Halfway down the Danube

In Search of the A-2

So we wanted to drive the A-2 highway this weekend.

You have to understand: Romania, a country half the size of France, only has about 200 km (120 miles) of highway. Half of that is the "Pitesti Autostrada", the A-1, which goes from Bucharest west for about 100 km/60 miles to the nondescript small city of Pitesti. (It was built by Ceausescu in the 1970s because the country's first car factory was near Pitesti, and he wanted a highway from the factory to the capital. The other 100 km consists of various odds and ends scattered around the country -- a few miles here, a few miles there.

Otherwise, if you're driving around Romania, you're driving on two-lane country roads.

Until about two weeks ago, that is. That's when we read in the news that 55 km (~35 miles) of the new A-2 highway had been completed.

Now, the A-2 will eventually go about 250 km east from Bucharest to the port of Constanta on the Black Sea -- it's supposed to be completed in 2006 (although there is room for some skepticism here). When it's done, the trip from Bucharest to Constanta (the country's largest port, a major industrial center, and the center of its most important tourist region) will take just over two hours instead of three and a half.

Putting that aside, we were looking forward to driving on it. Months of driving on Romanian roads leave you sort of wistful for a real highway. There's the A-1, but it's not in great shape, and even a small pothole makes a hell of a bang when you hit it at 120 km/75 mph. So when we decided to drive from Bucharest to Constanta, we naturally decided that we'd take the new A-2 just as far as we could. A big, fast, new highway: it wasn't like we gave it a moment's thought. We were there.

Except we couldn't find it.

Oh, we had a map that showed where it should be. It should start right around a Bucharest suburb called Pantelimon, and run parallel to the two-lane road that leads to Calarasi.. We know that road well. So we drove down to Pantelimon, and...

...and nothing. No highway. No signs for a highway. No construction equipment. Not even a little back road wiggling off somewhere that just might lead to a highway. It was just the same old two-lane road to Calarasi.

We drove around for a while, casting for the missing highway like a dog on a cold scent. We kept looking at the map: Pantelimon isn't that big, it must be around here somewhere.

But it wasn't.

Well: the map had a dotted line that showed where the A-2 was supposed to go. And it showed an exit off the Calarasi road about 25 km (15 miles) ahead, in a town called Fundulea. So, okay.

We drove along the Calarasi road, slipping into the normal long-distance Romanian driving experience: speed up to 100 kph, get behind a truck, slow down. Breathe some diesel fumes. Wait, wait, pass the truck. Speed up to 100 kph, hit a town. Slow down to 60 kph. (The towns are full of local cops who are waiting for people to blow through; we saw at least half a dozen people pulled over in the course of the weekend.)

Leave small town, speed up to 100 kph, get behind a piece of farm equipment. Slow down, wait, wait, pass. WHOA there's a horse-drawn cart coming the other way, half on the shoulder, half not. Swerve, veer, get back in lane. Speed up to, whoops, another town, slow down. Pedestrians in a crosswalk, full stop. Out of town, speed up to 100 kph, actually stay over 100 kph for four or five minutes, hit a long line of cars behind a particlularly large and slow truck. Wait, wait...

Normally one doesn't mind this so much. It's just how things are here. But the thought of that highway was tantalizing and frustrating. Smooth high-speed driving, just out of reach! So by the time we reached Fundulea, we were ready to jump on that road...

...except that it wasn't there. No signs. No exit. No indication that anything had changed in Fundulea, or ever would. Just the same old two-lane road to Calarasi, blowing on through.

A weird, paranoid sense of unreality gripped us. Had the newspaper lied? We hadn't actually met anyone who'd driven on the A-2. Or had we somehow misremembered it? Maybe it went to some other city entirely. But no: there it was on the map, a thick dotted line. But it wasn't there.

Since there wasn't really anything else to do, we continued on our way. Maybe the A-2 existed and maybe it didn't, but anyhow we were going to the beach. We would try again on the way back.

[to be continued]

Pie Blogging: The Clove and Tom Collins Pie

From the American animated television show The Simpsons, December 16, 1993:

Lisa: There's nothing to eat for breakfast.
Homer: You gotta improvise, Lisa: cloves, Tom Collins mix, frozen pie crust...

Cloves are the spice. A Tom Collins is a cocktail made with lime, lemon juice, bar syrup, club soda, and gin. Frozen pie crust is what I have been using.

I accepted the implicit challenge.

First, I started with half a cup of Rose's Lime Juice, and poured it into a mixing bowl. Rose's is sort of like real lime juice, but with added corn syrup and preservatives and an odd, metallic taste. Every liquor cabinet I have ever seen has had a bottle.

Next, I cut a lemon in half, and squeezed the juice into the bowl as well, picking out the seeds.

Then I poured an 14 ounce can of condensed milk into the mixture. Condensed milk is heavily sweetened whole milk, caramelized light brown and as thick as yogurt. It's extremely popular in the Spanish-American world, and a lot of differently Latin households have a can or two in the cupboard. There is a mildly dangerous dessert one can make with it, simply with an unopened can, which I will not recount here.

The acidity of the lime and lemon juices began to curdle the condensed milk, but the condensed milk was already quite thick in texture, so some stirring rapidly evened the bowl out.

Then I crushed six cloves -- skittery little things -- into the mixture. Ground cloves would likely be better, and less stale cloves better still. But mainly, I wanted enough clove flavor to compete with the Tom Collins citrus component of the pie. I stirred them in, ending up with a yellow batter with brown flecks. It tasted good and sweet and sour, much more so than the vinegar pie. The clove bits produced a mildly minty sensation on the tongue.

Three egg yolks followed. In theory, I could make meringue with the egg whites. But I don't like meringue all that much. It's like eating burnt candy styrofoam. And I do like white omelettes.

The filling at this point was a nice light glossy yellow, with scattered brown flecks of clovosity. I poured it into, yes, a frozen pie crust, thawed to room temperature. I waited for the oven to heat to 350 degrees F (175 C), and let the pie cook for fifteen minutes. The finished pie was light yellow with a light brown crust, with a remarkably smooth sheen to the filling. Cars should be painted that smooth.

I let it cool, and about an hour later I had a slice. Ooooh. Sweet enough to make my teeth hurt, sour enough to make me purse my lips. Kick it up a notch! The filling, while sticky, was able to hold its shape, and the pie crust, although with difficulty, did hold the filling. The flavors of the lemon and lime blended, somewhat to my regret, into a generic sort of citrus, while the six cloves had a much subtler effect on the whole pie, infusing it with a light mint flavor. (I should note that my cloves were rather stale.)

Mmmm, clove and Tom Collins pie. Now I have something to eat for breakfast.

Danube Day!

HDTD reader Pax has kindly alerted us that today is Danube Day. How could we overlook that! He's also directed us to a very cool link about the Danube which is very worth checking out. Quote the site about the events in Romania:

What will happen in Romania?

Danube Day in Romania is a day of national celebration, with festivities in every major town along the Danube. National television will be covering the events, encouraging everyone to join in the fun and appreciate the importance of a healthy Danube.

A symbolic torch and special Danube Day message will be transported by boat from Orsova, the start of the Romanian Danube (24 June) to the Black Sea at Sulina (29 June), signifying the immense value of the Danube to the people of Romania.

I'm sorry that we missed this, being two hours' drive away from the river.

BTW, last weekend, we traveled all the way down the Danube but that blog entry is still in the making. Now we do have the ambition to visit the source of the Danube in Donaueschingen, as well as the two little rivers that really make the Danube, the Brigach and the Breg. One day.

Pie Blogging: The Bean Pie

This is a sweet pie. Thus, this is a disturbing pie, since it is also a bean pie. Yet it is a multicultural pie. American cowboys, Black Muslims, and diners in Chinese McDonald's restaurants have all eaten the bean pie with gusto and with pleasure. Sweet, disturbing, multicultural; sounds good to me. So let's go.

I started off with a can of red kidney beans, a little less than half a kg, about one and a half cups. I drained off the liquid, and cooked them in my scratched-up old saucepan. They simmered. I should note that the precise type of bean is not all that important -- Black Muslims use navy beans in their bean pies, while cowboys used rehydrated dry pinto beans on the trail -- though haricots verts are right out. I picked a few out with a fork. They were tender and delicious.

