Massive Random Post

Since October 1, I have helped change a tire in the African desert, pursued the great Raymond Westbrook all over Cape Town academia, run down Table Mountain alongside a Rastafarian biker gang of some sort, experienced Cape Town’s night life on the famous Long Street, baked some amazing butternut squash muffins at 3 in the morning, voted twice on the same day, and so much more. Alas, I have not yet met the great Desmond Tutu because an urgent funeral came up, but we are currently scheduled for mass and breakfast with him on November 7.

Let’s start with academics. My AIDS & Development semester paper, on how redefining our approach to the AIDS pandemic should force a rethinking of the entire “development” concept, was a more excellent research and reasoning adventure. You have no idea how challenging it can be to link the libertarian Austrian School of Economics, AIDS research, and leftist development critics, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. If only more libertarian scholars addressed development issues, it would have been much easier. Thank goodness for Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne!  While my own beliefs obviously significantly impacted the paper, I did find a lot more common ground between the Austrian tradition and the post-development scholars than expected and really found myself excited by the realistic chances for scrapping old development aid for a new system based on self-reliance, freedom, and cultural context. Possible development grad school future . . . who knows?

Then, the do-or-die Old Testament theology semester research paper due Friday, October 25. I chose to research the Mosaic concept of the sabbatical and jubilee years found in Leviticus 25. In Leviticus, God calls for the land to lie fallow every seventh year, the Sabbath or sabbatical year. After seven such seven-year cycles, God calls Israel to celebrate a jubilee, freeing all Hebrew debt slaves and returning all agricultural land sold to pay off debts to the original owners. Whether these laws were ever actually put into practice or even meant to be put into practice, and what they mean for the Christian worldview today, remain the subject of much debate. This brings me to the previously alluded to quest for Raymond Westbrook, a legal expert specializing in Ancient Near Eastern law and customs. Mr. Westbrook happened to write an excellent article analyzing the jubilee in 1971 for the Israel Law Review, which I desperately wanted to find. Alas, UWC, despite including a law school, had neither the hard copy nor an online subscription to the legal databases containing this article. So, I headed off on the train to Stellenbosch, a charming town north of Cape Town known for its wineries and Stellenbosch University. I power walked across town not the regular university but to the highly acclaimed Stellenbosch Theological School’s library, recommended to me by Dr. Lawrie. I found a number of key articles, including a 2006 Stellenbosch thesis, that helped me write the paper, but Stellenbosch also lacked online and hard copies of that scarce 1971 volume. My pursuit of Mr. Westbrook led me to University of Cape Town, very close to Kimberley House. I had discovered online that UCT’s law library had both the hard copy and online access to the article, and on Monday the third time was indeed a charm as I left proudly bearing a photocopy of pages 209 to 227 of the 1971 ILR. Of course, that justified me not starting hardcore on the paper until Wednesday.

Thursday night, I wrote most of the paper, went to bed from 11:30 to 3, when I got up and listened to an amazing debate between independent Ralph Nader and Constitution Party standard-bearer Rev. Chuck Baldwin over the Internet via Restore the Republic Radio. Fear not, the long-promised commentary on the upcoming American and South African elections (EXCLUSIVE to Free Spirit Runner, read it here first!) is on the way, but not tonight. While this real exchange of ideas, including substantive discussions of universal healthcare, America’s overall foreign policy direction, and the global economic crisis, was stimulating my mind, I baked some crazy good butternut squash muffins in my new muffin tin that I finally bought and made a great frosting, even though I had to extract the lemon and orange zest from those fruits with a potato peeler because we lacked a zester. Muffins taste so much better at 4 in the morning, don’t you think? I then finished up my theology paper and turned it in at UWC, but it ended up taking me so long that my journal entries for the grassroots leaders class didn’t get finished on time. Oh well.

Let’s backtrack. (This post is becoming rather like the non-linear, postmodern novels we’ve been reading in our English literature class.) One of the reasons I didn’t start my theology paper until the week it was due (besides my finely tuned Marshall instincts) was that five of us rented a car and headed north to Afrika Burns on Friday, October 17. Basically, we borrowed a small tent and drove for five hours to go to this anti-corporate, hippy, camping party in the middle of the barren stretch of South Africa just over the border into the Northern Cape province. It’s like a smaller version of America’s Burning Man festival. Anyway, we had a lot of fun, managed to somewhat all fit in the tent (which was of course somewhat expertly pitched in the dark by a certain Eagle Scout from SuperTroop 540). Yes, I realize the futility, wastefulness, and irony of renting a car and buying the gas necessary to drive five hours north and back again to “stick it to the man,” but I was mainly on board to get out of the city, and we definitely accomplished that. The major flaw in this whole plan was that we had to drive three hours or so on this lousy gravel road (oh, the poor rental car). This worked fine on the way there, but on the way back, we blew our left rear tire and somehow didn’t notice it for a while because the road was so bumpy to begin with. (Don’t ask how we didn’t notice it, or why it seems that all of us were thinking that maybe we should stop and check things out but we didn’t for a while, because I really have no rational explanation.) This left us on the side of good old R355 (the gravel road) in the middle of the desert, out of cell phone range, and 80+ kilometers from the nearest service station. Fortunately, we had a full service spare and were able to successful change the tire. Even better, we stopped off at several Stellenbosch wineries on our way back.

Before we left for Afrika Burns, a number of us mailed off our election ballots, and I can say “Barring” a mishap by the postal services, the Township of Elk Libertarian tsunami has officially been launched . . . hey, we can all dream. I would point out that, as best I can tell, the Libertarian presidential ticket is either tied with the Republicans behind Obama or in sole possession of second place here at Kimberley House precinct. My presidential vote decision was easy compared to the fiercely contested Price County races, where I strongly supported the Democratic straight ticket against their apparently intimidated, non-existent opposition.

My American absentee ballot means nothing compared to my crucial vote on the future of UWC on Thursday, October 16. SASCO, the reigning PASMA, and a few independents fiercely contested the election, completely with rallies, inflammatory rhetoric, and chants. I hear the student government’s annual general meeting turned into a chant fest between SASCO and PASMA. Since the UWC choir is full of PASMA supporters and they are all nice people, I proudly voted straight ticket PASMA and got the precious ink of democracy on my figure to prevent me from voting again. I actually haven’t heard the results yet, but the Pan African Congress (the small, radical Africanist political party that PASMA is the youth wing of) deserves to control something in South Africa (and I deserve to win at least one contested election this fall).

Friday, Jesse’s parents were here and took us out to eat, so that was great! Afterward, I met my Pentecostal pastor friend Kholekile downtown and enjoyed hanging out at a nice dance club on Long Street, the night life heartbeat of Cape Town. Yesterday, I ran/walked a ways up Table Mountain. On the way down, I passed and was passed several times by a group of seven bicyclists with massive dreadlocks. They seemed very relaxed, and so I have concluded they were having a Rastafarian convention on Table Mountain. Today, I went to Kholekile’s Pentecostal church with Glenn, even though Kholekile wasn’t there today, which was an energetic service focused on purity. This evening, I went to this great, friendly Presbyterian service in the next suburb over, Mowbray.

That’s about it for tonight. Classes finished up last week, so I will have more time now.

God bless,

Andy