Wednesday, July 30, 2003
MONDAY July 28:
Gotta say, today felt like a lost cause, but actually when I look at my list of to-do stuff, a lot got done. Paid bills, got ATT to diagnose what was wrong with my cordless phone, spent a lot of time with Handspring Tech Service to get my PDA working again, more time with Beiks Tech Svc to reinstall Spanish on the PDA, got the phone, DSL, electricity, gas & water all slated to be turned off on 8/4, did some grocery shopping to replace the stuff that was green and growing in the refrigerator - plums are really tasty right now. Frustratingly, this stuff has damn little to do with Tanzania but just has to be done anyway. And those jobs weren't even the big ones today:
I got the big PEACE CORPS INVITATION PACKET and so found I am already behind the 8-ball on timing for the Tanzania visa and the special USA passport I need for the Peace Corps. So I filled out a bunch of forms. Still need to take and print some 2"x2" photos of myself tonight so I can get all that rolling first thing tomorrow. Meanwhile, the damned carpenter never showed up to work on the windows today, and he hasn't been home or answered my frantic phone messages. Seems he has been in court on some issue or other. I should be surprised? This is getting serious now!
With all this going on, I haven’t been able to get anywhere NEAR figuring out how to upload photos to this blog, and that is so important to me...
TUESDAY July 29:
The Peace Corps won’t use my permanent passport, and insist on a special, 2-year passport. So I spent the morning at the Post Office to file my application. What a ZOO! I was trundled back and forth between windows, nobody knew how to fill out the forms, the financial person didn’t know how to record the charges – crazy. Finally got it all done though, so one more task accomplished.
Clearly the carpenter has stiffed me for my $300 deposit for “custom windows”. Wish I thought there was something I could do about it. Meanwhile, I still do have to find somebody to replace the windows – I can’
Gotta say, today felt like a lost cause, but actually when I look at my list of to-do stuff, a lot got done. Paid bills, got ATT to diagnose what was wrong with my cordless phone, spent a lot of time with Handspring Tech Service to get my PDA working again, more time with Beiks Tech Svc to reinstall Spanish on the PDA, got the phone, DSL, electricity, gas & water all slated to be turned off on 8/4, did some grocery shopping to replace the stuff that was green and growing in the refrigerator - plums are really tasty right now. Frustratingly, this stuff has damn little to do with Tanzania but just has to be done anyway. And those jobs weren't even the big ones today:
I got the big PEACE CORPS INVITATION PACKET and so found I am already behind the 8-ball on timing for the Tanzania visa and the special USA passport I need for the Peace Corps. So I filled out a bunch of forms. Still need to take and print some 2"x2" photos of myself tonight so I can get all that rolling first thing tomorrow. Meanwhile, the damned carpenter never showed up to work on the windows today, and he hasn't been home or answered my frantic phone messages. Seems he has been in court on some issue or other. I should be surprised? This is getting serious now!
With all this going on, I haven’t been able to get anywhere NEAR figuring out how to upload photos to this blog, and that is so important to me...
TUESDAY July 29:
The Peace Corps won’t use my permanent passport, and insist on a special, 2-year passport. So I spent the morning at the Post Office to file my application. What a ZOO! I was trundled back and forth between windows, nobody knew how to fill out the forms, the financial person didn’t know how to record the charges – crazy. Finally got it all done though, so one more task accomplished.
Clearly the carpenter has stiffed me for my $300 deposit for “custom windows”. Wish I thought there was something I could do about it. Meanwhile, I still do have to find somebody to replace the windows – I can’
Monday, July 28, 2003
Overslept. Not too surprising. Got to church a little late, but enjoyed the friendship and welcoming group. Went to brunch with Ginny Beier and showed her more photos from my computer than she wanted to see, I'm sure. Guess I will have to be more selective - perhaps copy a set of photos to a CD or even to PowerPoint if I want to take the time for it.
The afternoon was taken up putting EVERYTHING from the trip in the washing machine, and with my efforts to make the car as respectable as possible, to sell it. The ad appeared in the Sunday paper as planned, but I didn't get a single call about it. That worries me - I don't have much time to sell it, and I don't want it sitting around rusting on flat tires for two years or more.
Allegra was anxious to hear about the trip, so I drove out there this evening. Shari and her kids were there too, so they all heard the stories and saw my pictures. Glenn called while I was there - what a day he had:
Glenn flew out of Philadelphia for Chicago at 6:00 to meet Jennifer coming up from Indianapolis with Thomas George and Emily. He took TG and E along with him to fly to Seattle, rented a yellow Mustang convertible, and then drove out to Crescent Lake. At least he sounded suitably impressed by the giant trees and beauty of the place, and the kids all settled in together very quickly. Roy and TG were playing baseball, Emily and Alice down by the lake. Wonder if Glenn will stay with the group, or take off on his own to explore the territory in that convertible.
Called Myrna - it was great to hear her voice, but it was a bad connection. My phone seems to have a problem. I couldn't use the handset and had to rely on the base speaker phone. Rats. Still have to fold laundry tonight. Sure hope that carpenter shows up tomorrow morning to install the new windows in the bedroom! Guess I'll see soon enough.
The afternoon was taken up putting EVERYTHING from the trip in the washing machine, and with my efforts to make the car as respectable as possible, to sell it. The ad appeared in the Sunday paper as planned, but I didn't get a single call about it. That worries me - I don't have much time to sell it, and I don't want it sitting around rusting on flat tires for two years or more.
Allegra was anxious to hear about the trip, so I drove out there this evening. Shari and her kids were there too, so they all heard the stories and saw my pictures. Glenn called while I was there - what a day he had:
Glenn flew out of Philadelphia for Chicago at 6:00 to meet Jennifer coming up from Indianapolis with Thomas George and Emily. He took TG and E along with him to fly to Seattle, rented a yellow Mustang convertible, and then drove out to Crescent Lake. At least he sounded suitably impressed by the giant trees and beauty of the place, and the kids all settled in together very quickly. Roy and TG were playing baseball, Emily and Alice down by the lake. Wonder if Glenn will stay with the group, or take off on his own to explore the territory in that convertible.
Called Myrna - it was great to hear her voice, but it was a bad connection. My phone seems to have a problem. I couldn't use the handset and had to rely on the base speaker phone. Rats. Still have to fold laundry tonight. Sure hope that carpenter shows up tomorrow morning to install the new windows in the bedroom! Guess I'll see soon enough.
Sunday, July 27, 2003
OK, I'm back again. I did not have internet access while my clan was camping out in the Olympic National Park, but I did keep my Journal as a Word document, and here it is to tell the tale of our camping reunion.
SATURDAY: July 26, 2003
Sat beside a thin, ascetic recently retired guy and his wife from Milwaukee on the long flight from Seattle to Minneapolis. After the customary (for me) nap and disreputable airline snack (small dry sandwich, fritos, apple, WATER!) we exchanged the usual pleasantries, both of us more interested in talking about ourselves than listening to each other. But they had been on an inland cruise through Saskatchewan and Alaska that left him quite impressed with Canadian environmental beauty and the economics of the northern salmon fishing industry.
That led to a discussion of the environment, what is happening in the world, and how our professions are changing. He’d been a bank president and over his career built up several community banks until they were taken over by large corporate organizations and went downhill again. He was livid about the ARROGANCE, greed and stupidity of Corporate America, and glad to be out of the banking business because of it. We agreed that all work is being centralized within corporate structures, to the detriment of society and individuality. He also feels that Enron is the typical corporate system, not the outlyer at all. Matter of fact, we agreed on most of the ills of our world, except that I feel that the middle class is in sharp decline with economic and power disparity dangerously increasing while he felt that the middle class is much stronger today than it was say 40 years ago. His reference was the number of what he took to be middle class couples on their cruise, and mine was the change in the New Jersey coast from small summer cottages to opulent beachfront fantasmagories.
So I commented that although I expected to find a bank president staunchly Republican, he was expressing views counter to everything the R party seems to stand for and promote. He agreed that he is a Republican and implied that staunch is not off the mark. But he was really simply angry at all politicians and basically anti-political just even more so against the Democrats primarily because of the personality of some of their party leaders. Clearly the Clinton and Kennedy and Kennedy sexual exploits disturbed him greatly, and the waste of welfare systems generally. A leader’s personality was of major importance to him. He is appalled by Bush and especially his “bring them on” goading of potential Iraqi enemies. But he cannot ABIDE Clinton. Or Gephart either, for that matter, but he seemed to like Lieberman in spite of his coziness with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. He also seems to be open to Dean because of his medical background but hasn’t been following Dean enough to really know.
And that is today’s report on midwestern politics.
FRIDAY: July 25
We never used the tent. All of us slept under the stars, and they were especially brilliant in the absence of any moon. Waking up periodically to snuggle deeper in my sleeping bag, I could trace the passing of time by the change in location of the Big Dipper. I had forgotten that everything would get wet from the dew during the night, but there it was. Later on, there were no stars and it became apparent that a fog had settled on our site. Fortunately no rain followed and through the morning we could watch the fog slowly become low-lying clouds that finally rose higher than the tall spruce around us. The sun broke through as we were walking out of the wilderness, picking blackberries and orangeberries along the side of the trail. During this whole expedition, we saw only two other people on the trail until we were very near the trailhead and came across several Rangers with a power saw, cutting a path through the few trees that had fallen across the trail.
By the time was got back to Crescent Lake it was too late to fly the kites Matt and I had brought from China. We talked and shared stories, then Diane and I packed our belongings, said our regretful good-bys, and headed out to spend the night at Ellen’s apartment in Seattle before flying back to reality tomorrow, Diane to LA and me to Philadelphia. (if my week in Philadelphia before going on to Guatemala can be considered “reality”)
THURSDAY: July 24
Today we drove several hours to Forks and beyond that to the Hoh River Rain Forest. Matt, Roy and I in the lead van, Kirk, Ellen, Diane and Alice in the other – Paola stayed behind for a day of rest and relaxation by Crescent Lake.
Forks is a small lumbering town in high unemployment slow decline due to mechanization of the industry and increasing environmental regulation of logging and clear cutting. It is famous, locally at least, for helpful, friendly people and the Lumber Museum that was the result primarily of donated items by local townspeople.
The most interesting thing about the Lumber Museum were the stacks of diatribes against placing “the welfare of birds and trees over concern for human beings ... We are destroying the heritage and culture forged by America’s loggers, farmers, ranchers, fishers, miners and fossil-fuel extractors ... industries are being systematically and methodically eliminated to make way for a New World Order that is based on premises which are in direct conflict with our Constitution and Rule of Law.” Believe me, the infamous Spotted Owl, environmentalists and the National Park Service have few friends in Forks, WA.
