I N T E R N A T I O N A L T E L E T I M E S ***** **** *** * * ***** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **** ***** * * **** * * * * * * * ***** ***** Vol. 3 No. 3 April 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Features -- SEPERATE REALITIES: INDIA "What can a visitor hope to absorb of India in a short time? Nothing but glimpses, dancers captured in the light of a flash gun. How you see a place affects what you see, how you feel affects what you experience." - by Dr. Euan Taylor TSUKUBA: SCIENCE CITY "Founded in the 1970's, Tsukuba is amongst the newest cities in Japan, a nation in which most towns and cities have histories spanning centuries. It's also Japan's Technological capital." - by Surekha and Prasad Akella IMPRESSIONS OF THAILAND "Thai society is extremely status-conscious. Your social status depends on many factors: monetary wealth, family connections, relatedness to the royal family, religious standing, and so forth." - by Ken Ewing HAWAII PUBCRAWL "But what do you do after you've returned the snorkel gear and showered off your Goldfinger-like suit of number-137 sunscreen? Watch TV in your room?" - by Ken Eisner GUATEMALA TRAVEL NOTES "I was told of a German tourist who became so seriously dehydrated that a med-evac to Guatemala City was necessary. Once there, his passport was confiscated and a bill for $12 000 was presented for the helicopter ride." - by Brian Quinby TORONTO TO VANCOUVER BY TRAIN "Every now and then we pass a lake, completely frozen over, flat and white, smooth as a skating rink. I'd love to walk to the center of a big frozen lake like that and just sit there for a while. I'd feel like the first blot of paint on a fresh silk canvas." - by Paul Gribble -- Departments -- THE LATIN QUARTER "On the night Marcos arrived in San Cristobal, he was serenaded by women with hired guitarists outside the 16th century cathedral where he was staying. In Mexico City, women talk about spending a 'fantasy night in the jungle' with Marcos, and others have confessed to discussing their lust for the dashing leader with their psychiatrists." - by Andreas Seppelt "These are strange times for Mexico - awash in scandal, kidnappings, armed insurrection, assassinations, and swirling conspiracy theories; only four months ago it all seemed so fine." - by Andreas Seppelt KEEPERS OF LIGHT "An excellent darkroom technician, Wolchock seldom employs any tricks or manipulative techniques in his work, preferring to concentrate on strong images that present best when simply properly printed." - by Kent Barrett DEJA VU "Writing an article in a forum such as Teletimes about a topic like gun control can be quite difficult...It is the author's hope that this brief article will suggest to the reader that further inquiry is required before forming an opinion about the right to keep and bear arms." - by Gerry Roston MUSIC NOTES "Long a favorite of critics, John Hiatt has undergone a transformation from angry '70s new waver to tasteful roots rocker, all the while turning out songs that other musicians have lined up to cover." - by Jay Hipps THE WINE ENTHUSIAST "Like wine, beer is a wonderful alcoholic beverage that can have complexity, sophistication, and be a delight to the senses. Like wine as well, the majority of beer produced is made to appeal to as wide a market of consumers as possible, and because of this most beers lack the above mentioned qualities. " - by Tom Davis NEWS ROOM "Should we limit what represents 'acceptable' opinion, or are universities and colleges places where it should be possible and acceptable to express any opinion without restraint? If there are to be limits on the permissible -- what should they be and how should they be defined ?" - by Dr. Euan Taylor, Jon Gould, Paul Gribble CUISINE "Chiles are exceptionally good for you. High in vitamin C, the chile adds flavor to food without adding many calories, sodium, or fat. Poorer countries have known for years that you can feel full on less food if the food is highly spiced." - by Brian Silver ------------------------------------------------------------ EDITOR'S NOTE ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Photo Contest! -- Welcome to the 16th issue of International Teletimes. It's my pleasure to announce the first annual Teletimes Photography Contest, PHOTON '94! Kent Barrett, our Photography columnist, along with a couple of other well known Vancouver photographers, will be judging the photos. Winners to be announced in the July '94 issue. Prizes have not yet been finalized, although we are guaranteeing a colour Teletimes tee-shirt to the winner in each category. Cash prizes are a possibility if we get sufficient entries. The deadline for entries is May 31st. For more details, see the official information sheet and entry form at the end of this issue. Stay tuned for new developments. I'd like to ask all of our readers to help us promote this contest by downloading the Photon '94 poster from our FTP site, printing it out, and distributing copies to photography stores and other such places in your area. The poster consists of two postscript files (front and back) and can be found at ftp.wimsey.com in the /pub/photon_94 directory. We would greatly appreciate your help. One last thing before I let you go on to read the rest of the issue. I'd like to welcome Ken Eisner aboard Teletimes. Ken is a writer from the Georgia Straight, a Vancouver Weekly newspaper who will be running a new Arts & Entertainment here in Teletimes, starting May '94. You can see his article, Hawaii Pubcrawl, in this issue (Features). Ian Wojtowicz Editor-in-Chief ------------------------------------------------------------ MAILBOX ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Los Ego-Boosters -- You are setting a high standard for electronic zines! Keep up the good work. Also, it is nice to see that your subject matter is not restricted to topics that would be, stereotypically, of interest only to net junkies. - Seth R. Trotz, Brookline, MA, USA This is great -- I really enjoyed the editorial content, the style, and the inline art (the Gallery show and interview). KEEP IT UP. This is the future of on-line journalism. - Andrew Shaindlin THANKS GUYS. WE LOVE ENCOURAGEMENT! LOOK FOR SOME GREAT IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MONTHS TO COME... -- A True Teletimes Fan -- Last month, Martin Janzen became the first reader to donate money to Teletimes. We'd like to thank him publicly and let everyone know that donations are being saved up to be reinvested into the magazine (ie: eventually paying contributors, photo contest prizes...) THANKS MARTIN!!! (Donation information is provided in the Teletimes Staff/Info section.) On Wed, 16 Mar 94, Martin Janzen writes: For WWW readers it'd be nice to get an e-mail message saying that the new issue is available, without getting all 1600+ lines of the email version... GOOD SUGGESTION. I'VE NOW CREATED A MAILING LIST FOR WWW READERS. IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON THE WEB AND WOULD LIKE TO GET NOTICES OF NEW ISSUES, MAIL ME AT EDITOR@TELETIMES.COM AND I'LL PUT YOU ON THE LIST. ------------------------------------------------------------ FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Separate Realities: India -- You can see a lot of a place without really seeing anything, or see very little of it and still see a great deal. This was brought forcibly home to me by a recent trip to India. I spent just over a week in Rajasthan, travelling, living cheaply, seeing things that tourists see. One face of India. The second half of my stay was spent in and around Delhi to see two of my friends (both Indian) get married. Suddenly, I was face to face with (one part of) the real India, not a posed photo, not a cardboard cut out for the foreigner, not an image from years ago. For the first time I felt myself in a fundamentally different place. What can a visitor hope to absorb of India in a short time? Nothing but glimpses, dancers captured in the light of a flash gun. How you see a place affects what you see, how you feel affects what you experience. India can be a very cheap place to visit, how much you spend can be however much you want, it depends on your tastes. The biggest problem with India and the arrival in Delhi is the shock of the new. If you are thinking of going (and I strongly recommend it) then make a hotel booking for the first night before you arrive, and don't worry too much if you are getting ripped off by the taxi driver that first day. Try and get out of Delhi the first full day, get a train to Jaipur, or Jodhpur, or just somewhere else and save Delhi for another time. (Speaking for myself, I hated Delhi when I arrived, but when I went back a week later it was a wonderful, vibrant place. I had changed, not Delhi.) In Jaiselmer stay in the walled city if you can do it. By all means take a camel safari but don't book one until you have looked around at the prices. Some travel guides say you should take a full 4 days of camel safari to see the desert etc. For me, once you have seen the desert, it is not especially interesting, the scenery is quite repetitive, and riding a camel is very uncomfortable. The only people I met who really, unreservedly, enjoyed their desert trip had just hired a motor bike for the day and buzzed off alone. In general, be prepared for the slowness of things in India, if you keep looking at your watch and worrying about your schedule you'll go nuts. Don't be surprised or unduly worried by long pauses, or painfully slow progress on the roads and railways, it is normal. Also stay away from anything run by the official government tourist agency. If you want to go to the Taj Mahal do not take a bus trip from Delhi, take the daily express train to and from Agra. It is cheaper, much quicker, gives you much more time and freedom to look around, and gets you back to Delhi hours earlier. That's it for my tourist bit, now what about India? During my "holiday" I barely scratched the surface of India. As a tourist I never felt as if I was in India, just looking at it. A week later I had begun to see beneath the skin of this wonderful land and its culture, it was a different place from the one I had just visited. When I was a guest, my experience was undoubtedly shaped by the attentions and deference of my hosts although they eventually started to relax a little (and so did I). But several things have rooted in my mind: -- In general, the shop keepers the taxi drivers, the officials, and practically everyone with any publicly displayed reponsibility was a man. Having said that, in my friends family there were several daughters, one a hospital doctor, one a scientist (doing her Ph.D.) in North America. However much one may generalise, it is important to realise that things are always changing. -- The coffee (which I was offered every ten minutes) was very milky, very sweet and quite weak. It seemed perfectly natural and normal in India but if I was offered it here I'd probably spit it out. The things going on around you can deeply affect what you find acceptable and even pleasant. -- Hand shaking. Having once been introduced to people at the house (guests, relatives etc.), every time I ran into them they would make a point of shaking hands and saying hello. I got used to it, but the apparent formality of it made me extremely uncomfortable for a few days. -- Servants. In a moderately well off household, middle class, not too fancy by western standards, people frequently have servants. In fact, they may lack many of the "modern conveniences" many of us take for granted (like a dish washer, a stereo system, a coffee maker, a home computer or whatever). But they are more likely to have servants, to do the washing, the ironing, the cooking, maybe even the driving. Human labour is cheaper and easier to obtain than many other things and it keeps a lot of Indians employed. -- Kindness and friendliness. I was overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity (I mean social rather than financial) of my friends' families. I had begun to accept India as a rough, dirty, aggressive, tiresome place, but now I found it warm, relaxed, friendly and sophisticated. It was suddenly a wonderfully enriching and uplifting experience to simply be there amongst these people. (And yes being with a well off family must have helped to shape that perception.) -- Indian society is very different from North American (in general). Parents and adults and older people are generally more respected. Marriage, children, and a decision to suit the family are much more expected and normal than might be the case here. It was particularly sobering to encounter the real differences in how Indians saw their society. Some thought that it was a privilege to be a good son/daughter, a fulfilment, a service to others to bring up children, get them married, have grand-children, etc. Some saw merely a cycle of dependency, look after your kids, teach them to be dependent on you until they get married and have job, then they will teach their children to be dependent and therefore obedient. Is the bottle half full, or is it half empty? -- Richness. From my place as guest and friend in a relatively very well off family, the dirty, squalid, crowded, noisy, disorganised society of Delhi appeared entirely different. From that point of view it was exciting, alive, interesting, vivid, striking, almost intoxicating. My final feeling (which may pass) is that there is no such thing as the truth about any country. There are only points of view. I don't mean anything so trivial sounding as "different opinions," I mean real substantive differences in nature of reality depending on the situation from which you see a thing. The true situation, the true nature of society, real life, are all subjective (to a large extent). Despite the incredulity of some of the more narrow minded people around here, I understand why my friends are so homesick for that country, why it is home, and this place is not. I have always understoood homesickness in an intellectual sense of course, though never really felt it. Now I have seen two people I know quite well in the North American environment slip so comfortably and easily and naturally into a place in a fundamentally different life in a society whose conceptual basis is different from mine. Now I see them perhaps with slightly different eyes because I have seen some of the forces which have shaped them. I understand in my stomach what they miss (even if I could never feel at home there). - Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada etaylor@cc.umanitoba.ca -- Tsukuba Science City: The City of the Future? -- The chances are that you have not heard of Tsukuba (Science City). We don't blame you, many Japanese haven't even heard of it! In fact, when we first moved to Tsukuba from Palo Alto, California, we were certain that the travel books we had read were written by people who had never set foot in Japan. After all, weren't the roads nice and wide? and straight? and tree lined? Where was the amazing public transport system that had been so eloquently described? The beautiful, old temples and castles? The ladies in bright kimonos? Could it be that we were back in the United States? Well, not quite. Founded in the 1970's, Tsukuba is amongst the newest cities in Japan, a nation in which most towns and cities have histories spanning centuries. It's also Japan's Technological capital. Until the 70's, most of the Japanese national labs (run by either the infamous Ministry for International Trade and Industry, MITI, or by the Science and Technology Agency of Japan) were located in the Tokyo metropolitan area. With the growth of the Japanese economy, and the realization that it was time to start generating the ideas in addition to the products engineered elsewhere in the world, the national government decided that it was time to expand these labs. It was also decided that the labs should be located close to each other so as to foster inter-disciplinary work. To relocate a dozen labs to a spacious campus, which are home to a few thousand researchers, was quite a challenge. As almost everyone knows, the cost of real estate in Tokyo is astronomical. So, rather than spend a fortune trying to find room in Tokyo, someone decided that it was time to build a new city. The rest is history. Tsukuba was placed bang in the middle of a little pine forest and some paddy fields, about 60 kilometers north of Tokyo. (The pine forest was the only contiguous piece of land available within a reasonable distance of Tokyo.) While the labs started moving out from the late 70's, Tsukuba was formally inaugurated in 1985 when the World Expo was held here. In one of the inaugural shows, a wonderful anthropomorphic robot from the Waseda University grabbed