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February 25, 2005

from Sunlight to Sunshine

Beulah - Battle Cry of the West (live on Netherlands Radio)

This is the prettiest song in Beulah's discography, and that's saying a lot. Miles Kurosky wrote some fantastic songs during the course of Beulah, but this one really distills their whole aesthetic into one nice little package- some tight harmonies, chiming guitar notes on the chorus, and a melody that's almost aggressively cheerful.

I know I've posted about Beulah before, but somehow I suspect that not many people know who they are, or if they do know, they haven't listened to their music before. This is a live version (the studio one is even more dramatic and overwhelming) that Miles and Bill Swan (I think) performed on the radio when they were in Holland. 'Battle Cry of the West' is a B-side on the 'Popular Mechanics for Lovers' single, which (PMfL) was taken from Beulah's great "The Coast Is Never Clear" LP. You can buy the CD single here (there's one left), and the LP here.

Here's some more of Dan's exciting adventures:

Eldoret Half-Marathon

From some inexplicable reason, I ran in the Eldoret Half-Marathon. The race, called by some "the crown jewel of the Rift Valley road racing circuit," now widely known as "self-dignity's last stand," took place on Feb. 2nd.

If you ever run in a decent sized road race in the US, you will probably see a handful of guys that clearly look like they are in a different class than the rest of the field. They are stoic, confident, decked out in full sponsor gear covering a gazelle-like physiognomy. The Eldoret Half-Marathon had about 300 runners, and as I judged it, 299 of them fit this description at the starting line. Guess who didn't.

I have never had such an utterly cold feeling of despair in my gut as I did before this race. I wasn't sure how fast I could run, but what I was certain of was no matter how fast that was, I would still be coming in last, by a lot. In fact, my only faint hope for this not happening lay in the late arrival of a runner who was racing in a pair of Haggar slacks that hung loose around his belly in a manner that suggested that he had not eaten for several days.

I ran a recklessly uncontrolled 5:30 opening mile...which put me in dead last place by about 20 meters. The rest of the race wasn't much better.

Let's just say that I had been banking on the abject humiliation of being in last (or almost last) to energize me to at least a respectable finish. What I did not anticipate was that other runners were even more energized by an even more powerful motivation: namely, abject humiliation at being beaten by me. Whenever I actually started working my way up to a runner, the roar of the crowd along the streets would begin to grow. They would frantically scream "Kwenda mzungu, KWENDA!" [Trans: Go foreign infidel, GO!]. As the cheers crescendoed and I drew alongside "my victim", he would unleash this panicked kick that would put him a good 20 meters ahead of me. I would work my way up to him, he would kick again. This process would repeat until he had no more kicks left. As I finally slid past him, the crowd would begin howling in laughter at the Kenyan who got beat by the neo-colonialist invader. Rather than face an entire town pouring it's ridicule down on him for the remainder of the race, he would then slink into the crowd and drop out. It was like I was wearing a sign on my back that said, "If you can read this, you'd better find a new line of work." Honestly, it probably is good advice. But you can imagine this got to be pretty frustrating for me.

To abbreviate the account, by the end, there were about 110 finishers, I came in 104. Among (a few) others, I beat the guy in the Haggar pants, a kid who raced in his school uniform, and a dude sporting an "NFL Gameday '98" t-shirt. Don't let that fool you. The short (and honest) story is that I probably ran the best race I biologically could, and I still got my clock absolutely cleaned. But I hope that the experience will make for a good article or something of the sort in the future.

The search for the thief continues, with the "elite" university investigative team doing their level best.

Dan

PS: to those on Peace Corps Ben's email list, I was amused by the stark contrast of our situations. While he left his Krygyz university because of human rights abuses committed there, I may be actively funding them on mine. Hmmm...

Read installments one, two, three, four, five, or six of Dan's correspondence.

Posted by matt at February 25, 2005 08:00 AM

Comments

Posted by: Sean Barry at February 25, 2005 05:19 PM

Posted by: Kevin at February 27, 2005 10:22 PM