Cooking, Mowing, Laundry and Ordering Books!

Hola darlings! It's Sunday night and it's been a busy day. Another record-breaking hot and humid day, too! Got up to 87 today - I don't know what the dew point was; yesterday it was 87 with a dew point of 69 and it felt like I was living in the jungle at the equator! One more day of heat, although tomorrow only a high of 82 with thunderstorms in the afternoon, and then the weather will drop drop drop down to "seasonal" and it will feel like the deep freeze in the low 60's during the day and 40's at night! Soooo, after I relaxed with my Sunday morning routine, feeding the critters, reading the paper on the deck, and having two - yes two! - cups of coffee (I restrict caffeine intake because of high blood pressure and normally only have 1 cup of coffee a day), I spent some hours reading the latest news from Explorator and The New York Times and making some posts here (I hope you enjoy them), I did some laundry, and I cut the front lawn. I swear I lost 5 pounds sweating, it was so steamy outside. I'd put a chuck roast with a pound of carrots into the slow cooker about 8 this morning and when it was ready about 2 p.m. I made a wine-reinforced gravy and had a feast. I stuffed myself - I love the sweetness of slow-cooked carrots covered in bordeaux gravy. The roast melted in my mouth - and I have leftovers for a few days - if I don't raid the refrigerator later on and stuff myself all over again! I love to cook but generally I don't do much serious cooking for myself. When Isis, Michelle and delion were here in July I did some cooking and loved every minute of it. There is something fundamentally satisfying about cooking a meal that everyone says is delicious and watching the food disappear at a rapid pace, just like there is something fundamentally satisfying about sweating and battling man-eating insects to create a beautiful garden. Now the Packers are on - we scored a touchdown VIA THE RUN - THE RUN! - a few minutes ago, against da Bears. Altogether now "da Bears still suck, da Bears still suck..." I just completed an order at Amazon.com - I was a good girl, I only ordered three books: Michael Weinreb's "The Kings of New York," "Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History" and "When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythym." There are several other books I would love to order - but I will wait until I get my Christmas bonus from the firm :) This day has been bliss! Speaking of books, David Shenk's "The Immortal Game" has come out in paperback. It is such an excellent read, I highly recommend it. The way in which he weaves the history-making game between Adolph Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky from June 21, 1851 into his narrative is superb. I suppose I shouldn't admit this, but up until I read Shenk's book, I had NEVER sat down and really gone through a game and analysis, move by move. Shenk made that game miraculously accessible to me. I look forward to his next book - he's doing research on it right now.

Kumari, "The Living Goddess," to Visit Film Festival

Controversial Nepal goddess to now launch film fest Posted : Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:14:09 GMT Author : Sudeshna Sarkar Kathmandu, Oct 7 - Three months ago, one of Nepal's 'living goddesses' created a stir by leaving her temple to visit the US and was sacked for the untraditional act. Now 10-year-old Sajani Shakya, better known as the 'Kumari' of Bhaktapur, will depart from tradition once again. The Kumari will be the special guest - not at any religious ceremony but a film festival. And the superstitious can regard it as an omen. On Thursday, when the fate of King Gyanendra is going to be decided in parliament, the royal dynasty's protective deity, the Kumari, will be trooping to a cinema in the capital - coincidentally named after her - to promote a British filmmaker's documentary on her and two more goddesses. The schoolgirl will be the special guest at the sixth Film South Asia, a documentary film festival where 45 entries will be vying for the Ram Bahadur Trophy, which carries a purse of $2,000, as well as a $1,000 best debut award for newcomers. Ishbel Whitaker's 'Living Goddess', the film that landed Sajani in trouble with her temple authorities, will be the first entry at the fest organised by Nepali NGO Himal Association. In July, Whitaker invited Sajani to the US to promote the documentary and the visit, unchaperoned by any members of her family, roused the wrath of the schoolgirl's temple management committee. The committee said the visit had violated Nepal's religious norms and polluted the young girl. It also said she had been sacked and a search was on to look for her successor. However, following an intense media glare, the authorities later changed their minds and the young girl was reinstated as the 'living goddess' when she returned home. When the festival organisers decided to invite the controversial Kumari, they hadn't foreseen the swift developments that would overtake Nepal since then. On Friday, arm-twisted by the Maoists, Nepal's government decided to postpone a critical election scheduled for Nov 22 and called a special session of parliament to vote on King Gyanendra's fate. The special session starts Thursday, when Kumari is to attend the screening of 'Living Goddess' at the Kumari cinema. The recent days have been full of the Kumari and the king in Nepal. (c) Indo-Asian News Service Prior posts about The Living Goddess here and here.

