Danger Heavy Goods

Posted on December 4, 2016 by smellincoffee

Danger Heavy Goods: Driving the Toughest, Most Dangerous Roads in the World
Also known as: Juggernaut: Trucking to Saudi Arabia
© 1988 Robert Hutchinson
288 pages

“Makes Smokey and the Bandit Look Like Smokey and the Boy Scouts”

When is a lorry not a lorry? When it’s leaving the country, according to the British drivers here. A continental trip makes a lorry a bonafide truck, and the run covered here puts even American transcontinental trips to shame. In Danger: Heavy Goods,  Robert Author recalls a run from England to Saudi Arabia he participated in in the early 1980s, at a time when Arabian ports were so overcrowded that ships sat at sea for weeks waiting for their turn to unload.  He takes readers through a string of countries which no longer exist, across the Bosporus Bridge, and down to Ar’ar by way of  Iraq — which is invading Iran. Well, golly.

Where to start with this book?  It is a snapshot of Europe in the early 1980s, where Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the DDR were still destinations and  Gorbachev is trying to reform the Soviet Union by banning alcohol. It is a road trip of epic proportions and epic aggravation. Time and again the drivers that Hutchinson partnered predict that the middle east run is doomed. The pre-EU customs inspections of Europe — the frequent scrutiny of their records, the endless paperwork — was bad enough, but the middle east is a bonafide nightmare. From Turkey to Saudi Arabia, every official from customs agents to parking attendants wants their cut,  a little bit to grease the palm The preferred bribe is cigarettes, and every country has its most-favored denomination: Turkey is Marlboro country,  Syria swears by Gitanes, and Rothmans rule in Saudi Arabia.   Bureaucratic delays are endless, some of them lasting as long as a week, and once the cigarettes are exhausted anything else is up for grabs. English newspapers, catalogs, canned food?  The amount of aggravation drivers throughout Eurasia receive at the hands of customs officials in Iraq and Saudi Arabia  amaze the author: it’s like they don’t want goods.

If one can get by the customs agents without being arrested for mysterious circumstances, there’s still everything else to contend with. Take your pick — roads that turn into bobsled runs as soon as they’re wet,  or threaten to throw trucks into rig-destroying quagmire if they stray from the beaten path. And which is more dangerous, Turkish prostitutes or the fact that Iran and Iraq are bombing one another? Tough call.  There are plenty of surprises which far friendlier, though. Although drivers on the mid-east run are technically in competition with one another, there’s a mild level of camaraderie in the face of a common enemy, customs. In one chapter, the British drivers warn a drunken Turk of a heavy police presence despite Turks being the main rival of British firms for transeuropean traffic. (They warn him in German, while in Czechoslovakia.  German is also used as a go-between language in Ar’ar,  Saudi Arabia.)

Danger is a most interesting ‘memoir’, delivered by a guide who has an honest interest in every country he visits, frequently regaling readers with historical background on the places he and his coworkers are passing through in their two trucks.  Virtually every aspect of the run has been overtaken by history, though. I haven’t been able to find any stats on truck traffic to Saudi Arabia from western Europe, but with a few decades of oil money sunk into the ports I doubt it’s as thick as it was when featured here

Related:
Truck this For a Living: Tales of a UK Lorry Driver, Gary Mottram

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Epic of Gilgamesh

Posted on December 4, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Epic of Gilgamesh
© 1997 verse translation by Danny P. Jackson
116 pages

