My interest in native American issues has grown over the past few years, fueled in part by Nathaniel Philbrick’s account of the King Philip Indian War in The Mayflower, and because of my close proximity to Mashpee and the efforts/strife of the local Wampanoag tribe to achieve tribal recognition and restore their language.

Until this past weekend I’d never visited the southeastern corner of Connecticut, home to the Mohegan and Pequot tribes and their better known casinos — Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods. Both have been in operation for more than a decade and are excellent examples of sovereign indigenous rights and, to some poetic extent, ironic revenge for past atrocities by the English settlers and their descendants.  Fleecing the locals and using the cash to better themselves and buy back their ancestral lands seems fitting once you put into context the events of May 26, 1637.

My interest in the Pequot followed a visit to the site of the Great Swamp Fight in Kingstown, Rhode Island during the winter of 2009. Philbrick brought this neglected piece of American history to light in the Mayflower, telling the grim story of the battle when an army of colonists massacred hundreds of Narragansett Indians in their hidden swamp redoubt one cold December evening.  My post on that visit is one of the most visited and commented on this blog.

The Great Swamp Fight of December, 1675, while interesting because of its senseless violence (it drew the peaceful Narragansett tribe into the bloody three-year war between the whites and the Wampanoags), was not the first nor the worst of the colonial era massacres.  Forty years before and only 20 miles to the west, near what is known today as the village of Mystic,Connecticut an English force (which included Mohegan and Narragansett warriors) led by Captain John Mason attacked and massacred an encampment of Pequot Indians inside of their fort on the western shores of the Mystic River. I’ve rowed on that river at the annual Mystic Coast Weeks regatta hosted out of the Mystic Seaport Museum of American maritime history, unaware of the atrocity that took place only a half a mile away. That 400 to 700 women, children and old men died there has been a source of macabre curiosity and is definitely not something on the typical Mystic tourist’s agenda between the aquarium and its beluga whale and ye olde quaintness of the Seaport (which is an excellent maritime museum and experience).

One recent January weekend, with the prospect of nothing to do but sit on the couch and watch football,  my son and I woke early and drove the 125 miles from Cape Cod to New London ostensibly to visit the submarine museum in Groton where the first nuclear submarine Nautilus is moored. We talked about zombie issues during the drive, remarking about the relative attractiveness of various structures as being zombie-proof or not, and listened to internet radio kludged through his iPod and an FM radio adapter. Our first stop was in downtown New London, home of my favorite playwright, Eugene O’Neill, for a healthy organic brunch at a crunchy little café off of State Street recommended by Yelp.

My son, unimpressed with my dietetic eccentricities, extracted a promise that the day would end with a hamburger from the nearby Five Guys in Mystic.

We recrossed the Thames River and found the United States Navy’s submarine base off of Route 12 in Groton. This was familiar ground to me as I had spent one grueling May in the 1970s rowing on the Thames with the Yale heavyweight crew preparing for the annual Harvard-Yale race, the oldest collegiate competition in the country. My father sent me a new Laser sailboat as a birthday present, having it delivered to the crew house at Gales Ferry. One day I decided to try the Laser out by myself and tacked it downriver towards the Route 95 bridge. It was very breezy day and I capsized in front of the submarine base’s sub pens. As I drifted perilously close to the warning line marked by a string of orange buoys I tried to right the boat and get going again as a group of alarmed shore patrolmen jogged down the dock, white rifles in hand yelling that I was invading off limits territory. A friend who attended Connecticut College on the other side of the Thames told me once about getting arrested for bird watching in the woods with a set of binoculars. A car pulled up, some Navy personnel hopped out, and he was questioned.

New London and Groton were definitely high on the Soviet missile target list during the cold war. The fact that General Dynamics, the shipyard that builds the massive nuclear submarines, is sitting right on New London Harbor and that New London is also home to the Coast Guard Academy makes it a very attractive target.  There’s something strangely functional and sad about a military base. I felt it on the Presidio in San Francisco during the recent holidays, and again last weekend in Groton as we drove past the gates of the sub base, the rows of enlisted personnel barracks, the retired Polaris missile standing sentry.

The museum was fantastic, a relatively new museum that I’d never seen before. We toured the exhibits, marveled at the display of American military technology and heroism, and eventually boarded the Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered “vehicle.” My claustrophobia immediately kicked in, making me realize I would make a neurotic submariner.

We took a left out of the museum and continued north on Route 12 along the Thames to Gales Ferry, home of the Yale crew camp. I felt very old and blue and nostalgic and boola-boola standing on the old croquet pitch looking down at the boathouse (trivia: the saying “paint the town red” was uttered by a traitorous mayor of New London who exhorted the Harvard crew to paint his city Crimson if they beat Yale)

Junior was impatient, honked the horn, so we hit the road and continued north in search of the mystical Mohegan Sun, casino of the Mohegan tribe in Uncasville. I’m a moron when it comes to gambling, so I have no affinity for casinos (and am profoundly happy not to be in Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show this week) and the alleged glamour associated with them.  We used the GPS to find the way, and suddenly astride the Thames, was the most out of place building I’ve ever seen — a shining metallic rectangle looming above the brown sere winter woods.

Good for the Indians, I thought. Getting back at the civilization that boned them and using the proceeds to better themselves and buy back their ancestral lands. The Mohegans and Pequots had been screwed, utterly so, and their history is fascinating, particularly in the 20th century as they struggled to preserve their language (banned by the state of Connecticut at one point) and culture. But they did, and by the 1990s had achieved Federal recognition, investors, and eventually prosperity.

We didn’t stop to visit, just drove through the valet area and back to the highway and eventually the creepiest place I’ve seen in years, the campus of the abandoned state mental hospital in Ledyard and Norwich. This place was amazing. You can get a great sense of it at the website, Forbidden-Places, a catalog of abandoned factories, hospitals and power plants hosted out of Belgium. I’d film a horror movie here in an instant. Make that a zombie movie.

