Cruising to Alaska

Dinner on the Norwegian Sun

My wife and I—along with her four siblings and their spouses—just returned from a Vancouver-to-Skagway, Alaska, 6-day cruise. We had a great time with family; the weather, meanwhile refused to cooperate and we spent approximately zero time on deck lounge chairs. The scenery was fantastic and the ride on the White Pass and Yukon Railway was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The food on the cruise was not as great as we remembered it from our previous experience on the Norwegian Sun two years ago, but it was more than adequate and the crew looked after us very well. They’re 900+ from all around the world, with people from the Philippines in the majority. The seas are never that rough on the inside passages, but there were days when a few of us were driven to our cabins for Gravol and an unscheduled lie-down.

I don’t think I’m your average cruise-ship type. I have no interest in the casino, don’t buy jewelery, don’t play bingo and am not that interested in mass dancing lessons. Today’s cruise ships are fantastically comfortable, very large, very well decorated places on which to spend a few days, however, compared for instance to the WWII-vintage Stefan Batory on which my wife and I crossed the Atlantic in 1986. The Vancouver-Skagway cruise attracts primarily retired people with few excesses and we noticed no alcohol abuse, no one was thrown overboard and the partying was all in good taste, as far as we could see.

We filled out an evaluation form before we left the ship, and I registered a few minor complaints. Ships photographers snap people at every opportunity: boarding, on excursions, at dinner, etc. I find that being photographed by a stranger and having my picture posted in the gallery on deck 6 makes me just a tad irritable at times. Some of us also complained that we would just as soon not have waiters offering us drinks every time we sat down. There is a sell, sell, sell mentality on board and on the streets of Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan that characterizes what cruise ships are, after all, about, namely the merchandising of goods to a captive audience at inflated prices. But then, nothing prevents anyone from saying “no,” except one’s own desire to have these things.

I was fascinated by the history of the Alaska Panhandle. The Gold Rush of 1896-8 is the focus of the excursions offered in Skagway, particularly. I bought a pictorial history of that event and read through it as we traveled. The horrendous hardships people were willing to endure to get at the placer gold in the Yukon River area is hard to fathom. It would probably be folly to judge this “lust for gold” by today’s standards, but for me it underlined the human weakness represented by the scrabbling after the apparently easy wealth gold offers—and the modern-day casino attempts to duplicate the gold rush urge. Stories of that era have a great deal to teach us, but when it comes to the temptation to seek easy money, we appear to be slow learners.

The greatest benefit of a cruise, from my limited experience, is that it takes you away from your on-land pursuits and activities quite completely. A change is as good as a rest. Living on the water represents a substantial change so that I’ve found sea voyages “mentally invigorating.” The Alaska cruises in which we’ve participated have also provided us an opportunity to get to know people from around the world—albeit not to any great depth—to hear their stories and to compare them with your own. I find these exchanges tremendously educational to a degree that reading alone can never provide.

There’s always entertainment on a cruise ship. The 800 seat theatre on the Norwegian Sun provides dancers, singers, magicians and comedians twice nightly, and live bands and singers perform in the bars at night. I don’t know what the Norwegian Sun offers on its Caribbean Cruises in the winter time, but on this cruise I found myself getting just a tad tired of the 50s and 60s tone set by the entertainment. I think it was geared to us retirees, but someone forgot that we haven’t been dead since we were young adults.

One question on the evaluation questionnaire asked if we would recommend the cruise to our friends. I think I said “yes” hesitantly. I’m torn between the benefits and the consciousness that cruising is a wasteful, polluting, labour exploitative activity (the Norwegian Sun at full speed burns 40 gallons (151 litres) of diesel fuel per minute; the crew members work at mind-numbing jobs for 10 hours daily with little time off; I don’t know the amounts, but leftover food is dumped at sea in large enough quantities so that whales and dolphins are attracted to the wake of cruise ships). Including the flight to Vancouver, the cost to us was about $220.00 CDN each per day. I’m inclined to imagine how many mosquito nets that could have bought for the fight against malaria in Africa.

It’s a beautiful ship, the Norwegian Sun, and the fjords, islands, mountains and glaciers of the west coast of Canada and Alaska are spectacular. As vacations go, it’s probably still a bargain, and there’s nothing to prevent me from buying a batch of mosquito nets at the same time. Except that I’m a bit short of cash right now.

Goodbye Afghanistan

According to a Canadian Press story of May 24, 2007, an Afghani legislator by the name of Malalai Joya has been banned from the parliament in Kabul for the remainder of the session for criticizing other MPs. Her criticism was harsh; she referred to some of them as “criminals, warlords and drug lords” and Canadian Press adds this explanation: “Many former commanders involved in factional fighting in the 1980s and 1990s now hold positions in parliament or government.”

The Canadian government’s position on our role in Afghanistan is two-fold: 1) to quell the insurgency so that security is assured for the people, and 2) to restore infrastructure so that necessary services are available to Afghanis. These are laudable goals, although the question of whether or not either is achievable given the escalating violence there is highly pertinent. A benchmark, I am told, will be the Afghani government’s ability to maintain security and to govern the country without outside assistance.

What happened to Malalai Joya is disturbing in light of these objectives. If the parliament we’re shoring up in Afghanistan does, in fact, include enough of the factional and criminal elements of that culture to make her ouster possible, then what exactly are we supporting over there? Isn’t it possible that we’re simply doing the dirty work of quelling the Taliban so that the war lords can again exercise their particular brand of tyranny without the Taliban’s interference? If the Afghani parliament were truly a government “of the people, for the people and by the people,” would Malalai Joya be on the outside looking in? Imagine a Canadian legislator being expelled from parliament for criticizing another MP. Who would be left on the hill?