Our real destination was the Hoh River Trailhead some 20 miles beyond Forks on a gravel road. By the time we arrived, Ellen and Diane were so pissed at how long the drive was that they turned back and spent another hour and a half driving back to Crescent Lake.
Matt and I were extremely disappointed with the trail, which seemed to be simply an old logging road that didn’t go anywhere and finally petered out entirely. So we gave up too, but on the way back to the main road we found that we had made a wrong turn. When we found the REAL trailhead, it was spectacular. Huge old Sitka Spruce and Hemlock columns lifting up to the sky, with copious green Spanish Moss covering everything like the kudzu in our eastern areas. A narrow, well maintained trail led through this area, crossing several small streams and varied terrain. We carried in our bedrolls and back packs, Roy carrying his own small backpack, until we came to the Flats, a wide area surrounded on three sides by a river with a nice flat area for the tent and an established stone fire ring. Lots of downed branches and wood to build a small cooking fire for our hot dogs and baked beans, and then a grand campfire for the rest of the evening. We told stories, reminisced, smoked hand rolled cigarettes and sang until Roy finally fell asleep on his bed roll by the fire. Matt and I turned in soon afterward.
WEDNESDAY: July 23
It stays light so late in the evening that we have not spent the evenings around campfires. By the time the sky is dark, around 10:00 or 10:30, the kids are pooped and so are we. But last night we sat around, Matt pulled out the guitar, and we talked and sang for hours.
So we had a late start for our hike to Storm King Mountain. It is quite a climb – several hours, all up, only one brief flat spot for relief. Without a sign marking the trail, there were very few other people on the trail. We met only two guys from New York, who were doing a tour of the western National Parks. They came running up the trail, all loud and wet and sweaty and puffing and hoping they were near the top. They were surprised to see Alice there, this 4 year old slip of a girl wearing a frilly pink outfit and taking it all in stride.
Near the top there was a sign “Trail Not Maintained Beyond This Point” and most of our group stopped there. The New York guys said the Rangers had advised them that it wasn’t safe to go any farther. Matt and I, not to be intimidated, trundled on. It did get a trifle dicy where we had to use a rope to ascend a steep slope of loose dirt and gravel without clear footholds. And the summit was rocky and steep with sharp falls. But the view was spectacular and Matt and I were arguing over whether we could see the ocean, 10 miles away.
Kirk joined us with a resupply of treats and beer. Always welcome. He also brought an ice cream maker and his family’s traditional recipe for ice cream, which we enjoyed around another campfire. Homemade ice cream seems so much colder than the stuff out of a box. Roy got the job of cleaning the paddles, anew treat for him, and Matt is wondering whether he ought to buy an ice cream maker to take back to China.
Ice Cream
TUESDAY: July 22
The drive to the Mora Shoreline Tour of the National Park Service took about an hour and a half, through forest land that shows the effects of “Forest Management”. I have a new understanding of what “clear cutting” does to the environment. The apparent result is just devastation, on the order of what strip mining has done to so much of northeastern Pennsylvania. Just huge tracts of territory that appear to have been brutally raped. As a response to environmentalists, there are now a lot of signs along the road –
Ranger Adrienne led a wonderful tour of the shoreline, explaining the bleached drift logs along the shore, the importance of the salmon as the main driver in establishing the biomass of the Olympic forest, which is surprisingly greater than that found in the Amazon. We all played with some of the biodiversity in the tide pools along the shore – hermit crabs, anomenae, sea stars, barnacles, snails, mussels, kelp of various types. Some kelp grow stems up to 120 feet long! A great place to collect interesting rocks and driftwood. I have a fantastic triangular piece of driftwood to remember the shore.
After the tour, Ranger Adrienne joined us for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He had led the tour when Matt and his family were there last year. He remembered Roy and Matt, and was glad to talk about China and southeast Asia as he plans to spend a bunch of time there soon. Neat guy, friendly and gregarious. Got the forms for the Peace Corps several times but never applied. I of course encouraged him to do so.
MONDAY: July 21
We set out today to find the trailhead that lead to the summit of Storm King Mountain. Matt and Paola, Roy and Alice, Ellen and me. Had a nice chat with Ranger Jeff before we started, and found out that the reason there are none of Matt’s favorite foxgloves this year is because they just had a team of exotic specialists through the area to remove non-native plants. Like foxgloves. So Ranger Jeff was very specific: If we should see any foxglove, RIP THEM OUT!!
Never found the trail to Storm King Mountain, and so followed a long trail along a brook instead. Then we learned from Ranger Val that the sign to the trail we wanted had been stolen about a month ago, so we weren’t about to be able to find that trail. OK, so they are making a new sign to match all the others, but couldn’t they just put up a piece of paper or something temporary to identify it?
Instead we took the trail to Merrymar Falls – a picturesque waterfall with some great overlooks. Ellen was torturing Roy, and his water bottle skittered away, falling about 100ft down toward the stream below. He retrieved it, and decided that Ellen should give him $1 for that effort. She sort of agreed and he hasn’t let her forget it.
Roy is now working through a pamphlet of tasks and questions that Ranger Val gave him. On completion, he can sign a pledge and then become a Junior Ranger, complete with a special badge that is even bigger than the one Ranger Val wears!
It stays light so late into the evening here that we haven’t had time for a real campfire. But we stayed up tonight to sit and talk around the fire, and to hear Matt play the guitar and sing. Afterwards we marveled at all the stars on this cloudless moonless night and followed the milky way. Also saw three satellites cross the sky, and a meteor.
Pretty good day in the Park.
SUNDAY: July 20, 2003
Woke up at 4:30am (thank you Jet Lag) and finished Sarah Erdman’s book by flashlight so as not to annoy the others in the A-frame. This book – Nine Hills to Nambonkaha – together with Peter Hessler’s River Town set such an impossible level of accomplishment. I’ve been taking the Peace Corps idea as adventure and pleasure in a way that also helps some people, hopefully. These people have Changed the World where they were sent. I don’t expect to do that.
My care at not annoying my A-frame-mates didn’t matter much at 7:00 when we were all brutally assaulted by a ferocious errant smoke alarm – damn, those things are LOUD!!!! Even yanking the battery out of it failed to stop it. How can it DO that? African sorcery?
Comfortable temperature, partly cloudy sky. The Devil’s Punchbowl, was recommended by Ranger Vallerie after the campfire last night. We found it, after hiking 1 ½ miles around the lake – a deep pool of clear water with high cliffs on each side and a picturesque bridge across the front of the pool. Some daredevil kids were jumping into the water from the top of the cliff. Matt decided to try it from halfway up. Took him a long time of looking at the water. He finally did, after Roy called to him “Do it, Dad.” After that we got some good pictures of Matt and Roy jumping into the water from the bridge. Dinner was hamburgers, grilled zucchini, and corn grilled in the husk.
SATURDAY: July 19
Matt, Paola and the kids were up early, so we got away from Seattle around 10:15am, headed for Olympic National Park. We would have been there in a little less than 3 hours, except that we had a 2 hour wait for the Edmunton Ferry. Roy loved standing on the very front of the ferry to look at the scenery around him. We could clearly see Mt Ranier, seeming to float over the horizon, majestic off in the distance, towering over the toy skyscrapers of the city.
Matt & family are staying in a cabin while Diane, Ellen and I are sharing an A-frame that comes complete with small refrigerator and indoor bathroom with a shower and hot water. We are right on Crescent Lake, and the scenery is marvelous, with Storm King Mountain on the other side of the lake.
The corn on the cob was kinda burned, but otherwise Matt did a great job in his grilling T-bone steaks over charcoal, served with well baked potatoes. Gotta admit it still feels a little odd not to be the Person In Charge on an expedition like this, being the center of the planning and the cooking and all. Matt is doing a fantastic job – the torch has been plassed.
Tonight we attended a campfire presentation by Ranger Vallerie, full of facts and lore about Crescent Lake. Roy was a rapt listener, and assisted the Ranger afterwards in her question and answer session. It stays light until about 9:30pm here, and cools off sharply in the evening. Great weather for sleeping, and we all seem headed for an early bedtime.
SATURDAY: July 26, 2003
Sat beside a thin, ascetic recently retired guy and his wife from Milwaukee on the long flight from Seattle to Minneapolis. After the customary (for me) nap and disreputable airline snack (small dry sandwich, fritos, apple, WATER!) we exchanged the usual pleasantries, both of us more interested in talking about ourselves than listening to each other. But they had been on an inland cruise through Saskatchewan and Alaska that left him quite impressed with Canadian environmental beauty and the economics of the northern salmon fishing industry.
That led to a discussion of the environment, what is happening in the world, and how our professions are changing. He’d been a bank president and over his career built up several community banks until they were taken over by large corporate organizations and went downhill again. He was livid about the ARROGANCE, greed and stupidity of Corporate America, and glad to be out of the banking business because of it. We agreed that all work is being centralized within corporate structures, to the detriment of society and individuality. He also feels that Enron is the typical corporate system, not the outlyer at all. Matter of fact, we agreed on most of the ills of our world, except that I feel that the middle class is in sharp decline with economic and power disparity dangerously increasing while he felt that the middle class is much stronger today than it was say 40 years ago. His reference was the number of what he took to be middle class couples on their cruise, and mine was the change in the New Jersey coast from small summer cottages to opulent beachfront fantasmagories.
So I commented that although I expected to find a bank president staunchly Republican, he was expressing views counter to everything the R party seems to stand for and promote. He agreed that he is a Republican and implied that staunch is not off the mark. But he was really simply angry at all politicians and basically anti-political just even more so against the Democrats primarily because of the personality of some of their party leaders. Clearly the Clinton and Kennedy and Kennedy sexual exploits disturbed him greatly, and the waste of welfare systems generally. A leader’s personality was of major importance to him. He is appalled by Bush and especially his “bring them on” goading of potential Iraqi enemies. But he cannot ABIDE Clinton. Or Gephart either, for that matter, but he seemed to like Lieberman in spite of his coziness with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. He also seems to be open to Dean because of his medical background but hasn’t been following Dean enough to really know.
And that is today’s report on midwestern politics.
