July 19, 2008
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Chapter 26 |
After I left my full time job at the New York Times, I never stopped traveling and eventually found myself spending almost half of every year, writing and revising at first Frommer books about Mexico, Greece, Yugoslavia, Japan, and then Insight Guides about the U.S., Rome and the American West. Japan and Greece were always my favorite countries, for totally different reasons, but I soon found the first out of my reach financially even though like the others it had once been Japan on FIVE Dollars a Day. Many years later an American-born columnist in The Japan Times surprised and delighted me with his story about how my book had so endeared him to the country that he'd remained there, married a Japanese woman, brought up children and was now celebrating his 20th wedding anniversary in the country. When he had first arrived in the country in 1963, Rick Kennedy wrote, Japan on $5 a Day "was the only thing to go on (and although) Wilcock evidently spoke only minimal Japanese he loved the city and was committed to poking into every odd corner he could find. He despised the mere tourist who for him was a shameless creature who lurked forlornly in the lobbies of the international hotels, who bought his gimcrack souvenirs in Ginza arcades and who lacked all sense of adventure. Wilcock was the first backpacker". Rick reminisced about how the yen was 360 to the dollar (it's now about 100) and so he took taxis everywhere and followed my advice to see the city by making a circular tour on the Yamanote Line and frequenting the Turkish baths and jazz coffee houses of Shinjuku, Tokyo's 'Greenwich Village'. "Wilcock wasn't at all impressed by fancy places, noting sourly that the Okura was an elegant and rather sterile hotel (and) was much more at home with hotels and ryokan which fit into his five-buck budget”. Calling me "an intrepid explorer" and "a great pioneer", Rick wondered where I might be now, 25 years later, and congratulated me on all my hard work adding that I'd obviously enjoyed myself. Murray Sayle mailed me the column, and after I exchanged letters with Rick, I went back to Japan for my first visit since 1980 and found it just as delightful as ever. I love that country, but the language is too hard for me to master. Even the signs are meaningless unless you know the kanji alphabet. What made researching a book in a country where I didn’t know the language (i.e. all of them) much easier was my habit of hiring as guides and translators young ladies right out of college who wanted to improve their vocabulary. Japanese women were very much more reserved in those days than they are today, and until I trained them a little they would rarely volunteer information. What’s that? What does that headline say? Who’s that man? Why are we waiting here? Was my constant refrain, subjecting my guide to a nonstop barrage of questions. Eventually, it usually paid off. “That sign up there” remarked Yuriko one day, “is rubber”. Rubber? I asked. “Yes, is for Bridgestone tires”…Ah yes, I nodded. “But man’s name is Ishi-bashii, stone bridge, and he changed it around to be like your Firestone”. She was witty, too. While at the Ryoanji Temple we joined a reverential crowd to admire the serene setting of stones, set among raked sand and hillocks in the garden at the back. But moments later, as I waited for her to rejoin me in the lobby I studied the glass-enclosed model of the garden with interest. “Yuriko” I said, “there were 15 rocks in the garden, but the miniature here only shows 14?” After a moment’s pause, Yuriko smiled: “Nothing’s perfect” she said. On another visit to Japan I had endured three laborious changes on the Kinketsu Line to reach Iga-Ueno, the birthplace of Matsuo Basho, the revered 17th century poet who is often said to be the father of haiku, and this time as I left Kyoto I felt a strange compulsion to make a pilgrimage to his grave. The journey to the nondescript town of Otsu, near Lake Biwa took almost the whole day and it was dusk when I found the quiet street on which his tomb, marked with a curiously shaped stone, sat alone in a railed off enclosure. There was nobody else in sight as I leaned against the rail and contemplated Another year is gone/A traveler’s shade upon my head/Straw sandals at my feet.
The concept of haiku—5-7-5 syllables in three Japanese lines, different if translated--has spread all over the world but, sadly, has often been banalized. Usually missing from imitation haiku is the essential kigo, or “season word” which, in the original, ties the haiku to nature. The word haiku itself arrived only in the 19th century but the style existed for centuries before the wandering monk Basho became a revered teacher. In an era when travel could not have been easy, he spent months on the road between instructing his pupils back in Edo. Each day is a journey and the journey itself home, he wrote. "Basho considered life as travel (which) was not a process but life itself", wrote Kunyama Richij, a Japanese historian. “To think traveling as an abode is impossible in worldly life. However, when you see the essence of life as constantly changing, journey is nothing but the form of life". An early influence on the wandering poet was the 12th century warrior monk Saigyo who had written, "We maybe rescue best the self, by throwing it away.” And Basho's viewpoint was shaped further by the Chinese philosopher Chang-tzu who emphasized the importance of looking at nature without making judgments, the "just-so-ness" of things. Studying zen koans--short riddles which aimed to provide an instant insight--Basho strove for spare, lonely beauty, something he called sabi, his poems being, said one observer, "a rare example of one word being worth a thousand pictures". "Moon and sun are passing figures of countless generations”, Basho wrote in 1694, “and years coming and going wanderers, too”.