All the recipes I found suggest at least mashing the cooked tender beans with a fork, while some suggest using a blender or a food processor to create a smooth bean paste. Not having a food processor, I mashed the beans with a fork, and then for good measure mashed them further with a round glass tumbler inside of the saucepan, using the tumbler as a pestle. It was messy, but it produced a nice purplish starchy goop, with the skins of the beans popping through the mixture despite repeated applications of the tumbler.

I stirred a cup of brown sugar into the hot bean paste, a cup of milk (which cooled it down), three egg yolks, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and some allspice. Other recipes suggest cinnamon and nutmeg, but I thought the allspice would better complement the bean flavor. I heated the mixture (below boiling) and stirred it for a few minutes, to let the starches in the beans thicken a bit further. I was a little dismayed to see the skins of the beans floating in the mass, since I knew they would be somewhat tough, and I was tempted to strain them out. In the end, I didn't.

I poured the thickened mixture into a uncooked store-bought Pillsbury pie crust, and put it in the oven at 350 degrees F (about 175 C) for thirty minutes or so. I'm afraid I'm really not much of a clock-watcher when it comes to these things. The crust was a light brown, and the surface of the filling was dark brown and intriguingly ruddy. I set it on top of my refrigerator to cool, and about an hour or so later I had my first slice.

That first bite was... interesting. As I had worried, the skins of the beans did give the filling a much chewier, more fibrous texture than most pies have. The next time I make this pie, I shall puree those beans. However, overall the pie's flavor was sweet and smoky, with overtones as complex as chocolate, and actually not unlike chocolate. And although I used three egg yolks, it didn't taste like a custard pie at all. More like some earthy, exotic New World plant that had been pulled straight from the ground and cooked sweet over the long day.

Not bad. Not bad at all. And it goes well with strong black coffee.

Tadic wins

Boris Tadic won the Presidential election in Serbia yesterday.

You may recall that Tadic was running against Nikolic of the Radical Party. Nikolic came alarmingly close -- the final vote was about 54% - 46%. That's worrying. Still, when the dust had settled Tadic was the clear victor.

So what next? Nothing much -- and that's a good thing. Tadic has said that he doesn't plan to call elections any time soon, which means he won't upset the oh-so-delicate Parliamentary balance.

Still, his party -- the Democrats -- are still out of power. So Serbia is in the odd position of being governed by a coalition of three parties, while a fourth party (the Socialists) is out of government but gives them tacit support, a fifth party (the Democrats) is out of government but holds the Presidency, and the largest single party of all -- the Radicals -- has no say in government at all.

Back from the beach

You may have wondered about our silence. Well, the simple truth is that we were at the beach for the weekend. We drove out to Mamaia, where we ran into friends and spent the days on the beach and at the pool. It was marvelous.

Only Alan destested it all. Sometime last week, or maybe the week before that, my little fearless water rat turned into a water-detesting land dweller. He hated the sea (all those waves, and this water didn't have an ending to it!), he hated the beach (the little shells were poking his feet), he hated the pool ("Don't like it, Daddy, don't like it!). He loved playing around the pool, though, and quickly amassed a group of loyal followers (i.e. little boys of five, six years) who helped him climb on and off the walls. Then he disappeared for a scary couple of minutes and was found outside the pool area, swinging the gates to and fro. But he frequently demanded that we go "home!".

Well. On a brighter note, David just loved all of it. The pool, the sea, the beach. He was busy eating sand and shells and destroying the sand castles I built for him.

I'm glad one of my sons had a great time.

Meet me in St. Louis

Also I was in St. Louis, Missouri, attending a wedding.

Geh' aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud
In dieser schönen Sommerzeit
An deines Gottes Gaben;
Schau an der schönen Gärtenzier
Und siehe, wie sie mir und dir
Sich ausgeschmücket haben.

Die Bäume stehen voller Laub,
Das Erdreich decket seinen Staub
Mit einem grünen Kleide;
Narzissus und die Tulipan,
Die ziehen sich viel schöner an
Als Salomonis Seide.

Die Lerche schwingt sich in die Luft,
Das Täublein fleugt aus seiner Kluft
Und macht sich in die Wälder;
Die hochbegabte Nachtigall
Ergötzt und füllt mit ihrem Schall
Berg, Hügel, Tal und Felder.

Ich selber kann und mag nicht ruhn;
Des großen Gottes großes Tun
Erweckt mir alle Sinnen;
Ich singe mit, wenn alles singt,
Und lasse, was dem Höchsten klingt,
Aus meinem Herzen rinnen.

A beautiful sunny day for a beautiful sunny bride. Congratulations, Chriscinda and Fabian!

Shameless Promotion

Apparently I have taken over this blog by default. Excellent.

I recently attended into the publishing event of the year. Yes, that's right: the release party for my friends Joe Garden and Mike Loew's new book, Citizen You! (Exclamation point theirs.) No, it's not my biography. It's possibly the only pro-Bush book the traitorous left-wing American publisher The New Press has ever printed (no doubt to position themselves for their inevitable treason trials), but it was definitely an event. Honest cold American Budweiser was served, with tiny pigs-in-a-blanket sausages bearing tiny American flags, and even the walls of The New Press's offices were covered in patriotic red, white, and blue bunting! As Joe remarked to me, it was a wonder that it didn't all spontaneously combust.

In honor of the event, Joe was wearing one of his Killdozer T-shirts, the one with the big hammer and sickle on it. Killdozer is the best Communist Wisconsin band named after a Theodore Sturgeon short story ever. Mike, like myself, had a new haircut, but his was far more dramatic. I got to shake Doug Henwood's hand, which means that I now have cell samples by which I could either clone him, or engineer a plague targeted at his genome specifically. Or both! There were real live evil America-hating Hollywood people there too, as well as some of the Billionaires for Bush. And, you know, the usual gang of weirdos from Wisconsin. Just good stuff.

Pop Quiz Friday: That Shakespeherian Rag

Two bits of Shakespeare pastiche with Communist transition themes. Can you identify their authors?

Here's the first:

BREZHNEV: What of the brotherlands, of Comecon?

ANDROPOV: The sledded Polacks grumble in their yards.
They hearken to, on shortwave radio
that turbulent priest, Pope Wojtyla,
and bide their time. The Bulgars hard
oppress their Turks. The Czechs
bounce currency abroad and Semtex too
and do protest too much their fealty.
The Magyars boast themselves
the happiest barrack in the People's camp.
Our Germans seethe
with discontent at that dividing Wall.
As to our brother Serbs, what can I say?
Their house of cards may topple any day.

(Uproar.)

and the second:

SIHANOUK: I know perfectly well the United States is immense, but I do not think an ambassador does honor to his country by characterizing the country that receives him as "rinky-dink"!

GENERAL TABER: We didn't say that!

SIHANOUK: Mr. McClintock doesn't stand on ceremony in front of servants, journalists, and even diplomats. Can't you accord us the same treatment as countries much smaller than ours yet which you respect? Do you say "Little Belgium"? "Tiny Israel"? You reserve contempt for Cambodia alone and foreordain its appearance. You're systematically shrinking us. Why, just look at the newspapers. First Cambodia is small, then it's very small, the next day I read that it's extremely small, now it's miniscule, a pocket kingdom, a useless remnant, an eleventh toe, it's a speck of dust on your eye, a scab, it's nothing! Just where is it? It's going to disappear. It has disappeared!

(Lon Nol signals behind his back that Sihanouk is crazy and should not be paid attention to.)

Hint: they're not the same person.

Pie Blogging: The Vinegar Pie

First, a quote:

"She also began to bake a lot of pies. She made dried apple pie and raisin pie. She had mincemeat she'd put up and was saving for Christmas but she opened those jars. When she ran out of those, she made mock apple pie out of crushed crackers or red bean pie. She made vinegar pie." -- Carol Emshwiller, Ledoyt.

The following recipe is taken from Carol Emshwiller's unconventional Western novel, Ledoyt. Unfortunately, I think it has a tragic flaw. (The recipe, not the book, which is excellent.)

1 cup sugar
1 cup cold water
2 tbsp. flour
5 tbsp. vinegar
2 tbsp. lard or butter

Mix and pour into pie crust.

If you can hold your hand in the oven and count to twenty, it is just the right temperature.

Bake until the crust is brown.

Usually a pie is a pastry shell -- the crust -- with a filling, sweet or savory, like a larger version of a tart. (There are exceptions, like the Boston Cream Pie, and pizza developed from the pie tradition in its own direction.) Some are baked, and some are chilled; some are open-faced, and some can be entirely enclosed by crust.

