No more ambition? (6/14/2024)

Ambition is a curious word to me. The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition: “a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.” Now that I am retired, I have put ambition to the wayside and just want to experience and hopefully enjoy life, however much of it that I have remaining. I am still reasonably healthy, at least I have not been told something different.

I am not sure if I had a lot of ambition when I was working. Maybe not like others, but I did have a desire to achieve things. I always believed in down time, to relax and recharge. My brother, who I have not interacted with for at least 10 or so years had an amazing drive or ambition. He wanted to become a pilot, and that is what he eventually achieved. He tried to instill the same ambition in his two kids. I know that he looked down on me for what and who I am. So much so that every time we visited with him, I had the hear him tell us how successful and rich he was, compared to me. My brother told me that when I visited and they invite guest over, that they told the other guest to dress down, because I was only a jeans guy, had no class, and would feel out of place when they would come dressed the way they regularly do when socializing. While the saying tells us that the clothes make the man, comfort and my disdain of status permitted me to dress as comfortable as possible and while we may not be able to match them and their rich friends, we are pretty darn well of. Moreover, my international work taught me that we all put on our pants one leg at the time, and fuck status, I often had to communicate with the folks in the village and could not dress like a fashion model, that would hurt my credibility. While visits to my brother upset me at times, it was really upsetting to my wife. I was able to accept him who he pretended to be. But when you treat my wife like shit and every time we visited she left crying because of their treatment of us, I hope you can imagine what led the eventual split between me and my brother.

I may have had very few true ambitions during my entire life, unless enjoying life and learning from it can be called an ambition. If so, I am one of the best. When we were working and living in Yemen, our work days were from 7 am. to 2 pm. Lunch was a 2 and then I usually took a nap. We would then often work in the yard around our home for the rest of the afternoon, or I would work on my 1964 Land Rover. But, we probably had the best landscaped area of the three homes on the compound. My colleagues had drive and would go back to the now empty office or work at home on project related items after hours. They resented me for keeping to the official work hours. I needed to recharge and spend time with my wife who wasn't working.

No, I am not perfectly balanced even after all the self-care I just detailed. I have had my depressive moods, but I have come out of those. I sometimes wonder if minor depressions were seasonal or tied to other life stages (I have been unemployed a few times in the past).

I think that I have been happier these past few years than any other time of my life. It has been nature, forest bathing, biking, being outside in the yard, with my bonsai, or on the water where my spirits were lifted. I just needed to fully experience life around me. I can really just sit around and stare into infinity and not do anything but think. It is my form of meditating. Do I feel guilty doing that? Not one bit, well maybe after ten or so minutes it sometimes feels like I need to do something. But my motto now is: No more ambition but experience and love life to the fullest since I have no idea how much of it is left!

A photograph I took sitting in the backyard doing nothing.  Just enjoying nature and our almost completed fence (it is done now and a report will follow soon).  I often site in the Adirondack chairs and either just stare at the trees or work on my bonsai.  Very relaxing! 

Roosters Unite (5/26/2024)

People finally moved into the house two doors down from us, and they have a rooster. While our county allows you to have chickens, roosters are not allowed. They also have ducks, which seems to be illegal as well by our county's ordinance. I do not understand the logic behind all these rules, but why question the wisdom of our county's leadership since they clearly exhibit that they have very little. They spend millions on building a new “law enforcement” building or palace, but do not seem to care one bit about education here in York County, Virginia.

I realize now that this is not what I intended to write about in this essay, but it must be said. My wife and I have been following the saga of our local school board. It seems that members were elected to the board under falls pretexts of being apolitical. However, that changed the minute they were elected, and they started to push an ultra conservative agenda which in the long run would hurt our children. One member used to be a substitute teacher in our school system but was fired for incompetence. Now she knows how to run the entire public school system (or take political revenge?).

