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Living with Vintage Items

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Our beloved Carver Receiver is being repaired

Vintage HiFi for Music Lovers

We own two Carver receivers that we’ve used for over 30 years to play music from CDs and vinyl records. Both are proud mem­bers of a dis­ap­pear­ing breed of hifi com­po­nents designed and man­u­fac­tured in the US, and aimed at music lovers. They’ve become col­lec­tors items, prized by peo­ple who still own CD/DVD play­ers and turnta­bles for vinyl records.

Carver receivers appeal to audio­philes who appre­ci­ate high qual­ity music with sig­nif­i­cant detail and def­i­n­i­tion dur­ing play­back. There’s a warm spa­cious­ness to their sound that few of today’s dig­i­tal devices and com­pressed codecs can equal.

Although we also own dig­i­tal com­po­nents with today’s stan­dard HDMI, USB and coax inter­con­nec­tions, includ­ing WiFi access, we far pre­fer the sound pro­duced by this Carver Receiver.

That said, these vin­tage devices are com­pat­i­ble only with audio devices that include legacy input and out­put con­nec­tors — no HDMI con­nec­tors on board.

Built to Last

Our Carver receivers were built to last. They weigh more than 30 pounds. Their build qual­ity reflects tra­di­tional prin­ci­ples that no longer drive con­sumer brands: the notion that con­sumer devices should be designed for long life­times and ease of ser­vic­ing.

This is a stark con­trast to today’s real­ity, where brand name devices are designed for early obso­les­cence. All too many 21st cen­tury devices break just days or weeks after the war­ranty expires, and end up in a land­fill not long after.

Unlike today’s con­sumer elec­tron­ics you can still buy spare parts on eBay for our receiver, 33 years after it was man­u­fac­tured. Long after the Carver brand went out of busi­ness, as a sad con­se­quence of US labor costs that could no longer com­pete against cheap off­shore labor.

Thanks to the Carver’s core design, if you know how to use a sol­der­ing iron and have the skills to work with cir­cuit boards and ana­log parts, you can fix the Carver’s typ­i­cal fail­ure points (the out­put relays) in about 30 min­utes. Sadly, my hus­band and I lack the skills and the know-how to do this.

Preparing for a Tune-up

The design flaw of this receiver is the way its out­put relays fail after 10,000 hours of use, prob­a­bly due to heat-related chal­lenges. We’ve learned that our receiver needs a tune-up about once a decade, when its out­put relays even­tu­ally fail. It was over­due…

Our Carver stopped work­ing last year, so I’ve been on a 6‑month quest to get it repaired. I bought replace­ment parts on eBay for about $30, and down­loaded a copy of the ser­vice man­ual writ­ten for repair tech­ni­cians.

Then I had to solve the real chal­lenge of obso­les­cence, find­ing some­one who knows how to use a sol­der­ing iron, under­stands schematic dia­grams, and can put those skills to use to repair a vin­tage ana­log device. These are fast dis­ap­pear­ing skills…

Vintage Items, Specialized Skills

Get­ting ready to sol­der the replace­ment parts in place

I’m not the only one look­ing for prac­ti­cal repair options for vin­tage gear. For­tu­nately, I live in a place where eco-minded peo­ple are exper­i­ment­ing with options to help us all keep stuff out of the land­fills.

For exam­ple King Coun­ty’s Eco­Con­sumer group is on a mis­sion to help peo­ple repair bro­ken house­hold items, includ­ing torn cloth­ing and bed­ding mate­ri­als. They’re exper­i­ment­ing with com­mu­nity-based solu­tions.

They’ve begun host­ing Repair Café events. They line up vol­un­teer “fix­ers” will­ing to take a stab at repair­ing house­hold items that local com­mu­nity mem­bers will bring to those events.

The event hosts try to match on-site repair spe­cial­ists with the items need­ing their atten­tion. Besides man­ag­ing atten­dees’ expec­ta­tions about what’s fea­si­ble, the event host declines items that are out­side the skills or scope that the day’s vol­un­teer fix­ers are will­ing to tackle.

King County Repair Café event, Octo­ber 2017

Luck­ily for me, last week­end’s Repair Café included two spe­cial­ists who know how to repair a broad range of con­sumer elec­tron­ics, includ­ing vin­tage receivers like mine. They’d brought the right tools for the job includ­ing the sol­der and sol­der­ing iron.

That said, my Carver could not have been fixed if I had­n’t come pre­pared. Thanks to online research and advance plan­ning, I came equipped with the right spare parts. I also had a copy of the ser­vice man­ual on my iPad, so the tech­ni­cian could check the wiring dia­grams. These were the key resources my fixer needed so he could do his magic with the sol­der­ing iron.

Many Needs

Repair­ing gar­ments at the Repair Café

While I waited for the spe­cial­ist to repair my Carver, I looked around to see what other kinds of repairs were pop­u­lar. To my sur­prise the busiest “fix­ers” were the women oper­at­ing the sewing machines. They restored a num­ber of torn gar­ments, bro­ken zip­pers and dam­aged quilts.

I over­heard that a num­ber of the items await­ing repair had recently been pur­chased from thrift shops… A sewing machine had come from a pawn shop — indica­tive of how badly these events are needed by peo­ple strug­gling to make ends meet.

While I was there, the fix­ers repaired a weed whacker, sev­eral lamps, a Singer sewing machine, a juicer, a gar­den orna­ment made of stained glass, at least two music com­po­nents, and dozens of torn gar­ments. Plus my vin­tage Carver Receiver.

I could­n’t help but notice that most of the vol­un­teers pro­vid­ing repair ser­vices are well over 40 years old.  Their skills may be a dis­ap­pear­ing art…

The room was crowded through­out the event. There were always peo­ple wait­ing in line for the next avail­able fixer. Clearly, the Eco­Con­sumer group is on to some­thing that our com­mu­nity wants and needs. Atten­dees went home delighted.

I’m grate­ful to have found some­one at the Repair Café with the sol­der­ing skills my Carver needed. This made me happy all week­end.

My hus­band and I are thrilled to know our vin­tage Carver is now ready to keep work­ing for another 10,000 hours!

Slowing Down

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After the multi-year adren­a­line rush of a high-tech career, I’m down-shift­ing: learn­ing how to slow down and savor each moment as it comes. I’m test­ing out what it might feel like to be retired — what­ever that means these days.

Bak­ing arti­san bread at home (French boule style)

Pur­pose­fully down-shift­ing is a form of mind­ful­ness prac­tice in its own right. It’s harder than it looks.

Slow Mo, Slow Cooking

I’m try­ing out how it feels to pur­sue slow-paced, inher­ently time-con­sum­ing activ­i­ties, such as:

  • Bak­ing no-knead, slow rise arti­san bread — a process that takes 24 hours or more
  • Knit­ting shawls and sweaters — projects that take weeks to com­plete
  • Plan­ning, shop­ping and prepar­ing slow-cooked meals, gourmet din­ners that sim­mer in a slow cooker for 6–8 hours
  • Learn­ing how to adapt a vari­ety of dishes to the slow cooker
  • Walk­ing for 4–6 miles most days

This lifestyle is slower, but not bor­ing. I wake up each day happy to under­take mul­ti­ple hands-on crafts, tasks and projects.

Food for the Brain

On a less pos­i­tive note I haven’t fig­ured out how to keep my brain as actively engaged as it used to be. This is a chal­lenge for some­one who earned her liv­ing as a con­sul­tant and excelled as a big-pic­ture thinker…

But it’s more than just an iden­tity cri­sis. I don’t want to end up like my mother, addicted to cross­word and sudoku puz­zles. My hus­band and I are talk­ing about down­siz­ing, so I’m not ready to buy or learn to play the piano.

Sci­en­tists say that using a sec­ond lan­guage keeps the brain plas­tic and youth­ful. Before embark­ing on a high-tech career, I was flu­ent in French and pass­able in Span­ish, but those skills eroded through lack of use.

