Rick Harsch's Blog, page 9

Geography Lighter Answers

It’s pretty amazing that Uzbekistan has three of these legendary cities in it. Dushanbe isn’t one of them, though it’s very close, in neighboring Tajikistan.
(15) Gallipoli is not on the Black Sea–it’s right where the Dardanelles meets the Sea of Marmara. The Gallipoli of WWI fame must refer to the territory (Gelibolu)
(9) Africa’s smallest is The Gambia, or if you include islands, then Seychelles
(10) The Bahamas get an article, just like The Gambia. Many ought to have them, like The Ukraine, The Namib. But our researchers find that technically only The Bahamas and The Gambia actually do. But no in the Slavic.
The highest lake in the world is in Argentina, on the border with Chile. It’s a small one without a name, but is indeed considered a lake and not a pool.
The fifth largest Japanese island is Okinawa, whether the US marines like it or not.
(6) Nordic countries that are not Scandinavian: there really aren’t any in the strictest sense. But our researchers eliminate both Finland and Iceland, primarily on linguistic grounds.
(3) Fennoscandian is about as legitimate as Fenugreek as far as I’m concerned. I prefer the Baltic Shield rather than the awkward Fennoscandian. Russia probably does to, not being Nordic. Though the nords are more entwined with the Rus more so than either would care to admit. If only Alexander Nevsky had been named Igor.
(4) Lake Victoria borders Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.
(2) Their capitols are Kampala, Nairobi, and Dodoma.

Notes on the Misuse of the Word ‘Obscure’

Notes on the Misuse of the Word ‘Obscure’

 

Last night Operation Palm was an unmitigated success. On the public islands of greenery between sidewalk and street in front of my apartment there are tall fan palms that drop seeds to the ground and several hardy specimens shoot up a leaf or two before the communal trimmers come and stomp them in service of rose plants and lavender scrub. Occasionally one is positioned to survives longer, long enough to grow a tiny trunk and shoot out a trifecta leaf or two, fans like in the name. It was one of those we were after. We: I cajoled my son into taking part. It was a two man job. Two men and two dogs. I needed to look as if I had stepped into the green space with purpose, as if following my dog to clean up his dreck. My son hanging back with the other dog would also distract attention. I found the palm and with a small spade successfully extracted it from the earth, bulb and most roots intact. Back inside I planted it. The palm is stout, tall as a midget’s knee, with five shoots, two trifectas.

This morning I noticed that it seemed to have rotated in the night—I had planted a stick near it to mark its growth, but I didn’t count on it rotating. Naturally I felt that it was mocking me in some obscure way. It is mocking me in some obscure way, I thought to myself several times before an upwelling of a profound need for clarity urged me to think the matter through. Yes, I still felt it was mocking me, but why do I need to call it’s manner obscure. Sure, it is obscure to me. But that in no way describes the intentions of the plant, or the fact of it having rotated. There is another plant in the same pot: I assured myself that that plant had not rotated. But what did that tell me? Only that I was using the word obscure as a defensive measure, so that I could lay the entire incident aside with minimal discomfiture.

Riding, wobbly, yet in full confidence of ultimate balance, this cresting wave of intellectual honesty, I sought a metaphor. I once engaged in fencing, I can say immodestly that I was no slouch, losing only to Viking marauders with no technique. Obscure…it is like a fencer building a brick wall between him and his opponent as a defense and calling the unseen feints and lunges obscure. Naturally I have no means of communicating with the plant world—perhaps some day—but that hardly makes the behavior, the feelings, the betrayals of its creatures obscure.

These notes taken I returned to the plant and sat beside it, remaining still, observing. The session did not last long. The plant had rotated sometime overnight; so far today, it has remained still, but for that oft undetectable trembling that I detected, that accounts for my obscure discomfort, which sent me scurtling back here where I feel if not safe, perhaps it is best said ‘safe for now,’ surrounded by my knowns.

Geography Lighter Quiz

1.Which of these cities in not in Uzbekistan?

–Bukhara

–Samarkand

–Dushanbe

–Tashkent

 

15.Which of these cities is not on the Black Sea?

–Trabzon

–Samsun

–Odessa

–Gallipoli

What is the smallest country in EITHER continental Africa OR Africa including islands?

