back from 15 miles

Yes, Virginia: I am still capable of 15-milers. No problem, aerobically speaking: as I suspected, there's a good bit of muscle memory involved. I do, however, have a throbbing left knee, which I'm managing with Vico-- uh, no... Naproxyn. (I'm not House, dammit, I'm not!)

My friends in Irrigon tell me they might just pick we up at the Portland airport instead of letting me walk along I-84 during the night and fetching me from the roadside the following day (that's the plan I'd suggested to them). Great people, Chuck and Lori. Whenever I write my book, they're going to be lavished with praise.

I don't think I'll be walking much with the backpack on my back this time around, except perhaps when I'm in a town or city. One of my upcoming purchases-- either here or when I'm out west-- is going to be a super-simple rig to tow my stuff behind me. I'm hoping to get something light enough to strap onto the backpack itself, if need be. We'll see what the sporting goods stores have on offer. I can't afford to get anything too bulky or heavy, but whatever I buy has to be durable, with fairly large, sturdy wheels.

The above might seem like a digression, but my point is that I'll be able to go farther and faster with the pack rolling behind me than with it on my shoulders. My first walk out from Walla Walla takes me back south into Oregon, to the city of Milton-Freewater. The next walk is a doozy, though: about 30 miles to the city of Pendleton. The walk to Emigrant Spring State Park, the following day, looks to be around 25 miles. Considering the distances I plan to cover, having the pack off my back seems like the way to go, at least until I've lost enough weight to think about shouldering the load for longer periods.

_

10 miles into a 15-miler this morning

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Kevin becomes House?

While I'm about 200 pounds heavier than Fox's Dr. Gregory House (that's only a slight exaggeration), House and I will have something in common for the remainder of my walk: pill-popping to manage pain in the lower extremities. In my case, the pain is a generalized ache in both knees. I get the pain even during short walks of 6-10 miles, so I assume this is simply part of my reality, now. Rest assured: the pain isn't debilitating, and it's worst at the beginning, when I start moving after having sat still for a while. It's not a big issue; this pain is nothing like the agony my right knee was in last year.

I'm assuming that the ibuprofen and Naproxyn tablets that I used last August were not addictive; I managed to wean myself off them rather easily while in Walla Walla. I'm hoping the same will be true after another 3000 miles of walking; we'll see. I don't want to end up in the painkiller-addicts' wing of whatever clinic hosted Michael Jackson.

And now, Dear Reader, I'm staring down at my gut and ruing the fact that I've regained about 20 of the 40 pounds I had lost last year. I don't blame anyone but myself for this, and I know that honesty doesn't ennoble me, but I also know that a few weeks back on the road will start me losing again. Think positive.

Meantime, I'm impatient to get restarted. A dark corner of my brain has been screaming since last year that I've been home way too long, but you'll recall the circumstances that led me back here: the need for a place to stay while I healed; the fact that winter would have been an issue, given the equipment I had with me; and the lack of funds, which disappeared at an alarming rate thanks to my decision to "stay legal" and not act like a vagrant while in towns and between them. (CouchSurfing.com isn't much help when you're passing through small towns-- a fact I've been rediscovering as I plan stops from Walla Walla to Salt Lake City.)

But this time is going to have to be different. I haven't made that much money, so it's imperative that I conserve what little I have. I'm not even budgeting for food; I'll rely on what charity comes my way. Because I have $500 per month in bills (all scholastic debt-- none of it with credit cards), my parents have agreed to help me for the next several months. For their sake, I need to finish the walk sooner rather than later. The folks are doing this despite having taken heavy hits in the pocketbook thanks to all the renovation since last September. I've promised to pay them back once I'm in Korea and... heh... probably working three jobs to make up for lost time. If I write a book and it ends up making some money, I'm sure that all the initial proceeds will go to my folks.

I'll be in Walla Walla for a few days, interviewing some of the interesting people I met last year (plus a few I've promised to meet), stretching my legs, basking in the high desert climes. I start ambulating in earnest on April 23, striking out for Milton-Freewater, where I hope to have a place to stay (the route to Salt Lake City is here). Unlike the first 600 miles, when I only rarely camped illegally, I see myself imposing a lot more on the largesse of both the federal government and private property owners. I might have to pull a Steve Vaught, camping in someone's woods when needed. That's what you do when you don't have $150,000 and a huge staff to act as your caddy so that you can walk virtually unencumbered.

Despite not having filled in all the blanks for my first 40-60 days of walking, I do have a route plotted out, which is a major difference from last time. I've given up on the "self-planning" idea; it's disappointing to have to let that notion go, but the basic problem has been the insularity (and general unresponsiveness) of many of these religious communities. I've heard excuses from some of them-- they're staffed with only a skeleton crew of volunteers, etc. That's fine, but simple courtesy demands that one respond fairly quickly when addressed directly, and the sad fact is that, on many occasions, this hasn't happened. Just ask my friend Nathan, who sent out a blizzard of mailings on my behalf many months before I even arrived in America. Not a single response after all that effort. Maybe I'm just not famous enough. Heh.

The week is winding down. There's still some shopping and some packing to do, then I'm off to Portland on Saturday. Am looking forward to being back on the road; I feel as if I've been dead weight here in Virginia. I'm deeply thankful to my folks for having hosted me this long and for helping to fund the next several months of the walk, but it's definitely time to move on. I've put my life on hold to do this, but I can't stay on hold forever, not with bills to pay.

If you readers want to help my folks out with this $500 a month burden, go peruse my CafePress shop and buy some items. Every little bit helps.


_

it grows within you

[UPDATE: If you've read the comments to this post, you've seen that this is likely a hoax. I'm beginning to incline toward that view myself.]

One of the greatest glories of the human condition is pregnancy. Granted, it doesn't feel all that glorious if you're a woman, what with all the bloat and vomiting and weird dietary urges. But gestation is still a marvel: a little life is growing within you, and the moment of birth is, as every parent I know attests, like stepping into a whole new realm of existence.

Perhaps as a result of our evolutionary wiring, we have a completely different view of anything other than a human being growing inside us. Whether it's a tapeworm, or a cancer, or hookworms, or an invasion of ascaris (picture not for the easily grossed-out, but this was an internet classic years ago, so you've probably seen it), we are wired to view such things as a horrifying violation.

The horror begins early. Many children worry about what might happen after they've eaten watermelon seeds: "Will I start growing a watermelon plant inside me?" Most parents respond with a laugh and a "No, of course not, dear." But this isn't to say that you can't grow plants inside your body, as my brother David demonstrated when he sent me a link that led to the following picture:

What you're looking at is a tiny fir tree extracted from a Russian man's lung. Here's what the article says:

A Russian man who had been feeling chest pain and coughing up blood got some stunning news from his doctors -- his symptoms were caused by a tiny fir tree growing in his lungs, Mosnews.com reports.

Doctors spotted a tumor on an X-ray and had expected to find a cancerous tumor when they conducted a biopsy on Artyom Sidorkin, 28, earlier this month. Instead, they found green needles embedded in the tissue.

"I blinked three times, and thought I was seeing things. Then I called the assistant to have a look," said Vladimir Kamashev, a doctor at the Udmurtian Cancer Center in Izhevsk in central Russia.

A 2-inch fir was removed from Sidorkin's lung.

"... I never felt like I had an alien object inside of me," the patient said. Doctors suggested he inhaled a small seed, and it started growing.

As Alan Grant says in the movie version of "Jurassic Park," "Life will find a way." Now that we all live in a post-"Alien" world, I imagine many of us, upon seeing the above photo, are having the same thoughts about chest-bursting aliens. Luckily for us, fir trees grow slowly. Luckily for Mr. Sidorkin, he lives in the era of modern medicine. Imagine if this had occurred two hundred years ago.


_

new CafePress items!

Work with BK has officially ended for me, so I now have no income stream. In my ongoing quest to fund my walk (and possibly make a little more money to address my mountain of scholastic debt), I've created more CafePress items for your perusal. Hit the links to see them up close.

1. The "Kevin signed this" tee shirt. Buy the tees, meet me along the road with a waterproof marker, and I'll sign those puppies as I walk across the country.

2. The Dalma Daesa white tee. My best-selling CafePress item is an ash-gray Dalma Daesa tee shirt; I have no idea why I neglected to put up a normal white shirt, but here's hoping that white will sell as well as (or better than!) gray. (Value tee also available.)

3. A slew of black Kevin's Walk tee shirts with the revised logo. Yes, I finally changed "Kevin's Wank" to "Kevin's Walk." Visit the Kevin's Walk section of the shop to see the whole gamut.

4. "A Pup and a Way!" tees. The pun comes from one of my poems. See the tee shirt section of my CafePress shop for the full gamut of available shirts.

5. The "Tiger and Rabbit Raisins" tee. I'm rather proud of this one, which uses the tiger/rabbit imagery I'd shown off before to portray one moment in the bizarre friendship between Tiger and Rabbit, a friendship rooted in Korean folklore, where many stories begin "A long time ago, when tigers smoked pipes..." Many a shop in Insa-dong, one of the most famous art districts of Seoul, will feature scrollwork images of tigers and rabbits placidly smoking together, puffing away on long pipes. My tee doesn't show any smoking, but it does show Tiger scaring the bejesus out of Rabbit as he roars, "Teach me how to make those awesome chocolate raisins!" I'll leave you to dissect the queasy implications of what Tiger is saying.

