Important Dates for My Generation (continued)

 Continuing with the four dates most important for my generation:

 

Sept. 11, 2001.

The Terrorist attacks by Islamic Zealots

 

         Europe and other countries had been experiencing airline hijackings, bombings, and terrorist attacks by several entities, but increasingly by Al Qaeda.   The US had its home-grown attacks, the most significant of which was the Oklahoma City bombing.   For the most part, though, US citizens felt safe.   Alert to deteriorating areas when traveling, but generally safe at home from terrorism.

         

All that changed on the morning of Sept. 11.   We were not safe, after all.

                  

Anyone alive then  recognizes how things changed after that.  Security at airports became strict and invasive and you’d better not complain.   The Patriot Act affected us all.   Edward Snowden leaked secret intelligence papers that shocked us, much like Daniel Ellsberg’s  theft and release of  the Pentagon Papers.

                  

Listing all the changes would take far too much time and far too much space.   Let me say only that things have changed and I hope our security is better.

 

         We abandoned several wars from Vietnam in 1975, Iraq in 2011, and Afghanistan in 2021, leaving all with our tails between our legs.  The implications of those “defeats” still hurt even though we are glad our warriors are no longer dying there.  

We have tried to make amends to our surviving Vietnam war veterans for their  abysmal homecoming reception.    

         

The mood of the country has been pummeled in the last decade.  The hate and lies and rancor and accusations in our politics is horrendous.   It’s no wonder some good candidates refrain from public office.  Many of us have avoided the news outlets, not only for bad news, but also because we’ve lost trust in them. 

 

The tumult of Trump’s first presidency affected us all, regardless of whose fault it was. Now, we are heading into another Trump term and many do not look forward to it with hope.

         

It is entirely possible that my final three paragraphs might be transplanted into a description of a new era.    Maybe the starting point of that era will be Jan. 6, 2021, the date of the so-called insurrection at our capitol building.

(There will be one more post in this series.)

 

         

 

Sharing Cups of Tea in Two Parts, Part Two

I have enjoyed tea in the home of a Tibetan woman who had two husbands. 

Water for tea is heated on this stove using yak dung for fuel.

The woman with two husbands.   This is a common practice in Tibet.

I drank tea with yak milk in the remote ger (yurt) of Mongolian nomads.

The nomad herders in Mongolia, and the daughter of one.

 I enjoyed tea during a feast on the palatial grounds of an Indian maharajah.

This woman at an Islamic temple in India invited me to have tea and fresh fruit.   I asked my guide if I could and he said, "Absolutely not!"

 

 

I had tea with a Russian woman in her "Khrushchev era apartment" who served boiled potatoes as the main course at dinner.

Our hostess, standing right, her mother, standing left.

Tea or vodka, bread, carrot salad, Cole slaw.   

Tea in the main room of a Chinese family as a group sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on a TV singing contest. 

 

Tea in a home in Christchurch, NZ, with green-lipped mussels and hogget. 

Tea in a tent on the vast African savanna as lions and hyenas fought nearby in the darkness. 

Tea on a wet, windy day in the tiny Sea Cabbage cafe in the Falklands with gentoo penguins all around. 

Gentoo penguins, Falkland Islands.

 

The Sea Cabbage Cafe, Falklands

 

Homemade cookies.

I drank tea with giraffes in Kenya.

Tea and fresh apple pie in a Ranger cabin  at the bottom of Haleakala crater on Maui. 

Apple pie baked in a skillet.

Tea in Halibut Cove as I watched sea otters punctuating the thin ice in the bight out the front window.

 

No ice during summer, but this is where I watched the sea otters.

 

Tea on a Norwegian small ship as we followed Shackleton's journey to Antarctica. 

I drank tea while I also ate milk dumpling breakfast in a hotel in Mongolia.

Milk yea with potato salad in a quaint cafe in Mongolia, my favorite cafe during the trip.

Tea (iced) and Singapore rice noodles in a Kowloon cafe with friends.

Tea with a picnic lunch far into the wilderness of Tibet as hail dropped gently on us.

Note the little white hail .

Picnic in Tibet,

Picnic lunch lightly seasoned with hail.

Tea in the shadow of Neuschwanstein castle. 

Tea in Australia's Outback with aboriginal artists nearby, and kangaroo tail roasting on an open fire.

 

 

 

Tea at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon as my mule rested nearby. 

Waiting for the Phantom Ranch dining hall to open so I could have tea.

Tea in a Tundra Buggy as polar bears waited outside for Hudson Bay to freeze. 

The snack and tea counter is right behind Julia and me on the Tundra Buggy.

Waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze.

I drank tea on all seven continents in the homes of many, many friends and with many, many friends in my home. 

 

 

The only cup of tea I couldn't drink was one thoughtfully prepared for me by Marg Wood in a camp outside Kruger park in South Africa, who made it so far in advance of my arrival at the table that it was too strong. Our strong friendship I love, but not strong tea.

 

Using solar to heat water for tea at a Tibetan monastery.

An extravaganza of homemade goodies by the ladies of the Falkland Islands....with tea, of course.

Story about Sharing Cups of Tea in Two Parts, Part One

This article appeared on Facebook and led me down a path of reminiscences. First, the tea story.

“In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting.

Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. 

Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better.”

― C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman

The Gifts of Christmas Past

 

Note the green rocking chair.   I still have it.

 

 

Here I sit on Christmas Eve reminiscing about gifts.   Not gifts I’m giving and not gifts I’m receiving.    I am looking at gifts that my mother gave me over the years.

Mom and Dad in Detroit

 

I was sitting in my parents living room in Anchorage in the late 1970s as I opened a gift from Mom.   After the wrapping was off, I lifted one end of the colorful gift box and saw three pieces of folded cloth.   Completely white, no design, nice and soft.

 

“Diapers,” said Mom.   “Yours when you were a baby.   They make good cleaning clothes.”

My baby diapers.

 

Sure enough, they were cotton WWII era diapers.   Did she really save them for 40 years so she could surprise me one Christmas Eve?    

 

Did she not use them on my six-year-younger brother?   I remember his diapers.   I remember holding onto a tiny hemmed corner and dipping the diaper in the toilet again and again until its contents finally washed off.   Then, they were stored under the bathroom sink in a white enamel pot with lid.

 

Whatever, I still have them—more than 40 years later.

 

 

Then, there are some things from my childhood that were simply returned to me, not as gifts for any special holiday, I think.     My stuffed black sheep that I remember so well, and a threadbare teddy bear that I don’t recall at all.

The doll has a sticker on the bottom of one foot that says Poland.   I assume it's dressed in the  tradition folk costume of that country.

 

I also have a round plaque on some kind of wood (beaverboard?) with a drawing of a kitten and two rabbits on it.   There is something up in the air above the kitten where some paint is flaked off but I can’t tell if it’s a butterfly or a bird.

Reverse side

 

This is a keepsake that I question because I have never had the kind of artistic ability of  whomever drew it.

 

There is a stretched and framed embroidered with the Lord’s Prayer on it that must have hung in my nursery room.    The earliest discovered version of  “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” is said to be from George Wheler in his 1698 book The Protestant Monastery.

 

A newer version, identical to what’s on my souvenir, was found in the New England Primer.

Crazy angle to keep the light from shining on the glass cover.

 

Another gift from Mom that I saved is a ceramic plate in a triangular shape.   The design on it is a childish drawing depicting two comically malformed children with “Bobbie and Bonnie, “ the names of my cousins, though why Bobbie appears to be wearing a skirt is beyond me.  

 

Also, “Jeannie 5 years.”

 

Yes, I knew my numbers and letters and colors at age five, despite no nursery school.   I guess Mom wrote the names and I copied them onto the drawing.

 

I recognized the drawing immediately     I am sure it was something I copied from one of the Childcraft books we had as kids.    But, her note that I did the drawing at five years of age puzzles me because we moved to Alaska when I was six .   Did those Childcraft books come up with us on the four-engine airplane?

 

The set of Childcraft books are on the cabinet behind my head.

  

Or were they shipped from Detroit to Anchorage?  It’s all a mystery now but I remember the drawing in those long-ago books.   A plagiarist at age five.

Detente with little brother.

 

I must have taken better care of my Polish doll than my sister.

My youngest sister.   Those green chairs?   I still have them.

Me and the green rocking chair that I still have.   I sure wish my hair looked like that today.