More Photos

First more L'abri photos:

A breakfast at L'abri. Around the table starting with me, Kathrine, Sonja, Shannon, Amanda, Victor, Seth, X, Trevor, Autumn, Allyssa and Anna.

Seth described this shot as a bad Canadian sitcom promo shot. Trevor (centre) is the star. Back row: Brandon, Seth. 2nd Row: Wendy, Victor, Sonja, Shannon. 3rd Row: Charis, Amanda, Trevor, Autumn, Allyssa. Front Row: Missy, Shiloh.

Me and Missy at improptu late night Wendy's trip.

Missy and Sonja.

Me and Missy with the finger puppet show I made for the talent night.

Now, LA.

At the Getty Museum (of Art) yesterday. An airy, light space created below a giant cube overlooking LA.

Sculpture at the Getty.
My cousin Nathan at the Getty.

Shiloh at the Getty.

Nathan at the Getty (in mid and background). Isn't Nathan handsome? He's single too, ladies and a really godly guy.

Shiloh and Nathan outside the Getty. Observe the modernist curves in the top left hand corner. Getty is an example of modernist architecture that works.

Shiloh at the Getty at sunset.

Shiloh at the Getty. LA county stretches into the background.

Back at L'abri

The Logans. Autumn, Tatooed Trevor and Baby Azariah. This was taken on the day they left which was a very sad day. Trevor has a tough guy exterior but really he is a soft hearted philosophy geek who tells tall tales for a laugh. You mistakedly assume Autumn is timid and serious, but she's actually witty, quirky, energetic and entertaining, with a forgiving attitude and a big heart.

Missy, Autumn and Seth at a late night trip to Wendy's. Seth looks kind of old in that photo, but its just the angle and facial expression, and the fact that the light is highlighting the grey flecks in his hair. He's really 27.

Shannon, Missy, Seth and me. Dinner on the last night in the library.

Me (in a dishwashing apron) and Missy. Paris Hilton's Stars are Blind is probably playing. Which is actually a very catchy and dancable song.

California Here We Are

I'm now in LA.

But first some photos from where I was staying before, in Michigan. We drove over to Chicago and visited the Chicago Institute of Art.


This is someone who should be in the Chicago Institute of Art; Ariella Phillips. She has just turned 16.


Ariella Phillips is daughter of Ron (on the left). Ron Phillips is an old friend of Dad's. They go way back to dad's rebellious days at Moody Bible Institute.

This is Ron's wife Carol and their other child, David. Well, he's not really a child, he's thirteen and he likes the Chilli Peppers. "Hey Yo" is a cool song.


I had a great time in Michigan.

Where I am staying in LA. Despite appearences, this is not a hotel, but the guest room of my cousins's place.


At Thanksgiving. A first for me. All Autumnally decorated.

We ate the traditional green been casserole, mashed potato, yam and of course, turkey. Kind of like a second Christmas, really.


Yesterday was a chockers day. The highlight was the morning, when I had the privledge of meeting Joni Erikson Tada and her husband Ken Tada. Greg Wood, my dad's cousin, is on the board of the organisation she runs.


I was a bit apprehensive about meeting Joni; anxious about what to talk about, what would be the appropriate thing to say. But I had nothing to be anxious about. Joni is a warm, kind person who is also a great conversationalist. Not only that, but she has great intellect, and conversed with me about Christianity and Philosophy.

She was genuinely interested in my life, my family and what I wanted to do in the future. And she offered gentle encourgment. She was humble enough to show me some of her artwork in her bedroom, and she gave my cousins and I each a copy of her new book and her Christmas album. Just before we left, Ken prayed for me, which was a lovely thing to do.

Afterwards, we drove up to the Griffith observatory. The view:


For dinner, we ate at a Forrest Gump themed restaurant in Universal City. Naturally, we had shrimp. Afterwards, we watched Casino Royale at Universal Studios, which was actually very good. Darker than the other Bond movies, and Bond is less suave and more macho.


This is Nathan Wood, my cousin, in Bubba Gump restaurant. Nathan looks like a Luke-Seth hybrid, and he also reminds me of JOB Bluth, but only in a good way.

California, here we come.

My travel plans have changed again.

The folks I'm staying with have asked me to come back and work for them for a couple of weeks. This means that my itenery is something like this:

Tomorrow I leave for LA. I stay with my cousins over Thanksgiving.

Then I fly to Dallas and spend time with Seth (not my brother, he's in Thailand with his wife).

In the middle of December I return to Michigan and work until just before Christmas.

Then I return to Texas, and either fly home on Christmas day or spend Christmas with my relatives in Houston. In which case, I'll probably fly home the next avaliable flight after Christmas or sometime in the New Year.

Confusing? I think I'll have seen enough of airports and security checks by the end of all this. But it's worth it.

Madame A Go-Go

One of the incarnations of Madame A Go-Go dances to the Scissor Sisters. Chad is also in frame.

More Photos

All American boys in an all American scape. And just to sound like one of the locals, that Washington Monument is huge! I saw it and thought, yeah about the size of Hobart's centataph. Oh No. Then I realised how far away I was from it and it quadrupled (and more) in size, before my eyes.

First trip with Sonja, Seth, Casey and Chad (not pictured) to Boston. Casey, holding the guidebook, leads us on the Freedom trail. At some point it starts bucketing down and we see Paul Revere's statue in the pouring rain and then find shelter in a cosy, peeling, Italian cafe and drink liquer hot chocolate and beer and play scrabble.

Do Chad and Seth share each other's views? It certainly looks that way. In the Boston Subway.

Continuing the unground theme, here is a chair in the cellar. Spooky. The cellar is quite large and includes a sub-cellar which is dark and mouldy and even spookier. A good place to be naughty. Btw, Americans love the way we say "naughty".