 

What is the only country in the western hemisphere whose name officially begins with “The.”?

 

Where is the highest lake in the world? We are taught Titicaca (that could be a phrase–I went to Harvard, but I learned titicaca), but I was looking for the second, thinking Himalayas, and it turns out all of the highest are in the Andes and Tibet, though they differentiate between lakes and pools. Lake Titcaca is merely the highest large lake in the world.
What is the fifth largest Japanese island?

6.Which two countries are Nordic countries but not Scandinavian countries?

 

 

3.Which country is a Fennoscandian country but not a Nordic country?

 

 

4.What three countries border Africa’s largest lake?

 

and

 

2.What are their capitals?

Death Visits Me in Izola

Death Visits Me in Izola

1

 

I was lingering near the bar then known as Sonček, near Marjan Motoh’s studio, maybe I was even talking with Marjan, when my phone rang and I found there was a woman who spoke no English on the phone and seemed very upset. This was about ten years ago, so my poor Slovene was penniless, but luckily Marjan was there—he did speak English–and I handed the phone to him. The caller, it turned out, was a woman I had never met, the wife of a friend who had just driven his car into the Seča canal. Luckily his daughters weren’t in the car as they often were when Š drove drunk, which he often did. Once at my apartment in Lucija he drank nearly a liter of ruda in a very short time and soon was at my dinner table with thick parallel waterfalls of snot pouring out of his nose, coughing a concerto, while his elder daughter, maybe about 12 at the time, tried to convince him it was time to leave, which meant driving home, up to one of the small hill villages of the brda. There was no way to stop him. Š was an humanist madman, a perfervid anarchist, who taught me a new pronunciation of Balkan—the Ball-Kane, he called it, by which he meant a great many things ranging form criminal-cabalistic to utterly liberated in style and thought. I never took notes when I was with him, so I recall only one story, that arose during one of his screeds about how stupid Americans (the US ones) are. He had been a tour guide, and he was guiding a bus in Montenegro, a bus full of Americans, and they were passing through swampy land when he asked the driver to stop, and for the passengers to lower their windows. Swamp noises orchestrated their way into the bus. What is that noise? he was asked by someone who surely had heard pretty much the same noise dozens of times in some typical swamp in the US. Montenegrin baby crocodiles, he told them, or maybe the creature known as the Montenegrin dwarf crocodile. At any rate, he did it out of disgust, and they believed him, and I presume the tour continued.

I met Š in this odd Slovenia where people are always telling me, so recently a stranger, often still a stranger to them, telling me that Slovenes are a closed people, cold (as Austrians—no wonder Hitler came to Maribor and drew crowds or had them drawn; I went there, too, by the way, to speak of a newly released book, and drew a crowd of one stranger) yet so warm they swarm to their human brothers and sisters to criticize themselves; I met Š hitchhiking from Lucija to Koper. He picked me up in his Citroen, one of those you can raise and lower, a whacky car, whackier still for its driver and his two halfrican daughters—a father half drunk early in the day with his daughters in the car picked up a hitchhike: was that the half Hungarian in him? But he was a drunk, and even madman surreal drunks become nasty at times, and twice he violated my hospitality with a turn on someone close to me. The second time it was my wife and I told him odjebi and he was off and I didn’t see him for a year, but was glad to when I did, at Boško’s place in Ludija, where my dog Zoltana learned to climb like a monkey. He was at the little šank inside, I approached, he fed me refošk while Boško as his wont wonts slipped me medica, and we were soon a bit drunk, he probably more than a bit, and he surprised me by apologizing for attacking my wife, he was truly sorry—and I was truly amazed at his memory, that it was functioning that night a year before. Ah, Črtomir, an artist of life, which so unfortunately makes of a greatness a danger to self and others. The daughters were not in the car, hvala bogu. But Črtomir was.

