Jim Boitano: Meet Angela Biedermann – Photographer, Designer, Baltic Tour Guide Extraordinaire!

She isn’t famous, but I’ll never forget Angela Biedermann. On a six-hour bus ride across the flat Baltic countryside from Vilnius to Riga, I met her back in 2003. Just one of those people you run into when you travel and fall into deep conversations.

She was a Viennese photographer, well known in her small local circles in Austria for her beautiful art exhibitions. She was best known for taking shots of old Austro-Hungarian doorways, thresholds and house facades. She was recording these in the Baltics when I met her.

We all have encounters with interesting people when we travel, often on planes, sometimes on trains. But usually when we arrive at our destinations, we scatter to the four winds.

But Angela kept in touch. Every year for my birthday, she made me a personalized birthday card containing multiple examples of her work. She even designed her own postage stamps. As someone who doesn’t have that type of artistic gene, I appreciate it so much more when shared with others. Beyond that, she became a kind of pen pal and we would write each other long emails about our lives.

I went to visit Angela twice in Vienna. Of course, her apartment was a museum. She called it ‘my Moroccan Palace’ and indeed it was a shrine of art and décor. I helped her set up for one of her shows (on India) and got to attend it. This was in 2011 and again in 2014.

Last year, I received a letter from her sister advising me that Angela had passed away from a pulmonary embolism. She was 20 years older than me, and when I met her that seemed quite old. Now I’m older than her and she will continue to inspire me to travel and enjoy the art we find in the little places in this world.

Richard Carroll: So Many

I have met a number of memorable persons in my travels, many who have become life-long friends. Among them in no particular order are Tom McCarthey, who I met in Maui years ago and is passionate about life with a marvelous sense of humor, a world-wide traveler, and with a big heart.

Celia Abernethy, born and raised in the United States who fell madly in love with Italy, learned to speak Italian, and is now the supreme contact for travel to Italy. She has homes with her husband in Milano and Lake Como, is extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of Italy, and always with a smile on her lips.

I met “John Colclough” in Dublin some 30 years ago and we have remained the best of chums. John, with his thick Irish accent, a photographic memory, and splendid vocabulary, has spent a lifetime researching, traveling Ireland and collecting in-depth details, it seems, on every major building, castle, Townhouse, estate, and historic site, in the country, along with the family history of each.

Another memorable encounter was in Salt Lake City. I was not quite a teenager when I thought I could play the trumpet, and along with David Pratt, who played clarinet, we wanted to show our skills to the great “Louis Armstrong,” who was performing with his band in the evenings at the Rainbow Randevu in downtown Salt Lake.

My sister Sharon, pulling a little red wagon, and our family dog, followed us to the Hotel Newhouse. With our instruments in hand and a battered music stand we sneaked up to the second floor of the hotel and knocked on Louis Armstrong’s door. A nicely dressed man opened the door and coldly stared at us. Looking at our feet we said to him, “We want to play for Louis Armstrong.” He started to shut the door but Louis said, “Open the door and let them in.” Armstrong was sitting on a bed in shorts, and a gorgeous black woman wearing a sparkling gown with strands of gold chains dangling from her neck was standing near the door smiling at us.

He said, “Come in boys.” We quietly said, “Can we play a duet for you Mr. Armstrong, David wrote it.” The man who opened the door was now holding a telephone and kept repeating, “Louis, New York is calling again!” Louis, said, “Hold the call. I’m busy.” We set up the music stand knocking it to the floor twice.” My mouth was dry, hands were shaking, and with two false starts we sounded horrible. When we finally finished the duet, Louis said, “Keep up the good work boys. What mouthpiece are you using?” I said, “It’s a Bach 7C,” handing it to him. He gave us personalized autographs, and said, “If you ever come to New Orleans I would like to see you both.”

We packed up and left, while New York was calling. My sister greeted us on the street and said, “Did you play for Louie? I thought I heard something?” We said, “We did, but it wasn’t so good.” She said, “Will you play for him again.” Nodding our heads we said, “Never.”

Phil Marley: Peter Marley, My Father

Peter Marley, though he preferred to be called, “Pete,” was a Cockney Londoner, who was a boxer before joining the British Merchant Marines. One of the vessels took him to Winnipeg, where he met and married a 14-year-old Canadian farm girl, who gave birth to my brother and me.

When my family arrived from Canada, I was eleven-years-old, and was very naïve and ignorant of the ways of the world that day. So, my first memory was moving into a small apartment on Lower Queen Anne Hill. Eventually I would become a high school student on the top of its hill.

As we unloaded our baggage, though there wasn’t much, for the small apartment was fully furnished, I noticed there was a strange buzz in the air, unlike anything I had ever heard before.

Later, I learned it came from concert at the site of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, by a rock group from Liverpool, who had shockingly long hair. They were named the Beatles, and in a few years would have a great impact in my own life. Soon I transitioned to John Lennon government-issued horn-rimmed glasses and began to wear my hair long. I was also a fan of the Rolling Stones. Once, while chomping on a candy bar in my family’s car, my father said, “You keep that up, and you’re gonna rot your teeth out like that Keith Richard.” I smiled, and said: “Yeahhhhhhhhh!”

My father, Peter, found a graveyard position as a security guard in downtown Seattle’s new 50 Story Bank Building. We were proud of his new tenure, though others thought it was absurd to take pride in such a low profession. But we would remind them, it was an honest job, and he was in charge of protecting a high building, which was then the tallest throughout Seattle.

As I said, my father was a Cockney from London, and my brother and I would laugh when others could not understand what he was saying. And sometimes we would laugh at ourselves, too; for we couldn’t understand a single word he was saying either, and were given a one-way ticket to be alone in our bedroom on Queen Anne Hill.

In the early morning, around 6 a.m., his night of work was over, and he would pack our family in our family’s Studebaker for a trip to Seattle’s Green Lake.

And it was there that he taught me how to swim and dive. Due to the early morning hour, the area that surrounded Green Lake was empty of people, and we had the lake to ourselves. And I enjoyed the solitude, for no others would see me struggle and swim, and laugh at me as I crawled up to the shore.

Our high school was on the top of Queen Anne Hill, famous for its setting and spectacular city views. On clear days, we could see majestic Mt. Rainier.

But for us, Queen Anne High School was just an old building and we would barely notice the views.

But, we were only kids.

David Erskine: Peloponnese and Epiphanies, Greece

My name is David Erskine. Ed Boitano of Traveling Boy asked me to write a guest article, written just ten minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I have been a Traveling Boy reader since the conception of the travel site, and also Vice President of Advertising from 2020 until the height of the Covid pandemic.

I recently spent over two weeks in Western Greece (the Peloponnese towns of Finikounda, Elafonisos and Monemvasia). It was a family reunion with the German and California families. It also was an opportunity to keep the European and American families connected, which was a request of my mother before she passed many years ago. Additionally, it was a way to honor a reunion from 1971 with my mother’s siblings in Germany and their children in Gmunden, Austria.

The theme for this travel article is Peloponnese and Epiphanies.

The request and legacy of my mother, who grew up in Dresden in the 1920s and 1930s is alive and well today. My German Uncle’s son and daughter attended the reunion and my cousin’s two grown children and my daughter as well. The legacy continues for another generation.

I share this as a foundation and backdrop to where the reunion took place for this article.

Traveling from San Francisco to Greece is a journey across ten time zones and here are a few takeaways and epiphanies.

Clarity: As I have been studying the ancient stoics and Eckert Tolle about being present it was becoming a mental exercise as I tried to undo the unconscious mind and become more conscious, i.e., living in the moment. Well, when I woke up the first night around three am and listened to the Ionian Sea outside my window, it dawned on me that I was present. Between the distance, lack of noise, TV or Internet, my mind was clear, and I was present. I was not worried or concerned about anything other than where I would run my miles the next morning.

History/Perspective: On June 4th, 2024, we walked the ruins in Messini circa 3 BCE. As an actor to walk in an amphitheater where actors walked the stage centuries ago or to see my daughter and her cousin walk in the sports arena where athletes competed so long ago literally took my breath away and gave perspective and context to my life and how living in the present and controlling what I can control and dismissing the rest is a gift.

Gratitude: Am so thankful for all the Greek people I met and shared a conversation, laughter and connectedness. I was recently reminded how important it is to bring joy to someone every day and perhaps a smile or a laugh. When all is said and done, remember: “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” – The Beatles.

David Erskine: World Traveler, Poet, Actor, Runner, Taxi-Driver, T-Boy Writer

Fyllis Hockman: What’s this – Ed Boitano?

Ed Boitano — because he has given us “Traveling Boy.”

Raoul Pascual: My most Travel Influencer

For me, the most influential person in regards to Travel would be Traveling Boy’s Ringo Boitano. I had known him early on as an editor for travel publishing companies but I didn’t expect him to be a walking encyclopedia about places to go, culinary delights, film and music of the 60s and 70s and geographic (mostly European) history. Ringo can spend hours sharing his anecdotes of just about anything.

Before I met Ringo, I remember I was touring a visitor to my hometown (back when I lived in Manila) and I brought him to different sites. Touring was simply “drive,” “look,” then drive to the next spot. I remember standing in front of the Intramuros (an antiquated Spanish fortress) in silence. Then he asked me, “So what’s the significance of this place?” And I was flustered because all that I knew about it was one sentence long. It was then that I realized the importance of knowing how things came to be — why was a Spanish fortress sitting in the middle of a grassy golf course far away from the shoreline? I wasn’t able to convey that this 300-year-old fortress is surrounded by reclaimed land and that it housed the prison cell of our National Hero who chose to die of a firing squad rather than deny his love for his country.

Historical facts are good but it lacks the joy and wonderment of a traveler-storyteller like Ringo. The way Ringo relates his adventures and the research he digs up makes me appreciate history then and history as it unfolds to the present.

Ed Boitano: MY PARENTS – Louis and Carol Boitano

My father, Louis Boitano, born Luigi Boitano on April 16, 1924, in Ballard, Washington, before it was incorporated into the city of Seattle. He taught me many things which I try to live by today: never judge someone about the money they make in an honest profession; be wary of flag wavers, they’ve probably never experienced a real battle; never define anyone by their religion or by the pigmentation in their skin color. And, never sprinkle grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on ravioli, for it interferes with the dish’s real natural flavor.

Luigi Boitano was mocked his entire life because he was a Roman Catholic and an Italian-American sinner. My father became the first Italian-American firefighter in Seattle. On his day of enrollment there was the customary pomp and circumstance celebration. But, he knew it was not for him; only for the new “white” recruits. The Fire Chief brushed past my dad: “Boitano, did you bring your stiletto?”

Once, when he was running too fast, he jumped on the back of a Fire Engine; he lost his balance and took a serious spill. He could no longer work saving people’s lives anymore. He was saved by his membership in the Seattle Firefighter’s Union. And, it was due to the Seattle Firefighter’s Union, that my family was saved from poverty.

At the time of his death, my family faced persecution from people who would mock Unions, which they considered to be Communist. Imagine, my father was willing to sacrfice his own life in WW II so these people would have the freedom to laugh at Unions — and, it’s due to Unions that we are not a Communist nation.

When I informed my father that I was planning to move to Hollywood, he said it was ok if I changed my family name to an Anglo-Saxon one. I asked my mother, why I was given the first name, “Edward?” She said, it was my dad who suggested it, so it would protect me from the hatred of White Nationalists who would be intimidated by the name of an English King.

Once, when he taught me how to drive a car, he said, “Ed, when you drive too fast… all you have to do… is take your foot off the gas.” As I grew older, I realized this was an important metaphor on how I should live my own life: “Never charge at the enemy looking for a fight, withdraw and no one will get hurt… no matter how much they had hurt you in the past.” Twice, a distant relative of my wife challenged me to a fight. But, I rememeber my father’s words. So, I took my foot off the gas… and no one got hurt.