FRIDAY: July 25
We never used the tent. All of us slept under the stars, and they were especially brilliant in the absence of any moon. Waking up periodically to snuggle deeper in my sleeping bag, I could trace the passing of time by the change in location of the Big Dipper. I had forgotten that everything would get wet from the dew during the night, but there it was. Later on, there were no stars and it became apparent that a fog had settled on our site. Fortunately no rain followed and through the morning we could watch the fog slowly become low-lying clouds that finally rose higher than the tall spruce around us. The sun broke through as we were walking out of the wilderness, picking blackberries and orangeberries along the side of the trail. During this whole expedition, we saw only two other people on the trail until we were very near the trailhead and came across several Rangers with a power saw, cutting a path through the few trees that had fallen across the trail.
By the time was got back to Crescent Lake it was too late to fly the kites Matt and I had brought from China. We talked and shared stories, then Diane and I packed our belongings, said our regretful good-bys, and headed out to spend the night at Ellen’s apartment in Seattle before flying back to reality tomorrow, Diane to LA and me to Philadelphia. (if my week in Philadelphia before going on to Guatemala can be considered “reality”)
THURSDAY: July 24
Today we drove several hours to Forks and beyond that to the Hoh River Rain Forest. Matt, Roy and I in the lead van, Kirk, Ellen, Diane and Alice in the other – Paola stayed behind for a day of rest and relaxation by Crescent Lake.
Forks is a small lumbering town in high unemployment slow decline due to mechanization of the industry and increasing environmental regulation of logging and clear cutting. It is famous, locally at least, for helpful, friendly people and the Lumber Museum that was the result primarily of donated items by local townspeople.
The most interesting thing about the Lumber Museum were the stacks of diatribes against placing “the welfare of birds and trees over concern for human beings ... We are destroying the heritage and culture forged by America’s loggers, farmers, ranchers, fishers, miners and fossil-fuel extractors ... industries are being systematically and methodically eliminated to make way for a New World Order that is based on premises which are in direct conflict with our Constitution and Rule of Law.” Believe me, the infamous Spotted Owl, environmentalists and the National Park Service have few friends in Forks, WA.
Our real destination was the Hoh River Trailhead some 20 miles beyond Forks on a gravel road. By the time we arrived, Ellen and Diane were so pissed at how long the drive was that they turned back and spent another hour and a half driving back to Crescent Lake.
Matt and I were extremely disappointed with the trail, which seemed to be simply an old logging road that didn’t go anywhere and finally petered out entirely. So we gave up too, but on the way back to the main road we found that we had made a wrong turn. When we found the REAL trailhead, it was spectacular. Huge old Sitka Spruce and Hemlock columns lifting up to the sky, with copious green Spanish Moss covering everything like the kudzu in our eastern areas. A narrow, well maintained trail led through this area, crossing several small streams and varied terrain. We carried in our bedrolls and back packs, Roy carrying his own small backpack, until we came to the Flats, a wide area surrounded on three sides by a river with a nice flat area for the tent and an established stone fire ring. Lots of downed branches and wood to build a small cooking fire for our hot dogs and baked beans, and then a grand campfire for the rest of the evening. We told stories, reminisced, smoked hand rolled cigarettes and sang until Roy finally fell asleep on his bed roll by the fire. Matt and I turned in soon afterward.
WEDNESDAY: July 23
It stays light so late in the evening that we have not spent the evenings around campfires. By the time the sky is dark, around 10:00 or 10:30, the kids are pooped and so are we. But last night we sat around, Matt pulled out the guitar, and we talked and sang for hours.
So we had a late start for our hike to Storm King Mountain. It is quite a climb – several hours, all up, only one brief flat spot for relief. Without a sign marking the trail, there were very few other people on the trail. We met only two guys from New York, who were doing a tour of the western National Parks. They came running up the trail, all loud and wet and sweaty and puffing and hoping they were near the top. They were surprised to see Alice there, this 4 year old slip of a girl wearing a frilly pink outfit and taking it all in stride.
Near the top there was a sign “Trail Not Maintained Beyond This Point” and most of our group stopped there. The New York guys said the Rangers had advised them that it wasn’t safe to go any farther. Matt and I, not to be intimidated, trundled on. It did get a trifle dicy where we had to use a rope to ascend a steep slope of loose dirt and gravel without clear footholds. And the summit was rocky and steep with sharp falls. But the view was spectacular and Matt and I were arguing over whether we could see the ocean, 10 miles away.
Kirk joined us with a resupply of treats and beer. Always welcome. He also brought an ice cream maker and his family’s traditional recipe for ice cream, which we enjoyed around another campfire. Homemade ice cream seems so much colder than the stuff out of a box. Roy got the job of cleaning the paddles, anew treat for him, and Matt is wondering whether he ought to buy an ice cream maker to take back to China.
Ice Cream
TUESDAY: July 22
The drive to the Mora Shoreline Tour of the National Park Service took about an hour and a half, through forest land that shows the effects of “Forest Management”. I have a new understanding of what “clear cutting” does to the environment. The apparent result is just devastation, on the order of what strip mining has done to so much of northeastern Pennsylvania. Just huge tracts of territory that appear to have been brutally raped. As a response to environmentalists, there are now a lot of signs along the road –
Ranger Adrienne led a wonderful tour of the shoreline, explaining the bleached drift logs along the shore, the importance of the salmon as the main driver in establishing the biomass of the Olympic forest, which is surprisingly greater than that found in the Amazon. We all played with some of the biodiversity in the tide pools along the shore – hermit crabs, anomenae, sea stars, barnacles, snails, mussels, kelp of various types. Some kelp grow stems up to 120 feet long! A great place to collect interesting rocks and driftwood. I have a fantastic triangular piece of driftwood to remember the shore.
After the tour, Ranger Adrienne joined us for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He had led the tour when Matt and his family were there last year. He remembered Roy and Matt, and was glad to talk about China and southeast Asia as he plans to spend a bunch of time there soon. Neat guy, friendly and gregarious. Got the forms for the Peace Corps several times but never applied. I of course encouraged him to do so.
MONDAY: July 21
We set out today to find the trailhead that lead to the summit of Storm King Mountain. Matt and Paola, Roy and Alice, Ellen and me. Had a nice chat with Ranger Jeff before we started, and found out that the reason there are none of Matt’s favorite foxgloves this year is because they just had a team of exotic specialists through the area to remove non-native plants. Like foxgloves. So Ranger Jeff was very specific: If we should see any foxglove, RIP THEM OUT!!
Never found the trail to Storm King Mountain, and so followed a long trail along a brook instead. Then we learned from Ranger Val that the sign to the trail we wanted had been stolen about a month ago, so we weren’t about to be able to find that trail. OK, so they are making a new sign to match all the others, but couldn’t they just put up a piece of paper or something temporary to identify it?
Instead we took the trail to Merrymar Falls – a picturesque waterfall with some great overlooks. Ellen was torturing Roy, and his water bottle skittered away, falling about 100ft down toward the stream below. He retrieved it, and decided that Ellen should give him $1 for that effort. She sort of agreed and he hasn’t let her forget it.
Roy is now working through a pamphlet of tasks and questions that Ranger Val gave him. On completion, he can sign a pledge and then become a Junior Ranger, complete with a special badge that is even bigger than the one Ranger Val wears!
It stays light so late into the evening here that we haven’t had time for a real campfire. But we stayed up tonight to sit and talk around the fire, and to hear Matt play the guitar and sing. Afterwards we marveled at all the stars on this cloudless moonless night and followed the milky way. Also saw three satellites cross the sky, and a meteor.
Pretty good day in the Park.
SUNDAY: July 20, 2003
Woke up at 4:30am (thank you Jet Lag) and finished Sarah Erdman’s book by flashlight so as not to annoy the others in the A-frame. This book – Nine Hills to Nambonkaha – together with Peter Hessler’s River Town set such an impossible level of accomplishment. I’ve been taking the Peace Corps idea as adventure and pleasure in a way that also helps some people, hopefully. These people have Changed the World where they were sent. I don’t expect to do that.
My care at not annoying my A-frame-mates didn’t matter much at 7:00 when we were all brutally assaulted by a ferocious errant smoke alarm – damn, those things are LOUD!!!! Even yanking the battery out of it failed to stop it. How can it DO that? African sorcery?
Comfortable temperature, partly cloudy sky. The Devil’s Punchbowl, was recommended by Ranger Vallerie after the campfire last night. We found it, after hiking 1 ½ miles around the lake – a deep pool of clear water with high cliffs on each side and a picturesque bridge across the front of the pool. Some daredevil kids were jumping into the water from the top of the cliff. Matt decided to try it from halfway up. Took him a long time of looking at the water. He finally did, after Roy called to him “Do it, Dad.” After that we got some good pictures of Matt and Roy jumping into the water from the bridge. Dinner was hamburgers, grilled zucchini, and corn grilled in the husk.
SATURDAY: July 19
Matt, Paola and the kids were up early, so we got away from Seattle around 10:15am, headed for Olympic National Park. We would have been there in a little less than 3 hours, except that we had a 2 hour wait for the Edmunton Ferry. Roy loved standing on the very front of the ferry to look at the scenery around him. We could clearly see Mt Ranier, seeming to float over the horizon, majestic off in the distance, towering over the toy skyscrapers of the city.
Matt & family are staying in a cabin while Diane, Ellen and I are sharing an A-frame that comes complete with small refrigerator and indoor bathroom with a shower and hot water. We are right on Crescent Lake, and the scenery is marvelous, with Storm King Mountain on the other side of the lake.
The corn on the cob was kinda burned, but otherwise Matt did a great job in his grilling T-bone steaks over charcoal, served with well baked potatoes. Gotta admit it still feels a little odd not to be the Person In Charge on an expedition like this, being the center of the planning and the cooking and all. Matt is doing a fantastic job – the torch has been plassed.
Tonight we attended a campfire presentation by Ranger Vallerie, full of facts and lore about Crescent Lake. Roy was a rapt listener, and assisted the Ranger afterwards in her question and answer session. It stays light until about 9:30pm here, and cools off sharply in the evening. Great weather for sleeping, and we all seem headed for an early bedtime.
Saturday, July 19, 2003
OK, we are set for camping. Diane got here on schedule. Paola and the kids arrived yesterday. Kirk has found time from his work to be around. We have completed our shopping - except for milk and a couple of other last minute items.
I'm not sure I will be able to keep posting quite as frequently since we will be camping for the next week. In any event, I'll at least try to keep making entries in Word to copy to the blog when I have internet access again.
I'm not sure I will be able to keep posting quite as frequently since we will be camping for the next week. In any event, I'll at least try to keep making entries in Word to copy to the blog when I have internet access again.
