Honor your ancestors (Story of my life 4) (3/7/2025)

I have been watching a documentary on YouTube called Kintsugi (The Ancient Japanese Practice that Will Heal You). While a lot of people that know me closely might say that this is wasted time for me; I am so screwed up and cannot be healed. As part of the healing process, the 4-part series taught me about the importance of honoring the people who came before me: my ancestors. I feel that the least thing I can do is write about them, which is as close as I can get to visiting their past lives and thus honoring them. I don't know where they are buried; moreover, that is a continent, and an ocean removed from where I now live. 

I come from a long line of builders. My father started out as an engineer and road builder. After the Second World War he briefly worked for his father who owned a construction company. He married my mother in August 1948 and sometime after that they departed to Kinshasa in what was then the Belgium Congo, where he had taken a job in the road construction business. Back then it was called Léopoldville. He did not last long and after two years or so took a job as a director of the furniture manufacturing company in Albertville (now known as Kalemi) in the eastern part of the Congo. This is the place where I was born. We moved to Antwerp in Belgium when I was 2 years old. In Antwerp, dad was working on the restorations of the “Grote Kerk,” the main church in downtown Antwerp. We moved to the Caribbean in 1956 and lived 13 years in Curacao and a half year or so in Aruba. Dad started out in the road building industry, became a director of a construction company, and an architect. He continued managing the restoration of some of the old buildings along the harbor of Willemstad, the capital of Curacao. After moving back to the Netherlands, my father worked in the construction management field and traveled all over the world. He spent time in Germany, Turkey, Congo, Cameroon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Indonesia before he finally retired. 

Uncle Willem (Wim), dad's brother owned a construction company, and when we moved back to the town of Capelle and den IJssel in 1996 he had developed and built almost ¾ of that town. As I mentioned before my opa (grandfather) owned a construction company, as well. However, my uncle Wim built his company on his own, from scratch. My great-grandfather (my grandfather’s father) was also into construction. He was a very skilled carpenter and his claim to fame was that he supposedly built the Bijenkorf (a large department store) in the center of The Hague (Den Haag). This must have been in the early 1900. The odd duck out was Karel, my father’s oldest brother. He ended up owning an optical store. Anyway, from the two brothers down to my great-grandfather they were all very skilled and talented carpenters. Even Herke, Karel's son, was a very accomplished woodworker. 

I do not know much about my mother's side. Her father was not into building. Opa van den Ende was a butcher and owned a butcher shop in Terbregge a small suburb of Rotterdam. Mom (or Ma as we called her) had three brothers, one (Jan) died in a German concentration camp, and another (Cor) was an accountant. I do not know what the third brother (Siem) did. The only thing that is somewhat related to building is my mom's second nephew Ben. Ben was the owner of a kitchen installation and renovation company. 

Naturally, one cannot help comparing all these folks that went ahead of me with my skills and abilities. However, together, my wife and I have renovated three bathrooms, including two in our current home. In Yemen I built my own house and a plant nursery and office; I also built a wooden play structure for our daughter, in Gallup, NM. In our current home my wife and I tiled a huge portion of our home (kitchen, breakfast room and library/stove room), we built two sheds from scratch and a woodshed. I also built a large built-in bookcase in our home. Finally, during the past 15 years I taught environmental compliance to folks in the construction industry. In other words, I dare say that I somewhat continued the family tradition in the building industry (sorry Opa van den Ende). 

It is fun to see where your forefathers come from and how you fit in the continuing story of a family, of your life. And yes, I do believe there are healing properties in writing and paying respect to your forefathers. I am really not writing this as a self-gratification exercise, but also for my daughter, my future grandson, nieces and nephews. I believe that family history is important and honoring them by documenting their existence in this manner will hopefully make them live forever. We have such powerful tools to do this by being able to blog on the internet, unlike our forefathers who did not have these tools and depended on passing stories down orally. The internet can be a very useful tool when it is used in such a way, as opposed to constantly maligning one another, as is seen in the case of the social media where it is often done now, in our polarized world.

This is the only thing I have from my great-grandfather.  It is a fishing basket he made.  It is supposed to be suspended in the water to hold the fish you caught, and shaped in such a way that you can easily carry it laying on your side while hanging from a strap 

Stories of my life 3 (moving) (2/19/2025)

I have lived in my current home for almost 25 years now. Since I am almost 72, that means that I have lived here 34.7% of my life. Before moving to our current domicile, I moved approximately eleven times before getting married. That does not include four longer vacation stays (more than a month) in the Netherlands. Once out of college I served in the Dutch army at three different locations during the 16 months that I served. Moving while in the Army was easy, just a large duffle bag. We got married while serving on the last military base and that allowed me to move into civilian housing. We rented a vacation home on a Dutch camping nearby, where we lived for the first few months. First, we rented a camper from a minister but left after a few weeks when he tried to get into my young bride’s pants. Not very surprising from a religious leader trying take advantage of a young girl. A young (she just turned 22) somewhat vulnerable lady in a foreign country who doesn't speak the language, trying to fuck her. Then to think that he was married and had two young daughters. We moved into a ramshackle cabin on the same camping after that and we lived there for two months.

