Rapture Shmapture

Okay, well, one of three things has obviously happened:

1.  My watch has stopped.

2.  The Rapture happened and I missed it.

3.  The Rapture was a bust.

If the Rapture failed to arrive as scheduled, I'm kind of disappointed.  I'd been looking forward to it -- not so much the Event itself as the world it would leave us, even for a brief, earthquake-rich period.

It might have been a world with shorter lines for movies.  And, although I had no data to back me up, I was free to imagine that the entire TSA workforce might have been yanked heavenward, leaving the airlines as the only problem with air travel.

On a more serious level, I thought the post-Rapture world would have been a much less smug place, a place in which negative value judgments and religious exclusion would play greatly reduced roles in social dynamics.  A place in which how we live our lives would be more important than how we bend our knees.

Since the Rapture is so selective and the devout of other religions are apparently unworthy of sharing eternity, I was looking forward to a world somewhat richer, statistically speaking, in devout Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Zoroastrians, and most versions of Islam. I kind of hoped, in the short time we'd have left, that we might see how the most positive aspects of those belief systems would color our world.

But it's apparently not to be. The 2011 Rapture can be filed with the Y2K disaster as something subscribed to by the world's slow learners.

So here's my remaining hope.  I hope that everyone who bought into this, who consigned the rest of humanity to the flames, will creep out of their houses and into the light of God's new day deeply, deeply embarrassed, if not actually consumed with shame.  Shame that they would buy into a deity so vengeful and ignorant and small-minded that it would save a few Elect out of billions of Blameless, and negligently destroy the rest, including the entire beautiful (and probably Primitive-Christianity-free) universe.

They won't of course.  They'll just reset their spiritual watches and start counting down again.

And I say, the hell with them.

Tim -- Still here on Sunday May 22

Ehis Konneh?

No, that is not the name of a Hawaiian football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers or Albania’s longtime former Stalinist prime minister (Enver Hoxha), it’s a Greek idiom borrowing in part from an English word.  It means, “Do you have [ehis] connections [phonetically, konneh]?” and is what one hears whenever you must wander off into the fairy tale land of Greek bureaucracy.

We’re not talking about anything corrupt here…that would fall into the category of “Did you bring the fakelaki [little envelope]”…we’re just talking about getting through the civil servant maze—or perhaps since this is Greece I should call it labyrinth—within a reasonable period of time somewhat less than the eighty-million-year half-life of plutonium-244.  Think of ehis konneh more on the order of an informal ombudsman system.

Mykonos Harbor

I arrived in Mykonos last Saturday night knowing I had to renew my residency permit by the end of the week.  I’m familiar with the process, I know the people, I like the people, and they like me.  But this is Greece, and my Greek friends kept saying things are more difficult now, what with the financial disaster forcing civil servants to take a cut in pay, a loss of benefits, and an increased workload.  They shook their heads at the thought of my trying to get something done without their ehis konneh.

Obviously, none of them ever had to deal with the U.S. Healthcare system, for if they had they’d realize that anyone who’d successfully done that was as well trained and experienced in mission oriented tactics as the Navy Seal Team Six that took out bin Laden.

After all, dealing with any flesh and blood live bodies standing between me and my residency permit could not possibly be as challenging as overcoming the U.S. healthcare industry’s computerized stealth techniques of non-cooperation: the telephone message, “Press 5 for another example of how we’re going to cause you to lose such patience that you hang up and quietly go off to die,” and the letter, “Please feel free to appeal this denial of life-saving care if you wish to spend whatever remains of your miserable life battling our lawyers.”

Mykonos Tax Office

So, first thing Monday morning, armed with my passport, documents, four photos, patience, and a smile, I began my modern day Odyssey (how could I not use that word).  My first stop was the Mykonos tax office.  It’s located next to the busiest pizzeria on the island, and there was not a legal parking space to be found.  I had to park on the sidewalk…and even then it was a struggle to get one.  Inside, the lines looked as if the tax office were giving away, rather than taking in, euros.

