midnight phone call

Late Friday evening, November 7, we were watching Bill Maher on tv . Now that we've been celebrating Barack's election and Sarah Palin and John McCain are mostly gone, Bill's satirical barbs weren't so funny. I was more than half asleep.

At 11:45 the phone rang and a familiar voice with a Polish accent said, "Hello, this is Hin-Ha, calling from Hong Kong." While I tried to shake myself awake, she said, "We are very excited about Obama's election."

Hin-Ha (aka Samsi or Magdelena) is the Polish Buddhist nun who I met when she spent some time at the Zen Temple in Ann Arbor. I spent a bizarre day with her at her remote monastery in the jungle on an island in the New Territories of Hong Kong. That's the place where the nuns have to meditate on raised platforms so that deadly poisonous snakes can't attack them and they have a helicopter pad to lift them out if a snake does find anyone prey.

"We have read in a magazine," she went on, "that many states not usually vote Democratic have voted for him. Which states are they, please?" I did my best to remember. I wasn't quick enough to ask her who "we" were: the 20 or so Chinese nuns living there, or perhaps an American or European nun.

"This John McCain, he looks like a nice man, we think. Is he a nice man?"

I said something about him probably being a decent enough guy, but anyone stupid enough to make Sarah Palin the v.p. nominee isn't qualified to run for president. Then I had another thought, as I remembered that the only possessions Hin-Ha can have are the clothes on her back and whatever can fit in her cloth shoulder bag.

"Did you know that McCain owns eight houses and thirteen cars?"

She laughed. "Ah, no, then I think he is not a very nice man."

She explained that she "found" a phone card with some minutes on it, so she was calling us to say hello and congraulations. Needless to say, we were happy to know that the good news had reached the Ch'an nuns of Po Lam and that they were celebrating too.