kohoco

2006-07-25T09:08:00.000+02:00

Ever take a picture on an airplane. You could be on a terrorist watch list. This, and other current US practices, if not passes, certainly matches what was done here in CZ under the Communists.

2006-06-23T16:07:00.000+02:00

This is a fascinating article in the NYtime on driving and says very clearly what I have always feared about other drivers.

"The study found that drivers were overconfident or very poor at predicting when it was safe to look away from the road to perform another task. Driving situations can change abruptly, but many drivers seem to be lured into thinking the world outside the moving car can be put on hold while they pay attention to other things."

2006-06-17T10:49:00.000+02:00

Guest Poster:

The tributes to Ritch Kumhala reported here have been shared with a love that is palpable and heartwarming. I first met Ritch as a friend of my sons'in scouts. A fun loving tow headed kid with a huge mischievious smile. Rich could be a dare devil but with a heart of gold for everyone. I know that his friends meant a great deal to him, as well as his family. While we all feel the loss of him-he will always be carried in the hearts of those of us who loved him-just for the person that he was. How can you even think of Ritch and not smile? He would like that. Ritch accomplished in his life something we all strive to be-a good person, with a good soul. Ritch managed to imbed himself in all of us-I hope he knew that--I like to think he did--Donna B

2006-06-16T22:12:00.000+02:00

Prague College is turning 2 and we're throwing a party at Akropolis on Friday, June 30, 7:30 pm. You're all invited.

Croatian sensation Svadbas will be playing! Plus our own DJs from the college. Check it out here.

If you want a ticket stop by the college.

2006-06-14T10:27:00.000+02:00

Guest Poster (see story below on Ritch):

i new ritch also i haven't seen him in quite some time,we go back to when i had lived on ferndale dr. back in the mid 1980,s we had shared alot in common and got to be pretty good friends,we had swapped trucks for motocross bikes amongst some of the things we did we had some great parties over the years and he had even stayed with my wife and i for a short time back in 1996 when we lived in green bay,sadly missed by all of us i now live in the pulaski area for the last 4 years but when my wifes mother had passed we had bumped into ritch back in 2002 and he gave her a hug and said he'd stop sometime but with all of our schedules it never seemed to happen,i vividly remember a party we had at my parents house that ritch had put together and another in which i had driven down the wrong side of highway 29 in my bronco and went through the ditch to get to the othe side of the road,i laugh sometimes to myself thinking of some of these times,we also worked on alot of cars and trucks over the year the firebird that sat at his moms the charger,1977 bronco which had air conditioning that i was in awe about and the 1974 chevy that i traded him with the steering problems i learned alot just from tearing stuff apart with him i guess i could go on but all i have to say in an essence is that ritch will not ever be forgotton or replaced nicest,kindest person to have been in my life rick p.

2006-06-14T10:25:00.000+02:00

Guest poster (see below for more articles on Ritchy):

I met Ritch Kumhala 14 years ago when I started dating and eventually married his brother Jamie. The first time I met him at the house in Green Bay. He was in a fight with his little brother and slammed the door to the garage. “nice to meet you too!”-
Ritch was always kind to me since the day I met him. We never knew when he would be pop in/or out of our life but that was just Ritch. He’d come stay for a while..and then we wouldn’t hear from him for months. He lived his life by his own rules and on his own terms.
We sure never thought the last time we spent the day with him, Mother’s Day would be our last. It was a nice day though- He played card games with his two nephews until everyone won a game- hid the left-over plastic easter eggs over and over again for them to find. We drove over to his aunt’s house and he chose to walk with the boys. He gave them his Bruce Lee books- but then again he was always giving thoughtful gifts.
I told our sons keep the walk with their Uncle Ritchie that day close to their heart… That and everything he taught them - how to play chess, cards, most importantly the importance of reading-

“give me five- way up high-way down low- too slow”… and he laughed every time...

2006-06-12T22:11:00.000+02:00

I just finished watching the Czechs trounce the Americans in the World Cup with my Czech father-in-law. I couldn't even pretend that I wanted the Americans to win (which I think mildly disappointed him), even though we clinked classes and said, "May the best team win." It was too much fun to root for the Czechs, who clearly outclassed the American team. Kdo neskace neni Cech! Hop! Hop! Hop!

2006-06-12T09:41:00.000+02:00

I am currently posting letters to and about Ritch Kumhala, a friend who recently died in Green Bay Wisconsin. If you have anything you would like to say you can post it in the comments box and I will move it to the front page.

2006-06-09T10:14:00.000+02:00

And another guest writer, Jeff Bartel:

hi
I met Ritch Kumhala in Boy Scouts, about 20 years ago. My early memories of Ritch are all Scouting memories -- playing Dungeons and Dragons along with his brother Jamie and Mike Baenen; running around at night after curfew; building a quincy and then freezing (almost literally) on a Polar Bear weekend.
Ritchie was a good guy -- he did not have malice. He would get into trouble sometimes, but I think it was the excitement of pushing things. He was a little wild.

After Scouts, I continued to run into Ritch -- for a couple of years while Jeff, Kent and others were in Madison for college, he would occasionally come down for a visit, maybe stay for a couple of weeks. We'd talk comic books, movies. Beer and loud music and friends.
College ended, and our group of friends split for various corners. I'd occasionally hear from Ritch, or run into him.

I ran into Ritch a couple of years ago -- I was popping into the library, when I heard my name called out. It took me a second to recognize Ritch -- he'd grown his hair fairly long, and had a sizeable beard. We caught up a bit.
Ritch told me he was writing a book about the real power in America. He told me he'd have to wait for the election (this would have been Memorial Day weekend of 2004) because that would have a big impact on his book. He didn't go into details about the book -- it involved a lot of conspiracy.

I'd run into Ritch every couple of months at the library -- he'd tell me about what he was up to, his plans to finish the book and get it published. I'd tell him about the people we knew from Boy Scouts and college -- who was where, who was married.
The last time I saw Ritch was May 6th, 2006 -- I remember because I checked out a Daredevil graphic novel on that date, and I remember holding it as I talked to him.
Ritch seemed to be doing pretty well. He'd shaved off the enormous beard he'd been sporting the last couple of years. He was also wearing a stocking hat on a pretty hot day. I pointed it out, and he laughed and pulled it off. His hair was in a rough mohawk. He told me his shaver had broken halfway through his self-haircut, and he'd said what the hell and made a mohawk out of it. He said he'd probably shave the rest off after he got a new hair trimmer.
It had been a bit since I'd seen him, so I gave him the big information dump -- me married, Kent married and with a kid, Jeff married with a kid.
When I mentioned Jeff, he laughed and said he'd looked up his name on the internet, and the only place he found it was on Jeff's blog. I'd remembered that entry -- talking about the time Jeff and Ritch had helped put out the forest fire. I said, that's a good moment, you were a hero, that's a good thing to find on the web.
So that was Jeff? he asked. What's he doing in Prague? I gave him the Cliff Notes version.
Ritch told me he had to go, really go. I have all my stuff packed up, he said, it's in a bag at the bus station. I should have left in February, but I had to wait around to see if a book deal would work out.
Where are you going?
I don't know. Somewhere. There's a lot of places I've never been. Maybe I'll go to California.

That was pretty much it. Ritch always said goodbye like he expected to see you again within a day or two, and that's how he said goodbye that time.

I went to the memorial service today. It was in Suring, where his mother lives. When I got there, the power was out -- all the way to Michigan, someone said. The funeral home was lit by candles. There were a couple of full boards of pictures, including several Scout ones. There was also growing up pics -- opening Christmas presents in front of a cardboard fireplace (our family had one too), Disneyworld. There was a section of the hunting pics Ritch had taken.
The lights came on after an hour -- it was strange to be in the funeral home fully lit up.

There's more to say about Ritch -- there's always more to say about a friend. I can't believe I'm not going to run into him again. I feel helpless and sad.
jdb
Jeff Bartel
6-7-06

2006-06-08T09:22:00.000+02:00

Posted by another of Ritch's friends:

I have many good memories of Ritch. I remember being impressed back in the seventh grade with how he hid throwing stars and other seventh-grade contraband inside the heat register in his room. When we were around twenty years old, he told me how he had just given a teddy bear to a girl he liked. As it happens, she just wanted to be friends, and he didn't harbor any resentment about that. He was smiling as he told me the whole story. He had a contagious smile. I remember him when he stayed with us in Madison, sitting on our couch eating cereal, playing video games, talking. Telling stories. He had many, many stories, good stories, and he knew how to tell them. There were times when he was telling a story, and people were captivated (or laughing their asses off), and you could see in his eyes that he enjoyed sharing his story because he knew that it added something special and fascinating to the lives of his friends. I have sweet memories of Ritch in junior high and early high school, sleepovers, video games, role-playing games, Bruce Lee movies. Then there was Mischief with a capital M. The memories continue, year by year, into late high school, the big transition to adulthood, the years in Madison. Like us all, Ritch made his share of mistakes, but he was always a caring, kind, intelligent, and genuine person, and he lived with an intensity of spirit that is needed in this world.

Ritch may not have been a fearless person, but he faced many, many things without fear, things that would (and did) make other people afraid. And of course there were circumstances in which Ritch did not have a lot of power or authority, but then, there were times when he was definitely the one in command. I am thinking of very specific situations, in which I was personally involved in one way or another. And from personal experience, I can say that there were times when I was afraid to do what needed to be done, and Ritch was more than happy to take care of the situation, to face the conflict for me, even if it meant personal risk to himself. And also from personal experience, I can say that there were times when Ritch was the person with the power or authority, and he used it to help me, to lift me up.

It was an honor to be Ritch's friend.

2006-06-05T21:42:00.000+02:00

Ritch Kumhala, a friend from high school, died on Saturday in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I don't know how or why.

Random memories of Ritch, in any order:

Boy scouts, hunting chipmunks up at his grandparents’ land in Michigan, the way he made that double shot on the run, maple syrup, running from the cops, showing me how to slip out of handcuffs, white blonde hair and beard, a really crazy and open smile, sleeping on our couch in Madison for months, getting him a job at the corner grocery store, his army jacket, quick mind that instantly caught me and Kent cheating at cards when no one else did, we going to the high school dance stag, leaving alone, those endless days and nights of parties, Ritch, running from the cops, the way he made you nervous with his silence, the way he made you laugh: “Ritch, you want some coffee?” “No thanks, I’m not thirsty.” Cigar box full of “goodies,” unapologetic living, afraid of authority, unafraid to challenge authority, devotion to his friends, forest fire, Ritch, running to the neighbors pounding on doors, plunging headlong into the flames with a bucket of river water, video games, mastery of video games, boredom and ideas, a bottle of whiskey and we walked down the long black road in the rain looking for the party where we knew we were not wanted, walking anyway, longing anyway, hoping to bribe our way in with the whiskey, running from the cops, tossing the bottle over a fence, who were the cops?, wrapped in an American flag, bloody lip, emerging from between the houses in the middle of the night, “Hi guys, remember that fight I had in front of South West”, always fighting, thirsting, hungry, happy to see and be with you… we lost touch and the last time I saw him was in a bar in Green Bay and I hadn’t seen him for years, walks in and says “Hi Jeff.” like we’d talked yesterday, very simple, and I, excited, “Hey Ritch!”, “Are you going to be around here in the center?” he asks. “Yeah, for a few days…” “Ok, see you then.” He turns and walks out as if we’d made solid plans and was counting on seeing me again sometime real soon. Thank you Ritch for the time we spent together, you are a good friend.

