Africa is not a photo-op

One thing that has been on my mind for the past few weeks is the nature of our humanitarian/missional attempts internationally. I am trying very hard not to be judgmental, but I tend to notice that the vast majority of trips that are made are done with well-intentioned and good-hearted, but fundamentally colonialistic assumptions.
This is despite the fact that I could cop-out and argue anything -I- do, professionally speaking, would be "exempt" from that; this is completely untrue. I completely disagree with the notion of being the "celebrity Canadian doc" that's parachuted in and put on display for a few weeks, without effecting any long-term usefulness or change.
To explain: much international (or, heck, cross-town) travel done for the 'betterment of mankind' tends to be the Westerner/Western NGO deciding unilaterally what would be best for said developing nation/homeless people/drug addicts/other socio-economic/racial group. The Westerner goes, with much love and good intent, does whatever THEY felt like doing, and then returns, with great photo-ops and stories about the "good" that they've done, without taking into consideration long-term effects or effectiveness of said travel, or whether it was actually what "they" wanted in the first place. This is no more than a repeated oppression by the colonizer, deciding what works best for the poor/marginalized/the 'other', without any consideration to what the colonized would do.
One story that has been driving me nuts has been hearing about one project where an individual is taking a bunch of cameras to some HIV orphans in Africa, having them take photographs for two weeks, displaying their photographs for a 'show' at the end of the two weeks, and then taking back all the photographs back to the West, in order to display them further to other Westerners.
To me, this is a travesty! What long-term benefit would it be for the children to NOT have their photos, that they took, with them? What will these children do with cameras for which they have no batteries, film, developing materials or a darkroom? Is it simply a benefit of the Westerner who gets to keep all these photos for show? Why is no one asking the hard (and potentially, very offensive) questions about what the value of projects are?

This post doesn't make any sense

I realize that I don't like conflict. Correction: I don't like people being mad at me. I suspect I would quite like conflict, as long as I won (which then, isn't really conflict, but conquest, so I guess it's quite a different thing), but I certainly don't like the aftermath of having people upset about the whole ordeal. This is a logical thing to happen, I suppose, if one insisted on winning all the time.
This is entirely beside the point. Two people I know are upset at me. I've apologized profusely to one (who, thankfully, forgave me, so hopefully isn't too upset anymore), the other one, I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong.
Both situations don't sit well. They just sit in the pit of your stomach and gnaw away at it. I suppose this is how some people get ulcers. Now, I am by no means a people-pleaser, but being temporarily disliked by people that you like, well, sucks, for lack of a better word.
I suppose I have to make another correction again: I don't mind people being mad at me if it's over something that matters not. If I overthrew the moneychanger's tables, and they were upset about that, I think I could take it. I suppose if I joined the Burmese monks in their struggle, and the army didn't like that idea, that wouldn't bother me either. Furthermore, if I had successfully assassinated Hitler, and the Nazis were mad at me, that would be alright. No biggie.

Self-inflicted injuries

You know, slicing off a substantial portion of my thumb and thumbnail HURTS! Holy cow, I've been surprised at how much it's been paining me (and yes, I haven't seen a doctor yet for my injuries). I'm surprised at how much damage I sustained. I'm finding it even more surprisingly difficult to function missing one opposable thumb - it's a lot more challenging than I had thought.
However, despite all this, it's my vanity that's the most 'sticks itself out like a sore thumb' - I don't really care how long it takes to heal, as long as it heals up normally. Something tells me, however, looking at the extent of the injury, I'm afraid that it might not... :( stupid Japanese knife...

Bubble girl

Sometimes I think I shouldn't be let outdoors. I was explaining to someone how come I rarely played team sports, and the reasoning essentially comes down to this: I am extremely accident-prone and clumsy. Un-co-ordinated to the nth degree. Case in point: in less than 48 hours, I managed to slice off the end of my thumb and thumb nail, gashed open my ankle on a shopping cart, and bruised my elbow on a pew. And folks, this was from fairly mundane to no physical activity on my part.
Of course, people do remember how I managed to injure myself fairly badly in New Zealand on an ecological project, but I digress... mainly, I should be kept in a bubble of some sort, since I obviously can't seem to keep myself upright and whole if I try to do anything too, uh, dangerous, like grocery shopping or listening to a sermon...

FFT

Why do you sit there in your pews looking up at me? There is nothing that anyone can say that will absolve you on Judgement Day from the act of sitting in the pew hoping somebody else will solve the world's problems. You just want to feel better about yourselves. You don't want to change the world because that would mean a change in your standard of living.

- Paula Spurr

The sermon... is therefore designed to make men feel, and feel so deeply that they will resolve. It is designed to make men resolve and resolve so strongly that they will act.

- Charles Reynolds Brown

Maybe I should just do a Cosmo quiz and get it over with...

In the last little while, I've been in conversation with people regarding various quizzes: about your personality, your likes/dislikes, etc. Some folks I know are going overseas, so the team decided to do the Myers-Briggs personality testing to see how their group dynamics might shape up. Some of them are not terribly surprising in the personality types that came up, but people seem to have a hard time believing that I actually sit in the middle of the road for the four dimensions - the 'Jesus complex', I've heard it said (which, I guess, would explain a lot...). I'm not sure what that's supposed to indicate - that I have no personality? That I have a suprahuman personality?
Secondly, I've done one of those 'how big is your ecological footprint' quizzes, and, whether I included my driving to the suburbs for work or not, I still end up requiring two Planet Earth's in order to sustain my lifestyle. TWO! I thought I was doing really well with all my granola-crapola, but I still need TWO Earths! This frightens me on two fronts: one, that I am still very very very far from being able to demonstrate something that would be something like global parity and two, it makes me wonder where people who throw out a lot of garbage, buy a lot of stuff, eat out a ton, and use their clothes dryer and automatic dishwasher end up. Do they end up using EIGHT planets?

FFT

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
-George Bernard Shaw

Garden eatin'

One of the beautiful things about this province is the yumminess it produces. I have been able to enjoy spring asparagus pretty much every day for the past month. Luckily, I have a supplier that farms close to my work, so have been able to bring bundles of the green goodness regularly. There is something really delightful in having produce fresh, picked that day, pretty much straight onto the plate... it's almost reminiscent of the goodness of 'eating of the fruits of the garden', literally...

Shekinah glory

So mainly, I've been trying to catch up on sleep for the latter part of the week, but one of the things I've been pondering about is interpretation of holy writings. Now, anyone who could possibly believe that the exact meaning and interpretation has remained static for the past 4000 years or so, must be, in my opinion, nutso. Culture, worldview, philosophy, law and history all play roles in the lens through which we understand scripture. Likely, in several generations, they too, will understand things differently, and that's OK.
What bothers me most, however, is how, for some, we keep it removed from ourselves, that we try to bring meaning that is far from our reality (boy, incest is bad! Genociding a nation is bad news!), such that it doesn't touch our own fundamental assumptions of our own reality. What I mean to say is, in our culture, certainly we acknowledge that ALL the sexual sins are wrong, that 'big, bad' things such as killing large sums of people, or cheating out your family are wrong, which are things that we already understand at an intuitive level, but to go deeper, to the things that will actually FORCE us to change our lifestyle and living, those we seem to keep at bay. Things such as greed and avarice, the prostitution of ourselves, not to sex trade workers, but to our careers, to our own futures, to our financial security, and the actions that we partake in that encourage and perpetuate slavery, those we don't talk about, those we don't change. Without question, I participate in the same things; in some senses, I am even MORE guilty, as I KNOW that I know better, and should do better. For some, I do know that (deliberate) ignorance plays a role.
It's almost like we try to keep things at status quo, affecting piety and repentance, but not fundamentally challenging the assumptions that colour how we have lived our lives. We argue that we are trying not to be 'of the world', but we do that through our affectations, rather than of fundamental shifts into how Kingdom living could look like...

You seriously think I'm lazy???

I'm exhausted; correction, I'm friggin' exhausted! The good news is that friends of mine who were hoping I'd come to their labour just got admitted; I've got to take a shower, bring some overnight stuff and head on over to the hospital. The bad news is is that I'm bone-weary! Not only was the whole Sunday night, let's-surprise-Julia-by-having-a-seizure-at-a-party-just-as-she-was-about-to-go-home, issue threw me off all night (even though, thankfully, it turned out OK), then I spent the next 24 hours after that delivering babies all day (and night...). Today, after going to the office for a bit, I had mucho stuff to catch up on, giving me just enough time to eat supper, and get called to the hospital, which, seeing as it's 7pm, means it's going to be another loooong night before this baby comes.... after which, oh joy of joys, I get to spend 12 hours in the office tomorrow, before I can finally, FINALLY, maybe be in bed by 11pm and maybe get six or seven hours of uninterrupted sleep in four days. This results in a total of about 12 or 13 hours of sleep in 96 hours total. That's just super.
I think I'm going to start correcting people when they think I don't work very much or very hard...

