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RTX Traveler magazine, the quarterly travel publication for members of Resort Travel & Xchange (RTX), a leading worldwide timeshare exchange company, has released its summer issue highlighting Hilton Head Island, S.C., as the featured destination. In this issue readers will find articles about bike-friendly RTX destinations, favorite vacations for golfers, eco-tours and more.
Hilton Head Island, S.C., is an idyllic setting for any summer vacation. The island offers an array of pristine beaches that are the perfect playground for bike riding, building sandcastles or simply relaxing and playing in the surf. The island's nature preserve is home to birds and marine life, which can be seen while on a hike or kayak tour. There are a number of museums, guided tours, historic homes and art galleries displaying the area's rich history. Several local boutiques can be found as well as restaurants serving low country cuisine prepared by world-class chefs. Additionally, some of the best golf courses in the country are located on Hilton Head Island. "Explore our articles on Hilton Head Island and you'll see how you can plan a restful RTX vacation that will by no means be idle," says Sara Little, editor of RTX Traveler.
"In this issue of RTX Traveler Magazine, we're introducing a new format," Little continues. "Previously, each issue highlighted two featured destinations where RTX members can travel. We've changed our format to feature just one destination per issue, but we've also included articles that spotlight several different destinations based on certain characteristics of our featured destination."
All RTX members will enjoy the online version of the magazine. RTX Premium members get two printed copies per year, and RTX Premium Plus members get all four printed copies per year.
RTX members can visit www.rtxtraveler.com to read the online version of Traveler Magazine and can log in to their account for membership information, vacation searches and more. Non-members who would like more information about RTX, should visit the RTX website or browse RTX Traveler magazine's site for plenty of information about the benefits of membership with RTX.
About RTX
Resort Travel & Xchange (RTX) is a timeshare and vacation ownership exchange company based in Asheville, N.C. RTX works with a number of resorts and developers throughout the world to provide the best exchange options possible to its members. In addition to exchange services, RTX offers a number of travel benefits to members such as trip protection, rebates, travel discounts and more. RTX has approximately 80,000 members.
Company Name: Perspective North America LLC
Contact Person: Keisha
Email:Send Email
Phone: 4077303565
Address:7380 W Sand Lake Road, Suite 500
City: Orlando
State: Florida
Country: United States
Website: http://perspectivemagazine.com/blog/premium/rtx-traveler-magazine-features-hilton-head-island-s-c/


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Wildlife official says he ate cougar that he shot
A collective gulp was almost detectable this week when California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel Richards defiantly declared to outraged legislators that he not only gunned down a mountain lion and held the carcass like a trophy, but he then ate big cat for dinner.
The revelation that Richards complied with the backcountry rule that you eat what you shoot didn't do much to quiet calls in the Capitol for his head, but the perfectly legal shooting and consumption of puma meat certainly raised questions about his diet.
As odd and unappetizing as the dish may sound, it isn't unusual for hunters to consume cougar meat, according to hunting groups.
"Eating them is common. We serve it to our guests," said Joseph Peterson, the manager of the Flying B Ranch in Idaho, which charges $6,800 for an all-inclusive, seven-day hunting expedition. It was at Flying B. where Richards killed the cougar and posed for the notorious photograph of him grinning and hugging the lion carcass.
"We save most of the lions we shoot," said Peterson, adding that catamount cutlets are milder and tastier than bear and horse meat, which he has also tried.
Richards, appointed to the commission in 2008 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, expounded on the subject Thursday, declaring filet of puma a culinary delight.
"It doesn't taste like chicken," he told conservative talk radio hosts John and Ken in Los Angeles. "The closest thing is pork loin. It's a white meat. It's really good, and actually in frontier times it was a delicacy because it's tough to bag one of them."
The photo of Richards first appeared in a Western Outdoor News blog after his January excursion - along with his quote, "I'm glad it's legal in Idaho" - and circulated on the Internet, provoking anger among conservation groups that questioned whether he's fit to serve on the California Fish and Game Commission. Richards apparently stayed in relative luxury at the 14,000-acre ranch, employing two guides for seven days.
Contradictory accounts
Peterson said the expeditions use hounds to tree the lions so that clients can shoot them. He said, however, that the 115-pound male cat that Richardson shot, and two other mountain lions bagged the day before during his hunting trip, were found roaming the property and would have been killed because they were a threat. He said Richards volunteered to kill the cougar as a favor.
Richards' account contradicted Peterson's story. He told Western Outdoor News that he shot the lion to fulfill a long-held goal, using a Winchester Centennial lever-action .45 carbine after eight hours of "the most physically exhausting hunt of my lifetime."
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined some 40 legislators, the Sierra Club and the Humane Society of the United States this week to call for Richards' resignation.
"I know many, many ethical hunters are just as appalled about the idea of treeing a predator," said Jennifer Fearing, California state director for the Humane Society of the United States. "It is a trophy animal, and they used packs of dogs. He followed behind and shot it out of a tree," she said.
Not backing down
For his part, Richards was as far from apologetic as possible, firing off a letter pointing out that it is legal to hunt mountain lion in Idaho and that there was "ZERO" chance of him resigning.
Richards stepped up his counterattack Thursday, accusing Newsom of lobbying for his removal because the lieutenant governor wants his father appointed to the commission. He said the Humane Society and other environmental groups are trying to ban hunting.
"We have a very aggressive, very well organized, very well funded (campaign by) what I call environmental terrorists," he told the radio hosts. "They are constantly trying to shut down ... fishing and hunting and anything associated with it."
The situation has, in a very short time, become explosive.
"It's shameful that Mr. Richards has compounded his problems by lying," about Newsom wanting to appoint his father, said Chris Garland, Newsom's chief of staff. "If he were smart he'd stop shooting himself in the foot, do the right thing and resign."
Besides Richards' reputation for being trigger-happy, conservationists have criticized him for, among other things, opposing marine wildlife protection rules and efforts to increase use of nontoxic ammunition. Assembly Democrats are now considering firing Richards, who recently took over the presidency of the commission, which sets policies and regulations that are implemented by the Department of Fish and Game. The agency manages wildlife, including depredation and hunting permits.
It has been illegal to hunt and kill mountain lions in California since 1971, but hunting the cats is permitted in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. In Texas, where they are considered vermin, people don't need a hunting license to kill them.
Trophy hunting
Peterson said his ranch conducts five to 10 mountain lion hunts a year, usually during winter when other hunting seasons are closed. He admitted that most hunters are not out for the meat.
"It is primarily trophy hunting, but the hunts are in compliance with a state fish and game management program designed to control the population," he said.
Hunting groups insist that it is better for wildlife in general when some mountain lions and other predators are regularly culled. That way, the argument goes, deer, elk and other prey species do not get depleted. Besides, they say, fees for hunting licenses and tags, instead of taxes, pay for wildlife preservation and management.
Chris Wilmers, assistant professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, said that would be a great theory - if it were true.
"There is no scientific evidence for that," said Wilmers, who heads a puma tracking study in the Santa Cruz mountains. "In California, where lions are not managed, we have a very healthy mountain lion population. There are just about as many as I think the landscape can support, and they are not killing all the deer. The studies that have been done indicate that deer are more limited by their food resources than by predators."
This article has been corrected since it appeared in print editions.
Peter Fimrite and Marisa Lagos are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?
Common Courage Press, Jan 1, 1997 - Antiques & Collectibles - 246 pages
"Mad Cow U.S.A." is the terrifying, true tale that industry hopes to censor. The U.S. has its own versions of the brain-wasting disease killing cows and people in Britain. In the U.K., the meat industry feeding practice of "animal cannibalism" has unleased a deadly human demential easily mistaken for Alzheimer's, and spread by infected meat. Yet, U.S. agribusiness still feeds billions of pounds of animal waste back to pigs, chickens, cows, dogs and cats. Rampton and Stauber reveal an amazing world of brilliant scientists, callous industry, courageous victims and cowardly bureaucrats, united by a mysterious killer that threatens a global epidemic -- unless we heed this warning.
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The epidemic of "mad cow disease" in Britain caused great economic damage, a political crisis, and general panic when it was discovered that humans were apparently acquiring a fatal neurological ... Read full review
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A Florida woman had to be rescued by the fire department after she became stuck on a draw bridge more than 20 feet in the air.
The woman, identified as Wanda McGowan by ABC News affiliate WPLG-TV in Miami, had taken part in a 5k walk for a breast cancer charity earlier in the day. As she crossed the railroad bridge, which is not made for pedestrians, it rose and McGowan became trapped.
Acrobat Arrested on New York Bridge
In video of the incident McGowan can be seen clutching the railroad ties in her pink T-shirt as onlookers call for help.
"She was hanging on for dear life," Anna Matlack, who witnessed the incident, told WPLG-TV.
The bridge McGowan was walking across is operated remotely and has a sign that warns pedestrians not to trespass. It's unclear why McGowan was crossing the bridge.
After the bridge raised, multiple witnesses called 911 for help. Firefighters dispatched to the scene were able to get McGowan down via a 24-foot ladder.
After about 20 minutes, McGowan was able to safely climb down. According to witnesses, she never let go of her bright pink handbag.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Sexual violence is a serious public health and human rights problem with both short- and long-term consequences on women's physical, mental, and sexual and reproductive health. Whether sexual violence occurs in the context of an intimate partnership, within the larger family or community structure, or during times of conflict, it is a deeply violating and painful experience for the survivor.
