Eideard

Xi Jinping talks with local people in the home of Roger and Sarah Lande in Muscatine, Iowa
Kevin E. Schmidt / Pool via AFP – Getty Images

A young, blue-eyed Sarah Lande never thought the polite young man from China, Xi Jinping, sitting at her dining room table in 1985 would go on to become the next president of China. She simply thought of him as a gentle soul with genuine interest in her family’s Iowa roots, sharing a home-cooked meal of pork, beef and locally grown corn.

Wednesday afternoon 27 years later – he returned to the same three-story home on Muscatine’s 2nd Street and walked through the same door, but this time as China’s next president.

“Coming here is really like coming back to home,” Xi told a packed living room of familiar faces he met on his 1985 visit. “You can’t even imagine what a deep impression I had from my visit 27 years ago … because you were the first group of Americans that I came into contact with…”

Xi first visited Muscatine as a provincial official from Iowa’s sister state of Hebei almost three decades ago. Leading a delegation of four other local officials on an educational trip primarily focused on agriculture, Xi and his colleagues toured local farms and businesses as part of an exchange that began with Iowans going to Hebei in 1984. He met then-and current Iowa governor Terry Branstad and more than a dozen other Iowans in Muscatine he now calls his “old friends…”

Clearly, Muscatine also left an indelible impression on Xi. Upon invitation back to Iowa by Governor Branstad, he requested to reunite with each person he met in Muscatine.

Muscatine is the perfect, if coincidental, background to counterbalance Xi’s highly-scripted meetings in Washington. Aesthetically frozen in the 1950s, the town oozes both old-fashioned small-town charm and the harsh reality of post-industrial American economy. Many storefronts and warehouses stand empty in a place that once called itself the “pearl button capital of the world.” Meanwhile, China has opened and expanded exponentially since 1985, into a roaring economy.

RTFA. There is so much real farm country folksiness in the article I won’t do an editorial job on it. The point for me – perhaps because of my decades dealing with Asian businesses bringing products to sell in the United States – is that commerce sets an appropriate stage for individuals and cultures to get to know each other, affect each other in social ways, in business, in study and friendship.

There was a time in American history when some portions of this nation lived as neighbors to the world – by preference. Better we learn to learn from each other – instead of following the night-riders of bigotry into their pride in conquest and conflict.

Pope Benedict XVI has warned of an “aggressive anti-clericalism” in Spain which he said was akin to that experienced during the 1930s…

In case you aren’t aware of what he speaks, that was when the Catholic Church labored hard in the vineyards of the fascist dictator, Franco.

“The clash between faith and modernity is happening again, and it is very strong today,” he told reporters on the plane, quoted by AFP news agency.

He is due to celebrate an open-air Mass and then travel to Barcelona on Sunday…

Despite protests from the Church, the current Socialist government has ended obligatory religious education in state schools and legalised abortion on demand in a drive to secularise…

Only 14.4% of Spaniards regularly attend mass, and legal changes to allow divorce, gay marriage and abortion have caused concern to the Catholic Church…

But some shopkeepers are disappointed by the number of people coming to the city for the Papal visit.

“There are still no people, we’re very surprised,” one souvenir shop owner told AFP news agency.

The pope is probably wondering what happened to his cut of the sales, too.

In Barcelona, gay activists are calling for a kiss-in outside the Sagrada Familia when the Pope arrives to consecrate it.

“Cripes! Pat him on the head gently to wake him up – last time, he farted!”
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

UK taxpayers should help pay for the Pope’s trip to Britain, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has said.

Critics are angry that up to £12m is to come from the public purse. But Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols told the BBC it would be a “sad day” when the UK “closes its doors and says we can’t afford state visits”.

He also hinted the Pope may meet victims of the Catholic abuse scandal during this month’s four-day visit…

All he has to do is drop in at pretty much any Catholic Church and ask around.