We continue to cloak our efforts in Afghanistan in noble terms, and I feel for the soldiers who risk their lives believing that they are pursuing lofty goals. Historically, though, when one culture has entered militarily into another culture’s community, the result has been disappointing. Think Vietnam, Ireland, Nicaragua, Cuba, Palestine, etc. Does our government really think that thousands of years of cultural habit won’t reassert itself in Afghanistan whenever NATO leaves there?

The expulsion of Malalai Joya is just one more signpost of the future, I’m afraid. There are others. The incredible poverty of Karzai’s leadership is another. The man spouts platitudes, says all the right things, inspires no confidence in me, at least, whatsoever. That’s another signpost. And then there’s the incredible reluctance of our NATO allies to throw in on the dirty work there with our troops. Do they sense something we don’t sense, or are they just chicken?

But the most glaring signpost is the lack of progress on the security front. Afghanis are not impressionable children to be guided tenderly toward democracy by us. They know their country and their local communities. They have engrained loyalties and aversions that we won’t change. They have religious faith that is not ours and that we won’t change. The threads of cultural power and influence – suppressed for the moment by the foreign presence there—are known to them, not to us. When we leave there, they will do what’s locally practical, growing poppies for a living, supporting the local Taliban if that looks beneficial—the local war lord if it doesn’t.

Like the Russians had no future in Cuba (or Afghanistan), the Americans in Korea or Vietnam or Iraq, the Japanese in China, so we have no future in Afghanistan. We might agree to continue “assisting” the Afghan “government” for a specified time (to save face, primarily) and then leave, or else commit ourselves to policing that country for ever. We could also withdraw arbitrarily and immediately, by far the most practical solution, even for Afghanis.

©George Epp, 2007

On faith, doubt and evidence

Suppose an anthropologist found some DNA evidence in a garment that had indisputably belonged to Christ. Suppose further that analysis of the sample showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ was the offspring of only one parent, a clone of his mother, if you will. What would change in your world as a result of hearing this? How would an evangelical atheist like Richard Dawkins live the rest of his life?

Would atheists seek to discredit the evidence? Would they propose that cloning was a procedure that had accidentally been discovered 2000 years ago, and was subsequently lost? Would they accept that Jesus Christ was what he and his followers said he was, the son of a virgin and, simultaneously, the Son of God? I wonder.

Would Christians jubilantly proclaim that they had been vindicated, and that their faith was now rewarded with the undeniable assurance that their gospel is the true Word of God? Would they finally have the confidence to proclaim the good news with the fervor of the early church? Would there be a new spring in their steps, new energy in their worship? I wonder.

Would young people, strangers, agnostics, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus suddenly flock to churches? Would that result in such harmony worldwide that we would very soon forget that animosity had characterized the world before? Would peace break out? I wonder.

You’ll no doubt recall the story of the rich man and the leper, Lazarus, told by Jesus to the Pharisees. Both die and the leper ascends to Abraham’s bosom, but the rich man goes to hell. The rich man begs Abraham to let Lazarus rise from the dead and go to his relatives to warn them of the horror they’re facing if they don’t repent. “If someone from the dead visits them, they will repent,” says the rich man in his torment. But Father Abraham is skeptical: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets they will pay no heed even if someone should rise from the dead.” The whole story can be found in Luke 16:19-31.

Jesus said that his miracles—actually surprisingly few given his power to turn water into wine, heal leprosy, even raise the other Lazarus from the dead—were done so that his faint-hearted followers would have their faith bolstered. He said to his disciples before raising Lazarus: “Lazarus is dead. I am glad not to have been there; it will be for your good and for the good of your faith.” Yet, having witnessed this miracle, the same disciples remained doubters, especially after it appeared that Jesus had been defeated through his own death and burial.

People will deny, deny (or, conversely, maintain, maintain) in the face of apparently irrefutable evidence, if denial or maintenance appear to be in their interest. There are plenty of indicators in the earth’s crust, for instance, that our planet was millions of years in the making (Carlsbad Caverns, Grand Canyon, Great Plains, Appalachian Mountains, etc.). Yet Christians of some fundamentalist stripes continue to declare that the Genesis account of creation is a history and that the Great Deluge had characteristics that reliably explain everything from the fossil records to the formation of the continents as we find them.

On the other side, it would probably take more than a rising from the dead to convince people like Richard Dawkins that the spirit of God is the Alpha and Omega of the universe. It appears faith is a choice, supported by evidence possibly, but not resting on it.

I wonder.

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the tulips , , ,

Spring has to be the best time of year, at least outside my window. There is no match for the color of the tulips in our garden and around town, and the pink of the almond shrubs is a pink even a man can love.
The soil in our yard is heavily populated by earthworms, the shrubs and the lawn are home this spring to thousands of ladybird beetles. Bees the size of hummingbirds (hyperbole) have started to fumble the fecund blossoms, and the robins feeding on the lawn are fat with worms and bugs of every sort.
In the greenhouse, tomato plants are thriving and lettuce will be ready to eat in a week or so. Our first feed of asparagus was a real treat; amazing how close this wonderful vegetable follows the snow. Rhubarb is another early treat and the sour leaves (suhrump) are ready to go; I'm looking forward to a lot of summa borscht over the next while.

