#mobile home underpinning ideas

[philbridges]

How To Repair Tear Underpinning Mobile Home

How To Repair Tear Underpinning Mobile Home

Phil shows you a quick tip on repairing a tear in your mobile home underpinning. ⏱️⏱️Chapters⏱️⏱️00:00 Intro00:22 Here we are under a mobile home00:45 Split in the underpinning, you could tape with foil tape01:05 He’s cut a piece of house wrap01:20 You want to get under the insulation and on top of the plastic on both sides02:00 Just like patching a pair of pants02:45 This one is built a little…

[preciserestumping]

Cost of Levelling Floor

When a floor has dips and rises, it can be problematic. Not only does it look sloppy, but it can cause problems with the subfloor and the flooring. A shaky floor can be dangerous for those with mobility issues or who are carrying heavy items. Fortunately, there are many ways to level a floor. The cheapest way is to use self-leveling cement. Self-levelling compounds are polymer-modified cement solutions with what is known as “high flow characteristics.” This allows the compound to spread and fill the low areas of a floor.

When used correctly, self-levelling cement can be an excellent base for new flooring. It can also be used on wood floors that are not in good shape but that you want to keep. It is best to install a new floor covering, like a laminate or hardwood, over the self-levelling cement.

Before beginning the process of leveling a floor, it is important to assess the condition of the concrete slab or subfloor. Look for any significant damage or signs of rot or termite infestation. It is also a good idea to remove any existing flooring materials, as this can save time and money. Once you have assessed the condition of the floor, the next step is to identify high and low points using a carpenter’s level and a straight edge. This can help you locate any areas that need to be leveled and mark them with chalk lines.

If the reason for your uneven floor is due to a rotting support beam, this may need to be replaced or shimmed. Shimming is a process in which thin wedge-shaped pieces of plywood are attached to the floor joists to make them even. It is a messy process, but it can be an effective solution.

It is a good idea to consult with a professional contractor before beginning the process of cost of levelling floor. They can recommend the best solutions for your home and give you an estimate of how much the project will cost. The costs of levelling a floor are often less than half of what it would cost to replace the floor completely.

If you decide to do it yourself, be sure to follow the directions and safety precautions on the package of the self-levelling cement. In addition, be sure to clean the floor thoroughly before starting. The floor must be free of any dirt, dust, and debris to ensure that the compound will work properly. It is also a good idea to purchase the proper tools and accessories before beginning. This will make the process go much more smoothly and allow you to achieve a better result. You can find a wide variety of floor-leveling products at your local home improvement store. There are also several online retailers that offer these products. A reputable company will sell quality products that are guaranteed to work as advertised. They will also provide customer service and technical support if you have any questions about the product you are purchasing.

Precise Restumping & Underpinning successfully maintains a reputation for delivering quality, reliable and sound services to clients all over New South Wales, with a licensed builder that personally oversee all work.

[onlyhedges]

Top Libraries in Ottawa, ON

The Golden Triangle is a small central district known for lively pubs, high-end restaurants, and cafes along its main strip, Elgin Street. The area is also home to several embassies and the Ottawa City Hall complex, with a plaza and pop-up ice-skating rink out front. Leafy Minto Park offers benches and picnic tables, while a paved cycling and walking path lines the Rideau Canal, which borders the neighbourhood. The Golden Triangle is one of Ottawa's most vibrant and diverse neighbourhoods. With so many libraries in the area, there's something for everyone, from avid readers to casual browsers. Here are four local libraries that will keep you reading all summer long!

Ottawa Public Library - Main

OPL’s vision is to build community and transform lives; our mission is to inspire learning, spark curiosity, and connect people; our core values are Community, Inclusion, Integrity, Intellectual Freedom, and Literacy. Notably, intellectual freedom is a cornerstone tenet that underpins the Library’s role as a curator of information and a champion of information literacy. OPL supports intellectual curiosity and enquiry as well as the free and open exchange of lawful information and ideas in a democratic society, respecting individuals’ rights to privacy and choice. OPL is a shared public service, part of the cultural, educational and community fabric of the nation’s capital city.

OPL’s Service Delivery Framework includes three service channels: virtual, facility, and mobile, through which OPL delivers five categories of service: collections, expertise, programs, spaces, and tools. 

Library of Parliament

The Library of Parliament is more than just an iconic building. It is also the Parliament of Canada’s knowledge centre, where a diverse and committed team of employees plays a critical role in supporting our parliamentary democracy.

We pride ourselves on being a trusted source of information, offering parliamentarians and their staff impartial and confidential reference, research, and analysis services, news from around the globe and access to our extensive collection of resources.

Every year, we welcome about 350,000 visitors to Parliament Hill, where we introduced them to the Parliament Buildings and more. In addition, our educational programs and resources help teachers ensure students have the tools they need to understand how democracy works.

I invite you to discover the long history of the Library; our art, artefacts and treasures; and the important work we deliver on behalf of Parliament.

At OnlyHedges, we believe in the power of hedges. When you're looking to add some greenery to your home or office, a hedge can be just the thing. A well cedar hedge trimming will give you privacy and shelter from prying eyes, while still allowing the sun to shine through. In addition to keeping people out, they'll also keep animals in—your dog might enjoy playing hide-and-seek with his best friend behind a tall hedge!

But how do you know what sort of hedge would be best for your space? That's where our team comes in! We'll come by and assess your yard or building, then recommend the best type of hedge for your needs. We'll trim it up for you so that it's an attractive addition to your property without being overgrown or underutilized. You'll be glad that you chose OnlyHedges for all of your cedar hedge trimming needs!

OnlyHedges Ottawa, ON +1 613-324-7228 https://www.onlyhedges.ca/ https://www.google.com/maps?cid=12329325371338453299

[fletchwindowtint]

Consider San Antonio home window tinting for long-term gains.

Untreated windows in your San Antonio house permit daylight to enter, which harms your items and produces areas of interest. Common execution film utilized for Window Tint in San Antonio will develop the energy ability, security, and solace of your home for yourself as well as your loved ones.

Benefits to adding window film to your home

You can commonly chop down your energy uses by introducing sun based control film in your home. It will make your home really smoking in the colder season and cooler in the pre-summer.

Up to 99 percent of the risky UV shafts will be deterred by window concealing in San Antonio when introduced through coordinated experts utilizing the real film and state of the art headway. It will help with safeguarding you against the stinging impacts of UV.

By utilizing film, you may overall reduce the darkening of your merchandise, floors, pieces, masterpieces, and other family stock.

It will essentially lessen glare, updating the possibility of your PC and TV seeing.

Introducing flourishing and security films on your San Antonio home's windows will expand guard against break-ins and coincidental effects.

The underpinning of wellbeing film will moreover encourage solace and security in your home.

The use of additional creating movies will give your district a more present day and stylish look.

How could your window concealing film be reasonably based on?

A huge piece of property holders have near no understanding into the best times to clean their really introduced window concealing film. Your film will endure longer and will not be hurt during cleaning expecting that it is cleaned appropriately.

When could it be fitting for you to start film cleaning?

It is unequivocally cut by specialists including the sensible gadgets for the state of the window it is typical to be introduced. The film is then applied to inside surface of the window through a strong paste like cement. Because of created by a sliding master to put the film, facilitating will take some time.

In any case, the facilitating times sway reliant upon the sort of film utilized, skilled installers ask property holders to take the necessary steps not to clean their window films for some place almost 30 days after establishment. It will ensure that it has sufficient opportunity to really handle to the window.

Use window cleaning things without smelling salts

Smelling salts is one of the basic bits of most of window and family cleaning things. Skilled installers brief swearing off smelling salts based cleaning specialists while cleaning it. Right when you use cleaning things with smelling salts inappropriately, it will ultimately become destroyed. Specialists likewise short against utilizing froth cleaners with salt to clean windows sold in window tone. Specialists brief utilizing a sprinkle smother stacked with standard water and little vinegar to clean your window film, in the event you ought to be extra cautious.

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[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: they’ve been called Duran Duran for art school nerds, and a whole lot worse, but you probably know them as...Japan! Find out what made their last album their best work, and how they landed one of the most unusual and experimental pop hits in history. Transcript after the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be taking a look at an album that proved to be its creators’ hard-earned mainstream breakthrough, as well as their final release as a group: Tin Drum, by Japan. Japan had gotten their start in the mid-1970s, as a glam rock act, and as the 70s melted into the 80s, they kept up with the times, gradually sidling into the “New Romantic” scene--a movement which, in turn, owed many debts to glam pioneers like Roxy Music and David Bowie. By their fourth LP, 1980’s Gentlemen Take Polaroids, they had arrived at a lightly electronic pop sound that fit right in with the musical landscape of the early 80s.

Music: “Gentlemen Take Polaroids”

The following year, Japan would release Tin Drum, but it’s not exactly the album you would expect it to be--at least, not entirely.

Music: “The Art of Parties”

The most immediately striking feature of Tin Drum is its unique instrumentation. The rich and distinctive sounds of Chinese horns and African flutes jump out immediately, producing a powerful and distinctive accent upon what’s otherwise a somewhat conventional rock band arrangement. I feel like the “exotic” instruments here actually function in a similar manner to how the bands of this era who remained grounded in rock often approached synthesisers--that is, they add flourish and flair to the hooks, and bring an inherent timbral interest to the music, but ultimately, they’re used in a more condimental manner. Underneath all of this exoticism lurk the bones of pop excellence: the ineffable brilliance of a great hook, and some wondrously groovy basslines--the contribution of core member Mick Karn, on his distinctive fretless bass. Artsy as it is, it’s not so hard to believe that Tin Drum was the album that finally pushed Japan from cult darlings to artists with a major hit single to their name. But, when you hear what that single was, you may well be surprised.

Music: “Ghosts”

“Ghosts” is certainly a singular track, that stands out even on this fairly unconventional album. Its complete lack of percussion contributes immensely to its uncertain, unpredictable atmosphere of invisible menace--a bold move, for sure, but one that really delivers on the song’s premise. While “Ghosts” is fascinating and unforgettable, it’s far from the most obvious hit single you’ll find on Tin Drum. If I had to guess, I’d probably have pegged the lead single, “Visions of China,” as most likely to succeed.

Music: “Visions of China”

The dreamy “Visions of China” seems to center the idea that what we’re experiencing is a fantasy vision of Asia and not the real thing. Japan may have been a bunch of White, British guys playing around with Oriental aesthetics, but at least they appear to have been somewhat self-aware about it. Or, at least, we can come to that conclusion if we read the lyrics closely. It’s also very possible for a more casual listener to gloss over that aspect, especially when it’s so easy to get swept up in that triumphant refrain. While some critics might describe Tin Drum’s Orientalism as wholly or partially “ironic,” I think that idea forms the beginning of a conversation on how these themes are used, and not the end of one. The album’s closing track, “Cantonese Boy,” is much harder to take at face value.

Music: “Cantonese Boy”

Just how do you write a compelling song about a subject as controversial as Maoism? Many artistic portrayals of totalitarian regimes fail to resist the urge to play up their clownish and absurd appearances--Laibach being a prominent musical example. That can be valuable, but it’s also, comparatively, somewhat easy. “Cantonese Boy” is designed to lead us to sympathize with the beauty of the Communist dream, and presents an insidiously stirring vision of glory. But it’s hard to imagine listeners nodding along with it, and singing about the Red Army, despite its anthemic charms and driving, martial percussion. I think “Cantonese Boy” is the track that most successfully balances irony and sincerity, and it pays off.

Tin Drum’s cover features frontman David Sylvian in a lonely, austere dwelling. The New Romantic movement is often dismissed on the grounds of being style over substance, for its elabourate wardrobe and makeup aesthetics, but much as the music breaks expectations, the sparse surroundings here set this album apart as something more subtle or contemplative. The first thing one notices is this drab colour palette, which is particularly ascetic by 1980s standards, but the more you look at it, the more the little details of this interior scene stand out: the bare lightbulb, and the tears at the edges of this portrait of Mao, make it feel particularly threadbare.

It’s somewhat ironic that this album is most famous for a song with no drums at all, but is titled “Tin Drum.” That aside, though, I think it’s an interesting title overall. The expression “to bang a tin drum” signifies creating clamour and commotion to call attention to something, most often, a social or political cause. It seems to be used in that sense in the lyrics of “Cantonese Boy,” and straightforwardly so. But the title also calls attention to the album’s instrumentation, which is of course one of its most noteworthy qualities, and it centers the instrument itself, as a physical object. A thing is simply a thing, an inanimate object to be used and abused however human beings see fit. In a way, the title gives tacit permission for the album’s re-interpretations of exotic instruments.

Ultimately, I do think it’s hard to reckon with the impact of Tin Drum without asking some difficult questions about culture and race. In the early 1980s, Orientalism was all over pop, particularly in the New Wave and New Romantic scenes. A lot of hit singles from this era contain much more overtly upsetting caricatures and stereotypes of Asian people and their culture than anything you’ll find here. But just because Tin Drum is a bit better than that, and sells us what it does with more class and panache, doesn’t render it above criticism. Nor does the fact that Japan were well received by listeners in the country of Japan, and collaborated (elsewhere) with Japanese artists like Ryuichi Sakamoto. It’s still essentially an album that uses instruments and themes perceived as foreign and exotic, in an attempt to whisk us away to the world of the Other, and I don’t think it could possibly be made in this day and age. While I do think Tin Drum is a Great Album, and simply tossing it aside as “problematic” is no solution, I think it’s worth examining the ideas and associations underpinning how and why these artistic decisions were made. This isn’t an easy conversation to have, but it’s a necessary one, and one that I wish wasn’t so markedly absent among fans of the music.

As I mentioned in the introduction, Tin Drum would prove to be Japan’s final studio album as a group, and they would split up to pursue their separate ambitions shortly after. Percussionist Steve Jansen and synthesist Richard Barbieri would form “The Dolphin Brothers,” and take more influence from the synth-pop stylings of Gentlemen Take Polaroids, but Tin Drum’s evocative, experimental soundscapes would serve as the blueprint for the solo work of both Mick Karn and David Sylvian.

