25 December 2006
Langoria
Atop the mountains the view eastwards was of a desolated high desert valley of scrub and sterile earth. To describe it required a palette of browns and tans. There were dry ravines and sandy, sere riverbeds that flowed only occasionally when the rains spilled between the frigid peaks and the ridge beyond which lay Langoria.
North and south of the saddle that formed the only entry to the desert and, ultimately, into Langoria, the peaks curved, ever higher, until they reached the sea, trapping both the desert and Langoria in a giant horseshoe shaped promontory.
To reach the ridge required a descent, at times nearly vertical, down the rock mountainside. Once at the base, the high desert spread out for three days, rough and scarred and permanently parched.
Only near the sharp edge which defined the top of the ridge and marked the border of Langoria did the earth become gentler and more giving. Behind lay the hot, killing world of the desert.
From the ridge Langoria spread out below towards the sea. The land dropped through a mix of oak and pine and then through fields of oats, barley, hops and wheat, separated by orderly rows of apple, pear and peach trees. Still lower there were grape vines spreading their low green canopies, ripening in the dry sun and the cool air, thickening the fruit until it produced a deep, rich purple wine which the people drank before fires on cold winter nights. Scattered amongst the wineries were groves of olives.
From the wine country the land sloped further towards sea where the altitude and the weather combined to create an unvarying cool, misty world of grazing sheep, peat bogs and windswept shores. The small harbour of Langoria, the eponymous capital of the country, had been formed by the laborious placement of riprap rocks to convert a gentle indentation along the coastline into a small, safe-haven where coasters and fishing boats were moored.
For miles both north and south of the capital there was little in the way of variation to the coastline. It formed an even line between land and sea; sometimes the boundary varied a bit, from sandy, straight beach to cliffs where green fields simply terminated and the land tumbled precipitously a hundred or more feet into the sea.
Eventually the coastal strip that marked Langoria narrowed and terminated where the mountains reached the water, marked by towering precipices, shelves that stretched to the north and south nearly a hundred miles, an impassable, unconquerable barrier between tiny Langoria and the hostile lands beyond those impenetrable mountains.
And so Langoria slept. It was a gentle land. Far from the rest of the world and its conflicts, the tiny country prospered in its own way, leading a national life that was in harmony with the gifts given it by the earth: a temperate climate, a beautiful, rolling terrain and a variety of foods, from land and sea, from vine and field, that gave Langorians long lives, even temperaments and a capacity for calm reflection and tolerance that scarce occurs in more heated climes, whatever the temperature.
26 December 2006
10 December 2006
French Fries on the Playa de Cortes
9 December 2006
Besford
The road from Hermosillo to Kino eventually thinned out after Buck Ibarra’s place. Buck was some sort of renegade, part Basque, part Indian and pretty much wholly a rascal. With half a dozen kids from an equal number of mothers, several happily residing together out there in his compound of huts and rusted travel trailers, he was just another of Dad’s curious friends. Many of them had criminal records – some pretty serious. I can vaguely recall that it wasn’t long after we first moved to Sonora that Dad became friends with a gringo staying out at one lonely ranch (God knows how Dad ever met these guys – he’d frequently just show up at dinner time, trailing some shy 'down and outer' who’d fascinate me and slightly disgust my Mom; every one had an interest in mining, many were genuine prospectors of the burro persuasion, for some adventure had become a habit they couldn't break; I never figured out whether they were souls lost or souls with purpose and direction, marching to their own rhythm). This fellow at the ranch, I think it was called Escondido ('hidden' – pretty appropriate, huh?) had already been out there the best part of 7 years when we arrived, never once having travelled the 20 miles or so into town. It was only after the statue of limitations had well and truly expired that he ventured into the city – I'm sure that one of his first stops had to be one of the bars that made up the front rooms of the houses in the ‘Zona’. Even at six I knew the Zona, one afternoon I'd dropped in and had a soda pop with the proprietress of one of the nicer houses but, that’s a story for another time.
Until they began to irrigate the backlands between the river valleys and coast in the 1960’s, the space between Hermosillo, the capital on the river, and Kino, a beach settlement on the Sea of Cortes, didn’t appear to have much to offer man or animal. There were a few scampering desert mammals, Gila monsters, plenty of snakes and some coyotes but not much else. In summer it got so hot so quickly that the trip was only healthy if you left around 7 AM to get there and started back around 6 or 7 PM.
The beach at Kino was very white and very big. The water was clear but you didn’t swim unless you could spot the fins of porpoises in the Bay. The Sea of Cortes has as many tiburones ('sharks') as anywhere in the world. You were only sure that it was safe to swim with the porpoises, otherwise it was build a sand castle.
At one end of the beach there was a point called Black Rock (imaginatively named because of it’s dominant colour) and some ex-fisherman ran a café there. Most of the place was actually jammed back into a cave that had been carved out by thousands of years of waves. You'd give the proprietor whatever fish you’d caught and he’d clean and fry them. His beer was cold (said my Dad) but to me the key thing was that he made papas fritas (‘chips’ or French fries) like I'd never had. He didn’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into wedges and tossed them into a pan swimming in pork fat! There they'd float until they turned a perfect golden brown, flecked with black. Wow! Strange that in the 1950’s, fat wasn’t so bad for you as it is now.
Dad was a hobbyist fisherman – he loved it. He could fish equally in a lake, a stream or the ocean; he even knew how to tie trout flies. Mom fished to keep him company. I mostly played on the rocks or the beach, the only fascination I found in fish was watching them jerk spasmodically as their lives drained away when they were tossed onto the rock. When Dad pulled one in, he would remove his hook and then bang the fish on the head with the blunt end of his pocket knife. When Dad was too far to take care of whatever she'd caught, Mom would just toss the fish onto the rocks, she was too squeamish to bop them. I'd then watch them struggle for breath. Most died in what must have been terrible agony but some managed to bounce themselves back into the sea, determined never to pick at anything dangling at the end of a line, no matter how appetising it looked. Before you go condemning me for my morbid voyeurism, remember that this was the 1950’s. We weren’t as sensitive then and I was only 5 or 6 so I’m not sure that I truly understood what I was watching.
In that decade, I believe that not only weren't we as sensitive as we are now, I’m pretty convinced the fish didn't have much feeling either. Whatever future punishment I let myself in for by witnessing these scenes, though, the memory of the papas fritas is still with me today, half a century later!
Besford
The road from Hermosillo to Kino eventually thinned out after Buck Ibarra’s place. Buck was some sort of renegade, part Basque, part Indian and pretty much wholly a rascal. With half a dozen kids from an equal number of mothers, several happily residing together out there in his compound of huts and rusted travel trailers, he was just another of Dad’s curious friends. Many of them had criminal records – some pretty serious. I can vaguely recall that it wasn’t long after we first moved to Sonora that Dad became friends with a gringo staying out at one lonely ranch (God knows how Dad ever met these guys – he’d frequently just show up at dinner time, trailing some shy 'down and outer' who’d fascinate me and slightly disgust my Mom; every one had an interest in mining, many were genuine prospectors of the burro persuasion, for some adventure had become a habit they couldn't break; I never figured out whether they were souls lost or souls with purpose and direction, marching to their own rhythm). This fellow at the ranch, I think it was called Escondido ('hidden' – pretty appropriate, huh?) had already been out there the best part of 7 years when we arrived, never once having travelled the 20 miles or so into town. It was only after the statue of limitations had well and truly expired that he ventured into the city – I'm sure that one of his first stops had to be one of the bars that made up the front rooms of the houses in the ‘Zona’. Even at six I knew the Zona, one afternoon I'd dropped in and had a soda pop with the proprietress of one of the nicer houses but, that’s a story for another time.
Until they began to irrigate the backlands between the river valleys and coast in the 1960’s, the space between Hermosillo, the capital on the river, and Kino, a beach settlement on the Sea of Cortes, didn’t appear to have much to offer man or animal. There were a few scampering desert mammals, Gila monsters, plenty of snakes and some coyotes but not much else. In summer it got so hot so quickly that the trip was only healthy if you left around 7 AM to get there and started back around 6 or 7 PM.