Nogales, Mexico

While in Carlsbad, NM, this past winter, we had an opportunity to take a bus through the city of Nogales, Mexico. As does Juarez, Nogales hugs the border with the USA and security is tight, especially for south to north movement, and there are steady streams of pedestrians going both ways. The two cities also have in common the multinational factories located in their suburbs to take advantage of cheap labour available there.
Nogales is growing by leaps and bounds, as they say. Apparently the opportunity for a job is attracting people from rural Mexico and the proximity to the USA may also make the town desirable to some Mexicans.
In response to this rapid growth, Nogales has constructed high density row housing (see photo below) but thousands of people have simply squatted in the hills above Nogales, thrown together dwellings by whatever means came to hand and now live there close to the Multinational factories. (See below) As our bus roared up and down the steep streets of the barrios, we marvelled at the ingenuity of the poor who have to look after themselves. At the same time, we were struck by the squalor and wondered what it would be like to grow up among the wrecked cars, in the dry dust of these hills.

Nogales

Two residential areas in greater Nogales, Mexico

Support the Troops

"That was one of my first choices, just to fire the big guns and see (stuff) blow up," said the grinning Small, whose thick Newfoundland accent confirms his origins in Main Brook, N.L., a tiny community of 350 on the island's northeastern tip.

"It was pretty cool, so I said, 'Oh yeah, let's do that.' It's a big rush to fire the big guns. That's why I like it."

(Canadian soldier, 19 year-old Mitcheal Small quoted in a Canadian Press release and appearing in Yahoo! Canada News on April 29th, 2007)

A lot of cars in the USA have a sticker attached in the rear that's in the form of a yellow ribbon with "Support the Troops" as its text. That sentiment is also expressed here in Canada as a nod to the "brave boys" fighting over there "to make the world a better place for the people of Afghanistan." As is usually the case, especially in time of war, the soldiering career is held up as a noble and brave profession, and its practitioners as the best of the best of citizens, to whom we all owe a great debt.

In the case of Mitcheal Small--quoted above--I'm not so sure that such accolades are in order. If he was speaking seriously, he was telling us that he chose to enlist and go to Afghanistan because it would give him an opportunity to wreak massive destruction, to "see (stuff) blow up." I would be interested in knowing which kind of soldier--the brave and noble citizen or the young man with a fetish for big guns and explosions--predominates in the Canadian military. My experience is limited in this area, but one young man who went from a high school in which I was teaching to the Canadian Armed Forces came back to the staff room full of the piss and vinegar of Mitcheal Small.

I don't support our troops, but I would support any effort to get them out of Afghanistan for retraining. It's not right that our young men and women should be rewarded for nurturing a "patience, hell . . . I'm gonna kill something!" attitude toward the world. I like a good explosion as much as the next guy, but I'm restrained from giving it rein. War removes the restraints and says that the love of the big guns and the havoc that can be created through their use is a good thing. I wonder if Small has already discovered that while he's blowing up "stuff," he may well be scattering the entrails of Taliban and civilians alike across the Afghan wasteland.

I believe that the NATO effort in Afghanistan is futile. Forces like the Taliban may well be suppressed for a time, but if our troops come home in, say, five years, they will most certainly creep out of the woodwork to continue where they left off. What I resent is the corollary to "support our troops," which says that expressing a negative opinion about our soldiers efforts in Afghanistan undermines their effort there and gives aid and comfort to the enemy. I'm being unpatriotic to boot, I'm told.

I can live with that. But let's stop kidding ourselves about the nobility of our cause in Afghanistan. We're sending boys and girls over there who know little about the culture and its history, and who are in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity--apparently--to blow stuff up.

One way or another, Afghans will have to shape the kind of country they want. No one can do that for them. The longer NATO troops carry on their project to stabilize the country and bring about order, the longer it will take for Afghanis to take the bull by the horns themselves.

Meanwhile, all the stuff Small and his colleagues have blown up, will have to be rebuilt.

Theists, deists, agnostics and atheists

Along with the members of a book club to which Agnes and I belong, I'm reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Although I'm not that far into it yet, I'm already finding it a bit of a challenge to chew, let alone swallow. It's been wisely said that there's not much point in debating the points for and against the existence of God, and I'm already feeling a vast gap between Dawkins' perceptions of the world and my own. Dawkins is, of course, a scientist, and consequently (but not inevitably) a materialist. He denies the existence of the supernatural out of hand and has warned me in the first chapter already that he will be providing plenty of evidence to make me understand that the probability of the existence of God is very, very low.

Not unexpectedly, Dawkins takes a full-bore run at fundamentalist concepts and the people who promote them. In my view, starting off with ridicule when a debate is desired, is an error. And Dawkins' caustic aspersions on the sanity of believers tells me that it's not a discussion or debate he's after at all. He sounds as dogmatic as any TV evangelist.

I'm sure there are a lot of rebuttals to Dawkins out there, and I'm sure Google would help me find reams of material refuting Dawkins. I'm determined, however, to postpone that kind of reading until I've done my own review, and I think it's probably a good idea to finish reading the book first. There are plenty of Christians condemning stuff they've never even looked at, including Harry Potter.

Dawkins starts out with a story about his wife who apparently hated school and wished she could leave. When she told her parents about this years later, they asked her why she hadn't told them about this at the time. "I didn't know I could," she said. Dawkins goes on to use this analogy to support his supposition that "there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don't believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name . . . but just don't realize that leaving is an option."

Dawkins writes hyperbolically (and in my view, inaccurately) about the death, bloodshed and mayhem that religion has caused throughout the ages. Certainly, wars have been fought on the basis of the defense of religion, but more often than not, there have also been contributing ethnic, territorial or economic factors involved. For instance, he labels the "troubles" in Ireland as a religious conflict when, if fact, religious differences there are peripheral factors in a conflict that is largely territorial and ethnic.

