Yes, I like Elizabeth Warren. I would’ve preferred her as the Democrat presidential candidate the last time, in 2016, instead of Hillary Clinton, but she didn’t stand. Maybe she should’ve, but, just maybe, her time has arrived this year now that she’s turned 70 without losing any of her vigour, passion or any of her very impressive marbles. She has been making quite a mark so far and her catch phrase, “I have a plan for that” makes a refreshing change from the clueless opinions of the current American president, or from the scared-to-say-what they-really-think leaders in British politics.

Elizabeth Warren is clever – she is an expert in economics, specialising in bankruptcy law reform where the little guy was always the real victim. She formed her plans from the starting point of wanting to bring equality into economic affairs, including her prophetic warnings before 2008 about the consequences ahead caused by the unregulated greed of the banks and big corporations. We could have done with her then – and we need her now.

She is far from being just a smart economics professor hitting the campaign trail – she is a true democrat, a liberal, a compassionate politician and, important this, a real fighter, who really wants to make a difference to everyone’s lives – black Americans, Latino Americans, female Americans, poor Americans LGBT Americans and, if any of those who don’t immediately recognise themselves from this list, all those other Americans who don’t believe that extremely rich Americans should dodge paying their way through taxation by hiding their yachts, diamonds and Rembrandts.

You would all be better off with Elizabeth Warren – your great country really could be great again, and we, in the rest of the world (North Korea and Russia, apart), would heave one giant sigh of post-Trumpian relief .

I like her.

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Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America, 1851 – 1865.

Franklin D Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States of America, 1933 – 1945.

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States of America, 1961 – 1963.

Barrack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, 2009 – 2016.

Pity about this one.

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It’s Thanksgiving in the USA today so I thought I’d look through a few of my photographs taken there over the years – they are in no particular order and i’ll leave you to guess the locations.

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Watching (and listening to) President Obama’s press conference yesterday, I was amazed and enlightened. For us simple Brits it seems incredible that the mighty nation that is the United States
could risk defaulting on its debts just because the two opposing political parties can’t come to an agreement on the standard procedure of voting through the funds (that they have) to pay for already agreed expenses from last year. It seemed like madness to me but then I realised that this is all a game of politics – silly me!

I was grateful to President Obama for explaining the meaning of  the mysterious term Raising Debt Ceiling. I thought along with a lot of other ignorant non-Americans that raising the debt ceiling meant increasing the debt but it doesn’t. I could understand if this furious debate was all about how much debt the country could take – we in Britain know all about the dreaded deficit. Here in the UK, our Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is celebrating knocking a third off the British deficit incurred by the international financial crisis of 2008 – a pyrrhic victory perhaps when you see the bleak consequences of his policies that demand that the have-nots pay more than their share to bail out the debt mounted because of the callous and foolish behaviour of international financiers. Barrack Obama has pursued a policy similar to the one advocated by Britain’s last and under-regarded Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and he can top Osborne’s claim by telling his nation that he has halved the American deficit without risking industrial and manufacturing collapse.

No, this row isn’t anything to do with debt. Raising the Debt Ceiling means Congressional authorising the American Treasury to raise the funds. already in their coffers, to pay for democratically agreed government spending.  So why are the Republicans making such a fuss about it and why do they want to risk another international economic crash?

It’s politics, dear readers! The Republicans, or at least the most militant and rabid members of the Grand Old Party, worked out that they could blackmail the President by scaring him into a situation where he can only pass this essential Raising The Debt Ceiling with their support which, they say, they will not give unless he agrees to change a number of unrelated policies such as his controversial medical aid legislation. Basically, it’s a trick and a rather shabby one at that.

Meanwhile average Americans are worrying about their bank accounts, their mortgages and the price of food and the government has had to temporarily close government offices. You can’t even ring the White House because the switchboard has been suspended.

This is the United States of America, the richest nation on Earth,  risking an international economic disaster and tarnishing its reputation all because a cheap political trick. Shame on you Republican Party – good luck to you President Obama. I hope sincerely that you will succeed in seeing off this threat. Selfishly, I’m concerned like citizens around the World, that it’s not just you Americans who will suffer if the Republicans push this over the brink. It will have consequences and repercussions everywhere. We will see you and American democracy differently, if you can’t get your act together.