Victor and Seth (lying down, middle distance) enjoy a calmer Cape Cod beach.

Beaver! (at the Natural History Museum, Harvard. This one is not alive, it is has been skinned in stuffed, to a point were Plato would ask you if this lump of fur and stuffing still has the identity of a "beaver". Gooood question)

Halloween night. Shannon as Audrey Hepburn (she went totally into character and smoked), Allyssa as Hermoine, Sonja as a 70's woman and Seth as a Gay. He later shaved his beard into a hilarious chops and fumanchu, but it would have been funnier with the above costume.

Just like the Christmas lights competitions in Australian neighbourhoods, Americans like to get into the Autumnal spirit and decorate their homes for Halloween. Here a house has a graveyard of pillow zombies and a crashed witch.

Funny to me. Apparently "Pratt" is a college in American somewhere. I don't think Sonja was being a pratt at this point though, even though she may have spent to long in the shower or farted or something. But you get to a point where you don't care what people do and you like them anyway. I like Sonja. And I did just as many annoying things. That's something I found I struggled with living in a community - my own judgmentalism.


There's a No Alcohol rule observed at L'abri since people sometimes come to L'abri with alcohol problems. But you can be a bit naughty and drink on the train back to L'abri from Boston, and keep the bottle in its paper bag. Here Karl and Seth indulge in some of that sophomorish naughtiness, but I can't judge them, since I had a few sips too.

In fact, I did quite a few naughty things in that sheltered environment (it seems that the cloisteredness of it promotes minor acts of rebellion. It it would be the best enviroment in which to rebel, if you had to). I didn't get a tatoo and jump in the No Swimming reservior like Shannon did. Don't blame the bad influence of those loose Americans, I think due to my long period of study (17 years, no breaks) I've had a delayed adolescance; but I think I've got all the cigarette smoking, illicit guinness drinking, wild canoodling, self-indulgent nihlism and flamboyant, racy, costuming out of the system.

One of our trips to Boston. Chad and Seth ordered Squid Ink pasta in the North End (the Italian district. There are shady looking guys on each corner.) That pasta was "good", as the Americans say.

I took this when I first arrived, and no one was around (except for the workers). This is the interior of the girls dorm. Yes, it's old school noice. That's me in the mirror.


The L'abri Manor. Us girls slept in the East Wing, the guys in the West. There was this kind of double standard; technically no girls in guys dorm and vice versa, but this was frequently broken by girls in the guys room. The guys kept a safe distance, except for Vincent, who is only 18 and the sort of guy girls want to dress up and have sleepovers with. He's not gay (ha! not at all), but we felt comfortable with his intrusion. Below is a blurry picture of him. He's Franco-Swiss and lives at Swiss L'abri, as he is The Frances Schaffer's great-grandson.


A L'abri meal. Brandon (California), Sonja (California), Shannon (Michigan), Paul, Keri (New York). In the background Seth, Chad and Victor all wear plaid. I think that meal was Cranberry Chicken. Delicious.

Casey, Chad and Seth on a train ride to Boston. I don't know what Casey was saying at that point, but he could have been improvising brilliant Dadaist poetry in his Southern drawl.

Autumn and her son, Azariah. All those bottles would be in fluid ounces.

Autumn (Arizona), Brandon, the back of Allyssa (Pennsylvania), Azariah, Paul (a strange young man from Georgia), Seth (washing dishes), all in the Student Kitchen. Everyone is doting over Azariah, who is now probably missing the attention very much.

Oh no. OH NO!*

Hello folks. I am finally at a computer with a working USB port, so now I can show you some photos.

In roughly chronological order:

Seth quit smoking before he came to L'abri, but the abstaining was taking its toll and he could only think of cigarettes. The only remedy was to light up. Spot an article which belongs to yours truely. Photo taken in Boston.


Victor (Maryland), Chad (New Jersey) and Seth (Texas). Victor was the odd one out until I alerted him to the fact, to which he jumped up without a word and put on a plaid, giving a farmer boy look to the table. Plaids are big here, even unironically.


Casey (from Alabama) and I are patriotic outside some important building of the revolution or colonisation, in Boston.

For talent night I created a tiny, detailed, finger-puppet theatre that was barely visible to the audience and performed a parody far more suited to the big screen - The Day After The Day After Tomorrow. A la Theatre of the Absurd.

Casey drove Victor, Sonja, Seth and me down to Cape Cod. This is Victor walking along a wild stretch of beach.

Sonja on a wild Cape Cod beach.

Sonja, Victor and Seth on Cape Cod beach.
Lots of L'abri students had tatoos. Victor has a clock motif which symbolises his three brothers. Seth has a man reading a newspaper.


Shannon added a whole new dimension to her personality by breaking the conservative mid-western girl stereotype and getting a tatoo during her L'abri stay (it's a Celtic knot symbolising the Trinity). This little rebel will extend her break from her philosophy studies and return to L'abri next term as a helper. Missy (from Wisconsin) is coming back next term too. The tatoo on her wrist is a Psalm.

There was much dressing up for Halloween. I went as a go-go dancer (awaiting photos from Missy's Gamera). Here Seth is a gay.

Brandon as a Mormon for Halloween.

Dick and Mardi Keyes, Southborough L'abri founders. Or at least Victor and Missy in costume for Halloween.

Karl and Seth are busted after a brief tryst outside.


Don't you think this manequin I saw in Macy's looks like (my brother) Seth? It's his kind of outfit too.


A L'abri meal at the Morrells.


A socialist looking sculpture in the capital of the Free World.


Counter-intelligence.

*A L'abri injoke. It's actually funny so maybe I'll explain in person..