When I'm done, I'll follow this up. 'Til then, God bless you.

Through my window today

A SOOP Reflection

Being back after an extended time away always gives me the eerie feeling of having one foot on the dock and the other in a boat that's come untied. Maybe that's not a great metaphor, but a part of me is still in Carlsbad, and another part is trying valiantly to adjust to Rosthern. For one thing, spring is approaching very reluctantly here, and the mounds of snow and cold temperatures after living in a summer place are hard to adjust to. Furthermore, Carlsbad was so easy going as regards responsibilities; for a while, we had some volunteer work, some housekeeping and not much else in that vein. Here there are responsibilities of many kinds: church, library, Writers Group, conference, social, etc. etc. on top of the odd bit of voluntary work and a great deal more housekeeping. Many of you are travelers too, and you probably know first hand what I'm talking about.
A friend at coffee row flew down to Alabama to work for 7 days on a Mennonite Disaster Service assignment. These people work a lot harder for the time they're there than we did in Carlsbad. Either way, it's a long way to go to do - not very much. In 7 days, a crew of 4 could probably strip damaged gyproc from one house and replace it, and maybe shingle the roof. It took a crew of four in Carlsbad about 6 days to side one house and storage shed. One sometimes wonders if locals couldn't have finished that house; they had done everything up to the siding, after all. As I said, it's a long way to go to accomplish relatively little.
But there's another side to it. What are my choices of things to do with my time? How can I budget my energies in order to do the most good in this world? I've concluded that it's not so much what's achieved by volunteerism that matters, it's more important that people are outgoing and active, both for their physical and their mental/spiritual well-being. A lot of volunteers are retired, and the worst thing to do when you retire is to shut down, say no to physical and mental work. Most of our volunteering is done for our good, and some benefit occasionally accrues to the recipients.
There remains, of course, that old conundrum surrounding the measuring of the "good" in an act. Most of us would applaud the act of giving as in, for instance, a church group giving Christmas cheer baskets to welfare recipients. Social Darwinists and die hard Capitalists would say that these acts do more harm than good. Our economic structures in North America assume that people will participate in the marketplace where supply and demand set a price that is fair, and everyone exchanges goods and services in this environment. Social Darwinists might say that feeding the weak perpetuates weakness, even rewards it, like interfering in the deer population to ensure that even the spindliest buck is allowed to breed. Both the Capitalists and the Socialists would probably agree that if you do things for a needy person, you remove his need to strive for it and thereby deny him the right to grow through that struggle.
I'm not naive enough to believe that what I did, for instance, to help a couple in Carlsbad renovate their house did any significant amount of "good." The time I spent with fantastic people working on that, however, did me considerable good, I think.
As a Christian, I can't sidestep Christ's admonitions to love my neighbour, and I don't know of a better way to do this than to do what I can to relieve his stress and help him supply his basic needs. However, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Handing over a meal without any expectations or replacing the shingles on a roof at no cost to the occupant don't necessarily fall into the category of "loving my neighbour." It might be far more loving to help my neighbour cook his own meal, might even be better to let him deal with a leaky roof for a time until he can afford to hire a workman. It's a question of discernment, good judgment. My impulse, I fear, is to roll up my sleeves, say "Step aside; I'm here to do this for you." I don't think I even know how to do the necessary work to evaluate "the good in an act" and to proceed on the basis of such an evaluation. We need to be better at that.
Meanwhile, it appears I've volunteered to edit a periodical of the Conference of Mennonites in Saskatchewan called News 'n Notes. I've also volunteered to put together an anthology of local writing and get it printed in two weeks, and I voluntarily act as historian for the Eigenheim Mennonite Church. I think all of these are "good acts" of volunteering, but I could be wrong. What do you think?

Oh Canada

Edmonton. I'm facing the patio doors in James and Cynthia's house in Edmonton where mounds of snow verify that it's been a cold and snowy winter. After 3 months in the US, it was a relief to cross the border despite the cool air and the leftover snow. We were prepared for interrogation at Coutts, but "came home" with very little hassle from Customs. Our car, however, was apparently still too accustomed to 75 MPH and the RCMP officer who pulled us over between Fort McLeod and Edmonton was friendly, but asked us please not to "pull away from the pack" like we were apparently doing. No ticket. What can I say? I guess to this young woman, we just looked too much like her parents . . . or grandparents. Our last day of driving - from Helena, Montana to Edmonton - started out on a scary note; we hit a near blizzard as we crossed the high passes in the Rockies and thought we were looking at a day of nail-biting driving. We took our time, though, and by the time we got to Great Falls, the weather had cleared and we were looking for our sun glasses. Watching only US news on TV for the past months, we hadn't heard about the Quebec election nor of any of the antics in Ottawa. We've got some catching up to do. American media apparently have no interest in what's happening in Canada, and very little in Mexico. In a way, it's not surprising; some of the states are more populous than Canada, for one, and there's plenty going on in that complex country to fill any news hour. Right now, also, it's a very divided country ideologically, and it seems it's on the verge of something catastrophic most of the time. It's a nervous environment, and the recent bill passed by the congress putting a time limit on concluding the presence of troops in Iraq and Bush's determination to veto the bill is the knife edge of the struggle in the country right now. The White House is under siege, and citizens really don't have much time in their days to cultivate any interest in matters beyond their borders. Tomorrow, our circle will be complete when we get back to Rosthern and pick up there where we left off. It's been an educational experience to say the least, and we wouldn't give it up, even if that were possible. I've written an article for the Canadian Mennonite on the experience and I'm putting together a slide show. I also managed to complete 15 short essays for another project I'm working on, and being in another part of the world for a time has been inspirational in that regard. We'll see. My trip jounal runs to 50 pages or more and I don't know what I'll do with that yet. All of you who read this blog, thank you. We looked forward to your emails whenever we got to the library and were disappointed when there weren't any, which wasn't often. Thanks. It's good to be home.

