Novel Adventurers

Seek And Ye Shall Find (Eventually)

noreply@blogger.com (Alli Sinclair) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:16:00 +0000


Photo by Luis Garcia

I’ve never understood some people’s aversion in asking for directions when lost. It never made sense. Why would you spend all afternoon roaming the streets, confused and stressed, when you could be in a bar, enjoying the local brew and watching other tourists wander past, puzzled expressions adorning sunburnt phizogs, and clutching out-of-date guidebooks?

Luckily, I’ve never had a problem asking questions, which is just as well because I am very good at getting lost. When I became a tour guide in South America, my family and friends had every right to worry—for my clients. But alas, their fears were unfounded (in the end).

When I first started out as a tour guide, my Spanish was so-so. I had a firm understanding, certainly enough to ask for beer and where the nearest hospital was, but asking for directions, well… let’s just say a pen and paper and a big, fat smile worked wonders. I became adept at drawing stick figures (hey, my cows don’t look like chickens!), and through my, ahem, diversions, I have met some amazing people and experienced some very unique places.

For example:

When I worked as a tour guide, I needed a home base in Cuzco, Peru. All I wanted was a small apartment to call home between tours and my shifts at the Irish Pub, so one late (and slightly inebriated) night, a friend scribbled down an address of an apartment they knew was up for rent. The next day, bleary eyed, I made my way to where I thought the apartment was, only to find I had the right street name but wrong neighbourhood. The kind lady, whose door I’d bashed on, fired rapid Spanish at me and I stood on her doorstep, my brain whirring but not connecting.

I pulled out my trusty pen and paper, and through some excellent drawing that Picasso would be proud of, I worked out there was a lady down the road who had a place for rent. Figuring I was already in the hood, I toddled down the street and after much searching for non-existent house numbers, I found the place.

Pachacuti statue near my apartment. Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson

When I was given a tour of the apartment, I nearly fell over with excitement. For a modest rent, I could have an apartment that offered views of the terracotta roofs of Cuzco and the hills behind. Every morning I could wake up and watch the sun rise while hot air balloons floated across the horizon. I could take a thirty minute walk into the city, where the offices of my employer were located, and down the street from my abode was the local market where I could shop for fresh produce and guzzle as much juice as I wished.

Turns out, there’s a lot to be said for getting lost.

After that, every time I hit the road (sans clients), I allowed a bit of wandering around with sunburnt phizog time to allow a new, unplanned experience. Sometimes the windy roads led me to dead ends, other times I stumbled upon a cute ma and pa café that served local cuisine or sold interesting art work. And each meandering left me with an experience I would never forget.

How about you? When have you gotten lost and found a lovely surprise?

Lost In Leipzig

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi Noroozy) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

City Tower, Leipzig
Photo by Dunchak

Everyone should get lost in a foreign country at least once in life. It’s the best way to discover the heart of a place, the cultural gems that don’t make it into the guide books: a tiny restaurant without a menu in English translation, a roadside shrine to a local saint, a pretty park where you can watch the life of the city ebb and flow around you. I’ve gotten lost like this more times than I can count, but one experience stands out from all the rest – the cold day in February when I discovered a rare private bakery in the heart of Communist Leipzig.

I wasn’t a tourist but a student living in a city steeped in history. Leipzig once was home to the likes of Bach and Mendelsohn, and it inspired Goethe to write his masterpiece, Faust. By the time I lived there, though, Leipzig had lost its mojo. The Auerbachskeller, which Goethe used as a setting in Faust, still existed and so did the St. Thomas Church where Bach worked as musical director. But for the most part, Leipzig had become a city of soot-stained buildings and filthy air, polluted by the coal refineries just outside town.

Every chance I got, I’d go exploring and try to find a hint of the grand old days. Usually, I managed to find my way around with a good map and directions from the locals. But one day, I got completely lost. It was the dead of winter, the sideways slick with gray slush, the chill air freezing my breath into clouds of steam. I wandered through streets that all seemed to have the same small grocery stores with half empty shelves, the same stout matrons sweeping debris off their stoops, the same ethnic restaurants where all you could get was German food, due to the scarcity of imported ingredients.

Factory Bakery in Leipzig, GDR
Photo by Deutsche Fotothek

Then I rounded a corner and smelled a rare scent: freshly baked bread. In a country whose bakers are famous for their bread, the smell of baking shouldn’t be unusual in the least. But in East Germany, bread, like most products, was usually manufactured in state-run factories. The shop on the street where I lived carried two kinds – oval rye loaves the locals called Graubrot (gray bread, on account of the color) and occasional rectangular bricks of a heavy, multigrain variety. In both cases, the loaves arrived from the state-run bakery wrapped in brown paper and were usually well past their peak freshness. A private bakeshop, with its wares baked right on the premises, was a discovery worth getting excited about.

On that wintry day, I followed my nose until I saw a line of people snaking down the sidewalk. It was eleven in the morning, only an hour until every shop closed their doors for the obligatory midday break. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I took my place at the end of the line.

Forty minutes later, I made it through the door into the warm, delicious-smelling bakery. The shelves were alarmingly bare. But my hopes sprung eternal as I inched ever closer to the counter. Only to be dashed when the baker sold her last loaf to a customer just ahead of me in line. The rest of us were told to come back the next day.

The bakery opened at six in the morning. I arrived shortly after five (yes, I was desperate). A line had already started to form, but this time I was in luck and left the shop with a rye loaf under my arm, still warm from the oven.

Photo by Rainer Zenz

Later, I learned an interesting fact about the GDR’s private economy. Although the state owned most businesses, anyone could open a private company as long as it employed fewer than fifteen people. With fresh bread such an important element of German culture, it still amazes me that there weren’t private bakeries on every street corner. Leipzig, a city of around 50,000 inhabitants, had only three.

It’s been thirty years since I found my private bakery, but I still remember the taste of that fresh, loaf with its firm texture and chewy crust, just like a good German rye bread should be. So I’m not at all sorry I got lost on that cold day in Leipzig.

Off The Beaten Track: Hercules Beetle Boxers

noreply@blogger.com (Edith McClintock) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Our guest today is Alex Montalvo. Alex works in the education and conservation field and likes to wander, photograph, write, and make videos. When he's lucky, he works as a freelance photographer and videographer. Some of his work can be found at revelriter.com. Originally from Miami, FL, Alex currently lives in Seattle.

As a child, I was reared to see insects in one light: objects of RAID’s affection. My parents, particularly my Puerto Rican father, militantly trained my two sisters and I to scream at the sight of a sugar ant, a battle cry to which he would respond immediately armed with a purple can of floral-scented RAID.

Strangely enough, with time I became an ecologist, developing enough of an insect appreciation to actually work on programs to attract insects to people’s yards. While my choice of career was perhaps an anomaly, I find my parent’s behavior prototypical of American attitudes toward bugs: we don’t need them, they’re disgusting, kill them. In the back of my head, I felt my insect-loving was making me a cultural pariah, nearly ready to don a Coleoptera Society T-shirt and walk around with a pet praying mantis.

Imagine my surprise, when leading a study abroad trip to Northern Thailand, I encountered the sport of beetle boxing. Yes, Spain has bull fighting, Nicaragua has cock-fighting, and Thailand has beetle boxing, the most PETA-friendly international animal sport of all.

Travelers have long voyaged to Thailand to experience Muay Thai, a martial art characterized by drop kicks to the head, piercing body jabs, and relentless shin beatings, though few know about its gentle sister sport thrust upon the Arthropod world. Thailand is a Buddhist Kingdom, after all, and this form of boxing satisfies the pacifist as much as the purist.

I was nearly ready to strike the words Muay Thai from my vocabulary when, after a fortunate decision to gamble on a winning boxer, a wiry Thai bookie refused to pay. I complained, he called over his posse, and I ran, swearing never to utter the words Muay Thai again. It wasn’t until my homestay father Pi-San, a rugged 55-year old with bullet wounds from the Red Shirt protests, insisted I attend a boxing event that I agreed—one doesn’t argue with a man who stands down a machine gun.

The night of the match arrived and Pi-San squeezed our group of six into a shaky homemade metal sidecar attached to his 125cc Honda Dream motorcycle. We arrived to an overgrown field surrounding a large sheet metal-roofed cabana. Groups of people, all men less two women, huddled in circles underneath fluorescent lighting like fevered gamblers at a roulette table. As we entered the interior’s green glowing edges, at least a dozen middle-aged Thai men rushed our group cradling 1-2 ft. long pieces of chewed-up sugarcane. Upon the cane fed monstrous beasts with apparent razor sharp alien claws. “Luckily,” my coworker Jackie murmured, “these giant cockroaches are leashed to the sugarcane….where the hell is the RAID?” This was Pi-san’s idea of boxing: his contenders were doping on cane juice before their big fight.

The “cockroaches,” it turns out, were the harmless Xylotrupes Gideon. A behemoth of a beetle, X. Gideon can reach up to 6.5” in length including its 2-4” claw-like horns, earning it the common name of Rhinoceros or Hercules Beetle.

Male Hercules Beetles are the strongest animals in the world, capable of lifting 850 times their own bodyweight, and the Thai conscript is one of largest and strongest. Their lifespan averages only 1.5 years, of which they spend only 3-4 months above ground to mate. Males use their massive horns to pick up a competing male and knock him to the ground, a move that grants him coveted claim to his female’s ovipositor. This period, during the rainy season, makes male beetles very aggressive, and it’s when Thai beetle boxers put their fighters in the ring.

So here’s how beetle boxing works: beetle boxing ring vendors or home-grown enthusiasts hallow out a small wooden log, outfit it with a door, and carve two dime-sized holes midpoint on the log’s topside. Beetle boxers then adhere two female Hercules Beetles to the inside of the log, just under the holes, so a dime-sized portion of the female carapace is exposed, revealing her presence and scent to the two dueling males placed directly above her. The competing males face one another, on opposite sides of a hand-drawn line of scrimmage. Each beetle’s respective owner then vigorously rubs a 3-5” wooden stick or metal file across the log’s grooved exterior surface, resulting in a loud, relatively high-pitched grating sound, which mimics the hissing produced by an aggravated male rubbing his wing against his abdomen. This infuriates the sex-hungry duo, who now begin to battle for access to the entrapped female.

No Thai entertainment event is complete without gambling and beetle boxing is no different. Determined to earn my pride back from my botched Bangkok experience, I placed a 100 baht bet on a handsome beetle specimen with extra long horns. Yelling, cheering, laughing, the grating sound of the metal files, and more cheering—at times the dueling beetles furiously locked horns, shaking their opponent in attempt of achieving the biggest mate-winning, point-garnering move, the Beetle Body Slam. Other times the beetles just sniffed around like curious insects.

Unfortunately my big-horned beetle lost, making me 0-2 in gambling on Thai sports. As I watched the money being counted, it seemed the biggest winners on this night were the two lone women selling cans of Thai beer—beetle boxing is just as much social as it is entrepreneurial. And speaking of entrepreneurial, the Hercules Beetle is reportedly an agricultural pest. In a country with a history of reduced access to resources, the Thai creatively took an agricultural pest and made it into a bona fide pastime. Economically, it’s no wonder the “sleeping dragon” awoke. In the States we often don’t know what type of bug we’re killing, less understand its life cycle enough to create a sport out of it. Watch out RAID, after this story breaks, your days are numbered.

Hercules Beetle Boxing from Alex Montalvo on Vimeo.

Beyond the Wild World’s End

noreply@blogger.com (Edith McClintock) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

By Edith McClintock

The places I’ve wanted to visit are irretrievably linked to books, and romantic suspense in particular, which I fell in love with in middle school. The old-fashioned romantic suspense of Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels, and one of my favorites in those days, M.M. Kaye. M.M. Kaye is better known for the Far Pavilions, set during the British Raj, but she also wrote a series of light mysteries in sing-song exotic spots around the world – the Andaman Islands, Cyprus, Kenya, Kashmir, Zanzibar. I read them all, and wanted to “…go sailing, far off to Zanzibar.”*

In high school, I discovered Elizabeth Peters. I can still remember reading my first Amelia Peabody mystery while crossing the Everglades in the back of my parents’ car on the way to visit my grandparents. I stayed hooked and fell in love with the Vicky Bliss series too, my favorite of which was Night Train to Cairo. And as all fans of Elizabeth Peters know, Egypt is where her heart resides. And for over twenty years, I dreamed of visiting.

My chance came when I was working in Tbilisi, Georgia, last year. I met a Peace Corps volunteer who was taking a month trip to Israel and Egypt around the same time I was completing my work in Georgia. I didn’t know him and had been planning to travel in Eastern Europe alone, but when I heard the word Egypt over a bonfire late one chilly night, I invited myself along.

Two days before we were to arrive in Tel Aviv, and just a few weeks before my flight left Cairo for New York, crowds of Egyptians began to gather in Tahrir Square. My mother called half a dozen times begging me not to go, while my sister posted Facebook messages telling me there was no way I couldn’t go. Disappointed, but making the best of it, we decided to spend more time in Israel and Jordan, always keeping a watchful eye on the news from Egypt.

We were deep in Jordan, staying in a cave in Wadi Musa, when Mubarak finally abdicated. But by then, I’d already switched my flight home from Cairo to Amman. It wasn’t until the morning I was supposed to fly home that we decided to go on to Egypt. We were only a ferry ride away. How could I not go after dreaming of it for so long?

And so we entered Egypt, on a night ferry from Jordan. I was the only woman onboard, which had its benefits as I was invited to skip the entire line of several hundred boarding men. Only to be greeted at the entry with news that the Egyptians were angry at something President Obama had done earlier in the day. Not the first thing you want to hear when entering a country in turmoil.

