I love all the new Phat Phap statues, but my favorite is the Reclining Buddha (top of post) because it was at the golden Reclining Buddha in Bangkok (pictured left) that I had a profound transcendental experience that led me, eventually, to take lay vows (the Three Refuges) as a Buddhist. The Phat Phap Reclining Buddha is joined by two seated Buddhas (the following two pictures) and a walking Buddha (pictured at end).

 
The most famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk in America is Thich Nhat Hanh who became famous for his attempts to promote peace during the Vietnam war. He has lived in exile until just recently when he was finally allowed by the Vietnamese government to return for two visits. He founded the Plum Village Meditation Center in France.
 
However, Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist, which is a different tradition than Phat Phap Temple.

Phat Phap Temple is in the Theravada tradition. Without going into too much detail, the Theravada tradition considers only the earliest Buddhist writing as being in its canon (book of scriptures), whereas other branches of Buddhism–Mahayana (which includes Zen) and Vajrayana (which includes Tibetan Buddhism)–also accept scriptures written later than the Theravada canon.

Despite these technical divisions (akin to denominations in Christianity) all Buddhists believe the same basics. The best, least sectarian, easiest to understand, short source of information on Buddhism, I believe, is by Barbara O’Brien (buddhism.about.com) who also has a good, free newsletter.

If you were to read almost any post in Inkwatu, you’d soon discover the word, “friend,” somewhere in the text. Very few of the places described in Inkwatu I discovered myself. Friends shared with me the things and places they liked. In turn, I shared them with you.

Family is important, of course, but friends are essential to life. Some have called them our “family of choice.” Time spent with friends is cherished, especially when sharing a meal or a cup of tea.

As I wish you a wonderful new year, I also wish for you many, deep friendships, both old and new.

And, I extend to my own friends and family a note of appreciation.

Happy New Year…and many, many more!
Hilton

My sister and I were fortunate as kids because our parents were good amateur musicians who, in the days before TV, would often play together as a way to end the evening: our mother on violin, our dad on piano. I have multiple memories of falling asleep on the couch as a child listening to them play the song pictured above. That copy of the sheet music is the actual music they played from: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. It’s one of my favorite covers, not just because of the personal memories, but also its beautiful, period style of graphic design.

St. Petersburg seems to be a hotbed of vintage and antique shows and shops…I guess that’s because there’s so many antiques living here (such as myself)! One of my friends haunts these shows even more than I do and she’s kindly picked up copies of vintage sheet music she knew I’d love. The four covers above, There Are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden, Way Down in Florida – That’s the Place To Be!, Buddha, and Nola were gifts from her. The first one was an amusing favorite of a dear friend; the second has value simply for its appalling lyrics; the third was an acknowledgment of my having taken lay vows as a Buddhist several years ago; and, the last was a piece I’d been looking for for years, a piece that I played constantly as a kid, driving my parents nuts.

The group pictured below, Galway Bay, The Last Round-up, San Antonio Rose, and Mexicali Rose, are more pieces our folks used to play in the evenings. Easy to see where I developed my eclectic musical tastes (or some might say, lack of taste!). I’m sure at least some of these are “collectibles,” but their value to me is entirely personal significance. It is fun, however, to rummage through the bins of vintage music to see how much some copies bring.

As we prepare to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome in 2010, here’s the cover of one of my favorite songs when I was a kid (a song that I sang over and over and over, maybe even more times than I sang Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuz a Bear), So Long It’s Been Good To Know Yuh.

click for larger image

Scrooge is everybody’s favorite skinflint, because not only is he transformed at the end of the story, but also his curmudgeonly nature reflects a part of our own souls we prefer to keep hidden, what Carl Jung called the shadow. Fictional portrayals of those aspects of hidden selves allow us to accept, grapple with, and hopefully integrate those issues that we won’t admit having but which we very much need not to ignore.

Perhaps another reason Scrooge is such a favorite is that his character raises the core life issues of generosity, empathy, and values. When positive, those are qualities characteristic of someone who is a delight to know. Scrooge wasn’t a delight to know–at first.

I can still remember the plates in the classic edition book in our father’s library from when I was a child. I’m not absolutely certain–memory is malleable–but I think this html reprint with illustrations is the same edition we had.

But, it’s the film adaptations that have stuck with us. The Wikipedia webpage, List of A Christmas Carol adaptations, gives lists in the categories of theatre, film, television, radio, audio recordings, opera, and parody. The following is a quote from that Wikipedia page of just the film category.

