Halfway down the Danube

At the White House Correspondents dinner

No no no, not me. But I have friends! The White House Correspondents' Association dinner is a big press shindig held in D.C. where journalists, Washington figures, and minor celebrities mingle, pretend to laugh, and swap respiratory viruses.

Last year, the lead performer at the dinner was the comedian Cedric the Entertainer. God alone knows why. He managed to annoy Condoleezza Rice with his comedy routine, perhaps because they were two of the only black people in attendance. Paraphrasing: "At the White House, she's Condi. But when she gets home, she turns on Oprah and becomes Leeza." The reaction shot of Rice was classic; it looked like she just chugged an entire jar of pickle juice on a bet.

Needless to say, Cedric the Entertainer was not back this year.

This year... This year, the entertainer was Stephen Colbert.

The American president was sitting maybe ten feet away.

Links to footage here. (Claudia and Doug, now that you have DSL, you will want to learn about torrents. JLU, the new Doctor Who, fuBball, etc.) The technical comedy term is 'roasted'.

You know, I felt a little pity for the man. He's never learned to deal with personal criticism very well, and is very easily wounded. But there's a line from Bujold: "Did you think you were dealing with amateurs?"

I am so making Rich Dahm a pie.

Jacob in Armenia

Poor Jacob has been neglected in the pictures recently. He's also cute, and getting big. And heavy!

And you know what? We are that close to having our DSL line installed! (There, now that I said it, the entire DSL system of Armenia will be irrevocably destroyed today. I'm sure of it.)

Twenty-five touchdowns, twenty-two interceptions to go

From Packers.com eNews:

Ending months of rampant media speculation, Packers quarterback Brett Favre Tuesday confirmed his intention to play for the team this year. Of course, as Favre himself would say, he never had said that he wasn't planning a return to the field.

Make no mistake: Brett Favre is the Kwisatz Quarterback. He is the shortener of the gridiron way long prophecied by the Bene Facenda.

He's also older than I am. And I'm halfway to the dirt nap.

Thus, after weeks of patient forbearance, I must now celebrate and mourn simultaneously.

(The Dune references are for K. Like the Onion crew never makes Dune references during Packer games.)

Tyrone explains it all

Like it says. Tyrone explains it all:

The famous "crazification factor" theory of American politics.

The difference between the crack and meth epidemics.

Why Lost is not a very good television show.

The board game Risk and geopolitical savvy.

The subtext of the Dukes of Hazzard movie.

His friend John is pretty smart too, but he leaves out the French maid costume in his explanation of Southern resentment.

And finally, fanfic.

(I will point no fingers of shame. I myself have written Robert Sobel fanfic, which puts me in the running for King Geek. I have even thought about writing about the missing years of Rubeus Hagrid, when he was playing for the NFL.)

(I mean, it's obvious. Right?)

Meat's meat, the Lithuanian edition

Made an odd book find at the Strand the other day: Upton Sinclair: The Lithuanian Jungle, by Giedrius Subacius. Y'all know about The Jungle, right? Muckraking fiction exposing the incredible foulness of the old Chicago stockyards? Everyone remembers the gross parts:

As for the other men, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting -- sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

Although as someone who grew up in one sausage-making town and went to college in another, my own view is more like this passage:

He had dressed hogs himself in the forest of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him.

Subacius's book deals with Upton Sinclair's use of the Lithuanian language in The Jungle. Background: a fair number of Lithuanians immigrated to the U.S., to work in the stockyards and mills, and the generations that followed provided the gridiron with some of its greatest names, like Butkus and Unitas.

By pure chance, Sinclair happened on a Lithuanian wedding reception near the stockyards in Chicago one afternoon in 1904, and fell in love with the folk there; the first chapter of The Jungle is a fictional recollection of that party. Subacius analyzes it in detail.

Subacius's philological examination of Sinclair's use of Lithuanian compelled me the most: the different dialect variants that Sinclair recorded, the competing orthographies (this is the second book I've read recently that went into detail about Lithuanian orthographic change, believe it or not), and the complicated linguistic history of both Chicago and Lithuania.

It's an oddly melancholy book as well. In effect, Subacius reconstructed a lost era of immigrant history in much the same way a historical linguist will reconstruct a lost tribe, from the few names left behind and the scraps of their speech recorded by outside observers. The pictures Subacius includes of the old Lithuanian Chicago taverns, homes and churches, now burned down or variously demolished -- one church torn down to build a parking lot! -- add to this tone.

On the other hand, like the wedding feast of The Jungle's first chapter, there are fun bits too! For instance, the first two Lithuanian translations of The Jungle were printed in Chicago, in 1908. One was called Raistas, 'The Swamp', and the other was called Pelkes, 'The Bog'. I love that.

Also, tavern owners in that era's Chicago would publish verse in Lithuanian to attract customers. Subacius reprints such an ad (translation by Elizabeth Novickas):

Pas Bierzinski visad szoka
Jauni, jaunos, kurie moka.
Nes lietuviai ju pazista
Jam prielankus, kad iszvysta.

At Bierzinskis's they come to dance
Boys and girls who love to prance
The Lithuanians all know him well,
Just to see him they feel swell.

