Maoist Orange Cake: Death in Tashkent

Monday, September 17, 2007

Death in Tashkent

Mark Weil was murdered a week ago, and no one knows why. I spotted the story on the front page of the Post-Intelligencer, and it seemed to connect, in random fashion, to me and my interests: theatre, Central Asia, and Seattle.

Some thirty years ago, Mark Weil, a Jewish Uzbek, founded the Ilkhom Theatre in Tashkent, in what was then the Uzbek S.S.R. Directing an independent theatre in the old Soviet Union was crazy enough, but doing it in Uzbekistan—just as dictatorial and with Islamic radicals to boot—takes someone insanely courageous. Neither polity has been known for welcoming independent, thought-provoking, Western-style theatre. Yet Ilkhom Theatre has flourished and become internationally known, staging productions around the world.

An article on Eurasianet.org reports:

“The Ilkhom Theater was famous for staging plays that explored controversial social and political topics. Among the company’s most sensitive productions in recent years was one titled White White Black Stork. The play explored homosexuality in a Muslim society, specifically examining the relationship of two students in a madrassa, or religious school. It also featured dialogue that was critical of conservative traditions”

The two men who stabbed Weil and clubbed him with a bottle on the doorstep of his apartment building on September 7 are still uncaptured, and their motives are unknown. Speculation ranges from politics to anti-Semitism to crazed druggies. But there’s no question artists and intellectuals in Uzbekistan are scared.

Mr. Weil’s last words were reportedly “I open new season tomorrow and everything must happen…” The new season at the Ilkhom started on schedule, despite the murder, with the Oresteia of Aeschylus, a trilogy of plays about vengeance, bloodshed, and reconciliation by rule of law in a democracy.

And the Seattle connection? Weil has directed more than one play in Seattle (though I don’t think I ever saw one), and his wife and daughters live here. His older daughter graduated from the University of Washington in 1999, and the younger sings and plays piano with a band. Oh, and Taskent is a sister city of Seattle. Seattle sorrows with her sister.

http://www.ilkhom.com/English
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight

11 comments:

shadocat said...: Jana,

I've heard that Uzbekastan (forgive me if I misspelled) has had a problem with muslim fundementalist groups---do you think his death has anything to do with that?; Monday, September 17, 2007 6:34:00 PM
Jana C.H. said...: Shado-- From the little I've read, that seems a likely possibility. He was Westernized, Jewish, and did plays on subjects that fundamentalists of most persuasions want to keep quiet about.

I've read that the Uzbek government is blaming it on drug addicts, though no money was taken. I suppose the idea is that drug addicts are so crazed that they would be likely to murder a famous theatre director spontaneously, at random, when they just happened to be in the entryway of his apartment building.

I trolled the internet before writing the article, but found little beyond what was in the original story in the P-I. I'm going to keep an eye on it.

Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith WSG: The man who can rule a theatrical crew, each member a genius and some of them two...; Monday, September 17, 2007 7:14:00 PM
shadocat said...: Yeah, drug addicts. right...

I get the New York Times online, and I read their article on Mark Weil. Is it true that the Taliban or Taliban like organizations are active in Uzbeikestan? (btw, that didn't come from the times article--just heard about it on NPR). That would certainly jibe with any uproar in the country over Weil's work and homosexual themes, etc.; Monday, September 17, 2007 8:01:00 PM
Josiah Rowe said...: It's frankly amazing that Weil was able to produce socially challenging plays in Uzbekistan at all. Opposition parties and independent media are banned by the Uzbek government. It's true that there's a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism there, but it's fueled by the repression of the Uzbek government. The citizens of Uzbekistan are being squeezed between two opposing totalitarian ideologies: on the one hand, a post-Communist nationalism/statism, complete with cult of personality surrounding the leader (Islam Karimov) and on the other, Taliban-style Islamic extremists. Each side uses the other to justify its horrific actions.

Of course, the Bushies have considered Uzbekistan a "valuable ally in the war on terror" since 2001, when they allowed us to use an Uzbek airbase as a staging ground for the invasion of Afghanistan. In exchange, the US turned a blind eye to horrific human rights abuses, such as political prisoners being boiled to death, and provided military training for the Uzbek security services. They proceeded to use that training to massacre hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilian protesters.

In this environment, it's hard to say whether Weil was targeted by Islamicists or government agents. The only thing that you can say with any certainty is that the chances of the murderers being "drug addicts" with no political, social or religious motive is very slim.; Monday, September 17, 2007 11:19:00 PM
Maggie Jochild said...: Last night I went to Wikipedia and read reams about Tashkent and Uzbekistan, then pored over maps. It's appalling to me how much I don't know about some places in the world.

Theoretically, I elect leaders who are knowledgeble about the rest of the world (though not at present) and acting on principles of freedom and generosity (see above), but that doesn't feel like enough. I'm not arguing for tying votes to tests of current affairs, but the long history of invasion, occupation and bloodsucking in this region -- often assuredly with our consent, if not our direct involvement -- makes me want a different system.

How frightened the arts colleagues of Mark Weil must be.; Tuesday, September 18, 2007 7:33:00 PM
shadocat said...: Jana,

Can you tell me who "Karimov" and "Gulnara" are, and why they would want Mark Weil dead? (Heard a snippit of this on a radio program about Central Asia, but no explanation was given).; Wednesday, September 19, 2007 8:30:00 PM
Josiah Rowe said...: Shadocat, Karimov is Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan. Gulnara is his daughter Gulnara Karimova. Neither is a particularly savory character, but I don't know specifically why either would have targeted Weil.; Thursday, September 20, 2007 10:23:00 PM
Jana C.H. said...: Islam Karimov is the president of Uzbekistan and he maintains a considerable cult of personality. In the old days the rulers in Moscow might miss what was going on in far-off Tashkent, but Karimov is right there keeping an eye on things. Craig Murry wrote, in an obituary of Weil: “Earlier this year, I investigated many murderous assaults on Russian journalists. In each case, they were ambushed on return home from work -- the standard method of the security services. Weil’s killing precisely fits the pattern.” So government involvement in the murder looks likely. I recommend reading the whole obit.

