Bill Murray's Blog, page 25
March 12, 2020
A Reading List in the Time of Coronavirus
All right, all right, it really does look like we’re all going to have to enjoy spring after being dragged inside (cozier if you’re south of the equator, winter coming on). If that’s what we’re facing, here are a half dozen books I can recommend for your quarantine time:
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk • Nobel prize winner for literature, clever, engaging fiction.
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris • The latest from a brilliant writer. It’s not what you think.
Prisoner by Jason Rezaian • Memoir of the former Washington Post reporter’s time in an Iranian prison.
Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa • Tough stuff about the Syrian civil war.
The Capital by Robert Menasse • Acerbic portrait of the function, and disfunction, of the EU in Brussels.
The Salt of the Earth by Jósef Wittlin • Classic novel of a Polish peasant’s experience in World War One.
And here are a few waiting on my bookshelf. Since we were planning to be in Africa this spring, here are three books that were to be background for the trip:
A Grain of Wheat by Ngūgī Wa Thiong’o • Classic story of late colonial Kenya.
House of Stone by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma • The facts of life in modern Zimbabwe.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste • I loved Ms. Mengiste’s 2011 Beneath the Lion’s Gaze. This one’s about Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia.
And one more, a new release:
Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon • Story of three orphaned kids in 1960s Laos.
At least we can enjoy traveling the world through books this spring, while staying indoors. And not touching our faces.
If you read any of these books please send your feedback.
March 11, 2020
Svalbard: Fastest Warming Place on Earth
Here’s a nicely done twenty-two minute documentary called Svalbard: Fastest Warming Place on Earth, from ARTE Reportage.
March 9, 2020
A Remarkable Message from the President
Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me! https://t.co/rQVA4ER0PV
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2020
Here is a retweet by the president of a remarkable post by Assistant to the President and Director of Social Media Dan Scavino. The very stable genius must have missed history class that day they talked about Nero.
But here’s some good news: turns out he’s a natural on the whole Coronavirus thing: “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability,” the president explained.
March 8, 2020
The American South: DO NOT SAY Namaste
All y’all who don’t live down here may be unaware of this political fight.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers might lift a decades old ban on yoga in public schools, though the bill would keep the greeting “namaste” on the forbidden list.
A bill by Rep. Jeremy Gray of Opelika would let local school systems decide if they want to teach yoga, poses and stretches. However it would require the moves to have exclusively English names.
It would also prohibit the use of chanting, mantras and saying the greeting “namaste.”
March 7, 2020
Climb a Mountain. Support a Poor Country.
Mt. Everest from rural Tibet
In How Mount Everest became a multimillion-dollar business, Zachary Crockett shows how massively the mountain benefits the Nepalese. This chart comes from the article.
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March 6, 2020
On the Road: Getting to Tasiilaq
Here is my monthly travel column as posted to 3 Quarks Daily on Monday:
On the Road: Getting to Tasiilaq
First thing we have to do, we have to find Robert.
The men smoking outside the concrete block terminal are not Robert so I ask around inside. The man behind the check-in counter might as well be collecting Arctic tumbleweeds. No flights are pending; no one is checking in.
He does not know Robert.
Together we lean over his counter to look down to the harbor. One boat is speeding away and there don’t seem to be any others. He flips his palms up and shakes his head, “I think you just go down there and wait. That is your only chance.”
•••••
Humans inhabit the fringe, the perimeter of Greenland not flattened by the ice cap, and I mean flattened, literally. Even with its thinning, ice reaches three kilometers deep at its thickest, pushing the bedrock into the mantle such that if the ice disappeared, the island would become an archipelago.
You can’t fly to Tasiilaq, the biggest town on the eastern side of Greenland, for lack of sufficient flat space for an airstrip. So we have flown to a gravel strip called Kulusuk airport. To get to Tasiilaq we must traverse the mouth of the Ammassalik fjord. We booked that online and all we know is, get to Kulusuk and ask for Robert.
We can see our destination twenty kilometers across the fjord behind a few icebergs and a coastline of precambrian rock thrust from the sea long before humanity, possibly even contemporaneous with the first life on earth.
We invade and insult the silence with our prissy roll aboard carry-on bags, scraping and skipping the damned things down the rough gravel. Show more respect and stand still, and the quiet closes up around you as a vehement, absolute thing.
A man from Cologne with a massive backpack walks ahead of us. He has arrived with no itinerary beyond walking for two weeks. His pack reaches up past his head, bulging with two weeks of freeze dried food and powdered milk.
Once he walked from Ilullisat to Sisimiut in western Greenland, and that is far, far farther than from here to Tasiilaq and then clear around the island, but that time he was advised that there was no danger of polar bears and he has yet to be so advised here. His itinerary may have to be revised based on local information. Right now he plans to circumambulate Ammassalik island. He puts great store in the advice of Robert, but none of us know how to find him.