We drove silently through the edge of Norwich, past the tired millworker housing and shuttered mills, Asian groceries and check cashing stores. The place was sleepy and stagnant and so evocative of the death of the industrial revolution in countless other New England mill towns. It made me think of my friends the Lotuffs, and their efforts to revive the American manufacturing tradition with their high-end leather working company, Lotuff Leather (whose briefcase I lust for). What will restore manufacturing to America? A drive through Fall River or Pawtucket or Norwich is like going to a drive-in wake.

We gazed upon the Pequot casino, Foxwoods, just as garish and out of place as the Mohegan version, and taking a back road, happened upon the actual reservation where the surviving Pequots live in a gated community with very nice houses in the middle of the glacial moraine crossed by rows of colonial stonewalls snaking through the Connecticut woods. Given that the Mohegans under their sachem, Uncas, participated in the Mystic Pequot massacre, I wonder how cut-throat competitive the two casinos are today.

The Five Guys burger ended the adventure — me eating mine like a caveman out from in between the paleo-forbidden bun, Junior inhaling his along with a massive greasy paper bag of fries. All was well with the worlds, the Pequots and Mohegans were making bank, our Navy is keeping us safe, but nowhere in Greater New London can one find a Eugene O’Neill play.

I took a hike around Great Island hike in Wellfleet yesterday with a college friend and his wife. A mere 14 mile, four hour slog to the tip of Jeremy Point under scudding purple December clouds with the Pilgrim monument in Provincetown a prominent finger to the north. Our only company was a half-dozen orange coated hunters with shotguns — one of whom told us to stay out of the woods unless we too were wearing orange, which we were not. So out of the woods we stayed and to the beach we went.

We walked down the bay side beach, made it south to the point, and then returned along the inner beach facing Wellfleet Harbor, stepping over countless clumps of wild oysters sitting on the sand, begging to be picked up. Near the end of the walk, inside the cove and marsh, we came upon a large, white, grey blob the size of a table laying in the wrack and flotsam.

It stank. It was gelatinous, and in an advanced state of decay. I looked for a minute and deduced it was a dead ocean sunfish, or Mola mola, one of the weirder fish in the sea.

First — they are all head. Seriously. No body to speak of. Just a massive head with fins.

Second — they are the heaviest fish in the sea, weighing up to 2,200 pounds.

Third — they swim very very slowly, preferring to drift on their side, right on the surface, sunning themselves as befits their name.

Fourth — their fin flaps lazily overhead in the air as they bask and some people mistake that fin for a shark.

This one is one of the dozen or so that have stranded on the Cape this fall. When the temperatures plunge the fish are stunned and can’t survive. According to the Cape Cod Times:

“The Mola mola is a frequent visitor to Cape waters and the season is under way for finding them stranded on the shores of Cape Cod Bay, Carson said. Although there are three types of ocean sunfish, the Mola mola is the one most likely to be sighted off the Cape’s shores.”

Here is link to a gallery of photos at the Time’s website of a marine biologist examining a dead Mola mola on a Cape Cod Bay beach in Brewster in October.

For years, whenever I found myself in the vicinity of the New York Hilton at 53rd and Sixth, I would be re-surprised by the monster line of people standing next to a corner food cart. Others would comment on the weird popularity of the spot. Was it the neighborhood? Dense with publishing houses, the Museum of Modern Art, Rock Center and the hotel? Or was it the food? Some strange attraction that had to be tasted to be believed.

Working as I do now on 54th between Sixth and Fifth, this cart is pretty much across the street and hard to miss. Today I worked up the gumption to try it after reading some glowing reviews on Yelp and checking out the cart’s website. Yes, they are at www.53rdand6th.com

Here’s the deal. It’s a Halal cart. Think Islamic Kosher. There’s a gazillion of them. They serve chicken and gyros and rice. Your basic Bourdainian stoner street food.I usually avoid street meat for the same reason I take lots of Immodium with me to Bangalore. Dirty water hot dogs — not my thing. But street food can be awesome, especially in places like Istanbul, and being a fan of the grey mystery meat known as gyro, I am not above finding my food in the great concrete canyons.

If you want the whole foodie obsessive take on the 53rd and Sixth chicken and rice thing, I suggest you read this guy. People get worked up over whether the day guy is the same as the night guy and whether the mythical “white sauce” is the same. I couldn’t tell you. I ordered a round foil plate of orange rice, chopped up chicken and gyro meat covered with the white goo and a splash of what is allegedly the hottest hot sauce in food cart land. A little sad chopped up iceberg lettuce, some sliced pieces of pita, on went the cardboard lid, into a bright yellow  bag it went, and five minutes later I am in my office tempting the e.coli/shigella gods.

Verdict: not bad for $6 bucks, but will give me a fat ass if eaten too often. The rice and pita are decidedly not “paleo” (which makes them all the better for being forbidden). The line, at 11:45 am, was nonexistent, apparently the fun is after the bars close at 2 am. I’m amazed at how people worship the place. Just Google “53rd and 6th”

And people have been killed for cutting the line.

I’ve done some casual hiking in Switzerland  (an ascent of Mount Tendre, the highest peak in the Jura canton; and the Hoher Kasten in Appenzeller above the Rhine River valley) but I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never climbed anything substantial in New England, especially the region’s tallest peak, Mount Washington (6,288 feet) in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Hailing as I do from Cape Cod, a flat sandbar, my outdoors pursuits have been monopolized by the sea and sand, yet the urge to scale something tall in the woods has been growing for years.

Last winter’s literary obsession with mountain climbing tales led me to join the Appalachian Mountain Club, buy a backpack, a stack of maps and drag a nice pair of mildewed Asolo hiking boots out of the closet. While I have positively no Mittyesque desires to ever bag a 8,000 meter peak (e.g. Everest) as the odds are bad enough for experienced climbers in their 30s let alone abject amateurs in their 50s; I do love a challenge, particularly one that kicks my ass, and over the past few months that challenge looked like a Presidential Traverse — a visit to all of the peaks named after Presidents in the White Mountains, an expedition traditionally accomplished on or around the Summer solstice when daylight hours are at their max. This post is not about such a Traverse, but a warm-up to one.