Kasparov Beware

You know chess is going mainstream when it's written about in Newsweek magazine: Dreaming of Checkmate Chess is catching on across Africa and beginning to produce some formidable players. Kasparov, beware. By Scott Johnson Newsweek International Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Amon Simutowe learned chess by reading magazines. He was the Zambian national champ by the time he was 14. But a series of dazzling victories at a recent tournament in the Netherlands earned Simutowe, now 25, a permanent place in chess history: he became the first sub-Saharan African to achieve the notoriously difficult ranking of international grandmaster. At home in his native Lusaka, the local papers exalted in his victory on the front pages. Chess in America has typically been the reserve of the geeky eccentric, or the rich and effete. But in many parts of Africa, where the game is seen as a powerful tool for intellectual strength and self-improvement, it has developed a broad following. And because chess is so cheap, it is luring players who are just as likely to come from a rural village in Botswana or a South African township as from a European boarding school. Now two homegrown stars—Simutowe and Zimbabwean Robert Gwaze, who won the African Individual Championships last month and is heading toward becoming a grandmaster—are leading the way for other African players to break into the ranks of the world's best. "This is the beginning of a real renaissance," says Lewis Ncube, the Zambian vice president of the World Chess Federation. "In time they'll be able to challenge for the top positions in the world." Christian missionaries first spread chess throughout Africa in the 19th century. But the continent has generally lagged behind in turning out masters—until now. Since Simutowe first beat British grandmaster Peter Wells in 2000, he has become something of a national hero. He receives hundreds of e-mails from adoring Zambian fans and provides them with daily updates from his tournaments via BlackBerry. Chess now regularly makes the front page of the sports section in The Post of Zambia. And Zambian officials are reportedly considering awarding Simutowe—who earned degrees in finance and economics while on a chess scholarship at the University of Texas at Dallas—a diplomatic passport to encourage him to become a global ambassador for African chess. "This is proof that you can come from southern Africa and achieve grandmaster ranking," says Dabilani Buthani, president of the African Chess Union. "It's going to be a boom." Perhaps. There are lots of hurdles. African players face a dearth of good tournaments at home and are unable to afford traveling abroad to play. Malawian Alfred Chimathere bounced for 72 hours in a bus to participate in the African championship—only to be detained at the border for two days because officials wouldn't accept his visa. Chimathere began playing only two years ago, but is already working his way toward an international title. "Chess is a game of thinkers," he says. "That motivated me to show the world that I can think." And while many aspiring players improve their games over the Internet, some of the best African players don't yet have access to the Web. Chimathere's policeman's salary, for instance, is not enough for him to buy a laptop. In Zimbabwe, political instability and a severe economic crisis have stripped the game of financial backing, forcing leading lights like Gwaze to move abroad. "I've gotten no support whatsoever from them," he says. But support is starting to come in other forms. African chess officials have embraced the strategy that Russia, a world-class chess center, adopted long ago: teaching chess in schools. The World Chess Federation plans to implement a global Schools Program focused on promoting chess among children in developing countries. In South Africa, there are already an estimated 100,000 students participating in official and nonofficial games. Earlier this year South Africa promoted chess as one of six "priority sports codes," allotting it the same kind of federal funding as football, rugby and swimming. Botswana and Namibia both now categorize chess as a sport, which means it is federally funded and promoted. Namibia is working with Iceland—where the government pays chess champions large salaries and where the reclusive American chess master Bobby Fischer lives—to promote chess in schools and prisons. Corporate sponsors are also pitching in. For years the mining company De Beers has sponsored chess championships in Botswana. Now a South African company called ChessCube plans to launch an interactive, free Web site featuring chess lectures and videos aimed at Africans who don't have access to teachers or local chess clubs. "This system we're building helps make Africa smaller," says ChessCube's Mark Levitt. And as Africa gets smaller, the number of African chess champions is bound to grow. © 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

Review: 'King's Gambit,' by Paul Hoffman

Paul Hoffman's book is getting tons of publicity. Here is yet one more review. I'm just not sure, though, that this will ultimately be a "good thing" for chess, darlings! From Newsday.com BY EMILY GORDON Special to Newsday October 7, 2007 KING'S GAMBIT: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game, by Paul Hoffman. Hyperion, 400 pp., $24.95. Chess brings out grandeur and brutality in its human players. Paul Hoffman, who's been deeply involved in the game since he was a child, is an intimate observer of - as David Remnick put it in a recent interview with grandmaster Garry Kasparov - "the absolute, singular concentration of a life bent over 64 squares." Hoffman's memoir, "King's Gambit," a chronicle of his and others' lives spent at that level of concentration, is as jagged, passionate and methodical as the game itself. Hoffman (who ranks as a Class A chess player) is the former editor in chief of Discover magazine and president of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, as well as the author of two well-received nonfiction books about an eccentric mathematician and an early pioneer of flight. Hoffman clearly likes to gets his facts right - this is a sturdy volume of carefully explained (and footnoted) details and digressions - but it's chess that really grips his psyche. Its rules, characters and histories occupy his head, a labyrinth of positions and personalities. Is that a form of madness? Throughout the book, Hoffman asks it directly. "Chess was an insane game," he writes. "When I lost, I was unhappy. And yet it was necessary to play and risk defeat if I was ever going to win and relish victory." In essay-like chapters, Hoffman ranges over this and the other great subjects of chess: chess as war strategy, the challenge of computers, the domination of Russians, the emergence of women players, chess-world politics, and so on. Hoffman illuminates his account with many well-chosen quotes from the literature of chess, fiction and nonfiction, although, curiously, he skims over Walter Tevis' peerless novel "The Queen's Gambit." Chess is truly a great subject: There's nothing sedentary about the players of this seated game. Hoffman - who once played Kasparov himself - seems to have met most of them, and he has a terrific ear for dialogue. He shows us that chess rivals can be close as lovers: "After he downed another vodka, Karpov looked a bit wistful. 'I know Kasparov as well as I know anyone,' he told me. 'I know his smell. I can read him by that.' Indeed, the two men had sat face-to-face for a total of perhaps 750 hours, their foreheads sometimes only millimeters apart as they leaned in over the chessboard. 'I recognize the smell when he is excited and I know it when he is scared. We may be enemies, but we are intimate enemies.'" This is not just a book about chess, however, and the danger referred to in the title is not just in the chance of losing a game or a tournament. Hoffman is preoccupied with plenty of chessmen, but the central character here turns out to be his father. James Hoffman was a B-grade journalist who wrote salacious, punning stories for gossip magazines and forged layers of deception in his own life that Hoffman is still trying to figure out. After he and Paul's mother (who is not much discussed here) divorced, he moved to a downtown Manhattan bachelor pad. When Hoffman started coming in from Westport, Conn., to see him, he began to play in an American chess mecca: Washington Square Park and the chess clubs and stores that surrounded it at the time. This childhood and adolescent relationship wounds and provokes Hoffman the writer and adult, and he seems to return to it almost fresh each time, as though he's only just sitting down at the board against a baffling opponent. Hoffman struggles to believe in and promote a valiant image of his father, but must constantly question him; his father undermines his son in turn. Still, some of his father's parental crimes ("dragging" him to Quaker meeting as a child so that someday he can stay out of a draft on religious pacifist grounds, for example, or "imposing" "experimental New Age braces") can surely be seen as loving, if not always especially considerate. Since Hoffman's father died in 1982, he can't speak to these stories. One of the qualities Hoffman admires in his father - his giddy, carefree way with language - eludes him during these psychological meditations, which can have an austerely formal quality. At times, he seems to be attempting an impossible project. It might be possible to write a thorough oral history of chess, or of Hoffman's father's career, of Hoffman's own games, or of his chess-world friends; the latter was what made "Word Freak" so engaging on the equally obsessive subject of Scrabble. But when you add further categories, like Hoffman's marriage, a nearly debilitating and mysterious illness, and his ambivalence about his father, complete documentation becomes futile. "Chess players live in an alternative world of what might have been," he writes early in this book, and like Mary Gordon's "The Shadow Man," this is a search for an inadequate, elusive parent that can never be completed. On the other hand, whenever Hoffman gets carried away with a story that gets him, and us, outside his history and head - as when he gets into situations filled with international intrigue and peril, like being interrogated by the police while trying to play in Libya - his prose is vigorous and very funny. His unselfconscious portraits of neurotic or outrageous characters are as effective as good fiction, and his chapter about women chess players - especially the section about top player Jennifer Shahade - is one of the book's liveliest and best. Obsession is often unquenchable, parents frustrating, love and the mind prone to failure, the sweetest dreams unrealizable. Hoffman is a noble character here, all the more noble because he's so self-effacing, and he's careful in his writing not to show off too much. He has some things to show off about, and he deserves a victorious break from replaying so many real and metaphorical games, whose results are unalterable.

