TABLE OF CONTENTS
What’s That You’re Wearing? A Guide to Muslim Veils Airport Near Everest Is Its Own Perilous Adventure Hong Kong’s Murder Mystery: Who Is Poisoning the Dogs? Fear Descends Over Australia as Magpie Swooping Season Begins In Senegal, Absolution Comes With a Wing and a Prayer A Traveler’s Guide to Customs: When to Shake Hands, Hug or Kiss South Koreans, Seeking New Zest for Life, Experience Their Own Funerals Canada and Denmark Fight Over Island With Whisky and Schnapps Jerusalem’s Latest Argument Over History Is About Fried Innards Divorce, India Style: It’s All Up to the Judge Tools to Help Japanese Schoolchildren Find Balance: Unicycles Brazil’s Surfers Lament Demise of Amazon’s Mighty Waves On an Island Named for Ice, the Poets Are Just Getting Warmed Up For Mexico’s ‘Beatlemaniacos,’ All You Need Is Nostalgia Who Haunts U.K. Ghost Trains? Railway Enthusiasts Nazi Grave in Brazil Endures as Marker of Secret Plan to Colonize If the Pool Is Warm in Paris, Thank the Washing Machine Napping in Public? In Japan, That’s a Sign of Diligence The Christmas Pickle: A Tradition With a Pinch of Salt Six Feet Across and Full of Peril: England’s Killer Creek Berlin Attraction Reveals an Uneasy Phenomenon: Hitler Sells To Fight Smog, How About Rooftop Bus Gardens? Talking to In-Laws Can Be Hard. In Some Languages, It’s Impossible Newfoundland Is Big on Bologna: Fried, Stewed and Layered Like a Cake When an Airline Suffered Misfortune, Some Looked for a Goat For a Modest Price, the Streets of Paris Can Be Yours Polish City to Give Tom Hanks the Car That Put It on the Auto Map WHAT’S THAT YOU’RE WEARING? A GUIDE TO MUSLIM VEILS
BY RUSSELL GOLDMAN MAY 3, 2016
THEY ARE BANNED IN FRANCE, mandated in Saudi Arabia and a fashion statement in Indonesia. Veils for Muslim women come in all sizes, shapes and colors — and with terminology that can mean different things in different places. The Quran is oblique in its references to “hijab,” which is described not as an article of clothing but something akin to a curtain or “separation” that allows for privacy. Here’s a guide to how that looks around the Muslim world. Abaya: The ubiquitous (and requisite) covering for women in Saudi Arabia is seen throughout the Arabian Peninsula and parts of North Africa. Typically black, the garment is constructed like a loose robe or caftan and covers everything but the face, hands and feet. Burqa: The Taliban-required garment is worn mainly in Afghanistan, and covers the entire face, with a crocheted mesh grill over the eyes. When first mentioned in The New York Times, in 1988, it was described as “tentlike.” In Kabul, most burqas are blue, but in other parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan they’re brown, green or white. Chador: For centuries, women in Iran have worn these semicircles of fabric draped over the head like a shawl. The chador has no fasteners; it is held in place under the neck by hand. Black is the preferred color in public, but women often wear colorful versions at home or at the mosque. Hijab: The term has become a catchall, particularly in the West, for all Islamic veils, but is mainly used to mean a head scarf. Styles vary not only by geography, but also fashion trends. Jilbab: Also mentioned in the Quran, the term generally refers to a protective article of clothing, not a specific garment. In Indonesia, jilbab refers to any head-to- toe style of modest dress, especially a head scarf, but in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula it typically means a long dress or tunic. Khimar: This is the third term, along with hijab and jilbab, that is mentioned in the Quran; cumulatively, they make up the religious justification for veiling. Historically, khimar refers to any article of clothing that promotes modesty, covering the genitals and breasts of a woman and protecting her from the gaze of unrelated men. In some countries, the term is used to describe any veil or head scarf, similar to a hijab. Niqab: A veil that covers a woman’s face with a slit left for the eyes. Though not required in Saudi Arabia, it is almost always worn, with an abaya, by women in public. In much of the world, including South Asia and North Africa, women often don a half-niqab, a square of fabric tied or held with a band below the eyes. AIRPORT NEAR EVEREST IS ITS OWN PERILOUS ADVENTURE
BY KAI SCHULTZ MAY 31, 2016
IF YOU WANT TO VISIT Mount Everest, you had better be pretty adventurous — and not just for the climb. Getting to the mountain usually means flying into Lukla, Nepal, home of Tenzing-Hillary Airport, one of the scariest airstrips in the world. It’s just a short flight to Lukla from Kathmandu, the capital, but it’s plenty challenging for pilots, who have to guide 19-passenger turboprops through rugged mountain terrain where the wind often swirls at 30 to 40 miles per hour and thick fogs can form. Not much weather data is available for conditions along the way, so pilots have to rely on reports from previous flights before deciding whether to take off. Midway through a recent flight, as passengers fumbled to take photographs of the Himalayas, the plane ran into turbulence, dropped sharply and pivoted left. The pilot told passengers not to worry, and one trekker laughed through his teeth. “You can’t train on weather,” said Capt. Pawan Singh Nagarkoti, 31, who flies the route regularly. “You can fly the aircraft, you can master the aircraft, you can be one hell of a good pilot in the aircraft, but weather, it has always been a problem.” Then you get to the airport itself. The runway is short, about 1,700 feet, or just one-fifth the shortest runway at Kennedy International Airport in New York. And it isn’t level: It was built on a mountainside with a slope of about 12 percent, making one end about 200 feet higher than the other. Planes land headed uphill, so the slope helps them brake in the short space available. But it also creates an illusion of distance for pilots. Clouds often appear suddenly and impair visibility (the cause of a 2008 crash), and guesthouses cluster close to the runway. Pilots have just one chance to get it right. For takeoff, planes barrel downhill toward the edge of a cliff, with the slope helping them pick up the necessary speed. But the margin for error is no better: There are boulders on one side, a 2,000-foot drop on the other. “If you lose your engine on Lukla, you will not come out of that,” Captain Nagarkoti said. “We are told in those moments, if anything happens, apply brakes, apply max power, try to stop on the runway, use whatever means to stop on the runway.” HONG KONG’S MURDER MYSTERY: WHO IS POISONING THE DOGS?
An older sign on Bowen Road, a popular dog-walking path, cautioned owners to be vigilant. (Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times)
BY AUSTIN RAMZY JUNE 6, 2016
GRIM REMINDERS OF SOME OF Hong Kong’s most gruesome murders line Bowen Road: signs posted every few hundred steps that warn, “Beware of Dog Poisoning.” The Hong Kong Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has recorded 66 cases of suspected dog poisoning on Bowen Road and nearby Black’s Link since 2003, including 14 dogs that have died. The group says that since the killings began in the late 1980s, the number of dogs killed may total 200 or more. Dogs have been poisoned all over Hong Kong, but Bowen Road’s central location — on a hillside lined with parks, shrines and elegant mansions that offers sweeping views of the city’s skyline — has meant that the cases there have attracted the most attention. Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, almost lost his Norfolk terrier Whisky after the dog ate poisoned bait left along the road in 1997.