Thursday, July 17, 2003
The China to Seattle flight was agreeably dull, yesterday. But I did meet this interesting guy on the trip - Leo Cachat taught in Jesuit schools - 30 years in Katmandu, more in Burma, and now works on educational planning in Detroit. He has friends in the Loyola High School in Dar es Salaam that he wants me to meet when I get to Tanzania. Surprising how things start to fall into place!
Seattle is crisp and almost painfully brilliant, after the China haze and pollution. Ellen's open arms and broad grin were show stoppers. Her apartment/studio is an extension of her, as it is so full of her work, photography and quirky found objects and things. I love being with her, and here. Matt is feeling the effects of jet lag, but we went out shopping anyway. Bought out REI and Outdoor Emporium for the camping experience, and filled the trunk of Ellen's car with bulk staples from Costco.
I'm continuing to read Sarah Erdman's book about her work in the Ivory Coast on the western side of Africa, and realizing that what she is writing is really ANTHROPOLOGY. She is learning and describing the sociology and beliefs, interactions and celebrations of this primative village where she was serving. Margaret Meade had nothing on Sarah. In Sarah's village, the people are locked in a culture that is fatalistic, superstitious, rigid and paternalistic. Childhood death and female mutilation, witchcraft and sorcery are taken for granted. Not sure how good I feel about all this - I just presume that my experience will be FAR different, since teaching chemistry does not fit into any situation nearly as primordial as what Sarah was facing. But ... stay tuned. (?)
Seattle is crisp and almost painfully brilliant, after the China haze and pollution. Ellen's open arms and broad grin were show stoppers. Her apartment/studio is an extension of her, as it is so full of her work, photography and quirky found objects and things. I love being with her, and here. Matt is feeling the effects of jet lag, but we went out shopping anyway. Bought out REI and Outdoor Emporium for the camping experience, and filled the trunk of Ellen's car with bulk staples from Costco.
I'm continuing to read Sarah Erdman's book about her work in the Ivory Coast on the western side of Africa, and realizing that what she is writing is really ANTHROPOLOGY. She is learning and describing the sociology and beliefs, interactions and celebrations of this primative village where she was serving. Margaret Meade had nothing on Sarah. In Sarah's village, the people are locked in a culture that is fatalistic, superstitious, rigid and paternalistic. Childhood death and female mutilation, witchcraft and sorcery are taken for granted. Not sure how good I feel about all this - I just presume that my experience will be FAR different, since teaching chemistry does not fit into any situation nearly as primordial as what Sarah was facing. But ... stay tuned. (?)
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
IT'S TANZANIA !!! I FINALLY HEARD FROM THE PEACE CORPS, and their offer to me is to teach chemistry in Tanzania. I don't yet know the location in Tanzania, nor the level of chemistry I will be teaching - I understand this is standard procedure and won't be finalized until near the end of my training period. But since this morning I've been devouring information about that country from the internet, thank you Google. And of course I've been talking to the Peace Corps veterans and world travelers here in China and at the TIME office. Conclusion: Great opportunity, beautiful country, and much more liveable and stable than West Africa.
So what have I learned from my initial frantic surfing? Tanzania. Pop. 35,000,000, living in a big country about twice the size of California. The Capital is being moved from Dar es Salaam (Pop. 2,500,000, about the size of Philadelphia) to a new city inland. The official languages are English and Swahili. Yes, I will almost certainly have to learn Swahili. 1500 Miles of coastline along the Indian Ocean, located just south of Kenya. The climate is tropical along the coast, and temperate on the inland savannah. Starting from a low level at independence in 1961, attempts at establishing socialist systems completely devastated what little economy there was. Currently the country is among the poorest in the world, but has been coming back a bit. The current president reportly is not corrupt, and seems to be actually pretty good - no wonder we haven't heard anything about him. The major economic activity is agriculture: coffee, some cotton and sisal for rope, a little industrial production, somewhat more mining. Hopes for some possible oil finds. The map promises all kinds of spectacular scenery, including Mt Kilimanjaro, huge Lake Victoria with its companions, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. The great Serengheti is there, as well as a raft of other wildlife preserves and national parks and refuges. Not much of a tourist trade - yet, anyway. Suzie tells me that Zanzibar, the island just off the coast, is incredible with wonderfully friendly people and tremendous resources of coral. The people are 99% Bantu and are about 50% Christian and 40% Muslim. Environmental issues tend to be things like desertification and elephant and rhinoserus poaching.
A lot of the photography of Tanzania looks like it was taken directly from the movie Out of Africa. Guess that shouldn't be so surprising, considering that Kenya is just next door.
Wow. Now let me stop and catch my breath a bit.
Last night Matt and I ended up at a dynamite Italian restaurant for dinner, where we spent a long time afterwards reminiscing about growing up, and places we've been to, together. Afterwards we went back to the apartment, and sat up late singing Spirituals and other songs we might want to use around the campfire next week at Olympic National Park.
This morning, with friends, we went to observe a Performance Art event: Li Jie of the Cultural Transmission Center had used manual labor and traditional methods - donkey carts, hand tools, pipe scaffolds - to build a large brick enclosure inside a warehouse. We witnessed the process of knocking it down and carrying the bricks away again. This was to symbolize and recognize the ongoing destruction of old Beijing to accomodate the erection of the new high-rise Beijing, and to commemorate that the process of recycling building bricks provides the livelihood for some 3,000 people in Beijing, plus their donkeys. Of course, the Performance was amply photographed, a video was created, and a written log describes the construction and demolition.
After this, Matt headed off to catch his flight to Seattle. We weren't able to get seats on the same flight, unfortunately, so I'll follow him there tomorrow morning.
I gotta say it sure feels good to have a real destination to think about, beyond September. I'd started reading the galley proofs of Sarah Erdman's book about her Peace Corps experience in West Africa and, while her book is fascinating, her experiences were far more rugged than I hope to encounter. Now I can concentrate on Tanzania.
So what have I learned from my initial frantic surfing? Tanzania. Pop. 35,000,000, living in a big country about twice the size of California. The Capital is being moved from Dar es Salaam (Pop. 2,500,000, about the size of Philadelphia) to a new city inland. The official languages are English and Swahili. Yes, I will almost certainly have to learn Swahili. 1500 Miles of coastline along the Indian Ocean, located just south of Kenya. The climate is tropical along the coast, and temperate on the inland savannah. Starting from a low level at independence in 1961, attempts at establishing socialist systems completely devastated what little economy there was. Currently the country is among the poorest in the world, but has been coming back a bit. The current president reportly is not corrupt, and seems to be actually pretty good - no wonder we haven't heard anything about him. The major economic activity is agriculture: coffee, some cotton and sisal for rope, a little industrial production, somewhat more mining. Hopes for some possible oil finds. The map promises all kinds of spectacular scenery, including Mt Kilimanjaro, huge Lake Victoria with its companions, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. The great Serengheti is there, as well as a raft of other wildlife preserves and national parks and refuges. Not much of a tourist trade - yet, anyway. Suzie tells me that Zanzibar, the island just off the coast, is incredible with wonderfully friendly people and tremendous resources of coral. The people are 99% Bantu and are about 50% Christian and 40% Muslim. Environmental issues tend to be things like desertification and elephant and rhinoserus poaching.
A lot of the photography of Tanzania looks like it was taken directly from the movie Out of Africa. Guess that shouldn't be so surprising, considering that Kenya is just next door.
Wow. Now let me stop and catch my breath a bit.
Last night Matt and I ended up at a dynamite Italian restaurant for dinner, where we spent a long time afterwards reminiscing about growing up, and places we've been to, together. Afterwards we went back to the apartment, and sat up late singing Spirituals and other songs we might want to use around the campfire next week at Olympic National Park.
This morning, with friends, we went to observe a Performance Art event: Li Jie of the Cultural Transmission Center had used manual labor and traditional methods - donkey carts, hand tools, pipe scaffolds - to build a large brick enclosure inside a warehouse. We witnessed the process of knocking it down and carrying the bricks away again. This was to symbolize and recognize the ongoing destruction of old Beijing to accomodate the erection of the new high-rise Beijing, and to commemorate that the process of recycling building bricks provides the livelihood for some 3,000 people in Beijing, plus their donkeys. Of course, the Performance was amply photographed, a video was created, and a written log describes the construction and demolition.
After this, Matt headed off to catch his flight to Seattle. We weren't able to get seats on the same flight, unfortunately, so I'll follow him there tomorrow morning.
I gotta say it sure feels good to have a real destination to think about, beyond September. I'd started reading the galley proofs of Sarah Erdman's book about her Peace Corps experience in West Africa and, while her book is fascinating, her experiences were far more rugged than I hope to encounter. Now I can concentrate on Tanzania.
Monday, July 14, 2003
The goal today was Tienenman Square, to observe how Mao is aging in his mausoleum,where he is supposed to be on perpetual display. But the mausoleum seems to have odd and limited hours and we found that it is closed entirely today because it is Monday. Perhaps we shall have another chance tomorrow morning, before Matt leaves for Seattle - his flight is in the early afternoon.
Instead, we walked around the square, looking at the people flying kites - we bought some for the kids to play with in Seattle - and talked to the students who hang out there hoping to practice their English by conversing with western tourists.
I'm getting used to good, interesting Chinese food. Not that I know any more than I ever did about what I am actually eating, or what to call it if I ever would want to have it again. Matt hasbeen a very good host through all of this.
Tonight? We disagree - I would like to hear some music somewhere, but Matt thinks my education has been amiss because I've never watched Sopranos, and he has some of their episodes on DVD that he thinks we should watch. Maybe we will compromise by doing both.
Instead, we walked around the square, looking at the people flying kites - we bought some for the kids to play with in Seattle - and talked to the students who hang out there hoping to practice their English by conversing with western tourists.
I'm getting used to good, interesting Chinese food. Not that I know any more than I ever did about what I am actually eating, or what to call it if I ever would want to have it again. Matt hasbeen a very good host through all of this.
Tonight? We disagree - I would like to hear some music somewhere, but Matt thinks my education has been amiss because I've never watched Sopranos, and he has some of their episodes on DVD that he thinks we should watch. Maybe we will compromise by doing both.
Sunday, July 13, 2003
Shi Du is a small Chinese village southwest of China. The Lonely Planet Guide calls it a beautiful gorge with the steep unbelievable limestone formations so typical of karst regions. About a 1 ½ hour drive from Beijing. So yesterday Matt and I headed out there. The 1 ½ hours turned out to be more like 3 because of road construction. Oh well.
Limestone drives the economy of the part of China we were driving through. Huge quarries of white rock and gravel, whole populations of roadside suppliers of huge decorative rocks and steles, building blocks and stone. The road was full of huge dump trucks and the little three-wheeled pickup trucks with thier two-cycle engines spewing clouds of black smoke, all carrying limestone in all its forms. We passed a gigantic cement plant, clearly the major employer for the area. Stopping near it at a dusty roadside stand for lunch, we had wheat cakes, soup and the chinese bottled tea amid the noise of the road. Our waitress was shy, embarrassed to be serving foreigners in her little stand. Our total cost for this came to something like $1.50, most of that for the tea.
The countryside is a series of surprises. Suddenly a park in the middle of nowhere, featuring huge plastic giraffes. Again, a town boasting a Convention Center with several grand hotels stuck incongruously along the side of the road, shoulder to shoulder with the junky little shops, stores and hutongs of the village. For a mile in either direction the road was lined with large tacky fake palm trees in a billious fluorescent green interspersed with fabulous street lights, each one a fountain of 30 or so individual lights on chromium tubes. High hopes for this dusty little village. Every little town needs its abstract sculpture at the main intersection – some improbable off-center chrome or concrete comet-like swooch pointed at the sky, standing alone on its dusty plot. A roadside lot in the middle of nowhere featured a big sculpture of what appeared to be two persimmons and a sign extolling Chinese Fruit. No other explanation, just siting there. And every here and there you will come across an elaborate Chinese Arch across the highway, or the shell of something that was obviously intended to be a major tourist resort but didn't make it. No end of interesting stuff.
The Shi Du gorge is undoubtedly quite spectacular - I wish we could have seen it in all its glory. We certainly could see the outlines of the hills through the haze that everyone has been telling me is so typical of Beijing. There are incredible cliffs and outcroppings everywhere. The road crisscrosses a lazy shallow river that is occasionally dammed up to create a pond so tourists from Beijing can rent rafts to spend several hours punting themselves and their families around in a circle. At every bridge there are hoards of vendors, fruit sellers, restaurants and hotels, all with hawkers extolling their virtues. The region seems to be capitalizing on the economic growth of China, so that now people from Beijing have enough leisure and money to treat themselves to a trip to a place like Shi Du.
The town itself is the central attraction, with flat margins to the river that accommodate construction, surrounded by high sharp cliffs and formations. Of course, all this has been fully exploited, chinese-style. There is a gondola to carry tourists across the river to the cliff on the other side, where there are more vendors, a restaurant, and two cantilevered cranes that offer 150 ft bungee jumps over the river. Lots more outdoor eateries, fish tanks, hotels, trinkets, vendors, hawkers, rides in electric carts, donkey carts, or by horseback with the horse led by a guy on a bicycle. Most grinning riders were sitting rigidly, bouncing up and down with every step of the horse to create tomorrow’s painful memories of their experience.
Exploring, we bounced along a rocky side valley for about 45 minutes through the rugged landscape. It is dry here. The corn and vegetables struggling to survive in terraced plots with poor, rocky soil need rain, badly. The main economic activity here is fish farming in small concrete-lined pools and goat herding – nothing else could likely use this sparse and rugged terrain. Finally we came to a few houses, and stopped to talk to an old gnarled couple – well, Matt talked with them and interpreted for me. The old man was bent over his cane, but still invited us into their austere home, where we sat on little stools and ate the tasty peaches and plums they picked for us. Most of the homes are vacant. The children migrate to Shi Du and then, if they are ambitious, on to Beijing where they can find jobs and send a little money back to their parents. But even these homes have electricity, although service is erratic, and many sport satellite dishes. I took some photos of the old couple, and they were delighted to see their images on the digital display.
Limestone drives the economy of the part of China we were driving through. Huge quarries of white rock and gravel, whole populations of roadside suppliers of huge decorative rocks and steles, building blocks and stone. The road was full of huge dump trucks and the little three-wheeled pickup trucks with thier two-cycle engines spewing clouds of black smoke, all carrying limestone in all its forms. We passed a gigantic cement plant, clearly the major employer for the area. Stopping near it at a dusty roadside stand for lunch, we had wheat cakes, soup and the chinese bottled tea amid the noise of the road. Our waitress was shy, embarrassed to be serving foreigners in her little stand. Our total cost for this came to something like $1.50, most of that for the tea.
The countryside is a series of surprises. Suddenly a park in the middle of nowhere, featuring huge plastic giraffes. Again, a town boasting a Convention Center with several grand hotels stuck incongruously along the side of the road, shoulder to shoulder with the junky little shops, stores and hutongs of the village. For a mile in either direction the road was lined with large tacky fake palm trees in a billious fluorescent green interspersed with fabulous street lights, each one a fountain of 30 or so individual lights on chromium tubes. High hopes for this dusty little village. Every little town needs its abstract sculpture at the main intersection – some improbable off-center chrome or concrete comet-like swooch pointed at the sky, standing alone on its dusty plot. A roadside lot in the middle of nowhere featured a big sculpture of what appeared to be two persimmons and a sign extolling Chinese Fruit. No other explanation, just siting there. And every here and there you will come across an elaborate Chinese Arch across the highway, or the shell of something that was obviously intended to be a major tourist resort but didn't make it. No end of interesting stuff.
The Shi Du gorge is undoubtedly quite spectacular - I wish we could have seen it in all its glory. We certainly could see the outlines of the hills through the haze that everyone has been telling me is so typical of Beijing. There are incredible cliffs and outcroppings everywhere. The road crisscrosses a lazy shallow river that is occasionally dammed up to create a pond so tourists from Beijing can rent rafts to spend several hours punting themselves and their families around in a circle. At every bridge there are hoards of vendors, fruit sellers, restaurants and hotels, all with hawkers extolling their virtues. The region seems to be capitalizing on the economic growth of China, so that now people from Beijing have enough leisure and money to treat themselves to a trip to a place like Shi Du.
The town itself is the central attraction, with flat margins to the river that accommodate construction, surrounded by high sharp cliffs and formations. Of course, all this has been fully exploited, chinese-style. There is a gondola to carry tourists across the river to the cliff on the other side, where there are more vendors, a restaurant, and two cantilevered cranes that offer 150 ft bungee jumps over the river. Lots more outdoor eateries, fish tanks, hotels, trinkets, vendors, hawkers, rides in electric carts, donkey carts, or by horseback with the horse led by a guy on a bicycle. Most grinning riders were sitting rigidly, bouncing up and down with every step of the horse to create tomorrow’s painful memories of their experience.
Exploring, we bounced along a rocky side valley for about 45 minutes through the rugged landscape. It is dry here. The corn and vegetables struggling to survive in terraced plots with poor, rocky soil need rain, badly. The main economic activity here is fish farming in small concrete-lined pools and goat herding – nothing else could likely use this sparse and rugged terrain. Finally we came to a few houses, and stopped to talk to an old gnarled couple – well, Matt talked with them and interpreted for me. The old man was bent over his cane, but still invited us into their austere home, where we sat on little stools and ate the tasty peaches and plums they picked for us. Most of the homes are vacant. The children migrate to Shi Du and then, if they are ambitious, on to Beijing where they can find jobs and send a little money back to their parents. But even these homes have electricity, although service is erratic, and many sport satellite dishes. I took some photos of the old couple, and they were delighted to see their images on the digital display.
Friday, July 11, 2003
Hmmmm. Surfing in the TIME offices, I found I couldn't reach a number of favorite sites, including the Phila Inquirer. More disturbing, I COULD NOT REACH MY OWN BLOG, although I could use to make new postings, like this one and that long one yesterday. According to numerous comments I then found on the internet, China has blocked many or most blogs, specifically including everything on blogspot.com. So here I have been handing out my business card to people, telling them to look up my blog and they are unable to reach it.
Yesterday was a recouperation day. Followed Matt around, had a fabulous evening meal at a local restaurant - I even enjoyed the TOFU! - and slept a lot.
Yesterday was a recouperation day. Followed Matt around, had a fabulous evening meal at a local restaurant - I even enjoyed the TOFU! - and slept a lot.
Thursday, July 10, 2003
My apologies for not faithfully maintaining this blog. But I've had trouble finding computers, switching information from Mac to PC and stuff, just couldn't do it. But I've been keeping the diary anyway, in blog chronology, so here are the entries that have been missed. Bottom line - it is a FABULOUS !!! visit with Matt. Unfortunately, the idea of adding photos to this blog is hopeless, until I get back to Philadelphia at the end of the month.
WEDNESDAY 7/9: Namu, TIME and the Forbidden City
Matt interviewed Namu today, and I sat in. As Matt said later, he does not like celebrity interviews. Indeed, I think she was the most narcissistic person I have ever met. My take on it, after the interview, is that Namu ran away from home to exploit her stunning good looks by travelling in a rarified atmosphere on several continents. Now that she is older and her attributes are less marketable she has written several autobiographies about her experience, and they have done pretty well both in China and the US. End of story.
Dropping by Matt’s office at TIME, I met his staff, who are young, bright, and seem exceptionally close-knit. Jody is the latest addition, an attractive slim woman who had us to her hutong for an 8-selection lunch. A hutong refers to the classic, crowded areas in China, a warren of tiny dirty one-room houses behind high gray walls. Sometimes the passageways are wide enough to walk a bicycle – nothing more. In rare cases, instead of replacing the hutongs with ugly high rise projects, they are modernized to something quite surprising. Jody’s home was carved from 13 of the original homesteads there. It has a courtyard garden surrounded by her living quarters and offices. It was extremely attractive, truly a quiet beautiful oasis in the washing machine of Beijing.
Jody spent the afternoon with me at the Forbidden City, where I shot a raft of photos to replace the rolls of film I lost on my last trip there, six years ago. I’d also planned to use the audio tour system since the TIME crew gave it high marks, but it wasn’t functional. They said it was “temporarily” discontinued due to SARS. Looking around with that in mind, there seemed to be a fair number of Chinese in the Forbidden City, but almost no foreigners. Not many vendors, nothing like what I would have expected, but those few were acting desperate – very aggressive and unpleasant.
That evening Matt and I were entertained by his chief assistant, Susie, in her very modern apartment – also carved from a hutong, but in a very chic western style. Susie had studied history, and our fascinating discussion ran the gamut of world and Chinese history and international interactions.
