Letter from Europe

[Gannon]

You are not alone, the same game is being played out upon us here.

SO glad to hear you're OK...even inspired...after this event.

It is sunny and beautiful this morning, Barbara. Detroit misses you, too. At least the folks who know ya!


Cheers!
John

[gazhekwe]

Oh, my! The same exact words could be written here. What is wrong with our leaders? Greed? Pride? Lust? Gluttony? That's four of the Seven Deadly Sins right there. Anger and Envy, those enter into it, too. They want what they think the super rich have and are whipping up Anger to strengthen themselves. Lust? 'Nuff said.

[Barbara Nadel]

Thanks, John. A beautiful sunny morning in Detroit would be a blast.

[Barbara Nadel]

Oh, my! The same exact words could be written here. What is wrong with our leaders? Greed? Pride? Lust? Gluttony? That's four of the Seven Deadly Sins right there. Anger and Envy, those enter into it, too. They want what they think the super rich have and are whipping up Anger to strengthen themselves. Lust? 'Nuff said.

I think that once they get power they just enter some sort of capsule. I know that here top politicians have very little contact with the public. They are cushioned by police, secret service agents, spin doctors, image consultants, PR people, advisers, speech writers etc., etc., etc. Even their so called spontaneous walkabouts are stage managed. People are drafted in to ask them 'appropriate' questions and look all happy. I remember some years ago a 'real' person broke through and asked ex-PM Tony Blair about the health service. Her husband was dying because he had been refused a life saving cancer drug and she wanted answers. Blair looked like a terrified rabbit in the headlights and couldn't speak. What more can you say? They are all so out of touch it's pathetic. I think that what we need are some politicians who actually don't want high office who might actually just do things in a normal way. There is an old saying about anyone who wants power being the last person to be given it. They're too weird and not in a good way.

[Barbara Nadel]

Now the trials of the rioters are taking place in London, Birmingham and Manchester. People who didn't take part in the riots but incited being given the same sentences you get for rape. This is my government being tough. Meantime our economy is in freefall and all our chancellor could say about it was basically 'whoops!' Some terrible industrialist was on TV the other day saying that of course the chancellor can't do anything about the economy because he isn't paid enough [[he gets about $200,000 dollars a year but he is also, in his own right, a millionaire) and that we should pay our chancellors at least $2,000,000 a year if we really want to get results. I am truly speechless.

[Barbara Nadel]

Libya isn't Europe at all but it's only across the Med and of course, ourselves and the French have been meddling away there for some time. In a bit of a will he or won't he [[leave Libya) thing, we all watch with bated breath to see what Colonel Gadaffi will do next. Will yet another tyrant bite the dust and what, if anything, will come after him? I just hope that for everyone concerned Libya can have some stability and ease for a change. I just can't get my head around extreme ideologies and I hope that everyone will be able to live in peace once Gadaffi has gone. Not that I huge confidence. I just hope.

[Django]

So which country is going to own the puppet that goes into power in Lybia? I really havent kept track of whats going on.

[Barbara Nadel]

So which country is going to own the puppet that goes into power in Lybia? I really havent kept track of whats going on.

Good question. Who knows? I doubt it will be the UK because our leaders, though dreadful, are really quite dim these days. When your government come just from one class that tends to happen. It's like in-breeding in dogs and cats, it doesn't end well. I don't think France either. Nicolas Sarkozy only went in to Libya, I think, to boost his ratings at home and now his wife is having a baby, I think he's OK. No I think, if anyone, it will be a big, proper player. Russia, Iran, maybe, dare I say, the US. With luck the Libyans will be left alone to just sort themselves out. But I know that's impossible. They have oil and so we all know what that means.

[Barbara Nadel]

I'm a bit of a 'method' author as some of you know and so I like to get down and dirty with whatever I'm writing about. At the moment that subject is stand up comedy. I have to write about a fictional stand up comedian. I have to design sets for her. So to actually perform is not a big step. You think?!! Humour in this country falls into two camps. It's either weak, lazy and pathetic [[jokes about women not being able to drive properly) or it's so dark and ironic it almost cuts the listener in half. On the 'alternative' comedy circuit, it's as rough as it gets. Nothing is out of bounds and that includes religion, politics, sex, the royal family, death, illness - you name it. Foreign nations are not exempt either and I can assure you that Sarah Palin would probably faint if she heard what comedians over here say about her. Anyway... I've opted, in the spirit of method writing to do a 5 minute stand up set in front of a baying London audience. I've written a load of material which I'll show to a friend who works in stand up next week. I've taken various tacks including talking about my work as a writer, taking about ageing and presenting myself in the character of a mermaid who works for the government. No date set for the gig as yet, but I'll keep you all in the loop. I know I'll probably 'die' but what the hell?