Let's get back to the subject at hand: the rooster. It crows or cockle-doddle-does incessantly. This reminds me of the rooster we had in Uganda, we called him “Turkey” or "Turk."  I realize that the name exposes my inert cynicism or playfulness, but our rooster was something else. Being in Uganda my wife had no full-time job to do; we were in our mid-twenties and so we amassed a menagerie of animals. We eventually had two dogs, at least seven chickens, our rooster, at least three goats, and an East African crested crane. We also took care or two horses. Later in Nepal we had a load of chickens, our two dogs and a cat we had brought from Utah. The dogs and cat traveled the world with us and after returning to Europe and the U.S.A., they ended up going to Yemen with us for our next assignment. I do not remember having chickens in Yemen. I guess you could say that we scaled down with age.

But more about Turk, our rooster. Turkey ruled the roost. We relented when some locals wanted to sell us a baby crane. We really did not believe in taming local wildlife, but otherwise it might have become a crane stew or a hyena snack. So, we bought it and raised it. Turk was the boss and quickly established a pecking order with our crane who was at least five time larger than our dominant rooster. The crane and the rooster also had fun with our dogs. The crane easily jumped over our German Sheppard when he charged them, and this became a game. Turk would chase the dogs all over the yard.

The funniest thing with the rooster was his love of opera. You need to know that my wife is a huge opera fan and was, even at the ripe old age of 23. We had a stereo with us, with records and Donna would often put on an opera record. Turkey would run in the house, the minute that the music started playing, and he just stood there still, did not move and listened. When the music was over, he would shake and ruffle his feathers like any good rooster would do and walk out. We always had our home wide open and at times, the horses would come in to beg for a banana, or the kid goats would jump all over the furniture. Uganda wasn't that buggy, although we both got malaria and Donna became quite ill. But I hope you can imagine why the crowing of a rooster two houses from here would take me back to a time almost 46 years ago.

Ladies and Cranes, here is Turkey, our rooster from Uganda

One of my favorite pictures of the time, Donna and Buddha our German Shepard pup.

Change of seasons but no changes in the world (11/3/2023)

It has been a depressing week for a person with liberal leanings like me. We witnessed a brutal fight in the Middle East, where it seems Israel has no regard for humanity; we had a mass shooting in Maine; the monster hurricane that hit Acapulco; reports in the Post on the horrible climatic situation in Hodeida in Yemen; and a Republican speaker of the house who is probably more dangerous than Jim Jordan. But let’s start at the beginning. Yes, what Hamas did was unconscionable. However, starting a full-fledged war and killing so many more people than what Hamas did, is not sitting well with me, it is unconscionable as well. I have always considered myself a pacifist, although this stance of mine has weekend substantially after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. I am trying to follow that fighting and I am secretly rejoicing when Ukrainian forced manage to claim victory or that they managed to kill a substantial number of Russian soldiers. This softening around my pacifist edges in itself is somewhat depressing to me, where are my convictions, morals, ethics and empathy that I had in younger years? It seems that I have no dog in this fight in Gaza. I morn the deaths on both sides. However, neither in Ukraine, interesting, isn’t it?

If you are a regular reader, you all know my stance on gun control, or tighter management of weapons. I think I have written a post about every mass killing that occurred these past 10 years, and I will continue doing so. These assault type weapons need to be outlawed and shipped to Ukraine to fight the damn Russians. Maybe we need to ship the owners of these assault weapons as well; they seem to be itching for a good fight, otherwise why buy one of these weapons.

Concerning the climate, the news was not very favorable. Climate change really seems to have hit home, and I wonder if we reached a point of no-return. Something must be seriously awry, for a tropical storm to form and blow up into the strongest Category 5 hurricane ever to hit Mexico. Couple that to reports that Hodeida in Yemen will soon become unlivable for long stretches of the year, shows that we are reaching the tip of the iceberg (figuratively or climatologically speaking). In full disclosure, I used to live in Yemen and spent quite some time on the coastal plains, including Hodeida. Regular readers know that my posts on climate change go back many years and it is not about Yemen or elsewhere, but our future generations.

Lastly the new speaker of the house, the third in-line to the crown (or is it called the presidency). This dude is dangerous. He seems to be an authentic bible thumper, a Christian Nationalist, who is definitely against the rights of women to choose what happens to their own body. Moreover, he was the leader in congress trying to nullify the election and he still does not recognize Joe Biden as president. This guy invokes God in everything he does but does not care about the little guy. He is smooth and absolutely dangerous.