My father was fearless and strong. After a long day of work at the Seattle Fire Department’s Engine 20, or after night shifts of labor at one of his two part-time jobs, he was never too busy to play catch with me or treat me to a Seattle Totem’s hockey game or a Seattle Rainier’s baseball game. He never once missed any of my little league baseball games on Magnolia Field. Once, when I was drafted into the majors at eleven-years-old, we looked down at Ray Field together from his old Volkswagen Bus. We saw our Magnolia All Star Players who were two years older than me. His own sense of worryness was greater than mine; “I was a Little Guy, playing with the Big Guys, who used to chase me around the block.”

Many of our summers were spent in Washington State’s Lake Roesiger in a cabin he built with his own hands. This was the place for great family reunions where everyone was invited: my mother’s church friends who she had known since she was seven-years-old in Sunday School, Italian and Scandinavian-American relatives, African and Asian-American inn-laws, and generally a new and lonely neighborhood boy who had no friends. Each morning would begin with my mother’s fried bacon, cooked on a woodburing stove. Then a big group would assemble around our large dining table to wait for my mother’s real specialty: “Hot Cakes!” smothered with real butter and my Grandma Nonna’s handmade jam, picked with berries from her own garden.

It was during one of our family occassions, later in the day, my parents helped me conquer my fear of water, and I learned how to water ski.

My mother once said that carrying my father’s Cross of Unhealed Pain was too much for her to carry alone. She asked God that she wanted a foul ball at a Rainier’s ball game to strike her in the forehead, so he would take her to heaven early. But, God said there was much more work for her to do. I was too self-centered to notice. All I asked God for was that the Rainiers make a double play.

I know we’ve all been persecuted some way or other. But I only think of myself. My mother-in-law, my beautiful Mother Gay, survived the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands, the Great Depression and the Winter Hunger. But, I never once ever heard her complain about anything at all. She would only speak with joy when starving people staggered to her self-sufficient family farm from Amsterdam to be fed. The only way these “City People” could survive was to dig up rotten tulip bulbs; and many of them had died because the bulbs were too soiled with disease.

Mother Gay and her Dutch Family were feeding “liberal urban elitists.” It’s such a “hateful” expression. My wife is frequently mocked with that same dogmatic expression. She is wounded and haunted by it. But, there is really nothing else we can do…

When my father first flew to Italy to meet our Italian relatives, it was the first time he could embrace his uncles and aunts and cousins; his relatives that his mother had told him stories about his entire life. When he returned back home to Seattle, he said: “This is the first time I ever felt I belonged.”

Louis, spoken correctly as Louie in French, joined the US Marine Corp when he was seventeen. He was involved in the Pacific campaign, a participant in D-Day: The Battle of Iwo Jima, and D-Day: The Battle of Okinawa. As a young child who loved playing army games, I would frequently ask him what his battle experiences were like. Yes, I was far too young to realize the pain my questions may have caused him.

My father, though, was not the type of person to shy away from any question, in particular, when it was from one of his own children.

With little fanfare, he would deliver a short narrative without any form of glory; but would always end with a valuable moral lesson:

“Eddie, no one really wins in war. It’s only the little guy who gets hurt.”

“But, Dad, didn’t you capture some real Japanese solders?”

“The Japanese were tough soldiers. Others in my platoon would try to break them in interrogation, but they would never break… they were tougher and better fighters than we were. You know, Eddie, the Japanese soldiers were ‘little guys,’ too, and they loved their families just like you do.”

My father spent the first years of his youth (two thru six) alone in a one-room migrant shack with his Italian immigrant mother, Adelina (My Nonna, MY Grandma Nonna!) who did not speak English. They survived by working in the fields of the Puyallup Valley in Washington State. Many blasphemous Luther ans and “inauthentic” Evangelical Christians — thank you, Pastor Chuck, for explaining this to all of us!– had called my grandmother and father criminals when they toiled in hard labor throughout dawn until the harsh darkness of a Washington rainy night. It was the only way they would not face starvation and experience God’s Salvation. Their shack had no indoor running water and one harsh lightbulb. I was unaware of this narrative until my early twenties, when I overheard my father speak to a kind woman at a small family gathering who was curious why he knew so much about the Puyallup Valley.

He conveyed his backstory above, without any sense of self-pity.

Kind Woman: “Louie, I didn’t realize you were so poor.”

My Father: “We weren’t poor.. at least we didn’t think we were. We always knew there was someone out there… who had it worse than we did.”

My beautiful Italian Grandmother, my beautiful Italian Nonna, was made fun of throughout her life in the US. She was branded as illiterate, because she could only speak broken English. Ten years before Nonna’s passing; I once sat alone with her in her small, dark living room in Ballard. And, she recited the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence in perfect American English. She always played by the rules in her new home in Seattle.

When my father, was close to death, my wife’s brother and her nephew, hurried over to his his assisted living memory care facility to say goodbye. No one had informed them of this, but they knew this in their real Christian Hearts, that God had told them that they must.

After they performed their eulogy, my father, Luigi Boitano, gently drifted up to heaven. And now, he rests with the Lord, who protects him from all the pain which may have come to my own family.

And, I must say, the pain in which I have caused him, too. Forgive me, Dad. I really did Love YOU.

Carol Virginia (nee Stave) Boitano was given birth on December 25, 1927 in Washington State. Her parents had planned to name her Helen. But, when she was born on Christmas Day, she became everyone’s “Christmas Carol.” My mother and sister and mother-in-law all had/have beautiful red hair. But, my mother and mother-in-law were mocked throughout most of her lives for having it. When my father first met his soon-to-be-wed bride, he said it was one of the most beautiful visions he had ever seen in his life. Later, my wife’s Father Herman, later said something similar — when he first noticed a shy, young red headed woman, trying to hide in the background of her Dutch immigrant family — her etherial red hair, made him believe that God had sent her to be his eternal bride. Later, Father Herman wed this shy, young red headed woman, and she became my second mother, my Mother Gay.

I still don’t understand why Anti-Christians said the color of red was the symbol of the Devil. They’ve caused suffering to all of God’s children, just because he made them look a little differently than you.

So, my mother referred to her hair color as “Strawberry Blonde.” But, she never once dyed her hair to a different color. I think, my Mother Gay, only did to preserve her natural hair color of red.

Carol Boitano’s Scandinavian-American parents, Tom & Clara (Nee Hildahl) Stave and her siblings temporarily relocated to Burlington, WA to be closer to their extended families, before returning to Seattle’s Norwegian and Icelandic immigrant district of Ballard. My father would say, “And I had to marry the only Scandinavian who did not like fish.”

My mom grew up with a lot of good natured teasing from her siblings (five brothers). Her Stave family home was just a few doors down from my father’s residence, where he lived with his mother, Adelina (my beautiful Italian Nonna), stepfather “Johnny,” and half-brother, Aldo. My mother would often ask her younger brother, Stan (who currently lives in an assisted living home in Seattle) to play tennis on the street which faced my father’s home, so that he would notice her. But, it was not necessary for he had often secretly basked in her beauty many times before.

They were Ballard’s Romeo and Juliet, who lived across the street from one another. At first my father was too shy to ask her on a date. He feared that she would condemn him as an anti-Christian Roman Catholic, just as her own father (my grandfather Stave) did when my father asked for her hand in marriage. My “Christian Lutheran Grandfather” made him swear that his first child must be raised as a Lutheran. Grandfather Stave was completely blinded by the German Roman Catholic Monk, Martin Luther, that he actually believed Luther’s inflammatory book about why we should persecute Germans of Jewish ancestry: “On the Jews and their Lies.”

Luther’s Jews in Amazon

Louie kept his vow, and that is why I’m a Presbyterian — but, not a Lutheran. The Presbyterian Church is often considered the most liberal branch of the Protestant Church. It was the only way my mother could heal her father of his sins which he had commited to her husband, my Father Luigi. I recall, I once sat through a service at my Presbyterian Church. The minister was a devout African-American Christian, yet there were no other African-Americans in attendance. I’ve read that Africans were God’s first and most favored people in his own Kingdom. Yet, over 114 million Africans perished due to blasemous Christian white slave traders. And, today, White Nationalists scream, why must there be such a hateful thing, called BLACK LIVES MATTER? Why do they riot? We give them free food and small rent-free apartments. I think the answer is obvious. Violence is the only answer that White Nationalists can truly understand.

My mom was an early version of Traveling Boy’s Fyllis Hockman and my wife, Deb; where she would politely correct me when I miss pronounced a word, but did it in a way which would not upset me. She also typed and proof read four of my screenplays.

My mother was once an executive at AT&T Phone Company in Seattle. One of her clients was our greatest city father, Ivar Haglund (“Keep Clam, Keep Calm!”). My mother said when she would call him, he would begin with one of his corny jokes, but those jokes were the reason why she loved him. Ivar Haglund: the son of two poor Scandinavian immigrants; Seattle folk singer, restaurateur and the founder of Ivar’s Acres of Clams, his flagship restaurant on Seattle’s waterfront.

Seattle’s Smith Tower was once the tallest building west of the Mississippi. When Ivar heard it was for sale, he immediately paid a million dollars to purchase it. He really didn’t know what he would do with it; he just wanted to make sure a big corporation would not tear down one of Seattle most iconic landmarks. At this point, Ivar was growing older and knew he would not live forever. So, when he signed the contract, he entered a clause that the next buyer could not tear it down.

Starting in July of 1968, Seattle’s skyline would light up with a display of Fourth of July fireworks. I would watch them with my family on Magnolia Bridge. My mother would turn to me, “This is a gift from Ivar, honey. He’s paying for it.”

Before my mother passed away at the same assisted living memory care facility where my father had lived. She was demented to the point of blindness and could no longer speak. My wife urged me to take the first flight to Seattle to be with her.

When I arrived, her eyes were closed as she rested in bed. The room was dark. And, I was stunned by how much my beautiful mother with strawberry blonde hair had aged. I did my best to emulate how my wife’s brother and nephew had eulogized my father.

I stroked her hair and said…

“Mommy, this is Eddie… soon you’ll be in heaven with all the people who love you.”

I was surprised when my mother spoke. But, was not surprised by her last words…

I LOVE IT…

Yes, She LOVED IT.

God Bless You, Mom!

Skip Kaltenheuser: Rick Cluchey; Actor – Playwright, Boxer, Convict, an Inspiration

Once it sufficed a teenager to dangle from a water tower in high wind by as few fingers as would support the weight, or to jump a strange horse to see how long until he was rid of you. Or to ask out a girl that held one in a state of pronounced intimidation. A mere smooch was a victory of acceptance, “safe sex” a distant dream of Nirvana.

Collisions with alcohol could go many ways. The sting of tequila might be so bad the stench would warn you off for years. Life did not lack for hazards, but the risks seemed cleanly cut.

Now someone has mined the field of play. Young people are being devastated by crack, AIDS and triple-threat pregnancies.

At Prince George’s Publick Playhouse, this Wednesday through Saturday, Rick Cluchey and the latest hybrid of his San Quentin Drama Workshop will seek to make these horrors imaginable when it presents “The Shepherd’s Song.”

The Publick Playhouse, formerly the Cheverly Cinema, is a facility of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The theater is located in an area of the county that has a high incidence of substance abuse and positive testing of the HIV virus among teenagers.

“The whole thing is about intervention, catching people at an early enough age,” says Cluchey of “The Shepherd’s Song.” “This is the heart and soul of it. We have to continue to intervene and educate at younger levels.” Efforts are being made by county officials to bring residents of juvenile detention centers, as well as teenagers loosely defined by their schools as “youth at risk,” to the performances. “The people I do business with can’t afford a ticket to Arena {which recently staged “When It Hits Home,” a play about AIDS}, or other name stages,” says Cluchey. “They can’t read or write. Education is a high-sounding thing but to people who can’t read or write conventional education means nothing. You have to engage them on an emotional level and you have to engage them where they live.”