I won’t give you all the details of our whirlwind tour of ancient Egypt, but suffice to say I took my night train to and from Cairo. We walked through the Valley of Queens alone. We were applauded in the bazaar with cries of, “Welcome tourists! Welcome!” I saw many of the ancient sites from my favorite books, empty of tourists. All grander and more beautiful than I’d imagined while reading.

But we were also the sole targets of every poor, underpaid, or out-of-work street vendor, shop owner, taxi driver, and kid selling postcards, knickknacks, and horse and camel rides. Even the tourism police demanded their cut of baksheesh. There were many sites I couldn’t visit, including the Winter Palace, where workers were demonstrating, and the village of Gurneh, which had been bulldozed. And there was the poverty of Cairo pressed against the massive, barbed-wire wall surrounding Giza, the canals clogged with debris, the dead horses left to rot amongst the trash.

I spent my last day in Cairo, planning to visit the Egyptian museum. I asked my hotel owner, a French-Egyptian woman, how to find the museum.

She raised an eyebrow in disbelief, no doubt despite having dealt with many clueless tourists in her day. “You have heard of Tahrir Square, yes? What has happened there?” she asked.

I said, “Of course,” although I’d never heard of it until the revolution broke out.

“The Egyptian museum is in Tahrir Square,” she added, pulling out a map.

“Oh,” I answered, feeling incredibly stupid. “Is it okay for me to go?”

She smiled, clasping her heart. “You will be proudly welcomed there with open arms.”

She gave me directions to walk; it was only a few blocks. The demonstrations had ended, although more were planned for the coming Friday. But remnants were still there – the tanks and military. And of course the revolutionary trinket sellers, peddling t-shirts and flags. I spent more time in the square than in the museum, watching the Egyptians taking photos with the tanks and soldiers, a moment of peace and hope.

Egypt didn’t live up to my dream, of course, because nothing could. Although in some ways it was better, certainly more beautiful. But it wasn’t a place carefully contained within a book, or time, or focused on the past. A new history was being made. People had died only days before in Tahrir Square, as would others in days to come, but I was glad I’d taken what on my side was a very small risk to see it at that time in history.

No risk at all in comparison to what the demonstrators had faced. And one day, in my dreams, I’ll go back and sail a dahabeeyah down the Nile, and stop at Amarna, just as Amelia would recommend.

*A song for all of you who dream of far off places, by way of M.M. Kaye, as she mentions it in her book, Death in Zanzibar:

“Stowaway,” by Carolyn Leigh and Jerry Livingston

I’d like to go away – be a stowaway,

take a trip on a ship,

let my worries blow a-way.

There are still many treasure islands

that wait to be explored,

and the wide world

is full of wonders for me.

When a ship’s standing in the harbour,

I wish myself aboard,

and I hide ‘til the rolling tide

carries me to sea.

Then I go sailing far off to Zanzibar,

though my dream places seem

better than they really are,

way down deep in my heart.

I keep them as people will often do,

who are stay-at-home stowaways too.

A Tropical Paradise

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

In honor of our topic of the week, Supriya is running a post we first published in December 2010.

Of all the places I’ve visited, a tiny dot of a village in southwestern India ranks as my all-time favorite.

I’m a city girl, so I was surprised by my affinity to this quiet, coastal town called Murdeshwar. Since childhood, I’ve traveled to India pretty regularly, at least every couple of years, it seems, and visited most of the big cities. In my younger days, I made attempts to visit rural areas, but never made it there, daunted by the lack of adequate roads and transportation connecting the cities I visited to the villages I knew of.

From the time I got married, I’d been hearing about a little farming village near Murdeshwar, in the state of Karnataka. It’s the town from which my mother in-law hailed. One of her brothers still lives there, in the original family home that their father built and where all his children (plus a few grandchildren and even great grandchildren) were born. I’d often heard how gorgeous this place was. In fact, it had been a running joke between my husband and me that whenever we visited any beautiful place, he’d make the inevitable comparison with his mom’s village outside Murdeshwar. Until several years ago, when seeing was believing.

We’d made the trek from Bangalore, piling into a large van, fifteen of us in all. We started early in the morning, our hired driver at the helm, and stopping about halfway for a late lunch in the mostly Muslim-populated town of Hassan, outside Mangalore (not to be confused with Bangalore). It was a long and sometimes bumpy ride but eventually, we arrived, late in the evening, skirting the tiny village where our relatives lived. All the adults, myself included, agreed that I—yes, me alone—might not be able to handle the rustic accommodations in the village, so instead we stayed at a lovely seaside resort in the neighboring town of Murdeshwar. (How thoughtful of the others to “rough it” for my sake.)

Since we’d arrived at night, we couldn’t see much of the town. We checked in and dragged the kiddos up to sleep, leaving our wide balcony doors open, the blanket of stars shining in and the sound of crashing waves lulling us to sleep. At breakfast, we sat in the seashell-shaped restaurant that jutted out into the Arabian Sea, surrounded on three sides by water as we ate South Indian comfort food, watched fishermen throw their nets out, and felt the gentle sea breeze roll over us. That experience alone was worth the twelve-hour journey.

But just outside our resort was the real treat, one of the most phenomenal sights I think I’ve seen. A towering statue of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, lords over the beach town. He’s 120 feet tall, made of cement and steel reinforcements, and his shimmery, silvery form can be seen from almost any vantage point in the area. While photos don’t do it justice, I found it hard to pull away from this truly spectacular sculpture.

We visited the area soon after the tsunami that devastated parts of Southeast Asia. While this region of the South Asian coastline wasn’t hit too hard, the gorgeous white-sand beaches had been wiped out. It still looked pretty amazing to me, especially a particular strip of beach along the nearby town of Manki, which was so pristine and untouched, it looked as if we were the first to discover it.

Okay, so there were no lazy days at the beach, no cocktails with little umbrellas in hand. It was a different kind of vacation entirely. We watched the kids dip their toes in the foamy waves as the sunset exploded into a thousand shades of red. We climbed rocky cliffs, collected seashells, and marveled at not being able to find a single bottle cap or cigarette butt along the way. We took long walks, sharing quiet lanes with an ambling cow or two, and watched the tall grass sway through the rice paddies on either side of us.

At the old family home, we ate fresh-cooked meals, lovingly prepared for us by an aunt who slid our food into a hundred-year-old clay oven known as a tandoor. The beautiful old house also featured a bona fide cradle room where my husband’s eldest uncle slept as a newborn some 85 years ago, followed by his ten siblings and several generations of progeny. We spent a lovely evening around a bon fire while the elders sang and the children danced. We drank from a real working well. (Okay, I watched others drink from it.) We toured the huge family plantation, a stroll that lasted a few delicious hours, as we delighted in every variety of tropical fruit, peppercorn, and unusual herb or vegetable we’d never heard of. Nearby, we visited stunning temples with incredible historic significance, their stories appearing in ancient holy scriptures.

It probably isn’t the most exciting part of the world to live in, and definitely not a destination for surfers or jet-skiers, but it was one of my best-ever beach vacations.

Pearl Of The Persian Gulf

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi Noroozy) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

By Heidi Noroozy

Kish Island
Photo by Panoramia

I’ve always been an armchair traveler, at least whenever I can’t get on a plane and head for distant lands. And over the years, there have been many places I’ve always wanted to go (which, if you checked our sidebar, is our topic this week). As a child, I yearned to visit the Arctic – an odd choice for a girl who hated the cold so much that she’d dash indoors after only one thrilling toboggan ride down the hill. But those round igloos with their thick walls made of ice bricks looked so cozy and warm, I forgot that the temperatures outside were frigid.

I’m fickle when it comes to favorite destinations. Once Greece topped my list. I was mesmerized by pictures of white-washed towns perched on craggy cliffs overlooking a turquoise sea. And, of course, I’d read Zorba the Greek three times. But when I got my chance to fly there over Easter break during my student days in Austria, I changed my mind at the last minute and took a train to Morocco instead. After learning that every Austrian student I knew was going to Greece for Easter, I wanted to seek out a place where they wouldn’t be celebrating a major Christian holiday.

I have no regrets. Morocco opened my eyes to an entirely different world – an Islamic one, with hints of Spain and Africa blended in. I was mesmerized by Coca-Cola signs in Arabic script and sprawling souks filled with colorful silks and redolent with the scent of exotic spices. Ever since then, I’ve gone for the less-traveled road, the trip off the beaten track.

More recently, a desert paradise in the Persian Gulf made it to the top of my bucket list: Kish Island. This most unlikely of high-brow playgrounds belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Really. It does. Kish is the closest thing most Iranians will get these days to a Caribbean holiday – shimmering coral beaches, crystal-clear waters, and even the world’s first all-solar hotel. All reasons why Kish Island is dubbed The Pearl of the Persian Gulf.

Photo Source: NASA

Just a 30-minute flight across the Persian Gulf from Dubai, Kish is the only part of Iran that Americans can visit without jumping through hoops to get a visa. A stamp in your passport at the airport of departure (Dubai, Istanbul, and a few other cities) gives you permission to stay for up to 14 days. The island is a trade-free zone, and along with the lower prices comes a more relaxed attitude toward all things Islamic, including the strict dress code. You’re not likely to see sun-bathers in bikinis and speedos, but you may notice a lot more bare skin here than any other part of the country. The laws aren’t different, I’m told – they’re just less rigorously enforced.

But not all the time. Swimming, though actively encouraged , still remains gender-segregated, as in the rest of Iran, with a Ladies’ Beach and a Gentlemen’s Beach. There once was a co-ed area, but I’ve heard that it was recently closed.

The island has an interesting history. In ancient times, it was a crossroads for traders throughout the region. Marco Polo visited Kish and noted the quality of its pearls. The Greek admiral, Nearchus, who scouted the Gulf on the orders of Alexander the Great, stopped on Kish and described the island’s lovely palm groves.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, turned Kish into a resort and built a casino – now the Shayan International Hotel – as well as an airport equipped to handle the Concorde. The island’s free trade zone was established after the Islamic Revolution.

I’m not one for resorts, so Kish Island may seem as unlikely a destination for me as the Arctic armchair travels of my childhood. But the island has a lot more to offer. When I go there, I’ll give the shopping malls, theme parks, and golf courses a miss and head for the really interesting spots:

Harireh: This archeological site holds the ruins of an 13th-century city that once was a thriving port with three natural harbors for access to trade routes. The excavated sections of Harireh include a hamam (public bath), private houses, and workshops, enough to give me a glimpse of what life might have been like on Kish 800 years ago. Archeologists believe that Harireh was destroyed in a massive earthquake.


Payab on Kish Island Photo by Mardetanha

Payab (traditional reservoir): Kish does not have an abundance of fresh water, but its ancient inhabitants worked out a clever way to ensure a regular supply of water for drinking and irrigation. They built domed structures over natural basins and collected rain in deep, underground chambers. One payab has been restored today and even accommodates that ubiquitous institution of Iranian hospitality: a tea house.

Natural wonders: There are too many of these to list, but once I’m tired of wandering around ancient ruins and drinking tea at the payab, I can sit on the beach and look at the underwater coral reefs, watch fish swim by, or gaze at the flamingos wading in shallow waters. Maybe I’ll even find a palm grove like the ones Nearchus mentioned in his report to Alexander.

Now it’s your turn: What part of the world have you always wanted to visit?

Off The Beaten Track: Fast Times

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi Noroozy) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Our guest today is Simon Wood, an ex-racecar driver, a licensed pilot, and an occasional private investigator. Simon has had over 150 stories and articles published. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and has garnered him an Anthony Award and a CWA Dagger Award nomination as well as several readers’ choice awards. He’s a frequent contributor to Writer’s Digest. He’s the author of WORKING STIFFS, ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN, PAYING THE PIPER, WE ALL FALL DOWN, TERMINATED, and ASKING FOR TROUBLE. His latest titles include THE FALL GUY and DID NOT FINISH. His next book will be HOT SEAT out in the summer. As Simon Janus, he’s the author of THE SCRUBS and ROAD RASH. Curious people can learn more at http://www.simonwood.net. Simon can also be found at Two for the Road, where he and author Tammy Kaehler write about the world of motorsport.

Like most events in my life, things happen by accident and motor racing was no different. That’s not to say I wasn’t interested in motorsport. I was a fan since I was around ten. Being a typical little boy, anything that went fast fascinated me whether it was cars, planes, boats, or anything else you care to name. I don’t know if this had something to do with the fact that no one in my family possessed a driver’s license or a car.

While I loved watching Formula One, my heart belonged to rallying and off road racing. The unpredictability of a rally stage appealed to me more than circuit racing. So I was an avid fan, with never a thought of taking part myself. That changed when I was nineteen. I wasn’t content to sit on the sidelines. I wanted a racing experience. I signed up for a rally driving training course and a circuit racing one. As much as I wanted to rally cars, my skills for off road driving were okay, but my circuit racing performance was pretty good.

That track day made me wonder if I should go the extra mile and switch from avid fan to competitor. I spent a couple of months exploring the notion of buying a single seater racecar and to be honest, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. Then the unpredictable element of life took over and I received a call from the owner of the racing school, who wondered if I’d be interested in a 50% share in a Formula Ford and to team up for a season. I mulled the idea over and said yes. A few weeks later, I owned a racecar.

I think the partnership with an experienced driver was a good one. An older and wiser head meant my introduction to motor racing was a smooth one. I think if I’d gone it alone, I would have made some costly mistakes. With what I learned, the following year, I went out on my own running the car myself with a small crew consisting of a couple of friends, my dad, and myself.

I can say racing changed my life. When things went well, I don’t think I experienced highs like it. Also I don’t think I’ve suffered lows like it either when things didn’t go well. But racing changed me as a person. The biggest thing racing did for me was it improved me as a person. I’m not sure it made me a grown up, but it built character. I learned how to handle pressure (self imposed or otherwise), I was more inventive, and it made me come out of my shell in some respects. My day-to-day life got easier, because the problems I’d experience during a race meeting were more intense compared to my day job. So I’ll always be thankful to motor racing for that.

I raced for three years but stopped when the money ran out. While I did have sponsors, I was still the underwriter and the only investor. I’d seen a lot of guys get themselves into serious debt and I wasn’t about to follow them down that dark hole. The ugly side of motorsport is that it’s addictive. You just don’t want to quit. So, after a crash on Brand’s Hatch’s Grand Prix circuit, when I knew all the money had run out, I called it quits. It’s a decision I’m happy I made and one I still regret. Racing decisions are like that.

At the end of the day, I can’t say I blew the motor racing world away, but I held my own. I wish I could have kept at it longer and started earlier, but it is what it is. That’s not to say that if someone offered me a drive tomorrow, I wouldn’t take it. :)

A Linguistic Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Winton) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

It’s fascinating how words move from one language to another. Why and how they move can be enlightening and often down right funny. English and Italian have a close relationship even though English is not classified as a Latin-based language. The connection comes in part from the years that Julius Caesar and his troops spent on the British Isles.

Take the word tooth, for example. It comes to us from Old English, but the Italian, dente, comes from Latin. From that root in English we have dentist, dental, dentifrice, etc. Likewise, the word hard in English is duro in Italian. It’s Latin root gives us durable, duration, duress, and endure.

English speakers learning Italian and Italians learning English have to be wary of “false friends,” words that appear to be the same, but aren’t. In Italian, the word for farm is fattoria; many Italian students of English think fattoria is factory. Other examples are more confusing: sensibile in Italian means sensitive. A sensible person in Italian is described as being di buonsenso. And if you want to order prosciutto without preservatives, say senza conservante because preservativo means condom.

In general, Italians love to use English words, but they often get them wrong. Last year on my other blog, Italian Intrigues, I wrote a piece about the Titty Bar. It’s not topless; in fact, the name is intended to conjure up a warm, family feeling. In this case, the name has as much to do with pronunciation as meaning. But it makes English speakers smile.

Often, an English word migrates into Italian to perform one narrowly defined task. Take chat, for example. Italian has a perfectly good word, chiacchierata, that is virtually equal in meaning to the English word. When the practice of Internet chat emerged, the English word was adopted, but only for Internet chat. Thus when someone says to me, “I was chatting with my friends,” I have a mental image of people talking face to face while they mean keyboard to keyboard.

Piercing and lifting are two other words that have narrow meanings in Italian. The first is body piercing, the second a face lift (or beauty products purported to have face lift properties). I once helped an Italian jewelry designer develop a presentation about her work in English. She had designed a line of gold jewelry in which the metal had been pierced to make intricate designs. She refused to believe that pierce was the correct word, and even after I showed her in the bilingual dictionary, her preconceived reaction to the word made it impossible for her to use it. We had to find another, more complex, way of describing her work.

Italians immigrating to America developed a slang that combined their own language with the new one. A classic example is Dean Martin singing about pasta fazool in “That’s Amore.” He was singing about an Italian dish called pasta e fagiole (pasta and beans).

Image from Western Connecticut State University

In Italian, a photographic camera is a macchina fotografica. Simple. Descriptive. But how we English speakers came to use camera for the same mechanism is quite interesting. It’s the Italian word for room. Camera di letto, bedroom; camera di pranzo, dining room. So how did camera come to mean macchina fotografica in English?

Before the invention of film, artists could record images by constructing a “room” outside, known as a camera obscura, dark room. Light passing through a small hole was reflected onto the opposite wall. It was upside down, but it maintained perspective. Artists could then trace the reflected image for an accurate record of the scene. Later, a box with mirrors to reverse the image was constructed, and the camera as we know it was born.

Know of any other languages that play tricks on your comprehension?

No, Really, Who Am I?

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Someone recently asked whether my family is north or south Indian, and the question gave me serious pause. I know, it should be a fairly straightforward question for anyone to answer, yet I’m embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t do it. Even after a bit of research, I’m still not quite certain. Yes, I see you shaking your head and muttering “no way.” And yet…

Part of the problem is that both my parents are from Bombay, born and raised. Bombay – or Mumbai, as it's now called – is a little like New York. Once you move there, it’s hard to remember anywhere you’d been before. (That dig is specifically directed at my New York friends, who’ve fallen off the map, so to speak.)

And yes, at least a couple of my grandparents and possibly most of my great grandparents were born in the south Indian state of Karnataka. Some of my ancestors even took their surnames from the tiny villages in Karnataka where they lived. That makes us south Indian, right? Maybe.

The distribution of Konkani speakers along India's
southwestern coast. (Photo by ImperiumCaelestis)

The predominant language spoken in Karnataka today is Kannada, a Dravidic language like the other main south Indian languages such as Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil. Dravidians belong to one of two major civilizations that have their roots in ancient India, the Aryans being the other and from which north Indians and Pakistanis have descended. Scholars believe the Indian subcontinent was entirely Dravidian until the Aryans migrated south from Central Asia and possibly the Caucasus (southern Russia).

The two traditions are as different as night and day. The languages are completely different, though today, they reflect slight influences on one another. The Dravidic languages have curly alphabets that look and sound different from north Indian languages, which use the more linear devnagri script. Aryans are typically fairer, Dravidians darker. The two have different accents, and many would say, very different cultures, even histories. Though India is probably one of the most successful melting pots you'll find, as with any large, diverse culture, biases and discrimination exist between these groups. Not as a rule, just on occasion.

Perhaps I’m just reluctant to choose sides, you’re wondering? It’s more complicated. My family speaks Konkani, which happens to sound a lot like Marathi, the main language spoken in Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. Konkani also shares a lot of etymology from Hindi, a north Indian language. Without much effort, I can understand a good bit of both languages (though more Marathi than Hindi), whereas I cannot understand a word of South Indian languages. I've heard quite a bit of Kannada spoken around my in-laws’ home in Bangalore but still can't understand more than a handful of words. (They, too, are Konkani, yet my father in-law can’t speak a word of it. Or maybe won’t.)

A NASA satellite image shows the location of
the ancient Saraswati River, which has since dried up.

It’s also been established that the Konkani-speaking community from which I hail, known as the Saraswats, descended from one of the five Hindu Brahmin communities that once lived on the banks of the ancient Saraswati River. Many subcommunities hail from these original Saraswats, including the Kashmiri Saraswat Brahmins, of which former prime minister Indira Gandhi was a notable member. In fact, many people from her community use the surnames of “bhat” or “pandit,” meaning priest and religious scholar. Gandhi’s father, Jawaharlal Nehru, whom I wrote about last week, was widely called Panditji, the “ji” added as a term of honor. Many Konkani-speaking Saraswats from Karnataka are descended from pandits as well, from even just a few generations back, before their own kids started moving away to study, work, and eventually take up other occupations in big cities and abroad.

Last month, after being asked about my northern vs. southern roots and stumbling over my response, I did a little research. That is, I turned to Wikipedia, where I learned that my community likely did descend from the original Kashmiri pandits – though not conclusively. (Damn you, Wiki!)

I’d been hearing bits and pieces of this theory for years, even had an American college professor who wrote a book on the topic, so it was interesting to gather more details. Beginning in the early 13^th century, forced conversion to Islam had begun in Kashmir, driven in large part by a Mughal general from Turkmenistan. Between 1389 and 1413, religious persecution of Hindus was at its peak under a sultan who at the time ruled Kashmir, leading many Saraswats to head southwest to Goa (just a bit north of Karnataka), drawn there because of the fertile land along the Arabian Sea and the religious tolerance under its local (Dravidian) kingdoms.

On their way south, the Saraswats passed through Gujarat, which may explain why Konkani-speaking Saraswats share some vocabulary with Gujarati, words even Marathi and Hindi, with their closer linguistic association to Gujarati, don’t use. (Hard to otherwise explain this fact.)

Cover page of the 1622 book,
Doutrina Christam em Lingoa
Bramana Canarim ("Christian
Doctrines in the Canarese Brahmin
Language"), by Fr. Thomas Stephens,
a Jesuit missionary priest in Goa

Before the Saraswats arrived in Goa, the local form of Konkani had already been influenced by other cultures, for example, by ancient Sumerians who had settled there. Goa had long been a major trade center with the Arabs and Persians as well, so many Arab and Persian words infiltrated into Konkani – such as dhukan for “shop,” fakt for “only,” and karz for “debt.” A few centuries after the Saraswats arrived and adopted Konkani as their new language, Portuguese traders followed by Christian missionaries landed in Goa. From the 16th century until the early 19th century, the Goa Inquisition resulted in many forced conversions, this time to Christianity. To avoid persecution and/or losing their land, a great number of Saraswats converted to Catholicism and even today are known as “Brahmin Catholics.” Goa still retains this largely Christian, Portuguese-influenced Konkani culture and language.

Meanwhile, a smaller group of Saraswats moved farther south, into the small villages and towns of Karnataka. Some moved farther still, into Kerala. In both Karnataka and Kerala, they were able to practice their religion, build temples, buy land, and hold government jobs. Today along this coastal stretch, you’ll find not just Saraswats, but Konkanis of all religions and dialects, too numerous to count. Konkani Muslims in Karnataka, for example, are descended from the intermarriage between the locals and Arab seafarers as well as through conversions. The sailor-warriors from Ethiopia, known as Siddhis, also adopted the language and planted roots in the area. (Yes, there are black people in India. And they weren't slaves.)

When Bombay became a boom town in the early 19^th century, a great many Konkani-speaking Saraswats – no doubt, drawing from their adventurous, nomadic roots – migrated there, so much so, that many families, such as mine, lost most of their connection with the south, while others, such as my husband’s family, retained it. Though exact numbers are hard to come by, it’s possible that today as many Konkani-speaking Saraswats live outside of India as within it.

A few parts of this history still aren't clear: how and why did we pick up the Konkani language? It appears that Konkani existed in the south long before the Saraswats’ exodus from Kashmir. The earliest-known proof of its existence dates to about the 2^nd century A.D., and Konkani was already spoken on the Konkan Coast, from Goa to Kerala. But that fact only raises more questions – if Konkani was already spoken in that part of the world, what did the Saraswats speak before they moved there? And if we adopted a language that already existed in the area, could we also have been absorbed into its culture through the mixing of bloodlines? Maybe we have both north and south Indian blood?

And why did the Saraswars adopt Konkani, of all things, and not one of the more widely spoken (read: more useful) majority languages, one with a real script?


A map adapted from A Historical Atlas of South Asia, Oxford University Press (1992), lists Konkani as an Indo-Aryan language. (Image by BishkekRock)

The origin of the Konkani language is a puzzle anthropologists are still figuring out as well. It appears to be an Indo-Aryan language, related more to Sanskrit than to the Dravidic languages of the south. One article I found says these Saraswats spoke Sanskrit in public and invented a simplified version, Brahmani, that they spoke at home. Brahmani may have formed a sort of grassroots version of Konkani. A study by the Indian Anthropological Society found that some Konkani speakers (not the Saraswats) are descended from Australoid tribes that came to India from the Mediterranean in pre-historic times, spoke early Dravidian languages, and migrated to north India! (Then moved back with the Saraswats? If so, no kidding about our nomadic spirit. No wonder I'm so antsy.)

Even the origin of the word “Konkani” is disputed. It sounds a bit like the word Kannada, but it could also have been derived from the Persian (Aryan) word kinara, meaning “the language of the coast." The anthropologists who conducted the study conclude it could just be a language born of the confluence of Indo-Aryan dialects that absorbed some Dravidic characteristics. Either way, Konkani has the structure and syntax of an Aryan language and the grammar of a Dravidic one.

All that to say that the Saraswats who left Kashmir for Karnataka probably took along their own dialect (possibly Brahmani), borrowed some useful Gujarati words along the way, and melded it all with a Dravidic form of Konkani, which in turn borrowed from the Persian and Arabic. Sounds like a real stretch, but if it's true, it's a pretty astounding amalgamation of cultures and languages.

Either way, I’ll just have to change the subject next time someone asks me that question, don't you think?

I Say Tomate, You Say Tomato – English, Arabic, and Spanish Word Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Alli Sinclair) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Photo by Fastily Talk

It wasn’t until I started learning Spanish as an adult that I realised a lot of words used in English were, in fact, of Spanish origin. I grew up with words such as cargo, chilli, chocolate, and oregano, using them in the English sense but not having a clue about their beginnings.

English and Spanish are both part of the Romance language family (along with Italian, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and Catalan), so once I got my head around learning a new language, Spanish didn’t feel so hard (except for the grammar, don’t get me started on the grammar!). Since becoming fluent in Spanish, I’ve found I can read or hear other romance languages and get the general gist. And when words from one language are used in another in the same context (or at least sounds similar), then it makes life a lot easier.

American English (as most of you know) comprises of a lot of Spanish words passed to us from Mexican and Central and South American immigrants. This influence dates back to the days of the Gold Rush, and with more adventurous palates, Spanish words are used to describe certain dishes of which there is no English equivalent. Sometimes we adapt a foreign word even though there is a version in English – coriander is often substituted with cilantro, a Spanish word of French origin.

But it’s not just Spanish that influenced the English language. A lot of Spanish words have strong ties to Arabic, harking back to the occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in the 5^th century and continuing on into the 8^th and 9^th centuries. Many people of Islamic descent occupied this region, and as time went on, many Arabic words migrated into the Spanish language. You’ll find many words in English that begin with al have Arabic origins and commonly a Spanish influence. Classic examples are alcove and alfalfa.

