First Impressions

I'm at Fort Myers, and today was my first day here at ECHO. I don't officially begin work until the 6th, so I've got one week to meet everybody and settle in.

So far, I couldn't be more excited to begin. I took a tour of the farm today, including the Monsoon garden which I will eventually manage. I've already seen and learned a number of cool things...

• I learned how to keep elephants out of a garden (fences, clearly, are ineffectual)
• I saw a contraption that converts barrels of dung into methane gas, which fills an innertube and then fuels a stove.
• Saw and tasted the Moringa trees. Very, very cool. I'll have to dedicate a post to them sometime.

Anyway, there's a ton more I could write about but it will have to wait. I've been meeting my fellow interns, and they all seem very cool, and very knowledgeable about subsistence farming.

I haven''t been able to take pictures yet because it's raining, but I promise they are forthcoming!

Setting Out by Wendell Berry
Even love must pass through loneliness,
the husbandman become again
the Long Hunter, and set out
not to the familiar woods of home
but to the forest of the night,
the true wilderness, where renewal
is found, the lay of the ground
a premonition of the unknown.
Blowing leaf and flying wren
lead him on. He can no longer be at home,
he cannot return, unless he begin
the circle that first will carry him away.

I recognize, of course, that Berry's poem is about a far more final "setting out" than my trip to Florida. Nonetheless, I think it's a beautiful picture of leaving home. This is my final week in Marietta before leaving for Fort Myers. I am scheduled to move in to ECHO on the 29th, so I'm quickly running out of time to tie up all my loose ends here: cleaning, voting, friends, odd-jobs around the house that remain unfinished... and packing, at some point!

I'll confess to being a little nervous about starting life in Florida. I recently spoke with one of the other interns, and discovered that he has both an undergraduate and Masters degree in Agriculture, whereas I have no previous exposure to agriculture at all. I'm trusting that the staff didn't make a mistake when they accepted my application; and I know that God is in control of these next couple years of my life.

Needless to say, my digital camera and my laptop will be making the pilgrimage to Florida with me, so I'll try to get pictures and thoughts up soon after I arrive.

Once again I have failed to update for a long time. Heather and I have been home for a couple of weeks now, and if you want to know more about our trip across Europe you can go to her blog here. Although I think even it is only updated to cover half the trip so far. I'll post some pictures to give you a general idea...

Now that I'm home I'm more or less biding my time until the ECHO internship in Fort Myers, FL begins in October. My knowledge of farming is limited to reading Wendell Berry short stories and having a killer farmer's tan. So I should have a lot to learn when I reach Florida. I can't wait to start.

During the trip and since returning I have had a lot of opportunity to read, which has been a nice change from the busy schedule of the school year. Purely out of spite, I'm going to inflict last month's reading list on my readers...

- Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco - I found this book really enjoyable, though I hardly think Eco considers himself a friend of the church.

- The Road, Cormac McCarthy - I read this book at Jeff Pipe's suggestion, and it was haunting, if a bit (intentionally) sparse. It's by the same guy who did No Country for Old Men, so don't expect a terribly bubbly story.

- All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy - I actually enjoyed this more than The Road, and can't wait to read the other two related novels.

- Peace Like a River, Leif Enger - An author/blogger I've been reading picked this book as one of his favorites, and it very well may be one of mine now as well. Couldn't put it down.

- Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy - Potentially the least depressing Hardy book I've ever read. I liked it.

- Two Ears of Corn, Roland Bunch - This is not a novel, but I'm reading it in preparation for my ECHO internship. It's about general good practice for doing agricultural work, including things like introducing appropriate technologies. Crucial if you're interested in Ag. Dev. Otherwise skip it.

- Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien - Hardly my first time.

- Two Crichton novels - State of Fear and Congo. Good quick reads.

- King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard - I had never read any Haggard before, but both Mr. Narayan and Heather (who read him at Oxford) recommended him. This one is a great adventure story, and a fun read. You do have to deal with the unthinking racism of Haggard's time (England was still an empire).

- She, H. Rider Haggard - Still reading this one, but so far I like it more than King Solomon's Mines.

I'm probably forgetting a couple. Anyone read anything recently they recommend?

La Ville-lumiere

Tomorrow is our last full day in Paris, after which Heather and I part ways with my parents and grab a train to Strasbourg. Heather hasn't been home since March, and I think she's more or less ready to see the States again. Still, I think this should be a good trip.

Some highlights from Paris... we saw Victor Hugo's house, the Pantheon (which contains among other things Foucault's pendulum and the aforementioned author's remains), Saint-Sulpice, the Eiffel Tower (of course), and Saint Chapelle. We viewed a large amount of impressionist and realist art at the Musee d'Orsay, and today we spent a few hours at the Louvre (where I could have spent a week). We also saw the Opera Garnier, which is the opera house that inspired Leroux to write the Phantom of the Opera (the French book, not the musical). It has subterranean water and everything. Tomorrow we're catching an early train to Versailles.

The pinnacle of the trip for me, however, was our visit to Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral itself was spectacular, and not just because of its associations with Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame. After touring the inside of the sanctuary we climbed the tall spiral staircase up to the first landing at the base of the two towers, right near the entry to the belfry where the fictional Quasimodo made his home.

There is a belfry at the base of each of the two towers of Notre Dame, one containing a full complement of cathedral bells and the other a single, gargantuan bell. While wandering around the top of the cathedral, amidst the gargoyles and chimeras, the bells began to sound. The clamor was enormous, almost to the point of being painful; the vibrations could be felt across the entire stone edifice. They sounded for a good fifteen minutes, and those fifteen minutes overlooking Paris and listening to the bells of Notre Dame were the best fifteen minutes of this trip.

In my opinion.

Traipsing the Old World

Heather has officially finished her term in Oxford, and thanks to her study abroad-ing and my father's hoard of frequent flyer points the whole family is over here now to visit the university town with her. It was great meeting some of the UGA students she studied with. And it was obviously cool to see the colleges, shops and pubs of Oxford. Several of the pubs we've eaten at are older than the U.S. The majority of them, actually. Just to put things in perspective.

Being here gives one strange ideas about graduate work abroad, though the cost would be prohibitive. Especially at 2 dollars per pound. Though they have a great D.Phil program in Development studies, with focuses in Economic Development, Anthropological Research, Forced Migration...

Anyway, we're off to Paris tomorrow from whence Heather and I will be hitting hostels across Europe.

Radiohead - All I Need

Hell in a Handbasket?

"For the Time Being"
Annie Dillard
---
Is it not late? A late time to be living? Are not our heightened times the important ones? For we have nuclear bombs. Are we not especially significant because our century is? —our century and its unique Holocaust, its refugee populations, its serial totalitarian exterminations, our century and its antibiotics, silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No, we are not and it is not. These times of ours are ordinary times, a slice of life like any other...

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time—or even knew selflessness or courage or literature—but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. There is no less holiness at this time—as you are reading this—than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Chebar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God.... In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture. Purity's time is always now.