But the filling has to fill the pie. The above recipe does not. Two tablespoons of flour isn't going to thicken 300 mL of liquid.

So before making it, I searched the Internet for other recipes for vinegar pie. Some trivia first: it turns out that vinegar pie was a popular dish in Regency England in the early 19th century. I had the impression, from the recipe's context in Emshwiller's novel, that vinegar pie was a pioneer sort of pie, a stopgap pie for when a farm might run out of fresh fruit. Not necessarily.

Vinegar pie is also meant to be a custard pie, a flan if you will; and those require eggs. And using Google, I found a version that used a nearly exact copy of Emshwiller's ingredients, save for an extra half-tablespoon of butter and four eggs. Aha! the missing ingredient confirmed.

Okay. I had all of the ingredients necessary for vinegar pie in the kitchen... except for the pie crust. While not wanting to use a cookie crust as I did last time, I also did not want to mess with making a crust from scratch. What can I say? I am just not in the pie crust zone at the moment. Thus, with a heavy heart (again) I went to the supermarket, and bought some frozen standard pie crusts, made by Pillsbury, the big American baking concern, from lard and flour and some interesting chemicals.

After I opened the package, I discovered one crust was torn. I swear, sometimes pie crust dough is more tempermental than phyllo. That one I saved for making empanadas or something later. The other looked OK, with a small, suspiciously straight, probably machine-made tear that was easy enough to fix. I set it aside.

I mixed the sugar and the flour in my old saucepan, Old Faithful, added the cold water, the vinegar spoonful by spoonful, and then a chunk of butter, two tablespoons worth. Butter in the US comes with measurement marks on the wrapper, so this was actually a rectangular block that floated on top of the liquid. I heated the mixture up, stirring, and waited for the butter to melt, wondering if the mixture would get thick enough without the eggs to use as a filling. The answer was no.

I let that cool for a bit, broke four eggs into a convenient glass, Rocky-style, and beat them with a fork. When the saucepan seemed cool enough, I poured a bit of egg into it, to make sure I wouldn't accidentally make egg drop sweet-and-sour soup. It was cool enough, so I slowly poured a bit more egg at a time in, stirring after I poured. Then I turned the burner back on, still stirring, medium heat, some recipes tell you to use a double boiler in these situations but I like living dangerously, lifting the pan, lowering the heat, stirring the mixture thicker and thicker, stirring towards freedom! until it felt as thick as a batter.

Then I poured it into the unbaked pie shell.

I figured 325 degrees Fahrenheit was close enough to "hold your hand in the oven and count to twenty". Some experiments aren't worth the trouble. That's about 160 degrees Centigrade for you maniacs already in the 22nd century. I baked the pie until the crust was brown, but forgot to time the proceedings. (We're probably talking about half an hour here, but don't quote me on that.) The filling had turned a rich deep gold.

I let the finished pie cool on top of the fridge, my standard operating procedure.

The first slice was delicious. As I mentioned before, vinegar pie is a custard pie, so the filling was sweet and rich and eggy. The vinegar added just enough sourness to make it taste as if fruit were involved, but no fruits or other extracts were harmed during the making of this pie. In fact, the next time I make this, I might want to increase the vinegar content, to give the filling a little more bite. And the store-bought crust was not bad, not bad at all.

Seven more slices to go.

In other news from Serbia...

The Legionnaire has stopped talking.

He says he's sick and exhausted. After prison doctors examined him, his trial was adjourned until July 12. This is rather a long adjournment, and cynical observers are already noting that it will be safely past next week's runoff election for Serbia's Presidency.

On the plus side, Prime Minister Kostunica -- after several days of agonizing over it -- issued a statement supporting Democrat Boris Tadic against Radical Tomislav Nikolic.

Not easy for Kostunica. He's a proud man, and he felt the humiliating defeat of "his" candidate keenly. And he loathes the Democrats; he thinks they're corrupt, and also that they were trying to harass and persecute him personally, especially in the last year or so of their administration. His party helped bring them down in a crushing defeat just six months ago. But now he has to support a Democrat to become Serbia's President -- head of state and so his nominal superior.

Personally, I wasn't sure he'd be able to bring himself to do it. It's really gratifying to see that he came around so quickly.

Rival candidate Bogoljub Karic -- who scored a surprisingly high third place in the presidential run, and who seems to want to be Serbia's Silvio Berlusconi -- also came around to endorsing Tadic. Since Karic got nearly half a million votes, nearly 20%, this is also a great help. So at this point I'm going to live a little dangerously and predict a Tadic win.

Meanwhile: eighty per cent of students at Belgrade University would leave Serbia if they could, according to the results of an opinion poll published by Belgrade daily Politika.

Enemy of the State

My osteopath has told me a wild story today. She's a member of MISA, the Romanian yoga movement "Miscarea de Integrare Siprituala în Absolut" (Movement for the Spiritual Integration in the Absolute). She was very shaken and upset. Apparently the police has launched a nation-wide crack down on the highly criminal and subversive subjects known as "yogis". We all know how dangerous yoga practitioners are, don't we?

Sources on the internet are readily available, like here and here, but I found this a very moving, albeit difficult to read document. Wizards? In this day and age?

My osteopath warned me not to tell anybody that I am practising yoga. It could be "dangerous". Her praxis has been searched and the police questioned the neighbors whether they'd noticed any sex orgies in her rooms. Good for her that the neighbors were outraged by this slander.

She also gave me a movie CD with footage of the police raids -- chilling documents indeed.

MISA has protested in Brussels against this treatment. We can only hope that the EU listens and acts. I have small hope of that but we'll see.

On Tuesday, there is a big protest planned downtown. I will try to be there and let you know how things go.

I find this whole story so absurd.

Picture of the Day

That's what our early Saturday mornings look like:

Wiggly toes

My god-daughter Catie had her casts removed yesterday! She's had them on since she was six weeks old, to help correct the development of her feet and hips. Yes, she is wiggling her toes again. Yay!

Well, anyway. To someone who grew up on tales of heroic surgeries (i.e., me), it was surprising to learn that the casting method used with Catie is not only as good as corrective surgery on a clubbed foot, but in fact is significantly superior.

The man who developed this method, Doctor Ignacio Ponseti, celebrated his 90th birthday earlier this month. He was recently profiled in the alumni magazine of the University of Iowa, where he has been affiliated for over sixty years:

Dr. Ignacio Ponseti walks briskly down the hospital hallway, stopping briefly to ask a clinic nurse, "Is the baby here yet?"

"No," she says. "Not yet."

"I have an album at home of my babies," Ponseti tells his companion. "These are all very important babies."

I'm going to give you Ponseti's own words on his method, its development, and its importance, because I found them fascinating (and who knows, you might too), and I think my own paraphrasing would diminish them. They're taken from a pamphlet put out by Global-HELP -- Health Education Low-cost Publications -- on the Ponseti method in use around the world, Clubfoot: Ponseti Management, with an emphasis on a recent successful program in Uganda. (Warning, it's a 1584K PDF file, with medical photography that might be distressing to some readers.) All ellipses are mine, mainly parts that would require prior knowledge of foot anatomy and development.

It is estimated that more than 100,000 babies are born worldwide each year with congenital clubfoot. Eighty percent of the cases occur in developing nations. Most are untreated or poorly treated. Neglected clubfoot causes crushing physical, social, psychological, and financial burdens on the patients, their families, and the society. Globally, neglected clubfoot is the most serious cause of physical disability among congenital musculoskeletal defects.

In developed countries, many children with clubfoot undergo extensive corrective surgery, often with disturbing failures and complications. The need for one or more revision surgeries is common. Although the foot looks better after surgery, it is stiff, weak, and often painful. After adolescence, pain increases and often becomes crippling.

Clubfoot in an otherwise normal child can be corrected in 2 months or less with our method of manipulations and plaster cast applications, with minimal or no surgery. This was proven by the results of our 35-year follow-up study and confirmed in many clinics around the world.

This method is particularly suited for developing countries where there are few orthopaedic surgeons. The technique is easy to learn by allied health professionals, such as therapists and orthopaedic assistants. A well-organized health system is needed to ensure that parents follow the instructions for use of the foot abduction brace to prevent relapses.

The treatment is economical and easy on the babies. If well implemented, it will greatly decrease the number of clubfoot cripples.