My final stop was Matsue which had grown into a sizeable town since my visit 20 years earlier. But many of the lovely traditional houses, their rooms measured by the number of tatami mats, were unchanged and in one of them, in the 1890s, lived author Lafcadio Hearn, Greek-born but a reporter for newspapers in Cincinatti and New Orleans before his arrival in Japan. Becoming a citizen he changed his name to Yakumo Koizumi, married the daughter of a samurai and taught and wrote until his death in 1904, aged 54. The garden, replete with “heavily mossed stones, fantastic stone basins for holding water and stone lamps, green with years”, is the same as he described it and the furnished house, too, remains as he left it, a poignant museum displaying his hat, spectacles and writings. When I had first visited Japan, demolition crews were dismantling Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel. It had opened in August 1923 on the very day that the country’s worst earthquake struck, leveling almost everything in Tokyo and nearby Yokohama, but had stood undamaged— just as FLW predicted it would. Now, 23 years later, it was being pulled down, ironically because of its alleged ‘instability although it had originally been built to roll like a ship instead of being anchored to rock bed. Critics of its destruction were probably closer to the mark when they explained (accurately as it turned out) that the owners felt that its spacious rooms, set along corridors of porous volcanic rock were a waste of space and that building a 17-story hotel to replace it would be financially more rewarding. The hotel’s 80-year-old owner Tetsuzo Inumaro was something of a legend in hotel circles having graduated from jobs as a kitchen skivvy in Shanghai, a window cleaner in London, a potato peeler in Paris and a cook at New York’s Waldorf Astoria. The original (pre FLW) Imperial had been built to accommodate Western visitors to Japan, and on one occasion when a dinner was gate-crashed by protesting right-wing nationalists, Inumaro had the orchestra play the Japanese national anthem, Kimigayo, whereupon the intruders stood to attention and then quietly left. IT’S NOT A SUBJECT to which people give much thought but, as I have remarked before, there are two kinds of travel writers, hacks like myself who collect all the facts a tourist needs—hotel prices and ratings, restaurants, bus routes, nightlife, out of town etc—and the polished essayists who rave about places with flattering text that doesn’t always match the reality. The Encyclopedia Britannica’s rather snide comment that “the literature of travel has declined in quality in an age when travel has become most common” seems a bit surprising in view of some of today’s heavily-praised writers. As an editor of guidebooks, I was constantly caught between trying to retain style while finding room for substance, in other words how to find space to insert all the necessary facts without excising too much of the author’s deathless prose. Insight Guides (for which I worked) are strictly formatted and you can’t get a quart into a pint pot etc., etc. So, as a general rule, travel books and travel guides are antithetical to each other. Discounting the ancient Greeks and Marco Polo, early travel books, (as the Britannica points out) were written by the likes of Goethe, Casanova,Balzac and Ivan Goncharov—affluent gentlemen writing for those of similar income and inclination. But even when those big name writers were in their heyday, in fact as early as the 16th century, the travel guide compilers were also at work. The days of mass travel were far ahead but there were plenty of customers for “road books” the travelers’ companions or almanacs in demand by chapmen who endlessly traversed the highways of Europe peddling their wares. The origin of “chapmen” is uncertain but probably derived from the old English ceap meaning ‘trade’. The Chapman traveled the country bearing news, gossip, medicines, and ballads with a bag around his neck containing simple items such as needles, scissors, thimbles and combs. For many rural people who never saw a shop, these were the only merchants. The chapman also carried cheap chapbooks, which, by the late 17th century, had become the principal reading matter of the poor.