Gulnara Karimova is his daughter, who controls huge chunks of Uzbekistan’s entertainment industry, and that means prostitutes. Prostitution was not common in Uzbekistan before the break-up of the Soviet Union. With her former husband she not only greatly enlarged prostitution at home, she arranged for tens of thousand of Uzbek women to be sent to the United Arab Emirates to work as prostitutes. She’s also generally as corrupt as hell. Gulnara’s top aide has been quoted as saying: “I have come to the conclusion that Gulnara likes money too much without caring about how and where it is made…she is a greedy, jealous, selfish and revengeful woman.” I found all this out from one article, Take a look for more info (link below), but prepare to be outraged.

Neither father nor daughter seems like the type who would enjoy cutting-edge theatre.

Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Theognis: If you should overthrow, by any means, a tyrant who devours the people, no vengeance from the gods will fall on you.

Graig Murraya Obit: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/2dd19dc75569c0ae/74960f39579f9989
Article on Gulnara:
http://www.despardes.com/newsmakers/GULNARA-NOV30; Friday, September 21, 2007 11:12:00 AM
Josiah Rowe said...: The URL for the Gulnara story at DesPardes is incomplete: this link should work, though.

Pretty horrific stuff. It's no wonder that in an environment like that extreme Islamic fundamentalism starts to look like an appealing option to some people. Which means that Uzbek women get to choose between being sold into prostitution or locked up as slaves in their husbands' houses. Great. :/; Friday, September 21, 2007 1:00:00 PM
Jana C.H. said...: Be sure to check out the main body of the post again. I've added a map of Uzbekistan.

JcH; Saturday, September 22, 2007 11:56:00 AM
shadocat said...: I read the link, and wow, that Gulnara is a piece of work! It's amazing to me how little coverage there is of all this in the western media...; Tuesday, September 25, 2007 6:34:00 PM

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The Flying Sasquatch by Jana C.H.

March 13, 2008

The eighteenth century pirate John Gow wasn’t much of a cutthroat. He and six comrades decided to kill their captain and officers so they could go a-pirating. They did such a bad job of throat-cutting that all the officers survived. At least they did until Gow had them shot and thrown overboard. Just as effective, but not as cinematic.

The generic term for the sort of reproduction done by a Xerox machine is “xerography,” from the Greek words for “dry” and “writing.” So-called because it uses dry toner instead of liquid ink. Xerography was developed by one Chester Carlson, native of Seattle.

Lord Sandwich, inventor of the comestible bearing his name, was infamous in 18th century Britain for his decadence. Along with endless gambling and orgiastic sex, he liked playing the drums in accompaniment to a men’s chorus singing Handel’s oratorios. Hal-le-ju-lah, and pass the BLT.

January 9, 2008

The calendar we use today is a modification of the Julian Calendar, instituted by Julius Caesar on January 1, 45 BCE. Most of the actual work was done by one Sosigenes, an astronomer and mathematician of Alexandria in Egypt. Should it be called the Sosigenean Calendar, then? No, any egghead can figure out a new calendar. The hard part is getting it universally accepted. For that you need Julius Caesar.

Dimitri Mendeleev, the Russian scientist who invented the periodic table of the elements, usually had his hair and beard cut once a year.

In rural Minnesota, near the towns of Corcoran and Medina, the Hamel Volunteer Fire Department is the proud possessor of a chainsaw sculpture of a fireman in full regalia. See it at http://www.hamelfire.org

Musical Edition December 21, 2007
A song for the season and the entire new year, by your friendly Sasquatch.

Impeachment Chorus
copyright 2007
lyrics by Jana C. Hollingsworth
music by George Freddie Handel

Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Cheney and Bush.
That’ll teach ’em. That’ll teach ’em.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s give ’em the push.

For the Republic stands in great danger,
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
That’ll teach ’em. That’ll teach ’em.
Not from a terrorist or a stranger.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
That’ll teach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.

Stop this unconstitutional tyrant.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
I can’t contain my fury or my rant.
Impeach them!

The Constitution stands-- Yes, it still stands--
The Constitution stands--
It’s in our hands, It’s in our hands.

For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.
For We the People govern forever.

Democrats--
Let’s impeach ’em.. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ’em..
Republicans--
Let’s impeach ‘em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ’em..

Socialists--
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ’em.
Cap’talists--
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ’em.

LiberALS--
We the People will impeach ’em.
We the People will impeach ’em.
ConservaTIVES--

LiberALS, ConservaTIVES.
For We the Peo-- For We the Peo-- For We the People
For We the People govern forever.
LiberALS, ConservaTIVES. LiberALS, ConservaTIVES.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
For We the People govern forever.
Impeach ’em! Impeach ’em!
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Let’s impeach ’em. Let’s impeach ’em.
Impeach them!

Note: “LiberALS” and “ConservaTIVES” should be pronounced as in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe.

Get together with a few dozen of your best friends, divide into four-part harmony, and sing along! Permission is given to perform the Impeachment Chorus for non-profit purposes. Just give me credit as author, and let me know you’ve done it.

Ailments Edition, in Honor of the Author's Four Broken Ribs (ouch!)
October 15, 2007

Bayer -- the aspirin-makers -- coined and trademarked the word "Heroin" in 1898.

The ancient Egyptians were the first known users of pills, described in a long medical papyrus of 1516 BCE. The doctors recommended washing down said pills with beer or wine. The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians preferred their medicines in liquid form, mixed with -- you guessed it -- beer or wine. If you were still sick afterwards, you no longer cared.

