The Story of my parents (Part 2) (8/4/2025)

Back to 1940. A few days after the Dutch government surrendered my grandparents on my father’s side got a knock at the door. The visitor was someone from the red cross informing my grandmother that one of her son’s had died during the Battle of the Grebbeberg. The visitor handed Wim’s military dog tag to my oma and he left. I have been told that my distraught oma locked herself into a private room and meditated for three days. My oma was a known fortune teller; family lore told us that one of her foremothers was a gypsy fortune teller. I remember that when I was young, during card games with my oma, she would suddenly gasp when she looked at the new hand she had been dealt and say something like “Oh my someone I know will become ill and will be dying soon.” She would refuse to tell you who the person was and that made it even more spine-chilling.

When my oma exited her room after three days, she announced that “Wim wasn’t dead.” Less than a week later Wim walked in the home, very much alive. His partner in the foxhole had been killed and Wim had swapped dog tags with the dead body in the attempt to hide his identity and enable him to join the resistance without implicating the family. The story goes that my grandmother’s hair had turned white during the three days of meditation. She had been a redhead before the episode.

It also seems that my dad worked in France during the early part of WWII. This might have been in 1940 or 41. He never told us much about it, except that he lived or spend time in a brothel in northern France (near Amiens?). While I assume he had a good time with the ladies, he never provided a lot of details of his life there. I found old photographs which showed him on a building site at an airport. On a few pictures you can see him doing some kind of roofing job; he was sitting on top of the roof rafters. I can assume that this was a work camp of sorts. The Germans forced a lot of young adults into forced labor. Jan, my mother’s oldest brother ended up in a labor camp (the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen) and died there two days after being liberated by the Americans.

What happened after that is somewhat of a mystery. I don’t know when exactly it took place, but my dad told me that he tried to escape to either a neutral or an allied country, and he traveled to Finland to try to cross the border into Sweden. I assume he somehow left or escaped the labor camp in France. He probably made it back to the Netherlands and took off for Sweden. I am not sure what his route was, except that he spent some time in Latvia. My research shows that Latvia was officially occupied by the German Army in July 1941 during operation Barbarossa when Hitler tried to invade Russia. Latvia remained under German occupation until October 1944. I also wonder how the heck he was able to do this as a young adult (it must have been in either 1941, 42 or 43, so he was between 19 to 21 year-old) without attracting the attention of the Germans and being (re)captured; however, it seems that he made it to Rovaniemi in Finland and spent the winter there.

The stories that my dad told me of this time include an account of him sitting in a soup kitchen in Latvia across from an elder man with a Jewish star on his jacket. My father told me he was able to sneak one of his id-s in the hope that the guy could use it to stay out of the hands of the Nazis. Stories of Finland include tales of cold, darkness, skiing, drinking and saunas. I learned about one of his buddies who was drunk and went outside to relieve himself. They found him, the next morning, just outside the door dead, frozen solid. Dad told me that they assumed that he tripped and that was it. Dad was never able to cross the Swedish border and somehow made it back to Holland.

Here it gets strange. When I got an interview for a job at a company in Amersfoort, my father insisted on going with me, and he and Donna went to visit the site of Kamp Amersfoort. After my interview they took me there, as well. It seems that my father ended up in that camp after the Finland episode. Amersfoort was a work/transfer camp. I am not sure how long he was back before he was captured. Kamp Amersfoort seemed to house a few Jews, but mostly workcamp evaders waiting for transfer to work camps in Germany. Furthermore, it had some resistance fighters, black marketeers and Russian prisoners of war. It seems that the surviving Russians (Uzbeks) were executed after a few months. Dad talked about having to work in the camp filling sandbags. He told us that he responded to an inquiry by the Germans if there was someone who could operate a train. The train was taking the sandbags to a point from where they were shipped to who knows where. Dad told us that he volunteered but did not know how to drive a train. The train promptly derailed. Did dad sabotage it? He claimed he did, but I am not sure. It could also have been pure incompetence. He told us that he was put in the “Rose Garden”, an enclosure surrounded by barbwire and had to stand in it for 36 hours without water and food.