An early example, The City and Countrye Chapman’s Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1687, published in London, contained a list of fairs and markets in England and Wales, their dates and times, information about post roads “with other things useful for all sorts of Traders or Chapmen whatsoever”. Alas, we can give no byline to the anonymous author but his task in an era when travel meant enduring mud, flea-filled straw mattresses, indifferent if not inedible food and the depredations of surly innkeepers and irascible coachmen it could not have been easy. Obviously the compiler of this and similar guides must have been a penurious chapman himself; it is unlikely he was traveling on a FAM trip or even an expense account. Chapbooks were usually printed on one sheet which when folded would provide a booklet of eight to 24 pages depending on the size of the sheet. It was often sold in this fashion and left to the purchaser to fold, cut and pin or sew the pages together. It measured about 6” x 4” and was illustrated with crude, lively woodcuts, usually selling for one penny. Most chapbooks were undated so they could be sold indefintely. Histories of notorious highwaymen, pirates, murderers, robbers, trials, executions, dying behavior, dreadful warnings and memoirs of infamous and famous characters—the tabloid horror stories of their day—were natural chapbooks, but equally of interest were superstitions and beliefs in charms, fortune telling and witchcraft. The highwayman Dick Turpin was a favorite subject as was the notorious burglar Jack Sheppard who became the subject of a pantomime and comic opera. Sometimes dreams, which led to the discovery of the victim’s body, were related and there were many books offering dream interpretations. In the 18th century books like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels had their abridged chapbook version not too long after publication. Works by Oliver Goldsmith and Benjamin Franklin were popular. The Copyright Act of 1709 didn’t do much to prevent plagiarism and anyway most of the subjects were traditional. And, 13 years before Thomas Cooke initiated mass travel with his temperance group tours, the travel book finally appeared as a chapbook. In 1828 at Dunfermline, John Miller published
Everywhere I went in the world I handed over, in lieu of a name card, copies of my own chapbooks, matchbook-sized minimags (usually full of timeless quotes) and pasted tiny stickers promoting my travel guides in the bathrooms of Japanese onsens or on restaurant menus in Mexican cafes. Once I handed over a minimag to passengers on a neighboring donkey we passed while trekking in Kashmir, and a New York friend recounted going into the ladies room on a beach in Greece and finding a sticker on the mirror that proclaimed; The best book on Greece is Greece on $5 a Day In the early editions of the books, I urged readers to place a copy prominently on the table in a foreign restaurant to attract the attention of other readers and hopefully make new friends along the way. When I first went to Japan it even became possible to match readers up with local residents who would give them advice and answer their questions. One early helper was Cid Corman, whom I suggested that readers meet and greet at his regular Tokyo coffee shop, was a renowned poet who once translated a book, put out an edition of 250 and allowed only people he knew to buy it.
SOUTH AMERICA WAS the next logical subject for An Occult Guide, following the similar books I had written about Britain and about the magical sites of European countries. Thus, I found myself in Latin America spending time in libraries and bookshops. My sponsor, Richard Rubinstein, had allocated a satisfactory budget of $7,500 for my trip but I was always pressed for time, rushing from one country to the next before the money ran out.. And because it was to be a book about “magic” rather than a conventional guide book, it was important to concentrate on the spiritual aspects. I would discover what looked like occult books (in Spanish) in local bookstores and airmail them back to Rona, my assistant, to translate what appeared to be the significant parts to await my return. My first stop was Brazil, well known for the dozens of mystic cults which had evolved from its earlier pagan beliefs, these mingled with a curiously tolerant Catholic church which had incorporated many of its rituals. Touch down was at Manaus where the Amazon visibly begins, as the inky black Rio Negro marries the rushing red currents of the Solimões. Fortunes were made from the worldwide rubber trade in Manaus, and its legacy was the majestic Amazonas opera house where Caruso sang on opening night in 1899. But Brazil’s spiritual center is to the southeast at Salvador, capital of Bahia state. Here two-thirds of the population is of African descent and the original settlers brought their rituals and religion along with them. Since most of Brazil’s early records and files of the slave traffic were destroyed in the 1890s after the birth of the Brazilian Republic, you might say that candomblé, that pagan/Christian fusion, is a scarce link to the past. Almost a century ago there were complaints about the way that candomblé was encroaching on Salvador’s day-to-day life. A letter in A Tarde newspaper on Dec 5, 1935 said: “Now the African cult is to be seen even in the best residential areas”. But it wasn’t long before candomblé sessions were being touted as tourist attractions, although the nightclubs that offered a taste of this esoteric religion usually also offered demonstrations of the more entertaining capoeria, the distinctive foot-fighting that the slaves originally brought with them from Africa. And, in general, the cult’s appeal is the poorer and less sophisticated members of the black community. “All this low stuff ought to be done away with” the nephew of a prominent babalo (cult leader) told author Donald Pierson. “It’s a sign of a very backward people. It has even disappeared in Africa. Only in Bahia do these old customs hang on”. What you’ll see at the sort of performance visited by tourists such as myself, is mostly ritualistic dancing to the sound of incessant drumming. It’s not exactly exciting. Before leaving Salvador, all tourists visit Laziness Street, ironically named because it was here the manacled slaves could pause for a 10-minute drink of water. A few visitors take the boat ride across to Itaparica (the third point of what’s known as an “esoteric triangle”.) There’s a temple here built by Brazil’s Theosophical Society in 1967. Rio’s equivalent of candomblé is macumba, sometimes defined by the much-misused term voodoo, although the word voodoo itself is nothing more than a derivative of Vodu, the Dahomey word for God. In any case, according to the Brazilian sociologist Arthur Ramos, in Rio’s macumbas “possession by the spirits rarely attains that violent form which marks the candomblés of Bahia. There is more artificiality and considerably less spontaneity. (they) are little more than séances of elemental spiritism, interspersed with a few elements derived from the African cults”.
