Run down memory lane

Posted on 19th February 2012 in The monuments of world

My love affair with running coincided with my parents’ divorce. I was 12 and Dad moved from the suburbs to New York City. He lived a few blocks from Central Park, one of the world’s most celebrated running venues. Every few weekends, it became my home away from home. Last Sunday, I unexpectedly found myself back in the city, once again in Central Park for a mind-clearing run.

Even though it was sunny and 32 degrees, I stepped out into what felt like air from the North Pole. I would happily take a Flagstaff subzero run over this anytime — after all, “it’s a dry cold.”

During the short jog up Fifth Avenue, I dodged tourists like I was playing Frogger, and entered the park’s southeast corner. I ran by the Conservatory Waters where, as a toddler, my parents took me to enjoy the model boats. I then passed the Zoo where gramps and I enjoyed watching the seals play. I passed the Great Lawn, where, in 1981, my best friends and I watched Simon and Garfunkel play one of the largest free concerts ever. The following year, right before high school graduation, we attended the massive No Nukes Rally, with Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Brown headlining.

Powering uphill, a bronze lion statue crouched on a rock above me. I wondered how many times this scenario played out with real lions on my solo runs on Mount Elden.

A few hundred strides north, “Cleopatra’s Needle,” a 3,500-year old Egyptian obelisk, towered over me. A gift from the Egyptian government in 1881 commemorating the opening of the Suez Canal, its hieroglyphics have severely weathered. Because of its eroded condition, Egypt’s chief archaeologist wants to repatriate the monument. As a kid, it was just another statue of absolutely no interest to me. My profession of archaeology and historic preservation was not on my radar screen, even though King Tut was pretty “funky.”

Passing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I leapt up the granite steps leading to the Central Park Reservoir. In 1976, the opening scene of the movie “Marathon Man” showed Dustin Hoffman running around the reservoir, frantically checking his stopwatch. This scene inspired me the following day to run laps around the 1.57-mile loop. I often challenged myself to break 10 minutes, which I did only years after living in Flagstaff’s thin air.

As I topped out on the loop’s north end, a stone’s throw from where I was born (Mt. Sinai Hospital), the city’s stunning skyline features the Chrysler, Empire State, and Panam buildings. Since I last ran the Reservoir, two twin towers were notably missing. After a week in the city, and homesick for Flagstaff, I likened these towering manmade monuments to Buffalo Park’s sweeping vista of volcanic monuments, Kendrick, the San Francisco Peaks, Mount Elden, Mormon Mountain and Anderson Mesa.

After a second chilly lap, I headed south toward the Columbus Avenue entrance. I passed the now boarded-up Tavern on the Green, once one of the most prestigious restaurants in the City, and the finish line of my six exhilarating New York City Marathons. Leaving the park, I wondered when I would return, and what changes were sure to take place.

Neil Weintraub is a native New Yorker who has lived in Flagstaff for 26 years. He is the director of Northern Arizona Trail Runners Association (www.natra.org) and the Flagstaff Summer Running Series. To learn more about the places and history mentioned above, visit natra.org.

Hope for Future of Libyan Tourism in Sprawling Greek Ruins

Posted on 15th February 2012 in The monuments of world
By MIKE ELKIN
Published: February 15, 2012

SHAHAT, LIBYA — More than 2,600 years after the Greeks founded the city of Cyrene in the mountains of northeastern Libya, the ancient gymnasium’s high stone walls still shield athletes from the winter winds as they train among the ruins.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi disavowed pre-1969 history as colonialist and un-Libyan. Now that he is gone, heritage-conscious Libyans have drafted a plan to preserve the ruins at Cyrene and promote them as a tourist attraction in a rural area where unemployment is high.

Abdallah al-Mortdy, a 52-year-old architect, grew up just a few kilometers from Cyrene, but did not study the ruins, now a Unesco World Heritage site, until he left Libya at age 19 to study architecture in Florence. In the years since returning home, however, he says he cannot let two or three days go by without taking a stroll through the remains of the vast colony blanketing the hills and valleys of the Green Mountains. Spanning 7 square kilometers, or 3 square miles, the excavated and restored ruins include a temple to Zeus, a sanctuary to Apollo, a Greek agora and a Roman forum, Byzantine baths, and more than 1,000 rock-cut tombs dotting the countryside.

In the 1940s, Italian archaeologists raised many of the walls and columns that had collapsed since an earthquake in the year 365, but about 75 percent of the city lies undisturbed, with bits and pieces poking out of the ground.

A modern-day town, Shahat, has risen on the edge of the ruins: For some of its 40,000 inhabitants the fall of Colonel Qaddafi meant a chance to get involved: Mr. al-Mortdy and 11 others founded the Cyrene Friends Society to protect, preserve and promote local heritage. With 120 members, the Society on Monday plans to present at a town meeting a “master plan” for the future of Cyrene, encompassing education, tourism, archaeology and cultural preservation.

Banned under Colonel Qaddafi, such organizations are likely to prove indispensable for the protection of Libyan history. Under the old regime, as with most institutions here, the Department of Antiquities was mired in constantly changing guidelines driven by corruption and whimsy. Today it struggles to solidify a policy for historic sites, reinventing itself during a political transition period where heritage is a low priority.

“Libya is like a rich man who wants to build a new house,” Mr. al-Mortdy, the architect, said during a recent tour of the ruins. “Tunisia and Egypt are renovating their old houses, but we are starting from scratch.”

“History,” he said, “whether it’s Greek, Roman or Islamic, it’s all part of the human experience.”

The Cyrene Friends Society is not undertaking the huge project alone. The Libyan antiquities authorities are working with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and U.S. and Italian academics to develop a plan for Cyrene and additional locations in Libya, including the four other Unesco World Heritage sites.

Unesco said it now had access to nearly $1 million that had been earmarked for cultural and educational projects in Libya, while Italy had pledged another $800,000 for training and conservation. They are drafting a plan to put those resources to work.

The United Nations and Blue Shield, a nonprofit group concerned with the protection of historical sites in conflict zones, sent several teams to Libya over the past few months to assess damage. Some thefts and looting did take place, Blue Shield reported, especially at the Bani Walid museum southeast of Tripoli, but not on the scale of what happened in Baghdad after the U.S .invasion in 2003 or in Cairo during the Arab Spring revolution last year.

During the Libyan upheaval as law enforcement vanished, volunteers mobilized to safeguard the Cyrene monuments and museum from looters. Elsewhere in Libya, workers from the Department of Antiquities and local volunteers guarded sites, welded shut the doors to museums, and hid artifacts. Rebels who had come to Tripoli from Misrata helped to protect the National Museum. The only known damage was to the collection of Colonel Qaddafi’s cars on display. At Leptis Magna, a majestic Roman city 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, east of Tripoli, the chief archaeologist invited shepherds to graze on the site as a measure of added security, a Blue Shield report said.

“Considering the large-scale conflict, our sites are relatively safe,” the head of the Libyan Department of Antiquities, Dr. Saleh Agab, said during a recent interview. “We were worried that something like what happened in Cairo would take place, but the people took the proper steps. Some things were taken, and we’re now working with Interpol and the international community to trace them.”

The worst violation, Dr. Agab said, was the theft of the so-called Benghazi Treasure, a cache that included nearly 7,300 gold, silver and bronze coins, 306 pieces of jewelry and 43 bronze figurines excavated during the first half of the 20th century in Cyrene and neighboring Greco-Roman cities and eventually locked in a vault at the National Commercial Bank of Benghazi. Thieves took advantage of the revolutionary chaos to break into the safe and make off with around 90 percent of the horde, according to Mohammed el-Shelmany, head of the Antiquities Department in Benghazi.

While the Cyrene Friends Society finalizes its master plan, the Department of Antiquities in Shahat and Oberlin College in Ohio — with grants from the U.S. State Department — are conducting an inventory of Cyrene’s artifacts, and preparing to map the site while also assessing risks to other sites in the region. Libyan archaeologists will also receive training in modern techniques for documenting antiquities.

“A database of what we already have is our mission right now,” said Nasser Abduljalil, who took over in April as head of antiquities in Shahat. “It’s what should have been done 40 years ago.”

Despite precautions, thefts have occurred, including that of two sections of a large mosaic.

Mr. Abduljalil was one of the volunteers trying to guard Cyrene. One day he surprised eight looters armed with knives who had found a headless statue. They started to beat him, but he managed to slip free, although the group made off with the statue.

“Cyrene is part of me,” he said during a recent interview. “I was born here, I was raised here, I studied here, and I would do anything for it. If something happens to the antiquities, it’s like something happening to my children.”

