I’ve loved Vancouver, B.C. since I first saw it in 1989.  I love it more today than ever, because in 1993, Christina Bell came to a workshop I was co-facilitating in Burnaby, B.C., a Vancouver suburb, on a Friday night early in the year.

She didn’t want to be there.  Her boss insisted that she attend.  When the workshop ended at 9:30, Christina was more than ready to go home.  However, she was forced to go to a nearby restaurant with the event sponsors, the speakers, and a few other hanger-ons, by the same boss who had insisted she attend the workshop, the one who had picked her up in Vancouver and drove her to Burnaby.

I was never happy about socializing after speaking.  Three hours of maximum energy expenditure never left much for conversation.  It was only natural that Christina and I talked quietly at the end of a long table while the rest of the party paid homage to each other at the other end.

We talked about a lot of things our first hour together.  I remember two of them like the conversation occurred last night.  I am a Vietnam Veteran.  I volunteered to serve there and had to extend my service obligation sixteen months in order to go to Vietnam.  Christina was a Vietnam War Protester.  She wasn’t a wave-a-sign on a sunny day protester, but rather a protester who gave up her family, her position in a doctoral program, and her country for her convictions.  When she finished telling me her story, she waited for my reaction.  I looked in her eyes and said, “You were right, you know.”

The second thing I remember from that first conversation is inviting her to Sunday’s workshop.  Not only did she attend, she sat on the front row.

We became pen pals.  Over the next two years we filled seven large journals with our correspondence.  We had three of the books in play at all times.  We each had one, which we made entries in, until the one in the mail arrived.  At that time, we had twenty-four hours to send the one we had been writing in.

Late on a July afternoon in 1995, I pointed my red Jeep west and left Alabama – my destination, Vancouver.  I took a slight detour in Iowa to visit the bridges of Madison County.  Because I couldn’t wait any longer, I asked Christina to meet me in Missoula, Montana.  She didn’t have a problem with that.

Two days later we left Vancouver with a large U-Haul trailer behind the Jeep.  We drove to Edmonton, where Fred, Christina’s ex, hosted a going away party and we picked up Christina’s great dog, Tigger. 

That happened almost seventeen years ago.  Today, my wife, Christina Carson, is celebrating her sixty-sixth birthday.  Nineteen of those years have included me – every day of each one of them has been special.

Happy birthday, my love…

The General

General Diem - speaking to three students who are taking notes - I took this at a family recreational site not far from Saigon - the woman and child in the background are selling candy and fruit - the man facing the camera on the left is a disabled veteran who spent ten or fifteen minutes talking to General Diem - It was clear he felt deeply honored to have spoken with The General - the Chinook was left by U.S. Forces after the war and now services as a "playground attraction" for kids who visit the park.

Blog Post about General Diem

Driver's License

Ron Ogletree, a retired Alabama Highway Patrolman told me one of the funniest stories I've ever heard and like all really funny stories, this one is absolutely true.
Many years ago, when Ron was fresh out of his training, a recently appointed commander issued a mandate that every Alabama Trooper would spend four hours every month checking vehicles and drivers at road blocks.
Ron and his fellow troopers immediatley noted that the directive did not specify how many cars must be stopped during the four hour period. Using that bit of information, most of the troopers established their monthly roadblock on the most isolated roads in their jurisdiction.
Ron was no exception. He set up at a cross road near the rural, north Alabama, community of Flat Rock. For the first and most of the second hour he was manning his road block not a single car appeared. Then he heard the sounds of an approaching vehicle.
After hearing the vehicle for a long time it finally came into view. It was an ancient Chevy pickup driven by an equally ancient old man, obviously a local, a farmer from the look of him. Ron stepped into the roadway and raised his arm in the universal signal indicating the driver should stop. He said nothing happened for a long time except that the old truck continued to close down on him. Just as he was about to vacate his spot in the middle of the road, the brakes squealed and the old man brought the vehicle to a dusty halt with the front bumper inches from the trooper's leg.
Ron gathered his composure, then walked to the driver side of the truck. He looked at the old man and said, "How are you doing? I'm Trooper Ogletree and I'm conducting a routine vehicle and driver check. Could I see your driver's license?"

Without hesitation the old man said, "I don't have one."
Ron said, "Do you mean you left it at home?"
The old man raised his voice a bit and moved the intensity level a degree higher, "No son, I mean I don't have one."
Still not believing what he had heard, Ron asked, "Do you mean you lost your license or maybe it's been suspended."
The old man, getting more than a bit frustrated with the young trooper said, "No, son, I mean just what I said. I don't have a driver's license and I've never had one."
Ron said he wasn't sure what to say next. Finally he blurted out, "How old are you, Sir?"
The old man said, "I was seventy-four my last birthday."
Still with no idea where he was headed with the question, Ron asked, "Do you mean that in 74 years you've never had a driver's license?"
The old man looked at him like a drill instructor explaining a basic concept to his slowest recuit, "Son, up until two minutes ago I've never needed one."
It took Ron a moment to regain his composure. Finally he did, looked at the old man and as seriously as he could manage to speak, said, "And you still don't need one. Go on wherever you were headed and have a good day."

Black Women - White Men

I thought of many black women I've known whose picture I could use to illustrate this blog posting. I thought of Della Reese who took my hand one morning almost twenty years ago, looked right in my eyes and said, "Bert, always remember this; don't take anything for granted. Just as soon as you hit the top they'll run a Whitney Houston in on you." Then she laughed and it was so contageous she instantly had everyone in the room laughing though she and I were the only ones who knew what she was laughing at.



And I thought of Lillie Hoskins who has run a day care center in Batesville, Mississippi for almost forty years and goes through life trailed by clouds of love and doesn't even know it.



