Such a nice gift from Google – free wifi at BWI airport. It’s amazing how expensive wifi is in many airports I travel through, so I was most thankful this morning!

Apparently, not at Miami, but I’m not here long enough to worry about it-just arrived, walked to departure gate, and flight is boarding.

Getting ready to fly to Haiti (at an un-Godly hour tomorrow morning – ugh!)

I’m excited about the weather forecast there – high in the low/mid-80’s and lows in the mid-60’s – perfect!

I’ll be staying at the Hotel Montana – which looks very nice, and has a pool, and a fitness center, as well as Internet access – so, my needs should be met for the week.

I hope to be posting some nice photos throughout the week…stay tuned!

My daughter, Shanthi, was born in New York City, and I never dreamed that she would have any direct connection with England, where I was born, except to vacation there and visit family.  But, she never ceases to surprise me – from birth onwards!!

A couple of years ago, she found out that she was eligible to apply for UK citizenship through me – I have UK citizenship through having been born in London.  A couple of months ago (the delay was largely due to my own disorganization in getting my documents to her), she was sworn in as a subject of the realm, and got her UK passport – so, she’s exploring the idea of living, temporarily or permanently, in the UK.  She is, in a few hours, going to be flying home from a week-long visit to London, mostly to visit our family there – and also to check out the job and housing scene.

She’s blogging her experience at http://shanthioverseas.blogspot.com

Her experience, so far, is reminding me of my own exploratory visit to London, way back in 1979 – I ultimately decided to come “home” to the US, and proceed with school and career in the way that was expected (although, even that didn’t turn out quite as straight-forward as it might have)…

I’m so glad that she had a good time, and I look forward to seeing what comes of this turn in her life – yes, in some ways I’m a little jealous of her freedom and opportunity to do things that I didn’t have a chance to do, but I’m mostly just glad that she’s forging her own path.

Tikvat Israel's gift of books to our friend, Wanjiku

Last week, I was sent on a very brief trip to Nairobi, Kenya, to meet with a variety of health professionals to discuss reviewing, revising, and updating the HIV-specific curriculum for educating health care providers at all levels of health-care facilities throughout Kenya.

As it happened, just a couple of weeks before, I had been contacted by my old friend, Wanjiku Ngugi, who told me that she is suffering from progressive blindness, and needs a surgical procedure to try and save her vision. The procedure was going to cost a small fortune, by Kenya standards, and, of course, as in most of east Africa, the patient must have the cash up front in order to get a surgical procedure performed.

I put out a call to our congregants at Tikvat Israel, and got an overwhelming response!! I was able to bring her enough to cover the procedure, plus a little extra to help out with other expenses!! I love belonging to a group of people who are willing to step forward to help someone in need.

In addition, Rabbi Gorin offered to donate some books, and I emailed Wanjiku to make the offer – she had a couple of specific books she hoped he might have on hand, which he did, along with a generous offering of other books – my only limit was the weight I was allowed on the flight (and I was taking over a bag of linens for a friends who is living in Kenya now). As it happened, the my total baggage came to exactly the 50lb allowance!!

In my previous post, Musings…, I mentioned that I took a photo from this odd structure that we came upon in our wanderings in a less-than-picturesque part of Lisbon, and I thought I had trashed the photo – the magic of the Mac, and iPhoto – i just discovered it in a folder called “Recovered photos”!! I’m so glad – it’s not a great shot, but I really like the contrast of majestic and ancient with modern and just a bit crummy.

It probably isn’t even very easy to see the aqueduct, but it’s the straight line, with arches below it, in the center third of the skyline.

The original premise of this blog was to get myself and my readers thinking outside boundaries, both geographical and cultural.  In addition, just a couple of weeks ago, my daughter took advantage of the fact that I have British citizenship, and she was sworn in as a subject of the United Kingdom.  Her action prompted me to renew my own British passport, and now I can freely travel within the EU.

It made me think again about how one identifies oneself – and, the first identity many people define themselves by is “Where was I born?”

So, I’m throwing that out there – where were you born?  How does your birthplace identify you?

