The Mound

August 27, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and Knit together by WS

Walking across Hyde Park from Knightsbridge, clocking in those steps to bring me close to my allotted healthy number, I reached Marble Arch and for a moment couldn’t find it.

Hyde Park is comfortably London, full of geese and people but that is not enough for the hop-on and hop-off tourist busses that wait – not too hopefully – by the roadside at Marble Arch. The Arch, long ago dumped here, has now been squashed by The Mound that has been built beside it and sits like a giant turd making the poor Arch look quite tiny and shabby. Marble Arch was built to be a state entrance to Buckingham Palace but didn’t fit and so was moved to its place at the junction of Edgware Road and Oxford Street, close to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. The the best thing about ‘Marble Arch Mound’ is that it is a temporary ‘pop-up’ though no-one is saying when it will pop-down. Like any pop-up the goal is to encourage the now non-existent tourists to pay up, climb up, look down and empty their pockets in the shops below. The cost to build the mound ballooned from 2.5 million pounds to over six million. “I resign!” said a Westminster City Council deputy minister, but that isn’t going to help The Mound go away.

Does its conception, its construction, speak in a oblique way of England today? Covering something that is not fit for purpose, The Marble Arch itself, that eventually found a happy placement, is now surrounded by detritus and foolishness – rather similar to what we see at the other end of town in Westminster.

Now that everyone has returned from their holidays to watch over the evacuation of foreign nations and afghans from Kabul the Prime Minister has slid off to the G7 Summit leaving the British Ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow to ‘carry on’.

The lucky few, those who can afford it, tripped off to Spain where the sun was scorching and the mosquitoes bit, much like England’s Foreign Minister, Dominic Raab, who was found sunning himself in fashionable Crete and not picking up the brought-to-your-lounger telephone to answer a call from his Afgan counterpart. The quickly put-together photo shoot of Raab behind his big desk, English and Chinese flags flying, one hand gripping the big chair, the other holding his telephone, looking earnestly at the computer screen are fooling no-one.

Ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow was ordered to stay in Kabul while the rest of the UK embassy staff and their families left on Friday night. We see and hear only the English and American struggles but there are other countries whose presence in Afganistan is no longer welcome and they too are trying to get their people out.

“I want my men out of there. Now.” Says Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. Raab is no Kilgore.

The implosion of western forces in Afghanistan, the walk-through of the Taliban takeover of their country’s government, remains a debortle of immense proportions. So many stories of terror render most of us sick with helpless heartache at this moment of suffering caused by each and every one of us. No wonder there was a full house when Boris recalled the government last week. More ruffled than usual – not quite taking in that everyone was really calling for his blood – his bluster could not cover his bemusement. And when the past Prime Minister, Teresa May, stood up to speak she was heard, even as some of us blinked at her dress of bright Conservative Blue caped in Mourning black. But there were others, retired but young military men now serving their country in another way, ashamed of their government. For a moment I felt a glimmer of hope that maybe one of them could step forward and possibly lead this country into some new beginnings.

Where are the hyenas hiding in those benches? But here comes Tony Blair, wearing the wise elder-statesman look with slightly too-long silver hair as he shakes his head smiling ruefully, ‘Why can’t you pull yourselves out of the hole I dug for you?’

Holes for whole countries are one thing, traps for individuals are another. The Weekend Financial Times newspaper has a weekly column, “Lunch with the FT.” which during COVID has all been virtual. But this weeks interview took place in Warsaw, Poland where journalist Magdalena Miecznicka met with the defected sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya and her husband. Because poison is a weapon of choice for Russian and therefore Belarusian authorities only Magdalena was eating. The story that 24 year-old Krystsina tells is harrowing, from her first realization that someone is trying to remove her from Tokyo and return her to a mental hospital in Minsk. Her grandmother tells her not to return to Belarus and her husband escaped to the Ukraine before Poland. She was escorted from the Olympic Village by a psychiatrist and a Belarusian committee official to Tokyo’s Haneda airport where she was saved by an app on her phone. Typing in ‘I need help they are trying to take me out of the country by force.’ and translating it from Russian to Japanese, she reached an airport policeman who took her to safety. Magdalena’s article is quietly compelling, mixing Borsch soup with Poland and Belarus and all that it means to suddenly leave your country, your home with as many of your family as are able. Krystsina’s parents escaped but what will happen to her grandmother? We go from one story to many as in these Afghan days, another wave of desperate immigration carries fearful repercussions for the families left behind.

