We didn´t get our act together in time to find flowers, but our difuntitos will find the most tastey mole de olla, vegetable beef stew with dark, smokey chiles.

Happy Halloween!

From Kenny

guide to previous post...

Let me guide you through Ben's post. He is showing you through his new abode.

His beautiful housemate, Callie.

His luscious sweet basil--his is much more vibrant than mine!

Their cat, Homey. Who arrested Jim passing by to demand a friendly pat!

Their backyard view, overlooking the train tracks.

And finally, Bandero, the Great Pyrenees. The size of a Polar Bear with the same coat, I think!

(Don't know why we got gibberish with Ben's post.) Hope I have not misrepresented anything and hope he does not mind my sticking my nose in!

So happy to have had him chime in, if silently!

Where I am

Monday in the Park...

Today I met Benjamin and Massie at the botanical garden for a last look see at the playhouses and forts exhibit. They were joined by Ben's friends Jett and Lola and their dad (whose name escapes me). When I happened on to them, the young ones were sitting inside one of the playhouses that had been created to look and feel like a chrysalus. They were all enjoying very healthy snacks created by these very gentle, very patient and loving dads. At one point, all three of the kids lifted their sippy cups with a resounding "cheers" from one and all-Lola can't be much more than 12 or 14 months; being upright and vertical is still a work in progress for her.

At one point on the walk, Ben asked Jett if he could give him a hug. Jett didn't say no so Ben took that as a positive and proceeded to hug and kiss his friend. A bit later all three of them were walking hand in hand down the walk. We took time to overfeed the ducks, run madly through one of the Texas homes with Massie periodically going in and making scary noises to frighten one and all. The kids loved it!

In the midst of all this it occurred to me that scenes like this one were rare when I was in the throes of child rearing. I had no experience with many dads who would be as happy and content in the company of their children as these two young men clearly are/were....perhaps this is a sign that society is evolving into a higher and better place and there is hope for all of us.

That's my grand epiphany for the day. I also voted today. Unless you are like Catherine and believe in voting on Nov. 2nd, please follow my lead....just be sure you get the job done!

a great evening with great food

You might think I added the line about food just to capture the interest is this foodie group. But no, it really was a great food event!

Callie's parents, Leslie and John Enlow, were in town. We wanted to get together with them so the natural choice was G&G Mobil Bistro! A 'restaurant' in Ben & Callie's neighborhood--they can walk there from their home--that Ben has been pushing me to visit for a while for its incredible food. The Enlow's and Callie arrive via car--Ben on his 'girl' bike. Bandero came along for the visit. (I have a cute picture of Callie and Bandero--but can't figure how to get it nto the blog...)

G&G is a tiny kitchen in a food truck, located behind a bar overlooking the San Antonio River in the Missions area. We sat at a picnic table overlooking the river on a wonderfully cool, lovely evening. We bought our wine from the bar that fronts the bistro on the street. Our menu was a fix prix four course meal--no choice, except you don't have to have all four courses. The menu changes each night--ours was leek & potato bisque, field green salad with goat cheese crouton, crusty grilled salmon with potatoes, and a nutella dessert. Small servings but each really delicious! The meal is served in plastic cups or paper dishes with plastic forks--which you save from course to course. Very frugal but oh so very delicious! What fun. There was a guitarist playing part of the time and recorded music when he was off. It was quiet enough for us all to engage in conversation.

All made possible by Pam's volunteering to stay with Kenny for the evening! Thanks, Pam.

So much fun. An how exciting to see this happening in our own San Antonio!

There are hippos a block from our house

I was intending to make an effort towards shifting the discussion away from food.  But then I came across this: http://www.marinaaurora.com (you have to scroll over to the sixth or seventh photo).  And I thought that it was so much like the other photos I mentioned the other time, and yet also so different.  The backstory is that the photos capture every step of the cooking, from ingredients to the final dish, and more than a bit of the messiness in between.  I like these better than the others.

