My Contributions To Fair Trade

Riding around the south of Zeeland with Lineke and Nellie.

The net weight of our backpacks hasn't seemed to be decreasing by much. I had high hopes there'd be less to drag around by this point, given that a lot of what we'd packed was actually small gifts for all the kind people who have hosted us. At a rate of one jar per stop, we've dropped a sporadic trail of Wisconsin cranberry mustard across half the continent by now, but i'm pretty sure we're still a fair amount over the fifteen kilos RyanAir allows. But i think we're on EasyJet this Saturday, so that's all right. Besides, the creeping accumulation on the plus side of the balance sheet has been well worth its weight. Good chocolate is going to make up a lot of my carryon allowance by the time we fly back to JFK. Add that to the Czech beer glass from Mark, more odds and ends from others, and the huge Dutch cheese from Nellie that i hope to sneak past those yappy little Agriculture beagles, and you're starting to get the picture. Let's see Chris Martin get off his little piano stool and beat that.

Oh. Czech That

New information. Don't be walking along the Dutch train tracks either.

So That's Why The Train Station Smelled Like That

As environmentally conscious engineers, the Soviets left something to be desired and little to the imagination. Katie came back from the bathroom in our old Czech train car with a thoughtful expression and said, "I don't think that was a vacuum toilet like the Danish train had." I was in there a little later and discovered that the plumbing in fact consisted of a six-inch straight pipe down to the tracks. You could see the railbed rushing by when you flushed. Ah, Marxism. Power to the People!

Prague

Prague.

The mother of cities, they call it, after Kafka's famous line. One of Hitler's favorites, too, and so it was largely untouched by the last war, except for the Jewish quarter. There wasn't much left for them to come back to, but then there weren't many of them to come back. I found myself wondering if the same tracks under our train had carried children to be gassed, sixty-five short years ago. And history rolls on.

But there were much more cheerful ironies in our visit as well. On Sunday we went to church in a hotel conference room that used to host Communist Party meetings while the Czechs were under the Soviet thumb. Someone told us the national motto - since long before the Russians came - has been something like "the truth will triumph." Looks like it did, at least this time. And it was easy to see why people fall so absurdly in love with Prague. Not my favorite city, but a city all its own. There aren't many higher compliments than that.

So it was a fine time. Mainly - yet again - due to the wonderful hospitality of a friend. Same here in Stuttgart. When we got off the train from Prague we were looking for our friend Manuela, or possibly her boyfriend Tommy, with whom we've been staying. Manuela was there - and so were Markus and Ester, come all the way from Switzerland to surprise us, just to hang out for one evening. Another hello; yet another goodbye. We'll be in Holland tomorrow.

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 16

(Copenhagen, Denmark. 21 Sept)

Disclaimer: I actually have no idea at all what this means.

A Note To Scotland Regarding Single Faucets

The Czech Republic has it figured out.

A Belated Location Update

In Denmark, staying with our good friend Tine.

Things to report:

1. The pastry here is every bit as good as they tell you;
2. Everything here is way more expensive than they tell you; and
3. They really do eat fish soaked in lye and smeared on toast.

Also fish buried and left to rot for a certain amount of time, but Tine says that's really more a Norwegian thing.

A Belated Reality Check

Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, 21 Sept:

"We're going to help you get out of the city," Thomas said. "If you choose not to leave, you're here at your own risk."

Hmm. Free will. Ouch.
For more ouch, reference this. See what you think. Drop me a line if you don't want to comment here.

But either way, this much is no joke: Literally everyone i've talked with about Katrina here in Europe honestly thinks George Bush personally caused the catastrophe in New Orleans. These aren't people who hate him or anything; they don't even necessarily know much about the whole thing. They just believe what they're told. (Interesting that even Bill Clinton was appalled at the BBC's coverage, for instance.)

The mentality of sheer entitlement we've slid into is frightening to me. My heart broke for the poverty-stricken and homeless who were physically and financially unable to evacuate New Orleans before Katrina. And it was indeed the responsibility of the rest of us - whether church or government, to beg a big debate - to take care of them, and we failed. But i too have friends and relatives who are homeless right now because of Katrina, and others whose entire livelihood was destroyed, leaving them with almost nothing but their lives and one another. And their response? To give. Many of them are reaching out to their neighbors as we speak, even as another terrifying Category Five looms in the Gulf. And i know still others who have traveled a long way, at their own great expense, to lend a hand. From what i've heard, the destitute Thai and Indonesian villagers hit by the Southeast Asian tsunamis responded similarly. They helped each other find food. They cleaned up their own neighborhoods. They didn't rob, beat, or rape the tourists. I guess there are different ways of defining civilization. I for one would prefer using a measure other than the number of HDTVs one is able to purchase. Or loot.

