I have been too long gone, but long time readers know that following this blog is like watching a game of cricket. Nothing at all happens for a very long time, then all of a sudden when you least expect it, something very boring happens.
I kid of course, cricket is fantastic – any game where you play for five days and still often end in a draw is one that this avid procrastinator can’t get enough of. To fall asleep for hours in front of the cricket and awake to find not much has changed – well isn’t that life itself?
This is my longest entry so far, and reflects the high (pun intended) esteem in which I hold those to whom it is dedicated: those magnificent men and their floating machines. Because this latest entry in The Horatio Files would like to pay tribute to the daring men who inhabit the rarified air (okay I’ll stop the lame wordplay – okay maybe a couple more, you’ll have to wait for them…) of the thrilling world of the cluster-ballooner.
I’ll admit that ‘ballooner’ doesn’t sound very cool. Not like ‘ninja’ or ‘heavy metal monk’. Perhaps the term should be changed. ‘Ballooniere‘, to reflect its French origins? ‘Balloonario‘ also has a dashing quality. ‘Ballunatic‘? But I suppose I had better start by explaining what cluster-ballooning is.
We’re all familiar with hot-air balloons. You heat air, it expands in the canopy, lifting you. When the air cools, you begin to descend, so you have to heat more air to stay afloat. Well, how about getting a little balloon that is filled with something lighter than air like helium, so it already floats? Then get another one. Then get a whole bunch more. Tie them to something. Now hop on, and away you soar…
Of course the eagle-eyed among you will instantly recognize that you don’t have a great deal of control here. Unlike hot-air balloons which have vents to control altitude, in cluster ballooning you just keep going up until the air becomes very thin, matching the density of the helium and you level out, hanging there very high in the sky, completely at the mercy of wherever the wind wishes to take you.
That’s all very good, and I hear you say that while that does indeed sound thrilling, you would at some point like to come down. Well simply pop a couple of balloons. But not too many. Otherwise you plummet to your death. This is not for the faint-hearted. You’d have to be some kind of ballunatic to even attempt it.
Let me introduce Padre Adelir Antonio de Carli. You’ll come to appreciate that one of the requisites of being a ballooniere, is that you be in possession of a fantastic name, one worthy of your amazing feats. With a name like Adelir Antonio de Carli, you can be assured that whether or not you seek it, history will nonetheless take it upon itself to find you. This good Brazilian priest, tied an imposing colourful mass of helium balloons to a modified seat, said a silent prayer and left this sinful earth and rose into the heavens…
the ascension of padre Adelir
Let us leave the good padre for a moment, as he is lifted into the wide blue yonder, and go back to the very beginning, for the history of ballooning is well worth a visit.
Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (see what I mean about the names) was kicking back in Eighteenth century France, observing laundry dry in front of a fire. He observed the sheets would now and then form pockets and billow upwards. While many men would have paid scant heed to such things and gone back to dozing in front of a cozy fire, monsieur Montgolfier was entranced, and immediately set about building a lightweight wooden frame over which he stretched some taffeta cloth, and under which he lit a fire. The contraption rose to the ceiling.
He sent for his equally fantastically named brother Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, writing “Get in a supply of taffeta and of cordage, quickly, and you will see one of the most astonishing sights in the world“. Who could resist such a summons, and the Montgolfier brothers immediately did what any man would do after making a cool contraption, they re-made it, only much, much bigger.
A public demonstration of the floating of such a craft on June 4th 1783 was naturally a sensation, and news of their amazing endeavours spread to the very beating heart of the world, Paris. In order to officially lay claim to the invention that had finally tamed the skies, they decided it was necessary to take their flying machine there and repeat their feat. In realization of the importance of such a task, Joseph-Michel did not go but remained with his family, “given his unkempt appearance and shyness“. It was left to Jacques-Etienne, the “epitome of sobre values, modest in clothes and manner…” to go forth and stake their claim.
The demonstrations were successful, and in September, at the Royal Palace in Versailles, in front of the King and Queen, they attached a basket to the balloon, and the first living things given the honour of the test flight were a sheep, a duck and a rooster. Because they were technically balloonieres, the sheep was given the fantastic name Montauciel (‘climb-to-the-sky’). Sadly the names of the duck and the rooster do not survive, perhaps because they became so well known that nobody ever thought to write them down. They flew without a hitch, for eight minutes, to wild acclaim, attaining an altitude of 1,500 feet.
Though how impressed the duck was, being able to fly much better on his own without the need of such fancy contraptions, was another fact also left unrecorded. But one can’t help feel elated for the rooster, who finally got a taste of what all the other birds had been talking about. It is a shame that his race would forever be maligned as the butt of jokes containing the mere crossing of a road, when one of its members had already taken to the skies.
It was now time to construct a hot-air balloon capable of carrying humans. A search was conducted to find two individuals with suitably fantastic names to be accorded this superlative accolade, and the winners were unsurprisingly the Marquis Francois Laurent d’Arlendes and Jean-Francois Plaitre de Rozier.
In November, the pair undertook a genteel but historic 25minute flight, covering five and a half miles at an altitude of 3,000ft. It is hard to describe how strongly this feat captured the imaginations of the locals. They, along with the Montgolfier brothers became the first flyboys to set thousands of female hearts aflutter. They were the Top Guns of their day.
you can call me Maverick
De Rozier now constructed his own balloon, and in conjunction with a Pierre Romain, attempted the first international flight by crossing the English Channel. Sadly they were beaten to the task by another catchily-named duo, Dr. John Jeffries and Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Undeterred, de Rozier forged ahead with his plan, but his balloon sadly caught fire and crashed, and therefore Pierre Romain (? – 1785) and Jean-Francois de Rozier (1754 – 1785) did attain a record, but it was the unfortunate one of being the very first people to have been killed in an air crash. (No doubt Icarus would dispute that).
De Rozier’s wife died eight days later, reputedly having killed herself. As we will see, being romantically involved with a balloonario is a very demanding role. As a testament to his short but pioneering role in ballooning, modern gas and hot-air balloons are known as Rozier balloons. The sadness of his passing aside, the allure of ballooning could not be contained, and the craze swept across the Atlantic, and the indefatigable Jean-Pierre Blanchard was the first to fly a hot-air balloon in America, an event watched by one George Washington, who no doubt couldn’t have helped wondering how much easier it would have been to cross the Delaware in one of those.
But the history of invention is never so clear-cut. One of the biggest controversies is the role played by a Portugese priest born in Brazil in 1685. Showing that the Portugese flying pioneers were also no slouch in the name department, Bartolomeu Lourenco de Gusmao, was said to possess a “remarkable memory and a great command of languages“, and followed in the scientific footsteps of Francesco Lana de Terzi, who we can safely assume knew what he was on about.
His revelation came not from laundry but from watching a soap bubble float upward in the hot air surrounding the flame of a candle. This inspired him to conceive of a very, let’s say ambitious project, which he petitioned the King of Portugal to be allowed to pursue. It involved gigantic sails being stretched over a boat like frame, with bellows pumping air through tubes to the sails when there was no wind. Intriguingly, there was also a role of two magnets in separate hollow metal balls, which were somehow to aid in propulsion.
Understandably, the proposed date for the demonstration of June in 1709 came and went, and Bartolomeu decided to scale back operations a little, and settled on a more modest design, and by August was set for a demonstration of a small paper balloon, without sails, bellows, tubes or magnets. However even then, things did not go according to plan, as it caught on fire before lift-off.
Undaunted, Bart returned two days later after having ironed out the kinks in his project, and succesfully demonstrated a paper balloon which rose appropriately majestically in the presence of the King. It rose so well that servants, fearing that it would reach the ceiling and set it on fire, were forced to destroy it.
Gusmao stamps his authority on aviation history
Three days after that, the cocky Gusmao showcased a new design of a wooden platform containing a clay bowl which contained the fire that lifted the paper balloon. Among the dignitaries was a cardinal Conti, who later became a pope, known as Pope Innocent XIII, perhaps being unaware that proclaiming yourself the Innocent instantly makes people wonder what you may indeed actually be guilty of.
Here the story gets a little murky. Bartolomeu seems to have experimented with ever larger balloons, and then is rumoured to have flown one of these contraptions himself, crashing it but not before achieving a kilometre of flight. This would make him the first person to have flown, predating the effort of Rozier and the good Marquis in a Montfolfier balloon, by several decades.
Did this actually happen? It is hard to say, there are conflicting reports. Records from the era itself are scarce. A sceptical newspaper article in The Times, written much later in 1786, states: ” By accounts from Lisboon we are assured, that in consequence of the experiments made there with the Montgolfier balloon, the literati of Portugal had been inclined to make numerous researches on the subject; in consequence of which they pretend that the honour of the invention is due to Portugal. They say that in 1720, a Brazilian Jusuit, named Bartholomew Gusmao, possessed of abilites, imagination and address, by permission of John V, fabricated a balloon… and one day, in presence of their Majesties, and an immense croud of spectators, raised himself, by means of a fire lighted in the machine,… but through the negligence and want of experience of those who held the cords, the machine took an oblique direction, and touching the cornice, burst and fell. “
The article goes on to expand on Bart’s ultimate fate: ” The inventor proposed to make new experiments, but, chagrined at the raillery of the common people, who called him wizzard, and terrified by the Inquisition, he took the advice of his friends, burned his manuscripts, disguised himself, and fled to Spain, where he soon after died in an hospital… Several learned men, French and English, who had been at Lisbon to verify the fact, had made enquiries at the Carmelite monastery, where Gusmao had a brother, who had preserved some of his manuscripts on the manner of constructing aerostatic machines. Various living persons affirm that they were present at the Jesuit’s experiments, and that he received the surname of Voador, or ‘Flying-man’ “
What are we to make of all of this? I have read from many sources that it is a misconception that he was persecuted for his flying machines. While poor Bart did in fact come to the attention of the Inquisition, it was not for his experiments, but on unrelated charges (though interestingly I can’t find anywhere where it states exactly what those other charges are. If anyone knows, please let me know).
He did go to Spain, where he died of a fever. It seems to be a recurring theme that these brave balloonistas tend to end in tragedy. His surviving works from the time include sermons and a work dated 1709, which when translated is titled: ‘A Short Manifesto For Those Who Are Unaware That It Is Possible To Sail Through The Element Air.’
So depending on who you believe, the inventor of the flying balloon were either two French brothers, one shy and unkempt, the other of sobre values and modest manner, or it was a Brazilian Jesuit, possessed of imagination abilities and address. Whoever it was, The Horatio Files salutes them all.
Well now, let us move on. The inventors are a rare breed, but often it is those that come afterwards who push the new advances to their limits, fully highlighting how amazing the initial discovery was.
One such individual is (man I love these names) Captain Joseph William Kittenger II. He spent his teenage years like many of us, racing speedboats. In 1949, he then joined the U.S. Air Force. When Colonel John Paul Stapp set the speed record of 632mph (1,017 kph) in his rocket car, who was flying the observation plane? That’s right – the Kitt. He flew missions in Vietnam where he was shot down and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war in the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’. This is a guy who is no stranger to extreme situations.
The Kitt
In 1960 he was chosen as part of Project Excelsior (latin for ‘ever upward’) at the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories. This was research into the effects of high altitude bailouts, from a little gondola, which is lifted by balloons. The ascent could be controlled (those meddling scientists) so whilst not strictly cluster-ballooning, it is impressive nonetheless. The plan was simple. Float up to ridicuous heights, and jump out. The Kitt was born to do this. He made three extreme jumps.
Remembering that Roz and the Marquis attained a height of 3,000 ft, you can appreciate Kittenger’s feat, when his first jump was recorded from an altitude of 76,400 feet. It did not go well. An equipment malfunction sent him into a flat spin of 120rpm (twice per second) which resulted in him experiencing 22 g-forces (or 22 times the force of gravity) – a record. He blacked out, but luckily the automatic parachute system worked.
