Homes for the Holidays – A Sampler
Christmas morning, my brother Steve reading the newspaper while I try to share the last wildly varied batch of 2011 photos before it becomes 2012. Croissants are doing their final rising over in the oven here at my mother’s house. This is my second winter holiday season at ‘home’ or with family since 2004 (since then, in order: China, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, NYC, India, Congo…no wonder I get confused sometimes). Perhaps the smell of croissants baking will prompt Mom to rise and then we can satisfy my older brother’s curiosity about what might be under the lovely Christmas tree off to my right. Last year at this time I’d been in my new home of Mweso for about two weeks and was celebrating these holidays with new colleagues in a beautiful new location and a great new job.
I wrote the last blog entry my final morning on the island of Lamu, in Kenya – early August. Then I returned for about eight final weeks of challenging and productive work in Mweso, did the fastest debriefing and return to the US that I’ve ever done — left Mweso on 30 September, Goma on 2 October after a full day of meetings there, debriefed in Amsterdam on the 3rd afternoon and 4th morning…and did a short presentation about Mweso and MSF’s work to a group of NYC high school students on the afternoon of the 5th. Since then I’ve spent: a wonderfully relaxing five weeks getting my head together and biking along the coast a lot in LA; the thanksgiving holiday with Steve, our mother, and our uncle and aunt in Pittsburgh; and the past four weeks with my mother here in the NYC suburbs. What I’d like to share with you all are photos I took during all that time – last weeks in my Mweso home and our outreach sites around the zone, plus images from lovely outings in my various US homes. Between assignments, I really am an unemployed homeless person but I’m blessed with lots of generous friends and families who welcome me to share their homes here.
Returning to the US was a bigger shock than usual this time – spending my first few nights with my friends near Columbus Circle, I’d stare out their windows at the towers of midtown Manhattan and the bustle of traffic on the street, and wonder if I was really still in the same world. I know I am, but the shock of transition and change can be so overwhelming at times. As usual I’ve taken full advantage of so many luxuries, from Thai food and midnight bike rides through quiet, safe , good streets to concerts and plays with lots of friends. Email conversations have just begun between me and MSF about where I’ll go next, and when. I’ll be in SF for most of January and some of February and then tentatively plan a cross-country trip to visit friends and relatives scattered through the nation’s mid-section…but as always the plans remain open to amendment based on evolving news about possible future assignments… More on that if and when appropriate.
..Above: me in June, on day one of construction of the health post in the beautiful mountain-top village of Ihula, something that we & the village & the BCZ can and should be rightly proud of. Above that, Mweso sunrise a few days before I left in September; Steve, Mom & me at Fallingwater late November; Calder on a hillside at Storm King early October; and two views of the Great Falls in early December. Below, a self-pic the evening I got back to LA.
I don’t want to write much now – I’ve said it all before and I hope the photos are interesting enough on their own. What I’m throwing up here are are photos of the following which occurred in the order listed: a trip Mom and I took in early October to Storm King Sculpture Park in New York State; a few Venice sunsets; a trip with Steve, Mom, and Aunt Judy & Uncle Bill to two Frank Lloyd Wright-designed houses outside Pittsburgh – one being Fallingwater, arguably his most famous creation and the other being Kentuck Knob which also has a sculpture garden on its grounds; and some wintertime views of the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ in early December, which we visited to give Sam a different image of NJ…perhaps they’ll do the same for you. 🙂 I’m organizing the photos based on variety and visual pleasure for me, and hopefully a sense for some of you of why I sometimes find simple questions hard to answer – when you consider that all of these photos were taken between mid-August and mid-December in places that felt at the time, at least to some extent, like home to me. A bit lower down, I will include in italic some text that I wrote on about my third morning back in the US when my nerves will still a bit raw at how totally different everything is here than where I’d been living so very recently. Since it’s sat unfinished for 12+ weeks and I’m now in a very different space, I’m not going to bother completing it… I hope the photos may tell you things I can’t find the words for now. May 2012 bring more peace, more health, happiness and stability to us all, known and unknown, all the rich, beautiful, conflicted & organic mess that is modern homo sapiens and our green home world.
All the autumnal photos of beautiful grounds on a sunny day with sculpture in foreground or background were taken on … October 10 … at Storm King, one of my mother’s and my very favorite places in the NY metro area. I’ve been visiting Storm King since the late 1980s any chance I get and am always happy I’ve gone; this day felt unusually blessed because the weather was so lovely and walking around the grounds cleared my head so well and reminded me some of the things to which I have access here, that I can’t see when I’m working normally.
And here’s the text I started in October and never finished: Early autumn in New York rather than early spring in the high country of North Kivu. (Late September = early spring south of the equator, technically…) Quite the change of location and cultural milieu to take in. As I write this I’m watching the sky grow lighter off to the east, as the nighttime lights of New York City’s skyscrapers slowly wink out and the deep blood-red-orange of sun’s earliest warning lightens to pale peach and the upper sky goes from black to pale blue. Soon the ball of the sun will blaze out and make it uncomfortable in this lovely window seat overlooking central park and the skyline. I’ve been fortunate to take advantage of good friends’ hospitality here in Manhattan, which coupled with three jet-lagged early mornings and three stunningly clear, sunny early autumn New York days have combined to give me three of the best-ever sunrises I’ve seen in New York. Quite the welcome home, really. Pity I didn’t think to bring my camera, but just trust me that the views of central park, skyline and sunrise make this an amazing window seat.
Which is just as well because it all adds up to helping remind me I’m not in Mweso any more. And I’m not really even sure quite what or how to say about that. Since I’ve put so little about Mweso on my blog, I feel a need to give it more air time, so to speak. It hardly seems right that the past ten months of my life were based in this place where I and my colleagues (both international staff and national staff) all worked hard, week in and week out, to do some very good work (if I may say so), and of which I’ve barely put anything up on the blog. Some of my friends have seen emails with more detail about my life and work in Mweso, but since this is always a personal blog and since my life in Mweso was 95% about work, there didn’t seem much to say about life in Mweso.