In the mid 1940s, I examined 22 patients with clubfoot that had been surgically treated in the 1920s by Arthur Steindler, a good surgeon. The feet had become rigid, weak, and painful... When operating on relapses, I noticed severe scarring in the foot and stiffness in the misshapen joints... After a few years of this experience, I was convinced that surgery was the wrong approach for treatment of clubfoot.

A study of histological sections of ligaments from virgin clubfeet, obtained in the operating room and from fetuses and stillborns, revealed that the abundant young collagen in the ligaments was wavy, was very cellular, and could be easily stretched. I conceived, therefore, that the displaced navicular, cuboid, and calcaneus could be gradually abducted under the talus without cutting any of the tarsal ligaments. I discovered that this was so based on cineradiography of clubfeet I had partially or fully reduced without surgery...

My casting technique was learned from Böhler and applied during the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1939 when treating more than 2,000 war-wound fractures with unpadded plaster casts. Precise, gentle molding of the plaster over the reduced subluxations of the tarsal bones of a clubfoot is just as basic as the molding of a plaster cast on a well-reduced fracture...

It was disappointing that my first article on congenital clubfoot, published in the The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery in March 1963, was disregarded. It was not carefully read and, therefore, not understood. My article on congenital metatarsus adductus, published in the same journal in June 1966, was easily understood, perhaps because the deformity occurs in one plane. The approach was immediately accepted, and the illustrations were copied in most textbooks.

A few orthopaedic surgeons studied my technique and began to apply it only after the publication of our long-term follow-up article in 1995, the publication of my book a year later, and the posting of Internet support group web sites by parents of babies whose clubfoot I had treated. I have been reprimanded for not pushing the method more forcefully from the beginning...

I. Ponseti, 2003

Alas, it seems Doctor Ponseti still feels troubled over not advocating his method more strongly in the 1960s. But it's difficult to know what more he could have done, since his method sometimes meets resistance even today. I wish him an easy heart. He's done more than most.

Pop quiz Friday!

An odd one: what do Pisistratus, Vuk Karadzic, and John A. Lomax have in common?

Answer or confirmation when I get back from the Shore.

The Legionnaire Speaks!

But oh, boy, is it hard to make sense of it.

The Legionnaire is, of course, Milorad "Legija" Ulemek -- former paramilitary, chief of Slobodan Milosevic's special police, gang leader, and accused assassin of the late Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Legija has been in police captivity since his surprising surrender last month, after more than a year on the run. He's appeared in court a couple of times, but without saying anything. Yesterday, though, he finally started talking.

High points:

-- He says he's innocent of Djindjic's assassination. "Neither I nor any member of the Special Operations Unit were in any way involved in organising or executing the assassination of the prime minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic."

-- A few days before the killing, he was contacted by Momcilo Perisic, former Army Chief of Staff. Perisic suggested that Legija should "take refuge". So he moved to a friend's apartment.

-- On the day of the assassination, March 12, he claimed to have been taking care of his children. Then he went to a friend's apartment, where he hid for a day and a half. Then he walked home; he was wearing white clothes and it was snowing heavily, so nobody noticed him.

-- He acknowledged having been close to the late Dusan Spasojevic, but says that they had drifted apart in the months before the assassination. Spasojevic -- also known as "Siptar -- was the leader of the Zemun Gang, a criminal group based in Belgrade's suburb of Zemun.

(Siptar was heavily implicated in the Djindjic killing. He and another gang leader were killed by police a few days after the assassination. Originally, they were supposed to have been killed in a gun battle, but just recently a Belgrade news magazine claimed to have obtained an autopsy showing that they'd been shot from close range in the back of the head.)

-- The bit that everyone is talking about: Legija claims that members of the Djindjic government asked him to sell 700 kilograms (about 3/4 of a ton) of heroin in the West.

The heroin had been seized by police from drug dealers some time earlier, and placed in a safe deposit vault in Belgrade’s Commercial Bank. Legija says that in April 2001 he was contacted by Djindjic's former deputy prime minister, Cedomir Jovanovic. Jovanovic pointed out that the heroin was still there and was worth millions, and that "it would be silly to throw away something worth hundreds of millions of dollars," when it could instead be sold for the profit of the impoverished Serbian state.

"The West gave us bombs and depleted uranium, so why not pay them back in hard drugs," Jovanovic supposedly said.

"To tell you the truth, I rather liked it," Legija testified. "It could be a little bit of revenge of us ordinary people, who were bombed for 78 days, And if that is the will of the state, then I accept."

Since Legija was still the commander of the Special Operations Unit of the Serbian police, it was agreed that they should distribute the heroin in the West. Legija says that they brought the heroin over Serbia's borders and sold it to transshippers in Romania, Croatia, and the Serbian Republic in Bosnia.

Former deputy prime minister Jovanovic vehemently denied the allegations:

"The drugs he was talking about are those we found in the vault of the Commercial Bank. We destroyed them, in line with the law and informed the public. These were drugs hidden there by him and members of the Milosevic regime. It is because of these drugs that he is in the position of having to do what he is doing today, trying to conceal his own responsibility for everything that’s happened in our society."

Some other parts of Legija's story are also under attack. For instance, his description of walking home in heavy snow isn't consistent with the weather records from that day, which show a dusting of snow that quickly melted. (Though there was about an inch of snow on the following day.)

Things Legija hasn't yet talked about: where he's been for the last 14 months; why he chose to surrender when he did; who really killed Djindjic; whether he was involved in the 2000 murder of Ivan Stambolic, the former president of Serbia; the 1999 assassination of four officials of the then opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement; and a failed assassination attempt in 2000 on SPO's leader, Vuk Draskovic, who is now the Foreign Minister for the joint state of Serbia-and-Montenegro.

So there should be more to come. Whether it will make any sense, of course, is something else again.

Legija's second day of testimony was cut short, though; he claimed he was feeling sick and feverish, and stopped talking. For now.

Pie update 2

The pie is gone.

The pie is gone; and I am alone.

Island riddle

My favorite weekly German newspaper, Die Zeit, has a very fun riddle section. This includes one of the best crosswords, Time-style, some logic questions, and the island riddle by Rafi Reiser. I love the island riddle. So much so, that I decided to bring the island riddle to the English speaking part of the world -- well, at least to the part that reads our blog. If you guys like it, I'll make it a regular contribution.

The following is a cryptic description of an island somewhere on this lovely planet. The clues will provide you with the right answer, and there is also a map of the island which might help you a bit.

Die Zeit comes out on Thursdays and this riddle came out last week. Tomorrow, the new edition will supply the answer. I think I got the right solution, but who knows? Anyway, guess away and have fun:

(Caveat: The English sounds strange because I stuck as closely to the German original as possible, which also has a strange ring to it. It's part of the riddle, so to speak.)

The island we are looking for today is part of a former crater rim, 8 km long and up to 2 km wide, and rises up to 284 meters in the southern parts.

The island and its archepelago are hardly known. One would rather think of many other islands - big and small - were one to talk about this country which we think we know so well. [This clue is for Germans --- which country do Germans know so well or think they know so well?]

Maybe it's because the islands of the archipelago have served as a place for political prisoners for two thousand years? Or because the citizens of the main land would rather not talk about the existence of those islands, ever since tourism has replaced fishing and wine making as main source of income for the 4,000 inhabitants?

After all, from one harbour which lies 60 km south of the country's capital, it's only 70 minutes by boat to this island. Should really all tourists be allowed to know that?

A map of the island can be found here.

Pie update 1

I decided to divide the pie into sixths, to eliminate any psychological barriers a more dyadic approach (eighths, fourths, halves) might have created. The pre-fab crust, I am ashamed to say, was not a success. It was unable to bear the sheer mass of the pie. Both spoon and fork were necessary in extracting the first slice out.

But the first taste, ah. Soft and sweet and silky, like the hair of a lover brushing one's forehead in the morning. The natural warmth of the brown sugar and the creaminess of the butter combined into a greater whole. Even my coffee seems pallid in comparison.

The pie is half gone now.

A Short Guide to the Parties: PUR

A few days ago, a commentor asked what the differences were between Romania's major parties.

The short answer is: not much.

Oh, there are differences. But the three major parties -- PSD, the Democrats, and the Liberals -- all seem to be rather similar. They're all more about personalities and factions than ideology. They all have a lot of very turbulent internal politics. In practice (as opposed to what they publicly say) they're all rather interventionist with regard to the economy, moderately nationalist, and not overly worried about things like press freedom and due process. They've all made European integration a top priority. And they're all top-heavy with former Communists.