When I threw in with the Classics Club, I knew the Epic of Gilgamesh had to be  on there. The oldest known recorded story? How could it be missed?  I’ve had intentions of reading it since encountering an excerpt of its Flood narrative in high school world literature, and have even listened to recitations of the drama. For those who have never encountered it: Gilgamesh is a king whose subjects behold him in fear and trembling. So potent is he that he gets away with nicking people’s wives on their wedding night. It’s good to be the king, no? The people of Uruk plea to the gods for relief from the king, and in response they send him…a bro.  A wild man named Enkidu, who alone is Gilgamesh’s match for sheer manliness. He is utterly untamed, in tune with the animals and such, until a priestess seduces him with her feminine wiles (and by this translation, she literally jumps him). Abandoned by his  four-legged friends in the forest, Enkidu goes to meet Gilgamesh, whose reputation precedes him. After a good brawl to shake hands with,  these two men of power start taking down monsters and cutting down trees. They attract the rage of some of the gods — especially that of Ishtar, who attempts to seduce Gilgamesh but is forcefully refused by him delivering a list of all the men she’s  used and destroyed —   and Enkidu dies, deflating Gilgamesh’s sails. Having previously been blithe about death, Gilgamesh is now hit with its reality, and goes to seek out the only man who cheated death, Utnapishtim, he who survived the Great Flood.  Utnapishtim attempts to dissuade him from the immortality quest, but then clues him in on a secret plant — one which is promptly stolen by a snake. Gilgamesh resigns himself to making the best of life that he can, and that’s’ that. (Unless you count the last chapter, which involves Enkidu and a brief visit to the Netherworld.)

Anyone who has read Genesis will see shared aspects and perhaps dimly remember that Abraham originally hailed from the city of Ur, just down the river from the site of Uruk. Most obvious is the Flood story, of course, but so is the snake costing man the secret of immortal life. I found it interesting when I first heard this story that Enkidu’s knowledge of woman immediately ruptured his ‘one with nature’ status.  In Genesis, Adam and Eve aren’t said to ‘know’ each other until they’ve been severed from their own natural paradise and put to work as farmers, but there’s still a tenuous link between sexuality and alienation from the natural world.   I faintly remember reading that  the agricultural Sumerian religious rites involved sex (see the priestess as a reminder), so perhaps that’s the connection: he who would control nature cannot be at home in it, and Enkidu does start learning about farming from the priestess after they leave.   Other, more distant similarities can be found between Gilgamesh and other ancient stories:  Gilgamesh’s refusal of a divine seducer, for instance, brings to mind Circe and Odysseus.

Not included in this translation are the 20 new lines discovered a couple of years ago in Iraq, which add a bit to the Enkidu and Gilgamesh adventures. Apparently they meet monkeys in the forest, and the wild beast Humbaba is presented a forest-king who is entertained. That might explain why Humbaba appears like a man in so much Sumerian art, though that could be laziness or something else.  I’m glad this is the translation of Gilgamesh my library has:  it’s rendered in verse in approachable English, and features 20 illustrations that invoke woodcuts.

Related

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The Flame Bearer

Posted on December 3, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Flame Bearer
© 2016  Bernard Cornwell
304 pages

The Scots were my enemies.
The West Saxons were my enemies.
Bebbanburg’s garrison was my enemy.
Ieremias was my enemy.
Einar the White was my enemy.

So fate had better be my friend.

When the library received this book, I mimicked Johnny Carson’s character “Carnac” and held it to my head, intoning thus: “Uhtred of Bebbanburg is on the verge of recapturing his family fortress, stolen from him decades ago. But then comes a rider with news that a friend is in peril and needs help!  Torn between his lifelong ambition and keeping troth with his friends, Uhtred reluctantly rides away and sees his opportunity fade away yet again.“

Page twenty, folks. I’m a bonafide psychic. Of course, I mock with love. I have read a ludicrous amount of Bernard Cornwell, and the Saxon Stories is responsible.  But there are ten books in this series, and lately I’ve been wondering when Uhtred is going to capture his old castle so he can die in peace already. He’s had his foot in the door — the castle and death’s — a few times before, and every time something  happens off in Northumbria or Wessex or some other heartily-named place. A woman is usually involved, and off he goes to rescue his friends. But now, with The Flame Bearer, the reign of teasing is over. This time the torturedly complex politics of Britain — Saxons fighting over who should rule the free kingdoms of Wessex and Northumbria, those same kingdoms plotting against one another and their mutual enemies the Danes and Scots —  will bring Uhtred back to the gates of Bebbanberg, that fortress of few gates and mighty ramparts.

One of the greatest pleasures of the Saxon Stories series has been Cornwell’s flitations with oratory. Perhaps inspired by Danish warrior lore,  Uhtred often chants his accomplishments to frighten his enemies. He is Uhtred who killed Ubba by the sea, who now as a greybeard  has a reputation that quivers bowels across an island.  Cornwell’s flair for dramatic narration is unmatched, especially while ruminating on the horrors — and joys — of battle. I’m not sure how he does it, since I’m tolerably certain that Cornwell has not in fact fought in a shield wall.  But this is a story that needs a few passages of Epic Narration, because here Uhtred is finally doing what he has yearned to do since he was a boy, and it will require equal parts deception and epic kickassery.  (Pardon my Ænglis.)