After leaving the service we lived in at least 13 more locations, not counting brief stints of a few weeks with both sets of parents. Twenty-eight moves or new homes in the first fourty-seven years of my life. On average , I moved from one place to another every 1.67 year or every one year and eight months. During that time I lived in nine countries (that count includes two islands in the Caribbean) on five continents (placing the two islands as Central or South America). Phew, I am tired of thinking about all that travel and moving. But on the other side, I miss it at times.

During the past thirty years I had careers that required a lot of traveling. First as a consultant I traveled for the various projects I was assigned to. I traveled to Los Angeles and a week later I was in New Hampshire or up state Pennsylvania. Then it was Louisiana or Michigan; you get the idea. When I took a job as an instructor for the state of Virginia, I was required to travel overnight at least two weeks per month, albeit in State. I liked the pleasure of solo traveling, be it by car or by air. While traveling with colleagues is fun, I somehow liked to be alone, for meals or just in my motel room. I assume that is a true sign of being an introvert, although my wife think that my claim of being an introvert is pure bull shit. However, my career forced me to be out in public and act extroverted. Marketing is the game as a consultant; although I was never good at it or comfortable with it.

And now I am retired. Do I miss the traveling? Yes and no.

Since retirement I have been across the country three times; really from the east coast to the west coast. I have written about these trips <here>, <here> and <here>. We camped at least three times around our state and stayed in a cabin at a state park. I should not forget our camping trip to the eastern shore of Maryland. Finally, another solo trip this year to Missoula, MT where I explored Walden and Desert Solitaire with a group of like-minded folks as part of the “Listening to America” organization.

Today I got the news that a friend of mine passed away last night; I am going to miss you, Roy! At least Roy led a good life (although you might say he was not kind to his own health). During retirement he and his wife travelled to South Africa, Egypt and to Petra in Jordan, just to name a few places. Other retired friends are currently in the Galapagos Islands; another good friend spent ten days in Marocco straight after retiring this year, and finally some very good friends just returned from a trip down under (New Zeeland and Australia), they were in Finland last year. I told my wife today that we better do some traveling before it is too late. Although we have seen a lot of this world and tell people things like “been there, done that, loved it, and got the t-shirt,” there are still places I would like to explore or even revisit.

Here I am in the woods behind the house I now have lives almost 25 years.  I love to walk and explore these woods, I forest bath as much as I can.  After 25 years I am starting to feel restless and start thinking of moving closer to our daughter. 

Transform yourself ... Stories of our life 2 (2/11/2025)

I am reading a book by Neil King, Jr. entitled “American Ramble" and was struck by a passage in the chapter on his visit to Amish country. It was a quote from the Bible: St. Paul's letter in Romans. It goes: “Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” A little later in the book the author provides his own interpretation or translation: “Do not let the world form you. Do not conform to it. Instead, transform yourself through a renewing of your mind.” A very interesting thing to think about in todays world, indeed.

I also ran into a quote by Erasmus the other day. This quote takes me to the political situation we are finding ourselves in as a country. The Dutch humanist, philosopher, priest Erasmus’ words still ting true when he warned us in the late 1400s and early 1500 about today's politics when he wrote: “The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools who applaud them.” These two quotes (Erasmus’ and King’s) intersect each other in an interesting way.

Fools in this sense does not infer that these folks are poor, destitute, have a low IQ, or not successful; just plain dumb. Bringing it back to King, these fools have been formed by a demagog called tRump. However, I am not sure who is the largest fool tRump or mUsk, who is following who in that case, and who else conforming to them and applauding them? They do not want to renew their mind but be back in the 1920s and 30s, or even earlier (McKinley?) and make this country backwards and racist again.

I want to leave it there and go on with some of the stories of my life and go back to Mr. Kings interpretation of St. Paul's words. “Do not let the world form you. Do not conform to it.” This was somewhat of the motto that I live by from my mid to late teens (late 1960s) and probably all the way until 2010. I mentioned in my previous post that I was moved to The Netherlands in August 1969 from the island of Curacao. I use the term “was moved" because it had nothing to do with my free will. As a 16-year-old you are not supposed to have free will but do what your parents think is best for you or the entire family. This move set me off on a more nihilistic path. I came from an exotic island that a lot of my new fellow students never heard of, let alone had never been too. The attention allowed me to become somewhat of a class clown, rebellious, different with an attitude of I don't give a damn.

The second part of King's translation: “Instead, transform yourself through a renewing of your mind” is also part of my life. I have always wanted to learn, but usually on my terms and not the way you are supposed to in today’s society. I took double the number of required courses in grad school and a lot of them were outside my major of study. We still have a library of a wide variety of books, some of which we are currently trying to get rid of; we are getting older and do not want to saddle our daughter up with having to dispose of them.

As I reported in an earlier post, this year I went to a retreat to discuss Walden and Desert Solitaire. Honestly, I felt like I was infected by a case of “Imposter Syndrome.” Me a scientist/educator/ecologist studying and discussing literature and philosophy? But I was renewing my mind, broadening my experience; and I had fun, learned a lot and was inspired; so much so that I am going back next year.

This brings me back to where I started with this write-up. I will continue visiting my stories as discussed in my previous post. In addition, I will keep pointing out what my perception is of what is going on in these politically and socially difficult times.

Out with the old.  These mushrooms are digesting an old stimp to make place for a new tree.

Some nice forest bathing this morning.  I just sat on a stump for 15 minutes and mediated in the woods.

