Don't Piss off the Pachyderms

There's something about a pissed-off bull elephant shaking his head and flapping his ears with his trunk wrapped around a tusk, charging your car, that puts a fine cap on the day.

We were leaving a wildlife area where we had been photographing all day. The track we were driving on was narrow and poorly paved, so when we came around a blind curve with dense brush on both sides and realized that a truck was approaching our front bumper at full speed, in reverse. Our driver leaned on the horn without effect. At the last possible minute the driver in front of us cranked the wheel and went off the road and through the bush to get around us without slowing down, followed by the elephant who seemed intent on practicing metal sculpting on the guy's vehicle. The trouble was that he spotted us, now that the guy in front of us was now behind us and accelerating away at a rapid rate. So we followed suit, dropping the car into reverse and backing away from the elephant, trying to stay slightly ahead of his accelerating speed. Of course, the narrow road made it impossible to turn around (and frankly, even if we could, I doubt that we'd have time before being overtaken by the pissed pachyderm), so we backed up for a couple of kilometers before he finally lost interest.

The question, of course, is why he was angry, and we finally figured it out. Following the elephant at a distance that was far too close was a van from one of the local lodges, filled with Asian tourists, all of them hanging out of the windows of the van and snapping pictures of the elephant chasing the cars, laughing gaily at the spectacle. If only the elephant had turned around I would have had something really special to shoot. Sigh...

Encounter with Luján

They arrived in the back of a truck from a small pueblo in the mountains north of Antigua. The truck was normally used to transport produce; today it transported people so that they could attend mass in the yellow and white church that dominates the central plaza. The colors of their clothing were bright and colorful and mismatched, plaids with patterns, and their strong Indian faces bore the marks and lines of lives well and deliberately lived.

One man, apparently traveling alone, spotted me with my camera and ambled over. He stood by while I fiddled with the controls, adjusting camera and tripod. Then he spoke; his name was Luján.

Luján: You are visiting from far away?

Steve: Yes, from the United States.

Luján: A long way to come to attend church.

Steve: Oh, I’m not attending the service. I’m photographing the church. I’m not Catholic, you see.

Luján: Pity. But I wish to sell you something.

At this point I ceased fiddling with my camera and gave him my full attention. He was dressed in clean but threadbare pants that at one time were corduroy, and a shapeless plaid shirt, patterned tie and worn jacket. His shoes didn’t fit well – I could tell by the way he walked – but he wore a world-class smile. This was a man who, like so many of the men I’ve had the honor to meet in Europe and Latin America, didn’t equate lack of wealth with social status; he was who he was. So I asked, “What is it you wish to sell me?”

Luján: Ah. What I have, you see, is quite valuable, and while I’m reluctant to sell it, my wife and I are hungry and would also like to leave something in the offering plate for the poor. There are so many who have so little. Would you consider buying what I have to offer?

I thought about it, and while I am usually leery of such encounters, there was something about this guy. Again, he didn’t see himself as poor; there were many far worse off than him. So I agreed to look at what he had.

Slowly, he withdrew his hand from his pocket and opened it. It held a small rock, about the size of a robin’s egg. It was neither colorful, nor shiny, nor crystalline; it was the kind of dull, lackluster stone you find along recently-built roadbeds. Puzzled, I asked Luján what was so special about the rock. “Please buy my rock from me,” he asked quietly, looking fiercely into my eyes. “If you buy my rock, my wife and I will eat, and I will not have to beg you for money. We will feel good because we will no longer be hungry, and you will feel good because you will have done a kind and human thing. And you will have my rock.”

It is with me always. My humble rock.

The Power of Social Media

In late April, my good friend Gary Martin and I took off for a photography workshop with Scott Stulberg in Death Valley. But rather than fly into Los Angeles, we chose instead to drive from Gary’s home in western Wisconsin instead. It took four-and-a-half days, but photographically-speaking it was a rich and rewarding trip, with surprises around every corner. We drove through Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and a tiny corner of Arizona before we made our way to Death Valley. We lingered for two days in South Dakota, marveling at all it had to offer. What a beautiful place.