2006-05-08T20:29:00.000+02:00

2006-05-08T14:35:00.000+02:00

Just like a good Czech family, we spent the weekend at the family cottage. All I can say is, despite the hassle of the train and the various irritations that go with shifting yourself and your carless family across land to another, more rustic location, it's worth it. There's an unraveling that happens, and, now that we're back home, greater appreciation of the comforts of the apartment.

Of course tomorrow means work. Maybe I should have moved to France, and we could just call a strike and go back to the hills.

2006-04-29T22:19:00.000+02:00

This is one of those times I’m kicking myself for not bringing my camera with me. Most of you know something about artist Martin Zet from some of the work we we’ve done together, or from what I have written about him here, or if you have had the fortune to know him personally. What I like and admire about Martin is his ability to make me wonder, wonder what will happen in the very next moment. Not in the way that dangerous people make you feel, like they’re going to hit you or throw their glass of beer through a window. But as if strange doors in reality are opening and there’s a moment of trepidation before you stick your head inside.

On Monday he had an opening at a small gallery in Prague that is attempting to show contemporary Czech art and artists. His latest exhibition, Fate of the Nation, consists of blown up pictures of busts by Otakar Svec, the creator of the huge Stalin monument that overlooked the city up on Letna hill. Now Martin’s blow-ups are hanging along the main drag just at the foot of Letna. I didn’t much understand the speeches (or the artwork, I’m pretty out of it these days), but I have fun watching all the old faces in the art scene here. After the speeches Martin goes over to the corner of the gallery where he has set up a large pot-bellied propane tank, lit and heating a smelting pot with a long wooden handle, and a backpack with a canvas wrap sticking out of it. Along the wall lie about 50 pieces of lead, alternating in size, short-long-short-long.

As Martin silently drops the pieces of lead into the smelting pot a young woman, thick around the hips with a booming chest and creamy brown complexion picks up a microphone and pours her voice into a small mixer and amplifier. She proceeds to mix and layer the various rhythmic sounds she’s making into a kind of hypnotic music, casting the rest of the scene as a kind a symbolic fairytale. While the lead slowly melts in the smelting pot Martin pulls the canvas wrap out of the backpack and unrolls it. Inside are four thorn branches, still green. He ties the bottoms of the braches together and begins to twine them like a Czech pomlazka. If you’ve never seen a pomlazka, it basically consists of several willow branches twined together, with colored ribbons tied around the top. On Easter morning boys and grown men run around whacking women, who give them chocolate eggs for their effort. (This year, for the first time in ten years of living in CZ, I woke up early in the morning and went down to the local flower shop and bought one. I felt like a kid buying condoms for the first time. I tried to sneak back to the apartment without anyone seeing me in the street. In the meantime, beefy guys strutted proudly past me in the street swinging theirs like it was a baseball bat. Back home, after dutifully beating my womenfolk into fertility, we went down to A.’s Grandma’s flat and I sent her reeling with a couple of blows to the backside and legs. Squealing with pleasure she gave me chocolate and a glass of Baileys.) So anyway, Martin’s taking this tradition to a new level by using thorn branches. In the process he presses his fingers into the thorns, and I wince, expecting blood, which never comes. When he gets to the end he begins to pull multi-colored ribbons from his leather boots, from under his socks, and ties them to the top of the pomlazka. When these run out he removes his old, worn-out boots, places them carefully on the painted gray concrete floor, and begins to cut off his socks in long strips, again tying them to the end of the pomlazka. He’s wearing about 5 layers of socks, so this takes while.

Now barefoot and back at the smelting pot, he stirs and prods the lead. I ask myself, “What now? What could he possibly be doing with the lead?” At this point I notice that the girl making the voice music rhythms has stopped and is staring at Martin’s performance too, wondering out loud, a cluster of faces pressing at the gallery window. Martin, looking like a farmer working on his tracker engine, carefully hefts the pot by the handle and with great concentration pours the contents into his old leather boots. Smoke billows comically from the boots, like the scene in a movie when the guy blows up and only his boots are left behind, still standing and smoking on the pavement. A second later the stench hits the gaping and incredulous audience. It’s nearly too much to stand.. No, in fact for most, it is too much to stand, and the room clears. Over the next half hour Martin continuous to melt lead and pour it into his boots, which leak and spill onto the floor. The gallery fills with stench, a pungent stew of wet cardboard, burning animal fur, mummified milk breath, and sour foot bandages. I go outside to get some air with the rest of the gallery-art-opening-goers and I overhear the exasperated exclamations of the owners, saying, “You’re supposed to bring people into the gallery, not force them out!” “He told me this wouldn’t happened!” Etc.

I do manage to peek in now and then to check on his progress and show my dying loyalty. Though it’s not easy and I’m definitely feeling queasy. I make it for the finale. He tops off the boots, smoking black nubs, filled to the tops with lead, standing next to each other, and quickly hefts the pomlazka in one hand, slamming it down between them so that it stands like an erect soldier, a thorny spinal column, with its gaily colored ribbons fluttering in the noxious fumes.

I didn’t know whether to applaud or vomit. On my way home I had a terrifying moment when I thought that we have all been poisoned. Stalin’s head was blown off the monument in 1962 on orders from Moscow. Remind me to ask Martin just what the hell that was all about. No camera, no camera, slapping my forehead. I’m left with a final image: Martin’s lead boots, permanently, messily sealed to the gallery floor, an indelible obstacle to the fanciful gazing of art on walls.

Stones and Log

2006-04-23T21:08:00.000+02:00

Stones and Log
Originally uploaded by buehler_jeff.

Just after I took this picture, a gate across the road slid open and an old woman in dirty clothes scowled at me. This is an everyday event in the Czech Republic and didn't at all bother me. I walked ahead a little while and spotted Alice and Isi in the distance, running madly ahead of the gathering storm. I started running after them when I heard rough male voices behind me calling after me, saying, "Hey you, mister! Hey stop!" I stopped and turned around.

There was a group of about 5 guys, but I can't really remember what they look like, as I began to panic, putting the situation together from their perspective. Oh oh. "Hey, you take pictures of something nice?"
"What?" I half stuttered.
"You take some nice pictures?" one asked again.
"Yeah, the stones are nice," I said.
"That's great."
I immediately turned and started walking, slowly now, down the long road with no exits. Dead silence behind me. I seemed to remember a white van they were in the middle of loading. Why are white vans intrinsically suspicious?

The whole walk ahead I imagined the growl of the van pulling up next to me and a couple of arms reaching out and pulling me inside. The last thing I would see is Alice and Isi speeding into the distance away from the storm. (Too many movies? I wish I knew. I read about these things happening in the newspapers.)

What makes me smile is the irony of starting to run just as they called out to me, immediately engendering suspicion on their part.

So, see anything out of the ordinary in the picture?

2006-04-20T22:54:00.000+02:00

I know that at one point in my life I never thought I would be married and have a child. And I certainly never thought that my child's first phrase would be (repeated endlessly throughout the day and on her lips as she falls asleep at night): "Hot tea, baby!"

2006-04-15T12:46:00.000+02:00

Speaking of Judas, have you been following the story of the recent revelation of his Gospel?

2006-04-14T20:36:00.000+02:00

In celebration of Good Friday my wife made a special kind of sweet bread that tastes something like a glazed croissant. It's called Judas' Rope. I asked my kind and intelligent wife why, pray tell, is this piece of bread called Judas' Rope. And she responded that it looks like a coil of rope on the earth and Judas hanged himself after betraying Jesus.

"Did he? Hmm," I said. "I didn't know that. I guess I never thought about what happened to him after the betrayal."

"At least I think he did..."

After a little research I learned that there are two versions of what happened to poor Judas.

In one (Matthew 27:3-8 ) he gives the silver back and goes off and hangs himself out of guilt, and in the second he "purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood." Acts 1:18-19

Man. What the hell happened there?

Just wondering what a bread called: Bowels Gushed Out might look like.

When will it stop raining? Forty days and forty nights. With Easter around the corner and no twinned stick whip ready for some good ol' women beating. Fertility under threat.

2006-04-13T21:31:00.000+02:00

So I'm reading this book called Blink (birthday present) the main idea so far is that the intuitive part of the mind is capable of making sounder decisions in the blink of an eye than, say, a computerized analysis of something. Or a decision that has been thought out and deeply deliberated.

In one part he describes this doctor who has been videotaping married couples for the last twenty years. While recording he has them argue about something while measuring their heart rate, sweat glands, whether they shift in their seats or not, etc.

He develops a system of twenty separate categories corresponding to various emotions that couples might have while arguing: Disgust is a 1, anger 7, defensiveness is 10, whining 11, stonewalling 13 etc. (By the way, just for your reference, according to this doctor the four black horses of a relationship are, from worst to less bad: Contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling.) Anyway, he then examines the video and the bodily reactions very closely, second by second, assigning a number to each reaction. Apparently, based on his calculations, he has been able to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether a couple will be divorced within 15 years after working on a one-hour video. His success rate is about 90 percent if the video is just 15 minutes.

After so many years he’s so good at it that he can sit in a café, hear two sentences muttered by the couple speaking in the next booth and know immediately that they’re doomed and should be shopping around for a good lawyer to fight for custody of the children.

Question is, would you want someone to do this to you? Would you sit in the chair with your partner and be filmed, assigned numbers to your emotions and told that, according to the patterns written in your immediate behavior, your relationship doesn’t stand a chance.

Made me think twice about my own “automatic” reactions.

2006-04-10T20:16:00.000+02:00

It's snowing, first day of semester. Wish me a happy birthday. I'm going to finish my glass of Ruby Cabernet, 2004 now. Not bad at all.

Feels like the kind of night for lightning high in the clouds. Thunder.

2006-04-10T20:05:00.000+02:00

Ok, sandpit rules: you enter with 1.5-year-old child and place her gently on the mound of loose sand. You set down her bag of brightly colored sand toys (bucket, shovel, rake etc), play stroller complete with mini teddy bear and you get ready to get dirty. It takes not even three split seconds, you look up, and your daughter's stroller has been jacked by a three-year-old and who is heading swiftly for the gate. Daughter has a scowl on her face but doesn't move or react. What now. You look down and see alien child fingers probing her bag of toys. All this while and no less than 24 pairs of eyes are observing your every reaction: your child's, the parents' standing around and all of their kids'.

Issues are raised in these moments. You know your child absorbs reactions: aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, neutral, easy-going, ignoring, pretending to ignore. You know that what you do now could influence a whole lifetime. There is nowhere to go, just be there and let the awkwardness do its thing. Well sweetheart, sandpit rules. One child grabs a toy tractor which is just sitting there, not being used. For his transgression he gets a shovel of sand in the eyes. Both children burst into tears.

