palabras e imágenes

2010-02-06T17:49:00.003-06:00

A month (mais ou menos) in Brazil should give me time to breath some life back into this blog. I'll probably even take some pictures here, as guest of James Alison and travel buddy of Aarti Kotak. For now, here's a shot of the São Paulo skyline that (while pretty -- thanks Flickr!) can't hold a candle to the view of this Megapolis I got while landing. It's like 50 Manhattans smooshed together -- and that's just the 'downtown' part.

Look closely to see how the square kilometers of highrise buildings just go on and on and on to the horizon. This is the largest city in the southern hemisphere and the 7th largest in the world.

2008-11-27T23:59:00.000-06:00

After we stuffed our bellies with a Thanksgiving family feast and walked part of it off around the neighborhood, Kent and Trisha and I visited Ingrid & Charlie at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. None of us were prepared for the Thanksgiving treat the renegade nurses there had prepared -- the twins cuddling together for the first time in their nine weeks out of the womb. It was a moving sight and so natural that it filled the room with a peaceful contentedness that I struggle to put into words. Kent noticed that the twins' heart-rates and breathing-rates settled into sync together, and we felt a tranquility and rightness ourselves. Trisha said it best hours later: "it's like I'm still on an endorphin high." We just stood there beaming and watched them sleep -- joined over time by more than a half dozen nurses who heard about the sight and had to witness it themselves ("These kids have been through the ringer and now just look at them," one said). We all agreed we would happily have watched them sleep snuggled together like this all night.

These two each have their own battles yet to fight (breathing, digesting, seeing and GROWING) but it was obvious to all gathered there to see it that this time together, cheek against cheek and occasionally hand in hand, was good for their whole blessed selves -- mind, body and soul.

2008-11-26T22:53:00.003-06:00

My folks are getting ready to wrap up their careers as resident caretakers of the schmancy lofts in downtown Minneapolis. When they do, they're moving down the street all of two blocks — from one side of the new überchic Guthrie Theatre to the other. Here's a shot of them from today on the swanky balcony of their new condo, the Zenith, with the Guthrie's stylized-smokestack-marquee in the background.

2008-11-24T22:10:00.002-06:00

Whoa.

TEN WEEKS between posts is nothing compared to ELEVEN WEEKS between posts. Sorry folks.

But in other news, look at my wee niece and nephew! They are NINE WEEKS old and getting stronger every day. You can read all about their adventures in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit here at their Caring Bridge website. And of course you'll want to see more photos and videos of their adorability here at the very own blog.

Little Ingrid & Charlie are doing well today, we believe, because of all the good energy sent their way in the forms of prayers, positive thoughts, lit candles, unabashed love and unrestrained hugs from the likes of you. THANK YOU. Keep 'em coming.

2008-08-29T17:14:00.005-05:00

Whoa.

Sometimes when TEN WEEKS go by between posts, a person leans on photographs to make up for lost time. But who have I been kidding, I've been leaning on photographs for a year or so.

So -- ahem, in keeping with my now-well-established photos trend, here's a link to a dozen I just put up on Casi Bastante, my unabashedly all-photos, all-the-time blog. (All 12 were taken on my little iPhone camera -- yeehaa!)

2008-07-15T11:36:00.004-05:00

Were myfriendMargaretPost still here, her practical side would gently point out that I should probably start packing for tomorrow's flight back to the States. But since she left 4 days ago (and is most certainly missed) you get these 4 photos from my weekend in Fujian Province instead.

Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian Province, a city of 6 million people on the coast about 400 miles south of Shanghai.

My gracious guide and generous host there was Xiaoshan, an English teacher who visited my hometown of Blue Earth for a year back in 1990. (That's her on the left, next to her policeman son and future daughter-in-law in a lovely park near their apartment.)

Xiaoshan's beloved dog is called (if I understand the translation right) Sweet Grandpa. Or maybe Grandpa Sweetness. He's 14 years old.

There will be plenty more photos in the near future (once, you know, I pack and fly across 12 time zones and all that) from my whirlwind trip to this region, but for now I'll leave you with this shot from today's lunch. Anybody who can name more than 5 of the 13 foods on my plate gets Major Bonus Points.

2008-07-06T09:24:00.008-05:00

The good news is that the thoughtful folks at Yangshuo Mountain Retreat have a really affordable (if less than speedy) internet connection. The bad news is that the computer screen is drawing lots of late night insects. So this'll be quick: China is stunning. Ambivalence and ambiguity seem elemental here, but so does ambition.

Margaret and I didn't lack ambition either when we signed up for a decidedly out of the ordinary Great Wall of China experience: hiking for 4.5 hours through an unrestored part of the wall (starting in a forest on the 'enemy side') to an in-process-of-restoration section, and ending at the restored-and-touristy section. Here's a shot from the first part.

It was beastly hot, and humid beyond belief, but our guide said it was the first time in weeks that you could see this far. The view wasn't our only reward, however -- we ate at a full-fledged mom & pop restaurant in a traditional part of the city, where the Peking Duck was as authentic as it was delicious. As proof, here's all that was left of my once-heaping plate. (As you can see, the vinegar peanuts at 12 o'clock and the lotus root with hawthorn at 10 o'clock didn't fare as well.)

And finally, here's a photo from a park on the way to the Forbidden City, which totally belies the mad crowds and unrelenting traffic on the other side of the thick, ancient walls. (For the record, 'mad,' 'unrelenting' and 'thick' also describe the sweltering heat Beijing subjected us to -- God help the Olympic athletes who show up in a few weeks. They've already stopped non-essential construction, the bulk of commercial trucking, and many industries in the region to help clear the air of the city's famous pollution.)

2008-07-01T03:06:00.004-05:00

We need to make our way to the overnight train pretty soon, so here are 5 highlight shots with minimalist captions. Enjoy — and see you after 8 July!

Fabricated 'antique' about to be transported to who-knows-where.

Spinach in a wet market.

Crickets in cages outside the Flower, Bird & Fish Market.

Gooseberries. Amazing.

Blooming water lily in the People's Park.

2008-06-30T10:29:00.007-05:00

An all-too-brief post about my travel comrades here in Shanghai:

Jyothi and Vik moved from Boston to Shanghai about 18 months ago. He works with GM, she works on her dissertation. They both raise 2 year old Sadhna, who has christened me "Pizzapizza!" because of a very fun game she and I invented that involves pretending to eat foam puzzle pieces (as pizza, naturally) and then trying (with thrilling unsuccess) to hide them on top of your head. This, combined with my ability to lift (and hold, for her entire 9 minute attention span) her high enough to reach the doorbell try-before-you-buy section at the local big box hardware store seem to have cemented a fine friendship.

Margaret (known variously as EmPee, Dr MAP, MPost, MAP-PhD and myfriendMargaretPost) is no stranger to this space, but she's also the whole reason for this trip in the first place: we celebrated her masters with a trip in the Pacific northwest and now we're celebrating her doctorate with this Chinese adventure -- which tomorrow finds us on a night train to Beijing, so I should hurry up and get myself to a relish-able bed. G'night!

(Oh, but not before sharing this twilight view of the Shanghai skyline from Jyothi and Vik's balcony...)

2008-06-27T01:16:00.013-05:00

It could just be the jetlag, but at the moment I think these might be three of my favorite photographs ever. I took them yesterday, dazed and delighted, in a city whose thick air muffles endless and sharp sounds, suffuses would-be-orienting light, and ferries that ubiquitous Big City garbage smell to the part of your nose that's closest to your brain. I've been traveling since late May but this if the first time I've had the giddy feeling (with its edges of recklessness and trust) you get when you're aimless and open, aware and ignorant, knowing only that your metrocard is fresh and that, if you can find your way back, you'll have a room over your head tonight — all despite not understanding a single lick of what anyone around you is saying.

Shànghǎi is a crowded city, of course, and one of savage contrasts — but beyond the clichés it strike me as a city constructing itself, as I read it has for centuries. (The oldest evidence of human habitation here is nearly six millennia old, but it was the canals that drained the marshland in the 1600s that kicked things into high gear.) I'll refrain from waxing philosophical about an economy, history, government and future I would be kidding myself to think I understood. But I will say that Mandarin (and Shànghǎihuà, its distant cousin) is a mystery to me and that visual learners seem to have it especially hard. Four tones? Somewhere in those characters? I wonder how long I can get by with a hopeful smile and my three workhorses: 你好, 对不起, and 谢谢 — hello, I'm sorry, and thank you.

2008-06-24T00:07:00.003-05:00

Two more pictures with no-time-to-write-the-whole-story captions.

Candles at the San Xavier Mission del Bac on the Tohono O'odham Nation near Tucson AZ

Christa and I practicing our PBS Frontier House faces, hiking near Wildcat Peak CA.

2008-06-17T13:21:00.004-05:00

Just because I don't have time to write anything at the moment doesn't mean I can't post these photos, right?

Enjoy.

The view out the back of one of my trains on my 60-hour Amtrak adventure from Saint Paul to San Francisco.

The view out the side window, trundling across Montana

The view from the porcelain convenience at Portland's BackSpace cybercafe. (No, I do not normally have my camera with me on the commode. But when you're traveling alone you have everything with you everywhere, right?)

2008-05-08T20:03:00.003-05:00

One very fine way to have lunch is outside, with trees flowering and breezes blowing, in the company of wise women who make your heart smile.

And one very fine way to avoid finishing your last final of the year (15 pages due tomorrow) is to post a photo of said lunch, updating your blog for the first time in months.

2008-03-07T23:23:00.003-06:00

Sandstone cliffs and crystal clear nights aren't the only things catching the attention of a visitor to Utah, especially one hosted by Aaron and Laurie and their son Ben. Ben himself has the power to command a roomful of otherwise conversant adults -- and not just when he's dancing to Kanye West. He's a scrapper, though, ably compensating for his Lilliputian size with a shock of red hair that I swear responds to barometric pressure. Due to his hair's preternatural comb-over tendencies, he often gets compared to Donald Trump -- but I insist the volume and sheer presence of it makes him more of a Conan O'Brien. Figuring into all these qualities is Ben's predisposition for puking. He does it amiably enough, and just as often as not with a smile on his face. So you can forgive me the smile on mine in this shot (courtesy of MacHarg). You'll have to forgive his parents' med school for the cap.

Other non-outdoorsy highlights included time tonight with Zaf and Tahira and their 2 year old daughter Alina, fresh off a flight from LA. (The former is shown here holding Ben in front of the Irish pub's fire.)

And speaking of restaurants, Mike and I patronized the Blue Plate Diner -- home of the all-you-care-to-eat daily specials. Mine was the salmon and bay shrimp frittata, complete with avocado and havarti. I paused between the first and second frittata (darn tootin'!) to snap this shot. It was delicious and thoroughly enjoyable -- Mike's pointing out I'd just consumed a half-dozen eggs was not.

