JOBURG FOR BARACK (4)

AND here is a final pic, this time taken by Anna Claude Bailey.

JOBURG FOR BARACK (3)

MY jealousy of the party at the Troyeville Hotel would have known no end if it wasn't for New York exploding with relief and joy on Tuesday night. Around the corner from our house is a spectacular bar, called Union Hall, and everybody who had watched the election returns there spilled onto the street after Obama's acceptance speech. The neighbourhood caught on in a flash, and a crowd of about a thousand people, dogs, children, the inevitable man with an aviary on his shoulder, firemen, the waste-removal workers and the police gathered to hang from lamp posts, stand on one another's shoulders and form prayer circles to shout: "Yes, we can!" and "USA! USA!" Graeme Simpson and I met each other for a cigarette at the corner to watch, and the rather wonderful Park Slope police simply parked their cars across the street to block off traffic. There was no way they were going to try to break up the party.

Here is a selection of Mikhael Subotzky's pics from the Troyeville. Looking at them I have to believe all those stories that are doing the rounds here about women at the Democratic National Convention trying to rip Obama's shirt from his pants.

JOBURG FOR BARACK (2)

JOBURG FOR BARACK

SARAH PALIN: "THAT COUNTRY, AFRICA"

THE Daily Beast relays a Fox News report that says McCain's Hail Mary thought Africa was a country, not a continent consisting of quite a number of states. Here's a clip about that gem of knowledge; it also holds out the promise of many more stories to come that will demonstrate the depth of her ignorance.

DONNA BRAZILE

I'VE followed Donna Brazil's contributions to CNN throughout this year, and she's become about my most favourite person on TV (she's a Democratic Party strategist, and ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000). CNN just showed a clip of her talking about what it meant to her to vote this morning; what it meant to realise that what her grandparents told her about being anything in America was actually true. For me that's one of the best things about having been able to watch this election campaign: how it energised people who have felt themselves politically marginalised for so many decades. That really is what real democracy is about, I think.

Donna Brazil

LAST-GASP ADVERTS

THE GOP Trust is running wall-to-wall ads about Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright on CNN -- that with only about an hour and a half to go before the polls on the east coast start closing. But there's the after-work voters he can still catch, I suppose. And the battleground states start closing from 7pm ET: at 7.30, North Carolina closes; at 8, Pennsylvania; at 9, Colarado; at 10, Iowa (can Obama do it again?).

FIRST EXIT POLLS IN AN HOUR

CNN says the first exit polls will be out in an hour. The New York Times said this morning:

"In 2004, early exit poll data suggested that Mr. Kerry was ahead began circulating within newsrooms — and leaking out on Web sites, including Slate’s — early in the afternoon on Election Day. This year, the consortium of six news organizations gathering the exit poll data — NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and The Associated Press — have agreed to keep the information under quarantine until 5 p.m.

"Representatives of those news organizations will begin analyzing that information at a secret location beginning in late morning, but will have to surrender all electronic devices at the door; even restroom visits will be supervised. There were already signs on Monday that the additional security was paying off.

"'We won’t call off exit polls,' Mr. Plotz said, 'in part because we don’t expect to get them leaked to us much before the first results.'"

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN IT HAPPENED?

DEBRA is working at home (and keeping an eye on the TV).
BEA has gone to bed, and is getting up at 5.
JACKIE and ANTONY are blogging from The Times, but may have gone to get sushi.
MIRIAM is besides herself with anxiety at Rietpan.
CHIPPY is at Hogsback without CNN (in a way that is a state of bliss).
JEREMY wants to know what to wear to the party at the Troyeville Hotel tomorrow night.
PROSPERO says he won't make the party because he'll be too busy comforting Sarah Palin (which is a comforting thought).
JANINE should be home from Cape Town by now, and may be watching at JANN's.
Debra's mother and mine have strict prayer instructions.

MADONNA ON SARAH PALIN

HERE'S a YouTube video of the Madonna concert Jonny, Dianne Hubbard and her daughter, Kelsey, and I went to at Madison Square Garden at the beginning of October. Some choice extracts:
"You guys have come to my party!
"Thank you for coming to my party!
"You know who's not invited to my party?
"Sarah Fucking Palin!
"She's not invited to this show!
"Sarah Palin has to go!
"Now get the bitch out of here, alright. Nothing personal. She's freaking me out."

(Give it a couple of seconds; the image gets better and the sound's fine.)

VOTER TURNOUT: MORE THAN 66%?

VOTER turnout has the TV anchors very excited, and there's a chance that this could be the best year since 1908, when the turnout was something like more than 66%. They're putting it down to person-to-person contact (the way it would have been a hundred years ago) -- that is, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and, I suppose, all those hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have been hitting the pavements all over America. There's a record turnout in Los Angeles; in one county in Ohio the turnout is 80%; 4,4 million people voted early in Florida, and inside the polling stations there it's humming right now.

RED, WHITE AND BLUE

THIS is trivial, but if you want to know why Republicans are red and Democrats blue, here's a nice explanation.

KARL ROVE PREDICTS

BUSH'S brain is predicting a 338-200 Obama victory over McCain today, and he's got a nifty electoral map to prove it. Check it out on his website.

DON'T SPEAK FOR ME, SARAH PALIN

The only way to behave today is mean. Here's one from YouTube...

THE ECC SINGERS

I POST this because Miriam and Chippy are in France, and I'm not. And because it's one of my favourite pics of the two of them. Here they are with Judy, reliving their End Conscription Campaign cultural performances from long ago.

VOEL VRY MET VOËLVRY

BLAST from the past, indeed. Lloyd sent me this pic of a Voëlvry moment in Windhoek in 1989, I think. There's me on the left, Grace Catao, Jannie Hanepoot van Tonder, Piet Pers (aka Gary Herselman), Helge Schütz, Steve "The Veg" Howells, Johannes Kerkorrel (aka Ralph Rabie) and Mark "Boesak" Bennett. Hell.

AT VANESSA AND ALBIE'S

ALBIE and Vanessa are returning to SA on 5 July, after spending six months here while Albie was scholar-in-residence at the Ford Foundation. Their apartment, on East 94th Street, is on the 28th floor, and has a frightening balcony: it has perspex (or something like that) walls, and makes one feel as if there is nothing to keep you from tumbling off it. But the view from it is magnificent.

Tony and Hillary Hamburger visited Albie and Vanessa a week or two ago, and we had brunch with them

Jonny and Vanessa ...

... and Albie

VISITORS

LOVELY Steven van Hemert came in April. Here he is in Central Park, in spring.

* * *

MARK Gevisser also visited. He was especially admiring of my new-found skill of putting together Ikea furniture. Clive Cope, who has done a lot of this in France, will vouch for the huge talent it requires to progress from flat Ikea box to a functional piece of furniture. And if he's not willing to, he's lying...

* * *

THEN came Bea and our friend, Hedwig (known as "Piering") Schoonakker (née Van Coller). Bea and Jonny and I drove from New York to Boston, where we collected Piering from Logan airport, and drove to Exeter. Bea wasted absolutely no time hitting the bars to socialise with her school friends from Phillips Exeter Academy, who were all there for their 25th reunion (sorry, fifth reunion). After Exeter, we drove to Conway, in the White Mountains, to stay with Bea's American family, Dick and Connie Brown.

Bea in front of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where we live

Bea and her friend Laura, who lives in New York. We went to the opening of an art exhibit with Laura

Bea and Piering shopping for I LOVE NEW YORK shirts near the Empire State Building

Organ pipes, don't you think? Sarah, Bea, Piering and Jonny in front of Inn by the Bandstand, where we stayed in Exeter

Near the library on Exeter Academy's campus

Piering and Bea in the school library, which was designed by Louis Kahn

We went walking with Dick Brown

Bea with her family: Dick, Connie and Liz

WEEKEND STUFF

IT'S the same story: it is outrageously hot today. At 10h30 the temperature had already exceeded the forecast. It should have been 88F max, and when I got up it was just over 90F (which is 32 Celsius). The humidity is already at 62%, and it's normally at its highest by 11pm. This is like Ladismith, where I grew up: it just gets hotter towards the evening, not cooler. Two nine-year-olds, who live in our building, have been filling small balloons with water, “to throw at people on the street”, which, of course, they’ll never do because they are exceptionally well-behaved NY boys. So I suggested to them that they put a table on the pavement with a sign saying, “Pay us a quarter and we’ll throw a balloon at you.” They thought it was a brilliant idea (and it is hot enough to pull it off). They've now set up business on our street corner, and they’re doing a roaring trade. Jonny has been up there to buy a balloon, and got it in the back. He came home all wet. One mother has had to put her work for the day aside since she’s the one filling balloons with water back home, on the stoop in front of our house, while the boys tend their stall. They’re parking off in deck chairs, shouting what they’re selling at the passers-by. All New Yorkers love a bit of business ingenuity, it seems. And their financial reports seem to get better and better: "We've got six dollars fifty!" Hell, they should go run Lehman Brothers.

Last night we had dinner at Jonathan and Nadine's. David Jammy was there, too, and two friends of Jonny and Nadine's, Rachel and Sam. Jonathan grilled sardines on the Weber on the balcony; there was pickled octopus -- I told Jonny it was the closest we'll get to Mozambique this year. Here are two pics of the post-dinner torpor... (There is something intrinsically sad about a Weber on a balcony, don't you think?)

FRIDAY IN THE PARK WITH THE MET OPERA

I'VE never seen "Sunday in the Park with George" (or the Seurat painting "A Sunday afternoon ...", for that matter), but the Metropolitan Opera's summer solstice concert on June 20 was pretty wonderful. The police estimate that 50 000 people attended, and they were sure strung out along Prospect Park's (four blocks from our house) Long Meadow. Huge video screens and a phalanx of giant speakers relayed the action on the stage throughout the meadow; because it is about a mile long, the video and sound signal was transmitted via satellite.

Graeme and Claire and Karen Harber came and we had a picnic against a slight rise, from where we had an unobstructed view of the stage. The Met hauled out Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, "opera's starriest married couple", as the New York Times called them, for a list of arias and duets that were so familiar that they felt as if they're part of one's genetic heritage.

When Bea and Hedwig visited, we all went to a rather rare Jessye Norman recital at Carnegie Hall; from our one-up-from-cheapest seats Jonny gave the stage one look and said, "From here Jessye Norman could very well be Albertina Sisulu." It was almost the case with the stage in Prospect Park, but the screens brought everything brilliantly close.

The Met said they expected about 100 000 people, but it was most probably a marketing stunt. During the first duet a police helicopter buzzed above the stage in a circle, making a huge noise. The audience started shouting and throwing fists at the helicopter, and it left. Sensitive cops...

Graeme Simpson and Claire Wright

The stage being prepared, while Gheorghiu and Alagna practise (this pic is from the New York Times)

PICS FROM LUNCH AT BEA AND RODDY'S

Sunday, 18 May 2008 at Bea and Roddy's. Wish we could do it again soon.

IT'S HOT

I'M trapped: outside it is almost 37 degrees, the humidity is at 48% and forecast to reach 71% by 11pm; inside the so-called "whisper quiet" air conditioner I bought from a woman called Miriam on Sunday night is anything but that -- but it does its job extremely well. I have rarely felt such heat, not even in those gatkant van die aarde villages where I grew up. This feels like Durban humidity, but it is much, much hotter. Everything about this city conspires to trap the heat between the buildings, made worse by the hot air from the subways escaping onto the streets, and the hot air blasting from hundreds of air conditioners on the street-side of the brownstones. The fire department opened the hydrant a couple of metres from our house earlier; cars coming up the street stop in the spray for as long as they can, and the construction workers walk up from the corner, where they are building a condominium, to dip their heads in the water. I live for tomorrow, when the temperature will drop to about 29 degrees.

The neighbouring ladies put their chairs underneath the trees on the pavement,
no doubt for a closer look at the cavorting construction worker

ELLA STEINBERG-MORRISON, PHOTOGRAPHER

As they were leaving school yesterday afternoon, Lulu Bethlehem-Potenza said to Ella Steinberg-Morrison, Jonny's niece, "See you at Jonny's book launch, Ella." When it was time to get ready, Ella put on her Sunday best and took her camera along "to photograph the author". This she did, throughout his speech. Erik Forster captured her at it.

"THREE-LETTER PLAGUE" IS OUT

My friend, Erik Forster, has done me many favours since I got to know him during the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. But I think he did me the biggest one ever today when he went to the launch of Three-Letter Plague at Exclusive Books in Hyde Park and took these photographs. I really wanted to be there, and these images help with the homesickness.

Robyn Arenstam and Philippa Garson with Jonny

Jonny with Alan and Sheila Steinberg

My favourite: Lloyd says hello

SNOW

At least 15-20cm of snow covers Park Slope, Brooklyn this morning. I'm looking after Graeme and Claire's house and dog, while Jonny is promoting Sizwe's Test in Philadelphia and Washington (he's on a train on his way back to NY), so this pic is of the street in front of their house. Nadine Rubin and I were in Union Hall until early this morning, and it started snowing while we were there. I don't think it has let up for a second, because everything has a thick coat this morning. This pic was taken at about 9.30, and it is still falling steadily.

ONE MONTH GONE

On February 11 we were here for exactly a month, and Bea has already forgotten me -- mind you, she does have a hundred children, and she’s scriptwriting, so I’m not blaming her. And Miriam forgot my birthday, which even Nandi and Sam Bauer-Cope remembered; however, in their case they most probably sparked because they couldn’t believe that anyone could be as old as I am and still have teeth to chew with.

Top of the recap list is that February 12 saw the publication of Sizwe’s Test. The New York Times Book Review did a double-page spread on it, used two of Gideon Mendel’s photographs, and got Adam Hochschild (King Leopold’s Ghost) to review it. (I’ll add the text of the review to our website.) Yesterday’s edition of Time Out says: “Not since Abraham Verghese’s haunting 1994 book about eastern Tennessee, My Own Country, has the AIDS epidemic been described so deeply and humanely, and from so many angles. … Steinberg has ended up with a big, brave, poignant look into the heart of his country…”

Just one pic of the book on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, and then I’ll stop being so full of bursting pride.

NADINE ZYLSTRA AND JOHNATHAN DORFMAN

We saw them last Sunday for brunch at Downtown Atlantic in Brooklyn (again, the Bloody Marys were exceptional). Did anyone know that Nadine got an Oscar -- I mean, an Emmy -- last year for her directing at Sesame Street? She forgot to thank her husband, she says. And he has completed another film (Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke; last year he produced Joshua). They have a really gorgeous girl, Ella, who must be about nine months old; like Damon Galgut she could say “Tyrannosaurus rex” at six months. Obviously. One’s friends only have geniuses for kids. I mean, Ella is Gertrude Stein.

Going down on Atlantic: is that the right orifice?

After walking with the Zylstra-Dorfmans to their really nice house (around the corner from where Heath Ledger lived), we got stuck in admiring the light and black clouds along a street whose name I have now forgotten, and then it started snowing. Actually, it was a blizzard. I am such a snow-struck Karoo boy that my hands had to start bleeding before we went into the subway.

Here’s a pic of the street -- ah, now I remember, it was Court Street, because that is where the bar is that you can sort-of see: it’s called Miriam’s. Never was a bar more aptly named.