The "Ghost Deer" of Northern Wisconsin

Incredibly beautiful animals - white deer - not albinos because these have blue eyes, not the characteristic pink eye of a true albino (lacking all pigment genes). I had no idea that such animals existed and, lo and behold, there they were on page one of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this morning. It lifted my heart just looking at the beautiful photographs, as much as the previous story about the brutal monsters unleasing terror on women and children in Congo plunged me into despair.

'It's like a white flash'
As elusive as they are majestic, white deer haunt the North Woods
By BILL GLAUBERbglauber@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 6, 2007

There is a place in Wisconsin's North Woods, in rural Vilas County, outside Boulder Junction, where the white deer roam.

They are as white as a covering of fresh snow, white like mystical and magical ghosts.

They run wild and free, show up at feeders and amble down roads. They are protected and cannot be hunted in Wisconsin.

They remain part of a timeless landscape.

"A cluster of white deer has been up there since the 1950s, maybe before," says Keith McCaffery, a retired deer biologist from Rhinelander.

"We've got 1.8 million deer or thereabouts (in Wisconsin), and we've had these scattered reports of white deer," McCaffery says. "I don't know how many there are in this Boulder Junction area. They're pretty darn scarce."

Linda Winn, a wildlife biologist in Vilas County for the Department of Natural Resources, says she believes there are several different populations of white deer in the area.

"It seems like there are more around," she says. "We don't keep an estimate of them like that. We don't do anything special with them."

Some people believe the animals are albino deer, while others say they are white deer. The animals' eyes are not pink - they are pale blue. "Albino means a true, total absence of pigmentation, so their eyes would be pink," says Brian Kirkpatrick, a professor specializing in genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

In Boulder Junction, citizens take pride in the deer.

"People are really, really interested in the deer, keep close tabs on them," says photographer Jeff Richter, who with author John Bates recently published a book, "White Deer: Ghosts of the Forest." "These white deer really get a hook into people."

Jeffrey Phelps, a Journal Sentinel photographer, recently traveled to Vilas County to find and photograph the deer. He was drawn there by a story he heard from a hunter. Many years ago, the hunter took his son into the woods and saw a glorious white deer, a 10-point buck. The hunter told the child, "Take a close look at that. You may never see another one like that the rest of your life."

To get an idea of where the deer might be, Phelps talked with wildlife specialists, tavern owners and shopkeepers, stopped people walking along back roads, headed out before dawn and at dusk, traveled slowly and cautiously.

Over five days he had 10 sightings. Some of the photos he snapped were blurred - he was shaking with emotion. Other photos, though, capture the poetry, beauty and majesty of the animals.

"You see one in the dark forest and then it vanishes," Phelps says. "It's like a white flash."

Not For The Faint of Heart

Stories like this one just go to show how our of balance our world is right now, and I don't see any end to the evil and violence. It makes me sad - and furious at the men committing these atrocities. Why is it always the women and children who suffer? The New York Times Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN Published: October 7, 2007 BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore. Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair. “We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.” Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country. “The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.” The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government. But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom. According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way. United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty. Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said. “I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her. She is also pregnant. While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon. “It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.” Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized. At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage. “I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway. In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil. The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops. Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3. “Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.” No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening. “That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.” Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished. Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu. Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago. Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias. “These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said. Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo. This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again. But his men may be no better. Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her. “When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.” She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased. In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area. The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women. Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them. But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it. Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals. Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega. “There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

The Artifacts of Lothal

Here is a photo of some pieces excavated from the Lothal site in northwest India during the 1950's-'60's. These pieces are often referred to online as from a "chesslike game", discovered at Lothal. It’s probably fair to say that some kind of board game(s) was played at Lothal, part of the Harrapan or Indus Valley civilization that thrived from about 2600 BCE to 1700 BCE. We know that the Indus Valley people had trade contacts with Mesopotamia, Egypt and the peoples of the Persian plateau and all of those people played board games. In Mesopotamia, there was the game of 20-squares, imported by Egypt, where the 20-squares boards (in somewhat modified form) were often on the other side of a 30-squares game called senet. In the Persian plateau stone game boards have been discovered at Jiroft – not all of which are frauds. And there was the magnificently carved wooden "serpent game board" discovered in excavations at Shar-i Sohktah – a variation of the 20-squares boards excavated by Woolley at Ur.

Trade contacts over a 900 year period would no doubt have led to the introduction of board games into the Indus region from any or all of these regions, even assuming their civilization had before then been unfamiliar with the concept and did not produce their own board games. As far as I am aware, however, no game boards were excavated in Lothal, or at any of the other Indus Valley sites. This does not mean that the people there did not play board games; it may simply mean that they made their boards out of materials that did not survive the ravages of time.

