A beautiful place to wake up in the morning

From Simon - Feb 14, 2009 4:48 AM - to C in America

Dear C. So glad to hear from you…We live amid a crisis none of us has encountered before. Life seems fine for us but all around storm clouds seem to be gathering and many more are clearly caught up in the effects of this historic economic hurricane – one that I realise has been brewing a long time. Kindest regards, Simon

From C:

Dear Simon, Same here; we are feeling nothing yet except for a freezing in University contributions to our retirement funds. Otherwise, we are waiting to find out the impact of lending restrictions on our enrolments and in the meantime...firing some of our adjuncts. The times lend themselves to philosophical reflection. All this unreality that we have been living in - here in America at least - has hit bottom. A good thing but not one that rewards prudent people. Enjoy Corfu. Greece, no matter what, is a beautiful place to wake up in the morning...My very best to you, C

The sun came up into a cloudless sky. It’s so bright and hazy, but for the crackle of the awakened logs I’d mistake this winter morning for summer. Yesterday as we pottered on tasks I became so chilled I began to sniffle. By evening I was squeezing fresh lemons to mix with honey to warm in a glass. We’d been down to CJs Bingo Quiz in the evening, me in two undervests and long johns, to struggle with questions that were almost entirely about things in films and TV series. Our friend Trish, in CJs after cold day’s work cleaning charter boats at Gouvia, won. She was playing with Sally who runs CJs for Chrissie and John (CJs!), also there - the latter cursing merrily to the delight of all. Trish is married to Dave, met at Ipsos Harbour in the first hour of our arrival in September 2006, who first raised our spirits as we surveyed Summer Song’s worn and musty interior, wondering if we’d been sensible buying her on ebay, sight unseen. “We’ll make a list” he said “Norman and Pauline loved that boat and she’s worth it”. And so she was and is. Dave keeps an eye on Summer Song – not only on the boat but also on the harbour politics that allow us to keep her safely berthed there. C remarked from far away on the Pacific coast. “Enjoy Corfu. Greece, no matter what, is a beautiful place to wake up in the morning" but I’m as superstitious as any atheist about reflections on the rewards of fortunae. The names of people who rejoice in their luck are selected by a divine factotum and placed face-down on a gilded dish that passes around the table on timeless Olympus. Amid merriment, each God selects the human whose fate it is to be their post-prandial plaything. Here a brilliant climber says “There’s a window for the summit at dawn”; there a mother says “Our child is so perfect”; and over there a father says “There are police officers, a man and a woman, at the door. Must be about those parking fines”; and here a wife who says “no need to hold the ladder darling. Go and make us a cup of tea”; and there, in the deep ocean, an exhausted sailor says “We’re through the worst” but see this one, here’s a gem “The war will be over by Christmas”, but what about that popinjay Confederate General who said “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…” Far below a fisherman on the Peneios and a woman waiting for a train at Litokhoro know they hear, not the rumble of endless thunder reverberating among the peaks of Olympus, but laughter. This matter of chance, accident, luck, fortunae - what Machiavelli said was vital to political art, treating luck – good and bad – as an asset rather than as something to be eliminated by actuarial calculation, or in today’s term ‘risk assessment’... A lot of us seem unable to assess risk, unable to let their children set out alone to explore the world for fear of abduction, terrified of what’s widely referred to as ‘stranger danger’ by those encouraging their fears. The greater risk to children and indeed adults is not 'out there' but in the home. Most sexual assault is done by people known to their victim - friends and relatives. To avoid risk to life and limb one of the safest places is a metal tube 30k feet in the sky travelling at 600mph. Review the RoSPA annual accident statistics and see the bloodbath associated with home repairs and gardening; realise that DIY is a lot more dangerous than the IRA ever was; that serial killers are less dangerous than ladders; the terrible great white shark, a pussy cat compared to the average family saloon car when it comes to killing. Many more in Ulster have died under cars than from all the troubles there since the 60s, and perhaps Wall Street rather than Islamic jihad has produced our most dangerous terrorists. What makes the gods laugh at us humans must be those of us who stayed at home in bed on Friday 13th (Tuesday 13th in Hellas) but slipped fatally in the lavatory. The most dangerous place for most of us is our kitchen – being full of relatives who commit the most murders against one another, especially when surrounded by all that weaponry, but we do enjoy Corfu and wholeheartedly agree that 'Greece, no matter what, is a beautiful place to wake up in the morning.' * * * On the matter of risk assessment, no greater debunker of current panics is John Adams who's just been asked to talk at a Cambridge Science Festival titled 'The World Under Assault: Can Science Beat Terrorism?' to which Adam's initial rejoinder is:

No: because paranoia cannot be cured by CCTV, or DNA databases, or ID cards, or CRB checks, or number plate recognition, or GPS tracking, or email archiving, or data mining.

to which he adds:

Further, I intend to argue that the combined force of all of these measures feeds the threats that they purport to defend against...