Most of these photos from DRC were taken during several different days I spent high in the hills at and near the town of Ihula, where we ran a mobile clinic 1x/week, when I arrived there a year ago, and where we worked during my time to construct a new health post which would then make quality care available, with our support, every day of the week to the folks up here who’d otherwise walk many hours – often across front lines – to get to health care. The sunrise shots sprinkled around were taken from our expat home & base-office one morning before my departure.
And so what you see are mostly photos of Lamu and London for the past ten months. Sure, both are great places that I was delighted to visit on my vacations from Mweso. But what have my last ten months been about, really – trust me, it was not dominated by the waves on the beach or great dance and theater in London. (Oh by the way, the sun is about halfway above the horizon over around Queens now; a livid pinkish-orange ball that I can already no longer look at. When I look at the two entries here in which I did show photos of North Kivu and say a bit about it, I think I did a fairly decent job of talking about how we live and what I was doing there, more or less.
My first day back in the US, I spoke to a group of high-school students here in NYC about MSF, our work, my work, and so on. One student asked about common misconceptions and I responded about over-romanticizing, or over-dramatizing, what we do or how we live. (And that’s where I ended in October. Not gonna finish those thoughts now. You probably get it. Lower down there are actually some pics of me at work, hauling rocks and shoveling sand for the foundation of the new health post.)
Above, Fallingwater; below, Kentuck Knob. Fallingwater: a magnificent house constructed on/in/over a waterfall – truly spectacular. Kentuck: so much less dramatic, but so much more like home: I would LOVE to live in Kentuck Knob, and would feel comfortable and happy all the time, I suspect. I think Fallingwater would make me feel constantly overwhelmed by its own magnificence – it doesn’t feel homely to me. 🙂
Mom, Paul & Steve at a Berlin-Wall segment installed in the sculpture garden at Kentuck Knob, which also contains some Andy Goldsworthy stone work, cousin to the two twisty curvy stone walls you’ve been seeing in photos from Storm King. If you don’t know Andy Goldsworthy, find a place to see his installations – photos can’t do them justice; they are site pieces best seen in person. Stones, water, walls are themes in these photos – from hauling stones for the foundation at Ihula, to Goldsworthy’s playful stone walls; from the huge stone support wall on the downslope side of Kentuck Knob to the waterfalls at Fallingwater, the Passaic River in Paterson, or at Ohiopyle on the Youghigheny River downstream from Fallingwater, below.
Ciao, Los Angeles
Early morning drizzle on the canal out my window in Amsterdam, first morning after the end of European Summer Time. How appropriate that my ‘summer vacation’ ends and my first night in Europe is the end of their summer time. During my month in LA I took essentially no photos – was far more interested in yoga, cultural & restaurant outings with friends, bike rides and general relaxation. Moreover, LA was hit with heavier and more frequent than usual October rains and cool temperatures, so there were rarely such views as those above and below from the lovely roof deck of the place I stayed in Venice.
For those curious who don’t already know, the plans are now fairly clear – I’m here in Holland for two weeks of training, then visit various friends and family types in northern Germany and Berlin, followed by time in Paris to get my French back to high proficiency before having to work in it full time, and finally back to Amsterdam to brief and fly to Democratic Republic of Congo. That’ll happen in mid-December, and thereafter I’ll be quite out of touch — both because I’ll be quite busy again and because my internet access will be much more limited.
That’s all I really have to say now – still a bit jetlagged, but knew if I didn’t get these photos up I never would, and felt I should do something to acknowledge leaving the home continent again. I’m trying not to worry too much about the US elections coming up shortly. I’m encouraging myself to be moved by generous and hopeful impulses more than anything else. Take care.
Northern Coastlines, Towns and Forests
…so it’s September 21 and smw, slt has been in SF for six weeks that have flown by in a blur. We’ve been back in the US nearly four months – again, time that’s flown past with family, friends, meditation weeks on Star Island and yoga classes in San Francisco. Amazingly, the last phase of my planned down-time will arrive next week when I head off to Los Angeles to create some final mental-vacuum space in my head, into which I’ll then start leveraging all the new information about wherever it is I’ll be working next. More on that when the time is right, for those interested – it’s slowly becoming clearer, but nothing is yet very definite.
For now I wanted simply to share some photos of my beloved California, land to which my heart always wants to return. This blog has shown very little of my spiritual home in the US for a while, since I was tied down on the East Coast and out of the country most of the time between September 2007 and … well, last month. So herewith a bit of the northern coastline. True, the photo immediately above just shows you the sunset & moonrise view from the top of Bernal Hill, which I’m fortunate to be able to call my home in SF thanks to dear friends who make room for me in their lives & family when I’m here. But SF is only either the beginning of northern California, or the end of central California, depending on how you choose to view it. The real north begins when you cross the Golden Gate Bridge, or even when you get farther up into the coastal redwood forests of Humboldt and Del Norte counties. I did that, the first weekend in September, on a five-day road & hiking trip with a Howard & Jim & Shantanu that took us all the way up to the Oregon border, and did some great exploring of forests, coasts and towns along the way.
…that’s me on a log in a waterfall within Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park. And below, a view of the Smith River upstream from the Redwood Park near a watering hole where lots of folks were floating on inner tubes and sunning themselves on a sandy beach.
The photo above is actually Oregon, just over the border – where we stayed for a few nights was right on the border, so our beach walks easily took us over into Oregon; further down are some close-ups of beach flotsam and seaweed which are also Oregon seaweed, and Oregon flotsam. Below, my friends by a mural in the AWESOME haven of Arcata, one of the spiritual hubs of the Humboldt Nation and, I hope, a future US home base for yours truly.
A view of Arcata Bay from the hill Arcata, above; and below, a carved deceased tree trunk in the Arcata community forest. How many other towns in the world can you think of that have an enormous redwood community forest??
The evening we arrived in Arcata, there was a folk band playing some music right there on the plaza in the heart of town. Kids were dancing, bikers were stopping to listen, and the sun streamed down.
