by Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—Every so often a newspaper or magazine will publish a grandiose analysis of the so-called economics of exercise.

Such articles purport to view exercising in a capital-budgeting framework: projecting the likely increase in longevity from an exercise program vs. the temporal and monetary costs of engaging in such a program, with all the benefits and costs appropriately discounted to their present values.

That, of course, is nonsense.

While there are some monetary costs involved in pursuing an exercise program, there are no temporal ones.

Exercise time is not a cost; it is a benefit. It is no more a cost than is reading a good book (or Weekly Hubris).

Properly pursued, exercise lengthens one’s lifetime, to be sure. But it also elevates the mood. Even more important, it increases our capacity to enjoy other activities . . .

. . . such as thinking, which a few people still find elevating and enjoyable.

There has been a great deal of recent research on the effect of exercise on neurogenesis—the formation of new neurons and the connections between them.

Follow this causal chain:

Clear thinking depends on the passage of neurotransmitters from one neuron (the pre-synaptic cell) to the next (the post-synaptic cell) across the synaptic cleft.

To better receive these transmissions, the post-synaptic cell has to sport as many antennae as possible.

The antennae are called dendritic spines.

An enzyme called Lim domain kinase 1 facilitates the building of dendritic spines.

That enzyme is activated by BDNF, which is a neurotrophin—nerve-cell growth factor—manufactured in a cellular organelle labeled the endoplasmic reticulum.

BDNF expression, or secretion, occurs during exercise.

The more intense the exercise, the more BDNF is produced, the sturdier and more numerous are the dendritic spines, and the clearer is (or at least can be) our thinking.

Clearer thinking may turn out to be the biggest boon conferred by habitual intense exercise, though it is one that is rarely factored into stylized and often presumptuous economic analyses of alleged benefits and costs.

by Michael House.

“Etiope . . . hathe a riche contrey. In it be many trees aromatikes and many mynes of fyne gold, and the people of this contrey be so riche that ther be many marchantes housys covered with golde as we do here cover our houses with leade, and that thei have ther dores and wyndowes and marmoldes (pillars) covered with gold.”

—Roger Barlow, “A Brief Summe of Geographie,” 1540

KINGS SUTTON England—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—We left our hero enjoying the spectacular scenery and wildlife in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia. On the way back to Simien Lodge, we were politely waylaid by a clever shopping opportunity. A group of local children had laid out for sale various items of basket-work, horn cups and jewelry. These kids clearly understood how the Western mind works. They sat apart from their wares, making no attempt to sell anything, so we had to ask how much things were. This lack of hassle made us far more likely to examine the stuff closely and make purchases, so several sales were made.

The Lodge, which claims to be the highest hotel in Africa (10,700 feet—may well be true) provides tukals, the traditional round, thatched-roofed native huts, but with modern refinements. After an excellent evening meal, we switched on our flashlights and headed out to look for our huts, among those dotted about the compound. There was no moon, only myriad stars, so the flashlights were essential—no light pollution here.

Day 4, 21^st December. Another glorious, sunny day, but extremely cold in the early morning. We had a long drive ahead of us to Axum, for hundreds of years the capital, supposed home of the Ark of the Covenant and the center of an ancient civilization waiting to be uncovered.

People who know say the drive from the National Park to Axum is one of the most dramatic in Africa. The roads are rudimentary, and 280 kilometres took 12 hours, but no one minded. Among the delays was the dynamiting of rocks for a new stretch of road, a landslide being cleared and many diversions into stony dust-bowls because the rains had washed away sections of road. Add to that the flocks of animals that felt it was their country and they would walk where they liked, and it was slow going.

An Ethiopian vista.

All the more opportunity to enjoy the glorious vistas. Combine the buttes and mesas of Arizona and New Mexico with the foothills of the Himalaya, throw in a few Grand Canyons, mix with the Meteora of northern Greece, and you have the Highlands of Ethiopia. Symmetry is completely absent. The fingers of rock, the cones, the great plugs of granite, are scattered randomly around the plunging and soaring cliffs. My poor vocabulary cannot do the landscape justice.

We stopped at a tea-house in the middle of nowhere for the coffee ceremony. Ethiopia is the home of coffee. When ripe, the fruit of the coffee bush is a deep red. Within it is a green coffee bean. A shallow metal bowl is heated until red-hot, then the coffee-beans are roasted. The priestess presiding then goes around the congregation, wafting the fumes over us to demonstrate the quality of the coffee. The beans are then put into a pestle and ground by hand. The coffee is brewed and, once you have tasted it, you will never again waste your money at Starbucks. It is superb. As the Greeks say, coffee should be drunk black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love. And here, it is.

We arrived at Axum at 6.30 and climbed the hill to the Yeha Hotel, wonderfully situated on a wooded hilltop above the town. We sat on the terrace sipping gins and tonics and watched the sun go down. (Yeha is the site of a remarkable temple, at least 2,500 years old, built of huge granite blocks without mortar, with walls 30 feet high, in its way as remarkable as the Parthenon or the mighty walls of Mycenae.)

Day 5, 22^nd December. Axum is an enigma. It was the center of a vast empire in north Africa between the 1^st and 7^th centuries AD, and a major force in world trade with its own port of Adulis. But the site was inhabited at least 500 years earlier, as evidenced by shaft graves found in 1992. The dates are vague because only a tiny proportion of Axum has been excavated, and no substancial results have been published since 1913. Scores of Axumite sites in Tigray Province await exploration. The empire stretched from Yemen to the Sudan. A 3^rd-century Persian writer, Manni, bracketed it with China, Rome and Persia as one of the four great kingdoms of the world. My wife, who is an archaeologist, says Axum feels like Mycenae and Troy before Schliemann, or Knossos before Evans.

The stelae field at Axum.

The stelae field at Axum are like nowhere I have ever seen. We were shown around by a local enthusiast who had been part of the recent German excavations on what is essentially virgin ground. The solid granite monoliths, single slabs of carved rock are, in some cases, taller than the obelisks of Egypt. The tallest, which may have collapsed during erection, is 109 feet high and weighs 500 tons. There are 75 of various shapes and sizes in the main field. The tallest standing stele is a 78-foot, solid block of granite, which was transported 4 kilometres from the quarry, presumably by elephants. It is engraved with a door and nine windows, vertically, supposed to represent the nine palaces built by King Ezana, the first Christian king of Axun, to whom it is attributed. How it was raised to the vertical remains one of the mysteries of archaeology.

Apart from the stelae, the enclosure contains the vault tombs of many kings of Axum, with very fine precision masonry, huge blocks of granite without mortar. (Sorry, this is beginning to read like a guide-book.)

One last “site.” In the Chapel of St. Mary of Tsion, near the modern cathedral, is supposed to live the Ark of the Covenant. The guardian lives in the chapel and never leaves. He is the only person allowed into the Holy of Holies to see the Ark. The priest selected as guardian holds the office until he dies. In the 60s, a priest appointed guardian refused to serve, fled from Axum into the hills and was brought back in chains to fulfill his gloomy destiny. Women are not allowed in the chapel.

The site museum is excellent. Displayed are the crowns and vestments of successive emperors, as well as ancient bibles exquisitely hand-illustrated in colours that have lost none of their brilliancy.

A priest shows a painting from an ancient Bible.

Day 6, 23^rd December. A transit day, driving from Axum to the Gheralta Lodge in the remote northeast corner of Tigray Province. En route, we visited the Yeha Temple (see above) and one of the celebrated rock-cut churches of Tigray. These are hewn from the solid sandstone or built into caves on inaccessible cliff-faces. They have been described as “the greatest of the historical-cultural heritages of the Ethiopian people.” They were unknown to the outside world until very recently, when a serious attempt was made to locate and catalogue them. Fewer than ten were listed in 1963 but, ten years later, the number had shot up to 153. They are difficult to get to, difficult to get into (travelers in Greece will be familiar with “the key problem” when visiting Byzantine churches), and the priests can be rapacious and reluctant to allow ferengi* to enter. But they are worth the effort. The frescoes are almost univerally ancient and stunning. The locations are magnificently mysterious—one is visited by being hauled up a sheer cliff in a basket.

