As a school principal, I once had a conversation with a parent from Ukraine. His child was in my office because he had refused the bus driver’s direction to sit down when the bus was in motion. The boy showed he had mastered at least some of the English language when he swore at the bus driver.

The father was incensed that his son was in trouble. After all, he asserted, the United States was a place where people were strong, assertive and independent. His son didn’t like where he was sitting and wanted to change places. He was just (literally!) standing up for himself, the way any American would. He knew this was the American way, he said, because he watched Westerns on television.

I like to think the discussion that followed led him to disavow his badly skewed view of American Society, but the view of the U.S. society as a collection of self-centered, non-cooperative individuals does persist.

Our current crisis requires cooperation and concern for others, as well as ourselves. We are all connected. No one person or group can survive long-term if we act primarily as individuals.

We do have great expectations of our society. We often claim that Americans can solve any problem, no matter how difficult: but this is true only if we work together. The failure to do so leads to grim reality.

Stay healthy!

Peace

This post is the first in a series about people who inspire others. They are not celebrities, just real people who make a difference in our communities every day, simply by being themselves.  

My friend, Bob Schneider, has been many things in his life: husband, father, restorer of vintage cars and one wonderful Victorian home, an antique dealer, and a world traveler, just to name a few.

He has always shown his concern for his country and community. He enlisted in the Navy just after high school and is justifiably proud of being a Navy Veteran.

Many years later, Bob retired from SMUD, the local utility district. Both he and his wife, Louise. continued their service to the community by volunteering at Kaiser hospital.  Bob volunteered for fourteen years.

He ‘retired’ as a Kaiser volunteer, but that wasn’t the end of his service to the community. For the past nine years, he has been on patrol as a volunteer for the Roseville Police Department. Recently, he announced he will retire as of April 23, 2019.

He has volunteered numerous hours over a twenty-three-year period. Thank you for being such an inspiration.

I was in a Washington D.C. bookstore at the end of a wonderful sightseeing trip to The National Air and Space Museum, looking for a paperback to read on the plane ride home.  I found Melanie Benjamin’s  The Aviator’s Wife. Perfect, I thought. I already know quite a bit about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and I just saw the Spirit of St. Louis at the museum. This probably won’t take long to read and if I happen to leave it on the plane, it’s no big loss. (Not like leaving your Kindle!).  Being a bit of a history snob, I thought a Historical Novel couldn’t have much more than entertainment value.  I was completely wrong. It took more than a plane trip to read. When I got home, I found myself going to the computer to get more information about that period in world history.  Since historical fiction raises the question how much is historical fact and how much of this book is fiction, the author’s notes on that topic are very important. Ms. Benjamin’s notes were great!

After reading the book, I had to know more about Lindbergh, so I re-read A. Scott Berg’s Lindbergh. I read it when it first came out during the dark ages (1998). While I read it to compare some of the points of history between the two books, reading one after the other was just fun.

At a holiday party, someone recommended another historical novel, Stevenson’s Treasure, by Mark Wiederanders.   This is a story about part of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life. I was aware of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but I regarded him as an author of boys’ adventures stories. I knew he had spent some time in the Monterey-Salinas area, and I had lived in that area for several years. On top of that 100 year-old coincidence was the fact that the author apparently lives not too far from me. That was it. I was sold. I had to read that book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found myself checking the historical references, just as I had for The Aviator’s Wife, and they were wonderfully accurate.

I decided I really didn’t know enough about Robert Louis Stevenson, so I tackled  a biography written by G.K. Chesterton. I say tackled because G.K. Chesterton (1874-1935) is anything but an easy read. It was not a biography in the typical, linear sense, but more of a literary and social commentary. It gave me a further context for understanding Stevenson and the chance to read a brilliant, if confusing author.

I went on a treasure hunt of my own and had fun on the way.

Peace.