The republic is saved! Not “taken Jesus as my personal savior saved” — in fact it’s pretty much just damned itself — but at least it’s “separation of church and state” saved, for now at least.

Superior Judge Ronnie Batchelor has upheld a decision made earlier by the Georgia Board of Education, supporting local school officials opposing the removal of Harry Potter books from a school library in Gwinnett County, Georgia.

Laura Mallory, who had argued that the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft, is not happy and has said she may take her case to federal court in order to get the books removed.

Wonderfully honest in her desire for an American Theocracy, Mallory said, “I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again. I think we need him.”

Welcoming God back in our schools again (though I thought he was omnipresent — isn’t he there anyway?) apparently means that godless texts would have to make an exit. Presumably the following would be unwelcome because of their magical content:

• The Lord of the Rings
• The Chronicles of Narnia (written by Christian C.S. Lewis)
• Macbeth
• Hamlet (contains a ghost)
• The Tempest
• Through the Looking Glass
• The Odyssey
• The Iliad
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• Faust
• The Faerie Queene
• Gawain and the Green Knight
• The Earthsea novels
• The Arabian Nights
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Peter Pan
• Gulliver’s Travels

Any other suggestions for the bonfire?

It’s generally unremarkable in the US if someone does not believe in evolution, the cornerstone of modern science. Only 39 percent of Americans answer yes to the question, “Do you believe that human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals?”

Given the ubiquity of the Biblical viewpoint in the US, it’s therefore heartening that Sam Brownback felt the need to expand on his views in today’s New York Times. Perhaps he feels that the remaining 61% of the electorate may require some reassurance that he’s a reasonable man and that he won’t be turning the republic into a theocracy. The problem is that Brownback’s Op Ed piece makes no kind of sense at all and does anything but reassure.

In the May 3 televised debate of Republican presidential hopefuls, Sen. John McCain was asked if he believed in evolution. McCain said “Yes,” and then added, “I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.” The candidates were then asked en masse to indicate who did not believe in evolution. Three hands went up: former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo. The debate then moved on with no follow-up, which is perhaps excusable given that there were ten candidates and only 90 minutes.

Brownback’s thesis is as follows: “The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two.”

So that’s an interesting start. There can be no contradiction between faith and reason. So if I have faith that Senator Brownback is actually an Alpha Centaurian hell-bent on the conquest of Earth, this cannot be contradictory to reason because it’s my faith, and faith and reason cannot be contradictory. Similarly, if I believe that the word was created from the fragments of an egg laid by a duck on the knee of Ilmatar, goddess of the air, or that the world was created last Thursday and everything that supposedly predates that day is an illusion devised by the flying spaghetti monster, then that too cannot be in contradiction to reason.

But what the Senator no doubt means is that reason and his faith — that is the Bible — cannot be contradictory.

Brownback explains, “[Science and Faith] deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.”

This is what’s known in logic as “begging the question,” in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. In other words this is circular reasoning. Science (the study of the material order) cannot contradict Brownback’s faith that God created the material order because God created the material order.

Despite this illogic, he does believe that “people of faith should be rational.” That’s a noble wish, and one with which I heartily concur, except that he’s already said in effect that he’s not prepared to accept any rational evidence that happens to contradict his faith in the Bible and its supposed literal truth.

Brownback goes on to make nonsense of his statement that people of faith should be rational by making another irrational statement:

“If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.”

The irrationality here is that Brownback poses a false dichotomy for himself (and us) to choose between. We can have small changes over time within a species OR we can have an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world. There can be Biblical literalism with its fixed species, or we can have the Darwinian evolution of species along with cold, hard, atheistic materialism. There are of course many other possible options to choose from, including a God who creates the universe eons ago and who then watches his creation evolve, and nontheistic and nonmaterialistic faiths such as Buddhism, which have no problem accepting the evolution of species.

Apparently Senator Brownback is not able to use his rationality to examine his own thinking.

The Senator is generous in exposing the hollowness of his own embrace of rationality by rejecting evidence, no matter how overwhelming, that contradicts his beliefs: “Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species.”

He is happy to let the facts speak for themselves, but only if they support the biblically acceptable notion of gradual changes within a species. However the evidence that species are no immutable and that new species can come into being is, to put it mildly, overwhelming. So is the evidence that the Earth and the universe and immeasurably older than the 6,000 years that purely Biblical evidence would support.

Unsurprisingly, Brownback reveals that fundamentally he does not “get” science: “It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.”

The purpose of science is to form hypotheses that explain observations, and then to find evidence that may support or undermine those hypotheses. Those hypotheses that gather overwhelming support in the form of repeated observations become “theories.” This includes theories such as gravity, relativity, and evolution. If there were any evidence that supported the contention that life was designed by an intelligence, then that would be examined and debated vigorously by scientists. However the evidence that life was not designed is, again, overwhelming. We simply have to look at the structure of the human eye, which has wiring on top of the receptors, or the existence of vestigial limbs in snakes, or the existence of junk DNA, to see that living beings have — in a strictly metaphorical way — cobbled themselves together.

Brownback continues to expose his fundamental opposition to rationality right up to the end of his article:

“While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order.”

Apparently “we know with certainty” that “man was not an accident.” There is of course no evidence whatsoever that man was not an accident!

“Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.”

Again, truth is welcomed when it agrees with Brownback’s Bible. Any evidence that contradicts the Bible should be met with ad hominen reductionism. If I demonstrate through fossil evidence and DNA studies that human beings have evolved from ape-link ancestors then I am apparently merely “posing” as a scientist, and my motivation is to promote — in Brownback’s delightfully oxymoronic term — an “atheistic theology.”

A number of things are clear from Brownback’s piece. First, he is afraid enough of public ridicule to have to explain himself. Second, he is almost certainly not capable of thinking rationally, because he has made an a priori assumption that what the Bible says trumps any evidence that may come his way. Third, he lacks self-awareness because he’s unwilling or unable to examine his own beliefs and thinking in a critical way. Fourth, he will not hold back from demonizing anyone who does present evidence that contradicts his Biblical beliefs. Lastly, he is, like many fundamentalist Christians, an inveterate perpetrator of falsehoods, prepared to present false dichotomies, to beg questions, and to claim as certain that which is open to question.

In short Senator Brownback is an irrational man, lacking in the qualities of intellectual honesty and clarity of thought necessary for the office of President. I’ll raise my hand to that.

I would describe my trip to this site as being the sign of a misspent lunchtime!

Go to this website and experience the ultimate in computer cursors. The page may load slowly just now because the site is on Digg and therefore is being hit by thousands of visitors simultaneously.

Ah, life’s simple pleasures!

There’s a shamefully uncritical piece of writing in today’s New York Times, pandering to a new Creationist Museum in Kentucky and never once mentioning that the “museum” is built on falsehoods.

The reviewer, Edward Rothstein, has written many pieces for the NYT on subjects as diverse as theatrical productions of Mary Poppins and exhibitions on the Spanish Civil War. From time to time his reviews have touched on scientific exhibits but he does not appear to be a scientist.

Although the review points out that “outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection,” he discusses scientific knowledge as if it were merely an alternative way to explain our planet’s history.

There’s no question here of the universe actually being billions of years old. It’s just an assertion. Scientists “assert.” Fundamentalist Christians assert. What’s the difference? You may as well just pick the set of beliefs that’s easier to get your head round, and we know how tricky all those equations are, right?

Rothstein repeatedly mentions (praises?) the “daring” of the museum, a “daring” that takes everything we know about our world — every fact of physics from stellar evolution to radioactive decay, every fact from biology from DNA studies to evolution, every fact from geology — and simply pretends that they do not exist. (For more on the inanity of Christian approaches to science see Pharyngula’s recently Dugg article).

Certainly the big lie is “daring.” If you’re going to tell a lie, make it a whopper. In fact make it a Big Lie. Make it a lie that treats all truth as falsehood and that treats falsehood — the writings of bronze age nomads — as fact.

And so we have dinosaurs depicted as living at the same time as humans, despite the 65 million year gap between the demise of the last dinosaur and the arising of our species. We have dinosaurs apparently being carried on Noah’s ark. Rothstein describes a video in which “the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah’s flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days.” Ah, how plausible!

Rothstein does describe himself as a “skeptic” and says that “for visitor steeped in the scientific world view, the impact of the museum is a disorienting mix of faith and reason, the exotic and the familiar.” Perhaps he was so disoriented that we was unable to exercise his claimed skepticism. He seems to have been seduced by the magnitude of the lie: “Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative.” Ah, with spectacle and narrative who needs intellectual honesty and factual accuracy? Stop thinking and pass the popcorn.

Rothstein points out that “for debates, a visitor goes elsewhere.” This is true of his article as well. There is no debate here, merely an uncritical view of “an alternate world that has its fascinations, even for a skeptic.” No scientists’ views intrude here, except as filtered through Mr. Rothstein’s “balanced” presentation.

At a time when the Christian Right aims to colonize the classroom and if they cannot yet teach untruth as truth then at least to suggest that truth is not truth, it’s vital that people of reason ruggedly and determinedly challenge fundamentalist falsehoods. These people don’t wish merely to persuade — they wish to create the conditions for the overturning of the US constitution and the establishment of a theocracy, where we will all live like good Christians, whether we like it or not, and where no wall will keep indoctrination out of the classroom.

Fundamentalist Christians frequently harbor views that are antithetical not just to truth but to the very foundations of the United States. This would normally be called treason, but their movement is so strong, their political support so desired, and their political organization so feared that no one is prepared to call a spade a spade.

Edward Rothstein’s review is a betrayal of reason and of truth.

Thanks to Dave Csonka for passing this along:

Talk about a test of faith.

Eight Tibetan monks spent two days cross-legged on the floor at Union Station, leaning over to meticulously create an intricate design of colored sand as an expression of their Buddhist faith. They were more than halfway done.

And then, within seconds, their work was destroyed by a toddler.

Monks are bald, so they couldn’t rip their hair out. But were they angry? Did they curse?

No. They simply smiled and started over.

“No problem,” said Geshe Lobsang Sumdup, leader of the group from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India.

The whole story is at KansasCity.com.

These sand mandalas are intended to be demonstrations of — and trainings is — impermanence anyway. Monks spend days making very elaborate patterns by pouring sand, and then they ritually destroy the image, often pouring the sand into water. So that Lama Sumdup was unfazed by the artwork’s premature demise was a sign that the practice was working as planned.

Maia’s been surprising us with her communication skills. No, she’s not quite talking yet, although she babbles like crazy and from time to time we could swear that she’s said words like “hello,” “yeah” (in response to questions), and even the other day a “dada.” No, it’s her comprehension skills that have impressed us.

Since we adopted her just over two months ago we’ve been demonstrating a few basic words in sign language — mommy, daddy, milk, change — and in the last couple of days she’s firmly grasped the meaning of “milk.”

When she’s getting a bit whiny and we make the sign for “milk” she now instantly breaks into smiles and wriggles with pleasure. I’m not sure whether she’s happier because she knows food’s on the way or because finally her mom and dad have shown signs of understanding her and no longer have to resort to trial and error in order to divine her needs!

At the same time as this she’s become much more relaxed about food and is happy to wait while we prepare her bottle. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Not very, I think. Here’s a case in point. Wired.com currently has an article about a guy who was busted for tapping into a cafe’s wireless network while sitting in his car. Here’s the story:

A Michigan man got snagged by the cops and slapped with a $400 fine for using an open wireless connection at a cafe without purchasing a drink. He was in his car in the parking lot checking his email when an intrepid lawmen apprehended him. He was charged with “Unauthorized Use of Computer Access,” according to WOOD TV. However, that statute seems to require that the person be using the access to commit a crime. They might also have hit the guy with “Obtaining telecommunications services with intent to avoid charge,” a statute so broad that anyone who tethers their phone to a laptop without carrier permission would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Where it gets interesting is that Wired has started an analogy contest: complete the phrase “Using open wireless connections without permission is like…”

So what is using someone else’s open bandwidth actually like? Is there a good real world analogy for using an open connection without having permission? Use the nifty Reddit-powered tool below to vote up and submit your own analogy.

Now from a Buddhist view this man’s actions were unethical because he was taking something that was not freely given, in that the wireless network was provided for customers and was an incentive to come in and purchase something. He was too cheap to shell out for a cup of coffee, which is pretty cheap, really. Now the fact that the wireless network was not password protected is irrelevant here, because this guy could easily go in once, buy a coffee, and ask what the password is. Then he could return and use the network whenever he wanted. It would be inconvenient for the staff and bona fide customers to change the password on a daily basis to deter this, and in fact having a password would be an inconvenience in itself.

So his actions were unethical — in a mild way because he probably wasn’t hogging much bandwidth — although it’s not the kind of thing I’d think should be illegal.

So the analogy I submitted was “…using the restroom. Using an open wireless network is like walking into a cafe and using their bathroom without asking if they mind. It’s cheap and rude, but hardly a crime.”

I think this is an exact analogy. If you’re going to use a cafe’s restroom without making a purchase you’re using something that’s clearly intended for customers without bothering to become a customer, just as our driver did. You’re also potentially making life a little more difficult for paying customers, just as the driver was potentially slowing down the connection speeds. It’s polite to ask if you can use the restroom under such circumstances, and kind of rude not to.

But some of the suggested analogies seem to completely miss the point, ethically speaking. Here are the three that have so far received most votes.

Using open wireless connections without permission is like…

listening to your neighbor’s noise polluting stereo and enjoying it.

Well, both are forms of broadcast, but the similarity ends there. You don’t physically consume music by listening to it, whereas you do use up broadband by tapping into it. It’s unavoidable that you hear the music, while it’s a conscious choice to tap into the network. The word “enjoying” is misleading because it’s ambiguous. “Enjoy” can mean to “make use of” or it can mean “to take pleasure in.” I think it’s been used in a way here that might be deliberately misleading, because the writer is equating “taking pleasure in” music with “making use of” a wireless network, while the two activities are not at all similar.

taking items/junk left in the alley or on the side of the street. Using an open wireless network is like taking items left on the street-side or in the alley, that someone has left out. If they wanted the items, they would not be out of their control, and available for anyone to use or take. If you don’t want someone using your wireless network, secure it. Don’t be an idiot.

Junk left in an alley has clearly been declared unwanted, while a wireless network has clearly not. In addition, saying basically “If you don’t want people to steal it, lock it up” would excuse people who buy coffee and then go home with the cup, sugarbowl, and salt and pepper shakers.

using your neighbor’s runoff water to water your potted plants. Using an Open WiFi Connection is like using your neighbor’s runoff water to make your potted tomatoes grow well.

If the water has run off your neighbor’s land onto yours, it’s clearly not his property any more and you can use it as you see fit. This driver was of course sitting in the parking lot of the cafe, so it’s more like he went into his neighbor’s yard and helped himself to the contents of the water barrel. But more to the point is that again, you’re diminishing by some extent the cafe’s resources and using something that was clearly meant for customers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not outraged by people using open wireless networks. I’ve done it myself and I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with it. I’m more interested in the kinds of faulty reasoning that people use to justify their behavior (and there were many more examples in the article, but I’m not (quite) obsessive enough to pick them all to pieces).

It is icky to sit outside a building using someone else’s wireless network. it’s kind of rude. It’s a cheap way to behave, when the alternative is popping in for a coffee. I don’t think it should be criminal, but I also don’t think people should be completely excusing by using faulty faulty reasoning, especially reasoning that would support helping yourself to anything that isn’t locked up.

This post (and the last one too) were posted using my beloved LifeDrive, which is basically a Palm Pilot on steroids. I log in wirelessly to the blog and post in the usual way. I’m in bed and really should be sleeping, but sleep seems such a waste of time: what was evolution thinking!

The LifeDrive is a wonderful tool. As well as being able to handle email and web-surfing it’s a personal organiser, MP3 player, and photo album. I’ve even watched full-length movies on it.

The only drawback is reliability: twice now the hard drive has died on me and I’ve had to have it replaced under warranty. Really, PalmOne ought to switch to using a flash drive,which would be much more robust.

Anyway, way before that happens I’ll probably ditch this for the iPhone when it comes out next month. That’ll allow me to combine the functions of this machine, my cellphone, and my aging iPod. Ah, the sweet call of simplicity beckons! Or at least that’s my rationalisation!

On this day in 1993 I was ordained at Guhyaloka retreat centre in Spain, and was given the name “Bodhipaksa” by my preceptor, Suvajra. Just thought I’d mention it.

Digg.com’s a funny creature. Sometimes it throws up old stories that are anything but news but are — because of the democratic nature of the site — of great interest. One such that appeared today is an ABC story from November 2005 of CIA torture techniques. It’s shocking, both in terms of the brutality of the techniques employed and in the resulting deaths that have occurred.

Here are two techniques:

The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

I have a proposition which I believe is entirely logical. If a person believes that torture is a quick and reliable way of establishing the truth, surely we should ascertain whether that person really believes in the efficacy of torture by volunteering to be waterboarded. The average CIA operative who has been subjected to this technique has been willing to confess to anything after only 14 seconds. I suspect that the average person who believes in torture could be persuaded to admit that torture is a completely unacceptable method of interrogation in somewhat less time than that.

Any volunteers?

It’s good to see that Aung San Suu Kyi has not been forgotten.

There are some historical figures who define an epoch because they embody its highest values. Nelson Mandela is one such figure. Vaclav Havel is another. Their sister in resoluteness is Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been incarcerated for most of the past 17 years by the brutal military dictatorship that rules her country.

Her National League for Democracy won more than 80 percent of parliamentary seats in a 1990 election that the junta has refused to honor. Because of her commitment to a dialogue with the generals that could lead to a democratic transition, she has become a living symbol of the democratic principle. Being devoted to nonviolence, she belongs to the same small band of peaceful liberators as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

The junta will decide later this month whether to prolong Suu Kyi’s house arrest for another year. In response, there have been stirring calls for her release: 59 former heads of state, among them former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, signed a letter to junta leader Than Shwe, asking him “to release all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally, including National League for Democracy leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo.” Tellingly, the letter was signed by former prime ministers and presidents in Asia, where there has long been a reluctance to meddle in neighbors’ affairs.

You can read the complete Boston Globe editorial here.

Mars bars get veggie status back:

Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to “upset” vegetarians.

The firm had said it would change the whey used in some of its products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme, rennet.

The Vegetarian Society organised a campaign against the move, asking members to voice their concerns to parent company Masterfoods.

Mars said it became “very clear, very quickly” that it had made a mistake.

In just one week, more than 6,000 people bombarded the company, which produces the Mars, Snickers, Maltesers and Galaxy brands, with phone and e-mail complaints.

Forty MPs also signed a petition to voice their opposition.

Fiona Dawson, managing director of Mars UK, said the company had listened to customers and decided to reverse its decision.

I’ve noticed that vegetarians in the US are much less aware of things like rennet than are UK vegetarians. Rennet, in case you don’t know, is an enzyme that’s used to help cheese solidify. Generally it’s extracted from calves’ stomachs, and you’ll see it listed in the ingredients list in the US as either rennet or “enzymes.”

In a deli in the UK you’ll typically see a lot of cheeses labeled as “vegetarian” because they contain rennet that’s from microbial sources. I rarely eat cheese but recently I checked out our largest local supermarket (in New Hampshire) and could find virtually no cheese that’s vegetarian. With the one variety that I did find I had to scour the (very) small print to find the provenance of the enzymes. There’s no question of the supermarket actually making a feature of the fact that the cheese is vegetarian.

Very few US vegetarians seem to be aware that most of the cheese they eat isn’t in fact vegetarian. My perception is that consumers in the US are generally much less aware and much less feisty than those in my native UK. To some extent I’d put the blame of the government. The US government is notoriously in the pockets of big business and as a result the labeling laws here aren’t very strict. For example I don’t think US consumers are aware that much of the food they eat is genetically modified — but that’s because there’s no requirement that food be so labeled. If you don’t have the information you can’t make choices and you’re unlikely even to be aware that there’s an issue.

But there’s something strangely passive about US consumers. For example, the Coca Cola company had to withdraw the Dasani brand of bottled water from sale in the UK after a few weeks. Why? Because UK consumers discovered that it was just tap water. In the US people don’t care. Tap water as prices more expensive than gasoline? Sure, I’ll take a twelve-pack. Strange.

The Mars fiasco is a similar situation. UK consumers rise up in arms where US consumers simply keep on shopping.

Most of today I was at Aryaloka Buddhist Center (coincidentally featured in a local newspaper today) with a bunch of men who have asked to join the Western Buddhist Order, of which I’m a member. The purpose was to continue the training that these men have been pursuing.

We started with chanting the Buddhist Refuges and Precepts, meditating, and then reflecting in a period of meditation practice on connecting with our sense of purpose and on where we are in relation to ordination.

We spent the rest of the morning sharing the results of our reflections. After lunch we discussed a document that Viradhamma of the San Francisco Buddhist Center had put together — a kind of handbook for men who have asked to be ordained. We also talked about various changes in the culture of the WBO and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in recent years, changes which could be summarized as a greater sense of openness to various viewpoints, experimentation, and bottom-up organizing.

I had a great day. I really loved seeing some of the guys I hadn’t touched base with since coming back from Africa with my adopted daughter, Maia, and I particularly enjoyed catching up with Vajramati from NYC and with Viradhamma.

And the day boosted the confidence I have in my practice. First, I love seeing people changing as they practice the Dharma. Second, I love exploring the Dharma. And third, having been a bit housebound with the baby over the last two months it was very nourishing to spend time with friends.

A lot of Wordpress themes use standard chunks of text to help you see what the theme looks like in action. (Wordpress is the blogging software this site uses. Themes are design templates you can download and install.)

Here’s a list that’s used to show what an ordered (numbered) list looks like. Because when I’ve seen it I’ve generally been checking out the design, I’ve tended not to look at the content.

But this is a great list and I think I’ll try to do most of these things over the next week (the cartwheel sound dangerous and I’m not sure whether a frog would appreciate my advances). It might lift my mood a little (it was rainy today and I’ve been sleep-deprived because of Maia’s medication schedule).

Enjoy!

Be a kid again

1. Do a cartwheel.
2. Sing into your hairbrush.
3. Walk barefoot in wet grass.
4. Play a song you like really loud, over and over.
5. Dot all your “i”’s with smiley faces.
6. Read the funnies. Throw the rest of the paper away.
7. Dunk your cookies.
8. Play a game where you make up the rules as you go along.
9. Step carefully over sidewalk cracks.
10. Change into some play clothes.
11. Try to get someone to trade you a better sandwich.
12. Eat ice cream for breakfast.
13. Kiss a frog, just in case.
14. Blow the wrapper off a straw.
15. Have someone read you a story.
16. Find some pretty stones and save them.
17. Wear your favorite shirt with you favorite pants even if they don’t match.
18. Take a running jump over a big puddle.
19. Get someone to buy you something you really don’t need.
20. Hide your vegetables under your napkin.
21. Stay up past your bedtime.
22. Eat dessert first.
23. Fuss a little, then take a nap.
24. Wear red gym shoes.
25. Put way too much sugar on your cereal.
26. Make cool screeching noises every time you turn a corner.
27. Giggle a lot for no reason.
28. Give yourself a gold star for everything you do today.

Maybe you could try to do all these things as well. Let’s make a pact!

After two days staying at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa and taking trips over to the orphanage to visit Maia, our newly adopted daughter, we went on an overnight trip down to Awassa to visit her birth family.

Maia is an orphan. We knew she had a surviving maternal aunt and two uncles, but we didn’t know whom we’d meet.

We traveled with a lovely young couple from Seattle, Stacey and Eric, who were adopting two sisters, Abebech and Adenech. Our driver was Solomon.

We left early on the Saturday morning, heading off not long after dawn, stopping once on the outskirts of Addis to pick up a few supplies for the road, and a few hours later to use the bathrooms at a roadside cafe.

The road to Awassa is long and straight, and it runs through scrubby savanna with flat-topped trees and compounds of circular grass huts. Everywhere along the road there were people walking, or standing waiting for buses, or driving donkeys carrying improbably large loads. Children waved and shouted, often asking for pens, which they need for school.

Stacey and Eric’s birth family visit was first. We met their daughters’ uncle and five older siblings in a brightly painted house in a village about 30 minutes south of Awassa. Shrijnana and I took pictures while our translator read a letter that Stacey and Eric had written to the family. The children seemed rather sad, except when they saw some Polaroid photographs of themselves. I doubted that the younger ones had ever seen themselves in photographs. On the whole the meeting went well. The uncle seemed relieved and glad that the two youngest girls would have a better chance in life.

We were told that our birth family visit would be back in Awassa, and so I imagined it would be in a house or apartment in the town, but it turned out that we visited a grass hut on outskirts of the city.

We met an elderly couple who we took to be a great aunt and uncle, although the relationship wasn’t clear, but the person who we were really there to meet — Maia’s aunt M. — wasn’t there when we arrived. The hut was bare, apart from a few cooking utensils, a dung fire, a small wooden stool, and a bench that had no doubt been brought in specially for the occasion.

M. arrived, looking much younger than I had anticipated. The paperwork we had said that she was 26, but she looked more like she was 19. She was small, and had a teenager’s shy awkwardness. I wondered if she’d ever met white people before, and thought that we must be very intimidating. I had the feeling she was ashamed of her poverty.

M. was obviously very sad that she’d not been able to take care of her sister’s daughter. It appeared that she’d tried to take care of her for at least a month before deciding that the best thing she could do was take Maia to an orphanage.

M. was so sad it was hard to ask her questions. We learned that Maia had been born in that very hut. Among the few personal details we learned about Maia’s birth parents were that they were “tall.” Ethiopians are generally small by western standards, and the family seemed short compared to other Ethiopians, so we don’t know what “tall” means.

We gave M. a book of photographs showing our families, our house, and the town we live in, with a special emphasis on the schools Maia would attend. This was all we could give her because the adoption agency has to avoid any appearance that children are being traded for money or possessions. Even though Ethiopians dearly cherish their children, in a country as impoverished as Ethiopia such an impression could result in children being given up in large numbers in the expectation of payment.

It was deeply upsetting to see the poverty in which M. and others lived, and to know that we couldn’t do anything directly to help. She’s family, and she has nothing. It was also upsetting that a family had to be split up because of poverty, and yet we in the west have so much wealth. I found myself thinking that adoption is not the solution — really families need to have the resources that allow them to stay together.

It’s uncomfortable having such thoughts when you’ve just adopted a child. I’m of course delighted to have Maia in my life but wouldn’t it be great if there was a sort of “nonadoption agency” that funneled funds to Ethiopia and other poor countries to support families so that they could stay together. That’s not always possible, of course. There are something like three million orphans in Ethiopia. The extended families often already have too many children, and it’s not just a case of being able to feed them, but of being able to take care of all their needs. I find having one child to be demanding. How about six, or eight, or twelve?

We did some sightseeing the next day, which was a good way to put some of the sadness behind us. We bought some clothes for Maia so that she’d have something to connect her with the Sidama region, we visited a fish market on the shores of Lake Awassa, and took a bumpy trip through the Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park.

And we arrived back in Addis in the late afternoon. With the birth family visit behind us we’d be able to stay in the hostel for the rest of our trip, and so we brought Maia over from her dormitory to sleep in our room. Being a parent was no longer just a legal technicality established by a court decree, but something real: something physical and emotional.

[At my wife's request I've removed some personal details about Maia's early life and family, which she thought it was inappropriate to share.]

So it turns out that the letter published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette complaining that early Daylight Savings Time was exacerbating global warming was, as I suspected, a prank.

According to Snopes.com, a fairly reliable investigator of urban mythology, Mr. Meskimen’s phone message now says, “If you are calling about the Daylight Savings Time letter and wish to explain global warming or daylight savings time to me, I would urge you to get a sense of humor and/or a life, in that order. Unless, of course, you want to pay me for an interview; if so, please leave your telephone number and I will expediently return your call.”