Finally, no stay with Aaron and Laurie is complete without some quality dog time. Coltrane and Miles are huge and hammy, but very easy to love -- and surprisingly easy to walk. Inseparable brothers that Aaron and Laurie brought home from their year at Nyumbani (an orphanage for HIV+ kids in Kenya), they seemed perfectly content on a single leash with two leads.

2008-03-06T23:41:00.001-06:00

Winter camping. Southern Utah. Stunning sights. Great fun. More later.

2008-02-17T22:37:00.006-06:00

Just because postmodernism tends to leave me feeling like I've been served a Xerox copy of a 5 course meal doesn't mean I'm above a little po-mo hyper-reflexivity and self-referential shenanigans every now and then.

Like Friday, when -- as part of our house party celebrating YouTube's birthday -- I staged photos of each housemate in front of their wall-sized video self and then all of us under the projected image of our street sign -- all of which came from the party invitation, itself a YouTube video (itself featuring our favorite YouTube videos in ironic homage to its power to deflate authentic community). This anemic Zen koan of visuals proceeded, it should be noted, an entire evening of projected YouTube clips on continuous play -- said clips being favorites submitted in advance and in real time by the aforementioned-video-invited guests.

My stakes-raising plan to shoot video of the party (including these metaportraits) which I could then upload to YouTube, choose as a favorite and integrate into the continuous play for showing on the very same wall fell prey to a strong Shakers-and-OJ . . . and a stronger desire to (as they say) interface non-asynchronously with the ontological agents at hand in their temporal totality.

PS: By popular demand, here's a link to the 96 submitted video clips. And because I believe in the po-mo concept best expressed as the presence of the absence, here's the video invitation itself:

2008-01-30T19:03:00.000-06:00

Anyone who's had the pleasure or punishment of traveling with me and my camera knows of my penchant for long-arm group-self-portraits. Maybe it's the Minnesotan in me that's doesn't want to trouble passersby to take the photo, or maybe it's the geometrician in me that loves calculating how to maximize light, minimize shadow, and capture something telling in the background.

This montaged set is from my road trip with Christa "No Home, No Job, No Fear" McDermott earlier this month. Here's the run down:

Title: somewhere in Illinois . . . or Iowa . . . or Nebraska

Ann Arbor (don't worry -- we drove the car and towed the bikes, not vice versa)
Colorado (still waiting on the North Face royalties check)
Utah (one of us is cold and one is loving it)
Berkeley (Christa was doing her Old Argentine Man face and I was about to shave my California-or-bust beard)
Joaquin Miller State Park (Redwoods make for luxurious light)
Muir Beach (with Kurt Denk SJ and grub from Gregoire)
Muir Beach Overlook (with Kurt and a tiny shard of the Pacific -- sorry, my inner geometrician was getting sloppy)

2008-01-27T10:39:00.000-06:00

Sleep-deprived and residually-giddy as I am, I don't really have words for the adventure that was Barack-ing the Vote for Senator Obama this weekend with Mike and Amazing-Field-Director-Peachy. It's about hope, it's about capacity, and it's about time. Here's what the BBC said about it.

(This photo was taken a minute or two after the crazy coincidence of Peach saying "Ginger should be here" at the precise moment Ginger stepped off a plane from Ghana and called Mike from O'Hare.)

2008-01-21T23:35:00.000-06:00

One coast, two coasts
Red-eye, blue-jet

That's as far as we've gotten on the Dr Seuss version of my flight home to Cambridge today. Since classes start tomorrow and I've already got a paper due, I'll let these pictures tell the rest of the story:

Christa and her good friend Kurt and me at the Muir Beach Overlook just before Saturday's dinner with Cousins Nico, Sarah & Simone -- then Martuni's with Radmar.

Christa and I hiking in the Joaquin Miller State Park, just before Sunday's Salvadoran dinner with Grace and Stella Maris and Kurt -- then the Oakland airport.

(And one more because I can't resist: a panorama from Utah)

2008-01-19T15:55:00.001-06:00

Late last night, shortly after we crossed into our ninth and final state, we took a brief and chilly break at elevation to have fun with lowlight long exposures. Here's a result -- intrepid explorers so near their destination!

2008-01-18T23:26:00.000-06:00

As somebody wise has probably said somewhere reputable . . . if you're going to get a speeding ticket, you might as well get it where the legal speed limit is 75mph -- say, for example, the middle of nowhere Nevada.

Officer G. knocked it down to the minimum fine because he's thinking of moving to Minnesota (I encouraged him, naturally -- to move, not to knock it down).

And for the record, we did not stop in Reno to win the money needed to pay the ticket.

2008-01-16T09:31:00.000-06:00

It was no big deal to leave at 5:30pm Monday instead of that morning, or earlier that afternoon -- gave Christa more time to tie up the loose ends of moving from Ann Arbor after 5 years there and gave me more time to play 3D Tetris with the trunk and back seat of the car. (I'm still disappointed she wouldn't let me build to the ceiling of the car's interior -- I promised a tunnel for both the rear view mirror and the blind spot on the driver's side!)

The only negative was that we hit a freezing-rain-blizzard situation that provided more than a few moments of white-out in western Michigan. We got as far as Chicago and stayed in the inimitable Hynes-Berry household of Hyde Park. And it was there, un-racking both of Christa's bikes that we saw the ice that shellacked them, literally freezing their wheels in place.

Tuesday we drove as far as Lexington Nebraska, a city I'll ask Christa to guest-blog about tomorrow. What stands out in my memory from the drive is our dinner stop in Omaha, where this remarkable hall of mirrors leads to the basement bathrooms, complete with a Garden of Eden cutout mural you can examine by clicking on this photo for greater detail.

Christa is stylish, to be sure, but on her own terms. And occasionally her practicality trumps any other potential concerns. Witness this shot taken at highway speed (or, since Christa was driving, 5-7 mph below highway speed) of her with my sunglasses atop her own spectacles. (Among the potential concerns trumped by her practicality is apparently the ocular well-being of her wingman.)

We've had a lovely time so far, are reading What Is The What by Dave Eggers, and will try to post again tomorrow.

2008-01-13T00:33:00.001-06:00

5 days.
4 places to sleep.
3 categories of podcasts.
2 dear old uproarious friends.
1 serious roadtrip.

And it all starts tomorrow. Christa McDermott, Ph D, is moving from Ann Arbor to the Bay Area and I'm her wingman. It'll be grand. And I guarantee we'll still be talking when we arrive at the Pacific.

Xanciña the cat, it has been decided, will not be traveling with us. Christa will collect her when she's back in April for graduation.

(For your detail-oriented peoples, here's a rough idea of what each day looks like. And the total mileage. Google thinks we can do it in a day and a half. Yeeehaaa!)

2008-01-02T02:43:00.000-06:00

Two quick things about
my beloved homeland of Minnesota:

1) We play cribbage.

At least my family does.

It's how my folks taught us math skills.

At least up to what makes 31.

2) We wear puffy coats.

At least my friend Grace and I do.

It's how we stay warm.

At least until we've walked along the Mississippi for a mile or two and duck into a local non-chain ice cream place for Guinness and Green Tea ice cream (I kid you not.)

2007-12-13T23:34:00.000-06:00

Nine inches of snow. Beautiful. My housemate Meghan spent an hour and a half covering a little over a mile in her car. But carrying my snow-caked bike on the T was easy and quick.

And the two blocks I rode for fun were just that. Happy Winter!

2007-12-03T23:56:00.000-06:00

One of the downsides of not bringing your camera with you for a weekend in New York City is that you can't document the beauty (snowflakes and gingko leaves competing for space atop a sweetly quiet car, the somehow-warming glow of skyscrapers against a clear dark sky, the expectant face of a child all dressed up for a very first Broadway show) or the shenanigans (the Joycean search for a toasted everything bagel in the East Village, the wide-eyed book-lust at The Strand, the belly laughs at "Avenue Q," and the adolescent delight at being mistaken for someone who really does live in the fancy building my cousin hosted us in).

Yet one of the upsides of the iPhone is that its camera does a serviceable job (even in low light) of capturing when beauty meets shenanigans: $5 cocktails during happy hour at Klong, my new favorite Thai restaurant. Bridget's was the Key Lime Pie Martini in the background (complete with cookie crumb garnish!) and mine was the signature rum-vodka-tequila-more-rum-and-Thai-iced-tea knockout garnished with flakes of edible gold. (Or at least I took it to be edible.)

Call me for the address and I'll tell you about the discount sake cocktails once happy hour is over. And the food so good that Bridget could only describe it as "inappropriately enjoyable." Better yet, tell me when you're going and I'll hop on another 5 hour bus to meet you there.

2007-11-25T22:33:00.000-06:00

A few shots from San Antonio before I dive back into the books and papers that patiently waited for me here . . .

My sister Anastasia and niece Summer

My brother-in-law Steve and nephew Conley B

My nephew Tully, to the right of his funny-face-making friend

Summer, me, Tully, and the reason my Dad doesn't photograph much

Conley B and me

My folks at Waring TX's famous Steak Night

Storytime with Miss Anastasia for Tully's classes
Enraptured by her finely-crafted silliness

Ski gear lent from friends for a December adventure

All in all, a gratitude-inspiring Thanksgiving break:

one holiday,
two pumpkin desserts,
three kids,
four adults,
five dog-walks,
and six naps,

all delighted in over

seven days.

2007-11-19T23:13:00.002-06:00

Summer, Tully, and Conley. What uncle could ask for anything more than a week with these adorably rambunctious rapscallions?

The event these candids are from was a friend's birthday party over the weekend (Theme: "Superman, Train, Shark" -- I kid you not) but today's big hullabaloo was Keynote presentations at both Tully and Summer's schools. Yeehaa!

2007-11-04T23:34:00.000-06:00

My folks didn't come to Boston for gourmet grub and visits with friends alone. Yesterday we hit up the Museum of Fine Arts (where I fell in love with Louis-Léopold Boilly) instead of letting hurricane-force winds on the Cape hit us. And today we immersed ourselves (figuratively speaking, of course) in the wonders of watery Creation at the New England Aquarium -- where I fell in love again with my telephoto lens.

Jellyfish are crazy (arguably the world's most numerous predators and some of them are more closely related to humans than to each other!) but Rockhopper penguins are adorable.

(Look closely in this photo and you can totally see that Emperor penguin [statue] gnaw on my decidedly-non-krill-shaped fingers.)

2007-11-03T23:16:00.001-05:00

Pumpkin ravioli in a gorgonzola sauce. Veal cutlet with cauliflower cake. Seafood ravioli in a champagne rosé sauce with caviar. And chicken saltimbocca with scores of mushrooms and goodness I couldn't pronounce then or spell now.