Last year I worked to regain some French lan­guage skills, while prepar­ing for a 3‑week trek across south­west­ern France. Now that I’m back in Seat­tle, it’s not so easy to speak French on a reg­u­lar basis, so I rely on Net­flix and French movies as a fall­back.

Clearly I need to find some activ­i­ties or pur­suits that engage my brain as thor­oughly as my crafts, hikes and slow-mo cook­ing engage my hands and eyes.

The Quest for Happy Feet

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Vintage Lowa boots

Vin­tage Lowa boots

When I agreed to go on a 3‑week walk­ing tour in France this fall, I assumed my beloved Lowa boots would join me on that jour­ney. We’ve been together for many miles over the past 15 years…

But all it took was one long walk on wood­land trails and paved roads to reveal that these aging boots would be prob­lem­atic on the Chemin du Puy.

For one thing there’s not enough cush­ion­ing for rocky trails or paved roads. For another, they are too heavy for a jour­ney where every ounce counts dearly…

And so the quest for boots began — a quest that took weeks and many shop­ping trips (or online trans­ac­tions) to accom­plish.

Finding the Right Boots Isn’t Easy

Patch for women hiking the Camino de Santiago

Patch for women hik­ing the Camino de San­ti­ago

Luck­ily, I’m in an all-wom­en’s Face­book group with other pil­grims — past, present and future. Besides shar­ing travel plans, we talk about what to pack or what to wear.

We share can­did ques­tions and per­sonal obser­va­tions about the gear that will work best for trekking the Camino. We dis­cuss every­thing, from sports bras to footwear, hik­ing socks, fold­able trekking poles, packs, etc.

Every­one agrees: the sin­gle most impor­tant deci­sion is what to wear on your feet.

We debate what’s the best footwear strat­egy: sturdy ver­sus light­weight hik­ing boots; hik­ing shoes ver­sus trail run­ning shoes; sneak­ers ver­sus hik­ing san­dals. For those not fac­ing moun­tain cross­ings, the con­sen­sus is: don’t bother car­ry­ing your heavy hik­ing boots. If you’ll spend all your time hik­ing on paved roads, boots are overkill.

And of course, we all agree that what’s best for your feet depends on many things: your age, weight, fit­ness; the size, shape and con­di­tions of your feet (such as high arches, flat feet or vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties like plan­tar fasci­tis, bunions, arthri­tis, injuries, etc.). Some peo­ple pre­fer lots of cush­ion­ing, oth­ers want to feel the road.

Given those phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics you then have to fac­tor in your expec­ta­tions of the ter­rain, the dis­tance to hike each day, changes in ele­va­tion, and the degree of tech­ni­cal chal­lenge.  We learn from Face­book posts what to expect about spe­cific con­di­tions in France or Spain, for the locales or trails where we’ll be trekking.

For these rea­sons we care a lot about details, like how many ounces each shoe or boot weighs — things that aren’t always easy to dis­cover from the man­u­fac­tur­ers’ breezy sales pitches… For those of us who will walk 100–500 miles to train before­hand, we also worry about dura­bil­ity. Will our boots be worn out before we get on the plane? Once I’ve found the right boots, should I buy a sec­ond pair to bring to Europe to replace the worn-out train­ing pair?

These are not ques­tions for fash­ion­istas…

It Takes Many Trials

To my sur­prise it’s not uncom­mon for future pil­grims to try a dozen pairs of boots and shoes before set­tling on the ones that work best for them. Some have posted pho­tos on Face­book show­ing 4–5 boxes of shoes and boots they’ve ordered to try out.

Despite the dili­gent shop­ping and pre-Camino tri­als, some Cami­gas report back that they’ve given away their boots by the end of the first week. They will hike the rest of the Way in sneak­ers or san­dals, to avoid the pain of ill-fit­ting boots.

I found this obses­sive try-buy behav­ior hard to believe, until I began my own quest to find light, com­fort­able hik­ing boots. Firstly, there’s lit­tle rela­tion­ship between the size of your street shoes ver­sus the siz­ing used for boots or trail run­ners. This means that online shop­pers have to antic­i­pate lots of exchanges…

Hoka One One boots

New Hoka One One boots, before they are cov­ered with trail mud

I’ve lost count exactly, but it’s taken me at least 6 tries (includ­ing 3 trips to REI plus a local shoe store) before set­tling on Hoka One One Tor Sum­mit Mid WP boots. Luck­ily, they were on sale at REI when I noticed how many Cami­gas were writ­ing good things about Hoka boots… Time will tell if this was the right choice.

We’ll be walk­ing the Célé Vari­ant of the Chemin du Puy (GR 65 and GR 651). Pil­grims tell us to expect stren­u­ous con­di­tions when hik­ing up and down the Célé Val­ley’s lime­stone cliffs or uneven, rocky trails.

Here in the Pacific North­west, in early spring, it’s hard to find train­ing con­di­tions like the dry, stony hills and crum­bling lime­stone cliffs we’ll face in France. Right now I’m focused on build­ing up endurance and over­all con­di­tion­ing, rather than repli­cat­ing the ter­rain.

I’ll need some train­ing on loose scree and rocky hill­climbs before we fly to Paris, but for­tu­nately, there’s all sum­mer to get ready.

For now, early prac­tice hikes sug­gest these boots will be quite com­fort­able, with some caveats…

Good Enough, but Not Perfect

After 25 miles in them so far, it’s clear that my new boots aren’t per­fect for the trek in France. Their water­proof­ing makes them less breath­able than what I’d hoped for, so my feet get hot by mile 5 —  and we’ll be hik­ing at least twice that mileage each day. I’ll also be hik­ing in much warmer weather.

Mes­sage to self: Learn how to man­age heat dis­si­pa­tion and avoid blis­ters. Step one: buy Glide. Check.

Even with thick hik­ing socks from Darn Tough, these boots are a bit too big, so my feet slip for­ward on steep descents but not enough to jam the toes. I haven’t yet tried the liner-plus-sock com­bi­na­tion as a way of avoid­ing blis­ters from an overly roomy boot, but it’s on the list of things to try. I did try this model in half size smaller, and liked the over­all foot com­fort, but found that the top of the boots cinched my ankles too tightly. Except for the ankle issue they’d be good boots to wear with thin­ner, lighter socks.

By the time I leave for France, I’ll have fig­ured out how to make my boots as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble, via:

  • The right lac­ing tech­niques to min­i­mize slip­page and max­i­mize com­fort;
  • The opti­mal com­bi­na­tion of socks and lin­ers;
  • How and where to apply Glide before putting on my socks.

My feet will swell after hik­ing all day, for 21 days in a row, so the fact that these boots are now 1/4 to 1/2 size too large will be most likely be a bless­ing on “les voies jacquaires” in France (camino hik­ing trails.)

For now I remind myself that this is a jour­ney of many lessons and dis­cov­er­ies — with many expe­ri­ences yet to unfold before we leave for France. Find­ing the right boots is an impor­tant mile­stone on the jour­ney.

Update

90 days later…

It’s mid-July and my love affair with Hoka boots con­tin­ues, now that I’ve found the opti­mal lac­ing and sock com­bos through trial-and-error.

I’m grate­ful for the way they pro­tect my toes and ankles from unex­pected encoun­ters with roots or rocks on uneven trails, the way they keep my feet dry in tor­ren­tial down­pours or unavoid­able pud­dles.

Unlike tra­di­tional hik­ing boots, these are so light­weight, lux­u­ri­ously cush­ioned and flex­i­ble under foot. My enthu­si­asm about these boots has inspired my friends too. Now almost half a dozen of us are hik­ing reg­u­larly with Hoka boots or trail run­ners…

Trail runners: happy compromise

That being said, as much as I love my Hoka boots, on hot days they become a bit too warm after ≥ 3 hours of hik­ing. If my feet get too hot and the socks get damp, there’s a risk of blis­ter­ing. This has spurred me to find alter­na­tive footwear for hot days or less rugged ter­rain.

