Memoirous

It is hard to know what is going on anywhere these days. Yes, we have Facebook and other social media, but to really get inside events is extremely difficult. I can only discern or interpret so much from pictures. That being said, this much I know: My friend is brave. Or stupid. I’ve often wondered about that thin line between being a risk taker and a hero. Between being someone who runs into a burning house and someone who runs into a burning house to save another life. Right now the war between Russia and Ukraine is a huge firestorm, wrecking countries and the world economy. In   Putin’s eyes and convoluted logic he is being brave and taking a risk to invade another country (or non-country, again his weird thinking) to de-Nazi-fy it. It’s all a play on words and myths and folk legend. Meanwhile. The people living in Russia and Ukraine reap the havoc. I have friends in Russia that I met through Couchsurfing when they stayed with us several years ago. It was a rough introductio...

 War and Peace  for Max I am not interested in War and Peace , the epic sweeping drama, my attention is directed toward the Russian man lighting his pipe, his back against the grey exterior wall of the building, as he takes a pull on the pipe the embers ignite, his whiskered cheeks sink in and out like a concertina playing a lively mazurka where   the great bear dances. Tolstoy said War and Peace is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” I am not writing a novel or a poem nor history, it is about these people, the Russian man who, after smoking knocks his pipe against the outer wall, the sooty tobacco, dregs from the bowl onto the ground, takes a stroll down the city sidewalk and suddenly greets a stranger at a bus stop. He would never do this in his country, in St. Petersburg, where there people on the street do not greet one another, they go along with eyes on the ground, downcast, absorbed in their own thoughts of bread, ren...

Today’s blog entry was provoked by a strain of threads that I will try to weave together into a coherent post. Part movie review and opinion piece on welcoming the outsider, the other. First did anyone catch the Washington Post article, The White Flight of Derek Black ? Derek Black was the son and heir apparent to a white supremacy movement. He was a junior cadet so to speak and even authored his own column/blog at their Stormfront website which spews hate and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Of course, we have been hearing a lot of this lately. And, in America, free speech is a right. Derek Jr. even helped his father host a radio talk show show and podcast. These guys were committed to their message. So what would make someone so comfortable with their ideology change course, to decide to chuck it and actually become an outcast from his own family? I was surprised to read this in the article: “He joined a new online message group, this one for couch surfers, and he opened up h...

I have been a proud Couchsurfing host since 2007.  making moussaka with y very FIRST couchsurfer Couchsurfing is where you stay with total strangers using the Couchsurfing website in order to connect on-line, matching hosts to travelers. I probably host 20 surfers a month, but that is nothing compared to the requests I receive daily. I tack it up to living in a world-class city, but also there just aren’t too many reliable and willing hosts. In the cosmic balance of things there are way more travelers than those offering a couch. Why do I do this—when of course it takes up a LOT of time. 1) reading the requests 2) responding to the requests 3) then the actual hosting? Because I love to meet people. Not always, and especially not when their train, plane, bus is late and I have to get up early the next day. But, because I have a memory of traveling and wishing I could get inside a culture. There was a time (and probably still is) when I wanted to go and liv...

Right now I have 3 visitors staying with me from Baghdad. I know, Baghdad. the only place less safe right now might be Gaza. And, safe, it's just a relative term. I asked the girls how their families were faring. Without trying to be coy or evasive, Rand looked at me and said, "Growing up, during nearly two decades of war, if I only heard 3 bombs go off during the day--that was good." The girls were here for a vacation, so on the second day when one of them lost or had her wallet stolen, it was a real downer. She wasted a lot of time running around to the consulate and filing a police report (not sure why since the report contained little information about the incident--not even an official stamp). Anyway, the mishap reminded me of when my daughter was traveling and had her cell phone stolen. Kids--we're so worried for them when they travel. There are a multitude of things that can go wrong--and something usually does. And, because they are our kids, even a thousa...