Wisdom from the 42nd Page

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

On the forty-second page of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar” author Paul Theroux wrote (emphasis added):

"To some degree, we all worry about what foreigners and strangers think of us," Pamuk says. "My interest in how my city looks to western eyes is—as for most Istanbullus—very troubled; like all other Istanbul writers with one eye on the West, I sometimes suffer in confusion."

"To see Istanbul through the eyes of a foreigner always gives me pleasure," Pamuk goes on. Flaubert, Gide, Nerval, Knut Hamsun, and Hans Christian Andersen all visited Istanbul and recorded their impressions, and in most instances what they saw was a fading Orientalism that ceasted to exist as soon as it was described—the harem, the grotesque and the pictueresque, dervishes, hubble-bubble pipes, the slave market, Ottoman clothing, floppy sleeves, Arabic calligraphy, and, he says, the hamals, the porters, though such men can still be seen, heavily burdened with huge loads on wooden pack frames, trudging up and down the cobbled streets of the old city. Whenever I began to generalize about Istanbul's modernism, I encountered an exotic vignette—a shroud, a fez, a minaret, a veil, a donkey, or something grilling fish over coals by the roadside.

But Pamuk's book, like all passionate books, is a bewitchment. Once you've read his Istanbul, you have been persuaded to see the city with his eyes—a gloomy, smoky warren of narrow lanes and conflicted families, serene, half fictional, like a city in a dream.

I find most cities nasty, but I can see that Istanbul is habitable, a city with the soul of a village. Unless there is a bomb in the bazaar, or a Kurd-related outrage, there is never news of Istanbul in the Western press. To say it is beautiful is so obvious as to be frivolous, yet the sight of its mosques and churches can be almost heart-stopping. I am imprevious to its charm, even the word "charm," but I admire Istanbul for its look of everlastingness, as though it has always existed (it has been a noble city since its first incarnation as Byzantium 1,700 years ago, and looks it in part). Most of all I like the city for its completeness and its self-sufficiency: it is a finished work, distinctly itself. Of course, you can buy gold and carpets in the Grand Bazaar, or jewelry and leather goods in the Egyptian bazaar, but everything else is available throughout the city too, because Turkey makes everything—stationery, cheap clothes, computers, knives, cigarettes, refrigerators, furniture. Heavy industry flourishes. The newspaper business is lively and competitive, book publishing is energetic, Turkish literacy is high, and book sales are brisk.

Give the fact that Turkey shares borders with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Arme[nia]

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(Houghton Mifflin Company, August 2008. Hardcover, 496 pages. ISBN: 0618418873; EAN: 9780618418879.)

Wild Nevada

On the forty-second page of “Wild Nevada: Testimonies on Behalf of the Desert” authors Roberta Moore & Scott Slovic wrote (emphasis added):

wilderness designation. They used all areas to their advantage and preserved the land for future generations. We don't need more wildernessa reas—we need to educate the non-Indian people to respect Mother Earth and all things connected.

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(University of Nevada Press, March 2005. Paperback, 172 pages. ISBN: 0874176131; EAN: 9780874176131.)

How to Talk Minnesotan

On the forty-second page of “How to Talk Minnesotan: A Visitor's Guide” author Howard Mohr wrote (some emphasis added):

Phrases

• Yep
• Well?
• So?
• Greetings

When you travel to Minnesota, I hope you're not expecting to be met at the border by a bunch of hyper people in colorful clothing. Our black-and-white signs at the state line say it all: MINNESOTA. If a smiling group of people with colorful clothing does meet you at the border, lock the doors and don't get out of the car. They probably escaped from someplace.

Minnesotans do not favor the big hello. We do it, we just don't overdo it.

A few years back two brothers from Minnesota ran into each other at a highway restaurant near Alexandria. The restaurant keeps a picture of the brothers by the cash register. The eastern newspapers carried the story and used it as evidence that Minnesotans' obsession with winter was reflected in our manners and feelings—what they meant was that we were a cold people.

The two brothers—Frank and Gary—had not seen each other for sixty-four years, not since they were split up somehow on a MIssissippi paddleboat. It involved a young woman from a river town and a girdle—and a catfish. I don't remember the exact details. They were twenty-two and twenty-three years old when that incident happened, whatever it was.

