Transcript

2.26.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated January February
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twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for the first article titled Nepal's Mountain
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Side Tea Houses elevate the experience for trekkers heading to
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the top of the world. Comforting rest stops dot the
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trail for adventurers ascending Mira Peak, offering food, rest, and
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a warm cup of the local brew by Aaron Treebe.
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We were only three days into a twenty seven day
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journey through the forests of eastern Nepal, pushing through low
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clouds and a steady downpour. Are we going the right way?
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I asked our June Rye, my guide on the Mirra
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Peak trekking trail. I think so, he said, rain dripping
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from the bill of his baseball cap. I'm pretty sure.
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The mist was so dense we could barely see one
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hundred feet ahead. It was an especially wet September, the
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end of monsoon season. As we descended a narrow muddy gulch.
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We reached a rushing waterfall that cascaded down a rocky
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incline and directly blocked our path. To cross it, we
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slipped off our shoes and socks and waded barefoot through
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the icy torrent, which dropped off sharply to our right.
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Rye crossed with ease and grace, lightly gliding from one
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slick river stone to the next. I clumsily grabbed onto
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rocks in the water to hold my balance, trying not
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to scrape my feet or tumble down the waterfall to
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my death. After we made our way to the other side,
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Rye lit a cigarette and said, now this is a
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real adventure. We looked at each other through the downpour
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and both threw our heads back in laughter, briefly forgetting
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that we were drenched, cold and covered with mud. That
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positive outlook is the way of the Nepalis, and especially
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the native Nepalis of the mountains. When things get hard,
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which in the Himalayas is most of the time, you
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make the best of it and keep walking. Still, only
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about seven percent of Nepal's population lives in these high
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altitude regions. Life in the Solukumbu District home to many
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of the country's tallest peaks, including Everest is harsh and
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often unforgiving, freezing temperatures, steep cliffs in fertile soil, and
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few drivable roads, Yet its remoteness and rugged beauty are
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exactly what draws tourists here. Between October twenty twenty three
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and September twenty twenty four, around fifty six thousand tourists
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visited Solunkumbu, most of them foreigners. After five hours of
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trudging through the rain, we finally saw it. A small
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hut on a hillside, smoke curling from its entrance, a
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tea house. Reaching the doorway, I ducked beneath a low
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beam and found Pembadama Sherpa fourteen and her sister Bigma
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Kanchi seven tending the fire. Pembadoma smiled shyly as she
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stirred a pot of pochaw or Sherpa tea. In this region,
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the thick salty brew is made of disomo, a yak
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and cow hybrid butter, black tea and roasted barley flower.
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As the rain drummed against the tin roof, she worked
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the churn, stirring the tea with a Wooden Dowel her
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movements steady and practiced. Some tea houses are operated by
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the wives of mountain guides who spend months away leading expeditions.
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Many others are family run, some passed down through generations.
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For many women and families, the tea house is more
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than a business. It's a vital source of stability. It
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keeps families many named for the Sherpa ethnic group rooted
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in their ancestral villages, financially, provides for their children's education,
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and creates a steady income in places where few other
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opportunities exist. The tea house in the next village, Ramailo Danda,
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belongs to Pertemba Shrpa, a retired mountain guide. My father
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built this place himself. His son and lodge manager, Shangba Sherpa,
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told me it was jungle before he cut the hillside
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by hand to make flat ground. At first, it was
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very small, only enough space for six people. Every year
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he added a little more stone by stone. Per Timba
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started guiding when he was around twenty. He tried to
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summ at Everest five times and made it twice. When
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he retired, he turned his focus to the tea house.
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Worked that was no easier. The hardest thing, per Timba
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said was water. There's no natural source here. We tried
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pipes from three thousand meters about two miles up the valley,
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but it didn't work. Finally, we brought water from four
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hundred fifty meters about fifteen hundred feet below, pumping it
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through the rock. He paused, then smiled. Now it works mostly.
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Per Timba also owns another tea house farther up the trail,
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in Chatra Kola, the Mirra Riverside Lodge, perched on the
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edge of a bluff beside a roaring river and a
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waterfall that feeds the valley below. There, a young woman
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named Rachana Rye worked in the kitchen, stirring pots of
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lentils and kneading dough. I like it here, she told me.
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It's quiet, but not lonely. The mountains keep me company.