Less than a month later, he was back in business, this time jumping from a much more sensible altitude of 74,700 feet. A cake-walk. Or cake-fall as the case may be.
His third jump was extreme, even for The Kitt. They went straight for 102,800 feet, or 19 and a half miles straight up. He went to town on the records. It was the highest anyone had ever been in a balloon. It was the highest parachute jump ever. To stabilize him and stop him from spinning, he deployed a tiny parachute called a drogue when he exited. He set the record for the longest drogue-fall, falling for an amazing 4 minutes and 36 seconds before activating his main parachute. He also currently holds the record for fastest human being without the aid of a vehicle. While falling, he reached Mach 0.9, or 90% of the speed of sound. That means he was hurtling through the air at over 1,000 feet per second.That’s not bad without an engine. And all this was after his suit malfunctioned on the way up, losing pressure in his right glove, so that his hand swelled up to twice its normal size.
Captain Kittenger goes forth. And then down. Very quickly.
So from the Montgolfier hot-air balloons to the Kitt’s space age jumpsuit, we have two ends of the scale of ballooning. But what if you want the simple charm of the old-style balloons, but something which also has the danger factor of the extreme jumps have?
Welcome to cluster-ballooning. Simplicity itself. You, a seat and a whole lot of balloons. Danger? Well, you can’t really control where you go. Allow me to introduce Larry Walters.
Mark Barry has chronicled the entire story in great and compassionate detail, and I urge those who want to find out more about Larry to check out his site at markbarry.com
The fascination of ballooning had been with Larry from childhood. “Since I was 13 years old, I’ve dreamt of going up in the clear blue sky in a weather balloon.” (When I was 13 years old, my only ambitions involved being able to grow a beard). Larry tried taking a more conventional approach to getting airborne, but couldn’t join the Air Force due to poor eyesight, and ended up in the Army. But as with all great men, he didn’t let obstacles discourage him. It took 20 years of yearning, but Larry finally achieved his dream, but it wasn’t with a weather balloon, it was with 42 of them.
He had not planned on anything too audacious, certainly nothing in the Kitt territory of extreme ballooning. Larry’s plan was to get a bunch of weather balloons, fill them up with helium, attach them to his lawnchair, cut the tethers and float above his San Pedro backyard at a height of 30 feet or so for a couple of hours, snacking on sandwiches and sipping on some beers.
For someone like me who takes the art of leisure very seriously, I would be hard pressed to imagine a more satisfying way to spend a summer afternoon. So Larry, having little inkling of what awaited him, climbed into his lawnchair, which he had named Inspiration 1. Along with beers and sandwiches, he also carried along a BB gun, to shoot out a couple of balloons when he was ready to end his aerial adventure.
You may be wondering just where exactly one gets a bunch of weather balloons. Well, it’s quite easy. You do what Larry did, use a requisition form for a film studio, saying you wanted the balloons to shoot a commercial. With that settled, Larry and his girlfriend and a couple of buddies (or the ‘ground crew’) were all set to make a dream come true.
Larry takes flight, wearing what ele but aviators
However, it seems that Larry, his girlfriend Carol and trusty ground crew had underestimated the lifting power of helium. With Larry comfortably settled in his lawn chair, all was set for the launch on July 2nd, 1982. They cut the first tether, and Inspiration 1 was immediately away, rising sharply, snapping the other tether.
Instead of a sedate glide up to 30 feet, Larry experienced a rapid ascent, hardly giving him time to let out a shout of surprise over his walkie-talkie. He was rising at close to 17 feet per second, and didn’t stop until he had reached an altitude of 16,000 feet. Because he was unlicensed and unsanctioned, this could not be recognised as an official cluster-ballooning record. The highest altitude attained by cluster-ballooning is 18,300 feet achieved by Americans Mike Howard and Steve Davies, accomplished in 2001, 19 years after Larry.
On Mark Barry’s website, you can hear audio from the actual flight itself. On YouTube, you can find a news item with footage of Larry drifting imperiously across the sky. An understandably worried Carol can be heard demanding that Larry come down “now! “Perhaps I am doing a disservice to Carol, but I can’t help but wonder whether she herself managed to set a record for the highest altitude nagging.
Imagine that you are Doug Dixon, a member of an amateur radio club. All of a sudden a crackly voice intrudes on your frequency with a mayday call saying that he is airborne in a lawnchair and getting numb. Or better still, imagine that you are a TWA pilot, engaged in idle chatter with your co-pilot, when you spy out of the corner of your eye a guy sitting in a lawnchair attached to balloons floating at 16,000 feet. This is precisely what the pilot reported back to the flight tower, who could actually pick Larry up on radar!
Realizing that help was unlikely to eventuate, Larry shot a balloon tentatively, and then a couple more. Perhaps because his hands were numb, he dropped the gun. Had he shot enough balloons? Worse, had he shot too many? It was time to play the waiting game… While many would panic or be paralyzed with terror, Larry maintained a zen-like calm, and enjoyed his spectacular ride. While he had taken along a camera, he later confessed that “I was so amazed by the view I didn’t even take one picture.”
Several hours after lift-off, Larry drifted eventually drifted down over a Long Beach neighbourhood, the landing as dramatic as the take-off, with Larry becoming entangled in power lines, blacking out a small area. Suspended five feet above the ground, he was freed from his lawnchair but arrested by the waiting police, but not before achieving his lifelong dream, and how many of us can say that?
Such life lessons were not uppermost in the mind of regional safety inspector Neil Savoy. But the case was so strange that he was at a loss. “We know he broke some part of the Federal aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed… If he had a pilot’s license, we’d suspend that. But he doesn’t.“
The Federal Aviation Admnistration initially fined Larry $4,000 but this was reduced to $1,500 when one of the charges, operating a “civil aircraft for which there is not currently in effect an Airworthiness Certificate” was dropped, due to the difficulties in establishing exactly what class of aircraft a lawnchair could be defined as.
Inspiration 1
Larry was unimpressed by such unfeeling heavy-handedness. “If the F.A.A. was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk” was his response, and one can understand his frustation, even allowing for the incredible assault on logic, or alternatively the incredible foresightedness that would need to have taken place for the F.A.A. to have been around before the first flight at Kitty Hawk.
Larry Walters had taken off a San Pedro dreamer, and landed an American Hero. He was an instant celebrity, appearing on the Tonight Show and on The Late Show with David Letterman, as well as on the news and many print interviews. In one of these, he told The Times “It was something I had to do… I had this dream for 20 years, and if I hadn’t done it, I would have ended up in the funny farm.“
He captured the national imagination, and has been referenced many times over the years in popular culture. He inspired a musical called “Flight of the Lawnchair Man”, and a play called “Up”. References to his memorable exploit can be found in T.V. shows as diverse as The A Team, Malcom In The Middle, Urban Legends, King Of The Hill, Arrested Development, Mythbusters and SpongeBob SquarePants. A motion picture has even been released about his feat called “Danny Deckchair”, to mixed reviews.
Larry quit his job and was for a time in demand on the lecture circuit as a motivational speaker. But his fame waned, and in later years he shunned the limelight and did volunteer work for the U.S. Forest Service, saying “I love the peace and quiet. Nature and I get along real well.“
But as we are all too sadly aware, tragedy is never far from the ballooniere, and this story too ends in sorrow. Like Kittenger, Larry had served in Vietnam, and one can only imagine the horrors that he witnessed and had to drag back with him to “normal life”.
But such theories are merely speculation. Whatever the reason, on October 6th 1993, Larry hiked to a secluded region in Los Angeles National Forest and shot himself in the heart. He never married and had no children. The poet is tempted to believe that after the euphoria of sailing through the clouds, life on earth could no longer hold any sway. But the true reason will never be known, real life sometimes being too large to fit into poetry. Larry was 44. “By the grace of God, I fulfilled my dream. But I wouldn’t do this again for anything.“
Let us now return to where we started. We had left the good padre Adelir Antonio de Carli having uttered his silent prayer, and drifting up into the clouds.
the Flying Padre
While Gusmao and the Montfolfier brothers were taken with the spirit of invention, de Rozier with the pioneering of a new technology, Kittenger with expanding the knowledge of science, and Larry Walters with achieving his own personal dream, what was it that drew padre Adelir to the skies? The noblest reason of all – to help his fellow man.
Adelir, like Gusmao, was no ordinary Brazilian priest. He was dedicated and courageous in doing good works for others. In 2006 he stood up for the rights of beggars against violence, his tenacity leading to the arrest of several municipal guards. But he also devoted himself to less dramatic causes, including the one he was fundraising for with his cluster-balloon flight.
Concerned that Brazilian truck-drivers in Paranagua servicing Brazil’s largest port were often left for days waiting to unload their cargo, padre Adelir decided that what was needed was a spiritual rest-stop for them. ‘Spiritual’ is not a word which springs instantly to mind when one thinks of truckers’ rest-stops, but it is just this kind of revolutionary thinking that ensures the devoted following padre Adelir enjoys. Not only that, but this was something for which the good padre was willing to risk his life.
You might be surprised at a humble servant of God going to such extents, but as we have seen padre Adelir is no ordinary priest. In addition to his ecclesiastical duties, he is also a skydiver. And this was not his first cluster-balloon flight either, having already completed a four hour flight from Brazil to Argentina.
He had also undergone a jungle and mountain survival course. This was hardcore priesthood. So it come as no surprise that he wasn’t messing about with his balloons. For his flight of charity, he wanted to make as big a statement as possible, and so used, in a variety of colours, 1,000 helium balloons. A cool helium grand. His equipment included a ‘parachute, helmet, water-proof coveralls, GPS tracking, mobile phone, satellite phone, flotation device chair, aluminum thermal flight suit and at least five days of food and drinking water.‘
His plan was to fly from Paranagua ,inland to Dourados, a trip of a mere 465 miles. By now, you almost consider it fate for the grim breath of Tragedy to buffet yet another intrepid ballooniere, and with padre Adelir it was no different. Rough winds blew him in exactly the opposite direction of where he wanted to go, and out over the vast silent ocean.
While he had undergone survival training on land, surviving the stormy seas is another matter altogether. Sadly, while he could probably kill a giant python with a box of matches and use its body to pull himself out of a ravine, it appears that the good padre didn’t receive much instruction in the use of his GPS device.
In a phone interview with a Brazilian TV network, he said that he was “very cold, but fine.” Heartbreakingly, he says that if only someone could explain how to use his GPS, he could relate his position to rescuers. However he soon lost contact with authorities, his last words being that he had to land in the sea as he was “losing height“.
The next few days saw a frantic search for the missing Adelir. But he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Given his occupation, I couldn’t help but think of the prophet Elijah, who had bypassed the bothersome business of death and ascended directly into heaven. The second book of Kings, chapter 2, verse 11 relates how Elijah was with Elisha when “As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.“
Could…surely not? Perhaps the good Lord had some urgent business which required padre Adelir’s unique set of skills in heaven? The discovery of some his balloons floating in the ocean, a sight both festive and incredibly sad, seemed only to add to the mystery.
After five and a half days, the search was finally called off, the planes, helicopter and two boats having scoured 1,900 square miles. Were this a movie, the story would have ended here, the precise whereabouts and fate of padre Adelir Antonio de Carli being forever unknown. But, as Adelir knew only too well, life can be cruel, gruesome and devoid of happy endings.
More than two months after losing contact, a support vessel for an offshore oil-rig discovered floating in the sea the lower half of a human body. The clothing seemed to suggest that it was indeed the good padre, and a subsequent DNA test confirmed that it was so.
It appears that Adelir not only goes into cluster-ballooning legend, he’ll go into the record books as well. While he didn’t survive, he did go higher than any other cluster-ballooner, reaching 19,685 feet. In this harsh discipline, there is often a high price for glory.
