April 27, 2006
Holiday romances roundup
Thanks to the wonders of Google Alerts, an excellent way to keep on top of any subject area, here's a quick roundup about what some Internet commentators are saying about holiday romances.
A Web article entitled Holiday Romance by Jim Keeble lists five rules of holiday romances, all of which seem exceptionally valid to me:
- Don’t go looking for it.
- Don’t go unprepared.
- Don’t discuss life back home.
- Keep photographs to a minimum.
- Don’t continue it after the holiday is over.
Note from me: One in 30 or more people do continue the romance after the holiday. And as Jim promptly notes, "Jeremy, an Irish friend of mine, met a Spanish girl on holiday in Salamanca four years ago. He ended up marrying her and they now live in wedded bliss in North London."
In the Sydney Morning Herald, we find Looking for love in all the right places, with somewhat surprising recommendations for the top hook-up spots for women. I would have expected Jamaica, the Gambia and an Asia pick (Nepal, Phuket in Thailand, Bali), but instead we have:
Top three hook-up hot spots for women:Lisdoonvarna, Ireland
The Irish have a long tradition of matchmaking, and in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, the annual September Matchmaking Festival attracts 100,000 international visitors. A healthy 75 per cent are men, and the organisers claim 100 weddings result each year from their efforts.
Anchorage, Alaska
This remote city has so many single men per woman it's known as "Manchorage". It's cold, but you'll have an extensive choice of human hot-water bottles.
Silicon Valley, USA
In this Californian tech city, single men outnumber single women by almost 5500. And they're not all geeks. This is one of the world's most educated and wealthy bachelor populations.
All of the above are more "marriage magnet" cities for women, more so than hook-up spots.
And similarly, the top hookup spots for men seem strange, but the article does acknowledge these are really hookup spots for women (and I agree):
Top three hook-up hot spots for men:Anywhere in Italy
Surprised? Consider the logic; thanks to all those movies and books about lonely women finding love with Tuscan hunks, Italy now attracts one-third more female single tourists than male. Canny blokes should head there and snap up the surplus.
St. Croix, Virgin Islands, Caribbean
With a 54 per cent resident (and stunning) female population as well as thousands of wealthy bachelorettes dropping in each year, a red-blooded male can't avoid action here.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Club Dance Holidays specialises in breaks with dance lessons in Latin American locations. The tango trips to Buenos Aires are considered the sultriest, with 70 per cent of participants single and women outnumbering men. See www.clubdanceholidays.com.
Don't end up with holiday baggage! warns Ryan Oliver from the Down Under Web site Webwombat:
Holiday romances are curious things. Some people go through their entire lives without ever having one. Others go miles out of their way every summer to have them because they are addicted to the transience, the inconsequential nature of mad flings that neither they nor their part-time partners have any plans to take further.Others blunder into holiday romances and end up getting thoroughly messed up because of them. They mistake the blinding light and heat of a phosphorescent fling for love and devotion and actually consider changing their entire lives for the new man or woman temporarily in their lives.
It matters little that keeping this new flame alive might involve you emigrating to Fiji or putting in for a transfer from your office in, say, Sydney, to the Gold Coast branch.
The highs and lows of holiday romance by Susan Quilliam, on the UK women's Web site iVillage.co.uk, looks at the ups and downs of holiday flings, noting, "A holiday fling can make you feel like a queen and boost your confidence sky-high." An extended section of RotR 
(Romance on the Road) comments on mental health and travel sex, and Quilliam also comments on this:
Holiday sex can be brilliant. The excitement of being on holiday, combined with sun, bareflesh and a few drinks can put even the most demure person in the mood for sex.The problem is that holiday sex can get out of control. Women often report getting carried away with the moment and having sex with a stranger. Once the sun comes up, all they're left with is guilt and regrets.
If you click the various sections at the bottom of each article, you will reach factoids on "How to avoid heartbreak" and "will the romance last" and "cross-cultural romance:"
If you pair off with a local, you can get to see the country you're visiting from an insider's point of view - and often have the holiday of a lifetime.But be warned - dating a local comes with hazards. Firstly, you may be just one of a series of summer flings for him. And, on the other hand, if you are both serious, be prepared for potential clashes of culture. You and your holiday beau might have deep-rooted attitudes that you don't share.
Cosmo UK even has a quiz to determine whether a holiday romance is "just a fling" or something more, at this link.
Finally, the Sydney Morning Herald columnist "Sam in the City" asks, Holiday romances: can they last?:
And while the majority of the 2,000 people surveyed said they have experienced a holiday romance with nearly half declaring that the heady mix of sun, sea and sand made falling in love all the easier, things were completely different once they returned back to home ground.
Her blog led to a fast-and-furious posting of comments, with many answering yes and others no. I posted a quick little note --
About 1 in 30 holiday romances leads to something permanent, according to a study by Dan Hellberg on casual travel sex.Even if they don't last, they can be a good idea in the sense that they often help people rebound from problems in their home countries.
-- and have received lots of feedback from Australians interested in my new book. Will Romance on the Road be mainly be of interest in Australia (and France, from which I have already received an order)?! We'll see.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:18 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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April 24, 2006
My daily diary of hearing F bombs
You never know exactly when it's coming ... only that it is coming.
At some point in every day, you will be subjected to a completely gratuitous dropping of the F bomb.
Or if you live in Baltimore, let's be more accurate: You may be subjected to near-continual dropping of F bombs.
Last night, I walked our older sheltie, Beau, and got ready to bring him up the front steps. I stopped to chat with two of the neighbors. Neighbor 1 told me about his girlfriend, his future job in New York, his own dog, and minor problems with other dogs who are walked off leash. These little stories required at least three glaringly inappropriate uses of "f-ing" as an adjective.
Note to Neighbor 1: I nearly flinched each time you used the word -- it felt like being hit in the ear. My mind struggled to come up with a proper way to make this known. Should I have noted brightly, "F Bomb"? Or ask him, "When did the memo come out saying that word was appropriate around women? I must have missed that."
If there is a such a secret memo, is this more fiery blowback, another unintended consequence, of feminism? Is it the case that now that some women (especially girl gangbangers) think they can swear like sailors, men (especially sons) no longer have a clue about how to behave?
Anyway, when Neighbor 1 said he was moving in four months, I took the easy way out: Wimping out. It won't be a problem for long if he's moving soon and I avoid him in the meantime. Later I learned that Neighbor 2 (male) was equally offended by the language, and similarly reasoned that Neighbor 1 is moving soon.
That just leaves thousands of other Baltimoreans who still sling the word around. Professionals, gangbangers passing by on the street, construction workers, athletes, and many in between. Note to everybody: You're not cool, you're not shocking anyone, you're just tone-deaf and making almost every corner of our city coarse.
Maybe I need to print out the chart above and carry it around Baltimore, the City that F-Carpetbombs Everyone's Ears, to show to people. Guess what -- two-thirds of the public is offended by your language.
Walking around our neighborhood, I often also hear the M-F Superbomb. From a distance, it sounds like, "m'h fhuh, that m'h fhuh m'h fhuh." Muffled but menacing, the individual syllables of the word aren't crystal clear, but the hostility and anger are. It sounds really ugly -- maybe the ugliest sound humans can make.
The graphic above was published with an article entited, Poll: Americans See, Hear More Profanity. When I read the article, it reminded me that I have thought about keeping a diary of the appalling language that I hear everyday. If compressed, it would read something like this. All examples are real:
- 8 a.m. Walk dogs. Overhear, "m'h FH, that m'h FH m'h FR," from pair of gangstas. Cross the light at Ann and Lombard and hear F bombs in stereo! One from two guys on scaffolding doing their work, the other from three men strolling by, one saying, "I'm not going down f-ing Broadway."
- 9 a.m. Go to Light Street Cycles. Gen-X repair crew pumps out loud rap with high F-bomb quotient. They apparently assume that every single customer wanting to buy or repair a bike or get supplies enjoys smutty language.