the attention of the visitors. This humanoid played the piano along with an entire orchestra in a concert! Having labored to build similar machines, I was extremely impressed -- even after I visited Waseda and heard that an army (50-100) of graduate students had hand coded every motion that the poor robot made. The infrastructure that was set up for the Expo became the basis for the Science City. Today, Tsukuba is home to about 170 000 people associated with about 50 government labs, about 50 corporate R & D labs and a couple of national universities. (Depending on who is counting, and what the criteria are, I have seen numbers of up to 190 labs!) By bringing in the multi-nationals along side the Japanese corporate and national labs, it was hoped that Tsukuba could become another Cambridge or Palo Alto. The unstated hope was that the Nobel prizes would start flowing in once people settled into this intellectual atmosphere. Reality, sadly, is quite different from this wonderful dream. What has resulted is an interesting mix of good and bad. At the positive end is the variety of excellent labs of international stature located in town while at the negative end is the fact that folks here do not really believe in collaborations. For the Japanophiles reading this article, we suggest that you take a look at an interesting volume of the magazine, "Science" [see end of article] for details on the Tsukuba area, on the national and corporate labs in the city, and on MITI's role. A city which was founded as far back as 20 years ago does not really provide one with much to talk about. So we shall only briefly touch upon the life here. Unlike most cities in Japan which are unplanned, Tsukuba is a planned city. A consequence of this is that there is a campus-like feeling. Architecture is fairly standard (brick and glass construction in the MITI campus). Buildings are separated by paddy fields and open spaces. The city itself is large, spanning five smaller cities that were combined to form the new city. However, the core of the city is small -- it takes less than a half hour to ride through the main part of town! As the public transport system is almost nonexistent, bikes are a common mode of transport. Of particular interest is that fact that the poor public transport system has spawned off a Silicon Valley-like atmosphere where almost everyone drives around. The wide roads have spawned off their own sub-cultures amongst the more lively kids. One bunch, called the "bozozukas," attempt to vent their feelings by removing the silencers on their Harley-Davidsons and Hondas and thereafter proceeding to blast the neighborhoods with the deep roar of their powerful engines. Another group meets every Friday and Saturday night for a most interesting "you- stay-in-your-car-while-I-stay-in-mine" dating (mating?) drama. They cruise down the road in two's, talking across open windows. Things are so different in Tsukuba that we have had Japanese friends come up from the more traditional Kyoto and Osaka areas, only to shake their heads and wonder if they were in Japan or in the US! We find this bizarre mix of new and old to be most fascinating. So, if you are looking for a place to relax in and to mix with the people who are striving to have something to do with the future of mankind, while not having to mess around with the bustle of Tokyo...Tsukuba is for you! If you do decide to head to these parts, remember to give us a call! We might even show you around... - Surekha and Prasad Akella, Tsukuba, Japan prasad@mel.go.jp Sources "Science in Japan," Science, Volume 258, 23 October 1992. -- Impressions of Thailand -- In 1992 we spent two weeks in Thailand as part of a South East Asia trip. We spent one week in Bangkok and one week in the North, around the city of Chiang Mai. The following article describes some of my impressions of Thai culture. Every few years I get to take an exotic trip somewhere in the world. I usually travel with friends and we create our own itinerary. Packaged tours have their place, but I prefer the adventure of finding my own way around. I typically spend up to a year studying about a country before going. I like the sense of adventure and challenge that comes from finding my way around a strange, exotic place. I always embark on a trip with a bit of a fantasy of being like James Bond starting a mission. A Few Cultural Points One main point of Thai culture is the idea of status. Thai society is extremely status-conscious. Your social status depends on many factors: monetary wealth, family connections, relatedness to the royal family, religious standing, and so forth. Personal interactions follow a rather strict protocol depending on the relative difference of social status between two people (most of this protocol goes completely unnoticed to foreigners). The Thai language has something like 28 different words for the pronoun "you" to be used between differing levels of status (i.e.; depending on whether you are talking to someone of higher status, lower status, and greater or lesser differentials of either, or if you don't know the status of the other). Another dominant point of Thai culture is what we might call a strong element of superstition. For millennia the Thai people believed that innumerable spirits populated the land. These spirits (which are generally unpredictable) can favorably or unfavorably affect the lives of people. With this in mind, it becomes important to appease these spirits and avoid offending them. At least in some measure, you still find this kind of belief in Thai culture. And if this belief is not exactly literal, it is at least figurative or latent in that Thai culture is extremely conscious of fate and luck. Astrologers and fortune tellers are ubiquitous in Thailand. There also are numerous national lotteries, and one dominant cultural characteristic in Thailand is the constant search for the "lucky break." People The Thai people are exceptionally friendly, so much so that after a while you begin to distrust it (as if you were being set up for something). Occasionally you might really be set up -- I got my pocket picked on my last day in Bangkok. Oftentimes I think that the Thai people see a Westerner and just want to practice their English. You will be walking down the street and someone will just start talking to you as if they know you well. It can be fun, but it also can be so incessant as to become bothersome after a day or two. Some Practical Points The monetary unit in Thailand is the Baht (abbreviated "B"). The exchange rate is about 25:1 (i.e.; 1 B equals around 4 cents US). My trick was to remember that 100 B equals US$4.00. A map of Bangkok is a must. There are some good tourist maps that list interesting things to see. They are also good for overcoming language barriers with taxi drivers, bus attendants, etc. Your hotel or guest house probably sells maps, but if not, there are lots of bookstores around town. One of the most important rules for Bangkok is DICKER ON THE PRICE BEFORE DOING ANYTHING! Except for the bigger stores, most prices are haggled. This includes taxis, tuk-tuks, street markets, food stands, etc. Especially before riding a taxi, tuk-tuk, or long-tailed boat, ABSOLUTELY AGREE ON A PRICE BEFORE GETTING IN. Transportation There are numerous ways to get around town in Bangkok. Taxis are the most luxurious mode, relatively speaking. Some are air conditioned, some are not. 50 B will take you pretty much anywhere in the downtown area. Tuk-tuks are a tradition in Thailand. These are three-wheeled, two-stroke motorcycles with a canopy over the back. Ex-kamikazes drive them. They are generally cheaper than taxis, but they are open-air vehicles that spew clouds of blue exhaust. Busses are fairly easy to figure out. There are bus maps at all the stops. The busses cost 4-7 B. For water transportation, there are three kinds of boats: water ferries (which simply go across the river), express boats (which travel up and down the river), and long-tail boats (which are the "taxi cabs" of the river and canals). For the water ferries and express boats, you pay at a ticket counter on the dock (1 B for the water ferries, 4-7 B for the express boat). For the long-tail boats, dicker for the price. Food Of all the oriental cuisines, Thai has always been my favorite. And I must say, the one thing that I most missed when I left Thailand was the food! Even an average Mom-and- Pop foodcart on a street corner had the best-tasting Thai food I've ever had. Thai restaurants in the US just don't seem the same to me anymore. All the travel books warn about the food and drink in Thailand, and rightfully so. The books warn against eating from any street vendor. After a few days we regularly ate from the street carts, and we never got sick. Actually, you are more likely to get sick from the dishes than from the food, since the dishes might be washed in the local water. As a rule, you should avoid drinking any water or fluids that don't come from a sealed container. Avoid foods that could have been washed in water (such as salads, fruits, etc., although fruits that can be peeled, like oranges and bananas, are OK). Also avoid foods that have been sitting out for long periods of time. In general, we thought we could judge if a given food stand was okay. The ones we ate from seemed to have fresh food that was made daily. Also, if you really get desperate, there are plenty of McDonald's, Arby's, and the like (the ice and the soft drinks in these places were safe). Religion and Culture Religion is an overwhelmingly dominant characteristic of Thai culture. You cannot understand Thai culture without becoming acquainted with the religious heritage of the country, which revolves around Buddhism. Buddhism came to Thailand around the 12th century when Buddhist missionaries traveled there from Sri Lanka. Thailand today is one of the most thoroughly Buddhist nations in the world (95% of the population). The country has 30 000 temples (450 in Bangkok, 300 in Chiang Mai). Thai Buddhism incorporates many of the animist beliefs that were prevalent before Buddhism came (such as beliefs in spirits of the land and the household). The result is a unique religious mix that sets Thai Buddhism apart from Buddhism in other countries. For example, everywhere you go in Thailand, you see what look like fancy birdhouses in front of buildings. Some of these "birdhouses" are very ornate, like miniature temples. In reality, these are "spirit houses." One characteristic of these spirits is that they are very capricious and easily offended. A big part of the culture for centuries has been to appease these spirits and avoid offending them. One way of doing this is to keep them away from you, especially out of your house. But how do you get spirits out of your house? Answer: build them a house of their own, of course. But how do you guarantee that they will leave your house and go to the spirit house? Answer: make the spirit house "better" than your house. You also want to make sure the spirits know you have not forgotten them (they might be offended), so you leave little offerings (food, flowers, incense) at the spirit house from time to time. The highest-ranking social class in Thailand is the Buddhist monk. (The King ranks #2 behind the lowliest monk.) For this reason, there are many rules for social propriety when around the monks and temples. For example, when in a temple, never sit in a lotus position. This is the position that the monks sit in, and for a layman to sit in this position is to say that you are equal in status to the monk. (The proper way to sit is to bend down with your knees to the floor, knees together, sitting on the heels of your feet, with your feet pointed behind you.) If a monk approaches you at a temple, a Thai Buddhist will bow down three times with his face to the floor (the symbolic meaning is that the layman's head is lower than the feet of the monk). Monks live a very simple lifestyle. They are forbidden to have money. They live in very austere quarters. They have very few possessions, mainly consisting of their saffron robe and a food plate. Monks are allowed to have at most only two meals a day: one at daybreak and one at midday. The midday meal must be completed before noon, after which the monk may not eat again until daybreak the next day. If you rise early (around 6:00 AM or so), you will see the monks wandering the streets gathering their food for the day. In Thai culture a monk collects his food from the people. He wanders the area with his food plate (which looks like a large pie plate) and the people bring food items and put them into the plate. When the plate is full, the monk has collected his food for that day. Here in the West we might look on this practice as freeloading, but in Thailand it is seen as a service. Buddhism in Thailand (unlike the philosophical varieties that I have heard described in the US) is an elaborate system of "works righteousness" (i.e.; it consists of rituals and deeds designed to acquire heavenly merit.) One way for a layman to gain heavenly merit is to give food to the monks. So, by wandering around early in the morning, the monks are providing a service to the people by giving them an opportunity to gain heavenly merit. One of the biggest ways to acquire heavenly merit is to become a monk. Thai men are not required to become monks during their lives, but they are strongly encouraged. The minimum "tour of duty" is one rainy season (about 1-3 months -- my sources differ on the exact duration). To become a monk, you must be a man (most men who become monks do so around age 20). There is a ordination that takes place in July (the beginning of the rainy season). You must vow to obey 227 rules of conduct, including poverty, chastity, etc. You can choose to remain a monk for as long as you want after the minimum stay. In the Buddhist scheme, becoming a monk not only gives merit to the man, but also to the man's whole family. Hence you see mothers urging their sons to become monks so that the whole family can benefit. Thai women can become Buddhist "nuns", but this does not carry the same status (or heavenly merit) that comes from being a monk. Buddhist temples are fabulously ornate. They usually contain many gold images of the Buddha in any of five postures (two in a lotus position, two standing, and one reclining -- each posture has a particular significance). Conduct inside a temple is often different from a Westerner's expectation. Particularly, we tend to equate a Buddhist temple with a Christian church. The significant difference is that the Christian church service is a corporate affair, where the people assembled participate as a group. In the Buddhist temple, though, the worshipers are very individualistic. Each person is carrying out an individual ritual strictly for himself or herself, so you can walk around, watch, engage in conversation, etc. (i.e.; without seeking to be arrogant or obnoxious) and you will not be intruding upon the activities around you. A typical Buddhist ritual consists of the individual bringing (or buying) some incense sticks, candles, and a piece of gold leaf. The worshipper bows down before the Buddha statue, engages is some ritualistic prayers while shaking the incense sticks, then lights the incense and the candles, makes his or her requests to Buddha, then finishes by applying the gold leaf onto the Buddha statue. Requests might be for such things as a good mate, success in business, winning the lottery, or some other kind of good luck. Redlight Districts Bangkok is world-famous for its redlight districts. Sex is an outright industry in Thailand. Our guest house happened to be two blocks from Patpong, one of the famous districts from the Vietnam era. Virtually anywhere in Bangkok you can get pestered about the sex parlors, but this especially happens near the redlight districts. The parlors employ people to stand out on the sidewalks and solicit customers. Particularly if they see a Westerner, they walk up and begin their pitch: "What you looking for?" "Wanna massage? Wanna massage?" "Nice girls! Nice girls!" If they stick with you long enough, they will even pull out their color glossy brochure about their sex parlor. The unfortunate reality is that many of the girls in the parlors are only teenagers (as young as 13). Many of them are from country farms where the family needs money so the father basically sells his daughter into slavery. In addition, about 70-80% of the girls are HIV positive. Thailand today is one of the worst hotbeds for AIDS in the whole world. It's not just risky to indulge in the sex parlors, it's a virtually assured infection. Final note Thailand is a fascinating, exotic, exciting place, but it's also very wearing. Throughout my time there, I never once felt in any kind of physical danger (and we walked all over, city and country, at all hours of the day). But, strangely enough, at no time did I have the feeling I could let my guard down. Particularly in Bangkok, the place never rests. There is the air pollution...the incessant activity...the traffic...being hounded by tuk-tuk drivers...being approached by street vendors...can I eat or drink this?...dickering the price for everything. By the time we left, we were both mentally exhausted. We are both experienced world travelers, but the culture shock still got to us. I am glad I went, but I will have to take a good long rest before I go back. - Ken Ewing, Beaverton, Oregon, USA kene@sequent.com -- Hawaii Pubcrawl -- The beach rules. Don't look for any arguments here. But what do you do after you've returned the snorkel gear and showered off your Goldfinger-like suit of number-137 sunscreen? Watch TV in your room? Or go catch Charo in the non-stop Polynesian follies at the Hilton (Don't worry: she has a contractual clause allowing Joan Collins to step in if she gets too old to perform her duties). I like Hawaii during the annual International Film Festival, in mid- November, but when some die-hard urbanites switch cities, they find cinema-going too passive, preferring an environment which serves up live music with a decent daiquiri. The Don Ho virus is rampant throughout the islands -- years of forced "hospitality" and a sentimental strain in their traditional music have made the Holiday Inn croon endemic to even the best Hawaiian singers -- but it's possible to step off the tourist-trampled path and find a vital, if slightly undernourished, alternative music scene in Honolulu. To answer your first inevitable question: yes, plaid has come to Hawaii! While surfwear still dominates club-going garb, it's not unusual to see leather jackets, flip-flops, and a knee-length lumberjack shirt on the same college-age person. (This isn't as absurd as the tropical climate would suggest, considering how frigid the buses and restaurants are kept. Which seems to suit Doc Martens-togged 20-year- olds who peer out their windows and, at the first hint of rain, dream of exotic Seattle.) I was surprised at the number of name acts in town: Ladysmith Black Mambazzo, KRS-One, Fishbone, and the Violent Femmes were gigging at small-hall or outdoor concerts. Suicidal Tendencies was at After Dark, an industrial-style club on the Nimitz Highway; and C-5, on isolated Sand Island, had scored Babes in Toyland. Still, I wanted to check out the local angle. Much of the obvious nightlife in Honolulu is centred in that thumb-shaped lozenge of hotel towers and fluffy white beaches called Waikiki -- familiar to millions, if only from reruns of Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum P.I. Waikiki is cut off from the rest of the city by the Ala Wai Canal, and its choicest hunk of real estate, smack in the middle, is still inhabited by the U.S. military (standing ready since 1893). This makes for a rather hemmed-in stroll for trinket-hunting visitors; after a few days, it's easy to feel like fish in a large circular aquarium. There are no footbridges across the canal, and this is most certainly a tourist-corralling device. But most of the beachfront entertainment is of the hotel-lounge variety, and if you want to get away from the Pukalani Brothers's slack-key version of "Feelings", a good place to start is the small university district. The number 4 bus zigzags across the canal and winds uphill to the University of Hawaii. The stop across from the Varsity Theater (the film fest's flagwaver) lands you in front of Moose McGillycuddy's, a dark-wood, top-40 joint much like college suds-barns everywhere. Notably, though, it hosts a once-a-month, all-night blowout with about a dozen local bands. I prefer a few at a time, and about two long blocks west on main-drag Beretania Street is Anna Bannana's. A beat-up club with an amiably split personality, its lower level is a classic biker's bar, with pool tables, surly bartenders, and Bud on tap; upstairs, a coterie of local bands, like Melodious Thunk and the metalheaded Poynt Blankk, play for students. The night I went, multi-race/gender house favourites Pagan Babies were holding forth with their impressively versatile (if slightly synthetic) blend of world beat, funk, and jazz-rock styles; the cluttered, multilevel room was rocking with serious dance-itude. Moving further east, just before the Diamond Head area, is Kapahulu Avenue, a long strip of T-shirt shops and good restaurants. In the middle is the Java Java Cafe, a plain- looking deli which favours bagel dishes and black-clad existentialists. Up some vaguely defined back stairs, I found a door, oddly marked "Lost Lizard", behind which a terrific jazz group called Money, Sax & Power was cutting loose in a Coltrane vein, while scattered patrons sipping non-alcoholic beverages sat uncomfortably on folding chairs. Java Java has since closed this room, staging occasional jazz and poetry performances in the deli proper until it can expand into larger premises (two similarly jazz-minded coffeehouses are called, appropriately, Cappuccino's and Tri Espresso). Found far west down the ocean-side Ala Moana Boulevard, at the end of a nondescript mall-strip known as Restaurant Row, is the Blue Zebra, an airy, L-shaped room with good acoustics and a reputation for encouraging class jazz acts. My first encounter, though, yielded a rather desultory blues band, complete with hats and shades. When Dan Aykroyd didn't show up, I took off, but a few nights later, the club hosted a sparkling piano trio (there were international jazz acts at the nearby Honolulu Academy of Arts, which also features local classical and new music events). Also in the Row, Rex's Black Orchid is home to numerous hardcore bands, like Action Figures, Cache, and the unforgettably named Two Guys and Two Girls. Further into a residential neighbourhood close by, I discovered My Favorite Eggplant, a cavernous warehouse space recognizable only because of a red light blinking over a huge crack carved in one cement face. Inside, disconsolate teenagers stared at snowy TV screens and faux Greek columns, or danced, semi- moshingly, to a reggae-grunge band called Red Sessions. The gaggle of New York film-makers I dragged there grumbled at having to settle for power shakes at the all-ages bar. They've since had their revenge: the joint recently closed, and is now searching for a less neighbour-annoying location. Ironically, the most fun I had was around the corner from my hotel, at the Wave Waikiki. A steamy, windowless box only a few blocks from the beach, the Wave is frequented by guys in Gold's Gym tank-tops, and the odd pack of miniskirted women practising their model pouts as they make a bee-line for the washroom or mezzanine above the stage. I went on a Tuesday, which offers local favourites, and I was lucky enough to encounter two great bands: Elvis '77, a Soundgarden-type noise trio driven by a twin-pigtailed drummer; and the Love Gods, an exceptionally tuneful quintet boasting inventive, REM-ish songs from frontman James Figueira and g-spot guitarist Porter Miller they were the one group I saw with breakout potential. Of course, my judgement could have been flawed, since Tuesday is also "bucket night"; I didn't realize my scotches were actually triples until a waiter politely asked me down from my bar stool, adding that I could stop cheering the band -- the house had already been playing videos for five minutes. Access The best way around Waikiki is on foot or better yet, by bicycles, widely available for rental. Buses are cheap, if not quite plentiful enough, at 85 cents a ride less for students! Taxis are needed for Restaurant Row, Sand Island, and other outer limits, and are reasonable by mainland standards. Here are some venue locations (808 is the area code for the whole state): Moose McGillycuddy's Waikiki, 1035 University Avenue, 944- 5525 Anna Bannana's, 2440 S. Beretania Street, 964-5190 Java Java Cafe, 760 Kapahulu Street, 923-9952. Blue Zebra, 500 Ala Moana Boulevard, 538-0409 Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania Street, 532-8768 The Wave Waikiki, 1877 Kalakaua Avenue, 941-0424 For event listings, listen to KPOI 97.5 FM (The Edge) and KIPO 89.3 FM (Hawaii Public Radio, which actually plays CBC news on Sundays), or pick up the Honolulu Weekly, Metropolis music magazine, and Artbeat, a hip bi-monthly newspaper. - Ken Eisner, Vancouver, Canada -- Guatemala Travel Notes -- I have just returned (January 6th) from Guatemala. Here are some travel notes I wrote: The war in Chiapas (Mexico) is going to cause problems for people who want to travel off the beaten track in Peten. The Guatemalan military is increasing its activity along the border and is paranoid about gringos given the Mexican government's assertion that "foreigners" are involved in the revolt. When I flew into Flores, there was so much military activity, it looked like the opening scene from the Oliver Stone film, Platoon. Beware of Tikal Jets. I encountered many people who had complaints...overbooking, overselling and selling tickets on flights that simply didn't exist. In Flores, Hotel Yum Kax is a perfectly good place to stay. Doubles with ceiling fan run $19 per night. Air conditioning is about $4 more but not worth the noise. No hot water but in the jungle, who needs it. The hotel has a swimming pool which is nice and the staff are very eager to please. At the airport, I was quoted 100 Quetzals for the trip to Tikal. At Yum Kax it was 30. The hotel ran vans at 4 am (for the cosmic folks who want to see the sunrise) and at 7 am (for the more laid back types.) For those who don't understand what happens to the human body when it is very hot and humid, let me explain: you become dehydrated. If you go to Tikal, bring bottled water with you. I was told of a German tourist who became so seriously dehydrated that a med-evac to Guatemala City was necessary. Once there, his passport was confiscated and a bill for $12 000 was presented for the helicopter ride. In Panajachel, I stayed at the Cacique Inn. Adela Schuman (a wonderful woman whose age I won't hazard a guess at) runs the wonderful hotel. $50 per night for a double. El Dragon is a superb restaurant for dinner (22 to 27/Q) and the Deli has great cappucino and eggs benidict (17/Q). In Guatemala City, Hotel Excell (9a Ave & 15 Calle in Zone 1) is a great bargin at 95/Q per night. They have a car park that is secure. Rooms are large, they include a TV -- but no cable -- and have ample hot water from the little heaters on the end of the pipe. Restaurant Gran Central (across the street from the Excell) serves excellant Peruvian food at very low prices and also is very international at night. When I was there (December 18th to January 5th) the Quetzal averaged 5.78 per dollar at the bank, and about 5.85 on the street. One final note: Guatemala now seems to be more of a drug market than a transit point. I received more offers on the street to purchase marijuanna from Belize than ever before. Rumor has it that the product is of high quality but the reality is that Guatemalan jails are are not worth the hassle. - Brian Quinby, Aurora, Illinois, USA quinby@imsa.edu -- Toronto to Vancouver by Train: Paul Gribble's Journal -- I'm twenty two years old and I've just had a spontaneous pneumothorax ("doctorese" for a lung which spontaneously decided to collapse). Yeah, I may be complaining, but I should be dead. I was blacklisted by my chromosomes. Charles Darwin gave me the thumbs down; Natural Selection gave me the finger. Why have we slowed down to 5 miles per hour? I don't mean society, I mean the train. I'm on a train -- the "VIA-1 Canadian" train from Toronto to Vancouver. Oh good, it's speeding up again. I've been on it for about six hours now, and I'll be on it for another 77 hours. Maybe I should carve out the hours on my bathroom wall... Maybe they'd leave me to rot in Winnipeg with my surgical scars and my Powerbook. I suppose any risk of the lung re-collapsing is not a risk worth taking. Dr. Ergina sandpapered the outside of my lung, then sandpapered the inside of my chest wall, then slapped them together like bologna and mustard on rye (ooh, I think it's dinner time soon). He thinks the changes in air pressure inside of an airplane might rip them apart before they get a chance to bond like crazy glue. I certainly wouldn't want to have to press the call-button on my aisle seat and ask the stewardess if she happened to have a scalpel and a chest-tube on board the aircraft. I can't help thinking about that M*A*S*H episode where Radar has to do a tracheotomy with a pocket knife and a fountain pen. I suppose I'd have to use the tubing from the pneumatic headphones -- that is, if they haven't switched to electronic ones yet. Yes, I think it's dinner time now. Maybe I'll meet some interesting and amiable people in the dining car and have a friendly, comfortable conversation about recently cherished events. Maybe I'll sit in front of vile, smelly yobs who blow cigar smoke in my face and jeer about the waves in my hair. Maybe I'll sit alone and stare out the window. That may be the most interesting option. Yum. I think I'll just eat the cheesecake from now on. The halibut was bland. I think they have some sort of rule about clustering people together at tables -- preventing people from sitting alone. I sat with a woman and her adult son (Betty and Bill) and this guy from Brockville, Ontario. Betty and Bill are from Vermont. She seemed sweet, he seemed like an overgrown hippie. They're going to Vancouver, and then to Portland; they say that the equivalent Amtrak route through the US sucks big-time, that it's boring and the train is in terrible condition. It made me proud for a second that two Americans would come to Canada to make their trans-continental journey. After dinner I went back to my "bedroom" berth. It reminds me of a hotel room I had in Japan last summer. The hotel room was bigger -- but not by much. Here, at least the view changes. There's a sign above the faucets by the sink that says "Undrinkable Water." I wonder what's in it? The light switch for the light in the closet that houses the toilet says "Annex Light." Annex? At least the French below it is honest enough to say "Toilette." There's a sign above the toilette that says "Please Do Not Flush When Train Is In Station." I saw the sign just after I flushed...and then realized we were in a station. Oops. I sat in my room with the door locked waiting for very angry, very smelly station workers to come knock down my door. I remember dreading this trip, being trapped on a train for 3 days, but now it's kind of nice to be able to just sit here, staring out the window, letting my mind wander, without worrying about where I have to be or what I should be doing. The view doesn't really change that much from minute to minute, it's all just trees and snow right now, but it doesn't feel boring or repetitive. The bed is barely too short. I can fit on my side with my knees bent, but on my back, my toes are smushed against the wall. I had trouble falling asleep and I kept waking up. Whenever the train goes along curved track it rolls you back and forth and up and down in your bed. I guess this is what it feels like to be a Bingo ball. I think we're somewhere in western Ontario now. I had no idea that the province of Ontario is so wide. We've been chugging along for almost 24 hours now and we still haven't reached Manitoba! Winnipeg is the next major stop -- a lot of people are leaving the train there. The "Map" control panel on my Powerbook says Toronto to Winnipeg is 940 miles, and Winnipeg to Vancouver is 1160 miles, so I guess Winnipeg is technically the half-way stop. We'll probably arrive sometime this evening. Maybe I'll get off the train and call home. I hope the train won't leave without me. I sat in the "Domed Observatory" (the bubble-car) this morning as we chugged through the forest. In this part of the country the landscape is mostly short trees and underbrush. It's not mountainous, but not flat like the prairies -- rolling hills, I suppose. It must be ideal country for summer camps and family camping grounds. There are streams and rivers every few miles, some frozen over, some not. Sometimes you can make out a layer of brownish, yellowish, frothing filth collecting in a side pool or along the shore. A quick scan of the treetops will usually reveal a factory, or maybe just its smokestack, spitting stuff up into the air. Every now and then we pass a lake, completely frozen over, flat and white, smooth as a skating rink. We passed one lake that was absolutely huge -- it looked like it went on forever. I've never seen such a simple display of nature's beauty. I'd love to walk to the center