He became ill with dysentery in the camp and credits his survival on a Russian guard who somehow smuggled in opium which stopped the diarrhea. Amersfoort was mostly a transfer camp. Jews were sent to extermination camps in Germany and the non-Jews to work camps. At times they were the same camps. It is therefore no surprise that my father was put on a transport train to the German concentration camp Buchenwald. It appears that he was not sitting in a cattle car but in a regular passenger car with guards. This might be a separation between the forced labor and the Jews, who I am sure were stuck in cattle carts. Somehow the Dutch resistance jumped the train near Venlo, overwhelmed the guards and my father was thrown out of the slow riding train. He was still very ill and somehow made it to a nunnery or cloister in Belgium, where he was rehabilitated. He told us that he was in a coma for approximately a week. “I saw the light,” he often told me, a near-death experience.

There is another gap in his stories and the next one he told me about was that he joined the Canadian soldiers in the spring of 1945 when they fought their way through the Netherlands, freeing it from the Germans. They were sitting in a barn somewhere in Over-IJssel or the Achterhoek when all the sudden a projectile came flying through one of those typical thatched roofs that many Dutch farmhouses and barns had. It had gotten stuck in the thatch, not exploded and was hanging above their heads. One of the soldiers was brave enough to climb on a chair and decommission the bomb while it was hanging in and from the ceiling. He mentioned that this was one of the scariest episodes in his life. And there you have it, my father’s life till the end of World War II, as I can remember from his stories.

A picture of my mother and her friend Hennie being silly during the war.  The sign says "Safety order, it is forbidden to take pictures or have cameras on you.  The storm troupes from the Netherlands."  These were the German troupes stationed and/or recruited in the Netherlands under Hitler.

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.

Buffalos and Nazis (11/24/2023)

We have been watching Ken Burn’s special intitled: “The American Buffalo.” What struck me (or better us), was that the millions of buffalo that were killed almost to extinction, were part of a sinister plan to eradicate the native American population, or what we call the Indians. Of course the killing was for the hide, but when there was a call for a moratorium, of sorts, it was decided to continue with the ulterior motive in mind. Interesting how killing buffalos would amount in genocide in actuality. The scheme was proposed by people (scientists) who while claiming to be conservationists, were racist or even people who believed in eugenics.

The other night I hear tRump telling the audience that we need to round up all foreign nationals (illegal immigrants), claiming that they are bad for our country’s blood. If that is not a huge dog whistle, I don’t know what is. I am sure he was talking to the white supremacist who want to keep the white race clean. The icing on the cake was that he wants to build concentration camps and round up all the illegal aliens and stick them in them. Unbelievable. He proposes the same things that Adolf Hitler proposed and implemented in the mid-1930s and 40s.

Let me remind you, I immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1980s around the time that we celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary with my wife who is a (U.S. born) citizen. Being originally from the Netherlands, I was frequently (if not almost daily) reminded of the second world war and the atrocities that happened under the Nazi regime. An uncle of mine died in a concentration camp in Germany, and my father was in an interment camp in the Netherlands waiting to get shipped to Germany. I was raised as, what I have heard described, a second-generation victim, or maybe someone who has second hand PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder). While I do not understand the complete dynamics, my father was very reluctant to talk about what happened to him. If you are a regular reader, you know we had some harrowing experiences in Uganda, and I sometimes feel that my father’s experience was all piled on top of that.

I am somewhat debating whether to retell my father’s Second World War stories or just bitch about the genocide I am recognizing all around me. However, this all brings my childhood back to me and the few stories told by my father. Naturally, my father and the Indian population of the mid 1800s have absolutely nothing in common, but the buffalos got me thinking (I once wrote a post about my crazy brain and thought process <here>).

