Yemen Stories

Following up on an earlier post - I've gone ahead and set up a new blog devoted to providing a more balanced view of everyday life in Yemen.  I've called it Yemen Stories and I'm in the process of looking for pictures and related stories from Yemenis or folks who have a lot of experience within the country.  Do I think I can change the world?  Hardly.  Even my ego isn't that big (although, as my friends are wont to point out, my plans never stay small for very long).  Mainly I'm trying to present a more balanced view of a mysterious and sadly demonized country.  Essentially I want to take advantage of the power of story-telling.  One of the things that blew me away about the Museum of Broken Relationships (discussed in an earlier posting under Croatia) was how a simple picture tied to a few explanatory sentences could tell a story and create an entire world (and break your heart).  I'd really like to take a similar approach with this blog.  

Red Colobus Monkeys

Just a reflection on the blissful tranquility of Zanzibar on a cold Vermont day.  Here are a few shots of Red Colobus Monkeys, which are native to Zanzibar - and sadly endangered.

Dreaming of Yemen

I'm settling in quite nicely into my much more sedentary existence here in Vermont, although I guess a hint of wanderlust still haunts my dreams.  This summer, for a number of reasons, I turned down an amazing job offer at Hong Kong University.  It was really a tough call, but in the end I think it was the right decision.  However, once you've been bitten by the foreign travel bug you never really get over it.  I've really been thinking a lot about Yemen lately, as I have ever since too short but eventful trip there a year and a half ago. In between reading books on Yemen and constantly following blogs and tweets from Yemeni writers the plight of this amazing place is on my mind.  As in my wont I'm putting together a proposal for a website devoted to life in Yemen as a mechanism for changing perceptions, and am forging a letter to some folks that I follow on Twitter to see if I can put something together.  Don't know where it will lead, but I'm jazzed about it - and there was a time when the Global Modules were just an odd little concept that was seemingly just my crazy little scheme.  Beyond the fact that Yemen is such a fascinating place I don't know why it has so completely captured my imagination.  Maybe it's because it is about as far removed from life in Vermont as I can imagine, and this is just my means of dealing with my slower-paced life and more limited universe.

The sun setting in Sana'a.

The Gift

Today in my Dar al-Islam class we were discussing Sufi mystic poetry, specifically Hafiz.  The students all have to read the collection The Gift, and write a paper analyzing a chapter and then present their favorite individual poem to the class and discuss its relationship to Islam or Sufism or perceptions of the divine.  It's a nice counter-point to all of our readings from the Quran and Nasr's The Heart of Islam.  The discussion always starts off slowly but then gets going as the students get more comfortable getting metaphysical.  After our first day's discussion (and the students always think it will last one day and it will end up stretching out to a week and a half, at least) I turned to find the following words written on the board.  My excellent friend Steve Wehmeyer proposed that it was "so Scudder," and I suspect any student I ever had would agree. It also reminded me of how much I love teaching and what a gift it is.

It all made sense at the time.

Getting Caught in the Draft

Today is a day that will live in infamy, as we rev up for our inaugural Champlain fantasy football draft.  At the last minute we had to switch from one fantasy football website to another because the first one would only allow us to have a live computer draft - which sounded too chaotic/stressful for a bunch of newbies.  The one we chose is going to allow us to carry out our draft offline (and then, much as with my fantasy baseball team) I'll add the players in later.  It should make for a more relaxed and fun-filled evening.  With the exception of a couple (quiet) ringers none of us know what we're doing so there should be much foolishness.  My hope is that my team, the Springfield Buffalo, avoids complete humiliation - especially in their Week 1 death match with Cyndi Brandenburg's Mojo Nixons.

The selection of draft order was carried out in the most official and solemn way I can imagine - drawing slips of paper out of an Omani hat.

Our excellent team log, designed by Bob Mayer's excellent wife Cindy.  It's an homage to one of my favorite Buffalo Springfield songs, "Down to the Wire."  If you look closely in the buffalo's fur you can see images of the original band members.  Brilliant.

Vermont League of Excellence

After threatening for several years I've finally dragooned several of my excellent friends into forming a fantasy football league, the Vermont League of Excellence.  While I've been a member of a fantasy baseball league, the Cincinnati-based Irrational league, for almost two decades, this will be our first foray into fantasy football.  While it is easy to mock fantasy league - and certainly many people take them way too seriously - I'm excited because it provides another opportunity to spend time with my extraordinary friends.  As one grows older it is natural that we appreciate the tremendous gift that our friends give us every day simply by being in our lives.  The Irrational League has forced me to keep in contact with friends from Cincinnati who might have faded away without this inspiration.  As you can see from the following logo from my friend Bob Mayer, obviously some of my friends share my enthusiasm.  I think my friends are mainly excited my decision to stay in Vermont because I'm the one who initiates this type of tomfoolery.

Fear the Poodles!

I'm including a great essay about fantasy football, written by Tony Gervino, that appeared in the New York Times, that nicely sums up the allure of the activity.  Thanks to the excellent Cinse Bonino for sending it along.

"Since 1991 I've competed in a fantasy football league with my college buddies, most of whom hail from the great state of New Jersey.  Fantasy football leagues typically draft online, but we still conduct our business face to face, convening once a year, in late August, at a faded South Jersey hotel, thick with cigarette smoke.  It's a weekend filled with steaks, beer, Bruce Springsteen bootlegs and affectionately toothless insults; a weird alternate universe where I wash down Cool Ranch Doritos with Mountain Dew and occasionally sleep in my clothes.

For the uninitiated, fantasy football is a statistical competition in which participants draft real-life N.F.L. players to fill imaginary teams.  And when the real play scores, so does the imaginary team.  The payoff at the end of the playoffs as a combination of money, bragging rights and, sometimes, a trophy.

It's not as exciting as it sounds.

Yet every Sunday in the fall, millions of participants like my friends and me surreptitiously track the performance of the Redskins quarterback - or some other player we'd normally have no interest in - while brunching with our wives' friends; we scrutinize weather forecasts and scour injury reports. You can begin to lose your marbles.  There was an occasion, in a London hotel years ago, when I actually asked my late father for guidance on my lineup.  To his credit, he was unforthcoming.

Over the years, my friends and I have all married; some guys have divorced, married again, divorced again.  Many have kids, and most have lost their jobs at some point.  A majority of us have gained weight, and some of us have become both hairier and balder.  Only our enthusiasm for these imaginary teams and for the draft has remained constant.

A few years ago, I offered to host the draft on my Greenwich Village terrace, but apparently I failed the most important criterion.  "Do you have a pool?" a league member asked.  "Because the hotel has a pool." I confessed that while I could have almost anything their hearts desired delivered to my apartment, day or night, I did not, in fact, have a pool.

It has been widely assumed for some time now that I would eventually quit our league. No one has said as much, but I'm not an idiot.  I'm the only one who lives in New York City.  I don't play golf or smoke cigarettes.  I'm childless and devour The Paris Review.  And my team moniker, The Fifty-Pound Head, is derived from he dark British comedy "Withnail & I." I'm closer in species to a unicorn than I am to some of my friends.  Yet I am also resolutely unwilling to surrender one of the few uncomplicated pleasures in what has become an increasingly complicated life - and the tether it provides to friends I might otherwise fall out of touch with.

I arrived at last year's draft an hour early and sat on a park bench in downtown Red Bank, N.J. with my friend Sean Roane, a managing editor at The Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Pa.  We updated each other on our lives and our emotional commitment to the league, which has increased in depth as years have gone by, as it turned from a mere hobby to the very adhesive holding our social circle together.

I reminded him of the season when I covertly drafted my team over the telephone during my 10th wedding anniversary and how the team I drafted performed abysmally.  We shared a laugh.

That Saturday night, while we waited for our friends to finish playing golf, we talked about how we considered the league a lifetime commitment.  For him it certainly was.

Sean died in May from cancer that had spread to his bones and lungs.  It was eating away at him the very night we were chatting.  His newspaper ran an obituary, which contained the line "One of his other passions was fantasy football, winning the championship trophy multiple times."

His wife, Bonnie, asked to have our championship trophy, a replica (in the loosest sense of the word) of the Lombardi Trophy, as his memorial service while people paid their respects to Sean, who, as far as bragging rights go, was exceptionally talented at managing a fantasy football team.

Sean's title win in 2011 was the most recent engraving we had made on the trophy, so we gave it to Bonnie.  We've ordered a new trophy.  It should be ready in time for the draft."

Fellow Traveler

Recently I was headed to Abu Dhabi and I knew my friend Rob Williams had a connector at the same time.  Naturally, I didn't think we'd run into each other - and, so, of course we did.  A great traveler and an even better friend.

African proverb: "All strangers are to one another kin."