So, Beirut.  I stayed at the Bayview Hotel on Zaitunay or Saint George Bay on the north coast of the city.  Jeremy recommended the hotel as being relatively safe and reasonable, and I found it to be so.  The senior staff had enough English to help me navigate in a city where the primary language appeared to be Arabic.  This doesn't seem to be a city where people are eager to come up to you and attempt to practice their English.  As you can see in the background of this picture, there's a lot of construction going on in Beirut, there was a massive high-rise under renovation or construction above the bay to the east of the Bayview, tall enough to put the hotel in its shadow.  Building cranes rise in clusters throughout the city, and as I was to find, the single biggest import of Lebanon may well be construction cranes - they were springing up all over the coast, in clusters of two and three, over high-rises, apartment blocks, office buildings, beach resorts under construction, and in at least one case I saw, as jury-rigged loading rigs for a construction-supplies depot housing, yes, more disassembled construction cranes for transportation elsewhere in the country.  The construction crane could very well replace the cedar as Lebanon's national tree.

This is the view westwards along the Corniche from my hotel room.  The Corniche is a promenade along the side of the bay, between the ocean and the coastal highway, which is a very busy divided highway, and must be a holy terror to drive during the day.  Lebanese drivers are infamous even by third-world standards, but I found their reputation somewhat overblown.  They didn't strike me as all that much worse than, say, Roman drivers, although late in the week I did come across a SUV which someone had driven full-tilt into a two-foot-tall block of concrete, crumpling in its fender and launching it high enough to leave its front hanging in the air, propped up as if a giant had just left it leaning there like a dog leaning on a divan, looking for a treat.  Anyways, Lebanese drivers tend to signal by carhorn, which is something to watch out for, and probably one ought to give everyone a bit more space than you normally would if you were in a more... Teutonic country.  They drive by Mediterranean rules here.

Walking around Beirut, I don't think I ever got to Hamra proper, and I wasn't familiar enough with the neighborhoods to identify where I *did* go, once I got out of the hotel district.  I think I was mostly in the the higher-end district to the east and north of Hamra.  As you can see, there are plenty of high-end shops, and lots of expensive European cars.  Cars are a big deal in Beirut, they're all over the place, and finding places to park them is a serious business.  Every parking lot has at least two attendants, and one of them usually was in something approximating military fatigues, presumably.

Which brings up the subject of the military.  They were all over Beirut when I was there, manning checkpoints, guarding buildings here and there - including a Maronite Church, a cluster of banks, some government buildings (I think) and, for some reason, an entire squad camped out along a street next to this children's park, on the other side from where I took the photo.  Presumably there were government buildings or party headquarters or something over on the other side, because I can't imagine why they'd be out in such force for a park.  A remarkably nice park, mind you, but still a park.  Beirut is very much an Arabic city in that greenery is a private good, locked away behind compound walls.  Some of the only shade from the August sun was to be found from the dense bushy foliage pouring over this wall or that.

The section of Beirut I walked was, I think, Sunni, but honestly I don't know enough about the differences to be able to tell a Shia mosque from a Sunni one.  There were a number of small mosques here and there, but there was a fairly large one across the street from the Bayview which broadcast the muezzin call to prayer via loudspeaker.  Not oppressively loud, but I had been told that this did not happen in Beirut, which obviously was misinformation.  As I said, there's a lot of construction going on, but few parts of this part of Beirut are run-down and slummish.  It's a city sloshing about with a lot of construction money, even now.

 The exception being this relic of the Civil War, the ruins of the old Holiday Inn Beirut, epicenter of the Battle of the Hotels.  It was heavily shot-up, rocketed and shelled during major fighting in the mid-Seventies, and seems to have been one of the few parts of the city which hasn't been torn down and replaced or renovated.  But then, there's so many other active construction sites - I walked past at least a half-dozen in a single morning - that this one could just be the result of ambigious property ownership, lack of interest, or the fact that it's way the heck back from the rest of the hotel district and the active areas of the commercial districts around it.  The city just has developed away from the old Holiday Inn.  But like I said, you have to strain to find signs of the old Civil War wreckage and divisions in Beirut, and this is the exception to that rule.

