Another one falls
We refuse to see the whole
Dark blood stains our peace
Mired in the past and having difficulty letting go....
When words just can't express enough...
Humanity still struggles to find its way. Yet we live on in hope.
It looks like a cake, but it is a commitment.
The love I never expected to experience again in my lifetime led me to a wonderful wedding ceremony on December 4 at about 6:15 PM. Faye Dangerfield and I jumped the broom and became wife and husband at the new home of our niece and nephew in Altadena, California.
We exchanged vows and I have decided to post the vows here so I won't lose them somewhere in a desk drawer.
Faye's Vows: The universe delivers. I have had a list for years, a silent list of what a perfect relationship would look like. What a perfect partner would look like, i.e. tall with a beard, intelligent, secure, kind, caring, and liberal.
I knew you were the one when you began to care for me in Guatemala, always looking our for a seat on the bus next to you, even if I had a ton of junk to put at your feet. Realizing immediately that I get lost in large outdoor markets, because I want to take a perfect picture, or check out wines in the restaurant wine bar, when everyone is already on the bus. No judgment. You had only kindness in your eyes. Even my wit, which can be somewhat abrasive, didn't put you off.
What I love about us is everything! It sounds like a cliche', but we move in sync, we love to garden, to travel, to spend time in great museums. Our days are filled. What I love about us is that there is an us.
In one sentence what I love most about you is how you love me. I can see forever in your eyes, feel forever in your touch.
Love you most!
My (Jim's) Vows: I promise to love, honor and cherish you in each moment and forever.
I promise to be with you and support you through good and bad.
I will never try to hold you back in anything you do--except when you honk your car horn at people on the highway who might get urked and try to shoot us.
I will give you aid and assistance whenever you ask and even when you don't, AND I will hold onto you no matter you try to shake me off.
You will never have to become a haus frau on my account.
I will support your spirit of adventure and freedom and travel the world with you whenever we can.
I will listen and be attentive (as well as I can with my bad hearing) and always try to understand.
I will bring you flowers.
Last of all, I will protect your from Menchies.
I love you.
A LETTER FROM ERNIE PALOMINO
I have known Ernie Palomino for over six years now, but it feels like we have been friends forever. We don't get together much and don't really correspond much, but when we are together I feel like I'm with a brother from another mother. You can see references to Ernie in other parts of this blog. He is an artist in many media and was a professor of art at Fresno State University until he retired. He is several years older than I and his life experiences are much different from mine, yet we are somehow connected at a very deep level. I had written Ernie early in the summer about my upcoming marriage in December of this year and invited him to come to be with us if he could. I knew that he doesn't travel much now, but wanted him to know we wanted him to be a part of this new episode in our lives. Ernie, like many of us, is dealing with changes inflicted on our bodies as we age; in his case, it was prostate cancer. You can see how he references it in his letter to me dated 7/20/15.
Dear Jim, Dr Morgan, Captain Morgan,
Your letters are always a welcome relief for my ego.
You bring about a sense of sanity to the world of robotic madness.
Once upon a time there was spiritual reality. You came upon the shores of North America and brought a change of ideas. The change to live longer, enjoy beauty of intellectual exchange.
I am living my life as a robotic savage. I live now at eighty with a robotic dick. It gets hard, but nothing comes out!
What this means--"big heart, old balls"? said the -Hindu--to the robotic T-shirt.
In Turkey and Tunisia, in China, Japan live spirits, still alive and well.
"The black woman cast a spell upon us and I need her so badly--" I got hit right between the eyes. I get the blues always three inspirational, compositional "speeches", televisional compensations, monthly payments, discount coupons and dollar store buys--and Donald Duck alias Donald Trump--.
Sending you enclosed not visual prints--but a "robotic, plastic disc" with a copy, by reading sheet music recorded on a machine which sounds (almost") like the real thing!! Thelonias Monk "Blue Monk" and Fats Waller, Jitter Bug Waltz--without further text, hand written, tattoed on paper!
God bless you we are in the same boat Captain Morgan.
Always hoist the mast. The Admiral, E.P.
--Ever Forward--
I asked Ernie if I could reprint his letter here. I found it so beautifully poetic and filled with those special kind of emotional shortcuts through language to the very essence of internal feelings and meaning. He graciously agreed to let me share the letter on my blog.
In the letter he referenced the connections we had made as friends, talked about places he had been that have left an impression on him, talked about personal relationships and losses with women, mentioned the plastic nature of life that he sees around him (including a person running for the office of President of the United States), and talked about giving me a gift of a CD he had recently made that embodies the essence of his musical self that he had reconnected to through learning a new way of expressing himself on a very sophisticated electronic keyboard. The CD is something that I will always treasure as a connection that Ernie has to something deep inside of him. He still produces visual arts and I think he has done some very good work lately. His music and his painting seem to swirl around that inner core that defines him yet cannot ever be fully expressed. I think the world has been bettered because he has tried and continues to try to see the core and show it to us.