There were no problems at the church we visited—the priest not only welcomed us, but posed in the doorway in his ceremonial robes and with his processional cross. Many birr (the Ethiopian currency) must have changed hands.

The main road was paved, so the going was much easier than on previous drives. En route, we encountered the salt caravans of the Danikil Depression. First a mule train, each mule carrying two large slabs of salt, to be sold in the towns in Western Ethiopia. Then, a train of camels appeared with their slow, swaying gait and their look of superiority (because they alone know the hundredth name of God). We stop to take photos, and children appear as if sprung from the earth. They ask for pens, cash, and plastic bottles. One of our group conducts an informal English lesson on parts of the body.

We stop for a picnic lunch on a ridge far above a deep river valley. Sandwiches, bananas, wine and our guide’s mother’s home-made pannetone—his mother is Italian; his father Ethiopian. Someone produces a premature Christmas cake (carried from England!).

My day off.

Day 7, 24^th December. A lazy day at the wonderful Gheralta Lodge, reading, sunbathing, watching wildlife and strolling about. The lodge stands on its own in a few acres of alpine meadow at around 7,000 feet, overlooking a valley thousands of feet below and fringed with dramatic, jagged peaks. It is largely self-sufficient, with its own vegetable gardens, and our dinner wandering around, enjoying its last day on earth. It has an excellent library of hard-to-find books about Ethiopia. A perfect place to relax after six hectic days.

In the evening, we were treated to an exuberant display of local dance by a troupe of six men and two women, enormously energetic. Also a solo recital on the masinko, a sort of one-string lyra, basically a wooden box with a stick attached to it, which sounds like a soul in torment.

Day 8, 25^th  December. Warm sunny Christmas day, the first we’ve had since Sri Lanka, 2004, when the tsunami almost got us. A long drive south through stunning countryside to Lalibela, unsurprisingly the country’s number one tourist destination, for reasons that will be explained in Episode Three.

* Ferengi and similar terms are Arabic names for European traders, or for Westerners in general. The name is likely derived from the Arabic word faranj or ifranj, or Persian farangi, meaning “Franks.” In Ethiopia, ferenj or ferenji has the same meaning, as does farang in Thai. The source of the name is likely from the Byzantine Greeks who were the Westerners’ neighbors; this usage spread to the Near East, Asia, Africa and even China. Greeks still sometimes use fra[n]gkoi (φράγκοι) as an exonym for Western Europeans, and the Modern Greek term ferengios (φερέγγυος, ο φέρων- εγγύηση, ο δυνάμενος να εγγυηθεί) literally translates as “the able to [“bear” (=carry)] guarantee (himself),” the trust-worthy, and not only in a financial way. The term was used as a partially derogatory term in India to denote the British. (Source: Wikipedia)

(To be continued.)

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

TEANECK New Jersey—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—Let’s get some things straight right off the bat. 1) I’m neither a genius nor a fabulously disciplined super-athlete; 2) I was never, ever, a “natural athlete” (a click murmur and early health problems, plus my usually being 3-4 years younger than my classmates pretty much kept me out of “school sports” altogether: I stood 5’6”, as a 15-year-old college freshman, and weighed 140lbs. Ech!); and 3) I’ve always had a tendency to eat the entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s (Coffee Heathbar Crunch) once I stick my spoon in the container.

Those facts out of the way, I’m as vain as the next Western woman; I inherited my mother’s desire to remain, well, desirable, well into old age; and—strangest of all—took up Yoga at around age 30, and kept at it, even “picking up speed” and launching myself into Iyengar Yoga at age 50. (Thirty years an academic, I taught writing, and journalism and literature at the university level before switching to teaching Yoga at age 55.)

Then, surprise! At age 58, like so many on the Boleman side of my family, my mother’s side, my back broke in two just at L4/5.

In two.

Only about three surgeons in my area, perhaps in the US, do the kind of minimally-invasive spinal fusion surgery I elected to undergo—well, heck, I had no choice, did I?—and I was fortunate enough to be right on the doorstep of the very fellow I needed: a tall, gangly, breathtakingly-handsome neurosurgeon named Alfred Ogden, who operates with aplomb in New Jersey and New York City.

He asked me, at our first meeting, when I wanted to do it. I responded, “Tomorrow.” Neurosurgeons not being noted for their humor, he took me dead-seriously, and consulted his calendar. I said, laughing, “No, no, Doc. Give me a couple of weeks to prepare for this.” So, he did. But, then, I was quickly at Valley Hospital, as trusting as a Pascal lamb, being put under for some very serious spinal rearrangement on 20 May  2010.

On the operating table, when they flipped me to begin work, my spine separated. It came asunder, so to speak. I’d got there not a minute too soon.

Dr. Ogden thought I’d be back on my Yoga mat in two months, max. I wasn’t. Instead, for about a year, I felt as though I’d been strapped into some sort of huge invisible papoose-like contraption which prevented me from “articulating,” fully, in any direction. And I hurt like the dickens just donning my underwear, which I had to flip into the air with one foot and catch on a toe to put on.

For the first six months, my spine had a 1-IQ mind of its own, and was calling all shots. Basically, I lay down on the sofa, and mainlined carbs. I was wretched, this former Yoga teacher; this formerly flexible and svelte middle-aged-but-who-knew-it paragon of activity and healthy living.

I went from 125 to 158 pounds, seemingly overnight. And, somewhere along that line, I gave up all hope of regaining my mobility, my freedom from pain, my skills in Yoga, my former good looks: Shoulder Stand is a bitch when you have 42”-hips.

I, who had worn a string bikini from my 20s to my 50s, bought a huge, black, 1-piece suit from Lands End. Online.

About a year plus a few months out from surgery, though, something shifted. And it shifted, primarily, in my head.

I decided to fight my way back.

I returned to Weight Watchers. I’d been there before, on and off. But, this time, nothing doing: the weight just stayed . . . and, when I got on the mat, the asana were still too painful to perform.

No one could help, either. No one had “been there.” Rehab, which my insurance company must have paid through my hat for, post-op, was a joke. I realized I was going to have to do this myself. Somehow.

Cross-training proved the way round my back’s recalcitrance.

In a warm climate (well, I do, have Greek citizenship, and write an online guide to Greece: www.GreeceTraveler.com), I took six weeks and: 1) swam 40 laps a day in an Olympic-sized pool (breast stroke one way; back stroke, the other); 2) did 45mins on an elliptical, and then used whatever upper- and lower-body gym machinery my back would allow; and 3) swam in the sea for several hours, setting no records; primarily just snorkeling, lazily.

OK. OK. Not everyone can go to Greece for six weeks, but most of us have pools, gyms, etc. in our immediate vicinity. No excuses!

And everyone has a blender.

. . . because the other thing I did was examine my diet, and decide, scientifically, how to lose those 40lbs. On my own. I did ask my doctors and a nutritionist what they thought of my plan, but I was going to follow it, really, no matter what they said. Thank heaven, they approved.

I developed a shake, which I consume (with a spoon) once a day, usually for lunch, and that’s the main ingredient in my success story.

For breakfast, I have: an enormous homemade latté, made with Illy coffee, non-fat half and half plus 1 % milk, and sweetened with Truvia; a low-fat pro-biotic yogurt; 1 tsp Kyo Green Powdered Drink Mix in 1 C grapefruit juice; a piece of fruit or a sliced tomato; and 5 little whole-wheat rusks (from Italy) smeared with Marmite.