Kad Chicagon atkeliausi,
Niekur rodos tu negausi,
Pas Bierzinski tik ateikie
Viska gausi, ka tik reikia.

So if to Chicago you have come,
No where will you find such wisdom.
Come on by Bierzinskis's place
All your needs they will embrace.

That's wonderful.

First day out

Yesterday, we left Yerevan proper for the first time and made a day trip to Garni and Geghard.

We'd been suffering from a little bit of cabin fever. We haven't yet found a nice play park for the kids, so we mostly hang around our house and the garden on the weekends. This has turned out to be less than ideal. So now that we have rented a car, we decided to go forth and explore.

Garni is a little town about 30 km (18 miles) from Yerevan. It takes almost an hour to get there from our house, which is a good indication of the road condition. It varies from "quite good, actually" to "practically non-existent". It’s the same road… but sometimes it’s smooth and fast, while in other places the asphalt just disappears and a mud track, washed out and filled with water from the recent rain falls, is all that is left. But you drive slowly and carefully and it will get you to Garni.

Garni is quite old, even for European standards. How old? Oh, four, five thousand years? Yep, you read that right. Garni has been inhabited almost continuously since the third millenium B.C. That is old. It's gone through a lot, has been destroyed numerous times, not least by earthquakes, has been sacked, plundered, burnt to the ground. The current population, our guide book tells us, comes from Persia - a big people swap back in the 1820s, when you could still do that kind of thing. We indeed spotted many "old Persian" faces, the kind you see in old scrolls from Baghdad.

Now, Garni itself isn't much to behold. It looks, at least to the casual eye, just like any other rural Armenian town. Run down, bits of garbage everywhere, men hanging out by the roadside (what do they do there all day long? It's a mystery to me.) There are three little churches from Medieval times which we need to check out some time. We haven't yet, so I cannot tell you anything about those.

But Garni has two things that make it special.

One, it sits on the top of a giant gorge, aptly named the Garni Gorge. It's a dizzying drop to the river Azat which churns down the valley with lots of white water. The mountains rise on either side, there are fruit trees blossoming in abundance, a sheet of green covers the slopes. Seduced by all the blossoms (white for cherries, pink for almonds) and the sweet mountain air, we made the mistake of hiking down to the river. That required climbing down a steep path for a kilometer or so, losing maybe 200 meters of altitude on the way. Well, that part was great, but it then required climbing 200 meters back again. Add an "I’m very tired, Mommy" 4-year-old and an even more tired 2-year-old, and a baby, and you can see where that leads. If you ever find yourself in Garni, though, and are not burdened down by children who need to go up on your shoulders, it's a dramatic and scenic hike that will delight your soul.

Mind you, anything "scenic" in Armenia seems to come along with - garbage. Plastic bags and plastic bottles can be found everywhere. Avert your eyes, learn to ignore it, because the attitude towards public space in Armenia can be described as negligent. People, you have a beautiful country. Clean the damn place up! (OK, that's a post in its own right. One day.)

Second, Garni has an old Hellenistic fortress which sits on top of an outcrop in the basalt mountain, right over the gorge. You know the motto of real estate agents? "Location, location, location!" This fortress has indeed quite a location. The oldest parts of the fortress have been built in the 3rd or 2nd century B.C. and the entire thing has been flattened in an earthquake in 1679. However, in the 1970s, the Greco-Roman style temple from 77 A.D. was painstakingly rebuilt, using mostly original stones that were still lying around.

There is also the remainder of an old bath house which sports a beautiful mosaic floor, and the foundation of a church next to the temple. It's impressive in its own right, and a great playground for kids. Also, the jams and pickles sold by the old women in front of the entrance are really yummy.

Next, we continued up the gorge to the monastery of Geghard. It assumedly once housed the spear that was used to wound Christ in his side during the crucifixion. The spear-shaped object is now at the treasury at Echmiadzin (the Vatican of the Armenian Apostolic Church) but the monastery is well worth a visit. The church is partly freestanding and partly carved into the rock, with a number of little side rooms deep in the cliff, complete with the chilly air and water dripping from the rocks. Next to the monastery is the more contained, now seriously whitewater river Azat. A little bridge leads over the river to a cave and along the path to that cave, the trees sport hundreds of pieces of cloth tied onto the branches. It's an old believe that a wish you make while tying a piece of cloth to a tree branch there will be granted. Unfortunately, we didn't bring anything cloth-like with us. Maybe next time.

We came home happy and tired. Well worth another trip or two one day.

Read me once, shame on you

First, an observation: sometimes the seemingly random order which one reads books can reveal connections that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. With that in mind, here's James Ellroy, author of the superlative crime novel L.A. Confidential:

I read Dashiell Hammett at the downtown library. I read Ross Macdonald by flashlight in the parks. I read meretricious crime writers all over L.A. I read Jolting Joe Wambaugh in jail and out.

The New Centurions/The Blue Knight/The Onion Field/The Choirboys -- visionary work by a cop. L.A. revised. Authoritarianism dissected. Authority sanely lauded over chaos. A counter-counterculture view of 1960 up. Absurdism sans leftist drill. A horrible compassion and indictment of moral default.