of a big frozen lake like that and just sit there for a while. I'd feel like the first blot of paint on a fresh silk canvas. Well, I seemed to have missed the prairies completely. Yesterday evening around supper-time we left Winnipeg, and when I woke up this morning we were in Edmonton, Alberta; I think we passed through Saskatoon, Saskatchewan sometime around 3am last night. So much for endless fields of sunflowers and wheat. I'm actually quite disappointed. I was looking forward to seeing the prairies for the first time. I suppose it would have looked like tundra this time of year, anyway. After passing through the entrance to Jasper National Park (10,878 square kilometers, collectively declared a "World Heritage Site" by UNESCO in 1984) and Disaster Point (a stark mass of rock that drops almost straight down into the Athabasca River, except where it was blasted for the railbed), we arrived in the town of Jasper, Alberta (pop. 4 000) this afternoon. Now these are mountains! I'm instantly jealous of the people who live here. My favourite peaks are the jagged ones, with long, sharp ridges and snow-covered sides. They look triumphant. They stand tall and proud, smug in their knowledge that humans will never create anything as large, beautiful, and permanent. They even rise above the clouds. I suppose our only rebuttal is to climb them and hoot from atop their peaks. The smaller, rounder mountains look less victorious. They don't seem to have as much energy as the jagged peaks, and most of them look patchy and torn from clear-cut logging. They look tired and glum. How did trees ever start to grow on rocky mountaintops? Will they ever return there in my lifetime? Everything here is covered in snow and ice. Some trees are bent over from the weight of it, kissing the ground. There are little footprints in the snow atop frozen creeks and rivers, but I haven't seen anything smaller than a moose walking around in the light of day. They look very disturbed when you catch sight of them from the train; kind of like you'd look if a bunch of strangers suddenly came barreling through your home in a long steel noisemaker. I wonder if the animals frolic and have fun in the snow, or if they're cold and miserable. Every couple of hours we pass through a tiny little settlement, with a few log houses and a road or two. I wonder if they live off of the land or off of 7-11 and J. Crew. Tonight we will pass over the Alberta-BC border, losing an hour as we change from Mountain to Pacific Standard Time. During the night we'll pass through Clearwater, Kamloops (doesn't that sound like some kind of kid's cereal? Hmmmm...maybe I need a snack), Ashcroft, Boston Bar (yeah, and maybe a drink too), Hope, and by first light we will be in Chilliwack. Wasn't there a hit single by a band called Chilliwack in the early eighties? What was it called? I've been listening to too much U2 on this trip. I wonder what these towns like "Boston Bar" and "Ashcroft" are like that they'd schedule the train to go through the Rockies in daylight, and these places at night: Ashcroft, BC (pop. 1,900) gets only 18 centimetres of precipitation a year, earning it the title of "the driest town in Canada." The landscape is desert-like, and both cactus and sage grow in abundance. Erosion has created odd formations from the reddish bluffs, such as hoodoos, isolated pinnacles of rock that remain after a hill has worn away. (From "Enchanting Horizons: VIA Rail's Log to Western Canada") Oh. I guess in the high-school of the wilderness, hoodoos aren't as popular as towering jagged snow-covered mountaintops. Hoodoos probably sit in the library during lunch hour, or alone outside, just watching the world go by. Snow-capped jagged peaks get all the attention. It's pitch dark now as we chug towards Clearwater. I hope that's not an inaccurate name for the place. When I wake up I will have spent more than 77 hours on the train, crossing most of our country by land. I usually make the same trip by plane in about 5 hours. On the train I was in constant contact with Canada, feeling bumps and hills and curves even as I slept: my body on the train, the train on the tracks, the tracks pinned to the land by spikes sunk deep into the ground. On the plane I look down nervously towards the ground, and the view from 30,000 feet up is airplane wing and clouds as we speed impatiently over the countryside. On the plane I feel like one of a herd of nervous, hurried sheep, with no privacy and no personal space. Stewards and stewardesses constantly demanding things of me - my boarding pass, my attention, my cooperation, my choice of dinner entree. My nerves are constantly frazzled by sudden, unexpected air pockets and turbulence. I arrive stressed out and jet-lagged, luggage optional, Toronto to Vancouver. Tomorrow we will roll into Vancouver awake and refreshed, with an eternal appreciation of the rich and diverse texture of the lands we share, but also with a nagging disappointment that our lands seem to have been soiled by the society which enabled us to make the journey. - Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada gribble@motion.psych.mcgill.ca ------------------------------------------------------------ DEPARTMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------ -- The Latin Quarter -- Romance in the Hills of Chiapas In his last visit to Mexico, Peruvian Novelist and former Presidential Candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, caused considerable agitation and official outrage when he exclaimed, "Mexico, the other Latin American nations stand in admiration of you. You are the 'perfect' dictatorship, all under the guise of apparent democracy." He was quickly hustled out of the country, as much for his own safety, as for any further potential embarrassing remarks he might make. Now, Mexico can even lay claim to having the "perfect" revolutionary leader. Not since the dark, brooding, mustachioed Emiliano Zapata rode his white horse out of the hills of Morelia, into Mexico City, has a leader captured the imagination and public appeal as the charismatic, ski- masked leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Subcommandante Marcos. On the night Marcos arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas for the recent negotiations with Government negotiator Manuel Camacho, he was serenaded by women with hired guitarists outside the 16th century cathedral where he was staying. In Mexico City, women talk about spending a "fantasy night in the jungle" with Marcos, and others have confessed to discussing their lust for the dashing leader with their psychiatrists. In these ten weeks since the insurrection began, Marcos has certainly not discouraged the romantic fantasies, and many women are treating his often poetic "press releases" as personal pleas. In San Cristobal, Marcos gave a passionate speech, asking, "Why do we (the Zapatistas) have to sleep with our boots on, and our souls hanging by a thread?" However, there is more to Marcos than a mysterious revolutionary, sending of romantic sound-bites. Handwriting analysts have suggested a man who is extremely intelligent, egotistic almost bordering on vanity, often exhibiting a mood of omnipotence, impulsive, and occasionally depressive. He has demonstrated a clear understanding of Mexican history and its even more poignant relevance now, and many of his "communiques" indicate a knowledge of military tactics and organizational principals. His Spanish sounds only lightly Mexican, and his conversation is peppered with jokes and occassional phrases in rough English. He has joked that he learned his English by spending his nights in the mountains reading Playboy and Pentagon manuals. As he has in the past, Marcos has refused to divulge his real name or age. While he has admitted to commanding the Zapatista's military offensive, he continues to insist that his role is subordinate to the indigenous leaders -- thus the title "Sub"commandante ..."My commanders are the Mayan Indian campesinos." Rebel leaders have carried weapons and worn ski masks at news conferences, but Marcos said they have put away their guns, but kept their masks for the present negotiations. "If you want to see what faces are behind the ski masks, it's easy. Pick up a mirror and look into it!" ... and in a recent missive from his camp in the Chiapas mountains, Marcos promised, "I am prepared to take off my mask if Mexican society will take off its own mask." Marcos has also shown a clear understanding of the international attention focused on Mexico and the subsequent pressure that its leaders feel, "What is at stake in Chiapas is no longer just Chiapas or even Mexico, but perhaps even the free trade agreement or the whole neoliberal project in Latin America (sweeping economic changes in Mexico and other Latin American countries). Recent changes have brought little, if any, improvement in the lives of the poor. "It's not because we have great force, but because people are saying, 'All right, what happened here? What is going to happen elsewhere? What costs are there going to be?" Motioning to the reporters before him, he added, "if that were not true, you all would not be here." During their initial occupation of San Cristobal, Marcos issued his first communique, "The war we declare is a final but justified measure. We have nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a dignified roof, nor work, nor land, nor health care, nor education." As the latest details of the recent accord were read to the press by govermnent negotiators (on March 3) in San Cristobal, Subcommundante Marcos sat behind, smoking a pipe and reading various reports, no doubt preparing his own impassioned statement from the men and romantic women of Mexico. -- The Latin Quarter -- Tragic Comedy Under Aztec Sun These are strange times for Mexico - awash in scandal, kidnappings, armed insurrection, assassinations, and swirling conspiracy theories; only four months ago it all seemed so fine. The North American Free Trade agreement had just been approved by U.S. Congress, the new Presidential Candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was given the nod by the President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, interest and inflation rates were at their lowest in years, and Mexico was basking in the attention and praise of the international business community. Enter "stage right" a few rebels in Chiapas wielding old rifles and rusty peeshooters, led by the charismatic ski- masked Subcommandante Marcos (many people have suggested that Marcos is in fact a Jesuit priest), issuing communiques about the lack of democracy in Mexico and the economic dichotomy which Mexico's indigenous peoples will only further suffer under Free Trade. Throw in a couple of major kidnappings (most notably, the president of one of Mexico's leading banks, Banamex), daily protest marches by campesinos, farmers, and students, and the assassination of candidate Colosio, and suddenly Mexico finds itself reeling like a "four in the morning" tequila drunk. Since Colosio was shot on Wednesday March 23rd, in a poor suburb of Tijuana, Mexican streets and newspapers have been full of conspiracy rumours. Official government press releases have insisted that the assassination was simply the work of a disturbed 23 year-old mechanic seeking attention for himself. But Mexico City's cab drivers know better, many insisting that this act of violence was masterminded by the unanimously despised Ross Perot, in an attempt to undermine the Free Trade agreement! More pragmatic voices have suggested that conservative elements within Mexico's political system stood to lose under some of the economic and democratic reforms which Colosio was preaching. Mistrust of officials is such that people on the streets almost matter-of-factly blame the shooting on anti- democratic elements within Mexico's ruling class. They believe that Colosio was reform-minded and viewed as a threat to those dinosaurs within Mexico's ruling class. The Zapatista's in Chiapas said as much in their recent communique: "The hardliners and the militarist option inside the government planned and brought to completion this provocation to end all the peaceful intent of democratization of the country." Recent developments in the shooting, with the arrest of a second suspect, have only further fueled the conspiracy theories. ln an effort to stabilize the situation, President Salinas quickly announced his new choice for his successor, by naming Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, former Education Secretary, and campaign manager for Colosio. This traditional practice of "dedazo" or the "tap" whereby the president chooses his successor, has continued for sixty years, robbing the public of an opportunity to voice its opinion for alternatives. Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, one of the few "high profile" and vocal critics of the government and its lack of democratic initiative, commented, "Mexico is not a country of one or two men, but rather of many men, and this authoritarian exercise deprives us of the riches of democracy and casts an ominous shadow over the electoral process and the elections of August 21." To add a good measure of comedy to an otherwise tragic and ridiculous situation, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, James Jones, called Zedillo's choice as presidential candidate a bright and competent decision, and predicted the country's elections will be fair and competitive. "It is going to be a very spirited election, and I have no idea who is going to win," Jones was quoted in a March 30th news conference. Gee-whiz Senor Jones, we'll give you one guess! l'm hoping that this statement can be attributed to a momentary lapse of reason, or a sudden surge in ozone and carbon monoxide levels over the American Embassy. Either way, it's painfully "par for the course" when it comes to American foreign policy and its apparent awareness in Mexico. The next months will be extremely telling ones, possibly determining the course of Mexican political and sociological developments for the next decade, at least. I'll keep you posted. - Andreas Seppelt, Mexico City, Mexico -- Keepers of Light -- Matthew Wolchock: Gentleman Photographer I first met Matthew Wolchock about twenty years ago in a howling gale while I was photographing a grated window of the very famous Ship Inn, a storied watering hole in downtown St. John's, Newfoundland. I was testing a new high definition film and he was curious about the project. He handed me a card. In yellow type on black it said: Matthew Wolchock-Gentleman Photographer. We went inside and had a pint by the fire and talked about photography, and we've been talking about it ever since. Wolchock works with a variety of camera formats from 110 to 4"x5", but the bulk of his work is done with 35mm film. He shoots a lot it. He never goes anywhere without at least one loaded camera, and he's always looking for shots and checking out the light (something to emulate if you're serious about becoming a better photographer). He uses Canon and Nikon cameras and has an impressive array of them, but he's not an equipment snob. One of his favorite tools is the disposable "stretch" cameras that come preloaded with film. An excellent darkroom technician, Wolchock seldom employs any tricks or manipulative techniques in his work, preferring to concentrate on strong images that present best when simply properly printed. The one exception is his work in xerography where he uses collage and hand tinting effects, as in his calendar series. [Photo of "Untitled 1" appears here in graphical versions] Wolchock's eye for composition is sharp, and he knows light. In Untitled 1, the model stands firmly in the centre of the frame, balanced, arms by her side, looking out to sea. the horizontal stripes in her shirt are echoed in the horizontal stripes of dark sea, white foam, silver sand and the black beaches of Belle Island. To her left the monotony is broken by an angle wave in the centre of the frame and to her right this is balanced by the slowly rising shoreline of and island across the bay. [Photo of "Untitled 2" appears here in graphical versions] In Untitled 2 we have an unusual portrait. A woman lays on the floor beside a chair with bright chrome legs. She holds some sort of child's toy over her face. The image has been printed with very high contrast to give a sharp, eye-popping and just plain strange impression. [Photo of "Untitled 3" appears here in graphical versions] In Untitled 3 we are presented with a vastly different tonal situation. The image of a young man looking very recently awakened a tousled bed in gentle morning light. The large pale wall area, rather than leaving the frame looking empty, becomes the sky in this formscape of