Autopsis » Cultures

Chicken Bus Roads

Doug — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:33:25 +0000

One common denominator of developing country travel is chicken bus roads.

No matter where you go in the world, if you get off the tourist trail and out into the places where the regular people live, work and travel, you will find yourself on a chicken bus road.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/peru/docs/chickenbusroads.pdf

Weavers 2.0

Doug — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:26:08 +0000

The 22 highland weavers of Patacancha, Peru received payment for goods sold today. Their efforts to revitalize and maintain the skills of the ancient craft were rewarded with a small percentage of the millions of tourist dollars that annually flow through the sacred valley into Machu Picchu.

After receiving payment, discussing new products and anticipated market needs, they negotiated for the types of weavings required to meet market demand and the wholesale prices for those products. The weavers were efficient members of a smoothly functioning market.

Things had not always been so.

Click here for the rest of the story: www.hackneys.com/travel/peru/docs/weavers20.pdf

El Ojo

Doug — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:31:52 +0000

I went down to the market and sat down on the curb.

I asked around about who was holding but no one was talking.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/peru/docs/elojo.pdf

The Room of Wakes

Doug — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:27:18 +0000

For 391 years no outsider walked the passageways.

For 391 years no outsider touched the walls.

For 391 years no outsider saw the interior.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/peru/docs/roomofwakes.pdf

Just Ask

Doug — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:13:16 +0000

10:15 AM

I was sitting at the table outside the gas station using their WiFi to finish our monthly finances when I first noticed it.

It was something on the underside of the truck. It looked like we picked up a branch somewhere and it hooked underneath with the end towards the back of the truck hanging down.

“Funny,” I thought. “Neither of us saw anything on our walk around yesterday morning before we left the beach. We weren’t in any brush there or since.”

I closed my laptop and walked out towards the truck. The closer I got, the more it did not look like a branch.

I reached the side, bent down and examined it.

No, it wasn’t a branch.

It was my worst nightmare.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/chile/docs/justask.pdf

La Tirana

Doug — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:04:25 +0000

Every year there is a festival at La Tirana, Chile.

La Tirana has about 250 full time residents.

Over 10,000 people come to La Tirana for the festival.

This year, we were two of those people.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/chile/docs/latirana.pdf

Market Town Saturday Night

Doug — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:28:51 +0000

We broke the rule.

We knew the rule. We knew it very well. It was kind of hard not to know the rule since we wrote it ourselves.

It is a simple rule. A just a few words rule. An easy to understand, easy to implement rule.

It has become a cardinal rule. A hard and fast rule. An under-no-circumstances-will-this-be-broken-rule.

We broke the rule.

The rest of the story is here: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/chile/docs/markettown.pdf

Saving The Books

Doug — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:18:06 +0000

If I could have participated in only one flood relief effort in Iowa, this is the one I would have chosen:

June 14, 2008

Heroic story of books

By MIKE KILEN
mkilen@dmreg.com

Iowa City, Ia. — In all the statewide stories of heroism, it would be hard to find more passion than in the snaking line going up the steps of the Main Library at the University of Iowa on the banks of the flooding Iowa River.

Hand over hand; all man’s ideas were handed. Philosophy and theatre, science and religion. Books rising from the basement to a higher level.

A student handed to a professor to a fresh-faced child.

This is Iowa City, after all, where thinking and literature are in the very blood, no less important than a homeowner’s prized possession or a building’s boiler.

Taylor Raborn, a graduate student, handed "Atmosphere on Space Cabins and Closed Environments" to the next man and the next, up three stories it traveled.

"I want to make sure the books are out," he said. "I saw Nietzsche and books on Judaism and Islam go by. It makes you want to come back and read them all. Hopefully we will be able to because I love books.

"There are a lot of bibliophiles in this city."

Librarians have been moving books from the basement all week — only copies of manuscripts and theses. But when they heard the news Thursday that the river was going to rise higher than expected, they put out a call for help.

"All of the sudden, ‘whoosh’ all these people showed up," said Nancy Baker, university librarian. "This is where it shows up for people, library books. They are very powerful for people. Many things can be replaced but not some of these books."

