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Recent Posts

  • Christmas 2015
  • Power Point of the Love Letter to Port Hueneme Speech
  • Christmas of 2014
  • LISTENING FOR AN ANSWER TO ALL OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS
  • FULFILLING A DREAM OF CITIZENSHIP
  • TRAVEL, LIKE CHRISTMAS, IS ALL ABOUT EXPECTATIONS
  • Easter Island and French Polynesia
  • UNUSUAL INTERPRETATIONS RISE FROM EASTER ISLAND
  • AN UNLIKELY STORY OF SUCCESS AT EASTER ISLAND

Jon Sharkey reading Passers By

Jon1

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May 15, 2016 in Power Points of Speeches | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christmas 2015

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Holiday Greetings to Friends and Family,                                                             Christmas 2015

            What is it about an Advent Calendar? It seems to be the perfect way to get one in the mood to celebrate Christmas. Every year, a dear friend presents Beverly with an electronic version that permits her to wrap presents as elegantly as Nordstrom’s, to bake professionally decorated gingerbread men, and to sing Christmas carols while backed up by a full symphony orchestra. But while Beverly finds that the cyberspace flawlessness really satisfies that part of her brain that craves perfection, she realizes it’s only a dress rehearsal for the real thing.

            And the real thing might well include burned baked goods, the inability, any longer, to hit the high notes, and the unrepentant use of recycled gift bags. A holiday incident that has now passed into legendary family lore springs to mind. Every Thanksgiving, Beverly deposits the remains of the turkey, a few onions, a couple of carrots, and a bag of barley into the crockpot. All night long, heavenly fragrances tickle our nostrils and cause us to salivate in our sleep. We can hardly wait to taste the first spoonful. One year, however, the soup had to be unceremoniously dumped down the disposal. We all had been eagerly chowing down when a youthful but highly observant Maxwell pointed out, “The barley in this soup has wings.”

            “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans,” John Lennon supposedly wrote, and he was right. Jon and Beverly still plan to tick off a whole host of items on their respective bucket lists, but only after Beverly’s health issues and Jon’s political obstacles have been resolved or reduced. Still, they find a great deal to appreciate in their lives—including Brendan’s biannual trips out here from Fort Worth (which always include a jam-packed itinerary of sights we would have never otherwise seen) or the generosity of Naomi or Nathan or Angie and Trevor who allow the grandparents as much alone time as possible with Maxwell and Elliott.

            Every time Beverly unpacks her “baby in a box”—the portable playpen that now houses all the little kid paraphernalia that a decade ago kept Maxwell comfortable and amused—she recalls and recounts her favorite blessing. She’s now allowed to enjoy grandparenting a second time around with Elliott (who may presently claim he wants to be a firefighter or a police officer but will, in Beverly’s humble opinion, end up as the next Perry Mason).  

            Although Jon still looks forward to taking fourteen-year-old Maxwell up in the Cessna, teaching him how to power-shift the SRT4, or hear him play the string bass with his high school orchestra, he also now gets to introduce Elliott to the piano, take him to see the Blue Angels or perch the three-year-old on his lap so Elliott can “back” Nana’s car out of the garage.

            When she’s not posting photos on Facebook, Beverly volunteers with Chloe the Therapy Dog, writes a weekly Port Hueneme Museum feature for the Hueneme ePilot called “History by the Minute,” and is uber-involved with the Friends of the Library. She gave up her column with the Ventura County Star to finish up (at last) The Second Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo, which was released in late October. The highlight of her year, however, has to be receiving the “People Who Make a Difference Award’ in mid-November.

            Jon’s special achievement for 2015 was recording his album of original music called “West of Malibu.” He claims he was particularly inspired by the piano at Sessions at the Loft. In a former life, the Yamaha grand was the house instrument at the Jazz Bakery. Coincidence?

            Wishing you love, peace, joy, and abundant blessings in 2016,

     Jonathan, Beverly, Brendan, Trevor, Angie, Elliott, Naomi, Max, Nathan and Chloe

December 07, 2015 in Christmas Letter | Permalink | Comments (0)

Power Point of the Love Letter to Port Hueneme Speech

This speech was delivered on November 14, 2015 at the Port Hueneme Historical Society Museum.  The speech followed acceptance of the People Who Make A Difference Award.

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December 06, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christmas of 2014

 

Dear Friends and Family,                                                                                      Christmas, 2014 

Our Holiday Countdown Calendar reads 14 days, 11 hours and 48 minutes.   The temperature in Port Hueneme is a balmy 69 degrees, the ocean shimmers with glints of silver and (after making a federal case out of it) abundant sand is finally back on the beach.

 The big news is that last month, Beverly and Jon crossed Easter Island and French Polynesia off of their respective bucket lists---with a week’s stay on Rapa Nui and a ten-day Society Islands cruise.

You can (voluntarily) be subjected to their travel photos and daily journal by visiting either the blog or Facebook Page

The year 2014 started off with a bang.  Jon took custody of the Mayor’s gavel and the Pacific Ocean threatened to take out Surfside Drive (TGWLOTTF---Thank God we live on the third floor).  In between trips to the nation’s capital to lobby for the Navy Base and sand replenishment, Jon (who was re-elected for another four years on November 4th) indulged himself with a stint in an official NASCAR vehicle, was gifted with a lookalike bobble head, and is still in the process of professionally recording an album (including five original songs) on a studio piano that used to hold court at the famous Jazz Bakery.

Beverly sprinted down the road to recovery in record time after full knee replacements in December 2013 and April 2014.  She claims that availing herself of the services of her own personal therapy dog was her secret weapon. She still manages to squeeze penning her bi-weekly newspaper columns, working with the Friends of the Library, therapy dog visits, tutoring in the literacy program, watching British mysteries on her Roku and procrastinating work on her second novel, into her busier-than-ever retirement schedule.

Angie and Trevor have been very generous with the time Elliott gets to spend in Port Hueneme.  In addition to playing piano and beach walks with Grandpa, the two-year old is crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine, starring in Elliott videos, learning to swim, playing pretend (especially meal prep or talking on the phone) and singing “Let it Be” at the top of his lungs.  In addition to taking on a mortgage, his devoted parents changed jobs this year.  Besides being a fantastic Mom, Angie is now helping to manage a children’s clothing line called Ultra Violet Kids (where Elliott got in some baby modeling time) and, just this month, Trevor moved up from being a digital marketing VP for Disney Music to the corporate side that included a senior VP title.  He’s looking forward to promoting movies instead of soundtracks and/or teen singers although “Frozen” (shades of Garret Morris) has been berry, berry good to him.

Brendan, now the proud owner of a condo, is still passionate about all things architecture, and fills his free weekends documenting houses of a historic nature within driving distance of Fort Worth.  Whenever he flies out here for a few days, we look forward to working through the itinerary he’s compiled after weeks of careful research.  We learn, firsthand, about remarkable sights to see right here in our own backyard.  He also still writes graphic novels, keeps up with Facebook and creates/records CDs of his own music.

Nathan, an Air Force Captain, is making the move from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington DC) to nearby Vandenberg this month. He will be visiting at Christmas.

Naomi is still enthusiastic about her new position with a loan company and tickles us with anecdotes about her eccentric coworkers.  She and Max reside in Chandler, AZ.  The 13-year-old, so cute (“Oh, Nana”) with longer hair, still enjoys science, his new friends in middle school and playing the bass.  Even though Jon has to consult YouTube for bands Max follows, music has forged a special bond between them.  Max still bakes cookies and swims with Nana, but his ardor for cars has propelled him into coaxing both his father and grandfather into early driver’s training lessons.  Only three more years… (Cue the music from “Jaws”).

This year we remain grateful for our many blessings and, most of all, for all of you.

 The (entire) Kelley-Sharkey Clan

January 14, 2015 in Christmas Letter | Permalink | Comments (0)

LISTENING FOR AN ANSWER TO ALL OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS

Leonardcohen-624x420-1354563972Published in the January 14, 2015 edirion of the Ventura County Star

"To be able to find that song that I can be interested in takes many versions, and it takes a lot of uncovering," admitted Leonard Cohen in an interview with Paul Zollo ("Songwriters on Songwriting"). Cohen penned a staggering 80 draft verses to his hit song "Hallelujah."

"If I knew where the good songs come from," he added, "I'd go there more often. It's much like the life of a Catholic nun. You're married to a mystery."

The suits at Columbia Records, not realizing that "Hallelujah" would not only eventually be recorded by more than 300 different artists, but would also be employed in numerous films ("Shrek," "A Lot Like Love"), television soundtracks ("Criminal Minds," "The West Wing," "House") and televised talent contests ("American Idol," "America's Got Talent"), initially refused to give Cohen's 1984 album ("Various Positions") the green light.

"Hallelujah," in addition to becoming the subject of both a book ("The Holy") and a BBC radio documentary, was also played at Fenway Park during a tribute to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.

And just last week, Bon Jovi's version of "Hallelujah"  went viral on YouTube — with 20 million hits and counting.

By picking and choosing among "Hallelujah's" 80 draft verses, cover artists have been able to co-create (with Cohen) a personal interpretation of the song — from melancholic to uplifting to acerbic to joyful.

Bono, who is a big fan of "Hallelujah," told Rolling Stone in 2012, "I've thought a lot about David in my life. He was a harp player and the first God-heckler. As well as shouting praises to God, he was also shouting admonishments. ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?' That's the beginning of the blues."

Since Cohen enjoyed numerous hits ("Suzanne," "I'm Your Man," "Bird on a Wire") in addition to "Hallelujah," the national media went into cardiac arrest upon discovering the legendary singer-songwriter had opted to retreat from the music business' spotlight in 1994.

In his 2014 book, "The Art of Stillness," author Pico Iyer describes meeting Cohen on a California mountaintop. During the five years Iyer's boyhood idol spent in seclusion at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles — meditating, doing odd jobs and enjoying the friendship of an elderly Japanese abbot named Kyozan Joshu Sasaki — Cohen was also ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and took the Dharma name "Jikan" (meaning "silence").

Why in the world would a man who made his living making music that the entire world embraced, choose, at this point in time, to embrace the sounds of silence?

Cohen confessed to Iyer that he found sitting perfectly still to be the answer to all of life's problems.

"Leonard Cohen," Iyer wrote, "had come to this Old World redoubt to make a life — an art — out of stillness. And he was working on simplifying himself as fiercely as he might polish the verses of one of his songs."

"What else would I be doing?" he inquired of Iyer. "Would I be starting a new marriage with a young woman and raising another family? Finding new drugs, buying more expensive wine? I don't know. This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence."

"Typically lofty and pitiless words," writes Iyer. "Living on such close terms with silence clearly hadn't diminished his gift for golden sentences. But the words carried weight when coming from one who seemed to have tasted all the pleasures that the world has to offer."

Going nowhere, as Cohen pointed out, was the grand adventure that makes sense of journeying to anywhere and everywhere else.

"With machines coming to seem part of our nervous systems, while increasing their speed every season," concludes Iyer, "we've lost our Sundays, our weekends, our nights off — our holy days, as some would have it."

With one-third of American companies now funding stress-reduction programs and such trends as observing an "Internet Sabbath" — turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning — illustrate how increasingly frantic we are to unplug ourselves from technology and/or to bring simplicity and serenity back into our lives.

When Nicholas Kraft crisscrossed the country to film his documentary "Pursuing Happiness," the most frequent question he encountered was "What is the secret to happiness?"

Kraft's response? "It's no secret at all. Which is not to say that there isn't a lot to understand. It is kind of like music. There are only 12 notes and people are still composing music with those 12 notes. I think there are only a limited number of things that really contribute to happiness, and those are things that we already know."

I suspect Kraft's definition of happiness might cause Leonard Cohen to shout — "Hallelujah."

Beverly M. Kelley is author of "The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo" and professor emerita at California Lutheran University. This is her last column for the Ventura County Star

 

 

January 14, 2015 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

FULFILLING A DREAM OF CITIZENSHIP


IMG_3621Published in the December 31, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

I'm betting that while the rest of us are jotting down resolutions we won't/can't keep, Jonnalyn Cabarles is applying for her American passport.

Less than two weeks ago, this 36-year-old native of Manila was naturalized as a U.S. citizen — the culmination of a five-year ordeal that included mounds of paperwork, anxious hours of interviews and the not-so-easy citizenship test.

According to the Honorable John A. Kronestadt, such illustrious immigrants as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (Czechoslovakia), Oscar-nominated actress Salma Hayek (Mexico) and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austria) have set the achievement bar exceedingly high.

Jonna and 4,386 other applicants gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Dec. 19. California boasts the largest (19.4 percent) pool of candidates and Jonna's cohort included natives of 133 countries — with the most hailing from (in descending order) Mexico, the Philippines (like Jonna), El Salvador, Iran and Guatemala.

Judge Kronestadt offered his congratulation with the words, "You dreamed and you followed the rules." In 2013, a total of 779,929 dreamers became naturalized U.S. citizens.

As Jonna posed for pictures, she must have been thinking of Coco Chanel's words, "A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous." Still, Jonna couldn't conceal an impish look that betrayed her wicked sense of humor and a higher-than-average IQ.

With a B.A. in Communication Arts from the University of the City of Manila, where she won the Outstanding Student Award, Jonna initially arrived in America in 2008. She later moved to Ventura County, where she is known as "The Princess of Port Hueneme," to assist two City Council members with the care of their (respective) mother and mother-in-law. Her bottomless patience proved invaluable in such a physically and psychologically challenging profession.

Ever since she could remember, Jonna dreamed of becoming an American citizen. Her mother, Navidad, loves to remind Jonna that even as a toddler, she insisted that all of her clothes (even then, she was a "fashionista") must bear the "Made in USA" label.

"The Princess," she proclaimed with a regal toss of her head, "will not use anything — not even a toothbrush — that is not American."

Even now, her Facebook page, which she operates under the nom de plume "Jondita Bratinella" (emphasis on the "brat"), displays the appropriate meme, "All I want is world peace and my own red soles."

Her father, Alexander, also recalls that his daughter would howl with rage if gifted with a doll that was not a Mattel product. When he received the official news that Jonna was a brand-new American, he quipped with great pride, "Now I shall call you ‘Barbie.'"

Jonna will be registering as a Republican. She categorizes herself as a political conservative who would like to vote Condoleezza Rice into the Oval Office.

She confessed that the hardest question on the exam was to write out, verbatim, the words of the national anthem. I don't know if any of us, much less wannabe-warblers at sporting events, could earn the perfect score she did.

One of the best things about America, she maintains, is the food. This was the first year she enjoyed a Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings. No gobblers in the Philippines, so she says.

In speaking of a Filipino noodle dish (that is as popular here as it is back home), she allowed that now that she's a citizen, she will pronounce "pancit" with a very broad "a" and accent on the first syllable — as we Tagalog-challenged Americans do.

I suspect that Jonna would agree with columnist Ruben Navarrette, who often argues that the road to citizenship should not be easy.

"It's about a lot more than voting," he writes. "It's about knowing English even as we strive to acquire new languages. It's about surrendering your allegiance to another country or another flag, and — as President Kennedy said — asking not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country."

So what's next on Jonna's agenda? She wants to be included on Judge Kronestadt's illustrious immigrants list.

I wouldn't bet against her.

Beverly M. Kelley writes a biweekly column for The Star. She is the author of "The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo."

 

 

December 31, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

TRAVEL, LIKE CHRISTMAS, IS ALL ABOUT EXPECTATIONS

Pareopainting"Are you excited about Christmas?" we inquire of children. They view this as a ridiculous question.  

You see, for the most part, they aren't forced to risk life and limb to hang the outside lights, gird their loins in anticipation of the family drama queen's rants or even sweat up a storm preparing the holiday feast.  

Christmas is all about expectations. 

Yet since we not only spent a week on Easter Island recently, but also tacked on a 10-day French Polynesian cruise, my mind is still on expectations of the travel variety. 

While Charlotte Bronte wrote, "life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will not---match the expectation," I suspect that expecting too little might prove far worse than expecting too much. 

When I asked a fellow sojourner why she had traveled all the way from Montreal to Easter Island, she admitted that as a child she had fallen in love with a poster of Ahu Tangariki. 

"Don’t say a word," she would insist---upon learning we had photographed the site the day before.

She wanted to be (in her words) "a tabula rasa" as she personally glimpsed the Moai.

She couldn't possibly be, however, a "blank slate." Her poster had led her to at least three false expectations: that Easter Island's most photographed site would be hers alone to enjoy, that the sky would be painted in the same vibrant sunrise colors and that the statue detail hadn't seriously eroded in two decades.

Additionally, this woman routinely expects to be disappointed. Only the day before she had created a huge stink about the food, her accommodations and the service. 

She reminded us of stuck-in-a-rut travelers who resist all changes to their daily regimen. They get tcked when they fail to find prune juice on the menu, a sleep-number bed in their room or the absence of precipitation in the Great Outdoors.  

We, on the other hand, had been tickled by the hotelier’'s idiosyncratic conduct. She seemed to be the Polynesian equivalent of "The Soup Nazi" made famous on "Seinfeld." We now had an amusing story to tell.

Unfortunately, travel, instead of merely broadening the mind, also broadens the beam---especially aboard a cruise ship. 

Still, as proponents of the "if it scares you, it might be a good thing to try" philosophy, we endeavored to taste new foods from doughy breadfruit to poisson cru (raw fish) to po'e (taro pudding).  

While our fellow passengers (most of whom had racked up voyages in the double digits) attempted to be open-minded, a myopic few viewed everything through the lens of "getting my money’s worth." In fact, they felt financially cheated when forced, by unanticipated circumstances, out of their comfort zones.  

"But you are on vacation!" the Polynesian tour guides would exclaim with frustration. They actually considered it a personal failing if a client was "unhappy."   

Still, did the couple from Moscow really expect the impressively multilingual (English, French, Spanish and Tahitian) guide from Moorea to converse in fluent Russian as well?

 We decided to bestow our unofficial "Go with the Flow" award on Martha. During the second day, she came down with a (still undiagnosed) fever and was quarantined to her cabin by medical staff.  

Five days later, she emerged from the ordeal with a heartwarming smile on her face (despite a $600 doctor bill), a hearty appetite and heartfelt gratitude---her thoughtful roomie, Janet had videoed their planned excursions, smuggled in restaurant doggy bags and (via iPhone texts and photos) did the bulk of Martha's souvenir-shopping.

While Susan Heller provided sound travel advice when she wrote, "When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money," we invested our loot upfront---leaving few francs or pesos for tourist shop proprietors.

 Handmade curios (oil-painted pareos, rongorongo carvings) or homegrown products (manoi oil, vanilla pods)---seemingly unavailable in the US---however, were must-haves. Of course, we had forgotten we reside in a global economy---where just about everything can be obtained at amazon.com. 

Still, when our new BFF from Hangaroa requested an American flag, we didn’t hesitate to say, "yes." We now know that though Amazon doesn't ship to Easter Island, USPS does. Tepihi’s stars and stripes are on their way.

 Our cruise line's advertising campaign included a "come back new" mantra. Yet, the letdown expressed by our shipmates upon our return tells us that those who expected this ocean voyage to be life-altering, were sorely disappointed. 

 Still, their dissatisfaction may be merely temporary. According to Miriam Beard, travel is "a change that goes on, deep and permanent---in the ideas of living."

"Are you excited about your next trip?" our friends inquire. 

 "Maybe when we pay for this one---and Christmas," Hubby sagely replies.

 

 

 

December 17, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

Easter Island and French Polynesia



Chloe

November 9, 2014. Bid farewell to Chloe, who will be residing with Harmony and her family for the next three weeks.  

We packed up a months supply of outfits, her food, allergy meds and some favorite toys.  

She will be just fine but even now I keep expecting to see her in her little donut bed next to my computer.  I'm sure we will keep looking for her "purse" under the table when we go out for dinner or for her "blankie" at the foot of the bed when we retire for the night.

 She would not have enjoyed this 8.5 hour flight in what has to be the most incredibly uncomfortable seats in airline history. Jon just doesn't fit in the seat. The problem is there are only three airlines flying into Papeete:  Air France (not direct from LA), Hawaiaan (originated in Honolulu) and Air Tahiti Nui.


WaterlilyOn the positive side, we did enjoy a couple of free meals and each seat was equipped with the latest in entertainment diversions including videos from TV, movies and documentaries about French Polynesia.

Upon landing we learned first hand about the difference between US and Polynesian concepts of time as we progressed at a snail's pace through customs and baggage claim.  In addition to the leisurely pace of the staff, there was only a skeleton crew available.

We finally found a cab driver willing to take us the four miles and charged us $35.  We didn't even complain about the taco bed at the Tiare Tahiti Hotel---just fell into the middle and fell asleep.

November 10

Enjoyed a petite dejeuner that reminded us of our little pension in the French Quarter of Paris.


 Gauguins banyonThe waitress was very friendly and helped me practice my French.  Since our flight to Easter Island wasn't scheduled until !:00AM the next day, We decided to expore Papeete with the trusty maperoo (Jon's cartographic term) we picked up at the airport.  It showed a comprehensive walking tour of the city (population:  2,681)  

We started it with Gauguin's Banyon Tree which is between 300 and 400 years old.

Apparently the famous painter used to climb the indigenous tree (where he had built a platform in the branches) on a daily basis to sit and enjoy absinthe.

He lived on Tahiti off and on from 1891, painted many of his famous Tahitian masterpieces there as well as a book about Tahiti called Noa Noa.  No original Gauguin paintings remain in French Polynesia.

A rather rundown Gauguin Museum near Papeete, but it contains only reproductions of his work and was closed when we tried to visit.


Ginger2Next stop was the bust of Pouvanaa a Oopa who was the first French Polynesian separatist politician to speak against the French colonial abuses.  He was jailed and exiled as a punishment for his speeches.  He died a few months before he got to see his dream of independence come true (1977).


We then strolled through the beautiful  Assembly Garden which was created out of a mosquito ridden swamp in 1858 for Queen Pomare IV at the mouth of the Papeete River.  


FlowerIt was the river that gave the major town in Tahiti its name.  

The fruit trees planted for the Queen in secret included breadfruit (Uru) mago, avacado, and soursop and many of the flowers are the same as those in Southern California (hibiscus, oleander, lantana, giner,  jasmine, coleus, bougainvilla).  

The biggest surprise was the Queen's Pond which was also created by the Papeete River.  Not only did we find masses of pink and white water lilies but learned that Tahitians used to come here to fill their canteen with the very pure water.  

Queen Pomar, who only drank coconut milk and water from this pond, also bathed here every morning,  Her servants poured monoi oil (which we picked up for gifts) into her bath during a social ceremony that lasted until lunch.


General De Gailled Monument was a surprisingly modern looking monolith.  We would have never guessed that the monument depicts two canoe-bows that form the cross of Lorraine (symbol of Free France) at the center.  It was during a speech by de Gaulle in London on June 18, 1940 lthat TAhiti becme the first French colony to join the Free French Forces and distinquished themselves at the battle of Bir-Hakeim in Africa during WWII.

Street

As we strolled down Rue du Commandant Destremea we found a tree-lined street named after the Pouvnaa a Oopa and an carved Tahitian god statue in front of a bank.  

 

Statue2It was very hot and humid so we thought we would search out another botanical park called Bougainville Park.  

We thought it might have been named for the flowering shrub so ubiquitous to California but discovered that the shrub and the park were named for the famous Parisian circumnavigator who, accompanied by botanists, draftsmen and astronomers landed in Tahiti with his ship La Boudeuse in 1768.  

It was shady and cool and boasts a bust of Louis Antoine de Bougainville as well as two cannon:  one from la French gunboat called Zelee and the other from the German commerce raider the Seedler.

The Papeete River, which flows through the park, is filled with tilipia--a fish that is very popular in Southern California restuarants these days.We decided to walk back the other way from our hotel which is right next to the Stuart Hotel and the AMerican Consulate

UnknownWe decided to walk back the other way from our hotel which is located  right next to the Stuart Hotel.  We were excited to learn that the much celebrated French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) arrived in Tahiti when he was 61 years old in 1930.  He was much influenced by the work of Gauguin.

Apparently when he got off his ship he took a room at the closest hotel which was owned by a Scot name William Stuart and his wife.  His room was on the third floor just like ours at the Tiare Tahiti and he had a great view of the waterfront (we could see the SS Paul Gauguin which is the ship on which my sister and her husband cruised the islands.  It was at the Stuart that Matisse painted a popular view of Papeete Harbor.  

We were able to take a photo of a sunset after a rainstorm from our hotel deck that would have thrilled Matisse.

 

 

Cathedral InteriorcathWe felt like it would be a good idea to spend some time at the Papeete Cathedral (also known as Notre Dame.)  The church is Gothic style of architecture  was more like a humble chapel than a pretentious cathedral with its rough hewn pews and white washed walls.  

The date over the door is 1845,

As you sit you immediately notice the stained glass above the altar, the stations of the cross paintings done in a rather primitive style, and the leis hanging from the lectern.  

The cathedral has managed to endure the bombing of the Papeete by German destroyers in 1914, cyclones in 1983 and riots in 1987.

To the right of the altar was a smaller altar decorated in birds of paradise and dedicated to St. Therese, the patron of sailors.  Every single votive candle was lit.  Both Jon and I felt an incredible sense of peace pass over us as we gave thanks for a safe journey.  I, for one, had felt abandoned in the wake of the most corrupt political campaign in my experience.

At any rate, we walked out feeling like even though Measure M lost its proponents did so with honor.   

MThen as to underline the point God was trying to make, we ran across a life-size statue of a bright yellow M & M (which was the unofficial mascot of the M Campaign) a block away.

 

Okay, we get it.   

All events are unfolding exactly as they should.

 

MutinypanelsAn impressive two-story, two-panel fresco depicting the history of the Mutiny on the Bounty  decorates Norman Hall.  The artist is Ravello.  

Of course we remember the English ship the Bounty which was commanded by Capain Bligh and which arrived on the island of Tahiti on a breadfruit expediditon.  His mission was to gather seedlings from Tahiti to plant in the British colonies to provide an inexpensive food source for slaves.

We tried a Tahitian slurpy called granitas and dined at L'Oasis, an open air restaurant and French bakery. We decided to try the house specialty which was a raw tuna marinated in  coconut milk and served up as a salad.  It wa really delicious and made us think about our friends Ray and Ruta who had introduced us to sushi.  BTW Port Hueneme boasts one of the best old school sushi restaurants in Southern California.  it's the kind of place where you just ask the chef to choose for you and you are never disappointed.

The folks at our hotel generously allowed us to check out at 9:00PM without charge so we would not have to sit for hours at the airport.  

Again we were reminded about Polynesian time.  There was a full plane going to Easter Island and only one computer that was working.  

After we were processed there was a very pleasant open air waiting area with shops, food, restrooms and comfortable seating.  Of course the LAN (Chile) plane was late.  Joninpap

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arriverapanui

 

Jon found the seats less uncomfortable than Air Tahiti Nui but didn't sleep a wink during the five hour trip.  I was exhausted so getting a few hours of zzzzs was no problem.  We touched down at 10AM but it took 90 minutes to get through all the Chilean officials. 

Touching down at Mataveri International Airport in a wide-body jet was not even possible until 1987, when NASA lengthened the runway to 10,885 feet. The spur, however, was not to boost tourism but rather the need for an emergency-landing site for the Space Shuttle. 

My first impression of Easter Island? Tiny, barren and uber-remote.  It's at least a five-hour plane ride from either the west or the east. With square mileage comparable to Thousand Oaks, Rapa Nui's population of 6,000 annually plays host to 80,000 tourists and their sizable (80 percent) contribution to the economy.

The beautiful Rapa Nui daughter of our hotelier greeted us with leis and took us on a tour of Hanga Roa which looks like it will be quite walkable.  After unpacking in our very charming room, we decied to try out the empanadas handmade by Tia Berta everybody raves about at Ariki O Te Pana.  It was right across the street and we made the mistake of ordering two apiece.  They were each the size of a plate and chockful of fresh caught tuna, onions and cheese.  

Both of us agreed that a reposo was in order after that huge meal.  

The Internet was very slow and kept dropping but as Jon pointed out, "You are at one of the most remote inhabited places on earth---it's a wonder that it works at all."  Besides, it was free (which we didn't appreciate until we paid 50 cents an hour on the ship) and we found that we had better luck with a stable connection in the breakfast room or the reception area.

BananaWe had dinner at Hetua where we enjoyed a 10% discount and the convenience of being right next door to the hotel.  It was quite a surprise to find a gourmet restaurant on Rapa Nui.  We ordered the lasagna with home made pasta and layered with a tasty cheese fresh basil leaves, artichokes and other unidentifiable veggies but which proved delicious.  

The meal was topped off with chocolate crepes.  We dined al fresco and were entertained by passersby, the antics of local dogs, and wondered how the bananas growing in front would taste in the morning.  We would find out since there was a big bunch of small, very sweet bananas in the courtyard of our hotel.

November 12

We scheduled a full day tour of the island so we hoped after french bread and jelly, a delicious omlette, fresh papaya juice, and fresh fruit and very strong coffee, we would be up to all the hiking to the different Moai sites.  Our guide was very good looking (for fortyish) although he had unfortunately broken off his front teeth (there must be a story there but I was too polite to ask).  We shared the guide who shall remain nameless with a couple from Brazil who arrived at the hotel with us.  

I am so glad that I researched the history, religion, culture and statues beforehand.  Just standing in front of monuments that are 10 feet tall can be overwhelming.  I would suppose that everybody wonders why they were constructed, how they were transported from the quarry, why they were abandoned and'/or overturned.  

We all had to march into the National Park Office and pay $60 for our daily entry fee which goes to Chile not into the roads, restroom facilities or upkeep of the signage that was so old and faded that they were unreadable.  These Chilean government officials are quite the surly lot.  The guy at the desk refused one of Jon's $20 bills because it had creases  OUr guide told us they won't accept anything but perfect bills---no rips, dogeared corners, etc.

Boathouse

The first stop was Vaihu with its eight overturned Moai.  Terry told us about several competing theories explaining why the statues were overturned: an earthquake and/or a sunnami, civil war among the villages or a loss of faith re: ancestor worship.   

Boathouse1

At Ahu Hanga Te'e, Terry pointed out a stone circle in front of the ahu or platform which is called a Paina,  

A special ceremony took place inside the circle (also called a Paina) in which  a son, wanting to honor his mother or father or other ancestor, would arrange for a large human figure to be made from wooden poles and bark cloth, placed in the circle in front of the family ahu.  

 

 

The son would actually climb inside the figure and recount notable events of the ancestor's life like a eulogy.  A oven-cooked feast would follow.  The Rapanui would heat up volcanic rocks in an umu (usually located in a cave) and wrap the food in banana leaves.

At Akahanga we found the foundations of several "boat houses" (Hare Paenga) which are constructed to look like an overturned canoe and covered with thatching via long curved poles. 

 

Topnot

The front yards were filled with smooth rocks in an intricate patterns.  

 

 

n addition to 12 moai and their topnots (pukao), this site was supposedly the final resting place of Hotu Matuaa.  One word here about the topnots.  

They were especially designed to fit in a groove on the top of a Moai head and were supposed to depict the chignon-like hairstyle in which males wore their shoulder-length hair.  

A competing theory says these huge scoria (red volcanic rock) were some kind of hat but there's no evidence that Rapa Nui ever wore hats. 

Chickenhouse

Another interesting aspect of Rapanui life were the chicken houses (Hare Moa).  The Polynesian settlers brought chickens with them and like all of their livestock, the Rapanui allowed them to forage for themselves---free to roam the countryside to find food.  However, chickens had a habit of disappearing so at night so their owners would shut them up in Hare Moa where a very small cylindrical shaped space existed uner all the rocks.  There are hundreds of chicken houses all over the island.

 

Tangeriki1Tangariki----where 15 reconstructed Moai stand (there is a 16th figure still overturned), is the most photogrphed site on Easter Island.  Still no photograph can possibly instill the wonder you feel when you see these giant statues for yourself.  

The best time to click the shutter is at sunrise but I wasn't disappointed that morning that the blue sky with its puffy clouds overhead hadn't be traced by the rosy fingers of dawn. Turtlepetroglymph

Also located at Tangariki are two petroglyphs surrounded by circle of rocks.  Both are sea turtles---a very important symbol to the Rapa Nui.  When I purchased my pareo from Easter Island I especially wanted something with a sea turtle.  A sea turtle in the Gallapagos gave me a very special ride.  You are not allowed to touch the fauna or flora there but this big green guy "volunteered."  He came up underneath me while I was snorkeling, turned around and looked me in the eye and then took off.  It was a dream come true.

