What, No Hajj?

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Saudi Arabia Has Halted All Flights To/From Iran

Saudi Arabia Has Halted All Flights To/From Iran

It is a mandatory religious duty for all Muslims, at least once in their life, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Now that Saudi Arabia and Iran are on the outs, the Saudis have forbidden all flights linking their two countries. This alone has the potential of leading to further nastiness. Admittedly, Iranian pilgrims can still go by boat (and risk being robbed by Somali pirates) or by land (and risk being robbed by bandits).

I cannot help but think that the real reason for all this nastiness is the conflict in Yemen between Shi’a rebels (called the Houthis) and the Saudis and their allies. In the end, the Saudis may think now is the time to rid themselves of the Shi’a menace once and for all.

Now what is this Sunni/Shi’a split all about? According to the BBC:

In early Islamic history, the Shia were a movement – literally “Shiat Ali” or the “Party of Ali”. They claimed that Ali was the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad as leader (imam) of the Muslim community following his death in 632.

Ali was assassinated in 661 after a five-year caliphate that was marred by civil war. His sons, Hassan and Hussein, were denied what they thought was their legitimate right of accession to the caliphate.

Hassan is believed to have been poisoned in 680 by Muawiyah, the first caliph of the Sunni Umayyad dynasty, while Hussein was killed on the battlefield by the Umayyads in 681. These events gave rise to the Shia concept of martyrdom and the rituals of grieving.

There are three main branches of Shia Islam today—the Zaidis, Ismailis and Ithna Asharis (Twelvers or Imamis). The Ithna Asharis are the largest group and believe that Muhammad’s religious leadership, spiritual authority and divine guidance were passed on to 12 of his descendants, beginning with Ali, Hassan and Hussein.

The 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, is said to have disappeared from a cave below a mosque in 878. Ithna Asharis believe the so-called “awaited imam” did not die and will return at the end of time to restore justice on earth.

In other words, the roots of the conflict go all the way back 1,400 years and show no signs of slackening.

It’s a sobering thought that we, who cannot even pronounce the name “Muawiyah,” may be affected in some way by this stramash.

The Intimate Enemy

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Sunni Anti-Shi’a Propaganda

Sunni Anti-Shi’a Propaganda

In a 1997 lecture entitled “The Origin of Satan in Christian Tradition,” Religious Historian Elaine Pagels writes about how the character of Satan morphed over the centuries from a messenger of God’s to His enemy:

So there are many stories about Satan’s origin; but what struck me about them is this. Diverse as they are, whichever version you choose, they all agree on one thing: that this greatest and most dangerous enemy did not originate (as we might have expected) as an outsider, an alien, or stranger. Satan is no distant enemy: on the contrary, he is an “intimate enemy”—one’s closest relative, older brother, or trusted colleague—the kind of person on whose goodwill and loyalty the well-being of family and society depends, but one who turns unexpectedly hostile, jealous, and dangerous.

So it is not the total outsider whom we hate, but the heretic—one whose belief is close to ours except on some details which to some will seem trivial. Such were the Arians and Nestorians in the early days of the Christian Church. And such are the Sunni and Shi’a over the last 1,400 years.

With the execution of a prominent Shi’a cleric (Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr), Saudi Arabia has earned the undying hatred of Iran. For many centuries, there has been a small Shi’a minority in the Eastern portion of the Arabian peninsula, and the executed sheikh was their religious leader. Shown below is a map illustrating the distribution of the two sects in the Middle East:

Percent Shi’a in the Middle East and North Africa

Percent Shi’a in the Middle East and North Africa

This comes at a bad time for Saudi Arabia, as the sharp decline in the price of oil is about to have dire consequences in the ability of the kingdom to provide benefits for its favored citizens. The price of gas has jumped 50%, water and electricity are going up, and the country’s safety net is in danger.

So what should we do? I think this is a good time to put our hands firmly in our pockets and start whistling until we see who wins, King Kong or the Dinosaur.

Living in the Desert

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By the Thousand Palms Oasis

By the Thousand Palms Oasis

When my brother first told me he was thinking of moving to he Coachella Valley, Martine and I both thought it wasn’t a good idea. Martine had lived for a couple of years in Twenty Nine Palms, where she worked at the Naval Hospital at the Marine Combat Center there. She hated the desert. As for me, I do not like living in a hot climate.

