I came to Boheminian Caverns — an historic and famous jazz club on Washington DC’s U-Street corridor — a bit late after class. Most people had been there since 6, drinking and stressing out about the election results. We were interviewed for Estonian television. When CNN announced Indiana, then Ohio, then Iowa, for Obama the entire crowd chanted and cheered. But with the announcement that virginia was turning blue, they went freakin nuts! It was only a few minutes after that CNN called the election for Obama.

There was free champagne, strangers kissing strangers, jumping, jubilation. A few minutes later, people poured out onto the street. Hesitant, at first, but jumping shouting and chanting all the while, they slowly came to dance in the intersection and block the streets. Big rig trucks blasted their horns and people all climbed up on top of them. Drivers stopped thier cars and got out and danced, hauling other people to stand on thier car rooves. A little boy carried a prizefighter belt with “Obama” written on it. Soon music was blasting, samba band were playing, and giant American flags waved. It was all races, all classes, all people hugging, slapping hands, and having a really good time.

America, you looked good last night. Really good.
 -Erica

Quote of the day -
“This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten,” Rama Yade, France’s black junior minister for human rights, told French radio. “America is rebecoming a New World.” (Read complete story)

These are powerful words — and not the ones you would normally hear at a concert where the singer raps “I make Jay Z look like Limp Bizkit.”

K’naan, a rapper born on the mean streets of Mogadishu who moved to America when he was young, played the All Roads Film Festival yesterday at National Geographic. The guy has recorded in Bob Marley’s house and spoke before the United Nations — and he has one whole song about anxiously waiting for a Western Union money transfer. This guy represents the world, and it was a treat to hear is music: melodic, heavily African influenced beats with challenging, clever lyrics.

I love hip-hop, but I am picky about it. I don’t like the cock-sure swagger stuff (well, unless its really done right), and K’naan is a rapper who isn’t afraid to sing. I’m buying his album today, and hoping next time he speaks before a political body, its the United States Congress. We need more voices of immigrants like him.

It is sort of a refreshing news in the ongoing period of market gloom and unpredictable future - A not so famous man from a small town in Missouri has won America’s Got Talent. I saw Neal E Boyd perform on AGT for the first time few weeks back, and I was pretty impressed by it. Boyd reminded me of another ”ordinary man” — Paul Potts — who had won Britain’s Got Talent in 2007. Though I do not have the knowledge to understand opera as a connoisseur, it didnt take too long to appreciate Potts powerful voice when he performed ”Nessun dorma”.

Both Boyd and Potts seem to have lot of things in common. The former is (was?) a insurance salesman, and the latter was a phone salesman. Potts, one of four children, earlier lacked self esteem to perform professionally and carried on his life doing sales. And physical health definitely was not on his side in his earlier days. His website says - ”In 2003, he (Potts) suffered a burst appendix. While undergoing treatment for this, doctors discovered a benign tumour on his adrenal gland. It was successfully removed but while he was recovering, he was knocked off his bike and broke his collarbone. “Of all the health problems I’d been through, breaking my collar bone was the most painful and it took months to recover,” says Paul. ” I got very, very low and for once, singing was the last thing on my mind.”

Boyd grew up in Sikeston, along with his brother, in a poor family that was held together by his mother. Boyd states on his website - ”I have been blessed with a loving mother named Esther Boyd. Growing up, I watched her sacrifice everything for her two sons, including the last slice of pizza most nights.

Boyd’s performance at AGT

Paul Potts at BGT in 2007

Though they came third, Nuttin But Stringz, the violin duo of brothers Damien and Tourie Escobar from New York was one of my favorites. Combining classic music with hip-hop they have the potential to please both generations.

We joined the crowd and decided to wait for 15 minutes and try our luck to get a glimpse of Obama. With every opening of the hotel doors the expectations went up. 15 minutes turned into 30 minutes, and a coffee and cake later we were still standing there in the rather chilly weather. Around 7:15 p.m. there was a flurry of car movements, and with sirens flashing a convoy left the hotel. A huge section of the crowd sighed and left. No one had a glimpse of Obama. But some of us lingered - there were still security personnel standing around. Then just past 7:30 p.m. Obama emerged into the alley adjacent to the hotel, waved to the crowd, boarded a black SUV and left.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama waves to the crowd as he leaves the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.(Photograph by Sebastian John)

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama waves to the crowd as he leaves the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.(Photograph by Sebastian John)

Security personnel stand near Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s vehicle at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.(Photograph by Sebastian John)

Also seen at the Mayflower Hotel

“Around before Jesus was born,” this AP story says of the trees, as do all the forest rangers — my friends mothers and fathers — who live out in the woods and love them like few modern people can.

Growing up in the redwoods of Northern California, my childhood memories consistent of the constant tension between hicks and hippies — the two largest demographics in Humboldt County.

I remember Julia Butterfly. I remember the grainy videos of protesters getting pepper spray smeared in their eyes at the local courthouse. I remember debating how mad my mother would be if I got arrested at the Headwaters protest.

I also remember the logging community — at their heart, people who love the woods just as much as the hippies, just in a different way — devastated. Their pensions were pillaged, the hillsides lay bare and clear-cut, and there were no more jobs. You couldn’t do like your daddy done. A Texan had bought the company, squeezed ever last drop out of it and our forests — and then left it in ruins. A lot of blame was placed on the environmental community. Some of it was justified, much of it was not.

Then in 1998, when I was starting my senior year in high school, David (“Gypsy”) Chain, 24, of Austin, Texas — who was an Earth First activist — died up in the woods when he was taunting loggers and a tree fell on him. That same year Julia Butterfly Hill was in the first year of her two year tree-sit in Luna, an old growth redwood.

