Musician Zoli Teglas will be leading a demonstration this afternoon in Santa Monica to bring attention to the recent revelations concerning the use of whale meat at the city’s famed The Hump restaurant.
The demonstration will be held between 11:30 am and 2 pm in front of The Hump, located at the Santa Monica Airport.
“When we heard that the offense is only a misdemeanor and that operators of The Humpcould at most be fined and serve possible jail time for violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act we realized that we needed to do more to raise awareness and educate the Los Angeles community that this local restaurant is serving endangered Sei whale meat. We encourage people to join us to help put an end to restaurants in the US and Japan selling endangered species as delicacies,” said Teglas, who in addition to being the frontman for the group Pennywise also serves as the volunteer music and outreach coordinator for Sea Shepherd, an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization.
The tragic story of the Jews who lived in Bekes County, a mostly poor and rural region in southeastern Hungary, 120 miles from Budapest, was grimly echoed to greater or lesser degrees throughout a large section of Central and Eastern Europe.
A once active and thriving community had been decimated during the Second World War. Most of the Jews who managed to survive the Holocaust immigrated to places far away from the region: Israel, the United States and Australia.
Only a smattering remained in Bekes County following the war and into the country’s Communist era. As the decades past, the number of Holocaust survivors living here dwindled.
Nevertheless, their story, as well as the history of the formerly thriving community, is still being penned, and by the most unlikely of chroniclers.
Istvan Balogh, a 22-year-old university student, hails from a non-Jewish though multi-ethnic Hungarian family. Despite his deceptively young age, he is the author of two books (in Hungarian) about Jewish life in Bekes country.
“Before I was even 10 years old, my grandmother would tell me stories about Jewish life here from the time when she was young girl. She recounted how her best friend, a Jewish girl named Rozsi Leichter, was taken away on a train, only to perish later at a concentration camp,” Balogh said.
“From that point forward, I was drawn to the story of this community that once live here amid my own community, yet was no longer here,” he added.
He started work on his first book, about Jewish life in his hometown of Totkomlos, a small community of 6,600 people, when he was a mere 13 years of age. His passion for the subject remained throughout his adolescence and his volume was subsequently published by the time he was 18.
Balogh’s fascination with the story of the Jews of Bekes County and Judaism as a whole remained so deep in fact that, at the time he had graduated from high school, he enrolled and was accepted at the Hungary’s University of Jewish Studies in Budapest, where he is in his third year.
He has just completed his second book, a painstakingly researched tome, about the Jews from the entire region of Bekes County. In it, Balogh goes into great detail about hundreds of Jewish buildings and landmarks within dozens of communities stretched across Bekes Country. He describes the location and the current status of the landmarks, whether the local councils have made efforts to maintain them or whether they have fallen into disrepair.
“Every weekend I would come home and plot out which city, town or village I would go to. I would ask officials in the settlements where the Jewish landmarks were. If they were in a bad state, I would ask them why the situation was this way,” Balogh said, retelling his experiences meeting with town officials who were often two or three times his age
“I also searched through local registry offices, traced the names on tombstones, spent hours poring over documents in local libraries, anything that he could use to find connections between those people who lived in Bekes county and who could help me make the picture more complete,” he went on to say.
Through these sources, Balogh was able to gather the addresses of Holocaust survivors and relatives of victims and former residents of the region. He wrote numerous letters and tried to establish a correspondence with scores of people who had a connection to Jewish life in Bekes County.
The reaction from those who wrote back to the young, non-Jewish compiler of their history was positive, if not enthusiastic, according to Balogh. From the many responses he received, he was able to piece together a framework of what had once transpired in this area, now mostly devoid of any form of Jewish life.
“The letters which came back to me were not only invaluable in the research I was performing, but they also helped bring in a human element which was mostly missing in my desire to learn more about what had taken place here,” he said.
Some of what Balogh has delved into in his book can also be found on his Web site where he documents the location of dozens of Jewish cemeteries, the number of tombstones situated in each and their present condition.
As for professional ambitions, besides the near certainty that he will produce more books, Balogh hopes to become a professor of Jewish studies.
My name is Myklust Srkt. I work as the chief public relations officer for the Ministry of Tourism in Gurgruc, the capital city of Aldovia — which many of you in America have probably studied about in your elementary and secondary schools as “the land without cats.”
This characterization of our people into a stereotypical soundbyte is, in my view, extremely unfair. There are more sides to Aldovia than what is depicted in a typical western education, ie, as a “no cat zone.” For example, we are a country which is proud of its cuisine, most notably our Aldovian turnip stews, our Aldovian turnip casseroles and our famous Aldovian turnip pie (tarte aux navets a la Aldovienne). Aldovia is able to produce such a bountiful crop of turnips each year because we farm them on land which in other countries would be reserved for cat parks, cat grazing and various and sundry other cat-related activities and amusements.
I believe that it is incumbent upon me in my position as the principle publicist for Aldovia to state categorically that we are not a cat-hating nation. In fact, we have diplomatic missions in many countries where cats reside and are admired. Though, as these embassies and consulates are considered the territory of the Republic of Aldovia, cats are not allowed on the property.
