It’s July 7th and the annual start of the week long fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona or most Anglo-Saxon speakers know it — the running of the bulls.
I grew up with bull fights so I am used to them. I don’t particularly care for the torture of the animal but I admit I adore the pagentry especially the music. I have also seen two gorings in my life. I was not that thrilled to see that either. Bulls do not always end up butchered, they do win reprieves for courage. Bull fighting is, of course, a long tradition in Spain and in the Mediterrarean dating back to at least to Crete. But the fiesta in Pamplona is more than just about running with bulls (I’ve done it twice during my stupid years — I was 21 and 24). Here is some background from Fiestas of Spain:
The festival in honour of San Fermín celebrated in Pamplona -los Sanfermines- is a mixture of the official and the popular, the religious and the profane, for local people and outsiders, the old and the new, order and chaos. And all of this packed into one long week starting with a bang at midday on the sixth of July and ending with the nostalgia tinged with expectation at midnight on the fourteenth.
The San Fermines have always been a special festival but when Pamplona was still a small unknown city -provincial and clerical- the San Fermines found their most fervent supporter in the American writer Hemingway.
The Sanfermines offer the visitor an open and hospitable festival where anything out of the ordinary is welcomed and soon becomes part of the tradition, so long as ¡t shows the respect due to others. The Sanfermines is a fiesta where no one is an outsider, everyone is equal and in which the festive spirit is never broken, centred around the people of Pamplona in the widest sense: all the people in the city during the always too short 204 hours of revelry, dancing, prayers and bacchanalian extravagance.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Sanfermines is a festival of religious origins and that this aspect is still relived in huge demonstrations such as the Procession on the morning of the seventh. But the religious celebration is in perfect harmony with the cult of the bull -a symbolic animal- and with the cult of Bacchus, the god of wine -a drink which ¡s no less symbolic. The Sanfermines are, in short, a total, absolute and radical festival in which the people of Pamplona play the leading part, but in which outsiders feel immediately at home -there’s no question of being a mere onlooker- as for nine days Pamplona becomes the world capital of happiness.
The festival is carried live on Spanish television. Pamplona is also in Navarra and it’s part of the Basque Country. Here’s a clip from the Chupinazo San Fermín 2007, the official start. You dress in white and carry a red handkerchief forming a triangle above your head. It’s an amazingly good time. I even made it to Mass. Whodathunkthat?
I am sure Italians would disagree and certainly I am biased but Spain has Europe’s greatest parties. This is one of them. My favorite, however, is Las Fallas in Valencia. But for more on that, you will have to wait until March 17, 2009.
It’s Pride so Happy Pride, the highest of the high-homo holidays as I call them, given its close approximation to summer solstice, I have often viewed it as the Gay New Year kicking off a series of events that last through the end of the calendar year. The San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is currently on-going. And over the next few months, there are a plethora of events celebrating aspects of gay life and culture.
For a full schedule of San Francisco Gay Pride Events, please visit SF Pride. For more on the San Francisco Frameline Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, please visit Frameline 2008
“The coldest winter I have spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
— Mark Twain
It rolls in touching us with its magic dew, a blanket of delightful chill that warms our liberal souls. We think of it as our natural air conditioning, providing comfort and joy. As San Francisco heads into its summer, fog is our daily companion and much beloved by me.
Tourists often frown at the cold thinking that it’s summer in California and bronze gods and goddesses run wantonly and scantly clad through the sunshine but the vendors show nothing but glee as they ring up sales of fleeces and sweatshirts for our unprepared visitors. Until late August, fog can blanket the city until late morning giving way for a few hours of sun-filled delight before reclaiming the land with purpose and force. Wind tunnels are common in the city in the gaps between the hills that protect the eastern part of the city from the perpetual fog belt of the Richmond and the Sunset.
When I lived on Russian Hill on Union and Taylor, the back of my flat, where my bedroom and den were, faced San Francisco Bay. I lived in a three-story walk up off the street but the back of my flat was on a cliff. It was seven stories down to the garden in the back. The winds could swirl off the bay and the temperature off the backside was at least a few degrees colder than on the front side of the apartment. Luckily, there was a fireplace in the den. It was a joy to see the fog stream in and envelope Alcatraz in its powerful mist.
