California

I remembered how as a child I heard of this place called
California ... Beatniks. Flower Children. Surfers.
Exotic, foreign, mysterious,
A land unknown to me.
And then, as I grew older, I heard of California from my father:
The land of fruits and nuts, he called it.
and then, fondly,
he would call me up and say:
"Just another lousy day in paradise,"
as I sat freezing in yet another Detroit winter.

For by now I had discovered the mountains,
the beaches, the valleys, the hills, the rocks jutting,
and breathed in the air
and touched the earth
and the mystery of the exotic terrain
became part of me.

And why California people are
who they are is because
they have come here, like the land, from all over the world,
they extend the exotic terrain from the geologic time scale,
through the human time scale.

I can't help but think that California's people
and communities are among the more unique
because of the land.

The land itself is unique.
And we are the people
of the exotic terrain.

– excerpts from a poem by Tanya Atwater

Topsy-Turvy
This post has to be quick because everything is going topsy-turvy. We knew Daughter of Purpose was scheduled for her procedure tomorrow, but were told we'd have time to drive up in the morning. Ahh!! They just called to tell us that because she is youngest, she goes first and her arrival time to the hospital is 5:30 am!!

It looks like the procedure may really be happening this time so please keep us in your prayers!

Review of Working on a Dream
Por fin! I'm thinking of starting a music review blog, more because I enjoy writing these than because I think anyone will actually read them... but, in the meantime, I'll post my reviews here. So, without further ado - and just for fun! - my, er, theological review of Working on a Dream, the 2009 album by Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Working on a Dream, begins in a nightmare.



It hits the ground running with “Outlaw Pete,” a song that begins with a tall tale and music that recalls hooves running through open country, like one of the sprawling romps on the The Seeger Sessions studio and live discs. It's a sweeping, widescreen epic of an album opener, clocking in at over 8 minutes long.

But then, without warning, the story changes. Outlaw Pete has a vision of his own death and flees to the West, where he tries to settle down. It doesn’t work. A bounty hunter finds him and declares, eerily, the line that haunts Pete, and hunts him, all the way to his mysterious end: “We cannot undo these things we’ve done…”

It's a line, and a theme, reminiscent of Bruce's last album, Magic, an album full of dread, anger, and impending, almost inescapable doom, with song titles like "Your Own Worst Enemy," "You'll Be Comin' Down," and "Last to Die." But on this new disc, Springsteen responds to the gathering clouds with a rather different response. At first glance, it seems like maybe he's trying to disprove the line, to say that maybe, just maybe, we can undo the things we've done. Further spins, however, reveal something rather deeper shining up through the album's surface.

It's worth wondering, as a theological exercise if nothing else, whether Bruce believes we can undo the deepest brokenness with our own two hands. One of my favorite songs on 2007's Magic is a song chock-full of Biblical imagery – “the late afternoon sun fills the room with a mist like the garden before the fall / I watch your hands smooth the front of your blouse and seven drops of blood fall” – but the song’s chorus declares that “I’ll work for your love dear / what others may want for free / I’ll work for your love.” It’s a gorgeously vivid song, with some kind of truth undeniably coursing through it, and yet - from a theological perspective, it's uncomfortably transactional for a Lutheran understanding of the deepest unmerited Love. (This may, I should mention, require some rethinking in light of a recent observation of the powerfully transactional nature of certain forms of religious pilgrimage.)



In light of this tendency of Springsteen’s – going all the way back to “Prove It All Night,” my least favorite Bruce song precisely for the amorous deficiencies it shares with “I’ll Work for Your Love” – it is not unreasonable to worry that the new disc, with "Working" so prominent in the title, would follow in a similar vein. The title track paints a landscape of human work, work, work as the singleminded path to achieving a far-off Dream: “Rain pourin’ down I swing my hammer / My hands are rough from working on a dream / Sunrise come I climb the ladder / The new day breaks and I’m working on a dream…” Later there are more images of doing, doing, doing, as if maybe Outlaw Pete really can undo those things he’s done, on his own, with his own two hands, as the track “What Love Can Do” repeats its title line over and over: “Let me show you what love can do / let me show you what love can do…”

