pic dump: scenes from Walla Walla and beyond

These pics are hosted over at Photobucket; they may appear cut off on this blog, so my advice is to right-click a given image, then do a "show picture" or "view image" command. If that doesn't work, try right-clicking the image, selecting "properties," and cutting and pasting the image's URL into a separate browser window so you can see the pic at full size.

Hover your cursor over each pic to read the caption.



I decided to take a stroll through Whitman College's fine arts hall, a building I'd been passing almost daily on my way to the library.



















The above two pics come from the same piece: a chair faces a wall that is blank except for the graffito "I think, I am alive." The comma is ungrammatical, but is it there intentionally? [NB: A proper construction would either have no comma or would use a semicolon in place of a comma. People often mistakenly use commas when what they really need is a semicolon.]







The above two photos were taken while I was seated at my favorite lunch spot on Whitman's campus grounds.



I took the above pic while waiting outside Maxey Hall just before Michael Shermer's presentation on "Why People Believe Weird Things." Cute dawg. Very friendly. I sat next to her, and she tried climbing into my lap-- about the only woman to pull that stunt since, oh, 2005.













My host Bob, who was renting from CouchSurfing host Jeanie (and her hubby Rob), used to own a restaurant. I was wowed by his kitchen, but while he liked it, he thought it needed a bar and some other minor tweaks.





I met the above two dudes while walking toward the campus convenience store to say goodbye to the Korean couple managing the place. Tony and Mark were taking a break from working on Mark's house, and they boomed out their "hello"s to me as I was passing. I stopped and talked with them about travel, the difficulty of doing renovation work, and other matters. Mark told me I'd be welcome to stop on by when I'm back in Walla Walla. Friendly folks. I've been fortunate: the Pacific Northwest has left me with a great impression of its people.

Below, we see the Korean couple who run the local Apex Food Mart together. The Missus was shy about being photographed. We said our goodbyes after I took a couple pics; the hubby wanted a photo alone with me, and that's what you'll see after the pic below.





I went over to the teriyaki-jip for a final meal, and managed to get pics of the couple running that place, as well.



The server, Andrew, took the following pics:





The following three pics are of my upstairs bedroom in Bob's place. I appreciate his hospitality.







And below, we've got shots of the Bob-meister himself: restaurateur, guitar player/singer, gastronome, bon vivant, horse rider, and Licensed Practical Nurse.







The following shots are from a brief detour I took with Lori and Kaylee to the Whitman Mission. From the main building (which houses a small museum and theater), you can walk left and see where the Whitmans died, or you can walk right and see where they lived. Whether we went left or right will become obvious when you see the next few photos.









The following pics come from my drive to Portland, Oregon with Chuck. We were in Kaylee's SUV, and Chuck saw an opportunity to photograph Mount Hood. What follows are the sad results of my attempts at shooting the venerable formation:








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what is pluralism?

UPDATE, January 9, 2009: A lot of visitors have arrived at this blog post after doing a search on the question "What is pluralism?" The post below merely quotes Diana Eck, a religion scholar at Harvard who heads up the Pluralism Project. It seems a shame that so many visitors arrive at this post and come away not knowing the blogger's opinions on the subject. For my own insights into the question of religious pluralism, see this post, which links you to my YouTube videos on the topic. And feel free to snoop around the blog: my sidebar links to videos I've done, and to transcripts of interviews I've had with some of the people I've met during my (still-ongoing) trans-American walk. Religious pluralism is also a major topic in my book, available here.

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Dealing with the word "pluralism" at a more general, abstract level than I did in my YouTube video, Harvard prof Diana Eck (who is a fantastic writer, by the way: get a hold of her Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras) writes the following:

The plurality of religious traditions and cultures has come to characterize every part of the world today. But what is pluralism? Here are four points to begin our thinking:

First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. Today, religious diversity is a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement. Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will yield increasing tensions in our societies.

Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.

Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.

Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both common understandings and real differences. Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one another. Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table -- with one’s commitments.

This comes from The Harvard Pluralism Project (the link has been on my sidebar for a long time), which I think I need to get more involved with. This resource, meanwhile, looks promising.


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photos

I've got some digicam pics that need uploading. I'm going to see whether I can do that by tonight; tomorrow morning, I'm up bright and early to help Dad with some heavy lifting: we're putting our living room furniture out on the street for people to pick up. Mom wants the renovation crew to have first crack at the furniture; after that, anyone can swing on by and swipe it.

If you're a reader in the Alexandria/Mount Vernon area who's looking to add any or all of the following:

-a short sofa
-a long sofa
-a sofa-style chair

...feel free to email me and drive on by. I can receive your email on my BlackBerry even if I don't have access to family computer.


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return to the sweaty armpit

My walk south along the I-5 corridor of Washington involved a good bit of rain, but after spending about 170 or so miles on I-84, plus another 60 or 70 miles walking up Route 730 and along Route 12 to Walla Walla, I came to appreciate the generally low humidity that came with moving into the high desert region.

I didn't realize how low the humidity was, however, until I got back to northern Virginia, where we're currently enduring a good bit of rain. My first few steps onto the jetway at National Airport yesterday felt as though I were being herded into a giant armpit.

I hate humidity. I've never gotten used to it. The DC-Metro area sucks in the summer, and South Korea's even worse. Malcolm, a fellow humidity-hater writing from New York City, puts the matter eloquently in this post.


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Alan Cook on Deep Planning for the Walk

Alan Cook, my indispensable manager, offers his thoughts on the walk in this email, which he's allowing me to post here for everyone to read (and, of course, to comment on).

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Kevin,

Now that the Walk is going into Deep Planning mode, let me express some of my thoughts about strategy for KW Phase II. (Feel free to post as much of this message as you want on the blog, in one or more installments.)

It seems to me that you have a number of different goals/objectives for the walk -- which, while not necessarily contradictory, pull in different directions (and in some cases, lead to dilemmas on particular issues.)

The four goals I see are:
(1)to WALK across the U.S.
(2)to make a "self-planning" "pilgrimage" across the U.S.
(3)to cross the U.S., visiting as many religious institutions along the way as possible
(4)to explore the religious diversity of the U.S.

To take them one by one, and say why I think they're different:

(1)TO WALK ACROSS THE U.S.
This can and has been done. However, ALL of the people I'm aware of who've done it (Steve Vaught, etc), have had much more ample funding than you have, have planned their routes in great detail in advance, and have had an extensive support team, including a chase car driver for at least part of the way. Moreover, the walkers who have been successful [have] been single-minded in pursuit of that goal. If you read Steve V.'s blog, you'll see that for much of the time he had no other thought in his head than putting one foot ahead of the other and getting down the road. I don't know of anyone who's incorporated other major goals (interviewing people, etc) into a walk of this sort.

(2)THE SELF-PLANNING PILGRIMAGE
Here I'm thinking about the adventure, hero's journey, whatever-comes-next, serendipitous, relying-on-the-kindness-of-strangers aspect of the trip. A few thoughts:
-- There's somewhat of a tension here with Goal (1), because as you've discovered, one of the forms of aid that people are most likely to offer to a traveler is a RIDE.
-- You originally planned to rely on offers of places to stay and for directions for where to go next. We've seen that that doesn't work. In populated areas, [a] self-planning trip requires that you either spend a LOT of money on motels, [or] go the route of genuine vagabondage: homeless shelters, soup kitchens, sleeping under bridges, the occasional night in jail. I understand your reluctance to go that route, and I wouldn't advise you to do it. In unpopulated areas, the choice is between having a chase car to ferry you to a motel/campground at night, or carrying a lot of survival-type equipment that isn't a lot of use on most of the route (and still risking encounters with the law.)

The bottom line: self-planning won't work without a lot more money. The alternative: detailed advance planning prior to the Walk. The trick will be to combine advance planning with flexibility: i.e, to have a number of potential hosts lined up in an area as long as possible beforehand, and the ability to stay in contact with them so as to make more definite plans as your date of arrival gets closer. We can talk in more detail about how this would work; one strategy would be to choose a route, i.e, deciding what states you'll be going through, and then planning state by state.

(3)TO CROSS THE U.S., VISITING RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS ALONG THE WAY
Breaking it down, there are actually a number of different things you were hoping for here:

(a)to be offered a place to stay;
(b)to interview clergy and laypeople;
(c)to participate in worship and practice.

Re (a): We've seen that blind mailings don't work very well, and I think we have to accept that even with maximum publicity, not that many RIs are going to be willing to host you in the manner that you originally envisioned. Which is why I think it's a better idea to locate CSers who have religious affiliations, and have them arrange for visits to their congregations, etc.

Re (b): Interviewing people, and being able to post the interviews to the internet, requires carrying some heavy high-tech equipment that I can't imagine either a serious cross-country walker or a homeless person encumbering themselves with. In other words, electronic media pretty much commit you to a chase car to haul your stuff around.