Home at last, we struggled to sort out the family travel plans for next week at Olympia National Park. I don’t even want to go into the gory details. But Matt was impressive in his struggle to put coherent plans together, and in his patience to try to win cooperation from the various family units that had to compromise plans to make it all happen. Many long international calls later, it appears that Roy and Alice’s cousins WILL be there, and Paola WILL be there and also get the stuff done that has to be done in San Francisco. This, with no change to Diane’s or my plans.
At the Peace Corps, I managed to quell Sylvie Mortimer’s suspicion that I don’t want to go anywhere except So America, and she says she will work on my Africa assignment right away.
TUESDAY 7/8: The Great Wall
It was quite cool last night, I’m glad I brought a sleeping bag. Quite a surprise in mid-continent China, everyone is commenting on it. I woke up with the daylight, about 4:30, to the gentle sounds of breeze rustling the trees outside, distant roosters from the valley below, and the braying of a neighbor’s donkey. The sky is beautiful today – a great day for a hike to the Wall.
The rest of the gang woke up on a more relaxed schedule. We headed out after a morning cup of coffee, while the village loudspeakers were announcing the morning news and reiterating the government’s Three Representations. I doubt that the news needed to include a morning traffic report, however.
Mimi led Matt and me off on a trail, up. And up and up. As Matt and I were tiring, Mimi announced that “it gets steeper on the next part”. It did, and we were often scrambling at a 45-degree angle, pulling at bushes and trees for help. After a tough climb for some 45 minutes, one of the towers of the Wall opened before us. We scrambled through some crumbling stone arches, up to the crenellated surface of the Wall. There was considerable bushes and shrubbery growing where the guards must have trod, and the stone steps up the steep incline to the adjoining tower were corroded and crumbled. But the next tower was at a high point of the Wall, and provided an incredible view of the region, and of the wall itself as it snaked over the hills and valleys and ran along the ridge tops. It felt like the top of the world, with a 360 degree view of ridge after ridge of sharp mountains, under a variably cloudy sky. The patterns of sun and shadow passed swiftly, and the sun periodically spotlit sections of the Wall or the rectilinear structures of its towers.
What a feeling! we stayed for about an hour and a half, just drinking in the feeling of the spot with its regal isolation and history. I felt powerless to catch the imagery with my small camera. Yes, my camera can show the Wall, and how it snaked away from us, and I think I got some great photos. But the larger scene – only something like an Imax multiple camera image would be able to catch how the scenery surrounds and envelops and awes the intrepid observer. Is my writing becoming florid, there? My apologies, but that seeming excess was justified in this case. I’m glad it was hard work to get there. Somehow a reward like that view, that feeling, should require an effort so that it can never become commonplace to be taken for granted.
On our return, we met an old woman carrying a large bag and pan of small apricots over her shoulder. She offered us some, and they were marvelously sweet and tasty. The village grows a variety of crops for sustenance, but its cash crops are the apricots and walnuts that grow wild over the area. Mimi’s computer has a screen saver photo of the apricot trees in bloom in the spring, and it looks like a snow scene with the white blossoms covering all the trees.
MONDAY 7/7: Out to Pete and Mimi’s Place
We got up late, threw some stuff in back packs and headed out of Beijing on fast, multi-lane throughways. Very efficient, very modern. Our goal was to hook up with Pete and Mimi at the Ming Tombs and follow them to their house in the mountains. They are about a 45-minute hike from an unreconstructed portion of the Wall. Amazingly, this is only about a two-hour drive from the center of Beijing, about equal to the driving time from center city Philadelphia to any place interesting in the Poconos.
From the Tombs, the roads kept getting narrower and less developed, as the road was climbing through long valleys. By the time we reached dusty Shayu to register at the provincial police station, driving required dodging occasional sheep, parked trucks, people unloading wagons in the road and the inevitable pedestrians and bicycles. From there it came down to one lane concrete roads and kept getting steeper and steeper. People stopped to stare as our two cars drove by. Soon we were negotiating switchbacks and changing gears frequently on the short straight stretches, and crossing streams on narrow bridges without any guardrails whatsoever.
Suddenly, coming around yet another bend, there was the Wall, climbing up along a precipace. Majestic, solitary, standing guard against the intrusion of foreigners such as ourselves.
Finally the road ended above the small village of San Cha (Three Valleys), a hamlet of perhaps a dozen families. Peter and Mimi’s redoubt is on the side of the mountain just above the village, with an incredible view of the mountains. From their porch, the two mountaintop towers of the Wall are plainly visible. Corn, beans, scallions, cucumbers, hollyhocks and marigolds grow in a small terraced garden just off the porch.
We ate dinner at the “restaurant” of P & M’s landlord, with the local Party Leader. The landlord is entrepreneurial, and believes he can establish a sort-of Bed & Breakfast: Hike to the Wall and stay and eat at an authentic peasant home. He hopes to attract Chinese looking to get out of Beijing for the weekend. Delicious food. String beans, soy beans, tomatoes, tofu, rice, noodles, and tasteless wheat biscuits.
Matt and I spent the night sleeping on a kang – the raised terra cota platform that contains the flue from the kitchen cooking fire, so that it can be warmed during cold weather.
SUNDAY 7/6
Cool day with rain, today – unusual in Beijing this time of year. Got up late and read until about noon. Started reading the copy of Gallelio’s Daughter, that I had given Matt a couple of years ago.
There was a birthday party for Titi at her apartment, where we stayed for an hour or two, then I went along with Matt and Peter and Mark to watch them play basketball. After the game we went to somebody’s idea of the very best Sichuan restaurant in China, where we cajoled the restaurant into allowing us to set up chairs outside the front door, where they graciously brought us chairs and a table for appetizers and beer. I nixed the beer because jet lag was finally catching up with me.
The food was delicious, but pure fire – absolutely smothered with hot peppers and deep fried. But the rice, fried tofu and mustard greens made it tolerable without calling the fire department.
SARS
The Tokyo to Beijing flight had been just as crowded as Phila to Detroit and Detroit to Tokyo, which made me wonder about the decreased traffic to Beijing. However instead of the usual 747, the plane was a smaller Airbus A320, so that is how they keep their load factor high in this immediate post-SARS time.
At the parties, people were talking about how China is starting a big campaign to rebuild the tourist industry, and how this is a great time to be visiting Beijing because of the reduced crowds. It is amazing – I remember China from six years ago, when every point of any tourist interest whatsoever was guarded by a phalanx of wall-to-wall vendors, hawking souvenirs, trinkets, jewelry, icons, whatever. On our way to the Great Wall we stopped at the Ming Tombs, and it was eerie. A line of vendor stalls were completely empty. We had the place to ourselves – perhaps 6 other people strolling around. The Official Tourist Shop had NO customers. We walked in for a soda, and there were four clerks there, looking bored and sitting at a table by themselves.
Nobody is wearing face masks in public these days, but measures to control SARS are still in evidence. At the entrance to the gym for the basketball game, a uniformed guard with Security Officer epaulets required everyone to present their forehand. I thought they were going to stamp it, like those old high-school dances, but he was aiming an infra-red detector at our hands to check body temperatures. At the restaurant, before serving, a small bottle of sterilant was passed around. It is isopropyl alcohol with a thickening agent, and you squeeze some on your hands to wash them before eating.
In the rural hamlet of San Cha, the peasants told us that everything had stopped during the SARS episode. Not that you couldn’t leave the village. Just, if anyone did, they were not allowed back in.
GRATUITOUS RANT: Sat 7/5
I woke up this morning with my mind again boiling in anger. Last night I had scanned the major news articles before I went to sleep, and was very bothered by the report of the fourteen Iraqi army trainees of ours that were killed yesterday by an explosion. (Actually, I think it was seven police trainees, but.... ) It was SO DAMNED PREDICTABLE. How could our leaders have been – and continue to be - so delusional as to think that our occupation of Iraq would not engender hate and resistance? Liberation, indeed!
So what now, since we have pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and can’t put things back together again? Indeed, how have countries in other times maintained power gained by conquest?
Rome, the Mongols and the like didn’t seem to flinch at genocide and extermination.
Spain did quite well in the Americas, by killing off 2/3 of the indigenous populations with the help of sickness and disease, and then enslaving the remainder.
We were pretty effective 300 years ago by displacing entire Indian nations and killing off most of them in the process, but it created problems that are resurfacing anyway.
Germany seemed to do rather well by executing about 10 random civilians for every soldier that was killed.
Israel is having considerable trouble, but they are only killing 3 Palestinians for every Israeli death, on average.
What increase in the number of our body bags will we tolerate? What level of brutality are we willing to impose in retaliation? What policies will our nation choose to initiate, and how will we have to twist our expression of purpose and values to accomodate them? Will our news media be brave enough to show us what we are actually doing to maintain our imposition of democracy? (How many Lt. Calley files are already hidden in folders marked CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET?)
When I am in the Peace Corps for the next two years, how can I represent the goodness, hope, freedom and justice that I still believe my country stands for, at the core – our Shining City on the Hill?
SATURDAY: 7/6
Today we slept late, kicked back a bit, did some strolling and shopping in Beijing. Kashgar is no longer in our plans. It is far, and Matt was hoping he could get TIME to underwrite his trip in order to do a story on the place. They nixed the idea, and instead wanted him to provide some background on the Hong Kong demonstrations that shocked the Beijing government. So he spent part of the morning developing contacts, coming up to speed on that issue and filing a report. Interesting to watch a journalist at work.
In the market we bumped into Matt's friend James, a reporter for the Financial Times, at a stall buying historical Chinese propaganda posters. That is a hobby of his, so we looked at bunches of posters with him: Down with the Gang of Four, Support the Cultural Revolution, a Chinese version of Duck and Cover, Build the New Tomorrow....
Then back home for a nap before going out for the evening.
Matt’s friend Pete (author of River Town) lives in a crowded old section of Beijing where the streets look a lot like alleys. But his neighbors were having an outdoor “barbeque” tonight. They call themselves the WC Club because they sit in front of the public toilet. Now most of the public toilets in Beijing are not something you want to sit within two blocks of. But this one was built just a few years ago as part of the Beijing investment in becoming an Olympics host. It is modern, neat, and MUCH cleaner than any other public area of Beijing I’ve seen. There are two sections to the club: About 8 men sit around in deep concentration playing or watching chess matches. The other group of about 8 sit around teasing each other, commenting on anything of interest and eating pork or crawfish kabobs, cooked soybeans and boiled peanuts and drinking white lightning and beer. Lots of beer. Lots of toasts. Hard (but possible, fortunately) to avoid white lightning toasts. Pete, Matt and one other guy spoke English, but some other ex-pats also showed up later. Very comfortable, and lots of laughter! Wish I knew how to post my photo of the guy there who had the super-expressive rubber face....
