The Chinese enthusiastically await President Obama. He is by far the most popular foreign leader in China. To commemorate the visit artists have created the likeness of Obama in Chinese Red Guard uniform on t-shirts and other paraphernalia (not for sale) and a flaming Obama statue (because he is so hot).
Actually, this is all about the automobile. Normally, given the same circumstances - on an interstate feeder road near a hurricane levee between Houston and Galveston, a car veers off into 3 feet of water and no one is hurt, the news would have only made it to the police blotter or perhaps garnered a few lines in the local news section of the city paper. Instead it was plastered on the front pages of Texas newspapers and has appeared in several news outlets and blogs all over the country. By curious coincidence, on last Wednesday, the day the accident took place, the brown pelican was deemed safely out of the endangered list by the Texas Audubon Society and the US Department of the Interior. See the full man-bird-car story here.
It was a small volume tossed carelessly in with the rest of the frayed
spines on the Public Library bookshelf : "Love of Seven Dolls" by Paul
Gallico.
He was one of my favorite authors as a teen, and this was
one book that intrigued me, with a faded rendition of a full-skirted
girl looking at what appeared to be a puppet show on the cover.
I borrowed it frequently, whenever I felt the urge, over the next several years. I must have b
een
the only person in the city who took out that particular book, judging
from my ability to always locate it on the shelf, whenever I wanted it.
The
years passed, but it remained one of the books seared in my memory,
even though the story, in retrospect, doesn't seem that remarkable now.
On a rereading, some of the story seems rather dated, but the charm of
the main plot still shines through.
After much deliberation, I
decided to see if I could locate a new copy of it for my home library.
It was out of print, only available through second-hand book sellers.
So I turned to the likes of abebooks.com and alibris.com and placed an
order for the least expensive hard-bound edition I could find.
The
book arrived, among others that I had ordered at the same time. This
had a faux leather cover, with the name of the book and the mysterious
legend ALYCE PEKORS at the bottom right.
I couldn't resist checking for the name on Google. And, the history of this particular carefully-preserved copy fell in place.
The
original owner of this book was Miss Alyce Pekors, the longest serving
US civil servant in Singapore, who died in Michigan last November.
From a newsletter with a memorial article:
"Of
course, much of the details of her “working” life prior to taking the
administrative role with the Navy in Singapore were never discussed
among her many friends. She brushed off enquiries with Lauren Bacall
like aplomb. By her very nature, she was reminiscent of an interesting
earlier era.
Whether it was
her Isadora Duncan impersonation as she drove her vintage MG around
town (of course, it wasn’t vintage when she first bought it), or her
Givenchy and pearls Audrey Hepburn look when she entertained, Alyce was
always one classy lady."
She must have loved the book very much to have taken pains to have the original paperback replaced by a custom hard-binding.
Now
the book sits on my shelf, bringing with it a whiff of the chequered
life of the one who owned it before me. We are strangely bound across
space and time, through this slim black volume with gold lettering.
--------------
Note:Cross-posted from Fluff'n'Stuff.
Addendum from the comments:
I found the details about the particular copy of the book fascinating,
"Even more than the original book that led to this unexpected discovery of Alyce Pekors.
Here's what I pieced out from what I read about her. She was a huge fan
of Hepburn and Leslie Caron (the latter acted in a 1953 movie called
Lili, loosely based on the Gallico novelette.) In her career, she may
in fact have been a precursor of sorts to the Valerie Plames, a hidden
asset whose role can be never be revealed except in private. She was a
bowling champion in S'pore long before I was even born, earning mention
in the newspapers of the day.
It might have been wonderful to have
known her in person, but I now have to settle for making a picture of
her in my mind based on the obituaries."
I don't know if you are aware of or have paid any attention to the raging debate over the arrest of director Roman Polanski in Switzerland at the behest of the California courts on charges that stem from the rape of a child thirty years ago. The facts of the case are little in dispute but the morality of arresting the culprit, now an old man, is being argued from all sides. Many sympathetic to the film maker are invoking moral philosophy, classical literature and the perpetrator's own life story in order to find exculpatory reasons on his behalf. For example, here, here and here.