Also, if you want to interview the most knowledgeable and interesting people, it would help to seek them out in advance, and set up appointments for interviews.

re (c): Just about all RIs welcome visitors to their regular services, and you might get to talk to people there. So you might want to show up in town, check out the calendars of the local churches, and decide on places to visit. You could probably stay pretty busy for a while in any town of any size. The one-night-per-stop policy reduces your chances of having insightful interviews, or participating in various aspects of the local practices.

(4)TO EXPLORE THE RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY OF THE U.S.
I make this one distinct from (3) because, as you're aware, the diversity of American religion is not evenly distributed across the continent. Rather, non-mainstream religions are heavily concentrated in major urban areas. The exceptions are a few monasteries, meditation centers, and the like in remote areas. While these exist, they're few and far between, relative to the vastness of the country; they require advance planning to visit and frequently charge fees, albeit modest ones, to stay there. If one wanted to talk to representatives of as many of the different religions practiced in this country as possible, one would do far better to spend six months each in NYC, LA, Chicago and Houston than two years crossing the entire continent.

Not that I'm proposing that you do that: I'm just using that as an illustration of how this Walk goal is in a certain tension with the other goals. The practical question here is: To what extent should you deliberately seek out diversity? To what extend should you allow that goal to determine your itinerary, both in terms of places visited, and amount of time spent in each place?

I realize this e-mail has gotten more disjointed as I've gone along. Basically, I'm just trying to suggest some higher-level reflection on what the point of the Walk is, and using that to inform the concrete planning in the months ahead.

Enjoy being back in Alexandria, and being an armchair traveler for a while.

A.

P.S.: I'll get back to you on the skepticism stuff.

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Reactions are welcome. I'll likely add my own thoughts later, but computer access is limited. Dad plugged his computer back in; the family still has Verizon DSL service, but will be switching to Verizon FiOS in late October. I can't rely on having consistent access to this computer, so I ask your pardon if a great deal of blogging gets done from the BlackBerry. Even B-Berry blogging may be problematic, as our neighborhood lies in one of those "dead zones" that Verizon claims, in those funny, horror-movie spoof commercials, to be able to handle. We'll know more in October.


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home

I'm home, and the house is indeed inside-out. The computer's unplugged, and the Verizon FiOS hookup won't be happening until the end of October, so I'll be BlackBerrying for more than a month unless I get access to my brother David's Mac.

It was good to see my parents and, later, my brother Sean. He's a professional cellist; on Sunday, he had a gig that netted him a cool $400. My brother David was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but due to a series of snafus (including a zipper malfunction on my pants that prevented me from getting to my BlackBerry and contacting anyone), he wasn't able to do so. Mom and Dad swung by the airport after hitting Costco; dinner was a Costco cornucopia.

There's more to talk about, but right now, it's all about settling back into a homey routine. I'm glad to be home.


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homeward bound

Got to Houston fine. I'm on the plane headed for National Airport: Continental Flight 458. Will be arriving 5PM, DC time.

Lots of empty seats on this flight. Maybe everyone's avoiding our Congress.

Side note: ululate for Paul Newman, who lost a battle with cancer yesterday.


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will make it to Houston

I'm on the flight to Houston, and I heard it's looking good to DCA.

About to board.


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hotelled

After a 200-mile drive that was essentially a backwards-running reel of my walk from early July, I find myself once again at the same Portland Super 8 motel I went to after my week-long stay at the Metanoia Peace House.

I have to wake up at 3:45, hitch a ride on the 4:30 shuttle to the airport and, we hope, make the 6AM flight to Houston. I'm flying standby, so let's all keep those fingers and tentacles crossed.

Many thanks to my host Bob in Walla Walla (and by extension, to Jeanie and Rob, whose house Bob is renting); as always, my thanks to Chuck, Lori, and Kaylee for their love and care.


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FLASH: in the midst of the crisis, Obama and McCain to marry

WASHINGTON, September 25, 2008 (Reuters)

In a move that has rocked the Capitol, senators and rivals John McCain and Barack Obama, the respective Republican and Democratic nominees for the presidency, joined hands in front of a stunned press corps and publicly declared their intention to marry.

"With age comes experience," said Obama, looking slyly at McCain. "And there's no substitute for that."

"Once you go black, you never--" boomed McCain before an aide managed to shush him. "I mean, I've always preferred lovers who were more cerebral. There's no denying it: Barack completes me."

"We've made a pact that, no matter which of us wins, we're getting married on January 21, the day after the inauguration," said Obama.

Pundits were quick to respond to this new development.

"The Audacity of Grope!" was the headline of a bitter post that appeared at the liberal blog Daily Kos. The post decried Obama's "unforgivable betrayal of his own party."

"Hmm," wrote Glenn Reynolds of the moderate-right blog Instapundit, who then updated his post ten minutes later with "Heh."

"It was about damn time," said an obviously moved former President Bill Clinton. "These guys could usher in a new era of true bipartisanship."

Despite reporters' best efforts, neither Cindy McCain nor Michelle Obama could be persuaded to comment on the situation.

"Bang on this door all you want! We've got nothing to say!" shouted an obviously inebriated Mrs. McCain from the utility closet in which she and Mrs. Obama had locked themselves.

"Apodictic cockroaches, tennis ball fur, rib cage battering rams, and gopher-shaped soul batteries!" screamed an equally distraught Mrs. Obama.

After these exclamations, the ladies fell silent. Reporters next to the utility closet claim to have smelled the distinct odor of Schlitz and marijuana.

How this new revelation will affect the outcomes of both the current financial crisis and the presidential election remains to be seen, but many are hopeful that President Clinton's prediction of a new era of bipartisanship will come true.


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many goodbyes

I didn't get to see Adam (the cool motel manager from my early days in Walla Walla); the lady at the front desk told me that he's on a trip and won't be back until next week, so I asked her to tell him that "Kevin says goodbye. He'll know who I am."

I also didn't get to see Mechelle today, though I did just send her a goodbye message; we were supposed to watch "The Matrix" together and discuss its religious tropes (a lot of sci-fi efforts are essentially religious parables or moralistic sermons; "hard" sci-fi is often difficult to come by), but given the suddenness with which my plans coalesced, this isn't going to happen.

I did, however, get to say goodbye to the Korean convenience store owner and his lovely wife (they've got two kids). I took their picture, talked about my plans, and promised to swing by their place again in the spring.

I also had a late lunch at the teriyaki-jip, where I said goodbye to the Korean couple running the place (yes, they're a couple!). They wished me well and even tried to give me a framed brush painting that was hanging on their wall. I also gave them this blog's address and told the wife to comment often. The husband had to take off for the bank, but before he did, we all took some pics together.

I also stopped and talked with two dudes who were busy renovating a house. One of the dudes, Mark, was the house's owner; his friend, Tony, was helping him out. We talked about their progress, and I told them about my walk and about staying in Walla Walla. I got their picture, too, and will slap it on the blog when I'm back in Virginia.

My route took me past the local K-Mart, where I bought a button-down shirt for $3.99 (end-of-summer clearance) and a container of oatmeal for Bob, who's been making my breakfast for the past week. Had I found some quinoa at K-Mart, I'd have bought that for him, too.

I'm bizarrely proud of the shirt purchase; I so rarely shop for clothing, and when I do, I almost never purchase it when it's on sale. Today's something of a red-letter day in that regard. I know, I know: my savvier readers are rolling their eyes. Big deal, Kevin. So you bought a shirt on sale. Yippie.

I've decided to save laundry for early tomorrow morning. I imagine that Chuck will be by in the early afternoon (is that right, Chuck?). Meantime, I need to figure out how the heck I'm going to pack my backpack and carry-on bag. The backpack has to remain under 50 pounds to avoid the dreaded excess baggage fee, but the carry-on can't be overstuffed: if it doesn't fit into an overhead compartment, it'll have to be checked as well. I wonder what, among my possessions, I can leave here.

Cousin Marie has forwarded me my e-ticket, so it looks as though I'm set. Because I'm flying standby, I won't be able to give Dad an exact arrival time until I'm safely aboard a flight from Houston.

One last note: today, I probably walked close to five miles. It was largely pain-free, but it became obvious, toward the end, that I've still got some healing to do.

I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to Walla Walla yet; will do so tomorrow. I'll just end this entry by observing that, if the townies are any indication, Walla Walla is a very likeable city. I look forward to coming back here early next year, chase car in tow.


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Thainglish?

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

busy day ahead

My host Bob ended up having other social engagements yesterday, so he couldn't make the Shermer talk, but when he got home last night, I played my recording for him, minus the Q&A (where all the politics was).

Bob's an LPN, like Mechelle, and he's been generous about sharing from his cupboard for breakfast, a meal he gently insists I eat to keep my blood sugar level roughly even throughout the day; spikes in blood sugar can apparently start you down the road to diabetes. The first meal of the day is usually tea along with Quaker oatmeal* and some fruit; I've flavored my oatmeal with molasses, or even sugar (Bob regrets the current lack of honey), and most recently with a fantastic compôte that's apparently a mix of berries and even some small chunks of apple. I'd steal Bob's whole supply if I could; it's that good.