It seems that my father was on the resistance. At one point he tried to flee the German occupied area and flee to Sweden. I have pictures of Latvia and Finland where he spent a winter. One story was at a soup kitchen in Latvia (I think it was near Riga). He told us that he was sitting across an old man with one of the Jew stars sewed on to his coat. My dad told us that he passed the obviously depressed guy his plate and underneath he passed him his identification card. Now, I ran into my last name online and this was a medical researcher in Latvia. Excitedly I contacted her wondering whether she was related to this older man. “No” she told me, my last name was common in Latvia and translated meant something like young deer. Here I thought my name was French.

Early in 1940 or 41 my father worked in northern France (near the towns of Beauvais and Conchy Les Post), where he was building something on an airport. I have photographs of my 18- or 19-year-old father on a roofing job. He told me that as a young lad he lived in a whorehouse and was well taken care off.

Eventually, he was arrested when he returned from his failed foray to get to Sweden. He was placed in an internment camp in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. He told us that isingle-handedly was involved in sabotage and was singlehandedly responsible for the derailment of a train that carried sand to the camp which was used for the filling of sandbags. He was punished and forced to stand for 48 hours in what was called “the Rose Garden.” The Rose Garden was a small plot surrounded by barbed wire that was guarded by soldiers who had the order to shoot when the prisoner moved. I am still surprised why the Germans did not plainly executed him for his deeds. Later in camp he got typhoid fever and was kept alive by his Russian guard who smuggled opium into his cell to keep him alive.

He was shipped to Germany by train and somehow, he did not end up in a cattle car but in a regular train car. My dad tells me he had a private guard. This guard was overwhelmed by the Dutch resistance and the threw him out of the train. The resistance took him to a nunnery in Belgium where he remained in coma for 10 days (I assume from the typhoid fever). My dad told me numerous times that he saw “the light.” The light that people see at the time of dying.

By the end of the war (1945) he had recovered and briefly joined the Canadian army when they freed the Netherlands. He tells a story where they were in a barn in the eastern part of the country, when a bomb came through the thatched roof and just hung there. He and the Canadians were looking at the bomb just hanging there. Eventually, one of the guys got on a chair and defused the bomb just hanging there in the ceiling.

These are some of the stories I heard at home and my father’s hatred of the German people his age and older. He had sleepless nights when there was a story on TV that dealt with the war. But then there was one TV show he loved and that was Combat. This series detailed the progression of the US army in France after D-day. I cannot check my dad’s stories for their voracity, truth or anything else; however, they have stayed with me for the rest of my life. Well, there things came flooding back to me after the buffalo movie and hearing what our criminal ex-president intents to do if he gets a next term (emulate Hitler).

My dad working on a roof in Beauvais, France at what appears to be an airstrip (1942)

My dad is the guy shaving (1941).  I think the town is actually called Conchy les Post.  I wonder if the ladies in the picture are the prostitutes my dad lived with.

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.

Appomattox (4/28/2022)

We visited Appomattox Court House the other day. A quick history lesson, this is the place where the Civil War officially ended, and General Lee signed the treaty that officially ended the war. Now I am no scholar of history and definitely not of the Civil War, but I am just amazed by what learned there about what transpired in the end.

It seems that Lee finally decided that it was over for him, and that any continuation would lead to useless bloodshed; that it was best for both parties to end it. So, the surrender was negotiated, and it was signed it Appomattox. General Robert E. Lee met with General Ulysses S. Grant and from what I learned form my visit, the meeting was cordial between two generals who cared much about their troops. Lee wanted to make sure his troops did not go end up looting the countryside and Grant made sure they were not taken prisoners of war but allowed to go home and their family. This is so different from what we see and hear now on television from what is happening on television about Ukraine and the war crimes committed by Putin and his soldiers.

It seems that when Lee and Grant met, they were exchanging war stories and other tales. They had so much fun and were even joking around, that after an hour or so they had to be reminded that they were there for some serious business and to sign the surrender documents of the South to the North. Two generals who had been fighting tooth and nails were able to put things beside them and had fun during this serious moment when the south gave up its ambition. Later on, Washington Lee University was established, in a way of reminding folks that this was one country (again).