For dinner, I eat about 1 ½ cups of O% Fat Fage Greek Yogurt, with about half a cup of “naked” (no salt; no oil; no preservatives) mixed nuts, seeds and dried fruit: cashews, almonds, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, raisins; and a sprinkling of (real, unsweetened) Muesli. I drink nothing but organic veggie-fruit juices, cut with filtered water, after 5 p.m.

Once or twice a week, I take in either a high-quality burger (bun-less) or steak with salad; sushi or sashimi with miso soup; a Cobb salad with grilled chicken; or a vegetable omelet, instead of my shake.

No alcohol. No preservatives/artificial colors/additives I can identify. No added salt. No recreational drugs. No cigarettes. No gluten. No sugar. During the course of the day, I take all the vitamins in one of the Vitamin Shoppe’s high-end vitamin packets for women.

And, in less than one year, I’ve gone from 158 to 118lbs, 42” to 34” hips, am back on my mat, doing better Yoga than I’ve ever done before, my cholesterol and other blood work is stellar, my blood pressure and resting heart rate are those of a 20-year-old athlete . . . and my surgeon, also a Yogi, wants to make me his poster girl, umm, woman.

Elizabeth’s 60th-Birthday Portrait

I’m also back in a tiny bikini.

This regimen isn’t for everyone, but it certainly works for me. And, I promise you, I’m never hungry.

My Shake Recipe

In a blender, I add, and blend on high:

1 to 1 1/2 Cup(s) unsweetened almond or rice milk

c. 1 Cup each: frozen butternut squash (or carrot) cubes, guava chunks, mixed berries, and banana chunks (I cut up and freeze my own ripe bananas). I may substitute other frozen fruits and vegetables such as beets, peaches, kiwis, and apricots: I buy what’s in season, chop it up and freeze it in big Ziplocks.

c. 2 Scoops of high-quality whey protein powder, vanilla-flavored. (I use a brand from the Vitamin Shoppe.)

½ Cup 0% Fat Fage Greek Yogurt

1 T psillium fiber crystals

2 tsp Kyo Green Powdered Drink Mix or Garden of Life’s Perfect Food Super Green Formula

½ to 1 Cup All Bran cereal

1 packet of Truvia

At least 2 T extra-virgin olive oil

Today, I was at Marshall’s trying on some Size-4 jeans, when a woman in the next changing room—75 and about 250 pounds at 5’7”—asked me how I stay so slender and fit. I promised her I was going home to write this column for her. I asked her, then, how old she thought I was, and she replied, levelly, “Forty.” I explained that looking and feeling 40 at 60 involves some determination—even more when one’s back decides to go both north and south one fine day—but that my best Yoga student, when I stopped teaching in 2010, was in her 70s . . . and that I’m now back on the mat right beside that student, in my former Yoga teacher’s classes, for about six hours of Iyengar Yoga per week.

One day soon, too, I know I’ll be teaching again, myself. Very soon.

PS I mention brand names for the products I consume, but I get no kickbacks, Dear Readers. I came up with this shake on my own, and I stand by it but, I assure you, I’m not really interested in “advertising” those who produce its components: I’m interested in the results I got.

Author Photo by Dionysis Tsipiras: www.mykonosphotography.com

by Wayne Mergler

Editor’s Note: Since Wayne’s still convalescing, Weekly Hubris offers up yet another of his early columns for the –zine.

ANCHORAGE Alaska—(Weekly Hubris)—1/23/12—Anyone who has been to Anchorage, Alaska knows that we are surrounded by mountain ranges, most notably the spectacular Chugach Range, which looms over the city like protective godparents.

Several roads wind up into these mountains and the more affluent and adventurous of homeowners have built gorgeous homes with incredible views of the city and the inlet and primeval forests and more mountains: the scenic wonderland goes on forever. We call this part of town the “Hillside,” though that is actually a misnomer: it is much more of a mountainside than a hillside. And the people who are lucky enough to live there are often envied.

This past, glorious, sunny Saturday, I visited my friends who live on the Hillside. I noticed their 12-year-old son hunched over his hand-held gadget—an iPhone, I think—in the family’s living room. He was texting, playing games, texting some more, playing more games, all at rapid finger speeds; rarely, if ever, looking up. He acknowledged my presence (to which he was profoundly indifferent) with a mumbled grunt after his mother had loudly chided him with: “CAN’’T YOU SAY HELLO TO WAYNE?” and went immediately back to the joys and mesmeric mysteries of his gadget’s screen.

Our waylaid, wi-fi’ed young’uns.

Unable to resist, I said to him: “Why aren’t you outside on a day like this?”

I, of course, hated that question when I was kid, engrossed in a book, but now I felt that, somehow, the torch had been passed to me and I needed to do my part as annoying-meddlesome-though-well-meaning-friend-of-father’s.

The kid looked up at me, eyes blinking from his computer screen, shrugged, and said: “There’s nothing to do outside.” He then went immediately back to his screen and finger-punching.

I looked out the picture window of his living room at the panoramic splendor of his back yard—mountains, forests, babbling streams, waterfalls, all rich in wildlife. There is even a glacier nearby. Jeez, I would have killed for such a playground when I was a kid!

When I told him this, he just shrugged again. “It’s just a bunch of boring trees and stuff,” he said.

“And mountains!” I retorted. “And glaciers! And wildlife! You even have a waterfall in your back yard! A friggin’ waterfall?”

He looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes, vaguely, impassively wondering if I might be unhinged. Then he went back to his iPhone.

There was a time—honest! —when kids used to actually do things. (No, I am not sh***ing you: they really did. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen them do things! Though, I must confess, not for a few years now.) There was a time when kids used to climb trees and build tree houses and forts and pretend they were Robin Hood and Tarzan: they used to fish with a long stick and a piece of string, and joyously dig up the earth for worms; they used to race their Flexible Flyer sleds down snowy hills with names like Devil’s Slope and Dead Man’s Jump; they used to build rafts and sail them on ponds, playing pirates.

My friend David Bergman and I once kidnapped Frank LeMay’s little sister, Bernice, and tied her to a tree in the woods and then fought Frank to the death when he came to rescue her. Of course, Frank’s enthusiasm for fighting to the death to rescue his sister was not as great as it could have been, but he gave it a valiant effort. But our wooden swords clattered together and rang out in the woods, those very same woods (actually, just a clump of trees in the LeMay yard) where we imagined packs of slavering wolves and stalking grizzly bears coming to menace us at any moment. (My friend’s kid on the Hillside wouldn’t even have to imagine the wolves and bears. They are actually there in his back yard.)

My visit to the Hillside reminded me of another troubling time, the last time I visited my aunt and uncle at their wonderful farm in the Virginia Piedmont. I spent a great deal of time as a child on this thousand-acre family farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. That place was more thrilling to me than Disneyland could ever be. My cousins (boys) and I used to roam those thousand acres like war-painted savages. We skinny-dipped in the Roanoke River, chased cows and sheep just for the fun of it, ran around stark naked most of the time, until we were shockingly old for such antics.

Looking down the dusty red-clay road that led (eventually) to civilization, we could see by the billowing red clouds of dust if a car was coming. If so, it could only be coming to visit our house, the only house for miles around. At times like that my aunt would call out from the front porch: “Somebody’s comin’ up the road! You boys come in now and put your pants on!” Even now, 50 years later, that farm still holds the same sort of enchantment for me, despite the encroaching civilization starting to nudge its way through our own special wilderness.

But the last time I was there, some visiting children were sitting inside in the now air-conditioned rooms (unheard of in my day!), glued to their computer games and texting machines or whatever. I don’t even remember whose kids they were. They could have been my aunt’s grandchildren or the children or grandchildren of visiting friends. The fact that I don’t remember is testimony to the fact that they never emerged as individual people to me, just a gaggle of texting, keyboarding, computing kids. But I remember asking them the same inane question: “Why are you inside? It’s glorious out there! Why aren’t you running with the bulls? Galloping on horseback? Fighting with staffs and swords in the barn? Swimming in the river? Tumbling on the baled hay?”