Today, I've got a lot to do, since this is my last full day in Walla Walla. A list of tasks:

1. Goodbyes to (and photos of) some of the people I've met-- Adam and Suzanne at their motel, the Korean folks at the teriyaki-jip, the Korean folks at the campus convenience store, Mechelle, Connie at the bus stop, etc. I'd like to get pics of the folks I've met at the last two Spirituali-Teas, but tracking them down will be a task. Maybe I'll hunt them down in the spring.

2. One of the strictures of the Continental Airlines buddy pass is a mild dress code. I need to buy a button-down shirt with a collar. Kinda makes me regret having sent back my other shirts.

3. Settle final arrangements with Chuck and Cousin Marie; she'll be contacting me with a reservation locator number for my e-ticket; Chuck will be arriving tomorrow after he's done with work, and we'll make the over three-hour haul to Portland, where I'll hit a motel.

4. Figure out how and where I can reduce weight on the backpack, and how I'm going to handle carry-on baggage. I already have an idea.

5. As always: laundry. I regret doing it so frequently, but I've got only one pair of pants, three tee shirts, a few pairs of socks, and Spandex biker shorts serving as underwear (the shorts' legs protect my thunder thighs from rubbing each other raw).

There's doubtless more to do, but I can't think of it now. This morning, I cleaned the upstairs toilet; yesterday, I repaired a chair; tomorrow, I think I'm going to vacuum the upstairs floor before I leave.

Right-- off I go, then.

UPDATE: Items 6 and 7: launder my bed linens and buy Bob some replacement oatmeal. Perhaps Item 6 is really Item 5a, as I can do the linens and my clothes in one fell load.

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*One day Bob asked me whether I was familiar with quinoa ("kee-nwah"). I wasn't, so we had quinoa with butter for breakfast. It looks like birdseed when dry, cooks fast like couscous, and tastes a bit nutty, as Bob noted. I asked Bob, who's an ex-restaurateur and an astute gourmet, whether quinoa might serve as a couscous surrogate; he brightened at the thought and said that it probably could.


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whoosh

It's hard to believe I'll be back home in Alexandria, Virginia this Saturday night.

I'm actually looking forward to some Korean food, though I have no idea whether the kitchen is even serviceable, thanks to the renovation going on.

This might mean a trip to Koreatown. Let's hear it for my favorite Korean restaurant in NoVA: Joong Hwa Weon!


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interesting presentation

I successfully recorded the Michael Shermer presentation on "Why People Believe Weird Things." Quick synopsis: Shermer, who in the right lighting resembles actor Harry Shearer, covered pretty much the same talking points you can find in Carl Sagan's The Demon-haunted World: belief in alien abduction, inability to deal with the implications of statistics, scams like therapeutic touch, tarot, palm reading, etc.

Interesting highlights for me: Shermer is a libertarian, so he also blasted the heavily left-leaning demographics and political tenor of academe. His take on the current financial crisis is congruent with those conservatives who say, "No bailouts!" Strangely, he avoided the topic of mainstream religious traditions.

I've got more to say on this, but will wait until later.


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going offline for an hour or so

I was the first audience member inside Maxey Auditorium at 6:25PM. The tech girl setting up the place asked whether I was the presenter (so did the tech guy, when he appeared). I should've said yes.

It's 6:45, and people are only just now starting to trickle in. There's a chance that my host Bob and his friend Elyse will be here; I'm saving seats for them.

Once the presentation starts, I'll be turning the B-Berry off and the digital recorder on. I don't know how long the presentation's supposed to be, so things may be dark for an hour or more.

Will report on the speech later.


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command decision

I've decided to spend a few months recuperating at home in Alexandria, VA, doing temp work of some sort (test grading, tutoring French, etc.), and helping the parents with their house's renovation.

It's been hard, deciding to make this move. I'll be losing so much time by doing things this way, and whatever hopes I had for finishing the walk before my 40th birthday have severely dimmed.

On the bright side, I'll be able to use the time constructively. Not only will I be able to earn some cash, but I'll also have access to a host of religious institutions in the DC-Metro area. Perhaps I can recruit some people to help me plot my path. As commenters have suggested, I can use this time to create a network of interested hosts (CouchSurfing and otherwise), connecting the dots a goodly way across the country.

As a friend suggested privately, there's no reason to think of what I'm doing-- going back to Virginia-- as "giving up." The walk will continue; it's immaterial whether I rest for four or five months in Walla Walla or Boise or Alexandria-- rest is rest, so why not do it where the lodging and meals are guaranteed to be free of charge? After all, I will pick up where I've left off. Walla Walla will see me again in the spring-- perhaps slimmer, stronger, and more energetic, if I'm not lax about training.

So that's my command decision. With so many offers of help leaning in the same direction-- a free ride to Portland (well, we're gonna pay for gas), a free flight to Virginia, and free room and board once I'm home-- it seems almost silly to say "no" to all the signs.

Remember the classic joke about the man in the flood? It goes something like this:

An awful flood caught a certain city unprepared, and people suddenly found themselves in a mad rush to escape. But not everyone: one man stayed put even as the streets were buried inches deep in water.

A jeep drove by and the driver called out to the man: "Get in! We'll get you outta here!"

"No, thanks," said the man. "I have faith that God will save me." The driver shrugged and sped off.

The water rose. The man scrambled onto a balcony and continued to wait. A motorboat puttered by; its operator shouted through the rain, "Come on board!"

As before, the man said, "No, thanks. I have faith that God will save me."

Soon, the water had gotten so high that the man was on his roof. A helicopter flew overhead, swaying dangerously as it tried to hover in the storm.

"We're throwing a line and harness down to you!" a man shouted from the copter's side door. "Grab it, hitch up, and we'll pull you in!"

The man smiled beatifically and waved the copter off. "No thanks," he shouted into the downdraft. "I have faith that God will save me!" The helicopter left.

Not long after that, the waters rose even higher...and the man drowned.

Finding himself before God's throne, the man shook his fist angrily at the Lord and said accusingly, "I'd put all my faith in You! Why didn't You try to save me?"

"What, are you blind as well as stupid?" countered God. "I sent you a Jeep, a boat, and a helicopter!"

Substitute the word "pride" for "God" (my pride will save me), and I'm that guy.

I don't want to be that guy, so I'm going home. Final details are being worked out, but Operation Extract Kevin is under way.

Many thanks to all the commenters who've helped me think this through. The input's been helpful.


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leaning heavily toward the nuclear option

Chuck, still recovering, has offered to push me all the way to Boise to get me to a major airport. Cousin Marie can probably swing me a buddy pass out of Boise (I have to check whether Continental serves Boise). My folks in Virginia can offer a free place to stay, free meals, and a chance to keep recuperating. Most of the signs seem to be pointing in one particular direction: home.

More on this in a bit. I've got a few calls and emails to make.


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where we go from here

My host Bob doesn't have a Windows XP startup CD, so I'm not sure what the next step will be, as far as my unresponsive laptop goes. I might be able to go back to that pawnshop ("All purchases final!") and ask to use the shopkeeper's CD. Something to worry about in the morning.

Right now, though, I want to think aloud about what options are available to me. I don't want to spend all night discussing the implications of each one, so I'll confine myself simply to listing some of them from off the top of my head.

1. One idea that Dad has been gently pushing at me is simply staying put in Walla Walla for the next few months: find a job here, keep working on the leg, then take off when winter wanes.

2. Find a way back to Portland, bus or train, and take up Marie's offer of the "buddy pass" to Virginia. Winter in Virginia, then fly back out to Portland and roll to Walla Walla. Take up the walk again from there.

3. Start a-walkin' down to Boise, hoping people will donate enough to get me there, then implement the original "winter in Boise" plan: find a place to stay, get a job, etc.

4. Walk down to Boise (donations, etc.), then use Marie's buddy pass to fly to Virginia and winter there. Pick up the walk again from Boise.

5. Walk along I-84 and stop wherever someone offers work. Might not be bad to stop at La Grande, Oregon, which is a college town.

Continuing the walk without a chase car is going to mean either attempting to walk with the backpack on, or obtaining one of those fancy trailers that I can harness to myself. The problem with walking without a trailer is that I now have a heavy backpack with a laptop in it. I might have to "pull a Steve Vaught" and hang the smaller pack off my front. That, or I should somehow rid myself of the computer and software before leaving Walla Walla. Sell it all at reduced prices?

MS Office, Home Edition: $50
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: $50
NetGear Wifi CD and USB module: $15
Optical USB mouse: $5
Cranky-but-salvageable laptop: uh, $10

Everything but the laptop would be almost totally new, and all the above-quoted prices are approximately 50% reductions. Any takers? Heh.

So those're the options. Feel free to help me think this through, and/or to add other possibilities to the list.


