The puppy who chose freedom

Saturday evening we had some American friends at the house, and we all walked down to the doner shop together for dinner.  As we settled down at the cafe tables to eat, a puppy was making the rounds begging for handouts.  She was thin but not emaciated, mostly brown with white socks on her front paws and black and white stripes on her muzzle.

The kids have been wanting a pet for quite a while.  We had some turtles for a while in Kosova, but they died.  We've never had the conditions to keep a cat or dog.  Since Luke was born, we've shared a yard with the landlord (minus the two years during that time that we were on Stateside assignment).  Another factor is that we've tried to keep our house welcoming to our Muslim neighbors, many of whom are disgusted by indoor pets.  Then there's the issue of our lives straddling two continents.  We stay in Europe for four years then go back to the States for a year, then back to Europe again.  What do you do with a dog when it's time to move back and forth across the Atlantic?

I offered the kids compromises.  What about a hamster?  A guinea pig?  A nice rabbit?  But they weren't interested.  We have some colleagues here in Macedonia who work with the same organization we do, and they keep a dog.  It turns that taking a pet between countries does require some extra work but nothing insurmountable.  I know that my kids are growing up, and deep down I guess I feel that their childhood would have been deficient if they never had a dog or cat.  So I promised them that when we looked for a house, we would try to find one that had a yard where we could keep a dog.

One of the first things I noticed about our present house the first time I saw it was that tucked among the weeds and trash was a crudely made doghouse.  This was clearly a yard where it was possible to keep a dog.  (It turns out that the former owner kept, not one, but four dogs.  I'm starting to gather that a lot of neighbors were grateful to see him go!)  

So there we were at the doner shop with the kids pulling that, "Please, dad, can we keep her?" thing, and I said ok.  The black and white stripes on her muzzle suggested a badger, so I proposed the name Bella after a badger character in the book I've been reading to the kids at bedtime.  

Lydia carried Bella in her arms for the five minute walk home.   I could see that it was a bit of  a struggle for her.  While the dog was far from fully grown, she wasn't tiny either.  Halfway there I offered to relieve Lydia of her burden, but she insisted on going the distance herself.  

When we got within sight of home, I realized that we had a problem.  The house is surrounded by an iron fence with big gaps everywhere.  Only a fairly large dog would be unable to crawl out.  I don't know how the former owner kept them in unless he bought them when they were big.  Or maybe he kept them chained up.  I just hoped that once Bella tasted the affection (not to mention the puppy chow) that we had to offer, she would choose to stay.

The kids (our two and six guests) and Bella romped and played for hours that evening.  Lydia went to the grocery store on the corner and bought dog food, and we were amazed at how quickly the puppy wolfed it down.  It soon became evident that we were going to have to teach Bella some manners.  She nipped at the heels of the little ones and made them cry.  But overall we all found her very charming. 

During the course of the evening she darted in and out of the fence a few times but always came back. When our guests left and Lydia and Luke had to go inside for the night, Bella cried and whimpered at the door for a while as if to say, "Please come out and play with me some more!  Please don't leave me by myself!"

I awoke the next morning with apprehension.  Would she still be there?  She was waiting in the yard, and she wagged her tail enthusiastically when I walked out the door.  We had crossed the first big hurdle.  We fed her again and left for church hoping against hope that she would still be there when we got back.  She was.

After lunch I announced that Bella was going to get a bath. We decided that I would hold her down while Lydia would hose and shampoo her.  She firmly disliked the water and detested the shampoo even more.  It was all I could do to hold on to her while she wiggled and whimpered.  When it was done she shot through the fence and ran a little ways down the road where she rolled and rubbed on the asphalt trying to rid herself of the stench of Johnson's Baby Shampoo. That was the last we saw of her.

The kids didn't cry or anything.  The good thing is that they had had less than 24 hours to get attached to her.  On Monday afternoon Lydia was moping around the house, and she suddenly said, "Dad, is it ok if I go take a walk?"  

"Where are you thinking you want to go?" I asked.

"Oh, you know... down by the doner place."

I understood.  "Of course it's ok," I said.  

She was back in a very short time.  I knew before I even asked that Bella wasn't there.

