misadventures

I often hear people say things like, "of course that would happen to me..." and as I've thought about it, I don't know that it's really unusual to think of oneself as an outsider to the general stream of humanity. For me it's been a variety of things: being a pastor's daughter, being a Christian, being part of a unique and dynamic (and wacky?!) family, or the cultural unawareness that comes with not watching many TV shows/R-rated movies. But it can be all sorts of things for folks, I think: medical conditions, physical characteristics, family story, whatever. It's like we think if that characteristic/set of characteristics were different, life would somehow be "normal". It took me quite a while to figure out that the majority of people feel like they're part of a unique minority for some reason or another.

Life for me has been fairly uneventful lately, not particularly by my choice. I had three awesome things lined up this weekend, and it was killing me that doing one meant missing the other two: my cousin Steve got married, my church did a mini-work trip in St. Louis, and it was Canoecopia in Madison. The wedding won out, but none of the plans I had made for it to be workable came through, so I ended up figuring that it just would have been pushing it too much to go. Then I got sick Thursday, and so watched hopes of St. Louis, and then Canoecopia dissipate. The funny thing is, I really have nothing to complain about - I got to watch the Badgers/hang out with friends yesterday, catch up with Amy on the phone and go rambling with Tammy today, get my hair cut tonight, and generally just clean and get caught up on rest and stuff. This is a dilemma I often face. Who likes complainers? I'm BUMMED - for real - that I missed out on those very-cool-marvelous-awesome things! And yet, how can I possibly, remotely have any valid reason for upsetness? If any of you have figured that one out, I'd seriously love to hear it. It's like after our apartment fire: it was majorly bitey to lose pretty much everything. But within a week, due to peoples' incredible generosity and the fact that I still had a job, I was back to having more possessions than probably 80% of the world can claim. What do you do with those conflicting emotions that somehow don't average out to any one feeling or perspective?

In light of these observations, here are a couple misadventures that I thought it'd be fun to share. I've back-posted them to the dates they occurred, but I'm hoping that with all of above as disclaimer, they won't sound too complainy! Notice I'm NOT claiming that, "of course, this WOULD happen to ME"... :)

Spilt Milk

Double Negatives

spilt milk

Once upon a time, I got into buying milk in glass bottles. Tastes better, less waste, kinda cool. All went swimmingly till one time when I carelessly put two half-gallon bottles in the back footwell of the car, never dreaming that those heavy bottles might clunk together and break. They did. Well - one did anyway. It was summer and I had a heckuva time cleaning up the mess, and dealing with the smell for the next few months. I foreswore milk in glass bottles for quite a while, but it was only a matter of time before their old-fashioned charm worked its magic on me and I was back to my old ways. This time, however, I was SMARTER. I bought this really cool wooden caddy that would hold 2 bottles side by side - making it easier for me to carry them, and harder for them to smash themselves into each other. I had learned from my carelessness, and was prepared to go singing off into to the sunset, intact milk bottles in tow.
Tonight, I was in a bit of a hurry and I plunked my (full) milk bottle caddy down on top of the crocs which were residing in the back footwell of my car (notice a theme developing here??). I wasn't too worried about it, because even if they weren't perfectly stable on the floor of my car, where else could they really go? And it's not like they could hit each other being in the caddy and all, right? Well, somehow - still don't know how exactly - they managed it. I was on my way to meet my friend Linda for dinner when I turned a corner (ok, a bit abruptly), and heard an ominous (that word's for you, Tammy!) cracking sound. I got to the parking lot, opened my door with great trepidation, and sure enough - the top of one of the bottles had sheared clean away. Dang it! At least this time, most of the milk was still in the bottle, but it was a frigid, windy night, so I had a heck of a time emptying the bottle, pulling out the crocs and floor mat (trying NOT to tip them!), sopping up what I could of the mess, and regrouping myself. I can't help but wonder if the glass was a tad flimsy, because as my frozen and sticky fingers tried to pick the broken bottle up from the pavement it broke again, and again, before I could get it back into my car. I headed into the restaurant to clean up and meet Linda (who was probably wondering what happened to me!). On my way back out to my car after dinner, I noticed that my right rear tire was nearly flat; so my time spent in the cold with frozen fingers was not quite done for the night! At least this job can be done with thin gloves on, so as I sent tire guage pieces flying around, fought for supremacy with the stiff air hose, argued with the little cap thingys about whether they really wanted to be on the tire stems, and re-filled all four tires with air, my fingers were not as cold as they might have been. I came away thinking, you know, these two incidents could really make me think of this as a terrible horrible no good very bad day, but that would probably be overly dramatic. It's been a good day - with two terrible, horrible, no good very bad incidents thrown in!

simple good

a weekend with Amy, Tim, Augusta, Chris and Sherman: sleeping in, breakfast at Delta Diner, skiing, hockey, and multiple birthday parties!

a weekend with friends: browsing music shops, drinking coffee, watching basketball (Wisconsin & Lawrence!), eating Indian and Korean, and staying up till 2 playing cards!






a weekend to chill: movies & bowling with friends, skiing, powerpoint for church, more wisconsin basketball, cake baking, and an improv concert with my small group






a mini-party at work to celebrate the 1-year birthday of our learning management system

Purple Flurry

So, I tried downhill this weekend! A first, at least since I was in 8th grade or something. Before this time around, here was how I considered it in comparison with my obsession with nordic (cross country).

• lovely adrenaline rush
• expensive (gear rental. K, this one isn't exactly fair - you have to either buy or rent for x-c also. Though x-c is cheaper)
• time consuming (you know how mountains are always further away than they appear? Ski-able hills in Wisconsin are like that too. Only you can't see them at all.)
• expensive (lift ticket)
• fun (chair lifts - hooray for all things escalate-y!)
• expensive (food)
  

A few things to note: at Granite Peak, near Wausau, there is no intermediate option for skiing. Once you skip exiting the chair lift at the half-way-up station, you're beyond the point of no return. It's all black diamonds to return to ground zero. Now I've been told, and am quite prepared to believe, that black diamond runs on hills in WI are laughable compared to black diamonds in real, live mountains. However, for a complete newbie, those things are still sufficient to help you learn things about yourself you never knew. For whatever reason, it doesn't help if conditions are moderately icy, or if you throw in the thick metal support poles for the chair lift into a narrow run.