Preventing intimate partner and sexual violence against women
Taking action and generating evidence, 2010, 94 pages
Preventing intimate partner and sexual violence against women: taking action and generating evidence
WHO scales up intimate partner violence and sexual violence prevention activities.
Sexual violence (Chapter 6)
World report on violence and health, 2002.
WHO Multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence against women
WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence provided important data on prevalence of partner and non-partner sexual violence and of sexual abuse in childhood among women in 15 sites in 10 countries.
Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI)
The Sexual Violence Research Initiative is a consortium, established by WHO and the Global Forum for Health Research, that aims to promote research on sexual violence and generate empirical data that ensures sexual violence is recognized as a priority public health problem.
Rape: How women, the community and the health sector respond
2007, 127 pages
The uses and impacts of medico-legal evidence in sexual assault cases: A global review
2007, 80 pages
Researching violence against women: a practical guide for researchers and activists
2005, 257 pages
Sexual violence in conflict
In armed conflicts, the breakdown of social infrastructures, the disintegration of families and communities and the disruption of responses leave women and girls vulnerable to sexual and other forms of gender-based violence, including rape by combatants and intimate partners or acquaintances and, at times, sexual exploitation by humanitarian actors.
The sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated against women in conflict and humanitarian settings is increasingly being reported and documented. This human rights and peace and security problem has begun to be the focus of international attention, with efforts being made to prevent its occurrence, to respond to the survivors' needs and to address impunity for those responsible.
United Nations action against sexual violence in conflict
WHO is a member of UN Action. UN Action unites the work of 12 UN entities with the goal of ending sexual violence in conflict.
UN Action activities include:
- Country-level action: working within country teams and peacekeeping operations to build capacity at the country level.
- Advocating for action: raising public awareness and engendering political will to address sexual violence.
- Knowledge hub: creating knowledge and evidence to promote an effective response by the UN and its partners.
Stop Rape Now
UN action against sexual violence in conflict
Guidelines and tools
Clinical management of rape survivors
E-learning programme
Clinical management of rape survivors
Developing protocols for use with refugees and internally displaced persons
IASC guidelines for GBV interventions in humanitarian settings
Focusing on prevention of and response to sexual violence in emergencies
- Guidelines for medico-legal care for victims of sexual violence
WHO ethical and safety recommendations for researching, documenting and monitoring sexual violence in emergencies
The ethical and safety guidelines (or recommendations) in this document are meant to complement existing internationally-agreed ethical guidelines for research and to inform ethics review processes.
Reporting and interpreting data on sexual violence from conflict-affected countries
Dos and don'ts, UN action guidance note
Rapporter et interpréter les données relatives à la violence sexuelle en provenance des pays où sévissent des conflits
Ce qu'il faut faire et ne pas faire, note d'orientation des Nations unies


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ROCHESTER — Zach Poisson felt the pressure, buckled for a second and then regained his composure. His Rochester Post 7 team led Nashua 4-3 in the winner-take-all game of the Senior American Legion state baseball championship, and the situation in the bottom of the eighth inning was dire to say the least.
Runners were on first and second with one out and a 3-0 count on Chaz DeWitt. Compounding the situation, home plate umpire had just warned Poisson for questioning a call, prompting Post 7 coach B.J. Gagnon to come out for a visit.
"I told him he needed to get his emotions together," Gagnon said. "Throw a strike and then induce a ground ball for a double play. We got the next best thing."
Poisson threw a strike to get the count to 3-1 and then DeWitt lined the ball to second baseman Michael Bellio who caught the ball and quickly flipped it to shortstop Luke Roberts to double off Jon McQuarrie to end the inning.
"That was huge," Roberts said. "The guy hit the ball hard and I tensed up. I thought it was going to be through. I was a little nervous. I saw Bellio had it, I sprinted over there and the rest is history."
It was the play of the game, helping Post 7 (5-1) preserve its lead and win the state title, 4-3, its first since 1990.
Nashua's Eric Damphouse reached on a one-out infield hit in the bottom of the ninth, moved to second on a ground out, but was left there when Poisson whiffed No. 3 hitter Nick Reed.
"We were hoping to have the lead late and give the ball to him," Gagnon said of Poisson. "He worked a lot this week. He worked Sunday, Monday and earlier today. Four appearances in three days is the max. He did the absolute max right there."
"I had to get that second guy and the third guy was huge," Poisson said. "I really couldn't feel my arm at that point. I was thinking strikeout. I've got to get him. I thought I had him on the pitch before. I think it was a little inside and I got him on that last one. It felt unbelievable."
It was Post 7's second game of the day, coming on the heels of a 6-3 win over Laconia to set up the championship match with Nashua, the only team to beat them in the tournament (4-2 Sunday morning). Nashua finished at 3-2.
Rochester jumped out to a 4-0 lead through six and a half innings, riding the surprisingly effective pitching of Roberts, who made his first Legion start ever for the depleted Post 7 pitching staff. He had a no-hitter through four and a one-hitter through six. It all unraveled in the seventh.
"I wanted it," Roberts said. "I felt good. I went out there and threw strikes and the boys made a lot of good plays behind me, a lot of good plays. They really helped me out."
Jason Ferlan singled and after an out DeWitt walked. A wild pitch moved the runners up a base and Matt Morais' sacrifice fly to center made it 4-1.
Damphouse walked and Mike Habibi followed with an RBI single off the tiring Roberts. He was lifted in favor of Poisson.
Reed greeted Poisson with a run-scoring base hit to right to cut the once comfortable lead to one. A strikeout ended the inning.
Rochester built a 4-0 lead with some clutch hitting and some help from Nashua.
In the first, Roberts (3 for 4, run) doubled to left and moved to third when the ball was bobbled by the fielder. He scored on a sacrifice fly by tournament MVP Alex Gray.
In the third, Mac Struthers led off with a double to left, scoring on Bellio's base hit. Struthers, who had a double and run scored in the first game, was only playing because regular third baseman Andrew Langdon could not make the final day of the tournament.
In the top of the seventh, Mark Leahy blooped a single into left. Josh Gagne bunted him to second and he scored from there on Struther's base hit to center. Bellio's potential double play grounder forced out Struthers at second base, but the relay throw to first was wild and Bellio advanced to second. Zach Miller's single to right plated Bellio to make it 4-0.
"They had a couple hits early and we made a few mistakes in a game that ended up being costly to us," said Nashua coach Kevin Palanski. "Us getting picked off in the eighth inning was a key play for them. That's what really hurt us. This game, that's what it boiled down to is mistakes and we made mental mistakes that cost us."
Rochester played well defensively, receiving a spectacular catch each from its outfield of Miller, Justin Jewell and Anthony DiPrizio.
Rochester won the first game, 6-3, behind the pitching of Kramer, the tournament's most outstanding pitcher. He went 2-0 with a save.
He allowed one run through seven innings, a leadoff home run by Ryder Arsenault — the only homer of the entire tournament. He was tough from there until giving up two runs in the eighth.
Jewell went 2 for 5 with two RBIs and a run, while Leahy was 2 for 4 with two runs and an RBI. Bellio was 2 for 4 with an RBI. Miller drew three walks and scored a run.


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India Insight: Hinduism and its Others
With a national election coming up within the next twelve months, India risks an intensification of communal tensions.
Encounter surveys the approaches of significant Hindus, Muslims and Christians to the task of achieving inter-religious harmony.
Supporting Information
Music: Luki Tr 1 from Remember Shakti, Saturday Night in Bombay 014 184 -2
Television News sound: montage of sound extracts from Indian television programs broadcast in early February 2013.
Margaret Coffey: I arrived in Mumbai right in the middle of the great Kashmiri all-girl band outrage. At least on television it seemed that the whole country was caught up in a paroxysm of outrage.
A suitably bearded, bespectacled and ancient mufti had judged that three teenage girls who'd won a band competition were behaving unsuitably in Islamic terms. They can sing inside their homes, he said, in public they're sending bad signals to men. A few zealots joined in on social media and when their lives were threatened via tweet the girls left both public performance and Kashmir, at least for the time being. As they say, it went viral.
The media including social media fury seemed weirdly disproportionate, given everything else going on in India. It seemed to be code for a few things – for a younger generation's rejection of older values and norms, for one. For another, a nationalist line on Kashmir and the threat to Indian control posed by Muslim separatists. But just as obviously it seemed at times code for disdain for all things Islamic, for frankly media-driven communalism. That's a concept that cropped up in so many conversations in India – the idea that in this 'secular' nation people were being pushed more and more into the straitjacket of their communal identities, generally religiously based identities. No group is immune from the thrust.
That morning I made my way north to a densely inter-religious part of Mumbai – the Muslim presence signified in the gaggles of goats tethered in the crowded city streets right under the noses of their executioners – and by the many women who were following the mufti's dress code.
This is the part of Mumbai that saw the worst of the 1992/93 riots, when hundreds of Muslims were killed, to be followed by bomb attacks targeting Hindus. An enquiry found that certain print media had a role to play in inciting the initial rioting.