In my eyes, all these items are eerily connected. We can all bring them back to the conservative trend or movement in this country. The Maga Speaker does not believe in global warming; he and the republicans are against all form of gun control (while being against birth control, an interesting contradiction in itself); of course, they are anti-Muslimism; you get the idea.

So now you are updated about my state-of-mind. What do I do about it, drink myself to oblivion? The problem there lies in that this solution is dangerous to my health and personal relations at home. Well, this blog is one of my outlets; I hope to inform and educate you, my readers; I even may be able to entertain or anger one or two. This past week I split a huge amount of wood to be used in our woodburning stove this coming and next winter. Physical exercise is good for the mind, soul and body. It was warm, high 70s or 25 to 28 degrees centigrade for the rest of the world. I did not get much time for my bonsai, but that changed when the weather folks told us that we were getting very cold temperatures. I needed to bring my tropicals inside or into the greenhouse. This occupied almost an entire day. Somehow the power cord that supplies electricity to the greenhouse had a short in it and I needed to replace it so that I could run a heater. All is good, the plants are safely tucked away and ready for the cold temperatures of the next few months.

What else do I do now we are not traveling and exploring? I try to spend as much time as possible in the outdoors. Spending time in nature, forest bathing, hiking gives me the solace I need. We try to get out and walk in the woods behind our home and in the area. Believe it or not, but with every step I take out there the beauty of nature reveals itself, again and again. Beauty in a fragile and threatened world.

The seasons are changing, and it was time for a 5+mile hike in our area. 

They are all tucked in and safe.

Am I really color blind? (10/25/2023)

As everyone that blogs should and it is something I haven’t yet, is speak out about the latest happenings in the Middle East. In the past I was somewhat neutral about what was going on; however, the attack by Hamas nudged my neutrality of kilter, a bit. Having lived in the Arabic/Islamic world for two years, I was somewhat sympathetic with their plight; I really believed that the Palestinians had an equal right to a country of their own as the Israelis (or in other words, Jews). While this opinion has not changed, the Hamas attack was horrific and I condemn it. However, in my opinion, retaliation by Israel will just worsen the divide. Yes, Israel wants to eliminate Hamas but the collateral killing will just harden the lines between the Islamic world and the Jews. Both groups are at fault in my eyes and actually, I am not sure if I see a way out. And I haven’t written about the plight of the hostages.

Now I have always claimed to be neutral in this case (but who actually cares about what I think). You can almost say I am colorblind when it comes to this case. It is this word colorblind that I really want to write about. The Washington Post (10/19/2023) had an article about the wish to abolish the idea of race designations the upcoming census. The article tells us that we human beings have 99.9% of our DNA in common with each other. In other words, we are so similar that race seems to be an artificial construct to claim superiority (especially by folks who have a white skin color). I have always argued in the genetics classes that I teach that the African population is evolutionary more advanced than the European folks, since the African folks have a lot more variability in their Ribosomal DNA than the other groups on earth. This shows that they have been in the evolutionary process much longer and all other ethnic groups originate from them. In other words, I don’t think I discriminate and I used to consider myself color blind.

From the Washington Post I learned that calling myself colorblind is actually discriminatory and that got me thinking. Is my neutrality with and consideration of the Middle East conflict as a conflict between Palestinian and Jews, me telling you that I am colorblind in this conflict, discriminatory? Interesting to think about. Here I am dividing the waring parties into two distinct groups, instead of just calling them plain human beings. It seems to me that a lot of warring and fighting comes from pigeon holing people into one group or another, whether it is religion, race, political belief, and so on. No folks, we are just human beings with what seems to be a lot of faults and weaknesses. Privately I wonder if strife would disappear if we consider ourselves equal human beings.

A lot of my readers will know that I was born in the depths of Africa, the Congo. I grew up in the Caribbean and was partially raised by a black maid, had black friends who I often played with or went fishing with after school. Somewhat tongue in cheek I used to tell my employers that they should classify me as African American to show how diverse their hiring practices are. Moreover, I sometimes tell black folks here that I am more African American that they are, having been born in Africa. Folks tell me that I do not have the correct skin color to be considered African American (I wasn’t born in what was at that time racist South Africa, but I am not count as a strike for or against calling myself African American) . However, I now feel emboldened by the article in the Post about colorblindness. I am human and no different than anyone else out there; however, I was born in Africa and have US citizenship!