According to Cecil Thompson, theater specialist for Prince George’s County Department of Parks and Recreation and executive producer of the play, “County officials are alarmed and know they have to get the word out, and there’s no time for fooling around. The fastest growing population segment at risk is females age 14 and up. Consider that the average age of a female parent of an incoming kindergarten kid in Baltimore City is 20, and you sense the magnitude of exploding tragedy.”

“This production,” Thompson says, “represents attempts to focus public funds on major problems at a time of severe fiscal restraint. I hope Cluchey’s vision can be realized, to create good shepherds teaching both wellness for the stricken, and prevention — some hope beyond the pipe.”

The social utility of theater is what Cluchey, a resident of Silver Spring, is about. He came to the stage later than most professionals. Rather, the stage came to him. His first theatrical experience, at age 23, was a 1957 performance of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in San Quentin prison. Cluchey was in the audience.
His crime career was brief, but if the prosecutor had gotten his way, the only notices we’d have read of Rick Cluchey would have been his execution.
The robbery was a day after a payroll delivery. A gun fired accidentally, and a ricocheting bullet gave a slight wound to the courier while he was held captive in his moving car. Under California’s “little Lindbergh law,” this qualified Cluchey for the death penalty. The judge, however, sentenced Cluchey to life without parole.

Though punctuated by success as a middle-weight boxer, life was bleak. “Then I saw myself on that stage, amid the two tramps commenting, and the baronial character hauling another guy with a rope around his neck.” Something sparked. One result was the San Quentin Drama Workshop, familiar to some from the film “Weeds,” in which Cluchey was portrayed by Nick Nolte. On his last day in office, Gov. Pat Brown made possible the reversal of fortune that put Cluchey over the wall after 12 years. After 10 years on parole, he was pardoned by Califonia Gov. Jerry Brown.

In prison, Cluchey wrote “The Cage,” which he eventually directed and performed in on Broadway, after warming it up at the Arena Stage. While performing in Europe, he hooked up with Beckett, who became his friend and mentor, training Cluchey to become a world-renowned interpreter of his works. Cluchey’s merit badges include an Obie for David Mamet’s “Edmond.” He was the first American actor ever to win the Italian theater critics’ Premio Critica, and has two Los Angeles Dramalogue Critic’s awards in writing, directing and acting.

Beckett’s influence runs throughout Cluchey’s approach to theater, and to experiments like the “Shepherd’s Song.” “Beckett was a spiritual man with an Irish sense of humor who carried deep pain from his identification with the harsher events in the world. He was not a nihilist, but a minimalist — poetic vision distilled to the last drop,” says Cluchey. “Beckett lived above a French prison, watching inmates signal him with mirrors. He was fascinated by prisons, mental hospitals, all the so-called bleeding meat of society. When he got the Nobel Prize, it was for demonstrating to humanity its pain in a way it could be understood.”

This is the challenge of “The Shepherd’s Song,” conveying understanding to generations that include many who are functionally illiterate. Says Cluchey: “They reject the messages sent by teachers they see as boors, their defense mechanisms are up to those approaches and they reject the ideas. We have to find a vocabulary to think the issues through, an architecture of thought and image that makes people understand the dues of irresponsibility, yet provides them with a voice so they know they are counted.” The message to the public at large is a stark one: Find ways to catch people who are falling or go down with them.

These thoughts are echoed by members of the multiracial cast, who range in age from 17 to 28. Ezra Knight plays the shepherd who counsels the teenagers as they confront their various fates in a juvenile detention center. Knight has worked for eight years with Arena’s Living Stage projects to reach young people in trouble. In response to a query as to whether the grim realities of the play are too unrelenting, he responds, “We’re used to people getting through, happy endings, so forth, but it is also important to show worlds we need to change. … In terms of the relationship of AIDS, crack and pregnancy, there is no better vehicle than this, with characters who speak a language that provides a bridge. It is incumbent for the audience to take that message and do something with it, not just sit on their butts and be gratified.”

With only six weeks to put the project together, Hayes Award-winning director Roberta Gasbarre required the cast to immerse themselves in the topics, attending presentations by Whitman Walker Clinic and getting tested, reading five new articles or pamphlets a night on the topics portrayed, visiting prisons.

All the while, she has done that delicate dance in line cuts that can make a playwright’s ears quiver, fitting the lines and rhythm to the stage choreography she envisions as most effective for the target audience.

“Kids have been talked at too much,” says Gasbarre. “They only listen to each other, only live in half-truths, and half-truths can kill them. I hope this will evolve into a national project that goes everywhere, including the prisons.”

Lory Fields plays Baby, a pregnant and homeless 15-year-old from a rural town in Georgia. Fields had previously done volunteer work in shelters and soup kitchens, but has found her empathy greatly stretched by her experience with the play, her first nonmusical role. “The play is challenging to the cast,” she says, “the idea of part of the audience living out what we are trying to portray. Hopefully by the time they’re adults these topics won’t be so taboo.

“We’ve had to become quasi-expert so we can handle questions in the informal forums that follow each performance. Our daily assignments include bringing in the latest slang, and the cast goes over each line to see what rings true. The sets, the lighting, the sound, everything will happen for a purpose. If they don’t understand everything we’re saying, they’ll understand what we’re feeling. The final performance will be signed for the hearing impaired, a real challenge of the craft. The issues are so far-reaching. It’s not just drugs that threaten. You can catch AIDS by sharing needles to pierce ears, or inject steroids, or from an elementary school blood-brother bonding. One of the toughest is curbing the negative feelings toward safe sex by teenagers who figure they’re charmed.”

The play has a consultant who has AIDS and who wishes to remain anonymous. He participated in initial readings at four Maryland juvenile detention centers last summer, but the evening of the last performance, he was rushed to the hospital with a 105-degree fever. “I’m still helping because I love kids, and they’re being stricken along with everyone else,” he says.

Meanwhile Cluchey hopes “The Shepherd’s Song,” a pilot play in continual progress, will become a national model. He says his San Quentin Drama Workshop has been approached by representatives of the National Commission on Correctional Medicine to put on the play at the commission’s September convention in San Antonio.

For now, the workshop is trying to generate enough community awareness to help raise funds to allow ongoing projects — such as the potential use of the auditorium at Prince George’s County Hospital for regular presentations in a medical environment.

“There is a strong link between substance abuse and risk behavior,” says Cluchey. “The message is: Don’t do drugs that diminish your capacity for judgment or you’ll do something dumb — fail to practice safe sex. If you have screwed up and contracted the disease, your days are numbered. But you can practice wellness that will increase your life span and shepherd those around you to protect them.

“We are heading into that intersection where theater and life converge,” Cluchey continues. “We’re using a Brechtian model in the dramatic telling of the lives of five young people, a cathartic story-telling of insoluble social problems, the warning finger that also points toward a redemption, a practicing of wellness and a stewardship of one’s fellows. What will not be confusing is the message of this play.”

Cluchey considers formats of communication that might counter the impact of crack, “a deadly drug tied to a deadlier disease, breaking everything apart inside, like a centrifuge, the fast ride and the sudden stop. These kids skipped right through the so-called gateway drugs like pot and booze that gave some warning perspective, and they don’t know what hit them.”

It all could make one long for the days when hanging from a water tower was a kick that lasted all day, like the memory of a first kiss.

For time context, my text is taken from a WaPo article I wrote in March, 1991. Rick became one of my closest confidants. Gone now, alas.

But his steady instruction, “Keep punching!”, still echoes.

The post People and Places: Who’ve Changed Our Lives – Some Good or Bad – Some Gone – But Never Forgotten appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Our grown children all lived in America and we lived in the Philippines. If you have read any of our stories on Traveling Boy, you will know we are Christian missionaries.  We lived in the Philippines for 20 years and raised our children there. Our role was to give them roots and then to give them wings which is the hard part, but all survived and thrived. We usually only returned to the USA once every two years and that was for only two months, usually July and August.  That means our Christmas was always in Asia and when the children were older we only saw them every two years.

The year was 2001 and we were due for our US trip in July. Once again we would not be with our family at Christmas.  We were still ready for the break and were hopeful we could see the children who were scattered around the country.

My wife and I were very active and quite healthy. I was surprised that I began having trouble catching my breath after minor exertion. Each week it was getting worse.  A close friend, a medical doctor, and I were having lunch after a morning church service one Sunday when he noticed I looked very anemic. The next day after running a few blood tests he was quite concerned as he told me I had a serious problem with my blood and needed to go back to the USA immediately and meet with a hematologist (blood doctor).  I told him I had a lot to do and maybe . . .  He stopped me, “Read my lips, you need to be on the plane in the next two days!” He got my attention and I flew to Seattle two days later and our mission agency set up all the medical appointments and by the end of the day that I arrived, I had been given three bags of blood and had a bone marrow biopsy. 

Two days later I went in to get the results. I need to stop the story now to change the mood of the story.  I have no plan to talk about morbid details and sadness and all that.  I love funny stories and find joy in most situations. I have been afflicted with that disposition since becoming a Christian. So, I want to tell you about a seven-month journey of joy in the cancer center of the University of Washington in Seattle. By the way, my doctor friend in the Philippines also has a sense of humor.  When I asked what my blood test indicated he casually said, “might be cancer, might be nothing.” I told him I may want a second opinion and he said, “OK, you are ugly too!”

The diagnosis

When I showed up for my appointment for the results of my bone marrow biopsy two days after arriving in Seattle I was led into what I will call the “bad news” room.  Three of our agency’s directors were with me.  Virginia, the main oncologist, informed me I had serious acute leukemia and had two months to live but with aggressive treatments that might be extended and in rare cases cured.  I am always telling funny stories and puns so I could not pass that one up.  I said to her, “You said I have “a cute” leukemia. Is that better or worse than an ugly one? She stared at me not knowing what to think.  She then, in a very serious manner, explained that denial is a common response to bad news.  I told her she had not given me any bad news.  She reminded me she had told me I was going to die.  I said that is not what I heard.  I explained that as a Christian missionary I traveled all over the world training pastors and when a long trip is over it is so nice to go home.  Then I told her a promise Jesus made to all who follow Him. He said He was going away to prepare a place for us and would take us there one day.” Then I told Virginia, “What I heard you tell me a few minutes ago was that I will be going home for the first time. You haven’t given me any bad news.” For the next seven months, we developed a nice friendship.

The decision

My wife was able to return from the Philippines a few days after my tests were completed. I told her we were going to have a fun hospital room. If I was going to die, it was going to be a great exit.  For us, living is a wonderful adventure, can you imagine what dying will be like, God saved it for last! So we immediately went to IKEA to find something, which we did and took it with us when we checked in for the first of what would become five major chemo treatments, each lasting three weeks.  I have described chemotherapy as three weeks of poisoning to the threshold of death and then followed by one week of eating Mexican food.  Then back again to the poison control center and repeat four times.

Above is the framed photo we got at IKEA.  We hung it outside our room in the hospital and had a contest. Whoever came up with the best captions would get a prize.  Word went around and hospital staff came from all over the hospital to fill out the entry forms.  How fun is that?  We all laughed a lot and met many who got to know us and visit.  I was lying in bed with green poison flowing into my veins and tubes hooked up all over and laughing and telling funny stories. Mark Twain once described the greatest days in a man’s life as the day he was born and the day he found out why.  I knew why and there was no fear of death and life was and still is a joy and peace, like Christmas year-round.

I picked that photo because it was begging for great captions, but it also represents cancer which is seen by many as a train wreck. For us, it was a fun event on what may be the dreariest floor in the hospital.  We had three winners and gave out gifts to each.

We had many other creative things we did over the months. Our room was covered in Bible verses, things people brought or made, and fun balloons. It was a party for someone who was going home for the first time.

The funny stories

I have been collecting true funny stories from my trips for years now and one day I will do a book called LAUGHING INTO THE WIND. But let me share a few things that happened while in the hospital. It would take too long to tell them all.

