The Mythical Hyrax

Watch out for the yellow-spotted rock hyrax: he's got a mean streak!

My friend Mike is obsessed with two animals found in Jordan: the hyrax and gerboa. I remain skeptical that they even exist at all. However, Mike is adamant that they do, as is someone who wrote articles on them in Wikipedia (it could be that the author and Mike are the same person). The story on hyraxes goes something like this:

Hyraxes are any of four species of fairly small, thickset, herbivorous mammals that live in rocky terrain across Africa and the Middle East. They are furry, rotund creatures with a short tail. Most measure between 30–70 cm long and weigh between 2–5 kg.

They are well-adapted to the arid regions of Jordan. They have complex, multi-chambered stomachs that allow symbiotic bacteria to break down tough plant materials, so that they can digest just about any kind of plant. They also have efficient kidneys that allow water retention, and their feet have rubbery pads with numerous sweat glands, helping them grip rocky surfaces.

Hyrax males have a mean streak.  Antagonistic behavior is often displayed by a single male against his rivals when protecting the territory of his small family group. He will growl and chew rapidly and loudly at them. Where there is abundant living space, the male may dominate multiple females, each with their own range. One can only assume that the greater the territory, the nastier the hyrax alpha male.  The remaining males live solitary lives, often on the periphery of areas controlled by larger males.

Where did these alleged creatures come from? The order first appears in the Eocene fossil record over 40 million years ago, and for many millions of years hyraxes were the primary terrestrial herbivore in Africa. Imagine that!  There were many different species, the largest of them about the weight of a small horse, the smallest the size of a mouse. Their numbers began to fall during the Miocene when they competed head to head with recently evolved bovids.  However, despite being pushed into more marginal areas, the order remained widespread, diverse and successful until the beginning of the Pleistocene (2 million years ago). 

The descendants of the really big hyraxes evolved in different ways. Some became smaller, and gave rise to the modern hyrax family. Others appear to have taken to the water (perhaps like the modern capybara), and ultimately gave rise to the elephant family.

Yup. Hyraxes are often described as being the closest living relative to the elephant. They still share numerous features with elephants, such as toenails, excellent hearing, sensitive pads on their feet, small tusks, good memory, high brain functions compared to other similar mammals, and the shape of some of their bones.

Sure thing, Mike.  Yup, mouse-like elephants.
 
 

Mike also really likes unicorns and insists that, like the hyrax, they too exist

History's lessons

Hernan Cortes

Spain’s empire in the 16th Century saw ships laden with gold and silver sail from her many world-wide colonies back to the mother country. Some estimate that 16th C Spain had the equivalent of $1.5 trillion (USD, 1990) in gold and silver. Having access to such largesse was not necessarily a good thing. Such wealth contributed to ultra-inflation in Spain in the last decades of the 16th century, and made Spain overly dependent on foreign sources of raw materials and manufactured goods. The silver and gold whose circulation helped facilitate the economic and social revolutions in the Low Countries, France and England and other parts of Europe helped stifle them in Spain. In a way, all of her money positioned Spain as a ‘consumer’ country, and condemned her to a Late Medieval world that saw aristocrats all the more unwilling to get their hands dirty in something as base as manufacturing. Spain simply consumed, while so many other countries of Europe entered with aplomb the industry of the Renaissance period and became global ‘producers’.


What is the point, I hear you ask? My dear uncle Allan has been traveling around the world for a few years now, and is, I think, on his third lap. The last time he came to Campbell River, he told us that traveling west from North America to the Far East was a revelation. On this side of the Pacific we see the fruits of those eastern manufacturing juggernauts in our stores. However, when in the Far East, he sees the very source of such prolific industry and manufacturing. He argues that even if America’s economy is presently still bigger, at this rate it will not be long before it will be eclipsed by these manufacturing and producing economies. It is simply a matter of time.

Already we are the consumers, and the Far Eastern economies are the producers. On this trajectory, we are doomed to repeat Spain’s history, and slide into economic and political obscurity, while the Far East continues to rise in economic and political power. If history does indeed repeat, we are witnessing the death throes of American power and influence.

Why is this important?  As flawed as our western-style democracies can be (George W Bush's administration represents, perhaps, the nadir), even the worst democracies have got to be better than the best autocracies, let alone theocracies.  With the passing of economic and political power to countries such as China, the western democratic powers will lose political influence in world affairs.  This might mean the passing of hard fought world legislation on human rights issues like the treatment of women, First Nations, homosexuals, to name just three.  Will a politically powerful China be at all concerned about basic human rights?  Will it not simply flex its muscles when it is displeased?

