BACK FROM BOSNIA

Back to Africa

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Dec. 29 -Jan. 19, 2010

The itinerary covered Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.

African skies

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Nakuru, Kenya

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Sunset in Kigali, Rwanda, to right. Parc National de Volcans in Rwanda in the middle and Lake Nakuru below

Pictures from a Uganda Rain Forest

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Uganda's beloved Mabira rain forest

Africans

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Hawley took this terrific shot of three boys in Musanze near the jumping off point for gorilla treks. As tourists with cameras approach they dropped their work tools and broke into this impromptu and irresistible dance.That's Moses in the middle. He asked for a picture of him and friends and gave us an email for his school so we could send the shot back, which we did. The boys also wanted dictionaries and new science books.
Boys run after an SUV filled with safari tourists in Kenya hoping for a candy handout.

A red-robed, beaded Masai dancer in Kenya

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School boy and flower in Musanze above and wood carver with unfinished gorilla mask below

Drum maker and family pose outside their shop after Hawley and I bought eight drums.

Isn't this the worst ad you ever saw???

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Coke could not get away with this in the states. We couldn't believe this ad --blown up to gigantic billboard size -- when we drove past it on the road from Kampala to Jinja. Notice the explosive eruption of soda at the bottom in addition to the oral sex imagery in the main art. Subtle.

A new skyline in Kampala since my last visit in 2005

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The skyline over Uganda's city is now dominated by the Kadafi Mosque, giving it a new Moslem feel.

The traffic jams have not cleared up over the past five years.

Masai shields are big sellers as Kenyan souvenirs

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African artwork

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A roadside art gallery outside Kampala, Uganda, caught the eye of at least these Americas. We jumped out of our car to snap photos of the poster until the painter's wife asked up grumpily if we were gonna buy it? We paid her for letting us take a picture of the art.

The bottom two shots are eye-catching works in the National Museum in Nairobi, Kenya

Giraffe closeups

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Lions rule at Masai Mara

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Gorilla Trek in Rwanda

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Not that everything in Nature is beautiful

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A dead flamingo on the beach at Lake Nakuru, Kenya

We had been snapping pictures of baboon mothers toting about their babies for an hour when we ran into this lovely scene at Lake Nakuru, Kenya: a male is digging into the entrails of a baby Grant's gazelle. Just out of camera range a female awaits her turn at the dinner table.

In the bottom shot taken at Masai Mara National Park in Kenya, vultures and a caribou stork pick at the carcass of a water buffalo.

Grown in Africa

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I ended up with all these shots of tree trunks which I love. I don't know the name of the top tree, but the middle one is a thorn tree and the bottom is from a papaya tree.

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Jennifer didn't know the name of these pretty purple flowers but told us that Ugandan kids sucked the white part of the flowers because they are filled with a sweet sap. We sucked up a bunch. Hawley loves shooting flower pictures and she spent a lot of this vacation with her nose and camera lens stuck in leaves. At one point some French travelers pointed to her camera signaling something wrong. She found it was covered in yellow pollen from getting too close. Her shots are amazing -- but even my mundane ones are filled with the bright colors, prickly textures and odd shapes of plants in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.

Blooms and Fungus

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Bananas and other African blooms I can't identify

Acacia and sun in Masai Mara National Park, Kenya

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On Beyond the Big Five...African game

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Guinea fowl in a dead tree at Masai MaraZebra, of course,

Beautiful giraffes which are wonderful to watch running

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Grant's gazelles and the birds that keep them tidy...

Cheetah mother carrying a cub to a new nest...

Flamingoes prancing in Lake Nakuru.

The Big Five...

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Safaris are really like cruises where pampered tourists are carefully shepherded about by keepers -- called guides -- who give them a taste of the wild and then deliver them back to posh hotels for sumptuous meals served by attentive servants. It disturbs me that I actually like this.

The comparison that safari organizers really want you to make, of course, is not to cruises but to 19th and early 20th century wild game hunts. The roads in national parks in eastern Africa are inordinately bumpy and crude; there is no Internet and I think things may be kept this way, at least in part, to better give the flavor of wild adventure. I am overly suspicious, but when our safari truck got mired in a middy trail and our guide had to call for help on his radio, I really had to wonder if it had been staged. This driver has been at the job for more than 20 years and he had only hours before been berating other drivers who didn't know enough to stay out of mud holes. Hmmm.

Lion at Masai Mara

The biggest conceit stolen from the old game hunts is the search to shoot the Big Five of Africa's beautiful animals. Of course, today, all shooting during safaris is by camera. During four days of safari this January, we bagged all five. I've never seen a leopard in the wild before and so, for me, that was the best.

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Water buffalo stewing at Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya

White rhino also at Lake Nakuru

and elephant photographed at Masai Mara National Park, Kenya

From the Family Album 1958-59

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The highlight of the year was the parade through West Albany Village that began the Feast of the Immaculate Conception every July. We marched in communion dresses carrying gladiolas. I'm the fat kid in the fifth row.
That's my grandmother, Anna Stellato, in the polka dots. She lived two doors down from the IBS hall and worked there every Friday night making pizza. She was the daughter, wife, sister, and mother of members, but could not, of course, belong to the IBS herself.

Outside the hall the members ready to march, led by then president, my great-uncle Oscar Nenni.

My sister and I and all the other little girls enter St. Francis under a gate of flags for the final round around the pews to Ava Maria with our Aunt Mary in her finery watching over the line. We found all of this magnificent.

The West Albany Italian Benevolent Society

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It hard now to find even the traces.

The village of West Albany is quiet, paved, just an aging lower-middle class neighborhood into between the highways and the once bustling Tobin First Prize Packing Plant crumbling into ruin on Exchange Street. The smell of hogs going to slaughter has faded, the uproar of train whistles, school bells, church bells and factory horns silenced. The railway shops, the stockyards, the hotel where men yelled over cards at night and the stores where kids got penny candy long gone.

This Italian immigrant ghetto once intimidated ‘Miticans – short for Americanos who were mostly Irish immigrants. It’s been transformed beyond what even those peasant settlers from Naples could have dreamed up while potted on eye-watering homemade wine – the West Albany Elementary School now a Hebrew Academy? St. Francis de Sales Catholic church a worship center for Koreans.

This month 360 members and guests gathered to celebrate the 100th anniversary of one West Albany institution that remains from the old days – the Italian Benevolent Society. IBS leaders also will serve as grand marshals of the Albany’s Columbus Day parade this weekend in honor of the group’s longevity and the role of Italian-Americans building the region. From 1909 the club, which is what we knew it as growing up, or the "Sooge," short for Societa, as our parents called it, was the hub of community social life as surely as spiritual life was grounded in St. Francis and work life in the railyard and Tobin’s.

You got married in St. Francis, had your reception in the IBS club across the street at which tipsy aunts and uncles were certain to dance the tarantella and after a honeymoon you put on a white coat and a hairnet and did your shifts at the packing plants. The kids sure to come soon after would cross the line into the territory of the Miticans to attend West Albany and you’d live in a little house with a big garden in the back on a curving dirt road in the village that shook with the reassuring regularity of the passing New York Central locomotives.

That was pretty much life for generations.

In some ways the IBS remains maddening unmodernized. Women still can’t belong except as kitchen workers who put out the best pizza in the area on Friday nights or as members of an auxiliary belatedly formed 20 years ago. Men whose fathers were not Italian and who, therefore, do not have Italian last names can’t belong at all. Anyone in search of a card game or a round of bocci can find it at the club still and when aged men who were once boys in the village die fellow members come to funerals en masse to salute them.