And so we are left with these pieces, many which resemble game pieces discovered in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Shar-I Sohktah. Did the Lothal residents play their own unique board game with them? We don’t know. Did the Lothal residents play 20-squares and senet? We don’t know. I also cannot tell you whether all of these pieces were found one at a time (such as the lonely Butrint piece, which was the kiss of death according to some chess historians because it could not be conclusively determined by other evidence that the Butrint piece was a chess piece) or whether some were found together. As some "experts" have said of the Butrint piece (it looks like a "finial"), these could all just be "finials."

It is tempting to assume that these pieces might be from a form of proto-chess. They were discovered, after all, in the area called Sindh (also called Hind in some 19th century literature on the subject of the origins of chess) and that is the area traditionally attributed by Murray as where chess first arose. I don’t know about you, but one of the Lothal pieces in the photo looks rather like a modern "knight" to me – very suggestive of a horse’s head. Rather like the Butrint piece looks like a modern "king" or "queen."

See here for some information about Lothal and the Indus Valley civilization.

For an analysis of the iconography embodied in the Butrint piece, see Don McLean’s "Butrint in Vivisection" Parts I and II. Here (and here) are some earlier blog entries where I talk about the Butrint piece.

Friday Night Miscellany

I'm tired tonight darlings, so this will be relatively short. Judit Polgar is one of the announced super-GMs who will be appearing in a stellar "A" Group line-up at the 2008 Corus in January. Corus, as you may (or may not) know, was bought out by the Indian Tata conglomerate. I'm glad to see the management is continuing the Corus Super-Tournament tradition. As far as I can tell from scanning news reports, Judit hasn't played in a tournament since she lost in the beginning rounds of the play-offs for spots in the World Chess Championship "Tournament" recently concluded in Mexico City. It will be good to see her in action again, and let's hope she's been doing some serious studying. It's a pain in the you-know-what to constantly keep to the grind of staying on top of the latest games and chess knowledge, but if you want to stay in the top, that's what you have to do. It's the same in many professions. Whew! Sure glad I'm not a top level chess player! Speaking of Tata brings to mind what I've been up to my ears in the past week - doing research for the investment club of which I'm President and chief, cook and bottlewasher. It's a grind when I'm doing research into potential "buys." Not only do I have to convince myself (not such an easy job), I have to also convince the members of the club that a particular company is a worthy "buy" candidate! I first heard about "investment clubs" in December, 2000 - yes, right around the time of the beginning of the tech stock crash (it took several months, if you'll recall). It was at the old "Officeworld" as I used to call it (where I work now, I just call it the office, because it's not near the soap-opera as was my former place of employment, my my my). I attended the January, 2001 club meeting at Officeworld and I was hooked. By March, 2001, I had opened up a brokerage account (my "play" account) and was regularly investing a fixed amount each month in addition to the amount I was contributing as a member of the Officeworld investment club. Theretofore, I was like millions of other Americans, convinced that investing and money management and such was something best left to the "experts" for which you paid fees every year. How wrong I was. I had "beginner's luck" - really - in my initial "on my own" investments. But - it also was not as easy as I thought at first. Shortly after I joined the Officeworld investment club, I took a good hard look at my 401(k) investments. Like millions of other Americans, I am not covered by a pension plan - there is only the 401(k) plan and - as I was lucky to have - a profit-sharing plan. From what I'd learned as an investment club member, I was able to insightfully analyze the investment returns of the various funds offered for investment through the 401(k) and profit-sharing plans, and made some adjustments - to my benefit. Before then, I'd been coasting along, just like millions of others do, "chasing" after prior returns instead of really grasping the essentials of fund returns. (Hint: It's not so hard to understand, when you know what to look for and what to look at). As I educated myself by extensive online reading as well as mass consumption of commercial investment magazines, I developed a real "feel" for picking stocks. I'm not a trader by any means. I invest for the long term - five years or more. And so, my criteria, and the criteria that I have since taught to several other fledgling investors, is different (a lot different) from the short-term or day-trader approach. Since that first paying of club dues in January, 2001, I've come a long way. I have invested every month in my club and individual account (I call it my "play" account) since 2001, even through the fear-inspiring drop in the market after 9/11. I've learned that, for the most part, commercial investment magazines aren't worth the paper they are written on. I learned how to spot winners and trends long before they're published in magazine articles, when the lemmings jump (positive or negative) and may make a price shift one way or the other - a temporary price shit. I have also learned the art of waiting - for a stock price to come down into my "buy" range, and for a stock price to go up after temporary market set-backs driven by the "lemmings" mentality. This is one of the most important things I have taught to my "pupils" - besides buying growing companies at a reasonable price. I have had good success - and some disasters along the way - but not so many disasters because I've been careful. I've also been overly cautious at times and sold out of positions where I've had a more than 100% gain, only to see the price continue upward to 200% and more. Oh well... Anyway, after I left Officeworld at the end of September, 2002, I continued with the investment club there for awhile, but eventually there was a parting of the ways. To make a long story short, it has been my pleasure to be the President of a very small investment club for the past couple of years, and we have had great success. Our returns to date are - bragging now - over 72% since May, 2005, when we made our initial investment. Our goal is to double our money every 5 years; looks like we're on-track to do that well before our five year "first investment date." Of course, as we continue to add to our portfolio, it will become harder to achieve the success we've had to date - although we'll certainly try! I couldn't be more pleased with how things have turned out. I continue to learn and learn more about investments and investing, and I'm pleased to be passing along to others what I've learned - and we all learn together. Yes, I know, that sounds sentimental and blah-blah. We're having fun while we're doing the blah-blah. We meet once a month, usually for breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday, for a couple of hours. Right from the beginning, we've had outings just for fun. For instance, we've held a meeting on the train to Chicago for a day-trip; we've met for breakfast at different locations and gone over reports over eggs and coffee and then spent hours attending fairs and festivals and shopping. In November we're doing a "spa" day. The goal is to get some of the young hairdressers and spa attendants interested in investing as we chat about our current buy prospects and the status of our portfolio :) Suffice to say - I was always one to say "pay someone else to do it." Now I know better. I can do it better myself and save money to boot by doing it myself. You can too.

New Rune Stone Discovered

See prior post mentioning runes. From Aftenposten.no Published 04 October 207 Ancient rune stone found Archeologists were very pleasantly surprised to discover an unknown rune stone under the floor of Hauskjeen church in Rennesøy, Rogaland in western Norway The rune stone likely stems from the 11th century, and tells of Halvard's powers or Halvard's magnificence. The stone slab has been broken off at both ends, and the text ("Mæktir haluar") is just a small part of the original inscription. Archeologists from the Archeological Museum in Stavanger thought at first that they had rediscovered a rune stone documented in 1639 and 1745, but closer examination revealed that the stone has not been reported before. The discovery site implies that the slab could have been a tombstone, but the text makes it more likely that it is the remains of a monument. The rune stone is now on exhibit at Stavanger's Archeological Museum. The runes are from the so-called medieval runes in use from the second half of the 11th century.

October 2007 "Chess Life"

Nice cover - it's IM Irina Krush on a beach, in the sun, with a king clutched in her hand and a "fierce" smirk on her face... No, she's not in a bikini, guys. There are, I think, better photos of her on page 4 and 23, in black and white, where she looks radiantly young and lovely (and yes, she is fully dressed). Krush is the cover story on page 22 with a review of the round by round action from the 2007 U.S. Women's Chess Championship. Yaaaayyyy! Goddesschess' Brilliancy Prize is mentioned on page 26 along with our url (www.goddesschess.com, ahem) and Liz Vicary's annotation of her brilliancy prize winning game behind the black pieces with Camilla Baginskaite. The cover story is 8 pages long - nice job, Chess Life. A bit of irony, the next article (beginning page 31) is "Ivanchuk Tops Montreal; Kamsky Disappoints." But flipping through the magazine I find on page 73 a "Special Notice!! GM Gata Kamsky (blah blah blah) will be playing BOARD #1 2008 National Open June 6-8, 2008 at the Riveria in Las Vegas." Of course, Gata is a draw, and a compelling story - but Chucky has been playing unconscious lately and winning just about everything in sight he's been invited to! Ivanchuk always has been brilliant, just has had problems with nerves at times (hey, darling, I can identify). On the October ratings list Ivanchuk has moved into the #2 position by virtue of his recent red-hot results. Way to go! Of more interest to me, though, is the photo that starts the article on page 31 - in the background are Pia Cramling and Iweta Rajlich waiting to face off against each other. The expressions on the ladies' faces is - well, priceless. The ladies were not playing in the 8th Montreal International but in a women-only event (without checking my notes, I believe it was the Monreal Grand Prix Finale that was running at the same time). I deduce from the photograph in question that the ladies and the gentlemen from both events (and maybe more events, for all I know) were playing at the same time, in the same venue. IM Irina Krush, who also played in the Ladies' Grand Prix in Montreal, was the author of the article that had to report on the rather disappointing finish for her main man GM Pascal Charbonneau, who still managed to score a point above GM Nigel Short, who finished in last place with 2.0! Paging through the mag now...interestingly, there are two reviews this month of books that aren't chess training manuals: a "letter" by J.C. Hallman containing a review of Michael Chabon's novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and a review PLUS an article about Paul Hoffman's memoir "King's Gambit - A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game" AND an excerpt. Just curious - I wonder if Paul Hoffman made a generous contribution to USCF... This edition of Chess Life contains the USCF Sales Catalog for Winter 2008. Does anyone ever order anything from the USCF??? The catalog is 47 pages - and naive me, here I thought Chess Life was finally giving us a really meaty issue. An article worth a read - "Steroid Chess - How Computers, Tournaments & Etiquette Have Changed the Royal Game" by IM Danny Kopec, Ph.D.

Islamic Fascist Barbarians Target Women in Iraq

Oh yes, such an enlightened religion. Well, maybe they'll end up killing all their own women and end up self-genociding - and cleaning up the gene pool. In Basra, vigilantes wage deadly campaign against women By Jay Price and Ali Omar al Basri, McClatchy Newspapers 2 hours, 42 minutes ago BASRA, Iraq — Women in Basra have become the targets of a violent campaign by religious extremists, who leave more than 15 female bodies scattered around the city each month, police officers say. Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf , the commander of Basra's police, said Thursday that self-styled enforcers of religious law threatened, beat and sometimes shot women who they believed weren't sufficiently Muslim. "This is a new type of terror that Basra is not familiar with," he said. "These gangs represent only themselves, and they are far outside religious, forgiving instructions of Islam." Often, he said, the "crime" is no more than wearing Western clothes or not wearing a head scarf. Before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraqi women had had rights enshrined in the country's constitution since 1959 that were among the broadest of any Arab or Islamic nation. However, while the new constitution says that women are equal under the law, critics have condemned a provision that says no law can contradict the "established rulings" of Islam as weakening women's rights. The vigilantes patrol the streets of Basra on motorbikes or in cars with dark-tinted windows and no license plates. They accost women who aren't wearing the traditional robe and head scarf known as hijab. Religious extremists in the city also have been known to attack men for clothes or even haircuts deemed too Western. Like all of southern Iraq , Basra is populated mostly by Shiite Muslims, so sectarian violence isn't a major problem, but security has deteriorated as Shiite militias fight each other for power. British troops in the area pulled out last month. Khalaf, who has a reputation for outspokenness in a city where that can get you killed, scoffed at the groups, calling them no better than criminal gangs. He said he didn't care if some were affiliated with the militias, he planned to crack down on them. "If there is a red line related to the insurgents and militias, we will pass it over, because it's one of the factors that destroy the society," he said. The violence is displacing the few members of religious minorities in the area. Fuad Na'im , one of a handful of Christians left in the city, said Thursday that the way his wife dressed made the whole family a target. "I was with my wife few days ago when two young men driving a motorbike stopped me and asked her about her clothes and why she doesn't wear hijab," he said. "When I told them that we are Christians, they beat us badly, and I would be dead if some people nearby hadn't intervened." That was enough, he said. "I'm about to leave the city where I was born and where my father and grandfather were buried, because I can't live in a place where we're asked about our clothes, food and drink."

