Eideard

 
Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse are two of my favorite footballers – even if they play for Newcastle United. Demba Ba in particular has a shot like a cannon.

But, I got to thinking about the difference in sophistication likely between the UK and the US. Americans get all woo-hoo over Tim Tebow and his Christian prayer pose. That’s just as common among athletes in Europe. Except oftimes those athletes aren’t Christian – they’re Muslim. Their celebration means as much to them as do the poses of Christian athletes.

So – you think there aren’t any Muslims in the NFL? Think, again. Do you think maybe it’s been suggested that for their own safety they shouldn’t kneel and face in the direction of Mecca when they score a touchdown? Tell us what you think would happen?

Authorities in the country have virtually canceled Valentine’s Day by nixing planned concerts and other events, according to the Associated Press, citing a report by Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.

Instead, Uzbeki lovers will have to content themselves with a government-organized reading of poems by medieval Mughal emperor Babur, who wrote about monuments, flora and fauna, wine parties and battle strategy…

Uzbekistan’s unofficial ban on romantic celebrations isn’t new. Last year, news agency Turkiston described Valentine’s Day as the work of “forces with evil goals bent on putting an end to national values.”

Other Muslim countries feel equally as frigid toward the amorous holiday, which is a nominally Christian one.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have both banned celebration of the day, Voice of America reports. Iranian officials last year said they would take action against amorous citizens who ignored the ban. Saudi Arabia prohibits the gifting of red on V-day — including chocolates, bears, or roses, according to the Saudi Gazette.

In India, right-wing group Sri Rama Sena warned in 2010 that it would take action against educational institutions, restaurants and theaters if they encouraged Valentine’s day celebrations. Some adherents of the group even burned Valentine’s Day cards…

Malaysia joined in the spoil-sporting last year when it announced it would crack down on “immoral acts” during the holiday as part of a wider campaign for its citizens’ lifestyles to be “sin-free.”

The head of the Malaysian Islamic Development Department told state media: “In reality, as well as historically, the celebration of Valentine’s Day is synonymous with vice activities.”

Is there no end to bureaucrats on this planet with no heart for love?

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square, the crucible of their revolution, on Wednesday in a mixture of celebration and agitation to mark the first anniversary of the protests that forced out Hosni Mubarak, the former president.

By midmorning, tens of thousands of people had packed the square here, smiling, cheering and waving Egyptian flags, but it was already evident that the spirit that unified last year’s uprising had been replaced by new tensions between Egyptian political factions over their view of the military rulers who took power when Mr. Mubarak was ousted.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that won nearly half the seats in the newly elected Parliament, sent many of its followers to the square. The Brotherhood’s leaders have endorsed the military’s timetable for a handover to an elected president by the end of June, and they sent thousands of their members out to ensure that a spirit of celebration prevailed, erecting soundstages and setting up security checks at each entrance to the square. An abundance of Brotherhood flags, buttons and disposable plastic hats filled the crowd…

Groups of ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis, political rivals to the Brotherhood who won about a quarter of the seats in the new Parliament, said they would also turn out to help secure the square and keep the day peaceful, and there were plenty of men with the Salafis’ trademark long beards mingling in the crowd.

The crowd in the square on Wednesday morning was overwhelmingly male, with very few women in sight.

Youth groups and other activists — including many of the leaders of the original uprising — were determined to make the day a huge demonstration calling for an immediate end to military rule, urging Egyptians to gather at mosques, churches and other strategic locations around the city for marches to the square that would arrive by midafternoon…

Superficial decisions continue to be a mistake. They provide, at best, fodder for the news-as-entertainment drones.

Read the rest of this entry »

An odd number of pandas

Ron Gordon would like you to take a moment or three to think about what an odd day Saturday was.

Why? Because 7/9/11 is one of only six dates this century that features three consecutive odd numbers. Next up, 9/11/13.

Gordon, a retired teacher from Redwood City, Calif., has set up a website to celebrate “Odd Day,” and offers some ways to celebrate: Do odds ‘n ends, root for the odds-on-favorite or watch the “Odd Couple.”

Gordon has been fascinated with curious dates since some 30 years ago when he noticed the upcoming date 9/9/81 while writing a check. That, Gordon saw, was a Square Root Day – one in which the day and the month are the same number and, when multiplied, yield the year as it’s expressed in one or two digits.

It led Gordon to begin thinking about Odd Days, which he has continued to do through the years…

After 9/11/13, the next Odd Day will be 11/13/15 – and that will be it until next century.

Though we still have 4/4/16 to look forward to – the next Square Root Day.

I love this. I’m marking my online calendar right now.

Photograph: Xan Rice for the Guardian

The freedom suit is tan, single-breasted and has three buttons. It hangs in Charles Mamur’s tent, covered by a black bag to protect it from the dust that blows in from the dirt streets of South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

Mamur bought the suit two years ago for about £50 but he has never worn it. He was keeping it for a special occasion, a time that he had dreamed of since the day nearly 50 years ago when, as a 10-year-old boy, he took up arms against the Arab government in Khartoum in the north.

“I never believed that the moment of freedom would come,” Mamur, 58, said this week, unzipping the bag to show off his suit, as well as the yellow tie and black shoes he picked to go with it. “But I wanted to be well dressed if it did.”

The moment has now arrived. At around noon on Saturday in the swelter of Juba, a besuited Mamur will be among tens of thousands of South Sudanese and foreign dignitaries, including the British foreign secretary, William Hague, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who will watch as the flag of Sudan is lowered. Then, a giant South Sudan flag, six metres by four metres, will be raised on a 32-metre electronically operated flagpole that was installed this week by Chinese contractors who claim it is the tallest on the continent.