But the old barriers that kept the village and isolated – and united – don’t exist anymore than do the stockyards and railroads. It’s hard to even find photos of the bridge that ran over the shops and raillines, or the gardens or the trail of people who came out of Tobin’s at shift change times. Photos were rare and special. You posed in family groupings in your best clothes for them and who would pay for a photographer to shoot such everyday stuff as that? It sounds quaint now when my mother describes how Mitigans were afraid to push through the thongs of dark-skinned, dirty men who gesticulated on the corners and outside the stoops of West Albany. She was an adult before she realized how frightening the men she knew as cousins and neighbors must have seemed to outsiders. And the outsiders were not exactly wrong. Hotheaded card players brawled and growled insults with regularity the women joked about and there was scandal when a West Albanian shot the boarder he suspected of fooling around with his wife.

Fresh off the boats and still indentured for the long ride over from the mountains above Naples, Italian peasants flowed into West Albany at the turn of the last century. They worked for $1 a day in the shops and the slaughter house around heavy machines and equipment that could cost them a limb and their livelihood in a wink. Deaths, also common, left widows and children bereft. The immigrants had no insurance, no government aid, no employer benefits. Their dilemma foreshadowed today’s worries about health care for the poor and uninsured.

So 20 men, among them my great-grandfather Anthony Scaringe, all illiterate and unable to understand English came up with this solution: they each put in $1 a month and they formed a society to watch out for the families of workers hurt, killed or in trouble. In days when a doctor came to your house for about $2 that kitty made a huge difference.

The good deeds of the IBS are part of countless family legends in this area. How the members didn’t wait for someone to have to ask for help, they just offered. How they made sure families in a tight spot had food for their kids and how everyone got a proper Catholic burial.

In the early days before there was money for a hall, members met monthly in each other’s houses, their wives responsible for the pasta and wine served that night. That was the start of the group’s more social functions. Eventually the organization moved into the building at 50 Exchange Street where it is still housed which had a bar and a kitchen, because no Italian event would be complete without food and drink.

In mid July of 1924 the IBS staged its first celebration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, enlisting the church, the businessmen and all the great Italian cooks in the village to show devotion to the mother of God. They put together a band of members and their children, lit the streets with lights and sold Italian ice and cookies in street stands. A statue of Mary was paraded through the village and residents ran to pin dollar bills to her dress. In her house on Richmond Street, my great-grandmother Rosemary Scaringe used to feed the electricians who strung up the streetlights for the Feast, which is what we called this event second only in grandeur to Christmas. My great uncle Paul led the bank rehearsals in the kitchen of his house on Exchange Street.

Through the ‘60s my sisters and I would don our stiff white First Communion dresses and veils, clutch a gladiola that the IBS supplied by the truckload and lined up behind the band with our grandmother for a march through the village that ended with a procession around the pews of St. Francis. The organist always played Ave Maria and the priests set off clouds of incense waving a a silver burner on a chain. There were two nights of games and treats behind the IBS and every friend and cousin we knew was there. We stayed up late to watch fireworks and no event since has ever surpassed the Feast in my mind.

My mother says we never really saw The Feast at its height, which we cannot believe because how could it have been more huge? But World War II killed it, she says. During those years you could not fly the Italian flag. Italian heritage was not something you wanted to advertise.
The end of the war brought more change to the village and to the IBS. Young men fresh from the service swelled the membership ranks and created a generation gap. Antonio Piombino, the first and only president stepped aside in 1945 and it fell to the second president, my grandfather Vito Stellato, to keep the group together.

Grandpa could speak Italian and English and he was an astute businessman. He’d come to New York at 18 with no money but a lot of good lucks and many relatives. He ran an ice business for years, until somehow sensing that this new-fangled refrigeration was going to change things, he sold out at a big profit about 1928. As IBS president he pushed the formation of a Bowling League and inaugurated the first annual clambake – which was almost as grand as the Feast.

The older generation did not fade away unobtrusively. At one point long past his prime Paba was stirring up a trouble and being loud in the middle of a meeting chaired by Uncle Paul – his son – who tried diplomatically to get him to stop, addressing him mildly as "Brother Scaringe," in the club’s fraternal style.

"Brother, my ass!" Paba roared back. This is a story that has been passed down in the family, no less.

As the railway wound down and the vast shops were plowed under to make way for Watervliet Extension, as Tobin’s phased out, as Melucci’s Hotel and Pacella’s store gave way to competitors, as the Italian section blended into the rest of the city, the IBS got rich and kept growing. My father joined, a succession of uncles and cousins too, though they all had insurance through jobs and Social Security too. Eight men in the club now have more than 60 years of membership.

It could be the pizza or bocci that keeps members so numerous and loyal – or it could just be the direct link to ancestors who didn’t leave us photos or letters or inheritances. "You know the sign outside the building?" Tony Biance asked at the anniversary celebration. Of course. Two hands shaking inside a circle pinned into the center of an American and Italian flag. "My dad and I hung that up 35 years ago," he said. Pat Biance, 92, smiled and nodded at the memory.

Natalie Merchant shakes it up in Colonie

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In the 1770s, the Shakers built a settlement in Albany County that turned the area during the 19th Century into a major tourist attraction. People came from all over to the Shaker meeting house for the music and dancing shows cult members put on, hoping to lure new recruits. Proselytizing was difficult since the major tenets of the group appear to have been celibacy, uncomfortable furniture and lush gardens. All of that is remarkably preserved at the Shaker site out by the airport. The wooden meeting hall with giant 36-pane windows and a floor that works like a drum when dancers or fiddlers stomp on it. Efforts are underway to restore the site and turn it into an entertainment and conference center and singer Natalie Merchant whom I've always loved gave two benefit concerts Sunday. Sister Lisa went to the morning show and I got the evening show, so the Armaos, devotees of all that is the opposite of Shakerdom, are now major contributors to preserving their memory.

Merchant sings poet songs and old folk melodies that could not have fit better into this locale. She said she wanted to perform in this unusual room with acoustics so precise that audience members shifting on the uncomfortable wooden benches or dropping a program made a racket and she used the room well, dancing and strolling up aisles and around the bleachers with guitar, fiddle and banjo player in tow. But she also had to contend with the lack of air conditioning that must have been her want to melt inside a long-sleeved belted dress, boots and a veil of heavy black hair. And brag about acoustics as you want, when she sang at one end of the hall, those at the other could make out few words. A mike might have been nice. Also there are no lights so that by the end of the second show she appeared as little more than a melodic smudge to people sitting in the back of the room. She allowed photos with no flash, but that was the same as not allowing them (see above)

But complaints are out of order. This was a warm, intimate and really special concert.

The Times-Union did a nice writeup and got better photos: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=846845

I violated many of the human rights principles I say I believe in during a stop in Newport, RI.

2009-09-28T09:40:00.004-04:00

Rod and Kelly had a few days off from work in Newport, RI, which is less than 3 1/2 hours from Albany due to the weird geography of the northeast US. So I drove over to spend a day with them.

They work aboard a 120-foot yacht owned by a wealthy couple and I am at pains here not to reveal their identity or the name of the vessel since that would be a serious breach of confidentiality. This, however, appears to be the only principle I have upheld this weekend while getting a taste of this rarified, rich lifestyle.

Do you know how much gasoline a 120-foot yacht consumes while cruising around the islands off the coast of NE for fun? Do you know how much "black water" or dunnage -- there're some new words I encountered -- it throws off into the cold waters of the Atlantic? Kelly said a guest on the yacht approached her with an empty water bottle recently and requested the plastic be recycled. Kelly had to laugh at the uselessness of that sweet gesture.Or get this: a lobster dinner at sea for a party of eight? There's $1,000 for an evening. Pop-up TVs, chandeliers, 800-count ironed sheets, marble flooring, all on a vessel used a few weeks at most a year.

No, I don't think that even if it were suddenly possible to do so that I could get used to that kind of luxury. My yacht would end up hauling refugees out of some Third World hellhole, I suspect. I kept thinking: People are starving in Africa.

