Guess who this is!

My future daughter-in-law.

Ben shared this happy bit of news with me this week! I could not be happier for them--a great match IMHO!

PSS - photos from Joel

Here are a few photos from Joel -- much better than before. Sorry that I'm sending two pictures of everyone wearing the team jerseys. It's bad enough that we have even one... but they're too good not to pass on.

PS

For some reason the tail end of my last message got cut off. It's just as well, though, since the tail end was on a different and separately-worthy topic:

"Last Sunday's party was also the culmination of Pam's visit here, too. She stayed a bit longer than expected to help see us through, and it was a good thing as there was tons of prep to do. It also meant the I got to see her here, which was a treat! There are some great photos of the party, and from our whole family -- Texas, Mexico, and California represented -- gearing up in a set of tshirts that Sarah had made. But I'll let someone else post those!"

I still don't have the best pictures from the party, but here are a few that I do have, sort of randomly, and that are worth passing on.











That last one -- I don't even know who he is, but his expression seems to capture the spirit of things pretty well!

Congratulations to me!

I just thought I'd congratulate myself here for getting engaged to Clara. Last Sunday, at our whole brood party, while talking in the barn we decided that we would really like to be married. (We spent the last year introducing ourselves as husband and wife, and I guess it just felt right!). A few of this blog's readers have met Clara and know that she's dynamite. I'm very happy and think that this is one more very lucky thing that has happened in a very lucky life. The most recent picture of us that I have on my phone here is this one, in which we're marching off officiously into the sunset. Or away from. It doesn't matter: the journey is the destination.

from Pam

I had something to share and thought our sometime blog would be the perfect place. I began the day attempting to post it from twinkie's computer to no avail. Then tried it from the iPad and it looked as if that might be a go, but it would only let me type in the title, no text. While waiting for T in N Burwick I thought I would play with it and see what happened. It appeared to be willing to let me type the text, but of course I did not have the recipe with me that was the focus of the post in the first place! It's always something, isn't it? What was intended for everyone, is now going to a select few.

As most of you know, Twinkie and Wayne are hosting a little gathering in August to celebrate the fact that all of their chicks will be together under one, possibly two roofs (rooves?). Bradford designed a very clever invite that even stated it would be a whole brood party-get it?

T had the notion that a menu that involved grilled corn and pulled pork tacos could not be a bad thing. To that end we all began research and development. We tried every recipe we were offered or found on our own. Then Emily mentioned having made some recently that she thought was quite wonderful. We tried it yesterday and had to agree. She says it is called Cochinita Pibil. This is how you make it:

Create a marinade using:
1T achiote paste-we found it in liquid and powder form so I combined the two to make a paste
1/4 t cumin
12 peppercorns
5 whole allspice
4 cloves garlic
1/8 hot paprika, optional, though I included it
1/4 c orange juice
1 T salt

Pour this mixture over serving sized pieces of pork. We have tried so many of late I am not sure if ours was shoulder, tenderloin....no idea. Marinate the meat, wrapped in banana leaves, and let it sit in the fridge for 6 hours or overnight!

Here comes the fun part-lightly sear over open flame or in an iron skillet banana leaves that you have cut so that each piece can be individually wrapped. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake the meat in a covered casserole for 2-2 1/2 hours and the meat is soft, soft, soft. We were very pleased with the results. Believe me, we are in a position to judge the quality of the dish! I put our wrapped parcels in an iron skillet and covered it with foil.

We had to go to Portland to get banana leaves, good tortillas, and the achiote spices. There is a Latina bodega on Congress that turned out to have everything we needed-unlike Whole Foods and their ilk!

The menu is as follows:
Bloody Beer- modela beer with tomato juice and bloody mary spices-sounds awful but is actually very light and refreshing; guacamole, chips, and chipotle peanuts from Rick Bayless

Grilled Corn

Tacos with a salsa bar provided by Joel!

Watermelon salad

Some sort of dessert provided by Clara and her pal Bradford

My earlier attempt at this post was much better, but at least you now have our menu and can give it a go for yourselves!

Hope you are staying cool and comfy!

Kate, am I going to miss your visit all together? Please stay until I am home!

Love you all!

The Perfect Pulled Pork!

The Quest for Perfect Pulled Pork!

the mothers

Happy Mother's Day--to those honored and to those honoring mothers! Lots of mothers connected to this blog. MaMaMa, mother and grandmother, is the inspiration for it. She produced 3 mothers. And we three have put our hands producing mothers and potential mothers. And so the work continues!