UntitledThe next stop was the quarry where all of the Moai were carved from the tuff at Rano Rarku.  Some 400 Moai were abandoned at the quarry or broke on the way to their destination ahu.  Nobody really knows why they were abandoned all at the same time.  OUr guide speculated that the workers (who were probably slaves of the artisans) got tired of doing all the heavy labor while the artisans got the big bucks and went on strike.  It could also be that supply outpaced demand and if the people started to lose faith in the ancestor worship religion then production would have slowed and eventually ceased.  

So how were the statues moved? There could be several methods, depending on the size and shape of the statues.  At first the monuments were very small.  As they got bigger they wouldn't fit on sleds or even rollers.  Supposedly the statues, which were rounded on the bottom so they would rock, could be "walked" by using ropes and pulling one side and then the other.  MotuNui


OrongoIt was also here that I met the daughter of Maria Chavez, the very first female park ranger in all of Chile.  Both she and her mother live at Rano Rokaru.  She explained that two different civilizations lived on Rapa Nui.  Replacing monarchical rule (by descendants of Hotu Matua'a) and worship of the mysterious monoliths was a meritocracy-based government and cult that celebrated a yearly Birdman Competition.

In order to stabilize the culture after statue production ceased and monuments were toppled, the warrior class (as opposed to the priests and king) came up with a belief system based on an ancient god called Make Make (see below).

MakemakeA yearly competition would determine which chief (of one of the 12 villages) would rule all of Rapa Nui for the next 12 months. The Hupu Manu (athletic competitors) representing each village were required to descend a thousand-foot cliff at Orongo, swim through shark-infested waters to the farthest islet (Motu Nui) and capture the first egg laid by a Manutara (Sooty Tern).  

At that point, the winner signaled his chief that he would be the new ruler---provided his egg remained intact. The victorious chief was required to do two things I think all future US presidents should consider: to shave their heads and eyebrows in an act of humility and to live alone for the first five months of their tenure. 

Of course this 150-year-old tradition was terminated by missionaries once they arrived circa 1860. 


Horses1We also talked about all of the horses (which outnumber the 6,000 residents) that are apparently wild and unpredictable (causing accidents with tourists) even though they have been branded.  

The Rapanui owners don't feed them nor is there a vet on the island.  The attitude is that if Providence wants them to live, she will provide.  

Many are very sick, starving and the owners refuse to take responsibility.  

They are even destroying the Moai with their hooves and by scratching their backs on the iconic faces.

We also returned to Tangariki on Nov. 14 where we saw a horse actually get through a turnstyle that was supposed to keep animals out of the site.  In fact there were about six horses there so they had gotten quite proficient. The horses, of course, were introduced by the Catholicc missionaries during the late 1800s 




AnacollageAnakena is probably one of the most beautiful beaches on the planet.  

That's Jon's humble opinion.  

Not only does it have a pristine pink coral beach but also a number of  Moai there to protect you as you sun, snorkel or surf.

Anakena was the landing place for Hotu Matua'a as well as Thor Heyerdahl in 1955.

Heyerdahl and the professional archaeologists who traveled with him spent several months on Rapa Nui investigating several important archaeological sites.

Highlights of the project include experiments in the carving, transport and erection of the notable moai as well as excavations at such prominent sites as Orongo and Poike.  

The expedition published two large volumes of scientific reports (Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific) and Heyerdahl later added a third (The Art of Easter Island).

Heyerdahl's book on Easter Island, Aku-Aku became an international best-seller. The calabash, sweet potato and chicken were, according to Heyerdahl, evidence of Polynesians coming from South America.

Our guide (who will remain nameless) wasn't all that knowlegable even though he claims to be a direct descendent of Hotu Matua'a.  We would have been better off just driving ourselves and consulting our Companion to Easter Island on my Kindle.  

He wasn't very happy with his life.  His passion for playing music had been replaced by a need to make a living by cobbling together a bunch of part-time jobs.  Early on  he had come to New York City with a band.  It was there he met his ex-wife but she wasn't happy on Rapa Nui so after four kids, they divorced and she moved back home.  

She also insisted on schooling the kids in America after elementary school.  He had to agree that the schools, although free, were not very good.  All the students are taught Rapa Nui, English and Spanish (Chilean citizens) before high school but it is up to the family to teach Rapanui culture and history.    

AngeltrumpetsInstead of typical travel guide stuff, our guy preferred to talk about smoking cannibis and drinking angel trumpet tea.  I think the flower is a source of datura so that might explain the deaths due to the hallucigenic drink.

He was also a big fan of conspiracy theories--maintaining that 9/11 was an inside job and Kennedy was killed by the CIA so we had to take his claims about cannibalismand starvation etc with a grain of salt.

I couldn't put a finger on his politics--he seemed to be a populist who leaned heavily toward  libertarianism---definitely against Rapa Nui indepenedence from Chile.  

Actually, he didn't hold science, government, Chileans, priests (which he called preachers) and government in any kind of esteem.  He was amusing but we really didn't learn much of anything from him.  

Even though the island had been denuded of palm trees by Coraltree Polynesian rats and from 1903 to 1953, the introduction of 70,000 sheep by the Scottish firm of Williamson, Balfour & Co. wiped out the rest of the vegetation, I did notice a number of Eucalyptus, Coral (Flame) trees, Bananas and Coconut palms.  

 

I also saw lots of frigates, tropic birds, sparrow and sooty terns.

 

 

 

November 13

Impressive breakfast this morning---fruit filled crepes.  We got smart and saved our second piece of French bread for lunch.  

RanoKauDecided to rent a car for three days and sight see on our own. It was only $72 a day at Oceanic for a Suzuki Jimny.  The salesman even let us take the car to our hotel to get our passport and swim/snorkle gear.  The plan was to visit Orongo which is at the top of a volcano named Raro Kau. The caldera is presently being used to grow wetland plants and trees.  It seemed to be a very spiritual place.---it was the site of the Bird Man Competition and the houses where the atheletes rested--much like an Olympic Village.

 

 

 

Manavai

SourpineappleNext stop was the CONAF garden at Mataveri.  The so-called endangered plants in their manavai (rock enclosed gardens, some subterranean) weren't thriving although other manavai we had seen seemed to be effective at protecting seedlings elsewhere on the island. 

 

When then headed for Fisherman's Wharf in Hangaroa for a late lunch at Te Moana.  Another 10% discount place that didn't disappoint.  It's difficult to believe that there are such great places for foodies in such an isolated locale.  We both ordered fish dishes and shared.  Mine was served with an dijon mustard sauce abd loads of veggies.  Jon was prepared with coconut milk and pineapple and served over mashed potato/taro.  We shared a scoop of ice cream more than faintly reminscent of an orange dreamcycle.  It was topped with strawberries, banana and a grape-like fruit that held a pit like a cherry.

MuseumWe went to the museum named for Father Sebastian.  

Two outsiders managed to earn the trust and appreciation of the Rapanui.  They were Father Sebastian Englert, who managed to trace the Rapanui lineage back more than 50 generations, and Katherine Routledge, whose interviews of the remaining elders provided information about the Birdman Competition.  

There are actually thousands of artifacts that belong to the museum but only a hundred or so were on the dispay.  

Those that we saw were definitely Rapanui treasures including:  early wood carvings, thre copies of the Rongo Rongo boards (all the rest are in museums or in private collections), petroglyphs, a female Moai, early carving tools (there was no metals---bronze, iron, etc---used by any of the Polynesians yet they were able to sculpt the huge Moai with obsidian), a water container made out of a scoria topknot and lots and lots of facts writ large on the walls of the alls.  

Admission was a paltry $1 (for Seniors)

Stopped at the Super Mercado for some tomatoes, salami and cheese for a sandwich supper on our private patio after a mytery tour where we pounded over some camino en mal estado that was not my concept of fun.

November 14

BougainvillaQuite the blow-up at breakfast.  The twenty-something physician (Im calling her "Dr. Entltled") and her sister were moved by the hotelier to our table even though one table (that was being saved for a family with children) and another that hadn't been cleaared up yet.  "Dr. Entltled" had made quite a scene the previous morning when the omlette didn't include all the ingredients she order.  We had already learned that you got what you got butit was always great tasting, well presented well, and served up hot.  "Dr. Entltled" started harranging about her room, the food and the service and was surprised that I wouldn't commiserate with her.  I advised her to think of herself as a guest in this hotelier's home.  She decided she would rather be unhappy.  She kept on about rudeness, how much she had paid, lack of respect , etc.  Some people actually live to be offended.  While it was perfectly true that ourhost was a control freak, she had a good heart.   She reminded us of the Soup Nazi (Seinfeld)---if you wanted really good soup, you had to take what you got. Besides we knew we would hmake a great story---the Polynesian equivalent of the Soup Nazi.  At any rate, "Dr. Entltled" wasn't having it---she exploded and left the table (and her embarassed sister) in a huff.  We noticed the next day that "Dr. Entltled" and her sister were gone and the hotelier had undergone a personality translplant, complimenting everybody and offering to personally grind pepper over the eggs---something she had never done before.  You still didn't get the eggs cooked to order, but what the heck.  The rest of the guests had something to talk about for the next couple of days. 

FemalepedestalWe set out for Vinapu today because it was the best example of platform stonework.  

The Ahu Tahire site was difficult to find---hidden behind the fuel storage depot.  Ahu Tahire boasted six overturned moai and several topknots.  One had been recycled as a shelter for a shepherd---another indication that respect for ancestors had come to an end.  

At Ahu Vinapu,we found five overturned Moai, a female statue that held up a funeral platform and an upsidedown pukao (topknoat) recycled as a taheta (collector for rainwater).

AhuvinipuAhu Akivi is the site for seven restored (William Mulloy and Gonzalo Figuroa) Moai.  These statues appear to be looking out to the sea but there was an actual village in front of them.  They are supposed to be representative of the first scouts who traveled with Hotu Matua'a and are allighned with the sun at the winter and summer solstice.  When you walk behind them you can see the cement work that is holding the heads and bodies together where they cracked after being overturned for whatever reason.

Puna Paul, a small volcanic crater, provided the quarry for red scoria and where the topknots were carved Punapau during the 15th or 16th Century.  These pukao were a much later addition to the Moai culture.  

Only 100 topknots exist compared to almost 1000 Moai.

Once the round pieces of red tuff (high iron content)  were carved out of the crater, they were rolled (could weigh as much as 12 tons)  to the platform and affixed to the top of the Moai head via a tongue and groove system.  

Fishies

We enjoyed some wonderful snorkeling at Anakena Beach but got a little too miuch sun.  We opted for Empanadas as the perfect meal for our lobster looks. Rightofway  

One of the things we had to learn the hard way is that all livestock has the right of way.  These cows weren't paying any attention to the folks on motorcycles so they waved us through.  Bossy and her friends were apparently intimidated by the sound of a Suzuki Jimny horn.

 

TepitokuraparoAt Te PIto Kuna we discovered a stone that is known as the Naval of the World.  It is also the site of the last overthrown Maoi and the only Moai that bears a name.  Paro was the husband of a rich widown.  The statue was ten meters tall and weighed 79 tons.  His topknot alone wighed 10 tone.  the statue of Paro was last seen upright in 1838.

Jon said he felt that this site was exceptionally spiritual.

 

 

 

 

Puohiro Papavaca1We couldn't get to Ana Te Patia (caves with petroglyphs)  because the road was flooded but we did make it to Papa Vaca which means Walk of the Canoe.  

This site had dozens of petroglyyphs including tuna, shark, octopoous, turtles, fish hooks and a 12 meter canoe.

We also found Pu a Hiro which is a trumpet like instrument made from  a rock by an ancient rain god.  

The Rapa Nui  used it to call the fish toward shore.

 

 


EdickWe ate dinner at Hakahonu which seems to be the hip and happening place on the island.  Also a 10% discount was available.  

The place was packed and while we waited for a table we met Erick.  He helped out for drinks after he got off of work.  He had been to America a number of times and had kids who actually lived there.  He kept wanting to "buy" us drinks (which he got for free).  

Lots of laughs, lots of great food.  Our waiter was all excited about an upcoming surfing contest.  Apparently he had placed 5th nationally.  We wished him luck.  

Before parting, Erick (real name Tepihi) asked me to send him an American flag---a big American flag that he could fly intstead of the Chilean flag.  

He said he loved America.  I told him I would .  I thought it would be easy with amazon.com but they refused to ship to Easter Island so we used the USPS.  No problem but the postage as almost twice as much as the cost of the flag.

November 15


CaveWe saved the most physically challenging site for last.  

Ana Kai Tangata translates as cave/eat/man.  

You can see anthropologists using this place name to evidence cannibalism.

 Howeve, Kai in ancient Rapa Nui also means gathering place.

The ceilings and walls were once covered with bird  paintings created fron vegetable dyes and animal fat.  

They have faded considerably over the years and many were lost as the shale on which they were painted fell off in large sheets.  

When Katherine Routledge visited in 1914, she saw, in addition to numerous depictions of the sooty tern, a European sailing ship as well.  

We felt emotionally  moved in the cave as we looked out to sea as it pounded the rocks in front of the opening.  

There was a sign warning about falling rocks but we escaped unscathed.

Jon seemed very impressed that I managed the steep stairs down to the cave.  Of course I had him to lean on if I felt unsteady.  People must think we are terribly in love because he's always holding my hand.  Let them think what they will.

ChruchWe also visited the Catholic Church in town.  

Holy Cross is known for combining both Rapa Nui and Roman Catholic symbols so we were anxious to see it.  

In fact, in the back of the church we found a Bird Man wooden statue as well as a likeness of St. Michael the Archangel.

Usually we feel the spirit in any church but here we felt nothing.  

We wonder if it had anything to do with the new Chilean pastor who insists on rennovating the hunded year old church.  

We had heard that the residents didn't like the way he called it "his church."  

In the graveyard on the left side of the church is a small graveyard which contains the remains of Father Sebastian Englert nd Maria Angata, who was a Rapanui priestess who supposedly could make the Moai statues "walk."

The Artisan Mercado was not yet open but we watched a man carving a miniature Moai out of mahogany.  

 

We later found  kava kava statues that ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  


Kavakava2
WoodworkerPurchasing a kava kava was on my wish list because of the significance to the myths about Hotu Matua'a.  

His son supposedly saw special spirits in their natural form.  

He had promised to forget what they looked like but then went home and carved the likeness.  

These are the wooden statues of men with bulging eyes, ribs exposed and huge penises that some anthropologists insist is evidence of starvation.

Since we really couldn't afford these carvings, we opted for a photograph.  

TurtleatPeaWe decided to walk down to Pea Beach to watch a few snorkelers and surfers.  It was a little too cold for us 

We had been told to look for green sea turtles swimming in the shallow water and what do you know, we got to see one for ourselves.  Such friendly creatures!

Since we had enjoyed outselves so much at Hakahonu, we decided to return for burgers at lunchtimes.  Everybody who had competed in the Surfing Contest was there celebrating.  Our waiter came in 9th but he was still happy.  He told us he hails from Venezuela (Carracas).  

Hangaroasunset

 

 

We also stopped at the Super Mercado to stock up on yogurt, peaches, and peanut butter.  We were exhausted so we watched the sunset and retired early to the throbbing drumbeat of the Tare'ai Traditional Show.

November 16

CemetaryWe had to return the car this morning so the only item on our itinerary was to visit the 100 year old cemetary at the edge of town.  

The centerpiece at the graveyard is the cross carved from a Moai topknot.  

We also noticed a very old grave covered in recycled scoria.

The typical final resting place was headed by a cross and the shape was outlined by smooth rocks but many were personalized.  

For example a young child's grave was arrayed with stuffed animals while a 38-year old musician had requested his guitar as his headstone.  T

here were many Rapa Nui symbols including turtles, fish and favorite foods.  

One handcarved wooden rooster indicated a favorite pet.

In between the graves there were riots of yhellow flowers and one plot had tomotoes ripening over the foot of the grave.  

It was a beautiful spot with the ocean crashing against black rocks in the background.

 

ArchangelsAs we headed down the cost we discovered Ari Hitu Murate whcih was a more modern sculpture made of metal and depicting a number of archangels. 

 

One word here about Eco Village and Spa.  Located far from Hangaroa to the west, you will find an ultra modern group of buildings covering several acres and surrounded by an iron spiked fence which just doesn't fit the vernacular of the local architecture.  It's obviously high end and exclusive but doesn't acknowledge the real reasons tourists come to Easter Island---to see the Moai and to try to figure out the mysteries for themselves.  We weren't surprised to see that it remained, for the most part, empty.  

DogatPeaWe also watched surfers catching waves off of Pea Beach, met a friendly dog, at an empanada at Tia Berta's yogurt pie and coffee at Tromiro's and then back to the hotel to chat with the only remaining guests.

IndependenceThey were really interesting folks from Denver.  He owned his own IT company but was also a ham radio operator who brought experimental equipment with him to Rapa Nui.  

She was a retired nurse and a Chihuly enthusiast.  

We can't believe that tomorrow is out last day on Easter Island.  The time went by so fast and we had intially wondered what we would do for an entire week.  

But as we say goodbye to Rapa Nui we will be embarking on an new adventure aboard a cruiseship.  Still it will be sad to leave a place of such incredible beauty, friendly people, temperate climate and fascinating culture.

One last word about the importance for journalists of doing independent research.  I would have been completely wrong about the Rapanui people had I merely read the recent news in the international press.  I would have thought that the Rapanui wanted and deserved their independence from Chile.  The truth is that most of the Rapanui want the status quo.  There is a handful of activists who are trying to drag Chile into the Hague but they, while media savvy, do not have the people's support.   You see going back to the map that Hotu Matuaadrew for the 12 villages would be giving up two big advantages the Rapanui currently enjoy:  only they can own land and they enjoy all the services (fire, police, hostpitals and schools) without having to pay income tax for it.  

That would all change with independence.  They would have to pay for everything.  Now I'm not saying there is any love lost by the Rapanui on the Chileans who move to Easter Island.  That's not going to change any time soon.  T'was ever thus.

November 17


ProducemarketrpapnuiAfter breakfast we strolled along the main street and finally stopped at all the tourist shops we had been avoiding all week.  

Our mission was to make sure our grandsons could say, "My grandparents went to Easter Island and all I got was this lousy tee shirt."  

It was, however, no small feat to find a siz 2T and an XL.  

We hope we managed to find something tasteful yet keeping within typical sourvenir teeshirt parameters.  

Also we wanted to get a small purse or something that would remind us of our experiences on Easter Island.  We had been impressed with the hoatel's use of a colorful flower pareo to cover the foot of our bed but it was going to be a challenge to find something that wouldn't clash with our already busy-patterned comforter but we were successful.

JonrapanuiThe next project for the day was the dreaded packing chore.  We had already washed most of our dirty clothes in the sink with special no-rinse soap and dried them in front of the open windows of our room.  We not only wouldn't have a stinky suitcase but figured sour remianing wardrobe would be able to last the entire cruise.  

We decided our last supper would be at Hetu'a and would involve something with their homemade pasta.  

Jon enjoyed a Pescado Hetu'a (their signature dish with scallops, lobster and a special fish known as kana kana over a bed of mashed potato and taro.  

I dug into Lomo Fetuccini which was a delightful combination of all the veggies we had seen at the produce market including green beans, tomoatoes, squash, beets and beef. 

Before we knew it (Jon took a little siesta and I listened to an Audible book), it was time for the hotelier's husband to transport us to the airport.  

Another uncomfortable five hours flight and few ZZZZs and we were in Papeete but we weren't prepared for the 90% humidity and 90 degree temperature in the middle of the night.  

Ventura County Star columns on Easter Island:

Part I

Part II

An expensive taxi ride after making it through customs and baggage claim and we were delighted to get a room without a taco bed.  We finally fell asleep around 1:30 AM on November 18.


WaterlilypondWhen we awoke we parted the drapes and were greeted by the sight of the Pacific Princess from our balcony.  Although it held twice the passengers of the Paul Gauguin it didn't seem twice as big.  After a slightly downsized petite dejeuner (the Japanese tourists must have wiped out the eggs) we walked down to the drug store (La Pharmacie) so Jon could pick up a few items.  I sat under a banyon tree and did some serious people-watching.  

I couldn't figure out why I felt so agitated.  

Then I realized it was the noise---a construction worker was grinding away on a railing overhed.  Add to that the high-pitched revving of motor scooters, the staccato clip of French speakers and the clicking of heels on the pavement.  

We had gotten used to the relative silence of Easter Island where people eschewed automobiles and even the birds (except for the Polynesian rooster) only broke into song with the rising sun.  The rhythm of our days had slowed down to synch with the Rapa Nui pace of living.  Meals there could take 2-3 hours.  

The smells of Papeete were also a malodorous mix of swage and sweat while the air on Rapa Nui was fragrant with flowers or the tang of salt.  I wanted to go back.

We decided to return to the air conditioned comfort of our room to read and write before it was time to board the ship.

JonbalconyThe process of boarding the ship was relatively painless.  

We said goodbye to our bags (which we wouldn't see again for three more hours but we were invited to a lunch buffet and then given time to explore the ship and our new home away from home.

 Jon had done some research reading reviews online so he chose a stern balcony for our free upgrade.  

What a judicious choice.  

The cabins are more like suites and we loved the ritual of arriving/leaving port from this viewpoint.  

Since dinner was open seating, we met a dozen new people (most for either Canada or California) and traded travel stories. Food was good--Jon tried the Kalua pork and I had prime rib.  Of course we didn't resist when the waiter passed around the dessert menus.  We share dmango cheescake and Papaya souflee.  I can feel the five lbs I lost on Easter Island finding their way back to me even as I took the first bite.

We were copelled to visit the Internet Guru aboard the ship in his native habitat when I couldn't exit.  Twenty minutes had ticked away (at 50 cents a minute) but no refund would be forthcoming he was sad to say.  He did install on and off apps on my iPhone so I didn't have to wait for the exit banner that may or may not arrive.  Jon also ended up not being able to get off when he logged in with his android (no on and off apps available)  so I banned him from using my account.  Decided to post photo collages on FB which take up fewer megabites than individual photos and limit myself to only once a day to make the minutes I had left last.  And talk about slow---the service on Easter Island was not only faster but it didn't cost us a cent.

Lightningpapeete

We are not big fans of the live shows---being early risers and preferring the comfort/privacy of our room to watch videos of Douglas Pearson, the French Polynesian expert on board or such movies as the "Fastest Indian" (the after dinner flick for the first night).

We also discovered that the live shows were  taped  but the effect was not nearly the same since it lacked  the company of 100 couples and the services of the trusty bartender.

We enjoyed our own light show out on the balcony where we watched the sky behind the mountains on Tahiti light up, courtesy of an electric storm.  Thank you Mother Nature.

November 19, 2014

The rosy fingers of dawn traced the sky over Tahiti.  It was a beautiful sight.  


PareopaintingAt breakfast we met a mother and daughter who told us about a shop which sold hand painted pareos (Fleur de Vanille.  Jon and I walked over to check it out and found a perfect flowered pareo for the foot of our bed.  We decided we would use the turtle pareo from Easter Island on our well worn sofa.  We also signed up for a circle tour of Tahiti that was only $45---a bargain compared to the ship's tour.  I was really happpy that I hadn't signed up for more than two snorkeling trips (which proved to be well worth the extra expense).  



UkesWe learned that Papeete was home to some 9,000 souls.  The island itself, born of a volcano is 2-3 million years old.  

Our first stop was the famous Intercontinental Hotel where the expected passengers never materialized but we enjoyed viewing the 32 acres of lush tropical garden alongside an idyllic lagoon and glimpsing the sumptuous furnishings through floor to ceiling windows.  The rate for a double next to the lagoon was a mere $319.40 a day.

Douglas Pearson had told us that protestant missionaries had destroyed all the marae on the island.  Marae were open-air altars, burial ground and a ceremonial location used in religious ceremonties for hundreds of years.  


Point JonmontavvaibayWe made a stop at Matavai Bay. Captain Cook anchored there in 1769 as did Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame.  A museum nearby is an exact replica of author James Norman Hall's home. 

Next was Point Venus, where an old picturesque lighthouse begged for a Kodak Moment.  We also waatched three dogs "crabbing" in the shallow water.  

The Arahoo Blowhold did not disappoint.

When we reached Maraa Grotto, we were reminded of the famous fern grotto on Kauai where we were married, only the cave was much bigger on Tahiti.  

I was really looking forward to the Mataiea Botanical Garden.  A sudden shower kept some of the passengers on the bus but we, who stupidly left our umbrellas back at the cabin, decided to brave the elements anyway.  

The reward was a wonderful collection of botanical delights including Elephant Ear ferns, Pagoda plants, and what was called the "Tarzan tree" with lots of vines conveniently hanging down.  

We got soaked but then counted ourselves fortunate that we were in a tropical climate where we would dry out fairly quickly.  

We also enjoyed the black sand beaches, the Papenuo Surfing spots and the Faarumai Valley with its most photographed Faarumai Waterfall.

November 20, 2014


HuahineArrived at Huahine.  Like Kauai before the 90s, it was still an unspoiled paradise where time had seemingly stopped.  Only 400 residents who mostly grow cantalopes and watermelon.

We breakfasted on Eggs Florentine and a beautiful tropical fruit plate.  Sitting next to us was a two year old girl Aylah who, of course reminded us of little Elliott although he would have been much more social than she was.  The thing she missed most on the ship was her Frozen songs.  I told her father about the Disney Karaoke app ( a gift from son Trevor) that I never did get to download (on my phone).

We decided to go ashore and stroll around.  

The shuttle into town cost only $16 round trip but we had no idea it would be such a teeth-clenching ride through a wicked rainstorm and over the bridge between Huahine Nui and Huahine Iti.  

Another little girl  (3.5 years) named Lizzie agreed to pose with Aylah so we could have a photo of  future dating prospects (must be rich if they could start cruising at such a tender age) for Elliott.  

HuahineThe town of Faaa was a big surprise in that there was one of the biggest supermarkets we had ever seen filled with produced, grocery items, household wares and even clothing.  I took a photo of the french bread on display because it looked so delicious. 

Since this is the Garden Island and especially known for its vanilla plantations, we made it a point to purchase some vanilla pods.

Very expensive---something like $3.50 each, but we were told we didn't need to use very much to flavor any dish.  

In addition we were advised to "store" the pods (which were hermetically sealed to pass customs) in rum.  

Sounds like a plan. Vanilla comes from a beautiful white orchid plant.  

Huahine dancersHad we gone on one of the ship's excursions, we would also have seen the sacred maeva marae, a pearl farm, the 400 year old stone Polynesian fish traps and a vanilla plantation but we learned all about them from Douglas Pearson's photos although I did wonder what it would have been like to get a blue-eyed eel in my camera lens.  

Some dancers called the Mamas of Hueneme entertained aboard the ship.  They also offered many of their floral headpieces, jewelry and other carved wooden items for sale.  

It was an excellent show and we thoroughly enjoyed it from the cool waters of the swimming pool.  

November 21 was an at sea day.  We breakfasted with a delightful couple from San Diego we would keep bumping into during the course of the trip.  He told us about growing up in Santiago Chile and refusing to return until late in life.  He said his childrhood friends all came out to party with him---some four decades later and they hadn't changed a bit.


HuahinestormWhen at sea, the dining room is also open for lunch.  These were the best meals--the chef got really creative and used lots of local produce and fish.  We decided to have a Bloody Mary while waiting for a table and who should be sitting next to us but Douglas Pearson, the Polynesian expert onboard.  I only recognized him by his voice.  At the time I didn't have any questions for him but I could see he really wanted to disentangle himself from a rabid fan.  The price of being on TV.  We sat with an interesting couple from Arizona as we chowed down on Tortilla Soup and Greek Salad. Their son is stationed at Vandenberg and gave us their card to give to Nathan who will be stationed there after the first of the year.   Jon was ready for a siesta after lunch while I watched Pearson's Mutinty on the Bounty lecture.  

BrowncoconutWe were not looking forward to dinner since it would be formal and we would be seated with just the couple from Canada.  Martha was confined to her room with a (still undiagnosed fever) and Janet would be taking care of her.  The other couple from Arizona were going to try out the Italian restaurant since they hadn't packed formal clothes.  

Amir told us how he became rich.  No, we hadn't asked.  

Apparently a professor at Harvard, where he studied economics, lectured about investing but only investing OPM (other people's money).  

We would soon discover that Amir, who kept referring to Jon as "your worship," once he found out Jon was the current mayor of Port Hueneme, always returned to economics no matter what topic had been introduced.  

Jasneen, who of course shared her husband's values, proudly told a story about her six-year-old grandson wanting to know who got the house when she died.

She said she had already promised the house to the grownup grandson.  

The little guy demanded that he get the first two floors while the other grandson could have the basement.  

We laughed but hoped that the other two couples would return to our dinner table soon.

Snorkeling rangNovember 22.  Rangiroa and Snorkeling Day!

Rangiroa or Te Kokōta, is the largest atoll in the Tuamotus, and one of the largest in the world.  

We breakfasted with the Marilyn and Cindy (who had led us to the hand-painted pareo store in Papeete) and then were off to the tender for a full day of activities.  

We went via boat to "The Aquarium," the lagoon (so vast that it could fit the entire island of Tahiti inside of it)  that wraps around a motu (islet completely made of coral) and the water is crystal clear  

We donned our snorkel gear and jumped in.  

Jon figured out a way to adjust his mask so it wouldn't leak and enjoyed the experience as much as I did.  

Well not quite as much since tsnorkeling is an obsession of mine.  

Spotted a number of varities of tropical fish (including grouper, butterfly fish, and parrot fish) as well as colorful coral and giant clams opening and closing in the coral.  

On the way back we circled the other side of the island.  

PearlAfter we returned to the dock, we found out we could catch a free ride to a Pearl Factory if we are willing to endure a 30-minute wait.  

The pearl farm was a 20-minute bus drive away.  On the trip around the island we saw a number of modest houses, thousands of coconut palms, the Rangiroa Airport and the Mobil Oil facility  

Our lecturer was quite knowledgeable about the pearl seeding process, which originated in Japan.  

A mother-of-pearl bead is inserted in the three-year-old oyster together with a piece of tissue (mantle) taken from another pearl oyster.

Seeds used by this farm were tken from Mississippi River oysters.

The piece of tissue, as a graft tissue, develops quickly. The oyster forms a skin around the bead and then deposits mother of pearl on the surface of the bead. Bead rejection affects about 30% of the seeded shells, mainly because the graft tissue is not enough close to the bead.  

Even with perfectly round beads, only 20% of the pearls will be perfectly round at the harvest, about 2 years after the seeding. Holes are drilled in the shells and the oysters are hung on a rope which is lowered into the ocean.  They remain there from 18 to 24 months.  We watched as a worker opened four oysters.  Three of them contained huge black pearls with secondary colors ranging from pink to green.  The lecturer estimated the value at 300-400 Euros.  We found the shop prices were pretty steep and had already been advised that Papeete, which supplied certificates of authenticity, had the best values on black pearls.

BalconybreakfestDinner was short ribs, salad and garlic soup.  

We went out on our balcony and gazed at the planets and stars (Orion, Aquarius and Southern Cross).

November 23 Sea Day

Jon surprised me with a champagne breakfast out on the balcony.  

Our actual anniversary is the day we leave the ship so he decided to celebrate today (at dinner as well).  

I could get used to living like this.  

Worked on my column and saved the last flute of champagne for when I finished.  

It was quite a challenge typing on my iPhone.  

I did have a stylus with me to avoid the chubby finger mistakes so except for having to deal with Autocorrect, I managed to finish in just  few hours.  

Here's hoping the email actually gets to the Ventura County Star.  I am going to wait until a major port to send it.  


PaintingatpearlshopMet a really interesting couple at lunch although the husband, at least initially, seemed rather taciturn.  

Turned out he was a shrink.  He seemed surprised that I knew about Jung.  

When he discovered I had authored three books about politics and cinema, he wouldn't shut up.  Just wanted to rip-roaringly debate everything I said about "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  

It was like having a really bright student in class and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  So did he.  

Wanted to lend me a book he had just finished about Sidney Lumet.  I tried to summon up Lumet's filmology and except for "Dog Day Afternoon," was stumped.  Really missed not having IMBD so I could refresh my aging memory.  