Dr Zeuss' 'Who-ville'

The Economist magazine ran a story this week on a group of islands called Socotra off the coast of Yemen. Dr. Zeuss might have been inspired by this place.

The Sucotran archipelago is on the right side of the above map

The beaches and sea around these islands are filled with giant lobsters, turtles, and dolphins. Because these islands are whipped throughout the year by gale force winds, the beaches have dunes of white sand that rise hundreds of metres high.   

White dunes surround this very odd place

Beyond the beaches and cliffs, the islands comprise limestone plateaus cut by gorges of rushing streams, and spiked by granite towers rising to 1500 metres.   About 50,000 natives live here, subsisting off mostly fish and goat.  They speak four dialects of a 'sing-song' language intelligible only to the people of these islands, and they live in caves often cut into the granite towers.  They follow an ancient Socotran calendar based on 13 months.

'Dragon's Blood' tree

The people live among 700 species of flora and fauna found only on these islands.  A species of tree called 'dragon's blood' can grow up to 15m in height and can live up to 500 years.  It oozes red sap and looks like a 'cross between a steroidal mushroom and a monster broccoli'. A breed of wild cat wanders about the limestone terraces, and a species of cows stand only a couple of feet high.  

'Bottle' tree

 One day I'd like to visit this place.  Perhaps while there I'll meet 'Yertle the Turtle', or 'Bartholemew Cubbins'.  

Women in power

Two years ago at our college, all but one person on 'President's Council', the group that wields the most power, were male.  Due to retirement, just about every one of these positions has changed hands, and presently, only one of the males remain.  This might represent a growing trend across our society.


I see it.  I look out at my classes of thirty students, and all but three or four of them are male.  While anthropology is rarely the choice of these students for a profession later on in life, it is through anthropology and other social sciences and humanities that students will become lawyers, architects, politicians, judges, psychologists, professors, and a host of other professions that carry influence and nurture our cultural heritage.  While I don't have empirical data in front of me, it seems at any rate that just about all of this cultural heritage and responsibility seems to be changing hands from males to females in this generation.


How important is the passing from one gender to the other the reins of power and influence?  In 1989, Chairman Mao was asked to assess the influence of the French Revolution at its bicentenary: he replied that it was too early to tell.  It could be the same for the issue of females in our culture gaining positions of power and influence: we simply cannot properly assess its importance at this point.


However, there is a very good chance that it could be as critical as some of the most important developments in western civilization spanning roughly three millennia.  Because I am feeling rather rash and irresponsible, as well as deliriously happy at finishing the marking for this term, I am going to throw a Mao-like discretion to the wind.


I think that the move away from patriarchy in our society is as important as any of the following things:  the setting aside of pagan gods and the embracing of Christianity in about the 4th C AD; the embarkation of European hoodlums and fanatics eastwards into the Middle East in the Crusades, and later westwards towards a 'discovery' of a New World; the re-discovery of the ancient texts during what we now refer to as the Renaissance; the breaking away from Scholasticism in the 18th C into a new world of unfettered enlightenment; a new method in science that has allowed us to answer efficiently age old questions at a dizzying pace; the setting aside of Newton in favour of a relative approach to physical things; the science of the mind and all those other cool ideas developed first by Freud and Jung;  the exploration and analysis of space, and the realization that we are simply on an insignificant rock in a vast universe. 


It is fun and exciting to think of our culture on the brink of a Brave New World, this time run by females.  Perhaps my daughter will be Empress.

Revisiting Sport's Leap Year

Earlier this year I posted a piece on Sport's Leap Year. 

So far, so good.  I was really happy that the Saints won the Super Bowl, even though I appreciate the genius of Peyton Manning. 

Canada Men's Hockey, Gold Medal Triumph

Now in an Olympic's aftermath, the only thing for me that really went beyond stamp collecting of medals for many sports that I have never tried nor ever seen in real life, was hockey.  The Canadian men and women's teams won gold in hockey, and because of this, the Olympics were a stupendous success.

As expected, the Sedins have been brilliant in these play-offs

The Canucks have found success early in the play-offs, defeating the red-hot LA Kings in 6 games to advance to the second round of the play-offs.  They will now meet Chicago Black Hawks, their nemesis of last season.  Last year, the Canucks came within a couple of minutes from going up 3-1 in the series against Chicago, but the young, speedy, and skilfull Hawks prevailed and won the series 4-2.  This year, the Canucks seem to relish playing the Hawks again, perhaps for the sweet taste of redemption, or perhaps because revenge is a dish best served cold. 