They looked at me with thinly disguised discomfort. Clearly, I had just made my mad escape from Happy Acres and they weren’t sure how to handle me. So they did what all good children of the 21st Century do: they ignored me and went immediately back to their hand-held screens.

Another time, while visiting old friends in their Norman Rockwell-ish small town in Indiana, I noticed, as they gave us a tour of the charming old-fashioned place, that I hadn’t seen a single child on the street, biking on the sidewalk, or playing on the spacious green lawns.

“Don’t you have any kids in this town?” I asked my friends. I grew up on such a street in Cleveland and remember that there were always swarms of kids everywhere, playing kick-the-can, playing baseball, roller skating on the sidewalks. “Where have all the children gone?”’

“They are here,” my friends said. “But they don’t come outside anymore.”

I’m not sure why all this bothers me so much. I mean, nobody is holding a gun to my head and making me text. What do I care what they do? But somehow I do care. It seems like such a tragic waste of American childhood! What riches are they missing as they strain their eyes before the computer screen! And what stories are they going to have to tell their grandchildren? (“Wow! Once, when I was about your age, I sent a text message with more than 80 characters!”?) It seems to me that kids now have no lives of their own. None at all!

Yes, I know how I sound. I have become one of those old farts appalled by “these kids today.” Actually, I think most kids today are quite charming and nice. I just wish they knew that they can actually insist on living a life, on actually doing things, if they just knew that things could be done.

I guess it’s not their fault. In addition to all the technology which helps them, even encourages them, to have no lives of their own, they have parents that so pamper and protect them that they are never exposed to any of the adventures that life may have to offer. I mean, something might happen to them if they tried to have an experience. They might hurt themselves; they might experience discomfort or pain or danger or fear.

They might experience being alive!

My younger daughter is a wonderful mom, but her three boys are so overly protected that I sometimes despair for them. They have a cool uncle, who owns a great bike shop in Colorado, who sends them state-of-the art bicycles for Christmas and birthdays. Cool, right? And they live in a city (Anchorage) which is proud of its fantastic and intricate web of city bike trails that plunge through greenbelts and over bridges and under highways and alongside parks and woods and beaches. But they are not allowed to ride their bikes except back and forth in front of their house. It’s too dangerous otherwise. Something might happen to them.

“The world is different now, Dad,” my daughter tells me. “It’s not the same world it was when you were a kid. Or even when I was a kid.”

Well, she may be right. Certainly, we all have Nancy Grace now terrifying the hell out of us every night on CNN, reminding us of all the kids who went missing or were molested or murdered in just the last few hours. I certainly don’t mean to make light of these horrors, but, Jeez, Nancy, you are making even ME afraid to leave my house just to get the mail.

I was a ten, eleven, 12-year-old kid in inner-city Cleveland. In the summers, I remember that I would leave my house right after breakfast, shouting, “Bye, Mom!” as I slammed the screen door, then jumped on my bike and was gone. My parents never saw or heard from me again until supper time. Now, I’m not saying that that was responsible parenting, but I was always given to believe that I was trusted to take care of myself and to handle anything that might come my way. Nowadays, kids all have cell phones. I guess they could keep in touch with Mom that way. (“I’m now at the corner of Elm and 7th Avenue, Mom!” “I’m now crossing Main Street at the crosswalk, Mom!” “I’m now sharing a joint with the nice homeless man in the park!”) OK: maybe not such a good idea.

I dunno. I have no answers. Just questions and reactions. What good am I?

I do turn then to that which always seems to work for me: I turn to literature. For those who do want their kids to have lives or to at least know that kids used to have lives, there are several books on the joys of childhood. There is a whole genre of (largely unread) literature out there that reflects nostalgically on memories of childhood. Besides Mark Twain’s classics of boyhood, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Booth Tarkington’s Penrod and Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, there are some wonderful lesser known works about the simple joys of being a kid.

Bevis, an English novel by Richard Jeffries, follows the adventures of two boys through a summer as they build a boat, sail on a reservoir, discover an island and camp out, all the while enhancing the fun with the liveliness of their imaginations. This book inspired author Arthur Ransome to write his series of Swallows and Amazons books, all about the real and imagined adventures of six children (boys and girls) playing pirates in a cove during their summer holiday.

Better yet is Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages, about two boys who spend their summer outdoors, pretending to be Indians. They build a teepee in the woods, hunt and fish and prepare their food, build a dam, blaze trails, read the stars, make moccasins, arrows, bows and drums.

Perhaps the most enjoyable and informative books about lost childhood are The American Boy’s Handy Book, by D.C. Beard and The American Girl’s Handy Book, by Lina and Adelia Beard. Written in the 1880’s by siblings, these two books—divided by seasonal activities—are a wealth of information and sheer fun about the joys of being a kid. The Beards tell us how to make kites, fishing poles and fishing tackle, how to make and keep a freshwater aquarium, how to make knots, hitches, water telescopes and boats, how to find birds’ nests, how to rear wild birds, how to trap, how to build snow houses, whirligigs, puppets. These books are great fun to read. Parents will enjoy them as nostalgic looks into the past. Kids need to read them to see what they are missing.

And just maybe, 30 years from now, one or two of them will have some memories of childhood other than the TV shows they used to watch and the text messages they used to send their friends.

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—No fancy riding habit, no well-groomed steeds, no blast on a hunting horn, no cry of “Tally-Ho” and the sound of galloping hoofs. Barking, eager hounds, yes, but a pack of fewer than a dozen, most of them selected for their stamina, voice, and ability to stay on track.

Clothes? Overalls or work pants, work shirts: light in summer, but flannel or woolen in winter. Pick-up trucks; sleeping bags; cooking gear; boxes or cans of grub; and kindling for a camp fire. Just the essentials. Oh, and maybe a chair or two, aluminum with plastic stringing, for hunters not happy sitting on logs.

Backwoods fox-hunting in the American South.

No green swards, stone fences, open spaces, and sunshine. Instead, bramble, briars, trees, and moonlight, if the weather is fair. Otherwise, just glimmers of light from a crackling fire where a smoke-stained coffee pot simmers over hot ashes. Little talk, most of it quiet, much of it joshing, and hardly any at all when the hounds strike a track and start yelping.

Obviously, I wish to conjure up contrasting images of foxhunting: the sort involving English aristocrats and squires expensively decked out for a chase across the English countryside; the other, a group of working men, yeomen if you like, engaged in a sport dear to their hearts, one of their shared pleasures being the music of the chase.

It’s the selfsame “music” appreciated by one of England’s greatest men, Shakespeare himself, if Scene 1 in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, grew out of The Bard’s hunting experience. In that scene he has King Theseus, in the presence of Queen Hippolyta, say to his servants:

Go, one of you, find out the forester . . . .

My love shall hear the music of my hounds.

Uncouple in the western valley. Let them go.

Dispatch, I say, and to the forester.

Exit one of the train

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top,

and mark the musical confusion

of hounds and echo of conjunction.

This style of hunting—turning the pack loose and finding a spot to listen to the chase—passed directly down to hunters in the Blue Ridge and Ozark Mountains, and elsewhere I’m sure.

An anecdote shared by an Ozark hunter relates the story of a city boy fresh from a seminary and taking up his first post as a Baptist preacher in the Ozarks. Wanting to get to know members of his flock better, he accepted the invitation of a deacon to go listen to heavenly music on a mountain top.

The deacon, driving a pick-up with a pack of hounds in its bed, stopped by the preacher’s house and then drove to a foot of a nearby mountain. Once there, he unloaded his hounds and said to the preacher, “We must walk to the top to hear the music.”

The preacher didn’t know what to expect, but thought that, perhaps, the deacon had fancied hearing music as winds swept through the trees. That could be considered “heavenly.”