On the Way Home

Little Colorado River, Cameron, AS --------Southern Utah

The Grand Canyon, AZ---------------Church of the Cross - Sedona, AZ

It's nearly summer in Arizona, and in Utah. Now, in Helena, Montana, it's rainy and cold and we're expecting snow tomorrow. The hills around Butte were already covered in fresh snow. Rosthern promises us a taste of late winter. Carlsbad - when we left - was 80+ F and we were turning on the air conditioner in midday. Why am I surprised by the vagaries of weather?

Utah is wonderfully various, especially in colour. Rocks vary in colour from near green, to pink, to red and back again. I'd never been to Utah before; probably never will be again.

I've always associated Utah with all things Mormon, and it was a strange coincidence that the the leader and prophet of the fundamentalist group in the church that practice polygamy confessed to his brother (from jail) that he was a sinner and had attained the status of prophet by plotting and not by calling. A talk show host was trying to solicit comments from the Mormon community on what this confession would mean. You will certainly find out all about this in the news.

We dashed from Nephi, Utah through Idaho to where we are now in the Holiday Inn in the capital of Montana. Helena, today a rainy little city with snow promised for tomorrow. We're within one long day of Edmonton, our last stop before Rosthern.

On our way

I've got only a few minutes on this computer, so here goes:
We left Carlsbad on Friday, spent yesterday in Sedona, AZ and are now in Grand Canyon, AZ wondering in part why we've booked a nite here. All I got from the canyon was the worst case of vertigo since my brothers and I climbed to the peak of our barn. Agnes enjoyed it a lot; took about 50 pictures and walked the rim until she could walk no more. Tomorrow we'll head for Salt Lake City, thence through Idaho and Montana and into Alberta. We hope to arrive in Edmonton on Thursday or Friday. Not sure if we'll want to spend time in Utah.

Down to 4 minutes. Got to go.

Don't pay to get old

Here's a life situation. You're middle class, 55 and your husband has just passed away. Your children need your help raising your grandchildren. Your parents are 93 and 94 respectively and your mother is in the middle stage of dementia. You feel you have to do everything for them because if you didn't, who would? The hospice pastor who helped you through your recent bereavement talks to her husband, who talks to the SOOPers, and a gang of us head off early in the morning to clean up the elderly parents' yard and pick up the pecans that should have been harvested in November.

The old lady doesn't want us messin' in her flowerbeds, but the old man and his daughter placate her when she tells one of us to "stay outta my flower beds!" We rake and dig and carry detritus to the dumpster for a few hours. At coffee time, I mistake three circling turkey vultures for bald eagles (where's Wally when you need him?).

The old man hobbles out with his walker to show us where the lawn mower is kept. "Don't pay to get old," he tells me. "I'm 94." I remember a friend back home who died about a year ago saying as he dealt with continuous pain and the inconveniences surrounding kidney failure, "If I'd know old age was so much trouble, I wouldn't have bothered!" In the case of the latter, it was a continuation of this friend's love of the ironic jest, but both of them, I think, were telling me that it might be better to die "in the saddle," as it were, than to linger on until you're barely a shell of what you used to be. Maybe we're so focused on living as long as possible that we don't consider a life left before the proverbial "three score and ten" to be a tragedy.

Amzie has told us a lot about Guatemala and Honduras, places where he and Elena have lived and worked. When he talked about the injustice practiced against the people in these places, I asked him if he was ever tempted to give up his pacifist moral stand. "Never," he said, and he told us about a couple of instances where people had defied the military, unarmed and enmass, and had persuaded the government to curtail the military encroachment on their villages. "Sometimes some people have to die when they defy authority and stand up for what's right," he said, "but the numbers of dead would be far greater if they were to take up arms." He's right, of course, and I wonder if leaving life early in such a cause is not a nobler thing than being careful to stay well as long as possible and to live through a century. We need to teach our children to be courageous in support of the right, and not so much to develop those skills and find those places where they personally remain safe.

On Wednesday, a friend of the SOOPers and a former Lutheran pastor invited us all over to see a video he had recorded of an episode in the Glenn Beck show. Glenn Beck is a right wing media guru who believes that the rise of Muslim extremism is comparable to the rise of Naziism in Germany in Hitler's time. His view is that unless we crush that movement, we are doomed. He was interviewing a Muslim of the reformist stripe and questioning her about the whole business of extremisim, women in Isalm, etc.

It was a revealing interview. Islamic reformists take responsibility for the extremism and believe that Islam is overdue for some fundamental work on interpreting the Koran, which, she says, has ten times as many verses advocating independent, rational thought than it has verses regarding the defense of Islam against the infidel. How like the Bible this is. We too can find the few verses that seem to support suppression of gays, military intervention, hoarding of wealth while overlooking the core of our gospel: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbour as yourself.

A week today we leave Carlsbad and arrive home around April 1 via Alamogordo, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City, Great Falls, Calgary, Edmonton and Waldheim. I hope there'll be some snow to greet us when we arrive (not!); it was +88F in Carlsbad yesterday and they're telling us it will be like that most of next week.

Meanwhile, take care, friends, and age gracefully, if you can.

