Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Nothing to see here, move along.

Well after being on a roll and posting a bunch of stuff in the space of two weeks, I've hit another dry spot. Mostly it is because I've been working 12-hour days for the last three weeks and by the time I get home all I want to do is fall face down on the couch like a giant blubbery invertebrate.

I'd also probably blame it on the fact that when you work 12-hour days, life tends to get very one-dimensional and boring. You wake up, you go to work, you drink a cup of coffee, you scratch your head and your balls and decide you need a shit and then you go home. You then repeat this formula until you suffer a bald-spot, raw balls and an anal prolapse.

It was at some point last week, just shortly before I was considering scratching my head and taking a jobby that the earthquake hit. A few days after that, sometime between the morning coffee and a deadening conversation with the bus driver, Michael Bloomberg came on the telly and said we should all prepare to die because there was a really big fucking swirly thing in the sky and the weathermen said it was heading straight for New York City. Hello Hurricane Irene.

The earthquake was definitely an interesting experience since it was my first. Yes, I never even knew I had it but I lost my earthquake virginity.

I work in the 2nd floor a beautiful old art deco building built in 1930. Solid stone and definitely not the kind of thing that will fall down easily. It is for that reason that when the building started to shake it was doubly disturbing. If I worked in some new crappy paper-mache construction I could understand the shaking but I work in the Robert Mitchum of buildings; old and hard as fuck.

The first few seconds felt just like a big truck going past, we all kind of looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Then a wave came through, literally a wave, there was a trough and a crest of shaking power and you could feel it. At that point every sphincter in the room collectively tightened, kind of like they do whenever the Pope is around.

What the fuck....

Some of the people who were here were in the same room on 9/11 when the World Trade Center came down and as it is only a few blocks away I think that was the first thought in everybody's mind. Another attack....

We switched on the TV (kind of ironic considering I am a TV broadcast engineer) and immediately every channel was full of earthquake this and earthquake that. There was a palatable sense of relief around the room that it was at least safe to step outside however also a sense of disbelief since those kind of things never happen in New York.

No-one died, no buildings fell down, some people went nuts but more people went drinking and enjoyed the moment. Then Bloomberg came on the telly, put on his best Cane Toad face and told us all to get the fuck out of New York because death was riding in on a cloud.

The collective relief of having survived an earthquake quickly dissipated and mass psychosis took over instead. Everybody headed to the supermarket and bought every packet of crisps they could get their hands on. Frozen pizzas flew off the shelves and every chocolate bar in New York City was squirreled away to a safe deposit box under the floorboards as people determined that if they were going to die, then they would die like big fat Americans.

I walked into the supermarket after work the Thursday before the hurricane was due to hit. I remember thinking "Wow, this isn't so bad, there are a lot of fruit and veg left" but then I passed through the healthy stuff to junk food area and it was completely cleaned out. I saw one guy walk past with 5 frozen pizzas in his basket, I wanted to point out that you can't really cook frozen pizza by candle-light but thought better of it.

On Friday I cleaned out my backyard of all potential flying objects, even the bowl of salsa that had been sitting outside for 3 weeks since our last party was brought inside much to the disgust of the bugs that had been eating it. The toys had to come in too the last thing I wanted to do was die by being hit on the head by a flying Dora The Explorer chair. That would be embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as being decapitated by a flying Phil Collins album.

When the storm came on Saturday, I could be found online examining FEMA floodmaps, all of which helpfully showed that the flood plain ended two houses away from me. Not very reassuring. All I needed was for one junk food bloated American to go for a swim and my basement would be ruined!

On Saturday afternoon the winds got up and didn't stop for a full 16 hours. I'm sure I've been in windier gusts but I'd never seen anything as sustained as this, it just blew constantly and hard.

I have a giant maple tree outside the back of my house and that thing started to dance like mad. I looked out my window before going to bed and it was like the tree from Poltergeist, at any moment you felt like one of the branches was going to fly in and grab you. Needless to say we pushed the wardrobe in front of the window and went to sleep.

