Well at last it seems to have finally happened. I turned up for a working lunch with a Coastguard student of mine at the 4th Street Diner, and we found it closed with a sad little notice in the front window saying 'For Sale.' So instead of going through his paper surrounded by 1960s Americana and alongside my much loved 'Omlet Caboose', Coffee and buttered sourdough toast we found ourselves doing so in a sandwich bar on East Main in Middletown, which frankly could have been anywhere. This cultural disaster has been threatening for ages but it's one of those things you think somehow is so awful it won't ever happen. There's probably a moral there.
It also fits the profoundly depressing news we hear all the time. I listen a lot to NPR - National Public Radio, which broadcasts quite a lot of BBC World Service material too, and I must confess that what I hear about the trend of things in the US is disquieting. It is admittedly true that NPR like quite a lot of the conventional media over here has a little bit of a liberal bias (and it is a 'little bit' I think) but their analysis of the trend in opinion isn't cheery. The latest issue is of course, the likely suspension of Roe v Wade, on abortion rights and the total mess of very different laws in different states and even more polarised debate, if not fighting, between the deeply committed on both sides doesn't bear thinking about. For all their veneration of the Constitution, I am coming more and more to the conclusion that its irremediably dysfunctional. Perhaps mainly because of the dominance of lawyers in every aspect of society and government.
And yet everyone one meets is as nice as pie - at least here in Rhode Island. When you want to use a zebra crossing, and you hang back so that the nearest car can go past, you find yourself in a battle of politeness. If you're anyway near a crossing, pretending to be interested in the nearest hedge, cars will still stop and very often at least 20 feet short of the white line so as not to put pressure on you ! But maybe that's because they're frightened of being sued. (This is much less true of out-of-towners, and they sadly are beginning to clutter up the streets as the tourist season opens up).
Talking of which last week I went with colleagues and some of the staff to the Constitution the super-frigate referred to in 'Master and Commander' which was such a nuisance to the RN in the war of 1812. This entailed a trip to Boston for which one of my colleagues was driving. Following the suggestions of the satnav to avoid the awful traffic, we took a circuitous route which enabled me to see parts of suburban Boston which I hadn't seen before - and quite tolerable they were too. Very different from other parts of the city. Boston I was told has the biggest social divide between rich whites and poor blacks and others, apart from Chicago. Driving habits are different from Newport's too. Go on a zebra crossing here and you become a target.
The meal and drinkies before and the after-hours tour of the ship were both fun. I had fish and chips and very nice it was too. Most unusually I couldn't finish it ! My Coastguard student turned up wearing a rather fetching pink top and had his baby strapped to his chest. Notwithstanding that, as he was quite senior, he was 'piped aboard' - only on the Constitution they do it with bells. It was both funny and touching at the same time. We were allowed to poke around in all the parts of the ship that the public doesn't get to. This included an opportunity to see the Captain's loo - comfortable if a touch public one would have thought. This culminated in the chap who organised it all being allowed to fire the evening gun. Interestingly he had organised the whole thing partly as he wanted his brother's flag flown from the mast. His brother had just retired and if you're senior enough, getting your flag flown in as many prestigious places as you can manage is 'a thing', as they say. Afterwards the flag party showed us how they fold the flag into a little triangle, just as they do in 'Clear and Present Danger,' or whatever that Tom Clancy film is a called. Fascinating. So a thoroughly enjoyable evening that nicely took one's mind off things.
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