Altra trail runners

Altra trail run­ners for hot weather hik­ing

For­tu­nately, I’ve found the right trail run­ners to alter­nate with the boots: some Altra Olym­pus shoes with a wide toe box. This model is well cush­ioned, pro­tects toes from encoun­ters with roots or rocks, and breathes well. The wide toe box offers lots of breath­ing room so toes can flex or splay out — and it avoids the risk of blis­ters that can crop up when my bunion gets too cramped.

So I’m now a happy camper, well equipped for almost any­thing the French trails are likely to present.

Training for the Trek Begins

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Woodland trail in Pioneer Park

Wood­land trail in Pio­neer Park — train­ing begins

Last month I wrote about plans to walk a 150-mile stretch of Le Chemin du Puy, a French pil­grim­age trail, later this year. It won’t be an ardu­ous jour­ney, but each day’s trek will entail 10–15 miles of walk­ing across some­what hilly ter­rain in south cen­tral France. It takes train­ing.

I’ve now begun train­ing for the trek, cau­tiously, after sev­eral weeks’ delay for med­ical con­sul­ta­tion about a lin­ger­ing knee injury. Thanks to pro­fes­sional treat­ment, heal­ing is now under­way, and a knee brace will be deliv­ered soon.

I’ve bought some Mer­rell hik­ing shoes that are well suited to our hik­ing con­di­tions, as long as it’s not rain­ing hard. My early impres­sions sug­gest they’ll be adept at han­dling a mix of walk­ing con­di­tions, includ­ing rough ter­rain along the ancient pil­grim­age trails in France. So far they’ve been very com­fort­able, with just the right amount of sup­port on steep trails. They grip well and keep me from falling on my face in the muddy sec­tions.

The woods are very muddy

The woods are very muddy

Sun breaks have enticed me out­side for the past 2 morn­ings, with just enough time to enjoy 3‑mile walks on nearby for­est trails. We’ve had twice as much rain as usual for the past 4 months, so the trails are very muddy.

One of the nearby parks includes a ravine; the trail sys­tem fea­tures a steep climb down the ravine to a fast-run­ning stream and then back up again. Hik­ing in this sec­tion of Pio­neer Park can be aer­o­bic, espe­cially if you go fast (which I’m not ready to do), or repeat some of the trails to increase the total num­ber of miles walked.

Oddly enough, I’ve tended to ignore this park, but am now find­ing it offers a lovely place to start the train­ing régime to get strong and fit for the trek in France. Best of all, it’s only a quar­ter mile from my front door.

Train­ing has begun, but fre­quent knee twinges are remind­ing me not to overdo these early walks; not to get attached too soon to achiev­ing spe­cific, quan­tifi­able dis­tance goals. Start­ing is the essen­tial thing.

Everything is green and lush

Every­thing is green and lush

Right now this is a prac­tice of mind­ful­ness, pay­ing atten­tion to how my knee is per­form­ing; remind­ing myself to slow down, lis­ten to the birds, smell the ver­dant wood­land, and enjoy the priv­i­lege of walk­ing dur­ing the late morn­ings in mid-Feb­ru­ary.

It’s time to heal, feast on the beauty, rel­ish out­door exer­cise, and begin a multi-month jour­ney of prepa­ra­tion.

Virtual Valentine to Mom

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Mom wearing a suit that she had made

Mom and Dad

This Valen­tine Day’s week­end was a time to remem­ber Mom. My mem­o­ries were trig­gered by the sound of sewing shears cut­ting through fab­ric on the din­ing room table. I was cut­ting out pieces for a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion, using a fab­ric rem­nant from cur­tains Mom made us years ago.

Remembering Mom’s Craft Skills

My mother was a remark­ably tal­ented seam­stress and tai­lor. She loved the chal­lenge of visu­al­iz­ing and then exe­cut­ing com­plex sewing pat­terns, such as the French cou­turier design­ers’ pat­terns that she would buy from Vogue. Her friends admired her fash­ion flair and skill at cre­at­ing multi piece out­fits, like the suit shown here.

Look­ing back, it’s hard to believe that she made me a Chris­t­ian Dior suit with a cape, as my back-to-school out­fit for sec­ond grade. Except for its yel­low satin lin­ing, the suit was very aus­tere — com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate for school­yard play — and prob­a­bly too severe for a child to wear to church. I had no fash­ion sense, but learned to adore the way the cape could soar like a bird’s wing or Super­man’s cloak. I’d pump the swings as high as they could go, or jump down from tree branches, just to make the cape bil­low and flash its bright yel­low lin­ing.

Meditation cushion

Remem­ber­ing Mom while cut­ting fab­ric for a zab­u­ton

Unlike the other moms we knew, our mother sewed pro­fes­sion­ally while rais­ing six chil­dren. Peo­ple would come to our house so she could tai­lor their suits (she did­n’t have her own car). Shortly after giv­ing birth to her sev­enth child, Mom re-entered the work­force and became a bank­ing pro­fes­sional. From then on her sewing down­shifted to a seri­ous hobby, reserved for spe­cial occa­sion out­fits.

Our child­hood mem­o­ries are steeped in images of her sewing, the sounds of the machine and the shears slic­ing through lay­ers of fab­ric. She may not have inter­acted with us as much as we would have liked, but we under­stood how ded­i­cated she was to her craft. She was pas­sion­ate about sewing, even though she never said so explic­itly. (She was more likely to ratio­nal­ize it as a money-sav­ing endeavor…)

We trea­sure the mem­o­ries of her gifted hand­i­work: the Easter out­fits, the new clothes for school, gowns for proms or wed­dings, and later, chris­ten­ing gowns for her grand­chil­dren. Sadly, there are few pho­tos of the cloth­ing she made for the peo­ple she loved.

Learning from Mom

Mom taught me to knit and sew when I was six. No doubt it was a tac­tic to dis­tract me while she tended the younger chil­dren, or worked on dead­line for some­one’s promised out­fit. No mat­ter her moti­va­tion, I’ve always been grate­ful for her lessons. Given parental anx­i­eties today, it’s hard to believe that she encour­aged me to use her sewing machine when I was just 6 years old…

For the first 30 years of my life I sewed or knit­ted almost every­thing I wore, from blue jeans to dresses and out­er­wear. I also made my brides­maids’ dresses.

From our New Eng­land homes, I had easy access to woolen mills; could buy fab­rics and yarns at out­let prices directly from the pro­duc­ers. Mom loved going on those fab­ric shop­ping expe­di­tions, dri­ving across rural New Hamp­shire in search of woolen mills.

It’s been a long time since I went on a fab­ric or fiber shop­ping adven­ture… It’s been way too long since I did any sewing.

Dusting Off Those Crafting Skills

Last week I tried to mend a gar­ment and dis­cov­ered my Pfaff sewing machine was in dire need of a tune-up, after sit­ting idle for years while I focused on a West Coast career. Luck­ily I found a great repair ser­vice for this vin­tage machine, and it was all tuned up and back home within two days.

To relearn my sewing skills, I’ve begun work on a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion using mate­ri­als on hand. It’s been an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, relearn­ing how to use this machine, how to rewind the bob­bin or select the right presser foot for the task, and how to exe­cute things I’ve long since for­got­ten, such as how to insert a zip­per for a pil­low cush­ion. It’s also caus­ing my fin­gers to move in unac­cus­tomed ways, to exe­cute pre­cise tasks like thread­ing a nee­dle — remind­ing me that my fin­gers aren’t as dex­ter­ous as they used to be.

Assembling a knitted sweater

Assem­bling a knit­ted sweater this week­end

I’ve noticed a change in the qual­ity of the writ­ten instruc­tions that accom­pany the sewing pat­terns. For exam­ple, my pat­tern says, “Insert the zip­per.” Pat­terns writ­ten years ago would have explained how… Luck­ily, I’ve got some old ref­er­ence guides that describe alter­na­tive meth­ods (e.g., for gar­ments ver­sus pil­lows), so I was able to insert the zip­per with­out hav­ing to rip it out and start over.