The men made the mountain top just as the hounds struck a track and began barking. The hunter then asked, “Do you hear that heavenly music?”

“No,” said the preacher. “All l hear is that dadburn pack of hounds!”

Not just anyone can hear the music created by a pack of barking hounds. To inexperienced ears, the sounds of a hot chase may come across as just so much frantic barking. While it’s not the Hallelujah Chorus being performed by the Westminster Choir, to veteran fox hunters the music of an exciting race can yield comparable pleasure.

Seated as they are on logs or in rickety chairs, hands cupped to ears, experienced hunters listen for a blend of voices, shrill soprano from young bitches, alto from older bitches, and tenor and bass from the males in the pack. Not low bass, mind you, not Russian-style low bass gained through much training and more than ample glasses of vodka washed across the vocal chords—just something low enough in register to serve as a contrast to the higher-pitched yelping.

The flow of conversation among the hunters might go as follows: “Did you hear that alto as she took the lead? That’s my Mamie and she’s singin’ her heart out.”

“Yes, that’s Mamie, but she’s fallin’ behind Susie, my soprano,” says a second hunter, whose ears tell him that Susie is now hotter on the track then Mamie.

But Susie leads for just a short time before a tenor voice rises above the rest. “That’s Ike, for sure,” whispers a third hunter, “and he’s showin’ them bitches a thing or two about how to track a fox.”

“That well may be the case,” says a fourth hunter, “but I believe you’re mistaken. It seems to me that Ike ain’t doin’ a thing but showin’ his bad breedin’. I think you ain’t got nothin’ but a cutter.” [A dog that cuts away from the pack and heads off on a false track.]

“You know my Ike’s too good a dog to do a thing like that,” replies Ike’s owner. You’re jus’ a joshin’ me.”

The attentive listening and talk goes on until the fox leads the pack beyond hearing. Then the hunters slip away to their sleeping bags, hoping to find their hounds gathered again at the campsite when morning comes.

They love their hounds, treat them well, trade among themselves for a voice they would like for their own pack, exchange copies of Chase magazine, and follow the practice of naming their dogs for whoever occupies the White House, President and First Lady. Of course, there are other names as well, but presidential names rank as favorites.

The hunters may come from the backwoods of the Blue Ridge or the Ozarks, yet they are as proud of their hounds as King Theseus was of his. The music of the hounds binds king and backwoodsman; The Great Bard and The Blue-Ridge-Josher.

by Skip Eisiminger

“Take no counsel from your fears.”—Stonewall Jackson

“Take the counsel of your fears.”—American Proverb

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—If the creator has ever visited this planet, I have a good idea of where and when that was: England, 1943.

My father still tells a story that he heard from an Army Air Corps friend over 60 years ago. It seems that a B-17 was struck by anti-aircraft fire returning from a bombing run over Germany. The plane’s engines were untouched, but part of the electrical and all of the hydraulic systems were disabled. The situation called for a belly landing after dumping excess fuel because the landing gear was immobilized.

As the bomb and gun crew gathered behind a bulkhead, the crew chief noted that his ventral gunner was missing. Upon nervous inspection, the chief realized that the hatch to the cramped pod could not be manually opened. When he finally found the words recoiling in his larynx, the chief informed the gunner what was about to transpire—a landing that would crush the bottom of the aircraft in order to spare the rest. The young man’s last words were unintelligible over the roar of the engines, but if God was anywhere about in the universe, He surely heard the gunner’s screams.

I suppose I was about ten when I heard my father carelessly tell that story. Sixty years later, I still have nightmares of the runway rising up to meet 20 tons of metal. In between the bomber and the concrete was an acutely conscious airman witnessing his final landing from a vantage better than the pilot’s, but worse than divine providence.

Fundamentalist preachers love black-and-white questions like: “Will you be ready when the black plane of death circles overhead?”

In 2008, at an anti-gay-marriage rally in California, an evangelist asked, “What’s more important—respect for others or the fear of God?”

Of course, only a saint is going to think of others when the bullet with her name on it gets close enough to read. I’m not sure whether I will fear God at that point or fear the bullet, but I’m reasonably sure I won’t be thinking of anyone beside myself. Call me self-absorbed if you like, but no one dies without some personal regrets.

The choice of respecting others or fearing God is complex if one reads the Old Testament and the literature based on it with an open mind.

I recall reading Samson Agonistes as an undergraduate and thinking that Milton neglected to tell Samuel’s story of 300 foxes set on fire to burn the Philistines’ crops because the British moralist surely disapproved of the animals’ torture. Professor Miller assured me that Milton did approve of the fiery deaths, the same way he supported the indiscriminate killing of Philistines. Thousands died and, surely, I argued, some of them were innocent. The professor red-penciled my essay with a yawning “C,” and I’ve been afraid of Milton ever since.

I lost my fear of God, however, a long time ago, but I still pay Him and His creation a nodding respect.

I’ve looked down the barrel of an East German border guard’s AK-47, gone weak in the knees hanging drapes in a ninth-story office, shivered uncontrollably in surgery, and waited for a surgeon to tell me that my wife was going to be OK, so I think I know the emotion I am speaking of. It is not what one feels finger-filtering a horror film or jumping a diamondback rattler on a downhill run in Arizona. Though laughter often allays stress, itdoes not as a rule accompany the real threat of serious bodily injury.

As a long-time member of a municipal recreation center’s board of advisors, I take a proprietary interest in the facility where I exercise a few times a week. This has never been truer than when budget cuts forced the center’s director to eliminate the weight-room supervisors, whose job was to maintain the sign-in sheet and keep kids under twelve safely outside. One blue-shirted employee’s simple presence also added an important element that only I’ve recently come fully to appreciate: civility.

One afternoon, I was using the quadriceps machine while, ten feet away, another patron was using the leg-squat machine. For reasons known only to him, this well-built young man grunted conspicuously with each repetition and, when he finished a set, he dropped 400 pounds several inches on to the weight stand. It was steel on steel, making a noise well in excess of 100 decibels. Finally, I had had all I could take, and I said, in the least challenging voice I could muster, “You know, if you break that machine, no one will be able to use it, including you.”

Leaping to his feet, the heavyweight lifter said, “Mind your own business, Old Man! I’ve paid my dues. You Stupid!”

I denied myself a stress-reducing laugh and said, “Excuse me, but what does that sign behind you say? I can’t read it from here.”

“It says, ‘Please don’t drop the weights.’”

“Well?” I said as my mouth went dry.

“I didn’t drop the weights,” he said, slipping two 45-pound disks from his bar. “This is dropping weights,” he said tossing one disk about ten feet to his left and another to his right.

“No,” I said, rising from my own machine, “That’s not dropping, that’s throwing.” With my heart hammering in my ears, I went to get my jacket and left by the back door. A half-dozen or more people were in the room when the flash point was reached, but no one spoke a word. Quite simply, we were struck dumb with terror. In less than a minute, we’d all become that small Jewish boy, hands overhead, being herded down the street by several Nazi thugs. Fear has a way of multiplying and magnifying the foe.

As a board member, I knew the exercise room has four cameras that record almost everything that goes on but, of course, it never occurred to me to tell the weight hurler that everything he’d done had been captured on a CD. That would have given him something to think about. As for me, I suffered two nights of insomnia thereafter and found several reasons to change my weight-lifting routine.

Fear, however, is not always so palpable.

Some friends of ours recently built their dream retirement home, including a bedroom for their daughter-in-law, who lives 2,000 miles distant. The young woman is germ- and pyrophobic, so her East-coast bedroom features a toilet separated from the shower and sink by four walls and a door. It also has a ground-level exit in case the all-brick house burns on the one weekend a year she’s expected to reside there. It all has to do with compartmentalizing one’s apprehensions, our friends assure us. I wish it were that easy; I can corral my own fears while the sun is up, but they keep jumping the fence at night.