A man walking his dogs in May along Bowen Road in Hong Kong, the site of dozens of dog poisonings. (Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times)
Officials still don’t know who is responsible. Some investigators believe that whoever is behind the poisonings gets a disturbed thrill from taking a life. “There’s only been one successful prosecution, because this is done in a covert way,” said Danielle Baber, the deputy chief officer for the Hong Kong S.P.C.A.’s inspectorate. “Unless there’s a witness to something, particularly somebody putting bait out, it’s difficult to find a suspect. And whether it’s the same person or copycats, that’s difficult to say.” The motives are not clear. Theories include fear or hatred of dogs, or annoyance at owners who don’t clean up after their pets. Part of Bowen Road is car-free, and people often walk or run with their dogs there. The bait is usually a piece of chicken or pork laced with commonly available pesticides, which the S.P.C.A. warns can cause “vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, breathing difficulty, convulsions, collapse and, in some cases, death.” Warnings and greater surveillance seem to have helped reduce the frequency of the poisonings, but they have not stopped: Another pet dog’s body was found on Bowen Road in mid-May. Poisoning is suspected. FEAR DESCENDS OVER AUSTRALIA AS MAGPIE SWOOPING SEASON BEGINS
BY SERENA SOLOMON SEPTEMBER 13, 2016
THERE ARE THE SNAKES, THE sharks and the spiders, but no one told you about the magpies, did they? In September and October, Australians band together as if motivated by a national war effort. It’s swooping season for the native magpie. This black-and-white bird with beady red-brown eyes can become aggressive, dive bombing and pecking anything, especially humans, that it deems a threat to its chicks. During the spring swooping season, victims of attacks update online maps with nest locations in order to warn others of the danger from above. Principals put their bodies on the line to protect students. Talk radio shows are flooded with dramatic swoop stories. “It is the biggest urban wildlife problem there is in Australia just because of the scale and sheer number of animals involved,” said Professor Darryl Jones, an urban ecologist with Griffith University in Brisbane. He has studied the troubled relationship between magpies and humans for 20 years. Australians have developed some odd defense methods over the years. When heading into a swoop zone, generations of schoolchildren (including this reporter) wore empty plastic ice cream buckets as hats with crude eyes drawn on. The theory: a magpie won’t attack if it thinks it is being watched, and if it does, you have the ice cream bucket to protect you. Other methods include waving a stick in the air or opening an umbrella. During the season it is common for cyclists, adults and children alike, to ride around with a forest of zip ties protruding from their helmets. “Birds do swoop, but they don’t come anywhere near your helmet,” said Professor Jones, who endorses the zip-tie method. An Australian’s fear of magpies has merit. Each year a handful of attacks cause eye injuries and in some cases permanent sight loss. Cyclists fall off their bikes, breaking bones and dislocating joints. Professor Jones and his students recently discovered a magpie’s ability to recognize and remember human faces, occasionally singling out individuals for escalated attacks season after season. Mail carriers who buzz around on small motorbikes are hardest hit, victims of more than 200 a day, Professor Jones said. IN SENEGAL, ABSOLUTION COMES WITH A WING AND A PRAYER
BY JAIME YAYA BARRY OCTOBER 5, 2016
FORGIVENESS FOR SINS OFTEN COMES at a cost. But in Senegal, making your transgressions fly away can run you as little as 8 cents. In Dakar and other cities, men stand on street corners with small cages crammed full of birds known locally as pithis, some of which are red-billed fire finches. The birds, which are common across sub-Saharan Africa and often live close to people, are thought to be carriers of human unhappiness. Tradition holds that you can get rid of sins and anxieties by buying a pithi and setting it free. The price varies with the gravity of the sin you’re trying to wipe away — typically 8 to 17 cents, but sometimes more. Some purchasers are looking for relief from family problems or the stress of hunting for work, or are worried about getting a friend or relative out of legal trouble. The idea is to whisper prayers to the bird and then let it fly away, taking your problem with it. Some people consider the traditional practice non-Islamic, a complication in a country that is largely Muslim. But the pithi vendors don’t seem to worry about that, and some have even expanded their buy-and-release offerings to include other kinds of birds and some reptiles. Abou Ndiaye inherited his bird-selling business from his uncle Diallo, and it’s doing so well that there’s no need to stand on street corners; the customers, including politicians, entertainers and bankers, come to his house to buy. “We have all kinds of birds that you can think of,” Mr. Ndiaye said. His business plan includes some recycling: When people release the birds, many of them fly right back to his house. Most often, people buy the birds for self-liberation, but some want to use them to send misfortune someone’s way instead. Mr. Ndiaye says he thinks that the birds that don’t return to him have probably been used for such a curse. “Our goal is to sell birds to people; what they do with them is up to them,” Mr. Ndaiye said. “At the end of the day, most of the birds come back to us, and we resell them. For us, birds are just birds.” A TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO CUSTOMS: WHEN TO SHAKE HANDS, HUG OR KISS
BY ANDREW JACOBS OCTOBER 21, 2016
YOU’VE JUST LANDED IN BEIJING, Rio de Janeiro or Christchurch, New Zealand, and you’re greeted at the airport by a clutch of adoring locals. What is the polite way to greet them? Do you bow, or proffer your hand, or prepare to envelop the assembled strangers in an American-style embrace? More important: To kiss or not to kiss? The world may be increasingly globalized, but when it comes to greeting practices, local customs still prevail — and things can get awkward when, say, a hug- loving American businessman meets his Japanese counterpart for the first time. (Best just to bow.) If you find yourself facing a group of native Maoris in New Zealand, you’ll want to steel yourself for a traditional nose greeting, which involves touching snouts and foreheads. In Rio, local convention dictates three cheek kisses. But a few hours’ drive to the south in São Paulo, the single peck prevails. In Beijing, the locals prefer a nod and a smile. In the interests of international fellowship and peace, here is an incomplete guide to world greetings.
Lips Together?
In much of Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, air kissing between strangers is common, but each nation, and in some cases each region within a country, may have its own habits. Argentine men will cheek-kiss one another, but only if they are friends of friends. In most of the Arab world, a double air kiss is obligatory, though only between people of the same sex. Things can get complicated in France: Expect anywhere from four kisses (in Nantes) down to two (in Toulouse) or just a single peck (in Brest). The general rule is that lips should never touch cheek, though a faint smooching sound is expected. In most of Northern Europe, a firm handshake will usually suffice between strangers, and a single kiss for friends. “Firm” doesn’t begin to describe the obligatory handshake between two unacquainted men in Russia, which can feel like a test of strength with near bone-crushing results. And there’s a taboo about shaking hands across the threshold of a home: Wait until you are both on the same side of the door. When kisses are called for, where do you aim? In Portugal, the kissing usually progresses from left to right, but in Strasbourg, France, it’s right to left.
Hands to Yourself
Kissing or touching strangers is frowned upon in Asia. The customary greeting in Thailand involves a bow with the palms pressed together, as if in prayer; similar gestures are common from Cambodia to Indonesia. In India, a limp handshake between men is fine, but don’t try it with a member of the opposite sex. The traditional way to greet an Indian elder is to bend down and touch his feet. Tibetans have one of the most unusual traditional gestures for greeting others: They stick out their tongues — though always from a safe distance. SOUTH KOREANS, SEEKING NEW ZEST FOR LIFE, EXPERIENCE THEIR OWN FUNERALS
South Koreans during a mock funeral service in Seoul on Saturday. Such funerals have become popular in South Korea as a way to gain more appreciation for life. (Jean Chung for The New York Times)
BY CHOE SANG-HUN OCTOBER 26, 2016
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — DID you ever wonder what it would be like to be at your own funeral? Some South Koreans aren’t waiting to die to find out. It’s become a trend in recent years to act out a mock funeral service as a way of better appreciating life. The Hyowon Healing Center in Seoul runs one such program, with financial backing from a funeral service company. After an instructional lecture and video, participants are led into a dimly lit hall decorated with chrysanthemums, where they sit, often tearfully, beside caskets and write their last testaments. Then they put on burial shrouds and lie down in the coffins. A grim-looking man dressed in a black robe, “the Envoy from the Other World,” hammers the lids closed. The participants are left encased in utter darkness for 10 minutes — which can feel like an eternity.