Still, there are some real differences. So let's take a look at some of the parties in a little detail.

For this first post, I want to look at a party that isn't one of the major parties, but that I find interesting anyway: the Humanist Party of Romania, or PUR.

PUR -- Partidual Umanist Romanei -- is entirely the creation of one man, Dan Voiculescu. Voiculescu is a wealthy businessman who used to be involved in Romania's arms export trade back in Ceaucescu's day. He's still involved in the arms trade today (yes, Romania is still a major weapons manufacturer), but now he also owns a media empire that includes a private television station (Antenna One), a publishing house, a couple of radio channels, and a newspaper (Jurnalul National).

Voiculescu is an interesting fellow. Everyone seems to believe that he was once rather high in the Securitate, Ceaucescu's secret police. Normally this would not make for a very positive image. But his media group has gained a reputation for being willing to talk frankly about corruption and to sharply criticize the government (sometimes). Jurnalul National, in particular, has a rather sarcastic, snarky attitude that a lot of people find appealing. So most people seem to have a rather neutral or even slightly positive opinion of Voiculescu.

It's not entirely clear to me what PUR stands for, or why people vote for it. It does have a platform, but that's not much help: "middle class, small and middle enterprisers supporting, value, human being, the youth, family, dignity, fight against corruption". In practice PUR seems to be vaguely pro-business and technocratic, but I'd hesitate to say they had a consistent program.

Oh, and: "pur" is Romanian for "clean". If that helps.

Still, PUR does consistently get about 5%-6% of the vote nationwide. They've got representatives in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and they've elected Mayors in several large towns and cities.

From 2000 to 2003, PUR was part of the government, as a minority partner to PSD. In the summer of 2003, though, PSD booted PUR out. Because of defections -- legislators bolting from the opposition parties to join PSD -- they had picked up so many votes in Parliament that they no longer needed PUR.

In fact, quite a few of these defections came from PUR itself. PUR started with 12 deputies in the Chamber and 4 Senators. As of June 1, 8 of the 12 Deputies and all four of the Senators had defected to PSD. Romania's elected representatives seem to change parties very easily, but these are heavy losses ; it seems like PUR's legislators have been particularly faithless and fickle even by the loose standards of the Romanian legislature. I'm not sure why.

So PUR has been in opposition since last year. It's widely believed, though -- despite loud denials on PUR's part -- that PUR is just waiting to rejoin the government again, especially if the November elections reduce PSD's majority. Certainly Voiculescu has not hesitated to appear in public with Prime Minister Nastase.

I'm not really sure what Voiculescu wants. He has managed to build a pretty successful small party, basically on the back of his media empire and a vague image of can-do competence. So it looks like PUR will continue taking 5% or so of the votes for as long as Voiculescu stays interested. But what's the point of it all? I don't know, but I welcome any thoughts from our Romanian readers.

Odd fact for American readers: Voiculescu has hired Dick Morris, former advisor to President Clinton, as a political consultant.

Pie Blogging Just Isn't A Crime: The Butterscotch Edition

So it's a cool June here in NYC, and the social life has picked up a bit: Rififi, Sin-é (the new one), Azkaban; soon Imelda, Truck Turner, and then to the Jersey Shore to assist Dave and Leah with their grand experiment of kosher smoked barbecue. I'm a little nervous, since I come from the heartland of treyf itself, but I think I have come up with some suitable side dishes for the upcoming carnifest. The following ain't one of them.

I am not a pie novice. But it has been a while. Thus the first thing: which pie should I make? I pull down my Norske Nook cookbook, which I consider the final arbiter of pie goodness, and look for a suitable candidate. Bingo! Butterscotch pie. I love butterscotch; I love pie. The choice is simple.

Even better, this is a *pudding* pie! So there's going to be delicious leftover chilled filling, served in graceful Steuben crystal cups afterwards. Who am I kidding? I'm gonna eat it right out of the pot.

The second thing: ingredients. I need brown sugar and eggs. And... I'm gonna cheat. I am going to use a pre-fabricated crust. But this is in defense of human liberty! One of the saddest, yet most mouth-watering, descriptions of food I have ever read was an account of making old-fashioned Southern biscuits. For my European audience, this is a savory bread made to sop up meat sauces and drippings, sometimes served by itself with gravy for breakfast (it's that good). In this case, the old-timey recipe was simple: mix white flour and good hog's lard into a dough, and then beat the hell out of it all day. Slave's work.

So I'm gonna cheat, and yes I will feel guilty about it. But making a decent flaky crust is tough, and frankly, I think I may have lost the knack. They have a pre-fab crust at the store in the baking aisle, actually three varieties of them: chocolate, graham cracker, and shortbread. I choose shortbread, and feel embarrassed. Elfin magic better work.

The third thing: the filling. The filling is easy. Three tablespoons of flour. (You can't see my keystrokes, but I so very badly want to spell that as 'fluor'. It's the chemist in me.) Three tablespoons of corn starch. Two packed cups of brown sugar. I use the dark brown kind, because I like the flavor. As I mix, the starch coats each granule of sugar, producing a volume that seems much greater than two, or even three cups. I wonder if it is related. Starches have unusual properties of viscosity, and brown sugar is always a little damp.

Then three cups of milk. With the first cup, the immense brown volume of the sugar mixture evaporates. Then the second, stirring, stirring, and then the third. Then three egg yolks. I crack the eggs slightly, and empty the whites out into the measuring cup. The yolks go into the sweet brown soup. Then three-quarters of a stick of butter. That's three-eights of a cup, and I apologize for these archaic units of measurements.

I turn on the burner, cutting the butter into chunks with my spoon, stirring slowly, slowly, slowly. Damn this is dull. So I put on a long mp3, what seems to be Golden Bough folk-rock from (get this, Doug) The Tain. Of course, by the time I return to the stove, the filling has thickened treacherously. Frantic repair stirring ensues.

Finally, it has thickened to what I consider a proper consistency. Stew-like. I turn off the stove, and pour a capful of vanilla extract into the mass. The Norske Nook people suggest maple extract, but we're doing freestyle butterscotch here. The aromatics waft into my nose. It does improve the taste.

I let it cool, and in the meantime make a white omelette with the egg whites. Some grated Parmesan, some pepper. It's good.

Finally, I pour the filling into the pre-fab crust. The empty accusing face of the crust is soon submerged underneath cup after cup of sweet brown goodness. The completed pie goes on top of the refrigerator to cool further.

There's about a cup of butterscotch filling left in the pot. I eat it. My GOD, what a sugar rush. It's so good. And I think to myself, how the hell am I going to finish eight slices of this monstrous pie?

More tomorrow.

The outside view

I'm married to an American and my kids are half Americans (OK, a quarter, really -- they have more passports than some small countries issue). Needless to say that I love them dearly. My in-laws are Americans, my best friend is American... one cannot say that my sentiments are anti-American. Right? Still, some of the things that are going on in the US these days scare the living daylights out of me.

Some numbers.

When Bush was made President in 2000, despite having fewer votes than Al Gore, the budget of the Pentagon amounted to 280.8 billion dollars. In 2001, the budget was raised by 8.8% to 305.4 billion, in 2002 by 12.4% to 343.2 billion and in 2003 by 15.4% to 396.1 billion US dollars.

The raise from 2002 to 2003 was 53 billion dollars. This raise alone is more than any other country in the world spends on its military (with the possible exception of Russia).

The budget in 2003 of 396.1 billion dollars is more then 26 times as much as of all the axis of evil nations taken together -- Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Lybia, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

If we move to the States in a couple of years, will there be any schools left? Roads? Public transportation? Libraries?

Just wondering.

And the winners are...

The Presidential election in Serbia is over, and the winners are...

...as expected: Nikolic of the Radical Party, and Boris Tadic of the Democrats.

Not all the votes have been counted, but it looks like Nikolic will get about 32% of the vote, to Tadic's 27%. An independent "clean government" candidate came in third. Dragan Marsicanin, the selected candidate of the ruling coalition, finished a humiliating fourth place, with around 19%.

So now what?

Well, there will be a runoff election in two weeks -- Nikolic vs. Tadic, head to head.