Talking to Canadians

One thing that has been causing me great weirdness is the culture shock I've been going through in returning to Canada. It's weird in that I only went to Europe, which is pretty 'normal', or a close-cultural parity, by my standards. I've been more than my usual irritableness and irksomeness about Canadians, and I couldn't figure out what was really bothering me this time about Canada. Until someone helped clarify my vision for me: I realize that one of the major things that drive me absolutely batty about Canadian culture is our arrogant individualistic rights-orientated culture.
The more I hear about what people are protesting and complaining about in this country and the predominant issues that consume Canadian discussions, the more I hear voices that say, "well, it doesn't work for ME, so it's no good - damned if it actually benefits all of society, but I won't have anything to do with it because it doesn't help me or my family". And then (because we are Canadian), we politely spin it so it doesn't appear that much that way.
It is no wonder, therefore, without a corporate/communal identity, and without a responsibilities-orientated culture, we live such lonely, addicted, mentally despairing, highly consumeristic lives. No wonder that we cannot think long-term, or what kinds of legislation might benefit future generations. No wonder we closely hover over our children, because we cannot give them responsibility (and discipline, due to their 'rights') and we do not trust our communities, thus they grow up to be small obese emperors that can talk about their 'rights', but cannot share the load of their responsibilities.
That seemed to click for me; therein lies one of the major failings of our society. As grand and beautiful and kind as Canadians are, I do not see how we can move beyond our culture of being coddled and lying about our bassinettes, crying about our rights, meanwhile being unable to get out and start to crawl towards the future...

Who's the talking head?

I haven't really been thinking about very much lately (mainly because I feel like I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off), but I want to mention something - I am not entirely sure what the motivations were, but I was complimented recently on a very (VERY) brief talk that I did at church the other day. Which was nice; I thought I did a fairly decent job myself.
However, part of the consternation arose when they asked me when I would likely be able to do a "full" talk. Of course, in my context, that would mean, oh, never. At least not a talk that he would be able to attend.
So there we go: good public speaker, good head on the shoulders, demonstrates can handle small snippets of truth, but obviously, only because I have an extra X on board, not qualified to do more. Hm.

Being sparky

I was invited to dinner with an old friend recently. While I was admiring his new digs, he told me that in the intervening years he'd lost his faith. That's probably a bit inaccurate, but it led to an interesting discussion about his story as to how he arrived at that point of hedonistic agnosticism in his life. He also challenged me in many ways, to articulate how I managed to hold onto faith, despite my own incredible odds over the years.
What I also found interesting is that he has still continued to dabble in the church a few times a year, and his own admission that some of the people he has noticed that have stood out to him as respectable, good people, "sparky" people, he's also found at church, when he's actually attended. He acknowledges that there still remains some beauty, and likely some deep truth to that.
Now, I concur with him that "good" people are not exclusively the domain of the Church, nor even that the Church is made up exclusively of "good" people, as they are found everywhere, in every culture and every religion. However, I do hope that I have some of that "sparkiness" as well, that deep Truth can be seen in me as well...

I kicked an SUV today

What astounds me is the ability that people have to be able to stand perfectly comfortably within a clear contradiction. I've been hearing a lot about this belly-aching about the rising cost of gasoline, and how the oil companies are doing it ON PURPOSE, because there is "plenty" of supply and it is simply the oil companies choosing to refine less crude that is causing the artificially rising prices at the pump. People are calling into radio and TV shows lamenting how much harder it is for them to pay for gasoline, how much harder it is to get around, how they've had to think of alternative ways to transport themselves from here to there, how they've had to curtail or change vacation plans because of the price at the pumps.
Um, hello? Isn't this a good thing? Aren't we also the society that cares desperately about climate change? Aren't we also the ones who are wanting to lighten our environmental footsteps on the earth? Aren't we the ones who are trying to practice the "Three Rs"? It is starting to disgust me how people are complaining on public radio that they can't get around and now, heaven forbid, they have to take public transport or bicycle to where they need to go, and how the government has to do "something" to make gasoline more affordable.
Considering we are only now starting to get a glimpse about the "real" cost of food and oil, I suspect our society is not willing to cut back on the frivolous (ie. entertainment and diversions) in order to pay for the necessities, when push really comes to shove...

Germany III

So, I think I've gotten a bit paranoid since I was in East Germany a few days ago. I was staying with a young Ukranian woman, who was living there with her Italian husband, and was giving me a furrowed brow with her stories of her experience of living there. As the Ukraine is still not yet part of the EU, and also has previous connections to the USSR and communist regime, Ukranians in general are looked down upon by East Germans, thus it has been very hard for her to be allowed to have the papers made to find work, to make friends, etc. She also noted that one of the ultra right-wing parties was the one that held the majority of seats in the local parliament, which for her, had echoes of that of the Nazis. that one of her darker-skinned Spanish friends had indeed been beaten several times by white supremacists in their city.
To me, this is all a little disconcerting, as I find it very hard to understand how, in light of a history that went from ultra-right wing (Nazis) to ultra-left wing (GDR) in a short period of time, both demonstrating their shortcomings, that the East should swing all the way back to ultra-right wing.
Anyways, it was a big relief to take the train to Frankfurt, and, getting off the train, seeing people of all colours and creeds and nations again. The balance between the multiculturalism of Western cities such as Frankfurt and Berlin, with the continued homogeneity and general suspiciousness to foreigners in the East is likely an issue that the Germans will have to work with for several generations yet...

Germany II

One of my big "tourist" goals in visiting Germany, more than Reformation sites, more than additional churches and museums, more than eating as much bratwurst as could possibly be eaten, was to visit a concentration camp. I wanted to see what we had always learned about in school, about the horrors of institutionalized hate and murder, that was mandated by government, and tacitly condoned by the Church. The careful calculations of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, its careful design, security perimeters, lavish grounds for the SS officers, the landmarks of torture and incarceration, the gas chambers and incinerators... it was really too much for me at several points... To know that an entire peoples allowed such horrors to happen, in their time, while they were eating and drinking and living on the "outside" (for many of these camps were found sidled right next to residential areas in town), made me shrink in horror at my own apathy to suffering and evil...
One thing that spoke to me was how Pastor Niemöller, one of the prime leaders of the Confessional Church, the only Christians at the time to speak out against these atrocities, for which they too were sent to the concentration camps, was considered "Hitler's personal prisoner" because of his status... Pastor Niemöller at several points in his incarceration wavered in his faith and his convictions, but emerged with a stronger faith, and a desire to foster unity within the Church, after it had done so poorly in defending the defenceless, and speaking for the voiceless.
His is the poem that spoke most eloquently at the time for the travesty of staying silent in the face of injustice:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Germany I

A few observations about Germans: They are definitely not as fit as the Swiss, and are more similar in shape to the North Americans. I think this may be because a lot of their traditional cuisine involves wursts and potatoes. That is to say, sausages in all their shapes and forms, and potatoes every which way.
Fortunately, a large influx of Turkish immigrants to Germany have providentially provided a way out of this problem by providing donairs and kebabs, which I have been gladly eating, as I realize I quite miss the food from that region of the world. In fact, Berlin has the largest Turkish population outide of Turkey. I think I will likely write a bit more later about the East/West divide and the Berlin Wall, etc the longer I hang about here. I have, sadly, seen skinheads still walking the streets (though thankfully not to beat me to a pulp), and have witnessed the Reeperbahn, which continues to sadden me and reminds me that Europeans also need compassion and mercy extended to them as well.
Anyways, this will be brief, as I am on a German keyboard, so am having to correct myself quite frequently, due to the different keyboards...

Switzerland IV

One interesting statistic from Switzerland is related to their guns. As I had mentioned before, each healthy male in Switzerland is conscripted to the army for 20 years. Furthermore, there is obviously gun and rifle training as well - women are also free to partake in all these activities as well, though it is not compulsory for them.
Because of this yearly return to military base for further training, Swiss males keep their army-issued firearms at home. This makes the Swiss the most highly-armed (in the individual sense) in the world. However, strikingly, their murder rate by handgun violence is low, just a bit higher per capita then Canada, which, of course, has much stricter laws against handguns (though the politicians are considering banning them altogether). And, obviously, a CONSIDERABLY lower rate than handgun violence than America.
This brings up many questions, to my mind. Does this really mean that "guns don't kill people; people kill people"? What does this say about our North American culture, that guns are used for the sport of killing people, that we have very lax values in civic pride, that we have less respect for our environment and culture? Does it mean that we don't value life and stability as much? Are there socio-economic factors that play into the handgun violence in North America? Do we really have anger and rage issues that prevent us from treating each other with civility? It makes me wonder, had Canada gone the way of firearms a la America, would we too have a handgun murder rate comparable to them? Does it not strike you as odd that we are just under the rate of the Swiss, when they have at least one gun in every home, and we have so few?

Switzerland III

One of the strange things one can find in Bern, the capital, is a 'bear pit', since, historically, the town was founded on some sort of bear hunt. The very sad part of it is that it is literally a pit, with a few rocks, and then a few bears that roam around pathetically, hoping tourists will drop snacks into the pit. Apparently, they have been talking a long while about making a 'bear park', where they might be able to have room to roam and actually live a bear-like life, but tradition dictates all, and since there has been a bear pit for hundreds of years, actually improving the lives of bears for the better takes a long time to change...
I also had supper with some Swiss folks last night, and they would like me to clarify: They don't eat cheese all the time; in fact, we had chicken curry for dinner. So there.
Some other observations I've made of the Swiss: They smoke relatively less than the average European. They are also strikingly less obese than North Americans are - I think some of this has to do with the European lifestyle generally contributing to healthier people, but I think also the mandatory conscription of all healthy males into the Swiss army also helps in keeping people fit. Furthermore, I do note what I think is a huge prevalence of polio (?I'm not sure - does anybody know?), as there are many many people here with what appears to be polio deformities and using crutches to walk. That is odd, so I wonder if there was some slip-up in their vaccination programs (sorry, that's obviously just job-related ponderings).
That being said, there is a lot of cheese here - we spent the day in the Gruyere region of the country, eating (duh) Gruyere, which is quite tasty, though I think, with the obscene amount of cheese that I'm eating, I would have to say that I'm a bit of a patriot, and still prefer cheddar. There, I said it - just don't tell the Swiss...

Switzerland II

So, despite some cloud cover and a bit of drizzle, I went hiking through the Swiss Alps yesterday. Let me tell you, with the edelweiss, the goats with bells tinkling, the green hills covered with snow, and the tiny Swiss wooden cottages, you really did feel you were in the middle of the Heidi story... all I really needed was my shepherd friend, and we'd be skipping about the mountains, eating cheese and whey. Sometimes it does strike me as quite odd when stereotypes come to life...
Another thing that I've noticed: There are A LOT of Korean tourists through here. I am not sure why that is. Additionally, there are A LOT of Indian tourists as well. For this, I have an explanation: apparently, a lot of Bollywood movies are now shot in and around the Swiss Alps, as it got too dangerous in the Kashmir lands, so many people from the Indian continent come here to check out site locales from their favorite movies... strange, isn't it? I'm currently in this tiny tourist town in a valley between two mountain ranges, and there are actually curry houses here... weird...

Switzerland I

So there are several things that the Swiss do that I note are strikingly similar to how I understand the world. The first is that of wearing socks with sandals; apparently they find it incredibly dirty to wear sandals without socks. I don't particularly think that, but I do like wearing my Birkenstocks with socks. I was actually going to walk out in my sport sandals this morning, sans socks, until my sister pointed out that truism about the Swiss, so I threw on some socks, and, lo and behold, so was everybody else! Secondly, I do also note the extreme punctuality here of all the transport system (I saw the last-second TTC strike on the Star's webpage - the bastards!) - no train, bus or ferry has actually been late; they show up on time, leave on time, and no delays! It's amazing, and jealousy provoking compared to the dumbass service from the TTC.
Thirdly, I'm also noting the care about food that the Swiss take; did you know they only have Fair Trade bananas available for sale here? You can't buy conventional bananas - good for them! Most of the produce in the stores is organic - organic as standard, not as optional. They also label meat, so that you know the country of origin, as well as whether or not the animal had been treated with antibiotics or not. That's amazing to be able to make some knowledgeable choice when it comes to buying food! Certainly, there's a plethora of cheese (no surprise there) as well.
Those are pretty much my observations thus far; based on those three things alone, I think I would fit in quite well here....

FFT

They [the question of what mankind's responsibility is on the earth] are also, both in origin and effect, religious. I am uneasy with the term, for such religion as has been openly practiced in this part of the world has promoted and fed upon a destructive schism between body and soul, Heaven and earth. It has encouraged people to believe that the world is of no importance, and that their only obligation in it is to submit to certain churchly formulas in order to get to Heaven. And so the people who might have been expected to care most selflessly for the world have had their minds turned elsewhere - to a pursuit of "salvation" that was really only another form of gluttony and self-love, the desire to perpetuate their lives beyond the life of the world. The Heaven-bent have abused the earth thoughtlessly, by inattention, and their negligence has permitted and encouraged others to abuse it deliberately. Once the creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the religious institutions. This split in public values produced or was accompanied by, as it was bound to be, an equally artificial and ugly division in people's lives, so that a man, while pursuing Heaven with the sublime appetite he thought of as his soul, could turn his heart against his neighbours and his hands against the world.
- Wendell Berry

Folks, we need to PRAY!

I am going to enclose this link (it seems like I'm getting lazy, just providing links rather than actually writing anything of value), particularly as it is a request from my brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe asking for intervention. It worries me that this is the case, as I have friends who work there...
"'Genocide' warning in Zimbabwe"

D'oh!

So a friend of mine points out the other night that I am Lisa Simpson, present on earth in bodily form. Sure, I don't wear a pearl necklace, or have extremely pointy hair, but I think he was getting at the 'vegetarian-Buddhist-ish-social activist-genius' angle. Parallels also abound: extremely shrill and argumentative at times, prone to self-righteousness, love-hate relationships with Bart-type personalities, geeky/smart, independent, well-versed in many different disciplines and topics, tending towards the left politically especially when pushed by the Right to make a choice, and possessing a disturbing tendency to be able to attract only Ralph Wiggum and Milhouse-types...

FFT - really

Well, some thoughts from Michael Pollan, who I totally adore, and he also quotes Wendell Berry, another iconic hero of mine...
"Why Bother?"

The invisible workers

No, this isn't a rant about the plight of labourers the world over... this is actually wondering something else; on my way from work, there's a ramp connecting two highways which last summer was closed down to a single lane for a good chunk of the whole summer in order to repave it or something. They've just started the other side this week, and so have shut down all the lanes, except for one.
My question is, however, where all the workers actually are? I've been driving by at 1, 2, 3pm in the afternoon and have yet to see a single person, let alone a machine, in the whole area they've shut down. I'd understand, perhaps, if I was driving by at 5 or 6pm and no-one was there; I could explain it by saying it was after the work day. However, to not see anyone there in the middle of the afternoon? This doesn't really make sense to me. And certainly, I would imagine they would need some sort of machinery to help them do some of this imaginary work. Can anyone explain this to me, as it boggles my mind that they would block several kilometres of major highway and not actually do any work on it?

Some more about Utah

One of the things that bother me most about the fundamentalist, "religious right" point of view is how I have to defend it. It bothers me how it presents an unloving, unmerciful and uncompassionate face to society; I don't think anybody in our society can characterize them positively at all; words like 'bigoted', 'hateful' and 'ignorant' come to mind. It bothers me, in that, on occasion, on some issues, I too, fall under the "Christian right-wing" banner, and I thus have to explain and defend my brothers and sisters. Then I have to listen to: "Oh no, not like you, they're not like you at all," at which point I do need to clarify, that yes, they are like me, because they are still part of my family.
I feel like it's kind of like having a very annoying brother, who does all that he can to torment and bother you at home. However, in the schoolyard, if some other kid is bullying him, you need to come to his defence and stand by his side, whether you like it or not, and even though you know, once you get home, he'll just be back to his regular self, with nary a feeling of thankfulness. Sometimes, there may even be some hostility for you having had been there defending his back, instead of letting him fight his battle on his own.
I just really wish, sometimes, that they would go away, that we could work again to create a faith that is loving and compassionate and can balance mercy and justice. Something that could take people's breath away and say, "For surely the LORD is in this!".

Am I in, like, Utah, or something?

As many of you know, I spent today FUMING (I still am!) at the audacity of a sermon that I heard at church this morning. Basically, the gist of the sermon was along the same old fundamentalist lines of disempowering women, and ignoring all basis for reality by informing us it was our God-given responsibility to have as many children as humanly possible. The same old arguments that those darn Muslims are outpacing us in their birthrates, and if we don't hurry up and make as many babies as they do, they will outnumber us on the planet, oh heaven forbid. The argument that it is our mandate to be fruitful and multiply, ignoring many other mandates that God gave us in that small, often misquoted passage in Genesis. That if a couple chooses to be childless, then they are ignoring and disobeying the command upon their lives and living selfish and self-centred lives.
What particular blew me away were the very humanistic "arguments" given for having children as well: The tax credits (what?? Just the speaker mentioning that made me decide I cannot vote for the Conservatives in the next election (not that I would've anyways), if these are the wingnuts that they are appealing to), the "fact" that we need to have more children in order to help support the baby boomers in their old age (I'm sorry; but if they didn't prepare adequately for retirement, then that's their own problem), the point made that children keep marriages together (I'm sorry, but having a child for the sake of keeping the marriage together is a VERY VERY VERY BAD reason to have a child), the reasoning that you women have to have a lot of children, otherwise men, whose hearts tend to stray, will not have a strong compulsion to head for home (Excuse me? If a husband doesn't want to come home to his wife alone, again, VERY BAD reason to have children).
We were also told that we shouldn't stop at just one or two children, oh no! In "fact", it was the Devil's LIE that the world is overpopulated and that there aren't enough resources on the planet to sustain the, oh 6.5 billion of us on the planet, that we should counteract all evidence to the contrary, and have a gazillion children apiece.
What I found particularly interesting was how the speaker, in another part of his sermon, pointed to Jesus as our example as to why we should do some other thing, not related to this subject that I'm speaking about. I did note, however, how he was silent on Jesus' example on this issue: namely, that He had ZERO children. Obviously, Jesus was not living out His God-given mandate.
I'm pretty sure the women sitting in the pews this morning weren't wearing kerchiefs on their heads and unadorned in jewellery and braided hair, but really, for all intents and purposes, they might have as well been...