The Internet and increasing travel opportunities have opened up new worlds of language, so it's no surprise that words from numerous languages are adopted across borders. Perhaps one day, there will be a single common language, such as Esperanto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto), but in the meantime, English will continue to adopt new words from different cultures and put its own spin on it.

Photo by Enzik

Here some examples of Spanish to English (with a bit of Arabic, Caribbean, Nahuatl, Quechua, and Arawak thrown in):

adios

aficionado

alcove (Arabic al-qubba)

alfalfa (Arabic al-fasfasah..)

alligator (from el lagarto, "the lizard")

alpaca (Aymara allpaca)

armada

armadillo (means "the little armed one")

banana (originally an African word but was adopted in Portuguese and Spanish then English)

barbecue (Caribbean barbacoa)

barracuda

bonanza

bravo (Italian and old Spanish)

cafeteria (cafetería)

canyon (cañon)

cargo (Spanish meaning to load -- cargar)

chaps (chaparreras)

chihuahua (dog breed named after Mexican city and state)

chocolate (Nahuatl language xocolat)

cigar, cigarette (Spanish cigarro)

cilantro

cinch (Spanish word cincho)

condor (Quechua)

conquistador

corral

el Niño (means the child and this weather pattern was named this because it appeared close to Christmas)

enchilada (Spanish participle enchilar which means to season with chili)

fajita (In Spanish faja means a sash or belt which best describes the cut of meat)

fiesta

flan

flotilla

Picture by John Ryan M. Debil

galleon (Spanish galeón)

garbanzo

guacamole (Nahuatl ahuacam, "avocado," and molli, "sauce")

guerrilla

hacienda (silent H in Spanish)

incomunicado

jalapeño

llama (Quechua)

machete

machismo

maize (Spanish maíz but originally from the Arawak mahíz)

mariachi (a Mexican musician that performs a special type of music)

matador (in Spanish it means a person who kills)

mosquito

nacho

oregano (from orégano)

papaya (Arawak)

patio (often means courtyard in Spanish)

piñata

plaza

poncho (originally Araucanian, an indigenous South American language)

potato (Caribbean batata)

puma (Quechua)

rodeo

salsa (In Spanish this word refers to any sauce or gravy)

sassafras (sasafrás)

savvy (Derives from sabe which means to know)

siesta

silo

sombrero (The Spanish version of this means any hat, not just the Mexican hats most people think of. The word originates from sombra, which means shade)

stampede (estampida)

tango

tequila (named after a Mexican town that makes this drink)

tobacco (Caribbean tabaco)

tomatillo

tomato (Nahuatl tomatl)

tornado (tronada which means thunderstorm)

tortilla (in Spanish, an omelette is called a tortilla)

tuna (atún)

vanilla (vainilla)

vigilante

yucca (Caribbean yuca)

The Traveling Word – Denglish, Yenglish, and Linguistic Globetrotters

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi Noroozy) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Public Viewing in Berlin
Photo by Thalan

I love it when words go a-travelin’. I picture them walking down the syntactical breezeway on their spindly, alphabetical legs, clad in a Hawaiian shirt, a Stetson on their vowelly heads. And like some global travelers, the first thing that happens to these linguistic tourists is they immerse themselves in the local culture and gain an experience that changes them forever.

When the globetrotting word or phrase is English (or American or Australian, for that matter) and the language receiving it German, the cultural merger is known as Denglish – a melding of “Deutsch” (German) and “English.” These words have been absorbed from English into German, sometimes undergoing a semantic shift along the way so that they no longer mean exactly the same thing they did in the original language.

Here are a few of my favorites:

A Handy (pronounced “hendy”) is what German speakers call a cell phone. This word has been around so long, it isn’t really Denglish anymore but a regular German expression. And while cell phones are certainly “handy” (some would say “indispensable”), the term is based on the human appendage and not on the device’s convenience. “Handy,” in its German usage, may have been derived from Motorola’s Handie-Talkie AM SCR536, a handheld radio transceiver American troops used in World War II.

A public viewing, in American English at least, has me picturing funerals and corpses, especially when the deceased is famous. Michael Jackson had a public viewing when he died, as did Teddy Kennedy. But in Germany, you’re likely to find a Public Viewing at a soccer game. There, it refers to the live broadcasting of sports matches, concerts, or other major events on oversized video screens set up in public areas such as city squares, shopping malls, or bars.

The German term was coined in 2006 during preparations for the World Cup Soccer Championships. FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, introduced Fan Fest events, where they broadcast the matches on video screens in major cities around Germany. The reason, ostensibly, was because they’d miscalculated the number of fans attending the World Cup and didn’t have enough tickets to sell.

Interestingly, the Denglish version of “public viewing” has migrated back into English usage, at least in the media, where it is now applied to sports broadcasts. But for me, the expression will always have to do with a state funeral.

Here’s another of my favorite Denglish words: If a German speaker were to ask me to turn on the Beamer, she wouldn’t be suggesting I get into the luxury car sitting in my garage (I wish!) and warm up the engine. In German, a Beamer is not a BMW but a video projector. The term is derived from the English verb “to beam” or shine a light, which is precisely what a projector does.

Denglish also works in the opposite direction. Take the über-use of über. In American English these days, the expression is a prefix meaning “the most,” “the best,” or “the ultimate.” We have über-achievers (especially here in Silicon Valley), who are a step up from overachievers. The chocolate fudge cake you ate for dessert was probably über-yummy, and if you have a teenage girl in your family, chances are you’ve heard her refer to her brother as an “über-dork.”

The German original has the connotation of exaggeration as well – as in übertreiben (to exaggerate). But über in German can mean “across,” as in übersetzen (to translate – literally to transport words across linguistic boundaries). And it can stand on its own; über means “over” or “via” or “above.” Note that Germans always write über with an umlaut (the two dots over the u), while the term is becoming so well integrated into English that it’s often written without the dots.

Then we have the English word, “mensch” – a decent person. Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life is a mensch – a regular, stand-up guy. Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind is not. Except in German he is, because Mensch in that language means, simply, a human being, male or female, neither good, bad, nor devious. In English, though, mensch isn’t really Denglish. It’s Yenglish, because English borrowed the word from Yiddish (which, in turn, got it from German). This globetrotter has a lot of stamps in its passport.

What are some of your favorite traveling words? Any Denglish, Yenglish, Spanglish, or Franglais in your vocabulary?

Off The Beaten Track: Calypso, Tell me a Story

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Sangeeta Nancy Boondoo, an attorney with the government of Trinidad and Tobago, is a student of life. She's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to learn and do. She loves to travel, and though she hasn't yet been to India, the land of her ancestors, it's at the top of her list to visit someday. She loves to go to the beach, take nature hikes, and bake. She does not like to cook, but she collects cookbooks anyway, along with all kinds of other books. A girl after our own heart...

Calypso music, like the steel pan and chutney music, originated from my beautiful, small country of Trinidad and Tobago, and unfortunately, it is a largely unappreciated art form in a world filled of “production-line” type music. Calypso music had its birth amongst the Afro-Trinibagonian slave population and is reported to have been a means of communication between the slaves in a time when their communication with each other was severely limited by the plantocracy, who were no doubt afraid of a slave revolution, which occurred regularly on other Caribbean islands. Calypso music has since developed to become witty social commentary set to music, and over the years, has served as historical records of events, whether local or global, capture Trinidad and Tobago’s attention. As we approach Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, the local highlight of the calypsonian’s year, I thought it appropriate to share a few of my favourite songs and explain the stories they tell.

One of my all time favourites is Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola.” Yes, you read right – Lord Invader’s, not the Andrews Sisters. Here’s Lord Invader’s original version:

Apparently, Lord Invader’s intellectual property rights got infringed way back in the 1940s. If you want to read about it, you can at: http://www.rumandcocacolareader.com/RumAndCocaCola/main.html

What does this song have to do with our history? Well, firstly, Trinidad and Tobago, though a British West Indian colony, has always had ties with the United States. In 1941, the U.S. and Britain signed the Lend-Lease Agreement, also called the Bases-for-Destroyers Agreement. As part of this agreement, the Americans got 99-year leases of the deepwater harbor on Trinidad’s north coast, along with three army bases, one each at Chaguaramas, Wallerfield, and Carlsen Field. Thousands of Trinidadians worked at these bases for higher wages and in better conditions than they were accustomed to. My grandmother spoke fondly of my grandfather’s experiences while working at the Carlsen Field base. There were also the female Trinidadians who worked in an entirely different manner – as prostitutes, entertaining the Americans and Canadians who were stationed here; they too made higher wages than the other islanders.

Lord Invader was inspired by this situation, and the fact that the Americans used to chase (drink) the local rum with their Coca Cola at limings (hangouts) such as Point Cumana. The wages of the prostitutes was apparently so high that mothers would pimp or even join their daughters in the profession, “working for the Yankee dollar,” as Lord Invader eloquently put it.

In 1936, Attila the Hun sang “Roosevelt in Trinidad,” a lively calypso recording the visit of then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Trinidad. Roosevelt was on a secret mission to Casablanca, and because of the tumultuous period before World War II, he flew the longer route through Trinidad as part of the secrecy. The calypso extolled Roosevelt’s virtues. Listen to it here:

It is said that Roosevelt became a fan of calypso music after hearing this song. Wouldn’t you too if you were flatteringly portrayed in song?

Jumping a few decades later into 1967, Lord Kitchener sang the popular “Take Yuh Meat Out Mih Rice,” a conversation between a Bajan (a citizen of Barbados, a Caribbean neighbor) and a Trini (short for Trinidadian), complete with the accents. Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados have shared a long love-hate relationship, and in this calypso, the Bajan and Trini, unable to make it alone and being hungry, decide to pool their resources to make a meal of meat and rice, the Bajan contributing the rice and the Trini the meat. After the meal is finished cooking, the Bajan continuously diminishes the Trini’s contribution as a justification for reducing his own share. Over the years, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have had disputes over maritime borders, cricket, and flying fish. Why flying fish? Well, the Bajans alleged that they have fished flying fish, the national icon of Barbados, off the coast of Tobago since the seventeenth century. We Trinis, for the most part, do not take too kindly to the Bajans passing of our fish as their own. In the opinion of many, this calypso song, though decades old, still applies. It’s sure to put a smile on your face! Take a listen:

One of the best calypos around is Ras Shorty I’s “Watch Out, My Children,” released in 1997. In the 1990s, the country’s drug problem began to surface. After meeting some young boys high on cocaine and looking as if their lives had been wasted, Ras Shorty I was inspired to write this song. Interestingly enough, the United Nations International Drug Control Programme chose the anti-drug anthem in 2002 as its theme song. It is timeless and beautiful, and if you listen to no other calypso on this list, I ask that you at least listen to this one:

There is a tremendous amount of calypso music, though my list is short and does little justice to the great art form. Calypsos have recorded much international history, such as about the Russian Space Station, Edward VII’s abdication, the first nuclear weapon, and a visit by the famous German airship, Graf Zepplin, to Trinidad in 1934 on its way to the Chicago Fair. While calypsonian musicians have stopped naming themselves “Lord,” the stage names are still unusual, and the music continues to tell our story and define us as a nation.

The Scandal That Changed Italian Law

noreply@blogger.com (Patricia Winton) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Franca Viola as a young woman

Franca Viola and Giuseppe Riusi, a young Sicilian couple, plighted their troth in 1961, when she was only fourteen and he not much older. They lived in the village of Alcamo, children of agricultural workers. Little money; less education.

At that time and place, among such families, La Fuitina was a common mode of getting married. This involved having the young couple disappear for a few days then return to the village hand in hand, signaling to the world that they had been intimate.

This action made her a fallen woman who could be ostracized and him a rapist who faced prison. But all could be made right through a strange part of the Italian legal code at the time called matrimonio reparatore (rehabilitating wedding). A woman could restore her own honor and that of her family by marrying the man with whom she’d had sexual relations, and the man could be absolved of rape charges. Many poor families, unable to afford dowries and wedding feasts, encouraged their children to take this route.

Who knows, Franca and Giuseppe might have done La Fuitina at some point. It was part of their cultural heritage, after all. But alas, they weren’t given the chance.

Franca blossomed into a beautiful young woman. By the age of seventeen, she was being pursued by Filippo Melodia, 21, a young man with Mafia connections who came from a rich and powerful family. Franca wanted nothing to do with him and rebuffed him at every turn, honoring her pledge to Giuseppe.

Determined to have her, Filippo assembled twelve of his friends and kidnapped Franca, along with her eight-year-old brother, Mariano, on the day after Christmas 1965. The kidnappers released Mariano after a short time and sent him back home. Filippo restrained Franca and repeatedly raped her for eight days.

Meanwhile, Franca’s father, Bernando, negotiated with the kidnappers for her return, ostensibly making arrangements for a matrimonio reparatore between Franca and Filippo. In truth, he was cooperating with the police to set up a sting operation which ultimately led to her release and the kidnappers’ arrest.

Franca Viola today

The Italian penal code at that time defined sexual violence as a crime against morality, not against the victim. In fact, a raped woman was seen as guilty of immoral behavior for having sex outside marriage, cursed for life as a slut. Both she and her family would have been shunned by the community. Her only recourse was to marry the rapist in a matrimonio ripartore. Men had used this scheme before to secure marriage with a reluctant conquest.

Filippo offered Franca this resolution, but she refused. Her father supported her decision, and together they challenged the law. This courageous act by a semi-literate Sicilian farm worker and his daughter blazed a trail that transformed the Italian penal code.

