Sunday, June 30, 2013

Red Songs...



A couple of years ago, 2009 to be exact, I went back to Chongqing, a city I had last been to in 1980.

In 2009, Chongqing politics were thoroughly dominated by the charismatic and contradictory Bo Xilai, the  Party secretary of Chongqing and a member of the Central Politburo. His ambitions didn't stop there; until his downfall, he was thought to be a favorite for membership in the very top of the leadership structure, the Politboro Standing Committee. Instead, after a bizarre series of events that included his police chief trying to defect to the US Consulate in Chengdu and his wife accused of the murder of an English fixer, Bo lost all his positions and was expelled from the CCP. It's a story so filled with melodrama, revenge, family rivalries, sex and murder that it stretches the plausibility of fiction. Journalist John Garnaut does a great job of explaining the whole case in his "The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo." It's 86 pages long and well worth the read. The subtitle is "How a Murder Exposed the Cracks in China's Leadership," but I also think it has a lot to say about some of the broader contradictions  in Chinese politics. Although Bo began his political career in the faction associated with former CCP Chairman Jiang Zemin, which tends to follow a more pragmatic, market-based approached to development--one for which all its successes in some areas has created a huge amount of economic inequality and proved to be a fertile environment for systematic corruption--he ended it as a "populist," pushing a more egalitarian economic agenda but also a heavy-handed Maoist-style cultural campaign -- the singing of "Red" Cultural Revolution songs, for example, appealing to a nostalgia for a time when there was more of a sense of shared goals and community. Well, except for the massive economic disruption, chaos, family members denouncing other family members to revolutionary committees, the forced dismantling of old social bonds, and so on. And the anti-corruption campaign that had brought Bo much acclaim and approval was later revealed to be equally corrupt -- one faction of the wealthy and powerful forcibly looting another.

At the same time, Bo represented a huge break from the traditional Chinese leadership -- pale, gray men with identical suits and haircuts who presented the appearance of consensus, despite whatever maneuvering went on behind the scenes. Bo wore sharp suits, loved glad-handing and kissing babies, like an American-style politician, and his wife was known as the "Jackie Kennedy of China," that is, before her murder conviction.

The Chongqing that Bo Xilai helped build bears little resemblance to the city I visited thirty years ago. Even the natural landscape has been altered or obscured, and made unfamiliar. "Chongqing is a mountain city," my friend Xujun would often say, but development blocks the mountain views. Even the Yangze is smaller than it once was, its banks filled to make room for yet more development.

Of all the Chinese cities I've visited, I've never seen one that more closely resembles Ridley Scott's "Bladerunner." A dank fog shrouds the city much of the time, making the mornings dark. Rank after rank of impossibly tall, impossibly skinny apartment buildings, crammed so close together that sunlight could barely penetrate, that I swear you could stick your hand out your window and shake hands with your neighbor across the way. Add to that the chaotic traffic that overwhelms the streets and highways, the city's layout that follows no discernible plan - all it needs are a couple of omnipresent blimps with video advertising (there are of course massive video screens on the sides of buildings and the requisite giant LED signs, at least).

It's fascinating, in a dystopian kinda way, and down in individual neighborhoods, actually pretty pleasant, with abundant street-life, trees and in the newer areas, charming landscaped areas that I still find a rarity in Chinese cities.

Thirty years ago, my friend Paul and I had come to Chongqing to meet up with his parents, who were on a vacation tour provided by their university for Spring Festival. We thought it might be fun to travel down the Yangze with them, be taken care of for a while. Traveling in China at that time was very difficult - they were not at all used to independent travelers, for one thing, and we spoke very little Chinese.

Also, no one had warned us about what it was like to travel during Chinese New Year. Who knew that about half the population of a billion plus Chinese left where they were and went someplace else, all at the same time? Looking down at the Chongqing river docks, watching the ferries load up, resembled a scene out of some World War 2 documentary: refugees fleeing the encroaching Japanese, carrying any and all of their belongings they could manage tied up huge bundles, lugging entire doors and lashed to carry-poles, television sets. Okay, the television sets do not fit the WW2 comparison. But it seemed impossible that these mobs of people and all of their things could fit onto the ferries they tried to board.