The 18th-century sage Samuel Johnson believed in ghosts. Well, maybe. He said: "There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth." What Johnson did not believe was that the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of St. Kilda all caught cold immediately after the first visit by strangers every spring. That was too preposterous. His pal, Boswell, thought the strangers might carry seeds of disease with them, but he deferred to his wiser companion, as usual.

Environmental Edition
October 15, 2007

The South Pacific tilts. It is usually about eighteen inches higher around Indonesia than it is off South America. During El Niño years, it tilts in the other direction.

State capitals in the U.S. get chosen for odd reasons. Washington Territory in 1853 picked Olympia, a small town at the bottom of Puget Sound, over the more important town of Vancouver on the Columbia River. Southern Puget Sound was the only place in the world one can find Olympia oysters, tiny mollusks said by oyster lovers to be the finest on earth. The Columbia has no such gastronomic delight. The capital went to the shellfish. Olympia oysters, along with salmon and Dungeness crab, are among the species now under threat from global warming.

One of the early European settlers on the south Pacific island of New Caledonia imported deer, supposedly as domestic animals. You know the rest of the story: they got loose, bred like crazy, became a nuisance. Then in the mid-20th century they were almost wiped out. American servicemen on leave liked to go deer hunting. For a few of them, the hunting weapon of choice was the machine gun.

The Flying Sasquatch is also available at: http://jana-ch.livejournal.com/

October 4, 2007

Al Gore knows how to hypnotize chickens. He recommends that while a hypnotized chicken can be used for a paperweight or a doorstop, it should not be used for a football.

Peter Freuchen, a Dane who lived in northern Greenland in the early 20th century, tells the following tale of a missionary foiled by scientific investigation: “During the fall the natives turned pagan again. They had been Christian for more than a year, and it had done them no good—the dogs had come down with distemper just the same. The Eskimos had even gone so far as to hang tiny crosses about the dogs’ necks, but it had not helped. Then a young woman remembered that once as a child she had cured a dog by binding pagan amulets around its neck. She was a cautious, clever girl, so she now fastened both a cross and a round piece of wood to several dogs’ necks, and the animals recovered. Then, by a scientific system of trial and elimination, she set about to determine which had been responsible for the cure. Half the remaining sick animals were treated with crosses, the rest with the wooden amulets. The dogs wearing the pagan wood recovered. Whereupon the natives returned to the ways of their forefathers, and doubtless remained satisfied until another problem arose.”

You wouldn’t think the Communist Party in Stalin’s Russia would come up with a popular song called “The March of Happy-Go-Lucky Guys.” But it did, in 1934.

The Flying Sasquatch is also available at: http://jana-ch.livejournal.com/

September 12, 2007

The Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620. The first slaves arrived in North America about that same year, in a Dutch ship that landed twenty Africans on the banks of the James River in Virginia.

More than ten percent of the biomass of animals in the Amazon rain forest consists of ants.

Take the first word in the Hebrew Bible, Brashith, which means “beginning,” apply a little Kabbalistic numerology, and you get 3910, supposedly the number of years between the Creation and the birth of Christ. That’s roughly two-thirds as long as the time James Ussher calculated in the early 1600s. You can’t fit an Ice Age into either one. Long before there was Darwin to get excited about, Bible literalists were slugging it out with geologists. They still are.

August 23, 2007

The Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo was reluctant to be baptized because to his mind Christianity required celibacy. “Lord, give me chastity,” he prayed, “but not yet.”

That famous line “The sun never sets on the British Empire” is a geographic statement, not a historical one, and should be understood literally, not metaphorically. It doesn’t mean that the British Empire will never come to an end. It means the British Empire is so large and so spread around the globe that it is always daytime somewhere in the British Empire. Literally, the sun never sets. And enough bits and pieces of the British Empire remain scattered about the planet that the statement is still true.

If you want to have a name that becomes famous, the best “sound” is a dactyl followed by a spondee: Dum-di-di dum-dum. Do you buy that? Edward Alexander Crowley, a student a Cambridge back in 1895, did. He dropped his first name and adopted the Gaelic version of his middle name. Aleister Crowley is no longer universally known, but he was certainly the most famous occultist of the twentieth century.

August 6, 2007

Skamania County, Washington, on the Lower Columbia River, was a hotbed of Sasquatch sightings in the Sixties and Seventies. So many people were hunting Bigfoot in the woods that on April 1, 1969, the county passed an ordinance making Sasquatch-shooting a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. The date of the ordinance was significant, I think, but it did have a serious purpose: people wandering around the forest shooting at anything that looks vaguely human are almost certain to shoot an actual human being sooner or later.

In 1983 there were 2034 museums in Albania. In 1950 there were seven.

If you’ve read any Greek mythology, you know that the island of Delos in the Aegean was famous in antiquity as the birthplace and holiest shrine of Apollo, god of Light and Truth. By the time the Roman Republic was building its empire, Delos was also famous as the largest wholesale slave market in the Mediterranean, moving ten thousand slaves a day under the gavel. Along with all those slaves were buyers, auctioneers, accountants, financiers, shippers, guards, sailors, scribes…. It’s not a big island, Delos. Not even medium-sized. Apollo must have felt a bit crowded.

Bastille Day July 14, 2007

Q: Where is “La France Antarctique?”
A: In Brazil. It was a French colony in the 1540s. It’s now known as Rio de Janeiro.

General Leclerc, one of the more successful French commanders in World War II, was famed for his independent ways. After the war he remarked that his best operations were precisely when he had not followed orders. De Gaulle replied that Leclerc had never disobeyed orders; he had merely carried out orders that hadn’t yet been given.

As Napoleon travelled around Europe, conquering as he went, he carried with him the works of Julius Caesar, whom he much admired. Caesar himself admired Alexander the Great. And Alexander, who went a-conquering with the works of Homer in hand, admired Achilles. Who says literature is irrelevant?