I begged my mother to let me skip school for the Earth First rally at Julia’s 100th day of the tree sit. So wise, she consented, saying I would learn more there than I would class.

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Only about 90 people were there that day — it was before she became a celebrity and Neil Young wrote songs about her. We listened to speeches and sang songs about the earth mother and made the hike up to Luna to bring her supplies. I remember she said a lot of things, not all of them particularly cohesive, but very heartfelt. Later, some local boys came by in a couple of trucks and screamed at us. Hiking, drive-by hick incidents, music and community — a typical day in Humboldt.

I won’t pretend to know the details of the new company owners and the new regime, but here is the word from the local paper, The Eureka Reporter (also my husband’s former employer)

“To implement its business model for SCOPAC’s former 210,000 acres of timberlands, Jani said areas covered under existing timber harvest plans that are slated for clear cuts will be changed to select harvest methods or other practices consistent with MRC’s forestry philosophy. Each harvest site will be looked at individually to determine how it will be logged by the new company.

“We are not going to just cookie-cutter it,” Jani said.

Simultaneously, an old-growth policy will also be put in place to retain those specified trees when logging resumes.”

One, Ranbaxy exports everywhere, and though there may have been some problems, I can’t imagine they would be very dire. Two, Indian drug companies have literally been begging the FDA to come and set up an inspection office in India, as they want no doubt that their generic drug industry is up to the best standards and safe. So far, this has not occured. Three, Ranbaxy is acutally producing drugs for a lot of American companies now — as opposed to competing with them, as this Wall Street Journal article says.

FDA would like to get a branch in India, it says, just as they are still working on getting a branch set up in China. That office would be the first ever FDA office on foreign soil — a scary thought when you think of the international nature of our food and drug supply.

The milestone has long been gummed up by China’s foreign ministry, who would have to grant requisite visas and other permissions for the branch to get up and running. With dying babies and tainted milk grabbing international headlines, one would think this would be a high priority for China’s government. This article claims that the office will be set up in October, but it also says this hinges on China’s approval.

Hmmmm….

Meanwhile, Indian press is rife with conspiracy theories about the move. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has an ongoing probe into FDA’s drug safety failings, and the Indian press believes the ban is related:

“As the US Congress is probing the issue, FDA has to demonstrate that it is active and taking action against companies which have violated manufacturing standards. They have to show that they are protecting public health and safety of the Americans,” says Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) secretary general DG Shah. IPA represents the interests of most of the leading Indian pharma companies.

Considering how little information comes out of the FDA, its hard to tell what its really about. But to be clear, FDA has never said the drugs themselves are dangerous, only that the plant had problems.

Erica

Through a scheduling snafu we missed Islamic hip-hop band Native Deen play Washington D.C., their hometown, this weekend. To mitigate our sorrow, we offer you their video “I Am Not Afraid To Stand Alone,” which is all about blonde, single Muslim mothers and the pressures of fasting during Ramadan when you’re on the high school football team.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. I was in India working then as the photo editor for a wire agency. Though I was used to responding 24/7 to breaking news, even in the middle of the night, the idea of the people living in New Orleans, who were steeling themselves for a disaster certain to happen always intrigued me. How did they spend that tense night, waiting for the hurricane to hit? I watched on the wire and TV as Hurricane Katrina unleashed its power and destroyed the houses and wills of thousands of people.

Three years later I am closer to the hurricanes. Though I still continue my role as a photo editor, I am directly involved in covering them. Since August we have been chasing the 2008 Atlantic storms. Two of them didn’t do much damage. Gustav threatened to do a ”Katrina repeat” but this time the levees held and New Orleans survived. I cut short my weekend holiday and run back to office when it was sure that Gustav will do some damage to the Louisiana coast.

We were more prepared for Ike it pummeled the Texas coast. I am sure I will be chasing more hurricanes in the coming years. Will I get closer.. I dont know. But I am not against it.

No matter what you want to say about Snoop, he’s always been a smart business man in my opinion. Honestly, I’m still surprised it took so long for US artists to wake up to the huge potential of India.

No, you can’t sell $150 tickets to concerts there, but you can charge $100 for the best seats — as for the rest, its all about volume. Come on, there are a over a billion people and the majority are under 30!

I saw Roger Waters and Shaggy perform in India, and the audience was so excited, it was so fun to see. Considering the size of the country, very few interational acts make it over to India, but Indians have TVs just like the rest of the world, and they know their Shakira from Shah Rukh Khan.

When I lived in Kochi in 2002, an auto rickshaw driver had a shrine to Bryan Adams in his vehicle. His picture rested next to Shiva and Krishna and an arrangement of little plastic flowers. Walk into any bar, anywhere in the country, be it a small wooden shack in a paddy field or glitzy place in Delhi, and everyone — regardless of whether they can speak English — will be able to sing ‘Summer of 69’

Bryan Adams is a superstar in India and its all because he was essentially the first big act to show up when he was still pretty famous in the West. (Deep Purple came too, but their star was already in decline). Bryan Adams came for a single show in Bombay in 1994, back when the Indian economy was still opening up and Bangalore was still a sleepy city for retirees.

Now, he sells out every show he does in India. His CDs are in every shop that carries English music. More musicians have followed him, but he still holds a special place.

Now Snoop Dogg is also seeing the light and plans to tour.

“Snoop Dogg has a lot of fans in India and I love ‘em right back,” he said. “Get ready for me.”

I did a story a few years ago on the event management industry in India, and everyone I spoke with told me their biggest obstacle was government restrictions on large events and just plain politics. Here is what Bryan had do say about it in 2004:

“India is an experience at every turn. It’s quite special. But I don’t understand the politics in the country, because we wanted to perform in Kolkata and Delhi, and I was told that we couldn’t, which is quite sad. But maybe another time,” said the rock star.”