Slop Pails

Three of us SOOPers along with our fearless leader form Carlsbad Mennonite worked on our remodelling job this morning. A. told us about a farmer in Indiana whose friend visited him while he was carrying two huge slop pails across the yard to the pigs. The farmer stood listening for a long time, not knowing that his visitor was talking on and on in order to see how long it would take before the man set the slop pails down. Eventually, the visitor took pity on the farmer and ended the story. E. and I were holding a half-sheet of gyproc over our heads while A. went ot get a screw-drill and the fact that he took a long time to get it from the truck outside prompted the above story. Now, the phrase for indicating that one of us should relax while waiting for something to happen is, ". . . put down your slop pails."

Working at SOOP is not like working for MDS or MCC in every way, but I hope the birthing and nurturance of friendships is similar. "On the job", you get to know people really quickly, and because we're all Mennonites, are all seniors and have all applied to SOOP, we already have a start on knowing what values we probably share. This makes it easier, and, I think, makes participation in the program here in Carlsbad - at least - more than worthwhile.

For most of the SOOPers here who work at the thrift store, the biggest temptation is keeping their hands off the merchandise. Last Friday, I came across a pair of jeans that actually had the size-tag still attached. The waist and leg length matched mine exactly and I needed some jeans because the ones I brought have almost all been put through the construction-worker mill. So there I was with a pair of jeans I wanted in one hand and the pricing pen in the other. Talk about your conflict of interest. I marked them at $2.00 - the going rate - and took them to the till where another SOOPer said, "you should get these for half price!" I have also purchased two or three shirts, another pair of pants, a pedometer, and a TV that I had to return because it would only work for 15 minutes at a time.

We're exploring the Grand Canyon via library materials since we plan to go there on the way home. They've just constructed a viewing platform that looks like a huge horseshoe with the round part extending over the canyon's rim. The floor of this "horseshoe", however, is made of glass and when you walk on it, you apparently get the sensation of flying, or, in my case, of vomiting. It's just opened and we're already talking about which of us will be too chicken to go on it. I suspect it will be both.

I'm writing as much as time and energy will allow. Right now, I'm beginning work on an article for the Mennonite papers (on spec - no reqest) that will be called "Carlsbad Soop." I've also picked up work on short essays I'm writing for a meditation-style book with a difference. We have taken to reading the standard Mennonite booklet every morning (Rejoice) but find that it seems to be great for new Christians, but doesn't give one much to chew on. I hope to appeal to a different audience.

Agnes is done her emails and is reading in the car, so I guess it's time for me to wrap up here.

Flowers

Yesterday, I titled my post "Flowers and Sweat," but never mentioned flowers.

Spring has hit New Mexico. Just outside the door of the RV stands a 5-foot tree covered in white and pink blossoms, and vibrating with bee-song. It's obviously a grafted specimen with several fruits possible at the same time. I'm told it's quite a few years old and would grow much faster if watered, but that that's a bad idea since the bigger it is, the more water it would need and it would literally grow itself to death. Things are different here in the desert.

Around town, the mock crabapples are in full bloom. Sparse grass is sprouting in shady areas, under our RV, for instance. I told my adult Sunday School class this morning that I've noticed a few differences between NM and Saskatchewan. One is that the coming of spring is not nearly as dramatic here since the only differences observable are that temperatures are about 10-15 degrees warmer than they were in January and February, and trees are slowly greening and a few are blooming.

Another difference between the two places has to do with dusk and dawn. The sun goes down at 6:05 (sorry, 7:05; we changed to daylight saving time last night) and by 6:30 (7:30), it's dark! The lighting of the day also happens much more quickly here than in SK. Nights are very dark in Carlsbad and the stars and moon are clearer and brighter than I remember them back home. A part of this may have to do with the fact that Carlsbad - at 3,400 ft. elevation - is over half a mile higher than Rosthern and therefore has a thinner atmosphere.

The Sunday School lesson this morning was based on 1 John 3: 11-24. Every Christian should read this regularly. John emphasizes here that Christians' test of authenticity is in the love they share for each other, and that love is not communicated through talk, but through action. Starting a discussion here in Carlsbad Mennonite is not hard. All you have to do as discussion leader is to hesitate; someone is bound to leap into the silence. It's great.

Tomorrow, a few of us SOOPers are driving the 40 minutes north to Artesia to clean up a backyard for an old man who can't do it for himself. Apparently we'll be picking up pecans at the same time; they'll have been lying there since late last fall, I imagine. On Tuesday and Thursday, we'll be doing some more renovation work and Friday, I'm working at the Bargain Store. Agnes will spend her time at the Bargain Store, the library and the hospice, I expect.

Next week, we'll have to start getting ready to head home. The owner of the RV we borrowed died just a few days after he and I brought it over here and his widow would like it brought back to her place for cleaning; she doesn't know yet what she wants to do with it. Our car was packed on the way down and we've gradually been picking up other "stuff," so I'm curious to see what our back seat will look like on the way home. We may have to donate most of our clothes to the thrift store!

We hear from Rosthern and Edmonton that temperatures are warmer and that it's beginning to feel like spring. Agnes said to the Sunday School group that we were going to enjoy a bonus this year, namely two springs. I imagine that we could live with an absence of snow when we get back h0me, but I very much doubt that that's going to happen.

Flowers and Sweat

This will be short. I'm scheduled to get a haircut in 20 minutes. Ernie at Ernie's Barber Shop and Self-storage place has become a good friend and he does it for half price for SOOPers. I said to Agnes that I'm missing the most homey of things, for instance, getting a haircut in Sharryl's kitchen on a Saturday morning. I also miss morning coffee at the Hotel. Well, in two weeks we should be in Northern Arizona on our way home, scheduled to arrive on or about April 1.

