The Move

Next time: 24 footer needed.

This move was surprisingly hard; then I realized: we're out of practice! We had lived in one place not for one, but over 3 years! Our neighbors threw us a party the day before leaving, echoing gatherings of our "new" and old church groups. With Beacon Hill & GRC, we felt more attached than ever; resettling in CH* - at least for me - feels different this time. Not singing "I Left My Heart in Camarillo" yet though.

The two out-of-country spots we know best - Japan & CH - resemble each other in striking ways, most painfully now in terms of currency exchange, as the world's investors look to the Swiss Franc and Yen for safety, given the dollar collapse.
Really pricey now: $1 = .75 centimes. OUCH! CH is 20% higher living costs than Europe anyway, and a Big Mac in Zurich priced in at over $17.00 last week.

We are under the Pepperdine safety net for half of the main meals - huddling close like US soldiers in Japan, staying on base where their dollars hold sway - but make our way out to explore.
These terraced vineyards along the lake take my breathe away every time; deemd a UNESCO World Heritage Site 4 years ago. Hiking trails run parallel and shortcut paths cut across to other levels.
Refilling water bottles is a fun sport; village fountains supplied by tasty mountain run-off.

Michael & Jack experience much nostalgia as they reacquaint with familiar see-saws, climbing trees, All Saints Church. Since we moved often and travel besides, they probably make mental adjustments more than most: ie this slide looks smaller, this railing shorter. At some point last year to his and my sadness, Michael became too heavy to ride on my shoulders. The boys have their lives ahead of them, but even at 8 & 6, sense time passing. Nothing registers life's melancholy quite like the steady aging of children.

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New things. We visited the wonderful Food Museum (Alimentarium) in Vevey, sponsored by Nestles, the world's largest food company. History and geography of cuisine and a killer kitchen of a carefully prepared, set menu (4 course meal), this place was fascinating.

Nutrition research, 200 year old dissertations. The museum is in the old Nestle mansion (the company owns Vevey) on the lake front.

A fitness/calorie burning center complete with a somewhat more complex nutrition pyramid; Jack mostly favoring the middle carb/fat levels! Swiss are really health conscious now - nutrition labels, city initiatives to walk more, health clubs - though a far cry from USA's multi-billion dollar diet & obesity business.

Outdoor gardens supply the museum restaurant and Michael found his favorite - pumpkins - hanging on an arbor!

Although the quality of restaurant meals is uniformly good, the exchange rate, twenty years of the USA's food revolution, and our credit-based, eat-out-all-the-time lifestyle means you can generally find better cheap to middle-fare meals in the States. Swiss noontime assiettes (plate-of-the-day) seem to run $23; stand vendor panini, $12 market sandwiches off a shelf, $7. More than once, I've thought, staring at my plate: "I paid $30 for this?"

Then again, hard to compare since lunches are seated, multi-course affairs; like having nice business lunches everyday. But when I'm back home looking for a lunch, generally don't pull into a Cheesecake Factory?

The museum's final room featured the place of food in religion, devoting key attention to the Church's feast days...

and the last supper, reminding me of Christopher Page's history highlighting the church keenly known as a feasting & singing community, borne out in Pastor David's series on the Psalms, where even creation praises the Maker:

Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together.
(Psalm 96:12)

Close-up of the beautiful vestment piece.
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The lake sparkles in the summer light, crisscrossed by Alpine ridges - a glass-like stage with dramatic backdrop.

We rented a paddleboat (with slide) of our own, as one of the great turn-of-the-century steampowered paddleboats whizzed by.

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BTW, this has been the summer of lost teeth for Jack!

Apparently, the Swiss tooth fairy settles at 5 francs.

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Another morning we explored Chateau Chillon, one of the most beautiful, smaller castles of Europe.

Castles are complete with dungeons and points of fascination, such as the lord's toilet! A real step-up apparently.
I was struck by the mosaic patterns in the castle chapel and receiving rooms, compared to the rest of the interior. Certainly cathedrals held a beauty that was a gift to the community - an aesthetic that was social, not private. God & man co-mingled in the most beautiful spaces in town, whereas modern home-dwellers create private bastions of beauty. Imagine if the most exquisite aesthetic experience of the week, including awe-inspiring music, was a church. This social weight underscored by geographic proximity - churches anchored a town - has been poorly supplanted by the modern museum which, however vital, essentially curates, ie has overseen only one purview of a church: attending the past, a mausoleum of culture.

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We made it to Vevey' outdoor market last Saturday, thoroughly enjoying the stalls; M & J are more independent - no stroller! no diapers! - enjoying the goods, while missing kettle korn.While we enjoyed the bottomless wine sampling! You buy a glass, then drink away.

There were new vendors, such as this block print outfit doing letter prints entirely by hand! Stunning.One section had sellers decked out in folk costume

Believers were out there, too: "He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever" at the top. I admired them, as well as knowing that this form of witness was absolutely odd in Europe, even more so than in the States. But they're dedicated.

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Picked-up our disposable grill, lakeside ritual, with Michael doing most of the grilling. Veal (wrapped in bacon), pork, North African merguez (lamb) sausages - very delicious.

Discovered Lausanne's outdoor pool and diving boards. Our thrillseeker did backflips off the 5 meter.

After church swim in the park fountain, with Michael's old school in back. Carolyn met with school officials, but need another to have M & J assessed before placement; we are hoping for the same school with same friends.

Thank you for reading this long entry!

*Confoederatio Helvetica (ancient Latin name of Switzerland), thus abbreviation CH.

Culture of Death

This may seem like an odd way to begin blogging from Switzerland, but we were introduced to this dynamic BBC program - MI5 in the States - during our last tour of duty. Refreshingly played by more classically trained actors emphasizing the physicality of acting; emotion tied to formal muscle movement, not the premise of romantic expressivity a la Hollywood (playing a taxi driver means interning at Yellow Cab, then giving voice to an authentic spirit). Not as severely overpayed as in the USA, these faces are seen in numerous shows & ads, while countering Hollywood tropes; ie morally flawed, complex heroes actually die.
Britain's answer to 24, except the European stage plays off of post-Cold War politics and hypocrisy in a single-superpower world; individual and national ambitions contradict and reinforce each other in complex ways.
Not all the actors are hunks and the more literate dialogues - spiced with Shakespeare, Milton, ancient war histories - also feature "normal" life, ie you'll find the male protagonist (Adam) folding a paper towel into a coffee filter while the average-looking intelligence queen (Ruth) attends her weekly chorale.

My personal favorite episode featured the fallen MI5 officer with paranoid delusions (below) staging a suicide, holding fellow officers captive. Memorable lines, touching upon fate:

We are what happened
to us.

and secular culture's lack of heroism:

We used to have a culture of death,
when England was Christian.

We stumbled onto Spooks years ago, finally viewing all episodes in order last year, and discovered a British expat subculture; a community dating back to the 1800s, lining the cities of Lake Geneva with tearooms, Anglican churches, bookstores, and upper-class aesthetes having mountaintop epiphanies en route to chasing sun-drenched landscapes in Italy. This fall's season 10 may mean the end of the principal, Harry!

Ritual

The initial posting weeks ago about MI5 (btw, season 10 has begun!) and the formal nature of British acting inspired me to write about Bunraku, one of Japan's 3 classical theater forms, still active. Bunraku is puppet theater with orchestra and chanters who vocalize all roles stage right, while puppeteers manipulate the 3/4 lifesize dolls.
Striking are the high emotions these puppets create, as visceral experience links to language - script is authoritative - and text animates wooden figures. What you see is what you get, as the chanter sings all parts and visible puppet masters work the dolls; a theater parallel to interiors that make pipes and ductwork part of the design.

By contrast, Bunraku accepts & visualizes brokenness, building a transparent theatre where the parts - actor, story, prop, stage, musicians, viewer - are woven into a multifaceted, yet textual, unity.

The conventions of mainstream Hollywood film being humanistic, musical and verbal cues advance plots & characters in an unfolding, linear arc revealed, requiring passivity, distance, & fragmentation in the viewer whose main role is to identify, emote, go along.

"The function of..Western theatre of the last few centuries has been..to show what is said to be secret ("feelings,""situations,""conflicts"), while hiding the very artifice of the show (stage effects, painting, powder, light sources)...The Western spectacle is anthropomorphic...the Western actor...the voice..the look..the figure are eroticized...like so many fetishes.

Bunraku exposes the sources of theatre in their emptiness. What..replaces [theater] is the action necessary to the production of the spectacle. Work substitutes for interiority...
Emotion no longer inundates, no longer submerges, it becomes reading material."

Roland Barthes, "On Bunraku"

***

Liturgical worship operates similarly; eg All Saints follows a prayer book (essentially, an updated script based upon the Book of Common Prayer),

where the minister reads plain type, the congregation responds the bold:

The Lord is here.

His Spirit is with us.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks
to the Lord our God.

It is right to give thanks and praise.

***

We break this bread
to share in the body of Christ.

Though we are many, we are one body,
because we all share in one bread.

Perhaps we are the puppets, chanters, & stage hands, bringing to life the Church Invisible, meeting Christ at the table -

"..if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you." Romans 8:11

- a Eucharistic Bunraku, if you will.

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Western theater largely stems from the Mass, but I had to go to Japan to retrieve a premodern precedent.

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FYI, Barthes was a pioneer semiotician & highly influential literary critic. Although there is a long history of Euro-American intellectuals, usually French, who completely misread Asia - brilliant at home, utterly stupid abroad - Barthes, was generally reliable. Japan has been an aesthetic obsession dating to the 1870s, when Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, Eisenstein, Frank L.Wright, Pound, etc interpreted Japanese culture as an artistic antidote to Western rationalism, propelling its inventive arts & design practices into global currency most recently explored by the anime and the video gaming community.

(Image, Music, Text is a classic - the chapter where he analyzes an Italian spaghetti ad, pioneer in its day.)

Whidbey #7

This was our 7th trip to Whidbey - the same unassuming cottage on the Keystone Spit near a ferry dock. While Michael in a crib & high chair on the Puget Sound, Jack was 4 or 5 months old in Deyang City, Sichuan.

Now look at 'em. Giles Bond behind.

Our love for this place was affirmed again, luring Tacoma locals and Camarillo visitors, as well. Gideon and Jack shared a table for breakfast cereal.

The children were old enough to really have fun at Fort Casey, the abandoned garrison nearby, matching our Piet Prins' "Scout" series, wartime stories of the Dutch resistance.
The sound of freedom. Hornet F-18s, top of the American fleet, practiced their deafening lift-off/landing exercises.

There were discoveries this time, like this story about Hokusai,

a prolific Japanese woodblock artist featured at the Coupeville library. A crazed genius by myth, a la Amadeus Mozart, his influence on the Impressionists animated Chris' bedtime reading:Our library card was active, building a sense of return, as did local merchants recognizing the boys.

Also new, Michael and Jack took part in a theater workshop in Langley, a town with more shops and creative galleries, like this glass blowing hot shop, producing a beautiful red & yellow, swirling bowl and Jack's blue paperweight.

Michael made a table arrangement of beach findings,

leaving the jellyfish

and crab pincers behind.

Earlier in Tacoma, a magnificent lowtide at Titlow Beach invited clam, crab diggers and novice explorers.
while on Whidbey, attracting a rare afternoon visit by the resident bald eagle, no doubt hunting for prey.
Another discovery was participating in the Whidbey Children's Theater (forgive the poor quality!)

a high quality outfit celebrating its 30th year, with seasonal offerings, such as last year's Robin Hood. A musical rendition of Treasure Island doubled for M & J's camp theme. Lacking resources of higher cities, this community invests in low tech imaginative play and work for its young people.

Jack lost 3 teeth this trip! A true Jack O'Lantern.

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Whidbey Highlights

our favorite hike along the water overlooking the Olympics, with purple alfalfa in bloom.

kayaking!

watching the weekend cruise ships - floating hotels - and local ferry from Pt Townsend.

Earlier on, M & J checked out Aunt Suzanne's honey bees, whose honey won 1st place at the county fair. Delicious for others, but overtaking the lovely garden, since these bees crawl around the grass.

Mt Rainier came into view for July 4th

We had an unusually satisfying visit with Michelle, on her lovely organic farm on Vashon Island, with daughters Valencia and Annie - our inspiration for international adoption. Jerram Barrs introduced Michelle to gardening while at the English L'Abri.

A July of much time away sandwiching 10 days before our Swiss departure. We are packing and saying our good-byes to a variety of communities with a bittersweet air, as we've become attached to our church and school.