Can Anyone Go Home Again?

story and photos by Richard Rossner

Life is slippery. Just when I think have it in my grasp, it slithers away like an eel. It twists, writhes and slips from my grip, leaving me empty-handed. And feeling empty in many ways.

That’s when I ache for some place of intense safety and familiarity to regroup.

The house where I grew up as it looks today.

Johnny Mercer wrote, “Any place I hang my hat is home.” I wonder about people who are that comfortable.  Frank Sinatra…George Clooney…the Dalai Lama (if he had a hat). They exude such ease with everything.  

I’m not on that list. I’m on the list of people who never feel at home. And I’m not talking about a geographical place. I’m talking about feeling at home in life.

Sure, I’ve accomplished some wonderful things, but it’s all been hit or miss with no mastery. In quiet moments I’m haunted by my sense of ineptitude at navigating something that seems so simple for others.

I recently had the chance to return to my state of origin. No, not the womb as a zygote. New Jersey.  

First, I went to the town where I was born. It’s been in an economic slide for decades. Sweet memories I knew of bright Christmas lights gaily strung down the main thoroughfare; the heady smell of popcorn and candy wafting through the glorious department store; summers of big-leafed trees and fat, fuzzy caterpillars; the sweet breezes off the Raritan Bay – they’re gone. Downtown is all bargain discount stores now. The place looks like a dump. 

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Wild animals, savage people

by Eric Lucas

The 8-year-old boy chasing the young sea turtle down the beach was having “fun.” His father stood by, glancing up occasionally while he texted a football bet to a buddy.

Green sea turtle by davidd via Flickr CCL.

Also enjoying themselves were the two dozen beachgoers who had surrounded a full-grown, 4-foot-long green sea turtle in the water at shore’s edge at this lovely, famous island resort. As the turtle drifted back and forth in the swells, trying to get out to sea, its “admirers” followed it to and fro, cell-phones clicking incessantly so they could capture the special moment for Instagram and Twitter and Pinterest and Facebook. Some were barely a foot away. I wondered if they knew that a turtle has jaws strong enough to easily clap off a finger.

But sea turtles are gentle creatures; too gentle, actually, as they were long easily captured until international outcry brought them protected status. Now, U.S. law requires that people maintain a respectful distance from sea turtles, not encircle them or block their path to the open ocean, or otherwise bother or annoy them.

The penalty for violating this law runs up to $20,000. It’s called Level B harassment, which sounds serious indeed; but in our brave new world where all of the earth is on display for all of humanity, in person or digitally, the law means little. Nor, I’m afraid, do simple standards of decency, integrity and care.

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Alcohol, Altitude And The Middle Class: I’m out of my depth.

by Martin Nolan

Growing up on a council estate in England, there wasn’t much opportunity to strap two pieces of wood to my feet and slide down a hill. There were plenty of hills but not too many skis. In fact, there was only one person on the estate who had gone skiing. He was the guy who had fancy tea bags and premium range biscuits. In England council estates are areas where low income families reside (like trailer parks but with bricks, mortar and no tornados). They are for working class families, who work all year to save enough money to go on a package Holiday to Spain. We didn’t indulge in expensive tea and we certainly didn’t indulge in skiing. If it was Victorian times, we would have been the good natured chimney sweeps and everyone knows chimney sweeps don’t ski. 

Council Estate, England. Photo file via Wikipedia Commons.

In the intermitting years, I had become wealthier and skiing had become more affordable. Although only ever so slightly. So it wasn’t until my early twenties that I was able to go skiing. It was an attempt to expand my horizons beyond my football loving, gambling, sun seeking past that lead me to book a trip to St Anton with Crystal Ski. I pretty much chose the resort because the people there seemed to like a drink. So in hindsight, it may not have been that big a departure from my usual ways.  A leopard can’t change his spots and all that.  So I packed my bag and went to the capital of Après Ski.

Travelling by myself did not come naturally. I’m basically a socially inept, mumbling wreck of a human being. Mumbling became a way to avoid my ill timed comments from being heard. My jaw was starting to ache from constantly having to dislodge my foot from it. Since my filter wasn’t capable of stopping the words passing through my teeth, I could at least say it in a way that they wouldn’t properly hear it. People being offended were replaced by nods of politeness. No one ever wants to admit they weren’t listening properly.

So booking a shared chalet may not have been the greatest of ideas. Strangers, small talk, me. A potential melting pot of problems. “Have a few drinks... you’re really charming when you loosen up”. That was my well thought through plan. Use social lubricant to slide your way into the group.

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Thoughts on Happiness

by B.J. Stolbov

Living in a foreign country is an opportunity to learn about a different culture, a different way of seeing and responding to the world.  It provides an opportunity to immerse yourself in new customs and traditions, and to see what really matters and is important to people around the world. It is also an opportunity to examine, from a distance, your own customs and traditions and, most important, your own cultural assumptions.