Of course, it's much easier for one to sit and expect a handout than it is to get off one's tucus and lend a hand - for one's own good at the very least, if not even for others. A decent, mature response does take more effort than just grabbing everything you can reach and slinging the blame at the first target you can find.

But then, most Southeast Asians aren't used to having the government do everything for them.

On The Danish Language

The Danes, unlike the Czechs, at least have enough vowels to go around. However, they seem to have accomplished this only by succumbing to the peculiar pan-Scandinavian need to invent entirely new ones. I mean, everyone's heard of the umlaut, and that smushed-together A and E thing (so i am led to understand) has some sort of meaningful reason to exist. But an A with a circle over the top? Obviously some Vikings around 1100 A.D. or so had just a little too much time on their hands between pillagings.

"Hey Sven."

zzzz

"Sven. Wake up."

"eh...what...ya, Ollie?"

"Hey, i was just thinking. You know what would be really cool to have in our language? Another O - but get this - with a slash through it. Killer! Am i right?"

Regarding The Previous Post

Almost a haiku, wasn't it?
Coincidence?

Sudden And Unrelated Weird Al Yankovic Flashbacks, Pt. 3

Listen to 'em squeal
They think the whole stinkin' world
Is their exercise wheel

--Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters From a Planet Near Mars

A Fairly Arbitrary Rant, Just To Keep In Shape

Okay, different cultures are different.

I know this. I don't really keep a count of the countries i've spent time in, and it wouldn't set any records, but it's probably safely over a dozen by now. So i know that people in various places sometimes do things in unfamiliar ways. And for unfamiliar reasons. (Insert DTS mantra here: It's not weird; it's just different. Repeat each time you eat a new kind of insect.) Here in Scotland, for instance: lack of central heating...oil-fired kitchen stoves...haggis....Different. Fine. But some things are so absolutely and egregiously wrong that you just have to draw the line.

Like separate faucets. This phenomenon might be understandable if today were 1885 and hot tapwater a novelty only slightly newer than the water closet. But it's 2005. This country has better mobile phones than America. Their credit cards have little microchips in them. Is it really that difficult to get hot and cold water from a single faucet? Is one really expected to wedge a dirty rubber plug into a foul-smelling drain, mix water from two separate taps together, and wash one's face from a basin encrusted with eight days' worth of other people's toothpaste? No wonder all the colonies are independent.

Next week: Tiny faucets too close to the sink to fit your hands under. Don't even try to justify those.

Disturbing Headline Of The Day

"North Korea Agrees To Drop Nukes"

(FOX News online, early 19 Sept)

Profanity Monday [Special Non-Profane Edition]

[a recurring feature incorporating slightly naughty but estimably relevant quotes of a probably inapproriate nature, except today]

So i've finished Lord Charnwood's 1918 biography of Lincoln--a man by whom i am increasingly fascinated. Throughout the book Charnwood never hesitates to point out Lincoln's shortcomings in leadership and decisionmaking. He also lays bare such "personal" details (quotation marks to be explained later) as the stark depths of Lincoln's struggles with depression--as in one letter when the then-country-lawyer expressed to his best friend his feeling that things simply could not go on as they were, that he must soon either feel better or die. Charnwood also delves into political analysis both contemporary and modern, with all the benefits of historical hindsight. And in the final analysis, he is highly complimentary, with reasons that are hard to ignore. Here he examines another of many letters Lincoln wrote to a lifelong best friend:

'I have no doubt,' [Lincoln] writes, 'it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize.'

All such men have to go through deep waters; but they do not necessarily miss either success or happiness in the end. Lincoln's life may be said to have tested him by the test which Mr. Kipling states in his lines about Washington:--

'If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; / If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim....'

Think of the horrors of the Civil War, and chew on that. And when you're done, here's this. Elsewhere in the not-yet-president's private letters, Charnwood unearths Lincoln's agony of doubt over his engagement to the emotionally disturbed Mary Todd--up to and including his actual temporary disappearance on their wedding day--and the quiet reason he finally submitted to the ceremony and all the difficult years of marriage that followed: Because he'd said he would, and he felt he'd be worth nothing if he didn't keep his word.

In the end, after frankly exposing the president's many shortcomings as well as his astonishing understated strengths, Charnwood is convinced that no one could ever read the vast bulk of Lincoln's personal correspondence and not conclude that, whatever his acknowledged flaws, this was a man "worthy of entire trust."

So. Which matters more, come election time: strength of character, or political skill?
Three pages, double-spaced. Turn it in tomorrow.

The Africa Mercy In Four Blurry Pictures

Progress, for you Mercy Ships groupies....

(Jarrow, England. 16 Sept)

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 15

(Stratford-upon-Avon, England. 12 Sept)

Schlock [n.]: An Occasionally Occurring Evil

Last night we ate chicken soup with a Dominican, a Dutchie, an American, and two Brazilians. In a rented flat in northern England, speaking four (possibly five) languages at once. I miss Mercy Ships.

Miss our friends, too. That's most of it - the ships are nothing without the people. We were just enjoying getting to see everyone here, thinking we'd be sleeping on a floor, but Jan and Elizabeth and Paul and Rodrigo and Tatyana put us up for the night in a beautiful South Shields B&B overlooking the North Sea. Call it a continued honeymoon, they said, and so we did. Then today they showed us around the ship. The Africa Mercy is right where i left it three and a half years ago, having moved away and across and back but never out of a shipyard. A lot of somewhat ambivalent memories have a way of coming to mind when you see something like that.

But back to the people thing. It's so wonderful (though that word is just cheap and shabby) to see good friends, i never know if it's better to or better not to, because it just reminds you of what you're missing. Anyhow, if you're reading this, you know who you are. You're missed.

Sudden And Unrelated Weird Al Yankovic Flashbacks, No. 2

Sometimes I tell myself,
"This is not my beautiful stapler!"
Sometimes I tell myself,
"This is not my beautiful chair!"

--Dog Eat Dog

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 14

(Southampton, England. 10 Sept)

How I Spent My Last Ten Minutes

In the back of a Land Rover, speeding through the fluid moonlit dark of the country lanes, riding back from a thatch-roofed English pub, with the warmth of Theakston's Old Peculier (hand-pulled from an oak cask) still bitter-fresh in my mouth.

Just wanted you to know.

A Sudden And Unrelated Weird Al Yankovic Flashback

I'd rather rip out my intestines with a fork
Than watch you going out with other men
I'd rather slam my fingers in a door (yeah)
Again and again and again and again and again

--"One More Minute With You"

Relearning The Mother Tongue

In Southampton now, staying with Nicky.

We had a very nice walking tour of the area today, including the local used-book shops, where i discovered side by side such fine titles as Marine Steam Boilers, Advanced Taxidermy, and Know Your Oscilloscope. Last night, in possibly the greasiest meal i have ever had, we consumed massive amounts of cod and chips and then lay around groaning periodically on the couches and floor. My pea fritter and battered sausage (they just seemed to go together) may have added somewhat to my intestinal discomfort. But it was worth it. My principle on experiencing new cultural foods is basically buy now/pay later. I find that this lets me have a lot more fun in the end. Maybe not three-quarters of the way through, but nearly always in the end. I did begin to doubt this on one or two occasions with Mercy Ships - particularly one time in Honduras, for about six weeks or so, which i can recall even now in fairly vivid detail - but really, the Vermox always comes through. Fine stuff, that; i highly recommend it. Nice fruity flavor. Chewy, too.

I am also being reminded how much i enjoy the fine British sense of humor. If anyone doubts the existence of such a thing, in my opinion all one needs to do is look at the street signs. In the United States, a short Keep Out might suffice, but not over here, where nothing less will do than a very tastefully printed standalone post bearing the legend No public right of way exists over this land. Particularly when the area in question seems to be a normal lawn like any other. It would seem that the people at the Royal Highway Ministry or whatever they call it are nothing if not polite. This was not my personal experience when working with the equivalent organization in the City of Brookfield, Wisconsin. But i generally like politeness. Especially because it establishes such wonderful opportunities to have great fun by being impolite. More on that later.

A Checklist, Several Secondhand Facts, And A Bad Joke, Upon Travelling To The United Kingdom

passport: check.

borrowed camera: check.

36 lbs. of American shampoo hand-carried to London relatives: Check.

The New Orleans relatives say their house is dry, wasn't looted, and should be liveable whenever they can go back to stay. One of these years.

And, per the Mercy Ships email circuit, the Caretakers have returned to the abandoned Caribbean Mercy - in advance of relief teams about to be sent from the IOC who will lodge on the ship and help clean up Chickasaw. Yeah, there was at least a dollar ninety-nine worth of damage....

Heh heh [ahem] Sorry.

The Mooch Tour Continues

To cheerfully plagarize my old Moon handbook, there are two theories on travel. One is to stay in the same town and change your clothes. We're leaning towards the other, which is to wear the same clothes and just change towns. In any event, we're off to England next, where we have some very nice hospitable friends. For self-entertainment purposes, i will attempt to post weekly for the duration. All that to say, you'll need to get your daily inanity fix somewhere else.

One thing you can do for that, by the way, is stand on a curb with your eyes closed and pretend it's the tallest cliff in the world. Then step off. Kind of fun, isn't it? Or if you're really hard up - this is my favorite - keep your eyes closed and push gently on your eyeballs with your fingers for a while. Very pretty flashing lights.

Compassion Part II

A little perspective, maybe, on yesterday's Profanity Monday post.

Mercy and justice. Hand in hand, right? Two necessary sides of the same coin? But we end up most often segregating ourselves into camps around only one, and generally on terms of reaction against the other. It ends up being Pat Robertson versus Jim Wallis - in the interests of rational discourse, i'm going to leave Jesse Jackson out of this - and the thought of a winner makes me cringe.

I spent the last several years of my life working with an organization called Mercy Ships. The emphasis, as you might expect, was on the compassion side of things. And it was good. You can't run a ship with an all-volunteer crew paying their own way from forty different countries and spend your time on debating the finer points of premillenialism. Not when you're spending your days seeing what we were seeing. (See it thru a ship's photographer's eyes here.) As far as i know, it's never yet occurred to anyone to try counting the number of Christian denominations represented on board any of the ships. No one cares.

In the same vein, when we were in Honduras or Haiti or The Gambia, no one was going ashore smacking the locals in the face with Why They Were Going To Hell Right Now if they didn't subscribe to precisely the right blend of Mississippi-steeped fundamentalism (conference of 1849, thank you, not 1871). Instead, they healed the sick. They gave sight to the blind. They made new legs for amputees and brought joy to the shame-filled and guilt-ridden. They brought a cup of cool water - or an entire well of it - to the thirsty. To borrow Don Stephens' well-worn talking points, if they haven't yet figured out how to raise the dead, it's not for lack of trying. These are the things Jesus did. But they're not the only things Jesus did.

When i read about his life (er, Jesus, that is, not Don Stephens), i see nothing but heartbroken compassion for the humble and beaten-down. But for the proud, smug in their certainties, i see nothing in his words but brutal indictments and point-blank fury. It was all about attitude. He showed each in turn the other side of the coin, and he could flip it instantly. Mercy and justice, whichever was needed - though not, as we would speak of it, whichever was deserved. That's the problem: in ultimate terms, no one really deserves the mercy side. (We like to think so, but then you just wind up with what most people think of as religion - vaguely hoping their good stuff will outweigh their bad, and never really knowing for sure.)

Judging from that, naturally, it seems smart to be humble. Not only to stay on the safe side of all that, but also because try as we might, we never seem to be able to guess perfectly on when to show each other the mercy side of things and when to smack each other with the justice. And because sometimes, deaf to the one we need the most, we can only hear in terms of the other. I have a friend right now like that. Is it "cheap grace" to speak to her only of mercy while she's half killing herself with preventable wrongs? Not if it's the perverted ghosts of justice that are haunting her, driving her farther away.

So is this all just stating the obvious? Sure. (But you've read this far. Ha.) I guess it just highlights the same old problem above: Although God doesn't, we separate. Mercy versus justice. Compassion versus truth. So how are we supposed to talk? Dunno. I guess that's why we often don't anymore, especially in a culture of increasingly totalitarian Tolerance. But in any case, i always seem to just end up indulging in the same old college-level idealism when i get to this point. It's a little embarrassing, really, on the face of it. But not underneath. Laugh all you want (i do), but the more things real life beats into and out of me, the more i return to the same old need for love. Not the dreamy "all-you-need-is" kind. The God kind, the practice, the driving force; the hardest, gentlest thing in the world. Cuz in the end, we can't pull it off - this, or anything. In daily terms - to state the obvious again - none of us "needs" only mercy or justice, because none of us has only one or the other. And none of us has much of anything, in the end, without the thing that bears both.