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My first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, is published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

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I was taken to visit the small and atmospheric town of Lambertville in New Jersey last week by friends who had told me that it was an American equivalent of the small arty town of Lewes in England where I live. They were not wrong. Lambertville, in its distinctive 19th. Century colours,  is a delightfully gentle, liberal and arty place in many ways just like my own home town.

Here too you can stroll round coffee shops, antique shops and quirky individual outlets for products that you didn’t know you wanted….

…but Lewes, UK, just doesn’t have the climate for the dress shops to hang out their wear open to the elements. This shop may have regretted it too later as the thunder rolled nearer and nearer.

It is a great place to wander around….especially for us English who have always had a sneaking regard for 19th. Century American wooden houses.

I could see that i was not the only one who liked them for everywhere these old houses were getting the best sort of tender loving care with an array of traditional but somehow surprizing colours adding contrast between the cosy residences.

Lambertville seems like a very friendly town where folk take the time to chat even to a strange Englishman with a camera slung round his neck – nobody seemed to mind my intrusive lens.

The walking pace was slow to cope with the humidity and there was usually a good excuse to stop for a coffee and iced water.

It doesn’t look as if the town is going to run out of another well-known American drink either.

The days of Lamberville’s 19th Century prominence as a factory town with a thriving railroad is long gone as is, indeed, the railroad itself and Lamberville station is another place where you can stop for refreshments.

There is, naturally, no shortage of fast food restaurants, this is America, but Lambertville is the American diner with style.

I had eggs sunny side up just ‘cos i needed to say that joyful phrase but I also had, a portion of scrapple because I had no idea what it was except that it is a speciality of these parts through into Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is made from the bits of the pig that you would rather not know about made into a kind of loaf that is then sliced and browned in butter. it is certainly filling but maybe it won’t become a habit for this particular glutton but the potato hash was wonderful as was the iced tea. Generally speaking iced tea is a good choice for any tea-deprived Englishman in America – it saved the normal disappointment when you ask for hot tea with milk which just, somehow, doesn’t work here.

The magnificent 19th. century mansions of those properous factory owners are still there though long after the factories themselves have gone.

Anyone interested in domestic architecture could walk round this town all day just gazing at the variety of house fronts on display

Lambertville was also famous as a river town and in the 18th. Century it was the point where a ferry crossed the River Delaware to Pennsylvania on the other side. It was here too that George Washington crossed the river with his troops during the American Revolution before the Battle of Monmouth against the British. I am told historians now consider the battle to have been a draw but I cannot possibly comment.

There is now a fine road bridge across the river and, even though there was the ominous sound of thunder in the air, I couldn’t resist crossing over it out of new jersey to the even more bohemian town of New Hope, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The view from the middle of the bridge is genuinely inspiring and, amidst all this small town charm, I was reminded, yet again, of how vast a country America is.

On the opposite bank stands the distinctive converted mill that is the Bucks County Playhouse…

…once, from the 1930s onwards, a thriving an pioneering theatre where Broadway productions often got their first airing.

It is struggling for funds these days and it would be a tragedy if it finally closes. In its glory days none other than Lisa Minelli  rattled its timbers.

New Hope, even in the rain, is a fascinating place somehow lost to modern industry but surviving as a meandering warren of artists’ houses and arty shops.

New Hope in the rain reminded me of England as does the whole of this part of the Delaware Valley.

Farley’s the bookshop, really could be lifted brick by brick and book by book and planted firmly in my home town’s High Street.

It was busy today as I was not the only one to shelter here book browsing whilst torrential rain, thunder and lightning raged outside. It was an opportune moment to read up on New Hope’s artistic heritage before venturing out again into the rain to see some of the wonderfully whacky artist’s houses many of them going back to the times of the American Impressionists.

The rain added to the luxuriance of the place which is as atmospheric a town for an artists’ colony as anywhere in the World.

As with all good holidays, I decided that would be all too easy to live here in one of these crazy but beautiful houses.

I was now too wet to worry about getting any wetter so I headed back over the Delamere to Lambertville ankle deep in rainwater down the now less than prospering Delaware-Raritan Canal that once took coal from Pennsylvania to New York City but which has now taken on a new life as a splendid place to grow bullrushes. Finally defeated by the weather, I took shelter in an art shop that was showing an exhibition of American Impressionist paintings featuring several of the places that I had visited that day like this New Hope winter scene by George Gardner Symonds (1861-1930).