There are more designs on the way, so stay tuned. If you see something that interests you, I'm not gonna stop you from buying it.


_

my last "24" update from home

Well, my easy prediction came true: ol' Larry Moss is officially dead. But who killed him? Not the person I expected: it was Tony Almeida! So we're now left with the impression that Tony is still one of the bad guys, since he helped the other bad guy spirit the remaining bit of the bioweapon away from the bombed-out portion of the Starkwood compound.

I suppose there's a chance that Almeida's still on our side, that what we saw lacked context and will make sense in subsequent episodes (Agent Moss might have been dirty, for example), but that's not looking likely. Here's my "middle knowledge" prediction: if Tony Almeida is indeed one of the baddies, then he will be dead by the end of the day, probably thanks to Jack Bauer. Tony allowed his co-conspirator to kill two federal agents, so the probability that he's a villain is high, which in turn means that the probability of his death is high.

I figured Moss was going to die this episode when he suddenly started doing the right thing. Up to now, Moss has been portrayed as pretty dense, and thus fairly unlikable. On "24," the route to likability is to do whatever Jack says is best, which is why Jack, not the US president, is the actual leader of the free world. Many characters who have gone against Jack's wishes often end up seeing the light, then dying. Moss is no exception. Once he was on the Bauer bandwagon, his fate was sealed. Think back to Lynn McGill's fate in Season 5.

We also see the return of Kim Bauer, who might be offering her dad some stem cells that will work their magic against the pathogen that's currently killing Jack. I'm assuming that Jack has to survive until the end of the day; if he expires, it'll be in the final hour... unless the writers pull a "To Live and Die in L.A." on us and kill off the main character two-thirds of the way through the plot. Don't see that happening. The show rides entirely on Jack.

Based on the preview for next week's episode, things don't look good on the romantic front for Bauer and Agent Walker. She's going to be grieving over the loss of Agent Moss, so viewers can expect her to be rather snarly. There might be some comic potential in having Jack put the moves on her, though: "Hey, babe. I'm dying from a pathogen that's gonna turn me into a drooling, spastic moron in an hour. What say we head over to my place?"

While watching the episode, Dad and I joked about what a crossover "House"/"24" episode would look like ("House" also shows on Fox; in fact, it comes on right before "24"). I wondered aloud who would be torturing whom. Both shows feature their own forms of political incorrectness; mixing the two-- Bauer's brutality and House's inability to hide what he's thinking-- would be volatile.

But such a crossover episode is about as likely as Jack undergoing sexual reassignment surgery, so I'll stop the fanciful speculation here. Given the recent turn of events, with Tony Almeida seeming once again to be an enemy of the state and Starkwood CEO Jonas Hodges raving that he's only a small cog in a very large machine (typical mid- to late-season revelation on "24"), I'm going to bring back my old prediction that Janis Gold (Janeane Garofalo's character) is a mole. She still fits the profile for moles on "24": fairly mousy, whip-smart, and at the center of things. Given the twists we've experienced thus far, I think this is not a bad prediction. It's not as easy or obvious a prediction as "Tony Almeida's gonna die," but I think there's something to it. We'll see.

ADDENDUM: This is sorta cute.


_

sae ong ji ma haiku

poor old man, lost horse
horse returns and kicks his son
son stays home from war


Well... that's the condensed version, anyway. Sae ong ji ma means "poor old man's horse." The Chinese story from which the image comes tells of a poor old man who undergoes many reversals of fortune, but who has the wisdom to know that reversals are just the way of things: no need to rejoice when times are good, because things can go bad. No need to weep when times are bad, because they can improve.

I've mentioned this proverb before (see here). It's a good one to remember in times of economic trouble, and a call for caution and prudence when times are good.


_

with thanks to Rico

One of my mentors during my southward walk along Washington's I-5, Rico Simpkins, has just posted an embedded YouTube video about what open-mindedness really means. I enjoyed it and want to pass the word along.


_

Happy Easter!

I walked into one of my grad school classes back in 2001 or thereabouts; it was just after Easter. Inside the class were a few classmates who'd arrived earlier than I had, mostly Catholic and ranging in age from late 20s to mid-50s. The other Protestant in the class, a young minister in the American Baptist Church, interrupted the quiet pre-class conversation by saying in a cheerful voice, "He is risen!" Everyone looked at each other, nonplussed; I was, apparently, the only one ready with the response: "He is risen, indeed!"

I know that that ritual exchange, or something close to it, is part of the Catholic liturgy, so I assumed the general lack of response had more to do with the out-of-context nature of my classmate's utterance. It threw people off guard. Anyway, it was an amusing Easter memory.

The Easter event is considered by most Christians to be the focal point on the liturgical calendar: Easter is what Christianity is all about. According to this point of view, Christ's resurrection, which signals his defeat of death and his opening of the way of salvation to all, is essential to Christian belief. If you fail to believe in the historicity of the resurrection, you aren't a Christian.

As my friends know, I'm not a scriptural literalist, nor will anyone ever mistake me for any sort of traditionalist. Politically, I think I'm fairly centrist, but religiously speaking, I recognize that I'm a flaming liberal. I don't take the resurrection to be a literal, historical event. The scriptural accounts of what happened aren't consistent, and what data the scriptures do provide can be interpreted in a variety of contradictory ways.

But this isn't to say that the Easter story doesn't resonate in me. I grew up hearing it, so of course it's a part of my history and psychology, part of who I am. The story of Jesus' self-sacrifice, his death on the cross, presents me with a model that I routinely fail to emulate in my daily life. And the resurrection, historical or not, conveys an ancient message about the nature of endings, which is this: even endings end. Each ending represents a new beginning. And there's hope in that way of thinking.

Whatever your view of Easter may be-- whether Easter represents the risen Christ or a rabbit that has the ability to lay eggs-- may it be a Happy Easter for you. Let the day be a reminder that every moment is a new beginning, and that we should, to borrow a biblical injunction, "rejoice and be glad in it."


_

Jesus with the angler fish?

Lee's Holy Saturday post (his blog is excellent, by the way) shows a picture of Jesus standing on what appears to be a rocky ledge, staring down into a hell-realm (or maybe it's just a sea) filled with angry or tortured-looking beings that strongly remind me of angler fish. Interesting image.


_

Easter miracle

Yes! You can now huff chocolate!


_

and how will you be spending your Easter weekend?

I'll be spending a goodly chunk of my weekend working on five documents I got from BK. I'm in the process of passing the torch on to a friend of mine in Seoul; he'll be taking over my proofing while I walk, but I'm still on the job until next Wednesday, after which I'll definitely have to stop working. It's a bad time to do that to BK, because next week is "crunch week," i.e., the week before the 20th of the month, which is the due date for all articles going into the magazine. But them's the breaks: I'm passing the job along to my friend because (1) he wants the work and I can't expect to continue proofing while stuck out in the middle of nowhere, and (2) I don't want to leave BK totally hanging.


_

put it down

What follows is an edited reprint from a post I wrote in 2005.

---

Today begins the period known to Catholics as Triduum, the three-day span during which Christ suffered, died, descended into hell, and rose again from the dead.

Good Friday is the day of sadness and shadows, the day when the world loses hope and all seems to be in ruin. Holy Saturday finds us in mourning and loss; it is a day of endurance. Finally, Easter Sunday reminds us that every ending is also a beginning. New life emerges. Hope finds its fulfillment.

Since I and a few people I know are all going through a painful period, each of us for various reasons, I thought it might be good to write about "putting it down."

In Zen Buddhism, the maxim is "don't make anything." Your mind is so often the source of your troubles. You choose to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune either negatively or positively. Often, at the beginning of a troublesome period in your life, it's difficult to realize how responsible you are for your own choices. It's easier to shift blame to your surroundings. But ultimately, the healthiest route out of the forest of troubles is to start by looking in a mirror. Behold what's actually there; don't needlessly manufacture problems for yourself and others.

I'm not a scriptural literalist, so I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead. But the story of the passion and resurrection nevertheless holds power for me, because it's a story about a man who put everything down, including his own life, for the sake of love. How many of us can claim to be ready and willing to do something like that? Not many, I suspect.

Most of us, like little children, cling desperately to our cherished notions, preconceptions, and delusions, unwilling to countenance truth and change. We face the world with fear, and create clever rationales for our spiritual cowardice. In a crisis period, this instinct intensifies. The ego swells to enormous size-- everything is about getting hurt, everything is about me, me, me. The world doesn't understand my pain, and only I am in pain!

I've felt like that before. I've looked out at a street full of people and wondered why they didn't see my agony, which was plain as day to me. The world kept right on turning, resisting my egocentric interpretation of it.

And there's a lesson in that. Life is change, ceaseless change. All we have is this moment. If we try to keep the past with us, we merely create more suffering for ourselves. If we try to hold on to our anger, or our hurt, or whatever it is we're feeling, we poison ourselves.

It's better simply to put it all down.

