Line of Demarcation

Pokhara, Nepal

Tami observed that tomorrow will mark the first anniversary since we left our jobs. It seems especially auspicious (her observation, as well) that we depart on one of the epic hiking routes, the Annapurna Ciruit. (Note, I did say 'hike', not 'climb'.

What a year it's been. At the end of it I can only bow my head in thanks.

So, we'll be out of touch for anywhere between two to three weeks. Don't fret if we don't get back to you right away. We'll certainly be thinking about you.




Meanwhile, in the 'what will our legacy be?' department, this from yesterday's Washington Post...

Dan Froomkin - Bush Rules - washingtonpost.com:

Washington Post Link

"Today's Senate vote on President Bush's detainee legislation, after House approval yesterday, marks a defining moment for this nation. How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.... The people have lost confidence in their president.... Bush remains deeply unpopular... mistrusted... out of touch....

But he's still got Congress wrapped around his little finger. Today's vote will show more clearly than ever before that... the Republicans who control Congress are in lock step behind the president, and the Democrats -- who could block him, if they chose to do so -- are too afraid to put up a real fight. The kind of emotionless, he-said-she-said news coverage, lacking analysis and obsessed with incremental developments and political posturing -- in short, much of modern political journalism -- just doesn't do this story justice...."

One of their readers observed:

"This is bad. Very bad. I can't underscore how bad this is. This is our Fugitive Slave Act, our Sedition Act, our Korematsu. This is a danger to our domestic liberties and a terrifying threat to our national security--for its impact on our international standing and on our alliances may be terrible indeed."

Brother From Another Planet

Most rececent PHOTOS HERE.

Well, well, well...

Flirt with the gravity of Planet Burning Man and who knows what might come shooting out of the cosmos? Just after the festivities finished back in Nevada, I got an e-mail from Mark, a person who joined our camp, Garage Mahal, for the first time this year. He was on his way to India to meet a friend and wanted to see if we could cross paths. This isn't so easy, as India is just over a third the size of the US. Comparitively, he could have been flying into Missoula, Montana and we could have been in San Diego. Lucky for us, we were still camped in Varanasi which gave us a fighting chance because he and his friend both wanted to visit this city anyway.

After several e-mails trying to nail down meeting places and times, we finally hooked up. They checked into the same guest house as us....but, OOOPS, what's this? Their rickshaw (motorcycle-taxi) driver took them to a different Vishnu Rest House. (Funny side note: In India, to try to cash in on an existing business's success, competitors have NO reservations about naming a business after an established, successful hotel or restaurant. Upstart business make it known to all rickshaw drivers that the 'imposter' hotel will pay a 'finders fee' to any driver who delivers customers to their door. We have subsequently heard that there are as many as seven guesthouses in Varanasi with some variation of Vishnu in their names i.e. "New Vishnu", "The Real Vishnu", "The Original Vishnu", "Ganga Vishnu", etc.) Once we figured out that we were at different "Vishnus", Mark and Alexandra moved to ours. We had an excellent 30 or so hours hanging out until they hopped a train to Agra.

What a quick and surprising dose of "home"! Major kudos to Mark for such a well-timed and appreciated precision strike.

Wayyyy Over the Line

Some of you know that I spent several years working in the beer business. One of my roles at the company where I worked had to do with regulatory conformity. Perhaps the single most important part of this concerned what is commonly termed "label approval". The governmental body that has primary and almost sole responsibility for this is the Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) in Washington, D.C.

I'm not sure anyone would debate that alcohol's role in human history has been and continues to be turbulent....the swizzle that stirs the drink in certain circumstances, so to speak. Ever since prohibition in the 1920's and early 30's, the TTB has had an explicit restriction against making any "therapeutic claims" for alcoholic beverages. Basically, this means that a beer or wine company cannot claim, even implicitly, that their product can make you feel or perform (in any way) better after consuming it. I saw some ingenious attempts at circumventing or navigating, rather, the spirit of this regulation....the best of these, for better or worse, originating from my own company.

The most obvious (and terrifically worn out) tactic is to throw a few pretty and scantily clad women into your ads to make a man (men drink the vast majority of beer after all) think he might meet similar women if he drinks "X" beer. All the big brewers do this and it's long accepted that the consumer can draw his own conclusions regarding his own probability of meeting similar women.

When a brewer wants to communicate something that promises more 'efficacy', they have to take a more subtle approach. A typical ploy could involve sending a message to potential consumers that your product might enhance the male sex drive or make a drinker feel more masculine. Designers (not the company I worked for) might try to communicate this (and did, however ineffectively) by including the image of a Rottweiler dog on their beer can. In their print advertising they (again, not my company) might claim that their product could make you 'last till the dawn'. Most all efforts treading into this 'claim' territory are caught by the specialists at the TTB leaving a legacy of fairly straightforward communication based on brand and quality. Until relatively recently, even claims of alcohol strength were discouraged by the TTB.