This has been A letter from A. Broad

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch

First Aired on Swimming Upstream KWMR.org

Web support by murchstudio.com

Second Wave

September 24, 2020February 12, 2021 / aggiemurch / 5 Comments

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

The British government again seems to be struggling with making up their mind about their ‘rule of six’. Hot spots of increased infection rates are happening, and England, like many other European countries, is rolling lock-down rules out of the front door of #10 Downing Street as if trying to knock off coconuts at a country stall fair. It is very possible that the coconuts are an easier target. The infection rate is going up, faster than the number of testings, though the rate of hospitalization and COVID-19 deaths is slower. The Health Minister, Matt Hancock, tried to talk a good talk on Andrew Marr’s Sunday political program, but it was heavy going. He predicts that a second wave of infections is coming. In trying to be stern, he repeated again and again “We must obey the rules”. But the rules keep changing and Hancock was ill equipped, and nervous. Monday morning we found out why.

Number 10 Downing Street had to ‘strongly deny’ that, as reported in La Republica News, Boris Johnson flew to Perugia to meet with Evgeny Lebedev at his villa in Umbria. Airport sources said that Johnson arrived on Friday, September 11th at 2. pm. and left on Monday morning 7.45 a.m. Every once in a while you have to love those airport staff and guards at these tiny airports. Johnson and Lebedev are tight, in that way that friends bond over what one could call ‘similar behavior patterns and tastes’. And apparently, according to the same source, the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, also flew into Perugia on September 8th leaving the day that Johnson arrived. Perugia has become a bustling hot spot surrounded by those busy villas tucked away in the Umbria hills. In London, the government brushed aside the Italian paper report as being – Italian – and now – sadly – the Italian government has concurred.

But the British people are fast losing faith and trust in this government as a second wave of increased infections and measures to contain the virus look inevitable. And so on Tuesday, Boris is to speak. First scheduled for 10 a.m. this morning he has now slipped to 12.20 p.m. in the house of Commons and will address the nation at 8 p.m. So far we know, that from Thursday, pubs and restaurants will close at 10 p.m.

As we adjust to another new normal, those of us lucky enough not to be directly effected by the virus look to see what got us through so far. There were friends and neighbors, grocery deliveries, the telephone, email and Zoom that kept us connected and took care of our more basic needs. These are community’s first responders.

But the cities were closed. There were no galleries to visit, no concerts or theaters to attend, no films to see. For some, music came through the wireless, while the television played endless reruns. There are books to read. A friend called Art the second wave of responder. And so, as we can, we search for Art.

In 2017 Beatrice had an exhibit at the Botanical Gardens featuring her photographs of the Trees of Buenos Aires. It was a fabulous exhibit and we were grateful to be there and see it. I chose about six of the pictures and had jigsaw puzzles made up from them thinking they would be great Christmas presents, but my friends said ‘Thank you very much Aggie’ and put the boxes away. I kept one here and after almost two years it was still in its box. Two weeks into England’s lock down we poured the one thousand pieces onto the kitchen – dinning table and the puzzle took over. Eventually we had to add the extra table-leaf. As nobody was coming to dinner the puzzle became our companion for the next several months. We would linger after a meal, like addicts, for just one more piece to put in place. It was completed in July.

This weekend it returned from the frame shop and now hangs on the wall bringing us comfort in a familial way and maybe even a little courage as we go forward. Bea’s photograph became something bigger we can share.

Carol Witman, from West Marin, has found her strength and comfort in art. Each morning (I think I have this right) before she starts her daily work of political activism she gathers flora from wherever she is: at home, on a walk or with a friend. Bob made her a work bench. She has gathered her tools. I image it as an alter, somewhere in a shed or close to the kitchen door, where she places her day’s harvest. The flowers, fruits and leaves seem an offering to the woodland gods and I believe guide her as she lays them out in a mandala circle. Carol says, “I started doing them as a response to my depression and anxiety over Trump/GOP and the pandemic, to focus myself each morning, and remind myself that there is still beauty in the world. When I posted them on social media, I found that others were given joy by them too”.

Susan’s Quinces Mangela and
Photo by Carol Witman

Sage and Nigella. Mandala and Photo by Carol Whitman

Even as Carol, Bob, and their cats evacuated to Oakland during the California fires, she kept her daily practice with making mandalas, calming and bringing joy to herself and us all. After this is all over and we come through to our newer still normal, I can’t wait to view a show celebrating her work in a book, to leaf (!) through with a smile, remembering when and how we survived this somber moment in our time.