In the memory vein, I was thinking about MeMe, MaMaMa's mother, for whom I have a fond attachment. Thinking about that attachment and the opposite relation to GaGa, daddy's mother, produced some atypical thoughts. Mother, Twinkie and I lived with MeMe and Daddy Doc during daddy's navy service years. And MeMe died in 1945--I was 8 and Twinkie was 5. So we did not have much time with MeMe and not so many clear memories. Yet, I feel great affection for MeMe. GaGa on the other hand outlived our childhood and our times with her were more in number yet still few and far apart. I have strong feelings of love for her and of being loved by her. From GaGa I felt reserve and a bit of criticism. But to be fair, I don't remember sitting in MeMe's lap or getting a hug from her. I remember her being very occupied with domestic activity (as was GaGa). And the only real clear memory (and maybe only from family stories) is how she broke Twinkie of thumb sucking by very firmly telling her to "take that thumb out of your mouth". Perhaps my love for MeMe came from expressions of mother's and Aunt Pud's great love of her. And we know that the distance we felt from GaGa was greatly the influenced by her rejection of mother as a wife for daddy.

Hmmm, I seem to have fallen into consideration of the sources of love! For each of my dear readers I think that my love of you is based on our individual relationships which we've forged together--which are unique, strong and very valuable to me.

Love, Gay

Cue Daft Punk: one more time

Hi everyone -

It has been waay too long since I wrote.  At this point it's almost too late, for Burundi purposes, since we leave here on Sunday.  (Yay!)  But I might as well tie this one off with a last letter.

I don't think I've written since January - yikes! - before I went to Mali.  Um, what to say about that?  Three things to say about that.  First, another great concert.  Last year I went to this pretty famous concert in TImbuktu.  It had a weird vibe because its exoticism attracts lots of foreigners like me, and that sets up this unpleasant segregated situation between ticketpayers and non-ticketpayers (euphemism for rich and poor, euphemism for white and black).  This year the concert was in Segou, a nice but unremarkable city in central Mali which attracted all of the same great musicians, fewer travelers, and many more Malians.  It is where Malians go to hear Malian music, and it was a great party.  My favorite find was Toumani Diabate.  I think he's pretty well known by people that are into African pop, which is to say that I'm not revealing any hidden gem here, but still it's nice music.

Second thing from Mali: there's just no end to the shit I don't know.  Last year I had interviewed this village herder, a dynamic and articulate guy in a village who had been organizing other herders in the area to oppose commercial agriculture.  This year I wanted to follow up so I called him, tracked him down, and it turns out he has an office, long story short he's the Regional Director of the Ministry of Agriculture.  Here is him last year, we're in his one-room hut in a village in the middle of nowhere, in the corner is the gourd that he used to serve me yoghurt from his goats.

  

This year he was wearing a dark suit sitting in an office with leather sofas, and no I didn't take a picture of him.  It was a surprise.  Also, I stayed again with a friend of a friend in Bamako, a young family that has a stifling gender dynamic.  The wife basically never leaves the house, and she's unhappy about it.  I have ended up getting along better with the wife than the husband.  At the end of the trip -- my having lived in their house for three weeks over the course of a year -- she confides in me that she is only one of two wives.  The guy has a whole second family that I had no clue about.  How do I not know this shit?

The third thing from Mali is professional, it's about land law, and it's kind of boring.

While I was in Mali Clara met her friend Aude in Tanzania for a week.  They took a 5-day trek through a park.  "Trek" might sound kind of dramatic, but they did set out with a guard a cook and a porter and lost themselves in 6-ft. elephant grass before they realized nobody knew where they were going and turned back to hire a guide.  It turns out that through the elephant grass was the right direction.  On the 36-hour bus ride back (which was her fourth trip like that, since it was the same bus we'd taken to Zanzibar in December) she watched all four Rambos.  The guy next to her said that Rambo "can't be a white guy, he's too tough."

