Dave’s 4th Post

January 16th Sunday

We docked in Dominica last night and while having breakfast I noticed a coed walk by with a 3-ring binder that had the following inscription on the cover: “How’s your Aspen?” I assumed she’s from Colorado and not inquiring about others’ body parts. A religious studies professor stopped by our table for some reason (everyone is super friendly) for a short chat.

That got Fred and I talking about how we ate communion wafers as kids and how few of today’s kids know what a communion wafer is. That in turn got me thinking about a possible short story I would title “The Wafer Maker.” It would feature the saga of a family business that spanned generations making communion wafers. The central theme would be the declining fortunes of the company over time as fewer and fewer “took communion” and the family fell on hard times. I probably won’t do it so someone feel free to run with the idea.

January 17th, Monday

Yesterday we visited a Carib Indian community and I see that Carol O’Neill has written an excellent account of the visit on her blog. Let me give you a little background. The Carib, now totaling about 3,000, were the indigenous inhabitants on Dominica and surrounding islands when Columbus arrived in 1492. The English moved into the northern Caribbean and the French into the south. Over time, the two European powers took over more islands and land and the sandwiched natives got squeezed into a smaller and smaller space. The Caribs on Dominica, originally coastal dwellers and fishermen, got pushed up into the interior highlands where they live today.

Most Americans, myself included, were taught in school that Columbus was a heroic figure who braved sailing off the edge of the world when he headed west. Not true. Educated Europeans knew the world was round but evidently the good nuns who taught me at St. Mark’s grade school didn’t get the memo. I also was not told how badly Columbus and his colleagues treated the natives, hunting them like rabbits for sport. For a more accurate account of events in “the age of discovery,” read Lies My Teacher Told Me.

In my previous blog, I described how distorted each of our individual maps are. We are all burdened with the heavy baggage of “our own truths.” I recall when hitchhiking around Europe in the summer of 1960, after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in American history, I had a memorable breakfast with a gentleman from India. We had both spent the night at a Dublin rooming house and over breakfast we discussed the Cold War that was in raging at the time.

I of course focused on the evils of the Soviet Union but my tablemate argued that the U.S. was not so well intentioned either. Being an expert on the American situation with a brand new degree to prove it, I thought this obviously well educated Indian was mistaken and I’ve never forgotten the encounter. I’ve learned since, after the atrocities and disaster of Vietnam, the ongoing disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that we currently have a military presence in over a 100 countries, including tens of thousands of troops in Germany and Japan, 65 years after World War II ended, that America’s lecturing megaphone perhaps should be muted a bit. It’s not that were so bad. It’s just that we’re not so different from previous great empires. It will be interesting on this journey to meet with folks from other countries, like I did with the Indian in the rooming house, to hear their views and opinions of America.

I stayed on the boat today to continue to recuperate from my cold/plus. Jean, who always wants to see everything, rented a cab for the afternoon with Joe and Carol O’Neill to see the island. I’m sure she’ll tell all about it on her blog. She left it to me to tell about the elementary school she stopped at where she was surprised to see CHARACTER COUNTS! very much in evidence. She took a number of pictures and chatted with students, a teacher, and the principal, whom she told about her husband’s involvement in CC.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been actively involved in CC for over a decade and helped bring the program to our school district, the Poway Unified School District, where it is thriving. CC promotes six character values that promote good behavior, Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship. It’s nonreligious and nonpartisan and practiced in thousands of schools across the country. A number of surveys indicate that where it is implemented it changes behaviors for the better. You can visit CC’s website at www.charactercounts.org.

You will notice in the pictures attached that all the students wear uniforms. The last picture is the principal who wants very much to have the pictures sent to her. She said no one ever sends the pictures after promising to do so. I’m going to make it a high priority to see that she gets the following pictures and others that Jean took.