Shakespeare's Land

    I first arrived in London at about eight thirty on a winter morning, extremely tired after a frantic day of packing everything I might need for a long journey, then a subsequent celebration with friends and relatives at one of San Francisco’s famed Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants.  Hours later, filled with hope and some anxiety, I boarded a jet for parts and people completely unknown to me.
    The trip of a lifetime for an impressionable youth started inauspiciously enough.  From Heathrow airport I phoned a local hotel only to find that the attendant could no more understand me than I could understand her.  Two countries separated by a common language indeed.  It’s not so much the words as their inflection or slightly different usage that throws one off and takes some getting used to.  Then, when the hotel sent a van for me, I proceeded to climb into driver’s seat much to the chauffeur’s amusement.  "Wrong side, mate!"
     At the hotel’s restaurant I found that ham and eggs were called gammon and egg, singular.  And that’s just what I got.  One egg and a piece of ham.  I went back for seconds and the waitress gave me a strange look.  These Yanks, she must have thought, so spoiled.  
    After twelve hours of rest, I was eager to explore my new surroundings.  I walked from the hotel, which was large and very modern, much like those in the U.S., except that it was staffed mostly by young and pretty, miniskirted women, which caused me to remain there an extra day. But that’s another story.  Anyway, I walked down a wooded path, past a rushing creek forded by a mossy old stone bridge, unlike any I’d ever seen in California.  Beyond it I came upon my first English Village.  A group of ancient cottages with thick, wavy stone walls, external, weathered beams, thatched roofs and deeply recessed windows made of small diamond-shaped panes.  These homes, clearly built back in Shakespeare's time yet so neat and well kept that they looked new and made me think I must have traveled back in time.  I fully expected to be greeted by a knight in armor atop his favorite steed.  This was Disneyland made real and the back lot of ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ rolled into one.
    The ensuing two years, during which I often drove out on to the wrong side of the road, would become among the most memorable of my life.  They were filled with discovery, adventure and delight if sometimes also tinged with a bit of heartache and disappointment.  Up to then I had benefitted often from being bilingual and bicultural, which not only enhanced my vocabulary but also my perspective on things, giving me two vantage points from which to consider most matters.  It’s very hard to be narrow minded when you are bicultural.  On that first trip across the pond, a third culture and perspective pointed me on the road toward a maturity that adulthood doesn’t automatically provide.
     My love affair with England began back then, and even much later when cracks in the facade began to appear, not so much on the architecture as on a society hurtling towards an overrated modernity, I was still moved by the good and the strength and the timelessness of a simpler life and its inhabitants.
    The London Bobbies did not carry guns then.  They spent most of their time politely giving directions to the tourists.  One day, on my way to visit a girlfriend, I stopped at a village to have breakfast.  The local paper was emblazoned with headlines of a shocking crime spree:  Two public telephones had been broken into on the previous week.  It was no joke.  Just a different time and place.
    After red tape thwarted my entry into Oxford I registered into my second choice: The International Racing Driver's School.  The school’s secretary set me up in a bed-and-breakfast at the nearest village.  At the middle landing of that hotel’s creaky stairway was a charcoal drawing of the building’s front as it looked when first built in 1645.  I ran out across the street and confirmed my suspicions that it had not changed a bit since then.  It was like being able to reach back through the centuries and touch those bygone days.  My second floor room looked out into a church graveyard where most of the headstones were between two and three hundred years old.  Things like that fascinated me.  The oldest house I’d known in San Francisco was the old Victorian we lived in when we arrived from Mexico.  It had been built around 1910.
    In time I got to know much of the English countryside, lush green, dotted with tiny villages and criss- crossed with winding roads and stone walls as fences.  I loved its quaint old trains (some still using steam) and double-decker buses.  But most of all I loved meeting and getting to know the inhabitants of a place so different from any I had known.  Usually they were just as eager to learn about me and my background which was strange and exotic to them.
    I experienced joys and disappointments on and off the race tracks, fell in love with a local girl, and traveled throughout that fabled island of King Arthur.  Strolling through the hallowed Oxford halls and punting down the lazy Cambridge University canals I connected with a world that Dickens had first alerted me to, long before Harry Potter served as tour guide for a new generation.  I’d often wondered how such a relatively small island could have become so influential, even dominant, in the world for so long.  Living there I found the answer.  It’s the people.
    They are quietly resilient, patient and proud.  Grounded in tradition and generally calm, they are also quite competitive and can at times be very passionate, as during Parliament's debates or a crucial soccer match.  They live in a land very deeply rooted in the past, love their pageantry and attend to tradition even as they grapple like the rest of us with the problems of of the present.
    On my most recent visit I was disappointed to see that things are changing and modernizing even in the distant villages.  The bicycles that housewives used to run errands and do their shopping on and which allowed them to stop and chat with friends along the way, have been replaced by cars with their attendant traffic jams, pollution and frantic pace.  The quaint neighborhood stores and friendly shopkeepers are fast disappearing, overshadowed by impersonal shopping centers and mega-stores.  Bobbies now do carry guns.  Small farms are struggling against the giant corporations and fast food convenience is taking its toll on the community's health.
    London is now as high-tech as any place on earth, more cosmopolitan than most and still a financial powerhouse, as it was soon after it became the cradle of the industrial revolution.  Its hotels are now more expensive than in Paris.  But the heart and the spirit of Old England can still be found.  One just has to dig a little deeper.  
    It is only right that I should have made my decision to become a writer while living in the land of Shakespeare; a land that has influenced us all, whether we know it or not.

