Rehla

2006-08-24T12:04:00.000+03:00

A friend of mine has set up a project called Lens on Lebanon.

Here is a short description of the project, from the site:

Lens on Lebanon is a grassroots documentary initiative formed during the devastating Israeli bombardment of 2006.

The primary concern of Lens on Lebanon is to provide technical support to local communities in order that they might document lived experience of the conflict and its aftermath in their own terms.

Our goal has been to deliver digital camera and mini digital video recorders into the hands not of outside professionals but of local people living through this period, and thereby to bring a grid of sustained attention not only to the repercussions of dramatic events such as the Qana massacre but to the ongoing realities of daily survival. We hope that the material collected will help to fill out the picture both for the lay public and the professional media. Most important of all, it will also enable the victims of this conflict to document war crimes, providing an invaluable resource for future advocacy. The material collected will be circulated to media outlets and activist groups worldwide.

To donate funds to Lens on Lebanon please go here

2006-08-19T18:28:00.000+03:00

Titanic struggle to clean Beirut beaches of oil

"A massive oil spill off the coast of Lebanon is choking marine life, polluting the air as it evaporates and threatening to produce a long-lasting ecological disaster"

continue..

If you want to help out contact Greenline in Lebanon

3rd floor, Yamout building, Spears 174,

Sanayeh, Beirut, Lebanon

Telefax: (+961 1) 746 215 or (+961 1) 752 142

greenline@greenline.org.lb

Volunteer, donate, spread the word..the damage will poison people for years to come if not dealt with...enough damage has already been done.

2006-08-08T17:00:00.000+03:00

With all the invasions going on around the world, it isn't surprising to hear that Jellyfish are staging one of their own...European beaches are on high alert for "A plague of jellyfish ". Another sweet gift from the people who brough you global warming..

Jellyfish fans? Take a look at these deadly dangerous amazing creatures:

Box Jellyfish: Also known as the sea Wasp-Found in tropical waters-has 4 eyes-a sting will require immediate intivenom, or else CPR will have to keep you alive. It kills more people than any other marine animal. Venom attacks the heart and nervous system and can hurt like hell for weeks while the skin around the sting will usually die.
Portugese man of war: Despite being mistaken for a jellyfish, it isn't one. But it looks similar and packs a hell of a sting. Even tentacles lying on a beach for weeks can be loaded with a lot of pain if stepped on. Hot water will soothe the sting, as will ice. Was it the inspiration for this?

2006-07-29T19:24:00.000+03:00

This is what the beach in Beirut looks like now:

AP Photo AP Photo Ben Curtis

The environmental disaster is taking a heavy toll on the wildlife in the area...victims that are to be added to the already horrific amount of human carnage in this vicious war..and this poison "could affect the livelihood and health of the Lebanese and people in neighboring countries"

Amid the fighting in Lebanon, a budding ecological disaster + Casualties of War: Lebanon’s Trees, Air and Sea + Deadly sludge spoils a place of beauty + Fuel oil and fumes spill from power plant bombed by Israelis + Oil spill adds ecological crisis to Lebanon's agony + Air strike oil spill a 'catastrophe' + EU to help Lebanon cope with major oil spill

2006-07-08T11:23:00.000+03:00

An enormous piece of the Swiss Bernese Alps (the size of two Empire State Buildings) is about to fall off ...Thanks to global warming.

The East face of the Eiger mountain is cracking at great speed and in the next few days is expected to come crashing down. There is a live webcam of the North face here..It is called the Jungfraujoch.

Clint Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction was a film about trying to find an assassin, while on a climbing expedition on the treacherous Eiger.

The North face has ended the lives of over fifty climbers, and is considered one of the most challenging climbs known.

The Schilthorn is a sister mountain to the Eiger, and houses the Piz Gloria revolving restaurant that was featured in the Bond film ' On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

2006-06-26T11:17:00.000+03:00

A little something for our coming few days...I just noticed the cracked monument in the back...and the orange just grows proud despite it..good luck on the 29th everyone..

2006-06-09T18:20:00.000+03:00

On the way back from that lovely snow on the Arctic's edge, the train I had to take back froze.

