tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90582795278014206272024-03-05T20:34:32.469-08:00NowNow or NeverUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-71947597032296131822019-09-25T00:56:00.001-07:002019-09-25T00:58:48.866-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>A Brief Anthology of Songs that Stopped Making Sense </b><b><span style="font-size: large;">Long Before </span></b></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"Stop Making Sense"</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Boop boop diten datem whatem choo</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Boop boop diten datem whatem choo</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Boop boop diten datem whatem choo</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">-- Three Little Fishes, Josephine Carringer and Bernice Idins</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Walla walla, bing bang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Walla walla bing bang...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">-- Witch Doctor, Ross Bagdasarian Sr., aka David Seville</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Sitting on a corn flake</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Waiting for the van to come</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Man you've been a naughty boy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">You let your face grow long</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">-- I am the Walrus, John Lennon, Paul McCartney</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Having a 2 year old at 65 takes you into downscale neighborhoods of recorded music that you have not visited in a long time, maybe ever. Such has been my entirely pleasant experience. I'd say it's been a trip down Memory Lane if I had any memory. Instead I have Google, which has rendered a mother lode of nonsense songs from the last century -- the stuff my toddler is enchanted by. I also tapped what remains of the brains of old chromosome-damaged friends and recent acquaintances. Turns out they are full of nonsense and had many good suggestions for nonsense songs I might try to make sense of. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Why, I wonder, after the mega-hits have faded along with the stars who performed them, do nonsense songs still have legs, they endure for decades and never seem to lose their usefulness, which is what exactly? What are they good for? Why do we keep them around? Why do they retain their popularity with youngsters as well as adults? What is the multi-generational appeal of these absurd vocalizations? In my case, it enables me and my son, Mukisa, to bridge a 63 year gap with silliness, nonlinearity and a reason to dance together (not that we need one). These songs are a terrific means of multi-generational merging, loud, often melodic, play at its best and most entertaining. For example:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">JABBERWOCKY</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">One of the first in recent times, and still one of the best, is the exquisitely nonsensical Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll from his splendid and surreal 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. As you will recall, it starts like this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Twas brillig, and the slithy toves</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">All mimsy were the borogoves</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And the mome raths outgrabe</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The frumious Bandersnatch!'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">He took his vorpal sword in hand:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Long time the manxome foe he sought-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">So rested he by the Tumtum tree</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And stood awhile in thought</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Jabberwocky then goes on for another four stanzas, demonstrating what Beowulf might have been if written by Beatrix Potter while on psilocybin. I love the atmosphere of menace and terror Carroll concocts with words of his own invention: the frumious Bandersnatch, the Jubjub bird, and later, The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! The horror, the horror. Later others set Jabberwocky to music, among them, believe it or don't, Donovan and the University of Utah Singers: Jabberwocky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnkumgf5qVw</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">THREE LITTLE FISHIES</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">About 1939 one of the great classics of the nonsense genre was born, Three Little Fishies. If your mother didn't sing it to you as a child you were deprived. The song, which tells of three little fish who disobey their mama and live to regret it, goes like this: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Down in the meadow in a </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">little bitty pool</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Swam three little fishies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And a mama fishie too</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">"Swim," said the mama fishie,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">"Swim if you can."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And they swam and they swam all</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">over the dam</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Boop boop diten datem whatem choo</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Boop boop diten datem whatem choo</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Boop boop diten datem whatem choo</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And they swam and they swam </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">right over the dam</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">"Stop!" cried the mama fish,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">"Or you will get lost."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">But the three little fishies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">didn’t want to be bossed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The three little fishies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">went off on a spree, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And they swam and </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">they swam right out</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">to the sea</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The three scaley juvenile delinquents finally get back to the pool, but not before scaring the bejesus out of us and encountering a whale. (Where was the father!?) It was recorded by Kay Kyser, Glen Miller and many others, but perhaps most profoundly by that great wackjob, Spike Jones and his band The City Slickers, Three Little Fishies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE_81urwm5k) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">I AM THE WALRUS</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Perhaps no finer purveyors of nonsense have gifted us in contemporary times as Lennon & McCartney of the Beatles, and their most impressive effort (among many) must be I Am the Walrus:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Mr. City policeman sitting</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Pretty little policemen in a row</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">See how they fly like Lucy in the sky</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">See how they run</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I'm crying</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I'm crying, I'm crying, I'm crying</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Yellow matter custard</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Dripping from a dead dog's eye</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Boy, you've been a naughty girl</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">You let your knickers down</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">I Am the Walrus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqbZjr5PY1w</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">WTF does it mean? Still, it advances the cause of nonsense, that intellectual exercise that everyone from toddlers to elders can throw themselves into with enthusiasm, commitment, and nonlinearity.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">YOU CAN'T ROLLER SKATE IN A BUFFALO HERD</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">One of the great shaman of sense-lacking song was Roger Miller, most famous for King of the Road, a song that is too linear to make a contribution to the canon. Instead we hail him for You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd. A sampling of its finest lyrics: "Ya can't roller skate in a buffalo herd...Ya can't take a shower in a parakeet cage...Well, ya can't go a-swimmin' in a baseball pool...Ya can't change film with a kid on your back...Ya can't drive around with a tiger in your car...Ya can't go fishin' in a watermelon patch." I once ran into Miller at San Francisco Airport. I walked over, greeted him and told him I loved his work. "And I love yours," he said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6WjfuxfIiw</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">YEP-ROC HERESAY</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Now comes Slim Gaillard, the jazzified high priest of senselessness in song and his exquisite “Yep-Roc Heresay,”, the lyrics of which are almost entirely in Arabic...or maybe Armenian...or something. He's apparently singing about food: yabra (stuffed grape leaves), harisseh (a semolina dessert), kibbeh bi-siniyyeh (a dish of meat and bulgur), and lahm mishweh (grilled meat), etc. Like other songs with cryptic or impossible to understand lyrics (see Louie Louie), Gaillard's Opus Maximus was banned on several radio stations. In fact, its meaning is entirely benign unless one is offended by food. One critic, Qifa Nabki, points out that the songs title is "...a botched transliteration of the first two words of the song: 'Yabra… Harisseh…' I can’t really tell if Gaillard’s own pronunciation is wrong or whether some record company executive couldn’t figure out what he was saying." Long live Slim Gaillard (too late, he split the scene in 1991).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Yep-Roc Heresay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiGseqJH6jQ</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">THE PENIS SONG</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Naturally, Monty Python belong in the pantheon of nonsensical song, not to mention complete idiocy. One of the group's greatest contributions — R rated -- goes like this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It's swell to have a stiffy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It's divine to own a dick</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">From the tiniest little tadger</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">To the world's biggest prick</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">So, three cheers for your Willy or John Thomas</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Your Percy, or your cock</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">You can wrap it up in ribbons</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">You can slip it in your sock</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">But don't take it out in public</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Or they will stick you in the dock</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And you won't come about</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Monty Python, The Penis Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGRPFUYUUdQ</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">AND ANOTHER PENIS SONG</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Interestingly, or perhaps not (depending on what interests you), there is another Penis Song, this one by Macklemore. It is, um, long, but here is just the tip:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I wish my dick was bigger, yep, I can admit it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I'm above average on inches but I wanted damn double digits</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">If I had a big ol' cock what would I do?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I'd probably go to Florida and show it to Trina and screw</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Get butt naked and start streaking at my school</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And get arrested but at least the girls would be impressed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">With my third leg and, and then I'd go to a keg and</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Do a keg stand, get drunk and do the running man</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">With no clothes on just to show off</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Macklemore, Penis Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPCS5dBbO1Q</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Nothing like a radical change of course to keep the reader's attention, so let us leap directly from the third leg ravings of Macklemore to, well, Mary Poppins as interpreted by Julie Andrews:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">It's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Even though the sound of it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Is something quite atrocious</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">If you say it loud enough</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">You'll always sound precocious</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Because I was afraid to speak</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">When I was just a lad</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Me father gave me nose a tweak</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And told me I was bad</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">But then one day I learned a word</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">That saved me aching nose</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The biggest word you ever heard</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And this is how it goes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Oh, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Even though the sound of it ...and on and on until you run screaming from the theater or TV room.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pu1adxqUAg</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">As appealing as it is -- Andrews could never fully extract herself from its multisyllabic clutches -- one punning wag once called Mahatma Gandhi a "super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">THE CLAP CLAP SONG</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Here's a grim little ditty that takes us all to heaven. It may not be a light hearted romp, but does show you how to turn a dark hearted chant into a highly danceable singalong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Three, six, nine, the goose drank wine</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The line broke, the monkey got choked</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">They all went to heaven in a little row-boat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Clap-Pat</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Clap-Pat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Clap-Pat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Clap-Slap</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Clap-Pat: Clap your hand, pat it on your partner's hand (right hand)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Clap-Pat: Clap your hand, cross it with your left arm, pat your partner's left palm</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Clap-Pat: Clap your hand, pat your partner's right palm with your right palm again</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Clap-Slap: Clap your hands, slap your thighs, and sing a little song; go:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">My mother told me</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">If I was good-ee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">That she would buy me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">A rubber dolly</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">My aunty told her</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I kissed a soldier</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Now she won't buy me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">A rubber dolly</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">The Clap Clap Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWuSPPLtkEQ&gl=UG&hl=en-GB</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">THE WITCH DOCTOR</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Finally, the world of nonsense and blithering wackadoodleness would be a poorer place indeed without Witch Doctor, written by Ross Bagdasarian Sr. who performed as David Seville. Seville later created the voices for Alvin & the Chipmunks and in this version we hear him try out the little rodents singing abilities:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">I told the witch doctor</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I was in love with you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I told the witch doctor</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I was in love with you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And then the witch doctor</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He told me what to do</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He told me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Walla walla, bang bang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Walla walla bang bang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Ooo eee ,ooo ah ah ting tang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Walla walla ,bang bang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Walla walla bang bang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Witch Doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjrTcYMqBM</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Sigh, there are so many more greats in the Nonsensical Hall of Fame and the Idiotic Grand Ole Opry, but time and your patience require that we bring this disaster to a halt. As we do, spare a thought for Mairzy Doats:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">I know a ditty, nutty as a fruitcake </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Goofy as a goon and silly as a loon </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Some call it pretty, others call it crazy </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">But they all sing this tune: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Mairzy doats And dozy doats </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And liddle lamzy divey </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Mairzy Doats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml4TxX4psTg</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Hum a few bars of the Monster Mash:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">I was working in the lab late one night</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">When my eyes beheld an eerie sight</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">For my monster from his slab began to rise</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And suddenly to my surprise</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He did the mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He did the monster mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The monster mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It was a graveyard smash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He did the mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It caught on in a flash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He did the mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">He did the monster mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">From my laboratory in the castle east</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">To the master bedroom where the vampires feast</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The ghouls all came from their humble abodes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">To get a jolt from my electrodes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">They did the mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">They did the monster mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">The monster mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It was a graveyard smash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">They did the mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It caught on in a flash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">They did the mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">They did the monster mash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Monster Mash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxcM3nCsglA</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">And raise a glass to what may be the greatest of them all, the one and only One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eather: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Well, I saw the thing comin' out of the sky</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It had the one long horn, one big eye</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I commenced to shakin' and I said "ooh-eee"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">It looks like a purple people eater to me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Sure looks strange to me (one eye?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Well he came down to earth and he lit in a tree</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I said Mr. Purple People Eater, don't eat me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">I heard him say in a voice so gruff</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">"I wouldn't eat you 'cause you're so tough"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater: </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nEeoXS18Ww</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-52991368668343127392019-08-30T00:43:00.000-07:002019-09-25T00:54:57.333-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After Somehow</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Douglas Cruickshank</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“I have made the big decision</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm gonna try to nullify my life”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">--Lou Reed</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Maybe the story should have ended at this point, not started here. In terms of narrative arc, maybe it would have been a better, tidier tale if the heart attack had killed me. But you work with what you’ve got, right? More on that later. First, come, we go back a ways. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The time arrived — too soon, as it always does — when my star began fading. It wasn’t that bright a star to begin with, even at its peak, but I was making a living. Then I wasn’t.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Why I love Africa: </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I can’t hear myself laughing, I can hear someone else laughing.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Coming into Africa was, for me, falling into a seduction. And I’m yet to stop falling. Indeed, the longer I’ve been here, the farther I fall. It’s been a decade now — living here. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I first fell in love with the people, was seduced by their warmth, love of talk and laughing, gregariousness, charm, playfulness, creativity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I then was seduced by the natural world, the flora, the fauna, insects, birds (more species than in all of North America) in my adopted home of Uganda, now also home to my young son Mukisa, and always the home of Mukisa’s mother, Nattabi. The country has a population of more than 40 million — 48 percent below age 15; 50 percent between 15 and 65; a bit more than 2 percent 65 or older.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nowadays I arrive around midday, not midnight. In 2009 when I first glided down to Entebbe in a jetliner after 20 hours in the air — my first time in Uganda, first time in Africa — the night had been buried long and deep in darkness. I’d done a lot of traveling for years before that, traveled extensively in several developing countries, so I was prepared, I thought. But one can’t really prepare for Africa. Because Africa cannot be adequately imagined, cannot be accurately conjured. The imagination is not immense enough. For one thing we have no clue how big Africa is. We can’t picture it. The pictures we do have are wrong. The maps we’ve seen don’t show it. You can take the continental colossus of Africa, pour in Japan, China, India, Eastern Europe, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the United States, and still have room left over. That’s good, because more than a billion people live here. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That’s what initially hit me driving into Kampala that night: masses of people people people people. People everywhere. It would be true wherever I went, city, town or country, for the entire time I lived in Uganda, and it gets truer whenever I return. At roughly the size of the state of Oregon, Uganda has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. The average woman has six-plus kids.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ugandans line the roads, cram into the markets and the taxi parks and the loud all-night worship services of the evangelical churches. Upcountry and in the towns, people line up at the water taps, the pumps, the streams and ponds to fill jerrycans and socialize. If there is a more sociable race than the Ugandans, I’ve yet to meet them. Before Uganda I thought Australians were the most gregarious, friendly people on the planet. The Ugandans make them seem shy and withdrawn. Before Uganda I thought the Vietnamese, whose country I’d visited in 1994, were the sweetest, most welcoming folks on earth, now they are in second place. Ugandans are the sweetest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is something oddly intoxicating about the ferment of modern Kampala — a madly active place, sweet, sour, hilarious, heartbreaking. (“Welcome to the future,” I tell visiting friends as we first drive into the frantic, potholed Bladerunner-esque megalopolis.) People have lived on this hilly landscape adjacent to the world’s second largest lake for centuries, probably millennia, but historians — being characteristically arbitrary — place the city’s founding in the 18th century. They have a point: the name Kampala came into use about then, with the arrival of the British overlords who went on to rule the country as a protectorate until 1962 (it was never a colony). The “founding” of such a glorious amalgam, however, is a vague concept. What it really means is anyone’s guess in this place where so much history was and is made by the people whose origins are here, yet almost all of it has been recorded and interpreted by foreigners, many of whom never set foot here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The name Kampala references the native impala that used to ramble and dance in abundance in this place, though no longer. But the people, the clan, who’ve lived here for dozens of centuries remain. They are the Buganda, the largest clan in Uganda, and have, over the years, been joined by many other people from many other clans and countries, so that the city you find now is a vital, surging human ocean of Africans from across and up and down the continent, Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners, Americans and you name it. In addition to the foreign languages that have floated into Uganda since the 1500s or so, there are 52 clan languages, plus Swahili and any number of strays from nearby countries that comprise the amazing sound casserole that is heard on the streets here everyday. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After I left Kyarumba, the Rwenzori Mountain town in Western Uganda where I’d lived for nearly 3 years, I died — or came damn close. “You had about 45 minutes left,” my cardiologist told me. As it happened, I was visiting the USA at the time of the massive heart attack. If I’d been in Africa I would have had none minutes left. I’d be taking a dirt nap now. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here’s the essay I wrote afterward, called “My Excellent Heart Attack”: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Interviewer: To what do you attribute your long life?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">John Huston: Surgery.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Easter morning I woke up with an almost preternatural feeling of well being, a novel sensation. What a good sleep I'd had, I thought to myself. I dithered about the house for five or 10 minutes in that glowing cloud, then noticed a rapidly intensifying ache in my upper right arm. As its intensity and sharpness and meanness increased, it radiated across my chest, a great sunburst of agony. I then broke out in a lather, my hands were ice. The classic symptoms, I thought; I'm having a heart attack. I knew I had to stay conscious, get some clothes on, get down to Susie's house next door. The pain was, well, magnificent. I'd never felt anything like it. It was monumental.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I walked in the back door and kept walking, right out the front door. Susie was sleeping on the couch in the living-room. As I passed her I said, “Susie, I'm having a heart attack.” I walked across the driveway and got in her car. She threw on some clothes and came running out. We live in a remote location that emergency services might have a hard time finding, so she wisely drove me to the fire station two miles away. It felt like 200 miles. The two EMT's there – Matt and Will – put me on oxygen and called the ambulance that was at another firehouse. Dave and Rachel arrived in the ambulance. I was loaded in. I looked at Susie standing at the back as they began to close the doors, and I thought of doors, and then I thought of that line from “When the Music's Over,” the old Doors song: “Cancel my subscription to the resurrection.