Olympia
Peloponnese
Greece
May 1, 2015

My Fellow Athletes,

Can we agree on one thing?  Frank Shorter started it all.

In 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, Frank Shorter became the first American man to win the Gold Medal in the Olympic Marathon.  (The Marathon by definition is 40.2 kilometers or 26.2 miles.)

In 1984, Joan Benoit added her name to Olympic Legend when she became the first American woman to win the Gold Medal in the Olympic Marathon.  Actually she was the first woman ever to win Gold since the female Marathon event was first added to the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles that very year.  (Joan had already won the Boston Marathon in both 1979 and 1983.)

After Frank’s championship and surely after Joan’s extraordinary Olympic accomplishment, we Americans decided to emulate our two new heroes.  We donned our sweat suits and our Nike Waffle Trainers and Adidas County Striders, dutifully performed our stretching exercises, and headed out the door for our training run. 

The Peloponnese

Greece

May 4, 2015

Civilizations are born, grow, prosper, decline and disappear.

Empires are here for a moment and fade into history books.

Fortresses are built. Castles and walls are constructed, besieged, breached and conquered.

Here in Greece I encounter three such examples.

How many past examples do we need?

The American writer William Faulkner wrote: “The past is not dead.  It's not even past.”

Banjarmasin (pop 611,000)

South Kalimantan

Indonesia

March 7, 2015

05:00

Salamat Pagi – Good Morning

Before dawn, I am picked up by motorbike and delivered to a dock where an awaiting boat transports me up river.  The river is black.  The sky is black.  The shoreline, barely visible.

The delta city of Banjarmasin is known as the “Venice of the East.”  Four major rivers are interconnected by numerous canals.  The name of my river?  I haven’t a clue.

A thin daylight begins to illuminate the river’s mist.  And as the mist disperses, we encounter our morning goal.  

Martapura
South Kalimantan
Borneo
Indonesia

March 8, 2015

Frankly, I don’t know what to expect.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world.  And my sense is that in the remote areas of the archipelago, Islam tends to be practiced in a more conservative manner than in the areas near Jakarta, the capital.  

For example, the area of Aceh on the tip of the western island of Sumatra has a reputation for strict Islam.   Sulawesi, far to the east has the same reputation.  So, what will I find here in remote Kalimantan, the Indonesian area on the island of Borneo?

Palanga

Lithuania

September 16, 2014

Chat

Several years ago, while on a trip to London to visit my English cousin Dorothy and her equally English husband Roger, I attended a theatre performance where, by chance, I met a lovely woman from South Africa whose name was Jocelyn.  Together we planned some sightseeing for the next day.

When I mentioned my encounter and my surprisingly unplanned plans, my somewhat astonished cousin Dorothy queried, “Jan, how did you meet her?”  (According to British polite society, Jocelyn and I weren’t “properly introduced.”)  Roger immediately intervened and responded, “Jan chatted her up!”

Kaunas

Lithuania

September 19, 2014

The Eyes Cannot Answer “Why?”

The eyes.  The eyes.  Always the eyes!

The eyes remember.  The eyes see.  Do the eyes foretell?

The eyes know.  The eyes teach.   

The eyes know what happened.

Do the eyes know why?