Under the Radar

Or, in the words of big brother: "Sanka, are you dead, mon?"

Nope.

Just took an early Lent and fasted blogging for a month, I guess--though I'm guessing I won't be getting much credit for fasting when it was completely unintentional. Thankfully, grace being a gift and all, you can profit greatly from things for which you are not responsible.

Work in Progress

...It's not just a personal description! I upgraded my Blogger account this weekend, which set the ball rolling for all sorts of innovations--including a subscription to Google Reader, which gives you a constantly updated summary of all your blogs, selected news feeds, Daily Show videos, and, to my great joy: podcasts. It's wonderful. And, as you can see on the left-hand bar, single click republication of the comic, profound, or merely interesting to the blog sidebar. So I don't have to login and publish everytime I want to share something cool with you, my iFriends.

And, work is progressing slowly on my most pressing project, that of paying bills. I reached a landmark 60$ surplus from last paycheck, which led to splurging...Big Al's Pizza! Soon, perhaps, I will be able to afford a new alternator for Sera, and I'll be able to go on ambulance calls without huffing and puffing my way down Centerville road just to watch Houghton 8 go screaming off without me. In the meantime, this blog will just have to be "Notes from the footpath (of doom!)". The quickest route downcampus from Babbit House involves a sketchy footbridge, a slippery slope, and lots and lots of ice and snow. Of course, my morning run to work is always rushed as usually end up snoozing the alarm clock until about 0450 (that's am) for my 0500 shift and end up half-dressed, blitzing out the door into the predawn chill (chill: your face won't move because it's below zero and the wind is busily coating it with snow that feels like sand. from a sand blaster. except really cold.)

I missed Tanzania for a few weeks, but, hey, now I walk with that proud Western-New-York snow-and-wind hunch that says, I'm too sexy for my parka, too sexy for my parka, too sexy by farka... It's good to be here--between the lovely E, experimenting with a hundred variations on rice, potatoes, beans, and other low-budget food made mighty by the currying process, and a few good housemates (here and here) and an eccentric and thoroughly enjoyable neighbor, life is good for Houghton's newest Community Member. I ski on the ski hill, get movies out of the library, take odd jobs lumbermilling and driving, keep things Safe and Secure, and play EMT volunteer-style.

And I screw up my sleep schedule. It's well past my bedtime. I spent four days without sleeping more than four hours in a row at any given time, and then I slept a lot during an afternoon, and I'm still working at five a.m. Except when I'm working at five p.m. Except when I'm working not at all. So, I stay up late and experiment.

For instance, adjacent to my Google Reader share feed (on the left) is a feed from an old blog that I've converted. I post whatever catches my fancy from the wide world of the internet via gmail to the old waybread blog, which should theoretically feed immediately to the sidebar on the new reified-beans blog. And then you can share my stream of (i)consciousness.

In the meantime, revel in this amazing song from a Scottish artist I discovered via NPR's All Song's Considered, 1 February 2007. It's James Yorkston's "Woozy on Cider," and it perfectly fit the mood Saturday at around 620, as I sat in the new superfancy conference room on the new 3rd floor of the Library, watching the sun rise deep and orange and vast across high, mottled clouds on a still campus where not a soul's step broke the newfallen snow...

London-Heathrow

garrrrr...

it's a long hike from Terminal 4 to Terminal 3. But, hey, the ticket counter lady just bumped me from the 4 pm flight to the noon flight, so I don't have a seven hour layover. Hooray! Instead I have five hours in DC. No biggie...maybe they can bump me up to an earlier connection in DC and I'll get to Rochester before Wednesday...that would be nice.

all right. This is expensive. And I'm officially broke. And going home...weather.com said 58 (F) in DC, and I said groovy, that will help me transition a little between sunny Africa and not-so-sunny America. And then I looked up Rochester, where, apparently, it's not enough to be 25 (F) (and thus below freezing) but also adjusted with wind chill down to 16 (F). Brrr....unpacking the wool hat already. Puttin' my thermals on midflight.

Well. I hope for a good movie over the Atlantic! I'm a-goin' hoooooome! Woooohooo!

Not Dead Yet!

Well. I'm back. The sky is yellow-grey outside, thunder is rumbling off the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, and it is freakin' pouring buckets of rain outside. My experience with electricity this trip has not granted me great faith is the Tanzanian electrician. It is with trepidation (and faith!) that I continue writing, because it's been a while since I was able to sit down and actually use the internet.

pause for anecdote

Cousin Kevin, an Electrical Engineering major, works for Catepillar. My father, also an EE man, has been wiring various things around the (American) home for thirty-plus years.

