Durf.org home

I write this in Honolulu International Airport. I have been in town here for a couple days while the world's air transport systems have crept toward normalcy. They aren't anywhere near normal yet, really, but my plane will fly at any rate. Adam and I were both in the air when the East Coast stuff happened. We were tooling around the Pacific, though, so no danger there. But fewer planes from which to choose now.

It's strange and jarring to come back to 24-hour coverage of the terrorist attacks on American TV after being so out of the U.S. media loop for so long. Viewing my native country from outside rarely gives me the idea that it takes a subtle approach to the international situation (or any approach at all, really), but coming back to hear Dan Rather preaching about how America will have to get used to this new and frightening and at-times-treacherous twenty-first-century global system was disturbing for me. This global system has been there all along, reacting to everything America does, and it troubles me to see my nation waking up to the hatred its actions can engender among the scary elements of that system only when that hatred smacks it in its towers full of rich white traders.

So. Some hate-filled men were able to kill perhaps 5,000 people and deal out many billions of dollars in damage. They did this with boxcutters. I look forward to Bush's explanations of how shiny new missile defense systems will stop this hatred when it crawls again out of the desert where we helped plant it . . . Threats to Americans' safety seem to come in the form of fertilizer in trucks and pocketknives on planes these days. But Raytheon probably isn't working on a sexy, expensive theater defense system to counter those. Too bad for Americans.

I do hate Usama bin Laden, or whoever it was that did this. I despise the creature that would meditate ways to make this many people burn and fall and be crushed. But I am not shocked. I am sorrowful for people who lost life and family and love. But I am also sad that the popular U.S. mind cannot wrap itself around the fact that these terrorists do not "hate us for our freedom and success"; they have grievances stemming often from choices that we have made in the past. Their views may be wrongly held, and they choose evil methods of expressing them. But when we ignore the grievances completely, plotting our revenge and buying flags and pausing to wag the odd finger at some Texans who decided to shoot out the front windows of Them Goddamn Ragheads, we are doing nothing to uproot them. We don't stop the hatred because we don't even try to understand it.

So next we will browbeat Pakistan into lending us its airspace so we can bomb some Afghans into the stone age. Never mind that they are basically there already, with the addition of a few choice U.S. rifles and Soviet tanks. And we won't kill whoever hates us, because he feeds on our energy and grows and becomes many and devises ways to slaughter Tennessee elementary schools with a bucket of cholera, which he carries grinning past our sleek SAM batteries. And Dan Rather will gaze grimly into the camera and tell us again that we must face this strange and frightening reality of the outside world; why wherever can that have come from?

Living in the world,

PRD 9/13/2001

nb--The images have little to do with my jetlag-fueled rant. At top is Kathy Kawamura's hand, my face, and a tasty mint. Below that is a picture by William Blake, who was crazy and drew beautiful dark things that only he understood.



					<-- the world could look so sweet . . . if we viewed it through candy I write this in Honolulu International Airport. I have been in town here for a couple days while the world's air transport systems have crept toward normalcy. They aren't anywhere near normal yet, really, but my plane will fly at any rate. Adam and I were both in the air when the East Coast stuff happened. We were tooling around the Pacific, though, so no danger there. But fewer planes from which to choose now. It's strange and jarring to come back to 24-hour coverage of the terrorist attacks on American TV after being so out of the U.S. media loop for so long. Viewing my native country from outside rarely gives me the idea that it takes a subtle approach to the international situation (or any approach at all, really), but coming back to hear Dan Rather preaching about how America will have to get used to this new and frightening and at-times-treacherous twenty-first-century global system was disturbing for me. This global system has been there all along, reacting to everything America does, and it troubles me to see my nation waking up to the hatred its actions can engender among the scary elements of that system only when that hatred smacks it in its towers full of rich white traders. So. Some hate-filled men were able to kill perhaps 5,000 people and deal out many billions of dollars in damage. They did this with boxcutters. I look forward to Bush's explanations of how shiny new missile defense systems will stop this hatred when it crawls again out of the desert where we helped plant it . . . Threats to Americans' safety seem to come in the form of fertilizer in trucks and pocketknives on planes these days. But Raytheon probably isn't working on a sexy, expensive theater defense system to counter those. Too bad for Americans. I do hate Usama bin Laden, or whoever it was that did this. I despise the creature that would meditate ways to make this many people burn and fall and be crushed. But I am not shocked. I am sorrowful for people who lost life and family and love. But I am also sad that the popular U.S. mind cannot wrap itself around the fact that these terrorists do not "hate us for our freedom and success"; they have grievances stemming often from choices that we have made in the past. Their views may be wrongly held, and they choose evil methods of expressing them. But when we ignore the grievances completely, plotting our revenge and buying flags and pausing to wag the odd finger at some Texans who decided to shoot out the front windows of Them Goddamn Ragheads, we are doing nothing to uproot them. We don't stop the hatred because we don't even try to understand it. So next we will browbeat Pakistan into lending us its airspace so we can bomb some Afghans into the stone age. Never mind that they are basically there already, with the addition of a few choice U.S. rifles and Soviet tanks. And we won't kill whoever hates us, because he feeds on our energy and grows and becomes many and devises ways to slaughter Tennessee elementary schools with a bucket of cholera, which he carries grinning past our sleek SAM batteries. And Dan Rather will gaze grimly into the camera and tell us again that we must face this strange and frightening reality of the outside world; why wherever can that have come from? Living in the world, PRD 9/13/2001 nb--The images have little to do with my jetlag-fueled rant. At top is Kathy Kawamura's hand, my face, and a tasty mint. Below that is a picture by William Blake, who was crazy and drew beautiful dark things that only he understood.