It's going to be interesting, for a couple of reasons. First, this is the best chance the Radicals are likely to have to actually get into power. If they win this, they'll control Serbia's Presidency -- which is an office with some real power. Nikolic has already said that, if he wins, his first priority will be to dissolve Parliament and force new elections. If the Radicals gain just a few more votes, they'll be able to form a government.

Obviously, this is a nightmare scenario for a lot of people: Serbia's liberals, western investors, pretty much all of Serbia's neighbors. The Radicals have cleaned up their act and toned town their language a lot in the last few years, but many people think that these changes are largely cosmetic, and underneath they're the same corrupt and violent hard-line nationalists that they always were. A Radical Party President -- whether he actually does anything or not -- would probably stop Serbia's slow process of rehabilitation dead for months or years.

The second interesting thing about this is, neither of these guys is a member of President Kostunica's governing coalition. So, no matter what happens, Serbia is in for a period of "cohabitation", with a President and a Prime Minister from different parties.

Tadic is personally popular, and stands a good chance of winning. Unfortunately, he's cursed with a lot of baggage. The Democrats made a lot of blunders and annoyed a lot of people during their three years in power, and the memories are still quite fresh. So to some extent Tadic will have to run against his own party's record. To make matters even more complicated, not everyone in his own party supports him -- the Democrats are still split, with a lot of them resenting Tadic for (in their eyes) abandoning them in their hour of need last year. And then of course, the other parties of the coalition will not be delighted about voting for a member of the much-loathed Democrats.

We'll know in two weeks. Watch this space.

Cherry Season

It's cherry season here in Romania.

The cherries come in two sorts: ciresi ("chiresh") and visine ("veesee neh"). Ciresi are sweet, visine are sour. They're both wonderful.

In fact, Romanian fruits generally are wonderful. Crisp watermelons. Strawberries that are almost painfully sweet. Peaches that are fat, tender, and literally bursting with juice.

Unfortunately, they're also very seasonal. Enjoy them now, because in a few weeks they'll disappear, and then you won't see them again until next year. But even this adds an edge to the appreciation, and gives us something to look forward to. (Raspberry season! Almost here!)

As for the cherries: Romanians consider them a little expensive: 80 to 100,000 lei/kg for ciresi, maybe 50-70,000 for visine. For American readers, that's about $1.30/lb for the sweet cherries, $0.90/lb. for the sour. This doesn't seem unreasonable to us, and we've been buying a kilo every second day or so. It's amazingly easy to just sit with a bowl of them and eat them like popcorn.

We'll probably get sick of them right around the time they disappear anyway. So that works.

Linguistic note: Most of the European words for "cherry" come from the Turkish. The Slavs, though, use a different word -- vishnya. No idea where it comes from. But the Romanians use both the Turkish/European word and the Slavic one -- one for sweet cherries, the other for sour. I find that neat.

Name that author!

Pop Quiz Friday continues with the following paragraph from the bad old days.

Traian handed Gigi into the china-closet elevator, aligned the swinging doors, pressed the button. Squeezed into a corner, Corde lifted up his coat collar, tied the muffler over it tightly, bracing himself for the street. Minna looked sternly absentminded; gracefuly dissociated as well. By the small light, her white face was dark under the eyes. The outward curve of her upper lip, the pressure marks of her severe chin, almost made a stranger of her. Corde was carrying the plastic bag with the Kents in it. Minna got into the front seat of the Dacia while Traian was hooking up the windshield wipers -- they would be stolen here if you didn't lock them in the glove compartment. "Albert, give me the cigarettes," she said. When Traian sat behind the wheel, Minna spoke to him, handed him one of the cartons. He opened it and filled the door pocket with Kents. No surprise, no problem; he was on. He drove to the hospital. Gigi, sitting beside Corde in the back seat, seemed incapable of speaking.

A chilly passage from a wintry novel. It ain't on Google -- I checked -- but it can be found in other places. But that would be wrong.

Ugh

I got spit on by a gypsy girl today.

So far, I've never had any problems with the gypsy beggars or with any other beggar. They ask, sometimes they get something, sometimes they don't, but they almost always remain polite and friendly.

I have "my" beggars who I give money. The man with the club foot in front of the church. The old lady at the NIC supermarket. The gyspy woman with her little boy at Piata Dorobanti. The old couple at the bakery.

Today I drove past the Unirea shopping center, heading northwards back home. I waited at a red light and this gypsy girl of about 16 or 17 came to my window. I had the window rolled down partially and that was a mistake. (No, the doors were locked.) She asked for money, my wallet was on the back seat, the lights were changing, I said something to her like "no, gotto go" and she... spat directly in my face.

I had an astonishingly violent reaction. Apart from the yuck factor and the feeling of utter humiliation, I was so mad. She was lucky that I was forced by traffic to drive on (and she knew that, of course). I was so angry, I might have run after her and hurt her. I'm not a violent person, I don't think. But this was utterly maddening.

I had revenge fantasies all the drive home. I still do (so don't give that beggar girl at the Unirea crossing any money, OK?).

I guess she was frustrated and unhappy. Begging is not an easy lifestyle. Who knows what else was going on in her life and there was this foreign bitch who was too arrogant to give her 500 lei. It's one way to see it. But this kind of behavior is not a way to ensure future income, says cynical me.

Anyway. Hope your day was better.

More news from Serbia

Serbia's holds their Presidential election this weekend. As I noted a few weeks back, this is a very interesting race.

Right now the frontrunner is still Tomislav Nikolic of the Radical Party. There's a recent interview with Nikolic in English available on the "B92"site. I don't think either interviewer or subject come off with flying colors, but it's interesting.

(There are some local references that might be confusing. Like, the bit about "rusty spoons"? That's referring to when Radical Party leader Seselj, now on trial for war crimes in the Hague, once said that he would gouge out Croat eyes with a rusty spoon. So what Nikolic is saying here is, ah gee, not that old chestnut again.)

If the polls are correct, Nikolic will win, but won't get 50%. That means he'll go to a runoff in two weeks against the next-highest vote getter -- probably Boris Tadic of the Democratic Party. Nikolic would probably lose a runoff if the other parties united. But will they? It won't be easy, especially if the other candidate is Tadic -- his Democrats were the dominant party in the last government, and a lot of people are still carrying grudges.

Meanwhile, gang boss, paramilitary leader, secret police chief and accused Presidential assassin Milorad "Legija" Ulemek appeared in court in Belgrade yesterday.

Legija refused to make any statement. Interestingly, he said that he was keeping quiet because of the election. He refused to go into detail, saying only that he didn't want to have an influence on the outcome. "Elections are more important, the country has been without a president for four years," said Legija. "I don’t want to help anyone."

He also said he did not want to be "anyone’s political prostitute".

This has, of course, only fueled the already red-hot speculation that Legija might implicate senior politicians in the assassination.

On a more cheerful note, there's this. I think this is a great idea, and I hope it gets picked up by other countries. "Hi, I'm Vice-President Richard Cheney. Can I get your bag?"

Football and extremism

Football and extreme politics seem to go hand in hand around the world.

For instance, take a look at Juan Posadas. A player for the Argentine team La Plata Estudientes in the 1930s, Posadas moved gracefully into the splintered world of post-Trotsky Latin American leftist politics, where, as time went on, his positions became stranger and stranger. Preemptive nuclear war, a solid Soviet first strike, a good thing! "After the destruction commences, the masses are going to emerge in all countries – in a short time, in a few hours." But then our socialist space brothers will save us. "Capitalism doesn’t interest the UFO pilots, which is why they do not return." In the meantime, though, we should make our peace with our aqueous cousins, the dolphins. So far, his ideas have come to not very much. After all, you can't have socialism on just one planet.

Then there's David Icke. Once a goalkeeper for Coventry City, and later a sportscaster, Icke declared himself the Son of God in 1991 on British television and has never looked back. Although his beliefs have changed through the years, at present David Icke believes... well, he believes the lizard people are secretly in control of the Earth. In disguise, of course.

As far as X-Files conspiracy theories go in the US, there's Marshall Faulk, who thinks the Moon landings were a hoax. It stands to reason, he opined in a Playboy interview. After all, the flag was waving, but there's no air on the Moon. So far as I know, Faulk harbors no political ambitions. Yet.