We'll get anothe puppy eventually.  I still don't know how I'm going to do it.  We can't afford to put up a new fence even if our landlord would allow it.  I know that in the US you can string wires underneath the permiter of your yard and outfit your dog with a special collar, but I doubt that that is available here.  After having read Shiloh out loud to the kids last year, none of us wants to be the kind of person who keeps his dog chained up.  Maybe we'll build a puppy pen inside the yard -- just until our he or she gets too big to fit through the fence.  We'll figure something out.

 

What's so great about sliced bread?

Life in the Balkans certainly has its deficits, but going out in the morning to the corner bakery to pick up a loaf of bread still warm from the wood-fired oven is not one of them.  Having to slice it myself is a small price to pay.

In our early days in Albania there were sometimes bread shortages and consequently long lines at the bakery.   Let me rephrase that; there were never really lines in the strictest sense of the word.  More like a rugby scrum.   Then there was the time I chipped a tooth on a rock in a loaf of bread.  Someone later explained to me that the rocks get in there when they sweep the flour off the floor.  But none of these traumatic experiences -- having to fight for my food and having to go to the dentist -- were enough to put me off Balkan bread.

I got to talking about bread the other day with a friend from this part of the world who spent a little time in the States.  Overall I think that he was pretty overwhelmed with a lot of his  experiences, but our American bread made a lasting impression on him.  "I put in the fridge and forgot about it," he said.  "A month later, it was exactly the same!  It hadn't changed even the tiniest bit -- for good or for bad!"

I realize that the old saying, "the greatest thing since sliced bread" is probably a weak target since most people use it with a certain amount of irony.  Speaking of old sayings, remember the line from the Lord's prayer:  "Give us this day our daily bread"?  Here in this part of the world, that still makes sense.

Sworn Virgins (not to be confused with American teens who take a chastity pledge)

Here's a fasinating article about Albania's "sworn virgins" -- a unique and little known cultural phenomenon. 

Redneckism as a global phenomenon

So I’m hanging out with my friend Gary from Michigan, right? And he keeps referring to certain of his co-workers as “rednecks” – which leads me to assume that they must be transplants from the Deep South, but no, it turns out that they’re native Michiganders.* Well I’m wondering whether someone shouldn’t sue somebody -- like Greece sued Denmark to keep them from selling white cheese and calling it “feta”. Don’t we have proprietary use of the word “redneck” south of the Mason-Dixon Line?

Fast forward a year. We’re here in the Republic of Macedonia, and we’ve found the house where we hope to live for the next four years. The current owner is a surgeon and the ex minister of health**. He bought the house about a year ago, but he has never lived in it. He claims that he bought it just because he liked the location and that he didn’t even bother to look inside. I’m sure he’s exaggerating, but I can certainly see why he wouldn’t want us to assume that this house reflects his taste. As we get to know the place, I feel like I’m getting to know the ex owner, and I’m starting to believe that redneckism really is a global phenomenon.  

You know Jeff Foxworthy’s, “You might be a redneck” routine? Well there’s one that goes something like, “If the last time you mowed your yard you found two cars you didn’t know you had, you might be a redneck.” When we first rented this house, the yard was a jungle. Let’s see, how can I describe how bad it was… I mean I was like expecting a rhino to come charging out at me or something. Let me interject here that it’s going to be a really nice yard. It has grape vines, apricot and plum trees, and rose bushes. But you would never have known that before we started hacking, sawing, and chopping. Actually I didn’t find any cars, but I did find a rusty truck bumper, a rotting basketball backboard, a toilet tank and numerous other assorted objects in various states of decomposition. 

“So what?” you say. “Just having junk in an overgrown yard doesn’t make you a redneck.” Well hang on, I’m not finished yet. This guy’s idea of interior decorating was to glue parquet flooring to the walls in the entry hallway and dining room. I thought it was pretty innovative of him (though I do wish that he hadn’t left the edges so raggedy and crooked). But it really makes Mary want to climb the walls. (Get it? Climb the walls…) And did I tell you about the garage? He had some kind of pit rigged up in the floor – apparently for changing the oil.

Still not convinced? Just wait. When we were touring the house with the realtor, we noticed that the kitchen was smaller than some closets we’ve seen. We also noticed a strange floor to ceiling depression in the dining room wall about a foot wide and a foot deep and covered with a locking wrought iron door. Have you guessed it yet? Yep, a built in gun cabinet! So I would like to propose the following addition to Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck routine. “If your gun cabinet is bigger than your wife’s kitchen, you might be a redneck.”***

I have to say, I’m starting to feel truly at home!

