Atlanta 2006 (Part I)

Atlanta Oct. 13-18th

Neuroscience annual meeting was going to be scheduled in Atlanta convention center - I knew it and was excited to visit this city starting last year.

Sunset at Downtown (from Westin hotel room)

There are always something to look at downtown, with Atlanta as the biggest city in the south. The CNN headquarter is one of the unusual ones. Two HUMMER jeeps were laying in the middle of the hall and a giant globe hanging in the air. I took a tour and noticed a famour picture along the stairways - that's the Chinese student standing before a tank in 1989. Nobody knows what happened to him afterwards.

There are two places I would like to visit in Atlanta - Carter Center and Martin Luther King memorial site. Although it is very hard to travel around Atlanta without a car and in a limited time, I managed to take a look at these two places - I would regret if I didn't.

First time President Carter impressed me is his speech supporting for Kerry at DNC 2004. Although the conference was covered by the shine of Obama's speech, Carter's speech was more sincere and moving to me. As one of the only two presidents who has made a peace agreement between Israel and an Islam country (The other one is Clinton - Jordan and Israel), I believe his new book <Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid> would be very interesting.

I started the tour with the film introducing Carter. There was a decent-dressed old man weeping silently all the time when the film was on. I felt sorry for him and know what he might feel - things could be so different if Carter were the president now.

After President Nixon visited China in 1972 and signed an agreement "One China, Taiwan is part of China", the relationship between China and U.S. didn't develop that much. President Carter is major contributor that started a conprehensive communication between these two giant countries. That helped China recover from destructive culture revolution and since then China has been on a much healthier road.

South Dakota/Nebraska (Part II)

Few more pictures of Badlands - BADlands are really not BAD, instead are very colorful.



Leaving Badlands National Park, we were driving south towards Nebraska. Close to the state line of SD and NE, there is a historic site for Wounded Knee Massacre. Instead of nicely-built visitor center in most of National Park Services, there were two Indian people standing under a small pavillion made of few pieces of wood. They showed us pictures and newspapers regarding the massacre.

It was the last massacre in American Indian wars, taking place on Dec. 29th, 1890. About 350 half starved tribe people traveled along nowadays Badlands National park area and gathered at Pine Ridge Reservations for Ghost Dance, a religious ceremony. From some reason still unclear, the U.S. troops opened fire and killed more than half of the tribe people, half of which is women and children. The leader, Wounded Knee was injured and captured. The Dept. of Interior had an short article written on a very simple board on the side of the road with a title as"Battle of Wounded Knee". After the protest of tribe people, they finally changed the "Battle" to "Massacre".


The Indian people working there talked to us for a quite long time, describing the sufferings of the tribe people both in history and the currency. The Lakota Tribe, along with another tribe in Minnesota, are only two reservations having Kingdom system. That is to say, they are two seperate countries from the U.S. although they have the U.S. passports. People living in the reservation are very poor. Kids don't get enough education and have a very high suicide rate. I asked them if they keep connections with other Indian reservations. They said No. It seems there are some problems with their own systems - for example, the previous King was voted out for several times but refused to step down. The U.S. government finally made him leave the position. When we left to take a look at the massacre monument, they said " Thanks for listening".

Leaving Lakota reservation, we noticed there was another similar board on the side of the road. It describes how Crazy Horse, another famous leader of an Indian Tribe, was murdered by the U.S. troop. Interestingly, on the way to mountain Rushmore, we had noticed there is an unfinished monument of Crazy Horse. They were and are being bulit by tribe people with limited money and sources.

That night we stayed in Scottsbluff, NE. It is one of biggest cities in Nebraska, but still quite small. Although there is not one National Park in Nebraska, it is famous for several important historical trails: Oregon trail, California trail, Lewis and Clark trail, Mormon pioneer trail and Pony express trail. Scotts Bluff National Monument is right in the middle of Oregon trail. There are still a lot of geographical marks everywhere. We took a hike up in the bluff before heading back to Denver. It was sunny, warm and it is amazing that thousands of people had passed this 2000 mile trail without a car in order to seek a better life.

Movie talk 3

Brother to brother

The movie is dedicated the Bruce Nugent, a black writer from Harlem Renaissance. It expressively describes the struggles of the communities of minorities: black VS white, and more importantly, gay black VS staight black community.

