I've already mentioned how animals are everywhere in India, but not all animals are created equal. There are friendly dogs, well-fed dogs, dogs that like you, and then there are dogs like the one in Kathmandu which looked so decrepit it caused me and two Brits to simultaneously yell some version of "Lord have mercy!"
Dogs near Hindu temples are often friendlier than dogs near Buddhist temples, but I don't think this has any real bearing on either religion. Monkeys near any temples will automatically take your food and eat it. Monkeys near temples also like to chase dogs. Monkeys get extra aggression points if the temple is sometimes referred to as "Monkey Temple".
On my trip through the Khumbu region of Nepal, I learned another important distinction. This is a cow:
This is a yak:
Yes, he's real cute there, but when he grows up he will look like this:
Or like this:
Fun fact: the yak can only live between elevations of 3000 and 6000 meters because of his big lungs and small heart. This is a biological truth, but it might as well be a metaphor. Unlike a cow, he is not gentle. He is not used to being pet. And the best part is? You will have to share the trail.
Cows are used to being fed. Cows expect to be fed. On the other hand, there is a story of one hiker who tried to walk alongside a yak and feed the little guy a bite of his Snickers bar. He was literally gored in the ribs. Gored.
We heard this story after one of the Aussies on my trek had tried to give the yak ahead of him a little pinch on the bum. "Yikes," was his reply. "I guess I'll stop playing grabass with him, then."
We all agreed that was probably a good idea. Although it didn't stop us from making terrible yak puns all the way back down the hill.
I have a confession to make: I have been seeing other readers.
So far, with only one or two exceptions, everything I've published has been a bound and gathered book. There may be ebook versions of some of my work, but for the most part my rent still gets paid with paperbacks. I debated getting a Kindle for India, but in the long run opted to bring my 1,000-page copy of Infinite Jest (which I am still reading). It's not that I think e-readers are going to ruin publishing. Anything with the word "reader" in it can only be good for publishing; it's the authors and publishers that will dictate whether a viable business model can be made.
My standpoint on the Kindle is this: it's not worth my money. The device itself is expensive (though becoming less so), and for every new book you pay a fixed price. Meanwhile, I personally get books for free at the Boston Public Library, and when I'm done with them they take up exactly the same amount of space on my bookshelf as the digital version: zero. On the other hand, when I read a book worth keeping, I want it in a format that will last, and which lets me loan it to friends, and which I can display spine-out to impress other intellectuals. In short, I want my durable books in paper, I want my disposable books cheap. Neither of which is made possible by the Kindle.
The Kindle and the Nook's e-ink screen, meanwhile, severely limits the publisher's capabilities. The pages are static, and take precious nanoseconds to "turn", and don't lend themselves to graphics or eye-catching design. Maybe they'll come up with something better soon, but at the moment Kindles don't seem like a fun way to read my latest edition of Outside.
This is where the confession part comes in: I think I love the iPad. Specifically, iBooks. Maybe I wouldn't read War and Peace on the thing, but I'd love a flashy digital Economist. Best of all, I prefer iBooks because of what they'll do for my books.
Textbooks aren't exactly the kind of thing you care to pay huge money for. Trust me, I sell them, so I know this. They are also generally not fun to read. Trust me, I read them, so I know this, too. As publishers, we throw in all sorts of pedagogical features that involve complicated graphics and icons; we flow text through every page to keep eyes moving and help important information get absorbed; we also waste tons of paper printing indices and glossaries to make information easier to access. The graphics work on the iPad. The movement works on iPad. The search functions work on iPad. When I first downloaded iBooks onto my own iPod Touch, my first reaction was, "I would want my students to use this."
If priced correctly, a digital textbook is more affordable than a printed one, and doesn't compete with the used-book market which haunts me to this day. It's also creates less waste than a paperback or 3-hole drill textbook ("consumable", in publisher-speak), which is designed to be thrown away at the end of every semester (fie upon you, used books!). Plus, which is easier to carry: an iPad, or a 1,000-page version of Single-Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals? Do I even need to ask?