I also came across this on our camera, a photo that captures really the essential nature of clara's nutella brownies, which I was eating at the time.  Werner Herzog said that a poet said that the best description of hunger is a depiction of bread.  These brownies would have blown that poet's taste buds out the back of his head.

In other news.  We've had two holidays in two weeks.  Last week was the anniversary of the assassination of Burundi's father of independence, Prince Rwagasore (in terra cotta, in the background).  Tomorrow is the anniversary of the assassination of the president elected in 1993.  An occasional observation reported in reports on this kind of thing is that nobody has ever been held responsible for the 1993 killing.  How can the society achieve peace when there isn't a shared understanding of the ways that social imbalances led to war in the past?  The other night I went off on a tangent about why we aren't more aware of who killed MLK and JFK -- I mean, who really killed them -- and Clara was very humoring of the whole thing.

  

I contacted Chris to ask if he could send a file of his book, which I could translate into Kindle format and read out here.  He schooled me on the difference between books (which he writes) and texts (which I read).  Chris has written a book qua book -- no so much illustrated as illuminated, it seems.  I am better off not even reading it if I can't appreciate the layout, illustrations, and fonts that he chose and designed.  I quivered to ask whether an iPad might be an adequate medium for his message.  Joking! of course! -- I can't wait to read the book, and read it as it was intended to be read.  But it'll have to wait.

Some interesting little research topics have been presenting themselves.  One involves a situation similar to the one I researched in Mali in January.  The Belgians set up a state plantation in the 30s where people were allowed to temporarily use land but never to own it.  It's been nearly a century, but the same people living there are still forbidden from doing things like building houses more than 60 square meters, lest they get too comfortable.  Once in a while government (or para-statal - not sure yet) officials come along and tell them what they have to grow.  And once in a while the state gives concessions to companies who kick people off the land.   People refer vaguely to regulations or old conventions signed by grandparents, but so far nobody -- residents, government officials, judges -- have been able to point me to the sources of law that supposedly restrict use of the land.  And yet everyone keeps going along with it.  It's extreme disempowerment maintained deliberately by the state.  It might be interesting.

Another iron in the fire is working, perhaps, with an organization here called Global Rights.  That project involves scoping out possibilities for strategic litigation (finding cases that might succeed in changing existing law if they are appealed to higher levels of the court system) in the areas of land rights and gender-based violence.  I'm not sure if this will go ahead, and I have sort of mixed feelings about it.  For several years I have had this inkling that I've been going about things all the wrong way.  I've been working at a sort of institutional level -- international NGOs, USAID, law school -- while in fact everything worth doing happens through collective action of people trying to improve their own lives.  That was one of the takeaways from the little project in January: attempts to improve land tenure security through institutional means just end up screwing people over in new ways; the only people actively improving their lives were the ones taking political action within their communities.  Anyway, I keep hoping to correct my bias for business cards, so to speak.  I thought that working with Global Rights, who has been doing community legal services in Burundi for a decade, might be an opportunity to do that.  And so I was sort of surprised/disappointed when the Global Rights director told me that they got out of the legal services activity in favor of change at a more systemic level.  But, but!  I thought systemic change never happens from within the system!  Doesn't 'systemic change' just reinforce the primacy of the system?  I keep coming back to these things.  Whatever.  There's probably some elegant synthesis to this micro-dillemma.  Something like: at some point I'll have to accept who I am and just get good at it, rather than trying to change it.  But, you know what: I'm not so sure.

Clara and I have both started language courses this week.  I'm doing Swahili; Clara, who already gets by in Swahili and collects languages like Carnegie collected smelters, started learning Kirundi.

In fact, Clara just came back from her lesson and, it turns out, from a trip to the Chinese store.  Bujumbura is not really lacking for anything.  But some things are sort of hard to get.  Extension cords, for example, are sort of stuffed in back shelfs of a few cluttered little hardware stores and they aren't cheap.  After a few weeks of finding where to get most things, if we're willing to pay for them, we stumbled across "T2000" - a store run by some Chinese family that has EVERYTHING, and it's all cheap.  It's all from China.  I would love to know how they stock -- do they handpick each item from different factories, or is there like a basic container-box of stuff that gets sent out to all the Chinese stores out there?  Anyway, they have tons of extension cords, all different kinds, and they are cheap.  Clara stopped by this evening and got tennis rackets for $10 a piece.  They are, like, real rackets!  Sent all the way from China!  For only 10$.  That whole situation is just amazing.  She also got tennis balls that are so bad we won't possibly be able to use them.

