I thought I should share these incredible photos by NatGeo photographer, Paul Nicklen, because 1. they are simply breath-taking, 2. there’s a big part of me that’s a marine-life freak (hard to believe, I know, but when I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a marine biologist! Then I realized it required subjects other than biology such as chem and math, and noticed that nothing but mutant plankton thrives in the water off our sunny little island), and 3. there’s a teensy tiny part of me that enjoys the blood and gore.

It’s incredible that the same man is able to capture the stunning beauty of arctic light, the grace of predators, and the raw violence of the animal kingdom.

I stumbled upon his work from this link on facebook (isn’t it wonderful that a social networking website can be educational as well?) I cannot fathom what it must be like to pursue your passion to the literal ends of the earth. He dives, day after day, into the frigid and dangerous waters of the Antarctic in order to capture nature in its rawest, purest form.

If you have a weak stomach, are about to have a meal or simply do not enjoy blood and guts, I highly suggest to do not click after the jump.

Parental supervision advised. These are the shots from his 4-day dive with a female leopard seal, who kept trying to feed him penguins cos she thought he was an incapacitated predator (thankfully she didn’t think he was a tasty snack, divers in black wet suits like the one he wears are often mistaken for seals/penguins and are accidentally preyed upon by larger predators, like sharks).

Stunning isn’t it? He’s captured something so gruesome and yet, there’s a raw, wild kind of beauty to it. Read more about the story and watch the accompanying interview here.

Visit his website here.

All images courtesy of Paul Nicklen.
http://www.paulnicklen.com/

Imagine eating as much you like as often as you like…”Cream with that sir”, “Yes please”. “Double portion of potatoes?”, “Why not”. If this appeals to you, try preparing for an expedition to the Arctic. I’m eating so much more than I would usually do in a deliberate attempt to put on weight ahead of the expedition next year as I’ve been told that having some reserves of fat will be a necessary source of energy and also will help insulate a little against the cold. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m burning more calories than ever before, primarily as I’m training more than I would do usually and I’m also having to challenge my thinking when my brain tells me I’m looking a bit chubby, so eat less.

Apparently, polar explorers burn over 7,500 calories every day when on expedition and generally the rations provide around 5,500 calories every day (Most people consume about 2,500 calories every day) so you can easily start to see how the weight drops off when on the ice – some explorers lose 1lb a day and as I’m going to be away for two periods of three weeks (first block in Norway in January and the second block on expedition itself in March), I may come back a new man..!

It is all a far cry from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s day when in 1908 on his expedition to the South Pole, he survived on biscuits, hoosh (a stodgy greasy stew) and penguin fried in blubber. Early explorers also took pemmican with them, comprised of dried meat mixed with melted fat with berries sometimes added. Modern explorers carry dried food which is rehydrated by adding melted snow and supplement calorie intake by regularly eating from a ‘nosebag’ that contains salami, nuts and chocolate to provide a blend of protein and carbohydrate. All good stuff and I’m pleased I’m not doing this on the same diet used 100 years ago. I may also give the pemmican a miss for the time being as I reckon I will have to be really hungry before I can bring myself to tuck into that! Still, all part of the challenge…

Dos videos virales excelentes de Samsung para promocionar un concurso denominado Samsung Mobile Explorers. La idea es que cualquiera puede convertirse en un reportero durante las Olimpiadas de Invierno de Vancouver 2010 gracias a sus móviles que graban vídeo. Si queréis participar tenéis que ser residentes en Canadá.

Vía: Advertblog

Photographed by Darth Holden

explored

– License

I went and asked on Twitter and Facebook about what movies from peoples childhood that they remembered most and always will. Here’s the list:

Pretty in Pink
The Never Ending Story
Ghostbusters
Die Hard
Commando
The Warriors
Flight of the Navigator
Short Circuit
Dark Crystal
All Dogs Go to Heaven
Cool World
Lost Boys
Trading Places
Return to Oz
Full Metal Jacket
Princess Bride
Labyrinth
Batteries Not Included
Hook
Tron
This Is Spinal Tap
The Goonies
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Big
Back to the Future
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
WarGames
Poltergeist
Blues Brothers
Ruthless People
Throw Momma From The Train
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Baby Boom
D.A.R.Y.L.
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
Explorers
Field of Dreams
Gremlins
The Burbs
Innerspace
Legend
Splash
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
Cocoon
Roxanne
Weird Science
Breakfast Club
Twilight Zone – The Movie
Stakeout
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Critters
Money Pit

From a few of the movies on the list I can gather that some people have a somewhat scary childhood. Also I know that some of the films are from the 90s but sure people were children then as well.