Then we – Pete, Mimi, Matt, Me – went to a series of house parties, 4 of them! Lots of people, many friends and associates of Matt. Food. Beer. Wine. Dancing. Exposed navels are the fashion here, too. Everybody claimed amazement at our family resemblance. The police appeared at the last party insisting that we damp down the music, and we headed for home about 2:00am. This post is my wind-down from the evening before I hit the sack.
FRIDAY 7/5:FLIGHT, Phila to Beijing:
NW took a straightforward path, Philadelphia to Detroit, then followed a Great Circle Route high over Canada and Alaska to drop down to Japan. The flight was dull, and I guess that is a good thing. My seat-mate from Detroit was a student returning to Korea where his parents teach in an international school. He is a high school kid, looks just a little sassy wearing his baseball cap. He didn’t know Korean, except for some words he has been picking up recently because he plays in a music group with some other Korean kids. Incredibly, he has been sleeping the entire time. I used the flight to finish reading almost the whole second half of Peter Hessler’s book on his two years in China with the Peace Corps, River Town. Matt knows Peter, and we may spend some time with him while I am here.
By the time I arrived in Beijing it was some 2l hours since leaving Philadelphia. I think I had just a 2-hr nap, en-route. Had thought that I might try to stay awake throughout the trip, to be very tired on my arrival in Beijing, but that has been impossible. Although we are chasing the sun – it was still bright outside through Japan, and still only 9:30pm when we arrived in Beijing – the cabin had been kept dark and gloomy throughout so passengers could see the movies or sleep. Made me feel like I was lost in a rat hole. I would rather have read Hessler’s saga by bright, natural light than the weak, yellow puddle of light that came from above my seat.
Matt was waiting for me with a big grin and warm hug. We came directly to his apartment and talked for several hours. Caught up on family, plans, all that stuff. They have a large, modern apartment. It’s nice, but lacks some of the personality that was there in their last apartment. Seems he and Paola are thinking of buying a place in Beijing – even have an area picked out.
WEDNESDAY 7/9: Namu, TIME and the Forbidden City
Matt interviewed Namu today, and I sat in. As Matt said later, he does not like celebrity interviews. Indeed, I think she was the most narcissistic person I have ever met. My take on it, after the interview, is that Namu ran away from home to exploit her stunning good looks by travelling in a rarified atmosphere on several continents. Now that she is older and her attributes are less marketable she has written several autobiographies about her experience, and they have done pretty well both in China and the US. End of story.
Dropping by Matt’s office at TIME, I met his staff, who are young, bright, and seem exceptionally close-knit. Jody is the latest addition, an attractive slim woman who had us to her hutong for an 8-selection lunch. A hutong refers to the classic, crowded areas in China, a warren of tiny dirty one-room houses behind high gray walls. Sometimes the passageways are wide enough to walk a bicycle – nothing more. In rare cases, instead of replacing the hutongs with ugly high rise projects, they are modernized to something quite surprising. Jody’s home was carved from 13 of the original homesteads there. It has a courtyard garden surrounded by her living quarters and offices. It was extremely attractive, truly a quiet beautiful oasis in the washing machine of Beijing.
Jody spent the afternoon with me at the Forbidden City, where I shot a raft of photos to replace the rolls of film I lost on my last trip there, six years ago. I’d also planned to use the audio tour system since the TIME crew gave it high marks, but it wasn’t functional. They said it was “temporarily” discontinued due to SARS. Looking around with that in mind, there seemed to be a fair number of Chinese in the Forbidden City, but almost no foreigners. Not many vendors, nothing like what I would have expected, but those few were acting desperate – very aggressive and unpleasant.
That evening Matt and I were entertained by his chief assistant, Susie, in her very modern apartment – also carved from a hutong, but in a very chic western style. Susie had studied history, and our fascinating discussion ran the gamut of world and Chinese history and international interactions.
Home at last, we struggled to sort out the family travel plans for next week at Olympia National Park. I don’t even want to go into the gory details. But Matt was impressive in his struggle to put coherent plans together, and in his patience to try to win cooperation from the various family units that had to compromise plans to make it all happen. Many long international calls later, it appears that Roy and Alice’s cousins WILL be there, and Paola WILL be there and also get the stuff done that has to be done in San Francisco. This, with no change to Diane’s or my plans.
At the Peace Corps, I managed to quell Sylvie Mortimer’s suspicion that I don’t want to go anywhere except So America, and she says she will work on my Africa assignment right away.
TUESDAY 7/8: The Great Wall
It was quite cool last night, I’m glad I brought a sleeping bag. Quite a surprise in mid-continent China, everyone is commenting on it. I woke up with the daylight, about 4:30, to the gentle sounds of breeze rustling the trees outside, distant roosters from the valley below, and the braying of a neighbor’s donkey. The sky is beautiful today – a great day for a hike to the Wall.
The rest of the gang woke up on a more relaxed schedule. We headed out after a morning cup of coffee, while the village loudspeakers were announcing the morning news and reiterating the government’s Three Representations. I doubt that the news needed to include a morning traffic report, however.
Mimi led Matt and me off on a trail, up. And up and up. As Matt and I were tiring, Mimi announced that “it gets steeper on the next part”. It did, and we were often scrambling at a 45-degree angle, pulling at bushes and trees for help. After a tough climb for some 45 minutes, one of the towers of the Wall opened before us. We scrambled through some crumbling stone arches, up to the crenellated surface of the Wall. There was considerable bushes and shrubbery growing where the guards must have trod, and the stone steps up the steep incline to the adjoining tower were corroded and crumbled. But the next tower was at a high point of the Wall, and provided an incredible view of the region, and of the wall itself as it snaked over the hills and valleys and ran along the ridge tops. It felt like the top of the world, with a 360 degree view of ridge after ridge of sharp mountains, under a variably cloudy sky. The patterns of sun and shadow passed swiftly, and the sun periodically spotlit sections of the Wall or the rectilinear structures of its towers.
What a feeling! we stayed for about an hour and a half, just drinking in the feeling of the spot with its regal isolation and history. I felt powerless to catch the imagery with my small camera. Yes, my camera can show the Wall, and how it snaked away from us, and I think I got some great photos. But the larger scene – only something like an Imax multiple camera image would be able to catch how the scenery surrounds and envelops and awes the intrepid observer. Is my writing becoming florid, there? My apologies, but that seeming excess was justified in this case. I’m glad it was hard work to get there. Somehow a reward like that view, that feeling, should require an effort so that it can never become commonplace to be taken for granted.
On our return, we met an old woman carrying a large bag and pan of small apricots over her shoulder. She offered us some, and they were marvelously sweet and tasty. The village grows a variety of crops for sustenance, but its cash crops are the apricots and walnuts that grow wild over the area. Mimi’s computer has a screen saver photo of the apricot trees in bloom in the spring, and it looks like a snow scene with the white blossoms covering all the trees.
MONDAY 7/7: Out to Pete and Mimi’s Place
We got up late, threw some stuff in back packs and headed out of Beijing on fast, multi-lane throughways. Very efficient, very modern. Our goal was to hook up with Pete and Mimi at the Ming Tombs and follow them to their house in the mountains. They are about a 45-minute hike from an unreconstructed portion of the Wall. Amazingly, this is only about a two-hour drive from the center of Beijing, about equal to the driving time from center city Philadelphia to any place interesting in the Poconos.
From the Tombs, the roads kept getting narrower and less developed, as the road was climbing through long valleys. By the time we reached dusty Shayu to register at the provincial police station, driving required dodging occasional sheep, parked trucks, people unloading wagons in the road and the inevitable pedestrians and bicycles. From there it came down to one lane concrete roads and kept getting steeper and steeper. People stopped to stare as our two cars drove by. Soon we were negotiating switchbacks and changing gears frequently on the short straight stretches, and crossing streams on narrow bridges without any guardrails whatsoever.
Suddenly, coming around yet another bend, there was the Wall, climbing up along a precipace. Majestic, solitary, standing guard against the intrusion of foreigners such as ourselves.
Finally the road ended above the small village of San Cha (Three Valleys), a hamlet of perhaps a dozen families. Peter and Mimi’s redoubt is on the side of the mountain just above the village, with an incredible view of the mountains. From their porch, the two mountaintop towers of the Wall are plainly visible. Corn, beans, scallions, cucumbers, hollyhocks and marigolds grow in a small terraced garden just off the porch.
We ate dinner at the “restaurant” of P & M’s landlord, with the local Party Leader. The landlord is entrepreneurial, and believes he can establish a sort-of Bed & Breakfast: Hike to the Wall and stay and eat at an authentic peasant home. He hopes to attract Chinese looking to get out of Beijing for the weekend. Delicious food. String beans, soy beans, tomatoes, tofu, rice, noodles, and tasteless wheat biscuits.
Matt and I spent the night sleeping on a kang – the raised terra cota platform that contains the flue from the kitchen cooking fire, so that it can be warmed during cold weather.
SUNDAY 7/6
Cool day with rain, today – unusual in Beijing this time of year. Got up late and read until about noon. Started reading the copy of Gallelio’s Daughter, that I had given Matt a couple of years ago.
There was a birthday party for Titi at her apartment, where we stayed for an hour or two, then I went along with Matt and Peter and Mark to watch them play basketball. After the game we went to somebody’s idea of the very best Sichuan restaurant in China, where we cajoled the restaurant into allowing us to set up chairs outside the front door, where they graciously brought us chairs and a table for appetizers and beer. I nixed the beer because jet lag was finally catching up with me.
The food was delicious, but pure fire – absolutely smothered with hot peppers and deep fried. But the rice, fried tofu and mustard greens made it tolerable without calling the fire department.
SARS
The Tokyo to Beijing flight had been just as crowded as Phila to Detroit and Detroit to Tokyo, which made me wonder about the decreased traffic to Beijing. However instead of the usual 747, the plane was a smaller Airbus A320, so that is how they keep their load factor high in this immediate post-SARS time.
At the parties, people were talking about how China is starting a big campaign to rebuild the tourist industry, and how this is a great time to be visiting Beijing because of the reduced crowds. It is amazing – I remember China from six years ago, when every point of any tourist interest whatsoever was guarded by a phalanx of wall-to-wall vendors, hawking souvenirs, trinkets, jewelry, icons, whatever. On our way to the Great Wall we stopped at the Ming Tombs, and it was eerie. A line of vendor stalls were completely empty. We had the place to ourselves – perhaps 6 other people strolling around. The Official Tourist Shop had NO customers. We walked in for a soda, and there were four clerks there, looking bored and sitting at a table by themselves.