Six years after the end of Africa’s longest-running civil war – and one of its deadliest – its largest country will be officially split in two. The Arab-dominated north under President Omar al-Bashir will remain Sudan, only with much less territory and oil. The ethnically African, non-Muslim south, governed by former rebel Salva Kiir, will become the 193rd country to join the United Nations – the Republic of South Sudan.

RTFA. Long and filled with anecdotes from the history of this struggle for independence.

As a general rule, I rarely support the politics behind secession. This time, I think the joy of self-rule will be worth the political toil that follows the bitter civil war that preceded the founding of the nation of South Sudan.

Reenactment honor guard of the 173rd Regiment N.Y.S.V.

With their riders dressed in pressed shirts and denim, sleek, shiny horses clip-clopped through quiet residential streets in East Austin on Saturday, headed for the starting point of the annual Juneteenth parade.

But at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Comal Street, the serenity of a weekend morning soon gave way to an ebullient street party. There, rainbow-colored candies rained from the sky, and children rushed the street to snatch them. From the back of a convertible, a teen beauty queen in a pink gown and silver tiara waved royally. Two dozen line dancers shook their hips, and seven men slapped African drums to a pulsating beat. In his parked cruiser, a police officer rocked and swayed in his seat to the bass-heavy thump of “Billie Jean,” and some of those same early-rising horses pranced in place for the thousands lining the streets.

These were just a few of the sights, sounds and rhythms of Juneteenth in Austin.

Juneteenth commemorates the bittersweet anniversary of the day — June 19, 1865 — when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger landed at Galveston to deliver the news that the Civil War had ended and that blacks were free from slavery. The news was old. President Lincoln had delivered his Emancipation Proclamation some 2½ years earlier, but slavery continued in Texas and the South.

Commemorating the struggles of forefathers and the slaves is the cornerstone of all Juneteenth events, festive or otherwise, said many lining the parade route.

“I think it’s important that we remember our history. Therefore we can always face the future,” said Rudy Hicks of Pflugerville, who with Judy Connor and her 6-year-old granddaughter Jasmine, watched from the shade of a tent outside a family member’s home. Hicks said he has attended the parade since he was a child.

Read the rest of this entry »

Holi Festival, Chennai

… in all their hobbyhorsical manifestations.

For all of you, our readers, who may celebrate one or another moment grounded in reflection and family in this mid-winter time, I reproduce an image and a blog post from widely separated portions of the northern hemisphere.

The month of December is full of holidays and celebrations across religions and diverse cultures. St. Nicholas Day, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, Hanukah, Las Posadas, Al Hijra, St. Lucia Day, Christmas, and Boxing Day pack December with joyful festivities and cultural ceremonies. For me, the magic crescendos on the Winter Solstice (this year the day falls on December 21st) as it echoes the earthy rhythm of changing seasons. Whether felt as an astronomical, spiritual, religious, or personal event, the day visibly marks a turning point in our 365-day cycle. On this shortest day of light, ancient and modern cultures hold solstice ceremonies to bring them closer to the skies as the giver of life and bounty. At the root of many ancient rituals was the fear that the dwindling light would not return without human intervention, creating the need for generous offerings and lavish celebrations to keep the gods and goddesses happy.

The Winter Solstice has greatest significance to those that live closest to the earth, and whose lives are intimately tied to changing seasons and harvest cycles. Tuning in to celestial events was an especially important cosmic science for ancient societies who created meaningful fertility rites; fire festivals and offerings to their deities in hopes of procuring a bountiful harvest. While not widely known, many of these rituals are part of our modern traditions. Candles, evergreens, mistletoe, lavish feasts, and the giving and receiving of gifts are rooted in ceremonies performed thousands of years ago…

Sith gun robh so.

Drummers below a statue of King Ly Cong Uan
who founded Hanoi as VietNam’s capitol in 1010
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

A musical refrain blared from a loudspeaker as this weekend began — “Hanoi, Hanoi, Hanoi” — and on the sidewalk below, Nguyen Thi Thuy was selling red heart-shaped decals printed with the gold star of Vietnam’s flag.

“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” said Ms. Thuy, a 20-year-old college student, who had pasted one of the decals on her cheek.

“This day only comes once every thousand years.”

With parades and concerts and flamboyant kitsch, Hanoi is celebrating its 1,000th anniversary on Sunday, and much of city life has ground to a halt to make way for it…

But in the symbolism of the celebration, the Communist Party ruled supreme, just three months before a once-every-five-years party congress, at the pinnacle of a history that includes royalty and feudalism as well as revolution…

As an urban landscape, though, Hanoi seems mostly to be succeeding, where other Asian cities have failed, in integrating development with preservation.

Zoning laws have maintained the low-rise heart of the city with its shade trees and broad sidewalks. Most development has been shifted to the western suburbs.

Many of the elegant villas of the old French quarter have been preserved, and the bustling Ancient Quarter, choked with tourists and commerce, survives. The area around Hoan Kiem Lake has so far resisted development…

As the city’s modernization picks up pace, it seems, the pace of nostalgia accelerates along with it.

The article is more than a little choppy – likely edited to suit New York/American politics.

After all, this is the celebration of a nation that generally succeeded in rebuffing attempts of their much larger neighbors like China to absorb them. They defeated old colonialists like Japan and France and a new imperialist like the United States. The distance they have brought a nation impoverished by war – by comparison with neighbors like Thailand – is stellar.