Blue, Black and White Alert

NOTES: Central Morocco and High Atlas 2012

2012-01-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

Talk about a lapse in research. I just found out today that there was a major terrorist attack in Marrakech last year. I knew about the Casablanca bombings almost 10 years ago but those incidents did not kill any tourists. But in April 2011, some guy - true, a non-Marrakshi and convicted rapist, but Al Qaeda and its analogs prey on expendables - walks into a cafe on the Jemaa al Fna, the huge central square and UNESCO site, the equivalent of about 1001 Raekoja platses, and blows himself up.

We were on the road back from Italy after a late Easter, and not reading the papers. But I have been online many times since on the subject Marrakech and had not come across the news, so it seems that Morocco's tourism has done a good job keeping it off the radar, as much as you can do with a bomb that takes out 15 people in your #1 site.

My impression, a bit unfairly I'm sure, remains that Morocco is safer than Israel, that it's a client state of the West, too cozy for the liking of any Islamists, but with enough open coastline, royal social democracy and historical resistance to mainstream Arab culture to not to become a second Algeria.

But I guess there should be no confusion that Arab Spring brought not only scattered street protests in Morocco but also one major instance of tourist carnage.

**

I'm here for the city's marathon, and my main preoccupation is getting rid of chronic fatigue by getting sun (it's real and it's bad this year), and remaining gastrointestinally healthy before the race, so I'm playing it low-key and not living it up or doing many traditional tourist things. But being here for three days meditating on West-East relations for the first three days, then finding out about the bomb, has been interesting.

Interestingly, I was looking for the Cafe Argana based on a 2007 Lonely Planet Guidebook -- I guess the fact that the bomb utterly destroyed it explains why I didn't find it. I wasn't looking for the Argana to eat there, though. Some double standards have already started to grate on me. There's actually much not to like about the Djemaa square itself. I have started gritting my teeth and adopting a thousand-yard stare (which happens to be the Djemaa's width) when I cross it, giving a wide berth to the rip-off food stalls and random hustlers. The exception is the highly competitive fresh juice stands, which charge a democratic 4 dh, and there's some proletarian eateries on the northern side where you can eat for single digits (rather than the tourist tajine for 50 in the stalls).

The official spin on Djemaa al Fna is that it is a magic square, a perpetual carnival of delights, sights, flavors and smells. What better way to enjoy it by going up to the atmospheric terrace high above the square? These two ideas keep on getting joined in the official copywriting. It's not quite honest. My impression is that people go up to the ramparts to escape. It's a hustle-free, less crowded area and most of all, they can drink there -- even though it is within full sight of the Koutoubia mosque's imposing tower. Anyway, the second floor terrace was pointedly the target of the bombing. And it didn't kill any Moroccans.

Drinking is interesting in Morocco, even in an open city like Marrakech that is everybody's playground from Manchester to Rabat. Alcohol consumption really occurs behind a quite substantial screen, and often, security. I noticed in the ville nouvelle street-level coffee cafes that there was a sidewalk security guard. I'm not sure whether it's a post-April safeguard or to keep hustlers away, but there aren't very many hustlers in the ville nouvelle.

Last night was rainy, windy and 10 degrees and for the first time in Morocco, I felt like a beer. But I was also in the medina, the old non-European quarter more than a mile away from the new town. I went up to the terrace of Cafe Arabe, which is basically a speakeasy above the restaurant. A very cozy space, when they take the translucent plastic off in summer, the views of the medina must be great and again probably include a couple mosques . Good beer, Casablanca, a domestic brew in 33 cl bottles (55 dh - 5 euros), utterly undistinguishable from any other.

All these foreign couples were sitting quietly on couches, they seemed silent, doing some odd ritual. Three impeccably comported bartenders, one a woman, stood quietly off to the side, along the wall. For some reason I thought of an opium den with rich foreigners lying on settees tending to their business.

My quick take is that the pendulum has swung as far as it will go. Oddly enough, I sympathize in a way with the hardliners -- I assume these are the some 20% of men who wear full-length robes, many of them middle-aged, who look studiously severe and extremely devout. I already have a liberal's conscience, I lament Venice's historical core getting Venetianized, the fact that Tallinn's Old Town doesn't have working cobblers to repair the residents' shoes. When I think on the theme of Westerners in the medina, the less I like it. "Why are they there?" Of course it's just a transferred crowding neurosis. The trick is probably not to think about it.

**
I got a few nights at a riad, or townhouse B&B, which ran around 500 dh a night (44 euros), three times pricier than the other lodging I used. In 2009 in Essaouira, we rented a riad from a Briton in the medina. So we became residents that time in the sense of running a household for a week and buying our own groceries.The Marrakech riad this time is a slightly bigger one, and I have an individual room + the run of the place.

Traditionally, a Moroccan family might invite a close Western associate or friend into their townhouse. Now, especially in Marrakech, foreigners have bought many of the riads and turned them into hotels or B&Bs. They try to simulate the feeling of being a guest in a Moroccan home, and I suppose that considering the owner often lives somewhere else in town and there are 24h staff of porters and servants there, it is like you are still in a Moroccan home. But you are paying a fee, so it's commercial lodging.

Which doesn't mean you can't get to know the owner and the help. The guy who runs the riad I am is a modern nomad, moving with his wife and two kids from place to place every few years. He ran a lottery company, which was somehow connected with the public sector, on the department of Reunion off Madagascar for a few years. They then "followed his heart" to Morocco where five years ago he bought the riad from its previous owner, also French. In the riad, there is a collection of books, but a Koran with French parallel text is on a coffee table, the piece de resistance.

Like all riads, it has an open square courtyard. From space, the medina looks like a million rimmed eyes staring up like some amazing alien.

I don't think I have yet seen a riad courtyard without some patches of rainwater, but I've only been here in midwinter.

Saida and Zaira are the staff and Rashid is the night porter, all seem competent though Rashid got swept up by the football against Gabon last night and disappeared to a neighbor's for 10 minutes -- there was no one to let me in, but it had stopped
raining.

Morocco lost 2-3 in a heartbreaking last-minute turnaround.

**

Is that enough white guilt? There's plenty of more ways to feel bad if you're creative. At its best, the Moroccans are the masters of their domain, and there is a stylized, ritualized script that has been observed the same way for decades when it comes to haggling and foreigners in the medina. First of all, the foreigner in the medina should conform to the part of hopeless case, with no idea where he is going, so that the local young men could have something to do and earn a few dirhams. If the foreigner is making his way deeper into the medina, down residential cul de sacs, clearly he must be looking for the main square. But then someone like me comes along, looking specifically for off the beaten path places, perhaps the worst parts of the mellah. (These are not always pretty areas. I saw a man standing at his front door discard a wrapper on the street.) The local boy will inform me that it's ferme'(e) (closed, dead end). I tell him I will walk to the end anyway and then turn around. Clearly I am fou. I carry a Garmin GPS which is clearly not a cell phone. Quite a few people know what the yellow gadget is, and that it could - yikes - replace their own questionable "services". I don't participate in their game. At the markets, I take counteroffers from other stalls, I explore futures, as if I'm running a local souk version of Priceline. Are there others like me? Can this slowly increase resentment, force young men to turn to begging and worse? I don't even support King Mohammad's economy by eating the tourist 50-dh tajines but eat the common people's food and subsidized khobz (bread) for 5-10 dh (0.50-1 euro).

**

Before it rained, the air was terrible in Marrakech and you couldn't see the mountains, so I took that, of course, as a cue to go to the mountains. I rented a car. This should not be viewed as a bucket list, exotic pursuit. Gas costs under 1 euro a liter, the rental from a local company (La Concorde in this case) with a bit of haggling will be about a third of what it would be in Europe (though unlike Hertz, they won't do 24 hours as a one-day). And the other drivers are not terrible. They don't want to die, either. But dictum about driving at night is probably a good one (no helkurs!), though early morning before dawn was OK in the countryside.

Drove over the High Atlas and camped in the stony desert at Ait Benhaddou. People are far more friendly and calmer on the Sahara side. It's a dramatic difference.

I made friends for life, or so you would think, with a Berber innkeeper miles from neighbors who cooked me an omelette in a tagine. He spoke some French but didn't know the word anglais - is it really possible, in this day and age? They were around 159 km from Marrakech and some 50 km from Ouarzazate. He was curious as to whether their inn (Issalene) was in my Lonely Planet (it wasn't), took pains to have me spread the word. A little pricey on the quoted lodging, I think it was (400 dh/37 euros for a double), but the omelette was only 4 euros with complimentary olives. Nice folks. As I understood, I had an offer of free lodging, were I to return that night.

The road out of Marrakech to Ouarzazate seemed pretty dire. It goes through scrubland and woodsy country, takes forever for the plain to end, another reason to consider Marrakech a bit overrated. Then just as long in the foothills. The roadside towns look desperate for the entire 110 km from city to the crest. Reminded me of some parts of Mexico.

It was more or less clear on the desert side, high of 12 C but brilliant sun. Didn't continue to Ouarzazate, desert town of 60,000 where the country's movie industry is based. Turned left heading back north in the direction of the main range to Ait Benhaddou, which has also been used for scenery in many movies.

Lots of tour buses at the kasbah in Ait Benhaddou. Unmolested by hustlers. No one charged for admission to go up to the kasbah. Camped in the desert; it's pretty much the end of the road. A 4WD road does continue farther back to the crest and reconnect with the main highway near the pass.

It was 2 C on the desert floor but no dew fell. It snowed in the night at the pass, the mountains were white from 1500-4000+ m going back NE at sunrise, quite a sight in treeless country. Some slush and ice on the road at the pass, glad I was driving.

Trouble with authorities: Stopped for supposedly speeding in an unmarked 60 zone on the way up, warning, very friendly. Looked like a young Harry Belafonte.

Big yellow boot slapped on wheel back in the city within 10 minutes as I was getting the rental car guy - amazing. Only cost a few euros to remove.

Gift ideas for Estonia's neighboring countries

2011-12-23T12:14:00.001-08:00

In this day and age, countries do many almost-human things like apologize to each other. Maybe they should also give each other Christmas presents. Any ideas?

I have one so far. For Latvia, the country that we share a patch of contiguous land with and without whom, as Hando Runnel said, we can't get to Lithuania.

The obvious one is an island, it's almost as much of a cliche as a necktie for dad, as gift ideas go for Latvia. But islands aren't neckties; they're like pets and kids - they take a lot of work. They're money pits and attract environmentally-unfriendly bridges and developers. So no island. Latvia will still be islandless in 2012. Whatever the opposite of archipelagoan is, Latvia would be it.

A present has to be good for the recipient and year-specific. This year, considering recent news down in Latvia (even though there may be no cause for real alarm and what appears to be a dangerous fifth column is actually a patriotic bunch of multiculturalists), I propose we give Latvia the opportunity to ask residents of the four adjoining Estonian counties if they would want dual Latvian citizenship. Latvia happens right now to be in the process of relaxing its laws against dual citizenship with other EU countries; Estonia can do the same for these folks. There would be no strings attached. Their abode, domicile, and home, etc. would continue to be Estonia. Diplomatic efforts could be launched now to find out whether Latvia might find this amenable.

The 200,000-plus people living in these counties tend to be a bit rural populist, I know, but the better part of them are good honest Igaunians. And sturdy, not to say heavy-set in the case of the pork, potato and barley-scarfing mulks from Viljandi County.

I know they'd vow to uphold the Latvian constitution in a pinch.

Hopefully the Lats would not be too proud. Not only could we be in this position, the Latvians might even return the favor someday - perhaps after seeing which way the wind was blowing,..but nevertheless. And that's Baltic cooperation. The main thing is that there would be no Gift of the Magi scenario where neither country has any use for mutual gifts. That scenario been on my mind lately, although I must say I have very little reliable information about the true balance of power in Latvia. The only thing I have concluded is that there are really no English-language Latvian current events blogs for outsiders.

But even if I'm overreacting, this can't possibly hurt. It would be worst for the southern Estonians duals. They'd never hear the end of it from their (Estonian) countrymen. But I think many of them would see the wisdom of it. It's win-win.

My own personal gesture is that I will resume learning Latvian in 2012. And I will refrain from jokes about the ancient digital libel (the one about Latvians having an extra toe) until Leap Year.

ANONYMOUS GUEST COMMENTATOR: Eurofootball is invalid

2011-11-12T02:40:00.000-08:00

So Estonia lost the opening match of its campaign against Ireland, 4-0.

I question the Hungarian referee, I question the spectators who think a horn should be sounded continuously rather in short bursts. But mainly I question the existence of the entire sport. I mean, the Euro playoffs part of the sport.

First of all, there's the matter of format. If Eurosoccer were a normal sport and had normal playoffs, people would now say things like: "Well, it was only game 1, look for the Estonian team to pull out a clutch victory on Tuesday in Dublin and force a deciding Game 3 in Tallinn."

The fact that the format of Eurosoccer is a best-of-2 series should already tell you that whoever designed the playoffs is not exactly playing with all 11 players.

Seriously, a best of 2 series? It's…an even number of games. Or, as they're called, "legs." (Get it? There's two of them,) Everyone knows most soccer games end up in a scoreless tie, anyway.

It would be understandable if there were a rule (like handicap, or total goals) that decided who won the series. There probably is, but no one seems to know what it is. Articles in the local press gloss over this maddeningly.

We think Estonia has been eliminated, but no one is really sure. And if Estonia has indeed been eliminated, why are the teams still going to meet in Dublin on Tuesday? Just because the tickets were already sold? Because it's bad for the economy not to have it?

As said: Not. Playing. With. All. 11. Players.

On top of it all, these playoffs are not even being held to decide anything this year. It's for next summer! I knew there was something suspicious about the scheduling -- an outdoor game in Estonia in November? (That's basically asking for another "game that never wiz", like the game against Scotland that was canceled in Kadriorg in the 1990s due to low light conditions.) When would the championship be played? December?

Next summer, it turns out. The championship doesn't even take place until 2012. So what, everyone gets pumped up over the "most crucial match in Estonian history", and if they win, they have to wait seven months? That's a different season! Some older players will probably go on pension before the championship is ever played! How can you have a playoff that determines next year's result? What happened to this season?

If the Stanley Cup playoffs in hockey were like Eurosoccer, it would be like this: The regular season (in which pre-season games alternate with important games) ends. Then there is a conference final. The winner of the conference final gets home ice in the division semifinals -- in next year's Stanley Cup. All series are best-of-4.

But it isn't like that. I thought I would never say this, but God Bless North America.

If you ask me, it doesn't matter whether Estonia won or lost. I think fingers should be pointed at someone, and it's not just at that poor Hungarian referee.

PS. Andrus Veerpalu has a genetic mutation that makes his body produce massive amounts of human growth hormone.

--Anonymous

Nordic-Maltic cooperation

2011-11-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

Visiting Malta last April, I was struck by certain aspects: a compact, cute little country that entered the EU in May 2004; population: about that of Tallinn, size: Harju County; boasts a particularly good-looking coastline by the standards of the local sea, and an inordinate amount of national pride (and yes, some smugness and provincialism).

Certainly it helped that, when we parked our red Škoda in the western town of Mgarr for a strawberry festival, a local man glanced at our car and said, in the lilting local English: "Wow, you drove here from Estonia?" That never happened in Sicily. Sicilians thought we were Swedish or else Romanian gypsies - or, if they were well-read, from someplace like Este in the north.

Playing tourist for a week, I really liked the way Malta has seized on its own historical narrative and the multimedia trend. Each major town has a few purpose-built movie theaters that screen flicks like the "Malta Story" five to ten times a day, for 10 euros a tourist. Featuring slightly questionable acting and special effects, they aren't all that bad, either. The slight cheesiness give people like me -- who can't take real-life artistic excesses like the Knights' Co-Cathedral in Valletta very seriously -- with an outlet for a little irony. (In the case of the Mdina Story, It was amusing to see the same actor who played a prehistoric settler make a reappearance in the late Middle Ages, or seeing tomatoes on the table in a scene from the 1400s .)

Estonian tourism seems to have a pretty good game plan itself, and it's gone past "multimedia" to "interactive". Still, it's tempting to imagine taking a few additional tips from Malta. Certainly Tallinn could have a dedicated theatre, say right outside the Old Town, where the excellent Singing Revolution documentary would be shown many times each day. (For one week in November and December, the Black Nights film festival could use it.)

It's hard to go an hour in Malta in without being reminded of the Great Siege and the country's importance in defending us all against the evil Saracens/caliphate/North African immigrants. Tallinn might also capitalize on its own clash of civilizations content with a Huntington Museum, named of course for thinker Samuel, whose dividing line between Western and Eastern civilization runs underneath Estonia.

The Maltese also do pageantry well. Contrast that to the Estonian military, which could be much more visible. Mainly you see the military in only a few contexts in Estonia: 1) 18-year-olds in fatigues hauling their pack to the bus station to travel to their hometown, and 2) the annual Victory Day parade. But a few ceremonies in the Old Town such as a changing of the guard and parades-in-formation would add color and national identity. Right now the only people parading around on a daily basis are the parking police.

At least we have a huge cross on Freedom Square. The Knights Hospitaller would certainly approve of that!

**
The funniest Nordic-Maltic connection happened long after our trip, when an Estonian tourist in the town of Paceville was told not to drink beer from a glass on the street. Due to problems known only to her, she went ballistic. Ended up being arrested and taken to a holding cell, where she ripped out the wires and cut the power to the entire police station. It made international news. Hard to believe anything about Malta could piss off anyone that much. It's like Britain in the 1960s crossed with southern island life. It comes out to some kind of parallel, quasi-European version of a Caribbean colony without the crime and poverty.

My own theory is that the beer caused her crack-up. The local brew, Cisk -- guess what? It tastes like every other country's beer. She may have been frustrated by that. On the other hand, the national soft drink, Kinnie, is excellent and distinctive. It's a little bit like the herbal versions of Coke from Russia. Ingrid Kalmiste -- that was the woman's name, I think -- should have had a Kinnie.

***
I'm enjoying writing about Malta and may actually continue with a part II soon. Right now, in the November half-light, the only thing Estonia resembles on Malta is the catacombs. (Today, on November 9, as an Italian FB contact notes, the sun did come out in Tallinn because of Berlusconi's decision.) Far drier than Sicily, the last rain of the summer fell in early April, and we ourselves saw nothing but sun. We car-camped in basically a sliver of vacant land left for the Boy Scouts near the parking lot of the Radisson. It was the most remote part of Malta, with two red sand beaches, but the hotel was the most prominent feature. This was before 99% demonstrations were a glimmer in anyone's eye...

A week in Haute-Corse

2011-09-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

(as told in offline tweets)

I was going to go trekking in Sapmi ("Lapland") again this year, but all of a sudden September was nearly a third of the way over, and with fall casting long shadows over Estonia, I had a feeling I would get snowed on this time if I tried to brave the Arctic again. I had read about the GR20, a long-distance hiking trail in Corsica, and it seemed perfect... if a bit of a challenge. Comparisons are often made with the NE part of the Appalachian Trail or Snowdonia, where glaciers and erosion have stripped the mountains to the raw and trails often follow bare rock slab and couloirs.

Tearing myself away from work and family to take a week-long backpacking trip is hard. Whether Lapland, the Tatras or parts beyond, reaching mountains from Estonia generally involves two days of travel on each end, so basically the trip starts pushing two weeks. The whole undertaking is like trying to reach escape velocity. Even until the last minute, it's not clear whether something will pull you back to earth at the last moment -- a request from a client to look over one more document, a minor family emergency.... the possibilities are endless.

GOING OUT

Ryanair continues to come through for me. I don't know what I would do if it didn't offer its Bergamo route. It's a great gateway to Southern Europe, and it's now available from Tampere, Tallinn or Riga -- the Tallinn flight being the highest-priced of the three, of course; how could it not be?

From Bergamo, cost-effective Italian trains and a slightly less cost-effective French regional train (pink pastel and frosted glass) get me to Nice. At one point I look up and notice the station is Monte Carlo. A guy in the Depardieu mold and a gorgeous black woman board, it's just commuter traffic, but the people (other than Depardieu) look very beautiful. Even the Depardieu does nothing coarse but just engages in eloquent small talk.

I arrive in Nice, no sign of Le Pen or anything reactionary. ALso, people wear loud Bermuda shorts here -- in the city. This isn't Italy. I stay the night in a train-station hotel, actually had to use the AC in the hotel room.

I raid an nearby Indian store for all sorts of snack mixes...Makai mixture etc, all with about 20 ingredients in them and based around rice, gram flour and potatoes, oil and spices...perfect trail food. You have to have respect for a country -- India, I mean -- whose junk food contains watermelon seed and spinach and a perfect balance of protein. I also found cute tubes of creme de marrons de l'Ardeche -- the sweet French chestnut spread -- perfect for backpacking or kids.

DAY 0/1

Arrived in Calvi, Corsica, the next afternoon - just as beautiful an arrival by ferry as they say, with the citadel perched high over a white arc of bay.

Arrive at Calinzana, a slightly inland small town, the northern trailhead of the GR20.

Mystified that it costs 8 euros to go 14 km from Calvi, but there you go. Unlike say Sicily, rural public transport is irregular and expensive in Corsica. It's only the population of Iceland and they all have Citroens.

I start ascending the trail that Friday night. The maquis (sagebrush/heather smells intoxicating. Probably is. Notes of wild thyme, but it's heady creosote and myrrh fragrances that predominate. Can't ID them. Exotic. Never smelled anything like it. Guess that's why they even have a Corsican beer flavored with aromes du maquis.

Heat is a major factor. It's perhaps only 24 in the shade, but the brilliant white Med light pours down -- until it doesn't anymore, and the sun rather abruptly sets. I had forgotten that September is still a summer month. I'm not sure August really is, in Estonia.

Overall I'm happy with pack weight, but all but impossible to get it under 20 kg. No camping fuel, so I'll eat dry food and whatever the refuges offer.

I stash my laptop on the back side of a rock outcrop, but I don't use GPS. I'm confident I can find it again based on landmarks.

Blackberries all over the place on the first kms of trail. I must be the only one who gobbles handfuls as I go. Old obsessive habit from Oregon.

First refuge is Piobbu and despite being the first one on the trail, it's remote, high up and rustic and family-run. Menu is lentils figatellu. (Figatellu would appear over and over in various combinations, it's halfway between liverwurst and boudin noir sausage.)

I'm sitting at a picnic table on the shady side of the refuge when someone shouts to me. One of the refuge horses is ransacking my backpack. Luckily not a whole lot of damage it could do, but one of the zippers is open and the horse is pushing a freeze-dried food envelope along the ground.

I reluctantly fork over 6 euros, the cost of pitching a tent outside the refuge. Level ground is expensive in Corsica. Wild camping is illegal everywhere in France, but I don't really see any way to do it anyway in this area. You would think there would be some level patch, maybe curled up by the roots of a tree, but there really isn't.

Despite the lack of fair warning about their horses and dogs roaming around looking to steal hikers' food, I decide I like the refuge proprietors and that it's not a scam.

A Corsican sandwich at the refuge costs 8 euros. Sure it's generous enough, but I'm sure its no bigger or richer than a pane cunzatu in Scopello, Sicily (a tad over 2 euros, also in quite a remote place).

Economics are making me a Sicilian patriot all over again. The prices in France and Corsica have been astronomical.

DAY 2: HIGH COUNTRY

Day 1 was just relentless uphill, but day 2 is a taste of the classic GR20. All granite ridges. The forest, and any kind of soil for that matter, is now far behind. Just knife-edge scrambles over rock, no sign of trail on the ridges ahead, it doesn't look possible: But it never becomes too extreme. No cables or chains, nothing death-defying.

I do two stages of 4 or 5 hours each, stop at Refuge Carrozzu (1200 m) for lunch, get an omelette with mint and brocciu (a fetalike sheep cheese). Nine euros. Apparently the hike up from a place called Bonifatu is easy, place starts filling up with retirees pretty quickly around noon. I push on.

It's a double-day. Don't know how many km, because everyone and all the guidebooks measure the trails in hours, without exception.

From Carozzu, back up to the high country and another similar stage of granite and scrambling, finally a 2000-ft steep descent to Haut Asco, a ski station. It's line-of-sight with the ski station nearly all the way, but the destination is pretty much at a 45 degree downward angle.

Haut Asco isn't too bad. It's a bit functionalist with a lot of gravel, the way most ski resorts are after the snow melts, but the place has a nice cozy ambience and feels very far away from the rest of the world.

A fox invades my backpack at 5am and makes off with some charcuterie. Good riddance, with regard to that particular piece of saucisse. I got lucky, though. Would had to miss a day of hiking waiting to resupply if it had gotten into the main part of the provisions.

DAY 3 -- MONTE CINTU TRAVERSE

I decide not to do the most famous part of the GR20, the Cirque de Solitude. It involves a descent of several hundred meters with ladders and cables into a chasm and then back out again. The reason is not so much fear of heights as the fact that there are lots of people. I think I could keep a cool head, but I can just see myself getting hit by a rock or getting stuck behind someone on a ledge.

I climb Corsica's highest mountain, Cintu, instead, planning to do a traverse and rejoin the GR20 after the Cirque de Solitude. Weather is nothing but sun and have map and compass.

The opening sections of the climb are slightly beyond scrambling and more into the realm of light mountaineering. Don't think I could retraced my way back down with a backpack. Not without a rope. A bit of a queasy feeling. But the rest is OK. I get to a 2600 m saddle just below the summit, where I descend 300 m through loose scree (like poor man's skiing) to a lake at 2300 m.

NEAR-DISASTER

After a nice lunch, I strap on my backpack and make my way over large boulders to the trail on the other side of the lake when yow, my ankle suddenly gives, for no seeming reason. Must not have been concentrating or sleepy. The endorphins rush to the scene but it's clear after a few minutes that the pain isn't going away and that the outside spur of the ankle is going to swell up. It's happened before. Fourth sprain of this ankle in my life, I decide to pop two Advils and keep walking as long as I can - a big descent separates me and the next refuge.

Walking is not fun, I have to concentrate hard to avoid worse injury, and I'm dreading how much it might stiffen up overnight.

Rest, Ice, Compression,Elevation. Well, not much rest.

The shelter is unmanned/creepy but it allows me to rest up and do things I ordinarily wound't do, like elevate my feet up on the table and relieve myself not too far from the hut on Depardieu-like demand. I sleep in a bunk on a mattress and it costs nothing, for once.

DAY 4 - LIMPING TO CIVILIZATION

I tape my ankle with loops of duct tape to just under tourniquet tension and set off. Not too bad really. It feels very tight, but it's not just the duct tape. The ankle doesn't want to pivot very much, not that it should. Luckily the trail joins an access road to an abandoned auberge and serpentines down the mountain to the village of Lozzi.

Lozzi has two incredibly restful looking campgrounds under chestnut trees with deep shade, but so I continue 3.5 km to Calacuccia, a bigger sort of regional small town with maybe 1000 people, set on a reservoir.

This is the central highland valley (900 m), between towering Monte Cinto on one side and the fourth-highest peak on the other.

I walk the level 3 km to the next village, Albertacce, and check into the gite d'etape (€16), which is a simple convent-like hostel. No one is here, but I relax, make myself at home, call the posted tel. number to check if there is vacancy.

A sign says l'accueil se fera a partir de 18 hrs, words and grammar that stump me. Later the host does show up at 6pm to welcome us (which is what the sign meant) and take our money and orders for breakfast. There's a lot of fuss over breakfast and what will be served, I can't make out all of the French, but it sounds shady. The breakfast costs 8 euros but I have a hunch that it will be Melba toast in cellophane and prepackaged little jams. It is, so I'm glad I opted out.

A SURPRISINGLY BLAND MEAL

The meal with the local restaurant that is partnered with the gite is pretty bad, bland food. A 20-euro menu fix with a saltless soup (only some kind of sorrel-like herb saves it), then a huge portion of veau in sauce, also over the same soggy fettucine that was in the soup. But for a hiker, I guess it's good, and the portions are massive.

DAY 4 - THE LONG WALK

I walk 3 km back to Calacuccia wait in front of the Hotel des Touristes for a bus that will take me up to the pass at Col de Vergio. I figure I can do what I do yesterday with a heavily taped ankle and make my way back to my starting point using another alternate route. The GR20 would be too rocky and rough.

The bus never comes. I go into the hotel and ask, the administrator says the driver is sick. There will be no public transport today.

I walk. It's the Sentier de la Transhumance, and it's a beautiful section, all through deep forest, steadily uphill, but not steeply. Unfortunately I use up much of my energy on the 12 km up to the low pass at Vergio.

From there, it's a brief 1 km on the GR20 and then the Sentier de la Transhumance splits off to the west over the great divide, for a route that parallels the GR20 back north but which I imagine will be more rolling.

I split off the GR20 at the junction and climb a 200 m pass to the island's divide at 1800 m as afternoon dark clouds build around the summits... and to my dismay, on the other side, I see not rolling dun hills, but craggy, high mountains as far as the eye can see, dotted with nary a farm or anything man-made. I'm wondering when I will get back now.( I'm only 18 km or so from my starting point as the bird flies, BTW.)

The descent from the divide pass is another killer one. I can't believe this is the trail shepherds used for their migrations.

Eventually after 2 hours I reach a refuge in a deep valley, where a strange man with white hair is the gardien. He seems a little like Assange, a little like something out of the Enlightenment. There is a satellite dish mounted on the refuge and he is working at a Mac Pro with a million windows open, with classical music blasting and bars on an equalizer in one of the windows blinking.

He says enthusiastically that it is only three and a half more hours to Monte Estremu. It's about 5pm. At this point I am off my only IGN quadrant map. I figure Monte Estremu is the name of the next refuge. (I ask questions, but don't think to ask everything - I'm however sure it's not an actual mountain, as I am not in a state to climb anymore.) There is a low pass, but only a 200 m ascent. Then, a 900 m descent to the valley of the Fango River.

I push on, as I have a lot of ground to cover if I am to arrive back on day 6/7. After a long, long descent I finally get to a tributary of the Fango, and find myself on a gravel road that goes on and on, again with no place to camp. I probably do 25 km this day, I finally have to camp on a wider shoulder of road. I put some brightly colored bags between the tent and the carriageway on the very unlikely chance that anyone will be driving up here in the absolutely desolate forest. Another fox comes at nightfall but I'm ready and I stamp my feet and throw pebbles. It's all pretty deplorable but sleep comes quickly and it doesn't matter.

DAY 5 - BIRTHDAY

I push on down to Monte Estremu, which is not a refuge but the first of a string of villages.

I feast on figs growing semi-wild below the village. Apparently the minerals are what the doctor ordered. I still need a coffee like all get out, though.

I reach a cafe that doesn't seem like it should be there (by the laws of economics and demand) and have a double coffee, which is superb, the friendly but very peasant-like proprietor sits down at my table and we have a nice conversation in French-Italian pidgin.

Then a road walk to Tuarelli, elevation only 90 m. The Fangu is a beautiful river, clear as all the rivers on Corsica. I have a good meal -- trout with ratatouille (15 euros) at a idyllic auberge. I may embarrass the owners with my compliments, but rarely has food tasted so good. Certainly the fish is fresh and local.

Two more stages to go until Calenzana, where i started the hike. But another miscalculation -- the maps show only a 590 m pass -- small beans. I meet two other hikers coming down just before the pass. They assure me that after the pass the trail follows the contour lines. But what's this, 90 minutes after the pass at about 6 km/h, I have been relentlessly climbing. After the good meal, I drank about 1.5 litres of water. I'm carrying 2.6 litres of water but now 2 of that is gone...and it sure looks like I will have to get into the high country again. How high, is the question.

1200 m is the answer. Much more than I had thought. Then a 600 m descent. This I can do. To Bonifatu and another roadhead. This is a swanker auberge. It's only 18 km by road from Calvi. I have a Pietra (chestnut national beer), €3. I camp "illegally" in the vicinity and have a nice night of sleep. One more stage to go.

DAY 6 - I set off at 5am on the last stage: The ankle seems to be getting stiffer every morning, though usually an hour of walking tends to loosen it up. Luckily after a murderous section to cross the creek near Bonifatu, the trail joins a forest road and follows an easy grade. I keep on worrying whether the trail will split off the road again (it's still dark) but luckily everything is so well-marked with orange blazes.

I pass another fig tree. Good timing. Then, finally, I rejoin the GR20 where i started, drop my pack, hike up to the rock outcropping...and CAN'T FIND MY COMPUTER. Nothing is backed up.

It looks like someone has moved the rocks I placed on top of the cavity. The hills have eyes all of a sudden. I pace, retrace, curse, mutter and rave. Two German hikers -- morning departures on the GR20 trail are picking up -- are resting on the other side of the outcrop probably wondering what is going on. In the end, though I glimpse the laptop bag peeking out about 10 feet from where I thought I had stashed it. Everything is OK and intact.

The way back to Estonia, though -- that's another post, or three.

Thoughts on reaching 20

2011-08-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

I was here in Estonia 20 years ago, but not for what is now considered the main event. I spent two peaceful, very cold weeks here in July 1991, the lilac was still blooming probably thanks to Mt. Pinatubo, a mountain impossibly far removed from either of my two countries). I saw the barricades on Toompea erected January in anticipation of trouble, but by summer they were mute blocks and passersby did not even take notice of them. I was back in the US by August. I missed the "action" during the putsch and what Estonia commemorated this year as perhaps the most beloved anniversary (more than the 90th anniversary of the original Independence Day, anyway).

Then I was in Estonia again in December 1993, more or less for good. In the interim, I missed the Savisaar economic crisis (which was a real crisis, incidentally), the Pullapää revolt. I've only known increasing stability with occasional tragedy (ferry disaster, Kurkse). That's why the riots of 2007 were so frightening at first for me, but that turned out to be just civil unrest rather than a Dec. 1924 type event.

From that summer of 1991, I remember only snippets from the cities, like the aforementioned barricades, and the smell of cabbage, buckwheat and cat piss smell in the entrance halls of Mustamäe apartment blocks. It wasn't squalid, but it was characteristically musty. But for a whole week in July 1991, I was on a farm with my cousin in Sürgavere. What was interesting there is that although the sovkhoz somewhere within arm's length was often mentioned, here was these people living in a farmhouse that looked like a normal smallholding. I had grown up in the States told about forced collectivization, deportations and massacres, and here we were making hay and feeding the chickens just as they probably had every year through the 1980s.

When I came back in December 1993, Mart Laar had been in office for a while and the crises were over, and it's been an upward trend. Even when people like Vähi and Rüütel ran the country, there was no real change, far less than even when the Democrats "take over" in the US. Taxes still get cut even further for the rich and teachers still don't get paid enough.

Today there's much less of the post-Soviet overlay, it's gone from most places -- street signs in Russian, certain foods that have disappeared from menus -- but I guess there are areas you could go to to find it, and I don't think we've seen the last of official bilingualism on Estonian soil.

Giustino asked about what the country might look like in 20 years. It's a great theme for an imaginative blog post, imagine the satirical possibilities. And I don't know if we'll still be sane as a species anymore, even with today's still-primitive virtual technology, some of us are already getting atomized with a short attention span. But the fundamentals will be the same. Even visually, the country will still be very recognizable. Sure, if you were blindfolded and driven to the Põhjaväil, you might be at a loss for a while, just like today if you took someone who grew up on Tartu mnt to the Tallinn financial district, but you would eventually get your bearings and figure out, hey, this must be Tallinn's new waterfront. And very quickly get used to it. And if you were here all along wouldn't even notice the changes they would take place so slowly.

I do miss some aspects of the post-Soviet overlay that lingered through the 1990s. Hard to put my finger on it. The idea of being able to go down to the corner store and buy a tsheburek. No, see, that's not it. Going back to Giustino's post, I don't long for the musty cracker wedged between the seats of the old car that is the Soviet Union, I would definitely not eat it but you long for the coins that might also be there, not even the coins but the fact that the car HASN'T yet been cleaned out, there's still something to find there.

Some things you might find in the old car are pleasurable in a shabby way. It's not too different from the nostalgia someone in New York might have when Bagels & Bialys closed down for good. A working-class sort of bakery that represents an old, not particularly efficient way of doing things. We hate change instinctively. Or the Internet has conditioned us to want everything to be available to us at all times in real form. Looking at recent news, I don't smoke pot, but the idea that it will not be available to people who want to go to the Netherlands to try it is just unbearable for some reason.

Part of the Soviet nostalgia is probably just a reaction to the alienation that the new system creates -- all the chrome and glass. The way Eurorenovation has less character than some flats that still need "san.remont". Windows that don't open.

Of course, people in the States have mainly gone to a new level and are pining Borders. The new big-box, chrome and glass trend that drove out working-class, sometimes shabby mom and pop, is starting to show signs of strain, and even though it is evil and represents Babylon, I miss it.

In Estonia, despite all the boutique cafes and small businesses, we're still going the big-box, chrome and glass way. We'll see if it even survives five, much less 20. In the countryside as well, there's plenty of lovely, well-maintained small farms, proudly signposted. But would anyone seriously say that that kind of agriculture is not an endangered species?

Still, I suspect that farmhouse in Sürgavere where my cousin's grandmother lived is still standing, I'm not sure what it is used for, but relatives are still in the area. I don't think my cousin's brother is planting Monsanto seed or GMO potatoes -- yet. Even if he is, I'm not even sure that would represents a huge cataclysmic break that will make life utterly different down the road.