Dad: Youch!

Kevin: Wow. The entire frame of this washing machine appears to be carrying current! But you only get zapped where the enamel's worn off!

Dad: Yeah, I noticed that...

Dan: I had the same problem in an Internet Cafe in Iringa. And, come to think of it, the same thing happened with an inverter we were using to power this drill.

Dan, lacking the proper degree, demonstrates his lack of appropriate jargon. He worked for an electrician, once

Dan: I think it has something to do with a leak from hot to ground.

Dad: No, it couldn't be that. That amount of current running to the ground wire would blow the fusebox.

Dan: Ummm...Dad...That's assuming they actually ran a ground wire to the ground. I've walked around this house a few times and I haven't seen one.

Dad: This system's not grounded?

Kevin: I don't understand how people don't die all the time from all these blatant code violations!

Dan and Jeff, in unison: No, no. People do die all the time from these blatant code violations. If there's really a code...

end anecdote

So did I mention it's raining? I think hurricanes are hitting the East Coast of Africa or something. It's the wettest and longest "Short Rainy Season" they've had in a long time. Which made our safari in Ngorongoro crater quite, quite fun. :) We played in the mud with a Land Rover and a Land Cruiser. The mud gods were pleased. I drove the hairiest bit in the 'Rover, and grinned like a banshee all the way. Good, good times...

Well. Synopsis:

a) Settlers and Risk are fun and all that--but. The game of the year is definitely Bohnanza, the bean-farmer simulation card game! It's wicked cool!
b) Bottle-cap poker is now a family safari tradition. Cokes are worth one, Fanta are five, Stoneys and Sprites are tens and beers are twenty!
c) My beer-tasting tour-de-force has concluded. First place: Tusker. Of course. But it's good to know the reputation is well-earned. It even cured a nasty upset stomach. Close seconds: Castle Lager's Milk Stout, a surprisingly good twist on Guinness, and Savannah Dry Hard Cider, with points for the most aesthetically pleasing bottle.
d) Tarangire Safari Lodge has a breathtaking view. And breathtakingly good food. When they weighed me at the doctor's office the other day, I was "only" down to 74 kilograms...still a few pounds over my pre-Tanzania weight, after a week under the tender ministrations of some exotic intestinal houseguests. I attribute it entirely to that amazing buffet.
e) 4100 Tanzanian Shillings (about $3.80) got me a doctor consult, lab tests, and two prescriptions to put an end to the digestive tyrrany of both (yeah baby! go big or don't go at all!) soldier worms and bacterial dysentery. I've always like the way "dysentery" sounds...rolls nicely off the tongue. I spent the first week of the new year abed (or atoilet) with all sorts of exciting sympoms. Good times. Now I have two more diseases to chalk off my life list!

I would upload pictures, but they're not working. And dusk is falling, and I don't have a lamp for my bike. Cheerio!

hey, look at me, i am here

nipo masumboni...I am in Masumbo, quite possibly my favorite place in the world. We went swimming yesterday, in the morning when there were no clouds. The sun shone beautifully on the massive boulders and ruddy currents of the Mto Ruaha. Paul and I clambered around on the rocks and boulder-surfed the main current and I partook of the opportunity to impart a little well-needed soap upon mine armpits. Life is good. We've (and by we I mean Paul, with a little kibbitzing on my behalf) been putting the finishing touches on the new director's house, and hobnobbing in the evenings with Iringa's finest and dining alternately between the Jacaranda and the Hasty Tasty Too.

It's quite phenomenal to see what has happened in the two years since I was here last. Abbas has married, Masumbo is getting a (admittedly slow) wireless internet hub, the solar water purification program (using cast-off plastic bottles and corrugated tin) is in full-swing, the craft shop has expanded fourfold and has a coffeeshop that serves panini, the bat-box program is getting onto its feet, Andy and Suzie got another baby and the closest thing anyone locally has ever seen to a Vespa...

And other things haven't changed at all. The night watchmen still chill out by the kitchen and are still good for both laughter and good conversation. The river is still the ultimate playground. And, oddly enough, people in the Iringa marketplace still remember me...and are as sharp bargainers as ever.

It's good to be here. Good people, good places, good food, good times.

on the road again...

