tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31343510438633621132024-03-05T07:05:34.209-08:00Far from the Madding CrowdThe way I see things.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-29982107408167832742022-06-17T15:45:00.015-07:002022-06-17T16:37:36.421-07:00The Hiding Place<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-nsqFOaVZqzNsyIjzfN4KlJSUbu3QQAgzJqJHWtxC-hj0uDtn494ZAt0arh1Hp5RzvSXmgMSX_7dQq6EHsgOrL3xDxkW5yKD-vVs3dwtnwJEeX46LlTYvv2Xo6hqSQEEB6iDvnGBBPzY/s1600/1655505895064065-0.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400"></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Corrie ten Boom House and Museum</td></tr></tbody></table><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-nsqFOaVZqzNsyIjzfN4KlJSUbu3QQAgzJqJHWtxC-hj0uDtn494ZAt0arh1Hp5RzvSXmgMSX_7dQq6EHsgOrL3xDxkW5yKD-vVs3dwtnwJEeX46LlTYvv2Xo6hqSQEEB6iDvnGBBPzY/s1600/1655505895064065-0.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
</a></div><div>I was told recently that someone asked my friend, ”What's the deal with Marty and the Holocaust?" I sometimes wonder myself. </div><div><br></div><div>But here's a start. My grandma moved to our little farm when I was five years-old. She lived in the house that now belongs to me Grandma became the center of my world. I once got up before everyone else at home and ran to her house in the cold morning dew in just my underpants. She found me outside her kitchen door crying, "Grandma, I'm cold!"</div><div><br></div><div>Grandma had a shelf of books, mostly paperbacks from her children's English classes. I remember them. I can smell them still. <i>Black Like Me. The Crucible. Fahrenheit 451. Animal Farm. Lord of the Flies. To Kill a Mockingbird.</i></div><div><br></div><div>At age six or seven, those didn't mean much to me. But the book that did was <i>The Hiding Place</i> by Corrie ten Boom and John and Elizabeth Sherrill.</div><div><br></div><div>For one thing, it had pictures which those other books didn't. Also Grandma liked the book , and before I could read it, she told me the story of how the ten Boom family rescued Jews and other people from the Nazis.</div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3OcZA_2mhAxndIy6GIPhccYd3lTFlom6c6Fpasm4gm5x2xEwrv_ey_irk1rQWAkVghhMW9dYJST25w2tQ-r5-HsFcoyKp6GtttHLj5ghqZo0FdWfc6wFAZ8rXOZ50a2KTd6AryLdBAA/s1600/1655505892064625-1.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400"></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was the entrance to the hiding place. The six who hid there had 70 seconds to get in and close it. I couldn't get into it in 70 seconds.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><br></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.2px;">The bookcase at grandma's hid the nook underneath the stairs where Christmas decorations and other odds and ends were stored. In my imagination, that's where we would hide people when they came to us.</span><br></div><br><div>So what's the deal with Marty and the Holocaust? It started with my grandma and Corrie ten Boom.</div><div><br></div><div>Two days ago I visited "the Beje," the family nickname for their 500 year-old house, where no one was ever turned away, on Barteljorisstraat, the street where it sits in Haarlem.</div><div><br></div><div>I've been in the edge of tears almost constantly lately. And from the moment i entered the house and watch shop, I felt like I was going to break down. I didn't. But I got chills over and over like I was getting the flu. A couple of times when I was asked a question, my voice cracked.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivQYyCXQXzUT8jlXNQyqFw_lxdQuWngDBQBN_3OJ6QUpRqz9_wZk7ihrl8lNpYT_O3rYOPhFmZqAEekEg8-Se9O4vwzT6UR-CzA7-kV0tYHBuQukl4l3VuZub7942FGZkvakNnzgu93PywF-pJTRCAfnZE36YzWtSrkSVsRcmLwGqtJWNr_k1LvKV4/s4000/20220615_143931.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivQYyCXQXzUT8jlXNQyqFw_lxdQuWngDBQBN_3OJ6QUpRqz9_wZk7ihrl8lNpYT_O3rYOPhFmZqAEekEg8-Se9O4vwzT6UR-CzA7-kV0tYHBuQukl4l3VuZub7942FGZkvakNnzgu93PywF-pJTRCAfnZE36YzWtSrkSVsRcmLwGqtJWNr_k1LvKV4/w320-h427/20220615_143931.jpg" width="320"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hiding place</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br></div><div>Being in the home where two spinsters and their aged father became key players in the Dutch Resistance in Haarlem was moving. </div><div><br></div><div>I won't give away the story. Go read the book or watch the movie (available on YouTube).</div><div><br></div>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-16047945996133984262021-10-14T13:19:00.000-07:002021-10-14T13:19:00.836-07:00What You Didn’t Consider When You Chose Not to Wear a Mask<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjodaCFkEKl7kY7jOTa09vMxgyZ1vG6kTEgUvtFPvTa2y1GcnnZ55yd88l1SrcoDFTOO4yOHrAFUl3eu-Oqit-V0LHi-FJsUvNqdL20KM-zEfMQ05sdUVszVgrh_obS3F7NxYk_1n7GpE/s1600/1634242738715304-0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjodaCFkEKl7kY7jOTa09vMxgyZ1vG6kTEgUvtFPvTa2y1GcnnZ55yd88l1SrcoDFTOO4yOHrAFUl3eu-Oqit-V0LHi-FJsUvNqdL20KM-zEfMQ05sdUVszVgrh_obS3F7NxYk_1n7GpE/s1600/1634242738715304-0.png" width="400">
</a>
</div><p>Maybe you didn’t consider this.</p><p>Maybe you think that wearing a mask is silly.</p><p>I’d like to tell you about how some people’s refusal to wear masks affected one man.</p><p>I’d like to tell the people the community leaders how their failure to enforce wearing masks and social distancing in indoor spaces affected one man.</p><p>There was a man who loved going to a weekly meeting more than about anything. He was a very social man, had been living alone for several years. Going to his weekly gathering was a lifeline for him. Of course, the Covid-10 pandemic changed all of that. Having seen people with polio and tuberculosis in his lifetime, he tried to heed the advice of scientists, doctors, and experts. He tried to keep socially distance even though it was the most difficult thing in the world for him. He wore a mask to keep himself and others safe. He thought it was only sensible that everyone else did too.</p><p>The last time he went to the weekly meeting he so loved, he was nervous about being there. His children had scolded him from time to time about being careful. Sometimes he couldn’t resist the temptation to be with people there. One day he said he went in and chose a seat reasonably distant from others. But soon after a whole family, entirely unmasked, came and sat right next to him, too close.</p><p>It made him uncomfortable, so he left. He never went back. He was disappointed that the leaders not only didn’t enforce any kind of safety measures but at times even openly flouted measures to do their part to stem the wave in the community that is only now starting to wane. He told me he didn’t know if he’d ever go back.</p><p>And as it turned out, he never did.</p><p>When he died, it wasn’t Covid-19 that caused his death.</p><p>His last few months of life would have been happier if he had felt comfortable going to what was once his favorite place to be.</p><p>So maybe you think that wearing a mask and socially distancing all this time is just a “personal decision.” And it is. </p><p>But it personally affects others in ways you may not have considered. Or maybe you just don’t care about how it hurt other people in your headlong determination to make a political statement.</p>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-46456547178075298212019-06-07T05:59:00.001-07:002022-06-17T16:39:40.706-07:00Unimaginable Horror<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
A few
weeks ago, I told one of my lifelong friends about my visit to Auschwitz
last summer, and further, how beautiful I found Poland. I was a little
shocked when my friend said something like, “Poland? I
thought Auschwitz was in Germany. I thought the Holocaust took place
in Germany.” My friend is a very smart, well-educated person. It made
m realize that all of my study on The Holocaust may benefit my small
audience of readers. I know more than I want
to know.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Warning, this is not pretty reading. It isn’t intended to be. But I think we need to know.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Auschwitz
may be what comes to mind when people think of the Holocaust. The
reason you have likely heard of Auschwitz is likely because thousands of
people survived Auschwitz and lived to tell about what happened
there. The Russians liberated it before the Nazis could destroy the evidence of their mass murder.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
On
December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl HarborI. President Roosevelt
said that it was a date that will live in infamy. There is another
reason that date should live in infamy. It was the day that Nazis
began their planned mass murder of Jews in Poland in what they called
Operation Reinhardt at a place called Chelmno.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiym_gUO-ymYOxBHlPY6fnuelSsU43hHhLm8XsSnZp6sDLDF83VvWU77Y5FarK5gmAw00u0uvkNaE7AArliS4KjXqAX7-6DJuduQ8Orhy4bE6cs0Qr-Dx_5n89FQhf2wzueGoJ0Y2DYvVY/s1600/300px-WW2-Holocaust-Poland.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="323" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiym_gUO-ymYOxBHlPY6fnuelSsU43hHhLm8XsSnZp6sDLDF83VvWU77Y5FarK5gmAw00u0uvkNaE7AArliS4KjXqAX7-6DJuduQ8Orhy4bE6cs0Qr-Dx_5n89FQhf2wzueGoJ0Y2DYvVY/s320/300px-WW2-Holocaust-Poland.PNG" width="297"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Most people have never heard of these other murder camps.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Belzec,
Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka. These were the other Death Camps in
Poland. There were few survivors. In some, fewer than 10, others a
hundred or so. The Nazis completely obliterated their evil
work at these camps. Today there are only memorials left where those
camps were. These places were sites of the unimaginable.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Belzec,
Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka existed for two reasons: (1) to steal
the very last traces of wealth from their victims down to gold teeth and
the hair of women and (2) to kill them.
</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Auschwitz,
on the other hand, existed for the same reasons but in addition it was
also a source of slave labor for surrounding industries. One would
never say you were lucky to be sent to Auschwitz but compared
to the other four death camps, if you did get sent there, you had at
least a chance to be chosen for work to survive another day, as long as
you weren’t too old, too young, too weak or a thousand other random
whims that might get you selected for death upon
arrival. Thousands were chosen for work upon arrival at Auschwitz,
giving them the slightest chance to survive for a few days or months and
for some, even years.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
In Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka, most were dead within hours of arriving.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
These
were tiny camps. There was no need for many barracks. Except for a few
hundred selected to work in the camps, thousands arrived and within
hours their remains were either dumped in a mass grave or, later
as the killing machine became more advanced, burned. In fact later, to
attempt to cover up their crimes, all of the bodies were exhumed and
burned.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZKnAIFFpeULGSM5IHC2bE6WJNQTCjO8FdpWXT_QaU4J3YZN9pBMklSr_wsGtQiRxjIlwWvtUnytZUzlE9buKnLq72W7_y9X04qEkmJAzQUDP3Uhtjv_gzzOBryoomFTcNZobbg6JhkLo/s1600/majdanek-nazi-death-camp-poland-51400546.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="620" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZKnAIFFpeULGSM5IHC2bE6WJNQTCjO8FdpWXT_QaU4J3YZN9pBMklSr_wsGtQiRxjIlwWvtUnytZUzlE9buKnLq72W7_y9X04qEkmJAzQUDP3Uhtjv_gzzOBryoomFTcNZobbg6JhkLo/s320/majdanek-nazi-death-camp-poland-51400546.jpg" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Remains of human beings killed in Majdanek. There are no known photos from Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka except for pictures of perpetrators.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
They
were remarkably efficient. Almost all people were dead
with in 90 minutes upon arrival. These camps used exhaust fumes tank
engines piped into the sealed chambers. These death camps, except
Auschwitz, were in operation for under two years. In that time the
killing was almost nonstop.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
At
Sobibor in fewer than 18 months as many as 250,000 human beings were
gassed by exhaust fumes from tank engines. On October 14, 1943, inmates
revolted. About 58 people survived.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
In
Belzec in about 15 months as many as 600,000 men, women and children
were murdered. Only two people are known to have survived Belzec.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Treblinka,
the second most murderous place in the Nazi killing machine, in about
15 months, 600,000 - 900,000 people died. On August 2, 1943 workers in
the camp revolted, and set fire to much of the camp.
Two hundred people escaped half of them were killed in the next few
hours. Around 70 survived the war.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
Chelmno
worked a bit differently. There was no camp. Three gas vans were
used. Each van held about 50 people. The people would be forced into
the vans. The exhaust of the van was piped into the compartment
where the people were crammed. The driver would drive to the graves
which had efficiently been chosen because it took just the right amount
of time for everyone to die of suffocation. Then Jewish prisoners were
chosen to empty the bodies from the vans, remove
any valuables including gold in teeth, and then put them into the mass
graves. At the end of the day, a couple of the Jewish workers would be
chosen and told to lie down on the graves. They would be shot and
replaced by new arrivals the next day.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
At
Chelmno, 320,000 people were gassed in mobile vans and buried in mass
graves. A handful of survivors lived to tell their stories of horror.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
It is important to remember that it is difficult to take in these huge numbers. Each one was a person with a story.</div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
“I look around and think: Good God, what kind of hell is this?”
