Intro to Jesus Mythicism: A Presentation BY Michael Turton

                                               Taichung Skeptics in the Pub Presents

                                               Intro to Jesus Mythicism:

                                               Was Jesus a Historical Figure?

                                               A Presentation BY Michael Turton

                                             Saturday, June 28, 8 pm  Terrior Wine Cellar 

      Michael Turton has been blogging from Taiwan since at least 2005. He studied at Miskatonic University in Salem, MA and Chang Gung University here. He is an ESL teacher. He’s married to a Taiwanese woman. They have no kids. He’s not a vegetarian. He rides a bike all over the island. He looks to be in his 50’s. He’s an atheist. He could be my friend. He didn’t respond to my telling him I was an IWW delegate, nor did he comment on the article I wrote about Lim It-Fang and the sneaker thrower. He wrote, “Taiwan is run by neoliberals who shit,” and he seems to supports Taiwan independence. He’s short and heavy and seems to have a good sense of humor from the photos I’ve seen on his Facebook page.

       Michael Turton is a fascinating studier of the New Testament which he can tear apart line by line to prove that Jesus, though he might have existed as a person was victim, at best, to a myth perpetrated by Mark and Luke. I felt very comfortable being there with six other people, at least three of whom are friends of Michael Turton, the most verbose being Wade. One Indian woman was slightly taken aback by Michael's condensed findings but mature enough to stifle herself. I wanted to keep it personal, meaning, how everyone had come to be there last night, especially Wade and Michael. Michael had been interested in tearing apart the Christian myth since he was eleven and Wade after he was about to go to seminary school and was distracted by love with a woman.

      Since I knew something about Michael from having researched him on the internet, I felt it was only fair that I shared some of my past with him; I would like to remain friends. I told him when we were the first there with the wine store proprietor, Wade, and the five other guests later on, how I had come to my involvement with Chinese people and my experience with my goyem friends as a young man, the friends who abandoned me because 'my people had killed Jesus.' 

     Michael is an excellent blog writer and I complimented him on it. He said that his blog was in the top three in popularity at one point, in some respect. He knew me through the taIWWan blog and Facebook. After ten years, my blogs will be as complete.  Michael has a niche in the mythicism of Jesus and many followers and followings. His political rants, however, are problematic for me because he's a kvetcher and cynic without direction. His flippant 'KMT neo-liberalism shits on workers' statement leaves his leanings falling off the edge of the world; I asked how what he studied was helping humanity, though studying what he does for its own sake and literary value are fine with me. At least Wade addressed my concern mentioning how a large percentage of homeless in America were gay youth thrown out of their homes by Christian closed-minded parents. Since my unionism has been relegated to the similar non-status of Michael Turton's atheism, his by choice and mine by default; I have no stones to throw at his house. 

     Despite citing examples of how Michael's knowledge would be sacrilege to most of the people I knew at FDR (I was thinking of Joanne, for instance) I told him there was one word that would throw fear into the hearts of colleagues in schools and workplaces more than 'atheism' would, and that word was 'unions.' Being an atheist and organizing your colleagues wouldn't get you expelled from school or lose your job but organizing workers or students into a union certainly would, unless done clandestinely. 

      I don’t know if Michael Turton keeps a journal. It may be that most of his thoughts put into writing go directly into his blog, and he does comment on articles in his “View from Taiwan” blog regularly. I write over four hundred pages of journal last year (though most of it is garbled because it wasn’t saved correctly) and don’t comment on most of the articles I post on the blogs. Improving and adding to my blogs takes a back seat to my journal and creative writing. Furthermore, I am not studying or adding to my art/craft/interest (other than reading excellent novels and short stories) and I don’t spar with other bloggers or try to convince or debunk anyone.

I have more dialogue with myself than I do with others; this is my Achilles heel.