I did 18 holes with D. and E. yesterday and given the hilly nature of the course, the temperature (+25C) and the extremely dry air, I was exhausted after we were done. E. and I are both 65 and he and his wife have bicycled across the USA and are preparing to bicycle the entire freedom trail from Mobile, Alabama to Owen Sound, Ontario in a few months. D. is ten years older than I and he carries his clubs! All of this to tell myself and others that although I thought I was in pretty good shape, it all depends on whom you compare yourself to. (Pardon the sentence-ending preposition.) At any rate, we have plenty of incentive to walk here in the desert, and we've been doing as much of it as we can.

In the NM news, an 11 year-old boy appeared in an Albuquerque school a few days ago with a motorcycle gang symbol cut into his hair at the back. Big news. The principal said he would have to study in a room by himself - until he had removed the offending symbol- for his own safety. The principal thought someone less tolerant than he might take exception and do the boy some harm. The boy's mother was not impressed with the principal and said her son would probably remove the symbol, but she had no idea what he would substitute for it. Can child rearing and educating get any wimpier than that? I thought. It was, however, a break from the usual news here in the deep south. Murders, kidnappings and abuse seem to be regular lead items, and one gets tired of that.

An update on something I wrote about earlier: The legislature in NM has approved the bill to ban cock fighting and it only remains for Governor Bill Richardson to sign it. All indications are that he will do this. That leaves only Mississippi as a state that seems happily to remain esconced in the dark ages as regards this despicable "sport."

We're well and enjoying a weekend off. Hope you're all doing likewise, and God bless you all.

America, America

I just started a new project today. It's going to be called "America's Good Side, America's Bad Side." I want to summarize my impressions in ten points on each side. On the good side, America (USA) has a constitution that protects freedom of religion, conscience, association, etc. On the bad side, America pays so little attention to the rest of the world that there's a vast ignorance here about the rest of the world and its people. The only bit of information I've heard about Canada since we've been here is that an American company was bought out by a company from Canada. And one day as we were going home from church, public radio was playing Gordon Lightfoot.

If you have anything to contribute to my project, I'd be glad to hear from you.

Yesterday, a bunch of us worked on that old house I've mentioned a few times. The owner fancies himself a bit of a writer and intellect, and as we shared the lunch his wife had made, he began to educate us on the ways of the world. Within a few minutes, we learned that a program called HAARP run by the USA is altering weather world-wide and using a new technology in the upper atmosphere in a sinister design to control the world. We also learned that Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, the last three US presidents and the president of France have met and divided the world up for future domination. And now I know that Great Britain is sinking at a rate of at least 1 foot per year, and some years as many as 20 feet. He said that the huge concrete barriers surrounding Great Britain had been abandoned because it has become impossible to control the sea's encroachment. I said I'd been to GB numerous times and had never noticed that. He asked me if I'd seen the barriers and I said that there was nothing like that on the coastlines I had seen. Then he asked me if I believed that mankind was contributing to global warming and I said, "Yes, I do," and at his request, explained why I believed this to be the case. He said that there were natural factors and I agreed and said that things don't always result from one cause alone, but that I believed that human activity was joining with other factors to cause the greenhouse effect. "Are you a scientist?" he asked. "No," I said, "but I have taught high school Science and I know a few basics.

That ended our discussion. I think another negative thing about America is that the lack of discusion about all but American affairs has made masses of its people extremely vulnerable to hoax, conspiracy theories and general gullibility. The same could be said of Canada to a lesser degree, but since we are a small fish in the big pond, we are not nearly as inward looking as I find many people here to be. To me, it's still amazing that the US got itself embroiled in a war in Iraq on the basis of such deplorable ignorance in the White House that the current debacle was not even considered a possiblity. I wrote at the beginning of this war that the aftermath of Saddam's overthrow would precipitate a civil war among the Sunnis, the Shia and possibly the Kurds, depending on the course of the war itself. If I could have sensed it at the time, how is it that this came as a surprise to the US president? I think it's all a package; if you are deprived of news from abroad and your education system virtually ignores world history, the nuances of life in other countries is bound to escape you.

And yet - on America's good side - there is a growing awareness of this weakness , and a resolve on the part of many to steer America back onto a right course. This can happen in a democracy like the US or Canada; if one regime does badly, the people can throw it out. And the development of the American system was won through great hardship and stress, in wars with England and Spain (even Canada) and civil conflict. Maybe with the history of this place, the nature of its democratic system was predetermined to be the only one that the diversity of its people could accept. In any case, Americans now know that Iraq was a colossal mistake, and they are saying so openly. An interviewer on TV the other day referred to the "Iraq fiasco," and the interviewee didn't challenge him.

It's a construction week for me. For the last two days, I've been working with others on the repair of old houses and tomorrow will be Habitat for Humanity day again. Patching gyproc into an old house is quite a challenge, especially when studs and ceiling joists are uneven and the corners far from square. But we soldier on. The pleasure we see in the eyes of the people who benefit from our volunteer work speaks volumes; the owning of a safe, comfortable house can only be taken for granted by the middle and upper classes. Most of the world, seems to me, subscribes to Better Shacks and Hovels. Fact is, the amount of one's possessions doesn't determine one's outlook on life. We all know this, but this experience is making it more clear to me how that works.

It's time for a constitutional walk along the river.

On Cacti

As we drove across NM and AZ, we tried to school ourselves on - and solidify what we already knew about - cacti. (Cactuses is also an accepted pluralization.) They are amazing plants. The prickly pear group has many varieties but I see the flat, oval, or cows' tongue shaped "leaves" for sale in the produce section of the supermarket. A Mexican Mennonite family in Manitoba Colony uses the juice of this cactus - along with cabbage juice and garlic - to make the tonic they call Jugo Mennonita. Cactus jelly made from the prickly pear is for sale in stores.