Well, blame my rambling on Clara's absence, a situation that is now remedied.

Chris on wild game dinner

Karen and I attended the Witte Game Dinner tonight. It's a big fund raiser for the Witte Museum (where I am a board member until the end of this month). I'm not much of a foodie, but this event is something Karen and I have been doing for many, many years. The biggest Witte fund raiser of the year (and this being the 29th year) features exotic game served up in obscene quantities. Not politically correct but fun nonetheless.

Everything from paella to venison enchiladas. I rarely eat meat these days, but this evening always provides an excuse to try things not on my regular menu. Top of my list was the quail cooked in some kind of basalmic vinegar sauce. It was also served two other ways, but I stuck with this version for two servings. The lamb chops were a close second. Karen always goes straight for the gorditas with hand-made-on-the-spot tortillas and a sizable selection of fresh add-ons; guacamole, sour cream, tomatoes, onions, oregano, cilantro, etc...

The venison enchiladas were actually pretty good, but the bacon-wrapped, jalepeno-stuffed chicken bits were better. It was impossible to get excited about venison "sliders." The wild pig and buffalo were okay, but not great. Mashed potatoes with cheddar was a new offering that tasted pretty good. The fish dishes were suspiciously pungent, so I passed on them this year. I chose the dark beers (Shiner and Negra Modelo) over the crappy white wine.

So from Texas I offer up the worst of all possible worlds.
Chris K

The leaves have turned...

...and so has the talk! I love talking about, thinking about, writing about...food!

Bradford's entry about polenta made me feel that, yes!, we are connected. I had 0nly a meal or two before cooked up my first polenta in a very long time. A pleasant convergence. (Sorry about all these fonts--only wanted to emphasize the first food; now can't get back to normal). And I am ready to take him on because after the first in a long time, came the second. Which was very good and totally different. First time, I managed to get a firm, toastable loaf which we enjoyed at dinner with some wild mushrooms, and the leftovers next morning toasted and served with molasses. Yum. Second time started with the a.m.--creamy polenta topped with poached eggs (very fresh eggs, of course). At some point I realized: This is grits!

The earlier entry from Bradford about fascist photos also got a big response--between Emily and me. We talked at length about photography, fascism (oh, yea, back to normal!), my mini-course on the story of photography (as opposed to the techniques of it), and so on. At length. I told her she must write an entry, and she did, but it did not begin to reflect the conversation we had. So thank you, Bradford. And thank you, Margaret. We aren't just talking to each other, we Adamses.

But one more thing before I sign off: Tonight we say goodbye to tomatoes and corn and tomatoes and eggplant and tomatoes and all the goodnesses of summer; and hello, KALE! The winter green. Its okay. I like kale. For the first four months or so...

Forcing Fall

It is a problem when 87 degrees feels like a cold front in mid-October. Robert made a killer pumpkin ale for Halloween and I was inspired by that as well as the cute pumpkins I found at the market yesterday. I made a vegan pumpkin cake this morning and it has filled the house with a sense of cooler weather . As long we don't go outside I think we can trick ourselves into a sense of changing seasons for a little while at least.

and back at 1507 Spanish Oaks...

I gave up on reading "The Girl Who Played With Fire"--got to hot for me. So I'm reading (again) "Pride and Prejudice" and loving it (again). Mrs. Bennet demonstrates why it took so long for women to get the right to vote! What a depiction!

George Judson is still in the rehab hospital--it has been a month now that he has been in the hospital or the rehab hospital. Jim has stayed with Ruth the whole time with some help from his brother Steve--but mostly he has been with his mom 24/7. Ruth said to me last week, "You have the most wonderful husband." I said, "Well, right now he is the most wonderful son, not much of a husband."

