Meditations on Borders Bookstore

Good bookstores select their books and know them.

After the American Century

More than three decades ago I spent some time in Ann Arbor while doing some research. I fell in love with a wonderful bookstore that was local. Later was pumped full of steroids, franchised, and made a national chain, and then an international chain. That local store was Borders, and it had a wonderful selection of academic books, and it had clerks who really knew about the books. In the process of becoming a chain, however, the quality of the store deteriorated and it became largely market driven, pushing best-sellers and whatever the New York Times happened to review. 

This process has continued, until now there are some disturbingly bad books on the shelves. Books that are long on attitude and very short on logic, research, or balance. Books that the old Borders of c. 1975 would never have bothered with. In my visit there tonight I could not find a clerk who knew anything about the books. They were so patently not interested in reading that I wondered how they could get hired. Ann Arbor is a university town, and some of the students still must read words bound in paper. 

I asked one fellow if they had any books on the assembly line, and where they might be located. He immediately turned to a computer and started to type, but then stopped and asked me how to spell assembly line. He did not know if the store had a section of books on business, labor, or the history of technology. The upshot was that after an hour of browsing without help from an incompetent staff, I was unable to find anything of interest on the assembly line.

Note that Michigan is the center of American automobile industry, and that the assembly line was invented in Detroit. You cannot get into a cab or sit on a bar stool without running into someone who used to work on an assembly line. One would think that a bookstore in Michigan's largest university town would be able to muster something on the subject. Worse, all the other non-chain bookstores seem to have closed, at least according to what people tell me, and what I can see in walking around.

You can also read in the newspapers that Borders, the chain of bookstores, is losing money and closing many stores. The conventional explanation is that on-line stores have killed the local stores. It seems a little more complex than that. First, the local stores were assaulted by bookstore chains, such as Walden Books, Barnes and Noble, and Borders itself. This was going on in the 1970s and 1980s, before the Internet was a factor.

The bookstores of the United States are fast disappearing. Back when I was here years ago I was told that the best bookstores in Detroit were all in Ann Arbor, i.e. an hour's drive away. Today, is seems possible that the best bookstores in Michigan may be in Chicago, Illinois. 

A good bookstore is a repository of public memory.  Once you lose good local bookstores,  local culture and the distinctive sense of local history begin to fade out.

Follow up note: Since I wrote this piece the entire Borders chain of stores has gone bankrupt.

Who Can Replace Trump, for Campaign Comic Relief?

After the American Century

I am sad to see Donald Trump quit running for president. He would have been a miserable choice, but what entertainment we could have had! Imagine him debating other Republican wannabes. Think of all the great editorial cartoons, with his trademark bad hairpiece!

Trump is the too-often hidden face of the Republicans. Not a Bible-thumper but a nasty New York businessman with contempt for most other people. A man of equisite bad taste, he has the great virtue of not pretending. He does not put on a bland face, but gets right in-your-face. Trump would have been the perfect candidate to run against Obama, in the sense that he would both lose and represent the business Republicans, i.e. the people who run that party, even if they have trouble, sometimes, steering the gaggle of lunatics they have recruited as foot soldiers.

Nonetheless, we can only hope someone equally colorful will emerge to give the coming election some comic relief. My guess is that Sarah Palin will not be able to resist running, but there is the danger that she will make stolid Mitt Romney look intelligent and responsible by comparison.

It may be time for a groundswell of enthusiasm for the resurrection of Dan Quayle - whose gleaming stupidity gave us some of the comic high points of the 1990s. He is now just 64 years old, and the only former Vice President the Republicans have that is healthy enough to run. He ought to be out there saying silly things. This is the man who apologized to Latin Americans for not being able to speak Latin.  His immortality is assured, for he also declared "I stand by all the misstatements that I've made." Not to mention his shrewd economic analysis: "“Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.” Such subtle insights no doubt explain why since 2000 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of Cerberus, an investment house.  

With Trump gone, we need Quayle back. We need to smile again.