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We drove back country roads to the hospital – painfully swinging and swaying, tires screaming on the corners. In the towns, Dave flipped on the siren. Rachel gave me morphine and talked to me and was terrific in every way; she kept sending information to the hospital so they knew what was about to descend on them. Dave drove like Mario Andretti. When the crimson vehicle's back doors reopened at the hospital, there were 12 or 15 people waiting for me – the cardiac catheterization team. A young man who looked to be about 18 walked up to me: My cardiologist. He very clearly and concisely explained what was happening and what he planned to do. I was in the OR within five minutes of arriving at the hospital. I was given a sedative. They took my clothes off – cut the shirt off – put a gown on me. A long white mitten that stretched to my shoulder was slipped onto my right arm. A small hole was cut in the mitten near my palm. The doctor gave me a couple of injections of anesthetic in the right wrist. That was the most painful part of the procedure. And then he began running the angioplasty balloon and stents all the way up the arm and into the two arteries on either side of my heart – the left coronary artery and the right coronary artery. Four stents in all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One artery had three blockages. Two spots had 99 percent blockage; another had 85 percent blockage. The other artery had about 85 percent blockage in one location. The procedure took about 90 minutes or two hours, the doctor later told me. I was awake the entire time, but the sedative spaced me out, helped me lose track of how long it was taking. Once I'd had the anesthetic in my arm, there was no further pain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now, nearly two weeks later, the doctor tells me that the damage to the heart was not too bad and that I'm making a good recovery. There were some complications from the drugs I must take, but they've rejiggered my cocktail and those problems seem to have been resolved. Indeed, if you must have a heart attack – and I strongly counsel you not to – I hope you have one like mine. It was a perfect storm of everyone who helped me doing the right things and doing them quickly, competently, coolly. I was lucky to be near one of the best cardiac catheterization clinics in the country, and also very fortunate to have a cardiologist who, youthful appearance notwithstanding, is enormously capable, kind and good humored.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Many people have said to me, “That must have been so scary.” Actually, no, it wasn't at all. It never occurred to me to be scared or that I might be moments from dying. The whole episode appeared before me like a great To Do list: Don't pass out; Get clothes on; Don't slip on steps exiting cottage; Tell Susie what's happening; Get in car; and so on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've always felt very lucky to have the life I'm living. And I still do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I had to stay in the US longer than I’d planned after the heart surgery; doctor didn’t want me flying right away. And when I was finally able to return to Uganda, my desire for future visits to the US diminished considerably. I did go back a few times but my connection to the place faded and many friendships there also faded. Now, 6 years later, I’m in touch with only a very few US friends on a regular basis.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the other hand, being back in Uganda was downright incandescent. It was authentically thrilling and, hyperbole aside, it as the beginning of the rest of my life, a very unexpected third act. Everything was heightened and sweeter — colors, tastes, smell, touch, sounds… Africa is dramatically beautiful to begin with. Now it was more so. The people are sweet and gregarious. Now they were more so. It was life tuned up to 11. My creative ambitions, always strong, became even stronger, more focused. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As I write this in late 2019, I’ve been here a bit more than a decade. I’m married to a Ugandan woman and we have a 3 year old son, Mukisa. The name mens “blessing” in Luganda the language most widely spoken here, though there are 52 indignous languages. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At 3, Mukisa already speaks English, Luganda and Swahili. At 65 I still struggle with English and can understand smidgins of Luganda, Swahili and Lukonzo, the language spoken in the Rwenzori Mountains region where I first lived when I came to Uganda. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since leaving the Rwenzoris, I’ve lived in Kampala, a city of 1.6 million with 50 million potholes. Our home is in the Kisaasi neighborhood, which looks and feels like a small town. There are many large trees, often filled with monkeys and exotic looking birds. Mukisa is especially fond of the noisiest one, the iridescent green ibis. There are more species of birds in Uganda (a country the size of Oregon) than in all of North America — Canada, USA, Mexico. They are extravagantly beautiful and some are passing strange in behavior and appearance — such as the immense shoebill stork. Indeed, there is a very sociable shoebill at the Entebbe Zoo. Given half a chance he’ll be happy to jump onto your shoulder. He is the size of a large eagle and has the unlikely name of Sushi. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The interaction of humans and fauna in Africa is problematic. There are the charismatic mega-fauna — elephants, hippos, gorillas, giraffes, etc. — with a clear tourism appeal; it costs $600 to spend an hour in the presence of a gorilla. Then there are the domestic animals — cattle, goats, sheep, which are treated poorly often brutally. Poverty drives both behaviors, and of course poaching is also a result of severe economic hardship. A single rhino horn fetches $75,000 n the black market. However, what few in the West understand is that there is a vast and growing middle class in much of Africa. And many African societies are significantly improving for many citizens. The changes are generational and substantial. Women, for example, are seen more and more in leadership roles in business and politics, and great emphasis is put on education for the “girl child.” Even up country women are beginning to get their due as there is a considerable push to put property in both the husband’s and wife's names.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">According to Harper’s Index, African immigrants have the highest educational accomplishment of any foreigners relocating to the USA. This is good and bad. Good for a growing high quality workforce in the US; bad for Africa, which needs its skilled professionals to stay on the continent and contribute to its development. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In Uganda, though there is much still to be done, infrastructure development in recent years has been extensive. Just in the decade I’ve lived here power outages have reduced dramatically, and major upcountry highways are the equal of those anywhere in the world, and tourism facilities are world class. What’s more even affordable hotels are clean, safe and comfortable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The greatest, most dramatic change in my life in the last decade was not moving from urban California to a small village in Africa (though it certainly had its surprises), but having my first child, a son, at 62. Mukisa, “blessing” in the Luganda language is, all bias aside, the most charming, funny, handsome, intelligent boy I’ve ever known. He comes up with the most surprising remarks. Driving through town the other day he reassured me that “If there’s a fish in the road, I’ll push it out of the way.” What a comfort! And the other morning as I was leaving he advised me, “Daddy, if you're around crocodiles, be careful.” Noted. At 3, he speaks three languages — Luganda, English and Swahili — though I don’t believe he knows they are distinct languages. Once, he came running to me: "Daddy, Sunny pushed me!" "Did you push him first?" "No, I bit him first."5 demerits for bad behavior; 5 credits for honesty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He is the light of my life, His sweet voice calling me “Daddy” or “Papa” is intoxicating, and when he climbs into bed with me at night and says, “Snuggle me,” I’m transported. He already knows he is special by virtue of being an African, or as we call him, “a Halfrican.” He deeply identifies with animals. When I tell him he’s a good boy, he says, “I’m not a boy I’m a crocodile, or a kangaroo, or a monkey. I love it. He recently informed me that lions eat snakes. He’s really into snakes. He has a very active imagination and is always telling us fantastic things. This morning he said that cape buffalo use big pencils and when they run they hold the pencils in their mouths, which is dangerous. A school warning no doubt but with the addition of wildlife. Then, as we were walking outside today looking at the monks in the trees, he was worried that the monkeys were going to eat us. He said if they tried to eat us he’d save me. “Thanks,” I replied. “You're welcome,” he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was never a stickler for manners, and I’m still not, but I do like that Mukisa regularly says please, thank you, and you’re welcome. And when he wants to get by and my chair is blocking him, he says, “Please, may I pass.” He’s a classy little guy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The other day a muzungu guy walked by and Muki said, “There’s my father.” “Then who am I?” I said. “You’re my daddy,” he replied. Then he pointed to a Ugandan man and yelled, “Uncle!” and ran over and hugged him. The man was totally charmed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have two meditation periods each day — the morning one accompanied by sweet tea; and the evening one with a generous helping of Bond 7 whisky, from Mumbai. I think about the past and the future; cogitate on what will become of Mukisa and the Africa he will inhabit in the decades to come, and what will become of me and his mother. I’m now 65 and wonder how much of Muki’s life I will get to see. It’s conceivable I could live another 30 years or so, though maybe not likely. Typically, my people live into their 80s at best. My father passed away at 84; my mother at the age of 69 after her second heart attack. I’ve already had one. Gulp. The answer is to savor every moment with Muki, spend as much time with him as possible — laugh, play, eat, ramble, go to the jungle and the savanna as often as we can.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most mornings I wake up before the monkeys, struggle to find the opening in the mosquito net, wander out to the front balcony and read the news or reply to emails as the sky lights up. By 7:00, the sun is peeking through the palms and the mango trees, and Honesty and Basharat are opening their small shops across the road. The packed matatus are bouncing down the road toward downtown, taking people to work; the boda-bodas are revving their engines and hustling suicidal rides through the rush hour traffic to everyone who walks by; some brave souls accept their offer, pay for the privilege even. Then Mukisa toddles out, settles in my lap, helps me eat my eggs, yells at the chickens three floors below us. And the monkeys show up to entertain their biggest fan.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We live in Kisaasi, a country-town-like neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda. It is lush with trees and domestic and wild animals. The bird life is especially rich and loud. The ibises, for example, don't seem to be able to fly without squawking loudly; they wait until they're cruising past about 5 feet away from us then let out an ear-splitting, guttural shriek that makes Muki jump about 6 inches and nearly gives me a second heart attack. Then there are the turacos which come in an elegant palette that ranges from warm grey to royal blue to deep black with red highlights. They are exquisite and have one of the odder calls, sort of a low gurgle that morphs into a deep bass coo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mukisa climbs on and off the stool next to me 5 or 6 times -- it's his most recently acquired talent -- falling only three or four times. I catch him most of those times, but he invariably knocks his curly-haired head at least once on the hard tile and we have a good cry. I hold him and comfort him and he then penguin walks back into the house to wake up mama. We try to tell him "No" as little as possible. He can touch most everything in the house, carry it around, try to make it work. The only restrictions are those things that might hurt him. Inconveniencing me is not his problem; he is not in my hurry; figuring out how and why the world works is his job. Mine is to make sure his discoveries happen in safety, and without destroying (or dropping from our third story balcony) expensive electronic devices that me and his mother must stare into throughout the day -- to service our addictions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Once Mama Ruth wakes up, there is an hour or so of play and silliness. She can get Mukisa laughing harder than anyone can. He finds her to be very, very funny. So do I. They are still lounging in bed, Muki nursing, while I cook myself breakfast. There is some very good bread here -- whole wheat, crusty, and slathered with seeds. We eat a couple of loaves a week. I always cook breakfast for myself, Mama, Muki and nanny Sophie. First I melt a big chunk of margarine in the skillet, then I put in two slices of the luscious bread, which I've torn holes in. I break an egg into each hole, add pepper and salt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I then shave, shower, put myself together and go off to Cafeserrie to work, drink coffee and observe the wildlife, especially the old white guys with the hot young black women, an abundant pairing here. As a member of that demographic -- the white geezer component -- I find those couples fascinating. There are a good number of them in Kampala (and in other African cities, no doubt), and most people's prevailing assumption is that the men are in it for sex and the young women are in it for money. That was my initial assumption too, but then I started closely observing these relationships, got to know some of the couples, and became involved in such a love affair myself. They are not what they seem. The initial attraction may be centered around sex and money, but as time passes and the two become real, fully dimensional people to each other -- vulnerable, fun, loving, lonely, giving, taking -- they connect on a sweet and deep level. They talk, get to know and appreciate one another. They fall in love, and in like (the more important of the two in my opinion). In many cases, after a time, you see them with children, babies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is one guy, an American, I see at Cafeserrie regularly. He is maybe 10 years older than I am. He comes in with a mixed race boy of 5 or 6 years old. They have lunch, laugh, talk. Sometimes they are joined by the boy's mother. She's very dark-skinned, must be from Northern Uganda or Sudan. The three are happy together, relaxed, caring. The man -- who I've chatted with a little, showed him photos of my son -- is helping the young woman finish university and raise her son. He is a retired construction company owner. He told me he and his wife never had children. After she died 4 years ago, he decided to come to Africa. He'd never been here before and, like me, was immediately smitten with the place and the people. He returned home long enough to sell all his belongings. He came back here and has never returned to the U.S. It's is a plotline that you come across often here. I'm living it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I feel fortunate that I'm at a point in life where I can spend so much time with my boy. And Nattabi is similarly fortunate: We spend many hours everyday with Mukisa, take him most everywhere with us (he's very social, at ease around people, charming, curious). He is especially fond of men and we have several friends who have had close friendships with him since he was an infant. One of our best friends, Rashid, comes by about once a week to take Muki out for 6-7 hours. He takes him to the mall, to antique car shows, out to eat with his friends. Muki adores him and Rashid dotes on Muki; it's a rich association for both of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We are so lucky that we all stumbled into each other -- Nattabi in the middle of her life, me in the final quarter (which is turning out to be the happiest) and Mukisa at the beginning of his. All three of us are healthy, happy and looking forward to the future. We have a nice place to live (no extra charge for monkeys), plenty to eat, we sleep well, we go for walks, our work and various projects are going well. Mukisa likes to laugh and thinks his mama is very very funny. He laughs politely at my jokes. He enjoys it when Nattabi and I dance and act like big fools, which is often. He is walking, running, jumping and climbing all over everything. Nattabi's most spoken and most ignored phrase, "Muki! You are going to fall!" He enjoys being read to and Nattabi (more often than me I'm ashamed to admit) reads at least one book a day to him. He loves his nanny, Sophie, and so do we. She is Muslim and when she prays Muki kneels beside her. He knows he must be quiet when she is praying, but he finds other ways to distract her. She also cooks, does laundry, cleans the house and often brings her sons over. They love playing with Muki; sometimes they all stay overnight. The boys are about 9 & 12. We sometimes take them swimming with us, always a fun day. Nattabi's tour company is picking up steam and threatening to start making real money. My work, including helping her build her travel business, is varied and satisfying, if not lucrative. We are busy in a good way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On balance, when looked at from a distance, it is, as always, the best of times and the worst of times. No matter how perfect things may seem momentarily, we are every moment reminded of the tentative, fragile nature of that perfection in our lives and the lives of all we know and don't know. Living here, where the extremes of poverty and wealth are everywhere in evidence, keeps us aware of that truth every moment of every day. We are within a day's travel of where homo sapiens began -- the Great Rift Valley, the Source Perrier of humanity Before us we see how far humanity has come in its present form, since its inception 200,000 years ago. It's no joke unless God has a particularly bent sense of humor. Just in the last few weeks we've heard of loved ones dying, having severe illnesses, losing everything in a raging wildfire. So it goes, as Vonnegut put it (repeatedly) in Slaughterhouse Five. Thank you then, or as they say in Luganda, Webale, for staying in touch. It's important to me. I believe in the art of communication; it's my religion, and my wife and son are its saints, angels. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-6122553126501157152018-08-29T00:56:00.002-07:002018-08-29T00:58:35.003-07:00Moving Money with Minimum Misery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Moving Money with Minimum Misery</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">By Douglas Cruickshank</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>The best things in life are free</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>But you can keep them for the birds and bees</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Now give me money</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>That's what I want...</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the days before the telegraph, the legendary Pony Express, during the 19 months it operated in the United States --April 1860 to October 1861 -- was the fastest way to get money, messages and other mail, from the West Coast to the East Coast: 10 days. Today, it can take my bank, Citibank, a multi-billion-dollar corporation, just a few days less to do the same thing; 3-5 business days is typical, and it can stretch to 7+. Citibank uses computers not horses, but, in my experience, its computers (it must have a jillion of them) are not much faster than 19th century horses. In other words, a Citibank funds transfer can take just half as long as moving money did in the 1860s. Not to pick on Citibank, all the big (and little) banks are just as bad. However, I'm guessing that when it moves hundreds of millions in illicit drug money for Raul Salinas, the brother of the former president of Mexico and his fellow criminals, things go a bit more quickly. (According to TaxJustice.net, Citibank's parent company "Citigroup operates in 100 countries, with $1.2 trillion in known assets [largely loans] and over $100 billion in client assets in private bank accounts." It has been convicted 17 times of illegal money laundering, usually drug money.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Back in the sphere of legal businesses, at the heart of many inventive new operations is a seemingly intractable story, overturned by a solution so simple that no one’s thought of it. Take international money transfer. It’s not a sexy venture, but it became thrilling indeed when TransferWise, an easy-to-use smartphone app, started offering peer-to-peer, worldwide money transfers at 90 percent less than conventional financial institutions.TransferWise was started by friends Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann. As their company history tells it, “Taavet worked for Skype in Estonia, so (he) was paid in euros, but lived in London. Kristo worked in London, but had a mortgage in euros back in Estonia.” Taavet needed pounds, Kristo needed Euros, but the exchange and transfer fees would take a big bite of their salaries. So each month Kristo deposited pounds into Taavet’s London bank account, and Taavet put euros into Kristo’s account. “Both got the currency they needed,”TransferWise explains, “and neither paid a cent in hidden bank fees.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Hinrikus’s and Käärmann’s singular leap in thinking questioned how the market’s dominant players had for years been operating something as wham-bam basic as currency exchange and/or transfer, while charging exorbitantly for it. TransferWise’s success highlights a weakness that disruptive businesses frequently exploit: an historical lack of innovation by an industry’s leaders, such as Citibank. Indeed, the calcified, glacial money transfers the big banks offer has created fertile ground for the innovators, creators of smartphone apps that move money with zero fees in seconds, making their profits solely on their very favorable exchange rates. Names like TransferWise, SendWave (my personal favorite for USA to Africa transfers), AfroRemit, WorldRemit, SquareCash, Venmo, and a number of others are making the financial dinosaurs eat their (gold) dust. They are simple, fast, affordable, easy to use and convenient. Not traits of which one could accuse Citibank and the other old school banks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Well, things are changing as another competitor dubbed Wave, has launched in the money transfer industry in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The service was launched in its beta form back in May, 2014, by two entrepreneurs Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk. They already have an app out for both Android and iOS devices.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As Durbin and Quirk described their proposed operation when starting: "Wave wants to offer users free and instant money transfer service directly to their mobile wallets. ...users on the platform will be able to send money as fast as they can send text messages from one mobile phone to another. Additionally the service also allows for fund transfer into East Africa’s most popular mobile money service, M-Pesa. The service will save users from having to spend as much as $10 on each transaction charged by Western Union and MoneyGram. (the appr now also uses MTN and Airtel mobile money for direct transfers.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Durbin, the CEO of Wave, says he was inspired to start Wave after the difficulties he experienced when working for an NGO in East Africa. After leaving the NGO, he teamed up with Quirk and together they founded Wave. Christin PetersonWave currently enables users to send money only to three East African countries; Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Users have the option of receiving their money through their bank issued debit cards or on M-Pesa with no fees charge and the best available rates. This is literally expected to give Western Union and MoneyGram a run for their money as the two have been accused of levying high surcharge fees and have problems with delayed payments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I've polled ex-pat friends here, mostly current Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs). Their experience with these apps has been more positive than negative. Here's what a few of them had to say:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Katharine Murphy, a PCV in Tororo, Uganda, tells me: "I’ve used WorldRemit a few times in country to send myself American money. (Backstory: my debit card never worked here and I can’t withdraw cash on my credit card, but I’ve needed some extra cash a few times. I looked into wiring money but the fees are super high. WorldRemit seemed like my best bet fees-wise; and I already had mobile money set up). When I first signed on to WorldRemit I liked them immediately. There was a customer service person (based in US, I think) who called me to confirm my identity and all that jazz, so I felt it was a nice secure service with people on the other end to help me if anything went wrong. The few times I’ve had questions, they always email me back promptly. The fees are super low, I think the exchange rates are OK (haven’t checked in a while) and the app is a breeze to use. It even has fingerprint sign-in, so I don’t have to remember yet another password. I also noticed the app had some bugs in the beginning that they’ve since smoothed out. Overall cool service, I recommend."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Karen McMillan reports, "Wave [aka SendWave] has been quite good. It's easy to use once you get your account set up. Customer support was extremely responsive, when necessary (rarely).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Christa Preston, Executive Director at EmbraceKulture in Entebbe, which serves the disabled, told me: "I used WorldRemit - worked really great for sending money to individuals - but they do not allow you to send money to NGOs, which I believe is a huge market in Uganda</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">People are definitely skirting it by sending to NGO directors and calling it "individual support" but that can have significant ramifications for the organization and World Remit in the future. Really great for sending money to individuals - but they do not allow you to send money to NGOs, which I believe is a huge market in Uganda.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">And Peace Corps volunteer, Danielle Parker, said: "I first started to look into these apps when I was home this past Xmas. I needed to send money to [her fiance] in Uganda. I downloaded both but tried SendWave first since sending money had no extra charge associated with it. They required me to submit a photo of a government issued ID, which I thought was weird, but after reading reviews it sounded like a reasonably normal thing to happen to people. I did it. And tried to send money. They basically told me my money would be sent as soon as my ID went through. Never happened.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So I started using World Remit, which I’ll talk about soon. Recently MTN Mobile Money went down for a day or two (due to something on the UG side of things). I tried SendWave again and they said I couldn’t send money until my ID was processed. I questioned why I submitted my ID in Jan and now in July(ish) my ID still had not gone through. I text customer service the problem, and they wrote back asking my email to look up the account. I sent it and no reply. I tried to inquire again and no reply. I was basically done by then because World Remit worked so well for me all the time prior. In terms of WR, I feel they are fast, reliable and have good customer service. Yes there is a fee, but I’ve only paid between 1 cent and 2 USD. If you send to MTN it goes in within a couple minutes, I always get confirmation. If I email them, they respond within a day. When money has had to be returned, it happens within 3 business days and the one time I forgot and they just credited my account anyway. My best friend loves WR. AfroRemit is also supposed to be good, as is TransferWise.If you call customer service that’s the only pitfall as you will wait about 20 minutes but when you do get through they are super helpful and nice. I know people who love SendWave too but it has always given me problems. So I go with who I trust even for the fee."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The consensus seems to be that these apps work very well with only a few hitches. A friend who recently tried to sign up for SendWave got flummoxed by all the requirements and cancelled transactions and finally gave up. There is a lot of fraud with money transfers to Africa from USA and Europe, so it makes sense that these apps are guarding their reputations by being extremely cautions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps the reason the big banks have been slow to come to this party is that few people in Africa have bank accounts, so the banks overlooked the need for such a service and how lucrative it could be. Mobile money accounts that go directly to people's telephone accounts are much more widely used here, and in other developing countries, consequently, these "disruptive" new apps are gobbling up the business that big banks initially didn't even acknowledge. That's how companies become obsolete.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-91613971955014816042018-07-28T01:40:00.002-07:002018-07-28T01:43:10.700-07:00My 10 Favorite Books -- So Far<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Any Human Heart, William Boyd</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- Any Human Heart</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“Never say you know the last word about any human heart.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- Henry James, Louisa Pallant</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">The protagonist of this magnificent, highly-readable novel, Logan Mountstuart (1906-1991), is a writer, a spy, the manager of an art gallery, and a teacher. The story follows him through much of his checkered, fascinating, intense and ultimately meaningless life, a life like many of us live, only we're usually not spies, accomplished writers, friends of Ian Fleming, thrice married, veterans of years in solitary confinement, and so on. What I admire about Boyd is that he gives us the whole man, lets us get to know him, decide for ourselves, add up his life next to our own. For Boyd (as Robbe-Grillet said of film) his works are always a multi-coded space. It's up to us to break the code; he helps by making signals through the glass.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">― God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">― God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">True and funny. Funny and true. And heartbreaking, of course, 'cause it's Kurt Vonnegut through and through.