My good friend, extreme sport fiend, and CRASH-B sprint coach: Marta, is renting a place at the foot of  Mount Washington in Jackson, New Hampshire on the banks of the bubbling Ellis River. She’s an amazing athlete and mountaineer, especially when it comes to backcountry skiing, telemarking, winter climbing, and the real hardcore New England winter sports that hark back to the early days of skiing before chairlifts, bunny slopes and ski chalets.  Marta, like me, is into doing stuff the hard way, a fellow hater of luggage with wheels. She’s been up and down the White Mountains countless times — running the trails, cycling up the Mount Washington Auto Road against the clock, a few Presi Traverses — and hence was the ideal guide for my first ascent.

We left her place at 6 am and drove north on Route 16 accompanied by spectacular views of the eastern slopes of the range. We parked at the Great Gulf Trail trailhead, paid $3 for a self-service parking permit, shouldered our packs and set forth down an abandoned road to a suspension bridge pocked with crampon marks over the West Branch of the Peabody River and then west, upstream, along that river on the Great Gulf Trail (which eventually reaches the summit of Washington). After two miles of relatively flat walking — which was enough to start me, the original Mr. Aquaman, sweating under my 30 lb. pack — we split off on the Madison Gulf trail to the northwest up an increasingly steep trail that forded Parapet Brook several times. Marta’s dog Gus balked at one stream crossing, but was generally kind of astounding to watch work up the trail with his four-paw drive. The air was cool and as since we were shaded in the spring canopy, the conditions made for relatively easy going as we worked uphill through the trees, with no views to give an orientation of altitude or progress. Finally, after an hour and half we popped out of the trees on a rocky knob and had a great view into the Great Gulf and the northeastern flank of Mount Washington.

After that tease the trail ducked back into the trees and the climb got steadily steeper to the point that I was basically drenched in sweat, stopping at one point to take off my shirt and wring out about a cup of fluid. Hydration was obviously going to be the first order of the day, and anticipating that I had 100 ounces of water in my pack’s Camelbak, and two additional liters in the side pockets. The Camelbak kept me going through its hose and bite valve and Marta continuously hounded to drink, drink, drink.  All told I pounded down over 200 ounces of water during the day  (and one RedBull) and micturated exactly once.

In a bit of a surprise, we came upon a pair of fellow hikers, a husband and wife in their 50s or 60s, making a descent — something unique as the AMC guidebook explictly says the Madison Gulf trail “is not recommended for the descent, for hikers with heavy packs, or in wet weather.”

They explained they had lost the trail the day before on their way uphill to spend the night at the AMC Madison Hut. Instead they were forced to bivouac in the open forest, in very chilly temperatures, pulling on all their clothing and cuddling for warmth. They asked us to pass along their names to the Hut staff because they had a reservation and didn’t want to kick off a search and rescue effort on their behalf. We offered them food and water, but they declined and passed behind us.

As we continued to climb I saw the granite face of the Madison Gulf headwall to my left, a green-grey monster that rose 1,000 feet from the floor of the cirque. Things were getting steeper and I was forced to use my hands for propulsion, wondering how we were going to scale what was obviously a very serious gain in elevation.

The answer was the Chimney, a sheer stack of white boulders and rocks that goes straight up the face, a gurgling stream/waterfall bubbling unseen underneath. Marta went first, Gus scrambling with her, and I watched her foot and hand placements before making my own moves on the face. Keep in mind I have an unreasonable fear of heights, but for some reason I was okay with the first part of the Chimney,  and actually felt very impressed with myself thanks to four months of  training at Cape Cod Crossfit which has given me a whiff of the upper body strength and flexibility needed for rock climbing.

I was nervous as a slip would have meant a serious disaster, maybe not instant death but definitely a bad injury. Marta later said the Chimney might be categorized as a Level 2 climb, meaning a fall would result in injury, but not a Four or Five which would lead to death. Pitons, rock nuts, and other classic protection are definitely not needed on the ledges, but there were some “interesting” moments when I was pressed flat on the face, very conscious of the weight of the pack on my back, looking for my next handhold and ledge for my toes. Gus the dog was not into some of the sections and started back tracking down to me, leaving the Chimney route in search of another more dog friendly one. Marta had to downclimb to get him, and her theory of why he was balking on a climb he had done before seemed very prescient — my silent anxiety was giving off a vibe that was causing him to doubt himself. In any case, he made it, I made it, and the feeling at the top was pretty awesome, giving me my first empathy with the lunatics who risk death to climb Annapurna or K2.

I have to give Marta credit, she didn’t quote this passage from the AMC’s White Mountain Guide Book to me before the climb:

“The section of this trail on the headwall of Madison Gulf is one of the most difficult in the White Mountains, going over several ledge outcrops, bouldery areas, and a chimney with loose rock. The steep slabs may be slippery when wet, and several ledges require scrambling and the use of handholds — hikers with short arms may have a particular problem reaching the handholds. Stream crossings may be difficult in wet weather. … Allow extra time and do not start up the headwall late in the day. The ascent of the headwall may require several hours more than the estimated time; parties frequently fail to reach the hut before dark because of slowness on the headwall.”

Once out of the Chimney we climbed above the tree-line at 4,500 feet (Madison is 5,367 feet). The deciduous birches and cathedral of the pines flora from at the foot of the climb had given way to stunted evergreens, and then, above that, a barren rock pile interspersed with arctic tundra and cheery bunches of blooming alpine flowers. Signs warned us to stay on the trail and off the sensitive vegetation (what little there was). The air temperature above the tree line dropped dramatically from the 60s in the valley to the high 40s and my soaked shirt and shorts suddenly became a bit of a liability. Hypothermia kills a lot of hikers in the Whites (an excellent book about Mount Washington fatalities is Not Without Peril, by Nicholas Howe), and the unofficial motto of the White Mountains is “cotton kills” — meaning a person in a t-shirt and bluejeans caught in the wrong weather will see all their body heat wicked away from them. One either wears performance synthetics or wool if they want to survive a bad turn of the weather on the summit.