The Stories of our Life (1/30/2025)

The folks at my church (the Unitarian Fellowship of the Peninsula) have established what are called “Fellowship Circles.” These spiritual circles are approximately eight persons strong, meet twice a month for approximately an hour and a half and discuss a specific topic. The topic this week was “The Stories of my Life.” We were asked to discuss three questions (in a round).

The questions were:
1. Tell us a story from your life that tells us something about where you came from.
2. Tell us a story from your life that tells us something about what you are.
3. Tell us a story from your life that tells us something about where you are going.

If you read my blog regularly, my possible answer to the second question should be familiar to you; this is what this blog mostly is about. I could have given four stories that address question 1. One of the stories is about the kid that was killed for stealing a pig. This happened in Uganda (1978) and the event is still haunting me. The other stories include one on how my career started; secondly about the first kiss my wife and I exchanged in 1976 while skating on the ice between Gouda and Rotterdam; and lastly the labor riots in Curacao 1969 and what this eventually led to.

Let’s start at the beginning: Curacao. I was 15, when on May 30, we were on lunch break at our high school. We were standing just outside the gate of our school, having just returned from buying some snacks at the Portuguese shop (toko, or convenience store) across the street when a huge crowed of angry protestors marched by the school on their way downtown. I was personally blown away from seeing all these angry faces walking by and so many! The school closed down and I think it was my father who picked me up. We lived on top of a hill fairly far removed from downtown (20 or so miles) but that afternoon we watched dark billowing clouds of smoke rising from the town (Willemstad). It later appeared that downtown was partially destroyed and put ablaze by the rioters. I read reports that eventually 432 rioters were arrested. Based on those numbers you can imagine how many rioters I saw that faithful morning passing by our school. The islands went into martial law for a week, and I remember 1) family friends coming over to stay with us, to be far enough from the epicenter of the riots, 2) with my father franticly driving around the island trying to find an arms dealer or some place where he could buy a weapon to defend the family, and 3) being safely at home with my scared parents and their friends. The name of the leader of the rioters was called Pappa Godett. You can just imagine what the white minority on the island was joking about or hoping for.

A little background, we had lived in the Congo and although we had not gone (suffered) through the independence war in that country (read Atwood’s “Poisonwood Bible” or Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River”). Many of my parents’ old friends (yes, white colonialists) had and had shared the horror stories with them. These riots scared my parents shitless, enough that they started panicking. Eventually things settled down, but my parents had enough; they decided to move back to the Netherlands. They stuck me on a plane in early August to start my 3rd grade (9th for those readers in the US) in high school (the move put me back one grade). I was sent to live with my aunt and her four daughters (two more or less my age) for the first few months and was reunited with my family in December of that year.

You can imagine how this shaped me. I had just discovered girls, already fallen in love at least twice and now had a steady girlfriend. These riots pulled me away from it all, my beloved island, its culture, my friends and my girlfriend. It changed my life forever, setting a course for who I am now, not better or worse. It just made me who I am today.

Stay tuned, I will write more about the next two stories that shaped me. Who knows, I may even write the story of my future in one of these posts; however, I hinted at it in my previous two posts about the workshop with Clay Jenkinson. Conversely, the current political happenings make me feel that I cannot and should not keep my mouth shut; I still have so much to say. In other words, my life stories may be interspersed by some more social and political commentary.

Yorktown Battlefield, a place where at least two battles were fought and a lot of stories were told, and lives were shaped.

Water (12/29/2020)

It was Rachel Carson who wrote: “The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.” Who am I to disagree? Having lived and grown up in the vicinity of the sea from my third through my sixteenth birthday and spending almost every day in it, I fully agree with her. I even have photographs of me as an infant at the shore of Lake Tanzania (or Lake Tanganyika as it was called in those days) one of the largest natural lakes in Africa. Technically that was not a sea, but you cannot see the opposite shore. Even later in Holland between my 16th and 22nd birthday, I was never far away from the water (those Dutch canals) or ocean. For the past 20 years I have lived on the Chesapeake Bay and have the almost daily illusion that when I am in Yorktown and look east, I actually have an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean and thus can look all the way to Portugal or thereabouts. As a sailor I know I am wrong, because leaving Yorktown at the 90-degree compass bearing I would sail straight into Cape Charles on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and never make it to the actual ocean.

This photograph was taken in August 2020 in Yorktown looking east!  Portugal I see you! (not).  But you get the picture, that is why I like living here. 

I often wonder what my attraction to the ocean or water is? I always blamed some form of claustrophobia, like the need to see the horizon. In fact, I grew up being able to see the horizon. On a clear day we could literally see the coast of Venezuela from our home some 60 kilometers (40 miles) away. Accounting for the curvature of the earth we actually saw the peaks of the coastal mountain range. This was especially spectacular at night, when the mountains got hit by thunderstorms and you could see the lightning. Pretty cool for us living on a more desert like island. But even in the Netherlands where I moved when I was 16, you can easily get to places where you can look to infinity.  Holland or the western part of the Netherlands, where I lived, is as flat as a pancake, and you can see for miles, even when not standing on a shore. 

The most miserable place I ever lived was Durham, North Carolina (sorry guys). This was probably because we lived in a rental and because we knew that it was only for three months. We lived there in the mid 1980s next to a racist who would stand in his front yard with a gin and tonic at 10 am complaining to me about those n...... But to me it was also because I could never get my bearings; too many trees, no horizon, I felt closed in. I really never knew where I was. Nepal, Yemen, Uganda all gave me a chance to look as far as I wanted.