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>One Hundred Years of Solitude, </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Gabriel Garcia Marquez</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- One Hundred Years of Solitude</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Seven generations of the Buendía family, creators and (conceptually) royal family of Macondo, a utopian city in Dreamland, South America traced from 1820 to 1920. It goes from high to far beneath and takes you with it because you cannot let go. Marquez never revealed how he pulled off this sustained dance of word-magic and we are better off not knowing. There are many books, and other things, you can skip in life. This is not one of them. Even most great writers could not match this tour de force.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- Trout Fishing in America</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Trout Fishing in America has no plot really, and its protagonist/narrator is never named. Some found this disconcerting when the book was first published, and still do. In my case, I was seduced, transported and became an evangelist for Brautigan's storytelling brilliance. And he was funny, very funny, Kurt Vonnegut funny (not sure if the two ever met; Google that for me, would you? I just did; They did not). We hear of the narrator's boyhood, his trout fishing experiences, some as a boy, and his adventures as a beatnik in San Francisco. He marries, procreates, but all along it is his voice and quirky sensibility that surrounds us, carries us along with him. We go willingly, of course. Brautigan was not hung up on chronology. Throughout this winding tale his values shine through -- love, nature, freedom, humor. Why, then, did he kill himself in 1984 with a rifle he borrowed from a bartender friend? Maybe because he could never get his life and his extraordinary narratives to quite merge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Coming in to the Country, John McPhee</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“In the society as a whole,” he writes “there is an elemental need for a frontier outlet, for a pioneer place to go. People are mentioning outer space as, in this respect, all we have left. All we have left is Alaska.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- Coming into the Country</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Coming into the Country examines what Alaska was like in the 1970s using the clean, clear documentary style that McPhee excelled at; he was one of the best non-fiction stylists of his generation or any generation. This was the book that hooked me on McPhee and I went on to read everything he wrote -- he was dauntingly prolific -- until he couldn't shut up about geology, then I had to cut him loose. His portraits of people and landscape, and people in landscapes (Encounters with the Archdruid) stand as the finest written depictions of their kind to see publication. I learned so much from him about writing, and thinking -- ideas and approaches I have drawn on ever since he immersed me in the vast wilderness of The Country, the outer space of Alaska.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler is an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">― One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I knew a lot of people who knew Kesey, as I come from Merry Prankster Land, California's San Francisco Peninsula. Vik Lovell, to whom Kesey dedicated the novel ( “To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs ...” ) was my psychotherapist when I was a teenager. I met Kesey just once, when I spent a night on his Springfield, Oregon farm, a half-century ago when I was a wandering 16 year old. We walked down to the pond together and fed his geese. "Now in Thailand," he told me, " or maybe it's Malaysia, what they do to sort out the toughest babies from the not so tough ones is they throw them up on a roof. The tough ones hang on, and the not so tough ones they catch as they tumble off. Pretty good system." He was a prankster through and through, pranking his young visitor who was in awe of him (I still am). Kesey, a psychedelic redneck, high school wrestling champion, a "bull goose loony" to use his Cuckoo's Nest hero's McMurphy's term, was also a bull goose novelist. He was a man of great love, charisma, artfulness, fun and good humor. In his sphere as a teen ( I knew many of the Merry Pranksters; my sister's boyfriend in the late '60s was Roy Sebern who painted the famously misspelled "Furthur" on the front destination panel of the polychrome bus) I found him fascinating and compelling. That his novels still hold up as literature is testament to his vast talent. In Cuckoo's Nest he wrote, “But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.” That was Kesey, talking about McMurphy and talking about himself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Briefing for a Descent into Hell, Doris Lessing</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of people. They know they have to do something, they should be doing something else, not just living hand-to-mouth, putting paint on their faces and decorating their caves and playing nasty tricks on their rivals. No. They have to do something else before they die— and so the mental hospitals are full and the chemists flourishing.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">― Briefing for a Descent Into Hell</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">From the time I was 8 until I was 30, my mother regularly tried to kill herself. Consequently, she spent many months in mental hospitals, was heavily dosed with antipsychotics, such as Thorazine, and antidepressants, such as Elavil. She had many series of electroshock treatments; I recall going to visit her once when her dark brunette hair had turned completely grey in a week. Madness has fascinated me from an early age. I've written about it, researched it, lived it and read about it. I had a Jungian therapist who once who told me that my motivation for the many LSD trips I took was to stay close to my mother even when she vanished into psychosis. "The LSD experience is a model psychosis, you know," the therapist told me. "You were doing everything you could to stay close to her emotionally and intellectually, maybe even spiritually. I think you learned a thing or two about the outer limits of inner space." "Yeah," I replied. Lessing's novel centers on a man experiencing a nervous breakdown. She takes you there. He's lost at sea, he believes. His hospital keepers say he is delirious. That may or may not be true, certainly he is adrift and Lessing allows us to swim out to him. One of the dangers of trying to save a swimmer in trouble is that you may drown yourself. You don't when you read Briefing for a Descent into Hell. But you come damn close.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- Slouching Towards Bethlehem</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Slouching Towards Bethlehem is perhaps the definitive Didion book and the one that introduced me, and many others, to her razor sharp prose -- matched only by her razor sharp thoughts and ideas. A trenchant essayist and social observer, she, maybe better than any other writer of her era, limned how the counterculture was just as shallow as its nemesis, the Establishment; just as indifferent, self-centered, given to casual relationships, and flimsy rationales. “My only advantage as a reporter," she once wrote, "is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.” She shared this trait of apparent harmlessness with Oriana Fallaci, who completely took apart Henry Kissinger in an interview and he didn't even realize it at the time; he was too busy trying to charm her (later he'd call granting Fallaci the interview the most the most disastrous decision of his career). Didion also took apart, dissected, people, places and situations, cultures and counter cultures. She did it with grace, insight and emotional penetration. And her writing matched her observational skills. She knew she had a gift, and she had the energy and skill to capitalize on it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>River of Shadows: </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Eadweard Muybridge </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>and the Technological Wild West, </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Rebecca Solnit</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"His trajectory ripped through all the central stories of his time — the relationship to the natural world and the industrialization of the human world, the Indian wars, the new technologies and their impact on perception and consciousness. He is the man who split the second, as dramatic and far-reaching an action as the splitting of the atom."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Here, in River of Shadows, we have a writer whose poetic, elegant style is perfectly matched to her subject. As Brainpickings termed it: "The Annihilation of Space and Time: Rebecca Solnit on How Muybridge Froze the Flow of Existence, Shaped Visual Culture, and Changed Our Consciousness." Muybridge, an out of round genius if there ever was one, did experiments that prefigured motion pictures. By setting up a battery of still cameras with trip wires, he was able to prove that a race horse had all four feet off the ground at once -- and win Leland Stanford a bet. Later he used sequential photos to make "movies" of dancers, runners, and all manner of living creatures as part of his motion studies. The great impact that technology was then having on society was the compression and manipulation of time and space. The railroad, for example, compressed time. Suddenly a weeks long journey could shrink to hours. We are still feeling the impact, good and bad, of this single innovation. Muybridge, Solnit tells us, "In the eight years of his motion-study experiments in California... also became a father, a murderer [he killed his wife's lover], and a widower, invented a clock, patented two photographic innovations, achieved international renown as an artist and a scientist, and completed four other major photographic projects." But his greatest achievement was the capturing of time, the anticipation of motion pictures. Radically, irreversibly, the world was changing and Muybridge got it. Solnit explains it like so, “What distinguishes a technological world is that the terms of nature are obscured; one need not live quite in the present or the local.” And now that we are here, what shall we do? If Solnit can't answer that question, her book does an astonishingly good job of explaining how we got here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">“Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- Americanah</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">This novel will bite you and bite you hard, if you've got a soul, a lick of morality, of empathy, if you have experienced racism or know some who has or even just heard about it. Or if you've ever been in love. It's a story of race, love and immigration. The protagonist, a young Nigerian woman named Ifemelu, is living in Princeton New Jersey. Following a breakup with her boyfriend, she moves back to her home, Nigeria. Through the lens of Ifemelu, we first see her new life in America, her love, her work and struggles. Then we experience her return. But the subject is race, race and race. Adichie writes (in Ifemelu's voice), “The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.” Racism is as old as America and it's clearly not going away. This is as good an examination of why, how to cope, and the role(s) that love plays as has ever been put on paper. Required reading for anyone with a brain...and a heart.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Douglas Cruickshank</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Yes, this one's by me. Published in 2013, named Photography Book of the Year in 2014, and I still have a few for sale -- at a discount, shipping in the USA paid! You gotta get one, drop me a line for details -- dsc914@gmail.com</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Here is what a few critics had to say about it:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"Somehow is decidedly not arty. It has a friendly sprawl, comes on much like a let's-take-a-beer visit with a man who not only knows how to set the visuals, but also can, in a paragraph or two, reveal the singularity of the countryside about him. He lets his pictures do the walking, lets them carry us over the hills and into the vistas and down in the valleys into the heart of the Kyarumba. Since Cruickshank is a friendly old sot, he's apparently willing to talk to anyone and set it down here ... the taxi-drivers, the hotel people, the villagers, the kids, the women washing their clothes outside, carrying things on their heads, the families who gather for the weddings, the people who invite him to dinner, the Bukonzos who can't get enough of staring at this big pale gringo with the camera around his neck. -- RALPH; full review here: http://www.ralphmag.org/HP/somehow.html</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"[A] big, remarkable book... the opposite of so many Africa books I’ve seen, wry and weird and moving and startling, in ways I’d never associated with that kind of book before." -- The Rumpus; Read the entire article: http://goo.gl/YN04A4</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"He's a superb photographer and an equally evocative writer, with well defined wit and wisdom... I’ve viewed and read enough fine coffee table books to rank this one among the very best. My take away after viewing Uganda through Cruickshank’s lens is the distinct feeling now that I’ve been there, too. Peace Corps Worldwide; Read the entire article: http://goo.gl/tEbqfz</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"I was transported by this book. Partly it was the strength of the writing. It is often laugh-out-loud funny — and believe me when I tell you it takes a lot to make me laugh out loud at something I read. It is also intelligent, affectionate, wry, perceptive, occasionally poignant and often beautiful...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">-- The Chicago Tribune; Read the entire article: http://goo.gl/LgXuas</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"Although Cruickshank had traveled all over the world for pleasure and as a travel writer, he had never been to Africa let alone Uganda and barely knew anything about it except what he calls tragedy porn. "I didn't know anymore about it than what most Americans know and here's what most Americans know — gorillas, Idi Amin, ebola. And now it's the anti-gay law," says Cruickshank, who helped grow a coffee cooperative of mostly women-owned farms in Kyarumba, a village in the Rwenzori Mountains, from August 2009 to April 2012. Everything we know about Africa is wrong, he says. "All you get is the rapes, the murders, the wars. But what goes on most of the time is nothing — people getting their kids ready for school, they're getting some coffee or tea, they're working in the garden, they're fixing a roof. Their life is not a big tragedy and they don't see themselves as victims," he says. The Marin Independent Journal; Read the entire article: http://goo.gl/21eECL</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Buy a copy of Somehow: Living on Uganda Time at a discount, shipping in the USA paid! Drop me a line for details -- dsc914@gmail.com</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Entire List:</b></span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">1. Any Human Heart, William Boyd</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">5. Coming in to the Country, John McPhee</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">6. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">7. Briefing for a Descent into Hell, Doris Lessing</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">8. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">9. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, Rebecca Solnit</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">10. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">10-1/2. Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, Douglas Cruickshank</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-42698499021531037772018-07-28T01:15:00.000-07:002018-08-29T00:58:34.723-07:00Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-84551645464618976862018-07-28T01:13:00.000-07:002018-08-29T00:58:35.266-07:00My 10 Favorite Books -- So Far<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Any Human Heart, William Boyd</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- Any Human Heart</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“Never say you know the last word about any human heart.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- Henry James, Louisa Pallant</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">The protagonist of this magnificent, highly-readable novel, Logan Mountstuart (1906-1991), is a writer, a spy, the manager of an art gallery, and a teacher. The story follows him through much of his checkered, fascinating, intense and ultimately meaningless life, a life like many of us live, only we're usually not spies, accomplished writers, friends of Ian Fleming, thrice married, veterans of years in solitary confinement, and so on. What I admire about Boyd is that he gives us the whole man, lets us get to know him, decide for ourselves, add up his life next to our own. For Boyd (as Robbe-Grillet said of film) his works are always a multi-coded space. It's up to us to break the code; he helps by making signals through the glass.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">― God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">― God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">True and funny. Funny and true. And heartbreaking, of course, 'cause it's Kurt Vonnegut through and through.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">One Hundred Years of Solitude, </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Gabriel Garcia Marquez</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">"Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- One Hundred Years of Solitude</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">Seven generations of the Buendía family, creators and (conceptually) royal family of Macondo, a utopian city in Dreamland, South America traced from 1820 to 1920. It goes from high to far beneath and takes you with it because you cannot let go. Marquez never revealed how he pulled off this sustained dance of word-magic and we are better off not knowing. There are many books, and other things, you can skip in life. This is not one of them. Even most great writers could not match this tour de force.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- Trout Fishing in America</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">Trout Fishing in America has no plot really, and its protagonist/narrator is never named. Some found this disconcerting when the book was first published, and still do. In my case, I was seduced, transported and became an evangelist for Brautigan's storytelling brilliance. And he was funny, very funny, Kurt Vonnegut funny (not sure if the two ever met; Google that for me, would you? I just did; They did not). We hear of the narrator's boyhood, his trout fishing experiences, some as a boy, and his adventures as a beatnik in San Francisco. He marries, procreates, but all along it is his voice and quirky sensibility that surrounds us, carries us along with him. We go willingly, of course. Brautigan was not hung up on chronology. Throughout this winding tale his values shine through -- love, nature, freedom, humor. Why, then, did he kill himself in 1984 with a rifle he borrowed from a bartender friend? Maybe because he could never get his life and his extraordinary narratives to quite merge.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Coming in to the Country, John McPhee</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“In the society as a whole,” he writes “there is an elemental need for a frontier outlet, for a pioneer place to go. People are mentioning outer space as, in this respect, all we have left. All we have left is Alaska.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- Coming into the Country</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">Coming into the Country examines what Alaska was like in the 1970s using the clean, clear documentary style that McPhee excelled at; he was one of the best non-fiction stylists of his generation or any generation. This was the book that hooked me on McPhee and I went on to read everything he wrote -- he was dauntingly prolific -- until he couldn't shut up about geology, then I had to cut him loose. His portraits of people and landscape, and people in landscapes (Encounters with the Archdruid) stand as the finest written depictions of their kind to see publication. I learned so much from him about writing, and thinking -- ideas and approaches I have drawn on ever since he immersed me in the vast wilderness of The Country, the outer space of Alaska.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">"Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler is an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">― One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">I knew a lot of people who knew Kesey, as I come from Merry Prankster Land, California's San Francisco Peninsula. Vik Lovell, to whom Kesey dedicated the novel ( “To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs ...” ) was my psychotherapist when I was a teenager. I met Kesey just once, when I spent a night on his Springfield, Oregon farm, a half-century ago when I was a wandering 16 year old. We walked down to the pond together and fed his geese. "Now in Thailand," he told me, " or maybe it's Malaysia, what they do to sort out the toughest babies from the not so tough ones is they throw them up on a roof. The tough ones hang on, and the not so tough ones they catch as they tumble off. Pretty good system." He was a prankster through and through, pranking his young visitor who was in awe of him (I still am). Kesey, a psychedelic redneck, high school wrestling champion, a "bull goose loony" to use his Cuckoo's Nest hero's McMurphy's term, was also a bull goose novelist. He was a man of great love, charisma, artfulness, fun and good humor. In his sphere as a teen ( I knew many of the Merry Pranksters; my sister's boyfriend in the late '60s was Roy Sebern who painted the famously misspelled "Furthur" on the front destination panel of the polychrome bus) I found him fascinating and compelling. That his novels still hold up as literature is testament to his vast talent. In Cuckoo's Nest he wrote, “But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.” That was Kesey, talking about McMurphy and talking about himself.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Briefing for a Descent into Hell, Doris Lessing</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of people. They know they have to do something, they should be doing something else, not just living hand-to-mouth, putting paint on their faces and decorating their caves and playing nasty tricks on their rivals. No. They have to do something else before they die— and so the mental hospitals are full and the chemists flourishing.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">― Briefing for a Descent Into Hell</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">From the time I was 8 until I was 30, my mother regularly tried to kill herself. Consequently, she spent many months in mental hospitals, was heavily dosed with antipsychotics, such as Thorazine, and antidepressants, such as Elavil. She had many series of electroshock treatments; I recall going to visit her once when her dark brunette hair had turned completely grey in a week. Madness has fascinated me from an early age. I've written about it, researched it, lived it and read about it. I had a Jungian therapist who once who told me that my motivation for the many LSD trips I took was to stay close to my mother even when she vanished into psychosis. "The LSD experience is a model psychosis, you know," the therapist told me. "You were doing everything you could to stay close to her emotionally and intellectually, maybe even spiritually. I think you learned a thing or two about the outer limits of inner space." "Yeah," I replied. Lessing's novel centers on a man experiencing a nervous breakdown. She takes you there. He's lost at sea, he believes. His hospital keepers say he is delirious. That may or may not be true, certainly he is adrift and Lessing allows us to swim out to him. One of the dangers of trying to save a swimmer in trouble is that you may drown yourself. You don't when you read Briefing for a Descent into Hell. But you come damn close.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">"I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- Slouching Towards Bethlehem</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">Slouching Towards Bethlehem is perhaps the definitive Didion book and the one that introduced me, and many others, to her razor sharp prose -- matched only by her razor sharp thoughts and ideas. A trenchant essayist and social observer, she, maybe better than any other writer of her era, limned how the counterculture was just as shallow as its nemesis, the Establishment; just as indifferent, self-centered, given to casual relationships, and flimsy rationales. “My only advantage as a reporter," she once wrote, "is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.” She shared this trait of apparent harmlessness with Oriana Fallaci, who completely took apart Henry Kissinger in an interview and he didn't even realize it at the time; he was too busy trying to charm her (later he'd call granting Fallaci the interview the most the most disastrous decision of his career). Didion also took apart, dissected, people, places and situations, cultures and counter cultures. She did it with grace, insight and emotional penetration. And her writing matched her observational skills. She knew she had a gift, and she had the energy and skill to capitalize on it.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">River of Shadows: </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Eadweard Muybridge </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">and the Technological Wild West, </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Rebecca Solnit</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">"His trajectory ripped through all the central stories of his time — the relationship to the natural world and the industrialization of the human world, the Indian wars, the new technologies and their impact on perception and consciousness. He is the man who split the second, as dramatic and far-reaching an action as the splitting of the atom."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">Here, in River of Shadows, we have a writer whose poetic, elegant style is perfectly matched to her subject. As Brainpickings termed it: "The Annihilation of Space and Time: Rebecca Solnit on How Muybridge Froze the Flow of Existence, Shaped Visual Culture, and Changed Our Consciousness." Muybridge, an out of round genius if there ever was one, did experiments that prefigured motion pictures. By setting up a battery of still cameras with trip wires, he was able to prove that a race horse had all four feet off the ground at once -- and win Leland Stanford a bet. Later he used sequential photos to make "movies" of dancers, runners, and all manner of living creatures as part of his motion studies. The great impact that technology was then having on society was the compression and manipulation of time and space. The railroad, for example, compressed time. Suddenly a weeks long journey could shrink to hours. We are still feeling the impact, good and bad, of this single innovation. Muybridge, Solnit tells us, "In the eight years of his motion-study experiments in California... also became a father, a murderer [he killed his wife's lover], and a widower, invented a clock, patented two photographic innovations, achieved international renown as an artist and a scientist, and completed four other major photographic projects." But his greatest achievement was the capturing of time, the anticipation of motion pictures. Radically, irreversibly, the world was changing and Muybridge got it. Solnit explains it like so, “What distinguishes a technological world is that the terms of nature are obscured; one need not live quite in the present or the local.” And now that we are here, what shall we do? If Solnit can't answer that question, her book does an astonishingly good job of explaining how we got here.</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-large;">Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">“Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">-- Americanah</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: large;">This novel will bite you and bite you hard, if you've got a soul, a lick of morality, of empathy, if you have experienced racism or know some who has or even just heard about it. Or if you've ever been in love. It's a story of race, love and immigration. The protagonist, a young Nigerian woman named Ifemelu, is living in Princeton New Jersey. Following a breakup with her boyfriend, she moves back to her home, Nigeria. Through the lens of Ifemelu, we first see her new life in America, her love, her work and struggles. Then we experience her return. But the subject is race, race and race. Adichie writes (in Ifemelu's voice), “The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.” Racism is as old as America and it's clearly not going away. This is as good an examination of why, how to cope, and the role(s) that love plays as has ever been put on paper. Required reading for anyone with a brain...and a heart.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b style="background-color: white;">Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, Douglas Cruickshank</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Yes, this one's by me. Published in 2013, named Photography Book of the Year in 2014, and I still have a few for sale -- at a discount, shipping in the USA paid! You gotta get one, drop me a line for details -- dsc914@gmail.com</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Here is what a few critics had to say about it:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Somehow is decidedly not arty. It has a friendly sprawl, comes on much like a let's-take-a-beer visit with a man who not only knows how to set the visuals, but also can, in a paragraph or two, reveal the singularity of the countryside about him. He lets his pictures do the walking, lets them carry us over the hills and into the vistas and down in the valleys into the heart of the Kyarumba. Since Cruickshank is a friendly old sot, he's apparently willing to talk to anyone and set it down here ... the taxi-drivers, the hotel people, the villagers, the kids, the women washing their clothes outside, carrying things on their heads, the families who gather for the weddings, the people who invite him to dinner, the Bukonzos who can't get enough of staring at this big pale gringo with the camera around his neck. -- RALPH; full review here: <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ralphmag.org%2FHP%2Fsomehow.html&h=AT3jzD-1UxyiPl02oiuZx-m4bQXEIJXN3P4K4R6Ns895qTv-YAqySBwwU2Sk_TXfZ68SWpDe4xLQBJ2RwP4d8yCsLU-pXK5_enBmyjq1jifp_sxyn1mWTbwLMIWOg__10CO-XQckeIsMkSLdE5rzFQ" rel="noopener nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://www.ralphmag.org/HP/somehow.html</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">"[A] big, remarkable book... the opposite of so many Africa books I’ve seen, wry and weird and moving and startling, in ways I’d never associated with that kind of book before." -- The Rumpus; Read the entire article: <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2FYN04A4&h=AT3vKvJENxWgulXl0HdXVS9K69Mo6lQHUCq-6For3aoRFlenI_V43fpI57fZkhpAL4TJqxZjP5ltQHZIf0hZrt8r8HULi5Uk6y7tsnynzNhKywYNZdK39qI2xKT3nARGM0whqEw5TmQ4nQacxO4ZJQ" rel="noopener nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/YN04A4</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">"He's a superb photographer and an equally evocative writer, with well defined wit and wisdom... I’ve viewed and read enough fine coffee table books to rank this one among the very best. My take away after viewing Uganda through Cruickshank’s lens is the distinct feeling now that I’ve been there, too. Peace Corps Worldwide; Read the entire article: <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2FtEbqfz&h=AT35nodnO9Qrnk1ZwD1Z5M4xIwU1BXNW0rcY0CNr_IYO_QeTG7faLBy6PiQJnea9WtE6UBGslPRzR37ycJuTEFiOHcmXlenB1wtWmEslXd9ufjn1PERIktQW0gXwLbotcUmxo4InLezI6wAZo66UAg" rel="noopener nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/tEbqfz</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">"I was transported by this book. Partly it was the strength of the writing. It is often laugh-out-loud funny — and believe me when I tell you it takes a lot to make me laugh out loud at something I read. It is also intelligent, affectionate, wry, perceptive, occasionally poignant and often beautiful...<br />-- The Chicago Tribune; Read the entire article: <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2FLgXuas&h=AT3z1enRlbdwuGaFuN2evgpN8QrQtijtvPFtwdMEdb7WASlblf0dylUT18_wZ88PlzRCqGm8f8PP5RueXw6D8Cu7_1m2ViQtVmGcFlY1ZgzexmR4-oqTT106OAU69NV0Yu1yGXiLJgnZqWlJLLdUuQ" rel="noopener nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/LgXuas</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">"Although Cruickshank had traveled all over the world for pleasure and as a travel writer, he had never been to Africa let alone Uganda and barely knew anything about it except what he calls tragedy porn. "I didn't know anymore about it than what most Americans know and here's what most Americans know — gorillas, Idi Amin, ebola. And now it's the anti-gay law," says Cruickshank, who helped grow a coffee cooperative of mostly women-owned farms in Kyarumba, a village in the Rwenzori Mountains, from August 2009 to April 2012. Everything we know about Africa is wrong, he says. "All you get is the rapes, the murders, the wars. But what goes on most of the time is nothing — people getting their kids ready for school, they're getting some coffee or tea, they're working in the garden, they're fixing a roof. Their life is not a big tragedy and they don't see themselves as victims," he says. The Marin Independent Journal; Read the entire article: <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgoo.gl%2F21eECL&h=AT1BMowESI8XdMR6C2SQvQS1b2KSIu-coVkFRckm07mo3SHjDYy2TNYJVhxdRj_szodo5Hnc_mRhZXEM_cR5frAghYZeoFjczZ8nFwxdXmSWPqrxztuIjoe-VBZLLAmmIfYK--vNid4lINgqq7WSOg" rel="noopener nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/21eECL</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Buy a copy of Somehow: Living on Uganda Time at a discount, shipping in the USA paid! Drop me a line for details -- dsc914@gmail.com</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-33023091328531214122018-07-27T06:18:00.004-07:002018-08-29T00:58:34.475-07:0010 Favorite Books Challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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1. Any Human Heart, William Boyd<br />