Friday Kenny got the long awaited "lift". I should admit that I got the long awaited lift. Transferring him from chair to bed and back has become almost impossible for me to do, yet with Jim gone I've had to manage and it was getting harder and harder. So there was much anticipation around the delivery of the lift. We refer to it as the 800 pound gorilla--lucky that Kenny has the largest room in the house to accommodate it! There are more steps involved in transferring him, but no strain on my back! Technology is great!

Here I am about to lower him into his wheelchair. Actually, I have him backwards there--ordinarily the chair is in front of the lift and Kenny would be facing the machine. Still trying to learn all the tricks to using it! Pretty much have figured out the bed to chair transfer and vice versa but have not attempted the in and out of the shower yet--next adventure!

Kenny gets a kick out of the 'ride'--it must feel a lot like a ride at an amusement park.

I've been doing some studio work--but it is very much in the experimenting stage. And the productsn from last weeks firing were not encouraging. But I'm going to get to work out there today and try to get over that set-back and make some progress forward. I, foolishly perhaps, signed up to sell at the annual guild sale Dec 4. At this time I have NOTHING to sell. So gotta something made or withdraw my name by Nov 4! It takes a deadline to get things to happen.

Food? reprise

Ok, I've been taken to task by my mother and Emily for sloppy use of the term fascism. And in truth, I don't really know what it means. Not really. I should, seeing as how Clara is now on page 350 of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the part where they walk into Austria, by which point their fascism (which is, I think, properly characterized as fascism) was well-established. I sort of thought that it was an aesthetic preference for order and authority -- for being ordered -- without concern for its human effects. That's what I think of when I throw "fascist" around. I think that's how Alan Grayson would use the term, and I recently decided that Alan Grayson is the only person doing anything useful right now. So seeing the eggs lined up, and formed stacks of flour, make me think that this could only be "he most beautiful image of food" if you have a particular aesthetic taste for being ordered, regardless of the consequences. But as everyone else pointed out, the images were also an invitation to jump in and mess things up. As a last effort to see whether my idea had any merit, I tried to see if Futurist paintings bore any resemblance to the aesthetic of those pictures, and really they don't.

This morning I made corn meal pancakes, which I accomplished by dumping an amount of corn meal into a bowl, and dumping an amount of dried milk on top of that, and then a smaller dump of baking powder, and then a much smaller dump of sugar, and then really just a dusting of salt on top of that. Then some water and finally an egg -- which, being pre-packaged, was the only item that was properly measured out. This method doesn't always work.

On a side note, though, we've been doing some really productive experimentation with grains. We made polenta last night, and paella the night before. They are so easy to do! It was great. Put some combinations of sausage and veggies on top and on the side. And then we had nutella brownies thanks to Clara. Oh god it was so good. Clara said it may have been a bit undercooked but I said Bah!: fondant.

On sunday we took a little overnight trip to Gitega, the smaller city in the center of the country. It was in the hills and therefore cool, which was nice. It is a small city with some really pretty tree-lined boulevards. It also seems to have been the retirement home of a modernist Belgian architect. Or maybe not. But the town had a surprising number (7?) of really interesting buildings with random cantilevered planes and things like this, made during the colonial period and now used to house the regional police, or political party offices, or nothing. French was much less spoken, Swahili much more so, so Clara was much more speaking, me not as much. We do seem to attract anglophone mildly-crazy people, however, which may prove to be an interesting network, or might not. (I'm reading 2666 right now, which has really cultivated my taste for equivocation, for uncertainty, which Bolano uses a lot in his descriptions. Or maybe he's just asserting many certainties.) The first was a guy at the Burundi-Ivory Coast football match on Saturday. He was wearing a dress and the kind of bandana that Aunt Jemima wore, and he was a bit crazy. But he also described MLK as an anti-colonial leader and was the only person in the whole crowd who was willing to go up to the policemen blocking everyone's view and ask them to get out of the way (they didn't). So if he was crazy, he was also wise and ballsy. The second was a guy in Gitega who was very friendly -- in fact, he introduced himself as "Mister Nice" -- and would have escorted us around the neighborhood but he had to go prepare for his Koran lesson. We're divided on whether he was crazy, actually.

B

fascist food photos? in response to bradford´s post, my thought is that the pictures are too playful to be considered authoritarian; more about colors and shapes than world order. anti-septic is the word i would use. that they are obsessively neat and far removed from organic materials and processes, is a true reflection of an existing attitude towards food: basic in ingredients, minute in size, clever in concept. these pictures makes the idea of cooking and eating look contemporary cool. if they had shown pictures of cakes, one might reminded of things that they don’t like to eat, don’t want to like to eat, or just don’t want to mess with. aesthetically i find the photos a little amusing and commercially I think it’s a clever way to sell kitchens. instead of a fascist attitude towards food, the cutsy deconstrucionalist approach is politically non-committal... adriá´s gimmicks all-pervading.

Poor me!

I've been feeling puny the past couple days. On Tuesday Jim and I walked down to Walgreen's to get flu and pneumonia vaccines. My pneumonia arm hurt a lot by evening--but I had been warned it might be a bit sore. I had a bad night and woke up really sick Wednesday morning--achy, wobbly and had a low-grade temperature. I was really miserable all day.

And to make me feel worse, I missed getting to go to the surprise birthday party that Callie had for Ben--starting at Tre Trattori (local popular restaurant) and ending with bond fire in their back yard. Jim went and had wonderful stories to tell about the group of friends (that Jim really likes), the cute house that Callie is sharing with Ben, Bardo the Great Pyrenees dog that bears a strong resemblance to a polar bear (I don't know how he is going to survive the Texas summers), and Homely the aggressive Tom cat that reached out his paw to stop Jim from passing by in order to get a pat and a pet!

I also had to miss my Asian Art class that I adore--have now missed 2 out of 5 classes--both for medical reasons!

I'm feeling a bit better today but still have a very sore arm and am pretty wimpy.

Okay, I'll Bite...

This looks like a minimalist's take on (Don't) Play With Your Food. The elements remind me of nothing so much as the building blocks of your childhood: the uprights, squares, circles. Someone playing with his food, in a modernist sort of way. But it brings me to a confession: I have never had a handle on exactly what it means to be fascist. Can you help me out there? Meanwhile, I want to tell you that tonight I finally got a handle on risotto. My best yet. I cooked it slower and longer than usual, and when it was toothy and soupy I added the parmesan and cooked it a bit longer. Quite fine, we thought...

Food?

Here's a question for this blog.  It has nothing to do with Burundi, or me, but I think it's an interesting question and I think that the readership of this blog might be the perfect ones to answer it.

Today I saw this posting on my morning blog skim: www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/september/ikea-baking-book

It shows some images from a recent book that has something to do with baking (but it's published by Ikea, it seems, so I don't know).  Anyway, the caption -- written by designers -- says that these are the most beautiful images of food ever.  And I agree that they are interesting and playful.  But it's also so regimented: is cooking ever that neat?  And the images seem to have nothing at all to do with food.  It's interesting that this "most beautiful depiction of food" (according to some contemporary tastemakers) might not be about food at all -- and if the ultimate depiction of food can't be about food, what does that mean about contemporary tastemakers?  Why does contemporary style veer toward the over-regimented and unhuman?  Is our aesthetic making us all (dramatic pause) fascists!?!?  That's my question!

But I'm not a real foodie, so what do I know.  (I did make pizza last night; it was a mess.)  So I'm wondering how the real foodies in the readership feel about those images.

This is a Shout Out!

If any of you out there hasn't yet got a copy of Chris' Art and Thought, get on it. I opened my copy today while on shop duty and felt I had followed Alice down that weird mystical hole. Where am I?
Who is he? WHAT IS GOING ON? I still don't know; have no idea. But what fun trying to figure it all out. Or any little piece of it. Thank you, Christopher, for an adventure!