Wambaugh burned through me. Wambaugh made me dredge abstractions and spin epigrams. Wambaugh made me think what it all meant.

Wambaugh sang me a swan song. Wambaugh changed me forever. Here's how I know that:

He made me ashamed of my life.

As a young man Ellroy was, um. Best let him describe it:

The blur heightened. School became a nonendurable drag. I was seventeen. I was white. "Free" would make it the trifecta. I stepped up my Nazi antics. I got suspended from class for a week. My dad started calling me "you kraut c[family blog]r." I painted swastikas the dog's dish. My dad wore a Jewish beanie to torment me.

I returned to school. I juiced the escape process. The Folk Song Club met. I regaled and disrupted with a pro-Nazi tune and a chorus of the "Horst Wessel Lied."

They expelled me. It was midweek in mid-March of 1965. I walked south on Fairfax. I've got the details memorized.

Ellroy went downhill from there. "I was Don DeLillo's Lee Harvey Oswald writ pit-faced and tall." He's not kidding.

I recently read Theodore Judson's Fitzpatrick's War, and have been pushing it on some (not all) of my science fiction reading friends. It's military science fiction, and uses nearly every single cliche of that subgenre adroitly; but I believe it was written to make one ashamed of military science fiction. Judson follows the consequences of every cliche to their natural, evil conclusion, and does it in a nearly perfect deadpan. It's a tour de force.

Which cliches did Judson use? I assembled a partial list elsewhere:

... devices that prevent electricity from being used, feudalism, dirigibles, the Alexander legend, Eurabia, the cult of 'hard men', wog-stomping, gook-killing, the John Campbell-Leo Strauss types who Know Better, the flip dismissal of all the social sciences except History, and even the freaking Union Jack.

And I shouldn't forget Judson's pisstakes on Joseph Campbell and his philosophy, or on the sexually aggressive annoying always-right red-headed woman (usually associated with Robert Heinlein, but hardly unique to him).

Here's a quote from a character in Fitzpatrick's War who Knows Better:

"It says in the Bible, Sir Robert, 'I shall bring on you everlasting disgrace and everlasting shame which will never be forgotten.' ... Tell me, do you believe there is such a thing as everlasting shame?"

Everlasting shame? For non-genre readers, y'all should know that the rehabilitation of the SS is perfectly acceptable within the military science fiction genre. To an outside observer, however, the genre might as well be in a militia compound somewhere... which is one of Judson's points.

Judson is a solid writer. I've just read his first novel, Tom Wedderburn's Life, which strikes many of the same notes of character, but in a twentieth-century Wyoming setting. (D and C, I'm sending it to Yerevan in the next box. You'll like.) It's very strong, and I really wonder why he had to publish it the way he did.

(Actually, I don't wonder too much; I've heard enough stories from friends in publishing to see how good books can fall through the cracks, even without dysfunctional editors or agents.)

My hope is, Judson will be to someone that Wambaugh was to Ellroy. Some poor sod who reads nothing but Extruded MilSF Product, perhaps. Perhaps that's Judson's hope too.

Let me conclude with Ellroy's benediction:

I changed my life. I credit Almighty God with the save. [he's not kidding. -- CY] I disowned profligacy. I sought righteousness. I swooned to write books. Literature is a deep calling. I knew it at the depth of my shame.

It's been good -- and it's nowhere near over. Now I learn from my words on the page. I dig the mystical aspect. My weird shit is out in the spiritus mundi -- particles popping in air.

There's a kid or some kids somehwere. I'll never know them. They're particle-puzzle-cubing right now. They might be mini-misanthropes from Moosefart, Montana. They might be demi-dystopians from Dogdick, Delaware. They dig my demonic dramas. The metaphysic maims them. They grasp at the gravity. They'll duke it out with their demons. They'll serve up a surfeit of survival skills. They won't be chronologically crucified.

They'll shore up my shit. They'll radically revise it. They'll pass it along.

Saturday plans

Because there really is no excuse for not enjoying a New York spring. If you like the samples here, you should see the band MAKAR at CBGB's 313 Gallery this Saturday night, about 10:30 PM. (For those of you in Yerevan or Bucharest or Belgrade, I realize this might be a hike. Te absolvo.)

Update: the New York City Math Teacher finds Makar "surprisingly tuneful and witty"!

James Joyce, a poet and a prophet

From Finnegans Wake, page 620 of the Penguin edition:

One chap googling the holyboy's thingabib and this lad wetting his widdle.

Yup, that's pretty much the Internet right there.

Halftime!

What makes this night different from all other nights?

Belle's balikbayan blogging, boo-yah!

We've started a trend! Belle Waring of the super-amazing expat family academic comic feminist philoso-blog (with recipes) John and Belle Have a Blog writes about her trip to the Philippines. Same issues, different perspective. (Warning: pig's head immediately follows the link.)

Joe Goes Global

It seems like everyone is mobile these days. (Except me!) Friend of HDTD Joseph Eros is wandering this old Earth as well, and you can read about it at the site Joe Across Asia.

