From the Ivy League to ivy-covered walls

Today is the eve of another baseball season. Each Opening Day I remember why it is the best game around. It brings us out of doors after long winters. What other sport has inspired so many good books? And what other sport can claim that it lured away the president of Yale University to be its commissioner?

That former commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, wrote of baseball: "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.''

Fall is a long way off. Tomorrow is the beginning of spring. Play ball.

One season ends, another begins

The Wisconsin Badgers men's basketball season came to an end yesterday at the hands of Davidson College. Despite what everyone is saying, this wasn't an upset. The Badgers had a great season -- an all-time Wisconsin record for victories (31) and the Big Ten championship. But Davidson, a little Presbyterian-founded school outside of Charlotte, N.C., has the real deal: a 6-foot-3 sophomore named Stephen Curry, who could follow his dad to the NBA someday. He's playing better than anyone in the country right now.

So now it's on to baseball's Opening Day. The Cubs take on the Brewers at 1:20 p.m. Monday. It's time for spring -- although whoever makes the baseball schedule and decides for a Chicago team to open at home on March 31 has never visited there in early spring. The Cubs open against Milwaukee, which has a retractible-roof ballpark! Why not open in Milwaukee, then return to Chicago when the weather is warmer? No one asked me. They didn't ask me about the designated hitter, either, and that's been around since 1973.

Logo: University of Wisconsin

Things I found in an old notebook

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
+
The Bible is like a human being. If you torture it long enough, it will say anything.

Religion meets mathematics

Snow began falling the precise moment our sunrise service began Sunday at North Church. Easter is still the talk around town, including this morning at the 4:30 AM Coffee Shop in downtown Chippewa. Specifically, the talk is: "We never have this much snow on the ground at Easter."

Well, part of that is certainly because of a return to a "normal" winter, after several seasons of paltry snowfall. But the most obvious is that Easter occurred earlier this year -- March 23 -- than any year since 1913. It won't come nearly this early again until 2035, when it will be on March 25.

Since the fourth century, the Western Christian church has determined Easter to be the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after March 21, using the Gregorian calendar. Believe it or not, there's a formula to make this calculation:

((19*t+u-w-(u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w- (u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-z)mod7)-7*(t+11*(19*t+u-w(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+22*(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w-(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-g)mod7)+114)\31

You thought understanding the Book of Revelation was difficult?

The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian. So the Orthodox Easter this year will be April 27.

The Power of Place

Ann is off at Garrett seminary for a preaching seminar. If I had seven days in Prague, it's only fair she gets a few days to feed her soul in Evanston. Not only is it the place where we met (and later married), but it's where her father once lived and schooled, where her grandfather once taught journalism, and where my parents married. So it's a place powerful with connection, history and memory. Thank God there are such places, where meaning transcends the structure of bricks and mortar and roots us in sacred ground. Photo by Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary / Northwestern University.

Oscar and Felix have returned

Above: The Last Supper, chiseled above the entrance to the church at Vysehrad (the original home of the Bohemian prince). Right: Looking over Old Town to New Town and beyond. Photos by steve 11-12 mar 08.

Yes, Jason has dropped his bags back in Ohio, and I have finished rearranging my sock drawer upon returning to Wisconsin. Can you hear the theme to "The Odd Couple" playing? Perhaps we couldn't permanently share an apartment (or a car), but a week in a flat in Prague went quite well.

I've had a chance to look at more Prague pictures since I've returned, and I've been pleased to note that a few of them are even in focus. Of course, I'm two years overdue for a bifocals prescription. This confirms Jason's blind-bird theory: take enough pictures, and one or two are bound to turn out (based upon the maxim "even a blind bird finds a worm once in a while"). A couple more are included above.

But I'm really looking forward to seeing Jason's photos taken with his 4x5 large-format camera. I'm certain he made a number of images that will render worthwhile that uphill dawn trudge with camera and tripod in tow. (Not to mention lenses that weighed as much as watermelons.)

Instead of sitting at the Bohemia Bagel Cafe, I'm now at The Bean Bag cafe in New Richmond, preparing a worship service for Easter Sunday while waiting for Jackson to finish a Destination Imagination practice at school. Can you say culture shock?

Easter week

" 'Irreligious' Prague still turns Easter into two-week fest." Posted today at MinnPost.com.

69 years ago come this Saturday morning

"Synagogue memorial brings home horrors of Holocaust." Posted yesterday at MinnPost.com.

How you say, dekuji vam?

That would be "thank you" in Czech. Jason has been a first-rate traveling companion, expert tour guide, patient cohort and masterful photo teacher (don't judge that by these photos). And, he just brought me a cappucino in the cafe where we've been posting all week. Photos from top: himself the artist preparing to make a photograph from above the city; St. Vitus Cathedral and the castle overlooking Praha; something for Ann; something for Jackson and Lara; and a train station south of the Little Quarter.
Photos by steve 11-12 mar 08.

Connecting with mystery

A huge juxtaposition exists in the streets of Eastern Europe. Monumental churches stand guard at every other corner, yet fewer Europeans attend church than Americans go to drive-in movie theaters. Most of these baroque superstructures -- erected by the Jesuits long before Communist-imposed atheism settled over the Eastern Bloc -- no longer house worshipers. They may charge 50 crowns for visitors to peek inside. At some, passers-by walk in to light candles in the adjoining chapels.