But what, says the cynic, did this simple Brazilian really achieve? And for what? Some kind of holy truckstop? Firstly, let’s not look down our noses at truck-drivers. Anyone, regardless of occupation is capable of doing amazing things. (And I happen to think driving massive trucks would be amongst the most legal fun you can have on the road. Who hasn’t seen a big rig on the highway and wanted desperately to be behind the wheel? You sidle up to them in your pathetic tin can apology for a vehicle, a process which in itself takes an age as you crawl past a huge array of lazily, confidently spinning wheels, and you pull leve, catch the driver’s eye and mime the pulling of the horn. And from their Olympian height they smile benevolently at you, before casually reaching up and pulling on that cord, loosing a strange sound both booming and shrill, the raspy, echoing voice of the spirit of the open road…) Larry Walters was a truck-driver.
One way of thinking would be to say that these ballooning men who attempt so foolish and dangerous an undertaking deserve what they get. The sky is no place for us, and if we must travel amongst those forbidden clouds, it should be in a giant metal plane, capable of going where we bid it, and even then we are periodically reminded of our hubris…
But another train of thought, and one which I hope you share with me, is that these extraordinary men are answering a call that the rest of us are not only deaf to, but are perhaps also unable to fulfil even if we did hear it.
The balloonieres show that everyone can make a definitive statement about how we choose to live our lives, irrespective of our circumstances. From flights in gilded palaces in front of the King and Queen, to ones over a suburban backyard, the will to be thrilled by life can find expression anywhere.
It is the call to extend the reach of humanity, not only physically by entering the skies, but also mentally (or ’spiritually’ as Gusmao and Adelir will insist) by not losing ourselves in the mass of troubles that confront us down on earth, but by finding ourselves in the skies. Looking down on our confused efforts, allowing the wind to take us beyond our false limitations by realizing that even the highest reaches of the heavens cannot contain the capacity we mere mortals have for invention, exploration, inspiration and compassion.
These sentiments, like the history of ballooning itself, seems to be both melancholy and hopeful, tragic and (here’s the last lame pun) uplifting. But as humans, we seem to have an innate desire for stories with unequivocal happy endings.
So let me leave you with Ken Couch, (again wonderfully named, though I guess Ken Lawnchair would have been too perfect) a 47 year old gas-station owner from Bend, Oregon. Only 1 day after the body of padre Adelir was discovered, Mr. Couch set off on his latest attempt at an interstate cluster-balloon journey.
Like Larry Walters, his fascination had began at an early age: “When you’re laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them. This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It’s just like that” He had left previously in 2007 from Oregon in a lawnchair attached to our friends those helium balloons, destination: Idaho.
I don’t know anything about Idaho or why you would want to go there. It’s probably a fantastic place. But if I did have to go there, what better way to arrive than by aerial lawnchair? Whatever reason Mr. Couch had, he was, like all his brother balloonieres, determined to succeed. He had come close in this second attempt.
An early 6.00am morning lift-off occured without incident, after having kissed his wife Susan and a quick pet of his chihuahua Isabella, who while perhaps not as instrumental as Montauciel, can nonetheless claim her small animal part in aviation history.
Travelling at a sedate pace of 25 miles per hour, he was followed by his ground crew in three cars. containing friends, family and of course Isabella, who must have thoroughly enjoyed the greatest game of fetch ever played. He was well-equipped, his lawnchair stocked with food, drinking water, water in containers which could be released acting as ballast, instrumentation to measure altitude and speed, a GPS (which he was thoroughly familiar with operating), and a video recorder.
After a mostly pleasant 9 hours, hampered only by “occasional turbulence“, Ken Couch decided to call it an admittedly long day, worried about the worsening terrain which was near the formidably named Hell’s Canyon, and having run low on water and ballast. He landed in a farmer’s field in Union, having just literally fallen short of Idaho by 30 miles, but having traversed a very commendable 193 miles.
In an eery similarity to Larry Walters, Ken Couch’s flight was also witnessed by a passing pilot, Brian Wilcox. I’m guessing that the Larry Walters event must surely have passed into pilot’s lore, and Brian must have been aware of it, but must never have thought that he would see anything like it himself in a million years.
The only moment of drama came just after the landing, when released of his bodyweight, the lawnchair was swept away, carrying the video camera along with it. It seems the sky wants some secrets for itself. [EDIT: A reader has informed me that the chair has been found! Over a year after it went missing, it was discovered by ranchers on their property, who hadn't heard of Ken, but the Sherif they called certainly had. Ken has his own website at couchballoons.com and you can check out some amazing pics from his flights and the recovered footage will be up there when processed. -thanks to Brendon for the info.]
Was Ken disappointed after having come so close to his interstate goal? No - Ken knows that while records and ‘firsts’ are an important part of the history of ballooning, there is something deeper and more valuable that draws men up there. Ken’s verdict? “It was beautiful – beautiful.“
This appreciation is all the more remarkable given that when he made his first attempt, he popped some of the balloons, but popped one too many and went into a rapid descent. Mr. Courch took this in his stride, and jumped clear, having brought with him a trusty parachute.
This was only considered a minor setback, and it was clear to all that he would try again. His wife Susan, the latest member of that long-suffering group, the partner of the madcap ballooniere, after having recovered from the drama of the first attempt, said that after the second one she was thinking about saying no.
However, these women have a hard-earned understanding of the breed to which their husbands belong, and she conceded “I know he’d be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind. This way, at least he’s fulfilled his dream.“
So with the blessing of Mrs. Couch, Larry began preparations for a third attempt. As mentioned, it took place the day after the recovery of padre Adelir’s body, an event which must surely have cast a sombre tint on proceedings. But as we have seen, this fraternity does not shy away from challenges, and we can firmly believe that the good padre would have approved.
This time, all went well. It was, you could say, plain sailing (Through The Element Of Air). Ken Couch, on July 5th 2008, after 9 hours and 12 minutes, in a cluster-balloon powered lawnchair, having travelled 240 miles, landed safely and triumphantly in western Idaho.
No deserted field this time, members of the public who had followed his progress were waiting for him, and he was greeted with an ice-cold beer. There were media present, and Ken went on late night T.V. but unlike Larry Walters did Leno instead of Letterman. So there you have it, one happy ending.
As I wrote, when I was reading through the accounts of the balloonieres and their colourful history, I noted that they all had fantastic names. All except Larry Walters. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with it, it’s just no ‘Bartolomeu Lourenco de Gusmao Voador the Flying-Man’, that’s all. He is instead simply the everyman’s ballooniere, the People’s Balloonario. Larry Walters is me. Larry Walters is you.
When asked by a reporter why he did what he amazingly did, he simply replied: “A man can’t just sit around“. Excelsior!
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
There’s a guy near my train station who sits on a bench selling copies of The Big Issue. It’s a magazine which gives part of the total earned by its sellers, who are homeless or otherwise disadvantaged, back to the sellers themselves.
It is my considered opinion that he is not particularly good at what he does. Or at any rate he pales in comparison to the guy at the other end of my train journey into the city, who also sells the magazine.
This opinion may be seen as particularly heartless, so I may as well confess it now: I don’t have a heart. I may have had one once, but it has now ossified into a hard, fused, immovable lump of breathtaking apathy and self-interest.
So let’s analyze the performance of these two fellows. The first guy, who I shall call Bill, carries along with his copy of the Big Issue, a few extra pounds. Now highly intelligent people such as myself know that if you are homeless or in financial difficulties, a healthy diet rich in vegetables and fresh produce is going to prove very expensive.
It is more probable that you dine at the cheaper fast food restaurants, where the more affordable food comes at the cost of it being composed almost entirely out of either fat, or sugar which your body will then turn into fat. So to hold poor Bill’s weight against him isn’t exactly fair.
However, most people are not highly intelligent. They see Bill and immediately assume that he can’t be doing too badly, as he seems to have ready access to a steady stream of tasty calories. The next area where Bill is going wrong is his placement.
Sitting on a bench, it is almost when you’ve already walked past him that you realize he is selling The Big Issue, the copies of which he keeps on the ground, almost entirely out of view. The magnificent Brisbane weather also works against him.
Sequestered on a bench under a leafy tree in bright sunshine, Bill really does not look as though he has a care in the world. Then, there is his pitch. Homeless or not, Bill has yet to realize that he is in show business. Merely saying the name of the magazine in a hoarse, resigned voice just isn’t going to cut it.
Finally, the reason for the hoarse voice. Bill is a smoker, and is usually to be seen with a ciggy dangling from the corner of his mouth. Even though I am not a smoker, I know that cigarettes aren’t exactly cheap these days. Logically, I admit that if you are homeless and spend a great deal of time sitting on an outdoor bench, then smoking is the perfect pastime. It not only gives you something to do, but also mercifully shortens your already difficult life.
But the majority of the general public, not blessed as I am with such a pragmatic outlook, will instead feel that they shouldn’t give money to someone who can afford such an expensive habit.
Now let us take a look at the other end of the spectrum, the guy in the city, who I shall call Ted. He is the Michael Jordan of Big Issue vendors. His spot is just outside the station, on the busy corner at the traffic lights.
This really seems like a bad choice. People at the crosswalk have their minds on other things. They don’t know when they will get the green signal to cross, so taking the time to fish around for change doesn’t seem practical. The other type of foot traffic, those going into the station, have trains to catch. They can’t afford to delay themselves.
location location location (Ted not pictured)
It would seem that Ted is hopelessly out of his element. But there is a method to the madness. On a normal street, you can always avert your eyes and walk on by, pretending that you can’t stop right now, you have this really important meeting…
But at the lights, you are trapped. Ted knows you’re not going anywhere. There you are, dressed for a day at work, a whole day of doing nothing but making money, and there is Ted, an honest man without steady employment, with nothing except a bunch of magazines.
And the mags aren’t placed on the ground, he’s carrying them in a tattered satchel, which looks as though it could burst at any moment, compelling you to buy one and lighten Ted’s load. He also uses the weather to his advantage. Decked out in a large coat, you can almost feel the stifling heat that surrounds him. You think: It’s probably his only coat. He has nowhere to keep it during the day, and needs it at night. So he is doomed to forever bake under the pitiless sun. Oh the tragedy! Isn’t there anything you can do for him? Why yes, kind stranger, there is. -I’ll buy a copy, Ted, in fact let me take a couple.
And finally, the pitch. No weary mumblings here. Ted is all action. “Ladies and gentlemen, what a glorious day I’ve put on for you today! Enjoy it folks, I may not be here tomorrow and then it’s grey skies for all! But not today. What great weather for kicking back and reading a magazine. And all for loose change! Get rid of your loose change, get a magazine, enjoy the sunshine, how can you lose?”
With energy like that, how can Ted lose? I must admit that sometimes on my way home, after having bought a magazine from Ted, I get off at my station and then confronted with Bill, I feel so sorry for him I grab a mag off him as well. At home, I stare at the two copies of the Big Issue and wonder: “Are they working together?“
I suppose that it is a sad indictment on society that we expect entertainment even from those who are struggling to make ends meet, but we are being conditioned to learn that if even elderly dowdy Scottish ladies can become international superstars, then surely everyone has some talent with which to amuse us? And if you choose not to share it with us, then you get voted off, or we avert our eyes as we pass by, eager to catch the next sensation.
I also find myself putting my compassion up for tender when it comes to buskers. Some croaky old Bob Dylan number on a beat up guitar? That is so cliche, how can I patronise such hackery? But a soulful rendering of an unknown Joan Baez track by a girl who has also gone to the trouble of wearing the long floral dress? Then my only problem is how much can I give without seeming creepy.
Too many coins in the case? Then I don’t think you need any of mine. Too few? Well it seems the people have spoken. Why should I support someone who obviously has no talent? I’ll save my two bucks for an act who could theoretically make it big, and then I will have no guilt trips about downloading their albums for free, because I helped to put them where they are today.