I love travelling long distances--it's not just seeing new things, it's taking your entire world and routine apart and being free to dilly-dally and dawdle and mess with it so long as you don't miss a flight.

And, you get to experience random things. Like, for instance, being chastised by a guy who barely spoke English for sleeping while wearing my shoes at the interfaith prayer room in London's Heathrow Airport...a drab little cube with an arrow pointing to Mecca and a bench where weary travellers like myself can practice their own form of contemplative prayer. I thought it was awesome that I got to slumber there and hear/see the Arabic poetry in motion that is daily Muslim prayer. I get the impression that the drab cube way off the beaten track exists so that faithful Muslims who work the airport's various menial jobs can excercise their spiritual duty of daily prayers (replete with foot and hand washing, rugs, and vigorous Sunna/Shia debates) without freaking out international travellers. It's a far cry from the quite posh "Meditation Room" here at Amsterdam's Schiphol.

By the way. I learned last night that if you use the loo's next to the exclusive executive travel lounges (where economy class people like me are not allowed) you can score yourself all sorts of perks. Like free showers. Hot showers, with no time limits (granted, there are no towels if you aren't a paying customer, but who needs towels when you are a well-equipped, moisture-wicking hiker sort?)

On the downside, if you spend the night in a Dutch airport, you will be serenaded nonstop by bad/cheezy/sappy American pop music. It's their version of elevator music. Grrrr...need Gorillaz!

Well, I'm almost out of time. Next stop: Tanzania. cheerio!

weee heee!

I'm out of here! See ya in January!

Well. As the newest member of Houghton College's crack security force, I am once more enjoying the perks of being paid to sit around waiting for stuff to happen. But now I have free, unlimited access to the internet--the perfect place to while away hours without the needless fear of being productive or useful.

And since I've finally got access to a computer less than five years old, I've been happily introduced to incredible time-wasting power of Google Earth. Never before has a mere computer program come so close to actually making me nauseous. If you start, for example, with **** Centerville Drive, Houghton NY 14744--my current living address--you will see satellite photographs dimly displaying the foresty setting of the northern "suburbs" of Houghton, NY as witnessed from a simulated altitude of 4,485 feet (a little under a mile up). Type in "Moshi, Tanzania" and the earth falls away beneath you as you soar, digitally, to a simulated altitude of 1,503 miles in less than two seconds. The earth moves beneath you as you move eastward, crossing the Atlantic ocean in the time it takes you to sneeze, and suddenly you are falling, quite rapidly, crossing all those tiny West African countries, gaining speed as the Democratic Republic of the Congo speads out beneath you, falling even faster as you move over Lake Victoria and the massive Mt. Kilimanjaro fills your vision...

Actually, your computer screen. At any rate, your descent slows as the land becomes blurry and green, as if your eyes were sparing you your impending impact, a moment frozen in terrified agony in your head. And you are there. 7,657.23 miles away, as the crow flies if he happens to be a crow capable of cross-oceanic endeavors and feels so inclined. It's quite disorienting, at first.

And, in six days, this old crow, charting a course from Buffalo, NY to Washington DC(282.5 miles), across the Atlantic Ocean to London, the UK (3,672.31 miles), take a short layover (6 hours), then hop to Amsterdam (the shortest leg yet at 230.22 miles), followed by the longest layover in the trip (16 hours, overnight), and then embark on the longest flight (a whopping 4,275.65 miles) to Kilimanjaro International Airport, Moshi, Tanzania, arriving on the third day of his sojourn, logging an extra 45.13 miles overland (as even the average crow could fly, with proper motivation) and an additional 803.45 air miles (should the airline pilots choose to follow the incredibly overachieving crows and their ridiculously straight lines).

Ahhh. Thanks to all who chose to contribute their opinions and the ever-accommodating Amazon.com, I will be accompanying myself with good reading. Thanks to none of you, I'll be provisioning myself with granola bars, oatmeal, crackers, cheese, and a beef stick for the duration of what will be, if all goes according to schedule, something like 52 straight hours of airline flights and layovers. Note to self: bring the nalgene bottle.

Well. Cheerio! I'm off to explore blog-land and try to find Mollie's blog again. (hint, hint...Mollie). Until next shift, cheerio!

okay, so my phone died and I have an appointment with traffic court to explain why I haven't fixed the muffler on my truck which is currently immobile due to a faulty alternator, so this will be very short:

1. and most important. I am going to have a lot of empty time in my life soon and reading will be very important. I'm putting in an order to Amazon by the end of the week. What should I buy/borrow/read? Stipulations: absolutely nothing involving analyses of postmodernism and/or Evangelical Christianity.