For others the case is simply one of crime, punishment and the law - the moral issues are undebatable (I agree). It is also worth noting that the best no-nonsense articles from this angle are written by women - here, here and here.
I am hardly surprised by the Polanski debate and even less by who his supporters are. The narcissistic and seemingly liberal world of the arts in general and cinema in particular, is notorious for what it deems appropriate for the common man and non-artistes and what it feels should apply to its own glitterati set. But here is an article unrelated to Polanski which did take me completely by surprise and the underlying psychology and morality of which is far more interesting to ponder than whether a 76 year old lecher should go to jail or not. (links to the articles in the Telegraph, The Village Voice and The Smart Set via 3 Quarks Daily)
A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.
Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.
Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him.
"Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.
"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."
I am curious now. Will Ahmadinejad /Sabourjian be allowed to migrate to Israel based on his ancestry, in case the Iranian elections are overturned and he finds life in Iran a bit uncomfortable?
From the New York Times a few weeks ago:
"Spending an idle morning watching people look at art is hardly a scientific experiment, but it rekindles a perennial question: What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums? As with so many things right in front of us, the answer may be no less useful for being familiar."
Why indeed do we wander around museums? Is it the age-old quest for finding ourselves in our past, the thirst for knowledge? Or the window-shopper and street-gawker's instinct? Is it less about stopping and staring and more about bragging rights as in "I visited the Louvre, when we were last in Paris." Or maybe a combination of 'All of the Above"?
As a kid in Paris, I had been on school field trips to various sections of the Louvre, spending a few hours once in the Egyptian section, and another visit in the Greek section, but remember very little of what are considered to be its main attractions. My recent visit was an all new-experience, reminding me that it was perhaps at the Louvre that I acquired my taste for museum-hopping no matter where in the world we went.
-----------------------------------------------------
Ah, the Louvre! The perfect place to loiter leisurely, gazing at John the Baptist's all-knowing smile, or perchance the mysterious magnificence of the Mona Lisa.That is, until the hordes of tourists and tour guides waving flags, assorted brochures and even umbrellas to keep their groups together, all trample over you in their eagerness to see the next item on the 'Da Vinci Code' tour.
The Monna Lisa was unreachable. A special line of the devoted faithful had to be stood in and endured, before you were able to partake of her timeless gaze at closer quarters. We settled for the distant view. Even hoisting my daughter onto her father's shou
lders and placing a camera in her tiny fingers elicited an indignant "Not allowed" from a museum security official doing due diligence.
Never mind the barely visible main attraction- the huge painting of the Wedding Feast at Cana (Veronese) on the opposite side was quite a show-stopper, though 
precious few of the crowds milling around the Gioconda paid any attention to it.
With over 35,000 paintings and antiquities, we could have spent an entire month in the museum, but having only a day, we could only spend a paltry few minutes in each section, catching the 'highlighted items' suggested in the museum's brochure.
Then, we decided to linger in certain places, not quite the stuff of tourist lore, but quite fantastic nevertheless. The Persian section was eye-popping, with its huge capitals that took up so much room that one could barely imagine the size of the pillar that supported it.
A small crowd was milling around a rock edict which bore the Code of Hammurabi, with a prominently displayed French translation nearby- 'for X, off with the hand... for Y, off with the leg... for Z, off with the head..."- I provided a quick translation for my son: "...It's the Off-with-his-head school of justice",as an eavesdropping tourist nearby snickered in agreement.
The sculpture courtyard adjoining the Persian section was a relatively quiet place to recuperate from the milling crowds jostling to pose with the Winged Victory. I sat behind a statue of Hercules battling a gigantic snake , though not at a good vantage point (read, treated to a prominent view of the Derriere). I was reduced to sneaking peeks at the red charcoal drawing of the statue, which an art student was working on, right next to me. She had time to spare, tracing every contour with careful concentration, but tiring presently of her drawing, whipped out a cellphone and started a quiet conversation with a friend. So much for the slow version of museum enjoyment in the era of the cellphone.