The trial of Filippo and his accomplices splashed across Italian newspapers daily. Death threats hounded the Viola family, and arson consumed their vineyards and home. Filippo’s lawyers portrayed Franca as an immoral young woman who had welcomed the interlude. But Franca’s lawyer, Ludovico Corrao, argued that the matrimonio riparatore was a barbaric custom that had to be eradicated.

The judges heard Corrao. Filippo was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in prison. His accomplices received lesser, various sentences. Filippo served ten years, leaving prison in 1976 only to be killed two years later during a Mafia power struggle in Alcamo.

Franca became a folk hero to the budding feminist movement in Italy. Her actions led the Parliament to eventually repeal the matrimonio riparatore legislation in 1981. No rapist in Italy can now be exonerated in this fashion, and a rape victim is a victim. Period.

Of the episode, Franca said at the time, “I didn’t want to marry a man I didn’t love. I would rather spend my entire life alone than do that.”

The Honeymoon

But she hasn’t spent her life alone. Despite the notoriety of her rape and the ensuing publicity, childhood sweethearts Franca Viola and Giuseppe Riusi married in 1968, seven years after their engagement. The President of the Republic sent a gift to the bridal couple as a show of solidarity, and on their honeymoon in Rome, they had a private audience with Pope Paul VI.

They moved away from Alcamo for the first three years of their marriage for fear of retaliation. They returned in 1971 and live there still among their children and grandchildren.

Today Franca says, “It was not a courageous gesture. I only did what I felt I had to do, as any other girl would do today. I listened to my heart.”

The Legacy of a Romance – Nehru and Lady Mountbatten

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Hands down, the most pivotal moment in India’s modern history was its independence from the British empire, which took place at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. The freedom struggle had juggernauted toward that goal for at least a hundred years. But once freedom was won, it was a bittersweet victory, with British India, the jewel in the crown, torn into not one but two countries, India and Pakistan, like twins born at the same hopeful moment then violently separated.

That’s because despite their shared ancestry and heritage, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims on both sides of the border erupted into violent clashes. More than 12 to 15 million people were displaced, becoming refugees, and crossing a border into a new country and new world order where they knew no one, had no roots or safety net – all because of communal (religious) riots, fear mongering, and forced uprootings. It's considered the largest migration in history, and the anger and bitterness over the events of that time still fill people on both sides of the border with much passion, mostly enmity.

An overcrowded train transferring refugees
during the partition of India, 1947

Historians say much of the blame can be placed on Lord Louis Mountbatten, India’s last viceroy and, after independence, its first governor-general. Mountbatten, who 30 years later would be assassinated in Ireland in an IRA bombing on his fishing boat, was Prince Philip’s uncle (that’s Prince Philip, as in Queen Elizabeth’s husband) as well as mentor to the young Prince Charles and "honorary grandfather."

The Mountbattens in the 1920s

A British statesman, naval officer, admiral of the fleet, a member of the British Royal Family, and the anointed Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Louis Mountbatten was sent to India by Clement Attlee, the prime minister of the UK, to India in 1947 to oversee a swift transfer of power from the British to the Indians no later than 1948. As World War II in particular had taken a huge toll on the Brits, financially and otherwise, Attlee had two priorities for Mountbatten – make the transfer quick and painless, keeping Britain’s reputation as untarnished as possible. The directive would prove to be disastrous, leading pretty much directly to the terrible rioting and displacement of so many.

Lord Mountbatten and his wife, British socialite and heiress, Edwina (nee Ashley), moved to India in 1947, and almost from the get-go, struck up a close friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru, the then-leader of the Indian National Congress, who would soon become the first prime minister of independent India. By this time, Nehru, an Anglophile who’d been sent to London for his schooling, was a widower, responsible for his young daughter, Indira (who would decades later become prime minister herself), and carrying the weight of his nation’s future on his shoulders. He’d been mentored by Mahatma Gandhi himself, rising to Congress president under Gandhi’s guidance, and widely seen as his political heir.

On the historic occasion of the raising of the
first flag of India on August 15, 1947

Though it’s more of a footnote to history, it is widely believed that Nehru and the vicerine were romantically involved. There’s certainly no doubt of their close friendship, which Lord Mountbatten knew of but either turned a blind eye to or else just accepted.

They made an odd pair, Nehru and Edwina, and not just because of the cultural differences.

Lady Mountbatten was a beautiful, glamorous, and very rich heiress, a countess who’d descended from earls and barons. She’d largely lived a life of leisure, and despite two young daughters, she and her husband had an open marriage in which they both had many affairs, some scandalous.

Nehru, on the other hand, hailed from a political family, and had spent his entire career in the pursuit of India’s independence, building his reputation as a hard-working, unflagging nationalist.

The iconic and much-analyzed photo
taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1948

And yet, the countess spent endless afternoons with the handsome and charismatic politician, chatting about everything under the sun as well as sitting together in long stretches of comfortable silence. Though the Mountbattens lived in Delhi for only a few years, Lady Mountbatten visited India at least once or twice a year till the end of her life. Suitcases upon suitcases of letters to her from Nehru have been the subject of several books, including one by her daughter Pamela. (Check out this fascinating interview of Pamela on the topic from only a few years ago.) Lord Mountbatten himself once wrote to Edwina’s sister of how his wife and the would-be prime minister “are so sweet together, they really dote on each other.”

Did they or didn’t they seems to be the question many want to ask, and those who’ve read the letters say they probably didn’t. But many of the letters include exchanges of affection and longing, counting the days till they would get to see each other next. Historian Alex von Tunzelmann wrote in her 2007 book on the subject that Lady Mountbatten had written a letter to her husband stating that her relationship with Nehru was “mostly platonic. Mostly, but not always.” (What do you suppose hubby’s response was to that admission? We’ll have to read the book to find out.)

The more intriguing speculation is what powers of persuasion did the wife of Britain’s top representative in India have on India's top politician and powerbroker? Mountbatten himself said on occasion that if he wanted to convince Nehru of something, he would put his wife on the task of broaching it at one of their private meetings. The expedited timetable for independence, negotiations with all the various power players in reaching a consensus, the partition of the two states, the Kashmir issue that remains a huge thorn in regional stability even today.... all these and more were topics Nehru, bogged down by worry and his huge responsibility to his country, discussed with his confidante and possible lover.

If it sounds like a movie, it almost was. von Tunzelmann’s 2007 book, Indian Summer: The Secret End of an Empire, was set to be adapted into a film starring Hugh Grant and Cate Blanchett as the Mountbattens and Irfhan Khan as Nehru. But plans halted when the Indian government refused to allow filming in the country unless the filmmakers agreed to take out the scandalous aspects about its first prime minister.

But how did it all end? Thirteen years after India’s independence, Edwina, only 58, died in her sleep while on a trip to Borneo, a stack of Nehru’s letters sitting on her nightstand. As the Royal Navy took her body to Britain's southern coast for a sea burial, Prime Minister Nehru sent a fleet of Indian Navy ships to cast a wreath into the water on his behalf. He died barely four years later.

A Portrait of Love – Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

noreply@blogger.com (Alli Sinclair) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000


Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera photograph by Carlo Van Vechten

The girls here on the blog often give me a hard time about my soppy, romantic tendencies and truth be told, I can’t deny it. I’m a sucker for a good love story – the more tragic, the better. That’s probably why I like to make the poor characters in my books suffer heartbreak at every turn. This works great in fiction, but not so wonderful when it’s real life. Sometimes, though, out of tragedy and suffering, great things can grow.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera go down in my books as a couple who left an indelible imprint on history. Born in 1907, Frida suffered from polio, and even though she lived, the disease left her with a withered leg that she always kept covered. In an effort to help his young daughter heal, Frida’s father gave her some paints, thus began a journey that would take many twists and turns.

At the age of eighteen, Frida boarded a bus with her then-boyfriend, Alejandro Gómez Arias. They’d planned to travel to her home on Coyocán, Mexico, but the bus had an accident with an electric trolley car, throwing bodies in every direction. Alejandro found Frida with a pole sticking out of her torso, and she was hospitalised with a myriad of injuries. Her dream of becoming a doctor disappeared and instead, she was left with more physical challenges. The only solace she found from the physical and emotional pain was through her painting.

One of Frida's fascinating paintings

Frida first met Diego Rivera when she was a student at an exclusive prep school in Mexico City. Twenty years her senior, Rivera had been employed to paint the school auditorium. Frida fell in with a crowd who loved to play pranks, so she became involved with soaping stairs for Rivera to fall on and popping water balloons over his head. Rivera and Frida had yet to discover their true destiny.

Alejandro went off the scene after the accident, and years later, Frida met Rivera again. Frustrated with her work, she asked his truthful opinion about her painting. Rivera replied, “Keep it up, little girl.” She invited him to her house to show more work, and this is when they realised they had more in common that just painting. When Frida was 22 and Rivera 42, they married. Frida’s mother disapproved of the tall, well-padded Rivera, and therefore didn’t attend the wedding.

The couple moved into a house shared by communists and not long after Frida became pregnant, but couldn’t go through with it as her life was at risk because of all her earlier physical complications. Later, Frida expressed her disappointment with her inability to have children through her paintings, with themes of childbirth, blood, and fertility.

She and Diego moved to the United States in 1930, and Frida fell under Rivera’s shadow. She played the “good housewife” while he lapped up the attention, and she suffered through his many extramarital affairs, including one with her own sister, Cristina. In 1933, the couple returned to Mexico, and during this time, they both had extramarital affairs. Kahlo had many lovers, both male and female, including Leon Trotsky. Her romance with him inspired her to pursue her painting on a larger scale, and by 1938, Frida’s work who traveled to New York, where she finally gained the recognition she’d craved.

In 1940, Frida and Rivera finally divorced and it was during this time, she produced some of her most renowned work. Turning to themes of death and religious symbolism, Frida cemented her position among the Surrealists.

Photo by Patrice Raunet Hollywood Mural by Siner

The last ten years of her life were more tranquil, all the romantic heartache and rejection behind her. She taught at La Esmeralda, an art institute in Mexico. As her failing health took its toll, Frida set up her easel while she was in hospital, and continued painting. In 1950, she and Rivera remarried (yes, they did!), and in 1953, she exhibited her work for the first time in Mexico.

In 1957, Frida Kahlo passed away, leaving a legacy of artwork that has been respected and admired for decades. The ups and down of her romance with Diego Rivera no doubt influenced her work, and it would be interesting to know what she would have produced (if anything) had her life been a Mills and Boon or Harlequin romance. I doubt we’d have such evocative and memorable paintings as we do now.

So there you have it. Sometimes out of great tragedy, comes something very special – the works of Frida Kahlo.

Esther and Xerxes - A Cross-Cultural Love Story

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi Noroozy) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Tomb of Esther and Mordecai
Photo by Philippe Chavin

On a quiet street in Hamadan, a sprawling city in the foothills of Iran’s Alvand mountains, stands an unassuming monument to Biblical history. It is a crudely fashioned brick building with a domed tower rising awkwardly at one end. The sand-colored structure has no adornment except for two diamond-shaped patterns on the side of the dome, made of turquoise-colored tile. And yet this odd little building is reputed to house the final resting place of two beloved Old Testament figures: Queen Esther, the second wife of Persia’s King Xerxes (486–465), and Mordecai, Esther’s older cousin and guardian.

Of course, there is a story attached to this holy site, and it begins with a big party. King Xerxes had been drinking a little too much wine when he ordered his queen, Vashti, to display her beauty in front of all his male friends. She refused and in a rage, he cast her aside and went looking for a new queen.

Xerxes replaced Vashti with a Jewish orphan named Esther, who’d been raised by her cousin , Mordecai, after her parents died. This cousin had earned favor with the king when he’d overheard two guards plotting to murder Xerxes. Naturally, Mordecai went straight to the monarch with the news and was rewarded with many royal favors, not least of which was to become Xerxes’s cousin-in-law. Nevertheless, neither Esther nor Mordecai told the king that they were Jewish and not Persian.

Not everyone was happy with the king’s new marital situation. Haman, a powerful royal adviser, became enraged when Mordecai refused to bow down before him. (And why should the Mordecai do so? He’s now related to the king.) In his rage, Haman hatches a plot to kill not just the queen’s recalcitrant cousin, but all Jews in Persia. He casts lots to determine which day would be the most auspicious time for a massacre.

The sharp-eared Mordecai again uncovered the plot. But this time, instead of going straight to the king, he asked Esther to use her influence with her husband to prevent the calamity. However, Persia had a law at the time that prevented anyone from approaching the king unbidden on pain of death. Apparently, this law also applied to the Queen. But Esther overcame her fear of breaking this law and asked her husband if he could grant her a favor.

“You may have anything you wish,” Xerxes told her, not at all enraged that she’d approached him without permission. “Even if it is half my kingdom.”

All Esther asked for was a banquet, to be held for her, the king, and Haman. At a second banquet some time later, she revealed the plot to kill the Jews as well as her own Jewish faith. (I’m not entirely sure why she needed two banquets to get the job done, but apparently she had her reasons.) Outraged by the revelation, Xerxes ordered Haman to be hanged on the same gallows the man had erected for Mordecai.

Jews today celebrate their deliverance from the impending massacre with the festival of Purim, named after the lots Haman had drawn to determine the day on which the deed was to take place. (Pur means “lot” in Hebrew.) And they revere Esther for having the courage to face possible death so as to save her people.

This story raises questions in my mind. Why didn’t Mordecai go straight to Xerxes and ask him to save the Jews? Why did Esther fear for her life when it’s clear that the king loved her so much he was willing to grant her half his kingdom? Wouldn’t a wife have known that? And why was Esther buried next to her cousin and guardian and not near her husband, the king?

In fact, no one knows for sure if Esther and Mordecai really are buried in the unassuming, brick shrine in Hamadan. No archaeological studies have been conducted on the remains. What’s more, the village of Kfar Baram in northern Israel also claims to be the place where Esther is buried. Yet many scholars do not believe that Esther existed in the first place but is merely the central figure in a Biblical morality tale.

As for me, I like to think that the tomb of Esther and Mordecai is the real deal. I still remember the sense of wonder I felt on entering the plain, brick-walled shrine and finding myself inside the richly decorated inner sanctuary where the reflection from the red brocade cloths draped over the sarcophaguses created an ethereal glow in the soft light from an overhead chandelier. The place fits Esther’s story somehow, a rags-to-riches tale of intrigue, courage, and survival.

It’s also a love story, and a cross-cultural one at that. Xerxes would likely not have stopped the massacre out of the kindness of his heart, let alone execute his trusted advisor. But he adored his wife and, since she was Jewish, he wanted to save her people to please her. So maybe love does indeed conquer all.

Off The Beaten Track: Photography Journey -- Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia

noreply@blogger.com (Alli Sinclair) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

We continue David Townsend's photography series this week with a journey to Southeast Asia. David is a professional photographer from Denver, Colorado. A self-taught photographer, David's journey started fifteen years ago when he captured the beauty of nature and landscapes in his home state. He later became an accomplished portrait photographer and master of the digital darkroom. Portrait photography eventually led him into photographing weddings, and now he and his wife, Lynn, own David Lynn Photography, a thriving wedding and portrait photography business. David also teaches his skills to new and aspiring photographers with his Shootshops Photography Workshops. Travel and photography have always remained David’s true passions, and he takes every opportunity to combine these whenever possible.

David’s travels have taken him all over the United States, and to three other continents and fifteen countries: Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Italy, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Websites:

www.townsendphotography.com

www.davidlynnphoto.com

www.shootshops.com

www.facebook.com/davidlynnphotography

My wife Lynn and I took a six week journey through Southeast Asia, feasting our eyes on the beauty of each country, taking every opportunity to sample the most amazing culinary tastes in the world. We soaked in the scenery with our senses and let our cameras capture it all.

These images can be found at www.townsendphotography.com ~ world galleries

The wats (temples) in Thailand are abundant, and all of them contain an image of the Buddha in one of many poses. In this image, monks are gathered in a wat for meditation.

TIP: It is always important to learn customs, traditions, and protocol in the country you are visiting. It would have been very disruptive and disrespectful to walk in to the temple and shoot pictures, so I used a telephoto lens from far outside to capture this image.

These young novice monks were very intrigued by me and my camera, and they were very open to having their picture taken. After asking them permission, I waited until they had these very thoughtful expressions.

TIP: When shooting children up close while traveling, start by engaging them first, and then pick up your camera to take pictures.

This image in northern Thailand creates mood through warm sunlight, the mist rising off the river, and the smoke coming from one of the village homes.

TIP: You can always shoot into the sun, and many times it gives interesting and artistic lens flare. If the sun is just casting a hazy film over your image, use a lens hood or shade the lens with your hand when shooting.

Chiang Mai in northern Thailand is famous for its markets, and the night market is no exception. There are loads of amazing crafts, clothes, sculptures and trinkets to stuff in your bag, and there’s always an amazing assortment of food to choose from.

TIP: Night photography is a fun way to liven up your evenings. Using a tripod, choose a bright light in the scene to focus on, choose a “wide open” aperture (f2.8, f3.5 etc) and set your shutter speed for a variety of long exposures and see what looks the best! Using your camera’s timer is a great way to prevent shaking the camera when you press the shutter.

Southeast Asia’s landscape is absolutely amazing, but the most beautiful part about the region is the people. The people of Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia are some of the most friendly in the world, and I am always gravitating toward them as much as I am the landscape. I chose the warm black and white tones for these images to draw the eye to the expressions and features of the people’s faces without the distraction of color.

TIP: When travelling, photograph people using a telephoto lens. It allows you to be non-intrusive, and let’s you get up close and personal without being in their space.

The city of Hanoi, Vietnam has a population of 6 million people, and they boast a population of almost 4 million motorcycles! The city is a constant flow of motorbikes and cars, and it is one of life’s greatest adventures to try and cross the street. Intersections are a chaotic pulse of vehicles with no apparent rhyme or reason, and I found myself just in awe of the bustle of this charming city.

TIP: To capture movement, use shutter speeds to achieve different effects. Fast shutter speeds will “freeze” action, and slower shutter speeds will create blurred movement. How much of an effect will depend on the shutter speed and the pace of your moving subject, so experiment with different settings in each shooting situation.

I shot this Asian market scene on a typically foggy day in Sapa, Vietnam in the northern part of the country. I pre-arranged the composition I wanted, and then waited until just the right subject walked through my image frame.

TIP: Using creative tools like vertical orientation and an ever so slight tilt of the camera helps to lead the viewer’s eye toward a particular part of the image.

These images of Vietnam, one from Halong Bay and the other from rice fields near Sapa in the north, both capture a sense of place in addition to telling a story. Halong Bay is an amazing natural wonder of Asia, with a dense collection of monolithic limestone islands that are covered with jungle vegetation. Among them you can find caves, lakes and secluded beaches. There is also a population of people who call Halong Bay home, as in floating home. Rice fields are abundant throughout Asia, and women hunkered over working all day are a commonplace sight in these fields.

TIP: Use wide-angle lenses to include important or dramatic elements in your image. The halong Bay shot has the two people in the boat to tell the story of how people get around in the bay. The rice fields show the workers small in the image, giving scope and perspective to the scene.

These kids in northern Vietnam were all about playing and being photographed, so I had an easy time playing with them and getting a couple good shots. I chose to focus on the two laughing boys behind the kid in front, while still maintaining his expression clearly.

TIP: Use larger aperture values (f9, f11, f16) to achieve greater depth of focus throughout your image. Smaller aperture values (f2.8, f3.5, f4.5) will yield less depth of focus and beautifully blurred backgrounds. DSLR cameras also have an Autofocus tracking system that tracks a moving subject and keeps them in focus, a really useful tool when photographing action.

Strolling through a gorgeous city park in Hanoi, Vietnam, I was impressed by the amount of people of all ages doing Tai Chi. Until I saw them, it never occurred to me that it was regularly practiced in its region of origin!

TIP: Use anything in your environment to “frame” your subject making a more engaging image. Here, I placed the woman right in the empty space of tree branches, forming a perfect natural frame.

Angkor, Cambodia is one of the most amazing ruin sites in the world. The ruins are from the Khmer Empire, 9th to 15th centuries, and span about 120 sq mi (323 sq km). I spent three solid days from before sunrise to after sunset wandering through and photographing these amazing structures.

TIPS: Angkor Wat – I photographed this enormous temple from another ruin site that afforded a breathtaking view of the temple from afar, allowing me to show its massive presence in the jungle.

Ta Prohm Temple – This is the most dramatic example of the jungle actually taking over these ancient buildings. I used a black and white tone in this image to highlight the contrast of the tree and the ruin and lends well to its ancient nature.

Bayon Faces – I used my telephoto zoom lens to crop in on just these three faces to highlight that specific feature in the temple.

Angkor Reflection – I photographed these lotus flowers using the reflection of the temple spires and the rising sun as an added element in this silhouette, being careful to place them right between the spires in the water.

I asked these monks permission to take their photo and they were more than gracious. Always be respectful of persons of religious nature or prominent individuals in a culture or society. Particularly with children, offer to show them the picture on your camera after shooting it. It’s an instant icebreaker and (usually) gets your subject more willing to have their photo taken.

TIP: I used two simple composition techniques here to create an interesting image: I placed the subjects slightly off center, and I tilted my camera slightly to create a more dynamic angle.

The giant limestone islands of Thailand’s islands always amaze me, and I love finding new ways to photograph them. This was a great opportunity to shoot one of them with the boat shown for size comparison.

TIP: When choosing a subject, use a wide angle on whatever lens you have and include another object or element that creates a sense of perspective or scale.

The island of Ko Phi Phi was a particularly rare visit for this trip, as it was one of the islands hit by the tsunami of 2004. The devastation was massive, and as I photographed the middle of the island from up high, I was acutely aware of what it must have felt like to watch the event unfold. It made me deeply thankful for all the safe travels I have had in my life. Lastly, a trip to Southeast Asia’s islands wouldn’t be complete without an incredibly gorgeous sunset.

TIP: Include a foreground element (like the palm trees) to add an appealing element to your image. Also, when photographing water around sunrise and sunset, look for reflections of color from the sky. Try to create unique images of just the colored water, leaving out the actual sunset sky.

Colonial Dutch Architecture of Paramaribo

noreply@blogger.com (Edith McClintock) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

If you’re a fan of the natural world, wild places, or cultural heritage, you’ve likely visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The World Heritage list was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1972 to “encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.”

I seek out World Heritage Sites when traveling, as do hordes of tourists. So many, in fact, that sites now face additional pressures from visitors touching, looting, or sometimes just breathing on artifacts, not to mention poorly planned tourist development around sites. The travertine terraces of Pamukkale, Turkey is just one few example of many I’ve seen recently.

There are, however, a few remaining countries where you can find World Heritage sites free of tourists - good for you, if not the local country’s economy. One of these countries is Suriname, which has two UNESCO sites, one cultural and one natural. And both happen to be settings in my first mystery. The natural site is the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, although I use a different name for the park in my book.

The cultural site is historic Paramaribo, which became a World Heritage Site in 2002. The white timbered Dutch colonial buildings of the old city are a unique fusion of Dutch architecture from the 17th and 18th centuries with the indigenous cultures and tropical environment of the northeast "wild coast" of South America.

The original inhabitants of Suriname were Carib Indians along the mangrove coast, and Trío, Wayana, and Akuriyo Amerindians in the tropical rainforest interior. Paramaribo, the capital, was settled about ten miles inland from the coast, along the Suriname River. The French arrived first, followed by the English, who established sugar and tobacco plantations on the west bank. In the late 1600s, the Dutch swapped New Amsterdam (part of present-day New York) for the English territory in Suriname and remained until Suriname’s full independence in 1975.

To work their plantations, the Dutch imported West Africans and later, with the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, indentured laborers from Indonesia, India, China, and Lebanon, creating a cultural and ethnic diversity reflected in the city’s present-day appearance, both old town and new.

Set against sun-dappled streets lined with grizzled mahoganies, the old town’s mostly clapboard buildings are simple and symmetrically uniform, likely due to the country’s abundance of tropical hardwoods and isolation from any grand cities. Doors and windows were usually matching and repeated on each story, with shutters and louvres painted dark green, and designed for the rainy, humid climate. The well-crafted, detailed designs and woodwork are a tradition still found among Suriname’s many talented wood carvers.

Bricks, in contrast to wood, were expensive and were used mainly for stoops and foundations, which were painted red, the color of Suriname’s dusty interior roads and tropical soils. Older roofs were high and steep due to the wooden shingles and leaves used for roofing materials, until two major fires in the early 1800s caused a switch to slate and baked roof tiles. As new roofing materials were introduced, such as galvanized zinc around 1870, roof shapes became less sloped.

Working in Paramaribo’s old town was a highlight of my two years living in Paramaribo, and I had a few favorite buildings, including the building housing Conservation International (above) and the Presidential Palace (below), with its white veranda and adjacent palm garden. I was also very fond of my own office with WWF, but I can't seem to find a photo. You can click here for more photos, maps, and videos of Paramaribo's historic old town.

Bottle Caps, Footmen, and A Touch of Jazz – The Story of a House

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The entrance to the Smithsonian Castle
in Washington, D.C.

Culture shock, the good kind, hit hard when I moved from Texas to Washington, D.C. Everything is different here, from the trivial to the grand. Cab drivers chatting about politics and literature. The super quiet subways, where everyone is reading, reading, reading. The view across the Potomac River, especially at the Tidal Basin when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the breeze blowing around little pink and white blooms like magic confetti.

Then there’s the architecture. The awe-inspiring national monuments, built in Greek Revival style, excerpts of speeches by Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington etched into the granite walls. The famous buildings that hold our three cherished branches of government, universal symbols of democracy and all things American. The museums – not just the exhibits, but also the enormous edifices that house them. The Old World urban layout, including the roundabouts with pretty fountains and gardens, designed by Pierre L’Enfant, the French architect who also planned Versailles. The Library of Congress, which stores a copy of every book published anywhere in the world. (Do they still do that, in this age of e-books and e-readers, I wonder?)

And, of course, the embassies, dozens of them along Massachusetts Avenue, NW, not far from where I lived in Dupont Circle. Peru, Denmark, Cape Verde, Bulgaria, Japan. It seemed to me back then, and often still does, that strolling by these buildings was akin to making a really quick visit abroad.

(Photo: M.V. Jantzen)

Tucked away on a quiet corner of Embassy Row stands a Beaux Arts mansion that has always intrigued me. Back then it was both the Embassy of Turkey as well as the Turkish ambassador’s residence, and no matter how often I passed it, its stunning exterior always gave me pause. In the early ’90s, I couldn’t take photos of it because very serious-looking men stood guard out front like vigilantes, holding big machine guns and menacingly approaching passersby, particularly those with cameras, who glanced their way for too long. I never knew exactly why they were there, but over the next decade, the country underwent a military coup, was slapped with more than 1,500 judgments by the European Union for human rights violations, enforced a NATO-led, no-fly zone at its border with Iraq, and closed its border with Azerbaijan to avoid a civil war there from spilling into its own borders. Who knows which of those issues led to the extra security.