Honestly, have no firm opinion about all this, but it got me thinking. I am contemplating about any solution to racial, ethnic and all other forms of discrimination. I honestly wish that all folks of different religions, skin color, country, sexual orientation, political persuasion would agree that they are human and no different than someone who is different than the. That they treat them with respect. Yes, I still wish for world peace!

Walking in the woods gives me time to contemplate things like this.  I am actually slightly color blind and often have a difficult time distinguishing between the leaves and a red bird, kike a cardinal.

I love this country (10/15/2020)

I really do love this country.  Otherwise I would have never changed my citizenship.  This is why that over the past four years I have been relatively vocal about our political leaders or those people that claim to be our leaders.  I have also continued raising the alarm about our environment locally, nationally, but also globally, because we simply do not live in a bubble.  I really prefer to write about my life, my travels around the state (pre-COVID), and the nature around me; however, it is important to lend a voice to this important cause.  

I much rather write about my walks in the woods and exploration than raising the alarm.  I love to describe what see, like these two gorgeous little guys.

It feels that our current so called leaders want us to live in isolation and as you know from my posts, I have not only lived in many regions in this country, but also in many countries on this blue marble floating in space.  The U.S.A. was respected world-wide in the old days.  From what I hear, that is no longer the case.  It always amazed me when I entered a hut in Uganda, in the late 1970s and saw a picture either of president Kennedy or sometimes even of president Carter on a wall, often together with the obligatory picture of Idi Amin.  If you did not have Amin on your wall, you were a dead person for sure, or at least potentially dead.  I would not be surprised if Obama showed up in the past 12 years or so.

The problem is that this term "Make America Great Again" does not hark back to the time that the U.S.A. was respected abroad, because we were respected under Obama and the last president Bush.  This MAGA slogan is isolationist and for the largest part a racist slogan.  That bothers me.  However, for example, when I try to set people straight about the black lives matter movement and tell conservative acquaintances about its deep roots, I am being made fun off by those MAGA few and told I that I miss the boat and need an education.  In fact it is they who need one, but at one point I feel like giving up and withdrawing into my peer group, my safety net.  What is the use trying to educate them and potentially alienating them.  I am not sure that I have the story completely straight and can defend myself through thick and thin without loosing my temper.

Am I hiding and avoiding confrontation?  I am afraid so; at times I do have the guts, at other times I just avoid it.  Should I always stand up for what I believe, defend it and try to work for what I believe is a more perfect country?  I am often at a loss and not sure if I make the right decision.  Should I react with my brain of my heart? 

I learned that liberal vs. conservative or democrate vs. republican is becoming almost more ideologic or religious and that the divide is becoming so sharp that they can almost be called battle lines.  This is scary, I have seen tribal wars in Africa and in Yemen.  In Yemen they ended up becoming a war between religious sects.  In Nepal, I saw what happens when a cast system (or a class system) puts its stamp on society.  A bloody civil was followed there as well.  I am in fact fearful of what will happen after the election.  

All I can say is that it is important to vote and the closer the outcome of the election is the likelier it will be that there will be trouble in this country that I chose to move to, live in and love.  I would really hate to see that happen.

Explorers (7/24/2018)

I have always been a fan of (the lone) explorers.  As a teenager, I read a book about the Scandinavian (Swedish) explorer Sven Hedin.  As an adult, I have been and are still fascinated by the likes of Sir Richard Burton, Charles Darwin, John Wesley Powell, Everett Ruess, and John Muir.  Actually, when working in Yemen I became interested in Peter Forsskal, one of those explorers that not many people have heard of, but more about him in a little bit.

All explorers I mentioned here were cartographers and/or naturalists in one way or another.   They were all ahead of their time and maybe with the exception of Ruess somewhat prophetic; although Ruess disappeared and presumably died at a very young age.  Forsskal died very young as well.