Nonetheless, beverage marketers continually try to step just a little further over the line with the designs they submit in an attempt to get the upper hand on the competition thereby putting out a product about which they can build 'myth'. See, if you have 'myth', you can play on that to differentiate your product from all the others. But myth is a subtle thing and the dance the TTB does with it's constituent manufactures actually helps enforce a subtlety that, ironically, lends any embryonic myth credibility. In other words, because of the TTB's long record of managing therapeutic "claims", if a marketer went too far over the line in its claim, no consumer would believe the hype. Conversely, if a marketer got something through TTB...perhaps the 'word on the street' is true.

I have recently discovered, in India, they apparently regulate alcohol marketing by using somewhat different guidelines. The US beer market is relatively conservative. My experience allowed me to see plenty of interesting ads and labels that all pushed the envelope but all that was within an admittedly prudish marketing environment. My horizons have now been broadened and I have now, offically, seen EVERY LAST THING...






And if you had any doubt at all...

















I'm not even sure what this communicates. I am, however, absolutely certain that I will avoid drinking "Fire" at all costs.

Exile on the Ganges

Burn Night Foursome (Tami Quest, The Man, Holiday and Claudia)

Planet Burning Man swung into Indian orbit and we were able to catch a ride, even if only briefly. Perhaps it was a case of being in the right place at the right time or maybe (if you're a believer like me) the spirit of the Playa can be tapped anywhere as long as the good citizens of Black Rock City have come together in fun-loving convocation. If it's the former, Tami and I sure are lucky. Varanasi is one fortuitous waypoint for a co-celebration. There is much about this ancient city on the Ganges that complements the ethos of "letting go" found in late August on the Black Rock Desert. Western preconceptions about personal space, cleanliness, decorum and sometimes, sanity get called into question continually.

The main reason Indians come to Varanasi, though, is to be released from mortal life. I can think of few endeavors of comparable sacredness. As a non-Hindu, non-Indian, I feel privileged to spend time here to watch and learn about the ephemerality of human existence. When you sit above one of the cremation platforms, the continual flow of bodies borne by family and friends to a final passage leaves little room for illusions of clinging self-importance. Some lessons transcend borders and culture, though, and my time with my fellow Burners has bequeathed me a few insights about graceful liberation of my own. Armed with that wisdom, Tami and I plunged into some of the ritual celebration that makes Varanasi special and gave it our Black Rock best.

We came up with the idea to co-celebrate about a month ago. (See this post.) Our invitations to other exiled Burners posted on Lonely Planet's chat site and Burning Man E-Playa yielded a nice handful of encouraging messages from around the globe but no respondents were in the vicinity of Varanasi during the actual event. That didn't slow us down a bit. Each day as you were on the Playa, we talked about you and whatever you might be doing. From 12,000(+) miles we were able to get right into the rhythm of things.

When we arrived in Varanasi, we set to work building our own "Man" and craft to float him down the sacred river. Actually, I had visions of sketching out a man and giving to plan to a local carpenter but after one surprisingly frustrating, three-way (interpreter included) exchange at a building supply store, I could see the chance of getting what we wanted was slim. That evening, I walked all over the old city of Varanasi scouting materials to build him ourselves. The first breakthrough came in the form of a large woven basket. I thought I could use that as a boat. After that, the other pieces fell into place. Our work area was the terrace of our guest house immediately overlooking the Ganges. Very, very nice.

I won't go into too many of the details here. Our Burn photos tell some of the story and Tami covered the unfolding events wonderfully on her blog. We burned our man a few days after the main event back home. That worked out perfectly as our burn night had a full moon, a partial lunar eclipse and a cast of supporters both in our boat and on the shore. After a few hitches, the Man burned better than we'd hoped. As you can see, it was a rousing success. :)


Link to our Burn Photos

The important thing I want to communicate is this: At the appointed time (Burn night for you, the next morning for us), each and every one of you, our Burning Man friends, whether you were on the Playa this year or not, had your name spoken aloud on the banks above the Ganges. Call it a prayer, if you will. For a short while this past weekend, you were with us in a special place.

A year from now, chances are slim we'll be either in Varanasi or in Black Rock City. Perhaps the question at the beginning of this post is correct also with the second answer. With luck, we shall find out.

Thanks for another great Burning Man.












Now......bring on the photos so we can see what kind of trouble you got into!