The most striking thing in Pakistan is the vision of trucks and buses completely covered in a riot of color and design. They might spew diesel fumes, they may take up all of the winding, narrow, under-maintained road one is trying to negotiate, but they are certainly noticeable, like so many mechanical dinosaurs adorned in full courtship colors.
The decoration of vehicles is a common practice in a number of countries in addition to Pakistan. Similar techniques and materials are employed in truck and (more frequently) bus decoration in the Philippines, Indonesia, and several countries in Central and South America; in South Asia itself, Indian trucks are painted, as are the scooter rickshaws, called "Baby Taxis", of Bangladesh. What makes the case of Pakistan unique, however, is the pervasiveness of vehicle decoration, since decoration is heavily utilized on virtually all privately and fleet-owned commercial vehicles, from the well known trucks and buses, to vans, share taxis, animal carts and even juice vendors' push carts.
The motifs on the trucks can be categorized in five groups:
1. Idealized elements of life, such as the romanticized village, landscapes or beautiful women.
2. Elements from modern life, such as pictures of political figures or patriotic symbols.
3. Talismanic and fetish objects, such as horns, yak tails and items of clothing.
4. Talismanically or religiously loaded symbols, such as eyes and fish.
5. .Obvious religious symbols and images such as Buraq (a celestial horse that is believed to have carried the Prophet Muhammad on a spiritual journey to heaven).
However, by far the commonest religious symbols appearing on a truck are the Ka'ba and Prophets mosque, appearing on the left and right of the front of the truck somewhere towards the top.
Interestingly, half a world away, some Sicilians (whose culture was also influenced at one time by Islam; coincidence?) used to decorate first their horse carts and then their cars in a a similar kind of way. (The Fiat 500 at left is absolutely fabulous!)
The Vespa was war-stricken Italy's reaction to the need for personal transportation in 1946. Little would anyone have suspected then that this sturdy little scooter born of necessity would become associated with the swank good life of the ultra-hip by the 1960s...
To celebrate my finally joining the mod squad here in Italy, here are some WONDERFUL 60s commercials for the Vespa! (Don't miss the girls in skirts riding side-saddle!!) Enjoy!!
I first saw this 30 minute-long animated short film more than 20 years ago, and it's still every bit as poignant today, if not even more so. Please watch - ideally in fullscreen - and I hope you will be as inspired by its beauty, hope, and wisdom as I continue to be to this very day.
"The Man Who Planted Trees tells the story of a solitary shepherd who patiently plants and nurtures a forest of thousands of trees, single-handedly transforming his arid surroundings into a thriving oasis. Undeterred by two World Wars, and without any thought of personal reward, the shepherd tirelessly sows his seeds and acorns with the greatest care. As if by magic, a landscape that seemed condemned grows green again. A film of great beauty and hope, this story is a remarkable parable for all ages and an inspiring testament to the power of one person." -amazon.com
But not the fun kind! ☺ I was astounded at how many were listed when I was waiting for my Italian husband to vote in the European elections... Some of these parties he'd never heard of before!
Thanks to all the wonderful local fresh fruit and veggies here, it's easy to eat low calorie. That is, until you get to the grocery store and see all the wonderful food there!
I snagged such goodies at the Italian grocery hypermarket today!
Longtime readers of "MMC" will know that I typically avoid political discussions, and I am practically never, ever partisan... I believe that people tend to come to their individual political conclusions - whatever they may be - as a result of their own personal reasoned deliberations, and that needs to be respected.
But I guess every rule has an exception... Admittedly, politics is a messy business everywhere, and surely good taste is not a prerequisite. But exceedingly poor (even disgusting) taste seems to be becoming the political rule of the day here. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Prime Minister Berlusconi's Hijinks Have Finally Raised Eyebrows in Italy, and today the Italian neo-fascist party is holding an election rally right around the corner from my house in Venice; they'd originally wanted to march very near - if not through - the historic Jewish quarter of the city! (That was cancelled, but needless to say, I'm not at my house today.)
But it doesn't end there. Check out the posters for the European Parliament elections which are coming up next week... You may have heard in the news that Italian has had a tremendous problem recently with embarkations of illegal immigrants. Well, the party of the Northern League, whatever valid points its platform may or may not have, tends to be notoriously jingoist about Northern Italians and denegrates nearly everyone from south of (and including!) Rome. The poster on the bottom left shows an American Indian and states, "They faced immigration. Now they live on reservations!" As an American, I was shocked and appalled that such an enormous miscarriage of justice by my own forefathers was being completely mischaracterized by the Lega for the sake of grossly misleading political propaganda.