*That’s really what you call them. I asked someone from Michigan and that’s what he told me. Which raises the question in my mind whether the female of the species should be referred to as a “Michigoose.”

** Kind of like their surgeon general. Except that the Republic of Macedonia only has two million people. So maybe it would be like the surgeon general of New Mexico. Does anybody know if New Mexico has a surgeon general?

***For those of you too redneck to recognize hyperbole, no, the gun cabinet is not literally larger than the kitchen.

Notes from Skopje, part2 – taxi drivers, ethnic etiquette, and a lost camera

Then there are the taxi drivers who wait in front of the hospital. Since our car is in storage in Kosovo right now we use their services several times a day, and some of them now count us as friends. In fact, a number of them have really taken to heart our hunt for a house. Every time they see me, they shout out: “So have you found anything yet? I just heard about a place over in Gazi Baba. Do you want me to take you to see it?” One of them ran up to me yesterday with an advertiser newspaper. “Hey, I bought this just for you. Look, it’s got lots of good houses!”

It’s hard to explain to them why we would prefer to live on the north side of the Vardar River where Albanians predominate. The streets tend to be dirtier, steeper, and more twisted over there. There are spots where one could be awakened at the crack of dawn by the call to prayer ringing out from three or four different mosques at once. Even Albanians have quietly expressed reservations. “You’d be better off on the south side of the river. They’re more cultured than we are.”

I shouldn’t give the impression that the river is some kind of solid barrier between the ethnicities. There are plenty of mosques on "the Orthodox side" and churches on "the Muslim side". There have always been Macedonian families among the Albanians on the north side; and as the Albanian population grows, upwardly mobile Albanian families are increasingly buying houses on the south side. It would be nearly impossible to find an ethnically pure neighborhood in Skopje anymore.

Those of you who keep up with me on flickr or facebook will know by now that I lost my camera. We went out on Saturday morning to meet a friend, and there were only a couple of taxis in the usual spot. I didn’t see anyone familiar, so we got in the first one we came to. As always I looked up at the rearview mirror to try and determine the ethnicity of the driver. Most Macedonians display a cross or an icon, whereas Albanians often hang prayer beads or Koranic verses. In this case, there was nothing. That would tend to suggest that he was Albanian since Albanian drivers often avoid overt religious symbols when working on the south side of the river so as not to warn away Macedonian customers. He looked a little bit Albanian – to me at least – but I’m not that good at telling them apart. However, the radio was tuned to a Macedonian station. Mixed signals.

I greeted him and told him our destination in Macedonian, which is always the safe thing to do when you don’t know. If it turned out that he was Albanian, and I switched to speaking in Albanian, he would be delighted. But if he was Macedonian and I started in Albanian, he might be offended. After a minute Mary asked him outright, “Are you Macedonian?” But she used the feminine form of the word, so it came out like, “Are you a Macedonian woman?” He didn’t seem to mind much. He chuckled a bit and said, “Yes, I’m a Macedonian”, using the same word she had used. After that I didn’t bother to try to make conversation since my Macedonian is very limited. I kept my head down and fiddled with my new mobile phone. When we arrived at our destination, I was concentrating on the phone so much that I forgot all about the camera sitting at my feet on the floorboard. I didn’t even miss it till a half hour later.

Since then I scan the faces of the drivers in front of the hospital every time I step outside hoping to see him again. Apparently he isn’t one of the regulars here. To tell the truth, I’m not sure that I would recognize him now if I saw him. If the driver had been Albanian, I’m pretty sure that I would have gotten my camera back by now. We would have chatted along the way, and he would have known where I’m staying so that if he were honest he could have brought it to me. And even if he weren’t honest, I would have known where he lives, how many kids he has, etc. – enough information to track him down.

Of course I tried to enlist the help of the other taxi drivers. “What was the name of the company?” they asked me. “What kind of car was it?” Unfortunately, I didn’t remember anything useful. “Well that’s what you get for just hopping in the car with just anybody!” one of them finally said in exasperation. “You need to learn to ride with your friends!”

Notes from Skopje - part 1

 We still haven’t found the right house. Time is running out.  It's starting to look like we’re going to have to take one of the wrong ones.