But not all of the locals seem to feel the same. Even more destructive than looting, according to Dr. Susan Kane, professor of classical archaeology at Oberlin, is the urban encroachment on the site. People are claiming land and building houses in and around the archaeological area because there is no authority to stop them, Dr. Kane, director of the U.S. mission at Cyrene, said late last month.

Showing a visitor around the site earlier this month, Salem Jedallah, 40, head of the volunteer security force and a former rebel commander, put down his AK-47 and led the way to a partially excavated Greek theater. Talking nonstop in Arabic, Mr. Jedallah was proud to show off what he called “the Athens of Africa.” Once a plan for Cyrene was announced, he said, the people of Shahat would make it happen.

“I caught a guy digging some holes yesterday,” Mr. Jedallah said. “I could have arrested him, but he wouldn’t have learned anything. So I told him, ‘You didn’t fight on the front, you didn’t protest against Qaddafi, and now you’re looting? Explain yourself.’ Later he came to my house and apologized. He won’t be digging any more holes.”

Shahnaz Taplin-Chinoy: The Ecstasy and Agony of India — From the Political to the Tribal

Posted on 15th February 2012 in The monuments of world

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Ancient treasures to the rescue of Greece's ruined economy?

Posted on 15th February 2012 in The monuments of world

By Margarita Pournara

Greece’s Culture and Tourism Ministry last month said it would slash the cost of permits for filming and photographic shoots at more than 100 of the country’s ancient monuments, including the world-famous Parthenon in Athens.

Some foreign reports reacted to the news by saying the Greek government was putting the Parthenon under the hammer. Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos tweeted that speculation that the sites would be “rented out” was totally unfounded.

Fees for utilizing ancient monuments for commercial purposes were first introduced in 2005, but the government has decided to lower the prices. The announcement has brought some tricky questions, and some taboo subjects, into the spotlight: How can Greece promote its cultural sites in a smart way without disrespecting its historical legacy and, at the same time, make money from it? What should be the role of the Central Archaeological Council (KAS), the highest advisory body on all matters pertaining to the protection of ancient monuments? Can the revenue be used to aid the debt-ridden economy? Who should set the fees? And what should the fees be? Many people, for example, questioned whether 6,000 euros for a commercial shoot on the Acropolis is the right amount.

In “Rush Hour 3,” actor Jackie Chan is seen performing a daredevil stunt on the Eiffel Tower. Harvey Keitel was filmed at Rome’s Colosseum for the needs of a whiskey commercial. Could a similar TV spot be shot at one of Greece’s world-famous monuments, like the Theater of Epidaurus? When French film director Jean-Luc Godard asked the Greek authorities’ permission to shoot at the ancient theater, KAS officials demanded that they first take a look at the script of “Film Socialisme.” Talks came to an impasse after that.

During the 1960s, Greece became popular among foreign film crews thanks to its natural beauty, monuments and low prices. Some steps have been made since then in an effort to lure foreign productions. One of the most significant came in 2007 with the foundation of the Hellenic Film Commission. It was a pilot project aimed at facilitating foreigners who wished to hold photo and video sessions at the country’s museums, monuments and other sites.

In an interview with Kathimerini, former HFC director Markos Holevas said that the film commission has done some good work but needs more funds and staff. “More important, we need a fast-track treatment so that interested parties do not have to wait for months for a response from KAS officials,” he said. His successor, Grigoris Karantinakis, says one of the problems is that the institution is part of the Greek Film Center, therefore any filming request has to go through the various offices of the center.

People from the film and advertising industry say the situation can be quite chaotic for applicants. The criteria for granting a permission are quite fuzzy and often subjected to political influence. The makeup of KAS, they say, can also affect decision-making.

KAS recently gave Vodafone permission to shoot a commercial at the Stoa of Attalos in the Ancient Agora, but went on to turn down a request by BMW to photograph its new models next to the temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounio. In the past, the archaeologists gave the Andreas Papandreou Foundation, a nongovernment entity, the green light to use the same site for a speech by then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and a concert. No fee was requested. In 1998, American fashion designer Calvin Klein was denied permission to use the Herod Atticus Theater. Meanwhile, pundits disagree on things like whether pop singers should be allowed to hold concerts at the site or if spectators should be allowed to visit the theater in high heels. A few years ago maintenance crews found and removed no less than 17 kilos of chewing gum which had accumulated under the marble seats.

