Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 3, 2022 – Today marks six weeks from “chemo-blast-off.” To celebrate, I took a long walk in nearby Como Park. As I admired the many trees that have become my friends, I contemplated the generations of park visitors who’ve also laid eyes on those oak, pine, maple, locust, chestnut, and cottonwood (to name a …
SEPTEMBER 24, 2022 – Blogger’s note: Perhaps it’s a good sign that 32 days post-transplant, I’m now able to be cranky with reckless abandon. (Trigger warning: take this post with a grain of salt.) Today between rainy periods, I got myself out of the house and hiked for an hour, including hill climbs at “Little …
JULY 18, 2022 – Over the weekend, while sitting on our dock, I watched cumulus clouds billowing upward over the lake. Earlier, when our six-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter was doing likewise and seeing dragons and unicorns, she’d asked, “How are clouds made?” I explained that when the earth warms by day, the moist, heated air near the …
JULY 14, 2022 – As a college freshman, I took a “gov” class. Elsewhere it was known as “political science,” but for reasons unclear to me then and now, “poli-sci” was “gov” at the Maine alma mater of such luminaries as Franklin Pierce, who, in case you forgot, became POTUS, and Melville Fuller, who was …
MAY 18, 2022 – After another day in Moscow, I traveled by train to Leningrad, then westward to Helsinki. From the Finnish capital, I steamed farther west to Stockholm. There I visited my cousin Anders before heading southwest to Malmö to see our cousins Merith and Mats-Åke. The November daylight in Sweden was short and …
MAY 15, 2022 – As the train approached Yaroslav Station in Moscow seven days after departing Khabarovsk, Sasha, my carriage attendant, and Yuri, chief of the train crew, found their way to my compartment. Yuri wanted to give me directions to the upscale restaurant to which he’d invited me for dinner the following evening. Sasha …
MAY 14, 2022 – When the train reached major cities like Perm, Omsk, Sverdlovsk, and Novosibirsk, I was amazed by the size of such places that prior to my trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway, I hadn’t even known existed. Each had a population of well over a million—larger than today’s combined population of the “Twin …
MAY 12, 2022 – (Cont. See 5/10/22 post) The public misbehavior of my two countrymen was unsettling. Throughout my formal education—and in life generally—I’d been no stranger to debate. But exactly how, I wondered, could two Americans aboard a Russian train become so locked in dispute as to lose all self-awareness—especially in the absence of alcohol? …
MAY 8, 2022 – My other prized souvenir from the Trans-Siberian train (see yesterday’s post) was the (real) silver, commemorative Russian tea glass holder impressed with an image of the Kremlin, “CCCP” (“USSR”), and “50,” marking the half-century since the (“glorious”) October Revolution of 1917. These exquisite tea glass holders were available for use aboard …
MAY 7, 2022 – If Russians readily conceded that they didn’t enjoy the same level of material prosperity as Americans, it was because the American military threat had forced the USSR to spend even more money on defense. This was a nearly universal sentiment—er, Communist Party line—among the Russians I met. The truth, of course, …
MAY 6, 2022 – Across my many conversations with Russians aboard the train, I endeavored to find consensus about one subject or another, such as national self-perception, for example, and impression of the United States, and most sensitive at the time—attitudes about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One person’s opinion is only a data point, …
APRIL 27, 2022 – As I wrote in my letter home, “The aesthetic shortcomings of my accommodations, though, were compensated a thousandfold by the beauty of Leningrad itself . . . The gilded dome of the imposing St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the tall, narrow gold spire of Peter and Paul Fortress, and the striking gold tower-spire …
APRIL 19, 2022 – It was in Krakow—at the youth hostel where I stayed—where I experienced the most memorable theater poster-based “class” (see 4/12/22 post). One of the other guests, Jerzy, was a young artist from Lublin. He spoke slow but understandable English and our conversation attracted the attention of six Polish students at the …
APRIL 18, 2022 – From Gdansk I traveled to Warsaw, then to Krakow. This former capital of the Nazi’s General Government during WW II had largely avoided the crushing destruction that had befallen Gdansk and Warsaw. In Krakow, therefore, “old” meant “original”—not, “reconstructed after the war”—and in many places, “original” meant the 14th century (St. …
APRIL 17, 2022 – It was a Sunday in Gdansk, and from my contacts the day before I’d learned about the dedication of a memorial at Stutthof, a Nazi concentration camp 21 miles east of Gdansk. I learned what bus route would take me there, and hiked to the bus stop a short distance to …
APRIL 16, 2022 – (Cont.) The procession led to a dark red brick, two-story abbey. I followed the leaders right to the front stoop and watched them disappear into the building. And there on the concrete steps I stood, an improbable observer—a 26-year-old, Protestant “amerikánsky”—in the company of three Polish Catholic nuns. I turned my …
APRIL 15, 2022 – I’d reached the convention center by unconventional means. On my way to a bus stop where I’d been told I could find a public ride, I saw a bus parked along the street. The vehicle was bedecked with signs—including Solidarity posters. Its passengers stood on the sidewalk beside it, and I …
APRIL 14, 2022 – South of Gdansk, the train passed within sight of Malbork Castle—the largest in the world. Completed in 1405, according to my guidebook, the structure was built by the Teutonic Order of Knights (think “German Crusaders”). The Poles had laid siege to the castle in 1410 after one of history’s turning points, …
APRIL 13, 2022 – During my days in the capital, which included mass, pro-Solidarity demonstrations that I joined to get a closer look, I learned three things about Poland that would’ve escaped me without on-the-ground exposure. First was the psychological proximity of WW II. For many Americans, that conflict was epitomized by Pearl Harbor, D-Day, …
APRIL 12, 2022 – Most of my time in Warsaw was spent in Stare Miasto (“Old Town”). This appellation, however, was misleading. In WW II, German bombing had obliterated it. In an inspirational demonstration of resilience after the war, Poland had assigned top priority to the painstaking reconstruction of Stare Miasto—so masterfully executed that until …
APRIL 11, 2022 – My next stop was Warsaw. If it wasn’t the birthplace of the Solidarity Movement, it was a cauldron of history and the vortex of current political protest. I covered much of the city on foot, including stops at various shops, bookstores, and a music store where, for next to nothing, I …
APRIL 7, 2022 – I can best characterize my impression of Poland in September 1981 via a giant Venn diagram depicting Polish: 1. Social unity; 2. Catholicism; 3. Sophistication in the arts and understanding of history and politics; and 4. Hatred of the Russians. Within the substantial overlap of these “circles” I found the essence …
APRIL 6, 2022 – Well after suppertime, I boarded a train in Malmö for the hour-long trip to Ystad at the very southern tip of Sweden. There I boarded a Polish ferry bound for Świnoujście across the Baltic—formerly the German city of “Stettin” before the westward re-arrangement of Polish borders after WW II. Nearly all …
MARCH 28, 2022 – Having spent considerable time inside the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, I next aimed for Vienna, capital of that old regime. Two years earlier I’d visited Salzburg, where I hiked in nearby mountains. If Salzburg was Mozart’s hometown and the movie set for The Sound of Music, Vienna was the larger magnet for …
JANUARY 14, 2022 – Our DNA evolved to accommodate “fight” when our ancestors dropped from the trees of Africa. The word still describes a central element of our personalities—individual and societal. “Fight,” some argue, is as essential to our survival as is “flight.” I harbor hope, however, that we’ll evolve enough socially and emotionally to …