Conversely, given this indifference to institutional religion, the Easter Festival in Prague's Stare Mesto (Old Town) is ardently celebrated for two full weeks before Pascha. Scents of sausage cooking over wood fires waft through the sprawling plaza from midmorn till dusk, while pivo (beer) and mulled wine can be had throughout the square. During the rule of Communism (which ended here only 19 years ago), religious observances were discouraged, so this Easter festival was really celebrated as a harbinger of spring.

We will endeavor to sample a tangible sense of the sacred tomorrow morning by rising before dawn to attend daily Mass at St. Vitus Cathedral, which overlooks the city from within the walls of the Prague Castle.

Despite what might be described sociologically as its nominal religiosity, Prague -- and much of Europe, I suspect -- inspires a sense of awe. While here, I have discovered while preparing for the Easter sermon that the text comes alive in different ways when one's context is a place so historical, so foreign, so grandiose and stark at the same time. It lifts one out of the Western historical-critical constraint, freeing the Word to become embodied in the depth of all the senses that a place such as this evokes.

It is a reminder of something I recently read from H.B. Swete (from The Two Greatest Miracles of the Gospel History):

"A rejection of the fundamental miracles which the Church has from the first learned to connect with the Incarnate Life, if it takes a firm hold upon the thought of our time, cannot fail to issue in a widespread loss of faith in the central mystery of Christianity, and a corresponding loss of the higher life which that mystery inspires."

Macroeconomics

"Booming economy, strong banks: It's a matter of perspective -- and place." See today's post on MinnPost.com.

Sun, signs and steeples

From top: 1) Signs in Nove Mesto. 2) The photographer is photographed; Jason at Vysehrad. 3) A statue of Ann and I. She is the one standing and preaching. I am sitting, tending to the housework. 4) Overlooking Praha from Vysehrad, the first seat of Czech royalty. Below) A video of the tram riding past St. John On the Rock. Photos by steve 7-9 mar 08.





For professional photos, see Jason's Travels and More (linked at left).

Kafka and Friends

"One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."

That's one of the great leads in the history of writing, from the pen of Prague native son Franz Kafka in The Metamorphosis. If legend is to be believed, he wrote from the old quarter of Prague in a building we came upon yesterday that now houses the Franz Kafka Cafe.

We went in for a lunch of soup, cheese and bread. Upon sitting at our table, a familiar tune by The Rembrantds was playing on the radio: "I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour ... I'll be there for you, like I've been there before ..."

Such is the anachronism of the 21st century: The theme from Friends playing in a cafe dedicated to the 19th-century-born Bohemian whose stories dramatized alienation in an increasingly impersonal world.

Saturday in Prague

An aptly named flower shop, above, and today's beginning of the Easter festival in Old Town Square, right.




Photos by steve, 8 mar 08.

Patience

One of the most prominent landmarks in Prague is St. Vitus Cathedral, surrounded by the Prague Castle. It overlooks the city from a high perch on the city's northwest side. Construction of the cathedral began in 1344. It was completed in 1929.

Another city icon is the Charles Bridge. Jason the historian informs me it is one of the five most historic bridges in the world. I assume he is referring to the London, the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn and the Stillwater Lift Bridge. As we and hundreds of visitors strolled across it yesterday, we came upon a huge section undergoing repair. The reconstuction began this year. It is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

Apparently the Czechs are patient with the evolution of their architecture and infrastructure. Tell that to the Minnesota legislators who in their fretful panic are seeking to have the collapsed I-35W bridge in Minneapolis rebuilt by next year. There is a European sensibility that suggests endurance and aesthetics are higher-order virtues than commerce and expediency.

Cheers from a land of endurance and beauty.

Pictured: A sculpture of the Crucifixion, one of dozens of sculptures lining the Charles Bridge in Prague. The Hebrew inscription reads, "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord." Photo by Jason Tetzloff, 6 mar 08.

Anglos in Prague

Hello from the Bohemian Bagel Cafe in Praha, located down a winding cobblestone street from our apartment in the Jewish Quarter. It is a beautiful, crisp, sunny day in Prague, all the better to help keep us awake. The cappucino is helping, too. Pictures of Hillary are on the front pages of all the newspapers following her victories in Texas and Ohio, but I can't find the Badgers-Penn State score anywhere. It's almost embarassing how everyone speaks and understands English. I can't even converse with the bus boys at Cancun's Mexican Restaurant in Chippewa.

It's time

I just finished my last midterm paper for school at 6:30 a.m. I'm jet-lagged even before leaving! Now it's time to go. Speaking of time, don't forget to spring your clocks ahead on Saturday night. There's no time change in Prague til the end of the month, so when I get back, I'll be an hour older than you. Or something like that. Peace.

Pictured: The 15th century Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square, Prague. (Internet photo)

Stage flight

Congrats to Jackson, who made his singing-and-playing debut Friday night at The Space.

Exchange rate? What exchange rate?

So why go to the Czech Republic? That's what most people ask. The better question is, why now!? My traveling companion Jason called the other morning from his car, where he's listening to NPR. "The dollar has just fallen to an all-time low against the euro and the Czech crown. Aren't we savvy travelers, deciding to go now?" That means a good beer in Prague may cost 70 Kc. But it's still cheaper than any other major European city. Besides, this morning's Today show reported gasoline has hit $4 a gallon in southern California. Given that we won't be driving for 9 days, traveling abroad may be cheaper than staying home.

On the road

The Cubs are in Arizona for spring training. I'm going to Prague, where they play hockey and the forecast highs are 8 degrees. That's Celsius, but still.