I’ve also resumed work on a knit­ting project I began a few months ago, com­mit­ted to fin­ish­ing it before win­ter’s end. As the photo shows, I’ve embarked on the trick­i­est part: seam­ing the pieces and attach­ing the sleeves to the body of the sweater. If all goes well, this project will be done this week.

Thanks, Mom, for shar­ing your love of sewing and knit­ting. They bring me joy — and remind me of you when­ever my hands are occu­pied with fiber crafts.

A Vintage Old Lady for Valentine’s Day

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A vintage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

A vin­tage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

My 25-year-old Pfaff sewing machine is com­ing home from the tune-up shop this week­end. She needed repairs to her presser foot, and adjust­ments to ten­sion and stitch­ing pre­ci­sion. The repair­man also cleaned the mov­ing parts and removed the gunky oil and grease that had caused her to lock up.

These are the prob­lems that occur when a pre­ci­sion mechan­i­cal device is neglected for more than a decade. Now the repair­man says she’s run­ning “like brand new” [sic].

Mechanical versus Electronic?

I was lucky to buy this work­horse sewing machine, right at the tran­si­tion point when lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers were flirt­ing with early LCD screens and prim­i­tive soft­ware appli­ca­tions for high-end sewing machines.

Hav­ing spent my career in soft­ware and later at Apple, I was leery about the pit­falls of buy­ing an impor­tant house­hold appli­ance that was utterly depen­dent on early gen­er­a­tion soft­ware — and worse, soft­ware devel­oped by peo­ple who don’t under­stand what it takes to pro­duce (and main­tain) great soft­ware.

To put things in per­spec­tive: the Web had­n’t been invented, the Inter­net was used only by sci­en­tists and aca­d­e­mics, and few peo­ple had email addresses. The Mac had only been around for a few years, and Microsoft had not yet released Win­dows 3.o/3.1 — the ver­sions that cat­a­pulted them into the Big Time. Those were the early days of com­put­ers and soft­ware designed for ordi­nary peo­ple to use…

After exam­in­ing those early mod­els, I could see how poorly those indus­trial-era man­u­fac­tur­ers under­stood the require­ments of soft­ware capa­ble of delight­ing con­sumers for years to come. Unlike the 1990s prod­uct design­ers, my high tech career had taught me the impor­tance of:

  • A deep under­stand­ing of usabil­ity, and how must-haves ver­sus nice-to-haves will dif­fer across the var­i­ous seg­ments of peo­ple who use sewing machines
  • Use cases and require­ments rel­e­vant to spe­cific cat­e­gories of sewing: e.g., gar­ments ver­sus quilts ver­sus embroi­dery
  • Ease of soft­ware updates and bug fixes
  • Local­iza­tion of the user inter­face. As it is, the printed man­u­als are hard enough to use, because multi-lin­gual instruc­tions are inter­min­gled — rather than lan­guage-spe­cific sec­tions
  • Screen leg­i­bil­ity under the ambi­ent light­ing con­di­tions for home or pro­fes­sional sewing machine users

Despite my ini­tial inter­est in state-of-the-art elec­tronic machines, I opted for the tried-and-true mechan­i­cal approach, where the man­u­fac­tur­ers excelled. My 25-year-old machine relies on push but­ton con­trols, dials and levers to adjust set­tings. It has a “heavy duty build.” There’s no soft­ware to break, or con­troller boards to replace.

Buy­ing a mechan­i­cal sewing machine proves to have been a wise deci­sion for that time… When you scan Ebay, Craigslist or sewing enthu­si­ast blogs, you can see the lengths that some peo­ple go to in their quest to find a vin­tage mechan­i­cal sewing machine from Bern­ina or Pfaff… I feel lucky to have cho­sen as I did. I flinch at the prices charged for com­pa­ra­ble mod­els today.

While I’m attracted to some of the con­ve­nience fea­tures of today’s high end machines, it’s hard to ratio­nal­ize their high prices, just to match the func­tion­al­ity I have now… If I start sewing a lot, as I did in my teens and twen­ties, then a pre­mium sewing machine might make more sense. It’s hard to jus­tify now.

Thanks to an $89 tune-up, my Pfaff 1171 will run smoothly and sweetly once again. Bet­ter yet, I still have all the parts and acces­sories, all the nee­dles and bob­bins, plus a sewing cab­i­net with a (semi-func­tional) hydraulic lift. It’s a great set-up for my episodic use — peri­ods of intense projects fol­lowed by months (years?) of inac­tiv­ity. For what­ever rea­son, sewing is start­ing to appeal to me again.

New Projects

The green cover needs repair

The green cover needs repair

My hus­band hopes to repair the pro­tec­tive cov­ers for Frol­ic’s sails. It’s unlikely that this Pfaff has the horse­power for such a heavy-duty sewing project: sewing through mul­ti­ple lay­ers of can­vas. He focuses on how small the sail cov­ers are, and there­fore believes this project should be well within the capa­bil­i­ties of our vin­tage Pfaff. We’ll see what hap­pens.

But for now I can’t wait to start some eas­ier projects with Madame Pfaff, once that she’s back from her spa treat­ments tomor­row.

First up: a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion fea­tur­ing some vin­tage Thai silk, sewn from the rem­nants of fab­ric used for cur­tains in my hus­band’s child­hood home in Swarth­more.

Closing Thoughts

Happy Valen­tine’s Day to me, from Madame “Tip­per” Pfaff. A true old lady, with beauty and ele­gance that’s hard to match.

My sis­ter is lucky to have my moth­er’s Pfaff 1171. I just hope she knows where to get it tuned up when needed… (We live on oppo­site coasts.)

Every Journey Begins with the First Step

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cahors_pont_valentre

Le Pont de Valen­tré, a vista along the Chemin du Puy, or Via Podi­en­sis, an ancient pil­grim­age route

My friend Jane is plan­ning another self-guided walk­ing tour in south­west­ern France, and wants me to join her on a two-week trek along the Chemin du Puy-en-Velay, a branch of the Camino San­ti­ago (or the Way of St. James). This has been a beloved pil­grim­age route for more than a thou­sand years.

Jane hiked the Chemin du Puy for two weeks last fall, and plans to walk a com­pa­ra­ble 150-mile seg­ment this Sep­tem­ber, con­tin­u­ing in the foot­steps of long ago pil­grims.

Undertaking this Journey

Should I join her on the trek this year? Can I? And if not, why not?

It’s a big under­tak­ing, both phys­i­cally and finan­cially.

For­tu­nately, we’ve both trav­eled in France before, includ­ing self-guided tours off the beaten track, so we’re not intim­i­dated by the travel logis­tics of get­ting to our start­ing point.

And then there are the cul­tural aspects of prepar­ing for the jour­ney. To truly appre­ci­ate these out-of-the-way places means brush­ing up on French lan­guage skills, reac­quaint­ing myself with high­lights of France’s medieval art and his­tory, and the sto­ried his­tory of the region we’d be vis­it­ing.

The over­all jour­ney, as it unfolds, is more reward­ing than any spe­cific des­ti­na­tion, so under­tak­ing this tour with some appre­ci­a­tion of its his­tory and cul­tural con­text is by far the best way to savor its delights.

The jour­ney is costly. Even with a 2‑week self-guided walk­ing tour (one that does­n’t require us to com­pen­sate pro­fes­sional guides or a tour­ing com­pany), the price tag is higher than a mon­th’s mort­gage for many peo­ple.

These hiking boots will need to become my new best friends

Hik­ing boots will need to become my new best friends

Train­ing for the long walk will require a sig­nif­i­cant time com­mit­ment, hun­dreds of hours of aer­o­bic exer­cise between now and then.

Despite being a reg­u­lar walker, one who can do 10,000 steps on a rou­tine basis, prepar­ing for this trek will require me to dou­ble or triple my usual walk­ing reg­i­men.

Regain­ing my French speak­ing and com­pre­hen­sion skills will require another big time com­mit­ment. Hun­dreds of hours again.

But these are things I love to do, and exer­cis­ing these skills will lead to indi­rect ben­e­fits and last­ing value in their own right, such as improved health and well being.