I amhonored to call Ernie my brother and my friend.
The Beauty of California Xeriscaping
A new xeriscape garden near our condo complex in South Pasadena, California.
The drought in California has finally gotten people to reconsider lawns carpeted in green grass that require 40 gallons per square foot to maintain during any growing season. Some people have begun to replace their lawns with plastic turf grass that looks remarkably real, but that keeps any rain that does fall from penetrating the ground and probably sterilizes the soil from excessive heat when the sun shines and the temperatures rise in the summer. Others are looking to return to the desert plants that are natural to the true climatic conditions of Southern California and that don't require large amounts of water to grow or expensive gardening fees to maintain. The little garden above has been the project of one of the residents of a nearby condo complex. She has taken it on herself (with the OK of the complex, I'm sure) to start converting a patch of the condo grounds to native plants. This is the result of about a year of her part-time project. These plants will eventually grow to fill up the available space and create a beautiful garden of natural plants that actually complement the condo complex. The picture below is an example of a mature desert garden (15 plus years old with some older plants having matured before they were transplanted in the garden) that we discovered on a visit to an art sale in Montrose, California about a week ago. It is how this area of California probably looked before water began to be piped in from the Colorado River and the mountains of Northern California.
At a private home in Montrose, California.
We grew up thinking that water would always be available. We were wrong. There is nothing in nature that is not finite. We will not be able to exploit the environment forever without consequences and without thoughtful ways of preserving and conserving the resources we need (as opposed to the ones we only want). Yes, the world will eventually heal itself if we humans kill ourselves off, but why not try to live more harmoniously with the world we live in and try to make it a better place that can sustain life until we evolve into something that doesn't crap in its own nest?
A NOTE TO THOSE I LOVE
I am fortunate to have been brought up in a loving family, and, having learned to love and appreciate the people who have come and gone in my life. There have been so many now, including my own children and grandchildren, sisters, a brother and cousins, aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, the many students I have taught, the clients I saw as a practicing psychologist, my colleagues and co-workers, my many friends around the country and the world, my deceased wife, and, of course, the center of my life at this time in my existence, my life companion, Faye.
It is hard to imagine just how my life might have developed without them in it, and equally impossible to imagine what my interactions with them have meant to them. What I know, think and believe have been influenced by so many sources that I can never know if I ever had an original thought myself. Sometimes words present themselves to me in a way that I want to share with others, with the hope that they will be useful from time to time as those people make their own paths through life. The following short poem are words that came to me today.
A NOTE TO THOSE I LOVE
When nothing is quiet
keep quiet inside
When everything's secret
have nothing to hide
When everything's frightning
have nothing to fear
When everything's cloudy
Just keep your mind clear
When moving though darkness
have light in your heart
When reaching the end
find yourself at the start
And always remember
that I am here too
Just reach out and touch me
I'm walking with you
Jim Morgan
January 9, 2015
South Pasadena, California
DISCOVERING MY OWN WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE, PART 2
This is part 2 of my post on this topic. To see the whole post in sequence, read the previous post first.
I was always confused about why some people would be treated differently from others because of the color of their skin. I truly didn't understand why it was that there were people who judged others as inferior because of how they looked. What I didn't realize at all was that I also did unconscious stereotyping. I tended to look at people different from me at "them." Sometimes I manifested this tendency by feeling sorry for those others because of their conditions and situations but without truly identifying with them. They were still "them" rather than "us." I thought that I always felt work so hard and achieve so little while still being a person who welcomed everyone sympathy for and supportive of women and treated them equally to men. I identified with the diminished role of women because I saw my mother work so hard and achieve so little while still being a person who welcomed everyone and never meeting a stranger whose life story she didn't know within 20 minutes of having met them. I even joined the National Feminist Therapist Roster during my early years as a therapist at a Florida university. I was not prepared for the animosity I experienced from some women during those early years of the feminist revolution and felt that I was often treated disrespectfully. It took me a number of years to appreciate that I was still expecting the same deference I had always received as a whit male but that I was only deserving of respect based on my behavior rather because of my gender and racial status. Although some women were venting pent up anger indiscriminately, most were just asserting that their rights were as important as mine and not less so. I needed to establish my worth separate from my race and gender. Even so, I had a less difficult road to traverse than my friends who were women or people of color. I didn't have to fight for my own privilege. It took me a while to realize that we all needed to fight together so all of us could advance together, even if it meant that I needed to pull back some myself to make room for those who hadn't been given a place at the table because they weren't white, male, of the proper religion or culture, or any other characteristic I possessed that I didn't have to earn.
