Packing Up and Heading South (and Central).
Sometime during my 2009 stay in Jordan, I decided that in early 2010 (after I finish applying for graduate schools), I would strike out on my own to improve my (then paltry) use of the Spanish language, investigate some social and environmental issues in Central and South America, and do both of these things through traveling.
Knowing that I would not start graduate school until August or September 2010, I decided to travel for about 5 months, from mid January to Mid June–giving me enough time to prepare for either graduate school or whatever the next step may be (full time National Geographic Middle East and South America storywriter, for all you recruiters out there).
My rough schedule is to be in Guatemala until early March, Peru from April to May, and Buenos Aires by June–and traveling through the logical geographical progression during the in-between times.
I have published some of my writing in peer-reviewed journals, non profit magazines, as well as news magazines, so if you are reading this and would like some Central/South America reportage or travel writing done in the next few months, please contact me. I can also supply print quality (RAW) photographs. I like to write about adventure and social justice alike, so please contact me if you have any type of assignment in mind.
So here is my life for 5 months spread out on my basement floor–a garish conflation of wool, polyester, polymer, and aluminum. And also packed up at a tidy 35 pounds.
Here is my travel writing and photography set-up. I have a Canon 30D with a bunch of standard accoutrements, including my fave, the 28-135 lens. More lenses are coming, for wider angle and lower light situations.
The computer is a Hackintosh Dell Netbook. MacinDell? DellinTosh? MiniMac? It is a Dell Vostro a90 that I hacked to run Snow Leopard, and equipped with Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop, and a bunch of other software.
My primary reason for getting this netbook is that my Macbook Pro has a standard plate HDD. This means that the weakest link in my writing and photo logging and writing kit would be a series of very fragile spinning discs. So, I went with a netbook with a solid state disc (SSD) drive. No moving parts, no worries about my hiking through the Peruvian jungle, or running to catch a bus.
The orange looking thing is my extra storage, for backing up my photos. Although this IS a standard HDD (with those spinning discs), the LaCie Rugged 250 GB external drive is MIL spec (up to military durability requirements), and has special locking and shock protection devices that allow it to be dropped and jostled to no avail (note…I think that this is only guaranteed to be the case when the drive is not running, so please don’t ever shake an HDD when it is spinning).
So, armed with this rather rugged rig, I headed off to Guatemala, where I now sit, in a very small, dimly lighted, spartan-yet-luxurious room.
Please see my address in my PAGES tab up top, and do check back about weekly, as I will try to keep some good updates coming. Perhaps more information on the travel reporting rig? Mebbe. Maybe a small story about that time that I accidentally overpaid a bus driver 100 quetzals (20 bucks), a fact which he vehemently denied–despite the fact that he was holding and staring right at the crisp new bill? Or what about the heartbreaking story of Luís, whose strong desire to see the Guatemaltecos live peacefully and free of corruption comes into conflict with his fervent commitment to a corrupt and corrupting catholic church?
And the coffee is really tasty, too.
The so-called “Danish Text” is turning out to be one of the early defining elements of the conference. Certainly a highly contested point.
The G77 group (the group that contains most of the developing nations, almost all of the poorest countries) see it as a violation of trust, since it is an unofficial/official (unclear as of yet) side deal between some big players.
It seems that is the biggest point: the unheard, unheaded developing world might take this as a move to be circumvented.
The G-77 chair Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping said this: “The empire is doing what it has done since the 16th century: they have been taking resources from poorer worlds. Now they are claiming the atmosphere.” Strong statement.
According to one of the EU’s chief negotiators, Di-Aping is known for his emotional statements, but this sort of desperation encapsulates the way the developing world (particularly the really poor countries) feel right now.
I am particularly interested in Human’s rights elements, conflict issues, migration issues, cultural issues of climate change–so to see the heads of the countries most likely to experience issues in these areas being so irate is intimidating.
Di-Aping said yesterday about the promised financial contribution to developing countries: “10 Billion [dollars a year] is just enough to buy coffins”
My attempt at being Atlas. Instead, a shrug.
