FIVE FEET AWAY FROM AN 800-POUND GORILLA
©2019 Jack Wheeler
You know the adage about the “800-pound gorilla” going wherever he wants to – such as five feet from you in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda. It is one of the world’s great thrills to be this close to these giants and feel at ease doing so. They are “habituated” to small groups of people whom they ignore. You of course are very quiet and do nothing to alarm them, just observing the little ones playing, mothers nursing, young ones climbing trees, huge male silverbacks watching over their families.
Gorillas are vegetarians, males eating up to 75 pounds of vegetation a day – thus they spend most of their waking hours chewing! The biggest silverbacks never get anywhere near 800 pounds by the way – 450 to 500 pounds at most (like the fellow in the photo). Big enough, believe me.
Rwanda is one of the best-run countries in all Africa. President Paul Kagame deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for healing his nation after the genocidal horrors of the 1990s. That’s far in the past now in this beautiful, peaceful land. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #93 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
PRESIDENT TRUMP GIVES VOTERS JUST WHAT THEY ASKED FOR
Donald Trump is once again President – and his second administration promises to be more Trumpian than ever.
Sworn in just after noon yesterday (1/20) – both the inauguration ceremony and his stick-swinging inauguration speech shielded from the cold inside the Capitol Building – he is essentially picking up where he left off. This time, however, Trump & Co have far more experience of how to navigate Washington’s corridors of power. They’re already showing it.
The past few weeks have seen Trump’s transition team prove its deftness in everything from foreign policy – that Gaza ceasefire – to a domestic agenda rife with executive orders promising to dismantle the vast DEI and identity politics network that former president Joe Biden and the Democrats had assembled with such alacrity.
And as Trump’s second inauguration speech made clear, he is only just getting started.
DONALD TRUMP WILL BE NO FRIEND OF THE KREMLIN
Vladimir Putin’s plan to outlast Joe Biden and an exhausted West has run into an unpleasant surprise – Donald Trump is surrounding himself with pro-Ukrainian hardliners.
Trump appears more willing than Biden ever was to throttle the Russian economy, if that is what it takes to force the Kremlin to accept peace on “America First” terms.
A new mood of relief – not yet optimism – is taking hold among Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers in Kyiv. Europe’s diplomats are starting to wonder whether a Trump 2.0 presidency might not be such a bad outcome after all, at least when it comes to dealing with Russia.
“It is now absolutely clear that Trump is not going to throw Ukraine under a bus,” said Prof Alan Riley, a regional expert at the Atlantic Council.
Trump’s advisers have persuaded him, by the odd “Socratic method” that shapes policy at Mar-a-Lago, that a shabby American retreat from Ukraine would be orders of magnitude worse than Biden’s humiliation in Afghanistan, and also that the first line of defense against China lies in the Donbas.
THE ISLAND OF LANCELOT
Lanzarote, Canary Islands. How, you may ask, did the most famous knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, Sir Lancelot du Lac, end up in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco? Well, he didn’t. It was an Italian explorer named after him, Lancelotto Malocello, who became the first European to reach this island in 1336, where he lived for 20 years.
Lancelotto called himself Lanzarote (lan-zah-roh-tay), and map-makers used it. The island along with the rest of the Canaries was colonized by Spain throughout the 1400s, and prospered with its volcanic soil. Until, that is, massive volcanic eruptions in the 1730s with over 30 major new volcanoes and over 100 small cinder cones flooded hundreds of square kilometers with lava.
The island became a mostly useless wasteland until a Lazarotean artistic genius named Cesar Manrique (1919-1992) transformed the lava fields into a surrealistic wonderland. The photo above is one of his many creations, the home Cesar designed and built on a lava cliff for actor Omar Sharif.
Today, visitors flock to Lanzarote to marvel at Manrique’s masterpieces scattered over the island, gape at the volcanic moonscape of Timanfaya, and to wine, dine, and luxuriate at gorgeous beach resorts. Come to the Island of Lancelot for an experience like nowhere else, one you’ll never forget. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #284 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
DONALD TRUMP INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS 47TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The golden age of America begins right now.
From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation. And we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.
During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first. Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.
And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud and prosperous and free.
America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before. I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success. A tide of change is sweeping the country. Sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.
But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face. While they are plentiful, they will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing and the United States of America.
NO FEAR OF THE EVIL EYE: PART I – ENVY AND SHRUNKEN HEADS
©Jack Wheeler
This is a human shrunken head. It was given to me by the man who made it, the curaka or chief of a clan of Jivaro headhunters in the Amazon. His name was Tangamashi.