Arsenal still has a wonderfully talented core group of players

Arsenal - brilliant, meteoric, beautiful - crashed out of the FA Cup, Champions League, and are now mathematically eliminated from winning the League Cup.  Oi vay.  The good thing is that they have locked up third place, and so have guaranteed entry into Europe next year for Champion's League play.

Lionel Messi: the best player of our time

Tomorrow I will sit back and watch Barcelona's smooth-as-silk style of play triumph over Bayern Munich and then the winner of Lyon/Inter for the Champions League title. For those of you who do not know, this Barcelona team might be the best soccer team ever assembled.  Even if you do not particularly like the sport, try to catch a glimpse: it is simply a joyous celebration of the beauty of sport.  Lionel Messi might be a god.

Hotel room in the Crystal Hotel, Aqaba, Jordan

The World Cup of soccer is still coming up.  I and Kira will be in the Middle East, and apart from the odd game on weekends, will suffer an almost total eclipse of this most important sporting tournament.  My hope is that on those precious weekends, my daughter, some of my friends, and I will gather around a hotel tv for a game: we will watch beautiful soccer, eat nuts, and drink more Amstel than we really ought to.   And then we will watch another game.

Mark, Mark, Mark... life as a hair-lipped dog

I have just marked the last final exam, and this term is finally over. 

I have been marking constantly for the past 2 months.  First were rough drafts of the first essays in Liberal Studies, then final drafts.  Next came midterms in first and second year anthropology.  Then came the essay outlines and then essays for first and second year Anthro.  This was followed by rough and final drafts of Liberal Studies essays, and then final exams for the Anthro classes.  Not a day has gone by in the last two months that I have not sat down and marked something, be it an exam or an essay.  Today, I marked my last final exam, posted the marks, and now look forward to Spring session beginning next Monday as we prepare to go on a dig to Jordan for a month.

All of this marking takes its toll.  I find that after a session of analyzing, interpreting, judging, and then finally giving a grade, I tend to think differently.  Aidan's job of cleaning the kitchen after dinner is about a C+, Kira fed the fish at an A level, Denise's desk sits at a C- and only with hard work and diligence can she bring it up to a B level.  American Idol is on tonight, and Simon is a wonderful salve to Ellen's happy ignorance and Randy's eternal optimism.  I like House because he too tends to grade everything in his world.  Because Arsenal blew their last 3 games, rendering them out of contention for the Premiership title, they have gone from an A to a B- on the year. 

After so much grading fatigue, at this time of the year I usually seek out tasks that limit the amount or scope for assessment.  I need to start running again, meditating, taking long, luxurious baths, reading fun and exciting novels, riding my bicycle.  After a few weeks I will stop grading life so much.

I give this post a 'B'.

The Canucks will break my heart

Sigh

I know it.  It happens every year.  Everyone I know who enjoys hockey and supports the Vancouver Canucks in the play-offs, inevitably spends time in mourning this time of year. 

And this is odd, because they tend to do so well in the regular season.  They have won their division two of the last three years, and over the last decade have had an impressive win-loss record. Every play-off season, we all hope that this year is going to be different, and the Canucks will figure out how to win when they are behind.  Last year they bowed out to a brilliant Chicago Black Hawks in the second round. That they lost three out of the four games having had a three goal cushion was like a kick in the gut.

This year they are playing the Los Angeles Kings in the first round.  The Kings' line-up is comprised of young, fast, strong, committed players that had a wonderful regular season.  The Kings are now up 2-1 in a best of seven series that might just go seven games.  The two teams are very close.

There are many variables in hockey.  The play-offs are long and gruelling, and the eventual Stanley Cup winners will have played at least 16 games, and possibly 28 games to win it.  It is a contact sport that is played at a dizzyingly fast pace.  Inevitably there will be injuries to key players, and the good teams are those with enough depth at every position to see them through.

However, since their entrance into the NHL in 1971, the Canucks have made it to the finals only twice, in 1982 and 1994, and lost both times.  A Stanley Cup is a good idea, nothing more.  Given their 39 year track record of mediocrity, there is one thing we can count on: the Canucks will break peoples' hearts.

The Treme

I began watching 'The Treme' on HBO because my friend Mike, a New Orleanian, wondered whether it would make him cry (see his post).

I can't decide whether I like this mini-series. The plot line follows several characters and how they are dealing with a post-Katrina New Orleans.  Some of these characters are compelling: the Big Chief of the Black Indian Mardi Gras is willing to commit murder to preserve what he has.  Janette runs a restaurant that is doing very well but nevertheless is in dire danger of going bust. 