I dragged a polar fleece out of my pack, put it on over my wet shirt, and followed Marta up past Star Lake in the col between Mount Adams and Mount Madison, and down a short rock trail to the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Madison Hut, the oldest of the hut system in the range. A work crew was busy digging out rocks around the recently renovated bunkhouse and dining room. We said hi, popped inside (where Gus was immediately banished), refilled a water bottle, and inspected the bunk rooms where beds stacked four high with ladders offer a place to spend the night for a modest fee (reservations are necessary as demand is very high).

“They’d evict me for snoring, ” I observed, but Marta said the place was a “symphony”  when filled to capacity.

We decided to eat our lunch on the peak of Mount Madison, a few hundred feet above us to the east. We climbed to the summit via a segment of the famous Appalachian Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine,  slowly picking our way up the boulders and scree to the summit, a very stark and exposed knob with magnificent vistas all the way around. I shucked my pack, unwrapped a turkey, bacon and avocado sandwich, and shooed away bee after bee homing in on the only food for miles around.

Stopping for lunch was not my best move. The four-hour ascent had thoroughly worked my legs and suddenly stopping caused them to cramp and go beserk with lactic acid. Sweating and drinking as much as I had during the morning had washed most of the salt and electrolytes out of my system. I started to see the symptoms when my hands  began to cramp into claws and my hamstrings went into knots.

It was going to be a long descent.

Psychologically, one thinks a lot about the descent during the climb, comforting oneself with the thought: “Hey, once you hit the summit it’s all down hill and no more climbing the perpetual stairmaster.” The bitter reality is that descending is worse than climbing. The mountaineers adage that one hasn’t really climbed a mountain until you get back down to the bottom, and that most mountaineers die on the descent stuck in my mind. The problem in descending is that one is constantly arresting one’s momentum, fighting gravity, using the legs and hips to slow things down. This immediately causes bad things to emerge around the hips, knees, ankles and toes as one’s foot is repeatedly rammed forward into the boot. I broke out my telescoping trekking poles and with a hi-h0-away-we-go, began to follow Gus and Marta down the Osgood Ridge Trail, the continuation of the Appalachian Trail (AT) that would loop us down and back to the Great Gulf Trail and eventually the trailhead on Route 16.

The Osgood Ridge is completely exposed buttress that runs above the treeline from cairn to cairn with an occasional white painted blaze to mark the AT.  The going is horrible: a constant descent over lichen covered rocks (I hated those rocks, told them they were shitty rocks on several occasions), painfully picking through the maze with only great views and a cool breeze to alleviate the suffering. I click-clacked along with the trekking poles, moving slowly as Marta and Gus flew away ahead of me, always in sight but seeming to descend effortlessly as they moved to the southeast down to the treeline unseen beyond the final knob.  Add to the misery a swarm of gnats and blackflies, and I was quickly losing the exhilaration of the summit to a serious case of self-pity and trudging drudgery. Eventually I stepped on a loose rock, the trekking pole slipped and I pitched hard onto my shoulder and face. That sucked, but no harm done, no bruises or abrasions, just a miserable feeling of being old and tired and embarrassed.

“I fall down,” I joked. Creaked back to my aching feet, and asked Marta to stick a lost water bottle back into my pack. “Falling is not a good idea,” she said. I got the point.

I smeared DEET over my ears and neck (and immediately tasted copper in my mouth, such an encouraging trans-dermal reminder that I had just smeared poison on my skin) to keep the blackflies from having intercourse with my ear canals. After an hour that seemed like two, finally stepped off of the ridge and down into the treeline. Marta warned me — its either rocks or roots — and apparently the Appalachian Trail, because it is so heavily trafficked, is always in rough shape, with very little soil, and as far as the Osgood Trail is concerned, a steep straight-down-no-switchback descent down a chute of rocks and boulders.

The descent of the Osgood through the trees was the worst segment of the day in terms of pain and tedium. It was a never-ending exercise in looking down at the trail, picking a rock to step onto, planting the poles, painfully bending a knee and side stepping downwards. My knees were so trashed I started fantasizing about asking my orthopedic surgeon for a knee replacement.  Eventually I met a trio of hikers coming uphill and had a flash of schadenfreude that at least I was leaving the mountain while they had the flies and rocky ridge well above them to contend with. A man about my age at the back of the string of climbers puffed “Fucking rugged climbing” as he passed me.

The terrain gradually turned more forest-like, the bugs vanished, and up ahead, was Marta and Gus standing by the base of the trail. My knees and hips were trashed. Beyond salvation, and somewhere inside of my right boot I imagined my middle toe had turned black from the constant ramming of my foot. It was an understatement to say I was exhausted.

“Say I fell and broke my leg. Like a real compound fracture. Who would come get me and how the fuck would they get up here?” I asked Marta, beginning to explore my options.

“Helicopter. Definitely a helicopter for someone your size.”

I wanted that helicopter ride. I also wanted a beer. So, not wanting to dawdle and let my cramping legs twist themselves to the point that I couldn’t move them, I drained the rest of my water, leaving a cup in reserve to wash down a handful of Advil back at the car. We descended to the Great Gulf Trail, and backtracked on the same trail we used to start the climb seven hours before. I was aware that my capacity for conversation had ended, but made an effort to be sociable as I over-thought every painful step. At least there were no blisters, a testament to the mighty Asolos, a darn fine pair of Italian hiking boots. Soon I heard the encouraging roar of the Peabody River down below,   and gradually, as we passed hikers headed to the tent platforms with coolers full of beer, I could see the end of the expedition ahead.