The Jivaro were the first tribe I stayed with. I was 16 years old, soon to be a freshman student at UCLA as an anthropology major. There are many tribes around the world who are “headhunters” from the Amazon to Africa to New Guinea and elsewhere, but they all collect the skull of an enemy they kill. Only one tribe on earth shrinks an enemy’s head – actually the head skin – and that was the Jivaro.
They live in the Amazon jungles of southern Ecuador and northern Peru. Shrunken heads were fascinating to a 16 year-old boy, but more so to me was the Jivaro determination to be unconquered and free.
So I arrived in Jivaro territory in the summer of 1960 – a young teenager from Glendale, California who had never been anywhere in the world except once on a trip to Europe with his parents. I was by myself, and how I talked my mom and dad into letting me do this is another story. In any regard, Tangamashi and I bonded, and by the end of the summer he adopted me into his people.
THE LOST CITY OF DJADO
In the remotest center of the Sahara Desert lies an unknown, unexcavated mysterious lost city known as Djado. No one knows who built it or when. Lying on the ancient Roman trade route from the Saharan salt mines of Fachi and Bilma to the Mediterranean, the Djado oasis flourished for a thousand years (the 1st Millennium AD), but has been forgotten and abandoned for many centuries.
The only people who live near Djado in the vast desert wasteland where Algeria, Libya, Chad, and Niger come together, are the wandering Toubu nomads with no permanent settlements. It is an indescribable experience to explore such a wondrous lost city right out of an Indiana Jones movie that you have all to yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #17, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
GEN Z UPSET ABOUT TIKTOK BAN FOR 4 3 SECONDS WHICH IS THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF TIME THEY CAN FOCUS ON SOMETHING THANKS TO TIKTOK
U.S. — After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on the Chinese social media platform TikTok, Gen Z managed to stay upset about the ban for a full 4.3 seconds, which is the maximum amount of time they can focus on anything thanks to TikTok. The nation braced for a groundswell of outrage from millions of TikTok users, but the outrage died out almost as soon as it began.
"I'm furious. I'm outraged about this. I'm — hey look! Nintendo Switch 2 is coming out!" said Mavryyck Dixon, a former Gen Z TikTok user. "I can't believe they would — yoooooooooo look at this Instagram baddie! This violates my freedom of — BRO these cargo jeans are bussin, no cap. What were we talking about again? Oh well."
Dixon then released some nervous energy by making weird noises and doing a dance he made up for the hot new Chinese app Red Book."Yeah, it seems like Gen Z has already moved on to the next thing," said millennial social media expert Ryan Tharknerb. "I asked 10 kids about it this morning, and they couldn't even remember what TikTok was. Frankly, I'm starting to forget myself. Ohhhh CRAP! Elon just caught another rocket booster out of the air! Sweeeet!"
At publishing time, Gen Z had found themselves outraged by something else, but no one can remember what it was.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/17/25
Time to ROCK AND ROLL, boys and girls. Time for the most fun HFR ever. The countdown to the demise of America’s Bad Biden Dream is down to hours now -- about 64 or so if you’re reading this Friday evening Jan17.This is woww pic.twitter.com/sNTJQEgLiP
— The King (@xxxxTheKing) January 16, 2025
We’ll start the festivities in Schadenfreude City. We can have a chuckle over the Daily Mail’s gossip this morning (1/17): What IS Going On With The Obamas’ Marriage? But then again, why should we care? They’re Old News history.
Still, it is fun to enjoy how bitter the losers are like Michelle and Pelosi Galore that they won’t attend T47’s Inauguration.
So here’s the real belly laugh: Brain-dead-to reality James Clyburn (D-SC) proclaiming on MSNBC yesterday (1/16): Joe Biden Will Go Down In History as “One of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had.”
That’s right up there with his Dem colleague Hank Johnson (D-GA) worried that overpopulation would cause the island of Guam to “tip over and capsize.”
THE ISLANDS OF SERENITY
Mulafassur waterfall below the village of Gasadalur is only one example of the serenity of the Faroe Islands. They’re a self-governing Danish possession in the North Atlantic halfway between Norway and Iceland. You won’t find a place of more captivating serene and peaceful charm.
Warmed by the Gulf Stream, in the summer it’s so strewn with wildflowers the roads are known as “buttercup highways.” At every turn along them you’re stunned by the incredible scenery. The capital of Torshavn is so laid back the Prime Minister’s Office – the Løgmansskristovan – is a wood cabin with a green grass sod roof. Great beer from the Faroes’ two breweries is always flowing in the pubs, where the Faroese islanders welcome you like an old friend.
You can easily fly here from Edinburgh, London, Copenhagen, or Reykjavik, Iceland . A few days here will do wonders for your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #18 photo ©Jack Wheeler)