This week: Explorers

Our brainteaser this week is about famous explorers. Need help?  Try Credo Reference .

1. Who first made his immortal “one small step” on to the Moon in July 1969?

2. Which explorer arrived in Botany Bay in 1770 and claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain?

3. Which explorer of the world’s oceans invented the Aqua-Lung which came to be called a scuba?

4. Name the sherpa who reached the summit of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953.

5. The South Pole was first reached in 1911 by a Norwegian expedition under which explorer?

6. America is named after which Spanish explorer?

7. What name was given by Thor Heyerdahl to the raft built of nine balsawood logs on which, in 1947, he and five

companions travelled the 5000 miles between Peru and the Tuamoto Islands near Tahiti.

8. Which Italian explorer is celebrated on the second Monday in October with Landing Day or Discovery Day?

9. Which explorer wrote the books “Talent for Trouble” (1968), “Hell on Ice” (1978) and “To the Ends of the Earth: Transglobe Expedition 1979-82 (1983)?

10. In 1922, which Norwegian explorer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Russian relief work?

Find the answers here.

Image is “Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (c.1510-54) Making his Way Across New Mexico, from ‘The Great American Explorers’, 1905 (oil on canvas)”. Find out more about it on Credo:

Free Sonlight World History Notebook Pages to download

American War of Independence This 3 page download includes a notebook page and biography pages on Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

British India A notebooking page on British in India.

Explorers & Empire Builders A 6 page download with a biography page each for David Livingstone, Captain James Cook, Rene’ Caillie’, Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen.

For the more Sonlight notebooking pages please visit my Free Pages ~ ENJOY!

Our Explorers session yesterday was great fun, we looked at Genesis 25:19 – 28:18 ish, Isaac, Rebekah, Esau and Jacob.

What a horrible family!

• Isaac and Rebekah each choose a favorite son.
• Esau cares more about filling his stomach than God’s Promises.
• Jacob won’t share his food, without making obscene demands.
• Rebekah eavesdrops, then deceives her husband.
• Jacob lies to his dad.
• Esau decides he wants to kill his brother.

What we learnt:

Characters in the old testament are not role models for us. We should be very careful about wanting to be like anyone other than Jesus.

Looking at God’s response to Jacob was really great. Jacob is on the run, having just duped his father and brother. God forgives Jacob and reasserts his promise originally made to Abraham, that God would give Jacob descendants, land, and that his family would be a blessing to the whole world.

God’s promise to Abraham, and his plan for humanity cannot be derailed by us letting God down through our behaviour. God will keep his promises.

That’s where I expected the session to stop, but there was unrest…. Howls of ‘That’s unfair, Jacob doesn’t deserve to be forgiven, God should punish him!’

How could God just forgive Jacob and give him this fantastic promise?

It’s not often that an Explorers session gives the opportunity where the kids are asking you to explain the Gospel, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever had it happen before, and I probably didn’t do a very good job of it.

God could forgive Jacob for the same reason that God can forgive us: Because Jesus paid the price for Jacob’s sin and our sin. God punished Jesus instead of punishing Jacob, just like God punished Jesus instead of us, and Jesus was prepared to take that punishment because Jesus loves us.

Today’s post is from Annie at Parr Library.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

The author is a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine, who doesn’t even like to camp out.  This is his first book and it has been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company and Paramount Pictures for a possible movie.

 In 1925, at age 58,  the intrepid British explorer Percy Fawcett , along with his 21 year old son Jack  and Jack’s friend Raleigh Rimmel, set out into the Amazon jungles in northeastern Brazil in search of “Z”, Fawcett’s name for the highly advanced civilization he was sure existed in the depths of the Amazon.  They vanished without a trace.  In subsequent years, dozens of expeditions ventured into the jungle in search of Fawcett, including Percy Fleming, brother of Ian Fleming, and an English actor of the day, Albert de Winton, found years after he set out, floating naked and crazy in a canoe, by Indians who promptly killed him.  All in all, it is estimated that 100 would-be-rescuers lost their lives in the jungle looking for Fawcett.

 Grann himself must be counted among these “Fawcett Freaks” because while researching this book, he leaves wife and child and attempts to follow Fawcett’s trail.  Fortunately he lives to tell the tale.  And what a tale it is!  Grann, who had access to Fawcett’s diaries, travel logs, and correspondence, meticulously recreates this Victorian man — a soldier, sometime spy, expert surveyor and dashing explorer—and his obsession with Z.  Fawcett was the Indiana Jones of his day and the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.  Grann intersperses details of Fawcett’s jungle hardships (malaria, cyanide-spitting millipedes, flies whose maggoty larvae burrow under the skin and fester, vampire bats, near starvation) with his own adventures in the jungle.  He comes closer than anyone to determining Fawcett’s fate.  And as for Z—that’s the surprise at the end of the book.  A great story.