The beach at Kino was very white and very big. The water was clear but you didn’t swim unless you could spot the fins of porpoises in the Bay. The Sea of Cortes has as many tiburones ('sharks') as anywhere in the world. You were only sure that it was safe to swim with the porpoises, otherwise it was build a sand castle.
At one end of the beach there was a point called Black Rock (imaginatively named because of it’s dominant colour) and some ex-fisherman ran a café there. Most of the place was actually jammed back into a cave that had been carved out by thousands of years of waves. You'd give the proprietor whatever fish you’d caught and he’d clean and fry them. His beer was cold (said my Dad) but to me the key thing was that he made papas fritas (‘chips’ or French fries) like I'd never had. He didn’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into wedges and tossed them into a pan swimming in pork fat! There they'd float until they turned a perfect golden brown, flecked with black. Wow! Strange that in the 1950’s, fat wasn’t so bad for you as it is now.
Dad was a hobbyist fisherman – he loved it. He could fish equally in a lake, a stream or the ocean; he even knew how to tie trout flies. Mom fished to keep him company. I mostly played on the rocks or the beach, the only fascination I found in fish was watching them jerk spasmodically as their lives drained away when they were tossed onto the rock. When Dad pulled one in, he would remove his hook and then bang the fish on the head with the blunt end of his pocket knife. When Dad was too far to take care of whatever she'd caught, Mom would just toss the fish onto the rocks, she was too squeamish to bop them. I'd then watch them struggle for breath. Most died in what must have been terrible agony but some managed to bounce themselves back into the sea, determined never to pick at anything dangling at the end of a line, no matter how appetising it looked. Before you go condemning me for my morbid voyeurism, remember that this was the 1950’s. We weren’t as sensitive then and I was only 5 or 6 so I’m not sure that I truly understood what I was watching.
In that decade, I believe that not only weren't we as sensitive as we are now, I’m pretty convinced the fish didn't have much feeling either. Whatever future punishment I let myself in for by witnessing these scenes, though, the memory of the papas fritas is still with me today, half a century later!
07 December 2006
Sonora Morning ...1950's
6 December 2006
Besford
Only when the rains came, around San Juan day, did the arroyo ever feel riverine. This morning the wan December sun floated through the dry and dusty bottom as men stretched, scratched and spit, rustling up muddy coffee, warming their tortillas on rocks set around the fire, forming them into pockets and filling them with frijoles refritos scooped from an old frying pan.
The plates, pans and cups all matched, blue enamelled metal with white spots, a design that was common up and down the Sonora and a half dozen other rivers. Washing up consisted of wiping them with river sand, water was too precious to waste on unnecessary hygiene.
Some men were still stiff from the overnight cold. It had been clear the night before, nothing unusual in that, but the wind had blown in a ‘norther’ and the mercury had dropped to single digits before midnight. Although the wind then dropped off, the temperature had continued to descend and this morning it was below zero.
Few words were exchanged, the men’s voices were low and quiet, scratchy from the cold, dry air, from cigarettes and tequila. The black, sugary coffee lubricated their voices only enough for instructions to be passed around.
The order that informed their preparations was not immediately visible. Men appeared to be acting independently, without reference to each other. Suddenly, however, the group set off; how they were organised was not immediately apparent but by the discipline that marked their departure from the campsite, fire damped and waste cleaned, was unmistakable.
All of the men, save one, were mounted on horseback. The exception was, however, clearly the leader, he rode a burro. The men treated him with an easy familiarity, they joked and gossiped with him but they also watched him, learning to interpret his moods, to read his body language. There was no fun made of his refusal to ride a horse. He was convinced that a burro was smarter and he would neither go where a burro would not nor go farther in a day than a burro wanted. His selection of camping spots, idiosyncratic but compellingly logical, was based entirely on the whim of his burro, when the burro stopped and would go no more, it was time to camp.
The paraphernalia of camping life - tents, army cots, kerosene lanterns, canned goods, utensils and cooking gear - was all loaded into heavy, waterproof rocket boxes. Surplus from the Second World War, the rocket boxes were heavy gauge aluminium. Fully loaded, each one must have weighed 100 pounds and at about 5 feet long, two of them made a formidable load for the burros that were unfortunate enough not to have been selected to carry the leader. It was, however a close call for the leader's weight verged on 200 pounds, not nearly as well distributed as the gear in the rocket boxes.
The camp was cleared and the party ready to move forward within an hour of waking. The last of the coffee was gulped down and unfiltered Mexican Raleighs lit up. A wispy haze of bluish cigarette smoke marked the trail of the group as it wended its way on up the river bed.
Besford
Only when the rains came, around San Juan day, did the arroyo ever feel riverine. This morning the wan December sun floated through the dry and dusty bottom as men stretched, scratched and spit, rustling up muddy coffee, warming their tortillas on rocks set around the fire, forming them into pockets and filling them with frijoles refritos scooped from an old frying pan.
The plates, pans and cups all matched, blue enamelled metal with white spots, a design that was common up and down the Sonora and a half dozen other rivers. Washing up consisted of wiping them with river sand, water was too precious to waste on unnecessary hygiene.
Some men were still stiff from the overnight cold. It had been clear the night before, nothing unusual in that, but the wind had blown in a ‘norther’ and the mercury had dropped to single digits before midnight. Although the wind then dropped off, the temperature had continued to descend and this morning it was below zero.
Few words were exchanged, the men’s voices were low and quiet, scratchy from the cold, dry air, from cigarettes and tequila. The black, sugary coffee lubricated their voices only enough for instructions to be passed around.
The order that informed their preparations was not immediately visible. Men appeared to be acting independently, without reference to each other. Suddenly, however, the group set off; how they were organised was not immediately apparent but by the discipline that marked their departure from the campsite, fire damped and waste cleaned, was unmistakable.
All of the men, save one, were mounted on horseback. The exception was, however, clearly the leader, he rode a burro. The men treated him with an easy familiarity, they joked and gossiped with him but they also watched him, learning to interpret his moods, to read his body language. There was no fun made of his refusal to ride a horse. He was convinced that a burro was smarter and he would neither go where a burro would not nor go farther in a day than a burro wanted. His selection of camping spots, idiosyncratic but compellingly logical, was based entirely on the whim of his burro, when the burro stopped and would go no more, it was time to camp.
The paraphernalia of camping life - tents, army cots, kerosene lanterns, canned goods, utensils and cooking gear - was all loaded into heavy, waterproof rocket boxes. Surplus from the Second World War, the rocket boxes were heavy gauge aluminium. Fully loaded, each one must have weighed 100 pounds and at about 5 feet long, two of them made a formidable load for the burros that were unfortunate enough not to have been selected to carry the leader. It was, however a close call for the leader's weight verged on 200 pounds, not nearly as well distributed as the gear in the rocket boxes.
The camp was cleared and the party ready to move forward within an hour of waking. The last of the coffee was gulped down and unfiltered Mexican Raleighs lit up. A wispy haze of bluish cigarette smoke marked the trail of the group as it wended its way on up the river bed.
03 December 2006
Memories of Parsley Manor
3 December 2006
Besford
This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).
Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.
I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?
There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!
Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’
Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.
But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.
This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.
Besford
This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).
Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.
I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?
There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!
Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’
Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.
But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.
This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.
26 November 2006
I'm genuinely sorry that my ancestors had anything to do with slavery!
26 November 2006
Sunday
Tony Blair has stopped short of apologising for Britain’s role in the slave trade. I believe that the United States has also failed to apologise.
It seems to me that this is all nonsense. Why not apologise? What would be the implication? If the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says he’s sorry – and, indeed, he says he’s sorry on behalf of the nation – that Britons sanctioned, participated in and profited from the slave trade – there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems to me it’s the right thing to do. There’s something of an irony in the fact there’s a controversy in one action that’s moral and healing in the tawdry history of an unprecedented crime against humanity.
