Bear Bump-In

The night we picked up our second group of Northwestern University students, we stepped out of a restaurant in downtown Sinaia (a mountain resort 2 hours north of Bucharest) and into the very approximate range of a very large European brown bear (as big as this pictured) who was in the process of turning over the restaurant dumpster. Briana started crying as we retreated into the restaurant. The wait staff shrugged their shoulders, "He's here every night." The rest of the diners hurried out with their cell phones poised to photograph. We asked one waiter if the bear had hurt anyone yet and he laughed, "Not yet!" We waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time and then linked arms and sang "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" at the top of our lungs with an empty wine bottle raised high in defense as we hurried terrified through the woods back to our rooms, at any moment expecting to be attacked.

The bear situation in Brasov (and vicinity which includes Sinaia) is not a laughing matter, even though our "run-in" is a bit comical, now. Half of Europe's brown bears are reported to make their home in Romania. One official reports with concern that the bear population is beyond normal size and is growing too rapidly. And another official reported, "It's incredible. There are 28 bears that live near Jepilor Street (in the city of Brasov), more than live in Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic combined." Tourists to Brasov are offered, at a price, the chance to view bears up close as they forage through neighborhood trash dumpsters. This is one factor contributing to the dangerously blurred line between the bears' domain and that of humans. In August a man was killed 50 meters from Brasov's "urban zone" while walking his dog. In the same month " a 20-year-old man was ripped to shreds by a large female foraging for food, as he slept on a bench in an alley near downtown Brasov." Two years ago a friend of ours, working for IOCC, was mauled to death while hiking near Brasov. It's not a laughing matter and is enough to keep us away from that beautiful region, at least for now.

Sources: http://www.evz.ro/articole/detalii-articol/815759/Oferte-turistice-pe-traseul-ursilor-de-tomberon/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4470979.ece

The Other Princesses

Clockwise from Left: Sue Bates, Mother Theresa, Florence Nightingale, Dorothy Day.

Like Mordor, the Eye of Disney has found our daughter, all the way in remote Romania, thousands of latitudinal miles and hundreds of experiential miles away from the Magic Kingdom, without a single Disney movie under our roof. It’s like our daughter was born with a Disney-shaped-hole in her heart that can only be filled with the Disney princesses – and anything with them on it. What is this really about? At the age of 2, before she could be aware that other girls had similarly shaped holes in their hearts, she would toddle into a store and, as if a magnet was pulling her, amble directly to whatever was nearest covered in Disney princesses. And she wouldn't let go.

So Dana and I were thinking about creating a counter-world, a world full of princesses (of course they will have to be beautiful, lithe, and genteelly clothed): The Other Princesses. The Other Princesses, because they care for others. We’d give them an outward-focus, a moral beauty to surpass their physical appeal, a selflessness and moral courage and cleverness about tending to and mending the plight of others (be they wounded bunnies or the indigent or polluted waters).