tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-261776152024-03-07T13:41:41.456+07:00Religion, Sex & PoliticsMy generation was told that these topics could not be discussed in polite company. But times have changed.Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.comBlogger569125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-28245604825124041692019-07-18T20:38:00.000+07:002019-07-18T21:04:17.952+07:00At the End of My 80th Year<br />
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My father and I were riding in a car near my house in Pasadena when he quietly said, not long after I'd become a father myself for the second time: "The older I get, the less I know." It was not the kind of observation this man's man, who prided himself on his wide knowledge of practical matters, had ever made before. It surprised me then and has remained in my memory until today. Now I know what he meant.<br />
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If life is a journey then I'm nearing the end of it and I don't know where I've been going. If life has any purpose, at least for me, I've never figured out what it was, and if I were a bird I've been flying blind. I've tried on numerous religious beliefs for size but none of them ever fit for very long. The rituals, though, were fascinating and fun, and the human propensity for religion intrigues me still today. I suspect there is an irreversible connection between the brain in my head and the identity I've been clinging to as "me." When that lump of tissue stops doing its job, I'll be gone like a puff of smoke. The idea of an afterlife strikes me as distinctly odd. What or which "me" would survive? My current suspicion is that the self is a mental construct resulting from the encounter of brain and body with experiences in the world. I never been very fond of the notion that life is suffering, or even filled with anxiety (or, needless to say, sin). There have been too many moments of genuine bliss and laughter to buy that explanation. Sure, times have sometimes been tough, mostly because of the mistakes I've made, born in moments of selfishness, pride or anger. But on the whole it's been a sweet ride, filled with love and the kindness of friends and strangers. I'm grateful for every minute of it.<br />
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I can be reasonably certain that almost everyone reading this blog post is younger than me. My longest and closest friend, who was by senior by three years, died last year. We'd known each other for over 45 years. Friends I see here in the flesh (as opposed to my virtual friends online), are all at least ten years younger. I feel a bit like the last of the breed. In these days of impending climate catastrophe and species extinction, that's not an unusual position to be in.<br />
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I've resisted this accounting until the final moments of my 80th year. There's no lack of distraction to keep an old intention like this at bay. As an elderly expat in Thailand with a loving helpmate to navigate the roadblocks and ease the way, I find myself in the enviable place of loving life with few regrets. Each dawn I scan the sunrise from my 9th floor window for inspiration. Sometimes a little rain must fall, for this is the monsoon season in Southeast Asia. But the clouds, oh! And the colors which are never quite captured by my iPad camera. Exceptional!<br />
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Now I'm facing what is supposed to be a significant milestone, my 80th birthday. These calendar celebrations are mostly cultural inventions (Thais seem less interested in birthdays), but they serve a purpose. People probably know I entered my 80th year last July (we celebrate our 1st birthday at the end of our 1st year), so this month's birthday marks the end of it and the beginning of my 81st year. I've had a bit of time getting accustomed to being an octogenarian. It continues to be a surprise each day to find myself so old. The mind, poor memory aside, feels much like the same mind I had when I was in my 20s and 50s, or so I recall. But the body! Oh!<br />
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When I began writing this blog in April of 2006, one of the reasons was to record and comment on the process of aging, not so much to pass on any tidbits of wisdom as to watch what was happening from the inside in order to deal with the difficulties more effectively. If my observations are useful, then good. I posted regularly each year through 2014. There were a few more posts in 2015 and 2017 which tried to sum up my life and experiences at that time. But by then I felt as if I'd said everything I needed to say, at least via the long blog format, in the over 550 posts I'd written during those 13 years.<br />
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Since then I've been furiously active on social media -- Facebook, Twitter and Instagram -- posting and commenting on a wide variety of topics that interest me, those in the title of this blog and also way too much about the current political drama in the U.S., Europe and Thailand (to choose only a few high spots). Not a few of my friends, who haven't blocked or snoozed me for excessive posting, even read them and respond.<br />
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In Jerry's last months, as his body grew thinner and bonier from heart problems and perhaps cirrhosis, we used to sit at his kitchen table and celebrate our happiness at ending up in Thailand with women and their families we loved and who cared for us. We were close enough in age to share cultural references that others might not recognize, and our time in the music scene in the 1970s gave our friendship a grounding only occasionally shaken by his judgments about the many ways our views and opinions differed. Jerry had little interest in American politics after 15 years away, and he hated not only expats who wore shorts and flip-flops but also all social media other than email. Like many technophobes, he disguised his inability to understand with dislike. When he could no longer go out easily, a blow to his love of the Bangkok social scene, I would download movies for him from the internet to watch on the laptop in his bedroom, hundreds of them. I got him ebooks as well but he wasn't able to figure out the iBooks program on his Mac.<br />
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Social media has been like a candy store for me. When I was a returning student in the 1980s, I discovered a love for research in the library. I would find a location call number for a subject that sparked my curiosity and then would browse all the books in the neighborhood. Locating a comfortable chair, I would sit for hours with a pile of books to browse. The old card catalog was slowly moving online and I learned to use dumb terminals connected to the database to find books I wanted in other places, and I would would order them from inter-library loan. Then I bought a used terminal and a noisy phone modem and learned I could research libraries from home during the early days of the World Wide Web. In time I got my first Apple computer and later traded up for a color model when they were developed. I followed along as the internet technology picked up speed and gradually absorbed all the knowledge in the documented world. Only curiosity was necessary, and the world would reveal its jewels of information to the willing acolyte. I was hooked, for good and ill. As any user knows, the internet has a dark and an addictive side, and avoiding temptation was often a challenge.<br />
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So while the huge arguments surrounding the giant corporations controlling the internet have their merits, for me the benefits of a virtually-connected world outweigh problems like threats to privacy and monopoly control. I spend at least three hours every morning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google News and Feedly, an app that collects stories from a variety of sites I follow. I've learned to skim news items, focusing on trusted sources and finding support when I come across questionable information. It's not hard to separate reliable from fake news but it takes a bit of work.<br />
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The internet has made it possible to stay in touch with distant family and friends. My three children in the U.S. are not as addicted as I to the medium. My oldest son prefers Twitter, the youngest Instagram and my daughter uses email. I was not the best father. My first family suffered from my involvement in the music business, and the second from neglect when I returned to university study. I was often not there when they needed me, so I must work harder now to stay in touch at this time of in our lives. In another era it would have been by writing real letters (which Jerry continued to do). Besides family, I am Facebook friends with people from almost every stage of my life, including Barb from junior high school. I discover old friends all the time, although its probably true that my cohort is mostly technophobic or inept about social media. Not a few are rabid right wingers who I try to avoid.<br />
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I've been in love with the written word, reading it as well as recording my own views and opinions in sentences as articulate and as elegant as possible, since I started writing a music column in my local paper when I was a teenager (and an aspiring jazz musician on clarinet & alto sax). I was a journalist for much of the 1960s. Publishing a book was another matter. I tried writing short stories and poetry, and poked away at a novel that never took off. The only extended writing I've done was at university in the 1980s and 1990s (I was a late bloomer) where I wrote many academic papers, an MA thesis and a Ph.d. dissertation. In the process I wrote up my research on saving the redwoods for a local land trust and the book was given away for donations. Still, it had my name on it which was something. Sometimes I imagine that I might turn my 550 blog posts into a book of some sort, but the thought of reading them all over again does not appeal.<br />
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It seems a bit pointless to make long-term plans for the future now. I could keel over tomorrow and it would be completely natural. No one would cry out that "he died too young." Having learned that habits are the brain's way to conserve energy, I have embraced routine lovingly. Besides my morning (sometimes as early as 4 am) appointment with the internet, I walk up the street to get a cappuccino in the morning and late afternoon, and I swim twice a day in my condo's pool. While sipping caffeine or sitting beside the pool, I read books in my iPad (over 400 waiting for my attention). I miss the feel and smell of paper books but my eyes are too poor and I appreciate being able to enlarge an ebook's type. In the evening after dinner I choose something from a long selection of TV show, movies and documentaries I've downloaded. My lady and I eat out at restaurants in the area once or twice a week. Now that she has a car, I'm looking forward to trips out of the city. My 80-year-old life is very full.<br />
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So what did my father mean when he said "the older I get, the less I know"? I think he meant his realization that old age brings with it a lessening of confidence in the certainties that sustained us during our middle years. There's a time for true beliefs and a time for questions. Few of us recognize at the time that most beliefs and certainties are provisional and subject to later update. Of course a fading memory helps! I'm not even sure what I used to be certain of. Certainly it including an ignorance of the aging process. Perhaps that are some senior user manuals available now but I've not read them. Not a day goes by that I don't discover something new about my body's disintegration or the holes in my thinking about some important. This I suppose is what is meant by second childhood. If so, it's not a bad state of mind.<br />
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<br />Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com2Bangkok, Thailand13.7563309 100.5017651000000613.2627269 99.856318100000053 14.2499349 101.14721210000006tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-303129958645221202017-05-10T12:35:00.001+07:002018-03-02T18:40:31.263+07:00Curiosity has its own Reason for Existing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Einstein said that. He
also said, "For me, curiosity has always been the drug of choice."
Without it I may have settled down into a successful career. Like
my friend Paul. We met when we were 14 and he sang in a boys' choir.
Years later he toured the world with the Roger Wager Chorale. Now
in his late 70s, he continues to teach and conduct choral music. Paul has
had a great career down a single track. Curiosity may not have killed the
cat but it gives birth to distractions that get in the way of sucess, fame and financial gain.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I used to wear an Einstein mask
every Halloween. It was a rubber mask that cover my head and made it
difficult to breathe. Most of the kids had no idea who I was supposed to
be, and were not a little frightened. I also had some iconic posters of the scientist on my wall. I
looked up to him because he defied expectations and not because I wanted to
follow in his path. I was a dunce at math.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In my life I have followed the path of passionate curiosity, poking my nose in
odd corners that attracted my attention. Sometimes the interest was
sustained, but usually it lasted only a season, to be replaced in time by
another. From the outside this appears to be the way of the dilettante,
the nomad, the butterfly who never alights long enough to get the juice.
My father used to complain that my habit of switching jobs was a recipe
for disaster. He was driven by memories of the Depression to provide for
his family at whatever the cost. I was driven by a thirst for novelty and adventure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When I was a young boy I wanted to become a movie actor. My uncle had a
modest success acting on Broadway, and his advice to my father about me was:
"Drown him!" When I was 10 I was impressed by a neighbor's
clarinet and took up the instrument, later adding the alto sax and performing
as a teenager in several dance bands. My dream then was to join Stan Kenton's orchestra.
But when it dawned on me that my musical talent was limited, I decided to
write about it instead, reviewing records in a local paper and later
interviewing rock stars. This led to a brief career as an entertainment press agent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Reading has always been a passion. In the second grade I read biographies
of famous people borrowed from the Sunday School library. In Atlanta at 12 I
lay in a hammock behind our house and read science fiction, the novels of Isaac Asimov and Ray
Bradbury in particular. While recovering from a car accident after high school
I read best selling fiction, and was particularly fond of the novels of Ayn Rand
and Frank Yerby. A girlfriend traveling in Europe smuggled copies of
Henry Miller's banned Tropics for me, and an older mentor gave me Kerouac's On
the Road to read. I would never be able to read pop fiction again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But my first specific passion was religion. While my broken femur healed,
a friend brought me books about world religions that I found fascinating.
Another brought me books about flying saucers and he suggested that the
Star of David was probably a UFO, an idea I found oddly appealing. Paul
(the singer in the first paragraph) had met Peter at our community college and
Peter's mother received messages from the space aliens. She was a
successful interior decorator in Beverly Hills but had also founded a group to
study New Age thought. I sat at her feet and soaked up her wisdom and
read the books she loaned me by saucer contactees who wrote about their encounters
with otherworldly visitors. One of them, Orfeo Angelucci visited our
group to tell of his experiences but the fact that he was not exactly sober
made it difficult to understand him. Eventually the group's consensus
that whiteness was a sign of spiritual advancement (it was the era of civil
rights) made it impossible to remain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">New Age thought, however, continued to attract. One Easter Week, when
college students flocked to the beach towns to drink and celebrate, I left my
friends at our hotel to attend a meeting of Theosophy, a religious movement started by the
inimitable Madame Blavatsky. I listened to Alan Watts' radio shows and once
stood at the back of a church to hear him speak though I could only see heads
in front of me. At Berkeley, foreign films became my passion after seeing
"The Seventh Seal" and "La Strada." I got involved in
campus politics and fell behind in my classes, lying in bed to read science
fiction. After Christmas I dropped out and visited my uncle in Cuernavaca,
Mexico, for several months. After an interlude of hepatitis, I journeyed to
Manhattan where I slept in an Italian lady's room in the village and commuted
to my job with United Press International in Newark, New Jersey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Who am I?" "What
am I to do?" These were the two important questions I asked in my
twenties. It also seemed important to know whether or not there was a god
(who could perhaps tell me the answers). Aside from a brief moment while
attending a Christian youth camp for a week during high school, I rarely came
close to believing in the standard Protestant truths. I drank
immoderately, smoked two packs a day, and if I couldn't find any worlds to
conquer I looked for women. In rare moments of reflection, I attempted to
make some sense out of my experience. But I resisted dogmatic and easy
answers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">S.I. Hayakawa</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After returning to California,
my next passion was general semantics. I was impressed by S.I. Hayakawa's
book, <i>Language in Thought and Action</i>, some years before he angered students on
strike at San Francisco State College, a stand that got him elected to the U.S.
Senate. He was also the editor of ETC, a journal to which I subscribed,
hoping to better understand how language might be understood and used. Finally a
friend introduced me to Alfred Korzybski, the self-taught scholar who had
influenced Hayakawa, and I carried around a copy of his <i>Science and Sanity</i> for years.
"The map is not the territory," is one of his famous
utterances, meaning there is a gap between reality and its representation in
language (later Richard Rorty's <i>Philosophy and the Mirror of Natur</i>e would
reinforce that idea). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0-HtgSqfVnka34lxBfAUXYNZ1rPl9ul5EyCweSbGxDSfUmtioBwdFLRDEmRVJ9X2TQt6X1WGFZC4J9Ga_ZfBmZfYefIw2Zch9WVMDfC1jVizVc5aPS1ra9gUeQd2X4WRIQV6/s1600/gurdous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0-HtgSqfVnka34lxBfAUXYNZ1rPl9ul5EyCweSbGxDSfUmtioBwdFLRDEmRVJ9X2TQt6X1WGFZC4J9Ga_ZfBmZfYefIw2Zch9WVMDfC1jVizVc5aPS1ra9gUeQd2X4WRIQV6/s200/gurdous.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Gurdjieff/Ouspensky</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1964 I moved with my wife to
London where I worked as a writer for a TV program journal. The High Holborn
library was next door to our offices and I spent much time in the stacks. I
went through the collected works of Agatha Christie as well as anything I could
find about the war in Vietnam then underway. The Theosophy Bookstore
across from the British Museum was a few blocks away and I spent many breaks
from work pouring over their selections. My uncle had suggested I read
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, two Russian New Age prophets, and they led me to a
biography by the Englishman John G. Bennett, a disciple of Gurdjieff who had converted to Subud, a spiritual discipline that originated in Indonesia (later he moved on to Sufism). By chance I met an American who practiced
the latihan, the name for Subud's form of prayer, and my wife and I tried
it out for a couple of months. I also continued to read fiction and when
Marianne Faithfull, a young pop singer with an intellectual bent, mentioned in
an interview she loved Lawrence Durell's <i>Alexandria Quartet</i>, I read it with
gusto.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ5XGQpcWilbr_v32IMwMe4sGvnnXbtO8LvvTDwyHtlJmkNyLlpX-tfZegjF7bbcZMzDLQns3IRZCy0DwnPlM2K_C5CvasiXyDafERJgi450JYF82f2cFvsk0TqvE3fU0ExFy8/s1600/gary_snyder_2007_columbia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ5XGQpcWilbr_v32IMwMe4sGvnnXbtO8LvvTDwyHtlJmkNyLlpX-tfZegjF7bbcZMzDLQns3IRZCy0DwnPlM2K_C5CvasiXyDafERJgi450JYF82f2cFvsk0TqvE3fU0ExFy8/s200/gary_snyder_2007_columbia.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Gary Snyder</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Returning to California with my wife and infant son, I became an entertainment
publicist in Hollywood with little time for intellectual passion. But
I did find time for classes at Los Angeles State in symbolic logic and philosophy.
I'd flunked algebra but was surprised to find symbolic logic was algebra by
another name, simple and fascinating. When I went to work for a record
company in Berkeley I met a worker in the warehouse who showed me the poems
he'd published in the <i>Paris Review.</i> Much impressed, I asked him to teach
me about poetry. I'd read the San Francisco poets Gary Snyder, Philip
Whalen and Lew Welch, and he recommended the New York poets, like Frank O'Hara,
and the French modernists such as Pierre Reverdy (a French Canadian, he'd
translated Reverdy and others for a major anthology. Under his influence,
we started a poetry magazine. Such mimeographed poetry zines were all the rage and
ours was called "The End." I typed up the issues on the same Gestetner printing machine I used for press releases and even contributed a few haiku.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Back in Hollywood, I showed the magazine to an editor and a poet and the three
of us founded the <i>Sunset Palms Hotel</i>. It was much more professionally
done then the mimeod zine and the poet found excellent contributions from
Bukowski among others. I encouraged Tom Waits, whose debut bio I'd
written, to give us some of his song lyrics. Besides poetry, my other passion
remained religion. When I learned my secretary was a trainer for Transcendental
Meditation, I urged her to initiate me. The fact that I had slept with
both her and her sister apparently did not count against my spiritual advancement. I
went to a few TM meetings in Westwood but I never advanced further than feeling
a bit of bless right before falling asleep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OLCziGvJpBNfOl7CSmXBPVfL6NcjOm1oFloFDgkCDA-RMXxDAVO6bZSdo7AjWkMKuEOugseclCK63VFnu9740rVsjd26-LtpMir0aalyutGAbukIsbjaMx8lYFrGtA7fIBS8/s1600/herbert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OLCziGvJpBNfOl7CSmXBPVfL6NcjOm1oFloFDgkCDA-RMXxDAVO6bZSdo7AjWkMKuEOugseclCK63VFnu9740rVsjd26-LtpMir0aalyutGAbukIsbjaMx8lYFrGtA7fIBS8/s200/herbert.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Nick Herbert</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After five years working in the music business in Hollywood, the writing on the
wall said "leave before you die!" I left drugs behind when I
moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains and reinvented my life as an occasional poet
on unemployment reading in clubs and a paste-up artist for a local paper. In time I went to work as art director for a music magazine over the hill
near San Jose. Right after my daughter was born, I enrolled in an
extension class at the university called "The Conscious Atom" taught by
physicist and magician Fred Alan Wolf. Quantum physics and the philosophical
implications of it because my new passion. Fortunately, a neighbor, Nick
Herbert, had written several books about it and introduced me to his good
friends Heinz Pagels, also an author on the topic, and his wife Elaine Pagels
who had written on Christian mysticism and theology. Both religion and
physics (the little I understood) obsessed me for a few years. During this time I attended a weekend seminar at Esalen and sat at the feet of the marvelous Gregory Bateson.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7nhleIDHqYi3d1_s148cvLBHt9wpdYl1GeI8p3qw87FI3e5jw40Hay3eeeuMF05SeGpfxq-eybe3V4p2nkX23yv9KNSR0sRJxW6m9nqr91V34bdCFiPqs9k6L7ZP0m2CZEYo/s1600/merton285.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7nhleIDHqYi3d1_s148cvLBHt9wpdYl1GeI8p3qw87FI3e5jw40Hay3eeeuMF05SeGpfxq-eybe3V4p2nkX23yv9KNSR0sRJxW6m9nqr91V34bdCFiPqs9k6L7ZP0m2CZEYo/s200/merton285.jpg" width="163" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Thomas Merton</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We moved to Connecticut to be near my wife's family and I used my publishing
skills in New York City. A friend introduced me to Thomas Merton's
writings and I think I discovered Simone Weil on my own, as well as Nicolas
Berdyaev. All three expanded my understand of what Christianity could be
and I began to sit in churches at lunch time waiting for a sign. I
visited a Catholic church in a barn upstate where I met Brother David Steindl-Rast, the prophet of gratefulness, and learned about Buddhist meditation at the
New York Zen Center. And I spent a weekend at the Catholic monastery St.
Joseph's Abbey in Massachusetts where I listened to a monk, Father Theophane,
advise us to write our own Bible. (His book, <i>Tales of a Magic Monastery,</i>
is delightful).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With a new zafu purchased from the Integral Yoga Society in lower Manhattan, I took up
meditation, using an egg timer to tell me when three minutes had passed, and a
small book by Baba Ram Dass as my guide. Our son was born one rainy morning at
New Haven Hospital and we left Connecticut to return to California where I would sit in silence in front of a wood stove until he crawled out of bed and into my
lap in the morning. I continued to read about religion and physics.
Merton wrote against the Vietnam war and in favor of other religions like
Buddhism and Hinduism. He resurrected a mysticism that had been
suppressed by the institutional church, and he was my main man. Years later when I visited the Buddhist ruins at Polonnaruwa on Sri Lanka I would recall the influence it had on him which he described in <i>The Asia Journal.</i> And in Bangkok I visited the spot where he died, electrocuted by an ungrounded fan. I also
collected the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein because I sensed there was something
important in his philosophy but I was not ready to understand them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij7scduHpkuEPM-drLVI0m7iWDSD7L6ft4zRN0t0UF0wAdNpioM_rnGn8dpcH-Q0agFMBRJ9zXhRpEPQc7Vy22oHUIJhs9s7NKr4yhnL5gIqlIu-Cro4nxJhq6lFNJDk7jc-R7/s1600/witt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij7scduHpkuEPM-drLVI0m7iWDSD7L6ft4zRN0t0UF0wAdNpioM_rnGn8dpcH-Q0agFMBRJ9zXhRpEPQc7Vy22oHUIJhs9s7NKr4yhnL5gIqlIu-Cro4nxJhq6lFNJDk7jc-R7/s200/witt.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Wittgenstein</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">My next job was doing data entry for the Alumni Association in Santa Cruz, and not long after
I learned I could apply to reenter the University of California with an essay
on my life experiences (books read, etc.) which could erase the Fs I received
when I dropped out of Berkeley. I started slowly with one class in Indian
philosophy from an Oxford-trained Indian professor who announced "we will
light no candles in this class!" The next few years were among the
best of my life. For a BA I studied philosophy with a concentration in
religious thought, and my thesis on Wittgenstein (who I finally was able to
read) and the will earned me a nomination to Phi Beta Kappa.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0eYypDI_R_HQzS6WCD5Toxh_Z6uAPN-Nn8uSerDGHnXRDdRBwAUOpWx4rCNd3NFzDoP8DQmZalS5ifE7x9aVQYgo8MrrZKpwJ9z0IqMwdcngyPQs9WgVxpWdCte0EfTtaW5j7/s1600/lammenais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0eYypDI_R_HQzS6WCD5Toxh_Z6uAPN-Nn8uSerDGHnXRDdRBwAUOpWx4rCNd3NFzDoP8DQmZalS5ifE7x9aVQYgo8MrrZKpwJ9z0IqMwdcngyPQs9WgVxpWdCte0EfTtaW5j7/s200/lammenais.jpg" width="133" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It wasn't easy going and I stopped and started my resurrected academic career a
number of times. I tried to get into the graduate program in History of
Consciousness (Huey P. Newton got in, but not me). At the time I was
studying to convert to Catholicism under the influence of Weil, Merton, and
liberation theology in Latin American which was combatting the oligarchs with
life lessons from scripture. I ended up in history with a plan to study
the influence of politics and socialism on religion in Europe. I took a number of courses in
intellectual history in the 19th century, focusing on France because my
dissertation topic was, Felicité Lamennais, a French priest who progressed from
conservative views to radical political ones. I also did work on Poland for the
MA, Peru, Morocco, and contemporary historiography which had been influenced by
postmodernism. It was a fascinating time, but because of my obsession
with ideas and history I was too preoccupied to be a very good husband and
father.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKl7pqdrkbobYu9aMiBnrEorFLRcqvj_aX-86_2KeMBKSfX4UVLejhhy8COYv5lLgoGRgg5K6nawPQ3AcP-KFL1lRyLli4D759XVeD6XDtCJJ2CqP4KRnnp0HUbLneAvRx73XG/s1600/Merchant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKl7pqdrkbobYu9aMiBnrEorFLRcqvj_aX-86_2KeMBKSfX4UVLejhhy8COYv5lLgoGRgg5K6nawPQ3AcP-KFL1lRyLli4D759XVeD6XDtCJJ2CqP4KRnnp0HUbLneAvRx73XG/s200/Merchant.jpg" width="154" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Merchant</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There wasn't much support in academia at that time for a white male in his mid-60s. I
needed to dig into the French archives for my dissertation research but found
no grants available that would help me provide for my work and my family.
So I took another year off, and audited a course an environmental history
taught by Carolyn Merchant from Berkeley, author of <i>The Death of Nature</i>, who because a mentor and friend. Another helpful influence at this time was sociologist James O'Connor who was researching local history. I
switched my field from European to U.S. history and began a dissertation on the
middle-class social movement that saved the redwoods in Big Basin, not far from
where I lived, for the state's first public park. My new passion then was
environmentalism which include such topics as eco-theology and Deep Ecology (a
class full of Marxist students thrashed me over that New Age subject). I
wrote the text for a coffee table book on the Sempervirens Fund which continued
to support Big Basin land purchases.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When I became officially Dr. Will, my interest in environmentalism as an
intellectual idea was as almost exhausted. The Ph.D. dissertation turned out ok but it broke no new theoretical grounds and I had little interest in turning
it into a book as Dr. Merchant suggested. By the time I collected by
certificate at the graduation ceremony from Angela Davis, there seemed no new ground to explore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO1Puy1YIdQbgY8wEEe8Oc13gn4DxcyinMcKhuvS4DTp2oCSPRCiEGR_n2a89_hzpGLC6JwVu-EJMOJ7ksz39yYqykX88f6MmVQSHcvBbaDJCUQdRzqEAvn0qbJ0sKi3qFV6cI/s1600/bede-griffiths1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO1Puy1YIdQbgY8wEEe8Oc13gn4DxcyinMcKhuvS4DTp2oCSPRCiEGR_n2a89_hzpGLC6JwVu-EJMOJ7ksz39yYqykX88f6MmVQSHcvBbaDJCUQdRzqEAvn0qbJ0sKi3qFV6cI/s200/bede-griffiths1.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Bede Griffiths</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">While I was becoming a Catholic, I spent time at the Hermitage, a monastery in
the Camaldolese order, in the Big Sur hills. I had long known of Bede
Griffiths, the British priest who took over Shantivanam in India from the
French monks who had started it in the 1950s. Although Griffiths had died
in 1993, Shantivanam remained a place of pilgrimage. I learned of an
annual tour there from Matthew Fox's Wisdom University led by a disciple of
Griffiths, and I joined it in January of 2004. Before then I'd never had any desire to
visit India or even Asia and was not a little nervous about the trip. It was an
eye-popper. The tour leader got us into temples past the signs banning
non-Hindus, and I loved the peace of Shantivanam near the banks of the Cauvery
River in Tamal Nadu (but not the squat toilets). I returned three more times, and co-founded Sangha Shantivan with a group of mostly Catholics. One year later I led a tour group to Shantivanam. Another time I played Santa Claus for the
kids. It's been ten years now since my last visit and I miss it,
especially the cricket-playing boys on the river beach.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBLQaKtvXadoK1x_VAvDvnf3div11D9r7kSdPslgNjZ7inKupWWLTIohzzFyZz5Qk0NdT19DURmVf5GkavXOLlVl5ImX134o9VFhYRRaGj8luxKTZZwE7NLIfPnqVKBFG57odo/s1600/buddha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBLQaKtvXadoK1x_VAvDvnf3div11D9r7kSdPslgNjZ7inKupWWLTIohzzFyZz5Qk0NdT19DURmVf5GkavXOLlVl5ImX134o9VFhYRRaGj8luxKTZZwE7NLIfPnqVKBFG57odo/s200/buddha.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When I became an expat in Thailand the natural passion was the social history
and politics of the region. I read a number of books on the subject as
well as many on Theravada Buddhism, the form practiced in Thailand. I
joined a group of expats and residents in a Buddhist sangha for English
speakers, became a volunteer of the National Museum, and attended talks at the
Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. Along with other members of the
NMV we began a separate group to discuss the more sensitive subject of Thai
politics with guests who offered their perspectives for us to chew over.
