Stoke Newington: On Monday, I went to Stoke Newington. My reason was to pick up a print of Mary Wollstonecraft in support of a drive to have a statue of her erected on Newington Green. (It really is shocking that she is not honored more in London and surprising that some rich woman has already funded a tribute to the Mother of Feminism.) The other reason for going there is that I have been curious about Stoke Newington, which I understand to be a fashionable, furiously gentrifying section of London. (And I can get there by just taking the 67 bus, which stops right outside the flat.) The part that I went to in order to get the print was very nice, with streets of two story connected houses and the sounds of power equipment indicating that renovations were in full swing. There was also an area of well-maintained estate housing (public housing in the US). As I walked north, the buildings got a bit grander and bigger, but a chilly rain started, so I decided to go back to the High Street and either find a place to eat lunch or go home. The High Street in the southern part of Stoke Newington was certainly bustling, but had more of a working class vibe. There were a lot more nail salons, hairdressers and kebab shops as oppose to barristas, galleries and cute restaurants. It appears that the ongoing gentrification that I’d heard about must be in the northern part of Stoke Newington. I thought about walking up there to check it out, but I was cold and wet and decided to leave it for another, sunnier day.

Elton John: Photography Collector: On Tuesday, I went to Tate Modern, where there was an exhibit of photographs from Elton John’s collection, which is one of the largest in the world. This one concentrated on his photos from the Modernist Period, basically 1915-1950. The audio tour featured Sir Elton himself talking about the selected photographs. It was pretty fascinating. It turns out that he began collecting photos in 1991, shortly after becoming sober and became obsessed by it. He now has thousands of photos. Early on, he set a record for the most ever paid for a photograph (since repeatedly broken). See below. It is tiny, taken by André Kertész in 1917, and inspired a generation of photographers, including all of the gay photographers who followed. Elton bought the original picture and the negative. The exhibit is full of iconic images, like Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”, lots of Man Ray photo-portraits and Weston, , Cunningham, etc. It is spectacular and it is just the tip of the iceberg that is his collection. At one point, he reveals that he has thousands of photos from 9/11, which they bring out every year to see if they should exhibit them. But they decide that, though they are beautiful, it is too soon. One more really amazing thing. Below is a manipulated photo entitled “Humanly Impossible”. In it, the photographer printed out the image and them added things that made it appear that his arm was cut off. He then re-photographed it. and all prints are of the second shot. Except Elton’s. He has the original print with the additions.

A Brexit Note: Judie is a member of the Emerging Payments Association here in London. They represent and advise Fin Tech companies here in London and elsewhere. On Wednesday, they released a report on where they recommend their clients move in light of Brexit. (As you may know, such companies can currently “Passport” their UK license to the EU and need not go through the process of getting a license on the continent. It seems likely that this will end with Brexit. And whether it will or not, nobody can tell, so businesses have to begin taking steps now.) So the EPA was advising on how firms currently in London should consider moving some of their operation to Europe to avoid any Brexit related complications. On one level, this is not terribly big news if you are in the industry or even familiar with banking issues. But I’d say it is significant in that here is a British firm giving advice that will lead to loss of tens of thousands of jobs. Since May and the Conservatives have done little and said less about Brexit in the last six or seven months, it seems like everything has been conjecture. But this is real advice to real firms with real consequences. Of course, the papers didn’t cover it.

Things I Am Going To Miss About London: Taking a bus over London Bridge, getting off, wandering through Borough Market, stopping to get something to eat or buy something for dinner, then going out to the Thames and walking up past the Globe Theatre to the Tate Modern, going in a seeing an exhibit or two, then walking over the Millennium Bridge, checking out both the incredible views and the gum paintings under my feet and the ending up at St. Paul’s.

The Deserving Poor: In the Victorian era, George Peabody, an American merchant, established a trust to build housing for the “deserving poor”. The distinction between deserving and undeserving poor was a big concept in that era (and is an idea that was picked up by Republicans and US conservatives in the 1960s). It turns out that the first such housing that was constructed is directly across the street from our flat, although there is lot of housing for the deserving poor in the area, which has always had a large share of poor people, both deserving and underserving. Of course, if you are like me, you cannot hear that phrase without thinking of Alfred Doolittle’s speech to Henry Higgins, with which I will close this post:

Doolittle: What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: ‘You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.’ But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you. I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take advantage of a man’s nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he’s brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she’s growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.

Higgins: Pickering, if we were to take this man in hand for three months, he could choose between a seat in the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales.

You’ve got to love Bernard Shaw!