Film

• Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost (1901), a short British film that is the earliest surviving screen adaptation.
• A Christmas Carol (1908), with Thomas Ricketts as Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (1910) is a 15-minute silent version of the film starring Marc McDermott as Scrooge and Charles Ogle as Cratchit.
• Scrooge (1913), starring Sir Seymour Hicks and retitled Old Scrooge for its U.S. release in 1926.
• The Right to Be Happy (1916), the first feature-length adaptation, directed by and starring Rupert Julian as Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (1923), produced in the U.K. and starring Russell Thorndike, Nina Vanna, Jack Denton, and Forbes Dawson.
• Scrooge (1935), a British movie, again starring Seymour Hicks as Scrooge.^[4]
• A Christmas Carol (1938), starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge and Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart as the Cratchits.
• Scrooge (1951), starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge and Mervyn Johns and Hermione Baddeley as the Cratchits. Many at the time of its release considered this film a classic, the best adaptation of the story yet made.^[5]
• It’s Never Too Late (1953), italian adaptation of Dicken’s novel, featuring Paolo Stoppa and Marcello Mastroianni.
• Scrooge (1970), a musical film adaptation starring Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley’s Ghost.
• A Christmas Carol (1971), an Oscar-winning animated short film by Richard Williams, with Alastair Sim reprising the role of Scrooge.
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), an animated short film featuring the various Walt Disney characters (including characters from Wind in the Willows, Robin Hood and The Three Little Pigs), with Scrooge McDuck fittingly playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.
• Scrooged (1988), a remake in a contemporary setting with Bill Murray being a misanthropic TV producer who is haunted by the ghosts of Christmas. Directed by Richard Donner.
• The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), featuring the various Muppet characters, with Michael Caine as Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (1994), an animated version produced by Jetlag Productions, written by Jack Olesker.
• A Christmas Carol (1997), an animated production featuring the voice of Tim Curry as Scrooge as well as the voices of Whoopi Goldberg, Michael York and Ed Asner.
• Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001), an animated version produced by Illuminated Films (Christmas Carol), Ltd/The Film Consortium/MBP; screenplay by Robert Llewellyn & Piet Kroon; with the voices of Simon Callow, Kate Winslet, and Nicolas Cage.
• A Christmas Carol (2006), a computer animated adaptation featuring anthropomorphic animals in the lead roles.
• Barbie in a Christmas Carol (2008), Barbie stars as the female version of Ebenezer Scrooge.
• A Christmas Carol (2009), a performance capture film directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghosts, from Walt Disney Pictures and ImageMovers Digital. It was released in November 2009 in Disney Digital 3D.

Obviously, few stories have been so often adapted. Here’s a link to a free, complete IMDb online video of the early 1935 adaptation: Scrooge. Another was made around the same time, the 1938 adaptation, A Christmas Carol (IMDb has only the movie trailer).

This video from the New York times gives A.O. Scott’s Critics Picks opinion on the best version of A Christmas Carol–the same thing as the “best Scrooge” I think. So that’s his choice, the 1951 Alastair Sim. I definitely agree. This is the version I remember best from my own childhood. The IMDb page about the Alastair Sim version Scrooge, has a wonderful bit of trivia:

The word “humbug” is misunderstood by many people, which is a pity since the word provides a key insight into Scrooge’s hatred of Christmas. The word “humbug” describes deceitful efforts to fool people by pretending to a fake loftiness or false sincerity. So when Scrooge calls Christmas a humbug, he is claiming that people only pretend to charity and kindness in an scoundrel effort to delude him, each other, and themselves. In Scrooge’s eyes, he is the one man honest enough to admit that no one really cares about anyone else, so for him, every wish for a Merry Christmas is one more deceitful effort to fool him and take advantage of him. This is a man who has turned to profit because he honestly believes everyone else will someday betray him or abandon him the moment he trusts them. [more]

So…who’s your favorite Scrooge?

Holidays are all about home and hearth, which is to say, family and food. Last week, Inkwatu was a post about sharing a morning with my son (the family part of home and hearth) at a dog park in Atlanta. Today’s Inkwatu is a repost of recipe teasers (both family and food) from my sister’s Hawaiian homesteading blog, Lava to Lilikoi. I hope you enjoy her posts–and food!–as much as I do..

Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Pie

In the days and weeks preceding Thanksgiving, every website that features food of any kind has a pumpkin pie recipe on it. The pictures are irresistible, of course. I can put on twenty pounds just looking at the pictures and thinking about how good it would taste!

Like so many of the recipes I post on here, this is my own version of one from an old issue of Better Homes & Gardens. When I say “old”, I mean it came from the fifties when I was first married. The photo above shows what is left of the original page, complete with old cellophane tape!…Read the rest of the recipe at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Pie.

Blackberry Cobbler

When a friend came to visit from Maui this week, I made the soup to eat with homemade cornbread. For dessert, I made this blackberry cobbler from the fresh berries I’d found at Costco. You can use whatever kind of berries you have available.…Read the rest of the story at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Blackberry Cobbler.

Split Pea Soup With Smoky Pork

When I lived on my sailboat, this soup was a tradition on all homeward bound trips after a week or more at sea. It’s a good thing stoves on a sailboat are gimbaled so that they remain steady and the soup doesn’t slop out when we are heeled over on a good run.…Read the rest of the story at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Split Pea Soup With Smoky Pork.