The Neanderthal doctor and his psychiatrist assistant

If you are not familiar with how chemo is administered, they put a special port in your upper chest to put in and take out fluids and blood. Chemo is very strong and would destroy veins and every puncture is a chance for infection when your immune system crashes to zero as part of the treatment.  Once in a while, a port gets infected which is very dangerous and must be replaced.  That is what happened to me and as I was laying on the operating table I started talking to the assistant and soon found out he hoped to leave his nursing job and become a psychiatrist. I asked him if he liked funny stories because he seemed very serious, almost somber.  He said he never likes jokes.  I said I bet I can make you laugh and he said, almost sadly, “I doubt it.” I told him about a guy who went to a psychiatrist and when asked what the problem was he said, “I think I am a dog.”  “How long have you had this problem?” asked the doctor. He said, “Since I was a puppy.” He started to smile but tried not to, and then he laughed out loud and said, “That was funny.” Then the Neanderthal doctor arrived.  That is what I called him. He came in quickly and had to remove the infected port, clean everything up and sew in a new one. I think he was shooting for the Guinness record for this one.  The stitches were quickly cut and then the yanking started but it was stuck in my chest.  He put his knee on my chest to pull the old one out.  He must have seen my eyes the size of saucer plates and said, “They stick sometimes.” Once the port came out and he made sure no ribs were attached he asked if I minded music.  “No, whatever calms you down is fine with me.” So he turned on a boom box and began loudly playing “I need somebody to love” by Jefferson Airplane and almost raced back to me and said, “You ready for your new port?  I said I wasn’t sure because the doctor doing it just about ripped my chest in half tearing out the old port and now he needs a song about finding somebody to love. And his psychiatrist keeps mumbling the word “puppy.”

The Atheist and the 800 number

They do a lot of “procedures.” They usually happen in a room where you find insecure psychiatrists and Neanderthal doctors.  After one of those procedures, I was rolled back on the hospital bed to my room and there was a new nurse this time.  It was fairly common since this was a teaching hospital on the grounds of the University of Washington. When I entered the room the nurse was fiddling around and not saying anything.  I guessed she was bothered by the Bible verses and happy stuff on the walls.  I waited a few minutes wondering If she was going to say anything, but nothing.  I said, “I am guessing you know I am a Christian.” She snapped back at me, “I am an Atheist.”  I took a moment to give her an answer. “As an Atheist, it is a good thing you live in Seattle.”  She quickly said, “Why is that?”  “Because there is a special toll-free 800 number in Seattle just for Atheists.  It is called the Atheists Prayer Line.  You call that number and nobody answers.” She smiled and after that she became friendly.

Gummy organs and a prize T-shirt

I have one sister.  I think when I was born my parents saw me and said they thought they could do better and so my sister was born and then they realized it was best if they stopped.  Joking aside, my sister is amazing and funny. She worked for many years as an administrator for several doctors and when she came to visit she knew just what to bring. You have probably heard of Gummy Bears. She brought Gummy Organs. We put them in a bowl and doctors would come in just to get liver or kidney to munch on.  She and her daughter came dressed as birds, feathers and all. It is a great story and I have written it for Traveling Boy in the past and you can read it.  It is a fascinating story that started with a smashed bird.

Another thing my sister did was make me a special t-shirt to wear, one of a kind.  It became such a hit on the floor that numerous doctors wanted it when we checked out.  We had a drawing for it and gave it away.  Unless you are a doctor you would not understand it.  The shirt said, “Leukemia is a real blast!”  The background known by all oncologists is that the renegade cancer cells that run amok in the bone marrow are called “blast cells.”  The chemo is used to poison the blast cells which overrun the bone marrow replacing stem cells which become useful blood cells. The blast cells do nothing but take up valuable space and prevent healthy cells from growing and you die.   For me, the double-meaning shirt was fun to wear around the hospital.  Leukemia is about blast cells and I was having a blast wearing it.

The mohawk and tough biker picture

When our middle daughter, Rachel, arrived to visit she had a plan. She knew my hair was about to fall out from the chemo so she wanted to do some fun hairstyles on me.  We eventually ended up with a Mohawk and then later the billiard-ball, shaved-head style and put earrings on me and had me make an angry face we called the tough biker cut.

The doctor and the clocks

There are many more stories, but let me close this article with one.  I called them the thundering herd. As many as 15 made up the pack.  At a teaching hospital, there are a lot of students, interns, and physicians on the floor each day. Every day they thundered into my room and usually just to ask a few questions and look at charts.  So, I began telling a different joke or funny story each day, It was always a light moment for the herd.  One day they came in and I told my story and they laughed and said, “no change” referring to my tests. I asked why they kept coming since every day there are no changes.  They said they liked the jokes.

But then one day there was a new doctor in the pack that took the lead. They usually changed each month. This new one was in charge but had not been in the herd before.  He was middle eastern man named “Dr. M.” This particular doctor had no obvious sense of humor, he was all business.  After I would tell a good joke and everyone loved it, he would just say, “Thank you Mr. Landry” with an unsmiling face and they would all leave.  That became a pattern so he became my project and after several unsuccessful attempts to just get him to smile I set up a good one.  When the herd came in the next day I was sitting on my bed looking depressed (not easy for me to do) and when Dr. M asked if I was OK, I told him I had a disturbing dream but did not want to talk about it.  He came next to me and urged me to please tell him the dream and I hesitated again and then finally said I would tell the dream. The whole group closed in.

(For privacy reasons all names in this story have been changed to initials)

I dreamed I died and I went to Heaven and I met St. Peter at the gate and before he invited me in he said he wanted to show me something.  He took me into a massive hall and on the walls were clocks of all sizes, billions of them and all going at different speeds. I asked what the clocks were for and he told me that is how they keep accounts of everyone’s sins on earth.  He asked if I would like to see anyone’s clocks in particular and I said, “Could I see Dr. A’s clock?”  (Dr. A was a resident who was in the room standing next to Dr. M. She was my first resident in charge and now she was with the herd.  Dr. A, I might add, led a life very different from our lifestyle.  I got along fine with her even though we saw issues differently.  I played some fun pranks on her and she was a good sport; we got along great). So, I told St. Peter I wanted to see Dr. A’s clock.  It was spinning quite fast. When I said that the group laughed and started needling her in fun.  Then I said I would like to see Dr. T’s clock and his was spinning faster than A’s.  (Dr. T was standing next to Dr. A. He was older, very conservative, super polite, and quiet. He was my second resident in charge of the group.) They really poked him and laughed, all in good fun.  Then St. Peter asked if there were any more.  I said, there was another doctor, but I am trying to remember his name. Oh, yes I remember and I gave St. Peter his name, Dr. M.  He said, “Oh, that is a very special clock.  I have it on my desk and I am using it for a fan.”

That one got him.  He broke up as did the herd. They all laughed down the hall.  I even heard them further down the hall say, “A fan!” and they laughed again.

That night when the halls were quiet Dr. M came into my room and sat down.  He told me his father was missing in Pakistan (it was during the Gulf War) and he was leaving the hospital in two days to go try to locate him.  We talked for an hour and he wanted me to pray for his journey. It was a very private conversation and I ended up giving him some things that would be helpful to him on the trip.  I never saw him again after he left the hospital. I was so glad I told that last story because it brought him into my room that night. Humor over the years has opened the hearts and minds of many when I talk to them.  Joy is also contagious. This is a picture of Dr. M the day before he left for Pakistan. I would love to see him again, he was a gentle soul.

This was my most unexpected Christmas… a joyous occasion (despite the health issues) because one of the benefits of cancer is it brought our family to come celebrate Christmas together… in a cancer ward in a Washington State hospital.

Merry Christmas from the Landrys and Traveling Boy!

The post A Most Unexpected Christmas appeared first on Traveling Archive.

I wonder if I could take your mind off COVID-19 for a few minutes to tell you about Lee Stockner, a very special young man in New York who teaches piano primarily to Autistic children.

Understanding the limited attention span, Lee developed a system using colors as a teaching tool.  His system is called “Occupational Octaves” and was the subject of a recent 10-minute, 8 seconds documentary that was in the top 100 of over 5,000 worldwide submissions.  This short film was scheduled to screen at Pasadena Film Festival, which was cancelled due to the CoronaVirus.  We do need to see something that uplifts the human spirit so below is a link to the documentary and I invite you to take a few minutes and watch the this joyful film.

This is the story in Lee’s own words:

“Ten years into my piano teaching career, I met a young man with Autism. Although I had no experience in special education, his mom asked me to give him piano lessons and we began working together. That student had comprehension skills strong enough to learn to read traditional music notation.  However, once I began working with K-12 students with Autism, many lacked those skills and could never learn to read music.”

“I let necessity be the mother of innovation and created a new language of music where the students wear color-coded finger bands with matching colors on the keyboard. Although the teaching approach is different, my students learn and perform the same pieces of music you’d learn in traditional piano lessons, ranging from Bach to Beethoven.”

Please note:  Although I have a strong policy of not reviewing material from family or friends, I made an exception in this case as Lee Stockner is my nephew, but I decided to not hold that against him as his work is pioneering and deserves attention.

Watch the video

Visit the Occupational Octaves Piano site for further information

The post A Special Story About A Special Man Doing Special Work appeared first on Traveling Archive.

I was especially excited at the prospect of going on this trip.  I was already an avid hiker and I was trying to accomplish as many hikes in the book Afoot and Afield in San Diego County as I could.  This book inspired me to hike areas I might not have tried otherwise, but Mt. Whitney was the temple of hiking.  To reach the highest point in the United States, outside of Alaska, was an accomplishment I needed for my ego and my soul.  A place that very few people have ever been or could ever be.  I was committed to being ready for this journey.

We started with a January 3^rd meeting of the men who were serious about joining us.  There were about five of us at first.  John had already researched much about the hike and laid out his plan for the trip.  We were to drive up to Whitney Portal first.  It’s the campground at the end of the road from Lone Pine that many call “base camp.”  We were going to camp two nights there and hike on one of the days to acclimate us to the higher altitude.

At the February meeting, a new man showed up who was interested in hiking Mt. Whitney with us.  He knew some of the members of our hiking team already because, like the rest of us, he was a member of a men’s group called the Mankind Project.  The new man, Larry, told us he had hiked for 20 years and is up for the challenge.  He was 74 years old but, who am I to question his capabilities.  The rest of the group welcomed him, and so did I.

LESSON #1:  When someone says he has been hiking for 20 years, it may be important to find out exactly when those 20 years were.

We decided at the meeting to start the SoCal Six Pack with a hike up Mt. Baldy.  At 11 miles, it’s the shortest of the six hikes, yet it’s a difficult 4,000-foot elevation climb to the 10,068-foot summit.  The date was set for March 23^rd.  We were about to kick our training into high gear.

The day came and only three of us opted to hike Mt. Baldy.  So, John, Larry and I drove up early in the morning so we could get a good start and have plenty of time to do the hike.  The start of the hike was a dirt road at the east end of the town of Mt. Baldy that headed up to the Mt. Baldy ski area.  The directions showed that there is a trail that heads off the dirt road.  The word was that the turnoff trail is poorly marked.  Apparently, some local environmentalists often take the signs down to deter hikers from ruining the pristine area.  Well, they were successful.  We did not see a sign, nor did we see a trail that ran off the dirt road.  Luckily, the other end of the trail head for the loop can be found at the ski area, so we continued up the dirt road until we found the trail.

On our way up the dirt road, Larry was stopping frequently to rest.  These stops, in addition to his slow pace, made our progress to the peak in question.  As we all chatted, we discovered that it had been many years since Larry had hiked.  Apparently, his twenty years of hiking was not a recent span of time.  What also came up was that Larry had some sort of respiratory issue that he would not elaborate on.