I was a therapist at a university counseling service from the 1960s through the early 2000s. That period of time saw some vary fundamental changes in our social structure in this country. Multiculturalism emerged and focused on women, gender identities, ethnicity--and to a lesser extent--socioeconomic status, age differences and immigration status. During that time I became immersed in these issues and, probably more importantly, I became older and more experienced. I was surrounded by people in my workplace workplace who were also deeply involved in these issues and who were dedicated not only to the trials of otehrs but also in their own inner processes. I was able--sometimes forced--to look at my own stereotyping behavior and mow own sense of privilege. The process was often painful and took conscious effort on my part to deal with without allowing myself to fall back into the same practices I had engaged up to that point. It was very hard to change attitudes that I and never examined before and that I hadn't realized needed examining. It was fully worth the effort and the pain. I feel far more connected to people I meet of any sexual orientation, race or ethnicity than I had ever felt before and I can see much more fully who we can all move forward more fruitfully when we all go together.
During the past six years I have traveled extensively in countries outside of the United States. I have enjoyed meeting people from many different cultures. I have eaten in their restaurants and their homes. I have visited their schools and attended their cultural events, and I have been enriched by learning of their histories. I have meet rural people and city people, rich and poor, merchants, artists, monks, priests, mullahs, young, middle-aged and old. We have talked with one another about our lives and our families, our wishes, or fears, our similarities and our differences. I found that most people are pretty much just like me. That is reassuring, and I feel hopeful that we will eventually find ways to embrace one another's cultures while still valuing our differences. I also realized that the days of power in our country being held mostly by old white men are numbered. Eventually everyone will be born and live as a shade of brown, and women around the world will have the same opportunities and responsibilities that men have now. Eventually, even gender identity will become nothing of concern. None of this frightens me. It just seems natural and inevitable. I only wish that hose who have never examined their own privilege would start to do so. That would make a better world for all of us.
DISCOVERING MY OWN WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE
Discovering my own white male privilege; an ongoing journey.
I grew up in a small Midwestern community of about 4000 people. It was a farming community on the Illinois river, much like many of the other slightly larger and slightly smaller town in the surrounding area. The people in my, and most other communities of its size, were white and Protestant. There was a small Roman Catholic community and some people attended an Episcopal church that, except for lacking a Pope, seem to be a pretty good replica of the Catholic Church as I knew it. During the time I grew up there in the 1940s and 1950s I can't recall knowing anybody who would pass for a person of color living in my town or any of the other nearby towns of the same size as mine. I knew, by word-of-mouth from various sources, that "nigroes" were not allowed in my town after dark. I never knew why, but, by implication, it appeared that they were to be distrusted for some reason. Never feared exactly, buy not welcome. I never had any opportunity to interact with people who were culturally or ethnically different from me until I went off to college.
I was born the year before the United States entered World War II. My parents had experienced the Great Depression, although the effects of the Depression were not nearly as devastating in the Midwest as they were on the east and west coasts of the country. My parents were among those who actually finished high school and my mother spent two years at a Normal School preparing to be a school teacher. She taught for a while in my hometown and she would often be greeted by her former students by her maiden name ("Miss H....") when we shopped in the small downtown stores. She stopped teaching after marrying my father. Her parents, aunts and uncles were either homesteaders or the children of first-generation homesteaders. My mother's father died when she was nine years old, leaving a wife and three daughters behind. My father's father wasn't able to attend school as all, so grew up illiterate, although he could "cipher" some. Most of the people in the community came from German, Dutch and Scandinavian immigrant farming families, although there was a strong representation of English names and a smattering of Italians. The people were hard working, reasonably pious and mostly welcoming of people who looked and acted like them. They wanted their kids to be well educated and they supported good local schools. The did not want people of color to live among them.
I came from a lower middle-class family, economically. We rented our house rather than owning it. We had no car. My mother (who was divorced by my father when I was eight years old) worked at low-paying jobs as a cook in restaurants. There was no money for things like music lessons or instruments, no summer camp and no such things as family vacations, and that was true for most of the kids in my neighborhood. What made me different from some of the kids was that my mother had attended college. That gave me a kind of stature in the community that most other kids in the community didn't have and also probably made me more mindful of needing to mind my own behavior around town. I was also white, male, blond/brown headed, tall and not too ugly. It took me over 40 years to understand just how privileged those characteristics made me. As a a teenager I was only aware of being poor and unable to have things that other kids my age had that I didn't have. Fortunately I was good at academics and that allowed opportunities that I would not have had otherwise.