My first real trip abroad (ie outside the US), as an independent person was when I went to London, England when I was 16 years old, and spent 3-4 months with my aunt, and her assorted household, in a wonderful, funky old house on Parliament Hill, on the edge of the wondrous Hampstead Heath. On my arrival, my aunt advised me that the best way to get to know a city is to get on a bus, and ride it around and see where it goes. The temptation, of course, is to use the metro system in any big city, because you know that you’ll land where you mean to go, and there’s a comforting map to tell you where the main attractions are. But the downside of a subway is that you’re underground – so you can’t see any of the connecting areas between where you start, and where you get out. Buses allow you to see all that connecting stuff.

However, I’ve always feared dealing with buses – I know it’s irrational, and maybe fear is too strong a word – mild anxiety is more the level of emotion. I worry about missing the stop, not knowing where to get off, and I hate asking the driver or conductor to help me know where I am.
So, my solution, in getting to know a new city, tends to be to walk a lot. I’m happy to just start off, either with or without a specific destination, and see where my footsteps lead. And that’s how I started off this trip in Lisbon – dragging Ron along on my not completely aimless wanderings.

We arrived on Thursday, after a red-eye trans-Atlantic flight, so, when we got to the hotel, we both desperately needed a nap – which was hugely restorative. We woke at about 6pm, and went down to ask the concierge where to go to eat. We were pointed towards the Baixa-Chiado downtown area. We asked if we could walk there, to which the concierge replied with some mild horror – “Oh no! It’s much too far to walk, take the metro”. That was the heads-up to me right away that I probably didn’t want to take their advice about walking distances (which turned out to be correct). Anyway, we took their advice, and took the metro down to the Restauradores stop, emerged to street level and began to walk. We passed through the shopping area, and out to the bank of the River Tagus, marveling at the architecture, the monuments, and the tiles on the walls of most of the houses. We wandered up into the Alfama neighborhood, and passed many inviting restaurant entrances, each with a greeter at the door, encouraging passersby to come in. I’m not sure, that evening, why we ended up bypassing all the options there – but I guess we weren’t hungry enough, and we ended up passing the cathedral (which became a constant landmark for us – easily recognizable, and helpful in pointing the way back to the center of town), and returning to the downtown area, where we finally stopped at a restaurant with a particularly aggressive waiter (we subsequently watched him skillfully rope in numerous customers while we ate there). The food was great, actually, and we were seated next to two French women, who began chatting with us - I can’t remember how we ended up getting into a conversation. We mostly used my very elementary and mostly forgotten French (but I’m going to be going to Haiti to lecture on HIV, so the practice conversing in French was a great opportunity). In the end, they gave us a recommendation for a restaurant called the Alfama Grill, which we went to the next night, and had a lovely evening. These French ladies were curious about our opinion of President Obama – and, as I’ve found with every non-American that I’ve talked to since the election, they are so relieved that we elected him!!

We wandered around a little more after dinner, and then returned on the metro. That night we studied the map, and I thought that it would be nice to walk into the huge park that was clearly just a short walk from our hotel in the Praca de Espanha (and, of course, I wasn’t about to ask the concierge for directions, silly me!!). So, we set out, and after a couple of blocks, we saw the entrance to a garden, which I thought was our destination (and I thought to myself “See, that was easy!”), but it turned out that my sense of direction was completely off, and we had actually headed exactly in the opposite direction than I had intended, and we were in the Jardim Calouste Gulbenkian. It was quite a lovely spot, and we passed many school groups doing art studies in the park (something that one almost nevers sees in the US – can you imagine? Going out and drawing from nature as a part of your school curriculum?).

The park was small, and after leaving there, we headed in what I thought should be the direction to get into the huge park. We walked, and the road became a moderate-sized highway, and we walked down, which I thought seemed promising. We ended up walking under the Aqueduct, which was very impressive, but, the more we walked, the more obvious it became that there was a major barrier between us and the park – several major roadways, and a railway track – and there seemed to be no way to get across. We were walking into a neighborhood, which was a bit shabby, and passed a bus-stop where two women were waiting, and we asked them “Can we walk to the park from here?”. They obviously had never considered attempting to walk to the park, but they pointed us towards the next bridge that crossed the valley that was in our way, so we proceeded. We ended up walking through a few blocks of what basically looked like project housing (although nothing like the projects in Baltimore or Chicago – no used condoms and drug paraphernalia lying around), and then we emerged up a staircase that brought us to this odd kind of circular structure clearly meant as a viewing structure. I was going to upload a cool photo of the Aqueduct that we took from this structure, but, somehow – I’ve managed to delete it (rats!). - correction: I found the photo - see it here

But you can view a lot of our photos on my Facebook page.

I’ve been concurrently reading the following three books (links will take you to Amazon):

• Karen Armstrong’s History of God
• Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion
• Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God

and it’s been interesting to read them in conjunction – the first and the last are very complementary, especially since Wright cites Armstrong frequently.  Of course, the concept of looking at the notion of the Divine from an evolutionary perspective would seem to be right in line with Richard Dawkin’s book, but, in fact, The God Delusion was very disappointing to me.  I have always loved the logical way that Dawkins presents complex ideas, and my thinking about science was influenced early on by The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. I was really looking forward to seeing how he would spell out clearly and logically his rational for rejecting the existence of God.  Unfortunately, it seems that, on this topic, Richard Dawkins can’t be objective, but seems to have suffered deep scars from early experiences with the church that lead to his only being able to call names, and making snarkiy comments – not logical at all – all emotion.

Armstrong’s book is very dense (I haven’t finished it yet), and I suspect I’ll have to reread it a few times (if I get the time).  In a way, I think that Wright’s book is sort of a “lite” version of Armstrong’s, and his writing is a little more accessible – he sometimes wanders off with citations that he then says don’t really have anything to do with the point he’s trying to make…oh well.

At the end of the day, God is a tough subject to grapple with, but I appreciate both Armstrong’s and Wright’s attempts to follow the strands of the three major monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – through the centuries, in their cultural contexts.  These three religions didn’t develop in isolation – their early adherents interacted with one another, and with other religions around them, and there was mixing and mingling of ideas all the way along.  I think that the most intriguing aspect of Wright’s The Evolution of God is that he posits, as a final conclusion, that the notion that the idea of God is evolving doesn’t necessarily prove that God doesn’t exist, but, actually, that God does exist, and it is simply our imperfect human conception of God that is ever-nearing a closer approximation of the ultimate truth, in parallel with science which is also continually getting closer to a complete understanding of the nature of reality.  I think that’s a very optimistic thought!

Those who know me, know that I spend a good deal of time on the road commuting, and I have grown very fond of several podcasts (mostly from NPR), one of which is Speaking of Faith (SOF).  Today, I listened to three short pieces from very different individuals, relating their personal experience of Ramadan.  I can’t recommend this series too highly – anyone who wants to get some insight into Islam, or thinks they know “everything about Islam”…

Revealing Ramadan

Revealing Ramadan [podcast]

iTunes RSS

So many wonderful Ramadan stories. Only 1 hour of radio. Let them sit + collect dust? No! But what to do… Hmmm… Create a new project: Revealing Ramadan. 1 story per day for the month of Ramadan.

My last night in Zambia, on this two week trip, and the power is out for the second time this week, for more than a couple of minutes. Usually the generator kicks in, but tonight it sputtered and failed – did someone forget to fill it with fuel? So, I’ve got candles lit, and my iPhone will work for a little while longer for me to write this draft (which, of course, I can’t upload, since the wifi connection is out).

I want to cook dinner, especially since it’s cold (winter here), and a hot meal would be lovely, but clearly that requires power.

It definitely makes me think about how reliant we, esp in the West, have become on a reliable electrical grid to supply us with our needs, for sustenance, for entertainment, for simply existing. It’s Friday night, Shabbat/Sabbath, and I’ve never really thought about what strictly observant Jews do in the setting of a power outage. Obviously, unlike me right now, their meal is fully cooked, but if they only have lit 2 shabbat candles, the whole house is dark, and they must continue their meal in darkness. But, that, I have always thought, is part of the beauty of Shabbat – that you have to accept things as they are, and adapt, not looking to “change” the situation. Our modern approach is to “muck around” with things – never satisfied with how nature has ordered the world around us. We landscape our yards, yanking weeds and native plants, replacing them with hybrids and imports. In Africa, the natural forces often seem to be winning the battle with human attempts at conquest – the futile cloth that covers our copy machine in the office, to try and limit the pervasive dust that finds it’s way into everything.

Why is the Zambian dust so hard to control?