Even living in New Mexico where I did not have to deal with claustrophobia. There were no trees in the desert, or when there were I could look around them and look far.  I absolutely loved it. But still, getting to the big lake called Elephant Bute in the Rio Grande was something spectacular to me. Open water! I wrote three posts about our visit to Newfoundland, and boy there again, the coastal areas were a delight. Oh, and coastal Scotland but then the single malt really helped too in my love affair with that country and its coast. 

Maybe, except for the single malt, what do all these experiences have in common? Water, oceans, lakes, and horizons. What does it tell you or me about me? I really do not know. That my body is comprised of something like 70 or 80% H2O? That I, like every regular human being, need to drink 8 glasses of water to survive or at least be healthy. Maybe that that like every one of you I have evolved from some lifeform that originally lived in water, especially that interface between water and shore? Getting back to Ms. Carson, that interface between ocean and land is beautiful and sometimes frightening. The area where the waves crash the algae, seaweed, oysters, crabs, etc. In evolutionary times those first creatures that ventured out of the waves onto the shores (plants, animals, etc.) to see if they could survive there. 

The horizon probably signifies my wander lust.  Not that I am any way like them, but I am sure that is what attracted the great explorers like Columbus, Cook or even Darwin.  They had the urge the discover what was over the horizon; new things to see, to experience.   More and more do I havve the need to see what is over the horizon and I cannot believe that I live in this house for more than 20 years.  Here I am couped up in it for almost a year thanks to COVID-19. I need to study these feeling and the deeper reasons behind them a bit more. 

One thing I do know is that we need to take care of our water. Water, clean water is so essential to us all, and it seems that we are forgetting this. On my daily walks I still see piles of dog shit around that people refuse to pick up. I observe litter all over the place. A lot of this, if not all of it, will be ending up in our surface water and pollute it. We need to take care of our water folks; it is all that we have. This is the only planet that we have, that our kids have and our grandkids.

A country for frustrated people (6/16/2020)

Being originally from Europe and immigrated to the US at the ripe old age of 41, at least that is when I officially became a US citizen I have always had a somewhat unique view or opinion of my newly adopted country. This came back to the foreground 26 years later during the recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the reactions to them by certain groups and after listening to a radio show on NPR.  Let me explain. 

In the past folks always asked me to contrast the difference in religiosity between Europe and the US.  Not that I am an expert, or ever went to church while living in Europe, but I try to oblige.  It seems to me that here in the US folks are so much more religious than in Holland or in Europe in general.  My superficial take has always been that the religious heretics, fanatics, outcasts, or persecuted, whatever you may call them fled to the US, for the so called freedom of religion.  Good riddance!  Here in the US religion flourished and like it or not this is what we ended up with.  This is why I think we have such a plethora of different religions and splintered off groups and really fanatical groups.  There are all kinds of different denominations and groups; on top of that they came up with a couple of new ones here as well.  Very unlike what I experienced in Europe (I think).

This theory is mostly something I developed in my mind and it makes sense to me.  It has been bolstered by some materials I have read and heard.  I am sure that I am completely wrong, but I like the theory.  To me it is an interesting way of looking at things in these times of racial upheaval, after the George Floyd incident.  It also relates to what is currently happening.  I am very encouraged to see that in the current Black Lives Matter demonstrations there are so many white folks that have joined in; in particular young people.  It shows that racial attitudes are slowly changing (as they should).  In the rest of this essay (or blog post) I would like to explore why I think it took so long.  But I do not think it is unlike what we are seeing with the religiosity above.  

I stood on the sidelines at the 1969 race riots on the small island where I grew up.  I watched them march by our school that day and I can still see it.  They stopped in at the Portuguese owned grocery store across our high school to buy something to drink on their way downtown.  I was 15 at the time, in awe and itching to join; fascinated and curious but scared, so I did not join them.  I don't think any of the students did.  I really did not understand the issues anyway, and when I got home I noticed that my parents were deadly afraid.  We had moved out of the Congo in the mid 1950s, where many colonialists (including friends of my parents) had been killed during the war of independence in the early 1960s (read V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River, or Margret Atwood's A Poison Wood Bible.  Both are novels but very well researched on the subject.) 

With this migration of the religious bunch also other persecuted folks came along: the poor, day laborers, the enslaved, indentured servants, sharecroppers, in essence the downtrodden looking for a better existence.  So it should not be surprising that the people who were so used to being discriminated and being used and were now freed, were happy to return the favor or at least did not see anything wrong with slavery, discrimination and the false idea of racial or ethnic superiority.  In other words, they had no problem with their opinion that they were better than than those people with a different skin color or even those that spoke a different language.  They came from a culture in Europe where they had been treated that way, and thus that attitude and thinking was normal; now finally they had the upper hand.  In my opinion this is partially the root to a lot of the racism we see in this country.

While most Europeans realized the mistake of their ways, in particular after what happened under Hitler and other fascist regimes, the folks that immigrated to North America never did, and superiority of the white European race was still being held on to.  It is a terrible thing to let go off and we still see this in the current occupant of the White House, his followers, (or is he blindly following them?), many of the Republicans in congress, the white nationalists, Nazis, and like folks.  