The Journey Is the Reward

My yoga prac­tice sug­gests set­ting an inten­tion for this under­tak­ing. So what should the theme be?

At Apple, I first learned that the jour­ney is the reward. For lots of rea­sons, that will be my theme for this walk­ing tour — the jour­ney of the trek itself, and the multi-month jour­ney to get ready for it.

I look for­ward to the indi­rect con­se­quences of prepar­ing for the jour­ney: a stronger and health­ier body, a nim­bler mind, thanks to the men­tal stim­u­la­tion of relearn­ing French, and a qui­eter mind, thanks to the med­i­ta­tive aspects of the jour­ney­ing.

The Training Régime

We’ll be hik­ing 10–18 miles each day, across some rugged or hilly ter­rain, so the trek requires a level of phys­i­cal fit­ness and sta­mina that is well beyond my cur­rent capa­bil­i­ties.

Before start­ing a seri­ous train­ing régime, I’ll need to recover from a knee injury. That said, with a dis­ci­plined effort, there’s plenty of time to build up the nec­es­sary strength and sta­mina for those chal­leng­ing day hikes between now and Sep­tem­ber.

Jane rec­om­mends at least 2–3 months of dis­ci­plined train­ing before we leave for France. That means a long walk every day, plus one or two hikes up hilly ter­rain every week­end. Those long hikes should tar­get ≥5–8 miles total dis­tance, includ­ing ele­va­tion gains.

Rain or shine. Given Seat­tle’s typ­i­cal rainy weather between now and early July, that’s no small com­mit­ment…

Parlez-vous français?

We’ll be pass­ing through small ham­lets, stay­ing in tiny inns or guest rooms out in the coun­try — places that lack sophis­ti­cated tourist ser­vices or large num­bers of Eng­lish speak­ers. We’ll need to be self-suf­fi­cient en français.

Because we will make the book­ings and man­age the walk­ing tour on our own, with­out any pro­fes­sional guides, French lan­guage pro­fi­ciency will be every bit as help­ful as our walk­ing sticks.

After pok­ing around at online resources about le Chemin du Puy, it’s clear that I will need to brush up on my French just to make sense of what those web­sites and blogs have to offer.

Today’s First Steps

So here’s what I’ve done today, in tak­ing the first steps on this jour­ney:

  • Ordered some French-lan­guage learn­ing resources
  • Ordered a Miche­lin guide for GR65, le Chemin de Com­postelle
  • Browsed a few pages of a 15-year-old travel guide for south­west­ern France, and read about a few of the places we might visit
  • Ordered some sum­mer-weight hik­ing shoes, with enough sup­port for long day hikes, but with­out the extra weight of my trusty hik­ing boots
  • Had a long con­ver­sa­tion with Jane, to agree on start­ing prin­ci­ples, expec­ta­tions and val­ues — and some early con­cepts for a plan
  • Began a tour of online resources to learn what’s in store
  • Went out for an hour’s walk, up some hills, about 7000 steps total — and am happy to report it did not harm my knee
  • Joined a closed Face­book group of past and future walk­ers whose feet have trod­den the Chemin du Puy

May the jour­ney begin.

The Quest for New XC Skis

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Conditions worsened after we crossed 2 mountain passes

We drove through a snow­storm for 6 hours and crossed 2 moun­tain passes before arriv­ing in Methow Val­ley.

We went cross-coun­try ski­ing in north cen­tral Wash­ing­ton over the Christ­mas hol­i­days. It was a wel­come respite from the Seat­tle rain, and the depress­ing news of the final months of 2015.

We bat­tled dri­ving snow, white-out con­di­tions, ice, and unplowed roads for most of the long drive to Methow Val­ley.

Get­ting there took over 6 hours of white-knuck­led dri­ving, often at 35 MPH or less. Dri­ving through the snow­storm was worth it, because we had the prospect of per­fect con­di­tions for our ski get­away in Methow Val­ley.

Arrival: Methow Valley

Powdery snow in Big Valley

We were lucky enough to ski on pow­dery snow in Big Val­ley.

We arrived in time for a glass of wine, and the sun­set alpen­glow over the snow­capped Cas­cades — the snow was tinged with a mil­lion shades of pink, salmon and gold.

We were look­ing for­ward to the prospect of ski­ing on freshly fallen pow­der snow and lots of sun­shine for the next 4–5 days.

The Methow Val­ley is justly famous for cross-coun­try ski­ing, thanks to 120 miles of groomed trails. It offers a wide choice of ter­rains and con­di­tions to prac­tice cross-coun­try ski­ing.

While there, we hoped to brush up on our rusty clas­sic XC tour­ing skills, learned years ago in the snowy mead­ows and wood­lands of Ver­mont and New Hamp­shire.

Shop for New Skis

But first: we had to equip our­selves for cross-coun­try ski­ing, and ensure our gear could with­stand Methow’s below zero tem­per­a­tures. We had thrown out my 20-year-old skis dur­ing last sum­mer’s declut­ter­ing, so my XC boots would work only if we could buy skis with match­ing 3‑pin bind­ings… And until we started shop­ping, we were unaware of how obso­lete that bind­ing sys­tem had become.

My hus­band gave me a poem for Christ­mas, in the form of a promise to take me shop­ping so we could replace my XC skis and boots, if need be.

We knew that Winthrop was home to sev­eral ski out­fit­ters, an ideal place to shop and try out dif­fer­ent options for Nordic ski­ing. Local friends advised us to shop at Winthrop Moun­tain Sports and the ski shop at Sun Moun­tain Lodge.

Although we tried sev­eral places, we ulti­mately focused on Winthrop Moun­tain Sports — a wise deci­sion. They offer a wider selec­tion of XC brands and choices, and co-owner Rita promised we’d be delighted with our even­tual choices. (She was right.)

That said, we were shop­ping between Christ­mas and New Year’s Eve, at the height of Methow’s win­ter sea­son, and inven­to­ries were deplet­ing fast…

Dis­cov­ery #1: our 3‑pin bind­ings were obso­lete, so we could no longer match skis and boots unless we shopped online for used gear, and took our chances on fit and qual­ity… So we faced the need to buy a com­plete set of skis and boots.

Dis­cov­ery #2: we’d have to adjust our tech­nique to the new advances in ski engi­neer­ing.

Fischer XC Control My Style boots

Fis­cher XC Con­trol My Style boots

Day 1: Choose the Right Boots

Deci­sion #1: which style do you pre­fer, skate ski­ing or clas­sic? Answer: clas­sic, AKA Nordic or cross coun­try. (We had to update our vocab­u­lary from “cross coun­try” to “clas­sic.”)

Deci­sion #2: which boots?

Deci­sion #3: which skis?

As expe­ri­enced (albeit out-of-prac­tice) skiers, we know that every­thing starts with the boots. Which boots you choose will deter­mine your over­all com­fort level — and con­strain your options when it comes to select­ing skis and bind­ings.

The right boots offer sup­port where you need it, fit com­fort­ably, and pro­vide enough room in the toe box so your feet stay warm despite bit­ter cold con­di­tions.

After try­ing a half dozen boots, I found a great pair of XC boots from Fis­cher. Sadly, they’re a half size too big, but Fis­cher’s boots only come in whole met­ric sizes. My new boots strike a good bal­ance between com­fort and sta­bil­ity, a big improve­ment over my prior boots.

For­tu­nately, the siz­ing prob­lem is solved by wear­ing thick hik­ing socks and tight­en­ing the laces every 30 min­utes or so. The side ben­e­fit of wear­ing overly big boots is that your toes aren’t cramped, so it’s eas­ier for your feet to stay warm. That was a a huge ben­e­fit last week, when ski­ing in below zero con­di­tions! My ski com­pan­ions were less com­fort­able.

Reset Expectations

New skis for the Methow Valley

New skis for the Methow Val­ley

We grew up ski­ing on clas­sic XC skis (Bonna 2000’s), flex­i­ble wooden skis that need a fresh coat­ing of pine tar at least once a sea­son, plus scrap­ing and fresh wax­ing for every out­ing. When you know how, and which wax com­bi­na­tions to apply given the con­di­tions, noth­ing beats freshly waxed skis.