I stood at the door of perhaps the most overworked person on Mykonos.  Her desk was covered in files, pens, pencils, stamps, coffee cups and family memorabilia, and surrounded by a half-dozen people.  Four were taxpayers making their pitches at the same time, and two were tax office employees asking questions and handing forms to their boss to read, stamp, and sign.  It was a virtuoso performance by a ringmaster who knew how to maintain order with a smile and courteous words, all the while keeping a whip firmly in hand for when necessary.

She saw me at the doorway.  “Please, come in.  What can I do for you?”

I explained what paper I needed and she said, “Could you please come back the day after tomorrow, I am so very busy today.”

That was cutting things a bit close, but there were documents I still needed elsewhere and her request was reasonable.  Besides, what else could I do?  So Wednesday it would be.

Now to find the lawyer to translate my English-language documents into Greek.  The one I used before had moved her office over the winter and was not picking up her phone.  That could be a problem because what I needed wasn’t a very productive (or profitable) use of a busy lawyer’s time.  I reached her in the early afternoon and we made an appointment for the next day.

With nothing more to do on Monday, I decided to go to the beach.  Life can be tough at times but one must make the best of it.

The next day I stopped by the lawyer’s office and left off the papers.  She said she would try to finish them “by tomorrow.”

That was better than I expected.  I could pick them up after my appointment at the tax office.  Things were looking pretty good.  Time to head back to the beach.

Wednesday morning the tax office seemed just as crowed and hectic as it was on Monday.  I stood in the same doorway and watched more taxpayers make their pitches.  The ringmaster motioned for me to sit in the chair in front of her desk as she heard them out.  One of her staff stuck his head in the doorway with a question and she told him to bring her a form, all as the taxpayers kept on talking.

I was getting the sense this would not be any better a day for my getting what I needed.  As if reading my mind she said, “See, I’m not as busy as on Monday.”  A minute later the staff member returned with the form and handed it to her.  She started writing on it, but stopped to speak to the taxpayers.  When she finished they all left at once, and her office became as eerily quiet as a shoreline the moment before a tsunami swept in.  She went back to filling out the form.  I didn’t know what to say so I just sat there until she finished.

“Come with me,” she said.

We passed a line of people snaking toward God knows where, and went into another office where she handed the form to a staffer who read it, stamped it, and gave it back to her.  With a smile she handed it to me and said, “See, I promised you I’d do it today.”

Wow.

I called the lawyer.  She said she was really busy and would call me at six that night.  More time to kill.  Back to suffering on the beach.

At six the lawyer said the translations wouldn’t be ready until the next morning, Thursday.  I said I was running out of time to file.  She promised they would be ready by 10 AM.

She kept her word.

Mykonos Town Hall

Then it was off to town hall, with a day to spare.  Now all I needed to do was turn in the papers and get the filing receipt.

At town hall I stood between two women peering out at me from behind pillars of paperwork as I told them why I was there.  The one in front of me said very courteously, “The person who takes those papers isn’t here today, but she should be in tomorrow.”

Oh no!  Could this be one of those what we called in the U.S. “it’s not my job moments”—the sort that could destroy the best laid of plans?   Then I heard the sweetest of voices say, “Here, I’ll do that for you.”  It was the woman buried in paperwork behind me.  My savior had arrived.

Okay, I admit this is a rather boring story.  Strike “rather.”  But trust me on this, when you go up against bureaucracy that is precisely what you want: A BORING STORY.  Exciting stories mean aggravation and lawyers.  I will take “boring” any time in this sort of situation and save excitement for other aspects of my life on Mykonos.  Stay tuned.  Someday I might even tell you what happened on the beach.

By the way, today in Greece is considered the first day of summer.  It’s when the military changes from dress blues to whites.  Kalo kalokairi. 

And, yes, the drawings are by Honoré Daumier.

Jeff—Saturday

It's the end of the world as we know it...