Music: “Pop Song”

My favourite track on Tin Drum is “Still Life in Mobile Homes.” It’s a track with a hell of a hook, and probably the single song that drifts through my mind at random times more than any other, which is saying something. But what really pushes it over the top for me is its eerie, surprisingly dissonant breakdown. In one track, it seems to distill all of the tension between avant-garde strangeness and pop par excellence that wrestle one another throughout the album. As always, thanks for listening!

Music: “Still Life in Mobile Homes”

[trumantomlinson]

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[nationalparkposters]

Visiting Dry Tortugas National Park

Visiting Dry Tortugas National Park: Some 70 miles west of Key West Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico, lies one of North America's most inaccessible national parks. Renowned for pirate legends, shipwrecks, and sheer unspoiled beauty, Dry Tortugas National Park harbors unrivaled coral reefs and marine life, an annual birding spectacle, and majestic Fort Jefferson, the largest masonry stronghold in the Western Hemisphere. Getting There Accessible only by boat or seaplane, just 60,000 visitors make it to Dry Tortugas National Park each year. Compare that to the more than 330 million people who visited America's national parks last year. But it's really no surprise when you consider what's involved just getting there. The jumping off point is Key West, Florida, and from there, you can choose between an all-day boat ride, and half- or full-day seaplane trips, assuming you don't have your own vessel. Pre-Flight When I visited Dry Tortugas National Park, I opted for the seaplane flight and checked in at the Key West Seaplane Adventures office at 7:30 for an 8:00 am flight. Even though it was late March, the sun was just rising, and filtered by wisps of pink and orange clouds. When the remaining nine passengers arrived, we received our briefing, were introduced to our pilot, and then walked out on to the tarmac together to board the DHC-3 DeHavilland Turbine Otter Amphibian. The plane can carry 10 passengers plus the pilot…and when the co-pilot seat was offered up, I literally jumped at the opportunity! Our pilot has been flying to and from Dry Tortugas for years. He would make five trips to and from Dry Tortugas that day…and after dropping us off, his early morning return flight to Key West would be a solo one. Ready for Takeoff Once we had our seat belts fastened, and perhaps more importantly, our headphones on, the pilot began to narrate our early morning adventure as we taxied out on to the runway. I fired up my video camera…and before I knew it we were airborne heading due east into the morning sun, and just as quickly banking south, then west for a bird's eye view of Key West. It was only then that I had the exhilarating realization I would be setting down in a place I'd only been able to conjure in my imagination — turquoise waters, green sea turtles, bright coral, frigate birds, shipwrecks, and a coastal fortress some 170 years old. The co-pilot's seat offered the perfect view of Key West, its hotels, Duvall Street and Mallory Square, which quickly faded from view. The pilot pumped some music into our headphones…though I wasn't quite sure what to make of his first selection: Tom Petty's “Free Fallin'”! Flying at at 130 knots, we were quickly over an area called the “Flats,” a body of shallow water just 3–5 feet deep extending almost 20 miles to the west. Flying at just 500 feet above the water, these shallows are teeming with Loggerhead turtles and you could clearly see dozens of them swimming about as we cruised overhead. 25 miles out, we flew directly over Marquesas Islands, a coral atoll…and then over an area called the “Quicksands.” Here the water is 30 feet deep with a sea bed of constantly shifting sand dunes. This is where treasure hunter Mel Fisher found the Spanish Galleons Antocha and Margarita — and more than a half a billion dollars of gold and silver strewn across an eight mile area. They continue to work the site, and even today, there are regular finds of huge Spanish Emeralds. But it wasn't long from my vantage point in the cockpit before I could begin to make out Fort Jefferson on Garden Key, and further west, the lighthouse on Loggerhead Key. Fort Jefferson, a massive but unfinished coastal fortress, is the largest brick masonry structure in the Americas. Composed of over 16 million bricks, the building covers 16 acres. Florida was acquired from Spain (1819–1821) by the United States, which considered the 75 mile stretch connecting the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Ocean important to protect, since anyone who occupied the area could seize control of the trade routes along the Gulf Coast. Construction of Fort Jefferson began on Garden Key in 1847, and although more than $250,000 had been spent by 1860, the fort was never finished. As the largest 19th century American masonry coastal fort, it also served as a remote prison facility during the Civil War. The most famous inmate was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set the leg of John Wilkes Booth following the assassination of President Lincoln. Mudd was convicted of conspiracy and was imprisoned on the Dry Tortugas from 1865 to 1869. The fort continued to serve as a military prison until 1874. Almost There… Our pilot banked the De Havilland to the right, providing a spectacular view of the islands and Fort Jefferson, heading the seaplane into the wind for the smoothest landing I've ever experienced — on land or sea — gently skimming the surface, and we glided effortlessly across the turquoise waters and headed towards shore. One more roar of the engines, a quick turn, and we were up on the beach ready to disembark. We arrived about 8:30 AM…and aside from the 10 passengers on board, a half dozen campers at one end of the Garden Key, and a few National Park Service employees, we had the island to ourselves. As I watched the seaplane take off, heading back to Key West, it struck me just how isolated we were in this remote ocean wilderness. I imagined the islands didn't look much different to Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, credited for discovering the islands in 1531. He named them Las Tortugas, or “The Turtles,” as the islands and surrounding waters were aswarm with loggerhead , hawksbill, leatherback, and green turtles. For nearly three hundred years, pirates raided not only passing ships, but relied on turtles for meat and eggs and also pilfered the nests of roosting sooty and noddy terns. Nautical charts began to show that The Tortugas were dry — due to the lack of fresh water — and eventually the islands were renamed as The Dry Tortugas. Taking advantage of the early morning light, I headed inside the fort, making my way up the spiral staircase, and stepped out of the old Garden Key lighthouse built in 1825. The lighthouse is no longer in use, since the “new” 167 foot tall lighthouse on Loggerhead Key, completed in 1858, continues to flash its beacon to mariners, warning of the shallow waters. The view from atop of Fort Jefferson provided a spectacular 360 degree panorama. And besides the few spits of land that make up the park, there was nothing but sky and sea in every direction. About the Park Dry Tortugas National Park, situated at the farthest end of the Florida Keys, is closer to Cuba than to the American mainland. A cluster of seven islands, composed mostly of sand and coral reefs, just 93 of the park's 64,000 acres are above water. The three easternmost keys are simply spits of white coral sand, while 49-acre Loggerhead Key, three miles out, marks the western edge of the island chain. The park's sandy keys are in a constant state of flux — shaped by tides and currents, weather and climate. In fact, four islands completely disappeared between 1875 and 1935, a testament to the fragility of the ecosystem. The Dry Tortugas are recognized for their near-pristine natural resources including seagrass beds, fisheries, and sea turtle and bird nesting habitat. The surrounding coral reefs make up the third-largest barrier reef system outside of Australia and Belize. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Fort Jefferson National Monument under the Antiquities Act on January 4, 1935. It was expanded to it's current size in 1983, when the monument was re-designated by an act of Congress as Dry Tortugas National Park on October 26, 1992. Its charter: to protect the island and marine environment, to preserve Fort Jefferson and submerged cultural resources such as shipwrecks. Just 100 yards or so from Fort Jefferson is Bush Key. Home to a diverse collection of birds that frequent the islands, it features a mix of mangrove, sea oats, bay cedar, sea grape and prickly pear cactus, reflecting the original character of the islands. A great wildlife spectacle occurs each year between February and September, when as many as 100,000 sooty terns travel from the Caribbean Sea and west-central Atlantic Ocean to nest on the islands of the Dry Tortugas. Brown noddies, roseate terns, double-crested cormorants, brown pelicans and the Magnificent frigatebird, with its 7-foot wingspan, breed here as well. Although Bush Key was closed to visitors when I visited, hundreds, if not thousands of birds filled the skies and the sounds of their screeches and calls filled the otherwise tranquil surroundings. There is no water, food, bathing facilities, supplies, or public lodging (other than camping on Garden Key) in the park. All visitors, campers, and boaters are required to pack out whatever they pack in, so the National Park Service created a wi-fi hotspot — only at the dock — where you can scan a QR code and download a variety of PDFs to your phone or tablet. It's an idea that's bound to catch on with so many mobile devices, reducing the need to print (and throw away) paper brochures. Inside Fort Jefferson, a small visitor's center has a few exhibits and shows a short video. I stepped across the entranceway, and found an equally small office that houses the National Park Service employees who maintain and manage the park. Some of the best snorkeling in North America Although I was only on the half-day seaplane trip, I still had enough time for a quick swim and snorkel on the west side of Garden Key. In the late 1800s, the US Navy built piers and coaling warehouses for refueling, but strong storms destroyed them, leaving only their underpinnings. These pilings, and the deeper water of the dredged channel, now offer an excellent opportunity to see larger fish like tarpon, grouper, barracuda…as well as the occasional shark. Multi-colored sea fans swayed in the gentle current. Colorful reef fish — with their vivid and boldly patterned reds, yellows, greens and blues — were camouflaged amongst the bright coral and sea grasses. Today, turtle populations have diminished, but you may still be able to see green, loggerhead, hawksbill, and leatherback sea turtles. As I walked back to the changing rooms at the dock, the seaplane for my return flight was just landing and I realized my time at Dry Tortugas was coming to an end. If I ever have a chance to get back, I would definitely opt for the full day trip. A week later, after returning home to Colorado and was shoveling snow off of the driveway, a small plane passed overhead and I suddenly thought of my flight to Dry Tortugas : the bright sun, the crystal clear waters, the abundant life — above and below the water's surface — a surreal landscape so captivating, so remote, that even having seen it with my own eyes, I still somehow could barely imagine it. About the Author Rob Decker is a photographer and graphic artist who is currently on a quest to photograph and create iconic WPA-style posters for all 61 National Parks. Rob visited his first national park at age five and began photographing them at age seven on a 10,000 cross-country trip with his family. He would spend the next decade working on his own, building a wet darkroom with his grandfather in the garage and serving as head photographer for the high school yearbook. But Rob's professional training really started at age 19, when he had the rare opportunity to study under Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park during the summer of 1979, less than five years before Mr. Adams passed away. Since then, he has visited and photographed 50 of the national parks in the US, including those in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands. Click here to see the current collection of posters. https://national-park-posters.com/blogs/national-park-posters/visiting-dry-tortugas-national-park?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=Sendible&utm_campaign=RSS

[philbridges]

Why We Use Foil Tape For Under Mobile Homes

Why We Use Foil Tape For Under Mobile Homes

Phil explains why we use foil tape for the ductwork and underpinning for mobile homes. Guess what? I have figured out that. Even expensive duct tape, like Gorilla tape, and this is iron forced and other tape that’s tried to hold up underpinning underneath a mobile home. The plastic doesn’t seem to last a long time. A lot of times you’ll see strips of duct tape falling down. So what I’ve been…

[jedivoodoochile]

Release date : 12th May 1972

The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street

First manager Andrew Loog Oldham said in the sleeve notes to the Stones’ first album: ‘The Rolling Stones are more than a group, they are a way of life’, and of no album is that truer than Exile On Main Street. The legend persists that it was all created in the dank basement of the former Nazi headquarters in Villefranche-Sur-Mer in the Summer of 1971, although a large portion was overdubbed in sessions in Los Angeles, where other songs were created from scratch. Some of the other recordings predated the trip to France, having been recorded in the UK, at Olympic Studios in Barnes.

However, the SPIRIT of the basement prevails throughout and it is the murky swampiness of the whole endeavour, extending to Mick Jagger’s all but indecipherable vocals, that have seen it acclaimed as the Stones’ most complete statement and possibly the most rock album the band ever made.

The guitar sound is largely due to Ry Cooder, whose involvement in the sessions of 1969’s Performance soundtrack, showed the possibilities of the ‘open G’ tuning on the guitar. Crucially, the guitar is tuned to a chord, but in Keith Richards’ book Life, he describes how he discarded the 6th (lowest) string, giving the lowest string (now a G) the role of a drone, quite appropriate to the blues. It also allowed the mega-riffs of the Mark 2 Stones’ biggest hits: Honky Tonk Women and Brown Sugar, which underpinned new member Mick Taylor’s melodic country/blues lines, melding to create a whole new style. Even now, the first chords of either of the above will pack a dance floor anywhere in the UK. With reference to Exile, the most prominent use of the 5-string open-tuned guitar is on Rocks Off, Happy, Ventilator Blues, Tumbling Dice and All Down The Line.

The Stones had recruited the sensitive 20-year old Mick Taylor in 1969 from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, where he became the third stellar lead guitarist to play the blues in Mayall’s band, following Eric Clapton and Peter Green. His first sessions were for the Let It Bleed album, overdubbing guitar on Country Honk and Live With Me plus some pivotal parts for the Honky Tonk Women single on the 1st June session that ended at 3:15AM.

Honky Tonk Women went to #1 in the UK and the US in July 1969, followed by the Let It Bleed album in December, another triumph. Any doubts created by the subsequent 18-month gap in releases were dispelled by the release of Brown Sugar in April 1971 (another US #1), followed in May by Sticky Fingers, possibly the strongest Stones album to date, and one that showcased the guitar interplay between Keith Richards and Mick Taylor, alongside some great songs, including Sway, Wild Horses and Bitch.

Having recorded sessions at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London, which included tracks like Stop Breaking Down and Sweet Virginia, The Stones had continued recording and writing in the Summer of 1970 at Stargroves, Jagger’s English country house, with the Stones’ own mobile recording studio, a move that became standard operating procedure for other UK bands, including Led Zeppelin. The mobile came in handy when the Stones discovered that in signing with US manager Allen Klein, their copyrights had reverted to him, so when they severed their connection with him in 1970, their income came under threat. They were also in a cash flow crisis, at a time when the UK taxman took 93% of high earners’ income, so they felt that the only thing to do was to get out of town, planning to spend at least 21 months outside the UK from 1971 onwards.

According to Bill Wyman, the band had at least working versions of seven tracks to take with them, including Tumbling Dice (original title: Good Time Women), Black Angel (which became Sweet Black Angel), Stop Breaking Down and Shine A Light.

In early April 1971, the band decamped to France, Mick Jagger marrying Bianca in St. Tropez on May 12th and honeymooning on the Riviera, before settling in Paris with his new bride. Keith Richards rented a villa, Nellcôte, in Villefranche-Sur-Mer, near Nice, while the other band members rented houses further to the west. The basement at Nellcôte became a makeshift studio to record using the band’s mobile recording studio.

