Personally, I Need To Free Myself

At the moment, I feel I don't quite know where I am or where I'm supposed to be. I know what I did today, but I don't know what I'll be doing tomorrow. It scares me (just a little bit), but I think that's what I want. I don't want to live in anything like a routine -- not just at the moment, anyway. I'm moving to Liverpool soon, and I think that's going to be situation where everyday is different. Everyday will (hopefully) bring with it new challenges and new pleasures, new emotions and new feelings. I want to live closer to the realm of spontaneity than to the realm of routine.

I think this can only be achieved by the acceptance that any coercive lifestyle must have a certain amount of routine to it. I'm a unique person and I'm coming to terms with that by forging a closer perspective with bohemianism. I'm going to try and govern the next few weeks of my life by some famous lyrics:

We're not bad people,
We're not dirty we're not mean,
We love everybody but we do as we please,
We're always happy,
Life's for livin', yeah, that's our philosophy.

Where do I want to be in five years time?

I don't know. I want to have had as many positive, worldly, experiences as possible. If, in five years time I've achieved a good degree, an M.A. (as I want to do) and I have a healthy bank balance, then that's alright. There's nothing wrong with that. But if, in five years time, I've got a degree, and an M.A., but I have less than no money because I went round New York on a budget three week trip and saw baseball in Yankee stadium and a play on Broadway and got absolutely completely lost on the subway system and ended up walking thirty blocks in the pouring New York rain with no coat, then I would prefer the latter of the two.

I'm a free spirit, and this summer I failed my goal of making it back to New York in the warm weather. I paid over £1,000 to have work done on my teeth. This hasn't been a wasted experience. I found out being in debt isn't that bigger problem. Well, not when you're a student. And I suppose that's why I want to make the most of the forthcoming 12 months.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Winning In The Ghetto: Explaining Harlem Through The Life And Times Of Malcolm X

The complexities and paradoxes of Harlem can be partially understood through the kaleidoscope of the life and work of (Mr.) Malcolm X, with close reference to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Claude Brown’s Manchild In The Promised Land. It is my intention to demonstrate this by dividing the characteristics of Harlem into explaining four fundamental concepts: Harlem as a place with a pre-determined destiny due to geographical elements; Harlem as a space for change under the umbrella of democracy in the United States, being itself a microcosm of a black metropolis for the world’s black people; Harlem as a space where forces of good and evil co-exist and collide in a ghettoised prism, resulting in the notion of ‘good’ being heavily distorted; and finally Harlem as the white man’s ‘sleaze pit’ where white persons go to indulge in illicit customs. In the following essay it is my intention to illustrate how Harlem, when considered in these guises, and contextualised historically from 1940 through the 1960’s, changed Malcolm X from a naïve Michigan boy to a hustling, street-talking Harlemite, and then to a leader for the black community. Throughout, I will draw upon specific details given in the above texts.

GEOGRAPHICS

To begin, it is important to understand the significance of the geography of Harlem. In broad terms, this means placing the neighbourhood in relation to the rest of Manhattan. Harlem is located directly north of Central Park, with 110^th street being the southern ‘dividing line’. Malcolm X noted in his autobiography that “when we left Central Park at the upper end, at 110^th street, the people’s complexion began to change[1].” Indeed, 110^th street was, during Malcolm X’s lifetime at least, a definitive barrier between classes and races. It is less so today, but it remains a significant point of reference on the majority of Manhattan maps. It should not surprise us in the least that Malcolm felt a change in the air when he crossed 110^th street. We may be surprised, however, to read that around 110^th Street was “the worst of the ghetto, the poorest people[2].” Even within the Harlem ghetto, a hierarchy remained.

While Harlem is basically a single borough, its streets are what New York’s African-Americans call (or are supposed to accept as) home. At the age of thirteen, James Baldwin learnt this from a police officer in the centre of the intersection: “the cop in the middle of the street muttered ‘why don’t you niggers stay uptown where you belong?’[3]” it is significant that Harlem is quite central on Manhattan; to the East and West of Central Park to the South, Harlem is bordered by predominantly white neighbourhoods, and Washington Heights is to the North of the black community. Excepting Central Park, Harlem is completely surrounded by white boroughs, full of people with different coloured skin and people of a supposed different class. The captivity of the black man in the United States is certainly evidenced by these geographic idiosyncrasies, which all add to the experience of living in Harlem, and must be taken into account as having a positive effect in reinforcing the Nation of Islam ideology. Even Baldwin concedes that “it is ‘only the so called American-Negro’ who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for over four hundred years. . .[4]” Indeed, the location of Harlem could be one of the principle reasons for Claude Brown referring to Harlem as being “exploited and neglected[5].”