Sanchi

Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh, India

A UNESCO world heritage site in central India near the Betwa River. On a flat-topped sandstone hill, 90m above the countryside, stands the best-preserved group of Buddhist monuments in India. Most noteworthy is the Great Stupa, discovered in 1818. It was probably begun by the emperor Aśoka in the mid-3rd century BCE and later enlarged. Solid throughout, it is enclosed by a massive stone railing pierced by four gateways on which are elaborate carvings depicting the life of the Buddha. The stupa itself consists of a base bearing a hemispherical dome representing the dome of heaven enclosing the Earth; it is surmounted by a squared rail unit, the world mountain, from which rises a mast to symbolize the cosmic axis. The mast bears umbrellas that represent the various heavens. Other remains include several smaller stupas, an assembly hall (caitya), an Aśokan pillar with inscription, and several monasteries (4th–11th cent. CE). Several relic baskets and more than 400 epigraphical records have also been discovered.

This is the eastern gateway to the giant stupa. It is particularly interesting because one row shows elephants with riders atop (bishop) and on the row above that are calvary riders (knight). The stupa dates to the mid 3rd century BCE; it seems unlikely that armies of this period didn't also have foot soldiers (pawns) and chariots (rooks). We know, of course, that there were plenty of kings to go around - just about one for each city-state - and where there are kings, there are counselors (queen). The dating of Asoka's Sanchi definitely supports Ferlito's and Sanvito's proposition that all elements for chess were in place in India well before Murray's hypothetical date of invention of the 5th to 6th centuries CE.

No Rest for the Champion

This is a fine article from the New York Times.

In the Major League of Chess, Next Year Comes So Soon
By DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN
Published: October 3, 2007

Hours after winning the World Chess Championship, Viswanathan Anand, an Indian grandmaster, sat in his hotel in Mexico City on Saturday and groped for words to explain how he felt.

“You can imagine,” he said by telephone. “I don’t know how on an emotional level it affects me.”

Mr. Anand’s victory was not a surprise — he is ranked No.1 in the world — but it was a milestone. He is the first Asian to be the undisputed champion and only the second player from outside Eastern Europe in the last 60 years. (The other was the American Bobby Fischer, who held the title from 1972 to 1975.)

Mr. Anand will not have a lot of time to rest on his laurels. Under rules of the World Chess Federation, the organizers of the championship, he will have to play a match early next year against the Russian Vladimir Kramnik, the previous champion.

While they are facing off, Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, another former champion, will play the winner of a tournament to be held later this year in Russia.

The winners of those two matches will play a final match to determine a new champion.

Mr. Anand’s strength has always been his speed and computational ability. He quickly sees deeply into positions, rarely spending much time on his moves or using anywhere near his allotted time for a game. For many years, he has widely been acknowledged to be the best rapid chess player in the world.

Mr. Anand, 37, took a long time to win the championship. He broke into the elite in 1991 by winning a strong tournament that included Garry Kasparov, then the world champion, and the former champion Anatoly Karpov.

Since then he has won all the top tournaments at least once, but he has always struggled to win matches. In a match, the historical format for determining a champion, two players face each other repeatedly, while in a tournament, many face one another just once or twice.

Some observers and fellow competitors have ascribed Mr. Anand’s struggles in matches to nerves. In 1995 he lost an 18-game match at the top of the World Trade Center to Mr. Kasparov. In 1998, he won a tournament to select a challenger to Mr. Karpov for the World Chess Federation championship; they played to a tie in a six-game match, but Mr. Karpov prevailed in a playoff.

Technically, Mr. Anand’s victory in Mexico City is his second world title. In 2000, he won the federation’s championship tournament held in Tehran and New Delhi. But at the time, the title was split and many people recognized Mr. Kramnik, the Russian, as the legitimate champion, a situation that Mr. Anand acknowledged tainted his victory.

“Anytime you have two titles, it hangs over you,” Mr. Anand said.

Last year Mr. Kramnik became the undisputed champion after he beat Mr. Topalov in a match in Elista, Kalmykia, a remote Russian republic.

In the Mexico City championship, a tournament, Mr. Anand outdistanced 7 of the world’s top 14 players, including Mr. Kramnik, emerging as the only undefeated player.

He is now the undisputed champion, acknowledged even by Mr. Kramnik, but since his victory some fans have said on the Internet that he cannot be considered a true champion until he proves his mettle in a match. So the match against Mr. Kramnik will be important.

In the phone interview, Mr. Anand said that Mr. Kramnik and Mr. Topalov, who did not play in Mexico City, should not have been given “special privileges” to try to reclaim the championship in the coming matches, but, he added, “It is water under the bridge.”

In the modern era, it is unusual for a champion to be so old — in his late 30s — raising the possibility that Mr. Anand’s reign may be short. He said that while the top players are getting younger, he also noted that the top three in Mexico City — himself and the two who tied for second and third, Boris Gelfand, 39, of Israel, and Mr. Kramnik, 32 — were also the oldest. “Maybe a bit of experience didn’t hurt,” he said.

Mr. Anand said he did not know how long he would play competitively, but he drew a clear line. Referring to Viktor Korchnoi, a former world championship challenger, who is 76 and continues to play regularly in tournaments, Mr. Anand said, “You can rest assured that I won’t be doing a Korchnoi.”