OK, well honestly I managed to suppress the guilt enough to enjoy a ride across the harbor in the tender and espresso martinis on the patio (under heaters) of sumptuous Castle Hill overlooking the water.

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This is an arty shot of a magazine rack and rug for sale in a vintage shop we visited in Newport.

Smiling about the weather or the best New England clam chowder in the world at the Black Pearl.

Tooling around the harbor in the ship's tender on errands, but really sight-seeing.

And here are the harbor sights to be seen on a sunny fall day in Newport.

George Will is not optimistic about Bosnia

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091802145.html

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My campus -- SUNY at Albany

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The 40-year-old campus in Albany is not your stereotypical US college campus. No ivy-covered walls and picturesque statues here. Edward Durrell Stone designed a modernistic college for then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller that is remarkably similar to designs he did for the US embassy in India and the Pakistani nuclear power institute. The Mogul style arches and multiple domes led to rumors that he'd actually used a design intended for an Arizona desert. Hailed as an architectural wonder, Stone's campus was not universally admired either back in the 1960s when it was new or now. His long walkways turn into wind tunnels during Albany's long, cold winters and Stone didn't really like cars messing up his design, so parking is too far away and inadequate in the mind of many faculty and students. Then there is the whole issue of an architectural wonder being maintained by a state government perpetually short of funds. Sticking doors, leaks and crumbling concrete keep maintenance crews constantly busy. Still, it's home.

How many lobsters do you think you'd have to eat before you got sick of them?

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Above see the Clam Lady who just shucked clams for us all day -- not fast enough, we kept telling her! Sister Lisa carries away her lobster dinner and her co-workers above stand over the day-long dice game that goes so well with seafood.

The annual Seafood Fest at the Polish American Community Center in Albany is a place to test that question. For $60 you get all the raw clams, oysters, chowder, shrimp, steamed claims, mussels, scallops wrapped in bacon and beer/soda and wine you can drink. Then they give you this giant lobster with clams casino, crab, sweet potato casserole and stuffed mushrooms. I think I might actually be sick of butter after this repast. One question? What's seafood got to do with Poland? I understand the Baltic Sea touches a small portion of the country, but shouldn't this be a job for the Italian Benevolent Society in town?

Tombstone etchings in a Vermont cemetery

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Remaining by popular demand

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Doesn't anything interesting happen to you when you are not here? a Bosnian friend asked.

I never thought of that before. Now I will. I'm not completely shutting down the blog this fall. We'll see if anything happens worth blogging about. And if you keep on reading.

The High Line -- NYC's newest park

2009-08-21T20:31:00.002-04:00

A non-profit organization in the city had this weird idea of turning an old freight rail line that until about 1980 carried cargo high above streets in an industrial-port area of NYC into a park.

It's not finished but it's terrific and original. The rails have become flower beds teeming with daisies and grasses and the same native species that once grew naturally along a railway. Benches and railings all have railway themes and there are plans to add waterways as well. People walk and sunbathe (on ingenious chaise lounges made of wood and rail wheels so they move) and eat lunch along the way.

See: www.thehighline.org for more info (the website is as innovative as the park) but the main history is this:

10th Avenue was known in the late 19th and early 20th Century as Death Avenue because there were so many accidents involving freight trains and street traffic. They had guys on horses waving red flags in front of the trains to try and help but then around 1930 they got the idea to lift the tracks -- hence, High Line -- for 13 miles through the city. That cut out 105 railway crossings and was so huge an undertaking that it would cost $2 billion today to replicate. So this works great and all kinds of food and factory items get shipped through around and along buildings without any deaths. But around the 1950s interstates are built under the Eisenhower administration and trucks overtake rails as best, cheapest way to move cargo. By 1980 the line was defunct. Then it took awhile for a group of citizens to get the right idea and raise the money for this latest reiteration of the line.

28th Street flower shops

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New York City -- return from SJJ

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Two towers, but not twins.

Toes and stripes on a NYC street

It's no Sarajevo, but NYC is not a bad city to come home to. Look up or look down and you find wonders here.

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Street poster advertising pita, which I will lust for in months ahead. There's be only Mom's ravioli and apple tarts to take its place.

Hawley and I get a goodbye from Sasha who has promised to have a new dish featuring Ruzmarin and named for me at Karuso's in December. There better not be turnips or pineapple in it.

Sarajevo showing off. The place is battered, littered and shabby, yet it can look like a Turner painting. How does it do that?

2009-08-21T04:59:00.005-04:00

One of my favorite Sarajevo neighborhoods for wonderful old residences, vibrant graffiti and one of the city's ubiquitous handwritten warnings to park someplace else.

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Another Goodbye to Sarajevo and Summer

2009-08-21T04:28:00.005-04:00

I know I'll be back, but I still hate leaving. I walked around on my last weekend taking photos of section of the city I love that I have not photographed before by way of goodbye.

This area is Ciglane, an exclusive area where big wigs have apartments amid restaurants, markets and a giant cemetery that swelled during the war. Miranda's mother and uncle grew up

in the area and remember when it was noting from a marshy field filled with puddles of clay. Ciglane means bricks. The clay was turned into bricks and this dizzying apartment complex was put up.

Food fetishes

2009-08-17T07:55:00.002-04:00

Bob and Michael threw a videmo se (see ya) party for me this weekend, a treat because Michael is an amazing cook. And she did not disappoint from chicken to salads and chocolate chip cookies. Oddly, though, her potato salad did not go over. Huge mounds were left at the end of the night. She had carefully peeled off the potato skins, thinking that would turn off Bosnian diners but it still didn't go.

Turns out that cold potatoes are considered disgusting or at least dangerous here, a sign of left-over day-old food. The only thing more reckless than eating this, Boki explained to us Americans with a smile, would be to sit in a draft.

Who knew? Meanwhile the internationals are eating a lot of potato salad. So far, no casualties.

Sharing last days in Sarajevo

2009-08-16T03:18:00.003-04:00

Lara, Hawley, me at CIN office in the last week of summer vacation.

Wonderful feminist ad Laura found in Sarajevo

2009-08-14T11:00:00.002-04:00

The Bosnian says "Know where a woman's place is!" Get it?

I don't get fashion

2009-08-12T16:29:00.012-04:00

"You look like two goats," Dona tells Miranda and me when we come out of the gym in sloppy clothes, lugging gym bags, hair dripping. That's exactly what we looked like Wednesday as we set out from pilates to a fashion show. Miranda didn't even have on eye-makeup. It was scandalous.

We tried to slip into the shadows on the lawn of the State Museum where the show was set up -- but when the guard came over to chase us out of the flower bed our cover got kind of destroyed. We felt conspicuous -- though we were hardly so glitzy as the woman in the first row in a sleeveless, backless, knit mini dress, giant fake breasts, two-inch long plastic eyelashes and lipstick that consisted of a black kiss mark in the center of her mouth. Stars can pull off outlandish looks. And she was Hana, known as the bosanka Paris Hilton because like Paris she was cast in a show as a shallow sophisticate living on a farm in a stupid reality show. Anyway she was in the first row and further back was a man in blue glasses and a Mickey Mouse T-Shirt and further back was this most amazing couple. She had hair of straw from over dying and a skirt that ended at her quadriceps muscle and about 6 pounds of gold jewelry while he had hair so slicked back and greased up you were afraid to touch it. They were in each other's laps and rubbing body parts through the show.

With all this activity in the audience it was hard to pay attention to the show. One while collection seemed to consist of barefooted women dragging rag dolls with both women and dolls dressed in burlap sacks and swimming caps in garish colors. The women were all uniformly skinny and willing to wear their hair in outlandish strands and puffs. But there was one moment in the showing of the first collection when a young man with thick black hair came out in a open front knit sweater when all chattering stopped and you could hear the intake of breath. Maybe I could get into fashion after all, I thought.

Because we were in the shadows we did not have seats and this show lasted nearly two hours. In the middle of it rain began falling, but that didn't slow things. Organizers handed out umbrellas to the audience.