This is a thinker I prefer to Slavoj Žižek, adored by so many starry eyed academics starved for intellectual bling and a bit of mystification amid the bean-counting world of academia.

Climate change in Greece - getting rid of my car in England

I'm back to working at the computer at the kitchen table. Lin says 'Your hair looks as if you've been in a wind tunnel'. Back here the media bombard us again. In-trays mount; brows furrow; lawns need mowing. I do wave and nod as I cycle through the city but I am also enveloped in its anonymity. In Ano Korakiana Democracy Street has already provided us neighbours, ceremonies, encounters and a smaller world that is, at the same time, not isolated. On Monday 29th October 2007 I will finally be rid of my car, having owned one for nearly 40 years. The family's not 'carfree' - more car-light - because Linda still has hers. This is more about me than overall CO2 emissions at our house - not reducing so much as slowing the rate of increase. I've been thinking about this for over a decade. Many would say my sense of urgency is unimpressive. Flying continues to be one of the ways we go to Greece. When we are on Corfu we hire a car - though when I was there with my friend John Richfield in February we travelled by train and ferry and cycled on the island or took buses.

To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window - Albert Einstein The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart - Iris Murdoch When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race - H.G. Wells

Last year I added a comment on Castle Morpeth Councillor Nic Best's contribution to 'thinking outside the car' on the I&DeA website:

Like so many, the 'problem of the car' is a wicked one. The arrival of the car changed settlement patterns determined by earlier forms of transport, shifting attitudes to time and distance. Helping to reduce car use requires understanding of how to change car-created environments - as these influence every walk of life. The car created untold opportunities to access distant places, along with door-to-door conveyance of people and goods. Banning or raising the cost of car use, in an auto-created environment , endangers business and reduces many people's quality of life - built around their reliance on the car and their enjoyment of this way of travelling. As someone who shifted to cycling, walking and public transport some 10 years ago I'm well aware of the obstacles to my new ways of getting about and carrying things. If government made things easier for me, life would be more difficult for the auto-dependent. As it is the freedom promised by the car is becoming more and more conditional, as its numbers increase and the collateral harm of car use becomes ever more evident in pollution, congestion, noise, car associated crime, with its consequences for legal and insurance costs and road deaths and injuries that continue to destroy many more lives than other forms of transport. The car economy is geared to human desire and spending, supported by intensive advertising in ways that blights the emergence of other forms of transport. The car's increased safety features (for drivers and passengers) has - via risk compensation - involved an apparent advantage being used to allow even greater speeds. Motoring organisations, in criticising the regulations that have been introduced to reduce speed and ease congestion, have managed, astonishingly, to depict motorists as victims - when in fact motoring victimises. I see it as vital to move away from the car's ability to create greater access via mobility, and the hypermobile culture of which the car is the mainstay [see Prof. John Adams' blog and in particular his writing on hypermobility and the value of policies and values that nurture access by proximity - a dimension of the Lyons' "place-shaping" agenda].

There are dire predictions for the future climate of Greece. There is some good news but Tania Georgiopoulou at the same web address writes:

This summer's repeated heat waves are just a foretaste of what's to come, according to experts. The average maximum temperature in July, now 33 degrees Celsius (91F), is expected to climb to 41C (106F) in the next decades, and average rainfall levels are forecast to drop by 20 percent or even 80 percent in summer months. Scientists believe that despite efforts by the European Union to limit the effects of climatic change to two degrees Celsius, the average increase will be at least 3.5 degrees over the next few years, with varied effects on different parts of the world. The Athens Observatory's Group on Energy Planning, Climatic Change and Sustainable Development has studied the effects of climate change in Greece over two years to April 2007. The results (link to PDF version of their report) show that there will soon be energy shortages, crops will be affected and large coastal areas flooded. Athens will face water shortages.

* * * To remind me to be less serious, the gods sent round my neighbour's grandson for a cup of tea. He told a bizarre tale about his Sunday League Football Club's transformation. As a solution to successive defeats every player, including him, has changed their name - passports, bank accounts and so on - to the name of a selection of international football stars. This has clicked with the media and Lynam Athletic have had stories all over the place on television, in the red tops as well as The Times and Guardian. They've also been doing far better since they made this decision. 'When did you decide this?' 'Down the pub' said J. now Vladimir Petrovic or was it John Terry? Linda calls this 'Grand Theft Autograph'