More controversial decisions followed. Greek-Canadian actress and scriptwriter Nia Vardalos got permission to use the Parthenon as a backdrop for her 2009 romantic comedy “My Life in Ruins” — a film which admittedly did not cast Greece in the most favorable of light. However KAS said no to a photo shoot at Crete’s Knossos Palace for the participants of “America’s Next Top Model.”

“We had to build ancient [ruins] out of styrofoam,” said Angelo Venetis, managing director of Boo Productions, who was in charge of the project.

“When the French, who have a very strict cultural policy on issues of historical legacy, invite Woody Allen to make a movie in Paris we still fail to tackle the simplest requests, then it’s only natural that the foreigners will turn their backs on us,” said Kyriakos Angelakos, a movie director. “Why should they come here and wait forever for a response from KAS, when they can find immediate service and better prices in countries such as Malta, the Czech Republic or Portugal?”

In European countries that make their sacred sites available to foreign film crews, advertising firms and publishing houses, local government has a positive role to play. Meanwhile, the City of Athens charges 1,800 euros per square meter for a single shoot. “You often pay this money and get a big space without any security,” Angelakos said. The Athens Film Office, which was established by the municipality to address with these problems, is no match for its foreign counterparts.

George Tsokopoulos of production company Avion Films knows firsthand what foreign crews have to put up with in Greece. “We are discouraging foreign clients from using our monuments to make movies or TV spots,” he said, giving the example of a big air carrier that made a commercial featuring a children’s choir at major monuments around the world. The production company asked permission to film at Cape Sounio. After a long delay, KAS officials said the site would be made available for an astronomical 300,000 euros. Following pressure from the production company, and a meeting with the then culture minister, the price tag dropped at 10,000 euros, he said.

Producer Yiannis Koutsomitis points out another issue that needs to be addressed. “Everyone respects the work of archaeologists, but it is unacceptable that KAS has a say on the artistic and aesthetic value of a script,” he said, recalling a frustrated Francis Ford Coppola who had to spit blood to get permission to shoot a scene in front of the Acropolis. That does not mean, he says, that all iconic monuments should be surrendered to commerce. “Greece has many archaeological sites and needs to have a clear list of what can be used, by who, and for what purpose,” he said.

Architecture historian Charalambos Bouras agrees with the idea. “[Such lists] are used around the world and need to be introduced here as well. To date, KAS has held all the responsibility, including pricing. Now things have started to fall into place,” he said.

Senior ministry archaeologist Maria Vlazaki says that on the one hand the state is under pressure to be more flexible with filming rights and, on the other, foreigners say we are “renting out” our monuments. “It’s a delicate issue that affects the image of the country abroad and much more,” she said.

Madonna, Clint and a Surreal Super Bowl Halftime

Posted on 7th February 2012 in The monuments of world

I went into last night’s Madonna Super Bowl halftime show expecting to hate it: yet another performer whose appeal can charitably be described as “nostalgic” (see The Rolling Stones, The Who, etc.) blasting out a set of oldies while trying to hit that big squishy target of something-for-everyone. (“Dad, what’s Lady Gaga’s mom doing at the Super Bowl?”) I ended up—well, not loving it, maybe, but admiring it, respecting Madge’s continued ability to strike a pose and put on a show and learning a thing or two about Fake Roman-Egyptian History in the process.

A lot of the immediate complaints about the performance were that Madonna lip-synched her show. This didn’t bother me, because Madonna has never really been a singer; she’s a performer. At the height of her powers she was more about her ability to move, posture and provoke than to sing, and that’s an advantage in a way, because it means she can not-sing just as well in her 50s as she could in her 20s. What Madonna did, and does, instead is what a lot of great pop performers do: erect and occupy massive monuments to herself. And she put on a glittering one, a gold-encrusted, Egyptofabulous beefcake fantasia of antique decadence and lighting special effects, wearing an age-appropriate-ish pharaoh-valkyrie miniskirt and keeping up with a bevy of dancers. (That, my friends, is why you do yoga.)

Part of gracefully accepting the role of elder pop stateswoman is being able to delegate, and Madonna shared the spotlight (here’s the “something for everyone” part) with a crew of singers who might have carried off a halftime show on their own: Cee-Lo Green in a shimmery black caftan, an antic Nicky Minaj, and M.I.A., who apparently briefly flipped off the camera in a gesture so shocking that I had no idea she even did it until NBC issued an apology for it. (She also performed a snippet of “Party Rock Anthem” with LMFAO, the only part of the entire show that the Tuned In Jrs. looked up from the iPad to pay attention to.) The set list—a medley of hits, plus obligatory new song “Give Me All Your Luvin’”—wasn’t surprising, and the closing image (“World Peace” spelled out in lights on the field) was like a parody of a lame pop message. But it all could have been so much worse. Have we forgotten the Black-Eyed Peas already?