I'm told to wait by a restaurant that has obvious links to Portuguese influences – then someone comes to guide me across the traffic and through the lanes. Right under the shadow of the Vakola mosque I find the office of the independent-of-any- church Christian Secular Forum. In a tiny upstairs room its General Secretary Joseph Dias explained the CSF motivation:
Joseph Dias: We noticed that the Hindutva brigade or the whole large number of affiliate organisations of right wing fundamentalists have been mushrooming and increasing their attacks in intensity. After Orissa came the Karnataka attacks and then when we started tracking attacks and documenting information we found that it was very widespread and the nature was very heinous. So we thought of bringing out an annual report on the persecution of Christians in India. Well what has happened is that there is a large amount of communalisation of different sectors of the Indian society. We have communalisation of the police, we have fundamentalists in the judiciary, we have fundamentalists in the media. It's a kind of soft Hindutva that is now taking over, which makes it all pervasive. So every sector of society is being influenced and that is why we hear of persecution of some form or the other.
Margaret Coffey: How it is present in the media – could you give me some example of that?
Joseph Dias: Well in the media it could be as simple as carrying one side of the story without talking to the victims of the persecution.
It could also be as simple as carrying totally false kind of information and using words like alleged and you know reported and stuff like that which creates an atmosphere of communal disharmony throughout and kind of incites communal violence on a very large scale.
Margaret Coffey: There's a national election coming up in India within twelve months – some media are touting RSS member, BJP politician and the current chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, as future prime minister. The RSS is a right wing Hindu nationalist group, and the BJP one of its political manifestations. Modi is seen by some as the kind of industrialist friendly, push through economic manager India needs. Joseph Dias sees the election campaign as cue for an increase in communal tensions.
Joseph Dias: Most surely that is what happens. We've seen it election after election. The year before the elections and we are just getting into that year will see an heightened amount of attacks against the Christian community. We have also seen a large amount of hate campaigns being carried out in various speeches made and various writings that they do.
It is largely the RSS and its babies that it has spawned over the last so many years since independence. The sad part of it is that members of the RSS are seen to be in all political parties irrespective of the BJP or - to some extent we would even suspect the Congress Party. That's what makes it even more dangerous. In addition to that there are a number of fringe and local regional parties that have come up, like the Shiv Sena or the MNS, which is the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. So there are different local regional parties to consolidate and to get the Hindu votes together would make this kind of appeal - basically the majority versus the minority.
Margaret Coffey: Are you seen as exacerbating the problem because of your activities?
Joseph Dias: Not exactly. We don't have a choice – because if we don't shout I mean we are going to be pressed down further and we are going to be exploited and denied our rights further. It is not just the rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution but basic human universal rights which we are denied.
Margaret Coffey: Joseph Dias and the literature of the Christian Secular Forum use freely the word 'persecution' to describe the Christian reality in India today, but I notice that the Catholic bishops have declined to take up the CSF's invitation to make representations to the national government. There are other models of how to approach these difficult issues.
I'm on my way to meet someone who offers an alternative approach. I've heard about him over the years – in Indonesia just before the downfall of Suharto young Indonesian Muslims were quoting Asghar Ali Engineer as an inspiring Muslim feminist and they had his books on hand.
Like all my journeys in Mumbai this one is a journey of discovery! But we do finally find the office of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism.
Margaret Coffey: Asghar Ali Engineer set up the Centre along with other activists as a response to the 1993 riots in Mumbai.
Asghar Ali Engineer: It was very serious rioting – over a thousand people were killed. It became very necessary to improve interfaith relations. Anyway I was working for inter-religious harmony since 1962 when first major riot took place in India after independence but there was no separate organisation as such. After 1993 we set up this Centre to work systematically for that.
Margaret Coffey: And who joined you in this?
Asghar Ali Engineer: Many friends, activists, those who stand for communal harmony – they all helped me, they all joined, together we work.
Margaret Coffey: You say you come from Gujarat but I think you belong to a particular Islamic community don't you?
Asghar Ali Engineer: Bohra community yes. It is one of the subsets of Shias.
Margaret Coffey: How do your Ismaili community – how do they think of your work and your activities?
Asghar Ali Engineer: You see of course there are different opinions. A section supports me – another section is opposed to me. Also we are working for bringing about reform in Bohra community which is a highly exploited community. The head is called Dai – the present Dai is Mohammed Burhanuddin. He has a huge establishment and they collect money from people, don't account for it and live in luxury so we are opposing all that. It is against the teachings of Islam. Dai should lead simple life, should be honest and accountable to the community and he should give accounts for whatever money he collects from the community. He refused and they are all-powerful and politically connected, well connected. So the ruling establishment opposes us and I was attacked several times: my office, house everything was destroyed in 2000 and five times they tried to kill me but by the grace of Allah I survived and am doing my work.
Margaret Coffey: Before I came to visit you I was visiting a Christian group, Christian Secular Forum, and they're particularly worried about the forthcoming election and the person I was speaking to was saying that in anticipation of elections often there is a rise in communalism. Do you fear that, that as the election approaches there will be a further exacerbation of communalism that will affect your people?
Asghar Ali Engineer: You see communal threat is [a] very real threat and communal forces are working day and night to divide Hindus and Muslims and Hindus and Christians and they think that by spreading communal hatred BJP will win. But I do not think so – that BJP will win by spreading communal hatred. Ultimately people want solution to their problems. There is a huge amount of poverty – more than 40 per cent [of] people live below poverty line.
Margaret Coffey: And that's defined in Indian terms, which is unimaginably low from an Australian perspective.
Asghar Ali Engineer: Yes. Ultimately even Congress alliance may not deliver but the smaller parties may come together and help either Congress form government or they themselves might form government. That is a more likely scenario than BJP coming into power and Narendra Modi becoming Prime Minister.
Margaret Coffey: I'm interested to hear that because the Times magazine in India seems to be boosting his chances – because he is seen as a good economic manager, one of the new people bringing India into this great new economic future.
Asghar Ali Engineer: Had it been in the hands of industrialists they would have made him a prime minister. But it's an election involving hundreds of millions of Indians. They don't want only a good industrialist or a good economic manager to become prime minister. They want solution to their day to day problems. I mean he can set up huge industries in Gujarat, fine. How does it benefit even poor of the Gujarat, let alone India? Even poor of the Gujarat are suffering as much as poor elsewhere. The health indices, the mortality indices, anybody can see they are very high in Gujarat. So it is all media hype and media hype is possible because media is in hands of big industrialists.
Margaret Coffey: I mention to Asghar Ali Engineer that I first heard of him in Indonesia, quoted as a Muslim feminist.
Asghar Ali Engineer: Yes, I want Muslim women to know Qu'ran first hand, to know Islamic rights first hand. To work for women's rights in Islam has been my passion because I saw so much suffering because of wrong application of Shari'a law which were formulated hundreds of years ago and our clergy is not ready to rethink or revise or revisit those laws. They are rigid and think that these are divine, which is totally wrong. No law can be divine as they are formulated by human beings, and human beings do so under the influence of their own society, their own culture, their own social structure. So I have two missions in life – one is inter-religious harmony. I consider all religions as good for humanity if their core message is followed. You see I focus upon values. So inter-religious harmony is my passion and another passion is women's rights - that they should live with full dignity and equality. As long as I live I would work for them – God willing.
Margaret Coffey: As I left, Asghar Ali Engineer was preparing to visit Indonesia again, despite age and ill-health. He has worked on succession planning – among his protégés is Qutub Jehan Kidwai who now works with an international NGO called the United Religions Initiative. When I met Qutub she'd just returned from an inter-faith women's gathering in Bangkok.
Qutub Jehan Kidwai: That was a very different experience for me because like women from faith based organisations so they were all nuns and you know monks, women monks, women Sufi preachers and Christian nuns from different congregation[s], they had this spark in them – why we are not able to excel to that level in our congregation, or in our community and they had brought out all the best thing in the scripture or in their religious history like how woman had played a major role in you know in reforming the society or in preaching those values of the particular messenger or Buddha or whoever.
So, I myself is a feminist and activist but I always see like there is some element of spiritualism should be engaged in our activism because that works as a healing element for the victim and even for the activist who are dealing with such depressing cases - so that gives us a certain kind of bonding also with the victim. Personally, it is my personally this thinking - how to engage spiritualism in the work of social justice. Like it is not a matter of laws, it is not just a matter of making people abide by the law but somewhere we have to bring or hold them close to us or build that trust by invoking spiritual values as well.
Margaret Coffey: What about when you go out to rural women?
Qutub Jehan Kidwai: We have a community hall in a locality, you can call it a slum. And Muslim women they are engaged because they are daily wage earners, they have their own other priorities of looking after family, but they do have a lot of you know domestic violence, and cases of divorce and desertion by their husbands – so it is like very prevalent among them. You know we engage them by inviting them for a small kind of a religious gathering – we invite them, come, we will sit and pray, but we will share what is you know going wrong in our vicinity, whether in your family, whether in your neighbourhood, whatever. So this is how we sit and make an informal talk with them, and then gradually they come out or display a problem. See I have made a compilation of the Koranic verses which I am translating in various local language as well. So I sit with them, I tell them, I explain them, this is how you have to explain and then share with other women in your community. So this is a very regular activity and it is my mission. It is not just about having advocacy, sitting with the intellectuals and talking to the scholars. This is my other, what you say parallel work, which I am mainly focussed on, that is to sit with the community women and see what actually you know they are facing and how we can you know engage them at a national level. That is one of my strategies as well – otherwise it is difficult for me to understand what actually problems are or identify those problems in the Muslim community.