Arcata: a university town fronted by a lovely bay, backed by a community redwood forest, centered by a plaza that flies the US flag, the California flag, and the earth-as-seen-from-space flag. Oh, yeah, and a place that certainly stands to benefit if Californians decide to vote in favor of the ballot measure that would fully legalize – and fully tax – the marijuana trade, by way of compensating for all that federal money no longer coming to support basic needs in our state now that our national budgets have been so constrained by needless, endless wars that prior administrations launched so casually, and that we and the world are still saddled with… Thanks again, Geo W and all you republican hypocrites who like government deficit spending when it’s to kill people halfway across the world, but not when it’s to build schools and railways and other things that help keep real people alive and leading real lives.
Below: lighthouse at Crescent City, the northernmost town of any size (i.e. 8000 or so inhabitants) in California.
Above: Howard and me in California; below: pinecones, kelp, driftwood and seaweed in Oregon.
There is no good way to capture, on a still photo, the magnificence of a mature and large redwood forest – or even of a single massive redwood tree. Those who’ve been to Muir Woods just over the Golden Gate from SF, or to the groves of mountain redwoods tucked into pockets of Yosemite and Sequioa National Parks, have some idea. But these northern coastal redwood forests are enormous – hillsides and valley bottoms covered in ferns, with entire forests of towering redwoods rising majestically far into the sky from the quiet, mossy & ferny bottoms. Above is a particularly monumental tree that’s been named ‘Boy Scout Tree’ within the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park – you can get a sense of its enormity by how tiny Howard & I are against its trunk. Imagine entire hillsides and valleys full of trees not that much smaller than this one, without really very many people around since it’s all very far from anywhere else, and you get an idea how wonderful these parks are!
Gardens & Trails – Peninsula & Southbay
When it’s possible, I do all in my power to get to SF/Bay Area for the first two weekends in August – because on those two weekends, the wonderful Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music happens in & around Santa Cruz. Howard and Gene first introduced me to the festival in the late 90’s, and I’ve tried to go every chance I’ve had since I started working w/MSF since live music and live performing arts in general are something I miss when I’m in the field. All of these photos were taken on the weekends we spent on the peninsula and in the south bay areas – hikes in the afternoons before evening concerts, an exploration of Filoli Gardens which is a lovely house and garden in the hills north of Palo Alto. If anyone wonders why I try to get back here as often as I can, the photos above and below may give you some ideas. 🙂
Coastal New England: Meditating on Star
…which title simply means that smw, slt has spent a stupendously wonderful week at a meditation retreat on Star Island, Isles of Shoals, off the rocky windswept coast of New Hampshire and Maine. To be precise, in the photo above, all the foreground is in New Hampshire, but once you get to the end of the pier, the dock and everything past it — the other islands — are in Maine. Anyhoo: I’ve left NYC. The house is done. I’m briefly in LA, doing the usual mix of checking in with my storage space to justify my sense that I still have a home base here in beloved SoCal, playing tennis with my wonderful friends down here, seeing movies on the big screen because I suspect such chances will be fewer in my life soon, hanging out with my other friends all over town from UCLA to Silver Lake and between, and generally reminding myself why I love California, messed up politics and budgets notwithstanding. You’ll hear from me next, most likely, from India, to which I’m headed next week to begin my next assignment with MSF. A wikipedia search for Manipur will lead you to an interesting and informative entry about the state where I should be working for the coming period, along with many nice hyper-links to such terms as ‘Seven Sisters,’ which I found most useful myself. Expect a return to the usual posting pattern from field assignments…and if you’re new to my blog, go to the archives from June 2008 and before and you’ll figure out what I mean. I look forward to keeping in touch with you all from the start of this, my next adventure in learning more about this beautiful, challenging, fractious, ineffable (wink to any meditators reading this) world we live in. But now…enjoy some shots of the ineffably beautiful coastline of the northeastern US.
(Oh, and with a nod to Elizabeth, a correction to my last entry on civil-war NYC: the ruling class loved the war because it was industrial north fighting for primacy over agrarian south; the working class, drafted to feed the cannons and crows on the battlefields, were not quite so enamored of the concept and organized the largest anti-draft riots ever seen; though I’ve not studied the issue I am told that there was often tremendous violence to suppress resistance to the draft, and/or to resist the draft. I believe it may have been complicated by some sense among white working-class immigrants they didn’t so much want to fight to free black folks from slavery’s yoke, so you see the issue becomes complicated for those who like simple stories…)
Star Island is the most actively used/inhabited of the Isles of Shoals, a handful of islands 7 or 8 miles out to sea off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. Located in the heart of coastal North America’s prime cod-fishing grounds (cf photos of Provincetown below; for those who hadn’t pondered it, there’s a REASON the colonists named Cape Cod as they did!), these rocky, windswept isles were among the earliest European settlements on this continent – they sported active year-round fishing villages in the 1600s, I believe. In the photos below, you’ll see indicators of a few small graveyards scattered around Star Island; none of the islands ever supported large populations (they’re small and rocky, and mighty cold and windy in the winter!), so we’re talking small little family plots or memorial stones scattered here and there, more picturesque than spooky or overwhelming.
Anyhoo, so I decided that en route to LA to touch home base before heading out again, I might as well check in with parts of New England I’d not seen in more than a decade – a week’s meditation on Star, and a sadly short stop at Provincetown. On Star, which I’d not visited since a day trip in the 1970s, I found beauty, good company, mental and spiritual renewal through a very enriching program of morning meditations and quiet afternoons walking the island or reading a book, and social evenings with my partners in meditation. I won’t bother saying much more about it all; group meditation can’t be described but only experienced, and the pictures demonstrate Star’s uniqueness far better than anything I can write. Only one small story: sometime in the late 1600s or early 1700s, New Hampshire – which, along with Maine, was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony – split off to become New Hampshire colony on its own. When that happened, Appledore Island (photos below) lost most of its inhabitants to Star: Appledore (then called Hog Island) remained in Mass Bay Colony (now Maine, which split off after independence), where the taxes were higher, so the fisherfolk left for the attractively lower taxes of the new colony of New Hampshire. The first instance of Americans moving to lower their taxes?!
Above and below are sunrises; the rest are sunsets. I know, I know – been there, seen that, done that, what’s more typical than an ocean sunset photo. But the minute we lose our ability to be awe-struck by a beautiful sunrise or sunset, we’ve lost something essential in ourselves. At least I think so. And we had an absolute string of gorgeous rises and sets on Star…so many that one was tempted to begin taking them for granted, in fact. 🙂
…Star seen from the sea on the mainland side: you can make out the tower of the church and the granite spire of a monument to some important early colonist, as well as the large bulk of the Oceanic Hotel.