We continued on the trail from the ski area and up Devil’s Backbone.  This 2.6-mile section of the trail is a bit narrow with a very big drop on both sides of the trail.  Over the years, a number of hikers have fallen to their death on this part of the trail, especially during the winter when conditions can be wet and/or icy.

This particular day showed some snow and ice on the ground along the backbone.  We were aware of this condition before starting the hike so we were careful to stay on trail and go slow.  Most of the hikers who died, or needed rescue, were venturing too far off trail.

We successfully made it to the summit. Once there, John and I chatted about how much time it took to reach the top.  We were concerned that we were unlikely going to get back to the trailhead again before nightfall at the expected pace.  Since it was March, the days were shorter and it was getting dark around 6 pm.  We needed a plan to safely descend back to our vehicle.

Being the stronger hiker of the group, I made the call to hike back down on the short leg of the trail loop.  I was planning to quickly hike down to the car, and drive up the dirt road to the ski area parking lot.  John was to hike with Larry back down Devil’s Backbone while it was still light, and meet me in the parking lot before dark.  There, I could pick them up and drive us down to town.  With that plan agreed upon, I set off on my descent.

LESSON #2:  Be sure that all plans are actually agree upon.  Repeat plans if necessary to assure everything is understood.

My initial descent down the trail went smoothly and quick, but at some point I got off trail.  I could blame the poor trails, or lack of signage, or the snow that covered some of the area, but it mostly came down to just trying to hurry and not paying enough attention to my surroundings. I veered off course, following a worn path that lead to an old plane crash, thinking it was the main trail.  Research later showed that the wreck was from 1949 when two USMC F-6 Hellcats crashed together during a training mission.  I continued until I could not see any signs of a trail.  I knew I had to head downhill so I just kept going down until I ended up getting into Goode Canyon.  This canyon is a steep and rugged descent with large boulders and very little access for hiking.  My descent was more like climbing over, sliding down and squeezing around boulders than hiking.  It was very difficult and I was getting exhausted.  Luckily, my GPS was telling me that I was heading in the right general direction, so I pressed on.

As I was trying to find my way to the car, John and Larry were making their descent back down.  Unfortunately, as I found out later, they were heading down the same trail as I did, instead of heading back down the way we came up, towards the ski area.   This is where the trouble really started.  John’s account was that they decided to go the same way I did because they knew it was shorter.  They got off trail the same way I did and saw the same wrecked planes.  They continued downhill until the trail faded but figured that they would eventually hit the road if they kept on.  Once down into the canyon, John realized that going up the steep canyon was too difficult, especially for Larry, who was very tired by this point.

I made it to Glendora Ridge Road, about a mile west of the town of Mt. Baldy, just at dusk.  I was exhausted and too tired to walk back to my car, but I needed to meet up with John and Larry as quickly as possible.   I was waving down passing cars to get a ride to my vehicle when a woman in a jeep stopped to ask what I needed.  When I told her the short version of my story, she agreed to help me out by giving me a ride to my car.

During the short ride to my car, I realized in our conversation that I could not have been luckier than to have Missy pick me up.  She was a long-time resident of the area and an avid hiker.  She and her husband Ron owned the Mt. Baldy Lodge and restaurant.  After hearing my story, she dropped me off at my car and told me to contact her at the restaurant if I needed her help.

I drove my car up the dirt road toward the ski area in hopes of finding John and Larry on their way down.  Unfortunately, I was greeted by a locked gate.  I decided to park there and hike up to see if I could meet up with them.  I hiked all the way up to the ski area, which was no easy feat since I was still pretty exhausted from my adventure up to then.  No sight of my hiking friends anywhere. I did not feel I could safely hike up Devil’s Backbone in the dark and in my physical condition, so I hiked back to my car and drove to the Mt. Baldy restaurant.

Once there, I found Missy and asked for her help.  She had keys to the locked gate so we drove her jeep up to the ski area and looked for the hikers.  They were not to be found.  Even at a slow pace, I expected they would be there by then.  I was growing more concerned now.  It was late and had been about 5 hours since I left my fellow hikers.  Were they already back and roaming around town somewhere?  We drove back down to the main road and went to a couple of spots where Missy said we would be able to see their lights on parts of the trail if they were coming down that way.  That was assuming they had lights.  We saw nothing.  We drove into town and looked around to no avail.

LESSON #3:  Before embarking on a serious hike, make sure all hikers in your party have the 10 essentials.  They include:

1. Navigation: A map and compass, GPS or some other devices so you don’t get lost.
2. Sun Protection: Sunscreen and sunglasses protect against sun damage.
3. Extra Clothing: Especially for any possible cooler weather in case you get lost.
4. Illumination: A flashlight or headlamp could save a life in the dark.
5. First Aid: Bandages, bug spray, medicines, antiseptic, etc.
6. Fire: Bring matches and/or other fire starters in case you’re lost in cold weather.
7. Tools: Have a multi-tool at least.  A knife, screw driver, or scissors can be handy.
8. Nutrition: Bring more than you will need on the hike in case you get lost.
9. Hydration: Bring more water than you will need for the expected hike.
10. Shelter: Consider an emergency tent, space blanket or other protection.

Missy had another thought.  Maybe they came the same direction I did, and got off trail, like me.  She drove to a couple of spots where someone might come out if they were off trail.  We did not find them anywhere.  It was getting late.  It was getting dark.  And it was now serious.  It was time to call for rescue.  We went back to the restaurant and Missy made some calls.

The Mt. Baldy Volunteer Fire Station was soon all a buzz with volunteer firefighters, sheriff, local search-and-rescuers and others wanting to help.  They quickly set up an incident command and dispatched the local volunteer search-and-rescuers to work their way up the trail to see if the hikers could be found.  Additionally, the Fontana Sheriff’s Air Rescue helicopter 306 was dispatched to search the mountain and the canyon areas.  I stayed at the fire station to wait for any word, and to provide any information I could.  I also took the opportunity to call the wives of both men.  I let them know what happened and that there was a full search-and-rescue operation going on.  I told them I would keep them informed of further information. They didn’t seem to panic, but they both were obviously distressed by the news.  I couldn’t help but think they didn’t know everything I did about Larry’s condition, and it was better to keep it that way for now.

It was after midnight and reports from the search-and-rescue team, as well as the helicopter, came in with negative results.  I was very uneasy about what might have happened to the guys, especially considering Larry’s age and physical condition.  As a retired career firefighter and rescue specialist, I have been in many, many situations where I was challenged with finding, rescuing, and treating victims of a variety of emergencies.  I can generally handle this type of situation with relative calm.  This is different. I am emotionally involved in this one.  These are my friends and I feel somewhat responsible for the outcome.

After about two hours of searching, the helicopter pilot radioed that they had to discontinue the search.  His maximum flight hours were about to be reached, and he had had no luck spotting the hikers.  They were going to have to stop for the night and resume at daybreak.  Soon after hearing that, the local volunteer search-and-rescuers radioed that they made it all the way up to the summit and were unable to find anyone.  They were going to continue to search down the loop of the trail.  I was starting to get a bit emotional about the possible outcome. All we could do at this point was wait for daylight.

During the evening, the lost hikers continued to make some progress down the canyon.  It was very difficult for both of them as they pushed through the obstacles of large boulders and prickly bushes.  John would push ahead and then wait for Larry to catch up.  John’s fear of being stuck overnight was driving his behavior to keep pushing.  At one point, both hikers discussed bedding down for the night but they were not equipped for camping.  Even so, the conversation calmed John and they decided to continue as far as they could.

The obstacles became harder to navigate as they descended down the canyon.  John would get so far ahead that he would lose sight of Larry so they would yell back and forth at each other to keep in contact.  John would yell at Larry, explaining how he got through an area in hopes that Larry could navigate the same way.  Both men were getting extremely tired by this time.

John worked up the east slope of the canyon, trying to find a trail of some kind.  The slope was covered in gravel and the footing was very difficult.  At one point, John slipped on the gravel and ended up sliding downhill for quite a way.  When he came to rest, he called out to Larry and got no response.  He tried again but nothing.  John thought that maybe Larry found the trail and headed back.  John did not hear from Larry again for the rest of the night.

John decided to continue to work his way down the canyon along the east slope as long as there was light, hoping he would soon see a trail or the road.  He continued for a while until darkness approached.  John thought he could see a road ahead but it was at least two miles away through very rough terrain.  Exhausted, he looked for a place to bed down for the night, thinking he could get injured if he continues in the dark.  When it gets dark on a mountain, it gets DARK.  Many people may not appreciate that unless they have experienced it.  Trying to climb boulders and navigate around prickly bushes is dangerous when there is no light.

John found a good place to rest for the night.  It was quite chilly so he opened his emergency space blanket and wrapped up in it to stay warm.  John then took out his flashlight and set it on a rock next to him, then made stock of his supplies.  He had plenty of water for the night and some food.  His biggest fear at this point was not the dark or the cold, or even being alone…it was the possibility of bears.  Now John debated what to do with his food.  Should he keep it close or should he place it farther away from him.  Bears have a great sense of smell and can detect food from quite a distance so generally campers keep food in special metal boxes or up a tree.  John decided to keep it in his pack and not open it.

Throughout the long night John’s senses were heightened.  He did not get much sleep worrying about bears, if he would be rescued, where his buddy Larry was, and the dropping temperature.  To calm his fears, he started to sing made-up songs to himself in a key that would definitely crack a window.  “I’ll make it out of here, out of here.  Tomorrow will come in eight hours, just a long eight hours.”

After a few hours, John heard a sound that got his attention.  It was the sound of a helicopter.  John was so excited that he reached for his flashlight to signal the approaching aircraft.  But it was not there.  He looked all around but could not find it.  He kept looking at the approaching helicopter, then looking for the flashlight.  John became angry. “Where the hell is my flashlight?”  It was nowhere to be found.  He gave up looking and concentrated on the helicopter.  He saw that the copter had a search light, so John moved to an open area where he thought the helicopter could see him better.  For the next two hours the helicopter flew overhead.  It flew up and down the canyon area and into other smaller adjacent canyons.  Then it would disappear to search other areas.  John would get excited when it was searching around his area and curse it when it left.  When the helicopter was near John, the search light seemed to hit everywhere except where John was.  He was getting very frustrated.

Eventually the helicopter flew off.  John figured it was low on fuel and probably wouldn’t return until morning.  John found an area under a big pine tree with a bed of pine needles under it that he thought would be comfortable and warm and bedded down again.  He slept from 2 am until 6 am, waking just before sunrise.  John gathered his supplies and looked for another area where he could be seen by the helicopter that he expected would begin the search again soon.  He tied his emergency blanket to his hiking pole thinking the reflective silver blanket would be a good signal device.  John waited.

At about 6:30 am the original Sheriff’s rescue helicopter, and a smaller spotter helicopter, were sent up again to look for our hikers.  The search-and-rescue team had been hiking all night, but now they moved into Goode Canyon.  After about an hour into daylight, the smaller helicopter spotted John Marsden.  Using their loud-speaker they asked about John’s condition and told him to stay put before taking off again.  John figured that helicopter was not suited to rescue so he waited patiently to see what came next.  After what seemed like hours, a larger helicopter showed up.  It seemed the smaller helicopter was showing the larger one where John was, but then they left again, flying back down the canyon.  Shortly after, the larger helicopter returned, only to fly off again.  This was frustrating John.

After several minutes, the larger helicopter reappeared.  It hovered overhead for a while until John saw a man being lower down with a cable.  The rescuer landed nearby, unhooked and greeted John.  John was never so happy to see anyone in his life.  The rescuer didn’t waste time and prepared John to be lifted into the helicopter by putting him in a special rescue suit.  John was hooked up to a cable and lifted up to the hovering aircraft.  Feeling safe, John was now having fun.  An interesting bit of irony here.  On the hike up the day before, we had talked about things we had never done in our lives.  John said he had never been in a helicopter.  Be careful what you wish for.