One of the random pictures I took during my visit in Appomattox this past week.  I recommend this to everyone, whether you are interested in the Civil War or not.

Leaving Appomattox, the thought just blew us (my wife and me) away how a New York City con artist has been able to rally folks in the south behind him, to believe that he was the next coming of Christ and therefore to vote for him as president. Since he was omnipotent, he could sleep around, grab them by the pussy, lie, and do whatever he wanted without consequences. Thanks to this con artist people now have less respect for their fellow humans; folks stormed the capital in order to stop the peaceful change of government; lied about the elections; there is less chivalry and comradery in this country then there was during Lee’s time, during the civil war. It makes you wonder doesn’t it; are we even more polarized now then back then, and is it all thanks to this con man? An emphatic YES here!

They say, “if you don’t learn from history, you are bound to repeat it.” I honestly wish we would repeat it and the past president would go away peacefully and behave like a gentleman. I have read commentaries which wonder whether another Civil War is near. Brace yourself folks, if so, I am afraid it is going to be a Putin/Ukraine type war as opposed to a more gentleman type war as was fought in the past Civil War, and as we know that was no boy scout trip.

My world ethic (3/28/2022)

Reading a book that I was given by the family of our diseased friend (who was very spiritual) I came up to a call for a set of new planetary ethics. An interesting concept indeed. I write a lot about ethics and empathy, which in my eyes are closely linked at times. The book, “The Sacred Depths of Nature” by Ursula Goodenough was published in 1998 and the situation on this planet was somewhat different than it is now. Since then, we have endured tRump, a pandemic, neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter protests, school shootings, a war in Ukraine, accelerated global warming, you name it.

It made me think, what would my so-called new planetary ethics be? I would like to propose the following: Climate, peace, ethnic cleansing, sustainable fuel sources, habitat preservation, human rights, black lives matter, hunger, infectious disease (pandemic), oceans, pollution, population, mindfulness. Some are borrowed from Ms. Goodenough; some have been added by me. I am struggling with some of these items, in that some bring up a negative emotion while others may engender more neutral or positive feelings. However, they are my key words of items we as society or planet need to focus on by fixing the negatives or enforcing the more positive items. Moreover, the order I put them in is random except maybe the last word: Mindfulness.

I realize, who the hell am I that I have the audacity to even think, propose, or write about a list like this and dare to call for a new planetary ethics? Oh well, this is my blog, and as a regular reader you know I have strong opinions, at times. These are my new planetary ethics. If you want to propose your own, tell me yours in the comment section below. However, these are some of the credos I would want to preach and live by.

Climate, sustainable fuel sources, oceans, pollution, population are all somewhat related. As you my regular reader will know, I have been on a climate change soap box for a long time. I have written a lot about the legacy we are leaving future generations, out children and grandchildren. While a lot of conservatives worry about money and the economic future, they do not appear to care if anyone survives to spend that money. Fuel relates to air pollution and that appears to be the driver to a lot of the environmental issues. Oceans don’t only address sea level rise, but also warmer ocean temperatures which allows less oxygen to dissolve in it, but it also addresses ocean acidification from increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

Peace and ethnic cleansings should be clear to you all. The war in Ukraine and the so called claim of Naziism. Putin’s need to cleanse that country. Let’s not talk about what China is doing to its Muslin population in the west. Hey, we are not much better in the white supremacy circles in this country. That is where Black-Lives-Matters comes in and all human rights. Naturally, hunger needs to be included as well.

Now where does population fits in? As I mentioned in a post, while I am not a Malthusian freak, I do believe that the earth has a carrying capacity. What I mean with this is that it can only support a limited number of people. What that will be or is, I have no idea. We are probably there already. I am for population control. Not mandatory, but birth control should be available to all and should be taught in school, so that everyone can make a sensible decision of their own. This includes a woman’s right to choose. Too many rats in a cage makes for wars and pandemics, the other word on my list.