Now living in the Castro, the fog is largely above me. I see it on Twin Peaks where the mountain breaks its forward path. It is quite the sight to see it hover above the Castro as if big balls of fuzzy cotton being pressed against our terrain.
The Fog Bank Above The Castro in San Francisco
A Classic San Francisco View
And if you are coming to visit us, bring a sweater or a fleece and carry it even though you might not think that you will need it for in summer in San Francisco wearing flowers in your hair brings no warmth at all.
University of Arizona Professor Lane Kenworthy (and one of my favourite bloggers on economics and sociology) takes his family on a road trip and explores how the annual American ritual of the family cross-country drive has changed over the past 30 years. His post is on his blog: Measuring Living Standards by the Family Road Trip. It is an interesting article on how living standards have changed over this period.
Thankfully, I was largely spared spared this ritual growing up. My parents separated when I was ten and my family Summer vacations, generally in Europe, with my mother and sister were more train rides than any thing else and my mother is rather frugal. Lots of beds and breakfasts or pensiones, few hotels and she was nothing but a drill sargent on our vacations. “We’re sleeping in dollars” was her constant refrain so we were up at 7AM to start our touring. Of course, now as an adult, I know I received an amazing cultural education and for that I am very grateful to my mother.
Once synonymous with Pablo Escobar and unrelenting drug violence, the city of Medellín in Colombia’s Antioquia department has undergone quite the transformation. Today, the Miami Herald is profiling Medellín’s comeback.
A few statistics tell the story: In 1991 Medellín had 6,349 homicides, 381 per 100,000 inhabitants, or nearly 18 per day.
In 2007, the body count was 653, or 26 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, not quite two per day.
”Medellín went from fear to hope,” said Sergio Fajardo, who served as mayor for four years until Jan. 1 and is widely credited with leading Medellín’s rebirth.
Medellín is not alone. In fact, security across much of Colombia has improved since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. He has the FARC guerrillas on the run, has dismantled most — but certainly not all — of the right-wing paramilitary groups — and has curbed some of the worst human rights abuses by government troops.
”Medellín is emblematic of Colombia’s transformation,” John Negroponte, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, said at the recent gathering here of the Organization of American States. “It is a testament to the change that Colombia has undergone.”
People everywhere in Medellín avidly discuss the transformación, about how the city of 2.1 million has dramatically improved.
This is not an innocent story about travel, there is a political angle. For that you must read below the fold.
This past week a group of European scuba divers were swept away by strong currents in waters off the islands of Komodo and Rinca in eastern Indonesia and forced to beach themselves on the island of Rinca. Whirlpools and eddies are common in area though on our dives we did not encounter any. However, you could see them off the side of the boat, the water swirls counter-clockwise. A whirlpool just drags you down sometimes hundreds of feet, if you are lucky you get spit back up. If not, you’re dead. Our dives were amazing. Lionfish by the hundreds, sea turtles, you name it.
The odyssey of these poor divers did not end after getting swept away. Landing on a deserted beach, they then had to confront a komodo dragon, the world’s largest monitor lizard. Here’s the saga of their plight from Yahoo News.
Komodo dragons are the world’s largest lizards. The length of adult komodo dragons can reach about 2-3 metres (about 7-10 feet) and the weight is approximately 45-85 kilogram (90-170 pounds). They are aggressive and they eat humans but their normal diet is deer and wild pigs. On Komodo, villagers and tourists do on occasion disappear. I became fascinated with them watching Johnny Quest as a boy and so to Komodo I did trek.
Komodo dragons only live on the islands of Komodo, Rinca and other tiny surrounding islands, and on the westernmost part of Flores Island in Indonesia. Komodo and Rinca are odd islands. They are dry, hot, and relatively barren compared to the lush and jungly islands to the east and west of them in the Nusa Tenggara island chain. Flores is lush and green, Komodo looks like California in August.
FIFA, the world governing body for football (soccer in the United States), has awarded the 2011 FIFA World Cup for the 20 and under classification to Colombia.