[Gannon]

Oh, what I'd give to be able to see that...LOL...perhaps you can Skype it that night, or have someone record it?!

Just remember, it is all in the delivery...the timing. Gotta wear your poker face, too.


Cheers, really! Knock 'em dead...

[gazhekwe]

That's really exciting, Barbara! I would love to see it, too. I'll be rooting for you to knock 'em dead!

[Barbara Nadel]

Thanks, guys. I've just got to get it booked this week and so I'll let you know. Will try to have it videoed or whatever even if I 'die' up there. But London crowds are rough and so there may be the odd beer can flying through the air and the language will be almost beyond belief!

[Gannon]

Barbara,

If you'd like, we can send you an American baseball catcher's mitt...so you can field a few of those beer cans and toss 'em right back!

Who knows...with all those newly-imported Louisville Slugger bats, you might just start a post-riot trend!

Cheers and more from a beautiful sunny Sunday morning in DEtroit...

[Barbara Nadel]

Thanks. I'll let you know about the mitts. May be a very good idea. I've got 2 sets. One is about getting old and the other one is where I take on the guise of a bored mermaid who works for the government. Her hobby is luring young men to their doom in the Thames and then stealing their iPads. I'm not well...

[Barbara Nadel]

Back from London I had a good time laying the groundwork for my comedy set. Autumn [[what you call Fall) is THE big time on the comedy circuit and so I'll have a lot of competition, that or I'll be able to hide my ineptness in amongst hundreds of others. Now, just for a change, I have to get on with an introduction I'm writing to someone else's book. It's about Istanbul and is basically a travelogue using the literature of the city in question. The UK company that produces these books is called City Lit and they have already produced books on London, Dublin, Venice, Prague and New York. They're held in very high esteem over here and I've got a meeting about them on Thursday. I think a City Lit book on Detroit would be great as the city is very rich in literature. I'll put it out there and see what happens. No promises, but I think it would be fab. Hope all's well with you guys!

[stromberg2]

Just wanted to say hi and good luck, Barbara. If they heckle you, bollacks that!

Stromberg2

[Barbara Nadel]

Just wanted to say hi and good luck, Barbara. If they heckle you, bollacks that!

Stromberg2

Oh, much appreciated, Stromberg! Yes, bollocks, what a wonderful word that is! Use it loud and use it often is what I say. I also like 'cobblers' too, which means the same thing.

[Barbara Nadel]

Yesterday spent much of a long car journey home remembering where I was and what I was doing on 9/11. My dad had been dead for less than a month and I had only just gone back to work which, in those days, was with a psychiatric project in the community. On 9/11 it was annual trip out day and so I had 40 patients with me on a visit to the zoo. We got back to the tour bus after a great day looking at elephants and petting llamas and goats to the sound of something awful on the bus radio. The driver and some of the patients were mesmerised. We could see nothing but we all heard the sound of the North Tower coming down. People cried, a lot of people just kept on and on asking whether or not this was the end of the world. I had no answers for them. It could have been. What is certain is that the world has not been the same since and that life, particularly for those with mental health problems has got harder and more confusing. And yet what big question was exercising my government this week? Was it maybe how on earth do we help all these mentally ill homeless people on our streets? What can we do about child poverty in our cities? No, it was 'how can it be fair that the very rich have to pay 50% of their earnings in tax'. Well that certainly keeps me awake. How CAN someone on $10 million dollars a year be expected to cope on just $5 million. It's a puzzler isn't it?

[Bigb23]

Barbara - I lost my dad two days before 9-11. That was a week I would not wish on anyone.

[Barbara Nadel]

Barbara - I lost my dad two days before 9-11. That was a week I would not wish on anyone.

I really feel for you. The personal loss on top of the Twin Towers tragedy was just too much. 2001 as far as I'm concerned was a disaster both personal and internationally. We NEVER want a replay of that.