So when Linda, Javier, and I spent a day at Granite Peak, I'm happy to report no major encounters with support poles, trees, or innocent bystanders. For Linda and Javier, this wasn't even a question: they both knew their skill level, and knew enough to challenge themselves appropriately. I, on the other hand, fell heaps of times, and REALLY biffed it three times. You know, the kind where you're going tail-over-tea kettle at high speed and need to simply relax and wait it out till you slow enough to plant a ski pole and hang on for dear life. Even so, I didn't really get hurt at all, till the last one when I sprained my thumb. That time, I was going super-fast, but not overly worried about it, till - well, I'm not exactly sure what happened but suddenly I was down, head-below-feet, and ramming pretty quickly toward a group of trees I had been about to try avoiding. Javier was ahead of me and says he couldn't say what happened, exactly; all he saw was a purple splotch blurring by. (I'm not sure why, really, I had to be the only one on all the slopes all day wearing a coat that color?!!). I did slow eventually, and was able to regather myself and my wits. No clue how my thumb managed to do that to itself, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't take one more full-length run before we called it a day. Since then tooth-brushing and card shuffling have been a bit of a challenge, but given the circumstances I really don't think I have cause for complaint.

So, are you ready for the updated list, now that some experience is thrown in?

• insane lovely adrenaline rush; definitely a blast!
  
• expensive (gear rental. K, this one isn't exactly fair - you have to either buy or rent for x-c also. Though x-c is cheaper)
• time consuming (you know how mountains are always further away than they appear? Ski-able hills in Wisconsin are like that too. Only you can't see them at all.)
• expensive (lift ticket)
• fun (chair lifts - hooray for all things escalate-y! why don't they have these for x-c??)
• expensive (food)
• humbling
  
• great time with friends, great stuff to learn, and a lot less work than cross country!
  

Even with all that it has going for it, call me cheap, call me a chicken, but I'm thinking it might be a while before I next hit the slopes. Cross country is the life for me....

Then again, if you're going (and it's somewhere other than Granite Peak!), well, you know where to find me!

Chicago!

This weekend I found myself in Chicago, hanging with my buddy-from-college, Alex. Here's a pic of us from the last LU reunion. You know those lovely folks you don't stay in super-close contact with, but with whom you're always "good", and can pick up where you left off? Alex is one of those. We bummed around, ate good food, watched movies, walked around a wee bit of Chicago, and generally caught up. Two highlights for me: the Peruvian restaurant we hit Sat. night (that was a new one for me!), and La Pasadita (dang I love that place!), which we caught just before I headed out of town on Sunday. Two thumbs up for this weekend! Oh, and I might as well try for common human decency and post a 'nice' photo also:

lost things, and found. decisions. friends.

As I hear about folks losing their jobs and losing loved ones and dealing with huge, difficult life issues, I look at my own life and chide myself for not having it more together.

On a silly level: should I be glad that I found 2 Things Lost under my car seat today? Or ashamed that my life is so disorganized that I lost them in the first place - and it took me over a week to look there? While the adrenaline rush of finding something lost is really something (I can definitely identify with the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to go looking for the lost 100th), I wasn't at all sure I'd find them and felt pretty badly about it.

On a slightly more serious level: I have an ongoing struggle with balancing my decisions. This is one of the more-not-fun things about being single - it's so much more fun to make decisions with others who will also be affected by them! How much should I be volunteering/helping the community vs. having fun vs. studying? Regarding cash flow: how much should I be saving (especially in this economy), how much spending on "me", and how much giving to good causes (and which ones?). How much time should I spend alone/reclaiming my forsaken apartment/reading/working out/having fun with friends?

Well, here's hoping the decisions for today are all right: I worked, got out skiing, spent time cleaning my apartment, talked to a couple of friends on the phone, and tomorrow after work I'm heading to Chicago for the weekend to hang out with my college buddy Alex. Now it's just a matter of packing... and - just for the fun of it - getting some sleep!

Oh, and if you'd like to join me, here are a few things I'm currently praying about:
- my cousin Abby, who's dealing with miserable issues of recent surgery, questionable recovery, and a miscarriage within the past year
- my friend Linda, whose grandpa died last Friday
- my friend Cheryl, whose husband died a few weeks ago, aged 44.
- folks who have lost their jobs
- (as always!) world events
- and - a Friday morning update - my friends the Rosenes - Paula's mom died this morning.

love and focus(es)

ever have the experience where things/ideas/concepts from a variety of places all seem to converge and be related? you find out what the word "paradigm" means, and suddenly you're hearing it everywhere, and everyone you know is suddenly using it like they've been doing so all along? you get a ford focus, and suddenly everyone else has one too?

happens to me every now and then, and one thread lately has been about the concept of giving and receiving love

first, as I mentioned in my last post, my cousin abby's thoughts on unconditional love.

second, again as mentioned in my last post, rob bell's dec. 7 talk "who doesn't want in on that?". actually, overall the sermon wasn't the best i've ever heard, but some of the middle-ish bits were quite insightful: (these are from my rough translation of minutes 23-39 or so)

paul is articulating the difference between a transactional and a trinitarian understanding of love. Transaction is about debt, and obligation, owing, and repaying. It is possible to have a transactional understanding of relationships in life. Everything is run with a score card. They did this to me, I do this to them. Understand God as a God of the transaction. God is a divine accountant. Has a really big scoreboard in the sky, and wrong things are written in the left-hand column, and if you do something good, there's a chance it might offset the left. But you never really know. The Diving Accountant you will find everywhere, and deeply impacts the way we see the world. Think about if somebody invites you over for dinner, and then it's 2 or 3 months and you still haven't invited them back over. You start feeling more and more guilty. How did their act of generousity turn into a feeling of guilt? And so we're trapped in the world of the transaction. For Paul, the universe is not a transactional reality. For him, it's trinitarian. Trinitarian thought is mind blowing, you see traces of it in Philippians. For Paul, God is different from the scoreboard in the sky. Paul is saying, "you know the story of Creation... when you said yes to the grace and peace of God expressed in Christ, the same nuclear energy that was unleashed in the creation of the solar system was unleashed inside of you". So when Paul talks about salvation, for him it's about a new creation starting in you. For Paul, God is one, but God is this community of Father, Son and Spirit. God is this communal loving relationship, endlessly self-giving and receiving. It's a dance. This is what's at the base of the cosmos. Not someone waiting to show you how you've screwed things up. So when the Philippians helped Paul in his time of need, they were entering into the life of this kind of God. A tangent: marriages are in trouble when they move from trinitarian to transaction. Trinitarian relationships are when you lose track of who's giving and who's receiving. He's endlessly looking for ways to meet her needs. She's endlessly looking for ways to meet his needs. He's not keeping track. She doesn't have a scoreboard. No sense of owing. The moment it moves from trinitarian to transaction, "what have you done for me lately, baby", the relationship is in trouble. The moment in faith communities we move from trinitarian to transactional, we are in trouble. When you move to trinitarian, it's not always exactly clear who's giving, and who's receiving. Let's go back to marriages: when you think of the best marriages, and going to one of them and saying, "that's amazing how you give", the response, will be "give?! I get more than I ever give". Enough with the primal anxiety of not knowing you how stand with God: grace, and peace. Grace and peace. What I gave to you God gave to me. You gave to me, I gave to God, God gave to you. Take a great friendship and try to map who owes who. It's impossible.
There are a billion people in the world who don't have access to clean drinking water. We recently sent a team over to Rwanda training people how to build and use water filters. Look at these pictures - who's giving, who's receiving? The people with the technology and money to fly? Who's giving? Who's receiving? Is that the smile of someone who says, "you owe me". Is that the smile of someone thinking, "oh man, am I going to owe this guy". People come home saying, "I received far more than I ever gave". When you are trapped in a transactional understanding of the universe, then you have to get credit for all the good you do. When you find yourself desperate for the strokes of others to acknowledge the good you've done, that happens when you're beholden to a transactional view. Grace is different. . When you step into a triune relationship of endlessly giving peace and harmony and sacrifice, you're caught up in such joy the last thing you're thinking about is, "what am I getting out of this?".

and third, a cs lewis quote. i believe this is from The Four Loves (but it's been a while since I copied it down).

