Horning in on poachers

I don’t ordinarily watch the PBS News Hour weekend edition, but a couple of weeks ago for some reason I had it on. And was stopped in my tracks by this report on efforts by Zimbabwe and South Africa to stem the rhino poaching that is annihilating the dwindling population of rhinos left in the wild.

There are some appalling images here of what the poachers do—because all they care about is getting the horn, which they sell into the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) market. So they hack horns off of still-living animals, and they kill mothers with calves; they are completely indifferent to anything except the money they can make.

It’s clear from this report that, up to now, the poachers have had the advantage; but there’s hope that the new cooperation between rangers in Zimbabwe and South Africa will turn this around. Frankly, it’s a little unsettling to see “park rangers” armed like paratroopers; but if it helps stop the poachers one way or another, then there it is.

TCM practitioners still use rhino horn powder to “cure” a variety of ailments, and it’s largely this complete load of bollocks that fuels the market for the horns. I find it hard to believe that sentient humans still literally buy into this massive lie, but it’s all too clear that their doing so is dooming these magnificent beasts.

So, watch the video and remember: the only one who needs a rhino horn is a rhinoceros. End of.

Counting croc

You know, you just don’t come across stories like this one every day. And thank God for that—both for animal welfare and so we don’t get so used to really weird stuff that we fail to enjoy it properly.

It starts out like this:

A crocodile and an accountant get on a bus…

No, really—it seems that there’s this Russian circus, which was travelling…somewhere in Northern Russia last week. And evidently (for possibly some cost-saving reasons, or I don't know, maybe some Russian circus tradition), at least one “performing” crocodile, named Fedya, and one accountant, unnamed, were in a bus. The same bus. And the accountant, at least, was not wearing her seatbelt.

So, when the bus hit a pothole, well, as the Moscow Times reported, “a dangerous reptile sustained injuries after being squashed by a portly circus accountant”.

(And, seriously—most journalists have been waiting their entire careers to have a chance to use that line.)

It seems that Fedya, who is 6’5”, with green eyes and a big, crowd-pleasing smile, sustained an “accidental full body slam” from the accountant, who’s reported as weighing 120 kg, no other physical description. (And yes, I made that up about the eyes and smile; but the crocodile is reported at 2m in length.)

According to the UPI report, “The animal vomited for several hours after it was crushed by a 264-pound accountant.” Well—as you do.

Fedya was examined by a veterinarian and excused from performance duty for a few days after his traumatic assault. The accountant—oh, hell, I’ll call her Masha—suffered cuts and bruises, and was given an official Russian circus ticking off for not wearing her seatbelt.

Now I have some questions. You knew I would.

Like: what’s up with the crocodile (by all accounts “a dangerous reptile”) being on a bus with Masha? Was the dangerous reptile bus full? Was his transport cage in the shop? And where was Fedya’s human performer partner? And why wasn’t he (Fedya) wearing a seatbelt?

By the way—what the hell does a “performing crocodile” actually do? In a circus, I mean.

And where, exactly, do you put a 6’5” crocodile on a bus? I’m thinking that even if you had those flat-bed seats like on trans-oceanic flights, a crocodile would kind of flop over the edges. Plus, you’d never get him to put his tray-table back into the upright position.

Also—it seems to me that if I were that bus driver, and I knew there was a 2-meter-long crocodile unsecured somewhere in the bus behind me, I’d have a really, really hard time concentrating on the road. So that whole bus-meets-pothole situation was just an accident waiting to happen.

Finally—how do they know that Masha weighs 120 kg? If they took that from her driver’s license, she lied. And Fedya probably lied about his length, too.

Capping it off

For some reason, my inquisitive mind recently found itself directed to an article of military clothing that I’ve always been passing curious about. I suppose it was one of those all-singing-all-dancing-Nazi programs on cable TV, where I saw a clip of some British soldiers marching. I was struck by the field service caps they were wearing.

Well, not the caps so much as it was the angle at which they were perched on their heads. Like this:

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this cap—it’s fairly common to a lot of military services. It’s worn by our Air Force, our Army and our Marines, for example. (Naval officers can wear one with their service khakis; enlisted wear the Dixie cups, of course.) But we—and pretty much all other forces I’ve observed in the world who use it—wear it smack on the center of the head, not at that tilt.

(I’m not going to tell you what the guys I knew in the Army called it, but it’s alliterative and rude.)

I’ll admit there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about that tilt—a sort of in-your-face ‘tude that makes it more of a statement than our straight fore-and-aft style. But ever since I first saw it in The Great Escape, I’ve always wondered how the hell those Brits kept the caps on their heads, wearing them at that angle I mean—were there staple guns back then?.

And I’ve even seen worse, including a couple of paintings by Eric Kennington, R.A. Like:

Well, I asked around a bit, and had a quick root through the Web on the subject. It looks like the antecedent of this cap is the glengarry traditionally worn in Scottish regiments, except that the latter typically had a sort of checked border around the bottom, and a couple of ribbons hanging off the back.