- 10 a.m. Guys getting on Light Rail at Camden Yards drop a few F-bombs. "C'mon guys," I implore, shaking my head. They respond, "We're not talking to you." "You're in a public place!" I point out. Their body language -- quieter, calmer, subdued -- acknowledges that on some level, they know they should clean it up.
- Noon. I have a hair appointment at the home of my hairdresser. Her daughter's friend, John, high school age, Fs this and Fs that. John and the daughter leave the kitchen, where my haircut and color are taking place. "What do you think of them?" my hairdresser asks. As she washes my hair in the sink, I reply, "Using the F word is inappropriate around women. It just is. And he won't know that if he's allowed to use bad language in the house." She's quiet, neither agrees or disagrees.
- 3 p.m. Go to Du Burns Arena to watch Lamont's soccer team play. A tall player, mid-20s, in athletic gear, waits in stands for his game to begin. He pulls cell phone out of his gym bag and engages in loud conversation that includes the word M-F. As he passes me to take the steps down to start his game, I quietly say, "Some language." He snaps back immediately an attempt at something clever. The metacommunication, or message behind the message, is, This is a men's space. If you don't like it, you can leave.
"Guess no one ever told you to watch your language around women," I say evenly.
- 5 p.m. Next, to Tyson's bar in Canton, which sponsors Lamont's team, the Slackers. A guy with a red Abe Lincoln beard F-bombs merrily at the NCAA basketball game on the TV screen. He may be a regular, and I've never been here before. No leverage to get him to watch his mouth around ladies. I shrug this one off. If I had the graphic above, maybe I could hand it to him.
- 7 p.m. Off to catch the latest play at Center Stage, Radio Golf. From the stage, the actors emit F bombs, S words and I believe the M-F word.
I just don't understand the need for this language anymore. Playwright August Wilson must have thought he was lending street cred to his script. It's nearly 40 years after the Sixties -- I thought we were long past using language for shock value? No one in the audience seems to blink at the words.
Hail to my mom, who just turned 80 with a bangup birthday celebration, for knowing what good behavior -- heck, with knowing what a little class -- consists of, and instilling this knowledge in her children, without concessions to being faux-hip. It really isn't as cool as people think it is to throw around bad language once past the junior-high rebellion stage.
To me, bad language -- especially that of the jock at Du Burns arena -- is (or should be) a rather serious matter against women. Males (but not men, or gentlemen) sometimes use bad language to mark an area as off-limits to women -- as a hostile move.
Maybe what's really going on is that there is no concept anymore of what being a gentleman entails.
I confess my own failings in the matter. I am not perfect in abstaining from the F bomb. It is something that escapes the mouth when, say, a hammer hits my thumb, or I am playing goalie in soccer and a shot goes by, into the net. Even then, I try to keep swearing at a murmur, not for the ears of others.
This quote from the article linked above also sees the F-word as something only for moments of extreme frustration:
And Donnell Neal of Madison Lake, Minn., notes how she'll hear the F-word used as a mere form of emphasis, as in: "That person scared the f--- out of me!" Neal, 26, who works with disabled adults, says she swears only in moments of extreme frustration, "like if someone cuts me off when I'm driving, or if I'm carrying something and someone shuts the door in my face." Even then, she says, she'll likely use "milder cuss words" -- and never at work.
Some young folks have bought into the canard that the F word, and the C word (which I truly detest), is "just a word." At Tyson's bar, Slacker pal George goaded me to say "c" word. "It's just a word," he said, his Gen-X pseudo-reasoning as predictable as the sun coming up in the East.
I thought, "George, I'm not restraining myself because I'm inhibited. I'm restraining myself because it's a matter of having a little class and decorum."
And I'm restraining myself because, as a writer, I know the power of words. Almost no word is "just a word." All have meanings. It's precisely because of their power that they need to be saved for the right times. I'd say vulgarity may be forgivable if you are hitting your thumb with a hammer. If there's no hammer in sight, save it -- I'm tired of the hammering on my ears.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:25 AM in The Neighborhood
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April 19, 2006
Jane Fonda's six years of celibacy
What a fascinating interview, for the student of women and travel sex, conducted by Larry King with Jane Fonda yesterday.
From the CNN transcript:
KING: Your sex life never need improving. Did you ever have low points in your sex life?FONDA: Yes. There's been a six-year drought.
KING: You have gone six years?
FONDA: I know you haven't. You know what Ted always said, if you don't use it, it grows over. Secondary virginity.
KING: Are you in a six-year period now?
FONDA: Um-hm.
KING: By your choice?
FONDA: Uh-huh.
KING: Why?
FONDA: I haven't met anybody I wanted to break the fast with.
KING: Really? You don't have that kind of need.
FONDA: I'm not talking about need. That's a whole other issue. There's other ways.
KING: We're getting really --
FONDA: Should we really get into it?
KING: But if you met Mr. Right --
FONDA: When you're 68 years old, the idea of getting in bed with a new man is scary. If I ever -- people say, you should remake "Barefoot in the Park," it would be called Barefoot in the Dark. I would be backing out of the bedroom in the dark.
I studied the issue of women and celibacy for my forthcoming book, Romance on the Road (pages 127-32).
Jane Fonda's six years of celibacy is not that atypical for older, unmarried women, according to surveys in the United States, France and Britain, which I describe in Romance on the Road. In the United States, 26 percent of women aged 45 to 54 report no sex in the previous year.
Some women Jane Fonda's age and older, unable to find Mr. Right at home, are showing up as sex tourists, especially in the Gambia, where the wedding registrar has turned away grandmothers attempting to marry teen boys, and Sri Lanka.
Though Fonda would appear to be a "voluntary" celibate, as she tells Larry King this is by her own choice, she is technically what is called an "involuntary" celibate, because she is more a victim of the man shortage, her advancing years and a lack of suitable partners than a woman making a religious pledge.
I will ask Dr. Denise Donnelly, one of my scholarly reviewers, if she has any observations on this interview.
Meanwhile, ladies, here we have a Hollywood star, still flawlessly groomed, a fitness guru and a woman with presumably plenty of money, who cannot find suitable dates despite -- or because of -- her attainments.
This is sad.
Fonda's is a cautionary tale on the difficulty of mating for even affluent and accomplished older Western women, especially those who fail to settle down with someone stable in their prime years. It's a slightly grimmer tale than that of even author Terry McMillan, who, for all her high-profile struggle with her Jamaican husband, Christopher Plummer , who turned out to be gay, at least had six years with the guy with some sort of physical activity, vs. none at all. (See the duo on Oprah here.)
It's also a sobering example of why British grandmothers fly to the Gambia for a last hurrah sexually.
Update: One noted scholar on the family e-mailed me to write, "I agree that it is sad. Maybe this is why married people consistently report more frequent and more satisfying sex than other groups!" My thoughts exactly -- this was the bombshell finding of Laumann and Michel's 1994 study, 
Sex in America.
Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a celebrity, if Fonda's is the price to pay.
Updates: I posted this item on the Baltimore Sun talk forums. Some interesting replies:
- "I'm sure she can find some men in Red China, North Korea, or some other commie country to help her."
- "What's wrong with her being free from a sexual relationship for this long period of time... after all, she's older... she's accepted Christ as her personal savior... and professes to be a Christian now... is that so bad?
"But as for it being sad... I think it is... I think it's sad that anyone her age is not in a healthy relationship with a partner... it's sad that someone her age has no companion to share her waning years with... life, especially at that age, is best not lived alone but shared with a loving companion... in her case, a husband... "
- "It may have been H. L. Mencken, after a nasty encounter with a paleofeminist, who quipped that men should go out and burn every bed in the world. Larry King should have responded to Jane there is no need to share everything."
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:24 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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April 18, 2006
My husband the rock star
Anyone look familiar in this picture?
