Grigovia preserves past

Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, and Hunter S. Thompson are but a few of the authors who slept at the Faraway Home for Travelers in downtown Grig. For the last 150 years, the three-story structure on the north shore of the Yalung River has sat wedged between an abandoned brick factory and a defunct dirigible manufacturer. Growing interest and trade in the Glorious Republic of Grigovia's vast reserves of lithium and other rare-earth minerals has allowed this landlocked Central Asian nation to skirt the worst of the ongoing global recession and to sink large sums of money into improving the lot of its citizens. As part of a neighborhood revitalization project that has included purchasing the Statue of Liberty from a tyrannical U.S. federal government, Grig's city planners have decided to expand the footprint of the Faraway House for Travelers and turn it into a national monument. The first and second floors of the adjacent brick factory to its west will become additional dormitories as well as workshops and living quarters for local artisans, and the roof – all 4 square city blocks of it – will be converted to green-space complete with groves of trees, meandering walking paths, and wilderness areas set aside for local weeds and plants. A portion of the cavernous interior of the dirigible hall to its east will be strung with zip-lines, and a climbing wall will grace the entire 5-story expanse of that building's southern wall. Additionally, there will be an archery tunnel, a paper airplane launching platform, numerous sitting and viewing perches, and a green roof reserved for persons seeking to exercise their Liberty (do a bunch of drugs) while watching the setting sun grace the majestic spires of the Yiptlong massif to the north. The Faraway Home itself will be completely overhauled inside and out (while preserving any priceless graffiti left behind by its illustrious former inhabitants), wired with an encrypted T-1 data connection, outfitted with a enough solar panels to make it nearly self-sufficient, and staffed by friendly and accommodating multi-lingual Grigovians versed in self-defense, first aid, and the art of hangover elimination. If you are looking for a place to let loose, love Liberty, and languish luxuriously, Grig's own Faraway Home for Travelers is the place for you. Please, come soon. For more information visit farawayhomeingrig.gv.

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Grigovia harnesses wind

Fed up with importing natural gas from plutocratic Russians, and sick of buying sweet crude from autocratic Saudi Arabians, the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) embarked on an ambitious national program to become energy independent. Whereas in other modern nations such projects are heavily subsidized by – and therefore beholden to – federal governments, here in this small, landlocked nation that straddles a mountain-range known as the Yiptlong Massif, private industry is leading the charge. “Operation Updraft was designed for maximum citizen participation,” said, in a joint statement released shortly after the project's modest unveiling ceremony, GROG's Ministry for the Interior and the nation's Alliance of Executives for Grigovian Independence and Security (AEGIS). “All companies interested in enhancing the development of native battery and wind turbine design are welcome to the research data we already have on hand; all we ask is that any technological breakthroughs in and improvements to current methods for harnessing and storing renewable energy be shared with the rest of the parties working on this program, in the interest of improving the lives and wellbeing of all Grigovians, equally.”

Blessed with extensive deposits of such rare-earth-minerals as are needed to make cutting-edge, high-capacity battery banks, and with a landscape dominated by sloping foothills that culminate in high, craggy cliffs, Grigovia is a nearly perfect candidate for the adoption of large-scale wind farming. “The wind gains in intensity as it rises up from the plains around Grig, reaching nearly gale-force as it enters the jagged spires and stark facades of the mountain peaks in the higher elevations,” said Ordend Haryyiend, Ph. D., a geologist at Pyltagrad State University. “According to my colleagues in this school's department for electro-physics, even if we built a mere handful of wind farms using current technology, we could capture and transmit enough electricity to power most of beautiful, cosmopolitan Grig, our nation's capital, as well as many of the bucolic regional population centers. These are exciting times.”

In recent years, Grigovia has faced pressure from Western conglomerates – chief among them Ynki organizations applying pressure through the American Department of State – to lease out vast stretches of pristine national parkland for environmentally-unsustainable mining, forestry, and resource extraction. “We have been fighting a shadow war against foreign parties hellbent on raping our land of its treasures and transporting our riches to distant markets beyond our borders,” said Hesta Noryindt, an analyst at the Ministry of Natural Resources, which controls leasing and licensing on Grigovian territory. “Similar to the Ynki Apollo program, which harnessed the will of the American people to reach a goal, Operation Updraft aims to harness the will of the Grigovian people to shake off our addiction to foreign energy and to become a world leader in methods for capturing and storing direct and indirect solar energy.” (Wind is caused in part by changes in atmospheric pressure resulting from solar radiation, i.e. sunlight.) AEGIS thanked the people of Grigovia for their enduring patience and communal sacrifice by installing German-made GMG grenade launchers at all major civilian defense centers.

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