The Breaking Time

We are coming back

 

Hello, readers. 

Been a while, hasn't it?

Obviously, the hibernation has gone on longer than expected. The last few months have been an immensely hectic time professionally and personally, but a necessary one. In the process, it became clear that this blog desperately needed an overhaul to reach its full potential. So, for the past few months, that's what I and a hard-working group of similarly interested people have been busy doing. Above is an initial glimpse of our new logo, designed by the talented David Gray.

That brings up something else: I'm not in this alone. Our return will involve a number of other contributors as well, who have excellent ideas and perspectives on our fractious era. If anyone reading this would like to be involved, email me with your thoughts.

I thank all of the Breaking Time's readers for their support and, above all, their patience.

We'll return soon.

P.S.-  All of us working on the revamp are doing so with whatever spare time and resources we can scrounge. You'll see a donate button on the top right. Any support is welcome, and every little bit helps us hasten the day we get the new Breaking Time back up, better than ever.

Poems for Friday: Where the sidewalk ends

A favorite since childhood, and Shel Silverstein is perfect for a busy week.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Bracing for the Storm

"Don't worry, we're all battened down here."

That's my grandmother, assuring me that she and my grandfather are prepared for Hurricane Irene. They're survivors, and weathered worse than this, and with far less warning.

Up the coast, New York is preparing frantically, in part because it's extremely unusual for a hurricane to head straight for it, the way Irene has. But North Carolina is first in its path and in the farm country where I grew up, bracing for storms is old habit.

I grew up accordingly: the northeastern corner of the state sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean like a nose ready for a punch. Hurricanes rolling across the long, flat horizon were a matter of when, not if.

Personally, my family never got the worst of it: our homes stayed intact and we never suffered any injuries, but they made an impression. On the cusp of 17, I waded through flood waters for hours to reach a friend's house. Years earlier, we huddled in the living room while trees fell and the metal roof of a neighboring farm shed flapped like paper.

When hurricanes approached, darting over the weather maps like angry specters, regular life ground to a halt and everyone fell back into old rituals: the thousand steps honed over generations to save lives and calm nerves. We had no monopoly on this: compare how West Coast denizens react to earthquakes. It's human nature.

In less terrifying form, storms were even entertainment. My parents would patiently explain the science behind lightning — both as edification and warning — while we watched distant bolts from our porch, thankful for the temporary gusts of cool air. My sister and I played in fallen trees.

I'm not there now, and on an odd level, it creates a sense of visceral discomfort, because a lot of people I still love are, in South Mills, Elizabeth City, Currituck and Norfolk. Before everything else, I hope they weather this safe and sound. I hope the same thing for everyone in the storm's path.

Storms are also a reminder: for all we plot and plan, there are things beyond our practical control capable of great devastation. Chaotic eras like ours are even more rife with them. From time to time, it's good to take a cue from facing natural disaster.

Keep perspective. Prepare. Stay calm. If hit, get back up. Even storms end.

Poems for Friday: A History Without Suffering

Rainy Streets of London on a Quiet Night, by Eric Magnuson

After blasting Frank Zappa's Trouble Every Day this morning, I settled down and decided that this piece by E.A. Markham was better suited to the times at hand.

In this poem there is no suffering.

It spans hundreds of years and records

no deaths, connecting when it can,

those moments where people are healthy

 

and happy, content to be alive. A Chapter,

maybe a Volume, shorn of violence

consists of an adult reading aimlessly.

This line is the length of a full life

 

smuggled in while no one was plotting

against a neighbour, except in jest.

Then, after a gap, comes Nellie. She

is in a drought-fisted field

 

 with a hoe. This is her twelfth year

on the land, and today her back

doesn’t hurt. Catechisms of self-pity

and of murder have declared a day’s truce

 

in the Civil War within her. So today,

we can bring Nellie, content with herself,

with the world, into our History.

For a day. In the next generation

 

we find a suitable subject camping

near the border of a divided country:

for a while no one knows how near. For these

few lines she is ours. But how about

 

the lovers? you ask, the freshly-washed

body close to yours; sounds, smells, tastes;

anticipation of the young, the edited memory

of the rest of us? How about thoughts

 

higher than their thinkers?...Yes, yes.

Give them half a line and a mass of footnotes:

they have their own privileged history,

like inherited income beside our husbandry.

 

We bring our History up to date

in a city like London: someone’s just paid

the mortgage, is free of guilt

and not dying of cancer; and going

 

past the news-stand, doesn’t see a headline

advertising torture. This is all

recommended reading, but in small doses.

It shows you can avoid suffering, if you try.

Who's left in the space race?

