Visitors to our spot of reality in Surabaya.

A little girl in a hijab just showed up at the house to meet her mom, who cleans for us three days a week. This grade three student is a very polite, respectful child. This is due to upbringing, good manners and being a decent person.

As the Bundy bozos and the Klan yahoos have shown, no religion or nation is free of jackasses. No nation or religion should be defined by the extremists who distort belief and scripture for their own purposes.

I have broken bread with atheists, Catholics, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans and likely a couple of Jedi. I would gladly break bread with most of them again. With a few of them however, I would not break wind.

An overdue post, and an unexpected smile


It has been a long time since I wrote anything new, at least that wasn't lesson related. I sat down to write but was almost immediately distracted by our cleaning lady's youngest. The little girl is three years old and there is no one home to look after her so she tags along with mom. Her older sister, the grade three student, is still at school.

The littlest one, whose name is unpronounceable, to nobody but me, is happily checking everything out, babbling pleasantly and occasionally popping over to see what the odd old man is doing. To be fair, I don't know if I appear more odd or more old to her, but she seems happy either way.

The long and the short of it is I have no idea what to write so I'll leave you with a short thought. Have a great day and enjoy the smiles that appear unexpectedly.