I don't think it changes very much as you get older. The situations become more complicated, maybe, but the essence is the same. You've been working as hard as she has, but the manager has not noticed. Later, when he comments on a nice piece of work, you subtly take credit, knowing very well it was your more visible, louder and more confident colleague.

2006-04-06T20:54:00.000+02:00

I think the spam may have stopped coming, along with all of my dear readers.

It's been over a year since I last updated this poor thing of a blog, and I have to admit for nearly 99.9 percent of that year I felt no guilt at all about that. Seemed like a good time to let that particular thread go, drift away like a Czech village in the spring.

Don't mistake this post as effort on my part to return to the blogoshere or whatever they call it now. I just had a hankering to put words down in space and wish the world a very good evening.

The year has been full of what it means to go from being be a wishy-washy introspective reader of world literature and newspapers, hanging out with artists, guzzling liquids of various degrees, percentages and origins, and in general not thinking too far beyond the ends of my shoes, which I often tripped over, to... well, being a father and breadwinner. A professional, in the world of work.

What a relief — I thought I would never get out of that particular life. Certain parts fall away, others grow from that, there are these amazing transformations in one's life, easily witnessed in an infant as she sheds her babyness at the speed of a fast crawl, proudly stands and moves in wider and wider circles in the world, circles that spin outward and land you in places you never suspected you would be.

Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. Claw town, ghost town, evil to the stony heart of the dirty river that pours its way through its back streets. You should see her now, all dressed up in glass and concrete. She is certainly undergoing change, an ambiguous transformation I don’t really understand. I know there is more money, more time for work, less for play, all that jazz. And somehow the city stopped being so strongly Prague for me. In bold. And more like, say, Milwaukee, a city with cash, green places for walks, some clubs and bars, theaters doing experimental stuff, with all the ghosts relegated to the closets and sanitariums slated for bulldozing.

In a sense, what I mean is that the ghosts and the past are no longer so strongly in the conscious mind, at least not in mine. We are happier to move in a glass and powerpoint world where money frees us, and our memories are saved for precious moments. In many ways, this can be good. After all, who wants to live in a cemetery. But in our hearts there is the awareness of loss, and the wonder at what we are doing, and who it benefits. I ask myself, who am I benefiting? What is it that I am creating for the future?

2005-04-23T13:20:00.000+02:00

I'm a bad, bad person. I'm spending way too much time in the Green Valley, and reading John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman, a book that reminds me most clearly of the powerful effect of good literature, and love.

Yes, you heard me right:

"When a reader falls in love with a book it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. We love relatively few books in our lives and those books become parts
of the way we see our lives, we read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds
become mixed up with ours, they become ours.
Love does this, hate does not. To hate a book is only to confirm to oneself what one already knows, or thinks one knows. But the power of books to inspire both love and hate is an indication of their ability to make alterations in the fabric of what is." Salman Rushdie

2005-04-09T10:07:00.000+02:00

No, sorry, I absolutely cannot share with you who walked into my office this morning. That kind of thing would be a total breech of confidence.

I mean really what do you take me for? This kind of thing can spread like wild fire and the next thing you know we'll have 2,000 kids all wanting to study with..... opps, almost got me there.

2005-03-19T10:53:00.000+01:00

I recently told Scott somewhat tongue in cheek that journalism was mainly bullshit. When I said it, there was a part of me that meant it. I have written a little journalism myself and know some of the mental trickery that goes into it, though I do not claim to be a good journalist by any stretch. And maybe the feeling only comes because of my lack of good journalistic skills. I remember in one journalism class in college I essentially created an elaborate fantasy, with made-up people and quotes and situations. I had a blast writing it and thought it was one of my best works (unable to track down my sources, my teacher gave me a B). Now, just to set the record straight, I never did this for any publication (at least not the ones that paid me).

When I said that journalism was mainly bullshit, it came from my feeling that journalists spent a lot of time patching events and facts together and trying to sell it off as journalism. You simply cannot escape the ignorance, style or agenda of any rag you might pick up. Even when you have the impression that a particular event is “real,” you are nevertheless betrayed by the choice of words, the order of the paragraphs, the hidden bias of the writer and editor and news source, the placement on the page, the ads that surround it or are buried within it. Or sometimes even the byline (I have personal experience with this, if you want details we’ll have to talk in person). You may however sense the shadow of something that is moving in the dark, and you get an idea of its form and how it may manifest in the future, around the next corner.

On the other hand, I learn from newspapers. The research that good journalists do can shed light on issues and bring together scattered events and show how they relate to each other. This post is just a roundabout way of saying that you should go read Scott’s article on Slate and learn about what’s going on in Northern Ireland. Scott’s article is definitely not bullshit, and I have learned a lot.

2005-03-12T20:27:00.000+01:00

Check out riverbend's hilarious description of Iraqis debating politics and why Chalabi deserves the Noble Peace Prize.

2005-03-12T20:09:00.000+01:00

This is nothing new, but just in case you didn't know where your news was coming from.

Is it just me, or is the year of the rooster making waves. It seems that all the things that were poised to happen for so long are happening. There is a kind of flow taking place, washing into every corner of people's lives. Maybe the tsunami was just a warning shot across the bow. Births and deaths, marriages, endings and great flourishes. Or maybe time is just undoing the knots. Be watchful, but also enjoy the ride.

2005-03-11T15:34:00.000+01:00

So many times, walking around, doing my job, interacting with people, watching Isadora unfold into a laughing, charming being right before my eyes, I thought that this would be good to blog and share with others. Then like steam in a toaster the thought fizst! out of existence.

Now I have another chance to earn your attention. This is a once in a lifetime chance to attend a SAVE TULIP CAFE FROM GOING TO RENTER'S PRISON PARTY.

Or something like that. I better let Scott tell it:

"I'm putting together an impromptu party at Tulip this Saturday -- to help us raise money to keep up with our rent payments. Yes, a rent party, how cool is that! (January and February were very slow months for us and yeah... we sort of fell behind.)

Cocktails, music, food, fun. You know the drill! Saturday, March 12, from 9 p.m. till late. Spread the word....

Also take note -- on March 17 (one week from today) we're having a St. Patrick's Day party with shots of Jameson for only Kč 40, green potatoes, Irish stew, funny looking shamrock-y drinks, and a live Irish music jam session in the cafe from 7pm!"

http://www.tulipcafe.cz

So there you go folks, you have something to do this Saturday. SAVE TULIP!

2005-01-05T20:30:00.000+01:00

One very kind student, about my age, has an eight-year-old son. Out of curiosity I asked him if he was learning English too. He said, "Oh, sometimes he sing some songs he learns in school." In a sing-song voice he demonstrates: "One, Two, Three, Four! And he also knows words like cat and dog and tree." He stopped and shook his head. "And then from video games he knows: 'Die pig, DIE!' and 'Come here baby, I wanna show you somethin' and after a very large explosion, 'REST IN PIECES!'"
"You know, that's supposed to be a joke," I said. "Do you know what it means?"
"Rest in pieces? Oh, no, what does it mean?"

Anybody want to answer?

2004-12-11T18:17:00.000+01:00

Stop carping

This evening I sent of an email to a family friend back home about the various Czech Christmas traditions, including the Golden Pig and the traditional Christmas carp. This is his response in full (he was a game warden and is an avid fisherman and the captain of a small fishing craft):

"The lowly carp. Remember it was the Germans that brought the "German Carp" to our shores as a food fish. Which it is. Lots of good fish protien in a fish that will grow fairly large in almost any water that has sufficent oxygen.
When we were in Boscobel the local warden and others introduced us (me) to carp.
The most popular way was to smoke it. Brine of salt water with some brown sugar (just like salmon) and smoke away. Smaller to medium fish are better because there is less fat. The fat is the problem in the USA becasue that is where the mercury and pcbs are concentrated. This is becoming more of a problem here. Then eithere eat it like that or with a little lemon juice to cut the fat that is left. Alot of people break it into small pieces, the bones are easy to get out, easier than other fish, and use in salads. Much like you would use tuna. Butches Anchor Inn in Oshkosh used to specialize in their "Smoked Carp Salad" it was always ont he menue and they would often run out at lunch time. I always ordered it when I went there.
It is also good baked. You "skive" it first. There is a layer betweek the scales and the skin and if you are careful you can work a knife between and peal off the scales and one layer of skin leaving the rest of the skin intact. This holds the meat together. Then fill it with bread dressing (like a chicken) sew up the cavity some and bake until done. Traditionally the head is left on, I don't. This can be done with other fish too. It is a little more "mushy" but if you don't overcook it it comes out o.k.
Also frying it is good. We filleted it and cut it into smaller pieces to fry since it tends to be a thick fish. The smaller pieces fry faster so absorb less fat. It would probably be good in beer batter too tho I've never done it like that.
The big thing to watch out for is the "laterial line". On any fish there is a line of dark meat that runs along the middle of the side. This is where most of the sensory organs, smell, pressure, etc are located. It is just full of nerves and small blood vessels and tastes like uugh. If you skin a fish as in filleting, cut that "v" out from front to back and it will taste alot better. I like to soak fish in some lightly salted water before cooking or freezing. The salt in the water pulls out any residual blood and other moisture and makes the meat more firm. This is important with what would be a soft fleshed fish like, whitefish, carp, buffalo fish, etc.
If the fish is already cooked and served to you, take the skin off (lots of fat there) and use a fork or knife to scrape the dark laterial line off before you eat it. You will notice a real difference.
Now quit "carping" about the lowly carp. Remember it is is just a poor "goldfish" and they eat and rever them in Japan. Try buying a full grown Koy(goldfish/carp) for less than $1000 US in Japan.
The biggest thing is to watch the fat, that is where the bad stuff is for mothers and nursing mother. No more than one meal a month. Trim off as much fat as possible throughout the preperation and cooking process. Parboiling will also float off some fat and firm the fish up some. I know people who do that with lake trout (very fatty fish). They cut it into smaller chunks, par boil it (it will shrink quite a bit and firm up) then french fry it. I've never boiled carp, but whitefish is a staple of "poor man's lobster". Boiled, some seasoning, lemon butter and wonder what the rest of the world is doing.
Don't forget the dark rye bread and cole slaw. Now about the piece of cherry pie?
Take care and say hi to all.
Have a great Christmas and watch for the "golden pig".
Is that pig any relation to the pig I saw in Boscobel that had three legs?
I asked the farmer about it and he said that one night his house caught on fire and the pig ran up and banged on the door so much that it woke them. The got out of the house and called the fire department and managed to save the house.
I then asked him again about the three legged pig. He said that was because you don't eat a valuable pig like that all at once. Taa daa"

2004-12-09T11:35:00.000+01:00

Turning that big ship around

Love the tone in this Guardian snip.

What's going to go next? I mean, after we have prejudice permanently enshrined in the US constitution. "Dig a hole and throw them in."

2004-12-07T10:20:00.000+01:00

There's something very odd about floating into the offices of some of the top executives and tech boys in this country and listening to them describe so openly what they do and how: the migration of servers from DHL London to Prague and the process of configuring them to the peculiarities of this country. This morning I spoke to one top manager hovering in a position between Telecom and Eurotel, as he described how he is working to break down old communist ways of doing things, and in the process firing people who have worked in the company since the early 1970s, and who haven't done anything since the 80s. He paints it as a clash of visions. They were protected by iron clad union contracts; however he managed to get them to sign a new contract that undercut their union contracts by **** million crowns. But they're not complaining, as they will get a juicy bonus and six months' paid holiday, car and phone. No wonder the company has to maintain its monopoly status. The old apparatus needs to be fed. I pity the poor buyer of this insular, shifty and ultra-protective company. Very often I have been in the offices of the competition of Eurotel and Telecom, listening to their position and how see the telecommunication scene here as it transforms into shark infested capitalist waters. Everyone wants a piece of the old monster.

2004-12-04T21:12:00.000+01:00

If you haven't heard, the Lizard cometh...

Arrival is predicted for the end of December. A little historical haiku seems appropriate from a trip we took to London a couple of years back. They open in the airport in Prague when we ordered overpriced food and stuffed as many cheap cigarettes as we could into Liz’s sax to sell to her friends in London.

December Haiku
Ten days with Liz in London
Taxi in the snow

Gouged in the airport
Producing bags from her cuffs
Smoking saxophone

Jeff orders coffee
Suspicious lumps of pink meat
In place of Tripe soup

Left side of the road
To Victoria Station
Liz writes a message

The tango is back
That reptile from the brothels
Uncorking the past

Bag o’ Nails and fire
Two pints of ale speak so loud
Outside the rain falls

Suburban heaven
Outsandwiched they never were
In history’s land

Wiz has orange hair
Disarming her enemies
On goat’s feet and charm

“Describing my mood
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic...”

etc.

2004-12-03T20:51:00.000+01:00

Mirror Man goes to the beach. This was years ago. Mirror Man now has a child named Robin.

2004-12-03T15:36:00.000+01:00

The dollar in 2001, as compared to the Czech Crown

Notice the way it soars over the 40 crown peak, catching a bare glimpse of the distant horizon.

The dollar in 2004, as compared to the Czech Crown

As I was saying to Theo, I may be one of the few poor Americans that has directly benefited from the Bush administration. Long live the King!

2004-12-02T13:47:00.000+01:00

How do you say, "Leave me alone!" in Kalmykian?

An article on Europe's only Buddhist nation.

The Czechs sometimes talk about being the small guy and pushed around by bigger and more aggressive neighbors. But after reading about the history of Kalmykia... let's just say that size is relative.

An interesting bit:

"Curiously, the spiritual head of the Kalmyks is a native of Philadelphia. Erdne Ombadykow was born to Kalmyk parents and sent to study Buddhism in India as a 7-year-old. There, the Dalai Lama recognized Ombadykow as the reincarnation of Telo Tulku Rinpoche, a Buddhist saint who could supposedly revive animals from the dead. Though his wife and child live in Erie, Colo., Ombadykow currently lives in Elista, where Kalmyks revere him as a holy figure and seek his blessing."

2004-11-25T19:08:00.000+01:00

Bad English?

This morning I was teaching a financial analyst from DHL, and I asked him if he'd done the homework I gave him the week before. "No I didn't," he said, and laughed, holding up his hands. "I didn't have time. My bad." I figure I'm going to be out of a job in a couple of years.

By the way, I never knew diapers were so expensive. 389 crowns for a pack of 80. But then, upon closer examination, what with all the pictures, perfumes, velcro and padding, they're a bargain and much more useful than, say, a pack of cigarettes.

Anybody else overjoyed by the current fall of the dollar? Anybody want to help me by lending me 300 000 crowns so I can pay off my school loans? Interest negotiable?

2004-11-19T21:47:00.000+01:00

The Doorbell and Newspaper Collectors

It’s not as if there’s nothing to write about, what with the war, elections, Green Bay Packers getting back into it, all the diapers and spitting up. I mean, the world is full of reasons to put things down. And reasons not to. Trust me.

Came home the other day and noticed that my Pakistani hat was hanging from the wires where the doorbell contraption used to abide so sweetly in the corner by the door. Babicka had apparently rung the bell one too many times during the day while Alice was hard at work feeding our little diaper butt, asking her important questions such as what time she was coming down for lunch and whether she had seen this coupon for free dried cat food. I was amazed that she’d had the patience to get the screwdriver and painstakingly disassemble the thing. I was mildly disappointed that she hadn’t kneecapped it from the wall with a baseball bat.

Today we discovered that by disconnecting it she had also cut off the juice to the neighbor’s bell. This was a reminder of our interconnectedness.

Especially in a building where people seem to slip in and out of each other’s flats with great ease. There is one man who lives above us who brings home whatever he can find in the city. But mostly newspapers. I heard stories of the truckloads that had to be removed from his apartment because the floors began to sag. Now it is so bad that the only place he can sleep is in the bathtub. The other rooms are stacked to the ceilings with yellowing paper. The landlady takes care of him, floating in to make sure he’s still alive and eating something. Otherwise he’s in the city, collecting.

This story reminds me of another apartment and crazed newspaper collector, this one was a Japanese art theorist who some were convinced was a man, though in fact I found her lovely to look at and be with. Once she invited me to her place for dinner. I understood it as a kind of date. I arrived early with wine and immediately realized that it was a dinner party. With the cooking still happening in the kitchen I set about examining her rooms. (I love going into people’s living space and seeing the various objects, books and whatever they have, how they have it set up, where the chairs are, what’s on the walls). In the room off the crowded and messy kitchen was a labyrinth of newspaper stacks leaning all the way to the ceiling, many of them turning yellow: Mlada fronta, Lidove noviny, Prague post, Japanese newspapers. I wandered among the stacks and found a mattress on the floor in the corner where she apparently slept. There were also stack of books, piled from floor to ceiling. None of it in any kind of order. Many languages. If there were shelves, then they were buried. Incredible books. Japanese comics. I wish I could remember what was there, but I had the feeling that the absolute clutter and fire hazard that was her room was also a treasure trove. The funny thing is, this girl, as I knew her, was a fairly sane and uncluttered type person. That night we ate sushi on the floor with chopsticks and watched a mystical street poet friend from the middle east somewhere perform his poetry while clucking on the floor leaping up to the window ledge and flapping his arms, cooing.

2004-10-02T13:24:00.000+02:00

If you want to sign up for the Web Design class, you have to do it soon. Class starts on Tuesday evening. No no. 2 pencil necessary.

2004-09-27T20:36:00.000+02:00

Some brief history before the interesting dispatch from Tibet below:

"In the late 1950's, during the lifetime of the Supreme Abbot, Chokyi Gyamtso, Trungpa XI, the Surmang Monasteries were destroyed by the advancing Chinese Armies. Trungpa escaped to India avoiding the holocaust that destroyed 90% of Tibet's monasteries, leaving most of the monks imprisoned or executed, including Trungpa's own teachers. What little was left in 1958 was completely sacked during the ten year 'Cultural Revolution' (1966-1976). During that period of time, remaining buildings were razed and other sites sacred to the Tibetans were plowed under. The accompanying commune system, and the ensuing famines, resulted in widespread hunting of wildlife. This hunting decimated almost all the wild ass, snow leopards, bear, etc."

Trungpa ended up escaping the country in 1959 and he lived for a short time in India before making it to England and then to the U.S. His fascinating escape can be read in his book Born in Tibet. Not just for Buddhists. Once in the U.S. he taught until his death in the late 80s, founding what is called Shambhala, which is now led by his son, the Sakyong, who now runs marathons in the U.S. to raise money to send back Surmang in an attempt to rebuild a monestary there.

The note below is what happened in the area where Trungpa was from in Tibet when his son, the Sakyong, stopped in for a visit.

"SHAMBHALA NEWS SERVICE SAKYONG PILGRIMAGE DISPATCH SIX, SURMANG GIVES THE CHABJE SAKYONG A TUMULTUOUS WELCOME.

Surmang turned out in full force this Sunday, 26 September 2004, to welcome Chabje Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Afer ten hours of travelling over extremely rough terrain (some stretches without roads), the Sakyong and his party reached the Surmang Valley at 3:30 (15:30 hr.) in the afternoon. Word of his arrival had spread through the valley. The first sign of the greeting that was awaiting the Sakyong were two truckloads of people who suddenly rushed toward his car as it made its way through the winding valley.Twenty-five minutes later the Sakyong's cavalcade rounded a curve on the road. In front was spread out the full panorama of the official "outer" greeting. The entire motorcade was circumambulated by several hundred people in procession, most dressed in traditional costumes and making offerings of all sorts. They then formed up into a procession of welcome that stretched for more than a mile along the winding road. It was led by a convoy of over one hundred monks and lay people on motorcycles festooned with flags, brightly colored flowers, and ribbons. After the motorcycles came four large detachments of a hundred horseriders on brightly caparisoned mountain steeds festooned with brilliant ribbons and bells. Following them were bright blue open-backed trucks filled with hundreds of local people waving white and yellow khatas. A police chief brought up the rear of the procession as it made its way to an "inner" reception.

In a large meadow filled with local people, the Sakyong and his entire party were offered milk tea, yogurt made from dri milk (the dri is the female of the yak), bread, sweet biscuits, and softdrinks. The ceremony was led by Karma Sengay Rinpoche, who spent years collecting the teachings that the Vidyadhara gave in the years before he escaped from Tibet. For the final two-kilometer (approximately one and a quarter miles) approach to the monastery's main shrine room, the horse riders formed a procession. They rode ten abreast behind the Sakyong who led them on a whitemare, flanked by officers of the Dorje Kasung in uniform.

To the sound of gyalings and drums, the Sakyong was greeted in front of the monastery by a procession of monastics -- the first two carrying Shambhala flags -- who led him to the main shrine room. The "secret" welcome took place in the main shrine room where the monastic community made a large mandala offering and presented khatas to the Chabje Sakyong (the term by which he is know: Chabje is the Tibetan honorific meaning "Holiness"). The lay community then streamed through, making offerings of welcome. En route to the shrine room, the party passed the site of the Dudtsi-tilshedra construction. The work was clearly ahead of schedule. The Chabje Sakyong is expected to inspect the site in the coming days. Dispatches from Surmang -- which is not on the Chinese electricity and phone grid -- are being sent for the next few days by satellite phone. (This message is from the Shambhala News Service.)

2004-09-26T15:28:00.000+02:00

Come all the way back to the beginning. Things seem the same, but there is the not-so-subtle shift. Here we are then, with our feet planted, a new red Hurricane pram-mobile, supped up with a flashy rain tarp and sweet suspension. You should see the way the sucker corners (actually it takes some effort to make the thing turn).

I wanted to tell so many stories, but find it difficult to do much in the way of online musings. In fact I could get sucked right into all the housework, gritty day-to-day necessities. Under the right circumstances (deep meditation practice, inherent wisdom, and newborn care) the more mundane aspects of life, like vacuuming, cooking, cleaning the toilet etc., take on their own richness and are complete. Nothing is really a pain in the ass, is it, if you get right down to it?

Again, everything seems the same, but it is not. There is a rootedness, a tie to where you are. And a simultaneous understanding and heartfelt forgiveness to the parents of the world, for all their efforts. That’s a relief.

Alice and I went for a long walk in the Krkonose Mountains one day before Isadora was born. We looked at the map later and counted about 6 kilometers, but it sure felt longer, especially with Alice’s belly swinging merrily from side to side. I could hear the sound of water sloshing, like lying the in the hull of a ship listening to the waves slap wood.

At first we stuck to the trail, but then a long row of raspberry bushes seduced us away and across a wide field filled with clover. At that point there was no going back. Despite my best efforts, I could not convince Alice to go back the way we had come. So we set off up the side of a grassy slope and into the forest. Our pace was slow and measured and soon the sun was making its way towards the other end of the sky. For a while we lay on the grass and watched the gliders circle overhead. The airport was next to our pension and served as a kind of reference point. But soon even they disappeared for the day as the sky deepened orange and all got much quieter.

Alice is no wizard at directions. She tries her best, but often it seems to me that she’s following a more intuitive path (or maybe purposely screwing us up?), one that answers a question different from the one that’s on the table, namely: How do we get back? I had the feeling that something else was at stake. So we trundled on into the wilderness, cutting across fields in search of an elusive road that we both suddenly imagined would take us back to the pension. We did find a road and took it, walking under the tunnel-like trees that lined it. The branches stood like soldiers along the narrow road, their branches interlocking overhead. It got much darker and the sound of sloshing seemed to echo with more intensity. I tried to look calm and control my thoughts. There was no one around anywhere. She’s practically ready to give birth. What, am I gonna have to bite through the cord. Alice on the other hand looked content and peaceful. After we discovered that the road was, in fact, taking us away from our destination, we laughed nervously at our silly mistake and had to set off across the fields once again. Now it was getting late and we were most certainly lost, though I think we both knew the general location of the pension, it was over a few hills with many properties, forests and natural barriers between. Alice wanted to continue cutting across the unknown, down a farmer’s field and go where we hadn’t gone yet. I was adamant that we go back to a place where we had been and knew and from where we could find our way. In the end, we just got more lost, before popping up in known territory. We made it back fine and said good-bye to where we had spent a week of peace. The moon at this point was nearly full. There was a raw kind of ripeness to this time.

When we left the next day, I accidentally took the room key with me. Once home, we went outside to hang the laundry, closing the door behind us. When we returned we realized that Alice had left the key in the opposite side of our super-high-security door. We had now moved beyond what is normally a controlled situation. All the carefully packed bags, papers and passports were left inside the room. Our birth plan, ideas about how things should and could go, was safely packed in the pockets on nice cotton paper. We were locked out in our slippers and T-shirts. Not even the fire department could get in, as Alice stood in the hallway rubbing her belly and answering their questions.

That night and early morning, as we were swept up by the forces of the unknown, playing each moment as it came along, I could only be grateful to this excellent woman who constantly shows me how to stop controlling and predicting, to let go for a moment and let life take care of itself. And it does, it’s quite a thing.

2004-09-04T20:25:00.000+02:00

Anybody in the room ever changed a diaper?

Another question. Are you ever amazed by what your friends do when you're not around? Check out this amazing story by Scott M. as he tracks down and busts the "piss-thrower" of his Tulip Cafe. His tenacity in the situation left me in awe.

2004-09-01T07:34:00.000+02:00

It's been a long haul, but yesterday Alice gave birth:

It's a girl and her name is Isadora Simone Buehler.

Many stories around the birth, but that's for later. Thanks to many of you for your help these past months. Time to do a little celebrating, no?

2004-07-26T22:49:00.000+02:00

The really great thing about the art scene here is its ability to completely surprise. Perhaps it’s the same everywhere, and I just have no experience of it. Yesterday’s art experience was unique, and I’m still carrying it around with. Martin called me on Friday, at Scott’s birthday party up on Pertin hill (but that’s another story), and said that “something” was happening outside of Kladno the next day, down in an abandoned coal mine, and that I should come. I said ok.

Kladno. Even the name sounds industrial. The city had a rough time in the nineties making the transition from a city that relied on state owned heavy industry to the new market economy. The mines were slowly shut down and the steel mills put out of business. The landscape is covered with the detritus of the period, hulking buildings and smokestacks. Since then, though, the city has made a kind of comeback, despite the major stumble when the mayor was arrested for funneling millions of illegal crowns into the local hockey team.

The exhibition took place in a coalmine outside of Kladno in a village called Vinarice. The mine was shut down in 1997 and is now open as an historical landmark. That said, not a thing has been done to preserve the mine or make it appear something other than what it is: a beautiful ruin, a disintegrating time capsule. A cluster of buildings that holds all the atmosphere and ethos of the 1950s, and which dragged its existence into the nineties, oblivious of the changes happening all around it.

I felt like a teenager again, when Kent, Jeff and I (maybe others?) all piled in the car and went out to the abandoned boys’ reformatory. It was a half-collapsed building out in the cornfields outside of Green Bay. We would poke through the rooms, getting a sense for how it must have been there: bars still on the windows, the broken and stained beds, all that plaster scattered across the floor, the metal mirrors. It was a place where life had happened once, a shuttered unreal kind of life, and was no more. But most certainly it was haunted.

This mine was haunted, too. The shaft had been concrete filled, but that didn’t stop it from being saturated by the miners’ presence. They were there in the sooty shirts and boots still hanging in space on hooks in the large central hall, in the giant rusty tools, hard hats, worn and broken stairs. The open showers with chunks of soap still in the baskets. And throughout the buildings, in various places, the artists had spun their vision within the space, an artistic spin to the darkness. The works were humble and easy to miss: A list of names on the wall of all the miners who had worked there, the day they started, the day they quit and the day they died. Often time there wasn’t a quitting day. I walked in one room and Jan Hisek had painted a large dark painting on canvas which lay on the floor, black faces like ripples after throwing a stone in water. An American artist using powdered soap and black coal powder made a floor landscape, piling the powders together and blending them in places, swirls, until it almost looked like a blurry image, but not quite. The smell of soap powder and coal filled the room. Over the work he’d hung a rusty pail filled with the soap slivers of the miners.

Martin got the sauna, an odd room with what looked like beds for injured miners. He’d pushed them up against one wall and stung an EU flag, floor to ceiling, from one wall to the other. It bisected the room. It was as dusty as the room, and the effect of the royal blue and yellow stars cutting through this room was odd, to say the least. The performance was very simple. (Here I have to guess a little because Ivan and Mariana and I were unaware that the performance had started and we were out front on the grass drinking beer.) He stepped out of a room wearing only a white doctor’s coat and green scrubs and took off his shoes and socks. He climbed a ladder and began the arduous work of cutting out the yellow stars using a razor blade. It took a long time. But the ripping and cutting had the crowd on edge. And it was one of those moments when you ask yourself: where the hell am I and what exactly am I seeing? When he’d completed the circle of stars he got off the ladder and put his shoes and sock on. As he did so I noticed blood was dripping from his hand to the floor. He kneeled down and, I believe, spontaneously wrote in the dusty floor with his blood: Rumunske variace. Romanian variation.

He explained to me, later, after he’d come back a little mentally from the strain of the performance, that the Romanian flag used to carry the Soviet symbols and after the revolution they cut them out and waved the flag in the streets. He said that he’d always dreamed of doing that himself but never had the chance. The flag had to be personal, not that of another nation. So he had to wait until the Czech Republic had become a EU nation before he could experience the pleasure. Of course, at that point he laughed like the madman he is.

Maybe the best performance was going on in the cafeteria. It was done up like from the 50s, with an old accordion band and two female singers in their sixties. Red and white checkered table clothes. Lard and onions spread on slices of dark bread. Old miners sitting and guzzling beer. Milos Forman’s The Fireman’s Ball. The odd sickening feeling of real and construct. This was a created atmosphere, but real at the same time: uncanny, Dave might say. But everybody was enjoying themselves. The old bones of the mine seemed untroubled by the play and noise.

Perhaps it was time to rip the place down and let the trees grow back.

2004-07-18T22:53:00.000+02:00

Porod Prep to Smith's background tunes

That's better, a screen and keyboard, an hour and "Shakespeare's Sister" coming fine through our new speakers. Saturday afternoon and Prague's first tropical day, a blessing, as Alice has been able to get around fine in the cool weather. Now she's been sent to bed for the remainder of the pregnancy, as there are fears that things are moving too fast for comfort. It's no surprise to either of us that our child would want to get this whole life thing going. What is there to wait for. Come ON, Let's GO.

"Hang the DJ."

The most recent facet of the adventure has been our prenatal classes with Ivana Konigsmarkova, an old battleaxe midwife and pestilent gadfly to all the maternity wards, as she uses practical common sense and supports a natural view of how the birthing experience should be. Obviously this grinds against the grain of the way things are typically done.

If all goes well, we are planning to go to the Center for Natural Birth in Bulovka hospital, a reputable center in a less than reputable hospital, but that's the risk. In order to get into this center, you first have to take the six-week class with Ivana. Our first ("Every Day is Like Sunday") class was mostly about sharing information and stories of the bad things that happen once you get caught up in the SYSTEM. Most of these stories came from the participants and not Ivana, who was fair and practical, speaking in a crisp no-nonsense voice.

She sat on the floor on a white pillow, looking like a cross between George Burns and Yoda, green skin and all. As with all of these kinds of meetings, introductions are obligatory and Alice eagerly volunteered to go first; so after her happy introduction I nervously explained that I was her husband, that I work for a school and that I was happy to be there. Ivana immediately cracked back with: "Are you going to be at the birth?" I said, "Yes," nodding my head. "And are you looking forward to it?" If I'd thought more about it ("There Is a Light That Never Goes Out") I may not have said so quickly: "Yes, of course."

As we went around the room, she asked each man in turn, and all of them waffled, hemmed and hawed. Shifting in their chairs. One girl tried to speak for and over her husband and Ivana came down like lightning from the clouds: "We all have equal rights here! Speak!" They shifted in their chairs, the power matrix of their relationship jolted. "Are you coming to the birth?!" Ummm..

I liked her very much. When you're taking on something as obstinate as "the way things are done here" you need to have a sense of fairness and truth and it must to adhered to at all times. She looked tired from it though, from her battle ("I'm So Sorry"). But we are grateful, as she has given us hope for the kind of birth we want. What little there is along this line here exists because of Ivana's efforts and others like her.

2004-07-15T19:00:00.000+02:00

Can you pass a third grade test?

Try this. The first time I played I failed and then my Czech wife showed me how to do it (with a smug smile on her face.)

2004-07-09T20:43:00.000+02:00

This interview with Ray Bradbury cracked me up. What about "Gone with the Windbags?" Would that be plagiarism?

2004-07-08T20:56:00.000+02:00

They say hurricane level winds will be rocking the country tonight. It's just started to rain, and there's that summer danger smell in the air...

Got my absentee ballot ready to go. Anybody want to guess who I'm not going to vote for?

Just surfing and the rains picking up now, gotta get the plants in...

2004-07-06T16:48:00.000+02:00

The city sleeps for the fourth day.

Everyone is out of town, in their cottages spending time with their kids, who finished school last week. And it's been a cool summer. That's why I was surprised this afternoon, riding the tram to put in a few hours at work, to hear a loud noise behind me in the nearly empty tram. I turned to see an enraged man in his late twenties, beefy and bald, bellowing down at a woman, presumably his partner, who was covering her head with her hands and arms. He screamed again and got off the tram, but before the door could close he jumped back on and slapped her, then pounded her on the head a few time, called her a fucking cunt and got off again still screaming at her and clenching his fists. All in the space of about three seconds.

Prague is not a violent city, as far as cities go, but I have seen a couple of nasty beatings here, and I know there are those out there who would kill if kill they could. I myself experienced a narrow escape from a group of drunk construction types who decided to work the kinks out of their muscles on me one afternoon as I was walking under the train bridge near Florence. I still have no idea why they jumped me, except that I probably looked like chump change, awkward as I was that first year in the city.

Bastards. Anyway, I walked up to the woman with Theo's dog Basket in my arms and asked her if she wanted me to call the police or to help her in any way. She just sobbed and looked out the window like she wanted to be left alone. So I did.

Now I'm sitting here wondering if I shouldn't have called the cops anyway. I figured the police wouldn't give a damn as long as she wasn't going to push it. What would you have done?

2004-07-05T20:56:00.000+02:00

There is an ironic end to the Boy Scout fire stories below.

When Ritchy and I were about sixteen, we were spending some time one summer up north on his grandpa's land, fishing for bass, walking in the woods and shooting at rabbits. One afternoon we were crossing a field in his grandpa's truck, grandpa behind the wheel, when we spotted a line of fire and smoke crossing into his pine plantation. We slid to a stop just as the fire reached the trees and all hell broke lose. We jumped out, and after a few seconds of being stunned we went into action, Ritchy going to the neighboring houses to see if anyone was home, to call the fire brigade and get water from the river. Grandpa suddenly disappeared and I was left alone on the edge of the field, transfixed, as the fire climbed through the trees. I became dimly aware of a helicopter hovering overhead yelling something at me like, “stay the hell away from the …” when whoosh! The flames reached the tops of the trees in a kind of explosion, leaping from one to the next. I held my hands over my head in panic, trying to block out the spectacle, the heat intense even at a distance, completely helpless and feeling like a coward for not being able to put out the fire. Ritchy came running back with a bucket of water, and tossed it uselessly into the grass along the road and ran back for another. That broke me out of it. I grabbed one of the shovels we’d brought for digging worms and headed into the forest, but up a ways from the fire, and began digging a trench. At least the movement and action made me feel as if I were doing something. The ice that had encased my body melted away. Soon trucks of men with shovels and saws pulled up, and we began to work for real, cutting trees and creating a trench so that the fire wouldn’t spread. It didn’t, just burned up what was left and then the firemen came and hosed down the whole area.

Ritchy and I were later honored by the Boy Scouts for our “heroic” action. I quote, “the boys, using skills they said they learned as Boy Scouts, threw dirt and sand on the fire and began digging trenches to divert the fire from the home and pines.”

Our attraction to fire seemed to go to many directions.

If anybody sees Ritch out there, give him a great big howdy from me.

See latest post about Ritch.

2004-07-05T17:09:00.000+02:00

Thinking about the Boy Scouts, and all those years, I went to their web site to check out what's happening in the kingdom of Lord Baden-Powell. And I stumbled upon this oddity. In their effort to be truly American, the Boy Scouts offer services and practices to nearly all major religions, something I had not been aware of all those years I sported khakis, sashes, and a pink tie-dyed neckerchief (just one more thing Jeff Bartel taught me).

What was suddenly clear to me, though, was the similarity between the Scout oath and law and the basic teachings of the Buddha as they are described on the Boy Scout web site:

The Goal of Buddhism

The goal of all Buddhists is enlightenment through understanding of the reasons and causes of suffering. Awareness of impermanence and of oneself and compassion toward others are basic and essential elements of Buddhism.

Buddhist Practices

The fundamental doctrine of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths, which are:

· Noble Truth of Suffering
· Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering
· Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
· Noble Truth of the Path that leads to the Cessation of Suffering

The last of the Four Noble Truths is also referred to as the Noble Eightfold Path, which is another basic foundation of Buddhism.

The Noble Eightfold Path is the practice of

· Right Views
· Right Thoughts
· Right Speech
· Right Conduct
· Right Livelihood
· Right Effort
· Right Mindfulness
· Right Meditation

Boy Scout mission statement: The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.

Scout Oath

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight
Scout Law:

A Scout is:
Trustworthy Obedient
Loyal Cheerful
Helpful Thrifty
Friendly Brave
Courteous Clean
Kind Reverent

The roots of my involvement with the Dharma?

2004-07-05T16:43:00.000+02:00

Check out this blog from London.

2004-06-22T20:49:00.000+02:00

Four hours at Bulovka hospital this morning sorting out pregnancy matters (all going well, despite a few detours). A couple of things struck me, almost at once. The hospitals seem (not all of them) to hang in midair at about 1983. The halls are dark, the furnishing inappropriate, the floors that plasticy shiny material used to cover bathroom floors in panelaks. The staff is harried and dark-eyed and cynical. One nurse stepped out the door and in the middle of the waiting room demanded to know from Alice in detail why we were there. And to everyone's embarrassment she got it. After the rage had bubbled down in me slightly, I began to see it through the nurse's eyes. They were under staffed and the building itself was depressing. Dim lights and gray crumbling tones and shades (and this was the maternity ward!). There were lots of women to see and she looked like a worn old blanket with two beady eyes as she lumbered in and out of the windowless door calling for patients. (In her defense she later apologized to Alice for what she's done.) Frankly, the talented doctors are heroes for sticking around and working for slave wages. I make more money than most, and we're dirt poor. We put dirt on our cereal and live in a wet dirtboard box.

I just don't get it. The health system is bankrupt. The school next to our building is still a prison grey and the inside is ratty, ragged and has those cages you see in the pictures of Guantanamo Bay. This is a small country that collects too many taxes and which treasures its family values. But when the Ministress of Education, Buskova, puts her kid in a private French school. Nary a shout is raised. Where is the outrage? Where are the French?

2004-06-21T23:09:00.000+02:00

Aneta, may you ever shine like a superstar in the Czech sky

I have to admit. I so longed to see you stomp Sarka, and to be finally free of this show. Does anyone else see a Friends rip-off in the works? I think it could work, with the last six finalists all yucking it up in a Vinohrady flat. (I should also admit here that I've only seen a couple of Friends episodes. Blame it on Europe.)

2004-06-19T10:45:00.000+02:00

2004-06-14T21:24:00.000+02:00

Redas Dirzys’ most recent exhibition, opening on April 31, 2004, on the eve of Czech entry to the European Union, never stood a chance of truly being noticed. After all, the venue was a town hall tower in the village of Bílina out on the fringes of the northern borderlands. It looked like a needle-thin lighthouse caught in the gurgling trench of two waves that ran full force into one another. Up on the surface, in distant cities, there were fireworks and dancing. While down below, the artist was patiently, with great focus and attention, driving his drill into the concrete floor of the tower, using patterned holes to create the face of Linas Ryškus, Lithuanian media mogul, and on the wall — Pol Pot, Lukashenko.... Who was going to stop him? Maybe a better question is: Why would anyone stop him? This was Redas Dirzys, the bearded and bearish artist from Lithuania, shimmering with irony, becoming a part of the system, his attempt to make contact with the world at large. We were out on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany, nowhere near the big shows in Prague, Berlin, Brussels, and Dirzys was on his knees every night for a week. One night, the artist drilled with so much enthusiasm, with such gusto and inspiration, that the tower itself picked up the tremble and began to vibrate uncontrollably around him. As the dust fell and filled the air, in the midst of the rattling drill and trembling stone, sometime around midnight, two local police officers suddenly kicked in the door, guns drawn, sweat pouring down their faces. Fearless upholders of the system. Friend or foe?
Nobody had informed the police, or so it seemed, that Dirzys was heading with a head full of steam straight into the heart of the system, truce flags waving, the very night that Europe took its next decided step towards becoming one. The police were never warned, apparently, that they had nothing to fear from a mad man with a drill out of the borders, on the brink of collapsing from fighting the Lithuanian breed of bureaucracy his whole life. The artist had turned in his pen and tongue for a drill and he was making faces on the floor, walls, smiling Lukashenkos and peacefully deceased Pol Pots. In effect, Dirzys was turning himself into the bridge by which Europe could struggle toward its ultimate Union: He was bringing home Europe’s native sons. The moment the door was kicked in, the artist raised his drill (in salutation? in self-defense? in a sudden surge of power?) and began to rev it. The uniformed men gaped down at the sight, too frightened to do anything, and he began to laugh like a lunatic, powering the drill in his hand up into the air like it was a pistol at an Iraqi wedding party.

2004-06-11T08:38:00.000+02:00

Did this make it into US papers?Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Art becomes the next suspect in America's 9/11 paranoia

2004-06-03T21:28:00.000+02:00

Got the end of a long stick in my hand, looks like a rain stick, even makes the sound of rain when I turn it upside down.

In the same way the sky opened up yesterday and has refused to heal. I ran through the rain clutching a wedding gift in my arms, trying to keep it under the umbrella, but to no avail. It was a large collage coved in glass on one of those clipboards. The glass was broken and I was setting out, however unwisely, to get it replaced. I stepped hurriedly out of the rain and into the warm shop. The girl behind the counter instantly recognized me, as I had been there the day before, getting a couple of artworks framed that had been lying around the flat forever. An old man was sitting forward in a chair in one corner of the room, still wearing his hat and coat, and he made comments about the weather as his wife?, a short proud-looking woman, stood at the window and repeated over and over, “This is horrible, horrible.”

I took my now wet and broken gift to the counter and the girl gave me a compassionate withering look, if such a thing exists, made that clucking sound with her tongue and took the glass off the picture to air it out. The woman at the window chirped up with “Well, you picked a good time to do that!” We all laughed, of course.

The day before I had appreciated the girl-behind-the-counter’s competence in dealing with the many seemingly trivial issues I’d brought up in trying to find the best way to get the pictures framed. And now, being here the second day, I could appreciate other aspect of her life as well. I could see that she had a touch of style about her; she was tall, looked elegant in black with her light-colored hair pulled back, setting off her cheeks, a simple direct expression on her face. At first she had come off as hard, as her sentences were clipped and to the point, almost severe, but then I saw that she was simply honest, more practical maybe, and warm. She took care of the pictures like they were her children.

She carefully replaced the glass, polished it with a clean cloth and set it to the board. She clipped it all in placed, put it in a box and wrapped it in a large sheet of cellophane. “There, now you won’t have to worry about it getting wet.” She handed it to me and I was grateful.

I raised my hand and said good-bye. All three smiled and called out in unison, “Good-bye!” as I trotted light back out into the rain.

2004-06-03T15:07:00.000+02:00

A little wisdom for your day, called "Autobiography in Five Chapters":

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there.
I fall in ... it's a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

--Portia Nelson

2004-06-02T11:04:00.000+02:00

Check out the link to Prague College. It's what I've been up to for the last few weeks. Please spread the word about the new college to your students and friends, if they're interested. The space is really nice, with a balcony that overlooks Reigrovy sady, a heavy steel entrance door, a spiral staircase, many rooms and designer lights and other points of interest.

The concept of the school is solid and I like where Doug is taking it. Stop by in a week or two and I'll give you a tour.

2004-06-01T08:33:00.000+02:00

Martin kicking off the revolution

2004-05-31T21:55:00.000+02:00

It's quite possible that, for the next ten years, I will not have to set foot inside the foreigner's police station. I stood in line for about two hours this morning, (for the last time?!) and walked out triumphantly with my trvale pobyt or long-term residency permit, or green card, or whatever. It all boils down to not having to worry about paperwork, legality, lines, surly women behind desks, adventures in crime and conspiracy, bribes, stamps, koleks, leaving the country, entering the country, insurance this, social that. What cracks me up, though, is the soppy irony in the voice of every Czech I tell: "well then, congratulations, and welcome!"

2004-05-30T22:11:00.000+02:00

I don’t really know about the rest of the Poetry Festival, but my and Martin’s reading went about as well as could be expected. Shakespeare’s has two main rooms, connected by a short hallway that’s done up in a funky mosaic and broken glass motif. The reading took place in the back room among all the books and their shelves. The room was packed. A camera on a tripod projected the scene onto one wall in the other room, which serves as the café and hangout part of the joint.

I wore a suit and orange sweater, which I thought would help me read loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, not something I’m good at. During the reading I felt as if I were shouting the lines, projecting them out the door and into the street, where cats leaned out the window straining to hear every twist and turn between adjective and adverb. However Alice informed me afterward that it sounded like I was whispering through a hole in my throat.

Of course Martin charmed the pants off the audience, as it were. First he dragged his camping backpack up in front of the audience and began pulling out books, one after another, whole packages of books saying, “I practically have a personal library.” Then he read in a soft, subdued voice that everyone could hear all the way to Poland. Poems from his treks through the Himalayas and the Middle East, poems about direct experiences from his life. He was humble and real. Then he took out his new revolutionary texts, the ones about how he lives on Marxova street, and about the color red, the color of revolution, and I thought to myself, now here it comes, now Martin’s going to work. I expected him to begin shouting and putting on a big show. But it didn’t happen like that. He just read the text in a very simple way:

"WHERE DOES THE WORD REVOLUTION COME FROM?

It is said that the word 'revolution' was first used in the region where I live. Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), the inventor of this word, while on a weekend trip out of Prague was suddenly struck by the glorious Libusin night sky and he whispered the word: REVOLUTION! He used this word not in the sense of making a definitive change, but in relation to the movements of stars, in the sense of an endlessly repeating chain of changes (M.Z.’s interpretation). He meant a kind of Re-Evolution, and this meaning is maybe still the most provocative one.
But because Johannes Kepler shortened his vowels somewhat, the Libusin people heard: 'Revolution' and just like that it stayed embedded in their/our hearts.

WHAT IS THE COLOUR OF REVOLUTION?

I cannot imagine an answer other than: Red

WHAT DOES THE WORD REVOLUTION MEAN TODAY?

It’s even more interesting when you realise that the word itself is used to make changes of a different, sometimes opposite character. Generally, it is used as a label for desirable change. When he was Czech president in exile in Great Britain during World War II, Dr. Edvard Benes used the word revolution for the possible final success of the home resistance movement. Sometimes even a step back to the previous political system — the change from socialism back to capitalism — is called a revolution (the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia, 1989, for example). What is the colour of the capitalist revolution, then?

I had personally better stay with the colour red and with the explicit dreams of the classical communist leaders. Revolution spreading over the world: WORLD REVOLUTION."

Then Martin pulled a black beret out of his backpack, a beret with an old communist star on it and began showing his flags, his new revolutionary flags. The European Union, all in red with just the twelve stars in a circle, other countries, all of the flags red and just the patterns there to tell you which country they come from. The US flag, all red.

At this point Martin had the floor, as they all sat wondering what was going to happen next. It was break time, but people wanted more, so we went into the front room and watched his videos: In one there is just a close-up of his face as he slowly paints his face red with lipstick. In another, he waves the red flags from a tree as his family implores him to stop. Martin asks the question: what happened to the revolution, what happened to challenging the systems we live under, who are those lonely artists shouting their lungs out, down there on the periphery and why is it that nobody hears what they have to say anymore. Martin called out, softly:

AS LONG AS THERE IS DISAPPOINTMENT WITH THE CURRENT SITUATION,
AS LONG AS THERE IS A DESIRE TO CHANGE SOMETHING,
THE IDEA OF REVOLUTION IS ALIVE!

2004-05-26T17:42:00.000+02:00

The New York Times > International > Middle East > From the Editors: The Times and Iraq

This is the kind of thing that I can't stop thinking about. You can see through this article how people are manipulated and opinions swayed. This is the science of creating a myth, the myth that there was ever any reason to go into Iraq like we did.

2004-05-23T21:17:00.000+02:00

We had the second ultrasound last week. The first clear image of the heart beating. That was a miracle. Then he/she opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue at us. I swear to god, at least that's what the doctor said. At first all I could see were rolling gray and black tones, like the sky this weekend. Suddenly the spine would come in clean, and I could see the ribs, haunting white fingers. It was frustrating, trying to make out the image as the doctor and Alice laughed and talked about all the body parts they were seeing. Me, nodding me head. Yeah, yeah, heh he. Black rolling clouds and little else. Near the end I finally got the hang of it. It was like one of those 3-D posters you have to stare at and when you finally get the trick, the image jumps out at you. In one sudden moment, through Alice's belly, I saw the child's face, and I could swear it was grinning. Or maybe that was me.

2004-05-17T22:16:00.000+02:00

This is what caught my eye. Anyway, no one even bothered to enter the contest, except Theo, who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a can of spam. This ol' boy tasted pretty good with a glass of Czech suds.

2004-05-17T22:05:00.000+02:00

One student wrote ... "I think everybody in this world have a little fantastic destiny. For ones it is always only dream ,for others it is sometime reality. There are many facts for examples, one of the big and important peaples in our planet was the greek millioner Aristoteles Onasis, who started his way to his destiny from a small wage job in telephone comunication servis. Or the important gay whoos mind we are using now, it is maker of Microsoft, Bill Gates , he started his dreams in his liitle old house somewere in USA., when he wrote Microsoft. I think that thise peaples and many others like them are very good examples for many young peaples that everything in world is imossible . I am one of them, i understood that we are only one time in this world and i must do everything what i can to leve this live whith all his interestings. And my little dream is maybe to be , minimum , manager in some hotel or casino."

2004-05-16T23:00:00.000+02:00

The New Yorker: Fact: "If you even give a hint that you're aware of a black program that you're not read into, you lose your clearances," the former official said. "Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are those who are undefended, the poor kids at the end of the food chain."

2004-05-16T21:29:00.000+02:00

Last night I used my mouse to move through dreams. Maybe I should take a break, and see some waves. A red crotchrocket slid and spun like a top in the street, and the trams rattled by unperturbed. The man's foot was bandaged before the ambulance arrived. Pickled cheese aches in the stomach for one hour after ingestion. A blimp hangs high over the city as jobs and people and faces wash along the streets with the yearly tide. Scott is in Africa, an article is forthcoming. The Four Seasons staff will not touch you if you fall and have a seizure in their lobby. It's in the manual. The communist party is sick and old and lives on in the dank closed off rooms of terrified old party members, who flash their idealism where there was none. Babicka has new sunglasses and looks fantastic in her trench coat, beret and sheer scarf. Summer swallows the spring chill and rain as we ride over the hill, sun tops down, hands waving at the screen, trying to see who's looking.

2004-05-15T19:18:00.000+02:00

You have three tries to guess what I'm looking at.

2004-05-14T12:00:00.000+02:00

Last night, as I was writing on the computer, I could hear Alice, who is now over five months' pregnant, splashing around in the tub, talking out loud in a singsong voice. A few minutes later she burst out of the bathroom, exclaiming, "I've just thought of a poem!"

Here it is:

Zeny v tehotenstvi
Rady do vody se nori
Do hlubokych jezer
Do bezednych mori
Do olejove vany
Kdyz se blizi vecer
Do smutku a sneni
Kdyz nevi, co se tvori.

A rough translation might be:

Women in pregnancy
Love to plunge into water
Into the deepest lakes
To the bottom of the sea
Into the oils of the bathtub
When evening draws near
Into sadness and dreams
When they don't know
What it is they are creating.

Of course the Czech is better because it rhymes, and all of that. Speaking of poetry, I'll be reading on Tuesday at Shakespeare and Sons for the Prague Poetry Festival with Martin Zet. For some reason I'm not nervous yet.

2004-05-13T08:57:00.000+02:00

This is my last day at Anglo-American College. My students are downstairs writing their final exam. So this is what all those teachers were doing when they left us alone in class. They were blogging and reading about Ukrainian giants on CNN. I think I'll peek in the and see if they're talking to each other.

2004-05-12T20:52:00.000+02:00

I'm addicted to going to the Hare Krishna restaurant in Zizkov. I'm even beginning to whisper "Hare Krishna!" under my breath as I walk in the door, before sounding out my confident "Dobry den!" The people dishing up the Sabji behind the bar keep switching. The first man was short, cocky and tattooed and once asked my friend Ondre what we would do if they ever ran out of the small portion (we never get anything else). He said we would stop coming.

Then there was the girl, about twenty years old, homely, with a crooked nose and straight intense expression. When she worked she wore a flowing patterned dress (a sari?) and paint smear on the forehead. Once I was coming out of the metro at Jiriho z podebrad and we saw each other and had one of those moments where you're not sure how, but you know that you know the other person.

She was dressed in jeans and a sweater and wore white running shoes. A backpack flopped on her back and music streamed from her CD walkman. We smiled and waved to each other.

Now when I walk in the door and bolt down the steps to check out which kolac is on the tray (thereby identifying the day of the week, otherwise I would never know) a mild-mannered middle-aged man with a shaved head and thin pony tail heaps the food on my plate, without me even telling him what I want. He speaks quietly and works hard, and today, as I watched him lug the silver buckets from the kitchen to the bar where he humbly served a line of hungry customers all pretending to be peaceful and patient, I had the urge to give the guy a huge Krishna hug. Then I did.

2004-05-10T20:47:00.000+02:00

Liz was in town for the weekend, and a couple of things she said struck me. Like the fact that Prague and this country is so different from where she lives now, London.

She lived in Prague for many years, so like others who have spent a great deal of time outside their native land, she has the ability to see the world through a different set of eyes, a different mind. The shock of seeing that new perspective again can stun you, and bring up a candy-colored assortment of feelings.

It's also on the level of the visual. Lately I have been hounded by sharp images from Wisconsin forests. They creep up as I teeter into sleep or ride a quiet tram. Sometimes the thought of thick green moss on a rock will stop me. Somehow it's different there than it is here. Or the curl of birch bark still on the tree. This country also has birches , but not to my liking. They are thin and sparse.

When I am home in the States, the mental smell of brown coal will almost double me over with the feeling and texture of this place, or the thought of the chestnut trees lining the streets and parks, blooming grandly in the spring, and dying from rampant disease in late summer.

2004-05-09T20:54:00.000+02:00

Publishing site meter...

2004-05-07T18:53:00.000+02:00

The New York Times reported today on the life and background of Private England, one of the prominent faces in the torture scenes coming out of Iraq. If you remember, she was the one holding the leash with an Iraqi prisoner on the end curled up on the floor. Of course her hometown is in a state of shock about how it could have happened. Her family friend is quoted in the newspaper as saying, "She is straight in your face, tells you how it is. That's why it shocked me. It's so not her. It's not in her nature to do something like that. There's not a malicious bone in her body."

Read this case in point:

"The prison was a living hell. Hidden behind their mirrored sunglasses, the guards asserted their total authority and power over the prisoners. The guards' permission was required to do virtually anything, including going to the toilet.

It wasn't long before the prisoners rebelled. The disturbance was quickly and efficiently put down by the guards. Cruelty now became the order of the day. The guards began to do roll calls in the middle of the night to disrupt the prisoners' sleep and to assert their power. Prisoners were forced to do push-ups, sometimes with a guard's foot pushing down on the prisoner’s back. The guards stretched routine 10-minute lineups into hour-long ordeals filled with verbal abuse. They refused to allow the prisoners bathroom privileges during the night and forced them to use containers in their cells.

For their past, the prisoners became increasingly passive, helpless and depressed. They hated the guards, but they were powerless against them. After a few days, one of the prisoners cracked emotionally. Soon afterward, another broke down. Before long, the smelly, demoralized prisoners became what the guards imagined them to be—objects of scorn and abuse.

This prison was not in some Central American country. It was not in Iraq, in the Gulag, or on Devil's Island. The prisoners were not hardened criminals, nor were the guards sadistic psychopaths. Instead, this prison was in the basement of the Psychology Building at Stanford University, and the guards and prisoners were intelligent well-adjusted college students who had been carefully screened beforehand. The warden of the Stanford County Prison was Philip G. Zimbardo, a prominent social psychologist, who watched in disbelief and horror as scenes of callous inhumanity unfolded before him.

What had begun as a 2-week simulation study of prison life had to be stopped after only 6 days. So powerful was the experience for both the prisoners and the guards that Zimbardo and his associates held several sessions with the participants to help them work through their emotional reactions, and they maintained contact with each student over the following years to ensure that the negative effects og the prison simulation did not persist.

What happened to trasform these normal college students into people they themselves would not have recoginized a week earlier? What goes on in a social setting that can transform the typical behavior of college peers so dramatically that they become dehumanized enemies? Before the disbelieving eyes of the researchers, a simulation in which two groups of people had been asked to take on temporary roles as prisoners and guards became a nightmarish social reality that called forth extreme and uncharacteristic behaviors. As one of the guards later recalled, "I was surprised at myself… I made them call each other names and clean out the toilets with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners cattle, and I kept thinking: 'I have to watch out for them in case they try something'"

Zimbardo recalls, "In the end, I called off the experiment not only because of the horror I saw out there in the yard, but because of the horror of realizing that I could have easily traded places with the most brutal guard or become the weakest prisoner, full of hatred at being so powerless that I could not eat, sleep, or go to the toilet without the permission of the authorities." (Psychology, Ronald E. Smith)

2004-05-03T20:59:00.000+02:00

Alice and I had two lunches in a row with her parents, a world record in our microcosm here. We live in an apartment one floor up and directly over her parents and her Babicka lives in an apartment across the hall from them. Periodically we have dinner in her Babicka’s apartment, in one of the crowded rooms in the back. The walls are covered with paintings, some family made, other from rummage sales and others by professional painters from Czech society, all collected in her life and carefully hung to fill every bit of space in every room.

I have discovered in my time with the family that they are mortally afraid of space. Any space whatsoever. This includes everything from collecting things to blocking out white walls to arguing to cover over pauses in the conversation. In general our lunches are drawn out affairs, not without humor and antics, full of good food and predictable in their unpredictability. This time it’s father who is offended by something Babicka said. This time the beagle Brixy is let in the room, as he gleefully pounces on table, food, feet, laps, ignoring all reproaches, happily bounding through the room in the glory of human company. This time Jeff is asked a question and he struggles to find his place in the language, fails, and is once again swept up in the pokes prods and gentle teases. Now that I think about it, it’s just like having dinner with any other family.

Last weekend we had two together, in celebration of dear Babicka’s 80th birthday. On Friday, the day before the series of lunches, I ran to the flower shop and bought her a potted budding plant with red blossoms. I have no idea what it’s called, but I was attracted to its tangled green parts, and fresh dignified look. It reminded me of Babicka. I knocked on her door and went in. She was so happy we sat down and chatted for some time, going into the past, about the Germans again, about the war and the suffering of that time. The communists and how she was fired because she wouldn’t join the party. She then tells me how she’s not going to be around for too long, and says it in such a matter-of-fact way. That she’s already lived through too much. My first reaction was to cover up the pain of it, the space, but she didn’t seem to need it. She pooh-poohed my look of distress, smiled and forced me to eat more cake.

The next day she made two glorious golden chickens, which father complained were too dry.

2004-05-02T19:54:00.000+02:00

My brother Denny stomping in the newspapers.

2004-05-01T20:59:00.000+02:00

So we made it. The Czech Republic is officially a part of the EU, whatever that means, and it's still not clear to me, despite some effort in the past few months to get to know the history, terms, people involved and their opinions.

Yesterday Vladan and I took a bus to a small town on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany. Bilina. It lies in a valley among the many tall stone outcrops that jut out of the earth there, between the wrecked forests and polluted streams of the past. The area shows signs of new life these days.

We took a bus there to see an exhibition by Redas Dirzys, friend and collaborator of Martin Zet. Meanwhile in Prague, people were filling the streets, concerts on the islands, fireworks being set up, an atmosphere of anticipation.

There were a handful of people at the show, which took place in the center of the town, in a tall white clock tower that looked like a lighthouse. His images of dictators Pol Pot and Lukashenko had been carefully clipped from newspapers, and blown up to wall size before the artist drilled all the white spots. The results were huge black and white newspaper-type images of these monstrous people, circling the metal staircase to the top of the tower. It was a powerful show.

The title of the exhibition "Let's be part of the system!" says a lot about the ambiguous feelings of vulnerability, power and arrogance that haunt the various systems that have plagued the world and created so much suffering. The word that keeps cropping up in relation to the European Union is fear. Fear of what? Klaus says it's the fear of dissolving like a sugar cube in water. This seems paranoid to me. On the other hand, I do understand the fear, as well as the courage that it takes to give up a piece of your identity, for what?

We ended up taking the wrong train back to Prague and met up with Scott and Theo. We carried a bucket of ice and two bottles of champagne to the bank of the river and watched the fireworks over Letna. A spectacular show, that they say may even have knocked the birds out of their springtime nests.

2004-04-29T19:42:00.000+02:00

Just playing along

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 23.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

The nearest book at hand was a book of Tarot in Czech, and it reads:

Duveruj moudrosti sveho srdce. My translation would be: Trust the wisdom of your heart.

2004-04-29T13:09:00.000+02:00

This is a thoughtful article on the Czech entry into the EU, and pretty much sums up the skepticism that some, but not all, Czechs feel. The Austrian-Hungarian empire passed, the communist era passed. This too will pass.

2004-04-23T20:13:00.000+02:00

So this is one of our new jobs:

There is already a palatable tension in the air these days as the country prepares to enter the EU, the magic day of entry being May 1st. Somehow I imagine that everything will suddenly look different, newer with less dog shit in the streets, noisier and people won't have time to drink a beer after work (not that people have much time now). But in our apartment every morning from 6:15 am to about 8:30 am the tension is like a cinderblock in your lap.

The radio turns itself on at 6:10 and it's my job to flip on the computer and get all the software running. MSN messenger, team speak, headphones and mic, word. If all goes well a screen will show the other members of the team that will be working that morning. By this time Alice will have woken up and put on her robe. She yawns once or twice and takes over for me. I head to the kitchen to make tea and toast or whatever we have.

At 6:35 a large document is downloaded off of the Prague monitor web site. The document contains anywhere between 150 and 300 articles on their way to being published in the major dailies. They haven't even hit the streets yet. Alice's job is to sort through this mountain of information and chose the article that are important and relevant to European Union policy. After sorting she begins to send out the chosen ones via MSN to the translating team (Two Czech, one American and one New Zealander, and maybe me next week), each working separately on their own computers in their own darkened rooms with their own snoring partners. They read the articles and write a short summary of what it's about and put the EU spin on it and send it to an editor (Theo or Katie) who fix the language and put it all together in a word document. This gets sent to bureaucratic headquarters in Brussels, for Lord-knows-who to read.

The document must be there by 8:00 am or all is lost! The past week we have been doing this and the best score so far is 8:20, which means that we have 5 more tries to get it right, or the deal is sunk. By the way this is work that we are doing with a friend, and it's his first big contract for his business, so failure is not an option. So the race to the EU has suddenly become a very real thing, a morning ritual, and only May 1st will decide if the ritual will become habitual.

2004-04-23T20:03:00.000+02:00

Friday night. Spring storm is brewing, and it is pleasant to sit inside, figure this blog thing out and listen to it...

2004-04-23T19:19:00.000+02:00

You never know what's going to hit you when you walk out the door in the morning, and these days this seems especially true.

On a personal level every phone call in recent days has meant a kind of upheaval, new job opportunities, lost chances and new toys (our friends have just offered to help buy a computer for me and Alice, one that can burn CDs, play movies and all the rest.) I experienced the strangely pleasant feeling of quitting my job of four years on Sunday, sitting in a park with Ivan and Jiri, telling them that I can no longer do the magazine. I'm burnt out on it, and have to get away from words for a while. They were beginning to weigh me down, accumulate on me like mold and dull my mind. It went well and I walked immediately into a new job, one I can't talk about at present... it's top secret .

A woman who works in our office, one I hadn't seen for some time, came in today and said that she has a serious health problem. She was flushed, and there was a look of fear there. It was too late to remove the tumor and the chemo starts next week. Sometimes it's too much, the ups and downs, and trying to find a center point from which you can be a help to people is nearly impossible.

2004-04-22T21:01:00.000+02:00

Hello all

So this is my latest bid to keep in touch with loved ones on the other side of the ocean. In recent years I have not been very good about writing, phoning, coming home and in general staying in contact with you. This is not because I don't like you. It seems to be a process of some kind. A time flick. Sometimes it seems like I'll go to bed on Monday and wake up in 2020, far more bald and stooped. My hope is that I will keep this blog updated and entertaining for you to come to any time and read about the various goings-on in my and Alice's life, Prague, the Czech Republic in general. I may also use the space to try and expand a bit as a writer, so be patient with me, and feel free to give me feedback.