FFT - really

These are a few articles published in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star this morning; this is a critical issue that really needs a lot of pondering and prayer about our own consumption patterns... it's actually starting to frighten me, at our complacency in the issue...
"Why Food Costs are Rising"
"The Coming Hunger"

Housekeeping

OK, now that I'm a bit post-rant (geez! Who would've thought I would've become so attached to a possession, for crying out loud!); I haven't really had to deal with much in the way of flooring, as I'm currently baby-sitting a house. One thing that I've become aware of is: I don't really like being in a big house all by myself, all the time. I suspect this is partly due to my urban upbringing, so the 'wide open spaces' likely tugs at the subconscious insecurities of being but a wee speck in the entirety of the cosmos. I find it odd, though, how we humans kind of like being in our small rooms, in our small houses, and find it a bit ?scary?intimidating?frightening? in being exposed to the vastness of nature. There are exceptions of us out there, of course, but for the most part, we tend to like being nestled, coddled, snuggled into our spaces rather than launched out into the grand vistas...

Stuff White People Like... (or don't notice)

So, one thing that continues to astound me is how people somehow think it's OK to be walking all over people's floors in their shoes. It's really starting to drive me nuts; I have a small patch of granite tile at the front door - a very logical place to leave your shoes. But oh no! Somehow people think it's OK to be walking over the hardwood with their grimy boots, which makes me want to scream, "Where the heck does it look like it's OK to be walking on wood floors with your shoes?"
It's really making me reconsider if I ever want non-Asians in the house again, or at least people I don't know very well, if at all. I couldn't believe one person recently who walked all the way into the house, despite the mounds of shoes at the door demonstrating that shoe removal was not optional, it was compulsory. Again, someone I didn't know at all, but in trying to use my house hospitably, was at my house anyways.
Obviously, by the title of the post, this is a particular crime of white people. However, I have noticed it transcending many different cultures and ethnicities. The other thing I've noticed is that a lot of white people don't find Russell Peters funny, but every single ethnic minority person I know does. Weird.

Arg! Still wishing for a Joseph...

The dreams are re-occurring again... this time, they've been a mish-mash of being accused, and brought to trial as a terrorist, alien abductions and brainwashing, kangaroo court-type scenarios, being black-mailed into doing something distasteful or illegal... it's really odd, and, of course, cutting into my sleep again...

FFT

Food shopping drives me crazy. I find myself standing behind my grocery cart paralyzed by all the voices in my head: buy local, buy organic (what does organic mean?), don't use plastic bags for produce (not even for bean sprouts), don't buy anything in a package, don't use gas to drive around to different stores for sales, be economical so that you can give more money away, just be thankful you can buy any food at all since people in Africa are starving, never mind whole wheat because you should be baking your own bread, rice is healthier than potatoes, brown rice is healthier than white rice, but don't buy rice 'cause it comes from so far away....
-Donna-Jean Brown

Here, here... and I do hear... the same voices are in my head too...

A rat in a very small maze...

So I had to go down to the financial district today, and boy! I haven't had to do that during business hours for quite a long time! It was a very interesting experience; firstly, in my MEC clothes, I totally did not belong - I really looked like I belonged to another class entirely. Secondly, I couldn't believe how many people were running around underground on the PATH; it was like walking through a very stylish Eaton Centre on the weekends. I had no idea that many people would be wandering around under the tunnels of the city, like many small rats scurrying for their next piece of cheese. Thirdly, everyone looked so focussed, like they had somewhere to go and nothing was going to stop them, not even a little scuff on their terribly stylish shoes.
I felt like I was in a parallel universe, and I felt kind of sad; I think I would be terribly unhappy if I had to run around those granite halls underground, in my stilettos, all day. I suppose that's because I'm such a dilettante....

The impetus is rising...

Oh my, it breaks my heart when I am now hearing people are being murdered over loaves of bread.... Egypt's army is now being involved in quelling the rebellion, as citizens can no longer afford to buy bread to feed their families... Asian countries are now hoarding rice that was originally to be sent for export, as they cannot keep enough to feed their own peoples...
This all ties up with people demanding more meat in their diets, people having abnormally large families with more than one to two children, with people choosing to buy food that is cheap and convenient, as opposed to what is right and just, with this North American obsession with ethanol fuel... sigh...
See the links below...
"Asian Rice Crisis Starts to Bite"
"The New Global Food Menace"

About Lent

I had forgotten to mention about my experience in Lent this year; it was the first time I tried to observe it. So I decided to cut out all meat. Which really, for me, is not a terribly arduous task. That being said, I did miss it when I went to a sushi restaurant, and I did have two slip-ups where I totally forgot I was declining meat until after I'd eaten it. However, on the whole, I didn't really miss it that much, and, I didn't really alter my eating style much either (except for the sushi; see above).
Which I suppose is encouraging; it's nice to know that my diet pretty much follows what we're supposed to be eating anyways, that is, infrequent meat eating and more fruits and vegetables and whole grains.
I am not sure if I felt terribly deprived, or that I was lacking in anything, or even (heavens!) that I was sacrificing significantly. Besides, I've only had a bit of chicken since Easter anyways. However, it has allowed me to think a bit more deeply about food issues (?you mean more than usual, Julia, cause you think about it a lot!), as can be noted in recent posts.
Perhaps next year I should try something a bit more challenging, like sugar, or chocolate...

Field Trip!

So, I had a terribly exciting day at the Ontario Food Terminal! I got to hang out with the folks from FoodShare and went on a tour and explanation of the nature of the operations at the Ontario Food Terminal, and can I say, folks, I am incredibly thankful that we have this here in Canada. We have no idea how blessed we really are when it comes to food, and how much more the onus and responsibility lies on us to make wise choices in what kind of food we buy, and where we choose to buy it.
The sheer enormity of produce that passes through its gates everyday - over 5 million pounds a day! The number of people that are involved in getting food to our plates, in trying to keep the large corporations from dictating what kinds of produce, and at what price, we can access! Just the vastness of the place was boggling!
I also learned that, many years ago, the large supermarkets (ahem, Loblaws, Dominion, Sobey's, etc) pulled out of this co-operative venture, a more level playing field for all involved, and went to go outsource their own produce for themselves, in the meanwhile screwing farmers left, right and centre, and, were it not for the independent nature of the Ontario Food Terminal, would dictate to consumers how much we would pay for produce. If it were not there, my goodness! The complexities of how it would change our food patterns, our food bills, etc, are a bit much to try to explain in a small blog account, but would completely change the nature of how we currently understand and access food.
Boy, today was totally a blessing (yeah, yeah, I didn't go to work again, so sue me), and I totally feel privileged for having been able to go learn more about our food webs...

FFT

I know this is Christmas-themed, and I don't really agree with the notion about Santa, but it's still funny and makes me laugh really really hard (likely because of the science geek in me), and I'm trying to streamline my paper piles, so I'm documenting this online, and recycling the paper, so just humour me.

A few facts about Santa

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2. There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total - leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.
3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels from east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hope out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but for the purposes of our calculations, we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - conventional reindeer can run, at top speed, 15 miles per hour.
4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (2lbs.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tonnes, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lbs. Even granting the "flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine- we need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload, not even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353, 450 tonnes. Again for comparison, this is four times the weight of Queen Elizabeth.
5. 353,000 tonnes travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat up the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's now dead.

The Prayer of Maimonides

This actually falls under the category of "FFT", but this is really for my own benefit:

O God, let my mind be ever clear and enlightened.
By the bedside of the patient let no alien thought deflect it. Let everything that experience and scholarship have taught it be present in it and hinder it not in its tranquil work. For great and noble are those scientific judgements that serve the purpose of preserving the health and lives of the creatures.
Keep far from me the delusion that I can accomplish all things. Give me the strength, the will, and the opportunity to amplify my knowledge more and more. Today I can disclose things in my knowledge which yesterday I would not yet have dreamt of, for the Art is great, but the human mind presses on untiringly.
In the patient let me ever see only the men, thou, all-Bountiful One, has chosen me to watch over the life and death of the creatures. I prepare myself now for my calling. Stand Thou by me in this great task, so that it may prosper. For without Thine aid man prospers not even in the smallest things.

-Maimonides (1135-1204)

Nice and wriiiiigggggly....

Now, I have never owned pets. I wasn't a "pet" child, with a collection of hamsters and dogs and such. I have, over the past few weeks, however, adopted my first living creatures into my house, though with a totally utilitarian role: my red wrigglers! It's been interesting, noting the slugs, and bugs and worms all crawling around in my garbage. Obviously, it is an utter tragedy to toss out perfectly good organic material into the garbage, and should be turned, and returned, back to the earth it came from. Hence, the worms.
They're not eating all my stuff as quickly as I was hoping (which is odd; I didn't really think I produced that much organic material), though they have cut down my 'real' garbage output to about one grocery bag worth every two weeks. I'm hoping that I don't drown them in too much acidity, or too much moisture, and can keep them happy, especially since I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing and I don't want to kill them.
Hopefully this experiment in my small agricultural endeavour works out...

Hurrah for the Vatican!

