WhirledView

Bricks and Mortar Still Count in International Influence Games

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Perhaps because I played tourist in London and Paris last summer – walking the pavements of two of the world’s great cities and riding their buses, trains and subways - that I'm reminded of the still important role of bricks and mortar in the influence games played by nations, societies and individuals. It seems to me that a permanent physical presence remains significant in shaping the images in people’s minds of places, cities or countries. Seeing the “bricks and mortar” or even the expanses of a city’s wide boulevards, bridges or green parks is part of that emotional experience. If I remember correctly, Moscow, under the Czars was designed to make Russian subjects feel small and insignificant.

A single picture may be worth 1,000 words, but that picture has to be taken of something or somebody. What makes physical imagery important is that real buildings provide visions of power, culture, wealth and project emotions like fear, joy, despair or awe in ways virtual experiences do not. At the very least, buildings provide a backdrop for human activity and interaction, exploration and sometimes intimacy.

The Seine, sans the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Musée d’Orsay, for instance, would be just another large river flowing out to the Atlantic. Or the Thames without the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Globe Theatre, the New Tate, or St. Paul’s Cathedral would be equally bereft of a special identity. Or think about the Potomac minus the Georgetown Waterfront, the Watergate, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery. Without the bricks and mortar – or concrete and mortar – that river too would be nondescript, just another river nearing its mouth at a location with a crummy climate far too much of the year.

Buildings are important symbols of places, countries, taste and societies

Pat Sharpe Is Reading Her Poems This Sunday: Come, If You Can

Patricia Lee Sharpe will be one of the featured readers at the New Mexico Women Authors’ Book Festival this weekend.  She will be reading from her three volumes of poetry on Sunday, October 3, at 1:30 pm.  The Festival is being held at the New Mexico History Museum in downtown Santa Fe.  Poems from The Deadmen, her first book, which was published by Writers’ Workshop in Kolkata will be included, as well as selections from Indus Suite and Coming and Going Love, her latest, which was published this summer.  WhirledView readers will not be surprised to learn that her poems grapple with the hard issues of our times, although the human heart is not by any means neglected.