The Sultan Ahmet mosque or the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Humbling thousands of years of history!

On our way to the Hamburg Airport early this morning. Grump kids and adults, me not wanting to say goodbye but having to once again leave people I love. I understand the attraction of not ever leaving so as to avoid this pain. Can one see the world by staying? Learn about I am sure but to have your soul changed and challenged? I know this to be impossible. It is the 'foreign' that enriches.

As I write this we are high over Germany flying to a country I've never been to yet would like to visit if not live. Such it is for almost any place I've ever set for in or even read about. The Congo scares me as do all the warring factions and shear butchery occurring there.

I send my greetings, respect and aloha to any reading this. When and I'd you do travel please check out the following books.…mine is: Istanbul: The Collected Traveler. An Inspired Companion Guide, edited by Barrie Keeper A Vintage Departures Original.

There are more in the series. It is a very great read, fascinating, informative, luscious and eminently readable in a long sitting or simple, easy delicious bites.

www.vintagebooks.com

You will not regret getting this. It is not a guide but full of history, fun, food, culture and so much more.

A Hui Hou.

David

Final Dispatch / Bremen, Deutschland

Wie Gehts es Ihnen? Sehr Gut!?

Tomorrow I fly from Hamburg to Istanbul. The last two days have been incredible romps through the past. More on this later but I visited my family childhood home in Florsheim Am Main (village) from 1965-68. I met the woman we rented the house from and she remembered us fondly. It looks so different now but still 'our' house. Then I hunted down some old friends not seen in the past 42 years and they remembered me at first sight. They were incredible then and still are. Heinz and Anna - had a DVD of an old 8 mm film of their wedding and there was my family, Mom, Dad, Paul, myself and even my grandmother. How beautiful we all were so long ago. I cried a lot, with some melancholy, joy and thankfulness.

Also saw the Gossens and they are just incredible and wonderful people whom I hope we will stay in touch with.

Much more later but so good to see old friends.

Tschuss -

David

Dispatch from Frankfurt, Deutschland. Spent the day on the A3 autobahn driving South to Frankfurt staying at the Frankfurt City Campground right in the middle of the city. Pitched a big tent and went to some old friends house in Dietzenbach just off highway 661. Christoph is married to a woman from Iowa that grew up only a one hour drive from where my mom grew up in Mason City, Iowa. It's a small village sometimes and I wish people would regard that before they turn to war.

Tomorrow I hope to see Christoph and Regina's parents in the morning. After that a continuation of my trip down memory lane although at this point it's more of a autobahn then a lane!

I left messages with my brother today. No call from him about my mom. Just wish to know the details of how she is even though she has called me. She is out of pain at least so that's good.

Germany, need it be said has changed so much. I can see my street on Google maps but it is no longer a dead end to a field and a World War II bomb shelter at the end of that street. I wonder at the past and all that it contains, memories, people, hopes, dreams, disappointments, wishes, births, death and everything in between. Id love to know what happens beyond my death but am not sure I could stand to be immortal. Too much sadness and regret at watching the centuries pass by, the people you love. It already breaks my heart at times.

Hard to believe I write this from near my childhood home where I last set foot on forty-two years ago. I remember the last drive out of our driveway in our Volkswagen, my red pogo stick lying in the green grass between the two rows of stone for the tires. How vivid but as if in a dream.

What will I find? What will I learn? That you can't go home again like Rosseau? I learned this long ago. My goodbyes only grow more difficult and the sadness of parting more of melancholy suffused with sustained and lasting joy mixed in.

I do not know what I shall see or discover but my journey to this secret place has taught me much.

David

Tomorrow we drive from Bremen to Frankfurt on the autobahn @ 200 kph all the way. Off to see friends and the house Paul and I grew up in from 1965-68 in Florsheim am Main (about 20 minutes E/SE of Frankfurt Airport). No doubt a rush of memories. My car was towed today to the tune of 180 Euros so am calling it a learning cultural experience and sometimes you must decide that it hurts 'good' when the alternative is to whinge. Tschuss!

Fotos are being posted to Picasa online so please drop me a line to get in if interested.

Dispatch from abroad: Bremen, Deutschland, June 26, 2010

Wie Gehts meinen Damen und Herren! Live or semiconscious at 0445 here on Falkenstrasse staying with my friends Benno, Dina, Kai und Taylor. The direct opposite time difference is a bit dodgy but I am having a great time. Reconnecting with old friends first met in Hawai'i in 1990. I have not seen them since about 2005 or 2006 when I had gone back to Hawai'i for our friend Colin Denney's wedding. Never heard from Colin again, sadly enough that his is standard operating procedure although he is a fine person. But, I digress.

Memories of growing up in Germany have come flooding back but many are insubstantial and what I call 'eine kleine kind' or 'little kid' memories. This includes the color and taste of liquorish candies, the smells and sights such as a barge on the River Elbe. I grew up in a small village called Florsheim am Main, South of Frankfurt and West of Wiesbaden. Our street was Landstrasse but I do not know the number. I remember seeing and smelling the paper factory. I remember playing with our friends and the local dare was to run down the stairs to the World War II bomb shelter and touch the doors and make it back up.

Just children then, we had no idea of the cataclysm that had shaped the world and so many of the attitudes of a generation. To us it was nothing and it was only later that I learned of the camps, Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and the hundreds of others that existed within the sphere of Nazi influence. We Americans like to deceive ourselves into thinking that it could not happen in America, that surely we are better then the Nazi's. But for me, I have seen too much. My mother took my brother and I to a camp and for years, every once in awhile I would have dreams, sometime nightmares of half imagined Nazi's still alive to terrorize me and the people I loved.

To this day I wonder why my mother took us, yet when asked she has a clear answer. She thought we should know. Indeed, that is a very clear lesson . . . that we must never forget. In the broader sense it applies to all evil that is done in the world. I was not damaged by what I saw but to my dying day it will affect me and i think in no small measure has contributed to my own quest to do some good in the world while I walk among you.

We hope to drive to my old home in a few days. I hope we can meet some old friends, hoist a few beers and maintain some tenuous hold on a distant relationship. I am glad I have come, not only to celebrate the ties that bind but also I think so I can do my own remembering. Not only of my own past but to remember it all, to not forget, to deny the naysayers their insane and ignorant quest to deny us all the privilege of knowing evil and the sacrifice made by so many. After all, I take care of many World War II veterans every week while their numbers grow less each day.

I am having a challenge in connecting to my friend's wireless Vodafone network. My iPhone picks up the network, I type in the passcode yet it cannot lock onto it. In this way I hope to post some fotos and other dispatches from Germany and then Turkey in another week. I bought a local phone yet am also having connection issues. calling the US for about five minutes was eight Euros, one Euro being about 1.25 US at this time.

I am missing my friends at work and send them a shout out. It is good to be in Germany again. I called my brave mother yesterday and she once again said she is doing fine and reassured me that I should be here. Yet still, I long to be by her side, doing my Nurse Manly thing for her out of the gratitude I have for doing her Mothering to me for the last 49 years of my life. When she dies, it will be a loss. Yet as so many friends and coworkers said to me . . . Carpe Diem.

For there is no other time but now.

David

Business class from New York to London is something I could get use to quite easily. Kudos to the staff at JFK's American Airlines for an upgrade, their laughter and kindness.

AA178 SFO/JFK/Heathrow/Hamburg

Aloha and halfway to the Big Apple. Once I land I have 55 minutes to wend my way through JFK airport to find my flight to London. I have no checked baggage so anticipate no issues on that end. Not bad for three week trip to Germany and Istanbul really, only a small backpack and a wheeled carry on. I will see my dearest friends in Germany that I knew in graduate school in Hawai'i. They live in Bremen, just outside of Hamburg. I land there about 1800 June 25, 2010, pick up a rental car and spend a week with them. I am very excited, great people and they have two incredible,beautiful children.

It will be interesting to see Germany again after so many years - forty to be exact. I left in 1968 and have only been back albeit briefly. It was only 20 years after the Second World War that I was there and the new enemy then were the Russians. We always seem to manufacture a new enemy to fit the times.

I am exhausted and my mind continuously goes to my mother. Dying of cancer, but not actively or else I would not be making this trip, I admire her so much and she is so brave. It is a choice and she is a great example for me and others. I established three numbers for her and others to call, a San Francisco Skype number, a European mobile number and my regular mobile number. I wrestled with this decision more than many tough calls I have had to make. Initially I was not going to go but my mom even asked me to please go after knowing that I will return instantly if she or my brother and his wife need me. The Doctors encouraged me, my workmates encourage me to so . . . so here I sit at 36,000 feet in total comfort. Only 1.5 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours so soon I will be passing out.

I look forward to what is to come on this trip but still, I miss my mother and I continue to hold her close.

Thanks for reading. Malama pono, a hui hou.

David, signing off from somewhere over America en route to Germany.

My mother lies in the UCSF Emergency Department, dying too slowly by
her courageous estimate. I am reduced to tenacious advocate for pain
meds, imaging, admission, palliative care. But not death and alas, no
dominion over death, not I, not this time. I shall accept it but
begrudgingly initially. Till the woman who bore me embraces it and
death embraces her, it will be a trying journey beset on all
sides by the ravening dogs of war.

So I play many roles, ER Nurse Man, advocate but most of all I yearn
to be just her son and as she slips the surly bonds of earth I will
tend to her body and soul. I will clean, dress, feed, comfort, read to
and most of all love her as a son.

Thank you for reading.

David

Istanbul

I'm reading, Istanbul: The Collected Traveler. An Inspired Companion
Guide.

On page xxiic' I am interested in the opinions of people who want to
know (italics) Istanbul, not just see (italics) it.

That takes a lifetime but I'm going to give it a try for two weeks.

Cheers,

D

David McCullough

Listening to NPR about the man Tom Debaggio (sp?) with Alzheimers and
my thoughts turn to my mother who is dying and my own fate. This is
not about me, not at all but I'm scaredcfor my mother and for myself
too. I'm alone albeit with a strong and loving network of friends. But
I have no family or children of my own and my heart fills with what
might have been. I'm still so lucky and blessed no matter what.

Aloha,

David

I walked to the oceans edge tonight and yearning, reached for warmer environs.

Caught in the tug and tow of life and deaths endless pull. My mother
lies awake, her thoughts so fresh and full of youth but also of her
impending death.

I comfort her as well as I can but I fear for us and I long for
comfort too. Now, it is my turn on earth to give and in turn be given this
gift of life, then death with my mother who is loved so much.

David

Upcoming Journey to Germany and Turkey

Aloha - June to July 2010 I will be journeying to Bremen, Germany for one week and then to Istanbul, Turkey for two weeks. I will be visiting close friends whom I knew in Hawai'i and then to Istanbul with friends. I wonder at the 'carbon cost' of all the flights and if in the end if there is a difference in if one chooses not to travel in that cost. But as it always does the world beckons and while I will not be working there I know that I will wish that I was. I detest tourism but I will be one at least for a bit. I'll try to stay away from the blatant tourist traps - my goals have always been to spend time with the people, to learn the culture, customs, food and politics but most of all to do my best to connect and return the welcome I am so often given.

Thanks for reading.

So this is life,
my life, thus far as I sit in San Francisco rain and fog obscura.
Obscuring my heart.

In this uniquely American place,
In a proper French restaurant
Absolute knowing that I will never have Paris
And it's beautiful women I want so much.

The French in San Francisco
An American soul lost but anchored here for now
So I gaze on my streets
As I look with so much love at my mother so brave in her dying.

I am blessed in the knowing that I am where I must be.
And that someday . . . I will have Paris and it me, lost in a dream.

Seaview Ridge Road on the top of Meyers Grade at 0645 this beautiful
morning.

A perfect day and night contemplated as I sit here by my campfire outside my little old 1903 house on Seaview Ridge. Now referred to as Camp David by Paul and Anna - my brother and sister in law. So I contemplate my existence and mortality to make sense of it knowing my time left diminishes and I think of what is left undone, wanted, needed. Under these stars, while certainly beautiful, my sense of myself is that in the larger scheme of geologic time is my irrevelancy. The stars, planets and universes wheel around and through me. I send these protons, electrons and quarks throughout the universe and just maybe I trick myself into thinking that I matter. But I do not. One hundred years from now I will not be remembered and these words, if lucky, may be archived somewhere on some data collection in some salt mine some where on or off this planet. I want to have mattered but I am not sure that it is important except to my attachment to my ego. I have tried to do good while here and although
the way has not always been clear I have stuck with the path.

Late night thoughts after a long mountain bike ride along the San Andreas Earthquake fault and lakes created by them. A sun filled day, lucky to be alive and blessed to be with friends that love me, and I them.

Thanks for indulging me, for reading this.

David

Thoughts for a Peace Corps Volunteer Soon to Depart

I received a request to speak with a new Peace Corps Volunteer who will soon depart to a South Pacific Country but they do not know where yet. Here is most of the text of my response . . . placed here because . . . well, you will see.

************
If I have the time and inclination I always love to talk about Peace Corps and my experience . . . albeit that was over 20 years ago which shocks the hell out of me every time I think about it.

I was in Fiji 1985-1987. It was tough but also one of the times of my life one never forgets. Simply staying the first six months was an accomplishment in and of itself. You will alternately hate and love it. It will change you forever, alter your outlook on the world and your soul, turn you into a different person, a better person and forever let you more easily adopt the outlook, feelings and perspective of the 'other' . . . whomever and however you conceive of what and who the 'other' is. You will be afforded the rare and valuable opportunity to be an outsider, first, upon your arrival to your adopted home and then perhaps even more importantly, upon your return to the United States. The reverse culture shock can be amazing and even more impacting upon your psyche in some ways than your initial culture shock entry.

I envy you this chance, this opportunity although I am very happy in most parts of my life. I once was married to a Fijian Nurse (divorced many years ago) but return to Fiji now and then to meet old friends, visit my ex in-laws, look for work and try to find meaning in how my heart and soul was captured by the people and culture I grew to love so much. I eventually completed a Masters in Community Psychology degree at the University of Hawai'i and my thesis was on Fijian Values. I lived in Hawai'i for almost ten years and after Fiji was really the only place I felt at home, at peace, comfortable in my own skin and that I belonged (despite being an outsider forever because I am a 'white boy from the suburbs!'). Yet I have been that way since I was born . . . my dad was an Air Force pilot and I lived all over the bloody place, Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Virginia, New Mexico, Germany. So my Peace Corps experience is an extension of my life and values with the emphasis on Peace and not the War Corps. Still though, even now I am an ER nurse and work at the San Francisco VA hospital. In my heart of hearts I yearn so to once again depart these storied shores not only to seek adventure but to be able to contribute and try, oh so hard to make a difference. You can in Peace Corps but the changes wrought upon you will be ever so much greater than those you can even dream to attempt to make in your host country and adopted home.

In rereading this sudden and unplanned outpouring (really!) I regret that I made this more about me but I guess I did it to show you the deep and lovely changes that Peace Corps allowed me to experience, the person that it helped me become. In my final words here and now as you read this I leave you with this brief story. I graduated UCLA in Political Science and then left for Peace Corps. When I asked my philosophy professor about doing it or not doing Peace Corps he said that I had nothing to lose, that I would look back in my life and ask myself if I would have been happy not knowing? You have already decided, made the leap, the commitment so the story may be somewhat irrelevant but I thought it worth repeating.

You are in for one of the adventures of a lifetime. Keep a blog, a journal, sights and sounds. Go, love, enjoy, work hard when you can but most of all, learn to let go and be comfortable with uncertainty, with not knowing what to do or how to do it. Learn to be a baby in your new culture. Be a 'hard driver' but not too hard. Learn to soak it all in. Learn to shut up, to be quiet, to observe, observe, observe. We Americans fill our heads with endless chatter, we have to sell and resell and package ourselves all the time. That may not work wherever you are going depending on your work and who you are with.

Sick of China's aging, paranoid and dangerous Leadership

The United States is guilty of stupidity from Conservatives and Liberals alike but really . . .

Chinese Communist Party official Zhu Weiqun said there would be
"corresponding action" if the meeting went ahead.

This from the BBC. The Chinese leadership is stupid and ignorant if they think they can prevent the US from doing many things. They do not have that type of leverage yet . . . but perhaps in a hundred years. I can hardly wait - too bad I won't be around to see all the rednecks and conservatives have their precious America changed before their ignorant, fascist and exclusive eyes. Rant and rave I will.

Better yet, once again China emulates the emperors of old, be the Tang Dynasty and beyond by erecting the so called 'Great' Firewall and coming up with the 'Ghostnet' to maintain the stifling subjugation and enslavement of the Chinese Spirit. This same spirit of opression that murdered one of my best friend's brothers, shot in the back at Tianmen Square that fateful June day.

I am not a China watcher or expert. For that I recommend James Fallows who writes for the Atlantic Monthly. China will become a greater world power than the United States. We have spent our way into the greatest debt in history and there is nothing to respect about a country that has done that. A once bright shining beacon of hope (yeah, right) and possibility spent into oblivion of multiple wars and a conservative movement that just wants more of the same they got under Bush. Conservatives whose last best hope is Sarah Palin, god help us from the likes of this complete and dangerous idiot who I would personally lock up and starve that stupid wench till she was dead. She will kill ever more Americans with no health care and new wars to protect our right to buy whatever we want and screw the rest of the world.

I apologize for our behaviour to the rest of the world.

Getting help to Haiti

Here is a list of organizations involved with helping Haiti. I have signed up with Interaction.org and CIDI.org in my own attempt to get over to Haiti. Finally I really know (besides just a feeling) that I have very solid skills to be able to help in the rapidly changing situation in Haiti.

http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti

If you are looking to donate to an organization working in Haiti and other parts of the world check the link out.

What I am sick of is people who do not donate because they state that the money will not get to Haiti or be diverted. Most organization do not divert funds anymore - especially after the debacle the Red Cross faced after the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11/2001. I heard someone say today they would rather 'give money to a bum on the street' then send money overseas. I wrote this idiot/jerk off right away as a know it all ignorant American.

Do something people, anything. I donated money to Partners in Health and the Red Cross. Now, I am trying to donate my skills and time. Lets hope I find a taker.

Thanks for reading,

David

Trying to get to Haiti after the Earthquake

I have applied to at least three organization to go to Haiti and assist after the earthquake hit last week. I have Emergency Room experience (not to mention hospice, pediatrics and PTSD experience) and am a Firefighter/Rescue and EMS responder in a remote area. In short, I have many many skills, medical and otherwise that I can put to use. I have cross-cultural experience and generous amounts of cross-cultural experience.

It is frustrating but I hope in the next month that I am able to find a way to help even if it is for a short time.

Aloha Mrs. Walsh upon leaving the planet at 0155. Malama pono, a hui
hou. Rest in peace, safe journeys, thanks for so much love and wow,
Morris is one of the greatest sons for you and my friend. Thank you
Mrs. Walsh, thank you. You are missed.

I'm currently in Sacramento, California sitting with a friend of mine
whose mother is dying. Death is a reflection of life. A friend sent me
an article awhile ago and the title was something like . . . we are
born towards dying. Here is the link.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/01/born-toward-dying

Very thoughtful. I'm not religious in any conventional sense. I like
to think I live an ethical life but then again so did Uncle Joe Stalin.

So I sit shiva with my friend. His mom closer to death then life but
comfortable, loved and pain free. The things we endure as humans! How
lucky I am and it is just enough to have clean water, food and
shelter, to not be hunted or tortured or have my land and business
surrounded by checkpoints and walls.

An honor to sit with my friend and his dying mum, his girlfriend and
simply be together in death and in life.

Professor Tony Marsella, PhD Psychology and David McCullough, RN, MA
Psychology. Tony was my thesis advisor at the University of Hawai'i. I
had not seen him till today in over 10 years. His wit, intelligence
and empathetic understanding are writ large. I miss working with him.

ER Warriors

So they come to us in pain and agony.
Shorn of their boyhood John Wayne dreams of glory, mud, battle.

These warriors, these few mighty warriors,
Reduced in their age but still to fight,
In their dreams,
their daily lives.

Pierced by hot velocity lead,
Claymores spit their scars of money for the profiteers of war
Who cloak themselves in the guise of patriotism and protection of the
motherland.

Yet no innocents these my fine young men. Killed or killing,
Died or dying,
They know the crack and thump and hiss of life and death and war.

These are my comrades,
Though I know not of war
But all too much of their pain.

David McCullough

Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/29/schneier.air.travel.security.theater/index.html

In the air at 38,000 feet over Memphis and found this great article
when reading a Twitter post from Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly publishing.
Thoughtful and I found myself in agreement.

Happy New Year to all.

David

Memory

Visiting my brother, his wife and son this Christmas I chance upon my
grandfather's old brown leather bag holding all of his old marbles
from childhood. The grandfather I never knew, who, because of my
mother's historical memory editing, is far more perfect in death then
any of us are in life. Despite this, the old brown leather bag
inscribed with "The First National Bank, Bagley, Iowa" lures me in
with its promise of memory, the colored handmade jewels of childhood
spilling forth a sea of my own childhood memories in a rush of history
and longing for a never known grandfather murdered by the cigarette
corporations, longing for my father murdered in his own turn by the
same carnivorous bastards and so it goes.

So they spill upon the table for me to weigh in the palm of my beating
heart, listening to the whack of marbles, echoing. Suspended now in
time, those children's voices merge into our own.

I see the broken marbles, the ones who are whole, glass and ceramic.
Uneven in their magnificant beauty, they are the bearers of ancestral
memory and I hear the voices of who we were, are and will be. Cracked,
yet unbroken they were made for a time and country much less
interested in perfection then practicality. They betray themselves
with simplicity of purpose, in being rather than just appearences.

I long for family, family that never was, family that died too early
from corporate greed, and I long for the faint promise of what has
been and might be.

I roll the marbles.

David