I was lucky that the state where I lived began a statewide "merit" scholarship competition the year I was to graduate and that I was able to win one of the scholarships to use to attend any university in the state. Although feeling more than a little intimidated, I left to attend a small, private non-sectarian university about 50 miles from my hometown. I think it was there, among people I met from across the country and from some foreign countries, that I found that I could begin to explore my curiosities about people of other races and cultures. At first I was self-conscious about meeting these new people in my life. I didn't know what to expect or what would be expected of me. I was afraid that I would be found lacking somehow. What I eventually learned was that my fears about being rejected were my own projections and that the reality was that many of these new people I began to know had experienced real rejection because of the way they looked, talked or believed. The first black male I ever met and got to know was a mystery to me because he was not only black but was also gay. As I got to know him I realized that his desires and concerns were pretty much like my own (to feel secure, to be loved, to have a chance to succeed and to be able to live the lifestyle he desired), and also realized that he was having a more difficult time than I was because of the way he was perceived in both the white and black communities. I also saw the turmoil around me in the community where the university was located when there were attempts to integrate a local barber shop and to open up real estate sales to blacks in traditionally white neighborhoods. I saw things happening to people of color but not to me. I never had reason to consider how my own white privilege kept me from having to deal with those indignities, but I always felt that it was unfair for black people to be treated the ways they were for no obvious reasons other then the color of their skin. In my own life I continued to take advantage of the opportunities that came my way, feeling that, in some way, they came to be solely because I had earned them entirely on my own rather than that I was "free, white, (male) and 21" and therefore had access to opportunities that those who were not male, or white, or blond/brown haired, or tall, or not too ugly might never have. And those who were offering these opportunities looked a lot like me.
I am not prejudiced. I just don't know why those people don't act better.
I keep trying to be hopeful that we will begin to grow again as a society instead of getting even more bogged down in trying to pretend that we are free of racial prejudice in the US. I know so many white people who honestly believe that everyone has all of the privileges they do because we all live in the same country. Far too many of my white friends have no concept of the level of privilege being white has afforded them without any effort on their part. Unfortunately, they also do not feel any reason to even look at how others are not afforded the benefits of being white. I am convinced that, within the next two generations, power now held primarily by a shrinking white majority will begin to slip away. Then, when whites are both ethnic and economic minorities, they will begin to feel what it is like to be denied what they have grown to think of as their natural right to be in control and to set social and economic standards. Unfortunately, most of those who now have "privilege" can't see that they will have to start looking at the world differently and to find ways to understand and respect people of all cultures so that everyone can advance together. Developing that understanding and respect would surely be better than continuing to contribute to even more misunderstanding and distrust.
I understand the frustration that anybody feels when they see their orderly world upset by having to accommodate others who have different beliefs and customs. My own travels around the US and the world, however, have convinced me that most people, no matter how different they appear from us on the surface, want the same things we want for ourselves and our families. They are often attracted to the US because they see opportunities here to build the kinds of lives they are unable to build in their own countries--just like the Europeans who came to the US in the 1500's and 1600's and became the dominant culture of the New World. In doing so, these new "Americans" nearly completely displaced the existing, ancient cultures that already existed in the Americas. The only major group who ever came to the US without individually choosing to come here were the African slaves who were used to develop the land and the wealth of much of the American South--wealth they were not allowed to develop for themselves. In fact, African slaves were a repository of much of the wealth in the South, and their liberation (and therefore forfeiture of that wealth) was probably the major reason emancipation was so feared that a Civil War was fought to retain the institution of slavery. And slavery was only possible, morally, if slaves were seen as the equivalent of animals rather than as people. It was a punishable offense to teach slaves to read and write; allowing them to do so would be proof that they were as intelligent as their owners--and any new ideas they might learn from reading might make them less willing to tolerate the deplorable conditions that most African slaves endured. History tells us that there were also white people who served as "indentured servants" to fill out debts or criminal sentences in the colonies. Yet, although perhaps undereducated, they were able to begin their lives anew once out of servitude partly because they were not black. Their whiteness gave them a kind of privilege that no black person has ever enjoyed in the white community in the US.
It has been interesting to me to see the difference in attitude of African-Caribbean people from the African-American populations. My sense is that there was a greater acceptance of people of all "colors" in the Caribbean because most people there were a mixture of ethnic groups due to the smaller populations of the various islands and therefore the greater intermarriage among cultures. Although slavery existed in the Caribbean, it seemed to allow a different, more inclusive, development rather than the separation of the "races" and, therefor the ability to maintain the myth that African slaves were not truly "people."
Many myths were developed to justify the treatment of black slaves, including that they were lazy, stupid, violent, incapable of learning, uncaring about their families and children, and had no sense of community; this justified the need for the owners to "oversee" and "guide" them. Because one can't expect to use reason on unreasoning beasts, one needed to use force and manipulation through fear. In my experience, many of the ideas the white slave owners had are still held by some white people today--often unconsciously and unexplored. It is far easier to deal with any group other than one's own by deciding they are so different that they can never be understood and aren't worthy of being understood. We are "us" and they are "them" and we don't need to deal with "them" other than to try to keep them in their place(s).
We are nowhere near being a post-racial society in the United States. Since President Obama was elected, my e-mail inbox has been inundated with racially themed comments, stories and jokes about him and his wife and family. It is clear to me that many white people see him as unworthy of having ever been elected as President because he is a black man (even though he is bi-racial). It appears to me that much of his political opposition is based on his ethnicity rather than his policies. He is also being accused of being isolationist and unwilling to work with the very members of Congress who have shown nothing but disdain and disrespect since the night that it was clear he would be elected as President. Why would anybody want to work with a group of people that have made it clear from the outset that they feel you don't deserve the Presidency and that have refused to accept any of your ideas as relevant? Their attitude reflects the very essence of unexamined white (male) privilege.