After that, of course, the only thing to do was to try one of Lamberville’s very tempting restaurants.

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I was thinking about this whilst sorting through some old photographs which I have just found in my loft. Going through old photos has been perfect therapy keeping my mind off the MRI brain scan I am off to this morning. I have been playing with my new scanner and trying to get some of my old analogue photographs onto the computer.
This is not only a wonderfully geeky pastime, just what I need right now but it has also revived memories of a lot of things I had long forgotten about. One day in The Twin Cities in particular.

I wrote about my trip to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, a couple of weeks ago (20/04/09) but I ran out of time and space and also, I had mislaid some photographs taken on a gloomy Sunday, some fifteen years ago, when I had a day off from my visit to the writer Garrison Keillor who was collaborating on a television project that I was developing.

In the previous blog, I was reminiscing about a sunny Sunday when I was free to roam around these most civilized cities which are Minneapolis and St. Paul.

These photographs show a different picture. It was a week later and the sunshine had turned to a dull overcast grey and everyone, well nearly everyone, who wasn’t a traveler with time on his hands, was at home doing cozy Minnesotan Sunday things like, I imagine, baking, putting up shelves and making jam or beer.

I was staying in a downtown hotel and visitors to the States will know that what is often a bustling centre during the week, can turn ominously silent on Sundays.

This was even more true on this day with its atmosphere of doom made more intense by the humidity.

The Minneapolis Hilton, fine establishment as it no doubt is, runs out of interest once you have been there for more than a few nights so I decided to do that most unAmerican inner city pastime, I went for a long walk.

Garrison Keillor, when I told him later about my day, said that I had probably been the first person ever to walk from one side of Minneapolis to the other. He said this not in admiration but with a look of pity which he, uniquely, can combine with an air of implied mockery.

My journey took me away from the empty downtown area and towards the University, a distinguished and noble place now bereft of any activity except for the occasional student sitting around looking into space. I didn’t want to intrude on his grief but the young man in the picture below did seem to have things more pressing than overdue essays on his mind. I hope that now, fifteen years later, they worked out for him.

The biggest of my problems was the sudden need for coffee, strong, black and now. It was mid-morning and I was seated in Annie’s Parlour with a large mug of coffee without any idea of how I got there. Thus is the power of addiction. I remember once, when I used to smoke cigarettes, standing next to someone, too close in fact, at a party when I had run out of the wicked things. I had been propelled across the room by the invisible force of my own craving. Luckily, the happy smoker whose space I had invaded knew the feeling and offered me a fix.

I never met Annie but her Parlour was, maybe like her, scruffy on the outside but warm and welcoming once you crossed the threshold. I made my first acquaintance with a blueberry muffin here and ever since, as a simple-minded Englishman, I have thought of them and maple syrup as quintessentially American. Now, of course, you can buy them anywhere in England and, sadly, they have lost some of their native flavour.

Two mugs of coffee later and after some effusive but perplexed looks from the woman who wasn’t Annie, I was off again, rucksack on my back and camera round my neck.

I had discovered the Mississippi River and was duly amazed. In England we wax lyrical about old father Thames, or that ferry across the Mersey but, in all honesty, they are leaking garden hoses in comparison to this most majestic of rivers. From its source in a lake in Northern Minnesota and travels practically the whole length of North America until it reaches the sea in the Gulf of Mexico. Awesome, as they say in teen soaps.

On this day of discoveries, I saw my first paddle steamer too. Again, I nearly said “awesome!” but as a lifelong fan of Showboat, maybe the greatest of all the musicals, if you ignore my personal favourite Pal Joey, awesome was just the right word.

I am not embarrassed to say that on that first meeting with ‘Ol Man River,’ I did stand on the river bank and deliver my poor man’s version of the great song to a couple of disinterested cormorants. Nothing erases the great Paul Robeson from my memory – his recording of the song still makes my eyes water but now it also takes me back to this river that “just keeps rollin’ along.”

A humbler vessel, a Mississippi tug boat, followed on pulling two barge-loads of soil, I have always loved these tough little boats, having been allowed to steer one on the Mersey in Liverpool sometime earlier. Watching its progress down this mighty river, I thought how exciting it would be navigate.

