Six Degrees South

I experienced another wonderful month of reading, six books in all.  Five of them were quite magnificent. The Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was probably my favorite.  It's a novel that was a finalist for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. It's a philosophical novel of family, religious faith, identity, and science and one women's struggle to understand them all as they apply to her tragic life. It would take a 1000-word review to do the book justice;  I would simply say that I highly recommend it and it's a book worth seeking out. Very different, but as good as Gyasi's novel is: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize. It sounds peculiar: it's a hybrid history/novel retelling the story of crucial discoveries in quantum physics. It's a book that disorients the reader in that, for the first half, it is extremely difficult to determine where fact ends and fiction begins. Ultimately it is a caution

Last weekend I visited the historic Central Javan city of Surakarta, more commonly known in Indonesia as Solo. I am now posting mostly on Instagram when I travel (erikhk21), but here are some images for those of you who don't venture near that platform. Some highlights: *Images of Mt. Merapi, the extremely active volcano near Solo, which I enjoyed watching erupt from my hotel room.  It is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. *Mangkunegaran Palace, which was the home of the Sultan of the Mataram Empire until the 1940s. *The Laweyan Batik neighborhood, one of the most famous places in Indonesia for making and selling fine batik. *The Sukuh Temple about 40 km. from Solo, up into the mountains, circa 1350. It is a very unusual Hindu temple and scholars are not completely certain as to the full meaning of everything at Sukuh, but there seemed to be an emphasis on purification and fertility as you might have guessed from the photos. *Grand Mosque of Solo, which dates from the 1

I read five more books in October, all of them very good. I used to provide my brief reviews in the order I read each book, but now I am featuring the most important book that I read first. The essential book of the month on my list is White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.  A few people who follow me on Facebook have sent me private messages chastising me for my constant criticism of American Evangelicals and their immoral alliance with Trump.  Well, they should read this book that not only concerns itself with the moral problems of current evangelicals, but also traces the racism that has been the driving force of white Evangelicalism for over 200 years.  Racism is not a bug, but a feature of most white evangelical movements.  Yes, some white evangelicals were at the vanguard of the abolitionist movement, but Professor Butler traces this ugly history of racism that has dominated white evangelical movements, particularly in the South,

If you are familiar with Dante, you will recognize this as the saying inscribed on the Gate of Hell that the condemned pass through on their way to eternal damnation.  But, I bet you didn't know this is also the saying inscribed above the entrance to the Customs Office at Soekarno-Hatto Airport in Jakarta--the place where my three suitcases have been held for 15 MONTHS now. Though I haven't provided you any details of my visit to the Customs Office today, I think both the headline and the first paragraph qualify as textbook examples of foreshadowing and you don't need to have ESP to have figured out how our expedition turned out.  I was accompanied by Tasya (she is picture here dressed in camo, though her battlefield attire was of no use) and Gigih, the poor souls in HR, who have inherited this mess from the previous souls in HR, who no longer work at SU.  They escaped before they had to pass through the Customs Office Gates. I will not bore you with details of the three of

Sometimes it takes weeks to get a reservation for the lunch dim sum at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in downtown Jakarta. Luckily, there was a table for one available at opening time. I love dim sum as it is a wonderful way of eating: bite-sized dishes served one at a time. As I have great difficulty narrowing down what to order on the regular dinner menu, this format that caters to experiencing variety is especially appealing to me.  Pictured here: *Goldfish-shaped prawn dumplings swimming in mutsusaki mushroom broth *Edamame and sweet potato dumpling with black truffle *Szechuan shrimp wonton in soy sauce infused with chili *Crystal beef dumpling with ginger and celery *Tofu Kung Pao bun with cashews (my favorite) Not pictured: Spicy scallop dumplings and mango pudding with carmalized banana for dessert.  A wonderful meal at one of my 5 all-time favorite restaurants.

As my flight was approaching the international airport in Bali, I noticed a giant statue on the horizon that was about 15 kilometers away, but appeared as though it must have been hundreds of feet tall.  I decided that I would visit it while I was on Bali. My last day on Bali, I decided to hire a taxi to take me to the Gurita Vishnu Kencana Statue, which depicts Vishnu riding on Garuda.  Including the pedestal, it is 122 meters tall (30 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty) and the winged Garuda's wingspan is 64 meters.  And the statue is so massive it can be viewed from up to 20 kilometers away. It is the tallest statue in Indonesia and the tallest statue of a Hindu deity. When the taxi I hired arrived at the park entrance about a kilometer from the statue, we found that the site was closed indefinitely.  I couldn't take a picture, because you couldn't see the statue at all through the trees and it was obscured further by the terrain.  My intrepid driver attempted to f