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(Penguin Books, August 1987. Paperback, 221 pages. ISBN: 0140092846; EAN: 9780140092844.)

The Art of Pilgrimage

On the forty-second page of “The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred” author Phil Cousineau wrote (some emphasis added):

The Sacred Call

Personal answers to ultimate questions.
That is what we seek.
—Alexander Eliot

All ancient pilgrimage not only celebrated identity," write Simon Colman and John Elsner in their book Pilgrimage, "but did so by linking it with a special place." The Great Panathenaea was an ancient procession that wove together the sacred and the secular as it wound up the Acropolis to the Parthenon, where a new robe was offered to the gold-and-ivory statue of Athena. If a spectator arrived at any other time, their circumambulation of the temple, according to the authors, "constituted a kind of proxy pilgrimage, a vicarious pilgrimage in a sacred event scheduled for a different time."

The Olympic Games were inagurated in 776 B.C.E in Olympia, Greece, in honor of the god Zeus. Thousands from all over the Mediterranean ventured there or to other events and sites such as the Pythian Games, the Isthmian games, the Nemean and Delphi, and were guaranteed safe passage by an unusual suspension of war during the games. Other sacred-center pilgrimages included Phocia, Dodona and Ammon in Libya.

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(Conari Press, April 2000. Paperback, 288 pages. ISBN: 1573245097; EAN: 9781573245098.)

Are We There Yet?

On the forty-second page of “Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations” author Susan Sessions Rugh wrote (emphasis added):

feelings of national identity to sell tourism in the "See America First" movement.² What sets the postwar period apart is the increased scale of heritage travel. The linkage of education, democratic values, and travel reassured Americans of their superiority as they dealt with the insecurity of cold war politics. War veterans toured the United States as an affirmation of their own values and as a means of passing them on to their children. Travel to historic sites nurtured a commitment to the nation for which they had fought.

Visitors were searching for an affirmative national history better labeled as heritage, a selective remembering of what is "attractive or flattering" and ignoring all the rest. Historian Michael Kammen argues that the end of World War II "brought a pronounced sense of discontinuity between past and present," and Americans sought a "sense of continuity" by visiting historic sites and museums. About 49 million persons visted historic sites in the United States in 1954, and they could choose from about 1,000 historic restorations. Annual attendance surged 20 to 30 percent at historic sites and national parks until 1976, when it began to decline.³

We can label these travels pilgrimages because the destination is a special place, a place that has become set apart or "sacred." By going to those places, whether Washington D.C., or a religious shrine, tourists strengthened their sense of national or religious identity. Central to pilgrimage tourism is the quest for authenticity, to see the actual site of a historic event, the same monument visited by all Americans, or the very spot a miracle took place. In that way, tourists can better imagine themselves as part of a larger community or can travel backward in time, to imagine that they too were a part of history. They sought no ordinary history but instead pursued a grand narrative of national greatness, or for African Americans, equality in a time when Washington D.C., tourist homes turned them away. Parents who wanted their children to consider their citizenship, whether full or partial, took their children on pilgrimages to the sacred places of America. In the process, they strengthened their own sense of national ideals and reinforced their commitment to a nation with equal justice for all.⁴

Maps and guides facilitated civic pilgrimage by guiding travelers to national landmarks and historic sites in a landscape prepackaged for the traveling consumer. Map publishers, states, and automobile touring associations designed their products to appeal to the family on vacation, both by depicting families on maps and by mapping routes and listing sites that would most appeal to parents traveling with children. Maps and guides in hand, families set off on cross-country tours of historic sites or

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(University Press of Kansas, May 2008. Hardcover, 240 pages. ISBN: 0700615881; EAN: 9780700615889.)

50 Best Short Hikes in Utah's National Parks

161 years ago today the first group of pioneers reached what is now Salt Lake City, Utah.

On the forty-second page of “50 Best Short Hikes in Utah's National Parks” author Ron Adkison wrote (hyperlinks & emphasis added):

beneath the seemingly overhanging wall of Cable Mountain. Views enroute stretch across Zion Canyon to the sentinel rock of Angels Landing.

