Is America The World’s Las Vegas?
I read this in the NYTimes Book Review this past Sunday and in the age of reality TV, exhausted couples working 3-4 jobs to get their kids a decent education and the goings on at Capitol Hill, if we have any of de Tocqueville’s America left – sometimes I just need to be reminded of the themes that gave me hope when I was in college.
“…that America was conceived in a spirit of openness, as a land where people could build new identities, grounded in the present and the future, not the past. This dream, despite current fears, has in great part been made real. And the fact that America is still a place where the rest of the world comes to reinvent itself — accepting with excitement and anxiety the necessity of leaving behind the constrictions and comforts of distant customs — is the underlying theme of Jhumpa Lahiri’s sensitive new collection of stories, “Unaccustomed Earth.” Here, as in her first collection, “Interpreter of Maladies,” and her novel, “The Namesake,” Lahiri, who is of Bengali descent but was born in London, raised in Rhode Island and today makes her home in Brooklyn, shows that the place to which you feel the strongest attachment isn’t necessarily the country you’re tied to by blood or birth: it’s the place that allows you to become yourself. This place, she quietly indicates, may not lie on any map.”
Thoughts On Outsourcing
On my drive to work some time ago, I listened to a story on NPR about an animation studio farming out their Alvin & The Chipmunks to a firm in India. The image in my mind aside, I had to wonder what this culture must think of America when they are in essence helping to construct this somewhat iconic image cell by painful cell. I felt somewhat violated, like one country saw another country’s skivvies. (I would much rather the story were about story work seen on The Incredibles, Tomb Raider or some Disney animation…but Alvin, Simon and Theodore??)
While the story was celebrating the advancement in virtual meetings and time zone enabled 24 hour work schedules, I compared it to my own experience working on outsourced projects and have to claim that when all is said and done, I fail to see the real cost savings. Virtual communication advances aside (which do save time and money if used appropriately) I added up the hours it took me to complete the project, the phone calls, the additional meetings, the travel, the language and cultural issues…it’s quite expensive and in the end, the quality of the work suffered. I read the rather alarmist The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman and have to say, agree with most of his observations which basically boil down to: when it comes time for the next generation to apply for a job, a B student from Poughkeepsie will no longer beat out a PhD from China.
Another Patch For The Quilt…A letter to my mother about her citizenship
My Dad just told me a few weeks ago that my mother had passed her interview/exam for US citizenship. I never really considered my citizenship, as one doesn’t really give a lot of thought to what comes with birth. The distinction of country didn’t really hit me deeply until I started traveling more extensively by myself, without the bubble family vacations with parents provide. She, who immigrated to the United States as a young woman about to be married, caused me to really look at the meaning of being a true citizen, when after living more than 35 years in the States, she decided to become a citizen.
Although she understands English, and lives “American” she is not what I would consider “from America” and that is a quality I’ve come to appreciate about her. When I was younger all those experiences: paper placemats at McDonalds, traveling a certain way (wipes, everything in kits, all menu and activity moments accounted for) set us apart from the more relaxed, last minute approach to getting from point A to point B. When I traveled to see family, the whole country was like that – I understood the impact of culture in more intimate way.
When she mentioned to me that she was preparing for her interview, I truly wished I could have helped her study for the test. It would have given me some insight into what the experience in coming here or the “bar to belong” must look like. To review things like, “What is the first amendment?” or “Who said ‘Give me Liberty or Give me Death?’”. She would need to learn The Pledge, which I had been reciting since kindergarten. It would have been interesting to see her as the recipient of flash cards, versus the other way around.
Does knowing these facts and reciting the pledge really define citizenship? When I consider my mother, someone who has participated in every community we’ve lived in, instilled a strong desire in her children to give back and volunteer – I don’t think The Pledge quite covers it. She has never broken the law, and along with Dad, has raised two kids on an average income, paid taxes, and hasn’t taken a vacation in years.
She passed the exam and was sworn in as an American citizen. There must be so many emotions, so many feelings about her country, what was, experiences of the past. I hope they don’t all wash all away in the desire to become recognized here. It’s another stamp, another patch in her very multi colored quilt.
She should be so proud of this and her accomplishments as a person. America is so much about forward motion; I hope her past doesn’t get forgotten with all of this. It played such a part in our development growing up. I believe she was a citizen long before the government ever recognized her and like thousands of other unrecognized “citizens” exist working for the American way of life: the desire to have happy kids in a happy home, making sure everyone is fed, clean, dry and reading a book. 
I hope she is able to vote in this upcoming election - it’s the best one we’ve had in years!
I wish I could have been there to see her sworn in. But, like her entry here, she was with my father – so I suppose it was a full circle moment for them both.
Plasmas On The Streets Of Japan
Another article, discussing the concept of quality and total product lifecycles and producer responsibility.
Like everything else – like health, like famine relief, like national security – the ethical impulse to minimise our waste must be rendered sensible in business terms before it can be understood to be practical in any other way. The liveliest new thinking in relation to rubbish is therefore about the great financial benefit recycling brings – there are profits to be had, and this is understood to be a motor of change. The concept was essentially invented by the Japanese, by companies such as Toshiba, who invented a system of ‘total quality management’ whereby the manufacturing process would build in the possibility of zero defects. Many Japanese companies are now working on an understanding that their processes will suffer only one defect per million. ‘Transferred to the arena of municipal waste,’ said Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace,
Zero Waste forces attention onto the whole life cycle of products. Zero Waste encompasses producer responsibility, ecodesign, waste reduction, reuse and recycling, all within a single framework. It breaks away from the inflexibility of incinerator-centred systems and offers a new policy framework capable of transforming current linear production and disposal processes into “smart” systems that utilise the resources in municipal waste and generate jobs and wealth for local economies.
Lastly, in Japan, they just leave things out in the streets when they bore of them. A TV, music center, refrigerator and washing machine just put out on the streets. The cost of upgrading electronic goods is not only price but space. There are fees for recycling. Putting the item in the street saves the person a trip and a fee for a recycling sticker. Most goods are in good working order just a bit dated. There are even plasma TVs waiting to be picked up!
What a standard of living we have achieved, when toddlers have their own ipods, and plasmas are left on the street.
Now what?
