Category Archives: Living abroad

Power and The Pig

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I was on my way to Oxford.  This involved taking the train into London, then boomeranging out to Oxford by coach.  I had taken both routes many times so I felt no anxiety about getting there.  From the train I could see Battersea Power Station.

When I first spotted it, I thought I recognized it from somewhere.  After a couple more trips it came to me—this was the scary structure featured on Pink Floyd’s album Animals, which I had listened to over and over in my youth.

Animals is loosely based on George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm.  It’s the debut of the pig that Roger Waters, the band’s former bassist and lead song writer, still features in his concerts.  The album critiques the socioeconomic conditions in late 70s in Britain, with the pig symbolizing despotic, ruthless capitalism.

This is one of those moments where I feel overwhelmed and amazed by coincidences and connections, but I’ll write on.

Battersea Power Station was decommissioned in the late 70s and early 80s.  It looks ominous and cool from a distance.  It took me back because my first day at Oxfam involved a group “field trip” to another coal-fired power plant in Didcot, a half hour south of Oxford.

Yes, my first day happened to be an “away day,” which we in the US would call a staff retreat.  It was disorienting, to say the least.  Here I was, ready to start researching issues like small scale agriculture and industrial mining, and instead my new boss picked me up in front of the liquor store near my hostel and whisked me away to a coal-fired power plant.

This is what it looked like as we approached.

All I could think was, “What the fuck?!  Maybe we’re really on an undercover mission to sabotage it.  I could be deported on my first day!”

But no, we were really going on a tour.  The Didcot plant has also since been decommissioned and transitioned to natural gas. Sadly in the process, part of it collapsed and four workers were killed.

But back in 2006, the management was in full marketing buzz-speak mode.  We got to don jump suits and hats and masks; we must have looked like the Oxfam version of Devo.

We were lead around by a perky young woman who made coal power sound so cool! and really—just super for the environment! We received cardboard model coal plants to assemble at home with our children.  These actually were really cool.  I wonder whatever happened to mine.

I never received a clear explanation of why we went.  Maybe to try to understand “the opposition?”

—

Back on the train to London, seeing Battersea reminded me that there was a Pink Floyd exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Strangely, my son is a bigger Floyd fan than I ever was, and I made a mental note to go check out the exhibit in order to obtain Cool Mom Points.

Now, sitting in my living room in January in Minnesota, I am reading Donald Trump’s tweet about Nine Elms, the area where Battersea is located.

“Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!”

An off location?  I read several articles about the redevelopment of Nine Elms and specifically Battersea Power Station when I was in the UK.  The plan is to invest £8 billion ($11 billion) into Battersea to create luxury penthouses.  $11 billion!  Yes, billion!  There are all sorts of other fantastical buildings springing up around Battersea, including the new American Embassy.  This is an artist’s rendering; the real thing was more impressive, although I didn’t know what it was when I saw it in the distance from the train.

This kind of phantasmagorical development project should be right up Donald Trump’s alley—affordable only to the one percent.  I’m surprised he doesn’t recognize a great real estate investment deal when he sees it.  I’d invest in it if I had his money.

Deserving Immigrants

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The next day I would go to Oxford for some meetings with Oxfam people and to hang out with Lynn and Possum.

I had to leave the house early but first I let in the cleaners into the flat.

—

People in the States have asked me what Brits thought about Donald Trump.  Typically, I would meet a new person and he or she would make small talk while looking down at the ground, then after 10 minutes broach The Topic.

“Sooo … what do you think of your new president?” They weren’t sure where I stood, so they posed an open-ended question.

When I expressed my opinion, they invariably let out a sigh of relief that I wasn’t one of “those Americans” who think he’s Terrific, and they would launch into a screed about him, usually looping in the themes of Brexit and nationalism.

“We think he’s a complete tosser!” was a typical comment.  Tosser, wanker, arsehole, mad as a bag of ferrets.  Just a few of the British endearments I heard about our president, not to mention the universal terms racist, sexist, nationalist, moron, jerk, sociopath, and narcissist.