In fact, when I returned to Minneapolis some time later to make the programe with Garrison Keillor, we filmed on just one of these vessels and the skipper, obviously picking up on my enthusiasm, asked if I wanted to take over the steering.

It was not for very long, I admit, but I was still thrilled to become one of folk who have navigated this nation-defining river in one of these plucky little boats.

This part of the river had been famous for one of Minneapolis’ greatest industries – flour milling.

I was now faced with the remains; shells of buildings and rubble in an unexpected wasteland. In front of me were the ruins of the old Gold Medal Flour Mill and further down the river, Pillsbury’s Mill, once the biggest in the World.

When I stumbled across them, they were forgotten cast-offs showing me America on its uppers, something I had not expected.

Now, I am told, both buildings have been restored and converted into luxury accommodation and the whole of this run-down area is now flourishing again, not with flour milling of course, but with condominiums, apartment blocks and all the smart accoutrements that support modern city life.

Today though, it had an altogether different feel. Shabby dereliction dominated this side of the river and, with my new camera at the ready, I was seduced by its shabbiness. I had brought along my prized new possession, one of those long camera lenses that can make even the most amateur of photographers look like a professional. Slotting it into position, I zoomed around me and spotted a group of sinister looking men under some arches.

A good shot, I thought, Native Americans, once the lords of these parts but now, too often, the city’s street drunks and down-and-outs. I had no time though to compose an arty picture as within seconds I heard a shout and a rock hit the ground next to me with considerable force. This was followed by others, stones, rocks, pieces of brick.

I ran.

They shouted and ran out after me.

Whatever they were doing over there, they definitely didn’t want me to photograph it. More missiles followed as I moved faster than I can remember moving before or since.

It was one of the few times in my life when I felt that I was in real danger.

I hadn’t noticed, in my photographic enthusiasm that I was quite alone. Me and those men in an empty landscape of demolished buildings.

I had been stupid, I knew that, and when I told Garrison Keillor that it was fortunate that they were all such bad shots, he sighed and said that no, they were probably really good shots.

Of course, he was right. I went cold at the thought in spite of the humidity.

After that, Garrison Keillor took me under his wing a bit more but he needn’t have worried, I had learnt my lesson.

Later that week, he drove me round St. Paul’s showing me the sights associated with the great Minnesota-born writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. We were both fans, who wouldn’t be after reading The Great Gatsby? We drove down Summit Avenue and he slowed down in front of Number 599 where Fitzgerald had lived with his parents.

It was here, in 1919, that a publisher accepted his first novel, This Side of Paradise. After reading the letter he ran out into the street and, in his excitement, showed it to everyone he saw.

Anyone who has ever wanted to be a writer must feel a beat of excitement at that story. Certainly I did and so did Garrison, I would guess, by the catch in his voice as he told it to me.

It is strange though, after all these experiences that the most memorable event of my time in Minnesota occurred after Garrison Keillor invited me to dinner at his place in the country.

We had been talking about rural affairs and the subject got round to poultry, don’t ask me why.

I found myself telling him and the other guests about my childhood skill at hypnotising chickens. He was amused and more than slightly incredulous about this. It was quite simple though. I told him all I used to do was put the bird’s head under its wing and stroke it until it fell asleep. The challenge was to see how many birds you could line up before the first one awoke. I think my record was about thirty.

Next day, I got a call from the producer of his famous public radio series, A Prairie Home Companion which broadcasts live from the Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul’s right across America. She said Garrison wanted me to hypnotise a chicken on his show that evening.

I was persuaded, leaving it to him to work out how such a visual trick could make good radio, and I turned up that evening to meet a friendly hen called Henrietta, a Rhode Island Red. I had time to form a relationship with her during rehearsals whilst a woman was practicing a yodeling song on stage.

It was all very tongue in cheek, I talked Garrison through the technique whilst settling Henrietta down to sleep watched by a full house in the theatre. The nation, pinned to the radio, held its breath as the fowl slept and, as if on queue, woke to my command with a ferocious squawk.

And that was it – my claim to fame as a Chicken Hypnotist. Leaving the theatre that night, I was asked for my autograph by an enthusiastic woman who was impressed that I had flown all the way from England to demonstrate my skills. Will you be doing your show across the country, she asked.

Maybe I missed my vocation.

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