As I mentioned above, I am encouraged to see that the movement appears to be sustainable for right now.  However, we need to make sure that these folks go vote.  We need to get voter registration tables out there at the protests and get everybody registered, because that is the only way to change things.

          

George Floyd or Black Lives Matter (6/1/2020)

I am upset. This country is being torn apart, hijacked by certain people, a noble cause is being drug through the mud, allowing dog whistles to fly.

Let me explain, I am white or Caucasian if you have not figured that one out yet. I was born in the darkest of Africa, the Congo. I often joke that this makes me an African American, although I have a distinct advantage of having a white skin color. I can only imagine what real African Americans go through.  I have actually been subject of reverse discrimination of which I write about here.  I grew up in the Caribbean and had white, brown and black friends. We did not see the difference (and this was in the 1960s). In my adult life, I worked in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and on a Native American Reservation. Again, it acknowledged to me that we are all the same. We all put on our pants in the morning, one leg at a time. Currently, in front of our home we have a sign that reads “Black Lives Matter.” 

The sign in our front yard.  We got this at our church and we proudly show this in our front yard.  We get people stopping by, who tell us how much they like it.

I have not been blogging much lately, this Covid-19 business has gotten me down, but as you can probable surmise, the George Floyd murder and what is currently happening to this country is really upsetting me. Yes, I am as upset about it as everyone else. While I am against the death penalty, I almost wish the police officer would face a similar penalty: “death by knee strangulation.” What upset me almost as much was the video of one of the police officers quickly looking at the scene and then looking away.

What also upsets me is what followed. I really liked the nationwide demonstrations. They are needed to focus attention on what is happening to the black community and they are needed to bring social and political change. Boy, do we need social and political change (I might write about it later). However, I do not like the looting and the burning of buildings that accompanied it all.

Our church is on the border of a black, somewhat poor neighborhood, and since the outbreak of Covid-19 I think it was burglarized 3 times. In my mind and I have explained it to my wife by telling her that probably these folks cannot or have a hard time getting unemployment or even the stimulus check. To be able to survive they have to go to food pantries, food kitchens or rely on burglary. Case-in-point, the food was stolen out of the fridge at church, in addition to the laptop. So the looting of grocery stores maybe, but fancy sneaker stores, not really. In addition, it seems that there are right-wing agitators in the crowd that maybe egging them on or are really the Molotov cocktail throwers and fire starters. 

It was Dillan Root the white-supremacist Charleston Church killer, who hoped that his killing would “start the revolution.” Other white-supremacists were hoping their action would do the same thing. I am afraid that this is what the agitators are trying to do, assisted by Trump, who is sending dog whistle after dog whistle to his troops and supporters, and the failing Republican Party. We need to go back to peaceful protest and do the following things:

1. Elect Biden as our next president
2. When we do that, make sure that Biden selects a young, dynamic person as vice-president. Because, we all know that Biden will serve for one term and this person will be next. We need a new generation of leaders and thinkers in this country. I am a 66-year-old baby boomer and I realize it is time for new thinkers. Mayor Pete or a younger white or black male or female would be a good choice.  (I used to be a Klobuchar fan, but it seems that she did not prosecute the cop that killed George Floyd for a previous violation when she was the District Attorney).
3. Trow the republicans out of congress and the senate, they are obstructionists and cling to the old ideas of yesterday that don't work and have caused the situation we are in now (the riots and the Corona pandemic).
4. All these protesters should understand what Trump is doing, keep up the demonstrations (peacefully) and they should use the power of their vote to force social and political change. Get people registered and get people to the poles in November. Yes, Trump and his cronies are going to call them socialists or worse communist. Remember, he is in bed with Putin, the real communist dictator.

Racism 101 (7/15/2019)

I was born in the darkest of Africa. No, not South Africa as many always want to guess since I am white, so South Africa is a good guess. However, I was born in what was called the Belgium Congo, in those days. In my young years, my family moved to the Caribbean. I will not bore you with my life’s story, but never in my early life did I encounter obvious racism in real life. Yes, my parents would make fun how folks on the island would exhibit status, by putting a TV antenna on their roof while obviously not having electricity at a time that battery powered TVs were not yet invented, or having a refrigerator on the front porch and not having electricity. Sadly, these disadvantaged people were mostly black folks, but again, to me that was more making light of the need to exhibit some form status and trying to keep up with the Joneses, than a form implicit racism. We had black families over and I was partially raised by Rosa our black housekeeper. 

This photograph of a mask was taken at an exhibition of Congo masks at the museum in Richmond, this past January.   It supposedly comes from the region I was born in.   Boy I would not feel comfortable going back there if our xenophobic leader would tell me to go back there.  Moreover, read the book: How dare the sun rise, by Sandra Uwiringiyimana which is partially set in that area as well and in the US, and you will also understand what the result can be of tribalism and racism 

The first time that I consciously encountered racism was during my first visit to the U.S. The passenger ship that we had taken from the island (Curacao) where we lived, to travel to Europe (Lisbon) had docked in Miami and we were allowed to take excursions. It was 1959, I was almost six years old and all I remember from that outing was taking a “train” ride through an Indian reservation and watching Indians do their thing. Half-naked Indians sitting in front of teepees, cooking above fires, etc. I have no idea whether these Indians were actually living there, or if they were actors and went home after the park or reservation closed for the night. However, I can clearly remember that it hit me as sad and exploitative. Closing my eyes, I am still on that open choo-choo train looking at those indians some 60 years ago. On the other hand, seeing alligators for the first time was kind of exciting, another thing I remember from that day.

Whether it was racism or tourism or a combination of it all, I will never know; however, the next time I noticed real racism was driving through the inner city of Baltimore with friends who we visited during our second visit to the U.S. four years later (1963). Our friends, who were Dutch, had recently emigrated from the island to the U.S. They were somewhat down and negative about the African American folks who moved into and lived in their neighborhood. They told us that when the blacks moved into a neighborhood, it was downhill from there. They were exploring to move out to the suburbs, away from it all. When we came back two years later in 1965, they had done just that and moved out. 

I think it was during my visits to Baltimore that I learned about the divide between black and white. At that time, in 1965, we had just left the Island of Aruba where we had lived for about 9 months. I remember so well that almost every afternoon after school, I would walk with a black classmate (friend) of mine to the harbor in Oranjestad to go fishing, and we would fish for part of the afternoon. If we would not go fishing, we would play soccer (football) or climb in either the mango trees or the tamarind tree in our backyard and eat the fruit. Fruit that was not ripe we would lay on top of the roof for a few days to ripen. We were completely colorblind although I had no idea what that word meant or that that word even existed. My father had a dark room where we printed photographs and that was where I learned the words black and white.

I think the sad part is that the common thread here is that the place I was exposed to racism was in the U.S., the country in which I now live; the country I have become a citizen of. I am sure that there was racism on the islands, in the Netherlands where we went on vacation, but it must have been hidden or more below the surface. Maybe my parents did not associate themselves with those people. Yes, we had the riots in 1969 in Curacao where half the town burned down, but my understanding was that these were more labor related than race; although some tried to relate them to what happened here in the US after the assassination of Martin Luther King around that time. However, I was young and naive and I am sure race played into it. After hearing what happened in the Congo, my parents were scared and we moved to the Netherlands fairly soon after those riots.

Where am I going with this blog post? I am a member of a religious community (the UU) that is mostly white and which has a “Black Lives Matter” banner hanging in front of the church. At home, we have a yard sign that says the same thing. I have written about this issue before <here>, where I wrote about my experience in New Mexico being stopped at immigration checkpoints in a vehicle with Mexican Americans, who were US citizens. I was the only non-citizen and experienced first hand that racial profiling in this country is real, but then in a ridiculous way. 

We have elections coming up where the leader of one party has been called a racist, actually acts like it or at least panders to them. This week he called out four female representatives of color with non white last names and two with non-christian religions and told them to go back to their country. Three of the four were born in the US and one is a naturalized US citizen. He has called neo-nazis good people.

It amazes me that in the 60 years since my first visit to this country there is still so much hate, fear and distrust to go around between the various races in this country. While it seems we made progress, I also see that in the past years we slid back. Maybe people filled with hatred and fear are coming out of the woodwork and dare to express themselves more? Whatever it is, it is going to take time to reverse this trend, but we are going to have to do it. We have to fight it and the people who refuse to call it out like many of the Republicans in congress and the senate who just shrug their shoulders and ignore what the guy at the top is saying.

My sermon: Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world (7/18/2018)

It has been a while since I posted something in my blog. For my regular readers, I gave a sermon at the church I attend regularly the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula in Newport News or UUFP. That took a bit of my time. For some of my friends there and friends in Holland, I promised I would post my sermon on my blog. I will start out with the sermon, followed by the quote from E.O. Wilson’s book “Biodiversity” that I read as a preamble, and the closing words. Regular readers will recognize a common thread in my sermon; for new comers I have an extensive list of labels where you can hunt for more.  It is not great literature but a way for me to express myself.  But without further ado, here it is:

Sermon:

Hello everyone, most of you know me, I am Jan. I’ve been a member of the UUFP since the year 2000. I am a biologist, a naturalist.

My funny accent might give it away, but as a lot of you know, I am not originally from here. I grew up on the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. As a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time in what was called the knoekoe (the local name for the bush) on the island, taking it all in; just moseying and looking around. One of my favorite things was looking for ball cacti, pulling out their little pink fruit out off the white pads, and eating them. I would also just fantasize about what I saw, about making trails so people could enjoy and appreciate nature more.

This carried on in my adult life, I first worked in international development, and then afterwards I had a 20-year stint as a field biologist. I loved being out in the field, experiencing nature in its fullest. I still do, you can try to take me out of nature, but I do not think you can take nature out of me; it draws me in like a magnet. Whenever I can I will be out there, find a tree I can hug and even kiss and be one with for a few seconds, feel grounded.

Of course, you can take photographs of nature (as I do) or look in photo books, but as Annie Dillard wrote in her essay “Total Eclipse”: “Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card.” Being emerged in nature, living and breathing it, is so important. At least, it is to me, and I hope to convince you that it should also be for all of us. Only outside can you touch and feel the trees and the soil; breath in the smells and fragrance and feast on the views. As you can imagine, I really hated to go back to the office to write reports about my fieldwork, especially since it usually meant that my fieldwork would turn it into some subdivision and destroy some of nature's beauty.