At the time that I liked Hedin and his accounts of travel through the desert of Inner Mongolia, his discovery of a solution for the existence of the lake known as Lop Nor and his travels to Tibet, there was no Internet and Wikipedia,  otherwise I would have learned that in his later years Hedin was a huge fan of Hitler and the Third Reich. Hedin would have been an unwelcome visitor on our bookshelves if we had known that since one of my uncles died in a concentration camp and our father spent time in one.  However, I loved Hedin’s account of his travels and writing about it and now, I wonder if this is where I got my interest and love of the desert; I was fascinated by his tales of the Gobi desert and how in his mind a whole civilization disappeared because a river and lake dried up.  It seems that Hedin was initially motivated by the lust for fame and secondly by curiosity.

If there is any person I admire a lot, it is Sir Richard Burton.  A true renaissance man, he traveled India, Afghanistan, and was one of the few Europeans to enter Mecca. He spoke a multitude of languages (29); he was the ultimate spy for the English empire.  I want to be like him when I grow up!

I will not say much about Darwin except that we named our sailboat “the Beagle.”  I will leave it to you to guess why, but as a hint, I will tell you that Darwin traveled the world on a ship named “the Beagle.”  It was on this ship that parts of his theory of evolution were developed.

Powell explored the west, and one of my favorite books is an account of his exploration of the Colorado River.  He starts in the Green River and trouble starts almost instantly in the Flaming Gorge.  Powell had a great career as a geologist and predicted amongst others the water shortage experienced during the dust bowl, 50 years later.

Muir has occurred in many of my writings and I will leave it at that.  Just look through the labels.  What amazes me is that he not only traveled the Sierra, but he first actually walked from Kentucky to the Florida Keys.  

Which brings me to the two enigmas: Forsskal and Ruess.  

Peter Forsskal was a Swedish/Finnish botanist philosopher.  He was a student of the famous Linnaeus; however, he also studied oriental languages and philosophy.  Interestingly, in 1759, he published a pamphlet entitled (loosely translated): “Thoughts on civil liberty.“  In this pamphlet he pushed for the freedom of print (freedom of expression?), which did not endear him with the powers of the time.  In other words, he was also way ahead of his time, freedom of the expression showed up in the U.S. Constitution that was first proposed 30 years later (I think) around 1789.  I read the pamphlet and it is darn revolutionary.  However, what initially interested me in Forsskal was the fact that he died in Yemen, approximately 20 miles from where we lived.  In Yemen, I ran into a plant that was named for him by Linnaeus (Forsskaolea tenacissima) and I started wondering who the heck this guy was and what he was doing in Yemen in the mid 1700s.  Linnaeus recruited a number of his students to swarm out over the world and collect biological specimens for him.  This was a big thing at the time; it seems that your status in the world went up with the number of species in your collection.  Linnaeus was one of the most ambitious of them all.  Moreover, he was the inventor of a completely new classification system of life; a system that we still use today.  Linnaeus sent Forsskal to the Middle East, first Egypt and then Yemen to collect plants.  It seems he contracted malaria and died in Yemen at the age of 31.  There was a time I was hoping to write an article about Forsskal, if not a book.  Maybe one day, but there is very little information on Peter, at least in English.

Finally Ruess; he was somewhat of an enigma.  He was a poet, artist and can be considered an explorer in his own right.  Since he was only 20 years old when he died in in 1934, we can never really say much about what he achieved either metaphysically, philosophically or scientifically.  However, I think he played on a lot of people’s fascination.  In 1931, at the age of 17, right after high school graduation, Ruess left home and started traveling alone through California and later on through the Four Corners Region on a horse and borough.  He made linoleum and wood blocks, did drawings and wrote home to his parents or brother Waldo on almost a daily basis.  These letters form a daily diary of his travels.  Ruess disappeared in 1934 and is thought to have been killed by two Ute Indians who stole his animals.  The mystery of his disappearance is still a subject to speculations.  In his writings home Ruess appears much wiser and knowledgeable than hi young age would give him credit for.  He even interacted with Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, three famous photographers.