As we left Custer State Park one morning, we found ourselves winding along the northern end of Highway 87, otherwise known as the Needles Highway. This part of the road winds through tall granite hoodoos or pinnacles that tower hundreds of feet above the forest. They are massive and craggy and beautiful, so we stopped at a pull-off to photograph them. As I mounted my camera on the tripod, Gary, who was squinting at the pinnacles, asked, “Are those people up there?, pointing to the left-most tower. Mounting a long lens on the camera I looked, and sure enough, there were two climbers, about to summit the tall, skinny rock. We photographed them for about an hour as they made their way to the top, ultimately standing side-by-side on the summit. “Sure would be nice if we could find them so that we could give them some of these pictures,” Gary mused.

I took that observation as a challenge – and an opportunity to perform something of an online science experiment. That evening, when we had settled back into our hotel in Lead, I booted my computer and brought up Facebook. I posted this message on my wall: 

One week later, I got this response:

Hi Steve,
 
Thanks for hunting us down to share your photos. Nice job on those. It would be cool to see some more of the shots. And I'd be happy to give a short interview. Evenings work best for me. Looking forward to chatting with you.
 
Chris

A friend of a friend knew someone who was a climber in North Dakota, but he knew of a climbing club in South Dakota. He sent a message on is own Facebook page asking the climbing community about my question, and a couple of days later, magic.

So anyone who tries to tell me that social media is a waste of time will get an argument. Just sayin’.

A Sailing Lesson

When our friends Joe and Claudia Candido suggested we join them and another couple for an eight-day sailing adventure in the Caribbean, neither of us gave it a second thought – other than to get progressively excited as we got closer to the date. So there we were in St. Thomas, aboard a beautiful 50-foot sailboat, ready to head off into the British Virgin Islands for a week of island-hopping. We sailed, ate, dove, snorkeled, ate, hiked, and ate – oh, and drank something they serve down there called a painkiller. Sabine tells me it contains pineapple juice, orange juice, coconut milk, and ice – oh, and rum. Lots and lots of rum. And the final touch, which is elegance at its best, is the fresh nutmeg they grind on top. These things bring on hallucinations and visions of the finest kind. So we stayed really busy. What we did NOT do, however, was access the Internet, check e-mail, or listen to voicemail.

As someone who is – I’ll admit it – addicted to all of the electronic tethers that keep me connected to what I have come to call the real world, the idea of forced disconnection created a level of anxiety that began to preoccupy me for several days before the trip. How would I stay in touch with customers? How would I stay on top of world events? How would I respond to calls in a timely way? I fretted endlessly, coming up with all kinds of scenarios for getting my messages. At one point I found myself mapping all of the Internet cafes on all the islands where we planned to stop.

To make matters worse, I decided to leave my laptop home, opting instead to bring my iPad. Even though I had to travel directly to a client engagement after our vacation, I had my presentations on a flash drive and could easily use a client laptop to run them. Still, I was just this side of frantic as we left the harbor, still blissfully awash in WiFi.

By day three I was sore from pulling lines (they’re not ropes in spite of the fact that they’re ropes), working winches and repeatedly banging my head on the coaming that led down into the salon and galley. And by the end of that day I realized that I had not yet checked messages – or had a desire to. So I grabbed my gadget bag, snuck onto the deck with my Blackberry as we passed an island with a tower, and turned it on. It buzzed and hummed, downloading three days of messages. Reluctantly, I went through them – all 97 of them – and discovered that among the ads, spam, promises of Nigerian riches, notifications about notifications from Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn updates, and jokes from all the people who keep me well supplied with humor, there were – count ‘em – four that needed a reasonably quick response. I snapped them off, turned off the phone, and stowed it for another three days. Sure enough, when I turned it back on I had 118 messages and two voicemails. Both of the voicemails were from well-wishers, telling me to enjoy the vacation. Two of the 118 e-mails required a quick response.