There are others, and I would send photos if it wasn't so much trouble. You can google the following names if you, like me, have to know what thing it is that I'm looking at or that's being talked about: Ocotillo, Saguaro, Cholla. Two things desert plants have in common: an amazing ability to extract and conserve water from their environment and an armour of sharp barbs to discourages assault. Looking for lost golf balls on a desert course is not that inviting an endeavour.

I think people - like plants - reflect the environment to which they've had to adapt. The poverty we saw in the hills above Nogales, Mexico has forced people to improvise, and the home-made-of-found-material "residences" are tributes to people's ability to adapt against all odds, like the lowly prickly pear. In many parts of the world, agriculture is under siege, and people who have always made their way by growing crops and raising animals are faced with the necessity of adaptation. What will food production look like in Canada in 50 years? In Guatemala? In Europe? Will it take a generation or two to adapt to the consequences of globalization and corporate agriculture - or more?

Humans can't survive without water either. The cacti's method includes ingenious collection methods and conservative use of this precious resource. The world has plenty of fresh water for every plant, animal and human that will ever inhabit it; somehow we will need to reeducate ourselves to a far more conservational use of water in the future if we're to survive. This is an adaptation our future will require of us.

Here are a few good questions: How much water does a person need in order to have an effective wash? Well, if you have a jacuzzi and you need to soak (for your mental well-being), the answer might be 150 litres. If you shower like I have to because I live in an RV, the answer is 15 litres. Truth is that you can wet yourself, soap up and rinse with a few litres. Baths and showers will look different in the future. How much water does it take to grow a lawn? It's pretty easy to sprinkle on 5000 litres in a few hours. But if you creatively cover your front yard with gravel, cacti and other succulent plants, zero water is plenty.

Cacti also carry armour. Their conservational way of living requires it. Like them, we need to be as prickly as necessary to prevent the consumerism of our time from doing what's environmentally right. In Carlsbad last week, a public meeting was held to hear the citizens' views on the establishment of a factory in the area to produce triggers for nuclear weapons. Only one person spoke up against the plan. The rest were enthusiastic about the economic spinoffs. Those of us who have been given the ability by our Christ to sense the evil inherent in commercialism and consumerism need to develop and project spines that defend the creation from the destroyers.

Well, I've worked the cactus metaphor to death, and my time's up. Have a nice day.

Arizona and back

Green Valley, Arizona, is probably the ultimate retirement town. Great climate, a clean and impeccably managed town - to all appearances - and easy access to the history of Arizona, Tuscon and Mexico. We spent a few days there with good friends, enjoyed their hospitality and some cut-throat scrabble as well as a great deal of travelling around the area.

Most memorable for me will be the side trip into Nogales, Mexico. We drove into Nogales, AZ, where W. parked the car and we walked across the border into Nogales, Mexico. We were greeted by shops selling jewellery, money exchange kiosks and pharmacies selling prescription drugs, apparently, at cut-rate prices. One hawker at a pharmacy offered loudly, "Viagra, we got viagra. Cheap. Have really good time tonight!" R. asked at a jewellery shop where she'd done some browsing if there was any way we could see the city, and he suggested the transit bus terminal nearby. Another gentleman flagged down a bus for us and for a dollar each, we commenced a two-hour voyage through the city of Nogales. The downtown doesn't surprise with businesses like any other city. It's when you get up into the high hills around town that you see Nogales other side. Here narrow gravel trails wind in and out, up and down among shacks of concrete block and unpainted plywood. Homes are packed together and children play among wrecked cars, dust and debris. Also up in these hills are the Multinational factories that exploit cheap labour as they do in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso. Master Lock, for instance, has a factory there that probably covers 5 acres. The employment opportunity doesn't seem to hold a lot of benefits for the community, however.

We also stopped in on friends from Eigenheim spending a few months in Mesa in a fifth-wheel they bring up with them from home in winter. With them, we saw a good bit of the beauty of Arizona, including the desert hills with the Siguaro cacti standing like prickly sentinels in their thousands. We played a game of "desert curling" with some friends of A. and V.; it's like ice curling except that it's played on a waxed floor with "rocks" made of wood. Both mine and Agnes's teams lost badly and I hope they're not still muttering about those inept curlers from Saskatchewan.

We got back to Carlsbad on Tuesday night. We took a cross-country route via state highways 60 and 70 to Lordsburg where we drove the I10 through El Paso and then on to Carlsbad through the Texas panhandle. We passed through the most magnificent mountain scenery so far between Phoenix and the NM border, and I'd highly recommend this route for anyone travelling in the area. Just east of the Guadalupe mountains, we spotted 5 - 6 Javelinas (Ha va LI nas), small, black, wild pigs, rooting for food in the ditch.

Back to work. We nailed siding at the Habitat for Humanity house until strong winds started blowing over our ladders and making the handling of siding boards hazardous. Our crew went over to a local house where we were nailing up gyproc and nearly finished one room. The house in question is in pretty bad shape, and when I was going to mark the stud locations for nailing the plasterboard and I asked for the level, the owner of the house laughed. There's no point in using things like levels and squares in this house, he said. He was right. I remarked to our fearless leader that when we got done nailing up the gyproc, we would need to do some very creative mudding.

Spring is windy in NM. We want to golf this afternoon, but it's almost too breezy for that, so we'll play it by ear. The temperature is around 70F.