So what fascinates me about these explorers, what is the common thread?  The fact that they roughed it, survived rough conditions to a point, discovered things: new cultures, new plants, animals, not only for themselves but also for society.  Ruess appears to have been murdered; I hope it was swift and as painless as possible.  Forsskal most likely suffered.  It somehow reminds me a bit of some of the situations we endured in Uganda, from being held at gunpoint a few times to having very little food to eat and two matches per night during the civil war when Idi Amin was being removed from power.  It also reminds me of the hikes through Nepal and our stays in villages in areas where few had ever seen white folks; or where we were in danger of being flooded (see this post); my stay at a home where they had a funeral for an important Buddhist lama; or that one time we slept in a home at an elevation above 12,000 feet.  It reminds me of sitting between these two heavily armed Yemenis driving through the Empty Quarter up and down sand dunes looking for a Land Rover mechanic.  In a way, I miss it. 

Reaching back to the past.  While working in Nepal I had to hike into the back country and get into villages where some of the folks (especially kids) had never seen Europeans.

One of my favorite pictures and I suspect I showed this one before, but when traveling on the Tibetan plateau, we ran into this guy and had a great talk with him.

Agree to disagree (2/14/2018)

Our local newspaper had an article that had a saying that was attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte: “The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.” I am not really sure if Napoleon was really the first one who said it, but that quote got me thinking. 

A good healthy fight at work never hurt anyone, or did it?

The article was about workplace arguments. It made me wonder who has not been in one, or at least seen one. I've had my share, and I want to bet that when I ask anyone who reads this blog to raise their hand who has experienced a workplace disagreement, probably 80% of you will do so. But who has said afterwards: Thanks for disagreeing with me, it has made my project stronger being able to argue with you about it. As Napoleon put it, the worst is when someone goes behind your back and tries to sow doubt about your capabilities with your colleagues or superiors without your knowledge and ability to defend yourself. A long time ago I read a book written by Stephen Covey in which he wrote that one of the thing you absolutely should try to avoid is, to “confess someone else’s sins.” That phrase has stayed with me ever since I read it; doing such a thing should really lower your stature in people’s eyes.

Truthfully, I have sinned and have been sinned against. It is so difficult not to talk about others and to confess their sins. I like to argue in my mind that I have been sinned against more than I have sinned, but is that really true?  Who am I to cast the first stone? I have been guilty as well. There is a guy at work we call Lucifer. I know he deserves it, but still. Also, when an ex-supervisor of mine heard that a certain individual was coming to work with us he warned me: “this guy is going to make everybody do his work for him; he is lazy SOB, watch out!” Well, I told my colleagues and have felt guilty ever since. They ignored me, and guess what? They are now doing his work for him and our boss is finally seeing the light and slowly putting the brakes on, after 4 years. Do I feel vindicated? No, still guilty for telling on him, and every time I get together with him I feel like embarrassed. 

But some people thrive on it. They actually get ahead in the workplace and still sleep soundly at night. Oh well.

During my international development career of the late 1970s and in the first two thirds of the 1980s, I worked in three countries with totalitarian regimes. If you are a somewhat regular reader of my posts, you know I talk about Uganda, Nepal and (North) Yemen. Of all three countries, I worked in Uganda stood out as totalitarian. It had a ruthless ruler: Idi Amin, who I wrote about before. However, Nepal and Yemen were somewhat similar. In my days a king, who called himself the reincarnation of God, ruled Nepal. We did not experience him as being too bad, but there was a communist uprising and in general, the people of Nepal were miserable under the King. There was corruption and he was also funneling a lot of money into his coffers. The president of Yemen was known to be a dictator as well and we know how Yemen turned (or is turning) out. In these three countries I saw how dangerous it was to talk behind people’s back, both in the workplace but in particular in the private life of people.

The one thing that all three countries had in common and many other authoritarian countries as well was poverty; corruption; a ruling upper class that was funneling money off society for themselves and only looking out for themselves; lack of education and literacy; suppression of free press; the development of a tremendous propaganda apparatus in support of the ruler; and a buildup of the military and police. One of the scariest things I saw in these societies was how people were divided against each other. They were encouraged to spy on each other, to tell the government about it and be rewarded for it. You were potentially even afraid of your family. Even your children, brothers, sisters or relatives that were further removed could turn you into the police or local security agency for anything you said. They would get rewarded and in the worst case it cost you your head. Just a joke about the leader could cost you your life and you could end up cut up in a cardboard box in a sugarcane plantation or being fed to the crocodiles in the Nile as regularly happened in Uganda at the time. Everybody was afraid of each other.