Earlier on as a graduate student there was nothing better to take pre-dawn measurements of plants in the desert of New Mexico and then hearing the coyotes howling around me at sunrise the minute the sun hit the area. It was magical; you knew they probably had been watching you all along and you never noticed them.

Later on, as a wetland scientist working in the woods I could not just do my job. Especially when working alone, I just loved to take time out at a beautiful spot and just sit on a log or lean against a tree and observe nature around me for 10 or so minutes.

Field work was not without its dangers. I will never forget the day I was struck by a water moccasin also known as a cottonmouth in Virginia Beach. The snake shot out of the high grass and hit me in the legs. I let out a very loud high-pitched scream. Thank goodness it did not break skin but just got stuck in my pants. But that night, 12 hours later my heart was still racing. The very next day, I did come eye to eye with a timber rattlesnake in the same area. I noticed a beautiful skeleton of a possum and bent down to look at it when I heard the rattle. The rattler just stood there and warned me to back off, as to say “this is my carcass,” so I slowly backed off, turned around and walk a different way.

Did I kill the moccasin that bit me the previous day? Absolutely not! As our 7th principle mentions, we have RESPECT FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF ALL EXISTENCE OF WHICH WE ARE A PART; or in other words, I believe that we all have our place on this little blue marble that floats in space and we need to respect it and take care of it and of each other. The snake defended its territory and I stepped in it. I did not get hurt and I know my heart was good, at the time. On the next day, the rattler just warned me to stay away. Not all snakes are bad, not even moccasins. A number of years ago I ran into two that were mating (and they were not aggressive), they were not at all interested in me.

You have to take precautions, during the times I've spent outside, have been bitten by so many ticks and have gotten rocky mountain spotted fever, one of the tick-borne diseases. And let's not talk about all those mosquitoes.

Did all this deter me from ever going out into the woods or nature again? Absolutely not. This was in 2003, and I still go into the woods for work and I still do it almost daily for pleasure. Am I more careful? Naturally, I am getting older you know. But I just love to explore, bushwhack and take it all in.

I think that I suffer from an extreme form of Nature Deficit Disorder. Nature Deficit Disorder is a term first defined by Richard Louv, it indicates the need of people to reconnect with nature at times to regain balance in their lives. Louv contents that a lot of personal inner problems, social problems and inner-city problems can be brought back to the disconnection from the natural environment.

The way I deal with my Nature Deficit Disorder has always been to go out in nature. I guess in the old days when I grew up on that tropical island you could have called me a loner. Being out in nature was my solace, and actually it still does. You could say that I could be considered an introvert. Later on, I learned by way of some psychological tests that I am truly an introvert among other things. However, as an adult I have forced myself out of my shell when I am in public.

Being an introvert does not mean that you do not like to talk to people or that we are anti-social. Every person needs human interaction and so do introverts. However, we introverts also need a lot of recovery time or me-time. For me it is so comforting to retreat into my own world and in particular in the natural world where I can be alone. That is my way of expressing and dealing with this curse of being an introvert.

So, when I am done teaching or interacting with people, my alone time is best spent outside hiking in the woods, on my sailboat on the water or in my kayak. Doing this alone would be great, but with my loved ones is great too, as long as they do not expect me to talk too much. I often just like to be in my own thoughts. However, when I am sailing I am just concentrating on staying on course and not running aground, but even that clears my mind.

I am not sure if he was an introvert, but the famous John Muir who hiked up and down the Sierra Nevada around the 1900s is credited as the person who initiated the Sierra Club, and was the impetus of the National Park Service wrote “the deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends”. Muir also wrote: “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” I think he was onto something here.

Earlier this decade Japanese researchers introduced the term Shinrin-yoku loosely translated as forest bathing. No, it has nothing to do with an outdoor shower, although I am still trying to convince my wife that we need one of those too. The Japanese researchers showed that the volatile compounds or phytoncides emitted by the vegetation in a forest, in particular the conifers, lowered the blood pressure and slowed the heart rate of their subjects, and one exposure to these chemicals (or to the woods) could last as long as two weeks.

John Muir also wrote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” As our friends from Japan found, of all the trees in nature, pines are the highest emitters of phytoncides, those chemicals that are good for you.

Maybe this is why pines have a rich history in mythology. Of course, we use them in our Christmas celebrations and with good reason. Many cemeteries plant pine trees and other conifers as symbols of eternal life, they stay green throughout the winter. Druids in England lid bonfires in Scotch pine forests during winter solstice celebrations. The Romans worshiped pines during the spring equinox festival of Cybele and Attis, while in ancient Greece worshippers of Dionysus often carried a pine-cone-tipped wand as a fertility symbol. Even in Siberia and Mongolia, people there enter a pine forest in silence and with reverence.

Native American people see the pine tree as a symbol of wisdom and longevity. Its needles and sap are medicine that protects people from illnesses, witchcraft, and more.

In the Orient the pines are also associated with longevity, virtue, youth, masculinity and power. The Japanese word for pine is Matsu which also stands for “waiting for the soul of God to descend from heaven.” In ancient Shinto beliefs, gods were said to have ascended to Heaven on a pine tree, where they now reside on a beautiful volcanic mountain in giant or old trees. Pine trees are associated with the New Year in Japan. So much so that many Japanese hang a bundle of pine twigs and bamboo trunks known as a Kado matsu ("Gate pine") on their doors to receive a blessing from the gods.