It is not only as individuals that we are confused when it comes to giving from our hearts. A study has shown that in Britain, it is actually the poor who give a greater proportion of their income to charity than the rich. The poorest fifth gives away three per cent of its income to charity. The richest fifth give away one per cent. It is also remarked on that the Poms give more to animal charities than to human ones.
In 2006, the much maligned Yanks gave 1.7% of their country’s economy to charity, while Britain came in at less than half that at 0.73% of the national economy. Furthermore, in America there is not the stark class divide that there is in Britain, with respect to giving to charity, with all segments of society from the very rich to the poor giving the same proportion of their income to good causes.
It is interesting to speculate on why these differences might exist. Some have said that the U.S. is the land of the entrepreneur, where you pull yourself up by the bootstraps, make a fortune and then complete the fairytale by ‘giving back’ to your community.
Whereas in Britain, a lot of extreme wealth comes from the aristocracy where it is handed down (“Old Money”) rather than accumulated through the vulgarity of business. As such, perhaps continuing the family wealth lines could be seen to be more important than giving it all away to charity, to the types of people who probably don’t even have a family coat of arms.
But just as we might be inclined to cut the Americans some slack, it turns out that while individual American citizens give a lot to charity, the U.S. government are not so ready with the purse-strings. In 2002-03, when the War on Terror kicked off, the U.S. government gave an underwhelming 0.13% of its GDP toward overseas aid. Of the 23 richest countries on the planet, that would mean that Uncle Sam comes in dead last. And when you consider the billions (and billions) that has since been spent on that merry adventure, it really looks especially bad.
Not only that, but the overseas aid the government does give, includes politically strategic places like Egypt, Israel, Russia and Serbia, places which aren’t exactly in the grip of famine and pestilence, when you would think aid should be firstly and mostly given to those who need it the most urgently.
Here in Australia, when the recent bushfires tore through Victoria and razed so many houses to the ground, the nation came together as one and donated unprecedented amounts. However, at the very same time, floods ravaged parts of Queensland, but the funds didn’t trickle in as fast as the rivers did.
It appears that fires are just sexier. People can understand a house getting burnt to the ground. The pictures are amazing. Walls of flame bearing down on communities, firetrucks speeding into the maws of hell from where terrified people are rushing out from, cuddly koalas in peril, incredibly photogenic ruins – a bushfire has it all.
ratings gold
But a flood? Dirty brown water, silt and sludge and dead bloated cows? Not exactly jaw-dropping. Despite the extensive damages, there seems to be a public perception that once the waters recede, a good mopping up will set everything right.
Some charities are just cooler than others. Breast cancer? Cool. Bowel cancer? Uncool. Free Tibet? Incredibly cool. (The Dalai Lama is the Samuel L. Jackson of charitable causes). Millions dying in Darfur? Where’s Darfur again? Some manage to turn the tide of popular opinion. When it first began claiming lives, AIDS was not exactly a cause that could count on widespread support, whereas now celebrities fall over themselves in the rush toward a red ribbon.
Charities now regularly employ the services of public relations firms in order to increase their ‘visibility’ and woo the high end of town. Just like corporations, charities squabble over the right celebrity to be their ‘face’. Organizations like Greenpeace sometimes outsource to other agencies for people to do public collections and sign-ups on their behalf, and it is no coincidence that many of them are blonde and perky.
If it brings in more money, I guess that the ends justify the means, but I’m pretty sure the whole point of charity is that it can’t be rationalized and economically accounted for, it resides not in the world of global markets but global conscience.
Then there is the case of “compassion fatigue”. I think once your society even gets to a place where such a term becomes needed, it is a fairly clear indicator that you are heading in the wrong direction. Are there really people out there who say “enough with the Katrina footage already – isn’t there a ballgame on?”
Yes there are. Me for example. After handing over my gold coin donation, I was pretty much ‘over’ the whole tsunami thing, and couldn’t see why the endless “specials” on T.V. took priority over my regular programming. If you find a whole island of people who survived by making boats out of tied-together coconuts, then that’s a story. If not, let me get back to the footy.
And above all, be upfront if you are seeking the public dollar. Once as I was walking around in town, enjoying the sunshine and pumping some funky Motown flavours into my ears, a guy in an orange robe smiled serenely at me and waved me to stop. Not knowing whether his beliefs prevented him from enjoying funky Motown flavours, I took pity on him, took off my headphones and stopped.
He introduced himself with a very disappointing non-mystical name. (Think Bill, think Ted). -Did I practice yoga? -No, but I immensely enjoy yoghurt. Not a trace of a smile. He then lectured me about the various benefits of yoga and how it isn’t just stretching and lentils.
But that accent was so strange and out of character that I had to inquire. “Well, I am from Estonia originally”. What did that ‘originally’ mean? Is he now from somewhere else? And Estonia? How can you have an Estonian yogi? It’s like having a non-asian martial arts instructor. No matter how good he actually is, you always feel like you are missing out.
Anyway, eventually he came around to the hard sell. He asked whether I would be interested in reading a short book about the finer points of what he had been discussing. In a novel twist, he took off his cap and pointed apologetically to his shaved head. “Now as a monk, I’m not allowed to sell things for profit, but perhaps you would care to make a donation and enjoy the book as a gift?”
What kind of malarky was this? This seemed to be the type of creative accountancy usually reserved for more unholy spectres like Bernie Madoff. -How much is the usual ‘donation?’ I asked, making sure that he could hear the quotation marks. Perhaps not wanting to sully his soul with all this haggling, he said something to the effect of ‘People give what they are comfortable with’ which I thought was a brilliant way of saying ‘depends on how much of a cheapskate you are’.
“I’ll give you a dollar”. Little did he know he was dealing with someone who had a gold medal in cheapskating. A less than divine frown littered his brow. “Well, five dollars is usually what people give.” Here I was, in a Mexican stand off with an Estonian. -But like you said, that was a donation. Now that I look in my wallet, it doesn’t seem like I even have a dollar coin. Sorry, but I will just have to accept your generous ‘gift’ without a donation.
Gazing firmly into my eyes, he said without missing a beat, and as though inquiring about my health, “Do you have a five dollar note in your wallet?” This was hardball. Okay Stephen, let’s play. -Yes, yes it looks like I do. Do you have four dollars change in your little purse there?
He smiled a smile of one who is about to do something very unsmiling and a chill ran through me. Was he one of those kung-fu monks? Was I going to have my eyelids pulled over my kneecaps and then spun onto a bamboo spike?
He turned to someone else coming down the street and began his spiel again. They ignored him and kept walking on. He tried again, same result. So there we were. Him ignoring me, people ignoring him, and me enjoying the whole thing. -Looks like a dollar would be a lot more than what you seem to be getting.
He briefly glanced at me in a patronizing way, pitying my unclean spirit, then went back to his futile but noble quest. I stayed for a while, very uncharitably enjoying his lack of success, but then eventually compassion fatigue set in, especially in my calves, and I had to be on my way, my wallet as unenlightened as my soul.
~<>~
-viva minutiae,
sillionshine.
I have always been a slave to the image. My earliest memories are not of birthday parties or my father’s voice or family pets or motherly hugs, though those are of course vivid and treasured ones.
They are of a stone lion guarding the pond in our back garden, a pale mossy green discolouring the faded white under his neck. They are of the little oasis of dirt that separated the back stairs from the lawn, where constant foot traffic meant that no grass would grow. They are the sequence of trees and buildings seen scrolling across the car window as I lay on the back seat looking upwards, navigating by these familiar visual clues until the reel stopped with the rough red brick wall that meant we were home.
I will devour movies that contain striking imagery, even if the plot, acting and dialogue are excruciatingly poor. I have favourite cinematographers as others have favourite actors. Angles, curves, textures, shades, they are the language I think mostly in, when my mind is quiet.
So I’m starting a new category in this blog, dedicated to images that catch my eye. I’m careful to not make it an ‘art’ section, as there are so many visually interesting things that may not fall under the official umbrella of ‘Art’ with a capital A, but which nonetheless astound, move, inspire and change me like the best art does.
I’m calling this new category ‘Visual Nutrition’ as I feel that a steady stream of memorable images sustains me like a diet of healthy food makes you feel revitalized and strong.
Pyramid Scheme
I’m starting off with the work of Celine Chamberlin. The above image, taken by her is titled ‘Pyramid Scheme’ and is of the window of the Ixtapa Mexican Restaurant, on Locust Ave, in Stayton, Oregon.
What intrigues me about her photo blog isn’t just the variety of magnificent images, but the idea behind them. As the name suggests, every day, she posts a photo she has taken of her home town Stayton, Oregon.
Artist:
Celine Chamberlin
Websites:
(a special thanks to Celine for permission to use her photos)
Browsing through the blog, it immediately made me think that it would be great to have at my disposal a bank of all the images that comprised the places where I grew up. Even mundane things like the manhole cover that I used as a marker of where to cross the street on my daily walk to school, though probably not very interesting to others, would represent a significant part of my life, and would bring back a host of other memories/images, acting as a kind of remembering gunpowder.
I love how other-wordly ‘Pyramid Scheme’ looks. Emerging out of the night, the contrast between the friendly, garish neon ‘OPEN’ sign hanging over a dark, ominous opening. Can’t you just imagine some Mexican music and the clinking of glasses emanating from within that gap, and the livelier and festive the noises, the spookier it would sound? This would be such a great opening shot for a horror film. Those purple shadows, the bright orange, the blackness – perfect.
And then imagine driving past it during the daytime, and how different and benign it would look.
I think that a blog like Celine’s, is not only a photographic record, but a historical one. It would be wonderful to see all of these photos after fifty years, to see how Stayton had changed. How many memories must be contained in these visually captured corners of this small town, and for how many people?
‘Phone’ by Celine Chamberlin
But an image doesn’t have to be enigmatic and mysterious, strange and out of the ordinary to have the ability to arrest your attention. At the other end of the scale, I like this simple image of a payphone. Austere and stark, the image might be bare, but packs a big punch. The clinical lines of the phone box against the roughly textured wall, (don’t you just feel like running your hands over it? No? Just me then…) the solitary nature of the payphone enhanced by the monochromatic colour scheme.
I think having the phone centered would have come across as trying too hard to be arty and ‘portfolio-worthy’, but by having the phone slightly off-centre, it highlights that this isn’t a glossy magazine spread, but a visual document of a real Stayton payphone on 1st Ave.
Okay, now for the big guns…
‘Canopy of Color’ by Celine Chamberlin
If you arent’ blown away by this image, then you probably have no soul or reflection, and wander the earth as a lonely ghost. Cool grass under an inferno of yellow and orange leaves. Overpowered by that magnificent canopy, it takes a while to even notice the beautiful white bridge in the background.
So there you have it; the strange, the mundane and the beautiful, each an absorbing image, and all from the same town. Of course, you don’t have to live in an idyllic small town to be blessed with amazing eye candy, you just have to look around you a little harder, or even just look at all.
Or to put it in a far more poetic way, it’s hard to forget the words of a character Richard Burton played in a film, when he said: ”worship all that you see, and more will appear.”
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
~<>~
Well, here we are. The first new entry in the new blog. It seems hardly possible, but stranger things have doubtless happened. The old entries have all been transferred, so ‘vivaminutiae’ is finally up and running. Well, up and walking. Okay, lying down and resting.
Which was precisely what I was doing under a majestic old (or at any rate large) tree last week. I wish I had a better knowledge of botany so I could name exactly what species of tree it was under which I was lying, enjoying the cool springy grass on a hot day. It suddenly occurred to me for instance, that I have no idea what an ‘elm’ actually looks like.
It was appropriate that I have these thoughts, because I was in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. I looked around for a little sign telling me of the name, both common and Latin, but couldn’t see one. A little annoyed, but it was probably a little unfair to ask that staff go around and label every single individual tree in the garden. Maybe, seeing as this was in the common picnic area, these trees weren’t even considered ’scientific’ enough.
Enjoying the sunshine, I closed my eyes and tried to name which trees I knew for sure. Pine trees. I know what they look like. An imported species I think. How about Australian natives? I know the Eucalyptus tree (incidentally, impossible to visualize without a koala attached to the trunk). How about from back in New Zealand? Pohutukawa. but I can only imagine them with the red flowers. If they weren’t flowering I would have no idea what they looked like.
Had a row of them I walked past on the way to school. The very school, now that I think about it, when aged 7 or so, we actually went for a field trip into a native forest studying the plant and animal life that could only be found in New Zealand.
I remember back then that I liked the names more than the trees. Kauri, Rimu, Totara, Kowhai (where ‘whai’ is pronounced ‘Fie’, to rhyme with ‘fly’) The Silver Fern, being a national symbol, I knew. But it turns out that I really only knew the stylized version of it, and so when a real one was pointed out, I thought it didn’t look as impressive as advertised. I guess this is the opposite to the Canadian experience, where a real maple leaf is infinitely more beautiful than the outline featured on their flag.
The silver fern is only silver on the underside of the fern fronds, which I remembered I liked, as you can’t see it unless you turn them over, keeping its shimmering pale grey secret from the rest of their green forest brothers which they merged with inconspicuously from above. I think the silver fern is the most ninja of all the ferns.
I also remember that there was something very important about ferns which I think set them apart from the rest of plant kingdom, but I can only remember the Park Ranger’s face being covered in shadow due to his hat and how his voice dropped lower as he let us in on the secret.
It is no wonder that the thing I remember most on that trip were the Huhu grubs. He brought them out in a tiny box like the ones painters keep their portable paints in. He undid the clasps with a firm flick and, ever the showman who understood kids, paused before opening the lid. Divided into two sections with a couple of live ones on the left and dead ones on the right.
The live ones didn’t squirm as disgustingly as maggots do, which disappointed us boys in the group somewhat, but they were big and fat, which made up for it immensely. But things were about to get a whole lot better. He informed us (again, leaving it to the last as a worthy entertainer would do), that they were edible. What a fantastic word. Even in the speckled dark of the forest you could see the eyes of the boys light up with savage interest, and those of the girls widen in horror.
Even before he had finished calling for a brave volunteer, our hands were up, straining to pierce the sky. Most were genuine, but some were only putting up their hands so they wouldn’t be accused of being pikers, being careful to exhibit just enough enthusiasm to pass as legitimate, but not enough to actually be chosen. The girls meanwhile, eyed us with the same disdain previously reserved for the grubs.
The Chosen One took his place, front and centre, and even got to pick out his intended. Naturally, the biggest, fattest, squelchiest one was selected. Held up to us for inspection. An appreciative ‘oooooh…’ Then, before the moment of truth, the Ranger gave us another fact that has always stayed with me: “Huhu grubs taste like peanut butter.” Try forgetting that.
The Chosen One cocked back his head, and just dropped the entire Huhu in, and then turned to us, taking exaggerated bites and smiling the smile of one who was ensured hero status for at least the next two weeks. We sat transfixed, groaning in amazement and disgust and envy, in that heady childhood state of believing and not-believing at the exact same time.
“What does it taste like?”, “What does it taste like?” we clamored. A pause as the question is given due consideration, then in between bites: “peanub budda”. We cheered.
Then, just as we were about to be rendered senseless through delirium, the Ranger says: “Now let’s see if we can have a good look around and find some grubs…” A small army of children immediately began to lay waste to a previously pristine section of native forest, turning over logs, scraping off bark, destroying valuable root systems, and every now and then, “I’ve got one!” would ring out and we would converge like a swarm of locusts (or keeping with the native species theme, like a swarm of wetas) and initiate the ceremonial eating of the Huhu.
It is probably for the best that field trips are no longer conducted these days with the same abandon that we enjoyed. But when I see a line of bored school children being led as if by chain through museums/parks/factories, stopping at intervals to robotically write in the appropriate spaces on their clipboards, I can’t help thinking that perhaps it is better not to merely acquire knowledge, but to accumulate experiences as well.
It would be nice to name every tree that you see in both the common and the Latin, but there is something else that may be un-nameable but just as important to learn, the thing that you can’t recite but will always remember, like the murmuring of the breeze through a group of silver ferns as you watch a shadow-wrapped face in a forest telling you amazing things, many of which you will forget.
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
[EDIT This entry was originally written on the old blog on the 21st December 2008, when a wrap-up of the year was a little more timely.]
Well, this the year of the Rat is almost over. Individually, people will naturally have their own take on the year, and their own ups and downs.
Globally though, I think that the general mood is that ‘08 is not a keeper. The argument that the commercial media only ever focuses on negative stories is a convincing one and perhaps a topic for another day, but I get the feeling that people are hoping for drastically better things from the coming year of the Ox.
For those interested in planning ahead for your calendars, 2010 will be the year of the Tiger followed by the Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Boar and then back to Rat. So how was the year of the Rat?
Staying with the Chinese theme, this year saw the hosting of The Beijing Olympics. It should have been a feel-good event, but only Michael Phelps ended up feeling good. [EDIT wow, I'm some kind of prophet! Obviously I meant 'feel good' as in the thrill of multiple victories, not the euphoria of cannibinoids.] As for the rest of the 29th Olympiad, people came to the conclusion that while military precision is desirable for such a large event, it shouldn’t be the military itself that is responsible for the precision.
As for Phelps, I know it is bad form to rain on someone’s medal ceremony, but I have always felt that swimmers have had an unfair advantage at the Games. To split an event up into various disciplines and award medals for each is excessive. Backstroke? Come on. Usain Bolt didn’t get another gold medal for running the 100m backwards, because there is no such event.
If there was the Reverse 100m, and the 100m hop, Blindfolded 100m, Clown Shoes 100m, Uphill 100m, Up an Even Steeper Hill 100m, and the Run-25m-And-Back Twice, then it is entirely possible that Bolt would have got 8 gold medals as well. The Olympic motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius” or ‘Swifter Faster Stronger’, not ‘Swifter Faster Stronger In As Many Ways As Possible, Including Butterfly, A Style In Which No Rational Human Would Ever Swim In Anyway’. It would be impossible to inscribe that on a medal unless you did win eight of them.
Continuing in the Olympic vein, multiple gold medal winner Marion Jones went to jail for taking illegal substances, whereas Amy Winehouse, who takes illegal substances on a nightly basis, is still a free woman.
Under cover of the Opening Ceremony, Russia either ‘invaded Georgia’ or ‘came to the aid of oppressed minorities’, depending on which end of the tank you were on.
Such things as a military incursion by a nuclear-armed global superpower usually make a bit of a dent in world affairs, but the other two global superpowers were either i.)hosting the Olympic games, or ii.)were so militarily stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, that their response amounted to “Please stop that, or we shall be forced to say ‘please stop that’ in the strongest possible terms‘.
For the U.S. it was a bit humiliating to admit that while “all options remain on the table” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, (a middle eastern country with possible weapons of mass destruction -wait, I think I’ve seen this one before, wasn’t Sean Penn in it?) their reaction to a real, as opposed to hypothetical act of military aggression was to “urge restraint”. Never has a Commander-In-Chief, let alone a duck, appeared so lame. Improbably, it was the world’s best dressed gnome Nicolas Sarkozy who managed to negotiate some sort of truce. (A short French leader with a famous mistress – haven’t we seen this one as well?).
2008 saw a gradual worldwide loss of interest in Iraq, along with an accompanying softening of ambitions. What had started out as a desperate and heroic campaign to save the world from Sadam’s finger poised over a red button, ready to unleash weapons of mass destruction, quickly turned into a vehicle for bringing “freedom, justice and democracy to the Middle East”, then it was decided to settle on “a stable government and improving security situation”, then just “a stable government” and now in 2008, the best that can be hoped for is for “Iraqis to take a stronger hand in their affairs” presumably before “we get the hell out”. Not exactly aiming for the stars. And one can’t help musing that “their affairs” were quite significantly affected by our poorly managed affairs. Almost makes you mad enough to want to throw a shoe.
On a brighter note, this year will be remembered as the moment in history when it was officially decreed that George Bush can never again be the President of the United States of America.
Which brings us to the U.S election. David Letterman (that political pundit) sagely commented that it is unwise for election campaigns to run for longer than the term of office for which they are campaigning. Personally, I didn’t mind. I didn’t fall victim to ‘election fatigue’ because this was the greatest show in town. Almost everyday brought something new.
McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns. To be fair to him, that might not have been the result of the excesses of an out-of-touch millionaire, but merely innocent dementia. I have to confess that I liked McCain. I liked him before the campaign. And with his gracious concession speech, I liked him after the campaign as well.
But I didn’t like him during the campaign, and as it turned out neither did over half of the American population. It should be a sobering thought that if someone with the integrity of McCain can be forced into gutter politics, then it is time to review the philosophy of the Republican party where a ‘maverick’ can win the nomination due to his differences from the Republican cliche, but must then run according to its worst examples.
I have no problem with a party catering to what it calls its ‘base’. But if you lost the election because you confused ‘base’ for ‘majority’, then by definition you are living in delusion.
Speaking of delusions, let’s not speak of Sarah Palin. At some time in the future, maybe I’ll try and get my thoughts about her down on paper, but right now, I still break out into a cold sweat at the thought that someone somewhere not only made the decision that she could possibly serve as the second most powerful person on the planet, but actually gave her the opportunity of being one out of two people on earth to apply for the job.
Nothing signified the ’sensation over substance’ of the political debate in an election year like Joe the Plumber. You would think that complaining about being made to pay more tax because you might earn over $250,000 a year doesn’t exactly give you ‘Regular Guy’ status, but he became the poster boy for the Republican ‘average Joe Sixpack’. I don’t think this was a deliberate distortion. In the Republican Party if you only make $250,000 a year, you are middle class.
In other countries, if you complained that you really didn’t see any incentive in turning over a quarter of a million dollars because you would have to pay more tax, a lot of people who actually were struggling everyday types, might not mind having your devastating hardships. But with the quality of election coverage we got, the crux of the debate was whether or not Joe would get his own television show.
But despite all this, the campaign finally came to an end, and what’s more, McCain was still alive. Well, at any rate he hadn’t died; I think there is a subtle difference. There were no voting ‘irregularities’ like Florida in 2000, and a half-white man was proclaimed the first black President.
Will Obama make a difference? I think he will, and in terms of image, he already has. The whole world let out a sigh of relief and heads of state welcomed a new President who has not only heard of the countries that they lead, but also of the problems they are dealing with, and most importantly, will not inevitably make those problems much, much worse.
This year also saw the financial crisis make trillions the new billions. What annoyed me was the view that this calamity had come out of nowhere like some bespectacled Alaskan moose hunter or a tropical hurricane. Many economists had predicted the collapse a long time ago and had, as it now turns out, correctly predicted the exact reasons why.
However they had made the fatal mistake of not serving on the boards of the most wealthy corporations in the country, and so their objections were lost in the roar of private jet engines which were either leaving a crumbling Wall St. carrying CEOs with multi-million dollar bonuses, or else spiriting CEOs to Washington to ask for multi-billion dollar bailouts.
But just when you think that there is no justice in the world, OJ goes to trial, but this time he also goes to jail. You would think that if you murdered your wife and got acquitted, maybe you would keep a low profile. Maybe you wouldn’t try to steal things at gunpoint in hotels. In his defence, he did claim that the things he stole were once his, and you can understand that if you were OJ, you would take matters into your own gloves before calling the authorities, because you would rightly have no confidence in the powers of law enforcement whatsoever.
He also forgot the golden rule which Phil Spector could easily have told him: if you are famous and you are going to commit crimes, commit them in LA.
