Boston A Great Place To View History

Written from Boston, Mass.

One dividend certainly of having gone East to college is that you keep coming back to class reunions during the pleasant summertime in New England. Here in the "cradle" of the American Revolution" for four days of celebrating my Dartmouth class's 70th birthdays this year, we've been lucky with the weather, until this morning, when it was drizzling.

A heatwave dissipated the day before we arrived, and the 108 members of the class who showed up here have had a splendid time -- a clambake, a gala dinner at Symphony Hall, the Boston Pops and breakfast and a panel discussion on presidential elections at Fanueil Hall, where the heroes of the revolutio0n once spoke. This time, it's me and Bob Hager, formerly of NBC News, on the podium.

Under the Boston 'Go' Card, we could travel as far as Lexington and Concord, where the first clashes of the Revolutionary War took place, as well as to see Boston's many monuments and museums, the Boston Green, the old North Church, USS Constitution, Bunker Hill, Harvard University, take boat tours in Boston Harbor and the Charles River, and even as far as Provincetown on Cape Cod, Plymouth Rock, Salem and Gloucester.

We stayed at a festive hotel, the Mariott Long Wharf on the harbor, with trolley tours and boat tours just out the front door. Our heavy drinking days are over -- this time, to hold down collective costs, it was a no-host bar throughout the weekend.

And a branch of one of my favorite restaurants -- Legal Sea Foods, was also right out the door. Its raw Little Neck, Cherrystone and fried clams are not to be missed. Even its key lime pie seemed authentic.

From Logan Airport, you can reach the hotel and this entire historic sector by water taxi for $10 one way or $17 a roundtrip.

We had our clambake, featuring steamers, huge lobsters and corn on the cob, blueberry and apple pie, at an Outward Bound facility on Thompson Island, a 15-minute boat ride.

This entire event cost each person about $1,100, including the hotel, and was arranged by two classmates, Dick Foley and Eugene Kohn. We also held a class meeting, and even a moment of remembrance for six classmates and two wives who have died since we last met, in Hanover, N.H., last October. (Dartmouth was not a Co-Ed school when we went there, although it has been since 1972).

Prices for travel have gone up. In the panel on presidential campaigns, I recalled that in six months of covering Sen. Eugene McCarthy in 1968, in 35 states, the most I ever spent for a night's hotel was at the St. Regis in New York City, $34 a night. That got a big laugh.

Actually, I think Boston, like Washington, San Francisco, New York and New Orleans, are the places to come in visiting American cities. Certainly not Sam Zell's Chicago.

Just dashing off for another event.

--

Getting back to Los Angeles late Sunday, and well after the Lakers defeated the Boston Celtics in the 5th game of the NBA championships, sending the series back to Boston, I notice that the L.A. Times Web site doesn't clearly have the game on Page 1. This contrasts with the Boston Globe leading its paper today with the Celtics.

This is more Hiller Horseshit. He promised a better Web site, and he hasn't delivered one. Oner problem is, they don't work hard, or very late. In the meantime, it was clear, talking to my classmates, the L.A. Times under Sam Zell, David Hiller and Co. is a laughing stock.

Airline Service Continues to Deteriorate Sharply

Written from Boston, Mass.--

As I flew east Thursday on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston to attend a college reunion, I asked United attendants what they thought would become of the airline industry 15 years from now.

"Only the rich will be able to afford to fly," answered one of them. "Air travel for ordinary citizens will be a thing of the past."

Of course, that depends on the price of oil. Maybe if M. King Hubbert and his "oil peaking" theories are correct, no one will be flying all that much, because, he said, by 2020 world oil production would fall drastically, and our way of life would change.

No sooner did I arrive in Boston, but I read that on the way back Sunday, United will be charging $15 for the first piece of baggage checked, and that U.S. Air will soon begin charging passengers $2 for either soft drinks or bottled water. The obnoxious American Airlines pioneered the charge for the first piece of luggage.

As a New York Times article speculated yesterday, it won't be long before at least the coach class passenger is charged for going to the toilet.

Or, as someone suggested at dinner last night, they will begin to charge $5 when, in an emergency, oxygen drops from above your seat, and you will die if you don't have the right change.

Airline service, at least in the U.S., is getting so awful that in California I take the train, and, if I have the time, I even take the train sometimes across the country. It is more expensive, but it isn't personally insulting, and they still serve food.

Among the worst carriers these days are United and American. Yet many of these personnel still try to be as pleasant and helpful as they can, even when their salaries are cut -- yet again.

It is a mess, and public resentment is growing. A lady told me recently that she hates going to the airport. "Every time I have to remove my shoes," she said, "I get angry again at the terrorists."

Coming home from Europe recently, I flew Lufthansa, where the service is still good. I wonder why the Europeans cope so much better than we do in these hard times.

--

Tim Russert, Washington bureau chief for NBC News, and a frequently blunt commentator on both NBC and MSNBC on national politics, is dead of a sudden heart attack Friday afternoon He was only 58. Both the coverage on many networks has been massive and totally laudatory. Scarcely any politician would be treated with as much respect.

Russert who was also moderator of the long running Sunday interview show, Meet the Press, was popular also because of his book about hiw working class father, who survives him, his Irish ethnicity and his sports enthusiasms (the Buffalo Bills) among other attributes.

But it was his willingness to say clearly what he thought was happening, more clearly than the other commentators, which made him a hero to many. In this fascinating political year, he will be especially missed.

My 20,000-Mile Voyage Is Over--Impressions

I came home from my long cruise around Africa last night, and, thank goodness, it was on Lufthansa Airlines, which still believes in customer service. On the flights from Seville to Lisbon, then on to Munich and finally nonstop to Los Angeles, they actually served food in coach, plenty of it, and drinks of water and other beverages often enough to escape dehydration. The stewardesses and other staff were uniformly pleasant. All three airports were quite efficient. No London-Heathrow yesterday. Even with oil at $135 a barrel, some airlines are still doing the job they are supposed to do. Lufthansa even had big racks of the most prominent newspapers of both Europe and America in the Munich Airport, free for coach and first class passengers alike. It was an encouraging reminder that newspapers remain important.

The trip on the Holland-America liner Prinsendam was worth the more than $40,000 I paid for it. It was a way to see a continent I had scarcely visited, only have been before in Morocco, Kenya and Ethiopia. On this long voyage of more than 20,000 miles, my favorite places were South Africa, Egypt and Malta, where I celebrated 100 countries visited, a lifelong goal.

Don't get me wrong, a cruise ship is no place to learn a great deal about the countries visited. The ship was usually in and out of ports in only one day, often just a few hours of a single day, and the tours offered from the ship were both costly and once-over-lightly.

But in my physical condition, at age 70, the ship offers enticements. You don't have to pack and repack. There are relaxing days at sea for reading and listening to lectures, watching movies and getting to know fellow passengers and the crew, many of whom on the Prinsendam were wonderful people, eager to please.

And you do form some impressions. I cannot forget the poverty we saw in many places, but particularly The Gambia and Togo. Cairo was more splendid in parts and diversified than I had been expecting, and Egyptians were friendlier than I imagined they would be, perhaps because many realize that tourism is one of the economic salvations of modern Egypt. Still, I wondered how the Egyptian motorist feels, kept waiting for long periods, so that an armed convoy of tourists can run through intersections at high speed.

Security everywhere on the trip was tight, but particularly in Egypt, Kenya and along the coast of Somalia, where we had numerous police escorts and the ships are closed off in the ports from any outsiders. All port gates are strongly protected, and as we passed by Somalia, for four days we had an escort from a heavily armed Dutch Navy frigate.

In South Africa and Namibia, from what we saw, the minority white population remains prosperous, often holds the best jobs, and seems comfortable and secure. The teeming black slums are something else, however. We had not long left South Africa when riots broke out in these slums and more than 40 "illegal immigrants" from Zimbabwe and Mozambique were murdered.

The resort islands we visited in the Indian Ocean -- Reunion, Mauritius and the Seychelles Islands -- were not quite as fancy as I had pictured. You are better off going to Hawaii.