Finally, the last word. The word I throw around a lot: Mindfulness. As regular readers and followers of my Instagram account know, I am a huge proponent of forest bathing or spending mindful time in the woods. I personally think that the interpersonal, health and mental health issues for a lot of people can be taken care of when we spend more time in nature. The world would be a better place. In addition, we would appreciate what is being done to the environment, our senses would calm down and we would become more peaceful. Can you just imagine Putin walking through the woods instead of sitting at one end of a very long table ordering to kill more Ukrainians?

So here you have it. My (not so new, somewhat borrowed) world ethics. I’ll be trying to live by them. Let me know yours, please!

We had a nice walk in Yorktown this weekend.  Spring had started and we enjoyed the spring flowers and the budding green.

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die (3/14/2022)

“When the rich wage war it's the poor who die” is a quote by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Now we all know that Putin is filthy rich and has secret bank accounts all over the world, but somehow, I don’t think this is why he started the war in Ukraine. Yes, he mentioned some bogus or false excuse for starting it. Moreover, he is able to control the Russian media with his message (this weekend he shut down Instagram to the Russian people). In addition to being a war criminal, he is a gaslighter. I am sure tRump must be jealous!

From my end it looks like Putin started the war from a more ideological origin than a financial one as Sartre concludes. He seems to want to cobble the old Russia back together, while using some strange pretext or outright lie. And who suffers? The soldiers from both sides. Russian soldiers who are dying, deserting, not knowing what or why they are doing what they are doing. Neither do their loved ones at home. Let’s not forget all the Ukrainian people. They suffer even worst. Their homes, hospitals, schools etc. are indiscriminately bombed.

It are the poor, the innocent who die for a cause of a few, maybe one deranged leader and his misguided ideas. He or they are not only rich and therefore hungry for power, this time he is also insane. This has to stop!

Hotels 4 and 5. A view from the road, Fairfax and Staunton (3/11/2022)

My travel and in person teaching has resumed in earnest. Driving to the locations, in motel rooms and even in the classes there is no way of avoiding of being exposed to and talking about the stupid war that Russia is waging in Ukraine. It appears that everyone in my classes is willing to accept the higher gasoline prices and know whom to blame for it: the Russian president (more about this below). But, as I mention in a previous post it is good to be back out. Since the last post on teaching, I have taught live in Richmond (no overnight travel), Fairfax and in Staunton (all of course in Virginia, more about that later in this post, as well).

At the Homewood Suites by Hilton i  West Falls Church in Northern Virginia.  This is a great place, were it not for the view from my room which was of the back of a strip mall and dumpsters.

No this is not me after drinking a beer, but I was demonstrating how the timer on your camera works to my students in a photography class that I taught this week.

In the meantime, it has been difficult to tear myself away from the television these past few weeks to do something productive, like writing a blog post. The war in Ukraine, the atrocities that Putin and his army is inflicting on that country and its people (like bombing a maternity hospital and killing innocent women and children) is keeping me in its grip. What is really upsetting me are the falls pretexted that he is using for the war and from what I am hearing the way he is preventing the people in Russia of finding out that it is all based on a big lie.

There are no Nazis in Ukraine that are killing ethnic Russians. The president of Ukraine is Jewish and calling him a Nazi is an insult to the Jewish people. Soldiers are killing civilians, and they are slowly becoming war criminals by the order of just one deranged crazy person: Putin. On top of all this countries like China, North Korea and Vietnam are telling their folks the same shit. Honestly, the international community should issue an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes and revoke his diplomatic status. When he sets foot in any other country, arrest him and haul him in front of the International Court in The Hague!

Enough ranting. My travel did afford me some distraction, including the ability to try out some different restaurants and different beers and believe it or not, wine. For example in Fairfax, I got to eat Lebanese and Korean, while in Staunton I ate an exotic grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tomato soup that I washed down with a glass of wine at a wine bar named the Yelping Dog. The second night an old friend and his wife took me to their favorite local pizza shop. In other words, it was a somewhat cheesy week for me but enjoyably so. I even visited a new microbrewery for me: the Seven Arrows Brewery in Augusta County (Waynesboro). They make some darn tasty beer!