In March, for both of us I think it's fair to say, we sort of struggled to keep our work going.  Clara had finished her training workshop and wanted to find partners to make more films with.  There were a few people that she wanted to work with and who wanted to work with her, but it proved hard to get things going.  Some of that was due to the fact that people had other stuff going on -- one of the participants in her workshop, and a good friend who Clara wanted to work with, took his film to Cameroon and then Burkina Faso, where he won a prestigious award.  Some of it was due to social politics beyond her control and, frankly, beyond our ken.  People are affiliated with group X or person Y, and they get suspicious of other partnerships develop, etc.  Things were going, but falteringly.  For my part, some of the boring things I learned in Mali made me abandon, more or less, the thesis I had been working on.  It proposed some other ideas that I was following up on back here, but none took off.  (Which is to say that I didn't take off with them, but let's not make it personal.)  What we were doing in the meantime:

In April things had picked up for both of us.  Clara has been working on two really interesting films, one on a fascinating corruption crusader here and another on a fascinating gay rights activist.  Both fascinating!  It has been cool to get a better view on how local activists work on local political issues.  She's also been helping some of her friends here polish up some of their projects.  I have brought together a couple people that are interested in land research, one a statistician and the other a policy wonk, and we have been developing a program for a long-term land rights survey.  I was hoping that it would be funded before I left; it isn't, but it has plenty of momentum now and I'm sure it will go ahead.

These are, for both of us, perfectly respectable outcomes from the year here.  Still, we've both spent a lot of time rationalizing why it is substantially less than we had anticipated.  Part of it is because integrating yourself in a community is hard -- as Eve Lyn diplomatically pointed out before we left (you were right!).  There have also been interesting ways in which ingratiating ourselves here has seemed particularly hard.  For me, it was the first time that I had tried to work outside of a big institution.  It was interesting to see how things work once I'd taken off the rose-tinted glasses of having a budget to spend, jobs to offer, a logo to flash around, etc.  In other words, to deal with people on their own terms.  For Clara, it was the first time she'd lived in a place with a history and a political culture that was so unwelcoming.  Because of the colonial history, presumably, the social and political role of a white foreigner is to a large extent predetermined here, in ways that it wasn't for her in Latin America.  For me the challenge was seeing, for her the challenged was being seen.  Funny.

An anecdote from yesterday captures this pretty well.  The annual film festival is going on now.  (All of her workshop films were submitted, and one will probably win an award.)  Clara was invited to a panel discussion.  She was invited to speak first.  She said something about how it's hard to make opportunities to learn when people only get three days to shoot a film.  The guy across from her is an established filmmaker from South Africa.  He said "What I'm going to say is harsh, but I'm shocked to hear that people are being trained to make a film in 3 days.  It's impossible.  It takes 3-5 years to learn to be a filmmaker.  Africans deserve real film training.  But you [Clara] come her and do a 3-day training because you get paid to do it."  (It wasn't three days of training, it was three days of shooting, but whatever.)  He was angry.  Another guy seconded.  Another guy elaborated, saying something about how it's "dangerous" to give young people cameras without full training.  This 3-day theme then drove much of the discussion.  Clara was less offended that she had right to be, and responded with more poise than I would have.  At the end one of the workshop participants spoke up and said that the workshop was great, that other opportunities had come out of it, and "anyway, what have the old generation of African filmmakers done to train us? People come from Canada and America to work with us and I'm happy for it."

We talked a lot about that afterwords, you can imagine.  Basically, I think, what was going on was run-of-the-mill elitism: an old guard that had worked hard to establish themselves was resentful of the upstarts working in a somewhat easier social and technological environment (in the case of Clara, much easier).  But then that wrong-but-benign point gets racialized because the politics is racialized.  And with good reason.  It's hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for the South African guy to establish himself as a young black filmmaker in apartheid South Africa, and how often he must have been told that he wasn't properly trained, that just picking up a camera doesn't make one a filmmaker.  He was not really talking to or about Clara or her work, he was addressing a long-standing situation in which Clara has just a cameo role.  And it isn't just him.  Even the workshop participant who spoke up for Clara's workshop couldn't just say that the workshop was good, she had to racialize it by challenging the African guy to be as helpful as the North American visitors.  People have dense political relationships that personal characteristics can't always cut through, and sometimes it's hard to blame them for that.  After all, they live here and we don't.  Clara put it really well: "The thing that makes it so unpleasant -- that I'm not being seen for who I am -- is also the thing that makes it understandable."  Basically, this has been a very interesting year for both of us to think about what it means to be adjacent to a community but never really part of it.

In other news, two months ago we were having dinner with our neighbors when we heard tiny squeaks from the nearby shrub, squeaks that were coming from a 3-week old kitten.  We've adopted him and made ourselves into a ridiculous caricature of a young couple acting out a nesting instinct.  He's really cute, though.  Almost all the time.

