A (sort of) secret and some photos...

Okay...so here's the funny thing about that trip north I wrote about back in 2005. It was, in many ways, a typical holiday to Duluth and the North Shore. My dad and Diane were there. There were chores at Devil's Track. There were long walks and long chats by the fire. And...well...we conceived our first child. Known to you all now as Silas. Wow.

Also, there were pictures. I just got them developed. Seriously. I took them with the Holga camera Laurel gave me for my birthday in 2005. Here they are...

Amman...

It's been not quite two days since we landed in Amman. Feels like weeks. Last night, New Year's Eve, we had tacos at a friend's apartment near our hotel. We shared a table with two Christian Peacemaker Teams members (one headed to the West Bank and one, potentially, to Iraq, where four CPT volunteers are still being held hostage). There was also a friend who is working on the rehabilitation of Iraq's marshes, which Saddam Hussein drained and bulldozed in the 90's, destroying a totally unique and rich ecosystem and a community long dependent on that ecosystem. Dave Enders was there, too. Dave started the independent, English language newspaper Baghdad Bulletin just after the war. The paper didn't last long, but it had a good run. Sitting next to me, to my amazement, was Saif, the restaurant cashier from Al Fanar Hotel in Baghdad, where I stayed just about every time I went to Iraq. I was very close to the staff there and Saif's update was heartbreaking. Sa'ad, a man in his 40's with a heart and a smile like a small child, lost his brother to a bullet from one side or another. Sa'ad himself is homeless, staying with friends. He doesn't have a job and Saif doesn't know how to reach him. He told me that after the war Sa'ad would always ask: "Do you remember Jeff!?" Saif didn't, until he saw me. "Who is Jeff?!" he would ask a smiley Sa'ad. Saif confessed to being annoyed and not terribly interested. I wish I could go and find Sa'ad now and take him home with me. I can't.

Saif told me all kinds of things about the activities of the secret police in my hotel in the Saddam days, all the way down to the operator who shacked up in the basement to listen to our calls. "I hate Al Fanar," Saif said, when we weren't even talking about it. "I hate all eight floors."

Tonight we are at Books@Cafe, a place for beer and burgers and books in English. The sign outside reads: "Books@Cafe: Fresh as a Daisy." What does that mean? I don't know, but I can't stop saying it. The Mighty Ducks is on the TV with Arabic subtitles. There is a beautiful view of hilly Amman outside a window just beyond the white Space Odyssey chairs. We are slumped in a blue couch.

Today Laurel and I interviewed an Iraqi man who used to work with a French aid agency headquartered at Al Fanar. He's is a sweetheart, I'll call him R. He left Baghdad in 2004 after getting a death threat on his mobile phone: "stop working for the French people or you're a dead man."

We talked for a long time about the kidnappings in Iraq--the kidnappings of Iraqis. Everybody I know from Iraq knows somebody who has been kidnapped. Most know a few. R's cousin was at home when an Iraqi police car pulled up. They told him they wanted to take him to the station for questioning. They wouldn't say what for. He got in the back of the car. The police taped his hands and eyes. After a few minutes on the road they forced him down and out of site of other drivers. They met another group of men, in another car, not police. He was taken to a house and locked in a room. His family was called. A ransom was demanded--by the police. Each day two men would come in to his room to feed him. One carried the food, the other a gun. Then one day just one man came in. A gun hung by a strap from his shoulder. With his two hands he carried a tray of food. An opportunity. R's cousin grabbed a loose brick from the wall, knocked the man unconscious, and ran like hell. It turns out he was just one neighborhood over from his home. He flagged down a driver and went home. The end?

Another kidnapping story from R. has the Iraqi police again playing kidnappers. A similar story: taken for questioning, taped up, and taken to a location he could not discern with the tape covering his eyes. A ransom was demanded. He sat in a room alone for the rest of the day--taped up. Then, sometime in the evening, he heard his name. "Is that you?" a voice said. Then the visitor gently pulled the tape from his eyes. It was a friend who was a police officer. The night shift guy. He was in a holding cell at a police station. "What are you doing here?" the friend asked. "I was kidnapped by the police," he replied. His kidnappers were day shift. He was quietly and carefully led out and told to say nothing. Better for liberator and captor alike.

It is still hard for us to believe the stories, and there are so many.

It's not all doom and gloom over here. Apologies if that's the way it sounds. There is joy too--there always is. It comes from friends and being together and it comes from the baby kicking and punching and squirming in Laurel's belly. The baby keeps us grounded and careful.

And there has been lots of laughter: There was the sheik who was in the airplane bathroom so long there was a five person line with Laurel at the head. He left a big gift, didn't flush, and came out smiling. Laurel walked in and walked right out, not smiling, but sort of grimacing towards the rest of the waiting passengers. Then she paused, reconsidered, opened the door again and went back in. That was funny.

Tomorrow we see about our visa to Syria. I have been waiting for nearly a month for my journalist visa. I am told it will be waiting for me tomorrow. We're hoping for the best. After Syria it's Beirut and then the West Bank. We fly home on January 20th. If you don't mind, we'd like to check in once in awhile with an email like this.

Okay, my drink is here and a really pretty Madonna song is playing. Fresh as a daisy. I'm going to try to get Laurel to stop reading Steinbeck and talk to me.

Happy New Year everybody. Thanks for reading!

xoxo,

Jeff

Back On Holiday!

Okay, we're back - on holiday. The holiday: Northern Minnesota. Five days.

Laurel has been working - either at the farm or at the Birchwood - just about always. The same goes for me. We've earned this one.

It's going to go like this: Tomorrow we'll load the car. Warm clothes, pillows, two iPods, a few old mix tapes and Ali inside. Two recumbent bikes on top.

We'll drop Ali off at my mom's and make our way to 35W heading North to Duluth. On the way we'll be hitting several thrift stores looking for loot. On our list: an old-school blender, a Casio SK-1 keyboard, a formica table for our kitchen and a bike helmet. Wish us luck.

In Duluth we'll have lunch at Pizza Luce and hit an antique mall across the water in Superior, Wisconsin.

Then it's back on 35 - which turns into Highway 61 - towards Grand Marais. We'll stop along the way at the Coho Cafe (Laurel's favorite) for coffee and pastries.

We're meeting my Dad and Diane a their Devil's Track Lake retirement spot, about 10 minutes from downtown Grand Marais and the shore of Lake Superior. There we will erect the two campers and get ready for camping. There will be a fire.

On Sunday the expedition will splinter. Dad and Diane will stay at Devil's Track and Laurel and I will move over to our $40 lake-view room at the Outpost Motel. On our one-year anniversary we will watch the sun set at the very spot we were engaged. Downright poetic. We will be home in time to celebrate my Mom's 55th birthday Tuesday night.

Trish: the bubble.

I don't know what the Wi-Fi situation is in Grand Marais (it was not so hot in December '03 when we were engaged) but it is our intention to keep you posted via this blog. Whatever the situation, we will keep a log, take pictures and video, and share them all with you some kind of way.

Ali, by the way, is asleep at my feet and dreaming as I write. I can feel her running paws on my foot and now she is dream-barking.

Be well.

Love,

Jeff (Laurel is at the Birchwood)

Back home again in Indiana (it's a song).

We're here. We pushed through and did it all in one shot. Thirteen hours. Would've been 12 but at 1 A.M., after 12 hours of driving, Laurel wanted to take a tour of her college campus. I was a tough sell but it was a nice time. I had been there once before, long before we met, to talk about Iraq. Laurel was invited to the talk by the organizer but she thought Voices in the Wilderness was a stupid name and all the Iraq activists she knew were a tiny bit loopy. So she didn't go. Funny.

Yesterday we did a little bit of shopping and waited for the snow storm that never came...until night. This morning there is something like 4 inches out there. It's beautiful.

Had a good dinner with Tony and Ruth. Laurel and I picked them up and drove them home. Tony can't drive yet. Too soon after his surgery. Missed them these past three months or so.

I've got to get out and do some shopping.

Dad & Diane are in the early leg of a drive to San Antonio, keep them in your thoughts!

Love,

Jeff (Laurel is downstairs chatting with her Ma)

Blog post from the road!

We are in hour 6 of our drive from NYC to Indianapolis. Jeff has had the wheel the whole time. He likes it. I wrote a letter to President Bush on my laptop. I heard a news report about the 20 people (troops and contractors) killed in an explosion in Mosul. His words of comfort were that he was going to pray for them. Now, I think prayer is important, but of all people in the world who have the power to do something other than pray in this situation. You work on stopping the war, Mr. Prez.

Anyway. We got out of the city at about 1 p.m., after stopping at our favorite deli in the neighborhood for turkey and brie sandwiches. We also got a $45 parking ticket when we were loading up the car. It was a street cleaning day, and I had seen the street sweeper pass so I thought it was safe. Not so.

Now we are 52 miles away from conquering Pennsylvania, the great Black Hole State. We are making good time, still hoping to get to Indianapolis tonight. A snowstorm is supposed to start at about 4 a.m. The iPod's random setting has just put on a beautiful Byrds song.

By the time we post this and you are reading it, we will be at my parents' house in Indianapolis, much relieved.

Love to all,

Laurel

It snowed! Pros and Cons...

Hey,

So it snowed last night. It was raining while I finished up my Christmas shopping in SoHo. I got on the train for the 30 minute or so ride back to our neighborhood and when I emerged from the 116th street station it was snowing ever so lightly. It was beautiful. A big smile. Leo Kottke was playing on my iPod and it was a perfect soundtrack. This was our first snow but...oddly...the second time I've seen snow in NYC this year. The first was several weeks ago when we were walking Ali with my mom. We passed a car parked in front of Riverside Church with about two inches of snow on it. The car behind it and in front of it: totally dry. Strange. Must've come from the North.

So the pros to the first snow in NYC are obvious. Cons: just one so far...we're driving tomorrow.

We are planning to make the 14 hour drive in a single shot. But if the roads or weather are goofy or if we are tired or if we get a late start, we will break the drive into two days, we promise.

The plan right now is to leave around six in the morning ("0 dark-hundred hours" as my brother-in-law Kevin says).

Trish: don't forget that bubble. We want a white one to confuse the snow.

Love you all!

Jeff (Laurel is studying furiously for her 10 o'clock final exam. She was up until 1:30 A.M. with a study group. Just a test and a paper and it's all over until February!)

Laurel steps into the blogosphere...

Hi Family! It's Laurel this time. I would love to write a long, long post but I am getting ready for an Old Testament study session with some friends. I have been planted at the kitchen table all day for several days with piles of books. I finally finished a 12-page paper (that took me FOREVER) for my early church history class about 4th century women who escaped their normal roles as passive daughters and wives by becoming ascetics and starting monastic orders. Now I'm working on another 12-page paper on applications of Jung's theory of "transcendent function," which is when you put your unconscious mind in conversation with your conscious mind in order to work out bugs in your psyche (like if you keep saying "boobs" instead of "boots" or something).

Let me shout it from the mountaintops that JEFF IS AMAZING!!! He is so patient with me and my stressed freakouts and he cooks me meals too. I will be forever indebted to him for supporting me through however many years of schooling are to come!

We are soooo excited to come home and see you all. I hope you're having fun holiday parties and listening to lots of Christmas carols.

love,
Laurel

* * *

From Jeff:

Early church history about 4th century women and applications of Jung's theory of "transcendent function"... just wanted to let everybody know I am nose deep into a 264-page anthology of comic strips. Shout THAT from the mountain tops.