The intellectual curiousity of many of the mostly elderly passengers on the Prinsendam was limited. With a few exceptions, they did not seem terribly interested either in the politics or the living conditions of the countries visited. I was quite impressed with myself, reaching my goal of 100 countries. But I found many passengers who had been on so many cruises that they no longer kept track how many countries they had stopped in. In any event, it was far more than 100, and there was one lady on the Prinsendam who had been on the ship as a passenger for a year.

I got along famously with my table mates each night at dinner. In the assigned seating, I found myself with an elegant lady from Georgia and Florida, a couple from Portland, Ore. and two ladies from Tacoma, Wash. We all became quite friendly.

My room steward, a young Indonesian, was great, and the food on the ship was rich, but bland. If you were willing to eat steak every night, which is not good for you, it was more than adequate. But if you craved spicy food or authentic ethnic food, forget it. They served a taco salad one night that would have got the chefs arrested in Mexico, and their "Arab dinner" featured only one Arab dish. The coffee bar on the ship, though, was excellent.

Many people on these ships seem to drink their way through the voyage. But I don't drink any longer, and while I spent $1,250 on the ship using the Internet, partly to write this blog, I never ordered a single alcoholic beverage. That saved quite a bit of money, since drinks often went at $5.95 or above, and wine, of course, was more than that.

I found, at the end of the voyage, that there were some limits to Holland America hospitality. The ship's doctors seemed only anxious to get rid of me when my defibrillator started going off -- 17 times despite tests by the ship's doctors and a doctor in Malaga, Spain, which showed the problem was not in my heart, but in the defibrillator. When this happened in the port of Cadiz, Spain, just two days from the end of the voyage, they packed me off in an ambulance to a hospital and then later were unable to tell my children what hospital it was. My son found out only after calling numerous hospitals throughout the city to inquire whether I was there. I was never so glad as to hear my son's voice on the line after hours of inattention from the Spanish-speaking personnel. From that moment, with my son, who speaks fluent Spanish, interceding for me, their treatment of me radically improved, and, after turning off the defibrillator as broken, they released me the next day.

I left virtually everything on board the ship to be shipped home. Let's hope it gets here.

Realization Of A Goal: Malta Is My 100th Country

Written from Valletta, Malta--

I celebrated reaching my 100th country or dependency today by hosting a luncheon for my tablemates from the cruise ship Prinsendam. Also guests were the sister and niece of my friend, Anton Calleia, who grew up on Malta and left for the U.S., and an eventual career as Los Angeles' chief budget officer. His sister, Ellen, and niece, Janet, remain on Malta, as does his 97-year-old mother. We dined and drank a very good Italian wine, Gazi, at Rubino's restaurant in downtown Valletta.

All those who are acquainted with me know I'm an inveterate traveler -- be it still hitchhiking around Los Angeles on occasion, to a 2005, 11,000-mile drive to Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territory, 20 automobile trips across the U.S., or nine trips to India, five to Italy, a voyage to Antarctica, and various visits to every continent. About 25 countries were in connection with L.A. Times assignments, mainly on the Olympics, but also several volcanoes in the Phillippines and the Caribbean.

Travel, as has been observed, is more a function of willpower than financial resources. When I was 20 years old, while studying a year in Paris, I hitchiked around Europe with a friend on spring vacation on the princely sum of $5 a day for two, and once hitchiked as well most of the way from Lima over the Andes, to Cuzco, Peru. I thought nothing of taking just $100 with me on a trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1967.

In 1968, while covering the presidential campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, I kept track of how much I spent on hotels. The most expensive in the six months with him was the St. Regis in New York, $34 for the night, and the least expensive was in Bismarck, N.D., $4. I used to stay in the Manger-Hay Adams in Washington, D.C. for $16 a night. Those were the days, and one of my proudest moments was when Mark Murphy, Metro editor of the Times, remarked that he could send me to Europe for what it would cost to send another reporter to Fresno.

Years later, when I had children, I often took them on long trips, a month in Australia, to the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, to the World Olympic Congress at Baden-Baden, West Germany, to India and the Normandy beaches. Both my son and daughter now travel a lot on their own, and both have been to 30 countries or more. Even my little granddaughter, four and a half, has been to 12 states and Canada and Mexico.

With so much traveling, I've found myself in some interesting spots when major events occurred. I was in Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 15, 1963, the day of the church bombing by Klansmen that killed four little black girls. On the terrible day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I heard the news while standing on the steps of Widener Library at Harvard University. I was in Athens, Greece, the day President Johnson expanded the war in Vietnam, on Feb. 7, 1965, in Wilmington, N.C., on the day of the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, and in Lausanne, Switzerland the day President Jimmy Carter tried and failed to rescue the American hostages in Iran. But I was close to home, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel with Sen. McCarthy, the horrible night that Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Of course, these days, unable to walk very well, I go on more expensive trips. The present one, around Africa, took me to 15 new dependencies and countries: the Turks and Caicos Islands, Madeira, Senegal, The Gambia, Ghana, Togo, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Reunion, Mauritius, the Seychelles islands, Egypt. Malta and, tomorrow, Tunisia. The cruise will end next week in Spain and Portugal. One of the best things about a cruise at my age is that you don't have to pack and unpack at every stop, but seeing the world from a cruise ship is not as good as renting a car and driving through a foreign land.

The first time I went to Spain, in 1958, Franco was still in power, and the police wore three-cornered Napoleon-style hats. Sometimes, such as with my daughter on the West Bank and in Kashmir, I wandered into areas which were pretty tense. It freaked out my kids when I went to the Middle East a few months after 9-11.

I have a long memory, and while I cannot tell you day to day about each trip, I remember most details of the lion's share of trips and still have a memory of my first, with my parents, to Palm Springs at the age of 2, and I have a pungent memory of a cross-country trip by rail my sister and I took with our mother in wartime 1942.

Obviously, I have some favorite places:

In California, Yosemite National Park, Lassen Peak, San Francisco, Big Sur and the Redwood Highway.

In the U.S., Ashland, Ore., Monument Valley, Ouray, Colo., the Beartooth Pass leading into Yellowstone, the Lemhi Pass, where Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide, Homer, Alaska, Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, New Orleans, Tampa's Old Spanish section, Greenville, Miss., Sanibel Island, Fla., Mobile, Ala., Washington, D.C., Harpers Ferry, Concord, Mass, and, I hate to admit it, New York City and Boston. I attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., but found it too cold. Now, as class secretary of my Dartmouth class, I enjoy going to Hanover every fall.

In Canada, Vancouver, Victoria, Jasper, Lake Louise, the Stikine River, Yellowknife, Montreal and Quebec City.

In Latin America, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, the Amazon part of Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I've never been to Rio, or to Panama or Costa Rica, and have only stopped briefly in Ecuador.

In Europe, Norway, Denmark, Austria, France, Italy, Greece and Turkey (the part of Istanbul on the European side of the Bosporus). Moscow was pretty grim when I went there in 1980.

In Asia, Japan, China, Singapore, India (especially Kashmir, Bombay and the Kerala state), Israel, and, I hate to admit, Dubai.

In Africa, Morocco, South Africa and Egypt.

100 countries and dependencies. But that's not really anywhere close to the travels of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the onetime president of the International Olympic Committee. He traveled to 256 governmental entities on Olympic business.

Will I match Samaranch? No.

My favorite trips of all? It would have to be hiking in Yosemite with my father, just home from the war, in 1947 when I was nine years old, and my 1983 trip with my daughter to India when she was 11, where we saw my dear friends, Abraham S. Abraham and his wife, Amrita, in Bombay. In Yosemite, we climbed the old ledge trail, no longer in existence, from the Valley to Glacier Point, to the top of Yosemite Falls and quite a few others. But, being scared of heights, I never climbed Half Dome. That was left to my father and my grandfather, Harris A. Reich, who went to Yosemite regularly for 6o years, and my son, who climbed it much later.

It was more hiking than traveling, but while he was growing up, my son and I hiked about 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail and greatly enjoyed the campouts and day-hikes in the San Jacinto, San Bernardino, San Gabriel, Sierra and Cascade ranges.

Into Teeming Cairo, The Pyramids And Sphinx

Written from Alexandria, Egypt--

For a long time, I had skipped Egypt on my travels, not being in great sympathy with its policies, and somewhat concerned about the security of such a visit. But that was a mistake. Egypt is a marvelous travel experience and no one who can afford such a trip should miss it.