In interviews with Ian Fortnam for the 2010 reissue of Exile, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts gave their contemporary perspectives on what went down: ‘They couldn’t get you in jail, so they put the economics on you, the old double whammy,’ said Keith. ‘So the feeling within the band was we’ve got to show them we’re made of sterner stuff and prove you couldn’t break the Stones just by kicking them out of England.’

The band again called on the services of their mobile studio and parked it outside Keith’s villa in order to carry on the recordings for the next album, the second on their own Rolling Stones records label, although according to Keith Richards, that wasn’t their first intention. They had been planning to look for studios in Nice or Cannes, but in the event, the band came to Keith, with the Stones mobile in residence from June 7th.

American producer Jimmy Miller had supervised the two previous albums, but the Nellcôte sessions were much more difficult to coordinate, partly because not all the band were around at the same time. Recording continued sporadically for some months until the French authorities began to apply pressure to rid themselves of the Stones and their entourage, who by then were engaged in various levels of illegal behaviour.

Drummer Charlie Watts was about three hours away, in Thoiras, west of Avignon, and bassist Bill Wyman and guitarist Mick Taylor were ensconced near Grasse, so at least one of the songs on Exile was made without them, although the album credits have never been clear about who actually did what. In the case of one of the most Stones-sounding recordings, very few of the Stones were initially on it. Happy, a showcase for Keith Richards’ vocals and guitar, has producer Jimmy Miller on drums and Keith doubling on bass. The basics were laid down between noon and 4PM one afternoon, with just Miller on drums, Bobby Keys on baritone saxophone, and Richards on the rest, including the lyrics and lead vocal.

Charlie Watts loved Jimmy Miller. ‘I thought he was the best producer we ever had. Jimmy was a hands-on type of guy. When we played he could never keep still, so he’d always be banging something; a drum or a cowbell’ [check out the start of Honky Tonk Women]. Miller insisted that Charlie‘s drums be tested in as many of the basement’s labyrinth of rooms as possible, before settling on one that had the right balance of natural ambience and proximity to the guitar players to maintain the vibe. It took a week or two to get the setup right, but after that, things apparently settled down.

The schedule did become a bit strange, as recalled by Keith Richards. ‘It became known as Keith Time, which in Bill Wyman’s case made him a little cranky. Not that he said anything. At first, we were going to start at two PM [every day], but that never happened. So we said we’d start at 6PM, which usually meant around 1 AM. Charlie didn’t seem to mind.’

But when Keith was on form, he would deliver, as with Rocks Off, which, according to engineer Andy Johns, involved a playback to Keith at 4 or 5AM. Keith went to sleep in mid-track, so Johns took that as the cue to get his own head down, driving the necessary half-hour home. He was just nodding off when the phone rang – it was Keith, asking where he’d got to. So Johns drove back to Nellcote – another half hour – at which point Keith picked up his Telecaster and played the second guitar part on Rocks Off, straight through.

The sessions were at least the backbone of the album. Said Keith: ‘A lot of the songs started off with an idea. Mick’s playing harp, you join in and before you knew it you had a track in the making and an idea working. It might not be the finished track; you’re not trying to force it.’

There was also much space for the interplay between Richards and lead guitarist Mick Taylor. Keith: ‘Brian [Jones] and I would swap roles. There was no defined line between lead and rhythm guitar, but with Mick’s style I had to readjust the shape of the band and it was beautifully lyrical. He was a lovely lead player. I loved playing with Mick Taylor.’

Some of the songs were collaborations, like All Down The Line, which, according to Keith Richards, he started with the basic idea of ‘I hear it coming, all down the line’ and handed it over to Mick Jagger to develop. Richards was extremely prolific and came up with many songs which didn’t eventually make on to the final release, including Head In The Toilet Blues, Leather Jackets (although Bill Wyman lists it as having been recorded at Olympic), Windmill, I Was Just A Country Boy, Dancing In The Light,(noted as possibly being one of Mick Jagger’s), Bent Green Needles, Labour Pains and Pommes de Terre.

Richards described the self-imposed pressure that he and Jagger felt when requiring themselves to come up with song ideas in anticipation of the arrival of the other musicians. Casino Boogie came about when inspiration was lacking and they decided to follow the William Burroughs ‘cut up’ technique (also used occasionally by David Bowie), whereby a book or newspaper is disassembled into component words, which are then re-assembled to create a new lyrical direction.

So, contrary to popular belief, the whole album wasn’t recorded in the South Of France, although most of the backing tracks were. As Keith Richards notes in his book Life: ‘What we brought to LA from France was only raw material for Exile. The real bare bones, no overdubs. On almost every song we’d said, we’ve got to put a chorus on here, we’ve got to put some chicks in there, we need extra percussion on that. So LA was basically to put the flesh on. For four or five months in LA in early 1972, we mixed and overdubbed Exile On Main Street. According to Bill Wyman, most of the Stones flew to LA on November 29th, 1971, followed later by the Wymans, for sessions that went on til February 1972.

It seems to have been planned as a double from an early stage, Richards mentioning ‘all business advice’ that warned against it. Which, to be fair to whoever was dishing out the advice (probably Ahmet Ertegun and Atlantic Records), was usually correct – double LPs had to be competitively priced, but they cost twice as much to manufacture, were heavier to ship, and their length and quantity of material meant they were harder for the public to assimilate, more difficult to review objectively, and took longer to get on the airwaves, at a time when multiple singles releases off an album was not the norm.

At Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, the basic tracks of at least Rip This Joint, Shake Your Hips, Casino Boogie, Happy, Rocks Off, Turd On The Run and Ventilator Blues were given numerous overdubs, including all the piano and keyboard parts, all lead and backing vocals, plus more overdubs of guitar and bass. The sessions included new recordings of Torn And Frayed and Loving Cup and saw Mick Jagger coming into his own, finishing off the vocals and bringing in other contributors.

A host of other musicians assisted the Stones on the LA overdubs, including Nicky Hopkins and Ian ‘Stu’ Stewart on pianos, and a mass of backing vocalists including Gram Parsons, Clydie King, Joe Green, Venetta Fields, Tamiya Lynn, Shirley Goodman, Dr. John, Kathi McDonald and Jess Kirkland. Jazz sessioneer Bill Plummer added upright bass to Rip This Joint and Turd On The Run, Al Perkins from Manassas played pedal steel guitar on Torn And Frayed, Billy Preston contributed keyboards to Shine A Light, and Richard Washington played marimba on Sweet Black Angel. Stalwart Bobby Keys played sax, with Jim Price on trumpet and organ on Torn And Frayed, while producer Jimmy Miller played drums and percussion where necessary.

The first hearing that the public and broadcasters had of Exile was the single, Tumbling Dice, one of the most multi-layered, murky, uneven recordings any band has ever released, and yet it is probably one of the Stones’ five finest records. There is something to listen at every turn, the rhythm is insistent, the lyrics are compelling, there’s rollicking piano, sweet Mick Taylor licks, (and his bass playing, the loudest thing on the track, is exactly wrong, but exactly right). Mick Jagger’s lyrics are almost indecipherable and mixed so far back they’re practically only a texture, but the whole thing is the Stones personified – far from perfect, but still fantastic.

As Keith Richards said in 2010: ‘Mick’s always seemed to have something of an ambivalent attitude to Exile… ‘, and here indeed are Jagger’s comments from 2003: ‘Exile is not one of my favourite albums, although I think the record does have a particular feeling. I’m not too sure how great the songs are, but put together it’s a nice piece. However, when I listen to Exile it has some of the worst mixes I’ve ever heard. I’d love to remix the record, not just because of the vocals, but because generally, I think it sounds lousy.’ Well, it could certainly be mixed with more clarity, but to do that would be to lose its essential Stones-ness, which would upset the millions to have bought it thus far.

Preceded by the UK and US Top 10 hit Tumbling Dice, Exile On Main St. was released in May 1972. It was an immediate commercial success, reaching #1 worldwide just as the band embarked on their celebrated 1972 American Tour, their first for three years. The second, and only other, single from the album, Happy, got to #22 in the US in July.

Many critics judged Exile On Main St. to be a ragged and impenetrable record at the time of its release, but the UK’s Richard Williams, writing in Melody Maker, praised the album in a review entitled ‘The Stones: Quite Simply the Best’. He said the album ‘is definitely going to take its place in history’ and ‘it’s the best album they’ve ever made. This is an album which utterly repulses the sneers and arrows of outraged put-down artists. Once and for all, it answers any questions about their ability as rock ‘n’ rollers.’

Keith Richards has the last word: ‘We didn’t start off intending to make a double album; we just went down to the south of France to make an album and by the time we’d finished we said, ‘We want to put it all out.’ I was no longer interested in hitting Number One in the charts every time. What I want to do is good shit – if it’s good they’ll get it some time down the road.’

[bluewatsons]

Caron Lipman, Living with the past at home: The afterlife of inherited domestic objects, 24 J Material Cult 83 (2018)

Abstract

This article examines people’s responses to the material objects they inherit or discover in their homes. Reflecting on interviews with inhabitants of a variety of English domestic interiors, the author explores the meanings, values and beliefs involved in choices to retrieve, retain, reposition or replace material residues from the home’s recent or distant past. Participants’ responses reveal how beliefs about the past and its objects become imbricated in homemaking practices, locating home as shared, both spatially and temporally, and enhancing or challenging senses of belonging. In particular, objects left by previous inhabitants are endowed with degrees of agency as part of the identity of home. Responses reflect a belief in the continuing presence of the past. Many objects require a form of negotiation – including rituals of appeasement or containment – expressing an entangled relationship between the heimlich and unheimlich in everyday homemaking practices.

Introduction

Many people live in pre-inhabited homes, the intimacy of domestic dwelling mediated by varying degrees of awareness that their home has been the residence of prior occupants whose traces remain in its physical fabric and in the objects left behind. This mundane presence of the past suggests alternative practices to the more purposeful unearthing of historic things: a fragmented inheritance of left behind residues often inadvertently discovered in the process of refurbishment. Names and dates are scored onto walls under layers of wallpaper; small objects – toys, coins, beads – are found under floorboards, in attics, jammed-up drawers, or in garden soils, whilst its material fabric, decorative details, form, layout and structure more overtly write the home’s histories across its surfaces. This article will explore this ubiquitous but overlooked aspect of domestic life, based on insights from a project that has involved interviews with members of 35 households living in a range of English homes of different ages, locations and tenures.

Popular guides stress the importance of discarded or forgotten objects left behind by previous inhabitants as offering clues to the house’s past. This evokes forms of excavation that parallel recent interest in extending archaeological practice to contemporary contexts, including homes, to consider the social conditions and effects of historical artefacts (Buchli and Lucas, 2001; Jeffries et al., 2009; Owens et al, 2010). Turning the focus on the making and meaning of the past away from the public to the private sphere, this article aims to highlight the home as a site of historical imagination, knowledge and practice. By following the ‘afterlife’ of domestic inheritance, I will explore the choices inhabitants make – the acts of leaving, removing or replacing past materials – and what these reveal about the meanings granted to the domestic past and its objects, and the beliefs and values underpinning such practices.

Attitudes to the residues of pre-habitation can be explored alongside work considering objects as ‘generat[ing] social effects not just in their preservation and persistence, but in their destruction and disposal’ (DeSilvey, 2006: 324), drawing on a recent focus on the practices of consumption and divestment of household consumer products, second-hand objects and waste things (see Digby, 2015; Gregson and Crewe, 2003; Gregson, Metcalfe and Crewe, 2007; Grossman, 2015; Hetherington, 2004; Marcoux, 2001; Miller, 2001). These interventions are paralleled by everyday senses of the meaning of left-behind objects as once embedded in webs of social relations and as material connections with past, as well as future, occupants. This becomes important in the light of recent scholarship emphasizing ways in which the home and its objects express and constitute the self (Blunt and Dowling, 2006; Fortier, 2000; hooks, 1990; Marcus, 1995; Miller, 2008; Tolia-Kelly, 2004; Varley, 2008). The act of homemaking is fuelled by a desire to develop senses of belonging, privacy and familiarity; these ideal tropes attached to the idea of home continue to resonate, despite being unavailable to many. Objects of personal value or memory are often galvanized as part of the homemaking project, reflecting or reinforcing senses of belonging and familiarity to enhance feelings of being ‘at home’. Although commentators emphasize the ‘undeniably inaccessible’ (DeSilvey 2007: 417) and ‘impenetrable’ (Shanks, 1992: 114) aspects of past materials, the incomplete biographies of second-hand objects can also be imaginatively adapted towards the same end. In one example, a migrant artist living in London, purchasing second-hand objects for his home, requested biographical information about them, collecting the fragmented stories into a book to share with visitors. He described how he ‘borrowed’ them as a way to ‘re-story the space, as well as reshape his own sense of home and identity’. These objects were imbued with histories which, in turn, were ‘retrieved, usurped, and taken on as raw material for his life’ (Jones, 2010; Lipman, forthcoming; Lipman and Sheringham, 2016: 53; see also Balthazar, 2016).

Such objects, however, are generally carefully chosen, In contrast, domestic residues draw attention to the spaces of home as previously inhabited, often by strangers. So whereas senses of homeliness may often involve the idea of a special, private and intimate relationship between home life and the material forms of domesticity, it is perhaps not unsurprising that anthropologist Daniel Miller dramatized being ‘haunted’ by feelings of anxiety about his home’s material inheritance – both its original aesthetic and design, and the interior furnishings left by recent residents. Miller identified a problematic alienating ‘discrepancy between the longevity of homes and the relative transience of their occupants’ requiring a process of coming to terms with the ‘agency expressed in the temporality of the home and its material culture’ (Miller, 2001: 107). But is the assumption correct that encounters with the home’s tangible history will always be fraught? This article suggests that people’s affective relationship with the past of their homes is more ambiguous and complex, inflected through a diverse range of experiences, understandings and practices in which inhabitants negotiate awareness of pre-habitation in multiple ways. The timbre of people’s responses depends upon the type of object, where it is found, its assumed aesthetic, use or identity values, and its perceived cultural meanings. In particular, the location of materials within the home is an important consideration in determining responses. Participants encounter a range of traces of previous habitation – overt and subtle, surface and hidden, fixed and mobile. The home becomes a conglomeration of superficial surfaces and hidden depths, of spaces to store or archive objects and those to display them, of objects thrown away or lost, hidden things revealed – and others yet to be found.