My daughter wanted a drink of water, and the quest for a water fountain began in earnest. But the Louvre, being a palace more than a few centuries old, didn't have the requisite plumbing to handle the thirst of the trampling hordes, unlike the new-fangled shiny rest-roomed and water-fountained American museums. We waited in line desperately at the entrance to a crowded café in the museum, and 15 minutes after we made it in, a bored-looking waiter finally brought us a tiny cup of cappucino (10 Euros! Eeek!) and a bottle of Evian (3 Euros! Eeek-squared!). Next time we visited a Musée, we resolved to carry our own water, even if it was in a distinctly unfashionable recycled Fanta bottle.
The famed glass Pyramid was but a snatched glimpse through the windows of various wings, as we gaped our way through the luxurious apartments of Napoleon III. Then we redoubled our walk through the section of European painters, catching a few famous Rembrandt self-portraits in the process.
How did we manage to spend the better part of a day in a museum with my children who are notoriously allergic to museums? My teenager didn't complain much, having succumbed quite happily to the touristy notion of 'catching all the highlights' in the brochures. My 8-year old daughter was anointed the official photographer and religiously clicking away at everything in sight. Unfortunately, we only have a handful of usable pictures from her collection, but the camera was worth its price in gold, for the peace of mind and the Prime Whiner's busyness that it brought us.
------
Cross-posted from Fluff-n-Stuff
Honest. See for yourself.
Who is the most influential person of 2009? Instead of relying on assorted "experts" Time magazine decided to open this year's annual polling on this topic to the "general public." And just as democracy is messy, so are on-line public polls. Totally unexpectedly, the top position has gone to someone named "moot." (There is more to moot than meets the eye. Read the story). The following nine positions are equally stunning. According to the "public" the ten most influential people of 2009 are:
Moot
Anwar Ibrahim
Rick Warren
Baitullah Mehsud
Larry Brilliant
Eric Holder
Carlos Slim
Angela Markel
Kobe Bryant
Evo Morales
How many of these have you heard of? Okay, at least some I am sure. A couple are leaders of their countries (Morales, Markel), one is the newly appointed AG of the US Justice Dept who beat out his widely popular, better known and vastly more influential boss in the White House. Then there is also a Christian pastor (#3), a wanted terrorist (#4) and a basketball player (#9). # 2 is someone I have never heard of. What gives? I guess this will teach Time (and other media outlets involved in list making and wishing to influence public opinions) a lesson in at last figuring out that the "public" is not only quite often ignorant but sometimes, as in this case, also mischievous. NASA learnt the same lesson when it opened up the naming of the International Space Station to public voting and was mortified when it ended up with Stephen Colbert. I suspect that this result too was skewed by the parochial partiality of the voting public.
Barack Obama does figure among the top 100 most influential persons of 2009. He is at a hopelessly feeble # 37 ... well below Britney Spears, Jon Stewart, Ron Paul, Tina Fey and some other knowns and unknowns.
I had been recently asked to translate the lines from an 18th century Tamil poem, written in the lingo of the Koravas or Narikoravas, an itinerant tribe often termed the 'Gypsies of South India'.As I researched verse after verse, I found some very interesting essays and commentaries about their history and traditions.
Today Kurava people in the area are officially prohibited from even going into the mountains to collect materials for basketry and broom-making, an occupation that provides a large portion of their meager income. Did the differential literary portrayals, in works like Kutrala Kuravanji, of Kurava people and of wealthy, powerful landowners and little kings factor into justifications for dispossessing real people from their ancestral homes? Literature and entertainment styles and forms from other times and places have clearly played such a role in justifying dispossession. Might Kavirayar’s portrayals have served the expansionist needs of little kings and big landowners by painting Kurava people as so markedly different from those powerful people, indeed painting them as untamed, independent, and silly, that they might seem perhaps unworthy of ownership rights?