Worshipping the Goddess Lands King in Hot Soup

From The Times of India online Nepal king visits goddess, lands in soup 2 Oct 2007, 0054 hrs IST,TNN KATHMANDU: A traditional visit to receive the blessings of a goddess said to be the patron deity of the royal dynasty has landed Gyanendra in a fresh controversy with PM G P Koirala construing it as a challenge to his authority. Koirala, who till recently had championed giving “space” to the kingdom’s two-century old ruling family and had advocated that Gyanendra should abdicate in favour of his five-year-old grandson, on Monday trained his sights on the monarch, warning that the government would take action if Gyanendra tried to challenge his authority. The warning came a day after both Koirala and Gyanendra went to the site of a traditional Hindu festival that ends with the Kumari- Nepal’s living goddess - blessing the head of state. Though Nepal is now officially a secular state, the multi-party government however still continues to patronise traditional Hindu festivals to the exclusion of Muslim and Christian celebrations. After the end of Gyanendra’s government last year, Nepal’s parliament, in a bid to make Gyanendra powerless, took away all his official functions, including attending religious ceremonies. With the king’s functions as head of state being given to the PM, Koirala has also stepped into Gyanendra’s religious shoes. Despite his erratic health and mounting crises, Koirala has been revelling in his newly acquired role, attending various festivals. Last week, it was he who kicked off the Indrajatra festival but did not have the stamina to see it through. On Sunday, it was a reversal of roles at the festival where the PM went in pomp and the king came as a commoner after him. When the king was all powerful, protesters shouted slogans against him and showed him black flags. This time, it was the all-powerful prime minister who faced the wrath of protesters. At the earlier religious festivals, the king had expressed his desire to attend though stripped of his prominent role. However, the government stopped him. ********************************************************************************* Well, I know that some folks out there may snicker at the King asking the blessing of the embodiment of the Living Goddess, but these things are taken deadly seriously in Nepal, and they have political consequences, where right now a war-by-proxy is going on behind the Chinese-backed "democratic" forces and those who support the traditional monarchy. It's pretty damned pissy to me when the King can't visit the Living Goddess (embodied in a girl child - I've posted about here earlier in the year here) without permission from the fricking government. Suddenly worship in the traditional way has to be sanctioned by the government. Do you get it now, folks? Hey?

Run, Run for the Hills Grey Squirrels!

Can you believe this?

From the Telegraph.co.uk

Sterilisation plan for grey squirrels
By Graham Tibbetts
Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 02/10/2007

EEK! RUN FOR THE HILLS, GREY SQUIRRELS - RUN, RUN FOR YOUR NUTS!

Scientists are planning a mass sterilisation programme to halt the growth of Britain's grey squirrel population which is now feared to have reached five million.

Teams in Britain and America are working against the clock to develop a method of rendering the pests infertile using treated bait.

Some estimates put the number of greys in Britain at five million and it is feared the local red population could die out within two decades unless dramatic steps are taken to curb their bigger, stronger rivals.

As well as forcing out red squirrels, greys destroy trees by stripping bark and have taken their toll on songbird populations by taking eggs. They also steal food from garden bird tables and infest loft spaces.

The problem of the burgeoning grey population was highlighted by the Daily Telegraph in an article by associate editor Simon Heffer which prompted a flood of letters and emails from readers. He called for a cull to stop them damaging the countryside.

Government scientists are working on a two-year programme commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to find an effective oral contraceptive for grey squirrels.

They are also trying to pinpoint the best way of giving it to the rodents without affecting other animals. If successful, the treatment could be adopted in around five to 10 years.

Brenda Mayle, who is leading the research, said sterilisation injections had already proved successful in horses and deer in the US.

"If it eats part of the bait and leaves the rest it is a risk to non-target species. We are looking for a food package that the squirrel will eat in its entirety and not cache, which it does with acorns," said Ms Mayle, who is research programme manager for Forest Research – part of the Forestry Commission – in Surrey.

The contraceptive would work by attacking the immune system of the squirrel, suppressing its fertility. Scientists are desperate to find ways of tackling the grey squirrel threat before it causes more damage to the red population.

Greys have been found to carry a disease called squirrelpox virus (SQPV) which does not harm them but kills reds.

It is spreading through Britain and has recently been found as far north as Lowland Scotland.

Ms Mayle said: "It's very important that we do find something to reduce the rate of their spread, particularly because we are seeing the squirrelpox virus spreading north in Scotland now."

But she added: "It's not an alternative to culling. It will become another tool in our ability to manage wildlife populations but it's not an alternative to lethal methods."

A spokesman for Defra ruled out a national cull, saying it had been considered but would be too expensive with no guarantee of success.

"The Government is committed to preventing the further spread of grey squirrels, however, eradication is considered impracticable at national level. Some local programmes of control are under way, particularly in areas where grey squirrels are threatening remaining populations of reds or to protect forestry," she said.

Grey squirrels were introduced to Britain from America in the Victorian era but swiftly pushed out red squirrels, which are now only found in the Isle of Wight, Brownsea Island, western Wales, northern England and parts of Scotland.

********************************************************************************
Well, well, well. Isn't this ironic. The land of Charles Darwin, who introduced the concept of "survival of the fittest" into the world in the "Age of Enlightenment" (cough cough cough) is now trying to wipe out the fittest species (grey squirrels) in order to keep an inferior species (red squirrels) alive. Hey, Darwin, are you spinning in your grave?

Gee, when it's put like this - up close and personal - it really sucks to believe in such baloney sausage as "survival of the fittest", doesn't it. But if the scientists (the "experts", after all) believe in this B.S. theory, then it behooves them to being committed to allowing the red squirrel population to die out, except perhaps for a few specimens in zoos. Otherwise, they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time. THERE ARE NO "BUTS" IN DARWIN'S WORLD OF EVOLUTION - NATURAL SELECTION AND SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. NO EXCEPTIONS. THE WEAK DIE. THE FIT LIVE. BYE BYE SUCKA.

And you know the scientists, they're just going to really screw up the ecology EVEN MORE if they try and "cull" the grey squirrels using treated bait for birth control. Anyone other than those scientists can predict right now what will happen. There will be tons more "unintended consequences" than what happened some 100 years ago when some frigging idiot introduced an invasive species (the grey squirrels) into the British Isles, and the scientists really have no clue as to what most of those new unintended consequences will be! And yet they're discussing doing this - finding the right "magic bullet." GEEZ!

