Williamsburg, VA

[Above photo: My Williamsburg Family: L to R, Roger, Gordon, Pat, Keith making bread dough.]

1 December 2019

Somewhat ironically, planes and busses I’ve taken in Myanmar have been more timely than those in the US.  Awakening at 3:30AM on Saturday, I shaved, ate muesli, hugged Chas goodbye, and drove to the Portland Jetport. Three hours after the supposed departure time of 5:54AM, we were airborne to DC. The Metro made it an easy trip to Union Station. The Greyhound was 1hour and 25 minutes late in departing, so I missed my connection in Richmond, VA. My nephews Keith and Roger graciously drove from Williamsburg to gather me.

However, I had a great and inspiring trip, since I had plenty of time to talk to fellow passengers. The woman next to me in the Jetport was 11 weeks pregnant and has travelled all over the world, working in S. America and Japan. Now she is in DC with USAID, facilitating women’s empowerment. Her husband is career state department, joining the ranks of Yovanovitch, Kent, Taylor, and Hill. Her mother was off to Myanmar in two days for a site visit as a member of the board of an NGO operating there.  I gave her daughter a list of good restaurants in Yangon.

At the bus depot in Union Station, DC I stood in line B for Richmond.   In line A for Boston,were two lively looking young women so I struck up a conversation. The first is from Zimbabwe, having attended college in the US. She is now getting an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health. When I told her that my mother was the first woman graduate of that program, she was astounded. I gave her my card and she’ll check it out and email me. The girl behind her finished in architecture at Northwestern and is working in a firm while applying to graduate school in architecture. Her first choice is MIT. She was African-American.

Riding on the Greyhound at last, a young woman sat next to me and we struck up a conversation. She’s the first in her family (again, African-American) to attend college. She’s at a small Methodist 2 year college  in N. Carolina, getting a 3.3 GPA and assured that she can pull it up to a 3.6 this term. She’s transferring next year for the last two years of her BA and then wants to go to medical school to become an orthopedic surgeon. She was sweet and determined.

It reassured me so much to talk with these young people, to see how directed they were to do good in the world. After all the cynicism, greed, deceit, and lying in Washington DC, they were so fresh and hopeful that it gave me hope. Even using mass hypnosis, there is a limit to the number of haters that DT can recruit..

My sister-in-law and nephews are all thriving, caring for themselves and others and generously welcoming their old brother-in-law/uncle.  I have hope that one may bring his daughter and son/daughter-in-law to the Island next summer. There is nothing like family.

My brother and sister-in-law in Maine were, likewise, welcoming and helpful. They are burrowing in for winter. I had suppers with two sets of friends in Bar Harbor, each very enjoyable. Finally, I ended up feeding and talking for an evening with my daughter, Ari.   The next evening I ate at her home with her, her boyfriend, Jake, and her close friend, Sadie. Finally, I had Thanksgiving supper at the Brooklin Inn where she was working. She sat me with a large, multigenerational family who are friends of hers and whose daughter-in-law runs the Inn. It was lively and talking with Great Grandfather Ray, sharp as a tack at 93yo, also gave me optimism for the future.

Ari is such an entrepreneur. Working shifts at the Brooklin Inn over the summer, she and Sadie also ran their food cart two days a week, selling out their delicious food from the beginning.  They did a bit of catering, as well. They intend to expand their cart and catering business next year.  They bought the customer list of a retiring wreath maker and are busy as bees, fashioning beautiful wreaths. It is a challenge to make a living in rural Maine. The tourist season is brief. Logging is limited. Lobstering is hard and dangerous work. There aren’t the government or commercial jobs you’d find in a city. And getting her hours for licensure and hanging out her shingle as a therapist would be a very gradual and solitary process. I feel so proud of her ingenuity and willingness to work hard. And she looks very happy.

I am finishing an interesting book—The Cult of Trump by Steve Hassan—by a man who was a Moonie for years and has studied cults and their leaders. The beginning seemed not so well written but it has increasingly become very interesting talking about the rise of the Right, especially in the media, with Rush Limbaugh on radio, Fox/Sean Hannity on TV, and Breitbart. They don’t, in any way, seem like the Conservative equivalent of the Liberal media (NY Times, PBS, NPR, Washington Post), just as university and government climate scientists reporting on global climate change are not the Liberal equivalent of the propagandists hired by the Koch Brothers and their ilk. On the one side are news and science, on the other propagnda. Hassan explicates this false equivalency, and the tactics of the Right, convincingly.

This has been a great visit so far and, even so, confirmatory of my decision to stay in Myanmar for the foreseeable. I hope all who read this had a warm Thanksgiving with family and/or friends. Despite our current climate and political circumstances, we have so much for which to be thankful.  Among other things, that there is Love and that it is available to each of us to feel for free.