The guy front and center is Lamont Weston Harvey dressed as a rock star. In his words:
Hey, I'm a rock star!The people from the Live! section were doing a cover shoot on
"cover bands" and they needed an extra body to make a 4-piece band.
I just happened to be wearing a Pantera concert shirt under my
layers.I initially grabbed the Paul Stanley mask but when the drum sticks
were passed out I saw it as an opportunity to show off my tatoo and
flex a bit.- - Rock ON! Wes
Hey babe you look like you LOVED helping out on this!
- posted by jbelliveau at 2:19 PM in Culture
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April 16, 2006
The marvels of newspapering in Alaska
It was fascinating during 2004-05 to be working for a crusading community newspaper such as the Tundra Drums (see about its award, here) after a career with stops at the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post.
On the occasion of the Drums' award, I'll note some impressions of newspaper life in Alaska, based on my own background.
I started out in community newspapers, beginning with the Montgomery Journal (which ceased publication last year) in Chevy Chase and later Rockville, Md., and progressing to English papers, including the Surrey Advertiser, and thence to the Gaithersburg Gazette, back in Maryland.
As much as the resources and worldliness of the staff increased as I moved in 1986 to the Sun and in 1991 to the Post, something was missing. Journalists at big newspapers are more likely to view themselves as elites than do the young scrappers at a local paper.
Higher salaries and living in more expensive neighborhoods also tend to push big-city reporters and editors much, much farther from the pulse of the community, their readers. In addition, success depends on assiduous politicking to ensure advancement in the newspaper heirarchy. As Steve Sailor writes here,
To reach a high position in American life, it doesn't pay to waste time associating with a wide range of your fellow human beings. You are much better off spending as much time as possible schmoozing other ambitious people who can help you out. It pays to adopt whatever conventions they exhibit in terms of what you are supposed to talk and write about.
Rural newspaper editors must still interact with a wide range of fellow human beings. Community newspapers in Alaska, given the state's isolated, off-road towns reachable only by airplane, boat, dog sled or snowmachine, serve as the town criers, not much changed since frontier days. You aren't isolated from your readers. The editors live in tiny communities where everyone knows everyone else, and play a far more delicate balancing act than, say, does the editor of the New York Times.
Thus returning to community newspapers in Alaska, beginning in June 2004, on site in Anchorage, felt wonderful. There wasn't the sense of working in a bubble sealed off from those whose life would be affected by the articles we ran.
My job was to help design the Tundra Drums, as well as the Cordova Times, and periodically to design the other papers in the chain (the Seward Phoenix-Log, the Bristol Bay Times, and the Dutch Harbor Fisherman). I also designed and filled in as a reporter for the Arctic Sounder, which gave me nine fascinating days on site in Barrow, the northernmost U.S. city.
The average "niceness" quotient of the editors, reporters, designers and production staff zoomed compared to bigger papers. Of course, this is in part because people in Alaska, journalists and non-journalists alike, are far nicer than those of us on the driven East Coast.
Front page of the Cordova Times. Laying out photos like this one made designing an Alaska newspaper a one-of-a-kind experience.
Further, the journalists were jacks-of-all trades, much different to the highly specialized East Coast scribes.
Each editor wrote articles and editorials and sports stories, shot photographs, and typed in the police log, births, obits, pet of the week, calendar, sun and tides and letters to the editor, and shepherded the columnists' work to Anchorage.
Some of the editors knew a fair amount about design. This often made communication far easier than it ever was for me at the Washington Post, where the visual illiteracy of some of the editors, as well as the blind spot some artists had toward being careful with text content, made being a graphics editor on the National and Foreign desks a great challenge.
These Alaska editors and reporters were a different breed altogether, and working with them was fun from Day One.
The most macho we called the Sounder Boys. These were Tim McDonald and James Mason, who worked in the Arctic Sounder bureaus in Barrow and Kotzebue respectively. They were no strangers to liquor, hunting (including Inupiat whale hunts, in the icy dark of early spring), rifles, scopes, snowmachines, dune buggies and husky dogs.
Getting them to file their copy on time was difficult for every reason imaginable, from them not always taking deadlines seriously to terrible phone and e-mail connections not of their making.
But ultimately they hearkened back to the era depicted in 
The Front Page, Northern Exposure style. They bore no relation to the sometimes paunchy and pale desk-jockeys, in blue shirts and wrinkled khakis, who manned metropolitan dailies. They had to survive, work and be effective in predominantly Native communities, and this made their newspapering quite unique.
Every day -- from my very first, when a young, skinny moose walked down the street outside the Alaska Newspapers' office in South Anchorage -- was full of wonder. I commuted by bike along the psychedic purple fireweed-lined paths of the Campbell Creek trail, listening to giant, scarlet-backed salmon in their last days fight upstream along its gravel bed. (Yes, you can hear their stomachs slapping against the rocks.) My last week, heading home, I passed a bigger moose at the side of the trail.
At my desk in the office, my work involved taking the reporters' stories and headlines and photos and reworking them around the ads provided by the ad scheduler, using specialized software (in this case, Quark Xpress). As I poured the stories into boxes, made them fit, and applied headline font sizes and cutline formatting, I let myself absorb the content, of which details below.
My last few days, I suggested to the editor-in-chief, Rose Ragsdale, and the design editor, Kristy Bernier, that I would love to continue working long distance from my home in Baltimore while they looked for my replacement.
We tried the experiment. That it worked was a testament to the open-mindedness of the individual editors to e-mail the components of their papers 4,000 miles away, to a rowhouse in Fells Point, Baltimore, Maryland, and ultimately after corrections, to let the finished product return by e-mail to the main office in Anchorage.
We knew the Sounder Boys were a handful to handle even from Anchorage, and two other editors, both female, seemed more conducive to our experiment in having an off-site designer.
Joy Landaluce of the Cordova Times and Naomi Klouda of the Drums were the most amenable to this arrangement. Every week I tried to make sure they were really happy with how their papers looked, enough to make up for the inconvenience of not having them designed in their home state.
If anything, this arrangement was almost typical of Alaska, with 15 percent of its employees not living in state. (Many live in Seattle and come up for intensive work stints, and return home.) And the flexibility of using technology creatively is extremely important for remote Alaska.
Every weekend for more than 1-1/2 years, I lived on Alaska time (4 hours later than Baltimore) and took a virtual step into a foreign world.
They sent me material each weekend that ranged from hard-hitting exposes to photos of incredible, unaffected charm, of children hunting moose or landing fish, or babies born or elders who had passed. I coudn't help but be fascinated by the stories and photos I was e-mailed every week to lay out on the pages.
Naomi Klouda, the Drums editor, and her reporter, Jon Grover, aided by roving reporter Alex DeMarban flying in from Anchorage, tackled every big issue there was to examine in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta: health care, policing, waste removal, village budgets running dry, politics, tribal organizations, dance festivals, Native arts and crafts.
That was the big, "important" stuff. The newspapers often carried stories of national and international importance, including oil drilling in ANWR (the Arctic Sounder), the crash of a soybean freighter in the Aleutians (the Dutch Harbor Fisherman), and the visit of Sen. Ted Stevens to Bethel and Nome to keep Lisa Murkowski in the Senate and preserve its Republican majority (the Drums and the Sounder).
But the columns, letters, recipes, calendar and police logs were almost more interesting. Every single paragraph in the Tundra Drums and the Cordova Times seems to tell a fascinating story of a place quite different to any other -- quite appealing to any traveler or amateur geographer or reader who likes writing with a strong sense of place.
I probably could have made at least twice as much per hour designing at a major newspaper, but designing the Tundra Drums in particular made up for it with exotic subject matter. These included such staples as:
- Columns by the wonderfully monikered John Active and Harley Sundown, Yup'ik Eskimos who write eloquent, first-rate essays about anything from myths and legends, family lore and Russian colonization, to how to construct a fence out of wood pallets.