We stayed at a place that stuck in my memory for years, because compared to most of the "proletarian" architecture of Chinese cities at that time (Soviet Russia, you have a lot to answer for, architecturally), it was a memorable building: a giant round palace that resembled a carousel, topped by a gold knob. It's still standing today, much remodeled:

The main building is actually a theater. The hotel was in outlying wings. Like most everything else at that time, the facility was rundown and mildewed and overwhelmingly beige, though I do recall new, boxed television sets piled in one of the hallways, waiting to be installed.

My main memories of Chongqing thirty years ago are these:

We visited a number of revolutionary historical sites. This was much more interesting to me than you might think. Though my knowledge of Chinese history was sketchy at best when I'd arrived in China, I'd become fascinated by the late Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai - I still am, in fact. At the time, amongst the teachers and returned students I knew in Beijing, Chairman Mao was not very popular. Once, in fact, Paul's parents threw a "White Elephant Party" for the teachers whom they worked with and taught advanced English. This is when you bring something you don't want any more and give it away, in exchange for something that somebody else doesn't want any more. One of the teachers pulled out a bundled handkerchief. Wrapped in it was a pile of Mao buttons. He grinned, then chuckled and said, "White elephant."

Zhou Enlai, on the other hand, was still regarded as "the Peoples' Premier," one of the few sympathetic figures in the upper echelon of the Party's leaders, the man who'd tried to keep the country running and who mitigated some of Mao's worse excesses. This is not an entirely accurate representation of Zhou's role during this time - he was nothing if not complex, and it is impossible to summarize anything about him so neatly - but it is not entirely inaccurate either. I'm always drawn to ambiguous characters, especially those with a hint of tragedy.

He was also very handsome, with an actor's ability to portray emotion. "I think that is part of why I like him so much," Xujun said to me recently. "I just like to look at him." Me too.

I got into the habit of buying any Zhou Enlai souvenirs I could get my hands on - not many, compared to the masses of Mao memorabilia left over from the Cultural Revolution - some posters and some buttons and a couple of thin books and comics about his early life. I'd also ask people what they thought of him. There had to be something bad about the guy, some dirt. One person reluctantly told me that "maybe he had a girlfriend who was not his wife. But maybe this is just a rumor." I sort of hoped it was true. You don't want a person to be perfect.

Zhou spent a lot of time in Chongqing during
World War 2the Anti-Japanese War, as the Communist representative to the Nationalists during the United Front period, mixing with Allied diplomats and journalists, spies and underground organizers.

So I was really happy about getting to see Zhou Enlai's office. Zhou Enlai's bedroom. Even Zhou Enlai's bathroom (I have a slide to prove it). My memory of what and where these places were, exactly, was pretty hazy.

Thirty years later, Xujun took me up to the Red Craig Village. This was the Communist Party Delegation headquarters during the United Front Period. Up in the mountains, overlooking the modern city at a distance, it's really a beautiful spot. Peaceful.

"Did you visit this before?" she asked.

I couldn't remember. I wasn't sure. Nothing looked familiar. It didn't look unfamiliar either. I just didn't recall. "The place I went to might have been in town," I said.

"Maybe it didn't make a big impression on you," Xujun said.

This wasn't the case, not really, but it was thirty years ago, and my memory has always been spotty and strange when it comes to recalling events. Ask me about song lyrics and tunes, trivial factoids, foreign languages, all that stuff I remember and remember well, but what I did yesterday, not always so much.

We wandered through the main building, looking at the photographs, the offices, the staff sleeping quarters. Here was Zhou Enlai's office. I wasn't sure if I'd seen it before or not. He did have another office in the old downtown part of Chongqing. Maybe I'd never been up here before. The office was blocked off by two stanchions with a retractable ribbon barrier. The bedroom was through a doorway at the back of the office. "Go in and take a photo," Xujun whispered. "Come on, I'll stand guard!" I didn't want to - I'm a great believer in following the rules - but finally I agreed and went in.

The bedroom is small, taken up almost entirely by the bed, at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. Now that looked familiar.

When we got to the library, I knew.

There on the wall was a framed piece of calligraphy, the characters done in an unusual, "modern" style. I'd seen this before. I remembered it exactly. I'd been so struck by the unusual form of the characters, the almost whimsical modernity of them, that I'd taken a slide. Now, here they were. "Now I remember. Yeah, I've been here before."


As I explained to Xujun, there was another reason that my memories of Chongqing were a little hazy, and that was because I got violently ill the next day. I felt a little out of sorts in the morning, when the group was going off to tour someplace else (I have no idea what or where) and decided that I'd stay at the hotel, beige and mildew and all. Shortly after they left, I started throwing up. I swear it was the soggy cauliflower and gristly pork dish we'd had the night before. Whatever it was, I kept throwing up, and by the evening I was really in sad shape.

It was determined that I should go to the hospital and see a doctor.

At this time, it was almost impossible to travel in China without being assigned a "minder," usually from Liuxingshe, the official China Travel agency. Paul's parents school group had two graduate students who traveled with them. In addition, different minders took care of the group in different cities.

The Chongqing minder was a piece of work. In years he wasn't all that much older than I was, late twenties, thirty at most, but he was a thoroughly nasty little man. I don't know why he hated us, what we'd done that had provoked his ire, but loathe us he did.

So, I had to go to the hospital. He was to escort me there. Paul came along too. He didn't arrange for a car. No. We were to walk. It was freezing cold. The streets were frozen mud. No sidewalks. Hardly any streetlights. Now and again workers pounded bricks and metal for some mysterious purpose that required them to work long after dark.

I'd walk a half a block, boots crunching in the icy mud. Stop. Grab onto a pole or a fence or whatever I could find. Throw up. Walk a little further. Throw up some more. Walk. Shiver. Puke.

We got to the hospital. It was not reassuring. A concrete block building, bare slabs of gray cement. Dimly lit, the occasional bare bulb. No decoration. The exam room had a steel table and a chair in it and not much else.

The doctors and nurses, however, were very nice, wonderfully kind, in fact. I immediately felt better, especially after they gave me a shot of some sort and some pills to take. They spoke to our minder, with Paul hovering in the background.

The minder turned to me and smiled. "They say they think you have appendicitis. They say you might need an operation." His face loomed over mine. "Are you scared?"

I had to laugh. "What do you think? Like I want to have an operation? Of course I'm scared."

He retreated.

"I don't think that's what they said," Paul whispered to me. "I think they said it might be appendicitis, if it doesn't get better."

And in fact, that's what the doctors had said. If I didn't feel better in a day or so, I should come back, just to be sure it wasn't something more serious.

It wasn't. I recovered.

Lisa...Sunday...

Saturday, June 29, 2013

As A Wise Bird Once Said...

The Sky is Falling! 

But we all know better than to listen to Chicken Little.  And over in Greece, poor Kotopoulaki is about as welcome as Cassandra.  Okay, enough with the bold literary illusions.  It’s time to move on to reality.  Hmmm, that last line should be re-read at least three times by every soul in Greece officially charged with making sure that gorgeous Greek sky stays up there.

Frankly, anything that gets the Greek bureaucracy to look up from the tops of their shoes would be welcome.  Far too many still spend their time lurking around the dark edges of their land, hoping to find whatever pots of gold remain from those bright rainbow times of the past.

The Coalition Partners, Nea Demokratia & PASOK

Greece’s current government is now a two-party coalition instead of three, and its razor-thin majority margin has gone from electric to blade.  The likely largest vote getting party if new elections were called today is grooming its leader to be the next king.  Excuse me, I shouldn’t say “king” for his party (SYRIZA) is an amalgam of five…or is it four…or is it three…socialist parties (with views ranging from North Korean to Swedish).  Yet, from the way his professional image makers are out there packaging him and his party to the world, I think they’re secretly planning a coronation.

SYRIZA’s leader made his mark saying “no” to whatever the other guy said in trying to deal with the crisis.  If the IMF, EU, the ruling coalition, or any of the demon financiers of the West were for it, he was against it.  That makes it easy to say, “I told you so” now.  Smart politics, especially if one conveniently forgets that he refused an offer to form his own government and lead Greece through its crisis.