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“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.” -- Any Human Heart<br />
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“Never say you know the last word about any human heart.” -- Henry James, Louisa Pallant<br />
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The protagonist of this magnificent, highly-readable novel, Logan Mountstuart (1906-1991), is a writer, a spy, the manager of an art gallery, and a teacher. The story follows him through much of his checkered, fascinating, intense and ultimately meaningless life, a life like many of us live, only we're usually not spies, accomplished writers, friends of Ian Fleming, thrice married, veterans of years in solitary confinement, and so on. What I admire about Boyd is that he gives us the whole man, lets us get to know him, decide for ourselves, add up his life next to our own. For Boyd (as Robbe-Grillet said of film) his works are always a multi-coded space. It's up to us to break the code; he helps by making signals through the glass.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-24123666576698029142018-07-20T00:23:00.000-07:002018-08-29T00:58:34.259-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>A Conversation with Photographer Pieter Hugo</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>2008</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I look at a lot of photographs, both in galleries and books, but I was stopped in my tracks when I recently came across an image from “</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3791339605/readerville" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Hyena & Other Men</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” an astonishing and disquieting new book by the gifted South African photographer Pieter Hugo. At a time when we’re constantly bombarded by images, many of them clichéd and derivative, Hugo’s pictures astonish because one simply has not seen anything like them before. They’re disturbing because they conjure a place and a time (today, it turns out) in which the line between the wild and the tame is thin at best, and the tension, beauty and sorrow of that precarious relationship is frightening and poignant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because I couldn’t get Hugo’s photo out of my mind and I wanted to see and know more, I went to his </span><a href="http://www.pieterhugo.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">website</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> where he tells how he came to travel with the Nigerian performers, their hyenas, baboons and snakes. Then I gave him a call in South Africa, and as the Cape Town wind howled in the background, Hugo answered my questions about his pictures and the men called “Gadawan Kura.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The first thing one notices is the incredible discrepancy, a divide, between those who have and those who have not. Pretty much the entire infrastructure in Nigeria is set up around the oil industry. If there’s a highway, or something that works, it’s due to oil. People don’t pay income tax there. The other thing about Nigeria, it’s by far the most populous country in Africa. One in five people in Africa is Nigerian. Lagos is one of the largest cities in the world, a completely sprawling mega-city. [The hyena men] are constantly on the move between different cities and they often stay on the peripheries — although city peripheries in Nigeria are a vague concept; they extend for 50 kilometers, or 100 kilometers sometimes. I’ve gone to Lagos and driven 400 kilometers and you’re still on the periphery of Lagos.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Exactly. And I think that’s very much what defines Nigerian existence. But to get back to your question, “What’s it like to live in Nigeria”: Either you live in a compound with bodyguards and make a lot of money, or you don’t. I feel uncomfortable with people seeing the photographs in some sort of apocalyptic way, even though that is what it looks like over there. I think there is something quite celebratory in the pictures. There’s also a sense of humor in them. Often people get overwhelmed by the spectacle and miss the nuances.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">They were slightly wary, but they got into the swing of things after a day or two. At the end of the day, they’re performers, and, like actors, love being photographed. That’s why they do what they do: They enjoy the attention. It’s also a means to an end, an economic means to an end. By the second trip, of course, I’d become much closer to them and we’d gotten to know each other. You know, if you spend two and a half weeks with someone, you get to know them. You get to know them in some respects, at least.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">There was money being exchanged. I feel that if I’m taking time away from someone that they could be using to earn an income that some kind of remuneration needs to happen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">You know, initially it was completely impulsive. It’s only after the fact that I’ve deconstructed what part of it was interesting to me. I look at my contact sheets and the diaries that I kept and what I tried to photograph initially was that in-between existence, that place between urban and rural. And also the unbelievable spectacle of it, which I tried photographing and failed miserably.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I don’t want to get anthropomorphic, comparing people to animals, but Nigeria’s a hard place, a dog-eat-dog place. Any engagement is fraught with confrontation immediately. It’s a difficult place to work. It’s a difficult place to live. Anyone who lives and works there will tell you as much. And anybody who doesn’t agree with that is lying.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Yes, often, often.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">You know, these guys and the kid were hanging on these animals all the time, playing with them. I’d sit next to them, and I’d photograph them, and I got close to them, but to be honest, I never felt comfortable with the hyenas. At the end of the day, they’re wild animals. Whether they’d ever do anything to me or not, psychologically I couldn’t overcome what I’d call a primal fear of those animals. I didn’t want to push that envelope.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I have no idea what they are. There are both Christians and Muslims [in Nigeria], and those forms of imported religion are still mixed with animism. People believe that ... for instance, these guys [the hyena men] have some kind of spiritual protection from wild animals. But I have no idea what herbs they use.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">They’d get hundreds of people out in the street and the crowd would be completely engaged as the men walked along with wild animals, but I just didn’t find it that interesting. What I realized early on was the dynamic between these guys and their animals was what I was interested in. When the crowds gathered, all I saw was what I expected to see in that type of situation. The thing that was really interesting was the interaction between the [hyena men] and the animals and what that represented, and the issues that it brought forth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I have a preoccupation with our relationship to nature, our relationship to animals. And, along with that, issues of domination and submission and the contradictions and paradoxes that play out within that paradigm.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Yes. Sometimes they would be incredibly affectionate with the animals, but if the animals didn’t do what they wanted them to do, they could be quite brutal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I didn’t initially go only to photograph these guys. There were other things I was going to photograph in Nigeria. And the first time I went I was completely broke. I could only afford, like, 20 rolls of film. And it took a lot of time to get in a position where I could go back. Also, in my head, I’d matured a lot and I had a better idea of how to ... complete the work I set out to do at first. [The two-year gap] gave me time to reflect on my intentions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">If you look at the pictures, very few of them have defined shadows, and that’s because most of the pictures were taken during the season of the Saharan dust storms, and it creates a natural scrim [a fabric screen photographers use to diffuse light]. And you’ll see there are not very contrasty shadows in the pictures, it’s flat, diffused light. I shot on 120 film. I used a Hasselblad and Mamiya [large format] cameras. Sometimes I used a tripod because often I shot very early in the morning or very late in the afternoon. Everything’s covered in the dust, which gives it the washed-out look. Early on I did desaturate a slight amount, but when I went back to scan them I looked at the contact prints and realized I hadn’t really done very much. The final prints are pretty close to what the contacts look like. It’s an interpretive print, no matter what you do with it, but I purposely kept it flat because they were shot at that time of the year when everything is covered in dust.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">See Pieter Hugo's photographs here: http://www.pieterhugo.com/</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-39244847483473267962017-11-04T06:57:00.000-07:002017-11-04T06:57:12.341-07:00The Cockettes...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKLO8yt8XE_2yo7nUqNDrJR2YYfWSNBFTVEECmt1F-eFODGzduOs_qxvAwOMNAtLbD32tyksr1xH7e2JIYx4P30NWIdYGr3E0cvIj9_Qn9UNtVFYclEufymmljEF5BlnQnM3RKZOMD66_H/s1600/cockettes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #660000; color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="184" data-original-width="274" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKLO8yt8XE_2yo7nUqNDrJR2YYfWSNBFTVEECmt1F-eFODGzduOs_qxvAwOMNAtLbD32tyksr1xH7e2JIYx4P30NWIdYGr3E0cvIj9_Qn9UNtVFYclEufymmljEF5BlnQnM3RKZOMD66_H/s400/cockettes.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It was all about sex. Or was it?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After midnight one evening in the early 1970s, I was standing in the Pagoda Palace Theater on Washington Square in San Francisco. At the time, the theater ran Chinese movies during the day and then, at midnight, the Chinese audience streamed out and in came a multicolored, unruly herd of glitter- and feather-bedecked hippies reeking of pot and patchouli oil. (It’s a cliché now, but those were indeed the pervasive aromas.) Onstage, penises and breasts bounced around wantonly. There was dancing, there was singing, everybody was loaded on some sort of mind-altering substance, and unbridled sexual outrageousness spilled out into an audience that could be described as enthusiastic only if you’re into extreme understatement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The glorious Cockettes, the florid and fluorescent LSD-fueled drag review that briefly lit up San Francisco, and excited the media as far away as Paris, 30-some years ago were onstage performing one of their live shows. It might have been “Journey to the Center of Uranus” or “Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma” or any number of other wacky, apolitical extravaganzas — Rodgers & Hammerstein gone terribly, terribly wrong. Whatever it was, it looked like Kabuki collaboratively produced by Busby Berkeley, Dr. Seuss and Federico Fellini, generously seasoned with Carmen Miranda. As John Waters has described the scene, “It was complete sexual anarchy, which is always a wonderful thing.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had a beat-up Nikon F hanging around my neck when poet Allen Ginsberg, obviously stoned out of his gourd, walked up, pointed at the camera and said, “Delicious! Take many, many, many pictures.” I did, too, but I’ll be damned if I know what happened to them. I’ve always regretted losing those photos, but my regret has been mollified by the recent release of </span><a href="http://grandelusion.com/film.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Cockettes,”</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a new feature documentary. It airs Friday, June 21, on the Sundance channel and has opened, or soon will, in theaters across the country. It’s also showing at film festivals around the world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The Cockettes” is a curious celluloid time capsule that succeeds in a way that few films have at accurately capturing the spirit and riotous acting-out — sexual and otherwise — that typified the most frequently disparaged and caricatured decade of the 20th century: the ’60s. But then the Cockettes would be nearly impossible to caricature — they aspired to cartoonishness and, to their own surprise, reached that sparkling mountaintop, and even stayed there awhile.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The film’s directors, David Weissman and Bill Weber, who spent four years putting the documentary together, describe the Cockettes as “the last hurrah of the Haight-Ashbury at its best.” It’s an interesting distinction because, contrary to so much of what’s been written or filmed about those times, there was indeed a “best,” though most of the lightheartedness, exhilaration and artistic experimentation had been replaced by hard drugs, hard times and bad vibes before the Cockettes first shimmered into existence in 1969.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That may be one of the reasons they shone so brightly: The Haight and the impossibly naive dream of hippiedom were crumbling, but the Cockettes still exuded the optimism, playfulness, sexiness and theatricality of a subculture that slipped away almost as soon as it was born. It was a time, too, when the dark specter of AIDS was still more than a decade in the future and sexual abandon seemed to be consequence-free.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Cockettes were certainly into sex, drugs, excess and self-indulgence, as creative communities often are, but Weissman and Weber’s film goes behind the glitter and eye shadow and finds that there was something more substantial to the group as well. In addition to being intoxicatingly funny, they succeeded at forming a community of sexual renegades that was focused on new ideas at least as much as it was on sex, maybe more so.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Weissman put it when we </span><a href="http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/08/23/weissman/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">first spoke</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> nearly two years ago while the film was still in production, “This was not about female impersonation. This was what came to be known as ‘gender-fuck.’ There had never been bearded hippie drag queens before.” Underneath the hedonism and circus sideshow frivolity the Cockettes shared an interest in pushing the parameters of sexuality, social acceptance and theater about as far as they could be pushed — they were aggressively messing with cultural presumptions and having a hell of a good time doing it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fayette Hauser, one of the original Cockettes, who appears frequently in the film, said of those times, “We were living in a parallel universe of myth, fantasy, self-exploration and high drag. What mattered was enlightenment. A new idea was the valued currency. We treated each other like gods and so we became gods. This acid-induced, profoundly honed persona was what we saw in each other ... In our minds, we lived more fully, loved more deeply and dressed more beautifully than anyone else in the world. We were divas of the highest order and everyone wanted to be a Cockette.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It would have been easy to make “The Cockettes” little more than an exercise in nostalgia, but instead it’s a highly entertaining act of counterculture archaeology; what Weissman and Weber went through to dig up performance footage, still photos and former Cockettes is worthy of another documentary. Some Cockettes just couldn’t be found. “There was one in particular that we were dying to find,” Weissman says, “who I looked for literally for three and a half years, who we never were able to find, then she miraculously reappeared just a few weeks ago — that was Harlow. Harlow was a ’60s fixture in San Francisco not just as a Cockette, but also as a member of the Plaster Casters. There were so many people who were dying to find out what happened to Harlow, Peter Coyote had contacted us to say, ‘Do you know where Harlow is?’ And Chet Helms from the Family Dog asked, ‘Where’s Harlow?’ Turns out she’s been living out in the country, in Southern California, for a long time.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“How far have the Cockettes drifted?” I ask Weissman. “Who among them has the least Cockettish life today?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Most of them live fairly quiet lives,” he says. “Most are fairly marginal financially, nobody’s really become a yuppie in any way. In their hearts, they’re all still Cockettes.” And several, including the troupe’s founder, Hibiscus, died of AIDs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In conjunction with the San Francisco screening, Weissman and Weber have curated an exhibition of original show posters and documentary photographs at the city’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I happened to be walking through the exhibit when Weissman, Harlow, another Cockette named Rumi and San Francisco photographer </span><a href="http://www.cea.edu/robert/x.index.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Robert Altman</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> showed up to see the photos, many of which Altman took.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Altman was chief photographer at Rolling Stone from 1969 to 1971 and continues to work as a photographer and Web designer in San Francisco. When the Cockettes were at their peak, he was assigned by Rags, an alternative fashion magazine of the time, to do photos to accompany an article about the troupe by Mary Peacock. “I spent about four days living with the Cockettes,” Altman told me, “over at their commune. I wouldn’t call it bedlam, but it was certainly nonstop activity ... Hibiscus had come along and drew all these people to him ... he had a sense of fun about being gay: ‘Not only is it OK to be gay and be out of the closet, but we can sing and dance about it and put on a show about it.’”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Weissman and Weber were determined that their film not be simply a glorified home movie, a cinematic scrapbook of hippie memories. “Bill and I struggled all through making the film,” Weissman says. “We wanted to make a movie that was not a nostalgia piece about something that happened once, but was about possibilities that are timeless — a movie that could serve as a reminder of how important it is when you’re young to be a rebel, to ask questions and to have fun. To seek community and not be totally driven by career and money.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nor were Weissman and Weber hoping to bring about some kind of resurrection. “I think that individual eras can’t and shouldn’t be re-created,” Weissman says. “Each era has potential for its own appropriate style of art and rebellion. Things have to come out of their own moments and yet they can also be informed by history. Certainly the Cockettes were very informed by the 1920s and the ’30s aesthetically — but they were also completely a reflection of their time much the way </span><a href="http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/09/08/burningman/index.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Burning Man</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a reflection of the era it came out of.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In recent years, the success of films like “Priscilla Queen of the Desert,” </span><a href="http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/07/20/hedwig/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and “Paris Is Burning” have brought gender-bending cinema to a mainstream audience. Whether “The Cockettes” can also reach that audience, as Weissman hopes, remains to be seen. He’s pushing for it to be viewed as a movie that will have appeal beyond gay filmgoers. “I think a lot of people have assumed that this movie is just another drag queen movie,” he says, “but it’s had huge appeal for people who are interested in both the counterculture of the era and countercultures generally. I never saw it particularly in terms of gay things. None of these people came out of the gay movement per se, they came out of acid, they came out of Haight-Ashbury. There are a bunch of straight guys in dresses in a lot of our pictures, a bunch of them.” As Hauser puts it in the film, “People were allowed to live at the end of their imaginations.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Cockettes’ trajectory was a relatively short one. They came together in 1969 and it was all over by 1972, their collapse helped along by money disputes and a disastrous New York debut; their act just didn’t work out of context. The East and West countercultures may have had a desire for sexual theatrics in common, but they didn’t speak each other’s language. The New York catastrophe is seen in “The Cockettes” along with its polar opposite: footage of some of their rollickingly good San Francisco performances, as well as clips from their film, an orgiastic send-up of Richard Nixon’s daughter’s marriage called “Tricia’s Wedding,” and the San Francisco arrival of the divine Divine for several guest appearances with the group.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not surprisingly, Weissman and Weber’s film has engendered plenty of strong reaction. “We’ve had a lot of powerful, personal testimony,” Weissman says. “A woman came up to us at Sundance who said that she had always hung out with the Diggers in the Haight. And she said to me, ‘It’s just become so hard to talk about that time period, because people just think, Oh, hippies, big fuckin’ deal. This is the first thing I’ve ever seen that really captures the complexity and exuberance of what that period felt like.’”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Seeing “The Cockettes” today is an odd bit of time travel to an era when sex, how we saw it, how we talked about it and what it meant to us seems eons away from the present. Despite the hippie revolution that was centered in San Francisco, there was still a great deal of societal naiveté about sex, and gay liberation was still very much in its infancy, which is perhaps why there continues to be something very refreshing about the Cockettes, their spirit and sense of humor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the show that night, as I walked out of the Pagoda Palace, the pocket of my Army field jacket stuffed with film canisters headed for oblivion, I spotted Ginsberg talking with a small group of people near the curb. Two things about him were different from when I’d seen him earlier: His pen had leaked all over the pocket of his white shirt and he was wearing lipstick.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">June 2002</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-52006968971163823922017-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:002017-10-23T00:00:00.197-07:00Sympathy For The Devil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRs-Fa74YA8cUihALKX1YIdsVkpxxxieIuBR_DHE1t2W7m2xuNu5MYhpt__2t7aUqIpZg6OubIzflg_xWWYEKC_5cuDRGqG5l1up1eVSfpRW4Cm8mLi2zjrNqmdQrkHa5gEGWkpAINzgzR/s1600/jagger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRs-Fa74YA8cUihALKX1YIdsVkpxxxieIuBR_DHE1t2W7m2xuNu5MYhpt__2t7aUqIpZg6OubIzflg_xWWYEKC_5cuDRGqG5l1up1eVSfpRW4Cm8mLi2zjrNqmdQrkHa5gEGWkpAINzgzR/s400/jagger.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">While the Beatles dominated pop in the 1960s, their music was nearly devoid of one vital element: darkness. At a time when authentic blues was still relatively unknown (and also not widely available) to most white kids, those who craved the seductive complexities of the dark side turned to the Rolling Stones. And nothing more vividly illuminated the group’s supposed affinity for Lucifer than “Sympathy for the Devil,” their anthem-cum-incantation in the form of a taunting cultural fable. It was the first cut on the A side of “Beggar’s Banquet” — which now, 33 years later, still stands as not only one of the Stones’ finest albums, but one of the best rock records ever made.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Released on Dec. 5, 1968, “Beggar’s Banquet” came out just 10 days after the Beatles’ White Album, and a year and a day before the Stones’ </span><a href="http://www.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/08/10/gimme_shelter/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">notorious free concert</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at Altamont Speedway in Livermore, Calif. (Contrary to popular legend, “Sympathy for the Devil” was not the song being played when a young man was killed at the free concert. The band was knocking out “Under My Thumb” when 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. Several websites reference Don McLean’s allusion to this incident in deconstructions of his song “American Pie”: “Oh, and as I watched him on the stage/ My hands were clenched in fists of rage/ No angel born in Hell/ Could break that Satan’s spell.”)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Stones have made plenty of mistakes over the years (“Their Satanic Majesties Request”), but producing a rock opera wasn’t one of them. Though “Sympathy for the Devil” is embedded with enough historical and philosophical scope to seem like the opening act to a drama of operatic dimensions, they wisely kept it to a concise six minutes and 22 seconds. In interviews, Mick Jagger — who wrote “Sympathy” (“I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song”) without his usual writing partner, Keith Richards — has said he was concerned at the time about the potential for the lyrics to come off as pretentious and the band to be “skewered on the altar of pop culture.” So when Richards suggested changing the rhythm, Jagger agreed and as the band worked (and worked and worked) on the piece, it ended up as a samba, which Jagger has called “hypnotic” and Richards referred to as “mad.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Jagger, a voracious reader and history buff, claimed he was influenced in writing “Sympathy” by Baudelaire. But he was also, as others have pointed out, clearly under the spell of Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic allegorical novel of good and evil, “The Master and Margarita.” Of course, Jagger was even more clearly under the spell of the 1960s, a time when — for many — heaven and hell seemed to have come to earth in the most lucid terms.