After an instructional lecture and video, participants sat beside coffins and wrote their last testaments. (Jean Chung for The New York Times)
“There was not a single ray of light coming in, and how I cried in the dark, suffocating coffin!” a recent participant wrote in a blog post. Jeong Yong-mun, the director of the Hyowon program, said 15,000 people had gone through mock funerals at the center since 2012. The program is free. Some participants had terminal illnesses and wanted help preparing for the end; others had suicidal impulses that they wanted to dispel. Businesses send employees as part of a motivational program. At the end of the two-and-a-half-hour session, Mr. Jeong tells the participants: “Now, you have shed your old self. You are reborn to have a fresh start!” It takes a few minutes for them to readjust, but soon they are chatting, laughing and taking selfies with their coffins. Mr. Jeong said he keeps an eye out for the few morbid souls who seem to feel a little too “comfortable in the coffin.” But most participants say they feel strangely refreshed afterward, gaining a new perspective on the things that matter in life, like family. “I feel my heart pumping,” one participant wrote in a blog post, where she confessed to having thought about suicide before the mock funeral service. “I am alive!”
Participants lie in closed coffins for 10 minutes. (Jean Chung for The New York Times) CANADA AND DENMARK FIGHT OVER ISLAND WITH WHISKY AND SCHNAPPS
BY DAN LEVIN NOVEMBER 7, 2016
INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES OVER TERRITORY CAN be ugly affairs, waged with all the nastiness of a divorce, backed with the force of armies. Just in the last few years, China has built islands topped with military bases to back its claim to vast stretches of ocean, in conflict with half a dozen other Asian countries, while Russia has forged a path of bloodshed and destruction in Ukraine over its annexation of Crimea. But that’s not how Canada and Denmark roll. Their way of contesting ownership of an uninhabited island in the Arctic would better suit a dinner party than a battlefield: It comes down to B.Y.O.B. Hans Island is really just a large rock, but it happens to lie smack dab in the middle of the Nares Strait, a 22-mile-wide channel of very cold water separating Canada and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. The island falls within the 12-mile territorial limit of either shore, allowing both sides to claim it under international law. Canada and Denmark set out to establish a definitive border through the strait in 1973, but they couldn’t agree on what to do about Hans Island, so they left the issue aside to be resolved later. The calm diplomatic waters grew choppy in 1984 when Canadian troops visited the island, planted their nation’s flag and left another symbolic marker as well: a bottle of Canadian whisky. The Danes couldn’t let that stand. The country’s minister of Greenland affairs soon arrived on the island to replace the offending Canadian symbols with a Danish flag and a bottle of Danish schnapps, along with a note saying “Welcome to the Danish island.” And so began a spirited dispute, one that has lasted decades, with each side dropping by the island periodically to scoop up the other side’s patriotic bottle and replace it with their own. (What becomes of the evicted liquor? No one is — hic — saying.) Canada and Denmark agreed in 2005 on a process to resolve the status of Hans Island, but the diplomats have made little headway since then. Hoping to encourage the negotiations, two academics put forward a proposal in 2015 to blend realpolitik with real estate: Make the island a “condominium” of shared sovereignty under two flags — and presumably, two bottles. JERUSALEM’S LATEST ARGUMENT OVER HISTORY IS ABOUT FRIED INNARDS
Nightlife at the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem. (Uriel Sinai for The New York Times)
BY ISABEL KERSHNER NOVEMBER 11, 2016
IN JERUSALEM, WHERE ARGUMENTS ABOUT history are a municipal pastime, a debate has been revived about the origins of a local delicacy. Jerusalem’s bustling Mahane Yehuda Market has long been a late-night culinary destination for Middle Eastern standbys like hummus and falafel, as well as more recent additions like burgers and burritos. But there is one dish that is considered authentic: a local concoction known in Hebrew as meorav Yerushalmi, or Jerusalem mixed grill, made of kosher innards that might otherwise end up in the garbage. The traditional ingredients include chicken hearts, livers and spleen fried with lamb fat and copious amounts of onion and spices. The takeout version is generally stuffed in a pita.
A popular dish at the market is meorav Yerushalmi, or Jerusalem mixed grill, which consists of kosher innards that would otherwise end up in the garbage. (Uriel Sinai for The New York Times)
The recent death of a shuk food legend, Haim Piro, at 73, revived an old argument over who invented the market’s signature dish. Older Jerusalem residents credit Mr. Piro and his partner Gideon Amiga, who opened a hole-in-the-wall steakhouse here in 1968. A year later, they named it Makam, the Hebrew acronym for radar, in honor of an Israeli mission to capture an Egyptian radar system during the War of Attrition. The restaurant served the inexpensive and satisfying dish to the mostly poor inhabitants of the area, Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Makam closed long ago, but Mr. Amiga’s son Shimon, 34, now runs a gluten-free falafel joint on the premises. A sign on the wall bears the insignia of the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel, which certifies the spot as the birthplace of “the famous meorav Yerushalmi.” But a rival steakhouse, which opened across the street in 1970, also claims to have created the dish. That steakhouse — called Hatzot, Hebrew for midnight — sports a homemade sign above the takeout window proclaiming it to be the home of “the original meorav Yerushalmi.” Still gritty in parts, the district now includes trendy bars, artisanal bakeries and gourmet restaurants. Modern twists like a seafood meorav have been turning up around the country, and Hatzot has been offering a vegan version with tofu.
A cook preparing meorav Yerushalmi at Hatzot, one of two steakhouses that claim to be the birthplace of the dish. (Uriel Sinai for The New York Times) DIVORCE, INDIA STYLE: IT’S ALL UP TO THE JUDGE
BY ELLEN BARRY NOVEMBER 17, 2016
INDIA’S FAMILY LAW WAS WRITTEN to discourage divorce, and in that sense it has succeeded brilliantly: The last census, in 2011, showed that the number of Indians who described themselves as separated was nearly three times the number who were divorced. The country’s legal code offers a notably narrow selection of divorce-worthy faults, among them cruelty, incurable leprosy and renunciation of the world by entering religious orders. Many applicants plead “mental cruelty,” but defining mental cruelty is a murky affair, often coming down to a judge’s discretion. “No uniform standard can ever be laid down for guidance,” declared a Supreme Court panel in 2007, adding, unhelpfully, that “what is cruelty in one case may not amount to cruelty in another case.” Here are some examples of the idiosyncratic ways judges used their discretion to support claims of cruelty (and approve divorce): • Forcing a husband to move out of his parents’ home. “In a Hindu society, it is a pious obligation of the son to maintain the parents. If a wife makes an attempt to deviate from the normal practice and normal custom of the society, she must have some justifiable reason for that,” the court found. “In our opinion, normally, no husband would tolerate this, and no son would like to be separated from his old parents.” • Deriding a husband as a “fat elephant.” “The calling of names and hurling of abuses such as ‘hathi,’ ‘mota hathi’ and ‘mota elephant’ by the appellant in respect of her husband — even if he was overweight — is bound to strike at his self-respect and self-esteem,” the court found. “Obviously, the respondent was sensitive to such taunts, and it is not the appellant’s case that the taunts were made jokingly, or out of love and affection, and without malice.” • Excessive interest in politics. “This case depicts the sordid episode of the life of a woman who spoiled her homely environment and family relationships running after the politics and politicians, forgetting her solemn duties and responsibilities of a matrimonial life,” the court found. “She was cautioned and reminded of her pious obligations but she was mesmerized so much by the political thoughts and quite adamant that she failed to understand the consequence of her negligent attitude.” • Withholding of sex without a good excuse. “Even assuming for a moment that the appellant wanted to have a child only after two years, does not mean that the appellant and the respondent cannot and should not have sexual intercourse,” the court found. “Admittedly, both of them are well educated and there are so many contraceptives available and they could have used such contraceptives and avoided pregnancy.” TOOLS TO HELP JAPANESE SCHOOLCHILDREN FIND BALANCE: UNICYCLES
Most elementary schools across the country offer unicycles for students. At Kyuden Elementary School in Tokyo, an after- school club makes sure the unicycles are neatly hung on their racks and that their tires are full of air. (Ko Sasaki for The New York Times)
BY MOTOKO RICH NOVEMBER 18, 2016
TOKYO — AT HOME, JAPANESE schoolchildren balance their families’ traditional expectations with the realities of modern life. In class, they balance course loads that include drilling multiplication tables and writing kanji characters. But it is at recess where they really balance — on unicycles. Most elementary schools across the country offer a rack of unicycles for children to ride during breaks on the playground. The Ministry of Education, as part of its recommendations for physical development, recommends that schools supply unicycles, bamboo stilts, hula hoops and other equipment that promotes balance and core strength.