      I tried to get around to asking if I could have a presentation next Saturday at the wine store in memorial to Jim Morrison. Michael didn’t think the open mike at Salut Pizza would be a good venue for my poetry reading as I suggested I might pursue but said he knew of a venue in Taichung and said there was a bi-weekly poetry reading in Taipei, which I had heard of. The wine store dude didn’t understand my request and instead handed me a headset with a microphone to read, at what he thought was my insistence, to the six people at the table. No one else held his mockery and I put the headset down. I did read “I only need to ride the river” before I thanked everyone and said goodbye around 10:15pm. I apologized for not drinking the quantity of wine from two bottles the knowledgeable proprietor opened; I would have if not riding my bicycle home. For the few sips I had, I was approached outside when I was unchaining my bike and asked me for a 270NT contribution as he’d ask the others inside finishing two bottles. Two guests who’d left earlier contributed nothing. I gave 300NT and he joked about my leaving him an illegal tip. I told him not to tell anyone. His was the only bad taste left in my mouth. 

Local Root Canal

6-21-14 7:47am Sat. (1)

      In about an hour Leona will go with me to a local dentist, one her brother says is good, to check on a tooth I might need root canal for. One upper right molar has been aching occasionally and is sensitive to hot and cold. I will probably ride the bike when I’m done getting checked out.

Bike Ride Past Tan-Zih Trail

6-21-14 7:47am Sat. (1)

      I took a long bike ride yesterday, four hours round-trip, and almost made it to The Wildlife Reserve on the coast of Taiwan Strait north of Wu-Qi. I think I was in Chin-Shui (or Da-An) but I’m not sure. I tried to use the Google GPS on my smart-phone but I was not able to figure it out. I spoke to one spandex biker but didn’t quite understand his Mandarin. At least I know that the Tan-Zih Sugarcane Rail Bikeway extends west beyond the “Three Tanks” that I make my terminal stop. I brought a book, writing paper and a pen but I did no reading or writing. The shady bike path and cloudy skies kept me from getting a heatstroke. Just before I got back, near the new light-rail train yard, it started to pour. I almost made it home but was getting drenched and should have waited somewhere. Instead, I forged home. Luckily, my book and electronic devices were safe. It was a great bike ride listening to Donovan and The Temperance Seven on iPod. I took a few photos. One day, if I care, I will figure out how to read and traverse the many wonderful bike paths around Taichung. Usually, though, I ride up the Han to read and write. 

Ma in Taichung, Mayhem in Taipei Metro, Trashing Taiwanese in Vietnam

5-22-14 5:26am Thurs. (1)

      On Tuesday morning, students demonstrated at China Medical University in Greater Taichung morning in anticipation of President Ma Ying-Jeou’s arrival. Ma later delivered a speech at the university on the sixth anniversary of his inauguration. I wasn’t aware he was coming or a demonstration was happening; no one alerted me. I would have gone if someone had cared to have me there. I was there when Ma came for the KMT meeting at Taichung Port last year. It has been very easy for me to retire from activism in Taiwan. No one needs me to do anything. I watch what is happening like a spectator. It is passed my station in life.

 A twenty-one year old asshole in Taipei killed four people and injured twenty-two others with a watermelon knife and switchblade on the TRA station in Banqiao. It had never happened before here. It happens every month in the USA. 

5-15-14 7:41am Thurs. (2)

      I posted an article from the Taipei Times about Taiwan government’s condemnation of Vietnamese workers trashing Taiwanese sweatshops because China seized disputed Vietnamese waters to drill oil. The Vietnamese workers think the Taiwanese sweatshops are from China! I just had this dialog with a FW from Boston:

      Here was a Wobbly who wanted to condemn China in a demonstration in Boston (where every ones’ rights were suspended to find the Marathon bombers) for the American instigated “Democracy Movement.”

      Meanwhile, the trashing of Taiwanese-Chinese businesses in Vietnam has calmed down. The oil rig that China put in Vietnamese waters is there to stay.

      A law taxing foreign investment by USA nationals goes into effect in July. 

Ms. Ma Visits Taiwan

5-20-14 7:42am Tues. (2)

      Ms. Ma came here by train yesterday at 10am. Leona took a taxi to the Taichung Train Station to pick her up and bring her back. She made Burmese noodle soup for lunch for us all and spent the day chatting in the condo with Leona. I rode the bike to American Eagle in the rain with my rain gear on. When I rode back, the rain had stopped. Leona rode Mrs. Ma on her scooter and I rode the bike up Dong Shan Road to have barbeque chicken for dinner. That was my bike riding for the day.