However, some of the characters are simply annoying.  Creighton Burnette (John Goodman) is loud and abrasive and perfectly predictable.  He lashes out at the world constantly, and by his third scene in the second episode, I was searching for the remote to skip to the next scene: this character is altogether too wooden, too predictably angry, too stock.  Davis McLary is a DJ and hotel concierge (I think), and is fired from both jobs because, among other things, he cannot control his earnest and burning desire to reveal the 'true' New Orleans to everyone.  I find his character more and more tedious. 

At the same time, I find it interesting that there is so little link between the characters and their very separate plot lines.  It could be that they will all be woven together later on in the series.  However, for now, it is as if they are all individual tesserae in a large mosaic with many pieces missing.  In a way, I suppose, this is fitting, because it stands as metaphor for a city that had suffered such a huge natural (I hear Creighton yelling 'Man Made!') disaster. 

So far, and in terms of character and plot line, The Treme does not come even close to other HBO miniseries like 'Deadwood', 'Six Feet Under', 'Rome', or 'Carnivale'.  However, I'll hang in there for a few more episodes and allow the series to gestate.  If for nothing else, I'll continue watching for the wonderful music, be it in a strip club, a recording session with Elvis Costello, a funeral, or a street parade (Wild Tchoupitoulas gonna stomp some rump!).

'Selling the play' in sport

Skill-testing question: Which one is most likely a legitimate injury? (Answer: boot to face.)

During the Olympics, one of the aerial competition commentators, a former olympic competitor herself, answered the question as to why every competitor jumps for joy after a jump. She said that there is always a chance that the judges might be swayed by the reaction of an athlete to his or her own performance. In effect, the competitor is compelled to 'sell' the jump to the judges.

Lydia Lassila celebrates convincingly after a jump

We also see this tendency creeping more and more into other sports. The World Cup of soccer is marred every tournament by players rolling around on the pitch holding their knees or ankles, and then miraculously jumping up and running perfectly if the referee is not buying. 

It is even happening at the youth level. This last weekend, Aidan's soccer team played a tournament in the competitive pool for his age group in Victoria. His team played two games on Saturday, and two games on Sunday. We saw the 'selling of the play' a few times in the tournament, and on three occasions our team got burned.

In the third game in particular, Jason, one of our midfielders, had a wide open net off a deflection at very close range. He hit the ball, and the opponent's keeper dove backwards and caught the ball that was clearly over the goal line. However, his players praised him loudly for his save, and he immediately stood up and threw the ball to an open player. He and his team had 'sold' the save very well. At the same time, our players did not celebrate the goal at all, and instead waited for the ref's call. The call never came, and play proceeded.

Later on in the game, the opponent's right back, a bruiser of a 13-year-old, cracked a 40m shot at our goal-keeper. It was a very good shot that threatened to duck just under the cross-bar. However, our keeper got enough of it to bounce it off the underside of the cross-bar, so that the ball came down directly onto the goal line and then into the keeper's hands. After the game, several spectators watching along the goal line told us that all of the ball did not go in. (The rule is that the ball must be completely over the line for it to be counted a goal.).  Nevertheless, the other team went nuts, high-fiving, shouting, jumping for joy, and ran back immediately to their half for the kick-off. Our team again waited for the ref's decision, and even though he was 50m from the goal and could not possibly have seen the ball go over the line, acquiesced to the screaming and celebrating opponents. We lost the game 2-1. Perhaps if we had tried to 'sell' our goals, or defense against goals, we may have won 2-1.

In the second half of the fourth game, the ref blew her whistle to stop play because she thought that one of our boys had committed a hand-ball foul in our 18 yard box. Fully a second after the whistle had blown, one of the opponents' players struck the ball into our goal. Again, the opponents screamed and shouted and ran back to centre for the kick-off. The referee counted the goal.

This was the most egregious act of 'selling' the play all weekend. Once a whistle is blown, play must stop. If a player strikes a ball after the whistle, particularly when very close to an opponent's keeper, the player sometimes receives a yellow card for dangerous play and unsportsmanship. At the very least, the ref, having blown her whistle, should have disallowed the goal, and allowed the other team to kick a penalty shot at our keeper, who had saved an earlier penalty kick in the tournament. Instead, unbelievably, she decided to allow the goal.

While typing this post, I have been jumping up and down maniacally to convince you of my position.  I hope I have sold it well, and that you are buying.