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assorted thought-dump

1. Spent two hours fruitlessly attempting to boot up the laptop, which has decided to rebel. Gonna ask my host whether he has a Windows XP startup disk so I can try a boot-from-disk. No transcribing done today; whether you'll see a transcript tomorrow is in doubt.

2. Went to the Spirituali-Tea, which today was about meditation and mindfulness. Much to write about, but would rather do the writing on a regular keyboard. Typing on the B-Berry's keyboard remains as pénible as ever.

3. Conferred with Cousin Marie, who can swing me a "buddy pass" so I can fly for free back to Virginia. The catch: I have to leave from a major airport, which rules out Walla Walla and Pasco/Tri-Cities. Marie's suggestions: Seattle or Portland. Ouch. That's 200-350 miles back the way I came.

4. Just talked with Dad, who reports two major setbacks (I'm tempted to say "disasters") on the renovation front: (a) the house's ancient oil-based heating system is being taken out rather unprofessionally, and heating oil now covers the basement floor; (b) construction apparently has to stop because of a problem with the plans being used. Long story. Upshot: Dad says, "I'm sorry, Kevin, but I simply can't leave Mom alone to deal with this." Believe me, I understand.

5. Obvious fallout: no chase car for the foreseeable future, which means it's time to consider options. I'll devote a separate post to those.


_

a sudden dilemma

So Dad calls me up today around 5PM, Walla Walla time, and says he has a modest proposal:

Why not winter at home in Alexandria, Virginia?

Right now, with almost no money to my name, the thought is tempting. My cousin Marie, fresh from the recent hurricane that passed over Houston (she lives in Conroe, TX), also thinks I should come home. Her own reasoning was somewhat sentimental in nature: "Your mom misses you." But she and Dad both hit on the practical aspects of such a move: staying at home would mean not paying rent, and the knee would have a chance to keep healing.

There would be other advantages to wintering in Alexandria:

1. I confess to missing my family, too. It'd be nice to see them, especially now that my brother Sean has moved back into Virginia. Same with friends: my buddy Mike lives a bit south of Alexandria; my buddy Dave lives in Maryland.

2. I'd be able to help the folks with their current renovation project. Dad says he could use another hand.

3. If I were to take Alan's recommendation for work, I'd be able to work from a hard-wired connection (in fact, the folks are upgrading to Verizon FIOS)-- no money spent on commuting, and I'd be able to leap to Dad's aid whenever he needed it.

4. No money spent on food: I could regress to my plump childhood and just raid the fridge.

5. I could hit the Fort Belvoir gym with Dad after raiding the fridge; Dad's retired military, and he's signed me in before.

6. Dad could postpone the expensive effort of having to come out to Walla Walla right now, right in the middle of his renovation project.

There are a few disadvantages, though. Well, two, really:

1. By leaving Walla Walla to winter in Alexandria now, I'd be losing a month of walking. Think about it: if I leave now, the 260-some miles ahead of me will remain unwalked. I'd also be wintering for five months (October through February) instead of the original four (November through February, and possibly part of March).

Worst of all:

2. I'd feel as though I were cheating. Given the many promises I've already broken over the course of this walk-- No rides unless seriously injured foremost among them-- perhaps this shouldn't matter. Trans-America walker Steve Vaught went home several times. He also accepted occasional rides. George Martin invested $150,000 in his walk and did it with a huge team helping him out. What could possibly be so shameful about flying home and staying put a few months? After all, I've spent nearly a month in Walla Walla.

But I still can't shake the feeling that I'd be cheating. I don't know why. It's not rational, and I admit it has a lot to do with pride... but pride in what? There's nothing stopping me from taking the walk up from Walla Walla once I'm done wintering, i.e., starting right where I left off. Hell, I could even start right at the Comfort Inn-- my first stop in the city.

The advantages of going home seem, from a distance, to far outweigh the disadvantages. A healthier Kevin might tackle the 260 miles from Walla Walla to Boise with greater ease; five months is plenty of time to work on overall fitness, to walk along the George Washington Parkway bike trail until it's too snowy to do so, to train at the Fort Belvoir gym.

And yet... and yet...


_

meeting Connie

While I was weeding this morning, a lady walked by the front yard and stopped within twenty feet of me, apparently waiting for one of Walla Walla's infrequent buses.* We got to talking, and she told me about her three sons, one of whom suffers from cerebral palsy and has a plate in his head after suffering a massive cranial injury. Since the insertion of the plate, he's suffered occasional seizures, but he's a tough kid, and has dreams of long-distance riding-- pedal, not motor. Another son, it turns out, works at the Comfort Inn-- the very one I checked into when I arrived in Walla Walla on August 31! Small town life, eh? I'll have to go back to the Comfort Inn, find that guy, and say, "Dude, I metcher Mom!"

Connie told me a bit about her history, and after a while I noticed the bus hadn't arrived yet. I offered to use my BlackBerry to call the Valley Transit Authority (big props to them for good customer service), and Connie graciously accepted. We found out that the bus wasn't late: it was simply one of those routes where the bus appeared only hourly.

Eventually, the bus arrived and Connie gave me a hug. "You gonna be here tomorrow?" she asked. I said yes; I'd be here until the end of the month. "Good; I'm usually out here every day, so we'll see each other again." With that, Connie, who's also a grandmother, stepped onto the bus. Before the doors closed, I heard her telling the bus driver about me and my walk.

Well... here's hoping I see her tomorrow. What an interesting lady.

---

*I'm not a big-city sophisticate, but I did live in Seoul for eight years, which can spoil anyone. Seoul's transportation system-- both the public transportation and the taxis-- is one of the best out there. Despite being a city of twelve million people and despite all the horrible traffic jams, it's still possible to move about for fairly cheap compared to many American (and European) cities of comparable size. Seoul's buses run until very, very late, and in the downtown area they often come at three-minute intervals. In Walla Walla, the time between buses can vary from about thirty minutes to an hour, so for spoiled people like me, that's painful. (By the way, the DC-Metro area is similar: if you're in Alexandria and trying to take the 9A-Pentagon bus northward, expect a half-hour wait if you miss your ride. Go, Korea!)


_

thanks, Bob!

When I told the story, earlier, of my having spent part of the morning and early afternoon weeding, I neglected to mention that Bob paid me $50 for the work. That's pretty generous; even though I did work continuously, at the end of the four hours I didn't feel as though much had been accomplished. Then again, that might just be the nature of weeding: with so many of the little boogers to deal with, you can spend hours in a single corner of the yard. I filled two 45-gallon trash bags with weeds, and when I looked around afterwards, it seemed as though I'd done little to nothing.

Hats off to Bob for his largesse.


_

Spirituali-Tea and Michael Shermer

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the second Spirituali-Tea of the semester. The topic is "Meditation and Mindfulness"; as I said previously, I plan to be there as a fly on the wall-- a silent, 260-pound fly.

Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic Magazine, is speaking on Whitman College campus on Wednesday evening at 7PM. The posters I've seen for the event offer no phone number to call, nor any indication of whether admission will be free, so I'm hoping to crash the party.

The topic of the lecture: "Why People Believe Weird Things." This is apparently the title of a book he wrote, as well.

Religious folks should pay attention! Despite my interest in religion, my generally pluralistic attitude toward religious beliefs, and an inkling that the scientific worldview doesn't quite cover all the bases (though I'd say I'm largely a physicalist), I do think Carl Sagan was right to argue that religions contain a great deal of bamboozlement (read his wonderful The Demon-Haunted World). Anyone who professes to be religious has an obligation, in my opinion, not to suppress their critical, skeptical faculties in the name of faith or obedience or revelation. This may put me on shaky ground with fellow religionists, but as someone who appreciates the commonsense nature of Zen and often has little patience with magical thinking, I feel it has to be said.

Heh... I may have lost most of my readership right there, but for those who remain, I do plan to sneak my voice recorder into the proceedings. I'm unsure of the legalities involved in transcribing Shermer's speech and putting it on the blog, but we'll eat that bridge when we come to it.


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laptop trouble

Installation of Photoshop Elements 4 was successful, but now the laptop's having trouble starting up. It's working right now, but at some point I might have to get it looked at. Oy.


_

get well soon, Chuck!

I got an email from Lori, who told me that Chuck's down for the count right now, having undergone a medical procedure (I won't get into it here). I hope to give them a call later this evening.


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no pain is a gain

I was outside weeding Bob's front yard for a few hours today to earn the cash to pay Mechelle the final $35 of a $135 debt ($130 rent plus $5 for half a pizza-- a very good pizza, as it turned out). After a while, I noticed that the knee was doing just fine despite all the squatting and kneeling. Eez gud nooz.

Bob drove me over to Mechelle's, where I dropped off her spare key (I'd forgotten to give it back to her), gave her her money (she had told me I didn't need to pay it, which was nice of her), and picked up the second FedEx package from Dad: Photoshop Elements 4.

I'm doing laundry right now; while the clothes are perking, I plan to install the program, shortly after which graphical mayhem will ensue.