Next morning I almost didn't want to open my eyes, I was afraid to go downstairs in case it was flooded. In the end I actually jumped out of bed because we got a phone call from from the power company saying they were about to cut off the electricity due to flooding. I ran downstairs to make a pot of coffee before this happened and thankfully it was dry. We had a wee bit of water in the basement but nothing too serious.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for people only half-an-hour down the road.

There has been a lot of talk of government over-reacting to this storm but my gut says we were just really fucking lucky it wasn't worse. Cane toad face did the right thing.

So anyway, as you can see, I've had nothing to write about. Hopefully it stays like this.

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Monday, August 15, 2011

My Selective Memories of My Dad.

My Father died 30 years ago this week. I was thinking about him today and thought I should really try to sit down and write something in his memory but I wasn't sure I would know where to start.

I was 9 years old when he passed. I don't remember that much about him except that he had white hair and his face felt like sandpaper when he hugged you. He also smoked cigars, drank McEwan's Export and wore a flat cap like almost all Scottish-Irish men of his generation.

He was a radio operator in World War 2 but never saw action, instead he spent the war intercepting German radio transmissions on the Isle of Man. The story goes that he was based out of Glasgow but there was a sergeant he hated so much that he requested a transfer, he expected to be shipped off to North Africa, instead he was shipped off to Douglas. That would be the furthest he would ever travel from Glasgow outside of a silver jubilee trip him and my Mum took to Ireland in the 1970's. He was not a travelling man.

He had a law degree but became a teacher instead. I'd like to think there was some kind of moral choice involved in this where he thought that being a teacher was more important than being a lawyer but I think it is more likely he just lacked the confidence for law and the fact that there were very few Catholic Lawyers in Scotland at the time. If you didn't know the funny hand-shakes you couldn't join the club.

He worked his way up from teacher to headmaster then to head of a teacher training college in Glasgow. Along with my Mum, my Aunt, and a good number of my Brothers and Sisters, he formed what my English teacher once called "The McGrath teaching mafia" throughout Catholic schools in the West of Scotland. My English teacher learned how to be a teacher under my Dad.

When he got sick, they amputated his big toe first. I was told that he had caught his toe under the accelerator in the car. Maybe he did but I remember thinking "Why would he be driving without any shoes on?". I had no reason to doubt him. After that there were a lot of hushed discussions going around the kitchen table but no-one ever really told me what was happening.

I used to get dressed for school beside the heater hidden behind the clothes horse in the kitchen. I remember being there listening to my parents in shock when they heard on the radio that John Lennon got shot. Little did I know 8 months later my Dad would be dead too.

They made up a bed in the living room for him, an old pull down sofa that had previously been reserved for visitors. I played around that bad while the cancer ate away at him but he never once told me he was feeling too sick and to leave him in peace. He would fall asleep and I would play in the hallway outside the door.

Pretty soon he got too ill and was taken to a hospice. I didn't know the difference between a hospice and a hospital so I thought there was a chance he would still get better. He used to sit in a chair facing a big window and I would go and visit him on Sundays. He seemed to be shrinking and aging rapidly but I still didn't know what it meant.

On the day he passed away I came downstairs and saw my two sisters crying and cradling the telephone receiver between them. When I asked what was wrong they just said Dad had taken a turn for the worst. A few hours later my Mum came home and told me he'd died, I didn't understand it and asked her if it was okay if I could go out and play football.

I went over to my friend Davy's house, his Mum answered the door and asked "How's your Dad doing?".

"Oh, he died this morning" I said. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth because she knew him from Church. I just asked if Davy wanted to come out and play football. We played football all day then I went home.

I remember all of that day very clearly but I don't remember much about the funeral at all. I was at the mass but I never went to the graveside. My Uncle John took care of me and we spent some time in the shopping center where he bought me a radio controlled car that I had my eye on for a while.

He died right after school had started, I'd been back from summer holidays for a week and then had another week off for the funeral. When I went back to school everyone knew because it was Catholic school and they all went to the same church. Some kids said sorry but others teased me about my Dad being dead. I remember being upset but I don't think any of us knew what it meant.

Nothing seemed real. Surely he was coming back. I think I asked my Mum when we were going to visit Dad in the hospital again. It was only a few months later when we were on a weekend trip to St Andrews that the enormity of it hit me. I was walking down the street and just suddenly burst into uncontrollable tears. It completely came out of nowhere and it shocked the hell out of me and scared the hell out of my Mum.

Fast forward 16 years and I am working at the BBC World Service as a technical operator listening to short-wave radio broadcasts from around the world. History is repeating itself.

I am sitting in my bedsit in Reading, England. It's 3 o'clock in the morning on August 16th and I am totally shitfaced on wine. I have written some drunken gibberish about how much I miss my Dad and how my character might have been completely different if he'd been around to guide me through my teenage years.

I still have the stuff I wrote that night but I am not going to share it verbatim, I will however say that it is mostly self-pitying drunken crap. One thing that stands out is the idea that somehow life could have been very different.

I now think this is mostly unlikely, sure my younger years were pretty directionless and full of drink, drugs and unemployment, but having my Dad around would have probably just added to the resentment that is inherent in all kids that age. I'd already lost the Catholic faith by then (or it lost me) and I am sure that his old school Irish ways would have probably annoyed me.

My Mum did a good job raising me without him and a lot of the stuff I wrote that night undermines the credit she deserves.

Fast forward again to 2006 and Mum is being buried alongside him in Eastfield Cemetery, 2 months short of 25 years to the day he died. I realize I am looking at his gravestone for only the second time in my life. I saw it once a few years after he died then all the photos of him came down in our house I never saw it again until we buried Mum.

It says "Harry McGrath B.L" on it.

I ask my brother what "B.L." means and he says "Bachelor of Laws". Up to that point I had completely forgotten about the law degree and it struck me just how few memories of my Dad I actually have.

I remember one time when Me and him went out to buy morning rolls in the town of Crail in the East Neuk of Fife. We had this favorite place called "Fife Ness" that was about 3 or 4 miles out of town and we would drive there and comb the beach for stones and bits of pottery whilst we waited for the rest of the family to wake up.

This time we were out there and it was pissing rain and the car broke down. There was nothing out there except the beach and an old World War 2 airfield. We walked home in the cold wet and I think that might have been the only time I ever heard the old man curse.

And that's about it. I don't think it was because he was an unfeeling man but I don't really remember anything else. I have seen photos of me and him together and I have vague memories of the photos being taken but my brain does not allow me to remember what I was feeling or thinking at the time.

It's almost like his death was so traumatic that there were two childhoods, B.D and A.D, "Before Death" and "After Dad". Now I am a Dad myself and I wish I remembered more to try and pass something on to my daughter but I'm content with the idea that he was just a good person who raised a big family that have all done very well and who still get along together (most of the time). That is testament enough in this day and age.

Thanks Dad.


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The good old days when the only thing that stopped you from getting stomped by an elephant was a poxy wee wooden fence.



Friday, August 12, 2011

Blind frustration.

There was a woman on the bus screaming into her cellphone. I fall over her bag which is sticking out in the walkway. On the street a man behind me is walking so close to my heels I can hear his fingers beep beeping away as he writes another dumb text message. The scaffolding is in a slightly different place from the last time I walked past here or maybe I am just 2 feet slightly to the right. Whatever the cause is, I shoulder crash into it and cause cellphone man to throw his phone up in the air in front of him cursing: "why don't you look where you are fucking going!" before he sees the cane and scampers off sheepishly into the distance.

It's one of those days, my mind is running slow and the calculations that I need to make as a blind person are not quite up to speed with my walking. It's being overwhelmed by the incessant chattering and constant movement of people with no levels of self-awareness. I am deaf as well as blind but I keep my ipod turned on because the music helps me concentrate.

I know I should slow down but I can't and I am asking for trouble. Cars, bicycles, fire hydrants, children, dogs, gyro trucks, bollards and scaffolding had better watch out because I am coming through and immovable objects won't stop me.