Granted, I tend to hang out with very liberal people, but I went to a few parties where I wasn’t sure what was coming.  It was always the same.

So when the Polish couple who cleaned the flat once a month stated that they love America, I expected the same.  They were immigrants, after all.  Fortunately they didn’t ask my opinion first.

“And we love your President Donald Trump!” the husband exclaimed as the wife nodded heartily.  The husband waxed enthusiastic.  “He is strong man!  In Europe, we understand about the Muslims.  You Americans need a strong man to keep them out!”

There was a lot going through my head at that moment.  Normally I’m a fighter and I would have challenged them.  But here I was, alone in Eton.  No one knew I was here aside from Sam and my people back home. This guy was about 6’ 2” and burly, with blonde hair and blue eyes—an ideal Aryan.  He was yelling—not angrily but animatedly—and waving the five-foot-long wand of the Hoover around in the air.  This was not the time to mention I was a Jew, and how I empathized with Muslims and hated all of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

The wife stepped forward, excited to share her opinions.  “We live in UK 11 years.  We go home to Poland every year, town near German border, and see what the Muslims do.  They change the country.  They make crimes, they are dirty.  They rape German women!  No, no, we stay here.  We have two kids; the boy he 13, the girl she 11.  They English!  We want keep refugees out of England.”

Wow.  I couldn’t even begin to know how to tango with the illogic of her statement.  During the election, I had heard a Vietnamese immigrant to the US on National Public Radio lauding Donald Trump and stating she would vote for him.  I had figured she was an outlier.

But now I wondered.  Is it a thing?  “I made it to safety/prosperity so screw all of you in line behind me.”  Or did a Vietnamese immigrant really see herself as completely virtuous and deserving of being taken in, while no Muslim was?  It boggled the mind.

I couldn’t resist asking, “What will happen to you with Brexit?”

They beamed.  “We love Brexit!  Brexit will keep new immigrants out.  There are enough immigrants here now.”

I really wanted to ask if they were aware that many Brits think Poles are pond scum.  Google “British views of Poles” and 18 million results come up.  I thought one chat room comment summed it up well:

“Poles are the second-largest overseas-born community in the UK after Indians. This isn’t new (Polish Jews came in 19th century) but much of it has to do with Poland joining the EU in 2004 making migration easier.  So I’d imagine anti-Polish sentiment being the British equivalent of American dislike for Mexicans.”

But instead of diving into this conversation, I grabbed my bag, waved good-bye, and exited to catch the train to Oxford.

Adieu, not Good-Bye

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Heidi and I worked our way through the first and second floors of F&M (remember, what Americans call the first floor is the ground floor, and so on).

F&M doesn’t carry clothing or accessories; its focus is on food and home goods.  One of their signature items is picnic baskets, or hampers as they call them.  I hate that buzz word “signature,” but in this instance it fits.

I don’t recall how much this hamper cost, but this is one of those cases where if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

“But how heavy it would be?” I remarked to Heidi.

“Oh dahling!  You wouldn’t carry it yourself!  You would have your man carry it!”  And by “man” she didn’t mean my lover but my manservant.

There were many hampers of varying sizes and with different contents, all with the signature F&M bluey-green colors.

“You buy these as a wedding gift?” Heidi suggested in her Aussie upspeak.

“Yes.  And then the happy couple use it once, put it in a closet, and every time they move they say, ‘Oh this heavy old thing—why don’t we get rid of it?’”

“But they can’t because Cousin Harriet gave it to them as a wedding gift,” Heidi finished my thought.

“That’s right.”

“Maybe some people use them all the time,” Heidi suggested.

“Maybe.  Maybe if you live in the country and your man only has to drive the Bentley a short way down the lane to get to the picnic spot near the river.  Not if you live in London and have to transport this on the tube.”

“Oh darling, no cousins of Harriet’s would ever be seen dead on the tube!”

—

We eventually staggered out of the store.  This is the entrance, with a couple of customers Kath Kidston’d to the max.

F&M had lovely window displays which I wasn’t able to capture due to the glare.  Since it was still raining, I’m not sure where the glare was from.