Watched Person's presentation on Raiatea after lunch.  Doesn't look like snorkeling will be on the schedule for tomorrow.  

Dinner was fun.  Sat next to Janet and we traded stories about our lives.  She's from Tennessee, retired and divorced and really loves to travel.  She gave me a fun fact I'll try to slip into a column someday.  

It seems that the  Jack Daniels distillery is located in a dry county so when you tour their facility, all you get is a glass of lemonade.  

We also talked about the reasons collecting jewelry has become unimportant to both of us.  

She and I both had owned expensive and irreplaceable items that were stolen from our homes and had to cope with the loss.   Black pearls were not on either of our must-have lists.

There was too much cloud cover for stargazing tonight.  I am looking forward to watching the sun rise over Raitea "Bright Sky."

November 24

RaiateasunriseFive AM and the sunrise was spectacular---morphing from bright pink to deep red reflecting off of the nimbus clouds. This was supposedly the birthplace or Hawaiki of the Polynesian people.  The island is 12 million years old years old.  Some 12,800 people live on Raitea.  Captain Cook visited there in 1769.   

At breakfast we met a nice couple who own homes in both Toronto and Blythe CA.  

They were very interested in our trip to Easter Island.  

We were able to stroll around Uturoa---all three blocks of it.  

We stumbled on a little market where we found women making the flower headpieces for just a few dollars.  

RaiateaThey had also set up a table with samples of all the tropical fruits from the island.  The mango was sort of spicy and the taste exploded in my mouth.  The pineapple was completely edible including the core which was not tough like Hawaiian pineapples since only very small eyes grew on the outside.  

We also learned the legend of the Tiara Apetali, which only grows on Raiatea's Mt. Toomaru. 

Once upon a time, Vahine Moea, a young girl of an incomparable beauty lived in the valley of Araau in Raiatea. She met a fisherman called Ariifaite – from Taha’a. They got married and had a girl called Tiaitau.

One day Ariifaite returned home with the news that a missionary was teaching reading and writing. and if they moved to Opoa, he would teach their beautiful young girl.   When she was older, Raiatea Island - About - 1she met King Tamatoa and became his lover.

When King Tamatoa left Raiatea to join King Pomare of Tahiti in the battle of Fei Pi, he asked Tiaitau to wait for him at home. However, she feared she would never see him again.  

King Tamatoa tried to reassure her by saying that he was surrounded by his best warriors.  

She took a coconut and told him she would put it in the hole of Apo’o hihi ura. The coconut will travel underground and will emerge close to the sea at the Piha ura source.

RivercruiseFrom there, the coconut will float from one island to another and will follow you. If you are thirsty, take the coconut, make a hole and drink its water by bringing your mouth to it in the same way that you would do to kiss me.”

From the top of the mountain,  she saw the outrigger canoe of her beloved and said: “Oh! My heart hurts; it hurts very badly, my love! I will plant my arm in the ground of my mountain; then it will flower and its flower will have the visual aspect of my open hand. It will be this hand, which is a flower now, which will give you a sign of my love."   

Instead of touring the sister island of Tahaa, we decided to sign up for the Faaroa River Cruise.  The owner of the boat likes to let out the throttle and go full bore which requires passengers to hang on with both hands.  We traveled halfway around the island before reaching the river, a muddy brown with lots of palm trees and wild hibiscus growing on the shore.  

He told us that the yellow flowers only last a day and turn pink as they drop into the water.  

We spied some Polynesian women fishing.  Turned out that on the way back, they became coconut saleswomen.  We got to drink coconut milk just like King Tamatoa.   We wouldn't be getting off at the motu where the other people went snorkeling (we only had to pay half price because we hadn't brought our gear).

JononbalconyGlad to get back to the ship and change for dinner.  Sat next to Gary and we traded Asperger's stories (his grandson Max and my Brendan).  

For Italian Night, the chef prepared the most amazing garlic marinara sauce which you could get with penne pasta as either an appetizer or main course.

I sampled the Veal Scallopini---it was so tender you could cut it with a fork.  

We spent our post dinner time out on the balcony.  Even though rain clouds covered the stars, we could still spy big fish jumping out of the water.

November 25

Bora Bora 

Bora Bora, the eldest of the Society Islands, is a staggering 7 million years old.  It is halfway between morphing from an island to an atoll.  The island contains the remnants of an extinct volcano rising to two peaks, Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu (2,385 feet).  Bora Bora's major products are seafood and copra. According to a 2008 census, Bora Bora has a permanent population of 8,880.  Captain Cook visited the island in 1769,


Since we scheduled snorkeling for tomorrow, we headed ashore after breakfast to find a circle tour of the island.  

We were directed to Brunella Phillippe's 4 X 4.  

What a propitious moment that was.  She and I hit it off immediately and she invited me to ride up front with her while the other seven people  sat on benches in the back.

 Jon said he heard some discouraging words.  

She told me all about herself, her family and former clients.

She soon figured out that I love flowers and helped me to identify the ones that aren't in Southern California as well as the trees I didn't know.  

When I confessed that I hadn't tasted breadfruit she said she would stop at a roadside stand she knew and get me some.  

It was really doughy and she said she loves it with corned beef hash (of all things).  

Borabora2She introduced us to some musicians, one of whom created and carved the most beautiful ukeleles from four different kinds of wood.  Every one he picked up was perfectly in tune.  

You can tell where the stand is by the pareos fluttering in the breeze on the opposite side of the road.  

Around every corner was a picture perfect view of the most beautiful coastline.  

The sea is an incredible shade of azure blue (because of the coral sand that extends out for thousands of yards).  

All of the remaining sections of the crater were shrouded in fog and seemed so mysterious and ethereal---reminding us of Delphi.  

All of the really expensive hotels and the airport were located out on the reef that surrounded the rest of the sinking island where the blue collar people live.  

BoraboraEven so, the little shacks along the road were million dollar pieces of real estate.  

Brunella decided to take us to her own home.  

Her husband owns a cucumber and banana plantation up in the hills.  She calls Mt. Otemanu (2,380 feet) "my husband's mountain."  One member of our party raises cucumbers in South America so he took lots of photos of the cukes which averaged 18 inches long.  

The property was covered with Tiare Tahiti bushes but no breadfruit trees.  

Brunells sells hundreds of the tiare buds to the hotels.  Her grandson was working in her husband's garage---they co-own a car repair business and there's no lack of business on Bora Bora.  

The property also has a grotto as well as a marae.  

Noni

The flat rocks forming the backdrop to the marae came from the ocean 300 years before.  

Brunella also gave us some bananas from the plantation to eat---small but very sweet.  The grounds also included a couple of Noni trees.  

The famous prickly fruit which is white when ripe is used by the Polynesian to cure everything from headaches to erctile dysfuntion.  She told me she gives it to her dogs and cats (her 'babies") since there is no veterinarian on the island.

 

BloodyMary's1Our last stop was Blood Mary's, a famous bar on Bora Bora with its thatched roof, open sides, white sand floor, wooden slab tables and stools made of coconut stumps. Famous artists playing there include  Jimmy Buffet, Julio Iglesias, Commander Cody Ron Wood (Rolling Stones) as well as such celebrities as Pierce Brosnan Buzz Aldrin, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers. Jon agreed to pretend to hold up the roof as thousands of photo subjects before him have done. 

We hugged goodbye--like lifelong friends.  I still think of Brunella fondly. 

Dinner was lively.  Martha had finally been released from quarantine and Janet is always great fun.  Everybody loved the twice baked cheese souffle and orange roughy.  We had the Chocolate Lover's Delight for dessert.  

Came back to the room and feel asleep after "Despicable Me II."  So shoot me.  I love this kind of animation.

November 26

Borasnork1Today is snorkeling day.  

Breakfast with a couple from LA who had racked up 20 cruises already and then back to the room to get ready.

Learned several  interesting factoid from Douglas Pearson about the movie "Mutiny on the Bounty."  

Brando's first wife, Movita, had starred in the 1935 version of Mutiny, and was not too happy when her husband fell in love with Tarita Teripaia, his co-star in the 1962 version.  

Brando was so enamoured of the island lifestyle he actually purchased the island of Tetiaroa.

We boarded the boat and then set off for the first stop where Sting Rays and Reef sharks would be swimming WITH us.  

The captain gave us a special spray for our masks that was made from yellow hibiscus.

Borasnork2The rays, especially the females, were very friendly.  They came right up to me and snuggled against me.  

The sharks kept circling (there was a pair) and I swam over to get a closer shot with my underwater camera.  

One shark turned when he saw me, I clicked the shutter and then swam backwards.  

One of the deckhands was in the water with us and he coudn't wait to see my photos.  

Next stop was the Coral Garden where there were hundreds of tropical fish, colorful coral and giant clams.  

I just kept snapping away until I ran out of memory.  

Then I just paddled away, enjoying the serenity of the sea and lost all track of time.  

When I finally looked up, I saw I had moved pretty far away from the boat but I quickly swam back (not the last one).

ShipinpovaiebayThe captain told me I moved just like a fish.  I have to admit that I can float pretty well and am very relaxed in the water.  Jon said he really enjoyed himself too.  I am so glad I declined wearing fins. There were times when you had to stand up between coral beds or rocks and flippers would have made that very difficult.

Identified many varieties of tropical fish including: clownfish, puffer, hawkfish rainbow chubb and tang   The colors were amazing and patterns ranged from stripes, polka dots and rainbows.

I spent about an hour messing around with my photos and then it was time to dress (formal) for dinner.  

There was no lobster at the last formal dinner so Jasneen called over the Maitre d'  and complained.  She said if she had to dress up, the least the chef could do is serve lobster.  

Well we were offered as much lobster as we could eat this time.  Selected escargot for an appetizer (my first time).  We also had a great time sharing photos of Bora Bora.

After dinner we watched the 1935 version of "Mutiny on the Bounty" with Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone and Clark Gable.  

November 27 Thanksgiving and Moorea

ThanksgivingWell, before we entered the restaurant for breakfast, we were greeted by a garish display of  cooked turkeys decorated with little pictures made of fruits.  

Most people (not just Americans) just shook their heads when they saw it but everybody took a picture with their phones and posted it to FB.  

My guess is that the staff was most grateful we would all be leaving the next day.  

We found a circle tour of Moorea that also went up to two spectacular lookouts (Kia Ora and Le Belevedere).

We drove by the remnants of a marae (destroyed by missionaries) but didn't stop.  

Everybody enjoyed the Moorea Fruit Juice Factory, where we got to sample four different liquors made from (respectively) star fruit, papaya, ginger and vanilla.   I liked the star fruit liquor the best.  Tasted like a Mai Tai but with a bigger kick.  

MooeaOur guide was really funny but I don't think the old ladies understood his wit.  

He claimed to have six wives---one for every day of the week but Sunday when he needed to rest.   His told us that polygymy wasn't a Polynesian custom---just his.

He was impressively multilingual--fluent in Tahitian, French, Spanish and English.  

Unfortunately for a couple from Moscow who pouted like little children, he wasn't fluent in Russian.  

We were also agast when one of the women, who didn't leave the van when we stopped, had the nerve to complain that she had missed his lecture.

 Whose fault was that?

He promptly repeated everything he had told us about the origins of the Moorea National Park and showed us pictures of the land's original owner (Kruger) who sold the property to the people of Moorea for $1.  The voters subsequently refused to sell to a developer and hence the lush wilderness we were enjoying is now available to everybody.  


Moorea3We still owed him $100 (total) for our fares, but he wasn't in a hurry to collect (via ATM).  

The view (and photos) we got from the two lookouts (Kia Oro and Bellevedere) were well worth the climb up the crater.  

Our guide was quite knowledgeable about the flora (avocado , breadfruit, acacia and wild hibiscus which was used to coat snorkel masks, for toilet paper and as a cholesterol- and blood pressure-lowering tea), and fauna (Polynesian chickens).  

Instead of the inside of hibiscus branches, the Mooreans used leaves from the fara tree to thatch their roofs.  Our guide was not in favor of plastic thatching even though the material seemed realistic and lasted twice as long.  He said that replacing roofs with plastic had become a cottage industry on the island and provided new jobs but jobs that didn't last.   The 4- and 5-star hotels still used the original fara thatching.  


BelvedereWe went by the local shrimp farm which is only used domestically--no exporting.  We also saw the tupu crab holes nearby.  We had been told by Douglas Pearson that the tupu crabs are never eaten but our guide maintain that if you fed them coconut skins before you ate them, it would clean out all the stuff that made them inedible.  

At Belvedere, he told us that he had a private party of scholars for three days.  He said he didn't know what they had been smoking but they claimed if you drew a line from the sacred mountain (Bali Hai used in "South Pacific" ) through the center of the earth, you would wind up at the Great Pyramid in Egypt.  

Moorea2On the way around the other side of the island, the guide bought/cut fresh pineapples and bananas for us to sample.  

I really don't know how these guys make much money since gas in $9 a gallon but we were grateful for the experience.  

At the dock we looked over all of the stands.  I had no intention of getting a black pearl.

Circa late 70s, I had purchased a black pearl ring from one of those pick your oyster places in San Diego but eventually it disappeared from the setting when the glue gave way.  

One very modest black pearl (pink highlights) pendant caught my eye.  The black pearl was not the focal point but rather the oyster shell from which it came had been carved into an intricate pattern that I had seen on a number of tatoos.  Jon could see that I was quite taken with it and when the artist insisted I try it on, well, it did look great and was very special.  It cost much more than Jon's carved necklace but we both went home happy with our souvenirs that day.  

FlamingBack on the ship we had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner topped off by the Parade of the Baked Alaskas.  

You were supposed to wave your napkins around to cheer on the waiters who are carting flaming desserts, but, get real, this is a ship where open flames are verboten.  The flames were really lightbulbs.

November 28 Happy 16th Anniversary

Since we were supposed  to have our bags packed by 6PM the night before, we completed the  "idiot check" of the cabin and threw last night's wardrobe and our toiletries in our backpacks.  

We were shocked to see that most people did not follow the rules as to packing or even vacating their rooms by 8AM.  

I guess we have a lot to learn about cruising.  At any rate we breakfasted at the Buffet instead of the dining room (where I always got my daily chocolate croissant.)  I am pleased to report that I did enjoy "the breakfast of champions" (chocolate croissant) as well as scrambled eggs.  

I used up the last of my internet minutes as we retired to the Library.  I was in search of a tropical fish reference book but alas, no luck.  

There were huundreds of books but mostly fiction and not shelved in any sort of order.  Other folks joined us to work on their journals, read recreational material, or to finish their daily Sodoku.  The room was quite formally British but comfortable with overstuffed chairs and tables for writing and, of course, a non-functional fireplace.

 

 

Pacific Map
 

When I glanced at an atlas, it occured to us that we had "done" the entire Polynesian Triangle---starting 16 years ago today with our wedding on the island of Kauai.  

A few years later, we added New Zealand where the Maori settled.  

This year we added Easter Island and Tahiti.

The similarities among Polynesian settlements is quite striking.  We noted that one of the lookouts on Moorea was Kia Ora which is aalso a Maori greeting.  

The green stone (jade) carvings we bought and gave each other in New Zealand (a double symbol for infinity to be given to one's true love not purchased) was not unlike the carving of a different medium, (but still precious), namely the black pearl oyster shell we found on Moorea.  


GodpicturePolynesian chieckens, yams, bananas, mango and breadfruit can be found everywhere in the Polynesian Triangle.  It is no accident that Polynesians became great navigators---learning to read the waves and the stars from childhood---and gained great status in Polynesian settlements far from home.

We hadn't run into Douglas Pearson again but (except for the tupu crabs) he seemed to know his stuff.  My favoarite part of each lecture was when he would say "blah blah blah," because that indicated that while he knew that most members of his audience really didn't want to know everything he had to share, he couldn't help himself like any true scholar.

DrinkofdayWe really appreciated the way he pointed out connections, eg there is breadfruit in the Caribbean because of Captain Bligh's second voyage from Tahitit.  I wanted to visit him during his "comfy chair" hours but we never had enough time before dinner.  

You see. we were regular customers of the "Drink of the Day" and that was much more important to me than the burning question I finally had for Pearson.  

I wanted to know where to buy hibiscus tea.  While you could find fruit (papaya, mango, coconut) teas, nobody had bothered to produce hibiscus tea even though it grows wild on every island we visited.  

Our guides (athough all were natives of the particular island) varied in attitude from seeing the job this as but another way to make a living to viewing it as a calling.  

The Rapanui guide on Easter Island and the South African who took us up the river on Raiatea were all about how much everything cost while the big-hearted woman on Bora Bora and the quick-witted guide on Moorea gave us more than our money's worth---they  not only educated themselves through books (the nearest high school is on Tahiti and the college is in France ) but they also gave of themselves.  

TIn addition the latter were Polynesians who took it as a personal failing when one of their clients expressed being "unhappy" in any way.   They wanted everybody to be happy---whatever that means.

French Polynesia is made up of 110 islands but only 80 of them are inhabited.  There was so much to learn about the Polynesian culture, flora, fauna, geology, relition and even their attitudes toward the U.S.  I have to say Easter Islanders loved America primarily because of NASA's lengthening of the airport runway which had the unintended consequence of allowing more tourists to visit.  Society Islanders love America because our troops protected the islands during WWII.  The fortifications are a still a sight-seeing highlight on Bora Bora.  Everybody spoke English.  The only thing that seems to be slowing the tourist trade to the Society Islands is the limited number of airlines that are allowed to serve Papeete.  Without competition, the cost of flying is astronomical.  In fact the cruise line was actually subsidizing its passengers. Still we saw many hotels underbooked and we were shocked to see the ruins of Club Med on Moorea where there were just not enough customers.  The owners of Club Med walked away when their lease on the property got too expensive to pay.

Biggest grocery store                         Huanine

Prettiest scenary                                   Moorea

Most cosmopolitan                               Tahiti

Best river cruise                                    Raitea

Most romantic (wedding destination)    Bora Bora

Most tropical fish (snorkeling)              Rangiroa

Most interesting history                       Rapa Nui

Most colorful coral                               Bora Bora

Best people watching                           Tahiti

Best place to mix with natives              Tahiti

Best Bloody Mary                                  Pacific Princess

CabaretloungeOnce we disembarked, which was a breeze compared to our Panama cruise ship, we stil had three hours to kill before we could enjoy the airconditioned comfort of our room at the Tiare Tahiti.  

After some serious people-watching, we returned to the Papeete Cathedral to give thanks for a safe and wonderful trip and enjoyed the same sense of serenity.  

This time we noticed the stained glass panels on the sides of the interior.  Each of them were Polynesian interpretations of a specific Bible verses.  

PapeetemarketWe also had time to visit the Papeete Marketplace.  So much to see what with all the fresh produce, stalls of relatively inexpensive souvenirs and bundles of fresh flowers for arrangements, leis or headpieces.  

We noticed that most of the women who worked with tourists wore the high-necked muu muu and headpieces made from silk flowers.  I was tempted to get a henna tatoo but we seem to be out of francs.

The first thing we did when we got our room was take a shower.  

Humidity was over 90%.  it's best just to drip dry and let evaporation do the work of a swamp cooler.  

Jon took a nap and I listened to a book on Audible.  

Jon wanted to visit the food trucks for dinner but since it was our anniversary, I insisted on a white tablecloth and comfortable seating.  

Le Retro was just a few blocks away and except for the pounding techno music, an acceptable choice.  We took advantage of Happy Hour by ordering two Mai Tais upfront.  we went went the waiters recommendations and we weren't disappointed with the Seared Tuna or the poisson trois (mahi mahi, swordfish and shrimp)  For dessert we shared Moelleux au Chocolate (souffle).  



PapeetekidsNovember 29 Time to Say Adieu

After a petitie dejeuner that included a chocolate croissant, coffee and juice we headed out.  We wouldn't be checking out until 9:00 PM for a midnight flight home. 

Jon wanted to check out the Alternative Tahiti Festival.  Eco-propaganda but a great place to see Tahitian families--especially the beautiful children, many of whom had one non-native parent.  

Apparently the residents of Papeete absolutely adore MacDonald's and we saw them queued up with lines starting outside the doors to get $10 burgers.  

Jon loved a tee shirt he saw that inverted the M (McDonalds) so it read "W for worst food in the world."  

 

 

 

PapeetepearlsWe strolled down the Rue du Commandant Destremeau to visit the Pearl Musium which proved very informative.  We saw a bra completely made of black perarls, a tableau depicting pearl seeding, another tableau depicting pearl diving which is still the only source of non-cultivated pearls, island beauties wearing pearls or offering them up to the gods.  

 

 

We also wanted to visit the Paofai Church but the protestants not only locked the doors but the gates as well.

A couple of painted murals (whales and Tahitian girl)  begged for their closeups.

  PapeetesightsThe Paofai Gardens went on for blocks and included a couple of playgrounds equipped with rides we hadn't seen before, restroom facilities disguised as thatched huts and a waterlily pool and fountain.  

We decided to break for lunch at Chez Jimmy which served up some very potent curried chow mein.  

The open air restaurant also povided some interesting people-watching as well.

It looked like rain so we decided to head back to the hotel.  


We went out later after the rain stopped to catch the bands that were now playing at the Festival and Jon picked up a cheese crepe at the good trucks.  By the time we checked out, it was a veritable monsoon.

 We got drenched getting into the cab but made it to the airport in plenty of time.  

Jon bought me a purse at the airport.  It was green with a black word cloud that included all of the islands we had visited (so I wouldn't forget).  He's so thoughtful.  

November 30

Slept on the plane, made it through customs in record time but met with the big bottleneck when trying to exit the door at LAX.  It seems that there was a plumbing problem so all of the other exits were closed.  Our towncar driver was waiting and she made it back through the rain we had brought with us from Tahiti.   We were so happy to see our condo and Chloe waiting for us.  Travel is great but Jon's Mom may be right---home is the best.

Ventura County Star columns on French Polynesia trip

Part III 

 

December 10, 2014 in Easter Island and French Polynesia | Permalink | Comments (0)

UNUSUAL INTERPRETATIONS RISE FROM EASTER ISLAND

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This is the second in a two-part series from Easter Island published on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014 in the Ventura County Star.

In a 1956 broadcast of Robert Nathan's satirical "Report on the WeUns," we learned that anthropologists in 7956 CE unearthed the ruins of an ancient civilization identified only by the hieroglyphic symbols "USA."

The scholars attempted to piece together a theory about  the people from words on a deteriorating monument and from curious artifacts buried deep in rubble.

For example, from finding a number of small golden idols in a region known as "Holy-Wood," they concluded that the population worshipped a god named "Os-Car."  

Further, they insisted that the evidence for this deity demanding human sacrifice were the permanent imprints of victims' hands and feet that had been left in front of a highly ornate temple. 

 I was reminded of the same scholastic hubris so gleefully skewered by Nathan in "Report on the WeUns" as I read the various books (all containing the word "mystery" in the title) about Easter Island. 

 So what do we really know about the Rapanui culture?  Short answer? Not much. The written record in the form of Rongo Rongo script (pictured above)  has proven untranslatable and any oral history died out around the same time (18th Century) the population was decimated and the Moai (iconic faces) came tumbling down.

 What remains for anthropologists and other scholars to study is located at some 35,000 archeological sites including nearly 1000 Moai, 300 Ahu (long platforms on which statues are mounted), hundreds of petroglyphs, Hare Moa (rock houses for chickens), Manavai (rock enclosures for gardens), Hare Paenga (thatched houses shaped like overturned canoes), Umu (volcanic rock-lined earth ovens), Taheta (red scoria urns carved from Moai topknots) and a number of still extant Kava Kava statues (carved wooden representations of the spirits supposedly glimpsed by Tuu Hoiku, the eldest son of Hotu Matua'a). 

We do know that a population that had, at one time, peaked at 20,000 was reduced to only 111 after Peruvian slave raiders visited in 1862 and that previous European intruders had also brought fatal diseases from smallpox to syphilis to the Rapanui.   

If the stowaway Polynesian rats (who devoured all the palm tree seeds) weren't  enough, from 1903 to 1953, the introduction of 70,000 sheep by the Scottish firm of Williamson, Balfour & Co. did manage to wipe out the rest of Easter Island's vegetation.  

 When Captain James Cook landed in 1774, the Huri Moai (statue-toppling) was already in progress and would continue until 1838 when the last one---the largest and only "named" Moai ("Paro")---ended up face down. 

 Nobody has yet been able to definitely explain the giant "living faces" with respect to:  cultural significance (ancestor worship or expensive memorials), the mode of transportation (sled, rollers or rocking steadily forward as if "walking"), the abrupt halt to production or the reason the statues were unceremoniously toppled (war, earthquake or loss of religious faith). 

Two outsiders who earned the trust and appreciation of the Rapanui were Father Sebastian Englert, who managed to trace the Rapanui lineage back more than 50 generations, and Katherine Routledge, whose interviews of the remaining elders provided information about the Birdman Competition, a meritocracy-based government and cult that replaced monarchical rule (by descendants of Hotu Matua'a) and the mysterious monoliths. 

In order to stabilize the culture,the warrior class (as opposed to the priests and king) came up with a belief system based on an ancient god called Make Make.  

 A yearly competition would determine which chief (of one of the 12 villages) would rule all of Rapa Nui for the next 12 months. 

The Hupu Manu (athletic competitors) representing each village were required to descend a thousand-foot cliff at Orongo, swim through shark-infested waters to the farthest islet (Motu Nui) and capture the first egg laid by a Manutara (Sooty Tern). 

 At that point, the winner signaled his chief that he would be the new ruler---provided his egg remained intact. 

 The victorious chief was required to do two things I think all future US presidents should consider: to shave their heads and eyebrows in an act of humility and to live alone for the first five months of their tenure. 

 Of course this 150-year-old tradition was terminated by missionaries once they arrived circa 1860. 

 Several myths have been busted by carbon dating, DNA and forensic anthropology:  the sweet potato (as Thor Heyerdahl contended) did not prove Easter Island was settled by South Americans, the Kava Kava (with sunken eyes and exposed ribs) did not prove that a famine was caused by over-exploitation of natural resources and caves filled with bones did not prove warfare and cannibalism ever existed on Rapa Nui. 

The so-called experts aren't always right. Consider this scenario:  some 6000 years hence, alien anthropologists discover the fragment of a cross in the strata below the crumbling ruins of a stadium.  

Couldn't they just as erroneously surmise that Christianity gave way to a new religion known as the NFL?

Just something else for you to think about.

December 03, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

AN UNLIKELY STORY OF SUCCESS AT EASTER ISLAND

Ahu Tangeriki This is the first in a two-part series from Easter Island published on Wednesday, November 19, 2014 in the Ventura County Star

Visiting Rapa Nui---the name preferred by residents even though it's a 19th Century designation---headed my bucket list, especially after studying Jared Diamond's blockbuster "Collapse."  

Touching down at Mataveri International Airport in a wide-body jet was not even possible until 1987, when NASA lengthened the runway to 10,885 feet. The spur, however, was not to boost tourism but rather the need for an emergency-landing site for the Space Shuttle. 

 My first impression of Easter Island? Tiny, barren and uber-remote.

 With square mileage comparable to Thousand Oaks, Rapa Nui's population of 6,000 annually plays host to 80,000 tourists and their sizable (80 percent) contribution to the economy.

 The most photographed site is Ahu Tongariki, where 15 moai (iconic giant statues) stand guard and tour guides spin out their personal version of the Hotu Matu'a's myth.  

 The "Great Parent" and his followers, legend has it, sailed---against the wind---thousands of miles to Te Pito Te Henua ("Land’s End"). Conveying cultivated plants and domesticated animals in double-hulled canoes, they arrived, according to carbon-dated artifacts, around 700 CE.

Hotu Matu'a would eventually subdivide the island among a dozen clans. Not only would his "map" serve for 57 generations but its return as a replacement for Chilean rule is also the fervent hope of independence activists seeking a favorable judgment at The Hague.

If you read "Collapse," you learned that Easter Island is the "clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources."

According to Diamond, once slash-and-burn tree clearing commenced, it didn't stop until the entire island, once as lush with tropical vegetation as Kauai, was completely denuded. Palms were also harvested to transport moai.

Diamond labeled such self-destructive behavior "ecocide" and warned that Easter Island's fate might, one day, be our own.

No less an authority than the History Channel reports that the shortsighted Rapa Nui, in a competitive frenzy to produce increasingly gargantuan statues and feed an exploding workforce, were unmindful they might consume every tree on the island.

Subsequently the ferocious winds and tropical storms that still plague the island eroded the topsoil so the Rapa Nui couldn't farm. Without wood for boats, they couldn't fish. The resulting famine, the History Channel argues, led to civil war and even cannibalism.

Of course, if you read Eric von Danniken's "Return to the Stars," you also learned that extra-terrestrials (supposedly stranded on Easter Island) "extracted a [number of colossal statues] from the volcanic stone…which they set up on stone pedestals along the coast so they were visible from afar."  

Rubbish.  Perhaps you need to see for yourself. Visit Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater quarry where dozens of uncompleted statues remain or hike down to one of the 1,450 subterranean manavani (walled enclosures) that protect plants from the weather or marvel at tales of athletic prowess by Bird Man competitors. You can't help but be impressed by Rapa Nui ingenuity, creativity and resilience. 

These were not crazy people who allowed an obsession with ancestor worship to destroy their environment. The evidence of their elaborate system of dams, reservoirs and channels to manage water on an essentially arid island or lithic forges that split rocks for use in construction and/or leaching nutrients into the soil contradicts such nonsense.

In their book, "The Statues that Walked," Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo conclude, "Rather than a case of abject failure," what happened to the people on Easter Island "is an unlikely story of success."  

Contrary to Diamond’s hypothesis, researchers---from fossil hunters to paleobotanists---have discovered no scientific evidence that the Polynesian settlers  burned trees.

The trees did die--- but rather than holding human beings culpable, Hunt and Lipo blame the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans) that stowed away aboard Hotu Matu'a's catamarans.   

Once the ravenous rodents hopped out on Easter Island---without predators yet with delectable palm sprouts/roots/seeds to munch on---they went forth and multiplied.  Remember a rat population can double in 47 days. 

The indigenous people might have cleared out some of the palm trees but the rats were responsible for preventing new growth.

Yet the plucky Rapa Nui played their own riff on "when life hands you lemons…"  As J.B. MacKinnon reports in "The Once and Future World," archeologists examining ancient garbage heaps on Rapa Nui found "that 60 percent of the discarded bones came from introduced rats."  There's no need to eat one's fellow man when one has an alternative form of protein.

Furthermore, an extensive forensic anthropology study of over 100,000 skeletons cited in Jo Anne Van Tilburg's "Easter Island: Archeology, Ecology and Culture" reveal scant evidence of malnutrition, cannibalism and/or violent (civil war) death.

Diamond's claim of ecocide, while it makes for effective extreme environmentalist scare mongering, just doesn't pass the common sense test---but more next time.

December 03, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

ROAD SCHOLAR MAKES LEARNING A LIFELONG ADVENTURE

 

 

 Published in the Nov. 5, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

GIRAFFESMetus secretus — that's Latin for "fear of retirement."

Apparently, this particular phobia has begun to afflict the 78 million Americans, largely now in their fifties and sixties, who are also known as "baby boomers." Their fear comes from being forced to face a brand new stage of life that may well extend over three decades before they will shuffle off this mortal coil.

Yet, we boomers aren't really without an instruction manual when it comes to retirement. All we have to do is follow the courageous examples provided by our Greatest Generation parents or grandparents. These highly adaptive folks, who saw the average life span vault from 54 to 79 years, were the first to be confronted with the question, "Now what will I do with all this (leisure) time on my hands?"

In his 1976 book, "Master Class: Living Longer, Stronger and Happier," author Peter Spiers attributes the success of Greatest Generation retirees to "the particular combination of all the things they do — interacting with and helping other people in pleasurable and purposeful ways; getting their bodies moving in ways that keep their hearts strong, keep their muscles toned, and — this is important — keep oxygen flowing to their brains; exercising those brains with complex games and projects; and creating new things ranging from family trees and memoirs to furniture and oil paintings."

In other words, our parents or grandparents role-modeled what turned out to be a happy and satisfying retirement. They adopted a lifestyle that included physical exercise, regular involvement with family/friends and a commitment to some form of lifelong learning.

