On The Street: Santa Con 2008 - 5,000 Santas in New York. Is China next?

Taisy was there - on the steps of the General Post office and all around mid-town.  With 5,000 other Santas, red, green, and all celebrating what the Chinese call 圣诞节Shengdan Jie.  In fact, since every waitress and grocery clerk in China sports a Santa cap like at this IGA in Wuhan, I think this silly celebration will soon flourish in China - where they can REALLY put together a crowd. 

Bill Cunningham was there too in Manhattan - with his usual wonderful photography.  So here it is- Bill Cunningham's audio slide show: SantaCon(vention) in New York.

Southbound 650 - Macchu Picchu - Cusco

  

It's irresistible to be light-heartedly cynical "why ride that far on a motorcycle for chrissakes to see a goat and some old ruins".  But mountains do inspire.  I remember babbling in the shadow of Denali as it loomed like a diamond ring in the distance while fishing the Lake Creek River in Alaska.

Pablo Neruda too, a far better babbler, got carried away in Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu:

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.

For more great shots go to Southbound 650

and p.s - Pascale reports the latest ultrasound shows the nascent rider is doing well. 

- gwc

p.p.s. - it has been pointed out to me that the quadriped is a llama.  Well, you know what they say about ducks. - gwc

The Furious Fifties - boat breaking seas and storms

The thrill of 400 nm plus days isn't an answer to why you would risk or endure 50 knot winds, confused 7 meter seas, icebergs too big to be called "growlers", and condensation dripping from every surface.

The cruel boat-breaking seas of the southern ocean have wreaked havoc 36 days out. 19/26 starteers are still racing.  Recent retirees: Dominique Wavre (keel swinging free under the boat taking shelter (3,300 miles south of Capetown)at  Kerguelen (Desolation) Island, Bernard Stamm (aground in 50 kts. in the same miserable cove where he stopped for rudder repairs), Mike Golding (race leader dismasted 950 miles SW of Perth).   And Michel Desjoyeaux surges into the lead with 20 kts boat speed.

The tales are amazing.  Check out:

The location

The Photos

News of a typical day (chaos & disorder)

Mike Golding on the dismasting  (audio)

Saturday's Video Roundup

Ushuaia on the rocks

South - still dangerous.  I know enough to know that Antarctic tourists don't know what they don't know.  I know because I've capsized in a 60 mph summer squall off Kings Point.  I know that I can't imagine a 103 kt. hurricane in the waters of Wilhelmina Bay on the outer end of the Antarctica Peninsula.  And I know from hard grounding a chartered J-24 25 years ago that even in  the Penobscot Bay not every rock is on the chart.  

The 80 passengers on the cruise ship Ushuaia, on the rocks there, waiting for rescue by the Chilean Navy, know about the 103 kt. storm now as their ship lies impaled on the rocks with a hole in the hull, as this blog post explains.

I want to take photographs too with the steely grays of Frank Hurley, two of whose images -  from original negatives - are on my wall, relics of Ernest Shackleton's doomed Endurance.  I want to tie up to an ice floe like National Geographic Explorer's Endeavor does there regularly.

But I have come to the conclusion that we should not do Antarctic tourism - not unless you are really ready to take your chances in a lifeboat, or have what you need to spend a week on an ice floe, or camp out on an iceberg or an icy rocky shore without shelter beyond what you have on your back or your raft.  

Chris Matthews for U.S.Senate

Chris Matthews for U.S. Senate - challenging Arlen Specter?  I'm for it.  Here's my take on my HC classmate, posted on Politico.com in the Agenda feature:

George Conk (guest), law teacher/lawyer, NY:

I have known Chris since freshman year at Holy Cross when his voice, in the next room, rose loud over all others, after mandatory 11 PM lights out in our monastic dorms. And it was politics that he breathed. He knows how the Congress works. He was spokesman for Tip O'Neill when everyone else was prostrate before Gramm-Rudman and the Reagan Juggernaut. With a solid Democratic majority and a presidency beginning with an iconic sheen Chris's iconoclasm and humor is needed - in a place where every other member looks in the mirror and sees a president. Chris knows he's not going THAT far.