There were also many things that happened this year that didn’t happen in America. My home country of New Zealand also had an election and long term leader Helen Clarke was ousted. More importantly to New Zealanders, the All Blacks continued a great year of global ass-kicking. Why we can’t play the same way when global ass-kicking skills are of paramount importance, i.e. during World Cup years, is a mystery which I hope will die in 2011. (The year of the Rabbit, if you’ll remember).
Here in Australia QANTAS probably lost their famous reputation as the world’s safest airline with a string of what a PR person could smilingly refer to as ‘non-lethal incidents’, the most incidental of all having been the appearance mid-flight, of a large hole in the side of a plane. Who said the excitement of air travel was dead?
The Prime Minister, probably in an attempt to salvage the national carrier’s reputation, took so many international flights he became the first head of state to spend more time out of his country than governing from within it. Critics of his never-ending world tour point out that with the internet these days, you can teleconference from anywhere in the world. But with Australia’s terrible broadband speeds, it’s actually quicker to just fly there and send telegrams back. ‘Having a great time! Signed Kyoto Protocol yesterday:) Flight was bad. Hole in plane. Everybody fine. Non-lethal incident’.
The iPhone was released here, and geeks found that their love of all things Apple was now in danger of going mainstream. Across the nation people tried to figure out the most prominent way to display their iPhones about their person without looking like pretentious trend-monkeys, and failed without exception. Total scorn is difficult though, because while they still have a few faults, touchscreens are awesome, and I secretly want one. In other tech news, Blu-Ray has so far failed to achieve similar impact.
But my favourite development of the year was a resurrection of what was thought to be a bygone practice, long relegated to either tales of yore, or blockbusting Hollywood franchises starring Johnny Depp acting charmingly effeminate. Yes folks, piracy is back! And not cd or dvd piracy, I’m talking real pirates, boarding real ships and sailing away with real booty.
The Somali pirates are not content with the odd chest of treasure and exotic spices. They don’t just attack tiny ketches, sloops, skiffs or yachts. When I first read about them, I thought there was a misprint, and that by ‘tanks’ they meant ‘tanker’. But no, Somali pirates seized a cargo ship and with it, a whole bunch of tanks.
And not tanks of fuel, I mean tanks with tracks and hatches and turrets and armour-piercing shells. And then, they did steal a tanker. A whole oil tanker with a hundred million dollars worth of oil. Makes Captain Blackbeard and Long John Silver look like Steamboat Willie and Captain Stubing from the Love Boat.
If 2008 was the comeback of the pirate, I will dare to predict that next year will see the triumphant return of that glamorous specimen the gentlemanly and debonair, moustachioed, goggled and well-scarfed Flying Ace.
2009 will be remembered for all posterity as the Year of the Baron. Now that is the audacity of hope.
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
How do you defeat the scourge of drugs, and the pain and misery that it brings to all those who are caught up in its web? The answer, which is the answer to fighting most of the evils in this world, is ninjas.
Jesse Trojaniak and Tadieusz Tertkiewicz knew the answer. Not for them the pathetically inadequate efforts of law enforcement. No, the bleeding-heart programmes of injecting rooms and touchy-feely therapy sessions do not convince these two citizens. Sometimes what is needed to change the world is tough love, and there is no tougher love than that delivered through the tip of a crossbow.
The Horatio Files is proud to present these two upstanding individuals, who did not meekly turn a blind eye to the evils on our streets, but who decided that enough was enough and who took a stand on behalf of all of us. When a friend of 19 year old Jesse and 20 year old Tadieusz got sadly mixed up with drugs, they knew they couldn’t stand idly by and watch this menace claim their community as well as their friend.
Now whilst this is undoubtedly tragic, what inducts them into the Horatio Files is how they went about conducting their crusade of social engineering. Picture this: The first glimmer of light infuses the early hours of the morning. A highway is virtually deserted. This is Route 46 in Clifton, New Jersey. Beside the highway is a lone car, parked and silent. The darkness obscures what is inside.
This is the scene that confronted police as they drove by on a routine patrol. I’m not sure how even a lifetime of dealing with the dark underbelly of crime could have prepared officers Steven Farrell and Robert Suhey for what they encountered when they stopped and approached this mystery car. Because sitting inside, were two ninjas.
Now when you think of two ninjas, you probably have in mind an image something like this:
No doubt this is what was uppermost in the minds of the police officers, who treated such a development with the cautiousness, care and concern that is appropriate when dealing with individuals who are trained in the way of stealth, weaponry and deadly combat. They could only have been further alarmed when they searched the car.
They found tactical vests, knives, throwing knives, ninja throwing stars, swords, bows, arrows, nunchucks and a cross bow. What evil deeds were about to transpire were it not for the eagle-eyed efforts of the New Jersey Police Force? A clue was found upon further searching of the vehicle. Five letters were found, decorated in Chinese designs and motifs.
It must have also surprised Police to find that under the menacing cover of the ninja robes, these two men trained in the way of the assassin actually looked like this:
It turns out that our two freelance soldiers were not intent on unleashing some sort of murderous rampage on the unsuspecting inhabitants of Clifton. Jesse and Tad informed police that they were modern day ninjas or “Shinobi Warriors” and were going to deliver their messages to drug dealers as a warning.
Now I am no expert on Ninjitsu, but I am pretty sure that among the many impressive skills of ninjas, their mastery of the many martial techniques does not extend to the deadly art of correspondence. I am unaware of any historical evidence that ninjas have won any battles through a letter-writing campaign.
But even in the world of the Shinobi, there is a first time for everything. And what chilling letters these were. They informed drug dealers that they had been tried and found guilty by our Shinobi citizens: “You have committed passing on your impurity upon innocent brothers and sisters.” They then went on and exhorted drug dealers to cease their “cruel and sadistic intentions“. And what was to be the fate of any dealers who ignored such dire warnings? They would be confronted with “justified, yet merciful force“.
The police officers were unconvinced by exactly how ‘merciful’ their force would be, given the lethal nature of their arsenal. But they were assured by our vigilantes that “Those weapons, they were just for show, they were just there to make us look as ninja as possible“.
part of the deadly (yet merciful) weapons haul
The plan had only been to deliver the letters to the front doors of dealers. They declined to comment on how they knew the addresses of the cruel and sadistic drug dealers, but a clue may once again be found in the letters themselves: “The wind guides us to those of impure heart and intent“.
Such cryptic pronouncements were not good enough for the police, who wanted a clearer statement from the pair about the reasons for their actions, and they were duly told in less formal language that they had undertaken their mission “To tell drug dealers and users to maybe back off the drugs,” Jesse said. “It screws up people’s lives.”
I think in this day when so many of our youth have gone off the rails and exhibit only disrespect and a lack of motivation, we should celebrate the efforts of these two fine upstanding young men. They should serve as an example to our lost, drifting generation of young adults, and prove that with discipline, effort, principles and eight-pointed shuriken, anything is possible.
Success does not only come by getting onto reality shows or making a sex tape, but more often it is the result of a lifetime of blood sweat and tears. You must wholly follow your passions. Jesse has not attained his considerable skills overnight, he has been selflessly immersed in his fascination with ninjas, “For a very long time now,” the 19-year-old said.
years of training
There was a sting to this already bizarre tale when Tad was charged with harassment after it came to light that he had delivered a similarly ominous letter to his ex-girlfriend. It seems the way of the Shinobi can not only defeat evil-doers who threaten your village, but is also capable of dealing, albeit without a great deal of finesse, with affairs of the heart.
Were the police glad to have on their side such talented and dedicated warriors to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with, in the war on drugs? No. Both of our intrepid saviours were charged with weapons possession. Jesse Trojaniak fared a little better and was released on a summons. Trojaniak’s father told The Associated Press his son is “not a maniac” and was only trying to help a friend.
But the lovelorn Tadeusz Tertkiewicz can meditate on how drug dealing crime syndicates are still easier to deal with than women, as he proves that it is easier to recover from the scars and injuries of battle than it is to recover from the longer-lasting wounds of a broken heart, while he is held in the Passaic County Jail on $20,000 bail.
Clifton Police Detective Captain Robert Rowan praised officers Farrell and Suhey for “doing an excellent job and putting an end to this misguided quest.” Of our deadly duo, he said, “Their intentions may have been good, but we tell everyone that they shouldn’t take the law into their own hands…They’re not bad kids. They just made a mistake.”
It is not certain whether the wayward Jesse views Det. Capt. Rowan as a sensei figure, but it seems that he has taken such wise words to heart. “I don’t think I’ll ever do anything like that again,” Jesse said. But then again, as Jesse and Tad well know, deception and subterfuge are key tactics in the philosophy of the modern ninja. I don’t think we’ve heard the last from the brotherhood of the Shinobi…
[Original Link]
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
On my way home everyday, I pass a gourmet pizzeria and often send them mental death rays, but so far to no discernible effect. Well, that’s not entirely true. They do seem to change their staff often, so perhaps I really am cutting a swathe of death and destruction through their workforce.
However on any given day the current staff don’t seem too grief-stricken. They hurry about their job with a busied gravitas. Or is it a sombre acceptance of their fate? Is it possible that my unrelenting telepathic carnage has reduced each new worker to a state of dutiful resignation? Like the lone man condemned to death who doesn’t feel the cold which torments his fellow prisoners.
The thought that this could be the case does not bring me any sense of happiness. Because on just as many days, I pass by and my spirits are given a lift of the type that only the combination of a doughy base, cured meats and melted cheese can bring.
Therein lies the problem. My attitude to this little place is ever-shifting. How can a man hold within him such opposing feelings without falling apart? As the forces of Good and Evil battle over me, let me take you back to simpler times…
just like I remember
During the golden days at my first university, the gods convened, and in return for the enjoyment I brought them from the exploits of my epic feats, they rewarded me in the second semester with a timetable so glorious that even now I can recall it with blissful clarity. A Monday with nothing that started before lunch. Sadly not even the gods could release Wednesday from its Hump Day distinction, though in concession it started at 10:00am and went solidly through to 4:00pm with an hour’s break, and each lecture was considerately placed closer to my home as the day went on.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, with their lectures in the morning when you were fresh and needed to think, and tutorials in the afternoon when you only needed to talk, or better still, merely to pretend to listen, formed comforting bookends around Wednesday, like the quick back-rub from your mother before you had to ingest some vile medicine, and then the half-spoonful of honey afterwards.
And then Friday. Oh, how my heart still soars! For on Friday, I had nothing. That’s right, a three day weekend for a whole semester. Well, technically that’s not true. I did have one lecture and one tutorial. The lecture was at 8:00 in the morning, so let’s face it – I would not have gone to that no matter on which day it had been scheduled.
And as for the tutorial: At the risk of sounding arrogant and immodest, the very first one which I attended was enough to convince me that any further attendance on my part was unnecessary. Not only that, but were I to attend them, repeatedly subjecting myself to the excruciating experience of pretending to take seriously the blathering moo-pinions of the lowing idiots there assembled, would in fact begin reducing the very intelligence which I possessed that rendered it possible for me to miss the tutorial in the first place.
A tip for those contemplating taking Philosophy at university: I am reliably informed that Philosophy, at the second and third year level, becomes fairly challenging. However the vast majority of people who show up for first year Philosophy papers think it is an easy subject. You soon find however, that there is a substantial proportion of students who struggle with it, even though first year Philosophy is an easy subject. Being in a tutorial full of these people is like forcing yourself to sit through the meandering, prolonged recounting of a dream by a dull witted child, knowing that there will be a test afterwards.
So if you’re continuing with Philosophy at a higher level, be prepared to give these initial tutorials a wide berth. The good stuff comes later on. Like me, you may be only taking a first year Phil paper as part of another degree, and chose it thinking that the tutorials will be a stimulating exchange of ideas concerning the nature of the world. They are not. Although to take a philosophical view, one could argue that perhaps they are, that the true nature of the world is in fact an endless switching between suffering and boredom.
