charming, cold and brutal
здраво, friends.
And first, a goodbye, to some of those leaving. But really I just want to show you my kitchen:
in which I now realise there is a poster reading Peace. Got to be on message...
~
In Скопје, the new year celebration is approaching. I had a chat with a man hanging presents in a pine tree on the side of the Водно hill-called-mountain as I walked on up this afternoon. Our communication, a mix of my Slavic and his patience, told me he lived just down the hill, the presents were hung for the children, his and his neighbour's. Had I not got lost on my way back down, perhaps there would be a photo.
The path to the top is marked with redyellowred tricolours, reminiscent of Land and Freedom, which told us so much about ideological purity. Ad or post hoc, this felt an appropriate association, given that the road to the hill is Улица Салвадоре Аљенде (the article in that link yellowed on my wall, way back when, having made a young, idealistic me cry, in incomprehension or Idon'tknowwhat). This not being a proper blog, I failed to mention the death of Pinochet when it came. In spite of this, he did die, and though Jack Straw may always have been fooled into letting him go free, this kind of case creates a classic dilemma for the human rights-based approach- how many people must you torture and vanish from existence to not have personal ill-health defeat the public interest prosecution against you? Perhaps living out life under house arrest is enough of a deterrant for others. Perhaps it can even go some way to satisfying the demands of justice. I'm not convinced, but my progressive nature is clearly reproachable - viz today's question, born of the hillwalk: should such walks, in the Tatras, say, or the Cinqueterre, or anywhere else, which give access to natural beauty, be made wheelchair-friendly? I like hiking, and part of the joy is to have to scramble and feel physically challenged by the land I am crossing. I don't want these paths to be made wheelchair-friendly, but there is a minority rights argument for it. Maybe it would be possible to provide other access for wheelchairs? Does anyone know any wheelchair-hikers? Maybe it's just that everyone has their limits, and my inclusive, minority-sensitive head runs up against my selfish heart at this point? After all, the purist can well argue that the little coloured path-guides undermine the need to navigate yourself to the top, surely an integral part of the experience...
Скопје is a friendly place, full of nice people and horrible buildings. Based on my few hours there, Београд is full of nice buildings and unfriendly people. So it goes. Gordana pretends to like buildings, I pretend to like people. This is us, people, in front of a building, which i realise you can't properly see. But it's just another mosque, looking like my (therefore your) archetypal mosque:
The church of Свети Климент Охридски is not a normal looking church, and deserves a photo:
The inside is much more interesting, but no photos allowed there. Not that I would feel inherently wrong taking photos at a youth club, political party headquarters or butchers' meeting house, and not that I do in churches, it's just harder to negotiate with those whose offence is divinely sanctioned. And anyway, the smell was the most gorgeous thing, all soot, wax and oil, and I couldn't even try to spell it.
Ten years before Chile's nine-eleven, another disaster, this time God's doing, befell another anomalous socialist country, killing thousands of residents of Skopje and destroying its buildings. According to Гордана, the whole place was rebuilt in the concreative image of some architect enamoured by ugliness, though I must say the consistency of the concrete and its variety are impressive. The side of the surviving part of the old railway station has Тито's thank you note to Југославиа and the world, which is a fine use of public space:
Lastly, for now: this being one of those places where Christianity is a massive, lazy, symbolic force in people's lives, they have a big cross. It's up the hill, like a little yellow, bent tour Eiffel:
Don't it make you wanna Џамп?
And first, a goodbye, to some of those leaving. But really I just want to show you my kitchen:
in which I now realise there is a poster reading Peace. Got to be on message...~
In Скопје, the new year celebration is approaching. I had a chat with a man hanging presents in a pine tree on the side of the Водно hill-called-mountain as I walked on up this afternoon. Our communication, a mix of my Slavic and his patience, told me he lived just down the hill, the presents were hung for the children, his and his neighbour's. Had I not got lost on my way back down, perhaps there would be a photo.
The path to the top is marked with redyellowred tricolours, reminiscent of Land and Freedom, which told us so much about ideological purity. Ad or post hoc, this felt an appropriate association, given that the road to the hill is Улица Салвадоре Аљенде (the article in that link yellowed on my wall, way back when, having made a young, idealistic me cry, in incomprehension or Idon'tknowwhat). This not being a proper blog, I failed to mention the death of Pinochet when it came. In spite of this, he did die, and though Jack Straw may always have been fooled into letting him go free, this kind of case creates a classic dilemma for the human rights-based approach- how many people must you torture and vanish from existence to not have personal ill-health defeat the public interest prosecution against you? Perhaps living out life under house arrest is enough of a deterrant for others. Perhaps it can even go some way to satisfying the demands of justice. I'm not convinced, but my progressive nature is clearly reproachable - viz today's question, born of the hillwalk: should such walks, in the Tatras, say, or the Cinqueterre, or anywhere else, which give access to natural beauty, be made wheelchair-friendly? I like hiking, and part of the joy is to have to scramble and feel physically challenged by the land I am crossing. I don't want these paths to be made wheelchair-friendly, but there is a minority rights argument for it. Maybe it would be possible to provide other access for wheelchairs? Does anyone know any wheelchair-hikers? Maybe it's just that everyone has their limits, and my inclusive, minority-sensitive head runs up against my selfish heart at this point? After all, the purist can well argue that the little coloured path-guides undermine the need to navigate yourself to the top, surely an integral part of the experience...
Скопје is a friendly place, full of nice people and horrible buildings. Based on my few hours there, Београд is full of nice buildings and unfriendly people. So it goes. Gordana pretends to like buildings, I pretend to like people. This is us, people, in front of a building, which i realise you can't properly see. But it's just another mosque, looking like my (therefore your) archetypal mosque:
The church of Свети Климент Охридски is not a normal looking church, and deserves a photo:
The inside is much more interesting, but no photos allowed there. Not that I would feel inherently wrong taking photos at a youth club, political party headquarters or butchers' meeting house, and not that I do in churches, it's just harder to negotiate with those whose offence is divinely sanctioned. And anyway, the smell was the most gorgeous thing, all soot, wax and oil, and I couldn't even try to spell it.Ten years before Chile's nine-eleven, another disaster, this time God's doing, befell another anomalous socialist country, killing thousands of residents of Skopje and destroying its buildings. According to Гордана, the whole place was rebuilt in the concreative image of some architect enamoured by ugliness, though I must say the consistency of the concrete and its variety are impressive. The side of the surviving part of the old railway station has Тито's thank you note to Југославиа and the world, which is a fine use of public space:
Lastly, for now: this being one of those places where Christianity is a massive, lazy, symbolic force in people's lives, they have a big cross. It's up the hill, like a little yellow, bent tour Eiffel:
Don't it make you wanna Џамп?
posted by chris at 2:41 PM
1 Comments:
Wheelchair-walking - complex due to the need for joined-up thinking on access. Support all the way from A to B and back, which may include extra people, ramps on buses and trains, accessible toilet and eating facilities, to create an overall sense of security.
It's not so much tarmacking the steep slopes - just thinking outside the box so it's possible to journey seamlessly to and from your beauty spot, say, and enjoy a level walk in the surroundings. But I think you already know that human rights progress has to be tackled on several fronts simultaneously...
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