- The amazing "Millie's Kitchen Korner." Not only might she provide recipes involving moose or wild tundra berries, Millie Bentley would always range widely into community issues, acting as a sort of Talk of the Town and Social Register as well. When Dr. Lucy Bayles's husband died suddenly, and Millie offered consolation before proceeding to the week's recipe, I almost felt I lived in Bethel.
Copy editors Victoria Zerbe, Kate Golden, Laurel Bill and I had a quiet, affectionate giggle at some of the more provincial aspects of Millie -- the extra K in Kitchen Korner, and the time she told of an intestinal eruption as a result of eating bran muffins. For a good while, I didn't understand why each of the rural papers gave so much space to recipes by Millie and other local columnists. Time revealed that the Alaska winter passes slowly, and Arctic Sounder editor James Mason (a grizzled, bachelor, macho guy) explained even he really liked running recipes and trying them himself.
- Thank you letters. Maybe nothing screamed of the different relationship between a newspaper and its readers than the Tundra Drums' letters pages. While letter writers to the Sun and the Post complain about the mightiest people in the land, in the Tundra Drums, many column inches are devoted to thank yous:
- Thank you to the Alaska Commercial Store for plastic plates for the Fourth of July picnic.
- Thank you ("quyana") to 50 people who helped when a village elder died, and to Hageland Air for donating a bush plane to transport the body.
- Thank you to the bands that helped raise money for tsunami victims, with the spirit of Native phrasing: "You have the great blessing from the four corners of the world."
- Thank you to the Alaska Commercial Store for plastic plates for the Fourth of July picnic.
- Prisoners' letters. These complained in enormous detail about all aspects of their trial and current incarceration, and seemed to blanket every publication in the entire state, judging by how a prisoner from down near Juneau would write to an editor in the Western bush. If the thank-you letters failed to materialize, the editors would run these. Wonder if running them simultaneously puzzled and entertained the readers as much as they did me?
- The photos. Each Sunday, photo editor Robert DeBerry would e-mail a compressed folder of each week's edited photos. The art told stories of soldiers returning from Iraq (Alaska has many soldiers and the nation's highest percentage of veterans), delicate-looking women hunters that had bagged a moose, fishermen plying the Kuskokwim, babies that had been born, sundogs and ice and riotous flower gardens, and frankly adorable photos of the children at Mikelnguut Elitnaurviat Elementary in Bethel celebrating Thanksgiving -- a ring of little Eskimos dressed as Pilgrims and Indians.
- Obits. These told the history of our biggest and second-youngest state. Few of the elders seemed to have just lived a routine life and died. Many had played huge roles in helping a remote Eskimo people enter the modern world.
Or they told other stories, both of loss and of tragedy. There was the poignant photo that arrived one week of an innocent-looking 11-year-old boy, with anthracite eyes and Asian cheekbones, lost playing in a bend of the Kuskokwim river.
The contrast between designing the Tundra Drums and its sister paper, the Cordova Times, was often striking, as the later was in a largely Scandinavian town of fishermen's descendants. Young people in Cordova seemed glossy and often extremely beautiful or handsome, as the editor provided pictures of them at swimming contests or softball tournaments.
In Bethel, Alaska, often the news of young people was sadder, and basic, and told of dangers inherent to life in Bush Alaska that modernity had not fully eradicated.
Still, the harshness of Fate often touched Cordova, too, as it lost one of its residents, who mourned the breakup of his marriage by taking a vacation to a sunny paradise. His bungalow in Thailand was smashed by the tsunami. And the repercussions of the Exxon Valdez still haunt this town, 17 years later.
- The police blotter. For the Tundra Drums especially, this could read like a Jack London story. Here's an example from last year:
Feb. 12, St. Mary's. Search and Research/Snowmachine. At 4 p.m., Alaska State Troopers in St. Mary's were notified that Clarence Sipary, 39, of Pitka's Point, and Glenda Andrews, 25, of St. Mary's, had departed from Pitka's Point headed to Pilot Station on Feb. 10, 2005 at around 9 p.m. on a Polaris RMK snowmachine. Friends reported them overdue on Feb. 11, 2005. Local search teams were sent on Feb. 12, 2005, with no sign of the two. Efforts continued on Feb. 13, 2005. On Feb. 14, the weather improved enough for troopers to fly over the area and locate a single snowmachine track, which led to an open hole in the ice in the middle of the Yukon River near the confluence with the Andreafsky River. Local search crews attempted to drag the river on Feb. 15th and 16th, 2005 without any success. Weather and ice conditions have made it impossible to continue dragging the river and on the evening of Feb. 16, 2005 the decision was made to suspend the search until conditions improve.
In Baltimore, our police blotter is full of bar shootings and drug drive-bys. In St. Mary's in Western Alaska, Mother Nature bests innocent humans, with no record except for a snowmachine track ending at a hole in the river.
Meanwhile, the Cordova Times police blotter was altogether more light-hearted, with people reporting stray dogs, children staying out too late and even the tangling of a baby otter in the fishing nets on the dock.
Given the tradition of the thank you in Alaska, I will close with one to everyone at Alaska Newspapers. Often it was a laugh a minute with Robert, Heather Resz, Kristy Bernier and Pat from production and Laurel Bill (who gives great back rubs to stressed-out designers).
Thanks especially to Rose Ragsdale, my former Baltimore Sun colleague. Rose, as editor in chief, ignored my protestations that I did not know newspaper design, only book design, and brought me up to Anchorage in June 2004 for a one-in-a-lifetime experience of learning how to design newspapers, and rural Alaska ones at that. She also housed and fed me dinner during that time. (As well as driving me, with her husband Darrell, to Seward, Homer and Talkeetna for some amazing sight-seeing of zillions of eagles.)
And to Naomi Klouda, for without hesitation signing on to a designer in far-away Baltimore, and sending me an ulu knife and Yup'ik slippers so that my home, and not just my computer files with her stories and finished papers, had a strong flavor of Alaska.
Quyana Rose and Naomi!
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:30 PM in Alaska
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April 14, 2006
Tundra Drums wins Alaska press award
It's well past time I wrote more about my fun experiences in Alaska, working for a chain of rural newspapers. (See more here.)
But first congratulations are in order.
The Tundra Drums weekly newspaper in Bethel, Alaska, has won an award in the Alaska Press Club 2006 contest for its examination of the rural justice system in Western Alaska.
My friend Naomi Klouda, the editor of the Tundra Drums, asked me to set up a Web page with the series, which you can see here.
Kudos also to former Alaska Newspapers editors Rose Ragsdale and Alex DeMarban for their keen interest in the matter of rural justice and support for Naomi's investigation.
I played a small role in the series, as the designer (by long distance) of Part 1. (Kristy Bernier, my former boss, designed Parts 2 through 4.)
In this isolated part of the world, villagers may have to wait "hours, days or even weeks for a distant non-resident trooper" to come investigate crimes, given limits on what each village's public safety officer can do. It's amazing to wonder -- given the vast distances and adverse weather of this area, as well as the interplay of tribal and Western notions of justice -- how crimes are handled.
To the social anthropolist, the situation also raises the question of how a public safety officer, often a native of his village, can be expected to impartially deal with crimes such as a cousin or friend bringing in alcohol to a dry village.
Domestic violence, assault and theft, often related to abuse of alcohol, occurs in these villages. And many deaths ruled as suicide occur under murky conditions and may actually be homicides. Part 2 of the Tundra Drums series describes villagers with eyewitness accounts of fatal attacks that did not lead to investigations or the filing of charges.
Part 2 also describes how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, just across the border in the Yukon, station an officer in every Native village.
Naomi, who I previously wrote about here -- "Beautiful slippers from Western Alaska" -- says farewell to her job this week after two eventful years in the harsh Bush country of Alaska, and plans to locate to the more congenial and artsy town of Homer, on the Kenai Peninsula.