Old-Fashioned Bread Pudding

When I was pastoring at a church in Arizona, someone always brought several dozen doughnuts from the local bakery to serve with coffee during a fellowship hour. If some were left over, I took them home and let them get stale for a couple days.

Then I would break them up into bits of about ½ inch to make this bread pudding – regular doughnuts, cake doughnuts, jelly-filled doughnuts, cinnamon twists, and the like. What a delicious and unusual bread pudding!…Read the rest of the story at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Old-Fashioned Bread Pudding.

Molasses Cookies

There’s nothing better in the middle of the night than a cold glass of milk (non-fat, of course) with a homemade cookie. One of my favorites is a soft molasses cookie. Please don’t count the calories on this one. It’s bound to be healthy with all that molasses. There really isn’t much more I can add to that, so here’s the recipe.…Read the rest of the story at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Molasses Cookies.

Orange Bread

When I was in high school, I worked as a receptionist for one of the local optometrists who was also a member of my father’s church. His wife was known to be a great cook, so this is the recipe from Bea Henderson of Litchfield, Illinois – one I’ve made for many years.

This recipe became a staple when I was living on my boat. It was not only a delicious and fast bread to whip up in my tiny galley, but it used up the orange peels instead of tossing them somewhere. Jokingly, I called it my “garbage bread,” but it was anything but garbage!…Read the rest of the story at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Orange Bread.

Lilikoi Butter

First, you need to know that “lilikoi” is our Hawai`ian word for passionfruit, the fruit of the Passion Flower vine. Read the Wikipedia religious explanation of the word “passion.” But I’m passionate about the passionfruit (groan), which I know mostly as lilikoi.…Read the rest of the story at Lucy’s Lava to Lilikoi: Lilikoi Butter.

Thanks, Lucy, for letting me share these recipes with the Inkwatu readers. Hope they keep going to your site for more info about Hawaii and plenty more recipes.

Celebrating autumn and winter holidays down here in the semi-tropics is always a little unconvincing because the temperatures are still in the upper 80s to mid-90s. But, many here are transplants–temporary or permanent–from climates that have actual seasons so we bring our traditions with us. We even relish the dissonance of seeing a carved pumpkin next to a palm tree as in the photo above (be sure to click it for a better view).

And, yes, we can grow pumpkins here. There are huge fields where you can go pick your own. But…you’re more likely to find a field of watermelon!

Or a pile of coconuts!

And, instead of stalks ready for a hayride, you’re much more likely to find a passel of sugar cane. (I remember my father teaching me how to cut and chew sugar cane when I was a tiny little boy…a fond memory, and I can actually remember the grainy, sweet, sweet, sweet taste.)

Have a Happy Halloween everyone!

You’ve got your chance today to celebrate our nation’s independence as well as the fact that July is National Hot Dog Month by competing in the Dairy Inn annual hot dog eating contest!

According to the Dairy Inn (1201 9th St. N., St Petersburg, FL 33701; 727-822-6971) website, “The Dairy Inn is St Petersburg’s oldest ice cream parlor, serving residents and visitors for 62 years (five generations).” Their log line is “Good Eats and Cold Treats, Almost Famous Since 1947.”

Last year, Inkwatu covered Old Farmer’s Creamery, one of my favorite ice cream palaces here in St. Pete. I tend to go there for their homemade, hand packed ice cream. However, Dairy Inn is my choice for soft serve. It’s different from Dairy Queen’s soft serve. Dairy Inn’s is more like old-fashioned homemade ice milk.

Speaking of homemade ice cream, do you remember making it when you were a kid? It was always my task to crank the darn thing while my dad supervised and poured on the rock salt to increase the coldness of the ice. You can get quite nice electric ones now, of course. However, I prefer my little Donvier 1-Quart Ice Cream Maker.

Yesterday, I was full of the holiday spirit and didn’t feel like making homemade, so I stopped by Dairy Inn for a soft serve, hot fudge and pecan special, pictured below. I tend to associate ice cream with the 4th of July even more than hot dogs. Here’s a few good links on the history of ice cream (can you imagine a world before ice cream? Horrors!):

food inventions
ice cream history
ice cream cone history
ice cream cone invention
ice cream facts


I’ll probably skip the hot dog contest and make a veggie dog here at home since July is also National Veggie Hot Dog Month!

If you’re looking for some activities for the weekend, check out the Baynews 9 list of 4th of July activities. To watch the fireworks, there are three very good locations:

• the St. Pete Pier — this also faces toward Tampa so you get a view of theirs as well as St. Petersburg’s own
• the roof of the Tampa International Airport parking garage — you can see Tampa’s, St. Pete’s, and all the bergs to the east
• the beaches — all the beaches have their own shows, so your head can swivel from one to another along the crescent of islands