Around Town Denver Winter 04

Thought it might be a good time for an update on life here on the Front Range. I’ve tacked on a couple of reviews on books about globalization at the end too.

Bill Clinton’s Journey

Jan and I lived for many years among inner-city folks in LA. In So Cal the decisive majority of poor people are African and Latin (dash) Americans. Or blacks and browns for those of you accustomed to old-timey racial categories and clear English.

But here in Denver many of the poor are euro-am types. They’re the trailer people, though that’s the more generous term people use when they’re in a good mood.

Janet teaches in a public school for very low income families. Some are from immigrant Latino families, but many are from very poor euro-am families. Janet’s never taught that population before.

We’ve learned that these kids certainly don’t suffer from social inhibitions as Janet gets an ear full about her students’ lives almost every day. It’s a little like the scholastic version of the Jerry Springer show. We laugh—often nervously--at some of the most outlandish stories than I can remember in a long time.

As an example, about a month ago an officer from the Lakewood police addressed Jan’s class and showed the kids some of his police equipment. One of the little girls saw his handcuffs and launched, very unselfconsciously, into an explanation of how much more she liked the “pink, plastic ‘love-cuffs’ my mommy uses with mommy’s friends.”

Janet stifled her own laughter and sense of shock, thanked the little girl for sharing, and quickly called on another student. But when she got home we cracked up when Jan told the story.

Needless to say, we appreciate the enormity of Bill Clinton’s journey from the trailers in Arkansas to the presidency more with each passing day.

DAM Good Art

Last time I gave you some initial impressions of folk art along the Front Range. During the past few months I’ve had a chance to check out some of the fine arts here in town too.

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) http://www.denverartmuseum.org/
just closed its landmark exhibit, “’El Greco to Picasso.” The G to P show focused on the development of modern western art from El Greco’s http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/greco/
weirdly elongated 15th century subjective realism to the extreme subjectivism and abstraction of the 19th and 20th century “moderns.”

G to P traced the influence of El Greco on all modern art, and the influence more generally of one artist on another, from generation to generation. I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing in an art show. Normally those kinds of influences are left to serious art books and histories. Public shows in the U.S. concentrate on the “individual genius” of artists who seem to create life giving art out of thin air and inspiration.

I enjoyed it even more because it represented a kind of breakthrough for the fine arts in Denver. It was the biggest arts “show” in the history of the city. This kind of very high quality mega-exhibit is standard procedure in places like LA or New York. But it was apparently a relatively new experience here in town. And people packed the place out. During the last couple weeks of the run they opened the show from early morning till late in the evening to accommodate the crowds.

It’s a striking art museum and a lot of fun. They have lots of top notch stuff from the Americas and some wonderful stuff from beyond too in a combo of high level art and architecture combined with the typical local self-deprecation. The t-shirts on sale at DAM capture the feel well. The logo on the back reads “DAM Good Art.”

DAM is in the middle of the national arts major leagues, but it’s about to jump up considerably. The museum is expanding. Daniel Libeskind, the architect who is designing the new World Trade Center in New York, designed the addition to DAM that’s going up right now. From my perspective it’s more interesting and innovative than his WTC design. The new site will be an office-building-sized jumble of geometric titanium, glass and granite wedges offset from each other and aimed in every direction. It will double the size of DAM and allow them to show lots more of their very cool collection http://www.arcspace.com/architects/Libeskind/

Downtown Denver is European in design, with the remarkable city hall and state capitol buildings, DAM, the quirky and attractive Denver Public Library, the Denver History Museum, and the Financial District scrapers all within easy walking distance of each other. The new addition to DAM will make an already impressive downtown even more memorable.

I remember the buzz in my adolescent days about LA becoming a center of culture and even overtaking New York, the loved/hated standard for left coast types at that time. Denver will create its own path toward a leading arts scene at its own pace. Folks here seem less driven by visions of grandeur for their city than the scarily intense visionaries and boosters of earlier LA, but it’s obvious that they’re committed to doing something here that is unique and true to the setting too. It’s fun to see some of their dreams coming to fruition.

I’ve also begun checking out the non-institutional local fine arts scene and artistic community, as well as the smaller institutions and galleries. That’s often where you’ll find some of the most creative and interesting stuff. More on that in future notes.

The Republic of “I’ve got the Check-i-Stan”

Jan and I stopped by the Dushanbe Teahouse (http://www.boulderdushanbeteahouse.com/index.html) in Boulder last week.

Boulder is a sister city to Dushanbe, which is the capital of The Republic of Tajikistan. In case a few of you can’t immediately locate Tajikistan on a map, here’s a hint: it’s just south of Kyrgyzstan and west of the well-known and vast Takla Makan desert. But you knew that….

