Fete de Bois

Michael had his big day - the Fete de Bois - a 60 year tradition in which all kindergarten classes (two years) of Lausanne march in a parade from the upper Montbenon park down to Milan Park, complete with marching bands, a clown, and proud parents of the city looking on.
Each class adopted a theme and costume, then processed in alphabetical order by school.

Michael's school - Montriond - adopted a Chinese theme, marking the Beijing Olympics. We wondered what was going on when Michael told us sometime ago, "I get to wear a long braid and a dragon."

Carolyn got some ideas for Halloween costumes.

Through the tunnel by the train station.

When Michael's class passed his school, dozens of older children began shouting, "MONTRIOND! MONTRIOND!" Then they entered Milan Park, which had been set up with free carnival rides and food for a private party of 5 & 6 yr olds until evening.

Got outfitted in the classroom first.

Michael's cahiers (notebook). These are "home jobs" - you buy a simple bound notebook and cover it.

Entries from Michael's cahier over the year:
Entry #1: self-portrait
Christmas
Michael's hook was conveniently next to the door.

Although he sort of dug his heels in French class, we are proud of how he threw himself in a foreign setting all year. I did the same when moving from a Japanese-speaking home to kindergarten in Gardena, CA. Last year, when asked how he knew what to do, he replied, "I just look around and see what everyone else is doing and I do the same thing." Early formation of what sociologists call, a "high context culture."

Not a bad skill to have, but, no more of that.

BRAVO!

England

England was unique in our travels, in that visiting there involved a family tie (ie duty, obligation, but also unmerited acceptance), as Carolyn's uncle (Don) had married an Englishwoman (Leslie), raising a family of 3 in Exeter - a craggy, spectacular landscape near the high moorlands of Devon. The eldest, Naddie, was busy with legal work in Cambridge, but Max & Jake were home.

We flew EasyJet - the super-convenient, air carrier out of Geneva, leaving an unusually wet June behind. You pay a basic fare, then add on menu items: extra bag, speedy boarding, meal, etc. Michael relishes being served refreshments on planes (poor kid was born in the wrong era), and eats with gusto food he normally wouldn't. He declined our breakfast at home that morning, later saying, "I was waiting for the airplane." At take-off and landing, he grabs your hand and announces, "Hold hands!" Our little ritual on the tarmac.
Max & Michael, Jake & Jack in front of Exeter Cathedral, which survived the bombings of WWII (the city's architectural charm was targeted by the Germans). Having grown-up far removed from relatives in Japan, I felt a certain kinship with these adult children who had also lived their lives apart from the rest of the Soule family, save one member: Carolyn (who had visited before).

The English countryside was a lush, often hedged, landscape dotted with manor homes, thatched rooftops, and pubs - where the sides of a narrow two-lane road disappeared into field grass.

Aunt Leslie guided us towards neolithic rock formations (eg Stonehenge) in the high moorlands called Dartmoor,
where wild sheep and ponies ran, oblivious to roads, cars, and us.

Back home, Jack found a guitar and pic. Both boys will be registered for Suzuki (piano and violin) in the fall.

I was never so glad to turn in a rental car. I knew I'd be driving on the left, but hadn't foreseen a reversed steering column and using a stick shift with my LEFT hand. Multiple scrapes. UGH. Then we boarded a train to Paddington Station, London, for 4 days, traversing the children's book settings of Duffy Driver and Thomas the Tank Engine.

LONDON

After the double-deck bus tour... (photo by Michael)
we saw The Sound of Music at the Palladium; it was great for us to see Michael entranced by theater, hanging on every word and note. Both Carolyn's family and my parents really loved American musicals. I always thought it a bizarre form of entertainment, but it did give me a momentary chill being where Judy Garland gave her acclaimed performances.

Pouring over EVERY detail of the program.

The London Eye is a ferris wheel with large pods with half-hour revolutions.

from the Eye

The London Tube (subway) was entertaining and efficient, as we hunted down play equipment for the boys at Hyde Park (site of the Rollling Stones' memorial concert for member Brian Jones, btw).

Men on the whole seemed better dressed - albeit conservatively - than women and I confirm all reports of mediocre British food. It would be a real culinary disaster if not for the more modestly priced self-serve chains that offer fresh salads and sandwiches and drinks for people on the go. There just didn't seem to exist a cultural standard for a great $10-15 street meal. Brits seem to really love their sandwiches; virtually anything ends up between two slices of crustless bread. We did find one pub licensed to serve minors, enjoying our final dinner in their upstairs dining room.

London had all the advantages of a large urban center - great bookstores, toystores, and some of the grand, old retail institutions, like Liberty's, which was running its annual Arts & Crafts Exhibition with Japanese prints. Liberty's was a key importer of textiles and carpets from the Oriental colonies (paisley came from India), and continues to display an exotic array of beautiful fabric and goods in an open-atrium, Tudor structure.
The Movieum was a film exhibition complex, highlighting UK productions (included Star Wars).

And a Jedi took us in a corridor for a photoshoot.

A cheap Chinese buffet hit the spot, and Jack demonstrated his technique.
A swanky Japanese restaurant named after the modernist film master, Ozu, was part of the complex.
Michael made use of the digital camera we gave him for Christmas last year; he tends to do catalog and inventory:

We were inspired by the city and Pepperdine has a program there! As you may be aware, England is experiencing its own cultural crisis, as the rising Muslim population coincides with the existing population's secularism and low birthrate, leading to talk show discussions of "What do you think Britishness is?" As for touring, you can choose to explore historic, Christian London, colonial London, theater London, literary London, etc.

As for souvenirs, after 4 days, we came home with:

Random post

Not sure anything dates you as much as colloquial phrases (or eyeglasses), but after living with 50+ young adults, I have adopted the word, "random." I assume this made its way onto the tongue via the play function on CD players and IPODS. Anyway, before catching an EasyJet flight this pm to visit Carolyn's relatives in Exeter England, I submit my first random post.
We hopped on a bus last Wednesday, and I took Michael and Jack into the St Francois cathedral while Carolyn went to the post office. An organist was practicing, and we just hung out for awhile.
The cathedral pews had this clever hinged-back system, allowing you to swing the back support 180 degrees to reverse your seating position.
These chocolate covered rice cakes have replaced the Farmer granola bar as the treat of choice among Michael's kindergardeners. They're quite good!
I took this B&W somehow off my cellphone. Kinda blurry, but I'm gonna try to hang on to my Swiss phone - they have all kinds of functions our US models don't. BTW, our children are typically the loudest ones in ANY setting.

We imagine this is due to the fact that most Swiss live in apartments with strict noise ordinances, but, in general, there aren't the "just go nuts" zones here, whether indoors or out. As a result, parents don't seem to "go nuts" either. Similarly, you NEVER hear a car go by blaring hip hop or anything else.

Jack's orphanage

Update on Deyang Social Welfare Institute - about 90 km from the epicenter. I think I mentioned that the building below (taken during our trip for Jack) is unsafe now but standing.
All the children are safely housed in tents.

Melody (a volunteer worker) and Madame Wu, director of the orphanage, displaying the supplies that have been pouring in from China and individuals in the US.
I believe Jack was in one of these cribs, although occupancy has increased!
Roads were destroyed, so the volunteers took treacherous, alternative routes in interest of time.

"The Wall"

A photograph of every child adopted out of Deyang. Jack is middle row, 3rd from right.

One upshot is that 10,000 Chinese families have come forward to adopt the newly orphaned in Deyang and Wenchuan. All is on hold now, as the effort to reunite surviving children with family continues.

Visuality and the Image

I've been thinking a lot these days about images and visual content. Projected images on a screen are now a common feature of church worship, as is PowerPoint; universities are turning depts of art history into visual studies; memory scrapbooking is big business; and then there's my own blogging.

Part of philosopher Derrida's early project was analyzing the visual dimension of language - it wasn't just an instrumental carrier of information - tending in the process to idealize Chinese script as non-phonetic, possessing the quality of an image: ie do you read, voice, or view kanji?


In contrast, part of Surrealist painter Miro's work focused upon the linguistic/poetic dimension of painting. 'I try to apply colours like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.':

And part of Michael's learning sees letters and numbers like drawings; it's all pictures to him, at this point.


If we live in the age of the image, not the word - a staple of over 40 years of cultural criticism - how does this development impact Christianity, often considered a "religion of the book"?

A sympathetic read of multi-media shows in church argues that this is really a return (long-awaited) of art over and against a rationalistic faith too indebted to the Enlightenment and, thus, modernity; in some ways, buying into Feuerbach's and Marx's 19th c. arguments - marked by the invention of the camera and the grand old moviehouses- that religion (and ideology) was a projection.

I wasn't around before Immanuel Kant, but somehow the projected images and the visible copyright logo of "praise" anthems sung to electric guitars doesn't feel like much of a return to me. SMS and email do not strike me a return to the word either (although I have a friend who thinks about a "theology of fonts," it's definitely a return to the keypad).

My understanding of modernity is that it is not a removed phenomenon that can be gone over with a highlighter, but comprehensive (including the person doing the highlighting), so that EVERYTHING (social institutions, personal experience, human identity, as well as, critiques of modernity) - are all marked - differently, perhaps, but marked - like siblings exhibiting different traits of the same parents. So the cold rationalist, as well as the emotional romantic, gets it right; part way, at least.

So what is the current obsession with images "getting"? Not sure, but I'm persuaded that, as one critic suggests, "Images...are the new opium of the people." Religious illumination has been replaced by media.

I'm talking to myself here. I have never known life to be so meaningful except when watching a movie - the coherence, the exhilarating experience of totality, a world that can be known and mastered, a sense of closure.

*****

In times past, the natural world was called the "Book of God's Works," in contrast to the "Book of God's Word." What we now call "nature" signified and "spoke" meaning; possessing, in that broader sense, language:

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." Psalm 19

So, "tree" - whether a word on a page or represented image or actual cedar - are all dialects of a common and profoundly metaphysical language. When the Gospel of John begins, "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God...", he wasn't talking about learning your a, b, c's. (Pope Benedict XVI's claim that "God is Logos - Meaning, Reason, Word.." is an interesting statement at this juncture).

The issue isn't between image versus text, but images and words (and trees) that "speak" versus ones that don't, which is, strictly speaking, the definition of an idol:

What profit is the idol when its maker has carved it,
Or an image, a teacher of falsehood?
For its maker trusts in his own handiwork
When he fashions speechless idols. Habakkuk 2: 18-19

The image power of contemporary media seems tied to rootlessness, lack of context; the ability to transport without sending, to intensify experience without the body. Certain religious illumination uses images as "speech"- they become part of the mind, consciousness, and (hopefully), the will. The logic of sacrament.

Swiss Naturalization

Good news! Christian Blocher's (Swiss People's Party) referendum - to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling that made secret ballots and denial of appeals for foreigners illegal (in naturalization cases) - was soundly defeated by 64% vote over the weekend.

The SPP's poster to curb naturalization:

The Swiss Green Party's countered with a poster urging a "NON" vote, conjuring the infamous black sheep poster that, without subtlety, wanted to keep Switzerland as a "white sheep" nation.