Victor Frankl Did Not Actually Enjoy The Holocaust, Guys

Back when I adjuncted at LDSBC (a wonderful school that helps make college cheaply accessible to many, btw), I would invariably, every semester, get several student papers arguing that one can "choose to be happy" in any situation one is in.  They doubtless first heard the doctrine in some religion or marketing class, and perhaps thought it would please their instructors to parrot the idea right back at them; who knows, some of them may have even sincerely believed it.

Such papers were always by a young student (no student over the age of 22 says something so ridiculous), as well as white, middle-to-upper-class, and American (none of my students from Latin-America, Africa, Asia, eastern Europe, or even the lower tax brackets of the U.S. ever wrote such silly papers, either).  It's apparently easy for folks who've never had real problems to tell everyone else to get over theirs; such a tragic lack of imagination these students have.

There are of course multiple problems with the rhetoric of "choosing to be happy," viz: it makes the clinically depressed feel even worst, for telling them to "just get over it" is like telling a cancer patient to "just be healthy"; it perpetuates the pernicious puritan doctrine that only the sinful suffer, and therefore if you're sad you deserve it, just like that girl was asking for it, I mean, look at that dress...; it's also weird for adherents of a religion that preaches "are we not all beggars?" to blame the sufferer, or for believers of "wickedness never was happiness" to claim that happiness is a choice--does that mean I can be evil and still choose to be happy about it, even in hell?

Then there's just the gross misreadings of these students, like when they cite "the patience of Job," the Biblical figure who supposedly bore all his sufferings with quiet patience, somehow skipping the 40 straight chapters of Job complaining very loudly to God.  Serious, does no one actually read the Book of Job anymore?  I swear, I need no other defense of literary studies than this: we learn how to examine what a book actually says, not what everyone thinks it ways.  But Job's not even the most egregious misreading these students perform!

For every last one of these papers cited Victor Frankl, the Jewish-Austrian psychologist who survived the Holocaust, then wrote a best-selling book about it called Man's Search for Meaning.  The gist of the text is that man's primary motivation is not pleasure (as Freud initially thought) or power (as Nietzsche taught), but meaning.  If you can find a meaning, you can handle most anything, even Dachau; Frankl even repeatedly quotes Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."  Hence, Frankl was able to survive the Death Camps when many physically stronger men succumbed, because he found meaning in his sufferings.

These young students then somehow conflate this search for meaning with the search for happiness (not the same thing!--perhaps they get the M. Russell Ballard book Man's Search for Happiness mixed up in their head?--In any case, meaning and happiness are not synonyms), and they make Victor Frankl their Exhibit A of how one can "choose to be happy," even in the Holocaust!

But, once again, here's the value of the English major, for I've actually read the books that everyone cites, and having read Man's Search for Meaning, I can testify that, guys, Victor Frankl did not actually enjoy the Holocaust!  He found meaning in it, yes, and with it the strength and the resolve to survive and escape it, but guys, he was still trying to survive and escape it!  At no point in his book does Frankl ever say he was happy during the Holocaust.  Not once does he turn to his fellow prisoners and say, "Welp, no use complaining about it, cheer up everyone, let's choose to be happy!",  and then proceed to whistle a happy tune during slave labor, give a chirpy good morning to the SS Guard, plaster a smile on his face while he crapped his guts out with dysentery, and cheerfully skipped through an enforced death march in the snow without shoes--and when the Americans liberated Dachau, he didn't say, "Oh no need to free us, for you see, I've chosen to be happy here, no matter where I am!"  Serious, I do believe his fellow prisoners would've killed him if the SS didn't first.

Frankl even explicitly says that "happiness must ensue," that is, one must have a reason to be happy!  Frankl does not confirm but repudiate the rhetoric of "choose to be happy," because happiness must result--you do not choose it.  Now, one can perhaps choose to find some meaning in one's life, and with it the wherewithal to not just survive but overcome, and even create the conditions by which happiness may at last be possible. But again, do not make the juvenile assumption that happiness is a choice.  It is far grander than that.  It is not a bag of chips on a grocery aisle, or a shirt on a rack, for you to just pick out and try on.  (Mayhaps our American conflation between consumption and fulfillment explains in part why we are all such anxious, neurotic messes).