We have many problems that need to be addressed in this country-far too many to even enumerate here. There are many roadblocks to achieving a country where everyone has an even shot at success. My sense is that having much of our government run by old white men is probably the major hurdle to jump. Getting young people and political moderates to vote and otherwise participate in government is another. Nothing will really change until the entrenched "old guard" is relegated to a place in history. As discouraged as I sometimes become, I still have the benefit of having lived for over 7 decades and I know that change is inevitable. At this point, I am fairly content to just watch to see how history unfolds...and write these occasional musings...and hope.
FINDING MYSELF AT THE MUSEUM
If you go enough places in your lifetime, you are bound to discover a connection between yourself and another time in human history. Please look at the separate entry on this website titled: Meeting Myself At A Museum.
Jacaranda
Jacaranda tree
My Mexican friend tells me that I am looking at a "hock-a-rahn'-da".
I see the intense blue-purple blooms and am again amazed that anything that beautiful needs a name at all.
I'm here in Pasadena, looking at trees and shrubs that were never meant to be here at all. They are not like the native vegetation that fills the canyons and arroyos that are too rugged to cultivate. ...and they demand a lot of water.
The whole state of California is in the most extreme drought condition. Wild fires dot the landscape near San Diego and stretch up the coast to communities near Los Angeles. We can sometimes smell the smoke in the evenings. The Santa Ana winds are here, bringing temperatures into the low 100's, far earlier than their normal appearances late in the summer.
At my home in Florida, torrential rains have brought down tree limbs in my yard and nearly made the swimming pool overflow. Temperatures are in the high 70's and low 80's. Flowers that had been slow to bloom in prior years are blooming prolifically.
Change is upon us. Weather patterns I used to be able to count on have begun to become very unpredictable. Storms have become more violent, although most of the worst weather has bypassed my home to the north and west, making a mess of the Florida Panhandle, southern Georgia and the Carolinas.
Climatologists are predicting that there could be a sea rise of up to 7 meters in the next two-to-three hundred years. My home, currently about 45 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, will be only 20 feet above sea level when that happens and I could probably walk to the new shoreline from my house in less than an hour--if I could actually live long enough to see the change happen.
I listen to those who deny that climate changes are happening--or at least deny that humanity has anything to do with the changes--and just shake my head. I know that it is hard to accept that the changes are happening and that they mark something that is truly permanent as we head out the door to work today, just as we have every day of our lives. Everything seems about the same on a day-to-day basis. Yet those changes are hard to deny for those of us who have lived over the past 70 years. Of course, humanity will adapt to the changes, although not without political, economic and social changes. It is likely we will have to endure hardships that will make the wars of the last 60 years tame by comparison. How many people will be able to continue to live when water and food resources shrink and disappear? Will we poison what resources we have left in an attempt to control them? I am curious about what the future will bring to humanity. Fortunately or unfortunately, I will not be around to find out.
I need to enjoy the Jacarandas while I can.
California and a new life.
Here I am in South Pasadena, CA, adjusting to a new phase of my life--becoming a bi-coastal person with two homes. Of all of the adjustments in my life, this is one of the most interesting, although probably not the most challenging. Now in my 7th decade, to be making the adjustment from country-living to city living is something I never expected to be doing. I keep wondering if I am up to the challenge, although I am pretty sure that I am. I know that I will eventually be able to drive the streets with enough certainty about knowing where I am going that I won't have to constantly use the GPS, maps, or depend on my partner's guidance. One of the things that have learned over the years is patience. I do experience a bit of culture shock at being here just as my significant other experienced spending time with me in my much smaller community in Florida over the last 6 weeks. I know that I wouldn't even bother trying if it weren't for being with her and no obstacle seems too big to overcome when I know I want to be with her. Each of our paths have been interrupted and we have been thrown from our previous, well-worn, paths. I could experience her relaxation when we returned here from Florida and I can feel the slight discomfort of my not being in territory familiar to me. Yet, what a great opportunity to learn something quite new to me at this stage of my life--life in and around a big city on the heretofore strange left coast of the United States. I know there is a poem (or series of them) that will emerge from the changes I am experiencing and I look forward to seeing what they are going to say.
Unexpected Changes
I was just hanging around in Central America when.....
Neither of us expected to find someone new in our lives when we met on a trip touring the Mayan civilization in Central America. Faye and I had been retired from our professions about five years before we met, she from the banking industry and me from academia. We both were satisfying our desires for international travel and just happened to be on the same trip together after both making last-minute decisions to take this particular trip. The attraction wasn't instant, but developed over the course of the trip when we discovered the many similarities of experience and attitudes we shared. Ironically, we also learned that we shared the same protector animal in the Mayan culture based on our birthdays, even though we were born about 3.5 years apart on different days and in different months (she is younger than I). She told me she thought I was "cute." Cute was not a term I would use to describe myself at my lofty age, but I was charmed by her thinking so and saying so. Within two weeks of returning home--me to Florida and her to California--we were already in contact several times a day and making plans to visit one another. Everything I learned about her made more certain that she was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Fortunately for me, she seemed to want to be with me, too. We will celebrate our three-month anniversary tomorrow; our 90 day warranties will have expired and we will start the after-warranty period of our relationship. I could not be happier.