This was our first real vacation since 2008. As the sole proprietor of a small (as in one person) business, it’s difficult to disappear for long periods of time because there’s no one else to mind the store. Luckily I can stay more-or-less connected when I’m traveling, but even so, being out of the office is difficult. Or is it? Clearly I had overplayed the threat of being disconnected in my own  mind, and had allowed the anxiety to take over and fester a bit. So what’s the lesson? One, vacations are extremely important and should NOT be skipped; and two, the world does not come to an end when you take one.

There is a third lesson at   work here that you may have keyed in on, and it’s a technological one. Remember, I climbed up on deck with my Blackberry and made a phone call. From the deck. Of a boat. Sitting in the middle of the Sir Francis Drake Channel, under sail. I had a strong signal and never had a problem. Every island, every rock, every piece of coral, it seemed, had a working cell tower. So I may not have had WiFi, but I did have a good 3G cellular connection – if I wanted it.

I didn’t.

Thoughts on Cultural Shift

I’ve always said that communities evolve and that things change – there’s no stopping it. Businesses come and go, people come and go, and the character of the place changes. It isn’t good or bad, right or wrong; but when it happens to you, when it messes with a reality that you’ve held in your head as a high water mark that helped define you as a person and served as a benchmark in your life, it isn’t pleasant.

When Wal-Mart first came to Vermont, the last holdout state in the country without one, there was public outcry from all directions. The end of innocence, many said; if they come our way of life is over, small businesses will be forced to close, entire communities will change. “It will be the same as what happened to small towns when the interstate highway system went in,” said a man holding a STOP WAL*MART sign in front of the newly-opened store. “All the cars will bypass the towns and the towns will die. There’s no upside – everybody loses.” Everybody, that is, except the 200 or so people who got full-time jobs there and the countless people in the supply chain who indirectly found jobs as a result of their presence. But like it or not, in spite of the perceived downside, Wal-Mart’s arrival had a positive impact on the local economy – a net add. The same is true of Costco, and Home Depot, and Linens-n-Things, and countless other faceless box stores that funnel money into the local economy. I may not like certain aspects of the evolution, but after the final accounting, things are in the black.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my childhood home.

In 1968 my father’s job as an exploration geologist for Chevron took our family to Madrid. This was still Franco’s Spain, a right-wing police state of rules and pomp and circumstance constructed around a core of self-importance. The country was clean and well-maintained, there were monuments to self everywhere, and the only perceived social ills were the omnipresent Gypsies that would rob you blind if you let them (one of them once tried to carry off my dog). Spain was the safest place on earth – you could walk down the darkest, dingiest street in the city at 3 AM without a fear in the world, because the criminals knew: mess with the public order and you will disappear.

I was reminded of this recently when I found myself in a taxi in Chicago and the driver began to extoll the virtues of the city’s mayor. My wife and I were there for a trade show, and while riding back to the hotel from the convention center, we chatted with the driver, commenting about how clean the downtown area was and how safe we felt. “Yessuh,” said the taxi driver, a black man from New Orleans who was as big as a house and who played trombone in a local jazz band. “You can thank the mayor for dat,” he explained. “Dis mayor cares about his city and he spends a lot of money to make it what it is.” Then he paused for a moment and said, rather ominously, “You mess with the Mayor’s city and he gonna f**k you up.”

That’s what Madrid was like in the 60s and early 70s. Draconian? Perhaps. But who am I to judge?

Time shift, now, to February 2012. I was in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress to give a series of talks, and decided to spend a few days in Madrid afterward. The last time I was there was mid-2001, and the tech bubble was on fire – it wasn’t due to collapse for another few months. Spain was happy, vibrant – even the Gypsies were profiting, harvesting riches from the hordes of tourists that swarmed the city. If they weren’t fleecing the public through pity (hungry babies, fake disabilities) they were flagrantly stealing. My wife once chased a group of Gypsy women away from an American woman whose backpack they were rifling, while it was on her back – in a crowd. They were completely unconcerned; she was completely unaware.