Getting royaled up

2011-08-19T12:11:00.001-07:00

The presidential candidates debated today, incumbent Ilves talking into the studio air, "dark horse" challenger Tarand keeping the president company in the dark and providing him with a foil, occasionally making wisecracks and dropping the phrase "Estonian SSR" several times as if to suggest that we might be returning there were it not for him, Tarand the one-man democracy-generator.

Sometimes the two argued, rather peevishly, about who had done what for the country (both have a track record as members of European Parliament).

When Tarand was asked at the end of the debate why he thought he would make the best president, his answer was a) he did not think he would make the best president; b) he was in fact there to keep the incumbent president company and serve as a conversation partner. Yes, he said that.

After that, the same question was put to Ilves. Covering the debate for a news organization, I poised my pencil in suspense, ready for him to knock it out of the park and walk off. Ilves' answer: He, too, did not feel like he would necessarily make the best president and he thought he had done "well enough that people might support him."

D'oh'p!

And the answers to that last question were going to be my lead, because let's be honest, during the foregoing proceedings my attention had wandered. A lot. It seemed they kept coming back to the issue of the role of the president and how he (or, next century, "she") should be elected -- by the parliament or the people. Ilves repeated the argument several times that if the president were popularly elected, such a president might be so arrogant as to decline to debate in the first place. At least a parliamentary president could have a radio interview and a shadow candidate could sit in the studio adding spice.

In all fairness, occasionally Ilves sparkled and was on message, with a number of good ideas, some familiar from his speeches -- so he may have squeaked out a narrow decision -- but sometimes he talked right through the moderator, which annoyed me.

While I think Ilves has done a very good job in a largely "unfurnished" position (meaning that he doesn't have a hell of a lot of constitutional powers) and wish him the best for his next term, I vowed today that I would do everything in my power as a citizen to make sure Estonia has a king or queen in my lifetime.

You know the people want it. They may not know it yet, because monarchy is a foreign concept. They're still stuck on the populist argument that they want popular presidential elections, not a vote by the "elitists" in parliament; that that is what it is all about. But is it? Isn't it the campaigning and voting -- and the debating -- that's demeaning, that reduces everything to banal, circular talk, even if the candidates are witty and intelligent?

So monarchy is the Alexandrian solution to all this flapdoodle that diminishes the potential presidentiality of both candidates.

The Estonian monarch should be chosen by some arcane and weird pseudo-ancient procedure befitting the mumbo-jumbo of the largely ceremonial head of state post.

Perhaps a viktoriin (Jeopardy-like quiz) to test the future king's knowledge, a strength test of some sort (sword-pull etc, but make it Estonian), then an official (the Chancellor of Justice perhaps?) asks the candidates some trick questions. Or Zen questions, or morality conundrums (premise: both Chinese officials and the Dalai Lama are in town and need to be entertained).

It has to be hard, but it also has to be fun. And enjoyable for the audience. The Setos in their kingdom down southeast have it figured out better, like a lot of stuff.

REVIEW: the 2011 Traffic Act

2011-07-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

Fall afoul of traffic regulations and they might just throw the book at you, as the saying goes. In the case of Estonia's new Traffic Act, that would really hurt. The new law that came into force on July 1 is a thick book, literally.

it's apparently popular, or a publisher thought it would be. You will see the 2011 Traffic Act on sale in the aisles of small town supermarkets alongside the latest bestsellers, wall calendars, and coffee-table pictorials. It's a handsome-looking volume. It's the same on the digital level: e-books just became available for purchase and download by smartphone a few days ago and well, sure enough, the Traffic Act is among the first 400 titles, right alongside Petrone Print's travel books. So basically, the e-books include the "My…" books, the Traffic Act and a few other books.

If you go to the "puzzles" section of the book aisle in that same small-town supermarket, they will have a couple volumes of brainteasers based on traffic situations, most of them from nowhere in Estonia that I know, all of them based around the question, "who has the right of way here?" I call them brainteasers, because although they are supposedly to help people study toward their theoretical driver's license test, I'm sure the Estonian chapter of Mensa could use them to thin the field. My advice to most people seeking a more gentle mental workout is to stick to su dokus. Because the traffic puzzles are hard, definitely beyond soccer score tables and close to British crosswords.

So now there is a new Traffic Act that has ramped things to an even more difficult level. I haven't read the original in all of its glory, but I have absorbed much of the main points by word of mouth and bullet points. As far as I can see, there is one huge advantage to it, not that it will necessarily be enforced - it gets tough on tailgating, which is truly the bane of driving in Estonia. It even codifies a three-second following distance in some situations, which is far beyond what I (a defensive driver) would ever practice.

But some of the Act is obscure, such as the new rule that you must yield to a car in the opposite lane making a left turn if there is a tram behind the car. How many Estonian cities have tram lines? I don't know about you, but I can think of one. In that X-shaped tram system, how many such situations are there? I can think of about four or five. Of course, maybe the Reform Party has plans to build tram lines in every town -- after all, I have read as little of the coalition agreement as I have of the 2011 Traffic Act that I am reviewing.

Another interesting point in the 2011 Traffic Act concerns pedestrians, who are now required to wear reflectors even within city limits or face fines. Putting this as gently as I can: I'm not sure that, in a still-relatively-early-capitalist country such as Estonia with a large share of impatient idiots behind the wheel, I would increase the onus on pedestrians. If I were dictator, I would (being a judicious and wise dictator) not put any more obligations on pedestrians at all. Instead I would decree that drivers should drive within city limits as if there were a pedestrian lurking in every shadow and should face even more severe consequences.

You'd think that if they decided to reform traffic regulations, they'd do something sensible, like get rid of the use of the "yellow diamond" to designate a road with the right of way. One thing is certain: I have NEVER seen a yellow diamond sign when I have needed it. (How was the yellow diamond ever considered a good idea?) Time after time, I will approach an intersection where the tributary road is about as big as the main road. I see the drivers on every side slowing down, everyone obviously has the same question: "am I on the yellow-diamond road?". I'll turn to my wife and ask, "I didn't see any yellow diamond. Am I still on a yellow-diamond route?" She will think a bit, then confirm this, at which point I will proceed with extreme caution. Which would save lives. Were it not for the "Yo-yo, I must be on the yellow-diamond road" people.

Another major issue is the sheer amount of signs. In the US, road signs generally indicate the places you aren't supposed to go and the maneuvers you aren't supposed to execute. But here in the EU, it's the opposite. You can generally only make a turn if there is a sign that says you can. Now without going into the details, there are clearly only two possible schemes, the US one and the Europe one, and both of them cannot possibly both be right. Though I can't prove it outright, I suspect that, as in life in general, more things are allowed that are prohibited, and if you have to have an enabling sign in every situation, you are wasting a shitload of sheet metal that, who knows, maybe you could burn in oil shale plants.

But some signs are prohibitions, too. "Do not enter" is the same as in the US, I have to admit. But there is another type of specialized do not enter sign. And it was designed by a challenged person. The sign for "trucks may not enter" is a red circle with a truck inside. Not crossed out, mind you. I went years thinking I could roller-blade on a pedestrian path because the in-line skate was not crossed out. Now I don't know about you, but if I want to indicate to an illiterate person that there is no smoking on the premises, I would draw a picture of a cigarette and then cross it out emphatically with a big fat red line. If I wanted to indicate to someone that smoking IS allowed, I might draw a cigarette and then circle it in red. Or am I a cretinized American?

By the way, the sign for "no entry whatsoever" is just a red circle with nothing inside. You have to admit, there is a poetic logic to it all. Too bad it isn't fixed by the miles of prose in the 2011 Traffic Act.

INVENTORY: Between seasons on the River Slough

2011-05-29T07:43:00.004-07:00

The last frosts should be gone, and there's some of that newfangled globalized weather coming through next week -- 27 C + during the day, maybe 15 at night. If soil temperatures are still a bit chill, they won't be after the mini-heat wave is done with us. Finally time to get beans and tender crops in the ground. Going into early June - this is a time trees have been in full summery leaf for about 2 weeks, and "people" crops should finally enter vigorous vegetative growth, joining the perennial weeds, which have been active for a month.

We escaped major wild boar damage in the fall and winter. Some friends of ours in Veriora were hit hard while they were away in the States last winter. Their whole lawn was deeply gouged -- Biblical damage that took a mini-Teeme Ära and a tractor or two to repair.

Still, there are many ruts and brushy areas, so this will probably be the year of groundskeeping. I wish I could say it was the year of building structures, but I don't know where to begin. I have to hope that the plans for the house or sauna-dwelling are bubbling away in my subconscious and will come up to the surface when the time is right. Right now, after last year's plague of ticks, the focus is on making the property a tick-free zone. No ticks have been spotted this year, even after tramping in high weeds off-property. Unheard of. Last year, there were many tiny nymphs. I would be lying in bed in the cabin and my eyes would see something crawling across the floor in the dim light -- tick. Mosquitoes are also slightly under their usual intensity, despite lots of standing water in the wetlands. The first mosquitoes appeared in open areas (during cloudy periods etc) only around May 19-20. I did not know this: Most of May is a wonderful time to be outdoors in Estonia if it's not too cold.

Spent Saturday taking out about 10 birch and alder -- because of overcrowding, to reduce brush. We will try to plant ash if we can get them -- a great firewood tree, underrepresented in Estonia, harvestable in 12-year cycles. Though the late leaf aspect is depressing -- I was complaining in early May about the fact that even early leaf trees were bare.

We still have the "Olympic swimming pool" hole out back from a failed pond construction attempt before our time, and the pile of displaced dirt next to it. It's going to stay there. Some neighbors dropped by and said the pile could definitely be shoved back in the hole, but I think we would be unpleasantly surprised; instead of a hole and a hill, I think we would have a hole with a small hill at the bottom of it. Piusa-type sand is sought-after, so I wouldn't be surprised if whoever made the hole carted the sand off.

What's growing in the garden this year on the River Slough:

Squash -- Mother-in-law started some seedlings for us while we were in Italy. Two or three varieties of gourd. I made the same mistake as last year and put them in the ground early. Even earlier than last year, so their shock is deeper. I'm not sure how much of the shock is from the cold ground (nights are still +3-+9 C) and how much damaged roots during the transplanting. Looking back at last year's posts, I see I wasn't sure whether they would even survive well into June, then I wasn't sure whether they would ever start producing female flowers. So despite the awful yellowish condition of the plants, there's still hope. If 3 or so survive, that might be all the squash we need. Last year, this section of the garden was called "Little Guatemala", so no problems with luxuriant growth.

Brassicas - Considering the amount that Estonians eat, cabbage sure is a devil to grow. I still can't say they're vigorous, but looking OK with no major infestations. This year, half of the (expanded) garden is given over to them, an even mix of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and kohlrabi. Painted some long planks with Bordeaux solution and surrounded the garden with them, sprinkled wood ash and lime around. The very first night the tiny seedlings were in the ground about 2 weeks ago, something munched on them, but It hasn't been back. I put clear disposable cups over the seedlings for some of the time.

Peas - soil is probably a bit clayey in this section, but they're coming up .About the same schedule as 2009.

Rucola, lettuce, chicory, radishes, spinach -these are in a long raised bed of Biolan Black Gold, the way my mother-in-law gardens. (Her squash plants are lush and amazing.) Unlikely anything will mess this up, probably the heat wave coming up mid-week will be the worst.

Beets and carrots - do birds eat beet seed? These haven't come up. Might have to re-sow.

Potatoes -- potatoes and sunchokes will go in the ground soon.

Tomatoes - None this year. Had a good "open-air" variety last year, and the early July weather was incredible, almost too hot for tomatoes.

Blackcurrants - and other berries, but blackcurrants (and raspberries) are the only ones I really care about. Major bird protection efforts with netting this year.

First re-impressions of Estonia

2011-05-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

+ 1. There really is a lot more public Wifi. Everyone's sick of the low-hanging "Estonia/incredibly wired/innovative/competitive" meme, so let me get it out of the way fast. Before I left, there were hints that, as in other areas, this was one where the reality might not measure up to the claims, that it might be a case of a circa 2006-2007 claim overstaying its welcome. Nah. Face it, Estonia is much more wired than any other place. You can't take the gezellig out of Amsterdam and you can't take the ease of going online out of Estonia. And none of those OingoBoingo unsecured connections that just want your credit card, either. Sicily, where we were based, was not as bad as one might think -- just like Italians are the world FB leaders, they do like their Web, and that infamous 2007 terrorism act isn't really a big deal -- but in all categories of wired, Estonia prevails easily.

- 2. Supermarket produce sucks ass, and where are the streetfront greengrocers? Ha-ha, there are none at all. That's a tough one to get re-used to after a stint abroad. There's some decent groceries with carefully vetted, attractive and comprehensive produce selections -- NOP in Tallinn, posh-ish places like Stockmann are good -- then it's pretty much a wasteland. A county-seat Selver with sometimes literally rotting piles of fruit that no one bothers to check on or remove can be particularly bad. Maybe not all Selvers, and obviously I'm pushing it if I buy a coconut from Põlva Selver and expect south seas succulence. Still..

And...on the customer side, no one wears plastic film gloves when handling fruit and veg in the store, or is expected to! But they should. Not wearing gloves when handling produce is like me not removing my shoes when entering an apartment.

+ 3. Prices. Refreshingly low, for the most part. Some establishments rounded up their prices and some dutifully left them where they are, even though it means the euro price is something like 1.695. Those are just +/-1 % concerns, anyway, though they do usually say something about the establishement. In general, it's still a -10% country in the EU, and that's a good thing for you and me. Don't court change for the worse by buying things for more than they're worth.

+ 4. The country sure looks a sight. Very neat and crisp. Even relatively unmaintained forests have a severe beauty (which I was mighty sick of when I left in October, but...).

I don't even think there should be so much preoccupation with cultural landscapes and adding value to forests by maintaining them. Just let some hectares here and there go, don't touch them for 10 years, and see what happens. It'll probably look fantastic and they'll discover a new orchid there.

- 5. Drunks are out and about. From 2003-2010, I was a big fan of universally 0.5 L beer bottles in a world of silly 0.3L cans. But now I am not sure about alcohol policies and traditions (though of course the culprit is more the 2L plastic bottle and producers are trying to be more responsible). For the most part the population looks healthy. Very healthy. More than Italians, even. But then there are the folks who are wasted in broad daylight. Not many. Maybe it's a Saturday afternoon at the Tartu bus station - not the Ritz-Carlton, in other words. But there are a few people there who are simply wasted. Not schizophrenic homeless, which I wouldn't write about here. These are two ordinary guys who have FAILED, they're sitting there and making substantial progress on a dorm-style pyramid of beer bottles in plain sight. It shocked me, and I did not try to be shocked. Then the two shitfaced guys are trying to get on a bus to Tallinn without a ticket, And the driver was very professionally explaining that they needed to BUY a ticket. See, if I were the driver, there would be no conversation. You're drunk - you can't buy a ticket OR get on the bus. You messed up this time, today, you drank too much -- it's embarrassing for us, it should be awfully embarrassing for you -- good man, now cut your losses and make yourself scarce. GO HOME.

TAKE TWO: Springtime for Cannes, wintertime for von Trier

2011-05-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

Top ten other things Lars von Trier could have said at Cannes:

1. Hitler was bad, bad, bad to the bone. He was the incarnation of pure monstrous evil. Nothing in this world or the next can touch him. I'm serious. No, really.

2. I am sorry for making a movie called the Antichrist which was NOT about Hitler. More importantly, I am also sorry for making the movie Antichrist, period. It should not have been made or even considered.

3. Hitler was absolute evil. By definition, nothing can be more evil. However, this leaves the door open for another to be more absolute in one's evil. Or does it? Can we explore the options? Look, I just want to talk about it. How do you feel? Is this mic still on? Kirsten, where are you going? I really want to hear your opinion! Come back!

4. Nothing is more absolute in his evil than HItler, but I am certain that Hitler at his best was only slightly less evil than Al Qaeda at its most annoying.

5. Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!

6. I'm not Mel Gibson. Nor am I Mel Brooks. Yep, I'm definitely not Mel Brooks.

7. Nor am I the guy who directed Der Untergang/The Downfall, which portrayed Hitler in his bunker as a human, wrestling with his demons. Speaking of which, can that director still attend Cannes?

8. I apologize for, as Richard Brody of the New Yorker put it, casting Nazi and Jews "in binary opposition, as if they were two sides to an argument." Looking at the films from Cannes in the past few years, I don't know where on earth I got that idea. Let's face it, I'm a basterd.

9. I'm pleased to announce that if Melancholia wins, my award will be accepted on my behalf by Michael Richards.

10. Anyone who sees even the slightest redeeming value in black humor, irony, cynicism and deliberately bad art should probably be blacklisted, disinvited, and lined up against the wall and shot...OK, OK, I'm an anti-Nazi.

Osama, life, and everything in it

2011-05-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

A week has come and gone, but I suppose I'll still have to write something about Osama, since as we know OBL is the reason for everything -- the decade known as the 2000s; the War on/of Terror; this trying-to-be-funny blog; the award-winning Laughagainistan series; the second term of Bush and now the second term of Obama; the war in/against Afghanistan and Iraq, the coalition of the willing and unwilling; thousands of (willing) American deaths and who knows how many brain damaged; a disproportionately high number of (unwilling) Estonian deaths and who knows how many brain damaged; less importantly of course, the millions of deaths of innocent people in Iraq that wouldn't have happened under Saddam, at least not in the same way, and probably not at all; the rise of the radical right; the Tea Party; Sarah Palin; Justin Bieber, the list goes on. It all started with Osama. He appeared on the scene seemingly out of nowhere and killed. Worse, he made us kill -- yes, in an equivocating, state-sponsored way, but nevertheless -- kill.

Damn him!

**

I like being able to blame the rise of Justin Bieber on Osama. Because I can. And the funniest thing is, I actually have nothing against Justin Bieber! It's just a meme I have picked up and because everybody has been shouting him down for years, I've just gone along with it. I would never admit outside the privacy of this blog that I have any warm or neutral feelings for Bieber.

Part of the magic of the War on Terror is that it's fabulously open-ended (besides probably being infinite). It's a wonderfully compact, self-supporting space, anchored on exactly one 0-dimensional real-world point in a military cantonment in Pakistan.

You can see the magic in the definitions. A terrorist is NOT an enemy combatant governed by the rules of warfare as long as he is still on the field. Aha, but once he is in custody, the evil rogue coward becomes exactly that: an enemy combatant governed by the rules of warfare -- especially the rule of warfare that says I can torture him with impunity for whatever he's got without proving that he was in fact the combatant.

You can play this game with anything, but Jekyll and Hyde Pakistan is perfect. (Jon Stewart: Pakistan, both too clueless to know where Osama was, and too clever to hide him in such an obvious place.

Al Qaeda can be a secret, centralized organization with deputies and meetings. Aha, but until it's not, and it reverts back to its other, true identity -- as one perceptive magazine put it in the understatement of the year, "more than just a centralized organization based in Pakistan" and "a network of franchised or like-minded organizations, and an ideological movement in which followers sometimes act in isolation from leaders."

Which pretty much covers the range -- Al Qaeda can be one solo underwear bomber + one pot grower in an apartment in Pakistan with no Internet....unless it is a vast secret military-style organization -- the Saracen version of the Knights Templar.

As said, elegant.

*

I don't deny anyone a moment of celebration. I was not a party-pooper!

In general, I am broadly pro-celebration, even if it is related to death. If America is happy, I'm happy. It's part of a bedrock core faith I have that Americans are still on the right track, except for the occasions they go astray and emulate 1930s Germany. Then I say so.

"They're on the wrong track," I will say at a time like that. "If it gets any worse, I think we could see the day in our lifetimes when a foreign coalition of allies is at the gates of Washington. Seriously." Stuff like that.

But I believe singing, dancing and passing out candy are healthy and help defuse emotions, and even that maybe there was far too little of it in 1930s Germany.

A head on a stick outside the White House gates can be useful for rallying public sentiment and just as edifying as any government website.

Of course, they did not do the head on the stick part, and I do not agree. After giving us the Code of Hammurabi for three quarters-plus, the US reverted to some creepy, clinical moves right before the final buzzer, dumping the body in the sea in the dead of night and being all weird and coy about it when asked.

And as far as celebrations go, this one is sure to have a metallic, nasty-tasting aftertaste, if not a full-blown hangover --we don't really believe it's so clear-cut -- but heck, I didn't say that DURING the celebrations!

**

Some questions answered

2011-04-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

Are you dead?

No.

Where have you been for the last six months?

Sicily.

Why?

Kids will be in school before we know it, and I am currently set up to telework. It's a blessing, sometimes one I curse, but certainly a circumstance to parlay into something even better. We were originally thinking of a subtropical English-speaking environment, but Belize and other such places had too many variables. Malta and Gibraltar seemed too small. Sicily was in Europe -- if barely. We had a reliable family car in Europe, there were more questions about the older vehicle still in Virginia.

Why the secrecy?

No real secrecy. Simply not knowing exactly how things would turn out, not wanting to commit to any kind of identity shift. And because it simply isn't everyone's business where I am at any moment. Though I must say I was reluctant to be seen as adding to the growing trend of people leaving Estonia for greener pastures, the potential for people to assume it was a permanent move.

Where were you based?

Just inside Palermo province boundary, on the Golfo di Castellammare. In the opinion of quite a few, including me, the nicest part of the Sicilian coastline. We had a villetta in Balestrate, pop 6,000, it was like a suvilarajoon or summer cottage area 1km from city limits and 30 m above the town. The town is itself about 40 m above the beaches. All quite walkable. The beach was average quality, but it was long, interrupted by only two small rivers -- 10 km.

How much did you know when you found your place? You found your place ahead of time?

Yes, over the Internet, from a German-Sicilian family. I didn't know much about it when I found our landlord, or even before we arrived. I figured we would be going to Palermo (50 km) much more often than we did. I think I probably only went to Palermo four or five times, usually by train, and a few times to Mondello, the city's beach, I would say one of the island's top beaches, depending on what you're looking for. But most of our outings were in W. Sicily, to the province of Trapani. Balestrate is much more connected with Alcamo, with Castellammare del Golfo. It doesn't show up in most travel guides. It gets lots of internal tourism, some Germans. Normal, Sicily.

Where else did you go in Sicily?

We saw a great deal of the island, which is half the area of Estonia, enough to make me feel a bit guilty about not yet making it to places like Mõisaküla and Vasknarva. SIcily takes at least as long to cross as Estonia, between flocks of sheep, frane (damage from old landslides) and getting lost, and there were a few major omissions. Catania -- though we did our share of slabbing along Etna's slopes, we never visited the great second city and its markets. Skipped Enna and Corleone, two pleasant enough interior towns, though I did make it to Ficuzza. We also missed a bit of the south coast from Gela to Agrigento. Didn't get to Modica, either, a city of excellent chocolate. We/I saw some sub-islands as well: Stromboli, Salina, Vulcano, Levanzo and Mozia but missed the other dozen or so.

Cost of living when not on the road or hydrofoil?

Cheaper for much of the produce we ate. Similar to Estonia for most non-veg. Pharmaceuticals were markedly more expensive. Pharmacists would not offer you generic by default, which is the law in Estonia -- my wife paid 19 euros for a couple tabs of ibuprofen once. Rent was cheaper, electricity was included (which is good as it is Europe's 2nd most expensive) and we saved on heating because the days were mainly 14-15 C with some sun in the coldest period.

Did you learn Italian or Sicilian?

Not enough. Work kept me busy. I would not yet be so presumptuous to list either language on a resume (unlike my rusty French, which continues to insist on being listed).

What were the hardest things to get used to? Cultural differences?

Apart from the island turning springlike green at a time when Estonia was getting its first snow, and yellow flowers starting to bloom in late December...

Initially, little things like napkins in the bars and cafes struck me as funny -- on the spectrum from cellophane to absorbent tissue, they're pretty much cellophane, and useless for sticky pastries, which are what pastries here usually are. Over six months, I probably left a truckload of flaky crumbs and ricotta cream dribbles behind in cafes -- not even counting what the kids got up to. I think there was something similar in early 1990s Estonia, too -- the triangular, single-ply "half-napkin".

Sicily seemed really dirty when we got there after various countries to the north. It was also in the middle of one of the many garbage mini-strikes, which still happen from time to time. But sometimes it seems quite clean now. In the beginning, there were stray dogs everywhere and they pegged us for tourists right away and would follow us. We were quite stern with them -- Lorna was still scared of dogs at this point. Around Christmas, they all disappeared.

So it's hard to say. In some ways it seemed like we arrived at the tail-end of a long hot summer and there was all this refuse and sleepy dogs left behind that no one had bothered to clean up or deal with. But is it really different? I guess I will be able to say when I get back to Estonia and walk around an Estonian town.

But the real tough one is the riposo, the version of the siesta -- stores close on average from 1:30pm to 4:30pm. No matter what your schedule, it always seems to be at the wrong time. I've had to to plan around that for months on end, and it's still annoying. And for our entire stay here, it certainly has not been hot or anything, maybe 25 C at most in October, so taking a break in the middle of the day seemed strange.

But driving?

Driving was intimidating in the beginning, but something clicked around month 2, and I'd have to say there are actually things I find better about Sicilian driving. (By the way, none of this goes for Palermo, which simply puts out a force field of criminal insanity for a long radius around the the city).

First of all, people on the autostrada drive very well, very consistently. You learn not to be averse to driving with your right wheels on the shoulder some of the time because that's how the 150 km/h crowd will pass you -- with their right wheels in your lane.

In the towns, you have to get used to less space on all sides, margins are tighter, but again, not necessarily more dangerous..the locals are better judges of their car's dimensions and oddly, just as paranoid about getting scratched as say the Germans. My wife was the first to realize this and you can use it to work in your favor.

Conventions are different. In Sicily, if someone flashes their high beams behind you (other than in the left lane of the autostrada) that means "coming through, don't move left or right" in a situation where in the US it would mean "you go ahead", so -- although it sounds pejorative - it's "third world rules" that way.

Things you missed in Sicily, compared to Estonia?

In the beginning, everything, though to a mild degree - we've traveled a lot. Family. Friends we'd spent the summer with. We were continuing our summer, they weren't.

Certainly we've felt a lack, in Sicily, of Online Public Services that Estonia has been famed for. For example, Sicily has an excellent interface for its hundreds of municipalities, but very few have bothered to fill in the important dates, festivals, contact information. People here are unfamiliar with the concept of digital signatures. That was a bit shocking.

So Internet coverage was presumably bad?

Actually, it wasn't and isn't. I had a WIND Internet key -- it's a smaller company compared to Vodafone or Telecom Italia and is much maligned. But I found the company to be reliable and the coverage was decent, about what any company provides in Estonia, with better slower protocol coverage than in Estonia. They key cost 50 EUR and the monthly fee for unlimited data was 10 EUR. It was anything but clear how to set it up initially. I gave them a fictitious address in Balestrate, they photocopied my ID, I bought a ricarica and after some repeat visits I was in business. No codice fiscale needed.

Wireless spots were everywhere, even unsecured is not all that uncommon. It was common for cafe owners to approach me as I was working. Seeing the orange chiavetta in my USB, they would express concern whether I was paying by the kB and ask if I wanted their house ASDL password. So that was nice.

Are Sicilians super-friendly?

No. Sicilians are not some accessible, sunny island people. They're complex, often surly. You could write a character/national identity piece and you would end up saying many of things that you would say about Estonians. Some people are very traditional, doubtless viewed us as oddballs, as migrants, who knows. Never encountered open hostility or anything. But for the most part, it's a good thing they are not friendly in an in-your-face kind of way.

But the climate/weather is warm? Subtropical? 25 by day?

Yeah right. In October, maybe. The autumn is warm, but it's also rainier than the spring. There are sunny days that are quite comfortable all winter long but the sea temperature and wind patterns make it very unlikely that there will be any 20 C days in February. On three occasions the temperature did not make it above 4 C. I stayed in denial about winter all through January and then had six miserable weeks. My wife and I now suspect we had very low level CO poisoning most evenings from our pellet heater and gas heater running simultaneously up to late March.

But yes, lemons and oranges do grow on the trees, loquats ripen in April and, as I found out yesterday -- from a book -- they have a sedative effect if eaten in quantity, it never drops below freezing on the north coast. You can swim until late November. These things are all true.

Hardest things to give up, now that you're leaving? Things you'll miss?

General kid-friendliness, as elsewhere in Italy. Although they are fawned over a bit and overprotected, they are almost always welcome, so that easily compensates.

Boys get a great amount of the right kind of support from older males, father figures. It's very healthy and hopefully it's always above-board. Morgan was enrolled in calcio (football) and both my wife and I liked how they interacted with the kids. This is just an average town, maybe slightly above average due to tourism, so I have no doubt things are similar elsewhere as well. Exporting this back to Estonia, if there were a way to do so, would be much more important than any kind of food item.

Apart from a ID check on a train -- during the height of the Lampedusa crisis -- I had no problems with authority figures. I welcome being able to sometimes have a glass of wine, maybe even two, and then drive. This country, Italy, has a reported drinking problem rate of 0.5% among men and Breathalyzer checks are not done in the south, I don't think. I would never say that alcohol improves anyone's driving, but the rules are simply ridiculous in some other countries.

Foodwise, the ricotta fresca (from sheep's milk) is truly good. always in stock in every alimentari (small grocery), always excellent. There is no substitute. The hard wheat, the bread, lives up to the hype. It's fragrant - yes, fragrant - in a way "white" bread is not in other countries. Decent local wine for a euro or two a litre. Fresh fish, to a degree. The big ones are swordfish and tuna and mackerel - probably ones not to eat all that regularly anyway -- and many other Mediterranean ones have small bones and don't make good comfort food that way.

Palermo is a world-class destination, in many respects, including food. What did you think?

It's a great place. The world's most conquered city, unless Tallinn holds that title. I still haven't been to Naples, but I don't think Palermo is anything like it. There's an article in the NYT that captures Palermo very well, it's slightly subdued, even depressive. People leave you alone. No one hustles you. There's still a lot of war damage that was never fixed. There's also an extensive northern section that is more like a ritzy mainland Italian city. The driving is bad. I meant that, though. But the one time we drove in to the centre, on a Sunday in January, there were no problems. I'm not a fan of any big city, and Palermo at just under a million for the metro area and hemmed in by mountains is too big for me to get a handle on. I regret not going to the opera for Bellini or other high culture.

But the food?

I have to say, I didn't find the street food in Palermo all that amazing. Pane ca meusa, sandwich with spleen and lung -- relatively uninteresting, boiled meat always is, even if it's odd-textured organ meats fried up in lard and made into a ubiquitous fast food. It was good at one place, Antica Focacceria, with a smear of ricotta on the bun and some caciocavallo cow's milk cheese.

Panelle, chickpea fritters, are hard to mess up, and they're one of my favorites. But the lack of variety! In Balestrate, I started ordering panelle sandwiches with crema di peperoncino on both sides of the bread -- they usually serve panelle just with black papper, salt and lemon and it's dry.

Sometimes there were surprises, some opportunistic guy would be set up for a day selling deep-fried broccoli or simply very fresh octopus in salt water.

In general, the best comfort food you found?

I went through some arancina and other rich bar-food phases, but my standby was the ravazzata con carne. It is a yeast bun with a meat filling, and tastes just like an American Sloppy Joe, if the Sloppy Joe also had peas in it.

You were between Palermo and Castellammare, two of the most historically Mafia-infested towns in the country? Any run-ins?

Eh. Well, I knew they left tourists alone. I kept waiting for something to manifest itself, like not being able to get the best cut of meat at the supermarket because I wasn't connected, but it never did, not to my knowledge. I stopped thinking about it completely by month 2. Though sometimes, when in the Catania area or SE, places traditionally not connected with the Mafia, I would sort of compare mentally and see if anything was different, if there were fewer ugly concrete buildings.

Country to transition to dot-triple-e domain

2011-04-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

IN A bid to increase the competitiveness of the country's image, the Estonian Internet Fund has decided to take the step of adding another e to the country's top-level domain name.

Still fresh off a reform of its domain names, Estonia will move to dot-eee by April 1, 2013 and to dot-eeee by April 2015, with a short transition period for a yet-to-be determined domain name.

The Internet Fund assured companies that the move to dot-eee has very little practical value and is largely symbolic.

"The extra 'e' indicates many things. 'Enhanced,' 'electronic,' 'extra' value added," said Rait Rakvere, an IT developer close to the Fund.

The dot-eee announcement was immediately criticized by a small and vocal grass-roots group of Internet users, known as the Estonian Internet Network, who said the move would require them to update all of their bookmarks manually.

They also accused the Fund of being behind the times.

"E's glory days as a letter are long over, and so is i's," said Paul Paide of the Internet Network. "It's really all about diacriticals now, such as õ," adding sheepishly that he was still partial to his own proposal, dot-e-õ.

Paide also noted that the move to dot-eee will not be automatic.

A spokesperson for the Internet Fund confirmed this was the case.

"We could just add the extra 'e' to the top level domain overnight. But we feel that companies should go through the re-registering process, anyway," said Tarmo Tartu.

In fact, Tartu said, half of the Fund's staff still back the option of simply throwing out all domain names and having companies re-register on a first-come, first-served basis, to remove any doubt that the previous reform had not been conducted properly.

"The good news is that we will issue about 20 reminders before it happens, and even then companies will probably still have a chance to register for about a year, when the next reform takes place."

No sooner will be the transition to dot-triple-e be complete that trademark analysts are already plotting for when Estonia hopes to go 4E.

Current debate in geek circles centers on what to do if there is an interim phase, potentially either dot-3,5e, dot-3.5e or dot-eee1/2.

Dialogues on minorities

2010-10-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

Estonia unveiled a new series of ads on September 27 designed to get people to think twice about tolerance by asking them to imagine a member of a minority group in a personal context. Now, for the first time, here are the interviews with random Estonians on the street on which the series was based.

*

- Muslims. What do you think of them?
- Don't know much about them. They're all right, I guess.
- BUT…what if one were your son-in-law?
- Oh, I never thought of that. I guess I should reconsider my whole view of them.

*

- Gays.
- I don't like outright exhibitionism, I'm sort of conservative. Like many Estonians. But live and let live. Most are probably totally 'normal'.
- BUT….what if one of them stole your sister and ran away with your wife?
- That's different! I would…hey, wait a second!
- Ha! Just keeping you on your toes.

*

- Immigrants in general.
- No-goodniks, all of them. They got no business in here, I'm telling you.
- BUT….what if one worked in the next cube over from you at the office?
- What do you mean, "but what if ," I just said they ain't got no business anywhere in this country!

*

- Economic migrants.
- I have nothing against them. But Estonia is a nation-state, it has to retain its identity.
- BUT….what if one migrated to your apartment building and squatted there.
- Oh, I already have four of those in the prewar building my family owns.

*

- Emigre Estonians.
- Fair weather friends who come only in the summertime!
- BUT….what if one were sitting next to you at the theatre?
- Why, I would exchange pleasantries with them and ask them for a restaurant recommendation in New York.

*

-Indians.
- Native Americans or Subcontinent?
- The latter.
- Ah. Hmmm…let me think. Yes. I like them OK. Never met one.
- BUT…what if one were preparing a huge plate of delicately battered samosas and an exquisite curry?
- Is it spicy?
- Yes.
- Deport him!

*

- Africans.
- They're OK, I guess. I don't hold anything against them, as long as they don't take our jobs.
- BUT….what if one was your Siamese twin?
- Depends. I think it would be OK, there might be good business in it.

*

- Terrorists.
- I'm not afraid of them.
- BUT...what if some of them came out of the manholes and fired small arms up at cars?
- Still not afraid of them.
- BUT...what if they set off a dirty bomb on a bridge or the subway system in your country?
- Nope.
- BUT...what if they drove cars around hitting random pedestrians?
- That happens every day.
- Suit yourself. Thank you for your time.

(Thanks to Stewart Johnson for planting a seed with a photo and a humorous caption.)

Some eateries revisited

2010-09-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

I ate in Tartu a couple more times over the summer. I'm not sure if I blogged about it or not. In terms of percentage of good meals, it continues to be a dismal restaurant town -- at least within a, let me measure it on Google, a 2.02 km radius of the central square. Moka is a central bright spot, although service can be brusque. It's good, and the presentation is often downright beautiful. They need to seriously tone down both the number of items on the menu (even to 25% of what is there now) and, more importantly, the number of ingredients in each item. Some of the items under Light Meals are what you would get if you ordered 4-5 tapas at the same time and asked the chef to stir them all together "until just combined." It's not a ungodly mess, but it's too much to process. But I recognize this weakness in my own cooking when I make a soup or stew, and I see it, too, in many fine restaurants -- you may know the kind, the ones that take pains to list ALL the ingredients on the menu, often capitalizing the nouns. At least Moka holds the truffle oil at the end. And with prices getting too high for their own good again, even in Tartu, Moka manages to fill your stomach for about 6 euros for a Light Meal.

You have to love Vapiano in Tallinn, because it's the first quality fast slow food chain we've landed. I'm reluctant to cover it again, because it's obviously a Corporate Global keyword -- last time I included the word "Vapiano" in a blog entry I received dozens of Japanese spam comments. And those food components that Vapiano doesn't make on the spot come in little individually wrapped plastic tubs that probably aren't totally carbon-neutral. I picture large trucks hauling away the empties at the end of the day, maybe back to Germany. Still, German quality control meets Italian cooking -- what a combination. For my birthday, I splurged -- I had the pasta puttanesca special, which at Vapiano's new rounded-up euro prices (a frowned-upon practice) costs €8. The rings of squid were chewy (obviously) but tender, the anchovies disintegrated into a rich sauce. A bit hard to eat, only because it's hard to twirl pasta and get a caper, squid ring and olive on your fork at the same time. But Vapiano is a constant. There are food preparers there I like less than others, but the end result is always the same.