I was born and raised and lived in the United States all my life, until I was almost 60 years old. Then, I joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to the Philippines, to Quirino Province in northern Luzon, to the municipality of Cabarroguis, to the barangay (barrio) of Zamora. There, I learned some things from Filipinos about happiness.

Eyes of curiosity, Luzon, Philippines. Photo by Daniel Peckham via Flickr CCL

Before I start telling you about my discoveries, I need to offer this disclaimer. What follows is full of generalizations. For the sake of brevity and for effect, I have purposely taken out all the “sometimes,” “occasionallys,” and “almosts.” You can add them and I won’t mind – almost. 

I believe that truth is circular, actually spherical, like the world. You can turn truth around, and even upside down, and still find some truths in it.  When I moved to the other side of the world, the truths that I was raised with, that I had always held dear, that I thought were the only possible truths, were turned around, especially what I learned in the last three years about happiness and success.

In the U.S., success is happiness. If you have money, a good job, a solid place to live, a car, a computer, a television, or a big-screen television, the latest electronic equipment, and a full-funded retirement account, you are successful. You can be happy, proud of yourself, of what you’ve accomplished, and of the things you own.

In the Philippines, it’s another way around.  Happiness is success. If you have good health, a good family, parents, spouse, children, relatives, trusted friends, supportive neighbors, pleasant companions at work, a community of people who like you and whom you like, you are successful. Happiness is who you are and with whom you are. Happiness isn’t something that you will get only in the future; and happiness isn’t dependent upon what you do for a living or what you own.

Happiness isn’t something you get after you get everything else; happiness is something you have before your get everything else.

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Heritage and Whisky in Scotland's Orkney Islands

by Frank Demain

I was very excited to discover that one branch of my family had its roots in the Orkney Islands, a handful of miles off the north coast of Scotland. It seems that my great grandfather was a master mariner, no less. As I had already acquired a taste for that magnificent Orkney malt whisky, Highland Park, it was not too big a step to decide that a trip to the Orkneys was required to investigate further my Orcadian roots and to visit the distillery just outside Kirkwall. My wife, essentially a gin-and-tonic drinker, does admit to liking the occasional wee dram and so it was not too difficult to persuade her to join me on my voyage of genealogical and sensory discovery.

Fortunately – and unusually for that part of the world - the sea was calm as we crossed on the ferry from Scrabster, a few miles west of John o’ Groats, the northernmost point on the Scottish mainland, towards the port of Stromness on the largest of the Orkney islands, confusingly called Mainland. Because of the flatness of the sea we were able to pass close to the Old Man of Hoy, a magnificent 449 feet red sandstone sea stack, perched on a plinth of basalt. From the sea it looks truly formidable and, despite its closeness to civilisation, it was not until 1966 that it was first climbed, by a team led by the famous British mountaineer Chris Bonnington. There and then I decided that my visit would have to include a trip to view the stack from the bottom on the landward side.

Old Man of Hoy sea stack, Orkney Islands, Scotland.

We enjoyed the warm, friendly welcome at the Highland Park distillery, and we had the joy of sampling rather older, finer bottlings than those to which our wallets normally extend. Smooth, peaty, rich, warming. 

A visit to the helpful people at the Orkney Family History Society, housed in the handsome Orkney Library in Kirkwall, provided some useful information. However, my ancestral investigations proved a little less definitive than I had hoped. Even now I have been unable to discover the origins of the elusive Betsy Birnie, maternal grandmother of my captain, Walter Weir Wilson. And sadly, I found that grannie’s highland home no longer exists on the narrow coastal plain on the east side of the island of Hoy. 

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Searching for Culture at a Five-Star All-Inclusive Resort

by Laurie Gilberg Vander Velde

“I want to take my kids on a trip. We have to have ocean view rooms; it has to be all-inclusive; and it has to be a non-stop flight.”  This was what my Mom wanted for her upcoming 90th birthday celebration which would be in the dead of winter. I’m not a person who does cruises or beach vacations. I like to explore, meet people, visit museums and cultural sites. But how could I refuse my Mom’s wishes, much less turn down an all-expenses-paid trip to a tropical island!

The irony of the whole plan was that my Mom is no beach bunny. “I really don’t like sand,” she says. She also shuns the sun, the result of 48 years of nagging from my dear father. But she’d lived in Florida and had spent time on the Jersey shore where she’d passed many an hour gazing at the waves and soaking up the ocean breezes. She was determined to see the ocean again.

Sunrise in Punta Cana. 

When my Mom, her four children and our spouses all boarded the charter flight to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, I hailed it as a minor miracle. Mom had managed to get all of us, now in our 50’s and 60’s, to drop everything and take off together for a full week. Together - - this was more family togetherness than we kids had had since we were twelve years old. 

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