The Flame Bearer also exhibits Cornwell’s usual gift for funny dialogue, though not quite as much of it.  Uhtred is too old to take many people seriously;  he has killed too many great men to have any use for the young pups strutting and pretending on the stage. A paragraph of my view for Warriors of the Storm stands:

Need I give the usual praise? Dramatic prose of thunder flashing as armies trudge through the mud to meet destiny,  quick wits amusing each other in conversation, bombastic speeches and a few sly jokes.  All the usual Cornwell strengths are here, though it’s a quick book so they’re over more quickly. The twists and turns aren’t as sharp here, possibly because once the reader has marched with Uhtred for so long, one gets used to his sudden bolts of inspiration […]. 

That ended with “Next Stop: Bebbanburg!”, but Cornwell mentions in his historic note that the series isn’t over.  This is the story of England’s beginning, and now that the spectre of his father has been quietened, now Uhtred of Bebbanburg has reclaimed his legacy, I look forward to seeing his role in fulfilling Alfred’s  vision of a united kingdom.

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Conclave

Posted on November 30, 2016 by smellincoffee

Conclave
© 2016 Robert Harris
484 pages

Inside the Casa Santa Marta, the elders of Rome are again assembling to choose the next bishop of Rome, and thereby the governor of Catholics the world over.  The Dean of the College of Cardinals labors in sadness prompted not only by the death of his friend and boss, but by the fact that he now has to manage the conclave of cardinals,  in which over a hundred men are hidden in a secret chamber until such time as they elect St. Peter’s successor.  Although it is an election covered in the shroud of holiness, it is an election still, and the cardinals who vote are men of ambition. Their desires and foibles bring endless complication — blackmail and simony do stir the pot —  leading to numerous dramatic shifts during successive ballots. The finale, which unfolds in a Europe smoldering under terrorist attack, includes another twist ending which proved an Achilles heel, for me.  Anyone who has followed my reading here knows I read anything Harris writes, delighting in his diverse settings (Rome, Cold War Russia, Belle Epoque France...and so on!)   Everything that lead ups to it was first-rate: the descriptions of  places and processes within the Vatican usually hidden away, the arguments between the cardinals over what sort of man and what sort of direction were needed — and then Harris has this Dan Brown, Angels and Demons moment in the last ten pages.  Ah, well.

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Columbine

Posted on November 29, 2016 by smellincoffee

Columbine
© 2009 Dave Cullen
417 pages

Columbine. I remember it, of course.  I was in eighth grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold turned their high school into a bloody spectacle. That day on April 20th, 1999, is always referred to as a school shooting, but that label misses the point. Harris and Klebold weren’t shooters, they were failed bombers.  They didn’t turn the cafeteria and library red with blood because they had a score to settle with the jocks, they wanted to depart a world of inferiors in a blaze of glory.  Dave Cullen’s Columbine is a disturbing history of the April attack, one which draws extensively from the corpus of material the two deliberately left behind.  Cullen’s history has a target, though, as he aims to rebuke not only the media for creating and perpetuating various myths about the horror, but the sheriff’s department for negligence and deception.   Most importantly, Cullen maintains that Harris and Klebold were not abused loners who ‘snapped’, but psychologically disturbed individuals who planned the attack for more than a year.

Columbine is a receptively easy read. Cullen is a journalist, and knows how to grease the runners to captivate readers with a story. The problem is the grisly subject — or subjects. The graphic nature of the shootings isn’t dwelt on overmuch, but through Cullen’s research considerable time is spent in the head of Harris and Klebold. This is, to say the least, a toxic atmosphere. Cullen’s thesis is that Harris was a clinical psychopath, one who could lead a double life. In society, he could be productive and charming, convincing adults into purchasing guns on his behalf, and even dating a twenty-something despite being a kid working at a pizza parlor.   By himself — in his journals, with people he regarded as confederates — Eric was full of contempt for society, for virtually everyone.  He acted out his contempt in ‘missions’ of petty vandalism and theft,  and when confronted by authority figures, could always manipulate them into believing he was repentant.  Eric was joined in these missions by Dylan Klebold, a depressive misfit who nontheless managed to snag a prom date; both boys had active social lives.