People need time to do this. It can't be done immediately. If, for example, you've just experienced a family tragedy, you can't be expected to act like the Taoist writer Chuang-tzu, banging on pots and celebrating your wife's death. No; most of us need time to mourn, grieve, recover. But after that period, we should be ready and willing to move on with our lives, to follow the constant flow of the river, to bang on the pots and celebrate.

You can't see the new life of Easter if you're always looking backward. Easter points simultaneously to the present and to the future, to hope and happiness and fulfillment. Think positively. Embrace goodness where you find it. Actively seek the good, don't wait passively for it.

Whatever your religion (or even if you have no religion), may this Easter find you looking to the horizon with hope and a sense that things can and will be better. May it also find you looking at where you are now, suddenly seeing the good things that have always surrounded you.

Peace.


_

good for him

I heard that President Obama hosted a Passover Seder at the White House. Good for him.


_

giving each other a look

I recall a moment last September, during that first Spirituali-Tea I attended at Whitman College, when two students gave each other a look while I was talking about the assumption some people make that all religions are basically reaching toward the same absolute reality or the same type of salvation. I had cast doubt on this notion, and the students who had given each other that look explained that they assumed that most people saw religions that way, i.e., as sharing a common essence or goal. Alas (or maybe hooray!), it's untrue that most people possess this conviction: while religious liberalism isn't necessarily a fringe movement, it's certainly not a reflection of where most people in any given religious tradition stand. Religious liberals are decidedly in the minority.

The problem for the religious liberal is here analogous to the problem for the political liberal, I think. The religious liberal wants to assign equal value and legitimacy to different traditions out of a sense of charity, but risks disrespecting those religions by relegating potentially fundamental differences to the realm of "mere detail." Good intentions can thus go awry when such a liberal, without actually having studied other religious traditions, makes a claim like "all religions are talking about God, each in its own way." It's not really a dialogue when you already think you have the answer.

This isn't to say, however, that you should approach dialogue with no convictions whatsoever. To the contrary, it's a good idea to have beliefs, and to be comfortable with the specificity of those beliefs-- to be able to say "No, I think you're wrong" when your interlocutor says something that runs contrary to your worldview. If the dialogue is a healthy one, the interlocutor will maturely accept this opinion without losing his temper.* Disagreement can be fruitful-- fodder for some great discussions-- and agreement is not necessarily the goal of dialogue. It's not even clear that dialogue should have a goal (cf. Raimondo Panikkar's notion of dialogical dialogue).

We should also note that the liberal impulse to make ostensibly conciliatory, pluralistic claims should not be viewed as completely wrong-headed. There is indeed a risk that, in making broad claims about a tradition not one's own, one will offend the Other. But there's also a chance that one's views of the Other's tradition, however well- or ill-informed, might afford the Other a look at his own tradition through another perspective. Reinterpretation by the Other is also part of dialogue, after all.

Anyway, I recall being amused by the students' reaction to the idea that not everyone was as "accepting" as they were. I wonder if they saw that moment as I did. For me, it looked as though they were beginning to realize that the world is a bigger, more varied place than the boundaries of their conceptual bubble had allowed for. That's a good thing, and to me, that's what college-- and life beyond college-- should be all about.

---

*Mature acceptance doesn't mean the discussion is over. This isn't about agreeing to disagree (see my above-linked post, plus this and this). Here, I'm talking about the acceptance of the fact that people will believe differently, possibly for reasons as legitimate as one's own.


_

all praise be unto Kim Jong-il

Humorist Frank J. of the blog IMAO (which is apparently banned in Korea... I was never able to access it) writes in praise of a leader even greater than Barack Obama.


_

Malcolm and dark thoughts

Malcolm links to an interesting exchange over at Dr. Vallicella's blog re: the morality of dark thoughts (you'll recall Jesus' instruction, in his Sermon on the Mount, regarding having lust in one's heart).

On the assumption that who we are is the sum not only of our darkest thoughts, but also of our repression/re-channeling of them (along with the expression of more positive thoughts and behaviors), I've argued, in the case of Mel Gibson's drunken episode, that vino doesn't reveal the veritas, but reveals only an incomplete person. At the time, Dr. Vallicella agreed with me, which makes me wonder how he reconciles his current contention (thoughts can be morally wrong) with that previous position. Thinking charitably, I can imagine a convoluted way to reconcile the two positions, but I'm still left to wonder, then, what our attitude should be toward something like the Mel Gibson incident, especially if unexpressed dark thoughts, as well as those expressed while drunk, are worthy of condemnation.

On the one hand, it's true that a single dark thought, in and of itself, probably won't lead to whatever behavior is indicated by that thought. On the other hand, a habit of thinking along certain dark lines could be argued to exert some sort of causal pressure on behavior, and such habits begin with single thoughts. But even here, bad behavior isn't an inevitable result of dark thinking. If you're interested in the current discussion over the morality of dark thoughts at Dr. Vallicella's place, see here.


_

updates

I'm moving my flight date forward one day to the 18th, because tickets are far cheaper for Saturday than for Sunday (go figure). Yes, I'm having to buy my ticket, but it's not a big deal.

In other news: the guy who shot up the Koreans at the Ggot-dongnae Catholic retreat center was himself a 69-year-old Korean resident of the center.


_

foodblogging!

Pesto with a twist: fresh basil, a touch of garlic, pine nuts plus pistachios, parmesan plus Gruyère, salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil. My brother Sean, back from Prague (which means Maqz is gone), tells me that, technically, "pesto" simply refers to any concoction made with an herb, a type of nut, a cheese, and an oil. So maybe my pesto isn't as twisted as all that.

Below: charoset. I made it the way I said I would; instead of Passover wine, I made a syrup of Korean pomegranate wine, sugar, and honey. Eminently edible.




_

nuts

More shooting violence, this time in California. Is it the economy?


_

mutant charoset

A slightly early Happy Pesach if you're Jewish (it actually begins at sundown on Wednesday)! I'm planning on going nuts by making a batch of charoset-- not because I'll be attending a Passover Seder, but because a Jewish coworker of mine, back when I worked at APIC from 1998 to 2001, brought some charoset into the office and got me hooked on it.

There are approximately 3.29 trillion different recipes for charoset (a word whose romanized spelling also seems to vary widely). You can see a few here. What I have done-- and plan to do-- probably doesn't qualify as true charoset, if for no other reason than that I won't be purchasing Passover wine, but will instead rely on whatever alcohol is currently sitting around the house, being consumed by no one (my parents and I don't drink, and Mom sips wine only on extremely rare occasions).

Charoset, according to the above-linked site, symbolizes the brick mortar made and used by the Hebrews during their time of slavery under Pharaoh. It generally has a rough, mortar-y look and feel to it, but it tastes fan-damn-tastic, which is why I suspect my Jewish friends and acquaintances are cheating every time they say they're remembering a bitter time in history-- they should stick exclusively to the consumption of bitter herbs and vinegar.

Anyway, I won't even pretend that what I'm going to make qualifies as true charoset. I simply like the general combination of nuts, fruit, honey, and certain spices or seasonings (wine optional). When I say "charoset," what I'm really saying is "inspired by charoset." A charoset tribute, if you will.

So I know you're wondering: how do we make this bad boy?

Very roughly pulse-chop in a food processor (make pebbles, not sand grains):

cashews
almonds
peanuts
walnuts

Mince or rough-chop:

raisins
pitted dates
figs
dried apple

The nuts should be in roughly equal portions. The fruits should also be in roughly equal portions. The amount of fruits and nuts should also be roughly equal.

Take all the above, once prepped, and combine. Add (to taste):

honey
wine
powdered ginger
chili powder


The red pepper was something I learned about from my coworker, who had brought in several kinds of charoset, including a spicy variety. If I'm not mistaken, the idea of adding fire to the charoset is Yemeni, though I suppose there might be other types of spicy charoset. You don't add much red pepper-- you need only enough chili powder to give the mix a slight but palpable kick.

In the past, I've made charoset by boiling the dry fruit for a minute or so, draining it, then blending it almost smooth in a food processor, leaving it up to the nuts to provide any chunkiness. Not this time! This time, I want the whole thing to be as chunky as possible. So I'll pulse-chop the nuts, use a knife on the dried fruits, and reduce any boiling (NB: many charoset recipes call for fresh fruit, with nothing boiled or otherwise heated) to about 45 seconds, just to achieve a slight softening of things like dates, which can be stiff and grouchy. The honey, wine, ginger, and chili powder will still be drizzled or sprinkled to taste.

The mixture won't look pretty, but I'm counting on it tasting very good, especially atop some matzo crackers. If I remember in time, I'll provide a photo of the results of my labor.


_

Faccia Luna: review

Dad was thoroughly pleased with yesterday's outing to Faccia Luna in Old Town Alexandria, a restaurant I hadn't visited in years. He thought I should write a review of the place, so here it is.

1. Service

It was a Monday night, right in the middle of the dinner hour, but seating wasn't a problem. We were led to a booth as soon as we stepped in, and our server, a young lady, proved to be very prompt and friendly. (The main gauge of promptitude, for me, is how often the server swoops by to refill an empty glass. Ours was spot-on.)

There was one major hitch, however: the kitchen flubbed my brother David's order, adding extra mushrooms to his pizza instead of the sausage he'd requested. David's miscarried pizza was taken away, and was replaced a few minutes later by the proper dish.