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The song’s opening — “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste” — parallels the beginning of Bulgakov’s novel, in which a sophisticated stranger, who turns out to be Satan, introduces himself to two gentlemen sitting in a Moscow park as they’re discussing whether Jesus existed or not. (“‘Please excuse me,’ he said, speaking correctly, but with a foreign accent, ‘for presuming to speak to you without an introduction.’”) The song then references Christ and the story of Pontius Pilate, which the novel takes up in its second chapter. Before moving on to the Russian Revolution, the song’s narrator, Lucifer, acknowledges that his listeners are mystified — “But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game” — just as, in “The Master and Margarita,” one of the men approached by Satan in the park thinks to himself, “What the devil is he after?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the lyrics for “Sympathy,” Jagger’s narrator jumps from making “damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed [Jesus'] fate” to St. Petersburg, “When I saw it was time for a change,” and kills “the Czar and his ministers.” Curiously (or not so curiously, given Jagger’s penchant for reading history), the only other allusion in the song to Russia’s dark past is an odd one: “Anastasia screamed in vain” — a reference to the youngest daughter of the czar who was murdered with the rest of the Romanov royal family. For most of the 20th century Anastasia was an almost mythological figure, thanks to the specious claims that she alone had survived the murders.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">But more interesting than what appear to be direct correlations between the book and the song is how Jagger and the Stones, drawing on numerous influences, Bulgakov’s novel apparently among them, managed — in a rock song — to address serious, even profound, ideas to a samba beat without turning the whole affair into an exercise in dull earnestness. On the contrary, “Sympathy” sounds like a party and works so well, on multiple levels, because its lyrics evoke more than they spell out, while the music not only has an infectious rhythm, it features ingenious layering of sound and background vocals that build to an irresistible, kick-ass tribal hootenanny. Those “woo woos,” by the way, which provide a self-deprecating, cartoonish poke at the song’s spookiness, while adding to the chanting-around-the-bonfire nature of the music, were provided by the four demons themselves, along with two members of the Stones’ 1968 coven — Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull — and the album’s producer, Jimmy Miller.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In writing the song, Jagger used words with impressive economy. He cites Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate, the czar, Anastasia, the blitzkrieg (World War II), the Kennedys and the city of Bombay and mentions Lucifer by name (just once) and in so doing creates a deep, amplified portrait of a world torn by religion, war, assassination and confusion where “Every cop is a criminal/ And all the sinners saints.” Threaded throughout are taunts from the teasing narrator — the traditional demon trickster — trying to get the listener to speak his name: “Hope you guess my name,” “Tell me, baby, what’s my name?” “Tell me, sweetie, what’s my name?” And — at the very pinnacle of the Flower Power era, remember — he then turns on his starry-eyed audience and tells them that they, in league with him, are to blame for the deaths of the ’60s most promising political leaders.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But lest you think Jagger simply mixed up some brainy lyrics and threw them into a recording studio with his talented, stoned friends, take a look sometime at the strange little cinematic time capsule “One Plus One,” a documentary on the recording of “Sympathy for the Devil” (among </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">many</span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> other things). The film, which has been distributed in two versions, was directed by </span><a href="http://www.salon.com/people/rewind/1999/08/07/godard/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jean-Luc Godard,</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and it’s had a tempestuous history, which I won’t go into here except to say that one version, known by the same title as the song, is not Godard’s cut. That’s the version generally available in the U.S. Anyway, whichever version you view, you’ll see the Stones as they work with meticulous attention to detail to record the tracks and build the elaborate song.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Not surprisingly, given its distinctive sound and eternal-hot-button subject matter, “Sympathy” has taken on a life of its own (and isn’t that just what that doggone devil would want?). It’s been recorded by Bryan Ferry, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Natalie Merchant, Jane’s Addiction, the Hampton String Quartet, the band Laibach (which devoted an entire album to different versions of the song) and, believe it or don’t, the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s worth pointing out that Rolling Stone magazine’s take, in its review of Ferry’s cover of the song (“‘Sympathy’ has always been recorded with, if not seriousness, at least earnestness”), is dismissive of both the Stones’ version and Jagger’s lyrics, which Rolling Stone called “slightly corny, vaguely ridiculous.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand, just last month Ron Rosenbaum wrote </span><a href="http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=5199" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an article</span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the New York Observer in which he extols Jagger’s abilities as a lyricist and specifically mentions “Sympathy for the Devil”: “And let’s not forget,” Rosenbaum writes, “at this particular moment, that he’s one of the rare rock songwriters who has addressed the question of evil and apocalypse in a sophisticated way.” Rosenbaum goes on at some length to praise the singer’s “beautiful use of incantation ... a lovely word for a special kind of vocal recurrence, one that combines overtones of prayer, magic, spell casting ... a kind of vocal voodoo.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The song’s title continues to have almost iconic status and gets all manner of uses. It has been appropriated for a computer game (“Sympathy for the Devil: The War in Russia, 1942-43″) and is tiresomely used whenever possible to headline stories about Jagger’s marital woes and paternity suits or any time bad behavior is the subject. For example, these, all of which appeared in the New York Post: “Jagger’s Ex Has Sympathy for the Devil,” “No Sympathy for Devils” and “Sympathy for the Devil: Why Bill Is No Hypocrite” (an article by P.J O’Rourke). To this day, “Sympathy” is widely discussed online on sites like the Christian Music Forum and referenced in treatises on the devil, such as John P. Sisk’s paper, </span><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9311/articles/sisk.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Necessary Devil” </span></a><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Jagger concedes that the song may have been something of an inspiration for all the ’70s and ’80s heavy metal bands that flirted with Satanism, but in interviews he’s repeatedly distanced the Stones from any of it. In an exchange with Creem magazine, he said, “[When people started taking us as devil worshippers], I thought it was a really odd thing, because it was only one song, after all. It wasn’t like it was a whole album, with lots of occult signs on the back. People seemed to embrace the image so readily, [and] it has carried all the way over into heavy metal bands today.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #660000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Regardless of, or maybe because of, the swath it has cut, “Sympathy for the Devil,” as good art often does, continues to resonate at least as strongly today as it did when it was first created. Woo woo.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-90455172674639745492017-10-11T03:00:00.001-07:002017-10-11T03:22:35.536-07:00The days in our life, and the lives in our days...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most mornings I wake up before the monkeys, struggle to find the opening in the mosquito net, wander out to the front balcony and read the news or reply to emails as the sky lights up. By 7:00, the sun is peeking through the palms and the mango trees, and Honesty and Bashura are opening their small shops across the road. The packed matatus are bouncing down the dirt track toward downtown, taking people to work; the boda-bodas are revving their engines and hustling suicidal rides through the rush hour traffic to everyone who walks by; some brave souls accept their offer, pay for the privelege even. Then Mukisa toddles out, settles in my lap, helps me eat my eggs, yells at the chickens three floors below us. And the monkeys show up to entertain their biggest fan.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We live in Kisaasi, a country-town-like neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda. It is lush with trees and domestic and wild animals. The bird life is especially rich and loud (there are more species of birds in Uganda than in all of North America). The ibises, for example, don't seem to be able to fly without squawking loudly; they wait until they're cruising past about 5 feet away from us then let out an ear-splitting, guttural shriek that makes Muki jump about 6 inches and nearly gives me a second heart attack. Then there are the turacos which come in an elegant palette that ranges from warm grey to royal blue to deep black with red highlights. They are exquisite and have one of the odder calls, sort of a low gurgle that morphs to a deep bass coo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mukisa climbs on and off the stool next to me 5 or 6 times -- it's his most recently acquired talent -- falling only three or four times. I catch him most of those times, but he invariably knocks his curly-haired head at least once on the hard tile and we have a good cry. I hold him and comfort him and he then penguin walks back into the house to wake up mama. We try to tell him "No" as little as possible. He can touch most everything in the house, carry it around, try to make it work. The only restrictions are those things that might hurt him. Inconveniencing me is not his problem; he is not in my hurry; figuring out how and why the world works is his job. Mine is to make sure his discoveries happen in safety, and without destroying (or dropping from our third story balcony) expensive electronic devices that me and his mother must stare into throughout the day -- to service our addictions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Once Mama Ruth wakes up, there is an hour or so of play and silliness. She can get Mukisa laughing harder than anyone can. They are still lounging in bed, Muki nursing, while I cook myself breakfast. There is some very good bread here -- whole wheat, crusty, and slathered with seeds. We eat a couple of loaves a week. I always cook breakfast for myself, Mama, Muki and nanny Sophie. First I melt a big chunk of margarine in the skillet, then I put in two slices of the luscious bread, which I've torn holes in. I break an egg into each hole, add pepper and salt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For lunches and dinners we cook a combination of local Ugandan food (some of the healthiest in the world), prepared by Sophie and Mama Ruth, which includes matooke (steamed, mashed plantains that taste like mashed potatoes), rice and beans, posho with mukene sauce (mukene are small fish; posho is steamed bread similar to a dumpling), and my concoctions -- pasta, stews, etc. The market produce -- fruits and vegetables -- is abundant and varied. We also eat roast or fried goat, Nile perch, tilapia, and snack on fried grasshoppers with cold beer in October and November when they are in season. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After the morning ritual, I shave, shower, put myself together and go off to Cafeserrie to work, drink coffee and observe the wildlife, especially the old white guys with the hot young black women, an abundant pairing here. As a member of that demographic -- the white geezer component -- I find those couples fascinating. There are a good number of them in Kampala (and in other African cities, no doubt), and most people's prevailing assumption is that the men are in it for sex and the young women are in it for money. That was my initial assumption too, but then I started closely observing these relationships, got to know some of the couples, and became involved in such a love affair myself. They are not what they seem. The initial attraction may be centered around sex and money, but as time passes and the two become real, fully dimensional people to each other -- vulnerable, fun, loving, lonely, giving, taking -- they connect on a sweet and deep level. They talk, get to know and appreciate one another. They fall in love, and in like (the more important of the two in my opinion). In many cases, after a time, you see them with children, babies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is one guy, an American, I see at Cafeserrie regularly. He is maybe 10 years older than I am; I'm nearly 65. He comes in with a mixed race boy of 5 or 6 years old. They have lunch, laugh, talk. Sometimes they are joined by the boy's mother. She's very dark-skinned, must be from Northern Uganda or Sudan. The three are happy together, relaxed, caring. The man -- who I've chatted with a little, showed him photos of my son -- is helping the young woman finish university and raise her son. He is a retired construction company owner. He told me he and his wife never had children. After she died 4 years ago, he decided to come to Africa. He'd never been here before and, like me, was immediately smitten with the place and the people. He returned home long enough to sell all his belongings. He came back here and has never returned to the U.S. It's a plotline that you come across often here. I'm living it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I feel fortunate that I'm at a point in life where I can spend so much time with my boy. And Nattabi is similarly fortunate: We spend many hours everyday with Mukisa, take him most everywhere with us (he's very social, at ease around people, charming, curious). He is especially fond of men and we have several friends who have had close friendships with him since he was an infant. One of our best friends, Rashid, comes by about once a week to take Muki out for 6-7 hours. He takes him to the mall, to antique car shows, out to eat with his friends. Muki adores him and Rashid dotes on Muki; it's a rich association for both of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We are so lucky that we all stumbled into each other -- Nattabi in the middle of her life, me in the final quarter (which is turning out to be the happiest) and Mukisa at the beginning of his. All three of us are healthy, happy and looking forward to the future. We have a nice place to live (no extra charge for monkeys), plenty to eat, we sleep well, we go for walks, our work and various projects are going well. Mukisa likes to laugh and thinks his mama is very very funny. He laughs politely at my jokes. He enjoys it when Nattabi and I dance and act like big fools, which is often. He is walking, running, jumping and climbing all over everything. Nattabi's most spoken and most ignored phrase, "Muki! You are going to fall!" He is very verbal but not quite speaking yet; soon. He brushes his 8 teeth about 45 minutes a day and likes having his lush locks combed. He carefully cleans his little ears with Q-Tips every morning. He helps mama pick out his clothes. Luganda and English are spoken in equal measure around our house and most places we go. I imagine he sees them as a single language. He enjoys being read to and Nattabi (more often than me I'm ashamed to admit) reads at least one book a day to him. He loves his nanny, Sophie, and so do we. She is Muslim and when she prays Muki kneels beside her. He knows he must be quiet when she is praying, but he finds other ways to distract her. She also cooks, does laundry, cleans the house and often brings her sons over. They love playing with Muki; sometimes they all stay overnight. The boys are about 9 & 12. We sometimes take them swimming with us, always a fun day. Nattabi's tour company is picking up steam and threatening to start making real money. My work, including helping her build her travel business, is varied and satisfying, if not lucrative. We are busy in a good way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On balance, when looked at from a distance, it is, as always, the best of times and the worst of times. No matter how perfect things may seem momentarily, we are every moment reminded of the tentative, fragile nature of that perfection in our lives and the lives of all we know and don't know. Living here, where the extremes of poverty and wealth are everywhere in evidence, keeps us aware of that truth every moment of every day. We are within a day's travel of where homo sapiens began and before us we see how far humanity has come in it's present form, since its inception 200,000 years ago. It's no joke, unless God has a particularly bent sense of humor. Just in the last few weeks we've heard of loved ones dying, having severe illnesses, losing everything in a raging wildfire. So it goes, as Vonnegut would put it. Thank you then, or as they say in Luganda, Webale, for staying in touch. It's important to me. I believe in the art of communication; it's my religion, and my wife and sons are its saints, its angels. Bless you in all you do.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-56567795430581633722017-10-09T02:13:00.001-07:002017-10-09T02:13:46.437-07:00Stalking the Dewey-Eyed Platypus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRQE5OQJA9-BcBaKl1r-gDLi3wQuSSrrMvekDV82kU1jyYgtSe5qWG4gn5HuFRvgK8ETAmVM5lCQq0a_RSJeUeMm0gtR_F58eix87nonDt2g0n8IaVAMSPPwsjxB47Qoyj-q-3r0gSKo3g/s1600/Wild_Platypus_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRQE5OQJA9-BcBaKl1r-gDLi3wQuSSrrMvekDV82kU1jyYgtSe5qWG4gn5HuFRvgK8ETAmVM5lCQq0a_RSJeUeMm0gtR_F58eix87nonDt2g0n8IaVAMSPPwsjxB47Qoyj-q-3r0gSKo3g/s400/Wild_Platypus_4.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-9266b6c4-607e-7cf6-b388-4468ddced1d0" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I told a friend that one of the main reasons I was going to Australia was to try to find a platypus, he said, “Aren’t they mythological or extinct or something?” They are not. In fact, platypuses are surprisingly abundant, though the odd, duck-billed creatures are also a shy, elusive evolutionary anomaly that few Australians – to say nothing of foreigners – have ever laid eyes upon. Some consider seeing one in the wilderness tantamount to bumping into a mermaid or a unicorn. When the first platypus skin arrived in London in 1798, many thought it was a hoax, and the poor thing has never entirely shaken the stigma. What could it expect given its looks?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The platypus safari commences with a flight out of Brisbane’s Archer Field in a blue and white, 10-seat, twin-engine airplane cruising over a parquet of flat green farmland and eucalypt forests. It is early fall – that is, April – in Queensland, warm and a little humid.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After an hour and a half, and an in-flight picnic of cheesecake and orange juice, we land on a grassy airstrip near Carnarvon National Park. Once I’m out of the plane, dozens of grasshoppers – the kangaroos of the insect world – hurdle over my feet and crash into my ankles as three yellow and blue pale-headed rosellas – small parrots – slalom between the polished trunks of the nearby gum trees. Within a few minutes the hot weight of the outback sun has caused my bald scalp to get as overheated as my prose, and I’m thankful that I’ve brought along an old tan Borsalino and a pair of cheap sunglasses. I put both on my head, where they stay for the remainder of the expedition, and we drive off toward Carnarvon Gorge, home of the platypus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The man driving is John Stoddart, who, along with Linda Stoddart, his wife, manages the Oasis Lodge adjacent to Carnarvon National Park. They are both former high school teachers, and like many Australians, they seem to find wry humor in both the nature of reality and the reality of nature. Stoddart, I find out, knows a lot about platypuses. During the next few days’ conversations he gives me a short course in Beginning Platypusology 1A.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To start with, he says, they’re smaller than most people assume. The average adult is a foot to 18 inches long. The heaviest one on record weighed less than 5½ pounds. They have a birdlike snout that resembles a duck’s, but the grayish bill is soft, not hard. They are mammals of the order called Monotremata (the only other member is the equally bizarre, hedgehog-like echidna, also a native of Australia), characterized by their egg-laying and the cloaca, a single orifice for excretion and reproduction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Monotremes are also the only mammals known to react to electrical fields. Platypuses have electrosensitive pores in their bills used to detect the electrical currents generated by the muscle activity of their prey – shrimps and insect larvae. (They have a tremendous appetite complemented by “a metabolic rate like a blast furnace,” according to “The Fatal Shore,” Robert Hughes’ definitive history of Australia’s founding.) It is believed that they may also use their electrosensitivity – a true “sixth sense” – for “seeing” stationary objects under water.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The platypus has beautiful, thick, waterproof fur and a plump tail something like a beaver’s, the top of which is covered with fur. They were hunted for their luxuriant pelts until 1912, when legislation was enacted to protect them nationwide.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Much like birds, they have a single functioning ovary, the second one being poorly developed. The females lay eggs but suckle their young with extraordinarily rich milk. Platypuses have webbed feet and the males have a venomous spur on each rear leg that can deliver a nasty sting. Stoddart tells me the story of a man he knew who managed to get spurred in the finger by a male platypus. “The poor bloke’s finger was no good after that,” he says. “It turned blood red and shriveled to a point like an old carrot.”</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Aborigines knew the platypus as Mallangong, Boonaburra or Tambreet, and it figures in some of their myths. In one – a moral tale – the platypus’s origin is attributed to a wayward duck who disobeys its elders, wanders away from its pond and is imprisoned and raped by a randy old water rat. The child this coupling produces is a platypus. This is no less solid an explanation of the platypus’s beginnings than most modern researchers have provided.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Platypuses are found in deep burrows along the muddy banks or feeding among the shoreline reeds of rivers, streams and ponds in eastern Australia, on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia (where they were introduced by a naturalist in 1940) and in Tasmania. Just one pair – named Jack and Jill – successfully bred in captivity, and that was 50 years ago. On the official Australian wildlife cuteness scale the platypus rates second only to the koala and just slightly ahead of the wombat. The palm-size baby platypus is too cute to discuss in rational terms.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">While Carnarvon Gorge is a platypus stronghold, John Stoddart tells me, I shouldn’t get my hopes up about actually seeing one, but if I want to try, dawn or dusk are the best times to seek out Australia’s duck-billed irregularity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As intent as I am on satiating my desire to meet a platypus, like every other first-time visitor to Australia, I also hope to see a wild kangaroo as soon as possible, and shortly after arriving at the Oasis Lodge I get to – they’re all over the place.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The lodge consists of a central reception building, which houses the dining room, a library where gatherings and nature talks are held, and a number of luxurious “tent cabins” that evoke camping without actually immersing you in its often romanticized but typically uncomfortable specifics. The buildings are scattered over several acres of lawn, with palms and gum trees to provide shade. Scattered over the lawn are kangaroos, looking so much like giant prehistoric mice I’m inclined to offer them a piece of cheese.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When they aren’t lollygagging around on the lawns – their usual midday activity – they are grazing or bounding or battling with each other, or staring at the guests. The lodge asks guests not to feed the kangaroos, which has kept them untamed, so you can’t approach any closer than about 10 feet. That’s good, because the rebounding beasts can get to be a nuisance.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Indeed, in some places tourists find that they must apply popular aerosol kangaroo repellents, such as “Roo-quat” and “Roo-Be-Gone” as frequently as sunscreen. And if you absent-mindedly leave your door open, making it possible for one of the large marsupials to sneak in and jump on the bed (they’re worse than young Homo sapiens when it comes to this activity), they can destroy a box spring in mere minutes, play hell with a goose down comforter and make an expensive duvet history in a matter of seconds. It is no coincidence, then, that neither pogo sticks nor trampolines have ever been marketed in Australia.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At one point I ask Stoddart what the word “kangaroo” means. “Joseph Banks,” he replies, “was the naturalist that sailed to Australia with Capt. Cook. The story’s told that when Banks came ashore and first glimpsed the hopping creature, he asked a native what it was, and the aboriginal said something that sounded like ‘kangaroo.’ Later Banks asked another aboriginal what the word meant. ‘Kangaroo,’ the native told him, means ‘Hell if I know.’”</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Curiously, I find no verification of this report in the literature. But in “The Fatal Impact,” Alan Moorehead’s elegant account of Cook’s “invasion” of the South Pacific, Banks is quoted and he does sound perplexed. The naturalist accurately describes the gray kangaroo as “of a mouse-colour and very swift,” and then remarks, “What to liken him to I cannot tell.”</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fortunately for Joseph Banks, his powers or description were not further taxed by the platypus. It would be another 27 years before a European (not Banks) first stumbled upon the fur-bearing duckoid, foolishly sending the hide off to London where he was ridiculed mercilessly. (There are certain discoveries it’s best not to reveal.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Carnarvon Gorge itself looks like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon with forest poured into it. The massive rock cliffs are composed mostly of sandstone capped by a layer of basalt. The forest below is light and airy, home to a variety of tall eucalypts – the slick-barked Sydney bluegum is the most prevalent – with macrozamia and other palms, native hibiscus and the sandpaper fig growing beneath the silver-green foliage of the gum trees.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Extravagantly painted parrots (splashed with crimson, chartreuse, deep yellow, electric blue), large white cockatoos with an ear-splitting shriek, and jug-headed kookaburras (like our kingfisher, but with a taunting cackle as their song) are plentiful. The wealth of butterflies is a poignant reminder of how scarce they’ve become in much of the United States.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The sun-mottled forest floor is carpeted with high grass and bracken ferns. It is common to see eastern gray kangaroos, wallabies (a smaller kangaroo) and the occasional dark-coated rock wallabies (a shy kangaroo that behaves like a mountain goat) either nibbling at the ground cover or bounding through the brush. There are also ibis, heron, blue-faced honeyeaters and pied cormorants. And a smallish python known as a carpet snake – because of the pattern of its scales – in addition to bearded dragon lizards, turtles and monitor lizards, called goannas, that can reach 4 feet in length.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At night the Carnarvon sky is ink-black felt speckled with white paint. Nocturnal animals are ubiquitous, including an assortment of possums and a sweet-faced, big-eyed creature known as the sugar glider – so called because, like a flying squirrel, it uses the webbing between its front and rear legs to sail from tree to tree where it feeds on the eucalypt’s sugary sap.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the bottom of the gorge runs Carnarvon Creek. Along its banks grow wispy Casuarina trees and the weeping red bottlebrush. Near the water’s edge are found green tree-frogs, which are preyed on by the creek’s freshwater keelback snakes. And if you’re extremely quiet and very still (and don’t wear bright-colored clothing) and patiently watch for the telltale shivering of the reeds, you may catch sight of a platypus. But, as I’m often told, “It ain’t too bloody likely.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">From April through November, staff members of the Oasis Lodge lead daily hikes, some of them fairly arduous, throughout the gorge and up to its more spectacular vistas, like Boolimba Bluff. (I hiked to the bluff on a Sunday. As I stood at the top looking down to the camping area from hundreds of feet above, a hymn being sung by the small congregation attending an outdoor Anglican service – which I could not see – came wafting up out of the gum forest. The effect was reminiscent of a scene from “At Play in the Fields of the Lord.”)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You can go hiking on your own, of course, but the young, dauntingly vigorous staff members make good company. They’re also knowledgeable about the terrain and the gorge’s flora and fauna, not to mention the fact that they carry a big backpack full of tea and snacks, which they prepare and serve during a rest stop along the way. One of the least strenuous walks is geared specifically to those desperately seeking platypuses.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the appointed day we get up before sunrise and drive a mile or two to the Carnarvon Gorge trailhead. I keep the window down as we drive through the dawn forest so I can listen to the bird songs and other noises – the archetypal “jungle sounds” we’ve heard all our lives in Hollywood movies. The caustic laugh of the kookaburra is especially familiar. (One of the many perverse satisfactions of living in the media-besotted world, I’m ashamed to admit, is visiting the real thing and finding it exactly as depicted in a motion picture or on television – the twisted pleasure of having reality validated by illusion.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As instructed, our small group has worn dull-hued clothing. The platypus has keen vision (and conservative taste in apparel), and it is put off by loud outfits. We’re also told not to speak, which certain of us find particularly onerous.