I'll have to get creative about some of the design work. If, for example, I want to make mug designs with my cartoons or hand-drawn Chinese characters, I'll have to shoot the images with my digicam since I lack a scanner. While the lens does create a very slight fisheye effect, this should be easy to correct in Photoshop, where you can reverse or undo such distortion.

So I'm excited. I'm also hopeful that some of you might be interested in whatever I come up with.

A wild thought occurred to me a little earlier: I'd like to hunt down some theater geeks and have them perform living sculptures reflecting the concepts of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. They'll assume each position, I'll shoot it at hi-res on the digicam, and then I'll make some posters like those motivational ones you've seen-- courage, perseverance, etc. With CafePress, it's easy to upload one's design and apply it to a product, so I might have some posters ready within a week. The hard part will be rounding up theater people and convincing them to allow me to make money off their images. (I'll credit their troupe on the poster-- free publicity for them.)

I'm going to tomorrow's Spirituali-Tea, which is about meditation and mindfulness. I'll be tempted to talk at length on the topic, but will instead abide by my promise to shut up this time around. I talked more than enough last week. While at the tea, I'll check to see who might be associated with the theater. Here's hoping I can find about seven to ten people.

Cross your eyestalks for me.


_

coming to you Wednesday (we hope)

The next transcript you'll see, which ought to be ready sometime Wednesday, is the transcript of my conversation with a group of residents of the Metanoia Peace House in Portland, Oregon, a Methodist-run communal living space that very generously housed me for about a week while I rested from knee pain (I was in Portland a total of about two weeks).

A quick reminder of what the group looked like (scroll down).


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halfway normal

I did something today that I haven't done for a long time: I dropped off into an unforeseen afternoon nap. It lasted only about an hour, but when I woke up I saw that it was 2:20PM.

I'd had an excellent breakfast conversation with my host Bob (again, dammit, no recording to show for it), after which I took my sweet time getting ready for the day: morning bathroom ritual, laundry, first of many email checks. Somehow, a little after 1:15PM, I ended up on the bed, leafing through cyberspace on the BlackBerry... and woke up to find myself transported forward in time to 2:20PM. A sudden pressure told me that it was time for another consultation with the porcelain oracle. Bob had alerted me to the fact that the hardcover version of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations was there on the toilet tank, which is how I found myself on the throne, flipping fascinatedly through the pages long after it was time to arise and walk. But I was hooked: with my hemorrhoids gently brushing the surface of the toilet water, I pored over the book-- which is mostly a photo compilation-- and enviously wished for some of Bourdain's writerly mojo to waft into me.

By the time I was downstairs and about to leave for campus, the long-promised visit from the house's true owners was under way: I met Rob, who was repairing the garage door along with my host Bob ("I'm supervising"). Rob extended a beefy, powerful hand and shook mine; for whatever reason, I've never been very good at handshakes, and some guys tend to crush my fingers before I've had a chance to secure a decent grip for the gesture. Sorry, Rob; I'm the bowing type.

Rob's better half, Jeanie, wasn't there at that moment; she was out somewhere (with their son?) and was walking back to the house. I felt bad about leaving; according to Rob, the idea to allow me to stay at their house was "all Jeanie." In retrospect, I think I should have stuck around a few more minutes to thank my benefactress, but I was already late and feeling the pressure of a mountain of work.

Today, I decided to take the final step of weaning myself away from all the props. I had stopped the painkillers last week after some unsettling bleeding episodes; a few days later I had dropped the leg brace; the time had finally come for me to leave the trekking pole behind. I'm happy to report that the walk to campus today went just fine, pain-free, despite the added distance that came from making a few wrong turns early on. Bob's/Rob's house is about a mile away from Mechelle's, so I'm re-learning the route to campus. In truth, the new place is closer to campus than Mechelle's, but I equalized the distance by getting lost. Won't happen tomorrow.

So I'm about halfway normal again. I've got another nine or so days to get back to a point where I can walk ten miles or more without pain; I need to factor those walks into my schedule. Tomorrow, I might start the morning off by earning some money doing some weeding (long-time readers will recall that I did this at my very first stop in the US, in Blaine, WA); I still owe Mechelle a slice of her rent (plus a little pizza money).

Tomorrow, a FedEx package is arriving from Dad: Photoshop Elements! If you're in the market for some sort of design, or just want to see yourself handling a lightsaber or shooting lightning bolts at Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin), I'm your man. I can even make the design into a tee shirt for you.

In other news: Alan wrote me with an interesting employment opportunity for when I settle into Boise: standardized test evaluator, a job that only requires a computer and a brain. The hitch: for security reasons, people who evaluate student work (e.g., scoring essays for the SAT or TOEFL) need to have a physical hookup, not WiFi, and cannot move around. This probably means I'd need to rent a space (will likely need an address), get a contract for Internet service from whichever companies service Boise, and stay put. I'll probably want to stay put as the weather gets colder, and I'm sure my knee will be screaming again after the roughly 260-mile trek down there.

So I need to get cracking on research:

(1) I have to find a place in Boise where I can stay for about four months, paying little or no rent. To that end, Alan will be re-tooling the CouchSurfing message he broadcasts to potential hosts, and I plan to talk with Mom about whatever Korean community might be out that way (surely there have to be some Koreans in Boise, ja?).

(2) I need to find out what service providers exist in Boise, what the setup fees and monthly rates are, and most important, whether it's possible to get a service contract for less than one year. I suspect I might have to bite the bullet on this one, paying for a year, then paying a penalty for early withdrawal from the contract (or receiving only a partial refund for withdrawal).

Assuming I secure the above two things sometime before I reach Boise, obtaining the test evaluator position ought to be easy (UPDATE: "Don't count your chickens before they hatch," writes Alan). Grading papers isn't anyone's idea of a pleasant way to spend one's day, but the nice thing about it is that it doesn't require you to flex your knee thousands of times.

Along with the above, I need to take some time to stare hard at the route ahead and plan where Dad and I are going to stop. It would be mighty awkward-- not to mention dangerous-- to spend the night parked on the freeway's shoulder. Spending the night in a town's or city's parking lot also poses certain risks, so CouchSurfing might still be relevant to the upcoming Walla Walla-Boise sprint.

It may, at points, come down to finding little turnoffs not on any map. While walking along I-84, I saw plenty of those: spots where, for example, the driver of a maintenance vehicle might safely pull off the freeway for a snooze. It might be advisable for Dad to scout ahead while I'm hiking, and to call back when he finds a satisfactory spot. Parking in such places has one special advantage: it's cheaper than parking in a town, where we might feel obliged to spend the night in a motel.

It occurs to me that one possible in-town solution (aside from finding a CouchSurfing host) would be to call up a church and ask permission to park in their parking lot for the night. I suppose the only real awkwardness here would be the shit/shower/shave situation in the morning; I doubt the congregation would take kindly to finding us performing our morning constitutionals on their well-manicured lawn.

Much to think over; much to discuss.

Right-- back to transcription.


_

at long last

I finally-- finally-- found a Q&A site that provided a decent link to a Digital Wave Player download site. I downloaded a ZIP file of DWP, went through the setup procedure, hooked my recorder up to the computer, and voilà-- the computer finally recognized the hardware.

So victory is mine: the rest of the sound files have at long last been downloaded to the laptop. Transcription can finally continue!

Shall we slay the fatted calf?

I say yes... and let's save the fatted thigh for later.


_

if you're into philosophy of mind...

Fascinating post on nanointentionality over at Conscious Entities.


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Anastasia on a pale horse

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T



I was out in front of the library, talking with Mechelle on the phone, when I saw something I hadn't seen since I first came to this campus: someone was sitting on Styx the Deathly Horse! I told Mechelle I was sorely tempted to take a picture of this scene, but was experiencing some internal conflict. After I hung up, I made up my mind to walk over, and that's how I made the acquaintance of Anastasia (I hope I'm spelling that right). I explained what I was doing in Walla Walla and asked her permission to take a picture of her; I also told her the pic would end up on my blog. Despite the fact that she was being approached by a very large stranger with a very odd request, Anastasia was completely composed, and gave her permission.

Et voilà.

If Anastasia is reading this (I gave her the blog's address), she should know that I am now going to inform the world that she is on the campus spirituality ListServe, and despite getting the announcements, she failed to show up at this past Tuesday's Spirituali-Tea.

Too busy communing with undead equines, I gather. For shame!

In all seriousness, it was a pleasure to make Anastasia's acquaintance. She told me that she likes reading while on the horse, from which I gather that she does this often. Curse my powers of observation; this was, as I said, my first time seeing anyone on Styx. I'd climb up there myself, but I'd be sure to crush the poor beast, bronze though he may be.


_

Alan Cook on "agreeing to disagree"

Alan Cook, my manager for the Walk, has written a post on the dialogical issue of agreeing to disagree, a topic that came up during this past Tuesday's Spirituali-Tea and on this blog. Go take a look at Alan's post on the subject, and at his blog in general.