     Mrs. Ma just left by taxi for Taichung HSR Train station to get a tour bus to Sun Moon Lake. I believe she is coming back to sleep over one more night. Leona is having fun with her, her former part-time colleague at BPL. 

      Mrs. Ma went to see Sun Moon Lake in the pouring rain yesterday, and saw nothing. I’m not sure what time she got back as I was at the bushiban and didn’t get home until past 9pm. I asked her if she’d like to take a walk up the Han or visit a flea market but she has no time; Leona is taking her to the Taiwan Railroad to get a train to the HSR station to get a bus to Lu-Gang to see the Temples. I hear it is raining out again. They won’t be able to take Leona’s scooter there.

Trip to Taipei

5-18-14 6:10pm Sun. (3)

      Leona and I just got back from two days and a night in Taipei. The weather was good down to the last leg of the way home; it was raining while we waited at The New Wu-Er station but it had stopped by the time we de-trained at the Tai-Yuan station and picked up the scooter to ride home.

     We did everything I hoped to do in Taipei, with the exception of going to the Palace Museum; Leona just won’t go there. We didn’t have much time to go there, anyway but, whatever. Saturday, when we arrived at 10:30, we stayed underground at Taipei Station and transferred from the HSR to the TRA local subway and took it to the Eslite Flagship building near the 101 Building. First we went to the floors with their large bookstore. They have a big selection in English. I got The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll by Preston Lauterbach, One Hundred Years of Solitude by recently departed Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler; three very different books from three very different eras, the last two novels.

      After finding books, we went to the Eslite food court in the basement for lunch and then we went back upstairs to the floor with the music CD’s. Leona replaced three CD collections we had lost in the Hurricane Sandy flood: Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Hits,” “Celine Dion” self-titled and “Let’s Talk About Love” CD’s, and “Time After Time, The Cyndi Lauper Collection.” She also got a DVD of “Whitesnake Live at Donington 1990.” I got a 199NT close-out DVD of “Glen Campbell in Concert” in Sioux Falls, SD in 2001, before he got Alzheimer’s. As for CD’s, I got a cool ten CD set called “Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll; Rough and Rowdy” with over two hundred ‘Hits and Rarities,’ most of them I don’t have and have never heard.

I also got “Ramones” first self-titled CD and “Rough Guide to Blues Legends: Blind Blake Reborn and Remastered” which includes a second CD “Ragtime Blues & Hokum.” 

      If that wasn’t enough, today we went back to the Eslite Bookstore near Taiwan University where I picked up a beautiful book; Charles Darwin: On The Origin of Species; The Illustrated Edition, general editor, David Quammen. At $30us, it was the most expensive item Leona or I bought. Leona bough two political books in Chinese: Simplicity is Beauty and a satire by ‘The Fisherman,’ a comic artist.

      Right now I’m munching on barbeque bacon from a Bee Cheng Hiang store near our hotel so I don’t want to touch any of them. After having breakfast at the hotel on Cheng Shao Road near Ding Hao, we went to the area near Taiwan University to have lunch in our favorite Thai restaurant and to buy some cat supplies from a pet store there. After going back to Eslite, we took the TRA back to Taipei Station and took the HSR home to Taichung.

      The main reason for Leona agreeing to go to Taipei was to celebrate the grand re-opening of her friend’s curry restaurant on Ren-I Road near the Howard Hotel with a dozen friends. “Cow” has had a restaurant there for twenty-four years. At one point he had three restaurants including a stall at the 101 Building. But after a failed marriage and some hard times, he is left with this one outlet that was in need of up-dating. His and Leona’s mutual junior college friends, Boris and Jenny, did the remodeling in two weeks while the Indian chef went on vacation back to India.  

Vacation in Penghu (The Pescadores)

 5-11-14 9:00am Sun (1)

We're sitting on the bed in the hotel in Penghu's Makong Island. It is the main island in the Pescadores and attached by bridge or land fill to another five or six forming an inverted 'c' from north to south. Downtown here looks like any small Taiwan city but as you drive north, as Leona did yesterday on a rented scooter, it gets more beautifully natural. We spent the morning and afternoon riding the 37 kilometers along route 203.