We also took a trip to Congo.  Bukavu is a nice town and I got to see some friends in Goma.  I also went up to Uganda to see some colleagues from when I worked there, which was really nice.  We've taken a couple trips to Rwanda, which is sort of surreal because it's a really pleasant country that has spent the past 20 years starting wars all over the region.  Here in Burundi the prognostications of insurrection have lost their novelty, the latest being that a recent 10% hike in the price of beer will be the tipping point.  Stranger things have happened.  Other very big news is that Charlie and Jane, Clara's parents, came for a visit.  It was completely awesome, and it deserves a whole letter all by itself, except that most of the people reading this letter were either here at the time or have heard it from them directly, and because this letter has gone on too long already.

Lots of love to everyone, and we look forward to seeing you at home!

Bradford and Clara

memories

Well, that got me going. I think it would be great to take off on sharing family memories. Family stories are so great--but they get lost between the generations. This blog might be a great vehicle for sharing family stories--the good, the bad and the terrible!

On the cooking vein, I think about GaGa--dad's mom. She was a fabulous cook! We mostly partook of her cooking on the big holidays--before mom and dad separated--we would drive to Lockheart--about 45 miles--for the holiday meal. And it would be a feast. Funny that one of my favorite food memories is of her green beans! She cooked them down, and down, and down in ham juices! And they were great. Then I learned, as an adult, that you should not do that because you cooked all the healthy part away. Well, I don't know but they were really good! And she made pickled peaches that were wonderful. And lemon chess pie! Because GaGa (and Big Josh?) rejected mom and make her feel unwelcome we girls were never close to dad's family. Only as an adult have I developed a new respect for GaGa. She was incredibly talented. Beside being a great cook, she did beautiful embroidery, made quilts, painted china, tatted lace edging on her linens. She had a garden where she grew her vegetables, she had hens for eggs and meat, she had a glorious iris bed in front of the house with an incredible bed of mint! She was competent, productive and accomplished. She played the organ for church services, keep boarders in an upstairs apartment, was the high school principal and math teacher! On the other hand, she was not warm and loving toward us--nor with mom. So no bond was developed. Hummm, having problems between mother and daughter-in-law seems to be a recurring theme. Hopefully, that is over come in the current generation!

My memory of Big Josh is that he was a sweetie-pie.

I expect tht I have opened the door for serious disagreement! Welcome! Coming up next, memories from Jefferson!

Starting Over...

Our stack of comments got wobbly, so here we are in a new place with fresh footing...

Margaret's comment got me going. I said, "whoa": I don't think of loaves of bread when I think of Mamama, only of her non-pareil dinner rolls. And, of course, the closely related cinnamon rolls.

Other than that I really don't think of food at all in relation to my childhood at 112 Charles (as opposed to that childhood in Jefferson, which holds vivid memories of the cookie jar with paper-thin molasses cookies.( Did Mother make those and, if so, why were they never in San Antonio?) Of hand-turned peach ice cream, the peaches from the yard; and, oh yes, the malted-milk ice cream cones that have been replicated only in the Grand Place in Brussels, of all places.

Which is not to say I don't have any Jones food favorites. Fig preserves Oh, yes, hers were the best. Liver and onions? Hmmm hmmm good. I miss that still, since no one else I know has any wish for such at all. The last time I ate them was while pregnant with Sarah. D.C. had (has?) a cafeteria that served terrific liver and onions, near my office, and I used to go there once a week or so because iron was good for growing babies. Wayne and I took a long, laborious (apt word, that) from the hospital to the cafeteria in the hope of coaxing out our overdue Sarah. I was so exhausted from the difficult "false" labor (don't get me started on "false" labor!) that tears were streaming down my cheeks and people on the street must have been certain that Wayne was refusing to "do right" by me.

But none of this is what I said a couple of hours ago. Not at all. What I said before, in the post that never made it to the posting, led me to conclude that Mother didn't really have much to do with us and food. But she had everything to do with us and this blog, with our doing it, with us as adults still striving to stay in touch, to be a family. Not nothing, that.

No-knead bread

I've been meaning to try making no-knead bread for a few months, and finally did it today. The quality of the bread is pretty amazing. I'm sure several of you must be familiar with this technique, which Mark Bittman featured in a NYT column in 2006. I only recently became aware of it, and as a bread-making novice I was amazed at how easy it was. I'd say the amount of actual work (including cleanup) is about 30 to 45 minutes.