An abandoned cosmodrome. Location and photographer unknown. More photos here.

So, Russia's decided to ditch human space travel:

Moscow no longer sees manned spaceflight as its top priority but remains committed to its International Space Station obligations, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Wednesday.

Russia holds a monopoly on flights to and from the 16-nation station. Soyuz launches from its Baikonur cosmodrome are now the only way to space since the United States retired its 30-year shuttle programme in July.

NASA pays it more than $50 million per flight to send its astronauts to the space outpost.

Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said Russia was spending almost half of its space budget on manned flights and needed to shift focus to more technology-oriented projects. He added however it would stand by its station commitments.

"Unfortunately manned spaceflight accounts for an unjustifiably large part of the budget: It makes up 48 percent," he told reporters at Russia's flagship MAKS airshow near Moscow.

No, it doesn't mean the end of manned spaceflight entirely, but combined with the end of NASA's shuttle program, it's yet another move in the wrong direction.

So, NASA's bowed out of major human space travel for the foreseeable future, Russia's followed suit. Who does that leave? China? Europe? Weyland-Yutani?

For all the talk that private industry might take over the space race, it doesn't look feasible in the near future. The whole enterprise lacks, so far, the huge returns shareholders generally crave. Long-term planning is not corporate culture's strong suit.

What I'd like to see is an alliance. Instead of looking at expenses and dwindling budgets and going "cut!" space agencies should take a cue the cooperation that's increased since the end of the Cold War. Throw together the reduced space agencies, a few more forward-looking private businesses and some coordinating non-profits with the overall goal of advancing space travel. Split the costs and the potential gains in research and resources. This might even allow rising powers like India, South Africa and Brazil to join in, as they could gain access to existing infrastructure and expertise for an investment, without the huge up-front cost of having to build their own programs. Cash-strapped but infrastructure-rich agencies like NASA and Roskosmos get much-needed funds. Business gets a safer investment, because the odds are better than going solo. The non-profits, especially the scientific ones, get to advance their own goals. Win-win, if it was done right.

Of course, as I observed after the end of the space shuttle program, that solution would require motivation: cultures that viewed space travel as a serious priority. Right now, that's seriously lacking.

Law-less zones: when authority and anarchy shake hands

Just another Pirate Utopia. Photo by Laura K. Gibb.

Some interesting news out of Copenhagen, as the squat of Christiania just won long-sought autonomy:

"'It's not a perfect society, but one of the nice things about being here is that it doesn't have to be," says one resident, who calls himself only Vesinger.

Vesinger delivers his assessment of Christiania with obvious affection. He has lived here with his two little boys for six months, a recent convert to the Christianian way of life.

And it is not hard to see why this tiny enclave just south of Copenhagen's city centre is an attractive location for a family.

Trees and plant life thrive free from human interference and pesticides. It is more racially diverse, culturally open and creatively expressive than your average Danish neighbourhood.

Christiania has been a squat for nearly 40 years, ever since a group of enterprising hippies broke down the fences and set up in the disused military barracks.

And after a recent government ruling, this small society is celebrating its independence as a kind of semi-autonomous region. They call it Freetown Christiania.

---

Under the new rules, residents are allowed to buy their land at knock-down prices and the remainder will be put up for rent by the state.

Although this effectively turns a hippy haven into a local council for Ms Larson, it means for the first time they can exist in security as well as peace.

"It will be a new way of living," she says.

"We do not have to worry anymore about whether the government will throw us off our land. Hopefully now that we have won our right to own the land, then we will be able to feel more secure and start to deal with some of the problems that exist here."

Ah, "we won, now what?" the question would-be revolutionaries in every field have to grapple, specifically, Christiania's relatively lawless status has drawn increasingly violent drug dealers:

There have been outbreaks of violence including gun battles on the streets as rival gangs fight for control of Christiania's drugs trade.

On the notorious Pusher Street, skinheads with pitbulls glare menacingly from behind their stalls draped in camouflage netting at anyone who looks like they might be there to do anything other than buy drugs.

Society: never a simple issue.

Christiana's problems aren't new ones either. Back in 2008, I did a brief write-up on the history of the Kowloon Walled City for Coilhouse. Instead of hippie idealism, in that case the lawless zone was founded on a far more mercantile culture, but it faced many of the same problems. As I summed it up then:

Yes, the anarchistic types out there are correct when they say that the Walled City is evidence that humans can co-exist, and even thrive, without laws constantly piled on them. But it’s not that simple. After all, without massive police raids (government incarnate), the place would have probably become a mob-run tyranny. Its residents had a degree of freedom that anyone who comes home to piles of bills or endless forms can’t help but envy. They also had darkness, a lower life expectancy, filthy living conditions and huge numbers of drug addicts.

