Month: October 2013

Categories
Favorite Places

Halloween in Paris

bee_halloweenCompared with New York, Halloween in Paris seems serene. On the metro we saw a girl with silver hair and a grey face. A few benches away sat a man who wore a bloody hockey mask, a la the Friday the 13th films. But you might miss them, too.

New Yorkers celebrate Halloween riotously with a parade through the West Village. The subways fill with ghouls and witches and, maybe this year, Anthony Weiner lookalikes.

No parade for Paris though some have called for one. Some trick-or-treaters came out. Mostly the city’s lights beckoned the undead and looked lovely as always.

Categories
Travel

The best lobster role ever?

red's_eatsImagine an entire lobster shucked, buttered and wrapped in a roll. That’s the lobster roll at Red’s Eats, a seafood shack along U.S. 1 in Wiscasset, Maine that we visited Tuesday while en route to the PopTech conference in Camden.

I am hardly a lobster roll connoisseur, but even I could tell that the one at Red’s is perfection. No mayo on that roll, which is simply meat.

That I even know this stems from some good fortune. Red’s is open every day from April through Columbus Day. A series of sunny days along the coast this fall persuaded the owners to keep the joint open until Tuesday.

In a typical season Red’s runs through about 10 tons of lobster, according to the owners, who told us that on summer days people queue for up to two hours. The traffic tie-ups that ensue have prompted the town to consider spending $100 million to build a bypass. Some locals have called for moving Red’s.

Businesspeople take note. A sign on the Red’s rear door tells its secret: “And to all of you, our customers, we owe our success.”

Still, Red’s has its skeptics. Sprague’s Lobster, a shack that sits about an eighth of a mile north of Red’s is “a better bet for everything than Red’s,” writes Christina Tree of the Boston Globe in “Maine: An Explorer’s Guide.” I’m unable to assess Tree’s take. Sprague’s already had closed for the season by the time we drove by.

As suits a finale, Red’s was down to its last claws. The owners had sold out of clams, fries and nearly everything else. Happily for me they still had enough homemade Oreo ice cream for a giant scoop

Categories
People

Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom

purple mandelaI recently read “Long Walk to Freedom,” Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. Besides being an amazing tale of one of the world’s great leaders, Mandela’s account of the development of his political consciousness fascinated me.

Throughout, Mandela writes about lessons learned in the politics of the anti-apartheid movement. The story he tells is, of course, one of struggle and ultimately triumph, but it’s also a story about politics. While reading I bookmarked some of Mandela’s descriptions of life under apartheid, his childhood and his outlook.

Here’s Mandela, who practiced law in Johannesburg, describing life for black South Africans under apartheid:

Africans were desperate for legal help in government buildings: it was a crime to walk through a Whites Only door, a crime to ride a Whites Only bus, a crime to use a Whites Only drinking fountain, a crime to walk on a Whites Only beach, a crime to be on the streets past eleven, a crime not to have a pass book and a crime to have the wrong signature in that book, a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison after being convicted on charges of sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government. In the following passage he discusses his incarceration.

Prison and the authorities conspire to rob each man of his dignity. In and of itself, that assured I would survive, for any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose because I will not part with it at any price or under any pressure.

Mandela goes on to discuss the hopefulness that enabled him to survive his incarceration.

I never seriously considered the possibility that I would not emerge from prison one day. I never thought that a life sentence truly meant life and that I would die behind bars. Perhaps I was denying this prospect because it was too unpleasant to contemplate. But I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.

Mandela’s father died when Nelson was a boy. Jongintaba, a Xhosa chief whom Mandela’s father had befriended, offered to become Nelson’s guardian. Mandela was sent to live with Jongintaba’s family at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni, the provisional capital of Thembuland. Tribal meetings that Mandela attended at the Great Place provided him with lessons in leadership, including the following:

As a leader, I have always followed the principles I first saw demonstrated by the regent at the Great Place. I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the regent’s axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

In the book’s penultimate paragraph, Mandela writes of the challenge ahead for his nation.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

Categories
Travel

Identity

foreignerLast Monday, I stopped by a factory in Pietermaritzburg that sells gardening boots. Leanne, one of the nice people who work there, helped me to find a pair in my size.