But I still couldn’t find out details on this whole angle thing, even though it was often called a “side cap” in British services on account of that whole tilt. The most I could get was that it was supposed to be worn at an angle on the right side of the head, but no specifications on how much of an angle, much less how you are supposed to keep it on your head while moving about.

Someone told me that Brylcreem would probably do the trick, but that just grossed me out (and I thought he might be testing the extent of my gullibility). Also that the exaggerated tilt as in the Kennington picture or this photo is probably just a pose for portrait purposes. Also for taking the piss. (Okay, that last one is my extrapolation.)

Well, since glengarries are still worn in Scottish pipe bands, by playing around with my search terms I found some forums where my exact same question has been asked and answered.

And Brylcreem it is. Or the like.

Euw. I mean: grody to the max.

Anyhow, the berets the Brits have been wearing since 1947 look way sharper. So, you know, carry on!

Still, like air, I'll rise

News today that writer poet activist humanitarian Maya Angelou has died. She was 86 and in declining health in recent years.

So hard to think of her in terms of decline, because if anyone defined the term “force of nature”, it was Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, first of several autobiographical works, knocks you off your chair and out of your complacency.

But it’s her poetry I love. I had to share “Phenomenal Woman” during National Poetry Month last year. Such a powerful piece to hold up next to your dreams and aspirations, filling them with strength and fire.

And now seems a good time to take up “Still I Rise”.

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

You can also listen to what the Washington Post calls “her regal presence and her honeyed voice.

Mash-up

Yesterday I talked about how music can set the stage for me when I’m trying to understand a historical period. And, specifically, of course, when I’m trying to pull together the elements of a war.

For the last century, another medium of pop culture that can capture a society’s attitudes or experiences with a war has been film. I’ve written about this before, and shared some of the movies I think give particularly good pictures of various conflicts.

I was thinking about this, and then again thinking about the music from the Vietnam era, and Woodstock, and trying to remember whereI first saw the film about the rock festival—was it in Korea or in Virginia?

Must have been Virginia, at Fort Lee. The one I saw in the Quonset hut movie theatre at Camp Coiner (part of Yongsan Army Base in Seoul) was M*A*S*H. As I mentioned in my post about war movies, M*A*S*H was set in the Korean War, but it was really about Vietnam.

Anyhow, the thing I remember about that particular showing was that there was a joint passing from one direction in any given row, and a bottle passing from the other.

It was the 70s, man. You had to be there.

The long, long trail

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I got to thinking about how historic events can be evoked by popular culture. In particular, I’m talking music here.

Back in the 90s, I traveled around Northern France in what I referred to as my “700 Years of Wine and War” trip. From Alsace to Normandy I covered pretty much everything from the Hundred Years War to World War II.

I took with me mix tapes that included some Renaissance lute work, but a lot of music from the First and Second World Wars. I have a liberal arts education; I believe it’s all connected, and I like to surround myself with context.

Anyhow—a lot of things like “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, Glenn Miller, Edith Piaf and the like. You really have to hear “We’re Going to Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line” some time. It'll give you an idea of how much the British and French were spitting into the wind during the 1939-1940 period known as "The Phoney War". Especially when you consider that they'd watched Blitzkrieg in action in September 1939.

But the first war of my actual consciousness—you know, that I saw on the evening news—was Vietnam, and I’ve been thinking about music from that time. There are a lot of bands that were going strong during those years (you’ll recall that we had a presence in Vietnam from the 50s through the mid-70s). But for some reason, I’ve been hearing this iconic performance in my head.

Gratitude Monday: The faces of war

You know, the thing about Memorial Day—when we’re meant to pause and give thought to those who have served and sacrificed in our armed services—is that you’re never going to run out of things to write about. Because we’re never going to run out of wars.

We are right now engaged in the longest-running war in our history. And it doesn’t really seem like “war”, unless you’re wearing cammies, or are close to someone who does. Because we non-uniformed personnel almost never cross its path. News outlets cover Kardashians more than they do events in Afghanistan or Iraq.

One exception is the Washington Post, which has, since the first boots hit the ground, periodically printed photos of the men and women who have been killed in those foreign fields. Whenever enough fallen have accrued to fill two broadsheet pages, the Post gives them to us, so we have names and faces to go with whatever statistics might filter out to us from governments that would rather we didn’t really know the cost.

And we have the names and faces even if we’d really rather not think about the cost.

As of this writing, the butcher’s bill stands at 6,805. But we have miles to go.

You can go to WaPo’s page—well, 96 of them—showing the serried ranks of men and women from all services, who left home in uniform and returned in uniform military coffins. The Post gives each person’s name, branch, rank and home town, as well as date and circumstances of his or her death.

It is Gratitude Monday, and it is Memorial Day. I am grateful for our uniformed services, and I am grateful for the Post reminding us of the lives contained within those uniforms.