Just as advice on house biographies emphasizes the positive value of the temporal as well as temporary sharing of ownership or senses of belonging (Austin et al, 1997; Backe-Hansen, 2011; Barratt, 2001; Bushell, 1989), the home’s inherited materiality can enhance senses of shared belonging with strangers whilst simultaneously requiring the negotiation of individual identity. The understanding of the home as shared over time leads to decisions informed by a framework of values balancing individual rights with an understanding of collective responsibility, the latter often reflecting a desire to preserve the home’s past as part of an ethic of respect, care and custodianship.

The etymology of the un/heimlich

Intensifying responses to these objects is a sense that the home’s past and its materials are imbricated with different degrees of agency. This is perhaps most dramatically rendered in the case of haunted homes, where experiences of a real sense of presence of the past often focus upon the figure of the ghost, who is assumed to be a previous inhabitant with continuing claims over their home, reinforced by the fact that uncanny events are often triggered after structural renovation work. Participants’ feelings of belonging to home are challenged by such presences, and ‘co-habiting’ with ghosts requires strategies of negotiation (Lipman, 2014). Responses to inherited materials in homes where there is no direct experience of a ghost are nonetheless also infused with beliefs about their extended agency, with household practices suggesting people’s need to engage different strategies, including at times rituals of appeasement and containment.

In his essay on the uncanny, Sigmund Freud (2003[1919]) offers a detailed analysis of the complex etymology of the now-archaic word heimlich, which, we are told, has two rather different meanings: a feeling of ‘home’ – something cosy and intimate; and also, something concealed, out of sight, hidden or secret. This second meaning is known to Germans (my German mother-in-law offers the example of a secret recipe as having a heimlich quality). Freud is concerned to unpack the similarities between heimlich and its opposite – unheimlich, literally ‘unhomely’ (or uncanny in its approximate English translation). In his essay, Freud examines the relationship between these apparent opposite but closely intertwined states to develop a psychoanalytical theory explaining, with examples, the origin of feelings of unheimlich. Freud draws closely upon the work of the psychologist Ernst Jentsch, who, in a two-part paper published in 1906, had defined the unheimlich as a state of ‘doubt as to the animate or inanimate state of things’ (Jentsch, 1906). In Freud’s paraphrase, unheimlich becomes ‘intellectual uncertainty’, something that is ‘frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar’ (Freud, 2003[1919]: 220). But this aspect of Jentsch’s interpretation of the unheimlich does not satisfy Freud, who elaborates a psychoanalytical reading: the unheimlich becomes a particular ‘class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’; specifically, ‘something familiar that has been repressed’.

The cultural influence of Freud’s essay is such that to speak of the un/heimlich for many evokes the psychoanalytical turn. This article, however, returns in part to Jentsch; the close etymological coupling of the homely and unhomely, pivoting upon the relationship between what is occult and what is available, becomes a useful device for drawing attention to the relationship between the geographies of home and emotional responses to domestic inheritance. What is hidden concerns degrees of (or more accurately, the lack of) knowledge of earlier residents in the context of the close proximity to the objects they leave behind. Exploring the material inheritance of home in relation to definitions of heimlich and unheimlich helps locate the variety of responses to the past, of feelings of belonging and homeliness or of anxiety, superstition and uncertainty; often both. The home becomes an uncanny place because it holds secrets or hiding places (see Fletcher, 2000, and Stewart, 2003). The ‘hidden’ objects in this study become metaphors for a meeting of the heimlich and un/heimlich, with the ‘combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar’ within the home rendering it uncanny (Gelder and Jacobs, 1998: 23) – akin to the experience of the spectres of the ‘archaeological imagination’, which are ‘at once horrifying and comforting’ (Buchli and Lucas, 2001: 11–12; see also Vidler, 1999). Indeed, people’s complex un/heimlich responses often relate to the relationship between the more hidden and more surface materials from the past – what is, in the literal sense, in or out of view; the metaphorical depths and surfaces of responses to the past are matched by visceral encounters and embodied practices. The spaces of concealment where some objects are found reflect the hidden identity of their original owners and the unknown social circumstances and intentions around the objects’ concealment. And yet the process of discovery also confers belonging, a passing on of secrets, of intimate knowledge of the home’s revealed layers. Where people choose to place such found objects also reinforces this overlapping of meanings. Removing objects out of sight – from display to storage – may signal their lack of value or, alternatively, their importance as things requiring protection. Such objects reinforce the heimlich – home as a safe place, of privacy, or a place to keep secrets – and simultaneously the unheimlich: home as unfamiliar, indeterminate, a place where there are secret, hidden things. Indeed, a focus on the afterlife of left-behind materials positions the home as an entanglement of the heimlich and unheimlich, reinforcing inhabitants’ role as custodians of what they both inherit and leave behind.

Metaphors of depth and surface have also emerged as a focus for debates about the value of heritage, with a growing unease with the ‘salvage paradigm’ – the desire to ‘rescue something “authentic” out of destructive historical change’, and where authenticity ‘always exists immediately prior to the present’ (Clifford, 2002: 160; see also MacDonald, 2011). Rodney Harrison (2013: 227) has argued for a move away from the ‘modern conception of heritage’ as ‘salvage or preservation of that which is distant, old, hidden and hence authentic’ in favour of an idea of heritage as a ‘creative production involving the assembly and reassembly of things on the surface and in the present’ (see also Harrison, 2011). At the level of people’s everyday encounter with the past, it is clear that both ideas of heritage find expression. Indeed, the value granted to the role of the past underlies the choices participants feel able to make. The past is defined, on the one hand, in relation to degrees of distance from and difference to now, but also as an expression of the home’s identity. Those who believe that the home’s identity is reflected in its original design favour preservation: this is how it was intended to stand, this is what gives it its integrity. As one participant explained, her house was built as a ‘whole object and if you’re not careful it starts not to work properly. I don’t like doing anything too drastic to an old house unless it’s absolutely necessary.’ But many people prefer the more progressive relationship to the past as fluid and evolving; the home’s identity becomes an accumulation of contributions of generations of residents, a:

mix of different periods … I like the feeling of this house [having] been lived in for generations and each generation changes it. [It is] transition … Houses change as people’s needs change. [Too much preservation] And you wouldn’t have a house anymore, you’d have a museum – because you wouldn’t usually want to live in it.

But the distinction between these two ideas is not always clear cut. Those who prefer a more progressive sense of history as evolving still tend to assume a greater value and respect for the older elements of their home, and older objects found within it. They will justify decisions to remove features by claiming they were not, in any case, original. But if identity is accumulative, this also lends weight to a belief that the process continuously confers agency from the past to the present. There is no linear time; the home is full of presences caught up in the lingering layers of a collective shaping of home. Within this entanglement of residents, agents and presences, its material objects require careful handling.

Permanent features

The home’s material spaces also become a trigger for imagining previous occupants. Participants attempt to reconstruct the interior shape and function of their homes, to understand what people were doing within its spaces, and how they might have adapted to socio-economic conditions and to changing tastes, technologies and cultural norms. Those whose homes had not changed much found it easier to imagine previous lives; others expressed frustration, hunting for faint clues and traces of past configurations. The home’s most enduring fixtures allow the most direct and unproblematic sense of relatedness with the past, the most benevolent and unthreatening sense of connection. Participants enjoyed the frisson of imaginative encounter with past residents through touching what had been touched by many before. Banisters, wooden beams, stone walls, for example, conjure up shared domestic routines, repeated reiterations of the intimate and ordinary. Walking up and down a staircase, opening doors, looking through windows – these become benign, transparent anchors between past, present and future, reinforcing ideas about touch as a means by which ‘the distinction between past and present is momentarily dissolved’ (Harries, 2017: 110). The haptic tactility of these objects and their uncomplicated function also help to trigger the imagination. William, living in an Edwardian house in a south London suburb, reflected how, ‘somebody’s hand, many people’s hands, have opened these [original brass handles on a back door] and gone out.’

The act of walking up and down the stairs, holding onto a wooden banister that others would have touched for the same purpose, leads him to speculate about their lives within the house:

You do kind of think: how many people have come down the stairs? When have they come down the stairs? The banister – because it’s so tactile I often think – how many people have been here? Who were they? What were they doing? … It’s one of the most used spaces in the house, isn’t it?

In a converted farmhouse in a remote Yorkshire hamlet, Pam described her love for the wooden beams in an upstairs room:

I go in there and I stroke the beams because I love the fact that they’ve been there for 300 years. They were possibly part of something else before that … It’s a physical connection with the past … Something about the number of lives that have been lived underneath them.

These encounters lead participants to feel connected to a wider social lineage, as William added, ‘It’s a nice feeling. Of permanence – of being part of the world, I suppose. That other people have been here, and now I’m here, and other people will be here … I’m part of this house.’

Looking out of the windows of her Victorian London semi to point to old trees, Rosemary reflected on how this made her feel a part of something bigger:

It’s a sense of your place in the world … Just knowing that you’re not the beginning or the end. You’re just a part of it, and it will continue. This house will be here after I’m dead. The house is like bigger than one human being … A big line that goes back and it will go forward as well … I still am there. I still am very connected. But I’m just – a little dot. Very connected and very belonging and everything else – but a little dot.

This sense of the small, temporary nature of their own time leads participants to express a sense of obligation, of responsibility, to consider themselves their home’s custodians, their duty to look after or improve it for the past and the future. One participant explained:

This [house] has been around for 180 years … and it is this thing about being a custodian of it for the time being … I’m improving the place … The house deserves it, if you like … We’re making it better, mending it … It’s the same way you’d nurture a child, to come into this world and grow.

Another stated: ‘We very much feel that – you know, we’re here for a bit. This house will go on. And – it’s everybody’s inheritance in a way … We’re only custodians really.’

The more fixed materials allow connections that are unencumbered by more complex relationships or feelings, bleached of any of the messier visceralities of domestic life – and, for Pam, an urban escapee, of feelings of unease about the assumed disparities in wealth and comfort between her modernized farmhouse and the tough working lives of previous occupants. She said: ‘Stone and wood don’t come loaded with any guilt, do they, about how much easier one’s life is now?’

Surface objects

These fixtures, then, create a benign relatedness to past and future residents via imagined shared domesticity creating an expansive sense of one’s place in the sweep of time. But responses to found materials can be emotionally complex, reflecting an uncanny doubling of intimacy and unknowability. Some objects create particular unease. Inherited baths and beds, for example, are less tolerated. In contrast to banisters and beams – where the frisson of shared touch occurs in the safety of neutral, public space – the feelings of vulnerability inherent in acts of bodily immersion and exposure make the imagined messy viscerality of past bodies too close. Joyce told me how she ordered her landlord to remove the beds in her semi-furnished rented flat in east London. She said: ‘To actually sleep in someone else’s bed, I mean … I regard sort of my bed as my personal – it’s me, it’s mine … It’s a private space.’

If energy from the past is believed to linger, those within such objects are less likely to be benign. Speculation about past events includes births and deaths (beds), and drownings, murders and suicides (baths). Participants are surprisingly specific in their conjecture; negative energy may wind itself down over time, but it may linger longer after slower, more painful deaths than swifter ones.

Another form of materiality least likely to be tolerated – for different reasons – is the surface inheritance, the most superficial and often most recent additions – carpets, wallpaper, curtains and so on. Participants seem to rather enjoy ripping these out, an initial ritual of claiming ownership. Inheriting what is deemed to be of poor taste offers the most leeway, the best justification for making changes. This allows people not only to substitute recent materials for those reflecting their own sensibility, but also, in a common justification, fulfils the custodial role of making improvements for the home itself, giving something back. As one commented: ‘They put in, you know, £5 chandeliers which vaguely looked as though they might just have been Victorian but quite patently were bought from Woolworths or equivalent. I wasn’t going to do that.’

In the south London Edwardian semi, William was also quite scathing about what he inherited:

And they were sort of quite odd people … You know – it had horrible wallpaper on the ceiling for some reason … It didn’t feel like sort of a warm, family house … They had done up the house in a very, very, sort of shoddy way.

But judgements about taste and quality are often tempered by an acceptance that tastes and circumstances change. William reflected with self-irony that future residents may well judge him in a similar light:

We are – the present incumbents. And in a couple of years’ time we will move and somebody else will come and say, ‘Oh my God, you’ll never guess what, that’s terrible. We’ll have to get rid of that’ … And in 10 years’ time they may be sitting down speaking to an academic and going, ‘God you’ll never guess, we moved in here – the owners were very, very odd.’

If the home’s identity is deemed a palimpsestic accumulation, it is permissible to fit the home to one’s own needs, circumstances and aesthetic choices – a far cry from Miller’s dramatic complaint of inhibition and alienation. But decisions about what to keep or remove need to weigh personal judgements against the responsibility to establish the value of what is inherited – to distinguish what is superficial, mutable and of little intrinsic worth, from what has depth, endurance and meaning for the home’s identity. This process is influenced by the social context. For William, for example, the previous residents were only considered ‘odd’ because of the way they had furnished the home. But elsewhere judgements are based upon rather more direct experience with previous residents. In a small Victorian terrace in central Bristol, Robert described the debris left behind by the previous owner: a broken chair, a pile of rubbish, a doll’s arm stuck to a wall and corks from multiple wine bottles. He also found hidden objects inadvertently left behind within a jammed-up drawer: bone-handled cutlery and a carving knife with a date on it (‘a wicked looking thing’). Robert considered that the rubbish reflected the previous owner’s chaotic lifestyle as an alcoholic, but also her relationship with him, which had soured since the exchange of contracts for reasons he could not fathom: ‘She left a whole load of rubbish … She stripped this place out. I mean, all she left was that broken chair … my housewarming present!’

He could separate – or, as he said, ‘dissociate’ – the older objects from his feelings about the vendor because they had other qualities which set them apart. They remained unsullied; their biographies predated her; they are allowed to rise above the momentary social fracas.

