From Evernote: |
Afghanistan’s Only Golf Course |
I came across this wonderful archive article in the New York Times about the only golf course in Afghanistan. I hope it is still open. It’s proprietor is clearly a golfist, and yearns for the day that will allow young Afghans to play golf in peace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/world/asia/15afghan.html
I watched network television for the first time in years on Grammy night. In the lead up to the show, I caught the Anderson Cooper interview of Lady Gaga. I have been a big fan since her first album, and have always thought that her music was the thinking man’s pop music. Cooper notes in his interview that Gaga never looks the same twice, and it is true. Watching her music videos, not only her costumes change but her look changes, many times in the same video.
Gaga complained in the interview that photographers are always asking for her to show her real self. Without any irony, she points out she is sitting in lingerie with just eyeliner on for Cooper, and even here, it’s hard to see what she really looks like. She has perfected the mask of fame. What we really yearn for is a kind of candid Gaga photo of her sitting in a pink polo shirt and Bermudas drinking a gin and tonic with just some
minimal eye liner, natural lighting – something to connect her to our mundane self. She understands this and studiously avoids ever assuming she is off camera.
So we have to go to the source. Youtube only hints at her underlying self, and what comes out is a basically attractive young Italian-American woman (right) who went to private Catholic school and NYU.It is very hard to link this picture with the mostly nude pop superstar being interviewed by Cooper, but then a light went off.
In this season of golf senescence, I had taken to watching the whole of The Sopranos from Netflix, and the truth came to me. Gaga is Meadow Soprano (Jamie-Lynn Sigler, to left). The face, the complexion, the eyes, all line up. It’s as if Meadow, instead of pursuing law, decided to go into performance art. Even more surprisingly, the internet rumor is that a young Stephanie Germanotta is has a cameo appearance as a high school girl watching Anthony, Jr., swimming in the 3rd Season episode, The Telltale Moozadell.
Gaga takes these underlying bones and transforms herself with not only her masquerade and costume parade, but had some transformational moment where she decided she would no longer be just Stephanie Germanotta, NYU coed with a lot of fallback plans.
That was the question Cooper failed to ask.
Addendum:
I was watching the episode and found her -she is indeed in the scene as one of the girls on the bleacher smoking cigarettes and eating pizza while Anthony Jr., and a bunch of boys vandalize the school pool.
She enters the scene and it’s hard to tell if it really is Stephanie Germanotta, but as the camera pans away from her, you see Gaga revealed. 
The grocery store turkey’s evolution from the wild turkey is an echo of our journey from our wilder, free-range origins. The wild turkey, whose intelligence caused Benjamin Franklin to recommend it for our national bird, is a far cousin of the overbred, overmedicated artifice that is the plastic wrapped bird that you plunk into your grocery cart. In the passage from our free-range origins to our over-cultivated existence, are we just overbred, overstuffed turkeys? Three things confirm this: the outsourcing of our basic food functions, the reduction of work into processes, and no reduction of stress from our surrender.
The wild turkey is known to be the most cunning of birds, requiring stealth and deceit to bring it close enough for a shot. I would assume the human in the original state of nature to be no different and no less intelligent. The urban legend is that the domesticated turkey is so stupid that they can’t be left out in the rain because they look up when hit on the head with raindrops, subsequently drowning. While this is untrue of domesticated turkeys, it may be true of domesticated humans, Homo sapiens sapiens familiaris.
We use to hunt for our food or gather it from the fields and forests. At a critical point, we domesticated the game and started farming the fruits and vegetables that sustained us, creating enough surplus calories to sustain larger populations that could then specialize in crafts, trades, and services, to where eventually the majority of the population could outsource food production to a minority of the people. If you’re lucky, you can buy a luscious apple out of season brought in by jet transport directly to your Costco from the Antipodes. This is not too much different from the turkey who willingly or unwillingly entered into the similar bargain with humans. In doing so, the turkey increased its population to an estimated 660 million turkeys currently in the world –technically a raging success on the chromosomal level. The outsourcing of the finding of food proved to be a Faustian bargain for the turkey whose life is rendered short and brutal. Depending on your outlook, the human bargain is no less Faustian because there are 6.8 billion humans, the majority of which now depend on this outsourced food production. If you are reading this on the internet, you are clearly benefiting from this arrangement. The recent economic downturn shows how easy it is to fall from the grace afforded by this system. If you can’t afford the fancy fruits, vegetables, and viands, you are stuck eating the processed corn and petroleum byproducts offered as stock feed for the masses.
