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Autocracy Defeats Neoliberalism
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History… We’re Soaking in It!
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War Is the Air We Breathe
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Sitting in an elegant, slightly faded old hotel in Aberystwyth, Wales, writing this entry via their wifi in the lobby. I first heard of this beautifully named burg from some folks who joined a bicycling history tour I gave a few months ago–they were regulars on the Aberystwyth Critical Mass! Here’s the view out of the window here at 9:30 pm:
Here’s an image of the ubiquitous “carbon footprint” marketing going on over here:
We left York yesterday morning and drove first up to the Fountain Abbey, an old monastery destroyed by Henry XIII’s soldiers back in the 1500s… as they are charging about $20 per person to go in, we decided to forgo entering the grounds. But I have to admit, the thought of a destroyed Catholic ruin warms my heart, whether I actually see it in person or not! A nice drive along a scenic route finally dropped us in Manchester where I was set on visiting the People’s History Museum, given my ongoing work with Shaping San Francisco, and the developing relationship with the new SF History Museum at the Old Mint. It wasn’t quite as stimulating as I’d hoped, but we did enjoy some of the old banners and many of the political posters. They had a great collection of full-sized Walter Crane images which I sorely coveted, but they had no posters or books available there. Here are a few images we grabbed:
Continue reading UK vacationing II
Got to London a week ago, and am in York tonight. Tomorrow I’m off to Manchester and then Wales for a few days before flying to Berlin on May 30… Having a great time, of course. The weather has been simply unbelievable. Brilliant, warm sunny weather, day after day, though a fierce storm is promised for this weekend.
Visiting London as a pure tourist for the first time (my 4th visit), with my parents for the first few days, joined on Tuesday by Francesca. At the outset of a six week journey that will encompass many countries, moods, activities, and people, it takes a bit to relax into the rhythm. It’s also a bit jarring to spend 24 hours a day with my parents after not having done so for many years. But we’re all finding our way (regrettably my mom is hobbled by a bad hip so she’s not as mobile as any of us expected her to be–but we’re working around it)…
London is a huge, sprawling place, so my experience was necessarily quite limited. I probably only heard English spoken by about half the people I overheard speaking (a great deal of Polish and Russian, among dozens of other languages). The whole place is either under construction or newly rebuilt, or so it seemed to my inexperienced eye. Here’s a photo from the Millennium Bridge towards “The City” which is decked out in cranes; the view was similar in every direction.
London is a very horizontal city, not so tall, and riding up in the over-rated Eye (a giant ferris wheel-like device that never stops turning at a very slow half hour pace) gave a view of construction in every direction. Here I am in it with Francesca a few hours after she got off the plane:
The visit to London started out with a trip to the Borough Market, a wonderful artisan market full of local cheeses, pastries, breads, chocolates, meats, mmmmm, so many good things!
Continue reading UK vacationing
OK, I’m going to do my part to heat the planet by flying to London tomorrow, and continue to use profligate transit for the following six weeks. So sue me!… Don’t worry, I’ll be meeting people, exchanging paper, sharing important conversations and contacts, and doing all the things you’d expect any self-respecting revolutionary traveller to do… but mostly I’ll be having a grand time with my parents and daughter, and a half dozen friends scattered from the UK to Turkey via Germany… reports and photos to follow regularly over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, I had a lovely get-away with Adri to Orr Hot Springs this past weekend. One of the highlights was a visit to the remarkable Montgomery Woods, a fantastic stand of old growth redwoods. Here I am on a trunk of one of ’em…
Recent readings inspired me to post the following three excerpts. Climate change is on everyone’s lips these days, and from liberal Harper’s to radical Mute, the shifting terrain of discussion is hard to miss. Quickly it’s becoming the all-purpose reason why specific social arrangements are not the problem, but all of humanity faces a crisis that we can only solve together… conveniently overlooking the specific capitalist organization of life that is not just heating the planet and changing the climate but destroying the basis for life far more systemically than that… so here’s three bits, first from Garret Keizer in the June 07 Harper’s… he’s a wonderfully cantankerous writer, blistering prose and many more outstanding turns of phrase than I can quote here.
Continue reading Climate Change Changes Purpose?
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Hidden San Francisco 2nd EDITION!
NEW 2nd EDITION NOW AVAILABLE!
Buy one here
(Pluto Press, Spring 2025)
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