The lost hikers’ wives, Debbie and Jackie, both decided to drive up and meet me at the fire station.  They arrived in tandem around 7 am.  I let them know that Jackie’s husband had been found but they were still looking for Larry.  Jackie was obviously relieved.

Right after Debbie and Jackie arrived, Larry was found by the team searching on foot.  He was in an area hard to see from the air…tired, cold and a bit injured.   Because of his injuries, he had been rescued first.  The search-and-rescue team worked with the air crew of the rescue helicopter to get Larry ready for the 90-foot lift into the helicopter, and to Cow Canyon Saddle where he was checked out by paramedics and transported to the fire station.

When Larry arrived at the fire station around 7:30 am, he was in good spirits but he had cuts and bruises on his face and neck, as well as a swollen black eye that completely blocked his vision.  He told me that he kept falling while trying to maneuver over the boulders in the dark.  His wife, Debbie, showed emotions mixed with happiness that he was found, and anger that he took the risks that he did.  He was made to promise on the spot that he would not go on the Mt. Whitney hike with us.  He agreed.

John was airlifted out around 9 am to the same area where the paramedics checked Larry out, and gave him a clean bill of health.  A sheriff asked John some questions for his report.  After that, John asked if he could meet the rescuers to thank them.  He went to where the rescuers were gathering to thank them when one of the rescuers asked to see the bottom of his boots.  The rescuer said that those were the boots they had been tracking for about 1/3 of the way down until they lost the tracks.

John was then transported to the fire station where the command post was.  He ran over to me and we hugged, relieved we were both safe.  John told me that most of the time he was lost, he thought it was me in need of rescue.  He thought Larry had already made his way out.  John hadn’t even noticed that his wife was there at first.  Once we were all together, hugged, and realized we were safe and relatively unscathed, we met with the Incident Command team to give them all the particulars for their incident report.  We thanked the team profusely for their efforts and I professed we would happily donate to their organization soon.  Each of the rescued hikers loaded into his vehicle with his wife for the drive home.  John, Jackie and I decided to stop for breakfast while Larry and his wife headed home.  It was interesting to see our story on the news while we were eating our breakfast in the restaurant.  John exclaimed “Damn, I’m a star but not the way I thought it might happen.”

On my drive home alone, I was able to contemplate the 30-hour episode.  I realized how it could have gone so much worse than it did.  Larry could have gotten seriously injured from one of his falls.  One, or both of them, could have encountered one of a number of wild animals in that area.  In his physical condition, Larry could have suffered from dehydration or exposure to the cold.  None of that happened, so it’s a happy ending with an interesting story to be told.

I saw Larry once more, a couple of months after that fateful trip.  The three of us met at a coffee shop to discuss what happened, and the lessons learned.  Larry quit hiking after that day, as requested by his wife, and they moved to Memphis soon after.  He died of cancer on September 5, 2019.  John and I completed the Mt. Whitney summit, along with three other friends, on September 16^th of that same year.  We definitely applied the lessons learned from the Mt. Baldy hike.  John and I still see each other. We travel and hike together, and talk about this event now and then.  Mostly, we each learned some lessons as a result.

LESSON #4: If you get lost while hiking, stay in one place so search-and-rescue can find you.

LESSON #5: Don’t split up with fellow hikers when you get lost.

In a less technical aspect, I learned that living sometimes has a price, but do it anyway.  The only other choice is dying and that will happen soon enough.  Just do the best you can to be prepared before setting off on an adventure.

I also learned to be thankful for those willing to help.  Missy spent all night trying to help me find my friends.  She fed me, drove me around to search for my friends, made the necessary contacts for a rescue, and was supportive. She was so amazing.

The entire rescue effort, volunteer and paid members, selflessly worked all night to help find the men.  Even after a long career of a similar service, my perspective in this situation was different.  And so, my appreciation is so very heartfelt.

I still hike, go on adventures, and travel a lot.  I try to be prepared before I go.  I still pay the price occasionally and I’m still learning lessons, but overall… life is an adventure and I’m enjoying the journey.

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By way of a little background, as a teenager I had my first visual exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust in some newsreel depictions of the liberation of some camps after the war – the emaciated survivors with their sunken eyes, gaunt bodies and harrowed auras. I called my mother, who had told me of the Holocaust my whole life, and said: “Mom, I finally understand.” Now six decades later, I came to understand even more.

Mauthausen, one of the largest of the camps, was built high upon a hill in Linz, where Hitler was once a resident, near a large quarry. The rationale behind concentration camps evolved over the war years from imprisoning people, enslaving them and engendering fear among the general populace to simply one of extermination. And that was carried out in so many ways. Mauthausen was considered a Level 3 Camp where the guiding principle was that no one left – everyone was to be killed in some way or other. The SS excelled at very efficient methods of mutilation and annihilation.

The roots of genocide, according to our guide, were fostered in anti-Semitism, an us vs. them mentality, a de-humanization of others who are seen as “less.” It was hard not to draw some parallels to today’s world…

Many bodies engulfed “the stairs of death” leading to and from the quarry where malnourished and mistreated prisoners were forced to carry very heavy stones up very high stairs and often died in the process. Others were simply pushed down the steps. It becomes difficult to hear the stories as they became so visually enshrined.

Other cases involved prisoners forced outside during winter over whom cold water was poured – a particularly appealing entertainment for the SS guards who delighted in “showering” people to death – outside the actual gas chamber showers, that is…. Because any SS who shot an inmate trying to escape got extra days off, a favorite party trick was to entice prisoners into situations where they might appear to be escaping – and then shoot them. Stomach cringing continues.

Others, sick and beaten, simply died during daily roll call, a grueling process of standing in the heat or cold for 4-5 hours at a time, and being forced to do exercises when most of them could no longer stand. It is hard to hear all of this – and my stomach clenched and my eyes teared and I was overcome by a sense of helplessness and disbelief that these things actually happened – and no one cared.

In the barracks hundreds were housed in such horrendous conditions the term unsanitary does not begin to describe the degradation. On the wall is a quote depicting the “wheezing, hissing, moaning, sobbing, snoring” that filled the night-time air in 20 languages. “The noise fused into a single, terrible sound produced as if by a giant monstrous being that had holed up in the dark.” Another quote:”Anyone who hadn’t been brutal when they entered the world became brutal here.” More gut-wrenching stomach-churning.

And then we went through the gas chambers where thousands were killed and then the ovens where their remains were buried, with a side visit to the infirmary where unspeakable “experiments” were carried out.

And yet the neighbors and surrounding community ostensibly didn’t know what was happening, despite being within earshot of the thousands of prisoners suffering and screaming. In fact, some complained about the noise – but not about why it was occurring. The grandmother of our guide, who was seven at the time, said she could smell the stench of the burning bodies; she knew something bad was happening but nobody talked about it.

Of the 200,000 prisoners who occupied Mauthausen from 1938-1945, about half were killed. There were only 20,000 survivors when liberation finally came on May 5, 1945, with another 80,000 already too ill to benefit from the end of the war. Not surprisingly, the liberators were shocked at the condition of the prisoners. I imagine so too were the community members when they were finally exposed to what was really happening in their backyard. At this point, my stomach was in perpetual decompression mode.

There were signs on walls from visitors in multiple languages: RIP, Never Again, and You won’t be forgotten. A simple drawing of an eye with a tear coming down was the one I most related to.

Most of the guards went home after the war suffering no consequences and little was said about what they had done. No one talked about it. According to our guide, it took Austria four decades to acknowledge its part in the Holocaust.

There were multiple school groups of teenagers at the camp and I felt thankful they were learning of the atrocities they otherwise would probably have no knowledge of. I wished I could understand what they were saying about their experience. History will now change as there soon will be no survivors, no one to say this is what actually happened, and the Holocaust will be relegated to the status of other historical occurrences which the young will learn about in school but will not relate to. Who really cares about the Crusades? There will be no visceral understanding. It will have nothing to do with them. There will be nothing to keep it from happening again. I only wish I could call my mother and tell her once again, that now I REALLY understand…

For more information, visit the Danube River Cruise Tour page.

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Summer school classes were canceled in the secondary school, so I coordinated with the local municipality and the primary school to organize my own classes. I tried for weeks before starting classes to work sustainably by involving a local teacher, but eventually our plans fell through and I was left to work alone.

For most volunteers, the rainy season months of January and February and Vacaciones Útiles classes present unique challenges. With large class sizes, we often end up working alone even though it’s a problematic sign our work is not sustainable. (See my first summer school experience here: Rainy Season and Summer School)

Yet for me, this February may have been my favorite month of service. My class was comprised primarily of a small group of  9-12 year olds. In other words, each class was full of energy, interesting questions, and short attention spans. We focused on leadership, life skills, sports, and art and would hang out before or after the class playing group games. Their favorite is Ninja!

Since I normally work with around 130 students on a weekly basis, I appreciated the opportunity to spend multiple hours every day with the same small group of students. Also, working alone freed me from the constant challenge of coordinating with teachers and gave me the freedom to develop my own classes and workshops. Along with this freedom, I felt more comfortable this year with the students and with my Spanish, and it was obvious their trust in me had also improved.

The classes culminated with a day hike along the Inca trail to a nearby town where we visited Inca ruins. I invited a friend from Tarma who served as our guide along with another friend who is an environmental engineer. More students participated than I expected, and the trip was a wonderful way to celebrate the end of summer classes and the start of the new school year.

The school year has now officially started, and I’m optimistic about my last 7 months here in Huaricolca. Despite high teacher turnover, the schools and I have improved our coordination and work by learning from our successes and failures of last year.

Teachers and I are working to develop small groups of leaders in each grade while continuing to improve weekly life skills classes which are part of the Peruvian curriculum. We also hope to expand our “Professional Hour,” an event we did last year, by inviting different universities and technical institutes to participate and focusing on job orientation before and after the event.

Above all, I’m excited to continue building friendships with students and sharing moments with my host families. Time flies, and I know that too soon this wild ride will be coming to an end.

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

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Phase 1: The Decision (Applying and Waiting)

On your laps through the park, you’ve passed by the roller coaster a few times now. You’ve been waiting for this ride for years; last year you were too short to ride.

This year you’re not sure you’ll have the courage, but you feel ready. You hop in line for the long wait, wondering if it will truly live up to the hype.

Each volunteer’s rationale for applying to the Peace Corps is multifaceted — to serve, to travel, to develop oneself personally and professionally, to further one’s education, to learn another language, to meet new people, to adventure, to learn. The list is endless. For some it was a last minute decision and for others it took years of preparations and forethought.

Yet everyone experiences the same wait. While back in the U.S., we completed essays and interviews and, upon acceptance, endured the long process of legal and medical clearance, all while knowing very little what life in the Peace Corps would actually be like.

We stood in line, excited yet anxious as we imagined what each twist, turn, and corkscrew might hold.

Phase 2: The Climb (Pre-Service Training)

You buckle yourself in. Your heartbeat quickens. There’s no turning back. You begin the climb…click…click…click…click. The knot in your stomach grows with each foot of altitude gain.

Preparing for the coming adrenaline rush, you raise your hands and let out a scream. As the clicking stops, so does your heartbeat. You’ve reached the top.

After 3 days of basic preparation, you find yourself on a plane to a foreign country. You most likely speak little to none of the local language(s), haven’t tried the local food, and are unfamiliar with cultural practices. To fill in these gaps, trainees receive three months of Pre-Service Training (PST).

PST is a whirlwind of activities. Long days of language, cultural, and program specific training more closely resemble a busy college schedule than your actual service. Here in Peru, we also began living with our host families from day one, sharing meals and speaking only in Spanish.

You slowly begin learning what your life and job might be like, yet many many aspects remain vague and you don’t find out in what town or region you will be placed until week 5. The anticipation builds and builds and finally culminates in the swearing-in ceremony and your arrival in your community.

While you may have just made it through one of the most intense and nerve-racking parts service, everything is really just beginning. You’re no longer in a large group of volunteers. You’re no longer in the capital city. You have a new host family.