The Contender

My guess is he thinks it’s time to take his shot, and I come to that conclusion from such things as the op-ed piece placed in this week’s The New York Times titled, “Only Syriza Can Save Greece” bearing a central message of comfort to the west: “SYRIZA would be a good thing for America and the European Union.”  I wonder how that will play at home, where bashing America has been a political staple of the left since the fall of Greece’s Junta dictatorship in 1974—one of the last Greek governments publicly hailing itself as “good for America.”

Frankly, I don’t care who governs Greece as long as the new government’s very first act is to tear down that plaque which must exist somewhere in the secret recesses of the Parliament bearing this inscription: “All ye who enter here make as much as possible of the situation while you have the chance.”

The Parliament

Yes, there are selfless, dedicated public servants working hard to drive their country through its time of direst need.  But far too often they’re compromised or cutoff by colleagues driven only to help themselves.

The Reporter
The Greek people are not fools, no matter how some of their leaders might regard them.  Word is out, more so everyday.  Bankers who drove the country into its horrid corner are reported as being lavishly rewarded by friends in government (inspired possibly by bankers in the US), and the reporter who exposed a list of highly influential Greeks possibly owing taxes on Swiss bank accounts, suppressed for years by Greece’s Ministry of Finance, led to the prosecution of only one person: the reporter.  That he was found innocent didn’t matter to the prosecutor who has gone after him again.  He has his priorities. (Here’s the reporter’s side of the story.)   

Hello out there, the sky is falling! 

If this government fails, and SYRIZA steps in but things remain the same—frustrating the millions who believed its leader’s rhetoric—waiting in the wings is the neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi party aka Golden Dawn, currently with 18 members in Parliament (of 300—not of the Thermopylae sort).  It, too, has packaged itself snappily.  Marketing specialists converted its unvarnished message of hate into nationalistic jingo rhetoric, and PR consultants cower those who dare challenge the parties brutal physical attacks upon “enemies of Greece.”

The Chrysi Avgi Party Symbol
The Party in Parliament
The Party in the streets
All that is necessary for Chrysi Avgi to prevail is for good, fair-minded Greeks to do nothing to demand better of their country.  And should Chrysi Avgi’s day come, Greece will know that the sky has fallen…for the Devil shall be ruling its land.



Jeff—Saturday

Friday, June 28, 2013

If you go to the woods....


The mastermind

If you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today you'd better go in disguise
  
When I was in primary five the teacher asked us to write a poem or a wee story based on a nursery rhyme. Nowadays it would be a hoot - Jack and Jill going to casualty after falling down and breaking their crown, the three little pigs applying for planning permission, London Bridge  falling down due to government cuts failing to support the transport infrastructure. Baa Baa Black sheep getting an ASBO for racist comments.  Mary had a little lamb, the doctor died of shock. 
But we were  nine or something, we were expected to do nice sweet wee stories.
                                     
                                                                  The Public Image


Mine was based on the song 'the teddy bears picnic' by Henry Hall, ex Sally Army man and band leader.  The first two lines are fair enough... but look at that last  chorus..... 

 If you go down to the woods today, you'd better not go alone
  It's lovely down in the woods today but safer to stay at home

That man recognised danger when he saw it. Like me, he probably always suspected the wee teddy torags of being up to something behind our backs. You just have to look at them to see that expression of feigned innocence.... and behind those little glass eyes are the thoughts of Satan.

                                    

What they really get up to- stealing sweeties.

My wee story, all those years ago started with the line 'five year old Lucy was the first one to die'.  I thought it likely then, and I have not changed my mind one iota - it is only a matter of time before the Teds turn on us and it will be World War T (starring Bear Pitt!)

Anyway in my little version the picnic goes very wrong indeed. The Teds eat all the jelly and ice cream. Then turn on the kids,  chasing and hunting them down, gobbling them up. Disturbing thoughts for a nine year old but my anti social personality disorder is now well under control. 

Sort off.


In a strange quirk of co incidence, I now have two friends who are  teddy bear people. They are allowed out in society. One owned a teddy bear shop called Growlies for many years. It was just down the road where I live. It was a tiny shop, full of glass cases  stuffed full of wee furry varmints dressed, posed, warm and cosy.... looking for trouble.  Then I realised  the full extent of Margaret's mafia life style. She runs a world wide business, everybody in teddy land knows her. She once showed me a photograph  of a gathering - all the bears she had sold were flown back from round the world for a teddy jamboree/council of war. There were hundreds of Teds sitting on a lawn of a very expensive hotel, sprawled on  lovely rugs, drinking champagne and munching chocolates.