Copenhagen COP15 conference day 2, rough cut. I just lost the post I spent the last 10 minutes writing, so this make-up will be shorter.
By all accounts from the Guardian and BBC and Reuters, communications seem to be breaking down, and the world of climate conferences as we know it is ending. I’m not sure I get that feeling, but there are certainly interesting developments afoot.
First, there is this scandal going ’round about “Danish Text”. Apparently, it is the product of collusion between the US, UK, and Denmark to give advantage to the US over undeveloped countries, in order to get the US to sign the treaty. Crazy. There’s more to it than that (check out the tweet over yonder—>), but it’s discouraging. As if the developing world already didn’t feel un-heard (see yesterday’s post).
Good things: New (to me) procedure called NAMAS is a replacement of the awkward and oft-taken-advantage of Clean Development Mechanism. Both of these acronymed tools are supposed to put in place fair carbon trading practices to allow developing countries to “sell off” their unused carbon supply (maybe they didn’t drive as much, so they have “left over” carbon) to a developed country that used too much (maybe the US went over by 10 million kg of carbon, so they have to pay a developing country so much in order to “forgive” it’s over use).
The new NAMAS is all this, and more. Better developed. More details. More bells and whistles. This is exciting stuff.
I’m not sure if these good/bad things will balance themselves out. More to come tomorrow.
I am in Copenhagen, Denmark from 6-16 December 2009 to attend the COP15 Climate Conference. The conference is an assembly of parties of delegations from all over the world, gathered together with the goal of producing and ratifying a fair, binding climate treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol. A colleague and I will at the same time write an article pertaining to Jordan’s business interests and climate change for Jordan Business Magazine.
Over the next few days, I will be throwing up some posts that cover some of my impressions of the conference and the surrounding social atmosphere. I will also try and include links to professional news services that might detail some of the goings on in the conference; since I’m only one small pair of eyes, I think I’d do best to consider a few things that I’ve witnessed and talk about them. These posts will be rough cuts, meaning that I have pretty much thrown them up here with no forethought and no editing. See my twitter feed on the right hand column (—>) for “real” news on the conference.
For all of you journalists out there, for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m truly getting a feel of the craziness of trying to cover a conference of this magnitude. The pace at which things move is unbearably fast, and every single radian that one turns brings an a onslaught of 10 things to report on and 20 really important looking handouts to read and 300 pictures to take.
So it’s day 1. There are thousands of protesters, demonstrators, and observers in the city of Copenhagen, and hundreds (maybe thousands now) outside the Bella Center (the conference center) on the outskirts of the city. That’s the first overwhelming thing that I noticed. An uncountable number of eyes flashing with different emotions: joy that the conference is taking place; sadness that the treaty might not be what one had once hoped it would be; anger and pain from being struck in the face by a baton; indignation from being an austere, sophisticated old man, yet having to stand in line behind some 23-year old punk kid from an NGO who also forgot to register for the conference in advance.
Police to protect us from the gathering crowds
Inside the conference center I was struck–again–by the scale of things. First, I passed through one of no fewer than 30 metal detectors. I chose number 18. Next (to register, anyway), I had to pass through the endless, serpentine intestines of waiting lines–being fed back and forth for hours. And then, just as I was about to give up hope and admit that hell truly is other people, I was vomited out to the media approval booth, quickly stamped, photographed, wreathed with a press pass, and ushered into the main facility.
Inside the Bella Center, COP15
The main facility is a cavern of tall, glass-walled apexes built on wiry steel frames, freckled with fancy lighting and draped with plastic-y looking banners from the future. This is where we walk, find food, find information booths, etc. There are also dozens of subcaverns, all named for famous people like Tycho Brahe, Niehls Bohr, Karen Blixen, and Mohammad Yunis. These rooms are for the conference panels and press briefings and though more modestly adorned, they still have their fare share of hanging screens and shiny gadgetry.
