Jerusalem

I mentioned this on FB a few weeks ago, but wanted to post this amazing panoramic shot from the Sea of Galilee. All the other shots are here.

So, we went to Jerusalem for a few days.

Now, that, in it's self, is a very, very cool thing.  Some folks get to road trip to Boise.  We get to road trip to the most hotly contested city on earth.  Bar none. (Which, BTW, was a pretty good candy bar when I was in Jr. High.  The Bar None... not Contested Cities.)  The only difference 'tween the two is that Boise doesn't come with the pleasure of that King Hussein/ Allenby border crossing and several hours of boredom interspersed with individualized interviews with the pleasant staff there.

While in town we got some quality time in the Old City and pulled in a few nice moments on Ben Yahuda street.  There's a crepe place down there that's a must on any given day.

While it took the Lord a bit longer to make the journey in sandal leather, we jetted north up the highway overlooking the Jordan River valley one morning with some family friends.  Let's be frank: The Sea of Galilee is not a Sea.  It's a good-sized lake.  But when you round the bend and see Capernaum and realize the Biblical significance of where you are... well, it's just pretty cool.

I'm sure there's probably a tour leaving soon from a church parking lot near you, and at the risk of sounding patronizing, get on the bus.  Jerusalem is the most amazing city in the world.  Not because of its nightlife or fashion or food.  It's the walls built by Suleiman circa 1538 or the Zion Gate pock marks from 1948.  It's the jolting transfer of culture in a passageway between the Arabic Souq and the Jewish Quarter.  It's the Via Dolorosa and its sundry pilgrims.

For time immortal, Jerusalem has been a shrine city.  Today, for a large part of the world's believers of three differing stripes, it still is.

Fancy...

There are times when people say to us, "Wow... I wish I could live overseas.  It must be so exciting!"  (In other words: "Wow... you guys are glamorous world travelers and it's all exotic locales and sunbeams for you!")

Today... was not... exotic.

 Unless, of course, you take into account the bacterial content of a sewer backing up into your church bathroom.  Now, that, friends and neighbors, is pretty exotic.  See, there's been a smell that comes around periodically, from the back of the church.  There's been all kinds of ideas and theories batted around, but when the water was literally pouring across the floor, I figured we could rule out some of them.  Reality had struck.

And reality takes the form of an overloaded sewer system in the rainy season, combined with overeager neighbors cleaning out their 'fridges too frequently and, well, it's the desert and there's dirt everywhere.  So, when the manhole covers come off, you get this:

But, of course, that can only happen after you've camped out 'till 4AM waiting for the city to clear a path of least resistance... only to find out that their truck is too big for the alley and they'll have to come back a few hours later.  Once the pipes are clear to do their thing, this too can be you... being... exotic:

The short of it is that in those four hours, liquid that should have stayed outside got to go inside through the office, classroom, back hallway, and stage area up to the first row of seats.  Tasty.  Also a bit squishy.  I would like to give serious props to the GAM water guys for working a cold and wet night as well as our awesome landlord who worked magic to get the job done.  To finish the clean-up I made two phone calls and got an 8-member multi-national force from our congregation to clear out the chairs, pull up the remaining linoleum & carry off the stage for the carpet cleaner genies to come tomorrow.  Hopefully they've got a box of magic anti-bacterial goodness with them.

Road Trip 1/2 Across America 2005

The "Perspective" entry below referenced our road trip pictures... in light of full disclosure, here's that story!

In 2005, we returned to the States after living for nearly a year in Prague, Czech Republic and we decided to take a short vacation before returning to work.  You know, visit some friends and family and reconnect with America.  Those of you who know us will understand how a short jaunt became the Roadtrip Half Across America!

We covered 13 states in 3 weeks, over 5000 miles... all the way from wee little Moberly, Missouri to the Florida Keys to Texas to the Grand Canyon!  Below is a short diary from our travels that was originally part of our old website (the content of which disappeared when that laptop crashed!).  For a lot more pictures, visit our Facebook album.

Sunday, 3/13 (St. Louis, Missouri)
 - Spent afternoon with Scott’s grandparents in St. Louis


Monday, 3/14 (Arkansas & Tennessee) - 
Visited Elvis’s home in Memphis... Graceland!