Margaret Coffey: Qutub Jehan Kidwai. Under Asghar Ali Engineer's guidance Qutub has also trained in Islamic law. She's a key person in a project to draft a revised code of Muslim personal law in India, revised so that it protects women's rights and rules out customary practices that discriminate against women. You can listen at Encounter's website to Qutub's description of this project – it's a huge effort involving research and consultation across the spectrum of Muslim identifications. And you can also hear how she got to work with Asghar Ali Engineer – it's a telling story: she went to university, trained as a pilot and took up her first job with an airline based in the Gulf States on the eve of 9/11. That event put paid to the future of a young Muslim pilot. She learnt about the relevance of identity in the context of global politics in a very personal way.
So listen online to Qutub's story or check out the transcript on Encounter's website via ABC's RN. And you'll find a link there also to the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. Right now the CSSS site features an essay by Asghar Ali Engineer, alongside reports about a two day communal harmony workshop for youth, run as an interfaith initiative, and another workshop run for women. Dr Engineer's essay examines the way the pendulum of judicial opinions in India swings between defining Hinduism as a religion and defining it as Hindutva – a way of life, and India's national culture. Hindu nationalists and Hindu religious institutions benefit he says from this confusion.
Just go to abc.net.au/rn and scroll through to Encounter. And of course you are with Radio National and I'm Margaret Coffey.
Music : Shringar Tr 2 from Remember Shakti, Saturday Night in Bombay 014 184 -2
Margaret Coffey: In Mumbai I pay another visit – travelling east to the K. J. Somaiya Institute for Sanskrit Studies.
Sound of wedding music
Margaret Coffey: Quite suddenly the road is blocked and there's nothing but joy and music and dance and colour in front of us. It's a wedding party and the bridegroom is being escorted by his happy friends.
Dr Kala Acharya has been director of the K. J. Somaiya Bharatiya Sanskriti Peetham since it was founded 21 years ago.
Kala Acharya: In the beginning the institute has a very limited objective – it was to train teachers in Indian culture and we used to give them in depth knowledge of Indian culture for over one year and in that program we used to teach all religions and to teach these religions the person from that particular religion was called, a practitioner. Personally I have studied the Gospel of St John or all works of St John of the Cross, or of St Teresa of Avila but I would not say that I will teach Christianity because if I do so I may do some injustice to that religion. So then the idea came to our mind that when there are so many religions in India under one umbrella of this nation, why don't we try to bring harmony in them through education. So the idea of international inter-faith dialogue came to our mind.
Margaret Coffey: This is an institute set up by an Indian philanthropist who was a very devout Hindu and you have come from a background in Sanskrit scholarship and so on, so what is it that inspired you and also the family to move in this direction?
Kala Acharya: Actually the philanthropist was a devout Hindu but he was open minded. One thing. And his son Dr Shantilal K. Somaiya in his life he had come across dignitaries from various religions so he also supported us. And I am a very small person actually but I always feel that in the name of religions there is so much discord in the world – instead of pointing out the differences – they are there – but if we give more importance to those elements which help us to come together [the] world can become a better place to live in because everybody in his life needs peace. If there is no peace, inward and outward, then what is the use of life?
Margaret Coffey: There is another thrust in contemporary India in the direction of discord isn't there?
Kala Acharya: Yeh. Of course there will be different opinions and different trends but you know the road which goes up to hill it is the same which brings you downwards. Now it is up to us to choose which one we want. There is a beautiful hymn in Sanskrit by P..., I quote the Sanskrit [language ]. It says O god that there are various people in this world and they have different sets of mind because they have different likings but in the end they all want to reach to you – so diverse are the ways and diverse are the opinions. It is our bounden duty to find out how we can come together. That is what I feel.
Margaret Coffey: Kala Acharya says her tradition directs her towards encounters with other religious traditions.
Kala Acharya: There are two concepts in Hinduism. One is that they say [language]. Our scripture says that we all want to be there where this entire universe becomes one single nest for all. So this idea is there. Then the last hymn of the Rig Veda, the first scripture, says [language]. I omit some portion and come to the last verse of this hymn which says [language]. In this hymn the seer is telling everybody that you go together, walk together, let your hearts be alike, similar, let your thoughts be similar and what you speak, it should be also a likeness. You should come to a proper decision on which you all agree. And why we should do that? [language] You all live together in a peaceful way, in a happy way. If we are there in the universe we are aware there are people of different dialects, of different nationalities, of different religions but we all have to live together happily. And based on that there is one philosophical idea in Hinduism which says that [language] whatever is the ultimate reality – you may call it God, or you may call it by some other name – but it is only one reality known by various names. So [language] [the] example is always given in philosophy that we call it bangles, or necklace or earrings, but it is all gold. Because of this accommodative view Hinduism is very fertile in its ideas, in its space for inter-religious dialogue.
Margaret Coffey: In allowing that space for inter-religious dialogue it's saying something different isn't it from saying that Hinduism is the primordial faith and that somehow or another everything else comes under that umbrella, which sometimes you hear versions of?
Kala Acharya: But it is because of chronology they say. That Hinduism is primordial when we say it is one religion – sanatana – chronologically it was the first one and other religions came later. But it doesn't mean that we are saying, at least I am not saying it is the origin of all other religions. The differences as I said earlier are the identities of those religions. We must recognise them and we must respect them.
Margaret Coffey: So I ask Dr Acharya what's next on the cards for an inter-faith conference?
Kala Acharya: About my next conference I have not thought but instantaneously I would tell [you] that maybe we would like to work on some particular theme for moksha - liberation in different religions. Even in Hinduism, or in Indian philosophy, the concept of liberation is there in various schools of philosophy but the ideal is different from one particular school of philosophy to another, whether liberation means just the end of all suffering or whether it is bliss. Even in Indian philosophy they debate on this and in world religions we find that sometimes liberation is once for all after leaving the body. So what are the different aspects of liberation and why it is the prominent goal in all world religions and especially in philosophies? On that concept I would like to invite papers.
Margaret Coffey: Because liberation in the Christian tradition can also be linked to our lives here on earth, through liberation theology and so on. Is there a dimension of that kind in Hinduism? Very much grounded in the world we see outside and looking at issues like the poverty we see on the streets and so on?
Kala Acharya: Of course it has two aspects again – one is the concept of [language] that is a person who is alive and is still liberated. That concept is very much in some schools of Indian philosophy and the characteristics of such persons have been defined. We also say that moksha, liberation, from what? From jealousy, from hatred, from poverty. That is also defined in our tradition and that is what we should actually insist upon because we always think that beyond this life what will happen, but when we are in this life and when there is so much of suffering to liberate people from that suffering, that should be the thrust of Hinduism. I am not as great as Gandhi or Vivekananda but if somebody asked me what type of Hinduism you would like to see when you are alive, I would very much like that Hinduism which gives more importance to this type of liberation in this world and especially in this nation. I want to get this idea popular and practised. If the precept is not practised then it is of no use.
Margaret Coffey: Dr Kala Acharya, Director of the K. J. Somaiya Bharatiya Sanskriti Peetham in Mumbai. There's a link to the Institute's website at RN's Encounter. Post-graduate students from all over the world take courses at the Peetham including, Dr Acharya tells me, students from Qom, in Iran.
On the road into Bangalore from the airport you can see that it's a city on the make. In the very small hours of the night it's easy to take the wrong turn, and we did: the road signs have gone in the reconstruction process, along with the lanes. You can make out the mess of new building, the roaming dogs and even at those hours the hastening trucks of workers standing so tightly crammed you'd think the breath squeezed out of them. Toothy swamis and swish new apartment blocks beam from the giant billboards along the way and very quickly you begin to see the outlines of Bangalore-IT-capital-of-India: the vast blank walled modern buildings with whole virtual worlds captured inside them.
I'm aiming for the centre of the city and walls I begin to see are important in Bangalore – walls around institutions, apartment blocks, schools, and the university where I'm heading. There's a conference at this Catholic university revisiting the event of the Second Vatican Council and the directions it produced fifty years ago for the Catholic Church. How I'm wondering will Indian Catholics talk about these contested ideas and in particular about the Council's much heralded opening to relations with what it called 'non-Christian religions.'
I'm hardly settled before the call to prayer sounds – and the dogs start up – and I learn the daily pattern. Bangalore reflects more or less the reality of religious India except that it has perhaps double the number of Christians than the national average. Going by the 2001 census 80.5 per cent of Indians are Hindu, 13.4 per cent Muslim, not to mention the Sikhs and the Jains and the Buddhists and the Zoroastrians and the Jews and the sundry others. The percentages tell only part of the story though because India's population is so large: the 13 or so per cent of Muslims make for the third largest Muslim population in the world. And it's estimated that there are more than 25 million Christians.
Alongside the university is a Catholic theology, philosophy and canon law college called Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram and I'm in time to join the hundreds of seminarians and religious sisters from the various study houses around in one very recognisable musical strand of the universal church!
