In America

This is just a quick note to re-start the engine of this too-long-idle blog with something - one of many somethings - that struck me as amusing/endearing on the long trip through to Birmingham Alabama. A plane change in Houston Texas let me loose on a Livestock Show and Rodeo School Art Programme exhibition. All very charming and culturally informative. Should one of the artists ever see this, I hope they will forgive my bad sense of humour for what it did to their excellent and presumably innocent work. See below, you’ll know which one I mean!

How the west was won

One more wrap

Soft porn Texas style

Birmingham is not my final destination. Just somewhere to break the journey without, I imagine, tripping over too many tourists. I read about it as a hotspot of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, but had no idea what it was like until I landed here on a Friday evening in spring 2010. First impressions: cold and crisp, deep southern accents on people all shapes, sizes and shades of white, brown and black, very industrial, and almost deserted.

The first thing I learned was that the central business district where I’d picked to stay makes possum road pizza look energetic on a weekend. It’s also got a derelict air about it, like many city centres whose populations have fled to the suburbs. The reasons for departing this city centre have both common and unusual threads, which I’ll come back to later. The other first impression was that it could easily pass for Birmingham England with lots of red brick infill between elaborate older buildings, a horizon dotted with church spires, factory chimneys, railroads and skeletons of heavy industry strewn around the skyline.

Which Birmingham?

Watch this space for slightly more serious investigation of a place with a long troubled past - thanks largely to the self-same capitalism system I heard a very (over?) confident, gray-haired, gray-suited earnest man on telly saying that the country needs more of, and more freedom for. Looking at Birmingham's history, I wonder how many details he considers desirable. Is it just the profits and periods of high employment, or the corruption, soaring crime rates, poor pay, abysmal conditions and exploitation of workers as well?