I have a commitment to be at Baku on May 14 to catch the Caspian ferry. I hope to get there by way of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Belgium, France, Corsica, Sardinia, and then cross Italy and go up the Adriatic coast before heading southeast to Istanbul. Then I'll cross Turkey and visit all three Caucasian countries (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) before joining my group in crossing Turkmenistan.

After Turkmenistan, I'll be in Uzbekistan for about a week visiting an old friend, and after that I hope to cross into Tajikistan and take the Pamir Highway to the Kyrgyz Republic. I'll definitely be crossing into far Western China from Kyrgyzstan.

In China, I hope to take the Silk Road route to Xian, then go to Baektusan on the North Korean border before heading south to Hong Kong by way of Shanghai. I'll fly home from Hong Kong.

As we used to say, go-o-o-o Joe!

Balikbayan guest blogging 6: Manila Cha-Cha

HDTD's man in Manila, Noel Maurer, continues his ongoing series, with some impressions of two of the Philippines' "greatest generation".

I have two more planned entries in this blog, one on poverty and one on politics. (It may stretch to more. I hope y’all don’t mind.) [there better be something on Filipino food, otherwise people will claim I am making it all up. -- CY] But before I get to those cheery topics, I want to discuss my meeting with two remarkable 80-something men: Washington SyCip and Bienvenido Tan.

Let’s start with Mr. SyCip. Anyone visiting the Philippines is told to “go see Wash. Go see Wash.” In my case, it was Michael Chen. So we went to go see Wash.

Wash turns out to be the 84-year-old founder of Manila’s most prominent accounting and consulting company, SGV Associates. It’s in a remarkably nondescript building in Makati City. Unlike the palacial tower that houses Cesar Virata’s offices, the SGV building looks almost run-down from the outside. And the lobby is nothing special. Nor is the elevator to the executive suites. In fact, except for the fact that it’s continually crowded with tall Japanese businessmen in black suits and odd haircuts the thing wouldn’t have looked all that out of place in the Stanley M. Isaacs Homes back in Manhattan.

Now, Washington’s suite is, in fact, rather nice. Wood paneling, modern furniture. So it’s nice, but it’s nondescript nice. It’s not the sort of nice that you remember afterwards. The same can be said for his office. Abstract Asian art on the walls, funny Asian sculpture thingys on the table, comfortable couch, computerless desk. Nice, but nondescript nice.

And dark. The shades were drawn. This seems to be a Filipino thing. People like to hold meetings in dark, sunless rooms. The only exception to this has been Aurelio Montinola, the president of the Bank of the Philippine Islands, who walked into a darkened conference room, blurted, “What the heck is this?” and had the shades opened.

I only laugh because it's true. Both parts.

Anyway, we walked into the room and were greeted by this small, wizened, and rather formal old man. Slightly hunched, but moving spryly, he invited us in and asked us to sit down. I mentioned that he was the same age as my father, and he asked me about him. So I spent a few minutes detailing the entrepreneurial adventures of my old man, and then proceeding to start asking my questions.

Which Mr. SyCip didn’t want to answer. Rather, he wanted to answer the question that he thought I should have asked, which is: “Is democracy the right form of government for the Philippines?” To which, he believes, the answer is quite self-evidently “no.”

That threw me less than you might have thought, because it’s an opinion that I’ve been running into a lot in the Philippines. Of course, it’s not one that I share, but what do I know? Commentator after commentator has told me the same thing, sometimes expressed as skepticism that any political system will function; sometimes expressed as a call for much less democracy, but no alternative selection method specified.

It’s an interesting position, and it says something (to me, at least) about how much American modes of thought have faded. It’s certainly an interesting counterpoint to Latin America, where the same modes have become much stronger. After all, I’ve never heard anyone in Latin America speak favorably about Pinochet—well, not outside Chile, not in similar circles to ones the people I’m talking to move in, and certainly not openly.

My first contact with this came in an interview with one of President Arroyo’s former finance ministers—she’s had a lot of them—Lito Camacho. Camacho is a dapper gentlemen who is older-than-he-looks. He left public service under less-than-ideal circumstances, which seems inevitable in the Philippines. So he has many reasons to be unhappy with how politics is done here.

Well, we’re in the lobby of the Makati Shangri-La hotel, sitting under this vasty glass wall and watching the waitresses float around in these tight dresses slit up to the navels—at least I was watching them.

Been there, done that, had the buffet.

Camacho is an HBS graduate, so he asks me what we’re doing nowadays in the course I teach: “When I was there, it was all about Japan,” he says.

So I joke, “Yeah, back in the day we taught mercantilism; today we teach that authoritarianism is good.”

He perked up. “You really teach that?”

Me, somewhat taken aback, “Well, many of the students complain that we do.”

“Ah,” said Camacho, “I would agree with that.”

He went on to make a cogent argument for switching to a Westminster-style constitution, but he lost me completely when he said, “Things are good in Singapore, and the government runs the place well. So why would people want to vote for change, for democracy?”

Isn’t the above an argument that democracy won't make a well-run place any less well-run, because good government is a vote-getter? I might be missing something.

