seanessay.com
There was a time when I mock-grouched, “Work colleagues can travel home to Asia and Africa, while I can’t even afford to fly to Saskatchewan.” (the next province over) Then a colleague at work, one year, flew to see the WWI battlefields in France. Well. So I decided to finally start budgeting too: Being already thrifty, the only place to save was on dining out. Gotta love those home-cooked cans of stew.
There was a time when an engineer I knew would fly off to Arabia to scuba dive in warm water, so I would say, “You, you’re going to get on that plane and me, I’m driving in the snow up to Edmonton.” I economized by staying at a big old “cowboy hotel” with toilets and bathtubs down the hall. I would try to be a little extravagant, trying to pay extra to have a toilet in my room, but there were only five such rooms. So when they were all taken I would have to save a little money, despite myself.
My passport shows I have already been to London four times; this week’s trip is to mark my retirement. Besides, there was a seat sale. Hence dismal February. I would like to quaver in self pity, “I’m going to be a starving pensioner, so this will be my last time taking a plane.” But no: ‘Forewarned by friends, I am forearmed by budgeting,’ meaning: merely going down to part-time hours, instead of totally quitting. (My senior friends are really hurting)
Everyone says travel is about “meeting the people.” One time I met a man from Oxford, now living in covid-free New Zealand; we remain pen pals; this week he mentioned being glad we met years ago,
so I wrote back to Derek Sivers, excerpt below…:
… Here’s some history:
World
The voyage of Christopher Columbus was the same year the Spanish kicked out the last of the Moors. Meaning: civil war often precedes imperialism.
Canada
The US civil war ended in the mid 1860’s. The various colonies in Canada feared Yankee imperialism, so they came together, con, to form a federation in mid 1867, with a promise of a transcontinental railroad. So cities appeared along the rail road, such as my own prairie (Great Plains) city of Calgary. Nobody wore six guns, the west wasn’t wild, because the federal government had various versions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, wearing the red wool coats of the British army.
City of Calgary
My city, in 1886, lest than a score of years after confederation, had a Great Fire. There are photographs of city hall being held in a tent. Result? A determination to ditch wood and use locally quarried sandstone for future buildings.
C-Space building
A few years ago, as our inner city became less populated by families, a sandstone school called King Edward Elementary, still with inscriptions carved “boys” and “girls” over separate entrances, became converted to a four story place for creative outfits. Such as painting, photography, fabrics, children’s drama, French teaching and, on the top floor, my club: three rooms for the Alexandra Writers Community Society. With some original slate blackboards. (Modern blackboards are a compound, not simple slate)
My writer guys
There I was, an hour early, waiting for my Friday Free Fall writing group to start, when I received a letter from you, regarding my exciting trip to London that I had e-mailed you about. So I rushed over to the secretary, named Ali, who was a novelist, and who had advised me on staying in the London writer’s area, Bloomsbury.
I said (I forget) “Wow, guess what Ali? There’s this guy in Oxford, a writer and world famous millionaire, who has a blog that gets hundreds of comments, and anyways, he gave me his cell phone number so we can meet!”
Me and you
I was touched to be entrusted with your cell phone number. I haven’t blabbed it, and I haven’t blabbed anything personal you said. I am relieved that you liked meeting, because I liked meeting too.
Say, I was relieved you liked The Odyssey, because some people only like popular culture. You may recall I was there in rainy February because I wanted to catch the short-lived Troy exhibit. I won’t recommend The Iliad because of the gore, but I found it very moving because I knew army reservists in cities, rather like the Trojans. (Ignore the Brad Pitt Troy movie—I blogged about why the movie failed to have noble tragedy)
My toastmasters guys
Right after my trip, at my toastmasters club meeting, standing on stage, I told them a lot about going to a British toastmasters club, and a little about meeting you, and afterwards in the bar two people eagerly wanted to know about you.
A fourth person wanted to change the topic, and I would humbly have gone along because I am beyond a standard deviation in “deference to others” but the other two both said, “Shush! We want to hear about this guy Sean met.” So I got to tell about you and of learning from your blog.
My toastmasters club, I should add, was probably the only club in our time zone that hugged instead of shaking hands, and was into New Age and self improvement. So they listened to me sharing exciting news…
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
End of January
Hoping it snows heavy back home,
2023
Footnote to my Iliad essay:
~As a young man, the only Hollywood war movie I ever found without “Yankee B.S.” (hubris) was 12 O’clock High. (The book was written by two veterans after the war, the movie came out in 1949) Update: I just realized: Like The Iliad, the novel ends with a hero incapacitated, even as the war rages on.
As part of my college class in Outstanding Lives I read a slim text by Ms. Simone Weil, written during the Third Reich. In The Iliad, or The Poem of Force she points out that, unless you know history, you cannot tell which side wrote the Iliad… so humble, so even handed, with no glory—and no Greek B.S.
We have yet to regain the clarity of the Greeks.