2. no, it's not a sin to not feel as I feel; but it is a sin not to feel at all, or to feel only what it is safe or accepted to feel. Remember the ringing condemnation of Christ: We played a dance for you, but you did not dance. We played a dirge for you, and you would not mourn. Mindless obedience or the heartless participation of a safely detached observer, both are missing something vital. If you can witness something beautiful or sorrowful without being moved, isn't there something disturbingly wrong with you? Something problematic with your soul?

Furthermore, there are sins that are not individual: corporate sins of a church that emphasizes dogmatic intellectual conformity over freedom in Christ--freedom to explore, learn, grow, experience, and express in the guidance of the Holy Spirit the fullness of a unique and awe-inspiring human life. A fullness that goes far beyond attaining correct theology or learning how to go through the motions of some particular Christian community.

A church where people are incapable of independent response to something beautiful and human because they have been trained into passively waiting for someone in authority to tell them how to act appropriately is a broken, dysfunctional, lifeless church. If you have to curtail or conform your actions because of the sanctions or standards of a church, isn't there a problem with that church?

Conformity to Christian social structures is not holiness; in the words of Flannery O'COnnor, to be holy is "to be specially, super-alive:" full of the grace of God, and participating fully in the image of God--the creative and oft-surprising image of God that is reflected with special treasure differently and uniquely in each and every human being.

There were at least five people at that concert who, well schooled in the consequences of being nonconformist in Christian communities, disappointedly sat down because they were the only ones standing in a crowd who stood and sat as if someone was holding up signs: "applause," "stand," "clap," "sit," "heel," "stay," "good boy, have a biscuit."

I'm not saying that everyone there should have participated or involved themselves in that particular moment. But they came and provided an environment where they remained disinterested observers while musicians laid their souls bare with incredible grace, beauty and energy; and I find their response tremendously callous and fearful.

Callous hearts worry me, and strong social structures that encourage and discipline (to use Foucoult's words) hearts in conformity or quick obedience to the status quo terrify me. The church should have noting to do with these things. The church is where people come alive in Christ. If music and poetry cannot move you--either to mourn or to dance or even to lift your eyes to heaven and not see whether the people next to you are standing or sitting or leaving--what can?

I don't think it's just a matter of taste--that the polite, detatched spectators in this moment would be fully awake and alive in another context. I think there's some genuine soul pathology at work here. And God wants souls to be alive and involved, sensitive and able to percieve and respond to people in a myriad of ways and expressions.

Well, I could go on. But the pathos of my daily life is calling. Actually, not calling, since my phone won't work. Alas. I'll be in Buffalo next week, working overtime for the holidays, and if I don't call--sorry. no phone...

wow

just got back from an internet-less week in Buffalo. put in 86 hours of ambulance work in six days...and a Jars of Clay concert.

conclusion: i love EMS, so long as I'm not burnt out. and Jars so helps you not be burnt out...pretty stinkin' incredible show. BUT...I was absolutely furious at the tepid audience response. I have decided that it is a sin to pay someone stand up in front of you and pour out their heart and energy and emotion and just sit and watch and refuse to answer with the same heart and energy and emootion. The whole audience just stood there. And sat down on cue the moment a slower song began. It's like they were totally incapable of experiencing passion or emotion publically without someone telling them what to do: stand, sit clap, yell, sway from side to side, move around...but only on cue. And only when everybody else is too.

It's wierd. I guess I got pretty indignant...work makes me pretty hardened, pretty deadened, pretty numb. We work in an efficient health-care machine and we are expected to be clinical and detached. It's like working with inks or motor oil or concrete or manure--it gets under your fingernails and in your hair and imbeds itself in your skin and you start smelling like death all the time.

And then something like Jars of Clay or Kate York comes along and sings and dances over you like clean pure spring water and you know what it meant to fishermen and camel drovers and dusty-street-worn tax collecters to have their feet washed by a man who's eyes were everything not deadened and stale. You know you need it, just to stand and let something real and human and intimate wash over you so you can feel something again, anything again, like a real breathing person and not some machine.