Anyway, the Tajiks are an Islamic people who suffered under brutal Soviet domination for decades. Before that perverse and silly empire collapsed, the Kremlin forced the Tajiks to call Dushanbe “Stalinabad,” which needed only the additional ending “guy” to elevate it to the highest ranks of truth in advertising.

The Tajiks are undergoing a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism along with much of the rest of the Islamic world, though that hasn’t improved their economic lot much--they continue to be the poorest fragment left over from the shattered Soviet empire.

As a sign of their goodwill to their sister city and in spite of their poverty, the powers-that-be in Dushanbe commissioned many of their best artists to create an authentic Tajik teahouse, shipped it in pieces, and then reconstructed it in the middle of Boulder.

It is a remarkably beautiful and delicate building. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite like it before. The basic superstructure is made of large wooden beams, and it’s overlain with stunning ceramic and tile. The patterns and colors are typically Islamic—complex geometric forms suggesting nature and Arabic script rendered in vibrant primaries. And inside, the wood is painted and worked in those same striking patterns and colors. It’s truly a piece of art in and of itself. We spent most of our time inside staring at the wood pillars, beams, and walls.

However, if the building itself is all Tajikistan, the social scene inside is all “Yuppistan.” The place was filled with lots of young and middle aged folks wearing obligatory urban black uniforms or the kind of expensive but dressed down mountain chic that’s popular here. They were joined by a few Boulder mountain neo-hippies too. Everybody gellin’. All in all, it was understated wealth, decaf tea, scones and salads. Very pleasant without a doubt.

On the outside the teahouse is glorious cultural tradition and religious intensity, mullahs and muftis. On the inside it’s a wealthy, secular western enclave. The art of the “outsider” has been appropriated, but the life and spirit and culture have been emptied out and filled with the relaxing and familiar. Perhaps that kind of “globalization” is inevitable, but as much as I enjoyed our time there, there was something faintly strange and a little odd about the whole thing.

But of course, quite a few people here on the Front Range feel that way about Boulder too. It’s the center of the “new” Colorado. More on that in future notes….

Red Vote

To move from the sophisticated to the manure covered, we also had an interesting time at the Denver Western Stock Show and Rodeo a few weeks ago.

“The Denver Western” has been held here for generations, and it’s the largest stock show and rodeo in the world. Though the days when Colorado was primarily a ranching economy are long gone, Denver revels in its inner cow-town once a year when ranchers and cowboys from everywhere around the world descend on the city for a month long party. Of course, since raising and selling livestock has become a sophisticated science and a worldwide industry, pale geneticists and metro-sexual suits join the cowboys these days at the Western. Buffalo Bill Cody, who is buried about ten minutes from our house, is probably rolling over in his grave.

I’ve always loved rodeo, so I know my mixed reactions to this one are related to the times.

I won’t bore you with too many details of the mythic competition we witnessed. The cowboys from the afternoon of the 6th Day of Creation dominated--with great difficulty--the beasts from the the morning of the 6th Day. A small dog was shot from a cannon. Men risked and women cheered. American totem flags waived. We were instructed to “remove cover” (take off our hats) when the anthem was played. A clown was gored. A very overweight young woman in an unintentionally ridiculous outfit fell spectacularly during a bareback exhibition by a local rough riding club, then got back on and fell even more spectacularly a second time. The announcer cracked wise at the expense of “Blue America” and at the expense of any unfortunate Islamic camel jockeys who got in the way of the few and the proud over in “Eye-raq.” Dust and dirt flew and some broken bones ensued. And a great deal of beer was consumed.

It was grotesque and wonderful and American. It reminded me of our current foreign policy, though that unfortunate fiasco is minus the wonderful.

We got a kick out of the stock show as well, once we got past the claustrophobic entry hall with hundreds of cheesy booths selling everything from cowboy trinkets to foot massagers to male enhancement supplements. Apparently more than a few roughriders need a little extra starch in their shirts.

The carefully engineered animals on display were astonishing and huge and super-healthy. Who knows, as genetic engineering of this sort improves and evolves, and as the capabilities of conservative politicians to gerrymander become even more subtle and profound, we could eventually see cattle that tell jokes, worship in bible churches and vote Republican.

Books

Centennial

When we moved here to Denver I was eager to read histories of the city and of Colorado. As it turns out, there is almost no readable non-fiction written about the history of the state and the city. I slogged my way through a deadly dull general Colorado history that is used in high schools and universities here and scanned through some quirky and eccentric “snap shot” books devoted to little slices of historical interest. The best of them is devoted to the whores and saloons of Denver back in the Plains Indian War days, but if you’re looking for a broader story and a more sweeping interpretation you’re out of luck.

How these authors could dull the history of a place like Colorado, and especially Denver, which was one of the wildest cities in the wild west and was the headquarters of America’s Native American “final solution,” and which is now the capital city of the entire Rocky Mountain west, is hard to figure out.

Fortunately my quest was rescued by an author who was very popular when I was very young but who has since fallen out of favor. A patient clerk at “Tattered Cover,” the legendary bookstore here in Denver (it reminds me a lot of Powell’s Books in Portland, for those of you lucky enough to have visited that great Northwest bookstore), recommended that I read Centennial, a historical novel about Colorado by James Michener.

I loved Michener when I was in high school but hadn’t read anything by him for at least 20 years. He pioneered the style of beginning a historical novel in pre-history and then following events up until the present day. So in Michener’s classic book, “Hawaii,” he begins with the geological formation of the islands and the prehistoric animals, follows the first Polynesians who paddle there, describes the development of Hawaiian civilization, the first Europeans like Captain Cook, the coming of American missionaries, and finally the development of modern Hawaii. But it’s not dull history by any means. He focuses on individuals and families (or in the prehistoric sections, sometimes a particular dinosaur!) and creates wonderful fictional tales that capture the historical events and trends. He’s a great storyteller whose strengths are his vivid characters and the fine historical detail.

Centennial turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. Michener manages to make the geological formation of the Rockies fascinating, and his section on the pre-historic tribes of Colorado is one of the more moving accounts of Native American life I’ve read. Maybe the best parts of the whole book are his stories of the trappers and mountain men who began the Euro-American conquest of the west. And the sections on the modern Front Range helped me understand much better why Colorado, and in some ways the entire west, is the place it is.

Michener, who lived in Colorado for a time, has two of his modern characters talking about why they live in Centennial (a fictional town just north of Denver) at the very end of the book. Cisco says to his friend Garrett, “I live in Centennial because it’s maybe the best spot in America…could even be the best remaining spot on earth.” Garrett replies, in the final words of the 1000 page novel, “Could be. It damn well could be.”

After reading it I had a bit more sympathy for more current authors who’ve tried to write about the Front Range and Colorado. I’d guess at least a few of them have been intimidated. Michener is a hard act to follow.

Globalization and Its Discontents

I wanted to quickly recommend some books on world affairs. Out of pure intellectual curiosity, but also out of the necessity of the kind of work I do, I’ve been doing a good bit of reading on globalization in the past couple of years. This is a topic that’s been so flogged and dissected by now that it’s becoming a bit tiresome, but I’m convinced that it’s so very important.

Few of the books I’ve looked at are worth your time, but there are three that really stand out.

The first is Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz, an American who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics and ran the World Bank for a number of years. What a book!

Stiglitz explores the question of how successful the tremendously powerful International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been in helping countries around the world develop their economies and dramatically reduce poverty.

To me, this is the crucial question of globalization. If cultures and nations are going to be willing to undergo the “creative destruction” of a truly market economy, and if they are going to be willing to make changes in even some of the most bedrock elements of their cultures and political systems for the sake of developing economically and technologically, then the economic goods need to be delivered.

And those goods need to be delivered in a way that allows for reasonable social and political stability. In recent years we’ve seen the results of failed cultures and states—the world simply can’t afford to have nations fall apart given the kind of fanaticism and weaponry at hand. There is too much interdependency and too much mutual vulnerability now to make that a realistic option.

To call the book a scathing critique of the World Bank and the IMF, and by extension of the whole international economic system, wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Stiglitz is scrupulously fair and thoughtful and obviously not given to rants. And he firmly believes in market capitalism and in the importance of international institutions that help govern and regulate the world economy.

However, he makes a powerful case that the international economic system, and in particular the IMF, have done as much damage as good to the countries in the developing world. In a nutshell, he shows that the IMF has wreaked havoc on many poorer nations’ economies and political stability by forcing ill advised and radical economic regimens on them. This has had disastrous effects on the hundreds of millions of very poor people living in these places.

He goes into detail in country after country showing how the IMF has hurt the economies and cultures of these poorer nations. In fact, he shows how nations which have largely ignored the IMF (countries like China and many of the South East Asian nations) have faired much better than those who have listened to it carefully.

Stiglitz shows how ignoring the IMF and World Bank is very risky business for the developing world, since those nations that don’t follow IMF dictates are normally punished by being cut off from aid and being denied capital through the IMF’s great power to influence global capital markets.