The irony is that, of all my students, the ones that were most genuinely charming, cheery, pleasant, interesting, intriguing, fascinating, kind and decent are the ones that have actually survived horrific tragedy--poverty and assault and oppression and abuse and so forth.  You could then claim that these students are living proof that happiness is a choice, except that these were never the students who wrote me such ridiculous papers.  They knew better.  They'd suffered too much.  Any happiness, peace, and/or contentment they had was hard-won, incomplete, and ensued from some other meaning they'd found in the midst of tragedy.  What's more, tragedy had fleshed them out, made a much fuller human being out of them, than the young ones who wrote about "choosing happiness," who still did not yet know the meaning of either choice or happiness.

But I also tried to not be too hard on those papers when I got them; these students were merely too young, too inexperienced, to know better, is all.  They didn't need me to burst their bubble; life would show them soon enough.

Shawshank Redemption 2: THE SEQUEL!

So apparently The Shawshank Redemption was on TV 151 hours last year. Weirdly, that number actually feels low for Shawshank.  Heaven knows I first saw the film while randomly flipping channels one day...and that I saw it again that way every single time after, too.  Doesn't matter how many times I've seen that film, still if I'm randomly flipping channels and it's on, no matter whether it's at the start, the middle, or the end, no matter if I have appointments or other important things to do that day, I will sit put and watch it through to the end--and apparently I'm far from alone.  Despite debuting to middling box office returns in 1994, Shawshank is apparently now one of the most reliable money-makers in cinematic history. 

By the immutable laws of modern Hollywood, you know what that means: SEQUEL! 

Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are BACK as Andy and Red, who, while still on the lamb in Mexico, are framed for the assassination of the President, who was killed to cover up the Roswell UFO held in old Shawshank prison, now converted into a high-tech research facility! 

Now, to clear his name and save America, the only man who ever broke OUT of Shawshank has to break back IN, steal the space-ship, take out the terrorists holding San Francisco hostage, infect the Independence Day Mothership, and team up with James Bond, The Terminator, Iron Man, Captain America, Batman, John McClain, Indiana Jones, Rick Deckard and Han Solo to destroy Skynet before it's too late!

ANDY DUFRESNE: You either get busy living...
(Throws down his cigarette and raises a bazooka)
ANDY DUFRESNE: ...or you get busy dying!
(Fires)

SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION 2: JUDGMENT DAY.  

Coming soon to relentless replay on TNT and TBS!

(You can just mail me my check, Hollywood).

Experienced Time

For his birthday, an astrophysicist of my acquaintance decided to calculate how much experienced time he had lived thus far (because of course he would).  Because when you're, say, 3, the interval between one year and the next is virtually unfathomable--it's a solid third of your life, right?  A birthday is of course a huge deal at that age.  Then by the time you're 5, a year has shortened to only a fifth of your life, and when you're 10 that's only tenth, and so forth.  By his calculations, by the time you are 25, even if you eventually make it to 80 or even 90, you have already experienced the majority of your life.  Not lived it mind you, but temporally experienced it.

Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why High School movies are so popular even among adults, or why "Young Adult" is read so much by actual adults, or why so many of us are so nostalgic for the decades of our teens--it's certainly not because those were the best years of our lives, but because, experientially, those were the majority of our lives on this Earth!

On a more personal level, his calculations have suddenly made me brood a little more on my teens, which I have not done in years.  For usually, when I reflect on my life, I usually begin with my mission to Puerto Rico, and then barrel down through my college years in Idaho and Utah and the Midwest, my jobs in China and Mexico, my trips across Europe and etc.  Like most folks, I wisely ignore the embarrassment of my teens and mostly put it out of my mind.