You will also, I must say, look cooler riding the T with your iPad than with your Single-Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals . Trust me, I commute with Harvard students, so I definitely know this.
If only the iPad didn't cost more than my monthly rent. If only the tiny iPod Touch's screen were more iBooks-friendly. I'm not quite to the point where I can make the investment, but I'm seeing a change in my attitude towards digital media. Ebooks aren't the bad word they used to be. Ebooks may in fact be a better way to read. Trust me, I'm an editor, I know this most of all.
A custom book is oftentimes an exercise in taking one author's content and reorganizing it to fit someone else's purposes. A custom editor's most important skills, therefore, tend to be those she learned in Kindergarten.
Cutting and pasting:
Scribbling. . .
. . . while, of course, staying within the lines.
And, to cheer me up when I'm tired of editing, my desk even has its own set of toys.
There you have it, folks. College textbooks by toddlers.
In the spirit of World Cup patriotism, we got it in to ourselves to attend the American Craft Beer Festival this weekend in Boston. Mercifully, no photos survived the evening, but it was a great chance to sample well-made ales and lagers from across the U.S.
After several tours across Europe, it's hard not to develop a taste for a well-crafted brew. One of the top items on my ever-lengthening List of Future Tours will most certainly involve an Oktoberfest in Munich. Even during my previous visit in mid-summer, we found paradise with a sunny day, a Paulaner, and a pretzel the size of my face.
Yes, pretzel, I love you too.
Not surprisingly, then, Your Correspondent has a history with beer festivals. A few years ago, in the middle of a long backpacking trip, Correspondent and Companion paid a visit to a grade-school friend studying in London. Our usual travel style involves large amounts of good food and drink, but with English cuisine being what it is my friend suggested we pay a visit here:
After two weeks of walking across Paris and Switzerland, a long evening of beverages seemed well in order. And what beverages! Brewers came in from all over the world, sold their most obscure vintages, and were not shy about discussing the best they had on tap. They clearly loved their work, and a lot of creativity went into finding the best product possible. (Or, at least, the most unique name to put on the bottle.)
Case in point, to the left: Dancin' Hen
At one point, we found ourselves standing in front of a giant double-decker bus chatting with a gentleman named Wells. It took us a moment to realize, his family ran the Wells brewery, which is a favorite import on American soil. After sneaking us a few free pints, he invited us on to the bus with a trio of inebriated New Zealanders to continue sampling the wares.
We stumbled outside happy with the evening, and shared a giggly Tube ride home with similarly impaired Brits. It was the early days of the iPhone, and this guy found it absolutely hilarious to continue the celebration with one of the newer apps: iPint.
A reported exchange between my former co-commuter and my former driver:
Driver: Other Madam, she is new office going?
Me: She is back in the United States.
Driver: Other Madam is coming India?
Me: No, she is all done in India.
Driver: Other Madam is marry?
Me: Um, no.
Driver: Ok ok.
In other news, I stumbled across a lunchbox in my home office with Hindi writing all over it, and this morning a random homeless woman said to me, "Dhanyavad. Namaste!"
- "Can you put this picture of my dog on the cover?"
- "Can you make Book X look like Book Y, and change all the page numbers in Book Y, and then change all of the internal references in Book Y for those page numbers, and then do the same in Book X?" (Subrequest, two weeks later: "Can we add some pages of Book Z, too?")
- "Can you please acquire permission to publish this article about Michael Jackson in my book?" (Note: this was a book about aliens.)
- "Can you put this drawing I made on the cover?"
- "Can you send me a desk copy of this book in two weeks?" (This is usually requested in a handwritten note accompanying the handwritten manuscript, which by the way - it takes two weeks just to set up the printing press.)