―
<span class="authorOrTitle">
Chil Rajchman, <i>The Last Jew of Treblinka</i></span><span id="quote_book_link_8467720">
</span></div>
<div class="yiv1252893002MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<br></div>
Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-58089834265515690592018-10-11T06:08:00.001-07:002018-10-11T06:38:36.186-07:00Coming Out Day 2018<div class="yiv4073399809MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Coming Out </span></span></div>
<div class="yiv4073399809MsoBodyText">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJC-evbK9OBta5H0Th1szkz7tOweyAJPR15KccVrSfsfLHwnxTLSmELNHBnfKgFm2ndV_g9QORqSuDk3tbFc2NY45fqbqVfciAjoCZUUjRUS7tQVNq14QbQNgiJ_g1AW9PmdVGCc2qdk/s1600/coming+out.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJC-evbK9OBta5H0Th1szkz7tOweyAJPR15KccVrSfsfLHwnxTLSmELNHBnfKgFm2ndV_g9QORqSuDk3tbFc2NY45fqbqVfciAjoCZUUjRUS7tQVNq14QbQNgiJ_g1AW9PmdVGCc2qdk/s1600/coming+out.jpeg" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today is National Coming Out Day.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I've
been thinking a lot about coming out in the past week or so. I got a
call from a young man I hardly knew. I had only met him
a couple of times over the years but found him to be so energetic, full
of life and promise. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew
this call would come. I think I hoped it would.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">From
the moment we met, I knew something about him without being told. I
guess you could say, "It takes one to know one." And I have
impeccable gaydar. And no, I don't think everyone is gay.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
he called and we've talked and talked for the past ten days. And we've
laughed, cried and compared notes on growing up gay in similar,
while at the same time very different, circumstances. My friend is on
his journey of coming out.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Coming
out was a most terrifying prospect for me. When you've hidden a part
of yourself since childhood, the fear grows with the years.
I remember coming home on the school bus and putting in my Barry
Manilow cassette and playing All the Time, over and over.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">All the time I thought, "there's only me,</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Crazy in a way that no one else could be”</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I would have given everything I own</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If someone would have said "you're not alone"</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">All the time I thought that I was wrong</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wanting to be me but needing to belong</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If I'd've just believed in all I had</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If someone would have said "you're not so bad"</span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
didn't come out until my early 30s. I started with the people whose
potential rejection mattered the least to me. Close family came
last. My parents were the last to know. I listened to the advice of a
wise therapist and tried to believe him when he told me that for most
people coming out as gay to family quickly becomes no big deal. He was
right. Sure there was an awkward time of
learning and adjustment but soon everybody realized that I was still
me. Except I am a much better me. I stopped living in fear. I was no
longer constantly sick. as I had often been with chronic sore throats
and stomach troubles. I wasn't hiding behind
the closet door anymore.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are well-known maladies that often share the closet space with its
inhabitant: Self-disgust, self-hatred, low self-esteem, negative
self-view, chronic depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder,
alcohol/drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts. The closet can be a
dangerous and even deadly place.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
was constantly restless, never staying in one place. Looking back at
those last four or five years in the closet. I think I moved
to a different country or state every year. Since coming out, I've
lived in the same zip code for almost 20 years. I've worked for the
same firm for 18 years.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
fears about coming out were mostly unfounded. I can't say that I've
lost any friends. Well, maybe two. And those two are a blip.
And those two are toxic people who were not really my friends.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Coming
out just doesn't change the person coming out. It changes the person's
friends and family. As Harvey Milk said, by coming out
we "break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions" that are
believed about gay people. I've marveled at what advocates my family
has become for all marginalized people.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
can also help others who are closeted watching. The young man who
called me didn't know me well but he knew I'd come out and survived
and more than survived. Thrived.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I've
seen tragic results of not coming out. I had a friend that I'd known
since we were both teenagers. My gaydar was right about
him. We never talked about it until we were both into our 40s. We
didn't have much contact after college. FaceBook brought us back into
contact with each other. He was living a miserable life.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
invited him to spend the weekend with me in New York. We did all the
things he wanted to do in NYC. We saw Broadway shows, ate the
biggest steak at Peter Luger’s, and just enjoyed a renewed friendship.
He went to church with me and was shocked that they actually had me, an
out, gay man, leading parts of worship.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When he left, he cried really hard and said it was the best weekend he'd ever had. He didn't know how he was going to go back.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
he just knew his family wouldn't accept him if he came out. He may
have been right. About a year later, he was found dead at home.
He drank himself to death. It appears that he did come out to one
family member. He was not accepted as he was.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Most
of the people reading this don't need to come out. But you may have
someone in your life that does need to come out to you. You
can be vital to a loved one who is coming out. You can be the kind of
person someone would feel safe coming out to. Are you? Do you make
jokes and derogatory gay jokes? Do you talk about "that lifestyle?"
Just stop. There may be a good reason someone
is reluctant to bare his or her soul to you. A little self-examination
goes a long way.</span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="yiv0933269138MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Coming
out doesn't solve everything. My young friend has some hurdles to jump
over as a result of living in the closet, as he goes
through the process of living authentically. But he's finally not
living in fear and he's found that he has so many people who love him on
his side. I'm so honored to have received that call. And my friend is
going to be great.</span></div>
Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-46222075898913546222018-06-15T06:04:00.000-07:002018-06-15T06:04:08.019-07:00But, um, who is my neighbor?<br />
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Governments make and enforce cold-hearted laws. They do it all the
time. All of them. It is what they do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0o0IVEstk3mGFn7XmqKP7xj6VGLM7oslqOMXhHBZSrrrzQUh1u-Fg1lJbKky9-DYODKDDYve6EIqqv9ytKdMDuCoaRfSDOBAJa-AqkLttHIh-BzNsJypubBZ4ngrIRORB3Pwftxe7flM/s1600/illegal-immigrants-children-arizona-680x365.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="680" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0o0IVEstk3mGFn7XmqKP7xj6VGLM7oslqOMXhHBZSrrrzQUh1u-Fg1lJbKky9-DYODKDDYve6EIqqv9ytKdMDuCoaRfSDOBAJa-AqkLttHIh-BzNsJypubBZ4ngrIRORB3Pwftxe7flM/s320/illegal-immigrants-children-arizona-680x365.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">But if you call yourself a Christian and you cross your arms and
defiantly say, “Well, they broke the law so they have to pay the price,” and
you have no compassion for people fleeing to save their lives and especially
the lives of their children, then I call bullshit on you and your alleged
faith. If you can look at children in detention centers and just casually
accept it as the way things are and so, that’s just how it is, then you need to
re-examine who you think you are. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Don’t take Bible verses about obeying laws out of their context. The
same Bible that says, “Obey your government rulers,” also says, “We ought to
obey God rather than men.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Maybe you need to read the Gospels and see what Jesus did. Because
your Jesus is on one side of this issue and I promise you it is the side of the
children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Don’t ask, “Who is my neighbor?” You know good and well who your
neighbor. The question is will you love your neighbor?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from
being polluted by the world.” Make sure you’re not being polluted by your Party
(and they both pollute).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgObuubgKUTJQZEMQWBjTqBUg1k03Ab6szLREI8fgeGPikiJaq39L-cEM6I_T7beIOmJe3DU5_rCSRB6jTGwLGQUMwM9Nrz-byNs75jN0K1bKwFHmABYBV6DDiC6q3_Yzlp7lTaQMl7dAs/s1600/jews+behind+barbed+wire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgObuubgKUTJQZEMQWBjTqBUg1k03Ab6szLREI8fgeGPikiJaq39L-cEM6I_T7beIOmJe3DU5_rCSRB6jTGwLGQUMwM9Nrz-byNs75jN0K1bKwFHmABYBV6DDiC6q3_Yzlp7lTaQMl7dAs/s320/jews+behind+barbed+wire.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">We will never know what would have happened if German Christians had
put Hitler on notice in 1933 that they would not stand for injustice. (And
please don’t talk to me about Bonhoeffer. I know all about him but not enough
Christians listened, did they?) They were happy to let what they hoped were the
ends justify the means and so could peep through the curtains while this
neighbors were first dehumanized then carted off to “detention centers.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I hope it isn’t too late for America. But when people use their
Bible to justify evil, ill treatment of the neediest and we don’t defy them,
then I’m afraid it is too late.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-86395337688215462942018-06-09T22:35:00.001-07:002018-06-09T22:41:29.914-07:00I'm mad as hell<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
I’m as angry as I have ever
been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just balled my eyes walking home
for ten blocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m must have seemed
like a lunatic to the early-Puerto Rican day revelers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I probably just seemed like a morose drunk,
which I would be if I were drunk.<br />
<br />
I wish I were drunk.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
I just talked to my Mexican
friend who just this year got his green card. That seems like something to
celebrate. But then he told me about the experience. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
It wasn’t just the fear of
leaving his wife, his five year-old son and two year-old son here in the States
while he went back to Mexico so that he could come back with a green card.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That process in itself seems a bit cruel and
barbaric. Hearing him tell how his son held to his leg begging him not to go and
begging him to take him with him belies the fear that has been created in the
process. Even a five year-old can tell that something is not right.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
But the thing that made me boil
was what he told me about the reentry process as his wife and sons waited for
him at the airport. The agents made him wait for 30 minutes while he heard them
cruelly talk (as if he couldn’t understand; his English is exceptional) about
perhaps not letting him enter. Of course, they didn’t have a legal foot to
stand on. His papers were in order. But in the current climate, they could
afford to entertain cruelty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
And his experience is mild
compared to what is happening on our border to the south.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
I’m ashamed of America. Merely
kneeling during the national anthem is not enough. I stopped the pledge of
allegiance years ago. Yet, a sentimental tear would often find its way out of
my eyes during the Star Spangled Banner. No more. Not now. It may sound cliché
but if this is what we’ve come to, they let’s tear down the Statue of Liberty
and especially the Emma Lazarus poem at her feet. It is, to be blunt, BULLSHIT.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
There is no conscience in the
White House or Justice Department.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
trickle-down cruelty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
I have offered some assistance
where I can. I think it is time for more. I don’t’ know what yet. I will find
out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-22308684951102644672018-05-21T22:46:00.000-07:002018-05-21T23:45:18.784-07:00Speak English! This is America!<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
In
the past few days I’ve had conversations with a few people about the ugly
incident with the New York attorney, an absolutely horrible person by all
accounts, who complained obnoxiously about two
workers in a restaurant who were speaking Spanish to each other. He threatened
to call immigration authorities on them because they were not speaking English.</div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
“People who come to America should learn English,” a couple of people said to me while we were on the subject.</div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
I
agree. But probably not for the reason they think people should learn
English. People who live in this country should learn English because
it makes their life here much easier than if they
don’t. Speaking English doesn’t make you a better American or a
smarter person. A lot of very stupid people speak English (and nothing
else). And no, English is not the official language of the United
States. There isn’t one.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Plg-IbKTYWnxKe7GEjRvIUaK4dHdBvc6bCmyO8VFkgIhrcnmd_vIILYi9YBg9uaEjkQvswOmBaN_Eu-TVcPRAjn17cqweKkauAF8JsGajGz99c2hwDXpmppNZ8w1qieD6Z6FERdBgaA/s1600/welcome.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="720" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Plg-IbKTYWnxKe7GEjRvIUaK4dHdBvc6bCmyO8VFkgIhrcnmd_vIILYi9YBg9uaEjkQvswOmBaN_Eu-TVcPRAjn17cqweKkauAF8JsGajGz99c2hwDXpmppNZ8w1qieD6Z6FERdBgaA/s320/welcome.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
I’d
like to point out that NOT ONE of the people who said to me, “People
who come to America should learn English,” speaks another language
besides English. And they don’t have to. They live
in America where they can get by just fine in English. And to a
person, NOT ONE of these people has lived outside the USA. And they
don’t have to do that either.<br />
<br />
A couple of things you need to remember. Just because you hear two people speaking Spanish or Chinese or Swahili, doesn't mean they can't speak English. They may just be more comfortable speaking their native language, just like you would be. And I've never met an immigrant to this country who didn't want to learn English</div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>BUT what all of thes "they must learn English" people probably fail to realize is how difficult it
is to learn another language</i>. I know. I've tried. <span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Twice, seriously. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It is hard. So hard. It is gut wrenching. If you want to see a grown man cry, go to a language school where is seriously trying to learn a new language. I've seen it happen many times. I might have even been the grown man crying more than once.</span></div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
But even more than hard work of learning and memorizing new words and rules, it takes
daily, meaningful interaction with people who speak the language you’re
trying to learn. Without that it will never happen. And that's where empathy and compassion should come into the picture.</div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
Has
anyone thought about how hard that is? You’re in a new place and you
just really need people to talk to in your new language. Been there.