On the other hand, there's Jack Kemp. Once quarterback for the Buffalo Bills -- the position of QB is a little difficult to explain to people only familiar with soccer, but Kemp was a star -- he parlayed that into a political career, trying (and failing) to reach the golden ring of the American presidency. I say 'golden', because Jack Kemp has been a strong advocate of returning to the monetary gold standard. You know, using the stuff in deluxe tooth fillings for money. This would (experts aver) have an effect on the American economy somewhere between abolishing the SEC and collectivizing the farms, although some Texans seem to like it.

On the other other hand, there's Paul Robeson. All-American at Rutgers, he quit a career in the law, became a radical actor and singer, and engaged in heavy petting with Stalin. You can hear him sing the Soviet national anthem (with English lyrics) here, about halfway down the page. (Look for the picture of Uncle Joe.) He had a hell of a voice, though. Much better than Kemp's.

You'll notice the absence of overt blood-and-soil tendencies among my American selections. It's not that they don't exist in American football, but professional football in the US has made a virtue of its racial and ethnic inclusiveness. So you get strange bits of rhetoric like the following, taken from a speech given by the great defensive end Reggie White to the Wisconsin state legislature:

When you look at the black race, black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to black churches, you see people jumping up and down, because they really get into it.

White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization. You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature and you know how to tap into money pretty much better than a lot of people do around the world.

Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure.

When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality.

When you put all of that together, guess what it makes. It forms a complete image of God. God made us different because he was trying to create himself.

I still wear his jersey on game days.

How long can this go on?

The relentless drum-beat of good economic news continues.

In the first quarter of 2004, Romania's economy grew at an annualized rate of -- wait for it -- 6.1%.

The growth was led by the industrial sector (which grew at 6.6%) and construction (7.2%). The service sector grew by 5.7% and agriculture by 5.4%... slow compared to the rest of the economy, but still not bad.

Inflation is continuing to fall smoothly, down from 14% in December to about 12% now, and on schedule to hit 9% by the beginning of next year. Meanwhile, real wages suddenly surged in the first quarter. After growing only sluggishly (like 1%-2% per year) for the last three years, they suddenly rose at an adjusted rate of nearly 10% after inflation.

The foreign trade deficit is still big and still growing -- but the rate of growth dropped sharply; if it continues to drop, then the deficit will stabilize this summer and then start to shrink before the end of the year. (The main cause of this seems to have been a sharp rise in commodity prices, especially things like aluminum, cement and steel -- all major Romanian exports.)

Foreign direct investment -- both greenfields and equity purchases -- is up by about a third since last year. It's still pathetically low compared to FDI in, say, Hungary, but it's expected to double in the next two to three years.

The leu is stable. Tax revenues are up. The government is projected to run another fiscal deficit this year, as usual... but the surge in revenues means that the deficit will fall to 2.1% of GDP, down from the originally predicted 3.0%. In theory, this means that Romania might see a balanced budget by 2007.

I have some thoughts on all this, but I'm going to save them for a later post. Just now I want to put the question to our readers:

Is this for real? And, if it is, how long can it go on?

After the Elections

So the local elections are over.

"Local" here means for mayors, city and communal councils, and county councils. There are 265 cities in Romania, each with a mayor and a city council. Then, outside the cities, there are about 2700 "communes" -- rural political divisions consisting of several villages. Each commune has a mayor and a council too.

Then, at the regional level, the whole country is divided into 41 counties, or judets. Each judet elects its own county council. However, the judets differ from the cities and the communes in one key respect. The chief executive of a judet -- the prefect -- is not elected. Instead, he's appointed by the government in Bucharest.

To give a crude analogy for our American readers: it's as if the 50 states had their own legislatures, but the state Governors were appointed from Washington by the President.

This system has some interesting effects on Romanian politics.

See, the prefects control the government bureacracies in each judet. Within the government, they can hire, fire and promote. Outside it, they can give out millions of dollars of government contracts and order inspections and audits of businesses and individuals. They also tend to have a lot of influence over local media, since Romanian newspapers and (especially) TV stations tend to be heavily dependent upon the government for advertising revenue and various sorts of soft subsidies.

So, if the prefect dislikes some local elected official, he has a lot of power to make that local official's life miserable. And if a county council, say, is controlled by a rival party, the prefect can easily harass that council and obstruct its activities. The council, on the other hand, can't do much to hurt the prefect; he's appointed from Bucharest, he stays in office at the will of the central government, and the bureacracies under him are funded with federal money.

The result... well, during the last round of elections, four years ago the Social Democrat Party (PSD) won about a third of the local races. However, they won a smashing victory at the national level, gaining control of Parliament and both the Presidency and the Prime Minister's office. PSD prefects duly took power all across Romania...

...and soon, it was noticed that mayors and council members were switching parties. Thousands of them, all across the country. Month after month, year after year, a steady stream of elected officials abandoned their original parties and switched over to PSD.

In the 2000 elections, PSD had won about one third of the local races. But by 2004, PSD controlled about two-thirds of the mayor's offices and council seats. Being non-PSD was just too hard.

Not that it's about PSD, per se. If the opposition Liberals and Democrats win the national elections in November, they'll appoint a new set of prefects. In which case I predict that we'll see thousands of mayors and council members, all across Romania, switching parties to join the Liberals and Democrats.

(Is this a bug, or a feature? I leave that question to my Romanian readers.)

The major exceptions to this trend werein the big cities. Bucharest, most notably, had a mayor who was not only non-PSD but aggressively anti-PSD. Timisoara, Brasov and Cluj also had non-PSD Mayors. The reason for this, I think, was that a large city provided an independent power base big enough to resist the central government.

Sunday's election seemed to confirm both of these trends. On one hand, PSD won almost 2/3 of the elections for mayors and city council seats. On the other hand, the smaller parties were still quite competitive in the big cities. Non-PSD candidates won again in Bucharest, Timisoara, Baia Mare, and Brasov, and forced PSD candidates into runoff elections in Cluj, Galati, Oradea, Arad, Braila, and Ploiesti.

What does it all mean? Well, I'd say that while there were some very interesting individual races -- Bucharest and Cluj, in particular -- overall the election didn't present too many surprises. PSD swept the small cities and the "communes" (groups of villages), especially in the east and south; the main opposition parties were strong in the biggest cities but floundering nationwide. About as expected.

PSD supporters would say this is the legitimate reward for success -- three and a half years of economic growth, NATO accession. Opponents will point to it as a result of the overcentralized political system plus PSD outspending its opponents by three or four to one, and will decry a gradual trend backwards towards de facto one party rule.

Next up: runoff elections, for mayoral races where no single candidate won a majority, on June 20th. Then national elections in November.

False start 1

I've been having a tough time getting my thoughts on Bucharest in order. A little unnerving. When that happens, I usually go for a walk.

My neighborhood in Brooklyn, like many in this city, has its contingent of beggars: the very polite woman with the large dog who waits by the subway entrance and always calls me 'sweetheart'; the bearded, tipsy guy with the odd hat (and wasn't he wearing a tam last time?) sometimes swaying drunk by noon; the stocky guy whose story has progressed over the years -- out of work, has to feed a daughter, just got work but doesn't have enough money, just got work and doesn't need money, medical problems, AIDS medications not working (he was quite alarmingly gaunt at this point) -- and now, weight back up, he just asks. Then there's Grant. I like Grant. Grant had his fifteen minutes of fame a few years back. There was even a Law and Order episode, sort of. Grant likes Aerosmith, and always asks me how I enjoyed whatever holiday has just passed. He's been in the neighborhood for years. The begging is recent.

Anyway. I'm walking past the only grocery in the neighborhood that stocks the beer of my people, and then only occasionally, dammit. That corner has a regular, a tall guy with a horsey face who knows the names of hundreds of pedestrians, makes small talk. By the evening rush, he has enough money for Chinese takeout, most nights.

So he spots me. I do stick out, even in Brooklyn. "Hey! How are you! Haven't seen you around in a while."

"Well, you know, been out of town..." Man, I feel awkward in these situations.

"Oh, where you been?"

"In Romania."

"Romania?" He looks puzzled, but just for a second. "That's where they got that Cho-chess-koo guy, right?"

"Well, they did..."

"What's it like?"

So I told him.

The year of living interestingly

Every parent of a two-year-old can tell you that they are a species completely unrelated to human beings. They try to kill themselves constantly, and if they're not busy playing with scissors, carpet knifes, vacuum cleaners, and hammers, they love to take things apart.

