Title Europe is Great. So is America
Body I was walking around Zurich tonight with D------, an amazing old friend. And it was rainy and wet which is unusual, so everyone I'd encountered was telling me how I'd picked the worst day to be there. But it was still beautiful; it's a beautiful city.
At one point, we were looking across the Limmat, the river that snakes up from Zurichsee ("Lake Zurich") and runs through the city. And D------- pointed across at a group of stately old buildings, and told me how they all belonged to the guilds. And how the guilds (Zunfte; organizations of various tradecrafts and professions) used to sort of run the city, but have faded in influence since an actual strong representative government has been put in place. And I thought of another friend, with whom I just in fact stayed, who is a member of something not really similar, but reminiscent in my limited American understanding: The Mercer's Company, the "Premier Livery Company of the City of London." D------ mentioned that there is still a festival at which the guilds get to parade and do their thing, and that membership is rather exclusive osed on alss
Date 02/23/15
Rating ******* / *****
Notes It is a real loss to the world that this post was not published. It contains both important original research and a novel engagement of the "old" / "new" world dichotomy. I think the point of the title was...I think it was going to be something like "it's super-cool that Europe has these cultural forms and traditions that are built on an edifice of hundreds of years of history; that's like a cool thing that the U.S. doesn't have. But then also those things are like a weight, a constraint." No one has ever made this observation, so it's a shame I did not.
I am a little interested in what kinda went down right @ the end, there. I'm thinking probably I fell asleep at the keyboard. That happens a lot.
Body I was walking around Zurich tonight with D------, an amazing old friend. And it was rainy and wet which is unusual, so everyone I'd encountered was telling me how I'd picked the worst day to be there. But it was still beautiful; it's a beautiful city.
At one point, we were looking across the Limmat, the river that snakes up from Zurichsee ("Lake Zurich") and runs through the city. And D------- pointed across at a group of stately old buildings, and told me how they all belonged to the guilds. And how the guilds (Zunfte; organizations of various tradecrafts and professions) used to sort of run the city, but have faded in influence since an actual strong representative government has been put in place. And I thought of another friend, with whom I just in fact stayed, who is a member of something not really similar, but reminiscent in my limited American understanding: The Mercer's Company, the "Premier Livery Company of the City of London." D------ mentioned that there is still a festival at which the guilds get to parade and do their thing, and that membership is rather exclusive osed on alss
Date 02/23/15
Rating ******* / *****
Notes It is a real loss to the world that this post was not published. It contains both important original research and a novel engagement of the "old" / "new" world dichotomy. I think the point of the title was...I think it was going to be something like "it's super-cool that Europe has these cultural forms and traditions that are built on an edifice of hundreds of years of history; that's like a cool thing that the U.S. doesn't have. But then also those things are like a weight, a constraint." No one has ever made this observation, so it's a shame I did not.
I am a little interested in what kinda went down right @ the end, there. I'm thinking probably I fell asleep at the keyboard. That happens a lot.
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