There is no doubt that the April attack was a methodically planned horror instead of a loner’s ‘snap’.  Not only did the boys ramble and rave in their bloodlust for months prior, but the equipment took time to purchase and put together —  for their bombs were homemade concoctions, based on plans from the internet.  The April 20th attack itself was a multi-stage drama of the horrific: first, a diversionary bomb in the outskirts of the city to draw police away, then several massive explosions would rock the school cafeteria at peak traffic time.  Hundreds would be killed by the inferno, and as students streamed out of the exits, Eric and Dylan would be waiting for them with intent of sweeping up survivors with gunfire  before their inevitable demise at the hands of the police. Still worse, their cars, parked in areas where emergency services would establish a perimeter, were rigged to blow after their deaths, adding still more chaos and death.  This is no impulsive revenge quest, but a premeditated campaign of war against the humanity they loathed. Fortunately for the students of Columbine,  all of the bombs failed to explode. and the murderous pair soon lost interested in shooting people after the first dozen, resigning themselves to self-slaughter.

Their campaign of death should not have been an ambush. Cullen notes that Eric’s sociopathy, his contempt for the world, often displayed itself in the arrogant way he and Dylan both leaked information.  Harris’ toxic website often broadcast his hatred for the world,  and numerous people were aware that they had guns and were experimenting with pipe bombs. The police, having previously arrested the pair for breaking into a van and stealing equipment from it, even had a warrant for a search of Eric’s house — one which was never executed.  Although Cullen labors to dispatch many minor myths associated with the Columbine attack — the pair’s association with a ‘trench coat Mafia’, the sole targeting of ‘jocks’, etc —   he rebukes local authorities far more seriously for their negligence in following up on Harris, and for attempting to conceal how high he had already registered as a potential threat from the public.

Cullen’s case is simple: Eric Harris was a psychopath who essentially co-opted the suicidal tendencies of his manic-depressive buddy into an attempt  to depart a world they loathed in a manner that demonstrated their superiority over the zombies.  Some parts of his argument are stronger than others: for instance, the numerous heavyweight bombs, which would have killed hundreds indiscriminately, indicate that the two weren’t just after jocks. (The intense planning obviously belies any impulsive snap, of course.)    The case for Eric’s sociopathy strikes me as solid as well. Less convincing is the utter denial that Harris and Klebold were bullied, as Cullen points to their circles of friends and the fact that Harris was a bully as well.  A bully can be bullied; the two categories are not exclusive, and Klebold strikes me as an easily-bullied sort of personality. While Harris’ journals are nothing but wrath and rage, Klebold is more relatable, alternating between wrath and idolization of a girl.  Numerous students have also testified in interviews that the two were subjects of abuse — but who in a modern high school is not?  

It is never easy to dwell on this kind of rage, and strong stomachs are definitely required to endure constant exposure to Harris’ utter lack of humanity.  Cullen’s interesting approach — alternating build-up and aftermath chapters — kept me glued to the pages, and I’m grateful for a history that indicates how Columbine attempted to climb back to its feet after the attack, to reclaim the school and honor those who perished.  Columbine’s story after the fact is also difficult, though, riven with lawsuits and slow-to-heal psychological wounds. But the school survives still, and these days much has changed: police have different active-shooter protocols now (immediate engagement, no more waiting for SWAT)  threats of violence are often met with zero-tolerance policies, and it is doubtful in the post 9/11 world that teenagers could get away with leaving mysterious dufflebags in the school cafeteria, ticking away.  Although a cry for stricter gun laws follows every shooting in the United States — understandably — Columbine also points to the limits of those laws, as the culprits’ most potentially dangerous weapons, the bombs, were fashioned from ordinary consumer goods. Thank heavens Harris had to put them together at the last minute for want of safe storage space, otherwise his serial bombing might  have succeeded.   Those with intent to harm will find a way to try it; good security policies are needed to counter these threats. At Columbine, I couldn’t help but notice that the sole guard was off at lunch during the attack. One guard for 2000 students?!  My high school had two deputy sheriffs, and we couldn’t have boasted a thousand students on a good day.  (Of course, we were post-Columbine.)

