Skip to main content

10 Years On

My husband sent around an article from the BBC about how England had changed in the last 10 years and invited people to add how America had changed.

I found this at the BBC site and as I was reading (and not getting a lot of the references) thought about the US. How
has the US changed over the past 10 years? (Since we're much larger. Regional references are OK.

I'll start:
~I93 (Boston) was a parking lot looming over our heads, now it's a parking lot under our feet.
~We (the US) had a national surplus in 1997, now we're 3
trillion dollars in debt.
~10 years ago there wasn't a Starbucks on every bloody corner.

1. Coffee is served by the pint and it will cost more than a pint of beer.
4. I remember arranging to meet friends at a given location/time many days in advance. If they were late you had to scratch around for 10p to ring from a phone box (and their mum would always tell you they had set off). They would never stand you up, as the cowardly way of cancelling without warning by text just didn't exist then.
It's OK to take photos at concerts, so long as you use your phone.
12. Helen Mirren was occasionally called "Ma'am" by junior officers in Prime Suspect, but not by anybody else.
14. Swear words are no longer asterisked in a newspaper.
15. Headline puns are no longer the sole property of the tabloids.
19. You can no longer wear a hat or a hooded top inside a shopping centre.
21. Northern Ireland is one of the UK's top tourist destinations.
23. The phrase "Big Brother is watching you" should actually be the other way round for many people.
27. Passwords were for international spies and entry to gang huts a decade ago. Now you can barely buy milk without the need for some secretive alpha-numeric code.

I was trying to think of some both national and personal and I don't know if it's indicative of my mood this week, but I can only really think of bleak ones.

Ten years ago we were not at war (well, not officially and not in Iraq). Ten years ago the Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in New York City. One didn't take one's shoes off for airport security. The Red Sox still hadn't broken "the curse" (I guess that counts as a positive). Blogging had yet to happen, but Geocities was revving up. Nobody had made a good film of a comic except Batman which was the old exception that proves the rule.

On the personal, it's rather timely. We moved to Boston in the end of March, 1997. I am not where I meant to be in 10 years, but looking back I'm not sure I had a vision of where I'd be, not a real one, and that is perhaps the answer. Ten years ago I didn't know how to drive (that is a positive in many ways--maybe not for the environment, stealing misery from the jaws of joy, that's me).

Ten years ago my father was still alive. In three weeks that will not be true. It's funny because I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I've been working on a long poem for about three weeks about the ten years that have passed since then. I'll post it here--I've given myself until the actual anniversary, April 1st, but I know it's going to take a lot of rewrites.

Two years ago I did six months of Behavioral Therapy. My therapist said that I tend look back at my life as a series of lows, of bad decisions and regrets. He made me map my life focusing only on the high points. It was much harder and I don't think I'm alone in that. I have done theater, design and acting. I've even been nominated for an award. I've done good work wherever I've worked. I've made good friends. Isn't that really what life is made up of? (I can't even figure out how you'd get the preposition off the end of that sentence). I didn't get divorced. I didn't kill myself. He (my BT) would say those last two are negatives framed as positives or something like that.

Sometimes I feel like we just moved here. Other times it seems amazing that I've done so many different things in just 10 years. I'm trying to focus on that.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adapting a book--The Prestige

I was completely blown away by the movie of The Prestige , and I thought then about reading the novel, but it seemed too soon. So I carried the author's name around with me for over a year (Christopher Priest) and then, finally remembered to buy it through an odd sequence of events. We watched The Painted Veil based on the novel by Maugham starring Edward Norton, and while I decided I didn't want to read The Painted Veil because of it's differences from the film (which was more romantic and tragic) it reminded me that I had wanted to read Fight Club (the movie version of which starred Edward Norton) and that reminded me that I had wanted to read The Prestige (which did not star Edward Norton, but was up against The Illusionist which did). Whew...so it's all Edward Norton's fault. The Prestige is a very good novel, and yet, the movie differs from it considerably. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly that means. The central premise is the same, AND HE
Post a Comment
Read more

Putting my money (read time) where my mouth is

Some Duran Duran with some songs that I believe prove their musical merit. eSnips gives me the power and I'm going to use it. ( Bwahaha ) Get this widget Share Track details This is one of my all time favorite songs. I have it on a B-Side Collection, although I can't find any mention of what it was B-Side of, just that it came out in 1988. The words are quite haunting, as is the melody. But, I can hear you say, this is not at all a standard D2 song. Well, no, but what is a standard song by any band? How do you average that? Thomas Dolby's singles were always abnormal compared to the rest of their respective albums. Same with Barenaked Ladies. I think the B-Sides are often truer to what the band wants to be without the pressure of the labels for commercial success. Get this widget Share Track details This is probably more like Duran Duran you're thinking of, right? It's from Pop Trash , released 2000. The words are based on the true story of a boy who was building
8 comments
Read more

The end of Cloud Atlas

Feel I must write this--promised it to myself, can I finish before midnight (when I said I would go to bed at 11)? Where was I? Oh, yes, section 5, where it gets interesting--because it's the future, at least 25 years, hopefully more. I say hopefully, because I don't want to be living in this future. The section is called "An Orison of Sonmi-451." An Orison (I had to look it up, proving I don't remember my Shakespeare) is a prayer, but in this future world where language has taken as many turns as in Orwell's 1984, it is more a confession or final statement. Sonmi-451 is a clone (as the name might suggest). The section is not entirely original. It owes much to Brave New World and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (made into the film Bladerunner ). I find it interesting that 40 or so years ago--when Dick wrote his book he believed that future slaves would be Androids, replicants. Now we are much more likely to presume they will be clo
5 comments
Read more