The Aldovian language is to most non-native speakers a linguistic enigma, for it bears no resemblance to any other known dialect. Every word was made up on the spot in less than three hours by the great Aldovian polymath Kledmik on June 3, 1132. Unlike the English language in which words are derived from Latin, Greek, French and many other tongues, the Aldovian vocabulary has no roots. Hence, there is no word for cat.
Living in a land that has no common domesticated felines (and no word for the species) has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, the average Aldovian has seen 32,000 fewer cat commercials by the time he or she graduates from high school than the average American. On the downside, having no word for cat leaves 32,000 fewer idioms that an average Aldovian speaker has at his or her disposal.
Needless to say, because of the paucity of cats in Aldovia we are one of the most productive countries on the planet. Aldovian workers spend their entire working lives free from the distractions of online cat videos.
I don’t mean to paint a picture that a society without cats is idyllic. Just because our country is cat-free does not mean we are without our social problems. Late last month, police searching a home in the village of Smkr, about 57 miles east of the capital, found a woman living with 107 marmots.
Still, putting aside my job as Aldovia’s top marketer for a moment, I urge you, in my capacity as a private citizen, to come visit my country. Here you will find none of the cat-related hassles that can mar an otherwise splendid vacation, such as being bothered by aggressive pan-handling cats with preternaturally keen abilities to pick out tourists, trying to book a table at a top restaurant only to find a group of cats has beaten you to it, being seated behind a whining cat on your flight to or from Aldovia, or having cats cut before you in line as you visit one of our world-renowned museums – where of course if you are looking for exhibits about cats you will be very disappointed.
Throughout the centuries, artists have found inspiration and relished their experiences in Aldovia. In a tongue-and-cheek note to his good friend Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron lauded the fineness of Aldovian turnip wine, “I would wish that Thee could be here with me, quaffing a vintage of which the cats cannot nip.”
In a little known essay entitled “Journey to Aldovia”, the great American writer Mark Twain remarked, “The cafes and promenades of Gurgruc are resplendent with the sounds of life – though none of these sounds seem to emanate from cats.”
Ernest Hemingway, though a renowned cat lover, was a frequent visitor to Aldovia. He once said of the country in a letter he penned to Gertrude Stein, “I find here the solace I need to write – free of the constant wailing of cats.”
There are many treasures and pleasant surprises awaiting you on your journey to Aldovia – too many to reveal on this occasion. Besides, as we say here, “I wouldn’t want to let the hedgehog out of the bag.”
Water Buffalo Takes the Plunge!
Earlier this month, a Howard Springs man finished mowing his lawn and noticed a water buffalo casually strolling up the driveway. Karl Stowers was stunned as he watched it jump in his pool and swim. Mr. Stowers yelled at it to no avail and then lured the beast out of the pool with food. It proceeded to run across his freshly mowed lawn and roll around in a mud puddle. The buffalo may be the same one spotted strolling around in the yards of other Howard Springs’ residents.
Love Soars to New Heights!
A few days after Christmas, a North Cairns police officer heard voices from above and spotted two people climbing down a crane access ladder over a construction site. Elisha Walker and Nigel Meighan were each recently released on a good behaviour bond after they plead guilty to the stunt. Mr. Meighan told the magistrate it was just a silly thing he and Walker thought up when they saw the crane, and they had not considered the consequences since they were drunk at the time.
Praying Mantis Becomes a Video Star!
A Brisbane couple, Maria and Rod Thompson, has captured amazing video of a praying mantis chasing a computer mouse cursor around the screen. Mrs. Thompson said the mantis was seen in the home before, and one night it poked its head over the computer as her husband was checking email. When the mouse was bumped, the praying mantis surprised them by leaping at the cursor. This began a twenty-minute game, and the couple filmed the unusual spectacle that can now be seen on YouTube.
Truck Driver Gets Stuck on the Phone!
43-year-old Darwin truck driver, Gye Gardner, broke his mobile phone’s headset and repaired it with superglue. His boss called before it dried, and it stuck to his ear. He said he usually kept the headset in his ear most of the day, and friends even jokingly suggested that he leave it stuck and plug his ear into the power point at night to charge the headset. Gardner scraped the earpiece from his ear but several pieces of skin were left stuck to the headset. He said removing it was painful, but it did not hurt as much as his pride!
Man is all Thumbs!
Semi-retired gun salesperson and firearms inspector, Geoff McLaren, now has his thumb replaced by his left big toe after his thumb was blown off in a recent workplace accident. Surgeons at Sydney Hospital performed the delicate microsurgery. McClaren says he loves to wear sandals, so a missing toe may cramp his style just a bit!
There are always strange stories to be told and you can find these bits of wonderfully strange news on BigPond News!
Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson, as two of the people most responsible for bringing the world’s financial system to the brink of the disaster and creating a bailout that mostly benefited the already rich and powerful on Wall Street and that will burden future generations with untold debt and all the while an enormous percentage of the population struggles to hold on to jobs (if they have not been lost already) and homes (ditto), it would be remiss of me not to ask you whether the Colts or the Saints are going to win this year’s Super Bowl.
And the American people have such a low regard for the mainstream media because … ?