I rub the area around by shoulder where I bumper car'd the scaffolding and know that it will be a nice shade of blue tomorrow. Instinctively I also reach down and rub my left shin where I walked into the open door of the dishwasher a year ago and can still see the discoloration.

Some days are just tougher than others. It's the little things that really bug me more than anything. The pen that I just put down and then can't find it. The garbage that used to be there and is now over there a mere 2 feet away. A 2 foot difference that will result in me doing a superman impersonation right into it.

At the end of June I found myself at the Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson with about 20,000 other people. It was to be a nice day, a bunch of old lefties on stage like Billy Bragg and Pete Seeger and the family alongside me. Something in my head went horribly wrong.

It was my first time in a big crowd like that in a long time, and my first time ever with an energetic 4-year old in tow. The combination of the two freaked me out no end and caused a mental meltdown.

I'll try to describe what it feels like to be me and what I can see, but to be honest I can't really do a good job at it. Usher Syndrome is very inconsistent and some days are much harder than others. It's also an evolving situation as I get a little blinder every year, every day if my brain tells me to micro-analyse it.

My vision is kind of like looking through a keyhole. There is a very defined clear area in the center surrounded by a kind of fuzzy electrical field of light where the retinal cells are dying and confused. On days when I am tired the electrical field can come in towards the center and everything gets blurry. On those days I have to take my time and try to slow down.

The first thing that happened at the festival was that my daughter kept disappearing. She wasn't really but all she had to do was move outside of the keyhole and I would have a heart attack. This is bad enough when Me and her are at our local playground but in a crowd of 20,000 people it is positively stressful. Add to this the fact it was happening every 3 minutes and my brain starts to hurt.

The next thing is just navigating through the crowd itself. My wife is a great help, as she always is, but I have to keep pulling my cane in to avoid people falling over it or worse, standing on it and snapping it. This leads to a feeling of great insecurity as the cane is always supposed to be one step ahead of you. When you pull it back the pattern in your brain gets interrupted and you are essentially stepping into the void.

I chastise myself for being weak willed but then I think about who else has to put up with this shit? Who else has to fucking think about just walking to the end of the path without having an accident? Who else isn't allowed to turn off and is constantly stressed? Sure there are people but I don't know any of them.

When I get in this mood an incredible selfishness comes over me, I just want to get the fuck out of there and usually end up wondering why I ever thought it was a good idea in the first place. This inevitably makes it hard on others around me.

I miss the old days when walking was one of the ways I could relax. I would wander aimlessly along the Thames for miles and miles, following dirt tracks or making new ones through the bracken. I loved those days but now they are long gone, the dirt path confuses my cane and I would just fall over the bracken.

I get angry when I realize I am complaining about stuff over which I have no control, but at the same time I also get angry when I bottle stuff up and don't have a way to release my feelings. None of this stuff is going to get any easier, I just need to get stronger.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

A blind guy and a deaf guy walk into a bookstore....

"My noime iss Brraaaduh" says the voice behind me that is attached to the hand that is tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around and see a graying man of about 70 years old.

"I see yhoou haave heeearing aiiids" he says, "Doy yooooo sign?".

"No I don't" I say then catch myself as I realize I am speaking normally to a profoundly deaf person. "No... I... Don't" I say looking straight at him and trying my best to annunciate my words so he can read my lips.

"Oimmmm soooooorry Iiiiii didn't catchhhe that" he says. "Wheere are yoooooo from?"

"ScoTT Lland" I say, trying to form the hard syllables so it makes my mouth more readable. It doesn't work and I realise this is going to be a long conversation.

Brad volunteers at The Used Book Store Cafe on Crosby Street in New York. This place has long been one of my favorite spaces in the city to just chill out and browse the excellent book selection. It is in this quiet place of people reading and working that I realise that I have a choice, I can either start shouting so Brad can (maybe) understand me, or I can grab a note pad out of my bag and start writing stuff down for him. I opt for the latter.

"I am from Scotland" I write, "but I live here now, in Jersey City".

He takes the notepad from me and writes "I've been in Scotland, I went to Edinburgh"

I write "That's good, did you like it?".

"Yeeeas I llllliiiked it veery mmmmuch" he says.