The iPhone photos can't do justice to the gorgeous plates, or our happy bellies behind them, but how could an evening in the North End with my visiting parents and myfriendMargaretPost be anything but lovely?

(For you food and detail devotees, we started with a prosciutto and portabello mushroom appetizer that featured fresh whole sage leaves and drank an excellent Sangiovese.)

2007-10-30T19:05:00.000-05:00

I felt a bit guilty about putting this little video together (my main book shelf, before and after my dear friend Bridget helped me fill it with my boxes and bags and piles and heaps of books) when I should have been studying, but then this little gem showed up and made it all better:

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
—Mark Twain

Enjoy. (No, there is no sound -- and yes, I successfully resisted adding lightning strikes, spooky fog, and old-time-film effects.)

2007-10-27T09:21:00.000-05:00

Maybe after I've vacuumed up the straw that fell out of my ankles, sleeves, pockets and hat (in nearly every room of the house somehow), I'll have more to show-and-tell about our rockin' Halloween party last night, but for now here's my housemates and I in our Wizard of Oz costumes: Natalia as Glenda, Tim as the Tin Man, Brian as the Man Behind the Curtain, Kat as the Wicked Witch, Krista as the Lion, me as the Scarecrow, and Meghan as Dorothy.

2007-10-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

Twenty-one miles in under twenty-four hours.

Night winds that threatened to unstake the tent and hurl it into the Pemigewasset River (at least that's what it sounded like).

The equal-parts-victorious-and-derisive chattering of a crafty cabal of chipmunks who apparently spent the better part of the early morning chewing through my dry bag (and the enclosed ziplock bags) to pluck out cashews and dark-chocolate-covered edamame -- despite its being suspended ten feet in the air. (They warned us it was a busy bear season, but it's the cursed chipmunks we should have been worried about.)

All this and the kind of conversations that wait for you on quiet leaf-ridden trails -- that's what MacHarg and I found in the White Mountains this weekend.

(Well, that and the Hungry Man Breakfast at Peg's in Woodstock, NH: 3 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, 4 pieces of wheat toast, home fries and 2 pancakes with real maple syrup. We had to say no to the planned chocolate malt -- that's how filling it was.)

Who's ready for the next hike? And I won't even forget my headlamp this time. (No guarantees on Mike remembering his rain jacket, though.)

2007-10-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

The chewy library we call the Bible is close to my heart. (A surprising person in this documentary calls it "the only book I know that I can go back to time and time again and still have it challenge me.")

Homosexuality -- and in a special way the faith-lives of people who are homosexual -- is also close to my heart.

So while I -- a gay Catholic man studying theology -- was anxious to see the this film I was also, well, anxious. I was afraid of cardboard people, puffed-up drama and endless talking heads making sloppy theology. Instead, the documentary honored both of its weighty, controversial subjects. I'm tempted to say that's no small feat, but it's what all the gay Christians I know do every day. The same can be said for the delicate job the film does of cultivating compassion for homophobes, connecting homophobia to misogyny, and holding up just how radical God's call to love really is.

Here's the blurb and a link to the movie's website and list of where it's playing:

Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? Director/co-writer Daniel Karslake's provocative and entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible. Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families—including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson—we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child.

I can't recommend the movie enough -- for gay folks and straight folks, for atheists and agnostics and believers and everybody in between. No movie is perfect -- even if the filmmakers had four hours to work with, there would still be some tough editing decisions to make. But let me know what you think when you see it.

2007-10-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

I was invited to four different weddings last month. Four in a row, actually. I'm all for good wedding karma -- and goodness knows I love all that love and joy and commitment -- but I was prepared for it to be hard, seeing as how none of the weddings were mine and I didn't even have a date to bring to any of them.

But they weren't hard, they were beautiful. And -- not to pick favorites or anything, but -- none were more beautiful than Jess and Heather's, in which I was Jess' best man.

These pictures are from theirs -- the light of God shone stunningly, and I've never been steeped in such poetry (even their easygoing-but-intentional placement of themselves in the church space was poetic).

Original poetry crafted for the occasion, a song custom-made for the day (with lyrics drawn from interviews with the betrothed), and spontaneous prose written in the guest book next to the goofy/gorgeous photos from the reception's photo-booth.

I love these women. And I love how their love inspires the rest of ours.

Amen!

PS: Photography by the amazing Ria Czichotzki -- handheld in available light only! Check out her site and fly her in to photograph your kids or nieces or nephews.

2007-10-01T19:18:00.000-05:00

I really have no words for this. I wasn't even there when MacHarg recorded it. But Earthquake was playing "Hoodie" by Lady Sovereign and Ginger and Peachy couldn't help but dance. Apparently Peach's family needs to see this and I guess this is as good as any other place. Enjoy. Alan Greenspan would call it irrational exuberance, but then again ol' Al and I never agreed on much . . .

2007-09-03T23:02:00.000-05:00

A little over three miles and a good several hundred vertical feet will bring you and yours from Forest Road 475 to the top of Looking Glass Rock in Pisgah National Forest. Yesterday such was the case with Earthquake, Ginger, MacHarg, Peachy, Aarti and me. It looked a little something like this -- though not, naturally, in sepia tones.

In a mere 48 hours I'll be back in Cambridge, fully unpacking my car for the first time since early June. Until then, I'm soaking up what I can in Durham and DC.

2007-08-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

How was my retreat?

You tell me in six months. :-)

Here's what I do know though:

God is impertinent and ridiculously patient, prone to reckless invitations and inexplicable intimacy. God is also fearless and hilarious -- and a royal pain in the neck.

I am fixated on productivity and usefulness -- my favorite strategies for security (which, it turns out, is a lust) and 'goodness' (a vanity, turns out). I am also learning fearlessness and laughing deeper. I am capable of deep sorrow and deeper joy -- and I am a royal pain in the neck.

Somehow, God and I love each other.

I suppose that's a sort of partial executive summary of my retreat. But, Fr Larry pointed out, just as none of us was aware of our being created when we were in our mother's womb, we don't fully get to know how we're being continually created now.

Thank you for your prayers and energy and lit candles and hope. Hope to see you all soon. (And, yes, it turns out God is crazy about each of you too. I checked.)

PS: King Alli is going in for his knee replacement surgery as I type this. Lots of good energy his way and his care team's way (especially Mook, who gets to return the favor -- from her hip replacement surgery in February -- of being #1 Caretaker)

2007-08-19T22:19:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow morning I start a 10 day silent retreat. This is an un-retouched photo of the view of Omaha and Creighton's campus I have from my quiet, comfy room. Before you jump to conclusions about Nebraska's smog problem or the power of the Holy Spirit captured as amorphous light, let me settle it -- that's beastly humidity fogging up my poor lens.

Pray for me -- and not just for my 90+ temp and 90% humidity bike rides -- and I'll return the favor.

2007-08-18T21:19:00.000-05:00

Every house has a story. Sometime when you have a few minutes/hours to spare, ask me for the "Impossible Dream," bat dung, neighborhood ghost, wallpaper, hardwood floor, cistern pit, new couch, sleepwalking Igor, and wood wall stories.

That pine tree, now taller than the west porch, almost didn't make it despite my Dad's careful planting. But I can still remember the rush of frigid air that invaded our warm living room every time somebody went out to that side porch to plug in the extension cord for the double string of Christmas lights King Alli draped faithfully year after year on that then-scrawny tree.

Furthermore, it takes everybody to make someplace 'home.' And so the stories at 326 West Sixth Street include us all -- Anastasia's guilty meatball spot on the barnboard kitchen wall, the corner where Mookie somehow miraculously caught Tuna the parakeet in mid-flight, the football field next to the raspberry bushes where Kent broke his leg (but caught the ball), the basement loft where the Anderson cousins slept and helped haul out soggy carpet when the river flooded, the apartment where I asked our foster siblings Huong and Trong to teach me insults in Vietnamese that I could use on my unsuspecting little brother.

But the stories that caught my camera's eye when I was in Blue Earth sorting through umpteen boxes of junk/treasure this weekend were about my Dad:

My Dad hung this tire swing from a sturdy branch about 35 feet up this walnut tree.

He crafted this stained-glass window next to the front door.

He planted prairie flowers around the house -- except where he transplanted the ever-expanding raspberries that so delight neighbors, relatives, and birds.

And he cared for this Japanese Lilac tree, which blooms only every other year but nearly always -- as if to say thanks on behalf of the whole huge corner lot that holds the eccentric seven-gabled house -- on Father's Day.

Thanks Dad. And thanks Mook too, naturally. You two made this place such a love-steeped home for us. But when the difficult time comes to say a final goodbye to this house, it will be that much less tough because you also showed us how to make anywhere we ever find ourselves 'home' too.

2007-08-13T14:53:00.001-05:00

Elk Lake at sunset and midnight.

Tonkie, Schmick, Andy, Jacob, Ollie, Stinky, King Alli, Steve, Tully and I ended up leaving a day earlier than planned because, as it turns out, this fishing lake had neither fishing nor lake. Drought conditions had the lake down to less than a foot under the dock and maybe only 5 or 6 feet at its deepest. Still, there was cribbage and beer, fris-ball and the grill, my Dad's famous waffles (though he thinks it may be time to replace the antique iron's woven cloth electrical cord) and precious few mosquitoes. Cousin Mick summed it up best: "It was worth it for the campfires." Amen.

2007-08-09T16:14:00.000-05:00

This quick trip to the Twin Cities in between Phase One and Phase Two of the family vacation (we're serious about vacationing) gives me just enough time to upload some highlights from last night's slideshow. (I mentioned we're serious, right?!) Enjoy.

2007-08-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

Here's the whole crew in Mookie's Iron Range hometown of Virginia MN. (Above that Summer and Tully hold hands walking back from Itasca State Park's Aiten Fire Tower.) Thanks to Anastasia and Trisha, I have few shots of myself with each of the munchkins. More family photos to come . . .

And here are Mookie and King Alli (called Poppee by the grandkids), the ones responsible for the whole blessed trip in the first place.

2007-08-01T23:46:00.000-05:00

Thank you to everybody who called and e-mailed to make sure my family and I are OK after today's bridge collapse in Minneapolis. My folks live four blocks from that bridge. My Dad and I have biked underneath it and I drove over it just the other day.

My nurse friend Heather is on call tonight for pediatric trauma and I wouldn't be surprised if my ER doc friend Paul volunteered to help, or if the lines to donate blood tomorrow morning are long and earnest. Everyone I've heard from is OK and no one's given me names of people they know to pray for -- in either grief or gratitude -- so mine will be a generic prayer, specific only to the empty chairs at dinner tonight: of rescuers professional and impromptu, of rescued young and old, and especially for those unrescuable.