Euro Song Contest Maintains its Tasteless Traditions

After the American Century

It must have been that crazy European song contest. I cannot sleep tonight,  nor can I sing a single line from any of the 25 songs I heard. After at least a decade of steadfastly ignoring the event, I decided to watch. The day before I heard a long discussion on the radio, in which several university lecturers explained how the event had evolved over the years. Its style had been affected by American Idol and similar contests. It displayed a variety of ethnic and regional song traditions. The choreography had improved. The contest stimulated European integration. And on and on. I decided to watch again, to see how the contest had been transformed.

What I saw, however, was depressingly familiar. There were many bad copies of American popular songs, most of them sung in something like English. None of the songs was memorable enough for me to hum a line now. None of the lyrics told a story, so far as I could tell. The event was held in a football stadium, and its acoustics, at least on my television, were poor. There were some terrible costumes, and silly but very athletic dancing. Several of the contestants could not sing on pitch, notably  the French entry, who was a master of bathroom bathos. Quite a few female contestants seemed to have been chosen because of their beautiful legs, which were displayed all the way up. Much cleavage also was on display. Cyprus gave Greece 12 points. Romance language countries voted for each other. Former Soviet countries all voted for each other. Nordic countries voted for each other. Truly atrocious songs did rather well in the voting. In other words, this is the tasteless event that I remember from decades ago. It has maintained its traditions.

Azerbaijan won, which is perhaps the best thing one can say about this year's event. And, oh yes, Denmark finished a quite respectable fifth. Not too bad considering there were 25 finalists, selected from 43 national entries in the semifinals. Sadly, however, the Danes finished behind the Swedes, who will remind them of this frequently for the next year.

In this contest, unlike the European Cup in football, little countries have a good chance of winning. Britain lost, despite sending a professional band that I thought was rather good. Ireland did better, and should have been near the top. But it did not appeal much to the Eastern Europeans. 

For Azerbaijan, the victory is proof that it exists in the eyes of Europe. It is an invaluable advertisement. I am considering already when to go there on vacation - it looked so quaint in the video before the song. But it will absolutely not be to see next year's event.

The Coming Meltdown of Cyberspace?

After the American Century

The sun may be shining brightly in the real world, but there are cloudy skies in cyberspace. At least once a month one hears about vast amounts of personal data, including codes that get one into bank accounts, being stolen from a server, or about a laptop being lost containing lots of sensitive information. Security is becoming a major problem, with identity theft on the rise and a black market in stolen credit card numbers.

I know, because my information was stolen last year, and one of my credit cards was used by someone in Florida for about a week before the bank realized it. (The good news is that almost all the money went back into my account, eventually.) 

But there are other problems, too, as every institution rushes to go on-line with as much as possible. I wrote a 30-page report a month ago as part of my work at the university, and then lost control over it, and could not even see it. The final editing was to take place on a new platform that was supposed to make it easier to nail down a final draft, as it let several people work on it in a common space. But I never could manage to open the document again, much less edit it, and I no longer feel that the document is mine. I send in specific changes for someone else to put in, but that is not the same as editing.

The problems of cyber-security and of retaining some rights over what one is writing, seem, to me at least, similar. The report has now passed into the control of well- meaning (really!) administrators. The money on that credit card passed into the control of an unknown cyber-thief. Obviously I can go and speak to the former but have no contact with the latter. But soon the report will move on into other realms of cyberspace, to be read, and perhaps edited again without my involvement. In this case, I am not much worried, but in other cases I might begin to feel that I had been robbed of my intellectual property. 

These are just clouds on the digital horizon, for now. But there seem to be more problems with a digital world than when it was mostly just a place to exchange emails.

The Cultural Value of Choirs

After the American Century  

Since I was seven years old I have been singing in choirs. There have been a few gap years, when for one reason or another I was not singing, and that was always a mistake. Because a person gets much more from being in a choir than the music itself, though that is sufficient reward.

Consider the difference between singing in a choir and being an athlete or working in a business. In both of these, the high priorities are winning and advancing.  Individualism is the main value. All too many things in life seem to be about beating the other fellow, coming out ahead, proving that you are better.

Choral singing is not about any of these things. The point is not to stand out, but to blend in. Not to get to the end of a phrase ahead of the others, but to get there at the same time. In a choir, you have to learn to listen to others and make small adjustments in order to create a common sound. All the tenors have to agree not just on the notes, but the dynamics (loud/soft, vibrato? staccato? bright/dark, etc.), the pronunciation of the words, and the phrasing of the lines. Only with such adjustments comes harmony, indeed, sometimes more than harmony: on good days you get overtones and harmonics.

In a choir, your age does not matter, and it really is not important whether you have an impressive job title or not. Pensioners sit alongside students, natives beside immigrants. What brings the group together is the music, and often I do not even know what someone does for a living, even after singing with them for years. It just isn't important.

Choirs teach people how to work with a group; how to blend in; how to compromise; how to listen and harmonize. In a well-functioning choir, the rehearsals are not only fun, they blot out your worries and problems. For a couple of hours a week, at least, you are living in the immediate moment, working to make the sound right and having a good time. There are usually a few laughs, too. 

In a choir, you learn (or re-learn) the pleasures of working together for a common goal. 

Unfortunately, not so many people are having this experience. Choirs seem to be having trouble recruiting new members. For some, karaoke singing to a mechanical accompaniment has taken its place. For others, no doubt, choral singing may just seem old fashioned. I am pleased, however, by the phenomenal success of "Glee" - a TV show which suggests the pleasures of being in a choir. although it mistakenly over-emphasizes the importance of choral competitions. 

The choirs I have been in have occasionally been in musical festivals or other events involving several groups. But the best thing about these occasions is not a competition to be the "best." Every choir has its own style and repertoire. I once heard a Bulgarian choir perform some of their national folk songs that would have been hard for anyone else to do in the same way. Give the same music to that choir and to some Norwegians, and their performances would be quite different. The pleasure is in hearing these differences, especially when choirs from several countries sing for each other. 

Each choir is different precisely because it works to create a common sound. Each choir becomes distinctive because it blends the particular voices it has and the musical traditions that it knows. under the direction of a particular conductor. Good choral singing is not about winning but about learning to value the special sound only you can make together. Echoes and audiences tell you when it is all coming together.

Want to live in the moment? Combine discipline with pleasure? Reduce the tensions of race and social class? Appreciate cultural differences? Shut off your electronic equipment and live in the NOW? And do all that as a secondary result of having a good time? Then go make some music. Join a choir.

The Coming US Government Shutdown

After the American Century

In another triumph of ideology over practicality, the Republicans are refusing the compromise on the budget, and seem now almost certain to force the United States government into a shutdown. What does this mean, for ordinary people?

For government employees, it means a forced vacation, for which they will be paid later. They may suffer a little bit if they have little cash on hand, but long-term they will be OK, financially speaking. But they will be frustrated knowing that important services are not being provided to the public.

For it is the public that suffers most in such a situation. Anyone who planned to travel to or from the US may be affected, because the passport and visa operations come to a halt. Anyone without a valid passport will just have to stay home. Foreigners, who typically do not apply for a visa to the US until shortly before traveling there, might be able to get a visa, but do not count on it. So the travel industry will be affected.

Suppose, however, that you are a foreign traveler who does get to the US. What will a government shutdown mean? All the national parks will be closed, for one thing, so forget the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and all the others. You can still see Niagara Falls, however, as the best views are from the Canadian side. Virginia's Natural Bridge is privately owned, and therefore will be open. Quite likely all those Washington DC museums will be closed too, but you can still see dinosaurs wandering the halls of Congress, and various human oddities in federal office buildings. 

For a look at really strange evolutionary life forms, however, go by the headquarters of the Republican Party. There you may catch sight of such rarities as homo gingrichiensis, a grubby self-inflating hypocrite that almost became extinct in the 1990s, but has been reconstituted from DNA found in Georgia.

Another politically endangered species, once thought unable to survive in Washington is the candidatus mormonus. Once a polygamous rarity confined to Utah, this creature has been seen as far east as Massachusetts. Moreover, they are hard working and can be trained.

But perhaps the most interesting new life form on view at the Republican National Headquarters is a species of rodent that scientists have discovered subsists primarily on tea. These creatures are definitely worth seeing, but caution is advised as they can be extremely aggressive. Do not be deceived into assuming they are harmless by their careful grooming. A particularly venomous variety carries the Bachmann worm, which attacks the brain, and if not treated in time leads to imbecility.

Despite the possible shutdown of the US government, in short, there are still rare sights to be seen in Washington, even if the museums and parks will likely be closed.

How Much Will Denmark Punish Immigrants Economically?

After the American Century

Danish politicians in recent weeks have been suggesting that newly arrived immigrants from outside the EU should not receive health care and other benefits as soon as they arrive. Rather, they should pay for them for a period of time, for example one or two years, before becoming eligible. Many Danes like this idea, and since the immigrants themselves cannot vote, so the political parties lose nothing by attacking them. Increasingly, the image in the media of the immigrant is that of a parasite.

In fact, immigrants to Denmark with jobs automatically pay for their medical care and other benefits through taxes. It seems absurd to demand that they pay what amounts to an additional tax. Denmark has the world's highest taxes, with the average salaried person paying about 50%.

Consider a counter-argument. An adult immigrant has not cost Denmark anything in terms of schooling, medical care, or other social services. He or she immediately can go to work and contribute taxes to the state.  In contrast,  Danes themselves cost money for at least twenty years before they can begin to pay back the cost of their upbringing, education, and care.  Comparing the cost of the adult immigrant with any Dane of 20, an economist could only conclude that the immigrant is a better "buy."

In the case of someone like myself, arriving with a PhD and working from the day of arrival almost thirty years ago, the Danish state has made a huge profit. I have made tiny demands on the medical system. My costly education at excellent American universities was completed before arrival, and I have never needed unemployment payments, retraining programs, or any other transfer payments. Meanwhile, I have been paying more than 50% of my salary in taxes. Moreover, the Danish laws limit my state pension, and I will receive less than any native-born citizen, regardless of what they have done or not done. So my retirement will also cost Denmark less the retirement of a Dane.

Looking at this in purely economic terms, the Danish state could save lots of money if it stopped training PhDs, doctors, and engineers and hired foreigners instead. I am not advocating that policy. But I am pointing out that if economics really drove immigration policy, then one would not punish immigrants by asking them to pay an extra tax. Rather, one would find ways to lure them into the country rather than erecting new barriers to keep them away.

What then is really driving this demand that immigrants pay more taxes than the Danes themselves? Is it not xenophobia? Is it not the fear of others? The Minister in charge of immigration declares himself against integration, demanding nothing less than full assimilation of foreigners. His predecessor illegally denied citizenship to many people with foreign backgrounds, even though they have grown up in Denmark, speak the language as natives, and have jobs.

And what is the likely effect of such laws, if they are enacted? What is already the effect of such illegal actions and such pronouncements from Ministers? People like myself may no longer migrate to Denmark, or they will soon leave once they realize that they face tax discrimination, pension discrimination, and hostile remarks from elected officials.

Meanwhile, Denmark will still end up giving asylum to victims of torture, refugees, and others who have suffered injustice, many of whom will not be able to work. In short, the proposed policy will drive away those who would come ready to make a contribution at the highest level, but it will not excuse Denmark from its humanitarian responsibilities. Quite possibly, the proposed law will not put more money in the treasury. Instead, it may drive away potential educated immigrants who can work, and simply impoverish the country - and not only in economic terms.