I am so glad to hear of the Vatican's new list of additional sins. I kind of wish that the Protestants would have some sort of central authority that could also voice such things. To label polluting, encouraging the dispartity between rich and poor, and deliberately keeping structures that encourage poverty as SIN is a good thing. I am so glad that they can recognize that much of the Church's involvement in those (previously unlabelled) sins have caused a lot of our current woes in our world.
Certainly, I find some of it greatly disturbing and compelling to me, personally. Another sin is having great affluence, at the expense of others - this, I find, is one that speaks to me and my generation. It makes me shudder every time people tell me, "Don't worry, you'll find things to buy for the house" when I scream in my head "NO! That's NOT the point!" I don't need more clothes, I don't need more stuff, I don't need more things.... pretty much, besides a good chef's knife, I'm pretty good, really...

Snort...

Apparently, the cigarette companies are getting more aggressive with their print media profile since the legislation of what constitutes appropriate cigarette advertising was clarified. What I found incredibly amusing was that NOW magazine's editor was interviewed about her paper's stance about full-page cigarette advertising. Her statements ran along the lines that NOW's "moral standards" cannot accept cigarette advertising in the paper, that they don't need to pander down to that level, that the money's not worth it.
This is from a paper that spends at least five pages in each issue for "Hot Sex! Live Girls!", as well as for alcohol and illicit drug paraphernalia. I'm sorry, but I couldn't help snorting when I heard that: When a paper actually carries advertisements looking for "Love Dwarves for Sex", I find their "moral standards" a bit iffy, no?

Going yellow...

So, I'm usually quite a loquacious, opinionated, incredibly verbal girl, as some of you may well know. What struck me as incredibly odd, especially while I was in the midst of doing it, was how I "went Asian" in a meeting with some friends this afternoon.
Now, some of you would understand what that means when I explain that I didn't say very much AT ALL, spent most of my time serving tea and tidying up after the meal, and being very submissive and demure, like the good geisha girl that I'm supposed to be.
It weirded me out, man... I was thinking to myself, "Self, what the hell are you doing? Why the racial inferiority complex all of a sudden? Is it because they're white people? Are you being a self-hater? Is your 'Asian' mask coming up for the kabuki that you are to play for the white folk?" I thought it was a bit paradoxical, both authentic, yet inauthentic.
It made me wonder as to why that is, why we tend to go Asian when we're outside of the yellow box. I do have some personal suspicions as to why, in this particular circumstance, that would be, however, that doesn't change the nature of the fact that it happens generally.
I was speaking to another friend about this, and she knew EXACTLY what I was talking about as soon as I said I had 'gone Asian' on some white people. Which was a relief; at least I'm not a total oddball. It is interesting to note, though, that this is something that infects the entire race, which is why so many of us do well and succeed to a certain extent, but we never get to the higher, more aggressive, echelons of power. We seem to be held back when it comes to speaking out and standing up; I suspect part of it is our Confucion heritage and our anti-feminist tendencies, perhaps.
At any rate, I found it really odd watching myself going Asian live, in real time, and yet somehow not being able to get out of that rut....

Boy, I'm pretty slow.

My gosh, it's been a while; I suppose it's a combination of just generally being stressed out and busy. WHICH IS NO EXCUSE. I am really wishing I had a second brain, or some sort of microchip implanted in my brain for extra storage space; I would be one of the first to volunteer if they had that available.
A friend of mine had asked if I had been considering getting an iPod Touch. Admittedly, it's beautiful, however, it's ridiculously expensive (for no phone capability), and honestly, I don't have the time to fill out all the applications and get it all on the go; I don't even have time to download more music onto my iPod, for crying out loud. I still haven't downloaded my previous photos from my last trip, oh, five months ago....
That really had nothing to do with what I was thinking about, but I figured I should jot down something, at the very least.

FFT

The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.
The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill.
This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return.
But we will consider the offer.

For we know that if we do not sell, the white man may come with guns and take our land.
The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.

The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.
So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us.
The Great Chief sends word that he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably by ourselves.
He will be our father and we will be his children.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land, but it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

This shining water that lives in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.

The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst.
The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children.
If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go walk among the stars.
Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man.
We are part of the earth, and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.
The rocky crests, the juices of the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man - all belong to the same family.

The red man has always retreated before the advancing white man, as the mist of the mountain runs before the morning sun.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not create the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.

The white man too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Continue to contaminate your beds, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

- Seattle, Dwamish Indian Chief, upon surrending his land to Washington Governor Issac Stevens in 1854

Too much excitement... can I send some back?

OK, this week, though only being a Wednesday, is just a little bit too much excitement all in one week. Today's big event was my first major car crash! Praise God that it was only me, and I didn't take anybody else down with me. To be honest, it was actually a bit fun, though really fast - kind of like a really cheap rollercoaster. I was toddling onto work, to get there for 10:30am, so I did, in fact, leave at a responsible hour, 9am, to make sure I was going to get there with the weather conditions as they were. However, just as I was about 5km from work, just to get off the highway, I spun out, and around and about, and dodged the median ditch, and swung right around, back and forth across the four lanes of highway several times, to end up smacking my entire driver's side into the snowbanked shoulder!
Frankly, if I hadn't stepped out of my car and noted that I had blown two tires, I would've just turned around and driven the rest of the way to work. However, a parasitical towtruck driver showed up about 45 seconds after I crashed to charge me a ridiculous sum to take me to Canadian Tire (ie the tow cost as much as the tire replacement... hmmm.), which, of course, not being a CAA member, and not being able to drive a two-wheeled car, made it a deal that was impossible to refuse.
I'm only now starting to feel a bit of back pain, though not too much. I know it could've been a lot worse, and it was frankly a miracle that I didn't knock out a few more cars with all the highway I traversed for about half a kilometre, trying to get the car back in control.
Well! Seeing as it's only half-way through the week, I look with trepidation at the rest...

So that's why I'm totally and utterly bagged today...

Well, I was given the privilege of being the 'second person/doula/support person/general entertainment' in the room for my friends' baby. Providentially, they happened to have the baby on my day off work, so I trundled over there, and stuck around for 12 hours until she had the baby, catching the last subway train home again. I must say, watching and experiencing it from the other side of the fence, there are a few observations I should make:
1. It's really boring, lying in the bed for hours and hours on end. At work, I usually flit in and out of the room, making some (witty) observations, and then going on to the next patient, so to me, it looks like there's progress, since I come in every few hours. However, having to sit there on the other end, it's a pretty long process. Thank goodness for Settlers of Catan, as that helped pass the time.
2. I can understand why some patients complain that they rarely, if ever, see nurses and doctors while they're in the hospital. Now, perhaps I'm biased, as this doesn't happen in my own hospital, but I couldn't believe how little one-on-one nursing care my friend obtained - in the twelve hours I was there, she got a total of 45 minutes (45 minutes!) of direct nursing care, given by SIX different nurses (since they were all on various stages of break and lunch). That is ridiculous.
3. The whole process is a lot more intrinisically interesting when it's a baby involving people that you love.
4. Usually it's pretty easy for me to throw off the 'medical hat' when I'm dealing with realms of medicine that I'm not terrible proficient or interested in, but I found it was harder to take it off in this situation, likely a combination of getting 'mama-bear-ish' for my friends (with their 45 minutes of nursing care), and the fact that it's the one thing in life I feel I'm actually skilled in.
Anyways, they both did awesomely, and the baby was pretty darn cute and chub-a-lub coming out, so it was all fun and games, really, at the end of the day...

What I think about while I eat...

So, the ponderings I was considering as I sat down to supper this evening:
I had a simple supper of some fresh, organic rosemary bread eaten with home-made raspberry jam, a spinach salad with almonds and organic grape tomatoes, and then some fair-trade chocolate. How yuppie! How granola! How so-like-Julia!
That being said, however, I was considering the various issues around each course that I was eating, as I was eating them...
My bread: most of the ingredients were, in fact, from Canada, and local, however, I was thinking about how world-wide wheat crops have actually done disastrously over the past two years, and world supply is, in fact, getting to critically low levels, spelling disaster for the developing world, and increasing pasta and bread prices for us in the near future. Sigh... I wondered about how North Americans were going to accept increasing bread and pastry prices, and I worried about those who are dependent on couscous, pasta and various breads as their staples around the world...
My jam: Well, that was mainly a warm, fuzzy feeling, thinking about the person who made the jam, just for me! And knowing that they had used raspberries from their own backyard!
My salad: Now it starts getting complex - I was certainly thinking about how all the components of my salad came all the way from California, and how out-of-season spinach and tomatoes are, but then I started thinking about the almonds.
90% of the world's almond supply comes out of one very large and vast tract of land in California. This is a problem, in terms of monoculture and intensive agriculture. It is likely one of the major causes of this collapsing colony disorder that is wreaking havoc amongst honey bees throughout the United States. It is thought that these poor bees, due to being forced to work, in stressful situations, in AND out of season, dealing with only one type of plant, and not being allowed to eat anything else, or diversify their diets, are causing them to die with disturbing alacrity. This is demonstrated in the California almond harvest - the trees are in bloom only for a few weeks every year, and almond growers are heavily dependent on proper pollination of the almond trees within these few short weeks in order to ensure adequate almond production. There are not enough honeybees, even before CCD was a problem, in California, to pollinate all these trees. For years, honeybees have had to be imported to California, just for this huge, four week almond orgy. However, until recently, they were able to deal with exclusively American bees. Because of CCD, bees are starting to be imported all the way from AUSTRALIA to help with the pollination. Changing their time zones, having them wake out of hibernation (if they are not from California) in order to force them to work - it's just too much for a poor little bee to handle. Sigh... I felt sorry for the bees, and wondered how the future of the almond industry, as well as most agriculture, is going to survive without them...
My dessert: Well, it was fair-trade chocolate - there's not really much else to say, except for then I thought about how far it had to come in order to end up on my plate. Admittedly, not quite as far as the Ivory Coast, which is good, but still from Central America, which is still quite a ways away...
This is usually what I end up pondering while I eat; what about you?

