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 Jenkins. 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.

What a week, part 2 (1/19/2025)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

What did I learn during the retreat? About Clay Jenkins, members of the group or myself? I will not detail very personal information on the first two, but I guess that I am somewhat of an open book to my regular readers, and I will write a bit more about myself and the activities I participated in.

What did we do? On Sunday we started out with a gift book exchange, where you gift a favorite book to someone in the group, while introducing yourself to the group. I gave “Solace of Open Space" by Gretel Ehrlich to one of the participants and received a book on poetry from another (“The Trouble with Poetry” by Billy Collins). On Monday we started with meetings in the morning and afternoon. There was a campfire every evening and some free time, sprinkled in between. We ate our meals together. I was surprised by the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed in the evenings. Folks shared wine, single malt and there was beer as well. We had a hike to the river to discuss Lewis and Clark and another time to reenact Thoreau and throw burning sticks in the river. A trip to a hot spring was the capstone to our get together.

Clay is as intelligent as he sounds on the radio and podcasts. He runs a fairly tight ship during the meeting and is an amazing facilitator. He is clearly the best-read person I have ever encountered with a great number of interests. He is caring and is very interested in the well-being of the participants. He engages in personal dialogues with folks during the discussions and social hours. Clay was trying to be as non-political as possible, hinting at the fact that he lived in a conservative State; however, he kept mentioning a great number of times that “Your vote matters.” My guess is that all but one participant were liberal; however, all were very well off (I counted four of the nine participants in first class on out plane on the return trip from Missoula, and I was definitively not one of them). Lastly, his daughter and future son-in-law had joined us for the first few days, and you could see his pride and love for those two. Both are also very intelligent and well read.

The participants ranged from a winemaker and his wife, to a foreign service person and wife, to retired naturalists, to retired park rangers/managers, to writers. Let’s not forget the copious number of retired lawyers (3), a financial advisor and a wall street guru. An eclectic but at the same time a very intelligent group. At least two were searching for what to do with the rest of their lives. This search was brought out to the foreground during our Walden discussions. Thoreau champions simple living, with nature. As a transcendentalist, Thoreau discusses spirituality, self-determination and personal growth. Coupled with his love for nature made most of us that week could consider ourselves to be Thoreauvian in some form or fashion. Hence, the search by some of us for the deeper meaning of life and the next step in the life we are living. Clay was good I hearing them out and making them think.

I had one of the most wonderful experiences in my life, psychologically, mentally and intellectually stimulating; it was a good kick in the ass: get going, there is such a wonderful life still to live. If you are a regular reader of these posts, you must understand that I at times have struggled with the purpose of the rest of my life. I am retired and have blogged about getting old. I have mentioned that it sucks! I too am (was) trying to find purpose in (the rest of) my life. This clearly was an issue that one of the participants was struggling with and I eagerly listened in to what Clay had to tell him, without saying much myself. My understanding is that in a Thoreauvian sense, we all have a purpose in the greater whole, but sometimes we do not understand what it is. We should embrace where we are in our stage of life, suck the marrow out of the life we have been given (to loosely quote Thoreau). Yes, getting old sucks, but at least I can blog and hopefully teach something to someone. As I always thought about the classes that I taught, if one or two of the students in my class of 40 goes home thinking “I learned something” (and hopefully also thinks “and I am going to apply it") than my task for that day is done. The workshop that week somehow enforced that idea. I do not have to be an Einstein, a Thoreau, or an Abbey to have an impact on other people's lives and to make a difference how small that is.