My hus­band broke his Bon­nas years ago; mine are in a closet in New Eng­land.

Remem­ber­ing what it was like to ski on Bon­nas in Ver­mont defined our expec­ta­tions for the best that XC ski­ing could offer. An impos­si­ble stan­dard of excel­lence; it was clear we’d need to com­pro­mise when shop­ping in Methow Val­ley.

The sales rep pro­moted Salomon’s “skis with skins” as the best alter­na­tive for peo­ple who want fast skis with lots of kick. She then steered us away once I’d cho­sen a dif­fer­ent brand for my boots, due to incom­pat­i­ble bind­ing sys­tems.

We dis­cov­ered that there is less stan­dard­iza­tion in ski bind­ing tech­nolo­gies than there used to be. Today’s ski brands pur­sue lock-in strate­gies — design­ing pro­pri­etary sys­tems of boots and styles matched to spe­cific ski bind­ings, so con­sumers end up with fewer choices across brands. There are some nor­ma­tive bind­ing stan­dards, but the real­ity for con­sumers is one of incom­pat­i­bil­ity across the major brands.

Net net: If you buy Fis­cher boots, you buy Fis­cher skis; the same goes for Salomon.

Days 1–4: Find Skis to Match the Boots

Hav­ing cho­sen Fis­cher boots, I spent the next 3 days exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent mod­els of Fis­cher skis, try­ing to find the right bal­ance between kick and glide. It took a lot more work than I’d expected.

My first choice, a mid-level Fis­cher Crown at 197cm, proved to be all glide, no kick — I flew like a bat out of hell, but only thanks to con­tin­u­ous momen­tum, great bal­ance and skill­ful weight trans­fers. The skis were so fast that I kept run­ning over the backs of my hus­band’s skis — a novel expe­ri­ence for both of us.

When­ever I tried to put a kick into my stride, the skis would slip out from under me. Strid­ing was an exer­cise in con­stant slip­ping. It took a com­i­cally exag­ger­ated move­ment for me to get any trac­tion under the foot. Climb­ing hills was out-of-the-ques­tion. Over­all I found those skis exhil­a­rat­ing, but exhaust­ing.

But I was­n’t quite ready to give up on them…

Match Skis to Your Ski Style and Ability

Before rul­ing out those fast skis, we decided to take a refresher ski les­son the fol­low­ing day. We the­o­rized that my lack of kick might be caused by an XC tech­nique that was­n’t matched to today’s no-wax tech­nolo­gies, so we signed up for a semi-pri­vate ski les­son at Sun Moun­tain Lodge. We told the instruc­tor what we hoped to learn, and the deci­sion we were try­ing to make about the skis.

Bruce waits for me to tighten my laces

Bruce waits for me to tighten my laces

That ski les­son was very instruc­tive, a valu­able refresher on the­ory and tech­nique. We learned how to adjust our style and stance, given the tech­ni­cal advances in ski engi­neer­ing since the days of our early model no-wax skis.

Our instruc­tor prompted us to lean for­ward more aggres­sively — as if we were falling for­ward or ski­ing into gale-force winds; to hunch our shoul­ders, and assume “the ath­letic posi­tion.” He coached us on weight and bal­ance trans­fers while keep­ing the for­ward knee bent. We both improved very quickly.

As a yoga prac­ti­tioner, I was amused by the dif­fer­ences between XC’s ver­sion of the “ath­letic posi­tion” and the basic pos­ture for yoga — quite dif­fer­ent when it comes to posi­tion­ing the upper torso, col­lar­bones and shoul­der rota­tion.

The ski les­son revealed that I was indeed equipped with the wrong skis. The instruc­tor hinted that Fis­cher skis are tricky to fit, but delight­ful once you find the right pair… We talked about “skins” ver­sus “fish scales” — the buzz among seri­ous XC skiers seems to be in favor of skins.

After our les­son we rushed down the moun­tain to reach Winthrop Moun­tain Sports before clos­ing time. As hoped, we swapped out the fast all-glide skis for a model that promised to offer bet­ter trac­tion under the foot. Given my choice of the Fis­cher boots (and inven­tory short­ages at the shop), I was advised to switch to a shorter and more flex­i­ble ski (5 CM shorter, a less advanced model). Skins were not on offer.

Day 3: Out we went into the bit­ter cold, equipped with shorter skis for a long after­noon of ski­ing. I got plenty of kick, but sadly, no glide… My skis kept stick­ing to the snow, in sun­shine and shade.

Despite my exces­sive trac­tion on Day 3, we skied for sev­eral hours, rel­ish­ing the per­fect snow con­di­tions. It was loads of fun, but not a wise deci­sion because those skis proved to be even less well matched to my skill level than my orig­i­nal choice. (Per­haps I was too expe­ri­enced for them.)

At one point I fell face for­ward while ski­ing down a very small hill because my body was mov­ing faster than the skis — a humil­i­at­ing reminder of the need to find the right bal­ance between kick and glide.

After ski­ing for sev­eral hours, mak­ing exag­ger­ated moves in a des­per­ate quest for some glide, I ended up over-tax­ing my knees and injur­ing the soft tis­sue.

At day’s end we limped into the shop to swap out those dis­ap­point­ing skis. Rita, the shop owner, promised to pre­pare two more mod­els for me to try the fol­low­ing morn­ing. She was pretty con­fi­dent that one of them would be just right. She pro­posed I try the top-of-the-line recre­ational XC model from Fis­cher, and Fis­cher’s entry-level rac­ing model (con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cion that I’d been fight­ing with begin­ner level skis).

Ice-covered needles on a bitter cold morning

Ice-cov­ered nee­dles on a bit­ter cold morn­ing

Day 4: We hit the trails early that morn­ing with both sets of skis. It was twelve below zero over break­fast, and about six below when we arrived at Big Val­ley. Pru­dent skiers might have waited until after­noon for warmer con­di­tions, but we could­n’t wait to try the new skis…

At Last, the Right Skis

I stepped into the high-per­for­mance Fis­cher tour­ing skis, got off to a fast start on freshly groomed trails, and it was love at first sight.

I also tried the rac­ing skis, but it took only 50 yards to reveal that the high-per­for­mance tour­ing skis were a bet­ter fit for my style and abil­ity than the rac­ers. The rac­ing skis went back into the Prius, ready to return to the shop.

After 4 days of shop­ping, I even­tu­ally chose to buy Fis­cher’s Super­lite Crown model. (The sad irony is that my hus­band has been ski­ing this model for the past 5 years or more — if only we had started here for me!)

Know­ing that we’d finally found the right skis, I stepped back into the Super­lites and we went out for a 90-minute cruise. Given the cold, there was hardly any­one else ski­ing Big Val­ley. Hur­ray! New skis and fab­u­lous con­di­tions for ski tour­ing, even bet­ter once the sun warmed the val­ley to a balmy nine degrees.

The sad irony: my knees were shot from three prior days of try­ing out skis that did­n’t fit. Despite a lovely cruise in per­fect con­di­tions, my injured knees pre­vented me from fully enjoy­ing my new skis on our last day in Winthrop.

Once my knees recover, I look for­ward to future out­ings on these brand new skis — in the Methow Val­ley or closer venues in the Cas­cades like Hyack.

In the mean­time I’m grate­ful to my hus­band for such a gen­er­ous Christ­mas gift. We’re both grate­ful to the owner of Winthrop Moun­tain Sports, for work­ing so care­fully to ensure we found just the right skis and boots for me.

Skis and Boots for Bruce?

And as a final irony: my hus­band went ski­ing with friends on our last after­noon in Winthrop, and may now be fac­ing a shop­ping trip to replace his fail­ing equip­ment.

The tem­per­a­tures were so cold that the glue on his ski boots failed. As a result the soles, with their inte­gral 3‑pin bind­ings, sep­a­rated from the boots. He’s going to try to glue boots and soles back together, but if that fails, we’re fac­ing another shop­ping trip.