At a recess at Kyuden last month, no one wore a helmet or kneepads, and the few adults on the playground left the children alone. (Ko Sasaki for The New York Times)
The Japan Lottery Association, a collection of public lotteries, regularly donates money to schools for the purchase of unicycles. Last year the association gave money to support the purchase of 2,000 unicycles for public schools throughout the country. Every year, students compete in the All Japan Elementary School Student Championships of Unicycling. During a recent morning recess at Kyuden Elementary School in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo, children raced to a rack of more than 80 unicycles with brightly colored wheels and began riding around the sand and gravel playground. Some children were just learning, clinging to monkey bars or the shoulders of friends. Others sped fluidly across the playground for more than 20 yards at a time. Pairs of girls twirled around, arm in arm and perfectly balanced. Several girls rode unicycles close to four and a half feet tall. No one wore a helmet or kneepads, and the few adults on the playground left the children alone. One of the school nurses, Kumiko Hatanaka, said that in three years of working at the school, she has treated only one or two injuries caused by unicycle riding. Katsuhiro Ominato, the vice principal at Kyuden, said the children never receive formal instruction, but are left to learn on their own or to teach one another. Some of the most passionate riders — nearly all girls — are members of an after-school club where they prepare for an annual parade, keep the tires pumped full of air and make sure the unicycles are neatly hung on their racks. Riding unicycles is part of a culture that urges elementary school-age children to do things on their own, including taking the subway or walking around city neighborhoods. “I see kids being challenged and encouraged to do things that I have never seen kids encouraged to do in the U.S.,” said Matthew Thibeault, an American who teaches at a middle school affiliated with Toyama University on the west coast of Japan, “and a lot of equipment that would be considered risky.” Hisako Ueno contributed reporting. BRAZIL’S SURFERS LAMENT DEMISE OF AMAZON’S MIGHTY WAVES
Jim Davis Rocha de Almeida, 38, looked out at the Amazon River delta in Amapá in October. (Dado Galdieri for The New York Times)
BY SIMON ROMERO NOVEMBER 21, 2016
THE THUNDERING WAVES OF THE Pororoca were legendary: Adventurers from the world over flew, drove, trekked, Jet-Skied and canoed to Brazil’s remote Araguari River to ride the Amazon’s stunning tidal bore that formed when water flowed in from the Atlantic. But the exhilarating waves that once reached five feet high are gone now, squelched by man-made factors, such as the large-scale ranching of Asian water buffaloes, an invasive species introduced to the Amazon decades ago, and new hydroelectric dams built along the Araguari. Brazilian surfers are expressing anguish about the end of the Pororoca (which means “mighty noise” in the indigenous Tupi language) on the river, in the state of Amapá in northern Brazil.
The Araguari River in the state of Amapá, Brazil. (Dado Galdieri for The New York Times)
“The Pororoca in Amapá was the best in the world,” said Serginho Laus, 36, a professional surfer who has pioneered trips to Amapá and set a record in 2003 for surfing nonstop for 6.3 miles. “Now it’s a warning of how man’s actions can change our rivers forever.” Surfers rode the last Pororoca on the Araguari River in 2013. Some blame the buffaloes: For years, ranchers have opened canals from the river to slake their herds’ thirst, while the buffaloes themselves trampled around the banks of the Araguari, depleting the river’s flow, according to environmental activists. The ranchers say two dams diminished the Araguari’s strength. Either way, the end of what was considered the Amazon’s mightiest Pororoca is a bummer lamented on national newscasts. Some optimists point out that the conditions persist for creating tidal bores, albeit of lesser intensity. When the sun crosses the Equator during equinoxes in September and March, the gravitational and lunar conditions bolster tidal bores as the flow of other rivers around the Amazon is reversed. Mr. Laus, for one, says that Papua New Guinea and India guard their own great tidal bores. Closer to home, he is scouring the Amazon for other sites with potential. ON AN ISLAND NAMED FOR ICE, THE POETS ARE JUST GETTING WARMED UP
BY KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA NOVEMBER 30, 2016
Iceland, it seems, is full of hidden poets. When they’re not at their day jobs, a great many of the island’s 330,000 inhabitants dabble in verse, including politicians, businessmen, horse breeders and scientists who study the genetic isolation of the island in pursuit of medical breakthroughs. Even David Oddsson, who was prime minister in 2002 (when Iceland’s banks were privatized) and central bank governor in 2008 (when they collapsed), is a poet by training. Birgitta Jonsdottir, the leader of the anarchist-leaning Pirate Party, which did well in a recent general election, describes herself rather loftily as a “poetician.” Her first published poem, “Black Roses,” written when she was 14, is about a nuclear holocaust. Kari Stefansson, one of the world’s leading geneticists and the founder of Decode Genetics, recalled a poem he wrote in 1996, a few months after the birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep. “I was a little bit depressed,” Mr. Stefansson said in his office, which, with its slit windows and computer screens, looked a bit like the interior of a spaceship. “One of my ways to deal with that was to write a small poem,” he said, before proceeding to recite it:
Where do I find, lost in the brightness of a sunlit day, The happiness of an unhappy man Fortunate only to be just one copy of himself. Everything else stinks.
Poetry is a national pastime, but not a particularly “specialist activity,” said Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, a professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. “It’s part of being an Icelander,” he said. “Yes, it’s charming, isn’t it?” In earlier times, verses were an integral part of social gatherings and were often improvised, he said. Poetry contests were held, with the prizes going to the wittiest, sharpest verses. The most popular verse form, he said, is called “ferskeytla,” four rhymed lines that can be divided into two parts. Icelanders are unusually prolific readers and writers, and books of verse tend to sell well in Iceland. Poetry was the third-largest category of books published in the country in 2014, after fiction and the arts, according to figures from the national library. Far more poetry books were published in Iceland that year than books about economics or public administration. (There were apparently none at all about finance.) The cold oceanic climate and long winter nights may also have something to do with it. “People usually get bored, and they try to humor each other,” Professor Egilsson said. “One of those ways is poetry.” FOR MEXICO’S ‘BEATLEMANIACOS,’ ALL YOU NEED IS NOSTALGIA
Proyecto Macca, a Beatles tribute band, performing in Mexico City, which is home to more than 50 such bands. (Brett Gundlock for The New York Times)
BY ELISABETH MALKIN DECEMBER 2, 2016
MEXICO CITY — WHEN IT comes to the Beatles, Mexicans just can’t seem to let it be. The group split up in 1970, but it might as well have been yesterday for the masses of fans who come together whenever they can to celebrate John, Paul, George and Ringo. Mexico City’s top classic-rock radio station dedicates two hours every weekday to Los Beatles. The second of two lengthy museum exhibits here of Beatles memorabilia closed recently. Small towns have named streets after the band’s members. Beatles tribute bands tour the country’s concert halls; five of them played in the capital’s giant central square on Nov. 20. No fewer than 50 of the groups are booked for a four-day festival here this month.
Ricardo Calderón, the president of Mexico’s Beatles fan club, with his massive collection of memorabilia. (Brett Gundlock for The New York Times)
There are Beatles fans all over the world, but there seems to be something special about Mexicans who love the group. Victor Rosas of Grupo Morsa, a tribute band he helped to start in 1984, believes that Mexicans are inherently nostalgic, even for a musical moment many of them never knew, and for songs in a language that few of them speak. (Morsa, by the way, is Spanish for walrus, a reference to the 1967 Beatles song “I Am the Walrus.” Mr. Rosas said his band started out calling itself Walrus, but it was too hard for Spanish speakers, who roll their R’s, to pronounce.) Ricardo Calderón, 65, is the president of Mexico’s Beatles fan club and the guiding spirit of the country’s Beatlemaniacos. He recalls the day in 1964 when he first heard a Beatles song — “I Saw Her Standing There” — playing at a lunch counter in Acapulco, where he grew up. The first album he bought was “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The melodies entranced him, and his appreciation only deepened when he picked up a dictionary and learned what the lyrics meant. Standing behind the counter of the shop where he now sells Beatles records and every imaginable Fab Four souvenir, he said, “It’s the language of pure love.” And of course, love is all you need. WHO HAUNTS U.K. GHOST TRAINS? RAILWAY ENTHUSIASTS
BY DES SHOE DECEMBER 7, 2016
THE PHRASE “GHOST TRAIN” CONJURES up eerie, fantastical images: a spectral locomotive barreling through the night, passengers doomed to ride the rails forever. In Britain, ghost trains are real — but they’re more of a bureaucratic curiosity than a Halloween nightmare. They are scheduled passenger trains that hardly anyone actually rides, running infrequently at obscure hours and stopping at stations that almost no one uses. They might operate only once a week or in only one direction. Other than a lonely crew member or two, they are often completely empty. Why do they even operate? Believe it or not, to save money. Railway companies would rather not serve these routes at all, because they generate too little traffic. But if the companies discontinued the routes completely, they would be obliged under British law to formally abandon the lines, and that’s a very costly, time-consuming and legally complex business. The only way to avoid that trouble and expense is to maintain some passenger service on the line, even if only on the barest of bare-bones schedules. So the railways run the ghost trains, officially called parliamentary trains, just to satisfy the law — and don’t care whether anyone rides them. And it shows. At the stations where they originate, the railway may not bother to list parliamentary trains on the departure board or announce which platform they will use until the last minute, resulting in a mad dash by the rare intrepid traveler hoping to board. One of the more accessible ghost train experiences leaves at 11:36 a.m. on weekdays from Paddington Station in London, bound for West Ruislip over the Acton-to-Northolt line. Its platform is hidden in a far corner of the station, behind a temporary construction wall. On a recent run, there were just six passengers. One was Steve Hamshere, who had come to London from Berkshire, about 50 miles away, specifically to ride that train. “This line was built by the Great Western Railway and was the main line to Birmingham up until the 1960s,” Mr. Hamshere said. These days the Birmingham trains go a different way, and Acton-to-Northolt is kept open mainly as a quiet place where new drivers can practice away from other traffic. Obscurity and the relative difficulty of catching the parliamentary trains makes them strongly alluring for railway enthusiasts, who make a hobby out of riding as many as they can. Two ghost train fans, Liz Moralee and Tim Hall-Smith, even run a website for fellow devotees. “It is great to have a whole train to yourself,” Ms. Moralee wrote in an email. One of her strangest trips, she said, was to the Teesside Airport railway station, one of the least-used in Britain. The parliamentary train there makes one round trip a week, on Sundays, and only 16 passengers used the station in all of 2015. The half- mile walk from there to the airport terminal it was built to serve may be why. “It is far from convenient for anyone using the airport, unless they fancy a 20- minute trek,” Ms. Moralee said. NAZI GRAVE IN BRAZIL ENDURES AS MARKER OF SECRET PLAN TO COLONIZE
BY SIMON ROMERO DECEMBER 9, 2016
AN ENDURING AIR OF MYSTERY surrounds the towering cross emblazoned with a swastika in a cemetery near the remote Brazilian jungle outpost of Laranjal do Jari. An inscription on the cross, in German, reads: “Joseph Greiner died here of fever on Jan. 2, 1936, in the service of German research.” Why is there a Nazi grave in the far reaches of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest? Researchers have meticulously documented how Nazi war criminals fled to South America in the aftermath of World War II. But much less is known about a plot that took root before and during the war: The Nazis hoped to establish a German bridgehead in South America by conquering a swath of the Amazon River Basin. The secret plan, called the Guyana Project, had its origins in an expedition into the Amazon led by Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel, a Berlin zoologist, documentary filmmaker and member of Hitler’s SS. For 17 months, from 1935 to 1937, Nazi explorers under the guidance of Mr. Schulz-Kampfhenkel hacked through forests around Brazil’s border with French Guiana. They collected animal skulls and indigenous jewelry, and they studied the topography along the Jari River, a 491-mile tributary of the Amazon. “The expedition started out with the usual scientific pretensions,” said Jens Glüsing, a longtime correspondent in Brazil for the German magazine Der Spiegel who wrote a book about the Guyana Project. “But back in Germany, as the war started, Schulz-Kampfhenkel seized on this idea for Nazi colonial expansion.” Mr. Schulz-Kampfhenkel presented his plan in 1940 to Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the Gestapo. It envisioned the endeavor as a way to blunt the regional sway of the United States by seizing control of French Guiana and the neighboring Dutch and British colonies (now the independent nations of Suriname and Guyana). But the dream of forging a German Guiana fizzled. Perhaps it was because French Guiana had already fallen into the friendly hands of the collaborationist Vichy regime. Or maybe it had to do with the ill-fated Jari expedition itself. The expedition had a Heinkel He 72 Seekadett seaplane, which was promoted as an example of Nazi industrial innovation. But the aircraft capsized after hitting driftwood a few weeks into the expedition. Throughout their journey, the explorers from a self-described “master race” had to rely on indigenous tribes to survive and find their way in the jungle. The Germans were enfeebled by malaria and other illnesses. Mr. Schulz- Kampfhenkel endured severe diphtheria, and an unspecified fever killed Mr. Greiner, the expedition’s foreman. His grave stands to this day as a testament to the star- crossed Nazi foray into the Amazon. IF THE POOL IS WARM IN PARIS, THANK THE WASHING MACHINE
BY AURELIEN BREEDEN DECEMBER 12, 2016
What do washing the dishes and uploading pictures to Facebook have in common? In most places, not much. But in Paris, they both could help heat your local swimming pool. To keep its bathers from shivering and its energy bills from ballooning, the city has developed some clever ways to reuse excess heat from two unconventional sources, computer servers and sewage. The wastewater from sinks, toilets, washing machines and so on pours into the Paris sewer system at an average temperature of 55 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. At the Aspirant Dunand swimming pool in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris, the stuff runs through pipes underneath the pool, where the warmth is captured with the help of metal plates in the sewage pipes. A heat-pump system then transfers it to the pool water. The heat source at a swimming pool in the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood of the 13th Arrondissement will have to be kept much drier. A French start-up company called Stimergy is scheduled to install several hundred computer servers in the building’s basement over the next year. The heat thrown off by the servers will go to the boiler that heats water for the pool and locker-room showers — a “data furnace,” if you will. Jean-François Martins, the city’s deputy mayor in charge of sports, has said it is all part of a plan to make the city’s swimming pools more “eco-responsible” in preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games, which Paris is in the running to host. (Los Angeles and Budapest are the other contenders.) “We wish to reduce the environmental impact and ecological footprint of these facilities, while reducing chemical product use,” Mr. Martins said of the pools. Making Paris more environmentally friendly is also high on the to-do list for Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a Socialist. To cut tailpipe emissions, her administration recently imposed a much-debated ban on vehicle traffic along a large section of the roadway that runs along the Seine. NAPPING IN PUBLIC? IN JAPAN, THAT’S A SIGN OF DILIGENCE
Sleeping in public is especially prevalent on commuter trains, no matter how crowded, in Japan. It helps that the country has a very low crime rate. (Ko Sasaki for The New York Times)
BY BRYANT ROUSSEAU DECEMBER 16, 2016
IN MOST COUNTRIES, SLEEPING ON the job isn’t just frowned upon, it may get you fired. But in Japan, napping in the office is common and culturally accepted. And in fact, it is often seen as a subtle sign of diligence: You must be working yourself to exhaustion. The word for it is “inemuri.” It is often translated as “sleeping on duty,” but Brigitte Steger, a senior lecturer in Japanese studies at Downing College, Cambridge, who has written a book on the topic, says it would be more accurate to render it as “sleeping while present.” That, she said, captures Japan’s approach to time, where it’s seen as possible to do multiple things simultaneously, if at a lower intensity. So you can get credit for attending that boring quarterly sales meeting while also dreaming of a beach vacation.
