Blah blah blogger

Blogger is slow for some reason right now, so I'll spin yarn on my recent trip next week. It was fantastic and deserves a worthy report. I'm now back home in the East, safe and comfortable. Here's a photo from the Sahara; a teaser in the worst form.

Quote of the Week

"Ideas are mallable and unstable; they not only can be misused, they invite misuse---and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is by this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea, but with the people who are attracted to it, until the last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogmas by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road." -author Tom Robbins

Sahara bound

I'm now on day 4 of a Sahara to Toubkal trip, or from desert to snow. Its a strange contrast and its too bad my friends and I wont have time to tack on surfing on the Atlantic coast. More to report later, but southern Morocco, ignoring the 130 F heat in the Summer, is a wonderful place.

Bab Sidi Abd El Wahhab in Oujda

This is the everyday souk in Oujda from where I get all my extras. You want lettuce, a special type of cheese, or the new Windows Vista for $2 (I thought I heard it couldnt be pirated), they have it here. Europe and Algeria contraband are abundant, with many sellers setting up on the sidewalks.

French companions

Here's the Frenchies from Oujda that we've known since arriving. One's a development volunteer, another works at the French Institute, and the other two are teachers at a business college. (L to R) Marie, Anne, Cédric, and Vincent. The guys introduced us to spear-fishing and most of the equipment we use is theirs. Their English is good and we get along very well, particularly if you follow the old Clintonism that our similiarities are greater than our differences. More than that, they are trusted friends.

Quote for the Week

"All day long the trains run on rails. Eclipses are predictable. Penicillin cures pneumonia and the atom splits to order. All day long year in year out the daylight explanation drives back the mystery and reveals a reality usable, understandable and detached. The scalpel and the microscope fail. The oscilloscope moves closer to behaviour.

"But then, all day long action is weighed in the balance and found not opportune nor fortunate nor ill-advised but good or evil. For this mode which we call the spirit breathes through the universe and does not touch it: touches only the dark things held prisoner, incommunicado, touches, judges, sentences and passes on. Both worlds are real. There is no bridge."

Author William Golding, Nobel Lecture 1983

Reason #10 Hassan II

The Hassan II Mosaue is located in Casablanca. The facts: 2nd largest in the world, holds 25,000 with another 80,000 in the courtyard, and has the worlds largest minaret.

Photo taken by Nate St. Amand