It's a well-deserved change of scenery. Many of us who know Naomi, shown below, admire her prodigious energy and courage in an extremely demanding editing job in one of the harshest climates on Earth.
Sometimes we'd be assembling the paper and she would mention "it's blowing 50 miles an hour out there" or "they cancelled the Kusko 300 [sled race] because it's too cold" -- explaining that a pan of water thrown in the air froze immediately, even before falling to the ground, and the dogs might not survive.
The morning after the November 2004 election, all communication was cut off for hours to the paper, and I (working in Baltimore, 4,000 miles away) pulled together a table of local election results via the board of elections Web site in Anchorage. That may be a testament to the Internet, but it also tells that it's not so easy running a newspaper in rural Alaska. It takes a lot of perseverance and calm.
Naomi also faced down some who tried to intimidate her (via a hit-and-run car accident while she was out walking her dog) into not revealing problems with the local hospital and with court and crime issues. Without harping too much on the point, Alaska, as wondrous and grand as it is in most ways, is not always an easy state for women, and rural Alaska more so.
Naomi dealt with a lot in Bethel, from $9/gallon, spoiled milk to the intricacies of the Yup'ik and gussak (white) societies. Hope she enjoys Homer. Say hi to the otters and eagles for me and hope you catch some fine halibut!
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:20 PM in Alaska
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April 13, 2006
The heroes of Flight 93
With rapt attention, we watched the Discovery Channel special, 
"The Flight That Fought Back," last September.
"If you'd be on that plane ...," Lamont said, speculating on my famous temper.
"... it would have crashed in Cleveland," I finished his thought.
After a moment, I continued. "No way I would have waited until Pennsylvania and plotted with others," pantomiming grabbing my ever-present Swiss Army knife (Flight 93, obviously, was pre-airport screening) and bum-rushing the hijackers reflexively, as soon as they made themselves known.
"RAARRRRRRRRRR!" Yes, women, at least some of us, fantasize about being heroes or warriors, giving a battle yell and charging the bullies. If you're going to go down, take your enemies with you, right?
That sentiment still stands. But in reality, the fearful details of the flight, revealed yesterday, would have scared the breath out of me. Thus the courage of the passengers becomes even more apparent.
Most of the details in the A+E re-enactment were born out by the playing of the cockpit tape yesterday at the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui.
What comes from the tapes is a better sense of the heroism of the passengers. Having courage required:
- dealing with the impending doom of an airplane heading for a crash, which must be utter Hell.
- knowing that other human beings (bringing a new wrinkle to cruelty), and not mechanical failure, doomed them.
- and knowing that they had little hope for themselves -- two of their number lay with their throats slit -- but could at best only avoid further deaths on the ground.
How did they act with such surety, in a situation far past that of Hell, subjecting them to some unfathomable level of fear and pure terror?
Somehow the passengers deliberated, got information from friends on the ground watching the World Trade Center burn, planned, made final calls home, acted and succeeded -- as maniacs in the cockpit screamed "Allah is great" nine times and turned the plane upside down.
The thought that any human could imagine that the use of an airplane for homicide honors the greatness of Allah is beyond chilling.
It's interesting to note Moussaoui's nonchalance in these two accounts below. Zacharias, you are moving into John Wayne Gacy territory with your casual attitude toward exterminating others, but maybe that's exactly how you can manage to be so evil.
Striking details from yesterday's court trial in Alexandria, Va. (from the New York Times, Final Struggles on 9/11 Plane Fill Courtroom, by Neil A. Lewis):
- There are also the sounds of what may have been the killing of a flight attendant as the hijackers took control: a woman in the cockpit moaning, "Please, please, don't hurt me." Her voice soon appears again for the last time as she is heard to say, "I don't want to die, I don't want to die" followed by one of the hijackers saying in Arabic: "Everything is fine. I finished."
- Mr. Moussaoui has mostly evinced an air of indifference during the trial.
- Violence in the cabin had told the passengers that something was different than an ordinary hijacking. In evidence presented Tuesday, jurors heard the phone call of Marion Britton, a passenger, to a friend on the ground. "Don't worry," the friend consoled. "They'll probably take you to another country."
Ms. Britton replied, "Two passengers have had their throats cut."
From the Washington Post, At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality:
- It began with a muted series of thumps from a sharp knife or maybe clenched fists. The sounds were muffled but unmistakable, one body blow after another, ending with a squishy thud.
"No, no, no, no, no. No," came the high-pitched voice of a crew member or flight attendant being subdued. " . . . Please, please don't hurt me," the person said later. " . . . I don't want to die."
- A foreign-accented voice, increasingly agitated, screamed: "Down. Down. Down!" as the whacking sound continued. Then there was silence. "That's it. Go back," a hijacker said calmly. "Everything is fine. I finished."
- "Let's get them!" one passenger yelled as dishes crashed to the floor. "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die," screamed another amid more thumping and crashing and breaking of glass.
- In the end, as the passengers were either in the cockpit or moments from entering it, the hijackers turned the plane upside down -- and crashed it.
"Allah is the greatest!" one screamed nine times as the plane went down. The recording then went dead. The courtroom was silent.
More than 35 survivors and family members testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, including Lorne Lyles, whose wife, CeeCee, was a flight attendant on Flight 93 (see photo of family, right). He brought several jurors to the brink of tears with his testimony yesterday about his wife's two calls from the plane.
The first time the phone rang, Lyles, a Fort Myers, Fla., police officer who had worked the overnight shift, rolled over and went back to sleep. He did speak to his wife briefly when she called again. But only a week later did he hear the message she had left on his voice mail.
"Hi, baby," CeeCee Lyles said in the call, a tape of which was played in court yesterday. "Baby, you have to listen to me very carefully. I'm on a plane that's been hijacked. . . . I'm trying to be calm."
Saying she knew that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, Lyles tried to keep her composure, but her voice broke as she ended the call. "I hope to be able to see your face again, baby," she said. "I love you, baby."
Lyles said he has been in and out of counseling for the past five years. "I'm just now being able to appreciate a full night's sleep," he testified. "They say closure, but there's never any closure. It takes a piece of you."
- Moussaoui looked bored, as he did when the cockpit voice recorder was played. Jurors leaned forward in their seats.
- Passengers, who had made cellphone calls and learned of the earlier trade center attack, then rushed the cockpit. "They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside," a hijacker said.
"Shall we finish it off?" one hijacker asked.
"No, not yet," responded another. "When they all come, we finish it off."
Within seconds, there was bedlam -- the sounds of a violent, almost animalistic struggle. People yelled and objects crashed, which Sept. 11 commissioners say was probably the passengers hurling objects at the cockpit door or ramming it with a beverage cart.
"Down, down. Pull it down, pull it down," a hijacker said just before his colleague praised Allah and crashed the plane.
In the background, a single voice could be heard screaming "No!"
Zacharias, what goes on in that mind of you and your friends, to do what you did to CeeCee Lyles and 39 others?
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:45 PM in Culture
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April 12, 2006
Oprah's Baltimore visit
The queen of daytime TV, indeed perhaps American womanhood, took aim at the deplorable Baltimore schools on her visit to her training ground as as broadcaster, as she returned Monday for a fundraiser.
She's refusing to commit funds however until she sees some slim hope of a sustainable improvement. From "Baltimore turns the other check for Oprah, Baltimore Sun, April 12:
"What I've learned from my philanthropic givings is that unless you can create sustainability, then it's a waste," said Winfrey, whose Angel Network has raised more than $35 million to support charities and offer grants around the world. "You might as well pee it out."During the WBAL interview, Oprah also stated that she has spoken about Baltimore's struggling school system with leaders around the world.