The red IPA by Seven Arrow.  A very nice a good tasting one!

The final hotel photo!  This one was taken in Staunton at the Holiday Inn. A nice hotel, I have been coming here many times.  I love the view of the golf course.  All the photographs I take of me in my rooms based on an exhibit we saw a few years ago at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on Edward Hopper the American Painter. 

The one thing that I found to be different now is the room service. I always stay two nights in a room. Pre-COVID folks would come in your room to clean it, give you clean towel and make your bed. Now, probably to save money, this does not happen. I have to go downstairs to ask for more coffee for my in-room coffee maker. I think it is fine, I am sure it is difficult to get good help for the wages these hotels are willing to pay.

In both overnight travel cases; however, the drive was bad. At those times, I miss Europe and the ability to jump on public transportation like the train and zip from point A to point B. We had a big storm this week and there were many trees down on the road between Charlottesville and Richmond. This meant tree cutters everywhere and traffic delays. The week before I was stuck in Northern Virginia traffic with bad tires that were losing air. C’est la vie.

As you can see here, just a very superficial update and in the hope that this blog still penetrates the Russian sensors (I used to have a lot of Russian readers) I wanted to let them know about the big lie that they are being told about the need for this war. As I mentioned in my past post, my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people and to the Russian folks as well, especially those who oppose this insane war but are afraid to express themselves.

I am upset (02/26/2022)

I am upset! Who wouldn’t be? As a lot of you, my readers know, I am politically opinionated when it comes to U.S. politics, but I usually stay quiet when it comes to international issues. But no longer!

This world has been plunged into a war that is completely unjustified and started to stroke someone’s bruised ego. Russia has invaded Ukraine under false pretexts. Supposedly, according to the Russian leader Ukraine is being led by neo-Nazis and that is a bizarre statement to claim of a Jewish president. I am sure there are much deeper reasons for the invasion, and there is no need to go into it in this blog. I just want to register my displeasure and anger with the situation.

I have been glued to the television and the news. I am extremely concerned about the situation in Ukraine. Now, since the publication of my blog, 2% of my readership has been from Ukraine, and they ranked 4th in countries of origin. My thoughts, prayers and solidarity are with you. I have to admit, 15% of my audience is from Russia (you guys ranked 2nd). My thoughts a, prayers and solidarity are with you who oppose this stupid war but are afraid to express yourself. We have heard the reports of arrests of protesters and opposers of the war. I realize you are being ruled by a ruthless dictator. May he rot in hell!!!

Procrastinators Unite (5/19/2016)

Why do we procrastinate?  Beats me, and I even do it at times. 

At work there is another deadline looming and man does it get me riled up.  I work in a certificate program that is in place for 17 years or so, and people's certificate expire either on May 31 or November 30.  About 300 every half year.  Their certificate is valid for 3 whole years.  People have certain requirements they have to fulfill to the eligible to recertify, like taking classes during those three years, enter them in a tracking system and pay a small fee.  Well if you look at the date, you know: THE END IS NEAR!  Just today, I already got three emails from people who have not taken one class yet and have 13 days left to get them all in.  Fun!

This is one thing we seem to procrastinate very well: :The end of war", where we will save the lives of young men.
This is a quote on the memorial bridge over the James River in Richmond from Browns Island

Frank Partnoy writes in his book “Wait, the Art and Science of Delay” that procrastination may be good, at least when it comes to making a decision.  I can see that, on the battlefield, in sports, and in making stock decisions; maybe even in photography, taking that perfect shot.

Susanna Halonen argues in her blog in Psychology Today that procrastination actually improves your productivity and happiness:

1. You can therefore concentrate on other (important) things and those things are getting done leaving more time for the thing you procrastinate.  (personally I find this a little farfetched, but OK).
2. Unnecessary tasks disappear with procrastination. (I'll buy that).
3. Procrastination shines a light on what is most important to you. (maybe).
4. Procrastination makes you more creative. (Yes, I can really see that).
5. Procrastination helps you make better decisions. (Partnoy agrees with that)
6. Procrastination leads to better apologies. (I like this one, and yes I have seen some good ones, even the ones like "I started my last online course at 10 pm om May 31 and the Internet went down" ... oh well).