Of course, if anyone could make it work, it’s Dan. After all, his previous home in Paso Robles was almost as hot as Palm Desert. When he wanted to call down, he and Lori would drive to the beach along the Central Coast, which was frequently 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. Living in Palm Desert, he is surrounded by mountains. He is already working on a log home at Idyllwild in the foothills, where the elevation of 5,413 feet (1,650 meters) affords some protection from the summer blast on the floor of the Coachella Valley.

I love visiting the desert, especially in the cooler months. Dan is not far from Joshua Tree National Park and Anza-Borrego State Park, which are two favorite destinations of mine.

 

Thoughts in a Dry Season

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Descanso’s Rose Garden on New Years Weekend

Descanso’s Rose Garden on New Years Weekend

Today, Martine and I went to visit Descanso Gardens in La Cañada-Flintridge. Despite the drought, I thought at least the camellias would be in bloom. There were camellias all right—two blossoms looked pretty fair. Most of the camellia bushes had not yielded any flowers. The Rose garden (above) looked as if it were ready for some cactus plantings.

I report with a smirk that rain is predicted for most of this week beginning tomorrow night. I have already gone on record about the unjustifiably high salaries TV weather persons earn for telling whoppers to their broadcast audience. Oh, it will probably rain—a few millimeters in the mountains. But I rather doubt I will be getting wet soon unless I take a shower.

The oak trees at Descanso (below) looked all right, but most are over a century old and will eventually have to be replaced by another type of shade tree to encourage the camellias.

Pacific Coastal Oaks at Descanso

Pacific Coastal Oaks at Descanso

 

The Best of 2015

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I Never Would have Thought It Possible....

I Never Would have Thought It Possible….

A couple of weeks ago, while I was visiting my brother in Palm Desert, the best thing about 2015 hit me right between the eyes. It was a four-month old baby named Oliver Moorman. I normally don’t go goo-goo-eyed over infants, but I have to admit I did this time. Little Ollie’s mother, my niece Hilary, and her husband Joe Moorman have collaborated on a co-production that has radiated hope in the lives of our tight little family. As you may know, I am a terrible pessimist, but little Ollie has given me some glimmerings of hope for the future.

He makes me want to help make this a better world.

 

Yay! Hooray! Yawn….

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Who Celebrates the Passing of Time?

Who Celebrates the Passing of Time?

First of all, don’t make any New Year’s resolutions. It’s a wasted effort, usually leading to broken resolutions before the month of January is over. Sure, everybody wants to be rich, healthy, and thin; but that just may not be your path. (It’s certainly not mine.)

Don’t go to any New Year celebrations. That would only embolden the terrorists. (Come to think of it, is there anything that doesn’t embolden the terrorists?)

It’s not a terribly good idea to get drunk. That’ll make you feel maudlin and resentful, just what you’re trying to avoid, isn’t it? Ditto for recreational drugs. There are no happy dopers.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to see your friends. Just make sure you show them how much you appreciate them. You may need their help in the coming year.

Remember that time will pass whether you celebrate it or not. As those calendar pages fly off, stick to the things that count, like love. Everything else is pretty much frou-frou.

 

 

 

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Zsófi, Elek and the Two Boys

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Our Family Around 1962

Our Family Around 1962

All the blog posts in this series are based on Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him.

My own ABCs consist of places I have loved (Iceland, Patagonia, Quebec, Scotland, Yucatán), things I feared (Earthquakes), writers I have admired (Chesterton, Balzac, Proust, Borges, and Shakespeare); locales associated with my past life (Cleveland, Dartmouth College, and UCLA), people who have influenced me (John F. Kennedy), foods I love (Olives and Tea), and things I love to do (Automobiles and Books). This is my last entry in the series, having gone through the entire alphabet from A to Z, including even the difficult letters like J, Q, and X.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the series, which you can review by hitting the tag ABC’s at the bottom of this post.

Above you can see a picture of our little family taken around 1962. I was about to enter college, while my brother was in the 6th grade at Saint Henry School on Harvard Avenue in Cleveland, from which I graduated in 1958. My mother is Sophie—Zsófi in Hungarian—and my father is Alex—Elek in Slovak and Hungarian.

This was a difficult time for the family, as my father was under suspicion of conducting an extramarital affair with a married woman. With the tense atmosphere at home, I was eager to attend college in New Hampshire, some 600 miles east, where I would be out of the fray. Although there were some bad times around then, my mother and father stayed together. They loved Dan and me, and in the end that kept them together.

