SAFARI, so good!
by Jay Garber
From June 13 through 30 of this year, I was lucky enough to make my second trip into the "(not so) Wilds of East Africa." Neither Teddy Roosevelt nor Ernest Hemingway would understand the lack of "roughing it' that a safari to Tanzania and Kenya has now become. The modern tourist hardly works up a sweat or braves a bug bite as he's chauffeured around the Serengeti plains; eats on a fancy dining room's open veranda and sleeps snug and secure in a rustic (but modern) lodge beneath the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Having a family of nature lovers who have watched the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet all their lives, it was my pleasure to be escorted on this adventure by two of my three children, a son-in-law and three of my seven grandchildren. The photo below is our troop in the hollow of an enormous Baobab tree. The youngsters are all in their late teens so they are sufficiently grown to view this break from reality as a life shaping experience. As for me, the only thing better than living a life-long dream is the fact that I was able to share that dream with those closest to me (The one downer was that the trip was out of the question for someone in Dollies' physical condition).
The trip documented by all of us with still shots and film (I have eight hours of video that I'll try to compress so viewers won't fall asleep from boredom). If I do say so myself, some of the shots are breathtaking. The animals have no fear of humans and as long as you stay in your vehicle, you have no need to fear them (but DON'T get out and walk about). In most game reserves (where no hunting is allowed) the dangerous predators (carnivores) are watched, by visitors, almost from sunrise to sunset and sometimes into the night. The animals totally ignore the noise of engines and the diesel exhaust must mask any odor that could resemble prey [human].
You'll find lion, cheetah, hyena at play, asleep and on the prowl as if the tourist didn't even exist. If you're lucky, you might even find the night stalking, solitary leopard sleeping off his dark prowling on some horizontal tree limb. We ran into full grown male lions soundly sleeping in the middle of the dirt road and were forced to detour into a field to make it past (it's their country, you know). The herbivores (plant eaters) are almost as blaze about intrusions of the human kind. With the exception of the smaller horned antelope types, which are startled by any loud sounds, life continues as expected in the animal world.
The roars, the brays, the squawks, the cackles, the chirping, the shrieks can be heard at all hours of the day and night. The flip side of the coin is the quietness of a field of elephant, giraffe and cape buffalo, who move with unexpected softness as they go about their communal daily lives. If nature and animals are something that you like, you'll never find anything to match an African safari. No place on earth can surpass it in numbers or variety.
After watching my DVD's a few times, I find it almost an unattainable goal to cut the film down to two hours (from the onginal eight). There's so much great "stuff' there that I can't bring myself to pick and choose, but I'll have to. If you'd like to view the experience by watching what I end up with, give me a call. I'll gladly relive it again and again.
Barbershop History-General Knowledge Quiz
Questions:
1. What 1921 song was a hit for the Paul Whitman Orchestra, the renowned Peerless Quartet, and also for Al Jolson? For extra credit, name the Broadway musical from which this song comes.
2. The Peerless Quartet had a second name and a second configuration. Explain.
3. Many barbershop aficionados in the early 20th century believed that the Peerless Quartet really was incomparable. That, mind you, was right smack in the middle of barbershop's greatest-ever mass popularity. What made this quartet so good?
4. On July 17, 1935, nearly three years prior to the founding of SPEBSQSA, the New York City Parks Department held its first barbershop quartet contest. Did any contests take place even earlier, in any place from coast to coast?
5. In what year did our international competition have its greatest exposure to barbershoppers and non barbershoppers alike?
Go to page 12 for answers Back to top