Saturday

A Public Service Announcement: at two am this morning, most of the USA will set the clock ahead one hour to observe Daylight Saving Time in the second year of its new, longer schedule--in effect robbing a daylight hour from the morning and adding it to the afternoon as the days in the temperate northern hemisphere begin to lengthen toward spring. In a jaw-dropping display of virtuoso egocentricity, we take our banking hours with us, forcing the rest of the world to comply. A lot of international dealing goes on in an hour. This is our head-scratching solution to a "problem" more easily solved by merely asking appropriate businesses to adopt seasonal hours of operation, equally effecting nations south of the equator who must negotiate US summertime changes as local autumn begins. The side effect, since Vietnam doesn't bother lining-up in this way, is that we're one hour closer to home from tomorrow through the second Day of the Dead in November. By eleven thirty this morning we had been transported almost three hours north of Saigon to the Cao Đài Holy See¹ in Tây Ninh, a flat and sun-drenched religious compound studded with dorms and temples. The main building is a vast and ornate temple reflecting the syncretistic mash of the religion's tenet: an involved structure of Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, and Catholic motif weaved together in colorful fancy beneath an all-seeing god’s-eye pyramid logo (which unfortunately rings unintentionally commercial in the eyes of western tourists). The Cao Đài² recognize the partial development of god's direct will throughout multiple religions and seek to bring these disparate devotions together into a more developed godly devotion, recognizing such saints as Sun-Yat-Sen and Victor Hugo alongside the more predictable figures of Jesus, Lau Tse, and Confucius. Stud* update in comments. [Cavin]