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Update on my previous post: Just as occurred to Rohinton Mistry a year or so ago, musicologist Nalini Ghuman has been brutally denied re-entry into the U.S., as reported today in the New York Times.

She’s British, of Welsh and Sikh descent, and an esteemed authority on Elgar. Until her apprehension at SFO she was also an assistant professor at Mills College in California. Consider this:
– armed immigration officers met her at the airplane door when she landed in SFO and during the next eight hours they:
– tore up her H-1B visa which was good for another two years
– defaced her British passport
– described her as “Hispanic” (in addition to being thugs, they are idiots)
– held her incommunicado and did not let her contact the British Consulate
– groped her during a body search
– told her she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher if she moved
– told her she was “a nobody” and “had no rights”
– threatened to transfer her to a detention center if she did not take a flight back to London that night, which she did.

She said “For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means.”

Despite many letters from musicians and intervention of the British Embassy, this case has been unresolved for 13 months.

Why would she ever want to return?

She’ll be going to Quebec for a conference soon. As the article states, “At least…she can expect Canada to let her in.

There is one other reason, besides food, that I prefer to shop at New Seasons or Whole Foods rather than the older supermarket chains. Before the racks of celebrity rags at Safeway and Albertsons, my appetite always dissipates to be reminded that American womanhood is in such crisis. Look no further than the once fabulous Nicole Kidman on the current cover of Vanity Fair, to see how even a woman of enormous artistic talent who is economically secure can be so afraid of maturing that she gives up her face, and in the process IMHO, her individuality. Take her collagen plumped skin, the jowls that have been cut away, the eyes no longer heavy lidded, the strangely full lips, and at age forty, brand new breasts. Her skin looks younger than it did 20 years ago. People, this is like building towns in the desert — it is not meant to be! Nor is it sustainable. What will she do when she turns 50?

The main reason I used to enjoy watching Kidman was her actor’s face…now encased in rigor plasticus and devoid of any personality, mystery or honest beauty.

I was stunned this week to learn that Richard Florida had moved from the Washington, D.C. area to Toronto. He’s a hugely influential researcher on what makes geographies dynamic and prosperous, and he is taking his work to the highly esteemed Rotman School, led by the exceptional Roger Martin.

On the one hand, in a global world talent is highly mobile. But on the other, does Florida’s move indicate that the U.S. is going to be less attractive to that kind of talent?

It might mean that Florida sees Canada, and specifically Toronto rather than Washington or other U.S. cities, as having the right criteria for a geography of the future: open, diverse, tolerant and creative. Such a geography is making the shift from manufacturing to creativity as its economic engine.

Florida is not the only one working in this vein. Daniel Pink has said that creativity is the new international currency, and the current fascination in business with the idea of collaboration and the plethora of tech tools to achieve it has to do with the goal of encouraging creative thinking among workers.

Are we in the U.S. seeing a pattern of laws and regulations that promote insularity, the opposite of curiosity and openness on which creativity thrives? Is our famously un-curious President the emblem of our post 9/11 culture?

Whether it is Mexican manual laborers or Chinese and Indian engineers, our immigration policies indicate we are concerned about “the others.” But we’re not just keeping out workers, who by contributing to cultural diversity in the past have exposed Americans to lots of ideas, but artists too.

These policies have ensnared artists and creative thinkers like the Canadian Rohinton Mistry and the British Lily Allen.

What would American music and the music industry been like without the British invasion of 1964?

The WSJ today writes that due to post 9/11 immigration and visa policies, “some companies say they have had more trouble bringing in talented people from abroad.”

Maybe that’s why the Toronto Film Festival has become a global magnet lately. There are indeed alternatives to New York and Los Angeles.

Florida has warned in his recent writing that the U.S. could lose in this creative economy. But we literally cannot afford to lose. We can’t rest on our laurels, now that Stockholm, Krakow, Tallinn, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Shanghai, Mexico City, Melbourne, Dublin, Dakar and Kuala Lumpur are producing powerfully creative ideas about work, life, science, education — all the things that the 21st century is transforming.

Does Florida’s move mean that we’re already shutting down?

So long ago I hate to contemplate it, I was a college student in NYC and a culture vulture. I so loved ballet that I signed up to usher at the Met Opera so I could catch the Kirov, ABT, the Royal and the Stuttgart during the dance season. Of course, I could not pick and choose the nights the Met called me in to work and I ended up working opera nights as well.

Pavarotti was singing night after night, the Verdi, Puccini, Bellini repertoire, alongside star after star soprano, his voice at its prime, just before he became household name. To this day, I unfairly measure all opera performances against his, because it is impossible not to experience the sublime and then hope to find it again.

La Boheme, I Puritani, Rosenkavalier (what a cameo!), Un Ballo in Maschera, Rigoletto: how fortunate I was to lose my opera virginity with the tenor of the century. A more liquid, mellifluous voice in opera did and does not exist.

One night, I was called to help hold the curtain for the umpteen curtain calls that followed a Pavarotti performance. Another usher and I stood together to hold it back, as it was very heavy, as the singers filed past to receive their applause. You could hear a constant thumping as the bouquets of flowers hit the stage. For his last bow, Pavarotti picked up a single rose, held it up in homage to his audience and disappeared from them behind the curtain, and towards the place where I was holding it. Suddenly the star of the century stood in all his corpulent grandeur before me, a young new opera fan working for music. Inches from my face, he held up the rose, and bent it towards me as a gift. I took it with a barely audible, choked “grazie”.

Unforgettable.

This is what happens when you don’t take it slow. The family visit from Canada was just over, and my mind turned to the admin caca kind of work that was piling up, the irritating general disorganization of the house, the sadly empty fridge and I seemed to need to just pile it on even higher. In my mad (might be literally so) rush to super achieve last Saturday, my left foot went out from under (“Stop it! I just can’t move that fast!”) and broke with a sharp stabbing snap.

For five days I was mostly immobile, but, god forbid, not idle. Thanks to high speed Internet and home networks, I put in 7-8 hours a day from bed. Now with my boot cast, I sit anywhere and plug away. Makes me really proud that I haven’t lost any time.

But I have six weeks recovery to go. I’m starting to give in to the limited ability to move. So here’s what I’ve begun to notice about being forced to take it a little more slow:

It helps to have a life partner. I don’t know what I would do without my husband to do stuff for me. I’m reminded that I need to not take that for granted.

I’ve listened to an entire 2-CD set in one sitting, something I haven’t done in too many years to recall. I could swear I’d heard “If It Be Your Will” by Leonard Cohen on this CD before, but I don’t think I had realized how much I liked it until yesterday.

I’ve read the NYT and WSJ and this week’s New Yorker cover to cover, something I haven’t done all in one week let alone day in too many years to recall. I have started to notice the small bits of coverage that you know will emerge as page one stories in a few months or years. If you are in a rush, chances are you’ll miss these and gripe about the lousy reporting job the MSM is doing, like I do all the time.

I visited 1:1 with a friend for an evening that stretched to almost midnight (way past MY normal weeknight bedtime) without once twittering, checking email, updating my Facebook page or scanning the daily blogs, and I came away with a few new things to think about that I would not have gotten from afore-mentioned activities.

The next month will be tough for a mad dasher like me, but there’s lots to savor in the down time.