Above and below: Celia Thaxter’s (check her out in Wikipedia: great stories!) garden on Appledore Island. This was a big New England resort in the late 1800s, but social and economic changes cut its popularity, then a devastating fire utterly destroyed the hotel and left the island pretty much abandoned and deserted until the 1960s and 1970s, when Cornell and UNH launched the Isles of Shoals Marine Laboratory there — site of summer courses in marine biology for undergraduates, as well as adult and family learning courses in marine topics and even such fascinating themes as historic gardening, based on Celia’s garden among other things.
Coastal New England 2: At Cape Cod’s Tip
I like to say that Provincetown, a combination old-colonial fishing village, national seashore town and artsy high-concept tourist resort catering to a very wide range of tourists from whale-watching families to lesbian bikers to gay circuit boys and most things in between, is my single favorite spot on the US East Coast. The sand dunes and tidal mudflats of the national seashore are crisscrossed by bicycle and foot paths for endless exploration, and there are reliably inspiring views of clouds, water, grass, sand and sky mirroring and reflecting each other in all weather conditions, from highest flood tide to lowest ebb tide. All this, great restaurants, excellent art galleries and an endless broad array of interesting and curious people strolling down Commerce Street from dawn til well after dusk — all with the town and environs packed into a manageably small space — you can imagine why I love it so much. Why did I let eleven years lapse between my last visit and the two fleeting days I permitted myself here on my way to Star Island?
…Portuguese sailors and fishermen were an important early component of Provincetown’s European settlement. I think this is why Portuguese flags shared pride of place on the streets with the stars and stripes, the week after July 4 when I was there.
I Love NYC In the Spring
This is it, folks…smw, slt is leaving NYC after a year on these shores. Tomorrow I’ll start moving again, exploring a few parts of the US before I leave in late July to take up my next post with MSF. There’ll be more information later about where I’m going, and probably another blog entry from my travels in the US before I leave for briefing in Amsterdam, but I want to take a moment to honor the city which I knew so well from the 70s through the 90s, but haven’t spent more than a week in since 1997. Having spent the 12 years since then largely in mediterranean climates (LA and SF) or in the tropics, I’d truly forgotten the robust bursting expressions of life and color that characterize the temperate spring. So herewith an ode to NYC in spring, now that summer has come and I’m leaving NYC. Enjoy. Stay tuned for more regular updates and photos since I’ll be traveling again.
…Yes, Brooklyn is part of New York City and dear to my heart as my home for a decade. Above and below – Brooklyn Botanic Garden during cherry blossom season, and Grand Army Plaza in the heart of Brooklyn by Prospect Park & the Brooklyn Public Library.
Some of my readers haven’t been to NYC and I’ve mostly aimed my NYC blog posts at folks outside the US who might consider visiting some time. I’ve always told European friends, in particular, that American cities are nothing special compared to European cities, and I stand by that; it’s our vast natural landscapes of endless variety and (underfunded) national parks that make the US a top-notch tourist destination, in my view. That said, the US has several cities that are chock full of great architecture, museums, parks, restaurants and people – even if none can hold a candle to ‘old-world’ cities like Athens, Istanbul, Varanasi or Beijing when it comes to history. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens were one of my favorite weekend haunts when I lived in NYC. You see why, I’m sure.
Since April I’ve taken a weekly conversation class at the Alliance Francaise – French Institute in NYC – another of those great NYC resources that everyone should check out, with really excellent classes and good membership benefits and programs. Every Saturday morning I’ve taken the A train to Columbus Circle, beautifully renovated and now a lovely magnet for strollers and walkers at the southwestern corner of Central Park, and walked through the park to my class over on Madison Avenue, past (Manhattan’s) Grand Army plaza at the southeast corner of Central Park, home to NYC’s famous Plaza Hotel and, on the day I took the photos below, many beautiful April tulips. (American history lesson for the curious: the Grand Army was the Grand Army of the Republic, aka the Union or northern army which deafeated the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, which for those of you who don’t know was an indescribably deadly and prolonged war from which the country took many decades to recover, and in some ways still has not. NYC’s population and economic might were important assets for the Union side, the city supported the war effort, and thus NYC has two famous Grand Army Plazas in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, which until 1896 was a separate city. The history of the names is more complicated, but go to Wikipedia if you want more.) 
Hyde Park in the Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley is a great visual joy north of New York City, and one of its historical highlights is Hyde Park, home of Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt. Hop on Metro North from Grand Central or 125/Harlem for a gorgeous ride that takes you into the Bronx and along the riverbanks with views of Manhattan and New Jersey as the train tracks hug the shoreline nearly all the way up to Poughkeepsie, nearly two hours north of the city. Any train ride on the Hudson River line is a pleasure; on a spring day with sparkling blue skies and fresh green leaves bursting on all the trees up this hills and mountains that slowly rise as you move north, it’s a treat. I can’t recommend it enough.
Once you reach Poughkeepsie, there are usually shuttles that can take you the few miles farther north to the Franklin Delano & Eleanor Roosevelt national historic sites. I was tempted to wax political – after all, FDR was one of the masters of 20th Century American politics – but will limit myself to reminding everyone that the country had 50 years without a banking collapse, for the very first time in its history, after new regulations were put in place and enforced under FDR and subsequent administrations. (They’d been happening every 10 to 20 years from the 1780s until then.) It wasn’t until 1989 that we had another banking collapse, after eight years of Republican presidents who philosophically disapproved of government regulating business.
So in Hyde Park you have something for everyone: political history and the presidential library of FDR; the Eleanor Roosevelt historical site, which highlights her leadership in the drafting of the universal declaration of human rights (if you’ve never read this document, please do – it’s very visionary and though often ignored and disrespected, it represents admirably high aspirations), education, civil rights & integration, rights of women and children, and so on. There’s colonial history, colonial architecture, the chairs and tschotschkes the Roosevelt family collected, and simply lovely views over the Hudson Valley. A very enjoyable day trip from the city on a clear day – keep it in mind next time you have a free day in NYC!
Above and below are photos of Top Cottage, FDR’s truly private retreat up a high hill inland from the main Roosevelt family house. Roosevelt was an amateur architect, and designed some local post offices as well as this house, a visit to which is a real treat that gives a sense of how Roosevelt gave himself quiet space as he directed the rejuvenation of the American economy and the war effort. Since they’ve either made replica furniture that very closely matches what was once there, or brought back actual pieces that were there at the time Franklin & Eleanor hosted, for example, the King & Queen of the UK, it was a real treat for Mom & me to pose for a photo in the same spot as some pretty famous folks. 
…the view from the porch of Top Cottage. You can sit there and hear…nothing but the sigh of wind in these trees. For a man directing the war effort in Europe & the Pacific, such a retreat must have been priceless. 
Above, the Roosevelt barn & garage in classic Dutch colonial style. Below: 2009 is the 500th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the Hudson, which made him the first European to explore and map the region. This ship is a close replica of Henry Hudson’s ship Half Moon, which is doing a tour of historic towns in the Hudson region from Albany south, in honor of the 500th anniversary of European arrival on these shores. As you can see, I fell in love with how the rigging of the ship looked against the rigging of the (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) Mid-Hudson bridge, which connects Poughkeepsie (east side) to Highland (west side). 
Adieu 2008, from LA
After a lovely family and food filled holiday hosted at my temporary apartment in NYC, I hopped a flight for LA on Monday the 29th, where I had a bit of time to walk around my old haunts of Venice and Marina del Rey before hopping a flight the following day for Tahiti. It being one of those classically gorgeous LA winter days, with seaside temperatures in the perfect range, and skies more than clear enough to see the snow on the San Gabriel Mountains, I couldn’t help snapping a few shots.
Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies
I’m still pretty deeply embedded in this north American continent, still quite deeply enmeshed in this project to set Mom up for a safer, gentler ongoing retirement by, well, nearly tearing down and rebuilding her house. This raises questions both deep and shallow. The most-common question asked by new acquaintances (read: usually guys I wish I could be dating) is ‘What do you do.’ For some time now I’ve taken disproportionate pride and joy in being able to say I’m a humanitarian worker – it usually launches interesting conversations, and it pretty well always garners me some approving feelings and comments from my conversation partner. However, for a guy of my years and experience to be…sort of an unemployed homeless person, formerly a humanitarian worker but now engaged in the humanitarian ‘Mom Project,’ – well, that just doesn’t come across quite so glamorous. There are deeper pleasures and rewards of family closeness and connection to my Mom, though; one came this past week, as my brothers and I gathered to help move Mom into her new temporary residence, and a few days later when I saw this house in which she (and we) had been accumulating detritus and stuff since 1975 emptied completely. It awaits now only building approval for the demolition and excavation to begin.
…some famous symbols of this city I’m again calling home are the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan to New Jersey across the Hudson – the flag is only there on holidays – and lady liberty in the harbor. The shot below, and other green and treed looking shots further below, comes from the parks in northern Manhattan — the riverside park south of the bridge, Ft Tryon park a bit north of the bridge, and other parts of the area broadly known as Washington Heights because our founding president and first general retreated from British troops here early in our revolution.
And while, on the surface, none of this is as challenging or rewarding as – say – running a surgical and emergency hospital in the Niger Delta, it keeps me busy. In addition, whether I like it or not, it forces me to sit down with questions like identity, life goals, and what it’s all about. I’m one of those Americans who’s felt rather estranged from my country, which took a turn from bad to much worse when we allowed the most destructive president of all time to remain in office after the 2004 elections. It’s much easier, when traveling internationally, to act Canadian than to have to explain that we truly have NO IDEA how that managed to happen. And since that was true – I really have had no idea why so many Americans looked at this lying, incompetent man and said ‘yeah, four more years in the White House sounds like a great idea for him.’ So it’s been much easier to just act like I’m not really part of it.
Being back has made me recognize, again, the complicated reality that is America, that is being American. And that complicated multi-faceted contradictory reality is more than ever present in our current circumstances. We’ve passed a presidential election that’s brought hope to folks around the world for a more constructive, engaged and positive American influence in the world – not to mention more realistic and honorable policies at home. At the same time, the US has spurred another global economic downturn that’s clearly one of the worst in 100 years, and whose bottom we’ve probably not yet found. Four and six years ago, I was totally bearish on America when others were betting our stock ever higher and acting like the high-flying leveraged days of irresponsibility could last forever. Now I find myself unusually bullish and confident, at a time when many seem quite lost and fearful.
The Cloisters, bits and pieces of various medieval religious buildings from different parts of Euopre brought over by one of the Rockefellers and cobbled together here as a gift to the people of NY during the great depression, now houses most of the Met’s medieval collections.
The most worrisome aspect to me of our current situation is the deliberate know-nothing approach that many Americans take to our social and political realities. And I don’t say that lightly. A democratic nation whose citizens choose, quite deliberately, to show no interest in the complex and challenging realities of the world they live in simply cannot succeed over the long term. Those who’ve fallen deeply in love with Sarah Palin reflect a deeply-rooted, uniquely American idea that complicated answers are bad, and sound bites are good; that intellect is the enemy, irrational simplicity our friend. I’ve wondered constantly how mothers and fathers in middle America, who I’m certain can barely manage to find solutions to their own family’s belt-tightening crisis, can possibly think that simple sound-bite answers will be found for the largest economy and most complicated government structure the world has ever know. And YES, our government DOES need to be the most complicated the world has ever known, since it manages the largest military, biggest economy, and third largest population the world has ever known. How could there possibly be simple answers for such an entity?
But this is the country where you can’t run for president without mouthing the mandatory ‘America is the greatest nation on earth’ formula. Do those mouthing or hearing the words have concrete ideas (as in, why we’re necessarily greater than Bhutan, Ethiopia or Italy?) in mind when they say it or hear it? I AM proud to be American; I DO think there’s much to be proud of in what we’ve done over the years. Sadly, there’s very much to be terribly ashamed of more recently, and those who re-elected Bush and brought more death and torture to remote corners of the globe, funded by their tax dollars, need to acknowledge their responsibility for what was done by the government they voted for, with their tax dollars. And I’d love to hear their list of concrete things that make them so proud, that make this the ‘greatest nation.’ I have my own list – though I reject utterly the notion that any nation is, or should expect to be, the ‘greatest nation.’ All citizens in all nations are doing what they can to put food on the tables of their families, and most governments, to a greater or lesser extent, are trying to find ways of meeting at least the most basic needs of their citizens.
Still and all, considering the fear and worry on the minds of many Americans, it’s a good time to remember things we can be reasonably proud of. This country, in creative dialogue with Franceth century, created a meaningful new model of democracy that helped fire political and social imaginations throughout the world. This country has been the leading nation composed of immigrants from all cultures, languages and ethnicities; and that diversity has usually given us the kind of health and creative vitality that most mutts have. At times we could learn well from our great northern neighbor, Canada, how better to create a cultural quilt that honors our differences rather than trying to melt them in a pot and fit everyone into the same mold; but still, we’ve done pretty well at taking the energies and experiences of people from all over the world and using them grow an endlessly creative and energetic nation. And we’ll need all that energy and creativity to find our way out of the mess Bush & Co have sunk us so deeply into. I could go on, but the point is made –like all nations and groups, we’ve made contributions both good and bad to the world as a whole, but consistent with our size and place in history, we’ve had a larger impact that most other nations in the past couple hundred years. And we can really be proud of a lot. But it’s been too long since our government did much that we can really be proud of: I’d say the last truly visionary thing we did was use the Marshall plan to invest in a devastated Europe (including Germany) and Japan at the end of World War II. We’ve been coasting on the good will that created ever since – and that well done run dry. We need to get out there and create some meaningful good will, by dropping help rather than bombs on people in developing nations around the world. In fairness to Shrub, he’s left at least one meaningful, positive legacy in the plus column – his serious commitment to AIDS help for nations in Africa. Would that he’d done more of that, and less of the bombs and torture.
Below and above, the NY Waterfalls was a fun public art project that linked the harbor in a new way, with four artifial waterfalls built around the harbor off lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Governor’s Island. Other shots include Ellis Island next to the Statue of Liberty, through which some of my ancestors certainly arrived as immigrants.
It’s clear the hope for renewal and meaningful leadership is shared eagerly all over the world, and this shows up in my own inbox with emails from friends all over saying things from ‘good on you, america,’ or ‘yippi yi ya for obama’ to ‘thank you all you american friends out there…you have made it for the whole of us!!!’ and ‘tears of joy and relief are in my eyes.’ I gave many hours to campaign phone-banks for Obama during October and November. I was born and grew up in Ohio, which was to 2004 what Florida was to 2000. I’m so happy to see the voters finally reject the hate, fear and consumption based approach to life we’ve followed for too long. (Don’t forget that W’s recommendation to citizens after 9/11 was that we should go shopping.) I was personally called anti-American and anti-troops by several people I thought of as friends when I opposed our imperial unilateralist war-mongering response to what, in 2001, could have been a very teachable moment for ourselves and the world. (How different would we and the world now be if we’d taken all those dollars we’ve now wasted in Iraq, and used it on a Marshall-like plan to provide healthcare, education and opportunity in the world’s most deprived places?)
Below, an historic Hoboken train station on the Jersey side just by the Statue of Liberty, through which some of my plains-bound immigrant ancestors very possibly traveled.
One thing I’ve become increasingly clear about is the need to speak out about my own beliefs and faith. Here in the US, religion is too often used as such a bludgeon to separate and judge – making folks like me very uncomfortable about speaking out for our own beliefs and values, which differ so starkly from those judgmental, narrow-minded religions that bludgeon, but that are no less deeply based in a deep spiritual commitment to right and ethical living in this world. I’ve become convinced that traditional, hidebound religions are a terrible impediment to progress in the US, and are limiting our vision and potential far too much. We are, after all, a nation formed by religious rebels of many stripes – so it’s unsurprising that religion and ethics play a huge role in our public life. Before church recently, I sat in the one of the adult education sessions I’ve so enjoyed; this was about Jewish theologian Abraham Hershel. In one passage, he recounted being told, as a 7-year-old, about the biblical story of Abraham taking Isaac up to the mountain to be sacrificed, as he’d heard his god demand he do. Naturally the 7-year-old was pretty horrified by the notion of a father killing his son based on the say-so of some voice in the air, and wondered what would have happened if the angel hadn’t told Abraham to stop before his knife struck Isaac’s neck. The rabbi’s answer? Angels are never late – humans, maybe, Angels never.
And that, my friends, is as good an illustration as any of why organized, judgmental religions have far outlived their usefulness to humanity. What sane ethical being would stick a knife in a son’s neck, for any reason, let alone because a voice spoke in thin air? And what sane person would put stock in a holy book that calls this a test of faith? Who needs a god that tests faith by insisting on human sacrifice? Didn’t Christians kill ‘pagans’ for thinking just that when they arrived in far-flung lands throughout the 19th century? What responsible human being would cede agency and responsibility for their own actions and ethics to an unknown angel, or an unknown god, whose existence must be taken on faith? If you believe in that god, don’t you suppose he/she/it gave you that head on your shoulders to be USED rather than turned off?
Something that discomfits me about the unitarian church I’ve been attending here in NYC is that the G word comes up rather often in services. I’m tired of whether we do or don’t believe in G – and I think actions matter more than spoken beliefs. It’s totally clear what sane, intelligent and ethical human beings should be doing in this world — taking care of one another and the planet, reducing conflict, bringing more and more deprived and impoverished people from developing nations and deprived parts of our own nations into our communities of opportunity, restoring the earth and our human world to a more sane balance and distribution of opportunity. To those in Kansas or Alabama who want to parrot that old Puritan saw about predestination, and basically say that their god has blessed them by allowing them to be born in this rich land of milk and honey, while those poor kids in [name of developing nation here] are just shit out of luck in this life…well, I say yours is not a religious practice worthy of the name. Because if religion serves any purpose in human life, surely it is to bind humanity together and increase the safety and security of us all, not just of one people or one community, but of our ever-more-connected global village. So learn a bit more about the world, get out of the Wal Mart and off your butt and do something to help the world become a better place – and start by reducing your own consumption, and using the saved money to donate to reliable charities that give food and medicine to needy people – and not bibles, since those don’t cure tuberculosis or hunger. While you’re at it, you might get around to admitting that hormones are hormones, and abstinence-only ain’t never gonna work…but I won’t ask too much.
Above, you’re looking up the length of Wall Street itself, from the East River to Trinity Church where Wall meets Broadway. And below, the World Financial Center, inland from which sits the site that once housed the World Trade Center. I used to take the subway to the WTC/Chambers station, then cross the street to have lunch at the WFC’s Palm Court restaurants for a lovely view on a cold winter’s day.
In Clint Eastwood’s new movie Changeling, the main character says ‘I didn’t start this fight, but I’m going to finish it.’ I’m feeling much that way now. For many years now, I and other liberal and progressive Americans have felt judged and rejected by what the media like to call ‘values voters.’ I’m tired of that – I am what I am, my values tell me to take care of my friends, family, community and world, and yes I’m proud to be far to the left and far more knowledgeable about what goes on in the world than most other Americans. Deal with it. We all have the right and responsibility both to live the lives that feel right to us – and to accept, without complaint, the consequences of those lives. For many Americans, right now, that means finding ways to tighten belts and develop some goals and values in life that involve something more than non-stop consumption, trips to the mall, and heaping more junk into their houses that will end up in the trash. There’s a lot to see and do in the world that doesn’t increase you carbon footprint. Try it – learn a little, explore a little; you might find that you like living a bit smaller in a larger world.
Sculpture & Summer Gardens Around NYC
Pride & Prejudice
The day after our national election on 4th November, I flew to LA. The main purpose, honestly, was to retrieve winter clothes from storage: and the trip came not a moment too soon; these last weeks I’ve worn little other than the sweaters, jackets, mittens, scarves and other annoyingly bulky items I dug out of the hidden corners of my storage space. It’s been quite horrifyingly cold lately in NYC, even more so to one whose nerves and body had become accustomed to gentler equatorial climes these recent years. But I digress.
California, as many even outside the US are now aware, was the scene of perhaps the most disappointing electoral loss for the equality-minded on that night of otherwise glorious and liberating news for us all: by a simple majority on a ballot measure, the California state constitution was amended to eliminate equal access to marriage for lesbian and gay people — thereby relegating us to second-class status, even within California which has a good civil-union law for us 2nd-classers, let alone in other states whose laws are far more restrictive and discrimatory — not to mention federal laws which take no account of our families and relationships, whether for taxes or immigration or any other civil matter . Fired up by our disappointing loss, progressive spirits of all stripes (not just the LGBT community by any means) have begun to organize and try to reach out to those who voted in favor of restricting equal rights. There are many reasons we lost on this ballot measure and thus lost our equal rights — we didn’t reach out enough to religious and other communities who feared that our equal rights might infringe on their free practice of religion (whereas the campaign in favor of restricting our rights played actively on that fear among religious communities, and was very strongly funded by members of both the Catholic and Mormon churches), those of us who might have devoted more attention to education and outreach about the issue were focused on work, our economic and career fortunes, or trying to get a responsible and honorable president elected for the first time in this millennium. Be that as it may, we have some catching up to do.
I’ve always been afraid to reach out as a gay person to my non-gay/lesbianfriends about my need for equal access to rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (I’m not joking — Matthew Shepherd was killed not all that long ago for the crime of wanting to love the wrong person, a fear of which has certainly affected my ability to reach out to those I find attractive and interesting.) Some inner voice has always said my equal rights matter less than those of others, because it’s always been this way and after all, I could fake it if I wanted to. (About as well as one of my uncles and all those others who leave behind broken families and shattered dreams when they finally give up on trying to be what they, quite simply, cannot be.) But these voices rest on misbegotten notions that we queer folks can, or should, change who we are. I don’t necessarily plan to marry any time soon or think it’s right for everyone of whatever love interest, but I don’t see that my right to do so should be different from that of my brother, cousins and best friends who’ve been married for years – in some cases more than once.
If the churches don’t want to sanctify my relationship, that’s fully a matter for them and their adherents to debate and hash out — as is happening, globally and visibly, within the anglican and other churches. But just as any church can deny religious marriage rites to non-adherents of its religion, so too it OF COURSE can decline to sanctify my marriage or my existence. But for a civil society based, finally, on equality for all — for a nation that 90 years ago finally allowed full ballot access to women, that 30 years ago legally overturned bans in many states against interracial marriage, that has struggled for all of its existence to overcome the inherent barriers to full participation in citizenship and society for all the many ethnic, cultural and religious groups who find their homes here and especially to all the Americans of African ancestry — how can such a nation, let alone one of its most progressive and leading-indicator states, still actively relegate me and my community to second-class status in a clear matter of equal access to civil rights and full particpation in civil society?
In the heat of the moment, I penned an angry letter to the head of Park City’s chamber of commerce – a lovely city where I had a great ski vacation once. Encouraged by a friend, I posted the letter on the blog and called on friends to join the boycott. I still feel this way, but I’m less fired up now and perhaps almost embarrassed at the youthful energy and righteousness of that letter. I understand there are those whose religions say I’m abomination. Personally, I find their religions abominable but I’ll fight to the death for their right to practice them, so long as they leave me alone to live my life without causing harm to others. And that’s what it’s about, for me in this. But I do think we need to find ways to communicate constructively with those who aren’t comfortable with us and our demand for equal rights. Just as other minorities over the years have overcome ‘scientific’ or religious explanations of their natural inferiority (heck, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the mormon church noticed that black skin pigmentation was, in fact, not punishment from god), we too shall ultimately overcome the prejudice that still says we’re somehow different or unequal. But to do so, we’ll need help and we’ll need to reach out. Now’s a good time to start.
…Above and below, shots from one of the largest spontaneous marches the weekend after the election, through Hollywood in LA.
