Peace Walk

Walk this way: Cross-country marchers cut through Shelby County
By JUSTIN AVERETTE / News Editor / Posted: Friday, June 6, 2008 4:20 PM CDT


MONTEVALLO - When Kid Valance gets where he's going, he'll have gone through 11 states, six pairs of shoes and countless foot blisters.
It's not easy walking 2,800 miles.


Longest Walk 2 participants march up Highway 25 toward Columbiana on Friday. The group is walking from San Francisco, Calif. to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness about Native American issues. (Reporter Photo / Justin Averette)


Valance and about 50 other people trekked through Shelby County last week on their way to Washington, D.C.

The group made up part of the Longest Walk 2, a five-month journey from San Francisco to D.C. that hopes to bring awareness to Native American issues.

The walk commemorates the 30th anniversary of a similar event that took place in 1978. That walk resulted in historic changes for Native Americans, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

"This walk has changed my life," said San Francisco native Mari Villuna, 27. "I'm walking for my people, this land. Most people wake up thinking, 'Ugh, another day of work.' I love to wake up and greet the sun. That's beautiful."

The Longest Walk 2 covers two routes, one northern and one southern, that will cover more than 8,000 miles total. People are invited to join in and participate in the walk at any point, for any distance.

The southern route came through Shelby County last week.

The walkers showered and had a hot meal at the University of Montevallo campus Thursday. They camped at George Roy Park in Calera that night.

"They came through we opened our campus up to them," said Monte Perkins, an admissions counselor at UM.

The group walked up Alabama 25 on Thursday and Friday on their way to Sylacauga.

The walkers average about 20 miles a day. At night, they camp out, or if they're lucky, they stay at churches, school gyms or college campus.

To keep good time and make mileage, runners add another 60 or so miles a day, to make sure they make it to D.C. by July 11.

Kid Valance, 50, is one of those runners and describes his heritage as "Not sure ... maybe Scottish?"

Despite not being a native, he started participating in similar run events in 1991, after meeting another runner in a record store.

"I've always felt a deep connection with running," said Valance. "When I met this man, it was the first time I heard there was spiritual running - a way to pray for the earth as you run. It just feels natural to me."

Valance is a singer-songwriter and says he is fortunate to be able to take five months off at a time.

"Those of us who get to do this are lucky. We know there are people who care about this cause, who can't do something like this," said Valance. "It makes you very humble, to be a representative."

Valance said his favorite part of walking across the country is the friendships that develop along the way.

"These people turn into family. It's hard to say goodbye," he said.

Jun Yasuda, 59, came to America from Tokyo more than 30 years ago; one of the first things she did was sign up for the first Longest Walk.

"At the time, I had not English, no knowledge of native culture, I just walked," Yasuda said. "During the walk, I realized that native people have a deep respect for nature and a deep spirituality."

Since then, she has also walked across America eight times, protesting nuclear weapons, big oil and the destruction of the environment.

'I keep supporting these causes and love of nature," said Yasuda. "It's not about supporting this 30 years ago and again today ... it was about supporting something this whole time."

"Another Endangered Species"

Another Endangered Species, by Aaron Howard

Another endangered species: This one leads to the extinction of ideas
By AARON HOWARD


Languages are dying in our world at a faster rate than mammals, plants or the polar ice caps, according to K. David Harrison, Swarthmore College assistant professor of linguistics. On our planet, 6,912 distinct human languages have been classified. By 2101, half these languages will be extinct. At present, 10 percent of these languages have 99 or fewer active speakers. Harrison is a specialist in endangered languages. In his new book, "When Languages Die" (Oxford University Press), Harrison said that languages have been shaped by people to serve as repositories for culture. When languages die, it means the extinction of ideas, ways of knowing and parts of the human experience.

David Harrison flanted by "Old Man" Patrick Nunadjul and Mona Nunadjul, among the last speakers of the Magati Ke language, Western Australia.

The process of language death usually begins with political or social discrimination against its speakers or the language, Harrison said. This can take the form of official state policies to suppress speech (as in the former Soviet Union) or benign neglect (as in the United States with its Native American language speakers). The critical point is reached when young speakers choose to speak the more dominant tongue, instead of their native language. A language no longer learned by its young is a moribund language.

Once a language becomes moribund, it rapidly declines, as its use becomes more restricted to the home and to its elders. The elderly speakers become invisible and, in time, begin to forget.

"The decision to give up a language is typically made by children under duress," Harrison argued. "It's not a freely made decision. I've spoken to many elders, and they universally express a sense of loss and regret. The elders say, 'I was made ashamed or punished for speaking my language.' So, it was almost never a free decision. And, it certainly doesn't fit with our idea of human rights, of all groups having their own languages and cultures. Of course, there are some benefits to not having so many languages to translate but [not when] the process getting there is one of coercion."

David Harrison interviewing Opino Gamango, a speaker of Sora, in Orissa, India.

Harrison said the most threatened cultures and languages are those of indigenous peoples. These are places on the globe where populations are small and sparsely populated. Alaska's 86,000 indigenous population, for example, speaks 21 different languages – the largest number of languages spoken anywhere on Earth. English rapidly is extinguishing these languages.


When a language dies, Harrison argued, knowledge about the natural world, myth and beliefs systems and a certain human cognitive capacity contained in language systems are lost. "Besides these other things, what is lost is a people's place in the universe. I've heard this sentiment expressed by Native American groups: If we lose our language, we lose our sense of who we are and our connection to the land. What we [English-speakers] seem to be missing is that close connection to environment that indigenous people feel. We don't even think of our language like that. Since land is a big part of people's identity, it feeds into the problem of aboriginal people who have been pushed off their land and lost their language and their knowledge, especially in North America."

Increasing urbanization also is a key factor in language death. Cities don't provide a supportive environment for small languages. "Kids go to school where the curriculum is going to be in the majority language. You don't have a lot of bilingual teaching going on," Harrison said.

Jews, as a people scattered throughout the world, developed a number of unique languages, many of which are now largely extinct. At the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, most of the Jews in Israel spoke Aramaic. The original Hebrew language already had become mainly associated with religious life In the Middle Ages, Judeo-Arabic became the major literary language. The rise of Yiddish in Europe and Ladino in the Mediterranean occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries. Smaller Jewish groups in Europe spoke Judeo-Italian, Yevanic (a Greek-Jewish dialect) and Karaim.

The Karaim language is a Turkic language with Hebrew influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish or Ladino. It is spoken by Crimean Karaites (also known as Karaim), ethnic Turkic adherents of Karaite Judaism in the Crimea, Lithuania, Poland and western Ukraine. It has very few remaining active speakers. Harrison met one of the last speakers of the Lithuanian dialect of Karaim, Mykolas Firkovicius, during his fieldwork in Trakai and Vilna in 1994 and 1996.

"When I sat down with Mykolas, he counted off on both of his hands maybe a dozen remaining speakers," Harrison said. "He was one of the most fluent. He spoke the language, knew all of the ritual language and could perform all of the ceremonies. So, he was highly skilled at the language.

"The Karaim are a Crimean Turkic people who adopted a form of Judaism quite early, maybe the 14th century. They were invited to Lithuania in the 14th century and have been there consistently. They lost their language in the usual way: existing in a multilingual environment where Russian, Polish and Lithuanian were all spoken. I've been in a Karaim household where the kids speak Lithuanian, the television is broadcasting in Russian and the elderly speak Polish [which was the former dominant language before World War II]. Only the very oldest generation speaks Karaim.

"They are making an attempt at language revitalization. But you can't judge the success of this project. in the short term."

Can moribund or extinct languages be revived? Hebrew is the classic example of successful language revitalization. The success of Irish Gaelic is less certain. Both these languages are official languages of political states, and they have millions of people who potentially speak those languages. A better example of true revitalization, Harrison said, is the Hawaiian language, which is making a dramatic comeback.

"Hawaiians have become a model for other groups," Harrison said. "They've created language nests (pünana leo) for four to six (edit: 10 hours) hours each day in which preschool children are put in care of elders who speak the language. So, that model seems to work. But most of the communities cannot mount that kind of effort and resources. Once the number of speakers gets below a threshold number – we don't know the number – revival seems unlikely.

"And, we have languages like Navajo, which is spoken by 150,000 people, but is in serious danger. Youngsters are not speaking it. The transmission rate, the percentage of children in the community who are speaking and keeping it as a first language, is very low. As long as you can motivate children to speak the language, you're creating a new generation of speakers."

And that's why Harrison is not worried about Yiddish becoming an extinct language. Children are learning the Yiddish language, especially in the ultra-Orthodox community in the United States and Israel. "Yiddish may not have the large numbers of speakers it had prior to World War II," Harrison said, "but, in terms of language transmission, Yiddish is robust."


For information on efforts to document the world's dying languages, visit www.livingtongues.org.

Leona Wood

FOUNDER: The Aman Folk Ensemble under Wood gained an international reputation for its programming scope and the versatility of its performers.Leona Wood, 86; founder of L.A.'s Aman Folk Ensemble

By Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 20, 2008

Leona Wood, a painter, teacher and expert in Middle Eastern dance who co-founded the Aman Folk Ensemble -- once the largest and best-known dance company in Southern California -- died in her West Los Angeles home Feb. 7. She was 86.

Wood always liked to say that she had two careers in the arts, gaining renown as a painter starting in her teenage years and later working as a designer and illustrator in New York City.

But her early ballet studies ultimately led her in another direction, and along with her teaching activities, she developed performing and staging skills that led her to form and direct Aman with choreographer Anthony Shay. They worked together for 15 years.

"Leona Wood was a pioneer in the field of staging traditional Middle Eastern dances," Shay said this week. "She had exacting standards in both her visual and choreographic productions and always displayed sensitivity to the cultures which her dances represented."

Wood was born near Puget Sound in Washington on May 21, 1921. She had an athletic childhood but learned to play the piano and studied ballet in Seattle with Ivan Novikoff (who later taught Robert Joffrey). She also learned her first folk dances at that time but soon abandoned dance for painting. Early in that career, she had a one-woman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, then received a fellowship to study design in San Francisco and later exhibited in Europe, New York and on the West Coast.

In 1939, she married Alaska-born physicist Phillip Harland and soon moved to New York City, working as a designer for Dorland International, Pettingell and Fenton. After World War II, she came West to head Fenton's Los Angeles office.

In the 1950s, her paintings adorned the De Beers "A Diamond Is Forever" ad campaign, and she also exhibited widely, with the Lane Galleries in Los Angeles serving as an outlet for her work for more than a quarter-century. Art patron Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of New York City Ballet, became one of her most enthusiastic advocates on the East Coast.

A 1958 profile of her in American Artist noted that "reviewers wrote of her 'beautiful masterly works and were reminded of Arch-Renaissance perfection.' " The profile also praised her skill as a sculptor, mosaic artist and goldsmith, and Wood herself was quoted as saying "I always compare what I am doing with the past. This saves me from the egotism of the painters who only measure their work against that of their contemporaries."

But dancing began to occupy more of her energy, and by the early 1960s, she and Harland (as her percussion-accompanist) had become part of the Westwood folk dance scene as well as performing in Hollywood's Greek Village. Shay told The Times in a 1989 interview that he became entranced with Wood's belly-dancing and wanted her to join a UCLA recreational group called the Village Dancers.

"She was the kind of mesmerizing, spectacular performer," he said, "who could take her specialty back to its roots, and Phil was a brilliant musician. They would have been a terrific asset to any company."

In 1963, the campus group was re-conceived by Wood and Shay as Aman, eventually becoming the first locally based dance company to perform at the Los Angeles Music Center and gaining an international reputation for the scope of its programming and the versatility of its performers.

"Aman's eclecticism is a reminder that America is a nation of people from many nations," wrote Jack Anderson in a 1979 New York Times review. "Moreover Aman implies that national traditions should be cherished, rather than scorned. And by making its programs so varied, it expresses the hope that different cultures may exist harmoniously."

Los Angeles Times music and dance critic Martin Bernheimer put it more simply, calling Aman "one of the finest ethnic companies anywhere. Repeat: anywhere."

In the 1970s, Wood's writings about dance appeared not only in the Dance Research Journal and other scholarly publications but also on record jackets. She produced field recordings of music linked to the dance traditions she was researching, and she received a choreography and production grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

By the end of that decade, conflicts within Aman led to Shay's departure, but it prospered, for a time, with Wood working even harder, even as she shouldered new teaching responsibilities at UCLA. "Building and maintaining a company is like climbing a mountain," she told The Times in 1979. "At each higher level, you establish a base camp and work from there. It gets harder as you get higher -- each climb is shorter because it's steeper."

By the early 1980s, Aman's budget had shrunk from a peak of $1 million to $200,000. It is now defunct, a casualty of the erosion of dance support on the national level and too many Aman regimes with different artistic priorities. But even in the company's last years, Wood's choreographies retained their old magic.

In a 1996 Times review (by this writer), her newly revived Algerian women's ensemble was praised for conveying the sense "that the colorful, fascinating dance on view represented merely one detail in a complex cultural panorama -- that each of the eight women on stage knew every souk and back alley in North Africa and could tell more tales than Scheherazade, if given the incentive."

Harland died in 1980. Wood had a series of strokes beginning in 2006. She is survived by her sister-in-law, Patricia Gaffney, and Aisha Ali, her god-daughter.

Segal is The Times' dance critic.

Flight from Chicago to London

LOL....I know this is NOT a laughting matter....But honestly after several overseas flights with shoulder to shoulder fellow passengers sneezing and coughing around me....are you kidding this would have been a dream flight!!! LOL




Plane flies five passengers from US to London

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board.

The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.


Friends of the Earth said it was 'obscene' to waste so much fuel flying an almost empty plane
It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behaviour by green lobby groups.

The latest "eco- scandal" flight took place on February 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London.

While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be accommodated. Those who did fly were upgraded to the business class cabin.

But while they enjoyed lavish hospitality, the airline was accused of an "obscene waste of fuel" by Friends of the Earth.

advertisementIt is estimated that each passenger produced 43 tons of CO2 – consuming enough fuel to carry a Ford Mondeo around the world five times.

Operating the near empty flight is estimated as having cost American about £30,000. But a spokesman said it had no alternative.

"With such a small passenger load we did consider whether we could cancel the flight and re-accommodate the five remaining passengers on other flights.

"However, this would have left a plane load of west-bound passengers stranded in London Heathrow who were due to fly back to the US on the same aircraft.

"We sought alternative flights for the west-bound passengers but heavy loads out of London that day meant that this was not possible."

Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner said: "Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passenger's carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.

"Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change."

my youngest child's birthday

It is odd how quickly the years zip by when your a parent. I have two children, my oldest is my son Joshua and my youngest is my daughter Petite Jamilla. Both my kids are as different as night and day, my son is conservative and settled, my daughter more of the gypsy soul. I feel blessed to have been able to watch both my kids turn into the interesting adults they become. I am proud their choices in life and the directions they have taken. My son was born on his grandmothers birthday and my daughter was born shortly after our 9th wedding anniversary. Birthdays should be celebrated with a cup of tea, a favorite cookie, a scented candle and a few moments to reflect on how blessed we are to have each other in this journey called life.
Happy Birthday PJ!
Love
momma

Petite Jamilla returns from China

PJ just got back last week from Bejiing China....can you believe that, sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe all the places she has been and is continuing to go to. This was the first time any BDSS members have gone there to teach and perform. This time the rat pack was Petite Jamilla, Sonia and Moria they taught a week long workshop, a couple television interviews, newspaper coverage as well and a school full of tentive students. PJ was some what apprehensive about going but once there she loved it with the exception of the cold weahter like 19 degrees! And the smog was troublesome to her too, she woke up every day thinking it was fog that just never went away! lol
I have enjoyed hearing about all her stories and what seeing all her pictures, it is just unbelievabke that she was able to go, I would have never dreamed it possible even 5 years ago, simply amazing!
Hopefully she will have time to write some stuff for her fans site to share with you all.
Tomorrow she is off to LA again this time to shoot a new instrucional DVD....so that will be fun and I think she is looking forward to the dvd shoot.
Guess that is about it for now, just wanted to drop a line here and let everyone knows a little about what is happening in the world of PJ! lol

Ahmed Diaa Eddin

LA TImes

EYE FOR DETAIL: Belly dance outfit designer Ahmed Diaa Eddin oversees a seamstress at his store in Cairo. “Tastes change, beauty stays the same,” he says. His customers include not only dancers, but enthusiasts and even Arab women looking to entice their husbands. But, he says, “the golden days of belly dancing are gone.”

Ahmed Diaa Eddin is one of Egypt's top designers of belly dance costumes and has dressed the art's finest proponents. But at 60, he but waxes nostalgic for the days when more was left to the imagination.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 14, 2007

CAIRO -- In a shop that looks and feels like the inside of a vaudeville trunk, Ahmed Diaa Eddin sits amid beads and sequins bargaining hard with a woman from Saudi Arabia over satin and chiffon.

"200."

"The price is 400."

"200."

He won't budge. Neither will she. There's a stare-down, but Diaa Eddin hasn't spent 40 years designing belly dance costumes to let his wares go cheap. He knows the contours of a woman's body and the intricacies of her mind. He waits. The night outside the open window is cool; he's listened to the street below since he was a boy in this same cluttered room watching his father sew purses for rich ladies. The Saudi woman makes another offer, the deal is done. She walks out followed by her happy husband.

"I'm famous. Google me and I pop up all over," Diaa Eddin says. "Nobody taught me this art. I mastered it. I am the first person in Egypt to export belly dancing costumes. I am the oldest designer in my trade. I love to watch the dancer. I love the way the costume flows. The truth is, though, you may design a beautiful, elaborate costume, but if an ordinary woman wears it, it won't attract much attention."

He ponders this for a while, sort of lets it hang there, so you feel his pain. In need of a shave and with glasses resting on his bald head, Diaa Eddin rummages through his shop, a sparkly, rhinestoned, un-spooled thread kind of place with fading photographs of dancers, a computer misted in dust and, hanging above it all, an airbrushed picture of himself with a smirk that suggests he might whisper something intoxicating or perhaps slightly offensive into your ear.

At 60, there's a hint of nostalgia about him, as if somewhere along the way he slipped out of a Peter Lorre movie and can't quite find his way back to those times when the best part of his craft and the arousal it evoked were a swatch of silky fabric, a sliver of imagination and the mystery of the unseen.

Egypt's best dancers have worn his costumes, women who can earn up to $3,000 for a single show. He knows the nightclubs, the orchestras, the bartenders, the discreetly sipped drink, the scent of the water pipe, and that feeling when the lights go down and the tables fall quiet as the tabla drum sounds and the silhouette appears, sometimes in high heels, sometimes not.

"Tastes change, beauty stays the same," he says. "But, you know, the golden days of belly dancing are gone. It's deteriorating all over Egypt. Most of my costumes are exported. This country has many dancers, but the quality is poor. I blame these music videos. They're harming belly dancing. You get this director who hires five or six girls, dresses them in belly dancer outfits, but they're not professional. They can't dance. But people see them on TV and they get hired in clubs. This is what's wrong."

Even Mohammed Ali Street, the fabled strip of belly dancing, is not what it used to be. The artists have slipped away to other neighborhoods, leaving behind upholsterers and tailors, men with swift hands and steady feet working vintage Singer sewing machines. It's a street that shows you a lot, but tells you little, a street of sweat and wrinkled cotton suits, of crinkled newspapers and rambling conversations, a tiny cramped universe shared by cucumber sellers, the ancient professors and the fast-talking cellphone salesmen.

"I began as a costume designer on this street when I was 16, but I've been in and out of nightclubs since I was 9," Diaa Eddin says. "I was a loser at school. But if I hadn't been a loser back then I wouldn't be famous today. . . . Sometimes a woman will come to me today. She wants an outfit, but she doesn't have big breasts, so I have to do a bit of cosmetic surgery on the costume to make her look bigger."

Women come and go, flicking through catalogs, scrutinizing folds of satin and Lycra, shaking bead boxes. Some of them are shopping for bridal gifts while others, like the Saudi woman, who wore a hijab and covered all but her eyes, want to entice husbands in the privacy of their homes. Some belly dance for art, many ripple and shake their hips for exercise, especially in Scandinavia and Germany, which imports more of Diaa Eddin's costumes than any other nation, including the United States, which comes in third.

"Have you heard that story about the American woman?" he says, settling back in his chair, swiveling every now and then and standing up to stretch his legs. "She had a spinal injury and started belly dancing for rehabilitation. She came to Egypt and danced for three years. It's a famous story."

Diaa Eddin enjoys imparting knowledge, stitching together a bit of this and a bit of that, giving thoughts shape. He's busy, but in no particular hurry, talking to a customer, answering the phone, looking over a costume, moving through his office like a magpie, collecting needles, spindles and ideas.

"Belly dancing is a legacy from the time of the pharaohs," he says. "Ancient Egyptians believed the belly dancer had an easier time in labor during childbirth. The costume is a sign of joy. It shows the allure of a woman's body. Egyptian women are inherently good at belly dancing. I don't know why, they just are. Today, though, it's the foreigners who like the traditional costumes and the Egyptians prefer the more revealing, tighter-fitting style."

The office is crowded. A professional dancer, in a ponytail and a pink sweat shirt, sits next to Diaa Eddin. She prefers Lycra to chiffon. He has lost a number of clients. Renowned dancers Hendeyya and Sahar Hamdi became devout Muslims. They wear hijabs and keep their midriffs covered, part of an Islamic revival here in recent years.

"I think there were motives other than religion," he says. "Some of the dancers and actresses taking up the veil now just want to get married."

It bothers him, but he doesn't linger. There are new orders to fill. Everyone on Mohammed Ali Street knows who he is. Their children know and their grandchildren know. He's the man with the lighted window and the tiny neon sign with the curvy girl. He's got pricked fingers and miles of thread, and the women come, slipping through the grit of ordinary life to buy something exotic. They hurry home through the night as if someone just handed them a bag of magic. Diaa Eddin keeps working, wandering the cramped rooms of his shop, plucking fabric from racks, arranging sequins and beads.

Holiday Hafla and Petite Jamilla workshop

HOLIDAY HAFLA & PETITE JAMILLA WORKSHOP! Dec 15 (Sat)
Dec 15
Childrens Dance Foundation
Homewood, Alabama

Petite Jamilla Workshop
2pm-4pm Choreography Class
$55 if paid before Dec 1 and $65 if after Dec 1
can pay with visa or master card
contact
Jamillarasa@yahoo.com to register
NO cameras/videos in workshop

(dinner break and get ready for the hafla)

Dec 15
SOJ Holiday Hafla
Childrens Dance Foundation Homewood
6pm-9pm
Workshop participates attend FREE
Workshop participates are welcome & encouraged to perform in hafla!
non-workshop participates/audience $10
contact
Jamillarasa@yahoo.com
(The Hafla is video/camera friendly)

Vendors will be on site for all your holiday shopping needs!

share the word with your friends and students and we hope to see you all there!


*PLEASE NOTE, the hafla is set up for workshop participates to get first dibs on performances, there are limited slots available and they go quickly!
__________________________________________________

Great Wheel of China

Great Wall old hat as Beijing eyes Great Wheel By Ben Blanchard
Mon Nov 5, 3:20 AM ET
yahoo news



You've climbed the Great Wall of China, now Beijing wants you to "fly" the Great Wheel of China.

Higher than both the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer, which opens in March, the Beijing Great Wheel will tower 208 metres (682 ft) when finished in 2009, executives said on Monday, which would make it the highest and largest in the world.

The giant ferris wheel will have 48 air conditioned observation capsules, each of which can carry up to 40 passengers, and on a good day even the Great Wall is expected to be visible in the mountains to Beijing's north.

"The wheel itself is a nice add-on to the city. It's a new icon for the city," Great Wheel Corp Chief Executive Officer Stephan Matter told Reuters ahead of the ground-breaking ceremony.

The wheel will stand in eastern Beijing's Chaoyang Park, where beach volleyball events will take place at next year's Olympics, and have far greater capacity than the London Eye, Matter said.

"The capsule in London caters for 25. Ours will cater for 40 people. It's like a little bus. It's 18 tonnes heavy. It's like your living room," he added.

Costing a total of around 200 million euros (139 million pounds), tickets will go for about 100 yuan (6 pounds) a head, Matter said, though final prices have yet to be decided.

"The Beijing one will be very affordable," he added.

The experience will be like flying, said chairman Florian Bollen, whose company is also involved in the Singapore wheel.

"It will allow the people of Beijing to rise up and see the city from a completely new perspective," he said. "It is a flight."

Matter brushed off worries Beijing's notorious smog may spoil the party.

"It is an issue, but it's increasingly better," he said. "I believe the Chinese government will improve it further and yes you will have pollution, but the wheel itself is an attraction. From that perspective, I'm not worried at all."

"Traveling to the birthdayplace of the blues"

Traveling to the birthplace of the blues By JUSTIN M. NORTON, For The Associated Press
Mon Oct 8, 3:24 PM ET



Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson's death has been linked to a jealous husband, the supernatural and pneumonia. So it's unsurprising that there are three separate graves bearing his name in the rural Mississippi Delta. I'm looking for one of those graves now during a drive through towns like Greenwood and Itta Bena.

I eventually find the monument at the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church on a desolate stretch of road. The text on one side of the grave, taken from a famous Johnson blues number, reads: "You may bury my body by the highway side." A photo of Johnson — one of two known to exist — shows the guitarist with pensive face cradling a guitar. The attention would probably astound Johnson, a traveling musician who only recorded twice and didn't live to see his 30th birthday. Johnson's graves were among numerous sites I visited on a road trip through rural Mississippi to visit the birthplace of the blues.

I arrive in Clarksdale after a daylong drive through Oklahoma and Arkansas, passing the famed "Crossroads" of blues legend as I enter town. The Crossroads have a special place in blues mythology as the location where aspiring musicians sold their soul to the Devil in exchange for musical prowess. A bluesman could wait at a crossroads at dark for the Devil, who would take the musician's guitar, tune it, and hand it back. The musicians could then play any song they wanted.

When blues artists referred to the Crossroads, they were likely talking about any number of backroads intersections, but the story has stuck to the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale.

The story is usually associated with Robert Johnson, who hints at the diabolical on songs like "Hellhound on My Trail." But the myth of a Crossroads deal would be better attached to guitarist Tommy Johnson, who boasted about a backroads pact with a shadowy apparition. The Crossroads don't seem as menacing now with a kitschy sign of interlocking guitars marking the spot. But they are a sign that what matters here is the music — and your ability to play it well.

After a quick stop at my hotel, I drive to Hicks' Variety Foods, a famed Delta eatery where the clientele has included presidents and foreign leaders. Hicks serves scrumptious ribs and fried catfish but is perhaps best known for tamales. I order a half-dozen tamales and sides of baked beans and coleslaw. The coarse, spiced tamale beef is expertly cooked and the coleslaw succulent.

I then head to Ground Zero, a blues club owned by actor Morgan Freeman and his business partners. The club, with beat-up sofas on the front porch and graffiti and old blues posters adorning the walls inside, aims to recreate the feeling of an authentic juke joint, although it is probably more upscale. On this Saturday night, Little Howlin' Wolf belts blues classics like "Spoonful" and "Bright Lights Big City" in a gravely voice, backed by an ace harmonica player and band.

My room for the night is a renovated sharecropper's cabin at the Shack-Up Inn at the old Hopson Plantation. The inside of the "Cadillac Shack" is covered with old blues posters and memorabilia.

Sunday starts with an early lunch at Abe's BBQ at the Crossroads, where I eat a pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw. Over lunch, I locate all three of Robert Johnson's graves with the help of "Blues Traveling," an excellent guidebook to blues sites by Steve Cheseborough. My stops include a memorial at the Little Zion church outside of Greenwood, which most experts now consider Johnson's most likely burial site.

In Tutwiler, a once-thriving town with numerous abandoned storefronts, I find a large mural near the old train depot that points visitors to the gravesite of Aleck "Sonny Boy" Williamson, one of the most influential harmonica players of all time. The site where composer W.C. Handy heard a musician playing "Goin' Where The Southern Crosses the Dog" — a moment that inspired him to record the blues — is also located in Tutwiler. Sonny Boy's grave is tucked back among miles of fields and in a burial site crammed with handmade grave markers. Two harmonicas and a half-bottle of gin sit on the gravestone — a fitting tribute to the musician who recorded "Fattening Frogs for Snakes" and "Your Funeral My Trial."

I start off Monday at the Delta Blues museum in downtown Clarksdale. The collection includes one of B.B. King's "Lucille" guitars, a harmonica played by Charlie Musselwhite and Mississippi Fred McDowell's gravestone. I then walk downtown to Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art, a shop that freely mixes blues and offbeat Southern art. Among the items for sale are hand-crafted Crossroads signs, books and blues albums - some by young or undiscovered artists.

I then drive to Dockery Farms, outside of Cleveland, which once employed Charley Patton. Patton was a sharecropper, now known as "King of the Delta Blues singers," who influenced virtually every Mississippi bluesman after him and recorded standards like "High Water Everywhere." Legend has it that you can hear ghostly voices and guitars if you strum your guitar near the Dockery site at night.

My final day in the Delta, I take another drive to Indianola, best known as B.B. King's birthplace, and then visit the Highway 61 Blues Museum in Leland, crammed with blues artifacts like a pair of rare Charley Patton 78s in a glass display case. To close the day, I visit Patton's grave in nearby Holly Ridge.

Other stops during my stay included a short trip to the Delta Blues Hall of Fame at Delta State University; a drive past the Bolivar County Courthouse, where Patton applied for numerous marriage licenses, and a drive through Clarksdale's New World district, once a bustling shopping area for black residents. A traveler with more time could tour nearby Helena, Ark., Memphis, or find more treasured blues sites tucked into the Mississippi fields.

Some of the best times in the Delta are when it's quiet and the sun descends. I spend my final evening in Mississippi on the porch of my cabin, listening to a Son House CD and wondering what it was like here not even a century ago.

___

If You Go...

CLARKSDALE, MISS.: www.clarksdaletourism.com/ or 662-627-7337.

GETTING THERE: The Mississippi Delta region can be reached by a 90-minute drive from the Memphis airport. A car is essential for Delta visits as many of the spots are remote.

LODGING: www.clarksdaletourism.com/HTML/...s.htm. Shack-Up Inn: Commissary Circle, Clarksdale; www.shackupinn.com/ or 662-624-8329. Sunday-Thursday nights, $50-$75; additional $10 Friday-Saturday nights, holidays and festivals. Book early for festival weekends.

GUIDEBOOK: "Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues" by Steve Cheseborough, $22.95 plus shipping, www.stevecheseborough.com/. Cheseborough also offers guided tours.

DELTA BLUES MUSEUM: Blues Alley, Clarksdale; www.deltabluesmuseum.org/ or 662-627-6820. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. November-February; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. March-October. Adults, $7; children 6-12, $5.

GROUND ZERO BLUES CLUB: Blues Alley, Clarksdale; www.groundzerobluesclub.com/ or 662-621-9009. Club opens at 11 a.m. Monday-Saturday. Closes at 2 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, at 11 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Live music Wednesday-Saturday nights.

ABE'S BBQ: 616 State St., Clarksdale; www.abesbbq.com or 662-624-9947.

CAT HEAD BLUES: 252 Delta Ave., Clarksdale; www.cathead.biz/ or 662-624-5992.