"On the natural level, we are full of the hunger to be loved, the hunger to receive family affection, erotic love, and friendship. And it might be expected that we had similarly a hunger to receive Agape. But this is untrue. There is that in the heart of every man which resists and resents Agape from his fellow creatures or even from his creator. We naturally want to be desired, to be found delightful: to satisfy worthily some hunger in others. To receive a Love which is purely a gift, which bears witness solely to the lovingness of the giver and not at all to our loveliness, is a severe mortification. We desperately need to receive such love from God, and even from our fellow creatures. But we don't naturally want to. Our necessities and our wishes are in conflict.... No sooner do we believe that God loves us, than there is an impulse to believe that He does so Not because of what He is, but because of what we are: because we are intrinsically Lovable. It is so easy to admit, but so hard really to believe that we are mirrors whose brightness is wholly derived from the sun that shines on them. Surely we think we must have a little inherent luminosity of our own."

i suppose none of this is rocket science; it's not all that far off from words i've heard since childhood. but somehow they've been resonating with me lately. i realize sometimes that God's love really isn't based on my performance, and then i forget it again. i slip into a transactional view of the world - mostly feeling guilty about all i owe to all the generous people around me - and then remember love is about both giving AND receiving. is it not funny how you can know something, and not know it, at the same time? i get it with my head, but in everyday life i find it continually elusive.

Why I'd Rather Not Blog about December

I wrote most of this when I first got back Sunday night - but have been having a brain block about finishing it.
December was a whirl. There's been gorgeous snow this year already, so there's also been plenty o' x-c skiing. Yippee! The month ended with a 1 1/2 week road trip, from which I just returned. I had a great time - and am even a tiny bit unpacked - but still not QUITE ready for the start of the work week tomorrow. I'll work on composing my "game face" even as I work on this update!

I've had people tweak me about what I've been up to and why I've been so silent.
Sometime in December: had really good hang out/connect/catch-up/present-swapping times with Paula, Katie and Linda. Game nights have been fun, and have mostly featured Javier, Tammy, Jim, Marc, Ray & Becky. I had an amazing time catching both a Badger basketball game in Madison and a chamber orchestra concert in a Green Bay cathedral. Since August or so, I've been hosting/attending a Bible study-small group with Alan, Jean, Matt, Mariel, Erica, Jim, Paul and Liz. I also got to sing in a mini-choir & play bongos for one of the December church services. Hooray for good times with good friends.

But there are several reasons it's hard to blog about an entire month - or really any series of events that include lots of details and people.
Dec. 23: Patrick was in town! We got a good ski in, and then he and Tammy helped me madly make tons of my favorite cookies (a recipe I got from Dave Rosene - here's a "close enough" version), before we all headed over to game night at Tammy's.

For one thing, I have a hard time believing that the folks reading this would have interest to the same level of detail that I have in recounting events.
Dec. 24: Headed to Eau Claire for an evening with Mom, Harley & Jode. We sang carols, read the Christmas story, and did some gift-swapping. Really a sweet, fun time.

How do I summarize, keep things interesting, and yet give attention to the things that meant the most?
Dec. 25: Tony & Mindy had a brand-new baby, Julia Rose on the 23rd, so they invited us all over to meet her & hang out for brunch Christmas Day. She's precious, and it was a blast hanging out with Dahlia, Joey & Anthony for a bunch of the day. Anthony, at 6, plays Boggle with the 'grown-ups' and proudly takes the 2-5 words he gets each round. He can get 3-letter words, while we have to get a minimum of 4-letter words, but every so often he gets one that no one else sees. Nathaniel Joe at 4 is full of stories and takes the time to tell each one. He kept time for us while we played Boggle. Dahlia (2) looked adorable in white pantaloons and a bright-red velvet Christmas dress with matching hat. She loves shoes and playing with her brothers. She's putting words together, and trying to figure out her place now that there's a new sister around.

And what happens if I actually have an incredible time at five places in a row? How do I keep my tone from sing-songy-ness and my adjectives from becoming tinny after a while?
Christmas evening, I headed to college-roomie-Joce's place and hung out with her & her family. We had a great time hanging out, watching movies, playing games, talking, and eating. It's so fun to feel so welcome and at home at her place, and Ed, Annabelle and Brooke all make me laugh - they're all just so fun to be with.

Worse yet - what if I forget or inadequately recount something? I was the recipient of so much kindness and hospitality throughout the holidays. My cousin Abby recently blogged about unconditional love and it made me think about this more. It's hard to receive!
Dec. 26th I headed through some rather scary weather to the Hanks residence in the Quad Cities (between Illinois & Iowa). Tom had gotten there Christmas Eve; Mary, Matt & Kalina (hooray!) had gotten there earlier that day, and Nancy and Tom Sr. had everything all set to host a marvelous weekend. After a fun Christmas celebration Sat. morning at Nancy's (she's renting a very cool house in a tiny town called Preemption), we headed back to meet up with the extended family. Food, games, food, swimming, games, and more food - what could be better?! I ended up getting permission from work to work from "home", so I stayed in the Quad Cities & worked from there in the early part of the week. We had a blast playing more board games, discussing things, listening to bits of Tom playing piano, and holding Kalina.

On a lighter note, I like to blog when I have pictures to go with the text. For this trip I stopped taking pictures after we left the Quad Cities, since Tom and others were doing so. Gosh-darn-it anyhow!
Tuesday, Tom and I headed up to Waterloo where we met/hung out with Michael - his good friend since elementary school - and his family. I really liked getting to know Michael, his wife Laura, and their son Isaac. We talked and ate pizza and played Power Grid, and I got to hear all sorts of stories! They're the kind of people that you just want to get to know better.