"I was actually sitting in Nelson Mandela's house telling him about the black male situation here in Baltimore," Winfrey said. "He did not believe me! I know it's easy to ignore, because you think it's East Baltimore and it doesn't have anything to do with your life and you're moving through your life. I just feel a sense of connection to that from which I've come."
City leaders are quoted as being on the defensive. Well they should be. The schools are a disgrace. I remember being puzzled, at a loss, and ultimately saddened when one teen employee of mine, helping on a repair project, couldn't put a vice away in storage bin because he couldn't read "v-i-c-e."
I've written in the past about our schools and the students they produce:
The situation is complex, obviously, but none of this helps either the suffering residents of this city, or its legions of almost perfectly empty-brained public school students. I have in the past hired local kids for various tasks, 14-year-olds who cannot tell me their wages (hours times rate) at the end of the day, or read labels in my workshop well enough to put a tool away.
So, others among us have come to identical conclusions to Oprah's.
A couple of years ago, the Megamillions jackpot reached in the hundreds of millions. My soccer buddy Rachel asked me to buy her a couple of tickets. She's an idealist and a city resident, and planned to use any winnings to help out the schools.
"Don't do that!" I nearly shrieked. When I settled down, I could clarify my thoughts: "The money would just go to North Avenue and be part of the waste. Found or support a charter school instead."
Oprah, girlfriend, you and I think alike!
A poster on the Baltimore Sun talk boards took a shot at Ms. Winfrey: "Yeah someone hosting a talk show that people sit around during the day watching has really contributed to a solution."
Well, one thing you can never accuse Oprah of is being all talk, or all talk show host. She's an action lady, who takes cash and supplies to South Africa, Ethiopia, New Orleans and many other places.
I'm trying to learn how to pitch my forthcoming book to her producers, and have been watching her show for the past six weeks. For the most part, I am very favorably impressed. When I ask professional women about the show, they always credit her for "what she does for women." That's a substantial compliment from a group that probably doesn't form the main base of her audience. But the admiration is there, and it's genuine.
If Oprah decided to get involved with Baltimore schools, they would have a genuine and committed friend -- and one who wouldn't be snowed by a catatonic school bureaucracy, burnt-out teachers, glassy-eyed students or even ne'er-do-well parents. A lot of people would have some shaping up to do.
- posted by jbelliveau at 10:33 AM in
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April 10, 2006
Loving tourism destinations to death
A crush of tourists mob the top of the Great Wall of China.
Ten years ago, I wrote in 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet (page 2):
If you have not yet been to [exotic places,] by all means consider going. Many world treasures appear to be more impermanent than you would wish. These include the Maya pyramids, the lemurs of Madagascar, the Buddhist culture of Burma, the pyrotechnic corals of Thailand and the elephants of East Africa.
This passage was basically inspired by visiting the Maya ruins at Palenque, the only ones that still have painted combs on the tops of the pyramid platforms.
When I learned that all the pyramids once had these, and that Palenque's were expected to also crumble away, I wrote the above thoughts.
Now it seems that many world treasures are crumbling due to climate change, weathering -- and too much love by swarms of tourists. See interesting Newsweek article, Vanishing Acts: The world's treasures are under siege as never before. So get out and see as many as possible—before they disappear. Excerpt:
Conservation International reckons that "unsustainable tourism" poses the main threat to half the cultural heritage sites in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to one in five sites in Asia and the Pacific. Cambodia's once-remote Angkor temples now receive a million visitors a year; the Taj Mahal is subject to 7 million. Rising prosperity in the developing world, more and more elderly on the move, and cheap flights to anywhere will only hasten the human flood. China alone reported a staggering 1.1 billion domestic tourists in 2004.
See also the excellent photo gallery accompanying the article, and numerous sidebars, including this one by Peter Mayle, Guests Welcome: Tourists don't deserve their bum rap. Without them, Provence might become a derelict bastion of mediocre food, that defends tourists. Excerpt:
Personally, I have never found the tourist season intolerable; indeed, there is reason to be grateful for some of its effects. If it weren't for the money that tourism brings, many of the châteaux and gardens open to the public would become derelict; monuments would be left to crumble; many restaurants could never survive on local custom alone; it wouldn't be worth putting on concerts or village fetes. Rural life would be the poorer.Obviously, this is not true everywhere. Some parts of the world have been so thoroughly overexploited that they have lost whatever charm they once possessed. This is usually the result of local greed; but the tourist, not the rapacious developer, gets most of the blame. If you believe some of the gloomy reports in the press, tourism is an international blight, and the travel writers' search for somewhere unspoiled that they can discover becomes ever more desperate. So what are we to do about it?
Here is my remedy: let us all try a period of travel abstinence. I will spend my vacation at home in Provence, and you spend yours at home in London or Brussels or Boston. Almost overnight, the problem of the invasive tourist would be solved. Alas, the reaction from tourist-bashers is always the same: what a ridiculous, unrealistic idea. In any case, it's not people like us.
A second sidebar article, Damage Control: Despite their bad reputation, tourists can also be one of the world's greatest forces for preservation, points out how tourist visits have actually helped a tribe in Ecuador return to traditional ways. The tribe had moved to the highway and begun wearing Nikes, but then:
Thanks to an influx of tourists, things have recently changed for the Cayapas. With visitors coming in search of community, or ethnic, tourism—to eat, work and often even live with the indigenous people—the Cayapas are embracing the nearly forgotten culture of their ancestors. Once again, they are wearing traditional clothes, building old-style homes and using traditional agricultural techniques. "They have become a sustainable community microbusiness, with a preservationist conscience, because they have understood that their indigenous roots are what interest tourists," says Armendáriz. "[It makes them] value their ancestral culture."
There's a lot to digest in these reports, which are causing quite a buzz on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree. Looks a balanced and thorough package of articles.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:13 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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April 7, 2006
One more look at "The Shot"
Here's a funny series on "The Shot" from the Maryland-Duke women's final Tuesday -- Make sure you look at all three:
(1) Maryland freshman Kristi Toliver watches as a tough three ties the game with 6 seconds left:
(2) Maryland fans react to winning the game, taking to the streets:
(3) Dookies react in Durham:
- posted by jbelliveau at 3:04 PM in Sports
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April 6, 2006
Continued rejoicing for Maryland's NCAA victory
Take a look at the picture at the right, from the Washington Post.
This may be the shot that changed a sport.
I'm not kidding, either. Look at Kristi Toliver's ice-water in the veins three-pointer over a 6-foot-7 Duke player, with 6 seconds left, to send the Maryland-Duke game into overtime.
She's got game.
This beats anything in the men's NCAA Final Four this year.
What wonderful aesthetics -- Toliver elevated, brave and fearless, sunk the shot with perfect mechanics, and not by lucky accident, but by will and determination to avoid losing. This was not second best, some pale imitation of the men's game, but the real deal for sports fans.
Fortunately, ratings were way up for the women's final this year, and what a game viewers saw.
At right, see a picture of the reaction to Toliver's shot. People watching around the country shared similar amazement to that of Toliver and her euphoric teammates. "Unbelievable!" my soccer buddy Deb C. e-mailed me.
The Baltimore Sun's David Steele writes, in "Once barely relevant, UM women now inspire revelry from students" (April 6, 2006), of how far the women's game has come in a generation:
If you do see the games from then, it's like watching black-and-white film of the NBA of Bob Cousy's era. The quantum leap in athleticism, skill and depth of the talent pool in the past 20 years or so, is astonishing. Debate the legitimacy of the dunks Tennessee's Candace Parker pulled off earlier in the tournament if you like. But the play, from beginning to end, that Kristi Toliver made to send the final into overtime was phenomenal by any standards, and should silence at least a few more doubts about how good the sport is.Both Toliver and Parker are freshmen, by the way. There's more of this to come.
NOTE: The game will be repeated tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPN Classic (Baltimore cable channel 6).