Many are out of print, books dating back to the 1800s or older that have been stacked in the basement for generations — called special collections — while so-called "rare" books are already on higher ground.

"We are a research library, the big library in Iowa. We provide the whole state with education and research. Some of these books you can’t just get another copy," Baker said.

As the hour approached quitting time at 5 p.m., when all operations were ordered to halt and volunteers evacuate the building, hands moved faster and faster.

One stack was emptied every 20 minutes.

Psychiatry professor Jim Beeghor said his shift started with Western philosophy, Kant and Spinoza, and he handed off to theater professor Kim Marra, who was glad to see a rescue of old plays from the 18th century, up the stairs, through the hands of joking students — 95 people to the top.

The best guess is more than 100,000 books are moving upward as they raced the clock, realizing some would be left behind.

Another line up a back set of stairs had 115 people, the last book landing on a pile — "Measurement of the Stretch of Muscles" — as the announcement to quit was heard.

It was over. People groaned. They begged to go on.

Hold on. Librarians announced to cheers that they could stay until 9 p.m. to save more books.

Floodwaters would not steal great thoughts. Not here.

Source: DesMoinesRegister.com

Where My Heart Lies

Doug — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:15:07 +0000

I am in a rural area.

It is a flat plain, with rich, dark, loamy soil.

The dirt here is dark, from cocoa to black – from merely laced with fertility to boiling with it.

The people here are friendly, open, rich in spirit and generosity. They are genuine.

The crops here were bountiful. Now, with the changing of the seasons, the land rests, dozes off, into the long slumber of winter.

For I am not home, in the heartland. I am in the parallel universe, the mirror image of the heartland, the polar opposite of home.

I am in the plains of central Chile, the breadbasket of the nation.

I awake to the crowing of the roosters and the lowing of the cattle. The puttering of the tractors paces my day.

All is good here.

But all is not good everywhere.

All is not good at home.

Home is under muddy water.

At home, my family and friends throw sandbags instead of Frisbees.

This is not how summer is meant to be in the heartland.

And here, 5,520 miles / 8,885 km from home, I long to be there, throwing sandbags.

Home, where my heart lies.

**************************

To those of you back home in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

The Operator

Doug — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:22:43 +0000

If my foulies could talk, I’m sure they’d have expressed mixed feelings. Sure, they were grateful for finally breathing fresh air again after being packed away since sailing across the north Atlantic, but this was fresh water running off of them. “What is up with this?” I’m sure they’d ask if they could, “Where’s the salt water? Where’s the rolling swell? Where’s the ocean? Aren’t we supposed to be circumnavigating?”

I don’t know how I would have broken it to them, probably slowly and gently. I would have started with how good they looked, clean and bright and yellow tastefully accented with dark blue set off by strategically placed reflective markers shining as bright as the headlights stopped along the remote gravel road. They looked good, very good, even if trapped on terra firma instead of their native endless seas.

With my day-glow yellow hood in place and my headlight strapped across my forehead shining out beneath it, I created a confident and commanding presence as I walked through the driving rain down the line of vehicles towards the deafening roar that lie ahead. So commanding, in fact, driver after driver rolled down their window and asked me, in a variety of equally incomprehensible Spanish language ways, what the heck was going on and exactly how long would it be before my crew had the bridge cleared and the road open again.

In reply, I repeated, in a variety of ways equally incomprehensible to them, in grotesquely butchered Spanish, that I was not in charge, did not command the Chilean highway system, and had absolutely no idea when the bridge would re-open. Based on their horrified expressions I was probably actually speaking the Spanish words meaning a cow’s entrails would be spread across their car’s interior, but, I took it as my mission to distribute confidence and positive thoughts through the dozen cars and trucks impatiently idling in line.

After each brief conversation I smiled confidently, nodded, and moved on towards what once had been a bridge over a minor creek on Chile’s famed Carretera Austral, deep in the southern reaches of Chilean Patagonia. In my wake, car after car and truck after truck executed a three point turn and headed back through the black night, pounding rain, and washed out road punctuated with landslides the 160 kilometers (100 miles) back to the nearest town. I had no idea what could cause them to flee with such urgency.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/chile/theoperator.pdf