Yet a second listen – especially in Springsteen songs (see “USA, Born in the”) – sometimes reveals a surprise lying beneath a simple chorus. "What Love Can Do" begins: “There’s a pillar in the temple where I carved your name / There’s a soul sitting sad and blue / Now the remedies you’ve taken are all in vain / Let me show you what love can do…”

So: Our own remedies have failed, only some other love can help us now – but what kind of love? Here the last verse reveals the song’s – and the album’s secret: “Here we bear the mark of Cain / We’ll let the light shine through / Let me show you what love can do.” And there it is: “Let the light shine through.” There is a source, then, of the love that pours through every bit of working and dreams in Bruce's new album, a holy gift that shines through the windows like a sunbeam, like an unmerited mark that the Creator gives even to Cain - or Outlaw Pete, for that matter.

There is a glittering truth about the world that finds its way into every nook and cranny of a Springsteen album that opens itself up with the orchestral arrangements nearly every critic has noted, spreading its wings wide like a bird soaring overhead - or underneath. Look at the album’s liner notes: Every page is a photograph of a natural landscape in a vivid color: a golden wheat field at dawn; a forest illuminated by the deep blue of midnight. That truth? It's rather simple, painfully so, really, as simple as what Chris calls the unabashed sentimentality of the title track:

Life is beautiful.

I know, I know, almost too simple, right? Except, that is, when it's illustrated by the poetry of music or the music of poetry. It’s like a rock and roll response to Gerard Manley Hopkin’s classic poem “God’s Grandeur,” which is what I keep thinking of as I listen to the album over and over:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

These “bright wings” are at the heart of Working on a Dream. For me, the album’s centerpiece is “Queen of the Supermarket.” Sure, it’s a cheesy story of a guy with a crush on the girl working the checkout counter. And yet, and yet: The music swells with a love so full, a heart so melted, and the lyrics, well…just read them: “With my shopping cart I move through the heart / Of a sea of fools so blissfully unaware / That they’re in the presence of something wonderful and rare…”



The song blooms, and the album’s other songs bloom around it, with lyrics that lift up the Grace coursing through every molecule of creation: “A beauty in the neighborhood / This lonely planet never looked so good…” More: “I watch the sun as it rises and sets / I watch the moon trace its arc with no regrets…” And finally, just before the closing song, a benediction: “In the hollow of the evening / As you lay your head to rest / May the evening stars scatter a shining / Crown upon your breast / In the darkness of the morning as the sky / Struggles to light / May the rising sun caress and / Bless your soul for all your life.”

And thus it is here, only after finding the “bright wings,” can we circle around back to the title track and understand what it means to work on a dream.

Return to Magic, an album whose muscular moodiness expressed a feeling about an America that was rapidly losing its soul: “We cannot undo these things we’ve done…”

Yet in the 15 months since Magic was released, Bruce’s beloved country actually seemed to take some pretty important steps down the “Long Walk Home” that concluded Magic, a long walk back toward an America where “nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.” Whenever the songs on Working on a Dream were composed, they sound now like the songs of a people surprised by joy, a people who have tried their hardest to tear down their world, only to find – wonder of all gracious wonders – that Hope, Faith, and Love still remain.

Never one to offer easy answers, Bruce chose his words carefully, releasing a week after Inauguration Day an album whose title track reminds us that the long walk home is still going to be a long walk, that the dream, as the song says, will no doubt, feel so far away, that there will be lots of grassroots working on the way to any dream. There is, still, a very, very long way to go. We are still, as Oscar Romero said, prophets of a future not our own.

But the Truth embedded beneath every song on the album, from the title track on down, is the surprise of an unmerited and ever-present Grace, a Grace as relentless as anything that hunts Outlaw Pete, a Grace that fills and re-fills us with every breath we take in a still-wondrous creation, a Grace that fills us for the work we are empowered to do in every one of what Bruce calls a "kingdom of days."

These are the fields we work in; and this is the work we do. Our lucky day, indeed.

Feedin' Our Families...

"Education By Experience" - The Only Way to Teach

Adventure. What is adventure? Why is falling from a plane an adventure for some and sheer lunacy to others. Why, or why isn't, walking on a mountain track to a waterfall considered adventure? I’m not much of a philosopher but it seems to me that adventure can be so subjective. Our grand ‘adventure’ started as just getting our act together enough to get out of Prince George. That, thankfully, has since changed for us and adventure includes a definition that will be changed forever in the eyes of our children, and us. Some of the things we have done in the last while will definitely live on in the memories of Ayden Jane and Sophie. It has been the utmost of grand adventure!

In and around our time at Myella (the Farmstay – see the blog entry below) we have participated in a wide variety of activities that will, yet again, define our trip to Australia.

Perhaps the highlight of all was going to a very special place in the world called Mon Repos. It is a turtle rookery that allows a set number of people each night for 4 months to witness an incredible event. We sat up late into the evening waiting our turn to get our guide to take us onto the starlit beach. When our turn finally came we were fortunate enough to be part of both the emergent turtle hatchlings making their scared dash across the beach to the safety of the water but then also to watch a female LoggerHead turtle come quietly up from the water to build her nest and lay over 170 eggs. The girls were amazed, Marnie and I were in awe. We felt so fortunate to part of this awesome cycle of life. Our pics just don’t do the event justice, but they are there for the viewing.

Our adventures have also included finding fresh water creek pools with incredible waterfalls tumbling from above (we even did some rock jumping!), we saw Goana’s (bigger than 1m) wrestling for territory, climbed around limestone caves, played with 1000’s of soldier crabs, we actually hand fed wild dolphins, saw wild rays, turtles and dolphins in the shallow waters crashing around the most Eastern point of land in Oz, climbed out on skywalks above the rainforest, …..and, whew, more.

Another highlight event we participated in was that we hiked up a small mountain and, as the sun dropped, watched more than 100,000 Bent-winged bats fly around us as they exited their 40m deep cave – all the while dodging pythons who were there to feast on the bats as we watched. Check out the snake behind Marnie’s leg in the photos! This is one of the only places in the entire world that these maternity dens exist – so it was incredible to see this in person.

We had the very good fortune to spend Australia Day here in Oz with the Abrahams. What a great blessing to be with them, especially Todd, to share in the pride of his country. Yes, we had shrimp on the Barbie as part of our celebrations that day. Sadly, we have left the Gold Coast area and headed deeper South, leaving Queensland for New South Wales and parts beyond. With leaving there we leave of course, the A’s. We just cannot tell you all enough how much we have enjoyed our time with them. They were such a blessing to the four of us; guiding, sharing, encouraging and just being there with us on this Aussie adventure. For those of you that know Todd and Leanne and kids, we can honestly tell you that it seems like Australia is the perfect fit for them. Yes, it is far from all of us in Canada, but they are happy, healthy and really working towards a life that fits their ‘blood’! We feel so honoured to have shared so much with them while being here and are so thankful for all their help. Thank-you so much A’s.

As always we have photos – and this posting there are a bunch. I just couldn't trim them down much more so it may take a while to get through them all. Hope you all enjoy. The photos can be viewed HERE.

Take care everyone, hope you are all well.

Jp, Marnie, Ayden-Jane and Sophie

New book with Ryanair quotes
Spotted in Dublin airport last week - this is a hilarious book of quotes from Michael O'Leary of Ryanair.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Book-Mick-Paul-Kilduff/dp/0717144925

Yuanyang Rice Terraces, Yunnan province, China
Not having quite finished our itinerary in Yunnan province, we returned yet again to Kunming on a 24-hour train from Loudi when the New Year's celebrations there had ended and our hosts and new friends dispersed to return to their respective hometowns. In Kunming we checked back into the Yunnan King World International for a night to sort out our things and to lighten our luggage where possible. We put the excess items into two plastic bags and went out on to the street to dispose of them.

Despite being a developing country and the disparity of wealth between its people, China has surprisingly few beggars although Kunming seems to have more than its fair share. And the methods they employ are varied and innovative. Around the Green Lake when the weather is mild some people with limb disabilities lie on the ground, dolefully displaying their disfigurements as explicitly and wallet-openingly as possible. And around the railway station some parents have trained their young children to work the crowd vigorously for handouts as they keep watch from a discreet distance. We saw a few instances where a youngster grabbed the leg of a stranger, dropped to the ground and refused to let go until the stranger handed over some money. The issue of giving to beggars is of course vexed. If begging yields a good return, the inevitable result will be more beggars on the street, with more children and other vulnerable people forced into undesirable and humiliating situations in which they are often exploited by their own handler/s. We generally avoid giving to beggars so as not to encourage the practice. Instead, we make an effort to deal with obviously needy people who are making an effort to sell a wanted good or service rather than simply begging for handouts, eg small scale street-side fruit and vegetable sellers, craft-sellers, buskers etc.

But this time we made an exception. Rather than simply put the two plastic bags into the bin (assuming we could find one) we decided to give them to people who could use the things inside. Having been approached by a few beggars on our way from the railway station to the hotel, we didn't expect to have the bags for long. But amazingly, when we actually went looking for a beggar we couldn't find one! Unbelievable. It was clearly the same cosmic conspiracy at work that always turns the lights red just before we get to the intersection, and that cruelly continues to deny us our Division 1. Cross Lotto win years after our rightful turn came. I wearily suggested to Lee Tuan that she ask somebody on the footpath where we might find a beggar but she just threw a quizzical glance in my direction and pressed on bag in hand. Rescue finally came at a bus stop where we saw two women with babies in tow working the line of passengers waiting to get on. We walked up to them, handed them our bags, and wished them Xin Nian Kuai Le. They looked into their bags, smiled, and were obviously appreciative of the gift.

The following morning we caught a six-hour bus to Yuanyang in the far south of Yunnan. Yuanyang is actually a twin-town; Nansha, the new part, and Xinjie, the old village perched on top of a steep hill with an appearance from a distance similar to the Italian hillside towns in Umbria. Our destination, and that of a lot of Chinese tourists too, was Xinjie. The visitor draw card here is not the village itself but what is to be seen on the mountain slopes for many kilometres around. The traditional inhabitants of this region are the Hani people, and over several centuries, successive generations have continued to carve and build rice-growing terraces down the steep mountain slopes and along the valleys between them. The result today is an astonishing landscape where a whole mountain range has been terraced, and the interplay of the sun's rays with the local topography gives each water-filled terrace its own unique kaleidoscope of patterns and colours.

We checked into the Yun Ti Shun Jie Hotel on Thursday night after lugging our backpacks around Xinjie's Titian Town Square seeking the best accommodation deal. We nearly shot ourselves in the foot as we had under-estimated the number of tourists in town and every place was booked out, or within a bed or two of it. The Chinese New Year's holiday week was nearing an end but there were still many Chinese tourists out and about. We returned to the Yun Ti that we had previously rejected for price reasons, only to discover that this place was now full too. Now facing the real prospect of a chilly night under cardboard in a dark alley, we turned to leave when the phone at reception rang with a cancellation. The desk staff called us back and offered us the room, and what's more because it was now 10pm and there was a significant chance that the room would remain vacant if we didn't take it, the price was dropped by 20 Yuan as an inducement. Yay!

The following day we strolled around the town square and then for about an hour along a road out of town that led to the Long Shu Ba Terrace, passing through a couple of Hani villages on the way. The terrace was beautiful and we decided to follow a dirt path that wound its way up between the terrace ponds. In places the track morphed into a deep muddy ditch and at others it was necessary to walk gingerly along the top of the narrow earthen walls that separated the stepped ponds, being careful not to over balance and become compost for next year's rice crop.

Near the top of the path we met a western tourist walking down. We introduced ourselves and chatted as we strolled back to Xinjie. Our new acquaintance was Paul from Los Angeles, a man about the same age as us who sold up six years ago and has been on the road ever since travelling far and wide. He had just crossed into China from Vietnam and was headed north. We had dinner with Paul at a café in the town square, swapping travel tales and exchanging information as we ate.

