Memphis: The Lorraine Motel

Memphis National Civil Rights Museum - May 25, 2012

Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior was assassinated here on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in early 1968.

They've turned the motel into something called the "National Civil Rights Museum". There is a big crowd. I'm a little surprised that about half the crowd is white. Times change. When I moved to Tampa in 1953,  every grocery store had four bathrooms (white men, black men, white women black women) and two water fountains (white and black). That was 60 years ago and a plumber's dream.

I suspect that Mrs. Phred might be the only real Civil Rights veteran at the museum today. Not many people had the balls to put their life on the line back then for social fairness. Mrs. Phred belonged to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and agreed to lead a demonstration at the Florida pavilion of the New York Worlds Fair in 1964. Her sign said, "we don't want a World's Fair, we want a fair world ".

When you read the whole New York Times article, you get a sense that about 70 Pinkerton agents, ten paddy wagons, and several tanks surrounded Carol before they dared to make the arrest. The cops all had the white or black "Stetsons" and other odd hat styles that prevailed back then. So Carol went to off to jail in New York as well as in Tallahassee.

At the time of Carol's arrest, there were only three channels on TV and no remotes. You had to click the channels with a mechanical dial. LBJ and Elvis had three TV sets so they could watch all the news at the same time. Mrs. Phred's arrest was covered at 7 PM on NBC, ABC, and CBS. Mrs. Phred's Mom, Frieda, saw the arrest on CBS and blew her Jack Daniels and coke all over her MuMu.

I admit my admiration for Mrs. Phred's accomplishments as a 19-year-old..The New York Supreme Court threw out her trespassing conviction on the grounds that she had every right to demonstrate on what was essentially public property.

Mrs. Phred and I were in Tacoma when King was killed. I was a First Lieutenant. They briefed me on operation "Garden Plot" which involved the potential of flying in massive forces of regular Army and Marine troops to American cities to put down the "insurrection".

Now we have a black President. Think of that.

Why You Should Avoid Sushi

In a recent study done in Chicago, 100% of the sushi sold as tuna was actually some other fish.

84% of sushi fish samples labeled "white tuna" were actually escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable, oily anal leakage. Escolar or butterfish is delicious, but is also the ex-lax of the fish family.

Escolar is a type of snake mackerel that cannot metabolise the wax esters naturally found in its diet. These esters are called gempylotoxin, and are very similar to castor or mineral oil. This is what gives the flesh of escolar its delicious oily texture.

As a result, when full portions of escolar are consumed, these wax esters cause gastrointestinal symptoms. Consumption of escolar causes explosive, oily, orange diarrhea which may be difficult to control while, for example, passing gas in an elevator.

Angkor Thom Temple

Siem Reap, Cambodia - December 26, 2011

The Angkorean Empire lasted from the 9th to the 15th century.

The empire was ruled by a series of god-kings who commissioned a number of fantastic phallic-shaped temples.

The kings had extensive canals dug, which held water during the dry seasons. This water and the fish and water of the nearby Tonlé Sap (the "Great Lake") helped to proved three rice crops a year and sufficient resources to support all the construction.

The area was abandoned to the jungle because of attacks and incursions by the nearby Thai people.

The French naturalist Mahout rediscovered the area in 1860 and the French colonized Cambodia from 1863 to 1954..

You buy a three-day pass for $40 to visit all the temples you can handle. The pass has your picture and is checked at each site you visit.

The U.S. dollar is widely used within Cambodia. We're packing to fly to Hanoi today. We'll have one full day there before flying back to the real world

The Bohdi Tree

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - December 15, 2012

Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia. There are construction cranes and big buildings on both sides of the river. Investment is finding booming. I landed here once in 1967. I only remember a really muddy airstrip with metal grating. At the time I had no idea it was the Capital of Cambodia. Some of these pictures show a more rural way of life. The rice paddies stretch back about a half-mile from the Mekong, then you hit a treeline. There's no sign of roads or electrical wires until you approach the big city.