“Cha-cha” stands for “charter change,” or constitutional reform. The Cha-Cha is a popular dance popular among the political classes here, despite the fact that nobody knows the steps. The steps, of course, are just how one goes about rewriting the constitution while remaining with the constitution—nobody’s quite sure how to go about it. (See Article 17 of the Philippine constitution.) And doubly so considering that the polls show that only 43 percent of the public support the idea.

The Cha-Cha is frustratingly vague. The main drift is to switch to a parliamentary system, but few people (Mr. Camacho excepted) seem to have thought through the logic. Some have proposed that a Westminster system, where the government could be yanked at any time by a vote of no confidence, would bring the present tradition of turfing out leaders by big people power demonstrations and impeachment into the constitution. After all, the House impeached President Estrada, but it stalled in the Senate, leading to the demonstration and Estrada’s belated realization that he had resigned without knowing it.

Okay... I can see that. Sort of. Problem is, the other goal seems to be to streamline decision-making, and I just don’t see how moving from a funhouse reflection of the United States to a clear reflection of Italy is going to help. A lot of serious thought will be needed to insure that the new system really produces a government that is both clearly accountable—unlike the current system of divided powers—and sufficiently free from short-term pressure to make tough decisions. Unfortunately, I don’t see many signs of the Cha-Cha proponents putting in that kind of thought.

I mean, they let just anybody sit in what would be the Prime Minister’s office under a parliamentary system, man.

The only thing which does make clear sense is getting all these weird ancillary policies out of the constitution and into statute law. I mean, Article 16 of the 1987 Constitution is actually entitled: ”Education, Science and Technology, Arts, Culture and Sports.”

That said, the real driver here seems to be a fundamental disillusionment with democracy, only nobody—and this flabbergasts me, in the land that produced Ferdinand Marcos—seems to have thought through what a lack of democracy means for accountability. You get the impression that “parliamentary” is shorthand for Lee Kwan Yew Two.

Only how would Lee Kwan Yew have done if he’d been put in charge of the Philippines? I have my doubts. “Better than Marcos” is all I can say, and that’s about as high a bar as long-jumping over a curb cut.

Many people, of course, recognize that the Cha-Cha isn’t really about democratic reform. “We’re still looking for a king,” said another former finance minister, Cesar Purisima.

Anyway, I said little of this to Mr. SyCip. It wouldn’t have been appropriate. The situation was one of a young man seeking wisdom from someone older and wiser; when he sidestepped a question, I didn’t make much effort to follow up.

And then, suddenly, the ambience changed. I asked him, almost idly, what he’d done in the war. I’m used to hearing people switch languages, lo hago todo el tiempo. What I’m not so used to seeing someone switch body languages mid-stream, because all of sudden I was no longer learning from an older and wiser Asian man; I was chatting with an older American guy full of interesting stories.

“The war? Yeah, I was in New York, at Columbia, when one of my buddies comes running into my room yelling, ‘Hey, Wash, didja hear? They’re bombing your home!’ So I enlisted, of course, and got stuck in intelligence. Somehow, I wound up in Bombay doing cryptography.” He went on to complain about how the U.S. Army, in its infinite wisdom, forced him to go all the way back to New York to be discharged, since that’s where he’d signed up. “The Army,” he said, shaking his head. “Nuts.”

It wasn’t quite backslapping, but it was unexpected, the sudden cultural shift from a stereotyped version of the deferential Far East to, uh, feeling like I was home kibitzing with my Pops back in Brooklyn. SyCip also had some rather bitter memories of the American mission that rewrote the country’s economic policies in the 1950s; although he seemed angrier that they demanded a uniform minimum wage in order to eliminate “cesspools of poverty” than that they wrecked the de facto customs union with the United States. Me, I’d have to see some evidence that minimum wages really distorted the Philippine economy during the 1950s, but it certainly gave me something to look into.

Plus, like I said, it was a lot of fun. I might not agree with him about the whole democracy thing, but Washington SyCip is a very smart man.

The evening I had a meeting with another very smart 80-something, Bienvenido Tan. The name kinda threw me at first; I kept wanting to ask, “¿Y qué?”

This meeting was fully American from the start: Mr. Tan doesn’t stand much on formality. He had already started drinking with Mike Chen when I arrived, and I suspect that my presence might have prompted a little bit of code-shifting: Mike seemed a little discombobulated for a brief moment, and I suspect that a precipitous alteration from Overseas Chinese to Expat American might have thrown him off.

The fun part, of course, was Tan’s welcome tales of trying to increase tax collection during Cory Aquino’s term. He didn’t want the job, but Cory convinced him that it was his patriotic duty. “I would say to them,” he said to us, “’C’mon, fellas, give me something here. Otherwise we’re gonna hafta shut down the whole gravy train.’ And it worked! We doubled the tax take. Of course, it cost me my job, but those are the breaks.”

More than that—his tax deals eventually got him indicted. The Supreme Court finally cleared in 2005. The wheels of justice grind slowly in high humidity, it seems. Anyway, we could have been having the exact same conversation in Schaumburg, Illinois, and be talking about Daley the First instead of “corazón sí, aquí (points to head) no.”