One of the striking feature of black community is their tendency to be very homophobic. George and I discussed this a lot, trying to understand why. In a reasonable way one minority group tends to understand other minorities since they are all treated badly historically. Black group is one of the minorities, gay is another. Why is black community so against gay man, especially gay black man?

When I was in Atlanta this October, my friend and I took a taxi to a club. Knowing that our destination is a gay club, the taxi driver, who is an African American, started to question us the morality of gay community. He did not care us being gay, but cared that his children might be gay - because he thinks that gay people are going to teach his children to be gay. With this theory, he condemned the existence of gay people. He seems a hard working man struggling to support his family, a man who goes to church every weekend, a man who might be very kind to majority of people who are not gay. Knowing the hardness of changing somebody's opinion, I tried anyway but failed to do so. With this pity in mind, I deeply feel sorry for him.

When a group, especially a minority group, had struggled to gain some position in a society, keeping the current status is so hard which makes it even harder for this group to be more progressive, because they are afraid to lose. Black people are stereotyped as strong masculinity. It is an interesting phenomenon that sometimes people hate being stereotyped, but on the other hand, subconciously they are happy what they are stereotyped as. In a hidden manner, it seems Black community enjoyed this stereotype although they might deny it. Being a gay Black man is a big slap on this.

In the opposite to previous theory, South Africa just legalized gay marriage. Why there is such a big difference between African American in the U.S and Black people in South African? Almost 80% of South African population is Black. With such majority, with continuous cruel and enduring fight for civil rights for centuries, are Black people in South Africa not afraid to lose?

Google for Justice

Google for Justice

The GOP lies, incessently, to the American People. It's time for them to go. Get the real story, here:

http://tinyurl.com/y3n3v3

South Dakota/Nebraska (Part I)

Sept. 8-11

We have planned to visit South Dakota for a long time.

Jennifer and Sergio live in Fargo, ND. SD is right in the middle of Denver and Fargo - it is a perfect mid-spot to meet and hang out.

Along with state of Mississippi, South Dakota banned abortion this year. That includes pregnancy from incestant and raping. Although still pending for legislatural pass, this decision, as a lot of decisions the republican administration has made, disgusted us. For a long time, we have decided not to go to SD because of this.

This summer was a very busy one - George worked hard for his graduation; I had to spend most of the weekends at office. Finally, with the coming labor day weekend, we found a break to get out of Denver. We decided to visit South Dakota. No matter what, people in SD are fighting against this terrible deed. The trip plan includes Wind Cave National Park, Mountain Rushmore and Badlands National Park.

Wind Cave national park is one of unusual ones. We were there around 10 am and 3 hours early for our reservation of a candle light trail in the caves. Knowing our schedule is tight, we decide to take a routine nature trail into the cave. Taking the man-made iron stairs down, we were impressed how deep in the ground this cave is. It is famous for its Boxworks - more than 90% of cave boxworks in the world is in this cave.

Entrance of Wind Cave

After leaving Wind Cave, we directly drove to Mountain Rushmore. The statues of four presidents are still there, as always. I wonder however, which four presidents' statues would people constitute NOW? I wish Jimmy Carter is one of them.


We stayed in Cedar city overnight - next day we directly headed to Badlands national park. It indeed is a big peice of bad land - more or less like pieces of artifical clays everywhere, with different colors.

New England revisited (III) - along I-95

Few places we stopped along the trip:

PORTLAND
It has a nice downtown with brick roads and familiar smell of sea. We stopped and dined at a nice porch along the sea at a local restaurant "J's oyster". The food is not good and the service is very slow. I had the worst lobster roll there, which reminded me the delicious lobster rolls at Cape Cod in the year 2003. The coast along the water is nice - some scenes look like mid-south part of China.

The coast of Portland

OGUNQUIT
Small P-town. We arrived in the evening. The small downtown is crowded with people. There are several gay bars and we stopped at "The Front Porch". Nice but very crowded bar with live piano playing.

PORTSMOUTH
The town was built in 1762 - probably one of the oldest town I have ever been in the U.S. It has several bridges, old iron style with part of it being able to be lifted up for boats to pass by, as well as modern hanging bridge. It was Sunday afternoon, people were hanging out everywhere. We walked around Strawberry Banke where a lot of old houses still exist. It is a cozy town of New hamshire.