I feel slightly embarrassed that he is speaking again and louder than before. Then I catch myself and I remember how much I hate the sympathetic looks that people give me when they see me coming down the street with the cane.

Those looks that project some kind of vibe that says "Jesus look at that poor guy, I hope that shit never happens to me". Most of the time I feel like screaming "FUCK YOU I AM A FULLY FUNCTIONING HUMAN BEING" albeit not quite but I do okay. Women will often give me a little sympathetic smile, little do they know I am staring at their boobs.

I am now guilty of giving Brad that same look and I feel like shit for it. Do some disabled people look down on other disabled people and think "Thank fuck that's not me!", hell yeah but it's not right.

"Haaave yoooouuuu evver been tooo Helen Keller?"

I say "Yes, I've been to Helen Keller but she's never been to me" but he doesn't understand what I am saying and I doubt he'd get the reference. Musical references tend to be lost on profoundly deaf people and that is going to be a problem for me as I often speak in lines bastardized from songs.

I write on the pad: "Do you mean the Helen Keller Foundation in Brooklyn? If so, yes, that is where I learned to use my cane. They were very helpful".

"No, I meeeaann heer hhou house on Long Island".

I shake my head and write "Is it easy to get to?".

He then takes the pad off me and draws me a map. It doesn't make any sense at first then I realize he is drawing me a map of how to get to Penn Station on 34th Street. He writes "Empire State building" and "Madison Square Garden". It's nice that he is giving me landmarks but now I am starting to think that he thinks I can't see a damn thing and have no idea where I am. Obviously you don't get that many blind people in bookshops so he's probably got a point.

Thankfully his map ends at Penn station and he writes "Take the train to Southold".

I write "Thank You for the information. I have to go now", hoping to draw a line (literally) under the conversation and get back to blindly browsing through second-hand books.

I shake hands and head to the other side of the store where the "Religions" section and the "Feminism" section are. Two of my favorite subjects. Obviously. Anything to put a bit of distance between me and him.

So I'm there browsing through books on Catholicism and Islam when I feel a presence just behind me. I know it's Brad before I even turn around.

"Helllooooo aggg agga again".

I'm now thinking fuck he's following me. Again, he either thinks I have no idea where I am or he secretly wants to shag me then murder me (or vice versa). Either way it's not good.

"Hello again" I say in my normal voice. "I'm going downstairs now, I need to find some new books about... Sarah Palin... or something". I know he can't understand me and I'm being a dick but I just want to be left alone.

The bookstore has a kind of almost spiral staircase and I aim my cane at the top step. Just as I do this he grabs my arm to try and guide me at the exact moment I step forward and I miss the top step entirely. We both kind of slide down the banister, not quite falling but going too fast to catch up with ourselves until we reach the bottom. We stagger across the floor into one of those library racks on wheels and knock the entire top row of books out of it onto the floor. They are hardbacks and make an almighty crash that causes everyone in the bookstore to look at us.

I'm obviously embarrassed but I fall downstairs and tumble over stuff all the time so I'm not too shook up. I'm more concerned with Brad who, as well as being deaf, is about 70 years old.

"Are you okay?" I say slowly to him and he starts laughing very loudly indeed. People around the bookstore are starting to look at us like we are a slapstick double-act. While he is still laughing I pat him on the shoulder and say "goodbye".

Brad stays in my head for the rest of the day. I feel guilty for thinking bad thoughts about him and when I get home I decide to google the Helen Keller House in Long Island.

You can read about it here. He was obviously sending me there so he could murder me.

Some thoughts on the rioting Part 2.

One of my friends asked the eternal question everyone asks when kids go bad: "Where are the parents?". As a parent I asked the question myself and here are some more thoughts on the events of the last week.

I would bet there were plenty of parents who did stop their kids from going out and looting, we just don't hear about those ones. The appeal for peace by the Father whose son was murdered by "looters" is one of the more heart-breaking moments of the whole event.




I hope people will remember his compassion and bravery more than anything else.