Bombay Burning

After  graduation [from Holy Cross (me) and Bucknell (Margo)] we got married during Peace Corps training and headed off for two years in Maharashtra - 1967-1969. We lived in Vasai (Bassein) 50 km from downtown Bombay.  An old Portuguese fort now in ruins once housed a Jesuit Colegio, and in its shadow was Sao Pedru Church, which served the Catholic fishermen with whom I worked the first year.

40 years ago we may have spent Thanksgiving  weekend (as we did many) at the Salvation Army Red Shield hostel down the block from the Taj (now seen in flames).  Got suits tailor-made  there that I quickly “outgrew” on return to American diet.  Took  the electric train from Bassein Rd. to VT (Victoria Terminus) - now the scene of gunmen with AK 47's randomly shooting down passengers, vehicles burning out front.

What  went wrong?

As Margo reminded me in an email the other night - when we were there the partition bloodshed was 20 years in the past.  The U.S., with urban riots, the ML King and RF Kennedy assassinations, was a cauldron.  And the Vietnam War of comfortably hazy memory ground on through the heavy killing years that  yielded Khe Sanh, carpet bombing,  My Lai, Tet, and Hue.

Attention now will go to the Muslim gunmen who targeted civilians - India’s 9/11.  This may have been the outgrowth of Kashmiri Muslim nationalism as it appears.  But the consequences may be gravest for India’s Muslims - an often persecuted minority.  

The “communal disturbances” - coverage of which is banned in the Indian press - usually take the form of Hindu nationalist  pogroms.  I remember a village about 20 miles from us where a Hindu mob surrounded the Muslim section and tossed torches onto the thatched roofs, burning out an entire neighborhood and trapping an unknown number in their flaming huts.

Such pogroms are not ancient history. There was a systematic assault in 2000 in Surat, Gujarat about 40 miles north of us.  Here is a report.  

The Shiv Sena - the Maratha nationalist party - was in its early stages - inveighing against South Indians who thrived in the Bombay financial district now assaulted.  They broadened their base by moving from Maratha nationalism to Hindu nationalism.

For the first time I am really worried about the future of India.

Krugman - what do you mean by "we"

Paul Krugman

Lest We Forget

Published: November 28, 2008 NY Times

"The story of how we failed to see this coming has a clear policy implication — that financial market reform should be pressed quickly, and that it should not wait until the crisis is resolved"

More than any other prominent commentator, Krugman, who will soon accept the Nobel Prize for Economics, has the right to say he saw it coming and that it would be a deep crisis when the housing bubble burst.  In today's column he finally says `I told you so': "what do you mean when you say `we', whiteman?" he said a few months back to a room full of  economists, etc.  Here it is.

When the Nobel Committee announced the award back in October I posted kudos on the nyTimes.com site - HERE.

50 knots - under sail

Not So Fast: Kiteboarding Dispute Sinks Sailing Record

By CHRIS MUSELER

Published: November 27, 2008 - New York Times

The World Sailing Speed Record Council belatedly decided to dismiss the mark set by Sebastian Cattelan in Namibia because he broke the 50-knot barrier on a kiteboard.  Here's the video.  The headline above gives you the NY Times story.

The Gates Pick

In a TPM post on the Gates pick.  I support it.  He was plucked from the Iraq Study Group, which called it straight - as this NY Times  archive piece shows.

Late to the party

I was late to the Obama party.  I feared a weak candidate - thin resume, the Rev. Wright problems, feared the war hero's appeal, etc.  So I didn't exult in the big crowds, the youthful followings, etc. that were the first stirrings since 1968 that felt and looked like a genuine popular mass movement.  

The Boston Globe has put together a photo essay that cures that problem.  It is photo-hagiography at its best.  Huge crowds, closeups of the candidate, private moments, casual moments, joyful, hopeful, adulatory faces, a youthful candidate in full stride on the basketball court (didn't do John Kerry any good to scrimmage on the ice with the Bruins. Oh well.  Spilt milk, etc.)