Urumqi by Night

urumqi

Just three years ago, four of us found ourselves in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China, as a stop on our tour of the China portion of the Silk Route. One of the more remarkable facts we learned as we approached Urumqi was that it is considered the most remote city from any sea in the world i.e. its about 1400 miles from any oceanic coastline. So its a bit of a drive to the beach. The biggest surprise for us, though, was the sheer cosmopolitan size of the place with over 2 million inhabitants.

Our local Hui guide was most accomodating and we wandered throughout the city prior to catching a plane for Kashgar where our guide was Uyghur. I'll have to post some additional photos to show you where our Urumchi guide, "Joseph", took us for a very tasty meal of noodles, lamb kabob and I can't remember what. But it was all good and the atmosphere unbeatable.

I post this now because of concern about the people we met in both Urumqi and Kashgar and the violence reported during the last month there. It appeared during the several days we visited both cities, that the Uyghur inhabited only the old, gradually ebbing, stone part of the city while the Chinese, many of them, recent immigrants from the east, lived on the modern, steel, neon and concrete side of the street. The demarcations were abrupt and vivid in that respect; a century or so between curbs.

However, our days so far from the beach, as on other stops along the Route, was rich and inspiring. Who knew?

Happy New February!

OK. It's late and semi-coherent, but this is what we sent out this year over the holidays. I hope its readable. If not, well, let me know and I'll send one directly to you. I may also get around to more posting...later...that will include dome of the individual photos and/or substance of what's been happening. [I once considered creating a superhero by the name of ANDOR! or, AND/OR, the Great Equivicator!). I'm also considering a Facebook presence. Will it make my life easier? Later.

...so it goes.

You wait long enough and someone  you care about no longer is busy being born and...is busy dying.  November 19, 2008 at 6:12 p.m. Dad finished his business.  And, once he made up his mind,  it took him less than a week.  On Thursday, November 13, shortly after noon, his oncologist, informed him that the chemo wasn't working, the tumor on his pancrease had grown, and the only thing left to prescribe for him, was hospice.  Dad was stoic, although he said later that he was surprised, that despite being bedridden for a month, he was going to beat it.  Like he did before.  That same night he told Bill that he would be dead in a week.  The nurse at Hospice House said "no way".  He was much too strong and would be around a few more weeks, at least.  But he didn't see the point in that.  On that last day, Mom and I took a break after 8 hours in his room.  Ten minutes after we left him, he let go.  He liked to be alone for moments like that.  

He had good run.  Here's his obit:

http://obit.petersonkraemer.com/obitdisplay.html?id=605574&listing=Current

Now, where was I...?

Oh yeah, a few days after the March 27 report on sugaring up north, MJ and I flew to Istanbul for a couple of days and then Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan until April 21 and 1400 photos later. One of those photos is at left, the tomb of Amir Timur (or, in the West, Tamur the Lame aka Tamerlane) in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. A terrific odyssey into the post Soviet world of Central Asia 15 years after the Russians told the Turkmen, Uzbeks and others that, like it or not, they were on their own. Independent, as it were. Of course, for many, that meant independence from jobs, housing, pensions, education. From cradle to grave. Hello, grave. The strongest party boss took power while the Russians took much of the parts and hardware from the factories and the citizens took a look around and said "whoa! Now what?" Some reached back into the family traditions dusted off neglected tools, revisited the skills of the older folks and fired up the cottage industries of ceramics, paper making, fiber art, jewelry making, etc.

We visited many homes and small workshops and saw (and purchased) beautiful items while being treated to demonstrations and a meal. I'll get into more of this later but we also have a wedding being planned for September 27. 2008 and, to introduce the fiance, we shared Tickfest 2008 with the Schiavoni siblings. More on that later, too.

2005 & 2007 Sap runs

March maple madness

March 2008 is just about over. The vernal equinox passed by last week which occasioned Ma Nature to dump a load of snow on us Madisonions. Being the good northerners that we are, we cheered it on, somewhat, because, having already broken the old seasonal snow fall record of about 76 inches, we wanted to break 100, which we did with a follow up of about one half an inch after the post Spring 7 inches. Now its time to say good by to Winter. We have crocuses, snowdrops and helibores blooming although 150 miles north there's still a lot of snow. And its time for the sap to run. That's March Madness Up North. Tap them trees, collect that sap and boil it down over an open fire. And you all know that it takes 37 gallons of sap for one gallon of maple syrup. That's a lot of tapping, trudging and pouring. But I'll miss it this year. Uzbekistan calls. Samarkand. See you later.