I note with sadness the passing of Yosemite ski legend Nic Fiore, who died on June 16 2009 in Fresno at the age of 88. He was the ski instructor at Badger Pass from 1948 through 2004 when heart troubles led to his retirement. It’s estimated that he taught over 100,000 people to ski in his nearly 50 years on the Yosemite slopes.

I ran into Nic frequently when I worked in the Village Grocery in Yosemite Valley back in the early ’80s. What a charismatic, energetic man he was; the nicest, most unassuming living legend you’d ever care to meet.

One interesting fact about Nic was his role as the fire guy for the nightly ‘firefall’ ceremony at Glacier Point during the summer season from the ’50s through the late ’60s. Nic was the guy who pushed the glowing embers off the cliff. The National Park Service put the kibosh on it as being a ‘non-natural’ phenomenon; the crowds who gathered in Curry Village to witness the almost mystical event would encroach upon and damage the surrounding meadows. I never saw the firefall, although I grew up with a big picture postcard of it on the wall of the bedroom I shared with my brother.

There’s an episode of Huell Howser’s ‘California’s Gold‘ (YouTube link) with a lengthy feature about the firefall with Nic making a memorable appearance on Glacier Point recounting his memories of those heady days. There’s also this fantastic remembrance of the firefall.

NPR’s All Things Considered ran a segment on this afternoon’s broadcast about the least appropriate wedding songs ever: songs like ‘Send In The Clowns’ as the bride glides down the aisle, or ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ ‘ for the couple’s first dance.

I’ve sung at a ton of weddings over the years, and have a ton of stories to match, but all the songs I’ve sung have been fairly appropriate: ‘One Hand, One Heart‘ from West Side Story, Billy Joel’s ‘Just The Way You Are’ and David Gates’ ‘If’ (both of those at my brother’s wedding), Dan Fogelberg’s ‘Longer’ (I sang it with my brother at my baby sister’s wedding). I sang a song of my own composition at my own wedding, interrupted not only by my own blubbering but the noise of an aircraft landing at Oakland International Airport, the landing pattern of which passed over our backyard ceremony. And of course I’ve sung Paul Stookey’s ‘The Wedding Song’ at a great majority of all the other weddings at which I’ve performed.

I sang at a wedding at Villa Montalvo near San Jose where I sang a snippet of a different song as each bridesmaid walked across the lawn. I was singing some pre-ceremony music when it started to rain at an outdoor wedding in the Santa Cruz mountains – I managed to fake my way through ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ and ‘I Love A Rainy Night’. I’ve sung ‘Ave Maria’, I’ve sung ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, I was even in the ‘wedding singer’ business in partnership with a videographer – had a demo tape and everything!

I suppose the most unusual wedding I ever attended, much less sang at, was one at the Home Church in Campbell CA. I guess I got this gig because I was active in the church’s worship team as well as leading worship for the singles minstry on Friday nights. Anyway, the song the bride wanted me to sing as she walked down the aisle was Tanya Tucker’s ‘Would You Lay With Me In A Field Of Stone’:

Would you lay with me, in a field of stone?
If my needs were strong, would you lay with me?

Should my lips grow dry, would you wet them, dear.
In the midnight hour, if my lips were dry.

Pretty racy stuff, no? Especially in a church!

Anyway, there were TEN attendants – ten bridesmaids dressed in square dance dresses complete with flouncy petticoats and cowgirl boots; ten groomsmen in western-cut tuxedos with ‘smile pockets’ at each breast of the jackets – in peach, no less.

But the pièce de résistance, if you will, was the bride, kicking up her heels in a beautiful virgin-white square dance dress, virgin-white cowgirl boots, and a virgin-white cowgirl hat under her virgin-white veil.

Quite the sight.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling

No doubt you’ve been hearing about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two female journalists from Current TV (which, amazingly, has not a single mention of this crisis on its website) who were detained by the North Korean government on its border with China, accused and convicted of ‘hostility toward the Korean people’, and subsequently sentenced to 12 years of ‘reform through labor’.

I’ve been wondering about hard labor. My view of that concept is sadly informed by images of the 3 Stooges dressed in stripes, shackled to iron balls, smashing huge rocks with sledge hammers (or on each other’s heads). This is more like the truth:

The most salient feature of day-to-day prison-labor camp life is the combination of below-subsistence food rations and extremely hard labor. Prisoners are provided only enough food to be kept perpetually on the verge of starvation. And prisoners are compelled by their hunger to eat, if they can get away with it, the food of the labor-camp farm animals, plants, grasses, bark, rats, snakes — anything remotely edible.

Many of the kwan-li-so (prison camps) involve mining for coal, iron deposits, gold, or various other ores, or logging and wood-cutting in the adjacent mountains. Prisoners undertake farm labor during planting and harvesting seasons. This back-breaking labor is often performed twelve or more hours per day, seven days per week, with time off only for national holidays (such as New Year’s Day and Kim Il Sung’s and Kim Jong Il’s birthdays, for example.

The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps

Then there’s this:

Reports indicated that conditions in the political prison camps were harsh. Systematic and severe human rights abuses occurred throughout the prison and detention system. Detainees and prisoners consistently reported violence and torture. According to refugees, in some places of detention, prisoners received little or no food and were denied medical care. Sanitation was poor, and former labor camp inmates reported they had no changes of clothing during their incarceration and were rarely able to bathe or wash their clothing.

The penal code prohibits torture or inhumane treatment; however, many sources continued to confirm their practice. Methods of torture and other abuse reportedly included severe beatings; electric shock; prolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse; and forcing mothers recently repatriated from China to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants. Defectors continued to report that many prisoners died from torture, disease, starvation, exposure to the elements, or a combination of these causes.

The US State Department’s 2008 report on
human rights in North Korea

The Today show recently aired some film, possibly archived, that showed prisoners shouldering 8-foot logs and carrying them from one side of an enclosed area to the other…ostensibly all day long, back and forth.

Thankfully, there are those in South Korea in a position to know who believe these women will never see the inside of a prison camp, that this is more about showing up the US than averting and punishing the women for any real threat they pose. Says one South Korean pundit:

It’s more likely…that they’ll end up in a hotel until the US negotiates their release. This is so because it would be stupid to put them in a prison camp only to release them later. These women are journalists; what would you expect them to do once they’re released?

In other words, if there is a plausible reason to believe that Ling and Lee will ever be released, it would be embarrassing to the North Korean government for these journalists to eventually report on their experience in a prison camp.

While the two will probably be given some kind of busy work to do, it is more likely that they will be housed at a ‘guest villa’…and treated at a relatively high humanitarian standard: good food, no beatings, and so on… at least for as long as North Korea perceives that the United States is interested in their welfare and release.

Celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2009

I’ve mentioned Pink’s Hot Dogs several times in the years that I’ve been living in SoCal – I’ve taken significant others to stand in the long line, even visiting family members have had the privilege of the long wait for sausage nirvana.

There’s an article in today’s Los Angeles Times that tells a little bit of its story – including the fact that their reputation is still pretty young.

Hmm – suddenly I have a craving for a Chicago Spicy…

At Pink’s hot dog stand in Hollywood, keeping it in the family – Los Angeles Times.