There were also windows featuring trains, a boat, and a bicycle, all incorporating the Signature Hamper.  I guess the message was, “Go explore the world with a 300-pound basket of china and cutlery!”

—

We stood on the pavement in the rain under our umbrellas.  It had been a long day.  First the Churchill War Rooms, then Victoria Park and the flashback of seeing my dad standing on that same spot, the unexpected Jewel Tower, Houses of Parliament, the Red Lion, then Fortnum and Mason.  My bags of accumulated trinkets were feeling heavy.  All I had had to eat was a bag of crisps and a pint in the Red Lion. It was 9:00ish and beginning to get dark.  Suddenly I felt tired to the bone and wished I had access to a Star Trek transporter machine so I could be home instantly.

“Now let’s see … what shall we do next?” Heidi mused.

I paused, because Heidi would leave in a few days to go back to Australia and who knew when we would see each other again?

But I am no longer willing to force myself to keep going. I simply said I was tired and needed to start getting home.  I started to apologize.

“No drama!” responded Heidi. This is her Signature Phrase and I love it.

“Where will we see each other next?” she asked rhetorically.  Since meeting through Sam in 2006, we had met up in Berlin, the south of France, London, and St. Paul.

“I would love to come to Aus, but it’s so expensive and I would need a ton of time off work.”

“It would be great to see you there—but I know, it’s sooooo far.  Well, think about it.  I should be there at least through New Year.”

We said our good-byes, I dropped down into the tube tunnel, and Heidi walked off toward Green Park station where she would catch the Jubilee Line to Swiss Cottage, the station closest to her flat. Her flat with the room she lets out when she isn’t in Aus.

A tube, a train, and a walk and I was back in the flat running a bath an hour and a half later.

Seeing, Really Seeing

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Am I a bad, shallow person to enjoy places like Liberty so thoroughly?  Only the one percent can actually buy anything there, right?  True, although I did buy some nail varnish, as they call nail polish in Britain.  It cost £12 ($15)—the most expensive nail polish I’ve ever bought—but I love the color and it reminds me of my day there.

But no regular person can actually afford to buy a pair of pants at Harrods.  Isn’t that wrong?  Isn’t it criminal that people spend £1,500 on baby carriages made by Maserati?  Or £2,000 for jeweled clutch purses, or £200 for a canvas tote bag because it has the Liberty look and label?

Isn’t it outrageous that people spend £95 for a small plate with a Liberty design on it, when they won’t give £5 to the homeless person sitting on the pavement outside the store?

Yes, it is outrageous.  And I’m glad there are people designing, making, selling, and buying beautiful things in this world.

Maybe, if the contents of all the high-end department stores were liquidated and the proceeds given to homeless people, those folks would get new clothes, get jobs, find apartments, fall in love, and live happily ever after.

Nah.

Some would, some wouldn’t. Some might use the money to start a small business, and build it into a business empire … like Harrods.  Some have such intractable problems that no amount of money or social service intervention can solve them.  Some poor people would be offended by the offer of cash and continue on their own path of working their way up.

No, it’s much more complicated. I’ve worked in nonprofit organizations almost my whole career and I know that rich people and businesses can be part of the solution.

I just searched the Liberty website for the terms “donations,” “charity,” “corporate social responsibility,” and “philanthropy” and came up empty handed.  It would be nice to think that they hired ex offenders or donated unsold shoes to charity auctions.

I would be happy to help them start a corporate philanthropy program if they would just allow me to work from that green velvet sofa.

—

For better or worse, I have an “eye” for color, composition, and all things beautiful, whether they’re manmade or natural.  You may be thinking, “Well everyone loves beautiful things!” but you would be wrong.  I have friends who have nothing on their walls.  Nothing.  No art, not even Art-in-a-Box from Target.

They come to my house, look around, and say, “Wow, you have so much stuff on your walls.  Interesting.”  As if it has never occurred to them that they could do the same, much less surround themselves with beautiful, interesting, uplifting objects.

I have been told that I notice things, in general.  The other day, I was in an old-timey grocery store in St. Paul and said to my friend, “Hey!  When was the last time you saw a grocery store with a ‘Grits’ aisle?”

She laughed and said, “You always notice things like that.”

Doesn’t everyone?  I guess not.

I asked my landlady, “What are those tracks?”

“What tracks?”

“The ones there—that look like a snake made them,” I pointed.

“Oh, those.  I’ve never noticed them.  Maybe a mouse?”

I am in a hyper-state of noticing when I’m traveling.  It was good to know I could see things—delightful, humorous things—right at home.  This new year, I’m going to try to pull it in even closer, and notice things in my house that I use or pass by—sightless—every day.

—

Back at Fortnum and Mason, Heidi and I worked our way slowly through the food hall.

I bought a box of Earl Grey tea for Lynn and a box of English Breakfast for myself.  I didn’t buy these exact containers but you get the idea of the packaging.

Yes, they cost more than a canister of PG Tips at Tesco.  They may not have been grown in a socially-responsibly, environmentally-sustainable manner.  But so what?  They’re beautiful, and six months later I am still dipping into my stash and enjoying the tea and the memory.

At Liberty

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I can always count on Heidi to show me something new in London that I wouldn’t have read about in a guide book.  She lived there for 15 years, maintains her claim on her rented room, and will return to work there—that’s the plan—after her sojourn in Australia.

From Parliament Hill, she led me on to Fortnum and Mason, in Picadilly.  I look at a map now and wonder, did we pass Banqueting House?  What is Banqueting House?  Did we pass Scotland Yard?  Surely I would remember walking through Trafalgar Square and along Pall Mall.  I love that name because my grandparents smoked Pall Mall cigarettes.  So sophisticated.  And then they died of cancer, emphysema, and strokes.

Maybe we cut through Horse Guards and walked up Waterloo?

Regardless, F&M is one of those fancy schmancy brands with a royal warrant:

F&M is a department store founded 300 years ago and in the same stratosphere as Harrods’s or Liberty.  I rarely step foot in places that have $$$$ next to their listing in a guide, but on a rainy day it’s fun have a look and take pictures, especially with a friend to whom I can exclaim, “Oooh, look at this!” to which she replies, “Aaahhh…so beautiful!  How much?” and when I flip over the price tag we both suck in our breath in a combination of pleasure and pain.

The last time I was in London, Heidi and I spent a whole day doing this in Harrods and Liberty.  I prefer Liberty to Harrods because the building itself is so beautiful; it’s reminiscent of something out of a Harry Potter movie.

—

They say you will know you have found your passion when you discover the thing that makes you lose all track of time and your surroundings.  I just spent 20 minutes looking at photos I took at Liberty.  I forgot it was -10F outside.  I wasn’t worried that my laptop battery was about to die, or that friends were coming over and I needed to tidy up my place.

This happens frequently when I blog.  Not just about going to posh places like Liberty, but during the process of coming up with words like posh … lush … luxuriant … sumptuous.  Focusing on stringing the right words together and complementing them with just the right photos—it transports me to another world.

And we all want to go to another world once in a while, don’t we?

—

As I said, I had visited Harrods and Liberty a few years ago with Heidi, and I returned to Liberty right before I left London for Scotland this summer.  I’ll give you a quick bad-photo tour of Liberty, then return to Fortnum and Mason.

The exterior.  Note the golden ship on top, undoubtedly an originally-proud way of proclaiming, “Come and see all the beautiful things we have plundered from around the empire!”

The atriums, from bottom to top.

Carved wild things on the railings.

It’s just fabulous.  If you are not fabulously rich, there are some signs that you don’t belong there.  First, rooms with precious few items.  This is not Walmart.  It’s about price, not volume here.

There are sales, but.

Five hundred pounds is $678.  But it’s all so beautiful.  The William Morris fabrics and wallpaper.  Persian carpets.  I pretend I’m in a museum.

 

A green-velvet love seat!  My inner gay man was ecstatic.

Some of it went too far.  These faux mounted heads were £695 ($943).  If you want a hand-crafted fake deer head, buy one on Etsy for one tenth the price.

Some smaller items were affordable but not easily portable, like the wrapping paper.

Buttons.  This woman appeared to be in a trance.

The conservatory. You could probably buy these plants at Tesco for £14.99.

I had had enough of being dazzled and felt almost nauseous from all the colors, textures, and other stimulation.  I made my way down, down, down one of the wooden staircases and encountered this on the ground floor.

As always in Britain, you can count on being reminded of all the men who gave their lives so we can buy green velvet love seats.

 

Swells and Bells

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Time to meet Heidi.  The tour with a human guide had sold out so Heidi was on her own with an audio guide.  We kept seeing each other, even in the immense palace heaving with thousands of people.

Visiting Parliament was the tourist highlight of my summer.  I don’t know why I’d never been before.  We weren’t allowed to take photos, which was probably good because there was so much to absorb.

London is made up of inner and outer boroughs, Westminster being one of them.  Westminster is also a city.  Then there’s The City, which is the business hub of London, while Westminster is everything else.  Westminster originally meant “that church on the west side of town” and there was also an east minster.

Is that clear?

Westminster was originally built as a palace in 1016 for Canute the Great. What Americans think of when we hear Westminster—if we think anything at all—is of Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament overlooking the Thames, and that’s all spectacular.  Occasionally we’ll be treated to news clips of parliamentarians ranting at one another.  Our politicians don’t yell—they smile and talk in circles and stab each other—and us— in the back.

The guide for our group of 20 informed us she was a Blue Badge, which meant she knew her stuff and had undergone extensive training to present information in a clear and entertaining manner.  Standing in the enormous great hall where the tour started, I had my doubts about how well I’d be able to hear her, but she projected beautifully.

I won’t go into an explanation of how the UK government is organized and how it functions.  I was curious to hear what she would have to say about the House of Lords and the role of the monarch.  As an American, the idea of unelected representatives living lavish lifestyles is incomprehensible.  We like that England has a royal family we can read about in the tabloids, but we wouldn’t put up with (and pay for) one ourselves.

When I was relating this to some friends of Lynn’s the following month, in Scotland, the wife pushed back and said, “But you have dynasties!  What about the Kennedys?  The Clintons?  The Bushes?”

Fair enough. We do give extra points for name recognition.  However, George W. Bush did have to run for office, and it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that he would win.  His brother Jeb bombed in the last election. You know what happened to Hillary.

By contrast, the queen and princes not only don’t have to run for office, they really can’t escape them unless they do something drastic like marry a divorced American commoner … oops … times have changed, that’s no longer enough to get you disqualified.

The nearly 800 members of the House of Lords are appointed, and the monarchy is hereditary.  Members of the House of Lords receive a £300 per day attendance allowance.  They get this whether they spend 10 minutes in the chambers or 10 hours, is my understanding. This feels outrageous to me, but I guess if UK tax payers are okay with it, it’s not my problem.

The 650 members of the House of Commons, who have to run for office, earn a basic salary of £74,000 plus supplements based on their role, ranging from £15,025 to £74,990 (for the Prime Minister). This is does not seem out of line to me, given that London is one of the most expensive cities on earth.

Our guide posited that their unelected branches of government are a strength because they aren’t constantly thinking about the next election and what moves they should take to look good to the electorate.  The monarchy and House of Lords balance the constantly-changing winds of politics with continuity and stability.

Speaking of divisions, the guide spoke about the “division bells” which are set in pubs around Parliament.  When they ring, MPs have eight minutes to run back to Westminster for a vote.

Heidi and I, being great students of history, took it upon ourselves to conduct further research on Parliament in the Red Lion.  We didn’t hear the bell ring but we had a smashing time while planning our next move.

Being There

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I had an hour before I would meet Heidi and there were swarms of people on the streets but nowhere to sit and have a cup of tea.  Normally I would have gone for a walk to see what I could stumble upon, but the rain hadn’t let up and I just wasn’t in the mood to get splashed by taxis and spend the rest of the day with wet pant legs and shoes.