But you could be lying to yourself as Dustin Was suggests in his article, and that is often where I see the people that I deal with.  It is so difficult not to call them out, to rub their noses in it.  Tell them they are full of crap!

Why do I procrastinate?  Looking inward, my excuse is often motivation and inspiration, not because I know I would be making better decisions or have better apologies; I don't go to war.  Halonen's point 4 speaks to me; once inspired and once it flows I can be darn creative!  Points 2 and 3 are also up there.  But once I am inspired watch out, then my motivation kicks in higher gear.  Like earlier this week when I was working on a new course that I was designing.  It was fun, I was going strong.

However, I am different, even when I am inspired.  I need to think and mull things over (as I also describe <here>).  Sometimes I only get one or two slides developed in a day and I can just sit there and think of how to the class is going to go; about what is next.  It is fun and sometimes very exhausting.

Oh my god I just came up with a great apology why I procrastinate with the development of a new class!

Roots (2/8/2016)

When I took the photo below of the root my wife told me that it would make a great entry in my next nature blog/journal.  Her comment did not leave the back of my mind for a long time now; it has been more than a week since I took this picture.  It is like planting a seed in one’s mind and watching it germinate and take root (pardon the pun).

This picture was taken in Newport News Park showing an old road cut and how the tree is rooted into the soil (photo take 1/31/2016).

I was at a loss what to write about, except for showing this picture, but then while listening to a program on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD on Satellite Radio it all the sudden struck me: what we are now is all rooted on past experiences and we feed on it, whether we like it or not.  Buddha tells us:

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment,” 

but it is so damn hard to follow.  If you are like me, it is so difficult to live in the moment sometimes, my mind is all over the place.  (So sorry guys no nature blog while talking about roots)

Listening to that program on PTSD, reminds me of a dear friend who served in Iraq and suffers from PTSD.  I witnessed one of his flashbacks and it was terrible to see a strong grown man have these.  Another acquaintance of mine who served in Afghanistan told me he has them too.  Their current lives are rooted in those past experiences, it has changed them and it’s difficult to escape at times.  My father had them his entire life, after spending time in Hitler's camps.  Interestingly, the doctors were discussing that there are indications that they can now detect PTSD in the tone of voice of PTSD sufferers and maybe even in the content of their saliva. 

Listening to the program, I was immediately taken back to my first experiences in Uganda in 1978, and I was wondering if I am (or my wife and I are) psychologically shaped the way I am (we are) by the events I (we) went through back then, just like the doctors were discussing on the radio.  I know my wife and I had PTSD after we were liberated in May 1979; the strange sound of a toilet flushing sent my wife under the table the first time she heard it, thinking we were being bombed or being shot at.

But even now, just listening to the discussion on the radio gave me flashbacks to that time 37 and 38 years ago.  Suffice it to say, I should have been killed but I escaped getting killed probably four times.  I also still feel guilty for not preventing a young boy from getting killed by an angry mob two days after we arrived in the country.  It’s all too gruesome to describe, but if you like me to, let me know and I can blog about it, one day.

It all came rushing back to me, again.  I wonder if the tone of my voice and my saliva are different from what it would have been if I had not experienced it, or my elevated blood pressure is caused by it or my migraines are partially the result of it.  So yes, I am rooted in the past, and I know I should not dwell on it just as Buddha says, but concentrate on the present and maybe prepare for the future.

Downtown Richmond, the roots of this old tree have expanded so much that they are growing over the curb and the sidewalk.  It makes you wonder what they can find there.  I am always amazed by the tenacity of some of these trees.  Looks like someone is trying to feed the tree some Red Bull, I hate people who liter (photo taken 2/9/2016).