skintones and wrinkled cotton. The vertical lines of the bedpost lead the eye back again and again to the subject's enigmatic smile. [Photo of "Pizzaman" appears here in graphical versions] Pizzaman. What can I say? This, er, informal portrait of fellow photographer Manfred Buchheit is a good example of how it pays to always carry around a loaded camera. It's also probably a good example something else, but I can't for the life of me think what, unless it's not to let photographers with loaded cameras into your house on those early Sunday mornings when you just have to get naked and eat cold pizza. That's it for this month. Join our contest. Happy photographing. - Kent Barrett, Vancouver, Canada kent@wimsey.com -- Deja Vu -- Exploring Some Myths of Gun Control [Here is the long awaited rebuttal to Jon Gould's article, American in Denial, published in Teletimes December '93. Enjoy! - Ian] Writing an article in a forum such as Teletimes about a topic like gun control can be quite difficult. The reason for this difficulty is two-fold: First, many well educated people who are typically open-minded with respect to important social issues have a preconceived notion that guns are bad and that eliminating them from society would prove to be beneficial. Second, the vast majority of the media outlets present a biased view against the private ownership of firearms, thus tending to strengthen these beliefs. It is the author's hope that this brief article will suggest to the reader that further inquiry is required before forming an opinion about a social policy as important to liberty as the right to keep and bear arms (RKBA). Before delving into the substance of this paper, it is worth noting that this particular issue is decidedly American in nature. The Constitution of the United States, the defining document of the world's first modern democratic republic, is the only national constitution of any modern country that specifically forbids the infringement of the individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms [1]. Many foreigners who observe the US wonder why there is so much controversy over this subject. The only reasonable answer is that Americans enjoy more freedom than citizens of other nations and this freedom was won in a war with England; a war sparked by England's attempt to restrict the colonist's RKBA. The remainder of this paper will expose a number of myths about gun control including the relationship between guns and crime, statistics used by gun-control propagandists [2], children and guns, and the underlying principle behind the constitutionally guarenteed RKBA. Throughout the 1980's, violent crime actually decreased in America [3]. However, most Americans, when asked, responded that crime had stayed the same or risen. What is the cause of this dichotomy? The apparent answer is the television media - for the first time, in the 1980's, the supremacy of major networks were challenged. This lead to a ratings war in which each network provided programming for the primary purpose of garnering viewership and not for providing a balanced perspective on major issues. A recent report on NBC showed that a particular television station in Miami devotes more than 25% of its on-air time to crime coverage even though the crime rate in Miami has fallen precipitously since 1980. The networks have successfully implemented the "big lie" technique engineered by Geobbels - that is by frequently repeating the same ideas, people come to believe them despite the lack of corroborating evidence. After a decade of this "brain-washing," most Americans believe that crime is rampant and in desperation are seeking any solution to this problem; a problem that is not as significant as it is portrayed to be [4]. One proposed "solution" to the increase in crime is banning guns. There are many problems with this "solution." The most significant problem is that there exists no evidence to suggest that restricting gun among the general populace reduces crimes. The gun-control propagandists have yet to provide a single example case in which the introduction of gun laws has resulted in the reduction of crime. In fact, those cities with the most stringent gun control laws are the cities with the highest violent crime rates. Many of these propagandists make the specious claim that to be effective, the gun laws must be applied nationwide to be effective because criminals in the cities with stringent laws simply get their guns elsewhere. This raises two questions: 1. If guns cause crime, why don't the cities with lax gun laws, next to cities with stringent gun laws, experience similar crime problems? For example, the crime index for Alexandria, VA is eight times less than the crime index for Washington, DC, and he only thing separating them is a short bridge. 2. How is a nationwide gun ban to be enforced? First is the problem of the current gun stock in the US, a stock in excess of 200 million guns. A large number of owners will (rightfully) refuse to surrender their arms. Second is the problem of interdicting guns being smuggled into the country. For years the government has been trying to halt the flow of illegal drugs into the country and they have completely failed to even make a dent in the supply. Thus, why should anyone believe that a governmental interdiction could stop the flow of illegal weapons. Third is the problem of manufacturing guns within the country. Every machine shop has the capability to produce firearms. And if these arguments aren't enough to show that gun control is not effective and can not be enforced, the gun- control propagandists must address a more difficult question: Why have those jurisdictions that have adopted non-discretionary concealed carry laws shown a decrease in the violent crime rate that is greater than the national average [5]? It would be improper to suggest that the proliferation of firearms causes a decrease in crime, however, the evidence to support this thesis is far stronger than the evidence that guns cause an increase in crime [6]. Gun-control propagandists will some times point to certain foreign countries and claim that said foreign country, with significantly fewer firearms has significantly less violent crime; thus reducing guns in this country will reduce violent crime. The flaws with this argument are numerous: There is no discernible relationship between the rate of private gun ownership and violent crime rates. For example, Norway, the European country with the highest per capita private firearm ownership rate has the third lowest murder rate of all European countries. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has the highest murder rate of any European country, but the third lowest private firearm ownership rate [7]. Another problems with this argument is that the comparisons are static, that is they compare the violent crime rates (typically murder) for one recent year only. A study of the difference in the murder rates for Canada and the US shows that in 1919, when there were no gun laws in either country, the US murder rate was 13.8 times the Canadian rate. In 1971, after decades of increasingly stringent gun control laws in Canada, the US murder rate is 4.3 times the Canadian rate. Finally, this argument completely fails to recognize the vast differences socio- political differences between the countries compared [8]. In summation, cross-national studies intended to show the positive impact of gun control, completely fail to do so. Another issue conveniently ignored by gun control propagandists are the number of times that guns are used by private citizens to stop crimes. Rather, these propagandists parrot simple, but completely erroneous statistics, such as "... a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to be used to kill its owner, spouse, a friend or child than to kill an intruder" [9] [10]. First, this statistic will be examined, then some more meaningful ones will be derived. The primary flaw with this statistic is the underlying assumption that to be useful, a home owner must kill the intruder. Were this the accepted measure of the effectiveness of criminal deterrence, the police would be asked to provide dead bodies instead of live prisoners! Other flaws with this statistic include the following: -- 37 of the 43 deaths are suicides. No study has ever shown a correlation between the availability of guns and suicide. Consider Japan - a country with few guns and a suicide rate twice that of the US. Also consider Canada - after enacting stringent guns laws, the gun suicide rate dropped, but the overall suicide rate remained constant. -- The statistic includes all murders that resulted in criminal charges and all unsolved homicides. In many cases, justifiable homicides initially result in criminal charges which are later thrown out. -- The statistic included firearm accidents (see below). -- The study was restricted to one community and is not representative of the country as a whole. -- The original study did not use the phrase "owner, spouse, a friend or child," the phrase that has been used repeatedly by gun-control propagandists, but rather the word "acquaintance." From the original data, 48% of the homicides were classified as acquaintance, a relationship that can mean anything from friend to the neighborhood drug dealer. Furthermore, those relationship listed as familial can include abusive spouses. Thus, the NEJM article can be seen for what it is -- a propaganda article intended to incite an emotional response in its reader rather than a scholarly article written to inform. More meaningful statistics than those offered by the NEJM can be developed. Consider for example, "A privately owned firearm is more than 30 times more likely to be used to stop a crime than to kill anyone." Several surveys, including Kleck [6], have found that private citizens use their firearms to stop in excess of 1 000 000 crimes annually. There are approximately, in total, 32 000 firearms deaths annually (homicide, suicide, police intervention, self- defense and accidental). Another useful statistic is that less than 0.3% of all guns are ever used in the commision of a crime. This statistic is found by assuming that each crime with a firearm (550,000 such incidents annually) involves a different weapon (a very conservative estimate) and dividing by the number of privately owned firearms (in excess of 200 000 000 and growing by more than 1 000 000 annually). Lastly, a person is 34 times more likely to die in a car accident than to be killed in a firearms related accident. There are approximately 48 000 annual motor vehicle deaths and 1400 annual firearm related accidental deaths. Some gun-control propagandists believe that firearms should be outlawed because of the "numerous" children who die each year year due from firearms. These deaths can be broadly categorized into three groups: intentional homicide, accidental deaths and suicides. A tactic frequently used by gun-control propagandists is to categorize as children all persons under the age of 19, and in some cases, persons as old as 24 [11]. For the purposes of this paper, the word "children" refers to all persons up to 14 years of age. The death of a child, for any reason, is a tragedy. However, outlawing firearms because some children are killed by them is illogical. In the year 1990, 890 children were killed, either by criminals or law enforcement officials. Of these 890 children, 283 were killed with firearms [12]. Another 236 died as a result of firearm accidents for a total of 519 firearms related deaths. (For this age group, there were no reported firearms suicides.) In the same year, a total of 15 367 children died, so the percentage of children who died from firearms is 3.3% of the total. To put this percentage in perspective, of those children who died in 1990, 20.7% (3182 children) died in motor vehicle accidents, 7.5% (1148 children) drowned and 6.3% (972 children) died in fires; however, no one would be irresponsible enough to suggest that cars, pools and matches should be outlawed because they kill children. Furthermore, the rate of firearm related accidental deaths, for all age groups, has been declining at an average of 2.6% annually averaged over the last 50 years. The last topic to be addressed is the raison d'tre of the second amendment to the US constitution, the RKBA for protection against foreign invaders and domestic governments. The typical gun-control propagandists response to this comment is, "You've got to be kidding! Do you really expect to hold off an army with personal firearms alone? This may have been true in when the Constitution was written, but is no longer valid." The simple answer is yes. In recent history, there are two clear examples of a lightly armed, resident populace holding off the armed might of the super-powers: Vietnam and Afghanistan. An even more recent example shows the inability of an unarmed populace to defend itself from its own government: Bosnia. These simple examples should make apparent a simple point: A well armed populace is sufficiently capable of defending itself both from internal and external attempts to restricts the peoples' freedom. And this simple truth is as valid today, as it was 203 years ago when the Bill of Rights was adopted. As a final note, we should all remember those two individuals who succeeded in passing the most stringent gun control laws of this century: Adolf Hitler [13] and Joseph Stalin. Let us keep this historical perspective clearly in mind and not repeat the mistakes of the past. - Gerry Roston, Pittsburgh, USA gerry@cmu.edu Endnotes [1] See Halbrook, Stephen P. That Every Man be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right. The Independent Institute; Oakland, CA. 1984. Halbrook, attorney and Ph.D., traces the evolution of the individual's right to keep and bear arms from ancient Greece to modern times. He carefully examines the four cases in which the US Supreme Court (SC) has referenced the 2nd amendment and shows how in each of these cases, the SC has clearly demonstrated that the right is an individual right, and not a collective right, as some gun-control proponents claim. In addition to this book, any study of the writings of the founders of this country, both federalist and anti-federalist, will show that the founding fathers unanimously agreed that liberty and freedom can only be achieved if the general populace is well armed. [2] Although some readers will take offense to the term "gun-control propagandist," the term was chosen to indicate that those opposed to the private ownership of firearms have yet to produce any scientifically verifiable evidence to support their contentions. Rather, they utilize propagandists techniques: emotional appeal, scare statistics, the big lie, etc. [3] Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. US Department of Justice, 1993. [4] Another reason that Americans believe that violent crime is increasing is due to the wide coverage of the "war on drugs," a policy that has dramatically increased the number of people arrested for non-violent crimes. One result of the increased number of arrests is an increase in prison over- crowding, which gives the impression of an increase in crime. [5] Since Florida passed a law that requires the issuing of a concealed carry permit to any qualified applicant (no criminal record or mental illness), the violent crime rate in Florida has decreased at a rate faster than the national average. Florida will also grant a carry permit to any qualified American visitor, a policy that may explain the recent increase in attacks of foreign tourists - the only group in Florida known with certainty to be unarmed. [6] The best book for further study of the relationship between firearms and violence is Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Gary Kleck, 1991. Dr. Kleck was recently award the 1993 Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology for "the book published in the past two years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology." [7] International Crime Index, Interpol. [8] To strengthen the argument that the vast socio-political differences between the countries are the key factor to the differences in crime and not the ownership of guns, consider that the non-firearm homicide rate in the US is higher than that of all European countries except Northern Ireland. Simply stated, for some reason, Americans are far more violent than their European neighbors. [9] Erik Larsen, "Armed Force" in the Wall Street Journal (2/4/93), from Arthur Kellerman and Donald Reay, "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearms-Related Deaths in the Home" in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 1986. [10] Gun control propagandists like to use the phrase, "If it only saves one life, then it's worth it." This author is aware of at least three cases in the last year in which innocent lives were saved, that would have been lost, had the Brady Bill been in effect. For the same period of time, the author is aware of six innocent lives lost because a gun could not be purchased when it was required. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty no safety." [11] A recent report by the Children's Defense Fund claimed that 50 000 children have been killed by firearms in the last decade. This statement is true if and only if one considers persons up to 24 years of age to be children. The sad truth is that the US is experiencing a staggering increase in violent crime among inner-city teens. The murder rate for black males, ages 15-24, has increased by a factor of three in the last six years. Since there has not been an significant increase in firearms during this period, the cause of this increase in violence must be sought elsewhere. [12] Crime in the United States, Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureaus of Investigation, US Department of Justice, 1991. Other data is from the preliminary release of Vital Statistics and from Accident Facts, 1990. [13] It must be remembered that Adolf Hitler was elected to office and that the gun control laws passed in Germany were enacted in a constitutionally approved manner. -- Music Notes -- Perfectly Good Songs: John Hiatt What do the following artists have in common: Iggy Pop and Paula Abdul? Bob Dylan and Conway Twitty? Nick Lowe and Willie Nelson? Buddy Guy and Ronnie Milsap? The answer is that they've all recorded songs by John Hiatt, the veteran singer/songwriter whose recent album "Perfectly Good Guitar" is finally garnering him the recognition from the public that he has always enjoyed with his musical peers. Long a favorite of critics, Hiatt has undergone a transformation from angry '70s new waver to tasteful roots rocker, all the while turning out songs that other musicians have lined up to cover. In fact, nearly 100 Hiatt covers have been recorded, from Three Dog Night's 1974 "Sure as I'm Sitting Here" to recent hits "Thing Called Love" by Bonnie Raitt and "Drive South" by Suzy Boggus. "Perfectly Good Guitar" sees Hiatt playing in a harder style reminiscent of his mid-80's albums "Riding with the King" and "Warming Up to the Ice Age." This time out, he's brought along some more rockers for the ride as well. Producer Matt Wallace, best known for his work with MTV favorites Faith No More and Paul Westerberg, was pegged for not only producing the album but putting the band together as well. Wallace paired Hiatt with young musicians like guitarist Michael Ward of the Los Angeles-based School of Fish to create a revitalized sound. The alternative rock edge was furthered in adding Cracker alumni Michael Urbano on drums and bassist Davey Faragher for Hiatt's touring band, The Guilty Dogs. Hiatt's writing on the new record continues to exhibit his trademark humor, personal insights, and slightly-off-kilter storytelling. While not as introspective as recent albums, "Perfectly Good Guitar" continues to explore the mystical relationship between love, emotion, and what happens when we imperfect human beings give ourselves the opportunity to experience such lofty feelings. While the focus of albums like "Bring the Family" expressed affirmation of the value of love and relationships, this time out Hiatt explores the apparent dichotomy of love and freedom, either in celebration ("Something Wild," "Buffalo River Home," "When You Hold Me Tight"), longing ("Blue Telescope"), or loss and betrayal ("Angel," "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari"). His ability to address these issues without becoming maudlin is a tribute to Hiatt's ability to write true to his experience and to the musicians, who play it like they mean it. After 30 years of writing and 20 of recording, Hiatt's popularity is reaching an all-time high. "Perfectly Good Guitar" is fast approaching Gold status and has become the darling of the new Album Adult Alternative, or Triple A, radio format. Hiatt currently has three songs on the Triple A charts and "Perfectly Good Guitar" was recently named Best Triple A Album of the Year by the Hard Report. I spoke to Hiatt on March 20 from his hotel in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he and the Guilty Dogs were appearing. The tour is now in California, with upcoming dates including March 26 at the Crest Theater in Sacramento, March 27 and 28 at Slim's in San Francisco, March 30 at the Freemont Theater in San Luis Obispo, March 31 at the Belly Up Tavern in San Diego, and April 1 at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. [Photo of John Hiatt appears here in grpahical version] Jay Hipps: So how's the tour going? John Hiatt: The tour is going great. It seems like it's been going forever, but it's going great. We've been out since September, not straight through but 3 weeks out, a week home, that sort of thing. JH: Was this planned originally? I was under the impression that the tour ended December 18 in Nashville? Hiatt: No, we were always planning to go right through the new year. This leg ends April 2nd, I think. We ended a leg December 18th, and then we came out again -- we had about two weeks off for Christmas and then we started back in the Northeast in January. And we've covered the Northeast and the Midwest and Texas and now we're up in Colorado and we're going out west. We knock it on the head April 2nd and then we're starting up again in May for two or three weeks. And then we're going back to Europe in June and then we're coming back out the end of July with Jackson Browne, we're going to do a shed tour. That's six weeks. And then we're going to knock it on the head-if we live that long (laughs). JH: So that's when you wrap the whole thing up? That sounds like a pretty strenuous schedule. Hiatt: It's basically a full year of touring, which I committed myself to when we made the plans to work this record. I was real charged up about the music and felt real re-energized about what I was doing creatively and it had been four years since I'd toured solo. 1990 was the last solo tour I did, with the exception of some solo acoustic dates here and there. So I figured it was important to get back out and play, play for the folks. And the show's been going great, and the audiences are ever-growing-we're selling out shows everywhere, so it's really been great, really been encouraging to me. JH: Well, I saw the show in Santa Rosa -- I guess it was mid-November. Hiatt: Ah yes. JH: That was a lot of fun... Hiatt: We've since changed the band a little bit, we've pared it down to a four piece, which seems to work much better. JH: The third guitar player is not around? Hiatt: Yes, Corky James is no longer with us. We've got Mike Ward from School of Fish on lead guitar and then the rhythm section, Davey Faragher, Michael Urbano and myself. It works, it gives it a little bit more air. The three guitar thing is something I've always loved, but it's very difficult to pull off. I think Moby Grape was probably the last band that did it well. And look where it got them! JH: Yeah, hasn't done much for them. When was the last time you heard them on the radio? So did Ravi Oli leave a disciple there? ["Ravi Oli" was credited for electric sitar on the song "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari" from "Perfectly Good Guitar."] Hiatt: Ravi Oli is not making any appearances! Although Corky was playing Ravi Oli, I was the actual original Ravi Oli on the record. So he was a surrogate Mr. Oli, bless his heart. But he's still there in spirit. Ravi is ever-present. JH: So it sounds like you're pretty pleased with how things are going. I've heard that you're hoping to do a live album from this tour. Is that so? Hiatt: Well, we've been recording since we came back out in January -- we've been hauling around 24 tracks of ADAT and recording every show. So, yeah, I would love to put out a live record, I would really like to put out a live record. JH: It seems like it would be a good time because you have so much material. Now that you're audience is getting bigger, a live album would be a good way to introduce them to... Hiatt: Exactly. Yeah, I feel the same way. Plus, I'm so pleased with this band, the Guilty Dogs, they just re- interpret a lot of the stuff in such an exciting way. I'm even more excited about getting into the studio with them, which we're planning to do in September. JH: Are you writing already for that one? Hiatt: Yeah, I've been writing like a madman. Writing on the road quite a bit. JH: Seems like a good way to spend that time... Hiatt: Well, you know, it's funny cause it's only in the last few years I've been able to do that. I didn't use to be able to write on the road, I used to have to be home in my little writing room and so on. But I've gotten more flexible about that. JH: One of the things that I've noticed about "Perfectly Good Guitar" is that it seems like a sort of return to the sounds of "Riding with the King"-era material. What made you want to go back to that harder-edged sound? Hiatt: I didn't feel like I was going back to it, but maybe just going on with it. I guess...I'm just trying to figure out how to best put it because it's not like you consciously make decisions, or at least I don't, in terms of music. What I'm writing and what I'm writing about and how a group of songs shape up over a year or two year period what tells me what's happened musically, how it's going to be. So in hindsight I suppose you can look back and see a design. I guess, if hindsight's 20/20, then I'm looking back and thinking to myself that whatever I was writing about with the last 3 A&M records ("Bring the Family," "Slow Turning," and "Stolen Moments"), I was done writing about that stuff. I was done talking about myself in terms of a self-inventory style of writing. I was just through with that, you know? It's like the guy at the party -- you can only talk about yourself so long, and if you don't start talking about something else, people are going to walk away from you! (laughing) So I was just sort of over it. I don't know if that's personal development. I think -- I'm sure -- I think any writer in his writing life gets into that self- discovery, that kind of writing where you go into yourself and check yourself out. I think you do it more than once in your writing life, and I think it's useful for the writer and I think it's useful for the listener or the reader as well. JH: But you don't want to make a career out of it... Hiatt: Well, you do it when you need to do it. And when I'd done that, I wanted to get back to some storytelling and maybe revealing some things to myself and/or others through that. JH: I think that's one of the real appeals to your music, at least speaking for myself. There are things that I hear you address that are real to you and are real to other people but that nobody really talks about. Hiatt: Well, my whole motivation for writing these songs is to connect in just that way you described. I want to know that what I'm feeling is not all that unusual. I want to know that other people feel stuff like that too. So that's why I write about it, to kind of send a flag up a pole and see if anybody else says, "Oh yeah..." JH: Yeah, "I recognize that, too." Well that's interesting. Having seen you on stage and how comfortable you are and how much fun you have, it's interesting to hear you say that. Because it sounds like something where you'd be a little bit timid out there, "Here, I'm revealing something..." Hiatt: Well, I think my comfort level on stage comes from some years of having some things affirmed by the audience. In other words, by having connected in whatever modest way I have in terms of the width and depth and breadth of my career, I have that knowledge going into it, that there are some people that understand what I'm talking about. But years ago, when I started doing this, I couldn't even look at the audience when I played. I used to sit down and stare at my strings and so on and so forth. So it's been a journey for me of connecting with people. JH: It's not like the first time you went on stage you were the same person we see today. Hiatt: Exactly. JH: Getting back to one thing you mentioned about the songs, and the direction they take you, it sounds like you let the song dictate... Hiatt: Absolutely. Over the years, I've tried a lot of ways to trick the song into appearing (laughs). Employing different disciplines, you know, or superstitions, or attitudes, or whatever. These days, and I think that's just a result of my personal and artistic development, I seem more willing to just sort of go along and see where the song's going to go. I don't have as many agendas in terms of, well "I want to write this kind of song." In your 30's you think you have notions and attitudes and ideas that are ever so important to get across to people, so you kind of come at it from that angle. But I don't do that so much anymore. It's more like an adventure for me these days, to see what the little old song is going to be about. It's fun and it's really opened up the possibilities of what I want to write about or what I'm going to write about because I hardly ever know anymore, lyrically, what's going to happen, to tell you the truth. I get inspired by a piece of music or a chord progression, and then a melody, and then the words are the last thing. And that's when you go along with the ride, see what happens. JH: That's an interesting way to go about it, when you consider a lot of popular music today is...people have an agenda going into, it sounds like they have a marketing plan in mind before they even sit down to play anything. Hiatt: Well, there is a lot of that, of course there always has been in pop music. There's been the Brill Building approach or Tin Pan Alley before that. And right now I think Nashville's a perfect example of that, just that approach you're talking about. It seems more designed to move product, have lots of records sold and then have that artist go out and collect...money. (laughter). And that's the pop machine, it's finally come to country music. Everybody down in Nashville is just thrilled with it, but artistically speaking, in terms of any artistic vision, it's slim to none, in my opinion. There are a few people that are working -- again, it's just my opinion -- there are some country artists who have an artistic vision, but right now there's just a real glut of sort of the "pop fodder." JH: Well, when you look at someone like Billy Ray Cyrus... Hiatt: There's a new kid every week. And it's the same story it's always been: somebody young enough and dumb enough (laughter) to do what they're told. It's a real producer- driven thing, right now, producers and record companies are in cahoots. Which is why, conversely, to my ears anyway, this new rock'n'roll, these new young bands that have been coming down the pike here the last four or five years are so refreshing. It's so invigorating to me that a music that is artistically driven for the most part -- although, sure, in any group in any music you've got people just trying to cop a thang, or whatever -- but what I hear is real songs being written about real everyday feelings that we all have. Not being cleaned up for the masses, or prettied up, just "here it is." I dig that. JH: I guess that's one of the joys of rock'n'roll, really. In the early 60's, the record companies had it all pretty squared away -- Pat Boone would cover the Chubby Checker songs and they'd go about their business just fine. But there came about a time when artists broke through that the record companies didn't know what to do with, and they found an audience and broke free of that whole record company control. I guess that's the same thing you're talking about happening now. Hiatt: Well, there's been many cases of producer driven and record-label driven periods where there has been some wonderful music made. Motown is a perfect example -- that was just fabulous stuff. And Stax, the Stax/Volt era in Memphis, the Chess era before that in the 40's and 50's with Willie Dixon producing all these great blues acts for the Chess brothers up in Chicago. But I think you have to have people involved that have some sort of artistic awareness. I mean, it's a commercial venture, let's not kid ourselves. It's a commercial art. I think that's not only the challenge, but I think it keeps you honest as well. I very much believe in that. If I just wanted to make records for a handful of people who think and look and dress like me, I'd be recording for some small label somewhere. I don't want to do that -- I want to reach people. But again, it's whatever your motivation is, and a lot of times the motivation