Tuesday, March 3/15 (Nashville, TN)
 - Went Shopping in Nashville
; Visited Dana, our great friend from Prague, & her family


Wednesday, March 3/16 (Georgia)
 - Spent the night in Valdosta


Thursday, 3/17 (Florida)
 - Met Tammy & her daughter, Sarah, in Orlando. (Missed you Bryan!) 
Spent the night in Ft. Lauderdale


Friday, 3/18 (Florida Keys!) - Arrived on Big Pine Key at Bahia Honda State Park
; setup across the road from beach... removed watches...
commenced relaxation

Tuesday, 3/22 (Florida)
 - Packed up and headed north


Wednesday, 3/23 (Louisiana) - 
Spent the night in Baton Rouge


Thursday, 3/24 (Louisiana)
 - Met great family friends, the Hennigans, in Robeline near the town where "Steel Magnolias"
was filmed.  Spent the night in totally cool Bed & Breakfast


Friday, 3/25 (Texas)
 - Drove to Beaumont to visit family & Scott’s grandmother’s gravesite. Spent night in Houston.


Saturday 3/26 (Houston, TX)
 - Had lunch with Mike Roth & Family... Mike’s a friend of Scott's from Jr. High... they reconnected before we moved to Prague... Had dinner with Scott’s Aunt Donna & cousins, Bonnie & Stuart. Bonnie visited us in Prague over Thanksgiving ‘04 with Jaime


Sunday 3/27 (Houston, TX)
 - Spent Easter with family: went to Grace Church & had dinner at home followed by hanging out & a quick jaunt over to Scott’s old neighborhood


Monday 3/28 (San Antonio, TX) - 
Visited the Alamo, shrine to Texas independence; wandered the Riverwalk & had dinner by the water.


Tuesday 3/29 (West Texas)
 - Drove to El Paso... getting into some very cool, very rugged country


Wednesday 3/30 (New Mexico & Arizona)
 - Walked across the bridge to Juarez, Mexico for a few minutes to catch sight of the infamous pharmacies. Drove to Flagstaff, AZ through awesome mountainous country.  Explored old mining site (Gotta love driving off road up the side of a mountain! FINALLY!) Spent the night in Flagstaff, AZ


Thursday 3/31 (Arizona)
 - Grand Canyon! Walked the ridge, rode the shuttle along the South Rim. Watched the sun set. We are such a small blip on the face of the earth...


Friday, 4/1 (Parts Unknown!) - 
Left Flagstaff by midmorning (had to get our oil changed... we've gone over 5000 miles so far!)
 Drove up through Monument Valley into Utah, swung down to the 4 Corners (where CO, NM, UT, & AZ meet) and then on to Cortez, Colorado for the night. The views in this part of the country are mind boggling. You can't imagine the scope and beauty of this area until you see it first hand. We had no idea what to expect and aren't really sure what all we saw... it's just amazing.


Saturday, 4/2 (Colorado)
 - Visited Mesa Verde Nat'l Park's 700 year old ruins and drove on to CO Springs

Sunday, 4/3 (Missouri) - Back to Missouri for some Famous Dave's BBQ!

A little Perspective, Please

We had just come back from an amazing road trip across the Southwest US.  I was in the process of editing our pictures when the laptop just died.

Total Blue Screen of Death.

I hadn't backed up the machine for a few weeks.  All the pix from the trip were locked away on a harddrive that wouldn't talk.  I vividly remember kneeling on the carpet face-first while on the phone to tech support: "We can send you a new drive, but there's nothing we can do about what's on the old one."

After regaining some semblance of composure, I mentioned the debacle to my old-school, tech-head father-in-law.  This man was the first person I 'd ever met with a laptop and he could still make a slide rule spin (he liked the round one).  We lamented the loss of data and commiserated the lack of backing up.

Jan called back a bit later.  A faulty floor fan had caught his eye and he thought of something... you see, a disk drive spins on bearings, just like a wheel.  His fan had bad bearings and to get it moving, sometimes he had to flip it over.  Could the same work for this drive, he wondered?  Heart in mouth (an odd taste), I flipped the machine on its side and powered up...

"Good tone!"

I quickly backed up and when the new drive arrived a few business days later, we were back in the game.

On my desk, right now, I have a one terabyte, a 500GB and a sweet little G-Tech 250GB drive, each one backing up the next... and there's a 500GB drive back in the States!  This boy's not gonna lose his marbles again, not if he can help it.

So, regarding the matter of perspective:  Sometimes you gotta stand on your head to see the picture more clearly... and you'll probably gain a lot from looking at that situation from a different angle.

Don't believe everything you see...

I'm no Photoshop guru by any means, but I do enjoy a little manipulation once & awhile. One of the big ethical issues that photogs get swept up in is the amount of retouching that can be done and still call a picture "original." (I suppose any touched up shot is no longer the original.)

