As we walk down the street holding hands, and i can feel the hint of rotten food on her fingers.
"Your mother would be horrified if she knew you were dumpster diving." As would mine.
Barcelona is not used to people looking for treasure in trash. Especially people who dont look like they are starving or destitute. But their we are, over educated, nicely dressed, presumably affluent white people digging thru other peoples garbage.
Barcelona is the other kind of civilized, the southern european version to bookend what Am*dam does.
It starts with an assault on time. Siesta is not just an abstract worker entitlement, it is a defining aspect of life here. Walk down the most fashionable or most crowded streets of this town at 1 PM and almost everything is closed. In December this is not because the heat of the day is unbearable - it is pleasant, in fact. It is because living is more important than working, a notion so radical it can't be embraced by most of the industrial world.
The other thing about siesta, is that it changes peoples expectations around time in general. 5 PM is not a significant closing time here. Lots of stuff, including banks and city services stay open later than that.
Caroline took Ethan and i to the big open air market this morning, we bought some forks and a blanket for the charming flat she has invited us into. It was crowded, cluttered and relaxed. There did not appear to be haggling going on, prices mostly seemed quite low, there were vendors hawking all types of things, but it was a different pace than the street markets of Am*dam. Caroline and i were constantly walking around people on the street.
The legal system punishes poverty crimes (black riding, squatting, vagrancy) less than most western countries and instead of the city drifting into lawlessness - it operates as a second level of social welfare net which reduces the number of beggars on the street and redistributes wealth.
It is not paradise, but they have chosen a different set of problems.
Showing posts with label dumpster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dumpster. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Dumpsters and Willow
When i was almost 7 my father first took me fishing. We went out on the nearby pond and caught catfish. I thought they were disgusting, slimy and alien. My father tried to explain that this is where we got food from. I knew better, we get food from the store.
I was half expecting to get the same response from Willow, now almost 7, when i took him dumpster diving for the first time yesterday. Grabbing stuff out of dumpsters is dirty work - smashed fruits and vegetables, trash mixed with treasure. All a bit gross and hardly enticing.
And as is often the case, my son surprised me. Happy to hold bags while we rescued stuff from the Ten Katestraat dumpsters. More than willing to run under vendor tables to grab a pepper or orange, inspect it and then leave it behind if it was too damaged or take pride in the find if it was salvagable. It was another kind of game for him. We skipped back to Casa together, laden with produce.
That's how i spent my thanksgiving, the most hopeful one i have had in years.
I was half expecting to get the same response from Willow, now almost 7, when i took him dumpster diving for the first time yesterday. Grabbing stuff out of dumpsters is dirty work - smashed fruits and vegetables, trash mixed with treasure. All a bit gross and hardly enticing.
And as is often the case, my son surprised me. Happy to hold bags while we rescued stuff from the Ten Katestraat dumpsters. More than willing to run under vendor tables to grab a pepper or orange, inspect it and then leave it behind if it was too damaged or take pride in the find if it was salvagable. It was another kind of game for him. We skipped back to Casa together, laden with produce.
That's how i spent my thanksgiving, the most hopeful one i have had in years.
It's not too late
Dave Pollard writes a thoughtful blog. One of his most recent entries was rightly criticizing the government about it's inaction around climate change. And there is much to be critical of, including Obama's most recent speech on the topic, which is way too little given what the official science is telling us these days.
But this leads Dave to toy with the potentially self crippling conclusion, that we are "too late" and the game is over. Below is an extended version of the comment i wrote on his blog.
It is not too late. We are just too lazy.
But this leads Dave to toy with the potentially self crippling conclusion, that we are "too late" and the game is over. Below is an extended version of the comment i wrote on his blog.
It is not too late. We are just too lazy.
I live in an eco-village in the US. We consumes 30% of the gasoline, per person of our mainstream counterparts. We use 10% of the home heating fuel and cooking gas and produces 10% of the trash of average US americans. And the lifestyle is in most ways indistinguishable from the American middle class, in terms of access to resources. And the really funny/tragic thing, is we are not even trying at it very hard. We dont prioritize sustainability over everything in our budgeting process, we often take cheap fixes instead of green ones.
What we do do well is sharing. We share 17 cars for 100 people, something virtually unheard of in the US, centralized shopping is a service which only the very rich have available to them and i enjoy everyday when i am at home. Growing most of our own food takes about 3% of our total labor (a bit higher than the national average) but most folx in the mainstream wont spend that amount of time on it.
Certainly Bush, Clinton and Gore can take heat for not doing anything at a national level to solve the climate crisis. But Twin Oaks came into being without government assistance and there is nothing which stops the model from replicating itself all over the country (there are about 8 communities in this model now, since our founding over 40 years ago).
Nothing except that old critique from kindergarten "Does not play well with others". The reason we cant share is that we cant talk to our neighbors. The reason we cant share is that we actually believe we need for all our stuff to sit idle almost all the time, because we have a tremendous fear that if we were to lend it out, even to close friends it might get broken or lost. We have (indirectly granted) decided that it is more important for our stuff not to be disturbed than for our planet to be habitable for our kids.
Almost everyday for the last week most of my food has been coming from the dumpsters at the market near Casa Robino. We go and rescue stuff and increasingly talk with vendors who give us the stuff they cant sell before it goes in the trash. We are building relationships and saving that energy (in the form of food). And part of what is surprising to me, is that there is no one else doing this. No poor people, no environmentalists, no life style anarchists.
It is not that there are no solutions our there, we are just pretending that the government is where they will all come from, so we dont have to organize them ourselves.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
An idea a day
I used to work for the Standard Oil company that was pumping the North Slope of Alaska that was 50% controlled by British Petroleum. And at one point we had some of the BP senior managers breeze thru and i spent a lunch talking to a guy who was paid a lot o money to work in strategic planning. "Our job is to come up with one good idea a day|. At first i was really enchanted by this idea.
When i lived in Brno i actually tried to do it for a time. I got a small journal and really worked at coming up with something new and useful each day. But it was quickly exhausting. Not so much because i could not come up with the ideas, but because the ideas once hatched would call for attention and ultimately there was too much to do.
I have this feeling here in Am*dam. Like i am overwhelmed by the possibilities. And i have happily given up trying to focus. And am just bathing in the impossible number of options. My current favs are:
When i lived in Brno i actually tried to do it for a time. I got a small journal and really worked at coming up with something new and useful each day. But it was quickly exhausting. Not so much because i could not come up with the ideas, but because the ideas once hatched would call for attention and ultimately there was too much to do.
I have this feeling here in Am*dam. Like i am overwhelmed by the possibilities. And i have happily given up trying to focus. And am just bathing in the impossible number of options. My current favs are:
- Flogging as described in Digital Nomads
- Rooftop solutions: urban windmills and micro farming
- Incentive Interventionism - to deal with the US financial crisis
- Sharing is Daring
- Sharism - as a new religion
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Digital Nomads: A How To Guide
There is a new lifestyle, which is right around the corner, facilitated by the collapsed borders within Europe and the advent of hand held internet technology and the rapid development of three separate types of websites typified by trashwiki.org, hitchwiki.org and bewelcome.org. Here is how it works.
You dont have any money and you are in Zagreb. You go to hitchwiki and it tells you the best place to get out of the city. But this is not all, short funds, but long time and internet access at the library, you read all about the routes to Am*dam, the hassles of the Ruhrgebiet (the megacity around Bonn/Cologne) and how to best avoid the Swiss police.
You have always believed in starting early, to show the first drivers you are serious about getting where you are going. Quickly, you are on the road. Your first driver is carpenter from Munich, who used to hitch when he was younger. You maintain the casual conversation and when he gets on his cell phone call from his girlfriend, you retreat to your own internet enabled cell phone. You look for the best exits near his planned end stop in Freiburg Germany. You remember when hitching was much harder, more guesses more walking. It is still quite daring, but you have the kind of confidence that Ford Prefect had reading the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
There is a small village of wagons about 3 miles from the most southern exit. They offer themselves as an overnight place for hitchers and there are several good reports from people who have passed thru. You walk from the exit to Star Village and are just in time to go dumpster diving for dinner.
Dumpster diving in Europe is often different than in the US. While they are not all open, the dumpsters which are dont suffer from the various discouragements used in the US, broken glass or motor oil sprayed on the food to keep pesky dumpster divers out. You borrow a bike and ride with Ellen of Star Village down to the local market which is just closing. She already has a relationship with several of the vendors and they have put food aside for her/ Food which was destined for the trash. Ellen has entered a lot about the Freiburg farmers market on trashwiki.
There personalities, their willingness to deal with strangers, the layout of the market and location of the best dumpsters and the best times to be there.
Back at Star Village various contributions make up the eclectic dinner. Carefully prepared food, some from the garden, some rescued the farmers market, a few things purchased. There is a young woman, Sabrina, who is also interested in hitching to the Netherlands. While she is not willing to get up at the crack of dawn, you're convinced you will do better hitching with her. And it is safer as well.
You get up early anyway the next morning. Help with some gardening, fix a couple of bike flat tires as your contribution to Star Villages all volunteer economy. You write your own entry in Hitchwiki encouraging those who come after you to Star Village to bring chocolate for Ellen (for an example of an excellent annotated hitchwiki map of good spots). And about your experience in the farmers market in trashwiki.
Sabrina gets up at almost 11 AM and you take the bus to the hitchwiki recommended hitching spot. The weather is threatening, but her smile brightens the day and my mood. A driver stops and after his admonishments of how women should not hitchhike, we settle into the drive to boarder town of Aachen. Sabrina gets a ride into the train station where she will pay for the last part of her travel. But i dont have the option, my wallet remains empty. The Bewelcome.org hospitality website shows several entries for Aachen, but there are no phone numbers and the local ambassador does not seem to be answering their phone. It's getting dark.
Hitching is largely useless at night. You could ask people at gas stations, a common practice in Germany, but you are shy, preferring exit ramps and willing drivers. The night is not threatening rain and the cars are not stopping, so you roll up in your sleeping bag under a big tree (tents are too bulky). Exhausted from walking between gas stations and exit ramps, from maintaining conversations in your limited English, the sadness about losing Sabrina's fair company too soon - the high speed traffic noise nearby does not slow your sleep.
The Dutch are not as friendly with hikers as the Germans. One driver explained that it is because all the student aged persons have rail passes and that there is limited number of hitchhikers and they are less trusted for being indigent.
Finally you arrive at your host home, a former squat called Zhaba, long since legalized on quite favorable terms. Natural candidates for radical hosting adventures. . The accommodations are not palacial, but they are friendly and reasonably clean. Happily they are experienced with guests and give you a set of keys as soon as you show up. You were guided there by Casa Radio which you found in BeWelcome.Org. Casa Radio is a combination placement service and city ore, which is directing you in. Casa Radio is actually a collection of hosting locations that you were in communication with before you left Croatia. They promised you a place tho they were not sure where it would be in Am*dam, as your plans solidified you texted Casa Radio and they confirmed your final location. Unable to afford the beautiful mass transit, you walk the last mile and half from the A2 exit to Zhaba. You're tired, but the places is comfortable, despite your space being quite small.
One of the most important services BeWelcome.org offered was low skill temp work for foreigners. They keep a listing of urban gardening, light construction and demolition work, dog walking, cleaning and cooking jobs. The website uses a reputation system, which almost all users put quite some energy into maintaining good online reputations. It was through offering better services like Casa Radios landing assistance and work opportunities for folx new in town that lead to it stealing most of the members to CouchSurfing.Com
In the morning there is muesli and left over fruit salad from the night before. A group of Zhaba kids will fix a leak in the roof after breakfast. You get to talking to Tatiana, who is writing a flog. Flogs were originally stories written by traveling bloggers would write about other peoples stories, written with the intention of selling ads (with Google Ad sense or similar services) and bringing in lots of readers. They were called flogs because they are in a blog format and they were peddled off to readers (flogged). It is a bit like soap opera writing, except that the characters are real and the stories twisted.
But Tatiana's flog has morphed also. It is her story of her adventures, designed to keep the readers excited by her unfolding story. But more than excited, Tatiana keeps a set of about 30 avid "premium readers" engadged in a personal e-mail dialog about her life.
"They are mostly parents and werents (people who wanted to be parents but were not). Some are having with Tatiana, who will occasionally drop reference to her correspondence with her advising aunt in her flog, her "aunt" is really the collective wisdom of her premium readers. Possibly unlike their actual children, premium readers find Tanya (Tatiana's digital identity) at least willing to listen and respond to their suggestions. Though Tanya offers little in the way of real concessions to her advisers, for her reckless lifestyle is part of what makes her so attractive.
Tanya is popular with tens of thousands of unique hits each day, but the premium readers are keeping Tatiana feed and entertained - tho she still hitchhikes and runs a foul of the authorities with some regularity. Tatiana is 19 and was born outside of Kiev.
This article can be found under tinyurl.com/digitalnomads and is being turned into a collective story at trashwiki.com/digitalnomads
You dont have any money and you are in Zagreb. You go to hitchwiki and it tells you the best place to get out of the city. But this is not all, short funds, but long time and internet access at the library, you read all about the routes to Am*dam, the hassles of the Ruhrgebiet (the megacity around Bonn/Cologne) and how to best avoid the Swiss police.
You have always believed in starting early, to show the first drivers you are serious about getting where you are going. Quickly, you are on the road. Your first driver is carpenter from Munich, who used to hitch when he was younger. You maintain the casual conversation and when he gets on his cell phone call from his girlfriend, you retreat to your own internet enabled cell phone. You look for the best exits near his planned end stop in Freiburg Germany. You remember when hitching was much harder, more guesses more walking. It is still quite daring, but you have the kind of confidence that Ford Prefect had reading the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
There is a small village of wagons about 3 miles from the most southern exit. They offer themselves as an overnight place for hitchers and there are several good reports from people who have passed thru. You walk from the exit to Star Village and are just in time to go dumpster diving for dinner.
Dumpster diving in Europe is often different than in the US. While they are not all open, the dumpsters which are dont suffer from the various discouragements used in the US, broken glass or motor oil sprayed on the food to keep pesky dumpster divers out. You borrow a bike and ride with Ellen of Star Village down to the local market which is just closing. She already has a relationship with several of the vendors and they have put food aside for her/ Food which was destined for the trash. Ellen has entered a lot about the Freiburg farmers market on trashwiki.
There personalities, their willingness to deal with strangers, the layout of the market and location of the best dumpsters and the best times to be there.
Back at Star Village various contributions make up the eclectic dinner. Carefully prepared food, some from the garden, some rescued the farmers market, a few things purchased. There is a young woman, Sabrina, who is also interested in hitching to the Netherlands. While she is not willing to get up at the crack of dawn, you're convinced you will do better hitching with her. And it is safer as well.
You get up early anyway the next morning. Help with some gardening, fix a couple of bike flat tires as your contribution to Star Villages all volunteer economy. You write your own entry in Hitchwiki encouraging those who come after you to Star Village to bring chocolate for Ellen (for an example of an excellent annotated hitchwiki map of good spots). And about your experience in the farmers market in trashwiki.
Sabrina gets up at almost 11 AM and you take the bus to the hitchwiki recommended hitching spot. The weather is threatening, but her smile brightens the day and my mood. A driver stops and after his admonishments of how women should not hitchhike, we settle into the drive to boarder town of Aachen. Sabrina gets a ride into the train station where she will pay for the last part of her travel. But i dont have the option, my wallet remains empty. The Bewelcome.org hospitality website shows several entries for Aachen, but there are no phone numbers and the local ambassador does not seem to be answering their phone. It's getting dark.
Hitching is largely useless at night. You could ask people at gas stations, a common practice in Germany, but you are shy, preferring exit ramps and willing drivers. The night is not threatening rain and the cars are not stopping, so you roll up in your sleeping bag under a big tree (tents are too bulky). Exhausted from walking between gas stations and exit ramps, from maintaining conversations in your limited English, the sadness about losing Sabrina's fair company too soon - the high speed traffic noise nearby does not slow your sleep.
The Dutch are not as friendly with hikers as the Germans. One driver explained that it is because all the student aged persons have rail passes and that there is limited number of hitchhikers and they are less trusted for being indigent.
Finally you arrive at your host home, a former squat called Zhaba, long since legalized on quite favorable terms. Natural candidates for radical hosting adventures. . The accommodations are not palacial, but they are friendly and reasonably clean. Happily they are experienced with guests and give you a set of keys as soon as you show up. You were guided there by Casa Radio which you found in BeWelcome.Org. Casa Radio is a combination placement service and city ore, which is directing you in. Casa Radio is actually a collection of hosting locations that you were in communication with before you left Croatia. They promised you a place tho they were not sure where it would be in Am*dam, as your plans solidified you texted Casa Radio and they confirmed your final location. Unable to afford the beautiful mass transit, you walk the last mile and half from the A2 exit to Zhaba. You're tired, but the places is comfortable, despite your space being quite small.
One of the most important services BeWelcome.org offered was low skill temp work for foreigners. They keep a listing of urban gardening, light construction and demolition work, dog walking, cleaning and cooking jobs. The website uses a reputation system, which almost all users put quite some energy into maintaining good online reputations. It was through offering better services like Casa Radios landing assistance and work opportunities for folx new in town that lead to it stealing most of the members to CouchSurfing.Com
In the morning there is muesli and left over fruit salad from the night before. A group of Zhaba kids will fix a leak in the roof after breakfast. You get to talking to Tatiana, who is writing a flog. Flogs were originally stories written by traveling bloggers would write about other peoples stories, written with the intention of selling ads (with Google Ad sense or similar services) and bringing in lots of readers. They were called flogs because they are in a blog format and they were peddled off to readers (flogged). It is a bit like soap opera writing, except that the characters are real and the stories twisted.
But Tatiana's flog has morphed also. It is her story of her adventures, designed to keep the readers excited by her unfolding story. But more than excited, Tatiana keeps a set of about 30 avid "premium readers" engadged in a personal e-mail dialog about her life.
"They are mostly parents and werents (people who wanted to be parents but were not). Some are having with Tatiana, who will occasionally drop reference to her correspondence with her advising aunt in her flog, her "aunt" is really the collective wisdom of her premium readers. Possibly unlike their actual children, premium readers find Tanya (Tatiana's digital identity) at least willing to listen and respond to their suggestions. Though Tanya offers little in the way of real concessions to her advisers, for her reckless lifestyle is part of what makes her so attractive.
Tanya is popular with tens of thousands of unique hits each day, but the premium readers are keeping Tatiana feed and entertained - tho she still hitchhikes and runs a foul of the authorities with some regularity. Tatiana is 19 and was born outside of Kiev.
This article can be found under tinyurl.com/digitalnomads and is being turned into a collective story at trashwiki.com/digitalnomads
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Time Compression
"Why dont you know how to cook?" Robin chastised me a couple of days ago. I've actually been feeling unusually guilty about it. Almost all my intimates make something of a deal out of cooking. Hawina, Patty, Caroline, Tree, Angie and Sky are all quite good cooks and care about it, in most cases as a community building tool. But by dinner, my guilt was gone.
Dumpster diving Video Will Be Here
We invaded Emily's Straat. The open air street market today early enuf to successfully dumpster (having missed it twice this week for being late). There was lots of produce to pick from and the vendors responded well when Lena asked in her high dumpster style of long pointy leather boots, frilly blue short skirt and bright Polish smile.
The lovely Lena and i argued about how much we were taking. Even tho it is not illegal, i still believe in a hit and run strategy, which is why i was so happy there were so many of us. But Lena was convinced we would use an eggplant each. So we captured ample tomatoes, mangoes, plums, papayas, cucumbers, kiwis, green beans, peppers, oranges, lemons and lots of avocados.
We were quite discriminating, because there was so much to choose from we could be picky.
Karden (a soft spoken, but clearly clever young German activist) spoke directly to vendors and collected many of our treasures. Karden went to the market most afternoon for years where he used to live in Germany and he developed relationships with the vendors, who stopped throwing their waste away and just put it aside and gave it to him directly, which he was appreciavite of and they in turn felt generous. Creating this type of ongoing relationship with street vendors and elevating the status of trash is perfect for TrashWiki. Karden will likely come with me to Gorleben next week.
It was a huge dinner, which when you added the two bottles of wine and large bar of chocolate cost 1.50 Euro/person. And the reason that i feel fine about not cooking, was that i facilitated getting the big group out there, encouraging scouting which increased our haul and coordinated the massive prep cooking effort. But what really got me was when i tried to find someone to be the chief cook from our 11 person group, there was not really any candidates. Robin arrived back from work and i pressed him into cooking, him reminding me he had cooked for the last 3 days as well. Then he cooked the eggplant (which i think we ate one of), but i basically got the rest of the dishes started and prepared, with lots of help. It is not cooking, but it is organizing which creates meals from self identified non-cooks. That is close enuf for me.
We had a helicopter land right in front of the Casa today, when we were all going to the afternoon market. We saw it land in the playground across the street. a lone local policeman cleared the playground as they were landing. A guy in a bright orange suit jumped out with what i assume was a medical bag and was nearly instantly picked up by a cop on a motorcycle and was whisked off. The time compression was amazing - if all the connections were that fast, you could conceivably have a doctor by your side within 20 minutes almost anywhere in the city. Nitia the photographers image will replace this one, when he sends it to me.
As the helicopter took off, we were just under it and the wind blew through our hats and hair. And within 60s of the take off, dozens of kids were back on the playground, running around and jumping. The Dutch are not just time compressing, they are space compressing.
Surreally, moments after the helicopter took off we walked by two kids about Willows age who had a quite realistic remote controlled helicopter toy, which took off right before us. Nitia got pictures. After a perfect and controlled take off and rise to perhaps 3 meaters, they drove it into the side of a nearby building and it crashed to the ground.
i dont know who this woman is, except that she identifies as from the Dennis Collective. She sent me a couple of nice pictures and said she was reading my blog. Kassia thinks it is not Israel, because there is too much graffiti. I think it might be Greece. Mark and Nitai - who flew in from Jerusalem today to the Casa, both think it might be Israel, tho the front right Temple is unusual. Nitai, who lived in Jerusalem for 15 years, thinks it might be Nazareth.
Earlier in the day, when i asked Nitai how the war affected him personally he said it heightened his awareness - and while he would not wish it on anyone, it does make him more serious about how he lives. "But at the end of the day, it is all about my last name, Peace." He is Nitai Shalom - from Israel, Poland, the US and Iraq. An ambassador for peace.
Dumpster diving Video Will Be Here
We invaded Emily's Straat. The open air street market today early enuf to successfully dumpster (having missed it twice this week for being late). There was lots of produce to pick from and the vendors responded well when Lena asked in her high dumpster style of long pointy leather boots, frilly blue short skirt and bright Polish smile.
The lovely Lena and i argued about how much we were taking. Even tho it is not illegal, i still believe in a hit and run strategy, which is why i was so happy there were so many of us. But Lena was convinced we would use an eggplant each. So we captured ample tomatoes, mangoes, plums, papayas, cucumbers, kiwis, green beans, peppers, oranges, lemons and lots of avocados.
We were quite discriminating, because there was so much to choose from we could be picky.
Karden (a soft spoken, but clearly clever young German activist) spoke directly to vendors and collected many of our treasures. Karden went to the market most afternoon for years where he used to live in Germany and he developed relationships with the vendors, who stopped throwing their waste away and just put it aside and gave it to him directly, which he was appreciavite of and they in turn felt generous. Creating this type of ongoing relationship with street vendors and elevating the status of trash is perfect for TrashWiki. Karden will likely come with me to Gorleben next week.
It was a huge dinner, which when you added the two bottles of wine and large bar of chocolate cost 1.50 Euro/person. And the reason that i feel fine about not cooking, was that i facilitated getting the big group out there, encouraging scouting which increased our haul and coordinated the massive prep cooking effort. But what really got me was when i tried to find someone to be the chief cook from our 11 person group, there was not really any candidates. Robin arrived back from work and i pressed him into cooking, him reminding me he had cooked for the last 3 days as well. Then he cooked the eggplant (which i think we ate one of), but i basically got the rest of the dishes started and prepared, with lots of help. It is not cooking, but it is organizing which creates meals from self identified non-cooks. That is close enuf for me.
We had a helicopter land right in front of the Casa today, when we were all going to the afternoon market. We saw it land in the playground across the street. a lone local policeman cleared the playground as they were landing. A guy in a bright orange suit jumped out with what i assume was a medical bag and was nearly instantly picked up by a cop on a motorcycle and was whisked off. The time compression was amazing - if all the connections were that fast, you could conceivably have a doctor by your side within 20 minutes almost anywhere in the city. Nitia the photographers image will replace this one, when he sends it to me.As the helicopter took off, we were just under it and the wind blew through our hats and hair. And within 60s of the take off, dozens of kids were back on the playground, running around and jumping. The Dutch are not just time compressing, they are space compressing.
Surreally, moments after the helicopter took off we walked by two kids about Willows age who had a quite realistic remote controlled helicopter toy, which took off right before us. Nitia got pictures. After a perfect and controlled take off and rise to perhaps 3 meaters, they drove it into the side of a nearby building and it crashed to the ground.
i dont know who this woman is, except that she identifies as from the Dennis Collective. She sent me a couple of nice pictures and said she was reading my blog. Kassia thinks it is not Israel, because there is too much graffiti. I think it might be Greece. Mark and Nitai - who flew in from Jerusalem today to the Casa, both think it might be Israel, tho the front right Temple is unusual. Nitai, who lived in Jerusalem for 15 years, thinks it might be Nazareth.
Earlier in the day, when i asked Nitai how the war affected him personally he said it heightened his awareness - and while he would not wish it on anyone, it does make him more serious about how he lives. "But at the end of the day, it is all about my last name, Peace." He is Nitai Shalom - from Israel, Poland, the US and Iraq. An ambassador for peace.
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