Today, hundreds of Prinsendam passengers took a 12-hour tour from the ship, docked here at Alexandria, into Cairo and Giza to see the great pyramids, the Sphinx and the Egyptian Museum, which has many more King Tut articles than have appeared in periodic tours of the U.S.

Cairo has a population roughly estimated at 20 million people, but it was not quite the ramshackle, disorganized place I'd been led to expect. It turns out to have many fancy sections, high-rise buildings of splendid architecture and a subway line that is longer than Los Angeles'. It even, recently, has built a freeway or two.

The pyramids and Sphinx are west of the city, but the city has kind of grown up around them, and the Egyptian authorities might be well advised to form a national park and buy out property owners who now impede the long views of the monuments, which date from 2600 B.C. There are good perspectives now, but the views from the desert are missing. There are obviously no monuments in all the world like these, and it was a thrill to see them. They loom even larger than expected. I skipped the $3 camel ride, however.

We had a guide today, an Egyptology graduate student, who felt constrained to lecture us for some minutes on the virtues of women wearing the veil and in many cases total burkas on the streets of Cairo. He claimed the women like it, although he said Islam does not dictate it. My fellow passengers sat mute through this exercise, which reminded me so much of the Southern whites who used to say the Negroes loved segregation.

But I did speak up. I told him of my feeling that not until women are liberated and put on an equal footing with men, will Egypt and other Arab countries advance. Right now, these countries labor under a severe handicap: Only half their population really participates in the economic life of the community. I expressed a view that men, like women, here would be better off with a new arrangement.

In accord with the ship's advice, many of the women going on the tour wore scarfs, and many of the men long-sleeved shirts. But Cairo has many tourists and I noticed that particularly the Asians, the Japanese and Chinese women who were visiting and on the streets, were wearing shorts. I imagine Arab men enjoyed the view.

Security on the trip from Alexandria to Cairo was light. No convoy, as to Luxor the other day, and buses drove separately, each with a security man in a front seat riding shot gun. In Cairo itself, and particularly around the Egyptian Museum, there was heavy security.

Tourists get a good reception in this country, by the way.

The Nile flows right through the center of downtown Cairo.

--

Kudos to the L.A. Times editorial pages for running an editorial contrary to a position taken by Sam Zell and opposing Proposition 98, which under the guise of undoing the foolish court decisions allowing muncipalities to seize property by eminent domain for commercial projects would also do away with rent control and do other things as a favor for the wealthy. This is a sound position, and tends to verify Zell's earlier assurances that he would not interfere in editorial policy.

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the uprising of French settlers and Army officers in Algeria that ultimately brought Charles de Gaulle back to power in France and paved the way, eventually, for French withdrawal from Algeria.

After being restored, de Gaulle went down to Algiers and made one of the great Machiavellian statements of modern history: "I have understood you," he roared. The crowd of Colons roared back. They thought he was saying he understood them and would support them. What he, in fact, was saying, as it turned out, was that he had understood them and was against them.

Suez Canal Pespectives--Sinai Side Undeveloped

Written on M.S. Prinsendam, Port Said, Egypt--

Our 11-hour passage through the Suez Canal is complete, and we're in the Mediterranean Sea. There were no warships today, so the Prinsendam led the northbound convoy of 46 ships, and actually got underway at 3:30 a.m. There were no halts, since the southbound convoy of the day, 18 ships, was waiting for us in Great Bitter Lake when we passed, south of Ismailia.

Signs of Middle Eastern conflict were everywhere. To protect the canal and its shipping, the Egyptian government stations soldiers every few hundred feet all along the 101-mile length of the waterway. Mostly, they live in flimsy tents and stand solo watch out in the bright sunlight. It cannot be pleasant duty.

The Suez Canal, finished in 1869 and containing no locks, since it is at sea level throughout, was first conceived by ancient Egyptian monarchs in the 6th century BC. It is traversed each year by about 25,000 ships, about 14% of the world's shipping, and individual ships frequently pay tolls of $200,000 or more. Of course, it marks the boundary between Africa and Asia.

There is a very marked difference, as we saw today, between the east bank, the Sinai desert, and the west bank, which is irrigated and part of the Nile river delta. So, on the one side there is lush farm land, and on the other side, the east side, almost no development at all. It's as if the Egyptians expect the Israelis to be back some day, as they were in 1956 and 1967-73.

There are signs along most of the way of the remainders of the Israeli Bar Lev line, built to defend their positions on the east side of the canal. Israeli engineers built berms and ramparts 25 feet high, and there are still the ruins of some military equipment destroyed in the Israeli-Arab wars.

On the other hand, Ismailia and other cities along the way on the west bank look fairly prosperous, as did Luxor a few days ago.

There is only one bridge across the canal, and that is a spectacular suspension bridge built a few years ago by the Japanese. Otherwise, there are multiple ferries, every few miles, and some with a huge backup of truck traffic. (The Asian influence is quite noticeable here in Egypt. When we went to Luxor the other day, we rode in Chinese-made buses, very comfortable with every modern feature).

Tomorrow early we dock in Alexandria, and many passengers, including me, will take a 12-hour tour from there to Cairo and the Pyramids. Malta has been substituted for Libya as the following stop, Libya having been cancelled because the Khadafy government would not give visas to the American passengers.

--

Two articles in the Herald-Tribune today deal with the Obama candidacy. Maureen Dowd makes a rather compelling case for him not putting Hillary on the ticket as a Vice Presidential running mate, calling her a "Trojan rabbit," a disruptive force who could jinx Obama. And Edward Luttwak, in a chilling article, warns that to fundamentalist Muslims, Obama is an apostate, because his father renounced Islam, and that accordingly his murder is regarded as mandated by Islamic law. Luttwak notes that Iran has endorsed apostate murder and that Obama could, under no circumstances, go there for any talks.

Luttwak concludes, "Of all the well-meaning desires projected on Obama, the hope that he would decisively improve relations with the world's Muslims is the least realistic."

Maybe so, but many Muslims I've met while circumventing Africa have expressed admiration of Obama, and enthusastically backed his candidacy.

Through The Suez Canal Tomorrow On My Cruise

Written on M.S. Prinsendam Approaching Suez Canal--

So far, my cruise from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., across the Atlantic, and then around Africa, has gone more than 18,000 miles, and now one of the climactic moments will come tomorrow, the passage in convoy through the Suez Canal.

At the moment, we are in the Gulf of Suez about 50 miles below the anchorage at which convoys through the canal are formed. What happens is that the northbound convoy enters the canal about 6 a.m., proceeds to a holding spot near Ismailia, lets the southbound convoy pass, and then proceeds to the Mediterranean Sea, reaching it about 5 p.m.

In the convoys, according to our captain, any warships go first, then passenger ships and cruise ships and finally freighters.

It's highly evident we are in the Middle East. Earlier this morning we passed the offshore oil wells developed by both the Israelis, during their Sinai occupation (1967-73), and Egyptians just off the Sinai peninsula. Then, the first big sight tomorrow is supposed to be all the Egyptian tanks and other military equipment destroyed by the Israeli army in three wars. You can be assured I'll be out on deck to see this.

My trip is also reaching a significant personal milestone. Egypt was my 99th country yesterday, and Malta, next Friday, will be my 100th. Naturally, I'm happy about this, and will take a few friends from the ship to a gala luncheon on Malta, renowned for its gallant resistance to the Axis powers in World War II.

--

Now Rupert Murdoch has dropped his bid to buy Newsday, and the New York Times this morning says that Cablevision might have the inside track to the purchase from the faltering Tribune Co.

But, alas, it is not faltering enough to divest itself of the L.A. Times to someone who would run it with more ambition and more competence.

--

Sen. Barack Obama's chances against Sen. John McCain have, in my view, been underestimated. I notice he is ahead of McCain in a poll out this morning, 46% to 40% -- and that's even before Hillary throws her support to him.

Dollar Still Counts On The Streets Of Luxor

Written After Visit To Luxor, Egypt--

Five hundred Prinsendam passengers went in a police-protected convoy on a 300-mile roundtrip to see the ancient temples and tombs of Luxor, on the Nile River, Saturday, and it was a great trip by several counts.

But on a voyage when we have often been reminded how far the dollar has sunk compared to the Euro (although it has rebounded a little in recent weeks), we found a deal while stalled in traffic in downtown Luxor that outmatched anything on the trip. In the hotel where we had lunch, they were asking $25 each for colorful papyrus prints. A peddler on the street, however, was selling the same prints, which look like paintings, for a dollar each. And one woman on our tour bus finally bought everything another peddler had for 50 cents apiece.

We had many impressions on the 13-hour trip in ten buses. Of course, the antiquities were wonderful, and it was great to see the Nile River, almost a mile wide and 100 feet deep at Luxor, with some of the 350 luxury craft which cruise up and down the river, at anchor on the river bank adjacent to downtown Luxor (an impressive city of 1.4 million people).

A few years ago, in a tragic day, Islamic terrorists slaughtered scores of tourists visiting the antiquities in Luxor, including 60 Swiss tourists. After that horrific episode, Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, vowed never to let it happen again, and he has subsequently assigned strong police and military guards to tourists traveling to Luxor and elsewhere in Egypt. Tourism is probably the biggest revenue-producer Egypt has, so this makes eminent good sense.

We saw the security guard in operation today, and it was well done. When we left the port of Safaga on the Red Sea first thing in the morning, the convoy of buses was headed by a police truck carrying several machine gun-wielding officers. Police cars followed the procession, and at each intersection, all other traffic was blocked, including that coming from the opposite direction, and police and soldiers carrying rifles or machine guns stood guard on the streets. It all came off without a hitch. Whoever said, Egypt was poorly organized?

The first 110 miles of the trip was through a barren desert, with hardly a bush or a tree, and no irrigated farmland. But 40 miles from the Nile, we began running aside an irrigation canal, and from then on, it was lush farm land, every square inch beyond houses and huts it seemed covered with a variety of crops, and even on the banks of the canal, sugar cane was growing. It was a repeat of something we've seen elsewhere in Africa on this tour: The inhabitants are often poverty-stricking, but they make use of everything they have to eke out a living.

Still, life is not easy. For every tractor or truck we saw hauling produce to market, we saw at least 10 simple wagons, pulled by a donkey. And many people carried their own produce to market.

In every village we went through, the most impressive buildings were the minarets of mosques, towering over everything, a striking display of the preeminent role of Islam in Egypt.

But also impressive to me was that nearly every woman we saw, and there were far fewer women on the streets than men, was not only veiled but covered from head to toe in usually totally black garments.

I could not help but think what a boon it would be to all these countries in the Middle East to liberate the women, to allow them to take their place in the modern world, rather than to be so subservient (and, in the customary heat here, uncomfortable).

Nonetheless, Luxor itself often conveyed an impression of prosperity. There are many fine hotels and gift shops of all kinds. This is in a way, a tourists' paradise. Many of the cruise ships that sail from Luxor up the river to Aswan looked very appealing.

We are leaving Safaga late tonight, and will be passing up the Gulf of Suez tomorrow and then through the Suez Canal on Monday.

--

I'm glad to see Sen. Hillary Clinton has said she regrets her statement to USA Today about the support she's been getting from the "hard working Americans, white Americans." Bob Herbert has an excellent column in today's New York Times about that statement, with its racist tinge. Hillary should abandon all her snide attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, and start going with the flow. He deserves her full support, for his campaign has been a dignified and worthy one, not to say inspirational, and there is every prospect he will be the next President. Hillary should be worried about her next Senate campaign in New York, not to mention her standing in the U.S. Senate if she begins to sound like Bilbo and Talmadge.

A woman on the trip complained to me today, "It seems like everyone in Africa is for Obama." I replied, "Nearly everyone in the world is for him. Let's just hope the American people have the good sense to go along with that opinion."

Off Somalia, We Get A Dutch Navy Escort

Written on M.S. Prinsendam, 165 Miles Off Kismaayo, Somalia--

Since leaving the Kenyan port of Mombasa last night, the Holland-America liner M.S. Prinsendam, upon which I've been circumventing Africa, has had a military escort. She is HMS Everestyn, a 6,000-ton Dutch frigate carrying missiles, a complement of 202 men and 10 Dutch Marines, plus a helicopter which could land on this ship, is just a mile off our stern as I write.

It's a certain comfort to passengers, because there have been several instances of Islamic pirates off Somalia in recent weeks. A French yacht was seized, as was a Spanish cargo ship, and a missile was fired at an oil tanker. Several Western navies are now in the Gulf of Aden, further north of where we are, to fend off pirates. A couple of weeks ago, French commandos captured six pirates and found some of the $4 million in ransom which had been paid for release of the crew of the French yacht.

Just this morning, news comes that U.S. warplanes or cruise missiles have attacked again in Somalia, this time reportedly killing the Al-Qaeda commander there, Aden Hashi Ayso. As this is being written, our captain, Christopher Turner, has just announced that the Dutch ship will launch its helicopter in a few minutes to make a sweep of waters ahead of our ship.

Our ship has taken other security measures during the wide berth we are giving the Somali coast. Most exterior lights on the ship are being kept off at night. Curtains have been drawn around the dining room. Two acoustic guns have been mounted on the ship's bow, capable of firing such loud charges that they are supposed to split the ear drums of any attackers.

Even in Mombasa, where I saw a contingent of U.S. Marines at an outlying hotel Monday, security around the ship was tight, with armed guards at dockside, a police boat constantly going back and forth beside the ship, and all vehicles kept well away from the ship. We had to walk to our tour buses a quarter mile away. Mombasa was the site of an al-Qaeda attack a few years ago against hotels housing Israeli tourists, and is about 500 miles from the Somali border.

This is the War on Terror as seen in East Africa, just one of its many locales.

--

A New York Times-CBS poll this morning reflects some of the damage that has been done to the Obama campaign by his fanatic, treasonous former pastor, James Wright. For instance, the number of Democrats expecting Sen. Barack Obama to win the Democratic nomination has slipped from 69 to 51%.

It is worth noting, I think, that Obama is not the only candidate to have been betrayed by dishonest, or fanatic associates or supporters. Sen. Hillary Clinton demoted her chief strategist, Mzrk Penn, when it was divulged that he was taking money from the Columbian government to support its trade treaty with the U.S. at a time when Clinton opposed the treaty. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, was betrayed by a "supportive" Protestant minister from Texas who made embarrassing anti-Catholic remarks.

Even Jesus had his Judas. But it is distressing that these low-lifes surface in modern campaigns. And the betrayal may have been particularly devastating to Obama, who had a long, close relationship to his pastor before he fully appreciating that the man was a violent, America-hating extremist and virulent anti-Semite. Although Obama has now responded forcefully, cutting all ties, the sordid episode has raised questions about his judgment and political seasoning.

The 2008 campaign has been dramatic and often uplifting, largely because of the inspirational messages of Obama. If he were to falter now, and we will know more after next week's Indiana and North Carolina primaries, millions of Americans would lose their hope for something immediately better in our politics than retreads of the Bush-Clinton failures of the past two decades.

It's Hard To Mail A Postcard From This Trip

Written from the French island of Reunion, Indian Ocean--

The Internet is not only adversely affecting the newspaper business, it's also causing a retrenchment in post office services, and making it harder and harder to send postcards back home.

I confess I'm a big postcard addict. I send them out to many relatives and friends, and try to provide a plethora of African stamps from my cruise circumventing the continent, to my grandchildren.

But this is not easy at many places. I've just had a typically difficult experience on the French island of Reunion. It's a prosperous island, an overseas department of France, 6,500 miles from the mother country. The population is 770,000. It looks French and has been French since 1638. The Tricolor seems as much at home here as it is in Paris. Today, we saw a volcanic crater 8,500 feet high which last erupted just two years ago. It's a scenic island, with some of the highest rainfall totals in the world.

I was able to buy postcards at a store at the lip of the crater, but failed in repeated tries to buy stamps to send them home. First, they said, the post offices on the island were not open Mondays. Then, there were supposed to be stamps at the tourist office. But all they had were envelopes. Besides, three different guides and clerks gave me varying figures for how many Euros it would cost to mail a card home.