June 15, 2007

Just read about a woman who spent thirty years a principal playwright for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Doing what?

Will Rogers was born in Oklahoma when it was still the Indian Territory. His own statement on the matter was that he was born “halfway between Claremore and Oologah, before there was a town in either place,” but he claimed Claremore for convenience because “nobody but an Indian can pronounce Oologah.” (OO-la-gawh, according to the town history.) It is Oologah, however, that now proudly proclaims itself the birthplace of Will Rogers.

If you look closely at the blowhole of a blue whale, you’ll see it’s divided into two sections. Nostrils.

May 25, 2007

American politicians used to be a lot more religious than they are now, right? Wrong. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Rutherford B. Hayes had no religious affiliation. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were Unitarians, as were Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft. None of them could get elected President today.

In the 1830, the son of the Earl of Derby hired a young artist to come to the family estate to make scientific drawings of the birds and animals in his menagerie. As an employee, the artist naturally took his meals with the servants. After a while the Earl noticed that the children of the household, as soon as dinner was over, ran downstairs where the artist entertained them with nonsense rhymes and silly pictures. The Earl invited the young man upstairs to dine with the family, and from then on he was a guest, not an employee. The name of the young artist and rhymester was Edward Lear.

Q. Where did we get the term “tall ship” for a large, multi-masted sailing vessel?
A. It was swiped from a line in a poem by John Masefield: “All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.” Masefield wrote in the early 20th century, when big sailing ships were well on the way out. Captain Kirk quotes the line in one of the original Star Trek episodes, which has probably done more to popularize it than anything else in the entire century.

May 7, 2007

The voice of Mickey Mouse is a male falsetto at the bottom of its range. A man speaks in falsetto but pushes it low enough that he’s almost breaking into a normal male voice, and that’s Mickey. This according to Ashraf Sewailam, an Egyptian opera singer who has dubbed Mickey Mouse into Arabic. Sewailam, a bass, says this has actually improved the upper range of his singing voice.

Does West Point still have an Art Department? A hundred years ago, according to historian Barbara Tuchman, a West Point cadet took “two years of drawing, which included topography and plotting of surveys, shades and shadows, linear perspective, theory of color and laying of tints, field reconnaissance contouring, history of cartography, engineering and ordnance drawing, freehand landscape, and enough more to equip a Leonardo.” Military tactics is applied geography, and for that you need maps.

According to the 2000 census, there were more than 31,000 black physicians and surgeons, 33,000 black lawyers and 5,000 black dentists in the U.S. Guess how many black athletes are playing professional basketball, football and baseball combined. About 1,400. In fact, there are more board-certified black cardiologists than there are black professional basketball players.

May Day May 1, 2007

The hippies of the 1960s were not the first radicals to call their children—and themselves—by exotic revolutionary names. There was quite a fad for it in the Soviet Union in the decade following the Revolution. Among the favorites were Elektron, Edison, Iskra (“Spark”, after an early Bolshevik newspaper), Kim (the Russian acronym for Communist Youth International), Vladlen (from Vladimir Lenin), and Ninel (read it backwards). There was not, however, a boom in Stalinka for girls or Joseph (Stalin’s first name) for boys. Even revolutionaries have their limits.

During the Chinese civil war of the 1930s, southern China was a hotbed of fighting Communists. After the famous Long March, however, these rebel Southerners ended up stationed in the far Northwest. Dialect and cuisine were not the only characteristics that distinguished Southerners from Northerners. The Southerners liked to bathe. When a Communist guerrilla visited the city of Xian after weeks in the wild, he would make a beeline for the public baths. Chiang Kai-shek’s Blue Shirts--the Kuomintang’s Gestapo--knew this, and kept an eye on the baths. Whenever they saw somebody really enjoying himself, he went on the list as a probable Communist from the south.

You’ve probably heard that pirates in the 17th century received money in compensation for losing a limb. A wounded pirate might also get a dollar a day while he was under a surgeon’s care, for up to sixty days. Injured pirates were compensated first, before the booty was divided among the crew as a whole. If there was nothing left for the crew, they had to go out and plunder some more. That’s what it means to have a good union.

Tax Day April 15, 2007

“If you are a worker poor enough to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit, your chance of being audited is one in 47. If you make over $100,000 a year, your chance of being audited is one in 145. This is not only unfair, but also stupid, on account of rich people who cheat on their taxes tend to owe a lot more money than poor people [who do].” So said the late lamented Molly Ivins, columnist from Texas.

A dollar in 2002 was equivalent to exactly six cents in 1913.

The Mayans used cocoa beans for money. The Arabs used coffee beans. In China and Central Asia, brick tea was used, but you had to be something of a geographer to use tea money. Tea bricks were stamped with their region of origin, and the value of the brick increased as it got further from home.

April Fools Day April 1, 2007

A man in Pennsylvania was in debt, and came up with the idea of framing his dog for arson, then collecting the insurance money on his house. First he singed the dog’s tail, then pushed a candle against a curtain, setting the house on fire. Didn’t work. He was charged with arson and cruelty to animals.

That early English king known as Ethelraed the Unready; in Old English he was called Ethelraed Unraed. “Raed” means counsel or advice-- “rede” we’d say now, if we were sufficiently old-fashioned. The name translates “Princely counsel, No counsel.” Ethelraed was not unready, but badly advised. Or maybe he didn’t listen to advice. Or gave lousy advice. Never mind. We all get the idea.

Q: What is “explornography”?
A: A term coined after the disastrous climbing season on Mount Everest in 1996, referring to a situation in which people with too much money and too little sense hire someone to take them where they have no business going.

March 23, 2007

Consider the plotline of the average romantic opera: They meet, they fall in love, they break up for some fairly stupid reason, then one or both die. Ever notice that if only one dies, it’s almost always the woman? Ask your local opera buff how many operas he can think of in which the man dies and the woman has sufficient strength of character to survive him. Start with Massenet’s Werther (say Vair-TAIR).

Another way in which Western Christianity is unique is in its regular swings between extreme permissiveness and extreme repression. The repressive periods usually coincide with religious revivals.

The experts say people nowadays come into contact with other people up to a thousand times more frequently than they did a hundred years ago. Mutual contact! Communication! Exchange of ideas! Wonderful stuff, right? Except when the experts in question are experts on infectious diseases. Lots of these supposedly new diseases aren’t really new; they’ve just never gotten far from home before.

Presidents Day Feb 19, 2007

Article VII in the treaty that ended the American Revolution stated that the British would return all escaped American slaves to their original owners or compensate the owners for the slaves’ value. The British, who had promised freedom to slaves who joined the loyalists, simply refused to honor Article VII, despite having signed the treaty. It drove George Washington and James Madison nuts. They claimed it was the principle of the thing. Congress was still bitching about it after the War of 1812, which generated a whole new batch of former slaves who were now British subjects.

For every U.S. public high school named after Jefferson Davis, there are eleven named after Abraham Lincoln.

Theodore Roosevelt once apologized to his children for his “quixotic fastidiousness” in not having made more money after his term as president. Said he: “I shrink to a degree greater than I can express from commercializing what I did as President or the reputation I have gained in public service.”

February 13, 2007

In St James Cemetery in Liverpool is a memorial to a certain Mr. Hutchinson, who passed the first bill in Parliament for a railroad to Manchester, and was killed when said first train ran over him.

Q: Why did American elementary and middle schools switch from football to soccer?
A: Lower insurance premiums.

Freya Stark was travelling without proper papers through a remote area of Persia (today’s Iran) in the 1930s carrying cameras and map-making tools. A Persian policeman suspected—correctly, as it turns out—that she was spying for the British, and demanded to see her permits. Thinking fast, Freya replied that she had been told that he himself was the ultimate authority in the region and she should ask permission of him. Flattered, he let her go without further questioning.

Jana’s Birthday Feb 5, 2007

Q: The first recorded modern election in which women voted was held in 1792. Where did it happen?
1. Canada
2. Revolutionary France
3. West Africa
4. Scotland
A: Black Americans who joined the British during the Revolution to escape slavery were settled by Britain in Sierra Leone, West Africa. They voted for their local representatives, one “tithingman” for every ten households; each head of household got one vote. About a third of the households were headed by women, mostly widows. And the women voted. Five years later the second British governor of the colony officially disenfranchised women, hoping it would subdue the lively black political scene. In the next election the first two white tithingmen were elected.

Alf Cheetham was his name, a British seaman of the early 20th century. He went to the Antarctic with Robert Scott in 1901, with Ernest Shackleton in 1907, Scott again in 1911, and with Shackleton on the Endurance in 1914. He was killed by a German torpedo in 1918.

Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel, whom we always pair as author and illustrator of the two Alice books, had an extremely rocky working relationship. Despite this, when Carroll began a sequel in 1865, he knew Tenniel was the only possible illustrator for Through the Looking Glass. But Tenniel, who had a perfectly good job as principal cartoonist for Punch magazine, refused to work with “that conceited old don” again. Before Tenniel eventually agreed to take the job, Carroll approached other artists, including a young fellow who wrote and illustrated funny poems for Punch’s rival magazine, Fun. His name? W.S. Gilbert. He had just begun a series of illustrated comic poems that would become known as the Bab Ballads. Years later he adapted many characters and stories from these poems for the comic operas he wrote in partnership with Arthur Sullivan. He’s now universally known not as an artist or even as a comic poet, but as half of G&S.

January 25, 2007

In 1952 author Nym Wales commented on abstract art: “A painter who prefers drawing colored cubes and circles to painting the female body is a borderline case of something or other.”

In the Arctic, baby seals are white-furred. In the Antarctic, they are dark. Why? Polar bears. Antarctica doesn’t have ’em.

Q: What is the oldest surviving printed book? One of Gutenberg’s Bibles? A: Not the Bible, but the Diamond Sutra, a book of Buddhist scriptures, produced in 838 CE. It was found in the Mogao Caves in Central Asia by explorer Aurel Stein in the early 20th century, and now resides in the British Museum. The Mogao Caves also contain the fifth-largest statue of the Buddha in the world. Third-largest now.

January 16, 2007

Cato the Elder, stern old moralist of ancient Rome, said, “it’s a hard matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears.” Meaning: don’t try to talk economic theory with starving people. First feed them, then talk.

Old John Calvin--a hard-core Christian if there ever was one--considered the account of the Creation in Genesis to be balbative. That’s a fancy term for baby talk. He wasn’t being insulting or atheistic. He meant it was a simple, vivid story for uneducated people who would become confused and possibly lose faith if they tried to deal directly with something so complex and mysterious.

Everyone’s heard about the Long March of the Chinese Communists, who walked six thousand miles through China and Tibet to escape Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. In 2003, a couple of Westerners who worked for the China Daily newspaper walked the entire route themselves in 384 days. They said it was only about thirty-seven hundred miles.

January 6, 2007

I wonder how many private pilots still use IFR navigation. That’s “I Follow Railroads.” They’re easy to spot, easy to follow, and always take the lowest route through mountains.

Interest in ancient Greek texts was popping out all over when Cyriacus de’Pizziolli, a rich import-export man in Renaissance Italy, took a couple of long business trips to the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1430s and ‘40s. He hit most of antiquity’s high spots searching for the Wisdom of the Ancients--nothing unusual about that. What made Cyriacus different from other Renaissance Men was that, instead of searching exclusively for books, he had a radical notion that inscriptions on buildings--indeed, the buildings themselves--could teach a lot about the ancient world. His Commentary on Ancient Things, of which only fragments survive, is considered a founding text in the field of archeology.