One of the ways they were able to combine all three was a trailblazing continuing education program called Elderhostel. The brainchild of world traveler Marty Knowlton and university administrator David Bianco, Elderhostel took the affordable travel and instant camaraderie inherent in European youth hostels and applied it to the typical not-for-credit college offerings geared toward the senior citizen wishing to maintain mental acuity.

Since its founding in 1975, Elderhostel (rebranded to Road Scholar in 2010 when the geezer image implied by the name caused boomers to balk at joining) has enrolled more than 5 million participants.

Road Scholar is certainly a far cry from the initial effort that signed up 220 pioneers on a handful of New Hampshire college campuses nearly 40 years ago. The number of educational adventure choices has swelled to a staggering 5,500 — not only available in every state, but in 150 countries as well.

For cash-strapped retirees, the affordable cost is a big draw. The average charge for a domestic program ($173 a day) includes accommodations, meals, lectures, activities, transportation, taxes, gratuities and insurance. Furthermore, each year, Road Scholar awards nearly $150,000 in scholarships to adults who might otherwise not be able to attend.

While the national headquarters is located in Boston, the city of Ventura, which serves as a regional hub for Road Scholar, offers a number of stimulating instructive opportunities close to home — from an expert-led watercolor workshop to a tasting tour of Ventura County farmlands to an exploration of Channel Islands National Park (the American version of the Galapagos).

Since 1985, when the first intergenerational program paired grandparents and grandchildren, oldsters and youngsters have been creating enduring memories together. Today, participants can choose from more than 100 tours/activities that take place on five different continents.

I've got my eye on three possibilities situated right here in California.

The first, which is more suitable for younger (7-11 years) grandchildren, is a photographic safari on a 400-acre private wildlife preserve that looks remarkably like Africa, yet is located just outside Santa Rosa.

The second is a comic book camp for teens (13-16 years) in Hollywood that includes the collaborative creation of an original 25-panel superhero comic and the production of a short film.

The third, also for teens (13-15), is a behind-the-scenes look at forensic science with experienced police officers, crime scene investigators, a forensic entomologist and a ballistics specialist.

According to the 2010 census, 70 million Americans are grandparents. Sixty percent of them are also baby boomers, afflicted or about to be with the dreaded "fear of retirement."

The American Grandparent Association reports that grandparents already spend $77 billion a year on travel.

Sharing our passion for seeing new places and learning new things with the younger generation has to be a no-brainer for most of us.

In Japan, ikagai is not only a commonly used but also a singularly powerful expression. Loosely translated, ikagai means "purpose," "meaning" or "joy in life."

According to the AGA, 72 percent of those surveyed believe that "being a grandparent is the single most important and satisfying thing in my life." Ikagai.

So, you say you suffer from metus secretus? Road Scholar just might have a remedy for you.

Beverly Kelley writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 

November 05, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

FROM EBOLA TO ELECTIONS---FEAR MONGERING WORKS

 
 

EBOLAAn airline passenger sneezes, cracks-wise ("I have Ebola. You're all screwed.") and is immediately escorted from the plane by powder blue hazmat-suited personnel. That's exactly what happened on Oct. 8, aboard US Airways flight 845 from Philadelphia to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Ebola is certainly no laughing matter, but even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises: "The risk of spreading Ebola to passengers or crew on an aircraft is low because Ebola spreads by direct contact with infected body fluids," 72 percent (Economist/YouGov poll) of Americans now view Ebola as a major public health threat.

Why? Critics blame the ratings-ravenous media.

Fearful American health care workers, as the result of media images of people in Africa totally sheathed in full-body hazardous-material suits, are demanding, according to The New York Times, similar uber-expensive protection — despite the unlikelihood of ever encountering an Ebola victim in their hospitals.

Given our "say-anything-to-win" campaign culture, predictably, Ebola has also become politicized.

Conservative Republicans, wishing to fuel the anti-immigration-reform movement, are painting Latino immigrants as Ebola carriers. Democrats, seeking to defend Obamacare, are pointing out that Thomas Eric Duncan was not only the first Ebola fatality in this country, but also the only patient who was both black and uninsured.

Fear mongering works — even when the fear is manufactured. Why? Political "shock-and-awe" scare tactics, which can't bear close scrutiny in light of the facts, do their damage before the other side can mobilize. In addition, there is no significant consequence for frightening voters, even if you lie.

Just browse through the slick glossy mailers choking your mailbox. You are being told that if you don't vote against a particular candidate or against a proposed ballot measure, women will lose the right to choose, veterans will starve and Social Security will be abolished (to catalog just a few).

And if you feel apprehensive while reading these mailers, that's exactly the way six-figure political consultants want you to feel. They are trusting that you will be so willing to relieve the tension (and stress triggers all manner of life-threatening maladies, don't forget), you will, as Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance theory predicts, immediately disengage your brain and/or your common sense.

Ever since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) allowed unlimited spending by corporations and unions to call for the defeat of individual candidates, fear mongering in political ads has skyrocketed.

Is fear mongering ethical? In the Journal of Advertising, a research team led by University of Nevada's Tony L. Henthorne argued that any level of fear that is not "psychologically ‘comfortable'" is unethical.

Still, who uses the words "ethics" and "politics" in the same sentence anymore?

But if you don't care about doing good, how about doing well? It's no accident that such global icons as Coca Cola and McDonalds refuse to allow their "brands" to be advertised using fear appeals. Since a wholesome family image is key to the constant expansion of their customer base, these corporations even avoid buying commercial time anywhere near the evening news, when folks might associate their products with negative reports.

Furthermore, fear mongering can always backfire. When too much anxiety is created via fear appeals, the target, according to a study published in Social Marketing Quarterly, just gives up. In politics, an overly anxious voter just doesn't vote.

The Guardian's David Batty noted in 2001 that creators of public service ads were turning away from "the hard-hitting scare tactics that turn people off" and opting for humor instead.

The wisdom of that move has been borne out by scores of recent empirical studies. According to various researchers, humor consistently engages the audience's attention, increases name recognition, induces positive feelings, boosts likability, fosters assessments of trust and can even overcome resistance to persuasion.

The New York Times is predicting "an explosion of spending on political advertising on television — set to break $2 billion in congressional races, with overall spots up nearly 70 percent." Unfortunately for beleaguered voters, most ads will be fear-based.

"Money has always been the bully's currency in politics," observes Christopher Lamb in the Huffington Post. "But never before in political advertising have the affluent spent so much on the effluent. Humor, however, contains the acids to cut through the effluence and show us the light at the end of the sewer."

Humor, likewise, diffused a potential panic aboard Flight 845. In a YouTube video that went viral, the flight attendant prepared her freaked-out passengers with the following words, "I know you all have your phones and your, you know, video and all that stuff. That's up to you and the video and the stuff. But stay out of their (hazmat guys') faces and out of their way. And, please, only take good shots of me. OK?"

OK.

Beverly Kelley writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

October 21, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

LOOK WHAT'S BEHIND THE DOOR TO PRUETER LIBRARY

DorothysDollsPublished in the October 8, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

 

The Pulitzer prize-winning author (“Winds of War”) Herman Wouk once wrote: “The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness and success is the modest door of the public library.”

On Sept. 22, 1989, the 15,065-square-foot Ray D. Prueter Library was dedicated and named in honor of the beloved Port Hueneme mayor who served from 1962 to 1974.

Prueter led the city during a dozen years marked by such major construction projects as a shopping center, various residential buildings and subdivisions, the fishing pier, Hueneme Beach Park, the Hueneme Boys Club, the community center, the post office and an extensive ($4.9 million bond issue) expansion of the harbor.

The bespectacled, open-faced and perpetually smiling Prueter was a regular visitor to his namesake library. He often introduced himself to the children browsing the shelves and then chuckled when they would recognize him as “The Library Man.” He was also known to make an impromptu donation of pricey educational materials whenever he discovered that such supplies were out of the financial reach of the small town library.

While the self-deprecating Prueter, who passed away at 87 on April 7, 2008, was tickled at the prospect of having a library named after him, he also took special pride in the building’s unique features.

The ocean, so cherished by Prueter as well as the folks who populate Port Hueneme, is front and center in the wave-like forms of a roof designed to maximize use of natural light as well as the sea-colored Italian glass mosaics that decorate the outside and inside of the entryway.

On Sunday, Oct. 19, the interior of the cheerful, sunlit building will be transformed into a bit of old England as the Friends of the Library welcome more than 100 guests to their Victorian High Tea fundraiser. Even though Prueter’s widow, Laura, currently resides in Montana, she never fails to send a generous check.

But you don’t have to have a building named for you to be, in local historian Powell Greenland’s words, “one of a great number of individuals, beginning with William E. Barnard” (who founded Wynema in 1869) that contributed to Port Hueneme’s evolution into “The Friendly City by the Sea.”

In fact, in April 1937, when the first Oxnard Harbor District Commission, consisting of a Hueneme banker (E.O. Green), an Oxnard businessman (Eugene H. Agee) and a Somis rancher (Fred M. Aggen) proposed naming the still uncompleted harbor “Port Bard,” Richard Bard politely declined. It seemed “less fitting and, in the long run, less desirable than the old-established historical name that has been used since the days of Cabrillo.”

Last week, the Port Hueneme Historical Museum Commission inaugurated its “People Who Made a Difference” series by displaying the personal doll collection of longtime resident Dorothy Ramirez.

The diminutive Ramirez, known for her boundless energy and bowl-cut hair (more salt than pepper), died just a year ago at age 98.

Helen Brant, whose friendship with Ramirez spanned an awe-inspiring 75 years, listed a lengthy litany of honors awarded by the community organizations that Ramirez faithfully served over the years, including the highly coveted “Woman of the Year in California” title in 1998.

Yet, Brant provided the best insight into Ramirez with an apparently off-the-cuff remark. Both Ramirez and Brant had been 20-year proprietors of competing grocery stores. “But we would borrow (merchandise) from each other,” Brant confided. Can you imagine such unselfish cooperation between Ralphs and Vons?

Larry and Roberta Downing told me about Ramirez’s role in acquiring the Lillis Waters’ estate for the Port Hueneme Historical Museum. When the former mobile home resident died, Waters’ heirs offered her 1,522 pairs (a Guinness record?) of salt and pepper shakers — but with the proviso that the unique collection be prominently displayed.

Undaunted, Ramirez made it happen — from having floor-to-ceiling glass cabinets built in Ojai to helping to remove decades of accumulated grime from ceramic figurines ranging from naughty to charming to politically incorrect to nice.

During her 30-minute talk to a standing-room-only audience, an eloquent Elizabeth Babchuk introduced her mother’s favorite dolls — each accompanied by an account that amusingly illustrated a different component of Ramirez’s altruistic yet still complicated persona.

The real-life lessons imparted by the dolls gathered during Ramirez’s travels all over the world, however, remain twofold. Despite days overflowing with volunteering, she was still able to find a healthy balance between work and play and to avoid taking herself too seriously — even though her life would touch hundreds of others.

Ramirez also realized that it’s not really important that the floor, ceiling and walls of a building bear your name. It’s only the door, you see, that counts — the door you open for somebody else to arrive at a better place.

Beverly Kelley writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

If you go

What: “Dorothy’s Dolls” will be on display for the next three months at the Port Hueneme Historical Society Museum.

Where:  220 N. Market St., Port Hueneme. Museum tours by appointment.

Info: Call 488-2023 or email phc@huenemechamber.com.

 

October 07, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

TEA ISN'T HILLARY, BUT SHE IS A WOMAN IN CHARGE


Madamsecretary_pilot_leoniivanek_1200_article_story_largePublished in the September 23, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

On the bulletin board above my computer is an autographed 8-by-10-inch color glossy of Martin Sheen. He's decked out as the fictional President Josiah Bartlet — the picture of rolled-up shirt sleeved power, resolutely perched on his Oval Office desk.

Whenever I feel alienated from and disappointed with real-world politics, this photograph, or rather the idealized "West Wing" world it represents, provides a (temporary) source of comfort.

And I'm not alone in my dissatisfaction with government. In fact, a January 2014 Gallup poll reported that 65 percent of Americans feel the same way, the highest percentage in Gallup's trend since 2001.

It's been more than 14 years since Aaron Sorkin's "The West Wing" premiered on NBC's Wednesday-night lineup but, according to Vanity Fair's Juli Weiner, "given the currency it still seems to enjoy in Washington, the frequency with which it comes up in D.C. conversations and is quoted or referenced on political blogs," people don't realize the final episode aired on May 14, 2006.

"In part," Weiner continues, "this is because the smart, nerdy — they might prefer ‘precocious' — kids who grew up in the early part of the last decade worshipping the cool, technocratic charm of Sorkin's characters have today matured into the young policy prodigies and press operatives who advise, brief and excuse the behavior of the most powerful people in the country."

CBS is hoping that "Madam Secretary," which premiered Sunday, will do the same for future female diplomats.

Téa Leoni plays cleverly-written Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst who jettisons her career in academia when an old pal (Keith Carradine as President Conrad Dalton) asks her to pick up the reins at the State Department.

Her first crisis involves two "stupid kids" who travel to the Mideast, are seized by militants and threatened with death. The parallel with recent Isla
mic State executions is impossible to ignore.

But don't look for any similarities between McCord and Olivia Pope ("Scandal") or Claire Underwood ("House of Cards") or even (probable) presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"Considering that secretary of state is surely one of the least glamorous positions in the federal government," writes Kevin Drum in Mother Jones, "it's pretty hard not to see this as a fairly transparent attempt to make Hillary look like presidential timber."

"It's a TV show, right," asks actor Tim Daly, who plays the husband of Leoni's character. He claims that the primary purpose of the show is to entertain people — not to make a documentary to support Hillary Clinton's supposed run for the presidency.

Echoing Daly, writer Barbara Hall ("Homeland") admitted that while Clinton might have served as inspiration in the early stages, many other politicians — both male and female — ultimately shaped the McCord persona.

Leoni, who named her daughter Madelaine after Madeleine Albright, told the Fresno Bee that McCord was based on "Madeleine Albright's fierce diplomacy and wit, mixed with Hillary's charm and dynamic womanhood. And, it's also Condoleezza Rice's courage, intelligence — and legs."

Of course, being accused of favoring Clinton's candidacy under the guise of providing entertainment remains a sore spot for several networks.

In 2005, conservative groups claimed that "Commander in Chief" (Geena Davis) was a thinly veiled attempt by ABC to smooth the way for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in 2008.

Then, of course, last year the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups lobbied successfully to prevent NBC from proceeding with a miniseries starring Diane Lane as Mrs. Clinton. In addition, CNN was also persuaded to abandon a green-lit documentary on Hillary as well.

In a Salt Lake Tribune interview, executive producer Lori McCreary ("Invictus") said "Madame Secretary" was the answer to such questions as "What's life like for the secretary of state," who has to balance "an incredibly heavy workload with a personal life? And how do you even plan a single moment of your life, a baseball game, when at any minute you could be dealing with rocket attacks in Israel, a military coup in Pakistan and a border crisis with Mexico?"

The ability of "The West Wing" to propel optimistic young people into politics was all the more remarkable given the countless political scandals hogging the headlines from 1999 to 2006. The show reminded fans that while government may be overpriced, glacially inefficient and inundated in unscrupulous power-grabbers, some folks in Washington are actually trying to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, the glass ceiling in the real Oval Office has yet to be penetrated. For Morgan Freeman, who also serves as an executive producer on "Madam Secretary," the best thing about his show is what happens when a principled female is put in a position with some say-so.

Apparently, sparks fly and people can't help but keep on watching.

I might need to make room for Téa Leoni on my bulletin board as well.

Beverly Kelley writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

 

September 23, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

WHAT PIT BULLS CAN TEACH US ABOUT STEREOTYPING

 Photo courtesy of Buzzfeed

Enhanced-buzz-19681-1377106073-0She was just seeking a timeout from browsing the stands at the dog-friendly Hueneme Beach Festival. Her petite brown-eyed Shih Tzu, black nose daintily sniffing the air, was leading the way.

All of a sudden, while pointing to the humongous hound next to us, the woman scooped up her pooch. "What kind of dog is that?" she demanded of the young man. He was busy chowing down a red-sauce slathered burrito.

"Pit bull," he mumbled. His dog continued to snooze serenely at his feet.

Not only did her face convulse in horror, but she abruptly turned on her heel to beat feet back from whence she came.

I have no idea why he misidentified the obvious Great Dane-mix as a pit bull. Perhaps it was a joke. All I know is that the gentle giant who had been securely leashed and under his complete control was paying absolutely no attention to our (mouthful-sized) Yorkie — or us. We felt completely safe.

So why did the lady with the Shih Tzu take a powder? Three studies are relevant to understanding her response.

The first two reveal that experts and/or the media frequently misidentify pit bulls.

According to a Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science experiment, dog adoption agency officials were proved wrong 87.5 percent of the time in pinpointing specific breeds in a canine's ancestry by DNA analysis.

And when National Canine Research Council's Karen Delise examined every fatal dog bite reported between 2002-05, she discovered that although 23 percent of the dogs in question lacked any pit bull characteristics, they were still counted as such by the media.

The third study blames the media for amping up the fear factor with respect to pit bulls. According to a 2008 National Canine Research Council survey, attacks by pit bulls invariably go national while attacks by other breeds, even if lethal, garner only local coverage.

So what can a fear of pit bulls teach us about racial profiling?

The raw data behind it seems indisputable. African-Americans are found guilty of a disproportionate number of crimes in the United States.

Yet, what if law enforcement officers routinely misidentify African-Americans as potential criminals? Unfortunately, being stopped for "driving while black" remains a rite of passage for most African-American males in this country — no matter what their bank balance, educational achievement or social standing.

Of greater consequence, however, what if eyewitnesses routinely misidentify African-Americans as the perpetrators of a crime? According to the most recent Innocence Project statistics, not only was eyewitness misidentification testimony a factor in 73 percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases, but of the 317 wrongfully accused, 199 were African-Americans.

Malcolm Gladwell defined racial profiling as a "category problem." "Generalizations," he wrote in The New Yorker, "involve matching a category of people to a behavior or trait — overweight middle-aged men to heart attack risk, young men to bad driving (by insurance companies). But for that process to work, you have to be able both to define and to identify the category you are generalizing about."

Pit bulls, at least, get better publicity these days. Journalists, seeking to "balance" articles on pit bulls, have stumbled across an American Temperance Testing Society study that reports pit bulls as "the second (to golden retrievers) most tolerant (in temperament) breed."

You can't buy PR like that.

Such pit bull rescuers as actress Linda Blair ("The Exorcist") and reality show star Shorty Rossi ("Pit Boss") are sparking positive stories about pit bulls.

Pit bulls themselves have become minor celebrities. "Daddy" (now deceased) and "Junior" experienced their 15 minutes of fame when Cesar Millan employed them to serve as role models for out-of-control canines on "The Dog Whisperer."

But there's still much work to be done. Just last week in Newnan, Georgia, Craig Emory Hayes used his pocketknife to deliver three bloody blows to the neck of a pit bull named Clara — who was up for adoption at the local Petco.

Witnesses reported that Clara, who had slipped her collar, bounced over to Hayes' Yorkie with a play date in mind.

Hayes claimed his terrier was being attacked.

Witnesses say Hayes was just looking for an excuse to kill. Not only had Hayes earlier expressed his fury over "a (profanity deleted) pit bull" in the store, but he also kept stabbing Clara even after the pooches were separated.

According to the official police report, the skin on the Yorkie's ear, where Clara had been pulling, was unbroken. Clara, however, had to be euthanized due to the extent of her injuries.

So what can a fear of pit bulls teach us about racial profiling?

Without fear, psychological studies conclude, racial stereotypes cannot take root. So how can we, as a society, free ourselves of fear?

Petting a pit bull might be a start.

Beverly Kelley writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

September 11, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

BROWNIE LAUNCHED MANY KODAK MOMENTS

 

 


1782423_origPublished in the August 27, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

It's not a very impressive photograph — black and white, extra small (2 ¼ by 3 ¼) and featuring four females scowling into the sun — but it's one of the few I'd try to save in the event of flood, fire or earthquake.

The oldest subject, an octogenarian without a single gray hair, is posing rigidly in her stylish summer dress with two strands of pearls hugging her neck. She is resolvedly clutching a dark leather purse at waist level.

To her left, a woman in her early 50s is clad in a plain, mid-calf-length frock that might have been popular a decade earlier. Her thin brown hair is pulled off her pale face by a couple of bobby pins, and her sensible white shoes indicate it's well before Labor Day.

A 30-something woman, her fashionable flowered skirt parachuting over the lower half of her body as she squats down to toddler level, occupies the center of the frame. She is attempting to restrain a 4-year-old decked out in overalls and flimsy sandals with white ankle socks. The tabby kitten the child has grasped in a determined death grip suggests a possible motive for her ongoing attempt to flee the scene.

The photo was taken with my father's new Kodak Six-20 folding Brownie. Well more than 300,000 of these pocket-size cameras with an imitation Moroccan leather cover would be purchased between 1948 and 1954. The snapshot's value to me, however, is that it preserves for posterity the last time my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and I were gathered in the same place.

The Brownie, now recognized as the camera that democratized photography, was no accident. George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, challenged employee Frank Brownell to come up with a camera design that would appeal to the yet untapped market of amateur (including children) photographers.

It was to be priced as inexpensively as possible yet capable of producing consistently satisfactory results.

The major source of this savvy entrepreneur's profits, you see, was film. The more Americans he could persuade to take up photography, the more rolls of film Kodak could sell.

The first Brownie, priced at a democratic dollar, went on the market in February 1900. Kodak sold 250,000 cameras the first year and countless millions during the next eight decades.

Of course, mass production and the use of such inexpensive materials as cardboard and wood contributed heavily to keeping the price tag low.

What made these box cameras fly off the shelves, however, were such modern marketing techniques as employing the image of Palmer Cox's wildly popular "Brownie" cartoon characters (think: the Scottish equivalent of an Irish leprechaun) as well as the clever slogan "You push the button, we do the rest."

For 15 cents, a Brownie camera owner could cart home a six-exposure film cartridge that not only could be loaded in daylight but could also be dropped off for processing — no pricey darkroom equipment required. Within days, he could amaze and amuse his friends with six snazzy snapshots of whatever he wished.

Before immigrating to America from Lithuania, my great-grandmother had only been photographed once in her life — preserved in a sepia-toned wedding portrait of two stiffly posed, unsmiling figures that cost her husband a month's pay.

After my grandmother was born, however, ordinary folks were getting busy documenting their family histories in photo albums and as sociologists, historians and popular culture scholars quickly discovered, documenting American history as well.

President Grover Cleveland was the proud owner of a Brownie as was the Dalai Lama, who packed his in his luggage before departing Tibet.

Ansel Adams, who wrote, "I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite," took his first photographs of the iconic scenery with a Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie.

But with all new technology comes the potential for abuse and the Brownie proved no exception.

"Camera fiends," attempting to catch female bathers unaware, prompted signs forbidding (specifically) Kodaks on beaches. Brownies were also banned at art museums, the Washington Monument and on streets of such municipalities as Hartford, Connecticut, where the Hartford Courant lamented, "the sedate citizen can't indulge in any hilariousness without the risk of being caught in the act."

My mother was born two years too early to cash in on Kodak's 50th anniversary giveaway. In 1930, some 500,000 12-year-olds collected complimentary Brownies.

The family considers it a blessing, however, since my mother regularly cut off her subjects' heads whenever she got behind a camera lens.

I realize that, these days, if I dispatch a photograph to "the cloud," it shall remain forever present in digitized form. But it's just not the same as the glossy snapshot that initially prompted my great grandmother to exclaim, "Kas jie galvoja apie kitas." That's Lithuanian for "What will they think of next?"

 

August 26, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

HOW HUMANS EVOLVED INTO A DOG'S BEST FRIEND

41Published in the August 13, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Ancients believed that during the so-called “dog days of summer,” dogs actually went mad. These days, however, it’s we who are mad about dogs. Even during this interminable recession.

The latest Labor Department figures demonstrate that Americans forked out a record $55.7 billion last year on our hairiest family members — about $10 billion more than Germany’s entire defense budget. That little factoid should give you pause (or maybe paws), but I digress.

So why are we so crazy about dogs?

While scientists admit that a dog is as intelligent as the average 2-year-old (in terms of understood vocabulary, response to nonverbal cues and the predisposition to seek assistance), most “Which Animal Is the Smartest” surveys rank the great ape, dolphin, elephant or whale — miles ahead of the dog. What could they have been thinking? They certainly didn’t consider the fact that none of these brainy creatures fits into a designer pet tote.

So how did dogs get their start? According to mitochondrial DNA studies, the common ancestor for all domestic dogs (400 breeds and counting) is the gray wolf. Perhaps dogs should adopt the motto “E Unum Pluribus” (out of one, many). OK, I know canines don’t really possess a currency — not unless you count wet, sloppy kisses, that is.

So how long have wolf/dogs been hanging out with humans? In 2009, the Journal of Archaeological Science reported that Canis familiaris (based on fossil evidence from Belgium, Ukraine and Russia) might date back a staggering 14,000 to 31,700 years.

Still, the first domesticated wolves weren’t tossed leftovers for merely providing warmth on a “three dog night.” It was their keen sense of smell, acute hearing and superior speed while in pursuit mode that proved invaluable in regard to the quest for calories by early mankind.

But it was the Victorian Age and the Industrial Revolution that dramatically changed the station of the dog. The nouveau riche merchant class, desiring in all ways to emulate the pet-crazy aristocrats, made the coddled canine into a status symbol — even employing them as props in formal photographs to impress the rest of the world.

They also generated scores of new breeds based on aesthetic considerations rather than behavioral traits. For example, King Charles spaniels got out of the hunting business, Pomeranians were shrunk down to lap size and Yorkshire terriers started thumbing their noses at rats.

Did you know that 80 percent of today’s breeds did not exist 137 years ago? “It was,” according to “The Science of Dogs” (National Geographic) “as if a massive leap in evolution occurred in a small period of time.” One new breed, however, has yet to be invited to the Westminster Dog Show but should he show up, he should win, paws down, “best in show.”

About two decades ago, Klim Sulimov developed a jackal-dog hybrid to conduct security sweeps exclusively for the Russian airline Aeroflot. “My dogs combine the qualities of Arctic reindeer herding dogs,” he told the BBC News, “which can work in temperatures as low as -70°C, and jackals which enjoy the heat up to +40°C. They’re perfect for our country.”

Trained from puppyhood to recognize 12 components of explosives, they outperform all other sniffing dogs because they take the initiative — not waiting, as Sulimov boasts, for a command from a human with an inferior sense of smell.

During the mid-19th century, workers in Yorkshire cotton or wool mills bred a diminutive terrier to hunt down cloth-chewing vermin. In the interest of full disclosure, I own a Yorkie, or rather a Yorkie owns me. And while I’ve never spied a rodent in our condo, I don’t think Chloe should get all the credit. She is, however, more than just a pretty face.

Chloe is a certified therapy dog and her special gift is the ability to read the emotional needs of the person on whose lap she is happily ensconced. Numerous studies confirm that not only do many dogs share this ability, but the human practice of petting them can lower blood pressure, decrease anxiety and stimulate production of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone” that presently shows promise in the treatment of autism.

Dogs are just beginning to assist human beings in the world of medicine. With special training, the canine nose can detect impending seizures in epileptics, rises in blood sugar in diabetics and early forms of cancer. Dogs from a study presented at the 2014 American Urological Association Conference were able to detect prostate cancer from urine samples — with 98 percent accuracy.

So as we bid adieu to the dog days of summer, just think, the mutt who hogs your bed and perfumes the air with his intestinal gases might one day save your life. No wonder we’re so mad about them.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

August 12, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

HARBOR, PORT HUENEME HAVING A DICKENS OF A TIME

 

 

Bleak-House-Charles-Dickens(Second of a two-part series Published in the July 30,2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

While the commissioners at the Oxnard Harbor District are awaiting their arbitration date with the city of Port Hueneme, now postponed by their Los Angeles firm (Best, Best & Krieger) until Nov. 17, I'm recommending a second book for their reading pleasure — namely "Bleak House."

I suspect principled lawyers chuckle as they page through Charles Dickens' satirical examination of the mind-numbing Chancery Court case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. I suspect unprincipled lawyers just take notes.

Although Dickens' novel was initially published during the mid-19th century as a magazine serial, the commissioners may discover parallels — re: their 21st century dispute with the city of Port Hueneme. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am married to Port Hueneme Mayor Jonathan Sharkey.)

While arguably every novel is autobiographical, Dickens' skewering of the British judicial system was prompted by his own experience; first, as a law clerk and second, as a Chancery litigant seeking copyright enforcement.

Dickens' readers readily responded to what Stephen Colbert calls the "truthiness" inherent in "Bleak House." In fact, British legal historians credit the novel with substantially shaping legal reforms during the 1870s.

So what should the commissioners be looking for in the novel? As "Deep Throat" once sagely advised, "Follow the money."

According to Dickens, the Jarndyce barristers and solicitors, who could be considered, in modern terms, "limbo lawyers" (How low can you go?) remained in business by convincing clients to stay the course — dangling the possibility (operative word) of a payday that would soon (nonoperative word) be coming their way.

The Jarndyce legal eagles were aided and abetted by the considerable confusion caused by the existence of five distinctly different wills. Keep that in mind with the distinctly different 1983, 1987 and 1995 revenue-sharing agreements between the OHD and the city of Port Hueneme.

Chancery lawyers, whose financial interests were best served by dragging their Stafford and Stone heels, kept their clients in a frenzied adversarial state by promising that each legal ploy (read: delay tactic) would turn the tide in their favor.

What the prospective heirs should have realized is while their legal representatives were getting paid, they still hadn't seen a farthing. Ultimately, attorneys' fees consumed the entire Jarndyce estate of £70,000 (or $3 million in 2014).

The only Jarndyce who escaped heartache, bankruptcy and/or stress-induced illness was John. He refused to get involved and referred to Jarndyce v. Jarndyce as "the family curse." There's a lesson in there somewhere.

On Aug. 22, 2013, nearly a year ago, the city of Port Hueneme filed a petition to compel arbitration (as spelled out in the 1995 revenue-sharing agreement) over the $8 million the city believed it was still owed by the OHD.

Why arbitration?

These days, business contracts routinely include compulsory arbitration clauses because arbitration is (usually) quicker, less adversarial, less damaging to future financial relationships and less costly than litigation.

An arbitrator, you see, is not as inclined "as a judge to entertain extensive discovery and motions practice," writes Inside Counsel's Alan Freeman, "both of which frequently drive the fees and costs of litigation."

The OHD, desiring to limit the arbitration solely to the 1995 joint-revenue agreement, took the city of Port Hueneme to court on Aug. 23, 2013, and won.

However, the city also took a victory lap on May 23, 2014, when the arbitrator ruled that the meaning of gross revenues — the key to the city's $8 million claim — would also remain on the table come November.

So how much in public funds (OHD) and taxpayer dollars (city of Port Hueneme) have been expended so far?

From invoices obtained through public records requests, OHD was billed more than $96,000 from February 2013 through June 2014 by Best, Best & Krieger. (Note: OHD's staff attorney's arbitration-related hours are not included.) The city was billed around $79,000 during the same time period by two firms — the Hensley Law Group and Jenkins & Hogin.

Not exactly chump change, you say? But, don't forget, these fees are only the beginning.

There are two reasons for either party "to go for broke" — the $8 million, of course, and this arbitration's stipulated "English rule" in which the loser reimburses the winner for "reasonable" legal fees.

As the British see it, a litigant (whether bringing or defending a claim) is entitled to legal representation and, if successful, should not be penalized by having to pay for the privilege of being right — as is customary in U.S. courts.

Interestingly, the "loser-pays-all" proviso arose out of the late 19th century British legal reforms inspired by "Bleak House."

Unfortunately, if there was ever a tempting reason to drag out the arbitration process at any cost, the prospect of losing a ton of money has got to be it. You see, as long as the arbitrator's decision resides in the "pending" column, the piper doesn't have to be paid.

Just the lawyers.

Beverly Kelley, of Port Hueneme, writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

July 30, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

DREAM SURVIVED ROUGH SEAS; MORE WAVES AHEAD?


PortofHuenemePublished in the July 16, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star
 

(First of a two-part series)

I don't know if a recommended reading list for Oxnard Harbor District commissioners exists, but it should definitely include "A Troubled Dream."