Here comes the drop.

Phase 3: The Drop (First 6 Months)

In free fall, your stomach rises to your throat. Muscles tighten. Adrenaline spikes. For a moment, you’re breathless, simultaneously loving and hating the terror of this adventure.

When you find your breathe, it instinctively escapes as a scream. And before you realize it, the track has leveled, and the ride continues.

Your first months in site are arguably the most challenging. On top of living each day in a foreign language, you must adjust to being away from other volunteers, living with a new host family, eating new foods, adjusting to constant sickness, dealing with hours and hours of unstructured time, and learning new professional and cultural expectations.

You make these adjustments while simultaneously trying to build relationships with local institutions and community members, doing interviews and surveys as part of a community diagnostic. Every day you also attempt to explain your role as a volunteer, the goals of Peace Corps, your program, and sustainable development while starting to match your program goals with local needs.

As a whole, your first months are a whirlwind of becoming comfortable amidst a sea of new experiences and the joys and struggles of integration. You often feel out of control, experiencing the free fall with both excitement and fear.  Yet through trial and error, through fire and flame, you see the value and beauty of integration, the foundation for the rest of your service.

Poco a poco, little by little, you settle in and your community becomes your home.

Phase 4: Acceptance (Year 2)

Accepting you’re at the mercy of this mad machine, you allow your muscles to relax for a moment. You remember once again to breath.

As you hurtle forward, you begin to truly enjoy the ride despite the many unexpected twists and turns. Nearing the end, a rush of dopamine reminds you the whole thing was worth the risk.

The rest of your service is filled with ups and downs, and the process of integration never truly ends. But many aspects of service simply become easier, and those which don’t you learn to accept.

You adjust to the food and hopefully getting sick less often. The language becomes normal, and you find yourself using local slang. You adjust to life with a host family or maybe even live on your own. You learn how to navigate local institutions and apply strategies for getting work done.

As time goes by, you also learn to lower expectations in terms of your work and accept the many limitations which exist. I find the longer I’m in my community, the more complex and interconnected the local problems become and the more I need to admit my limited role and impact in changing them.

I’ve spoken with many fellow volunteers who share similar sentiments. Two years is a short time to work towards long-term and sustainable change. The longer I’m here the more apparent that becomes.

So we do the best work we can and appreciate each moment we share with host families, community members, and friends.  And from what I’ve seen here in Peru, at the end of the day we love our jobs as Peace Corps volunteers, including all its surprises, difficulties, and joys.

Phase 5: What next? (Post Peace Corps)

You screech to a stop. You’re back where you started, yet you know without a doubt something has changed. You feel a bit light-headed and even disoriented as you stand up to walk out the gates.

It seems for a second that you’ve passed through an alternate reality. But as time goes by, you quickly readjust to life on the ground. Reflecting, you’re glad you rode, and you feel if you were to ride again, you could do so with more courage and composure.

I have yet to finish my service, but I’m positive returning to the states will require its own process of readjustment. For a while, parts of our own culture back home will inevitably feel foreign to us.

But even as life quickly becomes normal again, I’ll hope to never forget the lessons I’ve learned, people I’ve met, and experiences I’ve had here in Peru.

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

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I joined Peace Corps knowing very little of what life or work would be like. Unlike some of my volunteer friends, I hadn’t dreamt of Peace Corps since I was little, and it was never part of some 10 year professional plan.

So what drew me to Peace Corps? Simply put, I wanted to live cross-culturally abroad and work in community development.  As expected, integrating into another culture and working hand in hand with local people has been complex, beautiful, challenging, confusing, and rewarding all at the same time.

At the midpoint of my service, I know I’ve grown significantly over the past twelve months in site, and the following reflection is my attempt to communicate a few of these changes as they relate to my process of cultural integration and community work.

Cultural Integration

First off, I have been reflecting on my process of cultural integration in the community. Arriving in site a year ago, I was very concerned about acting or speaking in a way that would be perceived as culturally inappropriate. I also wondered how or if I’d ever know when I was “making a mistake” in a culture of primarily indirect communication. Slowly but surely, I began fine-tuning skills like careful observation and copying social behaviors, yet these helpful strategies were not ultimately the key to cultural discovery and integration.

Instead, I’ve found that the heart of cultural integration is being yourself and humbly opening yourself up to others and their lives. To do so, you must become secure in yourself and familiar with failure.

One day you say the wrong word at the wrong time to everyone’s amusement or horror. The next you sit awkwardly with an elderly person whose accent you truly can’t understand. And sometimes you unknowingly misunderstand people’s actions or intentions and plans fall through.

The process is difficult, and I’ve made a lot of “mistakes.” Yet I’ve learned that they are not really mistakes in the true sense of the word, but only part of the process. I’ve learned to laugh at myself, admit my faults to others, be content with discomfort, and ask curious questions. Many new discoveries have sprouted and relationships grown from the desert ground of awkward situations, cultural misunderstandings, and difficult conversations.

Through it all, living cross-culturally sets you on a path of self-discovery. This journey of cultural integration has been successful in bringing out my best and worst. Being myself in a new cultural context has uncovered many personal weaknesses and insecurities — my impatience, possessiveness, fear of failure or embarrassment, need for concrete results, and tendency to be a people-pleaser.

Despite being frustrating or confusing, I’ve found immense beauty and value in opening myself up to others and allowing their diverse lifestyles and views to impact my own. The journey of personal change is slow, but thankfully it’s lifelong.

So how have I actually changed? It’s difficult to discern the exact way living immersed in Peruvian culture has been shaping me. On one hand, I’m still inside the metaphorical “fish bowl” and am oblivious to many of the ways I’ve instinctively adapted. On the other hand, I catch myself acting or speaking in new ways that surprise me.

I instinctually offer others food or drinks, greet people I don’t know, tell white lies about my plans, and say provecho while others are eating. I’ve now become accustomed to being around livestock, washing my clothes by hand, throwing toilet paper in the trash, treating my water, eating guinea pig, and thinking in Spanish.

In conclusion, looking back on my service, I’m confident that the moments spent with my host families and community members will be far more valuable to me than any work I’ll be able to accomplish. These opportunities for genuine human connection and sharing will always be invaluable for me.

Community Development

I joined Peace Corps largely in part because I wanted to be on the front lines of grass-roots community development, which sounds more glamorous than it is. Turns out, it’s a slow, arduous process of building relationships, making institutional connections, and encouraging and training others to assume a larger role in their community.

Many volunteers, myself included, feel a pull towards accelerating this slow process, looking for projects with visible, concrete results. At the end of the day, we need to admit that on some deep level we all yearn for recognition. We love to put our name on something and say, “I did that.” However, sustainable development is slow, subtle, and often invisible. Good community development is really people development — in Peace Corps language “capacity building.”

Therefore, the main challenge is this: people are complex. As humans, we are not only capable of the best — beauty, art, progress, and connection — but also the worst — violence, hatred, deceit, and indifference. We are habited beings with complex histories and worldviews. We love criticism; we’re prone to denial. We are motivated to help our communities; we are engulfed in our own lives and preoccupations.

Given the intricate nature of persons, a community and its problems must be equally complex if not more so. If the goal is behavior and perspective changes — that people become active agents of change in their own lives and community — change will be neither easy nor straightforward. Every few steps forward is usually accompanied by a few steps backward.

In the small community where I live, finding motivated local counterparts is one of our primary difficulties. All but one teacher commute from larger communities and the majority will only stay for 1-2 years due to the education system. Therefore, because of brevity and location, many teachers are not directly involved or invested in the community where they work. After-school programs or weekend activities are a challenge.

Because of this difficulty, I’ve largely been confined to working in the classroom, supporting the teachers of tutoría, an obligatory, weekly life-skills class. This presents its own challenge of working within a 45 minute time-frame and coordinating with teachers whose priorities often lie in other courses.

For sustainability and liability reasons, I try to never teach alone but instead support and coordinate with the teachers to co-plan and co-teach the sessions. After a year of practice, our co-facilitation skills are improving but it’s a tricky balance that sometimes leads to me or the teacher taking on more of the responsibility.

Despite these challenges, I have much to be thankful for. The community, both families and institutions, has trusted and welcomed me. I coordinate weekly with the local government, health post, and schools, and they are open to working together.

We live by a motto here: poco a poco (little by little). Together, we’re slowly making progress, building relationships and making an impact.

Of course, there are good days and hard days. One day you and a teacher co-facilitate a dynamic class on machismo (sexism), and the next you’re tossed into a classroom to make something up on the spot. You watch a project you’ve been planning for months fall apart, yet in the same week a group of students surprise you with their own creative idea.

A PC staff member recently emailed us with three key concepts to embody in our work: permanence, persistence, and perseverance. I’ve found in Peace Corps, and in life for that matter, that consistency is often what matters most — being faithful in service and love to the place you’re at and the people you’re with.

One day results will come, even if they’re not as expected. After all, it’s through our journey together that we are truly changed. So here’s to another year of the beautiful struggle and the fruit it will bring!

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

The post Reflections on Cultural Integration and Community Development by a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru appeared first on Traveling Archive.

I imagine most of our lives are a series of awakenings.  One of my big ones came during my later college days.  By the time I entered my senior year at San Diego State I was a decent athlete and grades in school came easily. Actually, too easily. I spent much of my time at the beach when real students studied. My years in college were fun and I squeaked by doing almost no homework. But I did have a good tan, remember I am from California. When it comes to trendsetters we may be the undisputed world champions. We have the honor of being the home of the Christian Surfer Association. Yes, the only group in the world that addresses God as the Great Gnarly Dude. So, go light on me.

One problem with not applying myself was that even in the classes I liked I didn’t learn much since I was goofing off most of the time. My major was Industrial Arts. That is the educational term. It was really “shop class.”  Woodworking became my specialty.  I still remember my big assignment in Wood 101.  We could make any project we wanted with one square foot of lumber. I decided to make a cutting board, one-foot square, and one inch thick.  How is that for imagination?  But it gets better.  The undertaking stretched into nine weeks. As I hinted at I was not really strong in applying myself to anything except surfing.

My only creative moment was to get special permission to add an additional type of wood. The finished cutting board was laminated with alternating stripes of walnut and maple and had four tiny wooden feet on the bottom and two large clunky metal handles on the top. It looked like a zebra that had gone through a trash compactor. You are probably convinced at this time that I was into drugs. No, I just didn’t know what I was doing. But I did like woodwork.

If anyone with a sense of design had seen that monstrosity I made I might have been burned at a stake in public. Today I don’t know what finally happened to that awful thing. I gave it to my mother and I never saw it again after that. I think she made sure it was well buried in the trash can so the garbage truck would take it. Yes, the mother who still had my mosaic duck from ninth grade art class reached her tolerance level and my college masterpiece was no more. I am telling this story to give the background for what happened a few years later that changed my life and my self-confidence.

One of my neighborhood buddies got a job at a small custom furniture shop when I was in my last part of college. I can’t really tell you if I was a junior or senior because I just meandered through school, like life, and I never knew what I was. One day I took my last class and I was done. Now, back to my friend who got that job.  I was jealous and begged him to ask if I could work at that same shop. I have no idea what kind of story he told the boss but he hired me. I was a total dweeb (California word meaning “mindless LOOSER”). I hadn’t learned much in college except what the tide and surf tables meant and my woodworking major had left me mostly uneducated. But as I said, I liked woodworking. Surprisingly, the idea of working in a woodworking shop interested me and I actually started applying myself. I only hoped I would get a few skills before they discovered what they had hired and take me out behind the building and shoot me (sometimes known as acute lead poisoning). I tried my best and started to improve. They gave me simple jobs at first, which was very fortunate. Lee, the owner, was a very encouraging and tolerant person. He saw hope in the dweeb. His trust in me made me want to try harder. He was an exceptional man, but this particular story is really about a guy named Doug.

