Was Qaddafi all that bad?

"The worst thing that Qaddafi did was that Abu Salim thing," he said, referring to the 1996 massacre. "I mean, killing a bunch of prisoners in the basement of a prison, that's not nice, but, you know, these things can happen. All it takes is for someone to misinterpret an order--you know what I mean? Yes, the students were hanged in the seventies, and there was Abu Salim, but there was not much else. The secret police was around, but it wasn't too obtrusive. If you got thrown in prison, they allowed your family to visit and bring you couscous."

Excerpt from John Lee Anderson's article King of Kings. Above, an interview with a friend of the Qaddafi's.

Five Pictures in Hope of Endless Travel: Part Two.

Tulsa, Oklahoma. July, 2011.

St. Pete Beach, Florida. July, 2011.

Lake Michigan. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October, 2011.

Joplin, Missouri. May, 2011.

Providence, RI. August, 2011.

Photos by M.C and A.G.

You are what you eat.

Through processed food, factory farming, and the rush to get large amounts of food to the table as quick as possible, it's frightening what we have lost. On reading "True Grits" (based on chef Sean Brock's Southern food restaurant--Husk--in Charleston, SC.), Burkhard Bilger reminds us that the loss of extended crop rotations (some up to 17 years) and the substitution of more common, viable crops, has made thousands of foods disappear over the past century. Brock's intention: to go back in time (by diving into history books, diaries, etc...) and resurrect those heirloom vegetables that have been lost to convenience.

I pulled these two quotes: one poetic, one philosophical. Yet both inspiring.

"Southern food is more than a collection of recipes and seeds. It's a distillate of memory and hard-won experience, of ocean crossings and forest clearings, turnip winters and radish springs."

"It changed my life growing my own food," Brock said. "You start to see why farmers are so strange: they have a lot of time alone to ponder the questions of the universe."

-M.C.

Five pictures in hope of endless travel: Part One.

The infamous F.W. Woolworth's. Greensboro, North Carolina.

June, 2008.

San Francisco Bay at sunset.

March, 2009.

Loch Ness, Scotland, by boat.

May, 2005.

Somewhere between here and there. Utah.

August, 2010.

Old Jewish Cemetery. Prague, Czech Republic.

May, 2005.

All photos by either M.C. or A.G..

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

"By 1915, however, the demographics of addiction had changed and so had American attitudes towards drug users. Cocaine had come to be seen as a drug taken by lower-class, urban men, who were often looked upon with fear and disdain. Opium had been tolerated in the United States for more than a century--until Chinese laborers began to compete with Americans for jobs. Since then, the more directly a drug has been perceived to be associated with minorities and the poor, the graver the danger it is seen as posing to society."

Excerpt from "Getting a fix" by Michael Specter.

The cult of Ikea.

To be a member of Ikea's cult, here are some things you need to know:

-It is said that one out of every ten Europeans is conceived on an Ikea bed.

-Pigs and skeleton's are banned motifs.

-Ikea uses a technique called "Bulla, Bulla," in which a bunch of items are purposely jumbled in bins, to create the impression of volume and, therefore, inexpensiveness.

-Ikea is the third largest consumer of wood behind Home Depot and Lowe's and ahead of Walmart.

-Ikea published 197,000,000 catalogues last year in 29 different languages.

-"Breathtaking" items are termed so because they are so cheap you can't afford not to buy them.

-Ingvar Kamprad (Ikea's founder) has been rated the 5th wealthiest man in the world. Living in the Swiss village of Epalinges, Kamprad has very little taxes to pay and has been accused of doing nothing for the village (financially or philanthropically). Kamprad's nickname in town is the Miser.

Excerpt from Lauren Collins' "House Perfect" in the Oct. 3rd issue of The New Yorker

The Immortal words of Kenko...

"To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare."

-Kenko

"Adding to the day's sense of upheaval was a collision that occurred just outside 27a when the embassy chauffeur--a man named Pickford--struck a motorcycle and broke off the rider's leg. A wooden leg."

-Excerpt from Erick Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

On reading ITGOB, I felt empathy towards Kenko's quote...the second excerpt was a welcomed absurdity (or pleasurable anecdote) while reading about the initial Nazi Political purges of the the Third Reich. What would the insanities of history be without humor?

-Matt