The other big event at halftime was Clint Eastwood‘s commercial for Chrysler, the most stark, arresting Super Bowl ad since, well, Eminem’s ad for Chrysler a year ago. (Claire Suddath, Glibert Cruz and I tag-teamed the Super Bowl ads this year, and you can see the results here; I got the first quarter, arguably the most boring stretch of ads of the night.) Beginning with Clint rasping at us in a dark alley, as if he’s about to ask us if we feel lucky, punk, it lays out an unpretty but grittily optimistic picture of an America at “halftime,” talking itself back up after a rough few years and making comeback plans—much like, the ad suggests, the automaker, which was on the verge of failing just a few years ago.

No joke, for the first fifteen seconds or so, I actually thought that someone had bought air time for an election ad in the Super Bowl: it had all the hallmarks, from the shot of a front porch in early morning light to the “[Time of day] in America” construction to the shots of protest signs and talking heads on TV. And even given that it was actually a car commercial, it was nonetheless one of the most political feeling apolitical ads I’ve ever seen—even if it didn’t take a position, it prodded directly at the themes of hard times and recovery that candidates will most likely be hitting come fall. What complicated things were the different political valences of the spot: on the one hand, Eastwood is a well-know Hollywood Republican, and on the other, the ad was a pretty blatant argument for the value of the bailout of American automakers by the Obama administration. (A move that Mitt Romney, for one, has said we should never have made, in a 2008 New York Times op-ed titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”)

Chrysler, I’m sure, made the ad purely in its own interests, which just happen to overlap with the politics of 2012. But I’m guessing that President Obama would not mind if this ad campaign was on the air in, say, Michigan in October.

How do you vote on this year’s halftime show? Clint? Madge? Or none of the above? And who/what would you like to see on stage next year?

BootsnAll: 9 European Attractions To Miss (PHOTOS)

Posted on 4th February 2012 in The monuments of world

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Levi Novey: Announcing The Corps Network 2012 Corpsmembers of the Year

Posted on 2nd February 2012 in The monuments of world

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Iraq to replace martial monuments with peace art

Posted on 26th January 2012 in The monuments of world

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Nearly six years after Iraqis and U.S. soldiers toppled grandiose monuments erected by Saddam Hussein, Iraq plans to put up 100 new art works it hopes will stand as affirmations of a new era of peace.

Before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, all statues and monuments in public squares made reference to Saddam’s Baath party or told a story about its military victories against Iraq’s numerous enemies.

Along with the giant Saddam statue that U.S. troops pulled down from Baghdad’s al-Firdous square before television cameras in April 2003, many other images of the former president, often in military uniform, dotted the city.

Outside an Agriculture Ministry office, a mural depicted Saddam tilling the fields with a spade. At the Justice Ministry, he appeared in a gown, holding scales of justice.

Most of the murals have since been painted over and the statues destroyed by Iraqis in the chaos that followed the invasion. Sometimes, statues were pillaged for their metal.

Others still stand. Among them is a bronze statue of Iraqi soldiers standing on a tank and holding an Iraqi flag to symbolise victory over Iran during their bloody 1980-88 war.

In the heavily fortified Green Zone diplomatic compound, two pairs of giant arms emerge from the ground, hundreds of metres away from each other, holding crossed swords to form an arch across a parades ground. They were modelled on Saddam’s hands and cast using 160 tonnes of bronze.

Iraq wants to replace such monuments with symbols of peace.

Mohammed Tahir al-Timimi, head of the government’s Statues and Murals Committee, told Reuters there were plans to replace the swords with a statue of a rifle with a twisted barrel.

“It is an announcement that we are abandoning violence and are unwilling to use the weapon to harm the new Iraq.”

“PLEASURE AND CALM”

It is still early days, and the committee’s plans for erecting new statues are not far advanced. Timimi said he had asked Iraqi artists the world over to submit ideas.

What to depict is up to the artists.

“We did not determine the subject matter of the art at all in order not to be accused of political influence,” Timimi said. “We want beautiful statues that instil pleasure and calm.”

Artists hailed the plan as symbolising their hopes.

