A Not So Boring Life

PA BOY, THROUGH AND THROUGH On seeing an article about the upcoming regular deer hunting season in Pennsylvania, I was whisked back to my own, not so glamorous (or successful) experience in stalking the white-tailed deer in different places around Danville.   Being a regular old PA boy, I of course was indoctrinated into a sport hunting culture at an early age.   Having a dad who was the local Deputy Game Commissioner and who was known, both affectionately and, at times derisively, as “Birddog Weaver” (we always had at least two German Shorthair dogs trained to sniff and point out wary pheasant hiding in the underbrush of overgrown fields around the area) cemented my expected introduction into sportsmanlike conduct. Unfortunately, I was not, nor would ever be, a natural born hunter.   I had other interests, and while spending hour upon hour looking for adventures in the woods and farmland surrounding Danville was an enjoyable part of childhood, tramping around with a rifle or shotgun

  ADVENTURES IN MOVING A friend just commented “that moving must be a nightmare for me.”   She was referring to my penchant for accumulating things based on a philosophy of “Hey, that’s pretty cool. Why don't I get that?”   She was right, of course.   Especially given the fact that for the last 30 or so years of my life, moving has primarily involved travelling between multiple countries by air transportation.   There is just so much stuff you can fit in two suitcases and a carryon (no matter how liberally you stretch the concept of “able to fit into an overhead compartment or under your seat.”) Never have I come up against moving challenges and airline strictures more so than when I first moved to Nicaragua from the U.S. in 1988.  I had just gotten married to a Nicaraguan national who was in the U.S. completing a Master’s Degree on a Fulbright Scholarship.  We were returning to Nicaragua (I had been there a few years earlier for an independent internship as an undergraduate st

In the summer of 1975, while pursuing a degree in Theatre Design at Penn State University, I headed to Dayton, Ohio to work as a stage carpenter at Wright State University.   The summer theatre season put on by the University included six productions:   the musical Man of La Mancha based on the story of Don Quixote; the psychological thriller Veronica's Room (by Ira Leven –author of Rosemary’s Baby); the classic black comedy “ Arsenic and Old Lace ”; “ After Magritte ”, a surreal comedy by Tom Stoppard; “ The Real Inspector Hound ”, a one-act audience participation ‘whodunit’ also by Stoppard and, finally, Shakespeare’s “ Twelfth Night”.   You can well imagine the craziness of pulling together SIX plays over a four month period, all on the same stage!   The set designer, whose name is lost both to me and the internets) was considered one of the best of his time.   In order to meet the heavy schedule, we first completed the first set – in this case for Man of la Mancha , and

As I hear from friends and family in the U.S. regarding their experiences hunkering down into government mandated and/or self-isolated protection from the Coronavirus pandemic - working from home, limiting their excursions to markets and other locations in search of basic necessities, avoiding contact with other than immediate family and household - I cannot help but reflect on the situation in Nicaragua (where I live now) and dozens of other countries where I have worked as an International Development Specialist. These countries are normally classified as "underdeveloped" or "emergent" (adjectives that tend to focus primarily on economics). In the context of these nations, where a significant portion of the populace survive on a day-to-day basis through their participation in informal business and markets, “social distancing” is a whole other ballgame. In Nicaragua alone, an estimated 2.4 million women and men (@1.7 million living below the poverty line) leave

I travel a lot.   I have for most of my adult life.   Home (childhood home) has become mixed into a multitude of places where I have lived long enough to put down roots of some kind.   Home (childhood home) has become a place that I visit every couple of years to spend some time with family.   Family, with the passing of my parents and oldest sister, has shrank (if it is “shrunk” then Mr. Googles steered me wrong) to one younger and two older sisters, along with a healthy smattering of nieces and nephews, in-laws and cousins once or twice removed.   Many live in or near where we/they grew up.   My son, born and raised in Nicaragua, emigrated to the U.S. a few years back, and now lives a distance away, but close enough that I can combine visits. Growing up with four sisters was, at times, challenging.   Don’t ask them, because they will say that I lived like the king of the castle while they toiled and troubled over household chores and picking up after their pain-in-th