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Every major trek in Sulukumbu begins with the flight into Lukla,
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a small town perched on a cliff with the runway
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so short and steep its con considered one of the
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most dangerous in the world. From there, trails wind northeast
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toward Everest Base Camp, some sixty four miles away on
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foot or east for forty miles toward Mira Peak twenty
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one thousand, two hundred and forty seven feet. At Mira's
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high camp, approximately nineteen thousand feet, stands what is said
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to be the highest tea house in Nepal, Surrounded by
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ice fall cornices and jagged serrocks. It's run by Sherpa
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cooks who live there for weeks at a time in
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sub freezing cold. We don't make much, maybe thirty thousand
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rupees about two hundred ten dollars a month, one told
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me through an interpreter. They rely on tips. Tourists are kind,
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even with little salary. We are happy to work. When
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they smile and say thank you, we feel rich. The
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sherp of people, whose name comes from the Tibetan words
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shar east and Pa people are celebrated for their endurance
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and grace at altitude, descended from nomads who migrated south
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from Tibet. They settled in the Slocumbu region centuries ago
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and became the backbone of Himalayan mountaineering. While climbers from
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around the world seek glory on these peaks, it's the
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Shrpas who guide climbers fix the ropes, break trails, carry
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the loads, and when necessary, recover the fallen, as they
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did during my own time on Myra, when a Korean
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climber died and a Sherpa rescue team found his body
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and brought him down the mountain. Shrpa culture is steeped
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in Buddhism. Along the trails, the landscape is marked by
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mani stones carved with prayers, mantras or religious images, and
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stupas dome shaped Buddhist shrines. Strings of blue, white, red,
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green and yellow prayer flags flutter in the wind. Inside
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the tea houses, the rhythm of life slows. Fires crackle
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tea summers, and stories are told easily between strangers. For
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the tea house staff, the work is relentless, cooking, cleaning,
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stoking fires in the thin air. But most owners I
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met spoke of pride, not exhaustion. People come from everywhere,
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said Lakpa Scherpa, owner of Himalayan Lodge and Cafe and Koti.
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We take care of them like family. That is our way.
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On the final morning of the ascent, we left high
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camp at three a m. Climbing slowly toward Mira's summit
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as dawn broke casting an Alpenglow on pristine slopes, our
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pace was steady. As I continued my way upward, the
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sun appeared over the mountain tops and the full expanse
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of the Himalayas came into view. Everest to the north,
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Makalu to the northeast, a sweep of glistening peaks stretching
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in all directions, and the villages we'd passed through scattered
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far below. By day twenty one of the journey, I
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had visited nearly a dozen tea houses, had hundreds of conversations,
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and sipped countless cups of Sherpa tea. Now, as we
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headed back to Lucla, it struck me how much this
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climb had depended on the families who opened their doors
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along the way and offered warmth in a place defined
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by cold. In Nepal, the rugged landscape is shaped by mountains,
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but it's the Nepali people and the tea houses that
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make moving through it possible. Accompanying this article, did you
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know how high can you go before needing serious gear?
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In Nepal, Some mountain peaks are accessible by trekking, but
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higher altitude apexes require actual climbing. At twenty one thousand,
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two hundred and forty seven feet. Mira is considered Nepal's
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highest trekking peak. Ascending its low gray glacial slopes doesn't
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require the technical rock or ice climbing that peaks such
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as Mount Everest at twenty nine thousand, thirty two feet demand. Next,
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Myles Davis emerged from Middle America to become the Picasso
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of jazz and taught us all how to be cool.
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As we approached the one hundredth anniversary of the birth
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of a jazz legend, looked back on the staggering impact
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of his work and its continued relevance. By Ted Shineman,
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Myles Dewey Davis the Third's first memory was a blue
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hot flame on the family stove. I felt fear, real fear,
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he recalled in his nineteen eighty nine autobiography. He was
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also exhilarated that blue, he said, presented an invitation, a challenge. Afterward,
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I have always believed that my motion had to be forward,
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away from the heat of that flame. Davis was born
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to a prosperous middle class family in Alton, Illinois, on
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May twenty sixth, nineteen twenty six. The next year, the
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family moved twenty miles or so down the Mississippi River
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to East Saint Louis, or East Boogie, as it came
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to be known because of its crackling music scene. Davis's father,
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Myles Davis Junior, was a dental surgeon. His mother, Cleota
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Henry Davis, was a violinist and pianist, and tried to
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sear her son toward classical music, but Davis, the second
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of three children, heard more fire in jazz. He started
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coronet at tin, got his first trumpet at thirteen, and
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met his first girlfriend, Irene Birth, when he was fifteen
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or sixteen. The Davises didn't approve because she came from
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the goose Hill neighborhood, with its slaughter houses and stockyards
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and its smell of burnt meat and hair. Davis recalled,
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the two fell in love, and Birth provided crucial encouragement.
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In nineteen forty three, she persuaded Davis to try out
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for the Blue Devils, a band where he played what
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he called hot dance music and did his first arranging.
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The next year, he left for the Juilliard School, and
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Berth and their first child, Cheryl, soon joined him in
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New York. Davis was a soso student at Juilliard, spending
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nights in the clubs from the village to Harlem, drawn
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by the flame of beebop. According to his biographer John Seded,
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he was keen to meet the two architects of this
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brash news style, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and especially saxophonist Charlie
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Byrd Parker. Davis buttonholed Parker outside the heat Wave, a
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club on one hundred forty fifth Street, and by the
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end of nineteen forty five Davis had dropped out of
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school and scored a spot in his idol's quintet. He
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likely recorded more trumpet with Parker than even Lesbie did,
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and he made substantial contributions to be bop, but he
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wanted to blaze a path of his own, and did
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so by bringing an intimate attention to tone and phrasing.
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I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it,
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like a round voice with not too much tremolo and
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not too much bass, Davis said, for further understatement, he
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sometimes used a partial mute in the bell of his trumpet.
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At the nineteen forty nine sessions later released as Birth
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of the Cool, The Miles Davis Sound emerged forthright, eloquent
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and plaintive, as if lamenting that this was the closest
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you could get on trumpet to the human voice. It
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was urbane, perceptive, always ready, but never hurried. In short,
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to use a word whose full meaning we owe to Davis,
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it was cool. While Birth and Davis never married, they
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had three children. By nineteen fifty, Bill's mounted and Davis's
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ascent slowed as he served a heroine habit. He kicked
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dope a few times, suffering days and nights of sweats
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and chills. In nineteen fifty four, he got clean in earnest.
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The next year, Columbia Records signed him and bent its
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marketing apparatus toward making him a superstar, and Davis formed
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a breathtakingly versatile quintet that included John Coltrane on tenor
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sacks and boy could Davis work a band? As the
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great critic Stanley Crouch wrote, this historic combo stoked fire
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as ably as it crooned. In the two sessions released
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in nineteen fifty nine as Kind of Blue, Davis introduced
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unfamiliar melodic scales into jazz in what might have been
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an obscure modal experiment instead became the biggest jazz album
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ever recorded. Davis took the wartime sound of bebop and
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turned down the volume and heat without sacrificing intensity. He'd
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made a new and beautiful kind of Cold War art,
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bringing acoustic jazz to such a point of perfection that
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when he introduced electric guitars a decade later, many critics,
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especially Crouch, treated it as the vilest heresy. Ever, they
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were wrong. Davis's fusion bands were often brilliant, but so what.
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Davis trained as a boxer for fitness and for protection.
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He was obsessed with Jack Johnson and Sugar Ray Robinson
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and imitated them outside the ring, dressing sharp and driving
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fancy cars. He was legendary for the epithets he delivered
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in his frying rasp. To say the very least, his
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relationship with Birth and his three subsequent marriages to Francis Taylor,
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Betty Maybrey, and Cecily Tyson, each an artist in her
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own right, didn't survive his tempers. The anger was bound
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up with the prejudice. Davis babble all his life. He
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refused to play segregated shows, and was once beaten and
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arrested for talking back to a white policeman outside a
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club where his name was on the marquee. He also
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battled brutal health problems, particularly toward the end. Despite tremendous pain,
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he maintained a burning curiosity for new music, creating new
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fusions whenever he played. On September twenty eighth, nineteen ninety one,
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he ran out of breath. His last studio work, du Bop,
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a hip hop inflected album, released the following year to day,
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one hundred years after his birth. Some folks still resent
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Davis for being so ard to pin down musically. Many
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purists hate his seventies music. Why would such a genius
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debase himself with rock? Many more hate his eighties music?
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Why was Myles Davis covering Cindi lauper Oleu Dara, a
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cornetist whose son, best known as Naz, became one of
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the most influential rappers in history. Put it this way,
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Miles was dealing with all that America had to say.
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He makes you a true American. Accompanying this article, fun fact,
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what were Miles Davis's nicknames? Davis was known alternately as
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the Prince of Darkness and the Sorcerer, both nicknames evoked
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the trumpeter's mercurial, uncompromising, near omnipotent approach to music and
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to life. Next see the blades that carried Boitano to
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gold In the Battle of the Brians. In the nineteen
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eighty eight Olympics, the Americans fabled rivalry with Canadian Brian
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Orser reached its pinnacle, and Calgary on these gates, now
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part of the Smithsonian Collection by Mike Riggs. On February twentieth,
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nineteen eighty eight, millions of people huddled around their television
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to watch the men's figure skating finals at the Winter
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Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. The French newspaper Le Monde called
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it laguerre dedu Bran, while Spain's El Pais would remember
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it as Le Batalia de los Bryan. Americans and Canadians
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who lived through this dramatic age of figure skating know
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it as the Battle of the Brians, in which California's
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Brian Boitano and Ontario's Brian Orser settled a nearly decade
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long rivalry. It was the most watched half hour of
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American Saturday evening TV since the airing of Roots eleven
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years earlier. The Olympic podium was an unlikely destination for
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a kid from sunny Vale, a suburb of San Francisco.
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Gueitano's father, a banker, wanted him to play baseball. Figure
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skating was hardly even an option in the town. Sunnyvale's
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ice palace, the neighborhood rink had never produced a competitive
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skater of note. While Boitano didn't have access to a
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posh rink or an elite skating club, he did have
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obsessive dedication. I was always the first one on the
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ice and the last one off, he tells Smithsonian. He
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also had Linda Lever, a local skating instructor and choreographer
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who understood Boitano's potential from the moment she saw him.
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By the time Brian was ten, I felt an obligation
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to his talent and work ethic to make him the
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best ten year old skater in the world. She says.
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Lever also had a gentle touch with her young charge.
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Linda would say just the right thing to get me
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to relax my shoulders and take a huge sigh of relief.
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Boitano says. She knew how to make me feel like
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everything's going to be okay. That chemistry took Poitano to
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the nineteen seventy eight World Junior Figure Skating Championships in France,
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where at fourteen, he earned a bronze medal. At the
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same competition, sixteen year old Orser finished fourth. The two
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young men spent the next nine years orbiting each other
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in the standings, Orser second and Boitano fifth. At the
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nineteen eighty four Winter Olympics, Boitano first and Orser second.
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At the nineteen eighty six World Figure Skating Championships, Orser
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first and Boitano second at the same competition in nineteen
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eighty seven. That bruising second place finish at the World
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Championships stemmed in part from Boitano's fall while attempting to
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land a tricky quadruple jump. The misstep reinforced his reputation
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as a performer who relied too much on stunts. He
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has been known throughout his career as a relentless technician
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and perfectionist who perhaps sacrificed artistry for correctness and athletic feats,
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wrote Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post in nineteen eighty seven.
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As they stared down the next year's Olympics, Boitano and
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Lever reassessed their approach. I was devastated, Boitano says, of
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his second place finish in eighty seven. To elevate his
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program for the subsequent season, he and Lever turned to
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Sandra Bizick, a Canadian choreographer and a former Olympic skater herself.
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She created routines that leveraged Boitano's height. At five foot eleven,
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he was a larger figure on the ice than most
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other skaters, including Orcer, who was five foot seven. The
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challenge was getting the relatively shy Boitano to act as
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large as he was. Over the next nine months, Music
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and Boitano tweaked and perfected his short and long programs.
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In the former, he played an ostentatiously cocksure skater who
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wipes the ice from his blades and flings it over
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his shoulder mid program. In the latter, he was a
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Napoleonic soldier sporting a navy blue uniform with a burgundy
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sash and gold braid along the shop and collar, skating
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to Carminekoppolis nineteen eighty one score for the re release
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of nineteen twenty seven's Napoleon I gave him characters that
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he was able to hide behind, but they were still
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revealing his true self. Busick had said a month before
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the eighty eight Olympics, Boitano could skate a clean program
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without making a mistake. He arrived in Calgary with two
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pairs of skates, including this custom pair with boots from
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Harlequin Company emblazoned with American flag, patches with blades from
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John Wilson Blades, as well as extra laces, and the
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awareness that Orcer had a narrative advantage. We were on
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Canadian ice. Boitano says he carried the flag and had
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been in second place four years before. As predicted, by
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the final round of the competition, men's figure skating had
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narrowed to a two man race between the Brians. Barring
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a few fiasco one would win gold in the other's silver.
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Boitano laced up his skates, the blades slightly dulled to
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keep him from sinking into the ice. Boitano then skated
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one of the greatest freestyle programs in Olympic history, making
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one barely perceptible mistake when landing one of his eight
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triple jumps. Orser took the ice and performed almost as well,
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making two small mistakes to Boitano's one. The judges were split,
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but the rules said the technical merit would break the tie,
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which is how Brian Boitano, the man with almost too
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much technique, won the gold at the nineteen eighty eight
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Winter Games. Accompanying this article, did you know Brian Boitano
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was a skating innovator? Brian Boitano invented the Tanno lutz
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a k a. The Tanno triple, which he introduced in
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nineteen eighty Boeitano jumped off his toe, making it a
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lutz jump, then spun three times while holding his left
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hand majestically aloft. Finally, the story of Carthage isn't necessarily
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what the Romans committed to history. A new book by
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historian and archaeologist Eve MacDonald paints a more complete portrait
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of the once great African society destroyed by Rome by
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Brandon Tensley. Around three ten bcee Carthage was under siege
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by Agathocles of Syracuse and his army. According to the
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ancient historian Diodorus, Carthaginians began to despair that their gods
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had forsaken them and became so desperate to reclaim their
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favor that they sacrificed two hundred children. Yet to date,
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no physical evidence of such violence has been found. In fact,
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the Canadian British historian and archaeologist Eve MacDonald argues provocatively
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in her new book that this brutal episode was an
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imagine by a hostile ancient source. That source, of course,
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was Rome, which annihilated Carthage in the Third Punic War
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from one hundred forty nine to one forty six BCE.
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Rome's leaders never wanted any one to see Carthage or
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its citizens as real people, MacDonald writes, but rather as
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a savage foe, its name useful in boosting Roman morale. Now,
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in Carthage, A New History of an Ancient Empire, MacDonald
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survey's archeological work from the past twenty years, including her own,
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to paint a richer portrait of the city and its
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people than we've ever seen before. A star in classicist circles,
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MacDonald published her first book, A Biography of the General Hannibal,
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in twenty fifteen. MacDonald takes us from the Phoenicians who
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founded the city in the ninth century BCE. Through the
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myths and possible truths about a canny political dissident from
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Tyre who came to be known as the Queen Dido.
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We learn of the rise of Carthage as a formidable
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naval power, and yes, of its eventual sacking. But we
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also learn about the first century afterward, when the punic
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language of the city's institutions permeated North Africa. It is
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believed that Africas was never so punic as it was
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after Carthage was destroyed. MacDonald writes as surviving Carthaginians created
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a kind of punic diaspora. New archaeology and old literature
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present a different Carthage in the post war years. She writes,
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recent isotopic analysis has revealed, among other things, that Carthage
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could rely on its own significant resources from lead silver
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mining when it was faced with trade barriers during war.
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MacDonald's book is an engrossing and ambitious effort. As concerned
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with the histories of sailors and soldiers, as with the
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lives of generals and aristocrats, the Roman memories only ever
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told one side of the story. She writes, the complexity
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of this once great sophisticated and multicultural African city with
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the history of innovative technologies, brave warriors, and deep religious
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beliefs was gone. Accompanying this article know your Ancients? Who
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was the real Dido? Perhaps the most famous Carthaginian in
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history was Dido, founder of the city. In her lifetime,
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she was probably known as Elyssa. Alyssa came to Africa
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from Tyre in modern Lebanon, probably in the late ninth
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century BCE. In some sources, she is the sister of Pygmalion,
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king of Tire. The name Dido was given retroactively by
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Greek historians and cemented in history in Virgil's Aeneid. This
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concludes readings from Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader
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has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have
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a great day.