Then I noticed a modest structure across from Parliament with a sign out front and wandered over to have a look.  It turned out to be what was left of the original Royal Palace of Westminster, the Jewel Tower.

Before I paid my five quid or whatever it cost, I asked the guy at the till, “Will I be able to see it all in an hour?”

He laughed a little.  “Oh yes.  It’s smaller on the inside than what you see on the outside.  No one’s been in all day,” he said.  “You’ll have the place to yourself.”

“It’s weird there are thousands of people standing in line for a tour of Parliament, just steps away across the street, but no one in here.”

“I know.  This place isn’t on any of the Top 10 lists. It’s the kind of place people visit the fifth time they come.”

Erm…that would be me.  I hadn’t known of the Jewel Tower’s existence until now, as I began climbing the steep, winding, stone steps to the top floor.

The Jewel Tower was built around 1365 to hold the treasure of King Edward III.  It was used as a store house for special-occasion clothing, public records, and jewels—as you might expect.  In the late 18th Century it was turned into the office of Weights and Measures—exciting stuff!  There were displays in the small rooms of some of the objects stored or measured there, but the best part was the views of Parliament from inside the tower.  None of my photos turned out, but trust me; it was very atmospheric to see Victoria Tower in the rain through the wavy, hundreds-of-years-old window glass.

I was done in 15 minutes but felt like the guy downstairs might be offended if I popped down too soon, so I sat on a window ledge and enjoyed the views, including the forever queuing tourists.  It was warm and cozy in here. After a few minutes I traipsed down the steps and bought a cup of tea in the tiny café area.  The ceiling was only maybe 12×12 feet, but richly adorned.  My friend was busy with two new guests, so I gazed up and around between sips and killed a half hour.

How often are we forced to do nothing?  Rarely.  And I have to be forced.  I can’t do it on my own.  After 15 minutes I began to notice things I wouldn’t have if I’d given the place the usual cursory once over. Differences in colors where a wall must have been repaired.  Was that from the great fire?  There was a lion’s head—was it carved in stone, or wood?  How was it attached to the ceiling?

Looking straight on, my view was a little display of souvenirs and a freezer full of ice cream treats.  Ice cream treats!  This is one regard in which the Brits are eternally optimistic.  There might be that one warm day when an ice cream treat wouldn’t freeze off your already cold cockles.

I realize I’m writing about a lot of nothing here, but that’s my point.  I had nothing to do, nowhere to go.  I wasn’t in any hurry, and there wasn’t a lot to see but what there was, I really saw that day.

I realize I’m writing about a lot of nothing here, but that’s my point.  I had nothing to do, nowhere to go.  I wasn’t in any hurry, and there wasn’t a lot to see but what there was, I really saw that day.

I was kind of impressed with myself that I wasn’t ruminating about my dad, after feeling the shock of recognition in Victoria Park.  I didn’t think about shopping, or work, or paying my bills, or how I was going to lose 10 pounds, or what time I needed to catch the train to get back to Windsor by sunset.

I was just there, off leash.  This only happens when I’m traveling.

 

Happy New Year, You’re Beautiful!

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Yesterday I went to the British Arrow Awards with Vince.  Five years ago, I would never have imagined going to the Walker Art Center to watch 70 minutes of British TV commercials with my son.

Five years ago, I would have spent New Year’s Eve an agony of wondering where he was.  Three years ago, I knew where he was—in prison.  Two years ago, he was living in my 10×10 foot (3×3 meter) spare room alongside the washer and dryer, and things were extremely tense.  A year ago, he had moved out with sober friends, had a job, a car, and things were looking up—or at least were stable.

Today, he has a job he likes with benefits—for the first time in his life.  He’s moving in with his girlfriend.  He’s got three and a half years of sobriety and works his program of recovery like today is his first day.  Well, maybe not every day, but he does work it.  I realize things could fall apart, as they have before, but I don’t worry about him every day like I used to.  It’s such a relief.  Thank you, Vince.

So even though it was -15F (-26C) I got in my frozen car and drove to Minneapolis to meet Vince and his girlfriend and her two daughters for Thai food and sushi.