At other restaurants, recipes can change over time. I had the vaunted all-beef burger at Meie Maja again (only a shade over €4!), about two months later. Same presentation, definitely not a gram under 150 g, but this time it tasted like celery salt had been worked liberally into the patty and the meat wasn't off-the-ranch perfection. There was no ketchup. I had to ask for it and it was fetched in a small bowl. I totally forgot to check whether I was charged for it. I think I wasn't. Needless to say, ketchup as a separate side order is a Baltic cliche of which even the semblance must be avoided! Meie Maja had an excellent selection of sauces, but the server said they are now keeping them in the refrigerator. (The chile was too hot?)

NOP continues to be the cafe of choice for affluent Bohemians, Mac users and ad and IT office executives. Not much markup on the grocery side. You can still put a small meal together there and go out and eat it in Kadriorg, in the rain. But the cafe is good as well. It dropped my favorite item in the early summer -- the couscous salad studded with golden raisins and two kinds of olives -- an almost unforgivable offense, but I got over it. Coffee has always been overpriced at NOP, and they've introduced something inspired by the American-style upscale "cupping" coffeeshops -- brewed coffee (blend of the day) in a large thermos. It's pitched as a gourmet treat -- supposed to be African one day, Central American the next -- but it tastes like what I make at home with Gevalia or Maxwell House. So avoid that. Ask for the strong masinakohv and emphasize "smallest one" a couple times, just like I do at Starbucks. If it takes more than 6-8 oz of strong European coffee to get your brain moving, you have been drinking too much coffee for a longer period.

Public health and Põlva

2010-09-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

A number of people have independently remarked on an odd thing about Põlva: the high number of people in the scenic town of 6,000 who look and act somewhat different. Many rural communities worldwide straddle the line between "close-knit" and "questionable intrafamilial alliances," but Põlva, which is surrounded by some of the thicker forests and natural barriers in Estonia, appears to sit squarely on the other side.

For a while, it seemed like good material for a particularly irreverent routine at one of the comedy nights that have become a hot taco item in Tallinn and Tartu. Driving into town with the family for an afternoon dip in the lake this summer, we would sometimes have to proceed carefully, encountering people who would become oddly indecisive about their direction on crosswalks and begin, like a cartoon character, to move down the road instead of across the road.

What didn't help were curious features, such as the fact that Põlva has hundreds of light bulbs on an island in the middle of a manmade lake downtown. It is, and ordinarily would seem like, a pretty cool public art installation, but in the context it suggested that all the bright ideas in the town had been exiled to an uninhabited island while - not to put too fine a point on it - the town was controlled by a bunch of retarded zombies.

It all no longer seems as funny (which, albeit in bad taste, it was) after my son and I were both let down by the local medical establishment this summer. Given the neurological look to many of the symptoms around Põlva, I wondered if many local people have undiagnosed Lyme disease that has progressed to the later stages.

I suppose I'll blog about the details of our own encounter with Lyme eventually, but basically Põlva Hospital ER dropped the ball both times. I had a localized infection without a unequivocally clear set of symptoms and due to lack of action by the ER, I developed a full blown case of Lyme flu before I finally got an appointment with a competent local family doctor who prescribed antibiotics. It was more serious in my son's case -- he never had the classic bull's eye ring, and after a secondary, transient rash was misdiagnosed by Põlva ER, he developed neuroborreliosis with partial facial paralysis, for which the (luckily effective) treatment is intravenous antibiotics. It involved some inpatient treatment in Tartu.

Southern Estonia has a very high incidence of tick-borne illness. I can't say the medical staff anywhere was ignorant of the disease and its potential for harm, and they sounded an even more serious note on encephalitis, for which a vaccine is available. But there was a combination of bureaucratic obtuseness and foot-dragging that was maddening. They were eager to pass the buck to a family doctor who, they levelled with us, might not be able or want to see us, and who certainly had no obligation to do so.

It was a medicalized version of the dream where you are running but unable to budge from the place where you are standing. Or where you are trying to point out something that is blitheringly obvious but the person is still running through some standard operating procedure and won't listen to you. An example: I was waiting to give my own blood test in late June (I had already started antibiotics and my symptoms had resolved) in Veriora. I had been asked expressly to come in at 10am on Friday because the last samples that week were to be taken to Tartu by courier at 11am and the samples would no longer be fresh on Monday. After ten minutes of waiting in the hallway, at 10:10am, I saw a guy in a brown uniform and a cooler go into the examination room. I knocked on the door, and ventured a question but a woman peremptorily (angrily?) told me to keep on waiting in the hallway. The man with the cooler re-emerged and left the building. I chased after him and asked if he was not by chance taking blood samples to Tartu. He was. I ran back and tried again, but it was too late. "Why didn't you tell us?" asked the nurse while her assistant radiated resentfulness. Luckily, it turned out that the sample would keep until Monday. Then the nurse missed my vein on the first try and I had a big bruise there for the next 10 days or so.

On different levels and in different institutions, and in different situations, farces like this seemed to keep repeating. Twice blood sample scheduling was involved. Morgan was weighed twice before any substantive Lyme-related tests were administered or before they even knew where the tick bite location was. Etc.

On the basis of our experience, I would also say the Estonian medical system is also plagued by a surprising amount of regional disparity and lack of communication. It appears to be a big problem to be seen by a family doctor if you are not on his or her list. (Our family doctor in Tallinn has gone off to the States to work and we have not met the substitute we were automatically assigned.)

When your child is sick and facing the never-knows -- treating Lyme sometimes becomes like a game of Whack-A-Mole in the later stages once the bacterium goes dormant -- you extrapolate and imagine worst-case scenarios. I wondered if for some reason the system would not be able to treat him. What if his test results were a false negative (common)? I envisioned Morgan 15 years from now crossing a road and wondered if he, too, would set off running down the road ahead of the car instead of across the road. Also, when you deal with the medical system in any capacity, you inevitably come into contact with people and their children who are far worse off, and it gives you pause.

Is Põlva Lyme-ridden? it is a long shot, but it is possible. Neither my son nor I had an absolutely clear classic bullseye rash. And from what we can surmise, the blood test is only administered only on such clear visual evidence, but at least 20% of people don't have any symptoms. We got tested, insisted on it, because we're a bunch of hypochondriac freaks who read too much about diseases on the Internet; we also worry about the food supply and even have the idea that pork fat and nitrates might actually be a big mistake in excess. Would ordinary Põlvans really even think of getting tested for Lyme? Given that Lyme is a great mimic, and the chicken-and-the-egg nature of many neurological symptoms, do we really know why Rein started hitting the bottle harder at a certain point in middle age, or why Tiit has vertigo, or why Laine has strange bouts of depression and bone-crushing fatigue? Many Lyme infections don't have overt symptoms in the early stages and people often have the impression that they can tough it out or simply don't see a doctor. Lyme is basically syphilis, with a less dramatic, rarely fatal outcome. From what I understand, it doesn't destroy tissue the way syphilis does, but the disruption of pathways and potential madness can be similar. As for TBE, people who have had tick-borne encephalitis, Dr. Kolk of the University of Tartu Children's Hospital neurology unit told us, are rarely the same again. Since I actually don't think there's that much inbreeding, organic phosphates or other bad stuff around, the results of comprehensive testing for tick-borne illnesses conducted in some small towns in Estonia just might be surprising.

TPJ (Tiny Post-Soviet Journalism)

2010-08-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Happiness elusive for tiny post-Soviets in countryside

YYKHVI, August 25, 2010 -- Tiny post-Soviet people in the countryside of this post-Soviet breakaway republic are finding the blessings of liberty do not extend to the height-challenged.

"Before independence, we had plenty of money but the stores were empty. Now the stores are full - but we just can't reach the merchandise;" says small resident Lyublyana Byakmana in a comment made 17 years ago.

Byakmana, who lives in the crawlspace under the Yykhvi Rimi supermarket in this northeastern town, said she has talked to the proprietor of the store about providing stepladders.

"He said there is not money," says the diminutive, 5-inch (12 cm) Byakmana. "It is always the same answer."

Government officials say they are not aware of Byakmana or her problem.

"The complicated economical situation has brought out, that regional development is(t) uneven," said an official with an inspectorate, polishing his spectacles and extracting a meticulously hand-rolled cigarette from a small case.

The paraphrased comments from the official, which were recently published in a newspaper interview in the massively huge post-Soviet republic to the east, contained no mention of Byakmana or her complaint.

As a result, the situation for the tiny population of Yykhvi is iffy.

Byakmana faces even more hardship on January 1, which is the date on which the former Supreme Soviet decided the country will switch to the euro. "The coins are heavy," she says.

Byakmana's plight is in stark contrast to people in Yykhi's closest neighbor, the small town of Persevere, where well-tended yards and homes are arranged in an orderly pattern. and large people walk around, often not watching where they step.

The country has slowly shrunk since the rebel breakaway nation emerged and its urban areas are only slightly bigger than the Vatican, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Pitcairn Island combined.

Back in the Soviet era, legislation provided for equality between tiny Soviets and larger Soviets - at least on paper. That all changed in 1991, and things have grown ever-smaller in the tiny nation since that time, including its people.

Flatlining in low places

2010-08-22T01:38:00.000-07:00

Every year around July, my wife gives me a week or two to disappear into the wilderness. Usually I head high -- the Rockies when in the States, while in Estonia the closest ranges of suitably rocky, 2000 m-plus mountains lie athwart the Polish-Slovakian border and in Lapland. But this year I had had Lyme disease in June, and I didn't feel confident about being 50 km from the nearest road. Geographic concepts like Point of Inaccessibility had an ominous ring instead of sounding beckoning. Plus I had to be online every day -- this condition was really non-negotiable this time. Although I have an USB stick that allows me to data-roam, I don't have a satellite phone.

So I went low. I decided to slum in the Benelux countries for a week, recapturing some of the spirit of the Eurail/backpacking bum days of 15 years ago. Instead of ascetic self-sufficiency, carrying my house on my back across a desolate rocky plain, I would be Mr. Gezellig: hang out in parks and cafes on free WiFi systems to get my work done, and maybe sleep in them, too , rent a bike, perhaps have a small serving of beer with a ridiculously high alcohol content, then, say, ride the bike. On Saturday, I might take part in a strange local physical activity like wadlopen (mud-walking) along the Frisian coast, which carries a small risk of death if you misjudge the tides but nothing truly hazardous like a California tidepool hike.

I packed a mosquito-net hammock, a sleeping bag liner, no sleeping bag, and tarpaulin, cramming it all in into a 55x40x20 (Ryanair regulation) bag, which weighed in at 7 kg, and flew from Riga to Brussels.

First I had to get to Riga. The bus was terrible as buses always are. I left Tallinn for Riga at 12:30am to save a night at a hotel.

There is no way to sleep on even a Eurolines bus even if you have both seats, which I did for the first two hours of the trip. The best possible posture, I discovered, was a fetal position on my back (except with legs splayed apart) with my head toward the aisle. It may seem unlikely, but it worked, even though my head was slightly off the edge of the seat. The only problem was that people kept going to the rest room and brushing past me.

Brussels

I didn't know much about Brussels, the great melting pot capital of our confederation , though I had slowly gathered that it wasn't just a bureaucratic place with a few happening neighbourhoods (like my old hometown of Washington, DC). Brussels was vibrant.

It was also dangerous, apparently -- I kept on coming across comments on tripadvisor.com like "My four-star turned out to be in a total ghetto!" or "I was mugged by my taxi driver!" - so I decided I would sleep in a hotel here. It was the Queen Anne. Equidistant from the Central Station and Brussels-Noord, it was a decent business two-star that didn't cost more than twice a hostel.

Before I succumbed to sleep, I managed to form a few possibly distorted impressions of the city.

One, Brussels struck me as very French, very Latin-blooded, almost to the point of berets, but the people don't care what language you speak.

I ate at Nordzee, a slightly upscale seafood chain with an outdoor grill where people stand at a long bar. Had a grilled piece of cod, served with a rich sauce of some kind, probably ending in -aise, and greens, and made small talk with other diners.

Later I grabbed something from the convenience store next to the hotel -- a beer called Boon Oude Gueuze -- odd-tasting, very astringent, like a brut champagne. But enjoyable. Later, I came across the same thing on the 200-beer list of what is reputed to be the best tasting pub in the Netherlands, Gollem. The Boon Gueuze cost 6.50 euros there, twice as much as anything else.

That same Dutch pub didn't even have Cantillon, which is even a greater gourmet item, maybe the last real maker of traditional unpasteurized sediment-filled beer in Belgium.

I did not get to tour the Cantillon brewery in Brussels, unfortunately -- time constraints. But at least the convenience stores are stocked with Boon. It seemed that people drank lambic like water here. Come to think of it, I'm not sure whether that convenience store carried bottled water.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was crowded, full of energy, a lot of it positive. Somehow cleaner than the last time. Like New York in the Giuliani years, maybe. Not a single drug dealer whispered words at me when I passed, no addicts accosted me when I had my laptop open on Nieuwmarkt, looking for the mythical free city WiFi areas . I avoided the heart of the seedy areas -- more because I have a problem with drunk British tourists than the addicts -- but it seemed that the fringes of those areas had contracted. I doubt it has directly to do with the right-wing ascension that has taken place, but there was, as some say, a palpable air.

I find myself spending more and more time in the outer districts. I may even make it to North Amsterdam, where no one goes, and where, my otherwise tolerant friend Bas claims, racially no-go areas similar to US ghettos have developed in some of the Moroccan enclaves.

I ate at Bojo, an Indonesian restaurant in the tourist district that has gotten good reviews.

Bojo was a dud. The single mom from Vienna and her well-mannerered 16-year-old L.A.-raised son who was taking hits from a pipe in front of her at the next table thought it was a dud, too.

Maybe Bojo is a place to try a cheap one-person rijstafel. But what we ordered was just salty, overcooked sauce over rice for the most part. This city has plenty of people doing imaginative Indonesian food with fresh ingredients, I'm sure. But not at Bojo.

Anyway, I'm not sure you should ever trust a restaurant on a street completely lined with restaurants.

Meanwhile, I hinted to the kid about etiquette -- you don't smoke ganja openly, even in Amsterdam -- but then let it go. As said, he was well-mannered, attentive, and the breeze was blowing the other way. Instead, I asked him which coffeeshop he got it from and he said "I forgot". Which would be a good name for a coffeeshop. Maybe he could open one called I Forgot? Give the other American coffeeshop a run for its money. Better yet, the Grey Area and I Forgot could be part of a chain.

Not that you can open new ones anymore. And the ones that are left, except for pretty much the Grey Area, generally have unfriendly service and loud customers. Some have a seedy third-world look and others have a seedy urban dystopia feel. I feel like I've walked into a bar in an apartment block in Manchester or Birmingham. Which is what the punters want, I guess.

If I smoked anything anymore, I would probably keep it in the family, too, and go to an Indonesian restaurant.

*

Now Amsterdam is so old and combed-over that it is hard to find real satori there anymore. But it puts on a great show. The (c)anal parade -- I didn't deface the signs -- is a fabulous show of gay pride. I didn't think I wanted to rubberneck. I went swimming that afternoon at Het Marnix, a pretty nice indoor pool in the Jordaan that costs less than half of any pool in Estonia.

Inevitably my path back south led over the grachts or canals. It was a block party like none other. Like a Village People show meets cabaret, naval costumes. Lots of Heineken cans empty and full everywhere. But the thing was, I don't know who was gay and who was not. If parades in other places are anything like this, I don't know what the problem is. And maybe this is normal life and the conventional hetero lifestyle is what is keeping us all back.

Amid the total chaos, it started raining harder and I ducked into a tiny corner cafe on Prinsengracht. A very mystical place, called Rainarai and featuring nomadic Algerian cooking. Business revolved around a glass deli case loaded with all sorts of brightly colored salads, punpkin, greens, chicken, sardine-aubergine, which you order served on a French-bread type roll or a flatbread for 5 or 10 euros, respectively. I wasn't sure about the huge chunks of pumpkin, but somehow the spices were infused evenly throughout the flesh.

This had to be one of the worst nightmares for the country's right-wing. You're walking through a stately neighborhood when you encounter a massive gay parade and to escape it you end up in a Berber deli that looked like it was from 1001 Nights.

The Italian-ish Firma Pekelharing in De Pijp was the best conventional restaurant in Amsterdam from start to finish. Smart, casual but classy, unpretentious. It was a NYTimes pick so there wasn't much risk. But it surprised me. More restaurants should provide a long communal table for solo diners. Open kitchen, books to browse. No conversations developed, but ambience was friendly. Also very cheap. Bill was about 12 euros for a beer, arancini starter and a small but filling plate of pasta amatriciale. I would bet my life they used actual Roman guanciale.

COMING: Amsterdamse Bos, Bremen

More good ideas for Tartu. Part I: Transport and infrastructure

2010-07-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

1. Tartu's train station has plenty -- one might even say too many -- yellow square signs with numbers identifying the three tracks. This is good. For instance, track #1 is the first one behind the station building (where, you know, the tracks are,located), followed by #2 and #3, in that order. OK. But let's say you are a tourist who arrives at the station around 6pm, when all three tracks are occupied by trains going to Valga, Tallinn and Orava. Nowhere does it say which train stops on which track! You have to ask a fellow passenger (who may be wondering the same thing) or walk all the way to the front of the train to read the sign.

As it turns out, the train on track #1 is not the one to Tallinn, but to the smallest destination, Orava. Now walk back around the station house (it's closed indefinitely) go through the tunnel and try track #2 and #3.

2. Start a cafe somewhere near the train station (people may already be on this one). Why: because even if the train isn't an economic argument (and it isn't) I can't think of a 1 km square area in any Estonian town with this few places to eat. There's Sodiaak on Riia mnt, which is around a mile away (think weird Soviet-era formal, might as well have walked to Veerenni Selver), a hamburger place at the end of Vanemuine or Tiigi (but I'm not sure if it's working, anyway), and closer still the National Museum cafe (but no hot meals) and an R-Kiosk but none of these really fit the bill. Some German bicyclists who were travelling from Tallinn to Põlva and would have killed for food and water remarked upon this.

3. Not that either consumer centre would like it, perhaps, but a direct pedestrian crossing from Tasku to the new Kaubamaja, i.e., at Riia and Turu intersection? Hello? Not at Aleksandri and Riia tn?

It's called summer

2010-07-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

Roads are melting in Estonia. Which is novel and interesting. Riding the Põlva-Värska road, or shall I say plying the road, my bicycle wheel makes the sound of an adhesive strip being ripped from skin. I look back to see if I leave a wake.

A memory of childhood summers in the US involves walking across blacktop parking lots (say, at the local swimming pool) in bare feet, an activity that lent itself well to competitions and demonstrations of manhood. I don't know what would happen if you tried to do this on local asphalt but it would probably not be pleasant. But while deep-black shiny slicks on roads can seem ominous, it's probably more a sign of shoddy road-building, not of the apocalypse.

In much the same way, I can get some pretty crazy readings by focusing sunlight on a thermometer through a magnifying glass, but unfortunately they don't meet the Weather Service's rigorous standards for temperature records (or in the case of the climatologists at IPCC, not so rigorous). But actually, it's never reached human body temperature (37 F, 98.6 F) in Estonia in recorded history, let alone 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it probably won't this year. (In much the same way, some may be surprised to learn that the highest snow depth ever recorded here is under 1 meter.)

Just as I was surprised that a hardy Nordic people always seemed so cryophobic, with the older women for ever admonishing us to bundle up, I must admit some Estonians have a very low tolerance for summer. I'm not sure what the limit is, but it is reached awfully fast. (Naturally none of this applies to people who are ill or confined to their homes.)

Some might say to the complainers, think back to last winter. But I say think back to the lovely months of May and June. The lovely month of May, when the trees aren't even in leaf while the Continent enjoys floral displays and outdoor cafes. May, when there were more mosquitoes inside the Tartu bus station than people in the city. The lovely month of June, when the temperature struggled to reach the 60s by day and the mornings were chilly enough to make you want to defy nature's call, the path between the cabin and the outhouse a matrix of cold, beaded moisture, plants growing in a perpetual half-light like an giant soft bulb somewhere, mosquitoes possibly able to breed in the air.

Most of the world would call this early spring, but we call it midsummer and get together in the rain every June 23 and make fires and jump over them. Not to be faulted: I suppose it's making the best of it. The Setos on the other side of the River Slough have a better idea, whatever the drawbacks of the Julian calendar in a globalized world, by celebrating midsummer 15 days later, when the chance of sun is much higher and there is no need to mow twice a day.

I stayed on the Estonian side of the river on July 10 and missed the Seto song festival, which I hear took place on a particularly dry, golden, bugless evening, but I haven't missed the weather. So how warm is it? For a week or two on the River Slough, it's been around 26-29 C (79-84 F) with relative humidity of under 50% under the linden tree outside the cabin. No precipitation, except for little dried linden blossom bits falling on everything. But this does not qualify as heat. This is not some Texan speaking; I used to flee the haze of the Mid-Antlantic summer after summer to the dry mountain air in the upper Rockies.

Even in the cities, you can't walk 200 m in Estonia without striking foliage or a body of water, albeit possibly stagnant. If you can't find an outdoor university cafe with about a 200-year-old maple to sit under in a moderate breeze, as in Tartu right now, there are many options. The forests look fine, especially in Võroland, and there aren't many mosquitoes. Already saturated from winter snowpack, they have been replenished a couple times during the dry spell.

On the River Slough (the river itself still an icy 17 C/63 F as if fed by underground springs), berries are in full swing. The clearcut out back, with acres of wild strawberries, now has a second storey -- raspberry canes, bearing fruit for the first year. In the deeper forests, blueberries are peaking. There's still ditches of water in the forest, even in wheeltracks and fire roads. The plants in the garden are lush -- although the Mediterranean ones are happier and even some of the northern Italian beets are bolting from the warmth. As some bloggers would say about this, wimps.

Spring on the River Slough

2010-06-01T04:03:00.001-07:00

The squash, the marrow, the courgette, the kabatchok, what have you, it likes not Estonia. The big sugar leaves turn yellow at the slightest sign of distress, mimicking nitrogen deficiency, which is what I misdiagnosed and wasted time doctoring with manure teas and probably overfertilizing the plants somewhat in the process.

I guess it longs for the greenhouse, to be shielded from chilly wind. Those endless five-hour nights of half-light and damp dew are too much for them. Maybe I didn't harden the transplants off right. Personally I think they're wimps. It's been such a kind year. The ground spongy and well-watered from snowpack, and then a spell of mid-summer temperatures in early May. The soil as loamy and as humic as my plants will ever get. I'm too cheap (nor does our family unit produce enough compost) to grow in raised beds of pure black matter as some of my relatives do.

(It's kind of funny -- we grew up with reminiscences from grandparents of legendary black gold, of forests with a naturally clear understory, and what do we have on our first still-experimental Estonian homestead? A soil that looks like red Virginia clay, and young birch and alder brush all around, encroaching on the home acre.)

The squash are producing a major amount of male flowers. Maybe this is normal, or maybe it's a defensive reaction. I wish they would get a little bushier. I didn't really know about this food until I had some frittered squash blossom at a deli in Rome -- good in the manner of tempura, but the things were overwhelmed in their thick blanket of batter. The fragrance comes across better when you toss a couple into a stew at the end. Not quite sure why some recipes tell you to remove the stamen. It tastes just fine and they're so delicate to begin with, probably plenty of vitamins in that pollen.

The bean seeds rotted in the cold, cold ground last year, so didn't repeat that mistake. These babies are indoors in seedling trays at 20 degrees C. Have some psychedelic looking pre-1840 dolce di chioggia heirloom beets in as well. No worries there. Cabbages - slugs haven't touched them yet, but they're still not very vigorous. Spinach -- just planted. Maybe a little late, but smart money's always on a coolish summer. Pumpkin patch also started -- nothing exotic like last year's butternut. Just pale watery Estonian pumpkin, maybe for jack o' lanterns or spiced marinated pumpkin salad.

The old apple tree has about ten blossoms compared to two last year. Did some basic things like pruning and grooming and fertilizing last fall, but I'm no expert. The black currant transplants, damn Räpina Aianduskool to hell, have anthracnose, but I'll apply a fungicide and maybe they'll beat it. They are bigger than they were last year, so it's not killing them outright yet.

As for the shotgun shack, hey, it keeps the mosquitoes out and has a foundation and no pockets of rot. We have a thuja tree blocking southern exposure in the square 25'x25' cabin almost completely. Not an issue this time of year with plenty of direct sunlight from seven of the eight points of the compass. Still, wondering about the tradeoff -- will we miss it if we cut it down? The roots aren't probably good for the foundation and I can't imagine the cabin being buffeted by icy southern winds. I hesitate to cut down a tree called "life-tree" in Estonian, though. But there is a birch that shades some of the garden area at a certain time of day. I see no use for that one.

I've made my peace with the idea of eventually tearing down both outbuildings -- there's too much rot in different places but some can be harvested and salvaged. It will also open the yard up to breezes and reduce mosquitoes even further (mowing has really helped). It will change the look of the place but not permanently.

The inflatable Russian-made boat is gone. It had a bunch of slow leaks, and I considered it a write-off, but I didn't think anyone would take it. I wish whoever ended up with it lots of luck. Maybe the high water took it, but the tarp was still there. Nothing else was touched over the winter. Whoever took the boat, if they took the boat, did not follow the faint trail across the marsh looking for the farm. Absit omen, this trend will continue. I've never been paranoid about burglary and the only time I've lost something to theft is when it was locked up.

The place looked more civilized when I took charge of it this May. Everything has seemed a little more manageable. Kobestage edasi, my mother-in-law told us when she visited last midsummer. A new expression for me in that context. It could be an illusion, but the property does look more "tenderized" and tamed. Naturally there's a lot of work to be done, and it seems overwhelming, but as long as we don't have to do it, I suppose it won't drive us over the edge.

The basic catch is that if we do ever move to this particular property full-time, we're all but agreed that we would build a new family house (rather than pouring money into a slightly off-kilter cabin). But if we do build something nice and new (and actually had the money), it would have to be a special property. This one has its charms, with location in the woods and the river out back (albeit off-property) but there are also some problems -- wells are weird -- and it's not Zihuatanejo.

Lost in Estonia

2010-05-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

I have barely even finished watching season 4 of Lost, so please don't tell me what doesn't happen, and take into consideration that this allegory may be imperfect.

Estonia, says my friend on FB, IS the island, and he made a persuasive case. This guy, who, for what it's worth, will one day kayak around all 8 continents and whom I'm sure I remember from somewhere, has a point, and he's not the first to go down this path. The name of an e-zine which didn't pan out, Baltlantis, brilliantly encapsulated this quality from another, pre-Lost perspective.

Estonia as the Island... It may seem a consolation for an elusive ending, or obvious, and it may be breaking the Rules to put it out there like this, but it's tantalizing to consider the evidence.

First of all, Estonia doesn't really show up on cultural radar or maps. Have you noticed? This extends to all attempts to represent the country. Statistically improbably, we have had more foul-ups (15 of them) with the national flag being raised wrong at international ceremonies than any other country; and more than any other region, the country's outlines on newspaper maps are often distorted, there might as well be a permanent watermark over it reading "not quite to scale", or even "mappa mundi".

No matter how many Financial Times profiles are run about Estonia's economic success, you will still get a blank look from most ordinary people -- I don't mean uneducated schmoes but people on the ground in the US who have real jobs and participate in the real economy. More than 16 years after the country got normal Western banks, I still follow an elaborate set of personal superstitions whenever I arrive back in the hope that the rental car company will not recognize my credit card as a debit card or as not being issued yet.

Not to belabor the point, but if you tell someone that cafes in Estonia had WiFi a full 2-3 years before the US, back when libraries in the US still required you to sign up for time slots and show your ID, people will look at you funny. I have this slip of paper from the earlier part of the decade reading, "Estonia had WiFi before the US. No matter what happens, this is true. Remember this. K". I don't remember writing it anymore.

Go on at any greater length about Estonia and it's not out of the question you will get committed in an old-school mental ward -- certainly this is true when travelling in Russia.

**

So, if you wanted to hide a island, disappear a country, or an El Dorado, or bottle an evil spirit, you wouldn't put it in an exotic location like the South Pacific where it would be tourist-infested in no time flat, though I do see the wisdom in an obscure location in Indonesia. No, you would put it in a backwater, some arm of a shallow quasi-inland sea, where a guy on a boat could barely see the land over the tops of the reeds.

Come to think of it, this whole region -- call it a Europa-Ext. or auxiliary Europe -- is so convenient, it facilitates later additions. In much the same way as the geography of Lost is somewhat open-ended, accommodating ancient temples, you could create a whole new town somewhere in south central Estonia and you could claim that it was there all along, and probably get away with it.

We're wired, but almost too wired. You could go days without talking with a living person in Estonia, just punching numbers into a computer, to the point that you would lose your bearing in relation to Cartesian reality. A slogan for Estonia could be: Small enough to fake. Multiply surprising.

As for Dharma, well, as we know, Estonia was pretty much deprived a true hippie era by the Soviets . We had an AM radio garage band sort of 1960s at best, followed immediately by the bad hairstyles and fashions of the decades that followed. Still, the Soviets are like the Dharma Initiative in so many ways, basically putting the island -- I mean, Estonia -- in a deep freeze for years, keeping some lush nature unspoiled, while they erected hatches and ugly pylons in other places to keep themselves safe in an uneasy truce with the indigenes.

But does Estonia even exist, or are we all dead? Säästumarket is probably hell. A grey April 23 can be hell. Is it Hell?

And if it's Hell, why can I get to Tunisia anytime without booking a charter flight and with no more trouble than an occasional nosebleed? Why are local tour operators going bankrupt -- they could really run with this technology?

Anyway, most of this is blitheringly obvious. Some of it is also idle speculation of the kind aristocratic intellectuals used to engage in. Is it a door or a perception of a door? I don't know, pal -- hit the door with your fist.

But I find the curious coincidences and synchronicity irresistible.

While researching local alternative newspapers back in March, I came across pictures of Giustino and Mingus wearing Soviet-issue jumpsuits participating in a cornerstone laying for a Karksi-Nuia cultural centre in the 1970s. I knew there was something suspicious about how those two picked up Estonian. It was faster than Jin's English improvement in the actual Lost. And Giustino is always talking about returning.

Then there's AnTyx, who goes one better than Ricardo Alpert -- he seems to have reverse-aged while the rest of us put on extra pounds and wear and tear. Think about it indeed. I look like I'm 41 or 42 thanks to life in Estonia, while this mysterious consigliere figure is pulling a Benjamin Button. Who is he? Who is responsible for manipulating these players? Who put Estonia where it was, and why?

Watch the video again, is all I can say.

U-Strip post-flight

2010-05-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

U-Strip turned out to be a misnomer for our stateside sally -- air travel was free of obstacles going out -- but based on observations and experiences, I wouldn't be surprised if cavity searches are soon introduced after people's flights land in Europe.

On the way to JFK, we only went through one (1) security check. In Tallinn, right at the beginning. There was nothing in Helsinki. The expression "waltzed through" comes to mind. This was very different from the transit airport just a few years ago, when my wife was questioned by an Icelandic official (luckily the intermediate stop was in Iceland that time, so at least that part made sense) about her Syrian visa in her old passport.

The one security check in Tallinn's new-look airport seemed pretty professional, if not very rigorous. This is a bit delicate to say without offending local sensibilities, but I do wonder if the Americans are aware that that was it. I'm glad of course, that they entrust this weighty responsibility to us, and certainly the people who guard the US Embassy would do a bang-up job at keeping garment bombers off planes, but well...If the same procedure applies to international itineraries originating in Tampere, Finland, where you could toss things to your friend waiting in the cafe - which was past security check -- eventually some bad seed will exploit it.

I'm guessing, though, that the Americans have learned from their mistakes -- though in writing that, I automatically wince -- and now rely on high-tech detection, common sense, and probably a massive amount of profiling. And coming back, the JFK screeners, all of whom would have been singled out for racial profiling themselves, were professional and -- this is key and different from other airports -- supervised by an older gentleman wearing a different outfit and no sense of humour. We did not have to deal with him directly. Nor did we undergo any cavity searches or X-rays. We had to take our shoes off but not our underwear. My half-eaten jar of almond butter (volume of jar: greater than 150 grams, probably 100 grams of almond butter) was allowed to pass.

When we got to Finland, the first thing all the transit passengers had to do was to go through a security check. Huh? The almond butter, which while in the air had stayed reasonably solid and in the jar, was now to my surprise flagged for further inspection. I then witnessed a dialogue (trilogue) between three Finnish screeners on whether the almond butter was a gel or not. I thought I heard one say something about what would happen if it "started flowing". In the end, one informed me it was in fact neither a colloid nor a solid, it was a liquid.

Since the attending screener and I both seemed to be waiting for the other to do something, I asked if I could spread it on a sandwich -- I don't like throwing away food -- and they said that would be OK. It seemed the jar was the problem -- the fact it was over 150 ml in volume. But if I took the almond butter out of the jar, and smeared it into a regulation Zip-Loc bag, or a sandwich, things would be all right. And then, I assume, the empty jar would also be OK. It was the fact that the substance was in the jar. Note to terrorists.

I reflected that whatever case of anal fecklessness the Americans were suffering for a few years when it came to liquids and gels and underwear is now being passed on to the Europeans, while the Americans themselves were returning to normalcy.

That wasn't all in Helsinki. We cleared customs, walking through a green line. Yes, I know what you are thinking -- our bags were probably checked through to Tallinn and in transit on some baggage cart -- but there you go. We then showed our passports to the EU border police as we neared our gate. The only thing I can conclude from this is that Helsinki airport is modular, was taken apart during the recent NATO summit in the region or something, then reassembled incorrectly. But that's wacky.

In Tallinn, we got to watch as a zoned-out policewoman dragged a drug dog over people's suitcases on the baggage belt, without so much as a by-your-leave. Yes, nothing says "former Soviet" or "Eastern Europe" better than blanket customs checks; at least apparently they are too lazy to actually search bags by hand. Predictably, the dog found nothing narcotic - the shizzit probably just went out the other way, to Finland, hello? -- but it did pick up something non-narcotic that it would have liked to eat in the last of the bags and slobbered all over it. Luckily the stupid policewoman had the decency, though I would not say decorum, to get the dog out of there before the bag was actually chewed through. Pathetic and noxious.

*

We did have one brief strange moment with the US border inspector, something that hadn't happened before. I had all eight passports out (my wife doesn't have a US passport but, not to be outdone by the rest of the crew, she has her visa in her old EU passport and travels on her new one so she has two as well) and was juggling the sheaf when the inspector said, "I wouldn't show those if I was you." What - did he think we were agents or something, had been naturalized?** I didn't ask anything, pretended to be confused. He left us alone and let us through. But dual citizens ius sanguinis, heads up. Might be wise to keep the passports separate.

** I suspect that this is just an authoritarian phenomenon. It's very common in about 80% of American cops, too. They let you know that have your number while not having any intention to really proceed. When we were coming back from a trip to Mexico in 2004, the US customs inspector ended up with our car keys. We were searching the car ourselves, going through all the places the officials had just searched, looking for them, when the guy came back, whistling, and tossing the keys rhythmically in his hand. I'll bet cop manuals include a chapter or two on things you can do to keep people off balance.

The best thing since sliced bread?

2010-04-05T08:09:00.001-07:00

What to make of this new product?

You probably already know that Estonians to this point don't yet have a single catch-all word for "bread" -- leib, while used in the general and proverbial senses, refers to dark or rough-textured rye, while sai is white bread.*

I think there's a time and a place for both, but as suggested in the clip, some people feel rather strongly toward either white or black. Restaurants offer four or five complimentary slices of both in the basket, just in case, after a nasty incident in a tavern in the late 19th century. For some, black leib is the most quintessentially Estonian food there is (and certainly one of the most yearned-for foods for Estonians abroad); others view refined sai as more civilized.**

Now, according to the commercials, siblings can get along again and the divorce rate will fall, as there's something that combines the best of two worlds, the soft crumb of white bread and wholesome rye -- neither sai nor leib, but saib.

It's a catchy brand name -- and a good bit of word-of-mouth is going on, too. Over Easter weekend, I heard friends and relatives talking about it on three separate occasions, even people who don't usually talk about what kind of bread they have in their pantry.

The problem is that I've had saib before -- when it was called Harvest Valley 100% Whole Wheat 7-Grain and I bought it at the Harris Teeter in Peoria. More and more of the bread you see in Estonia -- I'd say up to 25% now -- comes in square loaves in plastic bags. Some of the bags are paper with cellophane windows, but a bag is a bag. The loaves have no crustiness (whether from sitting in the bags it is not clear) and their density is about like foam rubber.

My aunt Virve, who lives in the border town of Persevere, Estonia, has a good rule of thumb -- if you can't use a loaf of a bread to ward off a mugger, it's no-good bread.

Saib is 100% rye flour, but you can't taste the rye. By adding dough conditioners, wheat gluten and air, Estonia's legendary food technologists have basically reinvented the wheel, replicating run-of-the-mill American whole wheat bread. Except it's 100% rye Wonder Bread.

This achievement makes me defensive.