Sounds of traffic on Route 16, then there was the suspension bridge … almost …. there ….I creaked up the three wooden steps, swayed across the bridge thinking of the 1938 K2 expedition fording a Pakistani cataract, and then, before I realized it was over, I was sitting on the tailgate pulling off my socks and remarking on how good my poor feet looked. Half an hour later and I was slumped in a chair outside of the Jackson Store with two Gatorades and a bag of salty Fritos, doing my best to get some electrolytes back into my freaked-out thigh muscles. I was cramping so badly that when I yawned my  jaw and lower face cramped into an excruciating spasm. Next time, bring salt pills.

In conclusion: I’ve raced in the Harvard Yale race (rowing) when I was 20 and thought that was the hardest thing I had ever done. I’ve sprinted 2,000 meters on an ergometer in under 6 minutes and 30 seconds and thought that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve ridden my bicycle a century, or 100 miles (with Marta) and thought that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But nothing compared to eight and half hard hours on “one of the most difficult trails in the White Mountains.” My respect for people who climb BIG mountains has rocketed.

Would I do it again? Definitely. I still have yet to climb Mount Washington.

More videos on a Friday afternoon. I need the break after five hours of non-stop Powerpoint.

From Telstar Logistics via Laughing Squid. Gotta love time lapses – this one was shot at the rate of one photo about every two miles.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the 1970s I remember seeing ads on Manhattan buses for Cynar, the Artichoke Apertif. Big garish Mussolini typography with an alien looking artichoke on the label. “Who in their right mind would drink artichoke liquor?”

A couple years ago, while dining with master ThinkPad designer Richard Sapper, he mentioned his preference for a taste of Cynar. I asked the waiter who was totally confused and eventually went to the bar and asked the bartender if he had any.

“Arti-what?” he asked.

It's good for you

As an ex-bartender in the alcoholically sophisticated bar-city of San Francisco, I was exposed at an early age to some weird stuff like Fernet Branca (easily one of the more strange digestifs) and 150 proof Chartreuse. But never had I tasted Cynar until last month in Italy while on Dave’s Excellent Adventure. I’m a total addict now, and even persuaded a highly skeptical companion that it was indeed, when served with soda and a slice of orange, one of the lbetter things in a glass after a long day of marching through Tuscan hilltowns or thwarting the amorous advances of psycho street mimes.

It’s made by Campari, who makes all sorts of Italian goodness, but I haven’t seen a bottle on a liquor store shelf… ever. I guess I could special order it, but for now I have a bottle I brought back with me.

Here’s some good recipes over at Chowhound that utilize Cynar.

The mime was working the crowd next to the loggia and the entrance to the Uffizi Gallery. White-faced and in an orange jumpsuit with the helpful word “Jailbird” stenciled on the back. He wore a single green glove – a sanitation worker down on his luck – furtively  hamming around behind the backs of unsuspecting tourist girls, whose hand he would grab and as they turned to see who hadaccosted them he would shout, “HA!” and give them a terrible fright.

“Stay away from him, he’s a f#$%^r,” said my daughter, wise to the ways of the Florentine alleys after a term across the Arno. I was tired – having just surmounted the 450 plus steps (and my severe acrophobia) to climb to the top of Bruneschelli’s dome of the Duomo – and I was in no mood for any mime bullshit. Too late. Five people between me and the crazed white faced garbage man and he locks eyes on me – as Quint said in Jaws, he had a doll’s eyes, dilated crazed Siberian husky eyes. There was nothing I could do but shrug and endure.

First we embraced like long lost brothers and I understood what did me in – I was wearing an ancient orange Orvis polo shirt which made me look like a large tangerine. He in his orange jumpsuit … it all made sense but then it made no sense. Lesson learned, wear orange at one’s own peril.

Then we danced a little and the mob of people sitting on the stairs along the loggia started to laugh. The laughter was like mime fuel. He smelled poorly.

We stopped. He dropped to one knee and put his ear to my stomach. He held up one finger to the crowd. They laughed. He held up two fingers to the crowd. Twins. They laughed louder. I thought of Alec Baldwin playing Junior in Miami Blues and how he casually snapped and broke the finger of a Hari Krishna in an orange robe who had bothered him at the airport, the surprise causing the Krishna to die of a heart attack on the spot. There were too many witnesses for me to maim the mime, so I continued to smile while inwardly counting down the moments until the mime assault would end.

Finished with establishing that my paunch meant that I was pregnant – go ahead, laugh at the fat man – the final indignity involved lifting my shirt, baring said paunch to the mob (and the astonished, apoleptic, laughter-oxygen-deprived faces of my wife and daughter) and then planting his face on my abdomen and doing the mime equivalent of the 14^th century letterpress – aka The Motorboat – leaving behind a bas relief of his white makeup with two eyeholes, my navel as a nose and below, two horizontal black lines from his lipstick.

The crowd went insane. Truly insane. I turned, showed them the greasepaint on my chiseled six-pack, saluted and walked on. A beaten man.

Thx to Mark Hopkins for the post title.

Arrived in Beijing on Monday afternoon and have been in meetings non-stop Tuesday through today (Thursday). Last  night I connected with my brother Tom who is in country for the first time in his life and his Chinese colleagues suggested a restaurant near the Olympic complex that specialized in “Muslim Cuisine” from the western region of the country. Off we went, ending up in a basement disco where an Elvis impersonator and some ethnic dancers did a floor show while we ate meat on a stick and lots of lamb.

We passed on a whole lamb. This was on the menu and my brother nicknamed it “Snow Puff.”

We drank too much baiju and I am not well today and belching faint reminders of mutton under my  breath.

Home tomorrow. No time for any church/temple visits while in China.

Prior to the trip a good friend forwarded an article from the New York Times about a stellar breakfast restaurant in Cihangir, a neighborhood on the Beylogu side of Istanbul near Taksim, the “Times Square” of the city. I tried to hit the place during the week, but it was closed, done in by the snow or perhaps only open on weekends. I woke up this (Sunday) morning with no real agenda (other than to get a mosque under my belt) and started off by walking through the Besiktas Market (site of the fish vendors) via a little park that reminded me of Gramercy Park only grungier and surrounded by less posh apartments.

