We were delighted this morning to receive another excellent report from our Eastern correspondent D. Friendly. He takes stock of the work ethic and moral caliber of our Central Asian allies the Turks -- and finds both lacking. It’s a wonderfully written essay—but there was one sentence (or, rather, fragment of a sentence) that sent a shiver up our collective spine. To whit:

“They [the Turks] may have donned the attire of Old Europe -- in this case jeans, sport coats with vests, and duck-billed caps -- but I wear a sarong around the house and that hardly qualifies me for an Indonesian passport.”  [our italics]

It’s going to take several gallons worth of whiskey sours to wash that image out of our head.

Other Shpotzir observations:

*          We are pleased to see that West Coast correspondent G. Ehrlich is as prolific as ever. He has several new entries at his own site which are worth reading. And he still has that wonderful photo of Brother Newman that we mentioned before. Excellent.

*          We’re dismayed that there has been so little activity at Brother Graf’s Groupshow website. Most of the photos posted there are from the summer. That means there are at least three months worth of wonderful photographs piling up and waiting to be displayed. We urge their immediate release.

*          We’re irritated that we haven’t finished the Shpotzir newsletter archive—or indeed posted any of those historic issues. We make no excuses—our failure to reconstruct that fruitful period of Shpotzir literature is unforgivable. We hope to rectify this in a week or two.