One survivor (shrugging off the label of a hero by saying he just did what we're supposed to do) looked at the news camera directly to say that everybody watching should turn right away and tell all their loved ones that they love them. Please accept this late night post from a sleepy uncle on the first day of family vacation as a feeble attempt to express just that.

G'night.

2007-07-28T16:56:00.001-05:00

A few minutes of internet (thanks to Pepe's T-Mobile account) before I board a plane (not canceled this time thanks to Northwest) for Minnesota, so here are four photos from the last week of the Family Retreat Program. Yeehaa!

2007-07-23T10:55:00.000-05:00

Again with the no time to write . . .

our last retreat of the season begins in a few short hours.

So here are a few shots from Baltimore's Artscape:

a bark-covered art truck,

the 'aerial sculpture' (corseted people strapped to huge counterweights spinning in the air in response to avant-garde music)

and the (free!) festival headliners, the Old 97s!

2007-07-17T15:55:00.000-05:00

Time to post the shot and that's it.

But kudos to Blue Ridge Summit's Public Library for also having wifi.

Yeeehaa!

2007-07-14T15:06:00.000-05:00

While our quiet little retreat center has a lot going for it (including a pool and basketball court) it's only a short drive (or a nifty hike on the Appalachian Trail) away from a park on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border with a full-on playground. Our retreatants couldn't resist its dizzying lure Wednesday -- captured here by my iPhone.

And I can't resist sharing these three photos (DSLR this time) of J, the youngest member of a 7 person family I accompanied this past week. I don't speak either Portuguese or Crioulo (the Cape Verdean dialect of archaic Portuguese that was this family's first language) so Spanish had to do. And it did. A long with lots of wide eyes and wider smiles.

It was a challenge for me, the guy for whom precision and nuance in language are fundamental (and which do so much of the heavy lifting of meaning), to muddle through what I pray were meaningful discussions of the sacred texts of our lives along with the sacred text of the Gospel. (The latter presented in lively often-bilingual skits with almost as many anachronistic elements as timeless ones.)

In good time, the silences became less awkward and the moments of together-ness transcended the oxymoronic universal alienation that can fill the vacuum of a shared language. And if nothing else, digital photography gave us that satisfying shared experience of pointing at a screen with laughter, oohs and ahhs.

2007-07-09T14:43:00.000-05:00

With apologies to Heather (who apparently was prepared to throw something across the room -- in a loving, nonviolent, Christian kind of way -- if she saw one more bit of iPhone hullabaloo) I offer the following juxtaposition of, um . . . well it uh . . . you see, it's just that -- OK I ADMIT I HAVE AN IDOLATROUS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE iPHONE.

But doesn't this icon make it better? Not in a sacrilegious way (because I do not think, as some have said, that the iPhone is like Jesus came back as a phone) but but because the iPhone is tool that can be used in a blessed way, to serve God and make the world a better place. OK, maybe that's a stretch . . . but the Jesuits tell us to find God in All Things!

In any event, I now have one. And I pledge to do my darnedest to use it for good, not evil. (And yes, the photo of me all geeked up on enthrallingly-effective technology was in fact taken by my iPhone.)

(After a 10 minute Google search, I couldn't definitively locate the artist, bonus points if you can help me out.)

Confidential to Tim who's worried about the iWorld: if nothing else, I should get credit for not spelling icon as iCon, right? Please?

2007-07-06T23:04:00.000-05:00

This is M. And one of two parachutes the Jesuit Family Retreat Program has.

A sunny day, a grassy field, a giggling kid and a multi-colored parachute combine to make a whole lotta fun.

Hope you've enjoyed your day as well.

2007-07-02T22:52:00.000-05:00

Posting this on dial-up. A testament to both nostalgia and patience. The posting, not the photo. The photo is a snapshot of today, the first day of the retreat. And now, because I somehow believe more words will make this go slower, I sign off. Peace!

2007-06-28T13:07:00.001-05:00

This tree, it turns out, does not provide wireless internet access. It does, however, offer all the texture and asperity, all the promise of growth and evidence of growth, you could hope for standing in the front lawn of Loyola House, my home for the next month.

The Alexander Hamilton Memorial Library of Waynesboro PA, on the other hand, does provide wireless internet access. And in the spirit of public libraries, it does so for free. I doubt I'll get here even once a week, but when I do you can rest assured I'll try to post a photo or two.

For now, know that I'm grateful for the good energy and prayers you kind folks are sending (or, feeling sheepish, will soon send) for the staff and retreatants both as we come together to connect with God, with Creation, and -- inextricably in those two -- with one another.

2007-06-26T23:28:00.000-05:00

Things I'm grateful for:

The remarkable people gathered for the Fund for Theological Education's conference in Evanston IL last week and the beautiful (occasionally breath-taking) liturgies they rendered
That one of their number suggested we stop by Chicago's Pride Parade on the way to O'Hare for his plane.
That Minnesotans believe in air-conditioning
That my parents are flexible enough and my Uncle Tom is mechanic enough to get me through the two gallons of coolant Diego somehow guzzled in the last leg of my road trip to Minnesota
That Mookie's laptop is sufficiently better at cybersquating than mine is that I can keep up with friends' e-mails and iPhone rumors and reviews, as well as get this paltry post up online
That if you're persistent enough NWA will eventually give you a flight on Continental that more or less gets you in when and where their cancelled flight would have provided [A] you follow your Mom's advice and tell them what you'll be doing when you arrive at your destination and [B] you're willing to layover in Cleveland
That Bonita Kosciolek of Stone Pointe Shiatsu had a cancellation about the same exact time I had my first back spasm since my surgery four years ago
That I've successfully resisted the urge to make this a comprehensive list that tells the stories of the past few lovely days
That I can therefore get something approaching a good night's sleep

Things I'm not grateful for:

That this is the map of AT&T's cell phone coverage for Blue Ridge Summit, where I'll (otherwise happily) be spending the next 4 weeks working at a Jesuit retreat center for families.

The light color indicates 'no signal.'

So, um . . talk to you in August I guess!

2007-06-21T23:42:00.000-05:00

There are twenty 2007 Ministry Fellows (thank you Fund for Theological Education!) but only one of them had a birthday today: Mike Powell is not only my conference roommate, but also -- as far as any of us know -- the world's first liturgical gymnast. (Psalms 103 and 104, complete with handstands, back handspring, and a pommel horse series on the floor inspired by 'fire' and ending with 'thunder.' It was seriously cool.) We took a break from conference mode to share some Balvenie Doublewood 12 Year Scotch at a neighborhood bar with that classic conference phenomenon: the table for two dozen.

2007-06-17T23:39:00.000-05:00

Mike and I passed most of our hours on the road with stories, or solving the world's problems, or complaining about one another's otherwise-endearing habits. But occasionally, when that happy natural silence between old friends settled in, we'd crank up one of the above (mine an almost-ancient 2002 iPod, his the Mini that somehow looks bulky in comparison to today's Nano) and listen to music or a podcasted edition of This American Life, a radio show you should go and listen to right now -- presuming that if you're reading my blog you've obviously got nothing better to do with your time.

[Confidential to Bridget O'B & David V: my iVangelization is a natural outgrowth of my idolatrous relationship with Apple Inc and I refuse to feel ashamed about it. And Mike already planned to buy the iPhone. No, iReally!]

2007-06-16T14:29:00.000-05:00

Greetings from "Ace-Deuce" (that's what Christa tells me the cool kids are calling Ann Arbor MI these days).

Mike and I are roadbound, but wanted to get this photo up as well as as this Google Maps overview of the journey. (Wait until you see us with our iPhones, Google Mapping on the go!)

2007-06-14T23:18:00.000-05:00

What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do -- especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

--William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

The roadtrip wisdom of Mr. Least Heat Moon has not apparently reached the kind and efficient ladies and gentlemen of the Canadian Immigration Post at the end of Interstate 91. "So one of you has a California license but sort of lives in Georgia and soon-to-be North Carolina, and the other one has a Minnesota license but lives in Massachusetts, and together you're driving a car with 36 gallons of vegetable oil in the trunk through Montréal and Toronto on your way to Chicago?" They asked what states we'd lived in -- that took a while, especially because she said other countries were fair game too. Anyway, here's a photo of Mike and I in Acadia National Park, which I like to refer to as Gravel Camp. Yes, that too is a much longer story. (One that involves car alarms, ribbed blankets, and the verb "clench.") But the hike there involved the above flowers making their impossible way out of the rocks you climb to reach "The Beehive." More from the road tomorrow or the day after . . .

2007-06-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

Weston's graduation came and went, with wonderful music and the right blend of humility, gratitude, pomp and circumstance. Now my housemates are settling into their respective summers, including graduates Sean and Natalia (in the middle with their fancy Masters Degrees hoods).

The only photo I have of all of us hadn't yet made it to the blog -- so here it is, taken by myfriendMargaretPost after a shrimp-and-grits dinner cooked by Bethany and her boyfriend Karl (fourth from the right) in honor of our guest Professor Jim Keenan, SJ (fourth from the left) back on 6 May 07.

Of course I can't resist . . .

Here's some food porn of the accompanying Fried Green Tomato Salad . . .

. . . with homemade chow-chow.

Delicious.

2007-05-24T19:27:00.000-05:00

I came back from this trip (to help my folks be tour guides to their Dutch friends the Sneikers in NYC) with a smile on my face. "My parents are just so much themselves," I said, "unpretentious and unapologetic." They are very easy to love.

I am blessed to have so many people in my life that are easy to love. Maybe this is why God seems to be so delighted all the time. Of course there is plenty to make us sorrowful, and good that we pay attention to that as well. But bright and patient people with ice cream stains on their shirts and generosity and kindness in their hearts go pretty far to help us pay attention to joy as well.

2007-05-10T12:58:00.000-05:00

Just got a message from my fabulous friend Christa "No-Middle-Name" McDermott and felt inclined to share what I believe may be the quintessential Grad School toast. (Along with a photo of us from her visit in January, biking down Mass Ave.)

She wrote: "may your grades be high, your all nighters few, and your incompletes granted with ease and finished in less than 2 years."

PS: No, of course this is not a veiled distraction from my finals studying. This is, um, something . . . uh . . . persuasively compulsory.

2007-05-06T10:03:00.000-05:00

Rachel Doll gets a heap o' credit for last night's comedic creation, the Weston Jesuit School of Theology Theos Awards -- an excuse to laugh our fool heads off during finals with parody, absurdity, and a satisfying amount of talent amongst our ranks. More photos to come (I did mention it's finals time, yes?) in the coming days.

2007-05-02T18:38:00.000-05:00

I realized not too long ago that my mood doesn't change when springtime weather rolls in, but my sheepishness about my mood does. That is, when everybody else finally has a spring in their step (so to speak) I get to cut the tether on the cheeriness I started feeling when the first snow fell. It's a bit asynchronous, I suppose, but it cuts down on the dirty looks.

These tulips have checked in with me each time I mount my bike in our driveway on my way down Mass Ave -- and as I've suited up with less and less, they've done the opposite. They have bees to attend to now, and they're ridiculously close to a busy, sandy, candy-wrappery sidewalk, but don't you think they're beautiful?

Even Sean, our resident green thumb, doesn't know what kind of tree it is that blooms in our front yard but I liked the way its colors and curves contrast with the monochrome lines of our front doors.

And so -- though it pains me to bid adieu to winter -- I wish you the most inspiring of springs.

2007-04-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

John Baldovin SJ invited students at the beginning of our Eucharistic Theology course to sign up to lead an opening prayer at some point this semester. Today was my day.

Here's what we prayed:

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
We call ourselves into the presence of our mysterious Creator
And in a special way send what peace we can find in our hearts to everyone wounded, killed, affected or involved in the causes or effects of the violence at Virginia Tech

Thirst by Mary Oliver
Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
Ever-loving Creator, who patiently bears our need to name you,
You taught us how to pray
with light and dark, sky and earth,
with soaring, and swimming, and crawling,
with solitude and partnership.
You showed us how to pray
with the things around us
bread and wine,
friends and those we want to call enemies,
as well as with things we struggle to get our surly minds around
sacrifice and joy,
times that have come and times that are yet to be,
emptiness and resurrection.
Today we might not even have words,
reminded yet again of the violence we do to ourselves
and worried about where we are busy hurling ourselves.
Can you teach us to pray with these, please?
Can you show us how you already have?
Can you help us not to miss it?
Ever-loving Creator, thank you for your patience
and the way you weave it together with impatience.
Help us learn that too. Amen.

(The prose from Mary Oliver is in her newest book Thirst and was first read to me by my spiritual director Joe McCullough at my silent retreat in March. Borrow it from your local library if you want, but don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting to keep her words with you after the due date.)

2007-04-01T17:31:00.000-05:00

Cousin Steph took this great photo of my folks this weekend and I couldn't help but share it. (And on top of that she and Jared bought a gorgeous St Paul house!) Yee-ha!

2007-03-25T17:29:00.000-05:00

Eastern Point Retreat House is beautiful. "The walls are layered with prayer" they say. I say so is outside.

2007-03-19T14:14:00.000-05:00

[Just photos for now -- check back later this week and I'll put a bit of text about the really edifying and challenging New Ways Ministry Symposium on Catholicism and Homosexuality.]

2007-03-09T09:05:00.000-06:00

Back home and still needing to study and sleep. But here are 11 or so more shots from the Eternal City. Enjoy!

An almost-missable but definitely unforgettable streetside mosiac of Mary on Via dei Serpente.

I'm powerless in the face of texture and Rome is positively dripping with millennia of it. (And three more layers of it under your feet!)

Best view we non-über-early-arrivals had of the Pope was on the video screens.

Though I was punctual enough to get a seat with a straight shot down the aisle! (The Swiss Guard uniforms remind me just a bit of when I met Ray Charles and his bodyguards were wearing matching purple suits that I swear he had picked out.)

€130 for the Swarovski crystal rosary is about US$170, about the same as two weeks of good food for the people begging outside the Vatican Museum, where this photo was taken.

Grazie! is an extraordinarily cheerful brand of toilet paper made from recycled paper (hence this mascot tree's grateful gesture).

On the way to San Clemente I came across a little wildflower-strewn greenspace on the other side of what I thought was a very photogenic lock.

A stocky Italian man who had climbed up a balustrade to photograph his companions on top of the cupola of St Peter's Basilica was kind enough to do the same for me.

Michelangelo cleverly designed a curving tilting staircase in his dome for St Peter's -- meaning you can make your vertigo- and claustrophobia-inducing way up to the cupola by climbing between the exterior dome and the interior mosaics.

An angel's hand from the mosaic on the ceiling of Michelangelo's dome.

Insalata Romana, at Vitto's -- a sidewalk cafe and bakery serving since 1884.

2007-03-05T17:09:00.000-06:00

No time for prose. Should be sleeping. Or studying.

Great time here in Rome.

Jamie and her friends are fantastic hosts.

Of course I'm eating well. Taking pictures and even working out at the gym.

Wednesday morning I've got a (small) chance at a (large) audience with the (mixed-reviews) Pope.

More later.

2007-02-09T09:03:00.000-06:00

So here's the first batch of photo highlights from my students at Umana Barnes Middle School for you to appreciate and possibly order a copy of.

(Ooh, good thing I wasn't teaching grammar -- that's a dangling preposition!)

Cousin Steph suggested this assignment and the students had a great time imagining their world through a "worm's eye view."

(This was an easier and, I think, equally fascinating counterpart to the impossible-to-organize "bird's eye view" shot.)

Send me an e-mail or post a comment (but please don't include your own e-mail address because I'm told some spam-mail-producers ransack blogs looking for e-mail addresses to abuse) if you'd like to order a copy. All $10 goes directly to the student photographer.

Click on any photo to see it closer to full resolution. How else can you imagine what a piece of paper sees?

And there are plenty more categories to come . . .

2007-02-06T23:39:00.000-06:00

My dear friend Jess told me her fiancée Heather was glad to see I had a new post up that wasn't a commercial (she was obviously not sharing my breathless excitement about the iPhone). Then when the photo from Saturday's hike loaded she laughed that it was essentially a commercial for Nalgene water bottles. Or maybe for cold and ice. But anyway it was still a commercial.

So I vowed I'd finally get some photos up that my students took last semester at Umana/Barnes Middle School in East Boston. This is a still life shot by Gloribel, who has a fantastic eye and took some real stunners through the course of the, uh, course.

The thing is, though, that people are ordering copies of these photos through me as a way to contribute to the kids. $10 a pop for 4x6 or 5x7 and all the money goes to the kid. Which makes this, alas, sort of a commercial. Hope Heather doesn't mind. I'll post more in due time. Along with some info about this remarkable school.

PS: The gourds and pumpkin are resting on one of those ubiquitous blue hard plastic school chairs in front of the one corner of the Math classroom we used that wasn't covered with posters from a unit on probability. Nice colors though, huh?

2007-02-05T07:04:00.000-06:00

It’s cold. And I’m happy. Not only because I think my brain and body and soul work better when there’s a brisk wind waiting around the corner, but also because my friend Paul is visiting from Minnesota and we went for a hike. My first real hike since moving to Cambridge in August -- impossible to believe but true.

There was boot-deep snow, bright warm sun, slippery sneaky ice and views for miles. This may seem an odd choice for a photo to mark the event, but Paul was stunned and I was delighted to find ice clinging to the inside of our water bottles. Made me downright nostalgic for Antarctica.

PS: Thanks in advance for sending healing energy and prayers for patience to my hardly-ever-not-on-the-go Mom. She had successful hip replacement surgery on February 1st and is now staring down physical therapy 6 times a day. Go Mookie Go -- we love you!

2007-01-09T13:33:00.000-06:00

I try, as a rule, not to get attached to material things. Especially things that aren't shipping until June. But I have just fallen head over heels in worldly-attachment love with Apple's insanely great new iPhone.

Yes it's an iPod. Yes it's a mobile phone. Yes it's a 2 megapixel camera. Yes it has a huge touch-sensitive screen. Yes it sends and receives SMS messages at the same time it does e-mail and takes calls and, yes, surfs the whole web (not WAP versions, but the real thing) with wifi and Bluetooth. Yes it runs Mac OSX. And yes it's thinner than the Blackjack, Treo, or Blackberry Pearl. But what makes it so absurdly deliciously lust-worthy is what always makes Mac stuff that way: the sublime touches. It has a proximity sensor so when you have it near your ear the display turns off and the touchscreen shuts down. It has an accelerometer so the display rotates to however you're holding it at the moment. It has an ambient light sensor so the screen never wastes more battery power than it needs to, nor becomes unreadable in bright sunlight. If you're listening to music and a call comes in, the song fades out, then back in when the call is done. To shrink or zoom an image or a webpage, you just use two fingers to pinch or extend it. If you have multiple voicemails waiting, you get to pick which ones you want to listen to -- no more pressing # to skip messages. Because the buttons are almost all on the touch screen, they can be customized and evolve with new uses we haven't dreamt up yet. And to turn the thing on, just slide a finger along the bottom edge. Nothing in your pocket or bag will accidentally do that.

It does all this and somehow still has 5 hours battery life. Or 16 hours if you're just using it like a beautiful touch-sensitive video iPod.

And yes, I will be paying $499 for it. Unless I decided to pay $599 because I need 8GB of iPhone-goodness instead of 4GB.

Maybe I'll make an exception that it's OK to be attached to worldly things as long as they have at least 200 new patents associated with them.

2007-01-01T23:04:00.000-06:00

My parents served petit fours at their wedding on December 26th, 1966. Sunday afternoon they celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary by serving these delicious little numbers (along with sandwiches and snacks and wine and coffee) to the 100+ guests who braved a snow and ice storm for the Open House at their loft.

My other duties prevented much in the way of decent photography, but these few give you a sense of the festivities. The priest signing the special porcelain platter is Fr Reiser, who officiated at their wedding those four decades ago.

We also marked the occasion with a book my sister orchestrated -- the best pictures and stories from their years together. It was a big hit at the party and will be treasured for decades to come.

2006-12-25T19:30:00.000-06:00

A few black and white shots from my Christmas in Minnesota . . .

Christmas cat
(Zoë, resident napper and late night face-licker at my little brother and sister-in-law's house in the beautiful capital city of Saint Paul).

Christmas gift
(Trisha, the aforementioned sister-in-law opening one of a pile of gifts today. )

Christmas salad
(A little spinach number I whipped up with granny smith apples, warm goat cheese and crushed almonds.)

Christmas table
(Me, Trisha's folks Sandy and Mark, Kent and Trisha.)

Christmas ornament
(Sent by Aunt Janet from her trips to Poland.)

. . . look for some shots from my parents' 40th Wedding Anniversary coming up on New Year's Eve. In the mean time, I've got some final exams to write.

Merry Christmas, dear ones.

2006-11-20T23:58:00.000-06:00

It's a long story (it always is, isn't it?) but Peter Mayer is an astoundingly moving singer-songwriter that Margaret Post, Jess Myhre and I have been fans of for a goodly long time (along with my cousin whose wedding he sang at and enough people to pack the Fitzgerald Theatre in Saint Paul every concert). Here's the requisite post-concert fan-photo of Margaret and I with Peter, taken by my friend Shea who -- it turns out -- became a fan at the concert, thanks in part to another friend who brought him there (a fact we discovered near the 50¢ cookies and coffee at intermission -- did I mention we were in a tiny Lutheran church in the middle of southern New Hampshire?)