If that doesn’t sound like your cup of hemlock, give the tutes a miss. In fact, give the whole paper a miss, and do a first year Art History one instead. More interesting than Phil at first year level, and with hotter chicks. (If you are a chick, it’s just more interesting. Although, seeing as you are taking Art History, you should be able to appreciate the aesthetics of such a situation anyway).
I had more than ample time to occupy myself with these and other such weighty musings on my free Fridays. And where did I mainly conduct such reveries? “Poppa’s Pizza”, located just opposite the main campus library, on the street that divided the campus from the city. Being suitably distanced to allow yourself to be cocooned in wood-fired isolation, yet close enough to be pleasantly aware of all the work going on from which you were exempted, you could (and I did) spend many an idle hour.
Poppa’s Pizza
The above pic was taken on a recent visit back to Dunedin. It was not only captured as a reminder of a Dunedin institution, but I also wanted to document Dunedin on a sunny day, in itself a rarity.
The place was tiny. Two booths and a couple of tables placed as an afterthought along one of the walls. Another couple of tables placed optimistically outside on the footpath, it being inside knowledge that the arctic conditions to be found there were actually rendered bearable if you were periodically ingesting warm slices of pizza which would serve as internal hot water bottles.
Whenever you hear words and phrases like “quaint”, “wholesome”, “rustic feel”, “traditional ambience”, “minimalist dining” and “Old World charm” it inevitably means an establishment which could only scare up enough starting capital for cutlery and tables, and almost enough chairs. In such places, the sawdust is not a heartwarmingly nostalgic feature of the decor, but an integral and functional part of a spillage management system.
Yet here was the exception. A beautiful and cosy place built in a time where timber did not need to be ‘distressed’ to be aesthetically pleasing. Being a student town, pizza was a staple food, and the large franchises had the usual widespread presence. Yet once you had eaten here, all other pizzas seemed woefully inadequate, incapable of reaching the gastronomic heights easily scaled by a two day old congealed Poppa’s pizza.
Sure it was a little more expensive, but there was no greater guarantee of camaraderie than all pitching in and getting a couple of slices of culinary heaven, rather than being able to afford a whole pizza from the commercial cheapies, and trying to convince yourself of obtaining greater value-for-money as you stoically shoved the soggy cardboard triangles down your throat.
Poppa’s Pizza was independently owned, a one-off. You could not find other Poppi dotted around the city with garish neon-coloured signs which served as a flame to which drunken insomniac student moths would be drawn to at all hours of the night, swaying on their feet as they inexplicably took a whole ten minutes to come up with the princely sum, composed entirely of small change, of $4.95 for what was in effect some circular cheese and unidentifiable meat which came from beasts no doubt once penned together in claustrophobic sheds almost as dispiriting as the pizza outlets themselves.
No, my Friday hang-out was a byword for standards, quality, excellence. As the semester wore on, I became a temporal fixture of this particular niche. Soon you began to recognize the same faces and bags shuffling along to their Friday lectures. On good weeks they would stride victoriously, conscious that each step took them closer to the weekend. On bad weeks they would march along with heads bowed, hands in pockets, weighed down by assignments which would not get appreciably lighter over the two day respite.
You could tell the different types of students. The organized ones who strolled assuredly to campus in the knowledge that they had more than enough time to spare, and their lovably hapless counterparts who would rush headlong at that awkward speed which is the fastest it is possible to walk without breaking into a run.
You began to be convinced that you could tell students apart by the subjects they took. The Science majors who walked firm in the certitudes of rational thought and the promises of the Experimental Method, but betrayed by an occasional misstep or twitchy gesture, presumably as the oddities of the stubbornly inexplicable ‘facts’ of quantum theory would briefly flit across their minds.
The uptight smugness of Law students, the hopefulness of Arts students for whom all the horrors of the world can by defeated by a single painting, the Management students who have already started hating their lives and are correspondingly always hung over as they try to escape the fact of their oblivion.
Often though, you are proved wrong. The beautiful brunette who must, absolutely must, be studying Music and who you can picture drawing forth soulful yearnings from a richly veneered cello, will pass you, offering a glimpse of a folder neatly labelled ‘ACC 115′ and you will weep over your pepperoni and mushrooms at the travesty.
And every Friday without fail, a student on their way to campus will catch a whiff of a fiery Mexican or the subtle symphony of a Supreme, and will pause, conduct a losing battle within themselves, then shrug and turn into Poppa’s. At the first bite however, they will realize that the battle had actually been won.
You become aware of the same Poppa’s regulars. If they came with so much familiarity to the fatherly Poppa’s, they must accordingly be termed ‘Bambinos’. Often a quick frown of frustration would knit a v-shaped scarf across their foreheads if ‘their’ booth or seat was taken. You realized that the booths were in fact ‘owned’ by hundreds of students, each of them calling it home. They would take their place, wait and talk while the magic took place inside the stone walls and then take that first glorious bite. No matter how many times you ate there, you always heard the question pouring from your lips “How good is Poppa’s?” as your mate took a bite with neck hunched forward like a vulture and eyes closed, and nodded his answer while similarly plunged in ecstasy.
When writing this entry, I was amazed to find that I didn’t have a photo of a genuine Poppa’s Pizza. I have many pics of nights that either started or ended at Poppa’s, but not of the food itself. How could I have spent all that time in Dunedin without setting into digital posterity such a vital part of my life experience? While searching on the net, I wanted to find a pic that wasn’t advertising, but taken as a genuine form of appreciation for such great food. There were plenty of grateful written testimonials, but it seems no-one else had taken a photo, until I finally did find the above pic of a real Poppa’s pizza, taken from this blog .
It’s hard to describe how forcefully this took me back to all those magical Fridays. The wood of the table, the beer, garlic bread wrapping and of course the pizza itself. Proust had his madeleine, I have my Poppa’s to take me back to those afternoons at my booth literally tasting a slice of perfection . And if that memory serves me correctly, I would say that the above photo is of a pair of sweet chilli Poppa’s pizzas. Doesn’t it make your mouth water?
So with all this in mind, let us now travel back to the present. When I walk home these days, and pass this pale imitation of a pizzeria, I hope you can understand my mixed feelings. The small building is similar. As are the small tables outside. But there is no magic. The pizzas are good, but ‘good’ is not ’sublime’. The view of a shopping mall carpark entrance is hardly inspiring or conducive to great thoughts.
People in suits hurrying by become visual nausea. You hardly ever see the same person twice. Instead of a character-filled door, the entire front is opened out to the sidewalk. Eating hot pizza in the blazing heat now seems like a crime. Being a gourmet place, it is still better than the franchise pizza murderers, but whereas those places could never even be considered in the same divinely capers garlic and olive-scented breath as Poppa’s, this place consistently disappoints by continually promising a similar experience.
Usually I just order a pizza to go. And as often as not, when I get home, the slices haven’t been properly cut all the way through, and stick to each other. Not the biggest obstacle in life, but after paying $20 for a gourmet pizza, you expect better. As you pull up a slice and drag along another hanging segment along with it, you watch with a sinking heart as it sheds its toppings back into the box, leaving you with a bare, sauce-covered triangle, looking like some horrible atrocity has occurred.
a pale imitation
At times like these, I can’t help but think back to better days. In my mind’s eye I can see ‘my’ booth, the glass-fronted facade, the glowing oven mouths. I can hear the low buzz of conversation, frequently stopped for hungry bites. And if I can recreate enough of the mental picture, I can also remember a fragment of taste, a wisp of flavour, a ripple of deliciousness.
Every now and then a Bambino alumnus would stop by the old stomping grounds. They would always pause outside on the pavement, wondering at how incredibly small it seemed, even when fondly remembered for its underdog proportions. The first wave of that complex mixed aroma would bring back a torrent of memories, not only of Poppas but I suspect of youth in general. Bright young things who had gone forth, travelled to the four corners of this earth, seen things, done things, would tell their younger student versions, slice in hand, with a knowing tone: “Nowhere else comes close”. I am sadly beginning to understand exactly what they meant.
[EDIT] Since I wrote the above entry on the old blog, I have received a few e-mails which bring troubling rumours from distant shores. While the standard of the pizzas remain faultless, it seems there has been a gradual change in the Poppa’s “vibe”. The place has apparently changed owners, and I was also sent a link to a site which is eliciting interest from those wishing to start up their own Poppa’s franchise. The store now even has its own Facebook profile.
For my own part, when I returned to Dunedin it was during the summer holidays, so I put down the dip in energy to the fact that there were no students in town, something you can hardly blame Poppa’s for. But it seems that they may be heading in a different direction, which is both understandable (they are after all, a business) but also saddening. If this stalwart of an institution can head down such a road, is nothing sacred?
It seems unreasonable to expect such things to stay in the straightjackets that our memories place them in. But there was once a place where such concerns didn’t exist, where you could make a home away from home and where happiness was guaranteed, and I suppose I should consider myself blessed to have been able to spend so much time in such a place.
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
Y’all white folks is crazy.
I saw a kid, young enough to still be struggling with the more nuanced aspects of walking un-aided, throw the mother of all tantrums in the aisles of a store. At wit’s end, the hapless mother gave in after displaying a pathetic attempt at authority and delivering some beseechingly face-saving admonitions, allowing the little anti-christ to make off with a bounty of confectionery, a sugar load to no doubt fuel further petulant dictatorial displays in this as yet short, but brutal reign.
Growing up in an Indian household, my dad didn’t play that shit. My brother and I got a measly allowance, which, in consideration of the seemingly endless amount of chores we had to do, was surely in breach of many international statutes concerning child labour. When we went shopping, this allowance (the very existence of which was to be seen as some sort of divine compassionate benevolence, for there was no such thing as allowances in his day…) could be spent on whatever we pleased.
To even contemplate asking for anything above and beyond this, struck us as an exercise in futility, for it would have been met with only a hearty laugh and not even have been dignified with further response. Much less the thought of screaming at the top of our still developing lungs and demonically clutching at whatever bright and shiny packaging caught our impressionable eyes, sacking the store like some 3-foot-high Genghis Khan. For we were under no illusions that throwing such a tantrum, even in a place heavily populated by members of the public (or ‘material witnesses’) would be enough to prevent our dad from unleashing twelve types of whoop-ass on us.
One of the funniest memories my brother and I share was when we went back to India for a holiday. We were out in the city, meandering through the many stalls. One small shop had a parrot in a cage in the store-front, eagerly eyeing passerby for any small morsel of food. A small kid, an Alexander the Great in his own mind, stopped in front of the cage, neck straining upwards as he contemplated the bird, who ignored him with the sagacity of a wizened monk.
Enraged by this failure to pay the appropriate respects to a much-feared conqueror, the little tyke reached upwards and shook the cage for all he was worth. The shopkeeper, homemade reed pipe hanging languidly from the corner of his mouth, ambled over to this screeching commotion, and without missing a puff, clipped the boy around the head before ambling back to his newspaper.
Shocked out of his bloodlust, the boy stood there open mouthed, the comprehension of the outrage he had just suffered slowly beginning to dawn on him. His father, oblivious of this transgression of human rights, continued looking through the hanging wares of the next store, before walking back over to see the aggrieved conqueror balefully rubbing his ear, lost in the richly satisfying reverie of the unspeakable tortures his underlings would no doubt inflict upon this evil shopkeeper.
The father asked him what the matter was. An old man sitting nearby, (India is filled with old men who seem to fulfill no other purpose than merely to be present. It is a physical impossibility to conduct a conversation in public without the appearance out of thin air of an old man who will either nod in knowledgeable approval or else shake his head in dismissive disagreement) and who no doubt had in his many years smacked countless legions of young terrors himself, gave the father a quick rundown of the pertinent facts.
Whereupon, (and to the gleefully unrestrained approval and amusement of my brother and I) the dad proceeded to give the young fella a clip on the other side of his head. I’ll never forget the sight of that kid, a deposed monarch in short pants, rubbing both his ears and ruefully cogitating on the many and varied injustices of this world.