On the same day, a majority of Californians voted for a ballot measure that will require chicken farmers to allocate a minimum amount of space per chicken in their coops, so as to avoid overcrowding. 🙂
Sojourn in Sequoia
Being in California usually makes me feel better and more whole: more of my friends are there, it’s easier to do the things I most love to do (hiking, tennis, outdoor swimming all year long, etc.), and though I’m slowly rebuilding a social network in and around NYC, in general it’s just easier for me to find things to do and people to do them with in SF or LA than here in NYC. To my long-planned visit to the SF Bay Area for the Cabrillo Festival (see below), I added a leg to Los Angeles in order to attend the wedding of my friends Joezen and Steve. What a wonderful experience to be there with good friends for a wedding that, in the state of California, finally has legal weight! And such a generous, connected and concerned wedding it was — all about equality and conserving our planet’s limited resources, all about friendship and family. I’m glad I was able to be there.
Having added that LA leg, I then signed on for a sojourn in Sequoia National Park, the less-visited and somewhat less-known southern neighbor to California’s blockbuster Yosemite National Park. My friends Howard and Gene, along with others whom I enjoyed meeting in the park, had arranged three out of six tent cabins at Bear Paw high sierra camp for a few nights, which dovetailed rather nicely with the wedding: I got myself up to Sequoia with help from Gene, we hiked the eleven miles up to Bear Paw, and spent two nights there before hiking the eleven miles back down. In between, I did an absolutely amazing 16-mile hike with 4500-foot elevation gain going up and then back down, up to Mt. Steward on the Great Western Divide (the crest of the Sierras). The higher alpine-tundra looking shots below and above are from that day’s hike, with high alpine lakes and so forth. The rest are generally shots of the Sierras in Sequoia, including a shot of me in front of one of the big, wide redwoods that give Sequoia its name. Believe it or not, I’ve actually sorted through these shots and excluded many from this entry — still and all, there are a lot of shots, but I hope you’ll agree they’re worth enjoying. 🙂
California has two varieties of redwoods still growing: mountain redwoods, or sequoias, which grow much much larger in girth but generally not quite so tall as the coastal redwoods, which can be seen just north of SF in Muir Woods, or in other spots along CA’s northern coast.
John, David & I took a few short swims in this glacial (almost literally — there are snow packs that are still melting, just next to it) lake.
I nearly stepped on this six or seven-foot rattlesnake. Eek!
…the alpine flowers, as you can see, captured my imagination.
Above, I’m trying to convey the steepness of the rocks over which this water is falling. That’s basically a self-portrait of shadow, with the lower upper body much farther away because it’s a few hundred feet down a vertiginous drop.
A waterfall and pools much lower down in which we took a muchj-warmer swim on our way out of the high country.
Music, Missions & Mountains Around the Bay
If it’s early August, the Cabrillo Music festival is happening in Santa Cruz and other areas in and around Santa Cruz, just south of the SF Bay Area. My friends Howard & Gene go most years, and I join them whenever I’m close enough to make it feasible. The final concert each year takes place at the old Spanish mission at San Juan Bautista, a small town south of San Jose — hence the bell tower, above. I take advantage of the week in between the two main festival weekends to enjoy SF and see my friends Amy, Nancy & Kip — from whose lovely hilltop neighborhood of Bernal Heights these sunset shots of the bay and city, above and below, were taken.
Junipero Serra was the Catholic priest who decided to set up missions a day’s ride from each other all up the coastline of what was then Alta California, part of the Spanish colony of Mexico. These days the missions serve as parish churches in many places, and historical points of interest from San Diego in the south all the way to Sonoma in the north. Considering the history of near-utter extermination of the native inhabitants of California (surely an earthly garden of eden in the pre-European-invasion era, I’d think) in very short order after their exposure to Europeans and their diseases and culture, I personally think Junipero Serra’s legacy is as freighted with death and destruction as that of the rest of the church. But that’s just me. He’s certainly an important historical figure, and the missions certainly add interest and history to California. OK, soapbox time, with apologies to those who’ve heard it before: what is it about American liberals that allows them to feel comfortable driving around in cars with “free Tibet” stickers while living in big houses in the hills of California, on land that’s far more stained with blood and cultural genocide than Tibet? I know, we can’t roll back history here in the US – or can we? is there some creative we could retroactively create a little more justice and space for the first nations that remain and whose land, culture, languages and resources we have shamelessly stolen since our ancestors first landed on these shores? – but could we at least be a bit more humble, a bit more nuanced in our approach to the complex histories of territorial expansion and conflict occurring on the other side of the world, in regions with millennia of history that make our own expunging of native Americans from most of their former homes and zones seem like a highly-efficient blitzkrieg?
No, these are not Anasazi dwellings in the US southwest. They’re formations in a big limestone rock that’s been eroded by rain and water to form these fascinating images. I forget the name of the this particular type of rock formation: help me out, someone.
Above & below, me & Russ at the mission concert; Howard, John and Gene on the hike; Howard, Russ and Gene at the mission.
…you are looking, though you may not know it, at the San Andreas fault, which runs right through the valley next to San Juan Bautista.
Hills & Mountains of LA
In June, and again in August, I spent some time in LA – a city many outsiders love to imagine as little more than a smog-ridden, traffic-overwhelmed sprawl. While it does have plenty of smog, traffic and sprawl, those of us who’ve lived there and learned to love the city know its many hidden jewels in the mountains and along the coastlines of California. With my friends George, Pierre and Ed I had the chance to enjoy two hikes along segments of the Backbone Trail, which follows the Santa Monica mountains to connect the uphill, inland portion of Will Rogers State Park (better known for the beach portion) to Point Mugu up the coast past Malibu. The hilly portions that are flowery and greener are from the June hike, and the drier ones are from the August hike. I’m also including some shots of a visit with my friend Gary to Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains — the closeup of lavender berries, plus the shots above and below looking at big tall mountains in the background are from that visit. The sunset shot of a hilly arc of palm trees was taken in Gary and Rick’s lovely central LA neighborhood of Silver Lake. See how smoggy and ugly LA is!?
The backbone segments began or ended in Topanga Canyon, probably my favorite part of LA’s canyon country — home also to the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. Yes, if you visit LA, you should use this entry to help guide you to some of the more interesting and less-touristed sections than, say, Hollywood Boulevard. 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 