Great moments in history of Colombian soccer have been rare. On the club level, two clubs have won the South American championship: Atlético Nacional of Medellín (twice) and Once Caldas of Manizales (in one of the biggest upsets ever on the continental stage over one of the powerhouses of world football, Boca Juniors of Buenos Aires). On the national club level, Colombia has won the Copa América, the South American championship held quadrennially, but once in 2001.
Some my most endearing memories from childhood are my mother’s efforts to introduce my sister and I to the world of classical music. For us that included an annual pilgrimage to the Salzburg Music Festival in Austria. It was always a highlight of our annual European vacations. One year, I remember there was a marionette performance of Rossini’s Barber of Seville. If today I have a love for opera (and I do) and a love for marionettes, it can be traced back to that magical evening when I witnessed something truly full of wonder. My appreciation for opera was also enhanced by a class I took at Stanford taught by Professor Paul Robinson and his class on Opera and Ideas that examined intellectual thought in Europe through opera. Professor Robinson teaches European Intellectual History and has two books on opera– Opera and Ideas, from Mozart to Strauss (1985) and Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters (2002).
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
I chose tonight’s camp as I considered today’s events and I find myself thinking we Hillary supporters are but lonely goatherders dealing with rather recalcitrant Obama yodeling goats, begging forgiveness for any aspersions cast on goats. Obama’s supporters are indeed quite tiresome. And as for Figaro, my heroine is truly the hardest worker around. She indefatigable just like Figaro, the Barber of Seville. Plus it is one hell of a piece of music. True the Bugs Bunny version is most excellent but we’ll save that one for another night.
A te fortuna, Bella Hillary. Fortunatisima per verità!
For more on the Salzburg Music Festival (28 July - 31 August 2008) please visit their website: Salzburg Music Festival 2008.
The Canadian dollar touched a two- month high and rose for a second week as surging commodity prices and stocks at a record boosted the currency’s appeal.
Canada’s dollar has increased 0.9 percent so far this month, making it the fifth-best performer among the 16 most- active currencies. The Canadian dollar gained 0.6 percent this week, as oil reached a record above $127 per barrel yesterday. Commodities account for about half of Canada’s exports.
“Higher crude oil is a big positive for the Canadian dollar,” said Nick Bennenbroek, head of currency strategy at Wells Fargo Bank in New York. “I don’t see that trend changing soon. There is a positive bias for the currency and that could take it to 97 cents per U.S. dollar.”
The currency rose to 99.93 cents per U.S. dollar in Toronto, from C$1.0052 on May 9. Canada’s currency yesterday touched 99.43 cents, the highest since March 19. The Canadian dollar strengthened 1.4 percent during the week ended May 9. One Canadian dollar buys $1.0007.
Canada’s consumer prices probably increased 0.4 percent in April, unchanged from the previous month, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Statistics Canada will release the report on May 21.
The currency is attracting investors as Canada’s economy benefits from rising demand for copper, gold, wheat and oil from the U.S. and emerging economies such as India and China. Canada is the world’s largest producer of uranium and the second-biggest exporter of natural gas. The oil sands in Alberta contain the largest crude deposits outside the Middle East.
At least half of North America is doing well. And this is in spite of having Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.
Today marks the 126th anniversary of the death of Charles Darwin (12 Feb 1809 -19 Apr 1882), the English naturalist whose theory of evolution remains the most singular advancement in the thought of mankind. To Darwin, we owe much. And few of mankind’s thinkers is more reviled. The lunacy of Ben Stein and his Expelled propaganda is only the last example.
I became a Darwinist sometime around the age of 14 though the seeds of my Darwinism were planted earlier in childhood. You see growing up in the Andean highlands and valleys of my native Colombia is a fertile ground for the tree of evolution to take hold. Darwinism explains the beauty and wonder of Colombia. No country on Earth a more perfect example though in truth every square centimetre of this planet is covered by the clarity and honesty of Darwinism.
In looking back on my life, it was on a day when I was ten and on which I nearly lost my life that my most cherished views began to take shape. We are the sum of our own experiences and in truth on that day sometime in the summer of 1971, my experiences took a turn deep into the natural world. My uncle Luis Bueno Figueroa was an amazing man for so many reasons but one of them is that he helped found a group of medical professionals in Colombia who for a week at a time left the comfort of their homes for the joy of forgotten Colombia, the rural areas that never received any government attention.
