I was seven years old when a flood washed away life, as I knew it. At first, the flood was mysterious and full of adventure. My mom dressed me up in my fishing waders on the third day of the torrential downpour and we waded out into the street with water up to my knees. I brought my fishing pole with me, thinking maybe fish from the nearby river escaped, and were swimming along my street. Then I wanted to get my Spiderman raft out of the garage and float by the houses of my friends, but my mom wouldn’t let me.

Our house stood on a high road. When we walked down a small hill to a lower road, the water rose to my waist and a current started pushing at my legs. My mom let out a scream, grabbed hold of my hand and quickly pulled me back up into the house. I sat inside for three more days and nights and stared out the window to the black sky above, and the violent rains falling onto the earth. Sometimes God threw it down in buckets, sometimes He sprayed it down with His giant hose. I asked my mom if this flood, like Noah’s, was being used by God to wash away all the evil people in the world. “No, God will not punish man with another flood,” she said. But on TV, I saw that the flood was swallowing up people alive.

When the waters finally receded, I learned that they washed away my parents’ import business and all the stuff in it. My dad cried with his arms folded on the kitchen table. I wasn’t supposed to go into the kitchen and see him like that, I scolded myself back in my room. My mom took my child savings account - the one that I deposited change into every week -and emptied it, along with my porcelain piggy bank, all the drawers in the house, all the pockets in the closet and the lucky two-dollar bill our neighbor gave my parents when they started up their business. At school, I asked my teacher where ‘bankrupt’ was located, because that’s where my parents said they were going. The next few weeks, strangers would ring our doorbell and leave food on the porch. Every time my mom took the food into the house, and prepared a meal with it, my dad grew more silent. He didn’t like it, I could tell. It was an invasion into our lives, this food delivered to us by strange hands. And yet, we had to swallow it after my mom said grace at the table. (more…)

This holiday season New Yorkers are saying goodbye to a very special part of their childhood. The most famous toy store in New York City, FAO Schwarz on 5th Avenue, is going out of business. The store gained national fame when it appeared in the film Big, and Tom Hanks played the giant ground piano in the store. FAO Schwarz is a playground rising three stories high, an interactive fantasy world for children and their parents.

When you enter the store stuffed animals from the floor to the ceiling greet you, then whole sections are dedicated to children’s worlds like G.I. Joe, Barbie, Willy Wonka, World of Magic, The Cat in the Hat, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter and the not forgotten Madeline. But while Americans went to FAO Schwarz for adventure, they would actually buy their toys at discount stores such as Walmart. Despite its high prices, FAO Scwharz allowed everyone to enter its doors and at least look and feel, even if you couldn’t afford the goodies. It gained a special place on the tourist route in New York City.

On December 22, I visited FAO Schwarz, waiting in the entrance line to take in a last peak at this children’s world. Sales drew in the crowds. The trip overwhelmed me with the growing consumerism for children. I remember when I was a child (20 years ago) my favorite toy was something called “Sit and Spin.” You sat on a disk, held onto a horizontal wheel situated in the middle of the disk and span yourself around in a circle until you wanted to vomit. This was cool. I was not one for Barbie, but I saw that Barbie, despite all the sociological studies pummeled against her, is still very popular in her regal corner at FAO Schwarz. A favorite doll for Christmas this year is the Barbie of Swan Lake. The Barbie web site, geared for children, rates this doll as a “Must Have.” The popular toy store chain in America, Toys “R” Us, sells the doll for $16.99. The web site tells me that some people who bought the doll also bought “Barbie Think Pink Learning Notepad (an interactive children’s computer) for $49.99. Two toys and almost seventy dollars spent. (more…)

I dream of being a flamenco dancer, performing in an underground smoky bar in Sevilla, where round, lopsided tables, 5 or 6 no more, look ahead to a raised black stage.

And I, in a green dress with layers and layers of white ruffles, stomp my feet like a bull. Dark eyeliner would line my eyes with rings of sleepless torment, foundation makeup cracking my clenched forehead, lips smothered in dead raisins, lashes clumped in black mud.