But perhaps that's a mistake, maybe if my youth is experientially the majority of my life, then I shouldn't be quite so swift to discount them as a big, long mistake.  Moreover, in my experience as a teacher, late-teens are merely inexperienced, not unintelligent; they are ignorant, not naive.  They do in fact see through our adult hypocrisies quite easily; and if they can't quite put their finger or explain why something is wrong, they can still at least tell that something is wrong.  Nathaniel Hawthorne once said something to the effect that an artist spends most his adult life confirming the things he believed as a youth, and maybe he wasn't being sarcastic when he said that; maybe everything we thought was right and wrong while young will still turn out to be right in the end after all.

Jack White's Lazaretto Makes Me Miss Meg White

Jack White's new album Lazaretto is much better than his solo debut Blunderbuss.  Not that Blunderbuss was bad per se:  The musicianship was excellent, the production professional, the song-writing competent and the performances impassioned.  But despite White's best efforts, it just didn't feel as vital--both in the sense of feeling necessary and of feeling alive--as any given White Stripes LP.   Even the White Stripes-esque "Sixteen Saltines" strangely feels more like Jack White performing in the style of the White Stripes than an actual White Stripes song.

And come to think of it, as much as I find Lazaretto to be more wild and playful and just plain fun--as good as the groove may be on "High Ball Stepper" and the title track--well...it still isn't as much so as the White Stripes.  In fact, what's been most revealing to me about Jack White's solo career so far is how profoundly crucial Meg White had been all along.

It was easy to dismiss her as a gimmick you see--a gimmick that hooked you onto some cool music sure, but still a gimmick nonetheless.  Serious, a two-piece garage-rock outfit composed of a brother/sister duo with a relentless red/white color scheme that turned out to be a divorced couple somehow still friends?  That was always gonna be a fascinating premise for a band, even without hearing their albums.  Come for the weirdo couple, stay for the actual songs, seemed to be the thinking.

But then as they began to flirt with genuine mainstream success, as their singles received real radio airplay, as "Seven Nation Army" joined the rarefied ranks of "We Are The Champions," "(Whoop!) There It Is," and "Enter Sandman" as songs we will hear in every American sports stadium till the end of time, Meg began to seem like a sort of prehensile tail, a left-over vestige of an earlier Indie era when Jack White still needed a hook to set himself apart.  The fact that Jack post-success promptly formed The Ranconteurs and Dead Weather--"side-projects" that were more fleshed-out and professional than his main gig--did little to ameliorate murmurings that Meg, with her childishly simple drumming, was in fact holding back Jack the musical genius.

Not that Jack ever verbally expressed so, quite the inverse in fact: even at their height he was always very vocal of the great importance Meg had on the band's sound.  But then, Jack is also a natural showman, one who tries on as many identities as he does musical styles, so it was easy to just dismiss Jack's praise of Meg as more performance art, that he was still just milking the gimmick for all it's worth, that he was in fact only being gracious and generous to his mild-mannered bandmate while he dominated the spotlight.  And in fact, given how often Jack has consciously created limitations and obstacles for himself to overcome...

 [Jack White "Hard Work" from It Might Get Loud]

...so as to really force himself to wrestle the instrument and make better music, well, it was never hard to think that Meg was likewise another self-imposed limitation on Jack, another obstacle for Jack to overcome--and one he could easily do without.

But 3 years after the band's official break up and 2 solo albums later, it's now clear that Jack White wasn't just being a showman when he emphasized Meg's importance--no, she was in fact crucial to the band's sound.   He can do without her perhaps (as shown by his solo albums' sales), but never as brilliantly or as vitally as he could with her in the White Stripes.

Again, to be clear: Meg was, at best, a very amateurish (if primal) drummer; she had no vocal chops and was not the primary song writer; nevertheless, she was also clearly not just another self-imposed obstacle for Jack to wrestle against and overcome, no--there was something about her ambiance, her aloofness, her personality, and her chemistry with Jack that enabled Jack White to make the music he did. The White Stripes were not a gimmick, but an actual complete band, it turns out.   Meg would never even have made it as some no-name, journeyman drummer without Jack, but Jack would never have made as good of music without Meg!  For whatever reason, those songs could not have existed if Jack had not made them with Meg.  She was not the hanger-on to Jack's "genius" or whatever, she really was essential to that band.  Jack was right.