A common mode of transport in Xinjie is a small three-wheeled bullet-shaped vehicle with two passenger seats. It may be shaped like a bullet but it certainly doesn't move like one. This was fine by us as we wished to admire the scenery leisurely as we travelled along. We hired a driver of one of these to take us on a full day trip to see several of the more distant terraces surrounding Xinjie. On Saturday morning we were up at 4.30am and on our way in our bullet-mobile shortly after five. First stop was the dawn view at the Duo Yi Shu terrace. The viewpoint was a ridge far above the terrace and although most of the three-dimensional perspective was lost from that height and distance, the view was stunning, appearing as a giant black and white jigsaw pattern against a backdrop of a dramatically rising dawn mist. It was easy to forget that every one of those thousands of lines in the vast jigsaw pattern below was actually an earthen wall one to two metres high separating each pond from the one below.

We weren't the only ones admiring the view; there were some other photographers behind us and the man immediately behind us seemed to be particularly intense about his photography judging from the bulky equipment he was lost in. Or was it just too cold for him to come out?

We visited several other terraces during the day, each beautiful and unique. Just when we thought we had seen it all and nothing could top the views we had already seen, we came to the Laohuzui ("Tiger Mouth”) Terrace renowned for its sunset views. Many photographers had already set up their equipment and were waiting patiently for the sun to sink. There were several soft murmured conversations going on regarding F-stops, lux meter readings, lens refractive index, aperture diffraction compensation, spherical aberration etc etc. Other photographers were holding up filters to the light and cross-referencing the results while one or two gently squeezed a little air puffer across their lenses to waft away that damned molecule of wisp that had just settled. I found a flat rocky outcrop on the cliff top with a nice view and took my digital camera out of my shirt pocket to check that the batteries weren't flat yet.

An hour or so later and about half an hour before sunset, a young man rushed down the path behind me carrying a large bag of photographic equipment and two large tripods. He put one of the tripods next to me so that one of its feet touched my shoe and the other immediately in front of me in the tiny space between me and the cliff face. He left briefly to get some more equipment and when he returned he appeared surprised and miffed that I was still there. He tugged at my coat and pointed to an inferior viewing position further down the cliff-side path, obviously wanting me to go there. His reasoning seemed to be that as he had two tripods while I had none, and he had a really big camera with a bazooka-like lens while I only had a small pathetic shirt-pocket digital, I was clearly a much lesser breed of photographer and should vamoose immediately to the spot he had suggested, or better still fling myself off the cliff thereby selflessly making an immediate improvement to the world of photography. I stood my ground and he soon sulked off.

I don't mean to make fun of photography enthusiasts generally. Clearly, all that equipment and attention to the fine detail of the various settings yields a better result. And a large lens can reach down into a scene and extract a picture with a clarity and depth of field that a small digital camera cannot hope to emulate. But I couldn't help wondering how applicable the 80:20 rule must be to this situation, and how many of the photos taken with all those sophisticated bulky cameras would end up being displayed only on computer or TV screens.

Sunset came soon after to the Tiger Mouth Terrace and cameras clicked from all directions. This was the view of views. This massive terrace covered the mountainsides and valley floor, and in the few minutes before the sun disappeared behind a distant ridge the whole scene took on the appearance of a sea of molten lava. Again it was difficult to believe that those thousands of thin black lines in the vast interlocking pattern below were walls separating successive ponds stepping relentlessly down the mountainside and across the valley floor.

The Yuanyang Rice Terraces of Yunnan are certainly one of the most spectacular sights in the whole of China. Exquisite. Unmissable. Unforgettable.

Winter in the South
The wind started howling last night, banging against the metal shutters and whistling as it skidded under the front door, reminding me that it *is* still winter, even in the south. Not that I really needed reminding; staying in a beach resort in the off-season offers clear enough clues with shuttered up seaside establishments and other shops closed for a month-long vacation.

The town of Santa Maria is pretty, but also pretty small. The main pedestrian street, called the Corso, is lined with shops and cafes and while most of them are open year round, their hours are much more relaxed than during the high season months when the place is packed. Can't say that I blame them; when you put in long hours for three straight months, take the chance to kick back when it comes along. When we were looking for a connector cable to hook up the DVD to the television, for example, the first shop didn't have what we needed but directed us up the street to another electronics store, cautioning us, "he probably isn't there yet, though. He will open around 10:30 or 11:00." Va bene.

