At last....

At 8:30am, it's 41 degrees in our screened porch, and I sit with hot water bottle on my lap, baby blue angora hat atop my head, and a steaming cup of jasmine tea close at hand. It's a good life, really it is.

Have you heard about our Porch? My husband built it. It's amazing and a perfect nest after a year of travel.

When we first returned to New Orleans, I had ambitious plans to weatherize our little home, but a multitude of rental property projects, family gatherings, and general busyness quickly allowed my porch project to fall by the wayside. But we have a lofted bed that is walled on three sides, the fourth side I have insulated with an old sleeping bag. With a space heater and partially-working electric blanket, it is a cozy space for two. However, after a 34 degree night, we are eagerly awaiting our Christmas present from the folks - thanks (in advance) for the down comforter, Mom and Dad! 

So, for now, we enjoy our last few weeks in New Orleans. It has been a joy to have our friend Elisa visiting us from Ireland. The circle of couchsurfing is incredible, especially when you are able to host a traveler who once hosted you. Elisa's visit has prompted us to enjoy some of the special and unique aspects of our fair city, and to take a pause from the head down, blinders on, utterly focused, seemingly never-ending task list of repairs and roofs and projects. Poboy picnics in City Park, candy-making, early morning beers at the Mother-In-Law Lounge garage sale, and bonfires in the yard with neighbors and friends were just the diversions we needed. Can we continue the circle by another visit to Dublin someday soon?

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon and evening alternating between my current holiday card project, and stoking the ongoing bonfire (we are trying to burn through a few 'trash' trees in the yard). Apparently, my card project was just the push I needed to get my creative thoughts a-flowin'. I awoke to blog concepts piling up with great speed, henna designs, and quilt-making patterns all racing through my mind. Like I said, I'm a morning person. I'm not allowed to have coffee - I don't need any additional energy in the mornings.

The countdown to an Oregon Christmas is on....t-minus 15 days 'till our departure. 

And so we gear up to hit the road again, didn't we tell you that the journey wasn't ending?

Hope that you all are enjoying the holiday season and staying warm, wherever you are.

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Coming soon: How much waste is necessary after your FEMA managed disaster?

This is just a tantalizer...

Look for our article coming soon: How to lower waste after your disaster.


We have been astounded by the number of lots across south Mississippi which are filled with decaying 'FEMA' mobile homes for sale. Remember how these travel trailers were rushed to the Gulf Coast only to sit in lots of up to 40,000 trailers unused for months after the disaster? Remember how the first 18month life from purchase by our government through maintenance contract meant that average unit costs of $120-180k more than doubled the cost of complete renovation estimates per New Orleans' native 'double' family home?

But, in the USA when we have a disaster our government does not allow that recovery produce permanent solutions such as restoring existing housing - only temporary patches allowed.



Years after these trailers were determined unsafe to live in (due in part to being constructed with high concentrations of formaldehyde) they are being offered as reused, cheap, housing. They now fill plastic lots with signs asking potential customers to 'make offer.'

How the US wasted resources and other opportunities to use the disaster of Katrina continues to astound us almost 6 years since our disaster. But, how are our lessons being applied? How have we used the opportunities for teaching, learning, and being more humane in the disasters which have occurred since the Gulf Coast and Katrina? How has Haiti, by example, benefited from histories of New Orleans and Gulf Coast (non)recovery and/or (lack of) human restoration? Has the US/FEMA, Red Cross, or NGO community changed significantly how it expenses limited resources since Katrina's gross misuse of funds and misrepresentation of aid or assistance?

We are investigating. We are going to visit the FEMA parks and share our images. Did you have a FEMA trailer? Can we share your story? When you share it can help defend others. Your story matters; What we do now in sharing the truth defends the next disaster community.

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Traveling Abroad the Fence

I.

This blog is titled "Traveling Abroad the Fence" which means you can travel anywhere!