Republicans in Wisconsin Attack Historian

After the American Century

One of the most articulate and distinguished American historians, William Cronon, is now under attack by the Republican Party because he opposes their attempts to take away union rights. This is more than just a sad spectacle, as the Republicans have demanded to see Professor Cronon's emails and other documents, under the freedom of information act, to see what he thinks more generally. As the New York Times reports, this fishing expedition was prompted by an article he wrote for the newspapers.

For those who do not know his work, Bill Cronon is one of the pioneers of environmental history, whose writings include a book in Colonial history on  the transformation of the landscape during settlement of New England  and a fine history of nineteenth century Chicago, for example linking that city to the vast hinterland it affected through its control of the grain market. In short, his scholarly work is at best tangential to contemporary politics. He is widely respected and currently is the President of the American Historical Association.

I do not recall the "Freedom of Information Act" being used to demand access to  a historian's private correspondence or other writings on the rather slender grounds that he or she is a state university employee. We are not talking about criminal or subversive activities, but expression of opinion in support of the Democrats as opposed to the Republicans. The Bill of Rights guards against "unreasonable searches and seizures" such as this.

The current Wisconsin Republicans begin to remind me of another Republican from Wisconsin. His name was Joe McCarthy, and he destroyed careers during his witch hunts for communists back in the 1950s.  Professor Cronon is one of the best environmental historians in the United States. Targeting him at the very least will waste a good deal of his time and interfere with his scholarly work. At worst, it could send a chill through academic life, undermining freedom of speech.

As one who has read most of Cronon's work and met him both in Denmark and the United States, I find this attack completely unacceptable,  and one more proof that the Republicans have lost sight of their founding principles. They should aspire to be the party of Lincoln, not Joe McCarthy.

Earth Hour: Vote for Sustainability by Turning Off the Lights

After the American Century

This year Earth Hour is on Saturday, March 26. Around the world millions of people will join this event and cut back their electrical consumption. This is a fundamentally new use of the technology of electricity, as people declare  that excessive energy use threatens the environment.

Less than a century ago most of the world's houses, and most in the US as well, did not have electricity. A blackout was inconceivable, as most people controlled their own light, in the form of lamps, candles, hearth fires, and the like. Between 1911 and 2011 a tremendous change has taken place. Not only have billions of people wired their houses and apartments, but the electrical systems have been connected together into vast grids. These are in many ways admirable, ingenious engineering feats, designed to shunt power around to balance the load at each local utility.  

But the interconnections that make possible the grid also make possible cascading system failures, spreading blackouts from one city and state to another. The most spectacular examples in the United States occurred in 1965 and 2003, when blackouts spread at almost the speed of lightning and pushed millions of people from the power dependency of the electrical age back to an involuntary self-sufficiency. With each generation we are less able to fend for ourselves, as more and more parts of our lives are inextricably linked to the electrical system. When the power fails, there is no Internet, no television, no microwave, and no air conditioning. The ATM does not work, mobile phones are suddenly dead, and the kitchens dark and useless, unless one has a gas stove. Even so, all the food begins to thaw in the freezer.

Earth Hour reminds us how to live without the power, however briefly, but it is far more than that. It also is each person's chance to use the electrical system as a voting machine. Turn off the appliances, switch off the lights, and tell politicians and fellow citizens that you want to pollute less and be more efficient. Join Earth Hour as a declaration that the endless growth in electrical consumption has to stop somewhere.

Did you know that the average American family today uses as much energy every month as their grandparents did in an entire year? Did you know that electrical consumption for the US as a whole doubled roughly every decade for most of the twentieth century? That kind of growth is not sustainable, nor is it necessary to live a good life. Turn off the lights. Rediscover conversation. With luck, after an hour you might be telling stories. Shut off the TV, look up, and see the stars.

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For more on the history of blackouts, see my When the Lights Went Out: A History of American Blackouts (MIT Press, 2010). On the energy system, see Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (MIT Press, 1998), and Electrifying America (MIT Press, 1990).