Around Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
During January, 2014, I was able to travel to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize to visit Mayan ruins that extend back to 2000 BCE, to see how the Mayan civilization still exists, and to better understand the current geopolitical situation in Central America. It was reassuring to know that the Mayan people still survive despite attempts--as late as the 1990's--to eradicate the native peoples. The following pictures were taken in communities near Lake Atitlan in west-central Guatemala. I'll write more and post more pictures in the near future. I'm not sure why I started with these photos; they just caught my attention as I was scanning through the pictures I took while on this trip.
Lake Atitlan occupies a vast volcanic caldera. Active volcanoes still border the lake.
The picture above shows that US tourism is alive and well in the old city of Antigua, Guatemala. It is a beautiful, Spanish Colonial city that controls building to retain the colonial look. This is a major tourist destination in Guatemala and a number of US ex-pats live here. Actually it has been rebuilt a number of times after major earthquakes destroyed it and surrounding cities. This area of Guatemala is very seismically active, being part of the Pacific "Rim of Fire."
This is the kitchen of a home of a typical villager in a small city near Lake Atitlan. The household consisted of two sisters and their families. The food was fresh from the market (they had no refrigeration) and was quite good.
Public transportation is via privately owned "Chicken Buses." These are US school buses that have been driven to Guatemala (and elsewhere in Central America) down the PanAm Highway and modified for public transportation (shortened wheelbases and bigger engines). They are decorated by their owners. Although privately owned, they follow regular routes approved by the government and keep regular schedules. They are called "chicken buses" because they used to transport livestock as well as people. It is a great way to get to meet and talk with local people.
If I recall correctly, there are 34 or more volcanoes in Guatemala, most of them dormant, but several of them still emitting smoke. One northeast of Guatemala City was very active just a few weeks before I was there. This volcano is covered with clouds and was not emitting smoke, but has been active in recent history. Guatemala is a beautiful country that has emerged as a democracy and free from military control only since 1992.
ULTIMATE ARRANGED MARRIAGES: "CHRISTIAN MINGLE"
Pay God to arrange the perfect match for you; a bargain at twice the price?
Mass marriage of couples meeting for the first time. India, 2013. Pardon my finger.
Just in terms of sheer numbers, arranged marriages are probably more common in the world than non-arranged ones. Non-arranged marriages based on people falling in love rather than marrying to consolidate family power or wealth, or to secure some other form of advantage, are only a few generations old. They occur mostly in Western societies, and seem more common among those people descending from northern and eastern Europe and Russia. Perhaps they were also common among the native peoples of North and South America as well. When in India, the guide for the tour I was with said that he estimated that 80-85% of all marriages there are arranged, with an even higher percentage in the northern, less prosperous, area of the country. Most arranged marriages are done by the families of those getting married doing the choosing and negotiating. The ones to be married often have little to say about the marriage, although that seems to be changing somewhat. This certainly takes the issue of "courting" out of the equation in many instances. Courting and sorting through various partners to find the "right one" is something that many people find difficult. Not to say that "dating" is necessarily difficult for many people, but taking the step toward a serious relationship often seems formidable.
Fortunately for Christians in the United States, they no longer have to go through any of the contortions of dating and courtship because there is a company that directly represents God and promises to "Find God's perfect match for you." I hear them advertize every day on satellite radio and I think this is a wonderful service. Apparently they have a charter directly from God (I'd love to see it to see His signature for the first time.) that allows them to charge a fee to people who want to submit their names and profiles directly to God so God can chose the perfect matches for them. In this, they are just the middle man and the Big Guy actually does the choosing while they do the paperwork and collect the money. Although I have never used it or known anybody who has, I assume that, like the mass weddings in India, the matched people don't have to meet until they appear before a minister to be married. After all, it is God's match, so what would be the purpose of meeting someone beforehand?
Of course, only God knows why he matches any two people. I could be that He thinks that some people need to get together with someone with the same flaws so they can work through them together. Some may be chosen to reward them for going to church regularly and trying to live exemplary lives. Some may be chosen because they have good genes and their offspring will be meant for greater things. Some may need to be humbled and taught how to care for someone other than themselves. We can only guess at His choice once we see them together. But at least there doesn't have to be any guessing here. If God chooses the person for you--as "Christian Mingle" promises--then who are you to second guess Him?
I guess that if you don't contract with God through "Christian Mingle" you are just taking your chances that you will find something and that thing will work out. Not much certainty in that, is there? Maybe you should plunk down the cash.
Who visits?