This will probably be my last blog on this site. Probably my last blog on any site. In fact it might be the last thing I ever write. At least if Harold Camping turns out to be true. Mr Camping - I love the idea of a fire and brimstone fundamentalist preacher named after a British term for acting in an effeminate and stereotypically homosexual manner - has predicted that tomorrow, May 21st, will be Judgement Day (better file your post at midnight, Jeff) and that a gargantuan earthquake will kill us all, and only those who know the Lord - not personally, but in a weekly church-visiting, nightly-praying sense - will be saved. It's fire and damnation for those of us who thought Rapture was a Blondie song with a rap in it.


Not everyone is taken Mr Camping's prophecy seriously. Heathens. I admit, I haven't gone through the mathematical formula by which he's reached his conclusion - but then I struggle to follow the mathematical formula my 8-year-old son uses to solve his long division homework - but I think we are foolish to dismiss it out of hand. Look around us. Can you not see evidence piling up that we are approaching the End Times? I can think of ten, cast-iron pieces of evidence that our days on this rock are numbered.


1. Ebooks. Belched forth from the very pits of hell to dumb down the masses, reduce the publishing industry to rubble,closing bookshops, and give decadent, booze-swilling degenerate authors more power. Hell, they even came with their own evangelist, The One They Call Konrath.


2. Charlie Sheen has almost four million followers on Twitter. The Dalai Lama has less than two million (Though the Dalai Lama doesn't follow anyone, which is taking the mickey a bit. Nor does he share his views on Ashton Kutcher. It's give and take, your holiness. Not just take.)


3. Radiohead. Inexplicably popular, dreary, jazz-tinged choogling to numb bedwetting atheists before the shock and awe of the end claims their hollow souls.


4. Superinjunctions. These are court-issued gagging orders in the UK taken out by figures in the public eye at great expense to prevent any reporting of scandals in which they've become embroiled. As if the world cares whether a politician likes to have sadomasochistic sex with a prostitute. These days, the weird ones are the ones who don't have sadomasochistic etc....


5. Dog nappies.I don't think anything else quite spells The End like the sight of a dog in a diaper.


6. Snooki. See blogs passim.


7. Manchester United win the Premier League. Again. Thus becoming the most successful club in England and proving there ain't no justice and all good has been bled from the land.


8. Donald Trump's 'hair'. Never mind the candidacy, what the f*** is that on his head. Does it get a vote?


9. Glee. Have you seen that crap?


10. Rapacious capitalism. Not the sort of greedy gambling that destroyed the earth's economy recently, though that might have have prophecied something other than craven obeisance of our rulers in the face of big business. I'm talking about the sort peddled  by Bart Centre (he's from the US - shouldn't that be Center?). Bart, an atheist from New Hampshire, started Eternal Earth-bound Pets in 2009. He offers Rapture believers an insurance plan for those pets that won't join them in heaven: 10-year pet care contracts, with Centre and his network of fellow non-believers taking responsibility for the animals after the Rapture.The fee - payable in advance, of course - was originally $110, but has gone to $135 since Camping's prediction. Mr Centre has 258 clients.


Actually, scratch that, I think Bart might just have proved there may be some hope.


I'm off to stockpile some tins of beans.

cheers

Dan - Friday

The Fairest Cape

This is the story that got deleted in the "maintenance" that Blogger undertook inevitably - with my luck - late last Wednesday night.  I still think it was in retaliation for the poor rating for San Francisco but that wasn't my fault; Tripadvisor didn't consult me.  Which brings us to the point of the story. 
Probably anyone who has investigated an unfamiliar holiday destination has ended up scratching around Tripadvisor.  The website lets you see images of the country and links to a plethora of hotels and tourist destinations.  And best of all – in our interactive world – previous visitors to the country and its establishments can give their ratings and post their comments.  There’s no question that what ebooks are to bookstores, sites like Tripadvisor are to travel agents.

