Part seven in a series

When his majesty Yongle, third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, decided he wanted a new house, he wanted to do it up big. Really big. From his palace in the southern capital of Nanjing, he set one million peasants and 100,000 artisans to work hundreds of miles to the north, in Beijing, where he intended to move the capital. The year was 1406.

Fourteen years later, in 1420, Yongle finally moved north and took the seat of power with him. Some 120 million people—more than the entire population of Europe—were ruled from the new palace, which was so huge and so off-limits, that it was called the Forbidden City.

So huge in scope and scale was it that Emperor Yongle might have well called it the Imposing City. Or the Overwhelming City. Or the “Big, Just Like Everything Else In China” City.

But it’s not so forbidden any more. Full story »

Ken Griffey Jr., who may or may not be the best player baseball has ever seen (cue arguments), but has certainly been one of them, is retiring. He announced it yesterday in Seattle. In an age dominated by steroids, screwing around and other kinds of abuse, Griffey Jr. seemed to embody the best attributes of baseball—playing for the love of the game. Pretty much just like his dad. He was great to watch, was the perfect team player, and accumulated all sorts of records—and would have accumulated even more if he hadn’t suffered some serious injuries along the way. His career overlapped with that of his father, Ken Griffey Sr., who was part of those Cincinnati teams in the 1970s (which I disliked at the time, because of Pete Rose, mainly, but also because of the 1976 World Series, good as it was). In fact, both Griffeys played together for Seattle at one point. So for the first time since 1973—nearly 40 years—organized baseball will be without an actively playing Griffey. The game is the worse for it.

And while Jr may have been a slightly better all around player than his dad, including as a fielder, I still remember that one catch his dad made when he was playing for the Yankees when he literally ran up the left field wall to make the catch. Too bad I can’t find a video of it. Of course, neither had anything on this.

Retired people in China do many things during the course of the day to keep themselves occupied and physically fit. One especially interesting form of exercise is sidewalk poetry. A writer will use a special self-wetting brush to draw poems on the sidewalk. It is a deliberate, artful process.

“Doing good makes people happy. Reading is even better.”

(My thanks to my friend Sabrina Sun for the translation help.)

I’ve got a bunch for you today, courtesy of my 9-year-old daughter. Can you guess what she was studying? I’ll put three up first and then add more as the day wears on. (Don’t worry. They’ll get easier.) Good luck!

Full story »

Part six in a series

As I make the ride from the Beijing airport to our hotel, I have a line from Patrick Watson’s clack-clickity song “Beijing” running as a soundtrack in my head.

“It was the sound of a city. Speaks to me,” he sings. “It was the sound of a city. Sang me a song.”

Wastson’s song is full of cymbals and drums and all sorts of frenetic tick-tack percussion that clinks and clucks and clanks and clangs. It buzzes, bumps, and bounces. The back and forth piano reminds me of the tempo of morning rush hour, and the violin crescendos from just-woke-up speed to that of frenetic commuter. It is, indeed, the hustle-bustle sound of a city.

And Beijing is, if nothing else, all hustle and bustle. Full story »

Andy Linter at Beowolfe.com spent some time with Google Maps recently and came up with a visualization tool for the scale of the BP oil slick. When you got to his site, his site grabs your location from your IP address and then moves an overlay of the present size of the oil slick from the Gulf to over your home. The image at right is how big it would be if it were centered near my home in the Denver metro area, Colorado.

After the last census I calculated what percentage of Colorado’s population lived between Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, and it was somewhere between 70-80% of the state. So if that slick were here in Colorado, 3.5 to 4 million people would be covered in oil.

Click on the image to get a feel for how much of your neck of the woods it would cover.

h/t to S&R’s own wufnik

When I was young, summer always began with Memorial Day. Since I have a few moments between filling out applications, I thought I would enlighten the world with this sad but true tale of chickens and summer madness.

When we were kids, my brother and I had to sacrifice one week each summer to visit dad’s folks. That’s what we called them: dad’s folks. We did not look forward to the trip, because things are different out in the country.

In their middle years, dad’s folks were baked by the Great Depression, and they came out of that furnace overcooked, tough and hard. They used an outhouse, a decrepit structure I refused to enter. When people ask me why I’m so anal, I assure them there’s a reason. They drank well water that smelled like sulfur. They didn’t have a television, a car, a book, or anything else that could provide escape. Full story »