Eyjafjallajökull. Me.

*Note: All photos, except one or two, by Rick Johnson. Vocals in Sigur Rós video also by Rick Johnson. Jim Wilkins on langspil.

Iceland has lost its cool again. 10 years ago, a ragged group of us tried to climb over that very same volcano, and it sent us scampering back the way we came with our tails between our legs. It's a very stubborn hunk of frozen igneous.

This led my brother-in-law yesterday to make a point: "I like how you have some sort of tie-in with most of the big current events."

Well... yeah. That's the goal.

So—at the expense of flightless travelers everywhere (including my sweet Swiss-stranded sister—tie in!), tulip farmers in Kenya, and the fledgling global economic recovery—check it out!

We did a 10 day trek that we called the Fire and Ice Tour (yes... we made sloganed shirts), because the island is very much just that. It was two weeks of glaciers, snow caves and hot springs... and even a hot rock that melted my pants. Obsidian (volcanic glass) littered the ground. Hardened lava flows from a 1994 eruption had been unhelpfully dumped all over the trail. At one point, we spent a full hour dropping huge ice blocks into a boiling pond, and at another, we spent a full day slogging uphill through what one of our crew referred to as "mile after mile of endless volcanic shit." I want to go back tomorrow.

It's the most visually otherworldly place I've ever been. Like the moon, if the moon wasn't such a freaking fascist. The midnight sun creates these sorts of six-hour-long sunsets. And the whole time we were basically aiming for the middle of these two giant ice caps — one of which was, per my prescient plans, Eyjafjallajokull.

Big white thing in the back:

Eventually we got there, camped right beneath it, and planned a marathon trek over the pass separating the ice caps and back down to the coast on the other side. Something like this:

Sigur Rós - Glósóli from Sigur Rós on Vimeo.

"Don't try if there are clouds on the icecap in the morning," the sweet Icelandic lady at the last campground warned. The next morning there were clouds. Unhappy clouds:

And we went anyway. We thought we could get up and over before the storm hit. I don't know why we thought this. That's frigging absurd. And so we climbed right into the teeth of this spittin' angry whale of a storm. Whale storm!

It actually wasn't so bad until the storm hit about two-thirds of the way up. Then we huddled and stared at the most ice-cappy part of the ice cap for an hour or two, sent a couple of former Army Rangers ahead to scout it out, and got second thoughts when Rangers returned with reports of densing (verb?) visibility, Katrina winds, and flying pebbles. Flying pebbles turned back Hitler at Stalingrad. Pebbles!

So we very literally staggered home. Some of us getting flipped:

All of us losing our pack covers (a giant pack is the last thing you want on your back in that kind of wind). All of us losing our way at one point or another.

All thrilled to see the sweet Icelandic lady waiting sans smirk to mother us into a (thankfully vacant) warm cabin with hot showers. The next day we ate whale or something, drank Spanish wine, and swam here:

Anyway... the point of this story is: I was there, man. Once. When it was silent. Before it was cool to have your travel plans shat on by an Icelandic volcano.

Getting along II

The scene in Chiang Mai:

Even in Bangkok (well.. sorta..):

Happy Songkran* everyone. Seems like it couldn't come at a better time.

*Thai New Year and water fesitval... and the greatest holiday in the entire world.

Getting along.

Bangkok finally blew up again today. We're here, and fine. Life seems normal on the streets outside our hotel (except for pickups full of flag-waving redshirts rolling by, cheering as if they won something today). And I thought Shutter Island (watched today while "stuck" in a high-end mall after the redshirt protestors forced the closure of the Skytrain) was pretty decent.

But 21 (and climbing) protestors, police and soldiers died, including one Reuters journalist, and another 900 were treated in hospitals for injuries. Both sides are firing live rounds, and it seems like it will get worse before better. And it's all just sickeningly unnecessary.

I've actually been able to follow the day-to-day aspects of the protests pretty closely (thanks to Twitter and Google Maps, I've realized it's remarkably easy to keep a close eye on where protestors or police are gathering at any specific moment, allowing us to blithely gallivant around town). And, as result, I've gotten steady translations of the rhetoric coming from the leaders of both sides.

So beyond a government willing to use live rounds on its own people, the maddening dynamic—from my limited scope—boils down to this:

It's a lot of people with legitimate fears/grievances (the redshirts have a history of getting democratically screwed), and self-serving idiots with microphones on the protest stages exploiting those fears/grievances with willful distortions of the truth, oversimplified, frenzy-whipping rhetoric, and demonization of those of disagree. Don't educate; inflame. Don't think; yell. For this, they solidify their own statuses as political heroes, media kings (many have talk radio and cable news shows), and reliable minions for the real powers duking it out behind the scenes. The yellowshirt protests a year and a half ago had very much the same drumbeat.

Sound familiar?

Update—Here's some footage:

face surgery

with an organ. and—inexplicably—constance in the room with a camera.

We'll miss him when he's gone.

I loved this:

In the rash of window smashings and inexplicable health reform hysteria a couple weeks ago, one of the tea parties published online the address of who they thought was democratic Virginia congressman Tom Perriello, and encouraged followers to "drop by." They screwed up—it actually was Perriello's brother's address, and the brother woke up Wednesday to find the gas line to his house cut.

Because, you know, Perriello supported a fairly conservative, market-based compromise correction of a grossly failed system in our country. Let's blow something up. The same tea partier later referred to the brother as "collateral damage."

Perriello's response to the threats?

"Whatever. I’ve lived in Sierra Leone for two years, where the life expectancy is 34 years old. If the worst thing that happens is that special-interest groups spend millions of dollars against me and my most ardent opponents organize against me, it’s hardly a ‘cry me a river’ moment — as long as people act civil and within the law.”

This seemed entirely in character. Perriello got my attention last year when he won his seat in a massive upset in a historically conservative district. Here's why:

A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Perriello worked to end atrocities in Liberia as well as with child soldiers, amputees, and local pro-democracy groups in Sierra Leone. He became special adviser for the international prosecutor during the showdown that forced Liberian dictator Charles Taylor from power. His work as a security analyst has taken him to Afghanistan and Darfur. Perriello has also been a part of a groundswell of young progressives whose religious faith motivates them to seek social change through public service. One of the most startling aspects of his 2008 campaign was his pledge to tithe 10 percent of his campaign volunteers' time to local charities. Time they could have spent stuffing mailers and phone-banking went to building houses for the poor.

"Ours is a community-service generation," he says. "Our background is in not-for-profits, the netroots, and problem solving. We understand that the big divisions in America are not even about politics; it's a whole new way of thinking that throws traditional politics out the window." Perriello says he was warned not to talk about Darfur in the rural South but did it anyhow.

He helped stop the war in Liberia. The war in Liberia is.. uh.. personal to my family. I like this guy.

He'll probably lose his seat in November for supporting—again—what was really a market-based, conservative-ish healthcare reform bill. That's fine. I think voters—obviously—should be able to happily vote out representatives who don't represent their views.

But I also think both sides of the aisle—in a congress filled with men whose greatest strength is getting elected—would benefit from more of these sorts of level-headed, educated-by-the-wider-world, problems-are-worth-trying-to-solve public servants. And I'll lament it if we lose him.