Patriotism.

10/10/10   A perfect afternoon in San Francisco--bathed in sun and cooled by a refreshing off-shore breeze that filtered in through the remnants of fog across our Golden Gate, we sat on the lush green meadow below Ghirardelli Square, near the Dolphin Club, surrounded by a pleasant crowd of people made up of tourists visiting one of the world's great cities, mixed with locals sharing the delights we often take for granted.  Families, youths and pensioners from all walks of life and various ethnic backgrounds gathered harmoniously to enjoy what has become an annual rite of passage:  The Blue Angels aerobatic team.
      Blasting suddenly overhead with an earth-trembling roar and seemingly so low that one could almost touch them, they appeared majestically from the west, over the high-rise canyons of the financial district behind us and turned upwards with a flick, shooting like arrows straight into the sky, until they disappeared in a matter of mere seconds only to reappear just as quickly, heading down towards us at speed.  What a thrill!
      Breaking rank at the last possible instant they shot away in six different directions leaving only trails of red, white and blue vapor to disperse before our astounded eyes while they reassembled for their next maneuver.  Evoking spontaneous ovations from appreciative crowds of admirers gathered at the Marina Green, Crissy Field, Fort Baker, China Beach and many other vantage points stretched around and across our bay, they continued to perform their magic, enthralling us for a good long while.
      The power, beauty and precision of these exhibitions evokes an awe for the remarkable technology on display as well as the human achievement behind them.  It engenders pride in the knowledge that our way of life is responsible for these advances and such pride translates rather easily into patriotism.  A patriotism felt equally by American natives as by naturalized Americans who chose this land and its system of government for themselves.
      However, we should be clear about which type of patriotism we are talking about, for there are many types of patriotism.  There is the blind patriotism that in the face of any perceived threat resorts immediately to flag waving slogans like: "America, love it or leave it."  That is weak and lazy patriotism that eventually tries to excuse itself with phrases like, "I was only following orders."
      There is also the type of patriotism that assumes that our advances, discoveries and 'progress' makes us better than others and gives us the right to impose our will upon them.  That is bully patriotism and it is doomed to failure because it doesn't grow out of courage but, ironically, out of cowardice, the very opposite of courage.  It is false and hollow patriotism because bullies are nothing more than cowards overcompensating to hide their failure and their shame.
       Then there is the 'us against them' type of patriotism.  Its hallmark is a knee-jerk reaction in times of economic crisis to find an easy scapegoat, and the weakest members of society are by definition the easiest.  This type of patriotism calls upon the worst part of our instincts rather than the best.  Hitler understood that very well.
      At a time when true democracy is again threatened from within by those who would continue to enrich themselves and the most wealthy at the further expense of the rest of our society in spite of the near collapse of our system that such greed recently produced, what this country needs is real, genuine patriotism.
      Real patriotism requires effort.  It requires work, vigilance and a nurturing hand.  Real patriots promote a good education for their children so that they won't be fooled by slogans and sound bites that special interests employ to win the votes of the very people they exploit.  True patriots are informed voters.  They don't vote out of fear, prejudice or convenience.
      It is not enough to cast a vote for a system that has often been described as "far from perfect but still better than any current alternative."  True patriots work to minimize those imperfections so that the system that has given us so much to be proud of can continue to be the best alternative.
       