So, now that I'm back in the states, I thought I might mention to the world that I've been in Lebanon for the last week.  A co-worker was marrying a local girl, and they were having a ceremony outside of Sidon at the Saida Country Club.  Lebanese weddings are spectacular.   This particular display during the cake-cutting (with a sword, can't believe they let Jeremy have live steel) caught the grass on fire.   But only a little bit.

I have a bunch of photos, but I think I'll be working on organizing them over the next week or so.  I visited Beirut, Byblos, the back country of Sidon, and briefly, a little hill-town between Batroun and Tripoli called Hamat that my Uncle Ron's family comes from.

Good to be back, folks.  Travel is interesting, but draining.

How small those mountains looked from space! Little wrinkles on the skin of a globe he could cover with his hand, all their crushing mass made invisible. Which was illusory, distance or nearness? Distance, Miles decided. Distance was a damned lie.

- "Mountains of Mourning", Lois McMaster Bujold

Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire 
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

- T.S. Elliot, "East Coker", Four Quartets

As under cover of departing Day
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away,
Once more within the Potter's house alone
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.

Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
That stood along the floor and by the wall;
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all.

Said one among them--"Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."

Then said a Second--"Ne'er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy,
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy."

After a momentary silence spake
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;
"They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot--
I think a Sufi pipkin-waxing hot--
"All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"

"Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making--Pish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."

"Well," Murmur'd one, "Let whoso make or buy,
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry:
But fill me with the old familiar juice,
Methinks I might recover by and by."

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,
The little Moon look'd in that all were seeking:
And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!
Now for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-creaking!"

 - stanzas 82 through 90 of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated(?) by Edward Fitzgerald, Third Edition

Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

"Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth", Arthur Hugh Clough

Oh yesterday the cutting edge drank thirstily and deep,
The upland outlaws ringed us in and herded us as sheep,
They drove us from the stricken field and bayed us into keep;
But tomorrow
By the living God, we'll try the game again!

Oh yesterday our little troop was ridden through and through,
Our swaying, tattered pennons fled a broken, beaten few,
And all a summer afternoon, they hunted us and slew;
But tomorrow
By the living God, we'll try the game again!

And here upon the turret-top the bale-fires glower red,
The wake-lights burn and drip about our hacked, disfigured dead,
And many a broken heart is here and many a broken head;
But tomorrow
By the living God, we'll try the game again!

 "To-Morrow" by John Masefield

Things you thought you knew, that just weren't so: British use of mustard gas in the Iraq Revolt of 1920.  I had read about this ten-fifteen years ago, and just assumed it was substantiated.  After all, mustard gas was part of all major armies' inventory right through World War II - an Allied supply stock of the stuff in Bari during the Italian campaign was smashed open in a German air strike and the cloud killed hundreds.  And the British were pretty open about their legal opinion that the Geneva Accords only applied to "civilized" opponents, and had just spent four years gassing and being gassed by the nominally civilized Germans.  They had even used chemical weapons in Palestine a few years previously.  And both the Spanish and the Italians used chemical weapons against North Africans and Ethiopians between the wars, so it's not as if this was unthinkable at the time... just maybe not actually true.

Well, the live trap caught an adult cat overnight.  Unfortunately, it isn't the mother, who is much smaller and still has a red collar from whatever irresponsible jackass didn't bother to spay their pet & then abandoned her to the wild.  My co-worker Brian H is overwhelmed, he doesn't know *what* to do with this cat.  It's too burly to be somebody's indoors cat, doesn't have a collar, and is surprisingly well-fed for a wildling.  Based on the coloring and so forth, it has to be related to the kittens and momma cat - it may be the father.  Hard to tell without propping the live trap up on a shelf and checking its junk, I guess.  It does *not* like being in a trap, it was frothing slightly, and had torn its claws fighting with the trap, enough to be bleeding at the paws.

We may have to go to the animal rescue people at this point.  We've also ran out of adoption slots for the kittens, everyone who can take one right now is full up.