I saw this demented sculpture garden – quite possibly the weirdest thing seen this trip – and continued downhill past the by-now-common site of a gazillion mangy cats and pre-distemper dogs that infest the vacant lots and narrow hillside streets of the city. Some of the dogs have some sort of identification thing stapled through their ear – like cattle – and the cats are everywhere, perched on air-conditioner units, dashing into kebab shops, and languishing under parked cars with their tails ticking away. I imagine they must have to round them up and neuter the poor things every so often. Or, what I saw was a product of not rounding them up and neutering them. Some of the dogs are just nasty. They come wandering down a sidewalk and the first thing that comes to mind is “Oh shit. It’s Cujo.” You avoid eye contact –  be the dog whisperer – and stay out of snapping range. One bite and it’s fourteen injections through the belly button. I passed one cur that morning by the steps up to the German Embassy by the Karbatas soccer stadium that smelled like halitosis on four paws. It had this moussed electrified perm in its fur and smelled as if it had spent the night snacking in a dumpster. Two similes are not enough for this dog.

I wandered up to Taksim – a serious trudge up a big hill which instantly rendered my morning shower a memory and turned me into AquaMan – he who sweats buckets in January. No huffing or puffing. My cardio is okay. I just have very efficient liquid transfer capabilities. So off came the Filson logging coat and up I marched in shirtsleeves to the wonder of some French tourists bundled up for Ice Station Turkey. Taksim was quiet but I saw a big Orthodox church I spied from the morning I ate a “wet burger”, so I ducked in and took in another service to keep up the march moving towards 52 holy places in 12 months [I'll post on that later, I am highly burned out on churches right now.]

After the service at the Greek church I remembered the New York Times reviewed restaurant, Van Kahvalti Evi, was on a street that fed into Taksim Square. I Five minutes later was wedged into a seat next to a table full of loud Americans ordering a traditional Turkish breakfast from Van, the city in the easternmost regions of Anatolia, the Asian mainland of Turkey.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, a little pot of peanut butter, another of butter, a basket of breads, a bowl of yogurt and dill and cukes, a saucer of wild unfiltered honey and sweet clotted cream, and five kinds of cheese: Armenian string cheese, a very hard and coming close-to-smegma clump of some cheese with herbs, a bland cheddarish cheese, the ubiquitous triangle of very salty feta, and a wet cube of something made from sheep’s milk. To add insult to injury and to keep up my reputation as a trencherman and gourmand, I tossed on a order of flatbread grilled with meat and cheese – think a pastrami quesadilla and you aren’t far off except the tortilla was more like filo than masa flour.

I dug in. This was a project that took some planning and strategizing and when I eat alone I tend to become self-conscious and understand why my two terriers, when given a bone, immediately head for the underside of a table or staircase to eat it alone in their lairs. I took notes about the church service in my notebook, Tweeted, checked out my city map, and did my best impersonation of a guy eating in prison – shovel quickly, don’t make eye contact, and guard the plate with both forearms. The breakfast was very different, very good, and not your usual IHOP clown-face pancakes with the bacon eyebrows.

I left a better man for it, and walked back up past the church (which had two Cujos in a muddy side yard jointly gnawing on what looked like a diaper) to a serious main drag – a pedestrian Broadway with a cute little tram clanking up and down it. It was open and booming on this grey, drizzly Sunday morning, so I took it all in, snapping pictures and taking little tram videolets until I stumbled into the Greek Embassy and an exhibition on the Greek churches in the city. More churches. Just what I needed. But it felt obligatory and I had to feed my head after doing so much damage to my stomach at the Van. In I went, picking up a program, and for a half hour I circled two rooms reading big placards about the sad little churches left behind when the Byzantine Empire tanked.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Back into the fresh air. I walked down the hill past the Galata Tower and headed into the Golden Horn for my Excellent Mosque Adventure. See below.

On the return back to the hotel I had to do some souvenir hunting back in the Besiktas bazaar. Sons get Turkish soccer scarves, daughter gets a collection of pins, wife gets the Sultan’s Dagger (the one with the emeralds on the hilt) and a box of Turkish Delight (assorted Fruit flavors). While there I decided to eat the Turkish Last Supper and go as low rent as possible for a full grey-meat-on-a-stick experience. What follows is mayhem. Pray for me on the ride to Beijing.

Right off – worst meal of the trip. Worst meal of the month. The waiter – who is Rudy Giuliani’s doppelganger – was as good in English as I am in Turkish – and the menu didn’t have any pictures. A good rule of life is “Do not order anything called a: Sausage Special” and don’t order something that on second check of the menu is described as “boiled leaves of dough with cheese and/or meats.”

Boiled leaves of dough was amazing in its nastiness. It was like eating with a finger down your throat. Gelatinous. Wet with hot water. Sort of floating in the hot water. Cheese was chunks of hard feta. Some pale green parsley was hanging around in there too. Someone had rolled up a handful of cheese and a bunch of parsley in six sheets of filo and tossed it into the dirty hot dog water. Then assaulted it with a scimitar.

So now I have that going for me. I couldn’t wait for the Sausage Surprise. I saw the cook messing around with a red squirt bottle and a white squirt bottle, the International Greasy Spoon symbols for ketchup and mayonnaise. Waiter brings same plate to me. What occurred was a bed of greenish French fries bedecked with two hot dogs – pure Oscar Meyer – and two discs of what looked like anemic hamburger patties but were definitely not cow, I am assuming weren’t pork, and most likely were lamb or goat or both. On one side was a pickle stuck in a wad of tartar sauce, on the other was two squirts of ketchup and mayo.