“It’s not the face that we recognize,” says artist Gary Faigin, “it’s the head.” The over-all shape of the head and hair in combination is what we usually go by to identify people. First thing to do if you want to disguise yourself is change your hairline.

Winter Solstice Dec 21, 2006

That phrase Ultima Thule, meaning the farthest north, was first used in Virgil’s Georgics.

Arctic traveller Peter Freuchen quotes an Eskimo (Inuk) on the subject of sharing and gratitude: “Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. If I get something today, you may get it tomorrow. Some men never kill anything because they are seldom lucky or they may not be able to run or row as fast as others. Therefore they would feel unhappy to have to be thankful to their fellows all the time. And it would not be fun for the big hunter to feel that other men were constantly humbled by him. Then his pleasure would die. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves, and by whips one makes dogs.”

“A meal eaten alone and in silence is no pleasure.” So said Admiral Richard E. Byrd, after spending four months alone in a cabin in the Antarctic. Any bachelor or single woman will tell you the same.

December 8, 2006

Q: Among opera buffs, what is meant by GWOS and SWOG operas?
A: Gilbert without Sullivan; Sullivan without Gilbert.

The name Pamela was made up by Sir Philip Sidney in his pastoral romance Arcadia in 1580. The story was set in ancient Greece and “Pamela” was perhaps inspired by “Philomela,” an actual Greek name from mythology. The name lay dormant for 150 years until, in 1740, Samuel Richardson adopted it for the title character of his fantastically popular novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. That’s when parents started naming their daughters Pamela.

Said Aleister Crowley, the occultist: “I once went from Louisville to Detroit on a train called the Big Four, car number four, berth number four. It started at 4:44 pm from platform number four, and my ticket was numbered 44444. Meant nothing. Why should it be otherwise?” Crowley was big on numerology, but unlike so many numerologists he understood that sometimes a number is just a number.

November 28, 2006

Grandma Moses started painting when her arthritis got so bad she could no longer embroider.

In the 1770s, an Italian named Luigi Galvani happened to notice that the amputated leg of a frog hung with a brass hook from an iron trellis twitched during a lightning storm. What Luigi was doing with frogs’ legs hanging from his trellis nobody seems to know, but it is from his name that we get the word “galvanize.”

Saith Siddartha Gautama, aka the Buddha: Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations. Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it. Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you. Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters or priests. After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.

Veterans Day Nov 11, 2006

Shrapnel has been a regular part of war for as long as there have been cannons, right? Wrong. The shrapnel shell-- a hollow sphere filled with shot and fired by a time fuse-- was invented by Henry Shrapnel of Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, England, in the late 1700s. He spent his private fortune developing it. Henry’s invention became Wellington’s secret weapon against Napoleon. One of the Duke’s artillery officers went so far as to say that the Battle of Waterloo might well have gone the other way without Mr. Shrapnel’s hollow sphere. Other nations started using shrapnel shells in 1834, a couple of decades later.

General Joseph Stilwell, who would command in China during World War II, was an infantry officer. As a new lieutenant in 1905, he prepared for an exercise by lining up his men in a trench and arming them with bed sheets. The Cavalry charged at full gallop. The Infantry stood up and waved their sheets. That was the end of the Cavalry. Stilwell didn’t have much use for horses.

During his conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar was annoyed at repeatedly having to crush German raiders from the far side of the Rhine, where he had no intention of conquering. Instead, he decided to impress them with modern technology. He set his legions to work building a bridge across the Rhine at a point where it was 400 yards wide and up to 36 feet deep. It took ten days, total. The Germans-- not to mention the Gauls-- were impressed. One aspect of the business that no one seemed to notice was the great efficiency of free men working for a common purpose over slave labor. Not even Caesar could have gotten slaves to build a bridge across the Rhine in ten days.

Election Day Nov 7, 2006

In the Roman Republic, the tradition was that respectable women should be mentioned in public as little as possible. No eulogies were given at their funerals, for example. But politics trumps tradition every time. When young Julius Caesar was starting his political career, he was going to have to leave the city for a year to serve as quaestor in Spain, and wanted to be sure he wasn’t forgotten in his absence. Then his Aunt Julia died, and he delivered a eulogy for her in which he made his own political principles abundantly clear. When his wife died a few months later, Caesar eulogized her as well, for the same purpose. Plutarch reports is that the latter speech was particularly moving, and many people became “fond of him as a man who was gentle and full of feeling.” Not characteristics one generally associates with the Divine J.

The first black man to settle in the Washington Territory was one George W. Bush of the town of Tumwater at the south end of Puget Sound. In 1845, it was. The place he homesteaded is still known as Bush Prairie.

In the classless Soviet Union of the 1930s, one point of status was the make of one’s car. Lincolns and Buicks were high-class cars, Fords were low. The government tried to limit private car ownership; there were hardly any legal ways to get a car except as a reward for outstanding accomplishment. Service and parts could be acquired only through the garage of some official institution. No wonder we Americans opposed those guys!

Don’t forget to vote!

Hallowe'en October 31, 2006

The Brokenberg, a mountain in eastern Germany, is, according to legend, the site of wild witches’ revels. That “legend” goes back to the late 18th century when Goethe used the mountain for the setting of the Walpurgisnacht scene in Faust. Before that, the mountain had had no association with witchcraft at all.

The 18th-century sage Samuel Johnson believed in ghosts. Well, maybe. He said: “There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth.” What Johnson did not believe was that the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of St. Kilda all caught cold immediately after the first visit by strangers every spring. That was just too preposterous. His pal, Boswell, thought the strangers might carry seeds of disease with them, but he deferred to his wiser companion, as usual.

Life was pretty grim in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, so the party leadership tried to cheer things up with festivals. In 1935 in the mining town of Gorlovka, a costume ball was advertised in which “costumes must answer the following purposes: the old and new work norms, the Italian-Abyssinian war, Japanese-German friendship, and victims of capitalism.” I think I’ll go as a victim of capitalism. I can wear my work clothes.