- "Please see my corresponding notes throughout the manuscript." (This usually means someone has either gone to town with their red pen and we'll spend weeks making their changes, or else I'll have to navigate Post-It Notes coming out of every corner. By the end of a season I'm buried in Post-It Notes.)
- "Can you please acquire permission to publish this article about homoerotic motifs in Star Trek in my book?" (Note: this is true, and for the same book about aliens.)
- "Can you put this picture my kid drew on the cover?"
- "Please retype 196 pages of third-party material, combine with 400 pages from two other textbooks, repaginate entirely throughout, update all internal references, combine and update two indices, design a new cover appropriate for the theme of my book, and -- wait, hold on. I'm going to send you a preface I wrote, OK? Hold on." (Four weeks later, she still hasn't sent the preface and we no longer have time to do the book before her classes start.)
- [Paraphrased:] "Please publish my highly inflammatory opinion."
- "Can you please add this Foreward written by my Esteemed Colleague, Dr. Such-and-Such? He is Very Important in the Intellectual Circles I Travel In, and it is Crucial that it be Included with My Work." (Note: your book is customized for your own course. It's not sold on the mass market. Everyone who buys your book does so because it's assigned reading. They have to.)
- "Can we put some Endorsements from my Other Esteemed Colleagues on the Back of My Book, which will say how Great My Book Is?" (Same lady. Same thing.)
- "Can we pick up all of the content from this book, but just take out this one photo? It's gross." (Note: This was a Biology book. Admittedly, it was pretty gross.)
- "Can you put this screenshot from Swingers on the cover?"
- "Can you make the professor some photocopies of the book at Kinko's? The real books won't be published for a few weeks but they want to see it now."
One of the cool things about being an editor is being able to see an author's thought process. Working with custom textbooks, I'm privy to the backroom deliberations of all sorts of professors, from those who want to whip up a few extra worksheets to those who want their books to be short, simple, to the point, and best of all inexpensive.
Today, though, I found myself working on a book which began with your basic Welcome-To-College freshman orientation-type book, the kind that teaches you how to take notes, how to study, how to stay awake in class.
They wanted this combined with a technical manual of the United States healthcare system.
Now, I have to ask myself: does that mean that there are healthcare professionals out there who don't know how to memorize? Is there an underlying problem with multi-tasking in the medical community?
I didn't want to ask. I guess there really is a market for everything.
We were standing halfway up a treeless, rocky hill, something like 5,300 meters above sea level, the day after walking all the way to this:
Around Everest Base Camp, you're well above the tree line, and while in May you won't see much snow during the day, around you magnificent glaciers tower in all directions, punctuated by the occasionally rocky cliff. Every so often, you're able to see the tip of Everest itself poking shyly out from behind Nuptse, the 7,821 m "small" mountain positioned directly in front. To get the best look at the top of the world, one usually had to climb Kala Pattar, which we were standing beneath--"only" 5,545 meters, or 18,200 feet. Thousands of feet higher than the tallest mountain in North America.
We were debating: up or down.
Flash back to me the night before, at 5,200 meters, at the teahouse on our return from Everest Base Camp. The entire trip, I amongst our team had suffered the least from altitude sickness, which can cause nausea, headaches, loss of appetite, and in its more serious, dangerous stages, vomiting, disorientation, and death. I'd walked to EBC in high spirits, sat and had a lunch of Tibetan bread with my team to celebrate getting all twelve members to our goal, and then merrily trotted back down the hill to bed.
Except that, as soon as I'd unrolled my sleeping bag, I became terribly unwell. I found myself inexplicably sitting with my head on my knees, dead asleep in the middle of the dining room, only waking long enough to wanly place a halfhearted dinner order.
It took five minutes of staring at my noodle soup before I could get any down, and then I almost gave up on my omelette. The worst thing you can do at elevation, though, is take in too few calories. Another twenty minutes later, I persevered through the last bit of egg and pushed my plate away.
A fellow trekker, trying to console me, offered a bite of Cadbury. "If I feel like this tomorrow," I said limply, "I'm not going to Kala Pattar."