I can’t really see that happening here. Not only due to the glaring lack of parrots in Coles and Woolies, but more so the permissive standards of a contemporary society that will allow itself to be taken hostage by unruly nappy-clad Napoleons. I can’t really see the earsplitting wails of a hissy-fit bringing a checkout guy vaulting over his counter yelling “Read my name-badge, you caterwauling spawn of Lucifer, for I am Joel the Unmerciful, and if you don’t put that packet of Jellybeans back on the shelf and repent, I swear by all that is holy that I will bring down the divine wrath of righteous justice upon thine bratty head, for you are in Coles, and such insolence we tolerate not!”
Because the chances of that occurring are minimal at best, it is up to us to not merely roll our eyes and shake our heads disapprovingly at the woefully substandard parenting of others as they fail to control their little Nero or Emelda in public, but to take immediate action to eliminate these acts of juvenile terrorism.
A crisp clip around the ears, a firm smack to the bottom, a swiftly delivered roundhouse kick to the face, an expertly executed Special Forces choke-hold, a spinning hurricane of whirling nunchukus, whatever it takes… It’s for their own good, and it will hurt us more than it hurts them.
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
Welcome to ‘The Horatio Files’. This category is all about uncovering those stories that make you glad to be alive, because truth is stranger and ultimately more fun to mock than fiction. To kick things off in this category, what better way to show the many gloried spectacle of life that surrounds us on this awe-inspiring planet, than a Capuchin monk who finds inner peace through heavy metal…
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
-Hamlet, Act I Scene V
[Original Link] reposted here as follows:
[Start] At first glance, Cesare Bonizzi looks like the archetypal Capuchin monk – round-faced, stout, with twinkling eyes and a long flowing white beard. But beneath his robes beats a heart of metal. Brother Cesare is the lead singer in a heavy metal band which has just released its second album. A former missionary in the Ivory Coast, he lives in a small friary in the Milan hinterland.
The 62-year-old monk’s love affair with heavy metal began when he attended a Metallica concert some 15 years ago. “I was overwhelmed and amazed by the sheer energy of it” he says. Hard rock and heavy metal have, over the years, been criticised as the work of the devil. It’s a claim which Brother Cesare, also known as Brother Metal, says is nonsense.
He started playing and recording cassettes, firstly with “lighter” metal music, but gradually he realised that what really moved him was the hard core. The members of his band were at first sceptical at the idea of teaming up with a Capuchin monk but their doubts soon evaporated. “Five minutes after meeting Brother Cesare I decided to go ahead, because he manages to convey so much energy, that other musicians and youngsters often don’t manage to express,” lead guitarist, Cesare Zanotti, told Reuters.
Brother Metal recently appeared in the Gods of Metal festival in Italy, along with giants such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Slayer, playing to a crowd of leather-clad hard-core metal fans. “It was wonderful being there among all these young people” he told the Rome newspaper La Repubblica. “The only problem was that at one stage out slipped a “what the f…” because each time some people think that I am in fancy dress, they can’t believe a robed monk is on the stage playing their music”.
With a booming voice, Brother Metal belts out lyrics that are decidedly gritty, talking about real-life issues and not shying away from sex, drugs and alcohol. He does touch on faith and religion but is adamant that he is not seeking to draw people to Catholicism through his stage performances. Video clips of his performances on YouTube have helped spread his popularity and fan base.
His second heavy metal album, “Misteri” (Mysteries) has just been released. In a sign of Brother Metal’s eclecticism, it drew inspiration from a group of women in southern Italy who sang about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and a heavy metal version of that song is on the CD. Other songs talk about how alcohol warms the heart but excess drinking can damage the liver, and how important sex is to man.
Brother Cesare says he has never had any trouble with his superiors over his choice of musical career and would like to send his new album to the Pope. “He is a music lover and metal is music!” he says. While Brother Cesare always wears his traditional brown robe and sandals as a reminder that he has chosen a life of devotion to God, he is keen to distinguish established religion from faith, and from proselytizing.
“I do it to convert people to life, to understand life, to grab hold of life, to savour it and enjoy it. Full stop” he says. [END article]
-Wow, I am rendered speechless. Unlike Brother Metal, who it would seem has undertaken a vow of Extreme Metal Loudness. In this day of competition, I don’t think that other faiths can afford to rest on their robes, the challenge has been laid down. Let the battle for our souls begin…
Boring services? Not with MC battles from the pulpit, where freestyle Priests take on all comers, handing out lyrical smitedowns. And that’s not even taking into account the moshpit in the confessional.
Hip hop and heavy metal not rocking your pew? Coming to a place of worship near you, Goth Nuns, Rock ‘N Roll Rabbis, Punk Swamis, Reggae Shamans, Hard Trance Imams, and with a massive 180 decibel bass-sermonizing sub-woofer pumping out from his bulletproof ride, the Drum ‘N Bass Pope.
In the beginning, there were phat beats.
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’ My Dad used to say that. And, to be fair, Wordsworth before him. But procrastination, like all tastes, is an acquired one. It isn’t merely wasting time. It’s an artform. It’s the art of wasting time. The secret, as Eliot knew, is that ‘life is very long.’ We need things to take up the downtime.
Procrastination, at its most fundamental, is the exercise of freedom. Each man is King in his own world. And the best part of being King is not that you can do anything you want, but that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I am lord of all I survey. My will is absolute and beyond question. I could do this assignment, and I will, as and when I choose to.
But first, I will make myself a sandwich of such staggering proportions that court sculptors will make copies of it for posterity. As the lone and level sands stretch away, a stone tablet will eventually be uncovered which will tell of the King who could build such things.
I will use all the condiments, even the ones near the back of the fridge which have been in there so long they have evolved into the apex predator, whose merest movement stills the vegetable herds into silence. I will use the black olives, my subconscious helpfully steering my attention away from the fact that the faded label says ‘Green Olives’. I will include at least three phyla of beast, a sandwich with only one form of meat being nothing more than an elaborate absorber of saliva. Finally, I will cut off all the crust because I am no longer a boy but a man, free to do as he pleases. And no mere man but a King. (I will still hide the crust down the side of the bin, unable to rid myself of the disquieting sense of sin.)
Having becalmed the Royal appetite, I must now devote an hour and a half of concentrated endeavour to the PlayStation, to increase my hand-eye co-ordination to the necessary levels required for my fingers to fly across the keyboard as the assignment comes pouring out, filling up the screen, scrolling ever upwards as the words and sentences come out balanced perfectly, so that even the bibliography is raised to the sphere of inspired poetry.
But first I must see what my flatmate is up to, because I am no inscrutable head of state toiling away on works of genius, isolated in an ivory tower carved out of the tusks of all the elephants I have single-handedly slain, but a generous monarch, much beloved by his people. And, as in this case, if one of my subjects is enjoying an ale, why I shall join him and revel in the lot of the common man. And should he in his untutor’d ways choose to drink another, it is only politeness to join him.
And finally, because I am not only a sovereign ruler but also the owner of a poet’s heart, I will listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall.’ Twice. Now that the assignment is virtually finished and edited (in my head), the actual typing out of it, is merely a mechanical process, so I may as well wake up early tomorrow and dispense with that necessary unpleasantness before a spot of falconry…
This is the most basic of the types of procrastination, and is the form most people know. Unpleasant things are put off and pleasant things are indulged in, to show that we possess freedom. But this doesn’t explain the phenomena contained in the above photo. For that is procrastination raised to level of vocation. More of that later.
Moving up from the basic, we get into Relative Procrastination. This is where the pleasantness of an activity is relative to the urgency of the need of that activity being completed. So if you have to fill out a bunch of forms, for say, renewal of a passport, then it is an interminable bore and you would rather do your taxes. But if it is two days before your tax return is due, then passport renewal forms become as interesting as secret KGB files.
Another variation is the Justified Procrastination. Here, you leave off doing something in order to do something which is of some other supposed value. Instead of studying for exams, you clean up your entire house, re-tile the roof and replace the entire plumbing with non-lead, environmentally friendly pipes.
This form is strictly for amateurs. To think that your procrastination is anything other than avoidance is nothing but self-deception, of the kind indulged in by those who wash down cheese-encrusted double-cheese cheese pizzas with a Coke Zero. The true master of procrastination would never delude himself into such a frame of thought.
The activities you occupy your procrastination time with must be entirely non-productive ones. Two days before exams? Go out, see a bad movie, teach yourself funny Spanish phrases, go bowling until you get a strike, put up some witty graffiti, systematically work out the worst song you own, sew secret pockets into your favourite clothing and invent a signature breakfast dish – the list is endless. But clean up the place? No, make more mess! Sparkly, crunchy mess.
My favourite though, is the most specialized form. This is the realm of Pure Procrastination. This is procrastination for no reason at all. The above is a photo of an orange. It can be found on our kitchen countertop. It is over one and a half years old. The Brisbane heat has completely dessicated the inside of it, so it is totally hollow. The outer skin has shrunken and hardened almost to the toughness of a table tennis ball. Usually, fruit will just degrade into a fermenting pulp. But through some strange environmental embalming effect, this orange is now as indestructible as the pyramids.
Having fallen from the fruit bowl, it rolled down the other end of the counter. Neither myself nor my two flatmates could be bothered retrieving it, so there it remained. And remained. Soon, we couldn’t put it back, because it may contaminate the other fruit. It became a fixture. It became the fourth flatmate. Even when we cleaned the countertop (a rare enough event) we would just lift it up, clean, put it back down. It wasn’t a case of waiting for someone else to handle it – we all knew full well none the others would ever be bothered.
This is procrastination in perpetuity. We are a bunch of lazy bastards, but that doesn’t explain it. The effort it would take for me to walk over there and throw it away right now would be a lot less than having taken a photo of it before transferring it to my computer and uploading it to a website. No, this is putting something off just for the sake of putting it off. This is Zencrastination, and master practitioners of it are also capable of speeding up and slowing down their heartbeats at will.
Sooner or later, the committed procrastinater discovers the thrill of riding the delay donkey all the way to the end of the line. The assignment doesn’t get handed in. The bill doesn’t get paid, the reservation doesn’t get made, and time runs out. Excuses are made – the computer crashed, I’ve been snowed under with work, I plain forgot etc.
But to the connoisseur of Pure Procrastination, these excuses are unsatisfactory. The only two options worthy of honour are either blatant honesty – ‘To tell you the truth, it was simply a lot more fun not doing the assignment than getting it done. But at no point did I forget about the assignment” , or extravagantly complete and utter bald-faced lies – “What are you taking about? I handed in that assignment.” All true procrastinaters are good actors. “No, I didn’t make a copy, and I refuse to re-do the assignment. It’s not my fault you lost it.”
But these are extreme variations. For most of the lovers of procrastination inhabit a world where things get done, just not right now. There is a sort of mild bliss in relaxing when you have a lot of things that need doing. It adds a memory-sharpened edge that makes you enjoy relaxation more. Anyone can relax when you don’t have anything to do. Not everyone is cut out for it.
There are worriers and fretters and planners and organizers and all those who equate order with control. They set whole projects out weeks before their time. They also use one of the procrastiner’s favourite tool, the calendar. But unlike us, who look over a months worth of failed accomplishments with pride, they actually have their calendar entries crossed off as they complete them.
With no room for the thrill of frittering away time, they get out the necessary books for an assignment weeks in advance, drafts are drawn up, revised, shown to lecturers, revised again and finally handed in. You see them when the marks come out, frowning at their 90, wondering in which areas their extensive planning had let them down. Few people understand the unique joy of procrastination. The indescribable elation of getting a 60 on an assignment which was only started on the day it was due.
We walk a higher road, one which has many side streets and alleys, all of which lead to a restful sleep in a warm bed metres away from a desk where a ‘To Do’ list flutters restlessly, driven by the winds of fate.
~<>~
viva minutiae,
-sillionshine.