October 26, 2006

“It is one of the unfortunate peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, that the only species of excitement which really seems to suit it, must be attended with some degree of danger or discomfort; so that it ever affords an Englishman unspeakable gratification to be engaged in some adventure which is likely to result in what he terms ‘a scrape.’” Thus did Laurence Oliphant, intrepid Victorian traveller, explain why he felt compelled, during his travels in Russia less than a year before the outbreak of the Crimean War, to visit the Russian naval base at Sebastopol, which was strictly off-limits of foreigners.

All assassins and would-be assassins of U.S. presidents, except one, used handguns. The exception is Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot John Kennedy with a rifle.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the big-name feminists of the 19th century, up there with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, and wrote a major book on the oppression of women by organized religion. She was also the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz and the series of Oz books. Ever notice that all the most powerful and important individuals in Baum’s Oz are female? Glinda, Ozma, various witches.

October 20, 2006

The Fire Department in Washington DC has a fireboat named the John Glenn Jr.

Ask the artist in your social circle about the “self-portrait frown.” Those in the know say that in any self-portrait you can see at least a hint of a frown. You frown when you’re trying to overcome obstacles, and painting a portrait is hard work that requires concentration. Hence, the frown.

In the 1st century BCE, the Roman Republic was busy conquering and looting Greece, and Rome was flooded with incredible antique sculptures and paintings. Started a craze for modern art as well. A certain Greek painter from Asia Minor had a long waiting list of respectable (and rich) Roman matrons who wanted their portraits done. Why so popular? Because no respectable Roman matron would dream of posing for a male painter. Iaia cashed in big, she did.

October 7, 2006

In antiquity Aesop’s Fables were seen as jokes, not moral tales. The “morals” were added many years later by compilers who wanted to make it easy for an orator who needed a joke to punch up a speech to skim through and find something relevant.

You can’t be too athletic or too thin, right? Not when it comes to nerve diseases such as Lou Gehrig’s disease. People who’ve been thin all their lives are 1.7 times more likely to get such diseases than the pleasingly plump, and varsity athletes are 2.21 times more likely. This is according to a bunch of science nerds at Columbia University. Take that, jocks!

Another distinction of Alaska is that its citizens receive more federal money per capita than those of any other state. In 2001 the feds spent $10,214 on every ornery, independent, government-hating man, woman, and child in Alaska. The U.S. average was $6,268 per person.

September 28, 2006

You don’t believe that the genetic difference between chimps and humans is only a few percent? Consider Emily Hahn’s report of the technique she adopted to make sure her pet chimpanzee ate chimp food, not people food: “I wrapped her food carefully, with furtive looks over the shoulder, and carried it to the cupboard and made a great show of hiding it. Chimpo would rush over and snatch it out of my hand. Then she would gallop out-of-doors, chortling, while I chased her and shouted. I felt it obligatory to chase her. With the prize clutched in one foot, she would climb her favorite tree, perch on a branch just out of reach, and eat the food as fast as she could stuff it in, watching with satisfaction as I yelled and shook my fist.”

“The thing that turns line drawings into cartoons is funny noses.” So saith artist and art teacher Gary Faigin of Seattle.

The Great Explorers of Africa always had native guides who knew their way around the “unexplored” territory. Some guides made a career of it. Seedy Moobarik Bombay, a former slave, guided Sir Richard Burton in 1857, John Hanning Speke in 1860, Henry Morton Stanley in 1871, and Verney Lovett Cameron in 1876. By the way, “Seedy” was not an adjective, but an alternate spelling of the title “Sidi”, which means “Sir”.

September 22, 2006

You remember the Battle of Salamis, that great sea-battle of 480 BCE in which the Greeks whupped the Persians? Of course you do. Naturally you also remember Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three great tragic dramatists of the golden age of Athens. Well, Greek tradition says that Euripides was born on the day of the battle, Æschylus fought in it, and Sophocles, then sixteen years old, took part in the official celebration of the victory. In that same year, Pericles was also sixteen; the poet Pindar was 38; the historian-to-be Herodotus, who would write the history of the Persian war, was five, Confucius was 71 and had a year to live, and the Buddha had been dead for three years. Who gets your vote for Man of the Year?

Most people know that the word “robot” was coined by Czech science fiction writer Karel Capek (pronounced CHOP-ek) in his play R.U.R. Fewer are aware that the word “robotics,” meaning the study of robots, was coined by American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov himself didn’t realize he was creating a new term; he figured that was what the science of robots would naturally be called.

How do you tell an opera buff from a normal person? Ask him the name of the wife of the Moor of Venice. If he says “Des-de-MO-na,” he’s thinking of Shakespeare and is normal. If he says “Des-DAY-mo-na,” he’s thinking of Verdi and is an opera fan. This rule, of course, does not apply to Italians.

September 13, 2006

Charles Lindbergh’s lucky mascot on his flight across the Atlantic was Felix the Cat.

Saith Kierkegaard: “The less support an idea has, the more fervently it must be believed. A totally preposterous idea requires absolute unflinching faith.”

What was the biggest difference between that old Bolshevik Lenin and his rival successors, Stalin and Trotsky? Lenin was known, on occasion, to admit to having made mistakes. Not so with Joe and Leon. That’s according to Hannah Arendt, expert on totalitarianism.

August 28, 2006

Don’t always trust the quotations books. That’s where the phrase “under God” sneaked into Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Honest Abe didn’t say it.

Engineer’s Epitaph: Spite of the world, the flesh, the Devil, / He strove to keep his spirit level.

Q: How often is stoning to death as a punishment mentioned in Islam’s holy book the Quran?
A: Never. Not once. It is frequently prescribed in the Bible. Check out Deuteronomy for an eye-opener. It’s a good thing U.S. law is not based on the Bible as some believe. English common law—the ultimate root of our legal system—says nothing about stoning to death either. All American adulterers can now relax.