 2

Izola is filled with ghosts, more so than any other town that has hosted me, and no, not because I have reached that age. Perhaps it is because I have managed to avoid catastrophe, none of my travels having coincided with earthquake, plague, floods, mudslides, sudden acute group apnea syndrome. I did once attempt to make a move to Yalova in Turkey that if successful would have put me there at the time of the 1999 earthquake that killed between 40 and 50 thousand in that area, some thousands in Yalova itself.  It’s something else about Izola, not only that it is a small town—I’ve lived in small towns before—but that it is an outdoor small town, one in which, particularly if you live in the center, you come across a great number of people and soon know them socially. Izola is an outdoor social town. But there is more. Izola is both Balkan and Mediterranean, circumstances that tend to breed a gregariousness that residents themselves no doubt consider the natural societal condition of the human being. They are right, if you give credence to the notion that we are by nature very much like the bonobo ape and the chimpanzee. Consider the first great Izolan acquaintance of mine to die while I lived here, a pure Balkane man named Ibro, at age 60 some a quotidian street man, someone who likely never stayed indoors an entire healthy day in his life. We moved here a bit more than ten years ago, and on that day Izola no doubt sent to its sentries like Ibro some vibration or other letting him know that new peope were arriving. Ibro was a drunk, I think, perhaps he at various times in his life took various drugs—I wouldn’t know. He wasn’t for polite society, but I never enjoyed polite society myself, and so we were soon speaking that first day in some combination of partial languages, and I swear it is true that by our second day in Izola he knew the name of our dog. I’ve heard a sad story about Ibro, that he too had a dog, but it died, and in his grief he carried the dog around for days after its death. I never learned very much about Ibro because I knew him a few years and not many others well enough to talk about our locals. I did see a favorite bartender make an ugly face upon Ibro’s approach once, which was really the only fault I ever found in her; naturally I invited Ibro to sit with me and enjoy her hospitality, which he did, as he would. He always enjoyed enough life for two at the very least. My son, condemned by my own decision to move to Europe was destined to play futbol, not baseball, my own passion. I accepted this, and even grew to enjoy futbol. My son, Arjun, and I often went to svetilnik to practice the game, the ball leaving our hands at the door of our apartment and not picked up again en route to the green. We dribbled little, passing mostly, and naturally in our narrow streets the ball often made its way to the feet of others, all of whom, it seemed, were once professionals in the sport. In Europe I suppose, not just Izola, a futbol approaching ones footfall is not the least interruption, but a natural event one responds to with some tačke or a deft pass. The best day of our futbol life, though, was at Lonka, before it was disgraced by an apparently permanent bandstand that looks enough like scaffolding that it gives a once lovely spot by the sea the look of being perpetually under construction. On that day, there were others similar, but on this particular day, we played with Ibro, and I think my daughter Bhairavi took part as well, for well over an hour—the man was a true uncle to my children, a brother to me. We simply had a blast. Probably it was a short time after that day that I stopped seeing Ibro for some time. And then after a few months I saw him again, already he had been thing and now was thinner, unmistakeably dying. Very soon after he was truly gone.

3

Geography Quiz Answers

Vietnam is not as big as Cambodia and Laos combined. I thought it might be, so I made a question of it. The problem is Laos is bigger than it seems.
I have no idea where this question came from, nor what it really means. Existentially, no answer is really correct. But Vanuatu is the answer, and I suggest we all simply forget the whole thing.
This one is important. The Chagos Islands are owned, so to speak by the British and controlled by the US, who wanted it for a base and leased it in the mid-60s from the Brits. The problems was the place was inhabited. As we know from the last hundred plus years, this is not necessarily a problem. The Brits simply removed the islanders, mostly to the Maldives, and they remain a stateless people in any real sense of that term. But the US makes good use of the island, from where they exert much of their global military dominance, particularly from the notorious Diego Garcia.
That first city may not exist–I thought its sounded like a city. But Novi Sad is the central and largest city of Vojvodina, the great overlooked Serbian city of the Pannonian Plain.
There is one far flung Philippine island farther north than Hong Kong. This question meant to highlight the stretch of the Philippines.
Windward and Leeward islands…weren’t we supposed to know these? But how many come to mind, even after hearing their names? Saint Kitts sounds familiar. One of the others is a correct answer as well. Or is it the other way around? Check Google Earth.
Poor Gozo, so much of Malta, so little in our hearts.
The key question here is ‘would’, which makes all answers correct.
This fine question I must admit is not mine, but Martin’s. I knew Kazakhstan was the northernmost, or figured it out quickly, but Comoros? Who would have thought. I looked into it, checking the southernmost Indonesian islands, but true to form Martin was correct.
I love this one. Forget the US States and the correct answer, it is really just a way to emphasize how few double landlocked countries there are in the world. The answer is one or two, depending whether or not you believe in Liechtenstein. I do not. I do, however, believe in Uzbekistan, and in fact will soon be portraying that country here, as the US ally of the year–the last two winners being Iraq and before that Israel, and the year before…well, I can’t remember, but they had one hell of a human rights record.