There is no road to Churchill, only a train and tiny, tiny planes. So instead of the two day train trip down to Winnipeg (Capital of Manitoba province), I have to get on a little propeller plane. Good thing I read The Easy Way to Enjoy Flying to get over my insane fear of planes.

(I used to look like this for entire flights. After a few hours it gets very uncomfortable, and it freaks the flight attendants out. Now I just feel a bit like this )

So I say gooodbye to...'

...and get on this tiny trembling plane (called, funnily enough, Calm Air), which gets me to Winnipeg a day early for my next overnight train to Toronto.

Canadian friends later ask if the plane was painted bright orange, because they are easier to spot when they crash in the middle of snowy nowheres. Gulp.

Coming back from somewhere that is so cold and pristine can make being in a city very jarring. The noise is suddenly really intense and you can smell coke spilled across the street. Wolf senses.

A woman from Greenland, also a volunteer from the research center and one of the frozen-train-switch stranded passengers is a welcome companion in this strange new city. We decide to take a walk and find that there is a film festival in town.

So we walk down to the cute area next to the river, at the Forks , and lo and behold there is a screen made of ice, ready for a night of short films.

The introductions are made from a podium made of ice and we sit next to lit fires, overlooking the people skating on the frozen river, with free hot chocolates in our hands to watch some very good short films.

One of the films deserves a special mention since it is really mind-blowing.

It is called Showa Shinzan which is the name of a mountain. I really have no idea how to describe how staggeringly beautiful and well crafted this mixture of animation, real footage and digital puppetry is. I don't usually go for films like that but this one is just a must-see.

By the time the screenings are over we are covered in beautiful snowflakes and have smiles plastered on our faces for hours.

Talk about making lemonade out of cold weather lemons. That is a happy society for you.

Further reading

The World of the Polar Bear

Northern Lights: The Science, Myth, and Wonder of Aurora Borealis

Arab Cooking on Saskatchewan Homesteads: Recipes And Recollection

The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World

Trans-Canada Rail Guide

Manitoba

Project Thin Ice

2006-06-08T10:40:00.000+03:00

Here is a fun blog you can learn a lot from too..

Eric and Lonnie are two Arctic explorers who are trekking to the North Pole and back and are blogging daily about their experience. You can track their position on the map provided. There are photos and podcasts and chances for you to take action on climate change. It's fun and informative, and certainly worth a peek.

The expedition alerts us to the perils of thinning ice in the Arctic, particularily for the beautiful and at-risk polar bears. They are drowning in large numbers because of the melting ice and they are also being forced to starve because their hunting season is becoming shorter.

2006-05-24T14:01:00.000+03:00

I was sitting in the restaurant I had been having dinner in for all the days I was in Churchill ..that cold and strange town at the Arctic's edge..listening to the only two CD's I had..and reading the only magazine I had brought with me..(there is a lot of 'the only' to be said of this place)..the only store, the only school..the only road..
So, this only magazine happened to have an excerpt of a memoir called Man in The Moon, by Bill Capossere...and here is a little something from it:

"It is difficult to see the stars where we live"..."we are surrounded by convenience;"..."but we cannot see the stars"..."As the bright nighted cities expand daily"..."the stars, pressed by the light of a million artificial suns , recede more and more into the background, their appearance more remembered than experienced, more sung about than seen"..."and there is something in me that sighs at such an empty sky".

I read that piece a few times over dinner, it became a little prayer. A thank you to my experience, because I had seen a sky full of stars every night in this place. Stars so large and so crowded it was like someone had thrown hundreds of diamonds across the dark blue night.

His city, filled with convenience was something in my memory. It was something I didn't even miss. I had forgotten about baqalas, supermarkets, every single kind of cuisine in restaurants scattered all over town...I had forgotten the weekly shipments from Amazon that keep me alive in Kuwait, or the daily strolls through bookstores and cafes and cinemas in cities I have visited..

My life had become one filled with the cold, with good food I got in two places, walks, work and wonder..those huge stars in that clean sky.

There are these beautiful final frontiers where the world is still as it was before we began to ignore it, before we began to hide from it in big houses with high walls..before we began to pave it over...and that world is so very beautiful it makes you forget that you thought you couldn't survive without the latest season of 24, or without your car or your ipod...I had nothing but my few clothes and a warm bed to rest in at the end of the day and I couldn't have been happier..

2006-05-23T23:00:00.000+03:00

A couple of more photos from the Arctic's edge. The camera had to be taken out very quickly and then stuffed back into my jacket so that it wouldn't freeze most of the time.

The Tundra..it reminded me a lot of the Kuwaiti desert..except that it was white and freezing.

This is what you look like going out..

News today that is related to climate change: Drought

2006-03-07T02:36:00.000+03:00

Drought causing alarm in Arizona; snow measuring sites are bare

Arizona's driest winter in at least 65 years is causing alarm among scientists and government agencies, who say it has no precedent.

Britain thirsts for end to record dry conditions

Despite its reputation for wet, dreary weather, London and much of southeastern England are on the verge of the worst drought in nearly a century

FRESH APPEAL AS MILLIONS FACE STARVATION

help millions of people in east Africa who are facing starvation amidst the region's worst drought in years.
The United Nations has said 11 million people are now at risk in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Djibouti.

US Drought Monitor at the Global Climate Change research explorer

What they said in 2005

Climate change 'will prolong' drought conditions

2006-03-02T07:29:00.000+03:00

Alive and well

Wednesday the 1st

2006-02-25T18:28:00.000+03:00

This is how we measured snow crystals for size and shape

2006-02-23T01:56:00.000+03:00

Over thirty minutes to the sites, stuffed in Qamutiks rattling over tundra and iced over ponds and then smooth snow between trees...we left at 9am and got back after 3pm.
We did snow measurements for three different sites. One was a Burnt Forest another was forest that was replanted after a burn and a the third, a Black Spruce Wetland. We had to struggle in knee deep snow to get to a couple of the sites, and let me tell you, a grown woman wailing and trying to breathe through freezing gasps of air is not a pretty sound.
All measurements are done in teams of two or three people. What we do is first we dig a pit then we measure its height and figure out how many different layers of snow are in it. Then we check what type of snow is in each layer (crystals, shapes, sizes and how flat or how intricate the shapes are). Next we measure how hard each layer is and then weigh samples of each layer. Finally, we do cores and Rams. This whole sequence is done twice at each site. Then we get back, with snow samples and measure their conductivity and PH and enter all the day's data into the system.
It can get really cold out there so you have to take walks every now and then to warm up, which for me usually means hopping about ungracefully in the deep snow and maybe falling over a few times. Ok... definately falling over, more than a few times.
We had lunch out in the field today because it was too far to go back and forth. My cheese and mustard sandwich wasn't completely frozen, which I guess is the nice way to remember it.
The ride back was a bit frosty which gets painful, but we couldn't help feeling satisfied at the amount of work we got done, especially since we didn't lose any fingers to the cold. Thankfully, the great research tech. here ( who does everything you can possibly think of and more) had an extra neck/face warmer that saved my nose from a freezing death today.
I even tried out some snow shoes which were fun, and clumsy, and pictures were taken to embarrass me later.
Tomorrow we go to a Tree Island where the pit we dig out might be higher/deeper/taller than any of us...I will try and get pictures.
I am writing this in between rushing in and out to watch the Northern lights fire up all across the sky...They are a pretty green right now, at 9:30pm. They should really get insane at around midnight, so says the Aurora expert who is giving a week's course here. But we are usually fast asleep by then.

Here is a photo of a Husky Puppy you can enjoy. These are the fabulous creatures that pull the sleds here.

2006-02-20T20:01:00.000+03:00

Here are some photos of what it's like up here where the Arctic flirts with the treeline..

This is the moonlight in the early morning

These are the Qamutiks/Hamutiks we ride to the from the sites..Very rough rides.

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This is what we look like stuffed inside a Qamutik/Hamutik

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This is what we do every day...Notice the guy in red inside the hole to measure layers.

2006-02-18T22:17:00.000+03:00

Because I am up in the freezing North studying climate change/environmental change I will just link you to articles that are related to the topic,every now and then, and you can see how climate change will be affecting everyone pretty soon..

Sea levels likely to rise much faster than was predicted

Climate change: On the edge
Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag

2006-02-18T01:48:00.000+03:00

We saw the Northern Lights last night! They were green swirls coming down over the building and dropping at the horizon. Some of them were playful and made pretty twirling paths before fading out and others looked like green tornadoes just fading in and out. It was beautiful and it was betwen 10:00 and 11:30pm, so there were very quiet squeals of awe as we stared out of the windows.

We went out to do snow measurements again today, which is what we will be doing practically every day. It was a bit warmer (-24 degrees) so my hands and feet and face were feeling ok. We also did PH and conductivity studies of the snow samples we brought back from the field, which was another fun new thing to learn.

I got interviewed over the phone by a Canadian magazine that were interviewing our expedition leader/Lecturer and they liked the idea of a Kuwaiti in the arctic. I am fuzzy on what I actually said.

Tomorrow looks to be only -18, and that suddenly feels like summer weather..

2006-02-17T06:14:00.000+03:00

Did I say I liked being cold? I might have to revise that after today...We went out into the field to do snow measurements, and it was cooold. Your fingers and toes hurt, although getting the heat pack warmers into your shoes and your mittens does help. Also your face can't help but get cold because your goggles fog up, and you have to remove them and then your nose goes numb, your eyelashes become ice crystals and you look like the photos of Himalayan explorers, but I'm sure we get used to it in a few days. Right now those of us from warmer climates feel like little heroes for surviving a couple of hours. It will get better as the body adjusts.
The forcast says the northern lights might be out tonight, at 11:30 pm, which is when we are usually passed out from the day of carrying tons of heavy clothing and shivering. But it would be nice to see them, so we might crawl up into the observatory and be on the lookout..
Want to see what Northern Lights look like? See this or this..

2006-02-16T17:41:00.000+03:00

After a three day train journey, two trains and three train stations, a bunch of us are in the, now warmer, -33 degrees of Churchill, Manitoba( With a wind chill of -40 which means it feels like -40) . The train journey will be the subject of it's own post, once I have regained some of the brain cells I lost to the cold.
We are in a research facility that was once a rocket launch site, and now houses the CNSC where we will be spending ten days learning about and helping the researchers measure environmental change in the region (related to climate change).
Even with the 5 layers of clothing I have on, it's a battle to keep the cold wind from getting into little openings where my goggles crept away from the face mask, and to keep fingers and toes from feeling like they are going to fall off...but it is nice to be cold, even this cold.
We have a lecture this morning so I have to run. Now.

2006-02-09T17:45:00.000+03:00

This is the begining of a travelogue...Of a journey from Kuwait to the edge of the arctic.
The first leg of the rehla has already landed me in Toronto, a trip I almost didn't make because the check-in desk at Kuwait airport was closed when I got there. The man at the desk was very upset with how late I was and kept asking me 'why, why? Why are you so late?' I wondered whether getting on the plane would depend on how good an answer I gave. But, I didn't wonder about that until after I had already blurted 'I don't know' .
Tip: Getting on the plane after check-in has closed does not depend on your answer but on the check-in person's mood. And of course you could get there on time and avoid the whole fuss.
After way too many hours in the odd position that you somehow get into on a plane seat, the sun was setting over a huge sea of thick clouds and we dove slowly into them and suddenly there were gold lights all over the landscape. It looked like what Kuwait used to look like from the sky back in the 80's. Just gold lights with bigger golden lights snaking through them to indicate highways.
I am writing from a little, empty internet cafe in the Kensington market district of the city. Enya is on the radio, which makes me want to step outside until the scary music is over. Imagine the love child of Portabello Road and Souq il-Jum3a, and you will know what to expect from K. Market. It is sandwiched between Chinatown to the south and The univesity of Toronto to the north.
Chinatown here is huge, and has a more lived in less touristy feel than in NYC or London or L.A. Hardly anything but logos are in English and it takes over blocks and blocks of the city, which is nice.
Walking in this February winter is an act of bravery for desert dwellers, no matter how much we might like the cold. My attempt to blend in falls flat here, because no one else has ski mittens, a huge hat and a long scarf wrapped several times round their face. I'm not even at my arctic destination yet, so let's wait and see how a warm weather Kuwaiti woman will do there..
Till the next internet cafe playing late 80's music, bye bye..

2006-01-20T18:35:00.000+03:00

Here begins a journey