My debt to Monty Python

Monty Python's comedy sketches are very much a part of my life. Decades ago, when I first began watching them, like so many others, I found them hilarious. However, even though so much time has passed, I continue to draw on their insights in every day life. It has been a long time since I sat down and watched anything by this group, and yet I think about their sketches all the time. While their art was at first an attempt to find humour in life, it seems now for me that much of life tends to imitate the art of Monty Python. It seems that on some days there will be several times that something reminds me of a Monty Python sketch.

I even rely on Monty Python to lighten up my classes from time to time. For example, one aspect of Cultural Anthropology is 'economics', wherein we examine three broad types of exchange, including reciprocity, redistribution, and markets. To show students how price-fixing often works in a face-to-face market system, I show them the following sketch from The Life of Brian. In this sketch, Brian finds himself in a Jerusalem market while trying desperately to escape some pursuing Roman soldiers. Brian stops by a stall to buy a fake moustache and beard, and even though he is desperate, the merchant will not sell anything to Brian until he 'haggles' for it first.



When we cover 'spatial orientations' in Psychological Anthropology, we consider how it is that various cultures perceive individuals in space. Hopi will perceive themselves as a cog in the natural environment, while we in the west see ourselves as individuals in houses, municipalities, states, nation states, continents, planet earth, our solar system, our galaxy, and on and on. To illustrate this really well, Eric Idle sings us the 'Universe Song'.



As discussed in a previous post, in Liberal Studies we cover the Malleus Malificarum, a dark 15th C work that instructs authorities how to find, try in court, and execute witches. In the 'Witch' sketch in The Holy Grail, Monty Python sums up beautifully the absence of logic, the fear, and downright ignorance of people living at a very dark time in western civilization. The logic in this sketch actually has a name: it is called the 'fallacy of the consequent'. In other words, 'A' is 'B', 'B' is like 'C'. Therefore 'A' is 'C'. A witch burns and so does wood, so a witch is made of wood. Wood floats and so does a duck, so wood is like a duck. And so, "If she weighs the same as a duck, she is made of wood, and therefore, a witch!" This logic is not too far off that prescribed by the real life Malleus to find witches.



We also cover the culture of the 'Yanomamo' people of the Brazilian rainforest. Politically, these people arrange themselves in villages that are in constant competetion with other villages. Villages must strike alliances with other villages close to them, or eventually they will come to blows. Often, a smaller village will attempt to strike an alliance with a larger village. When this happens, the smaller village plays down the importance of the alliance, as well as the fact that it needs the alliance more than the larger village. The smaller village will constantly deny its weaknesses while putting up a brave front, continually calling into question the strength of the stronger village. To illustrate this point, we sometimes watch 'The Black Knight' scene from 'The Holy Grail'.



Many, many thanks, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and the late Graham Chapman.

Three German Words

Sometimes I listen to Denise talking with her relatives in German, and convince myself that I am able to understand some of what is going on. I don't really. Sadly, my comprehension of the language comes down to just a few words. Having said that, I really like some of those words a lot.

Perhaps my favourite is schadenfreude, which refers to the pleasure we derive from the misfortunes of others. There really is no English word for this, and yet, I for one indulge in it every day, and am pleased that there is a word for it, even if it is in a different language.  For example, I was really happy when the Calgary Flames did not make the play-offs, because I have seen them beat the Canucks in the seventh game of a play-off series a few too many times.  Were the Flames organization to undergo a massive scandal, with much heart-ache for management, players, and fans, I might be even happier.  I was also pleased that Real Madrid fell out of the Champions League, because this year they picked up Christiano Ronaldo, who has to be the most despicable athlete in the world today.  Ahh, schadenfreude.

Another is doppelganger, which is a ghostly double of a living person that haunts its living counterpart.   Seeing one's own doppelganger is construed by some to be an omen of death.  Others use this word to desribe a feeling one has when one has glimpsed one's own image in peripheral vision, even though there is simply no way it could have been a reflection.  Again, there is no English equivalent.

My third favourite German word is zeitgeist.  Someone has defined zeitgeist for Wikipedia as 'the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era'.  During the Neville Chamberlain era of Britain, the zeitgeist may have been to appease the upstart dictators so as to lessen the chances of conflict.  During the George W. Bush era, the zeitgeist in America may have been that the world is full of enemies, requiring Americans to root them out, capture, imprison, and kill them.  Again, we lack an English equivalent to describe such a cool concept.

Two Close calls with Agony Bags

I have had two traumatic experiences with bag pipes in my life.