Finally, I gave the guide on our bus a large tip and he assured me he would mail the cards. This worked, I've had confirmation, in Morocco and Senegal, and a friend e-mailed me that he had received my card sent from a hotel in Ghana.

But with all the e-mail and digital photography these days, it seems many people no longer send postcards. The market for them has clearly diminished, and post offices have, as I said, retrenched. Just another sign of modern life.

I notice even the New York Times lost money in the first quarter.

As to how I'm liking my long cruise (now in its 40th day, with 33 more to follow), I'm enjoying it. I'm not big into such activities as nightclub-style shows, bingo, bridge playing, sunbathing on deck, and some of the other ways many passengers pass their time.

But I do enjoy the long days at sea (39 of the 73 days are spent entirely at sea). And the improvement in international communications means that I now am able to get an electronic copy of the International Herald Tribune delivered to my stateroom six days a week, plus a short digest of the New York Times every day. We've only been out of range of CNN four days in the middle of the Atlantic. And E-mail has been available every day of the voyage, at my usual Yahoo E-mail address. All this is quite different from my last major cruise to Antarctica. I thought I would hardly write this blog at all during the voyage, but I've been writing it every couple of days. And I sent a classnote back to the Dartmouth Alumni magazine from the ship in Cape Town.

Many of my fellow-passengers are, frankly, rich people who go on long cruises every year. I've been so far to 96 countries or dependencies, but many of them have been to more. Their curiousity about the places we have visited has been limited, and their disdain for struggling African countries we have seen is palpable. But I have met some thoughtful people aboard, and a few just as interested in the American presidential race as I am.

It's true this cruise, on the Holland America liner Prinsendam, with about 600 passengers aboard, has skipped many unstable or even dangerous countries. We passed by Mauritania, the Guineas, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Benin, Gabon, the Congo, Angola and Mozambique, and are going to give Somalia a wide berth, sailing from Mombasa all the way east to Oman and then relying on the protection of a Dutch Navy vessel to get us safely through the Gulf of Aden, which was the scene a couple of weeks ago, of the seizure by pirates from Somalia of a French yacht. (The French sent special forces to Djibouti. After a ransom was paid for liberation of the ship's crew, the French Navy attacked the pirates in a Somalian port, retaking the ship, recovering much of the ransom money and capturing six pirates who were flown back to France for a well-deserved trial. It's interesting to see the U.S. is not by any means the only country who feels constrained to fight fundamentalist or free-booting Muslims).

Tomorrow, we visit Mauritius, a country 120 miles east of Reunion, that remains closely aligned with Great Britain. It's good to see the British and French have not disappeared from this part of the world.

We are now 12,500 miles out of Fort Lauderdale, where we started March 11. By the time we end up in Lisbon, this is going to be close to a 20,000-mile voyage. I'm happy I'm taking it.

Namibia An Empty Quarter of Africa With Potential

Written from Luderitz, Namibia--

This largely desert country in the southwest of Africa is three times larger than California, but has only 1.8 million people. Much of it gets rain only once every five years, and it has spectacular scenery reminescent of the South Dakota badlands. They call one section the Valley of the Moon. Sand dunes rise as high as 1,200 feet, and yesterday, when we visited one of them on my African cruise, young people were climbing to the top and then surfing downward on huge boards. Some were able to surf from top to bottom without falling.

Our guide in a tour by four-wheel drive vehicles was a former South African Apartheid policeman who said he is on his way to Iraq for security duty, a high priced job he claimed is now held by 20,000 former South African security people. I wonder whether this can be true, and also wonder if it is the American taxpayers who are paying for it. I've never read any article talking of Apartheid cops' role in Iraq.

Before World War I, Namibia, then called Southwest Africa, was a German possession, and there are still German attitude traces here. Our tour was so regitmented, they would not even stop to permit us from buying postcards, although I managed to buy and send some today.

The population in Namibia is said, at present, to be 12% white, 8% "colored," or mixed, and 80% black. Judging from our stops here today and Walvis Bay yesterday, the lion's share of good jobs are held by whites and a few coloreds, and there is much evidence, as in the rest of Africa, of young black men sitting around the streets all day, unemployed.

Yet Namibia has obvious potential, including the largest uranium mine in the world, and, close to this city, diamond mines. It would take an aqueduct nearly 1,500 miles long to bring water here from Botswana. In the meantime, it is pretty bleak, a few palm trees, but mostly barren land broken by a few exotic plants that can get by on the moisture they pick up from fog rolling in from the sea.

Below the Tropic of Capricorn, the weather at this time of the year, is marvelous, bright clear days and temperatures in the high 70s, as the Southern fall begins.

Next stop, South Africa, in two days, where the M.S. Prinsendam will be visiting Capetown for three days, Durban and Richards Bay. Some passengers are getting off the ship to take a trip to Victoria Falls, or to the game refuges, and some will even be going to Zimbabwe. I decided to skip that and will be going on two day trips to game refuges and also down to the Cape of Good Hope.

--

Russ Stanton's view of what editors should read for a three-day retreat apparently devoted to further downsizing and diminishing of the L.A. Times, might be suitable for Stanton's remedial reading course, but it has little or nothing to offer serious thinkers about the future of the newspaper business.

Two former L.A. Timers who are working elsewhere were among the Pulitizer winners this year, including Amy Harmon, the talented former reporter in Business, now working for the New York Times. Naturally, while the Washington Post was winning six Pulitzers, and the New York Times two, the L.A. Times won none. Most of the people who would have competed for them in recent years have left the paper, victims of Dennis FitzSimons, David Hiller and Sam Zell.

Voodoo Ceremony In Togo Displays Values

traWritten On M.S. Prinsendam After Departing Lome, Togo--

Togo, a small strip of a country neighboring Ghana, is not nearly as prosperous as Ghana. But I was still impressed, in a long rural tour I took yesterday, of certain values in that country.

Our tour party saw a most impressive voodoo dance performed in a village by more than 100 young people attired in yellow t-shirts. It was evident that, as in most religions, voodoo incorporates an ethical values system that can give great consolation to its adherents. And unlike some other fundamentalists, the voodooists in Togo are not out killing people who may disagree with them. trt

Also, Togo has an impressive, if relatively undiversified, rural infrastructure, a farming community which does not, as in The Gambia, seem overpowered by overpopulation.

We had an excellent guide for the day, an educated man who told us that in Togo, the motto is, "Nothing should be lost." It was astonishing to hear about the multiple uses that a date or coconut palm tree can be put, and, with the huge cassava crop, they even use the leaves to make vegetables, or other parts of the plant to make soap.

Togo lost its English-speaking sections at independence to English-speaking Ghana. It has few natural resources other than phosphate. But the, "Yes We Can" spirit of its people is admirable.

The M.S. Prinsendam has now left West Africa after making five fascinating, if sometimes depressing stops, and today at 2 p.m. we cross the equator. We also are now in the Eastern Hemisphere. We are more than 8,000 miles out of Fort Lauderdale, and our next stop, in four days, is Namibia.

--

Matthew Mosk, a political reporter for the Washington Postl, has an excellent article today on how the rapacious Clintons feel "spent and outspent" in the context for the Democratic nomination. Since they just reported $109 million in personal income since the 2000 election, it would not be too much to suggest that they spend some of their own money on their campaign to restore Dog Patch government to the White House, if they really desire to go on.

With the money he had been able to raise, primarily from small donors on the Internet, Barack Obama should now press on to finish the job, pouring a crushing amount of what he has raised into Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana. Victory for his inspired campaign, at least for the Democratic nomination, now appears in sight.

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One of the most distinguished foreign reporters in recent years, for the Los Angeles Times and more recently for the New York Times, has been arrested by police thugs working in Zimbabwe for the dictator, Robert Mugave. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Barry Bearak has repeatedly in his career courted danger to bring deeply perceptive reports on the evils of our times to the rest of the world. We can only hope now that he is safe and will soon be released.

Mugabe is a dope. He could give up power and go public speaking, like the Clintons, thus making himself an even greater fortune than what he has been able to steal from the poor people of Zimbawe.