[If you haven't read this blog for a while, you may begin to notice that certain themes appear and we deal with them for a while - say over a couple weeks or a month. Themes that are not always clear or straight forward themes; but, like some of us, are good for thinking about problems or opportunities; they develop in us over a long time.]

Being from Gulf Of Mexico/Mississippi River Bottom culture - we stew everything a long time.

This week, as the season got frosty for us (lows 49' F - 10' C) we started using our big Crock Pot as an ambient heater. The idea of greens in a pot is quintessential southern Autumnal food life; sweet potatoes, green and cabbages - all these point to changes of season on our food calendar.

We cooked Beans, eggplant dips, and sweet potatoes literally for days: Leaving a simmering pot of cinnamon potatoes cooking is so much nicer than just burning gas or electric!

Turn your crockpot into a RockPot of good tastes this winter and reduce your heat bill!

We decided long ago that when we got back to the USA after a ten month round-the world adventure we would adopt a mantra of traveling in your own backyard. The truth for us was that even as we have passed through and visited the furthest foreign lands; we did not want everyone to set their expectations that high. We do not expect everyone to have the possibility to travel as we have. We want to share our experiences and help others gain some lessons if they are interested. Food and lifestyle are very natural places to start. Living in Louisiana we can be engrossed in our native cooking styles. However, for the most part, our ideas of food all come from somewhere and were imports like all of us living here.

In addition to fine local sweet potatoes, we have been eating rice. We have not given up pasta, tortillas, or bread - though we are eating much less; but, the world eats lots of rice. We like rice. If you eat rice, you eat what most of the world eats (including south LA.) It is easy to make; and leftovers keep well. So, we bought the 25 lb. bag and are happy. We are also eating most of our meals (not po-boys) with chopsticks. For me, chopsticks slow down eating helping to savor food.

Here are some fun crockpot recipes to get your winter home-cooking season started.

[Save your rice. You can make delicious rich rice pudding with cardamon like we have done with cardamon we brought back from the Himalayas; or, even more authentic, make some Creole Calas - foods sold sweet on the street and one of the ways during New Orleans' 'code noir' law these famous calas helped many slaves who bought their freedom.]


II.

What is travel after all? Traveling is experiencing something new, in a way you have not known it, from a point of view you have not yet discovered it. By this definition, we can very easily travel by choosing to do things we have not done before; and, by being intentional to enjoy their newness and appreciate what we are learning in the process.

So, I have tried this concept on. I have visited some places that had been right in front of me. And,
I have scheduled or begun the planning to visit other new and obvious

And when I write about these markets as I already have, I get great feedback and new ideas like these great green market and collective farming ideas from my dear mother-in-law in Oregon.

Shopping is a very easy way to make a sustainable idea a reality. When we support local markets, we realize our connectedness to what we are buying. It degenericizes life!

This blog reminds me that the internet is such a fascinating way to visit places (virtually), to make long-distance 'pen pals,' and to learn about foreign places. We have many friends who would love to connect with you. If one of the countries we have visited or written about particularly speaks to you, please write us - we can put you in touch with one of our friends who would likely love to learn about you.

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Inspiration and Small, Tight Circles

My husband has inspired me, as he oftentimes does. Today, he has inspired me with his blogging, and I am encouraged follow his example. The end of our constant motion does not mean that the journey has also ended.

But I miss covering ground. I miss walking long miles and tumbling into bed, feet and legs aching from hard use. These days I seem to be turning in small, tight circles, and it makes me feel a bit dizzy. My feet have nothing to say, it's my hands now that shriek and moan.

It has been so simple to slip back into the routines and seemingly-mundane activities of life in New Orleans. And yet, we are changed. Small, but substantial, alterations in our behaviors and patterns and conversations are constant reminders of new perspectives and experiences.

Memories from Honey Service Year bubble up with regularity, helping us to remember the significant and importance of fleeting, chance encounters with people and places that can unexpectedly change your life.


We are never without hummus; I make it from scratch, with dried chickpeas purchased at Mona's store.