Then things moved into a different league when I met Sue Quinn. She appears normal but deep inside she is a Teddy bear person. She has a master called Mr Jones.
                                    

I told her my ted story, she was horrified.  She adores her teds. She makes them. Dresses them. Gives them a purpose. Some got cast adrift on a life raft. She made sure they all got swimming lessons  after that. 
                                   
She is a very funny lady.  She spends all her time designing  and making bears. They inhabit her house, are house trained but not always obedient or well behaved. They have been known to nip into her fridge to steal lager and chocolate.

Well that's what her husband says.
                                          
                                                  Mr Jones starring in Hamet
Mr Jones and co are going into a new venture, the bears are now starting to write fiction. They have written a few  books on how to  make more bears/ weapons of mass destruction but now they are going into real adventure type fiction.  Sue assures me it will be all Mrs Tiddywhatsit  puts her baps in the oven to hilarious effect but I bet if it is read backwards, there will be a call to war and rebellion.

                                  

Getting a lesson from Mr Shakespeare. Or a klingon.

With her permission I  have raided her facebook page  so you can be prepared. Note these faces. These guys are trouble. With a capital T.

I think the trouble started on that bear hunting trip in 1902 with Theodore Roosevelt. After the hounds had cornered an American black bear, they clubbed it half to death and tied it up. Roosevelt was asked if he wanted to shoot it. He refused to do it himself  (at that point he thought it was unsporting. That thought had been on the mind of the bear for a while longer). He then instructed the bear to be killed and put out its misery.
                                   
Recruitment starts young. 


After such treatment, is it any wonder that the ted invasion has started. We need to be warned and armed. These critters go through airport security!

The first ted was made by Michtom in the image of the famous Roosevelt cartoon. At the same time  Steiff, working in Germany produced a stuffed bear of their own. It was seen at the  Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903, where  a buyer ordered 3000 to be sent to the United States. They never arrived, the bears were reported as shipwrecked. 
                                   

                                              
But they probably swam ashore and have been making their plans for world domination ever since.   By 1906  the craze for bears .. well... went crazy.  Ladies carried them about, kids played with them, grown men took them flying. They  started to be involved in the mascot culture of the armed forces.  Roosevelt used one himself as a mascot for re election.
                                     
                     Caught in the act, genius level deck chair assembling.  Next- the Stealth bomber.


Without any of us noticing, they have got quite far.

It's a 2 billion pounds business. More and more Teds are being held in captivity/museums rather than in the wild. There are ...world wide teddy bear festivals, they are now  Teds working for the NYPD. I kid you not. So far they are only involved in counselling, they are not allowed to carry guns but it is only a matter of time until they are armed and on the street.
                                      
                                              Mr Jones- note adaption to warm climate.

In case you think I am making this up, the  Veterinary Record 90 (14);382-385, a very prestigious journal  carried an interesting paper in the 1970's.  It is entitled 'some observations on the diseases of Bruni edwardii ( species nova ).  It's the definitive article on re attaching limbs of  naughty teds who get up to stuff they shouldn't.

" The article does describe, in a dry, scientific fashion, the diseases of Brunus edwardii, which is described as a species "commonly kept in homes in the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe and North America." The article warns that: "Pet ownership surveys have shown that 63.8 percent of households are inhabited by one or more of these animals, and there is a statistically significant relationship between their population and the number of children in a household. The public health implications of this fact are obvious, and it is imperative that more be known about their diseases, particularly zoonoses or other conditions which might be associated with their close contact with man."

                                      

So before you think...they are nice wee cuddlesome guys- they do no harm. Are you sure your ted is where you left it last night? Exactly where you left it?  Or he been up to something while you were asleep?

It's often said that cockroaches will be the only thing to survive the nuclear Armageddon.  But that theory has never been tested.
One species survives plane crashes. Brunus edwardii.
At the Teddy Bears Picnic, no one will hear you scream.


Remember this face!

Caro Ramsay GB 28 06 2013





































Thursday, June 27, 2013

Move over Nessie?


The Loch Ness monster was first mentioned in a 7th Century text written by Adomnán, who reported that St. Columba had seen a monster in the River Ness a hundred years earlier.  Between the 7th Century and the 20th Century there was no mention of the animal.

The monster returned to the public eye in 1933 when George Spicer and his wife reported seeing 'a most extraordinary form of animal' cross the road in front of them.  Since then Nessie, as the supposed monster became to be known, has captured the world’s interest, even though there has been no hard evidence that it actually exists.  Many photographs of the monster, such as the ‘ssurgeon’s photograph’ of 1934, are generally now regarded as being hoaxes.
The 'surgeon's photo' of Nessie - a hoax

Sculpture of Nessie at the visitor centre

Despite the prominence of Nessie in the public’s eye, there is a similar monster that has been sought for much longer, namely Mokèlé-mbèmbé, meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers".  It is reputed to be found in Lake Télé and the rivers forming the Congo basin. It is said to have a preference for deep water, and local folklore claims that its favorite place is on  river bends.

The first possible mention of mokèlé-mbèmbé was by Abbé Lievain Bonaventure, a French missionary and naturalist in the seventeen hundreds.  He reported seeing footprints of an enormous creature that were neither those of an elephant or hippopotamus.

In 1909, several people reported hearing of mokèlé-mbèmbé but not actually seeing it.  Lt. Paul Gratz's account spoke of a creature known by native people, which was said to inhabit the Lake Bangweulu region in Zambia.  Gratz described the creature as resembling a sauropod.  This is one of the earliest references linking a local legend with dinosaurs.
In the same year, famed big-game hunter, Carl Hegenbeck claimed to have heard multiple reports of a creature described as "half elephant, half dragon".  And naturalist Joseph Menges also told Hagenbeck about an animal alleged to live in Africa, described as "some kind of dinosaur”.
These reports excited the press and the possibility of a modern-day dinosaur was discussed at length.
In 1913, a German, Captain Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz, conducted a survey of German colonies in what is now Cameroon.  He heard stories of an enormous reptile alleged to live in the jungles, and included a description of the beast in his official report.

The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and apple-like fruits.


The first organized expedition  to search for mokèlé-mbèmbé was sent by the Smithsonian in 1919-1920.  The 32-man team never saw the creature but "African guides found large, unexplained tracks along the bank of a river and later in a swamp the team heard mysterious roars, which had no resemblance with any known animal".

From then on, there have been numerous expeditions.  One problem they all faced is that the area in which the creature is thought to live is in the middle of the almost-impenetrable Congo jungles.  Some expeditions never even reached their destination.


Most of the expeditions have produced no hard evidence, as is the case with Nessie.  But there are some tantalizing scraps.

In 1966 a man called Yvan Ridel photographed a large three-toed footprint.  Hippos have four toes.

In 1992, a Japanese film crew shot 15 seconds of a large animal swimming across Lake Télé although, as would be expected, the photo is indistinct.  It appears that the animal has a single horn - which is also the description in a lot of local legend.  I could not find a photo worth printing.

One of the most interesting activities is the search for mokèlé-mbèmbé by creationsists, led by Young Earth Creationsist William Gibbons of England.  His first expedition in 1985-1986 was unsuccessful in finding the creature, but it did discover a new subspecies of monkey.  He returned in 1992 and again was unsuccessful.  Gibbons obviously believes that locating a dinosaur or dinosaur-like creature living today would undermine evolutionary theory.  Gibbons has returned several times, all without success.

The most recent expedition was about five years ago, and a Kickstart campaign has raised about $30,000 for another expedition, but it seems unlikely that it will materialize.

So is it time for Nessie to move over?  I think not.  Given the inhospitable terrain in which mokèlé-mbèmbé lives, and given the armed conflicts in the area, I think that Nessie is going to continue being the most popular of the two.  However, the chances that something unusual being found is greater in the Congo jungles, much of which has yet to be mapped.

Who knows, may we’ll all be headed there one day – to a living Jurassic park.

Stan - Thursday