Victoria & Albert Waterfront at night

For the last three years Tripadvisor has been awarding a variety of ratings to hotels and destinations.  There are maps on various Tripadvisor applications where you can pin your most visited and favorite destinations. As far as I understand it, these are the source of the information used to make the awards.  Tripadvisor hasn’t made the rules clear, and no doubt one could argue the results, but be that as it may everyone in Cape Town is over the moon.  For this month Tripadvisor named Cape Town as the world's favorite tourist destination for 2011. The competition was fierce.  Here’s the top ten list:

2011 Travelers' Choice World Destinations http://www.tripadvisor.com/TCDestinations

1. Cape Town, South Africa

2. Sydney, Australia

3. Machu Picchu, Peru

4. Paris, France (sorry, Cara)

5. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (sorry, Leighton)

6. New York City, United States

7. Rome, Italy

8. London, United Kingdom (sorry, Dan)

9. Barcelona, Spain

10. Hong Kong, China

After the great time we had at Bouchercon last year, I would’ve put San Francisco high on the list, but it only made position #23 (sorry again, Cara), way behind New Zealand’s Queenstown (#12), Cambodia’s Siem Riep (#14) and Thailand’s Ko Phi Phi Don (#18) (which I, for one, had never heard of, sorry Tim). (Reykjavik made the top 25 in Europe, Yrsa, so don’t feel completely out of it. You are just behind Ia (Oia) from Greece, which looks worth a blog, Jeff.)

Kirstenbosch national botanical gardens

Of course, we’re talking about tourist destinations not where you’d want to live, but I have to say that Cape Town has a lot going for it on both fronts.  It’s scenically breathtaking, cupped by the Atlantic ocean, has super restaurants, a stunning waterfront shopping and restaurant area, beaches, mountain walks, a game reserve, penguins, and is the capital of one of the world’s most extraordinary floral kingdoms with a glorious botantical garden to show it off.
At Cape Point you can climb to a view point and see the ocean on both sides.  Often visitors comment that they can see the line where the two oceans join.  Unfortunately the official divide is at Cape Agulhas to the South East and the southern tip of the continent.  Still, the oceanographical join is where the Agulhas current meets the Benguela current and that moves between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point, so the visitors are right to keep a look out. 
Then there is the wine country. Some great wineries, like Klein Constantia of Vin de Constance fame, are a stone’s throw from the city, others more discreetly settle themselves in the more rural surroundings of Stellenbosch.   

Klein Constantia

African or Jackass penguins at Boulders

So what’s the catch?  Well, there really isn’t one. Because the city nestles between the mountains and the sea, the routes are limited and traffic can be a problem at rush hour, but Johannesburg – with no similar excuses – is usually much worse.  Then again the city is anything but undiscovered and the locals are laughing all the way to the bank.  But prices aren’t ridiculous. Despite the current and not unsurprising strength of the rand, it's pretty reasonable value.  I stayed at a delightful guest house close to the city center with a room about the size of an ordinary apartment and a breakfast that set me up for the day for the equivalent of $100 a night.

Cape Riviera guest house
with Table Mountain in the background

This time I was only there for two nights; Stan and I had book events at two of the delightful independent bookstores that pepper the city. (I would have liked to write about them, but Stan used up our one free Blatant Self-promotion card in his last post.) But I’ll be back for a longer visit. Anyone want to join me?