Why has the current international economic system, and the IMF in particular, been a mixed blessing at best for the developing world? I think it’s fair to say that Stiglitz believes it’s because the IMF, which is dominated by American and western finance ministers and economists, has three striking weaknesses that are keeping it from being the engine of fairness and development it could be.

First, he argues that the IMF is currently run by people who are committed to a narrow and ideological understanding of free market capitalism. They often make their decisions based on ideology rather than on the actual evidence before them. He demonstrates that the IMF is normally tone deaf to issues such as the timing and rhythms in introducing economic changes, and instead normally insists on an all or nothing approach that is often dangerously out of touch with the realities in these nations.

Second, he argues that the IMF is run by people who are often arrogant and who are not willing to listen to economists and governments in the developing world.

And third, and not surprisingly after his second critique, he argues that the IMF is often shockingly ignorant of the nations and cultures it so cavalierly forces drastic changes on.

Two things struck me as I finished the book. First, Stiglitz’s critiques of the IMF, and by extension the international economic order dominated by the US and the west, are really just the critiques many have made for centuries about the western church’s missionary enterprise. Ideological narrowness, cultural arrogance, and ignorance of local cultures and peoples are pitfalls that any self-respecting missionary is well aware of.

Christian missionaries have been living a “globalized” existence for centuries. In many cases they were the vanguard of bringing cultures into interaction with one another, which is part of the essence of globalization. Perhaps the lessons that the Church has learned over the centuries in this regard could be put to prophetic use in helping reform and change the IMF and other aspects of the international economic order that produce injustice and damage to world’s poor.

The second thing that struck me was how easily his critique of the IMF could be applied to the foreign policy of our current administration. If I could summarize my deep misgivings about it, I’d say it is primarily ideologically driven and not especially interested in evidence or experience, often arrogant and unwilling to listen to others no matter how qualified or knowledgeable they may be, and surprisingly ignorant and uncomprehending of the world and it’s cultures.

Those of you who know me recognize that I’m not a particularly partisan or even political person. My normal stance has been to downplay the importance of politics in the overall scheme of life because I believe people often take it too seriously. But I’m revising some of my thinking, at least for the time being, because I’m deeply concerned about what’s happening right now in Washington.

In any case, I think a lot of people would do well to read Globalization and Its Discontents, and in particular, the somewhat ageless critiques he levels at people who have immense power over the lives of others. At a time when America has become a super-dominant nation, arguably one of the most dominant ever, it’s critical in my view that Americans and westerners give careful thought to the ethics of servant leadership and servant power, especially in cross-cultural settings, and though he doesn’t use that language, that’s really what Stiglitz is talking about. I wish a Christian had written this book.

Maybe some believer will write a prophetic work on what it means to be a Christian in neo-imperial America. There’s got to be a little room for something like that amongst all the “Christian Living for Dummies” books that dominate Christian publishing houses and bookstores :^)

The other two books are Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World, which was edited by Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington.

Seems like everybody has read The Lexus and the Olive Tree by now, but if by chance you haven’t, it’s well worth the time and effort. I’m a longtime fan of Thomas Friedman, who’s a journalist for the New York Times and a regular on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (best interview, news show on TV). The book is not so much an analysis of globalization, but it’s a brilliant description of it. He shows how market capitalism, information technologies, and democratizing trends are rapidly changing the world. The book is funny and interesting and pretty insightful.

Many Globalizations is a collection of essays by intellectuals and writers from around the world who examine, in detail, just what globalization really looks like in many parts of the world. Instead of generalities, they want to explore the specific and strange permutations that globalization takes. Basically, they collectively argue that globalization does exist, and that American and western cultural norms and forms are clearly spreading around the world in deeper ways. But they show, uniquely in the globalization literature I’ve read, that local cultures are alive and very well and that globalization, in most places, means strange new cultural hybrids that are quite different from the traditional cultures in those places and very different from American or western cultures too.

This seems like a critical insight in the globalization discussion. While people like Friedman tend toward broad generalities like the image of the “Olive Tree” to capture traditional culture and nationalism and then explain that these forces are in conflict with the forces of globalization (symbolized by the “Lexus”), Many Globalizations does a much better job of demonstrating that in reality cultures are much more creative and fluid than they are sometimes given credit for, and that the process of globalization is as much a process of specific and local hybridization and unexpected creativity as it is a process of conflict between seemingly irreconcilable values or the simple triumph of American cultural values in the world.

Well, that’s it for this time around. Fairly soon I’ll be sending out an update on my thoughts on the war in Iraq as well as some political musings about the current government, and also some notes on some of the various cities in the developing world I will have visited by the end of winter. And eventually, some more notes on life here in Denver.