 We’ve gotten to know a lot of nice people while staying here at the Hotel 7 across the street from the government hospital -- Mehmet, the Turkish guy who runs the doner shop below us, for example. There are Turks here in Macedonia whose ancestors were left high and dry when this part of Europe broke free from the Turkish Empire 100 years ago, but Mehmet isn’t one of them. He’s a businessman who came over from Turkey, and he works 7 days a week, 16 hours at a stretch, shaving pieces off of a huge hunk meat that slowly spins and diminishes as the day passes. (Doner is the Turkish equivalent of Greek gyros, but if you’ve only had gyros at the food court in some American mall, you’ve been sold a cheap imitation; this is good meat, not processed pieces-parts.) The temperature outdoors gets almost up to 100 F sometimes, and Mehmet stands there all day in front of the grill slowly cooking with the meat. But he always has a big smile and a friendly "Merhaba!" for me.

Once when there weren’t many customers Mehmet invited me to sit at an outdoor table with him and drink a cappuccino. He is more comfortable in Macedonian, and I’m far more comfortable in Albanian, so we had to keep switching back and forth between languages in order to communicate. Sometimes we turned to his workers, all of whom are Albanian and are therefore fluent in both languages, for help with translation. He told me with sadness in his eyes that he hadn't been home to Turkey a single time in four years. His wife and daughters live with him here in Macedonia, but given his work schedule he doesn't see much of them.

 Mary, the kids and and I often sit at one of Mehmet’s café tables with our laptops to do internet. When we booked the apartment online, Hotel 7’s website promised wireless internet. Unfortunately the two-room apartment we reserved is actually on the 5th floor (that’s by European reckoning; I would call it the 6th.) of an adjacent building, so the wireless signal doesn’t reach us. But the doner shop is right outside the hotel office, and I kind of enjoy sitting at a table on the sidewalk and sipping a Coke or cappuccino while surfing the net. We make quite a spectacle since open laptops in public places are not a common sight here.

 We had stayed here at the Hotel 7 a couple of times on earlier visits to Skopje and had a good experience, so we decided that this would be an ideal place to be based while we shopped for a house. It’s clean, comfortable and there was the promise of wireless internet. The price was a bit steep, but they gave us a deal when we reserved it for a month. It was just before we left the States that the hotel management sent us an email informing us that they had made a mistake. The apartment was already booked for three of the days that they had promised it to us. They offered to move us to smaller rooms for those three days and not to charge us, and we accepted.  Moving our bags back and forth was a lot of work, but the real problem turned out to be that the air conditioner was broken in one of the rooms, and Skopje was in the throes of a terrible heat wave those days. The kids got the room with the working a/c of course, and Mary and I toughed it out.  

One morning I woke up soaked in sweat. The sun was pounding into our room, but my body clock was telling me it was only 2 a.m.  The sounds and smells of the doner shop downstairs drifted up through our open window.  I really enjoy eating doner under normal circumstances, but this time the odor of roasting meat was very heavy, almost nauseating.  As I got up and started moving about the room Mary called out, “Mark, you need to put that food in the refrigerator!” After a moment of bewilderment I figured out that she was talking in her sleep. Later on when I mentioned it again she didn’t even remember having said it. 

My year in the U.S.

We’ve been in Skopje for a little over a week. Before I start blogging about life here, I wanted do a retrospective on our year in the USA. I traveled more than 40,000 miles (65,000 km) visiting those who support us with prayer, money and whatever else. That’s the equivalent of more than 5 times around the earth! (And that’s only counting official travel – not trips to Wal-mart or my sister’s house, for example.) I dipped my toes in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans; and I went as far north as the Canadian border and as far South as the Mexican border. For the first six months Mary and the kids traveled with me in a Dodge Caravan, which was made available to us by my home church in Slidell. In January I was able to buy a car of my own so that the family wasn’t obligated to live on the road with me.