Alexander von Humboldt by Friedrich Georg Weitsch, 1806.

Today, just some announcements:

Common-Place, the online history journal,  just published my article, “Why We Need a New History of Exploration.” You can read it here.

SciCafe, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is presenting “Darwin on Facebook: How Culture Transforms Human Evolution” a presentation by anthropologist Peter Richerson.  “SciCafe features cutting-edge science, cocktails, and conversation and takes place on the first Wednesday of every month. For more information, please visit amnh.org/scicafe”

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) opens its new exhibition Hidden Histories of Exploration today in London. The exhibition website is worth checking out. I hope to be doing a more extensive write-up of the exhibition (and curator Felix Driver) soon.

Some tough times at sea for ol' Henry

To complete this week’s totally unplanned explorers’ trifecta, let’s take a look at Henry Hudson. New York, Amsterdam, and history nerds everywhere have been celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the English sea captain’s jaunt up the river that now bears his name. Hudson, of course, was not looking for a good knish or a papaya smoothie when he sailed into New York Harbor. He, along with many other European explorers of the era, thought he could find a northern route across North America to Asia, the much-longed for Northwest Passage.

Hudson’s river didn’t stretch quite that far, and his ship the Half Moon could only sail to present-day Albany before it had to turn back. But Hudson’s journey convinced the Dutch to start trading with the Indians of New York, leading to the settlement of Manhattan and the river valley up to Albany. And don’t forget that the settlers from Holland also brought with them ice-skating, pancakes, and going dutch on dates.

Hudson didn’t spend any time in Manhattan, not even to christen the parkway named for him. He soon returned to England and put together another expedition to search for the Northwest Passage. Earlier, he had tried to sail due north over the Arctic Circle to reach Asia. That trip ended in failure. This time, he reached what is now Hudson Bay, where his crew mutinied, forcing him, his young son, and a few others into a small boat. The captain and his small band died a frozen death as the mutineers returned to England. (Thanks to Russell Shorto and his wonderful The Island at the Center of the World for these details.)

So peaceful - before the Dutch. And taxis.

A few years later, the Dutch began their commercialization efforts in earnest, hoping to stoke a profitable fur trade with the Iroquois and other tribes of the region. Robert Juet, who had served under Hudson on the Half Moon, told Dutch officials that the Indians “were seeming very glad of our coming.” Sure, Bob – because you left, too! When the Dutch finally put down roots, and the English followed, the tribes might have had a different take on this alien invasion.

Adriaen Block came after Hudson, scouting the region and claiming a good chunk of neighboring Connecticut for the Dutch. (The upcoming 400th anniversary – mark your calendar, it’s just five years away! – of Block’s reaching modern-day Hartford will stir even more worldwide attention than this year’s doings for Hank.

Sure.

Still, we have Block Island. And a typically woeful attempt at urban revitalization in Hartford named Adriaen’s Landing.) Block’s boat for his Connecticut excursion was actually built on Manhattan or neighboring lands, after his first vessel burned. Friendly Indians helped the Dutch through the winter, providing them with food.

Still not too bad after the Dutch - it was those damn English who screwed it up!

The first Dutch settlers came in 1624 (or at least the Dutch sent them—most were Protestant Walloons), landing on Governor’s Island. Some split for Delaware and Connecticut, some went north along Hudson’s river, a few stayed put. From those humble beginnings sprung the city that never sleeps, and where probably the most lasting Dutch presence is in place names—Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, the Bowery, the Catskills. A Dutch-themed tour of Manhattan, however, tries to put the lie to that notion.

This post might have stirred some Hudson-mania; you might have thought of proudly wearing a Henry Hudson 400th anniversary t-shirt, to mark the start of the Anglo-Dutch influences that shaped the growth of the Grote Appel. Bad news — the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation sold out in September. But you can still raise a jenever to the old guy, maybe while planning your next trip to the wonderful city he never could have imagined rising out of the Indian villages he saw in 1609.

Who can say no to cod soaked in lye?

Break out the lutefisk and lefse, give a solemn nod to Martin Luther, and pour another round of Linie Aquavit, because it’s Leif Eriksson Day!

Well, it was. But I guess I missed it. What with all the hoopla over Columbus Day. But there it is in the NYT, President Obama declared October 9 Leif Eriksson Day, just as presidents before him have since 1964.

The first European explorer in North America - leaving aside the claims for St. Brendan.

Continuing our explorer’s theme, let’s take a look at the often-ignored Leif. The presidential proclamation calls him “son of Iceland, grandson of Norway.” Actually he was son of Erik the Red, and though Leif spent his early years on Iceland, it was Greenland that became his home, and the base for the expedition that makes him famous…uh, semi-famous, today.

No one talked much about Leif when I was in grade school. We heard plenty about Columbus, but not much about Leif and his journey to Newfoundland, where he became the first European to found a settlement in North America. (More on that later.) Of course, archaeologists didn’t find evidence of Leif’s presence there until the early 1960s. And let’s face it, as hard-working and ubiquitous as the Norwegians are (in the upper Midwest, anyway), they don’t carry the same demographic clout as the Italians, and they had a 400-year head start in ginning up the PR machine for Columbus. Kids might learn a little about Leif, but to the general population, he is still something of a mystery.

That’s too bad, because the Icelandic sagas depict Leif and his family as the stuff of a ratings-grabbing mini-series. And if there had been cameras in the 10^th century AD to get them on a reality show — boffo! Dad Erik and his dad Thorvald were banished from Norway after a little bout of murder with some neighbors. Mayhem followed them in Iceland, which led to another banishment and Erik’s staking a claim in Greenland. Later, Leif’s sister Freydis seems to have masterminded a mini-massacre on Newfoundland (Vinland to the Norse), killing five women herself. According to one saga, she tried to hush up the affair with this threat: “If we are fortunate enough to make it back to Greenland, I will have anyone who tells of these events killed.” More blood-hungry berserkers than subdued Minnesotans, those Erikssons, eh?

At Erik’s little Greenland settlement, the Norse raised cattle and sheep. They also traded the ivory from walrus tusks, along with a few live polar bears, to the folks back in Europe. Leif, eager for adventure, set off to explore lands west of Greenland first spotted by Bjarni Herjolfsson, who, if he had had Leif’s spunk, would have led to our breaking out the lutefisk and lefse to celebrate Bjarni Herjolfsson Day.

Leif first sailed by Baffin Island, stopped briefly on Labrador, then came ashore for the winter on Newfoundland. There and nearby, the  Norse found abundant salmon, grassy fields, and wild grapes or berries, which may have led to the Norse calling the region Vinland (vin can mean either “grapes” or  “grassland”).

Actual on-the-scene footage of the Norse-Skraeling battle!

Leif returned to Greenland in the spring with tales of this verdant paradise. On a second journey, Leif’s brother Thorvald explored farther south, around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He also made contact with the Indians of the region, ancestors of the Innu and Beothuk. In the spirit of bonhomie that would mark future European contact with the natives, Thorvald called the Indians skraelings — “ugly people” or “weaklings,” take your pick. But the skraelings were strong enough to kill Thorvald, after he and his men attacked them first. And so a pattern was set in motion for the New World…

Another Eriksson brother, Thorstein, led the next Norse expedition to Vinland, hoping to bring his brother’s body back to Greenland. No luck. He soon died, and Thorstein’s widow Gudrid remarried and sailed with the next expedition, hoping to start a more permanent colony. After a year or two, fearful of more skraeling attacks, the Norse left this grassy land, much more suitable for farming and hunting than Greenland, but too far from the Norse there to make it safe.

No one knows when Leif died. He seems to have spent his last years as a leader of the Greenland colony. The Norse stuck it out there until around 1450, when Inuit attacks and colder temperatures either killed off the remaining Norse or drove them off the island.

The reconstructed site at L'anse aux Meadows

The story of Red, Leif, and the family almost seems too fantastic, with the heroic sailing off for unknown lands, the  building of a settlement out of nothing (hey, the Pilgrims got help from the Indians they met…), rivalries and retrievals of bodies. But the sagas and archaeological finds document it (leaving aside some of the holes and conflicting accounts in the written record). Leif has his day, though I doubt many parades. And of course, with the short shrift history gets in our schools today, in this era of mastery tests über alles, don’t expect too many kids to learn much of this story. But if you’re ever in Newfoundland, make a stop at the  living history museum at the first European settlement in North America. And do raise an aquavit for ol’ Leif.

Retell: An account of Columbus’ ‘discovery’ of the Americas told from the point of view of a Taino boy.

Topics: Christopher Columbus, explorers, gold, Taino, trade, slaves

Units of Study: Nonfiction, Historical Fiction, Content-Area

Tribes: mutual respect

Reading Skills: interpretation, envisionment, inference

Writing Skills: using figurative language

My Thoughts: Yesterday was Columbus Day and to celebrate, here is one of my favorite Columbus Day read alouds.  Since the story is told from the perspective of a child, students will be able to relate to how powerless the boy feels.  He warns his people not to trust the “strange creatures” that were “spat out of the canoes”, but no one listens to him.  This is a fantastic text for teaching inference.  Yolen takes great care not to use terms that would have been foreign to the Taino people.  Readers must constantly infer what the boy is describing.  For example, Yolen describes beards as “hair growing like bushes on their chins”.  When Columbus claims the island for Spain she describes how people “knelt before their chief and pushed sticks into the sand”.  It’s important to model how readers constantly consult the illustration while reading the text in order to construct meaning.

What, no balloons?

As thousands of New Yorkers line the streets for today’s holiday festivities, we’re reminded that green beer and corned beef and cabbage must be more significant than exploration, since so many more people turn out for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Why don’t Christopher Columbus and his accomplishments get more respect on the day named for him? Maybe because some of the people slaughtered and displaced by the floodgate of slavery and settlement he opened are still none to happy about being “discovered.” Maybe because Italians who aren’t part of dysfunctional but somehow admirable crime families don’t register too much in the collective American psyche. I can’t explain the lower turnout for the Columbus Day Parade. But I will try to explain a little about who Chris was — and wasn’t.

This is Columbus - only he didn't look like this. No paintings of him exist from his lifetime.

First, a look at some of the myths and maybe-truths. Someone told me yesterday that Columbus was actually English. What? Maybe she meant Scottish, if the recent theory of a Spanish historian named Villalonga is to be believed. I knew there was some uncertainty about his birthplace, though he always gave Genoa the honor. In recent years, a small Piedmontese village called Cuccaro tried to lay claim as the birth site, hoping to draw tourists. The claim was largely discredited and the tourists stayed away. Some scholars have argued for Spain or Portugal as his true homeland. Plenty of documents from Genoa seem to back the captain’s own claim, though we have his son saying his father chose to obscure details of his roots.

Why? Perhaps because he was a pirate, as Villalonga argues. Perhaps because the explorer was part Jewish in a Catholic Europe that did not much like Jews. We know, thanks to Monty Python, that Columbus’s Spanish employers were not too keen on the unconverted Jews (though the Brits seemed unable to find much humor in the real Inquisition and so subjected a nice, old Englishwoman to the horrors of the comfy chair). Some scholars have argued for Columbus’s Judaic heritage. I would buy that, since conversions weren’t limited to Spanish lands.

The four voyages

So the details are cloudy. And some historians aren’t willing to give CC much credit for his voyages (there were four) of discovery. He didn’t “discover” anything, since plenty of people had lived for thousands of years on the lands he reached. His legacy, as noted above, is one of pain for the native peoples decimated by European colonization. And the Norse beat him to North America by almost 500 years. So maybe he doesn’t even deserve a parade, let alone one to match the kind St. Paddy gets.

But consider: open-ocean crossings in 1492 were not exactly the norm. No one, to his knowledge, had ever taken the route Columbus did. The captain, in a word he might have known, had cojones. He had three tiny ships and a crew that got a little uppity as the sailing dragged on with no land in sight. The honor of making the longest Atlantic voyage by a European ship maybe gave the sailor some bragging rights — but only if they made it back home to actually do some bragging. And for good or ill, the colonization of the Americas that Columbus unleashed, and the exchange that bears his name, did change the world. Peppers to Thailand and potatoes to the homeland of Scotland, horses to Mexico and beer to me — all possible because Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Yes, Europe would have “discovered” the New World if Chris had never lived. But he did – whoever he really was, and wherever he came from – and he got there first. Maybe worth a halfway decent parade.

(pic of Columbus statue in Barcelona…I’m betting he is pointing West…)

It is a snowy Columbus Day here in Minnesota.  Heavy flakes are falling, two+ inches expected.  The white stuff descending this early is highly unusual…maybe we missed autumn…bummer!

Oh, anyway, back to Columbus.  I thought I’d give him center stage today (sorry snow).  He’s received boatloads of flack for receiving credit for something he never set out to do: “discover” America.  The flack stems from the fact that other peoples had beat him to it: native peoples were already populating the lands and had discovered it well before Columbus.  And then there are those shadowy Norse claims that the Vikings had hit landfall well before he.

I guess it is safe to say that Columbus’s claim to fame isn’t so much ”discovering America” as it is that he opened the Americas to exploration by Europeans…that is probably what children’s textbooks say nowadays, anyway.  In the 1937 FDR declared Columbus Day a national holiday.  Schools, banks and government agencies in Minnesota nary blink at it, although Charlie (our Boston University son) has the day off, which makes me think Columbus is still held in high honor in New England.