This is a Shout Out!

life-long learning, tested...

Having failed to learn Spanish, I am taking on photography. Out or respect for my daughter and son-in-law (!). Not the science of it, but the story of it. The Portland Museum of Art has an exhibit on the f/64 group, and in conjunction with that a short series of talks on the aesthetics of the movement. I went. And the one-hour talk was ever so much more interesting than I had expected. The first talk focused on the Pictorialists, which reigned from about 1890 to 1910 and beyond. They made me think of the stereopticans (?) that Daddy Doc had in his house and that we were given to pore over whenever we were ill, along with Mimi's buttons. Those 3-D slides of angels floating over sleeping babes and waterfalls all misty. Those were very much like the work of the pictorialists, except they (the pictorialists) liked to print their work on textured paper.

Today was the opening of the season for the Portland Symphony Orchestra. We have tickets with the Smiths and the Cohens for Sunday afternoons. Our new conductor--now starting his third year with us--is fantastic. For one thing the PSO has run in the black for the past two years--his two years! I have almost no ear for music, but this guy is sooo good he brings me to my feet. And he keeps Wayne and Richard fully awake. We all look forward to these events, not as a duty to fulfill but a treat to enjoy. I wish I could understand the difference between him and his predecessor. What exactly does a conductor do?

Meanwhile, Sarah rode a borrowed horse to a second place (Red Ribbon!) in a combined training event in New Hampshire. We are so pleased for her. Next year, when she will be riding Otter, we will be there--symphony tickets or not!

Tell me this: why am I no longer receiving posts in my email account as well as on the blog? I am not complaining--I actually prefer not getting them twice--just curious...

I'm reading

'The Girl' books of Stieg Larsson. I enjoyed the first (with the Dragon tattoo) so got the next two (for my Kindle). But I'm not so happy with the 'The Girl Who Played With Fire"--hoping that once I get into it bit further I'll get hooked. It is anxiety producing and I don't enjoy being anxious over the characters I've grown fond of...

And I enjoyed a real reading treat this morning--Times Reader. I accepted the NYT's offer of 2 weeks free subscription to the on line edition. Wow. So much easier to read and to browse on line. They have done a great job of the layout. I'm really impressed. When Bradford and Clara offered their Times on line in Oaxaca I declined because I could not imagine how that HUGE newspaper could be managed on line. But once again, I'm proven wrong!

I have really enjoyed my reading adventures since getting the Kindle. I'm amazed how many books I've read lately and how much I've enjoyed most of them. (Great that you can read a bit of the books before purchasing--I've downloaded a lot of 'samples' that I decided not to get.) But of all the ones I've read and really enjoyed "Hedgehog" is still my favorite! All my readings have been novels--nothing like Clara's new reading project. I don't think I could get through that one! For years I have not read novels but I am eating them up now.

I can't close without mentioning that I've really enjoyed Chris' new book! Really fun and a great peek into Chris' head!

hello, my name is emily adams, do you have a cindy sherman? this is what i have been repeating all week long by phone from museum to collection to gallery. i am trying to locate shermans on loan to fill individual exhibition in a venue that is dauntingly large. what else to report? well...

tuesday i went with my colleagues to a reception at the home of the american ambassador in madrid. an elderly guy caught on to our tails and before we could shake him off he introduced us to the infamous baroness thyseen, that i can now identify by her distinctive face tacked in every direction. four of us gals recapped the evening with a bottle of wine.

wednesday there was a general strike in madrid, first time in i think eight years. there was much talk all week about would like to support the cause and a few days before we received an internal email remind us that it is our legal right to go on strike, however the day´s salary would be deducted from our paychecks. on the very day i think everyone went to work; there is an overall inconformity with the strike, with the reform and zapatero alike.

thursday afterwork i went to a cuban restaurant with a co-worker. it is a small little family-run nitch owned by dapper old-school white cubans. what i like most are the daiquiris, which they serve in hansome martini glasses.

friday my friend invited me for lunch at her house, which is the easiest way to be with a six month old. she made meatloaf that was moist and satisfying. then a leisurely walk with a fill of baby news.

saturday I spent half they day enjoying the clean house, thanks to joel. in the afternoon i went to an exhibition, wandered over to the Mexican food shop for chilies, then we had an ice cream in front of the placio real to watch the sunset.

today the fall light is so golden and the air so crisp, i feel like i could eat a pumpkin.