People are still digesting the implications. For one, Maryland's men's program suddenly looks exposed for what it is: Truly failed recruiting after the 2002 national championship. See my earlier blog entry, A Maryland fan watches the NCAAs, as well as the Baltimore Sun's Rick Maese, "To avoid men's blueprint, Frese will build off title" (April 6, 2006):
[Maryland men's Coach Gary] Williams didn't capitalize on two great basketball teams because of troubles recruiting, an area which happens to be [Maryland women's Coach Brenda] Frese's forte. You can't win a title and wait by the telephone.Last week in Boston, each of Frese's players was asked at some point the main reason she chose Maryland. None said the teammates. None mentioned Comcast Center. None pointed to the school's academics. The personal relationship established with Frese, each told reporters.
My husband Lamont cautions against turning too quickly on Gary Williams, who after all, bought a championship four years ago.
He also provided the viewpoint of a once-skeptical male in a comment on my blog yesterday. It's such a good comment that I am pulling into my own blog here for better visibility. From Lamont:
I'm not ready to declare a 180 degree turn on my view of women's basketball. After torturing myself on WNBA for 3 years and giving up on it I'll need more to start watching the sport. Maryland's NCAA win was what I call "A good game."At first I sat there because after playing midfield for 90 minutes with no sub I was too exhausted to move. I groaned at first, only consoling myself that if I could sit through the 40-year old Virgin I could handle this. But as Maryland fought back and Toliver put in numerous 3-pointers, I was impressed.
As they closed the gap in spite of Duke responding with their own 3-pointers there was no way I was going to move. From watching, I could tell it was going to come down to one shot, and with the ball in Toliver's hands I was thinking she could be the best female ball player I've ever seen. The over-time was just as interesting.
I am still a bit reserved about women's basketball, most of them still shoot from the hip instead of over the head, making it easy to block their shots, and though I find the preoccupation with dunking in the men's game annoying, I still like the power game at the right moments.
I also liked the Maryland coach, looked like a cross between Gates McFadden and Lisa Kudrow, excited and into the game would wander onto the court cheering and coaching. Good passion.
I was pleased that they called a foul when Wilson used her shoulder to floor a Maryland player (I wish they'd call that on Shaq istead of making bogus rules to contain him) But I think that basketball refs are among the worst in the world, so there are always calls that revolt me.
Amazingly the women can make their free-throws.
Women's basketball still has a way to go, but that was a good start for me.
WOMEN'S SPORTS I WILL WATCH:
-Women's soccer: Credit Jeannette for twisting my arm, I like it about 90% as much as the men's game overall. The WUSA was better visually than the MLS at times (except when keepers in the 3rd season had trouble reaching midfield with goal kicks).
The team work was more enjoyable than some World Cup teams who fall back too much on showing off individual skills at times.
Do NOT, however, watch the women's game AFTER watching Barcelona, Madrid or Arsenal. You need to watch it first.
-Womens Tennis: I loved it in the late 1990s when Monica, Gabriel and Steffi were playing. Serena and Hingis are very exciting now. More rallies or returns in the women's game. The courts are almost too small for the men's game.
-Beach Volleyball: Whatever... its not just about the outfits and attractive women, I can look at sports illustrated to see that, they are fantastic athletes... who happen to be really attractive in skimpy outfits. I had to laugh during the last Olympics when the networks tried to bury it in the early programming. By the quarter finals they were delaying the broadcasts till 10:30 pm to keep you watching.
-Boxing: In spite of myself, I've been transfixed every time I've seen it. They don't show enough of it.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:39 AM in Sports
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April 5, 2006
Cheers for the Maryland women's team
I nearly forgot to set a tape for 8:30 p.m. on ESPN last night to catch the NCAA women's basketball final.
But just before going out to Lamont's soccer game I remembered to set the VCR, reminding myself that though I don't follow women's basketball closely, I would watch any match in any sport, from tiddlywinks on up, involving Maryland potentially defeating Duke.
Further, I had read that this group of young women was exceptionally tough in beating North Carolina in what was described as an ugly but determined game. They sounded worth taking a look at. From Sally Jenkins on the semi-final game:
Everything about Maryland's win was ugly, right down to the Terrapins' sagging black socks and shoes, which looked better-suited for playing on pavement. There were hard fouls, loud collisions and sloppy turnovers all over the floor. Even their victory celebration was unsightly: when guard Shay Doron went to the free throw line with just a few seconds to go, a referee had to tell her to tuck her shirt in.This NCAA Final Four semifinal game was often savagely played, brutally coached and badly officiated, but Maryland got the best of a bad situation, 81-70, over North Carolina. The Terrapins won with a hard-nosed brand of basketball, but they hardly cared about how it looked, after advancing to their first championship game in program history.
We came home after Lamont's soccer game and started the tape of the final. Maryland started off misfiring, but coach Brenda Frese called over players and gave them what-for in what seemed firm but positive terms (the picture, from the Washington Post, at right shows her size and guard Shay Doyon's fierce expression). The giant Valkyrie, who seems 6-foot-2 as a guess, definitely invades the personal space of her players but they seem to get the message.
What transpired next was the best game, next to George Mason's upset of U-Conn, in either the men's or women's finals this year. ESPN showed tape of Frese haranguing her charges in the locker room at half time. She said something to the effect of, "They're celebrating, Duke is celebrating, they think they've beaten you." It was the kind of aggressive challenge one rarely imagines being employed by the coach of a female team. (It's often thought that you need to coach women more gently than men.)
But it seemed to work. Out came Maryland's very young (mostly freshman and sophomore) team. They remembered suddenly how to play defense. The Lady Terps battled back from 13 points down, tied the score with a beauty of a fadeway 3-pointer with 6 seconds to go by Kristi Toliver, and pulled away just enough to win in overtime.
It was incomparably more dramatic that Florida's beatdown of UCLA in the men's final Monday. It's a great story -- a young fearless and tough group of females that won every overtime game they played this year. They rated my Redskins dance of happiness for the victory.
As Sally Jenkins wrote:
One team had all the experience, and the other had none. All Maryland had going for it was a bunch of beautifully consciousless kids. "We're too young to know better," Kristi Toliver had said entering this national championship game, and she was right.Too young to know that a freshman point guard isn't supposed to hit a brilliant step-back three-pointer with 6.1 seconds left to force overtime -- and do it against Duke's massive 6-foot-7 center Alison Bales. Too young to know that a 13-point second half deficit is too much to fight back from in a national title game. Too young to know that the Terrapins had no business upsetting the Blue Devils, a more accomplished and mature opponent that had been all but christened the national champions before the ball ever went up.
They also passed the ultimate challenge, the Lamont test. He doesn't hesitate to make fun of anything I am watching or listening to. I was braced for him to mock any lack of athleticism or skill or shooting ability or physical attractiveness. Instead, he watched enthusiastically.
The young women on Maryland's team, sinking soft touch shots unknown to the men's game -- such as the pullup midrange jumper -- gave him no cause for complaints.
Coach Frese wants to increase Maryland's average home attendance of 5,000 next season. Count me among the converted -- I'd love to see this young scrappy group in person.
- posted by jbelliveau at 2:14 PM in Sports
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April 4, 2006
Mayo Shattuck the Third, you are ticking me off
The president and CEO of Constellation Energy Group, right, stands to gain a cool $70 million from a proposed merger with the parent of Florida Power & Light.
(This information comes from an April 2, 2006, article by Jay Hancock, "CEG chiefs' gain could help BGE customers," in the Baltimore Sun. I will refrain from linking directly to the article because Sun links go bad quite quickly.)
These millions are on top of an annual salary of $1 million from Constellation (plus $4 million or more in bonuses). He apparently made $8-10 million a year as the head of Alex Brown, in previous job that he walked away from suddenly the day after 9/11.
Meanwhile, BGE, owned 100 percent by Constellation, is proposing a 72 percent increase in electricity prices this summer, when rate caps expire, costing most people $743 a year more.