In Ghana, Comparative Prosperity in West Africa

Written from Accra, Ghana--

Of all the countries we've visited on my Holland-America cruise in West Africa, Ghana, the first modern nation to emerge independently out of colonial Africa in 1957, is today far more prosperous and dynamic than its neighbors in West Africa. This is obvious to any visitor. One modern building after another is going up, the highways are often wide and busy. The markets are teeming.

Our guide explained to us on the way into town that one reason Ghana is booming is that in recent years much trade from landlocked central Africa countries to the rest of the world has been diverted through Ghana to avoid the religious and other conflicts that have embroiled other coastal countries, such as the neighboring Ivory Coast and Nigeria, or even further distant coastal countries such as Senegal, The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

One advantage Ghana has is that it only has about 16% Muslim population, thus avoiding the interrnecene strife that has marked Nigeria and the Ivory Coast where fundamentalist Muslims constitute a majority or close to it and live in constant disturbance with Christian citizens.

We're now going to bypass such conflict-ridden countries as Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Congo and Angola while sailing to Namibia (four days at sea). But first, we stop tomorrow in Lome, capital of Togo.

On the way out of Accra this afternoon, we stopped to see some of the elaborate caskets people have constructed to accompany them into eternity. Some are automobiles, others airplanes, the way they'd like to go. I thought of ordering coffins in advance for Sam Zell and David Hiller, but wasn't certain what they'd like. Perhaps a huge dollar bill.

Cruise ships are not too common in this part of the world -- just two this year for Accra's port of Tema. But there were dozens of other ships, freighters, in port. And the Ghana authorities gave our tour buses motorcycle escorts.

--

Bill Clinton's ugly assault on Bill Richardson for endorsing Barack Obama shows once again the power-grabbing instincts of the Clintons. It can only hurt Hillary in the Puerto Rican primary June 3, because Latinos will wake up to the machinations of the Clintons.

There are also reports that Bill Clinton blew up and launched a tirade against Richardson in a private meeting last weekend with California super delegates. He is certainly not doing his wife any good. He needs relaxation, perhaps from his old sidekick, Monica Lewinsky.

Obama and Sen. John McCain, as proven both by their public service and their positions in this campaign, are warriors for the right, as God has given them to understand the right, while the Clintons are snivelers, would-be petty tyrants.

With McCain, it is partially his heroic service in the Vietnam war, five years of capitivity and torture in North Vietnamese prison camps, plus his independence in Congress. With Obama, it is his brave, ever perseverant campaign, and his noble speech recently on the race issue. Both are devoted to the highest American ideals

Like Richard Nixon and Robert Mugabe, the Clintons are devoted only to their own vainglorious power. They should, they certainly must, be send packing by the electorate. Hillary keeps saying she is too tough to quit, very similar to what Nixon said during Watergate. Later, we learned he had drank heavily that last year.

Again, a salute to Richardson, to Lee Hamilton, to Ted Kennedy, to Bob Casey, to Pat Leahy, to other honest public servants who have stood up to the power grab. They all have come to know the Clintons for what they are, and, in endorsing Obama, they show they know a good candidate when they see one. Now, today, there are reports that Jimmy Carter is hinting he's for Obama and that Gov. Corzine of New Jersey may switch to him.

I Leave Today For 73-Day African Cruise

Between now and late May, this blog is going to be sporadic, not appear with its usual daily frequency. I fly out of Los Angeles today for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and will Tuesday board the Holland America liner Prinsendam on a 73-day cruise which will cross the Atlantic and then circumvent the African continent.

The cruise is longer than any other I've ever taken. It features 39 days fully at sea, and stops at Grand Turk Island, San Juan, St. Maarten, Madeira, Casablanca, Agadir, Dakar, two ports in Ghana, Togo, two ports in Namibia, three ports in South Africa including three days in Capetown, Reunion, Mauritius, the Seychelle islands, Mombasa for three days, Oman, two ports in Egypt and the Suez Canal. Malta, Tunisia, two ports in Spain and ends in Lisbon.

All this for the ridiculously low price of $38,000. I did not take the lousiest stateroom on the 700-passenger ship, but I turned down an upgrade to the truly luxury level which would have cost another $8,000.

At the end of this trip, which I pray I conclude in health, my goal of visiting 100 countries will have been satisfied. I'm pleased to say I'm far ahead of my children, who have been to just 33 and 30 countries respectively, some at their own expense.

This is not the longest trip of my life. In 2005, a year after retiring, I drove to Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territories, which consumed more than 10,000 miles of driving and lasted 84 days.

Holland America originally listed an itinerary for its African cruise which also included Libya and Benin. Benin, a small West African country, was dropped for no reason that was disclosed. Malta was substituted for Libya, after the Libyans raised visa difficulties for many of the passengers aboard.

Such hot spots as Mauritania, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Angola, Somalia and Algeria are being skipped for reasons that will be fairly obvious.

Fabulous and quite expensive excursions are being offered, and I have signed up and paid for about 20 of them, leaving only Kenya to be decided later, depending on conditions when we get there.

Africa is a fairly unknown continent to me. I visited Kenya and Ethiopia in 1968 and Morocco in 1963 and 1996, but otherwise have not been in any other African countries up to now.

Those are the main details of the trip. My favorite cruises up to now have been a 22-day Antarctica cruise on Lindblad, a six-day cruise on a small Australian ship, the Roelen Endeavor, and a four-day cruise up the Rhine River on a German line, although I have been on two Princess cruises, from Los Angeles to Acapulco and from Tahiti to Hawaii, and other cruises from Hong Kong to Bombay, from Fort Lauderdale to the the Amazon, from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires, and from Bombay to Dubai.

Sometimes, I've found, the most luxurious ship, as rated by the travel magazines, is not the best. My last cruise on Silver Sea, from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires, was a little bit of a disappointment, although I still enjoyed it. I objected to the fact that when we reached Cape Horn, they never woke us up to tell us we were there, and I almost missed it.

Knock on wood, I've never been seasick on a cruise, although on rare occasions I have taken a seasickness pill as a precaution. I have a few pills of Dramamine with me for this voyage.

The food will be good, but, if experience is any guide, rather bland and not of the spicy kind I like. In the past, I've supplemented the cruise food with some exotic foreign restaurants at various ports. I've bought packages which will give me unlimited laundry and dry cleaning, and even will have an electronic copy of the International Herald Tribune delivered to my stateroom each morning. That's costing $2 a day.

I always anticipate a great deal my first actual view of the cruise ship I'm going on. That is quite a thrill.

Holland America graciously includes airfare to and from the ship, plus a free luggage service. Fed Ex picked up my luggage (100 pound limit) at my house last Monday and, if all goes according to plan, it will be in my stateroom when I arrive Tuesday afternoon. If it's not there, this trip is going to be off to a bad start.

I will be traveling alone, but know, at present, one couple who is going the whole way and anticipate making many new friends. A relative of one of my best friends here in California, who originally came from Malta, will meet me there.

Finally, let me just express hope that when I get back, and resume this blog on a regular basis, David Hiller is gone as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, though I really do not expect either to happen.

Canada's VIA Rail Service Truly Excellent

Written From Winnipeg--

I have little time to write this before the train leaves for the West. But I'm happy to be able to recommend Canada's transcontinental train service without reservation..

It is better unquestionably than Amtrak. The food is better, and so is the service. This is a trip well worth taking, and many Americans, but few Californians are aboard. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone from California.
.But I have met quite a few Southerners. Over the prime rib, last night, I talked politics with a knowledgable South Carolinian, who thought Giuliani and Clinton would be the nominees.

Canada's a big country and it takes three days to cross it. VIA Rail is not cheap, but it's good, with a great tour book to accompany each passenger, comofrtavble roomettes and a most accommodating staff.

There is some worry here that the Canadian dollar is too high, with one Canadian dollar worth $1.03 American.

Socal Fires Point Up Need For Local Ownership

Written from Toronto--

Even in Eastern Canada, the fires now wracking Southern California, burning hundreds of thousands of acres, destroying hundreds of homes, forcing evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, are the biggest story of the week.

And they are definitely seen here as exacerbated by global warming. A dryer Southern California, a longer summer, led, it is written this morning in the Toronto Globe and Mail to the most severe fires in the state's history. But global warming is a local story here too. The temperature in Toronto when I arrived by train yesterday afternoon was close to 70 degrees, very rare at this time of year, and there have been stories here that evaporation has increased in the Great Lakes with higher temperatures. Lake Superior accordingly, is at its lowest level ever, and this means less water is flowing into the lower lakes.

I have no question that the L.A. Times is doing a great job covering this story, because the paper always does well with disasters. The staff rises to the occasion.

But I wonder whether Times coverage has been properly focused on the danger in the years and months leading up to the fires. My impression is that the answer is no.

The 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego revealed that that county had inadequate fire fighting capability and that, because it was at the extreme south end of the state, it could not count on all that much aid from outside counties. The trouble was that when fires are burning in San Diego County they are likely burning in Los Angeles and San Bernardino too. Oftentimes, these counties consume their own resources, and absorb most of the aid from the north, and San Diego is left to cope pretty much on its own.

But I found, as an earthquake and sometimes fire reporter for the Times that attention languished when the disaster was over.

This is where a locally-owned paper probably would be doing better. Under the Chandlers, the newspaper kept up with state issues, such as air pollution, water pollution, fire fighting budgeting, and so forth much more comprehensively.

My strong impression is that under the Tribune Co., not so much lasting attention is being paid.

I don't think the Times has kept up well with just what was happening in local, county and state government to get ready for the disastrous fire than had now occurred. After all, David Hiller and his Eastern comrades don't really know California;. They are not sufficiently aware of the fire danger here, and they don't, therefore, have reporters working this beat full time. I can't remember a useful story this year on just how ready the state was, even though this was the driest year in Los Angeles history, and the state clearly had budgetary shortfalls.

We need local ownership, now more than ever. Getting rid of these outsiders would mean the paper would take better care of the people's business, and the people, realizing that, would have more support for the paper.

I'm leaving by the Canadian transcontinental train for Vancouver in about two hours, and am not sure whether I will be able to borrow a wireless computer on the train to write in the next two days, but will try.

At A Dartmouth Reunion, Some Things Not In Sync

Written From Hanover, N.H.--

Some things were the same as Dartmouth College's Class of 1960 met here over the weekend for its mini-reunion. Forty-seven years after graduation, our class members are now approaching 70 years of age. We will meet in Boston next June for several days to celebrate that milestone. But every October the most loyal alumni return to Hanover for the homecoming weekend, the huge bonfire, the parade of classes down Main St., the football game. a class meeting and a class dinner.

This year, as all the others within memory, most of the 70 members of the surviving 700 class members who came to the reunion gathered around the grand piano after the dinner in the venerable old Hanover Inn, next to the Dartmouth Green, to sing the old college songs. Our classmate, Bob Kenerson, a psychiatrist and professor at the Harvard Medical School, played the songs and we all sang lustily (even me, who cannot sing).

But this year, some things were different. For one thing, here we are in late October. When we were students attending Dartmouth, peak fall color here in Northern New England was two weeks earlier, usually the first weekend of the month. This year, the weather has been so balmy, even warm, that peak color is now.

It seems likely that global warming is the cause. The temperature has been in the 70s so often this week that the management at the Hanover Inn has decided to reopen its terrace for outdoor dining. That would have been unheard of in late October when we were students here.

The winter of our Freshman year, one morning the temperature in Hanover 42 degrees below zero, and I raced outside to see whether what Jack London had written was true -- that at that temperature, if you spit, it would freeze before it hit the ground. I found out it was indeed true.

But it appears it never gets as low as 42 degree below any more.

Another thing seems out of sync, and that has to do with the trip I'm about to take across Canada.

When I was a student here, I hitchhiked once up to Quebec City. In those days, and almost all of the years since, the Canadian dollar was worth quite a bit less than the American, sometimes a disparity of 40%. Even if the prices were higher, it seemed and was cheaper for an American there.

Today, when I take the bus to Montreal, I expect to have to give, by a slight margin, more than a dollar American to get a dollar Canadian.

This has proved a boon for the Canadians, needless to say. They now cross the border to find cheaper prices.

Well, of course, other things have changed. Some of my classmates are more recognizable to me than others. Some of the talk about athletic exploits has faded, and now often the talk is about our ailments (although the shortstop on our Dartmouth baseball team is still playing shortstop, this time softball, on a team of men in their60s).

Als0, our class seems more liberal. The talk here this weekend was of the certainty, in many classmates' eyes, of a Democratic victory next year in the presidential election. I'm not quite willing to concede that just yet. My views have changed since 1960 when, in my senior year, I was chairman of Dartmouth Students for John F. Kennedy.

"Where, oh where, are the pea green Freshmen?," we sang last night. Those days seemed very distant. But, of course, there's a new class of Freshmen now. Members of the Class of 2011 ran ceremoniously around the bonfire Friday night, as each new class has for centuries.

L.A. Times Travel Section Shows It Can Be Good

I'm always glad to be proved wrong or excessive about criticisms, if it turns out later that they are unjustified or may well be. So two recent articles appearing in the L.A. Times travel section a week ago compel me to admit that I may have been hasty in judging that the revamped Times Travel Section on Sundays is pap.

I would have written before this commending the articles by Jane Engle and Rosemary McClure in the Sept. 23 Times, had there not been so much news last week, in Burma, with the Ahmadinejad visit to the York and with publisher David Hiller's speaking appearance before the "Old Farts," the Times retired employees association, in Studio City.

But better late than never, so I want to express the highest compliments for the article Engle wrote comparing plane and train travel between European destinations, especially between London and the Continent, and the one McClure wrote on an attractive new bus service between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Both of these topics are of great interest to many readers of the Times, and both these articles were carefully done. A lot actual travel went into them, and the details revealed a good deal about the issues at hand -- how to make travel convenient and as inexpensive as possible.

Engle and McClure are not among the best known writers at the Times. They don't have the glorious assignments of Borzou Daragahi in the Middle East, Megan Stack, newly in Moscow, Kim Murphy in London and often Tehran, or Doyle McManus in Washington. But a newspaper must offer all kinds of coverage to its readers, and Engle and McClure certainly handle their respective assignments with distinction.

A good travel section is an important part of the paper, especially since Californians, like Israelis and Australians, are inveterate travelers, and we are always looking for ways to make travel pleasant and easy. Under the late Jerry Hulse, the travel section dealt well with destinations like Hawaii, pleasant travel experiences of all sorts. But it seldom dealt with the nitty-gritty of travel the way Engle and McClure did on Sept. 23.

So I want to take back some of my earlier statements about the Travel section being pap, and express good wishes for the future work of these two fine writers.

Two readers, James and Helene Shielly of Palm Desert, also were enthused about the Travel section and their brief letter printed yesterday showed it. "The Travel section," they wrote. "At long last, you got it right!"

Maybe Hiller should note that this letter came from readers who live more than 100 miles from Los Angeles. Before he withdraws the paper into the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area, as he talked about doing at the "Old Farts," he ought to consider how good it is to have readers elsewhere in California.

While I'm commending the travel stories in the Sept. 23 edition, I should also mention that two of the book reviews were particularly impressive in the Opinion section that same day. These were Heller McAlpin's review of the book, "Fire in the Blood," a novel written by the great French-Jewish author, Irene Nemtrovsky, who was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1942, and the review by M.G. Lord of a revealing biography on Werner Von Braun, who did substantial work for the Nazis in World War II and then for the American space program after the war. Von Braun was a complex character, both good and evil, and was a model for the compulsively-Nazi scientist in the epic film, "Dr. Strangelove," one of the best ever done about the Cold War.

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A Burmese dissident group based in Norway said today that it has information that the death toll in last week's crackdown on Buddhist monks and other pro-democracy demonstrators in Burma was 138, with 6,000 persons, including hundreds of monks, detained. But Hla Win, a Burmese general who defected and is seeking foreign asylum rather than participate in the crackdown, said he understood several thousands had been killed. Hundreds of children were reported abandoned on the Thai border in another report.

Meanwhile, there are signs that there could be further developments in the drama. The junta, which has utterly failed to adequately manage either the country's politics or its economy, has come under severe pressure, and opposition reports say that the family of the head of the junta, Than Swhe, has arrived in Singapore under circumstances which were not immediately clear. Meanwhile, so far, Shwe has failed to meet with the UN envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, although the junta did agree to a meeting between Gambari and the Novel laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the legally-elected leader of Burma who has never been permitted to assume her duties.

In 1988, the last time an uprising occurred against the junta, it stayed in power, but it changed heads. At 74, perhaps Shwe could choose to retire.

Federal Official Warns, But Locals Dither Over LAX

Los Angeles is nowhere near as economically progressive as Shanghai. That will become obvious later in this blog.

In the U.S., The FAA has not always been appropriately aggressive over safety improvements at airports or in air travel in general. That is why, it seems very significant when the outgoing FAA chief, Marion Blakey, warns, as she did this week that it's imperative that Los Angeles International Airport move its north runways further apart for safety reasons.

Blakey was quoted in a story by Steve Hymon in the L.A. Times as saying: "Get the north airfield project done...It's an issue of safety and efficiency and economic competitiveness."

The trouble is, Los Angeles officials aren't listening. They have been dithering for years now over plans to expand LAX and make it safer. They have done some things, such as building a new taxiway between the south runways, but they have been delaying other plans, anathema in surrounding neighborhoods which have clout with elected representatives, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The most pertinent proposal at the moment is to move the north runways 300 feet further apart. But, of course, this would impinge, at least on the peace and quiet, of the adjacent neighborhood. No wonder, homeowners don't like it. But the question is, should homeowner concerns trump traveler safety?

There have already been several instances of near collisions between airliners, and one instance, back in 1991, of a fatal collision at LAX.

I would see nothing wrong with declaring LAX a secondary airport for international and transcontinental travel and moving most airport operations to Palmdale, where there is unlimited space. A high speed rail line could be built to get travelers to and from Palmdale.

But since this is not likely to be done in the near future, airport users deserve more than a sixth -- that's right a sixth -- study over what should be done.

Whenever politicians start asking for a sixth study, you know they don't have the courage to make up their minds, and proceed with a sound choice. So when Congresswoman Jane Harman, Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl and L.A. County Supervisor Don Knabe call upon Villaraigosa in a letter, as they did this week, to ensure that all options are examined, what they really mean to ensure is more delay in doing anything.

This has been studied enough. The airport, crowded, poorly managed, even threatened by terrorism, needs to get off the dime and move toward the future.

The L.A. Times runs two other fascinating transportation stories today. On Page 1, there's an account by Mitchell Landsberg of the fast-expanding subway system in Shanghai, which is building the world's most extensive underground lines. The 80 miles today is supposed to reach 125 miles by the end of the year, 250 miles by 2010 and 560 miles by 2020, at which time it is projected to carry 14 million passengers a day.

Landsberg contrasts subways in Shanghai with those in Los Angeles, where subway expansion has been blocked by shortsighted officials unwilling to invest the money necessary. Shanghai officials have no such compunctions.

Then, there's a story in the Business section by Jane Engle on the security confusion and poor baggage handling that presently afflicts passengers at London's Heathrow Airport, which handles 67 milion passengers a year. At least, a new $8.6 billion terminal will soon open, relieving matters.

In Los Angeles, no such luck. Neither in the airport nor in the subway system is anything being built.

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Tim Rutten mentions in his weekly column in the L.A. Times Calendar section today that the New York Times ran an Op Ed page article last Sunday by seven soldiers and noncommissioned officers serving with the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq calling for an American withdrawal, but then refused to run a reply written by seven Army and Marine Corps veterans of the war which said that a new American strategy in Iraq is working and will ensure that those who died in the war would not do so in vain. The reply was posted anyway on the Web site of the Weekly Standard, a conservative publication.

In many respects now, the New York Times is not providing fair coverage of the war issues. This is particularly true on the editorial pages, where the editors are falling all over themselves pleading for America to surrender to the enemy.

Since my New York Times subscription is costing me seven times more than the L.A. Times, I wish it was at least providing fair coverage. But, on this, and the developing presidential campaign, I don't think it is. The paper has an agenda which is all too apparent.

LAT Weak In Reporting LAX Computer Foul-Up

The story by Ted Rohrlich and Tami Abdollah in this morning's Los Angeles Times on the computer "glitch" in the Customs operation at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday that stranded 17,000 arriving passengers for hours, many of them on their airplanes, was weak and oriented more toward bureaucratic explanations than the experiences of the afflicted passengers.

The L.A. Times played the story on the front page both Monday and today with the prominence it deserved, but there is precious little in either story from the passengers who were the victims, once again, of the general incompetence that often pervades LAX operations.

Also, it took the L.A. Times two days to learn just how many passengers were stranded in the episode. Monday's initial story says 6,000. The 17,000 figure took a day to surface. But I wonder whether the depleted L.A. Times staff, afflicted by buyouts and cost cutbacks, actually sent many reporters to the airport to find out firsthand what was going on and interview the passengers when they finally got off their planes. There is little evidence the paper did. The story that ran Monday had not been updated late in the evening as more information became available, (as the Times did, by the way, in its recent brushfire stories).

By contrast, the New York Times air travel columnist, Joe Sharkey, reporting this morning on an incident involving a diverted international Continental flight stranded for five hours on the tarmac at Baltimore is filled with the passengers' accounts of what happened, and the frequently surly response of both airline and airport officials.

Airline service this summer has, by many accounts, been absolutely terrible, as an overcrowded system leads to intolerable delays, and the airlines' unwillingness to serve food on most flights leaves passengers, when they are kept cooped up on planes for hours, without anything more than pretzels to eat.

At LAX, the problem was an ill-diagnosed computer problem with sensitive information needed by Customs to keep terrorists out of the United States unavailable, and, to their credit, LAX officials saw to it that many of the airplanes were refueled and provided with food, so that they could keep air conditioning going and the passengers fed.

The Rohrlich-Abdollah story this morning does raise questions about the lack of timeliness of response, by the Sprint Nextel company, to the computer problems, and implicitly questions why more incoming airliners weren't diverted to other airports where there were no computer problems.

But the whole tone of the story is more concerned with bureaucracy and its excuses than about what might have been done differently as far as passenger treatment was concerned.

The L.A. Times editorial page does run two letters this morning from irate readers complaining about how matters at LAX were handled. But this would have also been an appropriate subject for an actual editorial. As usual, the Times editorial pages, supervised by the Chicago Tribune lackey David Hiller, were slow and inadequate in their response.

As the air travel problems have increased this year, the L.A. Times has been very quiet about them. Just this week, the Times introduced a new consumer columnist, David Lazarus, but his first column was quite mundane, on the safe subject of identity theft.

We'll see if Lazarus writes about LAX and the airline industry's problems in his next column.

As a consumer columnist for the Times for three years, (1998-2001), I found quite a bit of resistance in some quarters (but not by my editor, Tim Rutten) to columns that took on business interests and bureaucratic systems. Finally, the column was canceled by Tribune's new editors at the Times, John Carroll and Miriam Pawel. They didn't have the stomach for tough consumer coverage.

Long before Tribune took control, other Times consumer writers, such as Susan Diamond, found themselves in trouble when they tried to write honest, if abrasive, columns.

The Times remains quick to take on the beleaguered L.A. Police and Sheriff's departments, and to assail public officials for their sexual affairs or living outside their districts. It is far less willing to deal with the inadequacies and screwups by private entities. And it is weak, as the Rohrlich-Abdollah story was this morning, when it comes to giving consumers a chance to vent their spleen in such stories.

The readers of the L.A. Times, need it be said, are mostly consumers, not officials.

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The L.A. Times has begun reporting more comprehensively, on Page 1 as well as in the Business section, on the failures of various financial institutions to control the mortgage crisis. However, with the exception of Tom Petruno's articles, it is not coming up to the very extensive New York Times coverage. There is now an estimate out there that 1.7 million of the 3.5 million sub-prime mortgages will go into default. This, it is clear, would create a severe fall in housing prices and a further drying up of investments financing loans of many types. The coverage must
be massive, on a daily basis.