Done there. Hated it. Most people don’t have
time and don’t want to make the time to talk to you.</div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
So
if you’re one of those people who says, “Well, I DO think they need to
learn English,” then how about this? Find some of them. It won’t be
hard to do. I promise. If you look, you’ll find
an immigrant longing to become more a part of the community but with no
idea how to start. Invite them to your house for a meal. They will
probably bring something to eat that will change your life. Invite them
to a party, to church, to a ballgame.</div>
<div class="aolmail_MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .5in;">
It will enrich your world and change someone’s life forever.</div>
Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-87999286029885308842016-07-12T16:42:00.001-07:002016-07-12T16:53:18.366-07:00How Far Are You Willing to Go?<div><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0KloPZojzgSW_VzWh72uDiFJyIGTKPGQE4xRp9POoL3J9_WqCaHu-CxZb5jv2TyAQUbGb_Ph7ckGsRflgKgBSfc4u3FmuoFulEHijPz3C1jnp2SYjqh9Onllmx-xgX0ADbNv90WAwL9w/s640/blogger-image--1651979924.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0KloPZojzgSW_VzWh72uDiFJyIGTKPGQE4xRp9POoL3J9_WqCaHu-CxZb5jv2TyAQUbGb_Ph7ckGsRflgKgBSfc4u3FmuoFulEHijPz3C1jnp2SYjqh9Onllmx-xgX0ADbNv90WAwL9w/s640/blogger-image--1651979924.jpg"></a></div><br></span></div><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><div><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><br></span></div>There is so much talk, especially on social media, such, let me say, bravado. And I confess I have played no small part in it. But I want us to think about a few things. Maybe if we think in advance, we will equip ourselves to do the right thing.</span><br><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">If you know me at all, you know my obsession with genocide, particularly what we call The Holocaust, but also Cambodia (I had friends in college who lived through it.) Rwanda. Serbia. I have read more about The Holocaust because there is just more to read. I bet I've read more than you. If you think you've read more than I, we need to talk.</div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">When injustice presents itself, it is pretty easy to see myself, and I bet it is for you as well to see yourself NOT as an active perpetrator. For example, there was the story out of Rwanda of the Seventh Day Adventist bishop. A group of Tutsi pastors and their families was holding up in a hospital. They sent a letter to their bishop whom I will not give the honor of naming. The pastors sent him a letter that said in part, "<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families." They were begging for him to intervene. What they didn't realize is that he was actually the mastermind planning their murders. [You can read the book by Philip Gourevitch]</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yeah, most of us know we aren't that person. We aren't going to plan any murders nor are we going to actively set out to hurt a people or a person. </span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But what about walking down the street in early 1930s Germany and seeing thugs mistreating an orthodox Jewish man, pulling out his beard or ear locks or pushing him into the muddy, streets, at that time still filled with horse shit? What would you do? Early on, it didn't appear to get someone into too much trouble for telling the thugs to stop. They were in the early stages of thugness. What would have happened if the public had just let it be known that they wouldn't put up with it?</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What are we doing?</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What about when they painted "Jude" on the front window on the shop where you went every day. When the brown shirts asked people to boycott them, most appear to have obeyed. But I've read quite a number of stories where people went right on shopping in these stores and suffered nothing.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Which would you be? Which would I be?</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What would have happened on </span><b style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Kristallnacht </b><span style="font-variant-caps: inherit; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">if neighbors had flooded the streets to resist. It appears most stayed in their homes peeking through the slit in the curtains. What if? When it happens, and it will, if you are there, will you risk it? Will I?</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What about when it gets more intense? What about when the stakes are higher? When the mother and father come to you and ask you to take in their child before they are deported, it sounds reasonable enough. How could you not? But what do you do when you find out that if you are caught, you will be killed. "Fair enough," maybe you you think, "It is he right thing to do." But that's not all. They will not only kill you but your entire family and sometimes even your entire village? What then? I don't know. </span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Certainly more people in occupied Europe turned their backs. There are great stories of those who risked their lives to save people. Often when they are asked why they did it, it is like they don't understand the question. Because it was the right thing to do. Oh I hope I could be those people.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What if you are a soldier? What if you're supposed to obey orders and the order today is to shoot innocent civilians into a mass grave and not to waste a bullet on the children, just throw them in. You know it is wrong. Everything you've ever known tells you this is wrong. But if you disobey, you end up in the pit too.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All of these genocides are mass murders, or course. But at the same time each murder was an individual murder. At some point individuals made decisions. It was a human being deciding to do the wrong thing. </span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To pass by on the other side of the street when someone is being mistreated. To choose not to get involved. To close the door when the refugee comes knocking, and you can year the wolves at their heals. When a hand with a tin cup reaches through the cattle car slats and asks for water, the SS man says "No!" Will you risk it? Will I?</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Millions of decisions were made in the moment. Most chose to obey. Most chose to do that which they knew was wrong.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How far are you willing to go? I ask myself this question. Am I willing to believe that there are things worse than my own death. I often wonder about those perpetrators that went on to live long lives. And I wonder if in their nightmares, if they thought</span><span style="font-variant-caps: inherit; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> their lives would have been better cut short by doing the right thing.</span></div>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-17757642049896971242015-12-22T08:23:00.001-08:002015-12-22T08:32:40.361-08:00Happy Holidays! Merry Xmas!<div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 23px;">
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I'm not sure where this obsession with wanting to feel persecuted for one's faith comes from. But come on! It isn't happening. There is no war on Xmas. Xmas is alive and well in all its glory, sacred and secular.</div>
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I'm going to get mail because I used X in place of Christ even though the use of X for Christ goes back long before the word Christmas was born.</div>
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So some people prefer for you to say, "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Xmas!" So what! "Happy holidays" is quite useful, killing two turtle doves with one stone.</div>
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If you worked where I work, it just doesn't feel right to say, "Merry Christmas!" to an observant Jew, not that any of them I know would truly take offense.</div>
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And what his "holiday" anyway? It's a holy day. So you could say that when someone wishes you a happy holiday, they are recognizing that you are celebrating something holy.</div>
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But I don't know. Maybe it just makes people feel more devout if they think they are being persecuted.</div>
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I hear too many sermons this time of year on recapturing the true meaning of Christmas. Many of these inevitably turn into a rant on commercialism and the fact that someone somewhere called the tree a holiday tree.</div>
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It seems like a wasted opportunity to me. While wasting words on how we are approaching the end of Christendom as we know it, they might instead be truly telling a story of hope and redemption, a story that God came down. Someone might be waiting to hear such a story.</div>
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I don't think God cares if you say "Happy Holidays." I don't know. He didn't tell me that. I don't think Jesus cares if you celebrate his birthday or not. He honestly doesn't seem so much a birthday kind of guy. I mean he did seem to like a good party but in the end, I don't think he'd give a rat's, eh, wait, maybe I'm starting to rant. From all I see of Jesus, he wouldn't have been preaching about how the nation was going to hell in a hand basket because people aren't allowed their nativity scenes in public spaces. In fact, he'd be more likely to come into your church building and turn over your American flags, Xmas trees and offering plates and yell, "What do you think this is all about?"</div>
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I think it is easy for the church to take the easy road. It's easier to talk about the meaning of Xmas and lament its demise. It is an easy sermon to preach. </div>
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What's hard is to do what Jesus did. If you believe the narrative, he got pretty humbled. From the throne of heaven to a stable in Bethlehem, born to a poor family, and you know the rest of the story. It was quite a come down. We Americans aren't good at that.</div>
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Even if it should turn out to be that Christians in America are persecuted, should that surprise? Christians should be surprised that they aren't. And if they are not feeling the scorn of the world, they should wonder what they are doing wrong. </div>
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So far I don't see it. Not here. There are Christians in the world severely persecuted even today in the 21st century. Some say more there are more people killed for their faith today than ever before. It's just what I heard. You can research it.</div>
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Bing Crosby surely started the war back in 1942 in the Xmas classic film <i>Holiday Inn</i> when he sang, "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas, darling. Maybe that's where we started on the slippery slope down Mount Crumpet.</div>
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I think that people spend their time ranting about the war on Xmas have a problem with the meaning of these tidings of great joy. I don't think they believe it enough. Somehow, they think this two-thousand year-old story is going to be lost. </div>
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Maybe they are right. It is being lost. It is being lost to those who might hear the story of heaven come down to earth, Emmanuel, God with us. Instead they hear that Xmas is being taken away because some don't want a nativity scene on the courthouse lawn or some store employees are asked to say, "Happy Holidays."</div>
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If concern about how people don't celebrate an ancient birthday the way you think they should is the biggest thing you have to concern yourself with at this time of year, I'd say you need to get out more.</div>
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Turn off the noise. When people start talking about the war on Christmas, turn them off. The true message is cheapened. It is making good news bad news. If it bothers you that Christmas is being lost, then I suggest you turn off CNN, FoxNews and the Kardashians and get out and be meaning of Christmas.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was Jesus himself who said why he came. It was Jesus himself who said why he came, "...</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free." St. Luke 4:18<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Good grief people! Where have you been? No one can keep Christmas from coming. Haven't you seen Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas? It came! It came just the same.</span></div>
