Sunday, February 16, 2014

Sochi: Skiing, Skating, Skeletons and Scandal

We’re in the middle of that quadrennial snow festival known as the Olympic Winter Games; this time in Sochi, Russia.  Concerns aplenty as the games began.  Concerns about security, treatment of LBGT athletes and visitors, and facilities that are still in various stages of completion (a local columnist described some areas as looking like a big construction site).  And then there’s Mother Nature.  She’s apparently irritated at Vladimir Putin.  Mountaintop views reveal a shortage of snow and according to the "expert analyst" talking heads what snow there is, is of poor quality.  At the half pipe the snow was too bumpy; at the skiing venues it was too slushy and at skeleton the ice was too warm.  The folks at the Sochi Chamber of Commerce (if such a body exists) must be taking good long pulls from the vodka bottle every time the camera pulls to show vast brown hills. For his part Putin has poo-pooed the criticism.  Calls it cold war propaganda.  Vlad should know cold war.  The man who once called the Soviet collapse the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century" sometimes seems to have aspirations of resurrecting it.  Sort of brings a nostalgic tug to my heart strings; the good old days of fallout shelters, those brilliantly colored mushroom clouds, ducking under a desk when the alarm goes off with all those jolly jokes about kissing your ass goodbye and watching the occasional B-52 cruising overhead. My apologies comrade, I digressed. 

Sochi 2014.  Got snow?
Snow quality?  I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  What in the hell do I know about snow except that it's wet, we yearn for it in vain every Christmas Eve and actually getting it would cause an untold number of traffic accidents once the local amateurs got in their cars.


Sunday, February 9, 2014

On Rainy Days and Childhood

The wife and I are babysitting the grandchildren, “tending kids” as my Uncle Al used to say, on a rainy Saturday morning.  Rain has been a rarity in California this drought year but in the last couple days it’s been nonstop torrential.  The pool which was on the verge of disturbingly low is getting scarily close to the brim.  I've been expecting this rain.  I know to expect a soaker every year about this time.  You can keep your cloud seeding and your rain prayers and novenas and rosaries.  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have a much more reliable rain maker – the annual Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  You don’t got to show me no stinking rain dances here in San Francisco.  Just trot out a dragon, some lion dancers and light up a string of firecrackers and an old bearded boat builder carrying a staff and gathering pairs of animals can't be far behind.  The parade is next weekend and I have a feeling that, as per tradition, this Saturday’s storm is just a prequel to the gully washer that’s going to flood the parade route next Saturday night.