Ruminations
Recently The Verge ran an article entitled “Seduced by ‘perfect’ pitch: how Auto-Tune conquered pop music.” The title is pretty self explanatory – nearly all pop musicians use the audio technology called Auto-Tune to ensure their vocal pitches are exactly correct. As an example of one star whose raw take was released without the processing […]
(From Catherine) It’s not easy, and I speak from experience. But interestingly enough, I find it easier to say good-bye well to people who are leaving than to those I’m leaving behind. Already in these three short years, I’ve had to say good-bye to students and friends who were going away and I’d carefully plan […]
The Effects of Tyranny As a white male American, I have little familiarity with the effects of tyranny. The oppressions I have faced are those of consumption, greed, petty luxuries. But I live in a land where tyranny has left an indelible mark, a psychic scar beyond my experience. Brano is a young man filled […]
Titip had completed its classes, tests have all been taken and graded and now it’s time to kick back and relax a bit. Field Trip! One of the Titip staff comes from the island of Enggross Nearly all the houses are on stilts out over the shallow Yotefa Bay. We spent the night over the […]
Our time in Papua, Indonesia is coming to an end and we will be returning to the United States in mid-June. Our current plan is to take what we hope to be a leisurely trip back to the States, passing through a couple of places of which one will be a nice beach. Then we […]
(From Allan) My friend Florian, who works at the GKI (the church who sponsors us) synod office, gave me a call one day and made a very interesting proposal. The GKI is seeking two westerners to play Geisler and Ottow at the upcoming “Coming of the Gospel to Papua” celebration on Mansinam Island near Manokwari. […]
(From Catherine) I recently gave my students a task that was immensely successful. Armed with a passing knowledge of the importance of diverse “intelligences” and further noticing that Papuans have a flair for the poetic, I asked my students to write their own psalms of praise. We had already studied the Lord’s prayer and Psalm […]
On the island of Mansinam off the coast of Manokwari, 5 February 1855, Karl Ottow and Johann Geisler became the first missionaries to enter Papua. The date of their landing is a Papuan public holiday and every year a celebration is held on the island of Marsinam to commemorate the coming of the Gospel. Their […]
From Catherine It’s election day in the Province of Papua, Indonesia, and a chance for the people to elect a governor. This one has been “long awaited” for real. It was supposed to have taken place almost two years ago, but the election was stopped for several reasons, most of which I’m not so clear […]
From Allan The day had been busy and satisfying. Some of my struggling students had shown glimmers of understanding as they struggled with fraction subtraction. The class on sending email with attachments had gone well, as an old AOL account of mine begun to fill with Titip sent email. The exercise class in the late […]