And then there's the concern - particularly when I'm talking about a series of events like this - whether my excitement at various opportunities and joy in the moments I share will sound like bragging or an endless litany?
Then we headed to Jen & Mustafa's place in the Twin Cities. They had invited friends to a house/birthday party, and Jonathan, Becky, Ray, Ben, Andrea, Tom and I were able to make it. We bummed around, ate amazing quantities of marvelous food (no idea how Jen pulls it off), karaoked, skiied, winter hiked, wandered a bit downtown, and generally had a stellar time. Oh - and we played board games!

And of course, a Christian's blog about December had better include something about the birth of Christ and how much it means to her - right? Hmmm. I think on that one, I'll simply follow a good role model this time around, and "treasure all these things up quietly" in my heart.
Saturday brought the final holiday gathering: Christmas with Amy's family at Augusta's house. Amy and Tim and Augusta and Chris and Sherman were there, of course. But also, Amy's mom Beth flew out, as did her daughter Katie, and then Grant, his girlfriend Christy, and daughter Margo were also able to drive in. It was great that it worked out for all of us to be there, and we had a lovely time. We had an outstanding Christmas dinner, and great fun exchanging gifts (I got Bohnanza - uh oh!!).

Finally, there's the fact that putting words together takes TIME. Time that could be spent packing up ornaments. Or sleeping.
Sunday I got to meet up with Jody for a quick ski in Eau Claire, and then got back safely to Appleton. Hooray!

Speaking of inadequately expressing appreciation, I got to listen to some great stuff on the car ride home. One such "stuff" was a podcast of the Dec. 7 teaching from Rob Bell: "Who Doesn't Want In On That?" - there were some really great thoughts in it that I may try to blog about in the future. Take a listen, if you get a chance, and we can compare notes - and I can maybe depart a bit from this monologue format and go toward conversation! Phwew!

Double Negatives

Remember learning in math that two negatives cancel each other out and become a positive? Today, I found a real-life application of that worthy principle!

So it's a Saturday and I'm running around like crazy trying to get everything all pulled together. My friend Jim has called and invited me to a chamber orchestra concert in a cathedral in Green Bay for the evening, and I have a birthday party for my friend Ella on the east side of Appleton right before that. Timing-wise it should be fine - ok, it's been snowing like ca-razy all day, but hey, that's the way she rolls in my lovely home state. Somewhere during the day I hit the "trunk unlock" button on my remote keyless entry thingy instead of my door unlock button (maybe something to do with the heavy mittens I'm too hurried to take off before using the remote??). Of course I don't figure it out till I'm actually in my car and the 'door ajar' light is on, but there's no way at that point I'm getting back out of my car to go shut my trunk - I figure I'll get to it the next time I'm out. So, I find a present for Ella, wrap it, and head over to the party. Have a great time, but finally figure out that I should have changed for the concert BEFORE coming to Ella's because now I barely have time to run home (west side of Appleton), change, and head back to Green Bay in the snowfall. I head out to the car, start it up, and realize there's too much snow on it to be able to just windshield-wiper it off. So I hop out, hit the door unlocker button, shut the door, and just as it closes realize that I had just hit the LOCKER button (I didn't know it would let you do that with the car running!!). So now I'm standing outside a running car, in the snow, on the wrong side of Appleton, trying the door desperately to make sure the handle isn't just joking with me, and wondering which of my friends who has a key to my place would be willing to come over here, get me, take me back to my apartment for the key, and bring us back to the running car.
Then it hits me! The trunk is open! And because I have this lovely Focus with the pass-through back seat, there's a chance I can push it forward from inside the trunk. You can guess the rest - there's no graceful way to reach yourself in around random trunk collect-y stuff, skis in the back seat, and into the car enough to reach the back door. I can only imagine what the neighbors thought, but I am happy to report that I was able to clear off my car, make it back to my place, change, NOT join the cars in the ditch on the way to Green Bay, and get to Jim's in time to hit the concert. And it was a lovely concert, at that. Merry Christmas!

Back Baby, Back in Time

A trip to any of the places mentioned below is categorically recommended; and if, after reading, you’re not quite convinced of the marvelousness, check out Becky’s blog – she and Ray did a similar trip with Tom earlier this year!

It wasn’t till Tom pointed it out yesterday that I realized we unintentionally made quite a sequential trip back in time during my stay. I had some half-formed thoughts of blogging each day, but we were busy enough that it would have felt more like work than vacation to stay up each night to write – so here it goes, all in one shot!

PRESENT DAY
We started out mildly enough, with a college basketball game (NC State vs. Winthrop) Tuesday night, and an amazing Thanksgiving meal with Mary (Tom’s sister), Matt (her husband), and Baby Kalina on Wednesday. Mary made a complete Thanksgiving meal, and we did full justice to it. For some reason, Kalina was less than impressed by the loud-ish and enthusiastic folks invading her home – I don’t understand it – and found herself better amused up in her nursery and far away from the clamorous rabble. She is just a beautiful baby, and it was great to meet her and hold her a bit. As Matt and Mary pull off being parents AND great hosts and conversationalists the time flew by. They sent us off with a full lunch packed for the next day (hooray for turkey sandwiches!).

(RELATIVELY) RECENT U.S. HISTORY
Thursday we started easing into the past. We took the four hour drive to Washington DC, figuring there would be few crowds on the holiday itself. The American History museum just opened a week or so ago after a huge renovation project, so we got to be among the first to check it out. We spent hours there, viewing “Old Glory” (the enormous flag that inspired “The Star Spangled Banner”), and numerous exhibits from the country’s recent past. We also walked around the capital quite a bit, walking to the Jefferson Memorial, and viewing others from afar: the Washington Monument, the new Pentagon memorial (who knew? – pretty cool), the new – to me – WWII Memorial (it had been a big hole in the ground the last time I had been there), and the Lincoln Memorial.

BIRTH OF A NATION
Friday we took another whack at the City, beginning with the American Indian Museum, taking in a tour of the Capitol, heading to the Post Office Tower, then browsing the Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Castle, the Arboretum and the National Portrait Gallery before calling it a day. Particularly with the Capitol tour and the portrait museum, we really started immersing ourselves in the early days of our country’s formation. A while ago I had started a biography of Abigail Adams (the wife of John Adams, second president of the U.S. She's amazing; she and John were remarkably close and their story gives a fascinating glimpse into colonial American life at the time of the Revolution), and picked it up again once I knew I was coming here. So, what with reading that in the evenings, and an audio book Founding Brothers, that Tom played in the car, it started feeling like it was the late 1700s with the birth of a country just barely underway.

TALKIN' BOUT A REVOLUTION
Saturday wound the tape back still further: we headed to Williamsburg, VA. Now we were in the period just months before the declaration of independence and the beginning of the Revolution. (If you’re not a history fan, you may wish to skim to the end of the paragraph here!). At the time, Virginia felt so connected to England that it considered itself a fifth segment of that nation (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Virginia!). Virginians saw themselves as Englishmen, and were the wealthiest and most conservative of the colonists. Thus, the rest of the colonies – the rabble rousers in New England, and all the rest – waited to see what Virginia would do in finally progressing toward declaring independence. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were part of the dramatic arguments, government debates, and pamphlet-writing taking place in Williamsburg, Virginia’s capital. When the House of Burgesses voted unanimously to declare independence, the rest of the colonies quickly followed suit.

