Lording over you

Some whispers went around last week that someone in your correspondent's circle is the son of a Lord.

I needed this explained to me. What, exactly, makes you a Lord? Does this make my acquaintance a Lord? Is it anything like being a Knight? Do you have a say in Parliament? And, for goodness' sake, since when have there still been things like Lords in the twenty-first century?

One friend (who is a subject of Her Majesty, though not English) tried to explain: "It's kind of like the Kennedy family in America."

I thought back. Sure, they're the most famous political family we have. But, no disrespect to the Kennedy family, but they're also famous for various assassinations and the occasional scandal on Martha's Vineyard. Plus, when John F. Kennedy was elected president, it was under much suspicion - he was the first Catholic in office, and many thought he would be answering to the Pope.

"No," I disagreed. "I don't think we would consider the Kennedys anything close to a Lord."

For lack of a better analogy, we let the subject drop, and to this day I'm still not entirely sure what a Lord is.

As I found out, however, they are definitely still alive and well in the United Kingdom. I booked myself a flight to Morocco last week, and as I was entering in my passenger information, a drop-down menu offered me a choice of honorifics - Doctor, Mister, Miss, Ms, Mrs . . . Lord . . . Lady?

As tempted as I was to fly as Lady Your Correspondent, something tells me this sort of joke would be strongly frowned upon, and I'm not crazy enough to try. After all, as the expression goes, I'm no Jack Kennedy.

Thought of the Day

I found this quote in an Economist article, and felt I had to share:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. -- Mark Twain

At the very least, Mr. Twain has just justified the flights I've booked for Casablanca and Barcelona in April. One woman's lying on the beach is another woman's horizon-expanding fight to eliminate prejudice. You wouldn't want me to become narrow-minded, would you?

You Say Potato, I Say French Fry

Since moving to England, I've really missed the opportunity to do some good outside of class. Last week I was happy to stumble across the website of a local homeless shelter which seemed to match my old volunteer work: low-key, non-denominational, and non-judgmental. I went today for my first tryout and, as usual, found a few surprises.

Oxford is such a small town, so small that it literally takes me five minutes to run myself out of town. Sure, there's a bit of scruffy neighborhood down Cowley Road, but the group I joined was just open for a few hours every evening between the day shelters and the night shelters.

In those two hours, over one hundred people showed up.

Obviously, they need the help, so I will most definitely make it a regular occurrence. Next time should go better now that I've learned where they keep the plates and cutlery. Getting the terminology down is key, too.

"Do we need more cheese and crackers?" I asked the other kitchen volunteers. No answer. Blank looks.

Someone popped in from serving tea up front. "Do we have any more cheese and biscuits?"

Oh.

"Can you pass me the aubergine?" someone requested.

I stared at the pile of vegetables next to me.

". . . You might call it eggplant."

Oh.

The kicker came when one of the volunteers popped into the kitchen and asked me, "Quick! Can you make one of the ladies a Marmite sandwich?"

Ugh. Marmite. Marmite is one of those strictly English foods. I've never seen anyone eat it who wasn't a Brit. It's meant to be really good for you, but no matter how many times I try to give it a chance, it's still disgusting.

You're not doing it right, my friends tell me. You're supposed to put only a teeny little bit on toast. And lots and lots of butter.

"Are you sure I should be doing this?" I asked, when someone handed me the jar and a knife. "I'm an American! An American!"

But, I was there to pull my weight, and I dutifully followed the instructions I had been given hundreds of times. I handed my finished open-faced sandwich to the volunteer and waited for her reaction.

"No, we need more Marmite on that," she said, handing it back. "There's barely any there."

"I'm an American!" I explained again, and, shrugging, added more Marmite.

"Ew!" said another woman. "That's way too much Marmite!"

Lesson learned. I handed in my knife, and decided to wash dishes instead. Eating it or preparing it, I just can't win with English food!

Sacre Bleu!

The other night, I was standing in my local grocery store looking for a good beer to pair with dinner. Surrounded by Fuller's and Old Speckled Hen, nothing caught my fancy, nothing seemed to do. The English are so proud of their "real ales", but was that what I wanted?

Then, I spotted a four-pack of Guinness in the corner, straight from Ireland. I bought it without a moment's hesitation.

A few days later, I was lost for inspiration and turned my internet radio on to the first channel I came across. That night, I happily finished an entire paper nodding my head to nothing but rap music. Even though I wasn't a big fan before, for some reason out here I can't get enough Outkast and Eminem.

This morning, I realized I've spent the past week swapping between two other internet radio stations: what I call "yeehaw" country, and pop music from . . . France.

My goodness. It seems as though six months in England has turned me into the walking cultural opposite of English-ness. I suspect my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

The Inspiring City in Spires

Who Needs a Time Machine?

I just started reading a non-fiction book I found reviewed in The Economist, called Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward Glaeser. (Full disclosure: there is a large chapter about the decline of Detroit, but that was just more synchronocity, not the reason I picked it up.)

His argument is that cities, rather than creating poverty and crushing inhabitants -- which is, frankly, what it does feel like sometimes -- attract the poor and help inhabitants by making it easier for people to be productive. Even in a world where outsourcing is becoming the norm, we benefit so much more from personal human interaction than when we're typing on our computers at home.

That's all fine, but the reason I mention it is because I was lying in bed last night reading the following passage about the role of publishing:

[. . .] The book didn't help cities just by boosting their publishing industries. The printed word also made the world more urban in subtler, deeper ways. One direct effect of the printing press was allowing far-flung farmers to read the Bible, but indirectly the printing press helped make the world more knowledge intensive, more democratic, more commercial, and ultimately more urban.

"Yeah!" I thought to myself. "Books are awesome!"

Then I realized: here I was, feeling very proud about my profession's press and paper contribution to history and society, and yet I was reading these words off of the screen of my little e-ink Kindle.

Wow.

Makes you think, huh?

[Comic gratefully borrowed from xkcd]

Long Walk down a Short Road

I discovered this morning that the man who has been publishing for forty years on my dissertation topic, who is cited in paragraph two of my dissertation proposal as being a key scholar in my area of research, isn't based where I'd expect him to be. He's not in the UK, he's not in Brazil or Mexico, he is in . . . wait for it . . . Boston College.

So, you mean I could have just walked up Comm Ave with a cup of Dunkin' Donuts?

Sigh . . . Well, you know what they say. It's the journey that counts . . .

Imported from Detroit, Part 2

It started at the beginning of the semester, when my Iranian roommate talked about his Urban Planning and Design coursework. "You're from Detroit?" he asked. "We're studying Detroit." When I asked why, he just kind of laughed and shrugged. "Maybe because it needs to be rebuilt." OK, so we have an entire classroom of students trying to figure out how to rearrange my hometown. Good luck to them.

Now, my business module seems to be experiencing some odd syncronocity with the poor city. So far:
- In Week 1, we did a case study on Gale Cengage. I said to my workshop team, "That's in my hometown." Its headquarters is in Farmington Hills, not far from where I live. At the end of class, the professor, who is English, was running down the list of all Cengage divisions and described Gale as being "I forget where, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where you'd never want to go." I quickly raised my hand and enlightened her. "Michigan, m'am."

- In Week 2, this same professor described a sales conference she had been to as part of the Gale Cengage team. "It was somewhere out of the way like Grand Rapids and it was just awful." I hoped she meant the conference, not Grand Rapids. GR is actually quite nice.

- In Week 3, we're reading in our textbook about international M&A. What's the case study (non-publishing related)? The "celebrated" and "successful" merger of Daimler-Benz in Germany and Chrysler in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. What the copyeditors didn't know when they published this edition is that Daimler would sell off most of its Chrysler holdings in 2009, Chrysler would go bankrupt and get bailed out by the US government and -- hooray! -- get bought back up by Fiat. (Fiat is an Italian automaker whose name it is often suggested is an acronym for "Fix It Again, Tony".) Though Chrysler seems to have bounced back fairly well by now, my guess is they'll be suggesting a new case study for the fifth edition.

Not one to take the news lying down, in Week 4, a defiant grassroots movement in Detroit raised $60,000 to build a Robocop statue near the abandoned Michigan Central Station. Now that's what I call "rising from the ashes". I'll bet they didn't see that one coming in Urban Design.