It's just plain wrong to see something beautiful or heartbreaking and appreciate it detatchedly. There's no way to avoid it in the information age, with the overwhelming flow of more information than can possibly be attended to. But when you pay someone to come and strip themselves (metaphorically) naked on the stage and be intimately human in the most powerful manner possible, and just sit and watch, that's wrong. Dead wrong. Detachment will kill your soul so fast it's unbelievable. And a little salvation is right there saying, uncross your arms, shake your feet, stop looking for the right cues and right responses, and live in this beautiful moment. Breathe or dance or close your eyes or sign along or something, please give me a sign that your heart is still beating! Respond to beauty and sorrow, feel beautiful or broken yourself through identification with something human, participate somehow for the salvation of your soul...it may not feel safe because it requires creativity and initiative and risk-taking...someone may ridicule you, or despise you, or see you vulnerable, or worst of all you may see yourself in all your glory and weakness...

but the smug alternative is so much worse.

thought of the day:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." --C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Reason #8 to live in Upstate NY

Yeah, baby. The Cronks have (had) a plethora of less-than-beautiful apples in their backyard from the old apple tree. First we grabbed a handy tennis racket and taught them the meaning of...tennis raquet; then we got ol' Bertha out and really put the fear of God in those apples. That's not apple you see exploding off the head of that driver.

That's fear.

word.

and Happy Birthday Nathan. I'm taking my car off the road.
--


and for the record, Chuckles, NO! Dear God no! I do not work for Houghton Custodial. Oh. You said Maintenance. No. Not yet. That would be cool though. I landscape with Creekside Landscaping, a.k.a. Allan Yanda. And pick up odd ambulance shifts in nearby Springville. And cut down trees with Glen Falkhe. And do odd jobs for pretty much anyone who will pay. And maybe in a few weeks, I will wear the grey of the faithful Houghton Safety and Security. We shall see. I'm becoming a bona fide community member. See also: bona fide day laborer. Yeah!

more thoughts (no bills!)

Hmmmm....

Watched "Failure to Launch" last night. It's ridiculously awesome if you re-watch portions with the French language overdubs. Especially the "Nekkid Room." My house is totally going to have a naked/library room. With a reading hammock. And a minibar. Terry Bradshaw's in pretty good shape for an old man...good call, Jeff. I'd move downstreet in a heartbeat. Find me a job.

As for dragons, I'm all for slaying them, and I'm all for the Shire. I think I'm game for going out and slaying them in groups. Not groups of dragons--groups of dragon slayers. In other dragon-slaying news, I'm nine pages into the uber-project. Maybe another seven to go. It's lookin' good. The secret, I've found, is Oreos and good Pollywogg Holler berry wine. And late nights.

I had a good discussion with a beautiful woman yesterday. Is sin action, or an attitude of the heart? The seven deadlies are all attitudes of the heart--Rage, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Greed. (thanks to little Wetherby for the help on the last three...not my specialties :) If the sin comes out, it evidences the heart infested with death--and in need of salvation. Following that line, sometimes a little active sin is a good thing. Like a nasty case of stomach cramps, it evidences the need for healing--salvation. Our salvation is not gained or lost--it is a series of losses and gains. We lose our lives, we get them back.

"As a man dies many times before he's dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last." -Godric

And I wasn't cutting a line between my friends in the world captivated by lies, and myself outside and redeemed. I am struggling not with necessarily straight-out lies, but influences, values, the ideas that drive my generation. They're mine as much as they are theirs, and they are my cultural context--both struggle and joy. I like being a twenty-first century American twenty-something...but like any other place or time, it's got questions to be answered and difficulties to be overcome. Got a need for the wind and wisdom of God, just like every generation.

Well said, Katrina. Reminds me of a few shiningly great of examples of artists who escape the status quo and give a little time to those not single teens or twentysomethings, who I shall celebrate here.

Cheers go out to the artists of Iron & Wine, for love songs like "Naked As We Came" celebrating the romance of those married with children. And the writers of Firefly and Serenity for integrating Zoe and Wash and the various and sundry stresses of married life into the tale of life on a starfaring freighter. And, of course, The Flaming Lips and Death Cab For Cutie for making the theme of love in the face of death O-So-Trendy right now with "What Sarah Said" ("Love is watching someone die/Who's gonna watch you die?") and "Do You Realize" ("we're floating in space...that happiness/makes you cry...that everyone you know/one day/will die?")