Personally, I’m sorry that so much of the history of the United Sates is built on the blood of unknown and unrecognised men and women held as slaves. The whole concept, if you stop and think about it even for a moment, is so revolting and unimaginable, that you cannot conceive of any reasonable objection to a national and personal apology for it.
Consider: If your grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes, survived a hellish voyage in chains across the ocean and sold into involuntary servitude, would that not be sufficient crime against your ancestors for you to ask for an apology from the inheritors of the culture that committed that heinous crime? And it was even worse, you not only had to survive, you frequently had to survive completely alone, with strangers, fellow-slaves, who did not speak your language and worshipped different gods. Then, having survived these challenges, having been renamed, forced to worship the white man’s god and forced to labour at the whim and sole direction of the ‘master’, imagine the hopeless sense that there was no alternative to this existence, neither for you nor for your descendants (frequently products of a pairing in which you had no choice). It sure doesn’t seem to me that both personal and national apologies are out of order!
The argument may be about where you stop. Are the descendants of the victims entitled to reparations? Should money be given to the societies from which these people were taken? Well, probably not; I think our economies – made up of both former slaves and former ‘masters’ – would be stretched too far to pay for it. What we can do is ensure that we have created a fair and just society for the descendants of those people who suffered this enormous crime.
Sunday
Tony Blair has stopped short of apologising for Britain’s role in the slave trade. I believe that the United States has also failed to apologise.
It seems to me that this is all nonsense. Why not apologise? What would be the implication? If the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says he’s sorry – and, indeed, he says he’s sorry on behalf of the nation – that Britons sanctioned, participated in and profited from the slave trade – there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems to me it’s the right thing to do. There’s something of an irony in the fact there’s a controversy in one action that’s moral and healing in the tawdry history of an unprecedented crime against humanity.
Personally, I’m sorry that so much of the history of the United Sates is built on the blood of unknown and unrecognised men and women held as slaves. The whole concept, if you stop and think about it even for a moment, is so revolting and unimaginable, that you cannot conceive of any reasonable objection to a national and personal apology for it.
Consider: If your grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes, survived a hellish voyage in chains across the ocean and sold into involuntary servitude, would that not be sufficient crime against your ancestors for you to ask for an apology from the inheritors of the culture that committed that heinous crime? And it was even worse, you not only had to survive, you frequently had to survive completely alone, with strangers, fellow-slaves, who did not speak your language and worshipped different gods. Then, having survived these challenges, having been renamed, forced to worship the white man’s god and forced to labour at the whim and sole direction of the ‘master’, imagine the hopeless sense that there was no alternative to this existence, neither for you nor for your descendants (frequently products of a pairing in which you had no choice). It sure doesn’t seem to me that both personal and national apologies are out of order!
The argument may be about where you stop. Are the descendants of the victims entitled to reparations? Should money be given to the societies from which these people were taken? Well, probably not; I think our economies – made up of both former slaves and former ‘masters’ – would be stretched too far to pay for it. What we can do is ensure that we have created a fair and just society for the descendants of those people who suffered this enormous crime.
03 March 2006
Bush in New Delhi
Bush is probably wrong on this one. Do we really need to put geopolitics before nuclear non-proliferation? Are we building an alliance against the Chinese for the next 50 years? Why not build an alliance with the Chinese and use that to dominate the entire globe? The US would dominate Latin America, China would dominate Asia. Africa may not count for much for another century -- blame Europe! Meantime, Europe sits in the middle, prosperous but ineffective. India becomes an industrious non-entity.
India is prickly. Their reaction to many international issues is always reminiscent of some sort of national inferiority complex; reminds me a bit of the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Filipinos. For the subcontinent, of course, it's born of 200 years of domination by the British rather than centuries under the Spanish followed by five decades under the Almighty Dollar (the case of the Philippines).
So, by the terms of this new agreement, the international non-proliferation treaty is gutted but India opens up two-thirds of its reactors for inspection by the IAEA, imports US nuclear fuels, freeing up more of its own production to be diverted to mulitply its nuclear weapons production. This makes US conservatives happy because India's weapons then balance China's.
It gets ever more complicated. I don't want another nuclear power but India already is. So, this will just make them stronger? Does that make China relatively weaker? Do I worry more about China or India?
India is prickly. Their reaction to many international issues is always reminiscent of some sort of national inferiority complex; reminds me a bit of the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Filipinos. For the subcontinent, of course, it's born of 200 years of domination by the British rather than centuries under the Spanish followed by five decades under the Almighty Dollar (the case of the Philippines).
So, by the terms of this new agreement, the international non-proliferation treaty is gutted but India opens up two-thirds of its reactors for inspection by the IAEA, imports US nuclear fuels, freeing up more of its own production to be diverted to mulitply its nuclear weapons production. This makes US conservatives happy because India's weapons then balance China's.
It gets ever more complicated. I don't want another nuclear power but India already is. So, this will just make them stronger? Does that make China relatively weaker? Do I worry more about China or India?
24 February 2006
Charity the Wal-Mart Way!
Well, it’s a step in the right direction! Wal-Mart, the developed world’s most egregious profiteer whose senior executives are not either indicted, on trial or in jail, has announced that it will make some health insurance available to the 50% of their employees who are not currently eligible (that’s right, half of their work-force, around 650,000 people are currently out in the cold!). Of course, you’ve got to wonder how the workers are going to pay for this benefit with average wages under $20,000 per year.
This is not going to get me into Wal-Mart. I still go to Costco! Their average wage is 70% higher than Wal-Mart’s and their Chief Executive actually has a pay packet that bears scrutiny. You can look at what Costco’s top guys are paid without getting a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
How does the senior executive corps at Wal-Mart manage to sleep? I’m not sure what innovations they’ve introduced that really make our lives better. Bill Gates’ wealth doesn’t bother me, he’s driven innovation and productivity and his charitable impulses are admirable. Wal-Mart? Well, let’s see, they’ve destroyed communities, nearly bankrupted some of their suppliers, exploit their workers and build giant, ugly boxes around the country to which people drive miles and miles, persuaded to do so only by what I can characterize as a mass psychosis and an ephemeral hope of savings. And, by the way, I do wonder how much additional oil we use every year in this country just to get to Wal-Mart for those savings? I bet it’s significant!
This is not going to get me into Wal-Mart. I still go to Costco! Their average wage is 70% higher than Wal-Mart’s and their Chief Executive actually has a pay packet that bears scrutiny. You can look at what Costco’s top guys are paid without getting a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
How does the senior executive corps at Wal-Mart manage to sleep? I’m not sure what innovations they’ve introduced that really make our lives better. Bill Gates’ wealth doesn’t bother me, he’s driven innovation and productivity and his charitable impulses are admirable. Wal-Mart? Well, let’s see, they’ve destroyed communities, nearly bankrupted some of their suppliers, exploit their workers and build giant, ugly boxes around the country to which people drive miles and miles, persuaded to do so only by what I can characterize as a mass psychosis and an ephemeral hope of savings. And, by the way, I do wonder how much additional oil we use every year in this country just to get to Wal-Mart for those savings? I bet it’s significant!
23 February 2006
Shooting at the Arab company that bought the UK company that has a port operation contract and has, so far, not, itself, shot anyone at the ranch!
Bush was wrong when he ignored the secret court set up to authorise eavesdropping in the interest of national security. If the court was too slow, he should have asked for the court to be given either greater authority or more resources.
On the other hand, Bush was/is right to defend the granting of port operation contracts to a company owned by the Government of the UAE. If they won and they were fully vetted by various US Government bodies, they deserve to have the contract.
Those politicians who are trying to capitalise on this issue are wrong and self-serving. Only John McCain has shown any character on this matter -- he has, at least, said that we ought to give the process the benefit of the doubt.
I am not against a review of the process but any arbitrary cancellation will reflect badly on us as a nation of laws.