What I will be showing you here are three photographs taken in the countries that I worked that show the opposite of arguments.   The first one here is from Uganda when we visited the home of friends in the village.

This picture was taken in Nepal of our firend Warren and me at a tea shop on the trail during one of our treks.

An nice idyllic picture of us camping with friends at the beach on the Red sea in Yemen.  The weather was always nice and the water was always warm (almost too warm).  We just hung mosquito netting between two palm trees and that's how we slept.

In these three or other totalitarian countries Napoleon’s words really ring true. It is better to argue with people about life, politics etc. and then part either as friends or agree to disagree, than to run to a higher authority or someone else and tell on them. Or maybe it is better not to talk about these issues at all. The results in some cases can be deadly. Actually it was better to shut up and keep all those thoughts to yourself and not say anything. Beware, when talking to your spouse, there may be someone sitting outside the door or window listening in (as we experienced in Nepal but that is a different story).

On Islamophobia (11/3/2017)

So here I was planning to write my next blog post about spiders and the fear of spiders; however, you all will need to wait.  I feel the need to write about the need for another fear, Islamophobia.

I was teaching one of my workshops in Northern Virginia, this week.  It was two days after this 29-year-old nut from Uzbekistan drove a Home Depot truck over a bike path in New York City, killing eight and wounding more than a dozen.  My workshop is for inspectors that go on construction sites to make sure that the contractors follow the federal and state environmental laws and regulations; and local codes and ordinances.  I teach my students a module on situational awareness, as part of the class.  This ranges from a tripping hazards to aggressive people.

Northern Virginia is very diverse.  During breaks in my workshop I had a fun talk with a lady from Iran who works from one of the counties in the region, and with two guys from Nepal who had heard that I had lived and worked in Nepal and wanted to know more about me and my stay there.  My classes up there are always a fun multicultural mish-mash of people as opposed to other regions in Virginia where it is ethnically pretty boring.

My class had ended and I was approached by a middle-aged (50-ish) Arabic looking gentleman who wanted to ask me a question.  He spoke very softly and I had to ask him three times to repeat himself.  The first two times I understood that it had something to do about his arm.  Finally, the fourth time it came out: “are weapons allowed on a building site.”  So it was not about his arm but about the other definition of arms or weapons.

My “friend” had a building site that he was inspecting where the contractor was openly carrying a gun (yes we in Virginia have an open and a concealed carrying law).  The contractor would of course need to accompany the inspector on his round showing his gun and also inspect the most remote corners of the project.  You get my drift, the inspector felt very intimidated.  Being a Muslim, looking and sounding obviously Arabic, even in when dressed in western clothing, just having had the killing in New York, and having a Fox News and other conservative media whipping up the masses against Muslims and immigration (and people who carry can be assumed to be conservative), he was scared.  My heart broke!

Regular readers of my blog may know I worked in international development.  I took this picture during a wedding in a village in Yemen to which we were invited when I worked there in the mid 1980s.  Just before the ceremony the men went out to the border of the village to do a shooting competition/target practice.  It is all friendly, but everyone there was armed to the teeth (even during a friendly wedding).  To tell you the truth no one from the Arab world should be afraid of weapons, that makes this case I write about so remarkable.

When we arrived at the weeding we were welcomed by this sight.  We had an absolutely great time that day.  We were made welcome and there was no discrimination.

I had a long talk with him, gave him some solutions, and hopefully set him at ease, but obviously it kept bugging and eating at me.  I am just amazed that some of us still have to live in fear because of our ethnicity.  I realize that this is why we have the black lives matter movement and we still need to worry about civil rights.  There are still fringe groups in society that think they are better than others and they are the reason why we had gatherings like in Charlottesville that even the guy in our Whitehouse does not dare to condemn.  I see that today’s people in power are trying to erode our civil rights and try to silence us with terms like “fake news.”  Don’t let them do it, a lot of the news is real, my inspector friend made me realize that again this week.

Just a miscellaneous picture of a Yemeni village (town) somewhare in the desert.  My heart breaks again thinking about the civil war they have gone through in the past years.