And, right back atcha Jeff, you should watch "Friends with Money," a really awesome and very NPR (so trendy right now) film about the lives of three married well-to-do couples and their unmarried and not-so-well-to-do friend. Which includes the coolest married couple I can remember being portrayed on film, with the chipper husband blissfully unaware that all of his friends thinks he's gay. Good flick.

So. Dr. Tawfiq Hamid is here, advocating peaceful Islam, and I am off to pretend to be a prospective student in class because it's too cold and wet to cut lawns today. I think it's becoming a trend. I shall call it, "winter." Just signed up for a few shifts driving the old ambulance. Good bye, lawnmowing, I shall miss the paychecks.

thoughts after bills

so bills are obnoxious--glad all I have to worry about is the phone and the student loans. elsewise I might go mad.

a quick thought before I head back out into the un-wired-world.

I have a lot of friends (guys and gals, but more guys than gals) who are late twenty-something, single, living at home or on their own, Playstation and X-Box owners who simply don't want to grow up.

I don't mean that in a derogatory way--it's just that my generation of guys has no real desire to marry, settle down, have a career, become a grown-up. I think that's why one of my friends just got a divorce and a new girlfriend.

We're the type who have mid-life crises at twenty-five. We get divorced and start hitting the bars again at thirty. Maybe because we grew up being told that grown-up life is boring, and hence grown-up's lives are over. Life, if it was to be lived, was to be lived in that hedonistic aura of high school and college individualistic excitement. At least, that's what every marketing image we've ever seen has told us.

And now they're telling us that we can be youthful and accumulate toys and have adventures and never settle down or accumulate responsibilities. Because once you have responsibilities and commitments you are no longer free. life is over.

Of course, without responsiblities and/or commitments, life is pretty much meaningless. But we haven't realized this yet. We keep wondering where we've been sold wrong--why we feel disappointed with our marriages, jobs, where the excitement and feelings of significance and importance went. Maybe they're over there, around the corner, if I could be free I would be able to live it up, to taste the excitement again...

huh. It's not a clear idea so much as a feeling I had yesterday while moving dirt from point A to point B and thinking about why one of my childhood youth group friends is getting a divorce. But I have work to do, so I don't have time to pound out something really incisive and profound. Just found it interesting to think about twenty-something angst and flailing in terms of the mid-life crisis.

When you're raised in a materialistic paradise where everyone is told everyday by image-based advertising that glamour and excitement and wealth and sensuality are your birthright, and the good life is there for anyone who can go out there and buy it, and you don't feel it, feeling left out can be really devastating. You could be happy and fulfilled and instead you're feeling cheated and held back.

You were meant to be larger than life; treating yourself to good things, being on the cutting edge of teachnology or music of something significant, being someone impressive, suave, exciting and hip and involved, oh yeah--these are the stuff of the good life, real life. Think about MTV's The Real World: the hijinks and instensity of high school and college are real life. Dating isn't a preparation or precursor to real adult life--it is real life, the only life exciting enough to warrant attention. Exploring your identity through new musical, emotional, sexual, stylistic or ideological experiences isn't a stage in growing up to a stable adult--it's all there is to life.

If it isn't epic, it isn't living. If you're settled, you're boring. If you aren't mobile, you're dead. Growing up is the act of becoming irrelevant, too consumed in commitments to be free and wild. We have nothing to look forward to because being young and free was supposed to be the best time of our lives, and we particularly blessed for being born American in the golden age of Living It Up For Me.

There's no glamour to growing up--nothing to look forward to, no really exciting prospects to something like marriage or commitments. Sure, it's a lie once you think about it--but how can you stop and think about it when it's so widely assumed? And who is proclaiming any sort of desireable alternatives? Smug, boring evangelicals?

well. brain vomit. I wish I had time to edit. oh well. cheers!

Road Trip! (lette)

Took a few days off to play a coffeeshop with Hiram in Lancaster and visit Timmie and Mollie in Philly! (I only regret that we did not see Dave Lilley...)

And, since the boss is out of town this week, I'm out of work. Hooray for Lost Season Two (holy crap stressful ending batman!) We missed the Season Three premier by an hour because we broke for dinner before watching the Season Two finale...bummer. You can't watch a season premier when you're totally excited about the last season's season finale. Have to see if we can catch it on rerun or iTunes or something.

so. I have to go do office work. but for your enjoyment (if blogger doesn't mess with me): pictures!


"Dance the spears with me, dark one!" If you look close you can see Mollie's not-quite-bemused disbelief in the background.