is purely dollars and cents, unfortunately. But in a lot of other lines of work it's the same thing too. JH: Any word on further activities of Little Village? Hiatt: No, no word, all's quiet on the western front. We have not spoken lately, but when last we spoke, which was six months ago, everybody was still hoping that we could at least make one more. I think we all felt like we made an interesting record, but we didn't make a really great one. JH: Well, the record was good but I think expectations were probably pretty high... Hiatt: For the audience and for us as well. JH: I saw you guys perform in San Francisco and it was really an incredible show. It was a lot of fun seeing you guys work together. There are some great dynamics to the things that you four [Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, and Jim Keltner] can do. So nobody in the group is averse to playing together again? Hiatt: No. I think it'll happen. I think it may be a year or more before we get in the studio. The biggest problem is just getting these four guys together, because we all have these different projects. But I think we'll make one. There's a great rock'n'roll record in us, I think. - Jay Hipps, Petaluma, California, USA jayh123@aol.com (Article copyright 1994 by Jay Hipps. Print rights reserved.) -- The Wine Enthusiast -- Beer Like wine, beer is a wonderful alcoholic beverage that can have complexity, sophistication, and be a delight to the senses. Like wine as well, the majority of beer produced is made to appeal to as wide a market of consumers as possible, and because of this most beers lack the above mentioned qualities. There are now in North America many smaller micro-breweries and larger regional breweries that make superior products, many of whom have taken brewing in new directions. Wine is a very simple drink to make. All you need is a source of sweet, juicy fruit, - grapes are ideal - and a container to squish the fruit into, and wild yeast and bacteria will do the fermentation for you. All you need to do is pour off the fermented juice, now wine, and voila! In winemaking most of the attention is placed on the origin and quality of the original grapes. I've argued a great deal in this column that viticulture and micro-climate are the major determinates of a wine's quality. Wine almost makes itself. Beer-making is a much more complex affair. Though beer contains essentially only water, barley malt, other grains, hops and yeast, producing (modern) beer is more technologically demanding than making wine. (Ancient beers made in Egypt or Mesopotamia must have been downright simple to make, but probably awful to drink.) But like wine, the quality of ingredients, and thus the expense, have a great deal to do with the finished product, as well as how the beer is made. Since the end of prohibition, the large breweries bought out and absorbed almost every regional and smaller brewery in North America, leaving the marketplace dominated by a handful a large producers. These producers have largely shaped the marketplace in their own image. In an attempt to appeal to the widest possible market they have literally diluted beer to suit the lowest common denominator. Discriminating consumers, that seek beer different from mass-appeal products traditionally have bought imported beers, many of which, in turn have been bought and produced under license by the same major breweries. In the early 1980's all of this began to change. Hundreds of small micro and regional breweries sprang up, many of whom have passed into obscurity, but much of whom are thriving enterprises providing stiff competition to the large established breweries. Consumers began to demand more from such a an unlikely, inexpensive beverage as beer. Quality beer that had the same cachet as trendy wine, that was of course, slightly more affordable and accessible, had an immediate appeal. Consumers also had a belated recognition that beer was not something uniquely American or Canadian but was transplanted from Europe, and so consumption required a new perspective placed upon the experience. The same recognition struck consumers and producers of wine in the early sixties, that a Napa Valley Cabernet or Chardonnay could, approach the qualities of a Bordeaux or Burgundy. It was upon this fertile ground that the seeds for a truly inventive new brewing industry was founded. Copying the styles of old-world brewing was not sufficient, in fact, the nature of New World malt and hops made this a virtual impossibility. Barley grown in Washington State or Saskatchewan was significantly different from European malt, and new varieties of hops grown in the Pacific Northwest were astoundingly more powerful and rich than any European hop. From this set of circumstances New World brewers have created an unique tapestry of variety and richness of beer styles by reinventing old and new. Today because of the proximity of quality hop and malt producers Washington, Oregon, and California brewers are producing a wide range of beers that are every bit as impressive as the superb beers of England or Germany. Many New England states as well, with their rich brewing heritage, are on the cutting edge of this fusion of beer tradition and New World materials. Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, Yeungling of Boston, Red Hook of Seattle, Full Sail of Portland are truly on the cutting edge of beer style development producing rich, heavily hopped, zesty, quenching styles of beer, that have no real equal in European beers. Beer making has finally matured in the post-prohibition world of North America, and the future looks bright indeed. - Tom Davis, Vancouver, Canada -- News Room -- Academic Freedom News Room is a regular discussion column which will cover different topics each issue. The column is a transcript of a debate or discussion conducted between two participants over the net. Each "debate" will usually have a moderator, to help keep the discussion flowing, raise some points that seem important, and generally keep things orderly and interesting. One of the big advantages of the electronic media is supposed to be ease of participation. We hope we can stimulate you to take part in our forum, to follow it up, comment on it, suggest subjects we should cover (or participate in a debate, volunteers are always welcome). Readers are also encouraged to e-mail votes for the debator they agree with. Much has been made of the "filters" which select what does and doesn't tend make it into print in the big newspapers and magazines, the Internet has helped to provide one shortcut around some of those filters. The News Room is our own contribution to promoting the uncensored discussion of ideas between the writers and by people like you. So tell us what you think. --- Taylor (moderator): There has been a fair bit of coverage here in North America of disputes in the area of Academic Freedom ranging from visiting speakers being shouted down by students (with the willing support of some staff), to published opinions which have got students and professors alike into hot water. So should we limit what represents "acceptable" opinion, or are universities and colleges places where it should be possible and acceptable to express any opinion without restraint? If there are to be limits on the permissible -- what should they be and how should they be defined ? What do our two panelists think? Gribble: My views on the subject of academic freedom are well expressed by part of a recent statement issued by the American Association of University Professors, entitled "On Freedom of Expression and Campus Speech Codes": "Freedom of thought and expression is essential to any institution of higher learning. Universities and colleges exist not only to transmit existing knowledge. Equally, they interpret, explore, and expand that knowledge by testing the old and proposing the new. This mission guides learning outside the classroom quite as much as in class, and often inspires vigorous debate on those social, economic, and political issues that arouse the strongest passions. In the process, views will be expressed that may seem to many wrong, distasteful, or offensive. Such is the nature of freedom to sift and winnow ideas. On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed." Gould: This debate isn't about "political correctness." I don't advocate the prohibition of "unpopular" ideas. Rather, Paul correctly identifies the issue when he speaks about the proper role of universities. Our difference, however, is that Paul believes every individual should have the right to say, and continue to preach, whatever she or he desires. I would draw the line differently. Universities are about knowledge, about acquiring it, questioning it, and understanding it. While ideas are always open to expansion and modification, there are some facts we know to be true. The Holocaust happened. The Pope does not control the minds of every Catholic. Asians do not have a mass conspiracy to take over the world. In other settings, we might ignore these ravings of intolerant and ignorant souls. In the university setting, we cannot. This is not to say that the university should prohibit all members of its community from expressing these views in every forum. Staff may be prejudiced -- perhaps even faculty or students. But when a faculty member sets foot into the classroom and puts forth these views in the spirit of "knowledge," when he/she advances known untruths as "facts," the university has a duty to step in and stop the perversion of knowledge. The situation is no different than if a political science professor taught that Thomas Jefferson were still President. Knowledge may be variable, but there are some facts that we can cling to as true. The issue, then, is not whether someone's feelings are hurt by free speech. (The world is offensive at times.) Rather, the question is whether universities will have the courage to step in when vicious untruths are passed off in the classroom as knowledge. Taylor: So where is the line between the prevention of plain lies in the classroom and academic works, and the suppression of academic free speech ? Can we really accept the right of teachers to misinform (that is to lie) to those they are responsible for educating ? and how do we deal with the much more fuzzy cases (in their times Darwin and Gallileo "lied"). Paul, how do you reconcile the conflict of freedom and responsibility in this context, do you think it is possible to permit complete academic freedom of opinion and simultaneously prevent academic misrepresentation of facts and ideas ? and Jon maybe you could explain how you would want to define "acceptable" and "unacceptable" - after all many of today's truths have been considered unacceptable or wrong in the past. Gribble: A university education is very different from an elementary school education. In elementary school we trust teachers to teach our children facts about the world: how to do long division; who the first prime minister of Canada was; how a plant converts light into energy. In a university environment, the role of the professor is as a facilitator rather than a teacher. The role of the university student is not as a passive note-taker but rather as an active seeker of information. Many people (especially students) assume that they are at university to be taught truths about the world. They walk into a lecture hall and look at their professor, thinking, "Okay, now teach me." Almost nothing presented at the university level is fact. Everything from theories of chemical bonding to theories of the causes of the first world war involve interpretation. The role of the professor is to facilitate an environment in which a breadth of interpretations, mainstream and otherwise, are available to the student interested in exploring them. To a large extent the student is responsible for his/her own education. The student who walks away from a lecture on the industrial revolution believing that to be the only interpretation, or the student who walks away believing that they were only given the opportunity to be exposed to one viewpoint, is not living up to his or her responsibility. Gould: Paul is right that a university education is different than primary school, but I also suspect that he would be willing to redirect a grammar professor who taught that punctuation was no longer necessary. My point is simple: while knowledge changes, we as an academic community still set parameters as to what is in the realm of the true. If professors are expounding ideas, hateful ideas, that we believe to be untrue, we as a community have an obligation to prevent their instruction as truth in the classroom. Separating the true from the untrue is difficult, and we should always err on the side of caution and breadth, but it is process that we already undertake in others areas and we ought to extend it to hateful speech. Even apart from this point, we ought to restrict speech when the speaker's intention is to harm. Extend assault and battery laws to speech. If a speaker utters hateful speech with the intent to harm another, restrict him. Note here that I would draw the line based on the speaker's intent, not whether the listener finds offense. Freedom of speech doesn't prohibit offensiveness, simply intended harm. The obvious objection is that it's difficult to discern a speaker's intent. True. But, again, we face these problems in other areas of the law where intent must be measured, and we ought to be able to do it in the context of speech. Taylor: So both Paul and Jon seem to agree that some level of disagreement is just in the nature of a University education. One seems to be maintaining that whilst academic freedom is desirable, free speech does not override the necessity to enforce some level of commitment to honesty and ability to deal with malice and deliberate hate promotion. On the other hand we have the view that the necessity for free debate puts anything and everything on the table. I have a point or two I'd like to raise here, purely my own opinions following on the points of view expressed above. Because this is the end of a rather short exchange of views I want to add my two cents worth and hopefully promote some reader input. A big advantage of electronic publishing is supposed to be the ease of feedback so I hope we will get some comments, input, etc. on this. First off I want to say that I accept without reservation that the conflict (deep and perhaps permanently irreconcilable differences of opinion and moral conviction) of ideas and viewpoints is necessary to any worthwhile system of higher education. If a person can't see another side to a controversy or at least appreciate the fabric of views which are directly opposed to his or her own then their time at university has in many respects been wasted. However, whilst I don't dispute the right of Professors and academics (or anyone else for that matter) to express views which I find personally distasteful or offensive, I do expect responsible behaviour from everyone. Academics whether in a University or a Primary school have, along with their right and duty to contest philosophies and encourage independent thought, a responsibility to society. If an academic proclaims that we should sterilise the poor, nuke Cuba or Haiti, their position as a doctor, scientist, historian, economist, etc. can give credibility to the suggestion. They can claim that there is a concomitant responsibility to the public good (far more than the average Joe). Being an academic does not put anyone above responsibility for their actions and words. I have trouble accepting the academic community as somehow divorced from the rest of the world. I wish it were so but it isn't and in my opinion that is the reality we have to deal with. In fact that is what makes the problem such a complex one. If education were truly separate from life we could pigeonhole disagreements and forget about them. In the real world they can touch on the fears, prejudices, opinions and lives of real people who have to deal with real consequences. For me the problem isn't so much the concept of academic freedom per se, but exactly how great a freedom we can allow before we have to delineate the corresponding responsibilities to the rest of the world and give them priority. "Education," as someone once said, "is the ability to listen to practically anything without losing either ones temper or self confidence." If education has a real central value - it is to teach us to deal with deep, fundamental, and directly contradictory opinions and desires without coming to blows and resorting to personal insult and the suppression of what we don't like to hear. --- We encourage the readers to e-mail their thoughts on this debate to editor@teletimes.com. Be sure to