Somewhere the idea of work, trade, and craft as virtuous activities became lost as the management professions became elevated. I remember having dinner right out of college with a bunch of young lawyers and consultants in Boston, none over the age of thirty. All were entrusted in some way with managing, valuing, judging, and giving advice on billions of dollars, thus affecting the lives of many people. None of these guys had really worked a day in their lives (including me except maybe stocking groceries throughout high school), but were clearly inside some kind of membrane that separated them from everyone else who did have to work for a wage and save a lifetime to afford a lifestyle that these young men were having straight out of college. One boasted that the yearly return on their fund outstripped the gross national product of whole countries, reaching for some kind of irony that I used to think was cool and now I think is depressing.
I have nothing against capitalism, and know second-hand through my parents and my wife’s parents the horrors of totalitarian communism, but there is a problem when theory trumps practice. Business management allows the reduction of any human activity into processes. The inputs and outputs of these processes can be tabulated, analyzed, and optimized. The logical end result is a human worker confinement pen like the factories in Shenzhen that make my gadgets –the workers live in dormitories adjacent to the factories allowing them to run 24/7. What we are witnessing is the ongoing triumph of totalitarian capitalism, and we’re going to either compete with China on their level or borrow furiously to maintain our relatively luxurious, free-range confinement pens. Neither is palatable to a country having just ended America’s Century in the dust cloud of falling towers.
The majority of us don’t worry about food because it’s always there in the mega-mart, piled high and cheap. By surrendering our food production, we give up a load of stress but gain new ones. The ancestral stresses of hunger, climate, fear, and disease have been swapped for financial, social, and domestic stress. We outsourced our security functions to the local constabulary and our military, but rather than bask in security, we worry about terrorists at home and an endless war abroad. This stress is basically the same stress that the Thanksgiving turkey feels confined to a few square feet among thousands of other turkeys. That turkey fears not the fox, coyote, or bear, but it must feel something is terribly wrong with its world.
The populist anti-elitism that elevated the dancing Palin against far more qualified, limber, and graceful competitors bears poorly for America’s continued excellence. The problem is not with the elites, but with the complicity of the turkeys in their continued confinement. Rather than cheap corn and petroleum based feed, they should demand the variety of diet that was available only two generations ago right out of small family farms and home vegetable gardens. Rather than dismiss food reform as the socialist dalliance of elitists, people should confront the source of their predicament.
The second half of this is the realization that the solution to outsourcing is In-Sourcing –which means work. It means that the service industry jobs that move quants and utils over the intertubes must be abandoned for work, trade, and craft. It means taking it down a notch as a society and lowering expectations while elevating living. It means a lot more people working in food production and repopulating small towns. It means reconnecting with community and family rather than moving every three years from Charlotte to Atlanta to Houston to Tampa to Denver. It means sweeping, hoeing, weeding, hunting, fishing, gathering.
Worse catastrophes have happened to people –go ask the Carthaginians when you’re in line in purgatory. People want a return to the past, to the golden age of the 50’s and early 60’s. What we’ll get is the 1920’s and 30’s. If you aren’t Howard Hughes, it’ll be a lot of work after work, with canning in the fall.
Over six decades, countless acts of aggression has perpetuated the Simmering War. Only last year, the DPRK sank a ROK (Republic of Korea) navy ship last year with a human -guided suicide submarine. Infrequently mentioned is the fact that the DPRK has existed at the pleasure of China from the moment the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled in to shore up the collapsing DPRK army. The PLA fought the United Nations forces to a stalemate leaving Korea divided. But while the Brandenburg Gate no longer divides Germany, the 38th parallel persists even while the DPRK’s patron uses capitalism to bring prosperity to its top cadres. This is no accident.
The Chinese interest in Korea extends back millennia when Korea maintained a tributary nation status with China. Korea’s culture is heavy with Chinese elements of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and it was always the younger brother to China’s elder brother. In maintaining this stance, Korea was able to maintain its unique identity while being tightly gripped in orbit around China’s center. It was the Ming Chinese who helped sweep away the invading samurai army in the 1590’s. In maintaining the DPRK through the 80’s and 90’s, China had a mad-dog in its back yard to buffer the perceived threat posed by the US and Japan.
The tributary nation system is being rebuilt. This is a generations-long project that is no less significant to the Chinese than the Great Wall. And the world’s nations are already slowly falling into orbit around the gravity well created by the trillions of dollars willingly given to the Celestial Kingdom. This time, though, in exchange for kow-tows and tribute, they get access to mineral wealth of China, Tibet (the Himalayas will be strip mined), South America, Australia, Central Asia (including Afghanistan when we pull out), and Africa. People worry about mosque at Ground Zero. I worry about The People’s Bank of China buying out Wall Street.
In China’s world view, Korea must return to its historic status as an appendage on China’s massive body. A reunified Korea would allow it to use the ROK’s capital in combination with the DPRK’s low cost work force, giving Korea decades of double digit growth, financial strength, and from it -independence. By simply keeping reunification from happening, China avoids creating a second country on its doorsteps that would rival or even exceed Japan in economic and military power.
The Kim family had been reliable vassals in maintaining this close relationship with China, but the recent events indicate to me that this may be changing. With the addition of Kim Jong Un, an extra level of unpredictability has been added to the equation. He was schooled in Switzerland and exposed to the wider world. I get the feeling the Chinese do not think the younger Kim is their man. First, there is Kim Jong Nam, the Kim Jong Ill’s oldest son who went into exile after “trying to visit the Tokyo Disney World on a fake Dominican Passport.” This was a defection where he was able to get away from his handlers long enough to get into Japanese custody and then reach the Chinese who saw worth in maintaining his life. Today, the news came out from Seoul that China waved off an assasination attempt on Kim Jong Nam by his youngest brother’s aides. Kim Jong Nam has obviously cut a deal where in return for cooperation and hostages in the form of his family, he would be China’s puppet if some unfortunate accident occurred to Kim Jong Un.
What happens when a Korean native gets schooled abroad? I have several friends who while born and raised to middle school age in Korea, were sent abroad to boarding school in the Northeast. All of them who started boarding school at 12 or 13, while they would probably never admit it, become westernized to a degree that sunders them from their countrymen. The Kim family chef for a time, Kenji Fujimoto, states that Kim Jong-Un pondered at 18, “We are here, playing basketball, riding horses, riding Jet Skis, having fun together. But what of the lives of the average people?”
When a Swiss runs the DPRK, will China tolerate its loss of control? It would start with food and energy. If the DPRK stopped relying on China for its food and energy needs, and turned to the ROK, I would expect Kim Jong Un to have an accident. Then Kim Jong Nam will have an accident, and China’s true hidden man in the DPRK will rise to “rescue” the nation from the political chaos. The question then is, who controls the Kim Family Atomics? It’s only a few minutes’ missile flight to send a low grade nuclear device into Beijing from the DPRK. Do not doubt for a second that Beijing hasn’t already thought of this.
The best outcome, terrible to say, would be a continuation of the status quo. Those in the ROK pining for a reunification don’t think about the unintended consequences of being swallowed whole by China, Inc. If the status quo continues, and Kim Jong Un, his auntie, and her husband successfully navigate the minefield, and prove to be great vassals to China, the ROK will continue to produce girly-boy bands, dramas, cool telephones, and really nifty sedans for decades to come. And hopefully a Swiss dilettante will prove merciful to my suffering brethren in the North.
For me, I’m hoping for reunification on Korea’s terms. I’m hoping that the ROK will seize the opportunity to send a Food Bomb at the right moment across the border, and they should be stockpiling it now. Offer Kim Jong Un and his crew money and protection (a few billion at most), and you’d still save compared to a catastrophic all out war.
At the Living History Farm with our Cub Scout den. This is the type set for the Advocate, the town’s newspaper. Amazing that I can deliver internationally in a few seconds on my smart phone.
I have seen sparks fly from my golf shots. Typically, you have to be in low light. The most vivid example of this was when I played Van Cortlandt in the Bronx at 5:30 in the morning many years ago. The ball was dusted in flinty sand found there -the glaciers ground the bedrock which is composed of granite, flint, and some chalk. The impact of the metal driver on this rock caused sparks which were really cool.
Unfortunately, in the instance of the golfer above (link), the spark landed on the tinder of dry California scrub land, and started a 20+acre wild fire. Typical of golfers, they reported what happened, but even more silly is the fact that authorities have to protect this golfer’s identity from a lynch mob.
And this is it -our brains are not wired to accept circumstances of nature as they are but demand an explanation rooted in personal values, usually interpreted as good and evil, sometimes confusingly both. There is the inability to accept a stochastic interpretation of events as series of causes that arise from probabilities. Without this overlay of moralistic interpretation, the self dissolves a little.
That’s just it -in acquiring self awareness, we also get the baggage of self importance. Free will is the other lie that we tell ourselves to assure ourselves of our critical place in nature, because most people freely shackles themselves in the strait jacket of religion, tribal/racial/identity politics or just narrow mindedness.
Shit happens, people. Move on.
This picture above shows #1 at Wakonda during the time when the fairways were being reseeded with a new hybrid bent grass. The hole is a dogleg left with a hump of about 10 foot tall and forty yards long, transecting the fairway of the dogleg’s bend. This small hill acts as a shield, and most average drives of 230 yards drawn or hit into this mound will roll right, and leave an approach with an uphill lie and greater than 150 yards (the marker is on the upslope of this inclined impediment). When I first played this hole ever five years ago, I looked out and saw the dogleg and the trees marking the bend, and I thought -“jack it over those trees with a draw” and I did, leaving me with a 100 yard pitch. When I later explained to an established member, he looked at me with some concern, and said, “you can’t do that!”
To this day, I have not been able to recreate that shot because I hear that thought in my head, “you can’t do that!“
For several years now I have been asking the club to allow me to play golf at daybreak. It would allow me to get in 9 holes from a cart in way under an hour, 35 minutes was a recent time. This year, sunrise golf has been instituted and it is a roaring success.
Speed golf off a cart is like speed chess, it seems like the same game but different factors come to the fore. first there is the lack of warmup – you knock it down the fairway and play it as it lies. The other is that it simplifies your mental prep – playing alone and fast means I have to find the ball so I become very good at tracking and finding balls but foremost, I try to keep it in the fairway. I count every stroke but will allow a free drop if I never saw the ball in flight -I figure a playing partner if one had been present would have tracked it. The course is mine and that is the most important thing. It’s meditative and calming to be alone in all that splendor.
Five and One man, on a journey!Heading westwards, on into the night.Burdens shared, and sleep neglected,Y’all crossing the river, and arrive at first light.Great joy you have found, and more do you seekOnwards and onwards, for promises to keep,Hammer on the right foot, no shoe on the leftStill many hours, before you shall sleep.So go, I say go, and listen No More,I am an illusion, but so is your labor,That ball is not a ball, that hole is not a hole,And that last hasty meal, you will not savor.And when you are home, and you lay in your bedAlive you will feel, alive with no dreadAnd in seeking all that golfin’ pleasure,You realize the truth that the company is the treasure.
I played 27 holes this weekend. My 9 holes yesterday were played in windy, cool weather and I got a 50 for my efforts. It was notable for a par on the treacherous second hole which has a tilted green. I hit 5 of 7 fairways yesterday but three putts and botched approaches made life difficult.
Today, I hit the reset button and armed with a new 58 degree wedge from Callaway, I set out solo onto an empty course. The picture above is from the first hole. My drive was directly into a 20 mile per hour wind which made the 48 degree weather a touch more miserable -hence the absence of players on an otherwise very golf-worthy Sunday morning. The drive was in the left rough off the first cut, leaving me 200 yards out on a sidehill lie that left the ball below my feet. I tried to play a duck hook around the tree, but I lost my balance and lucked out by having the ball settle on a steep upslope with line of site to the green.
The first hole at Wakonda is officially a par 4, but it really is a par 4.5, and with the wind, it was a stretch to make par. I was 150 yards out and the pin was in the middle of the green -the green tilts to the right and I had to land the ball center or left to get to a makable par putt.
The wind was going a sharp right to left and the green is a good 20 feet above me. The ball is on the upslope. I chose to fade a 5 iron -the upslope would take some of the distance off and the fade into the draw cross wind would straighten the shot, I hoped.
It is always here on number 1 where I have my most intense golf moments -where concentration and visualization becomes very clear and I decided to pour myself into this shot. I set up aiming slightly to the left of the pin and practiced a fade swing, trying to keep my head still and my shoulders in line with the slope. The shot I had in mind was “locked in” and the actual shot became the apotheosis of my mind’s vision.
The ball launched after a clean hit
-this is so important on wet, sodden grass, and the ball kept climbing and going straight -this despite my having hit a near slice. The winding motion of the ball that normally creates a slice now was creating more lift with the right to left wind. The ball landed on line with the pin and I knew the ball would be 10 feet from the cup with a straight uphill putt (image -right).
I missed the putt by a hair, but still made a 5 which on this day was fine. I ended up with a 47 on the front -a great round given that I had great difficulties with my initial approach. After 18, I hit 10 of 14 fairways, but made only one green in regulation -this will require work. Despite this, I am still in bliss from the perfection of that approach on number 1.
Golfism -life is a metaphor for golf 