Rye itself has been on the run as a crop, reverting to its original status of a weed lurking at the edge of fields of wheat -- wheat that now might have been engineered by Monsanto Global for all I know. (The EU recently approved GM potatoes, so the monster is out of Frankenstein's lab.)

Besides the growing number of square loaves, I'm also seeing premium bread selling for more than $5, which seems criminal.

It does look like koorikleivad -- a subset of leib that is a traditional rye flatbread sliced down the middle -- seem to be well-stocked, but maybe it's because they have a long shelf life.

Saib is a good product, of course. It's toaster-ready, unlike dense rye, which you have to run through a couple times and will char as soon as it will crisp. Saib is not empty calories or anything. It tastes good and hearty. But one thing we heard during the recession was that people were starting to bake their own bread, which to me is just fantastic. Bread-baking is a very wholesome activity. Some even grind their own flour. My small worry is that because it was cooked up by food technologists (with air injectors and various gums and proteins, saib is something that is awfully hard to replicate in the home kitchen.

So I hope the likes of saib don't become too dominant a taste. It will impoverish the diet -- and maybe the language.

* Whole wheat or sepik is a full-fledged category of its own, and so on.

** Many kids ask for sai these days, I've heard. Luckily mine are both leib people, but then again much of the black bread these days is loaded with sugar and wheat flour, so the gains are modest.

Not in the news 2009

2010-04-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

Often disregarded by the diplomatic and business community in favor of the handful of national news sites and dailies and the 20-30 mainstream local papers, Estonia also has a variety of local alternative newspapers that are the hard-working stewards of the country's investigative journalism tradition.

At a time when many of the big papers are facing accusations of declining standards and control by syndicates, journalists at these small independents are reporting the stories that don't get covered by the national press with a fierce dedication to diligence to match. Existing mainly on low bandwidth websites and on paper in small-town libraries, they brim with stories that may seem mind-boggling, confirming that the country's reputation as "a place where nothing ever happens" is completely unfounded. Positively surprising indeed. I was in a library reading room today and was welcomed to an Estonia I never knew:

* There are currently ten moles ("possibly 11"; one has disappeared) among Estonia's senior public servants who "take orders directly from Putin". The main reason the Ansip government has remained in power so long despite its lack of popularity is because a "lengthy and massive" investigation is in the final stages. No one in the cabinet is suspected, but the Security Police, the country's most powerful institution, has requested that ministers "act as if they are just going about their business". The next few months will be crucial.(Läänerannik)

* The investigation is being personally led by Canadian-Estonian Andres Kahar of the Security Police, who is incidentally himself a former journalist (Pärnu Sõnumileht).

* A local paper in Rakvere reported the cause of death in the obituary of an 83-year-old man, who died of lung cancer, despite the efforts of doctors and the community to suppress the information. Foreign press observers consider it a "major precedent for Estonia". (Rakvere Teataja)

* An assay of the Bzonze Man, the controversial Soviet statue relocated in 2007, revealed the presence of refined coltan, a rare metal ore used in mobile phones -- and the concentrations increased the farther the statue was probed. ("Could the Bronze Man have been Estonia's Nokia?", Põhjanael, April 1, 2008)

* Although cited by officials, compliance with the War Graves Act may not have been the only reason the Bronze Man area was excavated. There is rumored to be an extensive WWII-era bunker system and communications station with tunnels connecting it to Toompea. During the riots of April 2007, with helicopters buzzing the area, the tunnel was sealed. (Harju Leht)

* Besides the number of meteorite craters per sq km, Estonia leads the world in the highest density of urban tunnels in the world. Even more oddly, some of the tunnels emanate from the craters, such as one underneath a Prisma store in Lasnamäe. (Videvik)

* Only a fraction of the tunnels were built in modern times. During the filming of Tarkovsky's film Stalker, a technical crew became disoriented. When they re-emerged, they said they had inadvertently wandered into areas of the system "not made by the hands of men", they would not elaborate. The brevity of dialogue in the film has been attributed to the screenwriters being "in a state" following the incident. (Võru Kino)

* A Soviet scholar, A.Kirov (attempts to disclose his first name have been unsuccessful even by the local Estonian press), called the tunnels "a subway system without trains, an eighth wonder of the world". Sadly, most of the entrances are blocked; it is unclear how stable they are. Spelunkers are discouraged. (Pelgulinnaleht)

* Part of the tunnel system merges with a 125-km long natural underground fissure, the North-Eastern Karstic Chasm. A reason why Estonia fell quickly to the Soviets in 1944 after holding the Reds rather successfully near Narva was that they lost control of the Chasm. The Chasm is currently controlled by Estonia's energy company Eesti Energia, which has also become the country's biggest buyer of cement. (Narva Kurjer)

* Ülemiste Lake is known as Tallinn's water source, but the city has two larger underground reservoirs that hold ten times more water than Ülemiste. Some geologists speculate that the cavities are consistent with a large pre-industrial oil shale mining operation. The capital city is said to be "geologically stable" although some districts are "figuratively resting on a crust" currently. (Mõisaleht)

* An amateur Russian diving expedition during the Soviet era found what appeared to be a deep hole at the bottom of Lake Ülemiste. Officials have explained the anomaly as a karstic phenomenon (cracks in limestone). They plumbed the hole with a crude sonar device but did not get a reflection. The files on the interrogation of the divers are in Moscow archives and remain classified. Estonia has unsuccessfully sought their release, including during the border treaty negotiations. (Sukelduja)

* The lake "continues to be the most heavily guarded public reservoir in the Western world". (Akropolise siseleht)

* A majority of English-language bloggers in Estonia are working for US intelligence. (Linnaleht)

United we slam

2010-03-31T05:40:00.000-07:00

I first saw the advertisement on Liivalaia tänav. The same place where I had seen that ominous loop-like Edgar Savisaar ad before local elections. Liivalaia is the ugliest street in the centre of Tallinn and the one with the poorest air quality, a giant multi-lane pedestrian-unfriendly wind tunnel lined by Soviet and modern buildings and the odd wooden structure hanging on for dear life. It's a place where there's not much to do but shuffle down the street pretending to be disenfranchised looking at populist ads, until you finally get to Stockmann and do your premium shopping.

As I dodged a spray of mud from a passing Mercedes speeding from posh Nõmme to posh Viimsi, the ad caught my eye -- it was for a new political party, United Estonia (Ühtne Eesti), and it promised three hectares of land to anyone who moves to the countryside.

Three hectares! But because I was in character on Liivalaia, my first reaction was to laugh ruefully and bitterly -- we bought one hectare of rural land only last year. We didn't pay too much, I don't think, even though the recession deepened right after we bought it -- but I had a little bit of remorse over not using my crony connections. Estonia of course is one of the world's least corrupt but most cronyistic countries. It's time to develop some cronies.

Now a party was backing genuine homesteading, not anything lame like free potatoes. Well, it was something to cheer.

If it was something to cheer, that meant it couldn't be true, and sure enough, it wasn't. The United Estonia party turned out to be the fictitious creation of NO99, a theatre known for its edgy and experimental productions.

Or not so fictitious. In the days that followed it turned out that it was quite an ambitious campaign, this was no obscure off-off-Broadway production. NO99 has created a full-scale communications universe, with regular press conferences, even including a 1989-style theme song (anthem).

It all culminates in their party congress at the country's largest indoor sports arena. The May 7 event sold out in just a couple days. Faster than Walking with Dinosaurs. Faster than Rammstein with the promise of porn.

*

The convention will make May a lot more exciting and edgy, not just busy.

May has been the month of civic initiative in Estonia in recent years. It's good, everyone cleaning up and building things like before the Mighty Quinn. I'm not going to knock it. Like the kibbutzniks in the ehitusmalevad, or student camps, in Soviet days - now with a NGO template. Late April has traditionally been a time of revolts and dark spirits, culminating in April 30, when the country exorcises its demons, shakes off its hangover and gets to work.

The first May 1 event was the trash cleanup of 2008, last year's countrywide bs (short for brainstorming) sessions, and now this year, the talgupäevad, which translates as countrywide miscellaneous community action day.

Smart money for a while was on a new political party evolving out of these disparate May 1 community projects. Now people are saying the same kinds of things about May 7, almost as if it is they are oblivious that United Estonia was cooked up by an alternative theatre to take the piss out of politicians.

One opposition politician says that it would be strange if unemployment -- Estonia's biggest problem right now -- would not result in a new political party. Yes, it's high time, but will United Estonia turn into a real force? I think it's a bit of a silly question. If you heard an underground theatre was doing existential political theatre in the western West, wouldn't it be a bunch of nihilist pranksters?

I personally doubt that you can go from taking the piss to viable constructive force, not in one move. Perhaps United Estonia will remain a T-shirt phenomenon, such as when Juku-Kalle Raid printed up "Kommarid ahju" T-shirts. Perhaps Indrek Tarand or whoever is the next Tarand, the maverick protest candidate, will grace United Estonia with their presence.

I have to say I have a little trouble following all the United Estonia activity. The logos and images are top-notch, but the live stuff does not come off that well. I'm not always really sure if the "politicians" are in character or not. Then again, I don't go to the theatre often enough. I'm rusty when it comes to criticism.

Politically, I do doubt the net good will increase -- I mean, right now people's trust in politicians is at a historical low. It's not like anyone needs to be made more aware of failings or sharpen their satirical rapiers any more.

People love to roast the opposition populist Savisaar, but it has accomplished nothing. It is like we roast him comically because we love him so much -- one could get that idea, which is a shame, because Savisaar has done much to hurt Tallinn and make it a more tawdry, inefficient place. The grumbling about the Reform Party and Ansip is more unfocused and less sure of itself. So it would be pointless if the party congress just ends up being a compendium for various gripes. That won't solve anything.

At the end of the day, United Estonia is just art. Maybe it will be a force for culture; at least we can hope for that much. And if they do come off with a clever, interactive ending on May 7, more power to them -- perhaps literally.

HACKED: An unwanted prank

2010-03-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

It's not April Fool's Day. Maybe it's April Fool's Day according to the Julian calendar. Anyway, last night, just after I had logged off, this blog was hacked.

I've always been concerned in the back of my mind about the single password entry to the Blogger profile and the fact that it is connected to my Google profile, which is related to Gmail. I use Windows XP and although I run AVG and a battery of other anti-spyware, use different passwords, etc, I can never be sure that my machine is perfectly clean. I remember logging into Paypal for the first time in six months, and the next day I received a phishing attempt that referred to my recent Paypal activity.

Whoever deleted my last three blog posts and posted a woefully unoriginal entry of their own had also been into my Gmail account. All of the latest logins to Gmail were from IP addresses around Tallinn, except for one, which was from a foreign country. Amateur? Undoubtedly. I'm a nobody, not worth the trouble to be blacklisted by the FSB. (I keep anything important encrypted so nothing business or personal was compromised.)

But since my last three blog posts, which were deleted, were in some way about the Russian Federation, I want to make one thing clear, though it should be obvious. This is not an anti-Russian or a "Russophobe" site. Apart from stock stereotypes such as parodies of Soviet leaders -- "comrade humor" -- I don't go in for disparaging the Russian national identity, language, culture. Only in the instances and to the extent to which it is wielded in a chauvinist manner.

There haven't been any rhetorical attacks on the Baltics recently, for domestic consumption or otherwise. It's been quiet. But there have been other decisions, such as purchases of amphibious assault vessels. And a decision to deploy Iskander missiles on the border of the Baltics. Domestically, to my knowledge, there has been no turnaround in terms of the lack of certain civil liberties in Russia.

This blog spent much time lampooning the misguided Middle Eastern wars, which I oppose, but as long as the blog waxes political, it should sometimes look at the Russian Federation's behaviour critically. That's something that there will be more of.

No, I am not looking forward to the Sochi Games, which was one of the deleted pieces. Yet I actually do want to visit Russia -- have not been there since 1991. I just want to do it in a free and secure environment. I don't want to worry about being questioned by the authorities, silenced or worse. This cyber-incident doesn't make feel any more at ease.

The other thing I expect -- naively, stubbornly -- is an apology for the Soviet occupation. I'm not even talking about reparations, but at least an acknowledgment of responsibility.

Hiatus continues

2010-02-28T07:03:00.001-08:00

Publishing will resume with a vengeance on March 5. Stay tuned...

Cabin fever, even outdoors

2010-02-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

The temperature has stayed below freezing for 40 days, and I detect significantly less talk about winter wonderland and significantly more madness in the air, including the air coming out of my mouth. There's been snow-worm infestations reported, and some Arctic scorpion problems (learned to identify them from Mingus), along with the more mundane issues like astronomical heating bills and not being able to see more than 10 feet because of the eye-level ¤%&¤/ snow dikes that line every sidewalk. And the serious, ever-present threat of icicles falling on your head while you are navigating the narrow clearance. So far the only serious falling ice injury has occurred in St. Petersburg, in line with the rule of thumb that the really bad things usually happen in Russia, but everybody should look up and be aware in Tallinn, especially with those high facades along Narva mnt or the Old Town with its absentee landlords and the Russian Embassy, which isn't removing its icicles -- it's sharpening them.

Speaking of embassies, I love how the US Embassy on Kentmanni always has a perfectly cleared, bone-dry 4x4 metre square of sidewalk in front of the security valvepod. It is 60 degrees there year-round. Don't ask me how or why they do it. Regime change and season change -- amazing.

Will it stay cold long past the Biblical 40 days, for all six months of the Estonian winter? Well, don't bank on it -- Tartu Ski Marathon is a week away, and sure enough, if I check ilm.ee, already numbers like 0 (as in freezing point) are creeping into the forecast for this Monday. My own prediction is the temperature will return to a depressing 43 degrees F (6 F) around the clock for March and April.

***

In the spirit of the middle bimester of a real Estonian winter, this blog will dedicate February to chaos, rants, and off-the-cuff anything-goes ravings on just about anything. After all, Inno and Irja are posting pornography on their blog with faces of Estonian officials crudely photoshopped on. That's a new step for them, though logical in the grand scheme of things. Must keep up. How to make this blog more sensationalist? I await my ideas!

But first, long, long-unfinished business. An linkscape update coming up soon, maybe tonight. Check the sidebar soon. Plenty of good blogs out there. The blogosphere is changing, fresh blood is everywhere, and it's not even scary. Not so fresh blood in a new package is everywhere, like Livonian Chronicle, which can be top-notch. Lots of blogs that are light and topical and well-written that have been unfairly neglected here. People who have often commented, but whose profile I never thought to check, have good blogs, like Pierce Bacchus. So check the right-hand column for links I think are worth my while -- soon! (Also, please visit our sponsors - in the Google ads box.)

**

Eventually your number comes up. The number being 4 8 15 16 23 42. Ah, Lost. Been watching it. The first and second seasons, though. I'm still mercifully many, many hours away from season six -- which is for now exactly where I want to be. As of early January, I must have been one of the only people on the planet, or in the Western cultural space, not to have ever watched the show, to know nothing about it.

My wife had watched all five seasons, week after week, but I was in an anti-TV phase at the time. Sometimes I would see Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, looking like a young Jerry Garcia with a major head start on Meat Loaf and Mama Cass, and beautiful beaches. But that is all I knew. I dismissed Lost as a shaggy-dog adventure story with some paranormal themes.

Which may have turned out to be absolutely correct, except it is closer to Infinite Jest -- that is, not the novel but the super-addictive videotaped entertainment in that novel. Lost is far from perfect, but still, I have to doff my cap to the writers, extremely belatedly and very low. Some kind of cross-fertilization has taken place between TV and Charlie Kaufman and Quentin Tarantino, whom I admire for several reasons.

There are a few continuity and factual problems and in season 1 at one point I thought several of the writers might have gone off on their own island and failed to confer, but they always postmodernly manage to cover their own tracks.

And reliably, every three episodes or so, the writers write one that is just marvellous. Even profound. Laughagainistan? I crumple it up and weep.

***

Good TV, but I saw a really bad movie for the first time in 2010, only redeemed by the fact that I saw it on a date with my wife. A washed-out one-dimensional effort on the theme of the equally idiotic Billy Crystal movie City Slickers, so weak and unfunny I can't even remember the syntax of the title. I just call it "Morgans". Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker were in it. They're not even old, but I felt they were being trundled out in front of the cameras to do a parody of their own method acting. Actually, Wilford Brimley was trundled out in this movie, as the crusty proprietor of a Wyoming cafe, but I felt worse for Parker and Grant. Hugh Grant looked like he has been partying hard, though oddly he looked OK in jogging shorts. Still, this is probably a good movie for drinking and drinking games.

I murdered Stalin on FB

2010-02-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

I recently received a Facebook friend request from Iosif Vissarionovič Džugašvili Stalin.

Yes, I'm aware: alter egos are proliferating on FB; it's become a miniature version of the Internet with trolls and even viruses running amok. Everybody can have a second joke profile, it seems.

Still, who knows? Maybe it WAS Stalin. People come back. The rumour in this case was that the Iosif Stalin page was created by a bunch of Italian students. And, you may know what happened in one of Umberto Eco's novels -- a bunch of academic types fed a hodge-podge of classic conspiracy theories into a computer...and they became true.

So my first reaction was to become frightened. Besides killing 40 million in a detached, banal manner, this guy probably started the whole tradition of polonium ingestion and brutality that persists to this day in Russia. He's the kind of guy who's not smart enough to invent a gas chamber but will get envious when he hears someone else has done it and takes it out on everyone around him -- before maybe stealing the gas chamber for his own use.

I checked Stalin's page. Yup, born in 1953. Information on secondary school attended. A pretty avuncular looking official portrait as his profile pic, exactly what Stalin would choose. the silly moustache, the hair that has coincidentally always struck me as Reaganesque (sorry, Reagan), the trick of the eyebrows and creases making the eyes appear halfway intelligent. Not much "progress" in the FB profile sense of the word.

I checked the names of his 12 friends. The names (Strauss, Fusfus) sounded like a pack of fellow travellers and existentialist professors.

My next reaction was to get angry. A friend request from Stalin - how dare he? It had that "my-reputation-precedes-me" air of many a FB friend request and didn't even include a personal message. Here's this guy who slaughters hundreds of thousands of my countrymen by proxy, and now wants to be my FB friend in his afterlife -- without so much as an apology or an explanation about how he found Jesus or something. Maybe we're too connected these days; Stalin couldn't be that obtuse or brazen as to approach an Estonian with a request, could he?

I went to the Friend notifications and saw that there was no "Decline" button. There was only an "accept" and "ignore". It would have to do. I "ignored" him. I nearly broke my mouse ignoring him. It was like Eli Roth in Inglourious Basterds, the guy with the baseball bat. I went into a frenzy of total disregard for Stalin.

**

I had second thoughts about my slaying of Stalin. After all, I was a believer in "there is nothing to fear but fear itself" -- and I don't think highly of revenge as a concept, either.

Of course, an online "friendship" with Stalin would have been hard to explain away to most of my contacts. But everybody's got one black sheep among their FB friends -- it's one of the first rules of Facebook. (Stalin would stretch the definition, admittedly.)

It would have given me access to post on Stalin's wall. I could write whatever popped into my mind, things like "hey, bro, last weekend was cool, we got to do Ukrainian mixed grill again".

I could upload Picasso's portrait of Stalin and tag Stalin in it, just to pester Stalin.

And of course, I could expose Stalin in the ultimate way, by suggesting Hitler to Stalin as a Facebook friend. That would be the big question: a possible online reconciliation with Hitler. Smart money is that four little years (1941-1945) and another 20 million are no impediment. It doesn't change the fact that, for Stalin, Hitler was role model and maybe even the love of his life. Stalin would accept Hitler's invitation in a heartbeat.

I searched Facebook for Hitler. But Hitler wasn't on Facebook! Other than a viral clip of Bruno Ganz playing Hitler as fake funny subtitles flashed. How unfair. Stalin had a fan page -- obviously there long before his profile -- with thousands of fans. "Other Public Figure." But no such page for Hitler. And no profile page. Was there a FB ban on Hitler pages or something? I Googled Hitler in Facebook. No, nothing on a ban, as far as I could see.

This wasn't fair to Stalin. Stalin could be friends with Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha and Mao, but not Hitler? Not that I cared about what was fair to Stalin, but if he wasn't able to consummate his deadly embrace with Hitler in cyberspace, the results could be catastrophic!

I entertained the explanation that the Hitler profile page and fan page must have been relegated to some special closed section of Facebook. Stalin's page should be there, too.

So I reported the Stalin page as miscategorized.

Then I got angry that I had merely reported the page as miscategorized. Stalin deserved worse.

So I reported him again on general principle for inciting hatred.

Just in case it was a fake page, I reported it as a fake page.

I had now reported Stalin three times to FB.

**

My friend says I did a bad thing, something that could get the Italian undergrads in trouble with Facebook. My friend says Stalin should be allowed to have a page, so people can mock him. I understand his logic. But what I did is the only way to beat him back underground. People had to wait over 70 years - way too long - for him to finally die, and it's way too dangerous to let him start going viral like this.

Stalin isn't the Comte de Germain or Cagliostro, folks. He's Stalin. You don't want Stalin living for hundreds of years in cyberspace, or bad things will eventually begin to happen. Maybe even to your personal data. Trust me on this.

So if you see Stalin on the social networks in a way that's clearly not like Bruno Ganz in that Hitler clip (i.e. funny) or historical, report him as inappropriate. Let's see if we can beat him down.

City of Good Food guest blog exclusive coming up; Ilves legacy speech

2010-01-26T22:48:00.000-08:00

When Obama was inaugurated, Tartu blogger Mingus offered hope and couscous at his home -- sort of a gesture of goodwill from one president to another, you might say.

What does Mingus preside over? Well, many things, but chiefly the state of food criticism in Tartu. There are only really about two rites of passage in Estonian culinary life. One is being "outed" by your friends to the magazine Oma Maitse, who send a crack team of writers and photographers to your home to sample your cooking. And for food professionals, there's getting your restaurant or kiosk reviewed in City of Good Food.

Last weekend, I finally had a chance to do the one thing better than accompanying Mingus on his weekly beat, and that was eating couscous (and many other things) in Tartu at Mingus's place with his family. The idea was to incorporate these traditions by reviewing Chez Mingus...au Mingus, except without the photographs. Stay tuned for the result -- on Mingus's blog. All I can say for now is that hope may now be a scarce commodity in January 2010, but if there's one thing that might rekindle it, it could be that lemon and green olive couscous.

**

While waiting for Obama's big announcement about the iTablet, we recently got a surprise here in Estonia. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik held forth for close to 4,000 words of his own at a media conference. Entitled "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" and taking the form of a dialectic with himself, it had all the trappings of a "legacy" speech, something for the presidential library perhaps, notwithstanding the fact that the president told everyone at the beginning to take the bulk of his comments as those of an ordinary (if slightly more demanding) citizen and media consumer.

The topic was democracy and the free press and trust in democratic institutions, but basically it was a hour-long tongue-lashing of the press for losing sight of what (to Ilves and a posse of media theorists from different eras) should be their proper role. Apparently media should not be absolutely free after all, but should be engaged in an intricate dance with the government with its own ritualistic rules. I've never been fond of such an approach; it seems like statism. For me, the media IS the watchdog. And "who will watch the watchmen?" can ultimately be answered in four words, not 4,000: "You and me both."

In any case, given that Postimees dutifully published Ilves's words unabridged in the opinion section (they spilled over on to the next page, almost bumping the other columnists), I'd say his own institution is safe for now. Whether Ilves's re-election is safe is another story.

But to be fair, you have to read between the president's lines. Somehow, even though all of the local geopolitical winds seem to be blowing in the right direction (the euro, NATO contingency), and even "gas supply and payment problems" have not emerged in the coldest winter in 20 years, there's a sense of danger building. Russia is gearing up for a propaganda offensive. Ukraine has somehow been stolen back, in broad daylight, with none of us even sleeping. It's similar to the way Latvia is still majority Latvian and people there are gloomy about whether the future of the language and the nation is that iron-clad. Although Ilves closed by warning that a homegrown dictator like Päts might take over if the press doesn't get its act together and behave more judiciously -- Päts often seems like the #1 bogeyman -- "Russia resurgent" was never far from his mind. It's like that Siberian high pressure system that has brought a big chill to Estonia for most of this month. No one is quite sure what makes it possible; you can only see a couple days ahead. Nothing is safe, and our own funnymen and critics can be our own downfall.

And after initially put off by the thought of a 4,000-word speech (OK, presentation) I actually found myself liking the fact that we have an eloquent president worthy of Lennart Meri, who is not below quoting Juvenal but is not above explaining what the quotations mean -- in Estonia's case.

DECONSTRUCTION: Hating

2010-01-18T00:21:00.001-08:00

This week, many articles were published in the liberal or mainstream press to enlighten people about the fact that Haitian history may just be a little more complex than Toussaint L'Ouverture standing at a crossroads in a Jacobin mask with a guitar and making a deal with the devil, then the devil coming up from hell seven generations later. Well, that's the jazzed-up version of Pat Robertson's theory -- I can't bring myself to quote his ravings directly. It begs to be melded with Marley, Delta blues and Haile Selassie into a silly musical. What is irredeemable is that apparently Robertson thinks the Haitians should have rendered unto Napoleon what was Napoleon's and accepted their lot to live and die as slaves.

The problem (with a few exceptions) is that so many of the pieces that set the record straight are offensive or patronizing in their own way. This suggests that people like Pat Robertson are indirectly more dangerous than their racist pulp fictions. They serve as an advance diversion, drawing off the most energetic liberal protests. Then the smoke clears, but the emphasis is still not in the right places.

Not if pieces like this are any indication. "So, how'd Haiti get to be so poor?". Even the subheading is wrong-headed. "Once France’s richest colonial possession, earthquake-hit Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world." It is not even remotely relevant in this context to say that Haiti was rich or thriving. The French stuffed the place full of slaves like they were force-feeding one of their geese. They imported African slaves and ran an agricultural sweatshop under brutal conditions. There is no economic comparability here; it is as appalling as the notion that if you are not paying workers salaries or providing for them that your enterprise is more profitable or successful. To say this was Haiti Fleuri, even in a headline, is just wrong.

Next, we are told, things got off "to a bad start" -- now who could have imagined? -- after these slaves decided that they would rather be treated as human beings. Immediately we are told of the revolution's reactionary excesses: "Dessalines's rule was short, violent and populist."

We then are told "a nation forged by a slave revolt set a terrible precedent in a world heavily dependent on slave labour and France persuaded Spain and the US to join it in an economic embargo." Fair enough. But "terrible"? Maybe "unwelcome". In any case, for the most part there generally WAStrade between the US and Haiti, but what really is significant is that the US failed to recognize Haiti politically for 60 years. Even Thomas Jefferson, one of the more decent Founding Fathers (apart from his own personal failings) refused. Ouch.

The American occupation in the 20th century gets awfully short shrift, except for that "a period of stability followed". As it always does, including in Iraq. Oh, and "the introduction of chain-gangs to improve the country's infrastructure was deeply unpopular in a country founded by slaves." Oh really? You think?

Then of course the classic post-colonialist pattern. The local Batista/Pinochet/Saddam takes over over - Duvalier. Yes, he had the Americans' blessing, the article says. But this is nothing new or scandalous.

Finally, in a separate section, we are told that deforestation is rampant. Oddly, this is not tied in with the chronological narrative, leaving open the question of where oh where this deforestation could possibly come from. Global warming? Actually, it all kicked off with the artificial overpopulation introduced by the French in the slavery era and snowballed.

Of course, no article about Haiti would be complete without a reference to voudou, the evil religion. Not like Santeria or other forms of syncretism in the region, which are more palatable. Or Carnival in Rio - hey, good times! Even David Brooks of the NYT declared that it spreads a message that "life is capricious and planning futile." What else can we add? People are more temperamental and lazy the farther south you go. Catholicism makes people passive while not being sure if they're saved or damned makes people work harder. Correlation or causation?

Of course, the Haitians are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They stage the world's first successful rebellion against old white males, half a century before Liberia, and they're accused of not being passive enough. But if they are realistic about the duplicitous nature of foreign involvement, then they are accused of thinking that life is capricious and futile.

LAUGHAGAINISTAN: 3D!

2010-01-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

INT: A large American stadium. Five Nighthawk helicopters are descending over centerfield. Instead of groomed turf, the outfield has been transformed into a barren area of sand, stones and tall brown grass. It is the set for what will be a series of filmed messages from the President of the United States, designed to gently prepare other nations for a policy shift. To increase psychological impact, the clips are being shot using the new beta single-camera 3-D technology, developed by two Estonian brothers.

DIRECTOR: (shouting over the helicopters): Take one. Yemen landing. Ready and...let's roll!

(One of the five Nighthawks touches down, awkwardly teetering on its landing struts. It steadies itself in the arid artificial landscape. A marine clambers out and turns to assist US President Barack Obama, who is wearing a dark suit (by de Paris) and tie (Armani) and a combat helmet (USMC) The marine salutes Obama. Obama salutes. The helicopters ascend and Obama gives a thumbs up to the aircraft.)

(Obama removes helmet and turns toward the camera. He walks slowly through the tall outfield grass, holding the combat helmet in the crook of his index finger)

OBAMA: Hello, I'm Barack Obama. I'm here to talk to you today about something that is facing our nation -- and yours. Let me be clear: this is not something that I sought. When I first took this job, one year ago...

(Camera cuts to two technicians sitting at a monitor behind a movie camera and wearing 3-D goggles. The picture on the monitor shows that the waving grass is in focus but Obama is blurry.)

CAMERA OPERATOR #1: Crap. I think we have to cut.

CAMERA OPERATOR #2: He's already orating.

CAMERA OPERATOR #1: We still need to cut.

CAMERA OPERATOR #2: I'm not interrupting the President, are you crazy? You call it in.

OBAMA: ..., and I never imagined that a year later, I would be walking through the tall grass, on an unannounced visit, by your leave....

CAMERA OPERATOR #1: Well, I'm calling it. (Into headset): Um, camera's on the fritz. Could you tell the President to, uh, take it again from the top?

(The director of the clip is sitting in a cordoned-off area in the bleachers, wearing a headset, surrounded by writers, consultants and White House staff, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. All are wearing 3-D glasses)

DIRECTOR (listening intently, absent-mindedly): Not now, please. (snaps to attention) What? You're not getting any of this? (Looks over at Rahm Emanuel, who is signalling a slashing motion across his throat). All right! Cut!

OBAMA: ... today we face extreme challenges of an unprecedented kind...

DIRECTOR: Mr. President. I'm sorry, sir, we have to take it from the top again.

OBAMA: (stops walking) Did I go on too long? Is this the infield already?

DIRECTOR: You were fine, sir Just a camera problem, sir.

OBAMA (lighting cigarette): OK. So do I put this helmet on again? Or just start my spiel over?

DIRECTOR: Mr. President, actually, I'm going to have to ask you, sir, to take it from before you start your oration. We have to get into the helicopter again. It has to be one seamless take.

OBAMA: I'm not sure my life insurance policy covers that. (Laughter from aides)

(Marine One descends, teeters from one strut to the other, then settles into the rocky dust, raising a cloud. Obama stubs out the cigarette in the sand, puts on his helmet and boards the chopper.)

OBAMA: All right, but next time we're sending a drone with an audiotape. Seriously. (The chopper ascends.)

DIRECTOR: All right, take two, ready and...let's roll!

OBAMA (as before, clambers out of helicopter behind marine, removes helmet, is saluted by the marine, and nods): Hello, my name is Barack Obama. I apologize for being here in your country today on an unannounced visit to tell you about something important that is going to happen here -- and soon. Let me be clear: when I first took this job a year ago today, I didn't imagine...

CONSULTANT (in the bleachers area): Wow, is he ad libbing?

DIRECTOR: Looks like it.

CONSULTANT: This is the best part of this job. The listening.

DIRECTOR: Tell me about it. This is costing someone here ten thousand dollars a minute, but it's worth every penny right now. Are we good down there?

CAMERA OPERATOR #1 (over headset): Not really.

DIRECTOR (into headset): Why?

CAMERA OPERATOR: Still blurry.

DIRECTOR: Still blurry?

CONSULTANT (cranes head to speak into director's headset): Are you getting the audio, at least? Do you hear what he's saying?

CAMERA OPERATOR: I'm getting audio, and I'm getting tall grass waving in the wind in 3-D. But the President's still a total blur.

DIRECTOR: Is the 3-D screwing it up? I knew this single-lens thing couldn't work.

CAMERA OPERATOR: No, no, it's fine. Everything was working earlier today. I think it's the auto-focus or face recognition that's fouled up.

DIRECTOR: Cut. Mr. President, I'm sorry. Apparently there are still technical difficulties with the camera.

OBAMA: Well, let me be clear on this: I'm not getting in that chopper again. (Lights a cigarette, walks over to the camera operators with a gaggle of Secret Service men following). Let's see what's going on. So what's the problem? Can I help?

CINEMATOGRAPHER: I'm not sure, Mr. President. I apologize. This is a brand new 3-D camera. We borrowed it from James Cameron just yesterday. It was working well earlier today, but it's very complex.

OBAMA: I've heard about this camera. First 3-D camera ever in a single unit, right? Estonian-made?

CINEMATOGRAPHER: You're well-informed, Mr. President. You know about movie cameras?

OBAMA: Absolutely nothing. But here's what I would suggest: have you called Mr. Cameron?

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Well, he actually hasn't seen the camera yet. It was in the box when he, uh, loaned it to us. The Secret Service picked it up.

OBAMA (puts on a pair of 3-D goggles): Let me take a look. As I said, I don't know about optics, but interfaces I can work with. And, if I know anything about the Estonians, which isn't much, the programming will be solid. (Looks over the technician's shoulder at the monitor). It's in playback. How do I get into viewfinder mode?

TECHNICIAN: Well, you...

OBAMA: Can I ask you to scoot over a bit? Thanks. (Hits a few keys) Ah, found it. Let's see. Real-time signal processing is on. Wow, look at that, 3-D and no latency at all. Yep, there we go. Where's Rahm? Ah, there. Rahm, would you run into the outfield? Pretend you're going after a long fly ball.

(Rahm runs out on the field.)

Keep on going. Run, Rahm, run! Well, look, it's tracking Rahm fine. He's not moving fast, of course. Rahm, you can stop. You were called off by the catcher. (Obama stands up, takes off 3-D goggles, fishes for a cigarette). OK, let's do the same thing with me. I'm going to run out there and you see if the camera tracks me.

ADVISER: Mr. President, I really think that...we're on a tight schedule.

RAHM: (returning, panting) Mr. President. She's right. Let's leave these things to the pros.

OBAMA: Nonsense. (Lights a cigarette) I fixed the drones last month, didn't I?

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Incredible! The President fixes missiles, too?

ADVISER: He did some troubleshooting. I don't know if I'd say 'fix', but they're more accurate now. (Pulls Obama aside) Mr President, a word. These people are in total awe of you. Let's save them some embarrassment. You know and I know what's wrong with the camera. Let's give them a few minutes to come up with something to save face.

OBAMA: What the hell are you talking about?

ADVISER (in an undertone): Well, you know. The race thing.

OBAMA (extremely loudly): The race thing? What? Have you lost your mind?

ADVISER: It's obvious the camera doesn't pick up your face. It picked up Rahm. It must not pick up black people.

OBAMA: puts hand to deeply furrowed forehead) Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? (turns to the film people) I apologize for this profusely. My adviser is feeling quite ill.

As for your camera, gentlemen, let me be clear: it is a wonderful piece of equipment, a true marvel of technology. I can find no inherent fault. The problem, which I was quick to detect whilst I was at the controls, was that the macro mode was enabled, reducing anything beyond a few yards blurry. However, with a few keystrokes, I took macro mode off. (Blows a perfect smoke ring)

Make no mistake: I do recommend you use manual mode. But for that, you will need to read the manual.

(Applause breaks out)

Now, if you'll excuse me, we have work to do, and a message to get out to the people of Yemen. (He flicks the cigarette away coolly and walks out into centerfield -- in 3-D.)

Silent era coming back

2010-01-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

Back on April Fool's Day 2008, I envisioned a scenario where in the future, online news site readers would get a monthly quota of comments linked to their national ID card, and could buy more. We're not there yet -- "pay as you go" freedom of speech has not arrived -- but the clamps are tightening. As of January 1, one daily, Eesti Päevaleht (www.epl.ee), requires readers to sign in with their ID card before commenting. You don't need to be too paranoid to come to the conclusion that anything you will say on epl.ee will become part of your permanent record and stored in a large drive somewhere. Obviously this fear can be countered by the old argument that if you're honest, you have nothing to fear. After all, it's hard to paint this as a traditional restriction on freedom of speech -- no one is saying "you can't say stuff". But they are saying: "Stuff can only be said by YOU". There is something ominous, dampening and humiliating about being carded for expressing your mind. Even the whole business of trying to get your computer to read the ID card is not necessarily easy.

It would be nice if the epl.ee policy could be dismissed as a not very successful experiment in a desperately competitive market, a quaint effort by one gatekeeper (certainly not superior to other papers) to re-invest the medium with a cachet of respectability. And indeed, certainly it has not been successful -- in ten days, the public discussion has completely evaporated on epl.ee with the exception of a few in-house people and shills trying to get something going.

But the thing is, it's not just epl.ee. The movement to ban anonymous comments has been accompanied by a great amount of pamphleteering by a group of people it would not be unfair to describe as ideological zealots -- Ilmar Raag, Anvar Samost, and so on, clutching manifestos arguing for the end of trolls and the dawn of a new age of ethics. A one-soul, one-identity, one serial-number policy. There are literally reams of tracts online justifying the decision. It's all a bit much. The people who brought you the end of comments on EPL seem to want a broader cultural revolution where all anonymous commenting on news sites is ended. Probably it's the only way epl.ee could be successful -- as long as there are free-for-all comment forums, people will gravitate there, not to epl.ee.