clearly state which side of the argument you agree with. If we receive sufficient responses, we'll publish some of the readers' comments and tally their votes on the subject. -- Cuisine -- Chile Peppers It is ironic that of all the foods native to the Americas, the hot chile has yet to be incorporated into the everyday diet of the 20th century North American. Especially with the habit of eating "healthy" food which is now vogue in the United States. Chiles are exceptionally good for you. High in vitamin C, the chile adds flavor to food without adding many calories, sodium, or fat. Poorer countries have known for years that you can feel full on less food if the food is highly spiced. The genus Capsicum contains all of the pepper fruits, including the tame Bell, but does not include black pepper (Piper nigrum). Capsicum is part of the lager nightshade family, related to tomatoes and potatoes both of which are also native to the Americas. Heat Since the alkaloid capsaicin, the heat producing defense mechanism of the pepper, is produced at the junction of the placenta and the pod walls, the ribs of the pepper can be removed to reduce the "strength" of the pepper. On page 238 of "The Whole Chile Pepper Book", it states "The seeds are not sources of heat, as commonly believed". Thus the seeds add nothing to the resulting dish, and might be removed for aesthetic purposes. When working with peppers, be certain to avoid contact with skin, as the capsaic in it can cause irritation to the eyes, as well as the mouth. Never feed to pets, or unwitting children. I would suggest you don't trim your finger nails before working with chiles. I have made this very painful mistake once. Much work has been done to determine the "heat scale" of chile peppers, which is measured in "Scoville Units", named for Wilbur L. Scoville a scientist at Parke-Davis. His work was used to measure capsaicin for the ointment "Heet". For reference, pure capsaicin equals 16,000,000 Scoville units. The "Official Chile Heat Scale" is reproduced here from the Whole Chile Pepper Book: Official Chile Heat Scale Rating Approximate Scoville Units Chile Varieties 10 100,000 - 300,000 Habanero, Bahamian 9 50,000 - 100,000 Santaka, Chiltepin, Thai 8 30,000 - 50,000 Aji, Rocoto, Piquin, Cayenne, Tabasco 7 15,000 - 30,000 de Arbol 6 5,000 - 15,000 Yellow Wax Hot, Serrano 5 2,500 - 5,000 Jalapeno, Mirasol 4 1,500 - 2,500 Sandia, Casabel 3 1,000 - 1,500 Ancho, Pasilla, Espanol 2 500 - 1,000 NuMex Big Jim, New Mexican Green 6-4 1 100 - 500 R-Naky, Mexi-Bell, Cherry 0 0 Mild Bells, Pimiento, Sweet Banana Help If by chance you eat more capsaicin than you might like, the quickest remedy can be found in dairy products. Sour Cream, Milk, and Ice Cream all will help to put out the chile fire. While water will eventually wash the capsaicin away, it can take up to twice as long to relieve your mouth. A Recipe The following recipe is one of my favorites. It is low in everything, other than taste. Choose the pepper for this recipe according to your tastes. I prefer New Mexican Green Chiles, but Bell Peppers, or no peppers, work just fine. Scallions Wrapped in Tortillas: Vegetable Oil, preferably Peanut (to resist flaming) 12 Scallions (Green Onions) 1 Pepper of Choice (Bell, Jalapeno, New Mexican Green, etc.) Fresh Lime Juice 4 Flour Tortillas Salt Prep Trim the Scallions, leaving most of the green parts, and enough of the root to keep the onion together. Rub lightly with the oil. Out Doors Cooking Roast the pepper over a hot charcoal grill, turning often until the skin is black and blistered. Place the pepper in a bag while hot, this will help steam the skins off of the pepper. After 10 minutes, peal the pepper under running water. Stem, seed and cut into strips. Set Aside. Grill the onions until well cooked, but not burnt; about 5 - 7 minutes. In Doors Cooking Follow the Out Door cooking directions, but use a broiler in place of the charcoal grill. Do not use a griddle (as if for pancakes), or a pan. The results are not the same. Wrap 3 onions and 1/4 of the pepper strips in a tortilla. Sprinkle with fresh lime juice. Lightly salt to taste. Makes 4 appetizers. - Brian Silver silver@ctron.com Sources DeWitt, Dave and Gerlach,Nancy.The Whole Chile Pepper Book. ISBN 0-316-18223-0 McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. ISBN 0-02-034621-2 ------------------------------------------------------------ NEXT MONTH ------------------------------------------------------------ Next month Teletimes will feature Favorite Authors. If you've read a really great book recently, or have enjoyed the work of a particular writer...send us an article describing your experience! Book reviews, biographical articles, whatever! Also debuting in May: Ken Eisner, a professional Vancouver writer, will be bringing us a whole new Arts & Entertainment section. Look for it soon! And all you budding photographer types out there, don't forget to enter PHOTON '94 (see last page for info and form). ------------------------------------------------------------ STAFF & INFO ------------------------------------------------------------ Editor-in-Chief: Ian Wojtowicz Art Director: Anand Mani Cover Artist: Anand Mani Correspondents: Biko Agozino, Edinburgh, Scotland Prasad & Surekha Akella, Japan Ryan Crocker, Vancouver, Canada Prasad Dharmasena, Silver Spring, USA Ken Eisner, Vancouver, Canada Ken Ewing, Beaverton, Oregon, USA Jon Gould, Chicago, USA Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada Jay Hipps, Petaluma, California, USA Mike Matsunaga, Skokie, USA Satya Prabhakar, Minneapolis, USA Brian Quinby, Aurora, USA Motamarri Saradhi, Singapore Dr. Michael Schreiber, Vienna, Austria Johnn Tann, Ogden, USA Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada Seth Theriault, Lexington, USA Marc A. Volovic, Jerusalem, Israel Columnists: Kent Barrett, The Keepers of Light Tom Davis, The Wine Enthusiast Andreas Seppelt, The Latin Quarter Funding policy: If you enjoy reading Teletimes on a constant basis and would like us to continue bringing you good quality articles, we ask that you send us a donation in the $10 to $20 range. Checks should be made out to "International Teletimes". Donations will be used to pay contributors and to further improve International Teletimes. If you are interested in placing an ad in Teletimes, please contact the editor for details. Submission policy: Teletimes examines broad topics of interest and concern on a global scale. The magazine strives to showcase the unique differences and similarities in opinions and ideas which are apparent in separate regions of the world. Readers are encouraged to submit informative and interesting articles, using the monthly topic as a guideline if they wish. All articles should be submitted along with a 50 word biography. Everyone submitting must include their real name and the city and country where you live. A Teletimes Writer's Guide and a Teletimes Photographer's & Illustrator's Guide are available upon request. Upcoming themes: May - Local Authors June - Sports & Leisure July - Photon '94 August/September - Education Deadline for articles: May issue - April 20th, 1994 June issue - May 10th, 1994 July issue - May 31st, 1994 August/September issue - June 31st, 1994 E-mail: editor@teletimes.com Snail mail: International Teletimes 3938 West 30th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. V6S 1X3 Software and hardware credits: Section headers and other internal graphics were done in Fractal Painter 1.2 and Photoshop 2.5 on a Macintosh Quadra 950. The layout and editing was done on a Macintosh IIci using MS Word 5.0 and DocMaker 4.02. Copyright notice: International Teletimes is a publication of the Global Village Communication Society and is copyrighted (c)1994 by the same. All articles are copyrighted by their respective authors however International Teletimes retains the right to reprint all material unless otherwise expressed by the author. This magazine is free to be copied and distributed UNCHANGED so long as it is not sold for profit. Editors reserve the right to alter articles. Submitting material means that the submitter agrees to all the above terms. ------------------------------------------------------------ BIOGRAPHIES ------------------------------------------------------------ Surekha and Prasad Akella Surekha and Prasad are in Japan on a two year sojourn from their home in the US. Surekha is a Pharmacologist between a Master's and a Ph.D.; she is masquerading as an English teacher in Japan. Prasad has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (California) and is working on the control of robots at MITI's National Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Their common interests include people, photography and international travel. For the next few months, they will report on life in Japan, as viewed through the eyes of Indian-Americans. Kent Barrett Kent Barrett is a Vancouver artist with over twenty years experience in photography. His work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada from Vancouver, B.C. to St. John's, Newfoundland. He is currently working on his first nonfiction book and interactive CD-ROM, "Bitumen to Bitmap: a history of photographic processes." Tom Davis Tom is a wine maker who lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. A former brewmaster, a painter and amateur (in the truest sense) film maker. Currently a Philosophy undergraduate at Simon Fraser University, Tom seeks to start his own vineyard. Ken Eisner Originally from the San Francisco area, Ken Eisner is a Contributing Editor to Vancouver's entertainment weekly, the Georgia Straight, and Canadian correspondent/film critic for Variety, in Los Angeles. He has also been a frequent arts commentator on CBC TV and radio, and currently reviews new movies for CKNW, throughout Western Canada. Ken Ewing Ken Ewing is a senior technical writer at Sequent Computers Systems, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon. He is a life-long resident of the Pacific Northwest, a graduate of Eastern Oregon State College, and in addition to travel, has deep interests in philosophy, theology, psychology, and history. Jon Gould Jon teaches law and political science at both DePaul University's International Human Rights Law Institute and Beloit College. He is a former counsel to the Dukakis- Bentsen Campaign and has served as General Counsel to the College Democrats of America and Vote for a Change. Paul L. Gribble Born in Cape Town, South Africa but raised in Vancouver, Paul completed his B.Sc. in Cognitive Science at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. After spending the summer in Japan working for a high technology research company, he started his graduate studies in Cognitive Science at McGill University in Montreal. Jay Hipps Jay Hipps is a freelance writer based in Northern California. He also writes, edits, and designs "Petaluma Business," a monthly newspaper published by the Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce and which was recently awarded first place in the California State Chamber of Commerce publications contest. His e-mail address is JayH123@aol.com. Anand Mani Anand is a Vancouver, Canada-based corporate communications consultant serving an international clientele. Originally an airbrush artist, his painting equipment has been languishing in a closet, replaced by the Mac. It waits for the day when "that idea" grips him by the throat, breathily says, "Paint Me" and drags him into the studio not to be seen for months. Andreas Seppelt Andreas is a former Economist with Transport Canada, now consulting in Business Communications and Marketing. He has spent a number of years undergoing formal graduate study and research in Economic Development and International Trade. He currently lives and works in Mexico. Dr. Euan R. Taylor Euan grew up in England where he did a degree in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. Before moving to Canada, Euan spent 6 months traveling in Asia. Now living in Winnipeg, he is doing research in plant molecular biology, and waiting to start Law School. Interests include writing, travel, studying Spanish and Chinese, career changing and good coffee. Pet peeves: weak coffee, wet socks and ironing. Ian Wojtowicz Ian is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaurate program at a Vancouver high school. His interests include fencing, Teletimes and sleeping in. Born in Halifax, Canada in 1977, Ian has since lived in Nigeria, Hong Kong and Ottawa and has travelled to several other places around the world. ------------------------------------------------------------ Reader Response Card ------------------------------------------------------------ If you enjoy reading Teletimes and want it to continue bringing you great electronic articles, please fill out this card, print it, and mail it to: Teletimes Response Card 3938 West 30th Ave. Vancouver, BC, V6S 1X3 Canada You may also e-mail it to: editor@teletimes.com or post it in the Onenet conference "International Teletimes." 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(BBS, friend, etc.)___________ ____________________________________________________________ Comments:___________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------ P H O T O N 1 9 9 4 THE FIRST ANNUAL INTERNET PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST ------------------------------------------------------------ CATEGORIES People - Send in your best "people" work. Portraits, action shots, kids, whatever. Works will be adjudicated on composition, effective use of lighting, emotional impact and general photographic quality as determined by our judges. Places - We want to see your grandest mountain vistas, your moodiest urban landscapes. Works will be adjudicated on composition, effective use of lighting, emotional impact and general photographic quality as determined by our judges. Small Wonders - Flowers, butterflies, thumbtacks or your thumb. Take a little time to send us a little gem. Photomicrographs of vitamin C or pinholes of pebbles. If it's bigger than a breadbox, it's too big for this category. Works will be adjudicated on composition, effective use of lighting, emotional impact and general photographic quality as determined by our judges. Digitally Altered Photos - Go crazy with this one, or use some subtle pixel filters. Either way, amaze us with your light fantastic. Images will be adjudicated on their "wow" factor by our judges. If appropriate, submit a copy of the image before the digital touch-ups are made. Humour - Humour says it all. Photos will be judged on their ability to crack up the judges. DEADLINE May 31st, 1994. 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E-mail - If you are concerned about leaving your entry in a public directory, you may e-mail your entries to editor@teletimes.com. Files must be uuencoded. Acceptable file formats are TIFF, GIF, PICT and JPEG. Mail - If you do not have access to a scanner, you may send prints to: Teletimes Photo Contest, 3938 W. 30th Ave., Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6S 1X3. If you enclose a return mailer with appropriate Canadian postage affixed, we will make every effort to get it back to you, but we can make no promises. Therefore, DO NOT SEND IN ORIGINALS OR VALUABLE GALLERY QUALITY PRINTS. Send "reproduction" quality RC prints, or any prints that you won't go crazy over if they are lost or destroyed. Hard copy images must measure 11"x14" or smaller, and have the entrant's name, address and phone number affixed to the back of the image. DISCLAIMER All works remain the property of the original artist. 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Date:______________________________________________________ Name:______________________________________________________ Address:___________________________________________________ Phone number:______________________________________________ E-mail:____________________________________________________ Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in the PEOPLE category:_______________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in the PLACES category:_______________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in the SMALL WONDERS category:________________________________ Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in the HUMOUR category:________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Titles and file names (if applicable) of photos entered in the DIGITALLY ALTERED category:____________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Method of submission (FTP, e-mail or mail):________________ Method of payment (check, money order, electronic transfer):_________________________________________________ Amount due ([# of entries] x [US$10] / [3]):_______________