Here's a bit of news that came via email from a friend. It's a bit unexpected. The city of Sialkot, Pakistan is one of the world's biggest exporters of bagpipes. From CNN:
Sialkot is located in north-east Pakistan, some 125 kilometers from the capital Lahore. Legend has it that the city started making bagpipes during the British Raj, when a Scottish businessman came to town and set up a factory.
More than a century later Sialkot is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of bagpipes, with more than a dozen bagpipe factories, both big and small.
The video shows a different side of Pakistan than we normally see.
It seems they also make vintage footballs and basketballs, new soccer balls, musical instruments, and and even replica US Civil War uniforms.
O/T I have to tell you I just finished Tibor Fischer's Voyage to the End of the Room. I feel I am still pinned to my chair drunk on endless addictive short stories, one after the I'm in a My dinner with Andre place, mesmerized. It's like watching a man juggle for hours, expecting him to flub, expecting a break in the pattern of his patter, expecting the next story won't be worth listening to, he'll start repeating himself and I can leave, satisfied I'd heard the best of his stories, his advice, his truthful (big and small) observations...
ReplyDeleteLike: "The trouble with crossroads...is that they don't look like crossroads."
Like: "Who were the famous locksmith of seventeenth-century Bohemia? Don't know? I don't know their names either, but I can tell you who they were. They were locksmiths who knew each other. The famous horse-breeders of eight-century Mongolia knew each other. There's always an inner circle. Always a velvet rope."
Like: "She was a pill-popper though. I have have no medical qualifications, but I doubt that loudly saying 'I'm' taking my medicine' in front of your colleagues makes it more effective."
And those were within 2 pages of each other. On and on and on he talks and talks and you can't not listen. A train-wreck of stories, sad, impossibly odd, insanely coincidental, but...just ... plausible. You keep reading, keep thinking there will be a Great Big Point to all of this and there is. Sorta of. But you don't care. It was a wild ride and you are a richer person for knowing this raconteur, this poser, this grabber of life by the balls man. Tibor, would you come to dinner?
(Thanks, Steve, for introducing me to his work.)\
And now I'll have a look at your post. Looks sweet. Good news in a Very bleak world.
Our library doesn't have Under the Frog and the person who lent me the book, long ago, said she wasn't as excited about his other works. Look forward to the short stories one day. Meanwhile I'b reading The Spinoza Problem. Will write about that before too long. Very thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteVoyage to the End of the Room is not a collection of short stories but a novel of short stories delivered non-stop by the characters. Sorry about the confusion.
ReplyDeleteMy city library doesn't have Under the Frog either....hmmm. WF?