Regardless, the armed guards are long gone, and the embassy itself is now housed in a separate chancery right on Mass Ave (as Washingtonians call it). But the ambassador still resides at the impressive old mansion, which is one of the city’s most important historic buildings and has its own colorful story to tell.

Believe it or not, this impressive mansion sits atop what was once a city dump. In 1909, Ohio millionaire and philanthropist, Edward H. Everett, purchased the property. Everett earned his fortune, among other things, for inventing the crimped Coca Cola bottle cap. He was a pioneer in glassmaking (think fruit jars and soda and beer bottles), owned oil companies in Texas and Ohio, and had been a large shareholder of Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis.

The view from the dining room
into the conservatory
(Photo: Library of Congress)

To build his dream house, Everett hired the famous Washington architect, George Oakley Totten, Jr., who by then had already designed quite a few Washington embassies and public buildings and had served as an advisor on the remodeling of the U.S. Capitol Building and as chief designer to the Office of the Supervising Architect for the Department of the Treasury. The birth of the Republic of Turkey was still decades away, but ironically, Totten had strong ties to the region. He'd designed the first U.S. chancery in Istanbul and the residence for Izzet Pasha, the grand vezir (counselor) and prime minister of the Ottoman Empire. Totten's work impressed his client so much, he was offered (but declined) the post of "private architect to the sultan."

Totten liked to experiment with different architectural styles around Embassy Row, and Everett’s house was no exception. The architect blended three architectural periods in his design for the mansion: 16th-century Italian, 18th-century Romanesque, and 19th-century Art Deco, borrowing additional decorative features from Ottoman styles. It took five years to build, and when it was complete in 1915, the Edward Everett House, as it is still known, had some of the most innovative features of the time, including a Webster air washer and a built-in humidifier.

The palatial, three-storied home also featured – still features, in fact – an enormous foyer with a black-and-white marble floor, teakwood floors everywhere else, marble fireplaces, ornamental ceilings in every room, a swimming pool in the basement, a ballroom, a musicians’ gallery, an elevator, and a rooftop garden. According to the society pages from newspapers of the time, the Everetts threw many a lavish party in this home, including festive musical evenings featuring singers from New York’s Metropolitan Opera. At least one party included 3,000 guests, an orchestra that played till 3 a.m., a lavish dinner, and footmen who wore “mulberry livery, with white silk stockings and pumps with silver buckles everywhere.” (Gotta feel sorry for those poor footmen.)

After Everett’s death, the government of Turkey leased the space in 1932 from Everett’s widow then bought the house – including all of its furnishings – outright in 1936. Total cost, $265,000, though even back then the house was valued at more than $400,000.


Munir Ertegun (Photo: Library of Congress)

Turkey was a young country at the time, only a couple decades out from when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I and Ataturk, who’d led the country’s national independence movement and founded the modern republic, still served as its first president.

A jazz enthusiast, Munir Ertegun, a career diplomat, became Turkey’s first ambassador and moved into the new Washington embassy and residence, where he lived and worked until his death in 1944. Ertegun’s sons, Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, shared their father’s love of music and went on to found Atlantic Records and discover such legendary artists as Led Zeppelin, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Otis Redding, John Coltrane ... on and on, right up to Kid Rock. At one time, Ahmet served as chairman for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How’s that for circling the globe?

Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun

Before their rise to music mogul status, Ahmet and Nesuhi urged their father to host jazz events at home in D.C., a tradition that the embassy continues into today. The Turkish embassy was one of the few places in the highly segregated D.C. of the 1930s and 1940s to host racially mixed musicians and audiences. According to the current ambassador, angry southern senators complained to the first Turkish ambassador about his custom of not only letting black musicians into his home but letting them come in through the front door. Ambassador Ertegun kindly responded to at least one of these white senators that he too was welcome to attend the concerts if he was interested, only he would have to enter through the back door. Among the notable guests who played in the Erteguns' home: Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Lena Horne.

Lawrence Brown and Johnny Hodges
perform at the embassy in the 1930s

Last year, the embassy won a “best embassy” distinction in a Washington Post survey, following a series of jazz concerts it held with Jazz at Lincoln Center in honor of the former diplomat’s late sons and to commemorate Black History Month.

In an interesting side note, when Ambassador Munir Ertegun passed away in 1944, Washington had no mosque at which to hold his funeral. As a result, the beautiful Islamic Center of Washington was born, the movement to build it led primarily by the Washington diplomatic community. The center, to this day, is controlled by a board of governors made up ambassadors. Heard of anything like that before?

But back to the house. Now that there are no hired guns – human or otherwise – guarding the historic old mansion, I might finally be able to pay it a visit, camera in tow.

When History Collides With The Present – El Ateneo Bookstore

noreply@blogger.com (Alli Sinclair) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Photo by Stanley Wood

One of the fun parts about writing fiction set in exotic locales is the opportunity to incorporate historical sites into the story. The current book I’m working on, a mystery set in Argentina, has afforded me the chance to set a major turning point for the plot and characters in one of my favourite places in Buenos Aires, an old theatre that is now a thriving bookstore.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid, situated in Barrio Norte, once was the Teatro Grand Splendid. The theatre opened in May 1919 and with a seating capacity of 1,050 patrons, the venue hosted a variety of concerts, including some of Argentina’s most renowned tango artists – Carlos Gardel, Robert Firpo, and Ignacio Corsini.

The building was the brainchild of Max Glücksmann, who originally came from the Austrian Empire and immigrated to Argentina in 1890. In 1914 he founded Nacional Odeon, a record company that helped put the tango on the world stage. His empire expanded to include exclusive copyright to all the hits his record company produced, as well as controlling sheet music and the silent movie-house business. He could easily have been despised by performers, but instead, they admired him after he introduced the royalty pay system in Argentina.

With the money and reputation behind him, Glücksmann commissioned the construction of Teatro Grand Splendid. In 1924, Radio Splendid, another business of Glücksmann’s, broadcast from the building and made recordings for his studio label. The theatre became a cinema in the late 1920s, and was the first place Argentines could watch movies with recorded sound.

Carlos Gardel -- one of the first performers at the theatre

Teatro Grand Splendid continued to screen movies right up until the year 2000, when Grupo Ilhsa, which owned a publishing house and other bookstores, leased the theatre to convert into a bookstore and music shop. Where the theatre seats once stood, there are now rows upon rows of bookshelves. The stage that hosted some of Argentina’s greatest talents now serves as a café, allowing patrons to relax with a hot cuppa and take their time perusing books of their choice. Reading before purchase is encouraged. And if you’re a person who needs peace and quiet to read, find one of the many sofas tucked away in the balconies that overlook the stage. In the afternoons, a pianist plays and that’s when you can also appreciate the theatre’s wonderful acoustics.

Despite the renovations, El Ateneo has managed to retain the ambience of an elegant theatre. The central dome is well preserved and shows off the magnificent fresco painting by Nazareno Orlandi, celebrating the end of the First World War. All the ornate carvings, frescos, curtains, and lighting remain true to the original building and its intended use.

Frequently named as one of the world’s best bookshops, El Ateneo deserves every accolade it receives. With over 120,000 book titles, a million people walking through its doors every year, and more than 700,000 books sold annually, this bookshop hasn’t lost any of its charm and is a welcome contrast to the “big box” bookstores you’ll find in other parts of the world.

If you don’t speak Spanish, fear not. The store has a wonderful selection of fiction and non-fiction books in a myriad of languages, including English. And if you’re after souvenirs, then the photography books and wide selection of Argentine music, including pop and tango, will have you lugging one very heavy bag back to your hotel.

Any modern renovation of an historic building is a great risk. Managing to find the line between past and present is a delicate balance, but the very savvy architects and designers who worked on El Ateneo Grand Splendid deserve a very big pat on the back. It’s not very often a bookstore becomes a tourist attraction, but El Ateneo Grand Splendid will go down in history as the bookstore that seamlessly combines old-world elegance with a modern twist.

Photo by David

Making Gold Out Of Dust – Kashan’s Historic Houses

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi Noroozy) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Photo by Shahram Sharif

In 1993, when the head of UNESCO visited the ancient Iranian city of Kashan, he remarked, “Kashani architects were the greatest alchemists of history. They could make gold out of dust.”

He was referring to the grand merchant houses that Kashan is famous for. Built or expanded in the 19^th century, these buildings could easily compete with Iran’s finest royal palaces. Most are divided into three main parts: the andaruni (private rooms for the family in residence), biruni (public areas for entertaining guests), and khadameh (servants’ quarters). The houses feature multiple courtyards with sunken gardens and reflecting pools flanked by flowers and fruit trees, porches facing the courtyards where the families could sit on a balmy summer nights and admire the stars, walls richly decorated with carvings of fruit, flowers, birds, and abstract designs, many of them reflecting the merchant’s specialty trade. In some of these houses, stained glass windows send patterns of colored light dancing across marble floors.

The architects of Kashan’s merchant houses knew how to make the best of a harsh desert climate. They built rooms deep into the earth, where the families would move in summer and enjoy natural air conditioning from the wind towers (badgirs – literally, “wind catchers”), which draw in hot air and cool it on the descent below ground. The south-facing rooms on the surface offered comfortable warmth for winter quarters.

Several years ago, on a trip to Kashan, my husband and I toured several of these magnificent houses, many of which now belong to the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization and have been restored.

We started the tour at the Ameri House, the largest of Kashan’s merchant homes. The original structure dates back to the Zand Dynasty (1750–1794), but Agha Ameri, a merchant who dealt in food and household items, rebuilt the house in the 19^th century, turning it into a sprawling complex with seven courtyards and 85 rooms. The walls are decorated with carvings of his merchandise: pots, samovars, pears, and grapes.

Ameri House

You enter the house through double wooden doors with the region’s traditional metal knockers on the front. One knocker is rectangular and solid, with intricate, embossed designs. The other is round and hollow without any ornamentation. The solid knocker is intended for male visitors and the round one for women, and each makes a distinctive sound so the residents of the house always knows which gender is knocking at the front door.

In the very heart of Kashan stand two houses that are linked by an underground passage and a common history. The story goes like this: Seyed Hassan Natanzi, a carpet merchant who earned the nickname Boroujerdi through the lively trade he conducted with the town of Boroujerd, approached another carpet dealer, Jafar Tabatabei, with a marriage proposal on behalf of Boroujerdi’s son. Tabatabei had no objection to the match. But he did have one condition – that Boroujerdi build the bride a house as lovely as the one she grew up in.

When a father sets such a condition, what he really means is, “build a bigger and better one.” Apparently Boroujerdi understood this subtext very well because, starting in 1857, it took him eighteen years, 150 workmen, and likely plenty of frayed nerves to build a house for the happy “newlyweds.” I can’t help wondering where the poor little rich girl lived in the meantime. Certainly not in a half-built house with the chaos and noise of construction all around her. Very likely she moved in with the groom’s family and dreamed of the day when she’d be the mistress of her own place.

Boroujerdi House

The distinctive feature of the Boroujerdi House is the design of its wind towers, which are hexagonal instead of the usual square shape. A reception hall at one end of the main courtyard features stalactite-shaped moldings and frescoes by Kamal-e Molk, the most famous Iranian artist of the time.

The Tabatabei House has four major courtyards with fountains and pools at the center, domed ceilings with skylights that reflect sunlight onto richly decorated walls, and entire banks of stained glass windows in patterns of red, blue, and green. Carvings on the walls depict floral sprays, cypress trees, and diamond-shaped designs typical of a Persian carpet. Agha Boroujerdi had his work cut out to top this palatial home.

Tabatabei House
Photo by Matthias Blume

We visited Kashan during Ramadan, and arrived at the Tabatabei House just before dusk. A crew of men and women were preparing iftar, the meal that breaks the day’s fast, and were busy setting out plates of flat bread, cheese, herbs, walnuts, and dates.

The crew told us that they were getting ready to welcome a group of children who were to attend a ceremony celebrating the revelation of the Koran to the Prophet Mohammed (which is what Ramadan is all about). With true Iranian hospitality, they offered us zoolbia, a date-syrup-drenched pastry that is a typical Ramadan treat.

Preparing for iftar

That evening, we drove away from Kashan with stories of brides and carpet merchants in our heads, the visions of secret gardens and towering badgirs before our eyes, and the sweet taste of dates on our tongues.

In The Service of A King

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:48:00 +0000

My grandfather and fathe

Unlike my cohorts here on the blog, I don’t have any ancestors who sailed the Spanish Armada, no Viking blood or uncles who were Communist spies (that I know of), definitely no one who was around during the American Gold Rush partying with Calamity Jane. However, there was this one maharaja…

But let me start at the beginning. You see, I had a much beloved grandfather known to everyone as the family storyteller. His old yarns filled me in particular, since I grew up outside India, with awe. If nothing else, his memories of the past shaped as much of my insights into my Indian heritage as did my occasional childhood visits to the bustling metropolis known as Bombay where he lived.

Where does my grandfather’s story start? Or maybe I should ask, where does my story start? Because although he was one of four grandparents, through him, I know my lineage on his side the best.

My grandfather, named Gopal after one of Lord Krishna’s many names, was born in Bangalore during a historical renaissance in that region, generations before the South Indian city became the illustrious capital of call centers and outsourcing. Even then, in the early 1900s, Bangalore was a hotbed of progress, in part because of its distinction as a twin city.

On the Cantonment side lived and worked the British and the affluent Tamilians (whom the Brits called the “Tamils”), both groups associated in one way or another with British India’s military or government administration. On the other side of town, in “Bangalore City,” lived everyone else – including my then-young great grandfather, Devrao Nayal.