Geography Quiz #17, bonus question

As our students of geography have found this latest quiz a bit too obscure and even difficult, we have conjured a bonus question which you may use to replace any of the other questions on the quiz.

To wit:

If the Black Sea were considered to be part of the Mediterranean, which of the following cities would not be a port:

–Izmir

–Taranto

–Ceuta

–Rome

GEOGRAPHY QUIZ#17

Geography Quiz #17

For this quiz I have invited a guest to help formulate the question. Martin McCarville of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America, Western Hemisphere has delivered five of these question, one of which I knew. He knew three of mine.  But I will not say who is responsible for which question.

 

True or false: Vietnam is larger in size than Laos and Cambodia combined.

      2. What country has the highest density of languages per capita?

      3.  Who controls the Chagos Islands?

      4.   Which is the main city of Vojvodina:

           –Vergenhulst

          –Novi Sad

          –Czernowitz

         –Monastir

Which is farther north, Hong Kong of the Philippines
Which two of the islands on this list are Windward Islands, as opposed to Leeward Islands?

         — Saint Kitts

         –Santa Lucia

         — Saint Thomas

         — Saint-Barthélemy

         –Saint Vincent

          7. What country is the island of Gozo in, taking up nearly one-third                    of that nation’s total space

         8. Of the three totalitarian megastates in George Orwell’s 1984—                         Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania—which would have had the largest                 uranium reserves?

         9.What are the northernmost and southernmost Muslim-majority                    countries (by northernmost and southernmost point)

       10.If each state of the US were to become an independent country,                    what would be the total number of doubly landlocked countries in                  the world?

Tsutsugamushi and the Microbial Apocalypse

Bad dreams, bad ideas, bad people, good tics, mites, parasites…sick is well, well is ill, a pail of sick tics down the well wall into the bottomless.

I dream tsutsugamushi–a giant mite on my face as I slumber, or I dream a giant mite on my face as I slumber exposed to the tsutsugamushi flux of the quotidian.

So I googled–I googled (is not this heralding the end?)–microbial apocalypse and second on the list was my own blog, first was a ship in Kazakhstan probably, stranded a few thousand miles from anchorage, or Ankarajastan, but the story was no story, rather an exercise in imagination, imagine a world, imagine a world you awaken to, a world bare of microbes!

Noughtmares, fleet zero horses, riding the tsutsugamushi trail, with flung fruit furrowed into their flesh.

Tsutsugamushi: Is a Comeback in the Offing?

Tsutsugamushi is a febrile disease caused by mites, which in itself is not a matter for concern. But, and be calm here, there is a chance that the treatment for tsutsugamushi, fairly standard antibiotics, will soon be utterly useless, as this week we have found that a microbial strain has developed that is immune to all known antibiotics. This tends to make the medical community think that perhaps the microbial apocalypse is nigh.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Be sure your community has an effective mite control unit. Remember, not all mites are bad mites, and no good will come of killing inoffensive mites.
Stop taking antibiotics for sprains, rugby injuries, acne, anxiety, ess (excess of saliva syndrome), tenderness in the ribs, reflexively after coitus, and so on. In other words, be sure doctor is coordinating efforts with the World Health Organisation.
Eventually, and the sooner the better, you will need to find an Indian doctor. There is likely one in your community already or at least in the nearest city with a population of 50,000 or more. Indian doctors have the most experience with creature borne diseases as well as the longest tradition of effective healing in general. You will be surprised to find how many times the cure to your health problem disappears with a change in your point of view.

IS THE MICROBIAL APOCALYPSE INEVITABLE?

Yes, it is.

IS THAT ALL?

No, there is much more, but I would not exhaust readers with a comprehensive presentation. I will, however, answer any and all questions.

Rick

Tsutsugamushi disease.

What is your favorite/most feared febrile disease?