But I believe that even that pales in comparison to what the party of the Radicali, practically the Italian equivalent of the Libertarians, are doing right now. Their politicians are wearing YELLOW STARS OF DAVID! Initially, I believed that they were doing it as an act of solidarity with the illegal immigrants who are being rounded up and kept in containment camps before being deported... and while I still found it deeply questionable equating this admittedly difficult human rights issue with the genocide of six million people, I thought at least I could understand why they were doing it. Instead, it turns out that they're wearing them just because they feel like their party is under-represented in the media!!! While I used to have respect for their leader, Marco Pannella, despite his sensationalist antics sometimes (he was instrumental for example in the legalization of divorce in Italy in the 1970s), this was the last straw!
I am officially disgusted... no, actually nauseated, by Italian politics.
Today was the annual celebration of Venice's "Marriage to the Sea," and a wonderful reminder of why I love this city.
It was Nan McElroy's blog Living Venice that reminded me that this weekend was the Feast of the Ascension, celebrated in quite a particular way by Venetians.
The "Festa della Sensa," as Venetians call it, has been celebrated for nearly a millennium. Probably the best read you can find about it is in Ed Muir's Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, but - as a quick intro - I can tell you that every year on the traditional Catholic feast day celebrating Christ's Ascension into Heaven after his Crucifixion, the city would take to its boats and row out to the end of the Lido barrier island, right in front of the Benedictine church and monastery of San Nicolò (as you can see in the image by eighteenth-century Venetian painter Gabriele Bella).
There, the Doge (the ceremonial head of the government) would drop a ring into the water, precisely where the Venetian lagoon met the Adriatic Sea, saying "We wed thee, O sea, as a sign of our true and perpetual dominion." (What can I say? Venetians were legendary for being more pragmatic than romantic!)
Today, a similar ceremony occurs, with the mayor standing in for the doge. But what really got me today was getting to wander around the old monastery complex of San Nicolò and the concert of seventeenth-century music which concluded the day's festivities.
Firstly, a couple of iPhone pics of San Nicolò... While most of the complex that one sees today (at left) is later than the sixteenth century, I have a soft spot in my heart for any and all remnants of the early Middle Ages. Sure enough, there is preserved a section of Romanesque-Byzantine mosaic pavement and some columns from the ruins of the nave of the older church, about a thousand years old! Even better is an easy-to-overlook tiny fragment of relief of an eagle, probably meant to be a symbol of the Saint John who is believed to have written one of the Gospels. But the evening's concert held in the church was the best part of the day! Firstly, as is the case with so many cultural events here sponsored by groups like Musica Venezia, it was FREE! (Particularly amazing when you consider that you'd be hard pressed to find anything of the like stateside at nearly any price!)
Secondly, the musicians (from the group VeniDilecteMi) were fantastic (6 male & female vocalists, 2 violinists, a viola, 1 lutist, and an organist), and performed music composed more or less at the same time as the present church of San Nicolò was itself was built, that is, during the 1600s.
As you can see, it was the perfect setting for these beautiful sounds, many of which had been taken directly from seventeenth-century music books and had never been performed in recent times!* (BTW, while the church is about 400 years old, the crucifix you see in the photo at left dates back about SIX HUNDRED YEARS, to the fifteenth century!)
Most of the works performed were very short, just a few minutes long, and written by minor, lesser-known composers of the time. But still Venice was a major cultural center of Europe, and was absolutely saturated with wonderful music by composers of all levels!
Here, for posterity's sake, is the great program they performed (with the pieces that really struck me in bold):
G.B. Bassani, Suonata IX (1683)
A. Balbi, "Laudabo nomen Dei" (1606)
A. Grandi, "Vocem Iucunditatis" (1637)
A. Grandi, "Quasi Cedrus" (1630)
A. Balbi, "Exsurgat Deus" (1606)
J.H. Kapsberger, "Toccata III" (1604)
F. Lucio, "Jubilate Deo" (1649)
A. Grandi, "In dedicatione templi" (1618)
A. Gabrieli, "Ego rogabo" (1576)
A. Grandi, "Bone Jesu Verbum Patris" (1621)
B. Marini, "Zarabanda III" (1655)
A. Grandi, "Benedictus Dominus" (1610)
J.H. Kapsberger, "Preludio in sol" (1640)
A. Grandi, "Deus canticum novum" (1628)
B. Marini, "Sinfonia IV tuono" (1655)
A. Grandi, "Anima mea liquidfacta est" (1630)
F. Cavalli, "Canzona a 3" (1656)
C. Monteverdi, "O Jesu vita mia" (1603)
G.B. Bassani, "Suonata VI (1683)
A. Grandi, "Memoriam fecit" (1621)
A. Grandi, "Ave maris stella" (1637)
C. Monteverdi, "Cantate Domino" (1620)
I'll just say one more thing: I learned today that there were a number of lesser-known composers whose work I really enjoyed. But then there was Monteverdi! (Along with Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi was the only other composer played today who was at all well-known; indeed, he is considered one of the earliest innovators of opera and is buried with honor in Venice's splendid Frari church).