“Where are you from,” she asked as we chatted.

“I’m from New York,” I answered. “How did you know I’m not from here?”

“It’s your accent,” said Leeann.

My accent. Yes.

Leeann’s question resonated with me because it reminded me of my being perceived by others in KwaZulu-Natal as a foreigner, which, of course, I am here.

As it happens, the Torah last week told a story about identity. In the story, God gives Abraham and Sarah new identities, as part of God’s promise to make Abraham the leader of a great nation. Abraham’s new name reflected his new status.

Identity is with us always. Shakespeare uses mistaken identity in such plays as Cymbeline, the Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night to create confusion and comic effect.

Around the Shabbat table on Friday, some friends and I discussed identity. What is our identity? Where does it come from?

“I was such a different person in high school,” said Kate, one of our hosts.

On Thursday, I visited a coffee bar in Durban. The manager, a Durbanite named Zane, asked me where I am from. “I’m from New York,” I said, enjoying answering the question for the second time in four days.

“Ah, yes, that’s it, I can tell by your accent,” Zane said.

For me this week, foreigner feels right.

Categories
Travel

The Mandela capture site

mandela sculpture at capture siteOn August 5, 1962, Nelson Mandela was driving to Johannesburg from Durban when he was stopped by the police in Howick, about 20 miles northwest of Pietermaritzburg.

For Mandela, who had gone underground rather than surrender to the apartheid government that had issued a warrant for his arrest, the encounter set in motion events that led to 27 years of imprisonment. Mandela’s companion that day was Cecil Williams, a theater director and political activist who had helped Mandela move through the country without detection.

“Suddenly, in front of us, the Ford was signaling us to stop. I knew in that instant that my life on the run was over; my seventeen months of “freedom” were about to end,” Mandela wrote in his autobiography. Here’s how Mandela describes the encounter:

When our car stopped, a tall slender man with a stern expression on his face came directly over to the window on the passenger side. He was unshaven and it appeared that he had not slept in quite a while. I immediately assumed he had been waiting for us for several days. In a calm voice, he introduced himself as Sergeant Vorster of the Pietermaritzburg police and produced an arrest warrant. He asked me to identify myself. I told him my name was David Motsamayi. He nodded, and then, in a very proper way, he asked me a few questions about where I had been and where I was going. I parried these questions without giving him much information. He seemed a bit irritated and then, he said, “Ag, you’re Nelson Mandela and this is Cecil Williams, and you are under arrest!”

On Saturday, I visited the Mandela capture site, which is marked by a sculpture that consists of 50 steel columns between 21 and 31 feet tall. When viewed at a distance of about 114 feet, the columns form a flat portrait of Mandela.

The sculpture, by the South African artist Marco Cianfanelli, was dedicated last year on the 50th anniversary of Mandela’s arrest.

Beside a plaque that marks the actual spot of the arrest, people have left candles, notes and other tokens of their affection along with wishes that Mandela, who turned 95 in July and who reportedly is recovering at home in Johannesburg from a lung infection, might regain his health.

Categories
Favorite Places

Visiting the farm with friends

the farmMost days Tala and Juma, my girlfriend’s Rhodesian Ridgebacks, and I head to a farm about a half kilometer from home. We walk along a winding red dirt road that takes us to a pond, where Tala likes to swim.

Tala and Juma are terrific companions. That’s typical of Ridgebacks, which are natives of South Africa. The breed likely descends from a dog that accompanied the Khoi, who migrated to southern Africa about 2,000 years ago, according to a history published in 2007 by Kennel Club Books. The Khoi dog later crossed with mastiffs, Greyhounds, the Deerhound and, possibly, Airedale Terriers.

happy-dog

Ridgebacks are known as lion dogs because hunters would use them to track the cat, which the dogs would hold until the hunter could shoot it.

Tala, Juma and I like our routine, which is good for all three of us. With the arrival of spring, wildflowers are beginning to blossom along the trail. By the ride home the dogs are tired and happy.