Some claim that there are more than several million spiritualists in today’s Brazil with those at the top preoccupied with extra sensory perception; the ones in the middle devoted to “the gospel according to Kardec”; and the remainder patronizing the mediums claiming to be possessed by African gods or American Indian spirits. Allan Kardec was the French author in 1856 of The Book Of Spirits which is said to have given respectability to what had been a jumble of animistic fetishes. The combination of mountains, tropical forest, and sea which forms its backdrop, makes Rio de Janeiro one of the most stunning cities in the world, but my next stop outdid even that in spectacle. This was the dazzling Iguaçu Falls where the borders of two other countries, Uraguay and Paraguay, meet up with that of Brazil. Discovered by a Spanish explorer in 1541, this “swirling boiling mass,…a chaos of forces” as José Vasconcelos described it, had always been revered by the native Guaraní and Tupinamba tribes, some of whom evoke the name of a revered water spirit as they set off on their daily fishing. We encounter the Guaraní once more in neighboring Argentina in which the tribe’s earliest members lived on islands at the mouth of the Parana river where it joins the Rio de Plata. They ritually sacrificed their enemies, practicing cannibalism, and as they spread into the Chaco, swampy plains between what are now four countries, they were targeted in the 16th century by the invading Spaniards in search of gold and silver. Common to the Chaco tribes was a belief in the evil spirit, anacua or gualichu, which was supposed to bring sickness and death and could be countered only by the shamans who “fired their spirits with abundant libations of chichi, shouting, grimacing, going into contortions like one possessed” (wrote Daniel Granada in 1896), “imitating the roaring of tigers and terrifying cries of other animals”. A seven hundred-mile road crosses the undulating pampas to Chile. Here begin the fabled Andes and the territory of the Araucanians whose own shamans were uniquely women, although sometimes berdaches, i.e. men with effeminate characteristics. From Chile comes a 600-page book by Enrique Oblitas Poblete with its collection of remedies based on the herbal knowledge of these ancient tribes who were said to have inherited the medical secrets of the Incas.
Seeing as the Incas had no system of writing, what is known about the five centuries they ruled until the arrival of the Spanish, comes from oral tradition and the artifacts they left behind. by far the most dramatic of these is the ruined mountaintop city of Machu Picchu., discovered in 1811 by Dr. Hiram Bingham. To visit, required a 12-hour train trip from Cuzco up into the Andes, with occasional stops at tiny villages where wizened natives clustered offering items of wool and fur. Memorable as 7,350ft Machu Picchu is, however, it would be hard to rank it over another stop on my journey—Easter Island. Getting there took some planning, specifically booking a seat on the solitary daily flight out of Santiago which landed on the 14-mile long island after five hours crossing an empty sea. There was nothing to do after arriving and there were only two hotels on the island at the time. I stayed at the cheaper one, the main memory of which is that the waiter kept appearing at dinner time and apologizing: “Sorry folks; weather kept the plane from coming again today and so you’ll have to have lobster again”. Nobody has satisfactorily explained the mysterious statues, so I won’t even try. There were other stops on my South American tour, in Bolivia and Ecuador, and I explored the ancient Indian customs as thoroughly as I was able via research in the libraries and visits to ethnic museums. But after seeing Easter Island they all seemed a bit anti-climactic.
IT'S NOT A subject that the efficient Amsterdam Tourist Office is anxious to emphasize, but clearly a goodly proportion of its 2.5 million visitors each year are attracted to the city by sex and soft drugs. Walk down charming Zeedijd opposite the Central Station: the famous red light district is located around Oudezijds Achterburgwal, an area locally known as "de Wallen' dating from the 13th century when the original citizens walled-off the sea. It's fun to visit, even for an innocent observer, with some of the alleys so narrow that eye contact with the scantily-clad "girls" only feet away is unavoidable. They spend most of their working time being appraised (and gazing back), so unashamed, unabashed staring is what they're used to. If you showed the slightest interest, they would open the door to inform you that the price for 15 minutes was 50 guilders (extra for special services). It's all very businesslike and unemotional. As for marihuana, almost everybody agrees that the tolerant attitude that allows it to be smoked is the best way for it not to become a problem. Coffee shops usually restrict sales to 2 1/2 grams (Dfl. 25 ), samples to inspect being enclosed in plastic packets in the menu, and will supply the papers with which you can roll maybe half a dozen joints. Each joint will get you stoned for two or three hours. For the neophyte smoker who, for one reason or an another, has never sampled the benevolent herb, Amsterdam offers a golden opportunity to try it risk-free, but due to the ignorant attitude that most countries' legal systems adopt, don't be tempted to take any of it home with you. The Cannabis Retailers Association (in Dutch: BCD) published a multicolor map/guide to 29 of the city's best coffee shops plus 27 other major landmarks including Paradiso and the museums. This could be picked up at the interesting Hash Marihuana Hemp Museum, Oudezijds Achertburgwal 148, across the bridge from the Oude Kerk. It was one of the clearest maps available, everything located and containing 12 cautionary "tips for doing it right" by coffee shop pioneer Henk de Vries, owner of the Bulldog chain (on Voorburgwal, Leidseplein and Singel) The tips were especially valuable for first-time smokers advising them not to mix marihuana or hash with alcohol (or tobacco), not to smoke when driving or working and to know when you've had enough. My old underground paper colleague Bill Levy told me that the real reason he considered himself blessed with being able to live there for the past quarter-century “is the sense of playfulness combined with mercantile pragmatism making Amsterdam palatable for everyday life and a future model of visionary urban harmony. This city still remains an outpost of open minds and open legs, where love and thought (Eros and Psyche) are not merely tolerated but encouraged. We take it for granted. Visitors gape. And depending on their worldview either deplore it as licentiousness or praise it as libertarianism. It is nothing more than reasonableness, however.” Of course, talking about sex and drugs might be a case of putting the cart before the horse, because Amsterdam truly is one of the world’s great cities. Apart from its superlative transport system (and the thousands of cyclists), there are few more delightful walks than beside the uncoiling network of canals bordering the lovely gabled houses with staircases so narrow that furniture must be hoisted by pulleys to the upper windows. Many of the canal homes were warehouses in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the port was the richest city in the world busily trading with 625 foreign harbors. The population of this international city is only 57.6% native Dutch. Almost three quarters of the population speak at least one other language, and almost half speak two additional languages. The front of Central Station is decorated with 1m. square tiles depicting the coats of arms of 15 European cities. In a message hoping that visitors will be "inspired" by the city, it’s former mayor, Schelto Patijn, said: "In Amsterdam we are adept at the art of compromise and we are proud of the fact that we have a city in which respect for individual freedom and an understanding of how people need to cooperate in order to live together, achieve a careful balance".
Wed, Nov 16, 1994: The soft black leather couches in the swank lounge of the Hotel Okura here in Amsterdam, are starting to fill up with indisputably hippy types as staid Japanese guests watch warily from the bar. Woolen army surplus caps, grungry jackets and shoulder-length hair with the occasional dreadlocks are making a fashion statement of the sort that the hotel rarely sees. Across the street, the Pax Party House is about to open for the annual Cannabis Cup Awards sponsored by New York's High Times magazine which has flown in 150 of its readers (seven- day packages, $85- $1,250). Guests, equipped with a glossy program containing map and schedules, will be dispatched around the city to sample the different strains of marijuana on offer, preparatory to voting their preferences. Getting around this lovely city is a breeze with its ubiquitous trams, an efficient Metro, cycle paths and delightful walkways beside the innumerable canals. (The Utne Reader once called Amsterdam's transport system "one of the eco-wonders of the modern world".) Thurs, Nov 17: Inside Pax, the air is thick with intoxicating smoke and upstairs the stalls of Hemp Expo are crowded. Exhibitors from half a dozen countries are displaying hemp clothing, bags, blankets; high-intensity lights and drip-feeding systems for growers; cannabis cookbooks and planting manuals; packets of seed ("We will not ship outside Europe" proclaims the Sensi Seed Bank catalog) and belts, jewelry, make-up and shoes. On the stairs dealers peddle bags of buds while volunteers from the Cannabis Action Network (2560 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704) hand out leaflets affirming their intention "to repeal the unjust marihuana laws and educate the public about the herb's uses for industry, medicine and recreation". The Hemp Initiative, declaring that hemp is among the world's oldest, most valuable and universally prolific crops, manned a stall, and so did The Institute of Medical Marihuana proclaiming that marihuana is among the world's oldest medicines for treating such maladies as emphysema, arthritis, glaucoma and mood disorders. Every half-hour a busload of dopers sets off to tour 15 out of scores of cafes that serve weed along with their coffee and snacks. Riders can get on and off the bus at any point, rejoining the bus on its later circuit. Coffee shop etiquette requires buying something to eat or drink to accompany the weed which is available to smoke on the spot or takeaway. Most cafes take great pride in their particular brand and weigh it out on a digital scale (from about $8 up), rolling papers and use of a bong being included in the price. At Grey Area the chef has been experimenting with hempseed dishes (pastas, pizzas, sprouts); at the Green House such rare strains as Chitral Special Silver Pearl, Kush and Northern Lights are available and the health food -oriented Paradox offers exotic cocktails such as Nervous Breakdown (avocado & coconut). Rick's Cafe displays a laconic picture of the young Bogie, smiling enigmatically with a cigarette dangling from his lips. Tropical cocktails (Between the Sheets, Fuzzy Navel, Yellow Bird) and regular booze are dispensed downstairs while Moroccan hash and chess games dominate the upper lounge. MTV plays incessantly in most bars. Two lovely ladies preside over the cozy cafe Lucky Mothers on Keizersgracht adorned with hanging plants, peacock feathers and quartz crystals. No liquor here, just soft drinks, coffee and relaxing weed (Mother's Milk is the house brand) served in pre-weighed bags on a tray containing smoking accessories. CIA offers a card marked into strips that smokers here fold to use as filters when rolling joints. Frid, Nov 18: The speakers at the afternoon seminars were joyfully upbeat about hemp's enhanced status in the world, but already signs of divisiveness are emerging between dopesters and those who regard the Hemp Initiative as heralding great commercial opportunities. These latter unchivalrously took the position that any association with pot-smokers would be detrimental to sales of bags, clothing and other straight items. Aware of this potential split with the battle to legalize hemp still to be won, more than one speaker urged a united front. (The really knowledgeable, of course, were able to specify exactly how much THC the resin contained to make it smokeable). Another split, amusingly trivial, was between sinsemilla growers and a feminist activist who insist that the conventional separation of the female from the male plants during the growing period is unfairly sexist. AMERICA'S first marihuana law, delegates were told, was enacted at Virginian's Jamestown Colony in 1619 and ordered farmers to grow hemp because of its value to the new community for fiber, oil, food and medicine. George Washington, Jefferson, Henry Ford and Daniel Boone were just a few of the well-known hemp farmers. By 1938, the magazine Popular Mechanics was extolling the plant as "the new billion dollar crop" and listing some of the 5,000 textile plants manufactured from it. Substituting hemp for wood cellulose in paper-making would go a long way towards ending deforestation, the experts were agreed. A Ukrainian American reported that his gift of a California catalog offering hemp T-shirts, belts and bags to his farmer friend in Kiev aroused such enthusiasm that the farmer promptly introduced the crop to his fields. But, the Yank warned, although growing and selling it was legal in the Ukraine doing business was frustrating, the kind of place where it took three hours to make a phone call to a town only one hours' drive away. Photographer Robert Connell Clarke provided a knowledgeable commentary to accompany his slides of harvesting the hemp crop somewhere in China. Sat, November 19: In the limousine ferrying visitors to the Green House, this year's award-winning coffee shop ("best ambiance" etc), the driver was handing round a cigar-sized spiff and remarking on how exaggerated were his illusions when stoned. "But the most useful thing we can learn" I ventured, "is exactly what percentage of exaggeration to allow for. Because when you come down your ability to fulfill those dreams is always greater than it was before". The Milkweg, a huge midtown warehouse, had changed little since my last visit more than a decade ago. A spacious concert room with bar shares the main floor with an art gallery, cafe and seat-lined halls; upstairs are a video room, cinema, theater and attractive tea room. Dealers informally hawk various strains of weed; there is no pressure to buy and many of those present obviously prefer drinking. Orrin Bolton climbed onto the stage to sing. "He's Michael's brother", revealed High Times' publisher John Holmstrom. "He has the guts to openly support the pot decriminalization movement whereas Michael won't stick his neck out for fear of losing his mainstream audience" High Times, of course, is keenly aware of who its friends are and frequently promotes the efforts of pro-pot bands although so far none of them has reached the superstar level. John introduced me to the current head of NORML, the suave Richard Cowan, onetime head of Yale's rightwing YAF and a colleague of the NationalReview's William Buckley. "Expect to see him nominated as Libertarian candidate for president in 1996", John observed Tonight, at least, the would-be president could claim to have inhaled but not smoked. The conversation, even un-stoned, was a high level throughout the entire convention. Attendees of all ages displayed a ready intelligence that seems an ironic rebuke to those who feel that dope smokers are all dumb hippies who've never grown up. Any objective observer might well feel that a world run by bright pot smokers would be a less-aggressive as well as a more efficient and humane one than the one run by the present bunch. How many pols do you know that smoke dope? If none, the reason might be either that dopesters are too smart to get into that sickening game or that dope-smoking pols are much too hypocritical to ever admit it. ============ BY THE EARLY ‘80S, I was taking my video camera everywhere, crafting and editing 28-minute shows in the camera to obviate the need for post production when I returned. My base was my mother’s home near Watford past which flowed the Great Junction Canal. Nick Ray, a writer whose home was Watford, described it as “the sort of town that makes you want to travel” and, apart from an occasional trip on the canal itself, that’s mostly what I did. Two offshore islands particularly caught my attention, the