2. Ambience

Dinnertime lighting was tastefully dim, but not too dim. The atmosphere struck me as informal and family-oriented, but the bar was a prominent presence: it's the first thing you see upon entering, and it dominates almost half the seating space. Faccia Luna takes pride in their wine selection, and I got the impression that the bar patrons were more of a wine crowd than a beer crowd. The bartender dropped and shattered a bottle of something near the tail end of our meal, which would qualify as a tragedy if I drank alcohol. Dad stepped over to help a person with cut fingers ("I'm a medic," he said-- and he is); his aid was politely accepted.

I think there was music playing in the background; if there was, it was kept tastefully low. The overall noise level allowed for easy and animated conversation; no shouting was necessary. All in all, it was easy to settle in.

3. Menu

I previously described Faccia Luna as a "fusion Italian eatery." The restaurant is part of a chain that describes its restos as "trattorias." I call the place "fusion" because the menu, while predominantly Italian in focus, has French-American highlights. The menu's text certainly features a lot of bad French spelling-- "chocolate noir," from the dessert menu, comes to mind.

The menu itself ran the gamut from a wide variety of pizzas to pasta dishes to sandwiches and salads-- a fairly typical gamut for Old Town Alexandria. While not exactly cheap, Faccia Luna's prices were reasonable; our meal ran about $25 per person before tip.

4. Bouffe

The appetizers were interestingly different: we decided to order an eggplant dish ("Melanzane alla Parma" on the menu) and a portobello-and-pepper dish (Portobello alla Chevre [sic]). They arrived hot and attractive; the eggplant, covered in a generous layer of mozzarella and sitting on a smooth marinara, disappeared quickly. The mushroom dish also disappeared, but the whole cloves of garlic went to Mom who, being Korean, had no trouble dispatching them. Garlic bread came with both appetizers-- not much of it, but enough to swab some of the sauces on both plates.

We all decided to avoid the Monday Night Special, a sort of bare-bones menu prix fixe, in favor of exploring various dishes. My brother David ordered a personal-sized pizza that looked and smelled delicious (La Capra: goat's cheese, spinach, and chicken, with the addition of sausage); Mom had a salmon dish; Dad ordered a chicken breast-on-herbed penne plate, and I had some plump gnocchi with slices of sausage on top (Gnocchi di Piselli). The gnocchi, which were plump and rib-sticking, featured a tomato-vodka sauce.

Portion sizes were satisfactory without being huge. Mom did her usual thing, giving away chunks of food to the rest of the family, which is how I know that her salmon was cooked to perfection-- buttery-smooth on the inside and seared crispy on the outside, in a perfect contrast of taste and texture. Alas, the fish was served atop a pile of shredded and seasoned onions, but that's just a personal hangup of mine, not the restaurant's fault. Dad's chicken penne earned plenty of praise from Dad (strangely, Dad's and Mom's dishes aren't listed on the online menu, which is why I haven't given you their proper names); I sampled a bit and pronounced it very good, indeed.

We were pleasantly full by the end of the main course, but because we had already had a glimpse of the dessert section of the menu, we were tempted. Dad ordered a cheesecake with raspberry sauce; David ordered the tiramisu (or Tira Mi Su, as it's called on the menu), and I swerved from ordering the Chocolate [sic] Noir to having something not listed on the menu: mousse au chocolat. David, who has been to Faccia Luna before, had recommended the tiramisu to everyone, but I once again gave in to my chocoholism. Mom ordered nothing, content to sample our desserts (sort of the reverse of what she'd done at dinner).

I tried a bit of Dad's cheesecake and thought it was pretty good, though not great. David's tiramisu disappeared before I had a chance to scoop into it; it was served in a ramekin, which is unusual for tiramisu. My mousse rocked. It was thicker than the mousse I'd grown used to in Switzerland, and arguably richer, but delicious nonetheless. Mom pronounced it the best of the three desserts.

5. Rating

Faccia Luna rates "happy ending" on the massage parlor scale. The night wasn't perfect: Dad's dessert could have been fresher, and the kitchen messed up David's order, but the overall experience was very positive. Service was friendly and prompt; the ambience was cheerful and struck a good balance between family dining and something more adult. The aforementioned shattering wine bottle was more entertainment than tragedy, as far as I was concerned, and the food was excellent. If you find yourself in Old Town and have a few bucks to spend on a very good meal, then I highly recommend Faccia Luna.


_

Muggle Quidditch!?

Fans of JK Rowling's Harry Potter heptalogy will be familiar with every wizard's favorite sport: Quidditch. It's like a complicated version of soccer, and it's now available in a Muggle version.

I would have thought that, with networked gaming so popular now, someone would have invented a scaled-down MMORPG-style Quidditch video game, so that the game could be played properly. In Rowling's universe, Quidditch is played on flying brooms, making it a decidedly three-dimensional sport. Only in a computer's brain can you simulate the predatory behavior of the Bludgers-- whose job is to unseat random players-- and the behavior of the Golden Snitch, which flits erratically about, eluding capture by each team's Seeker with startling bursts of raw speed.

A sufficiently complex video game would allow players to try different brooms, each with its own performance quirks-- acceleration/braking ability, turn radius, stability, and susceptibility to magical interference (cheating seems to be part of the reality of Quidditch). Players would choose from among thousands of different magic wands; they'd play in hundreds of different venues, and be subject to all manner of weather conditions and random aerial events (e.g., the occasional low-flying aircraft, flock of geese, or child's kite). That would be Quidditch!

Muggle Quidditch seems so pedestrian in comparison.


_

42 years and going strong

Mom and Dad celebrate their 42nd anniversary today. They married in 1967, and waited two years before bringing me into the world. "I screeeeeeeaaaamed," said Mom, describing what birthing me was like. She wasn't keen on having another kid right after that experience, so she and Dad waited another seven years before David, the Bicentennial Baby, was born. Three years after that-- Sean.

They went from sitting on the floor in a small northern Virginia apartment, with apple boxes for tables, to settling in suburbia with a nicely renovated home, and three big kids buzzing in and out of their lives-- me and Sean infrequently, David frequently.

I haven't asked the parents what makes their marriage work so well; I'm sure that, if I asked them the secret to a good marriage, they'd say all the usual things: love, trust, patience, and letting the wife win all the arguments.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad, and many happy returns! I love you!


UPDATE: This evening we went out-- my parents, my brother David, and I-- to Faccia Luna, a fusion Italian eatery in Old Town Alexandria, and enjoyed a fantastic meal. I asked the parents what the secret was to staying together 42 years. Dad's reply: "It's not just 50-50. It's 100-100. And when things go wrong, you take care of each other." Mom heard this and said wryly, "He puts in 100 percent. I'm not sure I do." Heh.


_

Elisson on Watchmen and "Watchmen"

Elisson came to Alan Moore's Watchmen late in the game, reading the graphic novel only recently, then going out to see Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" in an empty theater. Elisson's review of the print and filmic experiences makes for a good read; see here. What makes his perspective unique is that, having given himself so little time between acquainting himself with the graphic novel and seeing the movie based on it, he hasn't had time to build up a raft of fanboy expectations.

I still have yet to see the movie. It pains me that I've missed "Doubt" (already on DVD!) and "Gran Torino," and will likely miss "Watchmen" as well before I restart the walk.

Oh, yes: I got paid and now have an official start date: April 19.


_

celebrate!

Today, Sunday, is significant for most Christians, because on most Christian calendars today is Palm Sunday.

Today also happens to be National Pillow Fight Day, a fact I would not have known had my mother not been watching the Korean TV news. There, on screen, stood a Korean reporter in downtown New York City, and all around him was a mob of fighters, their pillows deployed and swinging wildly. Interesting. I wonder what Jesus would have said about that.

On a theological note, I startled Mom when I told her that, according to tradition, Jesus descended into hell after dying on the cross. Much depends on how one interprets the relevant scripture (1 Peter 3:18-20 --I looked it up), which might not necessarily refer to hell (many English renderings say "prison"); the significance of Jesus' visit to the place of the damned is also subject to multiple interpretations: according to one school of thought, Jesus was there to suffer, thereby expiating humankind's sin. Another school of thought claims Jesus was there to proclaim victory over hell and the Evil One. Take your pick, or take none at all.

Hell is just an open mouth away.


_

one of the boats I missed

I sometimes wish I'd studied criminology, because I'm constantly boggled by what drives a person to grab one or more guns, then slaughter a mess of people. Jiverly Wong's story (told somewhat sensationally here) is a good example; the even more recent family slaughter in Washington-- in which a father killed his five children and then himself-- is another. What makes these people tick? Wong (ethnically Chinese, as it turns out... I never thought "Wong" sounded like a Vietnamese surname) was apparently a coke addict, had trouble learning and speaking English, and was a gun nut. But these factors don't add up to an explanation, do they? Good Lord.


_

the center cannot hold:being Christian and Muslim at the same time

I think(?) it was my walk manager Alan Cook who first mentioned the name Ann Redding, an Episcopal priest who entered the Muslim fold while trying to retain her priestly status. At the time, it seemed that she had managed a rare feat, balancing two rival traditions in her personal life, but we now see that the tapestry is unweaving itself.