Tom and I wandered through Williamsburg, learning how shingles, bricks, wheels, and books were made, and seeing how carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, silversmiths, milliners, printers and others plied their trades at the time. We toured the magazine (where guns & ammo were stored), the Courthouse, the Governor’s Gardens, a colonial home and the capitol. We got to hear outstanding teaching on the laws in effect at the time of the Revolution (fascinating stuff: ask us sometime about English common law and the concept of issuing a “license” for something), and a 3-way discussion of the various political viewpoints of the time (Tory, neutral and Patriot).

HOW 'BACK' CAN YOU GO?
On Sunday, we went back to the beginning of European settlement of the country: Jamestown. We planned only to spend a few hours there, and perhaps catch Yorktown before a leisurely return to Raleigh, and maybe even another evening with Mary & Matt. We did not reckon with what we found there. I had been to the Jamestown reconstruction site, which is great, but never to the actual original Jamestown settlement. It was amazing. We walked all around the original town and fort, viewing foundations and reading all about the homes built there and what we know about the inhabitants. The fort was originally built in its nasty, swampy location because it was so excellently defensible, from both the Indians and the Spanish. Until 1994, it was believed that the fort was by now completely under water. Since it’s been discovered, actually almost entirely on land, there has been a mountain of artifacts recovered from the site. We spent over an hour in the church there (the tower of which was built in the 1750s and is still standing), pestering the volunteer guides with questions about Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, John Rolfe, and the site in general. We found out that John Smith mapped out huge quantities of coastland so accurately that historians have transposed them over satellite images and found them close to the same. He mapped out Plymouth before the Pilgrims arrived, and very nearly was chosen to lead their expedition from England rather than Miles Standish. A ship that foundered in Bermuda and ended up in Jamestown may well have inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Powhatan may have allowed the settlers to live because they were a source of copper (which they could no longer get because of inter-tribal warfare), and they would serve as a buffer to the Spanish - whom the Powhaten feared as well.

After all this “outside” investigation, we were ready to check out the Archaearium: a museum where the artifacts from the site are restored and displayed. The place is amazing. There are over a million artifacts that have been recovered from the site, one or two thousand of which are on display. Museums are cool, in general, but think of one where all of the artifacts are coming from “just over there” – places visible from the building! The stories, displays, and information were amazing, and – what’s more – they have a long way to go! They’re on pause now, since it’s winter, but they have just discovered another well and a cellar that they’re about to excavate, and have no idea about what they may find there. Archeologists who work there can uncover something like 10 artifacts a day, and they have a display of “recent finds” at the museum. We stayed at the museum till it closed, then made it back to Raleigh well after 10:00, listening to more Founding Brothers.

RE-EMERGENCE
Today began the re-emerging process. Back to work, packing up to return to Wisconsin, all that “real world” stuff. I’m still working my way through the Abigail Adams biography – so holding onto a few fragments of the weekend’s immersion as well as I can! Fascinating stories, fascinating people, fascinating country!

Click here for more pictures

life is short, the updates might as well be too

• vermicomposting update: much sadness - i think the worms are dead. i haven't seen them at all for a week or two, and things i would think they would like are untouched. my buddy jim says he thinks i didn't have enough worms in there - he would have thrown 5 tubs in, rather than 1. might be worth a shot since i'm pretty freaked out about digging around in there to try to figure out if anything else happened... kinda bummed that i killed 'em off somehow.
  
• class update: i finished my last assignment! not like me at all - since i need to get everything done by thursday, this would normally not be happening till wed. late. i just got on a roll yesterday and got 'em all done. now to get the final project done! (should i go climbing tomorrow night with the crew??)
• thanksgiving plans: zah hoo - i'm heading off to raleigh to hang with my buddy tom. we'll be hitting d.c. and williamsburg and hanging with his sis/bro-in-law and their brand-spankin'-new daughter. can't wait - it will be so fun to traipse about historical places with someone who likes 'em as much as i do!
• hunting: this weekend! we'll see how it goes. i always miss my dad a lot around this time of year.
• sports: javier and i got a ramble in, then watched the packers clobber the bears and then wisconsin beat long beach in basketball. i think it will be a fun wisconsin season to watch.
• thinking about God: we had bible study tonight and had an interesting discusion about john the baptist. interesting to think about the life he was called to (being a hermit, baptizing people, getting beheaded), and that even in a life apparently fully devoted to God he didn't have it all figured out (sent disciples to check Jesus out, even though beforehand he had known all about Him). also been listening to C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock essays lately. tons of thought-provoking things. one is a boethius idea that God is always working miracles, we just don't see them most of the time because they're so drawn out. so Christ's miracles were a 'snapshot' of what God is always doing already: making more bread out of bread, water into wine - things God does with seasons and cultivation and rainfall. boethius uses that as an explanation of why He didn't make bread out of stones. huh!
• lord peter wimsey: i'm all about dorothy sayers' murder mysteries lately. i inflicted a 4-part video, The Nine Tailors on jim and javier saturday night (poor blighters didn't know what they were in for when the responded to my innocent invitation). and for reading - i just finished one and am starting another; good stuff, good stuff. witty and clever and unexpected - and that's just the protagonist!
  

Loop North

So, this past weekend was all about my buddy Javier and I taking on the wild northwoods hinterlands. We had a great time - or at least I did. I can't quite imagine Javier getting enthusiastic enough about something to go quite that far! But he didn't call off the friendship or refuse to be seen in public with me after the weekend, so it can't have been too bad.

The weekend actually started for me on a great note: we had a baby shower for a coworker on Friday, and went to do pottery as part of the festivities. I made two survivable pots that will go to the mother-to-be. I left quite euphoric: it is so seldom I get to sit at a potter's wheel, and it was great to have such fun with my coworkers.

Friday night we headed up to my Uncle Dean & Aunt Dar's place, "The Farm". I wanted to scout deer hunting stands for Opening Day (starts in 2 weeks), and Javier was up for seeing the place. It was great fun - Dean showed us the gazebo he's been building on top of the silo - it's come a LONG way! So cool. It now has a roof and a stairway. Then Saturday morning Dar made us blueberry waffles (holy cow!!), and we took off to take a look around. Javier helped fix my stand a bit, so I think I'm all set, and we took a look at the stand I had used most recently when hunting with my dad. It's still there, but the branch has split, and I don't know how much longer it will "hang" around. Unfortunately, Dean started having chest pains, which scared us all quite a bit, so Dar took him off to the hospital and Javier and I headed off. [It turns out that Dean has a hiatal hernia, and the pain from the acid reflux triggers the same nerve that a heart attack does, so it's a good thing he got in and got it looked at - and it's a REALLY good thing that he's ok!!].