While I don't know if I'm exactly a Buddhist, I buy flowers ever Monk's
Day for our condo shrine, and continue to form and spread my opinions through
social media. Since politics is an even more dangerous subject in
contemporary Thailand, I will say that this forbidden subject is a definite
passion but one I cannot discuss.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sometimes I think I'd like to go back to school. Taking classes, reading books, and talking about their ideas was the ideal life for me and I miss it. I'm more of a materialist than i used to be, and can no longer follow a religious path without nit-picking it to death. Religion remains the major over-arching passion of my life. My theory is that religious language is meaningful but not in any literal sense. It binds like-minded people together through stories like it did for my Catholic friends in California. Today I'm fascinated by the new cognitive study of religion which is developing theories about why humans anticipate an after life and engage in rituals with purposes sometimes hard to fathom. Consciousness -- what is it? -- is also a central interest. In a sense consciousness, our own consciousness of something like a self, is the only thing. But some think it's just an illusion. Buddhism has some interesting teachings on the subject but they're difficult to unpack. I'm working on it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidAak_8LA7HXWhm0jvZm99nfKcnatyNOC3Mr2PvDqNCvbdZ7Ts3DVm3XzlAprNizz7Xl3V4zPpiXoDBfhBUBE88DhsdGu93mvaawXuqsCFLrFwEctIJWEpxETKflbe9W59cGKU/s1600/teach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidAak_8LA7HXWhm0jvZm99nfKcnatyNOC3Mr2PvDqNCvbdZ7Ts3DVm3XzlAprNizz7Xl3V4zPpiXoDBfhBUBE88DhsdGu93mvaawXuqsCFLrFwEctIJWEpxETKflbe9W59cGKU/s200/teach.jpg" width="145" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If I have a major passion these days other than the above it would be pedagogy. I've been teaching English for ten years to Buddhist monks and a few lay students but I really have no idea if I've accomplished anything. At the end of most of my 16-week classes, the students with a good facility continue while those who have difficulty saying anything in English remain mute. I've tried a variety of methods and techniques, have learned how to design a PowerPoint presentation that will hold their attention (usually), and I've collected a wide range of videos that help to teach the grammar lessons I want them to learn. But the biggest problem, pronunciation, remains because the university's Sound Lab is unusable. With only two and a half hours a week, my students really do not have enough time to practice conversation. The only permanent way they can learn is to use English like a tool, like a hammer, to achieve communication with other English users. It's been my most rewarding career but I'm not sure if I've been up to the task.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, as I await my 78 birthday, I look back on my life as a dilettante, one in which I changed jobs and passions as one discards old clothes. I was always either inspired or distracted by my curiosity. Which? And why? For all my efforts I've written no novels, no philosophical words of wisdom, no works of research to advance the boundaries of knowledge. I've traveled a bit, met some interesting people and kept a few as good friends. I've loved and been loved in return. It's been a good life. I don't regret most of it.</span></div>
Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-81208952582573034312017-04-26T09:31:00.000+07:002017-05-14T14:22:45.947+07:00Expat or Immigrant?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ayGLdYw3I3fI-WGaG4SfnUCVuIY3GdbUFZGcrsoTmDUdvc8IQ2bIuSRL0XAoli0iOx1XWDSmmzbxA4YCchAY2biiJdJnZLwrUeM4WT5XsOQu7lO4_VlPmlNghrRd-rmscC8e/s1600/immigrants.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ayGLdYw3I3fI-WGaG4SfnUCVuIY3GdbUFZGcrsoTmDUdvc8IQ2bIuSRL0XAoli0iOx1XWDSmmzbxA4YCchAY2biiJdJnZLwrUeM4WT5XsOQu7lO4_VlPmlNghrRd-rmscC8e/s400/immigrants.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Thai
officials detain Burmese migrants and Rohingya Muslims in Nakhon Si Thammarat
province.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Next month, if all my documents are in order (never a certainty!), I'll renew my "non-immigrant" visa and work permit for the 10th time. I call myself an expat, but this label has become controversial. An expatriate is someone who no longer lives in the country of their birth. An immigrant is someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country. If permanency is the issue, I never plan to leave Thailand. But why can I call myself an expat while the dejected men in the above photo are referred to as migrants? Is it because I'm a white westerner and financially self-supporting? Has expat become a racist term to distinguish between haves and have-nots?<br />
<br />
Conflicts in the Middle East and Africa have produced a flood of immigrants seeking refuge elsewhere, particularly Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Many are fleeing to save their lives and hoping for a new life in another country, preferably one with opportunities for work. But no one describes the Muslim migrant in Indiana or Stockholm as an expat. Objections to the influx of immigrants and rising Islamophobia have resulted in conservative political movements that call for closed borders. But while I face irritating bureaucratic hurdles each year, no one in Thailand is calling for a ban on expats.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7CynZdP1nrraScG-g8QMBZgx9m_CnN8PP_elrHA3sTPklCvIRjghK15g02rdvRfU0jp7rM64Z_Xza6PYbayuimtZVD0Fr8Q4-Va0GnmyYFzu7VRV5nN7Y3fxlqm0_3kW72bbl/s1600/IMG_8809.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7CynZdP1nrraScG-g8QMBZgx9m_CnN8PP_elrHA3sTPklCvIRjghK15g02rdvRfU0jp7rM64Z_Xza6PYbayuimtZVD0Fr8Q4-Va0GnmyYFzu7VRV5nN7Y3fxlqm0_3kW72bbl/s200/IMG_8809.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
There are a variety of expats in Bangkok where I live. Some come for sex in the "entertainment" zones of the city, many for medical treatment in the upscale hospitals, and most have probably been transferred here by their companies or embassies. No one seems to know how many non-Thai resident expats are here on a long-term basis but I've seen the figure of 85,000 for Bangkok alone. Then there are the semi-expats, more than tourists, who come to Thailand every year for a month or two on a temporary visa. Expats have "Hi-So" status in Thai culture which may be one of the attractions. They feel at home in the high-rise condominiums and super-malls. <br />
<br />
There may be several hundred thousand immigrants in Thailand, legal and illegal, mostly from Myanmar and Cambodia. You can see them on construction sites and in the nearby shanty towns built for temporary labor. Many beg on the streets. Migrants have little status and are tolerated more than accepted. There is clearly a class difference between expats and immigrants.<br />
<br />
I've reflected on these distinctions here <a href="https://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2014/03/tourist-traveler-expat.html">before</a>. There are many labels for the traveler who leaves home and goes to another place elsewhere. Some seek adventure and others leave because they have no choice. Their home has been destroyed and their neighbors are being killed. My reasons pale by comparison. California simply became too expensive on my retirement income. I received a small pension from the University of California along with health insurance (the minimum is $1,000 now which makes it only useful for catastrophic care), and a decent sum from Social Security because of a few high-salary years in the music business. In California, I could afford a garage studio apartment and not much else. In Thailand it is a princely sum.<br />
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I had a choice. I came by plane and not in a leaky boat or after a trek through the jungle. I didn't need to work but found a job by accident as an English teacher at a university for Buddhist monks. Though only part-time, it's become a calling, a vocation, and has brought me more satisfaction than any of the career paths I followed back in the U.S.<br />
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Still, I imagine my homebound friends asking, why become an expat? Why leave your friends and family and everything that is familiar and move permanently to a strange place where people look odd, think differently and speak a language you cannot understand? In retrospect, I believe that I was raised to be an expat.<br />
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Toledo, Ohio, was my birth home. I remember little about it except for the Art Museum where I watched cartoons on Saturday and the girl next door who let me play doctor behind the tree in full view of my mother's kitchen window. After the war when I was six, we moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where my dad got a job selling plastics. I remember vacations on the beach at Nags Head and in Florida where my father grew up. After a couple of years we moved to Lenoir in the western part of the state where my dad sold glue for plywood to make furniture. Moving so often meant it was difficult to find and keep close friends. A year or so later we moved again to Atlanta where my father managed a lumber warehouse for a year. Our final move as a family in 1953 was to the foothills of Southern California. I couldn't have been happier to start my teenage years not far from Hollywood where I hoped to work someday as an actor (I know, some kids want to be firemen, but I was different).<br />
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For the next few years my only trips were up north to San Francisco where my aunt and uncle lived in Tiburon with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and to see an elderly cousin in Berkeley who lived in a lovely old turn-of-the-century house. I preferred the green of the Bay Area to the bone dry landscape in the south. A few years later, despite my poor high school grades (I flunked band!), I managed to transfer from junior college to the Berkeley campus of the University of California. Majoring first in English and later in journalism, I found student life difficult. In the run-up to Christmas vacation, I lay in bed reading science fiction rather than attend class. I wrote of my unhappiness to my father's gay twin-brother and he invited me to stay with him in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he lived in the winter months <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">after working the summer as a maître d' at a
hotel on Cape Cod.</span><br />
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It was my first trip out of the country and the Tres Estrellas d'Oro bus took me from Tijuana to Mexico City where Ted met me. Mexico was surprising, scary and wonderful to this first-timer. Ted had a tiny apartment on a dirt alley and friends all over the city that included Helen Hayes and Barbara Hutton, as well as with numerous "remittance men" sent south by their wealthy families to avoid scandal. When his friend Alicia arrived from New York, we traveled south to the peninsula by bus and around to Veracruz and back again. He had a writing table made for my Smith-Corona and I pounded out bad poetry under the jacaranda tree in his patio.<br />
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My next trip was to New York City the following fall, arriving by train not long before the Cuban Missile Crisis. First I slept on a mattress in Alicia's nephew's apartment. Then I moved to the basement room of an Italian lady's house on Leroy Street in Greenwich Village and got a job with United Press International in Newark, New Jersey, that required an extended commute. Back in California, I met the first love of my life at a party and we moved to Berkeley where I went to work as a summer replacement reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle. At the end of the summer we got married and took a train to the east coast, but were delayed by a train wreck on the Texas-Louisiana border. In North Carolina, where my parents lived once again, we all watched the events surrounding Kennedy's assassination on TV before the two of us continued up to Manhattan.<br />
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After a short period of poverty, my wife and I found subsistence jobs and enjoyed life in the big city. But wanderlust called again, and I set my sights on Europe. At the end of the summer in 1964 we flew via Icelandic Airlines, then the cheapest fare, to Glasgow, Scotland, where I had a pen pal from high school who promised to put us up. The day we arrived his wife went into labor with her baby and we had their house in Ayr to ourselves for a week. Down in London we shared a flat at first with a friend from New York and I talked myself into a work permit so I could get a job with a London publishing firm, writing about American TV shows for the television program journal in the Midlands. Our son was born the following year and we made plans to return to the U.S. where it seemed more normal to raise a family.<br />
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And that was it for overseas travel for the next 40 years. My wife and I had two sons we raised in Southern California. After that marriage ended, I met my second wife in Northern California and we had two children, a daughter and a son who was born in Connecticut where were lived for a couple of years when I worked in magazine publishing in Manhattan. We traveled several times to Florida to visit both sets of grandparents, and we also went to Hawaii to stay in a rain forest with an old friend. The tropical climate was wonderful and we considered moving there, but the living was too expensive.<br />
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Living outside the country as an expat was unthinkable during these middle years when the children were growing up. I worked for a music magazine, and later decided to return to university study. Through fits and starts, I completed a BA in philosophy with a concentration in religious thought, and began graduate study in history. My first interest was 19th century intellectual history in France. But when it became difficult to find research money for the Ph.D. I switched to U.S. environmental study and wrote a dissertation about a social movement that saved redwood trees in the first California state park in the early 20th century.<br />
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My second marriage ended as I finished writing the doctorate and I taught a few courses in California history and environmental history. Going through another divorce turned my world upside down. I slept in borrowed rooms and tried to reinvent myself as a single man in his mid-60s. The prospects did not seem great. First my mother died in Florida, and then my ex-wife bought out my share of our house. I sold my mother's house, split the proceeds with my brother, and suddenly I had traveling money. I had been teaching a few classes but the students were more interested in partying than in reading books and I was fast losing any desire to help them. The road beckoned.<br />
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Without a wife and with children old enough to take care of themselves, there was nothing to hold me in California. I had been living in the same area for 20 years and it felt almost too comfortable. Friends were active in Habitat for Humanity, and my first trip on my own was to Guatemala to build houses. Next I decided to work on my Spanish and went with a group from the local community college to Oaxaca in Mexico where we studied for a month and lived with local families. It had been over 20 years since my visit with Uncle Ted in Cuernavaca. My language skills improved a little, and so my next trip was with the same college program to Buenos Aires in Argentina for another month of lessons and delicious steaks at midnight (Argentines eat late). We took a couple of trips outside the city, one to visit poet Pablo Neruda's grave in Isla Negra on the coast of Chile.<br />
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Religion determined the next trajectory. Influenced by the writings of Thomas Merton and Simone Weil, I'd converted to Catholicism in the 1980s. But I also retained an interest in Buddhism going back to high school. I began meditating in Connecticut and continued with a local sangha in California, a mixing and matching that I felt Merton would approve. I spent time at a monastery in Big Sur and read about an ashram in India founded by Catholic monks from Brittany and continued by a British priest. I learned of an annual tour to Shantivanam in Tamil Nadu, India, and joined them in January of 2004. It was an eye-opening experience and I returned several more times over the next three years, sometimes in a group and sometimes by myself.<br />
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By 2005 I was actively looking for someplace to live other than the U.S. Mexico and Chile seemed possibilities. The sights, sounds and smells of India were exciting but the crowds and trash put me off. That year I took several tours, one to England to visit cathedrals, and another to Vietnam with a group of priests to celebrate the feast day of the 117 Vietnamese martyrs. Later, I went with one of the priests to Angkor Wat for three days of walking around temples with the help of a car, driver and guide. After the cathedral tour I flew to the island of Menorca to stay with a friend I'd met in Mexico, and I took a boat to Barcelona especially to see the amazing architecture of Antonio Gaudi. From Barcelona I flew to Rome, walked around the city, and rented a car to sample the country, ending up in the mountains at the headquarters of the Camaldolese order, mother house for the monasteries in Big Sur and Tamil Nadu.<br />
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Finally Thailand, where ten yes ago I became either an expat or an immigrant, depending on your point of view. My daughter had been an exchange student in Chiang Mai in 1992, bypassing Bangkok by changing planes at the international airport. There had been demonstrations in the capital and people had been shot by soldiers. The north, we were told, was peaceful. She brought back a collection of straw hats and funny shaped Thai pillows that her Thai family had given her. I flew to Bangkok from Chennai after my first trip to India in 2004 and was met at the airport by an old friend from the music business days and his Thai wife. From the taxi I could see huge photos of the king on the side of numerous tall buildings. <br />
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I stayed at a small guest house near my friend's apartment in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok. The city is huge and spread out with no clear center other than the shopping district of Siam, to which Sukhumvit led, and the backpacker headquarters around Khao San Road across the city near the Chao Phraya River. I was enchanted by the bird songs and the sweet smell of flowers, as well as the heat and the manic bustle of the city around me. That first visit was followed by a few days in the country at my friend's farm in Surin. Then I took the train farther east to Ubon Ratchatoni and spent 10 days at a Buddhist monastery, Wat Pah Nonachant, where I got to shave my head, long a bucket list plan, and wear all white clothes. What I learned most there was that becoming a monk was not in my future.<br />
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I returned to Thailand two more times after trips to the ashram in India. Each journey was planned to see more of the country. On the second visit I traveled by train and bus up to the north, stopping at Ayutthaya, the monkey city of Lopburi, Sukhothai and Chiang Mai with a side trip to the valley of Pai near the Myanmar border, a backpacker outpost. For the third trip, I landed on the island of Koh Samui where I spent a week on and off the beach with a lady of the night. It's amazing how much you can say without a language in common. That week I decided that Thailand was where I wanted to stay for the foreseeable future. I would return to California, dispose of my possessions and return for good within six months.<br />
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And that's what I did, arriving as a permanent resident in August 2007 and finding a furnished studio apartment not far from my Sukhumvit friend. I stocked up on new and used books at Kinokuniya and Dasa Books on the history and politics of Thailand and Southeast Asia, and on how to learn Thai (a losing proposition it seems). I set out to walk over as much of the city as I could, and learned the Skytrain, bus and river taxi routes for what I couldn't reach otherwise. Bangkok, from the tiny alley sois to the penthouse of skyscrapers was my oyster and I wanted to learn all about it. I bought a yellow shirt (the color of the King's birth day) which impressed the women who did my laundry, and under my friend's tutelage I explored the underside of the city: Nana, Soi Cowboy, and Patpong. <br />
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Coming next: Why was I voted Expat Rookie of the Year for 2008 by my Bangkok friends? Why would a <i>farang</i> want to live in Thailand the rest of his life? What's to like and what's not to like about Bangkok life?<br />
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</style>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-27996922882963159872017-04-03T08:43:00.001+07:002017-04-03T08:43:28.049+07:00Won't you spare me over ‘til another year?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -1em;">"I grow old ... I grow old ...</span></div>
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I began writing this blog when I was 65. Nearly two years ago I stopped posting here, as I felt that I had no longer much to say beyond the short bits I put on my Facebook and Twitter sites. Photos, taken and found, had become more interesting to me than words. And after eight years as an expat in Bangkok, it seemed as if I'd seen and photographed everything. The last few posts in 2015 were a kind of summing up of my life.</div>
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But I'm not dead yet. Life goes on and my mind spews forth a litany of thoughts, views and opinions on a daily basis, too much for the social media outlets to which I subscribe. Who wants to read about death anyway? Often I feel like the last elderly man standing, and social media is a game for the young. One lovely lady I knew in junior high school is here, but the rest of my early school cohort are either lost to Alzheimer's or using their tablets as chopping boards. They know what aging is about but the others don't care.</div>
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Aging is not for sissies, Bette Davis supposedly said, and Tolstoy spoke of old age as life's biggest surprise. I've seen it coming for a long time and it doesn't take much work. I'm 77 now and I've enjoyed those numbers since I always thought 7 was a lucky one and it's doubled. In a few months I'll turn 78 and see nothing auspicious about that. It's too close to 80.</div>
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When I started this blog several years after my second marriage ended and I'd retired to travel the world to collect adventures, I chose a name to mark out my domain of controversy. "We don't talk about those topics, dear," my mother would say to me when I asked uncomfortable questions. No one ever talked about the sexual orientation of my father's twin brother until long after he was gone. As for politics, my family was solidly middle class and Nixon supporters. An aunt warned me that communists were teaching Shakespeare in Berkeley where I was going to study. My own post-marriage sexuality a few years after a diagnosis of prostate cancer was an open question. Religion was the easy one. I was an enthusiastic participant in the Catholic mass and a meditator in a couple of Western Buddhist traditions. In short, my thoughts on religion, politics and sex were homegrown and developing. The trick was to articulate them in ways that would help me understand myself.</div>
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Like most of the elderly, I read the obituaries, thrilling when the dead are older than me and cringing when they are not. The words "after a long illness" are especially troubling. My closest friend in Bangkok has been in the process of dying for the last year after he turned 80 with a big party in a ladyboy bar. The heart is his Achilles Heel as it was his father's. He's had open heart surgery and a pacemaker installed, and now it's the ebb and flow of edema and lung congestion. Muscle tissue wastes away. But as long as he can find someone to push his wheel chair up the street, he's happy.</div>
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My father had two heart attacks when he was my age. During the last years of his life he lived in close proximity to an oxygen tank to assist his breathing. When young my father abhorred doctors and refused to ever admit he was sick. At the end he was often in and out of the hospital and took his many medications faithfully as if they were sacraments.</div>
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I can still walk and breathe almost like a young man. But my body is infused with arthritis as was my mother's. She taught me that sitting can cause more pain than walking. Recently I came down with bronchitis, and when a pesky cough refused to go away I was given a dose of prednisolone. Years ago I took this drug and it cured a terrible asthma attack in hours. But it's a steroid and carries risks. A friend died of a fungus infection that was connected with too much prednisone. So I was cautious but hopeful. My cure wasn't dramatic and the cough lingered before going away. The surprise was the effect the drug had on my body. Almost all the arthritis pain disappeared and I was able to sprint out of my chair after sitting. When I stopped taking it, the old familiar aches and paints of aging returned. </div>
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I told my son recently that my death of choice would be to keel over while teaching English to a roomful of monks at the university where I've worked for nearly ten years. They would be shocked and sad, but understanding, for death is a part of life to those growing up in the farming regions of Southeast Asia. As monks they believe that one's life is only in transition between one rebirth and another. I long ago lost my faith in metaphors and consoling stories, and although I'm certain my future is only ashes I would avoid encouraging any believers to share my unbelief.</div>
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As someone who lives each day with one foot planted in real life and the other in the grave (I didn't really mean that above about metaphors), the main difference I see between the me who started to write this blog in 2006 and the me who may or may not continue writing it in 2017 is that I no longer make plans. By that I mean long-term plans, like finally writing that novel I was always meant to write. Short-term plans, sure. My friend and I make an appointment for lunch next week. I write in my calendar the dates for Songkran and our trip to Nan's village in Phayao. Since I have to renew my work permit and visa every May 31, that is a date I don't forget. Or the day of my 90-days report to the Immigration Office which happens to be tomorrow.</div>
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What I mean is I make no plans for 2018. I watch the slow construction of the overhead rail system that I can see from my window. There is construction for the transit system going on all over Bangkok which has one of the worst current public transportation systems in Asia. Some day it will be easy to get around the city by the BTS or MRT, but I don't expect it will be by me. Completion is too far in the future.</div>
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I don't exercise, beyond a few laps in the pool every few days because I like it, and I don't think much about what I eat, the excessive intake of ice cream and Oreos, because this body I've carried around for 77 years is not going to improve. Improvement involves thought for the future and the uncertainty that tomorrow brings. My days are directed mostly by habit, since habitual behavior is known to save on brain energy which I need to understand the threats and crises faced by the planet these days. Going to the pool at 10 and up the street for cappuccino at 5 leaves my brain free to keep track of the Apocalypse.</div>
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Yes, I could die tomorrow and the odds are in favor of it. But today, right now, I'm alive and the fan across the room dries my sweat. Outside the sun is shining through the morning mist over Bangkok. The traffic on the highway has passed its morning peak. And I have things to do, thoughts to think, and even places to go. I might even write another blog post, or two.</div>
Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-68593310405782900252015-05-17T09:31:00.000+07:002015-05-17T09:49:34.972+07:00Something About Religion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy5tSzwkprEUs-ug5rmNWOrnAbV7wLeGc0vT5qczozHF88VblT4mBL6TSH9H-NnwlzFBowjedWh2dARWyrxxfrnVQoJXHLDfeL7igw2-ObhUdNGmrZ-kbkTG6sK9W_sg5PW2oC/s1600/Sistine-Chapel-GodAdam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy5tSzwkprEUs-ug5rmNWOrnAbV7wLeGc0vT5qczozHF88VblT4mBL6TSH9H-NnwlzFBowjedWh2dARWyrxxfrnVQoJXHLDfeL7igw2-ObhUdNGmrZ-kbkTG6sK9W_sg5PW2oC/s400/Sistine-Chapel-GodAdam.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Imagine
there's no countries</div>
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It isn't hard to do</div>
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Nothing to kill or die for</div>
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And no religion too</div>
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Imagine all the people</div>
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Living life in peace</div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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John Lennon, "Imagine"</div>
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Jim, my faithful interlocutor on Facebook, rarely fails to comment when I post something about religion. We almost never agree. He's an accomplished writer and musician and he hates religion in any shape or form. For the most part, he's in sympathy with the outspoken "New Atheists" (though he hates that label) -- Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris. Though our dialogues are often frustrating, I appreciate the challenge of his persistent attempts to push over my dominoes. I have been engaged for some time now in saving the appearances (using Owen Barfield's phrase) of religion. For me, this means searching for value in the human questions that receive a variety of answers from the cultural traditions that are called religious. These questions, rarely scientific, are also my own.<br />
<br />
In Marx's well-known analysis,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against
real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of
the people.</blockquote>
Marx believed that politics could erase the conditions that brought suffering, but that has not been the case. The suffering of humanity, however, is real. It is the central point of the Buddha's teaching. Religious explanations for this fact vary enormously and solutions to the problem of suffering, the "opium" offered by the numberless sects, range from "love your neighbor" to the "Last Judgment" and Holy War (jihad).<br />
<br />
Is it possible for a materialist, who believes that the body and brain are all we have to survive in this world (and not for long), to affirm the importance of the question of suffering without accepting most of the answers that the different religions have proposed? This is my project.<br />
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To begin at the beginning, I call into question the very term "religion." The latest scholarship in religious studies argues that this word has come into use only in modern times. Most languages do not distinguish religious from ordinary behavior. The study of "world religions" arose with the discovery of non-Christian religious practices and was developed and defined by western scholars, many of them linguists in the employ of colonial enterprises. Today, it's a classic case of reification, where an invented word becomes a thing ("unicorn" is another). Religion, according to Jonathan Z. Smith, consists simply of the activities of human beings. In other words, it's an aspect of culture. According to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, religion is<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish
powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations
seem uniquely realistic.</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
You might say the same of dancing, or of playing sports.<br />
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Here in Thailand where I now live, there seems to be no divide between secular and sacred activities. Thais pay their respects to altar images (many of them Hindu), ancient trees, and go to the temple regularly for a blessing from a monk without calling attention to these activities as something special. Taxis and new shops are inaugurated with ritual ceremony. People wear amulets featuring images of popular monks and are symbolically tattooed as a form of protection from unhappy ghosts. Is this superstition or religion? Even Buddhists are unable to decide definitively. How do you tell the difference?<br />
<br />
These days cognitive scientists are turning to religion to understand the popularity and spread of metaphysical ideas. They have discovered a tool-kit of mental faculties that evolved to make life easier for humans 10,000 years ago. They have verified in experiments that young children are born with perceptions and instincts enabling them to detect unseen agents and predict what they're thinking. These new theories explain the possibility of religion (I'll use the word for human activities with particular characteristics) without predicting what particular forms it will take. God, of course, is the unseen agent writ large, and we (or the theologians) know what he's thinking.<br />
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Vocal atheists and haters of religion are reacting to real circumstances. Christians in America campaign against abortion and homosexuality, Muslims in Syria and Iraq slaughter those who they deem threatening, Buddhists in Myanmar and Sri Lanka persecute Muslims, and Jews in Israel bomb Palestinians back to the Stone Age. Not so long ago, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland were at each other's throats. It seems that Holy War is the dominant conflict in the 21st century. Others look behind the religious curtain and see conflicts over land and power, the same political struggles humans have engaged in since the dawn of history. <br />
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Religious activities have historically been organized and controlled by authorities, a priestly caste. Replete with all the harmful characteristics of institutional structures, these religions have declared their followers a "chosen people," defined the dogma they must affirm, and punished heretics for blasphemy and other deviations in belief. Their prophets have demanded obedience and promised rewards or punishment in a life after death, whether in a heaven or a hell. Scribes who claim to take dictation from a deity have written books to be worshipped that contain stories glorifying suffering, hatred of the body, subjection of women, and practices of purification that include genital mutilation. Missionaries carrying their holy texts have accompanied armies for the forced conversion of subject peoples. The whole sorry history of what we call religion gives the lie to any notion of human progress.<br />
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And yet... Religious believers have given hospitality to strangers, healed the sick at a great cost to themselves, and forgiven debts from horrible crimes as well as loans. Soup kitchens, schools and hospitals have been inspired by different religious messages. I was raised in the 1940s on a radio version of "The Greatest Story Every Told," a retelling of the life of Jesus, and the love and kindness in the parables brought me to tears. I am still moved by the core message of the Gospels without its institutional cloak. The Buddhists around me in Thailand, raised on a message of compassion in the Buddha's teaching, are incredibly generous to the beggars and fund raisers I see on the streets every day. Religious art and music can lift the heart to new heights. For me, the impetus for these activities that bring humans and communities together is at its root a response the the awareness of the suffering of the other.<br />
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So this is my dilemma. At their best, human beings can transcend the barriers that divide them and see themselves in another who might in fact be a member of group they traditionally hate, like the Samaritan in the Gospel story. Fear of the other is a legacy from the days when people lived in tribes and struggled for scarce resources. Today we're locked into identities of nation and religion, but occasionally we can break out of these cages and find that we are bodies with brains and this is all we have, so we need to stick together. Perhaps the "kingdom of God" is right here on earth, right now. Religious myths and rituals that permit and encourage such cross-cultural unity are to be treasured and encouraged. Those institutions that promote division and intolerance are to be condemned.<br />
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Theologian <a href="http://www.doncupitt.com/don-cupitt">Don Cupitt</a> has proposed a religion of ordinary life in a series of books that just might coexist with a secular or even an atheistic philosophy. For Cupitt, God is a symbolic vehicle for common cultural values, and religion gives us a shared vocabulary. There is no heaven or hell in Cupitt's theology. For him life is limited, transient, contingent and temporal, and also bittersweet (is this the Buddhist dukkha?). His most radical claim is there is no stable real world and no enduring self. All experience is mediated by language. Cupitt's theology is life-centered. Religion is expressive and we become ourselves only by expressing ourselves. <br />
<br />
This sounds a lot to me like John Lennon's vision.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DVg2EJvvlF8" width="450"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-20895659078576349442015-05-03T08:38:00.001+07:002015-05-03T08:38:20.037+07:00O Death!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f4yXBIigZbg" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
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<i>O Death</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Won't you spare me over till another year</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
--Traditional American folk song</div>
<br />
It's that time of life. People are dying all around me, and way too many of them are younger. The other day it was Ben E. King, composer of the magnificent "Stand By Me," and he was only 76, a mark I'll hit in less than three months.<br />
<br />
I'm not in any hurry. As the knight in Ingmar Bergman's "Seventh Seal" tells his visitor, "My body is ready but I'm not" (of course it's an English translation of the Swedish). This time I'm living now, through a fluke of chronology, is the best of my life. I live in an exotic foreign land with a lovely woman by my side and, after many detours and side trips, I've found a vocation that satisfies, teaching English to Buddhist monks.<br />
<br />
After many years of seeking spiritual answers to the deepest questions, I've come to the conclusion that now is all we have. It is my answer to poet Mary Oliver's question:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tell me, what else should I have done?<br />
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?<br />
Tell me, what is it you plan to do<br />
with your one wild and precious life? </blockquote>
<br />
This comes as no great epiphany, no enlightenment moment after an endless struggle. Words are too often only intellectual icing on a cake, and my cake is very tasty indeed.<br />
<br />
It's not easy to see how anyone could believe in death as a stage on the way to something else, something better or worse depending on your ethical guidelines. The body is all we are, and when it dies along with our brain then all that counts as my "I" disappears. Science, which rules the roost on material matters, has never detected a scintilla of evidence for a mind, self or soul that exists independent of a body. <br />
<br />
But some form of belief in life after death appears to be the default position for many people. A form of wish fulfilment? A comforting fable? For the various Christianities that look to the New Testament and church tradition for inspiration, there is a future after the body dies. Even here in a Buddhist country, the faithful put their hopes in reincarnation after death. Despite the Buddha's teaching of no-self, <i>anatta</i> in the Pali, a belief in rebirth grounds the tradition's explanation of <i>kamma</i>, what goes round comes round, the idea that good or bad deeds will receive their reward in another existence. Is it the same me that pays the price for thoughtlessness in this life that is punished in the next?<br />
<br />
A number of scholars and researchers in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology now propose that the human brain evolved faculties of thinking that benefited our ancestors in the savannah, including one they call "theory of mind." This "tool" enabled humans to imagine intentions and make predictions about the behavior of unseen agents who might want to harm, and even eat them, a survival skill of the first order. Once a part of our neural anatomy, this cognitive development could not be turned off. We see minds everywhere, even in non-living things like cars that won't start or computers that malfunction. A corollary of this is we fabricate explanations for events and detect purpose in rootless causes to create a fantasy world of our own making. While theory of mind may have been adaptive, the numerous byproducts of it, from the belief that minds transcend death to the worship of gods in religious rituals may not be.<br />
<br />
So goes the materialist mantra Rather than demi-gods, humans are no more than an unholy mix of bodies and brains with no more importance to the natural scheme of things than ants or the dodo bird. What does death matter but to make room for more life? <br />
<br />
And yet... In addition to adaptive behavior like tool-making and cooperation within groups, the human brain has produced a cornucopia of byproducts, from consciousness and language to music, art and poetry. I love the speculations of philosophers and the rhythmic charm of rock and roll. The edifice of human-made culture in its many forms around the world is as awesome as sunrise over the Grand Canyon ("It's just a big hole," said my unimpressed five-year-old daughter). <br />
<br />
For years I considered myself a dualist of the body/mind and pondered the mysteries of the Perennial Philosophy. I found wisdom and beauty in the mystical writings of Thomas Merton and Simone Weil. A member in good standing of the New Age, I shared the Eucharist with parishioners in Catholic churches around the world and I chanted in Hindu temples and meditated while facing the wall with a Zen sangha. No religious teaching was too outrageous for me to consider as a metaphor pointing toward God or being or the great void.<br />
<br />
Is all religion a beneficial byproduct of cognitive evolution? No. And there's the rub. First, how you answer this question requires a definition of "religion," and mine is as big as the sky. For me (and for numerous scholars), religion is simply human activity, it's what people do, and it all falls under the rubric of culture that includes activities like sports, game, hobbies and so on. It's not history and it's not cosmology, and those who treat it as "natural philosophy" as it was called before the development of the scientific methods are as doomed as the dodo bird. But not all "religion" is good. <br />
<br />
My standards are my own, influenced by a study of Liberation Theology in Latin American when religious activists in the late 20th century contested repressive governments with the moral armament of Biblical stories. For me, the goal of religion is the Kingdom of God where humans get along and care for one another, and refuse to bow to worldly power. The stories from different religious traditions are useful and inspiring, and can help motivate believers to bring religion down to earth. The thorn in the ointment is tribal religion, alive and all too well today, wherein one group of believers demonize another or try to convert them. This form of religion is usually accompanied by a hatred of the body and it seeks control over the bodies of its own and other tribes. <br />
<br />
Which brings us back to death. Do brains die? Yes. Do human beings live on after death? Yes, in the hearts and memories of those who loved them. I was there for the death of my good friend Peter who died over 10 years ago from prostate cancer. I changed his diapers in the evenings of his final week and I kissed his cold cheek less than an hour after life had left his body. I will never forget him, nor will the memories of my parents and others close to me go away while this brain is still functioning. But even though I believe they no longer exist in some post-death realm, I don't have a problem encouraging others on the precipice of extinction with stories from their tradition about life after that which might give them hope and consolation. <br />
<br />
I'm at that age in my life where I could keel over lifeless at any moment. I've lived with cancer for a dozen years but it will probably be something else that finally does me in. Whatever. I hope in those final moments I can say, as did Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Tell them that I've had a wonderful life."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JeG3cZsAd_Q" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-2466441316809848422015-04-23T11:12:00.002+07:002015-04-23T11:12:47.584+07:00Who You Gonna Call?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ghosts are a lot like gods: imaginary friends (or enemies).<br />
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In Thailand, where Buddhism is a mash up with Hinduism and animism, one of the technologies for protecting yourself from evil spirits is to wear an amulet (or two or three or...).<br />
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Although invisible agents are rarely mentioned in the literature of non-theistic western Buddhism, the cosmology of the Pali Canon does include devas and other beings who dwell in various non-earthly realms. While the Buddha disallowed a monotheistic creator god, ghosts,are a fact of life for most people in Thailand where they play featured roles in horror films and on the TV soaps. Brahma, the high Hindu god, is the most prominent icon in many shrines outside houses and businesses, and Ganesh, the Remover of All Obstacles, is not far behind. Unseen spirits can be appeased not only with protective amulets but also with elaborate sacred tattoos as well as by means of a ritual and blessing at the local temple. <br />
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Proponents of the new inter-disciplinary study of religion, under the umbrellas of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, say belief in gods and other unseen agents is the default position for a mind that evolved over 10,000 years ago to facilitate detection of dangerous predators. For a Paleolithic hunter, the survival rate was better for guessing that any movement in the forest was a lion out to eat him than to think that it was only wind in the trees and be mistaken. These new theorists and researchers argue that the human brain evolved a tool kit of mental facilities that permitted individuals and groups to flourish under harsh conditions so different from today's world. In addition to the agent detection ability, early humans made sense out of their situations by telling causal narratives to explain natural events, and understood that others had minds similar to their own (what's been called an innate theory of mind). These conjectures have been tested, for example, by observing early childhood development. The great theoretical leap in the last 20 years was to conclude that religious beliefs are a byproduct of cognitive evolution and that the human mind is thus primed for religion, the Agent writ large.<br />
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Humans continue to personify and anthropomorphize indiscriminately. The god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is similar to a person in that he (always a "he") listens and speaks and can be praised (or blamed) for the causation of inclement weather and success (or failure) in business. But concepts about god as a person are counterintuitive in that he is also all-knowing and sees everything at the same time. Theorists like Pascal Boyer argue that for a god concept to originate and spread it most be only minimally counterintuitive. Talking trees are acceptable but not an all-powerful cockroach. Gods are not always like the monotheistic Big Guy. The pantheon of gods on Olympus as well as the Roman deities possessed numerous frailties. And the devas in the Buddhist heaven are far from enlightened. <br />
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I tried, Lord knows I tried, to believe in God. My first exposure to religion that I remember was listening to the parables of Jesus dramatized for the radio on "The Great Story Every Told" when I was in the 2nd grade. In Vacation Bible School we made pictures of the stories out of pieces of felt. While Jesus seemed like a nice man I had little thought of God. My mother took my brother and I to various churches when we were small but my father claimed he was able to worship in his own fashion on the golf course each Sunday. If there were moral lessons in my family, they weren't reinforced with reference to God's punishments and rewards. According to theorists, religion is a byproduct of the evolution of the human brain, and not attributing causes to unseen agents goes against the human grain. While I didn't see gods, I do recall personifying my car and kicking a huge dent in the fender one day when it refused to start.<br />
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Some theorists believe religion is all about gods. Even prominent atheists like Dawkins and Harris focus their ire mostly on the stupidity of believers in an omnipotent being that grants prayers and protects the worthy from the wiles of Satan. They have a harder time criticizing the "spiritual but not religious" folks who eschew both religious institutions and dogma while holding onto some form of transcendent meaning that goes beyond the obvious. They rarely mention the movement of Deists following the French Enlightenment Revolution that included such prominent thinkers as Voltaire in France and Thomas Jefferson in America; Jefferson edited the Gospels to his liking and read the Koran. Even more slippery are those who define their God simply as nature or love. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thomas Merton, monk</td></tr>
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Years after Vacation Bible School, I found myself living in Connecticut and working in Manhattan. In the intervening years I'd run the gamut of New Age thought, from flying saucers to Theosophy, Subud to Transcendental Meditation, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky to est. While I earnestly tried to believe in whatever metaphysical reality I was trying on for size, my religious quest was ultimately one big head trip. Little of it stuck, beyond the feeling that life was not enough, that there must be some mystery to be revealed, some wisdom to obtained, and that I'd unfortunately missed it through my own many faults. A Catholic friend, with whom I'd taken the atheist position in our arguments about quantum physics and science, suggested I read Thomas Merton. I began with a biography that told me he'd died in 1968, electrocuted by an ungrounded fan in Bangkok. Merton's down-to-earth approach to the Christian mystical tradition, and his social justice writings about Vietnam and the civil rights movement, converted me to an openness to spirituality I'd not experienced with all my false starts. He became my guru through his writings. Later I added Simone Weil and Nicholas Berdyaev to my list of mind-changing thinkers.<br />
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What I'm trying to understand here in this blog post (and in more to come) is why I continue to find value in religious language and spiritual aspirations even though I consider myself now to be a firm anti-metaphysical materialist who is convinced that human beings are solely body-brain organisms without souls or a future beyond death. Nevertheless, the evolution of our brains has given us such marvelous adaptions or byproducts (the jury is still out on this) as language, science, culture, and, yes, religion. Religion has a function if not an essence. People who trust in the myths of their religion tend to live longer, happier lives and die with less stress and resistance. Religious groups are more cohesive than groups with less passionate identities and also last longer and are more successful in inter-group conflicts. All of this can be argued without the least belief in divine revelation or the truths of religious tradition.<br />
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Living in a Buddhist country now and teaching English to monks, I go through the motions of observance and practice respectfully without taking it all too seriously. From what I understand of the Buddha's teachings, particularly on the mind, I consider him certainly on a par with Plato and Socrates. In Thailand there is far less of a separation between the secular and the sacred; going to the temple, feeding monks, decorating shrines, and making merit is just what everyone does, and it's cultural all the way down. My wife says her prayers for the well-being of all existents, and I echo that hope. But I have no sense of the spirits everywhere here as those Thais raised in this belief, not the least in large trees that are wrapped with colored banners. And despite a brain evolved for that perception, I usually seek mechanical explanations for the hints of agency I detect in the natural world.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyte_fbB3R5t_A6LYuZgEamOG0cB2kgSnNQOXZjcRkR0IsPduxl8Ep3GttZfwUz_OfzoycpDjqzGxE_lL8Sh7knlcSGWM0mO5WscSR-rq4uJpWwE6N3OSxs3zNwM5TMihPvAl0/s1600/Don-CupittRED.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyte_fbB3R5t_A6LYuZgEamOG0cB2kgSnNQOXZjcRkR0IsPduxl8Ep3GttZfwUz_OfzoycpDjqzGxE_lL8Sh7knlcSGWM0mO5WscSR-rq4uJpWwE6N3OSxs3zNwM5TMihPvAl0/s1600/Don-CupittRED.jpg" height="200" width="141" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don Cupitt</td></tr>
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The religion that I support unequivocally wherever it can be found is this-worldly, not looking to an afterlife to justify the present. It promotes tolerance and compassion towards all others, human, animal, as well as natural forms. This faith (or trust as the word was originally intend) seeks justice for all as a reasonable goal and gives aid to the poor and helpless wherever they are found. Its stories and myths are guides for understanding rather than claims for literal truth. My religion revels in music, dance and art as a way to ritualistically celebrate life in all its manifestations. And that's just for starters. I'm only climbing on the shoulders of a prophetic professor and priest, Don Cupitt, who has put together what he calls "The Religion of Ordinary Life." You can see the tenets of this faith at his <a href="http://www.doncupitt.com/philosophylife/don-cupitt-philosophy-of-life-religion-of-ordinary-life.html">web site</a>. Cupitt, now in his 80s, accepts the term "secular Christian" and is a good friend of my favorite secular Buddhist, Stephen Batchelor. <br />
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When I went through the catechism process to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1984, I recall that one of the teachers told us that Buddhism and Hinduism were "cults." I kept my mouth shut then and confined his idiocies to the closet where the other beliefs I bracketed were hidden: the virgin birth, Jesus as God, the Trinity, miracles, etc. For a number of years I felt like a schizophrenic, going through the motions at mass and trying to believe in God and the traditions of the church, while also valuing insights from other religions and assorted heretics. Gradually I found support for my half-assed faith within the church and without. The closed nature of religious orgaizations makes complete honesty of the contents of one's mind rather difficult to reveal. When I finally took everything out of the closet I found many like-minded believers who understood.<br />
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I continue to unpack my closet. If you need some help, call me!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r1-NvLJFDsw" width="400"></iframe>dDr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-35098034710690178702015-04-05T12:36:00.002+07:002015-04-05T12:51:11.933+07:00The Meaning of Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This cartoon is meant to be a joke, but in my case it's true. The meaning of <i>my</i> life is largely told in this blog and on my Facebook page, expressed in the links, opinions, photos, check-ins and events of my life as it unfolds now in the first half of 2015 (tho since I live in Thailand I should perhaps write it as 2558, since the Thai year dates from the death of the Buddha). <br />
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In other words, after too many years of looking for <i>the</i> meaning of life in various forms of religion, different kinds of spiritual practices from the eucharist to meditation, and books about same, in connection with formal study toward several degrees in schools, I reached the conclusion that the search (quest or journey) only leads back to my own life. There is no salvation, wisdom or enlightenment <i>out there</i>. As T.S. Eliot so beautifully put it,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We shall not
cease from exploration<br />
And the end
of all our exploring<br />
Will be to
arrive where we started<br />
And know the
place for the first time.</blockquote>
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I've had a long, good life with no regrets for any of the detours, wrong turnings, and missteps in my years of exploration. I've learned something about myself in all of the experiences I have ever had, the good ones as well as the disasters (and there have been not a few of those). But judging by the cartoons in Google Images about the one true meaning of life, it still remains a preoccupation of many. There are lots of meaningful activities, from stamp collecting and and drug taking to sexual addiction and political campaigning. Whatever we choose to do defines our identity and self-image and imbues our life with purpose (even crime is purposeful). The most common way that people seek a purpose for their life is through religion.<br />
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This post is a continuation of my last when I set out to "find my religion" but only came up empty handed. Wherever you look these days, religion is in the news. The main topic is Islamic fundamentalism with fanatics slaughtering the innocent in Manhattan, Kenya, Nigeria, Boston, Syria and other Middle East countries. In Israel, Jewish fundamentalists (another term for truest believers) are attacking and injuring Palestinians in order to steal their land, with the connivance of Israeli forces that have bombed Gaza back to the stone age. Fundamentalist Christians in America may be more benign, but with the aid of right-wing state politicians they are shrinking the voting franchise to remove the poor and minorities, and legislating against sexual tolerance. Even Buddhists in Myanmar and Sri Lanka are forming racist nationalist fronts to protect their religion from what they mistakenly see as a threat from the small minorities of Muslims and Hindus. All of these fundamentalisms share a similar characteristic -- hatred of those who are different. While most of the conflicts may only be about struggles over land and the state (or tribe), the result of these comparisons is to tar "religion" -- whatever that word may denote -- with the bloody brush of hatred.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hao_Dq7vLiDmUqBmK5xtvrkpi-V0BbVagm6kcvxB5mFXxAfMAhyphenhyphenu8N0h56HvMi8vWJOsQe0yxImAARq28DvUyY-Rt35ag_55dbMdfl8Hm4Ap3BDGDaLg3nSK_tvSxBd8WGfF/s1600/KarlMarx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hao_Dq7vLiDmUqBmK5xtvrkpi-V0BbVagm6kcvxB5mFXxAfMAhyphenhyphenu8N0h56HvMi8vWJOsQe0yxImAARq28DvUyY-Rt35ag_55dbMdfl8Hm4Ap3BDGDaLg3nSK_tvSxBd8WGfF/s1600/KarlMarx.jpg" height="171" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karl Marx</td></tr>
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Despite arguments from social scientists in the last century that modernization would gradually remove the need for religion, what Marx called "the opium of the people," it has not disappeared. The fall of the Soviet Union resulted in the return of orthodox Christianity, now a conservative force. Globalization has not been a melting pot, despite Facebook, Starbucks and American films. The reason for this was recognized by Marx who identified religion as the "sigh
of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of
soulless conditions." Religion was an antidote at the time for the horrific conditions in the satanic mills of early capitalist industry. Wherever people lack jobs, education and opportunities, and are oppressed by outside forces, they turn to the consolations of religion. And this religion is not necessarily the "love your neighbor" kind. It is often a tribalistic faith, viciously insular and exclusive, and it promotes views and attitudes that demonize outsiders in an attempt to provide a security and control that can only be illusory.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Manchester U fans vs Roma</td></tr>
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What does this tribal religion have to do with gods, dogma, rituals and institutions, the stuff of atheist and anti-religious discontent? Very little, and only as a discourse that separates the sheep from the goats. This religion is not about beliefs and propositions that can be discussed rationally, but it is rather a form of idolatry and identity somewhat similar to that of the football hooligans who regularly run riot after European games. A professor of mine wrote a book about National Socialism in Germany as a religious movement. Gang membership among minorities gives them a home in a strange culture. Even second-generation immigrants in Britain feel so out of place that they run off to join ISIS in a search for meaning in their lives.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsMCyW_V_ThB4y4BVjrvpLQtnQMpLyrjp0-zof2cVdobBtNlgAzvm048ay3TJoWWqcy51tHLku_dec2mCC5nJGvnkgOBohO64WO0GG49Cchvj3KxNJWcrsTC8V1hWwHdsHIXzm/s1600/karen-armstrong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsMCyW_V_ThB4y4BVjrvpLQtnQMpLyrjp0-zof2cVdobBtNlgAzvm048ay3TJoWWqcy51tHLku_dec2mCC5nJGvnkgOBohO64WO0GG49Cchvj3KxNJWcrsTC8V1hWwHdsHIXzm/s1600/karen-armstrong.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karen Armstrong</td></tr>
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Historians of religion like Karen Armstrong and Robert Wright try to sketch an evolution from the religious practices of hunter-gatherer tribes to the institutionalized faith that provided social glue for empires, from Constantine's Rome to Mughal India and the Ottomans. Like empires, however, religious unity constantly broke into pieces. Christianity fragmented in 1000 AD and again in the 16th century. There is so little similarity between the Anglicans, the tent evangelists in the southern U.S. and the proselytizing Mormons in Latin America (to name only three sects) that "Christianities" is a better label for the largest of the so-called "world" religions. The split between Sunni and Shia Islam is now well known because of news events (although Bush and his advisers to their peril knew little of it before invading Iraq). And even Buddhists have trouble finding commonalities between the three major divisions (four if you count western Buddhism which is quite different from the Asian varieties). <br />
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Christians in America hate the gays, Israelis hate the Arabs, warriors of ISIS hate all westerners, Sri Lankan Buddhists hate the Tamil Muslims, Hindu nationalists hate the Sikhs, Bangladeshi Muslims hate Buddhists and Burmese Buddhists hate the Muslims of Rakhine state. And maybe even the Protestants in Northern Ireland still hate the Catholics! Hatred is an equal opportunity passion. What we hate too often defines who we are.<br />
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These hatreds resemble in many ways the antagonisms between tribes more than 10,000 years ago before many of the wandering peoples settled down in place to invent agriculture. Before the population explosion when tribes stopped moving long enough to grow crops and raise animals for food, there was enough land so that tribes could remain self-contained and avoid others. After agriculture, there would be struggles over land, and after the rise of city states and empires, struggles over territory. Religion was the handmaiden, holding people together in common rites and rituals and separating them from the unbelievers. It's still performing that role.<br />
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Robert Wright, among others, thinks that despite setbacks, religion has evolved. Wright, a cognitive psychologist who describes himself as a materialist and an agnostic, defends moral progress in his fascinating 2009 book, <i>The Evolution of God</i>. Since the pre-agriculture tribal period, people have gradually learned the benefits of extending moral consideration to those outside their own tribe. “As the
scope of social organization grows, God tends to eventually catch up, drawing a
larger expanse of humanity under his protection, or at least a larger expanse
of humanity under his toleration.” This progress can be seen in the sentiments of the Golden Rule, "love your neighbor as yourself," which can be found in all religions. It's also taken time for "neighbor" to be seen as everyone on the planet. <br />
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From this perspective, religion is not about gods, heaven or hell, orthodoxy, and the nation favored by the most powerful deity, but about behavior in this life that leads to peace. Morality is mutual interest, the compassion that arises when you contemplate the suffering of others that is much the same as yours. Each of the so-called world religions has various foundational scriptures that believers cherry pick to find rules that align with their prejudices and exclusionary views. Homosexuality and abortion have become important to fundamentalist Christians despite their absence from most texts while other prohibitions are often ignored. If religion had no other purpose other than to guide and encourage us into getting along with each other, it would probably fulfil the aims of the different founders. Everything else, St. Aquinas said of human additions to the divine, "are of straw."<br />
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As for the meaning of life?<br />
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<br />Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-4696875017504185762015-03-27T16:27:00.000+07:002015-03-27T19:12:23.759+07:00Finding My Religion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Over on Facebook I often find myself verbally butting heads with a co-worker from long ago over the topic of religion. Even though I self-identify these days as a materialist and consider the twenty years I spent as a Catholic convert to be memories of times past, my position in our debates is always in defense of religion Whenever I link to a story that shows religion in any kind of a favorable light, I trust that my friend will soon comment on the dangers of all metaphysical world views, the superiority of science to religion, and the religious education of the young as a form of child abuse (here I'm doing a gross disservice to his more nuanced arguments).<br />
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Religion in all of its many forms has been a major curiosity of mine since I was seven and attended summer vacation Bible school at the Baptist church in Greensboro, North Carolina. These days I usually write "religion" with scare quotes because I think no one has a comprehensive definition of the phenomenon with which I can agree. The old "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" argument no longer seems valid. It's not that there aren't any definitions but that there are way too many and most seem inadequate for describing what people do and think that might be called "religious." Those with the most rigid definitions tend to be atheists, those critics Schleiermacher called religion's "cultured despisers." In my experience, they inevitably try to dictate what the faithful must believe and then condemn it. Whenever I see this happening, I go into lawyer mode for the defense.<br />
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Now that I'm in the last quarter of my century, I live in Thailand where the religion of 97% of the population is said to be Buddhism. Christianity has never gotten much of a foothold here, and those Muslims living in the south have been trying to break away for decades. While Buddhism isn't officially the state religion, it's included in the government's purview and the current military dictatorship is trying to wrest control for prosecuting misbehaving monks from the ruling Sangha Council. Buddhist temples here in Bangkok are almost as common as 7-11s. They're usually crowded with Thais "making merit" (<i>tam</i> <i>bun</i> in Thai) by bringing gifts (often an orange bucket full of trivial items for a 20 baht donation) and receiving a blessing from the monk on duty. We keep an altar of icons atop our bookshelf (photo above) and refresh the flowers and liquid offerings every Wan Phra (monk day on the four phases of the moon). My wife says her prayers each night before going to sleep, and when I ask what she prays for, she says "that everyone be happy."<br />
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My objective in this post and perhaps a few more in the future is to ponder the word "religion" and what the term might point to that both pleases and upsets so many. I've written much about my own experiences with religious beliefs and practices here during the last nine years. After all, it's the first topic in the title of my blog! Now, however, I'd like to think a bit deeper about the disparate reactions to the phenomena that people generally think of as religious. A number of my friends get absolutely venomous about any form of religion, and slam all of it as backward, stupid and possibly lethal. These days, fundamentalism, Islamic as well as Christian, is the object of their ire, but many atheists, new and old, argue that tolerance towards any religious thinking or activity is ludicrous. Just as anti-drug campaigns declared that smoking marijuana opened the door to cocaine and heroin, anti-religion activists believe that even liberal or progressive religion is a stepping stone to fundamentalist extremism.<br />
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Maybe I'm tolerant toward religion because I never went to Catholic school and got my butt slapped by a nun with a ruler. My mother joined the most fashionable churches in the many places where we moved as I was growing up while my father claimed he found his god on the golf course. I learned about the different world religions from a couple of books given to me by a friend in high school. In college another friend's outwardly respectable mother communicated telepathically with flying saucers and wrote a book called <i>Wisdom of the Universe</i>. For a time I took part in her study group and fell in love with all the kookiness of New Age Thought that predates by many years the hippies and other more modern New Agers. For years I thought there must me something <i>more</i> to life and pursued a plethora of spiritual disciplines, from chanting, meditation and genuflecting to alcohol and psychedelics. But I never had that AHA! moment I thought and hoped was possible at the end of the journey. <br />
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Despite the disappointment of not achieving what was after all only a creation of my imagination, I have remained compassionate toward others who continue to seek what I did not discover. It's up to each of us to find our own way, so why be angry with anyone who choses a path you would not? Of course it's easier to be tolerant of the seekers than of the true believers who think they've found the truth and urge, nay demand, that you recognize theirs and validate it by joining them. I suspect the anti-religion activists are more angry about the finders than the seekers. There is something obnoxious about the missionary who solicits your conversion and won't take "no" for an answer.<br />
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Atheism is not really an adequate term for despisers of religion. It denies the existence of gods and other metaphysical entities but doesn't really get at the whole "spiritual but not religious" movement of seekers today. What happens when you pull the rug of religion out from under their feet? Buddhism, at least the modern form of it in the west, gets a pass since many of its proponents argue that Buddha didn't propose a god. There is ample evidence that Buddhism was re-tooled in Thailand, Tibet and Sri Lanka for western consumption, made to seem more scientific and anti-metaphysical than the early scriptures would indicate. There are passages in the Pali scripture where Buddha speaks of devas and the different realms of heaven and hell, embarrassingly close to the monotheistic cosmologies. Visitors to Thailand are surprised to see so many icons of Hindu deities in shrines, to learn of the popular belief in spirits, both good and bad, and to hear of the many methods of protection against spirits enjoyed by Thais, from tattoos to amulets.<br />
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Despisers of religion prefer science based on evidence and reason as the best description and guide for reality. The scientific method yields truth, or at least the best hypothesis until a better one comes along to explain the origin or the mechanics of how life works. Any other method comes up with superstition and idolatry. Religion is ignorance writ large. To deny the facts of science is stupid, and dangerous. After explicating the mechanics of evolution, Richard Dawkins has devoted his life to stamping out the disgusting vermin of religion. Others have joined him: the late iconoclast Christopher Hitchings, philosopher Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris (who says he's a Buddhist) and the comic commentator Bill Maher who lampooned religious belief in his documentary "Religulous." At times their activities have the air of a crusade. The social media has allowed atheism to become more vocal and more prominent, although it remains the kiss of death of politicians.<br />
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Some pretty scary people can be found at both ends of the spectrum. In America numerous elected officials are making pronouncements supposedly based on Christian teaching that encourage hatred and discrimination of others. In the Middle East, fanatics claiming to be Muslims are slaughtering their opponents and anyone who gets in their way with Medieval efficiency. Buddhists in Myanmar and Sri Lanka declare that Islam is a threat to their nationalist religion. On the other end of the spectrum, official atheism in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Mao in China was responsible for hardship and death. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Viet Cong in Vietnam destroyed churches and monasteries and tried unsuccessful to stamp out religion. Eliminating religion is about as successful as forced conversions. After the breakup of the USSR, orthodox Christianity came back with a vengeance and now is a conservative force in Russia.<br />
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Religion is the elephant and we are the blind describing it from different perspectives with only the other senses to go by. My current point of view is to avoid the word "religion" as much as possible. It has become reified beyond all meaning. Atheists frequently mean by it the religious institutions, authorities and sacred texts. It's easy to ridicule the monotheisms by pulling texts out of context from the Bible or Quran. Religion they believe refers to dogma, to the propositions that followers must affirm according to their leaders. If you argue that Catholics get abortions and use birth control just like everyone else, they'll argue these are not really Catholics and remove them from the equation.<br />
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In place of "religion," there are many alternate ways to describe those participating in religious activities. Here in Thailand, Buddhism (mixed with Hinduism and animism) is an intricate part of the culture; there is no division between the sacred and the secular which occurred after the French revolution and Enlightenment era in Europe. One's religion becomes an essential part of one's identity, not unlike the team football fans root for. The language used by co-religionists solidifies their community and allows members to be recognized. While fundamentalists treat religious stories as literal truth, many traditions base their meanings on universal myths and pedagogical metaphors. Anthropomorphism, rather than being error, can also be a useful technique for negotiating the dangers of reality. Struggles between religions are quite often a conflict over something else, like land and resources, and religious identity can be used to compel participation. To see religion as only institutions, authorities and texts is to miss the way that humans have used their imagination to make sense of their reality, and to find truth and beauty in the process.<br />
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I was thinking of R.E.M.'s song, "Losing My Religion," when I titled this post, and thinking of it ironically. But of course I haven't "found" (or "lost") anything. I was "in the corner" and now I'm out of it. "Religion" is only a site of contestation, a term of dispute with no pure content. And yet people fight and die for their religious concepts. Academics declared for a few centuries that religion was increasingly unimportant and irrelevant. Advanced civilization and modernity had no need of such illusory thinking. But of course they were mistaken. Current events show this. And yet, no one can agree on what religion is. How strange!<br />
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If these ideas seem scattered, it's because I have been thinking about them for a lifetime and their slipperiness and changeability make it difficult to put them into an organzied form. If anyone finds these questions and proposals intriguing, and they speak to your condition, please let me know. If not, no matter. It's time for me to chew over these matters, organized or not, to find out how and what I think. I will conclude with a couple of videos on the question of religion which I found interesting. Karen Armstrong is particularly astute at arguing persuasively that the meaning of "religion" today has changed considerably. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yp4ZaNpU-nY" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-10583341474997326622015-03-18T09:27:00.000+07:002015-03-18T09:27:04.320+07:00Dreaming of California<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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[This post is written for graduate students in a writing class for monks I'm teaching in Bangkok. Their final assignment for the semester is to contribute a post about their home for the class blog, <a href="http://mcutravel.blogspot.com/">MCU Travel Blog</a>, and my intention here is to give them an example.]<br />
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In a 1965 record, the Mamas and the Papas sang about dreaming of California on a cold winter's day somewhere else where the weather is not so nice. <br />
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<i>All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.</i></div>
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<i><i>I've been for a walk on a winter's day.</i></i></div>
<i>
</i>
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<i><i>I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.;</i></i></div>
<i>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>California dreamin' on such a winter's day.</i></div>
<o:p></o:p></i><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Downtown Santa Cruz</td></tr>
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These words of mine are written in a tropical climate where the leaves are never brown and if the sky is gray it's because of farmers burning off their rice fields before summer planting. While I was born elsewhere, I lived for most of 60 years in California, both south and north, and the second half of that time was spent in Santa Cruz on the Bay of Monterey, as close a place to Paradise as I've ever found. California, where I lived in Surf City, is surely my home forever.</div>
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Cruz Farmers Market</td></tr>
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Growing up in Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia, I was 12 when my father came home one day to tell my mother, brother, grandfather and I that we were moving to Los Angeles where he'd found a job selling plywood in the lumber industry. California! Where movies are made, and oranges grow on trees! I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. My goal at this point in life was to become an actor and now I'd have my chance!<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My cabin in 2010<br /></td></tr>
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After a memorable cross-country trip in our new 1953 Ford sedan, we found a "ranch" house in the northeast suburb of La Cañada with an orange tree in the front yard and four in the back, all full of ripe and delicious naval oranges. Later the back yard trees were uprooted for a swimming pool. The good life was great! I attended junior high school, found girlfriends aplenty, dressed like a juvenile delinquent, climbed the rope in gymnastics, played clarinet in the orchestra and was chosen assemblies commissioner to MC at school functions. Quickly I became a Californian, and every day on the way to school I picked an orange to eat.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Cruz Town Clock</td></tr>
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The native population of California was displaced in the 16th and 17th centuries by Spanish conquerers, and then the land became part of Mexico when they broke away from Spain in 1821. Twenty-seven years later gold was discovered in the Sierra mountains and the whole world rushed in to find some. California was quickly stolen from Mexico and became the 31st state. Queen Calafia was the queen of Amazons in a 16th century Spanish novel. Today, the state has the 3rd largest U.S. population behind Texas and Alaska, provides most of the fruit and vegetables eaten by Americans, and if it was a country would have the 8th or 9th largest economy in the world. Non-whites (Mexicans, Asians and blacks) are now 60% of the population. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Cruz Pier and Boardwalk</td></tr>
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There are really two Californias, north and south, with different climates and even political leanings. The country's 2nd and 5th largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, preside over each territory. Most of the water is in the north which means and empire dams and pipes to carry this valuable resource have been constructed to quench the thirst of the south. The state's landscape is 1240 km in length between Mexico and Oregon, and 400 km in width between Nevada/Arizona and the Pacific Ocean. I lived for 20 years in the south, in and around Pasadena where I began my work life as a newspaper reporter. During my time in the rock and roll business I lived in Venice a stone's throw from the sand and surf.<br />
<br />
Over the years on frequent trips to the north, where relatives lived in Tiburon and Berkeley, I fell in love with the cooler temperatures and greener hillsides. San Francisco is a sophisticated city compared to the shabbiness of LA. My first foray into big-time academia was at UC Berkeley but I dropped out twice, and I worked one summer as a vacation replacement reporter on the San Francisco <i>Chronicle</i>. The north felt like more my style but I never managed to find a foothold in the city in those early years.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seals gather beside pier</td></tr>
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After getting myself fired as a music biz PR guy, I finally escaped to the north in 1976 and began a long tenure in the coastal city of Santa Cruz, between the redwood-covered hills and the rocky shoreline along the Pacific. North of Monterey and south of San Francisco, it was a sleepy fishing town until the university and the hippies arrived in the mid 1960s. I lived in both cabins and houses in the mountains where hippies and rock bands (my friend Peter managed one of them) dwelt in communes, as well as down in the flats of the town where the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake disturbed the tranquility of the Victorian neighborhoods. To make ends meet, I wrote and edited a local newspaper, handled art direction and circulation for a music magazine by commuting over the hill to Cupertino, and managed a database of alumni for the University of California's Santa Cruz campus. At UCSC my dormant curiosity about, well, everything, was aroused and I returned to study, lifting my head from books only after I'd received BA, MA, and finally a Ph.D. degree in the new century.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ancient redwood trees</td></tr>
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Santa Cruz is smallish, with a population now of about 60,000, three-quarters of whom are white. It began in 1791 as one of the string of Spanish missions to spread religion by the book and the sword (a horribly large number of native Americans died from their ill treatment by the Europeans). The city was incorporated in 1866 with an economy based on agriculture, lumber, gunpowder and lime (necessary for construction). The first state park, established by middle class anti-logging activists in the early 1900s (my Ph.D. thesis), was at Big Basin. Most of the Mexican immigrants, legal and not, currently live in Watsonville in the south county. It earned the name "Surf City" (contested by Huntington Beach in the south) for the big waves at Steamer Lane next to the lighthouse.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Everyday Dharma</td></tr>
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My wife and I raised two kids in the notoriously liberal and free-thinking place and time (Santa Cruz had a Marxist mayor for many years who also taught at the university). I researched the redwoods and park history for my doctoral thesis, became a Catholic at Holy Cross, and meditated with the Everyday Dharma Sangha down the street. After I began traveling for community college Spanish classes (Mexico, Argentina) and to build houses with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala, I also helped start an ecumenical spiritual group based on the teachings of Fr. Bede Griffiths who established an ashram for Christians and Hindus in Tamil Nadu, India. I grew wings in northern California that hadn't yet sprouted during my years in the south.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset along West Cliff</td></tr>
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This has become more about my journey than about the landscape that supported and inspired it. The central coast is incredibly beautiful and many times I drove along the ocean south to Big Sur (where I stayed at the Catholic monastery) or north up to San Francisco. I sunned, burned and tanned in summers (when the ever-present fog had lifted) on the many gorgeous beaches where the sand is hot but the water too cold usually to swim. In the hills around the city I hiked alone or with friends through the redwood and fir forests. Most of the San Lorenzo Valley was clear-cut to rebuild San Francisco after the 1916 earthquake but by the 21st century much had grown back. During my last and perhaps final visit (the high airfares) in 2010 I tried to hit most of the hot spots I remembered. The downtown area has evolved from the sleepy main street that I saw in 1966 to a cosmopolitan pedestrian mall with trendy shops and restaurants, perhaps too fashionable now for my tastes.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where I used to teach</td></tr>
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And yet...30 years is a long time to spend in a place and I sunk deep roots. My memories of friends and familiar environments, in the town and up in the mountains, remain strong. I left to become an expat in Thailand for reasons too numerous to list here, but it was never a rejection of the place that sustained me for so long. I commune with friends on Facebook and follow news stories like the recent student strike over rising tuition fees that closed down the university for several days. I left a good chunk of my heart back in California.<br />
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Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-55978119723320369172014-12-31T11:42:00.001+07:002014-12-31T16:43:20.073+07:00It's Been a Very Good Life<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/VHJ3iZpfBRI" width="400"></iframe><br />
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<i>But now the days are short, </i></div>
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<i>I'm in the autumn of my years </i></div>
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<i>And I think of my life as vintage wine </i></div>
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<i>From fine old kegs </i></div>
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<i>From the brim to the dregs </i></div>
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<i>It poured sweet and clear </i></div>
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<i>It was a very good year </i></div>
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No, I'm not signing out, yet. But it's New Year's Eve, that time of the year when people take stock of the past and add up its pluses and minuses. The media has been printing lists of the best and the worst of 2014. I know it's artificial and a space filler, but there's nothing wrong with looking back so long as it isn't to scratch scabs and stoke the fires of guilt.<br />
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This has been the year that I turned 75. I'm in the "autumn of my years," and when I reminisce it's not just about the last 12 months. The knowledge that I could keel over at any moment prompts almost a daily summing up. Did I do OK? <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Building houses in Guatemala</td></tr>
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This blog surfaced more than six years ago when I still lived in a converted garage in California and was coming to terms with my life as a non-working, single man after two long marriages and several careers. Income from Social Security and my share from the sale of my mother's house, as well as a buyout from my ex-wife, brought economic freedom and an abundance of choices. I'd begun to travel a year or so before, to Central and South America, Europe and Asia, and I'd retired as a late-blooming teacher from the University of California at Santa Cruz. The email letters I'd written to friends about my travels gradually morphed into this blog.<br />
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I gave the blog a title with the most inflammatory topics I could think of, and for the most part I think I've written about all three with enough honesty and pizazz to disturb a few sensibilities here and there. My most popular post has been about <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2010/06/pattaya-boneyard-for-old-men.html">sexpats in Pattaya</a> and number two was about the death of President Kennedy, the <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-first-reality-show.html">first reality TV show</a>. A post on the debate between <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2011/10/great-buddhist-debate.html">religious and secular Buddhists</a> comes in third and, surprisingly, the fourth most popular post was about my gay <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-uncle-ted.html">Uncle Ted</a>. At number 5 is a sympathetic post on the <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2012/01/ethics-of-internet-piracy.html">ethics of internet piracy</a>. For the most part I'm proud of my 559 posts (this being the 560th). Sometimes I think about collecting the best bits for publication in a digital or paper book, but the challenge at this late stage feels overwhelming. I suppose the posts will remain until the electrical power fails in some future climatological catastrophe.<br />
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Lately I've been less inspired to get on my soapbox about anything and so the posts per month have been dwindling. (There is nothing more boring than a blog post about how I haven't written much lately!) Among other reasons for writing on this New Year's Eve, this post is a way to put at least something into December. I don't think much about readers and only know who a few of them are. Blogger gives me lots of stats to inform me that my most popular post has been seen by 2,599 (probably all looking for what to expect in Pattaya), and that of the Kennedy assassination has had a little over 1,000 viewers. I had 3,000 page views last month, but a typical post gets no more than a couple of hundred looks (who knows if they read it?). Each year since 2007, when I penned 134, I've written fewer post; this year it's been a total of 23. Perhaps I've said all I need to say?<br />
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The general thrust of most of my blog posts since moving permanently to Thailand has been: I'm happy. After my first year in Bangkok a friend dubbed me "Expat Rookie of the Year." That made me exceptionally proud! Little about my new life has disappointed me. I wrote once that my biggest upset was caused by the typically slow stroll of Thais on the sidewalk. Not in a straight line either! But such frustrations aside, leaving the U.S. and coming to this tropical land was the perfect solution to the slow death by boredom I was experiencing after divorce and retirement. For most of my life I've felt there must be more to it than I was experiencing. But it was only after I came here, began teaching English to monks and met my lovely Nan, that I have felt that, finally, there is enough.<br />
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My academic career has been erratic. I dropped out of UC Berkeley not once but twice. My original major had been English, and the second time it was journalism. I left to be a reporter rather than just study about it. In mid-life I took a few night classes from time to time, in philosophy and math, and then some extension courses in quantum physics and new age thinking. Finally, at 46, I enrolled again, finished a philosophy BA and kept going in a European history graduate program. After a few bumps in the road, I graduated with a Ph.D. in U.S. environmental history. Teaching was frustrating, however, because most of my students were more interested in smoking dope than in reading books. So I quit and went on the road. In Thailand I was challenged to teach English to monks at the Buddhist university and I began my classes with some trepidation. Six years later it's become the most rewarding career of my life. <br />
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For most of the time I've been teaching a basic listening and speaking class to 3rd and 4th year students majoring in English. There are a few laypeople, more each year, but most are young Buddhist monks (and at least two non-Thai nuns). In the beginning they were largely from Thailand with some from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar (Shan state in particular). Now, though, I've got students also from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Taiwan, Nepal, and southern China. After a few years I was asked to teach linguistics in a weekend graduate program. When an MA program in English began, most of my students transferred into it. Last term I moved over and taught students how to teach English. This term I'm teaching a writing class; I've got my students writing on Facebook and Twitter! As a relatively new teacher, each class taught for the first time requires extensive preparation, and I love it! And I've become fascinated by the academic field of English for non-native speakers itself with its different acronyms -- ESL, EFL, ELL, etc. Most English speakers today are non-natives and preparing students for communicating with other non-natives will necessitate a looser reliance on grammar and spelling. I'd like to live long enough to write a book on "good enough English," and to teach strategies for dialogues between speakers of imperfect English -- "What did you say?", "Do you mean ...", and so on. In addition to teaching classes, I'm now an adviser for students who are preparing a thesis topic. Five of them are sending me work in progress.<br />
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Faithful readers (are there any still around?) know that I sampled the sexpat scene during my first trips to Thailand and found it ultimately unsatisfying. Even before I moved, I was an engaged patron of a large online dating site where mostly Thai women looked for mostly farang boyfriends and husbands. My first dates in Bangkok were with a number of patrons of that site. Several I took on travels to Phuket and Luang Prabang. My first girlfriend worked for Thai Post and asked me online to help her with English. We lived together for nearly a year. And then, in May of 2009, I met Nan for coffee. She had posted another girl's photo on her profile so I didn't recognize her at first. She wanted to eat farang food so I took her to Sizzler's. It didn't take long for us to fall in love. She moved in with me at the end of the summer and we were married a year later at the Bang Rak (<i>rak</i> is Thai for love) city hall.. <br />
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I was a twice-married, overweight elderly American, and she was a young girl from a village in the northern province of Phayao who had come to Bangkok a few years before to find a better life. When we met she had an office job for a company that manufactured foam packaging and lived in a tiny room (office jobs don't pay very much). Unlike others I'd met, she wasn't ashamed of the differences in our background and age and soon introduced me proudly to her relatives. Now I feel like a member of the family. I asked her what she wanted out of life and she said it was to finish university. So she became a student and graduated, as Thais do, in a colorful ceremony where she received a diploma from the crown prince. Then she got certified as a physical therapist and for the past two years she has been working at a health spa in an upscale Bangkok hotel. Next year she's thinking of exploring new options, and I support her in preparing for a future in which I will probably be absent.<br />
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Nan and I have a good life together. Last April we vacationed in Kyoto, Japan, and our past holiday itineraries have included Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul. In Thailand we've visited the nearby island Koh Samed many times as well as Koh Chang, Koh Samui and Ao Nang. I've been to her small village three times. Next year we're talking about Shanghai. In addition to working full time, Nan cooks most of my meals and keeps the house and our clothes clean. On her days off we inevitably find a nice restaurant for lunch or dinner, our culinary ritual. When not together, we keep in touch almost hourly on Line, the popular Asian social media app. Her English has improved considerably over the nearly six years we've been together. Sad to say, my Thai remains at a more primitive level. Occasionally I irritate her by learning impolite Thai words all on my own. Next month she celebrates her 30th birthday and we're planning a grand celebration. I can say without qualification that Nan (Thai name Siriporn) is my best wife ever!<br />
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It's here that this past year and my long life come together. Both are "very good." Aside from my life with Nan, my teaching monks, and the Epicurean pleasures of daily life in the tropics, even the current political situation in Thailand is a plus. No reality TV show could be more exciting. The military coup of last May and its ramifications, the daily headlines hinting at mysteries and improbabilities beyond the ken of mere mortals, and the undoubtably exciting prospects for momentous change in that not too distant future make for a delectable social media stew. I put in a good three hours on the computer every morning keeping track of it all. I really hope I don't keel over tomorrow. Life now is just too much fun!Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-61545163115129779502014-11-13T19:26:00.002+07:002014-11-13T22:41:42.727+07:00Fathers and Sons<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nG-TUyMW9Qs" width="400"></iframe>
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My father and my youngest son were both born on November 13. Thirteen is considered unlucky, even in Thailand. There is no 13th floor in my building, only a 12 and a 12A. Dad was born on a Friday and always considered Friday the 13th in whatever month to be lucky for him. My youngest son was spared that decision by being born on a Saturday. <br />
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This would have been my father's 106th birthday. He didn't much like the increasing disabilities that come with age and he died in 1993 surrounded by medications for heart disease and oxygen for his late-onset emphysema. I think it was all over for him when he was no longer able to walk in the mall in Florida where he liked to exercise with other senior citizens. There was no funeral, just an afternoon party at my mother's house with a group of friends and my brother and I. A few days later we spread his ashes on Tampa Bay where he sailed as a boy. I didn't cry for him. By then we had lived at opposite ends of the country for a long time. Though I tried to visit every couple of years, it was hard to maintain intimacy with the occasional phone call. Two trips to Florida stand out: one on November 13 with my young son and family and another on Father's Day where he and I wore tee shirts designated for the day that my mom had had made for us.<br />
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Dad was a twin and he and his brother got very different genes. My uncle was a closeted gay man, an actor on Broadway in his youth, a piano player who had once accompanied Paul Robeson when he stage managed a touring company of "Othello," and a traveler with a home in Cuernavaca. His brother, my father, was a man's man, who worked as a lifeguard in his youth and loved all kinds of sports. He also played the drums for a time when he was younger, and with his hands on the dash board of his car as I grew up. He was a traveling salesman for much of his life, a heavy drinker, and a friend to everyone he met. His father had died young and after fighting with his new step-father he was sent away to military boarding school in New Mexico. With me he was a stern disciplinarian but he loosened up when my brother came along and they had an easy friendship that I missed. With the boy who was born on his birthday he was the ideal gramps (as you can see from the photo)<br />
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By the time my fourth child was born I was beginning to get the hang of being a father, I thought. My 2nd wife had put most of her maternal energies into raising our daughter and left me to bond with the boy while she went outside the home to exercise her body, first by lifting weights and later with Jazzercise and finally African dancing. I had an easy job on the computer at school before I started taking classes and there was lots of time to cook dinner for him and for us to hang out together. I encouraged his early interest in music and he took up the drums like my father, later learning the mysteries of electronic music. I taught him to drive in the parking lot of a lumber yard. The two boys I had with my first wife suffered from my absence when I got caught up in the glamor of the music business in Hollywood, and when the marriage broke up and I left they were traumatized. But in my second marriage, after learning how to co-parent with out daughter, I thought I'd become the ideal dad.<br />
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But after the second marriage ended and I moved out of the family home, our relationship changed. When he was a teenager I'd gone back to school and poured myself into my studies. I think I let him down at a time when I should have been throwing the football with him (unlike my dad, I was lousy at sports and consequently uninterested in most forms of it). Troubles with his mother led me to put my attentions elsewhere. Still, I helped him to move into an apartment in San Francisco and visited from time to time as he learned to take care of himself and worked at a variety of retail clothing stories. He continued with his music and I encouraged him to following his dreams, and for while he was quite successful. He came to Thailand in 2009 with his sister and I shared with them the new life I'd made. But something happened a few years later and he wrote me what I regarded as a "fuck you" letter, letting me know that he would never love me as much as his mother, that my constant queries about his life were unwelcome, and (the kicker) he thought my relationship with a much younger woman was evidence of a deviant life style. It seemly came out of nowhere and it shattered me. I did not reply and I ended our Facebook connection.<br />
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And yet...he is still my son. And I think about him every November 13th. Today he turns 32. I don't know where he is or what he's doing. My relationships with my ex-wife and my daughter have likewise soured. Sometimes I wonder why I could not create the close intimacy with my kids that my friend Jerry has with his son and daughter. They accept his outrageously deviant behavior here in Thailand far away from their families in California and Washington. My closest friend Peter, who died of prostate cancer ten years ago, was an incredible father and I tried to emulate him without success. His three children all flourished under his love. Both my youngest son and daughter have struggled with their paths in life and I don't know how much is due to my poor parenting. But it's what I've got and I have to accept it. Happy birthday, dad, son.<br />
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<br />Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-7733978135975387342014-10-16T10:46:00.000+07:002014-10-16T12:32:47.079+07:00Watching the River Flow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>People disagreeing on all just about everything, yeah<br />Makes you stop and all wonder why<br />Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street<br />Who just couldn’t help but cry<br />Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though<br />No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow<br />And as long as it does I’ll just sit here<br />And watch the river flow</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Bob Dylan, "Watching the River Flow"</span></div>
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One of the advantages of turning 75 is that you're free from all the pressures of making long-term plans. Today I saw a map of the Bangkok transit system in 2029 when most of the current BTS and BMT construction projects should be completed. I realized that at 90 I'd probably be not be able to maneuver the escalators in my wheel chair. That is, if I were still around. As a septuagenarian, it's much easier to live in the present, to live each day as if it might be my last, because there's a very real chance that this could come true. <br />
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<i>All things end in the Tao<br />As rivers flow into the sea</i></blockquote>
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Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell, trans.)</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rama VIII Bridge can be seen from my window</td></tr>
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Despite feeling more content about my life now than at any other time in the past, ruminations about mortality come unbidden and often. And what better place to ponder the inscrutable mysteries of life than on the banks of the Chao Phraya River which cuts through Bangkok and empties into the Gulf of Thailand. It was originally called Me Nam, or Mother Water, until a European engineer working in Siam in the 1890s gave it its present name, something like "grand duke," which confers royalty on what has also been called the "River of Kings." I live two long city blocks from the west bank of the river and can see over it but not into it from my 9th floor window. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wat Arun</td></tr>
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Traveling on the river is more peaceful (and often quicker) than by bus. I catch the boat at the Pinklao pier and travel a half hour downstream to the Saphan Taksin Bridge pier where I can board the Skytrain for Siam or Sukhumvit. Along the way I could disembark at stops for the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, the Flower Market, Chinatown and the Oriental Hotel. Ferries cross the river at every point, the best way for example to get to Wat Arun. I've been on the river boat in a storm when winds actually pushed us backwards, and I've traveled at every hour of the day (they stop at dusk), carefully finding a seat in the shade when possible. They're noisy and crowded and the water sometimes splashed in the face of passengers is not exactly pure, but flowing upstream or down is always a joy.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wheel at Asiatique</td></tr>
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Life IS like a river and the banks of my river, after many twists and turns, are now settled. The stream is navigable and the destination certain. In the short term, however, the changes and surprises of life are a delight and show no sign of ceasing. Thailand's military dictatorship is now into its fifth month and provides a constant source of fascination for the social network crowd. The general, now a suited PM, cannot stop talking to the media and there is no lack of suggestions about where he's put his foot. It is true, however, that despite the significant downturn in tourism and the ridicule of the foreign press, Thailand is more peaceful than its been in years. Discontent may bubble under the surface in the Land of Smiles but for now it's out of sight. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking down on Saphan Taksin</td></tr>
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Each day I arise before dawn and if the sunrise is unusually spectacular I take a photo for my "Out the Window" collection. The day begins with juice and drip-brewed espresso to accompany the checking of email, Facebook posts, and the latest items from my Feedly collection and Google News. Then it's onward to Twitter to get the most recent tweets from (this week) Hong Kong's street protests. Since Nan's a night person and rarely gets home from work before 11, our schedules are out of sync. For as long as I recall, it's been impossible for me to sleep in (naps are another matter). When she does awake, the proper day begins and she usually cooks me breakfast. Her latest triumph is hash brown potatoes, but her salmon congee is a culinary delight. Most days we shower together; she goes off to work and I repair to the pool for my strenuous 10 laps and an hour of poolside reading on my iPad.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Ajahn Golf and our graduate students</td></tr>
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Besides domestic bliss, the great pleasure of my life these days is teaching English to monks. The year's first term has just ended and I've completed the grade report for my 4th year students studying "Listening & Speaking." I'm awaiting final reports from the graduate students who I've been teaching how to teach English before determining their marks. Teaching myself how to teach has been a fascinating process over the last six years. I trained to be a historian but my Ph.D. opened up new doors here in Thailand. My students, who include a few lay people, come from poor backgrounds all over Southeast Asia and for many of them this is their only opportunity to get a degree (it's cheaper than the established universities). Some go only through the motions, their eyes on the prized diploma, but a few each year are outstanding and amaze me with their enthusiasm and brilliance. I'm putting together a writing class now for the graduate students working on an MA in English and it will begin in a couple of weeks. My fire is burning bright and I've been downloading papers on the "lexical approach" to teaching English, which privileges chunks of speech over memorized grammar. And I'm also taken with the communicative theory of teaching English which aims for mutual understanding more than perfect fluency. If only I were just beginning at this! I coulda been a contender!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rama VIII Park</td></tr>
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Habits are the brain's way of conserving energy, and I've got them in spades. When not teaching at my university's main campus near Ayutthaya or at the graduate classroom next to Wat Srisudaram not far from my home in Pinklao, I spend much of my time at home these days. Occasionally I travel to the main shopping area of Siam Square to look for books, or to Sukhumvit to visit friends or attend a gathering of my expat Buddhist group. Other than Jerry, who is responsible for introducing me to Thailand in more ways than I can count, I have few close friends here other than Nan. Most of my community now is online. I read now only ebooks and am slowly going through Karl Ove Knausgaard's trilology. In my iBooks library I've got recent releases by Naomi Klein, Thomas Piketty, Max Blumenthal, Sam Harris and Haruki Murakami as well as <i>Inside the Dream Palace</i> about the Chelsea Hotel. Rather than read, however, I mostly watch imported TV shows like the excellent new programs "Manhattan" and "The Knick," as well as "Downton Abbey," "Homeland" and the recently completed "Masters of Sex" and "Ray Donovan." I also watch movies on my small laptop screen and recently enjoyed "The Edge of Heaven," "Chef," "Obvious Child," "Le Weekend" and "The Homesman." I don't lack for diversion.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pinklao "Bride"</td></tr>
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Of course, nothing's perfect. Besides being overweight (it couldn't be the ice cream, could it), I'm plagued with a variety of probably age related problems. I still manage to walk up the street after my nap to sip a cappuccino at my favorite watering hole, "I Drink Coffee," with the loud sounds of the latest floor show for slimming treatments going on down below in the Central Pinklao mall. Like Kant's daily walks, my neighbors in Pinklao can probably tell time by the regularity of my late afternoon stroll. On the way home I buy flowers for our icons and fresh pineapple and watermelon slices to make a fruit shake in the morning. I pass the three-legged dogs who are caged during the day and let out at night by the sidewalk vendor who takes care of them. Three new restaurants have opened near my condo, Lumpini Place, as well as a coffee shop that plays Frank Sinatra tunes on a phonograph. I was recently asked how "exotic" it was to live in Thailand. The truth is that every day is both strange and familiar. I've lived in this neighborhood longer than anywhere else during my long life, and feel as if I know every inch of the road from my place to the mall. Not the people though. The wall of language and culture will forever keep me on the outside looking in. All I can do is lay back and watch the river of life flow!<br />
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And there's this magnificent song about the flowing of the river.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/m6wMKprHV9c" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-36143757330510585962014-08-25T11:14:00.000+07:002014-08-25T11:14:07.430+07:00Sex and Marriage, Redux<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/912DKxD0H1U" width="400"></iframe><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">"D-I-V-O-R-C-E," by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam</span></div>
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Growing up in Southern California in the 1950's, none of the boys I knew gave a moment's thought to the possibilities of marriage and raising children. Unlike the girls playing family with their dolls and dreaming of a white wedding dress, our concern was how NOT to have kids. It was before the pill when coat hanger abortions were common and dangerous. Many of us carried around a condom in our wallet, and its outline could be seen long before we had the opportunity to use one. Horror stories about flawed rubbers were exchanged over the lunchroom table in school.</div>
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The story of how I stumbled into marriage was recounted in the initial episode of <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2014/08/sex-and-marriage.html">Sex and Marriage</a>. I consented to calm my first wife's hysteria about the possibility of my leaving. And when I finally walked out the door (or rather was locked out late one night), I left my two young boys behind, telling myself that she would kills herself if I took them away from her. I had sufficient reason for leaving from the confession she taped to the TV set before I came home one night that told of multiple affairs -- with her best friend's husband, several next door neighbors, a number of one-night stands with strangers, and my brother's friend whose hair she offered to cut. Strangely enough, we had a reconciliation of sorts for three weeks until the night I came home drunk to find I was unable to open the door (it was only because of a wind storm which I misinterpreted, but took it as a sign). But, truth be told, I left to get my freedom from marriage and from my family. </div>
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Getting locked out was not the worst of the breakup. A friend in Santa Monica let me stay with him for a few days. And on Sunday I went to the weekly volleyball game on Venice Beach between fellow workers in the rock and roll biz. Who should show up but my wife and our children! She was not content to keep our problems private, but began shouting at me, asking where I'd been. I walked off the beach without looking back and drove up to a friend's farm in Mendocino for a week of distance and healing. On the way back I stopped off in Bolinas to visit a friend for some sexual commiseration. And back in Hollywood, my friend Diane, who was also Chuck Berry's girlfriend, found me a room in a apartment house for retired film folk next to Grauman's Chinese Theatre (torn down long ago). Eventually I found a crash pad in a duplex just off Venice Beach where I lived for two long years.</div>
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I had no idea how to be a single father. Once she saw the breakup was permanent, my wife agreed to weekend visits by the kids every two weeks. I bought bunk bed cots and a big TV, and subjected them to a routine of fast food and movies. Swimming in the ocean was always an option, but Venice was not yet a safe tourist destination. Junkies and Jewish refugees cohabitated in the run-down beach-front apartment buildings. When I bought my eldest a bike, it was stolen within a day. My lifestyle was increasingly drug related. LSD and speed was easy to obtain and I remember one all-night party which culminated in a dawn drive in a convertible with wired and blitzed friends. I took along my two boys, and I should have been arrested.</div>
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Leaving them with their mother may have been the worst thing I ever did. She remarried an artist and they moved from Sierra Madre to Durango to Sonoma, giving them a half-sister along the way. While I had moved north to Santa Cruz and dried out, my children's parents got heavily into cocaine and booze. Their mother has been a lifelong user of Valium which she argued made her almost normal. Although I'm not giving up my share of the blame, their lifestyle had similar yet different effects on our sons. One became an alcoholic who would die from substance abuse at the age of 42 and the elder became a workaholic whose obsessions would prove uniquely successful. </div>
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My wife handled the divorce and did not ask for alimony, probably because she assumed I would use her "confession" of serial adultery as evidence against her. After the breakup and before the move north, I indulged my senses and wrecked my body in a two-year bacchanalia fueled by rock and roll and drugs. My access as a PR man to musicians was attractive to groupies and star fuckers. I toured with Elton John, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Eric Clapton and Crosby, Stills Etc. I went to concerts in Hawaii and London, a conference in Paris where Stéphane Grappelli played dinner music, and a recording session by the Stones in Kingston, Jamaica. There was always a dealer handy. My one romantic affair during this time, with the younger sister of my secretary, ended when I chose cocaine over her. Friends identified me as a basket case and I lost jobs, finally getting fired by my boss when I wouldn't leave my office where I'd locked the door and played music at full volume. On alternate weekends I would take my sons to dinner and the movies (my eldest still remembers all the titles). My surviving son, who hasn't spoken to his mother in 10 year, chose not to have any children with his wife, for obvious reasons. </div>
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In the Santa Cruz Mountains I became the hippie I'd always wanted to be, lived on unemployment and wrote poetry which I read at local restaurants and coffee shops on bills with singer-songwriters. There I fell in love with a chef from one of the restaurants who wooed me with steak and shrimp take-home. She'd been a topless-bottomless dancer for a brief spell in Alaska and was then cooking and drawing pictures. We met at a luncheon to celebrate her divorce from a man who had made a fortune in the early Silicon Valley. Our days consisted of sleeping in late, going to outdoor parties, dancing at the Catalyst, taking mind-altering chemicals, and sunning at the nude beach. And sometimes my boys would come from far away to visit and sleep our couch (after I moved into her tiny apartment). </div>
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She had tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant when she was married. The daughter of an alcoholic airline pilot from Connecticut, she was very close to her mother and I think wanted to duplicate that relationship with her own child. I was of two minds about having children. My first experience had been such a failure that I never wanted to repeat it. On the other hand, it seemed like the most loving thing I could do for her. We were quickly successful, but when she told her mother, she learned in no uncertain terms that marriage was required before further communication. We were married in March under flowering fruit trees at an organic farm by a lawyer with a certificate in the Church of Conservation. His wife played the guitar and sang songs to Kahlil Gibran poems. </div>
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Our daughter was born in a big brass bed in the birth center of a local hospital where we spent the night after I gave her a warm bath. We buried the placenta under a rose bush in front of our house. I was entranced by this little thing with lots of hair. We swung together in the hammock I put up between two trees in our yard, and I was very good at dancing her to sleep. Now my thought was that perhaps I could do it right, be the kind of father I saw in the models around me in Santa Cruz of caring men who easily put their own needs aside for that of their children. When she was three, we moved back to the town where my wife grew up in Connecticut and lived in a large house with a yard that required a ride-on lawn mower. I got a good job and commuted to Manhattan by train. We got a dog (who promptly ran away), and our daughter trick or treated in the neighborhood on Halloween in a ballerina's costume.</div>
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When my wife began her campaign to have another child (so our daughter would not be an only child, now seen as a bad thing), I should have paused to reconsider. In the early months of her first pregnancy, she had experienced some bleeding, and our sex life screeched to a halt. After the birth, she moved easily from the role of lover to that of mother. The wild and crazy earth woman I'd encountered in the Santa Cruz Mountains went into hibernation. I responded to diminished intimacy by studying religion in my spare time, reading books and visiting churches. It only took a week for us to get pregnant the second time and it was the last sustained sex I would have in our marriage. After the pregnancy and birth (it only took an hour at Yale New Haven Hospital and we left before the free filet mignon meal), we drifted into separate worlds. I was the breadwinner and the intellectually curious student of a wide variety of subjects. When called upon, I fulfilled my fatherly duties. But I increasingly felt alone. We were no longer a couple or a team. Just as her father had been a threat in her family (he would pass out at the dinner table into his food), I took on that role for her in ours. We rarely agreed about child raising issues and she would frequently defend the children against my attempts at discipline (the main thing I'd learned from my father). </div>
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After returning to California with our son and daughter, I converted to Catholicism and returned to school as an undergraduate majoring in philosophy. We turned a succession of small mountain cabins into comfortable homes and socialized with a wide network of friends. Many looked upon us as the ideal family. When I received my diploma at a school ceremony, my wife stayed home with a bad back; it was a sign that I missed at the time. A high school dropout, she was intimidated by my university friends. As the kids got older, she took up jazzercise, then weight lifting, and finally African dancing and drumming. At one point I counted our sexual encounters and determined they averaged once every six weeks. She said it was because she was afraid of getting pregnant again, and suggested I get a vasectomy. After a horribly painful week, I was sterile. But it didn't seem to change her lack of interest.</div>
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Is sex on the internet adultery? When Macs could capture high quality photography and video, I got a new model. Given my experiences in the music business, I had little resistance to temptation. I locked my office door and pretend to be doing research. Our problems were complicated by two sizeable inheritances that my wife kept separate from our income, mine as a student teacher and hers as a face painter at county fairs. When our children were small and I had a decent income, I supported the family and gave her the check book. But when her ship came in, she sailed without me and resented any of my thoughts about sharing. By then our daughter was out of school and I cooked dinners for my son while she went to various African dance classes and events. In my spare time I studied and surfed for porno.</div>
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Aside from some of the more sordid details, the end came quickly. She went on a trip to Mexico for several weeks with friends, and I went to the urologist for a biopsy. It came back positive for prostate cancer. I worried that my wife would interrupt her holiday for this bad news, but she was hard to reach. When she returned I learned that she had been more than friendly with their guide. My upset seem to exacerbate hers. After visiting an oncologist about killing the prostate with radioactive seeds, we got into a horrendous fight on the drive home. Once there, sitting at our dining room table, she announced that she wanted to live alone. She wanted to be with people like her brother (a macho real estate salesman, but a really nice guy) and people in their 50s, not 12 years older geriatrics like me. I felt like little more than a sperm donor.</div>
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I left that night, later moving out my things (including a very large book collection), lived in a collection of borrowed or rented rooms, and we were divorced a year later (she did it by herself since I refused to participate in mediation). She'd found a new boyfriend a couple of months after I left, who taught her to surf, and they were soon married (for the insurance, she told me). She bought out my share of the house which allowed me enough funds for a couple of years of world travel. Both of our kids took her side in the divorce, and although we maintained cordial relations for a few years, we now are estranged. They're appalled that I would marry a woman younger than they (a story for later). My daughter, after tricking me into co-signing a school loan that she used to live on for a couple of years without telling me, now wonders if I molested her when she was 2 (it used to be the nursery school teacher but now her target is me). I didn't know what to say, except "no, I didn't," and to tell her to get psychological help. </div>
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So now I'm a twice-divorced, thrice-married man, an expat in Thailand who has unexpectedly found a deep love and fulfilling relationship late in life with a woman from Phayao in the north of Thailand (another, much different, story from these). One of my children died (and I often ponder the amount of my blame), two no longer speak with me, and my eldest son and I exchange light thoughts on Facebook. I think he was right not to have children. It didn't provide me with much satisfaction. I could talk about my father and mother as being poor role models (my mother said HER mother didn't know how to give affection, and my father was sent to military school by his step-father after his father's early death), but that would be to unfairly to shift the blame. In the long run, I can't say much about sex, marriage or love. I never got any of it right. Until now.</div>
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This song is for my boys and I, and my father as well.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/aVbbYYUMI-c" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-33231578071491639272014-08-14T10:48:00.000+07:002014-08-14T10:57:49.636+07:00Sex and Marriage<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YD740k0flNo" width="400"></iframe><br />
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<i>Love and marriage, love and marriage,</i></div>
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<i>Go together like a horse and carriage</i></div>
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Sex and marriage, however, go together like apple pie and chopped liver.<br />
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Sinatra was married four times, to the original Nancy, Ava Gardner, Mia Farrow and finally for the last 22 years of his life to the former Las Vegas showgirl who was the widow of Marx Brother Zeppo. He also had very public affairs including engagements with many prominent ladies that included Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, Juliet Prowse, Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson. Clearly he loved women, but was it for marriage or for sex?<br />
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I've only been married three times, and the half dozen or so serious relationships I've had over a long life never made it to the engagement stage. Was Sinatra ever a model for me, more so than Hugh Hefner, the guru of <i>Playboy</i>? Someone once told me I looked like Old Blue-Eyes and I did not take it as a compliment. Or maybe they said I resembled Humphrey Bogart. The mind plays tricks at this age.<br />
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Why did I marry? With my first wife, it was to ease her high anxiety that I might leave the small room in Berkeley with the fold-out bed where we were living and never come back. One night I had to coax her out from under the bed where she was indulging in a bit of hysteria. She hated lying to the landlord about being a Mr. and Mrs. So to soothe the troubled waters at home while I worked as a summer replacement reporter across the bay at the <i>Chronicle</i>, I consented to marry her, a possibility that had not before then crossed my mind.<br />
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Conveniently, my father's cousin who lived in Marin County was an Episcopal priest. Years earlier my family had visited him in Tucson where his wife's hefty inheritance maintained their country-club lifestyle. But in his mature years he saw the light, turned his back on a mediocre sales career and became a man of the cloth. During a "fish-in" for native fishing rights near Tacoma, Washington, he was arrested with Marlon Brando. At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, he was assistant canon to the noted liberal Bishop James Pike. Who better to marry us?<br />
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During a leisurely lunch by their pool, my relative the priest and his wife soon ascertained that the woman I wanted to marry and I were sleeping together in Berkeley and had been for some months. This was 1963 when puritanical attitudes about sex and marriage still prevailed, and "shacking up" was rarely an option for the middle classes. In the City by the Bay to the south the beats were about to transmute into the hippies and all moral hell would break loose. But for my relative the priest it just wouldn't be proper to marry someone who was already cohabitating. During a subsequent phone call to discuss arrangements for the wedding, he asked: Would you mind sleeping apart before the ceremony?<br />
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That would never do. So we headed south where my college roommate and his wife were staying in the beach house of his step-father, and we were married by a justice of the peace in Laguna Beach. Our honeymoon dinner was held with some additional friends on the patio of a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. For dessert, we visited a notorious bar where female performers were rumored to do nasty things with a donkey. My best man snuck upstairs with a waitress, much to the displeasure of his wife. Back in the U.S. that night, a nasty sunburn prevented my new wife and I from any thoughts of wedding night sex<br />
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Contrary to the dreams of teenage boys, marriage does not guarantee a steady diet of sex. I think I realized this not that long before the woman I had been sleeping with became my wife. Six months earlier I had been living in the lonely isolation of a basement room in an Italian lady's house on Leroy Street in Greenwich Village. Intent on a writer's life, the only outlet I found was to type passionate love letters to the woman I'd met at my going-away party in Pasadena. We spent the night talking before my train left for the east, and during the cold New York winter I imagined her to be my muse.<br />
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She liked the attention, I'm sure, but did not respond in kind; clearly I was not yet her white knight. So at the first sign of a thaw, I returned to California and set about wooing her into bed. Initial resistance only fueled my desire. On a picnic I dropped a wine bottle and seriously cut my hand on the broken glass. My wounds appeared to open her heart. A day or so later we got into the shower together and afterwards in her bed consummated my campaign to capture her heart and unlock the mysteries of her body. Was it love? Hardly. Was it just about sex? Humans seem unable to rut with the animals without clothing the act in fine linen.<br />
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I learned everything I know about sex during furtive discussions at the back table with other 8th grade boys in the lunchroom at our junior high school. Vaginas, one aspiring physiologist told us, took time to move from the lower stomach of a girl down to between her legs. If you want to get her excited, blow in her ear. But not too hard. Watch out for braces which could be dangerous. Girls that disappear (and there were a few) got pregnant and had to go away to have the baby. Run round the bases as fast as you can, from kissing to fucking. But in those early days all kinds of sex was equally imaginary.<br />
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In my home sex was never a topic, though my parents did have a copy of Alfred Kinsey's book on their shelf next to the Reader's Digest abridged book collection. I thumbed through copies of <i>National Geographic</i> looking for the photos of naked natives. Love wasn't discussed much either beyond the obligatory professions required of children in exchange for...everything. The lives of my parents did not seem all that different from that of the bumbling adults in the numerous family sitcoms on nightly TV we watched while eating our meals from TV trays. Mom bickered and Dad responded with indignant silence.<br />
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Girls played with dolls and engaged in extended foreplay over weddings and marriages and babies. In my experience, boys never aspired to marry and raise a family. It was simply not one of the choices we imagined for the future. The models presented to us on television, in the movies, and in our own homes, of marriage were not appealing. I wanted to be a movie actor, a musician, or a famous writer, but never did the thought of being a husband cross my mind. If anything, it was the consolation prize in a life that failed to live up to one's expectations.<br />
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Sex was a territory to be conquered. I recall long, sweaty make-out sessions that finally yielded a flash of bare skin, smooth to the touch. It was a contest with the girl holding back until she could be certain that the abandonment of her modesty would hook the attention of the desired object, a pimply-face boy who might prove to be an asset in the complicated social setting of a school yard. Love at that stage was the ramped-up desire of infatuation, an accidental by-product of the hand-to-hand combat of an adolescent boy and girl (though same sex equivalents may have taken place, I have no knowledge of it). On a New Year's eve while a one friend drove us from Pasadena to Long Beach and back, another friend and I dipped our fingers into the honey pots of our dates. Unchartered territory! Bliss! A year or so later I finally did the ultimate deed, rutting in the front seat of my parents' car at the drive-in while watching "Bambi" with a willing companion. As sex goes, it was more fumbling than fucking, but at last I'd made it to the finish line. After that, it was all down hill.<br />
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My first wife and I stayed married for nearly ten years. We were both unhappy much of the time and the sex was mostly unreliable and not very satisfying. As the mother of our two sons, I would be reluctant to deny feelings of love for her but they were drenched in the grip of obligation. She was jealous of my life outside the family cage and her attempts to break free took a disturbing turn. When she initiated a threesome, it turned out that she was having an affair with the other woman's husband. Moments of honesty led to brief intimations of new possibilities. But her deep despair, like the anxiety on the eve of our wedding, could not be assuaged with valium and serial sex partners. I walked away feeling a failure at everything I'd tried with her: marriage, sex, and fatherhood. <br />
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Sex and love: two sides of the same coin? A marriage without one or the other would be a mistake. But what is marriage anyway, other than a socially sanctioned way to guarantee the protection and survival of the offspring by the father and to prevent the mother from soliciting other sperm donors on the sly? Admittedly, that's the cynical view. In a more romantic perspective, it's the seal of approval by the community when two hearts beat as one. My second marriage might qualify under that rubric, although toward the end my wife would claim she only agreed to marry because her mother refused to speak to her unless she did, having learned she would soon be a grandmother. This time it was me arguing for the value of marriage and the seal it gave for the permanency of the union. But that's another story.Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-41598836786447342642014-08-11T11:39:00.002+07:002014-08-17T10:34:49.440+07:00The Banjo Player from Portland Town<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>I</i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> have seen this tattooed hand through a ship port-hole,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Steaming on the watery main through the waves so cold,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Heard his tinkling banjo and his voice so grand</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>But you must come to Belgium to shake the tattooed hand</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Donovan, "Epistle to Derroll"</span></div>
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On a snowy night in early 1965 my pregnant wife and I crossed the English Channel in search of the legendary banjoman, Derroll Adams. I was writing a story about Jack Elliott and needed his help. Elliott and Adams had combined their voices and stringed instruments together in the late 1950's to spread American folk and country music throughout England and on the continent, leaving a slew of guitar and banjo disciples in their wake. Elliott eventually returned to the U.S. where he consolidated his reputation as a unique performer, but Adams had stayed behind. His memories of their time together were important for my story.<br />
<br />
We checked into a hotel and left a message at the Cafe Welkum just off the Grand Place in Brussels and that evening he came to get us. Tall and lanky, with a smooth gravely voice that could melt the coldest heart, Derroll regaled us with stories that went far beyond his adventurers with Jack and his spotty musical career. In the company of a couple of other singers, we traveled around the city that night from bar to bar, where they sang their songs for drinks and tips. <br />
<br />
My story about Jack appeared in <i>Sing Out!</i> in 1966 (reprinted as a blog post <a href="http://drwillajahn.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-singing-cowboy-from-brooklyn.html">here</a>). Not long after our son was born, Derroll showed up at the door of our London flat. He looked terrible and was suffering from the DTs. He'd been asked to leave Belgium after a series of misadventures resulting from an excess of drink. We offered him our couch while he tried to sort out his next moves. During the several months he stayed with us, I tried to help him get back on his feet. Before long he found a few folk clubs that would give him work so long as he behaved. I told him about Donovan, a young singer I'd met at rehearsals for the TV show "Ready, Steady, Go," and Derroll soon got together with him, giving Don a direct line past the Dylan he'd been imitating to the original for both, Woody Guthrie whom Derroll had known in California. Derroll, Donovan and Dylan can be seen together in a scene from Dylan's film s"Don't Look Back." Derroll, unfortunately, is obviously drunk.<br />
<br />
While Derroll was living with us, I took the opportunity to talk with him about his life. Drunk or sober, no one could tell a more fascinating story. Were they all true? Mostly. I put my notes together for <i>Sing Out!</i> and the article was published in the December/November 1967 issue after we had returned to the United States. I have reprinted it below.<br />
<br />
In 1972, after a few disastrous career decisions, I grabbed a fist-full of credit cards and took my family to Europe in an attempt to duplicate the success I'd had as a journalist in the 1960s. When nothing immediately materialized, we crossed the channel to visit Derroll in Antwerp. Since last seeing him, he'd met the amazing Danny Levy who had helped him to turn his life around. There was lots of work and plenty of adoring fans who loved his laid-back banjo style and the songs and stories that connected his own experience with traditional music in the U.S. Derroll had been invited to play a folk festival in Geneva and we decided to tag along, thanks to my ample credit. After a flight to Lyon, we rented a car and drove south to visit Derroll's ex-wife Izzy and their two children who were living on a farm in Ardeche. From there we drove through Van Gough country and along the Riviera, stopping in San Tropez for lunch. Spending the night in Nice, we flew the next day to Switzerland for the festival. I was pleased to see Derroll so happy and productive.<br />
<br />
Working in the music business in the mid-1970s, I found myself at a party one night talking with John Stewart. I knew that Stewart while a member of the Kingston Trio had recorded Derroll's song, "Portland Town," and claimed copyright to it. He said he came across the song in <i>Sing Out! </i>and assumed it was in the public domain, a rather lame excuse I thought. I wondered whether there were any royalties. Stewart told me he had sold the copyright to a Mafia-controlled music publishing company and that getting any money out of them for Derroll would be difficult. (An interesting account of this can be found <a href="http://compvid101.blogspot.com/2011/03/derroll-adams-john-stewart-and-portland.html">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
Four years later, Donovan invited Derroll to join him for three dates in the U.S., at clubs in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was his first visit back to the states and he was looking forward to getting together with his far-flung family in the northwest. Danny looked after their young daughter Rebecca. We joined them in Los Angeles where they played the Rainbow and in San Francisco at the Boarding House where Jack Elliott got together again with his old partner. And they stayed with us for a few days at our cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains.<br />
<br />
I'm sorry to say that this was my last contact with Derroll. It was the 1970s and men and women's liberation was the cultural norm in the left coastal California city where I lived. All his life Derroll had found people to pick up the pieces from the messes he had created who would forgive him because of the unique and talented performer that he was. My new wife and I were trying to live an egalitarian life style and I found myself critical of Derroll because of his dependency on Danny and his seeming helplessness outside of anything but his music.<br />
<br />
Derroll died in 2000. On a trip to Europe in 2005 I went to Antwerp and spent the night in the two-storey house in shared with Danny, sleeping on the floor in his art studio. His art was amazing. I'd seen nothing of this side of him during our earlier meetings. I was also happy to learn of how fruitful and celebrated his final years in Belgium had been. There is a very good web site about Derroll's life <a href="http://www.derrolladams.org/">here</a>, and much of his music is now available on YouTube.<br />
<br />
The banjo player from Portland leaves a legacy that will not be forgotten. Here is my story from his early years.</div>
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The story of
Derroll Adams could begin with the year he arrived in Los Angeles with his
banjo in the early 1950's and met up with a group of younger, unknown singers
of folk music; among them Odetta, Guy Carawan and Frank Hamilton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His mist important friend for the story would
be Jack Elliott, for Jack and he became "rambling buddies." But
because Derroll has been an expatriate in Europe since 1957, he is little know
in America and his reputation in the U.S. has been made by the singers he met
in California, and by the people who have heard him and played with him in
Brussels and London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This reputation,
for one who has never met him or heard the records he recorded with Jack in
London and Milan, takes the appearance of a legend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a banjo player and singer in the
tradition of Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a creative musician who has evolved and
extremely personal style firmly rooted in country music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is also an eccentric iconoclast, an unusual
character whose life dwarfs the creations in two-dimensional beatnik fiction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This life,
with its heightened pleasures and tragedy, began long before he made his way to
Los Angeles where he became part of the World Folk Artists group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because his life has provided the
platform for his music, which concerns us here, his story must begin earlier.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Derroll
Lerwis Thompson was born in Portland, Oregon the day after Thanksgiving in
1925, to Gertrude Tompson, whose ancestors had come to the northwest by covered
wagon from Arkansas, and her husband Tom, an ex-vaudeville juggler from Marine
who carved tombstones when he wasn't drunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His mother had been reading an adventure story about a Captain Derroll
just before his birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She left Tom
because of his drinking and married Jack Glenn, a truck driver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Jack beat Derroll with his belt buckle
and she left him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George Adams as a
tenant in the house where she went to live with Derroll and her mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adams, a salesman and inventor in his spare
time from Takoma, Washington, gave Derroll eight pennies for some candy and the
small boy persuaded his mother that here was a likely father prospect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were married and Derroll took his
surname.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Much of
Derroll's childhood was spent in the back seat of a car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His step-father, after studying civil
engineering at night school, got a job on the Bonneville Dam power line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He took his family with him and when not
working they hired themselves out as fruit pickers throughout the
northwest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>although Derroll's parents were
not musical, the car radio was always turned on and they liked to listen to
"Grand Ole Opry."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Derroll fell
in love with the sound of a banjo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"Although I'd never seen one before," he said, "I figured
out that it must have five strings." In the orchards he listened to the
other pickers sing, and his mother bought him a harmonica so he could make his
own music.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As a child,
Derroll thought he would like to be an airplane pilot or a criminal
lawyer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also loved cowboys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Film star Buck Jones as his hero, as well as
Lefty Carson, an ex-cowboy who worked in a Portland clothing store in
full-dress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kids at school called
Derroll "Tex" because he wore cowboy clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a fruit-picking trip he acquired the habit
of chewing tobacco from some retired farmers outside a feed store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps he had his father's vaudeville blood,
because he loved to tell stories in front of his school class about his
family's travels, making true facts funny rather than inventing tall yarns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He took part in school plays, once as
Lincoln, and he imagined himself to be Maurice Chevalier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I used to juggle money in my pocket,
just like he did, kiss women's hands, and dance down the street."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack and Derroll</td></tr>
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when the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Derroll was sixteen and a typical adolescent who
was sick of home and in need of adventure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lying about his age, he joined the Army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But his absence was reported to the police and broadcast over the radio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George Adams was summoned but agreed to let
him stay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of overseas adventure,
Derroll laid mines of the Pacific coast from a converted ferry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unexpectedly, he was give a minority
discharge after five months and sent home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>within the year, he married a school classmate and joined the Coast
Guard in San Francisco. There he was assigned to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>naval landing force and trained in judo,
deep-sea diving, bayoneting and knife fighting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His destroyer was going overseas when its main shaft broke and the shift
headed back for coast duty.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the Navy
Derroll shaved his head (they called him "moon") and began wearing an
ear ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although he spent much of his
time with sailors from the south, playing his harmonica with them and learning
their songs, he hated the Navy. Constant calls to battle stations made him
nervous and the teasing by his shipmates because of his religious beliefs
brought him to the edge of a nervous breakdown and finally pushed him
over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"My mother believed in Unity
and faith healing," he explained, "and I used to keep pin-up pictures
of Jesus in our car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I healed an
old woman by praying with her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told
people I thought that God was love and everywhere, and that there wasn't any
heaven or hell, and they laughed at me." One night, Derroll took a knife
and went after a lieutenant who was particularly cruel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was stopped in time but was sent to the
hospital on Treasure Island in San Francisco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once there he found he couldn't remember what bothered him and his
illness was diagnosed as "psychoneurosis anxiety."<o:p></o:p></div>
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"The
war reduced me," Derroll said. "I realized that I had to go out and kill
people, and that I might die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We didn't
do any fighting, but we always had to be prepared, and the tension was
terrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I became afraid of everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before the war I'd lived in a cozy niche,
believing everything anybody told me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But he war made me feel that the world was full of lies."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Derroll told
the doctors that he wanted to do nothing else but grow flowers and paint
pictures, so they released him with instructions to take it easy for a year and
"learn to laugh." He returned to Portland, became a father for the
first time, and enrolled at Museum Art School, an extension of Reed College.
"I'd decided to be an art teacher and teach the eskimos," he said.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Derroll and Pete Seeger</td></tr>
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Derroll
studied other things as well as art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
joined the Vedanta Society, tried various drugs, kept his ear ring and grew a
beard, joined the Progressive Party to campaign for Henry Wallace, and held
Marxist classes at his studio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of
his time was taken up with the banjo, an ancient instrument which his mother
had bought from a blind lady to cheer him up on his return home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the first professional singer he heard was
Josh White, at a college concert, and he listened to records by bluegrass
groups and the Carter Family, as well as by Burl Ives, Roy Acuff, Pete Seeger,
Cousin Emmy, Woody Guthrie, Bascom Lunsford, Cisco Houston, Doc Boggs and Buell
Kazee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I guess I was the first
banjo-playing folk singer in Oregon," Derroll said. "I didn't know
how to tune the thing and had to invent my own way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first I sang the country songs I'd heard
when I was younger, but later I learned labor songs like Jim Garland's 'I Don't
Want your Millions, Mister,' and a parady of 'Little Brown Jung.' I went around
the state and sang in the grange halls for Wallace."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pete
Seeger's was Derroll's first live influence on the banjo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At a party after a concert (where Seeger
"wowed" Derroll with his music), Seeger borrowed Derroll's banjo to
play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"There was a crowd of
wonderful people there," Seeger said, "and I remember having to
retune Derroll's banjo."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seeger told
Derroll that Garland, the ex-miner from Kentucky and singer of labor songs, had
a broom factory in Washington.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"I went
up to see Jim a couple of days later," Derroll said. "We became good
friends and sang around the area for Wallace together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was a political hero for me because he'd
been at the Coal Creek strike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
remember him telling about his sister, Aunt Molly Jackson, who 'sure was a
marryin' woman,' he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn't like
my favorite singer, cousin Emmy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
said: 'Just because she's got a bad voice, that doesn't mean she's any good.'
One summer I was hurt in a logging accident and stayed with Jim until I got
better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gave me a job at his factory,
which made brooms to be sold by eh blind, and told everybody I was a disabled
veteran."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Derroll had
separated from his first wife, married again, became a father for the second
and third time, and parted from her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
was jailed on a false charge of non-support but released on probation because
of his illness in the service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He found
that most of his friends, particularly his political comrades, had turned
against him, with a "serves him right" cold- shoulder. So with his
third wife he left Oregon for Mexico to study art at the university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when they arrived in San Diego they
discovered she was pregnant and there they remained.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"We
were on a health food kick then," said Derroll, "and decided to live
on the beach, close to the soil so the baby could absorb the good rays from the
earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We found a strip of vacant sand
just north of Del Mar and set up our tent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pretty soon some of the race track crew settled there and we had a regular
little village." Derroll first worked as a spray painter for Lockheed,
after that as a dish washer, and later on a construction crew.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One night,
after seeing "The Thing" at a local theater, they stopped at a
spiritualist church on the way home, were told some startingly accurate facts,
and became interested in the subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"Just for fun, we decided to hold a seance on the beach to see if
we could fool some people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was the
medium and tried to think like a medium would think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To my surprise and horror, I found out that
most of the things I said were right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One man said to me: 'What kind of a monster are you?'" Derroll's
occult powers continued for several years until he tried to prove himself to
his skeptic mother-in-law and they vanished.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
While living
in a trailer camp at Carlsbad one Christmas during the Korean War, Derroll was
hired by a taxi company to drive seven Marines back east for the holiday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"One night in Texas, going 120 miles an
hour, the car's light went out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we
survived the crash with only a few bruises," he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"The end of the trip was in Tampa,
Florida, where the hotel I stayed at turned out to be a whore house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way back, we were almost arrested in
Alabama because it was illegal to ferry people across the country without a
special license.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I told the police I
was driving wounded Marines and they let me go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I made five hundred dollars for that trip and it allowed us to move to
Los Angeles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Derroll,
then a father for the fourth time, worked at a succession of jobs, finally as
head truck driver for Max Factor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he
wasn't much of a testiment for cosmetics, with his sandals, long hair and ear
ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His face looked remarkably like Van
Heflin's.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Derroll's partner on the truck
was Sid Berman and one day Berman was surprised to hear him whistling
"Pretty Polly." "He asked me if I knew anymore," Derroll
said, "and I told him, hell yah, and I play banjo to boot."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZn7VLd1YSE3CWAXPpX0bQ8tkOoTnzBPUz58ayKUvx16-mpESgLbsYyTClbK_3BNWDJhDBy31Q84VaASJitlYVNa8KeBF-09sTTeIkq63jAgWY1jLqyEN6bO_WGoas3vhzP0eT/s1600/roll+on+buddy+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZn7VLd1YSE3CWAXPpX0bQ8tkOoTnzBPUz58ayKUvx16-mpESgLbsYyTClbK_3BNWDJhDBy31Q84VaASJitlYVNa8KeBF-09sTTeIkq63jAgWY1jLqyEN6bO_WGoas3vhzP0eT/s1600/roll+on+buddy+cover.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"Berman
brought Derroll up to meet us," said singer Weston Gavin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"We were a group of teenagers and people
in their middle 20s who were interested in folk music and had organized World
Folk Artists, a booking agency and guild.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Herbie Cohen helped run it with me and our entertainers included Frank
Hamilton, Odetta, Jo Mapes and Guy Caraway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Derroll was different from the rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was older, a painter, and didn't seem to be involved in politics,
like we were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had a growling voice
like Lunsford and played his banjo very simply, like an old man looking back
over a spent existence with a mild eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was like a gentle man who's hatting with you and at the same time
wondering how he'd pay his rent. And at that time Derroll was reading <u>The
Journal of Albion Moonlight</u> by Kenneth Patchen while we were stuck on <u>Grapes
of Wrath</u>."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtYw3D2E5NZHTLNXhUSIKE0oJXc4RFyIms-ly6hgyL-JN8PFjj-M7hbEA-Ds6tbSuLXSVqzoleYcOwqvptx7jvYbaGzb0ca17Ow-Pnm9STXPpHpGazioN0fYZ5-gpuq8b-jrIP/s1600/topanga+canyon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtYw3D2E5NZHTLNXhUSIKE0oJXc4RFyIms-ly6hgyL-JN8PFjj-M7hbEA-Ds6tbSuLXSVqzoleYcOwqvptx7jvYbaGzb0ca17Ow-Pnm9STXPpHpGazioN0fYZ5-gpuq8b-jrIP/s1600/topanga+canyon.jpg" height="200" width="185" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Derroll & Jack in London</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Derroll
moved his family to Topanga Canyon not far from Will Geer, who as "the
Santa Clause of the L.A. folk scene," according to Gavin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He became a father for the fifth and sixth
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lord and Lady Buckley, and Bess
and Butch Hawes were a part of the Topanga Canyon group, and it was at Geer's
house that Derroll first met Jack Elliott, borrowing Bess' banjo to play a duet
on "Muleskinner Blues." Woody Guthrie showed up for a short while and
everyone helped him clear land in "Pretty Polly" canyon to build a
cabin that was never finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
Derroll also met James Dean and Cisco Houston.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcOA0H35YyP4zfMDqH0vdS5daiY8POHTsMO6U8tD4VKiezs0im0M2p6z3sg2QnfWS0IUdtTU-ofH0Tq3IQqdWQYQPXpsvayoykxrKDJmWe5wYKD_5NfKVUCvG2JAxl76PTYqS/s1600/Jack+and+derroll+paris.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcOA0H35YyP4zfMDqH0vdS5daiY8POHTsMO6U8tD4VKiezs0im0M2p6z3sg2QnfWS0IUdtTU-ofH0Tq3IQqdWQYQPXpsvayoykxrKDJmWe5wYKD_5NfKVUCvG2JAxl76PTYqS/s1600/Jack+and+derroll+paris.png" height="134" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack and Derroll in Paris</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Those were
productive years for Derroll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sang at
concerts with the WFA; painted pornographic miniatures; studied Zen and Yoga;
composed stories for children about "Pony Bill Derroll," a
Bunyanesque character with huge six-shooters he could have draw out of their
holsters; and recoded his banjo for the Elmer Bernstein soundtrack of
"Durango," a western film starring the late Jeff Chandler. It was at
this time that he wrote "Portland Town," his most famous song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I got the idea when I was living on the
beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was an old couple whose
only son had been killed in Korea and I sympathized with them because I had
left three children in Oregon I would never see again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally the music came to me and I sang the
song for Herbie Cohen and Frank Hamilton." Jack Elliott and Derroll had
become good friends, singing together and taking trips up and down the west
coast together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Jack met June,
married (Derroll was best man and sang "Rich and ambling Boys" at the
wedding), and left for Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Derroll
got a job as a preacher. "I met someone who owned several faith-healing
churches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there was supposed to be a
master church but it didn't exist. I was hired as 'Dr. Adams' from the master
church, and I spoke on Sundays, usually for five minutes at ten dollars a
minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I always spoke the
truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never talked about God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I helped the people and they always
used to come up afterwards and shake my hand."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkLxmQ6eswBFhGdtB77Ytviz66ajn3VJsx_h79gMWgybF1mdpQFZmOjBIC2YlfgFsPQFVJj1nPEoAgDDt2RzYg9XfXz8HG4asHPgAVeUOqHsPc_1xMYQDdOS7Bz89SqWNrR7ml/s1600/jack+and+derroll+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkLxmQ6eswBFhGdtB77Ytviz66ajn3VJsx_h79gMWgybF1mdpQFZmOjBIC2YlfgFsPQFVJj1nPEoAgDDt2RzYg9XfXz8HG4asHPgAVeUOqHsPc_1xMYQDdOS7Bz89SqWNrR7ml/s1600/jack+and+derroll+2.jpg" height="200" width="134" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
One
afternoon, Derroll went to see "An American in Paris" and, "I
knew I would see Paris soon," he said. Several days later he received a
letter from June Elliott asking him to join her and Jack in England, all expenses
paid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Derroll, who was separated from
his wife and children, arrived in New York just before the ship. left.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"I was
on the same ship with Big Bill Broonzy, but he was in first class and I never
saw him" Derroll said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I met
up with a Gaelic-speaking sailor from the Outer Hebrides and a cockney chap
from London and we terrorized the ship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I had holes in my pants and no underwear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The people thought I was a movie star because
nobody else could look that odd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sang
hillbilly songs with a girl from Texas who played the guitar and one man
seriously said he was surprised that I didn't recite Shakespeare."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxkeKsAEqa1KGL0srl2UyD_1OFBqlTjSulOWepDI-r32KLdBIj3_q3aJZGV_042D8E7PTZmznkNsZ43dVLVzDjIq4VhbeHw-BYp5fwF7xpwuaGh5-NcQNnBKINwi0jJsj-zN_/s1600/Jack+and+derroll.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVxkeKsAEqa1KGL0srl2UyD_1OFBqlTjSulOWepDI-r32KLdBIj3_q3aJZGV_042D8E7PTZmznkNsZ43dVLVzDjIq4VhbeHw-BYp5fwF7xpwuaGh5-NcQNnBKINwi0jJsj-zN_/s1600/Jack+and+derroll.jpg" height="200" width="173" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Shortly
after he arrived, Derroll and Jack were booked for a long engagement at the
posh Blue Angel night club in London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They lived in a broken-down tenament called the "Yellow Door"
with Lionel Bart, who later wrote "Oliver," and Scots singer Alex
Campbell, who became Derroll's protege on the banjo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They recorded for Topic in London, and Jack,
June and Derroll toured Europe, street singing, and spent the summer in
Portofino.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After recorded in Milan, they
separated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Derroll ended up on his knees
in a Catholic church in Pompeii, "my banjo broke, sick and hungry."
Somehow he got to Rome where a prostitute bought him food and got him a hotel
room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A magazine wrote a story about the
"cowboy" and he appeared on television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in Paris, he met and married the
daughter of an aristocrat who was also a baron and mayor of his village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Derroll and his new wife, Isabelle, were
forced to leave France by her family and went to Brussels. Because Isabelle had
decorated windows for Dior, they set up a decorating business for high
couturier fashion shops and within a few years were considered to be one of the
best in all Europe in their field.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EPRYe3On5It0HeAo7iRpT3nbOLm-CbXY2hbrI01MITQHlVRKMRY3L5G57ccxwpX1REVwimnZZRi5Xi6vaKYVRdf7O5cRBHFzOO_KfsAqvyvUZAqkL3NpMd-ziSgmPOtznBVJ/s1600/welkum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EPRYe3On5It0HeAo7iRpT3nbOLm-CbXY2hbrI01MITQHlVRKMRY3L5G57ccxwpX1REVwimnZZRi5Xi6vaKYVRdf7O5cRBHFzOO_KfsAqvyvUZAqkL3NpMd-ziSgmPOtznBVJ/s1600/welkum.jpg" height="112" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside the Cafe Welkum</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Their business
thriving, Derroll gave up playing the banjo professionally, except at the
World's <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was tired of bumming and scrounging around on the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The banjo hadn't given me any peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was always the banjo, never Derroll.
Several times in the past I'd smashed my banjo for that reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was a kid I wanted to be in show
business, but after the war I was too afraid of people, of failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Los Angeles, I used to throw up before a
performance because I was so scared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
whenever I'm scared of something, I have to keep trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when we were successful in Brussels, though,
I didn't need to try any more." For six years, Derroll was a "back
porch musician," only playing the banjo at home or occasionally at the
Cafe Welkom on a tiny street in the old quarter of the city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"After all, all of us do our best
picking at home." Once he consented to play on television, in a review of
the events of the past year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He became a
father for the seventh and eighth time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"I love Brussels," he said, "and really think of myself
as a Belgian."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Fair briefly when Jack came to town. "I'd gotten fed up with
playing in clubs to drunk audiences.<br />
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK7wk9UEgitHer0jBkvrIUZnJ6Fp3fuVw6t-CFLxHzuVWHOBptQEeHcBbubeSS7OXax-LZheJNwGbczoxDbe6yJtfDpX9VEB2pbBhYwlG8FOvsnT_o5_lTU6EQg83OT3qc6Ugg/s1600/hands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK7wk9UEgitHer0jBkvrIUZnJ6Fp3fuVw6t-CFLxHzuVWHOBptQEeHcBbubeSS7OXax-LZheJNwGbczoxDbe6yJtfDpX9VEB2pbBhYwlG8FOvsnT_o5_lTU6EQg83OT3qc6Ugg/s1600/hands.jpg" height="163" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tattooed hands</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But his
business failed and his marriage broke up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Derroll bought a new banjo last year and came to London where he was
welcomed as a prodigal son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the
years in Brussels, many folk singers had passed through to meet Derroll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One couple, Colin Wilke and Shirley Hart,
carried Derroll's stories and "Portland Street" throughout England
and Europe, creating a legend for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Derroll toured the British clubs and played in concerts, and he recorded
a record for a London company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
LP has never been released.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Executives
at the company refused to beieve that lDerroll, with his cowboy hat, hip talk,
beard and ear ring, was for real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"He must be a phoney," they reasoned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3hf1hsaIyFkAs38guf4cvVGakNbuRCNkm0j7ig37gVgEs9KDwOsmxiwyzJDVt75liEfywKxq0wJvSI401EdmQIUPO4VodQX8MqY8ORjR7_UB1aOaAh_RqMUbYXIZemlRbuxK/s1600/with+donovan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3hf1hsaIyFkAs38guf4cvVGakNbuRCNkm0j7ig37gVgEs9KDwOsmxiwyzJDVt75liEfywKxq0wJvSI401EdmQIUPO4VodQX8MqY8ORjR7_UB1aOaAh_RqMUbYXIZemlRbuxK/s1600/with+donovan.jpg" height="136" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donovan and Derroll</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is no end to this story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the long
retirement, Derroll is playing his banjo again in top form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although he would prefer to live on the farm
he and Isabelle bought in the south of France, "sitting and thinking,"
he realizes at the age of forty that playing the banjo is the only way he can
make a liing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"And I know now that
I do have something to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It boils
down to just 'love one another,' and I think people are listening. Last year he
met Donovan, the British heir to Dylan's throne, and the two struck up a close
friendship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frequently seen in the
neighborthood of Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley, in his boots and
cowboy hat, Derroll knows all the pop entertainers and they think highly of
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"People who argue about the
purity of folk music sicken me," he said. "I don't believe you should
sing a five-hundred-year-old song the way it was first sung.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've always liked all kinds of music;
country, even world war one songs, and pop music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the folk kiddies today have pop
records at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe it's
inevitable that pop and folk music will come together.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Pete Singer
believes "Derroll is the modern urban equivalent of the old-fashioned
mountain man who lived off in his cabin the way he wanted to, making the kind
of music he liked and saying, the heck with the rest of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's a kind of stubborn honesty here which
people admire and it's no wonder that Derroll Adams has become something of a
legend while he's still a young man."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaHkRZxpxbOy7VbvFjyoqKH19OHYz6L634IlSyBTwL-PqBiWENLZTOGeYeyuT0AEkOGYhNSAb3PC1Mxh4AO8qkceFhAhApvqiccqYbPvTUaHUxKGYr865p4weEY8HezVkpO8Pw/s1600/derroll+and+danny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaHkRZxpxbOy7VbvFjyoqKH19OHYz6L634IlSyBTwL-PqBiWENLZTOGeYeyuT0AEkOGYhNSAb3PC1Mxh4AO8qkceFhAhApvqiccqYbPvTUaHUxKGYr865p4weEY8HezVkpO8Pw/s1600/derroll+and+danny.jpg" height="200" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Derroll and Danny</td></tr>
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Not all
people admire Derroll's stubborn honesty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Several clubs in the north of england have banned him beause he swore on
stage at a performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the legend
illuminates only the glamorous features of Derroll's life, ignoring the
unpleasant products of hard living, his trafic marriages, fatherless children,
and his long fight with alcoholism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"One of these days I think I'll write a song about drinking,"
he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"People put alcoholics
down and they shouldn't because it will only make them worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think alcoholics should be helped not to
worry about their problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They should
only be encouraged to keep on fighting."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Derroll's
music career seems long, hard and complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But to Derroll, only one thing need be said. "I've always loved the
banjo, loved the sound of it, loved to play it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and when I play, whether to myself or before an audience, I always play
with my heart, soul and body."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Derroll sings "Portland Town" in 1973<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EVwdBETImu0" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-5858639369900450772014-07-29T18:40:00.000+07:002014-08-17T10:35:14.444+07:00The Singing Cowboy from Brooklyn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSGxXeTyTQy_nsdLjfit6n267zetOmzsjbS7RHhsVCToLmm-37lgUVzBiwClR_SXWjqFCABJf0-hNbytoTutDw2nVzzlzVz3Lv6jrCH_dWks5FtVxdr_rO44gT-2XhrXBnIBa/s1600/IMG_4041.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSGxXeTyTQy_nsdLjfit6n267zetOmzsjbS7RHhsVCToLmm-37lgUVzBiwClR_SXWjqFCABJf0-hNbytoTutDw2nVzzlzVz3Lv6jrCH_dWks5FtVxdr_rO44gT-2XhrXBnIBa/s1600/IMG_4041.jpg" height="398" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
In 1963, my first wife and I uprooted our lives from Berkeley and moved to New York City where we found a cozy garret apartment at the corner of Christopher and Gay streets in Greenwich Village. We situated ourselves on the fringes of the folk music scene portrayed more gloomy than it was in the Coen brothers film, "Inside Llewyn Davis."<br />
<br />
In the evenings after boring day jobs, we went to hear performances at Gerde's Folk City or to the Bitter End where I saw Woody Allen open for the Terriers. And on Sundays we paraded around the fountain in Washington Square Park where the amateur folkies gather to display their talents. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8_Wk6zRhgGyUKmOZ8hXLUBBVP1OFCJfZ5Nhq-8xbdKFXOVZKTKsXV810BfVcc4qyheYk3UX3mbFqD4xSsGhezZJt1rUh4fMTqJFTLzw0OzcVxPlp7h6kt2egnyDQBQ99NHTL/s1600/kettle_1216360c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8_Wk6zRhgGyUKmOZ8hXLUBBVP1OFCJfZ5Nhq-8xbdKFXOVZKTKsXV810BfVcc4qyheYk3UX3mbFqD4xSsGhezZJt1rUh4fMTqJFTLzw0OzcVxPlp7h6kt2egnyDQBQ99NHTL/s1600/kettle_1216360c.jpg" height="125" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">bar next door to the Gaslight</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I'm not sure where we met Jack Elliott, whether at the Gaslight or the Kettle of Fish next door where Phil Ochs presided over a folk salon. But one night he needed a place to sleep and we offered our couch. The next day he left before we got up, leaving behind his big Martin guitar. Later he returned on his motorcycle and took me on a odyssey to see the big sailing ships that had gathered in the harbor that season.<br />
<br />
I last saw Jack backstage at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. I'd been working for a radio-TV trade publication and wrote a series of articles about folk music on TV, the hootenanny craze and the banning of Pete Seeger for his political views. It got me press passes and a front row seat for the headliners, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, along with Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary. It was the year before Dylan caused a scandal by bringing an electric guitar.<br />
<br />
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We moved to London in the fall. I wrote about American television programs shown in England for a magazine guide, but I wanted to expand my writing horizons. Learning that Jack had made it big in England before return to the U.S., I pitched a story about his European experience to Sing Out! Magazine, the Bible of the folk scene. They bought the idea and I spent the next few months research Jack's footprint in London and on the continent with his friends. I was pleased when the story came out, and reading it over now 49 years later I think it holds up.<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ramblin' Jack Elliott, by Bill
Yaryan, Sing Out!, Nov. 1965, pps 25-28<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Walk down
any railroad track these days and you may well find a rambling folksinger bound
for some unknown glory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike the
earlier rambler who traveled by necessity in search of work and food, this
wanderer is searching by choice for hunger.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Greenwich Village</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The new
ramblers, usually some of respectable urban families, glorify the life of
"hard traveling" lived by Wood Guthrie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moved by Woody's fame, they see the same
experiences that Woody suffered and sang about.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The new
rambler is usually an imitation, and an inadequate one at that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He cries hunger with a full stomach, pleads
poor with money in the bank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he
becomes an entertainer, and this is usually his motivation, his aimless
wandering leads to hypocrisy and exhibitionalism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is
only one Woody Guthrie, a solitary genius, and the new ramblers would do well
to follow the example of the one folksinger0rambler who, because of and in
spire of his outright Guthrie imitation, manages to create his own
identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A carbon copy of the fabled
Oakie did not appear, because the man was sensitive to Woody's real
message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The man's name is Jack Elliott.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"Where
we see Jack on the stage now," said Pete Seeger, "he is Jack and no
longer an imitation of Woody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He's
proven that it's possible to learn an idiom and a style one was not born in,
but came to love later in life, and he's proven also that you can emerge from
this period of imitation into being genuinely creative on your own, something
that needs proving in this modern world where there's so much confusion among
young people as to the value of imitating between the value of just being
yourself."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alan Lomax
believes Jack "has become one of the few young urban singers who can
realistically claim to be a folksinger in the sense that he belongs to a
clear-cut and well-defined tradition which he handles in the manner of a true
folk artist."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFcYZf7uj9S16G08ZYZe03qwy5tACTzhqYb7D3PXkeO6KiXc5HaI528ZuX8OMZCy7YO2kwjdpP8kb1WdaGjyPxoK1aAVRQBxXlRgEVeNRWuuvrIbYPjhWwZndS4TR4YeF-KCe/s1600/eric+von+schmidt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFcYZf7uj9S16G08ZYZe03qwy5tACTzhqYb7D3PXkeO6KiXc5HaI528ZuX8OMZCy7YO2kwjdpP8kb1WdaGjyPxoK1aAVRQBxXlRgEVeNRWuuvrIbYPjhWwZndS4TR4YeF-KCe/s1600/eric+von+schmidt.jpg" height="200" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eric Von Schmidt</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Eric Von
Schmidt was perceptive enough to see Jack's personal development in 1955 six
years before it was recognized by the American public. "The word had gone around for some time
that he had actually become Woody," Eric said. But when he heard Jack sing Blind Lemo
Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan," -- "it was magnificent, perfect,
and Jack Elliott. I felt somewhere Oakie
had met Negro and he was the fruit of the coupling. Jesse Fuller had something to do with it, and
God knows what all else, but the Guthrie imitator was dead and Jack was
born."<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Only
recently would Jack admit he no longer need hide himself under a black
Stetson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Stetson would stay -- it
was now a part of him -- but the necessity for costumed escape was over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Jack Elliott started he in the
States," he told an English interviewer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"People over there are so cynical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They'd just laugh their heads off at the idea of a kid from Brooklyn
singing cowboy songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I invented this
Oklahoma thing to keep 'em quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Said I
was born on a ranch."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although
confessing his origins, Jack still could not believe he was no longer an
imitation. "He remains unconvinced of his wonderful validity," said a
worried friend, and unconvinced that Jack Elliott -- part mimic, part memory --
is an original blend.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Woody Guthrie</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Jack was
twenty, living by his wits in Greenwich Village, and Woody, at thirty-nine, was
near the end of his working life, when they met in 1951.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The glamour and drama of Woody's experiences,
compared with his own common upbringing, immediately appealed to Jack.
Explained a friend: "Jack wanted to get the hell away from his folks,
especially from the fact that his old man was an eminent physician instead of a
horny-handed hell-raising Oakie." Said Jack's younger brother David, now a
story editor Columbia Pictures in London: "He's self-destructive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you want to compare him to anybody, try
T.E. Lawrence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jack was
born Elliott Charles Adnopoz in Brooklyn in 1931.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a boy, he lived in a Western fantasy,
going to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buck Jones and Wild Bill
Elliott movies, playing like Gene Autry on the guitar, reading books by Will
James, and drawing pictures of cowboys and horses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>GHe persuaded his friends to call him
"Buck Elliott." When he was sixteen, he ran away with Colonel Jim
Eskew's rodeo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Abraham Adnopoz
located him two months later, but parental discipline was no longer any
use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mrs. Adnopoz said she wanted her
son "to become a great humanitarian like his father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But instead of ministering to people' bodies,
he found it more congenial to commune with their souls."<o:p></o:p></div>
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After two
abortive attempts at an academic education, at the University of Connecticut
and at Adelphia College, Jack left school. Von Schmidt remembers hearing
"of a curly-headed Greek called Xerxes who played one hell of a
guitar." Finally meeting Jack, "or Zerk as he was called," Eric
found him "very cowboy-oriented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
played whanging his thumb up and down on as many strings as possible."<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the
courser of his Village meanderings, Jack heard a record by Woody Guthrie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Son they met and Jack was asked to come stay
with Woody and Margie and their three children in their house in Brighton
Beach.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack and Woody</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Said Jack:
"Every morning, I used to get up and play guitar with Woody for several
hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned how to back up a fiddle
with guitar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woody was a great
fiddle-player.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's still my favorite
way of playing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"At
first, I was completely imitating Woody, although there were some things he
tried to teach me that I never could get the hang of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was so under his spell that I couldn't
think of any other way to play or sing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I never started in to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's
something that just happened."<o:p></o:p></div>
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The willing
apprentice absorbed Woody's instrumental and singing style, and the influences
which molded it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On his own, he imited
Woody's manner, his speech, and his personality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woody finally said: "Jack sounds more
like me than I do."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack with London friends</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
They
traveled to California and settled in "Pretty Polly Canyon," Woody's
name for an area of Topanga Canyon, north of Los Angeles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among their neighbors were Bess and Butch
Hawes, Will Geer, Guy Caraway, Frank Hamilton, and Derroll Adams, the banjo-player
from Portland who was to take Woody's place as Jack's best friend and
mentor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a trip to the South with
Carawan and Hamilton, Jack met and sang with Bascom Lamar Lunsford and A.P. and
Maybelle Carter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In San Francisco, he
leared from Jesse Fuller and stayed with Sam Charters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>among his drinking and traveling buddies were
actor James Dean and poet Gregory Corso.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jack's first
professional job was at Knott's Berry Farm, a Southern California Western
playground that absorbs the tourist overflow from nearby Disneyland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ed Pearl, owner of the Ash Grove, said
"Jack was acting as Judge Roy Bean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He would marry people for a dollar and also play guitar in the amphitheater
formed y a semi-circle of covered wagons in front of a huge bonfire."
Later, Jack worked for a faith-healing church as a cripple on crutches.
"He would wobble up the aisle," said Derroll "and be
saved." Throwing away his crutches, Jack would miraculously walk out, with
a few dollars of collection plate cash in his pocket.<o:p></o:p></div>
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June
Hammerstein, the young actress Jack met and married two months later, started
him on his European rambles, although he didn't particularly want to leave
Topanga Canyon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I had been
planning to go anyway," said June, "so why not the two of us, with
his guitar to keep us in bread and wine?"<o:p></o:p></div>
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Woody
provided a family tree for Jack Elliott and Jack inherited Woody's
songbag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>England listened, and the
people's praise gave Jack increasing confidence in his created character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The British crazy in 1955 was skiffle,
described as "folk music with a beat," and everyone, familiar with
Guthrie's songs, welcomed Jack as his official ambassador.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bill Leader,
who supervised Jack's three albums and three singles for Topic Records, said,
"Guthrie was Jack's introduction here, but it was his own personality that
started the legend of Ramblin' Jack Elliott.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>People loved him, and anything he did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If he walked on stage and said, 'It's raining outside,' they would
laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he added that he 'got wet,'
they would roll in the aisles."<o:p></o:p></div>
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"Jack
was the biggest influence on guiotar in this country," said Scottish
singer Alex Campbell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His flat-picking
seduced skiffle musicians away from their three-chod, brush-the-strings
technique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And his traditional folk music,
unheard before, was a "bridge from skiffle to real folk music," said
Roy Guest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A hero in
England with the stature of Seeger in America, Jack sang at clubs there and on
the continent. "he is one of the few to bring tears to my eyes," said
Ewan MacColl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His listeners loved
Woody's "Massacre" songs, "1913" and "Ludlow,"
and "Pretty Boy Floyd," and the immediately learned and spread
"San Francisco Bay Blues" and "Muleskinner Blues" around
the country.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack and Derroll in Europe</td></tr>
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Jack and
June appeared in Alan Lomax's folk pantomime, <u>In the Big Rock Candy Mountain</u>;
sailed on a yacht to Spain; toured Germany and Denmark with a skiffle group;
and sent for Derroll.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jack and Derroll
played the posh Blue Angel club in London for three months; spent the summer
singing in Portofino; recorded phonograph records in Milan; then went their
separate ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After touring Greece on a
scooter and Italy with the Platters, Jack and June met Derroll in Brussels to
entertain at the World's Fair; Jack sang on TV in Scandinavia; and he and June
returned to England where Jack sang at a party for Princess Margaret.<o:p></o:p></div>
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With enough
rambles in England and Europe behind them to fulfill ten lifetimes, they
returned to California in 1958, to "grow roots," Jack said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the soil was barren.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After adulation in England, he received
nothing but criticism in his own country, despite the fact that his legend had
preceded him across the Atlantic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Banjo-player
Stu Jamieson said, "Jack was aware that he didn't quite sound like Woody,
and was concerned about continuing to try, but probably not too displeased to
discover a difference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was upset only
by the fact that others knew his goal and condemned him for it."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jack had
begun to drop his imitation of Woody on the continent, said Alex Campbell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Street singing and entertaining in the
clubs there did it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The French wanted
variety and Jack wouldn't be just Woody Guthrie."<o:p></o:p></div>
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England
invited him back in 1959 and he returned after meeting and singing with Cisco
Houston for the first time at Manny Greenhill's house in Boston, to perform in
concert with the Weavers and on tour with Pete Seeger.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This was the
turning point, according to Jamieson. "Once in England, he was isolated
from odious comparisons and could be less introspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think Jack's present style grew out of his
renewed confidence on returning to England the blues influence." Jck had
been trying hard to play the blues, learning from Brownie McGhee in 1952 in New
York and, later, from Big Bill Broonzy in London.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alex Campbell</td></tr>
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The
returning hero, Jack was welcomed back everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He toured Europe, went to Israel with June,
and returned to Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Campbell's
songbook, <u>Frae Glesga Toon</u>, he said: "When Jack came back to Paris,
I was working in a gypsy bar as an accompanist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jack, who was at a club near St. Germain des Pres, finished earlier than
I did, and he would often pop around to sing us a few songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The yodel part on 'Muleskinner Blues' was
always worth at least six glasses of wine from the customers, and, of course,
the gypsy singers loved him as well."<o:p></o:p></div>
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After
touring England with Jesse Fuller, Jack took a scooter across Europe to Turkery
with author Herb Greer, a journey Herb fictionalized in his novel, <u>The trip</u>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After a year
and a half overseas, Jack came home again in 1961.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The time was ripe, and his debut at Gerde's
Folk City in New York was lauded by <u>Newsweek</u> and The New York Times. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His apprenticeship was over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since then, Jack has been himself and no
one else.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack, June, Pete</td></tr>
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"He
made a strenuous and difficult effort," said Alan Lomax, "to learn to
sing and play within the complex stylistic limits of modern Western American
folk song style, as set forth by Woody Guthrie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was perceptive enough to realize that he had to work long and hard in
order to catch the subtleties of the singers in this tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is now a mastter of this style and can use
it freely in singing all of his songs."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jack's
interests are a maze of wheels within the major wheel of his music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His friends are legion and each has a fund of
stories to tell about the real Jack Elliott, no two tales being alike.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He is an
actor: he can impersonate either Barry Fitzgerald or Goldwater at any hour of
the day or night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is an artist: His
sailing ships, usually drawn on bar napkins, are meticulously detailed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a motorcyclist: a new A.J.S. was recently
shipped to him from England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he is a
truck driver: a mechanical fugitive from the telephone company, one of a
succession of trucks, was his pride.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All of
Jack's pet occupations make food for conersation, and he loves to talk about
them, and talk about them, and talk about them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack and Pete, Newport 2011</td></tr>
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Next to his
music, Jack loves square-rigged sailing ships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Last summer's "Operation Sail" in New York, when two dozen
square-riggers gathered in the harbor, was a momentous even for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He rode his motorcycle from mooring to
mooring, sang for the crews, brought them as his guests to the Gaslight, and
sailed aboard on ship from Providsence to Boston and would have gone all the
way to Norway if they had let him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"What
he should do," said English singer Rory McEwen, "is get a sailing lugger
and take off around the world for the rest of his life, like Captain Slocum,
stopping here he feels like it for as long as he wants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of these days, he'll disappear and that's
what will have happened."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-12936755684289161742014-07-23T20:05:00.002+07:002014-07-23T21:44:54.042+07:00Making Out in the '50's<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNcQcFRNql4KzK931bnt-x3ojsj-M02J3tVUcijrPepWZZNkiWxaUrSJgThfuCRSnYCd3P5UWFnPuclYdYHZbPeXMexnS__WNGdJc6puSrc49-7gcDGtcshFOlU4RSQiI5U6Dl/s1600/420_sex_survey.imgcache.rev1272994445600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNcQcFRNql4KzK931bnt-x3ojsj-M02J3tVUcijrPepWZZNkiWxaUrSJgThfuCRSnYCd3P5UWFnPuclYdYHZbPeXMexnS__WNGdJc6puSrc49-7gcDGtcshFOlU4RSQiI5U6Dl/s1600/420_sex_survey.imgcache.rev1272994445600.jpg" height="255" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 16.363636016845703px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16.363636016845703px;">There is entirely too little sex in this blog despite its title. My reticence has been mostly out of consideration for the feelings of my Thai wife who might find these teenage antics of mine unfathomable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This piece was written for Colman Andrews' <i>Coast FM & Fine Arts Magazine</i> and published in the February, 1973, issue. The headline was "High School Confidential" with the subtitle of "Love in the '50's." I was only 34 at the time and looking back nostalgically on what seemed then to be a lost age. The subtitles are take from my junior high school yearbooks which are now long gone. The original photos are gone so I've added new ones to suggest the times. It's all true. Only the names have been shortened to protect these now senior citizens from embarrassment.</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">To a cute necker. Good luck in 9th grade.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Jim B<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.363636016845703px;">Jim was the best "necker" in the eighth grade. His succinct entry in my 1953 junior high school annual told me I'd made the grade. Make out in the '50's was our religion and Jim was my guru. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Twenty years ago this month I migrated with my parents and
younger brother in a new Ford, west to Southern California. I was 13 1/2 years
old and a social Neanderthal. My puberty began and ended with songs; "Oh
Happy Day" by Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra heard on our car radio
traveling along Route 66 towards the land of orange groves started it all; and,
four years later, there was Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" on the radio in
my hospital room where I lay with a broken thigh bone after driving drunk into
a candy store following a college fraternity rush party.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">To a very wonderful guy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Love.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Laurie<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Laurie was my first steady girl (remember that phrase?) in
the spring of our eighth grade. Jim's yearbook compliment resulted from his
witnessing of my first fumbling attempts at passion with Laurie at a party. It
was at that same party that Charlie P heard me emit a loud fart, during a comer
embrace and humiliated me for weeks afterward by spreading the nasty rumor that
my love-making was excessively noisy. Only the good Dr. Freud could have
guessed what future havoc that trauma may have wrought. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I danced with Laurie at parties and at the eighth grade prom
to "Song from Moulin Rouge." She was taller than me, classically
beautiful in my memory, and I never laid hands on the forbidden areas of her
body. I was a nice boy. My lust was confined to wet dreams. Several years ago I
ran into Laurie at a coffee shop. She had married an undertaker and was dressed
in the uniform of a middle-aged, middle-class matron. Only wide-open eyes and a
giggly laugh remained of the girl I held hands with in her parents' living
room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Flashback: A few years out of college, Laurie and Carolyn
lived in a hillside apartment in San Francisco, career secretaries by day,
beatniks by night. I came over from Berkeley one evening for a party with Dick,
who dated Laurie after me. Dick and Laurie and Carolyn and I fucked most of the
night away and in the morning I went into Laurie's room and gave her a
brotherly hug and kiss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Lots of luck to a real cute guy. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Nancy R<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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A month after writing that, Nancy and I sat next to each
other in a pew at the Church of the Lighted Window. Prompted by my guru, Jim, I
passed her a note asking if she'd go steady with me. She accepted, and that
evening I gave her a ring I'd bought at Woolworth's, a heavy 25-cent ring with
the skull's head removed and replaced with my initials. Our affair lasted three
weeks, three Saturdays at Jim's house where, while his parents worked, Jim and
Judy and Nancy and I "made out" for eight straight hours, stopping
only to get a Coke, to go to the bathroom, or to change the stack of 45's on
Jim's RCA phonograph ("All Night Long" by Joe Houston, "One Mint
Julep" by the Clovers, and more). "Making out" was hot and
sweaty work but we were driven teenagers (that label, teenagers - an epithet or
a badge of pride?). I hardly even minded Nancy's braces, which frequently
sliced up my lips. And she never noticed that my Levis failed to fold the
proper way in my crotch, a source of 'heartrending embarrassment to me. And my
hands never touched the forbidden areas of her body.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Lest you think my hands remained virginal throughout junior
high school, let me retell the events of New Year's Eve, 1953-54. Jerry and
Addie and Melanie and I sat in the back of Jack's lowered Chevy during an
aimless round-trip drive from Pasadena to Long Beach during which I managed to
slip my shaking right hand into Melanie's pedal pushers, underneath the silky front
line, and right onto the end-all and be-all for a 14-year-old boy/man. I hope
the experience was as instructive to Melanie as it was to me. Not to be left
out, Addie and Jerry enacted the same scenario besides us while Jack delicately
tried to watch the road and the rear-view mirror (from which hung an enormous
pair of angora dice) at the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your '40 is
going to drag my '41 Chevy someday. Your (sic) going to have your (ass wiped).
I'll have a G.M.C <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Gary L<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Lip)</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Bill,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We have only had a ball together since 8th grade. Especially this past
few weeks. I hope we only have a ball Wed. night and Graduation nite. I hope
the fun we are having can last through the summer and even longer. I hope that
you get your chance to be in that combo. Lots of luck next year.<o:p></o:p></i><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Love always,</i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Judy</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Judy, bless her often-available bare breasts, had forgiven
me for that night the summer before when Jim had lured her into the darkened
school hall from the dance at the community Youth House next door, right into
the waiting arms of three scared but eager teenaged boys who plotted to punish
her for being a "P.T." (prick tease). (Those breasts were only
available to a select few then.) Two of us held her arms, another put his hands
over her mouth, someone ripped her pants off and Jim lit a match. For no more
than a second we stared at a thatch of genuine female pubic hair (blonde), and
then fled in separate directions while Judy screamed for help, While several
teachers on duty at the dance searched through the school for us, I hid under a
bush and then ran home over back roads. Judy told on everyone but Jim (he was a
charmer) and I was "grounded" (restricted to home base in the
evenings) for a month by my parents. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Jim was our leader. He wore his wavy brown hair (bleached
blond in the summer sun with liberal applications of lemon juice) in a duck
tail (also "D.A." [duck's ass]), was the first to get a pair of black
"pegged" (A-1) pants, had brown loafers with pennies in the front as
well as the (mandatory) black 'cycle boots, and was the first (he said, we
believed) to actually sleep with a girl. It happened, so the story went, the
summer before I arrived in California, one night at the home of his girl friend
while her parents were out (our middle, upper-middle-class suburb had a high
percentage of party-going parent alcoholics). Mark corroborated the story. He
was feigning sleep in the living room in front of the T.V. while Jim and ...
(her name is lost in the fog of history) went at it in the bedroom. Stealing a
glimpse, Mark witnessed moving white limbs and buttocks and heard decidedly
gooey sounds. "Yep," said Jim, "we went all the way."
Later, she allegedly got pregnant by another, went to live with relatives, and
disappeared into a private girls' school some miles away. Sitting at our
permanent table in the cafeteria, Jim told and retold his story and reaped the
glory, and later Mickey would pull out a plug of chewing tobacco and we were
off into another voyage toward adulthood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drag scene from "Rebel"</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Jim cultivated a friend a year older than he who had a car
and a driver's license. He lunged ahead of us into the world of drive-in movies
and lovers' lanes. The magical age those days was 15 1/2; that was when one
became eligible for a learner's permit and a chance to use the family car -- as
long as a properly licensed 16-year-old was around. (Everyone's 16th birthday
was a rite of passage held at the Department of Motor Vehicles.) I paid $50
around my 15 1/2 "birthday" for a four-door 1940 Ford with baby blue
primer paint, which sat in my garage, an apprentice auto mechanic's laboratory,
for six months. Unlike most of my other friends, I was totally unable to
understand the workings of a six or eight-cylinder automobile engine, but I did
manage to drive the thing out of the garage on my 16th birthday. Not long
afterwards, Jack talked me into letting him drive it in a drag race on a side
street and when he floored the throttle the speedometer sped up to 120 but the
car just rolled slowly forward, its U-joint or differential or something threaded.
Jack tried to put a new one in later but only succeeded in snapping the rear
spring. I think I got $5 from the junkyard. About that same time, Jim'
persuaded his father, a car salesman, to buy him a nearly-new Oldsmobile.. A
year or more later in, high school, reportedly in the back seat of that car,
Jim impregnated his girl friend and both were forced to drop out of school,
marry and adjust to the stigma of being teenage parents. They failed and Jim
ran off to Hawaii, married and failed again, finally returning to Southern
California where he married the ex-wife of that same friend mentioned in the
first sentence of this paragraph. (When last seen five years ago, Jim was
selling office furniture and studying law at night school. His confident tone
of voice had turned into a pitiful whine and he had sunk from being a leader to
becoming a follower of conservative fashion, politically and socially.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marlon Brando in "The Wild One"</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Jerry M<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was tall
and funny, always the first to coin the latest password of slang, always clad
in cycle boots and sloppily dressed, always dabbed with grime and grease from
working on his '50 Ford (with his cutting torch he chopped the roof down to
about 'a foot, so that he had to ' squint in order to see out of the
windshield). In high school, Jerry got the girl I had desired in my dreams ever
since the day she had appeared at an assembly in a variety show from a junior
high school across town. My loss, and his good luck, were tempered by the
eventual revelation that she only had one breast, the other having been
permanently stunted when a shingle fell off her roof and hit her on the chest
in childhood (the story always sounded a little preposterous to me, but I wanted
to believe it to salve my wounded pride). I saw Jerry five years ago and he had
gone through the changes Jim had missed. Jerry was an automotive parts salesman
(not a mechanic as we and he had predicted), immaculately and modishly dressed,
had a girl friend who lived on a houseboat in Sausalito, and even admitted to
having tried the illegal weed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Jerry R, that sexual experimenter who had been beside me on
that long New Year's Eve drive from Pasadena, to Long Beach and back, took
Jim's place as my guru during the waning days of junior high school. Jerry
taught me how to buy liquor: we'd wait in his car outside a liquor store in the
black ghetto until an obvious wino staggered along, whereupon we would offer
him an extra dollar to buy us something alcoholic (we didn't care what). On our
first try, we ended up with a pint of apricot brandy and that became our steady
drink for a few months. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Ellis L was 16 but looked 35 with a heavy beard that
required shaving twice daily. He was famed for walking into Olson's Grocery
Store, where he would buy a quart of Olympia beer, and then sit outside on the
curb and sip contentedly, old Ellis, from the bottle still wrapped in a paper
bag. Ellis became a lawyer and is reportedly practicing somewhere in Ohio. ,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Flashforward: At midnight, when I turned 21, I was sitting
in a bar I had frequented all summer long with a couple of friends who,
knowingly, broke into a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday." I
treasure the expression on the bartender's face when I proved my masquerade of
age by showing him my driver's license, the real one and not the fake one we
all laboriously fabricated from expired learners' licenses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Barbara had slumber parties for her girl friends and,
because her parents were always either away or so drunk they didn't care, my
friends and I were usually invited over. We would pop popcorn in the kitchen
with the top off the pot, a dozen of us running around with bowls trying to
catch the kernels before they hit the floor. Girls in pajamas, boys in peggers
and T-shirts, we would turn the lights off and dance cheek-to-cheek in the dark
to "Night Train" and "Be-Bop Wino," arms around arms for
the slow dreamy songs and to the fast ones doing the Dirty Boogie (the
"D.B.')<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- couples facing inches
apart, feet planted firmly, right hands held, swaying back lasciviously until
heads nearly touched the floor behind (the more daring guys allowed one knee to
slip firmly between their partners' thighs).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Flashforward: Two years out of high school, Mark returned
one summer from the University of Wisconsin to describe a "bad taste"
party his fraternity had held. We organized a reasonable facsimile with wine
served out of douche bags into urine specimen bottles, dildos fashioned from
rubber-covered Kotex pads for favors, and costumes: loin cloths for the men,
bra and panties for the women. Barbara, the Elsa Maxwell of the junior high
school slumber party, ended up in my arms for a few hours of mutual regret at
what we had failed to consumate years earlier. She ran off to Las Vegas for a
quick marriage a few months later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Making out in the '50's with Janet and, Sue and Pauline
(when we kissed while lying on her couch listening to Jackie Gleason's
"Music for Lovers Only" album she would blush beet red from her
forehead to the top of her low-cut blouse; she too got pregnant by another and
went away to a girls' boarding school) and Jackie (spurned for a ski
instructor) and Sally and Gail and Cherry and ...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This bit of self-centered social history would probably be
incomplete without a brief description of How I Lost My Virginity. It happened
on the front seat of that same '53 Ford (by then repainted and engine
overhauled) that had brought me and my family to California three years before.
It was at a drive-in theatre and the movie was a re-release of
"Bambi" which, no shit, was the first movie I had ever seen as a
child. It wasn't exactly out of True Romance, but I was as proud that night as
I'd been the year before when I'd won my letter in gymnastics by climbing the
rope. And she didn't get pregnant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We broke up four weeks later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The article ended with my short biography until until the 1970's: Bill Yaryan went to high school in a suburb of Southern California, and was graduated "without honors" in 1957 He
has written for a variety of newspapers, and has worked in record company
publicity and public relations. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglcNEWF5MP9ncUkDH2bxR2YRyJ3mDNTlOGZAkUTcn6jtkcrG2LvsEcuIuuB-QgT_cdlTZyTZ1NtpplGBFJ0xT-rvVC6qJwDxnGHTE0WNQlVkHkDwvtCGmnkJhH3cgYYI9Ytmkl/s1600/family_0017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglcNEWF5MP9ncUkDH2bxR2YRyJ3mDNTlOGZAkUTcn6jtkcrG2LvsEcuIuuB-QgT_cdlTZyTZ1NtpplGBFJ0xT-rvVC6qJwDxnGHTE0WNQlVkHkDwvtCGmnkJhH3cgYYI9Ytmkl/s1600/family_0017.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author in the early 1950's</td></tr>
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Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-83886897526721356082014-07-19T09:50:00.000+07:002014-07-19T16:35:08.176+07:0075 Years Down the Road<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPSgy54F9ZpPmNaoy0glIB6GKnQmGqFnhyphenhyphenrUykimE80H6PNvL0MGEla4v3Cvw6xFjWk82MGUeNVexTVewjb8sVhqq1Pw5Vivgu0P9uVd9HM6VZDMbaa9sA-O2TLXh7ldrVoBm6/s1600/family_0008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPSgy54F9ZpPmNaoy0glIB6GKnQmGqFnhyphenhyphenrUykimE80H6PNvL0MGEla4v3Cvw6xFjWk82MGUeNVexTVewjb8sVhqq1Pw5Vivgu0P9uVd9HM6VZDMbaa9sA-O2TLXh7ldrVoBm6/s1600/family_0008.jpg" height="306" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My happy parents, Homer and Peggy, perhaps on the night I was conceived.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I heard the koel bird this morning down in the clump of trees below my building. It's been absent for a couple of months and I missed it in the mornings. I don't know the migration pattern of this common Asia bird but it was always around during my first visits to Thailand and the sound of its call makes me feel at home. That and the heat, and now the cloudy skies and monsoon rains. <br />
<br />
Time passes so quickly. I first encountered the koel in India during my initial voyage to this part of the planet ten years ago. Another pilgrim at the ashram where I was staying called it the "orgasm bird" because of its cry which rises and intensifies a couple of times. When I heard it again from the window of the P.S. Guest House on Sukhumvit Soi 8, it was a fitting symbol for my initiation into Bangkok where an obliging friend introduced me to the notorious Nana bar scene.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Newly born</td></tr>
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My life has been a series of comings and goings. Quick movements, like slight of hand; now you see me, now you don't. Yet each move seemed destined to last a lifetime. Only one move lasted for very long, though, and that was to the left coast city by the bay under the redwoods, long enough to raise two kids and a passel of friends. The pattern for other transitions was set by my father, a traveling salesman, who took his family from the north to the south and to the west. The uprootings and resettlings were never easy when I was a child, and yet I've replicated them in my own way. <br />
<br />
It's my 75th birthday today and I barely know how I got here. My father once said to me, "The older I get, the less I know." At the time I was a young man with a discontented wife and two small boys and I thought it an odd thing for him to say. Now, with my dad gone over 30 years, I know its truth. It's not a matter of forgetting, or early onset of dementia. The young require certainties to survive the slings and arrows of chance. Without them they would never have left the cave.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Naval reservist and gramps</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Ageing is alien territory. While the elderly may often send out messages to their inheritors, these observations and warnings are rarely heard or understood by the young. My mother's father lived with us when I was a teenager and I found him to be extremely annoying (he thought the same of me). My father, however, played cribbage nightly with his father-in-law, tolerated his pipe smoking and his Canadian witticisms, while I hated him for forcing me to share a bedroom with my younger brother. My grandfather grew increasingly crotchety and was shuffled off to an old folks home when he started shitting on the floor. I rejoiced in my new bedroom (after the floor was cleaned) and forgot about him.<br />
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Now I'm older than my grandfather when he died and regret that I refused him the time of day. Here in Thailand the aged are treated with the utmost respect. I've even been given a seat on the bus and Skytrain by younger riders who perhaps think grey hair a sign of wisdom. The respect is often not merited as I well know. Older expats, quite popular with the younger Thai ladies looking for a lift out of poverty, sometimes make me ashamed of my tribe. They can be loud and obnoxious in public and unfairly critical of Thais on internet web sites. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With younger brother</td></tr>
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Tourists who come to Thailand despite the ongoing political troubles can be roughly divided into two groups: the young looking for a beach or a beer on Khao San Road, and the old looking for bargains at the markets and interesting sites to check off on their bucket list. I belong to neither tribe. My people were seduced by something in Thailand -- the weather, the food, the women, or? -- and found a way to stay, sometimes for an annual extended visit and sometimes, like me, forever. I have met a considerable number of these intrepid adventurers, most of them men, and we share a curiosity and even passion about our adopted home, it's history, cultural and turbulent politics. <br />
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Many of them, like me, are happily married to Thais. I swore off marriage after my second unhappy divorce. Dating here was a different story. One of the reasons I refused an operation for prostate cancer was the risk of neutering at a time when companionship had become very important. But serial romance in the bars was unappealing to me. Many expats become addicted to easy sex and fuel the bar scene for which Thailand has become infamous. Fortunately after two years I met the woman who has become my wife. In two months we'll celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. Despite vast differences in age, language and culture, our relationship has grown into a deep and abiding love beyond what I ever would have dreamed. <br />
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Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like if I'd remained in the California beach town where my life had been fairly content for nearly thirty years. After my divorce I lived in a converted garage and walked or biked to the bookstores and coffee houses downtown. I had plenty of friends, most of them my age or older, and occasionally I'd hear from one of my grown children. I've never lacked for interests to engage my intellectual passions, and I've no doubt I would have been fairly satisfied as senility slowly set in. One friend now is in an assisted living facility, and not a few have already died.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, Mom and her brother</td></tr>
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Coming to Asia was a challenge. It followed after several years of wandering to Europe, Central and South America. French and Spanish were a breeze compared to Thai which continues to resist all my attempts to understand and speak it. While superficially Bangkok appears to be a modern metropolis, there are layers upon layers to be found going back to antiquity. Urban and rural snuggle together in copacetic comfort on the city's streets and alleyways below skyscrapers and temple towers. I constantly find myself slightly off balance trying to reconcile what I see with the limited knowledge I possess. Whenever Thailand begins to seem as familiar as an old shoe, I open my eyes a bit wider because I know there is something I've missed. The surprises are exciting and invariably jolt me out of my septuagenarian slumber.<br />
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My fellow teachers and students at the Buddhist university where I teach English several days a week like to tell me, "You look so strong, ajahn!" Most of them have rural roots and Thais who work on the farm age rapidly. They're not used to seeing someone of my advanced years walking upright, and even, in the classroom, strutting and pontificating in an animated fashion. I don't speak to them about my failing eyesight and faulty hearing, my tricky knee or arthritic fingers. At the end of six hours of teaching, my feet ache and I'm utterly exhausted, and I usually fall asleep on the computer bus back to Bangkok.<br />
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In sum, a mysterious environment, a job where I play the standup comic to amused monks, and a loving young wife all keep me invigorated and -- dare I say it? -- youthful, more so than had I remained in a comfortable place back in the U.S. It's not necessarily a prescription for avoiding the inevitable breakdown of the body. But it will certainly refresh and rejuvenate the mind. The down side to this expat's success story is the enmity of two of my three surviving children who are unhappy that their step-mother is younger than them, and the absence of so many friends apparently unable to use social media to maintain long-distance relationships. I miss my old family and old friends. But I rejoice in my new life!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/w15F4r09Pro" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-52657112083986565402014-06-28T10:38:00.000+07:002014-06-28T10:54:33.663+07:00We're Not in Kansas Anymore<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">St. Thomas Aquinas: "Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me."</span><br />
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Every few days the world turns, the poles shift, and I realize with a jolt that the certainties that formed the basis for my opinions were as worthless as straw. Unfortunately, unlike the good doctor at the end of his life, nothing new has been revealed to me. The quest for wisdom has been a bust!<br />
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"The Wizard of Oz" was released a month after I was born and I've seen it many times; "Over the Rainbow" is in the soundtrack of my life. I bought a copy of the film here with Thai subtitles for my wife's cousin Edward but he showed little interest in watching it during his last visit to Bangkok. It was the series of Spiderman movies that captured his attention. The original Wizard book was written by a relative of a junior high school friend who has managed to turn Oz into an industry. The ultimate message of the film -- "There's no place like home" -- is of not much use to someone whose home is a moveable feast.<br />
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This is the rainy season in Bangkok. I can see the black clouds move across the sky from my 9th floor apartment. Most days the sky darkens, thunder cracks, and a brief monsoon downpour sends pedestrians and sidewalk vendors scurrying for shelter. Most tourists avoid the rains by visiting Thailand in the dry season from November through March, unless there is political unrest which tends to scare them away. I've learned to love this time of year. Storms for some strange reason soothe my soul. I am mad for thunder, lightning and the frenzy of rain drops. <br />
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Kansas is far away. I crossed through it once on miles of interstate threading between corn fields probably filled with genetically modified crops. Now the state is probably dotted by wells for hydraulic fracking. Only a native like Dorothy could love that place. Most of America seems just as strange to me now. The sorry stories about surveillance, gun nuts and serial shooters, Tea Party craziness and another war in Iraq parade across my laptop screen and my eyesight grows dim. I did not vote for Obama and I no longer care if he's beholden to the banks or a beacon of hope for the downtrodden masses still yearning to be free. The news from the land of my birth is not good. I blame the chemicals.<br />
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Now I'm living under a military dictatorship. The civil war many feared after yet another coup d'etat in this once almost democratic country did not materialize. After a month in power, General Prayut and his subordinates are now firmly in control. There is little outward evidence that the new government is unelected, other than an occasional armed soldier or two, like the pair I saw yesterday on Phra Arthit near Khao San Road protecting the media offices of Sondhi Limthongkul, the yellow shirt editor. The malls are full of shoppers, the BTS and MRT trains are packed with commuters and the roads jammed as usual. Stories in the news tell of those "invited" to "reconciliation" centers with the authorities to discuss their "attitude." They invariably leave smiling, declaring their happiness and promising to refrain from political activity in the future. Arrest warrants are issued for those refusing the invitation and not a few dissidents have gone into exile where they're trying to organize. <br />
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As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I'd expected something entirely different. I've seen the movies and read the books about resistance and revolution. In the first heated days after the coup, protesters, many of them students, employed symbolic signs of non-cooperation: banners in English, the three-fingered salute from "Hunger Games," passively reading Orwell's "1984" in public, and the final disruptive act, eating sandwiches while thinking about protest. All of these acts were subject to arrest. After a week or so, even these protests disappeared. Of course I have no idea what people out in the provinces are thinking and planning, but consulting the green tea leaves in Bangkok leads me to the conclusion that the overthrow of the last government has been largely accepted by the citizens as a good thing. It will probably last a long time.<br />
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Since it's against the law to criticize the coup, my words are necessarily temperate. But I must say that the widespread acceptance of military rule is depressing. Criticism from outside the borders of Thailand has universal condemned the end of democracy (until the next election, now promised in October next year). The response by some Thais has been to threaten a boycott of American and EU products and turn to China for support. It's assumed that only a Thai can understand Thai history and politics. This calls into whole question the social construction of "Thainess" and even the name of the country which was changed from Siam in the 1930s to appeal to western interests.<br />
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But I digress. Thailand is not Kansas and I'm not Judy Garland. Most of my students are from elsewhere: Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. I put together a handout on the coup for our first class this term and many of them found it mystifying. Not that the governments where they come from are more democratic and less militaristic. There are no Switzerlands in Asia!<br />
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This term I'm teaching two days a week. In addition to my advanced listening and speaking class for senior English majors, I'm now giving a course in how to teach English to first-year students in a weekend English MA course. As a self-taught teacher who invented his lessons from scratch, I approach this challenge with some humility. How much do I know about the subject after only seven years of experience here? I'm still uncertain how much I help my students to improve their facility with the language I absorbed easily from birth. Only a few of them have progressed to thinking in English which allows them to appear fluent; most are struck dumb when asked to speak a meaningful sentence or two. <br />
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When I began teaching English, I borrowed themes and material from the Headway series of textbooks published by Oxford, including the one I'm currently using, <i>American Headway</i>. For the MA course, I visited the wonderful DK Books and its many shelves stocked with English instruction books, and chose Penny Ur's <i>A Course in English Language Teaching</i>. Published two years ago by Cambridge, it provides a guide which I hope to adapt for my class of 45 students from mostly other Southeast Asian countries. In the first three weeks of the term, however, our classes have been cancelled twice for ceremonial events (Thai schools seem to favor ritual over education). At our only meeting I learned that the students had been split into two groups and my three-hour lecture had been cut into two hour-and-a-half sections. Less work for me, but also less teaching for the students.<br />
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In the teaching textbook, Ur, a British OBE who taught ESL class in Israel, makes some points I first heard when I prepared a lecture several years ago on the 10-country ASEAN group which is using English as it's working language. English today is no longer a foreign language. It's an international language and for the majority of those using it, English is a second language, "globish" according to one article I reprinted for my students. The primary method of instruction these days is based on the "communicative approach," in which understanding is more important than grammatical correctness. Grammar now takes a back seat to vocabulary. What this means is that the native speaker is no longer king of the hill. A non-native teacher of English is a better model for students because they've gone through the process of learning English. If nothing else, however, native speakers like me are seen as models for pronunciation. But our days may be numbered.<br />
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Despite the military dictatorship, despite the uncertainty I feel over ever being able to teach my students anything worthwhile, I continue to see Thailand as "over the rainbow." Strange that I never dreamed it. And it's not bluebirds but the dove that comes to sit on my windowsill that makes me feel at home. California was my Kansas but I doubt that I would have been as happy rounding out my days there sipping cappuccino near the sound of the Pacific surf. Familiarity was never my thing. Thailand is exotic and strange and not a day goes by without a puzzle I cannot solve. Some expats deal with these mysteries by complaining about them. But from my first day here I found the uncertainty exhilarating. The novelty of living here has pretty much gone but the delight I take in the sounds and smell and blooming buzzing confusion of Bangkok street life has not faded. Thank the goddess I'm not in Kansas anymore!<br />
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<br />Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-50675696969677039812014-06-19T09:02:00.000+07:002014-06-19T09:02:08.960+07:00Death Comes Calling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Dylan
Thomas, "And Death shall Have No Dominion"</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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I met Michael three years ago on Facebook. It was a meeting of minds over the political issues of the day. He was an Australian, not that much my junior, with a long career in the theatre back home. In Thailand he was a teacher, a connoisseur of art, and a lover of elephants. Even before we met I was captivated by his way with words, the comments he made, the exchange of messages with me. Here was someone for whom life was no guilty pleasure but an adventure to be savoured.</div>
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We finally met at an art exhibit in a school near the flower market. He was one of the organizers and had little time to talk between posing for photos with some of Thailand's notable artists, all of them his friends. But he introduced me to his longtime friend Susan, the guru of laughter yoga in Bangkok, and we too became Facebook friends and co-admirers of the marvelous Michael. Over the next few years, Mikhun (as his Thai friends called him) and I continued to commune on Facebook and occasionally to meet for a meal or coffee. A big man, he used his body to punctuate his many stories, particular his eyes which sparkled with enthusiasm and joy. Not long into our friendship, he moved to Chiang Mai to help with elephants who had been found to animate children with autism. Elephants were one of his many passions and kids another. After that, he moved on to Yangoon to be a school administrator and then a teacher. When his internet was working, we stayed in touch on Facebook.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Susan and Banlu</td></tr>
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Michael would return to Bangkok on visa runs and medical checkups and his cheap guest house of choice was in a backpacker alley not far from the river (during the flood of 2011 he messaged me frequently to hear about the rising waters). Earlier this year he left Burma for good and was recuperating following treatment for swollen ankles. We kept in touch during Songkran when he was unable to go outside because of the water play. At the end of the holiday I took him some books to read and we drank beer in the guest house restaurant close by a fan which blew the smoke away from his ever-present cigarette.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Susan at our last dinner</td></tr>
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Michael was obviously very seriously ill; the sparkle in his eyes dimmed. Where are all you friends, I asked? Most of them are yellow shirts, he said, and don't like my politics now. He tried to explain his departure from the school in Yangoon but it seemed a bit mystifying. Now, he told me, he wanted to heal first and then return to Australia where he would have to live for two years to qualify for retirement before he could return to Southeast Asia. Susan and I took him away from the guest house for a sidewalk dinner around the corner. It was painful to see him walk so slowly with his cane.</div>
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Not long ago, Michael tripped and fell, and he lay two days in his guest house bed before the ambulance was called. At Phramongkutklao Hospital the doctors examined a painful lump in his leg (that he'd been complaining about for weeks) and discovered a mass in his lung. They diagnosed him with pneumonia and perhaps TB, maybe cancer. I visited him in the 17th floor intensive care unit and saw the bruise on his head from the fall. His long-time partner Unn was with him when his heart stopped for several minutes. And his sister in Australia was contacted and came to supervise treatment. A feeding tube prohibited conversation and the last contact Michael had was through his eyes which could be quite expressive. He died with a friend by his side who was playing recorded music for him. Before the day was out, his account on Facebook was filled to the brim with messages of sadness and love from his many friends in Thailand, Australia and Burma.</div>
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I didn't know Michael for long or very well and I regret that now very much. It's not often you find a conversation partner so sympatico, even on Facebook. No one has yet written his obituary (better yet, eulogy) so there is much that I do not know about his life. The many messages on Facebook speak of adventures going back years, of his love for food and drink, and, as I noticed so soon after we encountered one another, his passion for life. He didn't speak all that much about his illness and I suspect was unaware of the prognosis. In other words, he was the opposite of a hypochondriac. Our last conversations were about books. Confined to the guest house by his swollen legs, he worried most about running out of something to read.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Susan and his partner Unn</td></tr>
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When Susan mentioned Unn to me I didn't recognize the name and thought it a friend from Yangoon. When I brought Michael a couple of cartons of juice that he requested to the hospital, I asked who Unn was. He turned to me, his face lit up with the biggest smile I'd seen from him in months, and said: "He's my partner!" When I was unable to help, Unn spent a day renewing Michael's visa with a letter from the doctors. He was there when his friend's heart stopped. Tonight is the third and last night of chanting at Wat Apai Tharam (Wat Makok), the temple behind the hospital where Michael died, and the cremation will be there on Saturday afternoon.</div>
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The death of a friend is always unsettling because it reminds us of our own mortality. Next month I will celebrate my 75th birthday and am thankful for every day I've outrun the Grim Reaper. My parents are gone, my son Luke, and Peter, my oldest friend, long dead from the same cancer I've now survived for a dozen years. I think about my young wife and worry that she will grieve for too long after I go. But present worry about an uncertain future situation does little besides stir up unpleasant juices. The present joy I take in living each day is no doubt related to its tenuousness. Dr. Holly's death in Bangkok a few years ago helped me to sense that exquisite connection between life and death. Without death, life would lose its ecstatic edge. Death, even from those heartbreaking tragedies that so absorbed Dostoevsky's sleep, is not only the great equalizer but the finalizing event that animates life. </div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/If1yxmaJ14M" width="400"></iframe>Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-58018776043214570112014-05-31T11:47:00.002+07:002014-05-31T11:58:05.064+07:00Living in the Time of a Coup<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTTIVPK7xgKyMya0kulnkALsS3Ztlqzp81261-5N8dsuBmrgG-s06XL2Lr8iDxYVmLG1isSNPoMqVCjSNRuZrhrLfiPM8Z-21xJKkY-8NjJrxROaMaNX_BRfny-mHD73VKZDrE/s1600/ThailandCoupDemocracyMonument.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTTIVPK7xgKyMya0kulnkALsS3Ztlqzp81261-5N8dsuBmrgG-s06XL2Lr8iDxYVmLG1isSNPoMqVCjSNRuZrhrLfiPM8Z-21xJKkY-8NjJrxROaMaNX_BRfny-mHD73VKZDrE/s1600/ThailandCoupDemocracyMonument.jpg" height="252" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soldier in front of Democracy Monument</td></tr>
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On May 22 the feeble remains of the elected government in Thailand were replaced by a military coup d'état. While this had been a possibility since the anti-government street protests began seven months ago, it wasn't quite what I expected. Where were the tanks, like in 2006?<br />