In 1984 I was living and working in a rural farming cooperative in the north central mountains of Nicaragua.    I had been at the cooperative for a few months, contributing what I could through manual labor while I documented the lives of its members.  On this day, I hitched a ride into the nearby city of Esteli.  I arrived in town around 10 a.m.  Walking from the main highway up to the town center town where I hoped to meet up with some other North Americans, perhaps pick up some mail and later have an inexpensive restaurant meal before heading back out to the cooperative, I came abreast of the town’s post office where, unusually, there was a large crowd gathered in the lobby, spilling out into the cobblestone street.  Inquiring, I found that word had come that a group of 20 to 25 young postal workers who had left a few days earlier for a stint of coffee picking in the nearby mountains (a semi-voluntary practice of government workers to assist in the recollection of the all-importan

“P-O-OLLLLKA! I WANT POLKA!”   Aw, what’s he yellin’ about now?   Whadya want, Joe? Polkapolkapolka!   Sheesh!” Joe and Marshall were the best of friends.   Both men were born with cerebral palsy.   The speech of both was often difficult to understand.   Both suffered from spastic quadriplegia and had little control of their arms and legs.   Both had been confined to wheelchairs from the time they were children to their current age of around 60 years.   They had been interned in an institution for their entire lives.   For most of that life, their home was what was known as a “warehouse” – a large, government-run rural asylum where they were day-after-day lifted by underpaid direct-care workers from bed to wheelchair, showered, fed, wheeled to the same place in front of a window and, at the end of the day, returned to their beds – a routine that seldom varied.   Their mental development, already challenged by the cognitive impairment caused by the palsy, was further imp

Above, a winged St. Michael wields the sword with which he has vanquished Satan, whose head dangles from the claw of an immense crab laying upon a pedestal in the shape of a double DNA helix.   A tranquil moon looks to the west and a smiling sun to the east. Next to the sun a lion and a lamb lie together.   Nine giraffes prance around the center. Flames arise from the base.   Circling the fountain are small bronze statues of animals designed by school children. In May of 1985, I was fortunate to be able to attend the dedication of the Peace Fountain on the grounds of St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC.   I traveled there from Brattleboro, VT with Tom Boudreau, my Peace and Conflict teacher at the School for International Training.   The dedication ceremony was overseen by the Bishop of New York with over 1,300 persons attending.   The crowd was diverse, placing high-level church and government dignitaries alongside peace activists and curious spectators.   One strange elem

I hopped off the back of the pickup truck that had given me a ride from town to the place that I knew as the rural farming cooperative “La Quinta”.   There were a group of farmers sitting just off the road in front of a stone cattle pen.   They had finished hand milking about 20 or 30 cows and had sent the galvanized pails of milk into town for sale.   They glanced up at me as I hoisted my backpack and walked towards them, puzzling over this strange gringo. After nodding my hello, I began trying to explain to them, in a hesitant and very poor Spanish, the reason for my being there.   I wanted to know if I could stay there, as part of my internship with a university in the U.S.   (In my bad Spanish, it was probably something like “Me want living with you.   Me study boy”   I wanted to have the experience of living and learning from their experience of cooperative farming in the middle of a revolution and civil war – to write about their challenges and successes. (“Know me live

Sometimes, just getting out of your comfort zone opens up whole new worlds.  When I started at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont some thirty-plus years ago, the school held an orientation session for the small group of students who had come from all over the country for  the two-year, hands-on international development program.  The venue for the orientation was a rural campground near the school.  The day after our arrival at the camp, faculty announced that we going to participate in a “Drop-Off” experience that would challenge our ability to adapt to new and unfamiliar situations.  They gave us each a five dollar bill and a pack of candy Lifesavers and told us to bring along a sleeping bag if we had one.  They then loaded us into a few vans and headed out into rural Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire.  At various points along meandering country roads, usually at or near one of the tiny and isolated New England villages hidden throughout the mountainous