Based on Richard Bard's personal letters and papers, Powell March Greenland explains why Bard's dream took a troubling 14 years to realize.

By 1927, it was about which city would possess a deep-water port. In fact, not only did the opposition money to fight a harbor at Hueneme come from Buenaventura movers/shakers, oil interests and Los Angeles Harbor supporters, but their most effective move was to engage George Nicholson — a former L.A. port engineer.

Back in Washington, D.C., Nicholson conducted a vicious whisper campaign — painting Bard as a liar and a real estate scam artist — to such critical decision-makers as the Public Works Administration's Harold Ickes.

Greenland characterized Nicholson as "a hit man hired to shoot down the Hueneme harbor project with a slush fund of $10,000 ($177,537.31 in today's dollars) and a cadre of connections."

"Even as late as December 1938," writes Greenland, "the vindictive opposition in Ventura was still attempting to block harbor construction at Hueneme." Yet, on Jan. 4, 1939, with $1,750,000 in harbor bonds subscribed, construction was possible without the PWA grant that was, as Bard predicted, unceremoniously rescinded.

Greenland also explains why a port at Hueneme is being governed by an entity known as the Oxnard Harbor District.

I always thought it was because all the commissioners hailed from Oxnard. Actually, Oxnard is where all the votes are. In fact, there hasn't been a Hueneme commissioner since Dr. Bob Turner was appointed (not elected) in May 1992. (In the interest of full disclosure: I am married to Port Hueneme Mayor Jonathan Sharkey.)

Would you be surprised to learn that the Port of Hueneme is the only West Coast port not owned outright by the host city; not part of a joint powers authority; and not entitled to one or more permanent board seats? So how did this occur?

I doubt that Richard Bard intended Hueneme, whose residents are directly impacted by the port, to be denied a voice. In fact, Bard's very first board (April 28, 1937) consisted of a Hueneme banker named E.O. Green, an Oxnard businessman (Eugene H. Agee) and a Somis rancher (Fred M. Aggen).

Additionally, when the above-named commissioners proposed naming the still uncompleted harbor "Port Bard," the Bard family politely declined. It seemed to them "less fitting and, in the long run, less desirable than the old established, historical name that has been used since the days of Cabrillo."

Ironically, Bard's generosity in underwriting preliminary expenses amounting to $350,000 by the summer of 1932 was used against him. A cynical Roy Pinkerton, who led the media attacks on Bard's character in the editorial pages of the Ventura County Star, was convinced Bard was only in it for the money.

Greenland, however, evidences Bard as motivated, "first, by a sincere belief in the obligation of philanthropy for people in his financial position ... and second, the practical understanding that nothing would ever be accomplished without his personal financial initiative" — including gifting his land.

What if (1) Bard had decided to donate the harbor property earlier than 1935? He might have pre-empted the assassination attempts on his character.

What if (2) Buenaventura agreed to annex Bard's harbor property (still contingent on locating the harbor at Hueneme)? We'd be talking about the Ventura Harbor District today.

Despite honing several incarnations of his proposed port over 14 years, the visionary missed the import of incorporating Hueneme as a city. Perhaps he reasoned that selecting officers, organizing a municipal government and adopting a name might slow down his progress.

According to Greenland, it was Bard's own naiveté that cost him years. Convinced that siting a port inland at Hueneme instead of unprotected Buenaventura seemed so obvious to Bard, he never anticipated the cunning obstructionism of his foes.

Port Hueneme, though, wouldn't be incorporated until 1948, a year after the Navy finalized its lease agreement with the Oxnard Harbor District for property surrendered during World War II.

Finally, the OHD may have indulged in a bit of wishful thinking when stating that Bard's harbor property in Hueneme — first annexed by the city of Oxnard and subsequently released to the OHD — "should never be part of any incorporated city." The port is within city limits despite what's being claimed on OHD's website.

Bard, in his July 6, 1940, harbor dedication speech, observed, "We have a commission composed of men (and women) whom we can all trust, who were not swayed by political considerations and whose only interest is the welfare of the district, the county and the backcountry."

I don't suppose it is any secret that the city of Port Hueneme and the harbor district are not getting along.

The major point of contention? The city says the district owes it $8 million. The district claims it owes nothing.

Hopefully, these present-day guardians of Bard's legacy won't further trouble his dream.

Beverly Kelley, of Port Hueneme, writes a biweekly column for The Star. Email her at kelley@clunet.edu.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

July 15, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

A SCULPTOR'S QUEST TO CARVE A LASTING AMERICAN ICON

35399_1600x1200-wallpaper-cb1305223892Published in the Wednesday  July 2, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

"Isn't it just wonderful? What Mother Nature has done?”

Now I'm an ardent admirer of natural beauty. I freely admit there's more than ample evidence of God's handiwork---all across this fruited plain. Yet, at this particular point in time, the speaker and I were gazing at the 60-foot long presidential visages that occupy the face of Mount Rushmore.

Had she but glanced to her left upon returning to the colorful Hall of Flags, she would have glimpsed a bronze bust of the primary sculptor---Danish-American Gutzon Borglum.

A head of Abraham Lincoln---rendered by Borglum from a six-ton block of marble and gifted to President Theodore Roosevelt---initially exhibited Borglum's fascination with immense scale and heroic nationalism. 

 Considering himself an uber-patriot, Borglum not only argued that the "monuments we have built are not our own" but also sought, according to a 1908 interview, to create art that was "American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement."

 Borglum, his son Lincoln and 400 locals (many were failed gold prospectors) labored intermittently from 1927 through 1941, used enough dynamite to blast away 450,000 tons of rock and, according to former Mount Rushmore worker Don "Nick" Clifford, "although there were bumps, bruises and close calls, during the entire 14 years of construction there were never any fatalities."  

 Uncle Sam picked up most of the cost of coaxing the colossal countenances (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt) from stubborn Black Hills granite. The final tally was $989,992.32 or over $16 million in today's dollars.

 I would suppose that the monument’s three million (annual average) shocked and awed visitors wouldn’t hesitate to absolve Borglum of a minimal act of chicanery he found necessary to raise money.

 Sen. Peter Norbeck (R-SD) and Borglum invited President Calvin Coolidge to vacation at Custer State Park. The 30th president was so enamored with the fishing---he had no idea that the stream outside his room was being stocked with thousands of trout after midnight---that he extended his stay just long enough for Borglum and Norbeck to extract a promise of federal funding from him.

 Even today, and certainly In keeping with Borglum's incessant fretting about finances, a Mount Rushmore Preservation Fund poster (for sale in the gift shop) insists: "If they [Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln] were dictators, they wouldn't ask for your support---they'd demand it.” 

 Silent Cal may have provided few entries in Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," but this one has gained traction as a meme frequently posted on Facebook.

 "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." 

 Yet despite Borglum's exemplary persistence and determination, he didn't manage to finish his super-sized sculptures. If you observe the plaster models in Borglum's studio, you will see that the artist intended the bodies of each subject to end well below the waist. 

 Or if a South Dakota road trip isn't in your immediate future, just Google an image of Mt. Rushmore. If you look directly under Lincoln's chin whiskers, you should make out what Borglum meant to be the rounded knuckles on Honest Abe's left hand. 

 Also still in progress is the gargantuan vault Borglum started carving out of the canyon wall directly behind his iconic individuals. 

 You've probably heard about people who take the long view of history, right?

 Borglum, who was keenly aware that his masterpiece would endure for many millennia (the estimated erosion rate is 1 inch every 10,000 years), grew paranoid that future generations would scratch their heads and wonder, "Exactly what is the purpose of this monumental monument?"  

 To that end, not only did he plan to leave official papers documenting the construction of the memorial but also those documenting the birth of the nation.

 But all the persistence and determination in the world can't stay the hand of the Grim Reaper---Borglum died unexpectedly on March 6, 1941---or the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Without the driving force and funding---Congress immediately ceased appropriations for the mountain carving---it appeared the Hall of Records would remain a pipedream. 

In 1998, however, the National Park Service finished a scaled-down version of the vault and opened it to the public.

So as we approach Independence Day, when the Washington likeness on Mt. Rushmore was unveiled 84 years ago, it might be a good time to learn from this seemingly anonymous architect. 

Borglum may have spent countless sleepless nights stewing about the future, but he should have kept an eye on Mother Nature instead. Who knew she would try to steal his thunder?

July 02, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

ONCE BACK HOME, THE NEXT FIGHT BEGINS FOR VETERANS

Military-Health-Image-610x400Published in the Wednesday, June 18, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star
 
With “Terrible Memory Lane” the sardonic Jon Stewart was endeavoring to place the recent Veterans Affairs scandal into historical perspective.

Donning decade-appropriate headgear, the 51-year-old anchorman on Comedy’s Central’s “The Daily Show” highlighted the ’80s with VA hospitals underreporting high mortality rates; the ’60s with soldiers exposed to Agent Orange winding up, two decades later, suffering with cancer and nervous system damage and the ’30s with footage of the “Bonus Army” — World War I vets demanding promised pay bonuses during the early years of the Depression.

But breaking promises to veterans is not, as Stewart lamented, just a 20th century phenomenon. Revolutionary soldiers were also cheated out of pledged pensions and back pay after the War for Independence.

Veterans don’t have much recourse when treated unfairly by the federal government.

The Bonus Army soldiers tried enacting a peaceful protest by camping out across the river from the Capitol. Ultimately it took tanks, tear gas and infantry commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to drive them out — but at a great cost.

Two infants died and hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then liaison with the Washington, D.C., police, later recalled, “The whole scene was pitiful. The veterans were ragged, ill-fed and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity.”

Arguably the disgruntled troops in 1783 might have gone a bit too far when they took members of Congress hostage but, as they claimed, nothing else seemed to grab their attention.

Why not just sue Uncle Sam?

You can’t. The Veterans United for Truth, Inc. and Veterans for Common Sense found that out after filing a class-action lawsuit in 2007. You see, extended wait times to see VA doctors is not just a recent problem. Although they fought valiantly for five years, without the Supreme Court taking the case — and deciding once and for all whether veterans have a constitutional right to medical benefits — the legal route proved, at least for now, a dead end.

As the story goes, when Ronald Reagan was on the campaign trail, he had promised to help sick vets. Once he had moved into the Oval Office, however, somebody at the Office of Management and Budget had him over for a wee chat that soon had him exercising his selective memory.

Apparently, he was persuaded that the cost of treating victims of Agent Orange would bankrupt the country.

So, it’s all about filthy lucre. Yet, I can still recall a colossal expenditure of capital on veterans just after World War II. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 or the GI Bill was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, and provided returning vets with funds for education, unemployment insurance and low-cost housing or business loans.

The rationale behind the GI Bill may have been to avoid a postwar recession, since some 15 million military men and women (32,800 Americans are still in Afghanistan) were due to hit the unemployment rolls, but investing in these vets paid off royally.

The nation subsequently enjoyed two decades of postwar prosperity while the middle class expanded exponentially.

Wrap your mind around this. By 1956, when the 1944 act expired, the education/training portion had disbursed $14.5 billion ($122.62 billion in today’s dollars) yet, the Veterans Administration (now Veterans Affairs) reported, the increase in federal income taxes alone paid for the bill several times over.

So why does America react to its returning warriors like some sort of deadbeat dad?

Ask any shellshocked divorcee saddled with a former spouse who reneges on his alimony and/or child support payments.

She still remembers the proud papa he had been only last year. She has no idea who this guy — scrambling to distance himself from his once cherished family — is. In addition, she quickly discovers he also expects, along with the divorce decree, a clean slate — free from expenditures that might interrupt the financing of his “new life.”

Isn’t this exactly what happens in Washington after every war?

Both Congress and deadbeat dads need an attitude adjustment.

Allow me to suggest that this could be accomplished with a simple word change. Instead of talking about military budget expenditures, let’s call them investments instead.

Even Republicans understand you have to spend money to make money. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.

As Stewart concluded at the end of “Terrible Memory Lane” (albeit in words not appropriate for a family newspaper) “America has had, for more than 200 years, a bipartisan tradition of honoring those who have fought for our freedom by (expletive deleted) them over once they’ve given their guns back.”

Veterans have invested in this country — so very personally — in ways we are just beginning to understand. Isn’t it about time we returned the favor?

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

June 18, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

UP, UP AND AWAY---FIRST WOMAN FLIES INTO HISTORY

1364308619Published in the Wednesday, June 4, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star
 

German historian Wilhelm Roscher dubbed a cohort of absolute monarchs (Catherine II of Russia, Joseph I of Portugal, Joseph II of Austria, Charles III of Spain, Gustav III of Sweden and Louis XVI of France) the “enlightened despots of the 18th century.”

They may have been big fans of such enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire, Locke and Rousseau, but they were typically driven to improve the lives of their subordinates to strengthen or reinforce their own authority.

And, of course, implicit in their philosophy was the belief that they knew what was best for everybody — so, to them, political participation by their subjects was not really necessary. Still, these rulers pursued reforms that included freedom of speech, press and religion as well as the right to hold private property.

Even before we became a nation, we found allies in Charles III and Louis XVI. Without question, their coffer-emptying contributions of land and sea power proved decisive in winning the Revolutionary War.

Next, not only would Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Gustav III of Sweden be brought together on this very day in 1784 to witness the triumphant flight of La Gustave (named to commemorate the Swedish ruler’s visit) but would witness Élisabeth Thible being given a place in the history books as well.

Although only two weeks previously in Paris, the Marchioness/Countess of Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas and Mademoiselle de Lagarde would ascend in a tethered balloon, it was Thible who would get the nod as the first female to soar in a free-floating globe aerostatique.

Ironically, Madame Thible, the “épouse délaissée” (abandoned spouse) of a Lyon wax worker, was not even listed on the La Gustave flight manifest. This particular aeronautical voyage, in fact, was actually a “do-over” after the Jan. 19, 1784, trip aboard the Flesselles (named for the promoter) had to be aborted.

All original subscribers were offered a second chance, but 44-year-old Count Jean-Baptiste de Laurencin wasn’t about to risk life and limb again. When Thible volunteered to take his place on June 4, 1784, he hurriedly responded, mais oui, madame.

So what freaked out the count? A hot-air balloon ride should have seemed like the bucket list opportunity of a lifetime. At least that’s what promoter Jacques de Flesselles (later, a victim of the French Revolution) claimed as he set about convincing wealthy men they couldn’t live without a bird’s-eye view of Lyon.

Not only, wheedled Flesselles, will you meet Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, the first hot air balloon’s co-inventor (with brother Jacques-Étienne), but he has also agreed to serve as pilot.

Yet, contrary to the promoter’s claim, Flesselles would not be “the first manned balloon flight.” French record books credit, instead, an earlier 25-minute hop by Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis D’Arlandes on Nov. 21, 1783. Regrettably, de Rozier would also be named the first air crash fatality when his balloon went down crossing the English Channel.

The blue, white and gold paper that made up the skin of Flesselles’ envelope would rip apart and smolder after only 12 minutes in the air. Although Montgolfier would bring all his passengers to terra firma without injury, he, like the count, would refuse, ever again, to sail up, up and away.

Montgolfier initially hatched the idea for the globe aerostatique, according to Popular Science Monthly, after observing his wife airing out her formal ballgown in front of the fireplace. He noted that the warmest air currents caught the extra fabric in her skirt (usually held out to each side by a pannier of stiff, heavy whalebone) and caused the multihued dress to seemingly float — not unlike the dozens of rainbow-colored balloons that punctuate the Santa Paula sky each July.

Eight months after the ill-fated Flesselles flight, La Gustave would soar for 45 minutes — traveling approximately three miles and reaching an altitude of 8,500 feet.

According to a newspaper account, Monsieur Fleurant credited Thible for the success of the mission. He lavishly complimented her on her extraordinary courage (she sustained a sprained ankle during the jarring landing) and for assisting him in feeding the firebox (in actuality, a silver chafing dish) with handfuls of straw.

No evidence exists that she had ever been a professional opera singer, but as soon La Gustave left the ground, Madame Thible, dressed as the Roman goddess Minerva, performed two duets with the pilot, Monsieur Fleurant. The opera they chose? Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny’s “La Belle Arsène” — based on a poem by Voltaire, the so-called darling of the “enlightened despots.”

Exactly why Thible chose to break into song midair remains a mystery. One thing we do know, however, is she’s not the lady who sang the blues.

The lady who sang the blues was the one who made the mistake of saying, “Let them eat cake.”

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

June 04, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

COASTAL OFFICIAL FIDDLES AS SAND WASHES OUT TO SEA

EmilyphotoPublished in the May 21, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

I read every single word of Steve Allen’s “Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking” — not just because his thesis (American know-how has morphed into American don’t-know much) resonated with my teaching experience, but also because I feared Allen could have easily used me as a personal example.

One hundred percent of us, according to Allen, are sporadically guilty of “dumbth,” a term he coined to describe the witlessness, ignorance, superstition and/or knee jerk responses that currently masquerade as reason. But it’s not, he reassured me, our usual modus operandi.

In his 1998 book, the late-, late-night comedian-author-composer-autodidact cataloged a whole host of hilarious encounters with shoddy workmanship, lousy service, mangled communication and fuzzy-headed thinking.

Dumbth has become institutionalized, maintained Allen, by bosses who insist that everything be done by the book — their book.

Try to order iced tea, as Allen did, when iced tea does not appear on the menu. Even though the restaurant in question possessed an abundance of tea bags, ice, lemons and sugar, Allen’s request, in a moment eerily reminiscent of the “chicken salad scene” in the film “Five Easy Pieces,” was summarily refused.

But the blame clearly falls, Allen told me, on the employer. By failing to empower his/her workers with a means of taking initiative, solving problems or thinking outside the box, he/she was essentially raising havoc with his/her own bottom line.

I couldn’t help thinking of dumbth in conjunction with Steve Hudson. He’s the South Central Coast district manager at the Coastal Commission. Despite 32 days of begging by city of Port Hueneme officials for an emergency permit to armor their dwindling beach sand with boulders — the highly recommended method of shoreline protection used with two previously granted permits — Hudson opted to drag his feet.

And Port Hueneme officials were forced to wait. You see, the $2 million for emergency shore protection from the Coastal Conservancy may have been available, but was contingent on a Coastal Commission permit.

Even the day before the mighty Pacific rammed through the sand wall on April 26, Hudson, who couldn’t be bothered to make the 20-minute trip from Ventura to see the situation for himself, insisted that the situation in Port Hueneme was no emergency, and that city engineers explore “sand back-passing” — essentially digging up thousands of cubic feet of sand from the area in front of the Alaska Airlines Memorial, which is also an endangered bird habitat area, and trucking it to the beach in front of Surfside I.

Hardhearted Hudson simply would not listen to city officials, who argued that this so-called “alternative” was not only unfeasible but also futile. Simply put, since sand on Hueneme Beach predictably erodes at a rate of 100,000 cubic yards a month, a transplant of exorbitantly expensive back-passed sand would last only a few weeks at best.

Hudson started whistling out of the other side of his mouth when Gov. Jerry Brown (alerted by State Assemblyman Jeff Gorell) cut in on his hesitation waltz. I have no idea what was said, but an emergency permit for three times more rock than requested was granted immediately.

So why did Hudson drag his feet? Better journalists than myself have tried to reach him, yet he doggedly refused to speak to any of us.

We may not know why he stalled, but we do know the results of his 32-day delay — significant property loss after a large portion of the sand wall and the sidewalk collapsed, allowing the ocean at high tide, to threaten the street and residences across Surfside Drive.

The price tag for Hudson’s dithering? “Over a quarter of a million dollars,” according to Greg Brown, community development director for Port Hueneme.

In addition, there’s been a loss of access to Surfside Drive (in front of Surfside I), the Lighthouse Promenade (due to debris thrown over the revetment by the sea) and the pier (because of cracked structural pilings).

Thus far, Hudson’s dumbth has resulted in neither consequences to himself nor the Coastal Commission.

But, if a picture is worth a thousand words, Mayor Jon Sharkey, City Manager Cynthia Haas and Councilman Ellis Green carried an arsenal of arguments in their smartphones as they stormed Washington, D.C., last month to lobby for a permanent solution to Port Hueneme’s perennial problem.

“Protect, conserve, restore and enhance environmental and human-based resources of the California coast and ocean for environmentally sustainable and prudent use by current and future generations.” Do you see anything in this mission statement that suggests stall tactics or obstacle course checklists should be the price of doing business with the Coastal Commission?

So why the indecision? Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) once shrewdly observed, “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” And Sir Joshua didn’t even know Mr. Hudson.

Photo courtesy of Emily Barany

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

May 20, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

WITH HEART AND SOUL, HAVING FUN ON THE RADIO

LeeMarshallPublished in the May 7 edition of the Ventura County Star

Supposedly when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And that’s exactly what happened with Lee Marshall and iCLU, the Internet radio station at California Lutheran University.

Tim Schultz, a 1977 alum, actually constructed cablecast KRCL with his own hands. Legend has it that some obnoxious musician being interviewed on CLU’s first student-run radio station laid down the f-bomb over a live mike. KRCL was shuttered for good.

At the same time, the radio industry itself was struggling financially as deregulation overemphasized the fickle nature of the marketplace. Bad news: fewer radio jobs existed for grads. Good news: FM frequency 88.3 and call letters KCLU went up for grabs. Very good news: President Jerry Miller granted Tim and myself permission to see how far we could go.

It took us nearly five years to get our various ducks in a row — from garnering community support to actually getting a federal law changed — but, with a little help from our friends, we succeeded. KCLU signed on the air on Oct. 20, 1994.

And, for the next five years at least, students helped produce the local shows. When new station management started to systematically replace homegrown hosts with National Public Radio programming, however, they had nowhere to go.

Although Lee Marshall’s 1997 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came as no surprise to those who had worked with him at such prestigious Top 40 stations as KRIZ (Phoenix), KCBQ (San Diego), KHJ and KDAY (Los Angeles), CKLW (Detroit) and WOR (New York), Marshall, ironically, had “officially retired from radio,” lamenting that the medium had, in his words, “lost its heart and soul.”

Yet, his fertile mind wouldn’t let go of a unique format (“The Boomer”) that he would eventually launch at an underperforming AM radio station (1450 KVEN) in Ventura.

Unlike run-of-the-mill “Oldies” stations, which rotated the same 300 songs ad nauseam, Marshall’s anti-repetitive playlist included nearly 1,700 chart-busters from the ’50s and ’60s. After Cumulus Broadcasting hired him in 2000, he, Judie and their two crazy dogs relocated to Oxnard Shores.

Not only did his Boomer listeners look forward to the daily trivia question, they were also delighted to eavesdrop on live conversations between Marshall and such icons as Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beach Boys, The Tokens, Peter & Gordon, Freddy “Boom-Boom” Cannon, Chubby Checker, Herman’s Hermits, Jan & Dean, The Byrds, or Mary Wilson of The Supremes.

The National Association of Broadcasters was so impressed with Marshall’s efforts, they named KVEN “America’s AM Oldies Station of the Year for 2004-2005.”

Alas, in 2008, when management replaced “The Boomer” with a syndicated feed, Marshall, best known as Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger (after Thurl Ravenscroft’s demise), continued to voice animated characters on television, film and national advertising campaigns.

In 2009, however, I coaxed him into teaching a radio industry course and, then, a voice-over class — both of which capitalized on his considerable experience as radio personality, voice actor, sports talk show host, professional wrestling announcer and a radio programming executive.

So when an Education Suite was incorporated into the new KCLU building courtesy of $1 million grant by the Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Foundation, graduates of Marshall’s classes were ready, willing and able to staff a totally student-run online station.

In fact, Marshall played an instrumental role in planning iCLU, which (not coincidentally) celebrates the creative freedom of old school radio.

Marshall taught at CLU for only five years. Esophageal cancer took him on April 26 of this year. During his short but significant tenure, however, he didn’t just change attitudes — he changed lives.

First, he turned these young people on to a medium that they, as a generation, had abandoned — addicted as they had become to iTunes and ear buds. “If you’re not having fun on the radio,” he’d say, “then you’re not doing it right.”

Second, he opened up his considerable Rolodex to assist them in obtaining internships and entry-level jobs. “I give you permission,” he’d say, “to be excellent.” They never let him down.

Third, he remained their most enthusiastic cheerleader — in class, at commencement and on Facebook. “Most of all,” his wife told me, “Lee wanted his students to know how much he cherished them.”

Marshall’s 67 years on the planet weren’t nearly enough. What I will miss the most — his wicked sense of humor. Here’s an example:

“How will I know you?” I texted, realizing I had no idea what he looked like. We were meeting for the first time at a local barbecue joint.

“I’ll be the tall, skinny, good-looking fellow,” he shot back.

Although nobody would ever mistake Lee Marshall for a movie star, whenever he greeted me in those thunderous yet honeyed tones, Tom Selleck had nothing on him.

And that’s just the first thing he taught me.

 

May 06, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (2)

LARGER-THAN-LIFE MARILYN AND FOLLIES MOVING ON

ForeverMarilynPublished in the April 9, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Had she lived, the infant initially christened Norma Jeane Baker would be celebrating her 88th birthday on the first day of June.

I don’t know if Marilyn Monroe would have chosen to blow out her veritable forest fire of birthday candles in the city of Palm Springs, but, regrettably, the 26-foot “Forever Marilyn” statue, once located on the corner of South Palm Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way, is no longer there to honor her.

For the past two years, downtown Palm Springs boasted a sculpture by J. Seward Johnson that preserved a page from “The Seven Year Itch” (1955) in a truly colossal way. Johnson’s larger-than-life tribute, considered the height in kitsch, has been dismantled, loaded on a flatbed truck and is headed out of town — bound for Trenton, N.J., to be exact, where it will go on display along with 150 other pieces also sculpted by the heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune.

Also on its way out of Palm Springs is the 23-year-old phenomenon known as “The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies.”

The Historic Plaza Theatre, where “The Last Hurrah! Our Farewell Season!” is currently playing out its closing weeks, is located within 96 feet of “Forever Marilyn.” The follies, to its devoted fans’ collective dismay, has proved yet another victim of the recession.

According to follies’ co-founder (along with Mary Jardin, sales and marketing director) Riff Markowitz (an MC who is in no manner PC), “The philosophy that we’ve always endeavored to demonstrate is simply, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. The ability,” he added, “to continue to use one’s skill or craft should never be restricted based solely upon age alone.”

“We must find an outlet — whether modest or grand — to continue to practice all or part of that which we have mastered over our long careers,” continued the 76-year-old Markowitz. “I believe it is the secret of maintaining a continuing balance in our life and then our happiness.”

The highlight of the three-hour performance (replicated nine times during each week) pays homage to the Ziegfeld Follies.

In case you don’t remember Flo’s annual stage extravaganzas from 1907 to 1931, the impresario would assemble a personally selected bevy of beauties and dress them in elaborate headgear, expansive back-pieces (think: the wings on Victoria’s Secret angels), and jewel-encrusted lingerie.

They would gracefully descend a mirrored staircase assisted by tuxedo-clad young men to the strains of “A Pretty Girl (Is Like a Melody).”

The Palm Springs Follies, likewise, follows suit. In fact, each season’s wardrobe can contain up to 1,500 individual garments with some reaching 11 feet in diameter and costing up to $35,000.

Although little was left to the imagination — costume-wise — Ziegfeld’s idea was to “glorify the American woman” — not to appeal to men’s baser instincts (even though he failed miserably with the latter). These days, however, you’ve probably seen more skin on the silver screen at the local Bijou, than you will at either Flo’s or the Palm Springs Follies.

Still, the Palm Springs ladies do something Flo’s girls would never do. They confess their real ages. On stage. With pride.

Additionally, the headliner at the plaza proved just as special as Ziegfeld’s Billie Burke. If you watched the Academy Awards last month, Darlene Love would have caught your attention.

Instead of delivering her thank you speech, the star of the “20 Feet from Stardom” documentary sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” She was rewarded with a standing ovation.

Not only is Love famous for backing up Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen, but as a soloist, she can also steal the show, especially when belting out “He’s a Rebel” and “Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry.” Her remarkable set of pipes (she couldn’t wait to announce) have served her well for 72 years.

You also couldn’t help but be impressed with the strenuous dance numbers by the follies cast. Not one of the oldsters cheated the routine — kicks were head-high, tap shoes set off seismic vibrations and sweat equity was honestly earned. I suspect that each hoofer’s commitment to give his or her “all” was inspired by such senior dancers as 84-year-old Dick France and 78-year-old Leila Burgess.

Although Marilyn Monroe once appeared on a calendar, she could never manage to arrive anywhere on time. And Monroe, who once advised, “We should all start to live before we get too old,” met her maker at the tender age of 36.

The follies, on the other hand, advises exactly the opposite. According to Markowitz, “Our cast of performers — all of whom are working decades longer than they had ever hoped — have proved that ‘old age’ can be vibrant, rewarding, sexy and perhaps, perhaps even successful.”

There’s a great lesson in there somewhere.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

April 08, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

DRINKER TO EMERSON TO SALK: WIPING OUT POLIO

Polio-victim-in-tank-respiratorPublished in the March 26, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

No device is more associated with polio than the iron lung.

Its image is still horrifying — appearing more medieval than medical — yet, it was all physicians could provide to keep patients breathing once the poliomyelitis virus attacked the nerves of the respiratory system.

The (usually) young patient, who, regrettably, drank from an unclean glass or employed the same doorknob as somebody who failed to “lave sus manos,” could find himself occupying an airtight, steel and drumlike cylinder nearly the length of a subcompact car.

He could only view the world upside down and backward from the mirror mounted above his head. He could only speak when the negative pressure ventilation device — designed to mimic breathing by using air pressure — was in exhale mode (if, at all).

Harvard’s Philip Drinker, Louis Agassiz Shaw and James Wilson came up with the first iron lung for the treatment of polio victims in 1927. Yet, the cost was prohibitive for most hospitals. The price tag equaled the average charge for a new house.

But that, fortunately, is not the end of the story. Along came biomedical contraption genius John Haven Emerson, who greatly improved the early design.

His lighter, quieter and more efficient machine also halved the cost.

This being America, however, Drinker and Harvard sued Emerson, claiming he had infringed on patent rights.

Emerson’s defense was quite simple. He argued first that lifesaving machines should be freely available to all, and second that every aspect of Drinker’s patents had been published or utilized by others in previous years — in other words, the Drinker iron lung was not unique. Not only did Drinker lose his suit but he also lost all of his patents.

Although numerous celebrities including Alan Alda, Donald Sutherland, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur C. Clarke, Judy Collins, Joanie Mitchell, Neil Young and Itzhak Perlman were stricken by polio — Franklin D. Roosevelt may not have been one of them.

While the 1921 diagnosis by FDR’s doctors for his below-the-waist paralysis was poliomyelitis, a 2003 University of Texas at Galveston study contends the 32nd president was actually afflicted with Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Polio usually claimed its victims during the warm summer months, with epidemics sweeping through towns every few years. The first recognized U.S. polio epidemic occurred in 1894, and by 1950, the year I contracted the virus, America was in a state of panic.

Cities closed public pools and parks. Parents ordered their children not to drink from “bubblers” (water fountains). Schools canceled graduation ceremonies. And the March of Dimes, founded in 1938 by FDR, was frantically trying to raise money for a cure.

Even though most of those exposed to the virus, like myself, recovered without any lasting infirmity, during 1952, when this sneaky disease (which still has no cure nor identifying causes) was at its peak (3,000 died and 21,000 became permanently paralyzed), parents were understandably terrified.

The next year, however, brought good news. On March 26, 1953, exactly 61 years ago, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the creation of a vaccine that would eradicate poliomyelitis. When asked if he planned to patent the vaccine and make a fortune, Salk, essentially reiterating Emerson’s argument, responded that his vaccine belonged to everyone.

Despite specious anti-vaccination arguments attempting to link Salk’s vaccine with HIV and/or cancer, by 1994, polio was essentially eliminated from the Western Hemisphere via widespread vaccination.

The last case of polio in India was reported in January 2011. Since then, the country has remained wild polio virus-free. This is an unparalleled achievement for a nation, which until 2009, reported more than half the world’s polio cases.

In fact, the entire Southeast Asia Region of the World Health Organization should be announcing a historic polio-free certification by the end of this month.

The poliomyelitis virus only continues to circulate in a handful of countries. As of 2013, those nations included Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Yet, every cloud ultimately yields a silver lining if you bother to look for it. As they matured, polio survivors grew into one of the largest disabled groups in the world. According to the World Health Organization, they remain 10 million to 20 million strong.

