Confessions of an Immigrant

For many years I never thought twice, nor did any of my friends,

that I was what was known as an Alien Resident, a "Green Card" carrier. All through elementary and later high school, I was simply a kid (perhaps with a slight Brit accent). My folks came to the States (we always referred to, "The States") from Canada via five years in Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. I have a sister born there, but not sure if she's a Ceylonese or a Sri Lankan. Anyway, we emigrated to the States in 1940.

Fast forward to 1949. High school graduate, a summer job up in the Sierra Nevada mountains with the US Forrest Service and learning what real tough work was working in the mountains eradicating disease causing shrubbery, later doing fire suppression. Then a feeble start at junior college (while working nights for the San Mateo County Fire Department - - hey, I was an expert in fighting fires by digging fire breaks, no water hosing we).

And then Korea surfaced. Eligible for the draft, but no thank you; I'd like to chose my own destiny. Not quite ready for college, so why not join up, get the draft behind me, and then perhaps get back to school.

Being an enthusiastic Sea Scout the Navy was a logical choice.

Sorry, you're not a citizen. Marines (after all, they are a branch of the Navy and do things with boats). Nope, same story. Faulty eyesight meant not even trying the Air Force. So, what about the Coast Guard? After all, I knew something about small boats and the USCG are certainly into small boats. So, fibbing about my alien status I enlisted as a Coast Guardsman recruit.

The tempo of manpowering for Korea was in full swing and most

anything went. I was sent to a temporary training depot in San Diego, and it was great. Got my navy blue uniform - - the USCG lighter blue was yet to be introduced. We mixed with USN types ashore in what was then strictly a sailers' town. I quickly gained a level of respect knowing something about small boat handling (thanks, Sea Scouts), not hard to do with most every other recruit coming from the Midwest.

Then, called into the commandant's office.

"Jackson, your finger prints are not American."
"Yes, sir."
"In fact, not only aren't they AMERICAN, they're CANADIAN!"
"You're right, sir."

So, busted, but even after only four weeks, an honorable discharge, no less. Still have the certificate and lapel pin!

But, the draft was still looming. Yep, they could draft you even as an alien. But as an alien you couldn't join anything.

So, why not join my own army, in Canada? I'd read about them in National Geographic and they looked pretty cool. Up to Vancouver BC went I to join, only to discover that in spite of the Korean rush (yes, Canada was heavily involved) there was a three week waiting list. Finally enlisted and assigned to one of Canada's youngest regiments, The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, stationed in Calgary, Alberta. We jumped out of planes - - actually jumped 64 times, did over 25 before I ever actually landed in a plane. We waited to be rotated with our regiment's first battalion's return from Korea.

Then just before the rotation I was judged a lousy rifle shot so was sent to Officer Candidate School in Ontario, and then commissioned and assigned to my new regiment, one that would be my home for the rest of my service, the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada. Aye, laddie, wore a kilt for many a year. I did make it to Korea though, just before the truce and then for some months after.

Fifteen years later I emigrated back to "The States". And some years later, gave up my second "Green Card" and became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, no longer an alien or an immigrant.

On reflection, I don't think I ever felt not being a part of this 

country, even as a kid, nor when I returned as an adult. My

community was always where I was at the moment. And it was to my community that I found myself, and to which I gave my energy and support.



However,

I was a white (caucasian) immigrant.
I looked like and dressed like a local. 
I immigrated from the north, not from the south or east or west.
I wasn't fleeing from anything (well, cold weather, perhaps); I wasn't a refugee.
I spoke English - - well, a sort of a morphed Canadian/American accent.
I belong to a religious minority (active mainline Christians are only 13% of Washington State's population).
I wasn't branded as something suspicious even before stepping foot here.
I was welcomed as a new resident. 
I was pretty indistinguishable.
I was never aware of being profiled.

Yet I was an immigrant. So what about today's immigrants?

Go figure.