The liturgy is in English today - though most people in this institution would speak the Malayalam language of south India …. That's because it's run by an indigenous Catholic religious congregation, the first in India, founded in the 19th century by a priest of the ancient Syro-Malabar rite – a tradition they trace proudly to first century Kerala. It was this same priest who set up Christ University next door.
But now the ordinary day is dawning, the university is coming to life. I see a banner welcoming students from Queensland's Griffith University. Christ University is a substantial institution, one of the top ten in India. Few of its students would be Christian and in that sense it's like many Christian institutions in India – highly desirable as places to study or receive health treatment.
In the temple next door the priest is carrying out a ritual prayer. I'm fascinated by the way the sounds of other ways and other devotions leach unremarked through Bangalore's walls. But that's the beginning of a romance the conference soon interrupts.
Subhash Anand: ….religion for dialogue.
Margaret Coffey: The speaker is Subhash Anand.
Subhash Anand: Ratzinger somewhere says that the real purpose of religion is to bring us to the other and the others. But more and more all religions, including the Catholic Church, are becoming social markers. We have our church, our celebration, our style, our rite, etc etc. And we are one social force among other social forces and in a subtle way we are one political force among other political forces. This is not religion, this is worldly business. True, we need signs and symbols. But these signs and symbols are not walls – they are bridges. If they cannot function as bridges between humans they cannot function as bridges between humans and God. We can throw them out. We don't need them. (Applause)
Margaret Coffey: It's stirring stuff but it faces challenges such as these.
Question: I am Stella …, psychologist and a child in the field of theology and philosophy. But then, as we discuss about inter-religious dialogue, let me ask Professor Anand how you evaluate the several attacks and violences that has been happening in different parts of our country against the Christians, particularly against the religious. Is that a failure of the Church in making proper dialogue with other religions? Thank you.
Question: I'm Fr …CMI from DVK. My question is this. In this modern world scenario of extended persecutions and violence against the Christian minority, what is the role of this dialogue or does it have any effect at all? Thank you.
Margaret Coffey: Subhash Anand's immediate answer is this:
Subhash Anand: Under the British and earlier under the Muslims the Hindus have been persecuted. Their temples have been desecrated; their golden icons have been robbed. Their women have been humiliated etc, etc, etc. Now some of them fall back on the painful experience and hit back. That is part of history. We have to acknowledge our own sinfulness. The violence of Hindus against us is not even a drop compared to the violence inflicted by Christian communities down history.
Margaret Coffey: The thing is, the Christians experiencing violence are Indians and like other Indians in this secular state supposedly protected by law in their right to freedom of religion. Many of them are poor and according to the caste system at the very bottom of the pile, where they are highly vulnerable. And much of the violence seems to have more to do with very contemporary politics. With elections coming up in under twelve months, there's good reason to fear those contemporary pressures. Interestingly, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has put India on its watch list and there's a link to that 2012 report at RN's Encounter website. You'll find a telling reference there to Narendra Modi, the man some people would like to see Prime Minister.
Subhash Anand proposes in his own life one version of a way forward. He's a priest, with a doctorate in Hinduism from Benares Hindu University and he's taken very personally the task of making Christianity comprehensible in a Hindu context – he changed his name fifty years ago from its more obviously Christian style and he's adopted the simple life and style of a so-called 'saffron priest.'
Subhash Anand: My concern is to make first of all our Christians aware and thereby to respect what the Hindus do. For example, they have a festival called Ganesh Chaturthi, the elephant faced god. A Christian will laugh at that icon, but the icon is deeply symbolic. Unless you understand the symbolism of the icon you cannot respond. That is my concern that we respond with understanding.
Margaret Coffey: So among the books Subhash Anand has written is 'A Christian Appreciation' of the major Hindu festivals, a study of the Hindu concept of Bhakti or love of the divine, and an interpretative study of five episodes from the Mahabharata.
Subhash Anand: In fact one title is 'Story as Theology' for just as Jesus communicates the values of the kingdom and also the image of his father through a parable, these stories are telling us something beautiful about God and humans. The second book is 'The Eternal Stranger' – they are stories involving Shiva who I think is the most ancient deity in the mainline Hinduism. This deity is God and comes in the picture in a very, very unexpected manner – though he is with us he is the stranger forever – the divine transcendence – we can never claim to grasp God, he remains forever the receding horizon of our understanding.
Margaret Coffey: You say you have no problem calling yourself a Hindu Christian but listening to you I can imagine that there would be people who would see your work in that vein as in a way a threat to Hinduism, as a sort of appropriation of Hindu beliefs towards Christianity.
Subhash Anand: In fact some of my Christian friends said you are trying to Christianise Hinduism, Hindus didn't say that. They saw it as something beautiful. So in that sense their hospitality, their editorial hospitality is recognition that the work I have done is not white-washing or superficial hermeneutics – no. The hermeneutics is based on thorough exegesis.
Margaret Coffey: Subhash Anand. My interest here in Bangalore is how the Conference as a whole proposes going forward. There's speaker after speaker who invokes the Council insights.
Errol D'Lima: From the Catholic Church's point of view, Vatican 11 signalled seriousness in undertaking interreligious dialogue with all peoples in the world.
Margaret Coffey: Errol D'Lima has been president of the Indian Theological Association and he's jointly edited several books exploring the implications of religious pluralism in India for Christian belief.
Errol D'Lima: Authentic pluralism consists in examining another's way of life, to see if it reflects Gospel values. Pluralism does not begin with doctrine but with life. It also affirms 'otherness' as a manifestation of God's mystery in creation and avoids setting up categories – which are manmade – to authenticate God's action in the world. 'Christians ought to be convinced that the achievements of the human race are a sign of God's greatness and the fulfilment of his mysterious design.'
Kuncheria Pathil: The starting point of the Council was the plurality of the Churches, plurality of world religions, the plurality of human races, culture, societies and the plurality of different world-views.
Shaji Kochuthera: We begin the sessions of the third day with a keynote 3 by Fr Kuncheria Pathil.
Kuncheria Pathil: Pluralism has to go hand in hand with unity, the centripetal force of this universe. One and the many are to be always held together. But pluralism raises several important questions for us: How can we make absolute claim for any one historical form of revelation, any one form of Christianity as the only valid and legitimate form, any one structure and form of ministry as the only valid form, any one dogmatic definition or formulation as the only orthodox one? The classical or Western concept of truth and identity seems to be another major problem. The 'either-or' concept of truth and identity based on the principle of contradiction is challenged in the pluralistic world. The alternative model is 'both-and'. Exclusive truth claims are questioned today. Any thing to be true, it should be related to other truths. Identity is to be established not by exclusion but by relationship.
I quote: 'When religions encounter one another in dialogue they build up a community in which differences become complementarities and divergences are changed into pointers of communion.' ITS Statement 1989.
Margaret Coffey: That's the Indian Theological Association's 1989 statement Towards an Indian Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.
Music: Sound from DVK Conference
Margaret Coffey: Among the many speakers, the retired archbishop of Guwahati in Assam the north-east of India seemed to exemplify the community made possible by the Indian context. Thomas Menamparampil.
Thomas Menamparampil: Maybe 200 cultures would be in north east India but we have Christian members from at least fifty or a hundred of them.
Margaret Coffey: So there is an inbuilt pluralism in the Assamese culture.
Thomas Menamparampil: We don't call it exactly Assamese culture – it is north-east India, diverse culture of north east India. There is a pluralism – that's the word for us – multiplicity, differences and also finding joy in accepting each other's differences and seeing beauty, wealth, wisdom, differences that enrich the larger society.
Margaret Coffey: Someone has mentioned here that the work of the Church in precisely those areas is one of the factors fuelling Hindu fundamentalism because it upsets social arrangements that have been long-standing. How do you view that remark?
Thomas Menamparampil: I have no answer to that. The fundamentalisms [sic] are those who opt to be fundamentalists.
They look for one cause or the other. They will blame the minority community for actual grievance of the past or imagined grievances. If some of their fellow citizens opt for another religion of their own choice the basic Hindu belief itself is respect everyone's choice. And therefore I do not think [that] fundamentalists are representing the rest of the community when they take those stances.
Margaret Coffey: You are giving a paper, 'Dialoguing With All Shades Of Opinion.'
Thomas Menamparampil: You know, Vatican Council opened our mind and opened opportunity for relationship with all kinds of people. And even suggested that we dialogue with our opponents and in the context of conflicts and anxieties I have emphasised this particular point: we must also learn something from the opponents. Opponents hold something that can also enrich us. For example, even whom we call Hindu fundamentalists their attachment to India and to Indian culture, Indian religion, Indian traditions is something that I admire. Some of the values that they hold I appreciate very much. Can we build a common ground with them? Yesterday someone said, quoting Newton I think, every action has a reaction. So if ours is constant aggressive self defence I have a feeling they will also continue to be aggressive. If on the contrary ours is one of collaboration, eagerness to understand, they may also change – every action has a reaction.
Margaret Coffey: Have you attempted that approach in Assam?
Thomas Menamparampil: I think that is the reason why in our region we do not have any kind of so-called fundamentalist trouble. Our neighbours are friendly with us and we are also eager to be very friendly with them. We constantly cultivate relationship with them.
Margaret Coffey: How in your life do you express the value you place on being Indian, on being - if I can use it in that general sense of meaning Indian culture - Hindu?