And if you're not already a fan, here's a chance to become one: he wrote new lyrics for the Old French carol most folks know as "People Look East" -- sing along if you're inclined:

==========================
Green by Peter Mayer © 2005 Blue Boat

When winter’s grey is on the sky
Rust upon the leaves that lie
Red on the last few berries clinging
Brown on the branch where the bitter wind’s singing
Even when white obscures the scene
Still in winter, there is green.

Waving defiant pine tree boughs
Cedar needles stubborn and proud
Hiding inside, the seeds of summer.
Deep in the wood where it sleeps undercover
Patiently waiting there unseen
In the winter, there is green.

Death may raise its voice raise today
Oh, but life will have its say
Speaking in lovers and in children
In poet’s pens and philosopher’s visions.
Life is a plant, it’s daring dream:
Earth’s devotions spoken in green.

So keep it in the winter’s store
Hang its garland round the door
Grant to your heart its hopeful promise
Fashion a wreath for its blessing upon us.
Winter brings browns and greys indeed
And when it comes, remember . . . green.

==========================

(PS: It would make the story even longer were I to explain why this restaurant or its Hungarian Mushroom soup is significant, but I can't resist posting a photo of the dinner and Guinnesses we enjoyed before the concert. And yes we greedily ate the soup before I could photograph it.)

2006-11-12T22:48:00.000-06:00

My friend and Bolivia-travel-buddy Ginger sent me this link from BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6136268.stm

It's about about the road we UAC folks took every time we wanted to see a movie, or buy dictionaries for our students, our meet friends at the airport. I remember going in one time just because I wanted my students to have folders to keep all their handouts in (although I did bring back some cheddar cheese and La Paz bread).

Becky and I just compared notes with Skype (she was there for years) and we both agreed this story was a little overly-dramatic. "Must have been on the road on a bad day," she said. I agreed. But then she told me a story about the time she saw a Jeep hanging on by only two wheels. In the rainy season. Underneath a waterfall.

Nobody got hurt though, she assured me. "A couple ropes and 50 people pulling got them back on the road."

Ahhh, I miss Bolivia. (Oh, the photo above is from my first trip down the road from La Paz: Hugh holding the holy water the driver keeps in the glove box. The nuns used it to bless us all as we started our descent on the road.)

2006-11-03T23:05:00.000-06:00

Lake Titicaca . . . Machu Picchu . . . Waltham Mass (photos by M Post)

Mike and Margaret and I are living it up again -- remembering our adventures in South America this spring, eating fantastic food and drinking some Argentine wine. This time the food is courtesy of Margaret and her farmshare -- meaning it's even more fantastic: greens with pomegranate, lemon and goat cheese, sweet potatoes with smoked gruyère, sunshine squash with walnuts and brown sugar, and chicken breasts stuffed with leeks, mushrooms, white wine and of course garlic. They insisted I get a photo or two up here this very night, but I think it may just have been a thinly veiled attempt to distract me so they could bust out the Scrabble board.

2006-10-30T22:20:00.000-06:00

Why yes, those are life-sized Tetris™ pieces.

Friday was Bellarmine's Second Annual Haunted House Party -- so my housemates and I put away sacred texts and midterms to pick up fake cobwebs, black plastic, strobe lights and those Spooky Sounds CDs that live up to their names. Borrowing a page from a Haunted Porch my teaching comrades and I put together on the Tohono O'odham Nation in '97, I was a creepy face straining through a basement window. We also had falling corpses, moaning ghouls, creaky staircases, slamming doors, flying rats, surprise ghosties, scraping shovels (seriously scary!) and -- because this is a Div School party after all -- a Pope threatening excommunication and a jack-in-the-box Mormon missionary.

Scores and scores of people showed up in costume (Mary Catherine Gallagher, Superman, King Tut, "Smartee™ pants," a cowgirl sheriff, McDreamy from that TV show everyone watches but me, Steven Colbert complete with left ear sticking way out, and a whole troop of mousketeers leaving Tootsie Roll droppings all over the house) . . . but the party really got started when the martyrs showed up.

2006-10-14T14:10:00.000-05:00

Outside in the crisp fall air and the bright afternoon sunlight is where a person likely should be right now, but I'm inside motivating myself to read and write. It's a slow process, as it sometimes is, made slower at the moment by the results of a quick conversation with a friend this morning about photography -- and about art and about God.

So here's one result -- a photo I took weeks ago stuck in traffic along the Charles River on my way home from teaching. (Downtown Boston is behind the trees and to the left a bit, the bench on the right was completely empty, and in the shots before and after this one you could see the amorphous blurs of passing cyclists, trotting joggers, and a crew team on the water getting barked at by a coach in a motorboat.)

The real joy of this photograph was taking it -- switching gears from frustration to appreciation (neither of which can usually last very long) and reveling a little bit in how beauty smiles that shy smile even when no one is looking. But it's no small joy to share the photo either. Enjoy the afternoon a little extra for me, OK?

2006-09-25T23:53:00.000-05:00

With my folks visiting I've been treated to especially-fantastic home cooked meals courtesy of dear friends in my new city of Boston -- and tonight I was reminded by the Posts how long it's been since palabras e imágenes got any attention. How appropriate then that this photo as we sat down to dinner a few hours ago brings us up to date.

Sort of up to date, that is. Teaching 2 afternoons a week and taking a full load of fascinating courses means there are many tales to tell and plenty more images to share -- but more urgently there are also 30 dense pages of fundamental theology to read before bed.

2006-08-31T10:31:00.000-05:00

Just returned from a great, though camera-free, trip to London. I felt naked -- and not just because my luggage got lost along the way. But my bag eventually showed up and my friend Caz shared the photos she took, so all was right with the world. Here's her favorite shot of dear Lucy and Matt, whose wedding was the reason for the trip.

Lucy and Matt met -- in a story that was told half a dozen times during the joyful festivities-- on their own respective grand adventures in North America, despite both being from London. My own role was small (hosting Lucy and Caz in Arizona, Mexico and Colorado, then being introduced to Matt in San Francisco shortly after the fateful meeting) but seemed to grow with each mention during the reception's toasts. Needless to say, we all had a great time and I was made to feel very much at home. The music alone was worth the trouble of crossing the Atlantic -- Lucy's family (with a literal rock star, a singer on tour with Kylie Minogue, and a veteran cast member of Stomp in it) does not lack for talent.

This, by the way, is Caz -- short for Caroline and, well, short in general. (I can say that because back on our roadtrip in 1999 everyone thought I was her older brother -- until we opened our mouths and our accents gave us away.) Don, the bride's father and half of the charming and endlessly hospitable couple that made me fall in love with London during my first visit in 1988 and my summer there in 1995, pointed out before the reception that Caz and Zac were mirror-image names. Unfortunately, this seems to have gotten my name stuck in his head and several times during his light-hearted and heart-warming toast he said my name when he meant hers -- which was only half as funny as when he said my name when he meant the groom's. Then he closed with quotes from Luke Skywalker and Buzz Lightyear (inspired by his grandson Jared), but switched their surnames to get Luke Lightyear and Buzz Skywalker. All of which inspired Lucy's brother Rob -- the next one on the microphone -- to say "I'm not sure what just happened there, but I think Zac has married Buzz Lightyear."

It was a whirlwind trip, but I managed to squeeze in a play at Shakespeare's Globe, a night at a club in Vauxhall called Fire, no end of great meals, and several long walks in the August sunshine (yes! sunshine in London! and lots of it!) including some with my host James Alison, my favorite theologian in the world. Here's the cover of his fantastic new book -- the first copy had just arrived when I got there -- titled "Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-in" which sold out at the Greenbelt Festival he spoke to packed houses at this weekend. (You can preorder it from Amazon here.)

I'm back in Cambridge now, which is a lot of fun to think of as home for the next 3 years. Let me know when you're coming to visit -- I've already found a perfectly-poured pint of Guinness 4 blocks away and a truly faith-restoring number of non-chain restaurants!

2006-08-15T00:24:00.000-05:00

182 photos made their way back with me from the once-every-five-years family reunion this past weekend. Here's a favorite -- niece Summer outrunning nephew Tully and near-nephew Jacob -- to tide us over for now.

2006-08-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

I used to write these posts in a big white house full of volunteers and dust, with slanted floors and an enormous dark-stained kitchen table. I'm writing this one in the Caretaker's Office of Stone Arch Lofts -- a multigazillion dollar development in the historic mill district of Minneapolis' river front, two doors down from the stunning new Guthrie Theater.

But these pictures are from the backyard of my little brother and his wife's new house in Saint Paul. They threw me a little welcome home shindig, and hosted their housewarming the following weekend. Their hospitality, and my folks' as well, has made my transition from the cloud forest of South America to the sweltering prairies of Minnesota as smooth as can be expected.

I start the drive to Boston in two weeks, stopping along the way to see dear ones in Chicago and Ann Arbor. From there I fly to London for a friend's wedding, so I won't really 'land' anywhere until September is here. That's the month I start my classes at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and it's also when I start teaching digital photography two days a week at Umana/Barnes Middle School in East Boston.

[Speaking of my elective class at that incredible school, if any of you have upgraded -- or downgraded -- your digital cameras recently and have been wondering how to pass on the joy of photography to kids at a school that shouldn't be doing nearly as well as it is considering the challenges the students are overcoming (sound familiar?), let me know. We can use all the digital cameras we can get our hands on, and probably even get you a tax deduction in the process.]

Catching up with friends and family, I'm trying my darnedest to be not be "busy" even though I'm plenty "scheduled" during my time here in my beloved homeland of Minnesota. (The difference I see between those two is that 'busy' people are so preoccupied with their busy-ness that they rarely seem to focus on the here and now. 'Scheduled' people might have just as much on their plate, but they are present. They may have to be somewhere else in 25 minutes, but right now they're right here. Or so I hope . . . )

If said scheduled-ness allows for some more photos from South America, I'll likely put them on Casi Bastante, my photos blog. I'll try to put a reminder here if that happens.

Otherwise, expect some sweet shots of my darling cousins and their ensuing shenanigans from the Cousins by the Dozens reunion the second weekend in August. It promises to be the kind of fun you can only handle every 5 years . . .

2006-07-13T16:16:00.000-05:00

Margaret's already flying home and Mike and I leave the Flying Dog Hostel for the airport in 4 hours. That means this 6 months in South America is coming to an end. And THAT means I have even more reflecting than normal to do. Luckily, it also meant one last beer -- ironically my first Guinness in South America.

So, in the absence of time and eloquence for articulating much of anything now . . . I'll let Hafiz speak for me:

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:

What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing -- Now!

from "I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz" by Daniel Ladinsky

2006-07-12T00:54:00.000-05:00

Up late catching up on e-mail with my laptop and this astonishingly fast connection our hostel has in Cusco. Couldn't resist one more picture -- this one of our campsite the 3rd night of our 5 day trek. (Gotta love that tripod!)