FFT

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. He then became an itinerant preacher. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn't go to college. He had no credentials but Himself. He was only thirty-three when the public turned against Him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His clothing, the only property He had on earth. He was laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life.
-Anon.

Can you smell it on the air?

I was walking to the Post Office this afternoon, and there it was, unmistakable - the squawking and honking of Canada geese, flying in formation, back towards High Park! You can almost smell it on the air - spring! I know there's still piles of ice and snow everywhere, but today, you could feel just a smidgen of warmth and smell a bit of dirt and freshness coming... it's a comin'!!!!

FFT

I came across this amongst some papers that I have; I know it's an old one, but I thought I'd just leave it here for posterity's sake:

Socialism: If you have two cows, you give one to your neighbour.
Communism: If you have two cows, you give them both to the government, and they will give you milk.
Fascism: If you have two cows, you keep them, give the government all the milk, and the government sells you the milk.
Capitalism: If you have two cows, sell one of them, and buy a bull.

Bye bye, baby...

I think I can't help but be pessimistic about the future of humankind after I go through a stint of delivering a lot of babies for completely dysfunctional families. I think after a parade of a motley crew of various drug addicted, very young and immature, very old and overly anxious (think bubble wrap/helicopter parents), abused AND abusive, raped, rude, irresponsible, uneducated and unaware of the awesome responsibility they're about to undertake, uncaring and selfish women and their families, I get quite discouraged of the future generation of children that we are creating. I suppose this is a monster of our own making.
Not that the Church gets away from it either; I think some pat themselves on the back that -we- are doing a better job, or that -our- children will do much better, for we will put them in better schools, teach them to eat better and take full advantage of the middle-class banality of what presents as most modern-day Christianity.
However, these are still ALL our children; we are still responsible for them, and we are responsible for the society that shapes them into who they become. To write them off as 'not ours' is a crying shame.
I can't help shedding a tear sometimes for some of these babies as I hand them off to their families and God-knows what kind of life and future ahead of them... and all I can do for them is give them a blessing before they go...

Heroes and Giants

So, I was referred over to this website to watch this movie: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ , which was a succinct way of delineating the Problem. However, I already know that I'm part of the choir that it's preaching to - my angst and reluctance of having to go shopping over these few past months for basically everything is one of the reasons why everything has been moving at the rate of molasses. Why on earth would I buy a frypan "just for now", "you can replace it later", when that is part of the Problem? I thought, dear small number of readers, that I would also pass on this movie to you; to challenge you on your consumption patterns, and whether that is truly being a good steward of all the Good Things that have been made by the Good One....

Take this city, if it be Your will....

OK, so I feel, as usual, like I just experienced church, in one of the best senses of the word, courtesy of Bono and his boys, on the big screen, in 3D. I must say, there's something downright religious in U2's music and their performances. As I've gotten older, I'm less "screamy" and more cognizant of their choices of songs, and the natural arc of the story through the concert. And, like most good stories (including the Best One of All), there is the arc of conflict, suffering, redemption, solace and then hope. Wow. It's rather late, and I would much rather pontificate more about why U2 is the best aural thing that has happened in this century, and the last, but I am biased, and this could take a whole whack of time (maybe even a Master's thesis - ha ha!). Suffice it to say that I am deeply moved, yet again, by the Story that their music tells...

Robert Zurrer is the most selfish man on the entire planet

I can't even to begin to explain the sheer pompous, colonialistic, selfish actions of this man. I am terribly afraid that it does, however, reflect our general Western values and arrogance. Luckily, however, a very eloquent letter writer to the Toronto Star today states it much more clearly, so, as I'm rather tired, I will just quote the letter verbatim:

Robert Zurrer, a two-time kidney transplant recipient, claims it is "arrogant" to tell him he can't buy a kidney from a poverty-stricken person in a poor country. Dialysis, he says, is "a living death." I would say the arrogance is on the part of Zurrer and the rest of the consumer-oriented developed world.
He continued to live an active life, sometimes putting himself in jeopardy by playing hockey when he knew he shouldn't and playing golf four days after his first transplant operation. Twenty years later, he cashed in his savings to buy a body part from a man who perhaps didn't know the ramifications of his actions, perhaps wasn't even paid for the kidney. And Zurrer knows nothing of what happened to his donor after the operation.
This is nothing but a case of neo-colonialism, where a white man benefits from the destitution of a brown man living in poverty. And let's not forget that the whole transaction is based on the profit motive – profit for the intermediaries, not the individual who makes the sacrifice. Zurrer sees it as his right to live a full life, but based on what? The fact that he is white, living in the comfortable West with the cash to buy a body part? This sense of entitlement is endemic to Westerners.
Having to undergo dialysis to stay alive, perhaps dying at a young age (by Western standards), is a terrible thing. But even having the ability to live on dialysis, to live into one's 50s, as Robert Zurrer has done, is not an option for many people living in the poverty of Asia and Africa. And still we take their kidneys, as well as their labour and resources, so that we can improve our lives.
Stephen Bloom, Toronto

Bravo, Mr. Bloom!

That's Dr. Handywoman to you, buster...

So today, I kind of learned the basics of how to change faucets, replace toilets, fix leaking taps and repair drywall. I think that's mighty impressive. It's been kind of sad how I've been a bit of a 'damsel in distress', seeking men I know to help me fix problems around the house. Admittedly, they've all been awesome, and most of them are actually professionals in their area of expertise. However, there's something a bit empowering in unearthing some of the magic and mythology around basic plumbing and home repair. Now, I am no wizard in this domain, certainly not even an apprentice, but I do feel like I learned some useful tips. Whether I'm brave enough to hazard them on my own is something entirely else...

Luckily, Truth is a diamond, not a line...

It's funny how in retrospect, you can see how your views about certain matters change. When you can clearly remember from what facet you would approach an issue, and then realize that, a few months, a year, later your facet has changed entirely. And yet, I cannot pinpoint exactly what caused the shift in perspective.
There are lots of examples of this in the journey of my faith, that, even a year ago, my views would be incompatible with what I understand now. Finding truth, and Truth, in 'unexpected places', does that. I suspect also reintegrating faith back into reality also helps - not allowing it to run in a dimension all its own, but to see that it conforms to the norms and patterns of what makes sense as well. I think also (even though I am a few decades late) coming to accept that I am a product of this culture, this generation, and I do need to speak into that, and not desperately hold onto models and ideas that made sense generations ago...

Money for nothing, and the chicks for free...

This is pathetic; this is the first time since I've been in elementary school that I've had to borrow money off my parents to go out... Next time, I should really plan my billing cycles a little bit more appropriately...

FFT

To All But God

When you see me you see only a fat Indian
an ugly woman
a too young mother
a shabby dresser
When you hear me you hear only a toothy lisp
a faltering memory, a too talkative loner, a frustrated yell
If you delve a little deeper you'll find
poor health - a drain to health care
two kids - a drain on welfare
mental illness - a drain to the sane

You'll never know the beautiful child
who loved to dress up as a princess
or the dynamic grad speaker
who had the crow on its feet
or the vibrant bride full of hope for a lifelong partner in love
To you I remain pitiful, worthless, unloveable - to all but God

You think I don't see your arrogant sneer
don't hear your hostile snicker
as I lug groceries and kids and my swollen body
on buses, through malls, across busy streets
I keep my eyes down but my head up
I turn stone deaf to the jagged slurs
I choke back a tear and keep my mouth shut.
Now my pain becomes visceral
It cannot be hidden
So I dance like St. Vitas and draw more stares still
I'm reminded of how I must seem
how pathetic, how odd
I can't prove my beauty -
to any but God.