The grid system played an important part in the development of Malcolm X. The logistics of such a system results in the creation of a series of generic corners. At busy intersections, the corners become a focal point. Baldwin notes how he: “sometimes found myself in Harlem on Saturday nights, and I stood in the crowds at 125^th Street and Seventh Avenue, and listened to the Muslim speakers[6].” The Nation of Islam speakers were not the only ones who preached on soapboxes and step-ladders at the bustling intersections to anyone who would listen. Malcolm X realised this:

. . . the big trouble, obviously, was that we were only one among the many voices of black discontent on every busy Harlem corner. The different Nationalist groups, the ‘Buy Black!’ forces, and others like that; dozens of their step-ladder orators were trying to increase their followings[7].”

We can see from this that the grid system in place across Manhattan Island allows speakers to address a large number of people at once. Citizens can congregate and listen, and the orators also have the chance of catching the ear of passers-by as well. The manipulation of geography within the urban spectrum helped Malcolm X when he was the hustler selling cannabis to the drug addicts. When he had come out of prison, he used the same locations to sell his story of the white man being the devil to the dishomed African-Americans who now occupied the ghettos of America’s metropolises.

A SPACE FOR CHANGE

It is possible to understand Harlem as an urban space for change under the umbrella of democracy, on account of it being a focal point for black people across the world. This is evidenced in the writing of Claude Brown, who not only insists that “to me, New York was Harlem[8],” but also says he “used to tell everybody jokingly - but I half believed it - that Harlem was the capital of the world[9].” Not only does this explain Malcolm X’s desire to go and experience Harlem, but it underlines the importance of the borough to African-American culture. Harlem gave African-Americans a sense of identity; this is reinforced by Brown’s notion that Harlem was still his “point of relating to life and events and putting them together[10].”

Considering this, we can apply a similar theory to the hustling of Malcolm X. He managed to sell marijuana all up and down the East coast of the United States, through the manipulation of a railroad identification card. When he ran out of supplies, he would return to New York (Harlem), load up and then hit the road again[11]. Harlem became his base for his operation. It was his personal starting point for what he expected to be his life’s work. In a more general sense, this a reflection on the African-American relationship to the borough.

The notion of Harlem being the black man’s America is one which does not sit comfortably with the young James Baldwin. Throughout the opening part of The Fire Next Time, he feels sickened by the gangster lifestyle which was evident on a day-to-day basis on the Harlem streets. This is important because it is the opposite view taken by Malcolm X and Claude Brown who, for a short time at least, enjoy the characteristics of Harlem living in the age of sin:

“I was icily determined - more determined, really, than I then knew - never to make my piece with the ghetto but to die and go to hell before . . . I would ‘accept’ my place in this Republic[12].”

His anger at the misdemeanours of life on the Harlem streets is later adopted by both Brown and, to a greater extent, Malcolm X, yet his initial unwillingness to live out the gangster lifestyle even for a short time indicates that, for all it’s lacking of moral standards, Harlem can a place to empower the individual. In the case of Baldwin, it drove him into the church[13] and made him a better person for it. Baldwin freely admits he was scared to be living in such close proximity to so many evils, but this made him starkly aware of what was right. Malcolm X (and to a lesser extent Claude Brown) gain this awareness only after having been sucked into Harlem’s seedy underworld (though a great many things happened in broad daylight) and gained first hand experience of life without morals.

Any urban space has the ability to change any man in any number of ways. The specific characteristics of Harlem life clearly result in everyone being someone, and Baldwin seems quite resigned to the fact that change happens in Harlem, and change happens fast. In his words, “one doesn’t, in Harlem, long remain standing on any auction block[14]” before the nuances of life in the borough change your outlook on life and your personality. They changed Baldwin for the better, as they did Brown and Malcolm too, but only after years of experience of the nuances.