Here is a more recent article about their current status as a protected tribal group.
Many
hundreds of years ago, they claimed hunting-gathering rights in the
hills of what are now Tamil Nadu,Kerala, and Karnataka states, awarding the rights over the hills to the various clans in their tribes, a fact frequently referred to in the poem, as well.
Now, they have in general, been banned from those very hills, as practitioners of slash-and-burn style agriculture and inveterate hunting, detrimental to the beauty of the forests, never mind that their numbers are too small to cause significant damage.
Many in this group have been cut off from their nomadic ways, and lead more settled lives, but at the cost of taming the wanderlust which still holds a strong sway over them.
I still remember the harshly musical "Kallukothanundo, ammikal kothanundo, aattukal kuthanundo" (Do you have grinding stones to be resurfaced?)that the korava woman used to call out, walking the streets of the neighborhood in her swinging skirts, baby with sun-browned hair peering out of the sling on her back. Despite the life of dire poverty, there was always a gracious beauty to these women, going house to house selling small trinkets or resurfacing granite grindstones with their little iron awls and mallets, watched over with an eagle eye by the housewives, who mistrusted their reputation for 'light fingers'. Work done, they would haggle over the price, finally settling for whatever they could extract, milking whatever pity they could muster for their runny-nosed little ones.
They were soothsayers too.
I vividly recall the time
when I visited Thiruchendur, a seaside temple, with my parents. We were
enjoying the bracing sea breeze one evening when a kurathi came up and
insisted on reading my mother's palm. I was about 13 years old at the
time. She took a look at my mother's palm and had us close to
collapsing in laughter when she predicted that my mother would have
another child.
"Look at her," my mother said, pointing to me.
"That's my child, and my only one." I was taller than her at this age.
"Are you saying that I will have another after all these years?" We
were incredulous.
"Amma, I have never made false predictions in my
life. You will see. You will be back here in two years to look for me
and thank me."
Two years later, we were there... for my baby
sister's first birthday ritual hair offering. We looked for the
kurathi, but never did find her. She must have moved with the wind, in
the manner of her people.
A strange thing happened over the weekend in Texas. Last Sunday morning in broad daylight, a fireball appeared in the sky over Austin. Apparently, it was also visible over Houston but no one I know saw anything. People were both scared and thrilled to spot the unusual phenomenon that was "competing" with the sun, as one man observed.
Fiery debris burned through the Texas sky Sunday morning, alarming some and enchanting others but resulting in no apparent injury or damage.
From Dallas to Austin and beyond, sightings were reported of a red and orange fireball with a small black center speeding toward Earth before burning out in a trail of lingering white smoke.
Roland Herwig, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration’s southwest division, said the fireball was probably superheated debris from a broken satellite falling to Earth.
The FAA could not directly link the debris to the reported collision last week of Russian and U.S. communications satellites, however.
“It’s yet to be proved it’s those satellites,” Herwig said.
However, a spokeswoman for U.S. Strategic Command said the fireball spotted in the Texas skies Sunday was unrelated to the satellite collision.
Now the Federal Aviation Administration has declared that the object over Austin was an IFO (Identified Flying Object) and not UFO. Moreover it was a natural phenomenon and not the result of any activity by sentient beings, earthly or extra-terrestrial.
The fireball that blazed across the Texas sky and sparked numerous weekend calls to police agencies now can be considered an identified flying object.
The Federal Aviation Administration said today the fireball was a natural phenomenon — not flying space junk — and a North Texas astronomer said it probably was a meteor about the size of a pickup truck, with the consistency of concrete.
The FAA backed off its weekend statement that the fireball might have been caused by falling debris plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere after Tuesday's collision of two satellites from the United States and Russia.
The FAA fielded calls from across Texas on Sunday morning with sightings of a fireball in the sky. Callers also reported hearing an explosion, probably a sonic boom caused by an object moving faster than the speed of sound, said Roland Herwig, an FAA spokesman.
A chief of staff for Mayor Bill White, Michael Moore, said a blindingly bright flash made its way across his windshield in a matter of seconds. It seemed nearby, but Moore realized it had to be closer to heaven than Earth to appear so clearly in the morning sky.
“It’s hard to compete with the sun,” said Moore.
Moore was just leaving Austin when he saw the bright blip in the sky around 11 a.m. He assumed it was an unusually large meteor.
Hmm... are they sure? Should we believe everything the government tells us?
Season's Greetings to our readers and my co-bloggers. Hope everyone returns to A.B. refreshed and cheered after the holiday festivities are over and done with for the year. I am going on a short trip and won't be blogging for some time. Unless someone else finds the time to post, the front page will remain static for a few days. I will leave you with a potpourri of unrelated but interesting links to muse over if you find time to visit during the holiday rush.
Two thoughtful essays about the recent bombings in Mumbai and the tensions that tug at the national fabric of India - Ramachandra Guha in the WSJ and Badri Raina in ZNet.
TS Eliot on The Naming Of Cats.
An insect crime buster in Finland!
Enjoy the holidays!
One of the children shown in Hillary Clinton's 3am phone call campaign ad thinks that it should be Barack Obama.
Barack Obama's name is an issue in the minds of some voters. Say Barack HUSSEIN Obama loudly and often, it is bound to conjure up some not altogether wholesome images in people's minds. Hussein = Saddam, Obama = Osama and don't forget that Barack rhymes with Iraq. No wonder his political adversaries are targeting Obama's name more frequently than his record as a legislator. The Clinton campaign has done it and I have no doubt that right wingers will not miss a single opportunity to remind Americans of Obama's un-American name. If Obama is the Democratic nominee, wait till the real fun begins when his name will become as much a campaign theme for the Republicans as war and taxes. Even Jon Stewart found reasons to joke about it during last Sunday's Oscar ceremonies.
Obama seems to have anticipated the handicap of his own name when he wrote:
I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2004)
But what if his name was not Muslim sounding but something else - scary like Hitler and Frankenstein, inspiring like Boldness and Clever, fiercely martial like Admiral, Britainwar or Bombersingh? How would Americans choose? Well, voters in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, have a long list of candidates with interesting names to choose from. [Thanks to Dean for the pointer]
Think Barack Hussein Obama has it rough campaigning for president with a name like that? The Illinois senator has nothing on Frankenstein Momin. Or Billy Kid Sangma. Or Adolf Lu Hitler Marak.
The three men are among dozens of others with equally colorful names who are competing for legislative seats in Meghalaya, a remote northeast Indian state, on March 3. There are about 60 seats up for grabs, 331 candidates vying, and no shortage of unusual names.
There's Britainwar Dan, Admiral Sangma and Bombersingh Hynniewta -- all ready for battle.
There's Laborious Manik Syiem and Hilarius Pohchen. Boldness Nongrum and Clever Marak. Even a Tony Curtis Lyngdoh.
Meghalaya ("Abode of the Clouds") is a state of 2.6 million people. It's predominantly Christian -- but hasn't always been.
When the indigenous tribes first converted to Christianity, the locals named their children after the missionaries who preached to them. Subsequent generations started favoring words and names they were familiar with but didn't have a good understanding of.
Prashant Naik, the chief electoral officer of the state, told CNN that a candidate's name matters little to the electorate -- because so many voters and politicians themselves have peculiar ones.
"You have Australia, you have New Zealand, there's even a Thailand," Naik said. "I don't think that should matter in how people vote."
It certainly hasn't in Hitler Marak's case. He has been elected to public office before, with one of his stints as forestry minister.
"Maybe my parents liked the name and hence christened me Hitler," he once told the Hindustan Times newspaper.
" I am happy with my name, although I don't have any dictatorial tendencies."
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