elkit in wonderland

Give Love, And Keep Blood Between Brothers

Parking this here for posterity. From C-SPAN - President Obama's inauguration and address.

If you'd rather read or listen than watch, skip over to Transcript of Barack Obama's Inaugural Address on NPR.org. (I was looking for it on the newly remodeled http://www.whitehouse.gov/, but I couldn't find it there. Soon, I'm sure.)

PS a day later: Sure enough, here is the inaugural address in text and video on whitehouse.gov.

I Almost Killed You (29/2008)

I don't know about all the nay-sayers (nor do I care) - I thought Valkyrie was really good, and that includes Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. He plays well as a man sure of himself and of his convictions. The rest of the cast was great too - Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hollander, Thomas Kretschmann, Christian Berkel, and Jamie Parker - and I learned a thing or two about the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. I knew about that, and that it failed, but I didn't know that these officers had been trying for a couple of years to assassinate Hitler, and that he kept eluding them because he kept changing his plans and schedules. I also didn't know anything about the "Valkyrie" part of their conspiracy - how they were planning to overthrow the government after Hitler's death. Good stuff, well played.

Oh yeah, and Firstshowing.net has an interview with screenwriter/producer Christopher McQuarrie that is well worth a read for lots of background and historical info.

Won't You Help To Sing These Songs Of Freedom

From the Los Angeles Times today: Remains of the slave ship Trouvadore found:

Texas researchers have discovered the wreck of the slave ship Trouvadore, which slammed into a reef off the coast of the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1841, freeing the 193 Africans who were being brought to the U.S. South for a life of servitude.

It is the only known wreck of a ship involved in the illegal slave trade, said marine archaeologist Don Keith, president of the underwater archaeology institute Ships of Discovery in Corpus Christi, Texas.

One of the female Africans on board was shot by the crew, but the rest escaped and were rescued by local authorities. Their descendants may now make up a significant proportion of the 30,000 residents of the island country. The Spanish crew members were captured and sent to Cuba for trial. Their fate is unknown.

Let My Love Open The Door

Deb is playing The Page 56 Game and says we can all play along.

Rules:

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post that sentence along with these instructions.
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Mine is (and I'll post the preceding fourth sentence in parentheses, for better context):

("When will I be able to see Badri Chaudhuri?") Dunworthy asked, holding the door so she couldn't shut it.

This is from Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book", which is twice as fun to re-read while I'm in Oxford where it is set.

Reunited, And It Feels So Good

Today is the 70th anniversary of the "Anschluss", the German annexation of Austria. German news magazine Der Spiegel has a series of English-language articles and photos:

March 12, 1938: Annexation Austrian-Style

It was 10 minutes to eight in the evening, March 11, 1938, when Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg took to the radio to address his people. He bade them farewell with portentous words: “God protect Austria.”

The next day at 5:00 a.m., SS leader Heinrich Himmler landed with his staff at the Aspern Airport in Vienna. Shortly thereafter, the German army crossed the border into Austria. “Operation Otto,” as the military element of the Austrian takeover was known, and the “reunification of Austria with the German Reich,” as Hitler formulated it for a law decreed earlier that same day, was in full swing. A referendum on the topic of independence, planned by Schuschnigg for March 13, had prompted Hitler to take matters into his hands and push ahead quickly with the solution to the “Austria question.”

Everyday I Write The Book

I glimpsed the name "Wharton" in an NY Times headline, and clicked on the link, wondering whether this was related to Edith Wharton, a novelist whose work I enjoy, and whose biography I am reading right now. Indeed, it is: Landmark Massachusetts Building Where Wharton Wrote Faces Foreclosure.

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in Lenox, Mass., is in danger of being put in foreclosure, says Stephanie Copeland, president of Edith Wharton Restoration, the organization that owns and maintains this stately residence and its surrounding gardens.

Since 2002, Ms. Copeland explained by phone this week, the Mount, which is open to the public — much of it has been restored in recent years to match the period when Wharton lived there — has been covering its operating expenses by borrowing from the Berkshire Bank in nearby Pittsfield. It now owes the bank some $4.3 million, and in mid-February, when it failed to meet a scheduled monthly payment of $30,000, the bank sent a notice that it intended to start foreclosing unless the default was remedied promptly, Ms. Copeland said.

To stay open, she added, the Mount needs to raise $3 million by March 24.

Yikes! That's not much time for a lot of money to raise. If they decide to fundraise over the interwebs, I'll gladly pitch in a few dollars.

PS: They do (sort of), and I did. The Mount/Edith Wharton Restoration web site has instructions on how to contribute by check or credit card if you're so inclined.

This State of Independence Shall Be

Four movies that I would happily watch on July 4th (or any other day, really):

1. Catch-22
2. Hair
3. Apocalypse Now
4. Die Brücke

I Must Be One Of The Wonders Of God's Own Creation

I've had a trial subscription for ten weeks of the Sunday paper. It's almost done, and today is the first time I am actually sitting down with a cup of coffee and the paper in hand on a Sunday morning. (And what do I do? I read one article, put the paper down, and start to blog. Silly geek.)

There's a competition to select a new set of Seven Wonders of the World:

The Egyptian pyramids are the only surviving structures from the original list of seven architectural marvels. Long gone are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria. Those seven were deemed wonders in ancient times by observers of the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Candidates for the new list have been narrowed down to 21, including the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu. The public can vote until July 6, 2007, by Internet or phone. The seven winners will be announced July 7 in Lisbon, Portugal.

You can vote online, at the New Seven Wonders web site, or by phone. I think my votes would go to:

• the Pyramids of Giza
• the Hagia Sophia
• the temples at Angkor
• the Great Wall of China
• Petra
• Stonehenge
• the Taj Mahal

But I'll think about it a little more. Who would you vote for? (Here's a list of the 21 finalists.)

Man Out Of Time

And
this
is my
picture
of the day.
Amuses me to no end.

[To find out why, click on it; it'll take you to a Wikipedia page that tells you more about what is being depicted here.]

When We Could Be Diving For Pearls

The Cement Ship
Originally uploaded by elkit.

We're in our writing retreat in Aptos, less than a mile from the Cement Ship. I'd always wondered idly why it was called "cement ship", but I'd never been curious enough to find out. Spending this weekend so close to it, and taking several photos of it, I was inspired to look up its story on the interwebs. I found several good sources:

- a Mercury News article from 2001
- a page devoted to setting the record straight, including the "recipe" for the ship's hull, and a photo from around 1930, showing the ship in all its glory.
- a recent (September 2006) Mercury News article about cleaning up leftover oil that was killing sea birds.

So what is this all about, and why is it called "the cement ship"?
Here's what I've learned: Towards the end of World War I, several ships were built of concrete, because iron and steel were getting very expensive. The SS Palo Alto was built in Oakland, and was intended to be a supply ship, but by the time she was completed in 1919, the war was over, and she stayed in Oakland until 1929, when she was bought by the Seacliff Amusement Company. They sailed her to Aptos, and turned her into a dance hall, restaurant, and swimming amusement park. Unfortunately, the bottom fell out the financial market in 1929, and the company went under within the next two years. The SS Palo Alto stayed sitting at the pier and fell into disrepair. These days, she is an artificial reef and great fishing spot, and one of the most-photographed landmarks in the area.