Surprise indeed. I picked at a couple fries. Abandoned the dogs after one bite, and finally just gave up. Rudy Giuliani was sad about that. But I tipped him anyway as I didn’t want to carry any Turkish lira out of the country and besides, it wasn’t his fault. He shook my hand and touched his heart in gesture of “hail fellow, well met.”

I lurched out into the rain, missed squashing a cat, and sent it flying into the restaurant in fear. Perhaps it will join the Surprise.

A sad note. As I walked back to my hotel I passed a bookstore and in the window, big as can be, is a picture of my hero, the late David Foster Wallace. I became very blue, and stood still for a second, tired from running around, tired from to-do lists, tired from the fever pace of this emerging market, and looked up across the square where the ferries from Asia dock and saw in big lit up red letters the word “Final.”

Thanks Turkey, that was awesome.

Today the 52 Churches project left Christianity after 12 churches and finally experienced Islam with a visit to the impressive Blue Mosque of Istanbul. This one was not easy, took some courage and persistence, but was well worth the extra effort and I am particularly proud that my introduction to Islamic worship was in such a venerable and magnificent mosque.

Formally known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in English (the Sultanahmet in Turkish), the Mosque was built between 1606-1616 by Ahmed I, whose tomb is located there. There is a detailed history on Wikipedia of course, so I will spare you the borrowed pedantry and let you click the previous link to educate yourself. It’s blue because of the extensive use of blue tiles throughout the interior, particularly in the immense dome, which in many ways mirrors the grandeur of Hagia Sofia, The Church of Wisdom, built 1100 years earlier across the grand plaza to the east. The mosque is notable for having six minarets, the most of any mosque except for Mecca, which was given a seventh minaret to retain its preeminence in the minaret department.

I tried to enter and observe prayers three times over the past seven days and polled several people about the etiquette and protocol of an infidel such as myself entering a mosque during prayers. In some cases and countries nonbelievers are firmly banned from entering mosques, but allegedly, because of the secular reforms of Kamal Ataturk, Turkey does not hold such a hard line and the Blue Mosque in particular is organized as a “tourist” mosque and permits visitors in between prayers.

Each time I tried to enter I was too close to the beginning of the next prayers and the guest entrance on the west side was closed. The carpet touts and would-be tour guides can be brutal and by my final attempt today, with only hours before I left Turkey for China, I resolved to make one last effort despite the warnings of many that I was a fool to expect to watch prayers. It simply isn’t easy and it isn’t like a typical temple or church where a non-believer can just stroll in and have a seat. Indeed, even in the Eastern Orthodox church they have a name for people like me — catechumen - who are supposed to observe the services out in the narthex outside of the nave. That apparently is NOT the case in a mosque, some of which prohibit a non-believer from entering at all. I was growing a bit pessimistic I would ever gain entry or worse, would have to disguise myself and enter in mufti like Richard Francis Burton did when he snuck into Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Pashtun (he also spoke nearly every Indian and Arabic language).  I am a huge Richard Burton fan by the way. He was one of the more amazing adventurers who ever lived.

I rode the tram from Kartakoy under the shadow of the Genoese-built Galata Tower in Beyolugu and disembarked at the Sultanahmet stop, making directly for the northern entrance of the mosque through the Hippodrome to avoid the rug touts. Confidence and momentum were the keys to gaining entry, so I zipped up my green coat and tried to be as inconspicious as possible. I took off my shoes, put them in a plastic  bag and carried them with me into the mosque.

First impression …. world’s largest carpet. A veritable ocean of red and blue tulip patterned carpet that stretched off into the distance where the mihrab, or altar piece stood. A wooden railing separated the tourists from the worshippers, so I took my place and snapped some pictures and made some short videos. Everyone was toting their bag of shoes like some tourist totem and I noticed no one was leaving them on the shelves provided for that purpose.

I strolled around in my wool socks, gawking upwards at the dome and the hundreds of chains and iron rods that descended to hold up the chandelier — if there is such a thing as a 100′ diameter iron chandelier — encircled by hundreds of blinding naked lightbulbs in small glass vases.

Along the southern side, facing Mecca, a long row of windows looked out at the Sea of Marmara and the branches of some evergreens. Most of the worshippers praying during the tourist time were up in front by these windows or the mihrab. It goes without saying there were no pictures of prophets, imams, etc. A single piece of calligraphy on the eastern wall, which I forgot to snap a picture of, but which I have definitely seen before, and a framed poster by the eastern exit were the only decorations aside from the ornate tulip patterns on the endless tiles and the incredible colors of the stained glass. A small roofed area supported by columns was on one side of the prayer space, and a little pulpit with a tall dunce cap minaret steeple stood next to the mihrab — a perfect isoceles triangle with the staircase forming the hypotenuse.

It was 1:30 pm when I entered and prayers did not start until 3:30 pm, so I immediately had four things occur to me. One: how much I hate being around tourists (it takes one to know one) and Two: how badly I needed to pee. Three: my feet hurt without my Merrill clogs and Dr. Scholl’s mega-gel anti-elevator-plunge survival insoles. And finally, Four: how bored I was.

There was a little sign on the barrier railing that said “Islamic Information Center” with an arrow pointing that-a-away. A little office with glass windows and an “Open” sign was near the exit. Inside sat a young man around 30 years old on one of my competition’s laptops. A notice said anyone was welcome to come in and ask questions. Once a reporter, always a reporter, so I knocked, stepped in and introduced myself.

The word “American” made the man obviously uncomfortable. I saw the shadow pass over his face for a second. Just two hours before, while buying souvenirs, a shopkeeper asked me if President Obama was a Muslim and then proceeded to pantomine his dislike for President Bush by pinching is nose with his fingers and making a sour face. The young man in the white skull cap had the same sort of reaction to my identifying myself as a “Merkin”  but I was on a roll and proceeded to tell him about this project, and how I wanted to observe prayers and would I need permission, where should I stand, would photographs be disrepectful, and other small talk. He smiled. Lifted his palms and said: “It isn’t a problem as long as you are inside before prayers begin you are fine. Sit behind the gate and you will be fine.” I was tempted to ask him some theological questions, but remembered the admonition of my editor William Baldwin at Forbes who told me only a moron asks someone a question that simple research could answer. Not wanting to waste the man’s time, I thanked him and went back to admiring the immense piers that supported the dome.