Plenary Session 2, Karen Blixen
The air is one of mixed emotion. Many country’s delegations are enthusiastic to sign a binding, fair climate treaty. Other countries are more hesitant (the USA, for example) to rush into what they think is an immature treaty. There are also countries like Lesotho, that seem to care, but know that either way, nobody else cares what they think. Honestly, when the representative of Lesotho spoke on behalf of the Least Developed Countries group, it broke my heart. The man was so ennuied from saying things just to go unheard; his statements were strong, but his voice seemed pleading.
It’s going to be a complex few weeks out here. Looking forward to seeing what I can learn, and what we as a race can do for ourselves and our planet.
Maya and I finished off the night with a gratis dinner with wine at the Town Hall, and a night on the town.
Me and my boy, Tycho Brahe
Maya and I, supposed to be holding up the world
Few things are better than a warm steak on a cold day. Or a cold beer on a cold day. Or Chocolate on a cold day. I could go on.
But instead of enjoying any of these things separately, why not combine them into one giant pot of chili to eat on a cold day. Or a warm day.
I made this chili a few days ago for a potluck, and I was pretty pleased with it. I encourage cooks to be adventurous and try new things, so I thought I’d experiment with some bitter/sweet/salty combinations in this dish. Please experiment with the flavours as much as you like. For example, I chose more crushed red chili flakes over straight cayenne because I find the heat from it is delayed, so the eater can fully enjoy the other complex flavours before the kick comes. It’s all about messin’ around. Chili is hard to ruin, anyway. (I don’t have any pictures because I cooked most of it at a friends house. Gah!) So please imagine that the chili looked something like this:
Like my chili, but uglier and in better cookware
A few notes. I know the measurements are weird, but that’s the way I have them scribbled in my journal after I finished cooking: 6 teaspoons is most definitely 2 tablespoons, 400 grams is about a 15 ounce can, etc.. Also, I would say that many of the spices are + or – 1 or 2 teaspoons. You’ll have to work on your taste as you’re cooking. If you don’t want to mess with it, just follow the instructions as is.
Britt’s Brewskie Chili (feeds about 10 college age students, in a meal with light side dishes)
Ingredients
- 2 kilos of meat. (I used lean ground beef, sirloin steak, and ribeye–I would chop the two types of steak, but I couldn’t stop the meat guy before he just ground everything up).
- 2 400 gram cans of kidney beans (use all the juices for everything)
- 2 400 gram cans of white beans
- 2 400 gram cans of tomato paste
- 1 400 gram can of diced tomatoes
- 1 bottle of beer (I used a lager, Amstel, but I think a stout would be better. A dark beer, at least)
- 1 big splash of Pomegranate juice
- 3 bell peppers (any colour–I used green only)
- 2 HOT peppers (I don’t know what kind they are in Jordan. Just hot. Real hot)
- 1 large onion
- 4 large garlic cloves
- 1 big tablespoon of light-brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon of black pepper
- 3 teaspoons of paprika
- 4 teaspoons of salt
- 6-8 teaspoons of chili powder
- 2 teaspoons of crushed red chili
- 6-8 teaspoons of cumin
- 4-6 teaspoons of oregano
- 2 teaspoons of dark worcestershire
- 2 teaspoons of cocoa
Suggested additions/substitutions: Beef stock and Coffee. I regret not trying coffee. A good, finely ground dark roast bean might really add something.
Instructions
- Mince garlic and sautee with onions in light olive oil.
- A few minutes in, throw in the chopped bell peppers (before the onions hit that breaking point which they release their water and sugars)
- Stir this until the onions get about 2/3 to caramelized
- Scoop this mix into a giant pot
- Brown ground beef and steak together and drain drippings (the steak probably will be a little pink on the inside by the time the beef is done; this is good, it will stay tender while simmering later on)
- Add beef to the giant pot
- Chop hot peppers and throw those in the pot
- Add everything else (everything), stir, and simmer for 3 hours, stirring every now and then, checking for taste. For the right consistency, you’ll have to leave the lid off for part of the time to let the alcohol and much of the waters (like in the juice) to condense out.
- After simmering, you could eat it right away, or let it sit overnight and then nosh. Both methods are equally tasty.