Our first stop was an enormous banyan tree called Tongliang Great Banyan, spread out over the court of a temple supported by columns to its expanding growth. We got back on the scooter first stopping to get cactus juice and ices at the foot of the Penghu Great Bridge which isn't great at all compared to any of the Florida key bridges or even the Tappan Zee Bridge; it's basically a trestle low to the water. In the other side, Whale Cave, so called because the water erosion left a hole in the volcanic rock and visited the Xiaomen Geology Gallery, a nice museum of all the volcanic indigenous rock of the Pescadores.  We stopped there for a lunch of cold blow fish, sea snails, and hot baby squid, noodle soup with baby oysters, and seaweed egg omelets.

From there, we continued south on the 'c' of islands. The nicest part was the Erkan Ancient Residences, a few square miles of preserved Qing Dynasty houses, large and small, many of them now shops with traditional products, some of them still inhabited by the newest generation of residents. I took a lot of photos there. Going further south, we passed the Daguoye Columnar Basalt natural column of lava and ash from sixty million years ago; it was pretty facing the lagoon inside the 'c' of the main island chain. Further south, we saw the two forts that ruling classes from before the Qing had been using to defend or take The Pescadores away from the previous ruler, the last being the Japanese from China and the KMT from the Communists. The East Fort was closed so I scaled a wall near the deserted entrance and climbed up to take a peep. We then rode back directly to our hotel in Makong, along ride for Leona whose hands were vibrating from the scooter motion.

     We went back to the hotel to rest up a while and then went a mile or so away to have a hot pot crab dinner at another hotel with a voucher we got from our package deal. Leona took the scooter not too far away to the hotel where we had a voucher for a crab hot pot dinner. We sat in the enormous dining room of the largest hotel in Penghu until the uncompleted resort a few blocks away picks up speed after the gambling referendum passes. After dinner we walked along Minsheng Road to Relativity Park where a rock bands played as thousands assembled to see the fireworks display in the harbor enclosed by Xiying Rainbow Bridge. The fireworks were beautiful, from off the bridge and the seawall enclosing the harbor. Afterwards we returned to the hotel following a cool parade of a Taiwanese deity named Sun-T'ai-Zi, who was paraded up the street on a flatbed truck with techno music blaring and fire blowing up through a portal. It was the closest thing to a Marti Gras in Taiwan I have ever seen. Tired and happy we walked back to the hotel stopping off to get ice cream before calling it a night. 

     We have another two days and a night here to enjoy before we fly back to Taiwan tomorrow afternoon. 

5-13-14 6:36am Tues. (2)

      I didn’t write about Sunday or Monday in Penghu. A complete vacation starts with seeing places you’ve never seen before and loving the person (or people) you’re travelling with and meeting. This was a perfect vacation.

      Sunday morning, I walked with two vouchers to McDonalds a few blocks from the hotel. Wearing my Hawaii red shorts, red t-shirt under a white linen button down short sleeve shirt, flip-flops, sunglasses, and listening to Jimmy Buffet on the iPod, I looked ready for tourist paradise. In the morning and the night before, we’d made love. Leona stayed long in bed and I brought the breakfast back into the room. We were heading south on the scooter; my goal? Find a beach to swim at. We found it.

      Shili Beach is a perfect beach, at least until a private developer builds a eighty-unit three floor resort there. In these days of Penghu before the next referendum on legalized gambling, it is still a place for serious Taiwanese travelers not interested in vices and making money. The beach, about the size of Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, was crescent shaped. There were no commercial buildings in sight save one snack stand in the pavilion with dressing rooms and shady chairs; it was not the high season when umbrellas and reclining beach chairs are brought onto the sand. The sunny 85 degree day was perfect with less than a dozen people with family. To the right, there were more people; workers defacing the beach? We didn’t know it then but they were removing an illegal fence they were cordoning off on the sand. The TV news had a report that evening, coincidentally. The water was perfect; crystal clear, turquoise, not warm or cold, not wild or tame descending honorably deep. Leona sat on the pavilion as I got my lust for swimming satisfied.  