My great grandfather (Devrao)

Devrao had left his sleepy village on the state’s southwestern coast, where his father was a zaminder (landowner/landlord) and the only other profession was farming, to seek his fortune in what was then the big city. Thirty years later, his own restless son, my grandfather, would leave Bangalore to seek fame and fortune in the even bigger and certainly more glamorous city of Bombay. But when Devrao moved to Bangalore City in the early 1900s, it was still part of the princely kingdom of Mysore. Its monarch, Krishnaraja Wodiyar IV, lived a few hours away in the city of Mysore, but his dewan, or prime minister, oversaw the state's administration from Bangalore. And the lucky chap to become the dewan’s personal assistant? None other than Devrao himself.

Surprisingly, I don’t know much about what his job entailed or how often, if ever, he met the king, but Devrao’s life was a heady mix of old and new during a time of some serious history making. The city experienced a renaissance under the reign of Wodiyar IV, a benevolent philosopher-king. It became known as the Golden Age of Mysore, from roughly the end of the 1800s into the first few decades of the 20^th century, and during my great grandfather’s tenure.

Krishnaraja Wodiyar IV

Under Wodiyar, the state of Mysore became India’s most modern, progressive state. The young king blazed trails on all fronts – the arts, education, agriculture, industry, you name it. He expanded the country’s first democratic legislative assembly and made it bicameral, with an upper and lower house, paving the way for India becoming the world’s largest democracy. Five years before my grandfather’s birth, Bangalore became the first Indian city to have electricity. The king established the country’s first hydroelectric plant and installed its first streetlights. He also established the first state-chartered universities, and historians say Wodiyar laid down the educational framework that paved the way for Bangalore to become the major technology hub it is today. His love of classical music led him to pipe the music through a public address system on the palace grounds so that the public could enjoy it too.

As a side note, the British, of course, brought change too. They paved roads, improved sanitation, built hospitals, and so on. Christian missionaries brought the first printing presses to print bibles in the local language of Kannada. Those changes mostly benefited the elite on the Cantonment side of town, but they also created a few opportunities for the city-dwellers. Kannada history books and literature flourished, for example, and many modern Kannada classics hail from this period. Devrao made his own contribution, albeit minor. He created Kannada shorthand and published a small manual on it for the state legislative assembly (the lower house).

But back to Wodiyar… under his reign, the list of accomplishments, political and cultural, goes on and on, and his legacy reflects it. One British lord called Mysore “the best-administered state in the world,” while that saint of all saints, Mahatma Gandhi, an occasional guest of the king, called his friend Rajarshi, “the saintly king.”

Karnataka High Court

Did my great grandfather know him? I don’t know for certain, but I imagine he had to have rubbed elbows with him from time to time. Although the king occasionally went to stay at the Bangalore Palace, which oddly falls within the Cantonment area, Devrao went to work each day at the regal, rust-colored building known as Attara Kacheri, “the eighteen offices,” on the city side of town. After Mysore state officially changed its name to Karnataka in 1973, Attara Kacheri became the state’s new High Court, sitting directly opposite that Legislative Assembly Wodiyar created. Only a few decades later, India would become an independent nation, and all the political machinations making that happen were in full swing in Devrao’s day.

Back in those heady early years of the 20^th century, when he worked for a monarchy creating democratic institutions, pulling India into the modern era and hurtling toward Independence, what massive, whirlwind changes did he witness – possibly even participate in? Could any of the king’s accomplishments have been recommendations that came from the young, ambitious Devrao?

It gives me shivers just to imagine it and, frankly, I get the shivers every time I’m in Bangalore and pass that awe-inspiring High Court, the grand legislature across the street from it, the street itself lined with majestic Asoka and blooming Mayflower trees. Someday, I’ll make it inside and search for clues of my great grandfather’s own personal thumbprint on history.

Off The Beaten Track -- David Townsend, Photographer

noreply@blogger.com (Alli Sinclair) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

This week's Off The Beaten Track contributor is David Townsend, a professional photographer from Denver, Colorado. A self-taught photographer, David's journey started fifteen years ago when he captured the beauty of nature and landscapes in his home state. He later became an accomplished portrait photographer and master of the digital darkroom. Portrait photography eventually led him into photographing weddings, and now he and his wife, Lynn, own David Lynn Photography, a thriving wedding and portrait photography business. David also teaches his skills to new and aspiring photographers with his Shootshops Photography Workshops. Travel and photography have always remained David’s true passions, and he takes every opportunity to combine these whenever possible.

Next week David will return and take us on a photographic journey to South East Asia.

Websites:

www.townsendphotography.com

www.davidlynnphoto.com

www.shootshops.com

www.facebook.com/davidlynnphotography

Life is an adventure.

I've ridden my bike at 20mph, steering with one hand and firing off shots with the other. I've strapped a camera to my ski helmet. I've drowned a camera 40 feet underwater in Belize. I like going and being everywhere with a camera. That's where my life is, that's where my fun is, and that's where the photo opportunities are.

There are plenty of times I don't have a camera with me, and it always allows me to sink fully into the experience. Even then, my mind's eye is firing away.

I know it sounds a little clichéd, but the simple fact is that beauty is everywhere. Nothing makes me see that more than photography, and recognizing it has become such a part of my everyday life that I don't even think about it anymore. I just see it -- in the plain, ordinary and everyday. It's a simple concept, and when you get it into your consciousness things don't seem so ordinary anymore. It's all about perspective... lying on the ground in the middle of the woods, a meadow, a street, or in front of a bride and groom with my camera and seeing the world from inches high.... getting up close and personal with things I'd otherwise walk by... then creating art from it. That totally does it for me, and is one of a million reasons why I love to shoot.

The images below can also be found at www.townsendphotography.com ~ world galleries

I had the great opportunity to take a two-week overland safari through South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia. We drove caravan-style with Land Rovers equipped with rooftop tents, visiting National Parks and Game Reserves to experience the wildlife of southern Africa.

TIP: a tripod is essential piece of equipment for night photography. It allows you to keep the camera perfectly still and create long exposures.

We spent one day and night at a lion rescue camp in Botswana, and we had a chance to get up close and personal with these amazing animals. These images capture both the intense and majestic nature of the lion.

TIP: Especially on safari, a telephoto zoom lens is essential to get close to your subject. It allows you to exclude things that are unnecessary to your image.

We spotted a pride of lions taking their afternoon nap on a grassy hill on the savannah, and we moved in to see how close we could get to the resting pride. This female stood watch as I was able to get a few shots from about 100 feet away.

TIP: Placing your subject slightly off-center in your image creates a little more dramatic feel to your image.

The giraffe is one of the most unique animals in the world, and it is a rare experience to see these animals in the wild. With these two images I tried to create the very zen-like feel that these animals convey.

TIP: Use environmental features to add another graphic element to your image, or look for particular patterns, shapes, or (in this case) alignments that add an interesting perspective.

The zebras were always found in herds, often with a group of ostriches nearby (they help the Zebras search for predators with their keen eyesight.) I caught the attention of this lone zebra while moving around the vehicle. He turned and faced me and created the perfect image for me to capture.

TIP: Keep it simple. This image is very straightforward, linear, and symmetrical, all adding to the overall artistic look.

The elephants were always fascinating to watch for hours, and we spent a long time observing their playful nature and dedication to the family unit.

TIP: When photographing animals, look for interactions, as those images are not as common as just a solitary animal standing and doing nothing.

The hippos are notorious for being the most dangerous animal on the continent, but when we visited a watering hole with 30-40 hippos, they were doing what they do best…relaxing. Every once in a while they would all erupt in what sounded like a group of old men laughing together over a glass of brandy.

TIP: Use a foreground element to add a dynamic feel. I shot this image through the grasses to give a sense of place while still maintaining focus on the hippo.

Some of the smaller monkeys around the game parks and reserves have developed a bad (human-inspired) habit of raiding campsites for food. We even witnessed a giant baboon climb inside one of our trucks and steal a 5-pound bag of potatoes. Although annoying, it did afford some great photo opportunities, like this one.

TIP: Shooting images with low aperture settings (f/2.8, f/3.5, etc) gives you shallow depth of field and soft blurred backgrounds, letting your subject stand out.

This image of a red hartebeest is a more iconic image, with the lone silhouette of the animal surrounded by the expanse of the African savannah. I found myself absolutely awestruck at the simple beauty of the savannah and other parts of southern Africa.

TIP: Use a wider angle lens to include parts of the environment to give a sense of place and perspective.

This is how you transport vehicles across the mighty Zambezi River from Botswana into Zambia. We went over to visit Victoria Falls and it was amazing. Footnote: a couple months after returning home, I read that one of these ferries capsized, killing multiple people. Wow.

TIP: Always be on the lookout for interesting perspectives from which to photograph. Shoot from down on the ground or, if possible, from up above your subject.

The Baobab Trees of southern Africa range in diameter seven to eleven meters, and reach a height of 30 meters. Carbon dating has found some baobab trees to be over 2,000 years old.

TIP: Sunrise and sunset are the ideal times of day to photograph when the light is softer and warmer. It creates more dramatic colors and shadows.

The acacia tree is the iconic tree of Africa, and makes for the most interesting images. There was no shortage of beautiful sunsets while we were there, so I felt compelled to include one.

TIP: Silhouettes are a classic photographic technique. Keep it interesting by placing the silhouetted subject off center or in a smaller part of the frame.

Words just can’t describe the enormity of the Salt Flats in Botswana, but if I were to try, it would be the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. Just walking out onto the flats makes one feel completely alone, in a most peaceful way.

TIP: Use negative space to create an artistic view of what you are photographing. In this photo, the vehicles are very small and the sky dominates the scene, giving a sense of the salt flat’s vast expanse.

An Ancestral Gold Rush

noreply@blogger.com (Edith McClintock) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Addiction came on fast and strong this week. It started with the arrival on Saturday of my great uncle John S. McClintock’s 1939 book, Pioneer Days in the Black Hills. I’d known vaguely of his history: he’d joined the gold rush of 1876 in the South Dakota Black Hills, settled in Deadwood, and run a stagecoach line for twenty-five years.

But I didn’t know my uncle wrote a book until last month, or that my mom had an original copy. She mailed it to me and I dug in immediately, indulging in his first-hand tales of Wild Bill Hickok (“a man killer”) and Calamity Jane (drunk, kind, and wildly untruthful), stage-coach holdups, Indian scalpings (yes, bad, I know), gold mining, land grabs, confidence games, and corrupt and immoral city leaders. Pretty much what you’d expect of Deadwood in the late 1800s.

The book was fun, but it also stirred my appetite, which is where the trouble began. On Sunday morning, I logged onto Ancestry.com for a 14-day free trial, and have barely come up for air in days. I’d tried Ancestry.com about five years ago and found it a hard slog. But since then, my relatives have been quite industrious (as befits our Puritan heritage), starting with my Uncle Wayne who was kind enough to trace the McClintock line back to another John McClintock who arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, on back to Northern Ireland in the 1600s, then Scotland in the 1500s, where that line stops. For now.

The McClintocks, however, became irrelevant when I hit my own gold vein of sorts, this one spewing King Roberts of Scotland. I was so swamped with earls and kings and princesses, my arrogance turned heady. Until it turned complicated. Contested, in fact. My Virginia Alexanders were usurpers, fraudsters possibly, despite being American pre-revolutionary "aristocracy". George Washington was not enough for them. They wanted a king of Scotland. Or five. An emperor. Charlemagne himself. Embarrassed, I deleted the line.

Charlemagne, aka Charles the Great,
King of the Franks, Imperator Augustus,
and Holy Roman Emperor

But I didn’t like Charlemagne being ripped from my blood. My DNA screamed in protest. Plus, I’d notified my sister of our exalted status and she was already dialing Duchess Catherine to schedule drinks at Buckingham Palace. There had to be a way back to the crème de la 1% of history. In my denial, I went so far as to read the source material, to see if those naysayers (aka Wikipedia) could possibly be wrong. Instead it grew worse - my connection to the exalted Virginia Alexanders disappeared completely.

Could it be that my ancestor George Alexander was important for nothing more than accusing poor Mary Randall of witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1691? Was that what my illustrious heritage had come to? Not even a Salem witch trial? Mary didn’t even get staked, just spent some time in jail, although I did get excited at the thought of a cursed bloodline. I decided if I couldn’t have a European emperor, it would have to be Jamestown or the Mayflower. American royalty. I had standards now, and I’d find those ancestors.

And so I set upon my quest to trace every direct line of my family (excluding my probably peasant relatives that hadn’t yet been documented by distant cousins and would involve actual research work). Line after line, branch upon branch, I crawled back with a click of my mouse, finding founding fathers of Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and even North Carolina (and yes, a few slave owners, sorry).

But it wasn’t until the bottom of my tree, the family of my maternal great-grandmother – the Parks of Farmington, Missouri – that I hit a new vein. It spread across Virginia: Puritans, Jamestown settlers, a colonial governor, a founder of the Virginia Company. A veritable panoply of Revolutionary Patriots (as I will henceforth refer to my family). But even better, a connection to the House of Plantagenet and all those King Henry’s of England though the Waller family who arrived with William the Conqueror and fought at the Battle of Hastings. Not fool’s gold this time. I’m quite sure. Charlemagne all the way.

So there you have it. My golden heritage. The hardest part will be deciding what coat of arms to nail above my bed. And if it’s all wrong, blame my fifth cousins thrice removed for their poor research and ancestral avarice, because they did all of the work. And although I’m not done, I have to stop. I have to stop. I will stop. Before I find out none of it’s true.

For my Uncle Wayne, who passed away recently. He had the fever.

Supriya's Post....

noreply@blogger.com (Supriya Savkoor) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:50:00 +0000

.... will run on Saturday this week.

Happy Wednesday!