Here are some of the year’s highlights:
· Renewing acquaintances with old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in over 10 years.
· Working with Katherine Paterson, the author of Bridge to Terabithia, on her new book, Country of the Heart. (See this entry.)
· Getting to know my nieces and nephews.
· Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. (My daddy made that!)
· Fishing, especially at my parents’ house in Bush, Louisiana. They’ve noticed that since they built the house on the lake, they see a lot more of me.
· Preaching at an open air service for the homeless in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. This weekly outreach has been going on for 12 years straight, and it was thrilling to meet some of the people whose lives have been transformed.
· Sharing the Gospel with a Kosovar woman at the home of friends in Florida.
· Speaking to the recovering addicts in the Teen Challenge program in Pascagoula, Mississippi. I’ve never had a more engaging and receptive audience than these ladies!
· Challenging Chi Alpha students to line up their lives with God’s story. The campuses I visited included Stanford, Tulane; U. of L at Lafayette, La. Tech; SE Louisiana U.; Grambling; Alabama, U. of Arizona; and U.C. Davis.
· Seeing Luke emerge as a soccer sensation in a small package.
· Daily walks along the banks of Patton Creek behind our apartment. (Check out the Alabama set on my flickr page for pictures of the snakes, otters and other critters I’ve encountered there.)

It was a year filled with blessings, but still it’s good to be back in the Balkans where we belong.

Fourth of July or Fifth of May?

I ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant today, the Fourth of July.  Is that subversive, or what?  By the way, the restaurant is located in the part of Hoover, Alabama that has come to be known as Guadala-Hoover.

Remembering my life as a plumber's helper

I recently had breakfast with an old friend and former boss.  Jeff is a third generation plumber. Back when I worked for him, he was working for his dad.  We were both poor back then. (I still am.)  Admission to the local cinema was $1 on Tuesdays, and Jeff used to call me sometimes after work and say, "It's plumbers' night at the movies!  Wanna go?"  When his dad retired Jeff and his brother split the company, and both of them have done exceptionally well.

Here's the story of how I got the job.  Jeff and I went to the same church.  He was helping lead the youth group that I was part of.  On Wednesday after the regular youth meetings a group of us would meet for prayer.  I was about to graduate from high school and was planning to attend the University of Southern Mississippi in the fall.   I asked my friends to pray that I would get a good summer job.  Jeff asked us to pray that he would find a good Christian helper.  We all prayed fervently and somenow it didn't occur to any of us that our prayer was already answered.  A couple of weeks later my mom suggested, "Why don't you ask Jeff if he's hiring?"  I took her suggestion and ended up getting the job.  It was quite a while later that we remembered the prayer meeting, put it all together, and laughed about it.  We imagined that God was up there saying, "Ok guys, what do I have to do to make this more obvious for you?"

I ended up working for Jeff that summer and off and on through my college years.  I dug trenches, busted concrete, soldered pipes, and ran out in the truck to pick up supplies.  I've never had a knack for working with my hands, but I worked hard and learned a lot -- though not necessarily about plumbing. For example, I learned to appreciate coffee while drinking the free stuff out of little styrofoam cups at the plumbing supply houses.  (Associative logic rabbit trail:  Reminds me of the W. C. Fields quote:  "A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.") I learned to recognize the smell of marijuana.  I had had almost no contact with that kind of kids in high school, but many of my co-workers on the construction site were toking at work in those days.  One of them was doing community service to pay for a drug conviction, but that didn't stop him.  And that wasn't the only new lifestyle I was exposed to. We installed the plumbing in some rich folks' houses, and I was intrigued by the glimpse that it gave me into their world.  

As Jeff and I reminisced together last week at the Broken Egg (a fantastic little restaurant near the Lakeshore in Mandeville, by the way), we found a lot to laugh about.  For instance, I reminded him of the time that he asked me to blow on a copper pipe to get the excess moisture out so that the solder would seal up the joint.  The pipe was still hot from his torch, and as soon as I touched it to my mouth I yelped and jumped back sporting a bright red circle around the center of my lips.  Once the pain subsided enough for me to see the humor of it, I said, "Wow, I've never been kissed like that before!"

Jeff has experienced heavy heartache and abundant blessings during the last 20 years, and I'm always encouraged when I get together with him to see that he's still faithfully following Jesus. It was especially thrilling to me to hear his powerful testimonies from a recent missions trip he took into the Amazon jungle. 

Good company?

A list of famous preachers' kids from  Wikipedia's "preacher's kid" entry.

• Vincent Van Gogh
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Carl Jung
• Alice Cooper
• Denzel Washington
• Condoleezza Rice
• Marvin Gaye
• The Wright Brothers
• Malcolm X
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Ingmar Bergman
• Tori Amos
• Nicola Tesla
• Nat King Cole
• Jessica Simpson
• Phil Jackson (both parents)
• Mark Few
  

Can Christ followers be democratic leaders?

This article in Slate put into words a long-held conviction of mine: "In its wisdom, America has devised a presidential election system that actively selects for egotistical megalomaniacs: You simply cannot enter the White House if you aren't one."  

On the one hand, to be a serious presidential contender in America it's almost a neccesity to profess Christian faith.  But if you read the list of qualities that Christ said would characterize his followers in Matthew 5:3-12, you have to conclude that anyone matching that description wouldn't get very far in our political system.  I doubt that my brothers who are eager to "take America back" have really grasped just how peculiar a people we're supposed to be.  (My dad would be quick to point out that the word translated "peculiar" in the King James Bible means "specially chosen", not "strange."  But I would contend that if we're going to take seriously the teachings of Jesus we'll be peculiar in the most fullest and most modern sense of the word.)

I don't mean to suggest that our democratic system is any worse than any of the available choices.  In fact I personally would agree with Winston Churchill in choosing democracy as the least bad option in our fallen, broken world.

Nor do I mean to say that it's impossible for a Christ-follower to participate in politics.  In fact, I can think of two very good biblical models for Christian political leadership -- Joseph and Daniel. These two Old Testament rulers serve as examples for us for two important reasons:

1) Given the extent to which the values of the Kingdom of God fly in the face of the values of the world in which we live, it would take an act of God every bit as miraculous to place a Christ-follower in power in a democratic system as it did for Joseph in Pharaoh's Egypt and Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon.

2) Once in power Joseph and Daniel had to exercise authority in one nation while retaining ultimately loyal to another nation.  They weren't spies; they were working to be a blessing in their places of power without betraying their own people.  A Christ follower in political office today would also have to navigate torn loyalties, to negotiate living and leading amid the tension of dual citizenship.

This video has all of my buddies back in the Balkans and me ROTFL.  Definitely worth checking out.  

Reminds me of a time when I was in Honduras back in '86.  Some other American college students and I were doing children's activities.  We were resting in a church after a program, and we noticed some kids just outside the open window laughing hysterically.  We watched discretely to see what was happening, and we discovered that one young comedian among them was listening to our conversation then turning back to his friends to imitate the gibberish he was hearing.  They were all loving it up! We got a big kick out of it too, besides learning a valuable lesson in cross-cultural communication.

Love and tolerance

Thanks to my fellow Cajun and Chi Alpha man Glen Davis for this post.  You rock, Glen!  My evening at Stanford was one of the highlights of this year back in the States.

Heron supervising Long Beach harbor
Originally uploaded by kosova cajun

I recently received the following message concerning this photo:

"Congratulations! Your photo has been selected to be on view in the Water: A California Story exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

The exhibit will open to the public on July 19th, 2008
Preview opening reception for Museum Members & exhibition collaborators (that’s you!):

Selected photos will be presented in a digital slideshow in the gallery."

Lydia read this, and exclaimed, "Wow, dad are you going to go?"

I quickly assured her that I wasn't going all the way to San Diego, California just to watch my picture flash up on some screen for a second. But I am excited and honored nonetheless.

The photo evokes fond memories for me because I took it while visiting my sister Rachel and her family at Thanksgiving.

"Jesus came to liberate us so that we could die up front and then live. Jesus Christ wants to take us to places that only dead me and women can go."
Erwin McManus in The Barbarian Way

This quote reminded me of another quote. A prisoner condemned to die was asked what he wanted for his final meal, and he replied, "Mushrooms." When asked why, he said, "I've always been afraid to eat 'em."

ghost chair
Originally uploaded by kosova cajun

My parents have built a nice house out in the country near Bush, Louisiana. The house is on a pond with excellent bass fishing, and they've noticed that I make it down to see them more often lately. This photo was taken on the neighbors' pier. In the springitme whenever they get a good rain the pier gets submerged.

Working with Katherine Paterson

Some months back I got in just before midnight from a meeting in Huntsville.  I glanced at my emails before going to bed and saw one from some lady who said she was writing a book about a family of Kosovar refugees and wanted to know if I would advise her.  Without even reading the email thoroughly I quickly dashed off a reply saying that I would be happy to help.  After replying I glanced back at the email and noticed that its author had included this url in case I wanted to check her out, so I clicked on the link.  

Imagine my surprise to find that I was corresponding with the author of Bridge to Terabitha!  If my mother, my wife, or any of my sisters had been the recipient of the email, any of them would have recognized the name of Katherine Paterson instantly, but I wasn't very well-versed on children's literature.  She is one of the leading children's authors in the nation and a two-time winner of both the Newberry Medal and the National Book Award.  In addition to Bridge to Terabithia she is the author of Jacob Have I Loved, The Great Gilly Hopkins, The Master Puppeteer, and many others. Interestingly, I learned that Katherine was born in China to missionary parents.  As an adult she served four years as a missionary to Japan before marrying a Presbyterian minister and embarking on her career as an author.

It turned out that Katherine's church had sponsored a family of Kosovar refugees, and she had written a series of fictionalized articles based on that family's story.  Her publisher had suggested that she turn the articles into a book.  However, she felt that she didn't have enough knowledge of Kosova to attempt to write a book about a Kosovar family.  She had located me through my flickr site and decided to contact me to see if I would be willing to serve as a kind of consultant.  

As someone who has devoted his life to being a friend to the Albanians, I would have been willing to help anyone who wanted to write a book portraying them in a positive light. But it has been especially thrilling to work with Katherine.  All of our contact has been by email.  She has been sending me drafts of the chapters of the book, and I have been making suggestions and corrections based on my experience in the Balkans.  Also, I sent her several long letters with various bits of information about Kosovar Albanian customs, language, dress, etc.  This part of the process is now complete.  Just today I received the complete manuscript for a final review-- this time a hard copy by post.  

I haven't really begun to dig into it yet, and of course I'm not going to give anything away -- with one small exception.  The dedication page reads as follows:  "This book is for Muhamet, Saveta, Elez, Yllka, Almedina, and Aridon Haxhiu whose family planted the seed and Mark Orfila without whose help it would not have come to fruition."  Can you believe it?

As it now stands, the book is called Country of the Heart.  I don't know when it will be published, but I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I find out.

Addendum:  The book should be available for sale in September 09.  I know, that's a long time.

War

The following quotes were gathered in Blood Against Blood, a book written by prominent Pentecostal leader Arthur Booth-Clibborn and published in 1916:

"War is hell."
General Sherman

"I cannot fight, for the spirit of war is slain within me."
George Fox, when offered a captaincy

"God is forgotten in war; every principle of Christianity is trampled upon."
Sydney Smith

"Our religion teaches us that it is better to be killed than to kill."
Tertullian

"Shall Christians assist the Prince of Hell, who was a murderer from the beginning, by telling the world of the benefit or need of war?"
John Wesley

To Booth-Clibborn's quotes, I would like to add one more.  This one comes from Anthony Swofford's book Jarhead:

Already, I recognized the incompatibility of religion and the military. The opposite of this assertion seems true when one considers the high number of fiercely religious military people, but they are missing something. They're forgetting the mission of the military: to extinguish the lives and the livelihood of other humans. What do they think all of those bombs are for?

Like having a baby

"Deciding to start blogging is like deciding to have a baby. Once you've got it you've got to feed the thing."

A good friend of mine explaining why he doesn't blog.

The psychology of fishing

A couple of posts ago I wrote about what I see as the connection between photography and fishing. My sister commented with a question: Doesn't fishing require more patience?

In fact, the way I practice both pursuits might look like patience to someone who didn't know any better. If you watched me stalking a butterfly or a snake trying to get the perfect pose you could be forgiven for thinking me patient. But the dark truth is that I am no more patient than the gambling addict who sits in front of a slot machine all night hoping for a payout.

Back when my wife was in college she learned in her psych coure that the behavioral reinforcement of fishing is very similar to that of gambling and that fishermen often make compulsive gamblers. I've never tried gambling, but I don't doubt that this is true.

Let me explain it like this. It's very difficult for me to quit fishing once I start. If I'm catching 'em, I can't stop till I've caught just one more. If I'm not catching 'em I can't stop till I catch something. It's not patience, it's compulsion. Fortunately the addictions of trying to capture a fish or a photograph are relatively harmless (except to the fish of course). And I make sure not to go anywhere near the casino or the racetrack.