Judging from some crime-statistics, Americans have never been safer, yet the international prophets of doom say that the Death of Nature is just over the horizon, given the untold fingers on untold nuclear devices. As a consequence, I fear I’m a version of that old Frank and Ernest cartoon in which Frank hears Dr. Ernest declare, “You’re phobophobic.”

To which Frank says, “I was afraid of that.”

by Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—Like the other dilapidated houses on the block next to the train tracks, the Klimaka shelter for the homeless is covered with bold graffiti. They practically blot out its tomato-red façade and certainly distract attention from the name on its open door. I must have passed it several times on strolls through the formerly industrial district of Gazi in search of a tapas, wine or sushi bar.

In fact, it’s just two blocks from the new Kerameikos metro station plaza, which has become a favorite Athenian hangout. Since the transformation of the nearby 19^th-century gas works into a municipal cultural center, the area known as “Gazi” has acquired scores of up-market restaurants, nightclubs, theaters, galleries—even a gay hammam and a top notch art museum.

Down there, it’s so lively on weekends, so teeming with well-dressed couples, groups of friends of any age, teenagers in slit jeans, young families with kids and iPhones, that you would be forgiven for believing all’s right in Athena’s city.

But go back to that little red house, step inside and enter the world of the new homeless.

Klimaka Shelter for the Homeless

That’s what they’re calling them, the thousands of people—mostly men in their 30s and 40s—who have been laid off and evicted for failure to pay their rent or mortgages in the last year or two.

Klimaka is one of only a few organizations set up to deal with this sudden shredding of the Greek social contract. An NGO founded in 2000 by Kyriakos Katsadoros, a psychiatrist, Klimaka originally aimed at providing support for then-vulnerable members of society: addicts, gypsies, immigrants, the mentally unstable who’d been released from institutions, and other misfits.

They never expected that ordinary working and middle class Greeks would be turning up on their doorstep, hoping for a meal or a floor to sleep on.

At 5:30, when I arrived with supper—my friend Takis has been cooking for the shelter every Wednesday for the last ten years—the place was quiet. In the tiny courtyard, under a lemon tree and two umbrella-type gas heaters, a dozen men in dark jackets were huddled over three backgammon boards (the national sport, after soccer and basketball). On one side, blankets and sleeping bags were stacked against the wall to about 6 feet, protected from the damp by plastic sheeting.

We put the food in the kitchen, which had barely room for two people, and then popped our heads into the office to the right of the courtyard. Snug and warm, its colorful walls – sunflower yellow, hyacinth blue with green, red and purple details— could not have been cheerier. Quite the opposite of the traditional grimy white or waiting-room green of State organizations. It had two desks with computers, two sofas, one chair, a circular gas heater and next to it a cat, that never budged in the two hours I was there.

The smiles on Effie and Athanasia, the two young women who run the center were just as welcoming. Though employed, they do extra hours as volunteers, offering professional counseling, practical help in getting social benefits, job interviews, information on food and shelter. With her 1930s-style cap, black and grey sweater and jeans, Effie looked like a female version of Jackie Cooper in The Kid.

I was puzzled. Where do the homeless sleep? She pointed to a door on the other side of the courtyard.

The shelter’s third room was full to bursting. Half the occupants were watching a large-screen TV, others slept on their folded arms, others simply sat. After supper, most of them would have to go back into the cold, for there is only space on the floor for 17-20 bodies . . . and one bathroom.

In the kitchen, Takis was whisking instant mashed potatoes in two army-sized pots with the help of Spyros, a former sea captain. “I lived in another hostel for two years, a Red Cross shelter for six months, and I used to come here to help out,” he told me in English. “Now they give me a room to myself upstairs and in exchange I cook for about ten people every night. Shall I make you a cup of my special hibiscus tea?”

Surprised at the offer of such an exotic drink, I of course accepted, but just then Effie came to tell me that Ada Alamanou, Klimaka’s PR head, had arrived. “She’s the one to talk to,” said Effie.

In a blue baby-doll smock dress, black sweater and tights, blonde Ada could be an eccentric artist, but she speaks with the assurance of someone who knows her job and the warmth of someone who loves people. She put out her cigarette and came to sit next to me on the sofa.

“Here we’re all volunteers. We rely on donations but they are never enough. One of our big problems is that there is no formal recognition of the homeless status. We need to know who they are in order to provide the right help. And now we are dealing with a new category—“normal” people who up to recently had an organized way of life. They had no psychological problems, they were not illegal.

“The new homeless are between 30 and 40 years old or just below retirement age. They were construction workers, shop owners, people involved in the tourism business. Often they have families, but they’re ashamed to reveal their situation and they don’t want to be a burden. Greeks are nothing if not proud. Or their relatives, too, may barely be able to make ends meet.

“We have multiple missions. The first is keeping people in their own homes. Second, we try to restore them to normal life as fast as possible. We’d like to run our hostel on the American model, as a base where you can spend the night safely, have a shower and go out in the morning and face the world, look for a job. And finally, of course, we have to care for those who are permanently homeless.”

Ada interrupts herself to talk to a well-to-do couple who have just delivered some blankets in response to an appeal that sped round the internet last week.

So I turn to Aris Violatzis, a portly psychologist who helps man Klimaka’s 24/7 suicide prevention phone line. He’s a professor at Athens University as well as a volunteer and has come with four of his women students to help serve supper.

They’ll be needed. By now the courtyard is so jammed it’s like the proverbial subway at rush hour.

“The Greek people do not deserve what is happening. We may have made mistakes, but we’re paying too high a price.”

Outside dinner—stuffed chicken roll (which Takis prepared at home) and mashed spuds—is being served. The young women are passing plates around and everyone politely waits his or her turn. Squeezing through the crowd, I talk to a man in his 60s who despite being hungry keeps to his vegetarian principles. A handsome young Lebanese man speaks to me in English; his Greek girlfriend looks away, shy, bored or ashamed. An older Greek woman tells me she used to live in Hempstead, LI, while two Albanians explain they have been laid off from construction work. Virtually nothing is being built in Greece these days.

Says Emilian, “I’d really like a visa to the States. Can you help?”

His friend keeps asking if the kitchen is also serving Cokes.

I can’t help with either request.

It’s time to leave. Takis has finished his work. I return to the office to say goodbye.

I’m almost speechless at the order in this chaos, the palpable atmosphere of caring and good will that this packed shelter emanates. I’d been told about isolated cases of night-time violence in the past, but now Aris tells me, “We who work at Klimaka help each other. Our greatest achievement is that our beneficiaries run the place.”

My eyes fill with tears as I turn to Ada. Words fail me so we hug instead.

In the car, Takis says, “Guess how many we fed tonight? Ninety. That’s 20 more than last week, which was already 20 more than the week before that. When I started, and for years afterwards, we could count on having about 15, then 30, show up. It’s getting harder and harder to cater for them. But somehow, I always manage to have enough.”

For more information on Klimaka, go to www.klimaka.org.gr (Greek only) but Googling Klimaka will turn up more articles in English. Any donations should be sent to their account at the National Bank of Greece GR90 0110 1380 0000 1384 8010 248.

Note: No one knows exactly how many homeless there are in Athens, never mind the rest of Greece. Estimates run as high as 25,000 and more are joining their ranks every week.

Recipe

Takis’s Homeless Stove-top Giouvetsi

(“Giouvetsi” is actually the clay pot this dish is made in, which is baked in the oven, not simmered on top of the stove.) 