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We enter the forest and walk over the creek on stones to reach the start of the Nature Trail. We follow the creekside path with nothing but cackling kookaburras and beeping Nikons to puncture the primeval silence. Across the creek, a wallaby and its offspring are having breakfast, which gets me to thinking: When God created Australia’s animals, perhaps he somewhat overestimated his abilities. At the very least the deity exhibited peculiar taste, if not a perverse sense of humor.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">First of all, most of the beasts’ proportions are screwy; they look like a design experiment gone wrong or a rough sketch for an animated character that should have been canceled by the cartoon committee before it could see the light of day.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider the kangaroo – it is essentially a fur-upholstered pear with spring-loaded rear legs. Its creator apparently ran out of steam about waist level because, except for its well-developed biceps, the upper trunk, arms and head of the venerable kangaroo don’t amount to much when compared to its substantial lower body. Fortunately, the beasts seem to have little or no self-consciousness about having such a preposterous appearance, as that could only generate complex neurosis that would be no help whatsoever to a creature that must focus most of its attention on dodging boomerangs, bullets and dingoes in a natural environment that can be harsh on the best of days.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Australian people, on the other hand, are quick and funny, gregarious and natural-born raconteurs. As testament to their bountiful good humor, they have courageously put the kangaroo, and the equally illogical emu, on their national crest, and the platypus on their 20-cent piece. A race less comfortable with irony might have downplayed such a collection of ridiculous faunae, but the Australians are proud of their continent’s curious beasts, and on average, more knowledgeable about them than we are about our more banal assortment.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When you ask Australians a question, they’ll often give a well-informed answer or, if they don’t know the answer, they’ll make up something that either sounds like the truth or actually improves on the truth. In either case you come away satisfied.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Nikons are beeping excitedly as we approach the platypus viewing overlook. We make a few detours to the creek bank, but the guide shakes her head and motions us onward. Finally she stops at a clearing atop a small embankment and indicates that we should form a line. It’s about 20 feet to the other side of the creek where tall reeds wander into the slow-moving water, creating a perfect feeding area for the platypus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The sun hasn’t yet ascended above the walls of the gorge, but the sky is the color of a morning glory blossom and the sandstone cliffs are either changing from orange to pink or from pink to orange. We stare intently at the reeds and the nearly still, black water. Nothing. A Nikon beeps. Nothing. A couple of people move off down the trail, impatient. Nothing. Then the guide points emphatically and whispers, “There.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Something is moving through the reeds, jostling them as it goes, something underwater. And then, just clear of the reeds and out in the open, no more than 4 yards away, it comes to the surface. First the legendary bill, followed by a slick, furry back. It’s a great brute of a platypus, easily 12 inches long, maybe 14. It takes a breath, quickly glances at us with its small, dewy eyes, and disappears into the dark creek with a kick of its back feet. The reeds jiggle a little. And again nothing. And a Nikon beeps as the morning sun drools through the eucalyptus leaves. And we walk on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Later, back at the lodge, I tell John Stoddart of our luck. “Was it a good-size one then?” he asks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Probably about 8 feet,” I say. And for a brief moment his eyes widen before he explodes with a kookaburra chortle, which makes me think that for a second or two, I just may have had him going.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-62258626497953037812017-10-09T02:06:00.000-07:002017-10-09T02:06:35.527-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Manuel Alvarez Bravo</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The second most refreshing thing about Manuel Alvarez Bravo is that he’s not Ansel Adams. The first is his photographs — they are dreamy, literally. But that’s not news. Bravo has had his work described as dreamlike for much of the last century. Adams was a master landscape photographer, but Bravo, whose contributions to 20th century art are at least as significant as Adams’, is a master at chronicling the interior, making photographs that illustrate the subconscious landscape.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is especially true of “Nudes: The Blue House,” a new book of photographs by Bravo, some taken as recently as the ’90s, some dating back to the 1930s, with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes. It’s a small book of about three dozen images of women — Bravo </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">likes </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">women — all nude or partially so, and all, it seems, captured while in the middle of some sort of implied narrative.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That’s Bravo: He’s always telling the story without a plot, the story that never stops — the tightly constructed tale of whatever is going on at the moment he takes the picture. Like a dream, it makes perfect sense while you’re in it. If Cartier-Bresson was champion of the decisive moment, Bravo’s pictures have made the indecisive moment iconic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Though he worked with models (not professional ones) to produce the images in “Nudes: The Blue House,” often he has not captured poses so much as anti-poses, the evocative moments between those self-conscious instances when model and photographer conceptually come together. “My work is completely natural and spontaneous,” he once told Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper. It is also unnatural and carefully planned, albeit instinctively, not consciously.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our tendency is to look at photographs slowly, to amble through the gallery or page through the book, pausing at each new image, taking it all in, but Bravo’s nudes should be flashed on a wall, seen as a flipbook, perceived subliminally, run past furtively, then back again. There’s a longing in his images that’s better experienced by glancing at them than studying them pensively. “I don’t look for anything,” Bravo told the New York Times, “I discover things.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One of the things he seems to have discovered over and over during the seven or eight decades of his career is the exhilaration of discovery. But the leap Bravo made that has always given his work a perpetually modern, fresh spirit is that his photos are not about him, they’re not even about their subject — they’re about the person who’s discovering them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I was a college student, I was lucky enough to work as a teaching assistant for film director Alexander Mackendrick (“The Ladykillers,” “The Man in the White Suit,” “The Sweet Smell of Success”). He used to say that movies take place in a theater located inside the head of each person in the audience. Bravo hangs his pictures in a gallery at that same location.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The classic narrative hook of a quest, or of longing, is one of the themes that runs through “Nudes.” The women are often looking at something, as if for the first time, or seeking something or on their way somewhere.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In “Vertical Panoramic Nude,” Bravo tips his hat to Duchamp as a nude woman </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ascends</span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a short staircase to a drape that’s just blowing open. In “Between White Walls” another woman looks downward as she approaches the top of a curving staircase. “With Architecture II” gives us a naked woman walking away from us, down the sidewalk. And in one of the book’s most elegant images, “The Feet on the Ground,” a blonde, wearing only low-heeled pumps, turns away to walk up a desert road bordered on one side by a large tangle of swordlike agave plants.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Where are these women headed? They’re all going to the same place. They’ll be going with you. You’ll take them along to have coffee, or to the bar or to have dinner or to meet with friends. Or they’ll come to you later, after you fall asleep — that’s when the drape will blow all the way open; that’s when the woman will reach the top of the staircase, look at you and speak; that’s when the agave plants and the lady in the pumps will resolve whatever it is they’re conversing about. And you won’t be able to get any of them out of your mind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bravo was embraced by surrealism at its beginnings, and embraced it back, but he is a Bravoist more than a surrealist; he’s not a trickster. He’s also not humorless. The last photo of a woman in the book is “Lucy.” She faces us, we see her from the shoulders down, she holds a small tray just below her navel. On the tray are two artificial eyes. Now Bravo’s got us. We must look at her nipples, but we can’t take our eyes off those eyes, either. The picture is the first thing Fuentes mentions in his introduction: “We experience a shiver, just the kind we feel in the sliced-eye scene in Luis Buñuel’s ‘Le Chien Andalou.’ In this photograph of ‘Lucy,’ the ambiguities of the gaze become a triple challenge for us. We must wonder: is it our privilege to see ‘Lucy’ with no eyes other than the nipples of a decapitated body? Or are the eyes on the platter looking at us? But the woman’s breasts: don’t they have a gaze? Doesn’t the body have its own way of seeing and being seen?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bravo’s career has spanned almost the whole of what’s called modern art while not losing relevance. He’s nearly always found his subjects near his home in Coyoacan, south of Mexico City. He’s shown with Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Imogene Cunningham and Dorothea Lange and has been the subject of one-man shows and the recipient of myriad awards across the globe. In his own small Mexico City gallery, Bravo was showing the work of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo and Jose Clemente Orozco as early as 1927, three years after he bought his first camera. Just three years later he was cameraman on Sergei Eisenstein’s film “Que Viva México.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By 1938 he had met the bull goose surrealist André Breton, who asked him to take part in a Mexico City exhibition of surrealist art. It was for that show that Bravo created one of his most famous and startling images, “Good Reputation Sleeping,” which is included in “Nudes.” It’s a picture of a woman, wrapped in bandages at the ankles, hips and wrists, lying on a blanket outdoors next to a wall. Four prickly cactus buds lie next to her. Her pubic hair peeks through a gap in the bandages. It’s quintessential Bravo, an image of divine tension, carnal, but also religious, casual and ethereal. But then the jolting juxtapositions in dreams are often what wake us up.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-67641419503256458072017-09-01T22:53:00.000-07:002017-09-01T22:53:22.145-07:00Running Into an Old Friend<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In its glory years of 1959-1960 I was a member of the Hayward Public Library Bug Club. I've always had an affinity for insects. The wonderful woman who ran the Bug Club was Gladys Conklin, the children's librarian. She also wrote children's books -– about bugs. One of them, “I Like Bugs,” was dedicated to me and a friend: “the 6-year-olds in the Bug Club.” Many years later Mrs. Conklin, which is what I always called her, got Alzheimer's disease. One day the garden gate was accidentally left open and Mrs. Conklin wandered out. She was never seen again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She would be happy, I think, to know that I am in Africa, which has plenty of bugs. Some are very strange looking and some are very large, others are exquisitely beautiful and some look good to eat. I've dined on the grasshoppers here. When I lived near Kampala, I had a conversation with Grace, mother of Elijah, about eating insects. It went like this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Me: I ate some grasshoppers today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Grace: And ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Me: Pretty good, tasted like almonds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Grace: I've never had almonds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Me: They taste like grasshoppers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Grace: I want to eat a scorpion. They look so good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Me: But they're poisonous.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Grace: You take off the poison part.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Me: I knew that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then there are the bugs that don't get eaten. They get taken for a ride. Walking home today, I came across two schoolgirls going down the road. As I passed them, I saw that one of the girls had a big grasshopper sitting on top of her head. “Can I take a picture of you and your pet,” I asked. “Her?” she said, pointing up to the grasshopper. “Sure, I forgot she was up there.” I took the shot, showed it to the girls, riotous laughter ensued. I think I heard a tiny snicker come from the grasshopper. Perhaps her name was Mrs. Conklin.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-32327304407027101222017-08-31T03:04:00.000-07:002017-08-31T03:04:47.391-07:00Dancing with Mr. Demerol <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Fentanyl had vanquished everything bad except the itch at the end of my nose. Fortunately, the Chinese man with the upside-down smile had stepped over to help. He was standing directly above and behind me. “That always happens about now,” he said, scratching enthusiastically with an antiseptic-scented index finger. It was a good thing he was willing, because my arms were restrained with black Velcro straps and my ticklish snout was driving me crazy. Not that it mattered much. I was on the way out just as the surgeon, Dr. Low, was coming in. Still, even though the room was starting to breathe with me and I felt as if I were floating on my back in a pool of hot cotton, there was time left for conversation. “Do you know what John Huston said when he was asked how he’d lived so long?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No,” the anesthesiologist said, cranking up the sodium pentothal. “What did he say?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Surgery.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Low laughed and the room filled with black light.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the time I was living in San Francisco, on Taylor Street near Jackson, a few doors down from the Golden Lion restaurant, around the corner from the cable car barn, and the Chinese Hospital was the only health facility I could get to without driving. I may have had a volcano in my viscera but I wasn’t about to give up my parking space. The two-and-a-half-block walk down the steep hill was excruciating, but for some reason heart attack and cancer (which usually pop into my mind at the first sign of odd pain) didn’t occur to me. Apart from the intense discomfort, it was an exquisite ache, centered perfectly in my chest, alternately burning like a fist of lava and throbbing in counterpoint to my heart. If it hadn’t hurt so much, its singular symmetry and rhythm would have been a pleasure. Anyway, it was being taken care of now. Dr. Low was cutting out the devil appendix while I did the backstroke in the underworld.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moments later (so it seemed), I was eased into a bed next to a window that looked out on a wall. “Who’s he?” I asked the nurse, nodding toward the old man in the other bed. “He’s your roommate. He had an operation just before yours. He’s a Filipino. He’s not awake now.” I could see that, but he was groaning. Then again, so was I. He looked to be about sixty-five, a small, muscular man with big hands and most of his hair still black. We were in and out, the two of us. He’d mumble and I’d grunt, I’d sigh and he’d say something in Tagalog. It went like that into the evening until the sandman, a Mr. Demerol, sent us off to sleep in our stainless-steel canoes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the middle of the night, I awoke in an all-blue world. I was seeing the lights from the nurses’ station glowing through the curtains that enclosed the old man’s bed. A cape buffalo had one foot where my right hip pocket should have been. I pushed the button and a few minutes later a young nurse came in, gently rolled me over, and gave me another shot of Demerol, then rolled me back. She seemed embarrassed. “Thank you,” I said, and she patted my ankle as she left. She was a young soul with an old heart.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Tell me the funniest thing,” the old man said slowly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“What?” He seemed to be wide awake.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Tell the funniest thing that ever happened to you,” he said, batting back the blue curtain so that he could see me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a reasonable request. I thought for awhile. “I don’t know if this was the funniest,” I said, “but it’s a contender.” As the Demerol lifted the buffalo’s foot, I told him about my flight to Paris a few years before.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“My friend and I figured that we’d be up all night and that it’d be much cheaper to buy a bottle of liquor instead of buying single drinks.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“True,” he said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“So as soon as the plane left Dulles, I bought a big bottle of Remy Martin cognac at the onboard duty-free shop. Then, being that I’d made the purchase, I sent my friend to retrieve a couple of paper cups from the restroom. We had to be cagey pouring the stuff because you’re not supposed to open the duty-free liquor on the plane. But we got it poured and managed a quick toast before the cognac began dissolving the glue that held the cups together. I was wearing a baggy cotton sweater and about $6 worth of Remy Martin dribbled from the cup to my wrist and down my forearm, and collected into a big cognac reservoir in the sweater’s elbow. I spent the rest of the flight sucking a mouthful of soggy, intoxicating yarn and ignoring the quizzical looks from the stewardesses. I got pretty looped.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After an awkward pause he said, “That’s almost funny.” I had a tough customer on my hands.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t know what his habits were in the real world, but I’d later find that in the Chinese Hospital the man rarely slept unless he had visitors. At night he came alive. He favored conversation between the hours of two and five in the morning, though sometimes he’d perk up as early as midnight. We’ll call him Leon. I had little to do over the few days I was in the Chinese Hospital but chat with Leon when he was awake, write down our conversations when he wasn’t, and dance with Mr. Demerol as the spirit moved me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Right after the cognac story he said this: “Okay, what’s the saddest thing?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The saddest thing that ever happened to me?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Yeah.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’ll pass on that one,” I said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“That’s right,” Leon said with a slight smile as if I’d solved a riddle. “You keep it always here,” he tapped his head, “and here,” he pointed to his heart, “but you never say it. The saddest thing you can’t say.” I nodded and there was a long silence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I came to like him very much. I liked his mastery of the non sequitur (unpredictable changes in direction can be invigorating), his peculiar curiosity, and his screwy, invented expressions. (Once, when I made a claim he doubted, he declared it “about as likely as a luau in Lapland.”) Leon was part imp, part gangster, and something of a mystery. He seemed to be able to pass from consciousness to sleep almost instantly. He’d be lying as still as a statue and then suddenly say something like, “I grew up in Los Angeles.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Really,” I’d reply, “I thought maybe you’d grown up in the Philippines.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Why would you think that?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Because you’re Filipino.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’m not Filipino,” Leon answered. “I’m half Mexican and half Scottish.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I thought I heard you speaking Filipino.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No, that was Latin.” It was definitely not Latin, but I didn’t quibble.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“How old do you think I am?” This was obviously a point of pride (and, after all, the man had just weathered surgery) so I trimmed a few years from my estimate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Sixty-two?” He smiled.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’m seventy-nine,” he informed me with the justifiable glee of a man who’d just had seventeen years added to his life. “I grew up on the east side of Los Angeles where they used to call it Edendale. I lived there until I was twelve and then we moved here. The Mack Sennett movie studio was in Edendale. You know who Mack Sennett was?” I did. Famous for the Keystone Kops movies, Sennett has given Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Buster Keaton their first film jobs. “Constance Talmadge, the actress, would come to our house,” Leon continued. “My mother owned a coat with a leopard collar that Constance Talmadge wanted – real leopard, very luxurious. I think my mother finally gave it to her.” Leon was getting drowsy. “They’d give me fifty cents a day,” he said slowly, “and Mr. Keaton would chase me around for the movie. I was just a child, but I liked being in the movie.” And he was asleep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the morning an elegantly dressed Chinese woman entered the room, walked over to Leon and kissed him. “This is Grace,” Leon said to me. Grace smiled. She appeared to be in her sixties. I assumed that she was Leon’s wife. “I just go by Hang Ah,” she said holding up a large bag and pulling out several pieces of dim sum. “You have some.” And she placed a pork bun, two potstickers and a piece of shui mai on a napkin next to my water pitcher. “Don’t believe anything Leon say!” she whispered, making sure Leon could hear, and they both laughed. Grace took off her coat – it had a leopardskin collar that looked like the real thing – and pulled a chair close to Leon’s bed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I nibbled at the pork bun. The morning nurse had encouraged me to walk as soon as I thought I could. I was so sore I wasn’t sure I could even stand, but I wanted to give Grace and Leon some time alone so I drew my curtain and very, very slowly got to my feet. By the time I returned to the room ten minutes later, Grace was packing up the translucent bits of paper that had wrapped the dim sum and Leon was fast asleep, making a sound like a motor boat with water hyacinths tangled in its propeller going through muddy water. I thanked Grace for the food, we made small talk for a minute or two, and she left.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Late that night, about eleven-thirty, a noise in the hall woke me. The room was blue again; the nurses were laughing quietly outside. At Leon’s bedside were two well-dressed men in their late twenties, talking to him in whispers. He seemed to be angry with them about something. They left abruptly. Leon pushed back his curtain and looked over at me. “My sons,” he said without me asking.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“They like to visit late, huh?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“They’re night owls.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Leon told me dozens of stories about his early life while we shared that room. He reminded me of my own father at about the same age. In his last decade my father’s memory for the recent past was nonexistent, but he could recall the most minute details of his youth. Leon’s memory worked like that. We spent many late, blue-lit hours in the early decades of the century, the time Leon remembered best.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Being in the Chinese Hospital amplified the feeling of being healed in the past. Built in 1924, it has a time-out-of-time atmosphere that carries over to the doctors and staff. The hospital facilities are entirely modern. The only thing out of date is the attitude of the people who work there, which harks back to a less accelerated era when brusqueness was rarely encountered in such an environment. The hospital nutritionist stopped by to see if I wanted American or Chinese food (I chose Chinese), then visited me again to find out if the fare was to my liking. The amiable anesthesiologist came in one day – smiling right side up – to see how I was feeling, and stayed for nearly a half hour, discussing the weather, joking about my itchy nose, and telling me more about my appendix than I cared to hear – “It was all black and full of pus,” he said cheerfully. (Later, when I married a medical professional, I learned that that kind of talk is considered pleasant chit-chat in the health biz.) Dr. Low, too, paid me several leisurely visits. The nurses were kind and funny, and enjoyed telling me about their children. The Chinese Hospital was the perfect context in which to hear Leon’s tales of his life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“This isn’t a funny thing and it’s not sad either,” he said to me one night. “It’s more of a secret thing, but it happened so long ago I guess it doesn’t matter. It was the late 1930s – ’38 or ’39 I think. I’ve never told anybody this except maybe Grace. Nobody knows this,” he whispered conspiratorially. “I’d moved down to Los Angeles from San Francisco. I was in my late twenties. A fellow I met one night told me about a job down in La Jolla. I didn’t have much money so I hitched down and called the number he’d given me from a diner. And the man hired me over the phone – never even met me. Guess who that was,” Leon asked me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I have no idea,” I replied.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“He was the writer. The detective writer, you know? Mr. Chandler.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Raymond Chandler?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Yes, that’s who.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Amazing. What did you do for him?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Well, I would do all sorts of things. Odd jobs, whatever needed being done. And I would drive him some nights when he went visiting.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’ve heard he was sort of a solitary character.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“That’s right,” Leon said. “You know his wife was older than he was and she was ill, she was an invalid and he took care of her. And he wrote his books and articles.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As he spoke I imagined the Chandlers whiling away the warm La Jolla evenings together. I’d been to the town at night just once. I remembered the sea smell of the mist mixed with the scent of the night-blooming cactus, and how sensuous the curved trunks of the palm trees looked when illuminated by the warm yellow headlights of slow-moving Bentleys. “But they would go visiting?” I asked Leon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No, no. Mrs. Chandler was bedridden, but she wanted Mr. Chandler always around. So in the evenings he’d work or read to her. Then, when she went to sleep, he’d go visit his friend. But by then he’d be a little drunk. He never showed it, but he was a big drinker, you know.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’ve heard that,” I said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“So he’d call me to come drive him because it was quite a few miles north, up the coast to Encinitas.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Who did Chandler visit? Was he having an affair?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No, not at all. Mr. Chandler was very much in love with his wife. No, see, this is the part you’ll find surprising I think. He’d go on these late-night visits up to Encinitas to see the famous Indian. Those two had become acquainted, become friends some way. I don’t know how.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Who are you talking about” I asked Leon. I thought he was being overly mysterious considering that we were discussing events that took place a half century earlier.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The yogi!” Leon said impatiently, as if I was fool not to have known. “Yogananda. Paramahansa Yogananda, the great yogi from India. I would drive Chandler up there to the house on the cliffs above the ocean. He told me they often talked about his stories.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No! You’re kidding. I can’t imagine they’d have had anything in common.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“They were as different as butter and bone meal,” Leon said in a low, comical voice. “But I drove him up there dozens of times. I met Mr. Yogananda twice. Very nice man, though he could have used a haircut. Mr. Chandler would stay for a couple hours. I’d go for a walk and have a cigarette or two, or sit in the car and read the Daily Racing Form.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The conversation put me in mind of my world-traveling raconteur uncle who once told me about a fellow he met in London who – every time my uncle finished a story – replied, “Interesting if true.” It’s a line I never would have used on Leon, but his Chandler and Yogananda revelation briefly tempted me. The Demerol was trying to drag me out of the dance floor of sleep and I was trying to stay awake long enough to ask Leon a few more questions about the unlikely alliance between Mr. Chandler and Mr. Yogananda. But suddenly he was snoring away, so I gave in and let Mr. Demerol lead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I woke up the next morning the nurse was pushing a wheelchair into the room. “I’m going home,” Leon explained. “Enjoyed talking to you.