What's being read

I'm a real kindle fan, and not only because it permits traveling light. Still, when we headed out here there were some books that we wanted to bring along that weren't available on kindle. So some modest portion of our massive over-weight charge was for a little library of mostly professional books. But a massive portion of that modest library is "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", a 1200-page stunner of a doorstop that Clara brought due to some combination of interest on the one hand and gratitude to Dad on the other, since Dad had enthusiastically encouraged Clara to read the book. (And not only Dad. Dan Savage, America's favorite sex advice columnist/podcaster, says that it is his favorite book.) Yesterday was Saturday and we went to the beach; Clara got to the Beer Hall Putsch. Today is Sunday and when I got out of bed (our bed is super comfortable) Clara was sitting on our front porch, up to the abdication of legislative rights to the Chancellor. Apparently it's a really good book.

Meanwhile I've been flying through a really neat little memoir called "My Stroke of Insight". A rising-star neuroscientist experienced an early-life stroke that incapacitated her left hemisphere, depriving her of various functions located there such as language, linear thought, the capacity for proprioception (knowing where your body ends) and other rational thinking skills. Amazingly, she recovered fully. The book explains what it was like to lose those functions and why she never really wants to go back to the way that she was before. It turns out that the left hemisphere creates our ego-centered consciousness, and that when the right hemisphere is permitted to have its way we are able to access an innate capacity for holistic and compassionate consciousness. Her description of the way that she lives her life now -- in order to preserve the capacities she gained/revealed during her stroke -- echoes almost exactly many of the prescriptions provided by Tara Brach and Thich Naht Han (the only Buddhist writers I've read, I'm sure there are other better examples) for mindful living. However she comes at it from a purely scientific, physiological angle. It's really fascinating.

Otherwise, Clara and I have both settled into work. She finished her outline for a month-long workshop on documentary filmmaking. I'm reading up on all the secondary literature about land conflict and the judiciary in Burundi. Of which, it turns out, there is plenty! In the evenings we have done some cool stuff. We saw a really good concert on Friday of this singer Stephen Sogo. Great fusion of traditional tunes and afrobeat. Earlier in the evening we were pulled away from our work by a ton of drumming noise coming from across the street. We checked in out and down at the far end of the soccer fields a drum and dance troupe was practicing. It was completely awesome. They were doing some crazy moves that Matt (Clara's brother) should not be made aware of, lest he get inspired -- there's a real risk of broken furniture, limbs, pride.

B

Kenny is painting again

And that is a good thing! He seems cheerier these days. I guess we all are because the days are so beautiful here right now. A couple weeks ago my friend, Lani, brought over a xylophone for Kenny to fool around with. But he did not touch it until this week when he spent a little time hitting the wooden bars making lovely sounds. That and getting back into painting have been clues that he is a bit happier--more like his 'old' self.

He has lots of company--never enough, of course--Valarie comes twice a week to help him shower and dress and listen to his stories and reports! Basil comes once a week to have lunch with Kenny and catch up on family news--does not seem to me that there is much family news here but Kenny finds enough to chatter away for an hour or so! And dear Alice is here once a week and has begun bringing breakfast tacos to share with Kenny--so they have a good chat to start the day. Kay came by recently as has Pam. Lani came to have lunch with Kenny a week or so ago. Those visits really brighten Kenny's days and probably play a major role in his brighter mood.

Speaking of old self, Kenny will be 50 years old next month. Does that sound as incredible to you as it does to me? Where did all the years go? He has been pushing Basil to arrange a birthday party--like the one Basil gave him some years back, maybe at 40. I think they are working on the details over lunch--I don't know the plans yet.