Columbine is haunting, effective reading.

Related:

  • The Ashes of Waco, Dick Reavis. The boys’ April 20th assault was allegedly timed to ‘honor’ Timothy McVeigh, whose own bombing was allegedly revenge for the Waco massacre. 
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Civilian Warriors

Posted on November 28, 2016 by smellincoffee

Civilian Warriors: the Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung  Heroes of the War on Terror
© 2013 Erik Prince
413 pages

In the 21st century, the line between public and private warfare has gotten a bit fuzzy. I realized this most fully when reading a few cybersecurity books early in the year, mulling over how natural security was imperiled by cyber attacks on private firms or networks, but this fuzziness is also expressed via the world of private military contractors.     Flash back seven or so years ago, when my rage at the debacle in Iraq was white-hot, I would have never read a book about Blackwater, let alone a defense of it from its creator, Erik Prince.  Back then, Blackwater was tantamount with evil. They were lawless mercenaries, the very image of what was wrong with the military-industrial complex.  Finally released from confidentiality agreements, here Prince goes to bat for the company he created and guided through the rocky years of the War on Terror.

I purchased this book because I stumbled upon Erik Prince while listening to some podcast or another, and he sounded perfectly normal. He didn’t do an evil laugh even once.  (It helped that the book was on clearance for $6.)  Prince opens with an argument that private military contractors aren’t a novelty. His examples are convenient (he cites the Marquis de Lafayette, not the Hessians), but that’s to be expected. He also notes that military contractors been put to more use in the 20th and 21st centuries than at any other time, but then wars are a lot more complicated they used to be. There’s no more of this telling your peasants with pointy sticks to go stab the peasants with pointy sticks next door, there’s logistics and such.  Prince’s original idea for Blackwater was to fill the need of the American military for training facilities, since budget cuts closed or limited their options. His training lodge not only provided rented space for shooting ranges, but taught courses to interested service organizations. Prince continually responded to the needs of the US as he saw them in the news, achieving rapid success after the Columbine assaults when he began training police in active shooter response scenarios. (Prince created a school mock-up for them to practice in.)  After al-Queda bombed the USS Cole, Prince acquired a NOAA ship and turned it into a training ship for sailors to practice threat interdiction.

It was their work in Iraq that made Blackwater infamous, however. They entered the area as security guards for the United States’ top man in Iraq, Paul Bremer. Later on they would escort other State department officials, and as Iraq was a warzone, that entailed armored vehicles and M4 rifles. As Blackwater grew, it took on other tasks like handling airdrops in their smaller planes. Prince writes that he viewed Blackwater as a military force that had adopted the principles of lean manufacturing, a kind of Fedex to the government’s post office.  If Blackwater’s security convoys drove aggressively, it was to satisfy their contract stipulations:  no losses. Prince would have practiced more discretion than the government allowed him, but they insisted on ambassadors traveling in flagged SUVs, not beaten-looking Iraqi vehicles. Prince also reviews the several bloody incidents which turned Blackwater into a whipping boy for the Bush administration in the war, arguing that his men were merely defending themselves and that they made for effective scapegoats despite also using their resources  in a few humanitarian causes.

I suspect Prince is correct in maintaining that military contractors aren’t going anywhere. In Afghanistan, there are more contractors than US servicemen, and I think it telling that Candidate Obama condemned Blackwater, and then — when the group served as his security detail in Afghanistan —   President Obama commented that they were getting a ‘bad rap’.   If citizens don’t want war, but the  security state does, then the obvious thing to do is hire people to do the war bit on the state’s behalf, or even better to use drones. Although as a candidate Trump indicated that he was less interested in foreign wars than his competitors,  I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever is in the D.C. water leads to military contractors operating discretely in Syria. They’re certainly in Iraq now, fighting ISIS — at least two thousand of them.  They aren’t necessarily active combatants, but filling in a lot of the logistics holes that Prince noticed and started finding people to fill here.

I found Prince to be interesting as a man — rich boy turned volunteer fireman & Navy SEAL, then entrepreneur in his own right —  and his apologia informative about the shifting nature of war as executed   Even if war is a racket, the operation of that racket is worth noting as it changes.

  • Related:
  • The Heart and the Fist, Eric Greitens. The memoir of a humanitarian turned Navy SEAL, one recently elected as governor of Missouri. 

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Lost Enlightenment

Posted on November 28, 2016 by smellincoffee

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane 
© 2015 S. Frederick Starr
618 pages

Lost Enlightenment takes readers back to a time when Central Asia was the crossroads of the world, a hub of both commercial and activity. Here are celebrated the lives of cities which, in this time, were hosts to capitals, universities, and more.  Now they are dust, at best eroded columns in a desolate landscape. In Lost Enlightenment, readers follow Starr east to Baghdad, Merv, and a few other jewels. Though he touches on the political highlights of the region between the Arab conquest and the death of Tamerlane, they are important here only as far as their role in fostering the  arts and sciences.    Although diminished slightly by the complete lack of maps — and in Central Asia, surrounded by the great mass of Eurasia, there are precious few borders to define the area —  Lost Enlightenment is a weighty accomplishment.

Most readers have heard of the ‘silk road’, though much more than silk traveled its routes. The sheer bounty of thinkers and creators here, many of them polymaths and ‘renaissance men’  — though with no need for the renaissance bit.  Starr marks the beginning of this enlightened period with the Arabic invasion, but not because the Arabs came bestowing wisdom among the poor benighted natives. The area was already culturally rich and commercially sophisticated, and its geography frustrated any attempt at sustained conquests. Thus the Islamic Arabs and Central Asians of diverse ethnicities and religions —  Buddhists, Christians ,and Zoroastrians just for starters —  lived with and engaged with one another, iron sharpening iron.   There, philosophies and religions from across Eurasia came together, drawn to the trade cities of Central Asia like a savanna water hole. (They were, literally, water holes — most were near oases). Long used to weighing opposing ideas against one another, Central Asia even tolerated (at times) freethinkers who spoke out against virtually everyone. Here, in this intellectual marketplace of ideas, this constant mental competition, the arts and science flourished — for a time.

What caused their end?  Something as complex as a society doesn’t lend itself to easy answers, and there’s no shortage of little things going wrong for the area of central Asia. The most obvious agent of downfall were the Mongols, who didn’t merely raid civilization: they often destroyed it utterly.  Some regions lost an estimated 90% of their population, and those who were not murdered were driven away in fear.  Genghis Khan should be condemned by all mankind if only for his destruction of Baghdad,  then a shining city upon the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, but he cut a bloody path jut getting there, leaving behind him ashes and blood-soaked dust. Khan emptied Central Asia, but even before that the arteries were hardening, people receptive to arguments made by theologian-intellectuals like al-Ghazali, who rebuked philosophical materialism in his Incoherence of the Philosophers.  This hardening meant that even when the leaders stumbled upon something revolutionary, like the printing press, it never flared into potency as it did in Europe.

Lost Enlightenment is a considerable survey, mostly intellectual and cultural with a pinch of politics. I certainly welcomed it,  knowing virtually nothing about this area. It is astonishing to hear of places like Afghanistan being hubs of civilized thought, but such is the way of history. Civilizations rise and fall, flower and perish.

* “Central Asians” seems as clumsily artificial as “Yugoslavians” , but the author uses it in lieu of anything better. I suppose it’s easier than “Iranian-Turkic peoples”.

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TW on the Road: Mountain climbing in Alabama?

Posted on November 26, 2016 by smellincoffee

Three and a half hours north of me, and perhaps an hour or so east of Birmingham, lies Talledaga National Forest and Cheaha National Park.  The above shot is of Pulpit Rock, the apex of the park’s most challenging trail.   I hastened up today, Black Friday, because I figured the  autumn scenery would be gorgeous. I also assumed I’d have the park largely to myself, since everyone else would be out shopping.  I was gloriously right about the scenery, and utterly wrong about the crowd.  The road was lined with parked cars and campers.

While I took many shots, most of them of the view, and that really doesn’t translate into cameraphones very well.  Although traveling with a couple of friends, I parked myself  on a rock and gazed into the distance for a good while. I haven’t seen an expanse that vast since standing atop Carlsbad Caverns, the wind blowing the grass sideways. On the way home I passed through the cozy square of Ashland, Alabama, and spotted a courthouse so lovely it demanded I swerve into a parking lot and take admiring photos.

With Christmas approaching, it may be a month or so before I jet off again. I passed right by the entrance to DeSoto Caverns today, though…

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The Works

Posted on November 25, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Works: Anatomy of a City
© 2005  Kate Ascher
240 pages

Cities are, for my money, mankind’s most astonishing invention. Their complexity is stupefying — system within system, handling tons of material at any given time, whether the subject is cars across a bridge or the contents of a thousand home’s flushing toilets. And the stakes are always high, with the health and happiness of millions on the line — or at least, thousands. The Works is a dream of a book, a visual-rich guide to the many systems that keep cities thriving.  Author Kate Ascher throws light not on just the expected — roads and utilities, say — but also minor things like the postal service.  Using New York City as case study, Ascher explores systems for transportation, energy, communication, and sanitation in turn.

The Works stunned me again and again with its visuals. Readers are treated to an astonishing array of informative little diagrams: cutaways that show what’s inside the Holland tunnel, for instance, or the underbelly of a street-sweeper, or the waterworks inside your average skyscraper. The pictures also demonstrate systems — the chain of equipment required to convey power from a generating station into the average home, the links involved in a cell phone conversation,  Some of the visuals are clever: for instance, to illustrate the variety of goods a train might carry,  a cartoon representation of a real train runs along the bottom of every page in the chapter, each car marked with its contents. The same tactic is used to illustrate the electromagnetic spectrum in the chapter on communication.  The bounty of visual information here is ludicrous — showcasing fleets of sanitation vehicles and subway cars,  mapping out train yards and container ship docks, — it’s staggering, really.  Statistics are presented visually, too, and of course there are tons of maps — including one that shows all the traffic cameras in the city. There are a few sample pages on Streetsblog, all from the chapter on streets.

That’s not to say The Works is merely a picture book, because there’s no small amount of text here explaining the importance of all these systems, reviewing their evolution within New York City, and sharing the particulars of their operation.  Reading this book is kind of like reading Gone Tomorrow, Picking Up, The Grid,  Flushed! On the Grid, etc, all at once, all rolled into one, and with gobs and gobs and gobs of illustration.   It does lack a chapter on  the infrastructure of the internet, which isn’t an oversight that would be made if it were published today.

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Truck This For A Living

Posted on November 24, 2016 by smellincoffee

Truck This for a Living: Tales of a UK Lorry Driver
© 2014  Gary Mottram
226 pages

After hand-manufacturing woodwind instruments for thirteen years, Gary Mottram was laid off. So naturally, he took up driving. Working through a temp agency, he delivered all manner of loads via vans and small trucks before trying for Class 2 and Class 1 licenses. Truck This for a Living  collects stories from his workdays as he took on ever-more ambitious jobs. Beginning as a lowly delivery man who has to schlep around boxes and do his own unloading, Mottram eventually hits the big-time: hauling containers and then cozying up with a DVD while other guys take over.  
While this is a self-published memoir, the writing is very serviceable and even includes little illustrations to convey the difficulties inherent in squeezing a trailer with a mind of its own into a tight spot.  Having grown up among drivers — my father and uncle — I’m fairly familiar with American trucking and was most curious about driving in the United Kingdom and Europe. As it happens, Mottram never quite makes it to Europe — a buddy of his gets that gig —  but I still picked up a wealth of British trucking lingo. At first  I thought an “artic” might be a refrigerated trailer, but it proved to be short for ‘articulated’, or a tractor-trailer.   All of the vehicles Mottram mentions were cabovers, like that on the cover. That was a change, as the only time I ever see those on American roads are buses or Isuzu daycabs. Mottram is definitely unlike any truck driver I’ve met, constantly fretting about the environment and  holding fast to a vegetarian diet. He carries a little pot with him and cooks on the road! From the faint horror he had for most of his fellow drivers, I’m going to guess Mottram is atypical in the UK as well.  I’m waiting for a similar book in the post, memoirs from a driver who has worked in both Britain and across Europe. 
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