Piers at the waterfront

New England revisited (II) - Acadia National Park

"Acadia was never overwhelming", with the voice of Jack Perkins coming up in the introductory video of Acadia National Park, I already sensed it was going to be an unique trip.

In spite of being the first National Park east of Mississippi River, Acadia is not as popular as places like Niagra Falls. "In it heart, it offers solitude"Jack Perkins said. I guess that's what Maine is. The Taiwanese journalist San Mao once talked with her friends about where in the USA she can stay. She said, " Only Maine, cold and deserted, is just where we belong to". The lonely woman, she has been so many places, but finally couldn't bear with her life and commited suicide with her socks. It was showering when we visited - just fit the mood that the park offers.

A lonely bird

In the visitor center, the ranger recommened several hiking trails. Both Precipice trail and Beehive trail attracted us since they are "not recommended for small chidren - trail brochure". They both have iron rungs on ledges of exposed cliffs. Precipice trail was closed, however, during that time due to possible attack from agressive birds. George visited the park in 2000 after being impressed by the introductory video shown by his advisor Richard in his class. He enjoyed moutain bikings in the park but never got a chance for hiking. Therefore, we were aiming for the Beehive trail.

It starts with an easy trail - but soon, we had to use both hands and feet to climb on the steep iron rungs. It looks so steep and dangerous that one moment I was thinking maybe we should go back. There is really no way to go back - all the iron rungs were designed for climbing up only. We encouraged and helped each other - and at some points we even took pictures! Finally, standing at the top of the mountain, nothing could really describe our pleasure and joy.

A view from the trail

Beehive trail is very close to Sand Beach. Sweaty and tired, we both wanted a refreshing. The Sand Beach is only sea water beach in the park, with highest temperature only at 50s. We stepped in the cold water, with foot in freezing pain. I couldn't stand it and stepped back for a while and George had the guts staying in. After accumulating some energies, I stepped in again and swimed in high waves. It was like a refreshing cold coke runing through all my blood vessels - COOL!

Sand Beach

After Beehive and "Atlantic bath", we felt that we experienced so much joy and gained much more curiosity about this park. We finally stopped at Jordan Pond and took a hike along the shore. It was close to evening and still cloudy. The pond, the hills, the cloud, how nostalgia!

A man enjoying his solitude

Jordan Pond shore trail

Next day, we went to Bar Harbor and rented two bikes. The moutain biking trails in the park are one of very unique features. No cars, no traffic lights, miles and miles up and down. We biked through Eagle lake and Jordan Pond, finally got to bike up to the top of Day Mountain. It was windy at the top of the mountain, that reminds me the woman who lives at the top of an island in Maine. She was the lover of Louis Kahn, a famous architect, who deserted her after deserting his wife before her. She still believed that he loves her. It was similarly windy when Nathaniel Kahn, Louis's son, interviewed her around her house in the documentary film <my architect>. She looked pale and lonely.

New England revisited (I)

July 13-20th, 2006

This summer has been successful for us. George got his dissertation well written and defended on July 14th. Several days later, while at Vermont Academy, in Saxtons River, for a science conference, I was notified that my green card application was finally approved. Both happened in just one week - like people say "when it rains, it pours".

Vermont was surprisingly hot in July. We stayed in a room with no AC, no private bathroom, no telephone, no TV, no cell phone signal and no full-size bed. Only a fan was running all the time. Although quite different, it was not bad at all. No matter what, it is New England!

Early afternoon was free for conference attendees. We took a few trips to swim in West River, Saxtons River and Spofford Lake where George used to swim when he studied in NH. On Saturday night we took a drive along Route 5 to look for a gay club George visited a long time ago to the north of Brattleboro. It was not there anymore, instead, we found it has been remodeled and now is a country club. We stayed for few hours listening to a local band playing. I found it quite interesting in that it did not look too much different from a gay club, except that people there really didn't know how to dance!

There are many historic towns around that area. East of Saxtons River is a small town called Bellows Falls. Unable to find any bars in Saxtons River, we discovered a Cafe at Bellows Falls on late Tuesday night. In the Cafe, there were only a rude mid-western looking guy and a weird lady, who apparently were drinking too much. We didn't stay long. The Long Trail draft is good, I must say.

West of Saxtons River is a very old town Grafton. We took a few hiking trails - the beautiful New England hiking trails! We didn't forget, however, to buy some famous Grafton 4-year chedar cheese. Very yummy!

Covered bridge at town of Grafton