Robert’s story brings to mind Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas’s (2001) experimental use of archaeological categorization techniques to explore left-over objects in a recently abandoned council house, to gain insights into the social circumstances of previous residents. The process involved familiarity with the material cultures of home and an ‘everyday ability to read it’, alongside a ‘more conventional application of archaeological methodology where understanding comes, ironically, by almost de-familiarising the house in terms of our everyday perception, and reconstructing it as an archaeological site’ (p. 160).

Hidden objects

Robert’s ability to ‘dissociate’, however, differs from professional forms of defamiliarization because it involves allowing the older objects a form of distinctive agency separate from the social context of which he is a part. For many participants, the meaning of inherited objects is imbricated in the personal process of making home. It is the manner of their arrival which often shapes participants’ encounters with these objects and dictates their afterlife. Beyond inherited material fixtures and superficial decor, participants describe how they stumble upon hidden objects, often inadvertently during the peeling back of the home’s layers during renovation. Such finds emerge as a by-product of, and during absorption within, ordinary homemaking practices, an effect of an intimate engagement with the home as a material artefact. Its hidden layers release un/heimlich affects, yielding up secrets – what lies behind, beneath, above – whilst simultaneously suggesting others. These finds constitute chance encounters which also remind occupants that the project of making home cannot be completely controlled. Isabella, living in a 16th-century manor house outside Bristol, recalled:

We had to do a bit of mending … and we were finding things which we hadn’t deliberately set out to do – underneath. By mistake. We don’t look for things. It’s like doing some kind of puzzle. Every now and then you get another piece … We know there’s a staircase behind there because Georgie [the dog] found it … found a squirrel’s nest underneath the wood. They had filled it up with stones.

Elsewhere, in the Victorian semi in south London, Sharon recalls the excitement of uncovering an original fireplace:

Adam said: ‘Oh there is just this bit of wood … there is no point taking that off, there will be nothing under there’. I was like: ‘Get it off! Get it off completely!’ Cast-iron, original fireplace underneath it … Amazing! It felt like I had uncovered a mummy from the pyramids or something … it was completely intact, you know … [We also found] wallpaper in one of those built-in cupboards … It was definitely Victorian because it was hand painted. It’s like an archaeological find.

But, if participants express a sense of custodial responsibility for dealing correctly with this accidental archaeology, they accept the irony that much of what they find might also have been left accidently or without too much thought. Isabella explained that the preservation of her house was down to happenchance. For many centuries the house was rented out, probably to poor relations: ‘And that’s why it’s interesting. Because people do not remove, you know – put fresh things in … All those periods of time, people just did what they had to do [which] preserved the interesting things.’

Sharon also reflected on the fact that the fireplace had been covered over probably because someone thought it was ugly and it was the cheapest and most expedient solution; and the wallpaper had been preserved because ‘people didn’t take time in cupboards’. These circumstantial explanations for why certain artefacts are preserved lend weight to critics of those who appear to value the ‘authenticity’ of old things just because they are old. Certainly, participants tend to respond differently to objects that they assume were intended to be discarded. Ubiquitous pottery fragments dug up in gardens are greeted with the most playful response, often creatively remodelled as mosaic art – reworking fragments with unknown histories into new, knowable and unthreatening things.

Rituals of retention and reburial

And yet it is telling that the pottery is retained and displayed in these homes, albeit in a re-appropriated form. Indeed, a significant proportion of found objects, whatever their assumed pedigree, provenance or intention for being left, are retained within the home and done so carefully, knowingly and with degrees of respect. The process of retrieving left-behind things might create a sense of intimate connection with the home, of being let into its secrets. But, erstwhile hidden objects – invisible, waiting presences of and from the past – are, once exposed, granted a degree of agency, placed into a special category of meaning beyond (even if also involving) their more ordinary aesthetic, monetary or use values. The nature of these objects requires a particular form of handling – perhaps more so if previous inhabitants are assumed to have lacked a sense of custodianship, or did not have the privilege, money or time to have such concerns. Either way, as part of the home’s accumulated identity they need to be retained within the home. The manner of their storage contrasts with the way participants store (or hoard, as some apologetically suggested) personal items. During guided tours of their homes, I would sometimes be politely turned away from a closed door – often a box room or children’s room no longer in use. In a cottage in Marlow, Karen joked that she called hers the ‘Room of Doom’ which was full of objects ‘in transition’. Where were they in transition to? She didn’t know, but they had been there long enough to be granted the status of ‘transitional objects’, in a state of perpetual anticipation – a haphazard form of domestic archive mixing past memories with the potential of future function.

In contrast, the storing of found objects takes on a different set of meanings. Many participants squirrelled these away into boxes and envelopes, placing them out of sight in cupboards, drawers, attics, scrapbooks: a kind of ritual of reburial. These practices appear to be part of the negotiation of shared ownership, a form of appeasement as well as of containment of the past. These practices included retaining original elements of the house that had been replaced, such as ‘beautiful’ Victorian windows deposited into a cellar, or a fragment of (disliked) wallpaper into a scrapbook, a part standing for the whole. Sometimes storage is a way of protecting delicate things, such as a piece of crumbling ancient wall left in a bag in a drawer; at others, it is to protect the residents themselves, who express anxiety about proximity to lingering contamination: ‘And then I thought, “Oh god”. I’d read about how these wallpapers [and paint] had arsenic on them and things.’

Grace, an antiques dealer, showed me a number of choice items displayed in glass cabinets in her Georgian house along a major road in south London. She also described a box she kept in an inaccessible compartment, behind the cabinets, which contained hidden objects which had been ‘thrown up’ by the shaking of the ground, before the front drive was tarmacked, as heavy vehicles thundered past. She explained: ‘It would throw up things like clay pipes. I found a gold ring, coins, bones, all sorts of bits and pieces … You’d go out and you’d suddenly see a ring … I found lots of 16th- and 17th-century pottery.’

The secret compartment reflected her relationship with these objects. In contrast to her antiques proudly displayed in the cabinets, the found objects were not to be admired for any aesthetic quality or worth. They did not need to be seen or touched at all, but they did need to be kept somewhere in the house. In this way, Grace respected but contained the past, literally ‘keeping it in its place’. Such an act of hiding, storing or archiving has a symbiotic relationship with the decorations, features and objects displayed and designed to be looked at. Being placed out of sight does not trouble the aesthetic and functional choices involved in present-day homemaking. In this sense, found objects are granted less value. And yet, if the ‘past is immanent in our embodied engagement with [the] world’ (Harries, 2017: 126), we also need to account for those objects that we do not wish to touch with hands or eyes, that we need to keep present and close, but contained. This may be an attempt to diminish their agency, but keeping them out of sight within the home also grants them more power, reinforcing their mystery and enacting an acknowledgement that they contain a special relationship to the home.

Removing unwanted inherited objects out of sight to a lesser used room is another way of balancing the need to respect found objects as part of the home’s identity with the project of reinforcing belonging through displayed personal objects. Janet had taken a much-loved fireplace with her from home to home, removing the original fireplace in the living room to accommodate it. She expressed a certain guilt for doing so, but explained that she had compromised by moving the original feature into her bedroom upstairs, where she didn’t have to look at it as much. She added defensively: ‘At least it is still in the house.’

Participants also re-conceal objects for future residents to discover – another form of compromise between custodianship and taste – as one participant explained, pointing to original fireplace tiles that she disliked: ‘None of it is damaged, it’s all behind there … I’ve just painted over them. Somebody else might like them … Nothing is gone. It’s for the future. I’m only a guardian.’

Ritual objects

But some objects are set apart further, inherited with edicts attached dictating that they must be left untouched, in situ. The value of these objects is often transferred orally via people granted authority: previous inhabitants, older family members and local experts. Many participants were vague about the exact provenance of such a practice, but there was a suggestion of anxiety surrounding these objects, having been granted special agency or status – an unspoken, veiled, threat of some reversal of fortune if the object is removed. In such cases, no negotiation is possible. Responses to these objects have been pre-established and passed on; participants easily succumb to the pressure to continue the tradition, often without enquiring why. A sense of custodianship, in these examples, becomes loaded, a burden.

In one example, Susan, living in a 1930s semi in suburban Ipswich, found a little plastic cat on a window sill when she moved in. She explained:

I don’t move it. It stays there … My mum always said: ‘If you find something when you move into your house, you must keep it. And if you leave the house, you should leave it there’ … There was a silk scarf, and an ornament. And [mum] wrapped the ornament in the silk scarf and put it carefully in the loft. She left it with a note to say that it must never leave the house … When we found the little cat – she said: ‘Oh, you must leave that there. You mustn’t get rid of that.’

In an early 19th-century house in south Manchester, the owners inherited a painting of a man, which they were told was at least 100 years old, came with the house and needed to stay where it was. They did not seem curious to know who he was, but tellingly, they gave him an unthreatening nickname – he is known as Uncle Toby. However, elsewhere, objects reflecting an assumed previous ritual function create the most anxiety. Divia found a shoe, placing it in the attic of her 17th-century house in a southern English town. She said: ‘We took it down and then someone said that shoes are left in houses to bring luck and to protect the house. We put it back in a round balsa wood box that we had.’

A ‘cluster’ of other finds had been collected in the box since – an old photograph, a newspaper dated 1943 – but as she explained:

The shoe has overarching significance. The other things gather and I think the shoe has to be there. Being asked by you about it, I feel nervous. I don’t really want to even get it out. It feels embedded in the house. Part of its fabric and not something that should be meddled with … Leave well alone … We will leave it there and tell the new owners that it is there – hand it on as something to be known about.

These three examples represent one end of a spectrum of practices suggesting a belief in found objects’ continuing agency. They point to tantalizing continuities of oral traditions of belief which reiterate previous ritual roles of objects (particularly between the 17th and 19th centuries) to protect against evil spirits at a home’s weak spots (Billingsley et al., 2017) – practices which, perhaps, find their counterparts in other continuing but mutating traditions, such as cementing objects behind cornerstones or into foundations to bring luck or ensure the home’s physical strength, and the craze for more diffusely located time capsules – the latter reaching a peak during the future-oriented 1950s. If participants believe the intention is to protect, these objects are granted the most respect – handled with greater sensitivity, ensuring that the tradition – whoever started it and for what purpose – continues in some form. Some participants, indeed, created their own versions of these practices, leaving mint coins under floorboards to mark the year they moved in; placing a tin box into the setting concrete foundations containing coins and newspapers. Both marked a moment: a contribution to a home’s birth or rebirth. Presumably these were not meant to be found, or at least won’t be until the homes are refurbished or demolished. The act might be a kind of embodied prayer for the foundations to hold fast or to reinforce a sense of pride and belonging in the home. Perhaps this is why such objects are treated so respectfully when they are later discovered. Alternatively, there is for some the pleasure of depositing objects that may one day be found. Peter, a carpenter, described a ‘long-standing builders’ tradition’ of leaving things in the crevices of walls – initials, names, dates, newspaper – in order both to exchange practical information (‘this is when the building was last modified’), but also to celebrate the sense of being part of a particular lineage:

As you build you find these things – and go ‘Ah, I’ll do that myself. I quite like that’ … It’s a little storytelling tradition. There is a genuine pleasure in finding evidence of another man’s work … Why would you leave a note with your name and the date if it wasn’t to say: ‘I did this, at this time. And I feel a value attached to that’ … Even though you’re not going to receive the compliment, it’s the idea that a builder in the future will open up what you’ve done, find your name, and compliment you in his own mind.

Conclusion

Peter’s celebration of the secret, exclusive act of leaving banal objects during practices of stripping down, mending, adding back a building’s layers, is an exchange of conversation over time, part of a chain link of embodied relatedness – a passing on of knowledge and the conditions for acknowledging work done. It doesn’t matter if you are long dead when the next person discovers what you have left (or that they are long dead when you discover theirs). What is important is that these practices – taking place in the same place, with the same care – are shared.

For residents, likewise, encounters with material residues require an admission that the idea (or ideal) of home as something personal or private needs to sit alongside the fact it is also inevitably a collective endeavour. This broader temporal pantheon of habitation is most vividly manifest in the material traces marking out the erratic, mutable, history of homemaking practices over generations. The special values granted to what remains as intimate conduits between the past and future makes the task of homemaking more complex. At the most abstract level, a frisson of awe is sparked by the thought of the shared touch of the home’s fixed objects, fuelled by a desire to experience something bigger than the self, something that endures. But the sense of temporariness of belonging that this triggers also creates the burden of respectful engagement with the home, an ethical code of custodial responsibility and duty of concern for other residents, whereby homemaking practices become choices that need to be justified. Such decisions need to negotiate the desire for personal space alongside the duty to make the ‘right’ decision for the home itself, be that to discard, retain or rebury objects. These belong to the home, express its accumulated identity, and therefore require accommodation. Even objects that were likely lost, thrown away or left purely for fun, are deemed to contain or release something from the past, something of that essence of ‘me, here, now’ – whoever, wherever and whenever that was. Exploring where disparate forms of material residue are encountered, handled and placed – the more recent, surface layers, or the mobile things left, lost or purposefully hidden – illuminates the different values underpinning such decisions, offers insights into the relationship between historical and homemaking practices, and how the past and its material residues are imbricated in social relationships (imagined or otherwise) through which people decipher or reinvent cultural meaning.

Considering the home as a site of historical practice and imagination extends recent interest in landscape as ‘processual’, where ‘different temporal rhythms – past and present, creation and disappearance – are held in tension … [and] everyday landscapes are implicated in the negotiation of the past and the present’ (Hanlon et al., 2011: 2). The complexity of participants’ engagement with inherited objects speaks back to any simplified binary between metaphors of surface and depth, bypassing reaction or counter-reaction when one is deemed too privileged over the other. Importantly, accounting for a sense of the past’s extended presence also requires that we acknowledge the possibility that, within the ordinary Western home, some past objects are granted forms of what might be broadly categorized as supernatural agency, and that folkloric beliefs and rituals continue to shape modern homemaking. The accidental discovery of ritual objects causes particular anxiety, and participants are keen to keep them in situ rather than risk reducing or disturbing their power. But people also seem quick to create or accept ad hoc prescriptive edicts to retain objects that do not have obvious original ritualistic function – assuming other-worldly agency for mundane things, including the little mass-produced plastic cat that probably fell out of a Christmas cracker. This raises the question: can our material theories account for or accommodate such beliefs, experiences and practices?