[Barbara Nadel]

Building at risk! Some parts of Manchester and particularly a part of the city called Ancoats have been very heavily redeveloped over the last 10 years. Much of this redevelopment was needed post World War 2 bombing, the closure of the mills and the IRA bombing of the 1990s. But places like Ancoats were virtually levelled. Only one major old building remains and that is in a parlous state and is basically held up by scaffolding. It's the old Victorian Ancoats Pharmacy and it was where the poor went to get their medicine in the years before the National Health Service. It was an early example of socialism in a city that eventually became a byword for its support of the political Left. Ancoats Pharmacy was also painted by the most famous north western artist of them all, L S Lowry. Now there's a fight on to save the building. It's a lovely thing but I don't really know how I feel about it. It is very fragile and will take a lot of money to repair but it is also part of our history. As it is buildings from the Industrial Revolution are not really very well regarded here. We like palaces and castles and houses but we're not keen on places of work or old hospitals etc. If the city authorities replaced it with a new free pharmacy that would be OK. But free medication, unless you are destitute really is a thing of the past.

[Barbara Nadel]

Just been to a fantastic exhibition at the British Museum in London. Called Treasures of Heaven it's all about faith and relics and traces the history of Christian relic veneration from the middle ages until the present day. We can deride such things very easily but 'souvenirs' of significant others or saint or Elvis Presley are very important to most people. On thing I discovered that I didn't know before was that after he was executed by the Parliamentarians there was moves to make our King Charles I a saint. The exhibition actually features some of his relics! If you're in the UK from now until 9th October, do go otherwise have a look on the museum's website, britishmuseum.org. My Detroit book is coming together now and I will be opening up a new thread to talk about that soon. Love and hugs to everyone I know!

[gazhekwe]

Relics are certainly important. Reading about St. Bede, I learned that people would even dig up the ground where he walked to have a little bit of the dirt where Bede stood.

Can't wait to hear about the book!

[Barbara Nadel]

Will get on to the new book next week. I'm off on my travels again this week and some interviews with comedians. But just HAD to tell you about a documentary I saw about our ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair last night. As many of us suspected all along he has made vast amounts of money for doing NOTHING. He is supposedly a peace envoy to the middle east [[whatever that means) and yet people in the middle east say that he is next to useless. Apparently he officially works for a rather shady organisation called The Quartet which is made up of representatives from the US, the European Union, Russia and the UN. What it does, and who these people are we don't know. But Blair also has connections with vast corporations [[who pay him a fortune) and with various repressive regimes in the middle east. And this is a self professed 'man of God'. Do me a favour! Take my advice, if you ever see this man in Detroit have him thrown out. He will take all your money, lecture you about what is wrong with your lives and do no good at all. I'm so angry that a politician from this country is wandering around being so disingenuous! How dare he!!

[Jingles in Boofland]

It's commonplace in the US for former presidents, senators, congressmen/women, etc., to get paid exorbitant salaries or speaking fees, after they have left office - They just try to keep all of that hidden from the public as much as they can because they go all out to preserve the false impression their adoring public has of them.

Ten years or so ago, Bill Clinton had a hard time getting a mortgage for their home in fashionable Chappaqua, NY; today he's worth more than $80 million and charges something like $150,000 per appearance for speaking engagements - Hillary Clinton is worth somewhere around $35 million - Obama is worth almost $11 million right now, which is nothing compared to the hundreds of millions the Obama's will rake in when he leaves office with books deals, speaking engagements, board memberships, and other lucrative opportunities they'll be offered.

Considering that Bill Clinton was practically broke when he took office in 1993 as well as when he left, life after politics seems to have been immensely lucrative for ex-heads of state in recent years, Tony Blair included - Ronald Reagan was once paid $2 million for one speech he gave in Japan, but I believe too that they all have the right to make as much money as they can legally of course, in a free, capitalist society.

Senators and congressmen/women usually end up working for lobbying firms, where they can put to use the dubious skills they acquired in manipulating The Body Politic to suit them personally and politically as "lawmakers"; which is really what their terms in office are all about, to build a résumé born of huff, puff, and falsehoods, so they can land that six or seven-figure income loaded with perks and pleasures, plus a house in the Hamptons, and a getaway in Malibu - When the job calls for pushing the nefariously selfish interests of big business, and the agendas of dangerous third world countries, among other unsavory job descriptions, they more than fill the bill - To call them disingenuous would be a compliment; to call them a disgrace would be the truth.