As it finally closed down and we left, we were amused to see that audience members were carrying new umbrellas out with them. Miranda was disgusted. "Only in Bosnia," she muttered. I don't know. I've seen an awful lot of Americans tucking buffet items into their purses and taking motel towels and ashtrays. Same idea. And I'd far father have a nice umbrella than one of those sack dresses as a souvenir.

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Bosnian cats

2009-08-12T11:28:00.004-04:00

This post is mostly for my mother who lives in constant fear that I will bring home another stray cat.

I shot this outside the living room window of our apartment.

It turns out that you can increase the population of cats outside your house too. Just periodically fling pieces of sausage out the window.

More lost in translation

2009-08-11T09:20:00.006-04:00

I am endlessly amused -- and frustrated working in two languages, only one of which I know. And this summer has been no different.

Translators are always walking in -- usually while I'm deep in copy -- and asking for advice:

"What's the word for a pregnant cow?" Boki asked the other day.

Apparently my language is not as expressive as yours about bovine birth, I responded.

"What is an insult you'd use against a shepherd?" he wanted to know the other day.

I've never personally insulted a shepherd, or even knew one, I had to say, What was the offense he committed, but in general "sheep-f...er" might fit the bill.

"Fit the bill?"

You have to be careful about idioms in a two-language office.

And spelling can cause colorful confusion.

A reporter wrote an email recently about a story she was working on involving "tri gay." Mmm, the Americans pondered, they've gone beyond bisexual here. She actually mean "the third guy."

Miranda our editorial researcher recently complimented a blog post of mine as very funny but "a big obscene dough." I imagined a large Pillsbury Dough Boy flashing us before I figured out she meant -- A bit obscene, though."

As always, non-native speakers come up wit the best English. Candidate for this summer:

Tampoos for those things women need once a month that like shampoo do help keep you clean.

John, our new American editor here, is as amused as I by the translated copy we get from our regional reporters outside BiH. He gets a laugh reciting his favorite start to a story about gambling casinos which is a description of a bouncer:

"He has hands big like jackhammers to knock down walls with," the story colorfully detailed.

On the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock

2009-08-11T09:19:00.005-04:00

I managed to miss the seminal cultural event of my generation. The summer of 1969 I was working with a roomful of other college students at the NYS Department of Education. One Friday a coworker goes, there's a big concert this weekend with a ton of stars, in some place about 80 miles from here called Woodstock. Anybody wanna go?

No one did. It was gonna be crowded and 80 miles was far and the weather was gonna be horrible. A lot of rain.

So, I never say no now when it comes to concerts, though I still hate crowds and it rains all the time in Sarajevo. Plus I have liked Hari Mati Hari, the enormously popular Bosnian singer, since I heard him do a rendition of O Sole Mio at the National Theater a few years ago. About 45,000 people turned out for a free concert at Kosovo Theater. Some people sat on the bleachers but thousands like us stood on the grassy soccer field.

He came onstage a hour late but you could not be angry because he then put on a 2 1/2 hour show that included the national soccer team, stars Dino Merlin and Nina Badric and Eldin Huseinbegovic and Drazen Zeric Zera. The kicker was an emotional duet with Halid Beslic, a beloved fold singer, who has not appeared in public since a near fatal car accident earlier his year. Hari did O Sole Mio too. I worried at first when he came on stage in a black and blue outfit, but he quickly changed into his signature all-white suit.

I was amazed at how young the crowd was. There were some people my age but it was overwhelmingly teens and young adults and they cheered, danced and hooted and sang along. They seemed to know every word to every song. The ones they liked the best they marked by jumping up and down like Masaai warriors. And you couldn't not jump with them because someone from behind would grab you and move you up and down. Another reason not to like big crowds.

The fans took zillions of photos of the lit-up stage and of each other mugging and dancing and swayed to his oldest favorites holding up their cell phones. When did they stop using lighters at concerts?

Hari is not universally loved in Bosnia, I discovered. He went to Germany during the war, he wears white suits, he left his wife for another woman, he sings of sadness and lost love. "I have lost all respect for you," a co-worker told me the next day as I blared "Sreca" and "Ne mogu ti reci sta je tuga" on my computer.

Lemon mint drinks and balancing shekels

2009-08-10T08:15:00.003-04:00

Renee introduced me to what she called her favorite drink in the Middle East -- lemon-mint. There's a trick to getting the sour lemon balanced exactly with the fresh mint. This first attempt by the bartender at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jericho was a tad sour. But we tried again that night and asked for the addition of a shot of vodka. Well, that made all the difference, or anyway, we didn't notice anything sour.

Palestinian-Israeli relations

2009-08-10T04:02:00.005-04:00

Anti-Israel graffiti in central city Ramallah

Across the West Bank are acres of stumps. Just row after row of thin sticks poking out of what looks like infertile brown soil. They are all that is left of thousands of silvery gray olive trees cut down by Israelis trying to flush Palestinians from areas of the West Bank they want, especially outside of Jerusalem. These leafless orchards are an especially raw and ugly sight, but far from the only jarring signs of ethnic warfare here.

Angry graffiti explodes across every wall and fence, not just the prison walls around Palestine. The West Bank is filthy too with litter. At the checkpoints and border crossings, disgusted drivers hurl garbage at the walls and at the armed guards. In Hebron, where the Jewish settlement Arabs find so intrusive sits above and to the side of the central city market, netting has been stretched above the stalls. It is intended to catch paper and worse thrown down into the Arab gutter from the Jewish heights. The net is filled, though you have to wonder if it never cleared out in order that the accumulation looks worse.

Vendors in Hebron boldly urge tourists to buy their slocky wares by saying, "Hey help me out. It's hard to make a living here and the Jews came 40 years ago!" For their part, Israeli guards seem to purposefully drag out and taunt drivers in ways mean and petty. We were denied entrance to the Tomb of Abner (not the cartoon character, Abraham, patriarch of Judaism and Christianity) by Israeli guards on the Arab side. Prayer is beginning in a half hour, they told us, so you can't go in. We'll be fast, we tried, we've come all the way from New York! "Go to the Jewish side," they told us without sympathy. Of course, our Palestinian guide, would not be allowed entrance there, which they knew. And he knew. We decided to eat Turkish delight and shop instead. Palestinians are barred from even driving the most direct route into Hebron from Jerusalem. They take a snaky, roller-coaster route that winds through mountains and villages. It's takes two hours in a hot car to go the 35 km and most of the time you look out the window into a valley far below at the sleek, shiny black ribbon of highway that is only for Israelis.

Coming here I thought the conflict similar to the ethnic hatred of the Balkans, but the better metaphor is from the US. Cast the Israelis as the American settlers and the Palestinians as Native Americans and you understand something of the conflict here. Both sides -- with reason -- feel under threat and, therefore, justified in whatever defensive or offensive measures they take including attacks that leave the innocent maimed, imprisonment and sabotage. When the US government wanted land the Navajos considered theirs in Nevada, Renee, noted, it had all the pinyon pine trees the Indians depended on cut down. The Arabs, like the Indians, are splintered and have no powerful outside allies. Other Arab nations except Jordan have supported them mostly just with rhetoric. The Israelis out-number and out-class the Palestinians in resources. (In some ways the fight in the Balkans seems more fair because the three sides are more evenly matched than here.)

I thought this an original observation until I talked with Jeff Price, a veteran foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun whose many assignments included the West Bank. After the Six Day War, he said, he asked an Israeli official when they were gonna give back the West Bank.

The official snorted and retorted: "When you give back Arizona."

UN human rights experts compare the situation on the West Bank to apartheid South Africa where Bantustans -- little fake states -- were set up as a way to keep blacks disjointed and isolated -- controllable. The idea is that Israel is fragmenting the territory of the West Bank and restricting movement among and between those fragments not to mention sending in Jewish settlers into even the areas that clearly have been Palestinian.