Part of the fun of doing this website/blog is knowing that people actually visit it and read some of the contents and look at the photos I have posted. The hosting site I use for the site can capture the I P addresses of those who access the site. Although I can't discover the actual identities of those who visit, I can usually identify the cities and countries where they are when they are visiting the web site. I haven't kept complete track of all of the visits, but, over the past 3 months there have been visitors from: Guangzhow, China; Stockholm, Sweden; Toronto, Canada; Lodz, Poland; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Lahore, Pakistan; Moscow, Russia; England; Roubaix, France; Germany; Japan; Australia and Beijing, China. A number of these involved multiple visits by different people in the same country. Visitors from the US were from Seattle, Denver, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Antonio. Peoria, Redmond (WA), California City (NJ), Shalimar (FL), Atlanta, Gainesville (FL), Hartford (CT), Mountain View (CA), Ann Arbor (MI), St. Louis, Greenville (NC), Virginia, Bethesda (MD), Carbondale (IL) and Orlando. Many of these were people who made multiple visits to the site.
I have surprised and gratified that people have found the web site worth visiting--and returning to. I try to keep it interesting. Although it is possible to leave comments in the blog section, people rarely do so. I wish I know what they were thinking after having visited the site. I welcome comments about anything in the blog or any other part of the site. I just want to say thanks to those who have visited and hope they feel free to refer others to the site. In one case, it seems that a number of people from Stockholm referred one another to one of my poems; A Journey That Neither of Us Could Have Made Alone. I wish they would have added comments about it on the site.
I hope you have reasons to continue coming back.
My friend's father, Richard, with an elderly woman in a village in China.
HELLO (GOODBYE)
This was moved from the contemporary poetry section to the blog section because it just didn't make a very good poem. I liked the ideas, though, so thought I'd include it here as a kind of essay.
Every Hello Contains A Goodbye
Me and two of my oldest Counseling Center friends and colleagues at my retirement party.
Every hello contains a goodbye; it is just a matter of time. But each hello can be different from all of the others. Some are unspoken, just a sense of awareness breaking, like greeting the first light of a new day or smelling freshly brewed coffee on a late-rising, looked-forward-to weekend morning.
Some hellos are just friendly greetings to people one knows only noddingly or not at all, with no expectation of anything but a quickly passing encounter where goodbye is implicit in the greeting.
Some are pregnant with anticipation like the hello to someone one wants to become intimate with, perhaps to become their lover. This hello is filled with fear of an early goodbye.
Saying hello to your life partner is a hello where a goodbye is unthinkable, although said often in daily comings and goings when it is uttered merely as a greeting without any long-term thinking involved.
Saying hello to your new baby is an experience filled with joy and amazement and anticipation of a lifetime of bonded feelings, but with an awareness that it is now time to buy life insurance. You know what your child in its innocence can't begin to imagine. There will be many, many times during his or her life that you will have to say goodbye, just as your parents said goodbye to you.
At some point in your life you must say goodbye to your innocence, even though you didn't even remember having said hello to it. You discover that things are not always fair. People lie and cheat, and they are willing to hurt you or let you be hurt. They are more invested in their own wants and needs than yours. Saying this goodbye allows you to say hello to a new phase of your life where you learn to depend on yourself and make your own decisions. You discover your values and you learn who you can trust--and that isn't such a bad thing.
And throughout your life, if you are open to them, you say hello to new opportunities. You find that you are not bound to the past. Many things are worth saying goodbye to and leaving behind even if the future is still uncertain. For how can anything ever be different for you if you are not willing to say hello to what is new to you?
There are those who spend their lives learning to say goodbye to their own senses of self and learning to merge into the whole of existence, saying hello to a different state of being where every moment is greeted as a novel experience where one immerses oneself to the point of there being no IT or Me. That is not for most of us, although it is a worthy pursuit for some. That is a yin/yang phenomenon that encompasses all of the hellos and goodbyes and shrinks them to a single dimension like the period at the end of this sentence...or expands to encompass the whole universe.
The final hello we can only speculate about. It is the moment our lives in this plane of existence ceases and we move on to whatever follows. We all have ideas about what will happen--or what we will hope to happen--or fear will happen, but we don't know what will happen. So as far as we know, that is or final hello. I wonder if it also contains a goodbye.
FRAMED
Eastern Island Statues
Pastel Crayon Sketch by Ernesto Palomino
I credit my paternal grandfather with whatever facility with tools that I have developed. He had a shed full of tools and gave me full access to them to do with as I pleased. My brother and I made simple rubber band propelled paddle boats to use in the mud puddles that remained after a big summer rainstorm. I shaved off parts of the porch railing with a very nice box plane (not something my grandfather really appreciated) and I pounded nails into everything. I often rebuilt the wheels on my bicycle when the bearings in the hubs got filled with sand and learned how to replace the bike chain, fenders and coaster brakes. I worked briefly with an electrician as his helper when I was 14 and worked a full summer in a local hardware store while in high school. I found out early that it is easy to make mistakes with tools, but, when they are used correctly, you can do amazing things with them, too. I have probably saved myself thousands of dollars by doing most of my own home repairs for most of my life. Within the last 10 years, I have finally been able to build a workshop--very nicely equipped--and have been having fun re-learning how to do wood working. Most of my projects to date have been building picture frames for myself and for friends and family members. I now have the lumber and the tools to begin bigger projects and will soon begin building a coffee table that will incorporate some of the mosaic tiles that I purchased in Jordan a few years ago.
I like starting with bare wood and shaping it myself so I can try out some of my own aesthetic ideas. The frame above is made from poplar wood with an embossed wood inlay. The inlay is coated in gold paint and the remaining wood is stained with a dark rubbing stain that, when applied and then rubbed off before it is totally dry, gives a rich, dark finish. It is finished with two coats of clear polyurethane. It took me nearly a year of thinking to decide just how to frame this particular piece. It is a gift to me by my good friend, Ernie Palomino, of Frenso, California and is the original pastel crayon sketch he made when on Easter Island. Ernie uses such sketches as the jumping off place for his larger works and he has several versions of this sketch available for sale. I have mentioned his web site in earlier entries in this blog. The sketch is double-matted. I wanted both the frame and the matting to complement and emphasize the art, and I'm pleased with the result.
The photo below is of a set of frames I did for a friend who was born and raised in China and who had some photos of villagers in her home province she wanted to frame and display in her home or her professional office. The theme I decided on was of what appears to be bundles of reeds like the reeds in the school setting of one of the photos. I used a light maple stain on the wood and blue matting to emphasize the blue in the photos. Light-colored frames are not very common at the moment, so the effect is a little unsettling at first glance, but, as she said, "they grew on me." It was a real pleasure doing them for her and I was happy that she appreciated my attempt to do something unique for her photos. As a psychologist whose work often doesn't result in immediately observable outcomes, working with tools and wood is immensely gratifying. It is clear when your job is done and you get to be around at the end.
"Reed" frames for a friend's photos.
IS THIS THE TIME OF CLOUDS?
The following is too ragged to be a poem and not coherent enough to be an essay. I just want to get some of these thoughts written somewhere. I don't know if I'm depressed, or just thoroughly pissed about the amount of ignorance that seems to be pervading the world at the moment.
Is This the Time of Clouds?
The festering storm has blown itself out.
The threat of hail and high winds
damaged crops and cars
is removed for now.
Politicians and clerics
who know next to nothing
and trust only what they know
are momentarily quiet.
For a moment the skies are clear
and shrill voices are silent
or at least at a low murmur
But it will start again
and the clouds will fill the skies
as politicians rant
and clerics babble on.
Each has a special brand of truth
unique to them alone.
"Small minds are in the Capitol
holding onto power
with no respect for you or me
in this, our darkest hour."
The clouds in their eyes
aren't Nature's clouds
but are the kind that emerge
from hearts and minds of those
who will not see.
The power to destroy is what they crave.
They profess their love of God
while trying to destroy God's nature
and their fellow men.
To pervert everything they touch
is no way to get into heaven
no matter how they try to justify themselves.
It is disgusting to see them citing documents
and books written to meet the needs and understanding
of people who lived centuries ago
as if those words were never meant to grow and change
in the ways that people have grown and
changed.
But they want others to be judged by the old books
and themselves to judged by the new.
So go on you righteous bastards.
Deny Nature at your peril.
De-humanize people out of your ignorance.
Ignore what is inconvenient to see.
Deny the truth.
There will be clouds ....
...and you will find ways to blame others for them
but we will all be denied the Sun.
Jim Morgan--October 27, 2013.
Photo by Sean-Heavy, downloaded from the web. This is one of only a few photos on this site that isn't my own. I have given credit where it is due.
Every day when I take a bath in the tubbie....
Duck Dynasty, Pittsburgh, PA October, 2013
Nobody seems to notice what has crept up behind them at this downtown park in Pittsburgh. When I first saw this guy sixty years ago he was swimming in a bathtub in my cousin's bathroom in Illinois. He was only about 3 inches tall. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that he would grow to this menacing size and invade one of our oldest industrial cities--and do it so stealthily. Soon after this picture was taken, a large number of these people mysteriously disappeared. Life can be dangerous when you aren't aware of your surroundings. The giant duck was later seen in the company of an even larger green, singing frog.
My friend and I were alert and left the area in time to get away safely. We managed to hide in a theater and were distracted by a very nice production of "Our Town." By the time we left, all was clear. Surprisingly, there was no mention of the giant duck on the evening news. It seems to be able to control the media. I am convinced that it is not a "natural" duck, but must be some sort of trans-dimensional construct that appeared from a parallel universe for a brief time. That kind of thing happens in my life regularly. I often lay things down and when I go back to collect them, they are no longer where I put them. When I go back even later, they are just where they should be. The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that they disappeared into an alternate universe for a brief time, only to reappear when the other universe reverted to it's proper space-time dimension. How else could you explain it?