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Why don’t you write down your phone number,” I said, my writer’s brain sensing story potential.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I don’t have a phone,” Leon said (I knew he was lying, everybody has a phone). “But I’m at Red’s Place – just down Jackson here at Beckett on the corner – every Thursday night from seven ‘til eleven or so. That’s my night out. Come by. I’ll tell you some more. It gets better. You can buy me a drink.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’ll do it,” I said. “Thursday?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Every Thursday.” He nodded and the nurse helped him into the wheelchair and put a large paper bag on his lap.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day I checked myself out of the Chinese Hospital. They’d been so good to me, I actually wrote a fan letter to the nurses and Dr. Low.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The following Thursday at about seven-thirty I caught a cab at the corner of Pacific and Taylor and had it deliver me to Red’s Place. I stayed for nearly two hours, drinking J&B with water back and inhaling the other customer’s Camels. Leon never showed up. I did the same thing on the next Thursday, but I came later and stayed longer, until about midnight. I also described Leon as best I could to the bartender, but he couldn’t recall seeing anybody like that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the third Thursday after I came home from the Chinese Hospital I walked down to Red’s Place around 9:30 in the evening. It must have been late September, but it was still a warm night and there were a lot of children playing on the sidewalks in Chinatown. A fair number of young, backpacking tourists were wandering around with the same dazzled, fey demeanor they exude wherever in the world you come across them. As I walked, the aromas of seafood, car exhaust and stirfry wafted about, blending together into the singular, unmistakable Chinatown smell that I’ve had in my olfactory memory bank since I was a child. As I said, there were children all around, a few old men, a few backpackers and, as I arrived at the doorway to Red’s Place, Leon’s two well-dressed sons. They entered just ahead of me. I ordered a beer and stood there sucking up Camel smoke and trying to make eye contact with Leon’s sons. After ten minutes of watching them in deep conversation I walked over to where they were sitting. “Excuse me,” I said. “Is Leon your father?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Who are you?” the heavier one asked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I was in the hospital with your father. I saw you there one night visiting.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Leon’s not my father,” he said. “I just do some work for him sometimes.” And he smiled and checked his watch, and the two politely excused themselves and walked out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After that, if I was in the neighborhood on a Thursday, I’d sometimes go by Red’s Place, but I never saw Leon and I never saw his “sons” again either. Over the next few months I pretty much forgot about all of them, including Chandler and Yogananda.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Generally, I don’t pray. I’ve never found it very effective. It could be my technique, or it could be my lack of faith. It’s foolish of me no doubt, because writers of all people need as much help as they can get – who wouldn’t find comfort in an alliance with a supreme being? In any case, though I didn’t pray for it – indeed, I’d stopped thinking about it – my prayers were answered. By sheer coincidence I came across the ending to Leon’s story in a basement restaurant on Pagoda Place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a friend, Liz, who loves dim sum and I’m fond of it myself. About five months after my appendectomy we had a date on a Tuesday morning to meet at Hang Ah Tea Room. I like Hang Ah because the dim sum is quite good and the place is a charming dump, which means you don’t have to compete with a herd of people to get a table and you come away with that stomach satori that is the only thing any of us really wants (or perhaps one of two things). It’s the oldest dim sum dive in Chinatown and its cellar location gives it a tawdry appeal that the owners could probably cash in on if they wanted to, but thankfully have not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On our way in Liz and I stopped in Hang Ah’s entryway to look at the Miss Chinatown photos. As we were standing there, out walked Grace, Leon’s wife. I might not have recognized her except for the leopardskin collar of her coat. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen like that. It made me think of Constance Talmadge and Edendale and Leon-the-child being chased by an as-yet-unknown Buster Keaton for fifty cents a day. It’s funny how everything can get all mixed together in a moment – it’s often like that in dreams, but you don’t expect it to happen in reality.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Grace!” I said. I startled her. She didn’t recognize me. “I’m Doug,” I explained. “I was in the hospital with Leon.” She squinted and smiled.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Oh yeah,” she said, taking my hand. “I remember. How are you doing now?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“All better.” I patted the spot now occupied only by a phantom appendix and a faint hoofprint. “How’s Leon?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Her smile wilted. “Leon’s gone,” she said sadly. “He passed on…one months. Just one month ago.” He’d been such a vital character. Even in the hospital he looked so healthy and fit that I’d figured he’d live another decade or two or three. I didn’t ask her what he’d died of. What’s it matter?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Well, he was a great guy,” I said. Liz had drifted into the restaurant as I talked with Grace.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Great guy!” Grace agreed. “We take him back to Manila for the burial. That’s what he want.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Manila?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Oh yeah, he come from there, you know. Grow up there.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Really? For some reason I thought he grew up in Los Angeles. I must have got it wrong. Did he spend a lot of time in L.A.?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“No, I have a sister there. We visit her a couple times, but usually she come up here – better Chinatown,” Grace laughed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now Grace had me going. “I guess he was a big reader, huh?”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Oh yeah, he drive me crazy reading and re-reading those detective books and all about the movies and the crazy religions, but he always make a good living,” and her eyes started to tear up as she thought about him and I wanted to stop talking to her because I never know what to do at such times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Grace, I’m so sorry, but I know you’re going to do fine.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Yeah, I’m fine,” she assured me in a motherly tone. “Nice to see you.” She smiled and squeezed my hand. As she walked down the alley toward the street, I noticed her black-and-gray hair made an oddly dramatic lacework over the leopardskin collar – there was something bittersweet about it, but I don’t think I can explain it. I then walked inside the restaurant where Liz had already ordered pork buns, potstickers, shui mai and shrimp dumplings, and I told her the whole story, starting with the anesthesiologist itching my nose and ending with Grace’s leopardskin collar partly covered by her black-and-gray hair.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-65414079577996307422017-08-26T01:17:00.000-07:002017-08-26T01:17:38.118-07:00Lost in the French Quarter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0NAs1HbszP7nKASlHzsqX2DrH4Ebm9geiPRabPkWtCJlzJYQqqkGnBloj9xKPakbVFQFvl12O6jmbCDNVQ587y8gG0d3BNGasQlDZ_E3VxK4Gn1pVLcTEvL5e2lakl4ih8zHV82-3GKS/s1600/1979-362-16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0NAs1HbszP7nKASlHzsqX2DrH4Ebm9geiPRabPkWtCJlzJYQqqkGnBloj9xKPakbVFQFvl12O6jmbCDNVQ587y8gG0d3BNGasQlDZ_E3VxK4Gn1pVLcTEvL5e2lakl4ih8zHV82-3GKS/s400/1979-362-16.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">New Orleans is a city of layers – a parfait metropolis – and even on Bourbon Street, where the glitz is thickest, the authentic can still be uncovered. There is some eccentric, elemental power permeating the place (a filigree of John the Conqueror roots, perhaps, snaking through the subterranean piping), and especially its French Quarter or Vieux Carre (not an American neighborhood so much as a Caribbean one), that no amount of cheesy T-shirt shops, crummy souvenir stands, or corporate co-option can ever subdue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Among its many fine and bizarre qualities, New Orleans is a great people preserve – a museum of Homo sapiens and unnatural history; a national zoo park of persons. While Paris offers a peerless collection of strangely shaped dogs, New Orleans has the corner on curiously forged personalities; an undiluted jambalaya of jazz geniuses, junkies, over-voluptuous blues mamas and video-poker-playing antique hustlers, Lucky Dog hawkers ranting Shakespeare, beautiful and not so beautiful losers, piquant tap dancers in Nikes, rats, bats and alley cats.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“New Orleans,” a former resident recently told me, “is a nightmare you don’t want to wake up from.” It’s a town with a complicated soul: where the darkness ends and the light begins is not always easy to discern. A place where shadows are still abundant, still honored. The Vieux Carre’s sultry roux of ghosts – Marie Lavenaux to Tennessee Williams, Jean Lafitte to John Kennedy Toole, William Faulkner to Lulu White – probably has something to do with it. In any case it’s seductive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Consider our waiter the last time we dined at Antoine’s. My best guess is that he was a specimen of late middle age who crept from his glass case to serve supper. His waxy complexion was as pale and translucent as one of Ms. Rice’s vampires. And his wispy hair a color of red-brown that doesn’t occur naturally, nor can it be achieved through a simple dye job. Foremost was his demeanor. We seemed to be either amusing or appalling to him, and he appeared only barely able to suppress whichever it was. Imagine Bela Lugosi mingled with Willem Dafoe gone to seed and balding, while still trying to achieve a pompadour, and straining not to chortle in your face, and you’ve got our man.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He was bent sideways at the shoulder, the cant of his head making every utterance a question, whether it was a question or not. He sweated, breathed heavily, took time to consider with bemusement everything we had to say – looked like he might drop dead if we didn’t get on with it. Still, he was friendly, even warm, in his own off-center fashion. And, unlike Lestat’s brethren, he didn’t walk on the ceiling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We started with the Huitres en coquille à la Rockefeller (Oysters Rockefeller), because we had to: Antoine’s invented the dish in 1899, selecting the name to honor the rich sauce. It was the right thing to do (inventing it and ordering it). As we were finishing, our waiter crept over. “For your main course, Le filet de pompano Pontchartrain is quite good? And Les pommes de terre souffles to go along is always popular?” He was not only Gothic but clairvoyant. It was what I’d intended to order. He possessed a peculiar brand of charm, or he was the damnedest of freaks – take your pick.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Visiting museums in the French Quarter might seem redundant, but there are several worthwhile ones, and some others, equally meritorious, that don’t even know they’re museums. If you’ve come for the music (and if you haven’t, you’ve got the axiomatic hole in your soul) then there are two important relic centers at which your attendance is required. One is the permanent jazz exhibit at the Louisiana State Museum, the other is Preservation Hall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hidden away – as if it were something to be ashamed of – on an upper floor of the Louisiana State Museum in the Old Mint, at the far southeast corner of the Quarter, the jazz collection is a sweet exhibit of jazz (and some blues) photos, famous musicians’ instruments, and other artifacts. On one wall a frame holds old business cards for Eubie Blake, the Noon Bazooka Trio, Punch and his Bunch, Kid Sheik and his Storyville Ramblers, Paul Barbarin “Former drummer with King Oliver, Jelly Roll Martin (sic), Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong.” On the same floor, across the entryway, is a collection of Mardi Gras memorabilia – costumes, photographs of the parades and balls and various krewes in their regalia, and other fanciful pieces dating back to the early part of this century, when we all lived on a different planet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A half-dozen blocks across the Vieux Carre, Preservation Hall is a dilapidated, transcendent garage filled with music performed by veteran musicians who have been making jazz longer than many of us have been up and walking. You will stand in line; if it’s raining you will stand in line and get soaked. Finally, you pay your $3 for the privilege of peering in a doorway (all the seats will be filled by the time you gain entry). The room itself is little more than crumbling pegboard, peeling paint, thick dust and bare light bulbs. The audience sits on the floor, in the few seats, or huddles in the entryway corridor. They don’t seem to mind the surroundings, nor do the musicians, nor does the music.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When it rains in the Quarter, it comes down and down like a towel being wrung. Water streams over the roofs in rippling windows, floats discarded plastic hurricane cups down the gutters, makes the wrought iron glisten (the only time it does), slows the cars, accelerates the pedestrians, overflows the fountains. And the Gulf wind curls off Canal Street into the Quarter, flaps the courtyard banana leaves like slick green elephant ears, rattles wisteria pods against the brick, takes the flatness out of the river, pushes street musicians into doorways, under archways.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As Willie Sutton remarked about being in a bank at midnight, finding yourself in a French Quarter courtyard during a cloud burst is not an altogether unpleasant experience. You will get drenched, and maybe get a chill, which is why you’ll need to warm yourself with a drink or two (or three or five) just as soon as the rain lets up. Fortunately, one of the Quarter’s best courtyards happens to be behind the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum on Chartres Street only a few steps from Napoleon House, one of the city’s favorite historical saloons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Pharmacy Museum was once a real pharmacy, established in the same building in 1823. The original proprietor was Louis Joseph Dufilho Jr., the first licensed pharmacist in the United States. The museum courtyard has a fountain and benches, banana trees, a wisteria vine creeping high up a brick wall, stealthily heading for a neighboring balcony, and plantings of medicinal herbs. With luck it will rain during your visits. To get to the courtyard, you walk through the museum, which is well worth the meager $2 admission, and also worth a half-hour or so of lingering.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Inside, in hand-carved European rosewood cabinets, are antique medicines and doctoring implements of every description – apothecary jars of home cures and those prescribed by doctors, as well as patent medicines, leech jars, blood-letting tools, and bottles of gris-gris potions used by Voodoo practitioners. (Handwritten herbal formulas from a circa 1900 New Orleans pharmacist’s notebook are titled “Fast Luck,” “Wa Wa Water” and “Hoodo Mixture” – an effective-sounding recipe calling for “cayenne pepper, steel dust, Grains of Paradise, and lodestone.”) There’s a magnificent old soda fountain and a grim array of Civil War-era surgical instruments including an exquisitely frightening trepanning device. The revelation of the visit is not learning that Coca-Cola once contained coca, from which cocaine is derived, which everyone must know by now, but that its sparkling clear and clean competitor, 7-Up, once listed the mood-stabilizing lithium among its ingredients.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But the Pharmacy Museum is strictly a museum, so if you’re intent on acquiring supplies to do some freelance messing around, or charms to keep others from messing with you, you may want to stop into the Voodoo Museum over on Dumaine Street. In addition to selling gris-gris and potions, this small archive mixes a little tourist-targeted hokum with an honest effort to enlighten visitors about the world’s most misunderstood religion. The last time I was there, I was on my way out of town, leaving for a circuitous trip through the Mississippi Delta, driving to Memphis. To ensure that good luck would be my traveling companion, I dropped by to pick up a black cat bone from Prince Mougobber. He took me down a dark hallway to a back room altar, growled a few words to Voodoo’s mischievous child spirit-god and keeper of the crossroads (“Let us pass, let us pass …”), took a mouthful of white rum, sprayed it between his teeth across a Bible, pressed the bone into my palm, and sent me on my way. (“Keep it in your right pocket,” the Prince told me as I walked out, “not in your left, for God’s sake!”) And it was good luck, indeed, all the way to Graceland.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the Quarter, one can even stay in a museum of sorts. Many think the Hotel Maison de Ville, one of New Orleans’ oldest buildings, is also its finest small inn. It was good enough for Tennessee Williams – the hotel’s Room 9 is where he lived while completing “A Streetcar Named Desire.” They say the playwright would often relax in the lush courtyard with a Sazerac. Maybe the spray of the water coming off the old cast-iron fountain cooled his hot brain as he ended another day of trying to help Stanley, Stella and Blanche resolve their overheated lives so they could become an iconic part of ours.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Williams’ affection for sipping Sazerac in the courtyard couldn’t have been more appropriate. The Maison de Ville was once the home of Antoine Amedee Peychaud, the pharmacist who invented the drink – a combination of bitters and brandy – and first served it to his grateful clients in an egg cup, or coquetier. Some say that’s the source of the word “cocktail.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Maison de Ville actually has two locations, the main one on Toulouse Street, adjacent to its equally splendid restaurant (the Bistro at Maison de Ville), and the Audubon Cottages two blocks away. The Audubon Cottages were home to naturalist John James Audubon and his family in the 1780s. While in residence he made many of the watercolors – hand-painted color photographs might be a more apt description – for his “Birds of America.” You enter the cottages’ compound by passing through a black door in a white wall on Dauphin Street, which opens onto a brick pathway lined with impatiens. The pathway leads to a swimming pool surrounded by low, vine-covered walls that enclose the small courtyards outside the rooms. Each courtyard has a fountain or fish pond. “The room you’re staying in,” the bellman told me as he opened the door, “is where Sissy Spacek lived while they were filming Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK.’”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">His comment reminded me that the most cinematic vision I’d seen in recent years came walking at me down Bourbon Street one Halloween. Halloween in the French Quarter is considerably easier to take than Mardi Gras, and the costumes are often just as exotic, if not as abundant. I recall alligators with light-up eyes, faces painted gold and silver (remember the costume party cavorting in ‘JFK’?), and several burly ballerinas. But the outfit that left the greatest impression was that of a simple cowpoke. He wore boots, trousers, a shirt, a cowboy hat and a mask that covered his face. To every inch of his apparel he’d carefully attached a small square mirror. The effect was dazzling, a disco ball morphed into a man. As he languidly made his way through the crowd, every light along Bourbon Street bounced off his mirrored suit, sending thousands of luminous dots through the lurid New Orleans air to swim over the buildings, across startled faces, dappling police horses, sprinkling the black lace balconies, the strip clubs and T-shirt shops. People went silent, hypnotized, as they noticed him – the cowboy messiah come to the Vieux Carre.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But then something like that always seems to be happening in the Quarter. Or about to.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-85798273971081406212017-08-23T01:26:00.001-07:002017-08-23T02:16:29.848-07:0048 Hours on Safari in Uganda<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By Nattabi Ruth Lugose Basoma, director, Engo Tours</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">http://www.engotours.com</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let's say you're crazy as a hog on ice and let's say you want to do a 48 hour safari in the wilds of Uganda, but I repeat myself. Who am I to try and stop your craziness? Instead let me enable it. Here's a plan that will take you up-country in East Africa's most dramatically beautiful nation, get you up close and personal with its amazing animals and extraordinary landscape, and get you back to the 1.6 million city of Kampala in 48 hours. Yes, For reals. But it will cost you bigtime. Still, what better way to spend your hard-earned semolians?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ready? Here we go. You land at Entebbe at mid-day. You have already booked a whirlybird flight on FlyKea, Kampala's premier helicopter company (they also fly small planes). In about 40 minutes you're in Fort Portal nestled in the Rwenzori Mountains, the famed Mountains of the Moon, first written about by Diogenes who visited them. A private hire car zips you out to Kibale Forest where you do an hour or two of chimpanzee tracking. You then go back to Fort Portal and grab a quick lunch at The Dutchess -- great pizza and libations. You return to the nearby copter and off you go to Queen Elizabeth Park, about 30 minutes south. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To get there, you fly over some of the most beautiful landscape in Africa. Below you great gangs of elephants, cape buffalo, kob and waterbucks (two types of antelope), lions and hyenas range over the savannah. You cruise low over the Great Rift Valley, the place it all began for humanity, the Source Perrier of humankind. 30 minutes later, FlyKea drops you near Mweya Lodge at QENP. Wave goodbye; they'll be back to get you tomorrow. Check in, leave your bags in your room and walk down to the boat landing at Kazinga Channel. You've got just enough time for the glorious sunset cruise. Follow the cruise with a late night dinner, a soak and a massage. Then get to bed, cause you need to be up way much early in the morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's still dark as you crawl out from under your mosquito net at Mweya Lodge, grab your packed breakfast from the front desk, and make your way to the helicopter. Up you go, heading southwest for Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, one of the oldest virgin forests on earth and home to some of the planet's last mountain gorillas (about 800 remain, most are in Uganda with the rest in the DRC and Rwanda). You've got an early morning meet and greet with the gorilla family, 18 of the most laid back, charming primates you've ever encountered. Hope you got a good night's rest, because after the two hour drive you've got a 5 hour round trip jungle hike to meet your distant relatives. The good news is it's totally worth it (It will cost you $600 per for your permit, which allows you a one hour audience with the lovely beasts.) It's one of life's great experiences, and that's no hyperbole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ninety minutes later, you touch down in Buhoma, the gateway to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. After a brief orientation talk and some pointers on gorilla etiquette (don't get closer than 3 meters, easy on the direct eye contact, don't mess with the babies or you'll be going home in a ziploc baggie) you clamber into a Land Cruiser for the two hour drive to the 7500 foot elevation where the hike begins. You will meet up with porters at the trailhead and each member of your party will hire one, cause you're not that crazy; for $15, they will not only carry your expensive crap from Nikon and Northface, they will push you, pull you and otherwise save your ass from falling all over the place. You'll also be accompanied by armed guards -- to protect you from the other kind of guerillas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And now in you go, warily slipping, sliding and stumbling (and being caught by your porter) toward the best meeting you will ever have. It is a monochrome world you move through: green, green and green. Then, when the walks seems like it will never end, there in the distance are several black furry blobs, the Deadheads of the rainforest, just chillin', munching leaves, patiently awaiting your arrival and the clicking of your cameras (there are two thousand three hundred photos of mountain gorillas on Flickr. Why not just have the experience without hiding behind your camera?)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You slowly approach, the gorillas could not be less interested in you. Except the babies. They're very interested and on several occasions over the next hour the guides will have you back up because the friendly, clownish youngsters are just too interested in their strange, hairless visitors. The hour goes too quickly, of course, but what an hour it is. The babies keep things entertaining while the interactions between the adult males and females bring an air of dramatic tension to the proceedings, and the occasional grunts and soft growls of the silverback leave no question as to who's really at the top of the food chain here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On your way back to the SUV, as you huff and puff your way toward civilization, notice the profusion of amazing butterflies, the other primates and the fantastic birds -- more species in Uganda than in all of North America. Once back in Buhoma, find your guide who will take you on a village walk and introduce you to the Batwa pigmy group that used to live in the forest but now must reside at its edge as "conservation refugees." The Batwa are one of the oldest societies on earth. Hunter/gatherers by tradition, they've been booted from their forest home and now struggle to survive as farmers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After meeting the Batwa, and buying A LOT of their crafts, return to your helicopter. In a couple hours you are on the ground in Entebbe. You catch a meal at Goretti's great pizza restaurant on the beach at Lake Victoria, then head to the airport. By about 4pm you are ensconced in your Emirates 747, on your way to Dubai and then home.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-34359300348375582322017-08-23T00:30:00.000-07:002017-08-23T00:30:06.800-07:00No Sun King<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wrote this in 2010 about the day of an eclipse in Kasese, Western Uganda...</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It starts with the animals acting slightly strange. The local dog choir does a rare post-dawn performance, the blue-headed agamas freeze in place on the rooftops and branches. The birds, just wiping the sleep from little ebony eyes, hunker down in the trees, confused, thinking that their body clock is on the fritz because it's telling them they need to go back to dreamland, even though that's where they just came from. Then you begin feeling a little strange because the crackling white light of morning is turning to deep orange and getting dimmer by the moment. What up? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Annular solar eclipse, that's what. And not just any old eclipse. Yesterday's magnificent celestial stunt was a brief, but dazzling bit of sun-moon acrobatics, the likes of which we won't see again any time soon and most on the planet never saw at all, except on computer screens and newspaper pages. Around here, people used window reflections or a plastic basin filled with water, or peered through thin napkins to avoid gazing directly at the sun. The best shield, however, was the roiling cloud curtain that would completely obliterate the twinned orbs for a few seconds, then teasingly reveal them through a veil of vapor, which once or twice provided a glare-free projection screen, and cut the light enough to enable photos, such as the one above, which I took at about 8:15 a.m. in Kasese, Uganda.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“That's a good omen,” I said to a Ugandan friend after the show was over and we were heading to breakfast. I just made that up. I didn't know whether it was or not, and besides, I'm not really into omens. Turns out I was right. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About six hours later, the heat of the afternoon having put me in a semi-dream state, the same friend came to my door. “Would you like to go see the king?” she asked. She'd read my mind. Not five minutes before I'd been thinking that I wished I knew a king so I could go visit him. Wish granted! And we didn't even have to go far. His palace is less than a mile from where I'm staying. On occasion you do get what you want. Sometimes this old universe ain't so bad after all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He is Omusinga Charles Wesley Mumbere Irema-Ngoma of Rwenzururu, the king of the Rwenzori Kingdom. He was reinstated to the throne just last October after an absence of many years, during which he worked as a nurses' aide in the United States. On the spur of the moment, a small group of college students he was scheduled to meet with asked if we'd like to accompany them. My friend said she thought we would and came and got me. And that's the true story of how my wish was granted and we stumbled into an audience with his highness, the Omusinga of Rwenzururu.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We arrived at the palace in the hills behind this town to find several Ugandan army guards at the gate, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. An officer walked over and greeted us, then we were frisked, asked to turn off our cellphones and to turn on our cameras. The officer inspected the cameras and handed them back to us and said we could use them only “on request.” He motioned for us to follow him. We walked past a royal guard who was holding a spear. Both his white shirt and his gray cap were embroidered with the phrase “Royal Guard.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The throne room was in a large, low, cylindrical building with a gently sloping, conical roof. The entire structure was made of logs and reeds. It was cool and dark inside; a timid breeze moved through the open hexagonal windows. Unadorned fluorescent tubes attached to the walls in three or four places provided the only artificial light. The dirt floor had been swept clean. There were a few thick ribbons -- yellow and blue -- tied on supporting eaves, some palm fronds lashed to pillars, but the room was largely free of decoration. There were several rows of wooden benches. We sat down. At the front was a raised platform with a desk-size table and a large cushioned chair. The table covering was oddly incongruous. It appeared to be a sheet for a child's bed. Its border featured brightly colored cartoon figures of animals and a wooden ship with a barn on its deck: Noah's Ark.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We waited for 30 or 40 butt-anesthetizing minutes, then a small procession entered led by the king. Two ministers, several officers and three ladies of the court followed him. In his right hand he was carrying a short fly-whisk with a black and white diamond design on the handle. He was dressed in gray slacks and a short-sleeve white shirt. His glasses had thin gold rims. He looked to be in his mid-50s. He took his place at the table on the platform. The army officer who'd inspected our cameras sat behind the king in a white plastic chair.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We prayed and sang the anthem of the Rwenzori kingdom and the Uganda national anthem. We then introduced ourselves individually, after which the president of the student association read a long document. The king listened intently, making notes and nodding. After the reading was complete, the king addressed each issue that had been raised. The minister of education said he'd been a founder of the student association more than 20 years ago. We sang again. We prayed again. The king rose and exited, followed by his ministers, several officers and the three ladies of the court, one of whom carried his empty water glass in a small black suitcase.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-62315852003050651082017-07-29T05:01:00.000-07:002017-07-30T00:18:08.217-07:00Bella Africa: Yes, She Can<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<br />