At the eighth switchback, the signed trail to Hidden Canyon peels off to the right at 0.6 mile and 4850 feet, and from here we have a fine view back down to the shady alcove of Weeping Rock. Turning right onto that unpaved trail, we begin switchbacking at a moderate grade amid pines and firs, directly beneath the sheer walls of Cable Mountain. Above this climb, a traverse leads us into a shady chasm supporting Douglas-fir, white fir, ponderosa pine, and velvet ash. Soon the trail exits the chasm via a low but slippery slickrock wall, where acrophobic hikers may be compelled to turn back.

Beyond that traverse, we curve into the mouth of Hidden Canyon, hanging 700 feet above the floor of Zion Canyon. Numerous potholes have been worn into the Navajo Sandstone slickrock floor of the canyon by abrasive runoff waters. These waterpockets are like those commonly encountered in the same rock unit in Capitol Reef National Park, and they may hold water after substantial rains.

Steps cut into the rock allow passage around some of the potholes, but soon we are forced into the narrow, sandy, rocky wash as giant cliffs close in on either side. The trail apparently ends where we dip into the wash at 1.1 miles (5180'), and some hikers may be content to go this far, but to others, this mysterious chasm beckons. Douglas-fir, white fir, and ponderosa pine thrive in this relatively cool, moist microclimate within the confines of the canyon. Great sheer cliffs soar heavenward on either side of the narrow arrow-straight canyon. A number of small alcoves and other erosional features await those who hike the dry wash upstream, for another 0.5 mile or so. Rock climbinb skills are necessary to reach the head of the canyon.

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(Wilderness Press, August 2001. Paperback, 227 pages. ISBN: 0899972608; EAN: 9780899972602.)

Notes from a Small Island

On the forty-second page of “Notes from a Small Island” author Bill Bryson wrote (emphasis added):

That isn't a city up there, it's a Jane Austen novel. It's easy to imagine that you are shuttling about under a semimythic city from some golden pre-industrial age. Swiss Cottage ceases to be a busy road junction and becomes instead a gingerbread dwelling in the midst of the great oak forest known as St. John's Wood. Chalk Farm is an open space of fields where cheerful peasants in brown smocks cut and gather crops of chalk. Blackfriars is full of cowled and chanting monks, Oxford Circus has its bigtop, Barking is a dangerous place overrun with packs of wild dogs, Theydon Bois is a community of industrious Huguenot weavers, White City is a walled and turreted elysium built of the most dazzling ivory, and Holland Park is full of windmills.

The problem with losing yourself in these little reveries is that when you surface things are apt to be disappointing. I came up now at Tower Hill, and there wasn't a tower and there wasn't a hill. There isn't even any longer a Royal Mint (which I always preferred to imagine as a very large chocolate wrapped in green foil) on nearby Royal Mint Street, as it has been moved somewhere else and replaced with a building with lots of smoked glass. Much of what once stood in this noisy corner of London has been swept away and replaced with big buildings with lots of smoked glass. It was only eight years since I had last been here, but were it not for the fixed reference points of London Bridge and the Tower, I'd scarcely have recognized the neighborhood.

I walked along the painfully noisy street called the Highway, quietly agog at all the new development. It was like being in the midst of an ugly-building competition. For the better part of a decade architects had been arriving in the area and saying, "You think that's bad? Wait'll you see what I can do!" And there, towering proudly above all the clunky new offices, was the ugliest piece of bulk in London, the New International complex, looking like the central air-conditioning unit for the planet.

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(Harper Perennial, May 1997. Paperback, 282 pages. ISBN: 0380727501; EAN: 9780380727506.)

Route 66 A.D.

On the forty-second page of “Route 66 A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists” author Tony Perrottet wrote (some emphasis added):

So, in the pale morning light, I consulted my Latin volumes and exulted in ancient complaints about noise pollution.

"Insomnia is the main cause of death in Rome," wailed Juvenal in A.D. 100. "Show me the bedroom that lets you sleep!" The main culprit was traffic, even then. For the very reason that wheeled vehicles were banned during the day, Rome's cumbersome delivery carts were forced to do their rounds after dark. And since axle grease was rarely used in ancient times—olive oil and animal fat were prohibitively expensive—every lurch of the transports let out a piercing squeal that penetrated even the remotest apartment.

"The thunder of wagons in those narrow twisting streets," Juvenal groaned, "the oaths of the draymen caught in a jam, would shatter the sleep of a deaf man—or a lazy walrus."