I kept trying to think pro-Israeli during my days here, trying not to be swayed by the sight of tree stumps and teenagers with guns and walls and poverty. But I don't feel it. The same Israelis who had the wisdom and resources to turn the desert green and build stunning cities in 60 years can't figure out a better way than this? History's most oppressed minority can't handle the minority within its own borders in some way different from how brutes in Europe dealt with them? You just really want to see the story of Israel end up better than what I saw here.

As for the future, well, there was that Jewish family behind me on the people mover going through Ben Gurion Airport on the way home. The mother, obviously American from her accent, was commenting on a series of beautiful posters on the airport walls to educate her children as we moved by them. Each commemorated one of 60 years in the history of Israel. We got to 1967 when the Israelis took over the West Bank after defeating its Arab attackers in the Six Day War and the mother asked her children, "What happened important that year?" The little boy immediately answered, "Jerusalem was reunited." "Right!" she answered brightly.

Just as American settlers saw their hold over the entire continent as Manifest Destiny, the Israelis seem able to overlook the suffering and displacement of the people in the way.

Women in Hebron

2009-08-10T03:59:00.004-04:00

My friend Ann, a diplomat and world traveler, unleashed a retail monster when she suggested it was important always to support the local artisans of the places we visit. You not only, this suggests, should spend money, you are almost morally bound to do so. All of her friends try to follow this credo.

Thus, when Renee and I found the Women in Hebron's shop we knew what to do. The women work part-time when housework and babysitting allows stitching gorgeous dresses and shawls and stringing jewelry. It can take two months to do the work on the dress I'm trying on below.

And the prices are shamefully low. I gave extra beyond what I bought for the cause.

And I'd like Walmart to adopt the eastern custom of serving mint tea to good customers too.

Moon over Ramallah

2009-08-10T03:12:00.003-04:00

Sally lives in a wealthy section of Ramallah and one of the pleasures of this trip was sipping lemoncello and eating cheese and crackers on her balcony (Renee and Sally above). The view was breath-taking. Ramallah has boomed in recent years and now spreads out along the rims of a number of interlocking ravines. The sight at sunset of all those whitish structures in a rose sky, well, see it above for a taste.

The US view that all of Palestine is poor and destitute is obviously false. Palestinians who have earned money around the world running small businesses and saving it all have returned and are investing in the West Bank in new neighborhoods like Sally's

Jericho and Mount of Temptation

2009-08-10T02:18:00.007-04:00

We traveled to Jericho -- where there still are no walls or even any big fences that I could see -- for another cable car ride to the top of a mountain. In this place above, supposedly, Jesus was tempted by the Devil as he was spending 40 days fasting and praying. The Devil told him a stone was a loaf of bread that would satisfy his hunger, but Jesus resisted. (Renee and I were not so steadfast against the lure of lemon-mint drinks.)

Anyway, whether or not the story is true, in this spot true believers have erected an unexpectedly beautiful monastery and chapel. Apparently you can rent the place for retreats and it's easy to see how you'd feel calm and a closeness to God so high up and alone in this place.

The caretaker was not so happy to see us. He made us wait till his cigarette break was over before letting us in the door, then tapped his foot impatiently while we strolled along peeking into corners and snapping pictures.

2009-08-10T01:56:00.007-04:00

Downtown Hebron

Doing business in Hebron -- traders, vendors and taxi drivers

2009-08-10T01:48:00.001-04:00

West Bank journey from Ramallah to Hebron

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Different kinds of settlements in the West Bank: Below is a Bedouin settlement on the side of a hill on the road from Ramallah to Hebron. The move out of tents into tin and scrap wood shacks seems ill-advised but they are the norm today. Bedouins have moved in and out of the area for centuries.

More controversial has been the movement -- or incursion the Arabs would say -- of Jewish settlers into the West Bank. These settlements are solid, prosperous and to the Palestinians, highly inflammatory.

Hebron has long been known for its glass and porcelain and Renee and I did our part to support local artisans. We visited a small glass-blowing center and shop and found Christmas tree ornaments, dishware and tiles.

Acre or Akko

2009-08-10T01:34:00.006-04:00

Renee took these shots of our seaside lunch place and pretty St. John's Church and of boys leaping off the walls into the Gulf of Haifa.

The importance of this pretty little town in ancient times and during the Crusades is evident in the fortresses, walls, tunnels and castles that remain. And also in its name, which comes from the Greek word for cure. Supposedly Hercules found a healing herb here.

In the 12th Century the Templar Order -- a military-monastic order that protected European Pilgrims coming into the Holy Land -- set up here and built a tunnel from their fort to the port. This was lost until a woman complained about a blocked up sewer in 1994 and now you can walk through a small portion of the tunnel again.

The Ottomans set up a citadel here as well. We made it as far as the cat-filled gardens outside the fortifications before going into the Old City, which is on the UNESCO list of Historic Places. But really, the best part of Acre was the coastline where restaurants serve the best freshest fish and boys leap off the walls into the cool water.

Baha'i again

2009-08-10T01:18:00.004-04:00

I have to learn more about the Baha'is as I seem to keep running into them. In addition to the beautiful gardens in Kampala and Haifa, UPI, the first company I worked for that folded financially, was sold to two unlikely businessmen mostly known for being members of this new faith. And in Florida I lived on Baha'i Vista Street. What a coincidence, eh.

The Haifa Bay area is rich in Baha'i holy places. The leader of the faith was imprisoned in the the Acre Citadel and died in a mansion just outside that city in 1892. When members of the faith pray, they face the direction of that location. The gardens where he spent the last part of his life are also holy. In 2008 UNESCO put the sites on its World Heritage List.

View of Gardens from Haifa streets

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Baha'i Gardens in Haifa

2009-08-09T15:59:00.002-04:00

Beautiful views of the city and lush, tropical plantings (and cacti) amid marble fountains and gated entrances have made the Baha'i Gardens the outstanding tourist attraction in Haifa. I visited the Baha'i Gardens a few years ago in Kampala and was anxious to see these. The African gardens had been peaceful and holy. I remember sharing a lunch there with a friend who'd taken me, a janitor and his friend, all of us squatting and sitting on the porch outside the main temple.

Here was different. Workers were everywhere with mowers and clippers, but they didn't stop to talk to tourists. One guy gave us a list of rules -- which we didn't understand -- such as don't touch the water in the fountains and don't put your feet in the gaps in the marble. The three of us leaned over a marble railing stepping up on it for a better view down and discussed what gaps he could be talking about and why would anyone want to stick their feet into a marble gap. He came running up flapping his arms and pointing at our feet.

Ah, the gaps in the marble railing where we were standing.

I violated another rule in the picture above posing with Sally before one of the fountains. "Keep yourself covered," the guard growled menacingly at me. My discrete shawl had slipped down my arms.

If you believe in the Virgin Birth we have another Mary story for you...

2009-08-09T15:45:00.003-04:00

It's a pretty little church decorated inside and out with fine art touches like the pretty dove above and mosaic detail above, but the Milk Grotto is a huge rip off.

The story is that Mary rested at this spot to feed the baby Jesus and a drop of her milk fell on the red rock she was seated on turning it milky white. I mean, come on.

Many pilgrims were reading missals and taking pictures in the chapel. Mostly what there was to take pictures of were paintings of Mary breast-feeding. I kept wishing my sister Jo-Ann, a vocal opponent of the whole idea of the La Leche League, had been there.

2009-08-09T15:41:00.002-04:00

Church of the Nativity

2009-08-09T15:28:00.004-04:00

I always heard it was a manger.

But from appearances in the Church of the Nativity, Jesus appears to have been born in a fireplace.

This marks the spot, and Pilgrims lined up to bend down and kiss the apparent exact spot where the manger once was. It just looked very uncomfortable and unsanitary and hokey to this skeptic.