Turning Point

Doug was different from the crowd I ran with. He didn’t have a tan so I was suspicious from the start. He was focused and always seemed to know what he was doing and what he would be doing next. My life was like driftwood. Doug’s life was driven by vision and artistic balance. I envied him. Doug was a graduate from the same college I attended but he had paid attention. He was a few years older and many years more mature. He was one of the first Christians I ever met and he was a master craftsman. He was a man going somewhere and I hadn’t even looked at the map.

Well, one day towards the close of a work day he asked if I wanted to join him after we shut down. He was going to stay for an extra hour to make a gift for his wife. I hadn’t been married very long at that point and he was thoughtful enough to include me in his project. He told me I could make one for my wife.  I asked him what he was going to make in one hour. He said, “A cutting board.”  I think I stopped breathing. I stared blankly. It was as Yogi Berra said, “Déjà vu all over again.”  “Did you say one hour, Doug?”  “Are they going to have handles on the top, feet on the bottom and look like a squashed zebra?” Could a cutting board be made in less than nine weeks?  So, I agreed mostly out of curiosity. Anyway, if my wife didn’t like it, she could give it to my mom. She needed a new lid for her trash can.

That evening between five and six PM my life changed. Doug had designed (a formerly unknown word to me) a simple Danish modern, teardrop-shape cutting board made from teak with a rosewood strip in it and a small rawhide hanging strap on the end.  It was elegant and beautiful. And the food wouldn’t get wrapped around the handles. We made two in one hour. The shop had a special glue and a radio-wave drier which helped the job be completed in a short time. When the boards were finished we oiled them with vegetable oil and took them home to our wives.

I imagine Doug calmly and confidently handed his to his wife without much of a thought. But I had a different experience. I trembled as I drove home and began to feel something strange happening. It was something I had never felt before. It was my brain waking up. It was my life waking up. I didn’t even care if the surf was up.

Have you ever had a secret you carried that made you want to burst? That described me that night. When I walked into the house with a plain plastic bag holding the little masterpiece I must have been beet red and my eyes were bulging out of their sockets. My wife noticed my unusual blowfish countenance and said: “What’s up.” I said, “Oh, nothing much.”  What’s in the bag?” “Oh, it’s just a little something I made at the shop tonight for you.”  “Really, let me see it.”  “Ohhh, OK, here.” Silence. Lots of silence. Birth is a stunning moment.

I made that cutting board in one hour. It was beautiful. I did it.  What did my wife say?  I can’t remember because I was staring at what I had done and was even more amazed than she was.  She probably said something like, “You incredible hunk of a man, this is your lucky night.” But all I could see was what I was able to do in such a short time.  It was a metamorphosis, dweeb to achiever.  A mentor had dragged my sorry carcass into the light and I was never the same after that. Doug, you have no idea what that cutting board did to me that night.

Today I look back at an incredible journey. I became a building contractor, firefighter, cabinetmaker, Bible teacher, and author.  I have traveled to all continents except Antarctica teaching pastors and Christian workers around the world.  When we worked with impoverished churches we designed a church-based enterprise program to help them become self-supporting when formerly they had no hope of surviving. My wife and I developed a papermaking project from banana rope fragments and today we have designed and completed an amazing pulp mill we built from donated steam boiler equipment and discarded diesel engines from old buses. Churches were supported by the beautiful handmade paper products and herbal handmade soap that we marketed all over the USA. There were also community development and medical programs for the most impoverished.  Yep, this old dweeb got his life together and I can trace my current personality and skills to that cutting board and that night of awakening. I was a goof-off surfer and woodworker wannabe.  Today I have numerous skills and have directed several Christian agencies. My wife and I have raised five children that surprisingly have similar traits. Of course, my wife would add, “One hunk of a man” so I have to put that on the list at her insistence.

What happened to me? Doug showed me what I could be. Thanks, Doug.  Doug was a mentor. Mentors change people.  We all need mentors. We need to be mentors. My adventurous life journey is what it is today because of mentors. Mentors introduced me to my Savior. They made me an upper and not a downer. They made a can-do person. They helped me discover my spiritual gift of vision and to develop it. They showed me the joy of creativity, which helped me find solutions in the hard times. Other mentors modeled a life that was victorious in suffering. They were pathfinders. Others helped me lay a strong foundation that would stand against the onslaught of a terminal disease. My awakening happened when a guy took me aside one night for one hour and showed me I was worth something.

I have tried to imagine where I would be today if I had not spent that one hour in the cabinet shop that night with Doug. I would probably be trying to pay for cancer treatments by marketing cutting boards with handles on the top.

One post script is necessary.  A month ago a local church contacted me and asked if I could help them with a program that helps at-risk kids.  It is called Children Are People.  They had heard I had a cabinet shop and they wanted to have me help them do small project with wood. I asked how much time would I have for the lesson.  They apologized that I only had ONE HOUR.  I told them I just might have the perfect project we could do in that hour.

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We all have times in our lives that we would describe as extraordinary moments.  A day begins as normal and then suddenly something changes it. Today, I can barely tell this story without tears welling up in my eyes. It is interesting that before I trusted Christ as Savior over 48 years ago, I never cried.  My heart was a chunk of rock. My poor young wife had married a stoic and had been learning that I was detached from emotion. I still remember the night I surrendered to the Lord.  The floodgates opened for the first time in my life. God had put a heart of flesh into Old Granite.  I still have a softened heart today.  I don’t mean I break down and weep when I read the price of soup in a supermarket isle, but I am more sensitive now to human suffering and to things of extraordinary beauty.

One of the most difficult things we face as overseas missionaries is that we miss family events that most people take for granted. When our children returned home for higher education they were pretty much on their own. We gave them roots but the day came when we had to give them wings. But it isn’t easy when they are  7,000 miles away. This event happened when phone calls very costly and mail could take a month.  And as incredible as our children are they still sometimes forget how to communicate when they leave home. Too many distractions I guess.

Our second eldest, Dan, began his journey back home by being accepted at UCLA.  Dan was a great athlete and had been accepted to join the world-famous UCLA volleyball team. It was historically the top team in the country. Although no scholarships were available when he applied he was still invited based on a video we had taken of him his senior year at his high school, Faith Academy, in the Philippines.  Because the volleyball season was not during our two-month furlough schedule we never were able to see a volleyball game he played in during his four years at UCLA. We got an occasional video of a TV broadcast and saw some photos in a monthly magazine but that was it. It was excruciating for us.  I asked God to let us see a game one day but that prayer seemed like it would never be answered. Then the end of Dan’s collegiate volleyball career was at hand.  The team had gone four years without a national championship, the longest in its history.  But we could tell by what we read that UCLA was having a great year. Our son had set a kill record for the school which is no small achievement for a school like that.  The national championships were to be held at home court, Pauley Pavilion.  This was to be their year.  And as usual, our 2-month short furlough was timed just wrong. We had three children still in the Philippines and had to stay in the local school system calendar. We could not afford to go to the USA and then fly back and then one month later fly back again for furlough. It was out of the question.  It hurt so much.

During those years I did a lot of training for the Bible League and I traveled a lot.  I received a message from them that they wanted me to go to Khuzestan to train some pastors and then on to Mexico to help with issues that had come up in their Latin American program. They also wanted me to meet with a person in Tijuana.  Tijuana!  That was the border town next to our home city, San Diego. The trip to San Diego would be two days before the NCAA preliminaries and then NCAA finals would be the following week!  I asked if I could stay the extra week in the San Diego area and attend the National Volleyball finals. They didn’t care since the ticket price was the same and I could even stay at our home since a renter had just moved out and it was empty.  It was perfect. Well, almost.  My wife, Janet, could not go but at least Dad could see his son play for the first time in four years. God had answered my prayer, at least half of it.

UCLA slaughtered everyone at the prelims. They were amazing. My heart was in my stomach all night and the next night. Dan was a great player, even better than what I envisioned.  I read the articles in Volleyball Monthly (we subscribed to it just to get news of him).   But even better, he was a great person.  He never did get a scholarship. He earned his spot all the way while some of the scholarship players would sit on the bench. He spent his years at UCLA getting up at 3 AM and driving a bread truck to pay the bills. TV announcers who heard about it gave him his nickname which stuck with him for those years, “the Muffin Man.”   During his senior year, he rented space under a piano in someone’s living room. That is where he slept part of that year. It kept costs down.  Maybe spending time on the mission field helped him adapt. When he graduated from UCLA with degrees in history and international economics he had paid his own way through, had no school debts, owned two cars, had money in the bank and was one of the top volleyball players in the country.

Back to our story. I got to be there the night UCLA qualified for the NCAA finals which were one week away. I just had to make one of those expensive phone calls to Janet in Manila and share the event. We cried together on the phone. She was so happy. I was too but sad at the same time that she had to miss this great event.

The week moved slowly and the big weekend arrived. The day of the finals was on a Friday.  I had to make an early morning visit again to that missionary in Tijuana where I stayed until about noon.  When I drove back across the border in Mexico I knew I had to rush. I still had to return to our San Diego area home and pack up my stuff since I would be flying out of Los Angeles International airport a few days later, the day after the finals.  So, I headed home to pack my bags, and then get on the road in my rented car to drive the three hours to UCLA, eat dinner, and get to the first semi-finals. I pulled up at my house and looked at my watch as I jogged to the front door and ran inside.  But something was different.

Janet was standing there.  I stood there stunned. I broke down in tears. It was one of our longest hugs on record.  For three hours as we drove to UCLA, she told me the story. After my phone call the week before, she went to our mission’s annual conference. She told the group how much she missed being with me and Dan in this great moment of his life.  One of the missionaries, Dan’s former coach, Tine Hardeman, said to her, “Why don’t you just sell something and go. There are some things in life you just don’t want to miss.”  It was a light that needed to go on. In the next day, she managed to sell all our living room furniture. Our sofa set was really nice. We had saved our money for years to have it custom made of rattan. That sold quickly. She booked a flight and was standing in our home when I got there. She had arrived one hour before I walked in the door and had no idea where I was or how she would get to UCLA and then I walked in.

I had seen Dan the week before but she still hadn’t seen him for two years. We had so much to talk about for three hours. I told him that there was a good reason he was a two-time All American and had set a record at UCLA.  I knew the next two days would be really special for her. That alone made my weekend one of the most memorable in my life.  We got to UCLA and I took her to her favorite Chinese fast food chain which was on campus and bought her a meal she loves. She couldn’t eat one bite. She was so nervous to see Dan. We left and I tossed the plate of food in the trash can. We had a son to meet.  I had called ahead to tell him Mom was here so he wouldn’t be too emotionally shocked.

What a night.! UCLA annihilated their opponent. Dan introduced us around to players, coaches, sports announcers.  Dan was a champion. Dan was a hero. Dan was our son. I had no buttons left on my shirt.  We love our kids all the time. They don’t have to excel to earn our love. But I must admit that a night like that is unbelievably special. We were to eventually go to two Olympics and watch this kid compete with the world’s best. But as amazing as those Olympic events were I still go back to the NCAA finals as the most meaningful.  There was so much drama, sacrifice and emotion involved.

The next night the finals took place. Our humble little missionary kid son had over 40 kills and spent most of the night in the air. His 42-inch vertical jump was quite intimidating to his opponents. It was a night of glory. UCLA won it in straight sets, their first NCAA championship in four years. Dan was the standout player. We were the standout parents.  At least that is how we felt.  When it was over we mingled around the floor talking to people and Dan introduced us to a writer with Sports Illustrated who interviewed us.  An article appeared next month in that magazine reporting on the championship and focusing on Dan and it told this amazing story of Dan’s crazy Mom who sold her living room furniture to see her son play volleyball on the night of his life. I know it was the night of our life.

On the flight back to the Philippines I still had tears in my eyes. My wife asked if I was alright. I said, “I’m fine. I am just trying to figure out where we will sit in our house for the next year!”

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