Hangovers were apparently hell in Imperial Rome. Vehicles might have been forced off the streets an hour before dawn, but they were immediately replaced by a rising crescendo of bakers hawking their bread, blacksmiths pounding their anvils, priests shrieking their morning rituals, shepherds bringing milk from the countryside, and shrill children chanting their alphabets.

"All Rome is at my bed head!" moaned the poet Martial, writhing on his mattress one morning after a wine-soaked night on the town.

In modern Rome, technology had merely raised the pitch a few hundred decibels. For Les, being able to sleep through noise was the only pleasant side effect of pregnancy so far. She finally rolled over and looked at my sunken, bloodshoot eyes.

"This will get you in training for fatherhood," she chirped, and bounded out of bed.

A couple of cappuccinos later, we were happily immersed in the Queen of Cities, trying to imagine the world the first tourists left behind. Of course, ancient Rome was all around, in a manner of speaking. In front of the Colosseum, Italian actors were dressed in Roman centurion uniforms—antiques from the days when sword-and-sandal hits such as Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Caligula were shot in situ at the film studio Cinecittà. The new centurions posed for tourist photos, charged a small fortune, and casually groped the ladies whenever they had the chance. In the Forum Romanum, the summer sun ricocheted around the broken columns mercilessly, making you wonder how the ancients survived without sunglasses. Water was still pouring from first-century drinking fountains; little boys dashed amoung the statues waving plastic swords instead of toy guns. We staggered around the ruins like the wide-[eyed]

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Pardon My French

Parlez-vous français? If not, you may be interested in “Pardon My French: Unleash Your Inner Gual,” where author Charles Timoney wrote on the forty-second page (hyperlinks & some emphasis added):

trains are much bigger than Métros, go faster, and often have two floors. In addition to suburban RER lines, there are also suburban railway lines leading to the main railway stations. These lines are run by the SNCF—Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer—which also runs the main long-distance trains. Unless you have a carte orange, you will need separate tickets for the RER and SNCF trains outside central Paris.

Geography

DOM-TOM: When France gave up its empire after the Second World War, the word colonie was officially banned. What remains of the French empire is now known as les DOMS-TOMS. The letters stand respectively for Départements d'Outre Mer, or overseas counties, and Territoires Outre Mer, or overseas territories. The French départaments or counties include four that are overseas, namely Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, and Réunion. These are considered to be ordinary French counties, even though they are rather a long way from all the others. They are generally shown on the handy little map that you get at the back of French diaries or planners. The TOM are more independent and even farther away and compromise New Caledonia, French Polynesia Wallis-et-Futuna, St. Pierre-et-Miquelon, and the French Southern and Antarctic Lands.

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Reed's Sextant Simplified

On the forty-second page of “Reed's Sextant Simplified” author Dag Pike wrote (emphasis added):

Chapter Seven

Sextant Telescopes & Other Accessories

In the past good quality sextants would come supplied with a number of telescopes, each one designed to allow the best observations to be made in the easiest manner under specific conditions. The more expensive the instrument, the more superior would be the telescopes provided in order to allow observations in marginal conditions. Now with improved telescope technology most modern sextants come with just one telescope. Alternative telescopes are available with many modern sextants as an option but these are generally only required for specific observation tasks. Here we will look at both the old and the modern approach to sextant telescopes so that all types of sextant currently in use are covered.

No attempt will be made to go into the theory of the construction of the different kinds of telescopes, but we will look more at the various practical points that arise for the navigator who wants to get the best out of his sextant and to be able to optimise the viewing of both heavenly bodies and shore objects.

In any telescope the end farthest from the observer, which is generally the larger end, is called the object glass, and the end towards the observer, the smaller end is called the eye piece. With the older type of sextant telescope the lenses in this eye piece are fixed in a separate tube which is generally called the "draw" of the telescope which slides in an outer tube. This movement of the eye piece in or out allows the telescope to be focused for different eyes. On modern telescopes this focusing arrangement is generally by means of a screw adjustment on the eye piece similar to that found on binoculars. The screw adjustment allows for finer focusing and is also less likely to be unwittingly adjusted by eye pressure. With the draw tube system, when the telescope has been focused and the objects have been made to appear well defined and distinct to an individual observer, it is often the practice to make a

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