The timing for snuffing out public dialogue on epl.ee is undoubtedly poor, on the background of perceived political disenfranchisement, in the middle of a recession, with a Reform government that seems afraid to lose power, and unemployment increasing. Sentiment against involvement in Afghanistan is high -- another inconvenience for politicians, including the President, whose empty platitudes about "fallen heroes" are routinely mocked in online comments sections of Estonian newspapers. Devaluation fears have not gone away...or rather, they have tbeen transformed into the conventional wisdom that when Estonia finally switches to the euro, it may not be at the current 15.646 kroon peg. To the establishment, it could be argued, online comments sections are a dangerous nuisance, a place for radicals to gather, spread fear and dissent with impunity. Journalists' articles themselves are often sloppy these days, and comments sections are often better-informed. Almost every other comments section I see includes a correction of fact "phoned in" by a reader.

**

Is the fear of anonymity and unknown avatars justified? Is anonymous commenting really impoverishing discussion or turning newspapers into a bathroom stall?

Sure, there are pragmatic and idealistic arguments against anonymity, too. First of all, news sites have their own asses to cover, as it were.The Supreme Court ruled last year that they can be held responsible for what posters post.

Libellous comments are hard to police. I do understand the concern about individual reputations. It's easy to pass off hurtful statements in a sneaky way, or to repeat hearsay. Take the Supreme Court case, which concerned Vjatsheslav Leedo, a ferry owner who was accused falsely by a commentator of dumping prostitutes overboard on the Saaremaa line. He sued successfully and the website had to pay damages, but the damage was done. Statements can be nested in many ways to blemish a person's reputation or restaurant. People argue how many hookers there were -- after all, they were forgotten women no one cared about -- and the thing can get out of control. Of course everyone knows Leedo didn't dump any prostitutes; if indeed he hasn't stopped beating his wife, maybe she planted the story about the dead hookers?

The above is a extreme joke, of course. No one has any idea what was really claimed about Leedo because it has been scrubbed so thoroughly from the public record. Personally, my anonymous avatar thinks he's a major asshole for being so hung-up about his reputation -- as another blogger might say, "ur doing it wrong if you get trashed in a public forum". It could well have been that the original offensive comment was something on the order of "LEEDO IS AN ASSHOLE", perhaps in all caps. Always a good debating strategy -- screaming your opinion makes it more compelling, doesn't it.

But this brings up an important point. Perhaps other people's experience is different, but although the comment forums are often derided as offensive to the maximum degree, I have never seen a comment on an Estonian site that is truly vile and repulsive -- I have never been even close to hitting a "report" or "complain" link -- whereas I can go to the movies at Coca-Cola Plaza and see Antichrist, which is probably far worse than anything that has appeared, even on delfi.ee. I don't see anything that's truly persuasive. On Postimees, the audience can "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" comments. This is a sort of vox populi that keeps things a bit real.

So I really don't see the spectres that other people see. I don't think Internet comments have the capacity to galvanize or radicalize our thinking and incite mass hatred. Not in a place like Estonia, which is highly rational-minded. I think trolls are not that clever. It can't happen, unless the troll is also moderator. People aren't stupid.

Can I prove it? No. But can the other side prove that anonymity can lead to radical thought-mobs running around with conceptual firebrands? No.

**

Of course, maybe I overestimate Estonia. I continue to suffer from this notion that Estonia is a libertarian, laissez-faire, intellectualy cool place where people don't get too hung up about perceived insults and salty language. Or monuments. I want Estonia to be a hip, progressive experiment. This is delusional. The truth is Estonia it has clearly distanced itself from such a direction and grown to be a rather serious and grown-up country. Alcohol is becoming frowned on in more and more settings. The Royalist Party is no longer playing jester in parliament. The headiness of the 1990s is long, long gone. Some of the humour is gone. (Not all -- Rein Lang, the minister most associated with the movement against anonymous comments a few years ago, once ~~showed up at a party~~ appeared costumed as Hitler. Clearly he has a sense of humour! Not one shared by you or by me, but still, a perhaps telling streak of impishness.) But po-faced political correctness is on the upswing.

The country's leading satirist Andrus Kivirähk recently released a collection of pieces writing under the nom de plume "God" and some people were miffed, even though it was just a reprint of pieces that had already appeared in the newspapers.

The topic of Kivirähk brings up an interesting question. If Kivirähk wrote a "God" piece for Päevaleht and wanted to reply to a reader in character, he could not do so. First, of course, he would have to jiggle his ID card in the slot and (if he's using a Mac) make sure Firefox downloads the right certificates, and then...finally the witty riposte from "God" would appear...well, under Andrus Kivirähk's real name. Another one of Kivirähk's characters would have a tougher time: Ivan Orav has a double strike against him, being dead and fictional...

I'm sure there's a solution for this -- to allow "God" to have a say without issuing him an ID card. But still, what a colossal drag. The hubris of these serious people who think they can resolve the problem of broken eggs by walking on eggshells...it's hard for me to take.

Nanny state vs. common sense

2010-01-07T04:06:00.000-08:00

Common sense scored first this week. Kuku Raadio reported that doctors in Estonia will no longer be issuing excuse notes for schoolkids, meaning that if you're a parent and lie about your kid being sick, it's on your conscience -- doctors won't do your lying for you. That sounds about right and it certainly frees up doctors' schedules for more important things. It's an old Soviet idea that has finally been retired.

Unfortunately, on a separate news item, the nanny state struck right back. Apparently the government can order ISPs to block everyone's access to certain websites -- in this case European online casino websites who haven't sought a license from Estonian authorities. My reading of this is that the Gambling Act and the tax board come before Estonians' constitutional rights.

Personally, I would never gamble real money online (what, in the middle of a recession?), but I find this mechanism outrageous. Can they really do that? So if I wanted to, maybe even if I went through a proxy, I could not check out one corner of the Internet -- one part of the sum of the world's public online information?

How many times in the course of my work have I had to visit sites that may be dubious or immoral (SMS loan providers, escort services, realtors, banks), if only for terminology or legal background, or just to see what a certain menu heading is in the industry? Plenty of times.

Notes on the year in food

2010-01-04T23:03:00.000-08:00

It was a pretty good year in food.

First and most important, my belly stayed full. I hope the same was true of you and yours. The global food crisis of 2008 did not recur or spread to more affluent countries. I remember back when bread riots were taking place in Cairo that year, the West had some problems of its own -- we're so codependent sometimes -- Sam's Club ran out of rice! But I guess that was a one-time hitch in the supply chain; nothing like that happened again. Somehow, although it's like a game of Twister, computers and financial markets keep our interlocked agriculture sectors vital, even as GMO monocultures take a victory lap. Industrial, hardly sustainable...but alive.

Estonian stores (based on my experience in Tallinn) offered an ever-widening assortment of food. Sometimes culturally-specific comfort foods were hard to find, but that is true everywhere. It's hardly worth complaining about items like corn masa and chipotles not being available, because in fact, less specialized exotic produce like limes and mangoes are currently cheaper than they have ever been (20-30 EEK/kg).

Wonder of wonders, staple food prices even started falling late in the year, after months of false promises about deflation.

Developments like the opening of a farmer's market (albeit a bit tourist-oriented) in central Tallinn mirrored trends in the West -- more power to fresh local food.

*

A survey indicated that local ethnic Russians eat more vegetables than Estonians. Based on simple observation, it seemed both nations were eating a little lower on the food chain, at least judging from the popularity of Mediterranean diet items in the larger cities and in the more educated classes.

Some vegetable categories are still problematic. Dark green leafy vegetables are under-represented (with the exception of broccoli, which is everywhere).

Where's kale, for example? You may know kale -- the crinkly bitter-tasting brassica that's often used as a garnish in North American restaurants and is presumably discarded by most diners. It happens to be the world's most nutrient-dense food, certainly cost-wise, and as far as I know it will practically grow in the snow. Like Swiss chard and a number of other dark greens, it's not available in Estonia. I've seen just about everything in Estonia, even Starbucks frappuccinos (despite the lack of Starbucks outlets), but never kale or chard. Kind of surprising when you consider Estonians eat more the average amount of beets. What happens to the leaves? Biomass, I suppose, like the kale garnishes.

Of course, our property in the countryside this summer was a jungle of nettles and ground-elder, which are just as tasty, and we could easily grow radishes for the greens -- but it would be nice if there were more bulk greens while we're confined to the city in the winter. A nice kale stew was always a mainstay back in the States, either laced with bacon or not.

**

As far as raw salads go, it's a riot of leaves. The yellow Chinese cabbage that has been serving as lettuce since 1991 and looks like it is grown underground is finally giving up the ghost. Its elegant sister bok choy is moving in, but not into the salad bowl.

Rucola and baby spinach are widely available these days, and Romaine is almost ubiquitous, along with most common herbs, usually in little plastic pots (wonder how many people plant them?) but you have to be careful that you're getting a good deal. In winter, the basil and lettuce really get puny, to the point where you can count the number of leaves on your fingers. The standard green-leaf lettuce gets a shade paler, and the price goes up. Romaine is often wilted. NOP, a neighbourhood grocery-cafe in Kadriorg reliably had excellent fresh greens, even lamb's quarters and radicchio, at competitive prices.

*

If there were any other downsides, they were tied to general depressing trends (the state of the fisheries) or pet peeves. With some items, a case can be made for pure practicality. Even though they're also culturally a bit unusual, I don't understand why nut butters are hard to find, for example, especially in pure, unprocessed form. I mean, you can't always eat cheese or cold cuts, pate or its poor dodgy relative, saiakate. Peanut butter is close to a nutritionally perfect convenience spread as can be, especially for the age 2-18 contingent, but wasn't always available this year. I guess I should be thankful it is stocked at all.

Accessories like heavy-duty Zip-Loc freezer bags should by all rights be stocked, but I haven't seen them.

**

I didn't see any veal in supermarkets this year. Ethically I suppose that's fine, but that means one fewer alternative to pork. Pork can be easy to cook and tasty, but I don't support it. As we say on Facebook, It's Complicated with me and pork. Then again, one of the best things I ate this year was a kamararulaad or head cheese made by the söökla in the town of Vastseliina.

**

Eggs (unlike chicken) are now available in various degrees of omega-3-enhanced, free-range and organic, with the most expensive ones more than 80 kroons a dozen. On a largely irrelevant side note, eggs are the one thing that is often hard to find for me in supermarkets. They often aren't filed under dairy or the mayonnaise and cheese. I am giving out a prize of an Estonian dozen (10) eggs to anyone who can identify the location of the eggs at Pirita Selver.

**

Fresh fish sections seemed to be poorer this year. A couple times cod came in at dumping-level prices, but I never understood where it was from or what was wrong with it, even after eating it.

Cheaper white fishes like pike and flounder were usually available, along with more pricier whitefish and perch. Salmon and its pink relatives continued to dominate visually but were rarely dirt-cheap this year. Generally, industrially farmed tilapia and pangassius seem unstoppable.

I had a fantastic experience with fresh grilled Baltic herring (räim) with a sprinkling of kosher salt at a local maritime festival in Viimsi. As good as any sardines in Greece or Italy. More restaurants should feature this as a starter.

**

Estonia gets a really bad grade for food additives, unfortunately. There's unlikely to be much movement on trans fats after comments by the First Lady on this topic generated a strong opposite reaction. Although "no preservatives" appears on many labels (often where there would be no reason to use them), use is endemic in some categories of food. It is still nearly impossible to find any marinated fish not embalmed with E211 (the probably carcinogenic sodium benzoate). Boo. Cheese with nitrates is also a pervasive problem. You have to read the labels, the rule of thumb is that cheeses with "Saaremaa" in the name are OK, containing only CaCl2 but no nitrates. Nitrates are simply not OK for kids, in my opinion, because of what they turn into when browned. Same is true for cured meat (except for the new smoked five-day smoked meat (viiepäeva suitsuliha) -- they almost always contain E250 or E251. It was strange to hear of people in the countryside paying many thousands of kroons to get well water tested for traces of fertilizer...and then offering their kids fried bologna for lunch.

**

Tallinn Central Market (keskturg) tended to have a wider selection of fresh deep-sea and other fish, but I had a disappointing mushy baby trout experience there, which kept me from returning, so I'm not really up to date there.

Infrastructurally and experientially the central market is still stuck in the Soviet era, but it has good product. For things like organ meats, go there. I wanted chicken livers and I couldn't find them in any of the supermarkets, even frozen (though there were all sorts of frozen pig organs) but there was plenty of excellent chicken liver in the marketplaces.

**

Yuppification and gentrification of the food chain continued. I measure this by the Kaubamaja Index -- how far do I have to walk into Kaubamaja's ground-floor supermarket before I get to the actual grub, as in victuals, as in food that's not in a designer bottle or single-serving package. Around 15-20 metres.

Sometimes gentrification was confusing, as some stores have a health food section and a yuppie delicacy section, with some overlap.

The excellent Vertigo Restaurant launched its brand of foods, centred around expensive bread. But if there's two things I tend to avoid, it's expensive bread; the other is bread with pieces of meat baked into it (lihaleib).

Premiumization tends to be an inconvenience for me. We go through a lot of canned tomatoes and puree. Stockmann had 400g cans for years and they cost 10 kroons but then I guess someone got the idea that Stockmann's customers might fancy Italian organic tomatoes at 20 kroons a can. Apparently they were right. Maybe they taste twice as good. But there was no reason for Stockmann to really continue to carry too many 10-kroon cans. This has made Pomi Tetrapaks the most cost-effective option at 15 kroons. But that's all for the better anyway, from what I read about chemicals leaching from metal cans.

*

Finally, although this is not a restaurant review, here is the obligatory coffee review. The best coffee I had was the double espresso at Kehrwieder cafe, for instance the one at Apollo bookstore in Solaris. It's not very well-known that every establishment's coffee has a special character, with subtle variations, even in psychoactivity. The cup design adds to the full experience. If you've ever drunk coffee -- black americano, not a latte -- from a clear glass and found it to be somehow lacking or weaker-tasting, you may understand what I'm talking about. Inevitably, the good Apollo experience should be contrasted to the coffee at the other bookstore cafe in the competing Rahva Raamat in Viru Keskus. It's a fine cafe, but perhaps it is the hard-to-hold white cups -- the coffee tastes like pencil shavings. Vello once mentioned the cups in Baltlantis as well. If you poured the Rahva Raamat coffee into one of the low, glazed ceramic Apollo-Kehrwieder cups, it might taste less like graphite, but it's not completely certain.

Coffee prices tended to drop from 25 to 20 EEK in the city and from 20 to 15 EEK in outlying areas. Tried the famous Kükita coffee on the Tartu-Tallinn highway and I couldn't see anything special about it, but it did get me to where I was going.

Slo-mo-sno

2010-01-03T03:28:00.000-08:00

The snow kept falling persistently, or like it didn't know how to stop anymore, probably for around 72 hours with some of the heaviest accumulations on New Year's Eve, although your results may vary. It was propelled by an evaporation-cooling cycle over the frigid but still open waters of the Gulf of Finland, and both global warming critics and deniers claimed a point.

Occasionally the snow diminished to flurries but never really ceased, sometimes it imitated dust motes drifting around aimlessly like you might see in a barn, other times the snow was falling upward on aerials or drifting as in like a huge snow globe.Rain is not capable of such magic. As the coup de grace, yesterday the sun showed its face, shining across the land from south to north for an hour -- and it kept on snowing. The sun shone perpendicularly under the falling snow.

The result is pretty. More than 2 feet on the ground -- an all-time record for Tallinn. I've been snowbound in plenty of US nor'easters, but I haven't seen so immaculate a winter wonderland, carefully constructed by nature layer by layer over the month of December. You can cross-country ski free style on side streets and classical on sidewalks. What I could not do today was ski in the forests -- ski rental lines were too long at Pirita. Then again, maybe not such a hot idea. Looking up while running on a Nõmme street last night, I saw that the snow caps on the evergreen boughs were the size of small automobiles.

Tomorrow will bring some black grit back to the major thoroughfares, and sublimation and rising temperatures will decrease the actual depth for a day or two. Or maybe not: snow is in the forecast again.

UPDATE: I predict it will start snowing again tonight.

2010 in brief

2009-12-31T04:08:00.000-08:00

* Politician and Tallinn mayor Edgar Savisaar retaliates against being dumped by his longtime wife Vilja by taking up with a cabaret dancer who lives in Kadrina and starting a video blog with her.

* On Valentine's Day, Savisaar appears in a livecast four-way bed-in from a Rakvere hotel along with controversial Estonian bloggers Inno and Irja. The intended message is "wait until civil partnership to have sex", in line with growing conservative values in Estonia, but it backfires. The ultimate political survivor finds his reputation irreparably destroyed and he announces plans to retire from public life. Inno and Irja seem to benefit and re-emerge in the course of the year as a new morally conservative voice.

* In other political news, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip comes within two minutes of his best time in the Tartu Marathon. His Reform Party continues to be the #1 or #2 force in Estonia and Ansip has a surprisingly uneventful year, commuting to Tallinn twice a week by plane for government meetings.

* In an otherwise uneventful late winter, a Tallinn magnate unveils plans for WinterTower -- a new concert venue located in a tower to be built between the Estonia Opera House and the Estonia Concert Hall. But opposition comes from many quarters, most notably from Peeter Rebane, who says it will block views of the Old Town from Solaris Centre, which due to falling roof debris is now a full 3 metres lower than it was originally.

* A Tartu businessman unveils plans for "Lasku" -- a sprawling financial and insurance centre built of silicate brick on a concrete platform extending out into the River Emajõgi with several underwater storeys with portholes and views of murky river water. Foreign architects praise the "horizontal", low-density planning.

* In the early hours of 24 April, numerous people report that they saw the Freedom Cross in downtown Tallinn "illuminated", as "if it were shining from within". The reports are generally dismissed as not credible, as the monument's replacement extension power cord ordered over the Internet was too short and there was no power to the monument area on that given day.

* Somewhat surreally, the Freedom Cross becomes popular with Italian graffiti artists who are pathologically drawn to pompous 19th and 20th century nationalist monuments. They make pilgrimages all summer long from as far as Sicily. Estonians decry these "new Brits" but concede that there is now no doubt that the thing is a bit pompous and unnecessary.

* The Public Procurements Act is amended to prohibit the awarding of contracts to foreign companies whose business name translates as "careless", "negligent" or otherwise suggests they may not be on the level.

* On May 1, the country once again goes to work cleaning up the countryside in a repeat of the successful event two years ago. The haul is bigger than ever, but oddly, some participants report finding many of the exact same items, except in a slightly more deteriorated condition.

* Tartu officials attend a meeting of the World Maritime Organization and tout their prospects for a possible major container terminal on what is becoming known, at least in Tartu, as the "northwest-southeast corridor".

* The Use of Improper English Prevention Act is introduced into Estonian parliament but stalls after a vocal lobby of teachers from elite secondary schools in Estonia criticizes a foreign expert working group from the UK for allegedly using American English.

* War injuries, which increase, are neck and neck (no pun intended) with traffic accident injuries, which again decrease.

* The first bilingual street signs in Tallinn appear. Moderate commentators say it's nothing to worry about -- that Tallinn is asserting its cosmopolitan identity.

* Tartu gets Ryanair.

* Savisaar comes out of retirement as a potent force again.

* Travel sections of European newspapers write about a "Slavic renaissance" in Tallinn in the run-up to the 2011 European Capital of Culture festivities.

* A national campaign to discourage the use of a brusquely barked-out "Ach?" in favour of the more genteel "Pardon me, could you repeat that?" has only limited success.

* Enterprise Estonia announces the winning entry in the country's official slogan competition. The winner: "Estonia", a nod toward Nordic minimalism. The runner-up: "Eesti. Ach? Estonia."

* The ever-sensitive government of Kazakhstan files suit against Petrone Print for, as Kazakhstan sees it, "claiming ownership of Kazakhstan" in the title of the successful Estonian publisher's latest country-specific book.

* In early December, with snow falling and accumulating for a second winter in a row, Tartu announces that it will put in a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Black and blue alert

2009-12-28T09:16:00.001-08:00

"I don't understand your blog anymore lately," my wife said. "It has a madman quality to it." She said that one of her girlfriends had said so, too.

I'd like to say I swallowed hard. I'd like to say I called my writers up for an emergency staff meeting. But I did not. I took her comment with equanimity at first. Actually, I went on reading my excellent bedtime book, Not Quite The Diplomat by Chris Patten. Good, frank memoir about America and Europe. I recommend it.

But I respect her opinion. And I knew that it wasn't just, as she generously offered a moment later, a case of my American cultural references not getting through. No, no: there was something else. Readership has been dropping for a long time. On a recent posting, I actually got a grand total of one Chinese spam comment -- in Mandarin -- which, as anyone knows, counts as negative one comments. Going by an average of hits, profile views and comments, the situation is grave. And whenever I mention even a slightly popular keyword, like "USA", Chinese crap salesmen jump all over it.

The biggest single-day dropoff was when Obama was inaugurated. Before January 20, people used to hang out on the blog and banter; comments would sometimes push the 30 mark. Commenters would come back to visit and check if anyone had replied to their comments, always a sign of critical mass. Blue, Black and White Alert was once the #2 or #3 English-language blog in Estonia on some days, like the 11th. Not anymore. September 11, 2001 may not have been the death of irony, as Jon Stewart predicted, but for some odd reason, January 20 had been the death of sporadically funny political satire from a small northern country.

Not that it bothered me very much. But sometimes I felt I had interfered with some highly private "era of good feelings" that had come over people, and that they resented it highly. But how could it be? After all, to me Obama was clearly a total fraud -- in the American canon, the turn-of-the-century snake-oil salesman in a painted wagon. He had seemed normal for about four days, then he had started talking about terrorism. So how could be like FDR? FDR had said there was nothing to fear but fear itself, and here was ol' Barack talking about how people were going to go durka durka on us again if we didn't stay vigilant. Obama's metamorphosis had been like the Manchurian Candidate's. By March he was using every rhetorical device Karl Rove had ever perfected. He even spoke of something called "preventive detention" at one point. Civil libertarians like the EFF groaned: Obama was worse than Bush. Finally, in December, even Cheney sounded a note of caution -- peevishly complaining that Obama would eclipse Bush's legacy if he kept it up.

Still, I was a rationalist. I applied Occam's Razor. Probably Obama was just warming up for an really good 2010. Probably society wasn't mad. Neither were my readers.

That left the other possibility: that I was a madman.

I went to a shrink the next day.

"Everything all right at home?" she asked.

I nodded.

"This hasn't been a calculated move to scuttle readership?"

I shook my head.

"Well, you're not crazy," said the shrink. "And Afghanistan is a terrible, terrible war. Just wrong. Of course, it's bound to be good for my practice, with all the veterans, but so unfulfilling. The problem with your blog, I think, is that it is too concentrated sometimes. It's like that Estonian 30% vinegar. Sometimes I put it in my food by accident. The stuff is corrosive. I can't believe they sell it in shops in Estonia without warning labels."

"Your blog is also disingenuous," the shrink went on, but I could tell that she was rambling. Anyway, my disingenuousness was the literary device I held most dear!

But I thought about the "concentrated" part. Could it be? I knew what the shrink was talking about. I had diluted 30% vinegar 1:5 just the other day, thinking that that would be enough, and it still burned the tongue. It was like vitriol. My dinner party guests had asked me for chili peppers to get rid of the burning sensation.

"You need to keep the blog light, without wild leaps," said the shrink. "People -- the ones who haven't ditched blogs for Twitter -- want stuff about minor issues. Japanese bloggers figured it out a long time ago. Write about almost nothing, with a genial, feel-good vibe. Something like...well, 30% vinegar. Literally. Little cultural differences. Afghanistan, though -- that's a big cultural similarity. It's a background issue with minor variations. The only thing that is different is the flags draped on the coffins."

"But I don't want to write about salad dressing," I said. "I can't do that. There's things that have to be discussed now, even if they're uncomfortable. People can't go on daydreaming with an elephant at the table."

"Look, I'm not your editor, I'm not your agent. But I would change something. Your last post may have been a lot of things, but it certainly wasn't a recap of the decade. Give me a break. That was just a rant about Flight 253. Then it got to the little asterisks, and kept on going. It was awful! Like actually landing in Detroit!"

"New Year's is coming up," she went on. "Give the people what they need. A proper recap. If you can't do that, how about some predictions? You haven't been too far off the mark. If there's one thing that sells besides escapism in Estonia, it's prophecy. And the best thing is, no one will remember what you said. It's a highly forgiving country even if they do. I think you should try. The old prophets and seers are fading. Igor Mang has been wrong quite a lot of a time. This Anastasia woman, there's something I don't trust about her."

I thought about it. Yes, it was true. I had to re-establish my niche. Colbert imitations would not cut it. I don't have the sustained invention. I had to somehow re-establish my sanity and authoritative voice before my readers. To try to reel in the old ones and repay the readers who had stayed with me. And I had been gambling in simulated casinos recently while doing research for a 1930s theme party, and I had been on a rather hot streak in craps, if I do say so myself.

Yes, damn it, I was sane, confident, people liked me, and most of all, I was lucky. I vowed -- nay, predicted -- that my next piece would be the stuff of prophecy.

Flight 253

2009-12-26T11:26:00.000-08:00

Of course I'm disappointed. The decade opened with 9/11 (so sad!) and now it closes with, well, 7-11. I say that not to diminish the importance of 7/11, for I recognize that something momentous may well have occurred on that date, too -- every date ending in 11, 13 and 15 is suspect -- but because I recognized the name of the Nigerian in question as the clerk who charged me for a Slurpee a while back. Also (lest you think I am mining the oldest comedic material in the book) because said clerk's "terrorism attempt" makes me think of what happened after I exited the convenience store: I spilled that Slurpee all over myself. Man, am I a klutz! Better not trust me with a Big Gulp! Ha-ha!

The Ottos (as I call the 2000-2009 decade, after the bus driver in the Simpsons) also ended with this: no Osama capture. Remember that cliche: "Conspicuous by his absence"? I'm going to use it twice in this piece, because after being abused at too many city council meetings, its time has finally come.

Even if Osama WERE to be captured in the next few days (I am still holding out hope, no matter what InTrade says), the tragedy is that it would probably be completely eclipsed by this damn Abdulwaddiwaddi/Flight 253 story that keeps on snowballing.

But let it snowball. (Just don't bring snow on to aircraft, it can occur in both liquid and powder form, making it the most dangerous single item in America.) Because I am no Scrooge, not about terrorism. Not about unitedness. And most of all, not about good cinematic narratives, which the Story of Flight 253 surely is.

Of course -- to address the practical value of the Nigerian case -- it is not completely beyond the bounds of possibility that it will eventually lead investigators straight TO Bin Laden. I have two House Representatives on the record in an Estonian newspaper (later edited out) saying that Abdulwallah was connected to Al Qaeda.

But more important, it's such a good story. This is the Hudson River landing rewritten for Christmas, where not only the passengers, but the city of Detroit is saved. I guess I should say "former city of Detroit", because we've all seen the Youtube videos.

People sometimes say that some stories are made for the screen. They don't know the half of it. It turns out that the guy who made the heroic cinematic tackle that saved the former city of Detroit from destruction -- across several rows of stoned unemployed auto workers returning from Amsterdam on this Delta aircraft -- was...a film-maker!!

That means casting for the Story of Flight 253 can start without further ado. Neil Young and Toby Keith can do a duet for the soundtrack.

Even with its happy ending, it's never too late for anger, of course -- anger and maudlin sentimentality being the two reasons why God invented music. This narrative channels Americans' justified popular anger at Nigeria, an oil-rich country that has squandered its resources to court multinationals and kow-tow meekly to dictators, becoming a security vacuum.

As all that good security was being sucked out of Nigeria, common Nigerian folk evilly set to work, defrauding the world's financial systems...with scam e-mails, eventually leading to the recession, or economic downturn. I received one of the letters myself in 1998. I can tell you it was persuasive. I don't remember how much I sent, but it was months before I broke even.

Besides the global/financial impacts, the story of Flight 253 also resonates internationally -- so rare in these days when everything is "global, global, global".

I couldn't believe that the British newspapers picked up the story. And not only that, but they ran it today on their front pages! Ol' Blighty comes through in the clutch! What solidarity in lean times! But indeed, incredibly -- it's a small world -- Abdulwadda, although from a country impossibly far-removed from Albion, had relatives in Britain's immigrant districts. Valuable evidence was gathered. That's one small step closer to Osama -- and just as important, one small step closer to prosecuting two people (pawn and evil mastermind) for the same crime, which is the basis of international law.

***

In short, look on the bright side. Many things are better at the end of the Ottos than they were in 2000. There are still about 100 things that can be brought aboard an aircraft and bring that aircraft down prematurely. But there are more digerati and cognoscenti, many of them fit, metrosexual film-makers (pocket cameras can still be brought aboard) who are ready to hurdle seats and who have acted enough themselves and have just enough ironic distance to their perspective on reality to remember their lines. The lines being, "Let's Roll." They always were, no matter what the brand of English.

The other good thing ca 2010 is that, while I don't know about Al Qaeda, passengers can only be held hostage on the tarmac by airline companies for a maximum three hours.

Third but not last, flight attendants were seen dousing flames with bottled water -- to me at least, as a Ryanair flier, that's incredible and presages a more generous era in the air.

The Flight of 253 is an inspiring story. It has even "riveted the attention" (NYT) of one Barack Obama, conspicuous by his absence, but because he is vacationing on a remote Pacfic island -- I believe to draw the world's attention to global warming. They won't pay attention to it now, because we're riveted to Abdulwaddiwaddi and all the snow, but anyway...look for the Story of Flight 263 in theatres soon after it finishes its run on the news sites.

It'll make you feel that it all -- this whole decade, even W -- has been worth it.

1933

2009-12-21T04:19:00.000-08:00

For one night, Tallinn's other Valli Baar (on Valli Street, across from the Scottish industrialist's golden arches) was transformed into Madame K's House of Moonshine and Minor Gambling.

It was 1933, the 13th year of the 1920s.

The year the so-called immoral values of the decade became legitimate.

The year that the 1920s was killed in cold blood, except no one knew because the ghost was just as much fun as the living version.

Unlike the visibly dangerous 1920s with its rows of glittering shark's teeth, the 1930s just had a knife, much like the clownish Macheath (above), and kept out of sight -- at least for a few more years!

**

But everywhere there were signs of consolidation and upscaling. The musical-industrial complex was rising. Big bands ruled the day, and swing was king.

Blues was out of fashion, ostensibly when many needed it most. Yet Empress Bessie still held court. No one else sang like that. Never has.

Virtuosi and brilliant tragedies were waiting in the wings. Django and Billie Holiday.

Louis Armstrong was in his supple, youthful prime, crooning into a new smooooth RCA mic.

Looped silently under the soundtrack, the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood scaled towers and fought dinosaurs, until new skyscrapers punched holes through the celluloid.

With drinking legal, patrons starved for the lure of the forbidden took to smoking surreptitiously out of designer Craftsman bags.

These were still different times. Poets studied rules of verse, and ladies, they just rolled their eyes.

A craps mat -- not a table but up a notch from a cardboard box, preserved some of the egalitarian nature of street gambling. The house still won, but by a small, publicly disclosed margin, which would be donated to the construction of large civil works. There would be no more 1929.

LAUGHAGAINISTAN: Al Qaeda debriefs an Estonian

2009-12-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

EXT. A large, dark, forbidding stone building. It is the Al Qaeda Ministry of the War. The bronze letters on the facade -- in both Arabic and English -- proclaim it to be so -- "the Al Qaeda Ministry of the War". Corinthian columns flank the entrance, except the ornate part appears to be made up of the phalanges of bony hands. Camera enters through window, follows a torch-lit corridor, in which pages and officials and clerks are moving briskly, arriving at...

INT. ...A war room type of interior. A mosaic on the wall appears to depict an abstract version of a skull and crossbones. General Tariq Aziz, CinC-Helmand, is standing at a massive desk, studying a volume by Clausewitz with furrowed brow.

A picture of Osama bin Laden is on the wall, smiling benevolently from behind a desk. Behind Osama in the photograph is the same elaborate mosaic, perhaps of a human skull, perhaps not.

General Aziz closes the book as an adjutant enters, and looks up, adjusting his spectacles.

AZIZ: Yes?

ADJUTANT: Sir, he's here.

AZIZ: (consults schedule) The....Estonian?

ADJUTANT: Yes, small country in Northern Europe. Waterlogged and...

AZIZ: (waves his hand) Yes, yes, yes. Discovered by Al-Idrisi in 1154. What schoolboy doesn't know that? I'm just making sure of his ethnicity. And is he the leader of the group rescued in the ambush?

ADJUTANT: Well, he speaks for the group. To the extent that any of them speak. Being Estonian and all.

AZIZ: Show him in, and let the group speak. Not all at once, hopefully.

(The Estonian enters; a teenager, with more than a trace of acne.)

AZIZ: I'm Tariq Aziz, Al Qaeda's commander in chief of southern operations. No, no relation to the former Iraqi foreign minister. I get that a lot.(He peers at the Estonian through his spectacles) Good lord, son, how old are you?

JAAK: Nineteen.

AZIZ: Yes, and Iran is developing nuclear power to make the desert bloom. Tell me again, how old are you, son?

JAAK: I just turned eighteen.

AZIZ: And President Osama is actually hiding behind that wall watching us through the eyes in that picture. Come on, son -- I need to know if we need to scare up a wet nurse.

JAAK: I turn sixteen on the 30th of December.

AZIZ (raises eyebrows, to adjutant): And I thought children were in short supply in the West.

AZIZ (to Jaak): You're in good company. Hamid here is eleven. I'm nineteen. Anyway, here you'd be old for your rank. I'd have to wonder about the merit of any able-bodied fourteen-year-old who isn't an officer. Are you an officer?

JAAK: No.

AZIZ: Well, so be it. I'm not judgmental. You still have time. (Aziz's face crinkles into a look of fatherly concern.) Though you better get moving. And you should shave, though, even if it seems there isn't much to shave. It doesn't actually make the beard grow back fuller, you know, but it looks and feels that way. OK. Enough beard talk. Look, I don't want to do a lot of propaganda in your little informal debriefing here, especially under the circumstances. But one thing that is key to remember is that we don't operate out of caves. The President excepted of course, but that's for his own safety and his own...well, he's the president, and a wartime president. I hope you will be able to meet him. Basically, Jaak -- it's Jaak, right? -- we're not a bunch of savages. For a long time, we tried an asymmetric warfare image, hoping it would win sympathy. We were a disorganized bunch of militias and special operations groups. It backfired. Now we have uniforms. We're an institution. I don't know if you follow the American talk radio, but have you heard the expression "a real card-carrying member of Al Qaeda"? Well...

(Aziz opens his wallet and displays the contents to Jaak)

It's not laminated, but it's official. (Sighs) Trouble is, some people think Al Qaeda has become too secular for our own good. And they complain about bureaucracy. One day, I even heard, can you believe it, someone use the term 'military pre-industrial complex'. (Pauses for emphasis.) If the French sell us some weapons, there might be some truth to it. Looks like the deal might go through.

(A woman clad in only a burkha brings in Turkish coffee on a tray. Aziz takes a sip of coffee.)

Mmm. Good coffee. Thank you, Fatima.

(Fatima offers him a sheet.)

AZIZ: Ah right. (Aziz signs it. Fatima clears her throat. Aziz signs the other side of the paper, winks at Jaak.)

Bureaucracy, yes, that's my main concern. I don't want you to get caught up in its wheels. We're undergoing a difficult transition to civilian control of the Ministry of the War. I think the less you come into contact with bureaucracy the better. The better for all of us. Am I right? We're agreed, then? Very good.

JAAK: What? What are you trying to say? Are we prisoners of war or not?

AZIZ: No, of course not. You're our guests. We take guests very seriously. I sign for your coffee here. Remember, POWs don't drink coffee with generals. And they don't eat couscous with spring lamb and almonds after being...yes, Jaak, rescued. You were rescued.

JAAK: So when do we get to go home?

AZIZ: (Puts tips of fingers together.) Yes, that. If it seems like your status is unclear, keep in mind we're in a transitional phase. We're transitioning to civilian control. In fact, I don't know whether to keep my uniform on or not anymore. (His voice trails off.)

JAAK (eyes wandering around the room): What's with the human skull?

AZIZ: What skull?

JAAK: On the mosaic, for example. And some of the furniture is made of bones.

AZIZ: What? I don't see it. Where? (Aziz stands up and walks up close to the mosaic, examining and caressing the stones). This is a geometric pattern, very regular... But a skull...Well, I hear the people of your religion sometimes have visions. Things pop out, how to say, out of the woodwork... But..but a skull is an ancient symbol of eternal life, surely you do not find eternal life disturbing?

JAAK: Depends.

AZIZ: I agree. Didn't the count tell you about the virgins when you were eating lamb? But a symbol is just a symbol. What about the eye on the pyramid on your money? I find it frightening, personally.

JAAK: We don't have an eye on our money.

AZIZ: You don't use dollars?

JAAK: No.

AZIZ: No? Euro? Estonian darahim?

JAAK: (shrugs, reaches into pocket and removes a 100-kroon note.)

AZIZ: Is she the queen?