We'll be spending our 45th anniversary in Siem Reap. So far we see no mosquitoes and we're eating and drinking all the local stuff with no adverse results.

Bennett says the "strange fruit" I put in the last blog is called rambutan,.  In Thai, it's called "ngoh".  That word is also used pejoratively to describe people like Mrs. Phred that have kinky hair and darker skin.

We get a cyclo ride to the Palace of the Cambodian King and a museum of antiquities.

These flowers grow on the trunk of the Bohdi tree. Our guide tells us that Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and died under a tree like this.

I don't have time to wait for enlightenment so I'll just take a few pictures and keep moving....

Our guide was seven when Pol Pot emptied out the city and sent all the people to the country to become rice farmers. The guide lost 12 members of his family and only has one relative left. We run the numbers and figure he is about the same age as our son.

A third of the population of Cambodia was exterminated during the four years after 1975 that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge rant the country. We go to Security Centre 21, which was one of several hundred torture centers where confessions were extracted before those millions who confessed to being CIA or KGB were sent to the killing fields.

Each person who confessed after brutal torture turned in everyone he knew and they, in turn, did the same until over 1.75 to 2.5 million were killed and buried in mass graves. They dunked people's heads into barrels of excrement and urine.

Our guide was seven. He says that anyone younger was killed because they were too young to be useful and those older than 12 were also killed because their brains were too set in their ways. He is a little bald guy. Somehow he has acquired a laptop and I spend several hours with him showing him how to make bookmarks and download pictures about the Mekong for his tourist lectures. He took ammunition boxes for of excrement out of prisoners cells...

The suspects were tortured 16 hours a day until they confessed and implicated everyone they ever knew. Some tried to commit suicide by taking a header from the third floor or hanging themselves in the bathroom. To prevent this barbed wire was installed over the balconies.

Our guide had the job of emptying the ammunition toilet boxes at age seven. He says the solids were used in the garden and the "smelly" liquids were emptied into a large urn. When prisoners fainted from the torture they were revived by being dunked into the urn.

Cambodian now has fried chicken and free WiFI.

Pol Pot was reported to be a nice Buddhist boy who would never hurt a fly. However, the nature of man can be strangely plastic regardless of which, if any, religion is involved  Pol Pot was either insane or operating under the insane delusion that reducing the population from 8 million to 5 million and making the remainders all farmers would be a good thing.

This is Security Center 21, where skulls were stored and confessions were extracted.

These are farmers near the memorial at one of the Killing Fields. We find lots of human teeth on the ground as we walk around the trails at the memorial.

Valley of the Gods

Southeast Utah Desert - May 1,2008

It's about 600 square miles of empty desert valley uplifted 6,000 feet. Twenty miles of empty dirt road winds through the valley past the strange spires.


This is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. Camping is permitted anywhere you can find a spot to pull off the dirt road. Light pollution doesn't exist here. There are no small towns within 100 miles and the valley is surrounded by 7,000-foot bluffs and mesas.


In two days there will be a new moon. We'll find a spot to camp near a mesa and listen to the coyotes talk to each other.


At 4 AM the Navigator's Triangle (Deneb, Vega, and Altair) is directly overhead this time of year. The Milky Way burns a gossamer silver swath across the sky through the middle of the triangle. The Navajos think that it is very bad luck to try to count the stars. It's hard to imagine all this springing from a point smaller than an atom at the moment of the Big Bang. Trouble is that none of the other explanations seem credible either...Just an ant wandering the inside of an empty can try to grasp what it all means...We need bigger brains.


So. the evening of May 3rd, we'll be out here alone, in the inky black night, ten miles from the nearest road and thirty from the nearest electric light or human habitation.


This place is not well known or widely publicized. Only one of my maps even shows that it exists. It's a lovely, lonely desert. Right now the desert is blooming with wildflowers and greenery from the spring snowmelt.