Now, that being said, I will probably continue to pick up Jack White albums (at least as long as he keeps making cool music, and Lazaretto gives me high hopes for the future); but part of me worries that the ultimate effect of his solo stuff will just be to demonstrate what a lightning-in-a-bottle, irreproducible phenomenon the White Stripes really were (even if they were by some miracle to reunite, I suspect it would be less the White Stripes than 2 former members of the White Stripes performing covers of old White Stripes songs), and to at last appreciate the contributions of Meg White more than ever.

There is a larger moral here: never discount the contributions of those around you, no matter how much less "talented" or "skilled" you may perceive them to be.  Never assume that you are "self-made," or that you "never got help from anyone," or that you ever accomplished anything "all by yourself" and that "others are leaching off your genius" and other such poisonous rationalizations that cause the rich to grind on the faces of the poor, to speciously claim that they "earned" all their wealth and therefore owe the impoverished nothing (least of all the token taxes that could help alleviate the suffering of those who enabled one's material wealth), and that have allowed the powerful throughout history to justify their oppressions, for you never completely know who all has helped and enabled you along the way.  Jack White at least had the awareness and decency to acknowledge what Meg White did for him while they were together; may the rest of us learn to be likewise gracious--not condescendingly, not patronizingly, but sincerely, soberly, and truthfully.

Requiem on a Chrysler Sebring, Ashes to Ashes, Rust to Rust

There were multiple moments this last winter when I would rev up my car (no way I was walking to class in 2 degree weather) and listen to the timing belt squeal for at least 2 minutes straight, while the battery light appeared, and I could smell the gas leak, and the crack in the windshield meant I had to scrape ice from the inside as well as the outside, and the de-fogger was useless, so I sometimes had to roll down the window enough for me to stick my scarfed-head outside and let the stinging wind freeze the tears on my face in order to see, ironically in hopes of not causing an accident.

And that was assuming the window wasn't frozen shut! Moreover, the driver's side door no longer opened from the inside, so when I got to the parking lot, I couldn't open the door or roll down the window to hit the button for my parking pass; so, I had to throw the car in park, crawl out the passenger's side door, run around my car Chinese-fire-drill style, hit the button, then open my door, jump back in and throw the car in gear...only for the engine to abruptly stall out, so I'd have to put her in neutral, crawl out the passenger side again and start pushing my car into the parking lot, all to the angry honks of the cars in line behind me, while I cursed profusely under my scarf.  ("Remember this when you're rich and famous" I told myself.)

Inevitably some kind folks would come help me push it in the rest of the way (for after all most people are basically decent), and a few hours later after class the car would start up just fine...then it was just a case of making sure I didn't pull out on a patch of built-up ice, which would inevitably catch my front fender and tear it off, which I would then have to snap back in place before speeding back to my apartment before the engine either stalled out again or threatened to overheat.

This was once a proud car; a decade ago, it was a bona fide luxury sedan--with a sunroof, 4-cd disc changer (back when that was a thing), V-6 engine, and an old-school (one colleague called it "steam punk") Nokia phone holder that predated Blue Tooth tech by years.  Even though it was already past its prime by the time I got her, she still drove like a dream.  That stylish car got me all over Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and of course across the Midwest.   But it's time had long past, for the harsh truth is that, unlike Hondas or Toyotas, Chryslers are simply not built to last.  At all.

Frankly, I should've traded in that car a year ago--even 3 years ago.  So why didn't I?  Part of it was the standard anxiety about used car dealers--what if they rip me off, what if I get a lemon, what if something happens and I can't make payments, etc, etc, etc--but then, part of it, frankly, was sheer sentimental attachment.  Many of my generation I've noticed have deep attachments to their vehicles, often going to stupid expense (like me) to keep them running--sometimes because we can't afford a new one, but also because in these tumultuous times (there's an old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times") your car gets you a whole lot more than just around.  It becomes part of your life, an extension of yourself.

For I can't speak for others, but that Chrysler and I have been through death and life together.  Literally.  It was the car I was picked up in when I got home from Puerto Rico, and thus was my Mom's last car drive in this life (and seeing as how today once again would have been her birthday, now seems as good a time as any to reminisce on the significance of that--for that Chrysler would never again be "just another car" after that event).