Reflections on 9/11/2001

A Different View: Reflections on 9/11

[First posting September 2011, an extraction from a sermon preached on September 23, 2011 at Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle WA  now re-posted with some updating as a remembrance of September 11, 2001.]

We were returning from the Canadian Gulf Islands were we had been cruising for a couple of weeks. On the last day of vacation we were docked at LaConner, sitting out on the aft deck of the Lady Mick, enjoying a cup of coffee. The cell phone rang and there was my stepdaughter, Lindsay:

"Are you listening to the news?"

"No"

"You better. The world is falling apart!"

It was Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. Everything was falling apart. And we joined with the whole world as the horror unfolded. As we cast off and eventually entered the Sound, in the near distance an  ominous grey shape appeared as a USN vessel steamed south, almost at flank speed, going where? The Locks were deserted but open; the lock crew wondering and waiting to hear if the locks would be closed. Everything, everywhere, had a pall of frightened uncertainty.

That evening, secured at Thunderbird Marina in Lake Union, watching TV I saw for the first time the horrible sight of someone jumping from one of the towers. I chokingly pointed this out to to my step-daughter, who had joined us aboard. She replied "And some of them were holding hands." (USA Today reported as many as 200 jumped that day.) Horrific!

The next days and weeks were filled with unimaginable images, with uncontrollable feelings and emotions, with confusion, and at the same time, like a drowning man, the struggle to try to make sense out of this non-sense. I found that I simply could not go to church (a somewhat normal practise in times of stress or need) for the rest of that week. I found myself quite withdrawn as I sifted and sorted what I was trying to fathom. I caught glimpses of prayer services taking place around the country, including Seattle. I watched the service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

I did get to St. Mark's Cathedral that Sunday. It was good to have been there. As I looked around I saw many familiar faces (comforting). I also saw many new faces, young faces, many not church folk. The mood was one of need, of hoping, of a desire to find some sort of meaning in the midst of non-meaning. We were simply a collection of refugees.

Following the service I discovered an old friend visiting Seattle. Bob is a retired priest. He is also a retired USAF officer having flown with the Strategic Air Command before going to seminary. Bob told me that he had somehow managed to get through to his congressman, asking him if he had the guts to vote against the pending legislation empowering the president to use all military force necessary in response to the terrorist attack. He had responded that he simply could not vote that way at this time. (Only one congresswoman, from Oakland, CA, so voted against that sweeping legislation.) Bob went on suggesting to his congressman that only real response we could make was - - to forgive.

(Lieutenant Colonel, the Rev. Robert Beveridge died September 2, 2016, a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament   and a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation)

Today, 2011, sifting and sorting through a plethora of editorials, blogs, where are we, really, a decade and a day later? Even Sunday's comics, from Baby Blues, Sally Forth, Blondie, to Doonesbury make their own comment. Where are we?

Jon Talon, in yesterday's (September 22, 2001) Seattle Times, wrote, "In attacking the U.S. . . . one of Osama bin Laden's major goals was to provoke a hysterical American overreaction that would begin bleeding the nation into economic ruin. Mission accomplished?"

Tony Karon, NY Times, helps with some perspective, describing a murderous crime scene in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania becoming a spiritual staging ground for an international war against "a tiny network of transnational extremists, founded on the remnants of the Arab volunteers who'd fought in the U.S. backed Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union."

And the cost? Let alone the trillion dollars spent, more critically the immoral cost of lives, with almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive disability payments, with more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, with veteran suicides topping 18 (now 20-22) per day in recent years, and family breakups, are simply too incalculable to understand. 

For many other Americans the decade has been one of growing prejudice as Muslims have been cruelly subjected to Islamophobia, reminiscent, if perhaps not surpassing, that experienced by the Japanese-Americans during WWII.

Jim Wallis writes in Sojourners, "For a moment the world's last remaining superpower was vulnerable, and we all felt it. . . . in our sudden sense of vulnerability we were now, and perhaps for the first time, like most of the world, where vulnerability is an accepted part of being human. And in those first days, following 9/11, America, not the terrorists, had the high ground. The world did not identify with those who cruelly and murderously decided to take innocent lives in response to their grievances - - both real and imagined. Instead the world identified with a suffering America - -  even the front of the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline, 'We are all America'."