This trip, which will also include events in London and Birmingham, will be the first ever official state visit to Britain by a serving Pontiff…

But Archbishop Nichols told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme it was right the taxpayer and the Church shared the bill because the Pope was coming at the invitation of the government.

Amazing piece of reasoning. Explained, I guess, by all the other rules of logic ignored or abused by Christian theologists.

“This is the leader of probably the oldest international institution, that serves humanity in a tremendous way right around the globe…”

Earlier this week, an aide to Archbishop Nichols, Edmund Adamus, told Catholic news agency Zenit that Britain had become a “selfish, hedonistic wasteland”.

Maybe that’s why the Pope is coming to town? To get in on the hedonism.

The Foreign Office has apologised for a “foolish” document which suggested the Pope’s UK visit could be marked by the launch of “Benedict-branded” condoms.

The junior civil servant responsible had been put on other duties, it said.

Called “The ideal visit would see…”, the paper suggested the Pope be invited to open an abortion clinic and bless a gay marriage during September’s visit…

The UK’s ambassador to the Vatican, Francis Campbell, has met senior officials of the Holy See to express regret on behalf of the government.

The paper was attached as one of three “background documents” to a memo dated 5 March 2010 inviting officials in Whitehall and Downing Street to attend a meeting to discuss themes for the papal visit…

But it has, nevertheless, the potential to cause considerable damage. Whether fairly or not, it will leave some Catholics with the impression of a culture within official circles in which their Church’s teaching is not taken seriously.

We can only hope.

Some will suspect prejudice against faith groups. Perhaps most damaging of all, it could leave an impression that the Pope might be regarded as a figure of fun less than five months before his state visit to Britain.

It went on to propose the Pope could apologise for the Spanish Armada or sing a song with the Queen for charity.

Bet the Queen can carry a tune better than the Pope. Actually, I can’t think of anything the Pope does really well. He’s not succeeding at retaining his flock, is he, eh?

Scotland is a country plagued by sectarianism and struggling with a rising “tide of secularism”, the Pope has declared, in an address to the country’s Catholic bishops in Rome…

The Pope urged his Scottish bishops to “grapple firmly with the challenges presented by the increasing tide of secularism in your country”.

He also used his speech to condemn euthanasia – comments widely interpreted as a criticism of Margo MacDonald’s attempt to pass an assisted suicide bill at Holyrood.

“Support for euthanasia strikes at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life,” the Pope said…

He is likely to meet a wave of demonstrations across Britain after he condemned Labour’s equality laws earlier this week. Humanists, gay groups and academics joined politicians in criticising his unprecedented intervention in domestic politics.

In a lecture to English Catholic bishops in Rome on Sunday, the Pope described Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill as “unjust”, a restriction on religious freedom and a violation of “the natural law” – in other words, Christian teaching…

In Scotland yesterday, the Pope was urged to “relax”…Patrick Harvie, the leader of the Green Party, said: “I agree Scotland is a more secular society, but I think that’s a very good thing for equality in all its forms and for all religions. I would invite his Holiness to relax about this social change and enjoy it…”

The Pope’s whine is good news for the rest of us. At least, those who have stepped forward on the highway built of science, material reality, progress and good will.

Anyone stuck trying to find the on-ramp might be better served with a GPS running on reason and knowledge – instead of superstition and unquestioning belief.

Sarah Palin in Iraq? Kuwait? O.K. – Alaska…

Aides to Gov. Sarah Palin are scrambling to explain details of her only trip outside North America — which, according to a new report, did not include Iraq, as the McCain-Palin campaign had initially claimed.

Palin made an official visit to see Alaskan troops in Kuwait in July of 2007. There, she made a stop at a border crossing with Iraq, but did not actually visit the country, according to a new report in the Boston Globe.

Earlier, McCain aides had said that Palin visited Iraq, and expressed indignation at questions about her slim foreign travel.

The campaign also said she had been to Ireland; that turned out to have been a refueling stop.

Of course, the average Bush supporter – which now means McCain supporter – doesn’t get their undies bunched over what goes on in furrin countries.