August 23, 2006

The sound bite is nothing new. Said the ever-perceptive Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, “A proposition must be plain to be adapted to the understanding of a people. A false notion that is clear and precise will always have more power in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved. “

One of the skills of Julius Caesar that his contemporaries found astonishing is that he read silently, without even moving his lips. Nobody did that in antiquity. Gaius Julius was truly a multi-talented individual.

The English in the mid-19th century did not use lemon in their tea. At least, when Englishman Laurence Oliphant travelled in Russia in 1852, he reported with surprise that Russians serve tea with a slice of lemon instead of milk. He said he got to like it better that way.

August 20, 2006

What did people do to amuse themselves before television? Well, in the town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, in January of 1891, the Baptists held a competition to see who could hold the best conversation, the Presbyterians played a type of animal Pictionary, and those wild and crazy Episcopalians went in for music, cards, and dancing. That’s according to Katharine Rogers, biographer of L. Frank Baum. No, she wasn’t there.

W.C. Fields’s tombstone really does read, “Actually, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. “ Where is he buried? In Philadelphia. Where else?

From 1768 to 1771 Captain James Cook explored the Pacific in the Endeavour, a cramped, stubby, unattractive vessel of a type known as a Whitby cat. In 1992 another vessel named Endeavor, also rather cramped and stubby, departed from Cape Canaveral to circle the Earth 141 times. The Space Shuttle Endeavor took about as long to cross the Pacific as it took Cook’s Endeavour to weigh anchor.

The Maoist Orange Cake Recipe

(Courtesy of LondonBoy)
This works by starting with a simple cake, already moist because of the almonds instead of flour, and then makes it moister by adding moisture (in the form of a fruit syrup) after cooking. The one drawback is that you have to make it the day before you want it.

Cake Ingredients
1.5 oz breadcrumbs (a bit stale is good, or dry the bread slightly)

3.5 oz ground almonds

7 oz caster sugar

1.5 tsp baking powder

4 eggs

7 fl oz sunflower oil (or, if you’re rich, 1 fl oz almond oil and 6 fl oz sunflower oil)

Zest of 1 large orange

Zest of 0.5 standard/large lemon

Syrup Ingredients
Juice of 1 large orange

Juice of 0.5 standard/large lemon

3 oz caster sugar

2 cloves

1 cinnamon stick (optionally, 1-2 stars of star anise, if you like the taste, and a dash of orangeflower water)

Directions:

First, invoke the goddess Rotunda, because she’ll surely be visiting you soon.

Mix the dry ingredients, beat in the oil and eggs, and then add the zest. Put the batter in a pre-oiled 8 inch cake tin. Put into a cold oven (not preheated) and turn the heat to 375 degrees, baking for about 45 minutes. Use a cake skewer to test that it’s done - if it’s not , it soon will be. Leave it in the tin to cool for a few minutes, then turn it onto a high-rimmed plate (you’ll see why when you do this!). About 10 minutes before you take the cake out of the oven, mix the fruit syrup ingredients in a large saucepan (except the orangeflower water), and melt them together over a medium heat. Once the sugar has dissolved, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 5 minutes, then allow to cool a little, while you test the cake and put it on the plate. If you’re adding orangeflower water to the syrup, do it now. Use a skewer to make holes in the cake, and, while cake and syrup are still warm, pour the syrup over and into the cake, aiming for the holes so the syrup permeates the cake. (Leave the cinnamon stick etc in the pan, of course.) As the cake cools it will start to leak a bit: baste it, so as much of the syrup is soaked up as possible. This can take ages, and you might be left with some syrup that just doesn’t get soaked up. Eat that, or add it to fruit salad. Finally, put foil over the top of the cake, and leave it in the fridge overnight, to let the flavours settle. It keeps well, too (provided you put it at the very back of the fridge behind an uninteresting salad and don’t let your boy/girlfriend see it). Serve still slightly cold, sprinkled with a little icing sugar.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Is caster sugar the same as granulated sugar?

A quick Google for caster sugar provided: "Also called superfine sugar. It is pulverized granulated sugar. It can be purchased or prepared at home by whizzing some granulated sugar in the blender."

Could you please translate what "ZEST of 1 large orange" means?

The zest is the outermost part of the peel of a citrus fruit -- just the orange part, not the bitter white pith underneath. You get it off with either a zester, a grater or vegetable peeler, in which case you would then mince it finely for a cake. Try to use an organic orange to avoid nasty chemicals.

Could you convert the recipe to U.S. measurements?

Here is a good Internet source for that: http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/us_cups_to_weight.htm

Is the cake tin round or square? How deep should it be?

The recipe simply says to put the batter in a pre-oiled 8-inch cake tin. It does not mention a specific form of a tin so my guess is this to be a matter of taste.

The Trotskyist Key Lime Pie

(Courtesy of Meghan straight from the W. Street Commune, again from another blog long away and far away)
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs

2 Tablespoons sugar

5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

4 large egg yolks

6 Tablespoons fresh or bottled key lime juice

1 cup very cold heavy cream

Directions:
Put a rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9 inch pie plate. Stir together graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter in a bowl with a fork until well combined. Press crumb mixture evenly onto bottom and up sides of pie plate. Bake crust for 10 minutes. Transfer pie plate to a rack. Leave oven on. Whisk together condensed milk and egg yolks in a bowl until well combined. Add juice and whisk until well combined (mixture will thicken slightly). Pour filling into crust. Bake for 15 minutes. Cool pie completely on a rack (filling will set as it cools).Refrigerate pie, covered, for at least 8 hours. Just before serving, beat cream in a medium bowl until it just holds stiff peaks. Spread pie with cream.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Death in Tashkent

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