Airport to harbor, perhaps a twenty minute walk. No boats in sight. Either side of the gravel path, just rock and a little but not much tenacious flora. Our destination across the water is low and bare with mountains rising snow capped, glaciers embedded toward the top. Clouds tease the ridges but do not suggest a threat of rain. In between individual icebergs, not a field, rise like several-story buildings.
It turns out that two tiny Danish-built fiberglass Poca speedboats, so low slung that the dock hides them both, bob in the sea beyond the dock. Two Greenlandic men stand down there on the shore below the dock, neither in so much as a jacket, enjoying the northern summer.
We ask, “Robert?” and the younger man, with no English, shakes his head no, “Christian.” We and the backpacker, who is expecting the same ride, are at a bit of a loss until we work out, through gestures and good will, that Christian is on behalf of Robert. For us, that is good.
The dock is too high for the boats, and so we scramble down onto rocks to climb aboard, and Christian takes the backpacker, my wife Mirja and me screaming across the fjord toward a similar spot on the far shore. Christian, hair stood up to a greased crown, drives standing, and stops us dead in the water alongside this iceberg, then that, so we can take photos.
We clamber out on a rock where there is no dock at all. Christian motions without words, “up that way,” and makes no move to leave the boat. So off we scramble, not having paid anybody for anything, off to find someone who wants our money. Robert, maybe.
The Inuit seldom keep individual dogs as pets, but rather tether them in groups outside in summer, and we rouse the mild attention of a pack of tethered dogs as we troop up the hill. Inuit sled dogs have two layers of fur, the inner short, like wool for insulation, and the outer longer, coarser and water repellent. That may make them hot today but overall, they are surely chillin’, taking the warm season off, lounging all day except when growling and snapping over territory.
A vehicle makes its way down the hill picking its path, for the way is gravel and bumpy. A slight girl stops to ask that we wait here, drives down the road to drop some camping supplies and returns to drive us to the Red House, a tour shop and hostel run by the famous Robert.
Robert’s reputation should have preceded him. Turns out in 1983, extreme explorer Robert Peroni from the Italian south Tyrol walked across the Greenland ice cap, all the way across the island at its widest point, some 1400 kilometers, on an 88 day journey.
Now 72, Robert stands before us trim and erect, and above all relieved to find we aren’t planning to stay in his hostel, for he is booked solid as he would hope to be in a very short high season. We pay him for the crossing from Kulusuk, bid farewell, and the girl drives us up the hill to the Hotel Angmagssalik.
•••••
There was a time when airline passengers celebrated successful landings. I remember applause in 1986 when my Lufthansa flight landed in Frankfurt from Moscow. I thought it was as likely for getting the bloody hell out of the Soviet Union.
We came over from Iceland today on a brand new, gleaming Air Iceland Bombardier Q400 prop plane, twenty rows two by two. Bustling their baby refreshment cart up and down the aisle meant actual work for the flight attendants, compared to the doorman role they play on short domestic flights.
Come time to land, the plane took on a buzz incongruent with today’s humdrum air travel. In a small plane you’ve more of a sense of flying, and when the pilot maneuvered to dip under the clouds and between the mountains, we all craned to be the first to see icebergs, and phone cameras filled the windows. The runway at Kulusuk came up fast and we rode it right to the end lights.
About fifty of the seventy aboard were here for a day trip. Over in the morning, touch the soil, check Greenland off your list and fly back. I met a taxi driver in Reykjavik who said he did it as a fifteen year old.
What did they do?
They deplaned, someone took them around the side of the terminal and they watched a man in a costume play a drum and a fat woman dance.
Some months ago he drove a man to do the same and picked him up later that day. What did they do? A drum and a dance.
The east Greenland coast near Tasiilaq
Excerpted from Out in the Cold, Travels North: Adventures in Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Canada by Bill Murray
More photos in the Greenland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
March 2, 2020
This Month’s On the Road Column
Tasiilaq, eastern Greenland
Here’s a link to my travel column for this month at 3 Quarks Daily. It’s called On the Road: Getting to Tasiilaq, about arriving in eastern Greenland. I’ll post the entire column here later this week. Here’s a link to all 21 of my 3QD columns.
By way of explanation, my contributions have been scant here the last several weeks. After twenty years in southern Appalachia we’ve sold our farm and moved back to the big city, with all the attendant turmoil and disruption. Things should smooth out over the next several weeks, allowing me more time to properly tend to things here at CS&W. Hang with me.
On the Road: Getting to Tasiilaq
Tasiilaq, eastern Greenland
Here’s a link to my travel column for this month at 3 Quarks Daily. It’s called On the Road: Getting to Tasiilaq, about arriving in eastern Greenland. I’ll post the entire column here later this week. Here’s a link to all 21 of my 3QD columns.
By way of explanation, my contributions have been scant here the last several weeks. After twenty years in southern Appalachia we’ve sold our farm and moved back to the big city, with all the attendant turmoil and disruption. Things should smooth out over the next several weeks, allowing me more time to properly tend to things here at CS&W. Hang with me.
February 15, 2020
Storms Brewing for Northern Europe
Reykjavík Streets Empty during Storm, says Iceland Monitor, and with good reason. It’s one of the strongest storms ever in the North Atlantic.
February 11, 2020
The New Hampshire Primary
CS&W is mostly about international travel, celebrating different cultures, wonder at the world, and just getting out there to see what happens. But please indulge me.
These are my favorite few weeks every four years, the part of the American presidential political horse race that starts in Iowa and extends until the political parties have settled on their respective candidates. And I have a few comments.
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The Biden Campaign in Action
When Joe Biden exits the 2020 race, I expect he takes with him a distinctly twentieth century campaign style. Ten days ago in Iowa the Biden campaign rallied in the Hiatt Middle School. Precinct captains, younger voters and the demographically photogenic sat behind the candidate equipped with IOWA FOR BIDEN and IFFA Firefighters for Biden placards. The rest of us stood in front of a riser.
The candidate entered stage right. But only after extended remarks from his sister Valerie Biden Owens, Harold Schaitberger, the President of the International Association of Firefighters, Cedric Richmond, Louisiana Congressman and campaign co-chairman, Iowa Congresswomen Cynthia Axne and Abby Finkenauer, the former governor, Agriculture Secretary and Iowa political icon Tom Vilsack and his politically potent wife Christie, and then Biden’s wife Jill. Interspersed were short videos on screens hung on opposite walls at eye level, and thus unviewable to anyone in the SRO crowd not standing nearest them.
Once the candidate took the stage his first eight minutes comprised thanking still other politicians, including former Senators Dodd, Kerry and Kerrey who were traveling with him. The former VP was heckled twice, the first time for accepting oil money, and I couldn’t hear the point of the second heckler. Eventually Joe Biden got round to his message, which, abridged, was: Trump, egregious. Obama and me, Obama and me, Obama and me. And I won’t let Trump continue to happen to my country.
In contrast the Yang campaign filled a Marriott ballroom. Preliminary music and flag-waving. At the appointed hour a single warm-up speaker shared three or four minutes of remarks, the candidate promptly followed, strode across the stage and did his well-rehearsed twenty, twenty-five minute rap, an inspirational thing, got on, got off, music swelled, event done.
Across town a Buttigieg rally exhibited the same production values at Lincoln High School. His well-rehearsed amen corner, already in place before the crowd was led in, stood and swayed and chanted and cheered. A brief set-up, then the candidate was there, more substantive and less inspirational than Yang (in their respective styles), fishing a mildly gimmicky handful of questions from a bowl. And then he was gone.
The 2020 attention span appreciates the approach of Yang and Buttigieg.
I feel desperately sorry for a good and decent Joe Biden whose initial candidacy, for the 1988 nomination, I expected to support until it was cut short by that darned plagarism thing.
The New Hampshire primary was last night. Correctly anticipating disaster, Biden fled to Columbia, South Carolina earlier in the day, from which he attempted to diminish his fifth-place finish. Following his wife, who often introduces him, he introduced himself as “Joe Biden’s husband” and pledged himself as the savior of minorities, or maybe even not a white male himself. “Our votes count, too,” he declared, identifying himself with minorities.
He went on about “all these candidates who have beaten incumbents, like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama….” Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s running mate. Barack Obama defeated John McCain in 1988. John McCain was not an incumbent.
All this was predictable and it was widely predicted.
On the strength of his name and his career, Biden teased his entrance to the race long past the other candidates before finally committing to the race less than ten months ago. I wish he hadn’t. Lots of moderates in the Democratic Party wish he hadn’t. He and his family surely must wish he hadn’t, too.
Early lessons after Iowa and New Hampshire:
• Small states, where retail politics works, are important and help to set expectations for the later paid-media-driven larger states.
• Joe Biden floated atop slow-to-move national polls for far too long, while the dynamics of important early state polls shifted radically. Early state outcomes radically change national momentum. Memo for next time: Discount national polls. Pay attention to early states.
• Pete Buttigieg is sharp, mostly hits all the right notes, and will remain sharp even at age 42, four years from now.
• Amy Klobuchar extends the Happy Warrior legacy of Minnesota politics. She’s demonstratively uplifting. After her better than expected performance in New Hampshire she desperately needs a thorough polishing by state-of-the-art political operatives, and in a hurry.