For the next twenty years, Mom had few good words to say about Dad. Except, when Alex died in 1985 at the age of of 74, he became a saint. I went along with that, because all my life I tried to please him.

Dad never understood where I was going in life. I wanted to be a professor of film history in criticism at the university level. One day, I made the mistake of calling the profession “cinematology.” Ever afterward, Dad pronounced it as if I had said “cosmetology.”

Although Dan was more like Dad in being an athlete, Dad was harder on him. When Dan was at Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minnesota, he took some time off to travel around Europe and North Africa, thus delaying getting his college diploma. (He did eventually, but Dad kept riding him for his gap year.)

I like the above picture. It shows a normal family in which all the stresses are carefully kept hidden. But the fold lines over time come out as if they were fault lines along which our family could fracture.

Fortunately, it never did.

 

Heart’s Desire

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My Father’s Side of the Family Around 1918

My Father’s Side of the Family Around 1918

When I visited my brother a week and a half ago, he brought out two boxes of old pictures and papers relating to my past—except it was his past, too. From left to right, the pictures are of:

  • My Uncle Emil (twin of Alex)
  • “Mama” or my paternal grandmother Margit
  • Margitka, my Aunt Margit
  • Stará (Old) M., clearly a member of the family, possibly the same as my Father’s kindly Aunt Valera
  • My Father, various called Ellek, Elek, or Alex (twin of Emil)

Shortly after this picture was taken, Grandma Margit and her husband Emil Sr. abandoned their children in Prešov-Solivar while they went off to the United States. Little Emil, Elek, and Margitka were cared for by Valera. My father tells me stories of picking mushrooms in the Tatra Mountains and hunting for frog legs to feed his brother, sister, and aunt. All three children made it to Cleveland some ten years later.

As a result of fending for himself in the mountains of Slovakia during the postwar famine, my father always had an insatiable craving for meat. When he came to America, he and his brother indulged in that craving—and that’s what killed them. Sometimes it’s best NOT to have your heart’s desire.

I visited Czechoslovakia with my parents in 1977 and met Valera. She was the only Slovak in the family who could still speak Hungarian, so I was able to communicate with her. I would like to think she was the pleasant looking Stará M. in the above photo.

 

“Things That Might Have Been”

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Saint Bede

Saint Bede the Venerable

In the waning days of 2015, here is a simple poem by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “Things That Might Have Been.” Think of them as a head start for your New Year’s Resolutions.

Things That Might Have Been

I think of things that weren’t, but might have been.
The treatise on Saxon myths Bede never wrote.
The inconceivable work Dante might have had a glimpse of,
As soon as he’d corrected the Comedy’s last verse.
History without the afternoons of the Cross and the hemlock.
History without the face of Helen.
Man without the eyes that gave us the moon.
On Gettysburg’s three days, victory for the South.
The love we never shared.
The wide empire the Vikings chose not to found.
The world without the wheel or the rose.
The view John Donne held of Shakespeare.
The other horn of the Unicorn.
The fabled Irish bird that lights on two trees at once.
The child I never had.

Serendipity: Documents of the Ultra-Terrain World

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“Blue Harbor” by Xul Solar

“Blue Harbor” by Xul Solar

While in Buenos Aires last month, I visited the museum of painter Xul Solar, friend of Jorge Luis Borges. It was Borges who wrote the prologue to the museum’s catalog, which is reproduced here in its entirety:

Man versed in all disciplines, curious of all enigmas, father of writings, languages, utopias, mythologies, guest of hell and heavens, chessplayer author and astrologist, perfect in indulgent irony and friendly generosity, Xul Solar is one of the most outstanding events of our epoch. There are minds which profess the truth, others indiscriminate abundance: the large creativity of Xul Solar does not exclude the strict honesty. His paintings are documents of ultra-terrain world, of metaphysical world in which gods take the form of the imagination of the ones dreaming. The passionate architecture, the happy colours, the many circumstantial details, the labyrinths, the dwarves and angels unforgettably define this delicate and monumental art.

The taste of our time vacillates between the more lineal preference, the emotive transcription and the realism of wall painters: Xul Solar renews, in his ambitious way of being modest, the mystic painting of the ones who do not see with physical eyes in the sacred world of Blake, Swedenborg, yogis and bards.