Of course, I asked him what he did in the war. Turned out that he was an officer cadet when the Japanese invaded. “They gave each of my men two bullets. The soldiers asked me, ‘What the hell am I going to do with two bullets?’ Well, I told them, ‘Shoot a Jap, then shoot yourself.’”

His men demobilized and spread out, some joining the guerrillas in the hills, others (like Tan) fading into occupied Manila. The entire outfit was known as the “Hunters or ROTC Guerrillas” because they couldn’t decide whether to call themselves the ROTC Guerrillas, the Free Philippine Troops, the Hunters, or... and I am not making this up... the Green Archers.

The funniest—sort of—incident from the war was the time a Japanese soldier stopped Tan while he was carrying a bunch of underground newspapers. (The ROTC Guerrillas put out a sheet called, in character, Thunderclap, but there were many others. The soldier took them, stared at them upside down, and let Tan go.

It was a good dinner, and while he wasn’t fond of Philippine-style democracy, he didn’t think anything else would work better. I can’t say whether his war experience, or his work in government, or just his outwardly cynical (but really idealistic) Americanness made the difference. Anyway, Tan brought home to me how the Philippine upper class has been un-Americanizing over the past few decades, both in little things (business card rituals, conversational styles) and big ones (that whole democracy thing).

On the other hand, Raul Relente’s friends and family do believe in democracy, even though they’re not too fond of their government, and they don’t stand much on ceremony or go through little rituals when greeting each other. The more I find out about this country, the less I know.

Lookitthat!

Ararat again.

Okay, y'all are probably getting sick of hearing about the mountains by now. But it bears repeating, because it's such a huge presence here. Ararat just... looms over Yerevan, like nothing I've ever seen anywhere else.

First time I saw it? Third day here, I was walking to work. (Which is two miles and takes 38 minutes, by the way. So I won't be walking regularly.)

Turned the corner and started down the hill, and whoa: there's this snow-capped, perfect volcanic cone, right in front of me. Like a child's drawing of a mountain, you know? Just, wham, there. Very impressive.

So I thought, well, that's the famous Ararat. Very nice. And kept walking...

...and guess what: it wasn't. That was little Ararat. Little Ararat is a completely different mountain, smaller and further away. It sits next to Big No Kidding Ararat like a dog at its master's knee.

I didn't realize this, but when I walked a few more yards down the hill, I got a clear line of sight, and: Oh my God. Ararat is just... huge. Smaller mountains to left and right just serve to emphasize. Okay,

I would post a picture, but I can't imagine one doing it justice. I think you just have to come to Yerevan.

Okay. There's more to say about Ararat -- the history, and why no Armenians live there now, and how it's a constant reminder of certain things -- but enough of that for now.

Let me thank Carlos (and Noel!) for keeping the blog fires burning. They may have to carry us a bit longer, because we still have no internet access at home. So, to post, either I have to take a few moments at the office after work hours (as now), or Claudia has to sit in the Marriott lobby cafe. Neither is ideal, so our posting may be patchy for a bit.

Also, I'm in a new job. It's a promotion, with a fair bit of new responsibility. So that's going to hit my posting time too.

But we're still here, and we'll still be blogging. And thanks to all of you for coming along.

Further notes

- We've lived in the house for a week today and so far we've had 53 incoming phone calls, one of which was actually connected correctly. It was Doug trying out the landline and we agreed quickly on using the cell phones instead because the connection was so bad we could hardly hear each other. Hissing noises, dial tones, ring tones - we had it all in one single phone call. The other 52 calls were all wrong numbers. As a consequence, I have unplugged the phone for the time being.
However, there is hope! We think we can manage to have a new line put in. There is even a 75% chance of getting DSL! Why do I keep thinking we're the unlucky 25%? Surely that is negative German thinking only!

- We have loads of ants in the house.

- Every morning, we look to Ararat and check whether it's visible or obscured by clouds. Yesterday, we had a glorious sunrise on the glaciers, with clouds circling the mountain in the middle like a belt. The peak glowed bright red in the morning sunshine.
Today, after a day of rain and thunderstorms, we can barely see the foothills. It's become a habit, looking toward Ararat.

- Speaking of mountains - Yerevan is just surrounded by them. I had not realized but driving to Alan's school, we see snow-covered peaks in every direction, and they are not far-off mountains, they are quite close. Within 30 miles of Yerevan, you'll find Mt. Aragats (4090m), Mt. Azhdahak (3597m), Mt. Kotuts (2061m) and quite a few more that are over 2000 meters (about 6000 feet). Whenever you have a view in Yerevan, you'll see a mountain (range). It's quite amazing and stunningly beautiful. The kids find it amazing that it can be spring when indeed they see snow everywhere around them...

- I found a wonderful physiotherapist. He's a real doctor and works at the Litte Spa in the Marriott Hotel. I threw out my back on Sunday morning and I'm almost painfree as I'm writing this. He charges the amazing amount of $30 per half hour but he's so worth it. He absolutely knows what he's doing, he did a thorough examination before even touching me and he instantly pinpointed my two big Bad Things for the Back: carrying heavy things (a.k.a. little boys) and not working out my stomach muscles. I did promise to be better about the exercises and I mean it this time! If you have back problems in Yerevan, go see him! (It also has the additional perk of sitting in the Vienna Cafe afterwards, with coffee and "Torte", and wireless Internet access.)