He has 3‑pin bind­ings on his Super­lite Crown skis, and may not be able to keep his beloved skis unless he can find some­one will­ing to install more mod­ern bind­ings on them. We’ll see what hap­pens…

Will 2016 Be 1492 Redux?

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1492 was a year of extreme reli­gious intol­er­ance among Chris­tians.

Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain

Fer­di­nand and Isabella of Spain

1492 was also the year that launched Colum­bus’ first voy­age — and its unin­tended con­se­quences, the “dis­cov­ery” of the Amer­i­cas instead of a faster route to the spice-rich East Indies.

Years from now what will peo­ple say about 2016? Will it be a time of great dis­cov­er­ies, or will we stum­ble blindly into another painfully long war between Chris­tians and Mus­lims? Will we find the wis­dom and the courage to explore other, more sus­tain­able solu­tions?

Can we learn the avoid the mis­takes of the past — and not repeat the infamy of 1492?

Bigots Prevailed in 1492

In 1492 the Span­ish mon­archs Fer­di­nand and Isabella defeated the Mus­lim king­dom of Granada and won the keys to the Alham­bra Palace. This vic­tory was the crown­ing moment of a 10-year war of reli­gious intol­er­ance waged by los Reyes Católi­cos against the Span­ish Moors and other non-Chris­t­ian believ­ers. But la Recon­quista did not end reli­gious intol­er­ance in Spain.

stone-tracery

Stone trac­ery at the Alham­bra Palace

Instead, Emir Boab­dil’s sur­ren­der marked the end of cen­turies’ worth of artis­tic cre­ativ­ity, of sci­en­tific and med­ical inno­va­tions that had flour­ished under the Span­ish Moors. Orig­i­nally from North Africa, the Moors lived in the south­ern regions of the Iber­ian penin­sula and prac­ticed Islam.

The Moors’ cul­tural and sci­en­tific inno­va­tions far sur­passed the later con­tri­bu­tions of the nar­row-minded, poorly edu­cated Catholic con­quer­ers.

Hav­ing secured la Recon­quista and then financed Colum­bus’ voy­age of dis­cov­ery, the Span­ish mon­archs recruited Con­quis­ta­dores under the mis­sion of con­quer­ing the native pop­u­la­tions of the Amer­i­cas. (And forc­ing them to con­vert to Chris­tian­ity.)

These remote con­quests fueled a mas­sive trans­fer of wealth from the Amer­i­cas to Spain over the next 200 years. This whole­sale plun­der­ing of gold, sil­ver and pre­cious gems kept the Span­ish gov­ern­ment afloat (when not siphoned off by French or British pirates).

Believe or Else…

forced-conversionsFrom Cal­i­for­nia to the ends of South Amer­ica, Indi­ans were cap­tured, enslaved or forced to con­vert to Chris­tian­ity, often at the point of a sword or mus­ket. This was the dark side of the power of reli­gious con­vic­tion.

Mean­while Los Reyes Católi­cos expanded the reach of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, ramp­ing up its pun­ish­ing impacts on any­one who did not pro­fess the Catholic faith in Spain. Under los Reyes Católi­cos, there was no sep­a­ra­tion of the pow­ers of church and state. Vio­lence was a rou­tine means of forc­ing con­ver­sions.

Empow­ered to use tor­ture to draw out con­fes­sions or force con­ver­sions, the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion spawned a reign of ter­ror. The Inqui­si­tion was hos­tile to inno­va­tion, sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery, free think­ing, can­dor or any­thing that devi­ated from the nar­row belief sys­tems of ortho­dox Catholi­cism.

The infamy of 1492 includes the expul­sion of tens of thou­sands of Jews and other non-Catholic believ­ers from Spain.

Jews, Mus­lims, Protes­tants, Gyp­sies — any non-Catholics who remained in Spain risked relent­less per­se­cu­tion by the Inqui­si­tion and the monar­chy. Protes­tants, despite being fel­low Chris­tians, were not immune to this per­se­cu­tion.

The Catholic Mon­archs impris­oned, enslaved or sequestered many thou­sands of Gyp­sies and other non­be­liev­ers, forc­ing them to live in unat­trac­tive areas called ghet­tos.

Non­be­liev­ers who remained behind in Spain faced impris­on­ment, tor­ture, per­se­cu­tion, a choice between con­ver­sion or death (auto-da-fé), extor­tion and crush­ing tax­a­tion.

The choice was stark: embrace Catholi­cism, or pre­pare to flee the coun­try.

Who Will Prevail in 2016?

Big­otry and reli­gious intol­er­ance led to geno­ci­dal behav­iors and inhu­mane poli­cies in 1492 and after. In 2016 will our actions as cit­i­zens, vot­ers and gov­ern­ment offi­cials show that we capa­ble of learn­ing from his­tory?

Or have we for­got­ten the found­ing prin­ci­ples of this nation and our Con­sti­tu­tion: includ­ing the free­dom to prac­tice the reli­gion of our choice, the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, the prin­ci­ple of free speech — even when we dis­agree or don’t share the same belief sys­tems?

The pro­posal to ban all Mus­lims from enter­ing Amer­ica, sim­ply because of their espoused beliefs, is a total con­tra­dic­tion to Amer­i­ca’s found­ing prin­ci­ples.

Are we smart or brave enough to stop pay­ing atten­tion to the hatred and fear mon­ger­ing pro­moted by big­ots, dem­a­gogues and amoral politi­cians? Why are we allow­ing our­selves to become blinded by fear and hatred?

I pray that when we Amer­i­cans cast our votes in 2016, we won’t fall prey to the fas­cist play­book — fear-dri­ven reli­gious intol­er­ance, xeno­pho­bia and the other base moti­va­tions sold by Don­ald Trump and his rivals… If so, we’ll only be play­ing into the Mus­lim-alien­at­ing sce­nar­ios that ISIS recruiters sin­cerely hope we will adopt.

We Face More Serious Threats

Despite the fear mon­ger­ing, the true threat of ISIS pales when com­pared to the biggest risks to peo­ple’s lives: gun vio­lence, high­way acci­dents, can­cer, hunger — the things that can kill mil­lions. Each year:

Ter­ror­ism is scary indeed, but its actual risk to most Amer­i­cans (or even most Euro­peans) is low when mea­sured in absolute num­bers. Even when you fac­tor in the deaths on 9/11 (caused by Al Quaeda rather than ISIS), Amer­i­cans are 10 times more likely to die from domes­tic gun vio­lence than from ter­ror­ism.

Politi­cians and media moguls are cyn­i­cal real­ists: they know they’ll get far more atten­tion by appeal­ing to our fears, rather than inform­ing us about the big­ger pic­ture. As a result Don­ald Trump will get far more air­time than he deserves. And we’ll get dumber and more big­oted by lis­ten­ing to him.

The world deserves more from Amer­i­cans; it needs us to remain true to our found­ing prin­ci­ples, and not fall prey to fas­cism or the evan­ge­lists of fear and hatred.

What about Them?

My hus­band points out that this blog post could be mis­in­ter­preted by peo­ple who don’t read care­fully. Just to be clear: I do not say that account­abil­ity for reli­gious tol­er­ance or open-mind­ed­ness rests solely on Amer­i­cans or Euro­peans with Chris­t­ian back­grounds. Au con­traire!

Every soci­ety, every gov­ern­ing entity, indeed every reli­gious insti­tu­tion should encour­age and pro­mote tol­er­ance for other peo­ple’s reli­gious belief sys­tems. Espe­cially among those who share a com­mon cultural/historical her­itage — the Peo­ple of the Book: Jews, Chris­tians, Mus­lims. Instead the oppo­site is true (a par­tic­u­larly appalling char­ac­ter­is­tic of tribal behav­ior that anthro­pol­o­gists have long doc­u­mented.)

I’m appalled by the cru­elty and suf­fer­ing inflicted, in the name of reli­gion, by one group of believ­ers on oth­ers who believe or prac­tice dif­fer­ently.