So my cat, Otonashi's mother is still in the wild, and still having litters.  We've started trying to capture the current litter, and Brian H, a co-worker, bought a live trap.  He caught one of the 4-to-5 kittens last night with his brother, although I'm told they had to turn the trap upside down and shake it out, because it was clinging to the wire mesh like Spiderman.  They re-set the trap, and in the morning, there was a second kitten. 

Brian went to transfer the second kitten into a carrier, when he noticed the mother hovering in the bushes, hissing violently.  Then she started charging at him.  He shied a pine-cone at the enraged mother, but it didn't stop her, and she chased him into the building, the second kitten escaping in the chaos.  Reportedly the mother was pacing outside the office door for a bit.  Mind you, we're not talking about a big cat here, your average black housecat, a little on the small side.  But she apparently was doing the full-fang ready-to-kill charge.

Anyways, here's the captured kitten, who probably will go to another co-worker who just had her elderly cat die...  as you can see, it's pitch-black, and spot-welded to the back corner of the carrier.

Full Disclosure: within the past several months, I been hired by several hedge funds to advise them privately on the legal issues surrounding these events.

"I been hired by"? How can you expect to be taken seriously when you can't be bothered to have someone check your op-ed pieces for basic grammar?   Especially when you're shilling for a klatch of corporatist profiteers who managed to get caught without a chair when the music stopped.  The moral hazard of making fat income off of pseudo-governmental entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is that there's always the chance that those implied guarantees are actually poison-pills when the deluge comes and the government guarantors do their goddamn jobs for once and protect the taxpayer instead of crony big money.  Or, for that matter, they do the usual thing and favor some crony class *other* than your speculating ass.  Look up "risk", and always remember - politics is a risk.  You should *avoid* political influence unless you're the one swinging influence your own way, in which case - shame on you, you corrupt tool.

The Professor is talking up that Rowling pseudonymously written book, of which I don't quite understand the purpose.  The adoption of new nom de plumes is, I understand, now common practice for mid-list authors who have found themselves frozen out by underwhelming sale numbers.  Or,  I should say, it *was* common practice back in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the midlist. (I really should read through the whole of that Rusch writing-business series when I have a moment.)

Anyways, it makes sense to take a pen name when you're struggling or have been given the editorial kiss of death, but why would a massively successful best-selling author cut her own knees out from under herself like that?  Ego, I guess?

And really, building new snob-appeal menus based on per-Conquistidore Aztec diets?   How many times do I have to remind y'all that ritual and (possibly) dietary cannibalism was a common element of most Nahuatl cultures of the time, but *especially* the Mexica or Aztec? 

There's a Mexican restaurant in the county named "Rey Azteca".  I refuse to go every time someone brings it up... I don't want to set foot in an eatery that might as well be named "King Cannibal".

To continue this antechamber exercise, the Professor, who watches TV so I don't have to, saith they've found Zimmerman not guilty and lo! Fox News so reports.  If I'm lucky, I spend my weekends gaming with various friends, and if I'm not, drinking and watching Japanese cartoons. I've been doing both this weekend, as events and friends' travel plans dictate.  Neither has much scope for the close following of news on the weekend.

Anyways, the Professor sniffs that the much-feared race riots have failed to materialize. From that Fox report I see that this is not absolutely true - there's some minor vandalism in Oakland, and much gathering of crowds, well-culled by police departments experienced at dealing with Occupy vermin outbreaks.  But she's right in that the feral outbeaks anticipated by commenters like Icepick have failed to materialize so far. Although in fairness to Icepick, I see I was conflating his mild worries with some more... overwrought comments from folk I didn't recognize in retrospect.

We were talking Friday night at a friend's place about how video games had apparently lessened violence, and internet porn lessened rape.  How likely is it that blowing off steam on Twitter lowers the likelihood of real-world riot-incitement?  The producers of SyFy discovered earlier this week that just because ten thousand twitterers ironically love the idea of  your sharks-falling-from-the-skies B-movie wreck, doesn't mean that the general TV audience will watch it in droves, or even in the usual SyFy B-movie trickles.

The Professor notes a car-nivorous squirrel story.  Maybe there's just something about Sequoias that attract wild animals.   Is there something sweet or tasty in Toyota's paint composition?

