Antwerp and the Immigrants

Good night Antwerp!
Good night Antwerp!                                                                                                                                                                  

That’s the view from the deck tonight.  We docked late so had just over an hour to visit the new immigration museum built in the former headquarters of the Red Star Line, which for years carried dreamers from the old world to the new.  Here’s how they looked through the eyes of painter Eugene Van Meighan, whose parents owned a pub across the street.

Eugene Van Miegham 1
The Immigrants

Antwerp immigrnt pic 2

This fellow stands watch just a block away, reminding us of those who trudged, carrying all their worldly goods, from the railway station at the end of a grueling trip to Antwerp to the embarkation point: the Red Star Line terminal.  It was quite a trek.

The museum has managed to take a story we all know and, with the very ordinary tools of words and pictures, make it new again. There is a sweetness to the presentation, including portrayals of physical examinations, decontamination, and general misery,  combined with respect for the travelers and pride in the role the company, and the city, played in so many futures .

Of course this city is more than an immigration hub.  It’s also got a long history of its own, built around, among other things, the guilds that preceded trade unions.  Their icons top several of the buildings that surround this lovely city hall.

Antwerp square

Just down the street is the Cathedral and a flurry of chocolate shops, coffee houses and souvenir vendors.   We could have gone to Brussels tomorrow, but have decided to stay here and enjoy where we are.  We’re a bit weary of moving so fast, although grateful for all we’ve seen and learned.  It’s time for a nice, slow day, and that we shall have.

Antwerp red star poster

Greece’s Pain: It’s not Greek to Us – It IS Us!

 

 

Immigrant solidarity English onlt

See this?

Looks like home, doesn’t it?  And sometimes it feels like we are the only country struggling with these issues of immigration.  But guess what.  This poster isn’t from Arizona, or Florida, it’s part of a sign on a wall on Ermou Street in downtown Athens.

Immigrant solidarity poster

It’s not the only one, either.  The country is under terrible economic pressure and it’s fraying things. According to our very sweet taxi driver,  despite the rumors of wild spending on services, Greece does not provide for the homeless or the poor – at least not enough.  And the people coming into Greece want jobs and “a better life” but “they aren’t taking any food from me!”   He’s with the marcher s- but there are plenty on the other side too.  We know it’s true in France and Germany — and that Mohamed is one of the most frequent names for new babies in many European countries.  But as you can see the sympathy hasn’t completely eroded.  In addition to these posters, there are many stencils, borrowed from Paris, look like the one below, also from a wall in our neighborhood here.

For more evidence of how bad things are  — look at this sure coal mine canary: Squeegee men vintage NYC in the 1980’s – all over town.

Squeegee man Athens style

I’ll keep you posted as we move through the islands – assuming things will be different there.  Would write more but it costs the earth to use the web on this “yacht.”

Brick Lane in the Real World – Things Have Changed in London

Brick Lane Road sign
You can see it there – the street name in English and,  I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’s wonderful book.  Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been.  Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London’s East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane.  But the book was published six years ago.   And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.

BRICK LANE OLD AND NEWGentrification has arrived – as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint.  As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them.  Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself.  Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that  — nothing remotely ethnic.  There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus.  And there are liquor stores.

BRICK LANE COVER I’m not sure precisely why I’m telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel.  Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago.  This immigrant literature, whether it’s Ali, or Lahiri or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow or Amy Tan or Betty Smith, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced.  So it’s nothing new; it’s just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.

ONE MORE VIRGINIA CANVAS, ONE TIRED CANVASSER (AGE FOUR) AND ONE SENTIMENTAL LOOK AT WHAT OBAMA, AND THE CAMPAIGN, ARE REALLY ALL ABOUT

Sleepy_canvasser_cropped
It was a long long Sunday canvassing for Obama, this time in Ashburn, Virginia, and it was also a very exciting one.  It began far from our destination, in a parking lot in Maryland, where we were "briefed" and handed maps of our Virginia destinations.   

Next stop: Virginia field offices.  Once we arrived at ours, in a manufactured "village" of mostly low-rise, not-so-expensive apartment buildings, we were briefed again, presented with the usual impressive packets with maps and voter rolls, and sent on our way.

As on our other sojourns, my friend and I brought along his four-year-old son, who is a rabid Obama fan.  We had 36 apartments on our list – in at least eight different buildings.  The complex, nice but clearly not fancy, had no elevators.  Instead, like an apartment you might rent at the beach, each building offered concrete stairs in an open stairwell, ascending four flights to the top.  No doorbells, just brass knockers or — as we did — you knocked the old fashioned way.   

Apartments_3
It was a lot of steps; I clocked at least two miles on my pedometer.  Leading our way was our four-year-old ambassador, who never flinched at the up-down-up-down-nobody home – maybe an answer – up – down of the day.  It clearly wore him out but boy was it worth it.

I’ve always been sentimental about our country; since I grew up just outside a mill town south of Pittsburgh I’m very aware of multicultural living.  In my class there were Kalcevics and Janczewskis and Brneloviches and Courys and McCurdys and Mortons and Stepanoviches — and more.  But days like today – well – they’re different, mostly because many of the committed voters we met today just got here.  One charming African man, with a wife in African dress, himself in shorts and a tee shirt, just became a citizen and received his voter card on October 12th.  Another, Middle Eastern, immediately declared his preference for Senator Obama and asked where he could get a button (of course we gave him ours.)  A third, whose son was also four, spoke to us as smells of curry and some unfamiliar seasonings drifted out the door; the scent of strange spices was all around. Some residents spoke Spanish, some perfect British English, some less perfect – and less British.  But here they were, in these simple apartments in a massive series of cul-de-sacs, so ready to vote.

When I was a kid, my grandfather talked endlessly to us about how he felt coming here – what it meant to him and why he never wanted to go back to the Old Country – even to visit.  He was a tough old guy – kind of scary actually – but fiercely grateful for what he had found here.  That gratitude, and our own comprehension of our lives as the daughters of a Harvard-trained lawyer, educated on scholarships while his entire family worked to keep him in school; lives that were possible only because our grandparents had had the guts to pick up and leave and our country had offered them, and our father, the privilege of a chance – built an awareness that has never faded.   Today though, it jumped from its quiet residence in the back of my mind to full-on awe.  We are part of something wonderful here.  As Jonathan Curley wrote in a Christian Science Monitor piece with similar sentiments

"I’ve learned that this election is about the heart of America. It’s about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It’s about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

That’s what it is – hope.  And the remarkable privilege of acting on that hope – using the power of American democracy to turn hope into action.  Obama’s slogan "Yes we can!" isn’t just political.  It’s a battle cry, a pledge passed on through generations – this time from my grandfather to the "new folks" living in Ashburn Village.  The day we decide we are no longer obligated to help pass the legacy on will be a very sad day indeed.  That’s why what happens on Tuesday is so important.  Morals, ethics, values, opportunity, education, work, freedom, the pursuit of happiness…  this has always been us.  May it be again this week.