Get Religion has an interesting article on Redding and the coverage of her defrocking. I note with some surprise that the current trouble seems to be coming mostly from the Christian end: it is certain parties in the Episcopal Church who do not accept what Redding has done.

The common wisdom is that, the more similar two people are, the more likely they'll be in conflict. There are exceptions to this, of course, but I think it holds true as a general rule. The tension between and among the three major Abrahamic traditions is a good example of this. As Islam scholar Bernard Lewis notes in his book Islam and the West, when a Christian or Muslim uses the pejorative "infidel," the interlocutor clearly understands what is meant. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are, despite their major differences, similar in many fundamental ways. Familiarity often breeds contempt, and if not contempt, then at least tension and rivalry, especially between religions with strong missionary components like Christianity and Islam.

Radically different traditions seem to lend themselves more easily to syncretism. Three personal examples come to mind right away: Robert Kennedy (not RFK), his mentor William Johnston, and a Benedictine monk named David Steindl-Rast. Kennedy and Johnston, along with being Catholic priests, are both Zen masters who undertook Zen training and received "inka," a certification of enlightenment that legitimizes their teachings when they speak in an institutional Zen capacity (in Buddhism, the ultimate magisterium is your own experience, so it might not be exactly right to refer to inka as something that grants or signifies "authority" in a conventional sense). Brother David is not, to my knowledge, a Zen roshi like the other two men, but he has undergone extensive Zen training, much of which took place in the context of monastic interreligious dialogue (he co-wrote a book with Robert Aitken, a roshi of the Rinzai-Soto fusion Sanbo Kyodan school, titled The Ground We Share: Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian).

Zen nondualism probably sits very comfortably beside Catholic contemplative spirituality, which may be why these three men have been able to pursue their Zen studies so deeply without risking a raised eyebrow from the Roman magisterium. Zen also seems to go down easily if you're Jewish, as evidenced by the whole, "JuBu" (Jewish-Buddhist) movement, emblematized in such books as Roger Kamenetz's The Jew in the Lotus (a pun on the Buddhist expression "jewel in the lotus"), a story of Jewish-Buddhist dialogue through the eyes of a Jewish journalist who met the current Dalai Lama along with fellow Jews of different traditions to discuss, among other things, what it means to survive as a persecuted people.

What's your opinion on this sort of thing? Could you (assuming you belong to a specific tradition) adopt another tradition's beliefs and practices while keeping your "home" beliefs and practices? Is this even possible, or are people who try such things fooling themselves? Are such meldings doomed to failure? Why or why not? What do you think of Ann Redding? Is she brave? Misguided? Onto something?

Comments welcome.


_

ayup

In the end, not even Japan lifted a finger against the North Korean rocket, which has launched. You gotta love appeasement. Shame on all of us for allowing this regime to continue doing what it does to its own people and to the world.

"I urge North Korea to abide fully by the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council," Obama said in Prague, Czech Republic, calling on Pyongyang to refrain from further "provocative" actions.

This is a joke, right? North Korea has already violated at least two UN Security Council resolutions (see here and here). It will continue to make demands and give nothing in return. At the very least, we should contemplate closing off all diplomatic and trade/aid relations with the country. When will we learn that the best way to deal with a spoiled, potentially dangerous child is through firm discipline, quickly, consistently, and judiciously applied? If "Go to your room!" doesn't work, ready the leather belt. The country obviously isn't ready to reason with the world, so speak to it in the language it understands. We've been patient since 1953.

I give North Korea full marks for playing us all for fools. We are fools, and the starving, oppressed North Korean population continues to pay for our foolishness.


_

NERF GUNS!

I want numbers 5, 6, and 8. And lots of ammo.


_

death on the brain

I think it's fair to say that we are all stunned by the latest massacre to hit our shores, this time courtesy a disgruntled Vietnamese immigrant who had just lost his job. April 4 also marks the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, an event that still echoes strongly in the American consciousness because of what King preached and represented. In him, the messenger and the message were one.

King was a powerful speaker and an eloquent writer; his "I Have a Dream" speech can still bring tears to one's eyes; it enunciates a dream that resonates not only with the native downtrodden but also with the immigrants who come to America in search of a better existence: for people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I'd like to think that racism didn't play a role in whatever set Jiverly Voong (or Wong) off, though even if racism fueled his crime, he remains fully culpable for choosing to do what he did. I hope that we, as a country, will nurture the idea that character, effort, and merit count for more than color, and learn to put color-- race, ethnicity, local culture-- in its rightful place, for the sake of our children and for the Jiverly Voongs among us.

So we've got death on the brain this Saturday. I don't know what your thoughts on the afterlife are, but personally, I'm not counting on there being one, nor do I think there'll be some final judgment. But whether you subscribe to those ideas or not, I think we can all agree that every instant is precious because it's unique, which makes it imperative that we live each moment deeply and fully, because it'll never come again.

There used to be a minister at Geumho Presbyterian Church in downtown Seoul-- a small church that some of my relatives attend. The minister passed away years ago, but I heard many of his sermons in the 90s, probably understanding only a tenth of what he was saying. There was, however, one phrase that was repeated over and over, and I think it's a good phrase no matter where you fall on the spectrum of religious belief/nonbelief: yeollin maeum-euro, gippeun maeum-euro, sarang-haneun maeum euro...

With an open heart...
With a joyful heart...
With a loving heart...

Something to remember as we contemplate death as a nation and a world. As a mantra for how to live, it's hard to beat.


UPDATE: Charles has written a post that offers some potentially related insights about the good that people can accomplish together.


_

American anglophilia in prose: "er" versus "uh"

[NB: This post was inspired by this article.]

I used to love British spelling when I was a kid-- "humour" versus "humor," "metre" versus "meter." I'm still a linguaphile, still in love with words and language in general, and I admit I'm occasionally a sucker for UK spellings versus US spellings-- as in "travelled" versus "traveled" (the latter participle, which is more common in the US, still somehow looks wrong to me). I also find myself, even today, attracted to (but generally not using) spellings like "faeces" and "foetal" and "Judaeo-Christian." But in the main, I've tended to avoid Britishisms as an adult because I figured out I wasn't British. I have American friends who still include Britishisms in their prose, perhaps out of a sense of cultural inferiority: the Brits do it better! Or if I interpret their behavior more charitably, maybe they're like me, simply fascinated on a linguistic level by alternative spellings that seem somehow more pleasing to the eye for reasons that have nothing to do with culture. I suspect, though, that most people don't fall under the latter category. They're attracted to Britishisms specifically because of their Britishness.

The problem with being a Yank who sprinkles British orthography in his writing is that most Americans who do this lack consistency. I have no problem with UK spelling; I hope it's not condescending to say that I consider it perfectly proper, perfectly legitimate English. My point, though, is that if an American is engaging in this practice because of a latent linguistic anglophilia, he may as well go whole hog and spell everything he writes in a consistently UK fashion. Having done that, he should go further and adopt a truly British tone and rhythm, availing himself of the treasure trove of idioms and colorful turns of phrase found on the isles. Even a simple locution like "Aren't we going, then?" sounds more British than the American "So we're not going?" Why not write (and speak!) that way? Be consistent!

And herein lies the problem for the Brit-wannabe: for an American to alter his prose to something consistently British would require a herculean effort. He would, for example, have to make himself aware that, in UK English, company names are generally treated as grammatically plural ("Microsoft are struggling"),* and that periods go outside quotation marks,** as when I finish this sentence "thus". (--as opposed to writing "thus." the way a red-blooded American should.) Those examples, and thousands of other little variations, are what distinguish UK English from US English.

The anglophile's lack of consistency can therefore be traced to laziness, which interferes with the anglophilia. I might have more respect for the American anglophile who goes balls-out and writes in a convincingly British manner (and I'd trust only Brits to be the judge of how convincing the language was), simply because such an effort would reveal the depth and sincerity of the anglophilia. But the burden is on the rest of the inconsistent populace to explain why they feel the need to adopt only parts of the UK style and not the whole thing. (I exclude Canadians in this discussion, because they've somehow succeeded in having it both ways-- speaking with American accents while writing "colour" and "metre.")

Which brings me to "er" versus "uh." Can you guess which of these locutions is more British, and which is more American? Hint: both spellings represent the same sound. Try saying "er" with an English accent, and you'll see right away that it sounds pretty much like the American "uh," because the British final "r" is generally not rhotic (though this will, of course, depend on where in the isles you are). But for an American to write "er" as if it were American prose is silly: pronounced the American way, "er" rhymes with "fur," and no one actually says "urr" in spoken American English.

Or do they? Do you challenge my claim? Fine. Don't just make an assertion or give me an anecdote-- this is for science! Send me sound files of surreptitious recordings as evidence, or point me to a YouTube clip where a rhotic "urr" can be plainly, unambiguously heard multiple times. Hell, if you hear a Brit actually say "urr," send me a sound file of that, too! And don't tell me the burden of proof is on me: I feel I'm stating the obvious.

I should note that I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist. It's obvious that languages evolve, because that's the nature of phenomena. Mistakes in a certain language community can multiply due to incestuous amplification, and what started out as a mistake can become "received" English, i.e., the generally accepted form or style. But this isn't to say that there's no such thing as distinctly UK English or distinctly US English; obviously, there is, or we'd be unable to identify our places of origin (and social class, etc.) as easily as we so often do.