Chess Stuff

As you all no doubt know by know, Anand is the new world chess championship, to some of us at least :) Congratulations to Anand for playing fine chess to win the Mexican tournament. Guess chess isn't such a young man's game after all, heh heh heh. This is really big news in India, of course, and I expect the game will surge even more there now in popularity. There is an interview with Susan Polgar published in the International Herald Tribune yesterday. The October, 2007 FIDE Ratings List came out today. Anand is #1 on the list with 2803, the second time he has achieved a rating of 2800 or better. Ivanchuk, who was chewing up every chess board in sight, or so it seemed, during the past three or four months, increased his rating by 25 points, to 2787, and takes over the #2 spot. Not to be outdone, Koneru Humpy pushed her rating to 2606 by adding 28 points over the past 3 months. Well done, Humpy! Only Judit Polgar exceeds her ELO on the Women's List.

Even a Goddess Gets Hit with Inflation...

From The Telegraph Calcutta, India September 30, 2007 The goddess Durga will also notice that the banks have increased their rates of interest on loans this time. For the idol-makers at Kumartuli, beset by many problems, trouble started this year even before work began, when the banks they usually took loans from suddenly hiked the rate of interest. “We have been taking loans for our work from the State Bank of India (SBI) and the United Bank of India. Last year the rate of interest was 9.5 per cent per annum. But this year when we went for a loan, the SBI officials told us that the rate of interest has been increased to 12 per cent per annum. It is impossible for us to pay such a high rate of interest,” says Nemai Pal, president of the Kumartuli Mritshilpi Sanskritik Samity. The artisans were forced to change their bank. “We have been banking with the SBI for eight years. We spoke to many senior officials of the bank, but to no avail. Finally the Bank of India agreed to lend us money at 9-9.5 per cent per annum. We are getting a special concession on the usual rate. We also took loans from the United Bank at the same rate,” says a thankful Babu Pal, the secretary of the union. Looking for another bank has taken its toll on the work. “Our work was delayed by at least two months,” says Nemai. The SBI authorities try to explain their point. “The SBI Advanced Rate has gone up to 12 per cent. The artisans had asked for a concession that would have meant bringing down the rate to 2 per cent below the rate. We had sent an appeal to the higher authorities, but I was transferred at that point so I don’t know what happened after that,” says Arunava Aich, assistant general manager (IBD), SBI. However, Swapan Sengupta, assistant regional manager (region II), SBI, says: “Some artists have taken a loan from us. They have asked for a concession, but we haven’t heard from the higher authorities yet.” Kumartuli is not new to problems — both financial and practical. The price that Puja committees pay for the idols is never enough to cover the increase in the price of raw materials. “The committees at the most are ready to increase rates by 10 per cent, but the prices of raw materials, like clay, bamboo and hay, go up much more,” says Babu. There is little electricity. “The power cuts often continue for two hours or more,” complains Nemai. The idols need to be dried with oil lamps. And then came the rains. “For three days we couldn’t work. Especially those who had kept their idols along the roads. The rain washed away the colours and melted the idols. Not only is it a monetary loss to us because we will have to redo it, but we are also worried about how we will manage to finish work in time,” says Babu. The rains have been a problem for Puja committees too. “The bamboos and planks that we had brought for our work was washed away. Some Plaster of Paris art-work we had finished will also have to repainted. We could start work again only on Thursday because the area was so waterlogged,” says Anjan Ukil, the secretary of the Ballygunge Cultural Association puja committee. Other committees who had not yet started work on the outside of the pandal fared slightly better. “All administrative work was thrown out of gear. No one could reach us,” says Neelanjan Deb, the joint secretary of the Deshapriya Park puja committee. Adds Suman Chatterjee, the president of the Babubagan puja committee: “We have constructed a huge pagoda at the entrance and we were scared that it might collapse. Thankfully that did not happen.” POULOMI BANERJEE

Matsu Islands to Host Summit on Marine Goddess

From the Taipei Times STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA Friday, Sep 28, 2007, Page 4 Academia Sinica is organizing an international conference next month to discuss belief in the goddess Matsu and her connection with the Matsu Islands, officials with the Lienchiang County Government's Cultural Affairs Bureau said yesterday. The officials said that Academia Sinica's Institute of Ethnology would invite 40 academics from Taiwan and abroad to participate in the conference on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18 at the Matsu Folklore Culture Museum in Nangan (南竿), one of five major islands in the Matsu archipelago. Altogether, 15 papers will be presented at the conference on different aspects of the belief in the "Goddess of the Sea" and the historical relationship with the Matsu Islands. Matsu was born in 960AD to a fisherman's family in China's Fujian Province during the Sung dynasty and was given the name Lin Mo-niang (林默娘). Legend has it she was a genius with supernatural powers, including the ability to calm storms at sea. The numerous miracles ascribed to her include rescuing sailors in distress and curing the sick with her vast knowledge of Chinese medicine. One day, at the age of 28, she told her parents it was time for her to leave them. After reaching the top of a mountain near her home, she was encircled by clouds and carried into the heavens in a golden glow amid enchanting celestial music. She was deified and referred to as Matsu. Emperors in the Ming and Ching dynasties referred to her as the "Heavenly Empress." Residents on the Matsu Islands, however, have a different version of the story. They believe that Lin Mo-niang drowned while trying to rescue her father from a storm at sea, and that her body was washed ashore on the island of Nangan. A temple named the Palace of the Heavenly Empress was built on Nangan. The temple is said to contain her sarcophagus. The local people also named the archipelago Matsu in memory of the goddess, but the first character in the name was later changed to give it a different tone so as to make it sound more masculine. Today, Matsu has become the most widely worshipped deity in Taiwan, with temples dedicated to her seen in almost every township and city. Academia Sinica is the nation's most prominent academic institution, with more than 1,000 full-time research fellows undertaking in-depth academic research on various subjects.

Weinreb Review of "King's Gambit"

In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Michael Weinreb reviews Paul Hoffman's book "King's Gambit - A Son, A Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game." Sounds like another book to add to my never-ending reading list!