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all is well

The cash may be running dry, but I've got a place to stay for free until the end of the month, after which I switch to our "moving motel," i.e., my dad's rental SUV.

I left Mechelle's place at noon today after getting a morning message from Mechelle's friend Jeanie, a half-Korean lady in the wine business (and a good friend of Mechelle) who owns two properties with her husband-- one in Walla Walla. The Walla Walla residence is being rented out by a guy named Bob, whom I met today when he drove by at noon to pick me up. Bob seems to have done a bit of everything; he's a nurse (LPN?), but he's also owned a restaurant, done a great deal of hiking (he guessed my backpack's weight right away), and worked for years in the special effects industry. I asked whether he was a fan of the Mythbusters crew, and he said yes.

After I threw my gear into my new digs, Bob took me to pick up a friend of his named Elyse; she teaches in the History Department of Whitman College-- Middle Eastern studies, Islamic studies, and gender studies. She and Bob are good friends, and I had a great time talking with them about an interesting range of topics, from language to culture to food to history to religion. As always, I kicked myself for not having brought along the damn voice recorder.

So I'm happy to have found a place so quickly, and I have Mechelle and Jeanie (and now Bob) to thank for that. Overall, I must say that Walla Walla has been a very welcoming city, another point of light in my very positive Pacific Northwestern experience. I'll be here another eleven or so days.


_

a sudden change in living arrangements

Due to circumstances beyond her control, Mechelle needs to give her spare room to another CouchSurfer this coming week, so I'm vacating the premises this weekend. The news didn't arrive until Friday evening, so I've been spending the night writing messages to some of the CouchSurfing folks in the area. Perhaps I'll have a reply or two by Saturday afternoon.

Not to worry, though: if no one responds, I'll still be able to find someplace to camp, though that might mean going outside the city: in my current financial state, even camping eleven nights at a $15/night campground would be too expensive for me. KOA campgrounds, while nice, are pretty expensive at $30 a night (remember Cascade Locks?).

Life is always exciting, ja?


_

Charles Potts

Here's the gent I met this morning: poet, businessman, and confirmed atheist Charles Potts.



Mr. Potts sees religion largely as a response to the fear of death. I tend to agree, and while I'm not a classical theist, I don't see why theists would have trouble with this notion, either. In fact, when I asked some folks in my congregation about why they thought people so often turned to religion, answers like "seeking comfort" and "fear of death" were among the first given. Is it somehow irrational to fear death or to seek comfort in the face of it?

In our conversation this morning, I mentioned the equally prevalent idea that religion is a response to a basic dissatisfaction with how things are, an intuition also discussed at other sites.

What we didn't talk about, though, was whether religion could be more than that, or whether it was fair to reduce it merely to those sorts of essentially negative motivations-- fear of death, craving for sense/comfort, distraction from reality (i.e., opiate of the masses), etc. There were other issues we didn't have time to discuss, such as what counts as evidence when making the claim that religions construct their belief systems on absolutely no evidence. Is "evidence" to be interpreted only in a scientific way, or is there room for the data gleaned from a sort of "inner empiricism," in which certain experiences aren't open to public scrutiny, but are nevertheless "evidence" in a personal, subjective sense? I'm not hinting at any answers, here, but I wish we'd had time to get into this.

Alas, Mr. Potts is a busy man. He had just moved out of his enormous house on Palouse Street, where I met him (he was supervising a final cleanup; a carpet cleaning service was also there, soaping and vacuuming away). The home was practically a mansion, and Mr. Potts says he bought it years ago for only about $67,000. Incredible. Apparently, such properties are now worth quite a lot after a long period of real estate slump.

I'll try to transcribe the fascinating conversation I had with Mr. Potts as soon as I can. Sit tight. Meanwhile, check out Mr. Potts's online bookstore here. He's an author (lots of poetry!), and many of his own books are on sale at the site. Click through the links and you'll find video of him in action.

Ah, yes: he's also got a Wikipedia entry devoted to him.


_

good news

My father writes that his copy of Photoshop Elements 4 is on the way. I checked the system requirements for that program, and it looks as though my poor, battered laptop ought to be able to handle it.

This laptop's come a long way. I've run some disk repair programs on it, somehow managed to debug the startup procedure so that it no longer takes the whole Cretaceous Period for the computer to ready itself, and got the display back to showing millions of colors like any normal 21st-century computer. Along with that, I've got MS Office on here, have downloaded Adobe Reader, and once I have Photoshop, the final piece will be in place and I'll be open for business.

Need a graphic? Let's talk.

[NB: GIMP doesn't seem to have what I want in a graphics program. It's good for photos, but not nearly as intuitive for the design work I'd like to do.]

I'm about to check whether the freeware sound program called Audacity (thanks, Charles) will solve my file-reading woes. The problem, though, is that the laptop doesn't recognize my digital voice recorder, so I can't access the files on it. The device doesn't show up as a "removable storage device" when I look through the My Computer window; it simply doesn't show up at all. Even if Audacity is able to read the files stored on the device, I might still be unable to reach the files, let alone read them. Update on all this coming soon. I'm hoping to be back to transcribing by this evening.

UPDATE: Audacity downloaded and set up just fine, but as I thought, it can't find the device. The laptop won't recognize the device without a driver, and whenever I search for a driver for my recorder, I'm sent to the Olympus site, where the software is available for purchase. The search for proper software continues.

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pic dump for September 19

Right-click on the images and do a "show picture/view image" command, or right-click, select "properties," then copy and paste the pic's URL to see it full size.

Queen Pava on her throne:



The room I'm renting:







The room was serving as Mechelle's meditation space, so I feel kinda bad to be occupying it. Here's a closer look at one aspect of it:



Here's Kwan-sae-eum Bosal (a.k.a., Avalokitshevara, bodhisattva of compassion), hanging out in Mechelle's laundry room:



And here's another shot of that modern sculpture on Whitman's campus. It's titled "Pirouette," as it turns out:







_

how long can this weather last?

Another gorgeous day. I find myself once again sitting on a bench in front of a man-made pond close to the Catharine Chism Recital Hall (a.k.a. The Whitman College Hall of Music), eating lunch and listening to the sounds around me: the laughter of walking gaggles of students, the faded sound of music from the building behind me, the flow of water from an opening in the pond's border to a little stream below, the beeping of a truck in reverse gear. The campus has a calm, green feel to it, even though the leaves have started to fall. It's too bad I won't be around to see what the place looks like when fall comes in earnest.


_

and now for something completely different

In a few minutes, I'll be hobbling out of here to meet Charles Potts, about whom I know almost nothing except that he's a writer and that he comes highly recommended by one Mr. Jack Large, currently a resident in Korea, but a man with connections to both Walla Walla and Boise. Jack and I had an amicable email exchange after he found my blog via The Marmot's Hole, the premier English-language Koreablog.

Jack tells me that Mr. Potts has a worldview I won't want to miss hearing about, so today's the day I go over and find out what's up. If it turns out that Mr. Potts is a baby-eating psycho intent on harvesting my soul, I plan to write Jack to complain.

More later today.


UPDATE: No babies eaten and no souls harvested-- just fascinating (albeit brief) conversation.


_

mich'in yeomso

This had me busting a gut. I never knew such a subspecies existed.


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new YouTube vids!

They're linked on the sidebar, too (see the "Video Podcasts" section):

1. What is Religious Pluralism?

2. Did You Catch My Mistake?

3. Some Critiques of Religious Pluralism (1)

4. Some Critiques of Religious Pluralism (2)


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duck powwow

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

brace yourself

I survived yesterday without pain meds, took no pain meds this morning, and am on my way to campus without a brace. I do have my "cane," though.

My mother likes to growl, "I'm sick of being sick!" whenever she's down for a long time. I know the feeling. I don't like relying on pain meds, and am impatient to reach a point where I can walk normally, cane- and pain-free. I'm hoping that, today, I'll be able to make it without a brace at all. As long as I walk carefully and make efforts not to torque the knee, there should be no problem.

Also: I recorded three new videos for YouTube, but one of them has me rambling for 16 minutes. I might split the thing into pieces with Movie Maker, or try to upload it whole either via YouTube's uploader (there are vids longer than 16 minutes on there) or via Photobucket. Does Picasa do movies? I'll have to check.

The first vid is a quick survey of different types of pluralism. The second offers a quick correction of something I said in the first vid about Buddhism. The third-- the long vid-- goes over the more substantive critiques of the major pluralisms and touches upon some replies to those critiques.


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Craigslisted

Well, I took commenter Britt's advice and put myself on the famous Craigslist site. We'll see what comes of this.


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a partial Photoshop/artwork/photography resume

Right, well, I'm putting my Photoshopping services out there for those who'd like something done. Working from the computer seems like the best solution, for the moment, for someone with a bum knee. Got a graphic design need? Let's talk. Email me. Payment is easy through PayPal.

Things I can do for you:

-card designs (did you check out the gross and disgusting cards at my CafePress shop?)
-book cover designs
-poster designs
-tee shirt designs (check my CafePress shop)
-Photoshops of you doing something unnatural (like flying, I mean)
-comic strips in which your friend finds him- or herself in the world of Harry Potter (or the "Pulp Fiction" ball-gag scene)
-comic strips of you and your friends as Jedis

Think about a job that, to you, would be worth $25. Or $50. Or $100. Propose the project to me, give me a due date, and let's flesh out the rest of the details together. If you're willing to pay in advance, all the better. I could definitely use the cash. Keep in mind that, even when I spend nothing, I've got a $600/month scholastic debt, so cashflow does matter.



























I've got animated comics, too, but... you're not ready for those. Trust me. If you want to see a sample, ask me to email one to you.



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from my buddy Charles

My good friend (and expat Iron Chef) Charles writes:

I read your write-up of the Spirituali-Tea. Not bad for not having recorded the session. Did you take notes, or was that all from memory? I found the reference to the comment by Father Komonchak quite amusing. I can definitely see his point. Agreeing to disagree can be a weaseling way out of dialogue, depending on when the clause is invoked. I've found, though, that when two people who disagree on a fundamental issue, there are only three possible outcomes. The least likely (in my experience) is that one person will change their mind. The other two outcomes are that the argument continues (sometimes in future sessions) or that it doesn't. And the only way to really end an argument/discussion where neither party is going to change their mind is to agree to disagree.

Of course, this assumes that the goal of any discussion is to get the other person to change their mind, or at the very least to grant you your point. If this is not the case, and the participants are willing to simply discuss their views, then there doesn't necessarily have to be a "winner" or "loser," per se. But that type of discussion is based on the "agree to disagree" principle from the very start, i.e., "we may hold irreconcilable viewpoints, but we are going to discuss them in a civil manner without trying to sway the other person." (To take the assumptions one level further, all of this assumes that there are indeed irreconcilable viewpoints, but I think that is a valid assumption.)

So I think that ultimately all discussions carried out from irreconcilable viewpoints (note that the irreconcilability doesn't necessarily have to be mutual--discussant A can be willing to embrace discussant B's viewpoint, but B might not be willing to accept certain aspects of A's viewpoint) will boil down to either agreeing to disagree or a failure of the discussion. But it makes a big difference when you decided to invoke the "agree to disagree" clause--whether it is before or after you have made an attempt to understand the other person's point of view.

So, anyway, I thought that was interesting.

Agreed. Timing matters. Giving up prematurely can be problematic. Closing off discussion because one thinks one already knows its outcome borders on arrogance. This was the complaint of religious conservatives who found themselves largely excluded from the table during events like the Parliament of the World's Religions (1993). There might have been an assumption by religious liberals that conservatives wouldn't have anything new or surprising to say. Yet at the same time, it's true that we can often use our common sense in determining whether a discussion is going to go nowhere, at which point it becomes, as Bruce Lee would say, a matter of not wasting one's precious time on fruitless action (see Joe Hyams's stories about Bruce Lee in his short book Zen in the Martial Arts).

And, yeah-- that was from memory, so there are large gaps, things that happened that I didn't note.

Here's one thing that just came to me: one student, who may have been the lone Baha'i, asked me a good question: "Can you give a one-sentence definition of religious pluralism?" I gave her a flat (but I hope civil) "No" in response. The problem is that there are many kinds of pluralism-- a pluralism of pluralisms-- and I'd love to sit down with a group of people and just go through a rundown of the different types, allowing listeners to chew them over and talk about each type's merits and demerits. In fact, I think I'm going to do a YouTube vid on the topic, and another vid about the critiques of the various positions. Basically, I'll be rehashing material I already covered in my book, but it'll be good practice for me as I refine my still-rough on-camera presence.


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whoa!

Big change from the previous post!

I guess the software simply needed time to set itself up properly. I just came back into the 'brary after spending several minutes outside, and lo and behold: I've got a monitor that displays millions of colors instead of the 256 colors it was showing before! Installation successful: the monitor is itself again.

Dad, I hope you FedExed that Photoshop program! It's time to make some graphics!

Whew... one driver down, one to go.


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uh-oh

My mission today was to find two drivers: a monitor/display driver for my laptop, and a freeware driver for my digital voice recorder. Circumstances have conspired to stop me in my tracks.

I found a Q&A site that walks you through the procedure for finding and downloading Dell laptop monitor software. I then went to the Dell site, and after a lot of searching, I found what appeared to be the correct driver for my laptop and went through the download/setup procedure. Of course, you have to restart the computer to lock in the changes, and I did this.

Result: the startup begins (with the normal graphics), then the monitor conks out.

Frustrating, to say the least. The disk drive keeps whirring as though it's actually doing something, but even after several minutes, nothing changes. Dead monitor, whirring drive, but nothing else. Even CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work-- but strangely enough, the keystrokes for the "eject disk" command produce results: the CD drive obediently pops open. Go figure.

I'm typing this entry on the BlackBerry, as you can imagine. There, too, we have problems: the study carrel where I normally sit used to have a satisfactory signal for online work on the handheld, but over the past two days, that signal has been too weak, so to type this entry and do any surfing, I have to leave the library. With the weather this gorgeous, that's not a bad proposition, but it's a pain to have to leave camp instead of being able to do everything in one place.

If the laptop remains unresponsive, I may have to drop it off at a repair shop tomorrow. Damn. Not looking forward to that bill.


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blood and guts

My introduction to next-generation video gaming happened a few years back when my brothers got their first XBox. They'd had a Sega Genesis before that, but game play on the Genesis didn't strike me as all that far removed from game play on more classic consoles like the now-ancient Atari set (later renamed the Atari 2600), or the equally ancient Mattel Intellivision. The Sega offered about the same game play with better graphics.

Years passed, consoles improved, and I missed most of that. Then along came the much-vaunted XBox and the game that hooked me on it: "Halo" (we're at "Halo 3" now; this is supposedly the last in the series, but I doubt the game's designers will stop there), which took the old "Doom"-style first-person shooter (FPS) and ratcheted it up several orders of magnitude. Encountering "Halo" after years out of the loop was like moving from a 1970s wall-mounted telephone to a RAZR.

You have to love an FPS game where the enemies are powered by artificial intelligence, i.e., they won't necessarily follow the same attack pattern every time you encounter them, and they adapt quickly to changing situations. In "Halo," the creatures you fight (1) use stealth, (2) work in teams, and (3) do their best to avoid your shots and grenade throws, which includes duck-and-cover tactics. As you up the difficulty levels, the creatures also become tougher and think faster.

The game also remembers where corpses are, so that when you move back into a room where you've massacred everyone, you'll see their bodies (and, often, the blood spatter) still in place. The solidity of a video game's universe matters to me; it's easy to tire of games that save memory by making carnage or other scenery changes disappear.

Finally, "Halo," unlike the old Doom games, takes a more realistic view of encumbrance: you're limited to holding only two weapons at a time, which means that you often have to make painful choices as to which weapons you'll take into an unknown area. For a guy whose video game education pretty much stopped at Atari and "Doom II"/"Quake," "Halo" was a revelation.

So I was hooked. Even after playing "Halo 2," which was admittedly pretty good, I still preferred the first "Halo" (in "Halo 2," you're obliged to change characters to complete the storyline, something I resented having to do), and I definitely want an old XBox and a copy of "Halo" when I get back to Korea. Given how old both the console and the game are, I should be able to purchase both for fairly cheap.

Now we live in the Age of Wii. The Nintendo Wii video game system has been out for a while, and for the most part, I've viewed it with only mild interest despite its aggressive marketing campaign. For the first time, however, I really want one. When I get back to Korea after this walk, I'm probably going to get one along with an XBox, and the game I plan to buy for it is "Deadly Creatures." Why?

Because in "Deadly Creatures," you play the role of either a scorpion, or of one of my all-time favorite beasties: a tarantula! YES!

See here. I especially like the section on the over-the-top sound effects.

I owned four tarantulas as a kid, and loved feeding them crickets from the pet store or grasshoppers caught by hand. While "Deadly Creatures" forces you to play both the tarantula and the scorpion, I don't mind this so much: scorpions are pretty cool, too. (Ever seen Cynthia Rothrock's scorpion kick? No? Then... behold, right around 2:20 in this video.)

Yes, ladies, men over 30 are basically just big, hairy, aging adolescents. Most of us, anyway.


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med-free

I'm trying to get through today without any ibuprofen or Naprosyn. So far, so good; I made the 0.8 mile walk to Albertson's this morning and got my ice bag (the smaller size). Weaning myself from the trekking pole, however, is going to be more difficult. While I don't lean heavily on the pole and don't swing it in perfect tandem with my right leg (watch Hugh Laurie's excellent portrayal of Dr. House to see what I mean), I do use it to relieve some of the pressure on the knee, and admit I've become psychologically dependent on it. Sometime during the next week or so, I'm going to have to leave the "cane" at home at walk into the world without it.

Just not today. Not today.


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all linked up

The Brother Luke exchange now has links. Check it out.

