The Word in the Woods

This evening I started getting birthday wishes from friends where it's already tomorrow, and it made me think about how blessed I've been this year to somehow make friends in so many hemispheres.

Last march, as I was in Latvia for a mission trip kind of thing over spring break that I decided to participate in on a sort of whim. I was also in the process of ending my membership in an online game I'd been playing, Travian. The server was closing, and to avoid losing contact with one of my teammates, I messaged him my email address. It turns out he was from Iran, and I ended up having some very deep and interesting conversations with him and one or two of his friends that I connected with online. This was all while I was in Latvia, not sleeping because of jet-lag, and meeting lot's of Latvian high school students, a few of whom I've managed to keep in touch with. That week feels like a blur in my memory––but I think part of the reason is how much happened and how much I learned.

Over the summer came the journey that I had actually planned for: my internship in Beirut. Not only did I find myself in another foreign country, but I was also living and working with people who had come there from places far beyond the Middle East. Between visiting friends in Jordan and meeting new people there, traveling around Lebanon just talking with people, and hiking in the Lebanese mountains with people from Canada, Korea, and just about everywhere in between, I got to know and learn about the lives of more people with more diverse stories than I had ever imagined I would in my life.

On the way home I got to visit SBI back in San Lorenzo, Italy, where I was able to see people whom I hadn't in almost three years––back when I went to school there. I guess that was where it all started in a lot of ways. It was a little strange being there without my classmates from that semester, but looking at where they all are now, I realize how lucky, and wonderfully improbable it was that I got to meet all of them back then.

So looking back on this year, for someone who isn't very social or good with people, I feel like I've been really blessed to get to know so many from so far––and for the technology that gives the means for us to keep in touch. There's an old saying from back when Britain was still very much an imperial power that "the sun never sets on the British Empire," which was referring to Britain having colonies in nearly every time zone. The British Empire may be long gone (and that may be a good thing) but I think it's amazing that we live in a world today where it can be said that the sun never sets on our friends.

This past Saturday was my sister Mattea's graduation party. We invited a ton of guests, and my parents who are usually OCD about how our place looks took it to the next level and spent the whole week and a half before the party re-landscaping. After all that, we were afraid it was going to rain, but it cleared up just a few minutes before people arrived and everyone ended up having a great evening.

There have been a fair amount of thunderstorms in the last couple weeks. Ever since last summer in Sarasota when I discovered that my true photographic passion is capturing lightning, I have been trying to do it again. It's been difficult though, because certain conditions have to be met exactly for it to work, and then, even when everything comes together perfectly, you still have to get lucky. Since lightning is, well lightning, it moves really fast, and the only reasonable way to catch it is to set your cameras shutter to stay open for like a minute or so. This can only be done at night, because in the day time, have your shutter open for that long will just give you a bright white photo with nothing visible at all. On top of that, it can't be raining, which is somewhat rare during electrical storms.

For all these reasons, I have been so far unsuccessful in getting any good lightning pictures yet this summer. I have taken some other night time photos though. Here is one of Ursa Major, the big dipper:












And here is a photo of the gas well they are drilling a ridge over from us. This fall we will probably have one of those in the field right by our house.












There have been a number of really beautiful evening, or dusk skies as well. One in particular last Thursday night. I think there had been some storm activity or something, because the sky was partly cloudy, but had the most unusual colors. Some of them were colors that you don't usually think of as "sky colors" like brown and tan. Those were all in some parts of the sky, while other parts were pink and purple and blue, and gold. All that combined with the sunset and a really unusual cloud pattern created something very striking and beautiful. I was running all that evening, and all this happening in the sky may have been part of what distracted me into nearly running a half marathon. The farthest I had ever run before that was six or seven miles, but that night I went more than twelve. I didn't really want it to end, but eventually my joints started to get sore, which almost never happens to me. When I got home and tracked my route on Google Pedometer and found out why I was sore.

I love the sky. I think it's one of the coolest things in creation... although if you think about it, it's hard to nail down what the sky even is.

Above is pictured last night's New Years Eve celebration at our house with long time friends, the Spanos. It was a good time.

I can remember back in the 90's thinking: "Wow, someday it's going to be the year 2000." A New Millennium (yes-yes, it really it was 2001). Now we are a whole decade in! Hard to believe! I don't know if it really feels like ten years. But then, I haven't lived through too many periods of ten years to really be an authority on the subject. Maybe it feels like longer.

What are we going to call this decade? We still haven't reached a consensus on what to call this past decade yet! I have no idea for that one, but this one I think should be the tweens, for 'twenty' and 'teen'. I have to tell you though, I'm psyched about the next decade ten years from now. It will be the roaring 20's again! If I'm alive and Western civilzation persists, I am totally throwing a Great Gatsby themed party, replete with 20's garb, decor, and lot's of bootlegged cocktail drinks! And you are invited! Yes. You, right there in front of the computer screen.

For now though, we shall have to survive the tweens. And if you think of all the crazy stuff that happened in the last decade, I'm fairly confident that it won't be boring.


























Happy New Year!

I finally got some of my videos from traveling in Europe this past Spring edited and up on YouTube. If you're interested, feel free to check them out HERE.

I've had a rather nasty cold the last couple of days. It's kept me from sleeping too well despite spending a lot more time trying to sleep than usual. It seems like I get a few of these a year and there isn't too much I can do about it. This go round though, I've been distracted from my own silly, insignificant worries by events on the news; namely, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in it's latest and most volatile manifestation in Gaza.

It's a bad situation. In early 2007 seven, the radical Islamic political party Hamas won control of the government in the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip, a tiny bit of land sandwiched between Israel and Egypt. Hamas began a series of rocket attacks on Israel - who responded by literally sealing off Gaza from the outside world with fences on land and a naval blockade at sea. Rather than stopping Hamas however, the siege only seemed to steel their resolve to inflict as much damage as possible on the Israelis and caused outcry against Israel (or shall we say, an intensification of outcry against Israel) throughout the Arab world.

In response to the latest and worst yet wave of rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) began launching air strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and followed today with a ground assault.

On the surface, the good guy in this fight would seem to be Israel. After all, it was Hamas who has been attacking them all this time, and a nation has an obligation to defend it's people. This was the view that I had always had, and it made sense. Being a Christian, I have a tendency to sympathize with the Israeli people. I have friends who are Jews - and even acquaintances who's children are currently in the IDF and may at this very moment be part of the ground assault striking into Hamas held territory. Why do the Arabs have to hate Israel so much? And why do they repeatedly attack the Jews? I could see no reason other than that they must be poisoned by Islamic radicalism.

In recent months however, I have begun to question this point of view. I watched a documentary that addressed a side of formation of Israel that I had never known before. I ended up reading at length on the subject and was even called to give a presentation on it during course this past semester. Many of the Palestinians who currently reside in Gaza or the West Bank originally lived in other parts of Israel where they and their families had been for tens, if not hundreds of years. After WWII and the holocaust when it was decided by Western powers that the Jews deserved to have their own state and return to their Biblical homeland, many of the Palestinians were forced out of their property and made to flee to Gaza as refugees. Those who remained among the Jews in other parts of the country did so as an underclass, at first by law. Eventually the law was abolished, but the Palestinians were equal on paper only, still suffering higher unemployment and poorer living conditions than their Jewish counterparts. Currently all of the ten poorest communities in Israel are Palestinian, and 50% of those in poverty are Palestinian, despite the fact that they make up only 20% of the total pop.

I believe that much of the violence committed by Palestinians against the Jews stems from these past and current injustices.

In 2005, then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, attempted to alleviate these problems by creating a separate Palestinian State in Gaza. Unfortunately all that happened was what most people would expect when all of the nations poorest, most under employed and under educated people where taken and put in one place - they ended up with all the nations poorest, most under employed and under educated people in one place. Gaza became a massive ghetto with 50% poverty and near total unemployment in some villages.






















If desperation provides a breeding ground for extremism, which I suspect it does, it becomes less difficult to imagine how the people of Gaza could elect Hamas over the the lame duck Abbas government.

So to wrap all of this up - I guess I would have to say that I don't agree with all of the protesters around the world who are calling on Israel to stop the war... as if Israel stopping it's violence against Hamas will somehow magically end Hamas' violence toward Israel. This approach overlooks the fact that this most recent conflagration was a direct result of Hamas aggression against Israel and that Israel is obligated to defend itself against outside attack, just like any other country in the world.
Neither do I agree with the many of my friends and family who seem to think that the Palestinians are the unequivocal bad guys in the situation and that peace can only come when Israel beats them into submission and they gratefully accept their own pitiful social and economic situation, much of which is a direct result of Israeli abuses in not too distant history.

My own opinion is that Israel must defend itself in this present situation, and should not be condemned for doing so. They must however change their approach toward the Palestinian people, providing wide reaching programs to help them succeed both in and out of Gaza and perhaps even pay damages for past abuses.

- Andrew