Then there was its heroic drive through that once-in-a-generation blizzard of '08.  There have been the stunning National Parks visited in it, the drives through mountain passes, the long road trips.  I've beheld the solar eclipse of the sun in that car.  The sheer number of adventures I've had with friends, dates I've gone on, girls I've kissed, the despairing depths and soaring highs and general life experiences I've had all in that car stagger my imagination.  Oh yes, that old Chrysler was always more than just a car to me.

Once, years ago, when it first began falling apart, the mechanic noted that my ability to feel which tire-rod was loose just by driving her on the freeway showed that I had a very close relationship with my car, and he was impressed.  I couldn't quite suppress my pride when I replied that that car and I had been through a lot together; little did I know how much more we still had to go through.

I called her "Silver Bullet" when I first inherited it; "Silver Surfer" after it got me through that aforementioned blizzard like a super hero; "The Italian Stallion" after Fiat bought out Chrysler ("I now drive an Italian car!" is a bad joke I told too many times); and then "The Godfather", once age and wear began to show, as a title more commensurate with its dignity.

I was its last driver (I'm pretty sure I only got trade-in value because the dealership was hungry to close that sale).  Doubtless some junkyard is already in process of stripping it for parts to live on in other faltering cars being extended beyond their intended lifespan by other young college grads.  Much as I genuinely loved that car, I of course often wish that all I've spent on repairs over the years had been put into down payments on a new vehicle instead.  But hindsight is 20/20, and one never really knows with cars, does one.  And again, it was never just another car.

Sweet Hitch Hiker

Was busted up along the highway, I'm the saddest ridin' fool alive...
-Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Sweet Hitchhiker" [1972]

Read more: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Sweet Hitch Hiker Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Picking up a hitch hiker is a split-second decision.  Like all good acts, you have to decide ahead of time if you're going to do it at all.  Otherwise, you'll be speeding down the freeway in the middle of desert Colorado (like I was) when you'll suddenly see a lonesome stranger with his thumb out, and you'll at once worry what if he's a serial killer? An escaped convict?  A strung-out drug addict? Mentally unstable? A scammer?  A con artist?  A hijacker?  What if he assaults or attacks or robs me?  And of course that most despicable of Anglo-American impulses will inevitably cross your mind as well, the one that assumes that the poor are so because they deserve to be, and thus to help them would be a sin.

But then you cast that last awful thought out of mind, and your more charitable impulses kick in, as you consider the great leaps of faith that the poor hitch hiker is taking, having all the same worries about you as you do about him, and how every good act carries some intrinsic risk but that doesn't excuse us from doing them, and how if these hitch hikers are sticking their thumbs out in the middle of the desert then something has clearly gone south in their lives and what they really need is your help not your judgment, and if you're Christian you wonder what would Jesus do, and if you're LDS you remember "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief," and if nothing else you consider that life is unpredictable and uncontrollable so who knows one day it might be you having to stick your thumb out on a desert highway and you'll want good Karma then, plus it's just good to do good to others and this 2 day road trip is already plenty lonely as it is, so you get ready to pull over to the shoulder--

Now, all these thoughts flash through your mind in only a split second mind you, and by the time that split second is up you've already passed the hitch hiker and careened another half-mile down the freeway at 80 mph, and you feel a twinge of guilt.  For as more than one important thinker on the topic has stated, when the time for action has come, the time for preparation has ended.

Such was my experience early Tuesday morning, in the middle of a long solo road trip across the Midwest and Rocky Mountains.  I privately swore that the next hitch hiker I passed, I would pull over immediately, the risks be damned.

I didn't have to wait long for my resolve to be tested.  Less than an hour later outside of Grand Junction, Colorado, I saw yet another thumb along the I-70.  I pulled over immediately.  This 18-year-old drifter ran up, hopped in the passenger seat, thanked me profusely, then immediately apologized for his B.O. (which I actually didn't mind--it was a clear sign to me that he was in fact stuck in the middle of the desert and not scamming--my faith had been validated).

