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US/Canada
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Written by Russell Johnson
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I took a hike through San Francisco's Presidio a couple of weeks ago and saw how artist Andy Goldsworthy managed to create something of beauty out of destruction. Cypress bark beetles had made a feast of some 150 Monterey Cypress trees and, in 2008, Goldsworthy built the "Spire" from those felled trees to celebrate the history and future of the forest. Young trees will grow up to meet the sculpture, which will eventually disappear into the forest.
Even the beetle damage had the look of some ancient cave painting.
The trust that runs the national park is replanting some 1,200 trees along the Bay Area Ridge Trail over the next few years. |
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Asia
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Written by Russell Johnson
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I hate monkeys. Maybe it is just envy. Although there is ample evidence that our evolutionary stem has developed a superior brain, deep down at the coccyx of my psyche there may still exist the tail stub of an ape. Maybe I still have a repressed urge to play with myself in public, fling my feces and steal every shiny object that isn't nailed down. Last month at the Uluwatu temple in Bali, Indonesia I got stuck in a tourist trap, a narrow passageway facing a phalanx of not-so-great apes. Luckily I had been warned to remove my glasses and shiny objects and clutch my camera. But a woman in front of me was not so cautious. She let out a scream as a marauding macaque snatched her earring and taunted her to return it in exchange for a banana. Come to think of it, this hairy extortionist might consider an alternate career in banking.
But monkeys are untouchable in this Hindu temple perched on a cliff above the Indian Ocean. Every night, in a performance of the Kecak, or Monkey Dance, the monkey-like Varana helps a prince fight off an evil king while 100 men chatter like macaques.
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US/Canada
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Written by Russell Johnson
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A bit much, I think, meeting J. Edgar Hoover and Madeline Albright on the same day. OK, Hoover was quite dead, the late FBI boss a statue bending over assertively, as if ready to pounce, in the the main foyer of the Newseum in Washington DC, but the former Secretary of State/UN Ambassador looked quite pink and healthy as she showed off her collection of brooches in a TV studio upstairs.
The Newseum is a monument to journalism, the so-called "fourth-estate," which in its finest form has kept kings, presidents, politicians, scammers and mobs in check and at its worst pumped up wars, spread tyranny, "live shots" of car chases and celebity DUIs.
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Asia
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Written by Russell Johnson
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I had a dream that the Grand Lisboa tower, a hotel-casino that now dominates the skyline of Macau, came alive one night, pulled itself from its mooring, marched across China's Pearl River Delta and, like Godzilla, tossed trolley cars around Hong Kong.
Ka-Ching? (a Chinese expression?)
Like Vegas in the 90s, this former Portuguese backwater colony, now called East Las Vegas, has gone over-the-top.
I think about my week in Macau last year as I walk the strip in Las Vegas, past rubble-strewn lots that look like some lizard of mass destruction had just swung through. Past construction cranes that have not moved an inch since my last visit a year ago. Past women stuffed in short tight skirts like shrimp in sushi rolls, alone or in pairs, peering at their mobiles. This is not the Las Vegas of the mid-century when Mo Dalitz and his pals ruled and in the words of a longtime restaurateur, "knew how to take care of people." This is not the Vegas of the 90s when the Steve Winns and corporate poobahs built palaces and faux New Yorks and Venices and "family values" was the motto. This is the Now Las Vegas: down and a bit dirtier, but not out.
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US/Canada
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Written by Russell Johnson
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If the devil made a deal with me to choose one joyous, cathartic experience before he cast me onto the hazardous waste heap, I would (aside from participating in a Three Stooges pie fight) choose a romp through the first snow of the season: flapping my snow angel wings, pelting speed limit signs with icy snowballs, feeling cool fairydust on my reddened cheeks.
That happened last weekend as a rare October snow surprised California's Sierra Nevada.
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