larger of which (although still pretty small) was Lundy, lashed by the waves and gales of the Atlantic and hedged by 300ft cliffs 20 miles from the south coast of Wales. As far back as 1154 when Sir Jordan de Marisco built his castle as an impregnable base from which to pillage ships passing through the Bristol Channel, Lundy always seems to have inspired grandiose dreams for its owners. England's Henry II was so outraged that he declared the island forfeit to the Knights Templar. But Sir Jordan barred them from landing, and the family continued their piracy for another century until one of his unlucky descendants was tricked into going ashore and hanged for the family's persistent hubris. Even today ships must anchor offshore and transfer visitors to a smaller boat. When I visited, Lundy was accessible via a 21-mile trip on the m/s Oldenburg five days a week from Bideford in Britain's westerly Devon in winter and also from Ilfracombe in summer. But this only on days when the sea was not too rough. Water on the island came from wells, the waste from brewing being used to irrigate vegetables, and electricity was provided from a wind-powered generator (100 kw hours over a 24-hour period) which was turned off at midnight. No cars, animals or guns were allowed. With a winter population of 14, rare flora and fauna and several miles of trails through desolate moorland, sparsely populated with sheep, deer and wild ponies, the island offered the kind of tranquility that's hard to find nowadays. Even in summer when the occasional helicopter arrived, overnight tourists were restricted to what few accommodations were available plus a campsite restricted to 30 people. For centuries the island produced what one historian tagged "a record of association with piracy, smuggling and assorted thuggery". In 1609 a notorious pirate named Thomas Salkeld landed "with colors displayed in defiance of the king of England, wished his majesty's heart was on the point of his sword and declared himself King of Lundy". The Turks, Spanish and French all operated from the tiny island (3 miles long by half a mile wide) at one time or another, using it as a base to prey on Bristol-bound ships. Most of the pirates were eventually caught and hanged. Lundy is an old Norse name meaning 'puffin island', and the birds, now a protected species breed here from April onwards. Four hundred other varieties of seabirds have been spotted, some of which ramblers (cars are forbidden on the island) are likely to see. Sheep and a handful of goats and deer meander through the scrub and wildflower patches. Aquatic life flourishes in Lundy's ponds, the prolific and brightly colored marine life giving the seabed--with its patches of yellow, orange and pink --the appearance of "a garden in full bloom"boasts a pamphlet distributed by the Lundy Marine Nature Reserve.
THE 97-FT LIGHTHOUSE, with its 130 steps, that dominates the island's point, 470 feet above the crashing waves, caught the attention of the Victorian author Charles Kingsley who wrote of its "sleepless, fiery eye (which) blinks all night over the night mists of the Atlantic. If, as a wise man has said, the day will come when our degenerate posterity will fall down and worship rusty locomotives and fossil electric telegraphs", Kingsley added "then surely there will be pilgrimages to Lundy and prayers to that white, granite tower..." Although the flashes of light could theoretically be seen for 26 miles, they were so often obscured by fog that eventually their warning was supplemented by a pair of cannons which boomed every ten minutes.
Today, the alerts are carried by two smaller lighthouses, and the refurbished keepers' quarters of the obsolete Old Light- at one time the highest in Britain --are rented to bed and breakfast visitors. Apart from taking stimulating nature walks, staying in front of cheerful blazing fires in their cottages or, for the adventurous, kayaking around the island's eight miles of rugged coast, visitors to Lundy have no distractions which, of course, is why most of them come and certainly why I enjoyed it so much. The post office, which also serves as the local store, sells “Puffin stamps”, valid only for postage to the mainland. Ongoing mail must be additionally stamped with regular UK postage.
Sooner or later everybody finds their way to the charming Marisco Tavern, the island headquarters. Decorated with lifebelts from shipwrecks and a fireplace carved with the image and initials of a notorious smuggler, the tavern brews its own beer every Monday with water from a deep well and stays open every day until the electricity goes off at midnight. It also serves as the island, restaurant, store and post office. It stocks groceries, bread, meat, vegetables, fresh milk from the island farm, fruit, films, drugstore items, wine and camping fuel. On the days that seas are too rough for the crossing mainlanders love to joke about how to predict the weather. "If you can see Lundy" they say, "it's going to rain. And if you can't see Lundy, it's already raining". The second of my favorite British islands is hardly an island. In fact, it’s so close to land that visitors can walk to it when the tide is out. When the tide is in, access is by way of an ungainly Sea Tractor which has been described as "a bus on stilts'. I had read about a young couple, Tony and Beatrice Porter, fixing up an Art Deco hotel on an island off the Devon coast and set off with my video camera to see them. Agatha Christie's Ten Little Nigger Boys---a title that became politically incorrect only in the 1970s--was written during her length stay as were half a dozen of other novels. One of them, Evil Under the Sun, actually had a Burgh Island setting. Noel Coward had given parties where his guests were entertained by a full scale orchestra from a raised platform in the seawater pool. "The moment we saw the island it was love at first sight, a dream come true, all the clichés" Tony told me breathlessly. "We had to have it, no matter what it cost. It was on the market, about to be auctioned, and the owners had had scores of inquiries--from a Canadian nudist organization, from gay groups, a rock star, some German developers, you name it. They said they wouldn't take a penny less than half a million pounds and we stayed up night talking about how to raise the money. We took a wealthy friend over to see it but it turned out he didn't like cliffs".