At Feng-gui Blowholes we relaxed at the rocky shore under a circular cement bench shared by a sprawled out local man yawning loudly. We didn’t climb down the black basalt rocks to see the hole though. We got back on the scooter and continued to the tip of last island at Shetoushan, the bottom south gate corresponding to the northerly Xiyu East and West Forts across 4,000 meters of water a ship would have to pass through to get to Magong. We saw a French and Japanese memorial there and the outlines of the first Dutch fort after they’d been thrown out of somewhere else on their way to Taiwan with the Dutch Indies Company. Now it was the American puppet KMT’s turn to hold the fort. Riding back, we stopped off at a circular lighthouse-looking bed and breakfast and went back to the hotel to rest and for me to shower off the salt water from Shili Beach.

In the evening, we then went for a walk downtown to the old area, buying some gifts for us and the kids, sampling local foods and not-so Szechuan restaurant before returning to the hotel to rest and watch TV. Monday would be an early start as we spent our last day in Penghu.

Chinese breakfast was delivered to the hotel and I went down to get it and coffee from 7-11. Our shuttle to the airport would be at 2:30pm so we only had a morning and lunch left. We didn’t waste a minute relaxing and seeing what was left to see on the main island. We headed north again on the scooter, under overcast skies, and found the Penghu Aquarium, a right turn from the banyan tree we had visited on Saturday which turned out not to be the Tongliang Great Banyan tree after all. The overpriced Aquarium -200NT was nothing to break the budget though. I got a beautiful poetry coffee table book with photos (300NT) of the island old structures.

Despite the threatening weather, we didn’t turn back until we could see how big the biggest banyan tree was from the imposter. It started raining as we were heading there. I had faith that we would find shelter. Initially Leona stopped the scooter under a roadside building overhang until four or five selfish native Taiwanese females decided to stop their two or three scooters and crowd us in. It was providence as we headed another five minutes away to the nearby Tiongliang Great Banyan near a temple, beach, and tourist stands. The skies opened up and it poured for an hour but we were covered and didn’t get wet at all. We sat at the tourist area that Leona remembered from her trip here five years ago with her Amanda and her brother’s family. I bought a matching pair (500NT) of beautiful basalt chops there; one for Ariel and the other for Alice. The lovely couple had written us wishing Leona a happy mothers’ day. We headed back after the rain let up and we donned disposable rain ponchos. It was dry as we drove back to Magong.

After walking near the harbor we stopped in to a local seafood restaurant and had the most expensive meal of our trip, $100us on fresh local fish, tiger shrimp, fried sea conch, and steamed oysters. Delicious! The sky opened up again as we ate and it poured and poured, not getting in the way of our plans at all. We walked a few short blocks after the fine lunch back to our hotel lobby where we waited forty-five minutes for the van back to the airport, right on time. The weather had affected the flight schedule though and our flight didn’t leave until after 5pm, an hour late. Back in Taichung, we took a taxi in the rain and through the traffic. We got home by 7pm.

Ariel telephoned at 11:30pm to chat as we were readying for bed. Nala was on the bed, too, and we just wanted to sleep after a fulfilling three days and two nights away. Latte was typically naughty, taking down the drapes over the bedroom bathroom threshold (I wish I could have done it myself) and damaging nothing but leaving debris of play things (like my Casio watch) and playing with a roach in the toilet bowl.

 If we could go on a trip like our weekend in Penghu once a month, I would be that much happier. I love going away on trips. I have to push Leona to make plans because I don’t feel confidant making plans in Mandarin. Our next trip is to Taipei, thanks to Cow who is having a grand re-opening of his restaurant next weekend. Without his draw, I couldn’t get Leona to go with me to Taipei. It is bittersweet for me but better than not going at all. She’ll ‘waste’ money for that but not at my suggestion.

Back to the life I love in Taichung, my life being a vacation now that I’m retired, but retirement doesn’t mean sitting around in a living room watching TV. Even the creative writing I do I’d rather do outdoors up the Han River; only the journal writing feels comfortable doing at home. Even reading feels better without distractions outside up the river. Thank Gxd, I feel okay, despite a torn blister between my toes from wearing the flip-flops on Saturday. I’