- In theory, we have satellite TV. In practice, we have three or four Armenian channels and some Russian ones. Maybe there is Georgian one too, I haven't paid much attention once I realized we don't have a cartoon channel or CNN or any of the Discovery Channels. I know you can get them here since they were available in the hotel. It doesn't seem pressing and maybe one day I can figure out how to readjust the dish outside our balcony.

- Wishbone Ranch salad dressing. Chuck Wagon Chicken Franks, frozen. Chunky peanut butter. Mini marshmellows. I was baffled to find those available in the shops here -- US products are usually not very prevalent in Eastern European countries. I think this is the Diaspora making itself noticeable.

- You know that the border to Turkey is closed, yes? I mean, you cannot go there from here, or the other way around. Our move is going by ship, from Hamburg through the Aegian, the Marmaris sea, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, all the way to Georgia, and then by truck to landlocked Armenia - because of the closed border.
But: you can buy loads of Turkish food and other products, and I've seen Turkish trucks on the roads.
Conclusion: Borders may be closed to some but not to others.

- The American ambassador to Armenia has caused a public stir in acknowledging the genocide in a speech. He is now returning to the US in July. Coincidence? Many think not so. Ms. Rice couldn't order him home right away for fear of an uproar among the Diaspora so she ordered him home some months later. Not quite subtle enough for Armenians not to notice, it seems.

- I did change my Zeit magazine subsription to Yerevan before we left Romania. That was two weeks ago. The magazine from March 23 has yet to arrive. (Carlos, I checked and apparently we would get mail if there was any. I am waiting.)

- The heating has stopped three times so far and had to be restarted manually. The water stopped once (there was much complaining about a missed bath for the boys last night -- what creatures of habit they are!). We have lots of brownouts.

Where's your diglossia now?

Recent conversation on a new Bible translation:

K: "You got the Gullah Bible? Dude. What's it like?"

Me (considers): "It's like a really twisted Lenny Bruce routine."

Here's a bit of Acts -- in Gullah, De Postle Dem -- chapter 13, verses 6 through 12.

Dey gone all de way cross de islant til dey come ta Paphos. And dey meet one root man dey wa name Bar-Jedus. E been a Jew dat call esef a prophet, bot e ain been fa true. Bar-Jedus beena stay longside de islant gobna. Dat gobna name Sergius Paulus, an e been a man wa hab sense. Now de gobna sen fa Barnabas an Saul, cause e been wahn fa yeh God wod. Bot de root man Elymas (dat be de Greek name fa Bar-Jedus), e gone ginst Barnabas an Saul. E try fa mek Gobna Sergius Paulus stop bleebe pon Jedus.

Now Saul, wa dey call Paul too, e been ful op wid de Holy Sperit. Saul gone an look haad at Elymas. E say, "Ya de Debil chile! Ya fight ginst ebry good ting! Ya haat full op wid bad trick an ceitful ting. Ya ain neba gwine stop try fa change de Lawd true way eenta a lie, ainty? Now den, de Lawd done pit e han ginst ya. Ya gwine be bline. Ya ain gwine see de sunlight fa some time."

Same time Elymas eye gone daak. E staat fa wanda roun, da look fa somebody fa hole e han an lead um, cause e bline. Wen de gobna see wa happen, e bleebe pon Jedus. E been too stonish wen e laan bout de Lawd.

Just for comparison purposes, here's Clarence Jordan's "Cotton Patch" translation of the same passage into a different Southern dialect:

Next they went to Tuscaloosa, where they ran into a joker named "Reverend Jesus." He was a phony white preacher who was a friend of the mayor, Sergent Powell, a shrewd guy himself. The mayor sent for Barney and Saul and wanted to hear what the word of God was all about. However, Reverend Ellis (that was his real name) strenuously objected and did his best to sidetrack the mayor from the faith. Then Saul (or Paul as he was also called), running over with Holy Spirit, looked him in the eye and said, "You crooked creep! You low-down louse! You son of the devil! You full-time phony! You habitually twist God's clear message out of shape. All right, now listen, the Lord has put the finger on you and you'll be as blind as a bat for some time." Right then and there he was completely socked in and started wandering around looking for somebody to lead him by the hand. The the mayor, seeing the way things had turned out -- and shook up by the teaching of the Lord -- began to live by the Unseen.

Incidentally, in Jordan's translation, Jesus is from Valdosta.

Brief notes on classic Armenian literature 3

The following may be the oldest piece of Armenian literature in existence. It's a fragment of an oral epic preserved by Moses Khorenats'i (Moses of Khorene), on the birth of the deity Vahagn:

Erkner erkin, erkner erkir,
erkner ew tsovn tsirani:
erkn i tsovun uner
zkarmik eghegnik:
end eghegan p'ogh tsukh elaner,
end eghegan p'ogh bots' elaner:
ew i bots'un vazer
kharteash patanekik:
na hur her uner,
bots' uner mawrus,
ew ach'kunk'n ein aregakunk'.