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<br><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-67741543717319705352015-12-01T13:53:00.000-08:002015-12-01T13:57:35.759-08:00World AIDS Day 2015<div class="WordSection1" style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 23px; page: WordSection1; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you know me at all, you know I have an obsession with genocide. I have read volumes and volumes about the Holocaust. But I've also read much about Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia as well as Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. If I can come up with on reason I'm so interested in these morbid events, it would come down to trying to understand how the world let it happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And on this World AIDS Day, I'm reminded of a holocaust that happened right here in America in my lifetime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Again I'm left wondering, "How did we let this happen?" Yes, it was a little different. This was a terrible disease killing people instead of madmen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I'm always most particularly interested how the Christian church responded to all of these holocausts. I can only read about all of these massive human slaughters. But this one I lived through. And during the height of the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, I had the vantage point of viewing it as a closeted gay man from inside the evangelical world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When AIDS hit, I was just out of high school. I entered a conservative, evangelical seminary to train for ministry. This was in 1983. I spent the next ten years at evangelical colleges, as a student, undergraduate, graduate and then as an employee of a parachurch organization with offices on some of these conservative colleges.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">AIDS was huge news in those years. Not on our Christian college campuses. We had chapel twice a week. I rarely missed. I don't ever remember AIDS being a topic of any chapel session. I don't remember it ever being talked about in class. Well, wait, it was mentioned a few times, the gist being the "reap what you sow" line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was a fearful time. Huge numbers of Americans polled in the early years believed that people with AIDS should be tattooed or put into special camps. I get it. It was a terrifying disease and so little was known about or how contagious it might be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Still, the American churches did so little to help. Oh yes, you can find a handful wonderful examples of Christians and churches here and there who developed wonderful ministries to help people with AIDS. But I was on the inside and I, too, stood by, afraid of everything, especially myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Indeed even this very day, a Christian minister friend posted the "reap what you sow" passage from Galatians. I don't know if this is coincidental on World AIDS Day or not. I’m not saying “reap what you sow” isn’t a true maxim. Of course, it is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The church did not lead. The American evangelical church was happy to let the government deal with it. The problem was that the Reagan administration was doing practically nothing. Indeed it took Reagan years to even publicly utter the word AIDS after over 20,000 people had died.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gay communities all over the country took the lead to take care of the dying when often even the suffering ones’ own families refused. And they did a remarkable job. The organizations started in the homes of dying people to care of other dying people have become benchmarks for how to do it for all kinds of charities. And it brought LGBT people together like never before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But where were the evangelical churches? I think I know. AIDS proved them right in their minds. Those people were getting what they deserved. It was solving a pesky problem. Indeed the only thing I heard in my circles in those years went along the lines of "They brought his on themselves."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Even if that were true, it isn't how Jesus taught his followers to love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-21461116050715442582012-09-21T03:09:00.000-07:002012-09-21T03:09:35.388-07:00Big, Bad City<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioLZV9TjX14rCf9UZn5XSuDjWXmZKAzfgdG5ubmgqhFyIv7J-ZIS4vtlfxkIPhyphenhyphenPUqqyGyQ5iEf2s_UDpP0eUcLNu5zUTyg0R2mB3Xh_8Zg3zgFDsk4Udwj3Qz76-W-YsgAlJJzlrr5Sc/s1600/caracas-venezuela.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioLZV9TjX14rCf9UZn5XSuDjWXmZKAzfgdG5ubmgqhFyIv7J-ZIS4vtlfxkIPhyphenhyphenPUqqyGyQ5iEf2s_UDpP0eUcLNu5zUTyg0R2mB3Xh_8Zg3zgFDsk4Udwj3Qz76-W-YsgAlJJzlrr5Sc/s320/caracas-venezuela.jpg" /></a></div>One night in Caracas, a young man rang our door bell.<br />
<br />
He was about our age and gave us a real sob story, the details of which I don’t remember. He was friendly, overly so as to make him even more suspicious. But I had just cooked dinner, which was rare as eating out was so cheap for us. I remember I had cooked pork chops. So we invited him to stay for dinner. He was definitely a character full of outlandish tales of adventure, all too good to be true and too much for one guy. And he talked about a girlfriend named Nieves who worked at the Holiday Inn Caracas.<br />
<br />
I have no memory what he told us his name was but for the purposes of this story, let’s call him José. <br />
<br />
José said he needed a place to stay for the night and so, Brent, my co-worker, and I conferred and felt we couldn’t turn him out. I had Brent entertain the guy while I went up stairs and locked up the very few valuables we had. I think we only had two things of any value, one of the very first laptops, a Zenith that had no hard drive and took the original floppy disk and a fax machine, I think, but maybe I’m getting anachronistic. No, it wouldn’t have been a fax machine in 1986. Anyway, we didn’t have much for people who lived in a manse with six or more bathrooms--I’ve lost count. If he wanted to steal something, he’d have been hard-pressed to find anything worth much.<br />
<br />
I made up a bed in one of our huge spare rooms for him. I’m quite sure I slept with one eye open that night. At least, I never heard anything and when we woke up the next morning, he was still there. We had breakfast and he went on his way.<br />
<br />
We’d seen the last of him.<br />
<br />
Our landlady, Carmen, had a son, Victor, who was probably in his early 30s. When he couldn’t take his mother any more, which, knowing her, would be often, he would live in an apartment which was a part of our house but with a completely separate entrance. We rarely saw him.<br />
<br />
Late one evening, Brent and I came home from having visited a family in the far suburbs of Caracas to find a desperate Victor waiting for us. He had been in the garage working on his car and a man, our José, was walking around the house and came upon Victor. Looking back, José was looking for a way to get in the house but Victor didn’t seem to notice this at the time because José took him by surprise and told him he was looking for Marty and Brent. So, Victor assumed he was our friend.<br />
<br />
José, being the friendly guy he was, convinced Victor that he was “one of us” and then casually drew attention to Victor’s motor cycle, his pride and joy. He asked Victor if he could take his motorcycle around the block for a spin. Victor said, “Sure!”<br />
<br />
When we got home and Victor wanted to know where we could find our friend, José. We had only one lead, Nieves at the Holiday Inn. Sure enough, she was real. And she said she didn’t know where José was but that she hoped he was dead.<br />
<br />
As far as I know, Victor never saw his motorcycle again. When we told Victor the story and how we came to know José and that he wasn’t really our friend, Victor said, “You guys can’t trust people like that in this city. You have to be careful.”<br />
<br />
Sí, Victor. We know that.<br />
<br />
Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-9976319638163821282012-09-20T04:50:00.000-07:002012-09-20T04:50:58.803-07:00Poor indeed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1KsSzGD6xNE7EL1W37fX7pORXBUrYqxdkN_1zpdjzrDKVu5Xp8E1vV5sAdxJewNS5Xe1Yt97L_tbmD12nM2V7RTz4wi5Se5fK8bXPA5woaO7eOLe132GDdYEMUp5WCO3dROmTmVdgkRU/s1600/pico+bolivar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="194" width="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1KsSzGD6xNE7EL1W37fX7pORXBUrYqxdkN_1zpdjzrDKVu5Xp8E1vV5sAdxJewNS5Xe1Yt97L_tbmD12nM2V7RTz4wi5Se5fK8bXPA5woaO7eOLe132GDdYEMUp5WCO3dROmTmVdgkRU/s320/pico+bolivar.jpg" /></a></div><br />
This is a follow-up to my previous post.<br />
<br />
Let me start this out by saying that there was a period of a few years when I couldn't tolerate the thought of eating an egg.<br />
<br />
Since I didn't find a Venezuelan family to "bond" with in the summer of 1986 by moving in with a family, it was decided that I, along with my co-worker, Brent, should accompany a man in the neighborhood on a trip to his hometown in the interior of Venezuela.<br />
<br />
We must have met Chuy during our first couple of days upon arrival in Venezuela. Chuy is the diminutive name in Latin America used for men named Jesus. Chuy was probably close to 60 years-old, a peasant man from the Andean mountain town of Merida. He and his wife were house-sitting in a mansion up the street from ours while the family who lived there were on an extended tour of Europe.<br />
<br />
It so happened that a few weeks after our arrival, Chuy was going home to Merida for a few days. He didn't speak a lick of English so we'd be forced to communicate with him only in Spanish. We were to go there by bus, about an 18 hour ride.<br />
<br />
So we arrived at the bus terminal in Caracas very early in the morning. That's my memory at least. It could have been as late as 9:00 a.m., which I still consider early. The bus to Merida was modern and clean and air-conditioned. We were the first to board and there weren't many people on when we left Caracas. This was the local bus, meaning that it stopped along the way at every city and town along the route.<br />
<br />
I was so smart. I decided we should sit in the front because everyone knows the back of the bus can be uncomfortable, especially on bumpy, windy roads. What I didn't know is that the radio speaker was just above our heads and played what I would call Mariachi music for 18 hours straight except for the occasional 70s American pop song, which was always the same song, "ouga chaka, ouga chaka, ouga ouga ouga chaka...I can't fight this feeling" by Blue Swede. I like the song. I like it once every few months. Or years. It seemed to be on an hour loop. But I have to say, at this point, I loved it.<br />
<br />
To be honest, I don't remember much about the trip during the day. I remember after dark, we stopped at someplace to eat. It seemed like a truck stop high in the mountains. And it seemed scary to me. But I think it was just that everything was completely unknown. We were given a menu but it quickly became clear that there was only one thing left, some kind of beef. It came served with black beans (caraotas), an arepa and it was delicious. It was like my mom and aunts cook when they cook a cheap cut of meat and slow cook it forever until it falls apart and is served with a rich gravy.<br />
<br />
After dinner, the bus slowly emptied out at what seemed to be random stops in the middle of nowhere and there were some empty double seats. I decided to try to curl up and sleep. What I didn't realize is that by now, we were in the Andes. And the roads must have been hairpin, because every time I would get close to sleep, we'd round a curve and I'd practically be thrown out of my seat. It also appeared that the driver probably wanted to get to our destination very soon.<br />
<br />
It was midnight by the time we arrived in Merida. Chuy splurged to take a cab to his home. We went up and up and up. And then the cab could go no further and we got out and walked up and up and up another ten or fifteen minutes.<br />
<br />
When we arrived at his home, it was clear that Chuy was poorer than we had imagined. It was July but we were high in the mountains and it was cold, very cold, shivering cold, I-didn't-dress-for-this cold. There was no heat. He showed Brent and me to a double bed and we quickly crawled under the covers. It was like going to bed in my grandma's house when I was little. The bedrooms were cold in the winter and you just get under the covers and warm the space you're in and try not to move. But we were tired so we passed out.<br />
<br />
In the morning we woke up to an empty house. Chuy was nowhere to be found. I found a bathroom. There was a long pipe sticking out of the wall with water pouring out of it. I wanted to wake up and get rid of my bed head. Without thinking, I stuck my head under it. Whoa! Immediate brain freeze. That water was freezing. I looked out the window and realized we were high in Alpine terrain. That water was coming right out of the mountain.<br />
<br />
It had been weeks since I'd had cold, fresh water that hadn't been treated or boiled. So I drank that cold water for a long time. More brain freeze.<br />
<br />
I then went to the front of the house and went out onto the front porch. Wow! This was a stunning view of snow peaked mountains as far as you could see. We were basically in a slum with a millionaire's view.<br />
<br />
Chuy came home and brought us into the kitchen. He made us fresh arepas and fried eggs. Dread filled me. "Please don't eat with us," I was thinking. He served us each two eggs, very over easy, an arepa with a nice dollop of Underwood Deviled Ham.<br />
<br />
Chuy didn't stay to eat with us or make sure that we ate every bite. I offered Brent my eggs and, being one of the nicest guys in the world, he took one. But I just couldn't bear to eat the other. What luck! A cat slinked into the kitchen. I "accidentally" dropped the egg on the floor which the cat made quick work of, with not a trace left. A ate the arepa and deviled ham, which was like ambrosia to me. In fact, I wish I had a can of it to eat right now.<br />
<br />
Chuy had come home to Merida for some kind of business. Looking back, it now appears that it was probably some kind of legal issue so he was busy during the day and we were free to roam.<br />
<br />
But as we accompanied Chuy from home to the city center, it appeared that this poor peasant must have been the most popular man in town. Everyone knew him and obviously loved him. People came out of their homes and businesses to greet him.<br />
<br />
Merida has a cable car, the longest in the world by one way of counting, that takes you high into the Andes, higher than anywhere in the continental U.S. or Europe. Brent and I spent a day up there.<br />
<br />
Our Spanish was not terrible for beginners. On one of the cable cars, we happened to be on a car with just two other people, two girls about our age. They assumed we didn't speak Spanish, which was a fairly good assumption and not completely inaccurate. But they were talking about us and how one could have one and one the other. This went on for awhile because the first segment up the mountain is pretty long. When we left them at the next stop, we made sure to say farewell to them in our best Spanish. They were mortified. Needless to say they did not get in the cable car with us for the next segment.<br />
<br />
We were not with Chuy during the daytimes so we ate on our own, probably pasta or pizza, always easy to find in Venezuela. But at breakfast and dinner we were with him and it was always the dreaded egg, a freshly fried arepa and some sort of canned meat product. I know that Chuy was giving us the best that he could afford. I wonder if he noticed the cat getting fatter. But I still crave Underwood Deviled Ham on an arepa.<br />
<br />
I don't know exactly how long we stayed with Chuy, I think three full days. We met some of his family. If I remember correctly, he had eight children.<br />
<br />
Most of the population of Merida lived in the valley. But poor Chuy lived high up on the mountain with a view of the highest peaks of the Andes and fresh mountain air and cold pure water running right into his house. Poor indeed!<br />
<br />
On the trip home, which I dreaded terribly, Chuy suggested that we go by taxi. It isn't uncommon in Latin America to hire a taxi to take you very long distances. It was a shorter trip but I'm not sure it was more comfortable. I sat on the hump the entire 700 miles.<br />
Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-42117169035714247882012-09-03T13:37:00.000-07:002012-09-03T14:07:18.160-07:00My First Kidney Stone<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP0ORyjPwtSAmvoTmEy9TCIwqVyQb2fiVRJ0l2yM60KA1HIaZbwHMk3Art8P-91rresgg16-piO_vNHAvlkIMYMpSu6Nm19in-7HARbdrLHPRjv1BNdNprhoXnGZwLIjf_JpTgEBW5gzA/s1600/caracas+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP0ORyjPwtSAmvoTmEy9TCIwqVyQb2fiVRJ0l2yM60KA1HIaZbwHMk3Art8P-91rresgg16-piO_vNHAvlkIMYMpSu6Nm19in-7HARbdrLHPRjv1BNdNprhoXnGZwLIjf_JpTgEBW5gzA/s320/caracas+shot.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
You never forget your first kidney stone. You never plan to because you never intend to have another.<br />
<br />
Actually, what I remember as my first kidney stone wasn't actually my first, but I didn't know that at the time.<br />
<br />
It was July of 1986. I was twenty-two years-old and had been in Caracas, Venezuela for just under two weeks. There were a dozen of us, mostly Bible college students on a venture to start a new church in this city of over 4 million people. This venture was in some ways my baby. It was to be my internship and was up to me to recruit enough people to make it happen. So I did. I didn't recruit everyone but did recruit about half.<br />
<br />
We had spent the previous month in San Jose, Costa Rica learning Spanish. In that month alone, I'd already experienced food-poisoning and amoebas. But hey, I had lost weight so it wasn't that bad. I could use an amoeba right now.<br />
<br />
So, we had rented a large house, a mansion or as they call them there, a quinta, in an upper class neighborhood in Caracas where 75% of the people lived in high-rise apartment buildings. Our Quinta was called <i>La Fundación</i>. In Caracas and some other parts of the Caribbean, they don't number houses. They name them. And you can name your house Jacqueline if you want, even if the house next door to you is Jacqueline. And while JFK was President of the United States, he and Jackie made a trip to Venezuela. The Venezuelans loved them. There were Quinta Jacquelines everywhere. Have you ever tried to find a house on a street by name? Well, in Caracas they had a huge, six-inch thick book like the yellow pages that lists every house by name so you can kind of find the house you're looking for. It is very clever. Who ever thought it was better to number them?<br />
<br />
It was a two-story house, not counting the basement, which was huge. There were three large bedrooms upstairs and three large rooms downstairs with a maid's quarter. In all there were six bathrooms, the three main bathrooms all had bidets. There were two big mango trees in the backyard. There was no grass. The yard was brick, which I think is ideal. If I ever have a yard, I want it to be brick. But I don't want a mango tree, even though I adore mangoes, but when they fall from high onto the brick yard, they make a terrible mess that attracts bees.<br />
<br />
We rented <i>La Fundación</i> from a really tall, eccentric woman named Carmen Pereira who spoke so fast that even her fellow Venezuelans said they couldn't understand her. And she seemed to take joy in telling you something and then asking you what she just said. I got drunk at her house one night but that's a story for later.<br />
<br />
I was living in <i>La Fundación</i>. We weren't supposed to be living there. We were supposed to be “building bridges” by living with Venezuelan families. All but two of us had managed to find a place. I don't know about the other guy, but I didn't look too diligently. I'd just spent a month living with a wonderful Costa Rican family but living on my own in a mansion seemed more appealing. And just let me say right here, “Doug, I'm sorry, I didn't really look for a family to live with.” There. That's off my chest.<br />
<br />
So one Friday morning I was showering and, I'm not kidding you, I dropped the soap. I bent to pick it up and a pain shot through my back. No big deal. But the pain didn't go away and over the next half hour, got worse and became unbearable. We say “unbearable,” but most of us who say “unbearable” bore it somehow, so I guess it was just really intense.<br />
<br />
Finally, our leader, Doug Lucas, was summoned to my bedside. He asked me what was wrong. I replied, “I'm dying.” And I really thought I was and I think he really believed me too. I had gone through it all my mind already. I had been a major part of organizing this new venture, and I wasn't even going to make it through the first month. I was going to be a martyr. And I didn't even have any major quotes for future generations to quote about me or to grace the back cover of my biography, which would become standard in missions classes. They would name a dormitory after me at a Bible college.<br />
<br />
There were already great quotes from the summer, the best being, “It's cool,” spoken by fellow-intern, Jon Spalding. When things didn't go as planned (and things never go as planned), Jon would nonchalantly say, “It's cool.” But that wasn't my quote.<br />
<br />
So after Doug, was summoned to my deathbed, he consulted with Leslie Penhollow, who was on our team and was a nurse and who spoke fluent Spanish. It was decided to take me to the hospital. We got into a cab, Leslie, Jim (her husband) and I.. On the way, the pain moved from my back to my front. And a light went on in my head. I said, “I'm having a kidney stone. The pain just moved.” I don't even know how I knew this. I don't ever remember knowing anything about kidney stones.<br />
<br />
Well, at least I wasn't going to die.<br />
<br />
Leslie confirmed that it sounded like that was what I was happening. Jim confirmed that he had had them before and it sounded like I might not be dying after all.<br />
<br />
We got to the hospital. And though my Spanish was pretty good for two years in high school and a month-long crash course in Costa Rica and having listened to tapes of Venezuelan Spanish for almost a year (“Al pasarse la esponga el jabon hace burbujas.”) my hospital Spanish was just not there.<br />
<br />
The rest is a blur. They put me on IV liquid and pain killer and in a short while, say, fewer than three hours, the stone had passed and they sent me home. They sent me with pain killer in case it happened again. But they didn't send me with a nice bottle of pills, no. They sent me with syringes and vials of liquid to inject myself with painkiller. I never had to use them and I'm not sure what I would have done had I needed to. Leslie showed how to do it and had me practice on an orange. But I knew that I was not an orange and having always hated shots, I probably was incapable of shooting up. The other option was that I could go to a pharmacy and someone there would inject me.<br />
<br />
On this internship, we pretty much did everything by twos. So the next day as everyone went out to pass out brochures about our upcoming evangelistic campaign, “Cruzada de la Familia.” The telephone number of the house was on the brochure so it was decided that someone should always stay at the house if anyone called with questions such as, “Which La Fundación is that?” Not that I would have understood the question nor would I have been able to give a decent answer. Since I had been under the weather, I was elected to stay back that day to man the phone and since were doing things by twos, someone had to stay with me. The person who got the job that day said, “I came here to save souls not to babysit.” He actually said that.<br />
<br />
I realized that back in May, a few weeks before I left for Latin America, I had had a kidney stone on a Saturday night at my parents' house. I had terrible back pain and my mother had some kind of pain killer for something or the other and had given it to me and I must have passed the stone in my sleep. Now that I'm practically an expert, it makes sense. Almost all of my stones have come in pairs. The first one must have been a chip off the old block. The other one hung around to give me this wonderful memory.<br />
<br />
And for the record, that guy did get to save souls later. Or at least he want back there as a missionary for several years. I'm not sure how many souls he saved. And I guess we'll never know how many were lost because he got stuck babysitting me.</div>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-10123241513034017522012-05-24T07:49:00.000-07:002012-05-24T20:49:22.550-07:00Incident on the M100<div>This morning what I really needed was to get home and sleep as soon as I could. But I had to go to the bank. Then I headed home. Normally I would walk but I thought the bus would be faster and I saw an M100 coming so I decided to hop on.<br />
<br />
As the bus approached, the driver honked twice. I looked up and there was a man standing in the street, about a foot off the curb. He was wearing a suit and he will hereinafter be referred to as "the suit." He had ear-buds in his ears, as that’s where ear-buds usually go. He appeared to be talking on the phone. He heard the horn and looked up. And you could see that he consciously made a decision to stay standing in the street. The bus could go around him. The driver honked again and I guess even the suit’s hubris wasn’t as big as the bus so he finally relented and gently stepped on the curb.<br />
<br />
But his pride was hurt. So he decided to berate the bus driver. “You couldn’t go around me? You had to get that close?”<br />
<br />
“Yes,” the driver said, “I’m supposed to get as close to the curb as I can so that passengers can get on.”<br />
<br />
The suit said more words but I didn’t hear.<br />
<br />
We all got on but the suit got in front of the bus and started taking pictures of the driver and his bus number.<br />
<br />
Well! It is on!<br />
<br />
So the bus driver called his supervisor. The people on the bus weren’t too happy so the driver gave them transfer slips to get on another bus which had just pulled up.<br />
<br />
As I started to get off, I asked the driver if he needed a witness. He said that it would be great. So another gentleman and I waited.<br />
<br />
The suit stood on the sidewalk talking on his phone. I snapped some pictures of him, just for fun.<br />
<br />
We waited about 15 minutes for the proper MTA authority to arrive. Just before he did (you could see the MTA car coming) the suit asked the driver to open the door. The driver refused. Then the suit said, “I’m a city employee too. And I could make this much worse for you. I was standing on the curb and you came very close to me.”<br />
<br />
“No," I said, “You were standing with both feet in the street." At that he looked a little defeated.<br />
<br />
And then he crossed the street and went down into the subway. Coward!<br />
<br />
Well that sealed it for me. I was definitely going to tell what really happened.<br />
<br />
The MTA supervisor got on and what a timid little mouse he was. But I made sure he got my story and gave them all my information.I hope they call.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQeWEyNGGbCpgEeEEU09ZsyJWHBNkWu4Rwxg5dtvoviDANf4oawxJNMVyMD8ic9awcoikPPfjvsIfo6e4RN1a3HoZAQRl5JxDGLTmwx8Gr3QUa9e6Puy2RfDJ6uxJeyy39DW4ppkmRMKc/s1600/the+suit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQeWEyNGGbCpgEeEEU09ZsyJWHBNkWu4Rwxg5dtvoviDANf4oawxJNMVyMD8ic9awcoikPPfjvsIfo6e4RN1a3HoZAQRl5JxDGLTmwx8Gr3QUa9e6Puy2RfDJ6uxJeyy39DW4ppkmRMKc/s320/the+suit.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I hate bullies.<br /></div>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-1932060432181641132012-04-12T03:48:00.001-07:002012-04-12T13:53:10.998-07:00On The Hunger GamesWhat baffles me about the popularity of <i>The Hunger Games</i> is how many people are opposed to young people reading it. Now, I must point out that every one that I have personally spoken with who has voiced opposition to it has not read it. One lady was going on and on about how bad it was for her grandson to read it. I asked her, “So you didn’t like it?” “Oh, I haven’t read it,” she said without a thought. I knew that already because I know that this lady, who is a teacher, doesn’t read books. She only watches reality TV.<br />
<br />
It reminds me of a friend, who is also a teacher. A parent voiced her opposition to her teenage child reading <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> because it uses the word “nigger” and talks about rape. My friend asked the lady if she had read it and the lady admitted that she had not. Now, before I move on, I should say that I don’t know this lady and I don’t know where or if she went to school but if she went through school and was never required to read T<i>o Kill a Mockingbird</i>, then that school needs to be punished. And that lady needs to be locked in a room and forced to read it. And any teenager needs to know that we live in a world where people say “nigger” and girls get raped.<br />
<br />
Now, <i>The Hunger Games</i> is no <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. But it is compelling reading for teens and adults. And I think it has value.<br />
<br />
The biggest opposition I hear about <i>The Hunger Games</i> is that “sending children out to kill each other until only one is left standing” should not be looked upon as sport. That’s true. It shouldn’t. And I think that that is the point.<br />
<br />
I think the crux of <i>The Hunger Games</i> series may have been spoken by the character, Plutarch, near the end of <i>Mockingjay</i>, the last book, “We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.” You don’t have to look far back into our long history on earth, only the past hundred years to see how bent on self-destruction we are and how quickly we forget it.<br />
<br />
And that is why I think teens need to read this series. And then they need to move on from there to reading the history of the last 100 years (and of course, back to the beginning of time). As I write this, children are forced to murder in Africa. Not for sport? For what other reason? It is sport for sadists like Joseph Kony. But it is nothing new. I read in a history of the Holocaust how as the Nazis were cleaning out one of the large ghettos in Poland. A 14 year-old boy in a Nazi uniform was allowed to spear babies on his bayonet as they were tossed from hospital windows. The story went that he was having quite a fun time of it until he realized how messy it was and that’s what made him stop. It wasn’t the murder and suffering that made him stop it seems, but he didn’t like getting his uniform messy.<br />
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It’s a bad world we live in. Do we want our children to read nothing more unpleasant than <i>Little House on the Prairie</i> where evil Nellie Oleson is as bad as it gets? We live in a world where children are enslaved and forced to kill. We live in a world where there is starvation. We live in a world where many children, like the children in <i>The Hunger Games</i> have very few choices. And perhaps that is our problem in the West. We have so many choices that we forget how few choices some in our world have. To them the best we in the West often have to say is, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” perhaps a new way of saying, “Be warm and well fed.”<br />
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I’m often tempted to look at the world with complete cynicism and fear. But it was the evil President Snow who said what is true in <i>The Hunger Games</i> movie (I can’t remember if he said it in the book): “Hope, it is the only thing that is stronger than fear.” Snow misjudged how true that really is and it was his downfall.<br />
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“And now abideth faith, hope, charity.”Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-43362808168320275972010-10-20T22:54:00.001-07:002010-10-20T23:02:13.452-07:00What a night. What a world.I babysat today Jonathan's and Jubi's girls. Jonathan is a white guy. Jubi's family is from South India.<br /><br />After my babysitting gig, I stopped by my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group to pick up my weekly delivery of produce. Sweet potatoes. Acorn squash. Butternut squash. I question my choice about carrying around these large vegetables for the rest of the night.<br /><br />Twenty-seven years ago I met a great group of friends in Cincinnati which included Amy (Brane) Noyola who is now a missionary in Mexico.<br /><br />Twenty years ago I met Brad Canning in Cincinnati. Brad now lives in Brooklyn where he and his wife, Joy, started a new church (Church!).<br /><br />Tommy Brane, who happens to be Amy (Brane) Noyola's younger brother, is a white guy (and Amy's younger brother) married to Suja. Suja is from South India.<br /><br />Tommy and his family are going as missionaries to Burkina Faso.<br /><br />After I collected my produce, I met Brad and Tommy, who is visiting from Cincinnati, in Alphabet City where they had heard a singer from Brad's church perform. Tommy and I went for tea and hot chocolate at a diner while Brad went to visit a church member with a newborn at Beth Israel Medical Center.<br /><br />After Brad's visit to the hospital, we were looking for something to eat. I wanted Korean. Tommy didn't really want Asian food as he'd already had Japanese earlier. You know, all the people in Asia are saying the same thing, "Oh, I don't want Asian food again, I had that already five times this week."<br /><br />Tommy had never eaten falafel and we passed by this hole in the wall which appeared to be patronized solely by Middle Eastern cabbies. There was an Arabic film blaring on the tv. We were definitely out of place but we loved that. We ordered too much food which seemed to be too cheap for Manhattan and we ate family style, or maybe it was animal style, just food spread all over the table, each of us stabbing at food willy-nilly. Grilled chicken, stuffed grape leaves, falafel, some kind of beef and rice (so delicious).<br /><br />Then on to Veniero's, just the best Italian pastry shop I know of. I mean, the case with the pastries is more beautiful that my words can describe. I usually go for the lobster tails but the millefoglia seems to be the same thing only easier to eat. They now have what they call a French cannoli, which is filled with Bavarian cream instead of the heavier ricotta filling. But they only have that on weekends so I went for the millefoglia. Brad is now mad at me since he's lived in NYC about a decade and this is the first time I've taken him to Veniero's. Well, I don't take everyone there. Actually, I do. When Joy finds out what she missed, Brad is going to be in big trouble but I'll not tell.<br /><br />Then off to the subway to take them to bed in Park Slope and to me at work downtown. My subway never came. <br /><br />Great guys. Great conversation. A great night.<br /><br />I've only slept about two and a half hours today and it is going to be a long night. But it was so worth it.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-22045575632142329392010-02-12T02:54:00.001-08:002010-02-12T04:17:49.277-08:00Happy Chinese New YearIt is almost Chinese New Year. I was hungry at work it seemed fitting to eat some Ramen-style noodles I happened upon in my desk drawer. Smelling the steam off of them took me back to a trip to China in the early 90s. <br /><br />It was Easter week. It was early April. My boss, Doug, was in China looking at a potential project there. Early in the week he called and asked me and a couple of other people to get on the next flight over. He was in Shenyang, a city of more than 7 million, in northeastern China, not far from North Korea.<br /><br />We landed in Hong Kong in the morning and had to spend the entire day there. I'm not a fan of Hong Kong, just wanted to sleep but we made the best of it. I think we actually had to get visas for China so that took some time. We flew the three hour flight to Shenyang, arriving around 10:00 p.m. Doug had told us to call when we arrived and someone would collect us from the airport.<br /><br />It was apparent as soon as we came out of customs and immigration that the airport was closing. In Northeastern China, it is still very much winter in April. All we needed to do was make a phone call. We went to a desk. One of the people with me, Sherry, spoke enough Chinese to let them know we wanted to make a call. But of course, what did we know about telephones? They wouldn't allow us to actually dial the number ourselves. They took one look at the number and said, "Sorry, is wrong number." Now, we knew it wasn't a wrong number. We had been dialing it for a week and getting through just fine.<br /><br />But as I said, the airport was closing. Finally they shooed us out and, though I don't remember who "they" were but I imagine it was someone who couldn’t go home from work until they were rid of us so, they put us on a city bus and apparently told the driver to take us to an international hotel. After about an hour, we arrived and a very nice hotel, not in our budget at all. But remember, all we wanted to do was make a phone call.<br /><br />So we went to the front desk and ask if we can make a phone call. It is an international hotel and so they should speak English, right? Well, yes, they knew the vocabulary for renting you a very expensive room. Finally they relented and said we could make a call. But again, Americans probably don't know how to use a phone so they insisted that we give them the number. "Sorry, is wrong number."<br /><br />Okay, I'm not very pleasant after a trans-Pacific flight with very little sleep late at night in a place where I don't speak the language. So I convinced my colleagues that we should just get a room and figure it out in the morning. There were three of us, two guys and a girl. Because of the price, we wanted to share a room but that was forbidden. It was the guys in one room, the girl in the other.<br /><br />So when we got to the room, I decided to find Doug. But we weren't allowed, as foreigners, to call anyone inside China. We could, however, call the United States. So I tried calling Doug's wife. She was not home and this was back in the days when few people had cell phones.<br /><br />So, I did what anyone does when they are in a pickle. I called my mother. I gave her the number of Doug's hotel. I told her, "Dial this number. When they answer, they will not speak English. Just keep repeating the words 'Doug Lucas' and they will eventually get him." I told to tell him where we were staying.<br /><br />When my mother called, she only had to say "Doug Lucas" one time. Of course, if you know Doug, you'd know that he had already made an impression on the hotel and they knew exactly who he was. So we were able to make contact.<br /><br />It turned out that Doug was not in Shenyang. He was in Liaoyang, a small city (a village really by Chinese standards) of 1 million people. It was about an hour away. No one in Shenyang recognized the calling codes and so, "Sorry, is wrong number."<br /><br />And so the following morning, we were collected and taken to what appears to have been the only international hotel in Liaoyang. I don't remember much about it except that I do remember Doug cornering a rat in the hallway to the delight and horror of the "attendant" on our floor, the attendant being the person who was evidently in charge of making sure we were always watched.<br /><br />Doug and I did escape somehow one afternoon. We took a walk and people ran into their homes to get their children to come look at us. Doug had a camera and they all wanted to be photographed with us. Then we decided to take a bus. Neither of spoke enough Chinese to do anything but we took a bus ride and finally we were the only ones left. The bus driver finally pulled over, turned to us, threw up his hands as if to say, “What now?” We got off the bus and got on another bus going back in the direction from which we came and eventually we made it back to the hotel. I mean, how lost could we get? It was a city of only a million.<br /><br />For three days we lived like kings. We were wined and dined by the provincial government. There was a scary hotel breakfast every morning which consisted of hot milk (and I don't like milk, especially hot) and tasteless toast and unsalted butter. But then lunch came and for two hours we feasted. The food was truly amazing, art really. And then after lunch, just when you were sure you could never possibly eat again, the hauled us off to another banquet-style dinner, including some wonderful and some scary things, like fried scorpion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BeMld9mB2U). We did this for three days.<br /><br />On the fourth day, it was over. Everyone was leaving. The Americans were flying away. Doug had a morning flight to Hong Kong. The three of us had an afternoon flight to Hong Kong where we would meet up and fly back to the States. <br /><br />It seems that when all of the "important people" left, no one cared a fig what happened to the three of us. After being VIPs for three days, we were suddenly completely alone in the Shenyang airport. Did I mention that it was snowing? And did I mention that there's no heat anywhere in the airport. But there was a shop that sold instant, Ramen-style noodles and hot water. And that is where I learned to love those noodles.<br /><br />So when the time came to check in, we took our tickets to the counter and handed them to the lovely young lady. She looked at the computer screen. I could see it. It had our names with "OK" beside each one. But no. The agent said, "So sorry. Ticket has no seat. Must buy new seat with ticket." And that was all. She wouldn't talk to us anymore. She just went on to the next customer and pointed us to the ticket window. <br /><br />So we went over to the ticket window and just as we stepped up, the lady pulled down the blind. It was lunch time. I could peak through the cracks and I could see her eating her noodles. So, we went down the line of ticket agents. All of them telling us the same thing, "Ticket has not seat. Must buy new ticket with seat."<br /><br />Finally, we came back to the first girl. We handed her our tickets again. She typed us in and a beaming smile spread across her face, "Oh very lucky. Have three seats!" I wanted to scream, "It is not luck! That's what happens when you buy a ticket." We made our flight and our subsequent, close-call transfer in Guangzhou and then to Hong Kong, where Doug talked me into buying a duty-free Palm Pilot, which I never used but DID have to pay duty on when I arrived in San Francisco.<br /><br />That's all for now.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-43204269905648650242009-07-22T22:51:00.000-07:002009-07-22T23:25:07.991-07:00AaronA few weeks ago I had come home from a bike ride and I was chaining my bike to the street sign outside my building. An old man approached. He was wearing plaid Bermuda shorts and a plaid shirt that clashed, not that I'm the fashion police. He had white athletic socks pulled up almost to his knees and black dress slippers.<br /><br />Before I continue, let me just say that I've edited the man's words because he had a very foul mouth, dropping F bombs right and left.<br /><br />He came up to me and said, "I used to have a bike in Miami. I would ride it to the beach every day. I couldn't ride it here with all these hills but in Miami I could still ride even now but someone stole my bike." He had a slight accent that I couldn't place. Then he shrugged and said, "C'est la vie!" He said, "That means 'That's life' in French. Do you speak French?"<br /><br />I told him that I spoke a little.<br /><br />He said, "I lived in Paris for many years but now I live between here and Miami."<br /><br />Then he said, "You don't leave your bike out here on the street do you?" I told him that I only put it out during the day when I was going to be using it again but I took it in at night. I also told him that once I forgot to bring it in the day before I was going to be away for two weeks. So it stayed out there for two weeks. The only thing that happened was that the handle bar grips were stolen.<br /><br />He told me (again) that he had a bike in Miami but that it was stolen.<br /><br />I asked him where he was from originally. "Poland," he said, "But I escaped from Poland when the Germans came. I am Jewish. My brothers were in the Polish army but I was only 17. So I heard two boys talking about escaping to Russia. I told them to take me. The one boy said, 'no, I will not take you!' but I said to him, 'You will take me or I will tell the police what you are going to do.' So he said okay I will take you.<br /><br />"I went home to say goodbye to my mother. She was such a good, smart woman. My father had been dead since I was a child and my mother did everything. She cried and I cried but she told me to go. Of course, I never saw her again. She died in the camps.<br /><br />"So I went to Russia. The Russians accused all Polish refugees of being spies and they sentenced me to 25 years hard labor in the gulags. You know the gulags? So I stayed in the gulags all through the war and it saved my life but after the war, the Americans helped get the Poles released and I went back to Poland. I came from a city of 5,000 people, 3,000 Jews. Only 3 Jews came back alive, my cousin, me and another man who still lives there today. My cousin came to America. I went to Paris.<br /><br />"In Paris I worked as a tailor in haute couture. Very nice job. But it was the Cold War. My wife and I didn't want to live in Europe through another war so we came to New York. We stayed for a few years but we liked Paris more so we went back. But it was better for our children here so we came back to New York. And I bought an apartment in Miami.<br /><br />Then the man changes course a little. I was just listening.<br /><br />"I know this rabbi who says 'god this and god that' and that is fine for him but you know what I say, 'Where was god in Poland? Where was god when they killed my mother and my brothers? And so, I say, that is fine for you rabbi, but I don't believe. If you want to believe, fine, but I don't.<br /><br />Then the man realized that his fly was down. He looked down, zipped up and said, "Well, I like to be ready at all times." (This was obviously a sexual reference.)<br /><br />Then he went on, "I like New York but I can't take it in the winter. I can't take the cold. My cousin told me, 'Come to Miami.' And I said, 'What do I want with Miami but I went for a visit and I bought an apartment the first week. I had sciatica. When I escaped from Poland, for a week I stayed in the swamps on the frontier. A week sleeping in the swamps and then five years in the gulags. I got sciatica. Then I moved to Miami and swam in the sea every day and no more sciatica. I mean I can f#@% all night now. If you have sciatica, swim in the sea.<br /><br />I had to go. So I asked him his name. "Aaron," he said. I said, "The brother of Moses."<br /><br />"Yes," my father's name was Moses. My brother, Abraham. My other brother, Yaakov."<br /><br />"I'm Martin," I said.<br /><br />"Oh, I know another Martin who lives here. Two Martins."<br /><br />I told him I'd see him again and if he ever wanted to borrow the bike, he could. He said, "I can just steal it from here!"<br /><br />I hope to see Aaron again. By calculations he's about 87 years old.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-10437403256167535092008-10-02T09:08:00.000-07:002008-10-02T23:51:19.309-07:00RidingThis week I've just been tired and the temptations to sleep in and get a car to work (provided by the firm) were too appealing so I didn't ride. Yesterday it was just too beautiful not to ride so when I got home from work, I decided to take a ride down to Central Park and ride the loop. But once I got there, and rode around once, I was just overtaken with the day and I decided to ride my bike down to the office and leave the bike there so I could ride home this morning.<br /><br />When I came out of the park, I was riding down 7th Avenue and the sane thing to do would have been to head west and take the bike path downtown. But I was lured into the riskiness of riding all the way down Broadway. And so, right in the middle of the day, dodging buses, cabs and trucks, down Broadway through Times Square I went.<br /><br />At 42nd Street, a big moving truck, with a clever slogan on the back that I can't remember now, cut me off. The stretch of Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square has been turned into an amazing eight blocks for bikers. There's a bike lane separated from the traffic by tables and chairs where people can sit and have lunch. I'm not sure how many lanes there are for actual cars but there can't be more than two lanes. It is almost perfect. If this is the work of Mayor Bloomberg, I'm all for doing away with term limits and electing him again.<br /><br />I have to say that there is something exhilarating and a great adrenaline rush from the danger of weaving through cars. I'm no daredevil but I have to admit, it is fun. You definitely see the city through different eyes.<br /><br />The real daredevils are the bike messengers who often stupidly ride up the street in the wrong direction darting in and out of traffic.<br /><br />When I got down to the Wall Street area, there was a huge police presence and traffic was backed up for blocks. It turned out, two protesters had climbed the flagpoles beside the big brass Wall Street blues and stretched a banner condemning the proposed congressional bailout of Wall Street.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbtNT_5LFkSp4-MZc41v96sLCLv5ZC3ai11l8Dj5CItv30RZbc9LIgNLQz_qErp3363xudic5nPHvbg-W6XcV7KZcX_l3u0tfMakTGBVwiWAC_3jgf6TsbClQSw2-e-Piwso-670IgHo/s1600-h/Wall_street_bull.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbtNT_5LFkSp4-MZc41v96sLCLv5ZC3ai11l8Dj5CItv30RZbc9LIgNLQz_qErp3363xudic5nPHvbg-W6XcV7KZcX_l3u0tfMakTGBVwiWAC_3jgf6TsbClQSw2-e-Piwso-670IgHo/s320/Wall_street_bull.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252593599252018786" border="0" /></a><br />And just as I rode by the bill, there was that big truck with the clever slogan (which I still can't remember). Evidently I can get downtown in the same amount of time as a truck. I'm sure a bike courier could do it much faster. I guess I'm just not that daring.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-54780853411420882742008-09-19T01:18:00.001-07:002008-09-19T01:46:20.399-07:00Scenes from my daily 12 miles<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLrkAG1ybRgo6LObldXvpxV1hIAJsfjNznq-8kzsgtBuMWFdZPVruKJu2l8GmVeXi7bryXKq4udcNgoiNoA4alnR4KhbL48ObHnT6r6UM-wfYVOeq3x7UaPdBb3Z781o7hLL8Q59pObY0/s1600-h/The+Lady.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLrkAG1ybRgo6LObldXvpxV1hIAJsfjNznq-8kzsgtBuMWFdZPVruKJu2l8GmVeXi7bryXKq4udcNgoiNoA4alnR4KhbL48ObHnT6r6UM-wfYVOeq3x7UaPdBb3Z781o7hLL8Q59pObY0/s320/The+Lady.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247644339973252594" border="0" /></a>New York Harbor with The Lady<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM88MrBUJcFIS5QE9SIPALwbSox-xR_y6eMfB17bTz-etzI-uGpSkM46Dcs_tah66irxUSuLn5enKNLEHSlbh6RdXI0w1FTdKVauOifgQ0y8dXSFkI1K15npqIBQtPD88wzp4NNDU_5xo/s1600-h/Ellis+Island.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM88MrBUJcFIS5QE9SIPALwbSox-xR_y6eMfB17bTz-etzI-uGpSkM46Dcs_tah66irxUSuLn5enKNLEHSlbh6RdXI0w1FTdKVauOifgQ0y8dXSFkI1K15npqIBQtPD88wzp4NNDU_5xo/s320/Ellis+Island.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247644555325265810" border="0" /></a>Ellis Island<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv7IISEMjrxK5V6qCIoE5dtYhjPUJ4ZVsk9S7v2GR9_xlFUCtYppnmeOFKdV32MRFAqwnHB0DUsLEBXRYSBp2SsnbMAMwRZxYAQxXwfWY6OzvqIM0uowp7Jibzp73w5PLBDt3KWculM6c/s1600-h/Tai+Chi+JC.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv7IISEMjrxK5V6qCIoE5dtYhjPUJ4ZVsk9S7v2GR9_xlFUCtYppnmeOFKdV32MRFAqwnHB0DUsLEBXRYSBp2SsnbMAMwRZxYAQxXwfWY6OzvqIM0uowp7Jibzp73w5PLBDt3KWculM6c/s320/Tai+Chi+JC.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247644954345752994" border="0" /></a>Morning exercises, Jersey City in background<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRsBUiygBuMm1RfJmhyphenhyphenpjzbU7Pg96oCOOU_0aPimw4dvPMY_kUHCe8Vey0XI2hqjagYwiEnEzkpiFbQSJqenibIdjWp8zojKXW578YvNSeNvd38fNoKpsUTDpP0STEoRSr0mG1swBpsJc/s1600-h/Boats.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRsBUiygBuMm1RfJmhyphenhyphenpjzbU7Pg96oCOOU_0aPimw4dvPMY_kUHCe8Vey0XI2hqjagYwiEnEzkpiFbQSJqenibIdjWp8zojKXW578YvNSeNvd38fNoKpsUTDpP0STEoRSr0mG1swBpsJc/s320/Boats.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247647888817764290" border="0" /></a>World Financial Center Marina<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilUSaMQPBOuXNhgGNcc_4AIC68vH404zIp-TydH-4pH47qEafomR-Z48TzVYHK-TAPGeZWrznicZouH_HYMZuNW4Hrij2pW_WIcr9CwAHqw_i_NqxMlxlfgARPATfoQ1QGycpuQBxKz7A/s1600-h/yacht.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilUSaMQPBOuXNhgGNcc_4AIC68vH404zIp-TydH-4pH47qEafomR-Z48TzVYHK-TAPGeZWrznicZouH_HYMZuNW4Hrij2pW_WIcr9CwAHqw_i_NqxMlxlfgARPATfoQ1QGycpuQBxKz7A/s320/yacht.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247648231485375010" border="0" /></a>What a yacht!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaERaAh7GZmhkvHud2VAnwbZw2xJWhKUNNoF8vY5-QsvYQnJh_kxcPG9Mrz1UZ6ShPWu_oywKAZohQ4308wLdRMKQI8xaZHmUItYDmj5WjX2KNSgOrO0hE-j-UhwoxGTB36-hKEHufSo/s1600-h/empire+state.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaERaAh7GZmhkvHud2VAnwbZw2xJWhKUNNoF8vY5-QsvYQnJh_kxcPG9Mrz1UZ6ShPWu_oywKAZohQ4308wLdRMKQI8xaZHmUItYDmj5WjX2KNSgOrO0hE-j-UhwoxGTB36-hKEHufSo/s320/empire+state.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247648435004248098" border="0" /></a>Midtown<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK3EPgXumEbMiA1QoALPuf8XmKb3iXM8RUVIj6YzbnvelcQ52zT_AjNkYEeHKraRoFd80M94R-vaKkYZxXB9iDtY4ugFDQRIT0cwlW9nasAfTLm6xtG-eL4rCKtRLtXmdTWGI-pDLzm-4/s1600-h/The+busy+path.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK3EPgXumEbMiA1QoALPuf8XmKb3iXM8RUVIj6YzbnvelcQ52zT_AjNkYEeHKraRoFd80M94R-vaKkYZxXB9iDtY4ugFDQRIT0cwlW9nasAfTLm6xtG-eL4rCKtRLtXmdTWGI-pDLzm-4/s320/The+busy+path.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247648662449114994" border="0" /></a>The path<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN8YxBaKBX57YEJKqd7_SiszXolgVl5akCbHYq6bGWkwBCfhG3SGA-Va83CjKeZSHjWu7H-Jg3EoGa2idxBiAdP3omoh8BK5qlM4mRJOpfkP3NZ2JuYXNM5TweLjVDrB6LHA295LQDme4/s1600-h/clothesline.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN8YxBaKBX57YEJKqd7_SiszXolgVl5akCbHYq6bGWkwBCfhG3SGA-Va83CjKeZSHjWu7H-Jg3EoGa2idxBiAdP3omoh8BK5qlM4mRJOpfkP3NZ2JuYXNM5TweLjVDrB6LHA295LQDme4/s320/clothesline.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247648826161396466" border="0" /></a>Clothesline?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnbFPaZojW0ssfy507GXDYZ0oQCA7nCfBhCuQTF70EgpLVPZC02Ob7Puj87s6VW7e2VJz4TA_70gVDv2nt22AJKLWAH85_SgK8O6LpWW3VRIK7LWTEdXiVAZY3J7jnSJkMfKcEFOSmNFY/s1600-h/gwb2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnbFPaZojW0ssfy507GXDYZ0oQCA7nCfBhCuQTF70EgpLVPZC02Ob7Puj87s6VW7e2VJz4TA_70gVDv2nt22AJKLWAH85_SgK8O6LpWW3VRIK7LWTEdXiVAZY3J7jnSJkMfKcEFOSmNFY/s320/gwb2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247649138830155746" border="0" /></a>George Washington Bridge and The Palisades<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioCsZwyhOGFUNeBTtsZVFyiILK0ughIR1Jpl2Nn0eVFP_OuRn8NReiJGdvXVMVkDn7KTsKNYJ-IKNC71uXUpMa8P0gz65-0qPQV8WO_jYT0xz_NmQkEQohNjOrQ7mf0VKauK8Q_1_rlhA/s1600-h/Little+Red+Lighthouse.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioCsZwyhOGFUNeBTtsZVFyiILK0ughIR1Jpl2Nn0eVFP_OuRn8NReiJGdvXVMVkDn7KTsKNYJ-IKNC71uXUpMa8P0gz65-0qPQV8WO_jYT0xz_NmQkEQohNjOrQ7mf0VKauK8Q_1_rlhA/s320/Little+Red+Lighthouse.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247649322530998514" border="0" /></a>The Little Red Lighthouse (Google it!)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5NpRNutRTUPLPQ-nCFfqBNo9pu8xjvNC4249BCVWHVYAQXg78L0b8-CVjhORbxVV-jHWoyve2MwMjwohe5a8EIyPtGUABVebdlN5B1CGctXG2tubbVgz8yFuTcFKPKGMR15l6Go18-I/s1600-h/Killer+hill.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5NpRNutRTUPLPQ-nCFfqBNo9pu8xjvNC4249BCVWHVYAQXg78L0b8-CVjhORbxVV-jHWoyve2MwMjwohe5a8EIyPtGUABVebdlN5B1CGctXG2tubbVgz8yFuTcFKPKGMR15l6Go18-I/s320/Killer+hill.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247649901217029138" border="0" /></a>A killer hill. It is much more painful than it looks.<br />There's a sudden turn at the top.<br /></div>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-68166347356542079932008-09-18T01:04:00.000-07:002008-09-18T02:02:07.165-07:00I love New York!I especially love New York City in Autumn. Okay, so it isn't exactly Autumn yet but almost. And while I can't say I love my job, I love my new schedule 12:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. Tuesday-Friday.<br /><br />So, this morning, I decided to take advantage of my schedule and the city. First, breakfast with my friend, Gregory, in Soho. The company was nice. The food? Well, don't get me started. I'm quite dismayed at the state of the New York bagel. Twice in the past month I've gotten a bagel that was really your basic white bread inside a bagel-like shell. First of all, bagels are not supposed to be soft inside, not white Wonder bread soft. They are supposed to be crunchy on the outside while chewy and dense on the inside. And I spent $9 on this particular bagel. Okay, it came with cream cheese and lox along with red onion, capers and a tomato. But even so, for $9 I expect a real bagel. I could make better bagels and have!<br /><br />After breakfast I wondered up to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). I have always been discouraged from going to MOMA because of the $20 entrance fee and the long lines of European tourists waiting to get in. But then I became a member for only $60 a year. And in just a month or so, I've been in the museum six or eight times. As a member, I can just walk past all of those tourists and flash my membership card. Today was the opening of a Van Gogh exhibit and it was a members-only preview so I felt very exclusive walking in while all of those Europeans over here taking advantage of a great dollar exchange rate had to wait. I saw at least four people try to sneak in the exhibit. They didn't make it. Great exhibit. My favorite picture was The Potato Eaters.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVNXzwsUHkpdke3Kb0puvjL1d06XTJnizCU9Br8qRUBQQPYdzOsGedHGLPt80tnkpkxcD_wyAgJAc25zSl4EifXZJSfeYj35Wf3s2f1G2lwkd2PWZiXxSicymN1dqRUN4NvLGUrGjyZk/s1600-h/The_Potato_Eaters.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVNXzwsUHkpdke3Kb0puvjL1d06XTJnizCU9Br8qRUBQQPYdzOsGedHGLPt80tnkpkxcD_wyAgJAc25zSl4EifXZJSfeYj35Wf3s2f1G2lwkd2PWZiXxSicymN1dqRUN4NvLGUrGjyZk/s320/The_Potato_Eaters.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247272898234622290" border="0" /></a>After the museum, I walked up 5th Avenue past all the posh shops. I'm dismayed by Abercrombie and Fitch. First of all, their clothes look like clothes that should be discarded or at least bought second-hand. And the trend of having a nearly-naked young man (boy?) standing at the entrance to the shop seems truly tasteless. It would seem if you're selling clothes, you would have the model wearing some.<br /><br />Then I walked past The Plaza and across the way at the Sherry Netherland, a man on the 11th floor (I counted) was reparing a window. He was standing in the window, half hanging out and he didn't appear to be tethered to anything. It was toe-curling. You can't see him in the picture but I swear he was there.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCpYo-Iws20nK-s7Ptle_A4jofCi7yQzgOyq0Dzb7XrzlWOcyGVnIFdB3p2n-QceW9IaIhwQ94TLfabZAM6X_hkgnTSUv-g7Uf31mdEb4M31GhkoiTrqb-DQfOG-xHj3cb-btwOvNid0/s1600-h/sherry+netherland.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCpYo-Iws20nK-s7Ptle_A4jofCi7yQzgOyq0Dzb7XrzlWOcyGVnIFdB3p2n-QceW9IaIhwQ94TLfabZAM6X_hkgnTSUv-g7Uf31mdEb4M31GhkoiTrqb-DQfOG-xHj3cb-btwOvNid0/s200/sherry+netherland.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247277343098978802" border="0" /></a>On into Central Park I stopped to watch the seals swim around in circles at the zoo and stopped to take a picture for a tourist couple. I do that at least once a day. I'll see a guy taking a picture of his wife or girlfriend or vice versa and stop and offer to take a picture of them together. They almost always say yes. Except the Japanese. I'm sure they think I wouldn't know how to use their expensive camera (or that I might steal it).<br /><br />And then I walked through Sheep's Meadow. No sheep there anymore. But what a beautiful place!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkmBnVRCuRY6X9IQnAXrODBpTvYMkREJ1VhJJMX_EkOMkPUTLMVjKdm086Erb66Gg0QPN5M1C65t5QAcSWIt3-D6flNjW182i7Aj7m5w5MOjSkB13wTyZaNN_vEBGYzlu9mw9_DQwcCxo/s1600-h/sheeps+meadow.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkmBnVRCuRY6X9IQnAXrODBpTvYMkREJ1VhJJMX_EkOMkPUTLMVjKdm086Erb66Gg0QPN5M1C65t5QAcSWIt3-D6flNjW182i7Aj7m5w5MOjSkB13wTyZaNN_vEBGYzlu9mw9_DQwcCxo/s320/sheeps+meadow.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247277752036268802" border="0" /></a>Then home to sleep for the rest of the day.<br /><br />I love New York!Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-21653443488601118842008-09-11T03:54:00.000-07:002009-03-13T02:08:18.113-07:00My 9/11I have to tell it again.<br /><br />September 11, 2001 was my first day back from vacation, a 500-mile bicycle ride from Montreal to Portland, Maine. I didn't ride my bike to work that day because it was due to be shipped back to Manhattan that morning from Portland. So at 6:30 a.m., I was picked up by a towne car to bring me to work. I knew the driver as he'd often picked me up in the past, a Russian guy who liked to talk about how much vodka he'd drunk the previous night, not a very reassuring thing for a car driver to do. But I remember we both commented on what a clear morning it was. You could see forever. We drove right past the World Trade Center down the West Side Highway, nothing unusual. I pasted the WTC nearly every day.<br /><br />I got to work and I was excited to tell everyone tales from my bike ride. And I was cleaning out the hundreds of emails that had accumulated over the past ten days.<br /><br />I logged into AOL and my sister, Laura, in Indiana was on and we were chatting. She said, "Katie Couric just said a plane hit the World Trade Center. How far is that from you?"<br /><br />I told her I was about ten blocks from there and then I started to investigate. From my floor we couldn't see the towers and I really couldn't leave my desk anyway. I was looking online to see what happened but not finding much yet. Someone then walked in and said, "A plane just hit the other tower." At that point I knew it was no accident and I picked up my backpack and headed out of the building.<br /><br />Someone asked me, "Did they say we could leave?" I replied, "If planes are hitting buildings in downtown Manhattan, I'm not waiting for someone to tell me I can leave." As I was getting on the elevator a lady was coming out, crying hysterically. Just as I was getting on the elevator, they were making and announcement to leave the building.<br /><br />I walked out of the building and out into Battery Park. I remember looking up at the towers and screaming. It seems strange now. But everyone was doing the same thing. And people were trying to make calls. I had a signal but couldn't get out.<br /><br />I decided to head toward the Williamsburg Bridge where my bike was to be delivered. I knew a few people who worked in the WTC as I had worked there about two years before for a company called Pure Energy. But the only person I would consider a friend was a lady in her mid-30s who was about six months pregnant. As I made my way through the teeming streets, I happened to run into her husband. He had verified that she was fine.<br /><br />A few blocks up, a guy yelled from a second story window, "They just hit the Pentagon." I thought, "What a terrible joke!"<br /><br />I walked on under the Brooklyn Bridge which was still open, at least to foot traffic and under the Manhattan Bridge. It was so strange to see people walking where there should be cars and trucks. At some point in Chinatown, I was at a place where I could see the towers again because there was nothing blocking my view. I thought I saw an explosion but I didn't know what it was, just a huge cloud of smoke.<br /><br />I finally made it to Delancey Street where there was a truck full of bicycles. The guys there were frantically loading bikes back on the truck. I asked if I could get my bike. They said, "If you see it outside the truck, you can take it." I saw it. They had no idea they weren't getting their truck out of Manhattan.<br /><br />I kept looking at the WTC and I couldn't figure out why I could only see one building. It never entered my mind that they could fall. That was inconceivable. It still is.<br /><br />I started across town, toward the Hudson River, on my bike. I passed a bar on 17th Street that had its doors open and was showing CNN on its huge screens. I stopped in to see if I could make a phone call. The manager said, "The phones are downstairs. You can try." I called my parents' number using 1-800-COLLECT. I got through on the first try. At least they knew I was okay.<br /><br />I stopped in the bar to watch the screens. That was the first time I saw what had happened and the first I saw that the South Tower had fallen.<br /><br />I left the bar and did something that still seems odd to me. On the bike ride, people had told me that after riding 100 miles a day for five days, I'd be ravenously hungry for several days. They also told me that if I could resist the desire to stuff myself, I could lose a good ten pounds. Well, by 10:00 a.m., I was ravenous. I came around 17th Street onto 6th Avenue and went into the Hollywood Diner. There was only one seat in the whole diner. Everyone must have been ravenous. I sat down at the only seat left with three ladies and ordered the Big Breakfast with eggs, ham, bacon, sausage and hash browns. I'm not sure. There may have been pancakes involved. We all talked about how we felt kind of guilty eating but it didn't stop us.<br /><br />Sixth Avenue had the most perfect view of the towers. When I came out of the diner, they were both gone. Hordes of people were walking north.<br /><br />I made my way to the bike path on the West Side. It was almost too crowded to ride but I slowly rode along.<br /><br />The further I got up into Harlem, there were fewer people. But it was obvious that they were headed for the George Washington Bridge. The lines for ferries to New Jersey were more than a mile long and some people had decided to walk the ten miles up to the bridge and walk across.<br /><br />The day had turned hot. I stopped at Fairway and bought as many bottles of water as I could carry and took them out to the bike path and gave them to the walkers. But that was all I could do. So I headed home.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-75093401202593609032008-08-12T01:33:00.000-07:002008-08-12T01:54:28.297-07:00In the ERThis past week I was in the emergency room but not in New York, rather, back home in Indiana. Not a big deal, I just stepped on a rusty nail. But it reminded me of an emergency room trip several years ago in New York City.<br /><br /> I've lived in the same neighborhood now for eight years. It is called Inwood and is predominatly inhabited by people from the Dominican Republic. But up until that time, I'd never noticed whether or not there was a hospital in the area.<br /><br /> One afternoon I was just getting to go to sleep in preparation for another graveyard shift. And it hit me. I knew what it was immediately--kidney stone. I'd had several before though this was my first one in New York. I decided to try tough it out. I'd passed a couple before on my own and mine have tended to be small and while extremely painful, I've been able to pass them quickly.<br /><br /> So I groaned and threw up from the pain but after about two hours, the pain passed and I passed out. Just before midnight, I got up to go to work. Just as I was getting out of the shower, it hit me again. Only this time it really hit me and I said to myself that I was not doing this again. So I called 911. <br /><br /> The paramedics came and seemed skeptical that there was anything wrong with me but they put me in the ambulance and asked me where I wanted to go. I didn't know that I had a choice but I told them I didn't care, just somewhere close.<br /><br /> They took me to a hospital which it turned out, was walking distance from my apartment. I went in and registered. The nurse at the counter where I registered was gruff and mean, especially when she found out I didn't have insurance. But honestly, I didn't care. By then, I was hurting so bad. I bee-lined for the toilet as the pain was causing me to vomit again.<br /><br /> I came out and took a seat. There were probably a dozen people in the room. And I realized that I was the only English speaker in the room. The television was blaring a Spanish telenovela, a melodramatic soap opera. Everyone else seemed to be interested. I didn't care. I just wanted the pain down there to stop.<br /><br /> After about twenty minutes, the nurse at the front desk called the security guard over. She told him to switch the channel on the television to an English speaking channel. She said it was a rule that if there was an English speaking person in the waiting room, the television had to be on an English speaking channel. The security guard did it and told the crowd the rule in Spanish (which I totally understood) and they all looked at me and I just went and threw up. Now, it was going to be my fault that they were having to wait in the emergency room and watching a Jerry Springer rerun in English. I was expecting to be assaulted when I came out but before long I was called into a room. <br /><br /> The doctor who examined me was from North Carolina. He had come to New York for med school and had met his new wife there. He wanted to go back and she wanted to stay. He was very nice and when the first pain killer he gave me didn't do a thing, he gave me a shot of demerol. And I think I told him I loved him when it took effect. He asked me if I had insurance and when I told him that I didn't, he told me when I left to just leave and say nothing, which I did and never heard anything from anyone. <br /><br />And by daybreak, I was walking home.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-91187056823589690012008-07-18T05:58:00.000-07:002008-07-18T07:54:52.556-07:00What I saw in the parkYesterday I went out for my lunch break at about 4:00 p.m. It was about 95 degrees, hot and humid, but there was a nice breeze blowing off New York Harbor so it didn't seem so bad. It is always windy right down on the harbor.<br /><br />I went to Subway for a sandwich. Let me just add that I think it is probably a sin to eat a Subway sandwich in New York City with all of the wonderful delis around that make far superior sandwiches BUT there is that $5 special AND I know the Weight Watchers points values of the Subway sandwiches. So, I committed that sin anyway and went out to the park to eat.<br /><br />There is a park nearby with park benches surrounding a fountain. I sat down with my sandwich and started to eat. I saw . . .<br /><br />A well dressed stock trader (I could see his tag) sat down, pulled up his left pant leg and started to vigorously scratch his left leg with both hands. Then he pulled down that pant leg, pulled up his right one and scratched his right leg as well.<br /><br />A man, I'd say mid-thirties, came into the circle and strutted around daring anyone to notice him. He was wearing a negligee with a big red flower pattern. He was only wearing the negligee. It barely covered all the parts that so desperately needed to be covered. Every few steps he would flip the back up to reveal his behind. If he did catch anyone looking at him, he yelled, "What are you looking at?" He did not catch me looking. He finally sat down by two people who appeared to know him. I didn't look because I'm not sure what it might have looked like sitting down in that negligee. After all, I was eating.<br /><br />A man speaking Russian on his cell phone did not sit but circled the fountain, round and round, talking the whole time.<br /><br />A man, obviously a tourist (you can just tell) and his son, maybe an 8 year-old, were not quite running through the park. The boy obviously needed a toilet and it appeared that he wanted to run but couldn't. You know how it is. They were evidently heading toward the Museum of the Native American to try their luck there. And let me just say to Mayor Bloomberg and the city council members reading this blog that it is time to bring in the self-cleaning pay toilets like they have in Paris. We had a few of them and now they are gone. Bring them back.<br /><br />Three little birds sat hopefully waiting for me to drop some crumbs. They got nothing from me. I mean, if you feed one . . .<br /><br />A lady, elegantly-dressed but obviously homeless by the looks of her shopping cart, sat down and pulled out a small sandwich and started daintily eating. SHE fed the birds.<br /><br />The tourist and his son came back, no longer in a rush, the man giving two thumbs up to the rest of his family across the park. I guess you can potty at the Museum of the Native American. I make a mental note of this for my upcoming book: <span style="font-style: italic;">Gotta Go NYC: a potty guide for tourists.</span> I'm sure it will become a series with all the world's major cities featured. Except Paris. They don't need it. They have self-cleaning pay toilets (and besides that you can really go anywhere in Paris).<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><br /><br />The man in the negligee strolled out. I caught him looking back over his shoulder every once in a while to see if anyone was looking. He didn't catch me looking.<br /><br />My sandwich was gone and it was time to go back in.Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3134351043863362113.post-81114598648777586292008-06-27T01:51:00.000-07:002008-06-27T02:01:48.707-07:00Not long ago I was riding my bike along a path in the park near my house and I came upon a turned over shopping cart. It appears to have been someone's "home." It had some shirts, socks, pants and a couple of pairs of underwear as well as a sleeping bag. There were a couple of plastic tubs if different shapes and sizes. And a wash board. Where do you even get a wash board?<br /><br />There was also some food, a very old, dried up banana and some other things that appeared to have been food at one time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhePwIYmaZLa1ZKZPCGXGQk4O-O6MpX2qceUdlqSlnfeecAPO09ZgxXBB1QVZrYm_RzWhWc8um6ZX6iTDmkcDW06OdUx9ieM_ylFzo2eMA9FE2YmQb4Jdfc00KEI9s1iTg-ADe5JKZsnPY/s1600-h/granny+cart+1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhePwIYmaZLa1ZKZPCGXGQk4O-O6MpX2qceUdlqSlnfeecAPO09ZgxXBB1QVZrYm_RzWhWc8um6ZX6iTDmkcDW06OdUx9ieM_ylFzo2eMA9FE2YmQb4Jdfc00KEI9s1iTg-ADe5JKZsnPY/s400/granny+cart+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216483741057979538" border="0" /></a>Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08932232196097253125noreply@blogger.com1