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Two of the three times we exchanged houses with John and Brenda Wright, we walked down to the Thames to see the Henley Royal Regatta.  We couldn’t resist one of the events of England’s social season, being so close by.

The second time, showers dampened the show. There were still men with striped blazers, spats, and straw hats and women with frilly frocks and showy hats, redolent with the charm of a period piece. 

A few of the ladies, carrying their strappy sandals, had to don Wellies to slog through the mud to the protection of event tents.

Some women protected their dresses with raincoats. They all took the bother of the weather in stride as they paraded along the eastern edge of the river, occasionally taking note of the sculls going by.

On our first visit, though, the sun was hot, the breeze intermittent, shade trees too few along the path. Nevertheless, we walked upriver to the start line, there to witness a display of raw human power, the physical kind.

In the two lanes sat sculls, each with eight oarsmen, who were tense, poised for the first stroke and the coxswain’s commands to follow. When the starter’s gun fired, the sixteen oarsmen created a sight, sound and sense that I can call to mind instantly, more than twenty years later. In that moment, they showed the power that can come from working together.

People of a Certain Age, don’t you have electric memories like this?

That memory came alive again when I read the book my brother gave me for Christmas, The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. Like Joe said he felt, I didn’t want the book to end.

Brown tells the story of the 1936 crew from the University of Washington that won the gold medal for eights at the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany.  Brown uses the life of one of the crew, Joe Rantz, to spin his story, the outcome of which, of course, we already know.  Still, Brown charms us into the tale.

Brown begins each of his chapters with words from George Yeoman Pocock.  Pocock, who learned his craft downriver from Henley at Windsor, built the best boats. He was also the guru for crews, the one whose wisdom and insights motivated many oarsmen and women over the years.

I felt a connection to Pocock because Dad knew his son, Stan, also an oarsman and coach, when we lived in Seattle.  I think I remember visiting the UW boathouse. So Brown’s book brought back more memories, real or invented, for me. 

As compelling as is the story, the Pocock quotes have had significant staying power, too.  Like others who have succeeded in creating life messages out of aspects of their respective fields, George Yeoman Pocock used rowing to teach values.

“It is hard to make the boat go as fast as you want to. The enemy, of course, is the resistance of the water, as you have to displace the amount of water equal to the weight of the men and equipment, but that very water is what supports you and that very enemy is your friend. So in life: the very problems you must overcome also support you and make you stronger in overcoming them.”

“Harmony, balance, and rhythm. They’re the three things that stay with you your whole life. Without them, civilization is out of whack. And that’s why an oarsman, when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That’s what he gets from rowing.”

“One of the first admonitions of a good rowing coach, after the fundamentals are over, is “pull your own weight,” and the young oarsman does just that when he finds out that the boat goes better when he does.  There certainly is a social implication here.”

“It’s a great art, is rowing. It’s the finest art there is. It’s a symphony of motion. And when you’re rowing well, why it’s nearly perfection. And when you near perfection, you’re touching the Divine. It touches the you of you. Which is your soul.”

“Where is the spiritual value of rowing…? The losing of self entirely to the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole.”

I have no idea what has become of the sixteen oarsmen we watched trying to pull their own weight, displace enough water to go as fast as they could.  I’d like to think that they might have a gut-level understanding of what Pocock said.

I’d like to think that lessons like those drawn from George Yeoman Pocock are being learned by enough people these days to keep our boat moving forward as fast as it can, politics and circumstances notwithstanding, powered by people pulling their own weight giving themselves over to the cooperative benefit of the crew as a whole.

People of a Certain, Age, wouldn’t we all welcome the sight of a symphony of motion, nearing perfection, touching the Divine?

Daniel E. White

March 2, 2020

“In God We Trust” proclaims U.S. currency.  “All others pay cash,” advises the cynic in an old rejoinder.

Who Do You Trust? was a television game show from 1957-63 hosted by Johnny Carson.  I don’t remember much about the show although I think it involved married couples.  I can imagine that the set-up involved presenting contestants with situations or choices requiring that person to select the right or true option in order to win prizes.  Perhaps it presaged the popular “reality” TV of current fare.

I only recently learned, via Google, that Who Do You Trust? is the name of an album released in 2019 by Papa Roach.  I have no conjecture to offer about Mr. Roach’s song, only questions about his choice of surnames.

I was driving a two-lane road recently when I realized that every one of us on that road was in the act of trusting the others not to cross the center line or turn in front of our car abruptly or do anything that might upset the expected result that we would all stay in our lanes at reasonable speeds and distances from each other, arriving safely at our destinations.

Shortly thereafter, we boarded an airplane, bound for New Zealand, a 9-hour flight over the Pacific Ocean, How many acts of trust did it take for us to feel confident that the plane would land safely in Auckland?  Manufacturers, maintenance and mechanical personnel, pilots, flight attendants, food preparers, air traffic controllers and more; our confidence was based upon our expectation that they would all do their job well.

I’m quite comfortable trusting God in the larger sense but I don’t think the Divine services airplanes.  Trust rests in the hands of humans, too.

I read a novel recently about a young woman who, for a variety of reasons, had closed herself off to others, trusting her own judgment about the insufficiencies of others to do what she believes to be right.  I’ve known a person who had a similar suspicion about everyone else’s motives and competencies.  I wouldn’t want to live like that.

But, People of a Certain Age, do you sense, as do I, that a significant number of the people around us in our daily lives are more cautious about trusting others than before? Does aging contribute to a lessening of trust, an erosion that results from experience? Are we in that group? Is this a less trustworthy time in history?

I am the beneficiary of a set of stable relationships in my life, beginning with Judy and extending back through my family, my friends, my jobs.  Trust comes easily for me because of such stability, perhaps even making me too ready to trust for my own good.  In this, I believe, I am fortunate.

What have been the residuals endured by my friends when their experiences have included broken trust?

Political leaders used to speak of public office as a public trust, viewing their offices as contributions to a public good.  Our national history is populated with people who upheld that belief—and others who did not—but the language isn’t even used much anymore.

How many political leaders have even tried to articulate a concept of public good, and how many people believe that the office belongs to the public, held in trust until one’s term has ended? That language seems quite elevated when compared to political discourse these days.

One political leader in our lifetimes referred specifically to trust when describing his approach to working with the Soviet Union. Remember President Reagan quoting a Russian proverb, “trust but verify?”

Such caution might be prudent in foreign affairs. After all, every nation acts in what its leader believe to be the best interest of that nation (or himself), and an occasional check on the history of that nation’s abiding by its word in diplomacy does not seem out of line.

A few recent tragic helicopter crashes, on Kauai and in California, notwithstanding, if we had to live our lives constantly verifying, would we really ever trust anything or anybody?

It is axiomatic that, once trust has been broken, rebuilding it, if even possible, can take a lifetime. In the novel I noted above, the starting point for building trust was simple human kindness provided consistently, over time, no strings attached.  It required patience and dependability.

We can never be 100% sure that the other driver will stay in his lane or that the airplane mechanic has fixed every flaw.  We can take comfort in the percentages, though. Most drivers do what we expect them to do. Most planes don’t crash. Most foods marked safe for human consumption are.  We are in the habit of trusting.

What the television program and Papa Roach remind us, though, is that the decision whether to trust or not is ours to make.

A starting point is to be trustworthy. Trustworthiness can spread.

Trust me on that.

Daniel E. White

February 17, 2020

We were reading together on the lanai one afternoon when I drifted off to a random thought. I asked Judy, “Have you ever thought about all of the people we have known in our lives? Like, whatever happened to that fellow with whom I spent all night in the stairwell of the Seven Seas talking about that Alan Watts book about Zen?  And that’s about the only thing I remember about him from that whole semester’s trip!”

I think the thought popped into my head because we had just finished opening several Christmas cards, some from people we have not actually seen in nearly fifty years.

People of a Certain Age, can you relate?  Has there been a host of people in your lives that connected with you ever so briefly, not to be seen again, or only to be heard from at the holidays? Then there are those people who, at one time or another, helped to form your social life for a spell, perhaps in another city in which you lived or at a place where you worked?

I refer to actual face-to-face contact. Facebook allows faux-friending.  Tweets on Twitter seem more trivial. Engaging with another person for a night in the stairwell or tossing around a football at Thanksgiving for several years in a row conveys something more than these 21^st century “encounters.”

What impact on your life might any of that host have had? My staircase conversation, at age 18, with my Zen friend was my first experience of listening to someone whose beliefs were different from mine explaining how he came to believe those beliefs.  Perhaps my tolerance for others’ beliefs was stoked in those early morning hours.

In a recent essay in The Week, Jeanne Marie Laskas shared a line she had heard from her friend, Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers to the rest of us. “I think the greatest thing about things is they remind you of people.” I know what he meant.

I can’t see a turbaned man without remembering the Sikh graduate student at the University of Washington who Dad brought home on Christmas to provide him companionship during the holidays while his dorm sat vacant.  Surely, that exposure as a seven or eight-year old boy had some impact on my understanding that there were good, nice, respectful people who lived in other parts of the world and wore things like turbans. 

A tweed sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows reminds me of the man who sat down at our table on the Plaza in San Jose, Costa Rica and cadged a cup of coffee from us while he told stories about his vagabond life.  He has given Judy and me a shared memory—whether the stories were true of not—and kindled our sense of the wonders awaiting travelers.

Pasta al limone recalls the woman with whom we had dinner in Florence decades ago, whose husband had taken ill on our American Express tour, requiring him to be hospitalized and her to remain there on her own in a foreign city. Our itinerary after the tour took us back through Florence where we called on her. She responded as though we were long-lost friends, reminding us that “being there” can be a kindness of immeasurable quality, even if you barely knew each other on the tour. We stayed in touch with her for several Christmases, and Judy makes fettucini al limone from time to time.

“Things” have reminded us of people who have helped to populate our lives.

Why does our basket have cards from people unseen in our lives for so long? Did we have some mutual impact on one another such that maintaining even the briefest of annual contact is important in some way or another or are the cards just something we do?

A particular card focused on the children and grandchildren of someone who was newly married when we knew her.  We are happy for her, though we had no relationship at all with the subjects of her news.

Maybe therein lies a beginning to understanding the significance of the people who have come and gone, remembered perhaps because of some thing, like a book or a jacket or a turban but otherwise seemingly unconnected to our lives.

It is difficult to imagine a life without such random encounters.  We might never see again 95% of the people whose paths have crossed ours.  But they touched our lives, and life just might be the accumulation of all of those touches.

It is also our good fortune, and I hope yours, to have others with whom we have shared experiences over decades.  The impact of these people, family, friends of long-standing, co-workers, is more obvious. With these we have traveled, shared joys and sorrows, grown old together.  It is also hard to imagine a life where none of those people were a part.

Mr. Rogers was happy to be reminded of people. He made “I want to be your friend” popular. His focus was on whomever was facing him there and then.

As a result, his life was populated with friends who found a friend in him, for however long.

How great is that?

Dan White

February 3, 2020

September 13, 2019 was the 15^th anniversary of the first day of school at Island Pacific academy.  Head of School Gerald Teramae led his staff, faculty, students, trustees and parents in celebrating, convening everyone on the lawn in front of the Elementary Building to honor Larry Caster, Judy, and me as the co-founders. We felt honored.

I was asked to say a few words and, as one might expect, I spoke about the values upon which we had started IPA: the power of human kindness and generosity of spirit.  I noted that we sensed that these and other values were living parts of the school’s daily practice, and that made us ha’aheo (humbly proud).

Two recent readings brought the event to mind.  Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, a superb history of our species and one of the most thought-provoking books Judy and I have read together, wrote that 600 years elapsed between the discovery of gunpowder and its first use in cannon to turn the tide of battle.  Only 45 years went by between the emergence of the theory behind splitting the atom and the use of atomic bombs on two cities in Japan. In other words, the rate at which our species is uncovering new knowledge and applying it to specific uses has increased exponentially.

One question left in the reader’s mind: how speedily will we uncover more potent ways to kill each other?

There is debate about how rapidly the body of knowledge possessed by humankind doubles.  The estimates are usually expressed in terms of months or years, not decades or generations. I pointed out to some IPA students in my remarks at the IPA anniversary that the first iPhone was sold was five years into the future on the first day of school at IPA.  And tweets were the domain of birds.

Of related interest was what Mark Sappenfield, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, said in a story about the work of a group of scientists who were interested in “how human beings think about one another.” They devised a simple experiment involving kindergarten children.

They divided the children at random and gave them different colored shirts.  So, some had red shirts, some blue, some orange.  Without prompting, the children found others with the same color shirt and formed a group.  As Sappenfield wrote: “And that was just the beginning. Kids shared more of their play money with their color group. They had more positive thoughts about fellows in their color group and felt they could trust them more. ‘All of this arose simply because of randomly assigned T-shirt colors,’ notes sociologist Nicholas Christakis in his new book Blueprint.’”

For centuries, human beings have lived in groups and communities characterized by their similar appearances.  Indeed, when someone of a different skin color appeared in a place where only people of one skin color lived, he or she was regarded as an oddity and seldom integrated into the host culture. The kindergarteners were just doing what their ancestors had tended to do—separate on the basis of visual information.

Once the Age of Exploration happened, different colored people met each other more frequently. Still, there were few instances of wholesale integration of multiple skin colors into a common society. Better, faster modes of transportation accelerated mixing.  But the history of the world since has been marred by instances of societies in which the differences of skin color presented major challenges difficult to overcome.

Why? The kindergarten story suggests hardwiring.  Harari’s observation raises the apparent fact that the rapid development of technology outpaces the capacity of human cognition to keep up.

If we are hardwired in a way that is counter to what we hope might be possible in terms of living together with people who look different from us, if we are overwhelmed by the rapid changing of the world in which we must live, what might we do to mitigate the disconnects?

People of a Certain Age, what draws you to a leader you trust? I think that a leader’s values play a significant part, to the extent that you can discern what those values are.  Character matters.

Policy positions, if leaders are worth their salt, are responsive to context, existing conditions that are, of course, changeable. The rapid acceleration of the body of knowledge ensures that.

Values endure, or they ought to.  And if a leader espouses a clear set of values and them tries to live by them, that matters.  Many homo sapiens are part of some specific religious tradition, and they, in theory, are connected to a specific set of values. But, asking whether or not a person lives a life consistent with those values is still a fair question.

And how do those traditions come to grips with the rapid changes in the world in which they operate?  It does no good to pine for halcyon days of the past that weren’t so halcyon anyway. They’re just passed.

Does one value the dignity of every human being? Does one see people of all colors aspiring to lives of peace and prosperity? Does one see the need for “something like a star, to be staid on,” to quote Robert Frost, in the midst of a meteoric pace of change? Does one see the power of human kindness and demonstrate a generosity of spirit?

IPA is proud to be a place “where values matter.”   So should politics.

Daniel E. White

January 20, 2020

We attended a celebration of life for a woman with whom we had worked more than twenty years ago. We had stayed in touch because of “About Aging” and other correspondence.  Several of us spoke about her life and what she had meant to kids and how unjust it seemed for her to die so young. There was in the room a sweet sadness.

Toward the end, the love of her life shared a photo show that included pictures of her at various points in her life. In one, the camera is above her, and she looked up, her eyes wide, her mouth shaped into a smile we all recognized as a trademark—friendly, knowing, and just a bit mischievous. For all of us, she was there that day, in that photo.

For three years, I worked with a group comprised of people from the California Association of Independent Schools and the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools to re-think the accreditation process for independent schools.  Our finished product featured several unique questions for schools to answer, one of which required the school to produce 10 pictures or five thirty second videos “that richly convey the climate of the school.” I have seen responses from several schools; they are imaginative and revealing.

I thought about this when Judy and I were with some friends of long-standing. They have been going through hundreds of photos to pare down their collection to keepsakes. (People of a Certain Age, is this on your to-do list, too?) They picked several photos and challenged us all to recall where we had been when the picture was taken and in what year.

We had fun trying, and we think we did well as a group. We also made some observations based on the photos. For instance, they proved that, once upon a time, we all had darker hair and fewer pounds. It was obvious that we had traveled many places together.

Each photo promoted shared memories, from our B.C. era (before children, their son) to the S.T.P phase (son taking photo). We were visiting together a shared history, and it was satisfying to do so.

I had a further thought, one that parallels the accreditation question: if I were to present 10 photos or five thirty-second videos that captured the essence of my life, what would they be? Would the pictures show people, places, memorable events, animals seen on safari, famous landmarks?

Recognizing the difficulty of such an assignment, I immediately decided that the task needed to be placed in contexts. How about 10 items for youth, 10 for the ages 21-50 phase, 10 for 50 and over? Or maybe 10 about people, 10 about places? There were so many factors that would be different in one’s life, according to age and stage. How could one limit oneself to just 10 for such a long period of time?

Clearly, I was fudging.

Perhaps with justification. How can any of us reduce our complex lives over decades to a limited series of impressions? Yet, isn’t that what happens whenever a tombstone is etched for posterity?

An obituary in any newspaper, unless you have been a major figure in the history of your time, will, at most, be four or five paragraphs long (more depending on your family’s resources). What would you want those paragraphs to highlight?  They will form a picture of you in words.

I began to try to think about photos. I would start with a picture of a Thanksgiving dinner in 1967 in Agoura, California where all members of both of our families were present, possibly the only time that whole group was assembled. I could cover a lot, I reasoned, in just one shot.

It got harder after that.  So, I stopped.

I kept wondering, though. What pictures could represent me?

It should be obvious that I like to write. I have no doubts that the words I have written for various reasons to diverse audiences might create some sense of me. I have written, over the years, pages I once called “notes to myself at age 64,” the age chosen no doubt as a result of the Beatles’ song “When I’m 64.” When I read these pages now, I can get an idea of myself over time.

And so a light bulb went on.  I could produce photographs that would have meaning to me. But there is no guarantee that the other person would see the photos as I see them or know what needs to be known to make sense of them. My pictures will reflect what I think about me, only one perspective on my life, presumably an informed one, but also biased.

Likewise, what I write in any given circumstance has particular meaning to me as I write but my words will strike each reader differently as he or she filters my words through his or her lens. Your responses to me have made that clear every two weeks since January 9, 2015.

What might be etched on a gravestone or written in an obituary will be other peoples’ pictures of me. I’d best confine myself to creating word pictures that make me proud to have been alive.

Daniel E. White

January 6, 2020

Carlos Santana, a POCA at age 72, explained his approach to life to the AARP magazine this year. “It’s like everything in life right now; it has to do with being in the right place at the right time. The universe will bring you an abundance of opportunities and possibilities. It’s really all about trusting that before you got there, when you were sleeping, the universe was conspiring to give you something to blow your mind. Would you be open to receive it?”

Later in the interview, “I wanted to sound like B.B. King and Otis Rush and all of the people I loved. [I would] go into a closet, turn the lights off and play, and try to sound like them.  And then I didn’t sound like them. I sounded like me. I didn’t realize that it was a blessing instead of a curse. But when I stopped trying to sound like somebody else and really paid attention to me, I heard that sound that goes through all people’s hearts.”

There is a rich history to the celebration of Hanukkah, dating back to Judas Maccabeus in the 2^nd century B.C.E.  One part of the story involves a miracle: a one-day supply of oil burning for eight days.  The core of the message of the season seems to me to be about freedom and the regaining of self-determination as a people.  The freedom, though, was not only of an individual but of a people who, then, in community, worshipped their God and exercised the right of self-determination.

Miracles and acting in community for common purposes we decide for ourselves; are we open to receive these?

The Christmas season celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, known to his followers as the Messiah.  Christians would substitute “God” for Santana’s “the universe.” They, too, believe in a miracle, a virgin birth, and characterize Jesus as the “Son of God,” God being defined as “love.” Jesus’ messianic mission is, through the spreading of love, to bring humanity back into the presence of God.  

Miracles and loving all people as children of God; are we open to receive these?

Kwanzaa was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966 as an antidote to the racial strife abroad in the country at that time; a way to affirm African family and social values.  There are seven principles celebrated in the observance of Kwanzaa: unity, self-determination, collective responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.  Kwanzaa is not viewed as a substitute for Christmas.

I am not aware that Dr. Karenga cited any miracles in the formulation of the principles of Kwanzaa though his hope was that all seven principles would become common practice.  Acting in unity, in community, for common purposes we decide for ourselves; are we open to receive these?

A recent political cartoon in the Star-Advertiser featured a locomotive speeding to nowhere in particular.  On its side was the name of the train: “the Polarized Express.” How appropriate that a train so named would be speeding toward nowhere!

If Santana is right, that there is an “abundance of opportunities and possibilities,” why are we polarized? Perhaps he answers that question by noting how he tried to “sound like B.B. King and Otis Rush.” To what extent have people given in to unquestioningly echoing their favored political leaders, whose business it is to create conditions which only they can address, rather than listening to “the sound that goes through all people’s hearts” in their own hearts?

What might that sound be?

People of a Certain Age, do you remember…”I got a hammer, I got a bell, and I gotta a song to sing, all over this land? It’s the hammer of justice, it’s the bell of freedom, it’s a song about love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land.” (Peter, Paul and Mary)

Certainly, Santana speaks about a song. Surely, the song is one we all can sing, in our own voices, sounding like our unique selves. Hopefully we have hammers of justice (equal access for all to the opportunities in our society), bells of freedom (tempered by fairness), and a love between all our brothers and sisters, no matter their race, religion, political party or choice of automobile (thank you, Ellen DeGeneres).

Song is central to the celebration of Christmas. Angels, we are told, sang “glory to God in the highest and peace to all.” Carols convey joy, awe, wonder, and the warmth of family.

Be it blood relatives or a chosen one, family is at the center of all three celebrations.

Light, too, is a constant in these celebrations, candles being a part of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and the Star in the East lighting the way for the three wise men.  Our society today could use a lot less heat and a lot more light.

A hammer of justice, a bell of freedom, songs, family, light, our unique voices, community, miracles, love; Santana is right about an abundance of opportunities and possibilities. The December holidays are a chance every year to answer his question: are we open to that abundance?

Daniel E. White

December 23, 2019

A feature of church, school, and Boy Scout camps I attended was the evening campfire.  Sometimes campers helped stack the wood in a cement ring, filling in lower spaces with twigs, leaves, and other materials that would serve as the starter. Once the evening meal ended, campers gathered around to hear stories, sing songs, cook s’mores, and drink hot chocolate.

The fire gave light that cast shadows off the faces of those gathered.  Since most camps were in the foothills where temperatures dropped after sunset, fire also provided warmth. As the time around the fire extended, campers would, at times, bunch closer together to stay warm.

Not a few puppy love crushes were spawned at such fires, a magical internal fire kindled.  It did not take long for campers to develop a connectedness, the cohering of a group through shared experience, both illuminated and warmed by fire. When the camp ended, we campers parted with pledges to keep in touch that, if my case is any example, seldom happened, no matter how solemnly promised.

While we were at camp together, though, we were part of something bigger than ourselves, a community.  That felt good. Neither our political beliefs, if we had any, nor our ethnicity mattered.

I never served in the military.  Several of my friends did, a few in combat circumstances.  In the context of battle, being under fire is not a good thing.  The obvious purpose of the fire is to kill, or at least deter one from advancing toward whomever is doing the firing.

From what I have read, seen depicted in movies, and heard from my friends, the basic instinct when under fire, apart from not being killed, is to do your best to protect your comrade in arms.  So many of the stories about battlefield heroism derive from the actions of one soldier to protect the lives of others.  And no soldier would willingly leave a wounded comrade if there was any chance to bring that person to safety.

Under fire, a community forms, rooted in the training soldiers receive and the time they spend preparing for battle. But, if what I have learned is accurate, it is the fire to which soldiers are subjected that forges the lasting bonds of community.  Under fire, no one asks about political beliefs, and bullets do not discriminate by race.  Those levels of community seem to last beyond combat, even when veterans don’t often see one another.

Our friends lost their home in the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, California in December 2017. So did over 500 others.  We visited them a few months later and saw silent testimonials to the random destructiveness of fire in the many cement slabs filled with charred remnants of many lives.  These houses and people had formed the well-tended upper middle class neighborhood winding up the street we had visited only a few months before.

Some families decided not to rebuild and put their lots up for sale.  Others eventually decided to rebuild after a period of recovery from the shock and grief.  Our friends never hesitated about building a new home on their land and began to gather their burned-out neighbors into a group that moved forward together, learning about insurance, contractors, building codes, etc.

Our friends observed that their pleasant-enough neighborhood had coalesced into something different following the fire.  People who were once content just to know a neighbor’s name now shared stories in the manner of good friends.

We visited them again when their new house was well under construction. They invited us to join the group on its monthly tour of each other’s new houses, completed or in process.  As they milled about looking at structural and design features, they chatted about kids and jobs and Ventura happenings.  Each family seemed to know a lot about the others in the group.

I could not help but feel the warmth of that community forged from fire. No one talked about political or religious beliefs. In the circumstances, they didn’t matter.

The Dalai Lama once noted that, “as we recognize others’ suffering and realize we are not alone, our pain is lessened…you realize that you are not a solitary cell.”

Our friends hope the new community endures beyond the end of construction, morphing into a small interest group that can advocate for the neighborhood, becoming one of the historically American building blocks in politics. Time will tell whether the effect of the Thomas Fire on that community is more like the campfire or being under fire.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter.  People of a Certain Age, we have all experienced community in some form or another.  We understand that, despite our seemingly innate drive to individuate, we value being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Camp fire, enemy fire, wildfire; all can be catalysts for community that does not depend on our politics, religious beliefs, ethnicity, nationality.  That is the community of humanity.

Sometimes, it takes fire to forge a community and force us to see what really matters.

Daniel E. White

December 9, 2019

In Seattle in the early 1950s, our church sponsored the Moorbeeck family from the Netherlands.  Members provided housing, food, and clothing, and one of the congregation found Mr. Moorbeeck who was, I think, a draftsman (or draughtsman, if you prefer) a job.

Displaced persons, they were called. As a seven-year-old limited to linear thinking, I understood that there was some place for the family to be that they were not.  I think—I hope—I felt as sad about that as a seven-year-old could be before moving on to the challenges of second grade and Little League.

In his “Country Music” film, Ken Burns used displacement to describe much of what that genre of music has been about. I hadn’t thought about that term much in the past 65 years.  But, the narrative thread of the program supported the point on two levels. Country songs are often about loss or not fitting in or aspirations for what cannot be, like the love of some person who does not even notice the hopeful one.

Further, country music comes from the hearts and souls of people whom the dominant American culture has discounted as “hick” or “hillbilly,” made to feel like second-class citizens in their own land. 

The program chronicled American history from 1920 on though its focus was not the history but the music called “country.”  One point came through loudly and clearly: the current social climate is not nearly as fractious, as threatening to our way of life as have been other times.

Thirty percent of the people out of work in the 1930s caused massive shifts of population—displacements—within the U.S.  Fighting two powerful enemies in two different hemispheres obviously altered hundreds of thousands of lives in our country as well as overseas (creating displaced persons like the Moorbeecks). In the 1960s, helmeted police and National Guard stood in ranks several deep all with loaded rifles pointed at groups aggrieved about racial injustice and Vietnam.

Through those tumultuous times, country singers continued to lament, pine for, and regret past sins that fractured their lives. Displacement seemed the norm.

Displacement persists around us if we dare to listen to despondent cries we dare not hear.  Dare not because there are so many, at home and abroad, whose lives are a daily manifestation of being somewhere they are not supposed to be, either physically or metaphorically.

In just one example, a recent Atlantic article chronicled the like of Aung San Su Chi of Myanmar(Burma). Once a political prisoner and symbol of the desire for freedom, she is now part of the government.  That government has systematically displaced its Muslim population, the Rohinga, killing thousands and forcibly evicting others from their lands.

What would that feel like, to be evicted from your long-term home?

Driving to the Kapolei post office one steamy morning, Judy and I watched while a man wearing a long black overcoat and slippers, gray hair matted and dirty-looking, cross the street.  We assumed he was headed for his spot in the park, home to several homeless.  He looked much older than we are but we know it was possible we were his elders.

This man represented a persistent displacement in our own community, whatever the reasons might be for living in a park.

World history of the last decade chronicles displacement: Syrians, North Africans, Central Americans.  Where do you go when it is no longer safe for you to be where you are?

A few years ago, I wrote about a “sense of place.” What is it like to not have a sense of a place to belong?

People of a Certain Age, you might recall a TV ad years ago featuring a man who looked Native American shedding a tear over the thoughtless littering plaguing the landscape. (That Iron Eyes Cody was actually Espera Osker de Corti, a fact my friend told me, is typical Madison Avenue magic.) Do you suppose Iron Eyes might shed another tear these days over the pervasive sadness of displacement, here and abroad?

We cannot explain why some populations, which are comprised of people like you and me, have suffered displacement due to war, famine, dangerous environs or deliberate evictions and others have not. We tune out the cries of desperation in self-defense, knowing that some problems are beyond individual capacities to help.  We cannot take on every ill in the world. We do contribute to organizations that try; churches, Rotary, World Vision, etc. That helps.

“Country Music” suggested something closer to home.  To the extent that groups in our society feel like they are second-class citizens, we can draw our circles “wider to include them in.”  We can offer more handshakes than cold-shoulders.  We can create a place where, political opinions and religious differences notwithstanding, none of us feel like we are in a place where we are not supposed to be, wherever we are.

Actually, I think those places are here among us now but the din of disaster sells more newspapers.

Daniel E. White

November 25, 2019

Judy and I were watching the fourth two-hour installment of “Country Music, the film by Ken Burns on PBS. I observed that we were probably like a sizeable segment of the audience who were watching because it was a Ken Burns production.  Over time, many have appreciated his storytelling, whether about the Civil War or Jackie Robinson or a form of American music we seldom listened to intentionally but often heard because of its ubiquity.

Burns’ work has always struck me as visual scholarship, appealing to people like us who like learning new things or hearing new takes on old things, like the Civil War.

As the narrative took us from Jimmy Rodgers to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline to Loretta Lynn, the Carter family to the Judds, I wondered how popular the show was with those who had grown up with country music in the way I was drawn to the Beatles, the Lovin’ Spoonful, and the Eagles. To my unschooled eye, just about every icon in that world of music enjoyed some time in the spotlight in the film.  It seemed a resource to be treasured by those wanting a visual memory bank about the story of the genre.

So how is it that simple tunes played on string instruments with plain-spoken lyrics can survive the ebbs and flows of transient popular culture and hold the attention of our national videographer and a broad audience for ten two-hour segments?

It did not take me too long to see an obvious point. Two groups of people, possibly from different sections of the nation, probably reflecting a wide diversity of backgrounds and education, were watching the same show.  I mentioned that in a phone conversation with my sister.

“That’s the power of art to unite,” she said.

In Burns’ show, Winton Marsalis called music “the invisible art.”  I wonder if the true power of art lies not only in its capacity to unite but also in its capacity to engage the listener or viewer in an unspoken conversation that invites one to identify, to find common ground, to understand something differently.

Country music, because of its story-telling nature, uses the words as well as the music to spell out some aspect of the human condition. Who hasn’t, at some moment in life, been “so lonesome I could cry?”

The film described how country music popularity has waxed and waned while its core soul has remained constant. There have been detours, flirtations with influences from rock and folk music, seductions into glitzy show productions. But country always returns to its roots.

The art form reflected the social unrest of the 60s and 70s yet stuck to those messages that range true no matter your politics.  Heartache is not partisan. Loneliness persists in war and peace.

People of a Certain Age, you might be like me, struck by how many country songs we recognize though we didn’t listen to country music stations or buy its albums.  (You DO remember albums, right?) How did that happen? Especially if the people we hung out with tended toward folk music with a social agenda or rock and roll suitable for dances. 

One episode of Burns’ series was called “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin.” There is an explicit humility in the message, connected to my parents reminding me to be a good reflection on our family or Judy’s grandmother counseling “remember who you are.” What a genteel way to admonish young people to avoid the sin of pride.

(Ignore for the moment the deleterious impact of discouraging aspirations that could be the product of not getting’ above your raisin’; the British class system comes to mind.)

Have you ever heard a country song where you could not hear clearly every word? I think back to my music growing up.  There were several number one rock hits I liked but for which I needed to consult some printed source to grasp the whole message.  When your music consists of a guitar or banjo and a story, your story better be told really clearly.

Burns offers the insights of several country artists, all of which sound good. But they are insiders. What about those of us, who make a subconscious connection to a musical form to which we’ve never devoted a full measure of attention?

Each of us would probably answer that question differently. Perhaps, though, that is the point. In its simplicity, raw emotion, occasionally toe-tapping way, the music invites us to share our take on what it is like to be a human being.  We can shake off the dust of daily doses of doom and gloom, be “crazy” about someone, be “lonesome” enough to cry, try to “walk the line, because you’re mine,” sing about the blues we have from our respective “prisons.”

The stories in country music ignite our own stories. And don’t we all enjoy reveling in those?  

Daniel E. White

November 11, 2019

Judy stood at the sink cutting open a melon. “Hope this turns out to be ripe.”  She tasted it. “Oh good,” she said.

“So, it turned out to be tasty and ripe, despite your worry?” I asked.

“I worry each time I cut into a melon,” she replied. “You never know what you are going to get.”

“So, you are paraphrasing Forrest Gump now?

“Well, he was right,” she replied. “You never know.”

Dia de Los Muertos comes around again next week. The living visit the dead with food and dance, a party to assure the dead that they are not forgotten. The dead dance, too, light on their spiritual feet because they have no worries.  For the time of the celebration neither do the living.

If all we had to worry about was the ripeness of a melon, we might dance more. But, “you never know” becomes, for some people, an invitation to worry despite the wisdom of some wise people.

The Dalai Lama, for example, once wrote, “If a problem is fixable, if a situation is something that you can do something about, then there is no need to worry. If it is not fixable, then there is no helping worrying.”  A chronic worrier would worry about how to decide what is fixable.

Winston Churchill quoted Mark Twain who paraphrased Rene Montaigne who probably quoted an ancient Roman like Cicero: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.”

Robert Frost observed, “the reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry that work.” He must have written that after he had made money selling his books of poetry.

In his Gospel, Matthew asked, in the famous section about the lilies of the field, “who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

The wisdom of the sages notwithstanding, I’m not sure that anyone prone to worry can stop worrying.  And I confess, as a self-described non-worrier, that I have lost sleep some nights to worry (which I call anticipatory consideration of alternatives).

Worry made an appearance in two songs popular when we were growing up. “It Takes a Worried Man,” sang The Kingston Trio, covering a country song from an earlier day.  People of a Certain Age, do you know the object of the worry about which they sang? Two guys were sweet on the same girl. One was with the girl as the other, unaware of the competition, knocked on her door.

The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” comforted a girl whose boyfriend had bragged about how fast his car could go and was now called out to prove it to the other guys.

I suspect neither situation has cropped up for you recently. Perhaps it never did when you were a teen.  Both songs illustrate, though, what is now routinely called teen angst.

Ripeness, dating competition, bragging about your fast car; how trivial these seem when compared to, say a job in jeopardy, putting at risk your family’s security, a deteriorating neighborhood becoming increasingly unsafe for kids’ play, or a health issue with an uncertain outcome. 

Forrest Gump and Judy nailed it: “You never know.”

Is there, then, a sanctuary for worriers?

I have two suggestions. Whenever one is engaged in doing a kindness for another, that action tends to divert one’s attention.  Losing oneself in the service of others can crowd out worry from one’s mind space.

Serving others takes time that is then no longer available to be wasted on worry.

Secondly, we can learn from the rituals of the Dia de Los Muertos.  We can share our burdens with family and/or other who care about us.  A burden shared is a burden lightened.

People of faith can, in Martin Luther’s words, “pray and let God worry,” another form of burden sharing. Jesus was explicit. “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Brian Blessed wrote “95% of the things we worry about in life never actually happen but that’s the human brain for you. It can help us do all kinds of wonderful things but can also be an absolute nightmare.”

Perhaps worry is inescapable—Blessed’s 5% will always be there. “You never know” really is an ever-present possibility.

However, think on this: Isn’t being the other person to whom someone turns to share a burden a high compliment? Haven’t we all experienced that moment after we have shared something burdensome with a family member or friend best described by “I’m glad I finally got that off my chest?” Perhaps, the best sanctuary is us for each other.

Judy is fond of a quote attributed to Will Rogers: “Worry works. 90% of what I worry about never happens.” And when something you worried about doesn’t turn out badly, is there a sense of relief, an actual good feeling?

What if we began to view worry as a price of caring? Maybe, then, we could stop worrying so much about worrying and just get on with living. Because you just never know.

Daniel E. White

October 24, 2019