-Heather Slade

Loving welling from deep in my bones/soul

So, yet again, one who is rapidly becoming one of my more favoured friend-speakers, totally gob-smacked me with another one (OK, admittedly, he's only done it twice, but that's still two for two). The idea that my belly, my appetites and my desires can actually be used for glory? That it's not all evil in(carn)ate? That faith is holistic and holy, that it involves one's whole being, from head to toe, and EVERYTHING else in between... for some reason, he wanted me to mention his name here... which I thought was kind of silly; obviously, he has no idea how miniscule this blog's audience is.... :)

Little waves on the seashore guided by the irresistible ocean's heart

I had just heard the most refreshingly honest account of a 'returnee' home for the year. I find it quite odd how most returnees talk about how they move from strength to strength to strength (to strength to strength), never wavering, never faltering, never having any major doubts or troubles, except for maybe a bit of physical illness, or a bit of physical hardship. It's like we don't allow ourselves to fail, to doubt, to question.
I realized that this 'oddness factor' is partly because I no longer buy the modern model. It doesn't suffice for me anymore, marching out, sword in hand, assuming assured victory. Maybe the victory is not for us to win (wait; this is actually true - it is NOT ours to win). Maybe it's not a battlefield. Maybe we should be thinking of nuturing and growing and mulching - agricultural metaphors, not those of war and of violence. War and violence assumes there's a winner and a loser. Agriculture works with what one's got, and sometimes you get a bumper crop, and sometimes you lose everything, but at least you haven't destroyed everything in your path along the way. Yes, this is vaguely feminist thought. Yes, it may not correlate exactly with the imagery that we've been given in the good book, but it is more whole, more honest, and more in tune with what we know is good and beautiful in this world. But if not, then we assume if the returnee is not moving onward and outward, then they must be LOSING the battle. This isn't right thinking.

What do I know? I wear a conical straw hat...

I was just at a dinner celebrating the achievements of one of the largest charity groups in Toronto, if not in the country. It was a mix of agency workers, corporate representatives, and regular people like me. What I found fascinating was how many of the award presenters, as well as award receivers, were white people. Fascinating, in that this charity's work mainly benefits the ethnic majorities of the city, not the WASPs.
That dynamic has always intrigued me, the balance of the benevolent white folk helping out all the other coloured people, and how this still occurs, even into the 21st century. Of course, it is totally not under your control as to what ethnicity you are born, however, we do know that race plays a huge part into which socio-economic class you will tend to belong to, as well as what your particular prospects in life will be, as well as to how giving (or not) you are to the community at large (rather than just your particular ethnic enclave).
It was an interesting, though brief, discussion we had in the car on the way home about why that dynamic still exists, why people of colour remain the recipents of the generosity of the white people, for the most part, and how we long and dream to see that far, far away day when that dynamic might be reversed, and equalized...

FFT

The end cannot justify the means by the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends obtained.
-Aldous Huxley

FFT

The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.
- Tom Robbins

FFT

The cow became the sacred symbol to the Hindu because it gave milk and chops and hides. It nourished the babies and kept the old folks warm. Because it provided so many good and life-supporting things, it was regarded as an embodiment of the Universal Mother, hence holy. Then it occurred to some monk or other, some abstract scholarly kook, as you would say, that gee, folks, since the cow is holy we maybe shouldn't be eating it and robbing its udder. So now the Hindu has got sacred cows up to here but no more milk and steaks. They starve in plain view of holy herds so big only Hopalong Cassidy could stop them if they took a notion to stampede. The spiritual man's beef against beef is the result of a classic distortion. It's another case of lost origins and inverted values.
- Tom Robbins

I will heap burning coals on your head....

What surprised me recently was realizing that you can still be civil, even witty, with people you really dislike. I didn't think that was possible. I think I am struck by the notion of Asians having a deep need to 'keep harmony', or at least the semblance of it, above any sort of snufflings of conflict. That the notion of 'face', above everything else, reigns supreme, so that the whole group may move in the presumption that all is well on the surface, but just underneath the ripples lie turmoil and seething emotion. Of course, I was well aware of the fact that you MUST be civil with everyone (as an Asian), even if you hate their guts (as well as all the other bits of their bodies besides their intestines). What I found flabbergasting was that you could even joke and have witty repartée with one's so-called 'enemies'. Is this what 'heaping burning coals on their heads' is supposed to look like? Something tells me not...

You want me to go watch I Am Legend????

I must confess, I cannot understand people who can only function within the dimensions of their career and their house. That is to say, can only concern themselves about the very base and ignoble functions of life, and think little, if at all, about larger societal and global issues. To wit: I was recently having a discussion about our First Nations people with some friends, and (though this is a bit patronizing, as we had no aboriginal people among us) discussing how do we get involved, how are institutional structures preventing us from seeing justice done, and what kinds of barriers do we see in accomplishing such goals. In contrast, simultaneously in another part of the city, a friend of mine was stuck in a conversation about Jamie-Lynn and other celebrity tripe (oh heavens!).
It has always been a grave annoyance to me, if not downright aggravation, in trying to have people in the latter group start to think outside of the tiny cultural blinkers one has been given. It makes me wonder whether people really enjoy having their nose stuck to the grindstone, you know, that whole saying that you could be so engrossed in concentrating on your little furrow of dirt in the ground, that you miss seeing the stars in the heavens....

Bhutto briefly

I figure I should say something, briefly, on Benazir Bhutto, as controversial as a figure as she may have been in Pakistani politics. A friend wondered at me why I was displeased with the news of the assassination because she was a woman, and whether I would be equally upset if it had been Narwar Sharif instead. Of course, it would've been upsetting if her rival had also been killed, but I think it is all the more upsetting knowing that, in the balance of things, it was a man who killed her. Men are the ones who do such things; women, only rarely (and when they do, it is incredibly surprising) so. Men seethingly hate, actively work out their rage, execute brute actions in their anger, and, in politics, do so towards other men (ie. war, suicide bombings, AEDs, etc). Women, of course, also experience this hatred and anger, though in other forms (ie. rape, domestic violence, oppression... did I mention rape and brutality?). To know that some man would have sunk to a new low by assassinating a woman, especially one who, despite her polarizing influence, was still nonetheless a former Prime Minister, and, more significantly, the first woman to reach that level of power in a Muslim country, should be enough to make anyone upset.

Merry Christmas!

One of my favorite cartoon strips, and I've figured out how to put pictures up here! I suspect I must be violating some sort of copyright thing, but I just wanted to share it with everyone.
Merry Christmas!

Some clarification of angst

I was thinking: perhaps this has more to do with the fact that it's Christmas. The story that the (Al)mighty became weak, came to walk in solidarity with the small, and the frail, and the broken. Perhaps it's mulling over our archetypes of Christmas: of the Scrooges of the world giving back in abundance to the Crochetts, of the Grinch giving to the Whos, of the Magi giving gifts to the bastard refugee child that we serve, that makes me wonder about our place in all of this, of our role in reconciling such things.... maybe it's just a timely thought that deserves a good pondering for Christmas...
Merry Christmas.

Angst of the bourgeoisie

One of the things that has really been bothering me over the past month is the issue of class within the church, triggered by a particular comment by a friend, well, a month ago. I know the church already has issues with racial integration and reconciliation, but at least there are efforts in that way to improve that situation. The thing that strikes me, however, is how it is still integration only in a "horizontal", not a "vertical" fashion. How does one move "vertically" without appearing patronizing, or, worse yet, that one is "participating in ministry"? I haven't been able to figure out a way to genuinely and authentically break down class barriers, without it appearing terribly contrived.
This is also combined with being disturbed by the notion that churches have "target markets", that is, certain ethnic groups, or the "young urban professional", or students, or homeless people, or what have you. Is this what we're really all about? If I serve a God that prefers the poor and the oppressed (which, by and large, I am neither, and indeed, I do serve a God who does have that inclination), then how am I actively promoting His views, or am I actively standing in His way? Are we all about reaching "our own" "more effectively" by delineating our "target market"? Are we really reflecting the nature of Kingdom when we do?
I do worry that I (that is to say, an educated, upper-middle class urban professional) perhaps may be part of the problem; that perhaps I am being Pharasaical, in that my "elite class", whether on purpose or not, I exclude, I disinvite, people from the wedding feast...
Of course, this is all my luxury, that I can have existential angst about all of this...

Hospital gafflebab

Now, I suppose, after just having delivered my first baby at the new hospital, I should say something about the new environs - it's a BIG hospital. To get from my new call room to some of the important places I have to be, I actually have to sprint up to 500m to get to where I need to go. This is not ideal in my line of work, but at least there's some adrenaline pumping by the time I get there!
I must say, clearly this hospital was designed for patient "wow factor" in mind, rather than also balancing the needs of the employees as well. What I mean to say is, yes, it's a gorgeous place, and yes, the patient facilities are beautiful and spacious, but the environs in which the health-care workers toil are less than stellar. It's a lot of design planning issues that make it very patient-friendly, but very worker-unfriendly (which, of course, is NOT a good idea long-term; hospitals should be designed to be worker-friendly, perhaps even more so than being patient-friendly).
It's not just me, of course. I've been quite impressed with some of the new equipment we've been given and the bells and whistles that come in the patient rooms. The nurses think I'm weird for how enthusiastic I've been today with all the new toys for patients. However, it has been fun, including hovercraft transfer mats and disco lights for the OR!

Tearing down the ivory tower...

In the rarified air of the ivory towers of universities, I find it quite amazing how there is such a culture difference from institution to institution. Personally, I really despise hoity-toity academic ranks and hierarchy; it drives me nuts. I must say though, since I stand between both the two universities closest to my office, that the culture difference is quite stunning. One is welcoming, collaborative, and wants to hear from other voices. The other: callous, uncaring and certainly an attitude of, "Well, can do you do anything useful for us, or what?". It is striking. It makes me wonder why anyone (including myself) would think the latter is such a wonderful organization...

Films vs movies

I recognize that I am a movie snob. In fact, I rarely enjoy movies; I like films, and I adore documentaries. Most know about the belly-aching I made about having to go see Fantastic Four II: Rise of the Silver Surfer this past summer, and how I was bemoaning and bewailing the fact that I would never get that time back again, but I digress...
It's just funny, in that I noticed an acquaintance of mine has a WICKED collection of DVDs that totally runs up my alley: a lovely mix of some documentaries, some films, and the full extended version of the Lord of the Rings. Very decent. Of course, there's also the Transformers movie, and Star Wars, but I suppose that's because he's a guy, so I will forgive him that... At any rate, I forgot to ask if I could borrow, oh, almost his whole library, last time I was over, and emailed him to see if I could borrow some, which he willingly obliged, if I could list off what I wanted... but now, I can't remember exactly what was in the rack: What to do? Say I'll just take them all, except for Transformers? I think that might be kind of rude...

I also recognize that this is possibly the lamest entry I have ever made on this blog, but I didn't want people thinking that I was neglecting my writing; it's just that I haven't had anything terribly exciting happen in the past few days, that's all. Basically, I've been trying to catch up on labwork and stuff at the office, that's about it... whoo hoo!

Culture shock?

I find it odd that I don't particularly culture shock easily, or, at least, I don't think I do... I seem to have seamlessly slid back into the mundane, everyday humdrum of North American society... the frenetic pace, the blasé materialism, the lack of a collective... that being said, I did find that I was ranting at someone about what "stupid, upper-middle class shits" we all were the other day...

Can't quite figure it out....

Now this is likely just flogging a dead horse, but since I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while now, I thought perhaps I'd try to field some feelings about it. Is our goal really to try to pursue with all of our might that which we are passionately called to, or, are we to be dutiful to whatever situation we should find ourselves in? Is there something 'wrong' when situations or circumstances make us desperately unhappy, or, is that simply a manifestation of a temporary 'trial' that we should patiently endure until things change? Are joy and happiness to be our lot, or are pain and suffering supposed to be the sought-after norm? Any thoughts?

Border Crossings III

Well, this isn't really a border crossing, but a few last notes:
Jordanian elections occurred, and it seemed that most parliamentarians that were elected were sympathetic and loyal to the king, rather than the Muslim Brotherhood, and other fundamentalist Muslims. Long live the king!
It looks like they -may- have a candidate to stand for president in Lebanon, if Hezbollah and its allies agree. Hopefully this will all work out. Hopefully, conversely, General Suleiman would actually be a good man, not a strongman; this will be hard to know in advance, as he has been an army man all his life.
While driving out to the airport (this is the "border crossings" bit), the cabbie actually took me through a Palestinian refugee camp, and some of the Hezbollah stronghold neighbourhoods in Beirut, that still have noticeable damage due to the bombing by the Israelis. He told me that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah used to live "above ground" until last year's war, and now his living quarters are under street level. Nice. Frankly, I'd reconsider my ways if I was making many other people so angry that they'd be bombing me regularly, but I guess that's just me... I don't think I'd want to compromise sunshine for my warped ideology....

Lebanon VII

Surprisingly, I'm not sick and tired of Middle Eastern food. I am dearly wishing for some sushi and (can you believe it) dim-sum, but at least I'm not as tired of hummus as I was of paneer...
One of the things that is very odd here in the Middle East is the method of construction. I note here that people do not complete building jobs at all; sometimes they'll be missing the top floor of a building, sometimes one half of the building only has the scaffolding in place. It is quite odd. I had read somewhere it was due to the reluctance, and even prohibition of debt amongst Muslims. Hence, you build with as much money as you have; once that is gone, you wait until you accumulate some more, and then you continue with building. I was then told that was not necessarily true. Certainly, people do not necessarily complete buildings all in one go, but sometimes it is simply an issue of financing. Well, whichever way it is, it is quite interesting how many buildings have struts sticking out of them, in anticipation of further construction, whenever that is to occur...
That being said, Beirut is a relatively new city. That is to say, many of the buildings here have been constructed since the end of the civil war. There is a certain gracefulness (due to the French influence) and modernist feel to many of the buildings. Also, that means that many of the previous buildings that were pulverized during the war are hidden, or mostly disappeared. There are still many buildings with obvious bullet-holes and mortar shell holes in their walls, but the new buildings certainly out-number them.
Furthermore, I've been utterly unsuccessful retrieving photos of tanks, blown-out buildings and the like in Beirut. Due to the current simmering tensions here, for the lack of a President, there is heightened military security around the downtown. (Going through a check-point, I accidentally hit a soldier in the face with my hat as I was emptying out my bag to show him there was really only my hat in it... oops... I've never hit a soldier in the face before, but I didn't think that this was the best situation to have done that...) I've been denied to take photographs, and have not been allowed close enough to others to snap an adequate photo. Let me assure you though that the marks of the war still remain; it is quite something to note the mangled, twisted remains of the intersection where Rafik Hariri was blown up a few years ago. The road has been repaved, but the shriveled shells of buildings, with concrete sticking onto steel rods, curling over the edges of overhangs and previous windows is quite something; it is clear that 'they' wanted him good and dead...

Lebanon VI

The more I am learning about the politics of this country, the more I am profoundly convinced that people do need to deliberately pursue peace rather than partisanship. It confounds my mind at how men are more willing to go to war than to compromise. I am hoping and praying that something positive may come from the Annapolis conference, but I am not sure how a 2 day conference, moderated by the US, is going to fully resolve Palestine, the Golan, Hamas and Hezbollah, the lack of a Lebanese president, the Iraqi refugee crisis, etc etc etc... being able to start to see it from multiple sides now, it is not so easy to paint in large strokes of black and white...
Looking outside the window right now, I see a large plume of smoke coming up from the south end of Beirut: I am not sure why, and I am hoping it is only an accidental fire, and not something more ominous than this. I do want to get a picture with one of the tanks on the streets here, but I do know, as "cool" and "fun" as that might be, it does point to the brokenness in this country that serves as the barometer for the rest of the region...

Lebanon V

One of the things that I've been noticing by the sides of roads and in little crevices here and there are these random shrines to the Virgin Mary both here and in Syria. I couldn't figure out why; they didn't seem to be at particularly dangerous traffic points, not necessarily near religious buildings, nor surrounded by flowers or incense votives. They would simply be pictures or statues of Mary, maybe with a Bible or one plastic flower, encased in a cage. Very odd.
I finally asked someone if they knew what those were for: they told me it was to help prevent litter... hunh? Apparently, people build those little shrines in corners that they don't want litter accumulating, and it ACTUALLY prevents people from littering - obviously only in those corners, as there's plenty everywhere else.
I don't understand why a simple "Do not litter" sign with a rubbish bin wouldn't do... besides, Mary was a mother; I'm sure she could tolerate a bit of mess...

Lebanon IV

So I went to possibly the craziest tourist site ever... apparently it's known far and wide within Lebanon, and tons of Lebanese come to visit, but I'd never heard of it before, and all I could think of is, "Boy, this is some crazy s#&^!" walking through...
There is a man named Mr. Moussa who dreamt about living in a castle when he was just a wee lad, even though he was very poor. One day in his art class, he was drawing this castle, and he told his teacher about his dream. He was then soundly beaten (which isn't surprising - I've been hearing a lot of stories along those lines in the religious madrassas) for dreaming such things, as they would never come true.
Well, wouldn't you know it, Mr. Moussa becomes this huge tycoon, a very rich man, and he goes about building a freaking castle in the Lebanese mountains. Takes him several decades to finish his chef d'oeuvre, though he likely took a short hiatus during the war, and allows him to snub his nose at his old teacher, who is, unfortunately, dead by that point.
It was really crazy: it had a moat, turrets, drawbridge, everything! He doesn't actually live inside, but he does have dozens of dioramas (that do mechanize - it's almost like going to see "It's a small world after all" at Disney World) depicting traditional life in Druze country. There is also a diorama of the Last Supper and of Santa Claus (both of which don't make sense, as Mr. Moussa is not of "Christian" heritage, but anyways... as I said, crazy shit...) There is also a diorama of him as a child in his classroom being beaten by that original teacher! Then he has a motley collection of guns and other miscellaneous items that don't really have anything to do with one another, but it's crazy, as I said before.
I totally couldn't believe it: it is possibly one of the strangest things I have seen in the world so far, because it is SO entirely random, with the castle and the dioramas and the showcase displays of kitsch... but I got a picture with Mr. Moussa in front of his castle, so at least I know that it is really true...

Lebanon III

I hadn't realized how mountainous and lush Lebanon actually is, and how little of it is flat. The flat part is mainly along the coast of the Mediterranean. Now, it's a very tiny little country, so I had realized how small the distances are between towns... in fact, it's at the point where it's all sprawl, all the way up and down the entire coast... we had driven up past a continuous line of development all the way up to three towns up from Beirut! There is very little to distinguish (to the untrained eye) as to when you've actually arrived in the next destination.
I myself am staying in a suburb of Beirut, high in the mountains, and am overlooking Beirut and the Mediterranean as we speak. Due to the tensions of the last few days and recent travelling outside of the capital, I haven't yet been down there very much yet, but I have driven by where Hariri was assassinated (of which the marks of the damage caused by the blast is mind-numbing to see)...