Yes, I came out of that week refreshed and optimistic again, even though the results of the elections had left me depressed and ready to move to Mars or some other place sane. I realize that “your vote matters," and in future elections I will make mine count and make sure that you all vote as well. In addition, I will be reading more and not get sucked in so deep into the television (especially the news) and social media. I need to do more for my family and finally do more for myself. Like Clay, I will be trying to declutter my life. Wish me luck.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Lochsa lodge

Ready to discuss Walden

 

 

 

What a week it has been (1/13/2025)

What a week it has been. I write this while sitting in the Missoula, Montana airport, waiting for my flight home. A guy all the way from the East Coast in cold wintery Montana. As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, we decided that it was my turn to do something different or extraordinary and go to a week meeting (or workshop) at the Lochsa Lodge with likeminded folks. The workshop was put on by Clay Jenkins and his “Listening to America” organization. Clay puts on two winter workshops back-to-back. In addition, he has a number of summer programs. I went to a four-day (and evening) retreat/discussion on the book “On Walden Pond" by Henry D. Thoreau, and “Desert Solitaire” by Edward Abbey. On first thought an interesting comparison. I am not sure if this post will turn out to be a book report, an account of our meeting, or a free-flowing dump of my impressions and takeaways. Maybe it will become a combination of all three. I will try to keep it somewhat short and sweet, the length of most of my regular posts.

For those of you who do not know who the heck this Clay Jenkins is, he is a humanities scholar who used to impersonate (played) Thomas Jefferson on a radio show (The Jefferson Hour), he also is an expert on Oppenheimer and on top of that an accomplished scholar on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Here I am just giving you an extremely short resume of Clay, but since this is my blog I have some discretion on what I write about the man.

Comparing Walden and Desert Solitaire may seem somewhat far fetched. When I mentioned Abbey to my friends on the east coast, only a select few (one) knew who I was talking about; and she is a Ph.D. in English literature and professor who teaches composition. Out west he is a more familiar person. I learned during our meeting that everyone who joins the National Park Service in the Southwest is recommended or maybe even required to read his Desert Solitaire. I learned about him in the early 1990s when I lived in Gallup. Abbey is an interesting character; the way I try to describe him to my friends is part hedonist, part environmentalist, conservationist with libertarian tendencies. But that might be too mild for someone who writes about his “love rocket" in his journals. An interesting character, indeed.

History is not certain if Thoreau had a “love rocket” and it is speculated that he died a virgin. What a contrast to discuss in our meeting in the mountains. Honestly, our discussions were more ethereal than the sexual exploits of our celebrated authors; however, this particular subject was good for a few laughs and (nervous?) giggles. For the readers who know my political leaning and the company I tend to keep, it also elicited some noises of indignation by some of the feminists in the group.

I am not sure if we ever came to a conclusion or if that even was necessary, but I think the group really felt that Thoreau was more difficult to read, he was more flowery; very observant and descriptive; at times arrogant or dismissive of the folks around him. He was a transcendentalist and in his own way very spiritual. I was somewhat tickled by his overt love of some of the east Asian and Chinese traditions, the knowledge of which must have been in its infancy in the mid 1800s.

Abbey was more crass, more in your face; however, the beauty of his descriptions mirror those of Thoreau. He is a true nature lover and he showed his disdain for the development of the National Parks. I think we concluded he was a visionary, somewhat predicting the over use of the parks and what we see now, the rationing of access to some parks.

I can write books about our meeting in the Bitterroots on the Idaho-Montana border. I suspect that it were fertile grounds for potential books that Clay might write. I have just scratched the surface here and plan to write some more about it in the future; albeit I am not planning a book. It was a fun week; it challenged me intellectually, something I have not had in some time. Moreover, it dealt with self-improvement and resolutions (simplify, simplify, simply). I will make this vague promise to revisit this past week again and again in future posts; however, I still need to decompress and determine what I think we accomplished there, socially and intellectually. Stay tuned.

Below a few photographs of my week at the lodge.

2024 Redux (1/4/2025)

Realizing I owe you all a review of my 2014, I am starting this essay at the airport in Denver. I am not sure when I will be able to finish it (Missoula, MT), but I will make my initial effort. So why am I in Denver? I am on my way to a workshop held by Clay Jenkins in the Lochsa Lodge in the Lolo National Forest in the Bitterroots of Idah o. I previously mentioned that we were going to discuss Thoreau’s On Walden Pond and Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, in these two post (here and here). I am still somewhat mystified why this scientist would sign up for a discussion on literatur e; in other words, this was one crazy thing I did in 2024. However, I do enjoy reading both authors, especially Edward Abbey, the consummate environmental libertarian.