JAAK: No.

AZIZ: Does she not wear a veil? How is that possible?

JAAK: She is dead now.

AZIZ: Ah, so she was stoned to death. And yet she is a martyr?

JAAK: No, not quite right.

AZIZ: How much is this? When you take a girl out, do you buy things for her. Or...(voice is low as if hardly daring to suggest such a thing) do the women in your country buy you things with the woman-money?

JAAK: (face relaxes for the first time) No, General Aziz. It's just a banknote. Anyone can use it. It's about ten dollars. And usually kids just hang out. At shopping centres and things. It's really not formal anymore.

(Camera tracks toward the picture of Bin Laden to reveal there is an adjacent room behind it. Stalactites hang from the ceiling. A gaunt man with a turban and long white beard is peering through a hole in the wall into the room where Aziz and Jaak are talking. He is accompanied by a mullah, who is also looking through a hole at the same level, but the mullah is standing on a stepladder.)

OSAMA BIN LADEN: That Aziz is a fool and a moral relativist. He talks too much. He is talking about women now! Worse, he is asking questions about them.

MULLAH AHMED: Yes, you can never get him off the subject.

OSAMA BIN LADEN: Civilian control is a very bad thing. Is this Aziz really being groomed for a position after the transition?

MULLAH AHMED: Afraid so. He's only 16, and at the same time he's one of the older local officers.

OSAMA BIN LADEN: God damn it. Some days I think we should do something, you and me. Bring back the old theocracy. But of course, that would mean coming out of hiding.

MULLAH AHMED: Forget the hiding part of it. That's the least of your problems. The Americans don't care anymore. What about your kidneys? Think of your health.

A DELETED SCENE from LAUGHAGAINISTAN: Semper excelsior

2009-12-01T03:24:00.000-08:00

EXT. A military base somewhere in the Middle East. Two helicopters are hovering over the base in close proximity, seemingly courting disaster. Suddenly the helicopters dart toward each other. The rotors clip. One helicopter explodes immediately while the other is sent reeling groundward. Camouflaged figures on the ground scurry and dive for cover.

(A burly man in fatigues and sunglasses is standing by a white van watching. The van is marked Special Moving and Packing Company. There is also a motto emblazoned: Semper Excelsior. He lets out a low whistle and shakes his head.)

Hope that shit was insured.

(He removes his shades, slams the door of the van and walks to a building and goes inside.)

INT. Inside the staff building is a group of distraught-looking servicemen. Flames outside in the distance are visible through a window. The troops seem momentarily paralyzed but return to what they were apparently doing before. Efforts are underway to fit various appliances into boxes. It is not going well. One is struggling to fit parts of a coffee machine back into the original packaging. He is not succeeding. He is clearly frustrated. "Hello Coffee" is stamped on the box. The soldier throws the plastic filter holder down in frustration.

EMBEDDED JOURNALIST (helpfully): Maybe remove the Styrofoam inserts from the box?

(The soldier takes out the Styrofoam inserts and puts the coffee pot in the box. The burly man in fatigues sees this and barks at the soldier.)

BURLY MAN IN FATIGUES: What the hell do you think you are doing? That's Handle With Care, soldier! Any damage to glass pot, filter cup OR that, uh, small drip thingie that fits over the filter holder -- and that's your ass on the line. That could be someone's cup of joe in Afpak next month. And if Joe doesn't get his joe, or if Joe has to drink Turkish coffee, well, I hate to contemplate the consequences of how the Alpha Queens might interpret that!

EMBEDDED JOUNALIST (standing next to the base quartermaster): Alpha Queens?

BASE QUARTERMASTER (in an aside to the embed): Al Qaeda. They're trying to use the phonetic alphabet to make the enemy more familiar.

SOLDIER (glares at the embed, then looks at the burly man in fatigues): I was just thinking maybe I could use some of those Styrofoam peanuts instead...

BURLY MAN IN FATIGUES: Peanuts. What peanuts? Those peanuts? Goddamn it, do they make peanuts here? What, we have some sort of peanut surplus? Are there some local Alpha Queens farming Styrofoam peanuts around here? Hell no, that comes out of the Pentagon peanut budget. Your peanuts mean someone else gets less peanuts. And I would fucking hate to visualize the consequences of someone getting less peanuts. You'd be leaving someone's equipment totally exposed. This is a zero-sum game, boy, all tangled up with the butterfly effect. That's what Tango knows, soldier, and you're still trying to get through your thick skull.

EMBEDDED JOURNALIST: Tango? Is that the Taliban?

BASE QUARTERMASTER (in a low tone): Hasn't really caught on.

SOLDIER #1 (throws up his hands and kicks the Hello Coffee box): To hell with this. The pot fits, but not the power cord. Let the general come down and figure out this Chinese shit out.

BURLY MAN IN FATIGUES: The general is coming down to do just that. And I'll bet you he'll have no trouble with those Styrofoam inserts at all.

(Goes over to the next soldier and grabs him by the ear.)

What's that bulge in the box? Shipping Company will never accept that. Looks like Tango packed it. Hey I know, maybe you can take some duct tape and strap an alarm clock to the box, too, while you're at it! Oh, except it's Tango's job to strap alarm clocks to boxes, and you'd be putting him out of a job. He'll probably come crawling to Beta asking to defect. I'd hate to visualize the consequences of that happening!

(Cups hands to mouth and addresses the entire room.) If it came in in a box, it goes out in that same box. Zero-sum game. Didn't come in a box, still goes out in a box. I'd hate to contemplate the consequences of where that box is going to come from. You'll have to take it up with the general, as much as I hate to contemplate that.

(A soldier carrying a box full of light bulbs is going out the door toward the van. The burly man in fatigues collars him as he passes) You. What do you think you're doing? Light bulbs unscrewed? All right, out to the van.

(The soldier carries the box out to the van. The camera follows him.)

(From inside, we hear muffled sound of the burly man shouting.) All right, why is it so fucking dark in here? You -- leave the coffee machine and go see if we can get some power!

EMBEDDED JOURNALIST (walking outside with the Quartermaster): So basically my article is going to be about the exit strategy.

BASE QUARTERMASTER: Sure. The general can probably give you some better information on that. But you're welcome to tag along. Can I offer you some tea?

EMBEDDED JOURNALIST: All right.

They walk over to a permanent tent in the depot.) Quieter. So what happens to all these things here? The toaster oven. It looks like you have a lot of custom kitchen stuff.

BASE QUARTERMASTER: Well, I'm technically in a different division. I'm a manager. They actually head-hunted me.

EMBED: You're not military? How about the Special Moving and Packing Company? Are they a military unit?

BASE QUARTERMASTER: I dunno. No one knows that.

EMBED: But they're closing the base and shipping everyone out. We're handing things over to the locals, I thought, except for the necessities.

BASE QUARTERMASTER: I have Earl Grey and Gunpowder Green.

EMBED: Doesn't matter. Earl Grey, I guess. Hey, those are Styrofoam peanuts.

BASE QUARTERMASTER (walks over to a box in the corner): Why, actually yes, they are. (closes the box lid). Look, can we speak off the record?

EMBED: OK.

BASE QUARTERMASTER (lies down on cot and puts on a pair of headphones).

EMBED: Well? I thought you were going to say something.

BASE QUARTERMEASTER: What? I can't hear you.

EMBED (points to headphones)

BASE QUARTERMASTER: Oh. Tea. Gunpowder Green, right?

EMBED: What can you tell me about the exit?

BASE QUARTERMASTER: Look this is complicated. It's going to take a lot of people to sort out this mess. It was easy coming in. But now...

(The quartermaster takes a deep breath, his face becomes ashen and lips tight) We're in debt... All of us, here on the base. To the Chinese, man. Way over our heads. We've bought all this crap from them and never paid. Here we have protection. How can we leave?

EMBED: The Chinese?

BASE QUARTERMASTER: I already owe about $40,000 to the rest of the world. I barely make that a year.

EMBED: Oh, come on. That's nonsense. You're talking about the federal debt? That's not real money, it doesn't work like that. I think you're mixing up concepts.

BASE QUARTERMASTER: OK, you're right. That's B.S. about the Chinese, I was just playing with you. But seriously, I'm going out of my mind here. I can't do it. I just can't do it. Boxes are missing. Do you know how hard it is to find boxes on the local market. You can't get local boxes. The tension is killing me here. The staff has unpacked and packed about three times already and there's never enough boxes.

A Black Nights film festival must-see

2009-11-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

"Well, Well, Well"
in the "Way South of Here" sub-festival
Belgravia, 2009, dir. Janek Smiegda

Umblu has been released from prison and returns to his home village in the Belgravian countryside, where a huge wedding is to begin that week. On the night before the big event, the bridegroom mysteriously falls down a well. Umblu can't remember a thing about the night before, and the ex-con finds himself in the centre of unwanted attention. But not suspicion. Umblu is a wanted man all right: in a village of heavy-set rural folk, he is the one person who is thin enough to fit into the well and save the groom -- and the wedding. But further complications ensue -- the groom has more than a literal case of cold feet and turns out the ring is still at the bottom of the well. Bride, groom, and Umblu call the whole thing off...and all three take off on a road trip to the Belgravian capital for a weekend of gambling on a riverboat. Where is Umblu leading them, if he's leading them at all? Does the house always win? Is Umblu a matchmaker or is a triangle developing? Just then, a runaway barge hits the riverboat casino, setting it adrift, and everything becomes wide, wide open... Ultimate questions of the meaning of life and love are broached as tradition collides head on with modern life in this Black Nights special, set against the dramatic cinematography of magnificent Belgravian landscapes (and casino interiors) and the rawness of urban post-communist realities.

Read that synopsis and you've dispensed with 120 films. The good news -- and why Black Nights is such a treat -- is that that leaves about 100 films that are really quite original. Here are two capsule reviews of real films, not the cream of the crop, but at least minor achievements:

Van Diemen's Land: Sort of as if the dwarves from LOTR found themselves doing hard labour in the temperate rain forests of Tasmania in 1822 (with actual Dwarvish spoken and English subtitles), escaped and set off across the spectacular wilderness getting progressively grumpier. And hungrier. When the salt pork and bread run out, and there being no stout on hand, Darwinism and individual psycho-pathologies take over. Not so much like Tolkien after that point. I squeamed and I squirmed but I can't deny it was harrowing and haunting. (7/10)

Lourdes: "Institutional", almost proto-documentary-style take on faith and miracles, with a wry yet subtle touch and a lead character to match. One of those films that flows like water, sure to be derided by some as slow and irrelevant (because of "dead air"), but economical and watchable, maybe even a second time. Also good mountain scenery in the last half hour. (8/10)

Rumours

2009-11-25T00:40:00.000-08:00

A 13-year-old died of the flu here a couple days ago. The newspapers and others are calling it the "new flu", which suggests it has freshly mutated. That may be more accurate than we know. Every time I hear "new flu", I jump mentally and my pulse rate increases. But the call letters are the same: H1N1, swine.

A tinge of fear and sorrow is in the air, but the pandemic still seems remote. War has of course killed 25 times more people in the same period. As it now appears, war will maintain or increase its torrid body count.

Cancer continues to cause pain, and yet makes the victims invisible, nowhere more than here. People still die everyday in Estonia of things that aren't reported in obituaries, many of them alone. Death remains a strange novelty, even when it's close, or in the room. A few days ago I visited one of my relatives on my wife's side, who is sick with cancer, riddled with melanoma or whatever it turns into when it metastasizes. The experience was not necessarily completely negative. I was going to write about it here, but then I decided against it.

There are plenty of little personal distractions in society and in personal life. Some are neurotic things we invent to avoid facing the big issues, like Woody Allen once said. Even the US Embassy, which usually warns me on plague and riots, today sent me a "Warden" message about...an isolated mugging in the Old Town.

In line with the Seinfeldian or post-Seinfeldian tradition it seems appropriate for a blog to write not about cancer or flu or war (although Laughagainistan will soon resume) -- but rather Seasonal Affective Disorder, for instance.

Except SAD is actually serious, too. It mimics clinical depression in the mornings and hyperthyroidism at night and takes a physical toll due to lack of sleep and irritability. Over time, a wisdom develops about affective disorders -- you can tell yourself it's just a condition and learn to compensate -- but still it changes things,

I'm not complaining. Like hibernation, a depressed state can sometimes be preservative, even dilatory. It will pass.

In any case, I should be getting some Mediterranean light next month before Arctic night sets in.

As far as the flu goes, the plan at Camp Rikken is to wash hands, eat lots of ginger and garlic, take vitamins. And not to worry too much, except when it comes to the kids, in which case I am frantic and panicky at each sneeze.

What I'm worrying about is, of course, devaluation/bankruptcy. Maybe you should, too, no matter what the conventional wisdom (Estonian reserves are well capitalized, etc). Apparently one bank has been making contingency plans which it didn't deem necessary around this time last year. But that, too, is just a rumour. There isn't even an electronic link. You didn't hear it here. Maybe it was actually in Latvia. That must be it.

Certainly I'm not going to spend too much time on the rumours about the flu varieties and vaccine conspiracies. Taking the side of the vaccine theorists sometimes seems to go down a dangerous road to nowhere -- almost seems like AIDS in Africa, where some heads of state believed HIV was cooked up in Western laboratories, the same ones that introduced crack into America's inner cities. So little trust in governments. Now Western and affluent populations have become infected, if you will, with the same doubt.

In the swine flu capital of the world, Ukraine, stories of hemorrhagic pneumonia abound in the provinces. "Their lungs were discolored. The physicians had never seen such a thing." Who said that? Why, an anonymous Estonian Internet commentator. I noticed it because it had been upmodded to about +20. Yes, authoritative armchair dispatches from the wild fringes of civilization, where SARS and H1N1 might be joining forces to create a new Ebola. Or maybe not this year.

Somewhere, just beyond the borders of "Western" civilization, livestock and people are no doubt getting ready to bed down in each other's arms to roost for the night.

But still there's hope. No significant change, but hope.

REVIEW: Coming to Estonia

2009-11-19T22:43:00.001-08:00

OK, I didn't finish the Estonian-language version of Justin Petrone's Minu Eesti in time for this review scheduled for Nov. 20. Now the English version of My Estonia is out, and I'm itching to start in on it. But punctuality is important. A deadline is a deadline.

Actually, the Estonian version is a work in its own right, significantly different from the English adaptation, just as neither of these books is just an anthologized version of Petrone's well-regarded blog, Itching for Eestimaa. They're episodic, definitely, but these pearls are strung with true craft -- it's just one instalment of a memoir, but a raamat, close to a non-fiction novel from someone almost under 30.

In his blog, Petrone comes across as a bit of an old Nordic hand. After all, the whole thing opened with him plotting a return to Estonia when he had already become homesick for this place (or at least, in true Estonian character, envious of those who were here). Minu Eesti 1. osa is the prequel. Here we get to see him as the naif. He's going after some big, familiar archetypes here -- off-the-boat foreigner, personal salvation from some sort of louche Bohemianism, marrying into a strange culture, language barriers. But because the action takes place starting in 2003, only a year before EU accession, and not in 1993, it's not just the old familiar post-Soviet jungle contrast. It's fresh. When a nation is already as globalized as Estonia earlier this decade, it takes a little more skill and observation to get at the little absurdities and big differences.

To his credit, he doesn't just make it outlandish. OK, he does selectively take a few conceits. There is a running theme about Estonian punctuality that I can't personally or generally confirm. I can speak to the contrary: My boss is always late. Not with wages, but in person. Lennart Meri, late President of Estonia, the embodiment of the Estonian intellectual, was famous for being late before he was late.

But who cares? We aren't going to persuade Petrone otherwise, and we Estonians can take our lumps and pick our battles elsewhere. It's like something in his blog, where he maddeningly insists, being steeped in the social(ist) tradition, on calling the mainstream parties "right-wing". Live with it. Anyway, read the title: My Estonia. His. Yet he gets enough right that it is also a pretty accurate portrait of Estonia, warts and all.

**

Incidentally, Petrone is part of a husband-and-wife publishing dynamo, Petrone Print. There's been a lot of griping in Estonia about sales tax rates and lack of cultural support for publishing but none of it has come from this publisher, which maintains a torrid production and promotion schedule. They really are prolific. The first time I met the author Vello Vikerkaar, I mentioned how I had just bought Epp Petrone's Growing Green, a primer for environmental living. He called over to his wife in his dry sort of way: hey, did you hear that Epp has a new book out? I thought his wife glanced at her watch, then nodded: yep, about time. But they're fans, of course, despite what I (mis)interpreted as a weary resignation at never being able to keep up. And credit the Petrones for maintaining above-average literary quality. The only danger that I see is that the more successful they are, the more tasty they will be to Estonians, who love to bring their fellow countrymen down and cut them down to size, then eat them. That's another "conceit", but sadly it may be true.

Maybe Petrone blows it after page 200. Maybe they ran out of paper and he just starts writing, "Bla bla bla, bla bla-bla bla," or the pages are blank. I haven't looked. But I don't think so. And up to page 150, where I am right now, the Estonian prose is a joy and smooth sailing.

Apart from Estonian being notoriously difficult to learn -- a notion that Petrone dispels in real life incidentally, being rather fluent after about five or six years -- I suspect that Estonian writers want to keep the national soul inscrutable. They're bloody-minded about it. There's very little LOL-funny writing in Estonian. So kudos go out to translator Raivo Hool for his care. He preserves the economy and comic timing of Petrone's voice and proves that American humour -- and Petrone's enjoyable update on the proud tradition -- can be universal. (Of course, I'm not sure Estonian humour can ever translate perfectly into English...but that's another story.)

Dinopolis

2009-11-17T10:17:00.000-08:00

While waiting for Obama to make the decision on Afghanistan, I went to see an arena spectacular about reptilians -- not the ageless Illuminati masters of the world who decide which wars to fight, but extinct giant lizards.

Walking With Dinosaurs, based on the BBC series and imported by Lauri Laubre, has a tinge of the appeal of a monster truck rally but with a lot more edutainment, class and authenticity. The arena-size show, claimed by organizers to be the country's biggest indoor extravaganza ever, has certainly found its segment, selling out at least nine times. (I remember trying to scalp Michael Jackson tickets 12 years ago and ending up getting face value and giving one away.)

While big and technically somewhat impressive in a lumbering way, the most impressive thing about "Walking" is that it has done so well in the middle of a recession. Although not cheap at 500-600 kroons per seat, parents (and a few young couples) have obliged.

It would perhaps not be going too far to say that dinosaurs are the new religion of most kids in Estonia, narrowly edging out the old monotheistic faiths. My son had been talking, living and breathing dinos since late summer. He even went to bed cuddling a plastic, scaly dinosaur figure one night. Out on the playgrounds, at least in Tallinn, it's a constant struggle between ever-faster carnivores and stolid, placid herbivores. There have been articles in the press discussing why this is. My guess is that the narratives give preschoolers a feeling of power. There's also the theory that childhood development follows human evolutionary history -- 2-year-olds are Neanderthals, 3 year-olds Cro-Magnon -- so maybe they see themselves as having once been just a brain stem.

As parents, there's really no way to resist such a obsessive force. Of course, on the whole it's positive, somewhat scientific. The experience would also, my wife felt, constitute a learning experience for the youngster -- looking forward to something, counting off the days on the calendar, talking about it in class.

But I, too, learned a good bit from this whole dinosaur phase, starting from the fact that when we were in school, so long ago, the pantheon of dinosaurs only numbered 5-10, and the main ones were 1) brontosaurus 2) stegosaurus 3) triceratops 4) tyrannosaurus rex 5) pterodactyl. Well, Brontosaurus doesn't even exist anymore. Turns out it is a subset of the apatosaurus. (Still, Blogger's built-in spell-check accepts "brontosaurus" and flags "apatosaurus".) Jurassic Park added (veloci)raptors. Now allosaurus, the "lion of the Jurassic", is also a star. There's many more that I hadn't heard of, like diplodocus.

Walking with Dinosaurs had some pleasant visual surprises -- the unfurling of various plants to signify botanical evolution, the flight of a pterosaurus with IMAX-like rear projection, the paleontologist sticking his arm into a pile of stool to extract a "sitasitikas" or dung beetle (though why do they say "shit beetle" in Estonian, in front of the kids?!)

But I'm afraid that we have been spoiled by liquid animation and CGI.

The main problem was the limited mobility of the larger dinosaurs, which were mounted on huge stabilizers that blended in with the rock surface. Watching these lunkers square off, bob their heads, and ultimately almost never touch each other was unsatisfying. I reflected that robot choreography has been left in the dust by the silicon revolution, even though CPUs are hard at work underneath the skin and scales. The raptors and teenage dinosaurs were played by actual individuals in sophisticated full-body get-ups.

But most disappointingly, a ticket holder was NOT picked randomly at the end to duel the tyrannosaurus. I had told the kids this would happen. What good is a religion without a Jonah narrative?!

Nor were triceratops pulling caleches waiting for us when we exited to take us back home.

They didn't seem too disappointed. Probably they didn't believe me in the first place.

In any case, it was all probably just harmless edutainment and a pleasantly diversionary fad. A fun time was had by all. And I do have a new favorite dinosaur -- the impossibly knobby, tortoise-like ankylosaurus.

A Veterans Day message from the director of Laughagainistan

2009-11-11T04:38:00.000-08:00

To my mind, there are only two quotations that anyone needs to know about war. One is attributed to General Sherman (although the original context in which it was spoken is appalling) and the other is by Edwin Starr.

Apart maybe from the purest, most instinctive form -- if a nation is abandoned by allies and literally takes to its own fields and forests against an invader -- war is too bound up with the military-industrial complex, profit, indiscretion, lies, hatred and delusions of glory to ever be redeemed.

So I don't know what to think when I hear people say: "Thank a Veteran." Or "Support the Troops." I can support troops with a reference to conscientious objection resources, but I don't think that is what is meant. How can I thank some veteran on the street? What am I thanking them for? At best, they are electrons in a fantastically complex wave function; at worst, they were lied to by their leaders and used as cannon fodder.

Maybe it's partly because of this cloying "thanking" and "supporting" that we neglect to do what really makes sense. What we do need to do today is Respect All Veterans. We need to treat all veterans better and support them in every way possible, and we need to do it without pity or crocodile thanks creeping into the picture.

The front page of most American newspapers today was a clustermash of stories about Texas massacres, the euthanization of a Gulf War veteran in the Virginia "death house" (sic) for his own massacre, and lack of coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder. I hope I never see anything like that again on such a day.

Let's not lapse into escapist WWII nostalgia, either, that pure and noble campaign. That was not a good war either.

There are no good wars, and unlike a bad movie, a bad war just can't be redeemed.

LAUGHAGAINISTAN. Part 4. The ambush.

2009-11-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

EXT. Evening. The sun setting. A sentry post on a hilltop. Personnel from ESTCOY-13, the Estonian company in Helmand province, are leading the way from the position down a hillside toward a dun-colored town shimmering in the distance, followed by an American unit. A rudimentary wall, possibly erected for erosion control, parallels the rough trail in places. Four or five American privates leading the Americans are in quiet conversation with a veteran Estonian officer bringing up the rear of the Estonians.

PHIL: I'm from Kentucky and I don't know anyone voted for him. You, Joe?

JOE: Yeah. Brother-in-law. He's from up north, though.

PHIL: And everyone talks about the racket Karzai has going...

MIKE: I know he's my commander in chief, but let me tell you, last November...

VOICE FROM BACK: Aw come on, guys, knock it off. Especially after yesterday. No backlash. Zero tolerance.

AMERICAN NCO: Heads up now.

(The men walk on in silence. A local man is sitting on top of a wall, smoking. His feet are up on the wall, too, legs bent at the knees. He seems either depressed or suspicious, it is hard to tell. An American sergeant pitches a packet of Marlboros, underhand, in his general direction. It lands several yards short of the mark. The local takes a drag on his cigarette.)

ESTONIAN: Estonian public supports us in Afghanistan.

(The men walk on in silence.)

ESTONIAN: Ninety per cent support.

MIKE: Uhuh. That right? How do you figure that?

ESTONIAN: Look, who is next door to us. We can't just consume security, we have to contribute to it.

DAVE: Hey, does the Latvian public support us Americans in Afghanistan?

ESTONIAN: This I do not know. (pauses) (mutters) Ask from the fucking Latvians. (pause) All right. Ten minutes more and we're down. If I remember right. It's been 25 years.

PHIL: Problem over here is that the people don't want to consume security in the first place. Then again, I ain't got none to give.

(A group of local men sitting on the wall smoking finish their cigarettes and back off diagonally, never breaking eye contact. The American sergeant nods to them. The villagers stare back as they retreat. The sergeant pitches another packet of Marlboros, but the villagers are out of sight.)

JOE: The mayor of the last town said only ten per cent support the Taliban.

PHIL: Joe's been talking to the mayor again.

MIKE: He's not the mayor, Joe. Didn't they tell you that? There is no mayor. They don't have mayors here.

JOE (quietly): I meant the one in my dream. The one I'm going to visit.

PHIL: What in the?

JOE: When I finish my tour, he said, I can come visit his farm in the north.

MIKE: Joe, man, I'm worried you actually believe that. When we get off, we should visit Latvia. Estonia. The girls, Joe. The girls.

JOE: I'm tired.

PHIL: What the hell are you guys talking about?

DAVE: I've had that dream. That's where I got these (holds up a necklace of beads with lapis lazuli inlay. It looks like a relic.).

PHIL: Who hasn't dreamed about him? But that guy's an unfriendly. I can't believe you would accept anything from him.

ESTONIAN: Let me say you this. In our local elections, it happened such a thing, that --

(A massive explosion rocks the hillside close, just scant meters in front of the column.)

AMERICAN: We're hit! We're hit!

(A black cloud in the already dying light obscures everything. The smoke slowly clears to reveal inchoate shapes of men clutching their ears, stumbling, but they seem unscathed and slowly take stock.)

AMERICAN (staggering, hands clapped to ears): Everybody OK? I can't hear anything!

AMERICAN: I'm OK. Everybody's here.

AMERICAN: Where the fucking Latvians?

PHIL: Christ, you're right. They're gone.

DAVE: I can't find my beads! I can't find my beads! I can't find my beads!

NEXT: Part 5. Resolution.

REVIEW: Little Italy

2009-11-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

I like Vapiano. It makes me happy.

Maybe the onset of another Estonian winter has got the last of my brain cells (judge from the Laughagainistan series), but maybe it really is the food, as the chain claims.

Let me try to explain about my new favourite place to eat in Tallinn. It serves primi -- simple Italian pasta dishes -- made fresh in front of your eyes and it tastes like food does in Italy. Instead of a fast food joint where you watch a cashier push buttons, the person on the other side of the counter from you has two burners and a professional looking mise-en-place -- portions of parboiled pasta, rucola, chili, pine nuts, all ready to go. He or she will be your personal cook for the next 2-4 minutes. When you first enter, you're given a radio card to flash or point with and you settle up your tab at the very end, American diner-style, without waiting around for a waiter to go back and forth with the card. Fresh casual, it's called. That's what it's called.

The salads are probably overpriced, but Vapiano will dish up a satisfying basic plate (arabbiata, pomodoro or pesto) for 60 kroons. Not too bad. The other price groups are 85, 105 and 125 kroons, but I haven't had a reason to try them. You can choose from nine pasta shapes. Conceivably your personal cook will even warn you if you are about to pair a thick shape with a thin sauce. Each transaction begins with "would you like chili and garlic in that" (yes, sir!) and ends with "would you like Parmesan cheese" (please, sir!) and a twist of the pepper grinder on either end of your dish. Very comforting, somehow.

These guys are well-trained and remain cool under pressure. Some Zanzinger type in the line ahead of me with a cane and an expensive overcoat -- this place is full of movers and shakers, I think I recognized him as some shipping boss -- was giving his cook a hard time, insisting on a "vinegretto salad".

"Goddamn it, son, what's wrong with you? Noh, the vinegretto," he actually said, stabbing his finger at the specials card, which listed "vigneto", which I think means "in the style of the vineyard" in this context). The cook did not correct him a third time, but nor did he pour any undiluted vinegar over his food as I probably would have done. I wouldn't be surprised if these cooks trained for three months in Florence before the Solaris mall opened.

Perhaps by coincidence, Vapiano continues the Solaris theme. That is, just as you would expect from the inside of a spaceship, there are living, oxygen-producing plants here. Besides olive oil and vinegar, each table has a oregano plant and a basil plant in little pots I think Vapiano is the only restaurant I have seen with a staff gardener. I haven't seen anyone picking off leaves, so I hope it's OK to do that. Maybe it's some kind of experiment.

Like my second-favorite part of Solaris, the bookstore-cafe, there is only futuristic ductwork and no suspended ceilings in Vapiano. They have either fallen down or there were none to begin with.

In line with the artisan approach to food, the placemat on the tray talks about how Vapiano makes their pasta and then throws in this paragraph:

"It is certainly no coincidence that you will feel happier after eating Vapiano pasta because pasta is light, contains very little fat and it gives you energy for a long period. That's not all. Pasta contains certain substances that help produce the happiness hormone serotonin. A morsel of happiness in each bite. Maybe that is why you can see so many smiling people in Vapiano."

Actually, I don't even know if the low-fat bit is really relevant. The main reason the pasta dishes are so good is that they use so much quality olive oil. I would have probably quit while I was ahead and not made the loopy serotonin claim. But I looked around and people did seem happy, or at least calm, especially after eating, even the guy with his vineyard-style salad.

Other celebrity sightings included Anu Välba (she seems more like a girl next door type and I didn't expect her to be wearing high heels and powerwear but there you go) and Marko Reikop and both seemed like they had had pasta with St. John's wort. If there were a fountain, and the Rembrandts theme song came on, they would do the Friends thing for sure! There was also people telling other people what they did and what their fathers did (manager for Michael Jackson's HIStory tour, I think I overheard).

I have since got a haircut and next time I go to Vapiano I will be sure to take it up a notch myself. Maybe I will video blog from there.

Two other things I should note: the dolci bar has a spherical marzipan pastry that is out of this world, if you like almonds (15 kroons), but they were out last time. Sadly I have not tried the coffee yet. The bread at Vapiano is really good and it comes with your meal but you need to ask for it from your cook.

LAUGHAGAINISTAN, Scene 3: Film studio

2009-11-04T02:16:00.000-08:00

(NOTE: Estonians are mentioned in this scene!)

INT. A film studio meeting room. A preliminary exploratory meeting for production of Laughagainistan. Two film executives and the would-be director. On the table is the tattered script with grease stains and coffee cup rings.

EXECUTIVE #1: Explosions - check. Stunts - check. We can always use local kids. (nudges his colleague, whose expression had stiffened) That's a joke. Of course the clan leaders would be pissed!

But the 120 helicopters you're asking for....

DIRECTOR: 127 helicopters.

EXECUTIVE #1: ...the 127 helicopters you're asking for, that's a red flag. That's one helicopter per minute of running time.

EXECUTIVE #2: Everyone wants helicopters these days.

EXECUTIVE #1 (rummages through folder): I received this letter from the US Army. They're hitting up the studios for choppers. And they're paying well.

EXECUTIVE #2: Just to put things in perspective, do you know how many helicopters were...expended in Black Hawk Down?

DIRECTOR: I don't know. Not 127?

EXECUTIVE #2: That's right. It wasn't 'Black Hawks Down', was it? It was 'Black Hawk Down'. And they made a full-length movie about it. Something to think about.

EXECUTIVE #2: You're not making Helicopter!, the sequel to Airplane!. You're making Laughagainistan, the sequel to Lafghanistan.

EXECUTIVE #1: And that brings us to the second, more important order of business. We like Laughagainistan. It reminds us a little of Lafghanistan. Do you see the problem here? Uhuh. A little. It's a sequel. It should remind us of the original film a lot.

EXECUTIVE #1: We liked Lafghanistan. The formula worked. It was like Bob Hope entertaining the troops, except with jokes about semen. We don't want to depart from the formula too much.

EXECUTIVE #2 (leafs through screenplay): We're concerned about Scene 2, where the Koran gets turned into a mayonnaise sandwich, apparently.

EXECUTIVE #1: That's a tricky sell for the people handling the Hellmann's account. No one wants to go there, all that much.

EXECUTIVE #2: Delicate situation.

DIRECTOR: It's not a Koran. It's a dictionary. It's actually a plot point. It gets revealed in Scene 4, the one about the Estonians.

EXECUTIVE #1: Whoa, whoa. Estonians?

DIRECTOR: They symbolize the coalition of the willing. They clean up leftover mayonnaise packets and leaflets and helicopter wreckage from the battlefield. It's all explained, if you read it.

EXECUTIVE #2: No fucking way. That's a nyet, comrade. No one knows anything about Estonians. No one wants to know. That's the kiss of death for a major motion picture.

EXECUTIVE #!: A guy once gave a presentation to the studios trying to get interest in a piece of surround sound technology. He made the mistake of including the word Estonian in it. Afterwards, the group of executives was surveyed. They had no recollection of the presentation or even being at the presentation. Frankly, I'm afraid for the fact that the word "Estonian" has come up in our conversation here today. Seriously. Is anyone taking minutes? I might forget the whole thing. And that would be a shame. So no mention of Estonians, unless it's in a punchline.

EXECUTIVE #2: Right, we're not making a film abut post-Soviet complexities. Let's keep it simple: Afghanistan.

(Pause. The executives look at each other.)

EXECUTIVE #1: What were we talking about?

EXECUUTIVE #1: Koran sandwich.

DIRECTOR: Well, I still think there's a clever way around this problem and other what I would call hyperoffensive content. You could get some intellectual to endorse each scene of the film. Hitchens would endorse the flashback scene where the US is entering Iraqi villages and slaughtering.

EXECUTIVE #1 (looks at his colleague): Not bad. I'm thinking of Rushdie for Scene 2, then. He has nothing to lose. Better yet, cast him.

EXECUTIVE #2 (into Dictaphone): Cast Salman Rushdie as the guy jumping on the book. (looks up) Could work. Is that enough to cover our ass?

EXECUTIVE #1 (thinking): Then we've got, what's his name who did Strangelove, Terry Southern. He could endorse the nutty press conference with the military figures in Scene 1.

EXECUTIVE #1: He's dead.

EXECUTIVE #2 (into Dictaphone): Whoever's doing the Terry Southern thing these days - e-mail that guy asking if he'd play in that scene.

DIRECTOR: That might be Dennis Perrin.

EXECUTIVE #2: Dennis Brin? Never heard of him.

DIRECTOR: He lives in Detroit and--

EXECUTIVE #!: I don't know about this. First Estonians, now some Brin. Where do you get these things?

DIRECTOR: He's kind of an anarchist comedy writer. Niche figure, a writer's writer. A blogger's blogger.

(shrugs)
He hates the right wing and Obama.

EXECUTIVE #2: He hates Obama and no one's heard of him. Sounds swell.

DIRECTOR: People listen to him. Pundits do. I think.

EXECUTIVE #2: Would he do it?

EXECUTIVE #1: It might take the heat off. Some guy who writes on the Internet in Detroit...

EXECUTIVE #2: Right. All right. (speaks into Dictaphone) E-mail Dennis...Brin about Scene 2. If Rushdie doesn't want to play the guy who jumps up and down on the Koran with mayo in the middle, get Brin to do it.

DIRECTOR: Well, I didn't say that---

EXECUTIVE #1: Next point on the agenda. Obama.

LAUGHAGAINISTAN: Part 2

2009-11-01T23:24:00.000-08:00

VOICEOVER: Act 2. Helmand's Mayonnaise.

(EXT. Scene: The Agricultural and Life Sciences Vocational Madrassah in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. A field of poppies on a hillside under a bright sun. We see students at this less-than-elite school mowing poppies with scythes, methodically. Most have stubble or patchy facial hair. Some of the students are sitting with junior teachers on the rough-hewn flagstone portico of some ancient desert ruin at the top of the hill. Their beards are longer. They drink black tea and groom each other's matted, weatherbeaten beards, which have grown to prodigious lengths.

It would almost be an Aquarian, pre-industrial idyll, except for helicopter wreckage, some of it still slightly smouldering, that studs the fields.

The other odd thing is that the women hoeing in the field are clad head to toe in black and wearing leg irons, and singing what sounds like a call-and-response chain gang song in Pashto. Their hoeing is erratic. It appears they cannot see a bloody thing.

The men seem oblivious to the singing. They are silent, but occasionally one will grunt as he finds a nit in the beard of one of his compatriots, then flicks the offending material away, blinking vacuously from the depths of his facial hair.

In a cobalt blue sky shot through a wide-angle polarized lens, high cirrus clouds can be seen along with a contrail and a faint droning sound is audible. No one pays it any mind.)

(The screen then splits to show in close-up the various stages in the opium making process: workers scratching poppy buds to draw poppy sap; sap being dried in the sun, turning black; dried sap being compacted into bricks; hauling the opium to markets and refineries; a soldier at a checkpoint winking as the convoy proceeds; a local haggling over opium futures with a CIA arms dealer. Then, all of a sudden, single-serving-size packages of condiments fall into each split frame. They are clearly identifiable as commercial mayonnaise samples.

Screen reverts to the scene at the desert madrassah. The women have stopped singing. Gradually the scythes come to a halt. Students converse in Pashto, with subtitles.)

STUDENT #! (peering at a packet): What is it?

STUDENT #2: I can't read the infidel dog lettering.

STUDENT #!: Dude, you can't read any lettering.

STUDENT #2: Oh yeah.