Javier's family has a cottage up in Iron River of all places - and it turns out it's only miles from Amy & Tim's place. So we headed there next, and I got to meet his brother, step-brother, and other various friends and family members. It was a pretty chill time (hooray) and Javier and I both ended up getting some work done. He - work work, me - homework. *sigh*.

Sunday morning we headed into Iron River & met up with Amy and Tim at church. Then it was back to their place for tacos (hooray)! Grant, Margo, Augusta and Sherman were all there so it was quite a reunion. Margo is talking now, and adorable as ever. After lunch, Tim lead Javier and I out to his place where he has a shooting range, so we could get the guns sighted in. We got two rifles set to go, and then played with the .22 pistol for a little while. Then Javier & I headed back south - finishing up the audiobook we'd started on the way up: They Do It with Mirrors. Good times.
[click here for a few more pics].

Youth Group Work Trip

On Halloween morning six adults and 28 or so kids headed off in a caravan of minivans for Minneapolis-St. Paul. It was great fun. Mike’s (the pastor) goal was for us to experience different expressions of Christianity, and to help out at The Source, a ministry in the inner city. So that’s what we did! We did not get off to a stellar start, though. We stopped at Fleet Farm in Stevens Point and 2 kids tried to steal something and (thankfully) got caught. After the filing of the police report and some intense discussion, it was decided that we would head on (and the kids’ folks would deal with them on our return). I was personally really glad the kids were still along, and I’m hoping God used the experiences from the rest of the weekend in their lives.

• Hope Academy: a couple moved to a rough neighborhood quite a few years ago. They started feeling guilty that we are to “love our neighbors as ourselves” yet they were commuting their kids out of the neighborhood for a better education than their neighbors could afford. Because of that conviction, they started up a school which now has I’m guessing 300-500 K-9th graders. We joined them as they were having a fall carnival with their kids and needed folks to help man the duck ponds and musical chairs and other stuff. We had a great time, and thought the kids there were fun and very well behaved.
• The Basilica of St. Mary: on our way to drop off our stuff at First Baptist, we stopped for 45 minutes or so at the Basilica to wander around and take some quiet moments before the trip really got going. There is some amazing architecture there that I could look at all day, and it was nice to have the time for reflection.
  
• Christian Rock concert at Club 3 Degrees: yeah. I had fun playing pool with some kids down in the basement. :)
  
• The Source: I just like this one. It's a group of people that has set up an art community in one of the more sketchy neighborhoods, and just does neat stuff. We did similar projects to last year - I got to help hang insulation and drywall (hooray!). The kids worked so hard and were just awesome to be with throughout the day.
• Wooddale: A wealthier mega-church in the 'burbs. They graciously allow us to hang out in their youth room, shower, and eat pizza (yippee!). It's a beautiful facility, and a nice place to wind up. Unfortunately, we were at The Source too long to be able to make their Sat. evening service.
• First Baptist Church: This is the cool old church where we crash both nights: they let us use their Sunday School rooms to sleep in. On Sat. night, Mike gathered us to read and discuss The Irresistible Revolution - good, thought provoking stuff. We then split into smaller groups to discuss it and pray for each other - the highlight of the weekend for me. Then the kids took on the challenge of a scavenger hunt - Mike hid bags of candy throughout the huge, crazy church, and the kids spent probably 2+ hours searching for it.

All in all, a great weekend - and it's especially good fun to meet more kids and hear about what's going on in their lives. Really does make me think about volunteering more regularly with the group....

Photo 1: playing cutthroat pool with Tanner & Sam - Sam's taunting me because he's so intimidated by my mad pool skillz
Photo 2: this one's for Amy. :)
Photo 3: the group after a hard day's work

More photos (with kids' comments!) here.

Night Flight

Hooray for pilot friends! Javier is pretty passionate about keeping up his "skillz", so he offered to take me and Tammy for a night flight Saturday. He didn't have to ask twice! Unfortunately my poor little camera is not up for this kind of photography, so the pics from the plane were blurry despite my best efforts. I wish I could capture the beauty of the world better from up there. We flew out to Waupaca, then down to Sheboygan, then back. He let both of us "drive" for a while, and I did a 20-degree 360-degree turn! My heart was thumping like you would not believe, but it really was amazing to try. It's crazy. In a car/motorcycle, for most driving, you really only have one dimension at a time in which to operate. In a boat on open water, you have two. But having three is really crazy - and quite overwhelming. Respect for pilots: up 100 points!

Stratfor Report: The United States, Europe and Bretton Woods II

By George Friedman and Peter Zeihan

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. President George W. Bush met Oct. 18 to discuss the possibility of a global financial summit. The meeting ended with an American offer to host a global summit in December modeled on the 1944 Bretton Woods system that founded the modern economic system.

The Bretton Woods framework is one of the more misunderstood developments in human history. The conventional wisdom is that Bretton Woods crafted the modern international economic architecture, lashing the trading and currency systems to the gold standard to achieve global stability. To a certain degree, that is true. But the form that Bretton Woods took in the public mind is only a veneer. The real implications and meaning of Bretton Woods are a different story altogether.

Conventional Wisdom: The Depression and Bretton Woods

The origin of Bretton Woods lies in the Great Depression. As economic output dropped in the 1930s, governments worldwide adopted a swathe of protectionist, populist policies — import tariffs were particularly in vogue — that enervated international trade. In order to maintain employment, governments and firms alike encouraged ongoing production of goods even though mutual tariff walls prevented the sale of those goods abroad. As a result, prices for these goods dropped and deflation set in. Soon firms found that the prices they could reasonably charge for their goods had dropped below the costs of producing them.

The reduction in profitability led to layoffs, which reduced demand for products in general, further reducing prices. Firms went out of business en masse, workers in the millions lost their jobs, demand withered, and prices followed suit. An effort designed originally to protect jobs (the tariffs) resulted in a deep, self-reinforcing deflationary spiral, and the variety of measures adopted to combat it — the New Deal included — could not seem to right the system.

Economically, World War II was a godsend. The military effort generated demand for goods and labor. The goods part is pretty straightforward, but the labor issue is what really allowed the global economy to turn the corner. Obviously, the war effort required more workers to craft goods, whether bars of soap or aircraft carriers, but “workers” were also called upon to serve as soldiers. The war removed tens of millions of men from the labor force, shipping them off to — economically speaking — nonproductive endeavors. Sustained demand for goods combined with labor shortages raised prices, and as expectations for inflation rather than deflation set in, consumers became more willing to spend their money for fear it would be worth less in the future. The deflationary spiral was broken; supply and demand came back into balance.