Oh, you sci-fi boys, you think you are about technology and manly dreams of complicated machinery. But you want love. Dreamy, creamy love.

But, Professor, all advances and development of note are merely the carefully laundered sublimation of frustrated ardor, are they not?  Mock not the careful trappings of ferociously sublimated geekery, lest our entire swaying tower of technological prowess tumble and fall!

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
 For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!

So there's an angel with a burning sword standing before my door into Althouse's comments section.  She wants to out-source to our own little bloglet comments sections, and since I have let my blogspot account fall into decrepitude, I thought "why not?"

Last night, she asked the difference between a traveller and a tourist - and my first thought was that "traveller" is a synonym for "gypsy", and no-one wants a caravan full of those parked on their street.  But I suppose in the context asked, "traveller" is for that arrogant sort that hates to think of himself as an ugly American, a fat tourist wandering around landmarks in oversize sunglasses and baggy shorts.  (Some rogue spell-checker objects to the extra ell in "traveller", but nuts to that, two ells has more of a song to it.)

The other quote is from one of my favorite books, "Walden," by Henry David Thoreau: "I have travelled a good deal in Concord..." Concord! Not even Massachusetts. Concord. Of course, he didn't have a car.

 Walden again... damn, I'm a lot like Thoreau, at least in temperament, habits and prejudices, but every time I slam up against his Walden rubbish, I find myself hating those parts of me that I see in him.  Insular, pompous, incurious, misanthropic, narrow, indolent... I can't help but think that he might have been worth a pinch of owlshit if he had been kidnapped by gypsies as a child and had his outlook forcibly expanded by encounters outside of his own small sphere.

ADDED: A reader quotes my "Those who get paid for a particular type of work may find it hard to explain the value of the activity to someone who isn't getting paid but must in fact pay"

One quote deserves another, from Bujold's A Civil Campaign, which I once had taped up in my  cubicle back when I was the company bookkeeper:

Never... ever suggest they don't have to pay you. What they pay for, they'll value. What they get for free, they'll take for granted, and then demand as a right. Hold them up for all the market will bear.

Insomnia takes you to strange places, looking on a whim for a painting to match the spirit of "Silent, upon a peak in Darien".

What makes Homer, Homer for those previous generations?  That classical education which is two generations past now?  I've never quite felt that reverence or connection for the shadowy Ionian that that vet and his predecessors held for him.  A Homeric literary foundation is kind of unusual in Americans, even in the old days.  Allan Bloom claimed that Americans made the Bible their cultural touchstone, in the way that the British made Homer and the Greeks, and the French Pascal and Proust and Descartes, and the Germans Kant and Goethe and Hegel.

BTW, this is the painting I had in mind, Friedrich's "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog", it has nothing to do with the Keats sonnet, but then, a lot of the literature on that poem has to do with the inaccuracy of his factual constructs, and the importance of a pre-rational, emotional connection with literary culture.

"Darien" was drifting in my mind's eye from tonight's reading of a crummy Penguin Books collection of extracts from Lord Macaulay's History of England, specifically about the doomed Scottish venture in Darien.  Paterson, the visionary who also gave the Bank of England to the southrons, had this bright idea about inserting a Scottish commercial colony in the debatable lands between the viceroyalties of New Grenada and New Spain.  Sadly, his Darien was as phantasmic as Keats' Panamanian Cortez, and all such transoceanic trade plans for the Panamanian isthmus were scotched by ferocious disease gradients until the early twentieth century's advances in pest control conquered those difficulties, if only to a degree.

So, depending on how you define your terms, either I rescued a wild cat, or I've kidnapped a free feline-American and am holding her captive in a second-floor dungeon.  She had her first vet's visit and has figured out how the kitty litter box works, and has only bitten me once so far.  (Necessitating a separate trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot & antibiotics prescription.  No sign of rabies in either of us so far.)

She's been named Otonashi, for her generally withdrawn and quiet disposition.  I've yet to see her out in the open while there's someone around to spot her; when I'm in the room, she carefully lurks under the bed.