The first was while I was studying in Newcastle in North-east England, and some friends and I decided to spend a weekend at the Rothbury Folk Festival in the northern part of the County of Northumberland. I like their folk festivals. There were twelve pubs in the town, and each one was a venue for live music throughout the weekend. On Saturday evening, we all gathered for a ceilidh in the church hall, and then retired to our tent camp for the evening. On Sunday morning about 10:00 AM, we found ourselves with a pint in front of us, again in one of the local pubs, when we heard the strains of a pipe band passing in front of the pub. Like so many rats of Hamel, we filed out of the pub and followed the pipe band as it made its way to the village green. Once there, and as one, the band stopped, turned, and started marching towards us. Although its pace was not quick, still, we had to find a way to get out its way, and decided to file along the side of the buildings to the other end of the green. Now safely behind the band once again, we all listened until the band abruptly stopped, turned, and started to march towards us again. At that point we ducked into the nearest pub and ordered a pint.

Over twenty years later, I still wake sometimes in the night, covered in nervous sweat, having once again been pursued in my dreams by a slow but relentless pipe band playing 'Amazing Grace' or some such thing. I escape with my life, only to be pursued again, and again...













The second time was in the Roman city of Gerash in Jordan. Gerash was part of a system of ten Roman cities (the Decapolis) that spanned the eastern frontier of the Roman empire in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. All of these cities competed with each other, and because of this, Gerash had a hippodrome (race track), theatre, odeon (music hall), and wonderfully paved streets and a religious temple area. Gerash is somewhat unique in that it does not have a modern city built on top of it. One can roam the ancient Roman streets without all sorts of other historical distractions.

Kira and I decided to sit for a while in the theatre, and climbed the many steep steps to the top seats. And then it was there again... the tortured strains of a bagpipe. We made our way down the steps to get a closer look, just as two Bedouin soldiers marched in. They were wearing their full-length gelavias, with stripes on their arms and epaulets on their shoulders, and full head-dresses. One was carrying bag-pipes, and the other a bass drum. They took their place in the middle of the stage, and began playing Beethoven's Ode to Joy. They ended their song riffing on an Arabic ditty.

It was at that point that I nearly collapsed under the weight of such cultural disparities. This was a Roman theatre in an Islamic country. The musicians were Bedouin in the oddest looking military uniforms. They were playing bag pipes and a bass drum. They were playing Beethoven in a ruin. Yikes.

Have a listen to the video below. The screen below is blank, but if you look you will see a 'play' button.


To this day I wince at the strains of the accursed Agony Bags.

Bull Fights and Pult

A bull fight in Puerta Vallarta (courtesy, John Belshaw)

On our run last Friday, my colleague and friend John Belshaw had lots to say about his recent holiday with his wife Diane to the Mexican west coast resort of Puerta Vallarta. Westjet, a Canadian airline company, has been making runs from Canadian cities to Puerta Vallarta directly for a few years now, and John said that the local entrepreneurs have adjusted to the change in tourist demography in dramatic ways.  Instead of vendors hawking blankets on the beach, they now sell ponchos with 'Saskatchewan Rough Riders' stitched onto the back, or 'Vancouver Canucks', or 'Calgary Flames'.  Pubs sell Molson Canadian beer, and Labatt's Blue. 

John and Diane also went to a bull fight.  Happily, the bull had been drugged to reduce the chances of yet another Picador getting gored.  The stands were filled with both locals and tourists.  John and I discussed that this was kind of odd, because in the mother country of Spain, bull rings have been replaced almost completely by soccer stadia.  Cesc Fabregas and other Spanish soccer stars are the new Matadors and Picadors.  In Puerta Vallarta, the locals are hanging onto something Spanish, perhaps because they want to maintain such cultural links to the 'home' country, or perhaps because they are accommodating tourists' stereo-types of things Mexican.  If I close my eyes, I can picture row upon row of tourists with really big sombreros and ponchos with 'Saskatchewan Roughriders' sewn on their backs, cheering while drinking far too many Molson's Canadian beer.  Later on that day one of them just might go back to that hotel gift shop and buy the really special onyx chess set, the one with stone work on the back in the shape of a maple leaf.

The accursed pult

And this all reminded me of 'pult'.  Pult is a Swedish dish that my mom made when we were kids in a bid to celebrate the Swedish heritage of my father's side (see previous post).  As I remember it, pult was kind of like a dumpling, and like so many things Swedish and Christmas-sy, almost devoid of any taste or texture.  Another winner was Luttfisk:  herring cured in lye so that the tissues are broken down to the atomic level (an un-Swedish uncle once described it as 'boiled snot').  Imagine a plate full of tasteless dumplings and Luttfisk: Christmas dinner at our house was special. 