Policymakers of the time realized that the prosecution of the war had suspended the depression, but few were confident that the war had actually ended the conditions that made the depression possible. So in July 1944, 730 representatives from 44 different countries converged on a small ski village in New Hampshire to cobble together a system that would prevent additional depressions and — were one to occur — come up with a means of ending it shy of depending upon a world war.

When all was said and done, the delegates agreed to a system of exchangeable currencies and broadly open rules of trade. The system would be based on the gold standard to prevent currency fluctuations, and a pair of institutions — what would become known as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank — would serve as guardians of the system’s financial and fiduciary particulars.

The conventional wisdom is that Bretton Woods worked for a time, but that since the entire system was linked to gold, the limited availability of gold put an upper limit on what the new system could handle. As postwar economic activity expanded — but the supply of gold did not — that problem became so mammoth that the United States abandoned the gold standard in 1971. Most point to that period as the end of the Bretton Woods system. In fact, we are still using Bretton Woods, and while nothing that has been discussed to this point is wrong exactly, it is only part of the story.

A Deeper Understanding: World War II and Bretton Woods

Think back to July 1944. The Normandy invasion was in its first month. The United Kingdom served as the staging ground, but with London exhausted, its military commitment to the operation was modest. While the tide of the war had clearly turned, there was much slogging ahead. It had become apparent that launching the invasion of Europe — much less sustaining it — was impossible without large-scale U.S. involvement. Similarly, the balance of forces on the Eastern Front radically favored the Soviets. While the particulars were, of course, open to debate, no one was so idealistic to think that after suffering at Nazi hands, the Soviets were simply going to withdraw from territory captured on their way to Berlin.

The shape of the Cold War was already beginning to unfold. Between the United States and the Soviet Union, the rest of the modern world — namely, Europe — was going to either experience Soviet occupation or become a U.S. protectorate.

At the core of that realization were twin challenges. For the Europeans, any hope they had of rebuilding was totally dependent upon U.S. willingness to remain engaged. Issues of Soviet attack aside, the war had decimated Europe, and the damage was only becoming worse with each inch of Nazi territory the Americans or Soviets conquered. The Continental states — and even the United Kingdom — were not simply economically spent and indebted but were, to be perfectly blunt, destitute. This was not World War I, where most of the fighting had occurred along a single series of trenches. This was blitzkrieg and saturation bombings, which left the Continent in ruins, and there was almost nothing left from which to rebuild. Simply avoiding mass starvation would be a challenge, and any rebuilding effort would be utterly dependent upon U.S. financing. The Europeans were willing to accept nearly whatever was on offer.

For the United States, the issue was one of seizing a historic opportunity. Historically, the United States thought of the United Kingdom and France — with their maritime traditions — as more of a threat to U.S. interests than the largely land-based Soviet Union and Germany. Even World War I did not fully dispel this concern. (Japan, for its part, was always viewed as a hostile power.) The United States entered World War II late and the war did not occur on U.S. soil. So — uniquely among all the world’s major powers of the day — U.S. infrastructure and industrial capacity would emerge from the war larger (far, far larger) than when it entered. With its traditional rivals either already greatly weakened or well on their way to being so, the United States had the opportunity to set itself up as the core of the new order.

In this, the United States faced the challenges of defending against the Soviet Union. The United States could not occupy Western Europe as it expected the Soviets to occupy Eastern Europe; it lacked the troops and was on the wrong side of the ocean. The United States had to have not just the participation of the Western Europeans in holding back the Soviet tide, it needed the Europeans to defer to American political and military demands — and to do so willingly. Considering the desperation and destitution of the Europeans, and the unprecedented and unparalleled U.S. economic strength, economic carrots were the obvious way to go.

Put another way, Bretton Woods was part of a broader American effort to extend the wartime alliance — sans the Soviets — beyond Germany’s surrender. After all wars, there is the hope that alliances that have defeated a common enemy will continue to function to administer and maintain the peace. This happened at the Congress of Vienna and Versailles as well. Bretton Woods was more than an attempt to shape the global economic system, it was an effort to grow a military alliance into a broader U.S.-led and -dominated bloc to counter the Soviets.

At Bretton Woods, the United States made itself the core of the new system, agreeing to become the trading partner of first and last resort. The United States would allow Europe near tariff-free access to its markets, and turn a blind eye to Europe’s own tariffs so long as they did not become too egregious — something that at least in part flew in the face of the Great Depression’s lessons. The sale of European goods in the United States would help Europe develop economically, and, in exchange, the United States would receive deference on political and military matters: NATO — the ultimate hedge against Soviet invasion — was born.

The “free world” alliance would not consist of a series of equal states. Instead, it would consist of the United States and everyone else. The “everyone else” included shattered European economies, their impoverished colonies, independent successor states and so on. The truth was that Bretton Woods was less a compact of equals than a framework for economic relations within an unequal alliance against the Soviet Union. The foundation of Bretton Woods was American economic power — and the American interest in strengthening the economies of the rest of the world to immunize them from communism and build the containment of the Soviet Union.

Almost immediately after the war, the United States began acting in ways that indicated that Bretton Woods was not — for itself at least — an economic program. When loans to fund Western Europe’s redevelopment failed to stimulate growth, those loans became grants, aka the Marshall Plan. Shortly thereafter, the United States — certainly to its economic loss — almost absentmindedly extended the benefits of Bretton Woods to any state involved on the American side of the Cold War, with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan signing up as its most enthusiastic participants.

And fast-forwarding to when the world went off of the gold standard and Bretton Woods supposedly died, gold was actually replaced by the U.S. dollar. Far from dying, the political/military understanding that underpinned Bretton Woods had only become more entrenched. Whereas before, the greatest limiter was on the availability of gold, now it became — and remains — the whim of the U.S. government’s monetary authorities.

Toward Bretton Woods II

For many of the states that will be attending what is already being dubbed Bretton Woods II, having this American centrality as such a key pillar of the system is the core of the problem.

The fundamental principle of Bretton Woods was national sovereignty within a framework of relationships, ultimately guaranteed not just by American political power but by American economic power. Bretton Woods was not so much a system as a reality. American economic power dwarfed the rest of the noncommunist world, and guaranteed the stability of the international financial system.

What the September financial crisis has shown is not that the basic financial system has changed, but what happens when the guarantor of the financial system itself undergoes a crisis. When the economic bubble in Japan — the world’s second-largest economy — burst in 1990-1991, it did not infect the rest of the world. Neither did the East Asian crisis in 1997, nor the ruble crisis of 1998. A crisis in France or the United Kingdom would similarly remain a local one. But a crisis in the U.S. economy becomes global. The fundamental reality of Bretton Woods remains unchanged: The U.S. economy remains the largest, and dysfunctions there affect the world. That is the reality of the international system, and that is ultimately what the French call for a new Bretton Woods is about.