The basic idea is to make a very wet dough with a small amount of yeast, and let it rise for 12-18 hours. The actual baking is done in a closed pot, so that the moisture from the bread is trapped inside the pot and creates a nice, thick crust (most commercial bakers have special ovens that keep a high moisture level with sprayers to produce this crust). For the more complete explanation, I'll point you to Bittman himself: here's the recipe, and here's the article explaining why it works so well.

Here are a couple of photos:

storing herbs

In case you have not found a good way to keep herbs fresh, here is what I am doing now. (Formerly, I put a batch of fresh herbs in a small jar with a little water and loosely covered it with a plastic produce bag. It worked great but we were forever knocking over the jar or small glass and spilling contents. Frustrating! And it took up a lot space especially if storing several herbs.)

A picture book lesson:

You will use 2 Ziploc sandwich bags and a soaking wet paper towel:

One bag has the rim turned back making a cuff.

The paper towel goes into the first bag, the herbs go into the one with the cuff.

The cuffed bag of herbs goes into the first bag which is sealed shut. The cuffed bag of herbs is left open inside the sealed bag. So the herb is in a nice humid environment without being wet. If there is a large bunch of herb to store, just use larger plastic bags.

This basil has been in the refrigerator for a week or more--pinched off my new plants to encourage branching. It is just as fresh as when just picked. The little bags just go into the hydrator, taking almost no room!

I am excited about this because I have planted a LOT of herbs and they all need cutting back to encourage healthy growth--but I won't want to use all of them that regularly. I'll have a whole produce department of herbs waiting on me in my own refrigerator.

Now, I'm not eager to hear from you that you've always kept your herbs stored this way! But you can remark that it is a very clever way to store herbs. Cheers!

A story...

I posted a story about my evening yesterday on my newish blog, Scattered Work. Then it occurred to me that this might be a good post for the MZJ blog. So I'm going to link yall to the story of the Southside Onion Hunt.

Enjoy!

Spring

What wonderful weather we are having. Today it was 75• though the weatherman predicted it to be higher. It seems that we are never as hot as predicted or recorded--maybe the trees or because we are a bit north of the city or less asphalt.

A bit ago I mentioned that I really wanted an herb garden. Jim spent a couple days over the weekend digging out a strip among our driveway and edging with stones he brought from Sisterdale. Then he brought in 2 truckloads of rich soil. Today I went out to buy some herbs--unfortunately the nursery I like had a 'herb seminar' on Saturday and SOLD OUT of the herbs--almost. So I came home with a paltry selection to plant today, will go back next week for more. Jim also bought a soaker hose and planted it in the new garden. We're all set with herb for the kitchen--in a few weeks or so! I am surprised and delighted with my new garden. Happy lady here.

family stories

Yesterday Reed (age 6 1/2) and Jack (age just 3) spent the afternoon with us. We worked in the studio, watered plants and helped Jimmy cook salmon for our dinner on the patio. After dinner, as I washed the dishes, Jim read "Pumpkin Soup" to the boys. Then the boys got out a Tommy Train game and were playing on the living room floor. Reed came to me and wanted to play a game. We played a round or two of tick-tack-toe. Then switched to a new (for Reed) game of "No Dice". I had not played it in a while and needed to study the directions. At one point I looked around and noticed Jack had given up on "Tommy Train" and I said I thought he must be watching TV with Kenny--I'd go get him as soon as Reed and I finished our game. Suddenly it was almost 7:00 and I had promised Sara to have them home between 6:30 and 7. So I went back to Kenny's room to get Jack and put the boys in the car--but Jack was not there. Nor was he anywhere. Not in any of the bedrooms, the closets, etc, etc, etc! After we all searched the house and yard frantically Jim and Reed got in the car to drive around looking for him. They stopped a couple joggers and enlisted them in the search. I called Karen to alert her and she and Lauren walked over, looking for a little lost boy on the way. Out front I encountered our neighbor and told him we had lost a 3 year old. John was certain Jack could not have opened the door and so must be in the house. But I assured him we had searched the house, several times, calling "Jack" over and over again. So John and his wife Judi joined the search with flashlights. I was on my umpteenth round of looking in all the closets when I heard Karen call me from the living room saying she'd found Jack.

Asleep on the floor of the library. I had turned on the library lights and looked under the table--but not beyond it! We all gathered in library, Karen, Lauren, John, Judi, Jim, Reed and me chattering away and he never woke! Jim picked him up and carried him to the car. Jack woke a bit when Jim put him into the car seat! Happy ending to a scary story.

