robot arm/ drag show

Tonight I'm going to the Neo-Futurists' New show "Drag". I was going to go with folks from CTS' queer group, but every one of them bailed on me. No potential snowstorm will flag my adventure!

Also, I figured out something notable. The revelation came to me while Rachael and I were sitting on the roof of my apartment building (a amazing place to sit) reading Jane Yolen and John Irving respectively.

"It's like this," I said, "When you're around, it's like I have an extra, robotic arm that is super-strong and shoots lazers. When you're not around, I don't have it, but I still have two reasonably strong arm, and, you know, my lazer-sharp intellect."

So, I'm emotionally ready for Rachael to go to Nicaragua, partially because of this excellent, robotic metaphor.

Also, the spellcheck thinks that lazer should be spelled with an s. Screw that.

love,
David

i love the internet

So, I've been using this desperately-finding-something-to-do-while-I-wait-for-it-to-be-time-to-pick-up-Rachael time to catch up on the internet. Some friends sent me you tube links, and so I watched, in quick succession:

-an allegory featuring dancing cardboard bears, set in the Oberlin laundromat.

-"Let's Paint, Exercise, and Eat Pie"
and
-the Captain Vegetable Sesame Street song. In Dutch.

Now, all of these things are wonderful, but I'm not going to link to them. And not only because I don't know how.

Instead, behold: http://eastmostpeninsula.com/comic.php?id=059

This blog post brought to you by the American Council for Increased Use of Dashes (A-C-I-U-D)

advent calendar

Here are two pictures of the advent calendar I made for my sister. I got out my bulging folder of saved church bulletins, an old Bible I saved from the trash, and samples sent to me by publishing companies while I was Director of Christian Education. I cut out prayers and Bible passages and pasted them on printer paper in a liturgical arrangement involving pictures of purple and one pink candle on Sundays, and cut windows in wrapping paper to cover them. The windows are numbered 1-25 for days in December. I cut the Magnificat out of Luke (feels weird to cut apart a Bible) and cut up a Christmas card, and an announcement about donating to the Caring Tree from a bulletin.

It fed my soul to read so many churchy words. That is one thing about Quaker meeting-- lack of churchy words! I'm thinking about going to my family's Methodist church during advent to enjoy some liturgy!

Anyway, this was SO FUN and I think it turned out beautifully, probably due to the TLC for Sarah that I put into it. Feast your eyes and your liturgical womb, ready to bring forth Christ into the world!

Fun

Here's a picture I stole from my friend's blog...this basically captures what orientation at MCC in Akron PA was like. Amazing!

things sure are different

Today I woke up between warm flannel sheets and looked at pictures of Oberlin on the wall by my bed. I've been so dissoriented while I've been here that I put up pictures of my past life and it sort of reminds me about another way my life has been in the recent past. There's one of Phyllis and Paul at peace vigil, one of Formosa and Ginger picking flowers, one of my dad and Denise at my graduation, one of the tree on the corner of Tappan at Professor and College, and one of the view from my 27 Union St. bedroom window in winter with snow. And one of Easter egg decorating at Family Night at FUMC.

Then I listened to something I'm very proud of: a recording of me and lots of my friends singing Meg H.'s a capella arrangement of the Ginny Weasley song, based on Harry Potter. It is on the internet available for the listening pleasure of thousands! There are comments on it at the website by people who I don't even know! That is SO COOL!

Also so cool is the fact that I've had the privilege of performing said song at all. It is an experience decidedly outside of my current range of activities, a reminder of a community I've been part of and connections I used to enjoy.

Then I went to work and one of the chefs asked how I was. She waited like she was ready for a long answer so I told her about the internet and Meg's recital and the song and she listened and responded and was interested. I went on sweeping the restaurant, thinking how easy it is to perk me up: just one person has to ask, listen, be interested. But it seems like that doesn't happen very often for me right now. I will be glad to end this little season of my life.

John the Whaptist

There was an AP article on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on Sunday. It was about evangelical popular culture, and it featured a paragraph about Christian Professional Wrestling leagues. The article CLAIMED that there was a wrestler by the name of "John the Whaptist" (alongside such other heroes as 'the Sermonater', and 'the Abrahammer.') Now, that name is totally awesome, and so I looked up John the Whaptist on the internet.

As near as I can tell based on a five minute Google search, there is NO SUCH PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER. A travesty! It seems that the name has only been circulated as a joke.

At first, this made me quite sad. 'John the Whaptist, why can't you exist?' I thought.

But then I realized- if there is no John the Whaptist, that means that the first person who wants to can call dibs on the name, thus forcing everyone to refer to them as John the Whaptist.

Friends, I invoke that priviledge.

In daily parlance, you may still refer to me as "David", but please, in formal use, from now on: Mr. David Reese, AKA "John the Whaptist."

Keep your eyes out for the entwives,
David
aka John the Waptist

scarface

Dear friends,

Here is a belated update on my Halloween proceedings. This fellow's name is Scarface. See how the smile and eyes are asymmetrical? That's not the way it looked before the Terrible Pumpkin Adventure. Luke's pumpkin is visible behind.

By the way, for Halloween I was a Tai Kwon Do student, a doctor, and a soccer player. All while waitressing various shifts. I actually was working during trick-or-treating, but they had a bowl of candy in the kitchen so that whenever we dropped off dirty plates we could trick or treat!!! yay!

Sorry this is like two weeks late.

Love,
Rachael

Guatemala #1: I'm in Guatemala!

Here are a couple of short stories and quotes, and thoughts from the past few days:

-If you ever get a chance to watch a sunset from a plane, it´s pretty cool.

-The southern part of Guatemala is FULL of mountains, while the other half is much flatter!

-Quote, "En Guatemala hay mas iglesias que niños felices."
"In Guatemala there are more churches than happy children."

-At church we talked about forgiveness, vengeance, justice-it was a discussion sermon, which was cool. The pastor mentioned the response of the Amish community in PA as an example of faith and forgiveness, and a woman in the congregation shared her own experience of a family member who was killed.

-We´ve been talking a lot about building relationships, trust and confidence with the people we´ll be working with (I say "we" because there´s another MCC worker who´s here in orientation with me, who will be working in El Salvador) But, it´s really hard because trust and self-confidence has been destroyed by a 36 year civil war, not to mention centuries of colonization, and war.

-The MCC workers here are incredible people-loving, very concerned with peace and justice.

-There´s a mall around the corner called Tikal Futuro- Tikal is the site of some ancient Mayan ruins.

It´s now Wednesday morning. I think I´ll finally finish and send this today-I´m sitting in the warm sun by a somewhat overgrown garden in front of the MCC office. The weather is really perfect here. This whole week we´ve been meeting in the mornings, going over various aspects of life and work here- context, history, programs and MCC team, security, etc. It´s been very interesting, but also a lot of talking so it will be nice to start language classes and do something more concrete. I met my spanish teacher, and I´ll start classes Monday. I´ll also be moving in with a host family, in Zone 6 of Guatemala City. (There are 22 Zones) We went there on a bus yesterday to learn how to use the buses. I´m excited to live there, because it´s much more of a community feeling than the neighborhood where I´ve been staying so far. There were kids playing soccer in the streets, etc.

Anyway, I´ll leave you with that for now...and congratulations on the smashing elections you had yesterday!!

Donald Rumsfeld stepping down?

According to CNN.com, Donald Rumsfeld is resigning.

I told you guys, you can't stop the Spirit.

love,
david

Catapulted to superstardom

As if there wasn't enough to celebrate today, three authors of this blog are among those performing the a capella version of "save ginny weaseley" which is now on the Harry and the Potters website: www.myspace.com/harryandthepotters. I'm sure Beth, Rachael, and I all await our catapultment towards superstardom.

David

remember kids: