An Auspicious Day

Feb. 13, 1961. I boarded a Boeing 707 with only six other passengers in Scotland and headed west…leaving my homeland with my two cardboard suitcases for my journey to a new life and a new world. Fifty years ago today. It’s a significant date in my life.

I had made my decision to leave my job as a weekly newspaper editor in the north of Scotland because I felt confined by a union shop that insisted I could only do certain things in the production of a newspaper. I chafed under this when the union went out on strike – a strike I didn’t believe in. So I began looking around at the world’s possibilities.

I met a sea captain in my regular bar in Inverness, and he told me he would be sailing to South America in a few days. Did I want to sign up as crew? It was an exciting possibility but I hesitated and the ship sailed. At around the same time, I received a letter from the Hong Kong Police Department, offering me a position as sub-inspector of police in Hong Kong. They offered the position based on the simple fact I was British and white. That, in their view, automatically qualified me to supervise a bunch of Chinese policemen. Silly, silly people.

It was an intriguing offer for the lure of Asia was strong in my heart. But I also knew I’d be a lousy cop because my genetic makeup made me constantly question authority. And then the National Union of Journalist’s newspaper in Britain ran a story on its front page which told about a small daily newspaper in New Hampshire that was seeking to employ a British journalist in a reporting position. Pay would be $75 a week. Since I was being paid $20 a week I applied along with (I learned later) 284 other British journalists.

The paper’s editor picked an English guy, Larry Masidlover, who worked on Fleet Street in London. They liked him (even though ultimately they had a problem with him because of his unwillingness to bathe!) Three months later they decided to hire another Brit. I was chosen and three weeks later, I had received my green card and had bought my one-way ticket. Age 20.

Back in those days, if you were British you were considered a desirable immigrant and there was no impediment to getting into the U.S. so long as you had a job.

When I arrived in Logan Airport in Boston, I was met by the newspaper’s managing editor, Ray Brighton. He shook my hand but I sensed a moment of hesitation as he looked at me. “I can’t let you leave the airport without shaving off your beard,” he told me. “New Hampshire isn’t ready for a beard.” I stopped in my tracks. New Hampshire wasn’t ready for a person with a small Van Dyke beard? That made no sense to me. I had grown the beard in a desperate attempt to look older than my 20 years. But Ray was adamant. I negotiated with him that he would pay for the shave. We stopped into a barber shop in the airport and the barber made me acceptable to enter New Hampshire.

Fifty years on I have my beard. It’s much, much greyer now. And, I’m also happy to report that Ray Brighton grew a beard in the late 1960s. So America can change. America did change. And it needs to change much, much more.

In 50 years, I have lived through America’s golden years, as well as its darkest hours. I was a reporter in Rochester, N.Y., when President Kennedy was cut down in Dallas. I watched my managing editor marshal his newsroom resources with quiet skill moments after the news flash announcing the president's death. It was on my watch that Rochester, N.Y., riots erupted in 1966 and I went into the ghetto with a Canadian reporter and was spat upon and rocks were thrown as we made our way into the heart of the war zone. I had just put the newspaper to bed, as we called it, and had gone home when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. It was the only time I ever issued the order to "Stop the presses." I drove back downtown in Rochester to remake the newspaper that night. I was the editor in charge the night Apollo astronauts circled the moon and sent back the astonishing picture of earth-rise with the blue marble of earth rising above the grey moonscape. I remember the struggle of convincing a group of union engravers that I wanted to remake the front page with the earth-rise picture covering the top half of the front page.

I still think of my decision to come west as the most important decision of my life. All good things have sprung from that fork in the road.

I would not have met my bonny Jo.

We would not have produced two beautiful and talented daughters and, now, they have produced four grandchildren.

I would not have had the agony and ecstasy of working on some of the best newspapers in the U.S. – as well as some of the worst.

And I would not have been able to work with some of the finest writers, best editors, world-class photographers, designers who have worked in the U.S.

I would never have met my first news editor, Bob Norling, a brilliant, irascible editor who loved to stir the pot and make The Portsmouth Herald better every day.

Nor would I have been touched by sparkling, raw talent like Bill Duryea, now national editor of The St. Petersburg Times. I gave him his first job as a reporter and then manager editor of our principal weekly newspaper in New Milford, Connecticut.

How would I have found the sparkling writing talent of Michael Marzella, with whom I worked in St. Petersburg and, later, at The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His prose was poetry. His ability to grab a reader and illustrate bizarre concepts like the history of bricklaying or the creation of a time capsule entertained and dazzled readers. He is a diamond.

And I think particularly of the utter unmitigated brilliance of Jose Azel, a young Cuban-American photographer whom I hired for The Miami Herald. He was a diamond in the photographic firmament - and remains so to this day, running his own photo agency.

My particular friend, Richard Curtis, my assistant newsfeatures editor at The St. Pete Times, grew into a design giant as the managing editor of photography and design at the founding of USA Today.

The best - definitely the most courageous - journalist I have ever worked with is Gwen Lister, editor of The Namibian. I worked with the people in her newsroom three separate times for a total of more than 10 months. She is without peer as a leader, an ethical, moral force in her country. She has been imprisoned, her newspaper has been fire-bombed. But she pushes ever onward. She is respected by her readers as is no other journalist I have ever met. And she has trained black men and women to be excellent in their craft. My beloved black brother, Oswald Shivute, has been my primary teacher to the ways of his people. He has been the door-opener to the horrors of apartheid, to HIV-AIDS, to the raw brutality of unjust tribalism. I love this man for opening so many doors for me on my journey into the heart of Namibia. And I have great admiration for a brilliant white reporter, Maggi Barnard in Swakopmund, on Namibia's west coast. She was the one who introduced me to the cultural shock of a black enclave called the DRC, outside of her pretty town. The poverty and humiliation of life in that township was so overwhelming to me that I could not get out of the car to talk with the people. But Maggi wouldn't let me shrink back from this. The next day, she gave me a sheaf of used paper and we returned to a kindergarten in the DRC. I gave the used paper to the teacher and the teacher introduced me to the children and then their mothers. The dam was broken. My eyes were opened to the spirit of those who lived in abject poverty but who retained the sense of pride and self.

At the top of my list, though, is a petite Burmese woman, Hla Hla Htay, whom I taught in Cambodia. Hla Hla was shockingly shy but made of titanium. She was strong 'way beyond her 95 pounds. I received a call from the news agency Agence France Presse bureau chief in Bangkok, asking if I knew of any Burmese journalist who might be a candidate to run their bureau in Yangon (Rangoon). I said I was thoroughly impressed with the strength and brain-power of this diminutive woman who was currently in the journalism class I was running in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I arranged for Hla Hla to meet with the bureau chief when she passed through Bangkok on her way back home. I sat down with Hla Hla in my office and spent hours teaching her how to interview for a job with a western news agency. I taught her about eye contact, about projecting competence and self-assurance - all of it counter-intuitive to Hla Hla who was astonishingly shy. She set out for the interview and the bureau chief gave her the job on a trial basis. Her pay jumped from $50 a month to $1,000 a month. Hla Hla is still out there seven years later and I had the pleasure of being able to look at her pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi when she was released from house arrest earlier this year.

All of my work years were preparation for becoming a teacher/mentor/guide to journalists in every corner of the world – perhaps the most worthwhile endeavor of my life.

Had I not struggled to make newspapers better in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut, I would not have had the training to go into the most interesting places in the world – Bhutan, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Borneo, Nepal, Singapore, Colombia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Namibia.

When I flew to Bhutan, tucked into the snow-covered peaks of the Himalaya, I remember the editor of the only newspaper in that country, Kinley Dorgi, tell me about auspicious moments. He saw everything through the lens of auspicious moments. I had brought him a book called China Wakes by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryll WuDunn. Kinley had just read a review of the book that very morning in his precious copy of The Economist. “This is an auspicious moment, Robert,” he told me.

So Feb. 13, 1961, is my auspicious day. It is that moment Robert Frost wrote about in “The Road Not Taken”. This is what he said:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Not many have taken my road. But one has. I gave Lisa Schellinger, a new graduate back in 1981, her first job as a rooky reporter in Warren, Ohio. Today, Lisa remains my friend and she followed my path by going out into the world to give of her skills. She has taught/worked in Fiji, Cambodia, Afghanistan, among other places. She still is making all the difference in Afghanistan where she is a guide/mentor in the creation of a news agency, as well as creation of a school.

Now we look forward to new adventures. You may remember the Monty Python skit in which they are making fun of the Black Death in England. "Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead," was the cry onstage. A skinny guy in a white nightshirt is thrown onto the death cart. "I'm not dead, yet," he calls out. And so it is.

Just making numbers work

Documentary which takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics to explore the remarkable power thay have to change our understanding of the world, presented by superstar boffin Professor Hans Rosling, whose eye-opening, mind-expanding and funny online lectures have made him an international internet legend.
Rosling is a man who revels in the glorious nerdiness of statistics, and here he entertainingly explores their history, how they work mathematically and how they can be used in today's computer age to see the world as it really is, not just as we imagine it to be.

The End of the Road

This grizzly met us on the road in Yukon Territory.

It's the end of the road... for the time being.

We have pulled into the heart of Florida. There are an additional 14,512 miles on our odometer at the end of our journey. Add an additional 4,417 miles we drove our car along the way. Twenty thousand miles is not a bad adventure for one year. But it really isn't about the miles.

So much of this odyssey took us to vistas and worlds we have never before discovered. Texas wildflowers along the 1,000 miles of interstate that hustled us across that vast state... winds blowing so hard we had to put down our leveling jacks to keep the rig from rocking and rolling while we were parked in New Mexico....the bizarre world of Roswell, New Mexico, where alien conspiracies seem to pop up at you around every corner.... The glory of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in Utah...the crispy clean and antiseptic Mormons who greeted us in Salt Lake City....the re-enactment of the joining of the east and west railroad tracks to make transcontinental travel relatively comfortable in Promontory, Utah.... the spectacular waterfalls along the Columbia River in Oregon.... the snowstorm we drove through in Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington state...the love affair with Vancouver, British Columbia... the endless miles that are British Columbia (so large it's like driving from Miami to Maine)....Yukon Territory and its iffy roads but gorgeous territorial parks.

Then we made it to Alaska, a world unto itself. The people there see the world through a quite different prism from those who live in the lower 48 states. Everything about the state is record-breaking. The mountains, the glacial rivers that are milky blue, the incomparable wildlife. We'll never forget the shivers that went up and down our spines as Denali uncovered her snow-covered peak to reveal herself to us for three and a half hours late one night. We'll treasure the plethora of bald eagles that allowed us to get up close and personal with them at Anchor Point State Park in the Kenai Peninsula. And the glaciers.... ah, the glaciers. They're receding at such an alarming rate that we were both depressed and also elated that we were able to see them in our lifetime. But we do fear for this exquisite part of our world being lost to our children and, particularly, to our grandchildren.

We wept at the awesome culmination and death of the thousands of salmon in a natal stream west of Juneau, as we watched the writhing and dying fish struggle in their final ecstasy to fulfill their hard-wired instructions that, before they die, they must make their way home to spawn and then to die. It was beyond the ability of words to capture this final act as we watched thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of these fish reach their goal and drop their eggs before lying bruised and broken in the shallows of the stream, awaiting the end of their life.

The exquisite joy of watching a grizzly bear pass through our campground on the shores of the inland passage at Haines, Alaska, and then, in the dawn of the next day, to meet the same grizzly as we drove our rig to the ferry for our 1,000-miles journey south. We will treasure our encounters with the Tlingit and Athabaskan Native Americans who welcomed us on our journey south, permitting us to park in their campgrounds and sharing their cultural traditions.

The K’san Indian in British Columbia who offered us a newly caught salmon, along with the outdoors man in Slana, Alaska, who offered us a fully-cooked salmon that had been left over from the wedding of his daughter. We loved so much of the experience and these things will live on for the remaining years of our life's journey.

We've been delighted to have you come along on this journey. I have uploaded a “Best of the Journey” photo album and you are welcome to visit that. Enjoy.

It's All About Serendipity

Federal troops fire their canon at the Creek and Seminole Indians southwest of Lake City, FL.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. We drove across the Florida line on Sunday morning. Temperature was 75 degrees. Full sun. Ah. This is why we're here. We looked down the highway to choose a campground for the night and settled on the insignificant O'Leno State Park, just south of Lake City.

And that made all the difference in the world.

When we checked in (it cost only $9.90 for our slot), the ranger told us about Alligator Days that were about to begin. This is a re-enactment of a battle in the Second Seminole Wars against the Seminole and Creek Indians who lived in the area back in the 1830s.

The battle was scheduled to start in an hour which gave us time to get parked, have some lunch, and wander over to the battle.

Booming canon announced the start of the proceedings. Indians – who looked awfully white to me – whooped and yipped as they crept through the pine scrub, shouting their taunts to the US soldiers, pioneer militia and settlers and reenacted the Sept18, 1836, Battle of San Felasco Hammock. I checked into the demographics of the recent census and Native Americans now only account for 1.6 per cent of the population. But they looked good, with some awesome face painting, superb top hats and lots of rawhide clothing.

The battle pushed back and forth, with U.S. Officer, sucking on his pipe and shouting orders to his men to advance with their muskets, then to report back on the location of the Indians in the hammock. The big gun then opened up and cleared out the recalcitrant Indians. In the meantime, the audience, often made up of the fighters' wives – wearing period dress – photographed the proceedings with their digital cameras.

The festival also included Native American musicians and dancers, a drum arbor with dance ground and tee pee camp, as well as traders selling historic replicas, handcrafted arts, manufactured souvenirs, and food.

All of this was a great way to return to our home base – we still are 322 miles out – and we are delighted to be back. This has been a wonderful journey down the eastern edge of the country. We spent much time in the cradle of the Civil War. We took in the Appomattox Court House in Virginia, where the war ended with the surrender of Gen. Robert Lee.

Farther north in Virginia, we spent a day at the home of that American genius, Thomas Jefferson. Monticello is perched on the top of a high hill, giving views of the Blue Ridge mountains. He had a thousand acres and 200 slaves up on that mountain, helping him grow the crops and even making iron nails. The entryway to his home has a complex clock that run along the front wall and shows not only the time, but the day of the week.

When we entered Georgia, we met up with friends we'd made while living in Cambodia back in 2003-4. Then we connected with one of my proteges from early journalism days. She and her husband now shuttle back and forth to Afghanistan where she created an Afghan news service that supplies unbiased and credible journalism in that beleaguered country for embassies, CNN, BBC, many of the U.S. TV networks, as well as newspapers inside the country. She is rightly proud of her “baby”.

We drove with them to the little town of Jasper, GA, for dinner and visited her photo exhibit in an office building on the main street of this little town. The picture of the Afghan man in his turban hangs in the front window and already had created some trouble for the locals. Someone had called the local radio station to complain about the afront to their community of having this turbaned man's picture in the center of their town!

Lisa decided to replace the picture with one of a fresh-faced Afghan girl because Hallowe'en was a day away and that might prevent the building from being egged or even having the glass broken. Ah, what a wonderful world we live in!

A Day of Death

President Lincoln meets with Gen. McClellan on the battlefield at Antietam to order a final push against the Rebels. McClellan ignored his commander in chief.


Tuesday morning broke for us, but bleakly. Mist hung in the hollows on the northern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, up in the panhandle of Maryland. The cutting breeze made us wrap an extra layer of warm clothing around us as we ventured out onto the battlefield at Antietam.

It provided a fitting sense of chill at this the site of the ultimate day of death on the battlefield in all of our history.

Twenty-three thousand men died or were wounded on that one day, Sept. 17, 1862. It did not matter whether they were from the North – the Federals – or the South – the Rebels. They came together on that fateful day and faced thousands of cannon balls, muskets and rifles. And they fell in the Cornfield, on Bloody Lane, at the Middle Bridge that crossed Antietam Creek which ultimately joins the Potomac River.

Gen. Robert E. Lee brought his southern troops north, because he'd been winning the war to that point. He wanted to hurt the North and perhaps get the recognition of the European countries – particularly Britain – that the South was a separate country.

Gen. George B. McClellan believed Lee had many more troops in the area that his Union forces. He was wrong. He was a timid man, a good planner, loved by his men, but a lousy leader.

He sat in an overstuffed arm chair, overlooking the battlefield. The ladies and gentlemen of Washington had driven out to watch this decisive battle and they tittered and swooned at being so close to the star of the show. McClellan loved the adulation and played to the crowd while his men fell, and fell, and fell.

More than 10,000 men fell in the first three and a half hours after dawn broke on Sept. 17. By dusk, the battle was over. It was effectively a draw. The sounds of crying and groaning and begging calls for water could be heard all through the night.

The germ theory of infection was unknown back then. Surgeons operated on wounded soldiers in unsanitary conditions with unsterilized instruments. An amputee had a 65 percent chance of surviving surgery - but a 90 percent chance of dying from infection.

Jo and I drove and walked the fields, passing the 96 monuments that have been placed where the men fought and died. Only one monument honors soldiers who fought for both the North and the South. This was erected by the State of Maryland – a border state – because it had men who served on both sides.

It was chilling and sobering to linger along the split-rail fences and feel the presence of the spirits of so many souls. Sharpsburg, MD, would be a difficult town to live even now, I think. There is a sense of endless loss in the place.

We stopped in at a little tavern for lunch but there was no energy in the place. We returned to the field and spent an outstanding half hour with a park ranger who talked us through the strategy of Gen. Lee. He explained the power of the terrain, the way Lee moved his troops, the lack of coordination of the Federals as they came up the hill and were sliced in half by the cannon.

He also told us that five days after the battle, President Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The document became final on Jan. 1, 1863, and gave the war a twofold purpose – reuniting the country and freedom of four million slaves.

Lincoln came here to the battlefield and to the many hospitals that were set up in an attempt to save the wounded. He spoke with men of the South as well as Northern soldiers. The war would continue for another two-plus years because of the ineptness of McClellan's lack of follow-through on that day in 1862. Lincoln replaced him but the blood continued to flow on both sides so that, by the end of the war, 600,000 men had been killed or wounded.

Spinning Across New York

Friend Jody Hyman spins with her drop spindle at the Rhinebeck, NY, Wool Fest.

Here's the scene: Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, New York. Hundreds, nay, thousands of crunchy-looking women in their knitted hats and hand-warmers and shawls and knitted or woven dresses. This is the Sheep and Wool Festival. Surely, men were tagging along. There were even a few men spinning and weaving. But this was clearly a woman’s event.
The women of all ages were there to buy yarn, or fleece, or roving (the cleaned and washed wool). They were there to buy the contraptions that make spinning and weaving and knitting and crocheting easier.
We watched a contest of drop spindle spinners alongside a spinning wheel contest. The object was to spin the longest yarn in 15 minutes. Jo's friend Jody Hyman, a prodigious spinner and basket maker who is a master of the drop spindle, took second place. The drop spindle is the world's simplest tool. It looks like a top that you would spin on a table. But in Jody's hands it came alive as she hanked on a piece of raw wool and set it a-spinning. She produced 15 yards of yarn in 15 minutes. A younger woman pulled out the stops and produced a fraction more yardage in that time.
On the more mechanized section, a buxom lady sat beside her homemade spinning machine and fairly made it hum. It had been constructed of PVC pipe and it vibrated and bucked as she spun her heart out. When her son would put his hand on the machine to reduce the vibration, she would mutter, “Keep tyer hands off!” Across from her was a male spinner with a handsome cherry wood spinning wheel who seemed to be making awesome yardage. And closer to me was a German woman who constantly complained of the low-quality fleece she was trying to spin. No matter. The PVC lady won and the German lady took fourth place.
Dutchess County is in the Taconic range of high hills. They are at their absolute peak in terms of color as the sugar maples take on the scarlet and gold of the last breath of summer. We took up residence in a New York State Park down the road from the festival. We were ensconced in a wooded glade, peaceful beyond belief. But cool... quite cool. So we ran our propane heater in the evening before retreating under our down comforter.
Now, on Sunday, we begin our trek south.

Draco Malfoy is Dead

John carries the captured Draco Malfoy out of the hen house while Cassy recoils from the bird's evil eye.
I bring you great news. Draco Malfoy, the rooster ruling the hen house at grand-daughter Trisha's place in Kent, Connecticut, is dead.

Malfoy (named after one of the evil characters in the Harry Potter series of books) was a bit of a wicked bastard. He pecked me at the back of my knees when I went into the hen house to pick up the daily dozen eggs. He chased Trisha and terrorized her to the point she was unwilling to do the daily chores in the hen house. But his days were numbered when a farmer up the road said he was planning to slaughter 100 chickens and would be happy to include Malfoy in the batch.

Our son in law, John, entered the hen house at dusk on Sunday. He had learned the art of grabbing and controlling the rooster: you lay him on his back and he immediately quietens. He slid him into a borrowed cage and Malfoy, when released, set up an awesome squawk while jabbing his beak through the cage. But it was too late. Now Malfoy's hours were numbered.

The farmer asked Lynn if she wanted the dressed rooster back for dinner. She wasn't that keen. But when the farmer said it would cost $5 either way, she decided she'd bring home the carcass. We ate Malfoy but found him to be a skinny bird... no breast meat to speak of, and dark meat that was almost black. But he tasted pretty good.