I asked him how far he's going.  He said as far west as he could.  I said I was heading to Salt Lake City.  He said that was perfect, cause he was trying to hitch hike to Sacramento and Salt Lake would make a serious dent in his journey.  His sob story was that his younger sister (whom he hasn't seen in 12 years) was dying of cancer out in California, and his Uncle had finally tracked him down and invited him to see her and move in with him.  The kid's lemon of a car had broken down and been impounded he said, and he'd had a row with his Mom and her boyfriend and roommate back in Grand Junction, so he just up and left spur of the moment for California, even as he didn't even have the cash for a bus ticket.


In that inimitable self-focused way all teenagers are, he talked endlessly about himself, of all his music ideas and ambitions to become some Skrillex type DJ, and when he saw my guitar in the back he talked of all his favorite bands and at which album exactly Metallica sold out and etc.  As he described it, over the course of his young life, thanks to a truck-driver grandfather and some illegally-underage cruise-ship jobs, he has either lived in or passed through all 50 states and most of Canada (he spouted a bit of French at me to prove he'd been to Quebec; I only responded, "je ne parle pas le francais").  This kid had an odd M-name that I asked twice but couldn't remember either time.  He was observant enough to wait till we stopped for water before he stepped out for a cigarette.  After about 2 hours of him non-stop talking he suddenly conked out and fell asleep, and understandably, as he said he'd been awake for roughly 36 hours straight, having started walking midnight previous.  I didn't know whether to believe all of it or half of it or none of it--but then, he really was hitch hiking in the middle of a parched desert, which no one does voluntarily; and besides, at midnight previous myself, I was sleeping in a van at a truck stop in eastern Colorado, so it certainly wasn't me who should be questioning strange road stories.

In the mean time, as he slept soundly in the passenger seat, I looked up and admired in awe the canyons, mountain passes, and sheer beauty of the Rocky Mountains and southern Utah (which I'd always appreciated but perhaps took for granted but didn't any longer), while in even more awe I considered the strange series of events that had to come together just precisely for me to give this kid a lift part way to his dying sister.

For only a few days earlier, I was seriously asking myself why I was even bothering with the expense and hassle of buying a new(ish) car that wasn't completely falling apart, just to drive all the way to SLC for only a month or so, for the heavy inertia that settles in after a long graduate school year and a cruel winter had me considering how easy it would feel to just hang out in Iowa City all summer long (for I could read and write and hang out with friends as easily there as anywhere), and driving clear through Iowa and Nebraska in one day didn't improve my mood about this journey.  Really, only the house-sitting I promised to do for some strangers on the internet roused me enough to break my inertia and load up a van to strike out west.

And though I was initially excited to finally see mountains again, the lazy pragmatist within me (the one that urged me to just call the whole trip off in the first place) told me that if I was going to make this whole pointless drive anyways, then I should save time and money by cutting through southern Wyoming and further oppress my soul. It was almost with a feeling of rebellion that I, literally last second, took the exit into Colorado instead when the I-80 and I-76 split.  A few hours later, I slept with a baseball cap over my eyes at the aforementioned truck stop.

But then as I woke up with the stunning sunrise on the wind-swept prairies, and as I drove I beheld the skyline of the Rockies beyond Denver, and my spirit lifted...and as I ascended into the mountains once more I remembered why I'd longed for them so long, for my view increased and my soul expanded...and I considered the incredible synchronicity needed for me to buy an affordable old van that was somehow still in great driving shape, and get that house-sitting gig for just this particular month, and take the I-76 instead of the I-80 at the last second, all for me to help this poor kid try to see his dying sister one last time.  The Lord doth work in mysterious ways.

I believed enough of his story to assume that he really was penniless and therefore probably starving, so I took him out to Cafe Rio once we reached Salt Lake, where he quickly learned why anyone who's ever passed through Salt Lake raves about the place.  I dropped him off at the junction for the I-80 W, to continue his Quixotic quest for Sacramento...well, maybe not so Quixotic, for after I dropped him off and found a parking lot to turn around in, I saw that he was already gone.  He was either walking down the freeway shoulder like a madman or had already stuck out his thumb and found another ride to California.  Given my relative sleep deprivation and solid 2 days of driving, I almost wonder if I didn't just hallucinate the whole experience.  But then, life is a dream...