We were sitting on the curving terrace fronting the Ganges Bar, named for a sailing ship built in Bombay in 1831 whose figurehead formed the bar's centerpiece. Tony gestured to a 1930 printed tariff offering stays at the hotel for a then-expensive six or eight guineas a night and continued his story. "Finally we pleaded with our bank. We told them we'd sell everything we'd got....our house, our car, our boat, all our policies, everything we could scrape up. We went back to the owners with our offer, $550,000 and after a suspenseful 24 hours they agreed to abandon the auction and sell to us. From January 1986, Burgh Island was ours". But there was still to be an auction, this time of the aged hotel's furniture and fittings. A couple of thousand buyers turned up, snapping up beds once occupied by King Farouk and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, tables at which Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks had dined. The Porters acquired some wicker chairs and much of the hotel's monogrammed linen which had doubtless been in use when the Beatles stayed and when the Dave Clark Five made a movie on the island. Tides encroach upon the beach between the mainland and Burgh Island from both east and west. When they part, access to the island can be made on foot from approximately three hours after high water to roughly three hours before the next high water. When they meet, the island is accessible by Sea Tractor which negotiates the mile or two of water between the island and Bigbury-on-Sea in almost any weather—a five-minute trip except when slowed down by big winds. Built at Newton Abbot for £8,000 in 1970 to replace an earlier model dating from the 1930s, the tractor is especially popular with children. On busy summer days there is sometimes a two-hour wait to ride a distance that can be walked in 10 minutes. "All the kids like to have their pictures taken with the driver" said Jim Brenton, a local barman known in neighboring pubs as "Lightning". He refers to the tractor, which operates on a hydraulic pump system, as his "little baby" and checks the mechanism daily. "It's sturdy and would never capsize but did once stall in the middle of the bay when passengers were taken off by boat. Of course, I have to be ready to turn out at all hours if necessary; it wouldn't do for islanders to be stranded on the mainland." The Sea Tractor can reach a top speed of about four or five miles per hour and although it ran on relatively cheap diesel fuel, it was expensive to maintain. Each one of its massive, heavy-duty tires, for example, cost more than a thousand dollars. Smugglers and wreckers were associated with the island in previous centuries, but there was sparse documentation about their activities apart from the celebrated Tom Crocker who died at the end of a custom officer's pistol in 1811. Immortalized in the name of a Bigbury pub and by a rough carving in the fireplace of the Pilchard Inn, he is said to have buried treasure (never found) which his ghost visited from time to time. One of the island's major assets is that it is environmentally protected from new buildings, although existing structures can be rebuilt. Among these is a ruined chapel dedicated to St Michael, the patron saint of mariners, which in later years became a huer's lookout, a huer being the man deputed to watch for shoals of pilchards and alert the fisherman drinking away the hours in the Pilchard Inn. Millions of fish filled these waters for hundreds of years with tons of pilchards sometimes trawled in a single day. Their oil was processed on the island and the fishy remains sold to mainland farmers for cattle food. After my chat with Tony I walked for half an hour on the narrow tracks--there are no roads-- around the cone-shaped island, through bracken, wild poppies and a pale blue bloom called squill. One especially precipitous path veered over a rocky chasm to a bird sanctuary where herring gulls and cormorants wheeled into the sky with piercing, keening cries at my approach. Here I found another crumbling ruin which Tony later told me had once housed a camera obscura . He said he planned to restore it. Walks around the island lead inevitably to the Pilchard Inn, whose creaking sign dates the building to 1336. It served for many years as a processing and salting shed for the fish from which it gets its name. But before the 20th century the pilchards had moved to other waters and an 1893 visitor, J.W. Page, wrote that he found the inn deserted. Not any more. When I was there the pub was keeping regular hours, subject to accessibility between tides, although even the coziness of a cheerful log fire enticed few visitors across the sands in winter. The licensees often sat alone beside the fire with only two cats and Captain Laura for company. Captain Laura, a stuffed parrot, entertained customers for many years with his raucous vocabulary, but now sits mute behind glass. To read about A (slow) Train Trip Around the Peloponnese click here ================================= |
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