Now what makes that one of another 'family story' is the time Bradford went missing. After a frantic search of house and yard the volunteer search/rescue team of Kennebunkport was called. Sirens set off, alters sent out, everyone in K'port searching for that little lost boy--who was finally found sound asleep in a closet at home! Must we ever relive our past?

Just snow?

When I took this, I just wanted you to see what I had returned to. Now I look at the scene and think of little girls with melting tears. I think of souls changing forms. And I realize how very unsoulful I am.

We had a bit of rain, which reduced the pile by a few inches, but it still stands pretty high. The good news is the sun, though you can't tell by this pic, is coming in brighter and staying around a lot longer. If we eat early enough we can almost get through dinner without turning on an overhead. That was always Donald's criterion: "Winter is over: we made it through dinner without the lamp!" Now I have started shouting the good news, too.

a memory, a science lesson and more

You will remember, now that I remind you, of my trip to Japan in 2004 with some potters to visit pottery sites there.

One of my most cherished memories was an evening visit to the home and pottery of Euan Craig. Euan was born in Austraila and moved to Japan as a young adult to study Japanese ceramics--he apprenticed with Shimaoka, a Japanese 'national treasure' who died recently. He later married a Japanese woman, Mika, and they have 3 (or 4?) children. The evening that we visited his studio he was in a rush to get some pots thrown that would be part of a major exhibition in Tokyo. His studio is a small room off the kitchen--part of their home. While he was throwing pots and entertaining us his little children were running in and out of the studio, reaching into the area where he was working to get bits of clay to play with and coming close to destroying some of the freshly thrown pots. I got so nervous watching the children around the wet pots I left the room for a few minutes and walked outside and found his wood burning kiln which he had built.

So that is the background to my appreciation of this piece from his current post. I'd love for you to read it and then to tell me about your thoughts. (His blog is: http://euancraig.blogspot.com)

_______________________________________

Sora [daughter] sits with me as I fire the kiln, and we talk of many things. I explain to her about the trees using sunlight as energy to split the carbon dioxide in the air into carbon, which becomes the wood, and free oxygen which we need to breath. How, when I burn the wood, the flame releases the carbon and recombines it with oxygen to create energy and heat. How the hot, free carbon flows hungrily through the kiln, dragging oxygen from the materials in the clay, reducing them and changing their structure and colour. How everything in the universe is made of the same atoms, constantly combining, separating and recombining to become all the things around us, and that we are a part of that. That everything that is, always was, and always will be, it is merely changing form throughout eternity.

She is quiet for a while, as the heat of the kiln climbs and flames come blasting from the blow hole at the top of the door, like dragons tongues licking from the depths of the kiln.

"Dad," she says quietly, "What is Death?"

I look at her. "What do you think it is?" I ask.

"I don't know, really, that's why I'm asking you."

"Well," I say, smiling, "I think it's important to think about what life is first. Our bodies and all the atoms in them follow the same rules as the rest of the universe, so when we die, they change and become other things. Our spirit, our self, exists as surely as our bodies, does it not? The you that looks out through your eyes and sees the world and calls it beautiful is as real as the eyes that it looks through, but it cannot be measured. Yet it is, as much and no less as everything else that is, so how can it ever cease to be, if nothing else in the universe does?"

She nods slowly, a look of consideration on her face. The wind picks up and snow begins to fall once more. A flurry of snow flakes swirls into the kiln shed and a single flake sticks briefly to her cheek, before melting and running down to her chin like a tear drop.


I reach out and gently wipe it away. "I believe," I say,"That there is a great and universal spirit that pervades the universe, though we cannot see it nor measure it. It is like water, amorphous and all pervading. But in special circumstances, it crystallises into individual souls, like snow flakes. Every one is different, individual, special, and through all eternity it will never be repeated. For it's brief time it is the most beautiful and perfect crystallisation of the universal spirit, and though it may be surrounded by overwhelming numbers of other flakes, lost in drifts, buffeted by storms, and feels cold and alone sometimes, it partakes of the essence that is life itself and it is never really alone. And when its time is done, it will melt and return to the water from which it came, and flow once again as part of the universal spirit. It may, one day, be part of another snow flake, but the stuff of which it is made has always been and will never not be."

I hug her as the wind begins to buffet the kiln shed. "I believe that death is no more than the melting of a snow flake and it's return to the water from which it came. It is nothing to fear. What is much more important is to revel in the beauty and wonder of that snow flake, for it is unique and the miracle of its existence makes the universe a richer and more beautiful place."