This almost reminds us of Muir’s quote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world,” doesn’t it?

While I love that quote, and conifers such as pines rule, I would love to expand Muir’s quote to: “Between every two trees in a forest is a doorway to a new world.” I strongly believe there is power in nature as a whole, and not only in pine trees.

For me, it does not matter how familiar or unfamiliar the woods are, every time I step outside into the woods the worries of the world fall off my shoulders; I can retreat into my own world and relax. Early on in my life, in Holland, Uganda, Nepal, Yemen, and New Mexico I was in my happy place when I was alone just strolling around in nature, looking around and sometimes studying the things I saw around me.

What do I look for when I retreat into the natural world? For one, I grow bonsai trees at home and it is great to study the canopy of mature trees in the forest for examples to style my little trees. In my reading by E.O. Wilson you heard me tell you that he considers that there is more order in a handful of soil than in on the surface of all planets combined.

To me nature is full of order; full of hidden patterns, and that is another thing I am always on the lookout for. It is survival of the fittest, parsimony, and full of those patterns waiting to be discovered and understood. That is what I do in the woods.

Think about it, every spring the leaves come back, the dogwoods and the redbuds flower and we have to deal with pine pollen. Let me tell you, I had the worst allergy season this year. In summer months, nature does its thing, I enjoy watching the adult birds raise their young, watch the skinks (or lizards) in our backyard, and just see everything grow. In fall nature is preparing for winter. In winter, you notice things you hardly see other times in the year, like when looking up in the canopy you see that not many tree canopies touch each other. Also, that there is a rhythm on the way the trees branch and the way side branches come off.

In her book: “The Solace of Open Space” Gretel Ehrlich wrote: “Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.” Yes, nature to me is very predictable and it helps me to sort my thoughts. So yes, a new door opens every time I enter nature, I discover something new.

Those snakes, ticks, mosquitoes and other varmints are not going to stop me from going out there. I take precautions, use bug spray, watch out where I step. I need to get out and be one with nature. The tall trees are my cathedral, my spiritual home. That is why all those parallel tree trunks in the forest are so important to me; they are my doorway to a different, a new world. As I said those forests are something we all need, not only for clean air and clean water, but also as a spiritual experience, for our sanity, our health and overall wellbeing. Once I enter the woods I need to become one with it and feel grounded, to touch the bark, feel the tree, like when I was young when I needed to eat those little red fruit in in those cacti. But most of all, I need to get out there and I urge you to go too.

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Reading:

Organisms are all the more remarkable in combination. Pull out the flower from its crannied retreat, shake the soil from the roots into the cupped hand, magnify it for close examination. The black earth is alive with a riot of algae, fungi, nematodes, mites, spring-tails, enchytraeid worms, thousands of species of bacteria. The handful may be only a tiny fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic code of its residents, it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of all the planets combined. It is a sample of the living force that runs the earth – and will continue to do so with or without us.

Edward O. Wilson
The Diversity of Life

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Closing (Benediction):

Let us go out now into the sunlight filtered by the pine trees and oak trees. May the subtle fragrances of the woods bathe your body and your lungs. May this all bring you blessings and enhance your enjoyment of life for days to come, until the next time you can return to nature and experience it all over again.

Bless it be.

New River Trail (10/10.2014)

On the way back from my trip all the way out west I decided to stop in Draper and take a short walk on the New River Trail.  The "short" walk turned out to be an hour and a half long, but it was just what the doctor ordered.  Granted I saw very little of the "Creeper" (see my post of two days ago), but the New River trail is still my favorite.  The Creeper took me 2 miles from downtown Abingdon and back.  So it was a bit of suburbia with some nice pasture land mixed in.  The New River Train from Draper starts in a very rural area, and before you know it you are outside the village in nature.  I am such a strong believer in Nature Deficit Disorder (I previously wrote about that and you can find more in the labels section of my blog).  However, yes it is either nature or sailing where I can clear my mind and think clearly.  Then coming home, I hear that my brother-in-law gave a lecture at Princeton where among other he talked about the philosopher Heidegger needing nature as well to think clearly.  Naturally no comparison here, but yes I need my nature fix.

Fall was gearing up in this area.  Leaves were starting to turn and seeds were ripening.  Birds were all over the seed heads along the trail.  The pictures below show the flowers of a New England Aster, a fall flower that has found a niche flowering this time of the year.  There is a photo of the fruit of a spice bush.  Spice bush is one of my my more favorite plants.  The leaves are very fragrant, and serve as host for many butterflies.  I harvested a few fruits to try to germinate and grow some plants here in my yard.

The bench is something I have done for years now, ever since I got into photography as a 16 or 17 year old.  Back then I represented a certain loneliness that felt after having been transplanted from a tropical island to the Netherlands at the age of 16.  At that time my parents decided to relocate after some 1960s riots on the island.  Here in the peak of puberty, having my first girlfriend, I found myself transplanted in a completely new surrounding.  I became the class clown, in the hope to get accepted and to be noticed in a high school class that had been together for a long time.  I was lonely and depressed back then and started taking pictures of empty park benches (the tears of a clown?).  But, it is something that has stuck with me, and even now (see even my New Kent picture from a while back), I enjoy taking pictures like that; although I do not consider myself lonely or depressed.  I'm happy and content, but it is something that I'll always be interested in.