Time went by slowly. So I indulged in people watching. Little children turned loose on the pitch of the prayer rug all did the same thing when let loose from the parents. They ran, they danced, and they skipped. In that order. Everyone of them. The faces of the parents and grandparents were awesome. Some major moustaches happening, Omar Sharif/Josef Stalin big walrus moustaches. All the women wore silk kerchiefs and long ankle-length winter coats and were sloe-eyed. The men wore Member’s Only sort of jackets, shiny down coats, with strange “Engrish” sayings on them like “Classic Automotive Style Fashion.” I really had to pee and was feeling like Tycho Brahe (interestingly, urination almost uncovered Burton during his Hajj when he lifted his robe to whiz and was seen by a boy who, seeing he did not squat like Arab men, accused him of a being an imposter). I listened to a guide tell a large group of Japanese tourists about the  mosque in Japanese with an Italian accent. It was amusing. I was feeling crowded, and my attempts to stand stolid in one spot were thwarted by really aggressive grannies in black kerchiefs who were determined to get a family portrait right where I was standing wherever I was standing. I expect to be in a hundred family photo albums (“Who’s that Infi-Geek Grandma?”)

Finally it was 3 pm. A burly police man started pushing tourists out of the visitors area. He never said “shoo” in English, but his intentions were clear.   People started moving for the exits. I stood by the “Islamic Information Center” ready to invoke the permission given to me earlier. I stood still with my hands cross reverentially in front of me as I was taught to do as a Senior Prefect at The Brooks School in 1976 while attending to the Headmaster during End of School, except this time I had a bread bag containing my two size-13 shoes in front of me.

A few more police-like guys in black turtle-necks and boots came through telling people it was time to go. Never once did one directly hassle me but the tension was high. There was no way I was going to bail after 90 minutes of  listening to my back teeth sing “Anchors Aweigh.” I started thinking inappropriately of the Clash song, “Rock the Casbah” and its directive to place the bomb  between the minarets.  Past church infiltrations helped me display the appropriate karma and all was well. Gradually, over 15 minutes, a hush came over the mosque. The tourists were all gone save for me.

Then I heard the call to prayer. It was much softer inside of the mosque, whereas outside it is everywhere. I continued to stand and wait. Men began to file past me with their shoes in bags, they crossed the barrier and walked purposefully to the front of the mosque by the windows. Women were segregated into a penned off area in the back. I couldn’t tell if they were ascending stairs to the balconies or not, but it was only men on the main floor.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The muezzin went silent. An Imam with a white hat crossed the floor and vanished. The Islamic Information man left office and also vanished. An entering worshipper saw me, stopped and pointed at the base of the immense column. “You. Sit there.”

Yes sir. And so I sat. And what followed was pretty amazing.

Service

There is no liturgy and no music save the amplified voice of the muezzin.  With no guide I once again have no idea what he sang, but his voice was as magnificent as his mosque. The worshippers crowded together in tight lines. Islam is about worshipping together, in close quarters. There were no solo worshippers. No go-it-alone-prayer makers. Late arrivals rushed into the mosque, dropped their shoes onto a special shoe bench and searched for a place to fit into the prayer line.

Prayer follows a defined series of bows, kneelings, and prostrations. I watched carefully and observed the men begin by standing reverently. Then bending at the waist. Then kneeling. Then kneeling forward and touching their foreheads to the ground. Then rising and sitting back. Then gracefully standing. Whether they spoke something to themselves during this sequence isn’t clear. They were silent as they went through the moves.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Imam called the prayer. I’ll upload a video of the sequence. It’s blurry but it will give an idea of how the prayers are conducted. They reminded me of well orchestrated calisthenics, or tai-chi in that the movements were well synchronized, obviously second nature to the faithful, and occurred smoothly with a physical sinousness that even the older worshipers managed to display.

The prayers lasted no more than 15 minutes. At one point in the prayers about 20 percent of the men rose and simply left while the others continued. A few more prayers later and then with no fanfare the prayers were over and everyone was heading for the exits.

I followed, stepped outside with a view of Hagia Sofia. Put on my shoes, and dropped seven lira onto a table with a sign asking for donations for the mosque. A clerk counted my coins and then filled out three receipts. One for five lira, and two one lira coupons and handed them to me. I don’t know why. Either I possess three lottery tickets, or tax receipts for my deductible charitable contributions. I figure given the exchange rate of 1.5, that my donation was in line with the typical $5 bill dropped in the basket of the other 10 churches (okay, Grace Cathedral got a $20 for Christmas).

I stretched. Took a deep breath, and booked off in hunt of a men’s room feeling pretty good to have gotten a mosque onto the list in grand fashion.

Random Observations

• This one worried me, I’ll be honest. A few people told me to skip the mosque thing. I’m glad I didn’t.
• I should read the Koran and get smarter on Islam in general.
• It is a beautiful service and a friendly religion when you get close to it. The children dancing on the carpet made me happy, especially since no one scolded them or told them to be quiet.
• It was very touching to see young boys watching their fathers to learn how to pray.
• The view out the windows on the Sea of Marmara was amazing.
• I wonder how often a “regular” Muslim prays? With ablutions and the shoes, and the whole process I wonder if anyone has time to hit all the prayer times?  Just once a day? A week?
• I understand the Imam will preach on special occasions from the pulpit. That did not happen today.
• Islam should hold Open Houses to introduce non-adherents. The exclusion thing sets the faith apart from nearly all others. The information offering inside of the Blue Mosque was a very good thing.

Next: I visited another Orthodox church in the morning. I will write that up later. I’ll check for stuff in China — recommendations welcomed. There is a Confucian Temple and the Lama Temple. If I have time I will try.