1 kilo/2 lb beef, preferably shoulder or other lean cut, in serving portions

olive oil

1 big onion, finely chopped

1 can of tomatoes (“Kyknos,” a well known Greek brand)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 cup wine, red or white

1 500 g/ 1 lb bag kritharaki (orzo)

Salt and pepper

You sauté the beef in a big stew pot. Put it aside and sauté the onion in the same oil until transparent. Replace the beef portions, the canned tomatoes and the tomato paste. You can, before adding them, cut the tomatoes in smaller pieces or puree the tomatoes in your Moulinex. Add a bit of water, bring to a boil and then leave it on the lowest possible heat so that it bubbles merrily along until the meat is extremely tender (one hour?). Only add salt and pepper when ready to take food off the ring.

Remove the meat to a platter and leave the sauce in the pot. Pour in a good dollop of wine (one cup) and boil until sauce thickens. Add the kritharaki plus water to more then cover it and cook for about 20 minutes, adding water as needed. When the kritharaki is ready, throw in the meat and mix together. This is up to you; you can also serve the kritharaki and put the meat on top. You can sprinkle with grated hard myzithra cheese (or Parmesan).

(Of course, I make ten times the amounts mentioned above. You should see my industrial production procedure when making pastitsio, all of five big pans.)

by Michael House

“That amazing unknown country, Prester John’s fabled land of inaccessible mountain barriers and bottomless chasms, and wild, war-loving beautiful folk.”—George MacDonald Fraser

BACK IN LONDON England—(Weekly Hubris)—1/23/12—Fraser was writing about Ethiopia in 1868, when Britain sent an expeditionary force to rescue hostages held by mad, brilliant Emperor Theodore (Teeodros), who took his own life when the Brits were closing in on his amba (flat-topped fortress with vertical sides, like the leg of an up-turned table) at Magdala.

At the Addis Museum, I bought a T-shirt depicting this extraordinary man, an inspired general who united briefly the warlord-ridden tribes of Abyssinia, but a latter-day Caligula for insane cruelty. He was a kingly man of immense presence, his hair set in the cane-rows now so popular with young Afro-Caribbean males. The story goes that he wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, which the buffoons at The Foreign Office failed to answer, so Theodore seized and tortured British citizens living in the country. Magdala is now a center for the weaving of handsome, undyed flatweave rugs of brown, grey and black sheep’s wool, with striking geometric designs, one of which now sits in my London hallway. But I digress.

Market traders in Gondar.

 Day 1: Sunday, 18December Evening flight to Addis on Ethiopian Airlines, on an elderly but serviceable plane. No sleep because of yowling children. First Class is called Cloud Nine. Landed in Addis as the sun rose. Still a bit chilly at 8,000 feet. Addis is an artificial construct, chosen as the capital by the Negus (Emperor) Menelik in 1887, after the capitals had wandered over the empire for centuries. The name “Addis Ababa” means “new flower.” Not very apposite today.

Having had no sleep, I naturally went for a walk after arriving at the hotel. The streets were broad and largely empty, with some westernized buildings, the legacy of the Italian occupation from 1936. Despite dire warnings in the guide books about hostility to “farangis,” active pick-pockets, con-artists and aggressive beggars, I encountered nothing more hostile than a few friendly waves across the road. The climate was pleasantly warm.

My group, led by a cool and efficient young man of mixed Ethiopian and Italian ancestry, Dario, lunched at a restaurant where we ate the local way. A large, circular platter is provided, coverd with various offerings, mainly meat in different guises. Rolls of a pancake-like substance are used to scoop up the food and eat it—no cutlery. After, a waitress poured soap and hot water over our hands, and another waitress produced warm towels. All very civilized. Happily, steaks are no longer cut from live animals and eaten raw (see James Bruce, Travels, 1790.)

Then a visit to the cathedral, where Haile Selassie is buried. The last emperor was murdered in 1975 by the dictator, Colonel Mengistu, and buried next to a latrine, ending 3,000 years of rule by the supposed descendants of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. His remains were exhumed after Mengistu fell, and decently re-interred. In the cemetery outside, there is a handsome memorial to Sylvia Pankhurst, the great suffragist campaigner, who later made Ethiopia her home. Northern Ethiopia is almost entirely Christian, an emperor having adopted the religion in the third century AD.

The National Museum was far more interesting, housing Lucy, arguably the oldest hominid yet found by archaeologists, 3.2 million years old. The ethnological section appealed to me especially. I loved the old, carved neck-rests used by the Oromo people of the south. They have—or had—extraordinarily elaborate hairstyles, held in place by oil and butter. Rather than use pillows, to preserve their hair, they slept with their necks on intricately carved rests, thus keeping their coifs in order.

Representation of the Devil in the Debre Birhan Selassie Church, Gondar.

Day 2: Monday, 19December Holidays can be hard work. Having missed a night’s sleep, we were up at 4.30 a.m. for the one-hour flight to the old capital of Gondar. Not only did we have to check in 2 hours before the flight, I had to take my boots off twice for security checks. I hope, as the tourist industry develops, the airports will become more user-friendly.

Gondar was the capital from 1635. Before, Ethiopia had had no capital as such, the emperor and his court wandering around the country, fighting wars and living off the land. After a period of great upheaval, including war with a Muslim usurper, Abdul Grayn, and violent religious conflict between the established Orthodox Church and an emperor who wanted to convert the country to Catholicism, the Emperor Fasilidas wanted to create stability. So he chose a small hilltop village in the foothills of the Simien Mountains as his new capital.

Gondar is a friendly, laid-back town. Its chief glories are the Debre Birhan Selassie church, said to have the finest frescoes in Ethiopia—which is saying a lot—and the Royal Enclosure. As in Byzantine churches in Greece, the frescoes in this church, covering every inch of wall and ceiling, taught an illiterate population the myths of religion. There is a particulary fine and scary Devil within the flames of Hell, and there are graphic depictions of what lies in wait for sinners—religion as a mechanism of social control.

The Royal Enclosure, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, houses a collection of medieval-style castles unique in sub-Saharan Africa. There are six small, self-contained castles, built for occupation rather than defense, with a complex of connecting tunnels. Each of Fasilidas’s five successors added his own creation to the family enclave. Some have been beautifully restored. One sad relic is the Royal Archive Building. The Italian occupers used it as a military HQ, and the RAF bombed it into a picturesque ruin. The compound is huge and peaceful, with a profusion of trees. It is a lovely place for bird-watchers. A slice of history, preserved in aspic.

Then to the local market. There is no famine in the Ethiopian highlands: everywhere, huge piles of food, herbs and spices. Iron tools were being smelted and fashioned. Lambskin bellows made the charcoal fire glow, then a tool was heated until red-hot. Next it was beaten into shape, three men with sledge-hammers hitting it in rotation.

I liked Gondar very much. But a visitor in 1868 would have seen a reeking, smoking ruin, with a forest of crosses on which Theodore had crucified in their hundreds the population of the town. The priests called down curses on his head and he had them burned alive. The sin of the people was that they had protected rebels against Theodore’s rule. So when the young women of the town greeted his army’s arrival by singing and dancing, he decided that the singing had been a signal for the rebels to flee, and consigned the women to the flames. Every inhabitant was murdered (see Dr. Henry Blanc, A Narrative of the Captivity in Abyssinia, 1868).

Priests passing the time at the Debre Birhan Selassie Church, Gondar.

 Day 3: Tuesday, 20 December Drove into the Simien Mountains National Park, for one of the most magical days of the trip. The drive was rather grim—road-building in Ethiopia is a work-in-progress, Chinese engineers much in evidence. Mostly on dirt-tracks. Every child waves at passing farangis, so my arm began to ache after a while. When we stopped, children appeared as if out of the ground, wanting to shake hands and asking for pens, sweets and money. Stupid tourists have turned most children into beggars. But it is all very good-natured, perhaps more a game than anything else.

We climbed into the foothills, where the harvest was in full swing. The scenes were biblical. Threshing was done in a timeless way, three or four cattle—the ancient Egyptian breed with the humped necks, called zebu—driven endlessly round in a circle to trample the corn. Likewise, winnowing—tossing the grain in the air over and over, so that the chaff would blow away. Progress was frequently halted as mixed herds of goats, fat-tailed sheep, oxen, donkeys, mules and, occasionally, camels were driven along the road.