On both sides of the Atlantic, English teachers try to instill a notion of proper English-- correct grammar, correct spelling, correct punctuation, etc.-- and there's nothing wrong with that. You have to have standards. If a kid ends up thinking that the word "car" can be spelled "qaarre" or "PPPLPXEP," the teacher hasn't exactly aided the cause of mutual comprehensibility. The American kid who inserts "humour" into his prose but still writes "meter" and "license," while not as vile a specimen as the "qaarre" kid, is nevertheless somewhat... confused. And probably a bit lazy in his commitment to whatever anglophilia he harbors in his heart. That laziness is what results in an aesthetically displeasing English-- displeasing because inconsistent.

My advice? Either be consistently US or UK in style, no matter where you're from, or learn and employ the received linguistic forms taught in your own country. Life's simpler that way.

Righto. Bob's your uncle, then.

---

*There is some controversy on this point (see here, for example), but the use of the plural is British. You can satisfy your curiosity by performing a Google search on the exact phrase "Microsoft are," or "Ford are," etc.

**This is proper and logical in UK English, but is a mistake in US English-- alas, one now made with alarming frequency by people who never bothered to learn proper American punctuation. I see a lot of this in American online prose. If the writer is a UK transplant, I can understand how there might be an identity crisis at the root of the inconsistency, but most of the writers who make this mistake are American-born. What's their excuse?


_

"the road to happiness" redux

Why is this blog receiving so many hits from Koreans using the Naver search engine and searching for the string "road to happiness"? Is this the title of a Korean book or drama or something? Is it the original English title of a foreign work that was translated into Korean? Inquiring minds want to know.

I wrote a post some time ago titled "the road to happiness," which is where these Naver searches are landing. But the question is... why are people searching for this phrase?


_

the Mexico-South Korea connection

Who knew? South Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico. Instapundit, hammering away at what's being called "the Mexican gun canard," quotes from this article:

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

– The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

– Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

– Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

– The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

– Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America’s cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

(Mexicoreano connection in italics)

_

spring is in the air

I spent my early waking hours sneezing up a storm today, which must mean that spring is here. I still have pills from the beginning of my walk last year, so I've been taking those to quell the sneezing. In general, just one dose after waking will do me for the whole day.

So how's your nose doing?

Have you ever pondered writing a love story that begins with a wet sneeze? A man accidentally sneezes on a woman, and the rope of snot that connects them, nostril to hairdo, becomes a metaphor for things to come. Romantic, no?


_

the "ER" finale

I saw only the final hour of the "ER" finale (curiosity got the better of me), but it was enough to shock me into the realization that the American cast had been substantially replaced by people with British accents. American TV has been succumbing to the Brit/Down Under invasion for a while, often with good results, but it does make one wonder whether the US has a stable of competent actors.

Many of the old, familiar cast members were in the finale: I saw Dr. Carter, who had way more than a cameo during that last hour. He seemed to have used his riches to open up a new hospital wing or care center, and was also showing Mark Greene's daughter-- now a budding med student-- around the ER, even coaching her on a procedure. Kerry Weaver (Dr. House's grouchy, gimpy prototype?) was in attendance, as was Dr. Carter's old mentor, Dr. Benton, and Dr. Benton's former squeeze, Dr. Corday. On-again, off-again Dr. Lewis also popped up. Some of the other familiar faces I saw included desk clerk Jerry, the nurses Chuny (who appears not to have aged at all) and... and... that other nurse who's been there since Season 1.

The series pilot began in medias res, and that's how they chose to end it-- with everyone hustling. Dr. Carter was the newbie back in 1994, barely able to stick a needle in a vein, so perhaps it's appropriate that he be on site as a "bookend" character. Not having watched the series in years, I have no idea whether Carter has been part of the cast the entire time, or was brought back for the finale. The answer is a Wikipedia search away, I'm sure.

As I mentioned before, "ER" has always been marked by its esprit de corps, and that's the uplifting note on which the finale ends: with the entire ER staff standing outside in the cold, waiting for the arrival of numerous casualties from a plant explosion. When people are in need, "ER's" characters drop everything and respond; they're there for you. While I couldn't really make heads or tails of the finale, I was glad to see the series end with that positive message.


UPDATE (April 4): Television Without Pity has an April 3 article that makes many points similar to what I said above.


_

interreligious dialogue at the doorstep

While waiting for the refrigerator repairman to drop by today, I was alerted to the arrival of a pair of Mormons when Sean's chihuahua, Maqz, started barking, hackles raised on his tiny charcoal body. I opened the door, and the following conversation ensued amid much barking and growling.

ME: Hi. Sorry about the dog.

MORMON DUDE: No problem. Hey, we're just passing through the neighborhood, talking to people about life. Could we step inside?

ME (smiling tightly): Thanks, but no, thanks.

MORMON DUDE: Are you sure?

ME: Yeah. But thanks, anyway.

MORMON DUDE: OK.

They left, and that was that.

Not that long ago, I'd have been pissed off by this violation of privacy. It takes a special kind of nerve to invite yourself into someone's home to try and convert the homeowner to your point of view. But you see, here's the thing: after a few years immersed in religious studies, I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing surprising about people who act according to their beliefs. I no longer view these Mormon elders as arrogant or particularly pushy; they're simply doing what Mormons have been doing since Joseph Smith first established this most American of religions. I might think they're deluded or misguided, but they didn't try to force their way into my home, and in a free country, there's nothing to stop random people from knocking at my door. Once the problem is framed in this way, the notions of pressure and resentment go out the window: it might be rude for the pair to try and invite themselves into my house, but I'm in control of the situation-- I can say no, and there's no need for hard feelings, no need for me to view these guys as pushy or arrogant.

And that's what I told Dad when he showed up thirty minutes later: I didn't resent the Mormons the way I would have years ago. It's enough to greet them politely and send them on their way.

It occurs to me that I missed a golden opportunity to sit with these guys and find out what makes them tick. To that extent, I regret brushing them off. But as far as I was concerned, our fridge came first: I had to wait for the repairman (who was late and showed up after Dad had already come back home from his errands), and didn't want to be dealing with two sets of visitors at once.


_

most couscousic

Yesterday's meal was a redo of a meal we'd had a while back-- basically chicken and couscous, but spiced up. I don't have a recipe for you, but you can probably figure one out from the following description:

We minced some fresh parsley and green onion, and tossed that in a bowl with salt, pepper, dried basil, dried thyme, red pepper flakes, chopped dates, raisins, olive oil, and powdered garlic. Into the mix we added chunkily chopped chicken breast, then stirred the whole mess together, as if we were making a marinade. In the meantime, we boiled beef stock on the side. This was poured into a pot containing a mess of couscous, on which I had already drizzled some olive oil and added a large pat of butter. The couscous sat with the pot closed until we were ready to use it.

We also chopped some Italian tomatoes into chunks, and had a large pack of crumbled feta at the ready. The tomatoes were put into their own bowl.

The chicken mixture was cooked down until it had browned a bit (it was very liquidy at first). The couscous was fluffed with a fork and then layered into separate bowls. Chopped tomatoes were poured atop the couscous servings, covering half the surface area. The remaining area was covered with the chicken mixture, and feta cheese was sprinkled, to taste, on top of everything.

The result kicked ass. Mom pronounced the dish "sweet" thanks to the dates and raisins, but she cleaned her bowl. The only thing missing, in my opinion, was eggplant, which I'll be sure to add next time. All the same, the contrasts in taste (sweet, savory, spicy), texture (firm chicken mixture versus soft couscous), and temperature (hot chicken and couscous versus cold cheese and tomatoes) made for a very edible dish.

It was also simple and easy to prepare. The most time-consuming aspect of it was the chopping-- parsley, green onions, tomatoes, and those all-important chicken breasticles. The frying (we stuck a bit of olive oil and butter in the pan) took only a few minutes as we waited for the liquid to reduce and for the meat to brown a tad.

Give it a whirl. If you have fresh basil and thyme on hand, all the better. This is one of those dishes that's pretty hard to mess up if you have some sense of proportion regarding spices.


_

possible delay

The Korean office for which I've been working has given me plenty of proofreading to do, but they've also been dragging their feet regarding pay. This is a serious problem, as the expected paycheck is for a significant amount, and I absolutely need to have it in the bank before I can lock down my travel dates, do some last-minute shopping, etc. I should have received payment about a week ago, but I heard only this evening that payment will be sent tomorrow (Seoul time), and is expected to take 3-10 business days to arrive. In my experience, wire transfers usually take only 2-3 business days, at most, between Korea and the US, so I have no idea why the bank staffers told my boss that it could take up to 10 days.

The net effect of the wire transfer delay will be a further delay in my start date, which I had projected for Easter weekend in order to clear April 6, my parents' anniversary. So-- to my readers in Irrigon, Umatilla, and Walla Walla: I may be later than I'd thought, and I apologize.

Looking more realistically at the terrain I'll be traveling through, I've also concluded that working off my laptop will be nearly impossible for long stretches of my walk, especially in the upcoming states (Idaho, Utah, and especially Wyoming). I'm probably going to ask my Korean bosses to accept my temporary resignation-- or should I call this a "furlough"?