(Student #2 calls to the teachers sitting on the portico, but they are already busy examining their packets as well. One is trying to tear a packet open along the non-perforated side while another examines a packet intently with his one good eye from a distance of about two inches, twisting it this way and that.)

TEACHER (A lean man of about 45, the head teacher strides across the portico resolutely, holding his beard to keep from becoming tangled up in it. He berates the junior teaching staff):

Halt! Who among you (stabs a finger at the collective) in your greed, who would fall for such an infidel dog trick? For what falls from the air but for the temptations of djinns? Or brimstone to poison the soil. Imperialists' swine leavings at best; at worst, an affliction to torment the flesh of future generations! (Pauses.)

On the other hand...let's crack one of these babies open and see what's inside, eh?

(He places a condiment packet on a flat stone beneath a low stone wall and uses a long pole to dislodge a loose rock from the wall so it could fall on to the packet. But it misses the packet and the small boulder begins rolling down the hillside. Students dive for cover right and left. The women fall in a hopeless tangle of limbs, ball and chain.)

He moves the packet and repeats the process. Again the rock misses the packet, picks up speed and lays a student flat)

TEACHER (looses a stream of guttural invective): It's all right. I would have failed him anyway. (claps his hands) Bring me the nutcracker!

STUDENTS: The nutcracker!

Two students retreat to a bookcase. A surprising number of new English-language softcover volumes are visible. "The Art of Self-Sufficiency." "Vernon County Community College Test Farm Twinning Program in Helmand." "How To Write USAID Grant Proposals." "Poppy Straw as Bio Fuel." But the students pass these by and extricate, with difficulty, a heavy, dog-eared, ancient-looking volume with florid gilt Arabic script on the leather cover. It takes three of them to lift it onto the low portico wall. They set it down reverently with the spine away from them.)

TEACHER (gingerly leafs through the brittle yet oily, parchment-like pages of the book): All right. I need a volunteer.

(Two students close the book with the packet in the middle, gently. The teacher points at a heavyset student. The student pantomimes a jump and raises an eyebrow and the teacher nods.

With a mighty swing of his arms the student bends his knees and propels his bulk up and onto the volume.

Yellowish matter spews out, coating the beards and bodies alike with splattered bits of creamy white ooze).

STUDENT #! (in an undertone): Uh. Mad call.

STUDENT #2: Word.

TEACHER: (glowers beneath his aiolian mask, then his expression becomes distant and abstracted. He strokes his beard, inadvertently spreading the mayonnaise around until finally it disappears, leaving a luxuriantly glossy patch)

STUDENT #1: Then again, maybe not.

TEACHER: (a smile widens on the Teacher's face and he clutches a fistful of packets held high): I do say, it is some kind of balsam for beards.

Laughagainistan

2009-10-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Last summer, the blockbuster of the year, Lafghanistan, made you split your sides. This winter, get ready to laugh again, and even longer. Laughagainistan: Director's Cut...

Scene I: Operation McCrevice press conference

(a crowded briefing room, cameras pop and flare)

BRITISH GENERAL: Philip McCrevice. (Laughter) No really -- Philip McCrevice. (More laughter.) Could we have some order in here? As I was saying, the operation was designed by Philip McCrevice --

(Laughter.)

-- and Philip McCrevice happens to be one of the best operations designers in Britain.

AMERICAN OFFICIAL: He's worked with Benetton. Did the Lynndie England ads. Very edgy stuff.

BRITISH GENERAL: When we requested a plan to penetrate presumed terrorist networks in this country, logistics had only one thing to say to us: 'Philip McCrevice, sir.'

AMERICAN OFFICIAL (nodding): Philip McCrevice.

BRITISH GENERAL: And we followed their advice. And it has been mutually satisfying.

(uproarious laughter)

JOURNALIST #1 (wiping tears from his eyes): Sir, how did this latest arrest go down? Was the public ever at risk?

BRITISH GENERAL: Our crack team apprehended Amon Dul at an upscale fish and chips restaurant. Mr. Dul was in the act of surreptitiously emptying out a basket of complimentary matchbooks by the door. I should note the investigation was brought to a climax by the Home Office's own Operation Panopticome, which had filmed Mr. Dul buying socks earlier that day in an area even we did not know we had cameras in.

AMERICAN OFFICIAL: The socks were not in his foot size.

BRITISH GENERAL: We believe that he intended to use the matches to set fire to his socks in a public place. Or that he intended to extract a volatile ingredient from the after-dinner mints, which were also stolen from the restaurant, and use the socks as a wicking device. It could also have been that..

AMERICAN OFFICIAL: We treated it on the same level of seriousness as last month's Pillow Fight incident where Bed, Bath & Beyond received suspiciously large orders for potentially flammable soft cushions. As in that case, I believe we were one step ahead of the public.

BRITISH GENERAL: That is, we firmly believe the public was never at risk from the Sock Bomber or the Pillow Fight plot.

(murmuring from the press corps)

AMERICAN OFFICIAL: One at a time, please.

JOURNALIST #2: There's been much concern about blurring of the boundaries between military and civilian authorities. Should the Sock Bomber should be brought before a military tribunal?

BRITISH GENERAL: We're aware of that, and that's why we've taken action in the most stringent, meticulous and relentless civil instance available to us -- libel court in London.

AMERICAN OFFICIAL (holding a finger to his ear): Speaking of slander, I'm just hearing this from the networks. An Operation McCrevice informant named Abdullah Jizza has just led to the arrest of a Guatemalan national for talking. This is breaking news, folks.

JOURNALIST #2: Is the Guatemalan also involved in the sock bomb plot?

BRITISH GENERAL (looks over at the liaison, then puts his finger to his ear as well): No, he was talking. (Pause.) He was...yes. We're waiting for a Spanish interpreter from the Americans to see what he is saying. He worked as a dishwasher at the fish and chips restaurant. Perhaps 'arrest' would not be the right word.

AMERICAN OFFICIAL: Mr. Ramon Martinez is being held preventively for his own safety.

BRITISH GENERAL: As is Mr. Jizza, because my colleague here has just publicly disclosed his name. Abdullah Jizza.

AMERICAN OFFICIAL: That's 'Jizza'. Yes. J-I-Z -- More on that as it develops. We're out of time, folks.

(The men hurry together, holding hands, to a waiting helicopter.)

(Camera zooms out to reveal the press conference and helicopter are part of a film set.)

DIRECTOR: OK, that's a wrap. We'll do the chopper crash first thing tomorrow.

NEXT: Scene 2 -- Helmand's Mayonnaise!

Balloon boys, meteorites and golden opportunities

2009-10-27T01:14:00.000-07:00

I don't want to be hasty, but it looks like Latvia really is doomed -- doomed to be led by a humourless bunch of bureaucrats who insist on doing things by the book when they aren't taxing books at exorbitant rates. Just yesterday, the government was handed a golden opportunity to create or burnish a legend, and maybe even ultimately earn some tourist dollars in the process. Reports came in that a meteorite had landed, creating a crater eight meters in diameter. While it did make international news, it was only a blip. The whole story was over in less than 24 hours, dismissed as a hoax. But it didn't have to be over.

The meteorite theme has resonance here -- this part of the world happens to have the highest concentration of meteorite activity anywhere, at least over the last couple thousand years. The debris might be random rocks, of course, but can anyone really resist the notion that someone somewhere might be crashing space junk into southern Estonia to see if bogs really contain methane and water? I can't. There's the whole matter of why the local bus stop near our country home looks like a eight-legged landing craft and why some people in local villages don't talk when you speak to them. All this deserves to be better publicized.

To be frank, the crater was rather impressive. I'm aware that digging a hole doesn't take the skill of flattening grain without damaging the stalks, but there weren't any glaringly obvious signs of a hoax -- no pile of dirt next to the hole -- and there was even some authentic-seeming charring at the bottom of the pit, though I suppose it might just as well have been the remnants of a campfire. In any case, experts seemed dismissive but not completely sure. Radioactivity experts were called in just to be safe, possibly on the assumption that if it were an alien spacecraft it would probably have a nuclear reactor on board. All this was very well. Nor could it have squandered too much of the taxpayer money that the government is otherwise so careful to avoid spending. I looked forward to a week of news, visits by international experts.

But it all ended too soon. The whole story ran its course in less than a day. A wireless operator took credit for it as a marketing stunt, and the government muttered that it would look into starting a criminal case, which is government's answer to everything, especially any sort of non-conformism. I suppose if Orson Welles had operated here in 1939, he would probably have never worked again. Certainly don't think of claiming to have seen a strange creature in a bog -- look how damaging that whole Loch Ness thing has been to Scotland's economy, tourist sector, and the reputation of its institutions.

The thing is, unlike the company that carved out the crater, Latvia itself (or Estonia) doesn't seem to realize that it needs harmless stunts like this, not only to give people some fake reality entertainment during the recession, but also to create an international commotion. I would even say the Baltic governments need to look into a PPP partnership in this area -- folk costumes and bogs only go a limited distance. I actually think this -- not the absence of copywriting talent or miscommunication -- is why the best Estonia could come up with for a marketing slogan one year was a shield emblazoned the words "Welcome to Estonia" (Look at us, our country does typographic clip art. Come stay with us.) A spaceman narrative, even if it were fake and most of the world thought so, is so much better.

Government takes itself too seriously; I guess it can't be helped. But I think we should be a little buffoonish. Sometimes it seems we are just as anti-Boratist as the government of Kazakhstan. We hate to be the fools too much, we insist on setting the record straight. But since the real estate boom ended, big holes in the ground don't open up everyday, not perfectly round ones.

If I were king for a day, I would have kept up the game much longer. I would have taken it out of the hoaxers' hands and made it my story. I would have sealed off the entire site immediately and deployed military units in the countryside to suggest that perhaps something more than a chunk of hot rock fell from the sky. Perhaps I would have even put in a request for Estonia to do the same on its side of the border. I would have made it hard (though not impossible) for the public to get close to the site at first. A big radius is the operative word. Make the population think something big is happening. Such actions could veer off into sowing mass panic, but with a little skill, the seeds could have been laid for a Roswell-type story that would persist for years. Sure, the wireless operator could feebly insist that it had dug the crater, but people would be much more attracted to the option of believing that something unexplained happened and that the government tried unsuccessfully to cover up. And the government can always ham it up; it is best in the role of incompetent bumbler with rival agencies with different agendas.

**

In the US, you had the balloon boy, another relatively harmless stunt, especially since, as we all know now, the boy was not in the balloon. Without trying to affect morally superiority here, I think people got sidetracked by a kind of mob mentality -- it became more enjoyable to pillory the father while the story should have arguably produced is a sense of wonder. Hello? This family was building balloons! I don't know about your neighbours, but my neighbours don't build balloons you can ride in. They just mow their lawn and watch TV. I don't even know anyone who flies model rockets; maybe they have been banned in most municipalities. So I thought this was highly significant. No matter how nutty the family or what caused them to do what they did (maybe they waited too long to 'fess up) it conjured up images of Goddard and Wright. In this case, they were believers in flight -- they at least pretended to believe that their son might have been carried off in a balloon, and pretense is a start.

Me and Savisaar

2009-10-21T02:23:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to write a fairly straight blog entry specifically devoted to the winner of the Estonian local elections, Edgar Savisaar -- a "personal encyclopedia article" consisting of my memories of him and the personal significance. Though he's made many a cameo appearance, I've never spat out 1000 words before on what he means to me and what I know about Savisaar. So enough sideways sniping and satirical jabs. Here it is.

It's important to remember Savisaar is a major figure in modern Estonian history. If there were an Estonian branch of Madame Tussaud's, Savisaar would definitely deserve a statue there. The question of which public square is appropriate for the bronze version, on the other hand -- that question is still open.

Savisaar is best known for his major role in the Singing Revolution era 20 years ago, when he represented the mainstream movement -- some might say the broad road -- between nation-state purists on one hand, and communist hardliners on the other. In other words, a very, very, very broad path. Oddly enough, the descendants of the hardliners now tend to vote for Savisaar. No one said Estonian history is not complex and fluid.

Back in 1991, Savisaar may have saved the government castle from being overrun by communist hardliners by rallying the public, but something never felt right about the whole event, even to people who were there. I have to get everyone's version, Rashomon-style, before I comment on that.

And then, just like that, the singing was over. Not that the singing ever really ends in Estonia, but the revolution was over. Mart Laar came along. Laar made history for running the first successful course of economic shock therapy anywhere in the world, a fact that Naomi Klein and other critics of Friedman are paid good money to try to cover up.

As Estonia gained slowly in affluence, Savisaar's tenure as PM in 1992 was remembered chiefly for food vouchers and instability. (The whole prospect of a repeat of that situation -- some shabby half-assed version of the command economy, basically -- remains a potent weapon for Savisaar's opponents. Even now, infinitely more than with Obama, I think of Savisaar and I think of some sort of feckless socialism, an economy of kiosks where there are either no potatoes to eat or no fuel to cook them with because it was all given away for free. I can't help it -- that's what I think of.)

So Savisaar became a bete noire. That's not French for anything good to eat, but for Christmas 1994, I ate Savisaar in effigy. I was not behind the idea, but I did partake of him. He was in the form of a sticky bun. His snout was a piece of candy. Savisaar tends to resemble a certain animal -- at least in the American cultural space, he would indisputably be that animal or a bulldog -- so it's always been strange to me that Savisaar's moniker is the "rhinoceros". Personally I think it reflects very highly on Estonians and their sense of Nordic restraint that they named him after an odd-toed ungulate.

In the 1990s, Estonia generally had a succession of reform-minded governments, but centrist technocrats were always in the mix (with names like the Coalition Party, nearly as dumb as Savisaar's Centre Party) and they provided the apartment (privatized for cheap) for the free-market Reform Party who slept with everyone, even Savisaar.

Savisaar always polled well, but he never became prime minister again, though, prompting him to title his autobiography a couple years ago, "Prime Minister". The book's sub-title was "Not".

Sometimes he would be nominated as PM but then his minority government bid would crash and burn in the parliament. It seemed to me that Lennart Meri spent half his presidency nominating Savisaar and then chuckling wryly when Savisaar got his fingers burned again.

Savisaar was never friendly to the press and the press responded in kind, naming him the least friendly politician. Journalist Enno Tammer wrote an expose in book form revealing that Savisaar not only had a Russian mother but that she had slept with another Russian nine months before Savisaar was born. All this seemed really important at the time, especially for Tammer. (Tammer has faded into obscurity, though he did author an excellent Studs Terkel-like book about Soviet life, so he's obviously capable of good interviewing.)

In 1995, I wrote a back page for The Baltic Independent about a situation where Savisaar cloned himself, with terrible consequences for Estonia's demographic situation. He also figured heavily in that year's satirical Christmas issue. That was the year Savisaar found himself embroiled in a pretty serious scandal, one of several that have proved that he is coated in, if not Teflon, then at least some sort of fly-paper-like medium that traps and then, through the wave-like action of hundreds of ciliate hairs, manages to rid itself of most of the ick. Well, anyway, that was a metaphor we played with but never got quite right. It was just that there was nothing "phoenix-like" about Savisaar, and "comeback kid" seemed totally out of place. Savisaar denied journalists comfortable cliches, but he was a survivor all right.

My editor at the Baltic Independent was a Centre Party booster and would raise an eyebrow at these pieces but they always ran. I don't vouch for their literary quality but presumably our emigre readership nodded approvingly.

This dialogue more or less took place one day: "Come on, this is Savisaar," the editor would remind us as he toned down objectionable content in a news article. "This guy IS the singing revolution to Western journalists."

"They still want Gorbachev, too, but he's irrelevant," I said.

"No one's ever heard Savisaar sing!" someone said. "Or seen him with a baton. How can he really lead a singing revolution?"

"Castro couldn't dance and yet he was Cuban," pointed out another expat journalist.

There is a definitely authoritarian streak to Savisaar. If memory serves, he was voted by Itching for Eestimaa readers as most likely to be Päts, Estonia's 1930s-era soft dictator.

If my politicians must be involved in scandal, I would prefer they be sins of the flesh (though I'm not sure I would be OK with even this in the case of Savisaar). Under no circumstance should it be something involving abuse of public funds and surveillance on citizens. Savisaar pulled off a trifecta in 1995, with elements of nearly everything you don't want in government.

The press did the public a disservice by reducing the scandal to a catchword as they often do. It made it sound like Savisaar was some Nixon, Jr., with a penchant for recording his conservations with rival politicians, but the fact was that he had used a private security company to gather information, things that in the pre-Bush era required warrants. The people at the company had long-standing KGB links. They were scary, unsavoury characters.

Savisaar also had links to another security firm, ESS, which was always making the news in the 1990s for exceeding its power and acting like the police, granted generally in purse-snatchings...and firing shots into tires to issue drivers speeding tickets, which may have been a little over the top, actually.

From about 1993 to 1996, I would have a tremendous opportunity to spy on Savisaar, and, presumably, for Savisaar to spy on me. We were neighbours! The former Estonian SSR government complex in Keila-Joa had become the property of the new government and many people rented there -- foreign journalists, members of government, honorary citizens. His rental there would later end up the centre of a new scandal -- as I remember, he ended up buying it for a suspiciously low price.

I never caught Savisaar up to anything. In fact I didn't see him at all. I lived a couple doors down, in identical 1930s houses for a number of years, and I never saw him. I have never seen him in person.

All this is history, anyway. 1995 was a long time ago; odd to think now that it was less than four years after the putsch in Moscow.

There seems to be an implicit trade: Savisaar gets Tallinn and the rest of Estonia goes to his opponents. Reform now indicates openly that it will no longer sleep with Savisaar. Interestingly, although he is still the surliest bastard in politics anywhere, Savisaar has reinvented himself, showing some media savvy and blogging (only in Estonian, though), and often surrounded by girls. If Letterman slept around, it's also remotely conceivable Savisaar is also doing well in this category.

He also has a sideline cooperating with Putin's party in Russia and meeting with Russian regional officials and infrastructure bosses -- very unusual for an Estonian politician. Perhaps he is being groomed for a second-in-command post in an autonomous territory.

Besides pursuing this sideline, there's talk of him making a bid for the presidency, and the Estonian, not the Russian one. Personally, I don't quite understand it -- it's not like the presidency is some sort of rotating lifetime achievement award.

The narrative seems to be less patriotic than the culmination to some sort of personal revenge saga. But with Savisaar, the political damage to him always appeared to be self-inflicted, so the premise of the revenge saga would appear to be lost on many.

REVIEW: Sushi Cat

2009-10-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

As we entered this manga-themed hole-in-the-wall on Roosikrantsi, I made a comment about the pink scooter parked out front, asking, "is that just decor?" and my wife heard two words that are homonymous with "decor" even though that would not make any sense in the context. She has a mind in the gutter even when we are indoors, but that sort of set the tone.

On the screen inside were music videos, but instead of ho's or 1980s retrospectives, all featured chorus lines or dance squads of Japanese schoolgirls in uniform, some acting underage, some actually around the federal age of consent in Japan. The name of one ensemble was G-Child, which is somehow a pretty disturbing pairing though the whole thing does suggest that Japan is a possible if not the only asylum candidate for Polanski.

A similar revue of people dressed as schoolgirls than appeared in a short clip. I thought they were in drag until I realized the setting was the front entrance and the girls were in fact the employees of Sushi Cat. All of them attractive Nordic women, mind, but so leggy -- they can't do the nymphet thing without looking grotesque.

Anyway, vive la difference, I guess. The atmosphere was refreshingly different -- I've found places like the Narva mnt Silk to be very desolate. I enjoyed poring over a copy of the Hiragana Times (where little hiragana in superscript are written above kanji for people learning Japanese) and drinking warm sake at rock-bottom prices on this rainy day.

The magazine rack also had a Tallinn tourist brochure, all in Japanese, with a message from Edgar Savisaar, in which, if my limited Japanese serves me correctly, he talked about giving away free seaweed from the Bay of Tallinn and the Centre Party's plan for a Schoolgirl Video Resource Centre. I'm still glad I didn't vote for him.

The sushi (all offered as sets with different feline names from kitten to lion, $6-18) was good, even excellent, though the fish species are limited, even more than most places. Tuna was long-haul, of course, but still good, only it was somehow a little a bit more like good raw beef than fish. Salmon was fine, cold-smoked eel was excellent, with a lovely browned glace on its skin.

Sake and plum wine were not top-shelf but as said, cheap - less than a pint of beer at any pub in Tallinn.

The house threw in complimentary miso soup and tea. The miso was the best I've had, the tea had some sort of roasted sesame flavour going on.

ELECTION SPECIAL: The last piece of populism ever

2009-10-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

In a dream I had, a politician for a major party admonishes the population to vote.

He goes on for some time. Vote, or someone else will vote for you. Vote, or else face the dire consequences. You are a fascist if you don't vote. You must want a dictatorship, you dictatorship-lover. (He's basically hectoring the people now.) Vote or I'll pretend I have bananas in my ears at all other times. Vote, because this is the one big chance in a couple years we give you to influence what we do and who does it. We even gave you e-voting, so you could have a pretty interface to vote with -- and different ballot "skins".

Finally, he's fed up and says: Vote, or I will take your goddamn vote and give it to my opponent myself.

*

Well, well.

It's one of those absurd dreams. It isn't clear what party or country he's from. There was much cursing in the original dream -- perhaps influenced by In The Loop, which I saw recently, one of the most vicious films made about the military-industrial-bureaucratic complex. Still, the dream haunts me.

I can't take a call to vote seriously -- not when the vote takes place only every couple years, not when the politicians talk about "democracy," not when there is Internet in practically every home.

When I hear "vote!", I just hear desperation. A dying institution's fear of not making the quorum for credibility anymore.

I hear desperation and I hear inertia -- the force of our multiennial electoral habit, an atrophy of imagination thinking that we still necessarily need elected representatives, that it is intrinsically better to have middlemen.

We've all been taken in by the line (in all its variations) that conventional democracy is the lesser evil or the best of many bad options. It's one of the most insidious catchphrases of the modern age, I think. But is it even true anymore?

So who conducted the experiment that proved that letting people vote directly on the issues was more evil? And was that research government-funded?

We are told that the only other option besides dutifully voting is creeping dictatorship. Or, if the people were to be given the chance to vote on everything -- the original town hall ideal, for God's sake! -- anarchy would result. Mob rule.

I'm not so sure.

*

If you don't think everyone SHOULD vote (even every few years), that there should be a property ownership requirement, or that suffrage should only be extended to people with a certain amount of pigment, or that each vote should be multiplied by a IQ-based coefficient, do me a favor -- just quit reading after this section.

But then do me another favour and push just as consistently for constitutional change, too -- a repeal of all those famous lines about how all powers not expressly reserved for the government are devolved to the people, and an outright deletion of phrases like "we the people" from the world's basic laws. Replace with "some of us".

*

Now, I'm a fairly discerning citizen. I'm not Joe Stupid, but I'm not Joe Intelligentsia. I'm Joe the Translator. But so is everyone in a sense.

As a translator, I'm more urban professional than farmer, but I often have the situation in my work where I have to get immersed and become conversant in some horribly obscure subject that makes me feel that I should be wearing overalls, such as dosers in a grain hopper in a silo. At least it seems horribly obscure, but as I study it, eventually it becomes almost interesting, and proves, like all things in the universe, to be reducible to smaller units governed by logic.

I think deciding about life is within anyone's grasp.

People are smart these days, even the stupid ones.

We know that things are interrelated, and often we know exactly how things are interrelated, at least along our own segment of life. How a decision can impact other fields.

Yet we still have this situation where do the grunt work, then every couple years we are asked to give an oversimplified yes or no, and then let ourselves essentially be strapped to a corrupt structure with inscrutable clockwork. It starts winding down until the next elections. Occasionally we can call out public comments, or a cry like "Those poor people in that country! I'm not sure we should have killed them!" But really, everything takes place in the halls of power.

I'd rather play with time bombs than strap myself to such a political machine.

*

Maybe there's consolation to be taken here, that in all that proverbial singing in the shower that's been going on the last ten years -- the now-pointless-seeming Usenet debates and flame wars, the wry comments on Facebook, the concise takes on Twitter -- the public has been honing their rhetorical and thinking skills.

Maybe it's a necessary process.

But patience is wearing thin. People are ready, politicians are getting obsolete, but they're not ready for change.

Ultimately, though it is a bit of an ultimatum, a key argument for direct democracy is that electoral system isn't making politicians more ethical or better. Many are highwaymen. Another few decades, they'll just be thugs and murderers.

*

Though some elections are apparently being held this week here, this isn't really about Estonia.

Estonia is a perfectly ordinary, not-so-little, fairly innovative nation. Like any Western country, it's not a democracy, but a republic, in this case with a two-party system -- well, with a few half-weights to make the scales tip in one direction or another to make things interesting in a slightly different configuration from the last election.

Here, too, the Internet is king, revolutionizing everything from banking to data retrieval, not to mention being a powerful social networking tool in the name of "democracy". Here, too, not a single substantive change has taken in the direction of actual direct democracy.

We have a situation where the Internet can be used to sell things, make things look pretty, get incredibly accurate and comprehensive information.

The thing is, there's no doubt it's a quantifiable, verifiable medium. Look how much of it is free, powered by advertising, while in the outside world, things are far more fuzzy and expensive.

But the Internet still isn't used on a daily or even weekly basis by citizens to vote. That is mind-boggling.

**

If you look at certain other Western countries, any sort of electoral reform can start seeming pretty hopeless. Some may even deny electronic voting is possible, citing security concerns.

That's right, the same Internet that allows government to get a pretty good idea of who is who and doing what is declared unreliable as a means of measuring results if the people are using their free will.

Because what if the people overthink their decision? What if someone -- other than the government -- sways their vote? Horrors -- a decentralized system of people voting inside their homes all the time -- why, why, it's practically asking for skewed results and stolen elections, isn't it?

Other countries -- the ones that proved that e-voting works - see it as the end of the road and crow about it. The only possible progress now can be in introducing new technologies -- now you can vote (once every couple years, of course) from your cell phone. Now from your Kindle, unless you were just reading propaganda. Who knows what it might be next year. Your toaster.

We need a country to show that the Town Hall ideal of decision-making is possible. This is where this post could be about Estonia - in a positive way.

Look at the positive press Finland has received this last week for announcing - somewhat meaninglessly, in my opinion -- that all citizens have the right to a broadband connection.

Couple that right with the right to vote on actual initiatives and issues over that same 1 mbit/s connection...and it would be revolutionary.

*

The practical ways to implement direct democracy are many -- starting from reserving half an hour each evening to vote on the issues. Think of it as jury duty, except legislative duty. And it would be voluntary.

There will be a lot of concern about who will set up the issues in an articulated format.

It's not my place to outline how. I'm a populist. And it's way beyond the scope of this piece. But the person who takes these ideas and runs with them has a Nobel waiting for them, and I mean that sincerely.

If society can boil down an electoral choice to two candidates who were determined financially, I have faith that it will also be able to boil down important matters to the actual issues in the form of many yes-no questions.

Oh sure, there will be functionaries, special interests will not disappear, nor will would-be politicians -- functionaries, agenda-setters.

But as the first step, the public can take over the actual voting on issues from their representatives, who will remain in the same capacity. Except (think of members of the US electoral college) they will have to vote the way their constituency feels. No other choice. To otherwise would be a deep political taboo.

Above all, I have faith that ultimately, direct democracy will be far more efficient, better for the environment and the planet, the world community, than the current wasteful system of campaigns and candidates and artificial energy whipped up based on a false choice. It will also have value added in that it will actually lead to a citizenry that is even more politically intelligent.

That is my other dream.

AD COPY: Alienation

2009-10-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Rebane:

Here is the revised copy. I agree: the first line IS fairly flat -- I understand you wanted something with more pop than "one more place to shop". But I think it could work and if you continue reading, you'll see that it leads immediately into the whole consumerist dystopia theme, which we thought was fairly clever. Thank you -- I agree, the rest of our work is top-notch!

Best,
Kris
BB&W Ad Agency

PS. In light of today's mishap in the cinema, our team came up with an addition to the rotating slogans: "Solaris. Now with even more cool exposed ductwork." What do you think?
__________
BROCHURE:

The new Solaris Centre in Tallinn -- just one more place to consume merchandise.

Or is it?

Don't be fooled: it's not a shopping mall. Solaris is an entertainment and lifestyle centre.

Ah, but whose entertainment and lifestyle: yours or that of the sociologists on a distant planet who are monitoring you as you shop for the contents for your next round of landfills?

We're not telling.

Sure, we may not throw in a good mood for free like the competition, but we do promise self-insight. And that is far more valuable and unsettling.

**

Don't take the entertainment and lifestyle bit too seriously, of course -- we've also gone to great lengths to make Solaris recognizable as a shopping mall.

When we built Solaris, we started with a building that was once called a Marxist-Leninist cathedral. We tore as much of it down as we could. Then we contracted it out to the lowest bidder and rebuilt it at a cut rate.

Like the Viru Centre shopping center next door, there's a food store anchor tenant on the 0-level, designer goods stores on the next two levels, and a large book store.

Cinamon, which we'd again like to point out is a pun and not a misspelling, offers a selection of many of the same films shown at Coca-Cola Plaza, and modular construction techniques.

On the upper levels, speciality shops and a second, arthouse cinema are elusively inaccessible, manifesting an artistically ephemeral quality, because we didn't get them ready in time for the opening of the rest of the centre.

That's right -- in a world of brand-new shiny obsolescent things, we went one step further and opened something that is so brand-new that it isn't even finished.

Like the chefs in the foreign-chain eateries, the open concept extends to the glass elevators, where you can catch a glimpse of workmen welding important metal pieces and counterweight assemblies.

"We gave these people jobs," is what we are trying to tell you. "Look at how we're working to get things right -- even on your time."

Tired of bored security guards at other malls? The lack of signposts or a site map in Solaris also encourages you to talk to our staff.

*

When you enter Solaris, you're not in the darkest autumn of the recession anymore. Safe inside the stable, 1980s-style hull -- in one of the cafes, shops or construction areas -- you'll be anchored in some sunnier cove of the galactic sea, where jobs are plentiful and distances are compressed by warp drive.

We carry almost the complete catalog of a small southern Estonian organic dairy. And then we fly in Ben and Jerry's every week. Not because it's better and Estonian dairies can't, but because we can, and Estonian dairies won't.

You'll still be puzzling that last sentence over as you ride the escalator to the level 3 food court, where Lido -- Estonia's Latvian Nokia -- brings you a food court unto itself, with 156 comfort food options, all labelled with a price and a weight in grams. How do the servers know that they are giving you the right weight? Do they have bionic scales? No -- Solaris Centre's variable gravity environment automatically makes adjustments to bring the mass they dish out to the proper weight.

Solaris. Now with even more visible ductwork.

Hope and pay

2009-10-10T01:22:00.001-07:00

By now, you've heard a range of speculation about why or how Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps you've added to the discourse yourself. I haven't yet heard anyone try to tie the bombing of the moon to the story, and frankly, I'm relieved. I wouldn't have put it past anyone. You see, people lack hope. They will scoff at the possibility that crashing space junk might raise a plume of water. But as we know, the moon came out of the Pacific Ocean -- so what's the chance it isn't at least coated with moisture. One day there will be a water pipeline to Earth. And you can be sure a Nobel in science will be waiting for the guy who initiates the brainstorming process. Then, of course, the hard work of figuring out how to install the flexible couplings on the pipe so it doesn't break off when the Earth spins and the Moon doesn't. That's why you've got to have hope, I say. Look where faith got us during the Bush years.

Some of the Obama/Nobel theories listed below occurred to me; others are slightly more sophisticated. I just wanted to lay them out here in one place so we can see how ridiculous it all is. I mean, they can't all be true, right? Wouldn't the far simplest explanation be that it was a message of hope? It's a beautiful concept. You might still be saying: "Hope, that's not for me! That's wishy-washy stuff." Or you might say, "Hope, huh. Nope, I prefer faith." Yeah, well, think of hope as faith's mathematical and economic cousin. Hope is faith with a college degree. Think of hope as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we hope hard enough, and pay... That's right, I said pay, not pray. In fact, I say we should create an InTrade market right now that Obama will be successful and pay into it. My question is, why would anyone bet against Obama? I see Obama as a futures derivative. We got it all wrong last autumn: it's not the people who make derivatives, it's the people who bet against them. Our biggest enemies in fact are the speculators who would bet against Obama. Let's put it another way, if I created a derivative based on your chances of being alive tomorrow, would you not invest in it? And if you knew Obama was your only way out of the fix we've all got ourselves into...well, it doesn't take a Nobel prize winner in math to figure it all out.

Anyway, the other alternatives in the order in which I thought of them or heard them, for pure entertainment.

1. The Nobel Committee is brainwashed!!

2. Obama made a personal secret trip to Oslo to lobby for his case before the Nobel Committee.

3. Obama promised to vote for Norway in Eurovision. (OK, a bit silly. The US doesn't even compete in Eurovision. Then again, who would have thought the US would elect a black president?)

4. Event marketing bait. Rather than wanting to increase Obama's moral authority, the Nobel Committee actually wanted Obama present at the award ceremony to increase TV ratings. Actually awarding the prize to Obama is the best way to ensure this.

5. "Peace" is to be understood in the Orwellian sense of the Nobel War Prize. After all, Arafat and Kissinger have won the Peace Prize.

6. The Nobel Committee is crazy -- crazy like a fox. It's trying to send Obama on a guilt trip for doing so little (nothing, actually) in the hope -- there's that word again -- that he'll shape up.

7. Alfred Nobel's will says the Peace Prize shall go to the person "who SHALL HAVE done the most" for a number of good causes. Being non-native speakers of English, the members misunderstood this to mean that the Nobel is to be awarded for future deeds, or that it is to be given to the person who is ordained by the Lord to have done the most when all is said and done.

8. Nobel's will specifically mentions "abolition and reduction of standing armies". Drone airstrikes on villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan have nothing to do with standing armies and represent a step toward automated warfare. More civilians have been killed in 2009 under Obama than were killed in all of 2008 under Bush, and thus Obama is doing the best work for fraternity between the nations.

9. The Nobel Committee is a wise, cognizant body that realizes there's not much that can be done to prevent the US from starting to bully Iran, and figures that it might as well sacrifice credibility by awarding the Nobel to Obama in the chance that it might postpone the carnage.

10. Russia requested it for unspecified reasons. They're always so enigmatic.

Mastering the art of joy

2009-10-06T11:07:00.001-07:00

(maybe some spoilers, but the food won't be)

There's a scene in Julie & Julia where Julie (the contemporary woman) is having lunch with her girlfriends and she's suddenly mortified at how grotesquely plastic they are, trying to "fit her in" to their schedules with their walls of PDAs and cell phones. Julie and her husband are in comparison pleasantly mild, normal people -- they don't even live in Manhattan! Commercial audiences are supposed to identify with them -- I've probably seen characters like Julie and her husband in dozens of 1990s and 2000s films. Yet over the course of the movie I slowly soured on them just as Julie soured on her overambitious friends. To paraphrase Julie herself, I wondered: is it OK to not like these people (Julie and especially her husband)? Is that what the film-maker intended?

I'd be interested in hearing what others think, but I think yes, it was what was intended. Or at least, the film can work on two levels: as a pure ode to cooking and food but also as a deeper comment on how insipid and derivative modern life can be, from our little micropublishings to the void, even to sex lives. And it points to a very simple one-word recipe for making it less so: joy.

Julia Child and her husband would almost be material for a full-length biopic, especially with the good acting and the Streep factor, so the whole second Julie story line is pure conceptual art -- with allowances made for the possibility that it was a commercial calculation to try to draw younger audiences. The risk pays off, the two threads are woven well.

You can practically tabulate the contrasts: Julia Child is all about joy and "freedom to"; Julie is all about "freedom from". Julie lives in Queens and feels trapped because she's not in Manhattan, even though she wouldn't be comfortable with the lifestyle that would presumably entail, either. If Julia were in Queens, of course, we'd see her shopping at some ethnic greengrocers and making strangers drop their guard on the A-train. Watching Julie struggle to channel her muse, it's all gentle fun, with some physical comedy, but there's certainly dramatic irony watching her misplaced determination and conceit at becoming a writer (by riding on Julia's coattails!).

Julie & Julia has some pointed things to say about ideal husbands. There's a world of difference between Julia Child's husband, whom we want to cheer -- not just because he defies our expectations that be will be a stolid 1950s male or chauvinist or milquetoast -- and Julie's husband, nothing culpably chauvinistic, but always seen just eating or loafing or providing a verbal veneer of support, a thick-skinned loser who's got it made and is ready at the first minor quarrel to walk out (!). In his own way, this guy is actually as bad as the DiCaprio character in Revolutionary Road and I wanted to throw tomatoes at him, if this were not a waste of good food. (I've become sensitized to movie portrayals of schlubs of all stripe. A man who never cooks is already highly suspicious to me, even if he's just celluloid.)

If I had one misgiving about this movie, it might be that the Julie side of the quotient (and by extension many members of the target audience) still might not have "got it" at the end, as a still star-struck Julie, having finished her derivative re-enactment of all of Julia's recipes, makes a Graceland-style pilgrimage to Julia's kitchen and deposits a perishable offering on the shrine to the chef she never met. The film-makers use this to set up another great segue, smooth as hollandaise, to a final Julia-in-the kitchen scene, but I have to wonder about what Julie is thinking.

LEAN TIMES: Kitchen advice column

2009-10-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on a large quantity of oil which I don't want to go rancid. I expect to do a lot of baking this winter, so I was thinking of hydrogenating it. But I've heard that it's hard to do at home and not that good for the health?