Heaven was in labor, earth was in labor,
the purple sea too was in labor.
Labor pangs in the sea seized
the little crimson reed.
Along the reed stalk smoke ascended,
along the reed stalk flame ascended:
and from the flames there leapt
a golden-haired little youth.
He had fire for hair,
flame he had for beard,
and his little eyes were suns.

The translation is taken from Calvert Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, which I believe I've recommended before, although most of the following will be taken from the work of James R. Russell. But look at that phonology! Armenia is definitely in the apostrophe Sprachbund.

Part of the unfamiliar look of Armenian to English readers derives from its linguistic development. Armenian, like English, Romanian, Serbian, and Albanian (but unlike Turkish, Georgian, or Chechen) is an Indo-European language. All Indo-European languages can be shown to be descended from the same (reconstructed) root language.

Armenian developed from Proto-Indo-European via a set of regular sound changes, which modified nearly all of the original sounds in the language, sometimes in striking ways. Perhaps the most famous of these changes is the great historical linguist Antoine Meillet's discovery that Proto-Indo-European *dw- (the asterisk means the word is a reconstructed form) shifted to Armenian erk-. [1]

There aren't that many Proto-Indo-European words that begin with *dw-, but one of them is the word for 'two': PIE *dwo, English two, Armenian erku.

There are other ways to get to initial erk- in Armenian. So initial erk- is not as odd as it might first appear to an English speaker.

The gh phoneme in the text comes from a roughly datable sound change. The character from which the text is transliterated originally represented a sound related to L. We know this from words borrowed by Armenian from other languages, like the name of Pilate, which became Armenian Pighatos. The sound change must have occurred after the borrowing, likely some time after the Gospel was first translated into Armenian.

Okay, background over. Now for some of Russell's notes. The following is taken from his article "Carmina Vahagni," originally published in Budapest; but since the original is a little hard to find, I am taking the text from his massive Armenian and Iranian Studies.

As to vocabulary, the Armenian song of Vahagn begins with two lines in pure Armenian, though subsequently loan-words from Middle Iranian appear: karmrik, vazer, kharteash, patanekik. [...] To emerge from a reed, Vahagn has to be very small, so the oft-encountered ending -ik is appropriately descriptive. Despite the Middle Iranian loans, these are probably the oldest words spoken in Armenian which we shall ever hear.

Arm. erk- corresponds to proto-Indo-European *dw-: Arm. erku, English two, Greek duo, etc. And the first two lines are made of two words each, descriping a pair; erk- is repeated in every word. [Russell elsewhere compares this to Germanic kennings. -- CY] The third element, water, comes in with a third line of three words (excepting the little ew 'and'): erkner [ew] tsovn tsirani. To introduce a new element, there is a new alliteration of the sound (ts) in tsov 'sea' and tsirani 'purple' (a characterisation which must recall Homer's wine-dark sea). The change represents the eternal mystery of generation: the conjunction of opposites to produce a third, the child, a being wholly new. It is striking here that the words used to describe the sea are all non-Indo-European (tsov is Urartean, from sue 'lake', cf. Georgian tba 'idem'; tsirani is areal, cf. Georgian ch'erami, Pashto chereby 'apricot'). From what are in the poem colorless abstractions defined only by their dualistic constrast to each other: sky and earth -- we move to purple, then in the next, very long line to the brighter red of the reed.

Reed is eghegn; in ancient Armenian this was pronounced with a deep L, not (gh) as today. L and R are related, as liquids, so when the verb erkn-er changes in this line to the nouns, erkn, it prefigures eghegn, the reed. The two next lines, in which Vahagn is being born, reverse the direction of the poem so far. There has been a movement down: heaven > earth > sea > reed growing in the sea (i.e., from its floor). Now smoke and flame ascend (elaner), and the upward movement is crowned by the springing out of the youth (vazer). This is swift and light, unlike the slow pain of labor. Note also the perfect parallelism of zkarmrikn eghegnik (six syllables) and kharteash patanekik (also six), the only pair of nouns in the song with epithets of more than one syllable, which makes them heavy and brings them out for comparison.

The last three lines describe the head of the newborn Vahagn: fiery hair (alliterative: hur her), fiery moustaches (bots' uner mawrus, with the verb uner shifted so bots', an explosive word for fire, can get the full stress of the start of the line, as hur did in the preceding line), and eyes which were little suns. Note that his eyes are not like suns, or fiery: they ARE suns. This is an ancient Indo-European homology: the eye sees, the eye is light, light is the sun, the sun sees, and so on. There are two eyes; we have moved them from the pairing, the repeated erk- of the beginning, in which the vast macrocosm is in labor, to the pairing in the microcosm, where the two tiny eyes of the reed-born god are two suns, an intricate parallel of two of one thing to two of another.

I love this sort of thing.

[1] Yeah, it's weird. Meillet thought that the *d- shifted to an *r- (think of a trill) and then the *-w- shifted to a *-gw-, which by a previously known sound law would change to a *-kw-. At some point a prothetic e- would have been added -- standard for Armenian, similar to Spanish -- and the *-w- lost. There are several other theories.