Sorry for the lack of posts this week. All will be made clear very soon.

My friend Dave‘s adventures in Rwanda continue:

There is no question that Rwanda is still coming to terms with its recent past, and doing so in its own way. At times I see things that run so contrary to how I imagined third world Africa to be, the supermarkets and modern buildings and even tarmac roads (however pot-holed), only to turn the corner and there it is – the scene of long, orange coloured dirt tracks, small mud buildings with corrugated iron roofs and groups of young, dirty children – the Third World.

[...]When I arrived I found it hard to reconcile this peaceful place with the horror of the genocide that occurred here. It was so difficult to imagine. But the more one learns, the more one realises that all of Rwanda is a memorial to its past. At the top of the street we live on is a tall, perfectly normal looking advertisement hording, typical of any you would see in the US or UK, until you read all the signs on it, from the brash neon of ‘The Havana Bar’ at the top, to the sign giving directions to a centre for victims of torture at the bottom.

The Rwandans are a patient people, very willing to line up (they’d give the English a good run for their money in queuing) and wait for someone to tell them what to do. Once every month there is what they call Umuganda, where everyone in the city, including the President, takes to the streets to clear them of rubbish. It is quite remarkable but there is something akin to peer group pressure at work. There is an obligation to be involved. And as undoubtedly impressive as it is to see such cooperation, I can’t help but feel it was exactly these communal pressures and the eager willingness to participate that enabled such swift prosecution of mass murder during the genocide. Quite the double-edged sword.

He cut a colorful figure in Arkansas. Unfailingly polite, he stood more than six feet tall and almost always wore a Stetson hat and cowboy boots. Gold dollar signs secured his French cuffs, and from a gold money clip he dispensed $100 bills to the needy, explaining that his memories of childhood as a poor sharecropper’s son were still vivid.

Trucking tycoon Johnnie Bryan Hunt, who died yesterday.

Warren Hill was looking through a box of records at a street sale in Chelsea, in 2002, when he found “a brittle 12″ piece of acetone-covered aluminum” with the words “Velvet Underground. 4-25-66. Att N. Dolph” on the label. He bought the record, plus two others, for 75 cents each. Eric Isaacson, of Mississippi Records, in Portland, Oregon picks up the story in the December 8, 2006 issue of Goldmine Magazine:

As I have a small knowledge of records and am an old friend of Warren’s, I got a call from him the next day in which he described the acetate. Because of the date and the unique type of pressing, we both agreed that it was probably an in-studio acetate made during the recording of the first Velvet Underground LP back in 1966 (I had heard that they occasionally would have a vinyl cutting lathe in the studio to cut records of the day’s recordings for the artists and/or producers to take home for review).

Warren didn’t want to play the mysterious platter due to the fragile nature of acetates, and the cheap nature of his record needle, so we agreed that the next time he was visiting me in Portland we would check it out together.

[...]It took awhile for Warren to visit, but when he did he brought along the acetate. We cued it up and were stunned — the first song was not “Sunday Morning” as on the “Velvet Underground & Nico” Verve LP, but rather it was “European Son”- the song that is last on that LP, and it was a version neither of us had ever heard before! It was less bombastic and more bluesy than the released version, and it clocked in at a full two minutes longer. I immediately took the needle off the record, and realized that we had something special. Between the two of us we had heard many Velvets outtakes on both official and less than official releases, but the present material had never been heard by either of us.

[...]This acetate, which is possibly the only surviving copy, represents the first Velvet Underground album as Andy Warhol intended it to be released.

The record is currently selling on eBay for $150,000. (Via BlogChelsea)

American English, get out of my head! I can handle ATM instead of cash machine and sidewalk instead of pavement. Replacing words is acceptable. Likewise, changing the spelling. But altering the pronunciation?

Lately, I’ve been working on a magazine story that requires the use of the word niche on a daily basis. And every time an American says n-itch (instead of the lovely n-eesh) I feel compelled to say n-itch back. Otherwise it would be like correcting the poor bugger.

So here I am with the words n-eesh and n-itch battling for supremacy in my head. I hate to say it, but n-itch is winning. Damn you n-itch! Damn you American English! You can take my spelling. But you will never take my pronunciation.