What grabs my attention about Columbus is that he unintentionally set in motion an avalanche: the transfer of European people and culture to the Americas; the transfer of Christianity to the native peoples; the transfer of European plants, crops, animals and deadly diseases to previously isolated lands and people.  A mere 500 years later, look at America…it is indistinguishable from what Columbus encountered.

If Columbus time travelled from 1492 to today and graced our present day world, I wonder if he wouldn’t go into shock.  And what would he conclude, I wonder?  Would he applaud?  Would he weep?

What may help us answer that question is that Columbus afforded God and not himself the credit and praise for his successful voyage.  Listen to parts of a letter he wrote after returning to Spain (after his first voyage):

“I named the first of these islands San Salvador [which means holy saviour], thus bestowing upon it the name of our holy Saviour under whose protection I made the discovery.”

“The great success of this enterprise is not to be ascribed to my own merits, but to the holy Catholic faith and the piety of our Sovereigns, the Lord often granting to men what they never imagine themselves capable of effecting, as he is accustomed to hear the prayers of his servants and those who love his commandments, even in that which appears impossible; in this manner has it happened to me who have succeeded in an undertaking never before accomplished by man.”*

 I think Columbus believed God was behind all of this…that God enabled it, that God may have set it all into motion and that Columbus was just the vehicle through which God’s will was made manifest.  Part of Columbus’ intention was to bring Christianity to the native peoples (something school textbooks surely omit)…his journal comments often on the receptivity of the natives to the faith of the explorers.  Columbus the missionary–never hear about that one, do we?  Could Christ be behind such an intention? 

So, if a funk-ily clad Columbus stood before us today, what would he say?  I think he would maintain humility and point out that he was just a small player that God used to set a host of things in motion.  I don’t think he’d take credit or blame…he’d probably just wonder at it all.  Christ was central to his worldview, He was the One responsible for success or defeat, Columbus just had to hang with Him and do his best…I don’t think Columbus would easily comprehend America’s arrogant, human-centric modus operandi.  I don’t think he’d understand how we see ourselves as all we can trust in, rely on, have faith in.  I’d bet he’d shake his head at our “we can make it happen, no God necessary, thank you” think. You know, maybe at such a worldview encounter Columbus would stop and weep…maybe he sees and weeps for us now….  If so, may God hear and answer his prayers and set in motion a new avalanche, a spiritual avalanche of Christo-centric proportions. Now that would be reason to celebrate Columbus Day.

*journal excerpts and quotes of Columbus are from the work of Las Casas, printed by Albert and Charles Boni, New York, 1924.  Reprinted by permission from: The Forerunner International, P.O. Box 362173, Melbourne FL 32936-2173. taken from Columbus’ Christian Character and Divine Mission at http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0196_Columbus_Christian_C.html

I made this with Columbus in mind. Well, I planned to use an image of Columbus and then let the rest happen around it.  So, its kind of about the idea of Columbus, I guess. Anyway, happy Columbus day.

Mars and Magellan, paper collage, 11″ x 5 1/2″, 2009

The Blue Mountains can be clearly seen to the west of Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Back in the days of  Sydney’s early history, explorers were lured west to the Blue Mountains to discover more fertile lands to settle upon.

They experienced failure time and again, as they endeavoured to follow the valleys through the mountains.  Each time they were faced with massive cliffs rising up on all sides, but from the side they approached from.

It wasn’t until they finally decided to follow the ridges that they eventually managed to cross over.

The Blue Mountains are filled with the most wonderful scenery with waterfalls flowing over massive cliffs falling to the valley floor far below.

Echo Point lives up to it’s name.  As children we used to love to run down to Echo Point to call out “hello”.  “Hello” always returned!

I’ll never forget the strange hermit man we once met living in these mountains.  With his long white beard, that would have made Santa quite jealous, he took my family to see his “home”.  As we wound our way through the bush (I’d never find my way there again!) we eventually came to a fairly minor cave.

It was amazing to see how there was a little trickle of water flowing over the rock, through a little carved out channel into a tiny little dam he’d made inside the cave for his water supply.

I don’t remember seeing too much else.  His dwelling was very basic and it appeared to me to be a very lonely existence.

Blue Mountains

Marilyn Williams
Cascading Revenue

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РUncover new adventures in the immersive Pok̩mon Mystery Dungeon storyline by playing new Special Episodes.
РPlay as one of 19 different Pok̩mon (including five additional starter Pok̩mon). Find out which one you will become. Interact with more than 490 Pok̩mon as you explore.
РTrade items with your friends via a local wireless connection. Also, you can trade with Pok̩mon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pok̩mon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness and see what happens.
– With a wireless broadband Internet connection, access Special Missions or rescue fallen friends over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
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There is something about maps that inspires wonder, excitement, and possibility. But with today’s heavy reliance on GPS units, satellites, radar, and other technological advances to the world of travel, much of the mystery and allure of stepping out into the unknown has been lost. It has become so easy to just hop into a car, fire up the GPS on the dash, and let it take us on the quickest route to where we are going, that to imagine a trip around the country or across the world using little else besides a map, skill, courage, daring, and intuition seems nearly impossible. The thrill of the journey has largely been sacrificed in favor of the fastest possible arrival at the destination. But for those of you still feeling the lure of the open road and craving a time where danger and the unknown went hand in hand with travel, we’ve got just the thing for you. Good Magazine has created an interactive infographic which lets you trace 23 of the most famous journeys of all time, both real and fictional. You can trace the footsteps, road trips, flight paths and ocean routes of such famous travelers as Kerouac, Kesey, Earhart, Lindbergh, Hudson, Ahab and Ishmael, Magellan and many more. Follow the maps, learn about the travelers, and see images of the trips and let Good Magazine feed your wanderlust.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

———————- Henry David Thoreau

I’m glad we played our song, albeit a short one, we did create music with our bonhomie in this fantastic trip.

Greetings to the Fellow-Travellers (and the ones who skipped a glimpse of heaven), I cannot even begin to describe the beauty and grandeur of the little escapade that we’d managed in this short span of time. Thanks to Rohit, everything went “exactly” according to the itinery and we ended up having a ball of a time.

Just like a saas-bahu soap let me try and recap(..itulate) the series of really really fortunate events.

On Friday night we boarded the train from Sealdah, with self-same Yellow Livestrong Bands in hand (courtesy Prerna n’ Shaheera), we looked perfectly part of a proper Group. Although we were scattered in 2 groups, half here and half there, on the train, a lot of hopping made sure that everyone mixed and talked with everyone else.

The real marker of the train journey were Rahul’s mathri’s, which we all ‘loved’ and consumed throughout the journey. The love for the mathri’s escalated to such levels that Gurinder and Pritish were forced to start a discussion on them at 5 the next morning, even though it meant waking the others from their blissful slumber. By the end of the trip Sarad and wife suggested that we stick the mathri’s on the wristbands, so as to portray an image of brotherhood, through the rakhi lookalikes.

Another thing difficult to forget would be Pranab’s unending joy upon discovering a mobile phone video based on Sholay (in a not so parliamentary language). Jai g…….. ji ki, thakur.

As we reached Siliguri, all faces were distorted as searing heat pulled and tugged at everyone’s skin. But relief was at hand in the form of A/C cabs which transported us to our dreamland resort, Sterlings, in a few hours, only after stopping at a fab-food Punjabi restaurant (which had Proud notices on its lavatories asking customers for 5 bucks per use).

The resort had Live music which some of us got to experience and where Yours Truly sang while Gurinder escorted everyone out of hearing range. Will not forget the cute Nepali accent that the lead guy was singing “Love will keep us alive” in. Dinner was followed by some really spooky walking trails, led by Rj Rehan alongwith live commentary, in the resort’s vicinity. And the icing on the cake was Ila and co.’s calling on some Ancient Spirits while dancing around a make-belief fire.

The night ended really late with everyone staying up and chatting as if there was no tomorrow.

Sleep at 2 am and get up at 5 seemed to be the mantra of the trip where maximising your excursion time and minimising your lazing time was the goal successfully achieved.  Anyways, the morning began at 5 for some of us and we went to glare at the Sun in the eye (from Tiger Hill) while it rose as if it owned the earth. The first few minutes were fabulous views but later on the Clouds played spoilsport and covered the sunrise completely. Anyways, we decided to make lemonade of the lemon served to us and planned to walk back through the picturesque landscape. We did quite a bit of hiking while our cabs kept following us urging us to get on. After returning back to the hotel, everyone slept for a while wherever they found space. Evidently Pritish and Rehan barged into our room and demanded sleeping space and were snoring on our bed before we had the time to answer.

Later in the day we left for Darjeeling, where I met my friend David, who took us to a guided tour of St. Paul’s Boarding School. Everyone was amazed by the way David handled himself and played the part of a Professor while being only 25 years of age (he looks 40, though). It was a visit worth remembering and I shall keep that place in mind anytime I need to run away far from the madding crowd. St. Paul’s was a beautiful school with fine facilities and made on such a huge tract of land that even paying a visit to the library would be considered a delicious promenade.

From there on we went to the Mall Road Inox but found no movies to watch and ended up eating and getting back to the resort to end the night again with chatting going on late into the night. But only after confirming the next day’s plan of river rafting.