Thomas Menamparampil: I thought the universal outlook is the most central to Hindu philosophy. They have a kind of what we may call really catholic seeing goodness everywhere, and appreciate – let all good thoughts come from everywhere – this is one of the Vedic prayer. Even if some of us have failed in this respect that remains the ideal for the Indian civilisation – and it corresponds to the paper I presented, being open to people of all shades of opinion which Vatican Council has proposed.
Music: Shringar Tr 2 from Remember Shakti, Saturday Night in Bombay 014 184 -2
Margaret Coffey: This has been Encounter – Indian Insights: Hinduism and its Others. You heard from Kala Acharya, Qutub Jehan Kidwai, Asghar Ali Engineer, Joseph Dias, Subhash Anand, Errol D'Lima, Kuncheria Pathil andThomas Menamparampil. There's a transcript of this program and a podcast available online at abc.net.au/rn .. look for Encounter. And there you'll find details of all the contributors as well. You'll hear more from Bangalore's Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram in part three of India Insight, coming up in a few weeks. In that program we'll return to DVK for a report on the Bangalore conference Revisiting the Second Vatican Council. Carey Dell was the sound engineer for this program and I'm Margaret Coffey.
- Dr Kala Acharya
- Joseph Dias
- Dr Asghar Ali Engineer
- Qutub Kidwai
- Fr Subhash Anand
- Fr Errol D'Lima SJ
- Professor Emeritus Dr Kuncheria Pathil CMI
- Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil
Further Information
- Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
- Asghar Ali Engineer is the director of this Mumbai based Centre and its associated Institute of Islamic Studies.
- K. J. Somaiya Bharatiya Sanskriti Peetham
- The Peetham provides opportunities for pursuing scholastic activities and research in Indian Culture, Philosophy, History, Sanskrit language and Yoga.
- Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram
- Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram (DVK) is a Pontifical Athenaeum for higher learning and formation in Bangalore, India.
- India - Freedom of Religion report
- United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Annual Report 2012
- Sound Engineer
- Carey Dell
- Presenter
- Margaret Coffey
- Producer
- Margaret Coffey


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Teriyaki salmon bento
I think life is too short to keep the frozen salmon in the fridge! :-) So I made a teriyaki salmon bento, which was so fast to cook, that I had too much idle time in the morning... Just be careful not to overcook the teriyaki sauce, because it may have a burnt taste. Also, optional lotus root slices will keep the fish tender and juicy for the time when you can finally devour every last bit of it ;-)
Marinated beef and pasta bento
Bento is not only rice, but also other ingredients, like... pasta. This recipe came to life when I had some uncooked beef left-overs and just wondered what to do with them. Cooking them as a part of bento was a great idea!
Sweet Mustard Eggs Bento
I got tired of sausages after yesterday's deluxe bento, so today I decided to have some eggs with lunch. I put some sweet mustard over the cooked yolk to have them pack some punch and they were really interesting!
I prepared also hand-made furikake (rice sprinkles) with ingredients I like, which made my rice extra tasty today!
Deluxe bento idea
This idea mixes the basic sausage bento idea with previously mentioned teriyaki smoked salmon don for a more premium feel of the bento, without adding any more trouble while making the bento.
Teriyaki pork cutlets
This recipe is easy to prepare, cooks in no time and you can prepare everything basically day before if you wish to give the flavors more time to distribute. And because it's cooked with almost no extra fat, it's really lean and healthy for summer dinners, when you don't really feel like eating anything heavy. A massive win!


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When I saw Mack Bolger, he was standing beside the bottom of the marble steps that bring travellers and passersby to and from the balcony of the main concourse in Grand Central. It was before Christmas last year, when the weather stayed so warm and watery the spirit seemed to go out of the season.
I was cutting through the terminal, as I often do on my way home from the publishing offices, on Fifty-first. I was, in fact, on my way to meet a new friend at Billy's. It was four o'clock on Friday, and the great station was athrong with citizens on their way somewhere, laden with baggage and precious packages, shouting goodbyes and greetings, flagging their arms, embracing, gripping each other with pleasure. Others, though, simply stood, as Mack Bolger was when I saw him, staring rather vacantly at the crowds, as if whomever he was there to meet for some reason hadn't come. Mack is a tall, handsome, well-put-together man who seems to see everything from a height. He was wearing a long gabardine overcoat of some deep-olive twill—an expensive coat, I thought, an Italian coat. His brown shoes were polished to a high gloss. His trouser cuffs hit them just right. And because he was without a hat he seemed even taller than what he was—perhaps six-three. His hands were in his coat pockets, his smooth chin was slightly elevated, the way a middle-aged man's would be, and as if he thought he was extremely visible there. His hair was thinning a little in front, but it was carefully cut, and he was tanned, which caused his square face and prominent brow to appear heavy, almost artificially so, as though in a peculiar way the man I saw were not Mack Bolger but an effigy situated precisely there to attract my attention.
For a while, a year and a half before, I had been involved with Mack Bolger's wife, Beth Bolger. Oddly enough—only because all events that occur outside New York seem odd and fancifully unreal to New Yorkers—our affair had taken place in the city of St. Louis, that largely overlookable red brick abstraction that is neither West nor Middle West, neither South nor North; the city lost in the middle, as I think of it. I have always found it interesting that it was the home of T. S. Eliot and, only eighty-five years before that, the starting point of Western expansion. It is a place, I suppose, the world can't get away from fast enough.
What went on between Beth Bolger and me is hardly worth the words that would be required to explain it away. At any distance but the close range I saw it from, it was an ordinary adultery—spirited, thrilling, and then, after a brief while, when we had crossed the continent several times and caused as many people as possible unhappiness, embarrassment, and heartache, it became disappointing and ignoble and finally almost disastrous to those same people. Because it is the truth and serves to complicate Mack's unlikable dilemma and to cast him in a more sympathetic light, I will say that at one point he was forced to confront me (and Beth, as well) in a hotel room in St. Louis—a nice, graceful old barn called the Mayfair—with the result that I got banged around in a minor way and sent off into the downtown streets of St. Louis on a warmly humid autumn Sunday afternoon, without the slightest idea of what to do, ending up waiting for hours at the airport for a midnight flight back to New York. Apart from my dignity, I left behind and never saw again a brown silk Hermès scarf with tassels that my mother had given me for Christmas in 1971, a gift she felt was the nicest thing she'd ever seen and perfect for a man just starting life as an editor. I am glad she did not have to know about my losing it, or how it happened.
I also did not see Beth Bolger again, except for one sorrowful and bitter drink we had together in the theatre district last spring, a nervous, uncomfortable meeting we somehow felt obligated to have, and following which I walked away down Forty-seventh Street feeling that all of life was a sorry mess, while Beth went along to see "The Iceman Cometh," which was playing then. We have not seen each other since that leave-taking, and, as I said, to tell more would not be quite worth the words.
But when I saw Mack Bolger standing in the great, crowded, holiday-bedecked concourse of Grand Central, looking rather vacant-headed but clearly himself, so far from the middle of the country, I was taken by a sudden, strange impulse—which was to walk straight across through the eddying currents of travellers and speak to him, just as you might speak to anyone you casually knew and had unexpectedly but not unhappily encountered. And not to impart anything, or to set in motion any particular action (to clarify history, for instance, or make amends), but just to speak and create an event where before there was none. And not an unpleasant event, or a provocative one. Just a dimensionless, unreverberant moment, a contact, unimportant in every other way. Life has few enough of these moments—the rest of it being involved so completely in the predictable and the obligated.
I knew a few things about Mack Bolger, about his life since we'd confronted each other semi-violently in the Mayfair Hotel. Beth had been happy to tell me during our woeful drink at the Espalier Bar in April. Our—Beth's and my—love affair was, of course, only one feature in the long devaluation and decline in her and Mack's marriage. This I'd understood. There were two children; Mack had been frantic to hold matters together for the sake of their futures. Beth was a portrait photographer who worked from home but craved engagement with the wide world outside University City—craved it in the worst way, and was therefore basically unhappy with everything in her life. After my departure, she moved out of their house, took an apartment near the Gateway Arch, and for a time took a much younger lover. Mack, for his part in their upheaval, eventually quit his job as an executive for a large agribiz company, considered studying for the ministry, considered going on a missionary journey to Senegal or French Guiana; briefly took a young lover himself. One child had been arrested for shoplifting; the other had gotten admitted to Brown. There were months of all-night confrontations, some combative, some loving and revelatory, some derisory from both sides. Until everything that could be said or expressed or threatened was in its time said, expressed, threatened and a standstill was achieved by which they both stayed in their house but kept separate schedules, saw different new friends, had occasional dinners together, went to the Muny Opera, occasionally even slept together, but saw little hope (in Beth's case) of things turning out better than they were at the time of our joyless drink together and the O'Neill play. I'd assumed then that Beth was meeting someone else that evening, had someone in New York she was interested in, and I felt completely fine about it.
"It's really odd," Beth said, stirring her long, almost pure-white finger around the surface of her Kir Royale, staring not at me but at the glass rim where the pink liquid nearly exceeded its vitreous limits but did not, "we were so close." Her eyes rose to me, and she smiled affectionately. "You and I, I mean. Now I feel like I'm telling all this to an old friend. Or to my brother."
Beth is a tall, sallow-faced, big-boned, ash-blond woman who smokes too many cigarettes and whose hair always hangs down in her eyes like a forties Hollywood glamour girl's. This can be attractive, although it also causes her sometimes to seem to be spying on her own conversations.
"Well," I said, "it's all right to feel that way." I smiled back across the little round black-topped café table. It was all right. I had gone on. When I looked back on what we'd done, none of it except for what we'd done in bed made me feel good about life, or that the experience had been finally worth it. But I couldn't undo it. I don't believe the past can be repaired that way. It can only be exceeded. "Sometimes," I went on, "friendship's all we're after in the first place." This, I admit, I did not really believe.
"Mack's like a dog, you know," Beth said and flicked her hair away from her eyes. He was on her mind. "I kick him," she said, "and he tries to bring me things. It's pathetic. He's very interested in Tantric sex now, whatever that is. Do you know what that even is?"
"I don't like hearing this," I said stupidly, though it was true. "It sounds cruel."
"You're just afraid I'll say it about you, Johnny." She smiled and touched her damp fingertip to her lips, which were wonderful lips.
"Afraid?" I said. "Afraid's really not the word, is it?"
"Well, then, whatever the word is." Beth turned her head quickly away and signalled the waiter for the check. She did not know how to be disagreed with. It always frightened her.
But that was all. I already said that our meeting was not a satisfying one.
Mack Bolger's pale-gray eyes caught me coming toward him well before I expected them to. We had seen each other only twice. Once at a fancy cocktail party given by an author I had come to St. Louis to wrest a book from. It was the time I had met his wife. And once more, at the Mayfair Hotel, when I'd taken an inept swing at him, and he'd slammed me against a wall and hit me in the face with the back of his hand. Perhaps you don't forget people you knock around. That becomes their place in your life. I, however, find it hard to recognize people when they're not where I believe they belong, and Mack Bolger belonged in St. Louis. But he was an exception.
Mack's eyes fixed on me, then left me, scanned the crowd uncomfortably, then found me again as I approached him. His large, tanned face took on an expression of stony unsurprise, as if he'd known I was somewhere in the terminal and a form of communication had already begun between us. Though, if anything, really, his face looked resigned—resigned to me, resigned to the situations the world foists on you unwilling, resigned to himself. It was what we had in common, though neither of us had a language which could express that. So, as I came into his presence, what I felt was an unexpected sympathy—for him, for having to see me now. And if I could've turned and walked straight away from him I would have.
"I just saw you," I said from the crowd, five feet before I expected to speak. My voice isn't loud, so that the theatrically nasal male voice announcing an arrival from Poughkeepsie on Track 34 seemed possibly to have blotted it out.
"Did you have something special in mind to tell me," Mack Bolger said. His eyes cast out again across the vaulted hall, where Christmas shoppers and overbundled passengers were moving in all directions. It occurred to me—shockingly—that he was waiting for Beth, and that in a moment's time I would be standing there facing her and Mack together, almost as I had in St. Louis. My heart actually struck two profound beats deep in my chest, then seemed for a moment to stop altogether. "How's your face?" Mack said without emotion, still scanning the crowd. "I didn't hurt you too bad, did I?"
"No," I said.
"You've grown a mustache." His eyes did not flicker toward me.
"Yes," I said. I'd forgotten about it, and for some reason felt ashamed, as if I looked absurd.
"Well," Mack said, "good." His voice was the one you would use to speak to someone in line beside you at the post office, someone you would never see again. Though there was also, just barely noticeable, a hint of what we used to call juiciness in his speech, some minor undispersable moisture in his cheek that one heard in each of his "s"s and "f"s. It was unfortunate, I thought. It robbed him of a small measure of gravity. I had not noticed it before, in the few overheated moments we'd had to exchange words.
He looked at me again, hands in his expensive Italian coat pockets, a coat that had heavy dark bone buttons and long, wide lapels. Too stylish for him, I thought, for the solid man he was. Mack and I were nearly the same height. But he was in every way larger and seemed to look down to me—something in the way he held his chin up. It was almost the opposite of the way Beth looked at me.
"I live here now," Mack said, without really addressing me. I noticed he had long, dark, almost feminine eyelashes and perfectly sized, perfectly shaped ears, which his new haircut put on nice display. He might've been forty—younger than I am—and looked more than anything like an army officer. A major. I thought of a letter Beth had shown me, written by Mack to her, containing the phrase "I want to kiss you all over. Yes I do. Macklin." Beth had rolled her eyes when she showed it to me. At another time she had talked to Mack on the telephone while we were in bed together naked. On that occasion she'd kept rolling her eyes at whatever he was saying—something, I gathered, about various difficulties he was having at work. Once we even engaged in a sexual act while she talked to him. I could hear his little, buzzing, fretful-sounding voice inside the receiver. But that was now erased. Everything Beth and I had done was over. All that remained of it was just this—a series of moments in the great train terminal, moments which, in their own way and in spite of everything, seemed correct, sturdy, almost classical in character, as if this later time were what really mattered, whereas the previous, passionate, linked, but now distant moments were merely preliminary.
"Did you buy a place?" I said to Mack Bolger, and unexpectedly felt a widely spreading vacancy open all around inside of me. It was such a preposterous thing to say.
Mack's eyes moved slowly to me, and his impassive expression, which had seemed to me to signify one thing—resignation—began to signify something different. I knew this because a small cleft appeared in his chin. "Yes," he said and let his eyes stay fixed on me. People were shouldering past us. I could smell some woman's heavy, hot-feeling perfume around my face. Music had commenced in the rotunda, making the moment feel clamorous, suffocating: "We three kings of Orient are . . . " "Yes," Mack Bolger said again, very emphatically, spitting the word from between his straight, white, nearly flawless teeth. He had grown up on a farm in Nebraska, had gone to a small college in Minnesota on a football scholarship, had then taken an M.B.A. at Harvard; had done well. All that life, all that experience was being brought into play now as self-control, dignity. It was strange that someone would call him a dog when he wasn't that at all. He was extremely admirable. "I bought an apartment on the Upper East Side," he said suddenly and blinked his eyes very rapidly. "I moved out in September. I have a new job. I'm living alone. Beth's not here. She's in Paris, where she's miserable—or I hope she is. We're getting a divorce. I'm waiting for my daughter to come down from boarding school. Is that all right? Does that seem all right to you? Does that satisfy your curiosity?"
"Yes," I said. "Of course." Mack was not angry. He was, instead, a thing that anger had no part of or at least had long been absent from, something akin to exhaustion, where the words you say are the only true words you can say. Myself, I did not think I'd ever felt that way. Always for me there had been a choice.
"Do you understand me?" Mack Bolger said. His thick athlete's brow slowly furrowed, as if he were studying a creature he didn't entirely understand, an anomaly of some kind, which perhaps I was.
"Yes," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Well, then," he said, and seemed suddenly embarrassed. He looked away, out over the crowd of swarming heads and faces, as if he'd just sensed someone coming. I looked toward where he was looking. No one was approaching us. Not Beth, not a daughter. Not anyone. Perhaps, I thought, it was all a lie. Or perhaps, I thought, for a moment I had lost consciousness, and this was not Mack Bolger at all, and I was dreaming everything. "Do you think there could be someplace else you could go now?" Mack said. His big, tanned, handsome face looked imploring and exhausted. Once Beth had said Mack and I looked alike. But we did not. That had been her fantasy. Without really looking at me again he said, "I would have a hard time introducing you to my daughter. I'm sure you can imagine that."
"Yes," I said. I looked around again, and this time I did see a pretty blond girl standing in the crowd, watching us from several steps away. She was holding a red nylon backpack by its straps. Something was causing her to stay away. Possibly her father had signalled her not to come near us. "Of course," I said. And by speaking I somehow made the girl's face break into a wide smile, a smile I recognized.
"Nothing's happened here," Mack said suddenly to me. He was staring at his daughter. From the pocket of his overcoat he had produced a tiny white box wrapped and tied with a red bow.
"I'm sorry?" I said. I was leaving. People were swirling noisily around us. The music seemed louder. I thought perhaps I'd misunderstood him. "I didn't hear you." I smiled in an entirely involuntary way.
"Nothing's happened today," Mack Bolger said. "Don't go away thinking anything happened here. Between you and me, I mean. Nothing's happened. I'm sorry I ever met you, that's all. Sorry I ever had to touch you. You make me feel ashamed." He still had the unfortunate dampness with his "s"s.
"Well," I said. "All right. I can understand."
He simply stepped away from me and began saying something toward the blond girl standing in the crowd smiling. What he said was "Boy, oh boy, do you look like a million bucks."
I walked on toward Billy's then, to the new arrangement I'd made that would take me on into the evening. I had been wrong, of course, about the linkage of moments, and about what was preliminary and what was primary. It was a mistake, one I would not make again. None of this was a good thing to have done. Though it is such a large city here, so much larger than, say, St. Louis, I knew I would not see him again. ♦


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Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum
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This week, we sat down with Dino D'Auria, executive vice president and chief banking officer at Silvergate Bank. One of EDC's newest investors, Silvergate Bank is a San Diego-based community bank that serves individuals and businesses across industries including manufacturing, defense, property management, real estate investment and many more.
1) Please tell us what your company/organization does.