Actually, I'm convinced that all of this brouhaha over the port contract was concocted by Cheney's staff to distract attention from his culpability over the shooting of a lawyer during a hunting weekend at the Armstrong Ranch in Texas. Too bad, this, because Cheney demonstrated how dangerous guns are. He should lose his license but, wait, I forgot, there are no licenses for gun operation in the US. Any idiot, Dick Cheney included, is allowed to tote around a weapon that could end human life. That's reasonable, isn't it?
On the other hand, Bush was/is right to defend the granting of port operation contracts to a company owned by the Government of the UAE. If they won and they were fully vetted by various US Government bodies, they deserve to have the contract.
Those politicians who are trying to capitalise on this issue are wrong and self-serving. Only John McCain has shown any character on this matter -- he has, at least, said that we ought to give the process the benefit of the doubt.
I am not against a review of the process but any arbitrary cancellation will reflect badly on us as a nation of laws.
Actually, I'm convinced that all of this brouhaha over the port contract was concocted by Cheney's staff to distract attention from his culpability over the shooting of a lawyer during a hunting weekend at the Armstrong Ranch in Texas. Too bad, this, because Cheney demonstrated how dangerous guns are. He should lose his license but, wait, I forgot, there are no licenses for gun operation in the US. Any idiot, Dick Cheney included, is allowed to tote around a weapon that could end human life. That's reasonable, isn't it?
30 November 2005
First Blizzard - Thanksgiving 2005
Geese wheeled and circled and ducks rose off the pond near our house in Santa Fe on the morning that the snow lay thick in the early sun this past week. We were the first people to walk out that day, alongside the fairways. The only life that preceded us had left tracks across the path: coyotes, bunnies, hares and others we didn’t recognize.
A day later we left in early afternoon and drove across Northeastern New Mexico and across the pass into Trinidad. We slept that night in Colorado Springs and the next morning awoke to news of a blizzard screaming across the northern plains, cutting our normal route back to Kansas City.
We considered and chose a southern route, roughly tracking the original Santa Fe Trail for part of the way. We passed near Bent’s Fort, historic trading post. Along the way there were high winds and swirling, light snows. Garden City was bleak and cold. Dodge City seemed lonely and barren. The small towns between there and Wichita were all unremarkable.
We drank hot chocolate and ate baked apple pies at McDonald’s. I would have preferred an espresso and a panini but there was no choice.
The wind continued to blow. The southern route we took was longer and slower than the northern freeway we normally drove but it was drier – a relative term – and open. It was almost 12 hours from Colorado Springs to Kansas City and the whole trip, over the two days, covered a thousand miles.
A day later we left in early afternoon and drove across Northeastern New Mexico and across the pass into Trinidad. We slept that night in Colorado Springs and the next morning awoke to news of a blizzard screaming across the northern plains, cutting our normal route back to Kansas City.
We considered and chose a southern route, roughly tracking the original Santa Fe Trail for part of the way. We passed near Bent’s Fort, historic trading post. Along the way there were high winds and swirling, light snows. Garden City was bleak and cold. Dodge City seemed lonely and barren. The small towns between there and Wichita were all unremarkable.
We drank hot chocolate and ate baked apple pies at McDonald’s. I would have preferred an espresso and a panini but there was no choice.
The wind continued to blow. The southern route we took was longer and slower than the northern freeway we normally drove but it was drier – a relative term – and open. It was almost 12 hours from Colorado Springs to Kansas City and the whole trip, over the two days, covered a thousand miles.
24 November 2005
Thanksgiving -- Making Yourself
How does someone become what they are? How do you measure if a person has made the most of the combination of circumstance and natural gifts that they have been given?
Blue eyed, angular and taciturn, my father’s first cousin was a life-long farmer. He only left the little town in northwest Missouri where he was born, grew up and made his life when he went off to World War II. He put on the uniform, played his role dutifully – he was a battlefield MP – he fell in love, with a French girl who wouldn’t come home to a farm in the rural Midwest. When he got home, he put his uniform in the attic and took up farming.
He never married. It wasn’t that there weren’t other women; there were; there were stories told. I never figured out why he didn’t just settle with one but he didn’t.
Once a family Bible salesman came up to the door and wanted to sell him one of those huge, illustrated Bibles with room in the front to track the family through the generations. The farmer, dry and sinewy, looked at the salesman and asked why he would need a Bible like that. The answer was in the form of a question, ‘Don’t you have any children?’ Clearly the assumption was that he did and surely he’d want to leave it to them.
The farmer looked directly into the eyes of the salesman, ‘I'm not sure!', he answered.
The salesman quietly picked up his wares and made his way out to his car and drove off.
That farmer's name was John D. I don’t think the ‘D’ stood for anything, at least no one ever told me if it did. He had beautiful, clear, intelligent eyes. Maybe he could have been a lawyer or a statesman or a professor of philosophy. Circumstance made him into a farmer. I think he wasn’t much more than mediocre at that but he did take care of his Dad and people thought well of him. He died without enemies. I was with him only a little while, perhaps three or four visits, during my youth. I liked him, he seemed good and gentle and decent, wholly admirable. I admire him still, now many years dead.
Blue eyed, angular and taciturn, my father’s first cousin was a life-long farmer. He only left the little town in northwest Missouri where he was born, grew up and made his life when he went off to World War II. He put on the uniform, played his role dutifully – he was a battlefield MP – he fell in love, with a French girl who wouldn’t come home to a farm in the rural Midwest. When he got home, he put his uniform in the attic and took up farming.
He never married. It wasn’t that there weren’t other women; there were; there were stories told. I never figured out why he didn’t just settle with one but he didn’t.
Once a family Bible salesman came up to the door and wanted to sell him one of those huge, illustrated Bibles with room in the front to track the family through the generations. The farmer, dry and sinewy, looked at the salesman and asked why he would need a Bible like that. The answer was in the form of a question, ‘Don’t you have any children?’ Clearly the assumption was that he did and surely he’d want to leave it to them.
The farmer looked directly into the eyes of the salesman, ‘I'm not sure!', he answered.
The salesman quietly picked up his wares and made his way out to his car and drove off.
That farmer's name was John D. I don’t think the ‘D’ stood for anything, at least no one ever told me if it did. He had beautiful, clear, intelligent eyes. Maybe he could have been a lawyer or a statesman or a professor of philosophy. Circumstance made him into a farmer. I think he wasn’t much more than mediocre at that but he did take care of his Dad and people thought well of him. He died without enemies. I was with him only a little while, perhaps three or four visits, during my youth. I liked him, he seemed good and gentle and decent, wholly admirable. I admire him still, now many years dead.
15 November 2005
Full Circle -- completing the circuit
I tracked down one of my cousins yesterday. We’re not what you’d call a close family. The last time I saw him was about 20 years ago. Apart from being related, we still don’t have much in common. For a brief time I lived in the town he’s called home for about 30 or 40 years.
I didn’t have his telephone number but I googled him and up popped his name, and those of his two boys, as owners of a race track! This was remarkable. Even in college my cousin loved fast cars. I remember that he owned a Jaguar XKE in the 1960s, probably one of the first in that part of the Midwest. He was a handsome, curly headed college guy with a fast car; very cool, especially to a kid of about 12 or 13.
When for that brief space of a few months we lived in the same town, he spent his weekends driving a race car, it was a Corvette I think with a huge engine, maybe 500 horsepower. I remember that he let me steer it into the pit after a race I attended (confusing affair, the cars sped around the track without any apparent objective except to finish without mishap and ahead of the others, only thing being they didn’t really go anywhere). You had to climb in through the window (which had no glass) and the seat was pretty much bolted to the floor and there was no radio. Anyway, I think it was very kind of him to let me steer it into the pit (did I mention the engine was not running?).
In those days he worked for an agricultural chemicals company. I am so pleased that he figured out how to make a living begin around what he loves: race tracks, fast cars and so on. And, he’s doing it with both of his sons. That’s pretty cool, that’s success. I’m happy for him.