 
   
      
 

A Travel Tip© (a short story)

    It was a holiday weekend and the end of summer vacation throughout Europe, so I, and several thousand others, was stuck in Heathrow airport for hours.  Finally BOAC found me a seat on a special flight to Paris. 
    I rushed gratefully through the terminal and security checkpoints only to find the plane still nearly empty.  A Hindu family with their belongings in baskets kept by their feet along the aisle, three overweight businessmen already sweating through their tight white shirts, a few  nondescript people scattered about plus an elderly couple settled in at the back, beyond my window seat, were all I saw.  I sat down, breathing deep to calm my nerves.
    Three days before, my phone rang as I entered from the orchard of my Wisconsin farm.  It was Laura, and her excited voice made me hope that she was back and maybe even back to her senses.  However she was still in Paris and sick in bed besides.  Someone had robbed her purse, failing to steal her money, which she kept separately with her documents, but they deprived her of the medicine that had kept her normal all these years. 
    No one in Paris had even heard of such a medicine.  There was panic in her voice.  She was already feeling very weak and feared the epileptic episodes would soon return, perhaps in deadly form.
    I broke into her apartment, found her pills, put them in my carry-on bag and caught the first flight out to London, clearing customs easily.  Now, just hours from Paris, I started to relax and even hope that Laura would finally give up her wanderlust and settle down with me as we once planned. 
    Suddenly, the plane filled with schoolyard noises.  Dozens of exuberant teens talking over each other and laughing with joyous abandon dispersed into their seats.  They were French, so I couldn’t understand them, and were apparently returning home from some field trip.  I hadn’t slept in 22 hours and now this, I lamented in my mind.  The two seats beside me were empty and by looking at the youngsters approaching I tried to guess how bad my luck would be.  That’s when I saw her.
    She must have been sixteen or seventeen at most, with a shock of golden hair, gorgeous blue eyes, a few freckles and a golden tan.  She wore form-fitting jeans adorned by a belt of loosely-linked silver medallions and a white blouse with bare midriff.  She reached my row, looked at her ticket, then at me and smiled the most stunning smile I’d ever seen.
    “Ahhhlowww!” she exaggerated, holding out one hand and pointing to herself with the other.  “Marielle.” she added.  I chuckled at her engaging warmth, shook her hand and told her I was Mark.
     She was surrounded by adoring friends who delighted in her every action.  As she sat down beside me I kicked myself for not learning French in school.  Almost immediately she was called to the front to mediate some altercation and within seconds had enticed the group into a singalong.  Like everyone else, I could hardly take my eyes off her, yet from the corner of my eye I spotted something odd and out of place. 
    Across the aisle, one row back, sat a man also transfixed by this young woman.  But instead of admiration, he glared at her with hatred.  He was a thin, sickly looking man fidgeting nervously with the worn lapel of his blue trench coat.  
    As Marielle walked back toward us I saw him reach into the inner pocket of his coat and slide forward to the edge of his seat as if preparing to spring at her.  I remember wondering how he could have gotten a gun or knife past the metal detectors just as his hand emerged with a sharp, thin wooden stake, about ten inches long.
    I jumped out into the aisle, blocking the man’s path and motioned Marielle to my window seat with a feigned smile. 
    “Merci!” she smiled.  I took the aisle seat leaving the middle one empty for my jacket, her sweater and some magazines.  The stranger kept glancing angrily at us.  Marielle, oblivious to it all, spent most of the flight talking and playing cards with her friends.  When one of them offered her some candy she made sure I took one first.
    I wondered if there might be police security on board but the stewardess didn’t speak English, so I spent the flight trying to enjoy Marielle’s company while worrying about what might happen next.
    We reached Paris without incident and when people stood to leave I again blocked the stranger’s way.  This time he tried to push past me, so I fell against him, knocking him back onto his seat.  He sputtered something and tried to wrestle me away but by the time he managed it the youths had disembarked.  He rushed after them but they had been led into a special section guarded by policemen. 
    Relieved, I left the airport by train just as Laura had instructed.  From Gare Du Nord I decided to walk the short distance.  It was midnight.  The bustling streets became deathly quiet just blocks beyond.  From Rue Lafayette I crossed into a side street two blocks from Laura’s hotel.  Suddenly, I was grabbed from behind and dragged into an alley by two men.  I struggled to get away but a third man arrived and I was slammed against a metal trash container.  I recognized the third man immediately.  He growled something at me and punched me hard into the stomach.  When he pulled his fist away I saw the wooden stake and felt the warmth of my blood flowing down my leg.
    I fell to the ground.  Laura’s pill bottle rolled out and I grabbed it but they ripped it from my hands and ran off.  Poor Laura.
    Slowly my blood pooled.  My eyesight went blank.  My last warm breath exhaled.