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that females can’t be safari guides, they certainly can’t be drivers of those big SUVs, the LandCruisers and the Range Rovers?”<br />
<br />
“Ah, so many! Many, many people told me that,” says Bella Sylvia.<br />
<br />
But she ignored them. All of them. And today she is the director and owner of Bella Africa, the first all-female safari driver-guide tour company in Uganda, maybe in all of Africa.<br />
<br />
Much to her father’s dismay, Bella left home at 18 to pursue her dream of being a safari guide. She got off to a promising start as a dishwasher at a backpackers hostel run by an Australian fellow, then built on that success by getting promoted to potato slicer. Needless to say, the smart money, and her dad, were not betting on Bella’s success. Indeed, as her dad watched her depart for the big city of Kampala, he thought the very worst.<br />
<br />
“He opposed city life,” Bella recalls. “He said, ‘You will become nasty, a prostitute.’”<br />
<br />
“But that’s not what I was into,” she says.<br />
<br />
When she told one date that her dream was to be a safari guide, he said, “If I have a wife with such ambitions, she will forget them fast. My wife will stay home where she belongs!”<br />
<br />
“That’s exactly why I’ll never be your wife,” Bella quipped.<br />
<br />
The life of women, and of everyone in Uganda, has improved markedly in the last 30 years or so, since the fall of Idi Amin. There are still many improvements needed, but things are much better than they were in the bad old days.<br />
<br />
The lot of women is still a tough one, though they are the backbone, the heart, and the soul of the nation, as most men would agree. They are also genetically entrepreneurial as no one can deny. When people ask me to describe the Ugandan women I’ve known over the years (I’ve lived here since 2009), I tell them they have two abiding qualities: They are authentically sweet and genuinely tough. They are also gorgeous to a one; on the market days in the village where I lived the first 3 years I was here it was like being surrounded by Vogue models, as I walked the market, it was if I was swimming through a school of exquisitely dressed and coiffed tropical fish, albeit human ones.<br />
<br />
Uganda itself is a land of staggering and singular beauty with landscapes and wild animals that are both majestic and dramatic. Its people, according to no less an expert source than the BBC, and seconded by me, are the friendliest on earth. They are also very funny. They also love to talk. They are also brave, kind and loyal. Otherwise, they have nothing to recommend them.<br />
<br />
Because of Bella’s energy, her intellect, her high spirits and her determination, when meeting her one is reminded of her precursors, everyone from Mary Kingsley to Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas. Women of courage who didn’t listen to those who didn’t believe in them. Wild and beautiful themselves, they, like Bella, went deep into wild and beautiful places. They were drawn to them, pulled by the magnetism of adventure, seduced by the landscape, the animals, the possibilities.<br />
<br />
As tourism goes, Uganda is still something of a secret. Amin, Gorillas, Ebola is what most Americans and Europeans know about the land-locked, Oregon-size country that is surrounded by the Democratic Republic of Congo (which is in fact where the Ebola River is located), Rwanda, Kenya, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. There is one quote from decades ago by one famous person — Winston Churchill — that gets trotted out repeatedly (apparently no other westerner ever said anything complimentary about the country): “The kingdom of Uganda is a fairy-tale. You climb up … and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and, most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be seen in the whole range of Africa ... I say: ‘Concentrate on Uganda’. For magnificence, for variety of form and colour, for profusion of brilliant life - bird, insect, reptile, beast - for vast scale -- Uganda is truly the pearl of Africa.”<br />
<br />
Churchill was exactly right, of course. Over the years the British, and later the Ugandan government, had the good sense to establish national parks throughout this country, tens-of-thousands of acres of exquisite terrain and gorgeous animals, all set aside for looking at, camping in, photographing. And a knowledgeable local guide only enriches the experience.<br />
<br />
The landscape varies significantly in altitude, flora and fauna. There are snow-capped peaks and glaciers (The Rwenzoris in the west are the second highest mountains in Africa; only Kilimanjaro is higher), desert, dry savannah with acacia trees and euphorbia candelabra, giant succulents and tree ferns just below the snowline, and knee-deep mosses. There are fish eagles everywhere you look (they closely resemble the American Eagle) giant otherworldly-looking marabou storks sulking on buildings throughout the cities, and jillions of other exotic birds (this small nation has more native bird species than all of North America, in excess of 1000). And there is no shortage of humans and other primates.<br />
<br />
There are about 36 million people, 80 percent of which are 15 or younger; it’s a country of children, and children raising children. There are 52 tribes, or clans as they are usually called, with more than 50 languages. I speak a smattering of Luganda and Lhukonzo, the languages spoken by the Buganda and Bukonzo, and a few words of Swahili. The official language is English, though Swahili is also widely spoken and one also often comes across French, Dutch and German speakers, as well as Indians and Chinese speakers. Culture and tradition is a polychrome tapestry ranging from ancient rituals to hip hop and rap.<br />
<br />
Bella and her sisters expertly navigate it all while finding leopards and lions, elephants, hippos and anything else that flies, walks, slithers or swims. They answer their clients many questions and concerns, and all but tuck them in for the night at the end of another lovely tropical day. A visit to the office of Bella Africa finds two of the women practicing their German by reading aloud to one another, and others formulating itineraries, checking with guides in the field, confirming reservations, overseeing car washing and doing the many other tasks large and small that are required to keep things running smoothly in the field and in the office. Meanwhile, Bella is stuck at the bank trying to arrange a short term loan because a couple clients failed to meet a payment deadline. It's a regimen that would do-in a lesser soul, but she juggles all the challenges with good humored resolve. <br />
<br />
Bella’s first trip as a driver-guide was a 17 day drive through Murchison Falls National Park and the Congo’s Virunga National Park, one of the three places in the world to see Mountain Gorillas up close. The business was “getting real crazy,” she recalls. “I was doing everything, including raising a four year old boy (now 7).” She knew she needed “more girls who can drive and guide.” First, she turned to her sister-in-law. “Can you please come help; we will work together. I can’t pay you.” Who could down such an offer?<br />
<br />
Bella’s sister-in-law, Juliet, unlike so many, believed in her and joined the company; she is still a key staff member. Girl safari guides were not well received at first, and they still get a lot of raised eyebrows, but Bella and her sister-in-law kept pushing, kept booking tours, kept doing what everyone said couldn't be done. “It was was really hard when I started, so hard, but giving up was not in my vocabulary. Still, in many parks, I’m the only female guide.”<br />
<br />
Back when Bella was still slicing potatoes for a paycheck, she asked her boss, the Aussie bloke, to make her a safari guide. He laughed, said, “What can you do?”<br />
<br />
“Anything,” Bella said.<br />
<br />
“Go home and grow up,” he replied.<br />
<br />
So she did. She went home the next weekend, then came back on Monday. “OK,” she told him. “I grew up.”<br />
<br />
“OK, fine,” he laughed. And he started training her as a safari guide.<br />
<br />
I guess one could use words like spunk and precocious to describe Bella, but that would be condescending and inaccurate. Sure, Bella had plenty of those two qualities, but what made the difference was her vision, stubbornness, hard work, and fearlessness. Not to mention a business sense that would be the envy of any Harvard MBA. Luck? Sure, she had that too. You can’t get along without it in business, definitely not if the business is in Africa.<br />
<br />
“I worked for the Australian as a guide until 2009,” Bella tells me. “I learned all about guiding. Learning birds was the most difficult, because there are so many. Then I also learned about mammals, butterflies, moths, vegetation.”<br />
<br />
Bella says she feels a responsibility to find animals when she takes out clients. On one recent trip she spent 14 days with a British photographer looking for a leopard. They saw 9 lions, but no leopard. All the park personnel knew she was looking for a leopard so her client could get his photos. Finally she got the call from a ranger near one of the park gates. “I’m looking at a leopard in the tree!” the ranger said. Bella drove like the wind and they got there while the leopard was still lounging on the branch. The photographer took more than 300 photos.<br />
<br />
<br />
“What does your dad think of all this?”<br />
<br />
“I’m now his favorite! He includes me in all family meetings; I’m a role model for my siblings,” he tells me. “What I see in girls now,” Bella tells me, “is that they are waiting for a rich man instead of doing it themselves. That’s not right.”<br />
<br />
While Bella Africa excels at delivering the classic safari experience, it also seeks to give clients unique trips that expose them to the culture, the indigenous clans, and the extraordinary and varied lives of Ugandan tribes-people. One of the most unique, and unfortunately disenfranchised, tribal groups is the Batwa pygmies who live in the southwest near Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and in the west near Semliki National Park. Bella tells me about her first visit with the Batwa elders when they sang her “a deep, sad song” about the star-crossed history of the tribe that’s been pushed out of its ancestral homelands and forced to take up farming instead of the hunter-gatherer life they've lived for centuries.<br />
<br />
“They know the government and media have not treated them right,” Bella says, “but they are amazing people.”<br />
<br />
The far north of the country is an area Bella wants to see more foreigners visiting. Its fiercely independent Karamoja tribe is gifted with a fascinating culture and she feels that acknowledging it will help the tribe survive. “I love love love them, my favorites.” Might she find something in their extremely independent spirit that resonate with her own? Might. She wouldn’t be so unoriginal as to suggest it, but I have no shame.<br />
<br />
“I’m shocked how much people don’t know about Uganda,” she tells me. “There is so much good here and all the media reports on is the bad.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, I call it tragedy porn,” I say. “You know there’s a tired old saying in the media business, the news. Unfortunately, it’s true: ‘If it bleeds it leads.’ The news folks have found that by sensationalizing sorrow and tragedy they can sell more papers or ads on their web sites, TV and radio. I agree with you. There is so much good going on here and in most of Africa, but you’d never know it from western media.”<br />
<br />
“That’s why we call the company Bella Africa, Beautiful Africa. That’s the place you see when we plan your trip,” says Bella.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
“Speaking of sensationalism, tell me the scariest experience you’ve ever had as a guide.”<br />
<br />
“It still scares me when I remember it,” she says. “We were in a boat near Murchison Falls. We’d gone over near the bank to see a particularly large female Nile crocodile. She was maybe 6-7 feet.” (Males can be as much as 14 feet and 1200 pounds, but 7 feet is indeed large for a female.) The bank was steep, the croc was uphill from us, it’s mouth open, gazing down at us. She could easily have run and jumped in the boat. The guy driving the boat got too close. The croc just stared at us; some of the clients were crying in fear. I told the boatman to get us out of there. Then the croc started moving closer, increased its speed, jumped in the water and swam right under our boat. It could have flipped the boat, but I guess it had already had lunch. That was my scariest experience. I love animals, but you must keep your distance.”<br />
<br />
If you’ve seen a croc in action on one of the nature TV shows, you can imagine what a sobering experience it was. They are killing machines, fast, efficient. Their M.O. is to grab their prey and pull them under water, then spin with them in a deadly and disorienting move that cannot be resisted. They pull people from boats with regularity.<br />
<br />
“And your dream trip,” I ask, “what would that be — if time and money were not an issue, and who would you take along?”<br />
<br />
“I want to visit every country,” Bella tells me. “Mostly, I want to get completely out of my comfort zone. I hate the cold, so a very cold place would really challenge me: Antarctica! I want to see penguins swimming. And I’d like to take a loved one with me. That way, when it gets cold, I’ll have arms to wrap myself in.”<br />
<br />
Yes, Bella clearly sees travel, whether in her own country, which she loves fiercely, or elsewhere, as a sensual pursuit, like falling in love. Beautiful places and warm people attract her. “And I want to go to places where people look beyond my skin color,” she tells me. “Ugandans are very friendly, and I want to visit places where I’m seen for who I am.”<br />
<br />
“And what of the future? Where do you see Bella Africa in 5 years?”<br />
<br />
“We are bound by culture here, but when I started the company, I said, ‘Why can’t I do this? What’s being a girl have to do with it? And now the clients of other companies see us in the field and say, ‘Why can’t we have a woman guide?’ This work gives me a special feeling. The work itself, but also to be able to help other women move up in this non-traditional career.”<br />
<br />
“Five years? We want to grow the company, bring more women into this field. We will expand with more trips outside Uganda — Rwanda, Tanzania, Congo; there’s no limit. We want to reach every Asian household. There are many foreigners living in and visiting this country, also Europeans, Americans, everyone. We want them to see all of this amazing country. I believe we will excel, and we will do so while maintaining a personal touch. I think that women have a different perspective, a different way of guiding, they see differently.”<br />
<br />
“Is it better?” I ask.<br />
<br />
“It’s different, more inclusive.” She looks up at the map of Africa on her wall, pauses, thinks. “You know,” she tells me, at the start male guides would see me in the field and say, ‘You are bound to fail. This is a man’s world.’ I’d say, ‘Oh, really?’”<br />
<br />
<br />
Bella Africa Tours online: http://www.bellaafricasafaris.com/<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-52803080477497513162017-07-12T02:06:00.000-07:002017-07-12T02:06:17.772-07:00Addendum No. Five: Loss, Joy & The Other<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
Erfert, the ever joyous, suggested I write on these topics and I always do as she tells me to. We all experience loss from our very beginnings, but one of the things that gives me joy now is to see the reaction of my infant son when his mother returns home after being away for several hours. It almost makes the anguish he seems to feel when she departs worth it. As she walks in, or when he see her coming across the courtyard from our balcony, he glows, giggles, then hugs her as she enters the apartment, screams. He is unrestrained in expressing his happiness at seeing this person he is so powerfully connected to, and always will be. Not long ago I lost everything, partly through my own doing, partly through no fault of my own. All gone. Everything. I came within 45 mins of death. I also lost about 95% of my US friends. I now possess nothing and everything simultaneously. At nearly 65, I have no savings whatsoever, no regular income, no health insurance, no property except my clothing and shoes (I wear sandals most days, even in the rain; it's Africa). The everythingness of joy I possess is derived from my wife and son. They are a fire that burns with love. After about 9 years of living in Africa, I have lost most correspondents. Commonalities fall away; Richard Dowden mentions this in his fine book, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles -- the difference of daily life in Africa and Europe or the US is so great that friends just can't relate and, over time, lose interest, associations fade. You lose each other. I rarely hear from friends or family any longer, and when I do it's a missive of 3-4 sentences. The era of the long form letter has been blown away by the digital breeze. I like social media. I text, use WhatsApp, Facebook, but they are not the same as real correspondence. My other loss since moving to Africa is my anonymity. Eyes follow me wherever I go, a movie star without portfolio. In the upcountry villages, everything I do is fascinating, foreign, often funny. I am now and will forever be The Other, the muzungu, the foreign one, always consulting maps, always asking for directions and how to say something, always lost...in joy.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-14116144084234201412017-07-11T02:24:00.000-07:002017-07-11T02:26:41.275-07:00Addendum No. Four: Traveling in Mexico<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
I've gravitated toward tropical climates, ancient cultures, and carpe diem societies ever since I first began traveling. I've been to Mexico many times for both pleasure and work. I've also traveled in Southeast Asia, Brazil, Africa, Hawaii, where I owned property near Puna on the Big Island for several years, and watched a grown man teaching young girls the hula on the beach at Honaunau as spinner dolphins danced offshore. I love the heat, the pounding monsoons, the lush foliage, the weird insects and reptiles, the extravagant birds and the even more extravagant humans. Tropical people are what attract me the most. They're so sexy, funny, rarely in a hurry, never irritable or angry. The fat sultry clouds are always welcome as they float in on the hot morning winds, weeping and sobbing over the jungles, the mountains, and the savannahs. The cliffs covered with thick moss want to be petted. But the human life is what keeps me coming back, a craving for the culture, the sound, the tastes and aromas. Mexico and Mexicans drew me back so many times. I looked at them, their caramel faces, and they looked at me, the vanilla Californian. We engaged in a poetry of lyrical glances and stumbling phrases, grasping enough to know that we wanted to continue our awkward interpersonal symphony. When I'm in Oaxaca, home of my coincidentally named pal of many years, Roger Mexico, who suggested this topic, I go to the Zócalo in the evenings and watch the couples dance. Some have been coming there to dance in the dark for decades; everything from their souls to their clothes is perfectly matched. I watch them a long, long time, then I find a willing partner in the crowd, ask her to join me for a dance or two or three. She is invariably beautiful, exquisitely dressed. I am invariably a tall, bald gringo who dances like a three-legged dog, and just as happily. The music begins and away we go, swimming through the other couples, sashaying, skipping, strolling, twirling, sailing, unfurling...</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-15654572792804673982017-07-10T01:48:00.000-07:002017-07-10T01:48:06.899-07:00Addendum No. Three: Tech Big Shots I Have Known<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My old friend Ann-Marie suggested I write about a few of the people I knew in tech. Though I knew none of them well, The people I found most appealing of all the honchos I met in high-tech were Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon/WebMD and MyCFO (Jim and I were both high school dropouts, but he's a wee bit richer than I am), John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, founders of Adobe, and George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars films, founder of Industrial Light & Magic and founder of the the George Lucas Educational Foundation where I knew him. Clark and I talked almost exclusively about dogs. He had two Samoyeds that he'd bring by my cubicle at SGI every couple weeks and we'd talk as the dogs snoozed or begged for treats; I'd bought a box of treats just for them so they always arrived at the cubicle 5 minutes before Jim did. We'd also discuss his love of sailing, and his ideas for a high tech boat. He mused about writing his life story, which he later did -- with the help of a friend of mine. He had an ego, but he mostly kept it partitioned off and only brought it out when dealing with other egos, notably engineers and other tech execs. I also had some dealings with Adobe's John Warnock and Chuck Geschke. (Years after I met Geschke, he was kidnapped and held for 5 days.) They were both warm, avuncular types, quite unlike the other various CEOs in Silicon Valley, most of whom were asshats of the 33rd degree. Warnock was at gathering once a few years back and attracted much attention by first spilling his drink then finding a rag to wipe up the mess with. People were amazed that a billionaire would do such a thing instead of expecting himself to be waited on, but that was typical of Warnock. It was also indicative of the pretentiousness and entitlement people expected of the high-tech big shots, and apparently still do. For about 9 months in 2006 I worked at Skywalker Ranch and attended many small meetings with George Lucas where I had a chance to observe him close-up. Skywalker is a surreal, too perfect sort of place, a result of George's cinema-besotted imagination and an endless amount of money. There's a sweetness and kindliness to George even though he is often remote and awkward. I suspect Asperger's. In any case, he was always friendly when I met with him, asking if I wanted coffee, offering a chair and so on, yet it was obvious he didn't do these things naturally. He'd been schooled, maybe by his overbearing secretary, to interact with people in such a way when he was hosting them. Also, he needed to employ these traits if he wanted to work in the necessarily collaborative film industry. His fame could not have been easy for him and he sought out ordinary places of refuge, such as a coffee shop I frequented long before I worked at Skywalker. He'd come in, sit at the counter by himself and chat with the waitress. She'd tell him about an argument she had with her mother and he'd sympathize, ask endless questions about the dull minutiae the young women had an endless supply of. They were mind-bogglingly boring conversations but Lucas loved them, did everything he could to extend them. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-40356133224200802282017-07-09T01:23:00.000-07:002017-07-09T01:23:30.323-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Addendum No. Two: My Heart<br />
My friend Kaitlin, who is all heart, asked me to write about my heart. It's a tiny, shriveled thing so this will be a short entry. But here's the good news: My heart tripled in size and got much healthier as soon as I saw my son emerge from his mother nearly a year ago. He is now my cardiologist and everyday earns the name we gave him, Mukisa, which means blessing in the Luganda language. My heart broke, literally -- and only literally (I'm with Susan Sontag: illness as metaphor is baloney) -- on Easter Sunday 2013 when it nearly ground to a halt thanks to three arteries that were almost completely blocked (99%, 99% and 84% -- almost enough for you?). The pain was stunning, magnificent and left little question what was going on. Lucky for me, I was near one of the best cardiac catheterization hospitals in the USA and a friend and emergency medical people got me there very quickly. The surgeon told me I was about 45 minutes from the Great Beyond when the ambulance delivered me to the hospital. But the best part happened just after they loaded me in the ambulance at a rural fire station in Marin County, California. As I say, it was Easter, the celebration of Christ's resurrection, if you believe in such things. They put me on a gurney and rolled me into the back of the van. My mind was going like crazy, crazily thinking of all kinds of things in no particular order, kind of a waking dream. Oddly, I was not scared at all, too much other stuff was happening. The doors closed. So of course I thought of The Doors, and of course I thought of "When The Music's Over," and of course I thought of one of its most famous lines, "Cancel my subscription to the resurrection." That was early Sunday morning. Tuesday about noon, I walked out of the hospital -- pain free, energized, thankful -- and went home with four stents in my heart. They are still there, making sure things keep pumping until Mukisa is at least 25. I believe.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-33584548475381772712017-07-09T01:22:00.000-07:002017-07-09T01:22:03.185-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Addendum No. One: Things I Like to Cook</div>
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As I mentioned earlier, I find cooking therapeutic and have for decades. After writing this, I'll go home and cook a chicken stew for my wife, my sister-in-law, a couple friends and my son, Mukisa. He's now got seven teeth and is very enthusiastic about eating anything and everything and lots of it; my kind of dining companion. Nattabi bought the whole chicken at the market the other day. It's an African chicken, so it tastes like real chicken, not some Foster Farms plasticine robot chicken. I like to chop and drink something alcoholic while doing so -- restricts your intake and sharpens your knife skills if you're interested in retaining your fingertips. I'll dice onions, lots of garlic, bell pepper and potatoes. I'll saute all that in olive oil and butter, and throw in a little salt and a bunch of black pepper, also some sugar to help the onions brown. I'll then cut up the chicken. It's a big sucker so it may take awhile. Once it's in pieces I'll brown it. I'll then mix everything together, add some water and some wine and let it cook verrrrrrrryyyyy slowly, with oregano and rosemary, maybe a bit of curry powder. It will be a one dish meal, my favorite due to my terminal laziness. I will announce it to my guests as Memphis Booth chicken, aka Coq au Kampala, in honor of the man who asked me to write on this topic.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9058279527801420627.post-43476971389135426962017-07-08T01:56:00.000-07:002017-07-08T01:56:10.732-07:00The Long View: Being, in no particular order, 25 things I've bumped into along the way and have not forgotten. Yet.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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25. Dreams<br />
I mean the kind of dreams we have when we sleep -- not waking dreams or daydreams, not dreams one has about loved ones, not wet dreams, not dreams one projects about accomplishment or lovers, not vague dreams about this and that. NO, REM dreams is what I'm referring to, the intense ones, the take no prisoners dreams. I have a half dozen or so most nights. Let me tell you. They're always weird, with strange conversations, transformations, hallucinations and interactions -- rarely nightmares, but often anxiety producing. Then, just occasionally, I'll have a dream of unspeakable grandeur and beauty, shimmering, surreal, visually staggering. Such a dream will come to me without warning. Here's one I had years ago and still vividly recall: I'm walking in a field of waist high grass, a light breeze is blowing, music of the glass harmonica plays gently in the distance, all very ethereal, spacey. 8 or 10 large black and white butterflies come gliding towards me just above the grass. Suspended from the body of each butterfly is a crystal sphere about the size of a grape, swinging gently as they fly. What did it mean? I know not, except to tell me, "Welcome to your mind, this has been a brief demonstration of what it can do when you let it fly..."<br />
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