Is this still the case today?

Ten years later, on our local ABC affiliate, a young woman interviewed said we need to move, we need to remember, we need to forgive. One can only hope. The toll on us, let alone this whole world, this last decade has been unprecedented. To heal is perhaps the new mission to be accomplished.

Eric Darton, author of Divided We Stand: A Biography on New York City's World Trade Center, was being interviewed by NPR's Robert Seigel on "All Things Considered" just three days after the attack. Towards the end of the interview, Darton recounted that the night after the towers were destroyed, his 9-year old daughter climbed up on the kitchen ladder to look out of their Manhattan apartment window at the scene of the destruction. Night was falling, and she said to her father: "I think I'm beginning to see the new view."

We need to recall 9/11/2001, not as just the horrific event it truly was, but now as a means, a hope, a deep sense of resolve to heal - - in all areas of our national and interrelated world's life. For we are, and we can perhaps again be, a people that can "see the new view."

[And this timely posting from United Methodist pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes' blog Unfolding Light.]

Fifteen years after 9/11
what is worth remembering?


How fragile we are.

How deeply we need each other.

How little our differences matter.

That in our vulnerability
we are most human.

That we can always respond to violence
with violence or with peace.

That violence begets violence.

That in danger, chaos and trauma
we can choose to come together.

That you always have a choice
to contribute to the world's hurt
or its healing.

That we are one.

That entering into the world's suffering
is divine.

That the world is not ending yet.

How beautiful it is
when we care for each other.

An Anniversary Celebration

Anniversary Celebration?

And just how would you celebrate the anniversary of your marriage other than walking along a river shore, stepping carefully on the rocks and over driftwood logs, or looking at a great herd of elk grazing? How else would one?

Package all this in the context of two days at one of Washington's finest parks, Dosewallips State Park, at Brinnon, on the Hood Canal. Actually, we've only stayed at three Washington State parks, one being at Vantage, high on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River - - beautiful setting until dusk when the wind vortexes down the river canyon, causing all sorts of damage to unsuspecting campers (locals warned us). The other being Fort Worden, just north of Port Townsend and on the Strait of Juan de Fuca (and setting for the movie "Officer and a Gentleman").

But Dosewallips is by far our favorite, and our second time here. Great open spaces, lots of families simply enjoying the last days of summer (local schools start August 31st). Weather in the 80s. We watch an unending stream of kids, all ages, cycling, running, scootering, unfettered by parental hovering and simply enjoying being kids and free. Kids and nature at their best. 

This morning, walking Jax-the-Bichon, June was asked if she saw "them". "Them?" Yes, the resident

herd of elk, about 60 strong, moving through the campground, led by a magnificent large bull. We actually saw the herd later, grazing out in the marshland where the Dosewallips merges with the canal.

It has been a marvelous 28-years of marriage and partnering for us, and this seemed a marvelous way to celebrate.

As the day closes, and the evening shadows lengthen, bikes and scooters and strollers now lie quietly alongside RVs and tents and cabins. And the park settles and is still.

Quiet, as late into the night a single coyote yips somewhere in this magnificent Olympic Forrest.

And all is well and all is wonderful.

Addendum

The day we were leaving the park we woke just before 6:00 AM, to this amazing sight right outside our motorhome - - there must have been close to 90 Roosevelt Elk grazing!

This Is Your Century

With thanks to Mike Sato's Salish Seas and Weather, a delightful but so important topic.This is Your Century. Eric Becker's video with words by Paul Hawken

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CruiseMasters Is Closing Down

CruiseMasters Boating is closing down.

Nineteen years ago CruiseMasters Boating Instruction had its first client. Now, 617 clients later, representing 2,405 hours of instruction, CruiseMasters is going on the “hard”.

It has been a great experience. An early client turned out to be the owner of  Seattle’s notorious telephone sex operation. Then there were the “second-in-command” sessions at Seattle’s premier yacht club, empowering women to gain their own boat handling skills. (An observation: women make excellent, if not better boat handlers than their male counterparts in many, many cases, if they only would believed in themselves.) Helping with various boat make-specific rendezvous, such as the annual Tollycraft and Grand Banks gatherings. Delivering vessels to their new owners and moorages. It was all great.

At one time we explored franchising CruiseMasters to Southern California, but even with enthusiastic possibilities, that proved not to be

And there was instructing with the boating industry’s Certified Professional Yacht Broker program, as well as helping design the now mandatory Washington State Boater Education program.

At first it was rough starting, involving a lot of personal contact marketing and proving quality of both instruction and content. Talk about winning confidence. As the program grew, most new clients soon came from marine insurance brokers, boat brokers themselves (bless you all), marine surveyors and boatwrights, and former clients moving up and needing recertification, or referring new clients based on their own experience with the program.

Even before marketing we needed an internet presence. A webpage, still in use all these years, was created, actually written in HTML, way before the days of do-it-yourself and what-you-see-is-what-you get programs. Chris Jackson designed the CruiseMasters logo. And brochures were designed and printed.

Clients came from the San Juan Islands to the north, Olympia to the south, from Lake Sammamish to the east, Port Townsend to the west. Clients still keep in touch, describing their new adventures, celebrating their mastering of boat handling, or asking follow up questions.

Coaching, enabling, has been a real joy. To experience a client’s “Aha” is both humbling and made it all so worthwhile. We didn’t produce just skill; we strove to produce confidence. And a big plus is simply introducing folk to the experience of being on the water, the richness, the joy, and yes, even the spirituality of life on the water, especially here on the Salish Sea we call our home and those waters beyond.

All this started, at least in recent history, with June and me, and our high school freshman daughter, Lindsay, living aboard our classic wooden Lady Mick on Seattle’s Lake Union. As a post-retirement lark, in 2012 I studied and qualified for my US Coast Guard 100-ton Master’s License. From there it got serious, instructing at a boat leasing company on Elliot Bay, then being hired by Argosy Cruises to skipper the MV Sightseer for the Lake Union-to-downtown-Pier 57 lock’s tour. And then came CruiseMasters.

Now my Master’s ticket is soon to expire, with fourscore and three years behind me, my body reminding me that I’m not as agile as I think I should be, roading in our motorhome (yes, it is an Airstream, a “Land Yacht, go figure) opening up even newer adventures. it seems prudent to retire my nameboard and tie up. All suggest a time to close this log.

To all, and there are thousands of you out there, who helped make CruiseMasters a very credible and valuable part of our boating environment, thank you!

It has been a fantastic cruise!

Peace,

Mike

CruiseMasters is a program of  

Post Baton Rouge

Violence never resolves issues or concerns, and most often only leads to more violence. And lethal violence is never Okay, no matter cause or effect.

Wondering if the shooting and killing of the police officers in Baton Rouge and in Dallas would have happened if not for the police shooting and killing (murder?) of Philando Castile and Alton B. Sterling, not to mention our nation's love affair with unbridled gun possession?




The police, who are sworn to provide citizen safety, are in a tough in-the-middle spot, and I salute their being there for us, as we decry their being murdered. Yet it was police who were involved with the death of Philando and Alton (and a legion of others).




Yes, there are reforms being instituted across this nation, but will they come soon enough and be effective enough? One can only hope and trust.


Today starts the GOP convention, with dynamics yet to be seen and open-carry being allowed as a "right" and candidates unleashing racism, intolerance, and bigotry inflaming a dangerous and rude following (are there any adults in the room?).




Thoughts and prayers are such empty utterings when there are such obvious steps this nation can take to make real the prayers. But our highest forum just went on a summer vacation. So nice. Is there any real concern?

Just musing, saying, and wondering . . . .