A Not So Boring Life

DID HE SAY NAKED?!? What could be more American than a Fourth of July weekend................ at a nudist camp?  After all, there was a parade, cookouts, volleyball, fireworks – even a skydiving demonstration.  No different than thousands of other holiday celebrations throughout the U.S.A. -just without clothing.  

MUD BY ANY OTHER NAME… Before leaving the remote village where we had arrived after a half-hour motor-boat ride across a placid coastal lake and a pleasant, spirit-inspiring, forty-five minute journey in a dugout canoe through acres of mangrove trees, my hosts asked me if I wanted to borrow a pair of rubber boots as we continued on our way to visit a farmer who was planting nitrogen fixing trees on his small plot on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras.  “There will be mud along the way”, they said.

“YOU WANT TO VISIT ONE OF THE COMMUNITIES?  WHY SURE….!” Working with local partners in providing development assistance to rural populations in Central America made the objectives much easier to achieve.  The partner’s knowledge of and established involvement with the target communities was an important element in getting things done much more efficiently.  There were some disadvantages, though.  Whenever I would visit the projects we were implementing with them, the on-the-ground staff would invariably chose the most isolated and hardest-to-get-to locations; I believe mainly to show me just how hard they were working “for the cause.” In 2010, I traveled from Nicaragua to Honduras for a four-day field trip to communities in the mountainous region of Catacamas, in the south-central part of country.  The project involved providing community members with access to development funds to carry out small economic and community improvement activities.  It...

“SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE…” In the summer of 1975, I left my studies in Theater Design at Penn State University to follow my then girlfriend Eileen to Pittsburgh, PA.  To be as near to her as possible (she had temporarily moved back in with her parents), I took a room above a bar about 18 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.  The bar, situated off Freeport Road, was typical of the area; a falling down, two-story, asphalt-shingled wood structure that catered to the after-work and weekend “beer and a shot” laborers of the surviving PP&L and other industries situated along the highway.   The building was surrounded by empty lots where once-thriving businesses had been razed as the economic slump of the mid-seventies took over. The bar took up the most of the first floor and consisted of metal tables, chairs and a wooden bar with high, vinyl covered stools.  A few dim neon signs and beer posters on the walls completed the decor.  An old jukebox from the 60’s...

THE SHOW MUST GO ON...  I was a soldier stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa in the early 1970's.  While there, I became involved with and spent most of my spare time in an army-sponsored theater, organizing and acting in amateur theater productions with my friend Tim, an incredibly talented musician and actor who had also gravitated to the theater as a creative escape from the mundane world of the military.  The experience was what later prompted me to begin (although I ended up going through various courses of study before finally getting a degree) my college studies in Theater Design at Penn State University.  This is an edited (yes EDITED, my kind proof readers Maureen and Sherry!) version of just one of the stories from that long ago time.  

COULD I SEE THAT TRAVEL PLAN AGAIN? There seemed to be nothing but interminably rising mountains ahead.  Trees and plants succumbed to the altitude and gave way to rock covered by occasional patches of snow on the higher peaks.  Above was a crystal clear blue sky; not a cloud in sight.  The winding dirt road clung to the side of the mountains, carved out of natural pathways that had existed for centuries.  The mountain dropped off precariously into mile-deep chasms to the right of us, just inches beyond the wheel of our car.  The landscape was made up of gray and brown hues with spots of green where small clumps of grass and moss drew scarce moisture from between the otherwise barren stone.  Stone is what stood out the most; stone in the valleys below, sturdy stone houses with thatch roofs, stone fences and stone corrals, small pyramid shaped piles of stone randomly stacked where fields were cleared, fallen stone to be avoided in the road.