The exhibits in the museum are a real delight

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

The exhibition ground, which covers over five and a half acres, is on the western shore of the Lake of Lucerne, only a few minutes from the centre of the city. It has a superb setting, with the Rigi on one side and Mount Pilatus on the other across the Lake. Queen Victoria was carried to the top of the Pilatus twenty years before the construction of the present funicular, the steepest in the world. She reached the summit safely and in the best of spirits and humour; for she is reputed to have covered two and a half pages of the Visitor’s Book with praises of the transport arrangements and of the regal panorama which stretched before her.

They include a collection of vintage vehicles: romantic horse-drawn mail-coaches, cars and aeroplanes, and the so-called ‘ginger-bread’ steam-engines, confections designed, one might think, by some Alpine Emett.

In contrast there is a long row of the most up-to-date coaches and engines, which demons­trate how comfort has become increasingly im­portant on the railways in a country long familiar with the demands of crotchety tourists. There are diagrams and charts which reduce the facts and figures of transport, of the tourist trade and of communications to an easily grasped formula; a comprehensive and valuable transport library and archives; and a hall for conferences and film-shows; for the museum is intended as a scientific centre for the study of national and international transport problems.

Among the many models is a magnificent lay­out, to a scale of 1 :90, of the northern approaches of the Gotthard Tunnel (made from the original plans of the Swiss Federal Railways), which took the local club of Model Railway Engineers 25,000 man-hours to construct.

The buildings of the Edinburgh apartments for rent are grouped around a landscaped courtyard, in the centre of which is Switzerland’s oldest lake steamer, the Rigi, built in 1847 by Dichborn & Mare of London for the Steamship Company of the Lake of Lucerne; she has a length of 130 feet, a width of 27 feet, a displacement of 90 tons, and space for 200 passengers. For over a century she plied the Lake of Lucerne and now has found her final anchorage. Visitors can inspect the engine room, start the mechanism and even try their hand at steering, and the navigation of the ship is ex­plained to them; afterwards they may relax in the restaurant in the ship’s deck-saloon.

To get to her land-bound destination, the Rigi went from London to Strasbourg by water across the Channel and up the Rhine. From Strasbourg to Basle she travelled by rail; and then horses took over on the last lap to Lucerne. The Rigi was the forerunner of a fleet of 107 steamers which sail regularly on the Swiss lakes and which, last year, carried over 10,000,000 passengers.

In addition to these, Switzerland also has a merchant fleet on the Rhine numbering more than 384 ships, and a passenger-boat service operating between Basle, Strasbourg and Rotter­dam. Swiss freighters, with a total displacement of 135,000 tons, sail the high seas—an answer to jokes about the ‘Swiss Navy’.

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My first visit to Helsinki

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

This is mirrored in world statistics of per capita consumption of paper and paper board. Ten years ago the U.S.A. used 167 kilograms per person, against 64 in Sweden, 59 in the United Kingdom and 32 in Western Germany. Today the Americans still stand at the top of the list with 187 kilograms, but, with 105 kilograms for Sweden, 90 for the U.K. and 70 for Western Germany, their lead has been reduced. While the American increase was only some 15 per cent in the ten-year period, other countries, including Austria, Italy, France, Mexico, Greece and Spain, have more than doubled their paper consumption. Only India and Pakistan remained unchanged at the bottom of the list, with 1 kilogram per head.

In Norway and Sweden they can claim that their cellulose pulp is shipped to California or Cape Town and returns to Stockholm or Oslo in the form of thin paper wrapped round oranges, that it provides brightly coloured lanterns for Yokohama, or is turned into artificial leather in Buenos Aires, into cement sacks in Philadelphia and newsprint in London; that the Italians make it into artificial silk stockings and the French in Rouen into moulded toys, and that it is in great demand at Indian temple feasts as gay tissue paper. But paper in all its varieties is not the only product of wood pulp, and much of the rising importance of these Norwegian and Swedish industries is due to their own quick realization of the many uses of the by-products. They were soon aware that only half the log becomes cellulose product, the other half being dissolved in the pulp-cooking lye. This had seemed to be a waste-product, but valuable chemicals are now being salvaged from it. Resin substances and the lignin especially, as yet an only half-solved mystery to the scientists, now form the basic ingredients for the manufacture of such varied articles as sausage-skins, rayons, varnishes, glues, turpen­tine, cellophane, smokeless gun-powder, soap, printing-ink, dynamite, sugar, yeast, animal-fodder, alcohol, and even camphor for religious ceremonies in Bali—not to mention the wide range of plastics which have become so in­dispensable in our daily life, the many pharma­ceutical and cosmetic preparations, optical lenses, cockpit covers for aeroplanes, and endless para­phernalia for artificial satellites now circling the earth.

Finland, which has close links with Sweden and Norway, though not a member of E.F.T.A., has perhaps the widest practical experience of the great variety of uses to which the derivatives of northern timber can be put. When cut off from most imports after World War II, and unable to buy textiles or leather, the Finns lived for many years in the ‘paper age’. I well remember my first visit to London apartments short stay in 1947, when my host offered me a glass of brandy. ‘If you don’t smoke, at least have some Cognac or a piece of cake,’ he said, ‘you really must try some of our wood products!’ And after a skad he sighed: ‘If it had not been for our beautiful forests, we should have had nothing to drink all these years.’

In fact, the Finns not only produced some drinkable liquor from their timber, but also the baking powder, yeast and sugar for their cakes. They slept between paper sheets and dressed themselves from head to toe in clothing—hats, gloves, underwear and shoes—made from by­products of their pulp-mills or of material made from dissolving pulp. They drove their railways and their cars on wood and survived the severe winters by the glow of wood fires.

In these northern countries one is constantly aware how the ‘green gold’ of their forests, by opening out the new world, as yet only half-discovered, of macro-molecules of cellulose, is gradually rivalling in economic importance the `yellow gold’ of South Africa and the ‘black gold’ of the coal mines.

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THE DRAMATIC VIEW is real enough, but the setting misleads

Saturday, January 19th, 2013

Dallas is not a southern city—nor is it a western one. Its hinterland was never plantation country. Even in the 19th century it drew its settlers, and consequently its attitudes, from the Middle West almost as much as from the South. More than any other city in Texas, it has looked over its shoulder to the East. By 1900 Dallas was self-consciously separate from its surround­ings; now it aspires to be what its leaders call a world city.

Parts of Dallas haven’t heard about this ambition. At night South Beckley Avenue resembles the black quarter of any small east Texas town. The Fort Worth Cut-off quick­ly leads to seedy hotels, men in undershirts, and fast-food stops. On Elam Road a hand-painted sign offers “Yard Eggs–Okra­Sheep for Sale.” In 1983 Dallas County still had 16,000 acres of wheat, 10,000 acres of sorghum, and 1,600 acres of cotton, as well as 7,000 hogs, 20,000 cattle, and 30,000 horses—more horses than any other county in Texas. (But, despite its legendary reputa­tion, not a single drop of oil.)

In truth, Dallas is two cities, divided north and south by the Trinity River to the west of downtown and Interstate 30 to the east. (The city’s other great physical and psychological barriers are the Central Ex­pressway and the Lyndon B. Johnson Free­way.) Below the Trinity and 30 is southern Dallas: median family income $16,049, nearly half black; above it, North Dallas: median income $26,028, four-fifths white. The apartments for rent are expensive than barcelona apartment rentals.

To be sure, there are ethnic Dallases, as anyone knows who has heard the German voices at the sausage counter of Kuby’s deli, eaten Sichuan crispy rabbit leg at the New Big Wong, or stopped for the traffic light at Fitzhugh and Ross, where the “Don’t Walk” signals have been replaced by an outline of an upraised palm, a symbol understandable to the Asian immigrants who have made this neighborhood their own. Dallas is even starting to brag about these pockets of for­eign culture—they are on the checklist of things a world city ought to have.

North Dallas—generally prosperous, Protestant, and white—sets the tone and temper of the city. North Dallas may be what all middle-class America would be if it could afford it. In the center lies Highland Park—a graceful community by any estima­tion, where nannies push baby strollers on crisp November afternoons, maids answer the telephone “jBueno!” and cyclists pedal the shady streets at dusk. Few cities have made as much of what nature gave them. Is there a more gratifying sight than Lakeside Drive, aflame with azaleas in the spring?

North Dallas is “silicon prairie” too: the bedroom communities of Richardson and Plano in the heart of north Texas’ burgeon­ing electronics industry. The exasperating commute on the narrow and congested Cen­tral Expressway is worth it, many think, be­cause these suburbs have separate school districts, and so are immune to the wrench­ing integration controversies that have kept the predominantly black Dallas Indepen­dent School District in turmoil since 1971.

And North Dallas is the mother city prop­er, rolling north past the LBJ Freeway over the county line, a promoter’s dreamscape of apartments, condominiums, and luxurious homes for the city’s upwardly mobile new money. Dallas is the top market in the Unit­ed States for single-family homes, and most of the construction is in the north. More peo­ple now live north of the LBJ Freeway than in the city of Fort Worth, a fact that startles even Dallasites. Arriving families have be­gun to arrange their lives within this new ur­ban satellite, venturing less and less often into the older parts of the city.

New developments stress what advertis­ers call water amenities—artificial lakes, ponds, and creeks curling among the condo­miniums. Though firewood costs a dollar a stick at the 7-Eleven store, on cool fall eve­nings the pungent smell of many fireplaces perfumes the North Dallas air. Some new homes have as many as four. “There is something very traditional and romantic about a fireplace, even if at best you use one about 25 days a year,” says real estate agent Jean Craver with a contented air.

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The Uncertain State of Puerto Rico

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

THE NIGHT is the sweet stuff of tropi­cal fantasy. A soft wind ruffles the palms overhead; the sea, both dark     and luminescent, pounds the beach beyond the lights of San Juan. A dozen cou­ples, caught up in the Latin rhythms of Hec­tor Lopez’s 12-piece band, whirl and sway in the shadows of a small beachfront night spot, while Hector sings:

What will become of Borinquen My dear God

What will become of my children Of my home.

Borinquen land of paradise . . . pearl of the seas . . . .*

The notes fade, but the bittersweet words of the 1930s lamento by Rafael Hernandez for the island the Indians once called Borin­quen and the Spanish eventually renamed Puerto Rico seem to hang in the night air.

What will become of Borinquen. . . .

“The songwriters back then, they wrote to inspire people to love their island,” Hector said, joining me after the set for a beer. “Just like them, I love it here too, but perhaps it has been too easy living in such a beautiful place. Now we are facing some hard deci­sions about our future. Puerto Ricans are afraid of the changes they may bring. We ar­gue endlessly. Why can’t we just make up our minds?”

Strange conversation amid such lulling beauty. Yet during weeks of crisscrossing the Cordillera Central, the mountainous crown of this bullet-shaped island, and ex­ploring miles of its reef-combed Atlantic and Caribbean coastlines, I heard the same doubts repeated with impatience.

After nearly five centuries of absentee di­rection—first by Spain, then by the United States—Puerto Ricans are wrestling with themselves to resolve, in their own way, the uncertainties of the future.

Lying at the eastern end of the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico is a stepping-stone to the rest of the West Indies, to the U. S. main­land, and to Central America (map, pages 522-3). Caracas is closer than Miami. This proximity to the Latin world is strengthened by bonds reaching back to 1493 when Co­lumbus claimed the island for Spain.

“Emotionally, our ties are Latin,” a coffee grower in the mountain town of Lares told me. “But economically, we are bound to the United States.”

Politics With a Latin Twist

Though newspapers regularly carry broadsides in both Spanish and English from those favoring statehood, indepen­dence, or a continuation of the island’s cur­rent U. S. commonwealth status, the spirit of Puerto Rican politics is strictly Latin. I found signs posted in downtown San Juan bars and back-roads colmados, general stores, advising patrons not to talk politics. (“Otherwise they sometimes end up shoot­ing each other,” a wary owner explained.)

Politics even shoulders its way into Puerto Rico’s traditional winter pastime—base­ball. At a night game in Ponce, the island’s third largest city, the contest between the Santurce Crabbers and the Ponce Lions was all but overshadowed by the arm-waving political debate that broke out in the stands around me. The man in the next seat broke away from the verbal melee long enough to explain: “Politics, you know, is really the na­tional sport here these days.”

Then, remembering the always crucial nationhood-statehood-commonwealth de­bate, he quickly corrected himself. “No, I can’t say national sport. That in itself is a political statement, no?”

But there is more to the ferment than poli­tics. In rural villages, which were dominat­ed in the past by colonial hacienda-style agriculture, Puerto Rican jibaros—country­men—are sharpening new high-technology skills. In urban art studios and at isolated ar­chaeological sites, other islanders struggle to knit the threads of the past into a single Puer­to Rican identity.

With 3.2 million people jammed onto an island roughly 110 miles long by 36 wide, Puerto Rico is nearly as crowded as New Jer­sey. Sometimes this population pressure flashes into violence. One January night in Old San Juan’s Plaza de San Jose, I watched a squad of police suddenly appear and with­out warning pour pistol and shotgun fire over the startled heads of a crowd of young people milling peacefully around the statue of the island’s colonizer and first governor, Juan Ponce de Leon.

When the smoke cleared, I asked a young policeman what was going on in the now scattered crowd.

“Too many people,” was the reply. “We had to break things up.”

“There is a frontier element to our charac­ter,” Dr. Ricardo Alegria told me, when I mentioned the incident to him in his office at Casa Blanca, an airy, whitewashed build­ing near the bay in Old San Juan. Anthro­pologist, author, and perhaps the foremost curator of the island’s cultural heritage, the soft-spoken Alegria is director of the Insti­tute of Puerto Rican Culture.

“In pre-Columbian times,” he said, “Puerto Rico was the frontier between the Taino Indians of the Arawak group and the more warlike Caribs. When Spain ruled the Caribbean world, we were the frontier where other great powers like England and France sought to make inroads into the Spanish Empire.

“Even after the United States acquired Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War in 1898, Congress endowed its prize with the indeterminate status of an unincorporated territory—a sort of political limbo that we are still in today.”

Being a frontier and military post for so long has left its mark in many ways. “In fact,” Alegria said, “the buildings right here were the garrison for American troops that used to be stationed in San Juan. And where we are now sitting was the jail.”

 

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