2006-07-11T23:17:00.000-05:00

It's a nostalgia-inducing thing nowadays to get up at 4:00am. But today the reward for such early-bird-diligence was greater than normal -- a chance to walk around Machu Picchu before the sun peered over the Sun Gate and lit this amazing place with high altitude light.

One of the leading theories to date is that Machu Picchu was primarily a research and experimentation station for agriculture, and the terraces we sat ourselves on to wait for the sunrise attest to that.
It's late and we're sleepy -- Mike and Margaret and I all fly to Lima tomorrow to fly to the states at various times on Thursday. Might not get a chance to post any more until I'm back stateside on Friday. (A concept that both warms my heart and strikes me as bizarre. Go figure!)

2006-07-10T22:55:00.000-05:00

Wahooo!! Found an internet place with a cable I could prestar but the connection isn't setting any speed records. So no time for blurbs -- but these few photos should be self explanatory. Gotta get up at 4:00am to hike around Machu Picchu...

(If you think this shot of the 'cable car' is good, wait until you see Mike's camera-video of the ride itself!)

2006-07-10T18:18:00.000-05:00

Our guide was named Wander.

Seriously.

If that doesn't tell you what you need to know about our successful and fun 5 day trek through the Salkantay Pass to Machu Picchu, then maybe the pictures I'll hopefully be able to put up tomorrow night will.

Mike and Margaret and I are showered, in (relatively) clean clothes, and catching up on the rest of the world at the local cyber cafe in Aguas Calientes, the tourist trap that rests about 45 minutes by foot from the gates of Machu Picchu. None of us brought the connectors to our cameras though (why make the horses -- or us -- carry that extra 5 grams?) so please be patient for images. We have some stunners though, including our crossing this morning of a raging river in what they call an oraya -- but what sensible people might call an insane way to get pulled across a chasm: in a rickety metal and wood basket hanging from a steel cable.

And we have a couple great shots from Sunday, Margaret's 32nd birthday. The trail staff serenaded her (and Mike and me, her tent-mates) before 6:00am and presented a yummy improvised cake -- with egg white frosting and strawberry jam, plus a little "Feliz Cumpleaños" sign written on the back of a tea wrapper. We ate it at breakfast and sang her the Happy Birthday song in English as well.

But mostly, of course, we have great memories -- steep hikes and moon rises, belly laughs and deep appreciation, breath-taking views and gut-satisfying accomplishments. Oh, and Margaret has a new title: she's a body-heat vampire. And Mike has the unusual position of both cleanest-looking and nastiest-smelling feet. God help me.

2006-07-07T00:01:00.000-05:00

It is a very good thing that our trek was delayed a day because of more strikes -- it meant that we could sleep in a bed instead of a bus, and that we could rest up for what we found out will be 3 grueling days and 2 relatively easy ones on our climb to Machu Picchu. (And that we could buy the necessary batteries, sunglasses, and souvenirs.)

But it is a not even close to a good thing that we found out about our delay at 5:30am this morning -- after waking up at 3:30am to wait outside the colossal colonial front door of our hostal beginning at 4:00am. The early hour would not have been so bad had it not been that bedtime was a scant 2 hours before wake-up time.

But we persevere -- and after an all-morning snooze and an avocado-laden lunch, we felt great. And then we felt even better after a stunning ostensibly-light dinner at a brand new restaurant here in Cusco, Incanto.
We were indeed charmed by it -- as evidenced by our pisco-sour-enhanced smiles in this photo from Mike's camera. You might also spot glasses of Malbec, the remnants of some bruscetta, spinach florentine, pasta with mushrooms and something tasty I can't remember, and the edge of my arugula salad with pear, goat cheese, and candied pecans. For the record, we treated ourselves to this (and the chocolate cake, passion fruit custard, and truffles we had for dessert) because we will definitely not be eating like this on the trek. But we will be toasting Margaret's birthday under the stars Sunday night -- and there are rumors the carnivores among us may be supping on cuy -- better known as partially-domesticated guinea pig.

Against my better judgment, I am uploading this photo Margaret took of Mike and me after walking across the Bolivia-Peru border with our Serious Faces -- the major reason nobody checked our bags for smuggled coffee, coca leaves, or SmartWool socks. (The only benefit of this photo's publication is proof in perpetuity that I am significantly taller than our friend Mr. MacHarg here.)

(If you ever see in this space a photo of me shaking hands with a gold-toothed mannequin, you can take it as evidence that either Mike or Margaret stole my laptop or guessed my password. Consider yourself warned.)

2006-07-06T11:16:00.000-05:00

I'm writing this on the bus and I don't know when I'll get the chance to post it, but I'm glad to have something to do besides watch the dubbed version of Jerry Bruckheimer's dual-hemisphere epic "Kangaroo Jack" -- especially because this means I get to show off my Mac's über-cool backlit keyboard to the Italian kid next to me.

I should really be more specific, I suppose -- about the bus, I mean. Because this isn't our first, nor is it our last. Margaret and I survived the last ascent from Carmen Pampa to La Paz in a bus, then met Mike for our bus to Copacabana (after saying goodbye to Ginger and singing that blasted Barry Manilow song more times than it ever could merit), then we herded ourselves onto one of a dozen seriously-crowded buses leaving Copacabana for Puno (a two-day strike at the Peru border had just been lifted so we were in the company of scores of disgruntled gringos -- thank goodness for Mike's titanium elbows) and then we somehow survived the most chaos I've seen in all my time in South America: busloads of passengers in Puno arriving, scrambling for seats on buses going in the right direction, nabbing said seats, running through the terminal to pay a poorly-understood embarkation tax, grabbing anything resembling a mid-afternoon snack (with their freshly-exchanged Peruvian cash) and then trying their best to settle in for the sometimes 7, sometimes 9 hour ride from Puno to Cusco. Tonight it looks like we'll make it in around 8 hours

Which gives the three of us about 4 hours to sleep before we hop on another bus: the bus to the trail head for our 5 day trek that takes us to Machu Picchu . . . eventually. But that's another post for another time. In case you've lost track, we're looking at about 17 hours of quality bus time in less than 48 hours. (And did I mention the 2 boat rides, totaling 3.5 hours?)

But we haven't only been in transit -- to prove it, here's a quickie photo montage (quicker to upload, aren't-I-so-clever) of our dinner view Tuesday night in Copacabana, the three of us on Isla del Sol, Margaret at the central door of the Temple of the Sun this morning, and the bus we're currently on this very minute. Now if only the roads in Peru had asphalt AND wifi . . .

2006-07-01T01:08:00.000-05:00

Thank God for Margaret Post. Not only has she arrived with much energy, much love, and much wonderment at this place -- but she's also helped me give my exam, CORRECT my exam, stop worrying about my exam and generally breathe deeply and celebrate the end of my time here. And if that weren't enough she whipped up a scrumptious Italian dinner and one of her famous fruit crisps (this one was apple cranberry!) And if THAT weren't enough, now she's a Guest Blogger and Photographer! Read on as we peek into an e-mail she sent yesterday to her dear ones . . .

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Hola mi familia:

We're having a low key day here in Carmen Pampa where the clouds are thick and the rain is trickling occasionally. Because of the rain, we took the campus "bus" (which is really a truck, where we stand on the back and hold on over the bumpy roads!) to the upper campus. A group of us helped Zac give his final exam--a scavenger hunt around campus where the students had to answer a series of questions in english. I was stationed where the students wash their clothes (by hand) and managed to learn a few new spanish words in between the groups coming through for their challenge. I mostly spent my 1.5 hours there marveling at the clouds and mountains, and laughing a lot at my inability to communicate with Alfredo who was washing his clothes and enduring my pathetic spanish!

This school is incredible. Carmen Pampa received an award for being one of the best institutions world wide for alleviating poverty. I learned last night from Sister Jean (who is from Dorchester!) that Carmen Pampa is the only rural campus in Bolivia of the Catholic University. Most of the wealthier students go to the campus in La Paz, whereas Carmen Pampa enrolls poorer students from the villages and towns outside the bigger city. For them, this is their only opportunity for advanced schooling. While Carmen Pampa doesn't received money from the Catholic University, it does have support mostly from donors in the US, and US AID--both of whom recently supported the coffee plant on campus. Even though there is a great deal of support, there are so many needs here. The food cooperatives on campus make it a bit easier for students to afford their meals, yet many still go hungry. For the Carmen Pampa Fund this is a dilemma because there are also many resources needed to support the students' learning--books, the library and the computers, the staff and volunteers.

Amidst these paradoxes though, Carmen Pampa is a place of great joy and beauty. The school is located in the town of Carmen Pampa, so nestled in between the two campuses are the homes of many families. On the road between campuses it is likely that we will meet students from either the college or the high school, small children and their parents (some of whom are students themselves) and administrators and staff of the school. It's also likely that we'll meet a few dogs, a cow or two, and always chickens! My favorite parts of my time have been exploring the beauty of the cloud forests, meeting the people, and sharing meals with the other volunteers on campus. As you may suspect, I *adore* the nuns who have devoted their lives to building this place, and who have a spirit and energy that surpasses understanding when faced with the challenges they meet every day. And that spirit is what is so hopeful about being in Carmen Pampa.
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PS from MP: This photo was taken just outside the door to the house we are staying in, and right outside the garden to the house where Sisters Jean, Theresa and Carmen live. I've been playing around with my new camera, and took a chance on some black and whites of these gardenia bushes. This one is Zac's favorite and he made me put it on the blog.

2006-06-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

Time for you to get a break from me (in other words, time for me to crank out two slideshows, a two-campus quickie exposition of photos, a final-exam/scavenger-hunt, and final grades for 3 different departments in 48 hours.) But more to the point, time for some Guest Bloggers. Here's part of an e-mail from Mike, who just finished 3 days with Ginger in the Salt Flats last night. Their adventures are far from over, however . . . read on . . .

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Buenos dias amigos,

Currently typing on the worse keyboard in all of Bolivia. And I love it.

First, Zac give Margaret the biggest Carmen Pampa hug from Ginger and I. You have to give it, because we won't be able to. We're currently prisoners in Uyuni. The great people of Uyuni, Potosi and Oruro are blocking the roads prior to the voting on Sunday to protest the terrible road conditions (I happen to concur with them there). Our jeep back from the desert was blocked coming into Uyuni (we hiked back into the city -- felt good actually after the 8 hour jeep ride), and our bus to La Paz was blocked from leaving last night, at this point indefintely. There are tragically wronged gringos aplenty roaming the streets of Uyuni. We paid for, but then bailed on, a secret Swedish mission to escape last night -- five (some of them very cute, including my Todo Tourismo first crush) touristas packed into a desert jeep and snuck out under the cover of darkness to make it to Oruro (not clear how far they made it, but I wish them my very best). They had flights to Costa Rica Saturday morning, so their situation was more desperate. Ginger, not feeling the 12 hr jeep ride after having traveled all day in a jeep, decided we should skip the Mission Impossible, and sleep in. Granted, we have had some superb Boston pizza, and the best cafe leche south of Carmen Pampa, but given that we've already seen the train graveyard, there's not much left for us to do in Uyuni (save joining the blockades on the roads, which given the look in the eyes of the kids willing to throw rocks through the window of our jeep, probably wouldn't be as welcome as I might hope). So much for "Si, Se Puede!" But we're in good spirits, having had an splendid road trip through the desert and volcanic southern altiplano. Cold as hell, as advertised, but breathtakingly beautiful in all its myriad forms.

We'll see if the civic comission lets a group leave for either Potosi or La Paz tonight -- looks like a quorum of pleading whiteys are making headway on the bus to Potosi, but Ginger and I are hopeful for a path through Oruro (the trek to Potosi-Sucre-La Paz could be hazardous to our pleasant psyches right now) Haven't showered in 4 days, and dogs are beginning to think of me as one of their own. Tis life in the Wild West, no?
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Trapped as he is in Uyuni (a town best known for its surreal yard of abandoned rusty train parts), Mike didn't have time or bandwidth to include a photo. So I hunted down one from my time in Uyuni in May . . . I thought this piece of public art was apt.

2006-06-28T23:27:00.000-05:00

I have well over 6000 photos from my six short months here, so it wasn't exactly easy to choose the top . . . oh, 400 or so to show on the big screen. Folks have been asking to see them for a while. But when I posted this flyer inviting everybody to see the highlight reel, I felt very sheepish when they got more specific: "Remember that photo of me next to so-and-so? It was in February I think."

So it wasn't perfect -- lots of people missing and a few too many artsy fartsy shots I think -- but it was still fantastic to get to share the beauty that was so easy to notice in my time here. With heroic help, I'll be posting the 220 prints I have tomorrow and Friday the folks in the shots get to take 'em home. I'm leaving a set of DVDs with full-resolution copies of every single shot worth saving, too. But as you may imagine, that all feels insufficient compared to what I'm taking with me. (And no I don't mean the constellation of insect bites, nor the campo vocabulary.)

2006-06-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to report that this morning's 5:34am flight from Miami brought us none other than señorita Margaret Post -- carrying not only dark chocolate and Trader Joe's Temptation Trail Mix but also 2 big jugs of Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter. Dramamine in hand, she wisely kept her eyes shut during our descent down the "world's most dangerous road" -- meaning she saw only a little bit less than our driver, considering the rainy fog was so thick you could often only see 15 feet out and (here's the kicker) the windshield wipers didn't work. Nor the defrost, really. And certainly not the heat.

But we enjoyed the ride all the same -- bittersweetly for me because it's the last time I'll descend the 7000 vertical feet from La Paz to Carmen Pampa in my six-month stint as a docente de inglés para la UAC. There wasn't much time for reminiscing though, as we were treated to an exciting delay because a huge bus had tipped into the ditch -- on the up-mountain side, thankfully, not the down-cliff side.

The line of waiting buses, minivans, pickups and orange trucks (each overflowing with people) heightened the drama, but none of it affected the driver's white plastic bag of insouciant bread -- which skidded left and right with every hairpin turn but toppled only once when the driver flew over a cobblestone crater.

2006-06-25T18:12:00.000-05:00

Carlos is a student finishing his thesis on orchids. He's become remarkably well-versed on the scores of different orchids in and around Carmen Pampa -- including one with flowers only 2 milimeters across and another that flowers once a year for a few timid hours (and will fall over and die if it's touched.)

He took Ginger, Mike and I on a tour the other morning. No esta el tiempo por flores he told us, but we came across a few delicate examples anyway. And most of all we chatted in Espanglish and learned about the craziest orchids he'd come across: one that resembles a lady bee's, um, lady parts so that the male bee will -- in a too-good-to-be-true twist on the birds and the bees story -- pollinate the orchid by trying to copulate with it. Oh, and another that gives off the exact pheromone of a specific male insect so that the neighborhood male insects of that species think somebody new is trying to elbow in on their territory -- the resulting kerfuffle between the miffed males and the crafty orchids results in a happy pollination.

2006-06-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is la fiesta del San Juan, so the party started tonight. It's also ostensibly the coldest night of the year -- so the party features a big bonfire, usually in folks' yards but up on the canchita for us here at the UAC. Which meant there was room for music videos on the pantalla gigante and, more importantly, some dancing.

But the real hit was the fire of course. And the firecrackers. And the sparklers. There's a little pyromaniac in all of us, I think, and had I grown up in Bolivia San Juan would definitely be my favorite festival.

After I took my artsy fartsy shots, I fulfilled the duty of anyone with a digital camera: I photographed folks and them showed them their pictures. Little Katerine (who delights everybody within a 10 mile radius with her toddling and chubby cheeks) tried to right the balance by ignoring the photographs and staring at the photographer. (Thanks to Mike for this shot.)

2006-06-19T18:51:00.000-05:00

The computer next to me in Sucre's speediest internet cafe is playing Metallica a little too loudly for me to know what to say at the moment except that Ginger and Mike and I are having a grand time eating, drinking, laughing, crying, hiking and mining our way through La Paz, Sucre and Potosí -- the latter being the world's highest city (tied with Lhasa, I'm told.) Mike and I went up to Potosí to tour the Casa de Moneda -- which tells part of the story of the 400 years of tragically-mined silver that funded Spanish empire -- and then to tour the silver mines themselves which, as you might imagine, tell the rest of the story.

As many as 8 million (yes 8,000,000) workers died in the mines -- first the indigenous people of Bolivia and then African slaves brought in when there simply weren't enough Aymara or Quechua men left. (You can read more about it in this BBC article or this tourist's account.) The only things we saw in the working conditions there that can't be described as medieval were pneumatic drills, electric headlamps and a few electric lifts. All of the nuggets are still transported horizontally by the younger, healthier (12 to 22 year old) miners and a good number of them are moved up at least one or two levels by handcranks.

Our guide Jaime seemed lighthearted about his 8 years working in the mines, but he was also clear that if he was still there (instead of leading tours for a cooperative guide service) he'd be decades closer to his death. It was Sunday -- and a day after the annual festival where the miners slaughter llamas for another year of good luck or at least no more collapsing shafts, scarred lungs or spent mineral veins -- so the mine was tranquilo. In fact the only miner we encountered was a woman who had worked there for 46 years -- inside for 5 or 6 and now outside hauling and sorting the promising nuggets the miners sent up from deep inside the mountain.

But we did encounter sticks of dynamite (bolstered with ammonium nitrate), half-finished fuses, ladders that inspired little confidence, 30 meter holes, freshly-collapsed ceilings, noxious powders, mysterious liquids, tiny crawl spaces that led to gigantic rooms, and an altar to tio -- the reverent yet affectionate title of Uncle given to a creature some might call the devil. The traditional Christian understanding here has been that God is in the sky and the devil is underground -- meaning that the silver buried in the mountains belongs to the devil, personified by the smiling and, ahem, well-endowed tio and regularly placated with cigarettes, alcohol and coca.

Potosí has beautiful churches, inspiring views, cheerful people and an unbelievable altitude . . . but none of that affected the unshakeable sadness I felt in the air there. I asked our guide at the museum about a vial of mercury on display. "They needed it to purify the silver. Yes, it's very dangerous . . . especially for the workers." But when I asked for more about the lives of the people (the toil and the toll, some would say) who made these houses of silver stand, she said "We have very few documents about that" and walked away. There are few minerals left in Cerro Rico but whereas it was once the cause of much wealth in Spain and much suffering in Bolivia, it is now a caustic and cruel source of hope for a miner's harsh chance at wealth in Bolivia -- despite the suffering, despite the odds, despite the facts.

2006-06-15T23:46:00.000-05:00

¡Miguel y Jengibre han llegado! I met their 5:34am plane in La Paz yesterday and we tooled around the capital sipping coca tea (and hunting api y llaocha before boarding this 4:30pm bus for the Nor Yungas.

And yes, this is the same Mike that fell 3 stories in late January and broke 27 bones, including the C2 vertebrae. To say that we're lucky he's alive -- let alone traipsing around South America with fellow jet setter Ginger -- is an understatement. But he's not just alive, he's --como siempre-- full of life.

Igualmente nuestra amiga Jengibre. (Yeah, people who say ginger is good for travel don't know the half of it.) We head out this weekend for Sucre and Potosí in south central Bolivia, then return to Carmen Pampa for the last week of classes. I've been blessed with great friends and traveling companions during my time in Bolivia, but this double-trouble combo of Mike & Ginger might be hard to beat. (And when Margaret Post shows up from Boston a week from Tuesday, we'll form a Trekking Team like Bolivia has never seen -- at least when it comes to the caliber of trail mix and the ratio of laughter to sleep.)

PS: Good news for my friend Jess: she gets to leave the hospital and prepare for the bowel movement of the century at home. And there's a chance she may not need to have another brain shunt put in -- wahooo! (Jess' Caring Bridge website)

2006-06-13T01:17:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for months to get Hannah's approval for a photo of her on my Blog. I still haven't got it, but now that it's late and she's asleep, I'm putting this up and seeing how long it takes before she guesses my password and takes it down.

This is Coach Hannah -- she and I and a handful of other supporters rose at 3:40am to brave an 8.5 hour roundtrip bus ride Sunday with the 13 members of the women's equipo de fútbol to their big games in Caranavi. They lost one game and tied the second -- but most of all they had a good time.

My job was as el fotógrafo, a task I took seriously. At least seriously enough to shoot almost 2GBs of action shots and sideline candids. Oh, and seriously enough to get some fantastic mileage out of the phrase "¡Soy la prensa!"

(But honestly, who except a serious photographer would lie down in the soggy grass to take this photo? For the record, the rain and gymnastics weren't as bad as putting up with the incredulous commentary from the human subjects. The ball seemed to understand the artsy look I was going for, don't you think?)

2006-06-10T22:57:00.000-05:00

The US Ambassador to Bolivia, David Greenlee, and his esposa paceña visited our proud campus yesterday. He shook lots of hands, spoke mercifully briefly (en castellano, por supuesto), and cut ribbons at both the USAID-underwritten lab and our almost-finished coffee plant. Plus he got photographed by yours truly. Oh and the people from CNN-español. At least that was the rumor. Tons of press from La Paz was definitely here and it was a kick to see students being interviewed on camera.

This photo is among my favorites -- women from the neighboring communities that participate in the coffee projects placed flower wreaths around our guests' shoulders and 'it-ain't-a-party-without-it' mixtura upon their heads. (And yes, that's an orange hanging from the bottom of the wreath.)