As the program today said in his biography, "Claudio Monteverdi is one of the absolute musical geniuses of all time." Turns out that this is no understatement. After listening to several perfectly nice pieces by the minor composers of the era, I was utterly blown away by Monteverdi's "O Jesu vita mea"! There was simply no comparison between the unabashed virtuosity of his piece and the others. In fact, one of the earlier works had been called "Anima mea liquefacta est," which means "My soul is liquefied," and that was exactly how Monteverdi's composition - consummately performed in a lovely church constructed at just about the same time as his writing - made me feel! (Have I mentioned lately that God, I love this city?!)
*BTW, anyone interested in recuperating and performing this ancient music can find the musical notation for these pieces and others like them here!
I'm spending these couple of days easing into my new (Italian) milieu and catching up on some reading, which - it must be said - I'm doing on the iPhone through a mix of available apps, including eReader, Amazon's Kindle and Stanza. Sure, it lacks the satisfaction of the physical experience of reading a REAL book, but, let me tell you from past experience, it weighs a heck of a lot less than if I'd lugged every book I might possibly want to read over the summer to Italy with me!
The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine was quite entertaining, about the real-life events and intrique that unfold following the $156,000 record-breaking auction in 1985 of a bottle of Château Lafite supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson (not least of which was whether this bottle, and several siblings which also surfaced thereafter, was in fact a fake). My only wish for this fun read would have been for its conclusion to be, well, more conclusive. I understand the legal actions are not all finished, but I can't help but think that the author could have nevertheless given a greater sense of closure at the end for the readers who had followed him and the whole story all that way...
For further info, Ariely's going to be in the spotlight a lot again soon! TED just posted this afternoon his talk from the EG ("Entertainment Gathering") 2008 conference, and an expanded and updated edition of his bestseller is out TODAY, with additional information regarding his scholarship and experiments, not to mention addressing the astoundingly predictably irrational current stock market crisis!
Hope they pique your interest as much as they did mine! Enjoy!!
My parents were traveling around Windsor, Maine today and captured what has to be the very best store sign EVAR! (And it *is* serious...) What a kick!! Enjoy!!!
A week ago, I stayed overnight at the Weston in South Boston, where for the wakeup service your tv would turn itself on to the BlueMarvel channel. I wound up waking up to these sights and sounds of dawn at a basalt beach in Maui!
The whole channel's like that... According to the Maine-based company,
The best way to experience nature is simple. Go outside. For those who cannot, BlueMarvel presents an alternative. This is nature's events at nature's pace, bears on bear time, and the passage of the sun according to its own rhythm.
BlueMarvel pioneered a format we like to call "Experiential HDTV", whereby the viewer is allowed to slow down and develop a deeper relationship with the content, as if it were an open picture window in their home, hotel room or place of business. Our inventory of experiences include sunrises, sunsets, storms, distinct animal behaviors and migrations from stunning and evocative landscapes of our planet, all with crisply recorded natural sound.
Needless to say, their soothing video tour through Venice caught my eye... but not my ear! Natural sound, my foot! While people were shown in some of the shots, you never heard a soul. Not to mention there was no sound from the motorboat (the bow of which you constantly see in the video) taking them around... and last but not least when they finally passed a vaporetto on the Grand Canal, the noise it made was just sort of a generic machine sound, but not the loud characteristic churning, almost grinding sound all Venetians know too well. That's when I realized... they were using SOUND EFFECTS!!
So, not only is it a packaged, technological substitute for the real life of the outdoors (which I can't help but think really tells a lot about our twenty-first century society) but they're even faking parts to make it seem more tranquil than the real world actually is!
Still, I have to admit that they've actually succeeded, and it is pleasant viewing. So, here for your viewing pleasure are a couple of BlueMarvel clips not included on their video website. Enjoy!!
A great debate in the media this past week... Print media really seems to want to demonize microblogging!
"Twitter causes immorality nonsense deftlydispatched by bloggers. Most mainstream press lost the plot although Time did a good job and Wired Science were keeping it real."
As they said on the site, "This has to be the most impressive Rube Goldberg contraption I’ve ever seen." (And with cheap household materials, too...) My words can't possibly do it justice. Watch it and enjoy!!
Gorgeous collection of photos capturing the Pakistani tradition of elaborately decorating their vehicles. According to Drive Line:
