Summertime Hiatus

Time for a summer hiatus. Time to celebrate what ought to be a string of less-than-working days from Juneteenth to the Solstice to Canada Day to July Fourth to Nunavut Day (July 9), just to make it inclusive for all North Americans. Back to posting around Sunday, July 10.

Yesterday I learned more sad news, that my old friend Ed Henderson has died. I’ve mentioned him periodically in BTST over the years, and I believe he was one of a handful of people who read it regularly. Last year I visited him at his home near Bellingham, Wash., and we had a fine time — as fine a time as his precarious health allowed. I’m very glad I went. Sometime in the not too distance future, I will write more about him.

On the Solstice, I took a look at the full moon. First one on the Solstice since 1948, they say. Looked like all the other ones I’ve seen, but it was pleasant enough.

Closer to home, as in our back yard, the clover is lush.

Schaumburg cloverWho considers clover a weed? Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native clover? Pleasing to gaze at, pleasing to lie on.
Payton dog 2016The dog knows that, too.

The G.I.’s Guide to Travelling in Europe

Among the many books at my mother’s house, I found a copy of The G.I.’s Guide to Travelling in Europe, by Pfc. Arthur Frommer, first printing, dated August 1955. The book isn’t crumbling yet, but at 60 years of age it’s distinctly yellow, and at risk of falling apart if I handle it too much. Probably the only reason it hasn’t fallen apart already is that no one has handled it much since my parents came home from Europe in 1956.
GI's Guide to Travelling in EuropeAt the risk of damage, I took a look inside the book. It’s precisely what I’ve read it is — the first modern travel guide for a mass audience. In this case, U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe in the mid-50s. In the case of its successor title by Frommer, Europe on $5 a Day, American civilians traveling to Europe during that decade who had neither the time nor funds for a Grand Tour-style trip. Which would be most people.

The focus is on how, rather than what. Chapters include: Army Travel Regulations, Free Air Force Flights, Train Travel in Europe, the G.I. and His Auto, Cities, Hotels & Restaurants, Army-Run Resorts, Talking Through Europe, Menu Translations, Changing Your Money.

GI's Guide to Travelling in Europe backThe book’s done in a conversational, nuts-and-bolts sort of style, and quite well written. Besides the fact that Frommer was filling an unfilled niche, I can see why his books succeeded: useful content, done well.

“But where do I, as the author of this thing, get off posing as an expert on the subject?” Frommer wrote in the book’s introduction. “I’m a G.I. about to rotate home after more than a year of Army service in Germany. This was my first trip to Europe, and I wanted to see lots of it. During that year, therefore, I’ve taken the full allotted leave period of 30 days. I’ve requested and received, in addition, a 3-day pass per month. I’ve also traveled on several 3-day weekends resulting from Army holidays.

“In this manner, during a year of busy Army duty, I’ve been able to spend a full 3 to 10 days at every one of the following places: Paris, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, Barcelona, the Island of Mallorca, Vienna, Florence, Venice, Zurich, Munich, Frankfort, Innsbruck, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam.

“The entire amount of this travelling has been done solely on the proceeds of an Army salary that has never been higher than a Pfc’s pay. No money from home has ever defrayed any of these costs. Nor have I gone without coffee, razor blades and fresh laundry during the on-post portions of my Army life.

“Nor have I endured any grinding discomfort on any of the trips described… as the miles piled up, I learned; and the ordinary accumulation of experience was supplemented by a constant search for the gimmicks and short-cuts of European travel. I wrote for regulations and interrogated everyone I met. I was a pest, but I was able to accomplish a type and amount of travelling on the continent which — without fear of exaggeration or boasting — would’ve cost the ordinary civilian tourist over a thousand dollars, as well as months of free time. All at the expense of our benevolent Uncle.”

I hope my parents got their 50 cents’ worth out of the book. I’ll wager they did. I know they went to London, Paris, Strasbourg, Rome, Venice, and some other places from a posting in Germany. I rarely used any of Frommer’s later books myself in Europe or Asia, but I consulted others in the same style, and so have benefited from his work as well.

I’m also reminded of something my friend Dan, stationed in Germany as a Army lieutenant in the mid-80s, told me. By then, of course, getting around cheaply was easier (and there was no euro to mug you in places that should be cheap, like Italy and Greece). A handful of his men, Dan said, made an effort to go as many places as free time would allow, a la Frommer. A good many others, however, were content to hang around nearby and drink Bud.

Frommer, by the way, is still alive at 86. A few years ago, my friend Ed met the man in New York and did some walking around with him there. He says that was quite an experience, and I believe it.

Ah, Haleakalā

In his TEDx Talk (see yesterday), Ed also mentioned a transformative experience – maybe transcendent experience — he had at Haleakalā, the enormous volcano on Maui. Brave fellow that Ed, walking into a volcano against medical advice.

Even against the advice of the National Park Service, which says re Haleakalā National Park: “The Summit and Kīpahulu Districts are remote. An ambulance can take up to 45 minutes to arrive at either district from the nearest town. People with respiratory or other medical conditions should also be aware that the summit of Haleakalā is at 10,000 ft.”

Can’t say that my experience at Haleakalā was transformative, except that incremental transformation one gets living day to day, with a handful of those days including things marvelous to behold. The vista down into the cone was certainly that, like no place I’d seen before.

Haleakala79-1Mars. I thought of Mars, with its rocks and rusty terrain. When I gazed down into Haleakalā in 1979, and took a few of my own pictures, the pictures taken by Viking were still pretty fresh. But I knew it was Earth; a rare part of Earth, accessible to the likes of me only because of the twists and turns of history and personal circumstance.

That day I made the acquaintance of the silversword, Argyroxiphium sandwicense macrocephalum, which grows nowhere else, though another subspecies grows on Mouna Kea.

Haleakala79-2Say that to yourself: The Silverswords of Haleakalā. Fun just to say. Sounds like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs lesser-known works.

Silversword79Plenty of fully grown men and women who didn’t exist when I took in the vista of Haleakalā and its silverswords are now loose in the world, so long ago was it. But I get some satisfaction from the almost certain knowledge that the vista hasn’t changed at all since then.

Ed in Maui

This is the video of a TEDx talk in Maui late last year, featuring my old friend Ed, whom I’ve known since the early ’90s. We both happened to be in the same part of Japan at the same time working for the same company.

On the whole, he’s right. The bucket list is an inane concept. Though we probably differ a bit in that I sometimes visit famed sights in large part because of their fame. What, I wonder, is all the fuss about?

More often than not, the place turns out to be famed for good reasons, and even if it’s something everyone everywhere knows about, you can still take something novel away from the experience. Take the Eiffel Tower, for instance. Can’t very well go to Paris for the first time and not visit that. As we sat directly underneath it, I thought, wow, this is a hell of a metal sculpture.

And there are places I’d visit in preference to others. That seems only reasonable. Iceland, say, rather than Bayonne, NJ. But if I never make it to Iceland? So it goes. Life is short, the world is large. Can’t go everywhere.