UPDATE: On a personal note, I'm going home only now, at 11:20PM. I never made it to Albertson's to get that ice bag. We might have to knock on wood, but my knee actually feels as though I can walk on it without the trekking pole for support. The stretch from the library to Mechelle's house is 1.6 miles; I'm gonna try it tonight without taking any painkillers. (I should note that they're not lying about bleeding being one of the side effects of both ibuprofen and Naprosyn [naproxen]. Ask my nose and some other body parts.)

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Roboseyo

I've long meant to blogroll this wonderful Koreablog here at Kevin's Walk. This post, about a Western guy doing a scaled-down version of the Korean jaesa (ancestor-tribute) ritual for his mother, who passed away three years ago, is both touching and a window into how people of two cultures might interface, finding something in the other's culture that fills a need not filled by one's own.


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seen on the way to the restroom; any relation to Matt?

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good discussion; the gods are pleased

I think we had somewhere around ten people for the Spirituali-Tea today. The Spiritual Activities Room is a multipurpose worship space in the basement of Prentiss Hall. It strongly reminds me of the interior of a Japanese Zen temple: spare furnishings and an immaculately polished wood floor. It was a shame to walk across that floor in shoes, but at the same time, I didn't want to kill the discussants with my foot odor (which probably escaped from my shoes, anyway). The room is mostly bare because different religious groups are allowed to put in whatever accoutrements they feel are appropriate for their style of worship or meditation.

Adam Kirtley, the gent who coordinates campus activities related to religion and spirituality (see the Whitman Spiritual Life page here), is just as kind in person as he is on the phone. I arrived a bit early; Adam was already there, prepping the room. Students trickled into the room in ones and twos; we didn't have our full complement until a good fraction of the hour had passed. I was humorously reminded of what it was like teaching non-credit courses in Seoul: when a grade isn't on the line, you can expect a certain laxity from the students.

The physical setup for the discussion involved the placement of a dining room-style table roughly in the middle of the room (we had to avoid some load-bearing columns, so things were sort of wabi-sabi), around which we placed some chairs. Adam had already set up another table for tea and cookies. It wouldn't be a Spirituali-Tea without the tea, right? In the end, there weren't enough tea mugs for everyone, so some folks had to engage in the ancient practice of Doing Without while others of us sipped happily away. There were, however, plenty of leftover cookies by the end of the hour; I hadn't eaten any of them during the discussion, so I greedily downed two after almost everyone had left, then took the box over to the library and gave it to some library staffers.

Some folks had a chance to introduce themselves at the beginning; many of the people who came later were pretty much silent throughout the hour (I hope we talkers didn't put them to sleep!). I know we had one Baha'i; we also had at least one Episcopalian, three Unitarian Universalists, one Orthodox Christian, one non-practitioner (who nevertheless had a lot of interesting things to say on the subject of interreligious dialogue)... and then, as mentioned, a few quiet folks who never had the chance to introduce themselves and mention their religious affiliation or non-affiliation.

At the beginning of the hour, Adam introduced me and I had a chance to tell my story; I offered a condensed version of my FAQ. Adam then allowed the discussants to introduce themselves, and we dug into the issues.

I once again have to kick myself for not recording the session, but I don't feel so guilty about it this time around, because many of the ideas I heard were familiar to me. In no particular order, some of the themes and topics covered by all of us were:

-whether to "agree to disagree" when hitting a sticky point (I'm reminded of feisty Father Komonchak at Catholic U: "I hate it when people say they want to agree to disagree. I'm a New Yorker. For New Yorkers, disagreement is the beginning of the discussion, not the end!")
-the difference between a debate and a dialogue
-the practical aspects of creating an interfaith service (Adam talked about this; it's an interesting topic, and I would have liked to hear more)
-problems with the pluralistic position (talk mainly centered on what happens when potentially substantive religious differences are demoted to the level of "mere detail" in the search for common ground-- a critique I've come to respect over time, and a topic about which I want to record another little YouTube vid)
-the establishment of "ground rules" for interreligious dialogue (something that thinker and all-around Godfather of Religious Pluralism Raimondo Panikkar would be in favor of; I myself am not so sure)
-coming together not so much through self-conscious discussion of doctrine, theology, philosophy, etc., as through (1) doing meaningful things together, such as helping the poor, and/or (2) simply living in proximity to each other and allowing interreligious dialogue (well, encounter) to happen naturally and organically

We covered other topics, too, and I hope that the folks who appeared at tonight's discussion will leave comments that either remind me of what those topics were, or that continue the discussion in some way.

I had two regrets by the end of the hour. First: one hour simply isn't enough time to do more than allow a diverse group of people the merest taste of what the issues are; in a single hour, ten people can't possibly hope to discuss seven or eight meaty topics deeply; any one of the above topics could engender a days-long discussion. So it's too bad we didn't have more time; I had so many questions for the group, and I felt guilty for having monopolized so much time jabbering about my own point of view.

Second: we were all so damn solemn! While there were a few light-hearted moments in the discussion, I began to wish that someone would accidentally fart, or at least stand up and shout the word "FART!" There's no better therapy for serious religious discussion than a bad case of the giggles. Of course, I can't really blame anyone for this state of affairs, least of all the students: this was the first Spirituali-Tea of the semester, and I imagine that no one really knew anyone else (except, maybe, the folks who arrived in pairs), so people were, on some level, sniffing each other out and getting used to the surroundings.

The idea behind Adam's Spiritual-Teas is fascinating. If he's amenable, I think I'll attend the one happening next week-- this time more as a listener and only occasional contributor. The students obviously had a lot to say (several of them distinguished themselves with their perceptive, thoughtful commentary), and while today we covered ground familiar to me (cast not your stones! "familiar" doesn't mean "uninteresting"!), I imagine that the coming weeks will provide plenty of new and equally engaging topics.

My thanks to Adam for the invitation to attend and to speak a bit about issues close to my heart, and to the other folks I met tonight-- Jill and Phil and all the students who contributed either by participating in the discussion or by listening well to the proceedings. Thanks, as well, to the larger Whitman College community for tolerating my massive presence on campus.

Hope to see everybody next week. I promise I'll be quiet.


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pic dump: Arlington and Exit 151 campground

The first seven of these pics are from my time in Arlington; the final seven are from the Exit 151 campground along I-84. Hover your cursor over the pics to see captions; to see the pics full-size (instead of partially cut off, as they appear on the blog), put your cursor on the image, right-click, and choose "show picture" or "view image." If this command is unavailable, right-click on the pic, select "properties," then copy and paste the pic's URL into your browser.

































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today's project

I'm not transcribing for the moment. The audio for the conversation I'm about to transcribe is on my digital voice recorder; the file can't be transferred to my laptop because the I need to install the recorder's driver software first. The CD for the driver is... in Virginia.

I asked Dad to find it and FedEx it to me ASAP along with his version 4 copy of Photoshop Elements, but he said the driver CD was nowhere to be found. So I'm going to hunt online for some freeware that'll at least get the files from my recorder to my hard drive in playable format.

The reason I'm not transcribing directly from the recorder is that the recorder's "rewind" feature takes you back in increments that are too long to be practical. I tend to transcribe sentence by sentence, not paragraph by paragraph, and the "back" button on the recorder can send one back anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes, depending on (1) where one is in the recording, and (2) how long the recording is overall.

So instead, I'm sitting in the Penrose library on Whitman campus, typing this entry, mulling over how I'm going to screw with undergrad minds (cackle) at 4 o'clock, and planning my late-afternoon project: the acquisition of an ice bag from the local Albertson's.

We don't have Albertson's in northern Virginia, and I spent most of the first two hundred miles of my walk wondering what the hell an Albertson's was. It turns out that it's not so different from a Safeway or Wal-Mart: it's an omnibus store, carrying a little (well, a lot) of everything. I was passing through the pharmacy section the other day when I saw that ice bags come in two sizes: large and small. The smalls are about $6; the larges are around $12. I'm gonna get one. Haven't yet decided which size it'll be. Small might do the trick; the knee problem covers a pretty restricted area.


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the scare

One of my responsibilities in my host's house is to make sure the two backyard gates are shut so that Pava the Dawg-- whom Mechelle fondly addresses as "Turkey Butt"-- doesn't get out. Imagine my surprise when I stepped out the back door this morning and saw one gate swung wide open, the backyard shed door wide open, and Pava nowhere in sight.

Nothing else seemed to have been disturbed, and when I looked inside the shed, everything appeared fine (though I have no way of really knowing that, not having looked in the shed before). I called out, just once, to Pava, and she came instantly trotting back from somewhere hidden, much to my relief. I closed and locked the gate and stepped aside as Pava swished her turkey butt into the house.

Crisis averted.

But I wonder what happened, and why those doors were open.


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can anyone guess why this awesome sculpture (Whitman campus) reminds me of Hinduism?

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limits

When it comes to interreligious dialogue, you can't dialogue with everyone.

Case in point.


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