We eat vegetables. A lot. And we are patronizing local markets and community gardens. I am also growing greens (root remnants of those purchased on a trip to the 5AM Vietnamese Market in New Orleans East, just as the sun began to rise over the soggy morning mist) and basil (from seeds collected in Cincinnati) and Kentucky oregano (a small transplant is courageously growing from an old tin can).

We have created a communal house in New Orleans, based upon concepts of respect and contentiousness and friendship. With more members of the household, we collectively use fewer resources and maximize the potential of shared space.

The emphasis that we placed on lowered consumption and materialism while on our journey has become part of our lifestyle; we recycle water, bicycle more often than not, and bring our own grocery bags everywhere we go. We try to buy only what we need, and resist (I have to work especially hard at this) urges of impulse and instant gratification spending. We try to live with intention, rather than being pushed and pulled and suckered into consumerist behaviors.

Chopsticks are used almost as frequently as forks, and we eat lettuce in our soup.


We have begun to serve as couchsurfing hosts; with each guest that stays with us, I recall the generosity and kindness of those who hosted us during our journey. Faith in humanity and trust in the human spirit is a feeling that can slip away if it is not nourished and encouraged; media and news sources are diligent in combating these positive feelings.

And yet, it all feels so distant. The memories slip further and further away, buried beneath tubes of caulk and glazier points and big rectangles of sheetrock and the last dregs of enamel paint in the can. We speak, as we learned to do on our journey, of the present, of the now, of right here. We dream of the future and craft our plans

With the fullness of the present and the future, there seems to be little time reserved for the past. And yet, it has a sweet and gentle way of slipping tendrils of poignant remembrance, patient contributions, and astute relevance into the evolution of our lives.

Onward we go, as the small, tight circles grow slowly larger.

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The New Orleans Transformation

We are part of a lot of projects in New Orleans. And we are huge supporters of many more.

This city still has something big to give the world.

We love couchsurfing.org and we are supporters of all sorts of arts and social activities. We want to do more than be fb updaters - we love to encounter people in person - real facetime is important.

We are idea people. We have business and arts and philanthropy ideas. Sometimes when we talk we need to just write down half and start two as businesses. The rest would be history.

Maybe that is what we will do.

In the meantime, we are counting buckets. Backets of water, backets of rain, backets of rooftar, backets of mr clean, and buckets of money (little small ones) with holes in 'em.

Today we laughed. 'It will be at least another five years,' I told Brittany's Aunt after dinner, 'before we go on another one-year round the world adventure.' we all giggled. 'Maybe.' B says.

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10,000 blog views by December 14 or by year's end (whichever one happens first)

Ok, we are about to get back to this thing.

We have been missing the blog. We talk about it. But somehow we are TOO BUSY and too whupped to ever have the energy at the end of the night to ever have what it takes to give back.

So this is about to change. One Goal to make this change is new: "10,000 blog views by December 14" or maybe New Year's. As our Year of the Honey Service Year comes to a close we want to remember, recant, reenlist, and reinvigorate the goals, activities, partners, and people we came to know, love, work with, or call friends.We are back in the USA. Very busy - working; yet, determined to stay true to principles from our trip and principles grown up in this blog.

What better way to do that than these short 'shout out' blogs.

So here goes. We are in New Orleans heading back to Colombia New Year's Eve. A lot has happened. This week was VOODOO EXPERIENCE in our neighborhood. Nathan's childhood music mentor Mr Payton passed away, it finally rained.

Spread the love. Help us make "10,000 blog views by December 14 or year's end" a reality.

Share our blog with those you know, love, are firends with who can benefit from its story.

Soemtimes it is an odd struggle finding home again...

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Half a week after the Round the World Trip

We understand space ship reentry. We feel we just went through that this week as we are home just half a week after the Round the World Trip.

Honey Service Year year-end count down 50 days left.

We are home. How will our Honey Service end in the USA?


2.

New Orleans




Poplarville is calling....

3.

If anyone thinks we are slacking here or that we could have been more directed abroad this year, you would be right. But, there is a different impetus at home. Things soar. You know where things are and where they should be.

Our car (truck) was that sort of a story.

But... we are home. Indeed, it feels good to be home. We are carrying forward so many lessons learned meeting new cultures and absorbing good ideas; while, at home, applying ourselves very much at the here and now of what we do that impacts our world.

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New York, New York, New York

It was a strange touchdown in New York's JFK. The shocks squeezed lower. The wheels seemed to push against the earth with an unnaturally heavy load. Our travels came screeching into the same runway from which we had lifted off to Tokyo nine month's earlier.

We are so enjoying the NYC welcome. While it feels like another stop on a long adventure, we are happy to be in familiar places and spending long, languishing warm days with family.

This morning, the two of us walked the Highline Park While there, we remembered our best suits as travelers: we feel our presence and community spirit brings us into harmony with what locals love about the places they live. We do not live in Chelsea, New York - yet we know it, feel it, understand it in the space of hours and days.

Yet, even as we relish the slow pace of long family visits, tomorrow we are back on the road. Labor Day for us means early rise to share over breakfast our newest fun travel recipe rice pudding with Indian spices.



While we are not feeling thrilled about donning our packs again and walking across the width of New York at dawn, this will be business as usual, breakfast with a lovely Aunt and Uncle, public transit and bus through four states to Boston and Salem, Mass; more visits with old friends, and round off the evening with genuine local cuisine 'steamer clams,' fresh coastal corn-on-the-cob, beers, loads of fun and laughter.

Our journey departing Beverly, Mass on Tuesday morning repeats our favorite late-Summer circuit. New York to Maine, back through the Cape and Islands (hello M.V.!!) to East Canaan, and back again. This year will also wrap up with Fall colors in Vermont. From here we will visit grandmothers and old friends. Tomorrow's journey takes us up our family pathways through Boston, onto the Atlantic Coast of New England.

At the end of the month we will celebrate Yale-in-China centennial back here in New York. After that our journey will head South, overland from Northern Vermont, through Ithaca, NY, to Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit my parents in Berea, Kentucky, before finally making it home to New Orleans.

Around the world and a half? People ask us sometimes when our journey will end. It is a reasonable enought question. The truth is, we both look forward to settling on some piece of land and staying long enough to plant and raise crops, to grow trees, and to garden.

For now, this is not in the cards for us. After only a couple months on our beloved Gulf Coast, it will be back on the road again when we will begin traveling again back to South America, to Taganga, Colombia and our hotels El Miramar, Santa Marta and Oso Perezoso Hotel in Taganga. From Taganga, we may find our way circling through Amazon voyages or up the Rio Orinoco with our friends from Posada Don Carlos to distant villages cut off from modern devices. We do not pretend to know where all we are going.

Will we see you on the Colombia beaches next Winter? Or will our paths cross some other way? Who knows where our fates will lead us to exactly?

Keep up with us. We hope to continue to not only feed you our stories and experieces; we want to share our advice, our research, our ambitions and dedication through this blog.

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Blackberries and Bicycles

We have traveling by way of so many different modes during this journey around the world: plane, train, tram, bus, funicular, ferry, big rig, rickshaw, tuk-tuk, bicycle, and of course, our own weary feet. But after a rather extravagant week spent in Bretagne, France, we can add rental car to the list. 

Oh, I had forgotten the delights of independence you can find when behind the wheel of your very own car. The power to choose winding scenic roads instead of highways, the joy of a quick u-turn to more closely examine that old, ivy-covered stone chateau, the happiness felt in propping bare feet up on the dash in the bright sunlight streaming through the window, and the luxury of pulling over to stretch/explore/pick roadside blackberries whenever the need arises.

We looked for hitchhikers to pick up.

none.

We navigated a drive from Moncontour to Paris without a road map.

not entirely true. we had a tourist map of bretagne. when we left moncontour after we arrived in normandy we stopped at a supermarket and took photos of the sections of road map we might need. I squinted at these to determine our path.

We talked about places we've been and things we've seen and people we remember.

in bretagne we saw family for the first time in seven months; this sparked lots of conversation the multitude of dear family and friends that we wonder about and look forward to seeing.

I skimmed through radio stations.

the soothing babble of french talk radio was a favorite, followed by "nostalgia" with both french and american classics.

We didn't pay a single toll.

although the drive was eight hours longer, the distance and gas usage was the same. we never took the toll roads and enjoyed the slow country lanes instead, found much cheaper gas further from the interstate, and saw a huge chunk of France.

After visiting the Chartres Cathedral we car camped.

turning down a bumpy, dirt road in the pitch dark left us slightly unsure of exactly where we were. but the stars were bright and the night quiet. we awoke to find ourselves alongside a cornfield, mist rising from the earth in the pre-sunrise glow of dawn.

I was a pretty good navigator and N drove.

that being said, my tiny keychain compass proved to be faulty, I started feeling carsick from trying to read the map from a miniscule digital camera screen, and we both were hyperventilating as we navigated Paris with a photo-copied, blurry map and minutes ticking down for our British Airways flight. we returned the car at terminal 2F and our flight was at 2A. they are not very close together.  I was fibbing my way through an elaborate story about my invisible husband as the flight was being closed...N showed up just as the eyebrows of the ticket agent were about to pop off of her head.

In recent months I have become a huge proponent of public transportation, but I'd sorta forgotten why personal cars are so great. The independence. The power to "choose your own adventure." It is so easy to slip back into the mindset of regarding personal cars as the main (and most viable) mode of transportation. And of course, sometimes they are. My mother couldn't exactly find public transportation to Eugene (40 miles) four days a week. The New Orleans public transportation system includes lovely street cars that oftentimes take longer than walking, and public buses that don't seem to run on an actual schedule, they just rumble by when the mood strikes.

When in a land of functional, efficient, effective public transportation options, it is much easier (and oftentimes much more affordable) to use public systems. We love the bike sharing systems of Paris, London, China, and many other international cities. In fact, it seems that most urban cities of the Western world have bike-share/rent programs. Africa, Thailand, India, and Turkey were without a formalized system, but most likely have informal, community-driven programs that are not discernible to the foreign eye. 

So while we are here, still in the land of viable transportation options, we are off to use them! Though the hazy dream of that cushy Citroen rental car still lingers at the back of my mind, it's time for some sensible shoes and some London tube action!

*****

p.s. we are still sans-computer. no help has arrived. but we are SO grateful to David for the use of his computer while we are in london. be assured that our blog will be patchy until we return to our other laptop in the states (new york in twelve days).

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Useful Public Art in the Mediterranean: Murals, Spray Can Art, Mosaics

Murals, spray can art (and illegal graffiti), signage, and public art all play such important roles in defining cities, towns, and urban cultures. Public art viewed from the point of view of the traveler can become windows into the cultural world around us. Art in all its forms enlivens places we visit. For protest, aesthetic, and celebration, they are windows into a new world. Intentional art given for public purpose seems to do most good.

Public art provides a structural usefulness for people who live in the places we visit. It creates a ‘sense of place.’ Murals break up the monotony of hard flat surfaces. They tell stories and pass history between generations. Mosaics are like painting and plastic arts mixed. They seem particularly appropriate and historically resonant in the Middle East and Mediterranean

In Egypt, public art is often filled with ancient symbolism. It is a way to reach back into dim history while bringing forward contemporary aesthetic values. In Alexandria and Cairo, public art is everywhere. Aesthetics are not only on walls and in statues and sculpture put up in prominent locations, but on the painted market carts that rumble gently through the street delivering goods and selling merchandise.

Here in Cyprus, public art and architecture has been a part of public life for literally thousands of years. Villages are built on ruins of older villages containing theaters, frescoes, and mosaics several thousand years ago. But, today, art is increasingly important to meld modern sentiments, expressions, and politics with stories and history of by-gone eras. One particularly smart combination of public art in modern city expression we saw recently in Cyprus was the use of spray can collaborative muraling to surround ancient historic sites under reconstruction Spray Can Artists (graffiti artists who have gotten permission for the placement of their art) compete on tin panels securing restoration sork in the historic center. The contrast of the ancient and the contemporary provide a nice springboard for visitors and locals alike to see themes emerging without vandalism or public conflicts. However, the madcap artistry and tensions expressed by these youthful artists has a temporary functional utility which is sunsetting as the project of restoration moves to completion. Temporary Spray Can Art Installation outside Historic Site - Cyprus

Unlike murals, spray can art, public sculpture or mosaics (where agreements are fixed in advance with private or public property owners for permission to display art)): Graffiti is thought of as having positive and negative effects. But, by definition, graffiti is a nuisance. While it may be beautiful, it creates unbalance as someone has been hurt financially or otherwise. We have seen Roman historic sites 2000 years old spray painted with the usual swear words or propositions of love common n juvenile art. These ugly and selfish displays, which exist everywhere thoughtlessly and without any merit, take away from the artistry of others. Some solutions which we have seen are to provide temporary graffiti boards, to create competitions of juried spray-can art exhibitions, and for owners to turn ver more private and public spaces for display of public arts.

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Getting Our Groove On in West Africa

Life without music would be meaningless.” - Niezsche
[Taken from a marquee billboard advertising the Ghana Music Awards 2010

One night, as we were wandering through our Asylum Down neighborhood in Accra, we heard some great reggae bumping from a small shop with a corrugated metal roof. Being who we are, and feeling the ongoing inspiration of our portable hard-drive of collected music, we popped in to say hello. To our great delight, we found ourselves in the doorway of the local DJ studio, with DJ Black Shanti hard at work transferring music from records into digital form.

Shanti is promoting some great reggae artists from Ghana and has some ideas about creating an internet radio station. His office and DJ studio is one block from the circle of Asylum Square in Accra. If you are there and want to meet Black Shanti and some of his artists - just ask for the Rasta DJ, everyone knows him.

Thanks to Shanti, we have now have some fantastic reggae from West Africa…coming soon to a city near you! We really look forward to adding it to the 600GB collection at Hotel Oso Perezoso, and carrying it with us to share and enjoy on the rest of our travels.


We had similar good fortune in meeting another local musician in West Africa, again just by happenstance. One hot, sweaty afternoon in Lomé, as we were enjoying a cold Ekko beer at a local bar, a gentleman came up to invite us to his nightclub that evening to listen to some live Togolaise jazz! We started to speak about our jazz culture of New Orleans, but the conversation peetered out: our French was more limited than his English and we seemed to be getting nowhere. But our new friend popped into the doorway next door and emerged with his friend Yawo, who spoke both English and Spanish!. Almost immediately, our ‘translator’ became a great friend. We waxed on and on about music and the United States and cities around the world (Yawo Attivor and his Afro-Fun Band have toured and played with musicians in Africa, North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East). We talked politics and economics and global friendship. Yawo turned us on to some great music from Togo, and even shared some of his own tracks with us. We love it! You can get a bit of your own Yawo on youtube.com .

Another music exchange happened in Lomé, where we shared part of our collection to a budding young guitar player who managed the internet café one block from our hotel (La Patience) in Lome’.

And for the music lovers of this blog that need a bit of a soundtrack, here are a few of our other favorites (some of which you can listen to online for FREE!).

Listen to WRIU Rhode Island of Friday night, or Shepherd Mondays on 91.5 WTUL New Orleans. All of these great reggae stars of radio are ‘live’ on your internet dial streaming worldwide.


Pandora


Steve Greer’s awesome blues show on WRVU, Nashville


New Orleans' own WWOZ.


Listen to Black Shanti on radio 98.9 “Happy-FM” Ghana. Or hear it streaming on this site.

Check out our new friend Yawo on his site.

Get your groove on! And keep emailing your songs to us!

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Call To Prayer

 written by Nathan

We have seen so many sunrises this trip. Every one is unique, often their setting tells a story.

One thing new that we have gained from the sunrises of Asia and Africa is a desire to live life near a mosque - to hear daily the Muslim ‘call to prayer.’ Sunrise, sunset and prayer fit.

People are pious here. Most places, the singing verse and howls of prayer signify day break and the waking of a city or town. Addis Ababa if different. Addis mixes prayer with the end of night.

If my hometown, New Orleans, was half Muslim like Addis, it would likely wake up the same as this city does - mixing imens’ howls with a muffled drone of fading dancehalls and occasional street crackles from the last patrons’ revelry. As night haunts wind down, mixing pulses quietly provoke the early dawn light along with mosques and church bells, nudging ladies and gentlemen who are night people back into the wastes of last night’s streets. They spill out in conversations where fear of the brightening sun sends them scurrying home toward their private shadows at a crack of dawn.

---

As I write this, I am reminding myself what a city person I am. I have loved being in small towns. I love other places, rural places, too, where morning prayers wake up first roosters, rising cantonances with the holy sounds until the mutual efforts of guarding the earth sweep out above the mountains and across valleys in dulling muted harmonies. Cadences when so muted, whisper of our lot shared together. Why does the image of Jesus on a cross have this rooster crowing? What about our rooster causes no alarm?

---

Here in Addis, in the heart of this Ancient country’s hundred year capital, as the prayers whirls into a morning din that is mixing bus engines, wild birds, and rising human movements and early conversation, I am always being reminded of my natural embrace of urbanity.

This morning, like most mornings, I think of other people like me. I remember friends and family when it occurs to me what they might like , what they would want to see, how differently we might approach a place. One of my favorite people to think of these past months as we pass through all these capitals of human urbanity is David, my stepfather.

David and my Mom would both wake up like me before sunrise, before the call to prayer. My mother would wake, greet anyone else awake, then muster out for one or two hours of hiking the cities. She would go everywhere and greet anyone - up the hills, around the ports and seashores. David would sit here in this bench seat - observing, smiling, watching and listening.

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A land of handholding and coffee!!

written by Nathan

Ethiopia is a delightful culture. Beautiful smiles are everywhere here. Public hugging and holding hands is commonplace. A certain happiness, contentment, and familiarity rings from all corners.

In some ways, culture forms building blocks bringing us together, giving a sense of 'belonging," making us feel comfortable. Culture is pervasively public in Asia and Africa.

For many years I have probed the subject of what makes a great culture. There is no shortage of answers easy or complex. So, for brevity's sake - this is my exposition of simple traits of great cultures….

Many years ago I came to a personal discovery of what makes great culture: coffee and bread. Part of this comes from my pride of being a New Orleanian. If we have given the world Jazz, Creole culture, American food, Franco-American opera and the like, what you cannot get in any imitated form outside of New Orleans is its coffee or 'French' bread.

After a bit of travel, I concluded that the places which felt most cultured to me in the best sense of the word had these two defining characteristics embedded deep in the cultural soul: good coffee and delicious bread. Paris has the bread and coffee culture. Buenos Aires has it too. Ethiopia ranks happily on this quality culture list.

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Tragic Earthquake Shakes the World: Thoughts from China

For the last two days we have been rocked with the tragic news from
Haiti. Of course, we want to be home tending to the hurt and loss in
our dear Caribbean. The people of Haiti have suffered so much; they
are the last ones who need to experience more disaster.

Images here are horrible. Our prayers and work will shift to digging
out more information from Sichuan Earthquake in China to try and give
some comfort and aid to our Haitian compatriots and those who work
feverishly these next weeks and months and years to support them.

When disaster of such magnitude strikes, it is impossible to
understand. In the case of communities as impoverished, as damaged by
generations of corrupt governments, and with poor education, class
discrimination, and underdevelopment, suffering is more acute, more
palpable.

In China, a central government responded with massive convoys of
assistance, full military resource, and direct oversight by the most
powerful decision-makers the country had. Every province took on very
specific and targeted roles in assuring rapid deployment of aid and
community specific redevelopment activity.

As was our experience on the Gulf Coast of the USA after Katrina, and,
as is likely to be the case with Haiti, there is an absence of local
and national comprehensive response strategies. Worse, the human
restoration approach will not be put in place due, at least in part,
to: (1) competition over limited resources not to be delivered en
masse for humanitarian relief; (2) prioritization of government and
corporate toward infrastructure and other big projects; (3) a 'gold
rush' of grafters, contractors, and top heavy NGO-bloated
bureaucracies, (4) lack of existing community-based planning or plans,
(5) resistance to community engagement or historical analysis of
community needs and existing asset maps.

If the world community could seriously endeavor to combine elements
from the rapidly centralized recovery in Sichuan, China, with the
urban practices and democratic engagement principles developed but not
fully implemented following Katrina, Kobe, 2004 Tsunami or other
disasters, Haiti would likely recover faster, healthier, sustainably,
and democratically. The rush to pull injured, dead and dying from the
heaps of Port-au-Prince's hellish collapse will most likely be
followed by a rush to exploit resources and manage communities towards
increased marginalization, displacement, and disenfranchisement of
impoverished masses. Monopolization of power, corruption of class
structures, expanding political oligarchical powers, and resource
deprivation will likely force more suffering on Haiti, her neighbors,
her supporters, and the world-community at large. Looked at in this
way, the urgency should be upon all of us to urge a disaster recovery
for Haiti which transmutes new standards of cultural resiliency,
humanitarian environmentalism, economic sustainability, healthful
democratization through community engagement, and participatory,
inclusive, and equitable planning.

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Tokyo is building 'Super' Levees

When Katrina sent a 35 foot (11 meter) wall of water over Waveland on the Mississippi Gulf Coast levees surrounding New Orleans were overtopped and collapsed.

Tokyo, where we are now visiting, has its history of floods. Mumbai, [where we will visit Hume Churches and Maharashti Missions in March 2010, (missions begun by my great great grandfather)], also has had many floods. Tokyo, Mumbai, and New Orleans are all cities built on alluvial plains created by river deltas. Many coastal port cities have historically been developed at or below sea level across the globe. What was it then, after the flooding caused by hurricane Katrina that caused so many in the US to suggest that New Orleans should not be rebuilt because of its propensity for flooding? What do you think?

Sacramento, California, Lower Manhattan, the National Mall in Washington DC are but a few examples of cities in the US on the edge of enormous flooding disasters. But as we begin to contemplate the rise of seas globally, what will happen to port cities? How do we prepare?

Unlike New Orleans, Tokyo had begun to rethink its development in terms of flooding and put in place long term comprehensive flood plans before catastrophic flood disasters occurred in the modern climate change era. Tokyo is building 'Super Levees.' "Japanese cities are quite susceptible to floods. Most populations and property, and therefore most damage, concentrate on alluvial plains." Japan is the disaster capital of the world. Flooding, Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Typhoon, Volcanoes, and Terrorism are all part of the disaster mitigation planning going on here. In Tokyo, neighborhood maps include safety zones where people are protected from most forms of disaster (human is the most unpredictable). What is it in Japan that makes good city planning so doable? While the disasters are surely motivation enough, what we keep discovering is that the answers run deeper to the fundamental organizational qualities of the Japanese.

The other morning we had an earthquake here in Tokyo. No body was too shook up about it. Then today at Imperial Palace, some of the most delicate displays had wire strings holding them in place. For what? Earthquakes no doubt. In Japan, even the Emperor is planning for disaster.

Want to learn more about how effective levee protections are planned and built?

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