Bill Murray's Blog, page 121
November 21, 2014
Friday Photo #3, Hoi An, Vietnam
There’s a bustling vegetable market adjacent to the dawn��fish market in Hoi An, Vietnam. Hoi An is a beach resort near Da Nang and the imperial capital of Hue in central Vietnam. Click this to enlarge it, and enjoy 442 other photos in the Vietnam Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
November 19, 2014
The Velvet Revolution & Personal History
Today Vaclav Havel will be��honored with a bust in the U.S. Capitol. Only three other international figures have been honored this way. This week’s ceremony marks the 25th anniversary of the start��of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. By the 29th of December that year Mr. Havel had been elected President by Parliament.
That year the New York Times published special pages each day under the heading Upheaval in the East. From its 29 December, 1989 edition, in an article by Craig R. Whitney:
This evening, tens of thousands of people streamed into the center of Prague’s Old Town in what amounted to a street celebration of Mr. Havel’s election. He appeared along with the visiting Portuguese President, Mario Soares, and greeted them.
Mr. Havel, son of an upper-class civil engineer, was not allowed to go to university by the Communist Government after he finished his compulsory schooling in 1951, because of his class background. Today the students of Prague, many of them children of the Communist ruling class, have made Mr. Havel their intellectual hero, and they have been on strike since demonstrations on Nov. 17 sparked the peaceful revolution that overthrew the long repression.
‘Havel is the only guarantee that the changes here will be of a permanent character,’ said one of them, Ludek Vasta, 21, an economics student.”
Leaving East Berlin’s newly accessible Lichtenberg Station four days after Havel’s election��on 2 January, 1990, we��stopped in Prague en route to Vienna just long enough to tear this campaign poster from a wall and bring it back home. It remains on��my office wall.
November 15, 2014
November 14, 2014
Friday Photo #2
HDR of the Moai at Tongariki, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
“… Arriving at Tongariki for the first time is hard to describe. It’s an experience you can only have once in this world. The ahu is aligned with the inner part of a natural bay a few hundred meters wide and a field gradually rises inland giving the feel of an amphitheater.
These moai are huge. The biggest on the island is here, 86 tons. You can see why because you are line-of-sight from the main quarry, the cone of the volcano Rano Raraku. They say they built them bigger and bigger toward the end, perhaps growing plaintive in their pleas to the ancestor gods. If that is so these must have been among the last.
Standing at the base of the ahu regarding these guys, isolated in an obscure corner of an obscure island, while you’re alone in the twilight, it’s a feeling not quite like any other. It’s entirely unique.
A man taking pictures, another man and a boy are leaving as we walk through one of the rusty turnstiles they’ve put up here and there around the island. Campers’ lanterns twinkle down along the shore and besides that, no one. Nothing but the sea air, the full moon rising through broken clouds, a crashing surf, the moai and us….”
- from the eventual book, Visiting Easter Island, A Considered Guide.
Click to enlarge the photo. More photos in the Easter Island Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
November 13, 2014
Elephant-Sized Crimes
From a report titled “Vanishing Point: Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania’s Elephants,” by the Environmental Investigation Agency, as explained in the New York Times:
The organization has traced bribery and collusion in ivory smuggling to politicians from Tanzania’s governing party, led by President Jakaya Kikwete. When he took office in 2005, there were about 142,000 elephants in Tanzania. By the time Mr. Kikwete is to step down next year, the population is expected to have declined to just 55,000. Tanzania currently bans all domestic and international trade in ivory.”
The NYT article also alleges,
When President Xi Jinping of China and his entourage of government officials and business leaders arrived in Tanzania in March 2013 … members of the Chinese delegation used Mr. Xi’s visit as an opportunity to procure so much illegal ivory that local prices doubled to about $318 a pound.
November 11, 2014
Helmut Kohl on the east side of #BrandenburgGate 25 year...
Helmut Kohl on the east side of #BrandenburgGate 25 years on, in Bild: http://t.co/0oOqi5Ygvy #BerlinWall
— Bill Murray (@BMurrayWriter) November 11, 2014
November 9, 2014
Twenty Five Years On
This is one of only two remaining photos I have from a thrilling day for a young American. The events that led to this New Year’s Eve 1989 photo at the Berlin Wall began twenty five years ago today with the initial breach of the wall.
As soon as we got to Berlin we rushed down to the wall at the Brandenburg Gate. I borrowed a hammer and chipped off a few pieces of the wall for family and friends and later sat atop the wall looking west with a teen aged East German who had never been on the other side.
I remember a sea of American flags back down through the utterly packed Tiergarten. And I remain baffled by David Hasselhoff, hoisted into the air on a crane, singing to the crowd.
Click to enlarge this photo. It’s in the Germany Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
Autumn in the Southern Appalachians
Not much travel required for this photo. It’s Minnehaha Falls, maybe fifty miles from our home near Tallulah Gorge in Rabun County, Georgia, which borders both North and South Carolina.
Russia in Ukraine, It Just Doesn’t Wash
The Russian position in Ukraine is just untenable, despite the best efforts of its Foreign Ministry. Consider the audacity of these quotes from Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevicha in a Russia%20warns US against strikes on Islamic State in Syria">BBC report back at the beginning of U.S. air strikes against ISIS:
“The US president has spoken directly about the possibility of strikes by the US armed forces against Isil (IS) positions in Syria without the consent of the legitimate government.”
Meanwhile the Russian president has lied about verified strikes by Russian armed forces against Ukrainian positions inside Ukraine without the consent of the legitimate government.
Again, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevicha:
“This step, in the absence of a UN Security Council decision, would be an act of aggression, a gross violation of international law.”
Meanwhile the Russians’ steps, in the absence of a UN Security Council decision, are an act of aggression, a gross violation of international law.
Next?