GOOD VERSUS EVIL

Certain characteristics of the Manhattan neighbourhood point to it being a space where forces of good and evil co-exist and collide in a ghettoized prism, and where the notion of good is distorted. Running the numbers, for example, is represented by Malcolm (and others) as being an accepted part of Harlem life: all citizens recognise it as being a relief from the stresses of living in the ghetto and most African-Americans dreamt of hitting the big combination one day[15]. The police, for what they were worth, turned a blind eye to the numbers runners[16] and allowed the practice to flourish. This all went on regardless of the fact gambling was deemed wrong by New York law, hence it being illegality[17].

This distortion as far as the characteristics of acceptability are concerned is paralleled by a greater sense of what is unacceptable. Claude Brown, for instance, remarks how stealing from the poor is utterly wrong when a numbers banker failed to pay out after a win[18].

What is good and what is wrong is very different within the Harlem ghetto. Streetcorner philosophers[19] appear on the corner of many busy intersections appealing to Harlemites to listen to them and believe in what they are saying. Baldwin takes a distanced approach to such street politics:

“I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox. What … men were saying about white people I had often heard before[20].”

What Baldwin is referring to as “often heard before” is the berating of the white man. The portrayal of the white man as the devil would not have been anything new to any Harlemite. Malcolm X would soon be one of the people maximising the cosmopolitan way of life in Harlem in such a way in an attempt to try and get his political message across, but the acceptability of that political message outside of the 110^th Street to 155^th Street microclimate is unquestionably going to endure a harsh reception.

To reduce it to a lower common denominator, black is portrayed as good, while white is portrayed as evil. Baldwin notes how, to the supporters of the Nation of Islam at least, “Allah, out of power, and on the dark side of heaven, had become – for all practical purposes, anyway – black[21].” For Brown, being as far away from light skinned, the more accepted you were into the Harlem community, as if having a darker shade of skin made you a better person than a lighter skinned counterpart[22]. Such assumptions and such warped values were acceptable and sustained in the Harlem which moulded Malcolm X, though they would most likely not be actively endorsed by people of authority and power.

SLEAZE PIT

The evils of Harlem made the area between 110^th Street and Washington Heights into one big market. The market catered for the white man, and it is possible to understand Harlem as the white man’s ‘sleaze pit’, selling all the evils one can handle.

The young Malcolm X did not take long to notice that white people were not a novelty in Harlem; as he put it, “blacktown crawled with white people[23].” As he grew to know Harlem a little better, he slowly realised they came for the atmosphere: Harlem was a special place for them, too. Though Malcolm came close to white people early on during his time in Harlem (the NYPD recommended Small’s (where he worked) to white people looking for a ‘safe’ place up in Harlem[24]), he would later come to know ‘sinful’ as being all too good a synonym for ‘white’.

The riot of 1943 had a detrimental impact upon Harlem being a fun place for white people from downtown. After 1943, few whites went North of Central Park after dark, preferring to get their kicks in other areas of Manhattan. The only white people who continued to go there after dark were in pursuit of illegalities.

With substantial amounts of money involved, Malcolm X played a part in helping rich white men (and thus usually powerful and important white men) live out their bizarre sexual fantasies. The women who ran the operation now needed ‘steerers’ to get her white clients into, and out of, Harlem without them being seen; this is where Malcolm came in. His first hand experience of this business resulting in him declaring “Harlem was their sin-den, their fleshpot[25].”

Interestingly, he notes that, in this black-white nether world, no one ever judged the white men[26]. Later, however, Malcolm X would realise the errors he had made in his life, and as he became detached form the Harlem hustling scene, it is likely he would develop a very low opinion of the political leaders and the leaders of society whom he dealt with. To deny these experiences of white New Yorkers had a detrimental affect on Malcolm X is foolishness; he was often invited in by the white men to watch the whippings they craved from the African-American women[27]. These experiences must partly explain his deepest feelings towards white people when he first left prison a Muslim. As James Baldwin noted: “the Negro’s experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live[28].”

The transparency of these exchanges is debatable. The chances are that tails of these services being provided by African-American women for (often ageing) white men slipped out into common knowledge somewhere down the line, whether it be by word of mouth or a passer-by seeing something odd. If we take this into consideration, and combine it with some hard facts, we get a detailed picture of the black-white relationship in Harlem during the given time frame:

Ø Authorities invested next to nothing in Harlem[29];

Ø Mayor LaGuardia closed the Savoy[30];

Ø Rents in Harlem were higher than most of the rest of Manhattan[31];

Ø White merchants in Harlem refused to hire black people[32];

Ø A white policemen shot a black soldier at the Braddock[33].