Yesterday, Alan experimented with my kitchen timer. It's an electrical kitchen timer, precise, runs up to 24 hours, I love it. First, the tried to pry the lid off and the little buttons out, and when he didn't succeed, he put the timer into the microwave and turned it on. (Oh, don't ask why he was able to access the microwave.) The timer... well, it must have been very quick; I don't think it had time to feel any pain. The microwave, I'm happy to report, survived.

Today, Alan had an even better idea. While I was in the kitchen, he pulled a chair up to the alarm system control box in the living room and started punching random numbers. We don't have a panic button and the only way to set the thing off is to arm it with the right code and then disarm it with the wrong code.

Alan, being a two-year-old, managed this within three minutes. The alarm went off howling. It's a loud siren. It's supposed to alert the entire neighborhood and I can tell you, it did its job fabulously.

The problem was, I didn't know the right code. Neither did the landlord. Nor the landlady. Nor the security company. Nobody did, except Alan who didn't divulge his information. See, we had never used the alarm system and the landlord had never reset it from the former tenant. We were stuck with an alarm system that we couldn't disable. It went off periodically and slowly drove our neighbors and us insane.

Eventually, we figured out that the living room motion detector was overreacting. So we could avoid setting the alarm off... as long as we didn't enter the front door (which opens on the living room) or go up and down the stairs (which go up from that same living room). So, while we were waiting for the alarm people to figure out what was going on, I was trapped outside and Doug was trapped with the kids upstairs.

I sat on the front steps while Doug came out to the little balcony above it, and we tried to cheer each other up. I had nothing to read outside. Occasionally a few drops of rain would fall. The kids didn't like to stay upstairs; Alan kept trying to break away from Doug, climb over the stair-gate and run down the stairs. "Mommy! Mooommmmyyyyyy!"

It was dinnertime, almost bedtime. More rain began to fall. I could hear Doug upstairs, struggling. "No, Alan! Don't touch that! I said no!"

The high point, I think, came when Alan moved another chair -- clearly, he's made a major breakthrough with the chairs -- to the edge of the balcony. The balcony has a wall around it that's too high for a two-year-old to climb. A two-year-old on a chair, though, can climb over it easily. On the other side is a five meter (16 foot) drop to hard stone tiles. Doug reached him in time, but we now realize that we have to rethink just what "child safe" means in our home. And either watch our little boy constantly, or start teaching him that "no" really, truly means no.

And the alarm? It took almost two hours and the concerted efforts of two security guards, the landlord, the landlady, unknown people at the security company headquarters, and us to solve the riddle, disarm the sensors, and release us from captivity.

Alan is two years and three months old. He will be two years old until next March.

All quiet on the Eastern Front

Or so it seems. We had local elections yesterday and I found the run for mayor of Bucharest rather interesting. It's a tale of true Romanian politics.

In a bid to govern Bucharest for the first time in 12 years, the Social Democratic Party put 45-year-old Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana forward for mayor. A former ambassador to the United States, he is seen as more reform-minded than others in his party, and popular among younger people.

But critics say Geoana's diplomatic skills won't translate well into the rough-and-tumble job of running Bucharest, a dusty Balkan capital with potholed roads and no running water in some areas.

Voting early yesterday, Geoana said a well-run Bucharest under his stewardship would reflect well on Romania as a whole, saying that through "an efficient administration ... we can bring Romania through its capital into Europe sooner."

Geoana faced incumbent mayor Traian Basescu, 52, who represents the centrist two-party Justice and Truth Alliance. Polls showed Basescu ahead of Geoana, whose party was expected to win about 40 percent of the vote in local races nationwide.
Source: eTaiwanNews.com

Now, why would a Foreign minister run for a mayoral office? Doesn't he have enough to do? Why trade one really big post for a big post?

Prime Minister Nastase is said to be jealous of this hugely popular politician -- Geoana is erudite, charming, and has perfect teeth -- and would like to see a little less of him. I guess it seemed a good tactical move to have his competitor become Mayor of Bucharest which is a prestigious office but which removes Geoana from his daily menu.

Why Geoana agreed to this, I have no clue. Maybe he's tired of being Foreign Minister. Or the PSD has found a way to put pressure on him. We'll probably never know for sure - more's the pity.

However, it all amounted to nothing:

The opposition maintained control of the Romanian capital Bucharest in municipal elections as outgoing mayor Traian Basescu defeated Foreign Minister Mirceau Geoana with a clear majority of 59 percent, according to exit polls.
Source: Channel News Asia

So now Geoana goes back to his Foreign Minister duties but his position in the PSD must have suffered. I wonder whether he'll even bother to run again later this year in the national elections -- or whether he will be offered to run again.

Political analyst Sorin Ionitga said that Geona would return to the foreign ministry but had "undoubtedly lost part of his political capital" as Romania's most popular politician.

This is, of course, a nice outcome for Nastase in any case. He must have chuckled, privately.

Nastase said the winners of Sunday's vote had work to do as their mandates would "begin in Romania and end in the European Union".
Source: EU Business

I find the last sentence rather amusing. Natase has no choice but to keep up the belief that Romania will join the EU in 2007, even though this looks increasingly unlikely. Well.

In case you're wondering about my sources -- Asian news services are ahead of Western ones because of the time difference. Also, for some unknown reason, Taiwan seems to find Romania much more interesting and news-worthy than, say, the New York Times.

Name That Balkan Dictator!

It's Pop Quiz Friday here on Halfway Down the Danube, a new feature I am inaugurating in a hopel/e/s/s/ful attempt to get more comments on (and links to) this blog.

Today's question: from the following quote, can you identify the Balkan dictator this person is talking about? NB: one culturally specific word has been changed. No fair using Google.

Well, then, [blank] was dissembling, two-faced; a clever fellow with a marvellous ability to conceal his real opinion, and able to shed tears, not from any joy or sorrow, but employing them artfully when required in accordance with the immediate need, lying all the time; not carelessly, however, but confirming his undertakings both with his signature and with the most fearsome oaths, even when dealing with his own subjects. But he promptly disregarded both agreements and solemn pledges, like the most contemptible class of zek, who by fear of the tortures hanging over them are driven to confess misdeeds they have denied on oath. A treacherous friend and an inexorable enemy, he was passionately devoted to murder and plunder; quarrelsome and subversive in the extreme; easily led astray into evil ways but refusing every suggestion that he should follow the right path; quick to devise vile schemes and to carry them out; and with an instinctive aversion to the mere mention of anything good. How could anyone find words to describe [blank]'s character? These vices and many yet greater he clearly possessed to an inhuman degree; it seemed as if nature had removed every tendency to evil from the rest of mankind and deposited it in the soul of this man.

I'll give the answer later in the week.

Imponderables

You know, when Doug and Claudia asked me to guest on this blog, I was kind of bemused. I really had no idea what I should write about. I mean, it's Halfway down the Danube. It has a theme. Its readers expect erudite articles on Romanian monetary policy, not some guy in Brooklyn rambling about the punk rock episode of Quincy, or wondering when the Kool-Aid guy started wearing pants.

But finally, here's a question that's topical for this blog: female pop stars from the former Yugoslavia... why haven't they taken over the world? I mean, Ceca. Severina. Well, that's two, but do you really need more? Okay, I'll throw in the back-up dancers from Bosnia-Hercegovina's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.

I swear, if Laibach was a girl band, we'd all be speaking German today.

Where we've been

Claudia had to go to Germany for a couple of days, for family reasons.

She took Alan with her, because she didn't want to leave both kids behind, and because Alan has the huge happy crazy wild love affair with his grandmother, and she with him. David stayed behind with me, because flying with a toddler and a baby is a PITA.

Well, the "couple of days" ended up being, like, ten days -- things got a bit complicated up there.

So Claude and I have both been single parents. (Single parents. Single parents. How do they do it? How?)

David and I have been two guys together. We lie on the living room carpet watch the Discovery Channel and eat cereal mixed with yogurt. Actually, we've been having a pretty good time.

Well, except that David got sick -- dry cough and a fever. Nothing too bad, I don't think -- on the whole he's been a pretty sturdy little guy -- but it had us both up a couple of nights. (He seems to be on the mend now, cross fingers.)

So, the time for blogging, she has been lacking a little.

But we haven't gone away. Well, yes, Claudia has, but not away. And she should be back this weekend.

Meanwhile... thanks for your patience.

One year ago today

It was Doug's first day of work and our second day in Bucharest. Happy anniversary to us!