If the problems with the drug gangs keep building, Christiania will probably need police raids, ironically, to keep its ungoverned character. Anarchists, by ideology or default (as in Kowloon) have never been particularly good at handling organized violence. At the same time, while a hell of a lot greener than the urban labyrinth that was Kowloon, many of the other traits seem similar: functionally self-governing, relatively peaceful, ensconced in a niche and free of some of the surrounding society's ills.

This brings up a paradox: in both cases, lawless areas had their lawlessness preserved by, well, the law. So, what does one do with that particular contradiction?

From drunk to ruler: Liu Pang survives a Breaking Time

Despite his badassery, Liu Pang never slew a dragon. But Washington never killed a tiger either

Here's a story, and it's worth taking a moment to tell.

A very, very long time ago, Liu Pang (or Bang, depending on the translation), was born in a small village in China, a peasant. Generally regarded as a lazy drunk in his youth, Liu Pang was still charismatic enough that bartenders would pour him free drinks just to keep him around. Occupying various village positions from cop to headman, Pang eventually married relatively well and, as a leader of his town, ended up picked to lead a group of draftees to work on the emperor's tomb.

Yes, that Emperor's tomb

In was a dubious honor. China, at the time, suffered under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, who had a love for massive building projects that, whatever their uses, also happened to work large portions of the laborers to death. In fact, he loved these projects almost as much as he adored utterly crushing anything that might contradict him. Life expectancy either way was not good. So, one by one, Pang's drafted labor force slipped away. Heavily influenced by Legalism, perhaps the most cold-blooded political philosophy ever developed by humans, the emperor's laws were heavy on death penalty. Rebellion? Death. Late for duty? Death. Swimming in a thunderstorm? Death. Conscripts escape? Death.

Well hell, at least a death on the run might be quick. Driven by the same combination of insightful ambition and selfishness that had preoccupied his life, Pang ditched the rest of his band and went off to get drunk in the swamp. Some of them followed, and soon Pang was a genuine bandit lord.

When the old tyrant died, his machinery fractured, and the state quickly fell apart. Pang emerged from brigandage and became a minor warlord (same job, better title). Charismatic as ever, he picked capable subordinates, winning cities and former enemies over by the innovative tactic of not looting and burning them to the ground. A Taoist, he simplified laws where he want, reducing taxes on farmers and shaking off the mechanistic oppression of the Qin era. Later historians would marvel at his ability to draw loyalty (and repeated reinforcements) from the peasantry, but a large part of his appeal stemmed from simply not being a raging asshole when everyone else was.

The Ice Age is coming, Ctd.

As an epilogue to the last post on London's riots, I think it's fitting to add this map of London's impoverished areas overlaid with the riots. It handily illustrates both the underlying causes and the stupid tragedy of rioting, as the poor areas see the most destruction.

The furor's mostly died down, and MPs returned from their holidays for a basically pointless debate. Somehow I don't think Prime Minister David Cameron's insistence that the riots were "criminality, pure and simple" is exactly the approach needed to defuse a volatile situation and prompt a frank reassessment of the best way to prevent a repeat. Instead, expect more brutal tactics, more surveillance and more governmental cluelessness.

The Ice Age is coming.

The Ice Age is coming: England in riot

A woman and two children walk through debris while riot police try to contain a large group on a main road in Tottenham on Aug. 6. Leon Neal, Getty Images. From the Boston Globe's chilling photo series.

Britain, or England, at least, is in absolute turmoil, with police overwhelmed by a wave of riots causing terrible destruction. The initial spark for the chaos was the shooting of Mark Duggan by the London police last Thursday.

Ironically enough, for all that immigrants, in Britain as well as here, are often derided as parasitic sources of turmoil, their communities are largely holding the line:

"It was between about nine and 10 at night," said Yilmaz Karagoz, sitting in his coffee shop next to a jeweller's shop that has been shuttered since Sunday when the rioting began and a pharmacy that closed a day after.

"There were a lot of them. We came out of our shops but the police asked us to do nothing. But the police did not do anything so, as more came, we chased them off ourselves." The staff from a local kebab restaurant ran at the attackers, doner knives in their hands. "I don't think they will be coming back," Karagoz said.

Not everything works to suffering, of course. People also used social media to organize cleanup crews.

Picture from Twitter user Andy B

Surviving unrest, in the long run, depends on more people deterring rioters and cleaning up after the carnage than looting.

Rioting is stupid and ugly: about the worst possible way to lash out at poverty or a form of oppression, and it naturally attracts those who simply want blood and loot.