The latter two were the cause of the 1935 and 1943 riots respectively. If we take all these into consideration, we get a greater understanding of why Baldwin asserted that “one did not need to prove to a Harlem audience that all white men were devils[34].” In the work of Malcolm X with the Nation of Islam, we see this inherent belief, personified by incidents in the borough of Harlem, run explicitly through his work.

To conclude, by reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X in close relation to The Fire Next Time and Manchild of the Promised Land under the four guises outlined previous, we get a good sense of the urban landscape and the social make-up of the Harlem which transformed Malcolm X, first into a criminal, and then permitted him to be a devoted believer in the dangerous notion of the Nation of Islam: the white man is the devil. It is important to understand both aspects of Malcolm X’s life to get a grasp of the paradoxes which were present in Harlem from (roughly) 1940 through the 1960’s and which can, and do, exist in any urban space.

---

[1] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 157

[2] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 191

[3] The Fire Next Time, page 26

[4] The Fire Next Time, page 65

[5] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 179

[6] The Fire Next Time, page 46

[7] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 317-8

[8] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 53

[9] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 119

[10] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 198

[11] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 192

[12] The Fire Next Time, page 29

[13] The Fire Next Time, page 32

[14] The Fire Next Time, page 32

[15] Autobiography of Malcolm X; page 171

[16] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 51

[17] Section 5-401 of the New York Constitution, as cited by http://www.gambling-law-us.com/State-Laws/New-York/

[18] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 209

[19] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 61

[20] The Fire Next Time, page 46-7

[21] The Fire Next Time, page 46

[22] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 63

[23] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 169

[24] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 178

[25] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 209

[26] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 209

[27] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 209

[28] The Fire Next Time, page 28

[29] Manchild in the Promised Land, page 190

[30] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 202

[31] The New York Times, December 13, 1937, page 02; “Negro Rents Held Artificially High; Post, at Hearing, Says That Harlem Tenants Are ‘Gouged’ Since They Cannot Move” http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C14FB3B5A157A93C7A81789D95F438385F9

[32] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 202

[33] Autobiography of Malcolm X, page 203

[34] The Fire Next Time, page 48

Wall Street

First, I'd like to begin by saying I had an amazing time in Manhattan! With the exception of my sister's wedding, they were the best five days of my life. There wasn't a single moment I regretted going. Thank you to everyone who went, you are all amazing! Thank you to Ross and Morag, and also to Colin for everything he did organisation-wise in Liverpool. New York is an awesome place and I can't wait to go back -- there's so many things left to do!

I've been trying for days to write a decent blog entry. I've given up. What follows is only a brief description of a scene I witnessed on the Friday. Feel free to draw your own meanings and significances from the scene I describe.

After we had got back from Ellis Island, we went down Wall Street. Most, if not all of us, were there. No district of Manhattan is the same as another, and the financial district is no exception to the rule. I really enjoyed walking down there, among all the tightly built skyscrapers. The blustery wind was threatening to seize control of the umbrella Ruth lent me, but we battled on. I love the architecture of the Trump Building in particular:


Not far past the Trump Building, there was a worn out, scruffy, homeless women. I didn't get a good look at her, but she appeared dazed and confused, lost in her thoughts and her bewilderment, disorientated by her fear and drowning in the skyscrapers all around. She stumbled on by us, struggling to walk.

Did anyone else notice this women?

All the major economies of our world look to Wall Street, to the New York Stock Exchange, to the financial district of Manhattan -- they all look because it's the financial district of the developed world. And there's a broken women there. With no where to go. With nothing to eat. With no home to go to. And no bed to sleep in. Wall Street cannot accommodate for this women.

All I can do is make assumptions based upon what I saw. I don't know that women's background, and I don't know the stories behind every self-made man walking down Wall Street. But I saw a homeless women stumbling down Wall Street. That remains the most important most significant thing I saw in New York.

Everything I saw and experienced in New York has a degree of realism. Everything has a characteristic of some sort which made it 'real' to me. Even this:

What I saw reminded me of what Bob Dylan sang:
There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around,
They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down.
It's hard times in the city,
Livin' down in New York town.
This song is also an absolute choon and everyone should have a listen (it's somewhere in the depths of Blackboard).