A few years ago, Dove started a Campaign for Real Beauty to address manufactured beauty in media. Their commercial showing a model going through a transformation process is pretty good... Everything you see isn't real.

For instance, a few months ago we celebrated Thanksgiving at the Reed's house. I took the following shot of everyone at the table:Since I'm always behind the camera and never in the picture, I decided to "show up" for the party, hence the following shot:

With a little snip of the Cutting Tool and some smoothing with the Eraser, you get the following happy group (notice I left the napkin on my lap that was on the chair in the first shot):
Is it artistic license? Is it unethical to insert yourself into a Thanksgiving dinner you attended (versus Michael from The Office putting himself into his girlfriend's family skiing photo)? I don't think so... but it gives you pause over the stuff you see as factual events...

And that, my friends, is your lesson in paranoia today!

A Hand on a Shoulder

I ran across this clip on CNN of Bolivian peacekeepers distributing food to Haitians in the earthquake's aftermath.  The process contrasted so many other relief events we're used to seeing: masses of hands reaching skyward as boxes are tossed from the back of pickups, stampedes, broken bags of rice scattered across the ground.

What struck me was the scene at :30.  There is an orderly line and a UN soldier with his hand resting on the shoulder of the first man.  There's gotta be some crowd psychology going on there and I'd love to discuss it with someone who knows more than I.  Does that hand on the shoulder mean, "I understand you need help and I'm here?"  It certainly doesn't seem threatening.  Does it indicate to the rest of the line that "yes, there's a good chance you're getting fed today."  Does it provide the reassurance that boundaries mean order and order means confidence that my needs will be met?

A hand on a shoulder.  It can mean order in the midst of chaos.  It can mean the world to someone in need.  Who's shoulder is your hand on today?

How Do You Do It?

This is the only known picture of us holding hands. It was staged for the benefit of Rachel Wickstrum who was following along behind us, camera in tow. Not that we're some curmudgeonly couple... we're just not big PDA types.

Now, before you start a mental diatribe about a lack of affection in our relationship, know that Suz & I are the quintessential high school sweethearts. I was a junior and she was a sophomore the first time we met on a district science fair trip (she was supposed to be there... I made it on a fluke). It took me awhile to get my act together, but many years later I got around to popping the question and we got on with our lives.
All told we dated for 5 years. This year we'll be married 13. That's a grand total of 18 years of getting to know someone very, very well and I'll put money on the fact that she probably knows me better than I know her. (She says it's something about the way I've got a reader-board across my forehead... seems I don't mask my emotions very well.)
A few months ago we were out to eat with the facilitators of a marriage seminar we'd just attended. Ironically, the conversation turned to long-term relationships and we batted around what made ours possible. What keeps couples together when the trash is smelly and no one wants to take it out? At what point is that towel on the floor the final straw? When does "that thing you do" just push me over the edge for the very last time?

I still remember our first spat. We weren't married. We were still in college. We didn't have a house, babies, tattered passports, anything. We were sitting in her room discussing, of all things, appliances: a washer, I believe. How a conversation between two people in love went from theoretical purchase to tears so quickly I'm still not sure, but I believe it had something to do with this: I'm right & you're wrong.

We haven't had a knockdown, dragged out argument since. Neither one of us has ever screamed at the other. There's never been a night on the couch or at mom's house to cool down. (One reason is that Suzi has a hard & fast rule to always...ALWAYS... tuck me in if I hit the sack before her... hard to do if I'm not there!) We worked it out early on that we as individuals were not the most important part of our relationship. It was our relationship that was the most important part of us.

Read this carefully:

When I believe that you mean more to me than the issue at hand, it means that we can tackle anything. And we'll do it together.

That means that it doesn't matter who was right about getting the tire fixed or who should've paid the AmEx bill. What it means is that I do whatever I can to make sure this thing works. And she does everything she can to make sure this thing works. We don't hold grudges. We don't say things to intentionally cut each other down (her wit's way sharper than mine, anyway... I'd be in ribbons; no contest there). When there's an issue to discuss, we come at it from the perspective of "I care too much about you to let this go any further." That goes for everything from spiritual life to the green-stuff-stuck-in-your-teeth.
And TRUST plays a big part in all of that. If I know you have my best intentions at heart, then what you have to say holds greater weight with me. Again, one is never going to do something to intentionally hurt the other. Too many times, I believe relationships are built on the idea that each of the parties are owed something by the other. Keeping track of what you owe me and what I'm due is a recipe for disaster. Eventually that house of cards is coming down.

So, what's got us this far?

I just like her with me a lot more than I like me by myself.