Nobody is wearing face masks in public these days, but measures to control SARS are still in evidence. At the entrance to the gym for the basketball game, a uniformed guard with Security Officer epaulets required everyone to present their forehand. I thought they were going to stamp it, like those old high-school dances, but he was aiming an infra-red detector at our hands to check body temperatures. At the restaurant, before serving, a small bottle of sterilant was passed around. It is isopropyl alcohol with a thickening agent, and you squeeze some on your hands to wash them before eating.
In the rural hamlet of San Cha, the peasants told us that everything had stopped during the SARS episode. Not that you couldn’t leave the village. Just, if anyone did, they were not allowed back in.
GRATUITOUS RANT: Sat 7/5
I woke up this morning with my mind again boiling in anger. Last night I had scanned the major news articles before I went to sleep, and was very bothered by the report of the fourteen Iraqi army trainees of ours that were killed yesterday by an explosion. (Actually, I think it was seven police trainees, but.... ) It was SO DAMNED PREDICTABLE. How could our leaders have been – and continue to be - so delusional as to think that our occupation of Iraq would not engender hate and resistance? Liberation, indeed!
So what now, since we have pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and can’t put things back together again? Indeed, how have countries in other times maintained power gained by conquest?
Rome, the Mongols and the like didn’t seem to flinch at genocide and extermination.
Spain did quite well in the Americas, by killing off 2/3 of the indigenous populations with the help of sickness and disease, and then enslaving the remainder.
We were pretty effective 300 years ago by displacing entire Indian nations and killing off most of them in the process, but it created problems that are resurfacing anyway.
Germany seemed to do rather well by executing about 10 random civilians for every soldier that was killed.
Israel is having considerable trouble, but they are only killing 3 Palestinians for every Israeli death, on average.
What increase in the number of our body bags will we tolerate? What level of brutality are we willing to impose in retaliation? What policies will our nation choose to initiate, and how will we have to twist our expression of purpose and values to accomodate them? Will our news media be brave enough to show us what we are actually doing to maintain our imposition of democracy? (How many Lt. Calley files are already hidden in folders marked CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET?)
When I am in the Peace Corps for the next two years, how can I represent the goodness, hope, freedom and justice that I still believe my country stands for, at the core – our Shining City on the Hill?
SATURDAY: 7/6
Today we slept late, kicked back a bit, did some strolling and shopping in Beijing. Kashgar is no longer in our plans. It is far, and Matt was hoping he could get TIME to underwrite his trip in order to do a story on the place. They nixed the idea, and instead wanted him to provide some background on the Hong Kong demonstrations that shocked the Beijing government. So he spent part of the morning developing contacts, coming up to speed on that issue and filing a report. Interesting to watch a journalist at work.
In the market we bumped into Matt's friend James, a reporter for the Financial Times, at a stall buying historical Chinese propaganda posters. That is a hobby of his, so we looked at bunches of posters with him: Down with the Gang of Four, Support the Cultural Revolution, a Chinese version of Duck and Cover, Build the New Tomorrow....
Then back home for a nap before going out for the evening.
Matt’s friend Pete (author of River Town) lives in a crowded old section of Beijing where the streets look a lot like alleys. But his neighbors were having an outdoor “barbeque” tonight. They call themselves the WC Club because they sit in front of the public toilet. Now most of the public toilets in Beijing are not something you want to sit within two blocks of. But this one was built just a few years ago as part of the Beijing investment in becoming an Olympics host. It is modern, neat, and MUCH cleaner than any other public area of Beijing I’ve seen. There are two sections to the club: About 8 men sit around in deep concentration playing or watching chess matches. The other group of about 8 sit around teasing each other, commenting on anything of interest and eating pork or crawfish kabobs, cooked soybeans and boiled peanuts and drinking white lightning and beer. Lots of beer. Lots of toasts. Hard (but possible, fortunately) to avoid white lightning toasts. Pete, Matt and one other guy spoke English, but some other ex-pats also showed up later. Very comfortable, and lots of laughter! Wish I knew how to post my photo of the guy there who had the super-expressive rubber face....
Then we – Pete, Mimi, Matt, Me – went to a series of house parties, 4 of them! Lots of people, many friends and associates of Matt. Food. Beer. Wine. Dancing. Exposed navels are the fashion here, too. Everybody claimed amazement at our family resemblance. The police appeared at the last party insisting that we damp down the music, and we headed for home about 2:00am. This post is my wind-down from the evening before I hit the sack.
FRIDAY 7/5:FLIGHT, Phila to Beijing:
NW took a straightforward path, Philadelphia to Detroit, then followed a Great Circle Route high over Canada and Alaska to drop down to Japan. The flight was dull, and I guess that is a good thing. My seat-mate from Detroit was a student returning to Korea where his parents teach in an international school. He is a high school kid, looks just a little sassy wearing his baseball cap. He didn’t know Korean, except for some words he has been picking up recently because he plays in a music group with some other Korean kids. Incredibly, he has been sleeping the entire time. I used the flight to finish reading almost the whole second half of Peter Hessler’s book on his two years in China with the Peace Corps, River Town. Matt knows Peter, and we may spend some time with him while I am here.
By the time I arrived in Beijing it was some 2l hours since leaving Philadelphia. I think I had just a 2-hr nap, en-route. Had thought that I might try to stay awake throughout the trip, to be very tired on my arrival in Beijing, but that has been impossible. Although we are chasing the sun – it was still bright outside through Japan, and still only 9:30pm when we arrived in Beijing – the cabin had been kept dark and gloomy throughout so passengers could see the movies or sleep. Made me feel like I was lost in a rat hole. I would rather have read Hessler’s saga by bright, natural light than the weak, yellow puddle of light that came from above my seat.
Matt was waiting for me with a big grin and warm hug. We came directly to his apartment and talked for several hours. Caught up on family, plans, all that stuff. They have a large, modern apartment. It’s nice, but lacks some of the personality that was there in their last apartment. Seems he and Paola are thinking of buying a place in Beijing – even have an area picked out.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
I'm torn. I won't be here for July 4th. I LOVE this annual celebration of our country, its history and ideals and the hot weather and all the barbeques and family gatherings. Especially the crowds for fireworks - and they are GREAT in Philadelphia. I like to be close enough to smell the cordite and get powder dust and paper fragments from the shells in my hair, look up and say WOWWW along with the crowd around me. And I like all the proud flags and patriotic parades.
Patriotic parades. The coalition of groups in favor of peace and justice are planning their own parade this year, and I strongly feel a need to be part of all that. Patriotism in protest. This IS a time when I feel our values and ideals are being subverted. In the protest parade, Chris' great Bush Effigy will be unveiled and I would love to see that. Yeah, I tried to help steer the demonstration toward celebrating what is GOOD about America and issuing a call to RETURN TO OUR GOODNESS. But many (most?) of the activist coalition is so alienated that they want to say that there is NOTHING good to talk about in America right now and the only recourse is to PROTEST. Gotta admit that it is the protesters that provide the real energy for the action, and I guess any public action has to be simplified and overstated to get any message across. I'm glad they/we are getting news coverage and hope for a good turnout. I'll try to keep in touch by reading internet news accounts from China.
By the way, I've noticed that the time stamp on these entries is really screwed up. It is off by about three hours. Anybody reading this (IS anybody reading this?) who has an idea on how to fix this, please let me know - use my contact link at the left.
Patriotic parades. The coalition of groups in favor of peace and justice are planning their own parade this year, and I strongly feel a need to be part of all that. Patriotism in protest. This IS a time when I feel our values and ideals are being subverted. In the protest parade, Chris' great Bush Effigy will be unveiled and I would love to see that. Yeah, I tried to help steer the demonstration toward celebrating what is GOOD about America and issuing a call to RETURN TO OUR GOODNESS. But many (most?) of the activist coalition is so alienated that they want to say that there is NOTHING good to talk about in America right now and the only recourse is to PROTEST. Gotta admit that it is the protesters that provide the real energy for the action, and I guess any public action has to be simplified and overstated to get any message across. I'm glad they/we are getting news coverage and hope for a good turnout. I'll try to keep in touch by reading internet news accounts from China.
By the way, I've noticed that the time stamp on these entries is really screwed up. It is off by about three hours. Anybody reading this (IS anybody reading this?) who has an idea on how to fix this, please let me know - use my contact link at the left.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Matt called from China tonight basically to say "hi"! GREAT to hear his voice. We still aren't sure what we'll be doing - possibly Kashgar and the Old Silk Road, but maybe Shanghai instead. Or maybe look around in areas that will be flooded for the next 500 years or so by the Three Gorges Dam. In a way, it doesn't really matter - we will let things happen and take it from there.
Quicken Tech Service spent an ungodly amount of time talking with me today, as we tried to get the system to download my Quicken credit card statement. I need that, because in Guatemala and Africa I can't depend on getting the paper reports reliably. We never got it figured out, but there was a workaround by using a Quicken website to access the account activity. Glad we got it done, but what a drag to spend so much time at it.
HEY, DIDJA SEE THAT LINK?? HUH?? See? I'm learning! Whooppeee
More agreeably, my friend and computer guru, Dan Franceski was over for the afternoon, trying to figure out how to get photos onto this blog. We made a lot of headway but still aren't finished. All this computer stuff is trying to set up programs that I will need to keep in touch with my life while I am far away. There is all this stuff I want to do to be ready for the trip(s), and I'm running out of time. One of these times I will need to stop to begin packing, too.
Quicken Tech Service spent an ungodly amount of time talking with me today, as we tried to get the system to download my Quicken credit card statement. I need that, because in Guatemala and Africa I can't depend on getting the paper reports reliably. We never got it figured out, but there was a workaround by using a Quicken website to access the account activity. Glad we got it done, but what a drag to spend so much time at it.
HEY, DIDJA SEE THAT LINK?? HUH?? See? I'm learning! Whooppeee
More agreeably, my friend and computer guru, Dan Franceski was over for the afternoon, trying to figure out how to get photos onto this blog. We made a lot of headway but still aren't finished. All this computer stuff is trying to set up programs that I will need to keep in touch with my life while I am far away. There is all this stuff I want to do to be ready for the trip(s), and I'm running out of time. One of these times I will need to stop to begin packing, too.