Far from it. Don't be put off by what you read in the news about trans fats; when done right, hydrogenation can improve the quality and taste of oil and keep it in a waxy solid form that will last years, even when used daily for deep-frying.

Long a mainstay in the food industry, more and more consumers are choosing to harden their own fat at home, especially with the recession crimping food budgets. Although there are companies and labs that will hydrogenate fats for you, prices vary and you can't be sure that they specialize in culinary hydrogenation -- equipment being used now to hydrogenate a winter supply of oil may have been used for methanol in the spring or petrochemicals in the summer.

At the same time, many hobbyists have found that fat hardening can be a feasible and rewarding weekend project. Not only does DIY save money on by-the-gallon batch jobs, people who have a favorite flavoured oil they don't use every day might opt to harden it into an "heirloom margarine" for special occasions for generations to come.

To turn that messy, unwieldy oil into that beautiful, lustrous hard fat fit for the table or the next batch of melt-in-your-mouth (and only in your mouth) confection, you'll need to pass hydrogen through it at extremely high pressure. The two essential pieces of equipment are a hydrogen tank (here zeppelin hobbyist shops can be a good resource) and a piston compressor that is capable of compressing the gas to 30-40 bar. That may sound like a tall order, but if you live in a university town or larger city, you may be able to scrounge around the academic labs -- also keep your eyes peeled when a university advertises a new equipment procurement; sometimes piston compressors are disposed of.

Some contrarians like the New York Times' Mark Bittman say dihydronaphthalene or dihydroanthracene can be used just as well for hydrogenation, but most feel the pure bottled hydrogen gas gives the best flavour.

When Jamie Oliver "hydrogenates for his mates", he uses a Haug piston compressor with a nickel catalyst. Emeril -- who makes a "Cajun Crisco" from local artisan oils, prefers ruthenium and a much lower pressure. Whichever recipe you try, remember to play it safe. A mass spectrometer, if you have one in your kitchen, can be a good way to check to see if you have hydrogenated the right chemical bonds, and that the output is not toxic. Although it's inevitable that most of the catalysts and residues will end up in your first couple batches, don't be overly worried about these -- just be sure to use them only in lower-fat recipes. Most people find that their second or third batch is already quite successful.

As well as delicious.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION, Part 1: Indian Camp

2009-09-29T03:49:00.000-07:00

When I said we were going to an Indian Camp to be held in Estonia in July, it drew a "huh?" or two from people on both sides of the Atlantic. And when the event was first described to me, I thought immediately to the South American Indians who play panpipe Muzak on city squares and shopping streets -- the only Native Americans with a recognizable presence in Europe -- some sort of festival and craft market, I guessed.

It quickly became clear that this was a more spiritual type of retreat. The people who were recommending that we take part in the four-day camp had previously led us on an interesting experience. About three years ago, we drove to a farmhouse outside Haapsalu where our host did what only can be described in the funk genre as "took us higher", going on and on about energy, even giving us the readout in some proprietary unit of his own devising of exactly how much energy we were generating. Yes, it was highly weird, and I am very unreceptive, but he did have some hypnotic power and was surrounded by a coterie of young women who had made the trip from Tallinn, they lolled on the carpet before him and I found myself wondering whether at that moment, in a nation that is officially the least religious in Europe, other people in farmhouses were similarly rapt. Estonia has had a suprising number of homegrown prophets and sect leaders over the years. In any case, the guy who led the session hasn't appeared in the news yet; long may he continue to meter energy.

The most obvious religious overtone at Indian Camp was the fact that most of the Native American guests were ministers or lay leaders with the Native American Church. It couldn't have further from a missionary event, though. It was a down-to-earth, gossamer overlay of humility and respect and gratitude that was never intrusive.

I think we were lucky to have caught Indian Camp at an interesting point in its 13-year evolution. It started back in 1996, when a couple of well-traveled and open-minded Estonian folk musicians, the Urb Brothers, first started holding ceremonies in the Estonian woods with Native American friends of theirs. Besides a change of location or two to Yet Another Unbelievably Unspoiled Place, the happening hasn't strayed too far from its spontaneous and communal roots.

Certain requisite elements like a modest registration fee and wristband (friendship bracelet) have inevitably crept in, but it is still very decentralized, with no strict schedules. Most of the 70-80 participants were very sincere, perhaps sincere to a fault -- making the curmudgeonly folks (and even the slightly wry people) stand out. And there was a slightly bombastic sense of self-mythology, with participants always seeming to be referencing the gathering's own gestaltic energy. And the definite existence of an Inner and Outer Circle... I speculated whether, after the official close of the camp, there would be an actual peyote ceremony for the Inside Circle and people being groomed for the Inside Circle. But I never found out, being way on the outside.

**

There's more to the Native American-Estonian axis than just some spaced-out Rainbow Gathering scented with sage and an exotic cultural overtone. I saw the event as a straight-up world council between First Nations. On one side of a big circle, you have the Estonians, with their ancient presence in the country and strange language full of distant echoes of steppes and land bridges, an indigenous people, and a highly successful one by most standards, with their own nation-state... but perhaps they've started to forget their roots. Fifty years of shabby materialism followed by 20 years of not-very-affluent consumerist society will do that to you, I suppose.

Native Americans in the US are of course a very different case. My very limited impression is that they are exiled to huddlements across the parched West and form a ragged diaspora in other, more populated places. But anyone who has survived to adulthood in one piece seems to have a extremely ethno-conscious mindset.

Mexico is a different case altogether. I chuckled when Henry Oso Quintero, a poet from New Mexico who was a guest of the camp, referred to himself as a member of the "Apache and Mexican" tribes, but he explained later that he was pretty serious; mestizo pride is serious business. Almost everyone in Estonia is a mestizo, of course, but I guess European identity has trumped it.

**

After the initial gathering of the tribes at Indian Camp, volunteers were divided into three groups, two of which set to felling saplings and gathering fieldstones for the sweat lodges. The third group erected the tipis -- the traditional hearth and home -- but it's safe to say tis Indian Camp centred around the sweat lodges on the beach, followed by the Estonian farmhouse where three meals a day were served, and very little happened at the tipis, though we passed the tipis each time we walked between the farmhouse and the beach.

If you asked people why they were at Indian Camp, the most common answer was "to sweat".
What's interesting is that everyone from Tierra del Fuego to the Bering Strait and across again to the Livonian coast apparently speaks the language of the sauna or sweat lodge. This was news to me. While no doubt familiar with 110 degree days, I didn't expect a Hopi to be able to withstand a 200-degree sauna -- I steeled myself for the same sense of disappointment that I get when upon entering a commercial steam room in a American hotel -- but it quickly became clear that these Indians could have been old crusty Finns from the north woods.

The main differences are that the sweat lodge is a spiritual, almost religious ceremony. Estonians revere the sauna in their own way, but all too often sauna is an occasion for "beerchat", as organizer Priit Kuusik put it.

The differences, and some of these apply to the camp in general:

1) Participants don't sit unidirectionally on pine boards with a view of bevelled pine boards. They sit in a circle on damp sand in a dark wigwam draped with canvas.

2) Everything happens in circles (as it does anywhere in Indian camp), and within the circle, everything travels clockwise.

3) The rocks are believed to have an animist life force and are only used once.

4) No alcohol (as indeed, anywhere in the camp).

5) Lots of hugging.

One of the Natives led each ceremony in each of the four lodges, anyone can speak at will. But it's so damn hot, and the atmosphere is so profoundly charged with the sacred, that the words come out different. After two rounds, I wanted out. I wanted to say, "Let me out of here," but what everyone heard was, "I feel the urge to immerse myself in the waters to temper myself for what lies ahead."

Good God -- I could never be a cult leader; I couldn't take myself seriously with pretentious mock-Tudor pronouncements like this. I think Henry Oso Quintero laid a good-natured hand on my shoulder and said, "You'll be fine, dude. Stick it out."

Which I did. But I have to say it was the most grueling sauna I have been in, except for the time in Pirita TOP when someone who looked like Alexander Karelin, the Russian wrestler, came in, looking like he had recently been wrought at the elemental forge, and basically extinguished a 85 degree sauna singlehandedly without asking permission to douse the rocks.

Here the spiritual was integrated with the physical exertion. It was a passion play. When you needed to duck down to cooler climes, even the position you assumed was one of genuflection.

**

Like any event, it was a human carnival, too.

After the people who said they were there "to sweat" (we told each other what we were here for the talking circle; I was one of the "to sweat folks"), I'd say about one-quarter of people were there for sentimental-mystical reasons. For some reason, these people also generally cried a lot when speaking. Tears of joy and gratitude at being alive and catharsis poured down their face, or I hope they were that kind of tears, though I wasn't always sure. Generally they used their time in the talking circle to self-reference Indian Camp. This frustrated me, because one thing I always took away from any sort of group gathering was the Unspoken Thing. It always seemed to me that as soon you started talking about the power you were generating, the power vanished (unless you were metering psychic energy like the guy in Haapsalu). If I had a T-shirt that said, "It's the Unspoken Thing, stupid", I would wear it. Except people wouldn't see it in the dark.

Oddly, probably 1 in 10 participants were there "just to see an Indian" in the flesh, to see what they looked like. I found this a bit superficial, a bit odd -- but then again, I myself had driven hundreds of miles out of my way to pass through reservations in the American West to see what Indians really lived like -- to see the side of Indian culture I didn't see on the pawnshops on Main Street in Small Town America. (Incidentally, it looked a lot like the back alley behind the pawnshop.)

One young sporty guy was there for "military reasons". I have no idea what this was about. When it was his turn to talk in the talking circle, he talked in graphic detail about some obscure bloody battle that had been fought outside Stalingrad. I'm not sure if he was trying to inject a humorous note of crazed militarism, Merry Prankster-style, into the proceedings, or if he was just crazy. Then I noticed that he was hanging out with my wife on practically every occasion, and I started thinking about violence.

Then there were two young guys there with innocent moonfaces and primal Finno-Ugric names -- something like Seppo and Lembitu, something like that, a Finnic version of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Although I suspected that they were a bit slow, I had to admire their sincerity and openness. In the talking circle, Seppo talked about how he would do "any task or work the camp would see fit to assign him -- without any argument from me!" My impression that they were "artistic" was countered dramatically when my wife picked up a copy of a bookstore newsletter that someone had brought to the camp and there was a pictre of Seppo and Lembitu -- the article said that these guys were two of Estonia's few Indigo Children. I don't know if you know what an Indigo Child is -- I was unclear on the concept myself and thought it had something to do with being born on August 20, 1991 -- but apparently they are Homo futurus, the centre of the new world order, conduits for the very kind of energy and synergy that Indian Camp was supposed to channel... Which was sort of cool, it seemed to parallel every "meek shall inherit" messianic narrative I had heard, as they were very humble and likeable people in their own way.

Laughagainistan

2009-09-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

Last summer, the blockbuster of the year, Lafghanistan, made you split your sides. This winter, get ready to laugh again, and even longer. Laughagainistan: Director's Cut...

Scene I: Operation Crevice press conference

(a crowded briefing room, cameras pop and flare)

BRITISH GENERAL: Philip McCrevice. (Laughter) No really -- Philip McCrevice. Could we have some order in here? As I was saying, yes, the operation was designed by Philip McCrevice --

(Laughter.)

-- and Philip McCrevice happens to be one of the best operations designers in Britain.

AMERICAN LIAISON: He's worked with Benetton. Did the Lynndie England ads. Very edgy stuff.

BRITISH GENERAL: When we requested a plan to penetrate presumed terrorist networks in this country, logistics had only one thing to say to us: 'Philip McCrevice, sir.'

AMERICAN LIAISON (nodding): Philip McCrevice.

BRITISH GENERAL: And we followed their advice. And it has been mutually satisfying.

(uproarious laughter)

JOURNALIST #1 (wiping tears from his eyes): Sir, how did this latest arrest go down? Was the public ever at risk?

BRITISH GENERAL: Our crack team apprehended Amon Dul at an upscale fish and chips restaurant. Mr. Dul was in the act of surreptitiously emptying out a basket of complimentary matches by the door. I should note the investigation was brought to a climax by the Home Office's own Operation Panopticome, which had filmed Mr. Dul buying socks earlier that day in an area even we did not know we had cameras in.

AMERICAN LIAISON: The socks were not in his foot size.

BRITISH GENERAL: We believe that he intended to use the matches to set fire to his socks in a public place. Or that he intended to extract a volatile ingredient from the after-dinner mints, which were also stolen from the restaurant, and use the socks as a wicking device. It could also have been that..

AMERICAN LIAISON: We treated it on the same level of seriousness as last month's incident where Bed, Bath & Beyond received suspiciously large orders for potentially flammable soft cushions. As in the case of that Pillow Fight episode, I believe we were one step ahead of the public; that is, we firmly believe the public was never at risk from the Sock Bomber.

(murmuring from the press corps)

AMERICAN LIAISON: One at a time, please.

JOURNALIST #2: There's been much concern about blurring of the boundaries between military and civilian authorities. Should the Sock Bomber should be brought before a military tribunal?

BRITISH GENERAL: We're aware of that, and that's why we've taken action in the most stringent, meticulous and relentless civil instance available to us -- libel court in London.

AMERICAN LIAISON (holding a finger to his ear): Speaking of slander, I'm just hearing this from the networks. An Operation Crevice informant named Abdullah Jizza has just led to the arrest of a Guatemalan national for talking. This is breaking news, folks.

JOURNALIST #2: Is the Guatemalan also involved in the sock bomb plot?

BRITISH GENERAL (looks over at the liaison, then puts his finger to his ear as well): No, he was talking. (Pause.) He was...yes. We're waiting for a Spanish interpreter from the Americans to see what he is saying. He worked as a dishwasher at the fish and chips restaurant. Perhaps 'arrest' would not be the right word, but he is being held preventively for his own safety, as is Mr. Jizza, because my colleague here has just publicly disclosed his name.

AMERICAN LIAISON: That's Jizza. Yes. J-I-Z -- More on that as it develops. We're out of time, folks.

(The men hurry together, holding hands, to a waiting helicopter.)

(Camera zooms out to reveal the press conference and helicopter are part of a film set.)

DIRECTOR: OK, that's a wrap. We'll do the chopper crash first thing tomorrow.

NEXT: Scene 2 -- Helmand's Mayonnaise!

LEAKED: Draft lesson plan for Obama's speech

2009-09-06T07:08:00.001-07:00

Alternative Study-Pak
Menu of Classroom Activities
President Obama's Address to Students Across America
September 8, 2009

BEFORE THE SPEECH:

What landmark events in national history do you associate with presidents reading to schoolchildren in the first half of September? Do you remember what the book was and what happened in the end? Why not?

Now think about speaking. What landmark events do you associate with presidents delivering eloquent addresses to schoolchildren in the first half of September? What are your feelings regarding today's address?

Do you think the President, in his speech today, will mention the educational success of the troops fighting in Afghanistan? Which do you think he is more likely to mention: the educational success of the troops currently fighting terrorism in Afghanistan or the educational success of the troops being pulled out of Iraq? Which do you think will have greater educational success?

What elements in his speech will be similar to a speech delivered by the former President, if he were to address students in a similar situation? What might be different?

On the same topic, do you think a former president's supporters are bitter about not coming up with the idea of speaking to schoolchildren? Do you think President Obama will try to assuage such potential bitterness in his speech in an eloquent and diplomatic manner, or simply move forward proactively?

Speeches before Congress are often followed by a rebuttal. Should there be a rebuttal to President Obama's speech? Why not?

Do you find that the above questions are divisive and counterproductive? Do they resonate with you or make you uncomfortable?

Do you think the President will be eloquent?

Will he be equal parts inspiring and eloquent, somewhat more eloquent than inspiring, or vice versa?

Finally, what do you think your President will say about personal goals? Make a large print sign with your personal educational goals on it and post it on the wall.

AFTER THE SPEECH:

Did your President address personal goals? If not, take down the signs with the personal goals and tear them up.

Did your President talk about collective goals? If so, make a new sign with the keywords
from that part of the speech, and post them in the classroom.

You will now be read quotations. In your opinion, how likely it is that your President may have said something like this in the past?

1. "Ask not what your homeland can do for you but what you can do for your homeland."

(End of section.)

What, if anything, did you disagree with in your President's speech? (Instructions: Do not attempt to merely rephrase excerpts more eloquently, which is impossible, but think about the content.)

Imagine you were president. What would you say in your speech? Make a large print sign with an excerpt from your speech and post it on the classroom wall.

Now tear it up.

Official guide to signing books of condolences for Estonian soldiers killed in Afghanistan

2009-08-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

(In connection with a possible surge in coalition deaths in Afghanistan beyond the current 140% of the US death rate in the conflict, here are some guidelines to keep the system of electronic message boards under better control, preventing misuse or exploitation as a forum for political opinions.)

DO'S

1. DO keep your posting short and simple, especially if you don't know what else to write. "Deep sympathies", or "my condolences to loved ones." Imagine yourself in a receiving line at a funeral of someone you perhaps didn't know really well: you have 5-10 seconds to express sympathies, then move on.

2. DO avail yourself of the automatic condolence book update service, under the "Määratud sissekanne kaastunderaamatusse" link. When a casualty occurs during the summer or Christmas holidays, your name and your short message will automatically be added.

3. DO make blanket statements with a link too tenuous or indirect to be categorically proved or disproved. Not only do they add a sentimental touch, they may very well coincide with the official government rationale for the Estonian involvement. "They died fighting so that Estonia can be secure thousands of miles away." "No one could be capable of underestimating your sacrifice." BUT: see #1 under "Don'ts".

4. DO quote the foreign minister and other government officials, even and especially if unattributed (see #4 under "Don'ts")

5. DO make references to the continuity of the operation, to keep morale high. WWTCOS -- What would the men's commanding officer say?

DON'TS

1. DON'T inadvertently say anything with a deeply ambiguous ironic content. "Only when an entire monument fills with their names, will we realize the scale of their contribution." "When I visit the monument to the Estonian soldiers killed in Afghanistan..." And don't say "boys", unless you are a member of the same company as the fallen soldiers. This is especially the case when a fallen solder looks 15, or has not had raised a family, or is the father of young boys.

2. DON'T introduce vengeance themes. "Deep sympathies. We shall avenge their deaths on the sons of Afghanistan." The members of the coalition are professional associates and are not fighting against the people of Afghanistan, and there is no personal animosity. It was an occupational accident.

3. DON'T mention the Afghan people at all, if in doubt. "Condolences to the families, of the comrades, the families of any innocents caught in the crossfire and the people who found themselves fighting on the wrong side and their loved ones and relatives." This is too morally complex, and not the time and place. See #1 under "Do's".

4. DON'T make reference by name to Estonian government officials, or any officials or commanding officers.

5. DON'T make reference to or express thanks for your visa waiver.

REVIEW: A Kahunaburger Eastern

2009-08-23T06:06:00.001-07:00

1. Most capsule reviews will tell you that Inglourious Basterds, although it's an "amoral fantasy" etc., centers on a Jewish American special unit. I guess that must sell tickets, but I'm not sure it's quite accurate. That's like saying Pulp Fiction centers on a briefcase or a watch. The basterds are just one of the stories (they're introduced in and give their name to chapter 2), don't log an outright majority of screen time, and are among the most poorly-drawn of the characters. The joke is that you have this utterly implausible crack team of pros running around behind enemy lines, never quite with the programme -- now what recent occupation does that remind us of? Fanboy film critics compound or complete the joke by saying the movie follows the exploits of the unit, or in the case of Jewish critics, that it's specifically a Jewish revenge fantasy. Actually, Tarantino makes it pretty clear that two French people (one African, one Jewish) would have managed to end the war very well without the basterds.

2. While it's a mark of a great film to be many things to many, and it has a warm, happy ending (warm, certainly) I'm not sure it does a service to Jewish people. It makes me uneasy that it is warmly received (say, by Holocaust survivors) but doesn't even rise to the level of Jewsploitation cinema. This is Tokensploitation. There's nothing specifically Jewish about Aldo's men other than their swarthy looks, and that's not even a fair common denominator. Tellingly, there's not a single Jewish cultural reference (keep in mind this is Tarantino, the king of name-dropping). Actually, these are hardly even speaking roles. The image of Eli Roth with a depraved look in his eye, brandishing a baseball bat, may be as classic as Jack Nicholson baring his teeth in The Shining. (Visually, I also thought of Les Claypool smacking craniums with an aluminum baseball bat. Dimwitted rather than heroically determined came to mind.) The well-drawn heroine Shoshana, who is Jewish, is more of a general French Resistance trope.

3. This is a fucking great movie nonetheless. It may be Jewvenile in terms of how it decides to reduce Jews to ciphers, but it's not juvenile. There are long stretches of incredibly sustained suspenseful dialogue. And ascending beyond spaghetti Western or Quarter Pounder European, Tarantino has a keen eye for period detail, for Europe as it really is/was -- at least in terms of manners and mannerisms, if the buildings and sets may look a little too stylized. Tarantino is also still himself, as evidenced by his method of dispensing with troublesome subplots that were initially main plots: everyone in the room dies. I've become a little hypersensitive to movie violence in recent years, but nothing here seemed too much compared to Kill Bill. Hey, naybe some will even be put off by the fact that only a couple seconds of the 2:30:00 is devoted to real-time scalping. Trailers are so damn misleading.

REVIEW: National Museum

2009-08-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

We were staying in a house on Veski tänav in Tartu and had an hour to kill before catching the mid-day train to Tallinn on Aug. 20, so we went to the National Museum, hoping it would be open on the public holiday. It was not only open but admission was free.

I had never been to the permanent exhibition and I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't static, stuffy or cramped, but relatively hands-on, with hardy agricultural implements that withstood lots of use back in the day and can still generally be touched, probably to the benefit of the venerable wood. In only a few places (generally later in history) was it explicitly prohibited to walk amongst the items. So you had a situation where you could climb a ladder into a loft in a one-room Estonian barn dwelling, but if you ventured too far (as my son did) into a 1939 interior you would set off an alarm. We tried grinding our own flour from grains, and carded wool, which led to the assumption that we could also touch the yarn on a spinning wheel in the next room, but it set off another low-volume alarm. Luckily it only drew a smile from the gentleman at the desk.

A second pleasant aspect was the varied method of presentation -- mittens, hats and other items under plate glass in sliding drawers, which is perfect for kids given their obsessions with opening and closing things in sequence; and 365 wooden cards on a wheel of time, each with a folk saying related to that particular tine of year. September 15 -- my birthday -- "cabbage will still grow enough by moonlight to break through a piece of yarn". I knew I should have still planted cabbage last month.

Except for the two or three 20th century home interiors, it was very agrarian, and what we saw was basically a complement to the country's rural architecture museum, the Open Air Museum in Tallinn. Of course, that is what Estonian history mainly has been -- rural -- and even during the national renaissance from the 1860s, the efforts centered on collecting and preserving the old folkways.

Ah, but we're in another era now -- not 1869, not 1908, but more like the 1930s -- and things are changing for the bigger and for the more monumental, patriotic and centrally consolidated -- and did I say, hopefully for the better -- including the National Museum. Given how time flies, the next time I visit the permanent exhibition, it might be in a big-budget modern building on the outskirts of town. I will wear a hand bracelet and be able to swipe and bookmark exhibits to send information to my personal museum web page, play interactive quizzes, track the kids on a screen so they don't wander too far. All of which is very cool.

It is the third of three big symbolic national sites to become a reality -- one at a time, years apart, because the Estonian budget is limited. The first was the Academy of Music in central Tallinn ten years ago. I believe that everyone is happy with the building functionally, although the building is not ageing well on the outside.

The second was the big-budget, state-of-the-art KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn's Kadriorg Park, which is very impressive architecturally in terms of concept and execution (although it got some criticism for buried too deep in the park). It was designed by a Finn, which is historically appropriate, as they have played a role in Tallinn architecture. The building is limestone and greenish copper and will look fine in years to come.

The idea is for the National Museum to be modeled after the British Museum, the central museum in the country and a big tourism destination. The basic agreements are in place -- it will remain a Tartu institution (no one dares move the National Museum to Tallinn) and the soul of the nation and of the national renaissance is in Tartu. The plans are a a case of pure pre-recession budget and thinking. It was designed by foreign architects (the kind whose offices are located in a hyphenated megalopolis -- Tokyo-New York-Paris) with very little knowledge of Estonian particulars. In that sense it will be a more globalized product than the new Freedom Cross monument in Tallinn, which was only built by the foreign labour but was based on a very venerable Estonian design.

The design of the new National Museum building is, simply put, wacky and spaced-out. There's always been a strong ethnological research emphasis to the Museum, and well, the design ignores that blatantly. Otherwise, I can't decide whether the concept is appropriate or inappropriate to the Museum's mission. Some things are "love it or hate it"; this one is either "hate it or be mystified by it".

The design is based on the fact that there was once a military airfield here. The history of Raadi is basically this: it was the site of a big production estate with an especially fancy manor owned by wealthy Baltic Germans (colonizers), people dabbled in early aviation here (interesting historical side note), the Estonian cavalry was based here (good use of a nice property), then the Soviets built one of the biggest strategic airfields in Eastern Europe (a cancer on the earth). The big bombers drank up a lot of fuel, and much of it was spilled, along with the concentrated nitric acid used to oxidize the alkaline component before fuelling. The lake would sometimes catch on fire. The soil is sand and gravel and two major aquifers run through the place, supplying Tartu's drinking water. Nuclear warheads were kept in the woods.

What bothers me that, if it is built, Estonians will again be defined by who they are not, by who they never were. I haven't seen elevations or drawings, but I am almost 100% sure the building will also be ugly -- a long linear concrete tunnel that represents an extension of the runway.

Restoring the old manor building to what it looked like before it was destroyed in 1944 would not be a viable option. Old buildings always had tiny rooms. And I guess it is fitting that a modest-looking but strategic site in a modest-looking but strategically-located country gets the national museum. But it's still more than a little contrived.

One thing I know is that I will miss the old building on the corner of Kuperjanovi and Veski. I hope they incorporate some of its elements into the new exhibitions, and hopefully they can keep the alarms and security measures just as low-key as they are now.

Back in the jungle

2009-08-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

The proprietor at the Hotel Dundret guesthouse in Gällivare, a portly Finnic-looking Swede, is married to a Filipino woman and their "place in the country" is a plantation with mango and coconut trees. They spend Christmas there, but alas, can't harvest and bring back any fruit to the EU.

I'm back in Estonia now, and like the Crowded House song, I brought some Lapland back with me. There's already a nip in the air at our own jungle plantation -- we will probably not see 80 degrees F. again this year -- and leaves on many of the garden plants have turned yellow with what can only be the biological clock. But we've been harvesting leaves, roots and fruits, taking day trips to the house from our temporary base in Tartu.

We're making day trips because the house, which has a foundation and is once again a closed box, is now lacking floors. Work is proceeding according to Seto time. The workmen are sober, and honest about the time they work, but make their decisions according to some inscrutable logic.

As for the 20-year-old well diggers from Võru, they turned out to be, well, 20. Back in July, they budgeted three days for the digging, but a couple things didn't turn out right, then they had to go to a Wailers concert. Something must have changed their whole outlook there, because they never really put in a full day after that. The well is slightly tilted, more of a cosmetic flaw, and the water at the bottom looked like hot chocolate. It has slightly improved to Earl Grey with a little milk. That's what my wife drinks since she gave up coffee, but it's not a desirable quality for well water. I hope the guys get their act together, as they have a still-good reputation to uphold in a 50-mile radius. I look forward to pouring them a glass of clear water from their well and paying them.

The tiny garden has been the one certainty in a sea of lackadaisical schedules and somewhat unclear amounts of money. The plants followed the timetables on the seed packages punctually. I think it's a good omen, because any sort of self-sufficiency starts and ends here. The peas did very well -- only a couple square metres, but they bore heavily. I guess now I understand why peas are sold everywhere in Estonia in the summer. They are the zucchini of this nation, except the peas that are sold are allowed to mature too long. We prefer the baby snaps.

Lolla rosso lettuce yielded just as well -- we've more than we can eat, and I suspect no one else likes it all that much, it's kind of like some local green Estonian lettuce got knocked up by some radicchio. Carrots were a bit watery but are crisp and tender. The squash has escaped from the patch and its vines are giving the weeds competition as it decides whether to start producing butternuts. Beets are coming along. Broccoli was the only failure (along with beans, but those just never sprouted in the cold June soil) -- the leaves were eaten by something as soon as they formed. Whatever ate it also ate the second crop of radishes.

We also made some nice finds in the jungle that we didn't notice earlier -- we found a pear tree and underneath it, a fruit bush. My wife offered me what I thought was a cherry. It was a black currant.

DISPATCHES FROM THE NORTH, Vol 2

2009-08-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

Where are the Sami?

Their knives in the gift shops are beautiful and it's hard to dodge the duodji (handicraft), but it's not easy to find the Sami in the backcountry.

In the four years that I've been coming to the top of Europe to trek in the mountains, I've had the not unreasonable fantasy of supplementing my diet of Ramen and oatmeal with local specialities prepared in situ -- hearth-baked flatbreads, homemade berry liqueurs, and of course fresh or smoked fish. I imagine something like an Estonian ethnographic documentary crossed with an Anthony Bourdain special.

I still remember the first year up in Finland, when some fellow hikers shared some harjus (grayling) they had caught five minutes before and it was by far the best fish of any kind I have ever had, beating five-day Klamath smoked salmon, sashimi at a top sushi house, or bass caught by my dad...

I want to know what the indigenous people do with such great raw material.

And as long as I'm carrying money in the wilderness, it would be a shame if what little I spend ends up wholly in the hands of the STF, the Swedish tourist club, which runs a system of charming huts -- at double the “you-would-think” price.

As said, it's not an unreasonable fantasy as there are even signs advertising smoked fish on trails. And in 2006, there was a reindeer burger stand at a trailhead leading to Kebnekaise. But that was on day 1, not the time for stuffing oneself.

So I've been to the Sami stomping grounds in three different months now in four different years. I have experienced and learned to appreciate the distinctions of various biting insect subcultures, the subtle variance of Arctic summers, even some large mammals, but so far the only smoked reindeer I have had has come from the local Coop or ICA.

The Sami remain elusive. What have the Swedes done with them? Is that an unfair or loaded question? Probably, but I’m swinging wildly at this point, and it’s not personal.

This time I was in Padjelanta by day 5 of my hike. Padjelanta is as traditional a Sami stomping ground as you can get. This is the part of the "reservation" that isn't either a icy mountain fastness or birch brush and gravelly flats, but a rolling, treeless plateau with pretty good weather and unlimited grazing. For humans too. Cloudberries, crystal clear water. No disease vectors – honest to God. No giardia, Lyme, parasites, nothing. Edible bolete mushrooms – oddly, considering I thought they lived only in symbiosis with tree roots. Etc.

But no Sami and no reindeer. either. Only an occasional bleached antler, which was disconcerting in a buzzards-overhead sort of way until I got used to it.

The samevistes or traditional villages are quaint, with traditional sod goahtis, environs usually well-kept and, as I said in the past, very, very hobbit-like indeed -- except for the white-trash note of large amount of antler and bone fragments strewn about, suggesting that trolls have also visited the area and had a feast.

Regarding the signs left behind, I'll bet a forensic detective would tell me only what I knew already: there was a huge reindeer slaughter here last year and then someone drove a snowmobile through once or twice in the spring. Some pedestrian explanation like that.

My 7-day trek ended on Saturday after a boat ride to Ritsem -- basically the end of the motor road -- which, apart from a 180-degree panorama of towering mountains rising 5000 ft on the other side of a 10-mile-wide lake, had a bit of a truck stop feel. The STF huts are usually irresistible but this one was not -- and it cost 60 dollars without STF membership. I felt a bit awkward waiting for a bus in such an ahem, posh environment. But I didn't want to walk a mile for nothing. So I asked the proprietor at the café what was down in the nearby samevistes (such as tourist huts, friendly folks, shamans, things to look at). "Nothing!" he replied emphatically. His tone was not disrespectful (he may have been indigenous himself), it was just as if he himself couldn’t get over just how devoid of anything it was. There was pride there.

British operatives

Ah, but instead of the Sami, what I have found on many occasions is the lone Brit. I remember sharing an STF sauna on the Kungsleden (Royal Trail) in 2006 with a charming physician from Gällivare, about 70. I've met a few other such figures, enough to know a cultural type when I see one A specific type of individual -- something from a little before the sun set on the British Empire. Maybe around 5:45pm. Then again the actual sun doesn't really set here, even in early August, so best to avoid time metaphors altogether. Let’s say something out of Graham Greene or Evelyn Waugh, perhaps.

On day 4, I got to Sallohaure, a Sami village on a vast plain by an equally vast loch– you can almost think of the lakes like the world’s oceans -- all one interconnected body of water. The approach to Sallohaure from Kisuris (you can look up these places on the Internet!) is typical -- like in the desert, you see the huts from about 5 miles away down a gentle slope and after an hour and a half of walking you're finally there. Then there was a sign, geared at people like me, that said, bädd/bastu/rökt fisk. Bed, sauna, smoked fish. I followed it about 500 metres off the trail and there was no one there -- huts, the usual leftovers from a troll picnic, etc. -- except for The Brit. Som ething like Sean Connery in his 60s, very trim, sunburned, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette on a log. But not dissolute. Definitely a sense there that he could come out of semi-retirement for a couple more missions. A bit of charming awkwardness – I could imagine him saying cheerio, just doing a bit of house-sitting for the Samis, who were not there, of course.

Crazy, but I'm starting to think when the Caledonian rock split apart, some of the British simply ended up on this side of the North Sea, a very long time ago. The rowdy Highlanders were told to leave but some proper dignified Britons were kept and domesticated.

"Any fish?" I asked though I knew what the answer would be. "You would want that house," said the Brit, "but the chap's not here; he went to Yokemoke." "Jokkmokk”, the next county seat, uttered in a perfect public-school accent. At least I was relieved to hear from the Brit that no, the Sami chap doesn’t get his fish from the local ICA or Co-op ,which is the only place I have ever seen it. Yes, the chap does set the nets out when he is not in Yokemoke.

Maybe the Sami are off on the missions and the British are in charge of the logistics or housekeeping. I don’t know. Next year I hope to get closer to the answer.

Sun with periods of rain

2009-07-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Such a blissfully sparsely populated country, Estonia (not as if you didn't know, but for the benefit of strangers surfing on by). People don't usually dote on you here, but then again, I don't expect or want that either. What there often is, though, is a laissez-faire attitude or benign neglect (the latter being a parenting term; some also think it is the best way to raise children).

For example, the Tartu railway station today. Odd place. It caught fire years ago and the railway has simply worked on around it. They've figured out something important about the railway here in Estonia -- that you don't need the ornate station buildings. Some 19th century folly. As long as the tunnel underneath the Tartu station (to track 2 of a total 2) doesn't collapse, nothing will change here for years. There won't be a bench on platform 1, it would attract the non-pub drinker contingent. But see, the staff are cool (railway people seem to be, by and large). They let me on the Tartu-Tallinn train 50 minutes before departure. The onboard wireless Internet was already on (typical) and they soon turned on the AC current to first class. Why not -- the train is just sitting there, because there's no one else to service. In some countries, if there were only demand for one train a day, the train would still pull out of a closed hangar in the depths of the station and proceed to the platform ten minutes before departure, but here it's just sitting there.

The downside to the benign neglect is occasional paroxysms of police action and mindless rules, astonishing examples of juhmus, a kind of brazen stupidity. Just like the weather this summer, sun with periods of rain. My wife's expression is less meteorological: people get corks up their asses at the oddest times.

A sunny day in Räpina on Tuesday. I had bought an extension cord from the Ehitaja store there the week before. My wife noticed that it was marked for indoor use only. Maybe I'm just ultra-wary of things that crackle and spark, but I thought it might not be a good idea to use for pumping wells in the rain. I took it back. They let me exchange it -- though I have to say the the woman was already prepared for battle, perhaps due to a past experience, informing me in a peremptory tone that they could only offer store credit.

Well, the new cord I picked was about 10 dollars cheaper. No problem, right? Wrong. They basically would not me leave the store until I picked out something else to make the prices match. I said to ring me up for some widgets. Then they asked me to go to the widget aisle and do the math myself.

I suggested they might remember me, since it's a town of 2,500, and let me use up the credit gradually. They said no.

"Well, come on now," I said, "I don't need anything else."

"You have to buy something else."

"It's on me. Keep the 100 kroons."

"We can't do that."

"Why not?"

(Something about a computer, I think.)

"What are you going to do, have me arrested for stealing a negative amount of money?"

I realized I might have given them an idea. So I added that I had to go outside, put the cord in my backpack and "see what else I had room for", since I was on foot and it was ten miles home. (This is true, I did walk it, very pleasant.) At that point I melted hastily away, though I was deeply disturbed, and took the alley behind the shrubberies, listening for possible sirens.

Mikitamäe symbol

2009-07-13T03:11:00.000-07:00

The official explanation is that the symbol on the Mikitamäe rural municipality's coat of arms is a piece of Seto jewellery (and the green is for the Centre Party, who run local politics), but there's something futuristic about it. An amateur anthropologist who came across such a symbol in the woods or on a rock face might be tempted to conclude that early people had been visited by very distant visitors who possessed knowledge of nuclear technology.

A possible answer to the question posed in the last blog post -- what is it with all these meteorite craters, anyway?