My arms, soft from household, would flap to the heavy pounding of a stomping herd. Iíd penetrate the dark drunken audience with sudden turns snapping into frozen rage and stare through blissful eyes with urgent, violent, unspeakable passion.

Stomping, stomping, stomping out frustration, emotions rumbling over emotions just because Iíve too much Spanish emotion and need to boil, push the cork flying into the mouth of a senseless red haired clown watching agape. Iíd stop to rest my panting lungs, but the guitar would start up again and my feet, captured in a trance, would tap me across the stage. My hand, pulled by a string from above, would grab hold of my dress and lift countless layers of ruffles, a dark pair of legs, strapped tap heels, a quick, light tapping, faster, faster, harder to stomping out the beat that grips with claws around my heart.

Iíd snap my fingers hard and twirl my arms in fluid curls like Shiva destroying and creating, and call the muses to settle upon my shoulders, laughing in ecstasy, smiling, but only a second. Then Iíd embrace the Spanish flamenco soul, drive a knife through its back, beat against its chest, twirl away into a soft tapping repose catching my breath in long, heaving gasps. Start all over again, release from captivity all of passivity, burn, groan, kick, snarl, sweat and gleam. (more…)

Andrzej Adamczewski yearns to transcend Leczyca, a small town in provincial Poland, and become a famous artist in the west. His apprentice, Roman, dreams to escape his poverty by owning his own design studio and a hot sports car. Intuitively they blame each other for their frustrations. In reality, their fates are intertwined in small town clashes between old and new Poland. When Ela, an aspiring film director from Lodz, visits Leczyca, Andrzej regains hope. But can hope survive in a town where a mythical devil, Baruta, guards over the peopleís fate? (more…)

Hiram Bingham wrote in his book Lost City of the Incas, ìIt will be remembered that it was in July 1911, that I began the search for the last Inca capital.î

The place he was referring to was not called Machu Picchu, but Vilcabamba. There, the last Inca ruler Manco built a fortress to rebel against the invading Spaniards. He chose a location deep in the jungle of the Andes, inaccessible by Spanish horses. Mancoís men shot arrows through any Spaniard trying to attack Vilcabamba by foot.

The Inca’s ìGreat Rebellionî lasted until 1572, when the Spaniards captured Mancoís third ruling son, Tupac Amaru. They brought him to the main square of Cusco, the great Inca city besieged by Spaniards, and beheaded him. Don Francisco de Toledo, the Viceroy of Peru ordered that Tupac Amaruís body be dismembered to bring fear to the remaining Incas and to suppress any future uprisings. Thus ended the Inca civilization in Peru.

Bingham searched for Vilcabamba because it was believed that the Incas brought their treasures there for final safekeeping. He had heard about the site while tracing Spanish colonial routes in the Andes. Local farmers tried to convince Bingham that another Inca site called Choqquequirau (ìCradle of Goldî) was indeed Vilcabamba. But the meager findings at the site did not convince him. Bingham returned to Yale University, where he was professor, and planned his search for Vilcabamba.

In 1911, with financial support from Yale, Bingham traveled to southern Peru with two colleagues. They hired local guides in Cusco and set out to find the last Inca capital. They ventured through the Inca sacred valley, along the banks of the sacred river Urubumba, and up into the Andes Mountains. (more…)

Moscow’s Mafia Culture in a Snapshot

Casino Moscow
Author: Matthew Brzezinski
Publisher: Touchstone
Paperback: June 2002, $12.60 at Barnes and Noble

In Casino Moscow, Matthew Brzezinski gives a colorful, although superficial, snapshot of Russiaís corrupt business environment in which a handful of oligarchs and thugs stole much of the countryís wealth during the post-Soviet high rolling years, pre-1998 market crash. Brzezinski was serving as a Wall Street Journal reporter in Moscow during 1997-8, and was fortunate to witness the most crucial years in Russia by which limitless corruption, banditry, contract killings, graft, political favor and personal greed came to define the workings of Russiaís new economy.

Through manifold details and anecdotes, Brzezinski’s story (more…)