It's also not exactly unheard of in London: the city has a tumultuous enough history that its history of affray has its own Wikipedia page. Then, as now, it's not as spontaneous as authorities (through the centuries) usually assert. Rioting needs fuel — resentment — to flourish. Riots happen for many reasons, but they always happen for reasons.

So, consider the following.

Throughout this year, I've followed the fate of protests — peaceful, by and large — against the sweeping cuts in social services carried out by the current government. The poor will bear the brunt of these cuts, all while there is considerable tax evasion at the highest levels of British society.

At every turn, the police have reacted with violence in attempts to suppress, especially through the notorious kettling tactic, legitimate calls to not dismantle an important part of what makes Britain's society work. 

Remember this?

Not exactly a recipe for domestic tranquility. If that's what English police do in broad daylight, with media and thousands of observers, to peaceful protesters, imagine what they do in impoverished areas when no one's watching. Or, it probably seems to many of the inhabitants, cares.

Add in this contradiction: the same leaders making those cuts, the same ones calling for crackdown and blaming this eruption on the mysterious failing moral fiber of their nation, spent their youth as professional rioters.

Here's a handy directory

Prime Minister David Cameron, London Mayor Boris Johnson and Chancellor George Osborne were all part of the Bullingdon Club, a blue-blooded society dedicated to getting drunk, smashing up wherever they happened to land and harassing whoever they happened to dislike.

What makes this an acceptable tradition versus an unforgivable crime worthy of harsh punishment, apparently, is that they were all born into enough ridiculous wealth to avoid the consequences of their actions. That's the very definition of privilege: their law is not the same law meted out to someone in Tottenham.

Observing that dousing everything around in gasoline is a really, really bad idea does not means one endorses the inevitable fire. To carry the analogy a step further, it doesn't mean not to fight the fire. But it does mean that it's time to realize that one shouldn't turn the surroundings into a firetrap. When endemic poverty and a lifetime of rage meet an oppressively brutal police force, well, the place is ready to go.

My fear, from reactions like the lovely "let's police social media idea" now spreading across the Atlantic is that the initiative is behind trying to create stupidly useless measures to clamp things down even further. A catastrophic approach, and one that simply doesn't work. 

When BBC reporter Alex Hudson asked a protester when the unrest would stop.

"When there's war." Later that night, he was beaten.

The Ice Age is coming.

That old line by the Clash was the only thing I could think about, reading those words: an escalation between ever more-desperate attempts to clamp down on ever-more brutal unrest, any hope for better frozen solid.

London (or any city in the world) has long periods of relative civil peace when most people feel they have personal and political opportunities, combined with a basic degree of responsiveness from their rulers. Take that away, and all it takes is a spark.

Poems for Friday: Ulysses

I must apologize, readers, for the fact that I've let the last few Fridays go by without a poem here. Alfred Tennyson's Ulysses is an old favorite, to the extent I can't believe that I haven't posted this here before. It's old-school: long and word-rich in that way that leaves the reader stuffed, almost too much. But, hell, they're incredible words.

July's simmered over the landscape, from D.C. to Asheville. One might be forgiven for the bits of this poem that drift up, complete with a sense that younger days are long past, and the sword rusted more than any want to admit.

It little profits that an idle king, 

By this still hearth, among these barren crags, 

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole 

Unequal laws unto a savage race, 

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. 

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink 

Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd 

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those 

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when 

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades 

Vext the dim sea. I am become a name; 

For always roaming with a hungry heart 

Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men 

And manners, climates, councils, governments, 

Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-- 

And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 

I am a part of all that I have met; 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades 

For ever and for ever when I move. 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! 

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life 

Were all too little, and of one to me 

Little remains; but every hour is saved 

>From that eternal silence, something more, 

A bringer of new things; and vile it were 

For some three suns to store and hoard myself, 

And this gray spirit yearning in desire 

To follow knowledge like a sinking star, 

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, 

to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,-- 

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill 

This labor, by slow prudence to make mild 

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees 

Subdue them to the useful and the good. 

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere 

Of common duties, decent not to fail 

In offices of tenderness, and pay 

Meet adoration to my household gods, 

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. 

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; 

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, 

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,-- 

That ever with a frolic welcome took 

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed 

Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old; 

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. 

Death closes all; but something ere the end, 

Some work of noble note, may yet be done, 

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. 

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; 

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep 

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. 

'T is not too late to seek a newer world. 

Push off, and sitting well in order smite 

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 

Of all the western stars, until I die. 

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; 

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' 

We are not now that strength which in old days 

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-- 

One equal temper of heroic hearts, 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.