I had bought two tickets to the Arrow Awards a month ago, then when I went back to buy more so others could join us, they were sold out.

There is a weird phenomenon in Minnesota.  It’s the only place in the US where we get 10-year-old episodes of EastEnders on TV and pay $14 to watch British TV commercials.  Two weeks ago, my local PBS station started airing the great series Dickensian, which Lynn and I had binge watched in Scotland.

So in addition to being quirky in a general way (Minneapolis-St. Paul is the #12 quirkiest metro area according to Travel + Leisure), we are eccentric in a particularly Anglophile way.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you will likely think I am an Anglophile and I am, but I am also a Francophile, and a Berlin-o-phile, and a Malta-o-phile, and So-Many-Other-Places-o-phile.  I’m sure there are plenty of fantastic shows and ads in other countries but since I don’t speak French or German or Maltese, I’m not qualified to writing about them.

The Walker Art Center is a place I like to know is there for other people, but where I never go except for this annual event.  I used to belong to the Walker when I was young and hip and trying to meet young, hip men.  But my days of pretending that giant rusty chains suspended from the ceiling are Avant-garde art are over.

The Walker screens back-to-back showings of the Arrow Awards Thursday through Saturday from 1:00-8:00pm and tickets sell out within days.  It must be a real income generator.

The ads make you laugh, then cry.  Two of the funniest, Vince and I agreed, were for Rustlers frozen hamburgers and the Lottery, featuring James Blunt.

And then, when we were laughing out loud, the next ad would be for UNICEF or another organization trying to get the world’s attention about the biggest refugee crisis since WWII.  I had heard about this theme ahead of time so I was prepared with Kleenex.

Since I work for an NGO and blog about travel, I am always feeling the juxtaposition of my safe, happy life with the terror and despair with which millions of people are living.  This was another contrast, in the newspaper a few weeks ago.

Articles about a man burying drowned migrants and the racist rally in Charlottesville, then an ad about diamond rings.

I don’t care about diamonds, but should I skip a trip this year and donate the money to UNICEF?  Do I justify travel, my one big indulgence, by saying it sustains me to carry out my work raising money for refugees?  Should I call travel an indulgence?  Do I have to justify myself?  I don’t think there are any right or wrong answers, but I constantly struggle with the questions.

A Great Life and a Rainy Ghost

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It was my turn to go into London and spend the day with Heidi.  I wanted to visit the Churchill War Rooms, which are an underground complex near Parliament that are operated by the Imperial War Museum.  Heidi had already been there, or wasn’t interested, I can’t remember—so we planned to meet at the Houses of Parliament for a tour at 2pm.

I bought tickets online for both places which enabled me to breeze past the block-long line of suckers hoping to get in to the Churchill rooms.  There’s a reason they control the number of people who enter.  These were the underground bunkers where Churchill and his team lead the war effort, and so they are dark and cramped.  I was only inside for a couple hours and I felt claustrophobic.  I can’t imagine spending days and nights down there—breathing in thick cigar smoke and hearing bombs falling overhead.

Winston Churchill was complicated.  He was born into wealth—at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, where I had enjoyed many long walks on the pleasure grounds.  He joined the army, was captured in South Africa during the Second Boer War, and made a movie-script-like escape.  He was elected Prime Minister and indisputably led the nation through World War II with world-famous speeches with lines like:

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

“… we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.”

World War II—and the US making England repay every penny we contributed to support them during the war—and lots of other factors, broke the Empire. The official end wouldn’t be until 1997, when they turned Hong Kong over to China, but many would argue that it really ended with decolonization/independence of India, Malaysia, Singapore, Jamaica, Sudan, Ghana, Kenya, Jordan/Israel/Palestine, and many, many others after the war and into the 60s.

Churchill opposed Indian independence on paternalistic grounds—the Indians needed the British to get them organized.  If Ghandi went on another hunger strike, he said, they should let him die.  When Churchill was elected PM a second time, he had a front-row seat for the Empire’s dismantling. He lived to be 90 despite being—famously—a chain cigar smoker and heavy drinker.