But the church was filled with devout Christians praying and humming.

At the same time, the church was bedecked in white feathers and frou-frou for an afternoon wedding. Getting married where Jesus was born is trendy. Tourists in the square outside cheered the bride and took lots of pictures of the wedding party.

Bethlehem is a crummy little town

2009-08-09T15:09:00.002-04:00

Manger Square in front of the Church of the Nativity is a parking lot.

The square and marketing areas within walking distance of it are littered and smelly, filled with touts trying to get your attention and coins and the shops are exploitative and mostly shoddy.

I can see that a Tour of the Holy Land could be a disappointment to pilgrims who pay handsomely for it.

Aerial view of Masada

2009-08-09T15:05:00.002-04:00

from the internet

Harold and the Purple Crayon in the West Bank

2009-08-07T10:06:00.007-04:00

My boys -- or maybe it was just me -- used to love a children's book dating from 1955 that consisted of few words -- just a purple crayon line drawn by a little boy Harold that would periodically explode into trees or planes or even more fantastical objects.

I was reminded of this book by the line that runs through all the ruins of Masada. What the line actually is, however, is a demarcation between what ruins were actually found and new reconstruction added. This was disturbing. I had been thinking the line marked what had been exposed versus what was dug up. But no. someone is reconstructing ruins.

How do you do this? If you are gonna reconstruct why not rebuild the whole structure? Or leave the ruins as you found them -- eg. Pompeii. Why reconstruct ruins that are bigger than the ruins you found?

The story of Masada

2009-08-07T03:43:00.005-04:00

This is suggestive of a gun -- which could have helped the Zealots against the Romans -- but it's actually part of mechanism for cable car -- which would have helped the Romans. The cable cars take tourists to the top of mountain where Masadai is spread out. And next is the the photogenic descendent of conquerers mentioned below.

The 2,000-year-old story of Masada is weird -- though only slightly more so than that of the Alamo -- in you throw in a dash of Jonestown and pinch of Pompeii thrown.

The Israeli today regard it as a symbol of perseverance and survival -- though it's a story filled with defeat and death -- and when critics refer to right-wing Israelis as having a "Masada complex" they mean it as a willingness to die rather than surrender. The defenders of Masada were, after all, the Zealots. Tourists flood the place today, though it is not easy to get to or even enjoyable in the heat of summer. People get married and Bar and Bat Mitzavah'ed there.

We visited the site with Guitana -- the gigolo of a judge friend of Sally's who needed some stimulation for a day while she was working. He was driving, a plus, and he is Roman, which appealed to me in a perverse way since they were the conquerors of Masada. He spoke no English, which made for an especially long day, but he was photogenic.

Trouble had been brewing in the Roman empire's Jerusalem holding for some time but after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 what was known as the Great Revolt was supposed to be over. The Zealots fled to Masada, atop a huge isolated rock near the Dead Sea, which was much bigger than than it is today, depleted by mucking with the Jordan River, Global Warming and siphoning of the water for minerals and salt. After Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70, the Great Revolt was supposed to be over ended- -- but a band of surviving Zealots fled to an ingenious fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea. Herod built this place, according to a brochure they give tourists. He never actually used it but he saw it as a great defensive position for this part of the empire and it outfitted it something like a resort spa. The 960 Zealot defenders held out here for three years. They had to be hoping that the Romans would just eventually say, "To hell with this," and go -- as we tourists were tempted to.

But as the Carthaginians discovered during the Punic wars, the Romans were patient and vengeful. The 10th Legion built rams and weapons and figured out how to attack up the steep and hostile mountain. They did not have the choice of cable cars that we do today.

You can still see the spot where the fort walls were breached -- it's easy, in fact, since there's a big sign that says "Breaching Site." The Zealots saw their inevitable defeat coming and came up with a counter plan.

They picked 10 men to kill 10 comrades and then the 10 selected one of their number to kill nine, then himself. That's one version.

Another is that the Zealots agreed to commit mass suicide rather than face Roman enslavement and sale of their women into prostitution.

Flavius Josephus, who some accounts call a traitor to the Jews, wrote the only know account of the event. he said two women and five children hid and survived to spread the word. But it was mostly a forgotten story until a people about in the 1920s and a lot of archaeological digging more recently. Some 25 skeleton were found; the rest may have been lost to animals and the elements, according to guides at the site, which, though baked in the sun, offers all kinds of clues about life atop the mountain just as Pompeii does about life before Vesuvius struck.

It was hardly austere. There are still signs of ritual baths and a public swimming pool, dovecots where birds for dinner could be raised, a spacious quarter for the commander, mosaic floors and a complex and coolly engineered water system based on cisterns.

Judean Desert spectacular below Masada

2009-08-07T03:39:00.003-04:00

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The Shadows of Masada

2009-08-07T03:06:00.003-04:00

Our friend Howard just shook his head when he heard we were planning a trip to Masada. In August, during the daytime. "You have picked the worst possible time of year," he announced. "I wouldn't do it." Howard had a point. It was 100 degrees when we got there just after noon. The snack bar at the National Park was pulling in huge profit from water and ice cream sales.

But how often do we get to Israel? So we got on the cable car, went up to the plateau on the top of the mountain and began hiking through the ruins. The sun was intense and bleached out all color and details in the photo viewfinder.

So, I took pictures of the plentiful shadows.

2009-08-07T02:03:00.000-04:00

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Rules of the Dead Sea

2009-08-07T01:06:00.005-04:00

You don't just go splashing into the Dead Sea. Splashing is not allowed and ducking your head under the water is discouraged. If you do get water in your mouth, you should get to a lifeguard right away and drink plenty of fresh water while at the beach. Rules for the different kind of beach scene offered by the Dead Sea are posted at Kalia Beach outside Jericho.

I am giddy thinking that Wow! In a week I have been in the Adriatic Sea (in Dubrovnik), the Mediterranean (in Tel Aviv) and now the Dead Sea in the middle of a desert in the lowest spot on earth. I am overdosing on exotic as I walk in.

It turns out you can't just walk into the Dead Sea. So many people stand by the shoreline scooping up handfuls of the vicious mineral-rich mud to smear over themselves that they have created hundreds of unseen craters in the sea bottom. So you trip and stumble into the hot water. I was told there were no waves, but there are gentle waves. The water -- and the thick, black mud -- have no smell. This is good because it kind of reminds me of rubbing dog poop on your body from the feel of it; I could not have handled a smell. And the water is unbelievably salty, thick, heavy, chemically. I took a small taste and survived even without lifeguard assistance. The water feels smooth almost oily and the same with the mud. And you cannot sick. You don't float so much as levitate on the surface, bouncing on the top, it is so buoyant.

There is a niggling little problem, though: an odd sensation in a part of the anatomy not usually involved in my swimming activities. A tingling -- but not in the good sense sometimes associated with this part of the anatomy.

Renee finds my problem amusing. She has purposefully not shaved her legs this morning knowing that a nick, cut or raw skin awash in salt water stings. She makes a crude joke I won't repeat about misuse of electrical toys, but I am not amused picturing in my head having to see a doctor about this issue. What do you even say? "I think I was raped by the Dead Sea?"

Anyway, I stayed in the water and after awhile the symptoms subsided and I floated and soaked by hair and lathered with mud and forgot about it as the bromide of the water began to have its euphoric effect. My mood was light and airy.

But as we got out and headed for the showers to rinse off salt and mud we saw an unhappy, howling little girl about 3 stamping around and clutching at the bottom of her bathing suit. I knew exactly how she felt. Her parents poured cool fresh water down her suit for relief.

The Dead Sea

2009-08-07T00:56:00.004-04:00

Renee floats on the Dead Sea while other bathers cover themselves -- in mud or cloth.