I didn’t have his telephone number but I googled him and up popped his name, and those of his two boys, as owners of a race track! This was remarkable. Even in college my cousin loved fast cars. I remember that he owned a Jaguar XKE in the 1960s, probably one of the first in that part of the Midwest. He was a handsome, curly headed college guy with a fast car; very cool, especially to a kid of about 12 or 13.
When for that brief space of a few months we lived in the same town, he spent his weekends driving a race car, it was a Corvette I think with a huge engine, maybe 500 horsepower. I remember that he let me steer it into the pit after a race I attended (confusing affair, the cars sped around the track without any apparent objective except to finish without mishap and ahead of the others, only thing being they didn’t really go anywhere). You had to climb in through the window (which had no glass) and the seat was pretty much bolted to the floor and there was no radio. Anyway, I think it was very kind of him to let me steer it into the pit (did I mention the engine was not running?).
In those days he worked for an agricultural chemicals company. I am so pleased that he figured out how to make a living begin around what he loves: race tracks, fast cars and so on. And, he’s doing it with both of his sons. That’s pretty cool, that’s success. I’m happy for him.
27 October 2005
My father-in-law nearly marries a rich woman ….
My father-in-law tells a sad story. As a young man in Taiwan his family were poor. His prospects were not good; he was not a student. He was, though, strong, hard-working, virile. As a teenager he had served in a support role for the Imperial Japanese Navy. The loss of those precious years in futile support of an aggressive military that held him in institutional disrespect simply because he was Chinese and a resident of an island held in colonial thrall, removed any opportunity of further education and fixed his future path: his strong back was going to be the foundation of his life.
But there was, possibly, an alternative future for my father-in-law in those tumultuous years. World War II may have ended but the Chinese Civil War rumbled on until the end of the 1940’s when the remnants of Chiang Kai Shek’s legions fled the mainland with their treasures. The choice that was offered my father-in-law was one sometimes available to poor families with too many sons; one might have to be ‘married out’. In Taiwan in those days, and even recently, wealthy families with a single girl child might arrange a marriage for a daughter (mostly those less attractive) with a presentable but ‘economically challenged’ young man who would agree to marry the daughter and take on her family name, thus ensuring that property stayed in the name of the girl’s family. It served the purposes of the wife’s family but for the young man it meant a loss of face; it was a humiliation.
Pride was more important to him than riches so my father-in-law ran away from home. He left without a single penny, took a train to Taipei and wandered the streets for three days, without a place to sleep, with no food, only water.
By the end of the third day, his pride was no longer the most important ingredient in his character: remorse, loneliness and, especially, hunger had moved to the front of the line. My father-in-law decided to return to the south of the island and face the music. Sadly, the southern train run was not as loosely policed as the northern and the father of my wife was apprehended and taken to the railway police office before the train ever left Taipei station. This time, however, luck, even just a little bit, favored him. The duty officer took a look at him and asked, kindly, if he was hungry. In answer, my father-in-law could only nod. He wolfed down the bowl of cheap noodles that the duty officer ordered one of him men to bring. Afterwards, he led him to the next train south and put him on it; even ticketless, which he remained, he was now certain to get back home without more incident; it was clear to everyone that my father-in-law was traveling under the protection of the duty officer of the railway police and no one would dare interfere with his will!
By the time he did get back home, tempers had abated and my future father-in-law was welcomed home, given more food and no more was ever said about him ‘marrying out’. I think it worked out – I ended up with the woman I love but for him, for my father-in-law, I’ve never been sure whether any marriage at all suited him. Perhaps he should have stayed on the train, riding up and down, across the island from North to South.
But there was, possibly, an alternative future for my father-in-law in those tumultuous years. World War II may have ended but the Chinese Civil War rumbled on until the end of the 1940’s when the remnants of Chiang Kai Shek’s legions fled the mainland with their treasures. The choice that was offered my father-in-law was one sometimes available to poor families with too many sons; one might have to be ‘married out’. In Taiwan in those days, and even recently, wealthy families with a single girl child might arrange a marriage for a daughter (mostly those less attractive) with a presentable but ‘economically challenged’ young man who would agree to marry the daughter and take on her family name, thus ensuring that property stayed in the name of the girl’s family. It served the purposes of the wife’s family but for the young man it meant a loss of face; it was a humiliation.
Pride was more important to him than riches so my father-in-law ran away from home. He left without a single penny, took a train to Taipei and wandered the streets for three days, without a place to sleep, with no food, only water.
By the end of the third day, his pride was no longer the most important ingredient in his character: remorse, loneliness and, especially, hunger had moved to the front of the line. My father-in-law decided to return to the south of the island and face the music. Sadly, the southern train run was not as loosely policed as the northern and the father of my wife was apprehended and taken to the railway police office before the train ever left Taipei station. This time, however, luck, even just a little bit, favored him. The duty officer took a look at him and asked, kindly, if he was hungry. In answer, my father-in-law could only nod. He wolfed down the bowl of cheap noodles that the duty officer ordered one of him men to bring. Afterwards, he led him to the next train south and put him on it; even ticketless, which he remained, he was now certain to get back home without more incident; it was clear to everyone that my father-in-law was traveling under the protection of the duty officer of the railway police and no one would dare interfere with his will!
By the time he did get back home, tempers had abated and my future father-in-law was welcomed home, given more food and no more was ever said about him ‘marrying out’. I think it worked out – I ended up with the woman I love but for him, for my father-in-law, I’ve never been sure whether any marriage at all suited him. Perhaps he should have stayed on the train, riding up and down, across the island from North to South.
11 October 2005
09 September 2005
Back to school ...
Kansas City, 8 September 2005
It was parents’ night at our daughter’s school. Pembroke is a private school. It is not religious, just selective and focused on providing a strong education. Her teachers impressed us, they are enthusiastic and dedicated. Equally impressive, though, were the parents – mostly not divorced and all concerned and serious about the education their children receive. There is more: there is a quiet conspiracy amongst the parents. This conspiracy is unspoken and it is naturally occurring – we are all dedicated to spying on our offspring. We know that they are growing up in a world so different from our own that the two are mutually exclusive; what we experienced is as different from what they could experience as what we went through in the 1950’s and early 1960’s was different from what our ancestors went through a hundred years before that. Time has so accelerated that the only way we can manage what is happening or what could happen to our children is by simply spying on them.
The espionage we practice is benevolent in intent. We aim to know enough about the lives of our children that we can help them navigate through waters rougher, deeper and more unpredictable than we could have imagined.
There is some diversity at Pembroke – there are a few Jews, some blacks, scattered Asians – but mostly it is white and very mid-Western. I don’t think that’s wrong, however, I admire the self-conscious attempt at diversity and the inbred civility of these people here. The values that my Eurasian daughter will absorb in this place are good.
So, Alex, very much a fourteen year-old – with everything that implies – is now a high school student in this most mid-Western of places. After schooling in Hong Kong, in Manila, in Singapore, in Spain, in England and in Arizona, she has lit here (her father has been blown from place to place like that feather in ‘Forrest Gump’). Again, I think this is good.
It was parents’ night at our daughter’s school. Pembroke is a private school. It is not religious, just selective and focused on providing a strong education. Her teachers impressed us, they are enthusiastic and dedicated. Equally impressive, though, were the parents – mostly not divorced and all concerned and serious about the education their children receive. There is more: there is a quiet conspiracy amongst the parents. This conspiracy is unspoken and it is naturally occurring – we are all dedicated to spying on our offspring. We know that they are growing up in a world so different from our own that the two are mutually exclusive; what we experienced is as different from what they could experience as what we went through in the 1950’s and early 1960’s was different from what our ancestors went through a hundred years before that. Time has so accelerated that the only way we can manage what is happening or what could happen to our children is by simply spying on them.
The espionage we practice is benevolent in intent. We aim to know enough about the lives of our children that we can help them navigate through waters rougher, deeper and more unpredictable than we could have imagined.
