Our Intangible Caste

[from 11/18/09]

Let's react to some news!

Today's reaction is to a headline I saw in a foreign newspaper last week: "UN investigator accuses US of shameful neglect of homeless people." Seeing that, I knew I had a column, and here it is.

I've had a long complicated relationship with the UN.

I'll never forget my introduction to the UN. I was ten, or eight, or seven, or something. I was staying with my Aunt Zelda that Summer or Fall. Or Winter. No, it was Fall for sure. Aunt Zelda was teaching me about the United Nations so I'd be ready for United Nations Day, which you all know, being liberals, is on October 24 every year, in celebration of the establishment of our world government.

Ha! That was liberal self-deprecatory humor. Actually we all know that the United Nations never lived up to our expectations. Some world government. Thanks a lot. But Aunt Zelda (not her real name, to protect the child abuser) didn't care, because her only purpose was to torture children like me by making them build cardboard models of the UN complex in New York, even though she lived in Flushing and could take me by subway to see the place within an hour.

I had to make this thing that sat on a card table and stood a foot high. Then, I had to learn the names of all the buildings. Then I had to learn the names of all the stupid parts of the UN and where in the complex they had their offices or meetings. It was alphabet soup. I had to learn about the General Assembly, the Security Council, the IAEA, the ILO, the IMF, UNIDO, The World Bank, WHO, and not the least of them UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Personally, I think there's something sick about lumping education, science, and culture together. But I won't go into that now.

As soon as I had committed all that to short term memory, but before I forgot it, Aunt Zelda did what, as I say, she could have done from the outset. She took me to see the place. I am so healed, I can remember nothing of that day, except seeing the long line of flags in front, and wondering how much bird poop the flagpoles collected daily.

But that was not the end of my involvement with the UN, because decades later I discovered the UNESCO Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity Awards. These are awards, really announcements, that have been made every year since 2001, to recognize elements of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity, in the hopes that as people become aware of our great human heritage they might fight to preserve it. Thus the first honors in May, 2001, included awards for Georgian polyphonic singing, the languages and dances of the Garifuna people of Belize, the music of the transverse trumpets of the Taqbana community of the Ivory Coast, and Chinese Kunqu opera.

These are all cool things to look for on YouTube. Thank you, UN!

But the awards haven't all gone to arts. Over the years they've honored cultural spaces as well, whatever that means, such as the cultural spaces of the Columbian Village of Palenque de San Basilio, or the oral heritage and cultural manifestations of the Zápara people, whoever they are.

So it should come as no surprise that the United Nations is calling for an end to the neglect of homeless people in the United States.

I've just learned that one of the 2010 UNESCO Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity Awards will go to the Cultural Space and Manifestations of the Homeless People of the United States of America, in recognition, finally, for the great contributions their culture has made to the world, in particular to its intangibilities, and its cultural passings down of ways of getting around on the ground.

You're awesome, US Homeless! You're not being neglected now!