Monument to Yassar Arafat

2009-08-06T11:05:00.009-04:00

In Ramallah, but a distance from Sally's apartment, we visited the Mukataa -- the headquarters of the Palestinian National Authority bombed and bulldozed to rubble by the Israelis in 2002 then reconstructed and turned into a tomb and memorial for Yassar Arafat.

The early 2000s were another tense time in Israel-Palestinian relations after the killing of a top-level Israeli minister and an Israeli army raid on a refugee camp in Jenin. The UN was worthless and Arafat held on inside the ruins of his compound which actually boosted his falling popularity among Arabs. After some two years of virtual house arrest, Arafat got really sick and was flown to Paris where he died.

Israel refused to let him be buried in Jerusalem so he is in a tomb covered in the same white stone of Jerusalem's buildings -- in Ramallah. A marker says eventually he'll be in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem -- after establishment of a Palestinian state. In the meantime, the memorial complex is worthy of DC.

2009-08-06T06:42:00.003-04:00

Jammed traffic at the Qualadia check point and a man with one leg knocking on windows for shekels.

The wall

2009-08-06T04:18:00.005-04:00

It happened in Berlin too when the communists tried to wall off East Berlin and East Germany. Undercover artists went to work decorating it with funny, defiant, bold protests.

The enormous prison-like barriers that now surround the Palestinian areas of Israel have become a vast canvas. Of all I saw during my short stay in Palestine, these walls made the biggest impression on me. The Jews say that the walls are needed for security and that they have already reduced suicide attacks. Arabs demonstrate against their enclosure.

Along one section, someone with stenciled letters wrote GHETTO over and over.

The chaos at the crossings into and out of the walls, which are attended by helmeted and armed Israeli teenagers behind shields doing their national service, made me quake at the thought of actually doing any driving in this place. We hired cabbies to brave the crush of cars at these bottlenecks that seem to be deliberately disorganized, with no lanes, no direction and palpable hostility. Drivers have turned the checkpoints into garbage dumps heaped with litter they hurl at the walls and barbed wire. They honk and holler when there are hold-ups, which is most of the time as the guards inspect passports and look into trunks. Beggars with missing limbs or sponges to clean windows work through the traffic snarls trying to earn some cash.

Our first day in town, we set out in Sally's car to see Bethlehem. As we approached the checkpoint she asked Renee and I for our passports. What? We hadn't even thought to bring them and didn't want to turn back and go all the way to Sally's apartment again. So our strategy was to use our assets, meaning my press card, Renee's ID emblazoned with U.S. State Department seal and Sally's skill at flirting. She popped out of the car to open the trunk, chatting away and flashing the impressive stack of identity documents. No problem.

This photo is by my friend Renee Carrico who claimed car sickness to get the front seat during our travels! She writes a terrific travel blog at www.shefitsa.blogspot.com

2009-08-05T18:54:00.009-04:00

The top photo Renee shot. It reminded me of the horrible scene we saw repeatedly driving through the West Bank of fields filled with nothing but rows of stumps, Israel 's retributive policy for control of the West Bank has included chopping down Palestinian olive groves which kills beautiful plants and ends the livelihood of people in the area.

2009-08-05T18:53:00.005-04:00

Renee took the bottom shot, my favorite of the wall art. Arafat never looked this good in life and the artwork may be a better memorial to him than his gravesite in Ramallah which we also visited.

Is it really hard to figure out how this could have happened?

2009-07-31T09:14:00.002-04:00

Big news in Bosnia is that Abu Hamza, a terrorist and murder has run away from prison in Zenica.

Well, he didn't exactly flee the prison, as it turns out. He was on vacation from prison visiting his family and he just didn't come back.

Police warned the prison the guy would escape, but corrections officials said he had earned a leave for good behavior so they had to give it to him.

Hamza is a considered a threat to national security. In 2000 he began a seven-year sentence for murder. Currently he was working off a sentence of nearly four years for armed robbery and domestic violence.

Pretty Balkan pictures

2009-07-31T05:46:00.001-04:00

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and speaking of weird things tourists do...

2009-07-31T05:17:00.004-04:00

We paid 30 KM (about $24 with the weak dollar) for 10 minutes inside these giant plastic beach balls.

Waterballs contain about two hours worth of air and from advertisements you get the distinct idea, as I did, that you can stand in them and walk across the water. In truth, standing is impossible, I discovered, and even trying to move the ball along by crawling on all fours like a hamster is pretty impossible. The vendors told us -- afterward -- that the record is 45 steps. But if you keep trying you can use up as many calories in 10 minutes as a two-hour workout.

Phyllis said she saw me and Miranda fighting to get to our feet or move our balls in vain and so decided to relax. She reclined on the bottom which was surprisingly cool atop the Adriatic.

I tried screaming to her and Miranda and while inside the ball the sound was enormous, the plastic seals in noise as effectively as it seals out water. So that got me thinking about how I was trapped inside this stupid thing -- which is tethered to the dock -- and what if the vendors decided to leave us or it got unattached and drifted off. How would I get out? I tried kicking and punching the plastic. I tried biting. It all made me pretty claustrophobic. If I ever do this again I'm putting a pen knife in my pocket.

(PS: For those of you who asked how you get IN the ball, here's the answer. The balls are deflated and unzipped when you begin. You get inside and the vendors stick a big leaf-blower thing in that fills the ball with air. Then they tape the zipper shut and push you off into the water.)

Cat food

2009-07-30T06:13:00.010-04:00

Cats are everywhere in Dubrovnik and they are happy. Tourists toss them tidbits, garbage cans are overflowing and near the port, kids fish for them.

We watched kids baiting little lines and dropping it into the water, immediately hauling up an array of flapping sardines they tossed on the sidewalks to tense cats who followed their every mood.

Phyllis shot this picture; Barbara was kind of bent over double getting close up Iphone pictures of cats with wiggling fish in their mouths. Tourists really do weird things.

Fish food

2009-07-30T06:13:00.006-04:00

Near the Kompass Hotel in Dubrovnik we found the Eden Restaurant which friends recommended for good seafood. The setting was pretty but the menu was irresistible. Under specialities I read:

"Anger Fish and Black Risotto"

How could I not order that exact description of my temperament?

As it turned out the fish was breaded and fried and filled with odd big old hard bones. I was angry I ordered it.

Reporters back at CIN said Anger Fish was a bad translation for cod.

pretty Dubrovnik details

2009-07-30T04:28:00.001-04:00

These are from the Franciscan monastery in the Old Town

meeting Barbara in Dubrovnik

2009-07-30T04:20:00.003-04:00

In Dubrovnik we met my NYC friends Barbara and Greg who are on a two-week cruise from Venice to Istanbul through Croatia and Greece.

Read about their adventures at www.barbaragreg.blogspot.com

Barbara was the tour guide for this phase of the vacation and she led us to a 14th Century pharmacy where we bought rose-scented body cream, to Fontana's that sells wild cherry and the blackest dark chocolate ice cream you've ever seen, to the Regent's palace to see art and to this restaurant by the dock where, depending on where you sit, you get served meat or fish.

That's Greg and Phyllis holding up friture (kind of like fried bait fish but tasty) and squid and me and Barbara posing below.

Border crossings

2009-07-30T04:19:00.001-04:00

We had some trouble at the borders on our Balkan odyssey.

Phyllis was driving as we got to Croatia from Bosnia. Miranda, our Bosnian-speaking friend was in the front seat and I was in the back.

"Phyllis, we are coming to the border," I said.

"This is the border," Miranda said.

But Phyllis kept driving. Slowly, but she kept moving, past the border entrance, past the signage, past the uniformed guy who suddenly got very animated.

"Phyllis, you have to stop," I said. She did.

The uniformed guy came running up, waving his arms and chattering. "He's mad you didn't you didn't stop," Miranda needlessly translated. Phyllis immediately protested that she didn't know she was supposed to stop as there was no warning or stop sign.