So this is the museum of art where Rocky runs up and down the stairs while getting in shape to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger", and they put this statue of him up in the middle of the steps, and then everybody said, dude, Rocky isn't art, so they took the statue down, and then all the tourists complained, so they put it back, but this time in a discrete corner so that the artsy fartsy types wouldn't be insulted and the tourist types could get their pictures. but that's unimportant. important: I'm rockin' awesome. A frickin' tank. Rock Out Me!



Ummnm. Hi? She likes to dance. And I have a cool hat.



And, hey why not pay a little homage to karate kid, too...you can't see Timmie doing the same thing next to me, while people are trying to take their wedding pictures with us in the background. Yes. Wedding pictures. Four separate weddings rolled up to take pictures in front of the museum. And with Rocky. What can you say? It's Philly...

well. hello.

so, that nasty habit of breathing persists--and a persistent hacking cough, as well. i am well enjoying an established life and routine; of course, this means it's about to be rudely interrupted.

Alex the Scott is no longer here, and that makes us sad. For a few short weeks, he graced our pantry (it makes a nice visitor's quarters, except for the stepping over bodies to get to the morning Cheerios) with good looks, good cheer, good music, and good conversation. it is fitting, i suppose, that on his last night here we were up to two-thirty a.m. tracing the evolution of American society, generation by generation, from the Great Depression to the present. 'twas most excellent.

i like being settled in finally. it gives me time and energy to diversify. and diversification is diversion most excellent! like spending a few hours in the pool with paddlesports last night. it's nice to know that not only do i still have my kayak roll, i somehow developed the ability to handroll my kayak in the several years since my last attempts. Charlie was impressed. my arms were angry. they had to weed-whack for six hours straight and then i told them it was time to shake, paddle and roll. silly arms. maybe i'll teach them what's what and go rock climbing tonight.

oh. and exciting news! i'm going to be an uncle again! hooray! and, my brother and sister-in-law might have the little (guy? girl?) in Tanzania...so I might get to visit Tanzania next summer and see the newest Holcomb!

Bated...and Switched

oooh, what a surprise! overcast and drizzly rain. again.

no lawnmowing today!

as previously metioned, i continue to pass Leonard St. and wonder if Paul and Kat are home and whether or not I can bum dinner and a beer off them, only to be pulled short at the empty realization that they are gone. there is a sense of loss.

but there is a great balance. last night, on a meander through the coffeeshoppe, a young lady caught my eye, grinned, and said hello. being of tremendous mental agility and posessing the response times of a caffienated leopard, I gave her a grin, a nod, chalked it up to freshman uncertainty and my own commanding presence.

four-and-one-half steps later, as i caught a chair leg with my left toe and began a graceful in-flight path reorientation, my astounding powers of perception indicated that I should, in fact, recognize this person.

several minutes of sorting later, with surgical precision i deduced that i definitely should know this girl. from somewhere. earlier.

and then i observed with the keenest discernment--the Ruaha National Park sticker on the laptop computer! aha!

i should know this person from Tanzania.

Tanzania. Tanzania...

Tanzania Program...

[click...click...click...click...fizzle......flatline beep.............]

[click...]

"Hiram...is that Chera M from Tanzania?"

"why yes dan. i think it is."



so. we lost Paul and Kat to Tanzania, but we got Chera. And, she recognized me in a moment of looking up from her studying, after an absence of two years, somehow picking me out of the hundreds of students who have revolving-doored through the campus next door to their home over the past eight years of Tanzania programs. pretty impressive.

and if you haven't caught on, Hiram Ring and Alex Scott are in town, and Hiram and I put on a little guitar-and-djembe concert in Houghton's coffee shop. it rocked out. we rocked out. something. it was a grand ole time. if you haven't heard Hiram, he's the Jack Johnson of Western PA. and Afghanistan. Folksy, bluesy, swingin', his lyrical talents are by turns honest, poetic, and fun. definitely a cut above your standard coffeehouse share, and two or three cuts above your standard Christian coffeehouse share for depth of lyricism and creativity.

see Hiram Ring Dot Com and give a listen. My personal picks are "Play Switch", "To Be A Swallow," "Breathe Deep," a sea shanty entitled "Last Tide," and the one about the car...

check him out!

even more transient...