I feel so inadequate when I write these posts about which hundreds of books have been written and dozens of movies and TV shows made … go see the film that’s just out now, called Churchill.  All I can do is repeat my caveat that I am not a history professor, although sadly I think I could play one on TV.  I am just a curious person traveling around, learning a bit here and there, and forgetting most of it by dinner time.

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One thing I can say with certainty: the War Rooms have a really good cafeteria and gift shop.  After spending time and money in both I emerged into the rainy street.

I had hours to kill before meeting Heidi.  I opened my souvenir Wimbledon umbrella and fought my way through the crowds to the Houses of Parliament bookstore, where I bought more stuff which forced me to carry more bags.

I made my way to Victoria Tower Gardens, a quiet park on the west side of Parliament, and gazed out over the Thames through the rain.

Suddenly I felt something like an electric zing.  I have few photos of my father.  Being here triggered a memory of a black and white photo of him standing in this exact place with his umbrella open, 50 years ago.

Euros and Doors

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Mid July in Eton.  I was listening to a webinar about raising funds from European foundations.

Probably a quarter of my job consists of keeping up with what’s going on in my industry. I call it an industry because it is.  We like to think we’re all singing Kumbaya arm in arm while saving people, but without professionals who know what they’re doing, adequate funding, and an international infrastructure to support and coordinate everything, it’d be a big mess  Well, a bigger mess.

The international infrastructure is made up of what are called multilateral institutions, which are organizations that have funding from multiple countries: the World Bank, World Health Organization, and some of the United Nations bodies, like UNICEF.

The other day I was looking for a potential partner in Yemen.  I went to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to see who is working there, in what sectors.  Sectors are activities like Water and Sanitation (WatSan or WASH for short) or Health or Protection. I browsed OCHA’s Humanitarian Response Plan interactive map to find other NGOs working in Yemen, in this case specifically in the Education sector.  For better or worse, there are only two in Yemen due to it being in a state of war—Save the Children and Norwegian Refugee Relief. I queried my colleagues to ask if anyone knew anyone at those organizations.  In this case we didn’t have relationships with either organization so my search ended there.

The mechanics are pretty straightforward if you know where to look, but the type of thinking involved is something that takes a while to acquire, and I really like that about my job.  I have three dozen other projects going on at once, large and small, that require the same strategic thinking, focus, communications, and persistence.

There are newish master’s degree programs in international development studies that package and deliver this information.  Most people my age, or with my number of years of experience, have learned it on the job from coworkers, at a conference, or from reading articles in an online community like Devex.

My organization, the Center for Victims of Torture, just got a grant from a Swiss foundation that I found on a European foundations website almost five years ago.  What were the odds— finding a foundation in Switzerland that is specifically interested in mental health and Uganda?  But after clicking through a hundred other foundations, there they were, and after years of Skype and in-person meeting, writing proposals that weren’t funded, and having them visit our program in Uganda, they will now be supporting us in significantly expanding our work there.  It took involvement from 10 people at CVT, and someone else wrote the proposal that got funded, so it was a group effort and we’re all feeling pretty good about it.  When I am sifting through hundreds of foundations that aren’t good fits, I keep this one in mind.

Back in Eton.  The webinar informed me that the 28 member countries of the EU have the same number of foundations and give the same total amount of funding as the US ($160 billion in 2015).  Did you know that IKEA is probably the world’s largest foundation? I didn’t.  The UK, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France have the highest number of foundations with the most money, but the French foundation websites are all in French, so it’s a good think I have French-speaking colleagues to check those out.  The webinar made some common sense suggestions, like looking to the former colonizing country for funding (Italy for Ethiopia, the UK for The Gambia, France for Vietnam, etc.) and to look at the donor lists of our “competitors” to see who funds them.

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That afternoon, my walk was through Eton proper, where I photographed signs.  I was fascinated by how signs seemed to direct everyone to stay in their lane. I know how rambunctious boys can be, but was it really necessary for the grownups to have separate entrances?  Was a dame—as I imagined—a bosomy older woman with white hair in a bun who wore a flowered housedress and pinafore?  And was there really only one tradesman?