A 2015 study found that 39.5 percent of Japanese adults slept less than six hours a night. (Ko Sasaki for The New York Times)
Inemuri is most prevalent among more senior employees in white-collar professions, Dr. Steger said. Junior employees tend to want to stay awake all day and be seen as energetic, and workers on assembly lines can’t just nod off. Both sexes indulge in inemuri, but women are more likely to be criticized for it, especially if they sleep in a position that is considered unbecoming, Dr. Steger said. Inemuri has been practiced in Japan for at least 1,000 years, and it is not restricted to the workplace. People may nap in department stores, cafes, restaurants or even a snug spot on a busy city sidewalk. Sleeping in public is especially prevalent on commuter trains, no matter how crowded; they often turn into de facto bedrooms. It helps that Japan has a very low crime rate. “It’s very unlikely, if you are sleeping on a train, that someone would try to rob you,” said Theodore C. Bestor, a professor of social anthropology at Harvard University. Sleeping in social situations can even enhance your reputation. Dr. Steger recalled a group dinner at a restaurant where the male guest of a female colleague fell asleep at the table. The other guests complimented his “gentlemanly behavior” — that he chose to stay present and sleep, rather than excuse himself. One reason public sleeping may be so common in Japan is that people get so little sleep at home. A 2015 government study found that 39.5 percent of Japanese adults slept less than six hours a night. An unwritten rule of inemuri is to sleep compactly, without “violating spatial norms,” Professor Bestor said. “If you stretched out under the table in the office conference room, or took up several spaces on the train, or laid out on a park bench,” he said, that would draw reproach for being socially disruptive. Dr. Steger pointed out that closed eyes may not always equal shut-eye: A person may close them just to build a sphere of privacy in a society with little of it. That’s part of why Dr. Steger said she could imagine inemuri waning in Japan. These days, smartphones can transport people to their own private zones with their eyes wide open. THE CHRISTMAS PICKLE: A TRADITION WITH A PINCH OF SALT
BY MELISSA EDDY DECEMBER 23, 2016
A GREAT MANY PEOPLE IN the American Midwest have family roots in Germany, and a good number of them can tell you all about a beloved old-country holiday tradition: the Weihnachtsgurke, or Christmas Pickle. They will tell you that an ornament in the shape of a pickle is always the last one hung on the tree on Christmas Eve, camouflaged somewhere among the pine needles. It might be shiny or matte; it might have gold swirls or a little Santa hat. But whatever the style, the story goes that the first child to find the pickle in the morning is assured of good luck in the coming year and a special gift. It sounds plausible: Germans tend to love traditions, Christmas and pickles. Versions of the story and speculation over its origins proliferate on the internet. There is only one snag: It is all but unknown in Germany. The YouGov polling agency surveyed 2,057 Germans in November and found that 91 percent had never even heard of this holiday legend attributed to their country. Sascha Müller of the Lauscha glass center, in the eastern German region where the making of glass Christmas ornaments started in the mid-19th century, said he had learned of the Christmas pickle for the first time in the 1990s, on a trip to Frankenmuth, Mich. He brought the story home with him, and his artisans now churn out 50,000 pickle ornaments a year, making it a best seller behind only Santa Claus and colored glass balls. Dieter Dressler, a glass artisan in Weimar, also makes glossy green pickle ornaments, slightly curved and as thick as a large man’s thumb. He said there could be something to the idea that people in the Spreewald region, where cucumbers are grown and pickled, might have once been so poor that they had nothing else to hang on their trees, and that émigrés took the memory with them. Mr. Dressler said that over the past three years he had been selling more and more pickle ornaments to Germans, who laugh when they hear the story of the Weihnachtsgurke. “Lots of people ask me if I have a smaller one,” Mr. Dressler said. But being German, he knows you cannot go against tradition. “I tell them: ‘No, that wouldn’t be a pickle. It would be a cornichon.’” SIX FEET ACROSS AND FULL OF PERIL: ENGLAND’S KILLER CREEK
The Bolton Strid is narrow and deep, a powerful wedge of water racing through a crevasse riddled with underwater caves and overhangs. (Andy Haslam for The New York Times)
BY DES SHOE DECEMBER 30, 2016
It sure doesn’t look like a killer. The Bolton Strid has all the charm of a picturesque country creek, burbling along among moss-covered stones in a wooded stretch of Yorkshire, England. Its banks are only about six feet apart. But this particular stretch of water is also extremely perilous, with some locals claiming a 100 percent fatality rate for anyone unfortunate enough to fall in while trying to jump across it. Signs along the bank warn: “The Strid is dangerous and has claimed lives in the past. Please stand well back and beware slippery rocks.” Much of the danger lies in how quickly the stream narrows.
Upstream, the river is wide and shallow. (Andy Haslam for The New York Times)
The Strid is a segment of the River Wharfe, which runs past the tranquil ruins of Bolton Priory, an ancient monastery. A few yards upstream from the Strid, the river is shallow and wide, about 30 feet from bank to bank. But then the terrain squeezes the river so tightly that it is effectively turned on its side. Instead of wide and shallow, it becomes narrow and deep, a powerful wedge of water racing through a crevasse riddled with underwater caves and overhangs. This is the Bolton Strid. From above, the Strid appears beautiful and deceptively harmless. But jump or fall in, and you could quickly find yourself sucked into an underwater crevice or pummeled against the rocky cleft walls by the current. People call it the deadliest stream in the world, though no one keeps an official death toll for the Strid. The best known case involved a honeymooning couple who disappeared in 1998 and were believed to have drowned when rains rapidly swelled the River Wharfe. The treacherous stream has flowed into literature. William Wordsworth wrote about the Strid in the early 1800s in his poem “The Force of Prayer,” describing a young boy who tries and fails to leap the stream. The spot is also immortalized in the short story “The Striding Place” by the American author Gertrude Atherton in 1896. “There was no lonelier spot in England,” she writes, “nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were.” There is even an Old English saying that warns of the deceptive danger of the stream, compared with another Yorkshire river, the Aire:
Wharfe is clear, and Aire is lithe; Where Aire kills one, Wharfe kills five. BERLIN ATTRACTION REVEALS AN UNEASY PHENOMENON: HITLER SELLS
A replica of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. It was built about a mile from the original site by a private company, Historiale, which also runs the Berlin Story Museum next door. (Gordon Welters for The New York Times)
BY ALISON SMALE DECEMBER 28, 2016
WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT the buildings associated with Hitler’s life and death? In Austria, they are hitting the delete key, but in Germany, it’s more like copy and paste. After decades of indecision and delay, the Austrian government is moving to seize and either demolish or drastically remodel the house where Hitler was born, so that it never becomes a shrine for neo-Nazis. In Berlin, where the authorities have generally taken a somber approach to the terrible history, the story is different. Most landmarks of Nazi rule in the city were demolished long ago, but a commercial firm has now re-created one of them as a tourist attraction: the bunker where Hitler committed suicide in 1945. The new bunker was built about a mile from the original site by Historiale, which also runs the Berlin Story Museum next door. Wieland Giebel of Berlin Story says the intent is to show tourists more of the city’s past.