There is some diversity at Pembroke – there are a few Jews, some blacks, scattered Asians – but mostly it is white and very mid-Western. I don’t think that’s wrong, however, I admire the self-conscious attempt at diversity and the inbred civility of these people here. The values that my Eurasian daughter will absorb in this place are good.
So, Alex, very much a fourteen year-old – with everything that implies – is now a high school student in this most mid-Western of places. After schooling in Hong Kong, in Manila, in Singapore, in Spain, in England and in Arizona, she has lit here (her father has been blown from place to place like that feather in ‘Forrest Gump’). Again, I think this is good.
06 September 2005
Summer -- Swan Song
Kansas City, 5 September 2005
It’s fading, summer is slowly moving on. The mornings are brighter, cool. We walked around Loose Park this evening, two laps, the second in the dark, the paths lit by the old fashioned lights and a sliver of a crescent moon.
It’s Labor Day. My daughter and a bunch of friends cadged rides from a couple of parents to Worlds of Fun. There were boys in the group. My wife and I picked four of the girls up and dropped them off at their homes afterwards. The park closed at 6 PM today. It was not full.
It’s fading, summer is slowly moving on. The mornings are brighter, cool. We walked around Loose Park this evening, two laps, the second in the dark, the paths lit by the old fashioned lights and a sliver of a crescent moon.
It’s Labor Day. My daughter and a bunch of friends cadged rides from a couple of parents to Worlds of Fun. There were boys in the group. My wife and I picked four of the girls up and dropped them off at their homes afterwards. The park closed at 6 PM today. It was not full.
04 September 2005
Sudden floods in the Huachucas ...
4 September 2005
In those days the Huachuca’s and some of the other mountains along the border, both sides of it actually, were still sprinkled with a few characters from earlier, freer times.
Most of those folks were independent minded and most of them were eccentric; we’d probably call them weird today. In those simpler times we didn’t even really notice the eccentricity, at least not my family. You see, Dad was one of those old-fashioned mining engineers, the type who scratched at the rocks, wherever they were, always looking for that vein, the high grade one. Those others, the loners and losers who picked around the lonely desert and mountains were members of the fraternity, maybe not educated as engineers or geologists, but co-owners of the dream. Some of my earliest memories are of Sunday morning visits by old men, every one with a story, driving battered pick-ups, inevitably with sample boxes rattling around their rusty beds. Dad and his visitors would poke around among the rocks, Dad occasionally stopping and pulling out his pocket lens to look more closely at bits that glinted, that might be a clue of what they all looked for, Dad and his brother searchers.
But up there in the Huachucas it was Mrs. Meeker, widow of an old rock-dog. She lived among a settlement of abandoned buildings, atop abandoned underground workings. Dad got to know her, did a bit of poking around down there, under the dirt, in dark and, to me, scary old tunnels of rock with rotted timbering. Sometimes I went up there with him but I don’t recall ever climbing down the ladder into the darkness.
One evening we were up there into the late afternoon when the thunderclouds popped up, white, towering cumulonimbus clouds, heavy and full of water that then emptied themselves across the mountain slopes and then moved on.
The water accumulated and rushed down the creeks, too narrow for the load, and cut the roads.
We parked on the edge. Dad watched it for a while and then first tested whether our old Plymouth station wagon could make it across by wading it. I was scared but he did it, the water raced along but it only rose to his knees. When Dad got back to the side where we had the car parked, he got in, put it in gear and we inched safely across and then drove down the mountain and home. Dad always said the best way to drive through flooded streets was slowly so as not to flood the engine.
I can’t remember ever seeing Mrs. Meeker again. I guess that Dad’s way of driving is out of date now; certainly you wouldn’t be able to get through the streets of New Orleans these days driving slowly so as not to flood the engine. Lots of things are changed, I think that you might have been able to drive through New Orleans in a flood slowly and carefully in those long ago days when the city was smaller and richer and the waters didn’t rise as high nor stay as long. I miss those days, wish we could bring them back …
In those days the Huachuca’s and some of the other mountains along the border, both sides of it actually, were still sprinkled with a few characters from earlier, freer times.
Most of those folks were independent minded and most of them were eccentric; we’d probably call them weird today. In those simpler times we didn’t even really notice the eccentricity, at least not my family. You see, Dad was one of those old-fashioned mining engineers, the type who scratched at the rocks, wherever they were, always looking for that vein, the high grade one. Those others, the loners and losers who picked around the lonely desert and mountains were members of the fraternity, maybe not educated as engineers or geologists, but co-owners of the dream. Some of my earliest memories are of Sunday morning visits by old men, every one with a story, driving battered pick-ups, inevitably with sample boxes rattling around their rusty beds. Dad and his visitors would poke around among the rocks, Dad occasionally stopping and pulling out his pocket lens to look more closely at bits that glinted, that might be a clue of what they all looked for, Dad and his brother searchers.
But up there in the Huachucas it was Mrs. Meeker, widow of an old rock-dog. She lived among a settlement of abandoned buildings, atop abandoned underground workings. Dad got to know her, did a bit of poking around down there, under the dirt, in dark and, to me, scary old tunnels of rock with rotted timbering. Sometimes I went up there with him but I don’t recall ever climbing down the ladder into the darkness.
One evening we were up there into the late afternoon when the thunderclouds popped up, white, towering cumulonimbus clouds, heavy and full of water that then emptied themselves across the mountain slopes and then moved on.
The water accumulated and rushed down the creeks, too narrow for the load, and cut the roads.
We parked on the edge. Dad watched it for a while and then first tested whether our old Plymouth station wagon could make it across by wading it. I was scared but he did it, the water raced along but it only rose to his knees. When Dad got back to the side where we had the car parked, he got in, put it in gear and we inched safely across and then drove down the mountain and home. Dad always said the best way to drive through flooded streets was slowly so as not to flood the engine.
I can’t remember ever seeing Mrs. Meeker again. I guess that Dad’s way of driving is out of date now; certainly you wouldn’t be able to get through the streets of New Orleans these days driving slowly so as not to flood the engine. Lots of things are changed, I think that you might have been able to drive through New Orleans in a flood slowly and carefully in those long ago days when the city was smaller and richer and the waters didn’t rise as high nor stay as long. I miss those days, wish we could bring them back …
01 September 2005
Is New Orleans Manila?
31 August 2005
Kansas City
So, a tornado, about 100 miles wide, blew into the Gulf Coast. It didn’t just damage, hurt New Orleans, though, it moved it, much farther than you’d think. I’ve been watching the coverage of this enormous tragedy and I’m convinced that New Orleans has been blown to the Philippines and has replaced Manila. It’s the worst of that city on the bay, guarded by Corregidor. There are places in Manila where the people scratch a miserable life above stagnant water, their lives foreshortened by disease and poverty, byproducts of human hubris, the decision, perhaps borne of necessity, to form the clay of their lives in a place that was never meant to host our biped race. Now, the pictures of the sad remnant of the Big Easy’s population, wandering dazedly in filthy, knee- or chest-high water towards I-10 and the Super Dome, make my chest hurt; they are so reminiscent of the misery I’ve witnessed in Manila that I feel I’m a decade younger and, yet, a hundred years older while I watch and empathize.
New Orleans existed, oblivious of the arrogance of lives lived in the shadows of the levees and it danced to the music of Bourbon Street, cheered on by the rich, by the oil companies, by the notion that we had tamed nature. But, we haven’t done that; nature is still our master. Will this city come back? Will we know and sooner than we may want to know.
I am amazed by what I’ve seen; is this still my wonderful, generous, developed country, the source of succor and comfort for the world? Who will care for the care-giver?
Kansas City
So, a tornado, about 100 miles wide, blew into the Gulf Coast. It didn’t just damage, hurt New Orleans, though, it moved it, much farther than you’d think. I’ve been watching the coverage of this enormous tragedy and I’m convinced that New Orleans has been blown to the Philippines and has replaced Manila. It’s the worst of that city on the bay, guarded by Corregidor. There are places in Manila where the people scratch a miserable life above stagnant water, their lives foreshortened by disease and poverty, byproducts of human hubris, the decision, perhaps borne of necessity, to form the clay of their lives in a place that was never meant to host our biped race. Now, the pictures of the sad remnant of the Big Easy’s population, wandering dazedly in filthy, knee- or chest-high water towards I-10 and the Super Dome, make my chest hurt; they are so reminiscent of the misery I’ve witnessed in Manila that I feel I’m a decade younger and, yet, a hundred years older while I watch and empathize.
New Orleans existed, oblivious of the arrogance of lives lived in the shadows of the levees and it danced to the music of Bourbon Street, cheered on by the rich, by the oil companies, by the notion that we had tamed nature. But, we haven’t done that; nature is still our master. Will this city come back? Will we know and sooner than we may want to know.
I am amazed by what I’ve seen; is this still my wonderful, generous, developed country, the source of succor and comfort for the world? Who will care for the care-giver?
28 August 2005
Weather/Whether
25 August 2005
en route: Kansas City to Los Angeles
Another flight, half-way across the continent, a little bumpiness as we rose through the morning rains across eastern Kansas and, now, smoother air as we glide through clear skies across the Great Plains and the Front Range of the Rockies.
Just a few days ago we drove back to Kansas City after a week’s holiday in Santa Fe. Over two days we climbed up past Taos on US 64, across the alpine valley at the foot of Angel Fire and down through Cimarron to Raton. We turned north, following the railway pass between Trinidad and Raton. In the former we gassed up and I chatted with a couple of older ladies at the Welcome Center. I had heard Trinidad’s winter weather described as bitterly cold but was informed that was wrong – there were days when the temperature did hit zero (Fahrenheit) but it wasn’t that cold, not like, say, Leadville where one of them had grown up. Summers had been tough in recent years; there were several days when the mercury passed 100. Leadville, on the other hand, was terrific in summer; only rarely was it as hot as 80.
We slept at Colorado Springs where the air was as clear as I can ever recall. The evening was bright and bracing and my blood ran faster. The next morning we rose feeling strong and hungry.
Why does weather so fascinate me? It’s been something that I’ve followed as avidly as some people do a sports team. On my home page I first look at the weather for key locations: Kansas City, Santa Fe, Worcester (England) and more exotic locales (Antantarivo, General Santos, Istanbul, Dacca). My real search has always been for places away from heat. I grew up in Sonora where the summers were dreadful and not much better when we moved to Arizona. I know, it’s a dry heat but at 110 degrees, it doesn’t much matter, it’s simply hot!
Later I suffered through humid, dreadful summers in Florida and sweated it out on the North Carolina coast. I was a Fulbright scholar in India and bore up under scorching hot seasons and worse monsoons (when the rain passed, the heat was some of the most oppressive I’ve ever experienced).
I recall, as a Boy Scout, the incredible feeling of cool air on summer camp outs in the Arizona Mountains. I remember traveling up into the Chiracahua Mountains one Easter, leaving the warmth of the Sulphur Springs Valley below to climb up into the meadows of Barfoot Park at about 8000 feet where paper thin ice lay over the slow trickle of water from an alpine spring, even covering the furry leaves of the rabbit tobacco and the smoother ones of the bitter skunk cabbage. We were alone up there that morning – I cooked eggs and bacon on a limp gas fire, the eggs ran and the bacon was, I’m being kind, ‘rare’. I can still feel the cold, crisp air of that morning.
So, I check the weather of places where there is relief from heat; mostly they are high, perched over the baking lowlands: Taif in the western mountains of Saudi Arabia, Navada Cerrada above Madrid in mid-summer, the central highlands of Madagascar, Mount Lemmon above Tucson and anywhere in the Italian or Swiss Alps while Milan bakes from mid July to late August.
Even where the escape is not by climbing but towards the sea, I am fascinated. The Freemantle Doctor mesmerized me, the wind reversing each afternoon, dropping its heat over the waves of the Indian Ocean and making Perth afternoons bearable, and there is a drop of as much as 30 degrees or more on many summer days between the Valley and thin coast littoral at Redondo Beach.
Weather is another way to travel. I escaped the Gangetic Plain some 30 years ago by climbing up to Rani Khet, rimmed by the Himalayas. We stayed at the Westview Hotel where the Manager typed up the menu each morning (we were the only guests) and where we sipped at our bed tea while we waited for the wood fired boiler to heat the water for our morning baths. Another summer I tasted forbidden love at a cabin on a golf course just outside Simla. I reveled in the slight cooling that January brings to Manila and Bangladesh. Another time, again in the Philippines, Baguio provided surcease from the broiling lowlands: damp, heavy air and the deeper green of the rain-belt mountains. We drove through the shuttered remnants of Camp John Hay, weird relics of the American presence where the sailors and airmen of Subic and Clark (and their dependents) would recreate a semblance of an Appalachian or Rocky Mountain holiday.
My love and I stayed on the slopes of Ali Shan in central Taiwan and there we watched the ‘qi’ rise from below where it hid the lower world. We rose at dawn and went with other tourists to the top of the mountain to watch the sunrise. The next day we crossed a high pass (Hohuan Shan), bought peaches at a roadside stand in one high valley and slept above Taichung at Kukuan next to a cold stream in a hotel where the hot water was piped directly from the volcanic spring. As strong as these mystical memories is that of me showing off and losing my glasses in the river when I tried to fling an apple core across the water and, later, on the bus into town when she bought dried squid and had to jump off at the first stop to visit the nearest facility, a whiffy spot that I think I can still smell. That night, glasses restored, we rode back up, fetched the car and drove back to Taichung where we amused ourselves at a hotel where our room featured a round bed and a mirror on the ceiling.
en route: Kansas City to Los Angeles
Another flight, half-way across the continent, a little bumpiness as we rose through the morning rains across eastern Kansas and, now, smoother air as we glide through clear skies across the Great Plains and the Front Range of the Rockies.
Just a few days ago we drove back to Kansas City after a week’s holiday in Santa Fe. Over two days we climbed up past Taos on US 64, across the alpine valley at the foot of Angel Fire and down through Cimarron to Raton. We turned north, following the railway pass between Trinidad and Raton. In the former we gassed up and I chatted with a couple of older ladies at the Welcome Center. I had heard Trinidad’s winter weather described as bitterly cold but was informed that was wrong – there were days when the temperature did hit zero (Fahrenheit) but it wasn’t that cold, not like, say, Leadville where one of them had grown up. Summers had been tough in recent years; there were several days when the mercury passed 100. Leadville, on the other hand, was terrific in summer; only rarely was it as hot as 80.
We slept at Colorado Springs where the air was as clear as I can ever recall. The evening was bright and bracing and my blood ran faster. The next morning we rose feeling strong and hungry.
Why does weather so fascinate me? It’s been something that I’ve followed as avidly as some people do a sports team. On my home page I first look at the weather for key locations: Kansas City, Santa Fe, Worcester (England) and more exotic locales (Antantarivo, General Santos, Istanbul, Dacca). My real search has always been for places away from heat. I grew up in Sonora where the summers were dreadful and not much better when we moved to Arizona. I know, it’s a dry heat but at 110 degrees, it doesn’t much matter, it’s simply hot!
Later I suffered through humid, dreadful summers in Florida and sweated it out on the North Carolina coast. I was a Fulbright scholar in India and bore up under scorching hot seasons and worse monsoons (when the rain passed, the heat was some of the most oppressive I’ve ever experienced).
I recall, as a Boy Scout, the incredible feeling of cool air on summer camp outs in the Arizona Mountains. I remember traveling up into the Chiracahua Mountains one Easter, leaving the warmth of the Sulphur Springs Valley below to climb up into the meadows of Barfoot Park at about 8000 feet where paper thin ice lay over the slow trickle of water from an alpine spring, even covering the furry leaves of the rabbit tobacco and the smoother ones of the bitter skunk cabbage. We were alone up there that morning – I cooked eggs and bacon on a limp gas fire, the eggs ran and the bacon was, I’m being kind, ‘rare’. I can still feel the cold, crisp air of that morning.
So, I check the weather of places where there is relief from heat; mostly they are high, perched over the baking lowlands: Taif in the western mountains of Saudi Arabia, Navada Cerrada above Madrid in mid-summer, the central highlands of Madagascar, Mount Lemmon above Tucson and anywhere in the Italian or Swiss Alps while Milan bakes from mid July to late August.
Even where the escape is not by climbing but towards the sea, I am fascinated. The Freemantle Doctor mesmerized me, the wind reversing each afternoon, dropping its heat over the waves of the Indian Ocean and making Perth afternoons bearable, and there is a drop of as much as 30 degrees or more on many summer days between the Valley and thin coast littoral at Redondo Beach.
Weather is another way to travel. I escaped the Gangetic Plain some 30 years ago by climbing up to Rani Khet, rimmed by the Himalayas. We stayed at the Westview Hotel where the Manager typed up the menu each morning (we were the only guests) and where we sipped at our bed tea while we waited for the wood fired boiler to heat the water for our morning baths. Another summer I tasted forbidden love at a cabin on a golf course just outside Simla. I reveled in the slight cooling that January brings to Manila and Bangladesh. Another time, again in the Philippines, Baguio provided surcease from the broiling lowlands: damp, heavy air and the deeper green of the rain-belt mountains. We drove through the shuttered remnants of Camp John Hay, weird relics of the American presence where the sailors and airmen of Subic and Clark (and their dependents) would recreate a semblance of an Appalachian or Rocky Mountain holiday.
My love and I stayed on the slopes of Ali Shan in central Taiwan and there we watched the ‘qi’ rise from below where it hid the lower world. We rose at dawn and went with other tourists to the top of the mountain to watch the sunrise. The next day we crossed a high pass (Hohuan Shan), bought peaches at a roadside stand in one high valley and slept above Taichung at Kukuan next to a cold stream in a hotel where the hot water was piped directly from the volcanic spring. As strong as these mystical memories is that of me showing off and losing my glasses in the river when I tried to fling an apple core across the water and, later, on the bus into town when she bought dried squid and had to jump off at the first stop to visit the nearest facility, a whiffy spot that I think I can still smell. That night, glasses restored, we rode back up, fetched the car and drove back to Taichung where we amused ourselves at a hotel where our room featured a round bed and a mirror on the ceiling.
28 June 2005
We are the United State of America, aren't we?
It can't be the United States of Petroleum Interests, can it? Is this what I want to be associated with? Is this what I want the land of my fathers to be?
What's happened to compassion, a sense of service, sharing?
We will rebuild this country and the values that matter but I guess we're going to have to do it -- as my partner says -- a block at a time! How sad!
Kansas City is a bit of light in this dark room. A tradition of giving and a sense of public spaces and their value!
What's happened to compassion, a sense of service, sharing?
We will rebuild this country and the values that matter but I guess we're going to have to do it -- as my partner says -- a block at a time! How sad!
Kansas City is a bit of light in this dark room. A tradition of giving and a sense of public spaces and their value!
26 May 2005
24 May 2005, on a plane from Albuquerque to Los Angeles
Not a perfect world, but a better one …
In the better world, belief would be honored but not sacrosanct. Religion would be seen for the good that it does, the positive values it imparts and the discipline it teaches, the paths that it opens for people to live out constructive, contributive lives. Religion would be respected but not sacrosanct because of the emotional element it introduces into all consideration of the human condition. In the better world we would recognize particularly that the faiths born in the Middle East – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – all promote a level of emotionalism that is frequently irrational and often dangerous. Intolerance and ignorance mixed with injustice perceived (or suffered) can make people fly airplanes into buildings. It can make people immolate themselves in religious communes in Waco, Texas and it stops dialogue and honest inquiry. In some faiths the religious canon is open ended and can, therefore, change and adapt to different times, places and cultures. It’s difficult to think how a considered position on a contemporary issue can be derived from a closed canon that is a thousand or more years old. We can’t necessarily rely on ancient emotional diatribes to determine how we ought to run our governments, whether we ought to emancipate our women or what we ought to teach our children about how the universe was made and how we got here. Too often canons are dissected to serve emotion but, equally, apologists often strain to contextualize passages that are, in fact, nothing but antediluvian intolerance. Religious values that support the better world should be honored and there is nothing wrong with them but those that work against it ought to be shunned. Religion in the better world is personal and familial, it is not social – don’t be ashamed of it but don’t push it, be humble and diligent and focused and, if they want, they will come. Don’t support the broadcast rantings of a con man who is taking up valuable air time that could be better used by letting us follow the progress of our favorite baseball team or a rebroadcast of ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
You know, it’s interesting that I cannot recall ever having read of a war declared in the name of Buddha and certainly ‘Aristotle’ has not been a rallying cry for warriors going into battle. Even the memory of Socrates’ death stirs not the emotions but regret in the face of intolerance and a determination to work for a better world where honest, penetrating inquiry about all aspects of the human condition is not only accepted, it is encouraged. Debate must be honest, respectful and positive.
But a better world does not mean that we do not recognize that certain affirming values are superior. If we don’t do that, we end up wearing Birkenstocks, unwashed and marginalized. I’ve seen that and, no thanks, no more! Equally, I’m not going to honor the person who eats all processed food, feeds their children Coca Cola, spends Sunday waving their arms and speaking in tongues, believes, without rational thought, that the Government is a left-wing conspiracy and, in ten years, hasn’t read a book whose cover didn’t feature a ripped bodice. I believe in the great middle, somewhere therein lies the basis of the better world.
In the better world, belief would be honored but not sacrosanct. Religion would be seen for the good that it does, the positive values it imparts and the discipline it teaches, the paths that it opens for people to live out constructive, contributive lives. Religion would be respected but not sacrosanct because of the emotional element it introduces into all consideration of the human condition. In the better world we would recognize particularly that the faiths born in the Middle East – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – all promote a level of emotionalism that is frequently irrational and often dangerous. Intolerance and ignorance mixed with injustice perceived (or suffered) can make people fly airplanes into buildings. It can make people immolate themselves in religious communes in Waco, Texas and it stops dialogue and honest inquiry. In some faiths the religious canon is open ended and can, therefore, change and adapt to different times, places and cultures. It’s difficult to think how a considered position on a contemporary issue can be derived from a closed canon that is a thousand or more years old. We can’t necessarily rely on ancient emotional diatribes to determine how we ought to run our governments, whether we ought to emancipate our women or what we ought to teach our children about how the universe was made and how we got here. Too often canons are dissected to serve emotion but, equally, apologists often strain to contextualize passages that are, in fact, nothing but antediluvian intolerance. Religious values that support the better world should be honored and there is nothing wrong with them but those that work against it ought to be shunned. Religion in the better world is personal and familial, it is not social – don’t be ashamed of it but don’t push it, be humble and diligent and focused and, if they want, they will come. Don’t support the broadcast rantings of a con man who is taking up valuable air time that could be better used by letting us follow the progress of our favorite baseball team or a rebroadcast of ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
You know, it’s interesting that I cannot recall ever having read of a war declared in the name of Buddha and certainly ‘Aristotle’ has not been a rallying cry for warriors going into battle. Even the memory of Socrates’ death stirs not the emotions but regret in the face of intolerance and a determination to work for a better world where honest, penetrating inquiry about all aspects of the human condition is not only accepted, it is encouraged. Debate must be honest, respectful and positive.
But a better world does not mean that we do not recognize that certain affirming values are superior. If we don’t do that, we end up wearing Birkenstocks, unwashed and marginalized. I’ve seen that and, no thanks, no more! Equally, I’m not going to honor the person who eats all processed food, feeds their children Coca Cola, spends Sunday waving their arms and speaking in tongues, believes, without rational thought, that the Government is a left-wing conspiracy and, in ten years, hasn’t read a book whose cover didn’t feature a ripped bodice. I believe in the great middle, somewhere therein lies the basis of the better world.
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