We arrived at the eco-lodge, at 10,700 feet, the highest in Africa, in the early afternoon. We were housed in traditional round, stone-and-dung-walled huts with thatched roofs: very comfortable.

The highlight of the day was a hike into the mountains, during which we encountered a troup of about 50 Gelada Baboons. They were utterly fearless, treating us as if we were a herd of antelope rather than humans. They were mainly grazing, which they do by grubbing up and eating the roots of grasses. There were grizzled elders digging up the grass, and babies play-fighting and grooming. We could go within a few feet of them and they showed neither fear nor hostility. As time passed, they moved towards a cliff-face below the plateau, where they spend the night to avoid marauding hyenas and big cats. It was an utterly captivating afternoon. Huge lammergeiers floated on the thermals above the canyon, seeking prey.

Gelada baboons in The Simien Mountains.

PS I see “Newt” Gingrinch has won the South Carolina Republican primary. But are the American people ready for an amphibian in the White House? Especially after three years of a President without a backbone?

(To Be Continued . . .)

by Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—1/23/12—The days of our years are threescore and ten and, if by reason of strength they be fourscore, yet is their strength labor and sorrow . . . .

So says the psalm and, for most people, it rings true. There have been impressive increases in life expectancy, but existence after age 70 is still an increasingly troubled one, plagued by pullulating sarcopenia.

That is progressive muscle wasting, which creates a positive (read negative) feedback loop: Sarcopenia lowers the metabolic rate, which leads to weight gain, which leads to glucose intolerance, which leads to Type II diabetes, which leads to greater inactivity and thus still larger losses in muscle mass.

At around age 70, we seem to hit a wall.

Whereas, once we ran, now we can barely trot.

Whereas, once we lifted, now we must be lifted, often out of chairs.

The villain is our errant myoblasts, muscle-forming cells, which appear to melt away with uncharacteristic suddenness in our septuagenarian decade.

Myoblastic declension is, in turn, powerfully influenced by a failure in the DNA of our mitochondria, an organelle that is responsible for manufacturing adenosine triphosphate, the body’s basic fuel.

And why this failure?

Probably, it is because of the accumulation of mutations.

With age, there are so many cellular copies that a certain and growing number must be bad ones.

That circumstance, incidentally, is also very likely the cause of many cancers: diet-related increases in fat result in chronic inflammation, which leads the cytokine system to heal by generating new cells, thus inevitably creating too many cell copies.

So, because the mitochondrial mutations won’t stop, the muscle wasting is inevitable, right?

Wrong.

Mature mitochondrial DNA may continue to mutate, but this mutant DNA exists side-by-side with another kind of DNA that is far more resistant to, even scorned by, mutation.

So-called wild or non-mutant DNA, which is resident in satellite cells (dormant myoblasts), can be persuaded to awaken, enter the cell cycle and fuse with existing myofibers in order to negate or dilute the impact of the deleterious mutations.

Ergo the myoblasts will revivify and power the body in a youthful fashion for many more years than expected.

And what is principally responsible for such a happy rise in the ratio of wild-type to mutant DNA?

Heavy resistance exercise, of course.

Coenzyme Q 10 and L-arginine can help.

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/15/12—Few documents stir up as much controversy as the Ten Commandments. Few have such an interesting history. The story begins in the book of Exodus and, presumably, will have no ending, since the original source of the commandments will repose in the New Temple in the returned or replaced Ark of the Covenant until the coming of the Messiah. If we are to believe the Book of Revelation, they will not be found on earth, for John tells us that the Ark of the Covenant is already in heaven (Revelation 11:19). The prophet does not say whether it will be returned to the Temple.

Written by a mighty powerful finger.

My first knowledge of them came in the form of a wall hanging, an 8 x 10 board with a royal blue background and sparkling glitter forming the words of what God would have me do.

The board was a prominent fixture in the Baptist households of Deep Gap, North Carolina. These mandates could be bought for a mere 75 cents, though a version with cherubs flitting in the corners could be had for a quarter more.

I wasn’t required to memorize them, and I puzzled over the seventh, since the word “adultery” was not then a part of my word-hoard. From what I could figure out from the pocket dictionary we had, the seventh didn’t apply to me, so I didn’t worry about breaking it.

My curiosity about them led me to our family Bible and the relevant chapters in Exodus. If I had sat down with Huck Finn to read the account given there, I’m sure he would have prompted me to call it a “stretcher.” For it was pretty far-fetched.

The story asked me to believe that a man of 120 winters could twice tote down a mountain stone tablets with commandments written by the finger of God on both sides. How could that be, I wondered; did God have an extraordinarily hard finger, or had he merely glued a diamond to it before carving his mandates? More believable was how ticked off Moses was that, during his 40-day outing on Mt. Sinai, his people had taken up calf-worship. Who could blame him for slamming the first set of stones to the ground?

Moses would do better by that second set. After all, they embodied God’s covenant with his people, representing a kind of contract extending protection on one side for obedience on the other. Moses gathered gold, silver, bronze, and special woods and linens and then turned the job of fashioning an ark over to a master builder, Bezalel. A highly detailed description of the ark’s construction appears in chapters 26-30 and 36-39. Completed, it featured two cherubs on top and storage space for manna, Aaron’s rod, and the two inscribed stones. The enclosed contents were considered the Holy of Holies, the entire works being known as the Ark of the Covenant.

The ark in time became a venerated fixture of Solomon’s temple. But where it presently is no one seems to know for certain. Was it secretly buried on some mountain in the Holy Land, or was it carried off to Ethiopia by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and placed in safekeeping there?

One story involves a switch Menelik pulled off when he swapped an intended replica given him by his father for the real thing, believing as he did that Solomon had corrupted its site by allowing molten gods inside the Temple. Menelik wanted them to have a sacred housing, a fancy one, to boot.

Having fancy trappings or an elaborate place to hang them or situate them in public buildings and parks doesn’t much matter to people who venerate their function as a moral or spiritual guide.

Driven by a religious fervor to hang them in classrooms, many school boards and even state legislatures have acted to permit, yea encourage, placing them in classrooms, despite the continuing challenge of having the Supreme Court rule against them. In upholding the principle of separation of church and state, to take but one example, the Court struck down a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the commandments in every classroom (Stone v Graham).

Also in Kentucky (McCreary v the ACLU of Kentucky), the Court ruled against posting them in courthouses, acting out of the concern that they promoted a single religion.

But the Court permitted their display in a stone monument on the Texas capitol grounds, expressing the view (Van Orden v Perry) that, as one of 17 monuments erected there, the intent of those erecting it was not to promote a single faith.

No doubt, the most notorious instance involving a public display resulted from the effort of Alabama’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, to present them in some form in the state courthouse. He tried posting them and, later, that move having failed, he had them carved on slabs and placed atop a block of granite, which he set up in the courthouse. Defying a Federal judge’s order to remove it, he eventually lost his office and the stone was carted off.

If displayed in a manner promoting efforts to educate students about the diversity of religions in the nation, the Court has ruled that the Ten Commandments may be posted in classrooms and courthouses.

A sincere effort to study the evolution of them would produce, in many quarters, a surprise or two.

While presenting them to Moses, God proved hard-nosed about at least two: the one about keeping the Sabbath holy; the other about honoring parents. Anyone failing to observe the Sabbath should be put to death (Exodus 14:16), and anyone cursing his parents merited the same fate (Exodus 21:17).

I wonder if even Roy Moore would have gone so far in his obedience to God.

Hanging the Ten Commandments is surely an issue with a long, long life-line, even if they are slightly known and frequently disobeyed. Obviously, that seventh one has done little to keep our national divorce rate under 50 percent.