Wieland Giebel of Berlin Story showed a model of Hitler’s bunker to a tour group last month. (Gordon Welters for The New York Times)
The company attracted some publicity by inviting dozens of foreign correspondents to an opening tour in the fall, and then began admitting the general public for tours twice a day. Mr. Giebel said each tour has attracted at least 30 visitors at 12 euros ($12.5) a person. Like the museum — a mishmash of memorabilia — the bunker tour seems to appeal to a public appetite that several experts have recognized. Hitler sells. “Of course it sells, that is clear,” said Stefanie Endlich, a professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin and an expert on Nazi art. “But all these revivals of National Socialist situations are a little unsettling.” Historians at state-funded institutions, like the widely praised Topography of Terror center nearby, are also disturbed by Mr. Giebel’s venture. “We don’t work with sets,” said Kay-Uwe von Damaros, spokesman for the center. Besides that, he said, Mr. Giebel “demands an entry fee; we do not.” Mr. von Damaros estimated that about 1.3 million people a year visit the Topography of Terror exhibition, a dense and grim accounting of how the Nazis rose, ruled and destroyed. “This shows the interest in working through the story continues to be high,” he said. “And it also is proof that the quality is right.”
Tours of the replica bunker last about 90 minutes and cost 12 euros ($12.5) a person. (Gordon Welters for The New York Times) TO FIGHT SMOG, HOW ABOUT ROOFTOP BUS GARDENS?
BY NIDA NAJAR JANUARY 6, 2017
INDIANS HAVE LONG PRACTICED THE willfully inexact science — some would call it an art — of jugaad. It is a Hindi word whose specific meaning is a trucklike vehicle mashed together from whatever is available — scraps of an old bus, perhaps, with some wooden beams and maybe a tractor engine. But broadly, it can refer to any kind of slapdash solution, innovation in the face of scarcity. Now, that ingenuity is focused on one of the country’s most intractable modern problems: Delhi’s toxic air. A dense blanket of smog descends over Delhi each autumn, pushing air pollution readings to nearly unbearable levels. And when an outpost of the University of Chicago in New Delhi held a competition for new ideas to solve the pollution problem, many of the entries drew on good old jugaad. Some submissions were questionable, to say the least. One contestant proposed planting gardens on top of buses to create natural mobile air filters. Another resident suggested fitting automobile exhaust pipes with a device that could suck up pollution particles, but failed to explain how the technology would actually work. Closer to the mark were ideas like vertical gardens, with walls of hydroponic greenery planted in the city’s slums to absorb some of the pollution from open-air stoves and car exhaust. That one was a finalist. So was a suggestion to provide insulated kiosks for the guards who keep watch outside the gated houses of the wealthy, so the guards can stop burning garbage all night to keep warm. In the end, the winners, announced in October, were plans that seemed to be the most sustainable and achievable. They included a machine that converts rice straw into fertilizer, so that farmers around the capital would no longer burn their fields after each harvest. Another winning idea would capture some of the emissions from diesel generators and turn the soot particles into black ink and paint. The chosen projects will be put into action this year as small pilot programs, but Anna Agarwal, a senior manager at the university’s Energy and Environment Lab, said they could eventually be scaled up. TALKING TO IN-LAWS CAN BE HARD. IN SOME LANGUAGES, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE
BY BRYANT ROUSSEAU JANUARY 9, 2017
IN-LAWS MAY BE UNIVERSALLY INTIMIDATING, but in some cultures, the deference paid them rises to a whole new level, at least linguistically. A geographically widespread practice known as avoidance speech, or “mother-in- law languages,” imposes strict rules on how one speaks — or doesn’t — to the parents of a spouse, with daughters-in-law typically bearing the brunt of such limits. In parts of Africa, Australia and India, some societies restrict the words a person can say after marriage. Some cultures have even barred all direct communication with parents-in-law. Some married women who speak the Kambaata language of Ethiopia follow ballishsha, a rule that forbids them from using words that begin with the same syllable as the name of their father-in-law or mother-in-law. This rule can complicate a conversation, but there are workarounds. Certain basic words in the vocabulary come in synonymous pairs. “One is the normal term, used by everybody; one is the term used by women who are not allowed to say that word,” said Yvonne Treis, a linguist at a French research institute, Languages and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. Euphemisms are another frequent solution: If the word “ox” is taboo for a wife to say, she may refer to “the one that plows” instead. The Kambaata language also has a word akin to “whatchamacallit” in English, useful in a pinch as either a noun or verb when no other alternative is available. Avoidance speech is also practiced by speakers of some of the Bantu languages of southern Africa, including Xhosa and Zulu. Married women are forbidden from using their father-in-law’s name, or any word that has the same root or similar sound. Bantu speakers often get around this restriction by borrowing synonyms from other languages spoken nearby. Some linguists think that is how click consonants found their way into Bantu speech: in words borrowed from Khoisan languages, which use clicks extensively. In parts of India, a daughter-in-law is not allowed to use words that begin with the same letters as her in-laws’ names, requiring her to use a parallel vocabulary. Avoidance speech was a common feature of many aboriginal languages in Australia. The custom has largely faded in some areas, but it is still widely practiced in the Western Desert region and Arnhem Land, according to Claire Bowern, a professor of linguistics at Yale. Avoidance speech can be more of a two-way street in Australia, with restrictions applying across genders and generations. There are aboriginal cultures where a man and his mother-in-law are forbidden to directly address each other. “In my experience, the taboos between a man and a mother-in-law are a lot stronger than between a woman and her mother-in-law,” Professor Bowern said. As in Africa and India, there are a number of rules in Australian languages about which words one can say in the presence of “tabooed kin,” Professor Bowern said. For example, in the Dyirbal language, spoken in northeast Queensland, water is “bana” in the everyday language but “jujama” in avoidance speech. Of course, there isn’t a second word for everything, and one avoidance word often has to suffice for many related ordinary words. In the Guugu Yimithirr tongue, spoken in the far north of Queensland, the verb “bali-l,” meaning to travel, is the all- purpose substitute for more specific words like walk, crawl, limp, paddle or float. Why did the custom of avoidance speech arise? Some experts on its use in Africa and India see it as a way to reinforce the inferior status of daughters-in-law. In Australia, the prohibitions might have been intended to reduce the chance of sexual relations between in-laws. NEWFOUNDLAND IS BIG ON BOLOGNA: FRIED, STEWED AND LAYERED LIKE A CAKE
“THE BIG STICK,” A 9.7-POUND bologna sausage encased in wax, from Maple Leaf Foods, is a big seller in Newfoundland. (Antonio de Luca/The New York Times)
BY IAN AUSTEN JANUARY 13, 2017
From the start, Newfoundland has been all about fish. European settlers didn’t go there for the scenery (rugged) or the weather (always changing, often dreadful) — they went for the cod, and later the haddock and other valuable fish that were once so abundant on the nearby Grand Banks. But for as long as anyone can recall, the island’s favorite food has had nothing to do with the sea. Newfoundlanders have a voracious appetite for, of all things, waxed bologna. Canada’s largest bologna producer, Maple Leaf Foods, estimates that the province’s 530,000 residents put away 4.2 million pounds of bologna a year. In much of North America, bologna is one of the least respected of processed meats, seen as fit only for a ho-hum sandwich. But in Newfoundland, it is an all- purpose protein suitable for any meal. “If I don’t have bologna in my fridge, I’ve nothing to eat,” said Kevin Phillips, the author of “The Bologna Cookbook.” Mr. Phillips, a retired army warrant officer, grew up in a family that operated a general store in Cape St. George, a fishing town where hardly any of the catch was eaten locally; it all went for salting and sale to bring in cash. Families tended to be very large and feeding them wasn’t easy. Newfoundland’s terrain and climate are poor for farming and meat brought from afar was expensive. All that made “the big stick,” a 9.7-pound bologna sausage encased in wax, the shop’s big seller. Less affluent families would settle for a large chunk each week rather than a whole stick, Mr. Phillips said, and “every now and then an old lady came in for slices.” Though the tradition seems unassailable, Maple Leaf still feels a need to actively promote bologna in Newfoundland. It even has a mascot, the pink and cylindrical Mr. Big Stick, who appears regularly in parades and at community events. Ask Mr. Phillips to describe in words how Maple Leaf bologna tastes, and he is stumped. But whatever the flavor is, it hasn’t changed since he was a child, he says, though the texture has. “I’m not going to say rubbery, but it was a dense texture,” Mr. Phillips said of the old stuff. “Now it’s a little bit softer.” He amassed 400 bologna recipes for his cookbook, twice as many as he could use. Bologna-wrapped stuffed prunes with havarti and bologna cake made the cut; so did bologna stroganoff. But that is not what people usually do with their big sticks. The most frequently served dishes, he said, are bologna stew and fried bologna with mashed potatoes, green peas and gravy. He offered a stern word of caution: “Never, ever, ever try to cook bologna with the spice curry. It will not work. You will spit it out, it’s horrible.” WHEN AN AIRLINE SUFFERED MISFORTUNE, SOME LOOKED FOR A GOAT