Now, this day was the best of them all. We started after breakfast at the resort and went down to the rafting point while perched on top of our jeeps. We looked like some political party workers garnering voters’ support, but it was a completely different experience. At the Rafting guy’s office there was huge commotion over whether to do the 45 minutes route or the more than 2 hours route. While the majority rooted for the former, Prerna and me made sure that we ended up doing the latter. And we Thank the Lord for blessing us with stupendously gorgeous weather for the best rafting trip ever.

We all have our Paradigm shifts, things that suddenly make you turn and look at life differently, if I ever experienced something close to that, it was this rafting expedition. We were blessed with heavy showers throughout which also made sure that we got surer and rougher rapids adding to the excitement of it all. Prerna had the best time of it all when she fell into the water when a rapid threw us out of control, though she was shit scared, she acted really composed and got back in in no time. While Mermaid Ila kept jumping into the water and swimming around the raft, Abhishek was denied the privilege on several occasions, but eventually even he succumbed to the sheer temptation of it all and dived into the ice-cold water. We were all like a bunch of sea-creatures. happily getting wet in the rain while making sure we took all the rapids under our stride. The beauty of the surrounding hills and the force of water did put us greatly in awe of God’s creation, he certainly knows how to make things right. Things like these make poets out of nobodys.

As the “Forward” rowing ended so did our lung power and we returned to the hotel rather reluctantly. From then on everything else seemed pale in comparison and we thought that nothing would be able to match up to the sheer elegance of this water venture. Darjeeling’s Lotus restaurant was the chosen point for dinner. It was Don’s Aunty’s restaurant and we had fabulous momo’s and chowmein there. Aditi had to be controlled from throwing up as the long drives to and from the rafting trip had her stomach totally upset. While Pranab worked on the ‘project’ to get her back to normal, me and “Her” walked them around Mall Road, halting at moments for a little shopping. After dinner, we returned to the resort for a fabulous campfire, with Live (courtesy, Rohit: guitar, Everybody else: chorus) as well as Recorded (iPods in order of size, Amit’s, Pritish’s and mine) Music. We danced around the campfire like a bunch of tribals asking for deliverance, while Rehan fanned the fire and Rahul kept pouring oil over it. One of the dances sure to be remembered would be Sharad’s (the single one), O he showed all his moves and sure made them right as all the girls were severely impressed. Again the party went on till late into the night and only after the fire burnt down did we unwantingly go back to our rooms and slept.

The next morning was the checkout day, where everyone had really morose faces but nonetheless we tried our best to make the most of the last day we had. We paid a visit to the beautiful St. Andrew’s Church on Mall Road, where Sophia played the piano and Dana sang beautiful hymns. We admired the beautiful Christian architecture and the old huge musical organs. From there we lunched at Glenary’s restaurant..o mama…still can’t forget the flavour of their yummy chocolate tarts. While a group of us went to eat at the Mayfair Hotel, where they had fabulous a fabulous buffet spread out.

After fooding, we jumped into our vehicles to head back to the plains. The marking point of this journey was the fire ignited in the pit of Abhishek’s stomach when he saw me driving one of the vehicles. The car-rallyist in him wanted to jump at the wheels but one strong word from Pranab, the ever-composed old young guy, and his (Abhishek’s) fires were doused instantaneously.

We reached the NJP station to find heat and scattered seating arrangements in the train and, thanks to Kriti, after a lot of shuffling around we eventually sat down together. And just like all good things must come to an end, so did this fantabulous trip.

A Saturday well spent: Sentosa with the puppies for some fun in the sun and swimming lessons for the lot of them. That stretch is pooch central! So many pooches playing and frolicking in the sand and sea. Loves it Met a man with 4 schnauzers whose a regular there on weekends and takes all of them swimming. Just imagine! Little dogs bobbing along and paddling ahead of their owner, too cute!

BFFs

Winston in series. Sorry, had to put all of them up to make getting wet worth it. Dopey over here decided it would be a great idea to shake it off right next to me and the dlsr.

Tina truly channeling Ms Turner.

Pebbles. Being chill. This is why she’s my dog

Dopey is also messy. Thank god he’s blessed with good looks.

Stopped by the Shack for some beers (for the boys) and a strawberry margarita for me before heading home. Pebbles was a huge hit, she wandered far and wide and made lots of friends This puppy play date also turned out to be an impromptu photoshoot. Got all sandy trying to get shots of these wiggly little buggers. But super fun nonetheless. Can’t wait to do this again!

If anyone wants some nice whisky, evidently Ernest Shackleton left two crates of the stuff in Antarctica on his 1909 quest for the South Pole. It’s been encased in ice and buried under a shed for a century, I wonder if that means it’s aged well…