Mitch Rose (2011: 110), for one, has derided material cultural theory’s apparent ‘profoundly secular’ forms, where, he argues, the ‘co-constitutive relation’ between subjects and objects privileges the ‘present and productive over the absent and silent’, trapping relations ‘within a set of banal everyday processes’ (he points out that material structures often stand for absences). Of course, as this article shows, he is wrong about ‘banal everyday processes’, pointing as it does to the capacity for the unheimlich, as the strange within the familiar, to include the most seemingly ordinary objects and homemaking practices. These modern Western domestic interiors are alive with mundane things granted unearthly powers; wider senses of time and space are caught up in the temporary, small-scale practices of the everyday. But such objects take their place within a more complex expression of degrees of absence and presence, such as, for example, that described as the ‘paradox of absence–presence experienced through bereavement’ (Maddrell, 2013: 503), where a sense of ‘ongoing presence of the deceased’ is ‘often expressed as continuing bonds’ (p. 517). This article has explored the material traces of those now-absent others of the home’s past, given that ‘while absence is matter out of place, it is still placed through matter’ (Meyer, 2012: 109). To understand how the unheimlich and heimlich are imbricated is to accept a suggestion that immaterial forces are believed to persist within the material (not just objects that stand for absent others). It might be easiest to account for such forces as imaginative responses to the past; it is not of course that plastic cats have actual agency, it is just that people continue to attribute agency to them within particular contexts. Indeed, recent work appears to allow a degree of agency for objects, encouraged by a focus on the lively, excessive and emergent nature of the material world (see Anderson and Wylie, 2009, Dewsbury et al., 2002, Kearnes, 2003, Latham and McCormack, 2004), as well as their broader relationships – the way ‘different configurations of objects, technologies, and (human and nonhuman) bodies come together to form different capacities and experiences of relationality’ (Edensor, 2012: 1105).

But there are limits to such liveliness; objects are not allowed to be too animate. Rather than critiquing materialism, many are at pains to reinforce it despite appearing to grant the object world more agency than ever (Doel, 2004). This has not gone unnoticed, with some questioning the recent influence of Alfred Gell’s ideas in which an object’s agency is limited to social action, which ‘excludes … factors that make it possible … to conceive of certain objects as having agency in themselves’ (Morphy, 2009: 14; see Fowler and Harris, 2015; Gell, 1998). Others are returning to Jane Bennett’s (2001) theory of enchantment, which suggests that ‘through certain engagements with materialities people can be enchanted’ (Burrell, 2010: 143, emphasis in original), accounting for the ‘sheer emotional, imaginative and tangible power that objects provoke around them, and asserts people’s openness to the different and unusual’ (p. 144). Bennett’s concept of enchantment ‘recognizes qualities of liveliness as internal rather than supplementary to objects, helping move beyond the assumption that objects simply await enlivening by human subjects’ (Ramsay, 2009: 198), alongside a ‘capacity of materiality to work in unpredictable ways’ (p. 199).

It is not that we should turn away from a critical examination of relationships between the material, social and cultural – in some ways, there is no other project available. But if we are to do justice to the beliefs that underlie people’s responses to certain objects, we might have to accept challenges to the ‘inherited cultural categories that limit the questions and interpretations we bring to our research’ (Brown and Walker, 2008: 297). Indeed, refusing to accept ‘animism and non-human agency … devalues people’s lived experience’.

For both Jentsch and Freud, this idea would be repugnant. Jentsch (1906) points to the ‘horror which a dead body (especially a human one), a death’s head, skeletons and similar things cause’ as explained ‘by the fact that thoughts of a latent animate state always lie so close to these things’. Making use of this observation, Freud’s psychoanalytical ideas of the unheimlich countered animism and ‘primitive’ belief in spirits. Such beliefs, as well as the resultant uncanny responses to objects, were already pathologized by Jentsch in relation to particular susceptible individuals: ‘women, children and dreamers’ (see Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001; and, for more recent iterations: Greeley, 1975; Green, 1973). Freud (2003[1919]), in turn, reflected upon the ‘strength of our original emotional reaction to death’ – the ‘primitive fear’ of which is ‘so strong within us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation’ (p. 242). It is this, in part, which turns ‘something frightening into something uncanny’ (p. 243). In this reading, the agential power of found objects might be explained by their association with the dead – the discovery of found objects, and their intimate sensory presence, ‘provoking’ feelings of return to a repressed original fear. Such an interpretation, however, places limits on the complexity of people’s responses to the material past. If the uncanny ‘eludes coherence’, representing ‘that which exceeds the control of the agents of reason’ (Bennett and Royle, 1995: 39; see Ellison, 2001; Kingsbury and Pile; 2014; Wolfreys, 2002), it is in part because it is ‘bound up with an experience of the uncanny’, which ‘disturbs any attempts to remain analytically detached and objective’.

The context in which that experience takes place also requires scrutiny. When studying amulets exhibited at the Wellcome Collection, Jude Hill (2007: 75) noted that the manner of their display in glass cases was designed to subdue their ‘latent’ magic powers by categorizing them as objects of archaic, pre-modern value within a ‘narration of a broader scientific progress’. And yet, she argued, the museum ‘could not expunge’ their magic, and their containment in archives merely seemed to increase their power rather than remove it. As this article has shown, such experiences have particular impact within the non-institutional context of homes and daily life. Tracing the responses to the home’s material inheritance requires us to consider how attempts to contain beliefs about objects within the particular explanatory strategies we allow for them may well increase their power to unnerve, to overspill our categories in good, old-fashioned uncanny ways.

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DeSilvey C (2007) Salvage memory: Constellating material histories on a hardscrabble homestead. Cultural Geographies 14(3): 401–424.

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Maddrell A (2013) Living with the deceased: Absence, presence and absence–presence. Cultural Geographies 20(4): 501–522.

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[weemsbotts]

“Like the Gaudy Butterfly…”: A Discussion on Lace Tatting

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

The Weems-Botts Museum will be opening their doors soon to safely welcome visitors as we enter Phase 3. One of our treasures, our framed and donated lace tatting, is ready to take the spotlight again! But what is tatting? Why do we sell a Lace Tatting Kit in our Gift Shop? And why are doilies so ubiquitous?

Like crochet and knitting, tatting is a type of needlework that uses thread and tools (shuttle, needle, crochet hook) to create intricate and decorative knotwork. While this type of work could have evolved from netting and ropework, we find tatting popular throughout Europe and Great Britain in the 19th century with different names: frivolite in France, knotting in England,  Schiffchenarbeit in Germany, and tatting in America. People used tatting to either accent an item (such as our 19th century petticoat with lace tatting on bottom – not on display!) or create delicate pieces, such as doilies.

 Many reading this article may already know or could easily recognize tatting thanks to the surge of popularity it experienced in the 1930s-1950s and then again in the 1970s. It was popular throughout the Victorian era with Eleonore Riego de la Branchardiere publishing numerous needlework manuals/guides, such as Golden Stars in Tatting and Crochet, 1861, currently available via Project Gutenberg. Mlle Riego de la Branchardiere started with some reassurances, “The following Designs are formed by a very simple combination of Tatting and Crochet, the more elaborate style of both Works being avoided, so that any Lady with a knowledge of the first rules of each Art will be able to accomplish the patterns without the least difficulty, the Stars and Diamonds being made in Tatting and afterwards worked round with loops of chain Crochet.” Thank goodness! Let us check in with an anonymous author who included a chapter on tatting in the 1844 publication, The Ladies’ Work-Table Book; Containing Clear and Practical Instructions in Plain and Fancy Needlework, Embroidery, Knitting, Netting, and Crocheting. This author boldly declared the purpose and high importance of needlework specifically aimed at the female population, “If it be true that “home scenes are rendered happy or miserable in proportion to the good or evil influence exercised over them by woman—as sister, wife, or mother”—it will be admitted as a fact of the utmost importance, that every thing should be done to improve the taste, cultivate the understanding, and elevate the character of those “high priestesses” of our domestic sanctuaries. The page of history informs us, that the progress of any nation in morals, civilization, and refinement, is in proportion to the elevated or degraded position in which woman is placed in society; and the same instructive volume will enable us to perceive, that the fanciful creations of the needle, have [iv]exerted a marked influence over the pursuits and destinies of man.” The instructions for tatting included open stitches, stars (a popular theme), and common tatting edges. This author concluded by reinforcing their opinion that needlework contained a Christian imperative and service, a way for women to “endeavor” and develop their “moral goodness”, “We were not sent into this world to flutter through life, like the gaudy butterfly, only to be seen and admired.”

(Source:  Project Gutenberg Ebook of Golden Stars in Tatting and Crochet by Eleonore Riego de la Branchardiere)

However, needlework and crafted items, such as doilies, should not be viewed as crafted (and useful!) curiosities only. While women’s magazines published many ideas, guides, patterns, etc. in the early 20th century, artists also used these same objects in more meaningful expressions. Horace Pippin survived but sustained an injury during WWI that limited the mobility of his arm. Using small canvasses and drawing upon his experiences, knowledge, and imagination, his work gained national attention and the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited his items in their “Masters of Popular Painting: Exhibitions of Modern Primitives of Europe and America”. Supporters such as Robert Carlen and Albert Barnes helped boost his popularity through solo exhibitions and purchases. According to scholar Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, “Equally crucial is valuing these diverse subjects for their autobiographical, regional, and cultural under- pinnings—underpinnings that link them irrevocably to Pippin’s more celebrated paintings of war, spiritual harmony and African-American life”. Notably, Pippin painted numerous doilies in his artwork, whether draped across seating furniture or tables. His paintings featured an impressive depth and scope – whether a reflection/recollection on the war, social injustices, slavery, or famous events such as the execution of John Brown. He remarked, “The pictures . . . come to me in my mind and if to me it is a worthwhile picture I paint it . . . I do over the picture several times in my mind and when I am ready to paint it I have all the details I need." Just studying the doilies alone show his attention and mastery to still life and detail.

So why are doilies ubiquitous? We could discuss reasons ranging from potential cost to efficiency and décor, but doilies are definitely still a “thing”. While we could joke about its function as a glorified coaster, it is hard not to be excited when opening a family chest and discovering these delightful items crafted by our families and friends.

(Sources: Project Gutenberg Ebook of Golden Stars in Tatting and Crochet by Eleonore Riego de la Branchardiere; Project Gutenberg Ebook of The Ladies Work-Table Book, by Anonymous; The Spruce Crafts: What is Tatting?; Jonathan Boos: Specializing in 20th Century American Art: The Floral Still Lifes of Horace Pippin”; National Gallery of Art: Pippin’s Story)

[blankslateblog]

Can Cars Become folklore? Exploring the Future of our Streets Post-Coronavirus

It’s 7:30pm on a Monday night in August. We are in the heart of our nation’s capital. Yes, D.C. always clears out around this time of year, and yes, it is raining right now, but this summer night is different. We are on month six (give or take) of the coronavirus pandemic here in the United States, and our streets have undergone a drastic transformation. In the time it took me to write these first few sentences, only 5 cars have driven by my window. This would have been unheard of in the heated rush hours of Before Times. As Taylor Swift languidly reflects in her song, august, “But I can see us lost in the memory / August slipped away into a moment in time.” While maybe Taylor isn’t contemplating automobile ephemera like me, her sentiments about fleeting memories have never seemed more true. Our society has entered a new normal in every facet of our lives, and our streets are no different. Coronavirus has presented us with both extreme challenges and opportunities, leading many to question if we can leverage the positive, interim changes and seeming concessions into permanence.

It seems as if our view on cars being indispensable to the American Way of Life is immutable, however many are hoping to change this. Farhad Manjoo, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, recently published a piece titled, I’ve Seen a Future Without Cars, and It’s Amazing. His thesis: Why do American cities waste so much space on cars? While this idea may be nothing new, Manjoo’s angle of focusing on space came at an apt time as society reckons with isolating in small, urban spaces, quarantining in cities once as dynamic as its transient residents, and transitioning to experiencing our neighborhoods at street level. We are being forced to confront truly living in our immediate surroundings, in a way that we may not have wanted to, or been conscious of, before. I thought I knew my neighborhood like the back of my hand, but my quarantine walks have taught me that I was sorely mistaken. In the past month I have discovered 3 community gardens, 2 cemeteries, and 1 park all within a 30 minute walk of my apartment.1 Greenspaces have become a refuge for me now more than ever. Having worked with the Parks Research Lab at William & Mary and ParkRx America in Washington, D.C., greenspaces have always been a research interest of mine. Pro-tip: If you are yearning for some ecotherapy like me, you can utilize ParkRx America’s database (located on the homepage) to “prescribe” yourself a local greenspace to visit. Now, the idea of space, be it “green” or other, has taken on a whole new meaning during the pandemic. As I type, limited to my small, city apartment, I am reflecting on Manjoo’s visceral appeal for us to optimize how we are using and creating space.

ParkRx America’s mission is to decrease the burden of chronic disease, increase health and happiness, and foster environmental stewardship, by virtue of prescribing Nature during the routine delivery of healthcare by a diverse group of healthcare professionals. Source: ParkRx America Resources

As an environmentalist, I have been celebrating the recent dearth of cars in my own city, and the proliferation of “Open Streets” and “Open Restaurants” movements across the country as the pandemic progresses. Notable examples include: Oakland's Slow Streets, Seattle's Stay Healthy Streets, and Paris' “Corona Cycleways.” Many of these initiatives have been championed by individual communities or tactical urbanists for years, but for the general public these ideas are just now becoming mainstream as we adhere to Stay at Home orders and live more locally. Scenes like Karsten Moran’s photo, below, of Mulberry Street in Manhattan evoke the plaza-culture of cities abroad. Having traveled often outside of the U.S., I always wonder why our streets don’t feel like theirs. Is it a problem of planning? Of people? Of both? Cars seem like an easy culprit, but maybe they are just a scapegoat symbol for the individualism of American society. As public health experts reckon with the threat of American individualism in combating coronavirus, can we instead channel this obstacle into collective action to improve our streets?

