Eric's Beijing Diary

I thought it might be a good idea to have a dinner with students who have, for one reason or another, remained in Beijing for the holidays. I have been spending time with two or three of them, but I wanted to meet some of the other students on Courtney's list. So I had Eric and Leander call them up and invite them. We met at the North Gate, and walked across XueYuan to a restaurant we had been to once before. I was able to explain again to them some of the things I am planning to implement here at the University. There is considerable interest in the Oracle program I am putting together, especially the idea of being able to obtain a very valuable certification which will make them competetive in the industry.

Well, my "one lock" bicycle was still there this morning. The students assured me it would be...

"It's too old."
"No one would want it."
"Even if you forget to lock it, no one will take it."

These words of encouragement warmed my heart. If what the students tell me is true, then a bike as old as mine is virtually thief proof. Apparently, if I can manage to keep it looking old and beat up, I might just be able to keep it. When viewed from this perspective, everything is seen in a new light. The odd clang it makes while I am riding down the street is music to my ears. The old rawhide seat is making my own hide raw, but fortunately it is not only very uncomfortable, it also looks pretty bad. The rear rim is, well, an odd shape somewhere between round and square. Not a smooth ride by any means, but it does have a certain rythm to it that reminds one of the changing seasons of life. Steal it? No self respecting thief would be caught dead with it! At least that's what the students tell me. There is one problem. The lock. The guy threw in a lock with the deal, and it's a cheap one, but it does happen to be new. Makes it look like I actually care whether someone steals it or not. This is not good. Don't know what to do about that--let me know if you have any ideas.

Quite seriously, I think Chinese bicycle mechanics must be among the best in the world, since there is such a demand for their services. There are bicycles everywhere. So even though my old bicycle is pretty decrepit, I can tell that it is well oiled, and it is in pretty good repair. But don't tell anyone. This old thing cost me a fourth of what a new one would have cost me, and if word gets around that it actually works just as well, I might have to get myself another lock.

Well, I finally bought a bicycle today. I have been looking since I came here. I was told when I came that the going rate for a new bicycle was 150 RMB. But the students told me that I could not get a "regular" bicycle. They told me that I needed something sturdy. Very strong. An extra heavy duty bicycle. I looked at several "regular" bicycles, but the students were quite definite in expressing their concern, "This bicycle cannot support you!" OK, OK, I got the point. But the large frame bicycles are quite a bit more--close to 400 Kwai. Basically, when you buy a bicycle, you have two options: You can buy a new bicycle and get two very strong locks. Or you can get a a very old bicycle that doesn't appear to be worth anything, and then you only need one lock. This is what the students told me. Well, I decided to get a "one lock" bicycle, because it's cheaper, and because I think life will be a little less complicated if I don't feel like I have to bring my bike up to the 14th floor every night. I noticed a very, very old bicycle at a bike shop yesterday. It was a large frame bicycle, so I thought the students would approve. The guy wanted 90 RMB for it. I thought that was kinda high for a bike that old, and so did the students. I told them I would come back today. Well, the guy was still holding firm. To be honest, I didn't want to spend a lot of time arguing about a couple dollars, so I told the guy to throw in a basket (he had already offered to give me a lock). He finally relented. The students think I got taken, and so do I, but I am a foreigner. That’s life. I made sure he made some minor repairs, and gave him 90 RMB. Almost twelve US dollars.

I went to the temple fair yesterday. The students had wanted to go last Saturday, but I talked them out of it, because it was pretty cold and windy, and CNN was forecasting warm weather for Monday. Well, it really was nice yesterday. But very, very crowded. Lots and lots of people. When it gets that crowded, you sorta tend to become one unit. Masses of humanity pressed together moving through the exhibit area like a giant snail. In a situation like this, sometimes it is easy to forget that everyone of these folks is a unique, dynamic individual with his or her own hopes and dreams and ambitions.

One of the events at the fair was a giant human maze. You had to find your way to the center, where there were a bunch of little prizes. It was pretty confusing, but I made it, and got my ball point pen. OK, with a little help. I met an elephant at the fair. He was a very large elephant. Fortunately, he was a kindly old elephant. He picked me up with his trunk, and held me up in the air while he reared up and stood on his two hind legs. It wasn't a long ride. Just long enough for a picture.

"Ren zhe wu di." Leander was trying to teach me the meaning of this ancient four-character saying. Of course, I knew about four-character proverbs, because Ina had taught me about them. But I had not heard this one. "People who forgive quickly will have no enemies." We were eating radish and mutton stew at a quiet little cafe not to far from the West Gate. As if to emphasize the folly of ignoring these words of wisdom, a fight broke out behind us. The people involved had been inbibing rather heavily, and of course I have no idea what the argument was about. But the commotion was getting louder and Leander decided we should leave. I got up and looked around, and saw one of the guys, a young man in his twenties looking like he was ready to go off. I had seen the signs many times before when I was a security aide in a maximum security ward at Oregon State Hospital. Sure enough, he picked up a beer bottle, and hurled it at his opponent, whereupon it crashed into the opposing wall. Well, this cemented Leander's determination to leave immediately. He pushed me out the door, and then went back to get my stuff. But I was missing my cap and gloves. I tried to return to get them, but Lisa and Leander were holding me back. I finally pointed to them on the floor by my chair, and Leander crawled under the table and got them. The matron of the establishment came outside to settle our accounts. One man who had apparently gotten caught in the crossfire was holding his head which was bleeding, although not severely. He looked a bit bewildered. In retrospect, the students' slightly excessive concern was probably well placed--things would have gotten kinda complicated if I had gotten hit in the head with a bottle. But I really wasn't afraid of either of the men...they were actually pretty nice guys. In fact, both of them had, independantly of each other, approached me earlier in the evening to offer a friendly toast to my stay in China. And I am sure that after they'd had a chance to sober up, both of these gentlemen (I use the term loosely) regretted their actions.

Of course the incident I have just related is much less about culture than it is about alcohol. I have seen drunks in several cultures, and there is a boring sameness to them all. A drunk is a drunk is a drunk. Perhaps it is not completely out of place to contemplate what forces might incline a young man to feel boxed in, with a desparate need to fight his way out. But any analysis would be suspect. Drunken behavior is caused by drunkenness. And the only thing that has ever been known to cause drunkenness is too much alcohol.

When I got home, I turned on the CCTV English channel and heard the hostess say cheerily, "Spring Festival is a time when old grudges are forgotten, and everyone is on their best behaviour." Well, that's the idea anyway. This morning I was listening to a discussion on CCTV about corruption in China. A professor from Qinghua University quoted a four-character proverb that I could not follow. But the gist of it in English was that "we expect that people are born to be good-hearted." Then this professor from Qinghua University made a very interesting statement. He said, "In dealing with the problem of corruption in China today, we can no longer rely on this traditional view of human nature." Congratulations. But this belated enlightenment begs a very important question: If we can no longer rely on this traditional view of human nature, then what can we rely on? This is the question China is asking today. I wonder who will provide the answer?

I accidently stuck my hand in my tea today. No big problem, except that I had to spend the next 20 minutes teaching everyone how to say, "oops!" It turns out this word is not easy to say for native speakers of Mandarin. I went over it with them several times. Its not "ops," and it's not "ups," it's "oops." But they still had trouble. One of the students was making notes, and his classmate was trying to help him. But he chided his classmate, "I know how to spell it, I just don't know how to say it!" I was surprised by the possibility that this exact sound does not exist in Mandarin. I didn't have my pinyin chart with me, so I couldn't be sure...I was trying to think of a sound in Mandarin that could compare to it. But if the sound really doesn't exist in Mandarin, then the chart wouldn't do any good. So I finally decided to make the comparison to another English word that contained the same vowel sound. I wrote the word "foot." I told them, "If you can say 'foot,' you can say 'oops.'"

Interesting how the complete absense of familiarity with a given sound makes it such a hard thing for us to produce. For example, native speakers of English have problems with certain German vowels. And of course the Mandarin "r" at the beginning of a word is all but impossible. I have never heard a native speaker of English pronounce it correctly. Doesn't stop me from trying, of course, but so far, I have never been able to get it quite right.

Time to get up. I have been sleeping since 4 o'clock this morning. "Xing nian hao!" (That's Mandarin for "Happy New Year!") It started yesterday at noon. Leander managed somehow to get me a ticket to the free lunch put on for the students by the University. This really was a very nice meal. Not sure if I was supposed to be in on it or not, because I'm not a student, but when it comes to food, I don't ask impertinent questions. There was a group of seven or eight young people at our table. Some of them I had met, of course, the others were new, but not for long. Chinese students are some of the friendliest folks I have met. After lunch, Eric and Leander told me that they would find a place for supper and call me. I knew this was no small feat, because the whole town is pretty dead on New Year's Eve. Even the working man's restaurant was closed this morning. Well, they called at 5 pm and told me to meet them at the North Gate. Sure enough, they found a place that was open. Eric (he's forgiven me for "copying" his name) told the waitress to recommend their very best. I groaned a bit, 'cause I knew he was really going overboard, and this was going to cost. We got some fish, lots of other spicy food, and some exotic desert with cotton candy and what looked like eggrolls with a delicious banana desert inside. That meal cost me a little more than $6 US, which is about five times what the evening meal would cost me in the student cafeteria. You only live once. While we were eating, Eric and Leander and Lucy told me about a special New Year's tradition: they said that after dinner, families gather around the TV to watch the special New Year's Eve presentation. From eight to twelve. Then they had a brief discussion about where they would go to watch it. Very brief, because I was the only one with a TV. I said, "Sure, that would be fine." Well, I managed to catch a few winks during the four hour show. Just before midnight, the Taikonaut appeared on the stage, gave his speech, and the fireworks started.

But of course, the night was still young. Next on the agenda was karaoke. The Chinese version is quite a bit different from the karaoke American style. I have to admit that I am not qualified to speak from personal experience, because I have never been to a karaoke bar in the States, but my impression of karaoke in America has been as an excuse to get drunk and make a fool of yourself. Here it is very different. They lead your group to a private room, pour everyone some tea, and show you the controls for the video system that plays the music. Limited as my experience is, I like Chinese karaoke a lot better. Of course, some could argue. One might wonder who is crazier, the guy who gets drunk and makes a complete fool of himself, or the guy who can be completely sober, and still thrill to the echo effect of his own voice singing "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain" while some words are flashing across a screen. You really do feel like a complete idiot. But I guess the feeling is ameliorated by the fact that everyone has to take their turn. Sort of. Every once in awhile, they come to your room and pour some more hot tea, but the pain just won't go away. Still, I very much prefer the sober variety as a group activity. Chinese young people sometimes talk about "catching up" with the United States. When it comes to karaoke, I hope they take their time.

I don't know what's more fun, the Forbidden City, or going to McDonald's. Leander and I took the subway to Tiananmen to go to the Forbidden City, but we decided to stop for lunch at McDonald's I was trying to figure out how to tell them that I wanted a Big Mac (without the Coke and fries) plus a shake and coffee. First I had to explain to Leander what a shake was. And of course all the signs were written in Chinese, which I couldn't read. I got my dictionary out, but Leander said it wouldn't help. Presumably many of the names are phonetic, so the meaning is irrelevant. Well, we were getting there slowly, but we were taking so long that we were losing our place in line. Like a gift from heaven, a young lady from another part of the counter stepped up to me and said to me in perfect English, "Would you like a Big Mac?" I said, "Yes, and a shake." She said, "What kind, chocolate or strawberry?" I thought to myself, "Boy, I bet they keep her real busy." These young kids who are native speakers of English and native speakers of Mandarin are riding high in the "New China." Or perhaps I should say, "New, new China." China was "new" before once. There is a very high demand for young people who can live and move easily in both cultures. Anyway, we got our hamburgers...it was a bit awkward, but I learned something from the experience: I know how to say "ketchup" in Mandarin.

Food. The food is absolutely incredible. If I talked about every good meal I have eaten since I have been here, I wouldn't have time to talk about anything else. Most tastes are acquired, that's just the way it is. This means that if you are confronted with something you have never eaten before, it is likely going to taste strange. Not everything tastes good. There is a very natural reaction to something that is different from what you are used to. Now, I am a pretty adaptable person when it comes to food. I figured that whatever food I was confronted with, I could probably learn to live with it. But I have been subjected to meal after meal after meal of incredibly delicious food. I don't know what I am going to do about it. This is something I was completely unprepared for. I don't know...I might have to stop eating breakfast. As I said, there just isn't time enough in the day to talk about every good meal I have had--I have never had so many good meals in such a short time in all my life. If this doesn't stop, its going to be a serious problem. Mind you, it's a problem that I thoroughly enjoy, but it still gives me concern. I really do get a lot more excercise now then when I was living in Arizona. I walk everywhere. But I am eating like a king. Just a couple of examples:

Last night I went with three other students to a very nice restaurant near the campus. Peking duck. I am sure most everyone has heard of the world renowned "Peking duck." But perhaps not everyone knows that you can't just eat it straight. I started to, but the students stopped me. You have to take a miniature taco shell and put a few pieces of the duck in this soft shell. Then you take these stringy vegetables that look like celery and dip them in this black sauce and put them in the taco shell with the meat. Then you roll it up and eat it. Very, very good. But that isn't all. There are the side dishes: this stuff made of chicken and peanuts, and then lots of steamed vegetables. Plus this hair-thin french fry stuff. We ate our fill. Satiated. Full. Well satisfied.
I said, "Hao chi."
They said, "Not bad."

Tonight, I went with a couple of students to another restaurant to have boiled fish, Sichuan style. First the guy takes this fish out of the tank where it is swimming around, and he shows it to us. Then, whap! whap! as he kills the fish. Then it goes in the pot, while we are served some side dishes. Again, that stuff made from chicken and peanuts. And plenty of unusual vegetables. Finally, the fish comes. Boiled white fish. It is boiled in a sauce filled with peppers. The lady comes and scoops the peppers out. Then we start digging in. I have always liked fish, but fish that is fresh out of the water is hard to compare with. I don't exaclty know what the sauce is made of, but it must be fattening, because it is really, really tasty. As we were pigging out on the fish, the lady comes with some egg and tomato soup. And rice. Of course, there are lots of vegetables. Fish is good, but fresh fish that was caught less then 15 minutes before it was sitting on our table is pretty hard to beat. We all ate our fill. Cost? We eached kicked in 20 kwai. That's about two dollars and fifty cents.

Language. The great barrier. Language is often viewed as the primary factor in any cultural adjustment. This is not always true, because the most significant cultural adjustment for me was when I moved with my family to America at the age of 13. English was my mother tongue, so language was not the problem. Perhaps that experience has helped me to keep things in perspective, and not allow the language issue to become a bigger thing than it is. But it is still quite frustrating at times.

There is a small restaurant near my apartment that is frequented by working people. The place is popular, I think, because there is an assortment of items on a table at the front, and people who are in a hurry to get to work can take something quickly, without waiting to order. The first time I went there with Piano, I saw immediately that this might be a good option for someone like myself who is not comfortable reading a menu. The other day, I went there by myself. I pointed to an item, and told the lady that I wanted one of them. Well, she started talking to me very rapidly, and I gathered that I couldn't buy one. Apparently they came in pairs. Then she motioned to me to go to the cash register. Well, of course I couldn't tell the cashier what I was ordering, so she did it for me. It was awkward, but it worked.

Eating my meal, I was feeling kinda glum about my inability to communicate freely. After breakfast, I was reading an article by Dehaan in the BICF Community Digest. He was talking about Joni Eareckson, and the process she went through adjusting to her handicap. This is really what it comes down to. I have a handicap. It is not quite the same, of course, because I am in no way resigned to it. I am determined to find a tutor and overcome this disability. But for the time being, I have to learn how to live with my handicap while I am in the process of overcoming it. Some have questioned the wisdom of jumping right into a job with a Chinese university without extensive language training. In my case, I think I did the right thing, because my field is technology, and if I were to leave this field for two years so that I could study language, I would pretty much have to start over.

Clearly, a good language tutor is my greatest need right now. But along with that, is the need to see my problem in proper perspective, and learn to live with the limitations that it imposes on me. There is something I am supposed to be doing here, and in the process of discovering it, I will no doubt face many obstacles. Mountains are put there to be moved. Sometimes with a bold proclamation; sometimes with a good shovel and a lot of work.

Courtney was very concerned that I would be left alone during the Chinese New Year holiday, so she put together a list of her fellow students who live in Beijing, and would be willing to help me if I needed it. Wednesday she introduced me to Bulu. Yesterday Bulu and Piano and I took the subway to Tiananmen, and had dinner at a nice restaurant near the square. On the way to the square, I bought a sweet potato from a sidewalk vendor. Hard to believe it has been 40 years since I did that last. The price has gone up a little since then. Now they cost 2 yuan (about 25 cents). Back then I paid 5 or 10 yen, less than a nickel. But again, as I said, that was 40 years ago.

Yesterday Piano called and asked if I wanted to go to lunch. I had just heard about a place not to far from here that has an American Breakfast menu, so I asked him if he was interested. "Watashi wa American Breakfast hoshii." Well, that settled it. Piano was very hungry. I think he may have skipped breakfast. As we were walking toward the restaurant, Piano was paging through my dictionary, a going-away present from my Mandarin tutor in Arizona (Thanks, Ina!). He was very interested in the way it was laid out. After going through it for awhile, he looked at me and said, "My stomach is digesting by himself." I said, "Does this mean that you are hungry?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, in America, we say, 'My stomach is growling.'"
"Growling?"
"Yes, like a bear."

I think I know, now, why Piano has such a flair for languages. He talks. He doesn't wait until he knows it's right, he just speaks. He is constantly guessing the right way to say things. His English is pretty good, and his Japanese isn't bad either.

The past couple days, Piano ("I like music!") has been helping me to get some important details taken care of. Yesterday, we went to the bank, so that I could open an account. I gave the teller my American money, and he proceeded to set up the account for me. When I had Piano ask him about an ATM card, he informed us that an ATM card could not be used to withdraw US dollars. That's when I found out that the bank was not able to convert dollars to Chinese currency. Well, an account strictly for saving US dollars is not useful to me, since I am being paid in RMB. So I had him cancel the account. I went to another bank to do the conversion, and came back to the campus bank to deposit my money. All of this stuff would have taken so much longer if I had not had Piano's assistance.

Most students like to practice their English, but Piano likes to practice his Japanese, "totemo onaka ippai ni narimashita." Very true. The food is good. Sitting in the cold campus cafeteria and eating from a hot pot with big chunks of meat, and a sample of every vegetable on the planet--ten yuan (a little more than a dollar) for the two of us.

Yesterday Jazz and Lili met me downstairs outside my building, and we walked through the falling snow to one of the campus cafeterias. It wasn't heated, but the food definitely was. Nothing like a bowl of piping hot beef noodles on a cold winter morning. I'm definitely going to like the food in this place. After breakfast, Jazz and Lili showed me around the campus a little bit, then took me out to the main gate so that I could catch the bus to BICF (www.bicf.org). BICF operates four busses that pickup throughout the city. Fortunately, one of them comes by Beihang.

Howard Davidson was speaking on the topic, "What on Earth am I Here For?" Very appropriate question. BICF is doing a series right now based on the runaway best seller, The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren. Davidson began by quoting Simone Weil, "There are only two things that pierce the human heart, beauty and affliction." His point was that there are certain events which allow the Eternal to come through. I started to think about this. I tried to focus on a moment of beauty and a moment of affliction in my life that helped me to get in touch with eternal reality. For beauty, I picked the most recent--the Bering Strait from 40,000 feet. Serene. Awesome. Vast and incomprehensible. A moment when, to deny the eternal is to deny reality. For affliction...well, that's harder, not because I can't think of anything, but because what I can think of is what I don't want to remember. I prefer to forget those things which are behind and press on. Nonetheless, there are moments which come to my mind, and they all do have that one thing in common..they forced me to look beyond the cirucumstances such as they were at the moment, and hope for something better. Moments of intense beauty, and moments of intense anguish, these are the times when our attention is forced; we cannot help but consider the Eternal.

Beijing, China. My last few days in America were among the most hectic in my life, but I suppose that is the nature of moving. Yesterday morning--no, actually Friday morning...except that I am in Beijing now, 15 hours ahead of Arizona, so if I were still in Arizona, it would still, in fact, be Saturday, so it was yesterday morning, sort of. Anyway, Sasaki-sensei and Toshiko picked me up at 5am and took me to the airport. The connecting flight to LA was uneventful, except that a
stewardess overslept, so the shuttle plane, flown by Mesa Air, was late.

When I got to Los Angeles, I noticed a booth for currency exchange. The lady at the booth offered me a ridiculously low exchange rate for my money. When I asked her about it, she said that the value of the
dollar was dropping every day, and she went on and on about how the dollar wasn't worth anything in Asia anymore. By the time I got through talking with her, I felt like my money was losing value by the minute, and if I didn't change it in right now, my dollars would be
completely worthless by the time I got off the plane in Beijing. But I didn't bite. I wasn't born yesterday. I thanked her politely, and put my money back.

We had been flying for about six hours, and I thought we must be over the middle of the ocean by now, so I walked to the back of the plane and looked out the window. I got the surprise of my life. What I saw
was snow covered fingers of land reaching out into the sea from behind me. I walked to the other side of the plane, and looked out. Rugged coastline interspersed with ocean waters, and a mystical pink band across the sky in the distance. It was a scene no artist could duplicate.

Alaska. The Berring Strait. My bad; I had forgotten, of course, that the "great circle" route to North China would be very different from a great circle route to Hong Kong, where I flew the last time I went to China. A little later, I looked out and saw the massive ice floes on the Sea of Okhotsk. Frozen ocean. A truly incredible thing to see.

Phil and Helen picked me up at the airport, and helped me get my stuff to my apartment. Then we went to a very nice on-campus restaurant for a delicious meal with some of the students from the college. Shrimp,
tender pepper steak, and some other stuff. I especially liked the yogurt. They told me it's called suannai. I have never seen that in America. Some of the students asked me about the courses I would be
teaching. I talked with them a bit about the Oracle database architecture, and how I saw the courses shaping up. I was able to get a little feel for their background, and I explained a little how I felt
the courses I was teaching would be beneficial to them. Afterward, we went to a place were Phil had reserved a private room, and the students took turns singing while the words were highlighted on a video screen. Of course, they wanted me to sing. I am afraid I was not in the best form, but it was fun anyway. Two-and-a-half hours of sleep on the
plane, it was now 7:30 am in Arizona, I had been up since 4am the previous (Arizona) day, but I gave my best travel-weary rendition of "Red River Valley." Well, it really was an excellent "get acquainted"
activity, and I enjoyed meeting these wholesome, friendly students.

Passing of the year. Well, we are four days into the new year…the old year is gone and another has begun. Once more the transition brings to mind the words of Thomas Hardy:


The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

31 December 1900

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
And aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.



In spite of inevitable uncertainly about the future, it is the voice of the Aged Thrush which encourages me not only to move on, but to continue on with a renewed sense of optimism, putting my hope in that which I cannot see, but dare to believe.

Tempe, Arizona. The past two weeks are two of the busiest I have had for a long time. Obviously, Christmas and the New Year’s holiday have something to do with that, but the fact that I am moving has tended to increase the frenzy.

On Monday (December 22), I finally got my visa from the Consulate in LA. That evening, I submitted my resignation to the University here. Wednesday was Christmas Eve, and Thursday was my last Christmas in the US for awhile. Since Chinese schools choose to take their winter break during the Chinese New Year rather than Christmas, I probably will not have a chance to travel to the US for Christmas.

After Christmas, I had to get moved out of my apartment. Moving, for me, is always an onerous process. It’s definitely easier to accumulate junk than it is to get rid of it. It seems that every time I move, I have many more books than I can possibly take with me. The used bookstores are getting pretty picky about what they buy right now, so I finally took a bunch of books to the Salvation Army.

This Monday (December 29), I took the second portion of my Hepatitis sequence at the health department and then flew to Oregon to visit two of my daughters. Tuesday Melissa and I went to Eugene to do some shopping and “hang out.” Wednesday was New Year’s Eve, and Melissa’s birthday party. I had a good time with Heather and Melissa (unfortunately Bug wasn’t able to be there), but I noticed that watching how my daughters have matured tends to make me more aware that I am moving on through the years, ever more confronted by the wretched transitoriness of life. I was talking about getting older, and Melissa said, “What do you mean, getting older? Get a pipe and a rocking chair and you’re there, Dad!”