When these folks placed themselves at the forefront of the disability rights movement, they provided enough clout to pressure Congress into passing such sorely-needed anti-discrimination legislation as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

While the only place you can now find an iron lung is in a museum, you can probably locate a copy of Candy Land in any residence with young children.

What you may not know is that in 1945, a schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbott designed the wildly popular board game (“A Sweet Little Game ... for Sweet Little Folks”) while she was recuperating in a San Diego hospital — from polio.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

March 25, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

HARBORING DOUBTS ABOUT FEDERAL CASH FOR COAST

 

Beach erosionPublished in the March 12, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

What’s the old proverb? “Half a loaf is better than none”? Yet, you would have a thorny time convincing anybody to express appreciation for half a parking space or half a lifeboat or especially half a brassiere.

When the Navy built the jetties at the Port of Hueneme in 1940, they interrupted the littoral flow of sand to Hueneme Beach while also creating a corrosive eddy current that scrubs away 1.25 million cubic yards of seashore annually.

Two federal laws mandate that the Army Corps of Engineers replenish the lost sand.

The River and Harbor Act of 1954 authorized the creation of the Channel Islands Harbor sand trap, whose contents were to be used to nourish down-coast beaches.

The Water Resources Development Act of 1996 sanctioned a 100 percent federal cost share split between the Department of the Navy and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since 1960, however, the federal government has been behaving like a typical deadbeat dad. The volume of sand transported by the Army Corps has steadily declined from an average of 1.5 million cubic yards during the first decade to the 600,000 cubic yards delivered during the last replenishment cycle.

In addition, the sand trap at Channel Islands Harbor is choking on 3 million cubic yards of sand, a good million more than it was designed to handle. Furthermore the buildup, according to Lyn Kreiger, director of the Ventura County Harbor Department, threatens to cause a navigation hazard in the small boat harbor.

The next biannual dredge was not scheduled to occur until fall 2015. However, according to a news release by Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, she “worked with her House and Senate colleagues, including Sen. Feinstein, to provide additional funds in the (fiscal year) 2014 Omnibus Appropriations legislation for the backlog of harbor maintenance projects across the nation.”

While the powers-that-be with the city of Port Hueneme and Channel Islands Harbor expressed their sincere gratitude when asked to comment on Brownley’s March 4 announcement that nearly $12 million in federal funding to dredge Channel Islands Harbor and to replenish sand at Hueneme Beach would be available — what they diplomatically kept to themselves was, “it’s not enough.”

First of all, the actual allotment translates into less than $11.4 million. Add it up: the Navy’s 19 percent (or approximately $1.8 million) plus $4.4 million from the Army Corps of Engineers Fall 2014 Work Plan (minus 2 percent in administrative costs) plus the $5.3 million from the White House’s fall 2015 budget request.

Secondly, the Army Corps of Engineers hires the dredging company and apparently only one of three concerns worldwide does business on the West Coast. You’ve all played the game Monopoly. Apparently the sand dredging business is a textbook example of unfettered capitalism.

So what’s the harm in that? Up to half of a dredging budget can disappear down the pit of unspecified “set up costs,” leaving colossally inadequate capital to pump.

The ideal situation would be one in which oodles of competition exist, negotiation by the concerned parties replaces the Corps’ lowest bidder process and fees charged were simple, straightforward and evenhanded.

Not only is Greg Brown the city of Port Hueneme staff person who has been dealing with the two-year sand replenishment cycles for nearly a quarter of a century, but he has also researched the Corps’ abstract for bids that apply to the fall 2014 dredge cycle in which the emergency sand replenishment allotment will play a role.

He estimates that the full $12 million would only provide 2.152 to 2.328 million cubic yards of sand to Hueneme Beach. That’s about 1.2 million cubic yards less than the 3.5 million cubic yards that have already built up in the Channel Islands Harbor sand trap and $4.8 million to $6.48 million less than the money required to pump the 3.5 million cubic yards of sand necessary to restore the beach.

Third and finally, this emergency harbor dredging and sand replenishment effort doesn’t do anything about 2016, when 2 million to 3 million cubic yards of sand will have again disappeared.

Without a permanent biannual allocation, or better still, a permanent allocation plus a redesign of the jetties to minimize scouring of beaches to the south, it will be déjà vu all over again. It is interesting to note that a 2001 feasibility study (costing $100,000) got through a congressional committee in 2001 but died in the wake of 9/11.

Perhaps Congress, content to dole out half a loaf once again, might learn from that esteemed philosopher, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) of AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” who opined, “The moral of the story is, I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way. I’ll never make that mistake again.”

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

March 12, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

ANGLOPHILES LOVE ALL THINGS 'DOWNTON ABBEY'

 

Violet-Dowager-Countess-of-Grantham-downton-abbey-15932799-570-364Beverly Kelley, Columnist

Published in the February 26, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Americans love to queue up for all things English---from Charles Dickens' 1842 rock-star tour of the States to the Beatles' 1964 mop-headed appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

Anglophilia is still on the rise, in large part, thanks to the cheeky success of "Downton Abbey" from PBS. In fact, public television deserves much of the credit for exposing Americans to British culture, claims Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

Not only did the fourth season premiere of this period soap (set during the 1920s) attract a record-breaking 10 million fans, but the Masterpiece hit has even inspired cookbooks, fashion trends and thousands of dinner parties. Not even the 2014 Super Bowl, the most-watched TV telecast ever, could knock "Downton Abbey" out of the competition.

In "England, My England," culture critic Mark Dery posits the tongue-in-cheek question, "Are Anglophiles born or made or cultured in a medium of suet and sentimentality, romanticism and Marmite?"

"From my perspective," responds John Rampe, a card-carrying member of the English-Speaking Union (a group dedicated to the preservation of English language, literature and culture)  "the English culture represents a strong sense of tradition, a tradition of courtesy, manners and gentility in how one leads one's life."

 As we all know, America is a land of immigrants, and many of those who arrived on our shores at the turn of the 20th Century, decided that their offspring must assimilate as rapidly as possible. The native tongue was verboten in the home (English only) and parents jettisoned the foods, traditions and cultural trappings that would have made their children different in any way. 

So what remained after all the deliciously different diversity disappeared into the melting pot?

The debate over what to call our first chief executive might furnish a spot-on insight into the long game if and when time-honored customs are summarily discarded.

Despite their lengthy litany of gripes (See: Declaration of Independence) and contention that George III had exceeded his sell-by date, some colonists were still quite willing to crown George Washington as king. He came to office, as you remember, by unanimous consent.

His Vice President, John Adams, whose credentials as a proponent of democratic principles could not be questioned, still strenuously argued for "His Majesty" or "His Highness." Adams felt that "Mr. President" not only showed too little deference but also lacked the proper prestige.

Washington, who was also a big fan of democratic principles but no fan of royal elitism, eventually agreed to "Mr. President" yet frequently allowed himself to be publicly crowned with laurel wreathes.

While laurel wreathes may be a bit much these days, doesn't America seem a little deficient in the pomp and circumstance department? At least compared to the UK?

"An indissoluble connection now seems to exist," writes Christopher Hitchens ("Blood, Class and Nostalgia:: Anglo-American Ironies in the American Mind") "between the idea of England and the idea of heritage, royalty, pageantry and good taste."  

The telly served up plenty of heritage, royalty, and pageantry accompanying the high-profile wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011, Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and the 2012 Summer Olympics.

In fact, Facebook was flooded with selfies by fans adorned in fascinators and tiaras as they sipped Twinings (pinkies raised) out of English bone china cups. Twitter also reported (literally) millions of personal impressions of Brit upper crust in 140 characters or less.

"It is the essence of anglophilia that the object of its desire is unattainable," writes Hitchens. "The cult of something at once vanished and superseded is secure against any too abrupt swing in fashion. It is reliable and time-tested."

Self-proclaimed Anglophile Tim Harnett offers a simpler explanation, "It's that whole grass-is-greener effect." An avid collector of UK memorabilia, he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "It's not where you are every day. I just love the music, the clothes, the booze---everything that makes life there different from over here---and better, in my opinion."

Well that's certainly true of the accent. Polls consistently show that folks who sound British are judged by their listeners as smarter, more refined and even more honest.

David Goldberg, the president of Digital Waterworx (a company that produces customized telephone messages) says that clients often ask him for British voices. '"Usually the customer feels that hiring talent with an English accent is a little classier, a little more regal," he told the New York Times.

I know someone who programmed his GPS to sound exactly like "Downton Abbey's" Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith). Now if only he could get it to say (as the Countess did when employing the telephone for the very first time) "Is this an instrument of communication or torture?"

You don't have to be an Anglophile to love that.

Beverly Kelley, who writes every other week for The Star, is professor emerita in the Communication Department of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.  Email her at kelley@lunet.edu  Her "The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo:  A Hunter Triplets Mystery" can be found at Amazon.com

February 26, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is this?


What is this?

February 13, 2014 | Permalink | Comments (0)

SERVING UP A MIXED MENU ON LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

Lincoln_birthdayPublished on Wednesday, February 12, 2014 in the Ventura County Star

So what’s traditionally served at a Lincoln Day dinner? While folks expect to chow down on turkey at Thanksgiving or Buffalo wings at a Super Bowl party, Republicans are likely to eat just about anything (including rubber chicken) at one of these annual fundraisers.

What we do know for a fact, however, is that on Feb. 12, 1950, the featured speaker, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, served up a platter full of fear.

Speaking before the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, W.Va., McCarthy claimed that the long white sheet of paper he grasped in his hairy fist contained “a list of 205 (State Department employees) that were known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”

During the following months, the number of so-called communists named by McCarthy fluctuated wildly — at times as few as 10 or as many as 81. The 1962 film “The Manchurian Candidate” (based on Richard Condon’s 1959 best-seller) managed to skewer McCarthy’s numerical capriciousness in the bumbling character of Sen. John Iselin (James Gregory).

When Iselin’s highly placed communist-agent wife (Angela Lansbury) refuses to settle on a specific number of communists, she explains that Iselin is missing the point — nobody is questioning whether or not there are communists, they are only quibbling over how many.

Still, Iselin begs for a simple figure he “can keep in his head.” Glancing down at a bottle of Heinz ketchup sitting on the breakfast table, she sweetly replies, “57.”

Despite McCarthy’s inconsistent numbers, his refusal to name names and his inability to produce one piece of credible evidence to back up his charges, “Tailgunner Joe’s” message seemed to resonate with the American people.

He had managed to solidify a powerful coalition of religious conservatives (especially Catholics), dispossessed military hawks, isolationists, including the powerful Joseph P. Kennedy, and the lobby that supported Chiang Kai-shek over Mao Zedong.

America has seen a number of military heroes who have served as president but not one of them ever arrived in the Oval Office via a coup d’état. The 1964 edge-of-your-seat thriller “Seven Days in May,” however, speculated on exactly how that might happen.

Still, even when U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Frederic March) is confronted with incontrovertible evidence that the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is planning to oust him by any means necessary, he refuses to believe that Gen. Scott (Burt Lancaster) is “the enemy.”

“The enemy’s an age,” Lyman replies, “a nuclear age. It happens to have killed man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him we look for a champion in red, white and blue. Every now and then a man on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration.”

Unfortunately, many of the men on white horses are accompanied by unwanted saddle baggage — a seemingly unquenchable thirst for power.

And, largely due to a prevailing climate of fear and paranoia — especially during time of war (declared or undeclared) — they get it.

These “too-good-to-be-true” saviors are especially to be rejected if they offer to strike what will be a lopsided bargain — asking voters to sacrifice civil liberties in exchange for the promise of security.

But that can never happen in America, you say. Think: President John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798.

McCarthyites also managed to pass two such odious pieces of legislation (the second over President Truman’s vociferous veto) with The 1950 Subversive Activities Control Act (whose control board was granted absolute power to determine which organizations would be labeled “communist”) and the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act (which invested the State Department with the absolute power to prohibit foreigners with alien political beliefs from entering the county).

But that’s not all. Don’t forget FDR’s Executive Order 9066 (Japanese-American internment camps) issued on Feb. 19, 1942, the USA Patriot Act signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26, 2001, and President Barack Obama’s Patriot Sunsets Extension Act taking effect on May 26, 2011.

Even Abraham Lincoln, whose 205th birthday we celebrate today, violated the Constitution, according to Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, when he suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War.

So let’s change the subject. Did you ever wonder what kind of birthday cake Mary Todd would have baked for Honest Abe? Kim O’Donnel of the Washington Post has unearthed the white cake recipe that supposedly won Lincoln’s heart here.

In addition, according to the Huffington Post, Lincoln’s second inaugural dinner — which evolved into a sidesplitting food fight — featured poultry, tarts, jellies and, most notably, an abundance of oysters. Oysters? Lincoln?

Make of it what you will.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

February 12, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

PRODDING CONGRESS TO PLAY BALL ON IMMIGRATION

ImgresPublished in the Wednesday, January 29, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Experts agree, if there is any way to unlock the immigration stalemate in Washington, Esther Olavarria (presently charged with finding a feasible compromise by the White House) and Rebecca Tallent (presently working as the top policy aide to Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio) just might find it.

Both women sport impressive credentials. Democrat Olavarria was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s former top immigration lawyer and Republican Tallent was Sen. John McCain’s former chief of staff.

“They understand how this works,” Angela Kelley, a longtime immigration activist and friend of both women, told The New York Times. “They never deviated from standing by their boss. But they always treated each other with a lot of respect, and they never got to this point of personal breakdown where they couldn’t come back from it.”

Perhaps they might find inspiration in the American League. It was on this very day, 114 years ago, that the ragtag Western League was reborn as the American League (of Professional Baseball Clubs). The new league was the creation of Cincinnati news reporter Ban Johnson, who ruled as its president for more than a quarter century.

On opening day in 1901, the eight American League franchises consisted of the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Americans, Chicago White Stockings, Cleveland Blues, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators.

The Detroit Tigers were the only team left over from the minor Western League, and to this day remain the only team in either league to have held fast to their original team name and city.

Despite being denigrated as the “Junior Circuit” during its early years, the American League has burgeoned from a renegade baseball organization into an opponent worthy of doing battle with the National League. In fact, of the 109 World Series played since 1903, the American League has come out on top in the substantial majority of games — 63 to be exact.

Today, not only have we the American League to thank for breaking up a nasty monopoly (exclusively benefiting team owners in the National League), for making a larger-than-life icon out of Babe Ruth and for introducing the odious designated hitter rule, but also for a most positive transformation of America’s pastime by immigrants to this country.

In the first comprehensive study of baseball and immigration, Stuart Anderson and L. Brian Andrew of the National Foundation for American Policy concluded, “Americans have benefited from our nation’s openness toward skilled immigrant baseball players, just as the country has gained from the entry of other skilled foreign-born professionals.”

More than 23 percent of Major League Baseball players on active rosters in 2006 were, according to the study, foreign-born, the highest then in baseball history.

In the American League, seven of the top nine batting averages belonged to foreign-born players, while the leading home run hitter (David Ortiz) and the two leaders in runs batted in (Ortiz and Justin Morneau) were foreign-born.

Furthermore, foreign-born players accounted for 31 percent of the players selected for the 2006 All Star Game, higher than their proportion (23 percent) on major league active lists. Seven of the 16 starting position players at the 2006 All Star Game — some 44 percent — were also foreign-born.

Despite claims by anti-immigration proponents, increased competition from foreign-born players did not result in lower salaries for native ballplayers. Since 1990, average major league player salaries more than quadrupled from $578,930 to $2.87 million, while the proportion of foreign-born players in the league more than doubled (from 10 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 2006).

Furthermore, according to the study, a sustained or increased quality of play, to which foreign-born players have significantly contributed, may have helped boost revenues, as major league ballpark attendance rocketed from 54.8 million to 74.9 million between 1990 and 2005.

In both 2005 and 2007, Olavarria and Tallent spent months in grueling backroom deal-making sessions that came to naught. They repeatedly attempted to find consensus among lawmakers on such proposed overhauls as granting legal status to those already here, safeguarding the border and opening the door to more legal workers.

Their struggle to chart common ground was preserved for posterity in a series of documentary films called “How Democracy Works Now.” In fact, last year at the New York Film Festival, Olavarria and Tallent saw themselves fail up on the silver screen. Twice.

Even though their carefully crafted proposals succumbed to partisan bickering and entrenched special interests, the powers that be are again tasking them with exactly the same job.

Instead of forcing Olavarria and Tallent to pound out legislation that will ultimately expire, I have a better idea. Take the entire Congress to a Red Sox game. Give them the chance to see Papi Ortiz smack a homer. And then ask, “How can you vote against that?"

January 29, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

SOCIAL MEDIA GROWTH SPURS LANGUAGE REVOLUTION

Urban-dictionary-001-291x300Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote: “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

No limits, however, seem to apply to the Internet-based Urban Dictionary created in 1999 by Aaron Peckham during his freshman year at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. By November 2013, Peckham had already archived more than 7.3 million words.

The first entry he accepted was “The Man” — you remember that one — which the contributor defined as “the faces of ‘the establishment’ put in place to ‘bring us down.’”

The legitimacy of the Urban Dictionary was recognized in 2011 when agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, seeking to document the criminal threat inherent in the word “murk,” cited the source during a court case.

“People have always been inventive with language,” Katherine Connor Martin, head of U.S. Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“In the 19th century, if young people were using slang terms among themselves, those worlds had to become very well entrenched before anything came into popular use,” she added. “Now, if someone invents a new word on Twitter, it can go viral.”

Social media has goosed the growth of the Urban Dictionary more than any other factor. Imagine the number of people who decided to Google “twerk” after Miley Cyrus demonstrated the lascivious move at the Video Music Awards and ended up at www.urbandictionary.com.

Still, even though the Urban Dictionary predates Instagram, Snappchat, Tumblr, Twitter and even Facebook, “it does not,” according Jenna Wortham at the Economic Times, “garner the double-digit stock price and billion-dollar bids from eager buyers that are standard fare in Silicon Valley. It is a more modest business, run by Peckham, its 32-year-old founder, out of his home in San Francisco.”

Peckham is presently in the process of gathering votes for the 2013 Urban Word of the Year. Don’t feel badly if you don’t recognize the finalists — it’s a generational thing.

The phrase “said no one ever” has racked up enough votes to qualify for fifth place. Often employed as a Twitter hashtag, “said no one ever” has been used to mock something that is generally unpopular and disliked on image macros or in the text of such e-cards as “Thank God it’s Monday — said no one ever.”

In fourth place is “selfie,” a photo taken of oneself (deliberately not looking into the phone camera lens) and subsequently uploaded onto a social networking website. Supposedly originating on Myspace, the “selfie” is usually disparaged as the act of a soul so friendless that he or she is forced to DIY.

I once witnessed a teenager leaping into the air in front of the Mona Lisa. In the “selfie” snapped on her iPhone, she was actually blocking out the most valued ($772 million) painting in the world.

In third place is “YOLO,” the acronym for “you only live once.” YOLO has become the time-honored yet uber-lame excuse for making but another stupid decision.

Example:

Inquiring Mind: “Hey, I heard u broke ur leg falling off the balcony at that party last week.”

Born Loser: “Ya, man, but YOLO!”

Like LOL, LMAO or ROTFL, which also got their historic start on Usenet, YOLO has grown pervasive among computer-mediated as well as face-to-face communication. And like LOL, LMAO and ROTFL, YOLO has proved just as annoying when employed as an oral knee-jerk response that allows a twenty-something communicator to avoid any semblance of critical thinking.

In second place is “please advise” or the conventional corporate jargon for “What (the heck) is wrong with you?”

Example: “Dear Jim, I have not yet received the case files I requested last week. Please advise, John.”

While other text acronyms might seem more to the point, “please advise” appears more professional if/when attorneys get involved.

In first place is “ratchet,” which the Urban Dictionary has defined as “A diva, mostly from urban cities and ghettos, that has reason to believe she is every man’s eye candy. Unfortunately, she’s wrong.”

She can be recognized, according to various Urban Dictionary’s crowd-sourced definitions, by her overuse of “YOLO,” “actually” or “twerk;” her thrice-dyed weave, torn fishnets or unpolished 8-inch heels — as well as her mind-numbing stupidity. Raps by LL Cool J and Juicy J only fueled the further mortification of the so-called “ratchet” woman.

Yet, such megastars as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, via songs and Instagram “selfies” featuring door knocker earrings inscribed with the r-word, are attempting to morph the insult into a compliment.

The working-class South meaning of ratchet is “not necessarily negative. You could say ‘I’m ratchet’ to say ‘I’m real. I’m ghetto. I am what I am,’” Earl Williams, a producer known as Phunk Dawg, explained to New York Magazine.

And there it is — the elasticity of meaning — allowing our minds to know no limits.

Except for the 140-character limit on Twitter, that is.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

January 15, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

FLYING HIGH IN 2014? CHANCES NOT LOOKING GOOD

Terrafugia-transition-flying-car_100355074_lPublished in the Wednesday, January 1, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

So where’s my flying car?

In 1928, Popular Mechanics introduced the flying car in concept only. It wasn’t until 1957 that the magazine actually announced, “A new kind of flying machine is being designed (by Hiller Helicopter) that sounds like the answer to your desires for a personal aerial vehicle. It is almost like a flying carpet.”

The vehicle would boast air speeds up to 50 mph but would only cost as much as a “good car.”

Popular Mechanics got into the prediction business way back in 1902, when the publication was first launched. And although the editors might not have been able to glimpse the year 2014 with total accuracy, it didn’t stop them from making the attempt.

Over the years — as electricity replaced steam engines, brick buildings were overshadowed by glass, concrete and steel skyscrapers and the globe kept shrinking thanks to advances in transportation and telecommunications, Popular Mechanics continued to publish annual prognostications by scientists, inventors and other visionaries.

As to the precision of their prophesies, Popular Mechanics predictors didn’t make out much better than the assorted psychics who make their yearly forecasts on New Year’s Day.

Although we have yet to acquire flying cars, to give Popular Mechanics credit, our mail is presently sorted by robots (1921), rickets no longer cripples little kids (1925), cars emit fewer noxious fumes (1928), our clothes are made of milk (1929) and our buildings can revolve (1930).

Also, our food is cooked by microwaves (1937) and fortified with grass (1940), push buttons replaced dials on telephones (1942), full dinners are available in the freezer section of supermarkets (1947) and we currently hang our television sets on the wall (1954).

Yet, when the Popular Mechanics forecasters missed the mark, they missed it by a mile.

Chicago never became another Venice as imagined by planners in 1928. Air-conditioning buildings via rooftop lakes (1928), making clothing of asbestos (1929), radio-controlling farms (1939) and turning wristwatches into “total communication centers” (1968) — all flopped.

Furthermore, the world is still awaiting the highly accurate weather prediction machine that was touted to Popular Mechanics readers in 1950.

Those of us who visited the Monsanto House of the Future were thrilled at the sight of such labor-saving appliances as the microwave oven and the sonic dishwasher. We oohed and aahed at the thought of modular bathrooms, telephones featuring presets, pushbuttons, and hands-free transmitters as well as climate control centers that filtered, cooled, heated and scented the air in each room independently.

While all that futuristic stuff may have fascinated Disneyland crowds from 1957 to 1967, the Monsanto House faced the demolition ball after only 10 years. Considered passé even though the future it predicted, namely 1986, wouldn’t be reached for nearly two more decades, it was relegated to the ashcan of history.

In 1962, we started aspiring to live life like the Jetsons — an animated family residing in Orbit City some 100 years into the future at the time of the television show’s debut. All residences and businesses, rendered in Googie-style architecture, found themselves butting up against clouds as they pivoted on adjustable columns.

Any household task that couldn’t be accomplished by pushing a button was relegated to robot maids like Rosie. Audiences especially relished the notion that George Jetson’s space-age technology regularly broke down and inconvenienced his family in 2052, in much the same manner it did during the ’60s and ’70s.

But what I really want you to note is that George Jetson commuted to his two-day-a-week, one-hour-a-day job in a saucer-shaped, bubble-topped aerocar.

So where’s my flying car? If you can believe what you see on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuXbM0kaD7k my vehicle should arrive in one short year.

Terrafugia recently announced that the world’s first flying car will go on the market in 2015. Not only is no runway required for takeoff, but Terrafugia also claims that the Transition runs on premium unleaded gas.

The driver operates the two-seater with a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals while on the ground and where the vehicle can attain 149.3 mph. A pilot with a minimum of 20 hours (according to CNN) has the option of switching to stick and rudder while in the air where the cruising air speed is 107 miles per hour mph.

And in case you were concerned about space, the Transition’s wings fold up so that the flying car can be parked in your garage.

Prepare yourself for sticker shock, however, since the base purchase price for the Transition is $279,000. You can reserve your very own vehicle right now, however, with a measly $10,000 deposit.

Sign me up. In 2024, that is. I might be able to cough up the deposit by then. Happy New Year, dear readers.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

January 01, 2014 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (1)

DON'T GET CAUGHT UP BY FRAUDULENT ONLINE REVIEWS

 

CatandmousejPublished in the Wednesday, December 18, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

The time-honored bromide “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” has been erroneously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Would-be innovators, however, still insist on taking the adage literally.

According to author Ruth Kassinger, (“Build a Better Mousetrap”) since 1828, when the U.S. Patent Office was founded, not only have more than 4,400 mousetraps been patented, but with an average of 40 patents granted each year, the mousetrap remains “the most frequently invented device in U.S. history.”

So how many mousetrap moguls are actually making money? When was the last time you had a problem with rats?

Yet, across the fruited plain, we can’t help thinking of ourselves as innovators.

We are convinced that any one of us could hatch the “next big idea.” In fact, we believe a super-creative problem-solving gene is wired into our DNA — right alongside the much-touted American can-do spirit.

A hilarious holiday season video is currently making the rounds (more than 12 million hits) on YouTube, that, at least, musically, makes my point. Fourteen hooded students from South Kitsap High School, posing as a contemplative (silent) order of monks, are performing the Hallelujah Chorus.

How is that possible, you ask? Answer: the clever and creative use of flash cards — but please, see for yourself. 

You and I were not present in December 2008 when a proud parent from Port Orchard, Wash., shot the original video.

Yet, via YouTube, millions can now experience and appreciate the ingenious interpretation of the G.F. Handel classic by the Silent Monks — for free.

Not really free. A 20-second commercial precedes the video. YouTube needs money to keep the lights on but what I find disconcerting is that these talented kids doing the work receive zero compensation. Nada.

Let’s return to the mousetrap moneymaking question. Manufactured by Reckitt Benckiser, d-Con seems to have cornered the rodent control market.

It, in turn, bestow much of the credit and millions of dollars on Euro RSCG New York, the ad agency that devises its 30-second seductions for the boob tube, which also (coincidentally?) show up on YouTube.

Yet, Itamar Simonson, lead scholar on a new Stanford University Business School study, now claims that Wall Street is being seriously undermined by consumer evaluations like those on Amazon, Yelp or Google Local.

His research concludes that the wealth of online product information and user reviews has ultimately caused a fundamental shift in consumer decision-making.

Today, Simonson told The New York Times, products are being appraised according to their “absolute value, their quality.” His research suggests that not only should corporations spend less loot attempting to shape consumer opinions with traditional advertising, but also spend more studying consumers and the values that shape their purchasing decisions.

If you consult the 11 (total) user reviews for the d-Con “No View, No Touch” mousetrap on Amazon, you will find that ratings for this item averaged 3.7 out of 5 stars. Since the two dissatisfied buyers didn’t make much of a case for submitting abysmal scores, most buyers won’t be deterred.

But what about those who would game the system by paying for positive reviews or negative reviews of the competition?

Although neither is allowed on Yelp, MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal) reports that 20 percent of Yelp reviews appear to be fraudulent — typically written by freelance writers from the Philippines, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe who receive between $1 to $10 for each review.

In fact, according to Reuters, 19 New York City companies that specialize in boosting online search results to combat negative reviews were caught submitting bogus evaluations on such websites as Yelp, Google Local and CitySearch.

Snared in a yearlong sting operation dubbed “Operation Clean Turf,” these search optimization firms finally agreed to pay $350,000 in penalties.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office argued that faux evaluations breached laws against false advertising and deceptive business practices.

“Consumers rely on reviews from their peers to make daily purchasing decisions on anything from food and clothing to recreation and sightseeing,” Schneiderman told the Huffington Post.

“This investigation into large-scale, intentional deceit across the Internet tells us that we should approach online reviews with caution,” he said.

Two ways Amazon hopes to boost the credibility of its reviews is by verifying an actual purchase and publishing every response in full.

Although the better mousetrap aphorism actually popped up some seven years after Emerson’s April 12, 1882 demise, what he, in reality, wrote, according to John H. Lienhard’s “Inventing Modern,” was “If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

True? That’s what Jeff Bezos hopes we believe.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

December 19, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (1)

Christmas of 2013

 

Dear Family and Friends,                                                                                    

As you can see, the theme for this year’s Christmas card is music.  Elliott is tickling the ivories, Max is holding his new string bass and Chloe is tooting the horn of Beverly’s year-old Chrysler convertible (The Gray Lady). What you can’t see is Beverly (who is deploying Spotify on her phone) or Jon (who is warbling Grateful Dead lyrics) as they attempt to keep their No. 2 grandson distracted, if not amused.

 

Retirement suits Beverly quite well, even though she claims to be far busier than during her working days.  When she’s not sketching nudes for her Life Drawing class, she occupies her time keeping up with Friends of the Library activities, penning her bi-weekly column, tutoring adults in the library literacy program, and, accompanying Chloe the Therapy Dog, chatting with the mentally challenged daycare patients at Oceanview Pavilion.  She has also hosted Elliott during a sufficient number of overnights to personally testify that he is, indeed, an actual genius.  Not only does he giggle at all her jokes but can’t get enough of her mashed potatoes.  Beverly also managed to publish two books this year:  Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Political Film and The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo: A Hunter Triplets Mystery.  Guess which one is raking in the royalties?  She has also finally agreed to two total knee replacements now that she’s run out of pain-reduction options.  The first operation will take place two days after Christmas with the second following in two months.  She would greatly appreciate your prayers.

 

Jon is up with the dawn each day as he meets with something like ten county boards and working committees.  He shudders to think he has evolved from the pony-tailed radical elected in 1994 into the institutional memory for Ventura County politics.  And, but again, Beverly will be forced to embroider “Hizzoner” on his shorts.  This is the fourth time Jon has been tapped to serve as Mayor.  Apparently he can’t get enough of Goodyear chicken, greasy hors d’oeuvres, watered-down cocktails or crises.  The city is actually making a federal case out of the erosion emergency at Hueneme Beach Park.  The Army Corps of Engineers so shorted the sand nourishment allotment this time that Surfside Drive is in serious danger of washing away during the winter storms.  Fortunately, we reside on the third floor but, seriously, folks, we really don’t need our already up-close-and-personal view of the ocean to get closer.

 

Both Trevor and Brendan have become homeowners.  Trevor and his growing family (Elliott was born 11/29/12) are already occupying their newly renovated 3-B house in Echo Park while Brendan is busy documenting the construction of his 3-B condo on FB and preparing for a January move.  Angie is now a full-time homemaker and doing a fantastic job with Elliott.  Trevor is a devoted father as well.  Just recently, Trevor was promoted to Disney Music Group Vice President of Digital Marketing so we weren’t exactly flabbergasted when Elliott was dressed as Mickey Mouse for Halloween.

 

Brendan shared his passion for all things Frank Lloyd Wright with us this June.  The three of us (plus Chloe) set out on an eight-day pilgrimage starting in Oak Park, IL and spiraling out to the surrounding Chicago environs.  Brendan was able to add 45 FLW structures to his life list.  In addition, Bren, who has never been much of a reader, stunned Beverly by devouring her murder mystery in three days.  Of course he had an ulterior motive. Beverly had already confessed that she based the character of Anne, the sleuth with the photographic memory in her novel, on him.  In addition, Brendan is still writing graphic novels and creating music when he isn’t putting in oodles of overtime @ QBE First/B of A Home Loans.

 

Naomi and Max have relocated to Chandler, Arizona.  Max loves his new school and has progressed so rapidly with his bass lessons that his teacher invited him to join the elite Chamber Orchestra. Naomi is gradually adjusting to her 12-year-old son asking to go out alone with his friends rather than hang out at home but they will always be close.  Max still relishes anything scientific (especially explosions on “MythBusters”), is getting quite proficient on his flight simulator, dreams of the car he will drive at sixteen, and thrilled Jon (who was present) by scoring a basket during the championship game.