Mission Pics Greatest Hits

This year will mark the Decennial of my return home from my LDS mission to Puerto Rico, which was now officially too long ago.

To put that in perspective, the day I got home, our greatest hope against Bush was Kerry (dark days indeed).  Facebook wasn't on any of our radars, smartphones weren't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eyes, and digital cameras were in ascendancy, such that suddenly all my rolls of actual film that you have to get developed at Walmart felt hopelessly anachronistic--and would only feel more so in the immediate years to follow.   In fact, it was only a couple weeks ago that I finally got around to digitally scanning some of my favorite mission pics, so that, you know, losing the originals wouldn't be a complete catastrophe.

But scan them at last I did, and today feels as good a time as any to revisit them--or at least a few of my favorites--if for no other reason than on the off-chance that someone wants to see them, I don't have to lug out a big, bulky binder from the back of my closet and blow off the dust like some illuminated Medieval manuscript, all to the confused looks of on-lookers wondering why I didn't just open my laptop.

So consider this a "Mission Pics Greatest Hits" of sorts, arbitrarily chosen and even more arbitrarily ranked, restricted to a (probably not short enough) list of Top 25 in order to resist total self-indulgence, thus providing a brief snapshot of the days when Elder Bender sweated and sunburned in the Puerto Rico, San Juan Mission, AKA Paradise on Earth (or Paradise Lost, depending on who you ask). 

25.  A sign of how Puerto Rico sits right on the bubble between developing and developed: We had washing machines yes, but air-dried our laundry on clothes lines.

24.  I feel like I should include at least one pic of a standard San Juan street, with a local Puerto Rican member.

23.  Boats.  Beach.  Bright sun but a storm is coming.

22. I mixed cement by hand for my 20th birthday, what did you do for yours?

21.  Taíno statue just off the freeway near Isabella; looks cool till you find out it was only carved in, like, 1978.

20.  Typical view on a typical day, of such grandeur that the photos can only hint at.

19.  My Mission President cheats at arm wrestling.

18.  My companion was from Guatemala.  I'm from Washington. Guess whose bag was whose.

 17.  Many a pleasant Preparation Day was spent in Old San Juan.

 16.  Just look at how blue that water is, look at it!  (And at me hanging on for dear life, too).

15. Walking along some old abandoned railway trail between Quebradillas and Isabella.

14.  I just like the angles on this shot of El Mooro in Old San Juan.

13.  In Fajardo, my 3rd area, near where the ferry takes you out to Vieques and Culebra.

12-11.  Fun with mullet wigs. (You become easily amused as a missionary--like unto a child).

10. The blazing Caribbean sun is so bright that it can wash out all your photos if you're not careful--though here I think the effect is fortuitous.

9. I was first sent to the Missionary Training Center in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where I snapped this photo beside a Paramilitary doing traffic duty with an AK-47.

8. Most places in Puerto Rico are like America, complete with fast food, Walmart, etc; but there are still places where you really do have to remove your shoes, roll up your pants, and wade across a river just to reach someone's house.  (Elder Strege and I made this our Christmas photo).

7. I like how this photo captures the vivid green of tropical Puerto Rico.

6. Toilet on a roof.  'Nuff said.

5:  Were we truly lost in the woods or just posing for a pic?  THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW!!! (We were posing).

4. This photo feels like Puerto Rico in a nutshell: bright sun contrasted against dark storm clouds; green palms against azure sea.

3. Not pictured: the massive hill we had to scale just to reach this plateau...with still more mountains to scale beyond. 

2. Once more at  El Mooro, the old Spanish Fortress.

1. This one's my pride and joy: The baptismal font was leaking, so we improvised a last minute baptism in the ocean instead.  Elder Cox and Elder Nielson actually took off their shoes and rolled up their pants to wade out into the Atlantic with us, to serve as witnesses.

I know I promised up above to restrict myself to 25 pics only, but then I remembered that this is my lame blog, not yours, so screw you guys, here's a bunch more baptism pics in no particular order!