She smiles at me. "Thank you, Dad. I love you."

"I love you, too." I say. "It's getting too cold out here, you'd better go inside."

Now that I live in Georgia, going home to San Antonio is as exciting to me as Bradford's exotic travels must be to him. Thought some sort of explanation was necessary for my mundane travel post to follow Bradford's! That being said...

I love being home! It was a quick trip compared to my month long vacation last summer. I was there just a week but spent lots of quality time with my precious nephew, Ben, and the rest of the family. I ate wonderful meals at Piatti's, Los Barrios, Bistro Bakery, La Fonda on Main, Il Sogno, The Palm, Central Market, Jim's, Thai House, The Monterrey, Neiman Marcus, and Claire's and Mom's house.

Before Chris arrived, I stayed with my friend and running buddy, Carol, in the house I used to rent from her where she now lives. Started each day with a run in Alamo Heights or on the Riverwalk. Went for a Mission Trail bike ride with friends and Jim and Ben Judson one sunny morning. The weather was spectacular all week long and we took advantage.

Since the reason for the trip was Chris's Air Force One conference, we spent lots of time on the Riverwalk with the other advance agents, talking and drinking--A LOT. That's me with Colonel Turner, the President's pilot...a celebrity in that crowd.

The highlight of the trip, however, was bonding with Baby Ben. A 3 year old now, much different than the 2 1/2 year old I left last August. He's a talker, a music maker, a joke teller, a playground runner, an animal lover, a sweet singer and 100% boy. I miss him terribly and every minute with him is priceless. If other family members want to chime in on their positive experiences with nieces/nephews traveling across the country or ocean to visit aunts/uncles, please feel free.

We all gathered at Sara and Justin's one night for a casual family gathering. Such fun to be together and share big things happening in our lives. Conrad has the lead in his school's production of Aladdin in March. Lauren is taking the SAT. Justin was recently in D.C. on the same stage as Michelle Obama, both presenting to a national audience. Many of us have new jobs and projects we're excited about.

So thank you San Antonio and my wonderful family for all the good times. I can't wait to be with you again!

PS: Hi!

[Not sure why this got cut off from the last post...]

But we were there to be underwater, and it was very cool. I've only been diving once and I didn't like it -- I found all the gear to be way too distracting. I'm converted. It was several days of the courses, but since all the "training dives" were on the reefs, the whole thing was pretty exciting. We saw a bunch of animals, and bunches of animals. I never really appreciated what a coral is before -- that was nice. It's like an apartment block. So cool.

We went back down to Stone Town for a couple days. Learned about the history there. It was a hub of trade around the Indian Ocean rim. Interesting how for most people through most of history, the action all happened along coasts and in the bodies of water between them. Going inland was hard and unrewarding -- maps sort of petered out in interior lands. Now it's the opposite (except maybe for the oceanographers out there). Land is where the action is, we crisscross it with highways the same way that people used to crisscross oceans along sailing routes, and crossing water now seems so difficult and unrewarding that our awareness of it sort of trails off a few miles off the coast.

Also, Swahili culture is very mixed, which is cool. Arabs, Indians and Africans lived there. It was a slaving town, but they had this custom where slaves purchased as wives became free if widowed, and the children of free men and slave wives were free. The difference from American slavery shows, it seems, how our racism was separate from (and longer-lasting than) our slavery.

The food was disappointing, all around. Nothing to be said about it, really.

We went across to a smaller island, Pemba, for the rest of the stay. We rented a scooter for a day and explored around the south of the island. Ate my last octopus, for the rest of the year anyway (new year's resolution). Talked with some shipbuilders. Went to an outlying island for a day of snorkeling and admiring hermit crabs. The island is actually a massive coral rock that rose up out of the water during some ice age. Took another scooter to the northern tip of the island to a cute little joint that was full but had a tent and a beach. Then came back, by boat and bus.

Since then the massive news has been Clara's completion of her film workshop. It was a two-week sprint to finish up the six films, with the constant traffic of cineastes from December culminating in a 48-hr sleepless session and then, on Saturday, a premiere at the French Cultural Center. It was a huge success. The films were great (some greater than others, of course, but all great) the house was packed, the workshop participants dressed for a prom, and just the right combination of earnestness and irreverence from everyone.