well. with or without internet access, days and weeks dreamily meander by; we are now in my favorite season after spring. warm summer days, cool, star-filled evenings, and deep, cold, tucked-into-the-sleeping-bag nights. the grass is still green, and the trees are still leaf-clad, the creeks are still burbling and splashable, and next to all the quiet greens and browns the threat of winter grayness seems intangible and silly.

so the days of late summer roll by, marked by the difference in dinner's, or the excitement of a movie or a game or the visit of a friend. or by the leaving of friends--i am not excellent at goodbyes--I did not linger long enough with Paul and Katrina before they embarked for Tanzania, and now they have departed. Houghton is duller now, knowing that I cannot stop by their balcony for tea and dark chocolate with little witticisms on the wrappers.

but the days continue their meander, and the little routines of living in day-to-day commitment to people and geography are pure grace--space created through proximity for personality, personality and life, life and transformation: and I am become a person again.

ahhhhh...

see, the great thing about the life of a vagabond is all the unpaid vacation time...

Upward Bound is done, finished off with a splendid banquet. I actually got to sit back and enjoy last weekend instead of trying to resolve staff conflict or sort out some kind of intervention strategy for bad study habits or prep for another week. The Properts were away on vacation, so I got a dog and a house with a beautiful view, too. And a DVD player. Ah, happy.

I'm a little sad-faced about it though. Those were good students. I didn't get to know them nearly as well as I wanted to. I will miss them...

They are a pretty unique community, these Upward Bounders--they inhabit a place where they are allowed to be their normal teenage selves in an environment shaped by and infused with Christianity which welcomes them to come and build their own creative community without having to conform to Christian norms.

Basically, it rocks out. You can be part of the transforming work of Christ in community without all the nasty expectations of conformity that make the church boring and miserable.

Funny, Yesterday felt like the most relaxing day of the summer, and it was the most productive of them all. A day of discoveries:

-the awesomeness of Feta Cheese on Pollywogg Holler Pizza
-a clear, cold spring on the other side of the Genesee flowing with water that is so much better than Houghton-On-Tap
-Bittersweet Symphony Ice Cream at the Oramel Coffee shop
-An old, old cemetary on Cronk Hill
-Lattice Bridge
-Higgin's Hole, on my new favorite Creek in the Whole Wide World (that would be Higgin's Creek)
-Sour Green Apple Kool-Aid while chillin' with the Shaffners (finally! after a summer of hasty teatimes and IM conversations) on their front porch
-Philip Christensen is ridiculously awesome...and a putz!
-V for Vendetta is still an awesome movie.
-The habits of the woodland Shaffners in their native habitat can be quite...peculiar.

And all of that after church. I think I accomplished more living in that one day than all of last August. I like it here.

--edit--

banqueting picture: I like it here.





--edit again--
check out this guy, scroll down to "Feminism and Beer Ads"...especially if your name is Gustav.

food for thought

Casualties

You can filter the entire list for "Non-Hostile" deaths...there are quite a few ways to shorten your lifespan in this world. Even sergeants get heart attacks. Man knows not his time. But it's pretty sure to be closer in Iraq.

Also, from the news section of the same page.

Real Sex

[it's a book by Lauren F. Winner]

I was once asked what I would say to a friend whom I knew was having premarital sex; I told my interlocutor that the first step in speaking to my friends about sex was making sure that we enjoyed relationships built on top of hundreds of ordinary shared experiences--plays attended together and pumpkins carved together and accompanying one another on doctor's appointments and changing the oil together. To say this is not to side-step the question. Community doesn't come about simply by having hard, intimate conversations. Having hard, intimate conversations is part of what is possible when people are already opening up their day-to-day lives to one another."

In a nutshell, what I miss most about the Tanzania program and working with Wilderness Adventures.

yo donald miller

already there buddy--coming up on renewal for my first year's subscription!

check out what Donald Miller has to say about news magazines

ummm....it's been a crazy busy couple of weeks. any and all progress in fields other than my fourtteen Bridge students has come to a complete stop. i am exhausted.

but I got to go to the Counting Crows/Goo Goo Dolls concert last weekend, and play in Wiscoy again, and play Settlers, and Dan Sahli's been stopping by this weekend to hang out and shoot the...

oh, right, still not employing the extended vocabulary with students around. but I'm going to Buffalo this weekend for Shakespeare in the Park, and that means off-campus rules apply. hmmmm...can you say fruit of the vine?

hey, check out how ridiculously high-powered Paul's camera is. you can see individual drops of Wiscoy Creek on my face.