- Enjoy with some cornbread!
Let me know what you think!
Please watch these beautiful videos of an global art project going on right now called “Women are heroes.” A collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières, (Doctors without Borders) the project has been building for the better part of a year, highlighting remarkably courageous women worldwide.
You can find the original website Here. Even if you don’t speak French, cruise around and enjoy the beautiful presentation of the truth that women are heroes.
(Knicked from Wooster Collective.)
I forget where we were going.
Sometime during the summer we lost focus, and we skipped away from any strong direction, like a space shuttle that approaches earths atmosphere too narrowly. The perfect skip–just one bounce and it keeps flying foreverandevernandever…
But we we had enough oxygen in our car to last us for a few months. And we were mowing lawns and refereeing soccer, so we could pay for gas and food. We floated on.
“Hey” I asked. “You know Schrödinger’s Cat?”
We passed a little girl on rollerblades trying to coerce her dog to pull her down her gravel driveway. A microcosm of the history of warfare: You might have the advantage of technology, but without the most basic of knowledge, you might as well be demanding that your poodle overcome the laws of physics.
“Yeah.” No, he didn’t.
“I was thinking that we are sort of like the cat, y’know? We drive around and see some people once, and never see them again. They never see us die. In 70 years that little girl will have no proof that we did not keep on living exactly as she saw us today.”
“Whoa, you’re right.” He didn’t understand. He was chewing the edges of his fingernails, which meant that he was either insecure or threatened. Whenever I was talking about something with which he wasn’t familiar, it was both.
It didn’t matter. I had won. I had conquered the grave. I thought about that poor cat, trapped in a box. You poor bastard. One day you think you have a great life, relaxing, stretching, standing up only to eat, defecate, and relocate your body according to the ever narrowing ray of sun slicing through the window. The next day Lord Erwin has an epiphany and calls upon the laziest serf in the kingdom to make a small sacrifice in the name of science. That would be you, you poor bastard.
“In a way, this opens a lot of doors for Eastern thought, y’know?” I continued, “Like, the whole buddhist idea of every moment is infinite and finite and that it is only a moment unto itself. So, not only do we all live forever in the state we were in the last moment that someone sees us and never sees us again, but we do that every time a different person sees us for the last time. That girl gave us eternal life as two guys in an Altima. Tomorrow some guy in the city will give us eternal life as two guys eating roast beef sandwiches. In our lifetime, thousands of people impute unto us foreverness.”
His bicuspids were tearing into the bottommost edges of the nails. He brought together his upper and lower jaws with precision and rhythm, so that the front row of teeth lined up perfectly every time, and with the cadence of an automatic rivet gun. tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk
“Can we even say ‘in our lifetime’ if we live forever a thousand times over?” I asked with a sideways glance.
tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk
tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk
“I mean, yea. I don’t know. It makes sense.”
tchk-tchk-tchk tchk-tchk-tchk
He was now chewing back the skin on his thumb. I suddenly became captivated by the idea that I could actually lead him to chew off his own finger at the knuckle. I smiled uncertainly, and returned to driving, turning first my head slowly, keeping my eyes on the tchk-tchk-tchk.
We bounced over a pot hole, and I returned my eyes to the road. We had only been driving for five minutes, and I’d already set the tone for the ride. I speak, he affirms, he chews off his fingers. I know that ultra-runners rip out their toenails, but what could be the use of having no fingernails? Maybe I was unintentionally grooming him to be an ultratypist–his fingernails would only fall off anyway, so he should just chew them off before they become another unnecessary and potentially insidious body part. Fingernails are the appendix of the hand, just waiting to explode during a marathon typing session. He’d be thanking me from the podium someday, saying that I’d helped him hone his bicuspidalnailbitingform. I’d nod demurely. We’d grab a beer. I would avoid looking at his hands.
We pulled up to a T in the road and I stopped the car. The light was green, but there was nobody behind us. I still felt strange, because you can’t just ‘go’ at a red light–but it wasn’t illegal to stop at a green if there wasn’t anyone around, was it?
“Dude, why’d you stop?”
“I don’t know” I said, staring intensely at the green light. I adjusted my gripped on the steering wheel, and stared. I stared like a crazy woman stares at a bowl of soup waiting for it to suddenly turn into a lobster so she can stab and tear out its viscera with the fork that she always keeps hoisted above her head.
“Which. way. should we turn?” I said haltingly.
“I guess that depends on where we’re going,” he said carefully, squinting both eyes at me, “we could go to the train bridge, or else we could go visit Tilly…” He was confused by what I was doing, not by what I was saying. This is not threatening. His fingers would be safe. He was still talking, but I didn’t hear a word.
The Green Light is holding its ground unblinking. The Green Light does not care where we turn, only that we go. We are not going. He’s putting up a fight, but losing. My foot is depressing the break peddle so far that my knee is locked, forcing me to rise off the seat. The Green Light is starting to get sick, to die and fade away. Unable to fight anymore, The Green Light succumbs to Hepatitis or Jaundice.
The light turned yellow and I turned right.
We speed down the highway looking for the proper exit ramp. It has a name like “oldshire” or “miltwick”–some name of an old british town that resembles nothing of the turn for which we are looking. “Hamford”? “Sedgewick”?
The sun was just a sliver of orange on the horizon, and all of its heat had gone away in advance of the light. The spirit of the wind carried the shadows across the landscape, brushing darkness lightly on everything with three dimensions. I exhaled and inhaled old and new life. I could taste an old breath of some eternal me from earlier in the day expand in my lungs, and then shrink to escape.
“Patterson. Turn here.” He said pointing unnecessarily at the sign that read “PATTERSON” in 10-foot tall, illuminated letters.
“Wait, where?”
He rolled his eyes. Tonight is beautiful, I thought.
I took the exit and stopped at the bottom of the hill. A red light forbade us from going any farther. A car pulled up beside us.
“Hey, where’s the party?” We turned to see a waifish girl our age leaning out of the passenger side window. The window is still halfway up, I thought, why doesn’t she roll it all the way down?
“What?” I asked, looking harder, than softer at the girl. She was maybe 17, and her shirt was yellow and dirty, just like her hair and her skin. The corner of my mouth twitched when I saw her coal black eyes surround by vines of bright red capillaries. It looked like blood red worms crawling to cast themselves into the abyss. She stared back at me. The thought occurred to me that she might think I look like a bowl of soup.
“Wanna buy some drugs?” she said, in a voice we later decided was her attempt at being seductive. It actually sounded like she had a balloon stuck in her throat, and there was just enough air escaping here windpipe to push past her pursed, dried lips.
We stared as the light turned green and they drove away, with her head still hanging out of the window. As they rounded the corner, she was still staring straight ahead.
We turned to each other–incredulous–smiled, and each expelled one puff of air from our noses.
Tonight is beautiful, I thought.
What that there were a world without paper
If there were no paper
there would be less thought of anguish.
There would be nothing to remember the tears
fallen on a goodbye note feverishly etched
on the back of a grocery receipt
the tears lightly staining the carbon paper
a litmus test. Positive,
assuring a note rightly written.
With no paper, there would be no pages
journals all asking the same question repeatedly
WHO. AM I?
The wise would answer this question still unwritten
with simplicity and truth they would say
you are and you are becoming
Without paper, libraries would gather herds of velum.
The sound of flesh pressing flesh would ignite
the minds of the readers:
We are all books waiting to be dried and flattened
For your viewing pleasure is a video from the World Science Festival. (I highly recommend watching as many videos as possible, as well as reading as many articles as you can about the Festival.)
The video shows singer, conductor Bobby McFerrin hopping around the Pentatonic Scale.
Besides being lovely, the tale end of this video catches a big theme of the Festival: Commonality.
Bobby says that no matter who he’s around, the country, the situation, people will always get the Pentatonic Scale right (presumably also the notes on the scale that he did not introduce to the audience).
I think this is a beautiful little picture of a human harmony that resonates deeply within us all.