This has Been A Letter From A. Broad
Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch.

Rule of Six

September 19, 2020February 12, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

Six months into this strange lockdown year many of us are still struggling to find our old normal life patterns or create and accept new ones. Families, communities, and countries are so ripped apart by war, disease and fires, that this may never happen again in their life times. The natural world is in deep fury and sorrow and has serious indigestion from humanity’s greedy excesses. For support or solace some people return to their religions, some look to science, hardly anyone looks to their politicians. In this house there are books and charts from the I–Ching, Runes and Astrology.

Anne Ortelee sends out biweekly astrology posts. I read them yet I can’t begin to fathom all the planetary positions in the heavens that she explains. Planets are joining up, and flying back to whence they came. When she reflects back into history, I always learn something new. It’s been more than 500 years since the last time that Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto all met together in Capricorn; in the autumn of 1517, just a couple of weeks after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door and set off the Protestant Reformation.

But at this point in time it looks like trouble for America and much of the world all tumbling on into political and natural chaos.

The people of Belarus are not giving up. Another big protest rally in Minsk showed Lukashenko’s riot police, now almost completely encased in armor that makes them look like rolling armadillos, attacking protesters and bundling those they think are the remaining opposition leaders into vans and taking them away. The country’s interior minister says 774 people had been detained on Sunday.

On Monday, Lukashenko flew to Sochi to meet with Putin at Putin’s Black Sea resort home. This is Lukashenko’s first trip outside the country since the protests began after the August elections. Russian news agencies report that Russia will send paratroopers to Belarus for 10 days of military exercises entitled “Slavic brotherhood”. It is yet to be seen what else Putin will do to help the old warrior who has now interrupted Putin’s holiday break – or will Lukashenko fall ill, and not make it back home to Belarus. Such things do happen.

Alexei Navalny is up and conscious and anxious to return to Russia. Two German laboratories have independently confirmed that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. Suspicions remain strong that the poison was probably in a cup of tea he drank at Omsk airport before boarding a flight to Moscow last week. His team lost no time in blaming Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin spokesperson, remains completely dismissive of such suggestions.

Alexei Navalny with his wife and daughters in Berlin. Photo from Sky News

Following the English government rules for the COVID-19 situation is like playing a game of hop-scotch on a chalked-out pavement that has been twisted and blurred by the rain. Back and forth until this week Boris, Matt – and maybe deeply hidden behind a scientific puppet, Dominic – have come up with the Rule of Six, nicked one can be sure from a catchy-sounding chapter heading in a book on film lying about in Dom’s editing suite. What is right for film and the arts is completely useless for this epidemic situation. Professors Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson write in the Spectator, “Our leaders amount to little more than a Dad’s Army of highly paid individuals with little or no experience of the job at hand.” Their long article reads like a doomsday book of despair and the writers barely touch on the failures of Matt Hancock’s Track and Trace schemes.

Moving from one debortle to another, Boris last week announced that he was going to flout, that is break, an agreement with the European Union on the Trade Deal that he made, and celebrated as a victory, just nine months ago. Suddenly this has given past Prime Ministers something to get excited about, join in unity around, and enjoy a new photo opportunity. John Major and Tony Blair are seen smiling and looking sweetly neat walking together across the Peace Bridge. Both probably chuckling at this dig to Johnson. David Cameron has cautiously joined the chorus but did not see fit to walk the plank with Major and Blair. He is a young man and may still have hopes of a political life before him. But he did say that “Passing an act of Parliament and then going on to break an international treaty obligation is the very, very last thing you should contemplate. It should be an absolute final resort. So, I do have misgivings about what’s being proposed.”

“See Thomas, See how you have angered me so!” Henry VIII roars, on a supposedly surprise visit, to Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s’ “A Man for All Seasons.” It seems that it is this wrath that politicians fear, but what I can’t yet figure out: who is playing Henry?

So much politics to think and write about. All pushing back the desperately important thoughts and ideas needed in this time of Global Warming and the eruption of this pandemic experience. Last year we looked in amazed horror when the Australian bush went up in flames. This year California is following the fire season’s pattern of Australia, with ‘some fires in 2019’ becoming the whole of the western states of America in 2020. In both continents the fire season is barely beginning.

Meanwhile Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Lesvos continue to burn and drown with no helping hands in sight.

This has been A Letter from A. Broad.
Written and read for you by Muriel Murch.