Otherwise, things have been continuing along. My work is going ahead. Less photogenic: here's a photo of a lady salvaging some carrots from her field after government tractors plowed it to make way for a new presidential palace.

Tomorrow we're leaving to go to Rwanda for a couple days. We've heard really interesting things about Kigali and we want to check it out. Rwanda's president apparently runs a very tight ship -- too tight, as free societies are supposed to go. So it might be interesting to see the differences between there and here. We're going for just a couple days, and then I'm going to Mali for a few weeks to follow up on stuff from last year.

Missing you all, and the snow -

Hi!

Hi everyone -

It has been a while since I wrote, hasn't it? Not since Christmas.

Clara and I took a bus to Das Es Salaam and then the boat to Zanzibar. For those of you who think that the journey is the destination, I can report that the bus was 28 hours going (36 back), and that the boat caused some illness in some quarters, but that in both cases a sort of hibernation stasis allowed it to pass easily enough. I read recently about 36,000 year-old bacteria that was rehydrated and sprung back into action. It was like that.

We took diving courses on Zanzibar at a place that was really best experienced underwater. We found this really nice dive shop online and went there. It turns out that it was at this super touristy strip. Big all-inclusives where people had to wear wristbands and this kind of thing. The word was that the government has sold the entire eastern shore of the island to the Italian mafia, something that I've recently learned governments are capable of doing. Sure enough, there were lots of Italian-speakers there, including these young Maasai guys who come over from the mainland to sell baubles.

Clara and I had lunch with one of them. I mentioned, as a pack of Italian men strode out of the ocean, water dripping from hair all over their bodies except their heads -- and I mean all over their bodies seeing as how they like those speedos and all -- that Italian men are a lot like Massai men: proud. The young guy having lunch with us didn't see the resemblance. We were talking in a combination of Swahili and Italian, and so we were having trouble getting the concept of pride across. I said that everywhere Italian guys go, they are always the same. Also, everywhere you see a Maasai guy he is always wearing the red wraps and the jewelry and all that flair up in their hair. In both cases it is only their sheer unselfconsciousness that keeps them from being totally ridiculous. It doesn't occur to them to change. The Maasai guy totally agreed with this. "No, we don't want to change." After a reflective pause he added, "the Americans here all want to be rastas."

Birthday celebration

What a great week. Catherine and Wayne came from Maine to celebrate my birthday--well not exactly "to" celebrate the birthday but be present at my birthday celebration time! (You'll have to ask them for an explanation.)

It has been a great week--lots of good eats along the way.

It began Saturday with Wayne 'sleeping-over' at the Sisterdale ranch with Jim and his cousin, Reed. While the boys attended to meat-gathering Pam, Catherine and Gay dined at one of San Antonio's great restaurants, The Lodge. A memorable evening.

Sunday Chris took the 'girls' on a private, guided tour of a show at San Antonio Museum of Art featuring Egyptian artifacts from the Brooklyn Museum, titled "Life After Death" or something to that effect. Chris has taken several tours through the show (and SAMA's permanent collection of Egyptian artifacts--including several pieces owned by the famous collectors: Karen Keach and Chris Karcher) about which he is very well schooled. That was a treat.

Monday was the birthday with a gathering of the clan to celebrate.

Tuesday Ben and Callie took us to another great San Antonio restaurant--Italian this time. Really great meal! And that evening, Basil took the whole group to Paesano's for another great Italian dinner.

Wednesday Wayne was scheduled to return home--but bad weather in Boston kept him here till Thursday afternoon. Wednesday evening we baked salmon for our dinner at home.

We had a great Mexican dinner Thursday noon before taking Wayne to the airport to catch his flight home.

Speaking of weather. It was very disappointing that our winter wet, cold days set in as the Adams arrived in San Antonio and have persisted throughout their stay. Too bad. We were having beautiful weather before their arrival.

Friday Catherine's friend Chrlynn who lives in Austin arranged for a weekend get-away in Castroville. Word has it that it was a great weekend with lots of giggles and chuckles--though not much to report on the food front.

I managed to get sick on Friday--as Catherine was leaving town with Charlynn--which put me to bed for all of Saturday. But by Sunday I was on the mend and will be raring to go on Monday when we hope to close out the visit with one last great restaurant!

Wow, what a celebration! I imagine we all gained pounds--not intending to put a number to it!

As a PS I must add that in anticipation of the Adams' arrival we finally got the rug from Oaxaca hung. We are delighted--more than we expected. It is a great addition to our living room.