We were all feeling a little run-down, to be honest. We were on our eighth day of trekking at extreme altitude, and we had all developed Khumbu cough--a wet, persistent cough common above a certain elevation--and the air was so thin even walking took immense effort. Let alone walking uphill. Let alone walking to the top of a mini-mountain before sunrise to get a view of Everest. Rumor had it that you could see just as much from halfway up Kalla Pattar.
Halfway up was where my group now was, debating whether to call it a day and descend to our next camp, or whether anybody would actually try for the top.
I climbed a few feet above the group to have a moment with the view, still strugging for breath. Just about everyone wanted to descend. I was feeling better, but after struggling so badly I was nervous about going any further. Most of my compatriots agreed, and after snapping a few photos trudged back down with our guides.
But one Brit still wanted to go up. "Come on," he said. "It's only a piddly little hill." He and a guide gave us a wave and started walking.
I swore to myself and shook my head. I pointed at him with my walking stick. "We're going to walk slowly, OK?"
"Pardon?"
"We're walking slowly." Then I got into line behind him.
"Bugger," said another Brit, And then there were three. We trudged upwards.
It wasn't the steepest climb of my life, and I wasn't exactly speeding along, but that next half-hour was pure respiratory hell. Cough, wheeze, cough, wheeze, and all the while my legs and lungs burned with the exertion. Even our Sherpa guide just sort of trudged along, setting a snail's pace and looking spent.
It didn't matter. Even after being sure I wouldn't make it, even after questioning if I'd get out of bed, I found myself at the top of Kala Pattar with Everest, the South Col, Nuptse, Ama Dablam, and the whole Himalayan panorama surrounding me.
What's funny is, I had never seen a mountain until I was eighteen years old. I went to Vancouver for Spring Break my freshman year of college and my friends still laugh about how I hadn't known mountains came in ranges. Eight years later, I was on top of a Himalaya. A piddly little Himalaya, maybe, but on the horizon was the tallest mountain the world. I felt like hell, but it was worth every step.
The sun had already risen over Everest and the wind picked up, sending the prayer flags fluttering. "OK," I said, finally looking downhill. "Let's go home."
With two months to go before the start of classes and literally hundreds of projects per editor to publish, my company is at fever pitch. In the height of the season, when we're chained to our desks, we've needed some creative ways to relieve stress.
One of the development editors put this sign up last year, a message borrowed from Her Majesty the Queen of England:
When I got back from India to start our busy season, I noticed our production editors had gotten a little wacky.
Eventually, a proofreader took it to its logical conclusion.
I guess this is what happens when you log too many hours looking for stray commas.
Poverty is poverty, and coming back to America doesn't mean I see any less of it. In fact, one of the best things about being back is resuming my biweekly volunteer sessions at a wonderful organization: Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. Every other week, I spend a Sunday afternoon at the respite center stringing beads or making tie-die with homeless patients sick enough to need medical care but not sick enough to be in the hospital.
It's always bittersweet walking through the door, because while it's nice to get to know the patients, you're always a little sad to see folks still there week after week. You hope they get their own homes, or their wounds heal, or their circumstances improve enough for them to move on. Whenever a patient tells me, "I won't see you again! I'm getting out next week!", my unequivocal reaction is, "Good!"
Today I made necklaces with a patient who had definitely been with the program a while, but who I mostly remembered as a guy liking to hoard craft supplies. Patients don't always remember me, but this guy did. "Where have you been?" he asked.
"I was abroad," I said. "India."
His face lit up. "I am half Indian!" he said. "And half Pakistani! And I've been all over." He then listed thirty or forty countries around the globe which he'd seen. He honestly listed more countries than I think I could even name off the top of my head. Turns out, he'd been in the Marines, and he'd gone on a few tours to far-off places. He spent the rest of the afternoon asking me laundry lists of questions. "Do you speak Hindi? Do you watch Bollywood? Did you go shopping? Did you see the Taj?"
Before I left, he made me get out the construction paper so he could make me something special. Just from memory, he started folding up an origami heart. Then, he handed it to me: a present. He told me that, if he had glue, he would have stuck sequins and stickers and fancy designs all over it. I said, "Well, why not keep working on it and give it to me when I come back?"
He said, no. He hopes he will not be at the center two weeks from now.
I went back to yoga class for the first time yesterday. Ironically, I didn't do a lick of yoga the entire time I was in India. I once tried, when I was in Rishikesh: the "birthplace" of yoga. My hotel offered free yoga lessons in the morning, every morning except for the one I inquired. After that, I didn't have the heart to seek out a class.
I kind of had to giggle when I went back to my gym, though. There is always the Yoga Guy who Takes Yoga Very Seriously and whose Down Dogs are always somehow the most stationary and yet the most distracting poses in the room. Then, at the end of class as we wake up from Corpse Pose, we murmur "Namaste" very soberly, very somberly. I think some of my classmates think "Namaste" means a lot more than "G'bye!"*
Meanwhile, I think back to the mornings I would jog in the park alongside my guesthouse. I would see classes going on in the open air day in, day out. The yoga practicers were all ages, all shapes, all levels of flexibility. Sometimes, men in kurtas and ladies in salwaar kameez would just do yoga outside, by themselves. And then, every so often, I would run into a group practice of my favorite yoga style ever: Laughing Yoga.
Laughing Yoga is exactly what it sounds like. You take a deep breath in, then let it out with a big "HAHAHAHAHA!" That's your warmup. Then there are a whole bunch of different laughs you can do, like the Lion Laugh, in which you stick your tongue out and bulge out your eyes, and use your whole body to say, "HAAA HAAAA HAAAAA." There were also exercises to cultivate playfulness, and Ho Ho Ha Ha Dancing.
This isn't to intimate that Laughing Yoga isn't serious. From what I could tell, it did its students a world of good. Even running by, listening to them, I couldn't help but feel more relaxed. It was just ironic, as a Westerner, because our stereotypical yoga session is all silence and deep breathing and Taking Yoga Very Seriously. Maybe I should try my new style in class someday. First, though, I should probably promise Yoga Guy I won't be laughing at his Down Dog.
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*OK, so I know it means "reverential salutation to you" or something along those lines, but a few weeks ago I was saying it day in and day out to, amongst other people, the hotel manager, my driver, my boss, and fifty small children per day. So it loses its spark after a while.
Your correspondent has yet to live in an apartment which hasn't been flooded.
Back in college, pipes burst in the apartment above ours and poured torrents through our ceiling. Then I was subject to a lawsuit for having my own apartment obliterated, but that's a whole other story. The day that lawsuit settled, I got a phone call from my downstairs neighbor in Boston to ask whether I wouldn't mind checking to see if there was as much water trickling through my bedroom as there was in hers. Guess what! There was.
So, I got a new garden-level apartment, and within a month a flash flood had spread itself all the way through my living room and kitchen. When the maintenance man finally arrived, he found me eating a cold breakfast perched on a couch I had thrown across the room, staring like a zombie at the damage.
We figured out the mulch from our garden had been pushed over the drainage hole by water pouring from a neighbor's gutter. A reservoir was dug, the gutter was cleaned, and the mulch was removed. No more problems, even while I was in India and Boston received flooding of Biblical proportions. That whole time, my digs were nice and secure.
Then summer came, the mulch reappeared and, despite an immediate call to the landlord, I stood in my doorway tonight and watched as it, again, overpowered the drain and sent yuck streaming onto my carpet. The maintenance man arrived a little late this time, or else he could have feasted his eyes on me standing over the drain, scooping mud out with my hands, swearing bloody murder into the cell phone tucked between ear and shoulder.
Almost kind of makes a girl miss the desert. Anyone know a good realtor? How about a good ark-builder?