While this is frustrating, it may also be a good thing, as it gives me a bit more prep time.


_

printer up and running

Just a housekeeping note:

I'll be printing out a 40-some-page map of my route to Salt Lake City. This will be a lot better than carrying around the huge (and heavy) maps I'd bought along the trip. I'll be scanning images from a road atlas as well, to give me a big-picture view of the situation.

Keeping the map dry is going to be an issue. At this point, I think the cheapest solution is simply a binder with transparent insert pages, plus two layers of resealable bagging (Ziploc or Glad).

Another housekeeping task is checking up on the permissibility/legality of freeway walking in the states I'll be passing through after Idaho. I know that Idaho won't present a problem in terms of freeway walking; I checked. I still need to call the departments of transportation in Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Beyond Nebraska, I seriously doubt I'll have access to the freeways: as my buddy Mike pointed out, the laws become more up-tight on that score the farther east one goes. (Then again, the state of Washington didn't allow me on its freeways, so some western states have their issues, too.) I know for a fact that my own state, Virginia,* won't allow me on its freeways, so the final walk home will have to follow smaller roads. With narrower shoulders. Ick.

That's been the most unpleasant aspect of the walk thus far: all those narrow shoulders. I don't like dodging traffic, and would like to see walking paths-- sidewalks or biking/jogging trails-- built alongside all roads (and bridges!) in the US. Sure, such a move would take up a bit more space, but I think it would cut down on the number of vehicle/pedestrian accidents and possibly even provide incentives for long-distance walkers who simply want to connect the dots between cities more safely than they currently can.

---

*Technically, Virginia is called a commonwealth, but we still say we have 50 states (see here).


_

the death of another series

I used to be a huge fan of "ER" back in the George Clooney/Anthony Edwards era, but I lost interest in the show once most of the principals had left ("ER" guest star Omar Epps is now a regular on the doctor dramedy "House"). "ER" was a great combination of simple and gritty-- "a soap opera with a brain," as one of my friends described it. As with any long-running series, part of its charm lay in its formula, which always involved random emergencies to spice things up.

In its earlier days, the NBC series also benefitted from positive comparisons with the clunky CBS drama "Chicago Hope," which I couldn't stand, despite a very likable cast that included actors I really enjoy, such as Christine Lahti, Adam Arkin, and Hector Elizondo. I don't blame the actors for "Chicago Hope's" hopelessness; I blame the executive decision to make the show focus so much on boardroom goings-on and other petty squabbles. It was a standard joke, in the late 90s, that a patient who went to "ER's" ER would be saved within minutes, whereas the same patient, if brought into "Chicago Hope's" hospital, would die in the waiting room while the staff bickered endlessly. That, ultimately, is what saved "ER" for so long: the notion that hospital staffers, like soldiers, are in the trenches together, and personal differences are secondary to saving lives. This esprit de corps was always part of the "ER" formula, and was hard to beat as an uplifting message to the viewership. The series has featured plenty of power struggles and personality conflicts, but the moment the paramedics would burst through that door and that suspenseful music started chugging away, everyone would drop everything and get to work. I think "ER" also benefitted from the influence of its creator, the late Michael Crichton, whereas "Chicago Hope" was the brainchild of screenwriting overachiever David E. Kelley, who should have stuck to his many legal dramas and comedies.

I probably won't be watching "ER's" finale tomorrow, mainly because I'm years behind and don't know (or care about) the current cast. But I thoroughly enjoyed "ER" back during the days when I was a regular viewer, and I'm sad to hear that it's finishing up. Did you ever see "ER's" pilot episode? It's held up well over time, and is one of the best pilots I've seen.* I hope "ER" goes out as bravely as it came in.

---

*"Star Trek: The Next Generation's" pilot was, by contrast, awful. Not because of Q, who was a great antagonist (I can't call John Delancie's character an outright villain), but because of the sappy way that first episode ended, with jellyfish lovingly clasping tentacles, and a dewy-eyed Counselor Troi narrating the event. Ick. I did, however, think that ST:TNG ended well: the series finale featured Q again, but dared to dive into the realm of truly imaginative science fiction by creating a drama around the notion of "anti-time," a temporal analogue to antimatter. That episode, for me, got better over time.


_

the UN and religion

Get Religion has a good article about the recent approval, by the UN Human Rights Council, of a resolution "that calls on nation states to limit criticism of religions in general and Islam in particular." Phooey, I say. Malcolm, opining on the same turn of events, called the resolution "a craven act of appeasement." Jeff Hodges, commenting on Malcolm's site, wrote, "Islam should not be safeguarded from criticism, ridicule, or disdain. Nor should any other religion. Can’t take the heat? Get out of the kitchen."

The good news is that UN resolutions are almost universally ignored-- not just by Western powers, but by those inimical to Western values like freedom of speech (we're about to see several UN resolutions ignored by North Korea, and no one will lift a finger to stop it). In other words, the approval of this resolution means, in a practical sense, next to nothing.

The bad news is that pressure continues to mount in favor of political correctness. That's a shame: religion is often a great source of humor, both intended and unintended, and I see nothing wrong with mining religion's comic potential. Besides, the proper religious response to perceived insults should be humility, a value that is nearly universally preached, but so rarely practiced. Muslims and Christians (and, judging by some of the folks who inhabit the Beliefnet message boards, Western Buddhists) with oversensitivity issues need to unpucker their sphincters.

I've written elsewhere about my appreciation for the work of French cartoonist Claude Serre. Back in the 1980s, which is when I first became aware of him, Serre was routinely mocking European Christianity in his hilarious cartoons. Some of my favorite Serre works involve portrayals of Jesus: Jesus winning a swimming contest by running across the surface of the pool, or Jesus accidentally jamming his hands through the stigmata-holes in his feet while attempting a high dive. I can see how such pictures might be offensive to the more straitlaced among us, but that very straitlaced-ness is indicative of a deeper problem: idolatry.

I'm using the term "idolatry" in its Western Zen sense. It's a cousin of the Buddhist notion of "attachment" (upadana), which refers to the human tendency to cling to things-- ideas, people, habits, institutions, etc.-- as if they were permanent instead of being the flowing, ever-changing processes they actually are. Turning Jesus into a fetish-- a fixed concept and not a living, dynamic reality-- is an example of this sort of idolatry, and it's what ultimately leads people to become uptight and easily offended. When Jesus becomes "my Jesus," with the "my" implying a sense of ownership, we kill him. The same is true for ideas in other religious traditions as well.

There are many things I'd like to change about religion. Chief among them is adherents' overall lack of a sense of humor when it comes to the most cherished religious beliefs, customs, and images. Living in a pluralistic world means conceding the need for freedom of speech. This need isn't served by restrictive resolutions, and no religion qualifies as a special case.

Let me finish by reposting something I'd written back in Easter of 2006:


*************************


Alan Watts, well-known Zennist and LSD-lover (according to one biography, he even did acid while staying at some Japanese temples-- I'm not sure how well-received such behavior was by the local monks), wrote a great little essay that appears in an old collection, The Gospel According to Zen. The essay is called "Wash Out Your Mouth," and I was happy to see that someone has placed the piece in its entirety online.

I've reprinted the essay below. Don't commit the genetic fallacy against Watts: the man himself wasn't a shining example of Zen-style living, but his words are still sound dharma.

---

WASH OUT YOUR MOUTH

Christian piety makes a strange image of the object of its devotion, "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." The bearded moralist with the stern, kind, and vaguely hurt look in the eyes. The man with the lantern, knocking at the heart's door. "Come along now, boys! Enough of this horsing around! It's time you and I had a very serious talk." Christ Jesus our Lord. Jeez-us. Jeez-you. The Zen Buddhists say, "Wash out your mouth every time you say "Buddha!" The new life for Christianity begins just as soon as someone can get up in church and say, "Wash out your mouth every time you say 'Jesus!'"

For we are spiritually paralyzed by the fetish of Jesus. Even to atheists he is the supremely good man, the exemplar and moral authority with whom no one may disagree. Whatever our opinions, we must perforce wrangle the words of Jesus to agree with them. Poor Jesus! If he had known how great an authority was to be projected upon him, he would never have said a word. His literary image in the Gospels has, through centuries of homage, become far more of an idol than anything graven in wood or stone, so that today the most genuinely reverent act of worship is to destroy that image. In his own words, "It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Paraclete [the Holy Spirit] cannot come unto you." Or, as the angel said to the disciples who came looking for the body of Jesus in the tomb, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen and has gone before you...." But Christian piety does not let him go away, and continues to seek the living Christ in the dead letter of the historical record. As he said to the Jews, "You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life."

The Crucifixion gives eternal life because it is the giving up of God as an object to be possessed, known, and held to for one's own safety: "For he that would save his soul shall lose it." To cling to Jesus is therefore to worship a Christ uncrucified, an idol instead of the living God.

---

Today is Holy Saturday. According to tradition, our sins are being expurgated as Jesus burns in hell for our sake. The Lord is off the cross and buried, out of sight. But is the idea of "Lord" out of mind, as it should be?

Not every one that saith unto Me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father who is in Heaven.
(Mt. 7:21, 21st cent. KJV)

Just live your life, and your life will be sermon enough. Leave piety-- especially public piety-- for the self-righteous.


_

the dawg is back

My brother Sean is off to a couple music gigs in Prague for a week, and he's left his chihuahua Maqz with us. The dog is as bouncy as ever, leaping repeatedly against Mom's leg when she's prepping food (Maqz has no sense of boundaries, a state of affairs that Mom encourages). I once again find myself imagining Maqz in a variety of stews.

I missed this, but when Sean brought Maqz over yesterday morning, Maqz apparently charged out into our back yard, found a lump of dog poop (presumably his own, from a previous visit), and excitedly rubbed his face in it. Although I've long known that dogs practice coprophagia, I'd never heard of them giving themselves dung facials, and I began to wonder whether Maqz was representative of his kind, or whether his fellow canines would consider him a special case. Mom did her best to wipe the dog's muzzle clean when he proudly came back inside, but for me, the damage was done: I'll always think of Maqz as shit-faced.


_

philosophy of mind

More evidence of tight linkage between mind and brain. If technology continues to advance along these lines, predicated as it is on the notion that the mind is what the brain does, then substance dualism just ends up looking sillier and sillier.


_

random "24" thoughts

Tonight's episode of "24" gives us an infected Jack Bauer. He gets a shirtless scene in front of Agent Renée Walker, possibly turning her on with all those scars of his (Jack's been infected with an engineered pathogen that apparently isn't contagious, so Walker can, conveniently, remain in the same room with him). Agent Walker gets to weep quietly at the thought of Jack in pain and possibly dying; she also gets a few moments alone with Agent Larry Moss that, yet again, strongly hint at their romantic involvement. This hasn't been confirmed by a kiss or even a simple touch, but the looks they trade and the tones they adopt toward each other seem to imply some sort of outside-the-office relationship. It's all very reminiscent of a Korean drama, where kissing is still a mushy, icky thing to show on TV.

Walker seems, at this point, firmly in Bauer's thrall, whatever her feelings for the hapless Moss may have been (Moss looks as though he'll be dead by the end of the next episode; if he doesn't get shot next week, I'm still counting on him dying sometime this season). Walker's character has been portrayed as tough but extremely empathetic, the empathy being the unfortunate cause of her many internal conflicts. Whatever connection she's established with Bauer is probably primal: she can be tough as nails when she has to be, and she's as pragmatic and ruthlessly logical as Bauer is, which makes them two of a kind, intellectually and professionally. Her empathy, though, is what makes her both Jack's feminine complement and his foil: in a weird sense, she seems to be acting as Jack's conscience. Would I be wrong to surmise that Walker's attitude toward Bauer includes a healthy dose of sexual attraction? Larry Moss, poor sap, is a drooling, feckless idiot in comparison.

And what guy wouldn't want to be Jack Bauer in such a situation-- alone in a room with the likes of Agent Walker? Pardon me, ladies, but Annie Wersching, the actress who plays Agent Walker, is both gorgeous and possessed of a smokin' bod. The costume design people played to her strengths by dressing her in those tight jeans, a strategy reminiscent of what the costume designers on all the Star Trek series would do: shamelessly exploit the hottest women in the cast by wrapping them in the most revealing outfits possible (Troi, Seven of Nine, T'Pol, etc.). True-- Walker's ensemble (which includes a leather jacket) isn't about cleavage, but her outfit manages the feat of being tasteful while leaving nothing to the male imagination.

I truly wish I had something more intelligent to say about "24," which is my other favorite show after BSG. But "24" has never touched much of a religious or philosophical nerve with me; the series is scripted like a Dan Brown novel, where each chapter is a cheap cliffhanger whose sole purpose is to move you to the next chapter, and the overall tone of "24" has always been retro-- it's a lot like watching an 80s-era action movie, but with more torture and collateral damage. The overall effect, then, is brain candy. Were I more of a political junkie, I'd be all over "24" for what it says about international relations and domestic policy. A long time ago, I was fascinated by the way the show constantly presented its characters with painful ethical dilemmas, but those dilemmas have all become familiar now, and at this point we viewers know how Jack will face them.

Maybe that's part of my attraction to the Agent Walker character-- she's about the only really new thing to appear in this, the seventh season of "24." She is, in many ways, the FBI's answer to Jack, but she's also a newbie to Jack's dark world, which allows us to see Jack-- and his hellish 24 hours-- through fresh eyes. And who knows? By the end of the day, she may be Jack's salvation in matters of the heart.


_

humbling

From CNN:

After almost 3,000 miles of rowing, bouts of seasickness, equipment failure and salt sores, Paul Ridley is back on land.

On day 88, Ridley, 25, completed his solo rowing trip across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming the youngest American ever to do so.

"I'm exhausted. Overwhelmed with all the excitement from my arrival," Ridley told CNN.

"Physically feeling good but will be feeling a lot better when the soreness starts to heal and once that happens I will be back to fundraising because cancer research is still in need of funding, so we still have a lot of work to do."

For nearly three months, Ridley has been rowing up to twelve hours a day on the 2,950-mile journey to raise cancer awareness and hopefully raise money for cancer research. His organization "Row for Hope" was inspired by the death of his mother from skin cancer in 2001.

He set out from the Canary Islands off the north African coast in his 19-foot boat on January 1; he landed on the Caribbean island of Antigua at 2:30 p.m. on March 29.

"It was incredible," he said."The whole Island of Antigua came out to greet me. The harbor was swarming with boats. A big crowd on dry land. It's really been an amazing reception."

Only 85 people have attempted the nearly 3,000 miles east-to-west crossing, according to the Ocean Rowing Society International, but most failed.

"I'm definitely suffering from exposure to the elements and I've lost 20 pounds. This is definitely different from my life at home." Ridley told CNN this week before hitting land.

Read on. The story of how he prepped is particularly impressive.


_

IR website

Brother Luke sent me a message through Facebook alerting me to the existence of IRDialogue.org, the online branch of The Journal of Interreligious Dialogue. The website is accepting article submissions that must arrive on or before May 31, if anyone in my tiny group of readers is interested in writing something semi-scholarly. According to the website, JOID's purpose is to be

...a forum for academic, social, and timely issues affecting religious communities around the world. It is designed to increase the quality and frequency of interchanges between religious groups and their leaders. The Journal seeks to build an inter-religious community of scholars, in which people of different traditions learn from one another and work together for the common good.

_

depressing realities

It's not looking likely that the US will do anything when North Korea launches its long-range missile. I'm hoping Japan will have the cojones to pull the trigger, since we obviously won't, but there's doubt on that score, too: Japan knows that any move that even hints at its own remilitarization will galvanize a wave of historical anger against it from China, the Koreas, and any other Asian nation with a grievance dating back to World War II and before. Despite its robustness, Japan is in an economically and diplomatically precarious position; I'm sure the country is aware of the immediate consequences of a missile interception. This doesn't leave me much hope that Japan will do anything, and with both the US and Japan likely backing down, the situation is a lot like letting the class bully terrorize the students, despite there being several bigger, stronger teachers in the room.


_

piggy nirvana

It's a gross injustice to the word "nirvana" when we proles misuse it as a synonym for "heaven," but nirvana does refer to the blissful extinguishing of self, a glimpse of which can be found in my buddy Mike's post about his recent quest for the most awesome ham in the universe. (Don't bother reading if you're a vegetarian.)


_

if you're on Facebook

An old Georgetown buddy of mine, Paul, has added interesting comments to my BSG "note" on Facebook (a reprint of the big essay I'd written on the BSG deity's probable insanity) in which he favors a thoroughly Mormon interpretation of events in Ron Moore's version of BSG. Personally, I'm not convinced, but Paul makes a strong case, and there's no denying the Mormon subtext of Glenn A. Larson's 1978 original. If you're on Facebook, feel free to visit that note and leave your own comments.

(Full disclosure: Paul isn't Mormon, so his interpretation isn't based on a worldview filtered through a Mormon lens. Last I checked, he was more or less Catholic, but moving away from his home state of Nebraska may have exposed him to all manner of cultural impurities, including the Mormon memeplex. Heh.)


_

tribute

_

Joe Biden's daughter: coke fiend?

The right-leaning Drudge Report isn't normally that active over the weekend, but Drudge has slapped up two links to sensational articles about possible cocaine use by Vice President Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden.

Innocent until proven guilty, I say. If Ms. Biden releases a statement confessing her guilt, I might-- might-- spare a moment to wag a self-righteous finger. In general, though, I think newspapers are at their best when they stay away from speculation and simply report confirmed facts. If the guy hawking the video of Ms. Biden's supposed cocaine use turns out to be a fraud, I hope he's nailed to the wall.


_

experiences

I've never known the sensation of fish trying to chew off my nipples.

But my buddy Charles knows:

Before long, scores of tiny little fishes swam over and started nibbling away at us. It doesn’t hurt, but it tickles like crazy. I think it would be a pretty effective torture method, actually. After about ten minutes I got somewhat used to the nibbling and decided to submerge myself up to my neck. It wasn’t too bad, but for some reason they kept trying to nibble on my nipples, and I’m just not really into fish nibbling on my nipples. I eventually worked out a mummy-like pose that allowed me to cover the sensitive areas but still let the fish nibble away at the other parts of my body.

Of the many sensory experiences I hope to have before I die... this isn't one of them.


_