Silvergate Bank has four main lines of business: Mortgage Warehouse Lending, Correspondent Mortgage Lending, Real Estate Construction and Investor Financing, and – my division – Business Lending and our Branch network. We also have an on-line portal that serves our Fintech clients for Treasury Management services.
In our Business Banking group, we primarily serve growing, privately held companies or Community Service Organizations (Not for Profit) by helping them position their balance sheets for growth and assist them in efficient and cost effective cash management.
Many of our clients come to us after having trouble working with larger banks, because they did not fit. We take the time to teach clients how to properly report their financial statements and communicate in "banker-speak" to enable them to get the financial services needed to grow. Some examples of our work:
2) What are some advantages to being located/doing business in San Diego?
San Diego is a close-knit business community. Our team is able to bring other professionals as resources for our clients through our networking activities. The economy is diverse and provides a stable base for entrepreneurs to grow their companies and have the confidence that things will be good in the future.
3) San Diego is full of dynamic companies, firms and service providers influencing global trends and innovation. Pick another San Diego company that is at the top of its game.
Gap Intelligence is a dynamic marketing research company that is very progressive in using technology and creating a positive dynamic culture.
4) What do you anticipate for your company in five years? What do you anticipate for San Diego?
We expect to grow Business Banking to be an equal share of our balance sheet as our other lines of business. We also plan to expand into Orange County, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire so there are plenty of growth opportunities at the bank.
San Diego will continue to positively progress as it has over the last 20 years.


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Director Harald Zwart was in a forest outside of Toronto on Friday, looking for a possible home for fairies to live. After finding a proper wooded locale, he would have to quickly shower and change into a suit and tie for the Canadian premiere his new movie, "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones."
It's not unusual for a director to be promoting one film while setting up the next. But in today's risk-averse Hollywood, it's rare for that next project to be a sequel before the first film has even proved itself at the box office.
As the first "Mortal Instruments" arrives in theaters this week, targeted at the millions of adolescent girls who have made the five-book series by Cassandra Clare a global phenomenon, Zwart is already in pre-production on a second installment.
His situation is even more remarkable given that young-adult novel adaptations have a mixed record migrating to the big screen. Their fans' squeals have catapulted some movies and their stars into the stratosphere, a la "The Hunger Games" and "Twilight." But they've rejected movie versions of popular series like "Beautiful Creatures" and "The Host."
"Mortal Instruments" has sold 24 million copies worldwide, and Zwart and the German company that bankrolled the $60-million movie, Constantin Films, are confident that the combination of a strong female protagonist and a slew of fast-paced action sequences will lure in both fans of the books and those who have never cracked a cover of the novels.
"I don't think people go to see a young-adult movie. Nobody went to 'The Hunger Games' thinking 'Oh, I'm dying to see this young-adult movie.' They were just really interested in that particular movie," said Zwart, 48. "I never really set out to make a young-adult movie. I wanted to make a great scary movie with a strong female character."
Set in New York City, "Mortal Instruments" centers on Clary Fray, an average teenage girl played by "Mirror Mirror" star Lily Collins, whose mother is kidnapped from their home. Forced into a quest to find her, Clary learns along the way that she is part of a family of demon chasers called shadowhunters. She must use her newfound powers to rescue her mom.
Of course, a teenage drama wouldn't be complete without a love triangle, and Clary is forced to choose between her best friend and trusty companion Simon (Robert Sheehan) or the mysterious shadowhunter Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower) who saves her life and teaches her the underworld trade.
Despite the familiar terrain, Zwart, who most recently helmed "The Karate Kid" remake set in China, found the film's source material to be an attractive combination of "Harry Potter" and "The Exorcist." After making "Karate Kid" for his now 11-year-old son, Zwart was happy to turn his attention to a female protagonist he would be proud to show to his 8-year-old daughter — even with the scary creatures.
"There is plenty of media that my daughter is exposed to that I don't think is great," said Zwart, who prior to "Karate Kid" made family films including "Agent Cody Banks" and "The Pink Panther." "What is rare is to find a female character that is there on her own principles: not as one of the boys, not as a victim and not as an object. That is what I loved about what Cassandra has written. Clary is a very strong girl."
Zwart, whose mother died when he was a young boy, also connected to the idea of losing a parent. Clary's need to uncover the truth about her family felt like a reasonable coping skill when dealing with a sudden loss.
"I could relate to how a girl would react when she finds out her parent is gone. Going into a rational, emotionless mode. Dealing with reality. Then I imagined throwing supernatural things into that reality, where that reality is not what you thought it was. That's when it got really interesting to me," he said.
In the early stages of the film's development, Zwart was slavish to the fans and the source material, even watching scores of fan-made trailers on YouTube to better understand how they envisioned Clary's world.
But he also inserted some of his own world-creating that he believed would better ground the project in reality, and in the end he, screenwriter Jessica Postigo Paquette and producer Robert Kulzer made some significant changes. The characters are older, the ending is different, one character is removed and another's storyline is changed.
Plus, Zwart, both as an homage to his composer father and in an effort to base the film in reality, ties shadowhunting to German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, making him one of the original demon fighters who uses music to thwart underworld dwellers.
Even with all the changes, author Clare still believes it's a film that the fans will clamor to see. But as the creator of this world, she said there are differences in the movie that are tough to swallow.
"I feel like I'm the worst person to be objective. It's my book, and it feels very personal. I think fans are going to like it. The characters look right. The interactions between the characters look right, the settings look right. But there are book purists out there, and they want everything the same. It's a lot for Harald to take in," said Clare.
"But there are pieces of the world-building that I love that they couldn't fit into the story. It's called 'Mortal Instruments,' but you are only introduced to one. I miss the other instruments."
Constantin Film produced the movie on its own, securing distribution deals with Sony's Screen Gems division for its U.S. release; an estimated $60 million has been spent to market the film worldwide. Kulzer, Constantin's co-president, conceded just days ahead of the movie's release that "we are all super nervous."
Box-office forecasts project that the movie will take in about $18 million in its first five days of release stateside. Kulzer is hopeful that the film will not only sell tickets but also propel ancillary products associated with the movie (the soundtrack and merchandise), other chapters in the series and the prequel book series, which Constantin also owns. That would boost the overall "Mortal Instruments" brand — and improve sales for future "Mortal Instruments" movies.
"For us as an independent company, it's more about managing expectations," Kulzer said by phone from Berlin. "Even if the movie performs moderately, it will still warrant a sequel. Now that $60 million has been spent worldwide on prints and advertising, you can already see how the book sales are accelerating, the soundtrack is hitting the charts. Even if the first one doesn't become a gigantic success, we will have a profitable track ahead of us."
It's a strategy similar to the one the company used for its "Resident Evil" horror franchise, which is aimed at young men. No movie in the five-film series opened to more than $26 million, and the total franchise gross for five films was only $244 million, but the movies were still profitable products that have prompted Constantin to contemplate a sixth installment.
"With the 'Resident Evil' franchise, they were never that big theatrically but they made their money, and believe it or not we might do a 'Resident Evil 6' because all the distributors and Sony, in particular, really want it," Kulzer said.
Clare, who was involved in the casting process, played an extra in a scene and was consulted all the way through, also wants another one of her books turned into a film. She's a bit skeptical it will happen, though.
"I still actually can't believe it. I keep going up to them saying, 'Really, you totally sure?' And they keep saying they are sure. My wisdom on this is the same as everyone else's. It doesn't happen that often," she said. "I tend to reserve my feelings of rejoicing until they are actually rolling camera. Things can fall apart at the last minute. I know these things, I watched 'Entourage.' "


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Should it really surprise anyone that the in-development Lance Armstrong biopic all of a sudden is characterized by lies, misconceptions and hearsay?
Let's do a quick recap. One of the many, many projects suddenly piling up on J.J. Abrams' plate is a planned Armstrong movie documenting his cheating scandal as a rider on the Tour de France. Abrams will produce the film, but obviously is far too busy to ever consider directing. News broke, however, that Silver Linings Playbook star and current Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper was interested in climbing on the bike for that role because, like most of us, he found Lance to be a fascinating character. No doubt it will be a meaty role for whomever decides to play Armstrong on screen. And Abrams, speaking to press on Saturday night at the Producers Guild Awards, mentioned to E! that Cooper "sent me an email and we've been talking" about taking over the lead role.
Only Cooper claims he knows nothing about it.
The actor quickly responded to Access Hollywood at the SAG Awards on Sunday night that the story was false and that initially he was confused by the line of questioning from the BBC that first linked him to the story and the role in the first place.
Oh my God, that's so nuts! I was in Manchester, doing the BBC morning show… I had no idea what [the interviewer] was talking about. I didn't even know that J.J. has the rights, I had no idea. I don't know anything about it."
So did he send an email to Abrams, or are they both totally confused? Here's what we know. The pair have history. Early in his career, Cooper had a recurring role on Abrams' Alias opposite Jennifer Garner, so the idea of the two working together makes sense. And I have no doubt that Cooper actually would be an excellent choice to play Armstrong in the inevitable movie. Maybe this is a calculated denial as negotiations happen behind the scenes? Perhaps Abrams can still woo Cooper to the project, if he really wants him. Remember, Armstrong lied about taking PEDs for years. Maybe Cooper's fooling the media with a little fib of his own. He's Method. It's helping him get in character. We shall see.