With that said, it's not a coincidence that the riots happened in places like Tottenham, then spread to Birmingham, Liverpool and other industrial towns. The one thing these places all have in common is that they were destroyed by the privatization and closure of the steel, coal-mining and ship building industries. All of these places prospered during the industrial revolution and then had the rug pulled out from under them by the blood letting of the Thatcher years. The jobs left and were never replaced.

I remember it well from growing up in Glasgow.

This means you have had 3 generations (at least) of people who exist on the margins of society. 3 generations of resentment and hopelessness. It's hard for parents to set an example to their kids if the parents themselves are driven into the dirt by their own existence. You can see this in almost any housing estate or Projects in the world, the UK is not unique.

The condemnation has been predictable and swift. They have been pulling kids as young as 11 into court and some rioters have already been jailed. They are also talking about cracking down on social media. People need to realize that this is all ultimately pointless, the governments and forces of law and order are so behind the curve on how to handle the new media that their condemnation will only lead to more resentment.

A volcanic eruption may seem like a sudden event but in fact the pressure has to build up underground for years before it explodes. This might just be the first trickle of lava breaking the surface.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Some thoughts on the riots.

It's been strange watching the riots in the UK from afar. Violence in the streets just seems so un-British but obviously that is more an indicator that I have been away from home for such a long time. My impressions of Britain are stuck in 1998.

I've been following the coverage on the news closely but the most interesting thing has been the variety of opinion from friends on Facebook and Twitter. I've seen the whole spectrum from condemnation to empathy to outright encouragement. This has puzzled me as everybody seems to have taken just one viewpoint, human beings are supposed to be more complex than that.

Firstly, the rioters are mostly wrong. I say "mostly" because there is no doubt that these kids have a rightful grievance. They have been forgotten about and abandoned to the whims of poverty and the establishment that is supposed to set an example has fallen apart completely.

One hand of the establishment tells the kids that being violent is wrong and the other hand bombs entire villages off the face of the planet.

One hand tells the kids there is no money for education, no money for community projects. no money for decent housing whilst the other hand uses massive amounts of public money to bail out private industry.

Add to this the anti-democratic corporate collusion that has been exposed by wikileaks and then the phone-hacking scandal and the idea of functioning government for anyone other than the rich is completely compromised.

Also add to this pyre the religious organisations that hide pedophiles, a "free" press that supports illegal wars and austerity plans imposed on people by unelected bureaucrats and the pillars of society look like they are all conspiring against you.

Except when they want to sell you something.

A lot has been made of these kids breaking into stores and stealing clothing and electronics, etc etc. These kids are bombarded with the temptations of consumer addiction all day long, what did you think they would do?

Advertising is everywhere. It's not just two commercial channels on TV like it was when I was growing up, now it is in video games, music, movies, magazines, radio, the clothes they wear. Even previously public funded projects are "Brought to you by Barclays Bank" or "Funded by the McDonald's Corporation".

I personally find it overwhelming, I can only imagine what it is like for someone who has never known anything else. Buy buy buy. You have to keep up with the kid next door. The economy depends on you. Oh by the way, it doesn't matter if you can't afford it we'll keep trying to sell it to you anyway....

The song "Talkin about a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman came on my ipod when I was on my way into work today. There is a line in the song that goes "Poor people gonna rise up and take what's theirs. Poor people gonna rise up and get their share". I'm sure Tracy didn't intend it this way but my first thought was that poor people are gonna rise up and take what they are told should be theirs. Maybe some new trainers or a nice new flat-screen TV or an Xbox. Revolution is probably just the name of a deodorant now.

But anyway, I am getting off topic here. Kind of.

These kids need direction from somewhere. A few pool tables in a community center certainly won't do that by itself but perhaps just the very idea that they can be fully functioning members of society should be fostered and promoted. Instead of politicians harping on about the evil "hoodies" they should be talking about "untapped potential". Just a very simple change of message can sometimes make the world of difference.

And as for the kids themselves, burning down homes and stores only drives people further into poverty. People need places to live and jobs to go to. The establishment will crack down harder and this will lead to more abuse.

The kids are all wrong. Just because you are angry doesn't mean you are right.