BY SALMON MASOOD JANUARY 18, 2017
EVERY SUPERSTITIOUS PASSENGER HAS WAYS of dealing with the existential uncertainties of air travel, but the ground crew of one Pakistani airliner raised the stakes on preflight rituals when it sacrificed a goat on the runway. The age-old custom in Pakistan for warding off evil and bad luck is simple: Slaughter an animal. For extra luck, make it a black goat. Last month, just a few days after a Pakistan International Airlines propeller plane crashed, killing all 48 people on board, some members of the airline’s staff felt the flying public could use some extra luck. A photo went viral of a group of men slaughtering a black goat on the tarmac of Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International Airport, its blood staining the ground in front of an airplane. Such rituals are common in Pakistan, a majority Muslim country, but the sacrifice was quickly ridiculed by the country’s educated elites. It also seems to have had the unintended consequence of scaring passengers who worried that slaughtering goats was the airline’s best effort at ensuring its planes were safe to fly. “This is so beyond stupid,” read a Twitter post by Adil Najam, a well-known Pakistani academic who is also the dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. A poor goat “gets slaughtered by #PIA to keep its planes safe,” Professor Najam wrote. Across social strata, Pakistani society is deeply conservative and superstitious. Ritual slaughters are as common in major cities as they are in rural areas. Aides to former President Asif Ali Zardari were known to sacrifice animals whenever Mr. Zardari found himself in the midst of a political scandal. Mr. Zardari would also frequently travel on the advice of a trusted spiritual healer, who would tell the president when he should leave the capital, Islamabad, to visit Karachi. Mr. Zardari, whose wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated, survived his full term despite several political crises. Many Pakistanis attributed his resilience to the advice of healers and soothsayers. For many Pakistani travelers, the sacrifice did not reassure them about the airline’s safety. Instead, they criticized the national air carrier for relying on superstitions rather than good engineering practices. In a statement, the airline distanced itself from the crewmen who killed the goat. The men, the airline said, were not authorized to conduct the sacrifice. FOR A MODEST PRICE, THE STREETS OF PARIS CAN BE YOURS
Some Paris streets still have visible cobblestone paving, but on many the stones have been buried under asphalt and are often torn up during construction. Rather than dump them, the city has started to salvage and sell the stones. (Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times)
BY BENOÎT MORENNE JANUARY 20, 2017
THE COBBLESTONES OF PARIS HAVE seen some things. They were trodden by jaunty French soldiers in 1914 and jubilant Free French liberators in 1944, and were rolled over by the tumbrels of 1793 and the panzers of 1940. They were hurled at the police and piled in barricades in 1848 and 1968. They’ve been shown rain- slicked in countless paintings and photographs. And now you can own one. Used Paris cobblestones are being offered for sale online at Mon Pavé Parisien, spruced up and suitable for showcasing on a mantel or étagère anywhere in the world. Each year, the city digs up about 10,000 tons of old cobblestones as it rebuilds or repaves its streets. It used to discard them along with other rubble. But officials recently hit on the idea of salvaging the stones and selling them, to spare the city the trouble and expense of hauling them to the dump.
Now, Parisian cobblestones can be bought online and showcased on shelves and fireplace mantels around the world. (Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times)
“Rather than have cobblestones thrown away, we collect them, we clean them and give them a second life,” said Patrick Marchetti, the head of the city maintenance yard where the stones are stored. The intended buyers were contractors and others who wanted to build with them. But an entrepreneur named Margaux Sainte-Lagüe saw an opportunity. Last September she bought five tons of the cobblestones for about 200 euros ($215) and set about turning them into keepsakes for local and foreign buyers eager for a bit of Paris laden with memories. Ms. Sainte-Lagüe polishes the stones, which weigh from two and a half to six pounds, and hand-paints them in various designs, from the simple tricolor of the French flag to an eye-catching gold-plated version. She’ll personalize them on request. And in true collectible fashion, she gives each stone a number and a “Made in Paris” certificate. All that transforms an 8-cent paver into a souvenir priced at 60 to 150 euros ($64 to $160). So far she’s sold more than 100, and shipped them to buyers as far away as Oklahoma and China. The streets of Paris were first paved with stones in the 12th century under King Philip II, and the practice continued well into the 20th century. These days, cobblestones are buried under the asphalt on about one-third of the city’s streets, but they endure as the surface pavement on a few iconic boulevards and squares, like the Champs-Élysées and the Place de la Bastille, and in the narrow alleys of historic neighborhoods like Montmartre.
The streets of Paris were first paved with stones in the 12th century under King Philip II. The practice continued well into the 20th century. (Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times) As souvenirs go, Ms. Sainte-Lagüe said in an interview, a cobblestone has one clear advantage over the miniature Eiffel Towers and Joconde-emblazoned T-shirts that tourists snap up by the hundreds of thousands every year: It is sure to last. “It’s a piece of history,” she said. POLISH CITY TO GIVE TOM HANKS THE CAR THAT PUT IT ON THE AUTO MAP
BY RICK LYMAN JANUARY 25, 2017
Detroit has its Mustang. Munich has its Bimmer. Bielsko-Biala will always have the Maluch. The Maluch, or little one, is officially the Fiat 126p hatchback. Drab and cramped, it lacks either girth or pretension. But it has a perversely special place in Polish hearts. “The Maluch was the beginning of an automotive revolution in Poland,” said Jacek Krywult, the mayor of Bielsko-Biala, Poland. Before the Maluch appeared, cars meant for ordinary Poles were rare, expensive and difficult to get. That changed in 1973 when the Polish manufacturer FSM began to churn out its version of the Fiat 126 under license from the Italian carmaker. Poles snapped them up, and they were soon exported throughout the Soviet bloc. “This is a car that has a soul,” said Monika Jaskolska, who runs a clothing store in the city. FSM kept on building and selling the Maluch — 3.3 million in all — before it was finally discontinued in 2000. The car developed a cult following in places as far away as Australia. But even so, city officials were rather stunned recently to stumble across evidence that the humble minicar had attracted an unlikely and highly prominent fan: Twitter posts from Tom Hanks that show him posing beside Maluchs. Delighted, Ms. Jaskolska started a drive to buy a Maluch, put it in good condition and ship it to the actor as a gift. Local companies have kicked in $2,005 for a 1974 model and another $7,250 to spiff it up. When it is finished in about four months, the car will be flown to Mr. Hanks with an invitation to visit Bielsko-Biala. “And I don’t want him to stay in a hotel, either,” Ms. Jaskolska said. “He should have a full Polish experience, and he can stay with my family.” The mayor, Mr. Krywult, finds the whole thing a bit humorous. “I’m happy that Mr. Hanks took a liking to our Maluch,” he said. “But it’s also a sign of the times: Poles now want to drive a Cadillac, and Americans want to drive a Maluch. That’s one crazy turn of events.”