There was a sign with STOP written in two languages back there, I pointed out. "Stop signs are red," she protested, "That was not red. It was not octagonal!"

The guard talked more. "He says to tell you," Miranda translated, "that the fine for trying to avoid a border crossing is 300 KM."

"300 KM!" I exploded. (It's about $240) That's nuts. We weren't trying to avoid any border. We're tourists!"

"Stop signs are RED," Phyllis kept insisting.

The guard looked in through the window at us dolefully then waved us on disgustedly.

The next day we wanted to pass from Croatia into Montenegro and Phyllis stopped in plenty of time. We had to. There was a long, slow-moving line in front of the window. We baked in the hot sun for half an hour, our boredom relieved only by an extortionist Montenegro official who insisted we had to pay an environmental tax for 10 Euros. he gave us a sticker he said was good for a year. Right. As a friend back in Sarajevo put it: "An environmental tax? In the Balkans?" At one point a guard motioned for us to move from one line into another. It was even more slow-moving. Phyllis was having a fit about that when we finally arrived at the window and turned over passports. The guard wanted to see the car registration.

It was not in the glove box where it was supposed to be. It was not under the seats or tucked into the visor. It was not in the back. It was not in the car.

"He says to pull over to the side there and look some more," Miranda translated.

We ripped the car apart to no avail. We called long-distance to John and Boris who'd used the car recently. They knew nothing.

Miranda and I tried sauntering over to the window and talking to another customs official about where we were going and our disappointment and our dilemma. We were hoping he'd ask for a little money and help us out. But in the end, looking at the first guard who'd wanted our documents, he wished us luck.

The first guard said sure we could go to Montenegro but our car couldn't. We had to take our passports and go back to Croatia.

Uh-oh, we thought. Will we have trouble getting into Croatia? We'd gotten in the night before but now the day-team was on duty. "Can I see your registration?" the guard on the Croatian side asked immediately.

Fortunately, this guard was susceptible to Miranda's ample charms and her plaintiff back-seat narrative about our trip to Montenegro being ruined and we had to go back to Dubrovnik to search for our registration. He waved us across the border.

So, the bottom line is that while drug dealers, smugglers of nearly all goods and Russian thugs pass easily every day into Montenegro, the country's crack customs team kept out three tourists with money to send.

Parking ire

2009-07-30T03:37:00.004-04:00

So, we finally find a parking place in Mostar after a really long time looking for one. It's a hike to the Old Town where we wanted to go, but in the shade by a little apartment building, next to a mini-van emblazoned with the name of a cafe. There are no signs posted anywhere near the spot.

We go to Old Town and be tourists then we return about 90 minutes later and there, inches from our bumper, butt up against the back of our car is another cafe truck. Locked. It's about 110 degrees and there's no sign of a driver anywhere. So Miranda, serving as trip fixer, goes into a restaurant across the street and comes back with the proprietor and the two of them ring on doorbells looking for the driver. No luck. I'm convinced the guy is an upstairs garret with a girlfriend having afternoon delight; Phyllis figures he's trying to teach us a lesson about taking his spot -- although how we were supposed to have know it was his spot is unfathomable.

Just as we are convinced we are gonna spend an entire day of our limited vacation waiting for the angry, oversexed driver to return, Miranda hit on the right button, talked to a woman and in a few minutes a man in shorts but nothing else came sauntering out. He didn't look at us, just got into his offending truck and pulled away just far enough for me -- using K-turn maneuvers -- to wiggle out of the space. Really, a sign saying NO PARKINJE would be more effective.

Fanning

2009-07-30T03:29:00.003-04:00

Summer in the Balkans is brutally hot especially when you are walking over cobble-stoned medieval walkways and clamoring up hills amidst hordes of tourists. Miranda saw fans for sale in a souvenir shop and we spent 30 minutes picking out the perfect instruments. Wooden not paper or lace, hand-painted not appliqued. The shopkeeper gave us all discounts I think because we had to have been good for his business.

The fans did not, however, work so well outside in Mostar as they had in the shop. Which was air conditioned, we realized. Nice sales tactic.

Up hills and over bridges with friends -- a Balkan tour

2009-07-30T03:18:00.003-04:00

Phyllis, Miranda and I packed up and hit the road this weekend (7/25/09) to the Croatian coast. In the top photo you see we made it to Dubrovnik but that was after touring Sarajevo, Konjic, Mostar, Pocitelj, (see the picture below) and Hutovo Blato (a migratory bird preserve which was gorgeous but birdless) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I love showing off this area to strangers. They generally start out asking how I can like it so much and then by the end of the trail they know. Perfect hot sunny weather didn't hurt.

2009-07-30T01:41:00.003-04:00

With Phyllis and Miranda in West Mostar and Blagaj and below showing Phyllis Sarajevo from atop the hill near Bijela Tabia and near the Princip Bridge where World War I began with the shooting death of Grand Duke Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sophie.

Ricotta Hunt: a new kitchen adventure

2009-07-29T06:58:00.006-04:00

This is me (an Italian-American in Bosnia) standing near a sign for Italian food in Bosnia that we found in Trebinje. I laughed at the Bosnized spellings and saw this as a symbol of my efforts this week to make lasagna for a dozen people. Yes, buoyed by success serving spaghetti at a party earlier this month, I sent out invites for another dinner party. Lasagna was a challenge, however.

First was the noodle situation. My mother and sisters make their own pasta, of course, but I am not that advanced or motivated so I went to the supermarket. I know they sell Barillo brand noodles in Sarajevo but all I could find at the store I hit was a thin box with an Italian name that contained maybe 14 thin rectangles about the size of a crayon box. I threw them into a pot of water.

This was a mistake because each rectangle swelled to the size of a tablecloth and there wasn't enough room for all those tablecloths in the pot so they stuck to each other. I cut off all the edges and pieced them together for the lasagna.

This was a minor problem compared to the cheese situation. There are lovely soft, fresh mozzarellas in Sarajevo but I went to three stores without securing a single container of ricotta or pot cheese. Miranda's mother said she knew where to get some and came back with a 10 KM ($8) box that did indeed say RICOTTA. However, inside was a cheese in a box that looked suspiciously like a brie. Same hard outside, same gooey white inside. Clearly this was intended for baking in an oven and then dunking with bread. I gamely cut it up into chunks but decided at the last minute brie would not work in lasagna.

At the chi-chi supermarket ex-pats here frequent I found cottage cheese and marscapone. I mixed them together and seasoned into a reasonable ricotta substitute. But I used the same amount of that mix as I would have used ricotta and marscapone is far softer and mushy.

So I ended up with something that was much more lasagna soup than lasagna. Lasanje maybe. Anyway, it tasted good enough that I had no leftovers afterward.

Phyllis, visiting here from Washington, had almost as much trouble making her signature brandy alexander mousse. The hand mixer that came as part of the furnishings with the new apartment looks like a kind of combination vibrator and rotor-router. It's green and yellow and altogether a weird instrument. (see photo above) It was no match for the egg whites Phyllis stuck it into and an hour later, the mixer was overheated and sending out electric fire smells but the whites still were not forming stiff peaks. We called Miranda and made her come up the hill with her hand mixer.

The mousse turned out fabulously.

Mary in Medjugorje

2009-07-29T06:49:00.002-04:00

In what has to be a blow for Medjugorje, Bosnia's famous holy town, the Vatican has defrocked (a word I love) the priest who has served as the spiritual advisor of six children to whom the Virgin Mary has appeared repeatedly since 1981.

It seems that Father Tomislav Vladic got a nun pregnant in a little sexual misconduct and has failed to produce convincing evidence of Mary's supposed 40,000 visits over the last 28 years.

Church officials, including the local bishop, have long scoffed at the idea of the visions, but this has hardly slowed the stream of pilgrims -- including me -- who have flocked to the place over the years, even during the war years.