What this means for our household, in conjunction with the huge hikes in natural gas prices this winter, is a year-round average of $300 a month for heating (natural gas) and cooling (central air conditioner powered by electricity). And with that, we are not even comfortable!
When I first moved to our Upper Fells Point home in 1990, gas and electric ran $93.40 for my first bill, in February.
Going from $93 to $300 for utilities over 16 years translates to a 13 percent annual increase, with no benefit in return, in fact, considerably less comfort. $3,600 is a lot of money to pay per year to not be comfortable. I predict some level of migration out of Maryland farther south in response to these bills.
In the April 2 Sun, Hancock wrote about a paradox whereby BGE consumers could benefit if Shattuck is motivated by the prospect of $70 million, in his very own post-merger pocket, as part of a contract he negotiated that takes effect if Constellation merges with anyone else. With the Maryland Legislature threatening to block the merger with Florida Power unless the rates are rolled back, Shattuck may have to lower our rates so as to get his mountain of cash.
Mr. Hancock, I follow you in this complicated saga. But what occurs in part of my brain, the part that oversimplifies, is a short-circuit of anger, pretty much a loathing of Mayo Shattuck the Third.
Dude, ya want $70 million? While we get ready to live freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer?
OK, sure, you can have your money IF you promise me to live like Marylanders did in my childhood, suffering through the sticky summers, with childhood photos showing sweaty bangs stuck to our foreheads. Because that's how a LOT of us are going to be living.
I want you, Mayo Shattuck the Third, to remove all heating and air-conditioning from your car and your Roland Park mansion and your office and your wife Molly's vehicle that ferries her to cheerlead the Ravens at age 39. Sweat and shiver like the rest of us. Or maybe insulate your house's walls with $100 bills.
I am normally pretty laissez-faire re: market forces and executive compensation and so forth.
But the greed of Mayo Shattuck the Third, like that of a villain in a Charles Dickens' novel, hits too close to home. It rubs me the wrong way.
Here is his arrogant defense of his millions in the March 12 Baltimore Sun (article entitled "Constellation's CEO defends rates, merger: Interview with Mayo A. Shattuck III"):
Sun reporter Paul Adams: Your post-merger benefits package will pay you tens of millions of dollars. How do you explain those numbers to people who are worried about a 72 percent increase in electricity costs?Mayo Shattuck the Third: Constellation is the leading power commodity business in the country. We have very talented people here, the most talented in the business. They've created something very special. They get compensated relative to their competitive peers in New York. Now, I could have fielded the junior varsity here to build Constellation, and we would have been crushed by the New York giants. Instead, we made a proactive decision to build the world-class commodity platform, and the individuals that created that need to be rewarded in the same way that the stars at T. Rowe Price and Legg Mason get rewarded. And we're very proud of that, and that adds to the tax base and the health of the community, and I don't believe people should be resentful of that success.
Dream on, Mayo Shattuck the Third. I don't resent your success. I do resent your greed. It completely undercuts every last bit of philanthropy and public service you have ever undertaken.
Maybe it's even worse if you are an economic conservative to see such a naked expression of greed as Mayo Shattuck the Third's. This just provides fuel to those who want the inefficient government to handle things better handled by private organizations.
Our nation's electric grid is mess and in dire need of updating and investment, as we all should have gathered from the blackout in the Northeast United States Aug. 14, 2003.
Deregulation changed how electricity was physically shared around the country, and an aging grid became a problem. Utility rates actually DO need to go up to address an aging infrastructure, see the conclusion of this explanation in The Industrial Physicist:
One widely supported answer is to change the grid physically to accommodate the new trading patterns, mainly by expanding transmission capacity. The [Department of Energy] and [The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission], as well as organizations supported by the utilities, such as the Electric Power Research Institute and the Edison Electric Institute, advocate this approach. In reports before and after the blackout, they urged expanding transmission lines and easing environmental rules that limit their construction. The logic is simple: if increased energy trading causes congestion and, thus, unreliability, expand capacity so controllers can switch energy from line to line without overloading.To pay the extensive costs, the utilities and the DOE advocate increases in utility rates. “The people who benefit from the system have to be part of the solution here,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abrams said during a television interview. “That means the ratepayers are going to have to contribute.” The costs involved would certainly be in the tens of billions of dollars. Thus, deregulation would result in large cost increases to consumers, not the savings once promised. [Emphasis added.]
As an economic conservative, I could with some reluctance buy into increased rates for improved reliability and security. No one wants to be on an operating table and have the hospital's electricity go out.
But higher electricity rates so that Mayo Shattuck the Third can further line his own pockets -- in a merger that has my utility prices decided in Florida?? No way!
Regardless of how Hancock writes this, and how much I understand the workings of capitalism, the brain goes:
- I am going to pay $300 a month and even so I will NOT be comfortable in the summer or winter.
- This is so the already mega-rich Mayo Shattuck the Third can get $70 million for doing God knows what -- apparently, drafting exorbitant contracts with an energy company and getting away with it.
From the Baltimore Business Journal:
Both critics and public relations experts independent of Constellation say the company comes off as arrogant, cold and unfeeling toward the plight of customers, especially seniors and those on fixed incomes. And the issue is getting personal: Activists are planning a protest at Constellation CEO Mayo A. Shattuck III's house on March 29.All of this political turmoil could have a big impact for the company, which is banking on getting the FPL merger approved by the end of this year. Lawmakers are talking about using the merger as a way to extract concessions from Constellation, including relief for ratepayers.
"The way this has been handled has left people very angry," said state Sen. E.J. Pipkin, an Eastern Shore Republican. "They've taken an attitude that everything's just fine."
Baltimore already has people too poor to heat and light their homes, witness this story of an 11-year-old boy rushed to Johns Hopkins, where he later died of burns from a house fire because their power had been shut off, and their home was lit with candles.
As for the rich in their McMansions, they too are going to feel these hikes, trying to heat and cool 4,000 square feet, but presumably they know that if you ride big, you pay big. Or maybe they will wise up and join the Small House Movement?
There are thousands of families like ours, kind of in the big middle, with a more modest-sized house and once-reasonable utility bills, wondering what to do. We are in Upper Fells Point, which bakes like the rest of cemented East Baltimore in the summer, with too few trees and parks. As heated air rises, our vertical rowhouses turn the 3rd floor into a sweatbox. It takes both central a/c and a room unit to make the 3rd floor liveable, because our 1980s rehab-era heating and cooling set-up lacks zoned systems.
The house may already be as weatherproofed as it could possibly be. Some years ago we had a thermal inspection -- from Thermal Inspection Services in Allentown, Pa. For $250, the guy brought an infrared camera and provided us with a written report and a videotape showing air leaks in our house. We have caulked and sealed everything possible. The windows are reasonably new and double-paned.
I'm not sure what we can do barring getting a higher efficiency furnace, which would be extremely expensive. We are probably stuck until the current furnace gives out.
This is going to be tough.
Mayo Shattuck the Third, you gall me. As a consumer, I am just mad enough to live in the dark and cold and keep my money from you. And I will not be happy about that.
For other people, living in the dark and cold will be because they don't have the money to pay their bills and have had their power shut off.
Our governor in Maryland, Bob Ehrlich, didn't help with a proposed $25 million to help the poor with their utility bills. OK, Bob, I'll be living in the cold and dark, AND be taxed more so others can be a little less in the cold and dark? Is that supposed to be a solution to a problem that is going to hit everybody?
Why aren't you pushing for new technologies or an expansion of Maryland's nuclear power? Calvert Cliffs seems to be doing fine. Can you imagine the economic boon to our state if we found ways to provide affordable power to homes and businesses?
Pass the hat to Mayo Shattuck the Third, he's got the $25 million. Maryland taxpayers -- and anyone using heat or air conditioning -- sure don't.
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:08 PM in The Neighborhood
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