NYC Open Restaurants’ Siting Criteria has ushered in a new era of ‘tactical urbanism’ founded on quick-fixes, often utilizing the mishmash of materials on hand. Source: NYC DOT 

“New York City’s sidewalks and streets have sprouted oases that evoke destinations from the Greek isles to the New Jersey Turnpike. In Manhattan, Mulberry Street, which was dotted with sidewalk seating before the pandemic, now features in-street dining.” Photo Credit: Karsten Moran; Source: Outdoor Dining Offers Fresh Air and Fantasy to a City That Needs Both

It is critical to explore who we are “improving” our streets for, who these changes will benefit, and who is calling for them. How would open streets impact BIPOC? People living with disabilities? Essential workers? Many urbanist activists are “challenging the practice of quick-build infrastructure projects like Slow Streets that eschew multi-year and multi-stage construction projects in favor of timely progress and rapid feedback.”2 In D.C., Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White effectively banned Slow Streets from his ward, which is over 92% Black according to DC Health Matters, with an amendment to the law permitting them stating, “Many residents in Ward 8 have not supported bike lanes and other measures that appear to force aspects of gentrification and displacement.” Dr. Destiny Thomas, a Black transportation planner and organizer, explores these ideas and more in the article, ‘Safe Streets’ Are Not Safe for Black Lives. I highly recommend reading her article first, before I outline a few of her ideas here. Dr. Thomas explains that the onslaught of slow streets and bike lanes during the pandemic was a “nightmare” due to their lack of participatory planning. She states, “by design, their ‘quick-build’ nature overrides the public feedback that is necessary for deep community support. Without that genuine engagement, I feared that pandemic-induced pedestrian street redesigns would deepen inequity and mistrust in communities that have been disenfranchised and underserved for generations.”3 If planning is to become anti-racist, it must center and amplify the voices of communities members through inclusive methods such as participatory planning and budgeting, youth engagement, and other targeted outreach efforts. As we know, racial justice and environmental justice are interconnected, and Dr. Thomas goes on to explain how these initiatives “fail to address the environmental factors at the root of these health disparities. Encouraging Black residents to go outside without addressing the environmental crises that lead to COVID-19 complications is a tell-tale sign that Black well-being was a secondary (at best) intention of these projects.”3 Black access to the outdoors has long been limited, as illustrated by national park visitation statistics: although Black Americans represent 13.4% of the U.S. population, a 2018 study, People of Color and Their Constraints to National Parks Visitation, indicates that they represent less than 2% of national park visitors. Keya Chatterjee, a D.C.-based climate activist who organized ad hoc street closures in the first few months of the pandemic, believes projects like Slow Streets can mitigate harm to Black residents, including from air pollution and COVID-19. Chatterjee argues, “I do think that building things quickly, that result in a lower loss of life, in a situation where that loss of life is clearly based on racial injustice, is the only way to move towards justice.”2 Decreasing the number of cars operating in our cities would lead to significant reductions in toxic air pollution which currently disproportionately affects communities of color. However, we must not make these decisions in a vacuum; input from affected populations is indispensable. 

Black visibility in public spaces and streets challenges the racist, ableist, and classist ideas historically underpinning “who should have access to ‘outside’ and how they should be allowed to access it. Without a plan to include and protect Black, Brown, Indigenous, trans, and disabled people, or a plan to address anti-Black vigilantism and police brutality, these open streets are set up to fail.”3 Dr. Thomas outlined seven concrete ways to address racism and inequity in transportation planning specifically: 

Public works and transportation agencies should produce and publish a concrete plan for divestment from police agencies. This includes both fiscal and values-based components: Enforcement should be replaced with accessibility and accountability, and funds to police should be redistributed to community-based organizations, direct service providers and behavioral health specialists that are equipped to uphold dignity and care for everyone within the built environment.

Quick-build projects don’t solve the disparities caused by the legacy of racist planning and disinvestment. In order to be transformative, infrastructure projects should have a comprehensive environmental justice plan as a prerequisite, and basic public works should be up to date prior to implementation. This includes proper drainage and floodplain planning, addressing pavement heat indexes, upgrading underground utilities, reducing toxic industry in the vicinity, accessible curbs and crossing opportunities, adequate shelter and shade, and dignified support for curbside residents.

If you want to ban cars, start by banning racism. Planners should make an intentional effort to address scarcity across all modes of transportation so as to empower freedom of movement and choice in mobility. This should include free assistive devices, bikes and bike accessories, free transit, subsidized rideshare, and economically equitable access to zero-emissions vehicles. Until Black people are no longer being hunted down by vigilantes, white supremacists and rogue police, private vehicles should be accepted as a primary mode of transportation.  

Design low-stress street networks that specifically center the safety of and joy-filled travel by Black people. These routes, networks, wayfinding elements, and reparations-centered policies should derive from a participatory process that includes the voices of Black people, people living with disabilities, trans people, elders and youth.

If your leadership can’t speak to racial equity, you should not be releasing a statement. If your organization, agency, or firm is/has released a racial equity statement in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives, you have an obligation to ensure that your workforce is reflective of those values and the treatment of your Black employees is consistent with these values. Stop asking your one Black employee to write your equity statement overnight.

Employee agreements for transit and transportation agencies need to be modified so that no one is forced to serve the needs of law enforcement. No one should face retribution or punishment for opting out.

Bikeshare operating agreements should include mandatory long-term anti-displacement and equitable distribution plans to ensure bikeshare as a mode choice is equitable across the geographic region.

As a new “student” of planning, I am just beginning my studies into the racist history of planning, however I am eager to share with you new resources I have found as I begin to educate myself and work to amplify BIPOC voices in planning. I recently attended a webinar titled “Design for Everyone: An intro to Urban Planning & Design” hosted by Form Function Studio featuring BlackSpace, a collective of Black urban planners, architects, artists, activists, designers, and leaders working to protect and create Black spaces. The BlackSpace Manifesto consists of 14 guiding principles encouraging us to Celebrate, Catalyze, and Amplify Black Joy, Protect and Strengthen Culture, Seek People at the Margins, Center Lived Experience, Be Humble Learners who Practice Deep Listening, Reckon With the Past to Build the Future, among many others.

BlackSpace created this manifesto to guide their growth as a group and their interactions with partners and communities to work towards a future where Black people, Black spaces, and Black culture matter and thrive. Source: https://www.blackspace.org/manifesto

As we return to the tension between cars and space in our cities, we must investigate who owns these cars, and how car-owners are profiting off this status. In D.C., only about 6 in 10 D.C. residents have a car, and those who do are overwhelmingly wealthy and white compared with those who don’t own one.5 Additionally, the federal government provides subsidies through the tax code for employer-provided and employer-paid automobile parking, transit passes, and other commuter expenses, but it does so inefficiently and inequitably.6 

“Ultimately, the effect of the tax benefit for commuter parking is to subsidize traffic congestion by putting roughly 820,000 more cars on America’s most congested roads in its most congested cities at the most congested times of day. [Beneficiaries] tend to work in areas where parking is most expensive (such as downtown business districts), with those in higher-income tax brackets receiving the greatest benefits. The parking tax benefit represents $7.3 billion in reduced tax revenue that must be made up through cuts in government programs, a higher deficit, or increases in taxes on other Americans.”6 - TransitCenter and Frontier Group

Similar to how the pandemic is helping those who are already ahead to stay ahead, the parking tax benefit merely serves to hurt lower income populations and non-car owners, a demographic with a lot of overlap. 

In I’ve Seen a Future Without Cars, and It’s Amazing, Manjoo is told, “instead of fighting a war on cars urbanists should fight a war on car dependency - on cities that leave residents with few choices other than cars. Alleviating car dependency can improve commutes for everyone in a city.” Focusing on urban scarcity, from accessible, alternative transportation to affordable housing, to inclusive food systems, will force us to question how we are often allocating space in our cities for the benefit of cars (as if they are CarsTM) rather than the people living in them. As Manjoo has outlined, “in most American cities, wherever you look, you will see a landscape constructed primarily for the movement and storage of automobiles.”7 We cannot “continue to justify wasting such enormous tracts of land” on cars as we strive for more equitable and inclusive urban spaces.7 It is also important to acknowledge that this piece comes at a unique time, when city dwellers and suburbanites alike are vying to escape the sprawl, antsy from months of quarantine. Even I have been wishing I owned a car to set out on some, any,  kind of spontaneous adventure. The unknown of life post-coronavirus is daunting, but in the chaos lies a little bit of hope. Perhaps we can channel this sliver of optimism to design for the future we are all hoping for. I know I still want the “old Taylor” back, just not all the cars that came with that era.

But do you remember? Remember when I pulled up and said "Get in the car" And then canceled my plans just in case you'd call? Back when I was livin' for the hope of it all, for the hope of it all

Inspired by “august” by Taylor Swift. Stream on Spotify.

Citations:

Washington, D.C. greenspaces discovered during quarantine; Gardens: Columbia Heights Green, Upshur Community Garden, Wangari Gardens; Cemeteries: Rock Creek Cemetery, Glenwood Cemetery; Park: Crispus Attucks Park

Do DC's Slow Streets Benefit Everyone?

‘Safe Streets’ Are Not Safe for Black Lives

People of Color and Their Constraints to National Parks Visitation

Opinion | The high cost of DC's cheap parking

Subsidizing Congestion

Opinion | I’ve Seen a Future Without Cars, and It’s Amazing

[radishreader]

If we really want to start designing transport systems that serve women as well as men, it’s no good designing transport infrastructure in isolation, cautions Sánchez de Madariaga, because women’s mobility is also an issue of overarching planning policy: specifically, the creation of ‘mixed use’ areas. And mixed-use areas fly in the face of traditional planning norms that, in many countries, legally divide cities into commercial, residential and industrial single-use areas, a practice that is called zoning.

Zoning dates back to antiquity (what was allowed on either side of the city walls, for example), but it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that we started to see the kind of explicit division of what could be built where that legally separated where you live from where you might work. And, with its oversimplified categories, this kind of zoning has woven a male bias into the fabric of cities around the world.

Zoning laws are based on, and prioritise the needs of, a bread-winning heterosexual married man who goes off to work in the morning, and comes home to the suburbs to relax at night. This is, explains Sánchez de Madariaga, ‘the personal reality of most decision-makers in the field’, and the idea that the home is mostly a place for leisure ‘continues to underpin planning practices throughout the world.’

But if for these decision-makers the home is ‘a respite from paid labour’ and ‘a place for leisure’, that is far from its role in most women’s lives. Globally women do three times the amount of unpaid care work men do; according to the IMF, this can be further subdivided into twice as much childcare and four times as much housework. In Katebe, a town in central Uganda, the World Bank found that after spending nearly fifteen hours on a combination of housework, childcare, digging, preparing food, collecting fuel and water, women were unsurprisingly left with only around thirty minutes of leisure time per day. By contrast, men, who spent an hour less than women per day digging, negligible amounts of time on housework and childcare, and no time at all on collecting fuel and water, managed to find about four hours per day to spend on leisure. The home may have been a place of leisure for him – but for her? Not so much.

In any case, in most families both parents work, and with women in heterosexual couples being the most likely to have primary caring responsibilities over children and elderly relatives, the legal separation of the home from formal workplaces can make life incredibly difficult. Those who have to accompany children and sick relatives around the peripheries of an urban area poorly served by public transport infrastructure are forgotten. The truth is that most zoning ordinances do not reflect women’s lives (or even many men’s lives).

--Caroline Criado-Perez, Invisible Women (2019)

[obiternihili]

Something about property rights

I felt like I needed to rant yesterday and decided to adapt the discord messages into a tumblr post.

I spent most of a class this morning thinking about the Anglo interpretations and notions of property rights, trying to actually contrast it with workable alternative notions of property rights and feeling kind of hopeless about it and finding it hard to actually come up with anything that isn't literally communism.

And in retrospect it made the whole “philosophically questioning the whole notion of property rights” feel more, idk, respectable than it had before, when it just sounded like the USSR and China opposed its inclusion in the UDHR for technical reasons or pure self interest in covering their own atrocities.

The whole thing started with thinking about the Zapatist slogan “la tierra es de quién la trabaja”. “The land belongs to those who work it.” To me, the Zapatistas were pretty cool guys, who sided with the little guy and the indigenous peoples of México. But I thought immediately about how a colonial American might react to it, and I couldn’t escape the idea that they’d hear the slogan and go, “ah, yes, we should kill the savages and steward the land correctly”.

As much as the magna carta is held up as this great precursor to democratic rights in this country, its origins are far more dismal and petty. It wasn’t really a democratic impulse, it was more like a bunch of petty-kings coordinated to overwhelm a high king. But it doubtlessly had a strong effect on feudalism and came to be a part of English identity before that even really made sense from a modern perspective. In short it came off almost as a promise that “every man is a king of his own home” and that helped to make property itself sacrosanct.

So when capitalism changed the people’s relationship with the land, the serfs were “liberated” as the commons were siezed by their de jure owners. The collapse of the commons fundamentally changed people’s relationships with property, exacerbating the whole “every man is a king of his own house” issue, and making property the be-all-end-all of basic needs like shelter. To the degree that the Magna Carta made property sacrosanct, in a literal “this is a divinely appointed right” sort of sense, the collapse of the commons codified exactly what that meant, making that sacrosanctity intrinsic to thriving.

So because of tying these issues together so deeply, it made sense to steal the lands of people “not working it” according to how you might work it. So that it made sense to go to war because the yankees were stealing your chattel, and horror of horrors not even repurposing them! So that telling South Africa “hey, no, black people are people too” was unholy, violating their sacred authority to clean their own house. So it makes sense that Australia continues to break promises to its Aboriginal communities, if, say, their homes have a potentially profitable mine to work. So it makes sense that Canada breaks promises to its indigenous population, if there’s an oil pipeline they can lay. So that it made sense, paradoxically, for the US to strong arm México into changing articles of its constitution about indigenous land rights in order to pass NAFTA and be able to threaten to go United Fruit Company on the people for not being profitable to the corporations. And the EZLN, which formed directly because of the anxieties of these moves as the Maya genocide was still very fresh on everyone’s minds, are neo-Zapatistas; the land belongs to the one who works it! The Maya who always has, or the companies that want to (exploit it)? 

