Community

Great bit of guerilla activism in Prospect Heights, protesting the disastrous Atlantic Yards project (helmed by developer Bruce Ratner) which just broke ground earlier this month. [via Brownstoner]

"Privately, a Columbia official said that compared to other visits to the school from world leaders, preparations for this one were among the most complicated and detailed. Requests included a special espresso-making machine ready to serve him coffee in an office reserved especially for him. The French also flew in their own podium for the president, but failed to install a rug they wanted to put in place for the speech."

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I just got out of this speech by Sarkozy. His charms cannot be denied, and somehow even a rightist French xenophobe sounds like a breath of fresh air over here. He spoke forcefully about the dangers of capitalism, and then he shook my hand. Also, his wife was there. Here’s the AP:

# Sarkozy urges world finance rules in US speech

And if Libé uses any of the quotes I gave their reporter, I’ll let you know! Also, Stiglitz and Dinkins were there! And, as I tweeted, lots of insufferable Eurotrash international affairs students.

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Wow, what a space. Please can my next apartment come to resemble this?

# Best Brunch - Best of New York Food 2010

"Answering the call of tradeswomen who are sick of gloves that don’t fit, reflective vests that sag, and the abject lack of work boots designed for the feminine physique, longtime construction worker Deidre Douglas opened Woman Up, a work-wear store on Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights."

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Awesome awesome awesome awesome. From the Brooklyn Paper (wince past the headline):

# Here’s how to look good on a girder 30 stories up

My old view makes an appearance on the new post at Christopher Niemann’s always-delightful but rarely-updated Times blog.

# Come Rain or Come Shine - Abstract City Blog

Harold E. Ford Jr. Discusses Potential Run Against Gillibrand →

I’m a newcomer to New York State politics, too, but personally can’t imagine a less appealing Democratic candidate. I didn’t even include the part about pedicures:

He called for a major reduction in the corporate tax rate and a payroll tax holiday to encourage hiring.

He blasted [Gillibrand’s] support for the proposed health care overhaul, which is expected to cost New York an extra $1 billion a year, and for opposing the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry.

On many days, he is driven to an NBC television studio in a chauffeured car. He and his wife, Emily, a 29-year-old fashion executive, live a few blocks from the Lexington Avenue subway line in the Flatiron district. But Mr. Ford said he takes the subway only occasionally in the winter, to avoid the cold when he cannot hail a cab.

Asked whether he had visited all five boroughs, he mentioned taking a helicopter ride across the city with fellow executives, at the invitation of Raymond W. Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner. “The only place I have not spent considerable time is Staten Island,” he said, adding that “I landed there in the helicopter, so I can say yes.”

He has breakfast most mornings at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and he receives regular pedicures. (He described them as treatment for a foot condition.)

Mr. Ford twice voted for legislation in the House that would make same-sex marriage illegal. In 2006, when Tennessee voters considered a ballot initiative to outlaw the practice, he vowed to support it. “I oppose gay marriage,” he said at the time.

Mr. Ford has repeatedly described himself as “pro-life,” and has voted to ban a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortions and to require that minors receive parental consent before receiving an abortion.

In the interview, however, he said: “To describe me as pro-life is just wrong. I am personally pro-choice and legislatively pro-choice.”

Mr. Ford, a member of the National Rifle Association, also voted for legislation to limit lawsuits against gun makers, and he cast one of the few Democratic votes for a bill to repeal the District of Columbia’s restrictions on guns.

Asked about his own experience with guns, he said he was an occasional bird hunter. “I shoot at things that can’t shoot back,” he said with a smile, “and will continue to do that.”

Mr. Ford has officially been a resident of the state only since 2009, and did not vote in November’s mayoral election.

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Peter Funch builds composite photos of New York City street corners, each photo around a single element (black, yawning, manila envelopes). They are all brilliant. (via Kottke)

Community, capitalism, and the human story

It occurs to me that this blog’s new title is Community, and I found that word echoing in my head last night as I asked a question at Union Theological Seminary’s “mega-class.” Following are my question and Dr. Serene Jones’ response – I addressed the question to her because, after hearing the fabulous Gary Dorrien answer a half dozen questions on the AIG bailout, I wanted some theology. Also, I’m transcribing - and not linking to the video podcast of the course - because this way I get to edit my incoherence.

Q: Professor Dorrien said that neoclassical capitalism pays no heed to community, and that economic democracy is a brake on human greed. It seems that those two work together: community may curb greed, and greed harms community, right?

But on the human level, it wasn’t [Reagan-era] globalization that destroyed that community, it was industrialization and the ability to simply buy something from two towns away.

As Christians, we feel this anachronistic call to a community that began to decline with modernity itself. What do we say to a world which lacks the sort of robust community that can curb our sinfulness, curb our greed?

Serene Jones: Community is an interesting term because, like many of the things we’ve been discussing, community isn’t inherently a progressive or positive space. You can have really corrupt forms of community and when you get corruption going in deep, communal ways, it’s bad. So we can’t just sort of invoke community as if it’s a nostalgic, utopic space somewhere that if we just got reconnected to one another, we’d be alright.

But what I do think your question points to is that this is all transpiring in the context of a world populated by people who still have very fundamental desires for intimacy, for connection, for being seen and being known, for being held and being loved and being fed. Again and again, if those sort of basic truths that the Christian story lifts up in profound ways stay at the center of our reflection on this, then we stop thinking that we’re dealing with human beings who are creatures other than these kinds of creatures, and we stop thinking as if these systems have a life of their own and [realize] they’re systems that these kinds of people with these kinds of needs have generated. Then we keep coming back to the earth of our existence as the place in which we are most likely to find – not always the most immediately practical answer – but we will get the impulses and the desires that point us in the right direction when it comes to articulating those policies.

In one regard, Dr. Jones fixated on my use of the word “community,” when I was really trying to recall the broader litany of grievances Prof. Dorrien raised against “neoclassical capitalism.” However, inasmuch as I was trying to say, “we Christians want this deeper thing than a post/modern world has ever offered,” she rightly took me down several notches in reminding me that community is anything but a “nostalgic, utopic space somewhere.”

I think my choice of that particular word is unwittingly rather revealing; any who know me can attest to my deep reverence for relationships and the often sabotaging ways in which I can elevate the role of community.

The body of her answer, though, gets to the heart of why I feel called to seminary of all things. I’ve been fiddling around, trying to find what felt like a rationally sound way to simply say, “Christianity tells a story of truth.” A story, where analytic philosophy simply strikes out at the thing. Embodied as we are in time and place, aren’t humans always entangled in the story of our lives more than any Platonic forms?

Dr. Jones’ answer exemplifies that growing conviction of mine, that the Christian story pushes back against our willful belief that, “we’re dealing with human beings who are creatures other than these kinds of creatures [who have orchestrated the current economic catastrophe], and we stop thinking as if these systems have a life of their own.” Scripture is so troublesome, but humanity is still more so. I find a truth in the way the Christian story contains so much, and wraps all of it in God’s love and justification.

I explain myself these days by saying that I head to Union to give myself to God. Said less biblically, I go to recognize that my life is not my own. It may be God’s (I’m beginning to believe so), or it may just belong to fate, nature, the soil. That giving up makes increasingly little practical sense as job prospects dwindle in this economy, but I find the end of Dr. Jones’ answer deeply affirming. Places such as Union, study such as this, may “not always [be] the most immediately practical answer – but we will get the impulses and the desires that point us in the right direction when it comes to articulating [just] policies.”

I am eager to spend a few years seeking to form those impulses.

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From the Week in Review (which Lauren and I are realizing is rather fluffy, if enjoyable), A Modest Proposal - Bikers, Take the High Road:

Next comes another species of biker, which I call the Really Cool Biker, because they are really cool — usually younger than the Lance Armstrong types, wearing skinny jeans and a windbreaker imprinted with, say, the name of a bar or a bowling alley, and riding a sleek, fixed-gear frame bike that I myself am too uncool to even adequately describe.

Now, as the Tour de France vs. the tourist melee is exploding, the Really Cool Bikers attempt to skirt the scrum of tourists, using the moment of chaos as an obstacle course, causing tourists to break like pheasants after a bad shot. The Really Cool Bikers speed silently around terrified bystanders, leaving a trail of bike-induced horror.

But it’s kind of fun to skirt the melee!

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Kitschy design pr0n, per usual, from Apartment Therapy