What are some of the additional things that happened to me this past year? It feels crazy to report that three times this past year I/we drove across the country. A solo trip in September, to give my car to our daughter and her wife. In November we took the camper van across and back to celebrate Thanksgiving with the gang. You would think the drive gets old after a couple of times; however, we try to make it more interesting by choosing a different route. We took part of the Lewis and Clark route in 2023; returning through Colorado, generally in the track of the Santa Fe trail. I started out using the same route in September of 2024 but I changed it up after Alamosa, Colorado and went direction Monument Valley, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and back into Nevada, before heading to Long Beach. November and December can be relatively chilly so we opted for a more southern route.

The November trip led us from home through North Carolina, to South Carolina to Georgia. Around Atlanta we figured we were south enough to head west through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona to our final destination in Long Beach, California. We visited the same states on the way back, but took a different route that was more southern and stopped over in a few National Parks. So what were some of our observations from our travels?

While I still like the prairie states, especially the Tall Grass Prairie Natural Preserve area, Kansas still stinks (smelly feedlots). Enough so that it almost made vegetarians out of us. Now today my wife asked me what I thought of Denver airport. I told her it reminded me of Dodge City, but without the smell. Too many people stuck in a small space (like the cattle in feedlots), especially in the food court. On the other hand, I am still in love with the desert and the Grand Canyon area.

This love for the desert was strengthened during our return trip in November and December. On our way home we drove from Long Beach to Death Valley. From there it was on to Sedona, Arizona (heaven). After an overnight stop in far western New Mexico, we drove through Guadalupe Peak National Park to Van Horn, Texas. The next day we drove though the Davis Mountains and the McDonald Observatory to Big Bend National Park, three to three and a half days in the Chihuahuan Desert heaven.

Other observations include (and yes here I go again being political), that the Republican States in the south are the poorest of them all, in horrible shape, and just depressing. Visits to the First Baptist Church in Birmingham and Selma Alabama made us realize that in their eyes, black lives absolutely do not matter. We came away depressed after visiting both important landmarks of the Civil Rights era. The white dominated Tuscaloosa was in bit better shape. Central Louisiana and whatever we saw from the interstate of Mississippi were slightly better, but let’s not talk about the few parts of Jackson that we drove through.

Sugar Land, Austin and Fredericksburg Texas were a huge contrast with much of the rest of Texas that we saw. Places like Uvalde (the scene of the horrible school shooting) and anything between that town and Victoria appeared to be either big game ranches or dilapidated small town and villages. We got the impression that a lot of the inhabitants were Hispanic, which appear to be treated as second class citizens in Texas, much like the blacks in Mississippi and Alabama. I would not be surprised if Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina are similarily depressed, but we stayed mostly on major highways or the interstates since it rained incessantly during those days.

What else happened in our lives? I taught two 3-hour classes and we got a fence around our back yard. Other things include of course the election of the orange-colored white guy to the office of president. Remembering what we saw while driving through the south, the election of tRump and a Republican legislation does not bode well. Will the entire country be transformed into a perfect copy of Mississippi or Alabama? Only time will tell. But it seems that none of these morons understand that education is what makes this country great and cutting education, plus making fun of the educated elite is going to force this country back to the middle ages. Education and knowledge is what makes this country great. And let's not write about the economic safety nets they plan to demolish and all the other budget cuts they are threatening with.

I may write a bit more about our trips around this country in future posts, but I better stop for right now.

The "National Votings Right Museum" or what ot goes for in selma, Alabama.  It appears to represent what this country is heading for.

 

The bridge in Selma, Alabama

At the steps of the first baptist church in Birmigham Alabama 

Guadalupe Peak National park ... the next pictures are from Big Bend NP.