This trip, though, the Gypsies are nowhere to be found. In three days I saw two, not the swarms I’ve learned to be wary of. What I did see, though, were immigrants of another sort: West Africans, Romanians, Albanians, all with a game or an angle, street-tough (and street-worn) Russian prostitutes who disappeared into the shadows when the police passed by.

Spain is currently in the top ten of the European economic failures. With unemployment topping 20% and national debt at a staggering € 680 billion, only Greece and Italy surpass it in terms of economic morbidity among developed European nations.

The Plaza Mayor is the historical center of Madrid. Built in the 17^th century as the administrative center of the city, it is an enclosed, cobblestoned square with arched stairways leading off in all directions. Architecturally it is a treasure. There are small cafes in each corner, perfect for people-watching, and there have always been clusters of students scattered about, often surrounding a guitarist playing soul-stirring Flamenco. There were artists as well, and under the arches of the inside perimeter of the Plaza there were always coin and stamp vendors, selling to collectors. But now things have changed. Instead of the old Spanish men selling coins and stamps, they have been replaced by north Africans who, at the first hint of a police presence, grab their blankets and bootleg products and melt into the crowd.

The artists have been replaced with marginally-skilled caricaturists. And the guitarists and students are now overwhelmed by an armada of Brobdingnagian cartoon characters. Over there you can have your picture taken with seven-foot Smurfs. Here, Mickey and Minnie Mouse. In that corner, Garfield. And in the center, in the shadow of the giant bronze statue of Felipe III, an extremely fat man dressed in a Spiderman suit tries desperately to look superhero-like, a wedge of hairy belly sticking out between the two halves of his costume.

Leaving Plaza Mayor I stroll up Gran Vía to the Plaza de España, a monument to the author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes. The centerpiece of the plaza is a tall marble monument with fountains. The monument itself is covered with carved likenesses of characters from Cervantes’ many books, and on the back side, facing the royal palace, is a massive bronze statue of the errant knight himself astride his horse Rocinante, and his sidekick Sancho Panza on his mule. It’s a massive execution, ten feet tall at least. But today it is covered with graffiti, and at 9:00 in the morning four very drunk Russian teenage boys are climbing on Rocinante, making lewd sexual movements with the horse. Two police officers standing nearby watch but do nothing. When I lived in Spain many years ago (and I must say, admittedly, many years ago), that statue was a point of pride in the city, and to touch it or deface it was to risk losing a hand. The Guardia Civil, the state police agency, was a group to be revered – and feared. What the hell happened?

One of the beer bottles falls over and breaks; the teen boys laugh loudly, ask if I want beer. The police continue to ignore them.

But it wasn’t just the Plaza de España in Madrid where I saw aberrant behavior. On March 1^st, while I was attending Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the 60,000 attendees of the conference were joined by 25,000 protesters, many of them students, who flooded the city’s Plaza de España in front of the bullring, which is now a covered shopping mall. Protesting the rising cost of tuition, the moribund economy, and bleak employment prospects, the crowd swarmed the Plaza in a Facebook and Twitter-coordinated assault and stopped traffic in all directions. They were loud, a bit rowdy perhaps, but relatively well-behaved until an uglier element arrived in the afternoon (anarchists, I was told). That was when the damage started; they set trash bins afire, broke windows in cars and businesses, and created violent havoc until the police arrived, breaking heads and dispersing the crowds -- An “Occupy movement” of a whole different sort.

As I watched all of this going on, I could not help but draw references to Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point. In that book he tells the story of New York City before Giuliani, when the city was garbage-ridden, police were not respected and the subway was for fools – or those looking for trouble of the worst possible kind. The city had stepped over that invisible line, that tipping point, beyond which the decay of social order accelerates rapidly and often, cannot be stopped. But Giuliani did stop it, by identifying and eliminating those elements that empowered the lawless element in New York.

Is this transformation a necessary part of the evolution of Europe, and by extension, Spain? Perhaps. But for someone who remembers a very different place, that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.