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

Back To The Future: Living Through The Legacy Of Sir Henry Morton Stanley

July 22, 2005. My sister gets married in glorious sunshine in front of a packed church. After a beautiful service, the two families gather in the church yard, struggling to stay cool under the blazing sun. Those who have come up from Devon have brought flowers to place on the grave of some deceased relatives. The people they plan to honour and spent a few moments remembering are my grandmother and grandfather. But there’s a problem.

They wander around aimlessly. They can’t find the grave. The grave is unmarked. There is no headstone to mark out the dead. When they died, my grandparents were the last to be lowered in the family plot. At the time they died, in the early 1990’s, we could not afford a headstone.

Eventually my dad emerges from the church, one of the last to do so. As he shakes hands with well-wishers who tell him how beautiful his daughter is, he sees the Devon relatives searching uselessly. He hurries over to point them in the right direction. I am stood a good distance away, but I can see the displeasure written across his face as he leads the way to the Wright family plot.

Later, I speak to him about it. He takes it personally. He takes it hard. His mother and father are resting peacefully, but there is no headstone to show where they lie. He feels he has done them a disservice, and vows to buy a headstone to honour the dead if it the last thing he does. But there is another problem.

Edith and Thomas Wright are not they only two people buried there. My dad suspects Walter is in there, and Sarah Ann might be as well -- oh, and Aunt Jen, what about her? Suddenly I am confronted with names I know nothing of. I have never heard them before, but I am curious to learn: who are all these people? How are they related to me?

My sister’s wedding was the spark. Within a few months, genealogy is the buzz word. My dad and Uncle Dave are well into it, sending off for birth certificates, searching censuses, and visiting some place called Mobberley. They talk for hours at a time on Skype about what they have found out, what they need to find out, where they might be wrong, where they are definitely right......

Before long, it is Christmas time, and festivities take over. But by the spring of 2006 the hunt is on again. The original research project to find out who is in the family grave seems to have been swallowed up by something bigger -- something even more important. A family tree is emerging, and there is over 100 names on it. I recognise only a few.

I am curious as to whether there are any semi-famous people in our family. As far as I am aware, no one in my family has ever done anything significant outside of the family sphere. I ask my dad. It turns out there aren’t. But there is one person, my dad says. This man’s son, John Rowlands. The family tree shows the name John Rowlands, with no marriage to anyone and no child. Well, I ask, if this guy had a son, why is he not on the family tree?

My dad informs me very politely he does not deserve to be. He says this in a roundabout way, but I get the message. His name was the same as his father, John Rowlands. Well, it was until he fled to the United States and changed it.

He was born a bastard -- a very serious thing back in 1841. The workhouse is where he spent his early years, before he ran away. Eventually, he landed in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he settled upon the name Henry Morton Stanley. Soon, the American Civil War was well under way, and this brought with it Stanley’s first mistake. He fought for both the confederate states and for the union. As someone who despises the horrors of slavery with unbound utter contempt, I have found it hard to come to terms with the fact that someone I am related to fought for slavery. What is worse, this would not be his final brush with slavery. But at this point in his life, he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep the chains of slavery locked.

Once the civil war had finished, he went to work for the New York Herald, a now defunct but formerly very popular newspaper. In under a week now, I go to New York. It is going to be strange walking the streets of New York City, knowing that at one time, Henry M. Stanley lived and worked here. Over 100 years ago, these were his streets. While he went on to commit a great many atrocities during his time in Africa, he has my respect as a journalist. Family folk law has it he murdered more Africans than he helped on his trips through ‘the dark continent’. For a long time, I despised him as much as everyone else did. Tales have also been passed down of how he traded the Wangwana into slavery as well, when passing through the land of troublesome kingdoms. Of course, none of this is recorded in his official books.

I had respect for Henry Morton Stanley only as a journalist. That changed for the better when I read Booker T. Washington’s autobiography ‘Up From Slavery’. This is the greatest book I have ever read. I already held it in the highest regard before I read the following passage: ‘In the House of Commons, which we visited several times, we met Sir Henry M. Stanley. I talked with him about Africa and its relation to the American Negro, and after my interview with him, I became more convinced than ever that there was no hope of the American Negro’s improving his condition by emigrating to Africa.’ Maybe, just maybe, I had got this all wrong.

I still find it hard to believe that my hero met a member of my family. And in such grand settings! If Booker T. Washington could take a shine to Henry M. Stanley, then surely I could as well. I have begun to read more of his work, and I am currently half way through the first volume of Through The Dark Continent.