Don't all comment at once.
Ha.

A Small Tribute To The Big Easy

Taken with a Canon S110, 12/03 - 3/05.

Introducing Profanity Monday

[a new recurring feature here, incorporating slightly naughty but estimably relevant quotes of a probably inappropriate nature]

Evacuate? When the president begged me to? Hell no. Trust the government? You kidding? Besides, i really needed a new XBox for free, and another DVD player, and a new handgun, and just a little jewelry from that old lady's house. She was dead anyway. Or almost. Hey! You! Hurry up with that helicopter! I'm getting hungry. It's been six hours, and i'm all wet, and somebody stole my whole stash of Southpaw Light that i, uh, found. How come the cops are never around when you need them? Injustice! Incompetence! Conspiracy! Why hasn't anyone saved me yet?

--anonymous

An Ever-So-Slight Momentary Stooping To Gloat

(Malta, NY. 3 Sept)

My lil' bike gets fifty miles per gallon. Yep, that's right: five-zero. So sorry about your Grand X-Humungica Sport luxury SUV.

That's right, i only fund two future Saudi terrorists per month.
Actually, fewer, now that i think of it, considering the bike's been in storage all year....

A Small-To-Medium-Sized Bright Spot

According to internal emails and a press release not yet posted on the official website, Chickasaw locals who were able to reach the Caribbean Mercy by small boat Wednesday afternoon reported that the ship is still in its berth. The caretakers, still at the IOC, have now been joined by hundreds of other Gulf Coast refugees receiving a hot meal at the Mercy Ships IOC dining room.

A Quote, On The Topic Of Victimhood, Presented Otherwise Without Comment

"I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
"Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

--Reuters, Friday 2 Sept.

Compassion

Compassion. Haven't thought about it much, as a concept, since being in outreach situations with Mercy Ships. In that world i heard it mused over by fellow travelers both wiser and more experienced in it than i. But when the need is suddenly on your own soil, strong opinions form a lot more quickly. And the discussion, more or less, was this: What happens when compassion meets ingratitude?

Certainly it spotlights your definition of compassion. Like love, really. If it's kind of a vague warm feeling of desire to give to others out of pity for their circumstances - well, that evaporates pretty quickly the first time someone fails to respond to your gift the way you think they should. I find that such a motivation actually makes me more and more demanding, perversely, as a giver. (As all our self-centered imitations of virtue do, really, which is a good way to gauge how you're doing in any given area.) But if compassion to you is a practice, a way of doing and acting that you cultivate in yourself regardless of its reception outside - then that's a real start.

Henri Nouwen wrote a fine, fine book on the subject, which i read several years ago and of which i remember nothing at all. But today's news footage brought it to mind again. In New Orleans last night, the police were forced to stop rescuing stranded citizens because the mayor needed them to fight armed gangs of looters running wild. This morning, military Chinook helicopters evacuating refugees from the Superdome had to stop after a shot was fired up at one of them. Reportedly, a servicemember was wounded. In another area of the city, dozens of volunteers who had driven in from far away to bring their small boats for the rescue efforts were forced to sit idle because they were shot at while trying to pull people from the water.

Is this really upsetting to anyone else? It is to me. Apparently some of those small-boat volunteers had some choice words on the subject this morning, as did a few of the cops (who, it's worth noting, face that kind of routine depravity every day). Characteristically, today it was the military professionals that responded with the most grace and restraint. When someone asked the captain of the just-arrived Navy vessel USS Bataan how he felt about his fellow rescuers being shot at by the very people they were trying to save, he spoke gently, using words like "understandable desperation." If i'd been in this place, i'm not sure such a charitable response would have been the first thing out of my mouth.

Yet, faced with such an appalling response to their rescue efforts, the women and men of the Red Cross, NOPD, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, FEMA, and others are responding in turn by continuing their efforts. This, simply, is grace. Met with demands, hostility, and worse, they are continuing to practice compassion. Now, it's one thing to go through the motions on the outside even if you're seething within, but it is something. It's a very big something. And i guess the inside, for all of us, is the perpetual next step.

Anyway, read the book. Or, for that matter, the original book. They put it much better.