For more than a thou­sand years Chris­tians, Jews and Mus­lims alike have had shame­ful track records when it comes to killing, antipa­thy and intol­er­ance towards those they label non-believ­ers, heretics or infi­dels. Let’s not for­get the hun­dreds of years of war­fare and exe­cu­tions across Europe over diverg­ing def­i­n­i­tions of heresy or apos­tasy. This pro­longed vio­lence inflicted by Chris­tians on other Chris­tians was one of the fac­tors that drove the Pil­grims to seek reli­gious free­dom on the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent.)

I have no sym­pa­thy for ISIS, but grieve for their vic­tims. ISIS is not a reli­gion, it’s not a vari­ant of the Mus­lim belief sys­tem; it’s a wanna-be gov­ern­ment, a socio-polit­i­cal force that mas­quer­ades in the name of reli­gion in order to inflict its medieval beliefs and cul­tural prac­tices, like sharia, on those within its sphere of influ­ence.

Just as Chris­tians would be appalled at this faulty logic:

All Chris­tians = right-wing extrem­ists = poten­tial mass-mur­derer with guns

So should we refrain from faulty reduc­tion­ist think­ing, like the notion Trump espouses:

All Mus­lims = ISIS mem­bers = poten­tial ter­ror­ists  —> there­fore keep all of them out of the US

Very few Mus­lims, Chris­tians or Jews are ter­ror­ists, or have the poten­tial to become ter­ror­ists.

Mus­lims should be wel­comed to Amer­i­can shores, just as we wel­come Jews, Bud­dhists, Hin­dus and other non-Chris­t­ian believ­ers.

As long as we’re in a state of war, we should not wel­come ISIS rep­re­sen­ta­tives until they are ready to take a seat at the nego­ti­at­ing table, to pur­sue seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions about peace­ful coex­is­tence and the future of our shared planet.

Going back to my open­ing premise, Islamic edu­ca­tors and soci­eties need to find ways to learn accep­tance, open-mind­ed­ness and tol­er­ance. They need to edu­cate their peo­ples and cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for sus­tain­able lives, so that vio­lence towards oth­ers no longer seems an accept­able choice.

Grieving for Paris

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Like so many oth­ers in the West­ern world, I spent this past week­end griev­ing for the tragic events in Paris. I was struck by the out­pour­ing of sym­pa­thy from peo­ple around the world.

It Feels Personal

Like oth­ers who have vis­ited or lived in Paris, my heart was sad­dened by the bomb­ings and shoot­ings that rav­aged the City of Light. I grieve for the hun­dreds of wounded or trau­ma­tized peo­ple who were present at a venue tar­geted by the ISIS bombers. I regret the deaths.

On a per­sonal note I grieve for the for­eign exchange stu­dents who spent Fri­day night in one of the cafes and bars that were on the ter­ror­ists’ hit list. Like them, I too was once an exchange stu­dent in Paris.

Was the mas­sive out­pour­ing of grief this week­end trig­gered by mem­o­ries of 9/11?

Do we grieve because so many peo­ple we know have vis­ited Paris at least once in their lives — thanks to its being one of the most heav­ily vis­ited cities any­where?

Paris occu­pies a spe­cial place in our hearts. Unlike places in the Mid­dle East whose cities we can’t even name…

Do we fear, self-ref­er­ently, that this could so eas­ily have hap­pened to me?

Should we drop Paris vis­its from our bucket list?

And Yet, And Yet

A thought­ful friend posted a reminder on Face­book, point­ing out that things are so much worse, every­day, in war-torn places like Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. 129 peo­ple died in Paris on Fri­day. Mean­while, more than 210,000 peo­ple have died in Syria over the past 4 years; more than half civil­ians — inno­cent bystanders like the peo­ple in Paris on Fri­day.

Where is the mas­sive out­pour­ing of sym­pa­thy or help for peo­ple who suf­fer in Syria or other war-torn Islamic coun­tries?

Are we less empa­thetic because so few of us have trav­eled to the Mid­dle East or North Africa? Because we are unlikely to have read books or watched movies that would give us insights into what it’s like to live there? We don’t read or write Ara­bic. Their music sounds odd to us.

We may all, in some fash­ion, have a com­mon his­tory as Peo­ple of the Book — but we haven’t read each oth­er’s Book (Bible vs. Koran).

Do we demo­nize each other because we feel, some­how, that they are too rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from us? Why are fear and hatred our only prac­ticed responses? Why is it always US ver­sus THEM, instead of WE?

We need to break the end­less cycle of vio­lence that’s grounded in mutual igno­rance and antipa­thy. That means we need edu­ca­tion, empa­thy and insights to help us under­stand the peo­ples, cul­tures and griev­ances that fuel the sav­age energy that ISIS exploits. We need jointly to uncover alter­na­tives to the Islamic State’s reliance on war­fare and ter­ror­ism as its only (appar­ent) means of bring­ing about change.

There­fore our edu­ca­tional, reli­gious and civic insti­tu­tions need to devise a dif­fer­ent and more nuanced strat­egy, one that has a pos­si­bil­ity of dif­fer­ent and bet­ter out­comes. At the national level we need to rethink bud­get­ing pri­or­i­ties.

The Costs of the Status Quo Are Too High

I’m no diplo­mat or politi­cian, so I fear we are on the verge of another cen­tury of war­fare between Judeo-Chris­tians and mil­i­tant Islamic peo­ple. I worry that the cycle of vio­lence will con­tinue until Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans develop more empa­thy and a deeper under­stand­ing of the prob­lems that plague every­day peo­ple who live in the Islamic world. Sadly, we need to under­stand each other before we can learn to tol­er­ate each other.

We’re all blinded by igno­rance today, so it’s all too easy to be manip­u­lated or ter­ror­ized by war­mon­ger­ing politi­cians or hate-fueled big­ots. Col­lec­tively, we do not put enough time, energy or money into the painful work of devel­op­ing more last­ing solu­tions. We invest in short-term human­i­tar­ian band-aids (as in, tex­ting $10 to the Red Cross), but not in long-term sys­temic solu­tions.

For most Amer­i­cans it’s hard to under­stand what it’s like to grow up in a place where the major­ity of peo­ple live in poverty, illit­er­ate or poorly edu­cated, taught only lies about so-called infi­dels: Jews, Chris­tians and West­ern civ­i­liza­tion (“tools of Satan.”) It’s hard for us to visu­al­ize places where young peo­ple grow up hun­gry, angry, over­whelmed with bur­dens, lack­ing dreams or real­is­tic hopes for life-sus­tain­ing jobs.

Given those strait­ened cir­cum­stances it’s easy for ISIS zealots to recruit young men for sui­ci­dal mis­sions against peo­ple they view as god­less or worse. If you have no pos­i­tive rea­son to go on liv­ing, why not get your­self on the fast track to Par­adise, as promised by the ISIS jihadists?

West­ern gov­ern­ments’ easy-to-exe­cute responses, of lash­ing back at ter­ror­ists with mis­sile strikes and armed war­fare, is unlikely to break the cycle of vio­lence in any last­ing way. Just look at the impacts of Bush’s war on Iraq or Afghanistan as poster chil­dren for the endur­ing con­se­quences of mil­i­tary-only inter­ven­tions. What makes us think that this time there will be a dif­fer­ent out­come?

This hor­rific feed­back loop will con­tinue as long as peo­ple drawn to ISIS can envi­sion no bet­ter path than ter­ror­ist actions that result in a fast ticket (or so they believe) to mar­tyr­dom in Par­adise.

I urge our edu­ca­tors, civic lead­ers, and gov­ern­ments to seek out a dif­fer­ent path, devis­ing long-term plans and strate­gies that enable our dif­fer­ing worlds to resolve our dif­fer­ences in more last­ing ways.

Until we do so, our over reliance on “wag­ing war against ter­ror­ism,” will do noth­ing but keep us all mired in a bloody and end­less cycle of war­fare and ter­ror­ism.

In the mean­time I’m cry­ing for the peo­ple who lost lives or limbs in Paris…