					Over on the message board, Steve Glaser complained about the lack of site updates. Well, I been busy. Lots of work and lots of wild fun!!! in Tokyo. Adam has been jetting back and forth across the Pacific and we have had many fattening dinners together. Kentaro Relnick is also in town now, for those of you who know him. He is on his couch once again. The couch isn't always his; there is room on it for other friends and Durfees and et cetera who want to visit Tokyo. Anyway, Glas, you shouldn't have complained like that. You never, ever complain to the Webmaster. You never know what he might do. So the site is getting a reworking. There was too much code in the old HTML that did nothing. I hope this is a bit slimmer. It might be hopeless, though, since I really don't know what I am doing. But no matter. All the pix are still here; click on the thumbs to the left to see 'em. There are no frames to deal with. Many other things are happening, at least on paper or in my aching* brain, and I do hope to update more frequently. Sorry for the gap . . . An artistic picture of a gang at Point Reyes in 1993 will help ease the pain. --PRD 5/17/2001 * Beer last night, imbibed as part of above-referenced fattening dinners with Adam.

					OK, I got a real live pic of T and Leslie and George after he came out to join the rest of us. In this shot his head looks like T's but by now he will be much more hirsute and virile than his dad. I put together the Ping Yao-cheng masterwork in HTML format for your enjoyment. You can check out the finest madness ever to come out of Sacramento right here. If you write a letter to the president and Pentagon demanding a city named after you, two Nobel prizes, and permanent life, I'll feature you on this site too. It's April Fool's Day, but PYC is no joke. Keepin it real since 1988! --PRD 4/1/2001

					To the left are T and Leslie. They now live in Bogota, where Mr. Miller is heading up the new L.A. Times bureau there. Colombia is not safe, and it took some courage to pull up stakes and take the newborn George to a fairly violent place. That courage is what the Franzia is giving him. These two got married in a nice ceremony in Leslie's parents' front yard. Pictures of the thing have been on my old site (actually, they have been the sum total of my old site) ever since the thing happened in 1983 or whenever it was. Anyway, we're all happy they are a family now. T has checked in to report, in flawless journalism-grade English, about the settling-in process: here's my deal: fatherhood still extremely wonderful, george is now fat and sometimes smiles, which is a HUGE deal in the babyworld, age 7 weeks. We have all now relocated to Bogota. . . . Our furniture has yet to arrive, b/c of an armed strike blocking hiways because of plan to cede yet more of country to rebels. Cool. Lyn, lester's mom is here, helping to make transition. Speaking bad spanish all the time. hoping to get better. Tremendous pressures of learning how to navigate new country, do news and compete with nytimes and wapost, which have also located buros here, tho earlier than me. So dayz are tough, really, tho ther is much room for improvement, and thus, much hope. lov all fast t. So it sounds like things are all right, unless "lov all fast" means something sinister. I hope the Millers will send more info to post here. Might have to do a "Berkeley" page on this site for that crowd . . . It would be the ideal place to put the Ping Yao Cheng manifesto. (Better than where it is now, anyway.) What else . . . I am redoing the pages on the site so they show new items at the top. Scroll down for older updates. I am also posting a photo of me and T at the height of our wild-n-crazy college days, when T would drink beer and threaten to leap out of windows and I would set my beer down and run outside to catch him. I hope he doesn't need me to catch him now, because he is dozens of hours away by plane. --PRD 3/25/2001



					I think the message board is now up and running. Try it out and see. I have been too busy to do much updating on the site, or (sob) to go skiing. The pic is from four years ago, I think. I did go this year, for a week in Switzerland. The Alps were nice, but much less snowy than I would have liked; and the one day it snowed I hit a rock hidden in it and tweaked my ankle. That made me feel like a champ. Switzerland pictures will go up in the new section listed (but not live) in the links at the top of this page. So will pictures from my future adventures. But my life is kind of boring, so I am hoping some of my friends and relatives with real adventures under their belt will step up with content. Free space on the WWW for your family snaps! or something like that. Get in here! --PRD 3/19/2001

					So things are being updated . . . slowly. Look for a bit of new content in the Family and Bochi sections. Not much. I'm working on it. Also added the links at the bottom of this page, including one to the page for Enchanté, Yotsuya's finest restaurant. Mmm. Pizza balls. To the left is Marge-n-me. The Simpsons sold out in Japan and are advertising various things. Not bad for a show whose humor can't possibly be translated out of American English, for the most part. No real equivalent for Apu and the Kwikee Mart in this country . . . --PRD 3/11/2001

					Welcome to durf.org. The site is not very content-heavy at this point, but that is because I just uploaded the thing. No complaints allowed. I hope to make it a key stop on the Web for people whose name is Durfee, or who happen to be related to a Durfee, or who knew a Durfee in Bochi, or who can only find the letters that spell durf.org on their keyboards. (These people also have the option of going to gourd.fr, which hopefully turns out to be a site loaded with info on inedible French vegetables.) There will be something for you all. Quick rundown of the site sections: Home is where you are. Translate details my work as a Japanese-to-English translator. Family is for those of you who live on my branch of the human tree. And Bochi is for everyone who would feel at home drinking beer out of a penguin-shaped bottle in a park in west Tokyo. Check back later. There will be more.One way to guarantee this is to write me and tell me what to include--or better yet, write something for me to include. Or send me a picture. Or Xerox your tickly parts and send me a fax of that. The Internet is an interactive wonderland! Interact with me . . . please . . . And with that pitiful digital whine I leave you to explore the little bits of things that now reside on this server. --Peter Durfee 3/7/2001



			All content on this site is copyright (c) 2001 by Peter Durfee except where otherwise noted. Created with Adobe software on a Macintosh computer. Hungry Webmaster fueled by Enchanté. Brain frequently fed at A&L Daily. Durf.org hosted by Yahoo since March 2001.