The overflowing swimming pool is another sign. While early winter is usually rainy, everyone we've encountered so far is bemoaning the much wetter-than-normal season they've been experiencing. I guess the unremitting rains we had in Ascoli had circled around to this area, too. In fact, they are telling us that they haven't seen rain like this is 40 years. There have been an abundance of rockslides in the hills above town, in some cases stranding residents out of their homes when the roads become impassable. What do you do when you can't get home after work? Boh. (See photos of the wash-outs here.)

Today I'm watching the gray storm over the sea while listening to the wind, catching up on email and projects while nursing a cup of tea. But at least it is a warm wind. It may still be winter, but it is definitely milder than we've experienced in a few years, and being able to watch the weather fronts as they skirt the coast is a new experience. We can see waves breaking in front of a lighthouse located on an isola in the distance. Very cool.

Now where did I put those biscottini? They'd go nicely with my tea.

Mix Funny Pictures

Is he micheal?


amazin make up skill

Morocco: the veil by the scandal which came
The film "Love veiled" arouses the anger of an Islamist MP

A veiled young woman doctor discovers love in the arms of beautiful Hamza. Scandal! The first feature film by Aziz Salmy, veiled Amours, provoked the ire of Islamist MP Abdelbari Zemzmi, which argues at length for the newspaper outright ban of the film. The MP, who has not seen fit to watch the film, denouncing "a call to abandon the veil."

"I want to provoke debate," said Moroccan director Aziz Salmy when presenting his first feature film, Amours veiled, out of competition at the International Film Festival of Marrakech (14 to 22 November). A film that aims to lift the veil on a section of the Moroccan society, these young thirties who succeeded socially, and remain torn between their professional ambitions and the temptation to tidy family life in the shadow of a protective and caring man. Batoul, the film's heroine, a doctor of 28 years, after a conservative middle-class family, finds love in the person of the beautiful Hamza. It can be then taken up in the whirlwind of love, giving for the first time a man in defiance of social conventions.

"An illegal"

In terms of debate, the feature film by Aziz Salmy has provoked the wrath of the member and preacher Abdelbari Zemzmi, the Renaissance and Virtue Party, which was once the film's release, melted statements in the press to denounce the immorality assumed. It is not enough to express his disagreement, the man repeatedly called for a ban on its distribution. "I will call upon the Minister of Communication for the ban of the film, and now I ask the Government to shoulder its responsibilities," he ignited on the columns of Aujourd'hui le Maroc, January 9. This has boosted the member? "This girl has a young man with an illegal, which results in pregnancy [...] and some sequences of the film show veiled girls smoking hookah." According to the parliamentary qu'Amours veiled message wants to move "is not logical or legal, because the girl wearing the veil has no intention to carry out his religious duty, as n 'any other Muslim who makes his prayer, giving alms, fasting or doing. " In sum, the member, "the film conveys a call to abandon the veil."

"I am talking about a particular case"

The director Aziz Salmy, which states that the dissemination of the film has been allowed by the Moroccan Cinematographic Center, is for its part forced to defend his film on the ground of morality. "In my film, I spoke with one woman, the special case of a certain category of women, and I do not generalize. This is the story of a woman who can not reconcile his love life and his religious life, between modernity and conservatism, between the divine and the carnal, "he said in an interview with the same newspaper. He added: "The purpose of my film is not to make the moral and even less polemics. For me, the purpose of cinema is to put the problems of society and create a positive debate. And then the story of a woman no one model. As a director, I choose interesting stories and characters complex. "

The output of the member Abdelbari Zemzmi calling for outright censorship of a film, not surprise overseas extent the kingdom of Morocco. The man is known for his extreme positions. He had previously sparked outrage by refusing the status of "martyr" in Ben Barka, Moroccan opponent treating on Morocco weekly columns of "renegade" who has earned his murder because he was against communism and the monarchy. In any case, the controversy around Amours veiled, Aziz Salmy, is likely to serve as a promotional campaign, as was the case for Marrock, Leila Marrakchi, a few years ago. This should once again avoid the criticism of the aesthetic of the film.