There has been talk of a meeting at which the United States gives up its place as the world’s reserve currency and primacy of the economic system. That is not what this meeting will be about, and certainly not what the French are after. The use of the dollar as world reserve currency is not based on an aggrandizing fiat, but the reality that the dollar alone has a global presence and trust. The euro, after all, is only a decade old, and is not backed either by sovereign taxing powers or by a central bank with vast authority. The European Central Bank (ECB) certainly steadies the European financial system, but it is the sovereign countries that define economic policies. As we have seen in the recent crisis, the ECB actually lacks the authority to regulate Europe’s banks. Relying on a currency that is not in the hands of a sovereign taxing power, but dependent on the political will of (so far) 15 countries with very different interests, does not make for a reliable reserve currency.

The Europeans are not looking to challenge the reality of American power, they are looking to increase the degree to which the rest of the world can influence the dynamics of the American economy, with an eye toward limiting the ability of the Americans to accidentally destabilize the international financial system again. The French in particular look at the current crisis as the result of a failure in the U.S. regulatory system.

And the Europeans certainly have a point. If fault is to be pinned, it is on the United States for letting the problem grow and grow until it triggered a liquidity crisis. The Bretton Woods institutions — specifically the IMF, which is supposed to serve the role of financial lighthouse and crisis manager — proved irrelevant to the problems the world is currently passing through. Indeed, all multinational institutions failed or, more precisely, have little to do with the financial system that was operating in 2008. The 64-year-old Bretton Woods agreement simply didn’t have anything to do with the current reality.

Ultimately, the Europeans would like to see a shift in focus in the world of international economic interactions from strengthening the international trading system to controlling the international financial system. In practical terms, they want an oversight body that can guarantee that there won’t be a repeat of the current crisis. This would involve everything from regulations on accounting methods, to restrictions on what can and cannot be traded and by whom (offshore financial havens and hedge funds would definitely find their worlds circumscribed), to frameworks for global interventions. The net effect would be to create an international bureaucracy to oversee global financial markets.

Fundamentally, the Europeans are not simply hoping to modernize Bretton Woods, but instead to Europeanize the American financial markets. This is ultimately not a financial question, but a political one. The French are trying to flip Bretton Woods from a system where the United States is the buttress of the international system to a situation where the United States remains the buttress but is more constrained by the broader international system. The European view is that this will help everybody. The American position is not yet framed and won’t be until the new president is in office.

But it will be a very tough sell. For one, at its core the American problem is “simply” a liquidity freeze and one that is already thawing. Europe’s and East Asia’s recessions are bound to be deeper and longer lasting. So the United States is sure — no matter who takes over in January — to be less than keen about revamps of international processes in general. Far more important, any international system that oversees aspects of American finance would, by definition, not be under full American control, but under some sort of quasi-Brussels-like organization. And no American president is going to engage gleefully on that sort of topic.

Unless something else is on offer.

Bretton Woods was ultimately about the United States trading access to its economic might for political and military deference. The reality of American economic might remains. The question, then, is simple: What will the Europeans bring to the table with which to bargain?

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

Chowocolate

Bad news. I recently learned that human trafficking is alive and well, and is currently the most lucrative of organized crime activities. I get pretty overwhelmed about the size of the world's problems sometimes, but when I learned that nearly half of the world's chocolate comes from Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, where an estimated minimum of 12,000 children are trafficked into slavery, AND that by refusing sugar in their tea in the 1800s, Britishers were able to raise the awareness that shifted the tide toward banning slavery, I thought, "there's something I can do something about" [more details here].

As much as I may joke about not being able to live without chocolate, when it really comes down to it, it's a luxury. I can live without chocolate if I think about children being forced into slavery for me to have it. So a few weeks ago, I decided to give up any chocolate that couldn't be validated to be slavery-free. From what I hear, fair trade and organic chocolate are ok. Yes, they're more expensive, but that just means eating less, right? The things I'm most bummed to lose so far are Reese's Peanut Butter cups (and - related to it, my favorite DQ thing: Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzards made with twist ice cream!), DQ cakes, and pretty much hot fudge in general. Most other things I think I can make for myself with fair trade cocoa, chocolate chips, and so on.

I'm not really much of a radical, but I did try something that's stepping out pretty far, for me. If you're familiar with Facebook, you'll know that there are a gajillion-and-one groups out there that you can join to show your support for... well, whatever cause you want. I seldom join them, because I don't usually don't see a connection between me joining the group and it actually having an effect of helping the cause. So I decided to try a twist on the theme: I created a Facebook group where I ask folks - by joining - to agree not to eat chocolate that isn't slavery-free [click here to view it]. It's kind of cool - there are 33 members at the moment, which is a pretty big deal, if you ask me. I'm pondering other actions, so if you have further ideas, let me know or drag me along!

Vermi-sqvirmy

On Thursday, Ray & Becky brought over the frame and "catchy" bucket for the vermicomposter - hooray! I picked up some red worms from Gander Mountain, and shredded some paper, so when they got here to drop it off, we were close to being all set. Becky and I dumped 'em in, and we moved them into the coat closet. Guess we'll see how this goes! I've since dumped water, part of a cookie and an apple core in there - not a stellar start, but here goes, hey? Amy (or anybody!) - any advice on how to make sure they're alive without needing to touch them?

Grandpa Cliff, Grandma Lucille, and Things Apple-y

Last week my Step-dad Harley's folks were in Eau Claire, so I drove over for the day on Saturday to see them. We had great fun catching up (I had known them as a little kid, wayyy before Mom and Harley got married). Jody and Dan ended up coming over and we all went to the apple orchards. The "kids" took Dan's Jeep - my first acquaintance with it! Hooray for fall days that are sunny and almost too warm, and for families to enjoy them with! We wrapped the evening up with a lamp-lit dinner on the lawn. It was a flying trip for me, but we all had a sweet time.

a Katie contest

OK, let's have a Katie contest. How many Katies do you have in your life, and how proportional is it to your level of life fulfillment and happiness at any given time? I have a (step)sister Katie, a boss Katie (a most superior person), a good-friend-from-high school Katie, and two former Katie-roommates. All lovely people - do I win? :) OK, so maybe it is just a series of circumstances there to confuse the people I talk with (which Katie?), but it's kinda fun.

The first of the Katie-roommates is one of my bestest-ever friends - and she just got married last weekend! Hooray! [very cool photo slide show]. We had a great weekend - Jen, Mustafa, Tom and Serena were in from out of town, and there were all sorts of wedding activities going on (bachelorette party [complete with painting pottery, a tapas restaurant, and salsa lessons!], kickball with Katie & Joel's extended family [including Joel's grandparents!], rehearsal, getting all "duded up" and so on). It was a bit of a whirlwind, but overall great fun. Hooray!