Ins and Outs of Winter Cycling

SO we're in the dead of winter, and that means that people who bike all winter are in their most extreme season. Jeff over at BikeJerks has posted a rundown of his gear, which I find very interesting. He seems to do that yearly, and it's always fun to see what others are riding. If you already have a few winters of riding under your belt, his gear choices may make more sense to you, but if you're just starting, you might find the cost of his stuff prohibitive. Heck, I find it prohibitive. But Jeff works in the bike industry, and with that comes the perks of using really nice stuff that he can buy at close to wholesale cost or cheaper. Most of us can't do that. So I want to give a walk-through of my gear to show what it looks like for someone who doesn't have industry access to buy clothes warm enough for riding through the winter. 

Keep in mind that cycling clothing is extremely specific to the individual, and what works for me may not work for you. What I am trying to do here is show how to choose wisely when deciding how to keep warm. How you go about keeping warm may look different, but the general principles of how to keep warm are, I think, generally similar. On the day I took these pictures it was -6F outside in Minneapolis, with a windchill of -24F. I apologize in advance for the crappy phone pictures.

We'll start with my base layer. I use an UnderArmor longsleeve turtleneck thermal (heatgear) on top. It has compression, which boosts circulation. This stuff is not cheap, but it is only for extreme cold, by which I mean below -3F windchill. Above -3F I use a C9 longsleeve thermal (cheaper), and if the mercury reads above 12F windchill, I use regular a old cotton waffle-pattern thermal. But it is cold now, so on goes the UnderArmor. Down under I am wearing a pair of ASICS windproof boxers. These also are not cheap, but there's nothing worse than having to pee when your plumbing is too cold to perform. My feet are clad in some SockGuy WTF socks, because, wtf, it is so cold out right now.

Now at Level 2, I put on a cycling jersey, cotton longjohns, and military-surplus wool socks. The jersey is a mountain biking jersey with a quarter zipper. I wear it for two reasons: It is reasonably warm and does not bunch up, and it has three pockets in the back (one in the middle, with one on either side). The pockets can be useful for carrying extra gear, like granola bars or extra inner tubes or a phone, but I want them primarily for if I need to fill the side pockets with handwarmers. This is a trick I learned from ice divers, the type of guys who do this for fun and profit. Ice divers need to stay warm, too, and one way they do that is to have heating packs over their kidneys. The kidneys are close to the surface of your skin and all your blood passes through them as it circulates through your body. Having heating packs (or, in my case, handwarmers) directly over the kidneys heats up all your blood as it goes around. The jersey I'm wearing now is actually a litter bigger than I would like, but all my smaller ones (with their pockets that ride higher on the back, closer to the kidneys) are in my suitcase, packed away for the winter.

Here's a close-up of the longjohn going into the sock.

Next, Level 3, is when I put on my Carhartt two-layer beanie, cotton turtle-neck fleece, and wool cargo pants. The pants are made by The Gap and cost me $4 at Goodwill. I wear wool pants because they keep me warm even when wet (important when the roads are slushy or the weather is sleety!) and because they don't show dirt. Pants can get really dirty in the winter, and I want to look as presentable as possible, even if I should slip on ice and fall into slush. The fleece has a drawstring around the bottom so I can cinch it up close to my body to keep wind out. My loins are girded with a (not pictured) Galco reinforced nylon belt, which, as far as belts go, is a pretty solid system for keeping your pants where you need them.

Before I can put my gloves on, I need to lace up my boots! I wear black combat boots that I bought from a surplus store. They are leather and take a long time to put on. 

The soles are not great - they are rubber and get very hard when exposed to cold. This reduces traction and makes it harder to pedal. Right now I use disposable plastic pedals, which are slippery. If I shelled out and got some metal pedals with spikes, this problem might go away. Once laced up, with my wool pants tucked inside, the boots look like this.

Now I may put on my base layer gloves, which are a pair of Novara Statos'. 

I like the reflective material on this glove, the snot patch on the thumb, and the drawstring on the cuff. The lobster-like combination of the fourth and pinky fingers is a good idea, but on the inside the fingers are separated, just like a regular glove, and thus cannot rub together to keep warm. What were they thinking? The gloves are also only moderately windproof.

Here's the cuff cinched down.

It's important that I cinch this glove down now, because otherwise my wrist may get cold. If you turn your palm face up and bend your fingers away from you, you should be able to see a bunch of blood vessels right by the surface of your wrist. These need to stay very warm and protected, or else your fingers will get very cold. Cold wrists lead to cold fingers. Over the fleece then I can put my bright yellow Adidas windbreaker shell. 

I bought this over three years ago, and to this day it is the best $2 I ever spent at Goodwill. It keeps the wind out, my body heat in, glows in the daytime, and adds visibility at night. It actually defines what it means to be visible. No, it does not need batteries. 

Next I don my favorite new piece of gear, the 45NRTH Lung Cookie "technical balaclava". This thing is not cheap, either, but boy, is it great. Merino wool means it wicks moisture away. It only comes in one size, but that's OK because it's wool, so if you put it in the dryer for 15 minutes, it will shrink to your my head size. The balaclava gets tucked into the collar of the fleece.

What really sets it apart from other balaclavas, though, is the adjustable facemask. It has a tab so you can move it up and down with big mittens on (this is so key), and is separate from the balaclava itself, sewed on by the ear. This means that when you raise it up over your face, you get a double swath of fabric over your ears, keeping them toasty. It also means that you can fasten a helmet strap under your chip and then raise the mask up and over the straps, i.e. fastening your helmet doesn't lock your facemask in place. I didn't wear a helmet today, so you don't get to see that - sorry.

With the mask in place, I can put on my canvas, military surplus outer mitten.

These are canvas with a leather palm. They have an independent pointer-finger slot, or you can just use them as mittens, which is what I do. The straps on the back allow me to tighten them close to my wrist once I put them on. They are dirty because sometimes in the winter I drop my chain, and I have to put a greasy grimy chain back on. If you want a picture of how the Stratos looks in comparison, here you go.

To this I add a pair of Oakley goggles... 

...and I look like this.

Now to grab the messenger bag. I'm still using the TrashBag that I bought over two years ago, which has served me very well and given me a great deal of sore vertebrae happiness. This is what was inside it today. 

Clockwise from the top: Extra wool socks, tool pouch (with tire levers/patch kit/extra chain links), Lezine micro floor drive pump, adjustable wrench, 15mm wrench, extra inner tube, Crank Bros M17 multi-tool, extra gloves, neck warmer, knife. There's other stuff too, like floss, chapstick, wallet, phone, keys, mints, etc., but nobody wants to see that crap. The tool pouch actually came in really handy, because this day I had my first flat tire in over a year. 

Lately I've been riding this machine, my super-dandy Surly Steamroller, maroon, 59cm. 

700x23 tires, 170mm cranks, vintage Unicanitor on a zero-setback post, pink LizardSkin tape

The handlebar mount is for a Niterider Lumina 500. In addition to being obnoxiously bright, the Lumina is also rechargeable. This is good for winter because sometimes normal batteries inside lights have trouble with the extreme cold, what with not wanting to run and other shenanigans like that. Since the sun sets around 4:30, you need light for most evening commutes.

The bike is a fixed-gear. I ride a fixed gear in the winter for several reasons. First is simplicity. I only need a front brake, no derailleurs, and a shorter chain. This means less maintenance and less things to brake break. Oh, and not having to shift is really nice when wearing huge gloves. Riding fixed also means that I have a direct connection to my back wheel and can feel immediately if I start to lose traction. I can also slow down with my legs, which is handy when/if my front brake should take extra time to grab because of a wet rim/cold pads. 

Here's a close-up of the drivetrain. I'm running a 44x18 gear ratio for a development of 64 gear inches.

I like a spinny gear for two reasons. More spinning means I pedal more, which means I heat up faster. I also have to keep pedaling, meaning I stay warm. Pedaling faster means my legs are going around faster, and that circular motion has a gyroscopic effect, making me more stable in the snow and slush. Should I warble, I can recover my balance more quickly than if my legs were lumbering around at 45 rpm. I run cheap cogs and chainrings because I usually replace them after winter.

Gratuitous winter grime shot

 So that was an overview of what I ride and how I dress. It's exciting to see more and more cyclists out and about in the MPLS winters. Remember to dress warm, ride hard, and enjoy the scenery!

_DZ

10 Records That Shape and Shift

This is a list of ten records that shaped how I listen to music and what I enjoy listening to. Not all of these records are records that I still like - I probably own less than half of them. Neither are these records that I would have ever put at the top of a "Top Ten" list. These, rather, are the albums that, for lack of a better word, revolutionized how I listen to music. If my "musical life journey" could be expressed as a painting (I guess making it a "musical life painting" (-_-) ), then each of these albums would be a new color added to the palatte. My headphones are the brush. So these are the colors that have tainted my brush, for better or for worse, over the past 12 years.

TLC - Fanmail

This is probably the most embarrassing album on this list, but whatever. I owned it in seventh grade. Up until Fanmail I had only listened to CCM artists (dc Talk, Newsboys, M.W. Smith, etc), and where Fanmail differed the most from those discs was the issues that it addressed. The Newsboys sang about how to stand up for your faith; TLC sang about how to deal with a society who didn't like you. I went to a Christian school and didn’t have to worry about defending my faith, but as tween I did have to worry about fitting in. I liked how relatable secular music was. I couldn’t get enough, and all the CDs I bought after Fanmail (which was a gift from a girl in my class, by the way. I didn’t buy it.) were secular. This disc laid the foundation for the type of music that I wanted to listen to.

Stand-out Tracks: “No Scrubs,” “Unpretty,” “Dear Lie”

Subsequent Artists: Green Day, Offspring, Eminem, Smash Mouth

Creed - Human Clay

While Fanmail may have laid the foundation, this is record that shaped the direction of my musical taste. Growling vocals, guitar solos, aggression, the works. Because it was Creed none of it was any good, but that doesn’t matter when you’re 13 or 14.  My appreciation for music has hopefully developed way beyond its humble beginnings, but I still think that my gut reaction to music will be driven by how similar it is to Creed. Human Clay received such heavy rotation (Weathered and My Own Prison less so) that the disc no longer plays. The song “Higher,” in particular, set the standard for what I thought was good music. Crunching riffs, clear vocals, tension-building bridge leading into ripping guitar solo - it was all there. (True to the charges leveled against Creed for being formulaic, “Stand Here With Me” off of Weathered did all of this in the exact same way, but better). Bands that I listen to now can be traced back to Creed in one way or another. Take Devin Townsend for example. I just bought his latest record, Epicloud. I can trace him back to Steve Vai, who I can trace to David Lee Roth, back to Van Halen, to Guns n’ Roses, to Jet, to Alien Ant Farm, to Seether, to Lifehouse, to Creed. I can do analysis like that for most of my current record collection.

Stand-out Tracks: “What If,” “Beautiful,” “Higher,” “With Arms Wide Open”

Subsequent Artists: Nickelback, 12 Stones, Evanescence, 3 Doors Down, Fuel, Default, Seether, Finger Eleven, P.O.D., Chevelle

Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard this album: I was on a shinkansen (a bullet train) on the way to Tokyo from Kyoto, listening to a friend’s MD player. This was the spring of my eighth grade year, when MDs were still useful. Linkin Park literally blew me away; it was nothing like anything I had heard before. It was fast, aggressive, and energizing. It was rap. It was rock. And you could sing along to it. All the bands I was listening to at the time- Creed, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, P.O.D., U2 - didn’t even come close to capturing the excitement that Hybrid Theory brought to my middle school life. I could yell, spit rhymes, headbang, air guitar, DJ scratch, all at the same time! The amazing thing is that I never owned this album, even to this day, yet I can still sing along word-for-word with the whole thing.

Stand-out Tracks: “Papercut,” “With You,” “Crawling,” “In The End”

Subsequent Artists: Puddle of Mudd, Trapt, Drowning Pool, Alien Ant Farm, Incubus, Deftones, Breaking Benjamin

Weezer - The Green Album

I liked this album because a popular girl liked it. There, I said it. She was fun and sporty and two years older than me and liked Weezer. So, as a high school freshman, I decided to like Weezer. And I still like Weezer. Weezer pulled out a relaxed and fun side of me that Linkin Park suppressed. They wanted to spend all day at the beach and surf and complain that relationships with popular girls never worked out. (OMG, that was so true!) The difference with Weezer was that listening to them actually made you want to care about the issues that Rivers was dealing with. I was sad with him, anxious with him, joyous with him, and tortured with him. Life was tough when you listened to Weezer, but if things ever got too tough, you could always put on your Weezer t-shirt that read “If it’s too loud, turn it down,” and get on with your day. I listened to this album pretty regularly in my early high school years, except for that one time I stopped because I was dating a girl. All Weezer ever sang about was breaking up, and I didn’t need all that negative noise. But then she dumped me over the phone, and I went back to blasting “Island in the Sun.”

Stand-out Tracks: “Photograph,” “Smile,” “Island in the Sun” (“Hashpipe” sucks, yo.)

Subsequent Artists: White Stripes, Modest Mouse, Jimmy Eat World, Good Charlotte, Cake, Goo Goo Dolls

Rage Against the Machine - Battle of Los Angeles

This CD defined my existence for two years, and now I can barely stand it. The angst and rage present in Hybrid Theory was here, not only tenfold, but also in a way that made me want to care about what Zack & Co. were angry about. Linkin Park were mad, sure, but I didn’t really know why. Rage talked about politics, economics, poverty, and other important stuff that high school sophomores with a lot of emotion and energy want to want to care about. While others in school were still caring about being popular, as I had in my TLC phase, I had “graduated” into caring about “real” issues. I can only imagine how my supercilious attitude must have come off. “Oh, you didn’t get elected to that student council position? Well, the EZLN rebels fighting for their freedom in Mexico are dying as America doesn’t care, so I’m gonna go put up their poster in my locker. Later.” I was a real prick. BUT ANYWAY, for the better part of two years Rage was the primary band that I listened to. Part of the appeal was Morello’s guitar work. I was a fan of good guitar playing (well, good in the “loud and fast” sense) ever since listening to Mark Tremonti from Creed solo away on “Higher,” but Morello was more interesting. He took what the guitar was capable of into left field and stayed there. Add that Tim the bassist was crazy and Zack “spit non-fiction” about real issues, and I was hooked. I want to say that I eventually matured out of this record, but I didn’t. I became a Christian - that’s really what pulled me out of it. I was talking to a youth pastor named Dave and he told me something about anger that I’ll never forget. “Dann,” he said, “you need to watch out to avoid anger. A lot of Christian parents warn against AC/DC or Judas Priest or whatever, but those guys don’t bother me because I don’t think they’re very serious. But Rage, man, they are actually angry. And if you feed on that, it will destroy you.” So for a while I worked hard to be more careful. And then a Christian thing called “sanctification” happened, and my entertainment tastes changed because God was at work within me. Now anytime a Rage song comes on, it’s hard for me to listen to it because I’m not that person who used to enjoy it anymore. I’m different.

Stand-out Tracks: “Guerilla Radio,” “Calm Like a Bomb,” “Sleep Now In the Fire,” “War Within a Breath”

Subsequent Artists: Porno for Pyros, Soundgarden, Living Color, Sevendust, Jane’s Addiction

Guns N’ Roses - Greatest Hits

Throughout most of high school my goal was to be kind of a rebel. That didn’t work too well, because it turned out that I was too introverted to be rebellious. Being a rebel was also a full-time job, but I didn’t have enough to be angry about to make it a lifestyle, and I didn’t have the energy to keep up a front 24/7. Guns N’ Roses changed all that, because Axl taught me that you don’t need to be rebellious all the time if you can manage to be stupidly irreverent some of the time. I started listening to classic rock my junior year of high school, and the summer between junior and senior year I borrowed this CD from a guy named Jay. And that was my summer. “Patience” followed by “Paradise City,” “Civil War,” and “You Could Be Mine.” Rock out and repeat. Summer ended and I was still rocking. For the next four months, I wanted to be Axl Rose. I wanted to tour the world, wear ridiculous clothes, and trash talk rock critics. I wanted to gyrate around micstands, call Cobain a loser, and date crazy women named Michelle. Looking back on it now makes it seem all very funny and childish, but I was serious. When I was 17, I wanted to be Axl. Their Greatest Hits should have been a double disc. 

Stand-out Tracks: “Patience,” “Paradise City,” “Sweet Child Of Mine”

Subsequent Artists: AC/DC, Van Halen, KISS, Led Zeppelin, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Hanoi Rocks, Poison, Scorpions, Velvet Revolver

G3 Live - Rockin’ in the Free World

I bought this CD on a trip to Thailand in the spring of 2005, as part of the logical progression of my exploration of the “influencers” of modern rock bands. Up until this time it had been mostly alternative rock with a smattering of classic rock, but late in 2004 I started on the “influencer” kick. I felt I knew what bands I liked, and respected the musicians who were part of them. I also knew that those musicians were influenced by bands before them, and that musicians I looked up to had musicians they looked up to. And so I traced modern bands back to classic bands, and classic bands back to Hendrix. But I soon found out that I didn’t like Hendrix. So I traced Hendrix forward, and got to virtuoso guitar players - particularly Steve Vai. Vai had all the talent you could want combined with the panache of Axl Rose. What could be better?, I said, and so I bought this album. The three guitarists on this record took me by storm. Malmsteen’s “Trilogy Suite Op.5” was the greatest piece of music I had ever heard. My hierarchy of guitarists was quickly rearranged to put him at the top, followed by Vai, Van Halen, Slash, Page, Morello, Angus Young, Kim Thayil, Satriani, and so on and so forth. I had always liked guitar work, but this album turned the key into a whole new world of guitar work. I had a lot of disposable income in the months following this purchase, and a lot of it was spent on instrumental guitar albums. That has stayed reasonably constant over the last seven years, to the point where a whole shelf of my CD rack is dedicated to such records.

Stand-out Tracks: “Crystal Planet,” “Whispering a Prayer,” “Trilogy Suite Op. 5”

Subsequent Artists: Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Eric Johnson, Buckethead

Yngwie Malmsteen - Concerto for the Electric Guitar

My list includes this record not because of anything innovative it did, but rather because it showed how poorly integrated classical and rock music does no one any favors. My parents are classical music buffs and I was exposed to a lot of it growing up, but I never liked it. It was always “Mommy and Daddy’s boring music” and ipso facto inferior to anything else that I was listening to. This was never more true than in high school when I was immersed in rock music; the only classical instruments I wanted to hear were strings on an Evanescence record or an organ in a Doors’ track (barely a classical instrument, I know). But as I said above, alternative rock led to to classic rock, which led me to Hendrix, which led me to virtuoso guitarists. Just like, I think, most people freshly exposed to virtuoso guitar, I took an immediate liking to Malmsteen. His speed and technical ability were incredible, and when one has yet to learn about things like harmony, phrasing, tone, fuzz, and other fun stuff like that, technical prowess is all that matters. After I had chewed through a few of his solo albums that he released in the '80s, I had to get this album, because it combined blistering fast guitar with all the “epicness” of playing with an orchestra. I was 19 at the time and very into “epicness.” Rather than epicness, however, I found disappointment lurking in every track. My childhood exposure to classical music had taken its toll, and I found that I was used to much more lush, complex, and interesting orchestral arrangements then what Yngwie offered. Just watch this and tell me that it’s not absolutely terrible. It makes both the electric guitar and the orchestra look bad. The guitar part looks childishly simple, and the orchestra looks bored. Neither instrument is playing to its strength. And so, with that, this record cemented in my mind a clear separation between rock and classical orchestral music. By seeing orchestras used poorly, I gained an appreciation for the good classical music that I had grown up with, and so went out and bought a lot of classical CDs. By seeing Yngwie perform without bass support, I realized that bass support is really crucial to making a good rock band, and I gained an appreciation for good bass work on rock records (none of which shows up in any of Yngwie’s catalog). Rock stayed rock, and classical stayed classical.

Stand-out Tracks: All are equally bland

Subsequent Artists: Paganini in particular, and an increased appreciation for classical music in general.

Klaus Schulze - En=Trance

See that picture? The one of the guy opening the door to the electromagnetic spectrum? That got me to buy this album. I knew nothing of Klaus Schulze, nothing of kraut-rock, nothing of sequencers, mindscapes, patches, or textures. But I liked that picture and was attracted to an album composed of four tracks of 17-minutes each, so I bought it off eBay and waited for it to arrive. It showed up postmarked from Russia, the product of an illegal pirating operation. Oops. I have never listened to a legitimate copy, so I don’t know if the quality is equal to the original, but it did its job before the poorly-pressed disc disintegrated. I honestly didn’t know what to think as I listened to it the first time. I had never heard synthesizer music, but knew that it was "different" and that I liked it. As I grew to like it more and more, I noticed that my appreciation for cohesive album experiences grew. Up until this time I had listened to rock singles and "greatest hit" and such, but it was rare for me to listen to albums start to finish without skipping a track I didn’t like. En=Trance didn’t have any tracks I didn’t like. A side effect of this was the change from music being background noise to music as an active experience. I began to sit down for an hour and concentrate on just listening to music. This album was rich enough and interesting enough to make me do that. Another change I noticed was that I liked classical music more as a result of hearing Klaus Schulze. Both are what music critics call “long-form” music - music that takes a while to develop an idea and makes you stick with it through boring moments and exciting moments because it wants to actually take you somewhere. It presents a journey for you to take rather than a chorus to headbang to. A common complaint leveraged against classical is that it it boring, and therefore not worth listening to. This, I think, has less to do with the merits of classical music (though some is quite tedious, cc: Mahler), and more to do with a misunderstanding of short form vs long form music. They aim to accomplish different things. Klaus and his synthesizers accomplished wonderful things.

Stand-out Tracks: The whole album, all four tracks.

Subsequent Artists: Jean-Michel Jarre, Peter Namlook, Adam Freeland, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Aphex Twin
Fun Activity: Say "in-depth synthesizer" ten times fast.

Devin Townsend - Infinity

I bought this record because I liked Devin’s vocals on Steve Vai’s Sex and Religion record, but nothing could have prepared me for the sonic assault that “Infinity” threw at me. It was like Hybrid Theory, but it was also like Metallica, but it was also sensitive, and above all, it was spine-crushingly insane. I sat there with my headphones on, mouth agape, thinking “what on earth is entering my brain??” Sex and Religion was overall pretty terrible; this was brilliant and terrifying, engaging and overwhelming, precise yet chaotic. To this day nothing has matched it. By the end of the first four tracks, which comprise a seamless start to the album, my heart rate had risen by at least 15 beats/min. I needed to press “pause” and take a few deep breaths! Townsend uses a “wall of sound” technique in which layer after layer of instrumentation is woven together, on top of which the melody is laid. Most rock music is made with just your normal instruments: vocals, guitar, bass, maybe some synth, and drums. The backdrop to all of this is silence. On Infinity, the backdrop is more noise. Ancient people had this idea of the “music of the spheres,” the idea that there is cosmic music always playing that we are unaware of, and if it ever stopped, time and space would unravel and humans would be thrown off balance, terrified. Infinity touches on that. When the album reaches a point where noise actually stops, you can’t breathe. At first the noise seems raucous, but then it becomes natural, and then you realize that you feel lost without it. It’s hard to explain. Just listen to it. This album, in a way, even influenced my education. It was recorded just after Devin was diagnosed as bi-polar, and so represents him, literally, at the height of his insanity. Listening to it made me want to understand how his mind works - how any “different” mind works. And so I started studying psychology in college, watching psy/thriller films, and reading books about LSD and near-death experiences. All that to say that I still haven’t figured out what is going on in the album, and it takes me for a trip with every listen.

Stand-out Tracks: “Christeen”, “Bad Devil,” “Colonial Boy,” “Dynamics”

Subsequent Artists: None, because Devin stands on his own. I now have four more of Devin’s records. Go listen to Epicloud.

_DZ

Coats in Summer and Proper Use

“Attention Goodwill shoppers,” flowed the voice over the loudspeaker, “today is dollar-forty-nine day. All items with a green tag are just $1.49. That’s right, all items with a green tag are just $1.49. Thank you for shopping at Goodwill, where we’re more than just a store - we equip people to work.”

My fingers flitted through the rack of coats, my eyes scanning labels as I walked down the coat rack. Beige. Beige. Too small. Women’s. Too small. Too cheaply made. Ugh, red. Ooh, leather - too small though. This looks nice! I lighted on a huge woolen overcoat with “London Fog” on the label. I pulled it off the rack and tried it on. Too big. The arms were the right length, but you could have fit another of my torso inside. What rotten luck it was sometimes to be tall and skinny. I replaced it among the other coats and continued making my way towards the end of the aisle. I passed a couple more. Here’s another wool coat - a possibility! The tag read “Stafford.” I think I have a sportcoat made by them - it was nice. Let’s see how this one fits. I pulled it around myself, looking a tad ridiculous as I stood there in the middle of store in July, trying on woolen coats. The sleeves fit, the length of the coat looked right, and there was just enough space for my torso to be comfortable covered. I looked at the tag. Green! Looks like I found the deal of the day. 

“You find anything?” asked a voice to my left. I turned to see an middle-aged man, maybe early fifties, staring at me through a pair of glasses mounted low on his nose. He was wearing a green polo shirt and khaki shorts, and the scruffy beard on his face complimented by his socks-and-sandals clad feet reminded me a bit of my father. “Yeah, this right here,” I said, holding my arms out to better show him the coat that I was still hidden in. “One-hundred percent wool, and just a dollar-forty-nine!” 

“Can’t beat that!” he said, and I nodded in agreement. “This is the best time to buy coats, because no one else is looking.”

“That’s right!” he agreed.

“How ‘bout you? Find anything?”

He shrugged and held up a long beige coat. “Got this here, but there’s no label on it so it’s useless to me. It’s nice, though. 100% wool.”

“Really?” I asked as I stepped towards him. He handed me the coat to look at. Sure enough, it was wool. Really well-made, too. Heavy. But without a label, any potential customer would be skeptical that it really was a nice coat, or that it wasn’t stolen. Such skepticism is problematic for flippers.

You see the flippers from time to time at the Goodwill or other thrift stores. Guys browsing the electronics or the golf clubs, looking for a name-brand stereo or putter to buy and flip. Women looking at the men’s dress clothes or the household knick-knacks on the off chance that they might find a shirt of a good cut or maybe some genuine silver utensils. Buy and sell, a little bit of money here, a bit there. There’s always something to be learned from these people.

“You can have first dibs on it if you want,“ said the Flipper, gesturing at the coat still in my hand. I took off my new-found pile of warmth and tried his coat on. Too short in the sleeves. Again. Besides, it was beige. Beige coats are a sign of the wealthy, of the richer upper class who either don’t have a lifestyle that puts them in positions where an overcoat can get dirty, or who have enough money that they don’t have to worry about replacing a coat even if it does. This violates what I call the “proper use” of an item. God made fabrics and materials, and humans figured out that if those materials were combined and stitched a certain way, they would keep one warm. The primary purpose of a coat then is to keep one warm and dry and clean. Wool does all of those things (which is why I seek it out), and wearing a darker color allows the coat to fulfill its function longer, because the dirt doesn’t show. Using an item until it is finally worn out is a wise financial decision; here proper use and financial prudence dovetail nicely together. The only reasons a coat need be beige is because of style, which is ephemeral, or to broadcast one’s actual wealth, or to make oneself appear to be wealthy and in possession of “good taste.” Since I care little for style and am not wealthy, nor do I want to pretend to be, I have no interest in beige coats. “It doesn’t work for me, thanks though.” I handed the coat back.

I continued my search down the coat rack, nearing the end. Ah! Another well-made coat - one he could flip, perhaps. “Here’s a nice one,” I said, holding up a darker woolen Hugo Boss. Surely the German name would impress him. Instead I was met with a “What’s that? Is that a good one?” So this man isn’t just a flipper - he’s an ill-educated flipper.

Brands are a funny thing. They signify quality, but only to a certain extent. There is a very fine line between when a brand means “well made” and when it only means “trendy, so we can charge more.” Browsing Goodwill over the years has taught me a lot about quality - about things that are waterproof, windproof, warm, airy, breathable or not. NorthFace, for example, is one of those brands that is an automatic buy for me. It doesn’t matter if the item fits me or not, because it is guaranteed well-made. A well-made item is useful for somebody, and even if I can’t use it I can at least have the satisfaction of giving a high-quaity item away to someone else. NorthFace is (normally) expensive, and rightly so - it delivers on what it claims. Making extreme cold-weather gear or a windbreaker that is waterproof/breathable is hard, and to do it well justifies the cost. This is part of proper use. Things that accomplish their goals well should be honored and used. And, for Christians, Jesus commands us to be generous with our belongings. To both invest in proper use and to pass it on, I feel, honors Jesus. Because of this I have tried to make a habit out of anticipating being generous. If I find nice things at good prices, I buy them in the hopes that they will be useful to someone somewhere down the line. But as I stood there in front of the coats, it seemed that Flipper was unaware of proper use.

This brought all sorts of existential questions crashing down on me, one after another like a rack of coats breaking free of their hangers and burying me under a pile on the floor. What did this guy do? Was he successful? Where had he been in his life that brought him, here and now, to the middle of a Goodwill in Minnesota, staring at a rack of coats trying to figure out which ones he could buy and make a profit on. Did he like wool? Leather? Polyester? Now the guy was talking something about cashmere. “Here, you feel that? That’s cashmere. That’s gotta be. That’s the stuff you really want. That’s the good stuff.” Did he know what he was talking about? Did a mid-life crisis push him into a place where his way out was to work to be an expert on fabrics? Was this just a fun hobby? Either way, it didn’t look like he wanted the Hugo Boss, and it was too big in the torso for me to consider. I looked at my $1.49 success story of the day as he wandered off through the jeans aisle. 

“Attention Good will shoppers. There is a car parked out front that needs to be moved. If you drive a blue Honda with license plate xxx-xxxx, please go move your car. Thank you.”

It wasn’t my car, but I figured it was time for me to go anyway.

_DZ

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort."

April is the month of every year with the highest number of suicides, so be nice to your neighbors. If you have an encouraging word to spare, say it.

Thank you.

-Dann

_DZ

Jehovah's Witnesses: Using Jesus Against the Watchtower

As I was walking with my friend Mike today, somewhere in the Philips neighborhood near Franklin, we approached a car parked at the curb. An older (greying) woman in the passenger’s seat rolled down her window, got our attention, and waved a magazine at us. “Can I give this to you? This is for your health!” I recognized it from fifteen feet away - it was a copy of Awake!, a witnessing tract used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A longtime cult in the US and now growing in popularity around the world, at first glance the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their theology look strikingly similar to Protestant Christianity. Where the paths split is when the JWs refuse to recognize the divinity of Jesus. So, if you look at it that with that in mind, the two theologies are actually completely different.

The only thing most Christians know about the JWs is that they are a cult with dangerous doctrine (which is true, more on that later). But the JWs are also a very proselytizing religion, going door to door and whatnot, and so Christians find themselves encountering far more JWs than they are usually comfortable with. But they know that they shouldn’t engage them (danger!), so they might mumble a hasty frightened response like “Um, no, yeah, I’m a Christian, so, uh, please go away.” This is sadly one of the most damaging things that one can do, because JWs are taught that Christians are afraid of them because they (the JWs) have the truth. Identifying oneself as a Christian and showing intimidation only reinforces that teaching.

Graciously, God has blessed me with a great relationship with a man who has spent years working with JWs, working to get them out of their organization, the Watchtower. He’s taught me tons of useful tips for use in talking with JWs, and here, on a cold Thursday in Minneapolis, I got a chance to use them.

I’m not much one for arguing theology with strangers, but I am very much into fighting false hope. The opposite of hope isn’t despair (because despair drives you to seek hope), but false hope, because once you find any kind of hope, you tend to rest in it until it is no longer hopeful. In offering God without Jesus, this woman was offering false hope that will leave people in hell. This was suddenly about spiritual warfare, heaven and hell. What followed was basically a spiritual version of a ‘breach and clear’ sequence straight out of a Clancy novel, because I wanted to present the real hope that Jesus has to offer.

I walked up to the car and took the magazine, holding it in my thick winter glove. I looked at the cover and then at the woman. (Set!) Meanwhile she had handed Mike a copy of Watchtower magazine. (Clear!)

“Is this about Jesus?” I asked. (Bam! I blow down the door.)

“This is for your health!” she replied.

“Oh. Because it looks like it’s about Jesus!” ( I gratuitously kick over the coat rack.)

I clumsily turned a few pages until my gloved hands held open a page-long article. The word “Shepherd” was in the headline.

“Is this about Jesus?” I asked, motioning to the headline. (Now I’m in middle of the room, red targeting lasers criss-crossing the smoke.)

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, yes it is.”

“Great! Because I love Jesus.” (I slide belly-first over a table.)

That made her look concerned and cautious.

“You know, a lot of people wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, I do, because Jesus is awesome.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “It is pretty amazing what he did for us on the cross.”

“I know! How he lived a perfect life and died on the cross for our sins, so that we might be reconciled to God.” (Muzzle-flash galore.)

She was nodding, knowingly.

“Man, I’m so thankful for how he changed my life. I pray to him all the time now!” (Bombshell!)

At this point my excitement in talking had taken over my mental preparation and clearheadedness, and instead of following up and asking her about Jesus, other tips that I had received started surfacing in my head.

Take the literature and keep the interaction short.

This actually applies much more to door-to-door interactions than to on-the-street ones, because JWs who are witnessing have a certain quota to meet. If you want to start a relationship with them, the best thing to do is to take the literature (they like that), and schedule a follow-up meeting with that same JW (they sometimes just send elders for follow-ups). The scheduled follow-up allows them to move on to the next house (they like that, too).

So I thanked her for the tract and Mike and I continued on our walk. I was happy with how things went, but I regret to say that I left out one of the most important points of Rapid-Fire Jesus Promotion: Acknowledge that you are sure in your experiences with Him and that you haven’t been lied to.

JWs are taught that people who believe that Jesus is God have been deceived, and when you face them with excitement over what Christ has done and surety that your convictions are genuine, that might find its way through a hole in their defenses. I forgot to do this, and the result is that she might have just left the conversation thinking that I was a babbling crazy person. Nice and enthusiastic, but misguided.

Hopefully God will use the “praying to Jesus” comment that I got in to work in her heart. Since JWs don’t believe that Jesus is divine, they don’t pray to him; praying to Jesus for them is heretical, like telling a Christian to pray to Moses. We’re not going to do it. Jesus’ death and ministry, his divine atonement for sin, is THE axis around which Christianity revolves. It is the central work to which all the of Old Testament points towards, and to which the entire New Testament points back. Without a divine Jesus, Christianity is worthless and going to church becomes a really dumb hobby.

This, the majestic work of a fully-divine-yet-fully human Jesus, is the weapon which we wield against the dangerous doctrine of the JWs. But we have to know how to use it well in order to be effective. There is little use in entrusting a soldier with a powerful rifle if he doesn’t know how to use it correctly. There are people in church who have encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and Jesus, but either don’t believe that is true or are not able to talk about it well. The mission of the Christian should be this - to yearn to know and love and savor and treasure and worship Jesus in order to proclaim Him effectively to neighbors and nations. My interaction this morning was less then ideal, but I hope that God will use it nonetheless. In the meantime, it’s back to my Bible to worship and savor Jesus, and back to looking for ways in which I can share Him with the world.

Black Swan: A Lesson in Broken Feminism

(Picture from MoviePosters.com)

ALERT: This movie features scenes that the main character hallucinates, which I reference; therefore, movie spoilers are present.

Time and time again Darren Aronofsky succeeds in producing films that I can’t watch twice. Try as I might, I just cannot rustle up the will to re-watch any of his movies. Pi bored me almost to tears, Hugh “wolverine forever” Jackman ruined The Fountain, and Requiem for a Dream, despite all of its brilliance, left me with such psychological scars that I cringe just passing it on the shelf at the movie store. Aronofsky’s latest film, Black Swan, continues the trend, though this time its ideological bias is what ultimately renders it best left as a one-time experience.

Which is too bad, because as a movie, it is really well done. I’m a sucker for films featuring mental illness and this one not only capture that angle well, but soared as high as I think Aronofsky’s vision for it would allow. The levels of psychology explored in the mind of the main character, Nina (Natalie Portman) are intriguing without being overblowingly psychotic. On the surface, the storyline is an obvious tragedy: a young woman goes insane while trying to prepare herself for (and ultimately achieving) the so-called “perfect” performance of her career. A technically gifted ballerina, she is given a role where she must embody two characters: the technically perfect and reserved White Swan, and the mysterious, dark, sensual, passionate Black Swan; a literal Jekyll and Hyde of the ballet world.

All this time, her understudy, a girl named Lily, is a “free spirit” who, while lacking technical discipline, embodies the black swan almost perfectly. Nina must then fight not only her own lack of confidence in forgetting all that she has trained for up until this moment (in order to capture the spirit of the black swan), but also the lingering feeling that she may soon be replaced. The key that allows her to finally harmonize that black/white dichotomy in her final performance is an endorphin high brought about by a self-inflicted stab wound to the abdomen - a true Phyrric victory if there ever was one.

Underneath this tragedy, however, feminist themes run strong. The movie draws out scenes that emphasize the degrees to which Nina must go to be perfect: grapefruit-and-egg-white diets (followed by bingeing), weight-watching, a mother who constantly fusses, daily stretching and exercises, early nights filled with restless sleep, and long make-up application sessions. She is a doll in a dollhouse, marched from room to room, from home to rehearsal to stage to back home. "This is not freedom," the film seems to scream, "This is not normal!" The message is conveyed primarily in the scenes in which Nina hallucinates: a hang-nail removal having drastic consequences, a toenail cracking to uselessness, webbed feet, legs bending at odd angles. Her body is falling apart right before her eyes despite all of her attempts at control. Again the message here is clear: This is not worth it and everything will probably not be ok.

(Picture from the official webpage of Black Swan)

If Nina’s control won’t get her to the top, then what will? The answer seeps into nearly every sceme - her sexuality. Black Swan is rife with nods to the third wave of feminism, the lie that full knowledge and experience of feminine sexuality is not only the swiss-army knife of the modern woman, but even that it is the key to ultimate self-realization. While the viewer is told that Nina has has some sexual experiences in the past, for the most part she comes off rather priggish, naive, and sexually self-repressed. Her creepy ballet troupe director believes that breaking that repression will ultimately allow her to embody the sensual black swan, and takes it upon himself to facilitate the transition. He forces himself on her twice, once with a kiss to find out if she is good for the part (she bites him, somehow proving that she is), and another time gropes her and calls it “seduction.” (“See how easy it was for me to seduce you? Now I need you to be able to do that on queue!,” is the “life lesson” there.) I was at once horrified and impressed with the brazen misuse of such a loaded feminine term.

Perhaps most controversial about the movie is that he assigns Nina the “homework” of going home and touching herself, as if “self-discovery” and orgasm apart from relationship is a integral component of well-rounded femininity. To turn some feminist lingo on itself for a moment, it almost seems that the goal is for Nina, as an “animus”, to be a sort of “celibate priest incarnating God as she plays the role of a creator” of the rest of her self. Yet as she writhes on her bed in private, on the screen she remains no more than an object of scopic consumption. There is no power there - only weakness. This preoccupation with her myopic sexual release culminates in a lesbian sex hallucination completely devoid of intimacy. Not only is the act itself over far to soon for any meaningful climax to have been achieved (contributing to the pornographic and therefore exploitive nature of the scene), but its ultimate result is that Nina, thanks to vendrous mental delusions, stole her sense of sexual liberation from her understudy (her fantastical partner) instead of searching it out on her own. But hey, whatever helps fulfill her dream role, right? Don’t let consistency get in the way.

Despite criticisms some leniency may be required - this is, after all, a story about mental illness brought upon by eating disorders and a high-stress lifestyle in a fragile girl. But wait, no. The options that those in authority give Nina as ways to achieve her ultimate goal are ludicrous. Barbie-doll physique? Manipulative authority figures? Selfish sexual empowerment? This kind of ideology is ultimately what makes Black Swan difficult, if not impossible, to watch twice. Even if Nina hadn’t been mentally ill, the pathways that lead to her success are ultimately vapid and devoid of any true character development. That doesn’t make for a rewarding viewing experience. I don’t want to be entertained by being lied to. It’s sad, because the movie was so well done, but this is yet another Aronofsky film that will become but a memory of my twenties.

_DZ

"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" or, Yes, Kanye is Insane

Since Kanye West’s latest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy “dropped” a few weeks back, people can’t stop talking about it. Rolling Stone and Pitchfork Media both gave it a perfect score, and the single “Runaway” has over two-and-a-half million views on YouTube. His 35-minute video that accompanies the album has (counting both clean and unedited versions) close to twelve million views. Ridiculous. I don’t even follow any hip-hop/rap releases, and not only did I hear about it, but I sat through the whole half-hour ordeal. Oh, and I watched the single eight times. Why does the press and the internet like this release so much? Heck, why do I like it so much? Of course, West is still a complete egotist - his music is still a reflection of that personality. Allmusic.com puts it well:

“In some ways, [this album is] the culmination of [his] first four albums, but it does not merely draw characteristics from each one of them. The 13 tracks, eight of which are between five and nine minutes in length, sometimes fuse them together simultaneously. Consequently, the sonic and emotional layers are often difficult to pry apart and enumerate.”

What was good about (I think, specifically) Graduation and 808s & Heartbreak, here coalesce to form a holistic view of West, a view only bolstered by his latest media shenanigans. Beautiful...Fantasy is just completely Kanye - these 13 tracks are what he is about, inside and out. It's raw and even embarrassing at times. When, on “Runaway,” he claims to have taken a picture of his genitalia and emailed it to a woman, you get the idea that, so long as the lyric is not a prophesy about a aging NFL quarterback, that it is something that Kanye has actually done. Sad, but that is who he is, so “runaway from me, baby. Runaway!,” he pleads. Pitchfork elaborates:

“[W]ithout his exploding self-worth-- itself a cyclical reaction to the self-doubt so much of his music explores-- there would be no Twisted Fantasy. "Every superhero needs his theme music," he says on "POWER", and though he's far from the virtuous paragons of comic book lore, he's no less complex. In his public life, he exhibits vulnerability and invincibility in equal measure, but he's just as apt at villainy-- especially here.”

Kanye knows that he is fallen and so has to prop himself up. He has to build something out of nothing. And see, I don’t think that that is lost on us. Yes, the tracks are well-crafted and the bass is thumping, but what makes the album so appealing is that Kanye is effectively starving himself to death on top of a pillar in the town square. It’s a spectacle, an aestheticization of his own destruction.

This idea, I have also argued, is why Lady Gaga is so attractive. Just as Gaga “left her head and her heart on the dancefloor,” so to is Kanye baring himself, multitude of flaws and all. And, let’s not forget, Gaga already acted out her own death in a music video. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kanye’s next move echoed those impulses.

It’s said that the best music is that which does not bore the listener, and as I listen to wider varieties of music, the more I find this to be, in fact, completely true. Many things can make music interesting: new sounds, new rhythms, quirky lyrics, etc, but I would argue that most important is the ability to show your personality through your music. David Bowie can change with the times and yet still be himself. Vernon Reid can smoooothly transition from a twenty-something shredder in neon tights to the anchor of a free-form jazz/rock hybrid collaboration. Lady Gaga is a wacked-out plastic disco antibarbie. Each transition inevitably shows in their music, and this is what keeps it interesting. Ultimately, Beautiful...Fantasy is a solid record because it is inseparable from Kanye himself, and this is precisely why we are attracted to it. We aren’t really listening to slick production and bi-polar lyrics; we’re listening to a functionally insane man make music. And functionally insane men are interesting to us.

_DZ

Guest Post: Maria Rainier on Cultural Arrogance

This week's post comes from Maria Rainier who contacted me like, a month ago, and offered to write a post. I'm pleased with how it turned out, even though it was a long time coming. Like me, Maria has experience living in Japan, and her views on cultural cross-pollination and adjustment, while unique, certainly resonate to some degree with my experience. That being said, her opinions are entirely her own and I welcome the diversity she brings to core::minimalist. I hope you enjoy her article, and feel free to give her link a click once you have reached the end!

_DZ

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Around the World in a Little Over 80 Days and What I Learned About Cultural Arrogance

Until I arrived, America was my promised land. And then it all went to hell. People didn’t greet me with huge smiles when I entered convenience stores and they didn’t give me an exaggerated bow when I left (they also threw my change back at me instead of placing it in a little plastic tray and gently nudging it across the counter toward me). Nobody had any sense of personal space in concerts or bars. Nobody had any manners. My friends gave me funny looks when I gave themomiage, or gifts. Everyone told me to stop apologizing.

To a college-bound kid who grew up in Japan, America was a nightmare.

And then there were the questions. It’s not news to most kids who grow up abroad that when you go (or go back) to America, you get an interesting array of questions. Here are some—word for word—that I was asked:

Do you eat raw fish?

Do you live in teepees?

Is Japan that island off the coast of Africa or somewhere?

Do you guys have gnats? I hate gnats.

Is Hiroshima still in ruins?

I won’t go into the Hiroshima bit. I want to, but I won’t. Instead, I highly recommend a great book, Stephen Walker’s Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.

Cultural Superiority: the American Way

What I will go into, however, is how appalled I was that when I offered a couple of American friends Japanese chocolate candies—and anyone who’s ever had Japanese candy knows that it’s phenomenal—they took one look at the foreign writing on it and said, “I don’t eat furren food.”

This would not be the last time I’d hear something to the effect of, “Why doesn’t the world do things theAmerican way?”

For a few years, I went through an I-hate-American-and-I-can’t-wait-to-graduate phase for this very reason. I found the Americans around me to be self-righteous, self-important, and self-serving. If it wasn’t in English and if it didn’t praise the Lawd or Amurrica (as the two are synonymous to many Americans I know), it was trash.

Cultural Superiority: Not Just the American Way

In 2007, I studied abroad in Europe. My home-stay family lived in northern Italy, where locals spoke more German than Italian. I found that if I spoke Italian to the town baker or gelato man, I got dirty looks. These looks, however, were nothing in comparison to the derision on the faces of Romans to whom I accidentally spoke German. German was the “lesser” language, while Italian was the language of the oppressors.

Similarly, when I visited my family in Japan that same year, I found that if there was a Mandarin-speaking person in a Japanese town, the usually humble and open-minded Japanese turned up their noses and protected their purses. Koreans and southeastern Asians had the same effect on many Japanese I saw.

Not too long ago, a Chinese trawler bumped into a Japanese patrol boat around what the Japanese call the Ryukyu Islands, which they boldly deemed their territory and therefore held the Chinese captain and crew hostage for days before returning them to their country. The history between these countries can’t be discounted—before WWII, Japan defeated Russia, China, and Korea, and the Imperial Army’s conduct there was less than reputable. Post-WWII turf wars aside, China and Japan haven’t been buddy-buddy on anything: China keeps kidnapping Japanese citizens and putting lead in their toothpaste, and many Japanese refuse to admit to the Nanking atrocity. That many Japanese citizens hold deep grudges and prejudices against the Chinese and feel a sense of cultural superiority over them is no exaggeration.

This sounds oddly familiar. Since the colonists’ defeat of the English oh-so-very-long-ago, many Americans can’t stop poking fun at the Brits and Europeans (and the latter can only laugh at American antics). Meanwhile, North American treatment of Latin Americans is beyond abysmal. That racial epithets—most of which I didn’t even know existed before I came to America—can be so blithely dropped in everyday conversation is a point in itself.

The Kamikaze Incident

Bigotry is alive and well, not that it’s news. In September of this year, an American military base employee in Japan ran over an elderly Japanese man going home from his garden plot across the road. He died three hours later. He also happened to be the vice chairman of the anti-base housing coalition, which happened to be having a very important meeting that day with a prominent Japanese official to prevent the nearby military base’s planned expansion. Local Japanese often fall victim to military personnel’s drunken driving and prejudices, ear-splitting and low-flying jets, and the humiliation of living under the thumb of the country that dropped not one but two atomic bombs on them over sixty years ago.

On that base, whispers quickly abounded among American military and civilians: Did he do it on purpose?

What for, how, and why, I might ask?

You know, they used to be kamikaze. . . .

Oh, right. That hugely misunderstood band of brothers who were forced or brain-washed into dying for their lying government and Emperor because if they didn’t, their families would be punished and they’d be sent to a deadly war in the Southeast, anyway. That thing that no one in Japan talks about anymore because it’s ludicrous and horrifying even to them. That thing that’s been falsely linked by the ever-so-fair-and-balanced Fox News to the 9/11 terrorists when in fact the kamikaze never once targeted civilians in a non-combat situation. Oh, yeah. That thing.

But I Don’t Mean to be a Killjoy

Yeah, American prejudices and examples of cultural superiority annoy me more than anyone else’s, I think. That’s my own bigotry. Bigotry is alive and well. Again, it’s not news. You don’t have to look far for it, either. I found it around the world.

The good news in all this? That there are sane people around the world, too, whose kindness knows few, if any, culturally implemented bounds. It was an American who let me cut thirty people in the security line at the Kansai International Airport when I had five minutes before my plane took off. It was a Japanese man that let me charge my camera battery and warm my frosted hands in his sake store in Iwakuni. It was a My Lai massacre survivor who hugged me when I told her that my mother was a Hiroshima victim. It was in Grand Cayman that locals and Americans worked together to shelter and feed abused and stray animals on the island. These are the truths that let me sleep at night.

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, researching various online programs and blogging about student life issues. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.