 

We remain most grateful for all of our many blessings and for all of you.

 

Jon, Beverly, Chloe, Nat, Naomi, Max, Brendan, Trevor, Angie, and Elliott

December 06, 2013 in Christmas Letter | Permalink | Comments (3)

'BOOKIES' ARE DREAMING OF A GREEN CHRISTMAS

IMG_1302Published in Wednesday, December 4, 2013 edition of Ventura County Star
 

Question: “When is a fundraiser not a fundraiser?”

Answer (as provided by a smart aleck who shall remain nameless): “When nobody shows up at your fundraising event.”

But “nobody showing up at your fundraising event” certainly doesn’t describe this Saturday’s Holiday Book and Gift Boutique sponsored by the Port Hueneme Friends of the Library.

Every year, for the past five years, hundreds of bargain hunters (and not just folks from Port Hueneme) crowd the specially marked tables (25 cents, 50 cents, $1, $3-$5 and $10) inside the Ray D. Prueter Library, 510 Park Ave., Port Hueneme, from noon to 3 p.m.

The Port Hueneme Friends, you see, keep dreaming of a green Christmas. Every year, our “Bookies” (volunteers who sort, clean and price used books) set aside Christmas novels, boxed sets, teen and children’s books, holiday crafting magazines and the most recent cookbooks for the sale on the first Saturday in December.

It all started in 2008, when the Port Hueneme Friends decided to do something special for the community right before the holidays.

In her Port Hueneme Pilot column, city librarian Cathy Thomason once talked about the value of presenting books as Christmas gifts. In fact, she shared her own childhood experience with a beautiful anthology of children’s literature.

She said she kept returning to read her favorite Little Red Hen story so many times that the hardback eventually fell to pieces. How many of you can relate?

Given the financial downturn closing out 2008 as well, it was especially important to the Port Hueneme Friends that parents desiring to share a cherished volume with an offspring could find an affordable option at our sale. Most of our stiff-covered children’s books cost less than a dollar. Buying new at a bookstore could well run into double digits.

In addition, our adult customers were delighted with a matchless value-added aspect of biblio-stocking stuffers. They realized, like Thomason, that books, especially if read aloud, rarely fall out of favor or get broken before Christmas or Hanukkah is over.

And while books alone would have flown off the tables, the Port Hueneme Friends believed they could expand the outreach to further ease the financial burden of a largely blue-collar community.

You see, while Port Hueneme may seem like just a sleepy little beach town to Ventura County, demographically, it is unique. Our population of 21,856 seems to be concentrated at the age spectrum’s extreme endpoints.

Port Hueneme residents are either very young children (and their parents) or over-65 retirees. The middle of the range, which is usually packed with individuals in their peak earning years, barely exists in Port Hueneme. Such a singularity, however, comes with a significant economic disadvantage.

According to city data, the estimated per capita income for Port Hueneme residents in 2011 was $22,208, making the “Friendly City by the Sea” one of the most financially challenged municipalities in Ventura County.

So we asked ourselves, “How can we be of help?” The answer we found would prove as beneficial to us as it would to our customers.

During November, we (and all of our friends, and friends of our friends) scour our jewelry boxes, closets, toy chests, video or DVD collections and garages in search of nearly new yet gift-quality treasures — something that might make the perfect inexpensive present.

Those of us staffing the tables during the sale particularly look forward to assisting our fledgling shoppers. These youngsters show up, their quarters and dimes tucked securely into a back pocket or purse, with a long list of people to buy for — many of whom are shopping as well.

We not only assure them that we can be counted on to keep their acquisitions secret, but we also provide bags so that mommy and daddy will be suitably surprised come Dec. 25.

In addition, the naming of the “white elephant in the room” has become an unexpected tradition as well. Each year we find a contribution that we, collectively, are quite positive will never find a buyer — at least not somebody in his or her right mind.

Last year, the designated white elephant was a toilet plunger decorated in appropriate greenery for display on St. Patrick’s Day. Sure enough, one of our adult consumers snapped it up, allowing that it would be ideal for some unsuspecting Irish relative.

So whether you’re focused on the wearin’ or the savin’ of the green this Saturday afternoon, the Port Hueneme Library is the place to be.

And as to a more appropriate answer to the question posed in the initial paragraph, “When is a fundraiser not a fundraiser,” how about this? It certainly can’t be considered a fundraiser when charity begins at home.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

December 04, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

BROWN AND HIS TOP AIDE EXHAUST THE POSSIBILITIES

Anne+Gust+Brown+Jerry+Brown+Holds+News+Conference+unDzTgQ7y64lPublished in the November 20, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

 

“I would say sometimes he is exhausting,” 55-year-old Anne Gust Brown told the New York Times, as she scratched her corgi “Sutter” behind the ears. “Sometimes,” she added, seated in the state capital courtyard, “I have to foist him onto other people and say, you go talk to someone else about that, because he has a sort of insatiable appetite about these things.”

Anybody who has spent more than a photo-op minute in the company of Jerry Brown knows exactly what his diminutive, dark-haired wife of eight years is talking about with “these things.”

I got my chance to learn in the spring of 2002. Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland had arrived at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel to deliver a keynote address to the Local Government Commission.

It wasn’t exactly a speech — it was sort of a rhetorical ramble liberally sprinkled with quotes from Adam Smith, Francis Fukuyama and C. Wright Mills. Brown also included a soupon of self-deprecating humor, a formal recognition of the tough job local elected officials do, and such “the emperor is wearing no clothes” truisms as “politics is nothing more than raising money to buy enough votes to win.” I believe he employed the word “sustainable” 24 times.

Just before his stint at the podium, however, he sat next to me furiously scribbling notes he never used. I found it odd that so few recognized him before he arose.

Still, Brown had changed. Since his fruitless run for president against Bill Clinton, his waist had thickened, his shock of chestnut hair had thinned to a friar-like fringe, and he was decked out entirely in black. While the piercing brown eyes were still striking, the once-vibrant countenance appeared doughy and pale.

I was, however, to get more up-close-and-personal face-time in the cafeteria of the Yosemite Lodge. Since Brown, Gust and several of her relatives plopped down at the next table from me, I was able to indulge in an hour of delicious eavesdropping.

You didn’t have to be a body language expert to discern that the former two-time California governor, three-time presidential candidate and then-mayor of the state’s eighth largest city was incredibly uneasy making small talk. He kept picking up his conference materials and clutching them to his chest — an involuntary effort that seemed to grant him a modicum of comfort.

Obviously bored with the humdrum that passed for table talk, he also appeared bewildered that none of his breakfast-mates had heard of Arthur Schopenhauer.

When Gust’s family started to gang up on him, persistently pestering him to go hiking, he threw up all manner of excuse, and, in desperation, launched into an impromptu lecture about the cannibalistic Donner Pass Party.

Yet, to me, it seemed obvious — even at a table sticky with maple syrup and crowded with plastic trays — Gust was more of a dynamo than she seemed to be. While rock legend Linda Ronstadt may have inspired the ’70s-era “Pop Politics of Jerry Brown” once deconstructed by Newsweek, Anne Gust had accomplished the impossible. She had gotten Governor Moonbeam to grow up.

Brown’s political Wendy shook up his hippy-dippy dream world, reminded him that governing at the local level meant dealing with practicalities like potholes and pensions and, most importantly, reshaped him into the hard-edge realist who might, someday, confront California’s unmanageable budget woes. Gust played no small role in Brown’s transmogrification from philosopher to pragmatist.

A decade later, the New York Times’ Jennifer Medina agrees. Gust “is the first person to whom advisers turn if they need to anticipate the long list of questions the governor is likely to pepper them with ... she is one of the few people who can predict his often unpredictable thinking. And she is the one most likely to tell the governor it is time to end the Socratic seminar and make a decision.”

Gust, who wed Brown in 2005 at a ceremony officiated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, swapped the title “first lady” for “special counsel to the governor.” And instead of pushing women’s issues as her predecessors had, she opted to head up the successful Proposition 30 campaign and keep contributions flowing into Brown’s $10 million war chest.

As the Brown entourage was vacating the cafeteria in 2002, I watched closely as the “waste not, want not” mayor of Oakland paused to pop a leftover piece of bacon and a couple of discarded over-toasted crusts — from one of the kiddies’ plates — into his mouth.

What I hadn’t realized is that his wife is equally parsimonious. When the governor took office, not only did Gust surrender the first lady’s wing but also led the effort to penny-pinch the governor’s staff by 25 percent. Furthermore, she boasted that she regularly cut Brown’s hair herself and they split an entree whenever they dine out.

Now that I find exhausting.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

November 19, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (0)

CREATING POSITIVE CHANGE THROUGH COMPASSION

 

800px-Carneige_Art_Museum,_OxnardPublished in the Wednesday, November 6, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Who best attracts your attention?

1. Somebody with less social power than yourself?

2. Somebody with more power?

3. Somebody with the same?

A growing body of research reports that individuals higher up on the status totem pole tend to essentially tune out anybody beneath them.

In a 2008 study, social psychologists studying pairs of strangers relating such difficult life experiences as death or divorce found that the more powerful were not only less compassionate toward their partner’s hardships but also actually played down any suffering being described.

Dacher Keltner (UC Berkeley) and Michael W. Kraus (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) discovered that the underprivileged are so much better at interpersonal relationships than the affluent because they have to be. While the prosperous can pay, the impoverished must depend on the generosity of friends or relatives.

Emotional intelligence (EI) guru Daniel Goleman contends that the aforementioned studies demonstrate profound implications for societal behavior and government policy. As he wrote in “Rich People Just Care Less,” (New York Times) “in politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them.”

What with House Republicans cutting food stamps and/or impeding the implementation of Obamacare, it would seem that Goleman might be on to something — yet, as former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out, there is plenty of culpability to spread around.

“It’s easy to blame Republicans and the right-wing billionaires that bankroll them,” Reich noted, “and their unceasing demonization of ‘big government’ as well as deficits. But Democrats in Washington (must) bear some of the responsibility. In last year’s fiscal cliff debate, neither party pushed to extend the payroll tax holiday or find other ways to help the working middle class and poor.”

Why not? According to Reich’s analysis, the top 10 percent in net worth are presently tickled silly. Not only do they own 80 percent of the market, but also this year stocks rocketed a whopping 24 percent. Did I also mention that 10-percenters are the ones who contribute to political campaigns and fund “independent” ads as well?

But here’s Reich’s kicker that links directly back to Goleman “Congress,” — consisting of 100 percent 10-percenters, according to Reich — “doesn’t know much about the bottom 90 percent.”

So how does money trigger fat cats into turning a blind eye toward the less fortunate? If a causal link exists, Goleman hasn’t found it.

All he can say is that “tuning in to the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy, which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the circumstances are right, compassionate action.”

So it would appear that the actual variable Goleman is after is “empathy.” However, not everybody buys his doctrine that empathy can be learned.

While emotional intelligence training has been warmly embraced by both academia and the business world in an attempt to address such pesky problems as bullying, sexual harassment, hate crimes and “going postal,” eliminating insensitive habits or behaviors is the only change with EI.

For example, a boss might be trained to silence his pager or smartphone when he sits down to speak to an employee. He is, in essence, forcing himself to pay attention to a subordinate. The question remains — is paying attention actually empathy?

Andrew Carnegie was one of many self-made men who comprised America’s newly minted upper crust. In “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889), he argued that it was up to the rich to deal with this new phenomenon called wealth inequality — since they were the ones who really understood money.

Carnegie pointed out that piling up lucre to overindulge oneself or to pass down to one’s progeny “encourages the slothful, the drunkard, the unworthy” and subsequently fails to benefit society. He urged the creation of a philanthropy that inherently generates opportunities for the deprived to better themselves — and to better America.

To that end, Carnegie funded the construction of public libraries across the fruited plain. Not only does evidence of Carnegie’s benevolence still exist in Ventura County, but the former Carnegie Library in Oxnard — constructed in 1907 to resemble a Greek temple with Doric columns — was repurposed as a public art gallery in 1986.

To Carnegie’s bitter disappointment, none of the other Gilded Age millionaires responded to his invitation. Yet, his “Gospel of Wealth” took on new life in 2010 when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates announced their Giving Pledge campaign.

Signatories promise to donate at least half their wealth to address society’s most pressing problems. According to the Huffington Post, as of July, 113 billionaires signed the commitment.

In fact, Americans, well-heeled and not so well off, routinely make the astounding personal decision to give away, in the aggregate, the equivalent of about 2.2 percent of America’s gross domestic product every year.

Somebody must be paying attention.

 

November 07, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (3)

PIONEERS, THE GLASS CEILING AND DECISION-MAKING

Breaking-through-glass-ceiling1Published in the October 23, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

This is the second part of a two-part column. — Editor

The 1960 presidential debates provided the ideal venue to test Paul Rosenthal’s theory that the visually-heavy medium of television was going to turn campaign persuasion upside down. No longer was a candidate’s stand on selected issues the key to the ballot box but rather the voter’s response to the candidate’s flickering image on the boob tube.

In addition, another factor entered the mix — the so-called “illusion of intimacy” that resulted from inviting people on television into the privacy of one’s home. They became almost as intimate to us as our Facebook friends today.

Since, in 1960, media dominance was teetering on a tipping point between radio and television, scholars studied the presidential debates on both media.

They found John F. Kennedy won the hearts and minds of television viewers, while the statesman-sounding Richard Nixon prevailed on radio.

Without such negative visual cues as Nixon’s gaunt, sweaty and shave-stick-white face or his gray-suited figure disappearing into the background — it was, for the folks listening on radio, as if Nixon and Kennedy had auditioned behind a screen.

Yet, millions of political advertising dollars are still spent on television, even though millennials don’t watch TV. Or vote — at least, not until they find themselves with families of their own.

So what can be done about the seemingly impenetrable glass ceiling in the Oval Office?

In a recent Huffington Post column, Marie C. Wilson argues, “Having spent 30 years working to change the culture and conversation — from Take Our Daughters to Work, to Vote, Lead, Run — I know there is only one way to permanently change the discussion: numbers of women in leadership. Or more specifically, a critical mass of women leading in each sector, with the end goal of women leading in parity alongside their male peers.”

To that end, the White House Project not only encourages women to run for office but also trains them to compete successfully.

Hollywood also got into the act in 2005 with the ABC series called “Commander in Chief.” And although the show’s bigwigs denied the claim, a number of conservative commentators and right-wing organizations criticized the series as a thinly-veiled attempt to lay the psychological groundwork for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Polls had been suggesting that the sticking point with American voters, both male and female, is the perception that a female commander in chief is an oxymoron. Fortunately, the citizens of 19 countries in which women are presently large and in charge do not share such an unsupportable view of female leadership. In the U.S., however, a majority of voters still contend that a female president doesn’t possess, to employ Al Campanis’ language, “the necessities” to strategize in the War Room.

Since we can’t exactly audition our presidential candidates behind a screen, how can we prevent gender bias from being thin-sliced into the ballot box? How can we shift perception to include both men and women when we talk about the candidate who “looks presidential?” Maybe what is needed is unisex attire that has evolved far beyond the pantsuit.

Hillary may well be the only really experienced presidential candidate out there. Surely as first lady and secretary of state, she has logged the requisite 10,000 hours that, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” is the secret to mastery of any field.

In addition, in his latest best-seller “David and Goliath,” Gladwell contends that “being seen as an underdog opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.” Perhaps the press corps who bashed her in 2008 didn’t realize they were gifting Hillary with an advantage.

Yet, only last month, during the Grano Speaker Series in Toronto, Gladwell threw out a McLuhan-esque “probe” to the effect that we will not see another African-American president in our lifetime — or, for that matter, another female president, if Hillary wins.

The reason, he offered, is tokenism. “Pioneers,” Gladwell said, and supported his point by ticking off 30 female heads of state who were not succeeded by other women, “don’t necessarily blaze trails.”

“The door is let open,” Gladwell told the audience, “but then the door gets shut behind them. Those people who get through,” he added, “become fetishized for where they came from. They are too visible.”

Maybe tokenism barred the door for the African-Americans who followed Jackie Robinson.

The hot-water-free response by Al Campanis to Ted Koppel’s query about the dearth of black managers should have been “I really don’t know, but isn’t it a huge loss for baseball?”

A year later, with the perfect vision that hindsight provides, Al Campanis was able to employ more clarity in his thinking. “Time has diffused the immediate hurt of April 6, (1987)” he told the Los Angeles Times. “It has turned to a plus for baseball and myself.”

October 22, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (7)

THE POWER OF 'THIN-SLICING' ON DECISION MAKING

Published on Wednesday Oct. 9, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

GladQuoteThe year is 1987 and Al Campanis is appearing on “Nightline” with Ted Koppel. Coincidentally, America’s favorite pastime is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s Major League Baseball debut.

Campanis knows that Ted doesn’t toss out softballs and his next question will be no exception. Since Campanis is the general manager of the Dodgers and a close friend of Robinson, Koppel questions why there are so few black managers in MLB or why none have been hired at Campanis’ level.

Granted, Campanis was not himself that April evening. In fact, he was, in his words, “wiped out,” but opted to shake off the fatigue because that’s what professionals do.

Fumbling around for suitable language to answer Koppel’s follow-up “to peel it away, a little bit — is there still prejudice in baseball today?” the best Campanis could come up with was admitting that “blacks may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.”

In his best-seller “Blink,” (which is shorthand for “rapid cognition”) Malcolm Gladwell describes the experience of a female trombone player named Abbie Conan. She was the hands-down choice of the Munich Philharmonic selection committee.

The auditions, you see, were held behind a screen so the old-school musicians were certainly surprised when Frau Conan emerged, instead of the Herr Conan they had been expecting.

Since her orchestra colleagues wouldn’t overcome their ingrained bias against women, she was demoted without explanation to second trombone.

Conan had no choice but to go to court. In their legal brief, attorneys for the orchestra argued, “The plaintiff does not possess the necessary physical strength to be a leader of the trombone section.” After eight years of testing by experts, she was finally reinstated to first trombone, but she spent the next five years battling all over again — for equal pay.

In “Blink,” Gladwell also examines “The Warren Harding Error” or why we, as voters, keep falling for tall, dark and handsome men.

Most historians concur that Harding was one of the worst presidents in American history, yet his was that name that attained consensus in 1920 as Republican Party bosses gathered in the smoke-filled backrooms of Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel.

Even though Harding chiefly occupied his life with poker, alcohol and women (not necessarily in that order), he continued to rise from one political office to another, but without ever actually distinguishing himself.

His oratory, in fact, had been depicted as “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.”

So how did this intellectual pygmy ever attain the presidency? Because to voters, Harding “looked presidential” — decades before TV became a major player in politics.

Deciding that a candidate “looks presidential,” according to “Blink,” is a perfect example of what Gladwell calls “thin-slicing” or “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.”

While thin-slicing occurs both instantaneously and outside of our conscious awareness, it’s best understood as the distillation of years of experience into some sort of split-second reaction that usually proves eerily accurate.

Gladwell provides a case in point with John Gottman, a psychologist from the University of Washington who studied more than 3,000 married couples in his “love lab.” Gottman’s hypothesis involved predicting whether or not a couple would still be together after 15 years.

Gottman would observe a videotape of husband and wife as they discussed a controversial topic — factoring in dozens of nonverbal cues. His predictions proved 90 percent accurate after 15 minutes; 95 percent after one hour.

According to Gladwell, “when our unconscious engages in thin-slicing, what we are doing is an automated, accelerated unconscious version of what Gottman does with his videotapes and equations.”

Yet, not all nonverbal factors proved equal with Gottman. If a husband or wife demonstrated (even briefly) defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism or contempt, Gottman would predict that the marriage was doomed.

So what might have happened had Gottman been asked to view the “Nightline” interview? Would he have zeroed-in on the not-so-hidden contempt leading to Campanis’ ham-handed choice of words?

The press certainly did — they started grilling Campanis about his seemingly black-or-white decision to replace Walter Alston with Tommy Lasorda rather than Jim Gilliam the very next day. The story would grow legs and would end with Campanis relegated to the unemployment line.

Yet, Campanis was a veritable genus at thin-slicing. In fact, his role as general manager demanded it.

The sad thing is that he will always be remembered for his ill-considered words on “Nightline” instead of his 19 years overseeing the Dodgers.

Or as his friend Robinson once observed, “How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.”

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

October 09, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (3)

FACING THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT KNEE SURGERY

MRSA_SEM_9994_loresPublished Wednesday September 25, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

You are not your mommy, said my friend. She was right. I had allowed fear, despite FDR’s Depression-era warning, to trump reason.

My mother died almost two decades ago after knee replacement surgery. She contracted two different infections by antibiotic resistant bacteria, and then she was gone.

Now, with osteoarthritis causing the deterioration of both knees into a bone-rubbing-against-bone reality, and my physician running out of pain-reducing medication options, I could face the same fate.

When my bone doctor first suggested a couple of knee-replacement operations, the pain was manageable. I told him I had no intention of ever considering going under the knife. The orthopedist just grinned and said, “You’ll be back.”

The odds were in his favor. Not only has the number of total knee replacement surgeries soared 161.5 percent over the past 20 years, but the yearly demand is also predicted to reach 3.48 million procedures by 2030.

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, 90 percent of patients undergoing knee replacement experience a dramatic reduction in pain and a significant improvement in the ability to perform daily activities. The 30-day mortality rate, in fact, is .04 percent with less than two percent of patients suffering complications.

As to antibiotic resistant infections, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials reported only last week that while hospital-borne germs infect around two million Americans every year, only 23,000 die.

The recent number is considerably lower than previous CDC ballpark figures — the estimate was 100,000 in 2007 — because researchers deliberately stripped out cases in which a drug-resistant infection was present but not necessarily the cause of death.

One particularly lethal type of drug-resistant bacteria, known as CRE, is impervious to nearly all antibiotics on the market. While still relatively rare — causing just 600 deaths a year — it’s still been identified in health care facilities in 44 states.

“We are getting closer and closer to the cliff,” the CDC’s Dr. Michael Bell told The New York Times.

Now it wouldn’t take much for somebody as apprehensive as I am to obsess about CRE — becoming convinced, based on comments like Bell’s, that the bacterium will do me in.

Do you remember Barry Glassner? Although it’s been a dozen years since the sociologist who is now president of Lewis and Clark College penned “The Culture of Fear,” he still spouts the message that most major anxieties of the American public are wildly misplaced.

Glassner, who regularly slams the mainstream media for fear-mongering to boost ratings, reports that three out of four Americans admit to being more afraid now than 20 years ago — even though the crime rate is at an all-time low, people are living longer and capitalism is under no viable threat.

“If we ask why so many of us are losing sleep over dangers that are very small or unlikely,” Glassner told the Oregonian, “it’s almost always because someone or some group is profiting or trying to profit by either selling us a product, scaring us into voting for them or against their opponent or enticing us to watch their TV program.”

He advises that whenever we find ourselves exposed to “fear-filled” news, we should investigate the claims.

Is an isolated incident (like my mother’s experience) being treated as a trend? Just asking the question, Glassner suggests, can be reassuring in itself.

Second, Glassner recommends that we think about the person conveying the scary message (even if it is ourselves) and determine how the communicator might benefit. In my case, it allowed me to avoid a thorny decision.

So I hit the books. I learned, of all the superbugs, the most pervasive is MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) but according to a JAMA internal Medicine journal article published only last week, MRSA infections in hospitals have dropped by more than half from 2005 to 2011 due to vigorous hygiene measures.

But that’s not the most remarkable finding. According to the same study, while hospitals may have cleaned up their act, the probability of picking up MRSA at such outside health care setting as clinics or rehab centers is still high. That (and the money) are why Medicare prefers you recuperate at home.

While “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” is sage advice, I was more persuaded by “The Daily Shower Can Be a Killer,” a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Jared Diamond.

The 70-year-old author of “Guns, Germs and Steel” confided that “the biggest single lesson that I’ve learned from 50 years of field work on the island of New Guinea was the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently” — like slipping during one’s daily stint in the shower stall.

My sturdy new knees should diminish that risk considerably.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

September 24, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (53)

GOING BANANAS OVER PORT'S COMMUNITY FESTIVAL

Dscf0463Published in the September 11, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

When Stan Freberg introduced satire into the field of advertising, he revolutionized the entire industry.

Yet, to hear him talk about the pitted prune commercial he created for Sunsweet in 1967 — it was all about solving a marketing difficulty.

According to the Madison Avenue guru, his clients’ ardor for their own product had so removed them from the realm of reality, their big plan for stepping up sales was printing instructions for stuffing prunes with whole almonds on the side of the box.

“Gentlemen,” interrupted Freberg, in an attempt to disabuse the executives of the obvious fallacy in their logic, “America is a long way from prune hors d’oeuvres.”

The problem, as Freberg saw it, was not what housewives could do with the boxes of prunes already sitting on their pantry shelves. There were no prunes sitting on their pantry shelves. Why not? Nobody, it seems, but the desperately constipated purchased prunes on a regular basis.

Freberg’s resulting 30-second seduction, which featured British actor Ronald Long as a finicky prune critic, not only increased awareness of the Sunsweet brand but also earned Freberg one of his 21 Clio awards.

The powers that be at the Port of Hueneme are likewise wagering that their Second Annual Banana Festival on Sept. 28 will also raise awareness of their brand. Unfortunately, the existence of a deep-water harbor in Ventura County’s own backyard is one of the best-kept secrets around.

The idea for a festival celebrating the musa sapientum (banana) was the brainchild of former Port Commissioner Jesse Ramirez — a notion he had been kicking around for two decades before being brought to fruition on Sept. 29, 2012.

While the Port of Hueneme could have chosen to celebrate liquid fertilizer, heavy agricultural equipment or the plethora of automobiles (Mazda, BMW, Mini Cooper, Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Land Rover, Jaguar, Volvo, Saab, Hyundai and Kia) welcomed at Hueneme, “bananas,” Port Executive Director Kristin Decas told The Star, “we felt were sort of something that people could relate to.”

I should hope so. The average American consumes 27 pounds of bananas each year.

Initially, back in 1979, it was only Del Monte Fresh that opted to locate its West Coast distribution hub at the Port of Hueneme. Yet, once Pacific Fruit and Chiquita Fresh also arrived on the scene, more than 600,000 metric tons of bananas started coming here from Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Not only do bananas constitute nearly a third of the port’s business but Hueneme has also become one of the busiest banana gateways in the entire nation.

“You are standing or sitting in one of California’s primary economic resources,” Port Commissioner Jess Herrera informed festivalgoers last year. “All this property you’re standing on has been acquired through time, through money, through effort and through no cost to this community or Ventura County. We’re very proud of that.”

Indeed, the Port of Hueneme, which handles cargo valued at $7 billion a year, is not only the second largest employer in the area but also claims to impact the regional economy to the tune of more than $700 million a year.

Visitors to the 2013 Banana Festival can expect to divide their time among sampling banana-based foods and beverages, tapping their feet to the music of local bands, being transported on organized tours of the port or shopping at the Vendor Marketplace.

This year, the Saturday event also features a Kids’ Zone where offspring can expend energy while exploring a climbing wall, getting creative with banana crafts, enjoying tons of inflatable fun in a bounce house, meeting animals courtesy of the Reptile Family and participating in an interactive experience from Gull Wings Children’s Museum.

The Friends of the Port Hueneme Library, inspired by last year’s festival, researched and tested 139 recipes for their “Going Bananas! Cookbook.” While they haven’t forgotten your favorite banana beverages, desserts or breakfast fare, these “don’t like to fuss much” cooks also included easy main dishes from Central and South America as well. Donations for the book are tax-deductible and support children’s programs at the Prueter Library.

Finally, not only is admission free at the event but Chuck Caulkins, port manager for Del Monte, reported that last year his company gave away more than 5,000 bananas, 1,000 leis and innumerable chunks of pineapple.

Freberg’s tag line for his pitted prune commercial was “Today the pits ... tomorrow the wrinkles. Sunsweet marches on.”

What you probably don’t realize about the humble banana is that in addition to being a rich source of vitamin B-6 and potassium, you can use the inside of the peel to erase those pesky facial wrinkles that accumulate as time marches on. What? You say that last factoid isn’t actually true? Now, that’s the pits!

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

September 10, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (71)

CHAPTER AND VERSE BEHIND E-BOOK SELF-PUBLISHING

Cover1Published in the August 28, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

So you want to become an author? I hate to break it to you, but what you really want is to become a publisher. Relax, it’s not as impossible as you think.

While my last book, “Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Political Film,” achieved “respectable sales” (the average U.S. nonfiction book now sells fewer than 250 copies per year), I was little comforted when a royalty check for 66 cents arrived in the mail.

I then started researching self-publishing, which has tripled, according to Bowker since 2006.

Readers are being seduced by the lower cost. A traditionally published fiction trade paperback averages $16.92 and a fiction hardback at $28.73. Contrast that with an indie fiction paperback averaging $6.94 or an indie e-book at $3.18.

Moreover, self-publishing is no longer burdened with the negative vibes of the vanity press. Today, such established authors as Pulitzer-prize winner David Mamet or romance novelist Eloisa James have decided to publish themselves.

First, veteran writers are simply fed up with the lopsided division of royalties. While independent author/publishers get no advance, they now typically end up with 70 percent of sales. A standard contract with a traditional house not only stipulates that advances must be paid back, but also that royalties can only amount to 25 percent of digital sales or 7 percent to 12 percent of the bound book list price.

Second, there’s virtually no marketing for any but top-tier authors. Publishers stayed solvent in this deteriorating marketplace only by shifting more and more responsibility to authors. In fact, most book proposals now require an extensive section detailing the author’s platform, reader community and social media profile.

Third, traditional publishers insist that an author surrender too much creative control. A mystery house that shall remain nameless would have published “Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo” had I deleted sections that reviewers now identify as the book’s most compelling scenes.

Luckily for folks like me, the Big Six New York publishers created a vacuum when they decided to price their e-books too high. Jeff Bezos, never one to muff a financial opportunity, stepped up with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and Createspace (his print-on-demand operation).

Bezos’ dirty little secret? He demands that the author/publisher do all the work. But he also returns almost all of the profits.

So merely penning a 90,000-word manuscript is only the beginning, dear author. While Microsoft Word’s bells and whistles makes life easier for the amateur scribe, all those nifty shortcuts to style or structure must be manually removed before your magnum opus can morph into an e-book.

And while in a perfect world all e-readers would employ the same format, sadly this is not the case today. If you want to make your book available for the Nook, Kindle and Apple e-reader, your manuscript must be converted three ways — and flawlessly. Are you ready to tear your hair out yet?

Yet, no indie author/publisher stands alone in this brave new world. While I was laboring on “The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo,” I ran across a blog that doggedly argued for taking one’s Word manuscript down to bare bones before coding the paragraphing, italics, bold, diacritical marks, chapter headings, title page and photograph insertion into proper HTML.

While HTML was not the only four-letter word emanating from my mouth during the challenging procedure, Guido Henkel () was right. After my editing program ground out the final product — it was mistake-free. No gibberish appeared in the text, no gigantic print suddenly sprouted up, and all of the hyperlinks between chapters and the table of contents operated seamlessly.

Next, when my cover artist dropped out, I stumbled on step-by-step instructions for creating a single-image cover in an online post by Joleene Naylor.

My murder mystery takes place — don’t tell anybody — in a sleepy little beach town that coincidentally resembles Port Hueneme. All I had to do was dip into my iPhoto archives for a sunset shot of our pier, manipulate the color balance, superimpose the title and voilà, a sufficiently creepy cover at zero cost (not counting the Oreos I devoured to ease my ensuing frustration).

But no book can be a total DIY project. My best advice? At least hire a professional proofreader. Reviewers, you see, will call you on any typos or misspellings. Don’t let subsequent sales suffer for a few measly dollars.

If you decide to invest in a print version of your book, which the majority of author/publishers still forgo for reasons either philosophical (to harm no trees in the print process) or economic (print-on-demand setup costs can range from $300-$800), Createspace, the most popular player (57,602 titles), provides a viable option.

And just to let you know, my royalties from “The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo” have already exceeded 66 cents.

Beverly Kelley, PhD, who writes every other week for The Star, is professor emerita in the Communication Department of California Lutheran University in Thouand Oaks. Email kelley@clunet.edu

 

August 27, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (50)

WILL DOGS SIT UP AND WATCH A CANINE CHANNEL?

Chloe PUppy BowlPublished in the August 14, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

I wonder if James Herriot would have prescribed DogTV?

Dogtv.com claims its service ($4.99 a month) provides pooches, especially those with separation anxiety, with “relaxing, stimulating and behavior-improving content.”

“We have created programs,” claims Ron Levi, founder and chief content officer, “where every frame, second and sound have been tailored to fit the way dogs see and hear the world.”

James Herriot was the nom de plume of real-life Yorkshire veterinarian James Alfred Wight, whose little anecdotes about the animals he treated became a beloved BBC television series called “All Creatures Great and Small.”

Herriot practiced at a time of significant change. The economy was transitioning from an agricultural to an industrial age — greatly hastened by a worldwide depression.

Science was making inroads into farming productivity as well as in veterinary medicine. And folks were on the move — rapidly relocating from family farms to urban centers — and as they secured employment there, they not only found life more convenient with electricity and horseless carriages, but also more satisfying with added discretionary income and leisure time.

Veterinarians such as Herriot, instead of urging their jalopies across muddy roads to assist ewes, mares and sows into bringing new life into the world, found themselves confined to surgeries, inoculating puppies or dispensing pills, prolonging the lives of elderly cats.

Even the way people fed their animals was altered. In 1860, Jack Spratt (no relation to the fat-adverse nursery rhyme fellow) came up with a bone-shaped biscuit of wheat, vegetables, beetroot and beef blood that flew off grocery shelves — first in England; then in America. Inexpensive horse meat (readily available after World War I) paved the way for canned dog food.

Right from the beginning, however, pet food manufacturers, who currently turn out 12 million pounds of food an hour, managed to convince consumers that feeding table scraps was tantamount to animal abuse. They should leave, these businessmen maintained, a pet’s nutrition to the experts.

The persistent persuasive power of their message can be demonstrated not only by the grocery store shelf space devoted to canned and kibbled dog food — more than breakfast cereals or baby food — but also by the average pet food bill still hovering around $183 a month, despite a recent recession when so few diners ate out that major restaurant chains were shuttered.

Think about this. During the past two decades, the dollars devoted to pets has more than tripled. We will spend $55.53 billion this year — with a staggering 25 percent going to pay the vet bill. Yet, today’s vets aren’t getting rich — not any more than Herriot did. High-tech equals high costs.

Everybody in Herriot’s Yorkshire community used to laugh at Mrs. Pumphrey, who seemed to have more money than brains. In fact, she treated her Pekingese like an oriental potentate. A favorite episode features her Tricki-Woo close to death, obese from such rich and exotic cuisine as lobster and pheasant.

Herriot immediately realizes the dog needs to go on a medically supervised fast, so he brings Pumphrey’s pampered pooch home for a couple of weeks. And after romping daily with the pack at Skeldale House, Tricki-Woo returns, svelte and energetic.

While Mrs. Pumphrey views the transformation as a miracle of modern science, Herriot eventually straightens her out in much the same way Cesar Millan does the masters and mistresses of out-of-control curs appearing on his “Dog Whisperer” television show.

Millan, who claims he doesn’t train dogs as much as owners, sums up what’s wrong with American mutts: “Many dogs grow up without rules or boundaries. They need exercise, discipline and affection — in that order.”

Too many puppy parents, like Pumphrey, are all about “loving,” but refuse to admit that “love” includes long walks, healthy diets and just saying “no” to annoying antics as well.

According to Millan, “A dog’s mother begins training puppies from birth. She makes them wait for food; she controls when they play and how far they travel. Adult dogs need these same rules, boundaries and limitations from you, their pack leader.”

Television isn’t going to teach your dog not to gnaw on the coffee table. Television isn’t going to stop him from eating out of the garbage can. Television isn’t going to silence his howling.

When Gilad Neumann, the CEO of DogTV, was asked if he owned a dog, he said, without hedging, “no” — his job has him traveling 50 percent of the time. Apparently, DogTV has its limits.

Lastly, do dogs really watch TV? While YouTube might boast more than 5,000 videos of dogs glued to the boob tube — the accompanying photo shows my Yorkie cheering on contestants from Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” — and a AKC/Iams survey reports that more than half showed “some interest” in the big screen.

Here’s another question I’d put to Herriot: “Do we really need but another family member competing for the remote control?”

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

August 13, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (48)

NAME RECOGNITION STILL DRIVES PUBLISHING WORLD

Jk-rowling-cuckoos-calling-reviewPublished in the July 31, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Joe Klein had 6 million reasons (green in color) to release “Primary Colors” as Anonymous.

You may remember the brouhaha back in 1996, when his roman à clef (based on President Clinton’s 1992 presidential primary campaign) spent nine weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list. Not only did determining the author’s actual identity serve as an appetizer at inside-the-beltway dinner parties but, like St. Peter, Klein issued public denials (at least) three times.

On July 17, 1996, however, the jig was up. Klein was outed by Maureen Casey Owens, the expert in literary forensics who helped the FBI identify the Unabomber. The Washington Post hired her to compare handwritten corrections to an early manuscript of “Primary Colors” with samples of Klein’s handwriting.

In response, Klein called an immediate news conference and appeared before his peers sophomorically removing a pair of Groucho Marx glasses. His colleagues, though, remained unimpressed with his tepid mea culpa and questionable ethics.

Fast forward 17 years. According to Sarah Lyall of The New York Times, readers described “The Cuckoo’s Calling” as “complex, compelling and scintillating.” They also compared the author thought to be a former military police investigator named Robert Galbraith, to P.D. James, Ruth Rendell and Kate Atkinson. One even called the writing “almost too assured and sophisticated to be a first novel.”

As it turned out, not only wasn’t “The Cuckoo’s Calling” a first novel, but Robert Galbraith was a pseudonym adopted by J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter novels made her just another billionaire.

Rowling, who denies her pen name was a “marketing ploy by me, my publisher or agent,” was unmasked on July 14 by Richard Brooks, the arts editor at The Sunday Times of London.

Acting on an anonymous Twitter tip, Brooks discovered that not only did both “The Casual Vacancy” (Rowling’s 2012 novel for adults) and “The Cuckoo’s Calling” share the same agent, publisher and editor in Britain but, according to computer linguistic experts he employed, significant literary similarities.

Yet, why would someone whose writing life has been as transparent and whose work has been as enthusiastically anticipated as Rowling’s — not want to take advantage of her advantages?

“I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer,” she explained in a press statement, “because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”

Rowling isn’t the first best-selling author to write under a nom de plume. Stephen King scribbled a couple of thrillers as Richard Bachman. Earl Stanley Gardner penned detective fiction as A.S. Fair. And, Nora Roberts dabbled in science fiction as J.D. Robb.

While Doris Lessing’s 1962 “The Golden Notebook” would sell 900,000 hardback copies and Lessing would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, the novels by her alter ego, Jane Sommers, were DOA. Yet, Lessing’s intention with Sommers was to make a point. “I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that ‘nothing succeeds like success.’”

Today, with America’s up-and-coming generation proud to be bibliophobes — more than half will not read another book after college — publishers are even more reluctant to take a risk on untried writers.

Aping the mistakes of the music industry, the so-called “Big Six” New York publishers are resolutely engaged in deck-chair arranging instead of figuring out how to make money with e-books, which now constitute one-third of the market. Did I mention they cost virtually nothing to publish? Still, these guys keep the printing presses humming.

But just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does the economy. E-book distributors such as Kindle Direct Publishing or Smashwords, among others, have crafted a whole new future for self-published digital writers.

These e-book distributors invite anybody with a manuscript in an acceptable format to upload it for free — allowing the market to sort out the winners. Much depends, however, on how much of the marketing a writer is willing to do.

And marketing doesn’t have to mean a half page ad in The New York Times. E-book scribes have already earned big bucks from works priced well under $9.99 — a figure intended to undercut the Big Six. Some attribute their success to maintaining a Facebook page or posting daily on an author’s blog or to giving their books away (for a limited time) on sites like Pixel of Ink or Bookbub.

Keep in mind that publishers never advertise second-tier published authors. Their efforts must also be DIY.

While Klein figured out a way to engage the mainstream media into spreading the word about “Primary Colors,” I don’t believe Rowling is nearly as avaricious or ethically challenged. At least I hope not.

Harry would be so-o-o disappointed.


  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

July 30, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (6)

NOT EVERY MOTHER DREAMS OF A CORNER OFFICE

Call_the_Midwife_2Published in the Wednesday, July 15, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

“I must have been mad. I could have been an air hostess. I could have been a model. I could have moved to Paris. Or been a concert pianist. I could have seen the world.” So goes the introduction to the first episode of “Call the Midwife,” a 2012 BBC series based on memoirs by real-life nurse Jenny Lee Worth during the postwar, pre-pill ’50s.

Surrounded by bombed-out buildings and squalor, she and the nuns from Nonnatus House assist 200 women a month to give birth to baby after baby in London’s East End — often with no running water, electricity or alleviation of pain. With the pill, however, their number will trickle to fewer than 60 per year.

The most important social change, courtesy of birth control, was the opportunity for women to work outside the home. They got their first honeyed taste of money and freedom during World War II, when they replaced soldiers serving their country.

While they were forced to relinquish their positions once the survivors returned, by the late 1950s, two out of every five married women with school-age children would secure employment.

During the late ’70s, when I became a working mother, we were told that we could have it all. In fact, lyrics from a 1977 television commercial for Enjoli perfume seduced my generation with “I can bring home the bacon/Fry it up in a pan/And never, ever let you forget you’re a man.”

It was a big fat lie.

Now Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer and former Google executive, recently published what Oprah Winfrey calls “the new manifesto for women in the workplace.”

In her best-selling “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” Sandberg bemoans the scarcity of females heading up major corporations and admonishes the gentler sex to be much more forceful with respect to career goals.

“It is time for us to face the fact that our revolution has stalled,” she scolds. “A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and men ran half our homes.”

Sandberg also suggests that employed mothers commit — completely — to competing for a top spot, acquire a supportive partner to assist with child care, and constantly lobby for titles, raises and promotions.

Yet, is Sandberg — whose net worth runs nine figures and who is ranked by Forbes as the 10th most powerful woman in the world — really the right person to dole out career advice? Especially to mothers struggling to fulfill the daily demands of employers and family members?

According to USA Today’s Joanne Bamberger, not only is Sandberg’s book “the latest salvo in the war on moms” but Sandberg’s reproaches (like claiming that equality in the workplace just requires women to pull themselves up by their Louboutin straps) are as unsupportive of women as Marissa Mayer’s recent ban on telecommuting at Yahoo! has been.

“The message coming from these C-suite moms (Sandberg and Mayer) is less about empowerment,” Bamberger observed, “than it is about guilt.”

For today’s working mothers, especially the more than 10 million single mothers with children under age 18, reality is more about trying to “hang on” than “lean in.” In fact, they are far more concerned with making their careers accommodate their personal lives, than vice versa.

Further, since unlike Sandberg and Mayer, they don’t have access to nannies, in-office nurseries, personal assistants or limo drivers, they’ve had to become extremely resourceful in balancing job demands with what’s important to them as parents.

Perhaps it was seeing mom and dad consumed by their careers or suffering an after-school schedule that cobbled together a series of dubious child care providers or premature latchkey setups, but today’s young parents want something radically different for their kids.

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, among all mothers with children under 18, only 25 percent would actually choose to work full-time.

Furthermore, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more mothers are deciding to remain at home or only work part-time — at least until their children enter elementary school. This trend, in my opinion, should bring hope to us all.

This generation of working mothers is significantly different from the way we were. One in three are employed by companies that encourage telecommuting, their husbands participate much more with child care and household chores and, as a whole, they make “me time” a healthy priority in their lives.

In an ideal world, employers would count motherhood years as bona fide work experience. Doesn’t every mom serve an unpaid internship in which every managerial skill (motivation, delegation, coaching, communication, performance management and leadership) is forged in the crucible of real life?

Jenny Lee Worth, who considered the East End mothers her true heroines, would quite agree.


 

July 16, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (58)

PORT HUENEME HUNTS FOR SAND, EROSION SOLUTION

IMG_1977Published on July 3, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

The 5th Annual Sand Sculpture Contest in Port Hueneme has been canceled this year — but not for a lack of participants. Hueneme Beach, you see, is rapidly running out of sand.

In reality, Hueneme Beach Park itself could be considered a 20-acre sand sculpture — fluctuating in size and shape from year to year.

When the Navy built the jetties at the Port of Hueneme in 1940, they interrupted the littoral flow of sand to Hueneme Beach while also creating a corrosive eddy current that scours away 1.25 million cubic yards of seashore every year.

Two federal laws mandate that the Army Corps of Engineers replenish the lost sand.

The River and Harbor Act of 1954 authorized the creation of the Channel Islands Harbor sand trap, whose contents were to be used to nourish down-coast beaches.

The Water Resources Development Act of 1996 sanctioned a 100 percent federal cost share split between the Department of the Navy and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since 1960, however, the powers that be have been behaving like a deadbeat dad on the run. The volume of sand transported by the Army Corps has steadily declined from an average of 1.5 million cubic yards during the first decade to a current 600,000.

Since Army Corps activities are subject to the congressional appropriations process, during this recession “It’s the economy, stupid” has become its tired mantra.

Granted, sand replenishment is expensive. It costs more than $5.35 million to move just 600,000 cubic yards.

Yet, Army Corps representatives don’t seem at all concerned that their dwindling sand deliveries — coming up various degrees of short during past decades — have now created an emergency situation for the second time.

When Hueneme Beach eroded to Surfside Drive after a significant deficit in 1994, emergency funding came through. Now, however, city of Port Hueneme has been told that it’s on its own.

Since January, ferocious winds, abnormally high tides and killer waves have washed away nearly 1 million cubic yards of the sand transported last year. And destructive winter storms have yet to descend upon the Friendly City by the Sea.

The Army Corps, however, only plans to move 600,000 cubic yards of sand during the next three cycles. This amount totals less than 25 percent of the replacement rate identified in the 1996 Water Resources and Development Act. Try paying one-fourth of what you owe your creditors, and see how that goes.

It only works, apparently, if you are the federal government.

So let’s talk about money. One of the complications with this share-split business is that the smaller the appropriation by the Army Corps, the smaller the amount coughed up by the Navy, since they pay a fixed percentage of each allotment. Port Hueneme has been asked to play limbo — how low can you go?

In the meantime, nobody is leaning on the Navy (who caused the problem in the first place) to insist it pays a fair share.

Furthermore, when you look at who actually benefits from the jetties (which were ostensibly constructed to keep the harbor entrance calm as well as silt-free), who isn’t paying at all?

The first entity that comes to mind is the Port of Hueneme. In addition, it will definitely have something to lose if Hueneme Beach Park disappears.

The port recently rebuilt a riprap revetment along the Lighthouse Promenade. Once the sand is history, its sea wall will be subjected to a life-shortening pounding.

Perhaps a cost-benefit analysis might convince the port to pony up.

The second, Channel Islands Harbor, actually benefits from having its sand trap relieved every two years.

Yet, with less sand being transported because of cost, its sand trap will eventually overflow and create a navigational hazard.

Perhaps throwing some money in the pot will also pay off for Channel Islands Harbor in the long run.

So what can be done long term? I’d like to see one of those brilliant military engineers redesign the jetties so as to minimize scouring of beaches to the south.

That’s the best solution, and like the parent paying child support, when his kid turns 18, all parties would be released from fiscal responsibility.

And think about how happy it would make Mother Nature.

The city of Port Hueneme plans to armor what is left of Hueneme Beach with strategically placed boulders — yet, rocks don’t roll for free. Their cost will lighten the already stretched-to-the-max Port Hueneme coffers by a cool million.

Elected officials are also attempting to coax another million from California Boating and Waterways.

Thursday, Port Hueneme, which will be enjoying a balmy 69 degrees, will welcome hundreds of day-trippers celebrating the Fourth.

In addition to roasting weenies or braving the water, we hope you will be sculpting sand castles as well.

We only ask one thing — please bring your own sand.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

July 03, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (59)

THE WRIGHT WAY OF CONSTRUCTING A REPUTATION

220px-Frank_Lloyd_Wright_LC-USZ62-36384Published June 19, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

“The Big Year” should have been a bigger movie. Not only was the cast (Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson) stellar but a $41 million budget is nothing to sneeze at.

Still it went bust. That’s because the subject is no laughing matter — not among bird watchers who compete to identify the most bird species during a calendar year.

Would you be surprised to learn that there’s a similar competition among fans of Frank Lloyd Wright? According to the FLW Field Guide, buildings designed by the charismatic architect still survive in 35 states and number over 300.

We set out on a pilgrimage to Oak Park, Ill., (and surrounding environs) with son Brendan, who counts himself a committed FLW aficionado. He’s added more than 84 FLW structures to his life list — 54 during this week alone.

So why Wright?

1. Wright always described himself as a genius. His genius, however, was in making folks believe in him.

Nobody was ever better at self-promotion. Even as early at 1901, when Edward Bok (Ladies’ Home Journal) invited architects to suggest modern house design improvements, Wright alone responded, submitting two articles that paid off handsomely in future commissions.

Wright insisted that rules never applied to him — not only with respect to architecture but morality as well. He abandoned his wife and six children for the spouse of a client.

When jobs dried up as a result of the subsequent scandal, Wright and his mistress just headed for Europe to publish his portfolio. His designs won him international acclaim, and, once again, a queue of paying customers.

When the Depression found him back in America and again facing bankruptcy, he responded by publishing an autobiography that clearly belonged in the fiction section. The book, however, convinced well-heeled Americans that they couldn’t pay enough to own a FLW home.

To boost his bottom line, Wright also included, whether ordered or not, FLW-designed furniture, geometrically-patterned leaded glass, minimalist landscaping and, even in one case, the ideal hostess ensemble — in his final bill.

2. When your own mother gives you the ultimate gift — a boundless faith that you will succeed — it can’t hurt. When Anna Wright was expecting, she was convinced her baby would grow up “to build beautiful buildings.”

Not only did she decorate his nursery with engravings of English cathedrals clipped from magazines, but she also purchased a set of educational blocks called Froebel Gifts as his elementary curriculum. Wright credited the smooth maple cubes, spheres and cylinders for teaching him the geometry of architecture.

3. Timing is everything, and with the devastating Great Fire in 1871, Chicago was virtually a tabula rasa that could provide full employment for ambitious architects.

After interviews with prominent firms, Wright was hired as a draftsman for Joseph Lyman Silsbee but it was the progressive vision of Louis Sullivan that riveted Wright. Furthermore, Wright and Sullivan were united in their disgust with Chicago’s neoclassic White City built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

Wright worked for Sullivan until 1893, when he betrayed his mentor’s trust. Not only did he accept independent commissions for nine houses in Oak Park, but he won them by taking credit for Sullivan’s work.

After Sullivan gave him the boot, Wright shared a Steinway Hall loft space — and here’s the Ventura County connection — with several like-minded architects. Along with Wright, Robert C. Spencer, Jr., and Dwight H. Perkins was Myron Hunt, the architect for Sen. Thomas Bard’s Berylwood Mansion. They would later be recognized for founding the famous Prairie School.

4. Everybody can recognize Wright’s unique architectural signature. The entrances to his houses are usually concealed for privacy, cantilevered rooflines may soar above, and the structures are laid out horizontally since lots in the Midwest allowed for plenty of elbowroom.

Inside, his houses subject folks to low ceilings (FLW only stood 5 feet, 7 inches — coincidence?), are painted the muted colors of the harvest, and instead of boxy rooms, Wright’s open plan focuses on a fireplace as it invites guests to converse with the hostess/cook once households operated without servants.

5. Finally, Wright, like so many artists of his day (Norman Rockwell, Robert Frost, Aaron Copland) yearned to celebrate American.

With the Prairie School, Wright would realize Sullivan’s dream of defining a uniquely American style of architecture.

Additionally, in answer to his less affluent fans, Wright, who revered democracy, was persuaded to think small. The Usonian home — a name Wright borrowed from satirist Samuel Butler — refers to the United States of North America. The price tag for a Usonian? Supposedly $5,000 but, as usual, Wright never even came close.

During the introduction to “The Big Year,” the following words appear on the screen: “This is a true story. Only the facts have been changed.”

Funny, the same could be said about Wright.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

June 20, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (58)

LET'S STOP BEING TRASHY; SACK PLASTIC BAG OPTION

Littered-plastic-bags-chicago-new-life-for-old-bagsPublished in the Wednesday, June 5, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one from Animal Planet makes a most moving argument for eliminating the plastic option at the supermarket.

It shows an unfortunate gull that naively dined on trash and got more than a tummy ache.

Those favoring single-use bags claim that those who want to rid the planet of their pesky presence rely too heavily on such “emotional” appeals. The plastic industry wants you to believe that if banned, in addition to resulting in horrific job loss, we are throwing out the more cost-effective choice.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, reusable bags not only require four times more energy during the manufacturing process, but also produce four times the greenhouse-gas emissions. In fact, says the United Kingdom Environment Agency, to break even energy-wise, you would have to tote your reusable bag to the market for more than three years. How long have you toted yours?

Then there’s the suspected health hazard.

Research by Jonathan Klick (University of Pennsylvania), and Joshua D. Wright (George Mason University) found that food-borne illnesses in San Francisco County increased 46 percent after the city’s plastic ban went into effect. Apparently, San Franciscans didn’t realize you could toss a reusable bag into the washing machine.

At present, 20 percent of Californians enjoy life without plastic bags, and soon Ventura County, Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme will be considering prohibitions as well.

Personally, I hate the flimsy things. Unless more than one bag is employed, they support no more than a couple of cans, usually fall over and divest themselves of their contents on the ride home, and although I have a cute sock-like device to collect them, I rarely remember to return them to Ralphs — where they’re routinely discarded, anyway.

Most of us already realize how detrimental plastic bags can be. They constitute nearly 25 percent of the litter or “urban tumbleweeds” piling up beside roads and highways, floating in waterways or hanging from trees and bushes — where they can choke or poison wildlife, domestic land animals or, eventually, marine creatures.

Furthermore, plastic bags don’t break down in landfills for centuries, they add to the demand for oil (100 billion plastic bags annually equal 12 million barrels), and they’re neither easy nor convenient to recycle.

Plastic bags, in fact, are the bane of recycling plants. Many folks deposit them in “general plastic” bins. Big mistake. Plastic bags subsequently jam and break the expensive sorting machines. Your taxes are then diverted into repairing equipment, instead of, say, filling potholes.

California could have been the first state to prohibit plastic bags had not legislation failed in 2010, and then again on Thursday.

Business interests linked with the plastic bag industry provided formidable opposition in 2010, despite then-Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, the author of AB 1998, getting the California Grocers, fed up with a hodgepodge of regulations, on board.

The writing, however, was on the wall long before the 14-21 defeat. Tim Shestek of the American Chemistry Council knew exactly how to get the lawmakers’ attention.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Shestek argued, “This bill will result in increasing consumer grocery prices with the requirement to pay for paper bags. They will cost at least a nickel, and it could be higher,” he added. “We think recycling is the answer. Burdening Californians with a new tax or putting people in an unemployment line is not something the Legislature should be doing.”

Essentially the same buzzwords (“new tax,” “unemployment line,” “recycling”) led to the demise of Senate Bill 405 (authored by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles) last week. Like Brownley, Padilla had garnered support from retailers wanting to eliminate the uneven patchwork of policies across California.

It wasn’t enough. The plastic people, who had signed up two high-profile lobbying firms in Sacramento, spent nearly $300,000 to defeat the bill.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who voted against SB 405, told CBS News, “If you think plastic bags are single-use, you have not met my mother” while Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, who also voted “no,” pointed out, “All you’ve got to do is go to a local park where someone’s taken their dog and you can understand how you can actually use the bag twice.”

Sounds like recycling bags works. Wait a minute, though, while California retailers distribute more than 14 billion plastic bags each year, state officials report only 5 percent are actually recycled. Sounds like recycling bags doesn’t work.

Did you know that a 2006 California law prohibits cities from requiring fees for plastic bags? That’s absolutely backward. If you want plastic bags, you pay for plastic bags.

And next time you see a gull, try to warn it about empty plastic calories.

 

June 06, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (42)

NOT-SO-SMOOTH SAILING AHEAD FOR GOOGLE GLASS

850867-google-glass-einsteinPublished on May 22, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

 

If you think folks look dorky talking into a Bluetooth headset as they stroll down the street, wait until you run into an early adopter of Google Glass.

Recognized by Time Magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year 2012, Google Glass is a wearable computer that’s lighter than the average pair of Oakleys.

Glass, which allows users to access the Internet, snap photographs and record video clips to be shared with friends via Google+ or gmail, is an attempt to liberate data from desktop computers or portable devices. The idea is to get the information you need — directly in your line of vision.

The Explorer edition, being beta-tested by 8,000 lottery winners willing to cough up $1,500 for the privilege, isn’t actually a pair of specs at all. It’s actually a titanium glasses framework — with a small square screen on the high right. The digital display is attached to a curved piece of plastic (available in charcoal, tangerine, shale, cotton or sky) that contains a camera, bone-conducting speaker and battery.

The device looks less cyborg when the wearer snaps on either the sunglass or clear visor. While those who wear regular glasses will have to fit the current Explorer edition over them, Google promises to come up with a designer (more expensive) frame to accommodate prescription lenses.

The Explorer edition receives data through Wi-Fi or can be tethered via Bluetooth to either an Android device or an iPhone. If you want to know how it feels to wear Glass, check out the YouTube video.

Google confirmed that Glass would be available to the public just in time for Christmas at a cost less (but nobody knows how much less) than the $1,500 beta users paid.

Still Apple, Sony and Microsoft as well as Vuzix, Oakley and Baidu fully intend to become Google’s rivals. A significant cost savings will come to those who wait.

Beta testers have already complained — as testers are wont to do — about the seriously short (1-2 hours) battery life, the lack of volume control that makes phone conversations in noisy locations impossible and their dashed expectations. Google Glass doesn’t yet actually augment reality even though it’s highly touted as such a device.

For example, augmented reality would actually integrate a patient’s chart or vital sign information with the surgical field while a physician is operating. While Google Glass offers certain elements of augmented reality, it’s not quite there yet.

The future of Google Glass rests with a so-called “killer application” actually being developed in somebody’s Silicon Valley garage. But geeks bearing such gifts as apps for news, facial recognition, photo manipulation, sharing to social networks, language translation, flight information and map directions won’t be allowed to charge for their creativity. Sergey Brin’s device; Sergey Brin’s rules.

As personal technology becomes increasingly invisible, however, the prospect of Google Glass prompts some crystal-ball-gazing-type questions. Will Glass make us all paparazzi? What will happen to the First Amendment as it comes in direct conflict with the right to privacy? How more socially isolated can human beings actually become?

The 5 Point Cafe, a seedy bar in Seattle, was the first business to explicitly ban Glass. In part a publicity stunt that garnered worldwide attention, the sanction was also a harbinger of regulations to come. Las Vegas casinos, where computers and recording devices are already verboten, have already weighed in.

Crime-fighting shows have accustomed us to the idea that surveillance cameras catch (almost) our every move. In fact, the average American is videotaped at least 30 times a day. Just for giggles, total up the instances in which you spot the probing eye of Big Brother as you trek through the next 24 hours.

Still, the prospect of being videotaped, having private conversations recorded or a facial recognition app readily available — to individuals not involved in law enforcement — makes most of us uneasy.

Google Glass is an early technology that’s clearly still in the experimental stage. What interests me most is not how useful Glass proves to be in the present, but how Glass — as an evolved augmented reality device — creates seismological cultural shifts in the future.

When my son presented me with an iPhone for Christmas 2011, he insisted it would change my life.

It did. With all the apps on my phone, I find myself equipped with email, Google, a turn-by-turn driving guide, 1,263 photos, Spotify, a 4-in-1 calendar, a calculator, Facebook, a tipping guide, a plant identifier, a GPS-enabled star/planet guide, Amazon, solitaire, 381 e-books and this newspaper — all contained in a 2.25-inch-by-5-inch-by-.25-inch gadget.

I did draw the line at a hands-free headset, however. I didn’t want to look like a dork.

May 22, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (68)

BIGGER CANAL, BIGGER SHIPS AND PORT OF HUENEME


Homepage_imagePublished in the May 8, 2013 Edition of the Ventura County Star

The day after we transited the Panama Canal, the ship’s painters were busy covering the damage, albeit cosmetic, to the ship’s sleek white exterior from the rough concrete walls of the locks. The 24-inch clearance on either side of the vessel was obviously not enough.

Behemoth ships, referred to in shipping jargon as “post-panamax,” just don’t fit. Size does matter, however, since the bigger vessels are more cost-effective — carrying nearly three times the 20-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers as the less-than-lock-sized ships.

Back in 2006, nearly 77 percent of the Panamanian voters approved an ambitious third set of locks project. The reason? More and more ships were transiting a canal built in 1914 that just couldn’t keep up — capacity-wise. Their $5.25 billion expansion solution should be realized in mid-2015.

As of last month, the deepening and widening of Atlantic and Pacific entrance and approach channels as well as the dredging of Culebra Cut, the narrowest part of the canal (located on the Continental Divide) were finished. Yet, work on the innovative locks that feature water-saving basins and rolling gates is only 42 percent completed.

In fact, the project is already eight months behind schedule because of heavy rains, labor strikes and problems with the concrete mix. What also remains is the dredging to increase Lake Gatun’s operational level from 26.7 to 27.1 meters.

All this expensive excavation, construction and material-removal should, according to Panama’s then-President Martin Turrijos, double the capacity of the canal and subsequently generate enough income to not only reduce poverty by 30 percent but to also transform Panama into a First World country. This was a Big Dream.

The U.S. East Coast, you could say, endlessly indulges in trade envy. It lusts after Asia and South America. Why not? The Pacific Rim is home to 29 of the world’s 50 busiest container-shipping ports. The West Coast has been geographically blessed.

Yet, after 2015, when the Panama Canal should be able to accommodate post-panamax ships, Gulf and East Coast ports may appear more appealing to shippers. In fact, many of these harbors have already started investing serious money into infrastructure — betting on a paradigm shift in trade due to the expanded Panama Canal.

So should the powers that be at the Port of Hueneme be concerned?

Kristin Decas is the 44-year old, first female CEO at the fourth-busiest port on the West Coast. But she isn’t exactly shaking in her designer boots.

The Port of Hueneme, according to Commissioner Arlene Fraser, is unique in that it serves niche markets that include the import and export of automobiles, fresh fruit and produce. Consider that bananas — 30 percent of Hueneme’s business — don’t have to come through the Panama Canal. And while cars make up a hefty 60 percent, they don’t have to make the voyage on post-panamax-sized vessels. Nothing may change for Hueneme.

Moreover, Decas — who loved launching the popular Banana Festival last year but loathed hiking tariffs for automobile customers this year — is cautiously optimistic about the economy. The economy is a critical factor to any bottom line.

“Right now, we are seeing healthy recovery,” she told me. “This has been the fourth-best cargo year, and we are continuing to see increases in overall trade.”

The Panama Canal expansion would definitely impact the Port of Hueneme if the ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach, which boast more land and lower operating costs, tried to purloin Hueneme’s customers by undercutting fees.

So what would it take for Los Angeles and Long Beach to go after Hueneme’s automobiles? Without a crystal ball, says Decas, there is really no way of knowing what their diversification strategy might be.

Long Beach and Los Angeles, however, probably won’t be tempted by Hueneme’s 600,000 tons of bananas. According to Port Commission President Jason Hodge, “Here at the Port of Hueneme we continue to modernize with the future in mind.”

To that end, Hueneme is investing $12 million in shore-side power outlets so that refrigerator ships (like those toting bananas) can turn off their engines and plug into zero-polluting power. The bigger ports to the south, however, haven’t yet acquired technology to meet the more stringent air quality standards being required in 2014 for refrigerator ships.

With economists polarized and railroads resistant to change, Decas believes the debate has only just begun. The sea-level canal at Suez, of course, is the elephant in the room. Without locks of any size, it’s a perfect fit for any ship.

Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping line, has already given the Panama Canal the brushoff. To add insult to injury, in 2011 Maersk ordered 20 container ships from Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding. They’re too large for Panama’s brand-new expanded locks.

Perhaps, Maersk is the one with a crystal ball.

Scripps Lighthouse

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

May 08, 2013 in Ventura County Star Columns | Permalink | Comments (1)

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