Luttfisk (on the right) is another Swedish culinary delight

I was on an archaeological expedition in Jordan three times with Lisa Soderbaum, a Swede with a great sense of humour.  One day I told her about pult, and how we ate it every Christmas when I was a kid. She informed me that her grandmother had eaten pult when she was a child, but that no-one in Sweden had eaten the stuff in probably three generations.  Like so many else, immigrants to a new country will hold onto cultural things and freeze them in time, while the mother country's culture continues to change, embracing new things, discarding other things. (I think there is a word for this: if you know it, please let me know in a comment to this post).

Perhaps in the same way that some Mexicans continue to slaughter bulls for fun, long after the mother country has found a little white ball far more interesting, we continued to eat pult generations after real Swedes had said goodbye to all that.

Pave paradise, put up a parking lot

A Walmart somewhere in the world

At the bottom of the hill near our house Walmart is building a store, and although the Grand Opening date has not yet been posted, it looks as though it will be ready soon. Hundreds of empty pallets littering the parking lot suggest merchandise is being placed on shelves.

About two years ago the city erupted in a display of defiance and civil disobedience when Wal-mart had made public its intentions to purchase estuary lands. City Council voted 3 versus 2 against the selling of the lands.

Undaunted, Walmart signed a deal with one of the local First Nations Reserves to build on several hectares of estuary on First Nations land.  Perhaps as a token of its victory, Walmart decided to build a 'mega' store instead of one of its regular, run of the mill behemoths.

Part of our Campbell River estuary lands

I don't like Walmart for many of the reasons other people don't. They pay their employees very little money, the profits leave the country, the merchandise is all made in China, they put the 'Ma and Pop's' out of business, they seem to have an ultra-conservative agenda, and of course, they could care less about the ecosystem of a marshland estuary.

Those estuary lands were home to bird species that would winter along the Amazon, and summer only in our Campbell River estuary. Some plant species grew only there. Fish spawned, frogs hopped, and sea otters frolicked. Bald eagles still sit atop their tree, but now look over a parking lot full of pallets.

There is more to it than this. Walmart is emblematic of a complete rejection of art.  The new building at the bottom of our street is a box surrounded by pavement. If one were set the task of designing a building devoid of esthetics, one would be hard pressed to best a Walmart mega store. It is as if someone took the basic design and wrung it like a wet rag to squeeze out all of the art.

Walmart is only one of many corporations that make such horrible box stores.  Some of them (Costco) even require a membership for the right to shop at their horribly ugly stores.  Why do they build such ugly buildings?

Another bloody Costco

We as consumers are conditioned to seek out and buy only those items 'On Sale'.  We are attracted to big box stores because we suspect that there will be more cheap things in them than at the smaller, family run businesses.  Further, we suspect that if the corporations have put zero money and effort into architecture and esthetics, somehow merchandise will be even cheaper. In essence, we as consumers have traded away art for cheaper stuff. This period may well earn us the dubious distinction of having the ugliest commercial buildings in the history of our culture. 

Gaudi architecture in Barcelona: what it could be like

Our mega Walmart has replaced something special with something lacking a soul. In a word, our Walmart is profane.

Talkin' 'Bout My (Grandfather's) Generation

My paternal grandfather, Magnus Anderson, was born in Sweden in 1891. His parents conformed to a long tradition of constructing their son's surname by adding the word 'son' to the father's first name (his father's name was Anders Munson). My grandfather apprenticed, became a carpenter and emigrated in 1911 to Canada when he was 20 years old.  The next year, in 1912, his mother, father, brother, and two sisters followed him from Sweden.  Originally, the plan was to leave Sweden for England, and then cross the Atlantic on the Titanic's maiden voyage.  However, as fate would have it, a storm in Sweden delayed the crossing to England, and so they booked passage on a different ocean liner. Eventually the family settled in Winnipeg. When WWI broke out, my grandfather still did not know much English, and in 1917 was conscripted as an orderly in the Tuxedo Military Hospital in Winnipeg.  He later married my paternal grandmother, another Swedish immigrant, and raised a family of four children. The children were raised as 'Canadians', which meant that only English was spoken at home, and only some 'trappings' of Swedish culture were preserved, such as the special food and decorations at Christmas. Keeping employed through the interwar years as a carpenter, in 1931 (the year my father was born), he was hired at Christie's Biscuits as an engineer to re-organize and maintain the machines on the factory floor. He was 48 when WWII began, and joined the Reserve Army in Winnipeg.  He outlived my grandmother, and in the late 1960's had a stroke, thereafter living out his life in a Nursing Home. He died in bed in 1973, at the ripe old age of 82.

His generation saw continual and rapid change in every facet of life. Perhaps most obvious were the terrific advances in transportation technology. He would have read about the first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. He'll have seen the cars produced by Ford in Canada for the first time in 1904. Sometime later he bought a second-hand Durant (he never bought a new car in his life), and built rather than bought the box that people used as trunks on those early cars. WWI saw huge advances in transportation technology, including planes, trains, and automobiles of every sort. WWII saw further advances in such transportation, and added submarine technology. In the post WWII period, cars became affordable to most people, and successive politicians covered Canada with an ever more elaborate web of highways. Before he died in 1973, my grandfather watched on television as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. In his lifetime, he saw an advance from hot air balloons to landing on the moon, from dreadnoughts to nuclear submarines able to circle the globe without ever coming up for air, and from horse and buggies to a country full of cars.

At the same time, he was around for the first radio transmissions, and belonged to a world in which families eventually gathered around the 'wireless' to listen to the news and entertainment on a nightly basis. He also witnessed the change from families listening to radios to families watching televisions. He will have communicated by telegraph, a technology virtually replaced in his lifetime by telephones, and would live to see a telephone in every house. He was around for the first transistor which changed forever the world of electronics, and the first small computers required by the space race. He would have first played records made of glass, and later of vinyl, and would have seen the first 8-track tape recorders. His generation saw the invention of sulfa drugs and eventually broad spectrum antibiotics to kill all sorts of deadly bugs, and the first successful organ transplants. Such advances increased life expectancy in his society by a decade.

His generation witnessed dramatic changes in society. He saw universal suffrage in 1928 that allowed women the vote, and a steady advancement of womens' status in Canadian society throughout his life. Eventually, barriers began to fall that had preserved for men only certain types of work. By his death, his doctor may well have been female. He would have seen a dramatic change in how people of European descent in North America perceived people of different ethnicities. He witnessed US civil rights legislation that granted people of colour the same rights as white people.

His generation saw two world wars of staggering death tolls and horrific atrocities. WWI ended with a crappy international agreement that in many ways set the stage for WWII, which itself had the normal nation state rivalries at its heart, but the added dimension of racism and the atrocities committed in its name.

Things are changing so quickly today that I can barely keep up with some of them. I still don't really understand why people like Facebook so much, let alone Twitter, and I am typing away on a laptop with Windows XP as an operating system. 

However, can there ever have been a time that saw so much change in so short a time as my grandfather's generation?

My Beef with Harley Davidsons

Our subdivision was built by the same guy who owns an adjacent golf course, and so all the streets are named things like 'Fairway' and 'Sandtrap'. A lot of retirees from across Canada have chosen our subdivision to live in, and yet, confusingly, there is an elementary school smack in its middle. I like the subdivision because all of the utilities are buried under ground, and people make concerted efforts to grow colourful and interesting looking vegetation.

What I don't like about our subdivision is the fact that about three or four guys own and drive Harley Davidsons.

I don't have anything against motorcycles in general. I certainly think they are dangerous (one sits on a catapult), but we live in a reasonably free society, and if people want to risk their lives unnecessarily, it is up to them. Some motorcycles have good mufflers and are as quiet as cars: I have no problem with Kawasakis, Yamahas, Hondas and BMW's.

However, Harleys are different. They seem to be designed to create more rather than less sound. Those in my neighbourhood may even have been re-tooled so that they are even louder than they were directly from the factory. When these people drive through our quiet subdivision streets, they often engage the clutch and rev their engines to emit as much noise as possible. Sometimes it seems as if they are torturing some wild animal. The sound will drown out music on our home stereo, and completely disrupt conversation. A friend of mine, who has since moved, told me that their baby would cry every time the Harleys would go past. Why do people feel that they have to be so loud?

It might be a strange and wayward side effect of testosterone, as I don't know any women who are compelled to be so loud in public. Perhaps being so publicly obnoxious is a strategy for attracting a mate. Human nature is a tricky thing, and it is entirely possible that men drive Harleys and make horrendous sounds in public for the same reason peacocks plume their tail feathers when a female approaches.
















Then again, men who drive Harleys might be banking less on the appeal of loud engine noises than the persona they perceive is evoked by such behaviour. Perhaps they see themselves as James Dean or Marlon Brando-like 'rebels without a cause'. They might think women find such behaviour irresistably sexy.

However, what if it has nothing to do with sex, but is rather a display of aggression against society? Are these Harley drivers like the guys in bell towers with high-powered rifles picking off innocent people, or those guys who introduce viruses onto the Internet?

Whether such behaviour is a mating ritual or an egregious act of aggression against society, the Harley drivers in my neighbourhood are a pain in the ass.