But for a short time, before being dispatched to ‘find Livingstone’, in the words of Bennett, a member of my family called New York City home. He lived and worked there, in what was slowly becoming the world’s first modern metropolis. I keep thinking about how much New York has changed since then. What would Henry M. Stanley recognise of today’s Manhattan? Would he be surprised by the disappearance of so many mastheads from the newsstands? The American newspaper which financed his search for Dr. Livingstone is gone. I would love to tell him that it merged with its bitter rival the New York Tribune before going out of print. But he probably wouldn’t believe me.

My ultimate goal in life is to be a journalist. It always has been, even before I knew who Henry M. Stanley was. Stanley was a true English gentleman in New York, but I feel his character was tainted by inherited racism, as so many other people of his generation were. His crimes against humanity on his travels through Africa are shameful. For example: as his caravan sailed down a river through Central Africa, the locals organised a welcome party on the river bank. They had never seen a white person before. They were dressed impeccably, wearing traditional garments of the finest materials, reserved for such rare and special occasions. Stanley panicked and slaughtered them all. Or so legend has it.

In a way, Sir Henry Morton Stanley lived my dream 100+ years before I could dream. He wrote for a great New York newspaper, he lived in the most vibrant city in America and he saw the world. Moreover, he made my dream happen for himself. I admire his drive and his determination, his will to succeed in all circumstances against all the odds. I also admire his whit. When he met Dr. Livingstone, he had not seen another white person since the Navy sailed away some two hundred days ago: ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’ I try to focus on the good things he did, but sometimes he makes it very hard.


The family grave still has no headstone.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

New York City: A Lonely Old Place?

New York City. The home of multi-million dollar movie sets, home of movie stars, stars of television, stars of sports, -- the much mythologized place where dreams are made, broken, and (if you’re lucky) made again in the blink of an eye. Things, cultural things, things beneficial to humanity, things in the name of democracy, things in the name of America, things to commemorate September 11 -- things happen on a phenomenal scale in New York City. It’s a big city a big distance away, full of big buildings, big stadiums and big people, with big personalities, big jobs, big salaries and bigger egos. Size matters and I don’t.

I have never been so far away from home before. I’m looking at a map on my wall. Three thousand miles of solid water between me and where I grew up. The furthest I have ever been away from home is Valletta, Malta. That seems just a stones throw away now. Getting to the Unites States is a serious business. 7½ hours, maybe 8 hours, sat in the same seat across ‘the pond’, after getting up at stupid o’clock to leave Liverpool at 06:00. The journey there and the first day is all I can think about. I can’t sleep on an aircraft. How can you sleep when you’re ‘cruising’ at 10,000 feet with what can one can only describe as a bloody deep pong below?!

John Denver’s version of Mother Nature’s Son just came on my iPod. The opening line has stuck in my mind: Born a poor young country boy. I remember my dad a few years back saying that line put his childhood into perspective for him. To a lesser extent, it does for me, too. I only know of one other person in my family who has been to New York City, and experienced it in some way. He is not talked about in my family, because of hidden truths that are not yet commonly known. I, however, admire him for the positive things he did and what he achieved. I’ll write about him in a separate post when I get round to it.

Eventually, I will get there. But what then? What happens when we are all settled in to Manhattan life for five days? Is it possible to settle in to Manhattan life? I am a shy person, in a country (and a city) that doesn’t seem to ‘do’ shy! I suppose I am mentally preparing myself to be completely overawed by the sights, sounds, smells, highs, lows, pains and pleasures of a dominating metropolis. I think I’m ready to feel small.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

From New York, NY, to Hull, Yorkshire.

I'm going to New York in March, and I can't wait! Wow, the metropolistic capital of the world! More foreign adventures beckon with this 'Working In The USA' module. I'm just beginning to panic a bit. I really need to start applying to some more companies this month. Hopefully I'll be in New York again, or Boston, MA. or Washington, D.C, and hopefully doing a job in the media industry. Hopefully.

Moreover, 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of fundamental abolitionist successes in Britain in relation to slavery and the slave trade (if you don't know what, you should). To mark this milestone, Wilberforce House in Hull is being refurbished and is due to open to the public again in March. I shall confirm the exact date as soon as it becomes known. I intend to be there no more than a week after it opens. Wow, what a place!

In a strange, academic way I'm almost as exited about going to Hull as I am about going to New York!

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright