I learned that it's record cold in Michigan this winter! And that means there are icebergs on Lake Michigan...

My parents recently moved to Michigan after finishing seminary in MIssouri and Kansas. Both of them are California, born and raised, as are their daughters. Their adventure to the midwest has been a family-wide experience and even their brothers and sisters, intrepid as they are, cannot admit to ever having visited (or even wanted to ever visit) any part of the country beyond the Sierras! But thanks to my pioneering parents, we've all fallen in love with middle America (St.Louis is one of my absolute favorite cities!)

Michigan, however.... might just be a whole other animal. I have some friends from Michigan and they have shared some breathtaking images of weather like I've never experienced and palettes that I'm more akin to seeing in Los Angeles' contemporary art galleries than across trees and foliage. The same goes for incredible crystal expanses left behind by blizzards and ice storms - or, in the case of the photos below, by the frozen ebb of Lake Michigan's towering waters after a record cold. Apparently, it was so cold, the waves would freeze upon contact with the air!

This is video of a lighthouse on Lake Eerie. I couldn't find the lighthouse my dad saw on Lake Michigan, but this still gives you an idea of how cold it was this last winter:

Dairy- & Gluten-free Pine Nut Pie

Unbaked pie - bakes into a pretty, marbly surface!
I know that last week I wrote on my Pine Nut Pie recipe and that this week - if anyone was paying attention to the Pie of the Week widget off to the right - I was supposed to write on a made-up recipe for Banana Nutella, but to be honest, my Banana Nutella Pie did not turn out as well as I had hoped whilst my Pine Nut Pie seems to be improving!

This last week I made it for the birthday celebration of Paul Hoppe and then again for the in-laws, some of who cannot eat wheat and/or dairy. I learned some things and made improvements to my recipe, including a version that would not offend the stomachs of my loved ones!

Original ingredients:

(click here for the original recipe)

What I learned the second and third time around:

• Istead of dark brown sugar, light brown sugar! This lends itself to a more fluffy filling and doesn't get quite as dense.
• The flour is only necessary if you want to use dark brown sugar which mixes into a syrup that is thicker than the light brown sugar.
• Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread bakes very well with pies! I hardly noticed the difference between it and regular butter.
• On a similar note, this spread has a higher viscosity than butter when melted and is similar to the heavy cream - 1 Tbsp of this for the missing consistency of 3 Tbsp of heavy cream
• The best alternatives for gluten-free pie crusts are not potato flour ones, but cornmeal and nut based! This is Almond Tart Dough is vegan and wheat-free.
• Trader Joe's new press-in pie crusts are AWESOME. (Not Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-free)

Honey Pumpkin Date with 'Mallow Topping

In a nutshell: 1) Thoroughly blend all the ingredients together, taking care that the dates are cut to bite-sized bits. 2) Pour into your prebaked graham cracker pie crust, distributing date pieces evenly 3) Bake at 350 F for 20 min, rotate pie, bake for 25 more min at 450 F 4) Remove, let cool, place in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours just before serving, 5) cover chilled pie with mini-marshmallows and place in the broiler for 2-3 minutes - MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE MARSHMALLOWS AS THEY BROWN!! If you take your eyes off for even a few seconds, you'll end up with an ugly burnt mess.

Pumpkin, dates, eggs, heavy whipping cream, full-fat sour cream, honey, molasses, cinnemon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves!

One thing I am learning about pies is that for all their variety in flavor, filling, crust and occasion, they are pretty darn straight forward to make.

However, one thing I underestimated is the value of some TLC. This pie, relatively simple and easy in writing, required a significantly greater amount of time to prepare (and practice). And I am a lazy person - if I had planned a little better, I might have been a little less frustrated, but perhaps you can benefit from my strife and discovery:

Stuff I learned this time around:

1) Let ingredients (like eggs) reach room temperature
2) Your own squash puree is easy! But not instantaneous...
3) Cool a pre-baked pie shell in the fridge OR unthaw a frozen one in the fridge before using
4) If the recipe says the pie should cool -

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TIME TO LET THE PIE COOL!

A little about each:

1) Letting the ingredients, like eggs & butter & even milk, really does help mix and bake the filling to the proper consistency!

Room temperature ingredients allow for the emulsion of fat and liquid which cannot otherwise mix. If you add cold ingredients, like eggs from the fridge, to a room temperature filling, you may end up with not-so-yummy descriptions of your mixture like curdled, chunky or grainy. This is particularly annoying if you are mixing or whisking by hand.
Also, your mixture will likely not hold its form as well - a good looking pie is even across the surface and not cracked or sunken. Sinking is a particularly disheartening result of chilled ingredients.
(PS I know the FDA says this isn't true, but you can leave eggs out of the refrigerator for up to two weeks, depending on how fresh they are. It's true! That's how they do it in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY except America. Ask you European or African friends (I did). There isn't an in-between for a good egg and a rotten one and so long as you aren't storing your eggs in the top cabinet with the California winter-heat beating on them, they'll do just for for a while.)

2) You can cook any squash like this:
Cut in half, de-seed, put in the oven in a half an inch of water (any way you like) with some loose foil over for about 35-40 minutes at 350 F. That's it. Pumpkin, Delicata, Spaghetti, they can ALL be cooked this way. If you want to forgo the canned pureed squash you stick the results (without skin!) in a blender. VIOLA!

3) Once again, don't be lazy like me. Prebaked pie shells are the bomb! And easy. So just do it, you don't need to always buy pie shells... but you do need to cool them and not use them straight from the oven. If you do, you might make a mess of your pie in one or several of theses ways: cooking the outside filling faster on the hot crust, crust can absorb the filling and get mushy, the taste might change, the exposed edges will likely cook more & dry out than the covered ones and ultimately, the crust (depending on the kind) can really lose its shape - refrigerating it keeps it firm.

4) This is probably the singularly most important experience I had during the baking of this pie.
The filling for this pie used a lot of liquids and had a very low viscosity (rather runny); in addition to this new factor in pie-making, the recipe called for this pie to be baked at two different temperatures in the first half and last half of its time in the oven. I did my best to follow the recipe to the "T" (after not doing so and creating delays as I ran into the aforementioned discoveries) and baked as instructed. But at the end of the 45 mins, the pie still seamed to be quite liquid. I baked for an extra 20 minutes, just to be sure, but the consistency did not change much. I didn't want to risk over-cooking, so I removed the pie and let it cool to room temperature.

This pie is best served chilled with freshly warmed marshmallows. Prepare this pie the night before or very early in the day to alot time for cooling...
Allow the pie to cool thoroughly; then place the pie in the refrigerator for 3 hours or over night.

Despite the hold-ups and a little bit of cheating on the instructions - the pie was incredible. So delicious and so vacant of any processed foods (san marshmallows!). The ingredients DID NOT include sugar except what was in the dates and honey! Another successful Pie of the Week.

The party we attended was pretty fantastic, too! The treats were especially fun:

Potato Brains!	Mummy Dogs!	Baby Burrito!

I learned about Japanese mayo.

This weekend we got some Meghan Janssen. In honor of this getting, we made a jaunt to Little Tokyo to look for manga art supplies and prepare our moods for Japanese dinner and My Neighbor Totoro!

The weather rapidly changed from rainy to sunny during the short jaunt down I-110 from Pasadena to the heart of LA. It made for some wonderful pictures:

Upon returning home, unsuccessful in acquiring neither art supplies nor boba, we received Meghan who cooked for us her Japanese students' favorite dish: Omuraisu (pronounced roughly oh-moo-rys-oo... or "omelette rice oo" said really fast.) On our fried rice omelette we drew faces with ketchup and Japanese mayonnaise. Another friend of mine once told me that Japanese put mayo on everything green - no uncooked, un-mayonnaised veggies for the Japanese! And Meghan told me that there is a special Japanese word for someone who has extra love for mayonnaise. Having now tried this incredible condiment, I think understand why!

Japanese Mayo > any other kind of mayo.

I'm not sure I could tell you why... perhaps its the slightly more tart/sour flavor - but in any event, it stands a fact!

I learned that the taste map is a LIE!

(illustration by everevese - whoever it is)

Yesterday we got back from an impulsive, weeklong stay at the in-luvs (in-laws) in Paso Robles. Again! It was a great week of industry for both Matt and I: he went to APE in San Francisco with Malachi to exhibit their new comic, EXPANSION [buy it here!], while I stayed in Paso and was waited on, hand and foot, by his mommy. I dunno what he was doing up there but I was cooking pies, crocheting & knitting, quilting, birthday-ing, and I even got to meet my sister-in-law-in-law's mother (who is an amazing artist) and learn a bit about wet- & needle-felting! I left with my head so full of ideas (not to mention a car full of vegetables from the Sheean garden), I could help but come home with the domestic-midas touch.

Last night, I made dinner with the produce we came home with. I didn't really have a plan, but all the pie making has given me the chance to work with all kinds of whole foods, see how they cook, and understand their complimentary tastes. The last two pies where apple and squash based. Seeing as how I had both at my disposal, I decided to make a soup.

There doesn't seem to be a huge difference between soup and pie fillings...

Pie filling	Soup base
bake/puree ingredients add some cream if desired add flour & sugar spice	bake/puree ingredients add some butter if desired add chicken broth & milk spice

I could be totally wrong, but all-in-all, it seems that soups are just liquid-y-ier pie fillings!

In any event, I cut up a butternut squash and some apples, baked the butternut squash in butter and the apples in brown sugar, boiled the almost-soft butternut squash in some chicken broth and half-&-half while the hot apples sat in a couple cups of orange juice, and finally pureed the whole dang thang. It was already tasty, but the seasoning had yet to be added!

And this is where I learned of the LIES!!!! As I taste tested, adding a bit of salt and some left over butter from the butternut squash pan, I pulled out my brain (iPhone) to see what parts of my tongue were wanting for stimulation. I definitely nailed the sweet/sour balance by adding more broth and butter to tone down the sweetness - but I wasn't quite sure what my tongue (between the edges and the center) wanted. SO I looked up a taste map!

Much to my dismay, the image I chose came with the following article from LiveScience explaining the myth of the taste map. Christopher Wanjek, the columnist and author of Bad Medicine, explains that basically the taste map has persisted because no one has taken the time to really refute it. The map was developed based on some loose and subjective data (D.P. Hanig, 1901) and then arranged into graphs (Edwin Boring, 2942) that translated to the map (Virginia Collings, 1974) decades after the initial study. But apparently (and, I must admit, somewhat obviously), the whole tongue and other parts of the mouth can taste every flavor.

The article didn't really give much information concerning how taste actually works or present any alternative maps or interpretations of how taste is process, but I suppose that isn't really the its point... if you want real information on the debunking and exploration of tastes, check out this article by Cathy Pelletier.

So how did that effect my soup?
I basically decided I didn't care and tried to forget the information I read. I knew that even though the map is outdated and inaccurate, I was still trying to stimulate that certain part of my mouth, right around the salty/sour area. I pulled out all the complimentary spices I could think of and added them in different quantities to test bowls of the soup base I set aside. Like a good scientist (maybe), I repeated my taste testing until finally I had my solution: a dash more of salt and a buncha ginger. YUM! The completion of my make-shift recipe left my whole mouth tingling with delight.

Still, my mind is reeling a bit from the news of this faulty map. Would you judge me harshly for saying it feels a little like when they said "Pluto's not a planet"?

I learned that foil is a very useful crafting tool.

I think foil is a lot like duct tape: cheap, all purpose, and probably grossly overused when it comes to amateur crafting (I used foil in EVERY diorama I ever made. Including the tiny reproduction Fort Ross which featured weapons fashioned from toothpicks covered tin foil). I also recall my old art professor scoffing at a piece I made using predominantly foil... he also hated duct tape.

In any case, it turns out this stuff can save you a lotta money & headaches when properly applied to projects. For example, instead of using muslin or some scrap fabric - which can always be re-appropriated to something else - I used foil to hold the shape of the thing I was creating a pattern for (including my torso) and cut it (not with my fabric scissors!!) where I guessed I would want the seams. I also used it to take the shape of the inside of the little treasure boxes the pocket sea creatures come in. It's the easiest way a right-brained like me could think to translate something three-dimensional to two-dimensions.

Foil is also great for Halloween costumes.

Today, however, when I frustratingly failed at my third makeshift row marker, I discovered that little candy foils (like the kind on Kisses) can also be re-appropriated by being twisted into strands used for marking rows! Oh how I love to give things, like wrappers, a second life:

(oh and what is this picture of you ask? It's going to be a crocheted VAMPIRE SQUID!! available this weekend at my shop :D )

The Irony of Dumpster Diving

(sorry for the delay.... several drafts of this disappeared... and then I got shy realizing this is not my best writing... and then I started teaching myself CSS & HTML and forgot to post this two weeks ago... thanks for your comment PC - it reminded me to blog!)



In the "comments" section of the last blog, I addressed Pasadena Cafe briefly on the topic; and, to some extend, PC pointed to one of the predominate frustrations I have with the act of dumpster diving in how it is received socially. I fancy myself a slightly skilled observer (given I must have gleaned something useful from my newly acquired Sociology degree), but I am not separate from the social expectations for behavior that clearly, if unspoken, do exist. One of them being that dumpster diving is unsafe, unsanitary, and an activity of the desperate (Forgive me if I sounded desperate in my last post - but, aside from curiosity, truly I thought of myself as being economic) and the other that it is "better."
I first found myself wondering where the line between desperate and economic really is. I wonder how many of us (particularly those who could in some capacity afford their B.A.) consider economy sub-par, or perhaps equate it with undesirable or at best, less-than-comfortable. I do not mean to insult the wisdom in avoiding eating things left in a bacteria-infested garbage bin; but, along side the easy-to-damn Man, I do intend to bring into question the collective judgment, in which I participated, that deemed this not just a reasonable activity, but an important, healthy, better one.
I understand these Houses choosing to live as Freegans because it is 1) economic, 2) offsets the waste created, 3) is a form of subversive consumerism, & 4) it creates a standard for the House where consumables were truly expropriated (no one could be mad at the person who grocery shopped because they didn't get the right granola bars, nor could someone defend their peanut butter against the rest of the House).


I began this article with the title and thought "The Irony of Dumpster Diving" because in my research to find out legal and safe practices (and during the event itself) some very interesting things came up.
While we were sloothing through the treasury of meat, eggs, and bread, I happened upon a box of Camel Reds (a brand I'm particularly fond if I do get the rare treat of sharing a smoke with someone). In the same fashion I happily retrieved a frozen, sealed package of rack of lamb, I reached for the carton. One of my friends said "oh don't take that! It's been opened, it's not safe!" And the absurdity of the statement hit me, "They can't possibly be any worse for you than they already are!" Together, we laughed at the truth in the statement; earlier in the night one of my compatriots had offered a round of cigarettes to the divers of their own, fresh purchase.
Over the next several days I ogled and feasted on my goodies. I noticed my bank account was not as drained as it generally is at week's end. I could not help but speculate on what I would do with the extra income (for the most part, I put it toward my Legends of the Hidden Temple graduation party). In the relief of dodging anxiety over a tight grocery budget, I immediately thought of the many wonderful ways I could entertain myself with the extra dollars for the month. The correlation between saving and recreation was not lost on me. It dawned on me that if I made smoking a regular, perhaps even just a weekly habit, I would quickly shell out what could be spent on rack of lamb.

What kind of consumer was I really becoming? It's a fallacy to consider my saved income from the dive as "free" or "unspent" money (I think, too, this is an attitude that pervades the self-righteous who look at people of privilege and think "hmm, they could be paying for so many meals if they weren't making car payments on a BMW..."; it's also foolish and untrue). For all intents and purposes, I was just as wealthy/poor as before I decided to feed my family from a dumpster (after all, I am a member of privilege - as we all are, more or less - and that is a difficult thing to exclude from wealth). But the question still remains: what do I do with those extra dollars? The only fair and real answer I could come up with is consume. Cigarettes, a completely superfluous, un-fulfilling and arguably damaging activity, are not outside the logical or moral confines of such subversive consumerism. Instead of existing only in privilege, I found myself walking a line I couldn't quite put my finger on - the better line....

The elitism I was edging my way towards was found roots in a quote from an essay called "Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket" by Angela McRobbie:

Although there seems to be an evasion of the mainstream with it's mass-produced goods and marked-up prices, the "subversive consumerism" of the ragmarket is in practice highly selective in what is offered and what, in turn, is purchased. There is in this milieu an even more refined economy of taste at work. For every piece rescued and restored, a thousand are cosigned to oblivion. Indeed, it might also be claimed that in the midst of this there is a thinly veiled cultural elitism in the operation...

Forgive a rough landing to this blog - but, ultimately I realized that narrow line I walked was between economic & elitist/subversive & snobby. I was still consuming, even if I wasn't paying for it and my means of consumption were even empowered by dumpster diving - an activity, by the way, that comes at the cost of time and energy that many people more depraved than I simply cannot afford (i.e. I am young, have no children, don't commute to work, only have on job, etc). This is not to say that I "should" fully adapt an impoverished lifestyle - I don't mean to say that dumpster diving isn't truly helpful or the idea subversive economics requires a change of socioeconomic status to justify it. But I do have to reconcile my own privilege with a socially abnormal practice, lest it become a snobby hobby or a creative delusion of self righteousness.

At the end of day it is 1) not more economic - I could simply work more with my free time and afford the food I spent time diving for; 2) makes room for other waste as I am still capable (and do) consume; 3) subversive? yes - but better... not so sure; & 4) may find it's only and better purpose in expropriation - but only if expropriation is the philosophy of all involved and towards all property.

But like I said... this is a rough landing and that last thought is for another day.

What do you want to read next?
	My Small Rant about Community Houses (old and un-posted)
	The Pizza Martyr (a real person we met)
	Peti and Walker (an episode of historical fiction from childhood)
pollcode.com

Dumpster Diving

I wish I had written yesterday – when the event was still fresh in my mind but I had yet to relate the experience to anyone and I was still delusional from sleep deprivation. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I participated because we had run out of funds for the month (although, this is true) or because I had some moral convictions that were satisfied by it (although, this is true, too). The heaviest weighing factor was simply curiosity. I had seen the fruits (literally) of the previous week’s scavenging and I wanted to understand just how much edible waste was actually found in these excursions.

The night began with only two of us who left at midnight for the nearest Trader Joe’s. Initially, I was disappointed by what I saw. The dumpster smelled foul and it looked like most things had yogurt or orange juice dumped on them. It was only about a quarter of the way full which lead me to my 2-minute assessment that there was nothing to be salvaged. My more experienced partner had an eye for this thing, however, and over 15 minutes of poking around, she managed to spot us several dozen unopened bags of bagels, a pair of zucchinis, 4 perfect Fuji apples (and 2 bruised ones), 2 cartons of blueberries and a basket of fresh basil. I was particularly surprised about the apples as they were the only unpackaged treasure we pulled. My friend explained that if the skin wasn’t broken we could wash them with water and a little bit of bleach and they would be sanitized enough to eat safely.
As I was climbing out, we were joined by several other dumpster divers who we spent the rest of the night with. Since it was my first time, they climbed in and double-checked for goods I may have missed. They found a bag of lemons with only one moldy piece of fruit, two unbroken eggs, and a sad looking sweet basil potted herb that they determined could be brought back to life.

We stopped at a few other stores along the way to the site most frequented by my Freegan friends. The ones with management and night crews still out and about we avoided. I have yet to confirm this, but I learned that dumpster diving is not illegal as long as it not on private property (which, apparently, means it is an enclosed dumpster). All the same, we did not want to call attention to ourselves or create an awkward confrontation over this grey-area activity.
We were not the first to get to the prized dumpster, a couple had loaded up nearly two trunks of food before we got there. I got a glimpse before they awkwardly left us to get the last pickings – they had several bags of breaded goods with expiration dates for that day, boxes of produce looking a bit less than pretty but still totally edible, and good deal of shelf-/dry-goods. Apparently, the night of the week we went followed regular shipments at this particular store, so the dumpsters area always full of product that was replaced during that day.
At this site, I, alone, brought home over $70 in grocery foods. This was what was left after we removed all moldy, dairy, warm, or questionable products from our findings. Anything that had not been pierced and could be washed in bleach was fair game. Understanding that I came only from a two-person home, this was a meager portion compared to the amount the other two intentional communities with me took. One of the girls with us even commented that it was far less than normal and they would have to come back the next night; but I was pleased.
The people who beat us to our bounty were a true Freegan couple (eating only free, organic, non-meat products) and so what was left for us to pick from in the dumpster was a large variety of packaged meats. I was extremely skeptical of taking any, particularly the poultry, but the community members assured me that they had never experienced any ill effects from eating the packaged meats they pulled. To accommodate my skepticism, they gave me the meats that were still frozen in their sealed packaging. I hit the jack-pot when I stumbled upon a garbage bag of eggs still in their cartons. I pulled out about ten dozen eggs in perfect condition! This was what the two houses were hoping for as eggs are a main staple, easily prepared, possessing a long un-refrigerated shelf life, and numerous.

At the end of the night, we took out all the goods from our cars (even the ones that had been scavenged by smaller groups in locations I had not been to) and laid everything out. Item by item we asked out loud who wanted what. The divvying was facilitated by questions of amount and preference and gifting all at once; and there was an air of joy and effortlessness to process. In the kind of conversation where it is reasonable to expect conflict, there was openhandedness and an absence of entitlement. Things were not allotted based on what was fair, or even on who needed what, but exchanged in generosity. I am not exactly sure how such an “exchange” of any kind happened because, without sounding communistic, the food belonged to all of us at once. I suppose a contributing factor was that the dumpster would be there the next night and the next and the next…
When I got home, I was nervous that the food I received would go bad or make us sick and so I prayed. The words I heard myself saying were not at all unique, but they had more implication than ever before – I asked that the food I received would nourish us (despite being pulled from a dumpster), that God would protect us (from dumpster bugs), that God would continue to provide for us… The attitude that my friends from the communities had during the distribution suddenly made sense to me. It wasn’t that the food belonged to all of us, it was that the food belonged to none of us.

What do you want to read next?
	The Irony of Dumpster Diving
	Revenge of the Hidden Temple (Danica's version of the childhood game show)
	Pictures Transformers in places they shouldn't be (as edited by Danica for invisiblepeople.tv tour)

Quotes and Sources from my paper

These are just some quotes I will be using through out my paper. Some food for thought on economics and hospitality for you. =D

THE CREDIT CRISIS points to the inadequacy of any ultimate credo whose object is anything but God. God is our refuge and strength. And God’s sustaining power is not tied to the Dow. - Adam Hamilton, Article from Sojourners "Faith, Hope & the Credit Crisis"

He black power base, political base, is not based on activism, is not supported by commerce, not supported by other Black millionaires, we don’t have that many Black millionaires. So what we have is this dynamic where this Black powerbase is based on the White powerbase. So when you have someone, like Jeff who comes along, who is not tight to the political structure, not tied to the dynasties, that kind of creates a problem for the Black political power base. Because they’re like, “uh oh, I like this guy, this guy is speaking to my issues, he’s exciting my people, but he’s not my bread and butter.” And it’s a shame, but that really is the dynamic that the Black powerbase is really dealing with. We didn't get our own so we have to depend on this other, artificial, but yet real base. - Sylvester Brown, from "Can Mr. Smith Still Get to Washington?"

“Capitalism is wrong because even if it succeeds in delivering the goods, it nevertheless works against Good, corrupting (and perpetuating the corruption of) human sociality in competitive and confliction modalities.” -Daniel Bell

"Justification of ungodly behavior comes from the sanctification of cultural wisdom." - Matt

“… I think the statistics about happiness and satisfaction indicate that, deeper down, we know we’ve been over liberated. There are communitarians and social conservatives and progressives for whose “community” has become a magic word, a mystic goal. But it is our economic lines, even more than our moral choices, that play the crucial role in wrecking or rebuilding our communities. We need to once again depend on those around us for something real. If we o, then the bonds that make for human satisfaction, as opposed to endless growth, will begin to reemerge.” McKibbon, Deep Economy

Concern with getting uor needs met keeps us bound to ourselves – our deceptions, our distortions, and our autonomy. - Newman, Untamed Hospitality

(I did not pick the best quote from this book, but it's one I thought that was good offhand.. I highly recommend read)

“It is the task of economic policy to grow the economy as rapidly, sustainable, and inclusive as possible.” Bill Clinton

"[When] money means grace – it means one has grace; it is an indication of one’s graced state. And [when] grace means money – it means one has money; the grace one has, one’s religious standing, is an indication of one’s economic status.” Kathryn Tanner, Economy of Grace

“You can’t ignore people when God is looking out their eyes at you.” Homan & Pratt, Radical Hospitality

"Sometimes intellectual conversations boil down to the capacity to quote the right authority at the right time." - Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

“From the beginning to the end, the people of the Bible are people of hope. All of them saw the star of promise in the long night of this world, and glimpsed the first streaks of daybreak colours heralding God’s new day.” - Moltmonn, Jesus Christ for Today's World

"How often is your guest room occupied by a stranger? Isn’t it usually prepared for grandmother or aunt Sue or your college roommate? …
Who knows what rich experiences the next guest at your door may have to share with you. Think how your life has been broadened and enriched by the personalities of your friends. …" - Ahleen Heynen, "Given to Hospitality" published in The Banner

“Everything about me is recessive” – my dad to my grandmother