Michael - Thursday

scandale a la française and meet the next sulphur

You no doubt know the scandal. Dominique Strauss Kahn or DSK head of the International Monetary Fund and frontrunner Socialist Party candidate for 2012 who a day prior led Sarkozy in the polls - Sarko was only #4 - is in NY Jail. DSK was arrested in First Class on the Air France flight to Paris ten minutes before takeoff on the JFK runway. He's alleged to have sexually assaulted a hotel maid in his $3000 dollar a night suite on Times Square then bolted and left his cell phone. DSK was in a hurry.
This event has sent France, and especially the Socialists, reeling. Changing the political landscape. With the first contender in years the Socialist had a good chance for the 2012 election and given the fact DSK might be incarcerated or not, his career, French pundits claim, has gone down the tubes. Not the first time for DSK either in the sexual harrassment department. Mr Strauss-Kahn had been due to meet Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, for talks on Sunday. Instead he was arrested. My question - he lives in DC with his wife Anne Sinclair - what was he doing in the big apple in the fancy suite on his IMF credit card?
Labelled "The Great Seducer" by the French media, Mr Strauss-Kahn has been criticised for his behaviour towards women.
Tristane Banon, a French writer, claimed she fended him off with kicks and punches during an alleged encounter, while an anonymous author last year claimed: "He has trouble controlling himself."
In 2008 he admitted to an affair with Piroska Nagy, a senior IMF official. Afterwards he said he had made an "error of judgment".
A French friend hazarded that this was a plot by Sarko to discredit DSK and bolster Sarko's popularity. I'd go more for that set up theory if the event happened in France. But then if this happened in France, it would probably be regarded with a shrug and 'it's his private life.' People paid off, the papers not covering it. Two top French TV news shows ignored DSK's past history and omitted interviewing Banon or Nagy as of Sunday. My other French friend said that DSK was a known frequenter of Les Chandelles, a club echangiste, the swingers club off from the Palais Royal. He'd shown me the place when I researched my book and I even set a scene there in Murder in the Palais Royal. Quite the luxe freewheeling couples and menage a trois all with gourmet cuisine.

The scary aspect - to me - is that this opens the door wider for Marine Le Pen, daughter of the National Front Right Winger Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2012 - that's them. Marine's taken a lead in the polls. She's modernized the language of the Far Right, made it more appealing and palatable to the centrists, the disgruntled Socialists and the unions and popularized her father's National Front policies - in my opinion. My old Leftie friend stunned me a while ago saying 'you know Marine gets some things right.' This is the daughter of the man who called the Holocaust a footnote in history.
"Nicolas Sarkozy took many right-wing voters for a ride," Marine says. "He stole our slogans on security and order, promised a lot and delivered little. We won't be taken in twice."


Bernard Henri Levy the philosopher/journalist rockstar calls Marine le Pen 'sulphurus and scarier that her father." Bear that in mind. The latest polls show that her anti-globalisation, anti-Europe and anti-capitalist speeches make more inroads in the Left-wing electorate and among intellectuals that on the Right. On television, she is a redoubtable debater, having honed her bruiser's skills in numerous panels in which most of the other participants seemed to gang up against her. This has helped her: the Front National always made a meal of representing the citizens left without a voice. Her thrust is a mix of protectionism, almost Leftist social welfare economics and French nationalism that seems tailored to the present post-crisis Zeitgeist in France.

Following her father, she has built a strong nationwide support by opposing unchecked immigration, but insists this has nothing to do with racism and is only about proper assimilation into the French culture. Almost alone of the French political class, she has jumped on the European anti-Islamist bandwagon. She favours tailored jeans which she wears with high-heeled boots, silk shirts and strict blazers, and told Paris Match she follows the high-protein Dukan diet. She's also a single mother of three children.
In recent weeks, Le Monde and Marianne, the news weekly, published figures showing that close to one quarter of the Gaullist electorate sympathises with her views; and that almost half of all French voters agree with her on insecurity and crime.
One third agree on immigration, one third on "secularism" - code in France for disagreeing with the encroachment of Islam on society - and one quarter on leaving the euro. Fascinatingly, 74 per cent of the French would describe her as "courageous". Meanwhile 59 per cent consider her "racist", 47 per cent "modern" and 42 per cent "close to people's concerns."
Such figures would make her France's most electable politician if she weren't called Le Pen.

But if she weren't called Le Pen, would she be where she is now?
Cara - Tuesday

Portinari

Some three-quarters of a century ago, my mother-in-law accompanied a friend on a visit to a coffee plantation in the interior of São Paulo. While there, they visited a family she’d never met before, and has never seen since, but has always had good cause to remember. Because their home was filled with paintings by a young nephew named Candido Portinari.

Portinari, the son of immigrant laborers from Veneto, Italy had been born on that very plantation.

He went on to become one of the two leading Brazilian artists of his generation (the other being Di Cavalcanti, five years his senior).

Classified as a neo-realist, the range and scope of Portinari’s work is remarkable.

It includes images of childhood…

…paintings depicting labor…

…refugees fleeing the hardships of Brazil's rural north-east...

…treatments of key events in Brazilian history…

…portraits of members of his family…

…and leading Brazilian intellectuals…

…even book illustrations…

…and decorative tiles. 

At the United Nations Building in New York, you can also admire his enormous panels Guerra e Paz (War and Peace).

Not, however, as of this writing, because they happen to be in Brazil for restoration.

Like some other countries proud of their painters (France and the Netherlands come  immediately to mind) the government once saw fit to honor him by putting his image on the currency.

And these are the images of him, that Brazilians will most readily recognize.

Of Portinari, it can truly be said he gave his life to his art.

He died in Rio de Janeiro, in 1962, of lead poisoning contracted from his paints.

Leighton - Monday

Freedom in the Rear-View Mirror

The American-based global NGO Freedom House last week downgraded the Kingdom of Thailand from "partially free" to "not free."  This is not good news for those of us who love the country.  Unfortunately, it seems to be justified.

Much of Thailand has seen increased "security" precautions in place since the Red Shirt-Yellow Shirt confrontations in 2010 and 2011 - bulked-up police and military forces, more visible than usual.  Rumor says that many of the Red Shirt leaders -- those who were calling for the overthrow of the current government -- have been in hiding ever since the disturbances, and that one of the purposes of the security escalation is to catch them before the elections currently scheduled for July.

But the primary reason Freedom House changed Thailand's status had to do with the touchy subject of monarchy.

For decades, Thais have revered the King and Queen.  Their portraits hang in virtually every house in the land, and the popular love for the King, especially, is so deep it's difficult to understand it outside Thailand.  And, in fact, the 83-year-old King Bhumibol, who is the world's longest-reigning sovereign, has been an extraordinary monarch, tireless (until recently, when age has made him frail) in his people's behalf.

During the riots, the protestors were careful to distinguish between the elected government, which they opposed, and the royal family, whom they revered, or purported to.   Recently, though, questions have been raised about whether the King -- a Constitutional monarch with enormous moral and ethical influence but little actual power -- was neutral in the overthrow of the billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, who was elected prime minister by a landslide but was thrown out of office in a coup while he was abroad.

The traditional Thai power elite -- mostly Bangkok, mostly Thai-Chinese -- has relied for years on the monarchy being sacrosanct.   It was the one thing that could never be challenged, and they have taken a position directly behind it, secure in the belief that the somewhat unusual laws protecting the monarchy would also protect them.

Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code prescribes prison terms for those who defame or insult the monarchy.  This article is being invoked with ominous frequency lately. 

•  A respected Thammasat University professor was recently hauled to the police station to hear charges read against him -- apparently at the insistence of Army chief Prayuth Chan-Ocha.  
• The Thai Election Commission has imposed a ban on all discussion of the monarchy in campaigning leading up to the July elections. 
• A national cyber patrol has been set up to monitor the Internet.  Several people have been arrested, with prison terms ranging from 13 to 70 years, and some estimates place the number of banned sites in the thousands.
• Another Thai academic has been charged because of a book he wrote criticizing the coup against Thaksin, despite the fact that the book was not directly critical of the monarchy.

With a very dramatic election coming up, it seems inescapable that the lese-majeste laws will be used as a weapon against those who are challenging the government, a catchall response to criticism.  And behind the lese-majeste laws stand not only the power elite but also the sometimes ominous weight of the military.

Not good.  Not good at all.

Tim -- Sunday