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It was a sneaky coup. Two days earlier, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, commander of the Royal Thai Army, had declared martial law. Large groups of opposing protesters -- Suthep's anti-government mob in the vicinity of Government House, and the pro-government Red Shirts south of the city -- were surrounded by troops. Radio and TV stations were seized. Two weeks before, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and several other ministers had been removed by a ruling of the Constitutional Court, and the fragments of a caretaker government were told to report to Prayuth. The general then ordered representatives of the warring factions to hold talks to settle their differences. At the second meeting, after the Pheu Thai government refused to resign, Prayuth reportedly said: "Sorry, I must seize power."<br />
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This post will neither be a full journalistic report of the coup, the 18th in Thailand's modern history since 1932, nor will it be a critique: criticism of the military junta's actions is against their law and offenders are warned of severe consequences. I write "their law" because it is not exactly clear what laws currently govern Thailand. The 2007 constitution, written by the military junta that took control in a 2006 coup, was overturned by Prayuth's seizure of power. Nevertheless, anyone with a gun is in charge now. <br />
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My first reaction, when I turned on my computer at dawn on the 20th to learn that martial law had been declared several hours earlier, was exhilaration. Since I'd moved to Thailand in 2007, there had been two events on the horizon that promised excitement and adventure for an expat from a country where political passion had long since been tamed. Discussion of the first event is strictly verboten. The second event had been too long delayed. Earlier in the year I wrote about endless street demonstrations, always expecting that a climax ("Armageddon") was near. Suthep's mob tried to shut down Bangkok and had ultimately failed, although the carnivalesque closures of major intersections brought upset as well as entertainment. Trying to mollify their demands, PM Yingluck resigned Parliament and called for new elections. But Suthep's mob, seemingly protected by security forces, the courts and independent agencies like the Election Commission, blocked much voting and the results were nullified by a court ruling. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Protester at Victory Monument</td></tr>
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At first it was amusing. TV programs were replaced by the juntas slides, indicating that soap operas, game shows, and the news had been put on hold because of the coup. The soundtrack for the slides of ancient Thai patriotic music was almost hilarious. The lack of news was unimportant since Facebook and Twitter went into overdrive. There was little immediate resistance. Once the coup was announced, people in small numbers carrying signs mostly written in English ("NO COUP" and "FUCK THE COUP" were popular), gathered outside a McDonald's outlet in the shopping center of Bangkok, a cinema in the north end of the city, and around Victory Monument, a landmark erected in 1941 to commemorate the brief Thai victory in the Franco-Thai War the year before (gains were soon erased by war's end). Strangely enough, supporters of the military gathered at Democracy Monument, a few miles west, which commemorates the coup of 1932 which established Thailand as a constitutional monarchy. Soldiers seemed careful not to overreact as they had in 2010 when over 90 people were killed and 1,000 injured, most of them red shirts, as a two-month demonstration was crushed by the military at the orders of then PM Abhisit and his 2nd in command, Suthep. <br />
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Certainly many people in Bangkok were happy that the military had intervened after months of irreconcilable disagreement. While the violence during that time had been small compared to 2010, committed mostly by unknown forces, there was the ever-present threat of civil war if the elected government was overthrown. No one, inside or outside of Thailand, could see any possibility of resolution. The reds wanted the results of elections to be honored by the losers (since their candidates had won every election for over a dozen years) while the yellows (Suthep and all who since 2005 had opposed the Thaksin Shinawatra "regime") felt that elections in Thailand were flawed and resulted in a majoritarianism that trampled on the rights of the elite minority that hated him. My heart had been with the majority through I felt sad for the whistle-blowing demonstrator who seemed clueless about the consequences of toppling Yingluck.<br />
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The protesters at Suthep's gatherings and those against the coup at McDonald's and Victory Monument look much the same. It does seem as if women are dominant at both. Both groups claim to love the King who apparently signed off on Prayuth's coup (though HM was not pictured). Both sides could also be called nationalists. In many respects it's a continuation of the long struggle of people in the hinterland against domination by elites in the capital, a 100-year-history told in Charles Keyes' excellent new book <i>Finding Their Voice: Northeastern Villagers and the Thai State</i>. While there was some agreement on decentralization, which could result in the election rather than appointment of provincial governors, this is all moot now after the coup.<br />
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After a week, the coup has taken its toll. While not as dramatic as tanks rolling down the main boulevards, the resolve of the general is firm. The first curfew from 10 pm to 5 am has been modified to midnight until 4 in the morning. Each night Nan had to rush after leaving work early to get the last transportation home. Hundreds of politicians, academics and journalists have been detained and those already released say nothing. Pressure against resistance has been even stronger, and less publicized, in the provinces. The junta threatened to curtail social media and Facebook was down for an hour the other day. I've lowered my profile on both Twitter and Facebook, trying to "hold my tongue," not always with success. I've stopped following and even de-friended some of the most vocal opponents of the coup, many of whom live outside the Kingdom, out of fear that I might find myself in the junta's sights.<br />
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Last night the general spoke to the nation on TV. He only wanted a return of happiness, he said. Though democracy was always the goal (under the King as the head of state as it says in all constitutions), it was necessary to undertake reforms before elections could return. This sounded remarkably like Suthep's goal which he announced nightly during his half-year campaign to eradicate the Thaksin regime from Thailand. Anyone connected to or having publicly favored Thaksin is now undergoing treatment at a series of "reconciliation" camps designed to change their attitude. Signs at red shirt villages in Isan, erected after the massacres of 2010, have been taken down. School administrators have been told to keep an eye on their teachers and students for any pro-Thaksin, anti-coup sentiments. Those arrested will be jailed and judged by military courts.<br />
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My fears may be groundless but it's prudent to be careful. Outside on the streets in my neighborhood nothing is changed. In Siam at the shopping malls all goes on as usual. Tourists at Thailand's many beaches notice nothing different. This is a "bloodless" and peaceful coup. Six months of protests followed by a military takeover have taken their toll, however, and financial prophets predicted a rocky road for Thailand's economic future. Over 50 governments have posted warnings to travellers about visiting one of the world's most popular vacation destinations. For many, their travel insurance is invalid where there has been a coup d'état. But now the military is in firm control and the streets are quiet. There is no civil war but there is also no democracy, not without elections and an agreement by all that the results will be accepted. That has rarely occurred in Thailand since that first coup in 1932. Friends ask if I'm worried or scared. The answer is no. The military was in charge when I arrived here in August of 2007 and I barely noticed (except when a friend voted in the referendum on the junta's constitution). It's hard to believe that the government's supporters and the large network of red shirts have given up. But for now, there's an uneasy peace.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This soldier's tears were seen widely on social media after he was shouted at by angry anti-coup demonstrators at McDonald's. Many soldiers come from poor villages in the north and northeast and now find themselves on the other side from their rural neighbors and kinsmen.</td></tr>
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<br />Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-37800597019570301302014-04-27T12:22:00.000+07:002014-04-27T14:25:00.959+07:00Cooling it in Kyoto<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Confession: I'm an unreconstructed tourist. I search out popular and significant sights and sites in foreign lands and take photos of them along with numerous selfies and pictures of what I eat. All goes into an album of memories, most likely these days on Facebook. This makes me not unlike a collector of stamps or the Boy Scout accumulating merit badges. On my <a href="https://apps.facebook.com/tripadvisor/?fb_source=search&ref=br_tf">TripAdvisor page</a> I'm up to 216 cities in 30 countries. Wow. <br />
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Seasoned travellers look down their noses at this. I once traveled with a lady in Sri Lanka who sneered at my predilection for modern hotels with sumptuous breakfast buffets. She thought a measure of discomfort was a mark of the exotic. We parted in an ancient hotel on the beach at Negombo where fish were drying on the sand. For me, the exotic can often be found in the familar. Even the lowly McDonald's outlet can provide surprises in a menu adapted for Thai or Japanese tastes.<br />
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I live now in a foreign land far from where I was born and every day is a tourist excursion. As a resident in Asia, my goal has been to explore the neighborhood, and in the recent past I've taken selfies and eaten strange food in Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore. This year the destination was Japan, home of the Karate Kid, where Marlon Brandon said "Sayonara" and John Wayne was the barbarian who courted a geisha, birthplace of the Ninja Turtles and the place where Bill Murray became Lost in Translation. <br />
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We see what we are prepared for. In my case, besides the movies already mentioned, my anticipation was conditioned long ago by reading James Clavell's novel <i>Shogun</i> which was made into a popular TV miniseries in the 1980s with Richard Chamberlain as an English ship pilot in the early 17th century. In addition to films, I also have a fondness for the art of Hokusai and the haiku poetry of Basho, but both are associated with Eido which grew into Tokyo, now the world's largest city. Tokyo, however, held little attraction since I already live in a large Asia city. It was Kyoto, imperial capital of Japan for a thousand years and home of the shogunate, that appealed most to me.<br />
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In the run up to departure, I read Pico Iyer's <i>The Lady and the Monk</i>, the story of how he fell in love with the city and the woman who became his wife, and I poured over maps and guide books and looked at pictures of many of the 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines, 17 of which have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. From a YouTube video I learned that pickles and tofu were specialities of Kyoto cuisine. Friends said that our departure in the second half of April was too late for the blooming of the cherry blossoms, an almost religious event in Japan, but it also meant smaller crowds of tourists. I bought Nan a Kyoto guide in Thai and for me the just published <i>Kansai Cool: A Journey Into the Cultural Heartland of Japan</i> by Christal Whelan which takes a regional view to include nearby Osaka and Kobe. <br />
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Reality can be unexpected, since it's mostly of our own construction. For reasons of price and location in the temple-saturated Higashiyama neighborhood of Kyoto, I picked a <i>ryokan</i>, or traditional Japanese inn, thinking it would add to our immersion in historical Japan. It wasn't sleeping on a futon over tatami mats in a tiny room, or the postage-stamp bathroom, that was difficult so much as the 4th floor walkup in a building without an elevator. Everything else about the Kyoto Traveller's Inn was superb, from its location opposite the zoo and art museums near the Heian-Jingu Shinto shrine, to the food and the friendliness of the staff, and not least the <i>onsen</i> hot bath in the basement (probably more correctly called a <i>sento</i> since the water wasn't from hot springs) that was strangely always empty. The hot waters helped to soothe aches and pains brought on by extensive walking.<br />
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The burning summer weather had just begun in Thailand as we set off for Kyoto where long sleeves and coats were necessary and the shorts I brought useless. Despite warnings that Sakura, the Japanese blossom time, was past its peak, there were blooms everywhere and tourists and locals who were taking their photo. We cut notches on our tourist samurai sword by visiting Nanzen-Ji, Ginkaku-Ji and Kiyomizu-dera on the east side and Tenryu-Ji in the west. We walked the grounds of the Imperial Palace and Nijo-Jo Palace where the shoguns lived but failed to see much without the necessary reservations. We sniffed the smells and eye-balled strange food in Nishiki Market and climbed to the top of the ultramodern Kyoto Station in the shadow of Kyoto Tower. We walked the blossom-lined Path of Philosophy and the through the giant bamboo grove at Arashiyama. In the evenings we ate yakiniku, okonomiyaki, sushi and sashimi, and sipped incredibly tasty noodle soups. So what if we missed Fuji and the short trip I'd hope to make to Nara?<br />
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In my imagination, Kyoto was forever lost in the shogunate period from the 11th to the 19th century. And the authorities have certified that the tourists sites are historically authentic. But Kyoto today is a cosmopolitan city of one and a half million with a modern bus and subway system that we quickly learned to navigate. Ginkaku and Kiyomizu are surrounded by a veritable Disneyland of shops selling a hodgepodge of souvenirs as well as pickles, mochi and green tea ice cream. That it was Easter weekend probably did not increase the usual crush of visitors to the sites. Arashiyama was particularly crowded because it was a Sunday to celebrate the coming of age of young girls who could be seen everywhere in kimonos strolling with their families. I felt the stickiness of stereotypes jostling for dominance with the commerce of tourism, mostly from Japanese themselves, so much in evidence. What, I wondered, was the relation of the city's history to the fun-seekers queuing up for hot buns or taking selfies in the Buddhist shrines?<br />
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We had a wonderful time during our six-day visit. Nan got to rent a kimono one afternoon for a stroll down the street in Arashiyama, and she was able to buy a variety of Nippon goodies for gifts and for treats that now fill our refrigerator. Our journey was made easier with the help of Kanae who grew up in Kyoto and Nueng from Thailand who is now studying there, both friends from my university in Ayutthaya. This blog has turned into somewhat of a meta-reflection on tourism rather than a traditional travel report. Hopefully you can browse through our photos in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/doctorwill/media_set?set=a.691473427569205.100001196635476&type=3">Holiday in Kyoto</a> album on Facebook which I have made public.<br />
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More than any other city I've visited, Kyoto is a paradise for bicyclists, if not pedestrians. In Bangkok, the motorcycle taxi drivers roar down the sidewalks, but they are no more dangerous than the two-wheelers that whizzed by me in Kyoto. Despite this sign, there was plenty of bike traffic in the downtown shopping area. Another observation: Kyoto is a city where the elderly remain active. Japan has an average life-expectancy of 81 and the old folk were everywhere. Maybe the long lives are due to the ubiquitous face masks worn by residents to prevent the spread of infection. When I visited Germany in the 1970s I thought about the elderly I saw and wondered who might have supported Hitler. Perhaps enough time has past now so those thoughts did not arise when I encountered the elderly in Japan. <br />
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More likely, it's because I'm old as well now. The Vietnamese I met in Hanoi seemed to have forgiven the misdeeds of my country. So I have no more reason for grudges. This trip made me realize my age acutely. The four floors walkup in the hotel didn't help. Most mornings while Nan slept, I wandered the surrounding area with my camera looking for a good cup of coffee (toast was the usual accompaniment). By the time we set out on our day's tourist adventures, my feet, right knee and legs were already sore. I learned to search out the elevators and escalators in the underground. Rheumy eyes made it hard to see clearly. And I even got sunburned though the weather was mostly cloudy with a bit of drizzle. Arthritic fingers ached from gripping maps. By late afternoon, I was pretty much wiped out, and we took more taxis than our budget recommended. Future trips will require better pacing.<br />
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As Christal Whelan points out in <i>Kansai Cool</i>, Japan's ministry of tourism now uses the slogan "Cool Japan" to advertise its wares. When we got off the plane back in Bangkok the hot air hit us like an explosion, emphasizing the temperature difference. But the cities differ in other interesting ways. That night back home we went to an outdoor restaurant in Pinklao serving Isan food. The place was full of people happily chatting. In Kyoto at night the streets were silent, except for in the busy karaoke bar section of Pontocho. In my youth, I lived for a time in Cuernavaca, and loved the street life there. I found it again in Bangkok. Thailand and Mexico are <i>outside</i> cultures, while Kyoto and probably all Japan are <i>inside</i> cultures. I don't know if it's totally due to the long hot summer since Japan, like much of the north, has seasons. In many respects, Kyoto reminded me of San Francisco. And it was wonderful to see again pine and fir trees. <br />
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One other significant difference between the cities: Thailand is known as the "Land of Smiles" and if you look at someone they will almost always smile at you (even if they think you're a farang who smells like a turtle). I smiled at lots of strangers in Kyoto and no one returned my grin. On the other hand, we were struck by the friendliness, from the customs inspector at the airport who wanted to know if we were married, to the helpful staff at the hotel and the subway ticket taker who saw we were lost and gave us a free ticket to the proper stop. The Japanese are punctual and incredibly efficient. At the Daimaru Department Store, the information staff pictured directed us to an elevator that had not one but two operators, both grinning from ear to ear and eager to help us to our destination. When our plane departed, the ground crew waved goodbye (they also did in Taiwan).<br />
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In Japan I knew nothing of the country's politics. There could have been a revolution brewing and it wouldn't have interrupted my activities. This must be what it's like for a tourist in Bangkok ignorant of the current crisis that seems so disturbing to us expats. After nearly a week there I will probably pay more attention to any news stories I see mentioning Japan. Obama arrived in Tokyo the day we left the airport in Oasaka. Parts of the country remain uninhabitable after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. More than the tourist crowds and the temple shopping malls, I'll probably remember quiet mornings in Higashiyama when residents came outside to water their plants and sweep up the leaves while the many streams through the area provided the rippling sound of water rushing over pebbles.<br />
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<br />Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-60174970449390141502014-04-12T10:21:00.001+07:002014-04-12T10:36:31.187+07:00To Be Me or Not to Be Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Living in a
Buddhist country, Thailand, I find it remarkable how little impact the Buddha's
teaching about the self appears to have for the people around me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They regularly frequent the many temples with
flowers and incense to "tambun" (make merit) for the happiness and
success of themselves and others, and to secure a favorable rebirth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their world is full of good and evil spirits
that require small shrines full of icons outside buildings, religious tattoos, prayers
and special amulets for protection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Since the
Buddha's discourses were written down for his monastic followers, perhaps the
teaching on <i>anatta</i> is primarily for monks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The students to whom I teach English are mostly monks, and other than
their robes and shaved heads appear to be little different from other young men
their age in Thailand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They joke about
girlfriends and passionately follow British football teams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All have digital devices and love the music
of Michael Jackson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I taught the
Five Precepts in English, none of them questioned the reality of a self that
was able to abstain from killing, stealing, lying, intoxicants and sexual
misconduct.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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My monks are
also aware of <i>anicca</i> (impermanence), the second of the three marks of
existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I ask them their plans
for the future, they tell me no one can know what will happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if I ask them "what if," then
they shyly confess their dreams of becoming a teacher, a businessman or a tour
guide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since all grew up in small
villages where becoming a monk is the only way to get a university education,
they know the <i>dukkha</i> (suffering) of poverty, the third mark of existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm sure they've also been taught the Pali
terms for the Five Aggregates and can explain that the self and everything else
is the result of prior conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
how does this knowledge impact the effeminate monk applying makeup at the back
of my classroom?<o:p></o:p></div>
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It always
made sense to me that the Buddha in his teaching on anatta primarily intended
to undermine a permanent or essential sense of self such as the eternal soul of
Christians or the atman of the Vedas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Buddhadasa Bhikku in Thailand described it as the "I, me,
mine" that gets in the way of social relationships and makes it more
difficult to feel compassion for others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A self that is constructed by the brain through experiences of the body in
the world makes perfect sense to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This provisional "self" dies with the brain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is why the idea of reincarnation and
kamma that connects successive incarnations makes no sense at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is
currently much theorizing about the idea of self and no-self by writers such as
Julian Baggini, Jennifer Ouellette, Thomas Metzinger, Ray Kurzell, Patricia
Churchland and others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea of a
constructed and impermanent self is no longer a surprising notion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only
the religious faithful cling to an eternal self that can suffer rewards or
punishment in an afterlife (or, as some Buddhists think, be reborn as a deva or
cockroach in the next).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Why then is
the existence of a self such a sticky belief?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It must benefit the transference of our genes to the next generation, in
Professor Wright's thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we were
all meditating on a mountain or in a cave, there might be no next
generation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Selves are useful in an
evolutionary sort of way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They must be
fed, clothed and housed, and for that a singular sense of being is necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Selves incur duty and responsibility, imply
an ethics, and they link us into a great chain of others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two selves are necessary to create the next
generation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To aid in
this effort, our language locks us into a way of thinking about selves and
objects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, in my native
English it is difficult if not impossible to speak from an abstract position;
my view of the world is a perspective dictated by my body in space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Generalities and objective claims are often only pretence. English sentences, I tell my students, must have a subject and a verb
(although sometimes the subject is implied); e.g., "Speak!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gurus and enlightened humans have to struggle
mightily to eliminate all subjectivity from their speaking and writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if all language is metaphor, a world of
only objects makes little sense, and is of less interest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am
comfortable with my self.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has just as
much solidity as the objects around me in my Bangkok apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Years from now we'll all be gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While my brain and my body are showing
increasing signs of age, they continue to provide an existence replete with
security and surprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When it's time to
relinquish this self I've labored long and hard with through the twists and turns of an
amazing life, I hope to do so with gratitude and grace.<o:p></o:p></div>
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(This was written as a midterm assignment for an online course in Buddhism and Psychology given by Prof. Robert Wright of Princeton via the <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a> web site.)</div>
Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26177615.post-12477044797433631152014-03-20T12:06:00.002+07:002014-03-20T12:17:18.877+07:00Peeking is Prohibited<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>No more pencils, no more books</i></div>
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<i>No more teacher's dirty looks</i></div>
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"School's Out for Summer," Alice Cooper</div>
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School's out for what counts as "summer" in Thailand, mid-March through the end of May. Most of the tourists have gone home and hot weather is upon us with the rains not far behind. I finished teaching "Listening and Speaking English" (always embarrassed by its missing "to") for 3rd year students at Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya Buddhist University with a music video of Alice Cooper's classic end of term anthem. Earlier this week I tortured them with a final exam.</div>
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For six years I've been teaching mostly monks who are majoring in English in the Faculty of Humanities at MCU. The main campus is now in Wangnoi, an area on the outskirts of Ayutthaya where factories are taking over the rice fields. My school provides several pink air-conditioned commute buses for teachers and staff that takes 1-1 1/2 hours each way, while students not living in the on-campus dormitory travel in a fleet of red leased buses from Bangkok where they stay at Buddhist temples around the city. Occasionally I have a layman or woman in my class and this term one of my best students is a bhikkhuni (nun) from Vietnam, but most of my students are men in their 20s from all over Southeast Asia. This term they've come from Vietnam, Yunnan province in southern China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, and Bangladesh as well as Thailand. All are from poor backgrounds and my university may be their only opportunity for an advanced education.</div>
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Since I'm relatively inexperienced at the job, the key to my teaching method is humor, hence the "rules" shown above for my final exam. Despite the fact that they are Buddhist monks bound by a monastic rule that forbids lying and stealing, among other bad deeds, I know that they've been educated in an authoritarian system of mostly rote learning, and they'll cheat and copy if they can. So I taught them the English word "peeking" and I demonstrate it graphically, peering at the exam paper of a student next to me, which always brings laughter. I also demonstrate teacher's "dirty looks" when I pretend to see peeking taking place across the room. In addition, I make them put away their precious electronic devices (all of the monk students have computers and mobile phones) and any books or papers they brought along. Finally, since it's difficult for young men in a group to ever stay quiet, I emphasize my no-talking rule by including shouting and whispering (I should have added "murmuring" which is what I usually hear from my desk at the front of the room. The other "rules" attempt to convince them that I'm not "too serious" (not a positive in this culture).</div>
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Thinking my Social Security income would be sufficient, when I moved permanently to Thailand in 2007 I never considered the possibility of teaching English, the most common occupation for expats. Although I had a Ph.D in history, I'd only taught classes for a couple of years before growing bored with my students, and I'd never taught anything remotely resembling a language. But a British monk who got his BA at MCU, and who thought I should do something more worthwhile with my spare time, encouraged me to visit his satellite campus in Bangkok and I was invited to address its English Club. The only other native-speaking English teacher had left and I was asked to take his place teaching two classes of the same basic subject for English majors, one day a week. </div>
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The offer came with the promise of a work permit which would remove the necessity of frequent visa runs needed for a longterm residency. That was an ideal incentive. My friend thought all I needed to do was sit down and chat in English with the students, but I required more structure. The truth is, I was scared witless by the prospect of attempting to teach English! I had no idea how I learned it, and I doubted that the diagramming of sentences, so important in my elementary school, was still a common practice. So I found and read Barry Sesnan's <i>How to Teach English</i> and bought the <i>Headway</i> elementary textbook published by Oxford University Press in order to plagiarize its themes and make use of its grammar lessons. Setting up my first few classes was relatively easy, but getting the work permit was an arduous process that took almost six months. The Thai bureaucracy loves documents and signatures and stamps and they all have to be done without error. I trekked to the Immigration Office and Ministry of Labour many times before finally winning approval. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inner courtyard of classroom building</td></tr>
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Before the department was moved to the Ayutthaya campus, my first classroom was rather primitive with only fans, ancient desks and chairs, and a blackboard that had seen better days. In my first year, I moved from Sukhumvit to a condo in Pinklao not far from the classes at Wat Srisudaram. Many of the students were eager and passionate about learning English. I gave them topics for oral presentations that required them to talk in English about their lives, their families and home communities, and their path to the monkhood. All of my students without exception have come from small villages. Those from outside Thailand had to learn Thai in order to study at MCU (more recently, there are BA and MA English programs in the International School taught in English). My classes of course were exclusively in English, but I know that some of the other English teachers did a lot of their instruction in Thai. Classrooms were supplied with a microphone and a portable speaker, and from day 1 I discovered a irrepressible desire to be a standup comedian who also happened to teach English. My students responded enthusiastically and I was off and running.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linguistic students at Wat Srisudaram</td></tr>
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English grammar by itself is mind numbing, so I tried to sugar coat it by reading stories from Bangkok's English newspapers, giving them song exercises where they filled in the blanks on lyric sheets (at first just audio but later watching music videos), pronunciation practice with elocution limericks, reading articles with each student taking a sentence, and a variety of lesson tricks found on the internet. They wrote short essays every week along with five sentences using new English words they wished to add to their vocabulary. I got most of them to send me their homework by email attachment and I encouraged them to find email pen pals with whom to practice their English. Some laughed at the "old" music I played for them and suggested new songs and artist to me for exercises. Teaching was exhausting work since I rarely sat down, but from the beginning I loved it more than any other job I'd had in the past, and wondered why it had taken me so long to find my vocation.</div>
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As I gradually honed my skills (and continued to wonder whether my students were learning anything from me), I accepted other offers to teach. I've held conversation classes for students in several different weekend MA programs at various MCU campuses, and I twice started classes for students and for staff in the school's Language Institute that unfortunately never found a large enough audience to continue. When the Faculty of Humanities started an MA program in linguistics I was asked to teach for several terms, using PowerPoint and videos to lecture on mass communications and in an English class where I used <i>The Little Prince</i> for a textbook to illustrate linguistic concepts. Being old and lazy, I've rarely taught more than two days a week, and as a temporary lecturer I get paid with envelopes of cash (sometimes many months' late). </div>
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There's something wonderful about the episodic nature of teaching, even when the material is the same. I usually teach the same students for two terms, an intermediate course followed by an advanced one. Getting to know the students and especially the names of each (which are often difficult for me to pronounce correctly) is a challenging yet rewarding process. But I'm always sad when the term ends. It should normally last 16 weeks, but because of various cancellations I only got 12 weeks before giving the final exam. And each week's class lasts 2 to 2 1/2 hours, not nearly enough I think to cement their learning. My students, however, are enormously grateful and constantly tell me how wonderful I am (a bit of apple polishing, perhaps?). At the end of the final class, as the sounds of Alice Cooper faded away, my students brought another teacher to the room and we all lined up for the obligatory class photo. There is nothing forced about my big smile.</div>
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Dr. Willhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09788468231312646543noreply@blogger.com1