I remember once as a teen confronting the attitudes this bears on a small chan.

Before the BLM stuff, actually regarding OWS and those "rich punks arguing for socialism with their iphones" and shit;  I'd made an off hand comment about things not being worth more than lives at some point and someone replied "I'd totally kill someone if they stole my phone".

I made a comment in utter exasperation (this was on a board that was like /pol/ before that was really what it is now and there was no reason to believe they weren't serious), saying something like "Is, what, a month's pay really worth a human life to you?" ($800 really was more money than my mom was making at the time, let alone taking out rent and shit first, and I gave them benefit of the doubt that they weren't rich first world fucks who could afford to take a hit. At that point I’d learned that most people in India, even dirt poor people who couldn’t afford water, generally had smart phones in order to help with work and things; conscientious of this, the fact that I know and knew dirt poor almost homeless people in the US who needed phones for work, I was trying to allow for “if I lose this phone, I lose my job, my home, my health, and my life” which is a reality a lot of people live with, and at least somewhere to come at this issue with).

(But) the commentators, both the user I was arguing against and several people using trips, proceeded to mock me for apparently living in a 3rd world country for thinking a phone cost more than one paycheck.

To these people a phone wasn’t even worth a week’s pay, let alone two. And yet, to them, another person’s life, no matter how desperate they were, no matter how hungry or sick or anything they were, they were worth less than that.

This exchange was about the time I started nurturing (or giving in, depending on your perspective) the idea that "maybe some people aren't just, mistaken, or seeing something I don't, or have some complex network of beliefs making them bite a bullet, but like, actually goddamn legitimately evil in terms of their fundamental values". I gather absolutely that there’s a lot going on with this; that you could understand the guy to mean “I think thieves should be killed” as opposed to ““humans”“ or whatever. But, like, still.

Traumatizing is an overly dramatic word for what that conversation all those years did to me, but maybe it was. And it’s not like a phone’s *nothing*. But the way the users undercut me, and revealed not only how worthless the phone was to them, but how little human lives were worth to them in relation to the phone just kind of knocked the wind out of me

This made the rounds recently. This is the legacy of that property is sacrosanct bullshit.

And, like, fuck, this is the whole cultural underpinning of what’s been going on with the gun shit here. It’s why guns are so important to us. Why we feel it’s absolutely justified to shoot a kid in the back for lifting a $2 bottle of beer from a convenience store and leaving him to bleed to death without so much as calling the police. The entire fucked up thing we got going on w/r/t race here in the land of the free? It’s because of our relationship to property rights.

At the same time, you get climate change from people who feel it’s their right to do whatever to their property. Oil’s money. Dairy farms, meat, cash crops like almonds. You don’t like your water dirtied? But I’m only fracking over ma plotte!

What’s going on in Brazil? Some natives won the right to their lands against farmers who wanted to clear the forest, and mysteriously within a few weeks everything’s lit on fire. 𝅘𝅥 Dark torrents shake the airs, as black clouds blind [São Paulo] ♫

You even get the nimby zoning shit out of this. How dare you let colored people into my neighborhood! That’s stealing from my property values! A tall building? That’s stealing my sunlight!

In a more mixed sort of way, you got homeless shelters, oil wells, chemical plants, industrial parks, military bases, fracking, wind turbines, desalination plants, landfill sites, incinerators, power plants, quarries, prisons, pubs, adult entertainment clubs, concert venues, firearms dealers, mobile phone masts, electricity pylons, abortion clinics, children's homes, nursing homes, youth hostels, sports stadiums, shopping malls, retail parks, railways, roads, airports, seaports, nuclear waste repositories, storage for weapons of mass destruction, cannabis dispensaries, recreational cannabis shops and the accommodation of persons applying for asylum, refugees, and displaced persons - a list i just lifted from wikipedia’s articles on nimbies. Looking at that, there’s some clearly sympathetic issues too. I mean do you really want a train cutting through your farm, no matter how well you’re recompensated, no matter how much it will objectively improve the lives of the people in the cities, no matter much better it is for the environment to commute together?

But, like, what exactly are the alternatives?

We could look at other cultures. What did Belgian property notions look like? Leopold of the Congo? What do French notions look like? Forcing Algieria to pay back the “investment” France made by colonizing them? Well, the English and the French go back a long, long ways, maybe we could look at Germany?

The first genocide of the 20th century is often recognized to be that of the Herero, in Namibia’s, Germany’s biggest steal  in the struggle to carve up Africa like the Black Dahlia.

I already mentioned Brasil.

What about China? Surely they aren’t western!

By some notions they were the first feudal nation in the world, and yet only left the system really in the 20th century. That’s a lot of cultural baggage that underlays the reality the Chinese live under today.

The early republican period saw the rise of warlords and other petty bastards effectively continuing the feudal reality in much the way sharecropping and jim crow continued chattel slavery in the US. The successor states aren’t pretty either; Taiwan, continuing republican ideals, cleared out much of its indigenous population for the Han in ways analogous to what European powers did to the natives of their countries; the PRC, which was born to challenge the ideals of the old republic for its own, took back “what was theirs” with Tibet.

The PRC, explicitly rejecting property rights as the west understands it, doesn’t even have a legal analog to eminent domain, and in effect can seize property on a whim without compensation, forcibly engaging in actions like people moving, which I feel it should be known when done to a community often results in genocide.

Something else illustrative of the conflicts of interest in the problem lies with the 3 Gorges Dam project. Ostensibly to control flooding to villages downstream, over a million residents of the Chongqing area were forcibly relocated, with rumors of people who resisted the project being explicitly drowned and because everything’s just hopelessly corrupt the money actually provided for recompensation never made it to the hands of farmers now stuck in a big city without the education for work.

Similar stories to Taiwan’s play out in other capitalist countries; similar stories to the PRC’s play out in countries that reject those notions.

Generally you just reinvent the same concepts drawing from the lord and serf mentalities of old. There’s shit like this going down in the Muslim world, in East Africa, South America, South Asia, whereever. It’s not just an Anglo thing, even though I’ve let myself believe it were, because of how I was taught about history, from my culture’s perspective.

Then you have to ask yourself, when there’s no net, when you have to provide for yourself first, do the commons necessarily make sense?

Is it even viable, economically or politically, to abolish private property and return to the commons like people have advanced? Would, to enjoy the benefits of something evidentally only stable under feudalism, we have to return to some kind of practice of feudalism? Is that even worth considering?

There are more people alive today than ever before. And that didn’t happen just by accident. We really, actually, seriously have made incredible improvements to agricultural yield and safety, ensuring that the only places on the planet that starve are those that are being starved, by monsters like the Saudis. But the scale we need, the scale we want, the scale we have - is much more than just what one farmer can provide for himself. And the fact that we do have other farmers do the mass farming with their bulk fertilizers, machinery, pesticides, and such, means that most of us don’t have to spend time every week tending to our gardens making sure we have enough staple foods to survive, so we can pursue our own hopes and hobbies and dreams and undertakings and services and so on.

All of it sort of leads to the question, Who deserves the land?

The worker whose blood sweat and tears are wrought into the soil? That could lead to the issue of killing my Yokuts friends' gatherer ancestors for stewarding their lands, husbanding their ecosystem and managing burns and wild populations, instead of raping the lands, burning everything to ash to farm foreign crops that aren’t even adapted to the water issues here. And it doesn't proclude the workers from choking us with smoke, if they feel they need to. The guy on the oil rig isn’t doing it because he endorses what the oil companies do or because he thinks it’s necessarily a good thing, he does it because it makes him bread. Why would worker’s self management solve that? Shareholders and workers alike would only care about taking home what they can.

The "owners” in the English sense? Taking subsidy after subsidy, fighting actively to drain our rivers, collapse the formerly self-renewing resources entirely, bringing us droughts, feeding even the lactose intolerant among us the lie that we need fatty heart clogging cheeses to be healthy? Illegally hiring, exploiting, and deporting the vulnerable? Big farms are just any other business, their owners are the same venture capitalist vultures preying on anything else in that world. South of me used to one of the biggest lakes in North America, virtually the entire south valley was lake Tulare. It’s a bunch of cities now.

So, the people who need it?

Maybe but who decides that? War for territory is a fundamental struggle built deep into us; war is even practiced by chimps. Military ration planning like we saw in the USSR and PRC cause Holodomors. United Fruit and their entire coalition caused the Silent Genocide. Abolishing private property entirely would, what, return us to the times when the lands were unclaimed? That would just lead to petty struggle after petty struggle, like a chimp disemboweling another.

And now, having written this a second time, I’ll end with what I wrote earlier

[kiev4am]

The AU that nobody asked for. Really, nobody.

Okay, so (a) this is a terrible idea and I'm a terrible person, but please consider (b) Brexit is legitimately horrifying if you live in the UK and aren't a xenophobic 'rah rah Blitz spirit' wingnut, because if we leave the EU without a trade deal we will have a degree of difficulty importing essentials like fresh food and medicines that has 100% not been honestly evaluated.  Supermarkets, hospitals, factories etc. have been stockpiling supplies for months in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit in six weeks' time and our political leaders are so busy chasing their slim margins of power that they'd rather run the clock down while trumpeting jingoistic slogans than materially protect the country.  People are writing unironically in the papers about stockpiling food at home and it scares the crap out of me.  So much of the language of Brexit harks back to imperial nostalgia, mythical glory days when Britain supposedly forged ahead and didn't answer to anyone, and I'm already obsessed with a TV show whose major theme is 'people finding out in cruelly short order that Britishness isn't magical and you can't eat patriotism' so, well, here we are: with bitter sincerity and many apologies, I give you the Terror No-Deal Brexit AU.  Feel free to skip this if you feel it's too close to the bone.  I've split it into three posts to try and spare mobile users some pain - it's loooong because apparently I derived catharsis from this wreck of a concept.

Part 2  |  Part 3

Setting: 2 years into a no-deal Brexit.  Imports into the UK are subject to catastrophic delays and huge cost increases, which means demand for anything home-produced or home-grown is far in excess of supply.  The wealth/quality of life gap hasn't been this stark since the 1800s, and nobody in power is losing sleep over this since most of them are hard-right Tories who've spent their careers fetishising the undeserving-poor Victorian model of society.  Almost all the EU citizens who were living here have gotten the Tories' 'hostile environment' message loud and clear and departed, leaving many sectors struggling to survive without that workforce; this especially impacts healthcare, agriculture and local councils.  Non-critical clinical and surgical care is almost non-existent, medicines are being rationed (officially only non-essential ones, but there's increasing reportage of insulin, heart drugs etc. being withheld, plus things like anti-depressants and contraceptives are ruled 'non-essential', fun times), waste collection and water purification in cities is compromised, fresh food is a luxury, unrest and rioting is commonplace with typically harsh response by overstretched but well-armed police and security services who've been given the 'state of emergency' nod to use extreme force.  Schools are on a three-day week with much depleted class sizes (the research into why those numbers have gone down makes grim Dickensian reading) and many local authorities have introduced water and electricity rationing.  There is rhetoric about 'temporary measures' and 'light at the end of the tunnel' and 'Britain once more proud and independent' but the politicians who engineered the mess have all moved to their second homes in Spain and Italy, and in their few carefully curated television appearances the ones who are left speak with ghostly, heartsick cheerfulness.  Every local council is effectively on a wartime footing and their offices are like seige towers; with fuel, transport and public safety compromised, people frequently sleep at their workplaces rather than chance their route home every night.  There's a sense of everything being one explosion, one riot away from full-blown dystopia; of society hanging in the balance, trying to stay polite and bureaucratic on the very doorstep of anarchy.  No-one sleeps well.  Everyone who isn't super-rich has nutrition problems and is obsessed, on one level or another, with food.

Erebus House is one of those brutal 1960s office blocks with grandiose names that typically house local government departments; surrounded by the closed shops and boarded-up arcades that once made Barrow city centre a cheerful hive of activity, it is Northwest Council's last remaining administrative hub.  From these chilly beige rooms, shuffling in the dead-grey flicker of the last few striplights and guarded by a ragtag division of local police and army, a skeleton staff attempts to maintain law, order and some kind of subsistence for this once-prosperous Middle England town.

John Franklin was the local Tory MP who campaigned vigorously in favour of Brexit and was re-elected comfortably on the strength of his rich, confident visions of independence and national pride.  A keen amateur historian specialising in Victorian industry and exploration, he was also among those whose intransigence and hubris propelled the country towards a no-deal Brexit, convinced as he was that home-grown manufacturing and invention would flourish in adversity.  Unfortunately, he and his confederates were so sure of this outcome that they never underpinned it with any realistic contingency planning.  As the consequences unravelled so did Franklin, succumbing to a heart attack eighteen months in.  His widow Jane now channels her grief into fierce party activism, stubbornly insisting that the problems are transitional and that her husband's legacy will be a stable, thriving Northwest county.  Driven into town by her personal security staff, Jane Franklin visits Erebus House every fortnight to plead support for her causes and stress the need for 'visible, inspiring' gestures.

Francis Crozier was never a politician.  The closest link he ever had to government was his heartfelt but ill-advised attachment to Franklin's niece Sophia - an attachment which has mellowed now into genuine, if wry friendship.  An outsider, he always meant his stay in Barrow to be temporary, his job at the council a purposely dull stop-gap until he collected himself and moved on, preferably back to Ireland or to the itinerant sailing life he'd enjoyed so much in his youth.  Two things have held him back from this goal:  his frequent bouts of debilitating depression, self-medicated with alcohol, and the fact that - against all expectation - he turned out to have an excellent, intuitive grasp of town council management and infighting, combining logistical and bureaucratic shrewdness with an angry compassion that keeps him from walking away even at his most despairing.  His bold advocacy and fairness made him well-liked by activists and local grassroots organisations while setting him at odds with Franklin's complacency; their relationship became strained in the run-up to Brexit, then disastrous in its aftermath.  On his worst days Francis holds himself responsible for aggravating the stress that led to Franklin's death (his closest staff have offered to bar Jane Franklin from the building, but he doesn't have the heart).  On his best days he runs Erebus House like a ship in a squall, holding the shreds of the town's welfare in both shaking fists.