“We have a lot of ideas, like statues of intellectuals or writers, because Baghdad is the cradle of civilisation,” said Murtadha Hedad, a sculptor and professor at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts.

Another college professor, who fashions abstract ceramic art, was worried that the violence that has plagued Iraq since Saddam’s downfall would make artists afraid to participate.

He asked not to be named, as militants have threatened him.

“We are all dreaming of making Baghdad like Paris, but … the poor security is sapping artists’ energy,” he said.

One of his most recent pieces, which he hesitates to promote as it hardly celebrates Iraq’s happy future, depicts three people shackled to the wall in the chancel of a ruined temple.

It represents Iraq still chained by violence and its occupation by U.S. forces, he said.

Meanwhile, the old Saddam monuments may end up in a new museum to be erected near the Martyr Statue, a monument built in the 1980s to glorify Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq war.

“Iraq is … in transition from a dictatorial system to a democracy,” Timimi said. “A supporting pillar is to shift art away from a single person to depict all aspects of Iraq.”

Copyright © 2012 Reuters

Gerrans wins Tour Down Under

Posted on 22nd January 2012 in The monuments of world

AAP

GreenEDGE director Matt White has set ambitious goals this year for Tour Down Under champion Simon Gerrans, saying he should aim for a top-10 world ranking.

White, like Gerrans, is also confident the 31-year-old can achieve arguably the highlight of his outstanding career by winning an Ardennes classic.

The hilly course for the world road championships means that is another big race on Gerrans’ radar.

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Gerrans won his second Santos Tour title on Sunday, following his 2006 success, finishing stage six safely in the main group.

His wife Rahna and father Allan flew across from Melbourne on Sunday morning to watch the last stage.

German sprint ace Andre Greipel scored his 11th stage win on Sunday, putting him one behind Robbie McEwen for the Tour record.

“The next big goal for Gerro is the Ardennes and if he can nail one of those three and then something again in summer, then he’ll be in the top 10,” White said.

“He’s more than ready and I think we have a solid team around him.”

Gerrans was third at the Amstel Gold race last year, one of the three Ardennes classics that are among road cycling’s “monuments”.

He will also aim for Liege-Bastogne-Liege, but White thinks Fleche Wallonne does not suit him quite as much.

While Gerrans wants to ride at the Olympics, his better chance of a big win later in the year might be the world road race championship in The Netherlands.

“I think we’ll be playing the Cadel (Evans), Gerro cards in that world championship, it suits them,” said White, who is also a national selector.

Gerrans has enjoyed a dream start to the year, nailing the Tour a fortnight after winning his first national senior road title.

His twin successes also meant a perfect WorldTour debut for GreenEDGE, Australia’s first top-level professional cycling team.

“The first victory for a new team is often the hardest one to get … so to get that straight up is a huge bonus,” Gerrans said.

“We’ve just made our presence known right from the beginning, and that we’re here and we’re ready.”

The Tour win was also the perfect reply to Sky-Procycling director Sean Yates, who said in the media on Sunday that he felt some GreenEDGE riders were not quite ready for the Tour.

“It’s interesting that Yatesy made comments like that, because he usually doesn’t make negative comments about anyone,” White said.

“At the end of the day, we won the bike race and he’s got the biggest budget in world cycling, so … .”

Gerrans finished tied with Alejandro Valverde, the second time in race history that a countback has decided the overall win, after the Spaniard beat Gerrans by seconds to win an epic fifth stage.

Valverde said before the start of stage six there was little chance he could gain a time bonus during the 90km Adelaide street race to snatch the title from Gerrans.

The Spaniard was happy with his first race after a two-year doping ban.

After eight centuries of isolated slumber, Cambodia's “second Angkor” stirs to life

Posted on 9th January 2012 in The monuments of world

BANTEAY CHHMAR (AP).- It’s still entwined in mystery and jungle vines, but one of Cambodia’s grandest monuments is slowly awakening after eight centuries of isolated slumber, having attracted a crack archaeological team and a trickle of tourists.

“It takes awhile to unfold this temple — and everywhere there are enticements,” says John Sanday, the team leader, as he navigates through tangled undergrowth, past dramatic towers and bas-reliefs and into dark chambers of the haunting monastic complex of Banteay Chhmar.

What drove Jayavarman VII, regarded as the greatest king of the Angkorian Empire, to erect this vast Buddhist temple about 105 miles (170 kilometers) from his capital in Angkor and in one of the most desolate and driest places in Cambodia remains one of its many unsolved riddles.

At its height in the 12th century, the empire extended over much of Southeast Asia, its rulers engaging in a building frenzy which produced some of the world’s greatest religious monuments.

Called the “second Angkor Wat,” Banteay Chhmar approaches it in size, is more frozen in time than the manicured and made-over superstar, and has so far been spared the blights of mass tourism of recent years at Angkor.

In 2011, an average of 7,000 tourists a day visited Angkor, one of Asia’s top tourist draws located near the booming northwestern city of Siem Reap. Banteay Chhmar saw an average of two a day, with no tour buses and bullhorn-wielding guides to disturb the temple’s tranquility or traditional life in the surrounding village.

Abandoned for centuries, then cut off from the world by the murderous Khmer Rouge and a civil war, Banteay Chhmar didn’t welcome visitors until 2007, when the last mines were cleared and the looting that plagued the defenseless temple in the 1990s was largely halted.

A year later, the California-based Global Heritage Fund began work at the site under the overall control of the country’s Ministry of Culture and now spends about $200,000 a year on the project.

Sanday, a veteran British conservation architect, assembled a team of 60 experts and workers, some of whom were with him on an earlier restoration of the Preah Khan temple at Angkor. Others were recruited from the surrounding community and although barely literate, Sanday says they’re among the best he’s worked with in Asia.

Challenging them are hundreds of thousands of stone blocks from collapsed shrines and galleries scattered helter-skelter within the 4.6-square-mile (12-square-kilometer) archaeological site. Towers teeter, massive tree roots burrow into walls, vegetation chokes a wide moat girding the temple.

Three-quarters of the bas reliefs — rarely found at other Angkorian temples — have fallen or been looted, the most notable being eight panels depicting Avalokiteshvara, an enlightened being embodying Buddhist compassion.

Thieves sheared off four panels with jackhammers, smuggling them into nearby Thailand where two are widely believed to be decorating the garden of a Thai politician. A pair has been recovered and the others are still at the temple, although only two still stand.

“We’ve been struggling away with this gallery for nearly two years now,” says Sanday at another bas-relief, one depicting a figure believed to be Jayavarman VII leading his troops into battle. In vivid detail, the ancient sandstone wall springs to life with charging war elephants, soldiers plunging spears into their enemies and crocodiles gobbling up the dead.

Nature and time have proved the culprits: the vaulting protecting the 98-foot (30-meter-long) relief collapsed, exposing the wall to monsoon torrents, which seeped downwards to wash away the masonry and loosen the foundations. Pressure from the weight above toppled sections of the wall or forced it to lean.

“He’s going to have to come down,” says the 68-year-old architect of the king’s image. A section of the wall is angled dangerously outward, he explains, so it must be dismantled, the foundations reinforced and the sandstone blocks meticulously numbered, charted, then set back into place.

Nearby, two young Cambodian computer whizzes are pioneering a shortcut to the reassembly process through three-dimensional imaging. The work-in-progress is one of the temple’s 34 towers recently damaged in a severe storm.

Some 700 stone blocks from the tower have been removed or collected from where they fell and each one will be videographed from every angle. Since like a human fingerprint, no stone is exactly alike, still-to-be-finalized software should be able to fit all the blocks into their original alignment after they are repaired.

“We hope that with one push of the button all the stones will jump into place to solve what we are calling ‘John’s puzzle,’” says Sanday.

When an original block has gone missing or is beyond repair, either an original stone from elsewhere on the site is used or, as a last resort, a new stone will be inserted.

“My philosophy is to preserve and present the monuments as I found them for future generations without falsifying their history. So often people tend to guess what was there,” he says.

The Global Heritage Fund, he says, is also intent on involving the community. “We can’t protect Banteay Chhmar. They have to be the protectors. So they must gain some revenue from the temple,” Sanday says.

The Community Based Tourism group, which the fund supports, is training locals to become guides and devising ways to derive more income from tourism, part of which is funneled into betterment of the entire village.

Sanday and local organizers, however, hope Banteay Chhmar’s remote location will spare it from a mass tourist influx. Thus he is not keen to have it listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, something the Cambodian government is pushing for.

“I often come here in the late afternoons, when the birds come alive and a breeze stirs,” Sanday says as fading sun rays, filtered through the green canopy, dapple the gray, weathered stones. “It’s peaceful and quiet here, like it used to be at Angkor. This is a real site.”

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.