And I thought of Louise (there is no one left in my family who remembers her last name) who took care of me every afternoon from the second grade through the fifth grade who will never know how much she meant to me and how much I love her and she laughed when I told her that I could always see a halo around her head.



That list goes on and on. I didn't use Della's picture, or Lillie's, or Louse's - I chose instead Norma Jean Anderson. When I think of black women and unconditional love she is the one that comes instantly into my mind. Norma Jean left an amazing list of accomplishments - too many to even begin to note in this posting (click on her name and read her memorium). As far as I'm concerned one of the most memorable of them occured the night in her home, when I blurted out, "Norma Jean, would you be my mother?" She didn't laugh or pretend that she hadn't heard. She looked into my eyes and my heart and my soul and then she smiled and said, "Bert, it would be an honor." My adopted mother passed away almost two years ago but she will be with me forever, as will Della, Louise, Lillie and a growing host of others.



I am a white man, not something I had anything to do with, and certainly not something I'm proud of, but still, if power means anything to you, white men are the most powerful group on the planet. From a conventional viewpoint, that is true, but I'll be the first to own up to the fact that power isn't worth a thing in and of itself. In fact that's the point of this posting. I've done a lot of things in this life and to be honest, everything being the same, I'd do them all over again. Do I have any regrets? Well, sort of - but it's not about anything I've done or failed to do. My regret, if you can call it one, is that I didn't spend this life as a black woman rather than a white man.


Why? It's simple. Black women are the masters of unconditional love. It's in their eyes, their hearts, their every breath. No matter what you've done or who you've done it to, they'll still love you. When a black woman looks in your eyes and says, "Honey, it's going to be all right." You know that it is.



I'm stuck with being a white man for the rest of this trip but I do have a consolation - I have the friendship and love of a long list of black women and that list grows longer every week. There just isn't any comparison between that and power.

What Matters

"You taught me almost everything I know that matters," she said.

"Thats not so hard," I said. "Because not many things matter."

"But the ones that do," she said, "matter a lot."

Carl Touchstone

In 65 years I've had a half-dozen or so "good friends" and maybe four mentors. In only one case were they the same person - that's him in the picture - Carl Touchstone, my friend, my mentor, and a man that I think of every day though he has been gone for almost eight years.

I could tell stories about him for hours and hours, maybe even days, and never repeat myself. I won't bore you with that. However, I will tell you how we met and try to limit my stories to that one event.

In 1979 I was the managing partner of a car dealership in Laurel, Mississippi. I was 35 years old, deskbound, and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. I was always the first one to work, my office manager, Johnnie Taylor, was usually the second to arrive. One morning, in June 1979, I looked up and saw her turn off the street in front of the dealership and head back to the employee parking lot. Immediately I readdressed the never ending stack of paperwork on my desk.

A few minutes later I realized Johnnie hadn't come inside. I got up, walked outside, and found her still in her car. She was clutching her chest and could barely talk. In minutes the ambulance arrived and she was whisked away like she had never been there.

Johnnie, who had never had a hint of a heart problem was given a 50-50 chance of recovery. A week later, on a flight to Kansas City where she was scheduled for open-heart surgery she died. I thought about little else during that week. We were about the same age and we both smoked. I figured that if I didn't do something I'd go the same way. So I decided to take up running.

On July 2, 1979, at 9 pm, just eight days after Johnnie's heart attack, I walked out of my house, flipped my last cigarette into the dark and began jogging down the street, thinking to myself, 'I'll run a mile or two until I get used to this and then begin to increase the distance.' It's a good thing I chose the downhill turn from the house or I'd have never made it the 1/4 of a mile I ultimately managed. The struggle served to convince me that I had to stick with it. However, two months later, hurting in every joint, and with no relief in sight, I was seriously thinking of hanging it up; figuring that death from some cigarette related disease couldn't be as bad a death from running.

I was probably within a few days of giving up running when, minutes after arriving at work, the phone rang. I answered and heard, "Is this Bert Carson?"

"Yes it is. Who is this?"

"This is Carl Touchstone. You don't know me. I live here in Laurel. I'm a runner and I've heard you're a runner. Is that right?"

Suddenly I forgot all of my aches and pains. I forgot that I was about to give up running. I took a deep breath and said proudly, "That's right, I'm a runner."

"Great," he said. "Let's meet at the high school track and run a few a laps."

I quickly agreed and we met that very afternoon. I had run from my house to the track, less than a half-mile, and it had taken everything I had to get there, but I didn't let on that I was hurting. We ran a mile together and I noticed that it seemed that Carl was really pushed to the limit - why, I thought, he can barely keep up. When we finished the four laps, we shook hands and he said, "You are good. I really appreciate you running with me."

Much later I realized that Carl had also run to the track from his house, about three miles away. After our run he ran back home, met some of his regular running buddies and they knocked out a 9 mile loop that was known as the Garbage Dump Route.

It was the beginning of a friendship that continues today even though Carl passed away on June 5, 2000 - because you see, my friend Carl is with me every time I lace up my running shoes and he always will be.

Every person who ever crossed his path was better for the experience - I'm damn sure glad I was one of them.

Children of Tomorrow

As for the children of tomorrow, they are those who have been summoned by life, they have followed it with a firm step, their heads held high. They are the dawn of the New Age. The smoke of wars will not dim their light, nor will the clanking of their chains stifle their voices, nor will the miasma from stagnant waters overwhelm their fragrance.
They are not very numberous among the crowd. But they stand out like a flowering branch in a burnt-out forest, like a grain of wheat in a haystack. Nobody knows them but they know each other. They are like the mountain tops which can see and hear each other, quite unlike the caverns, which are deaf and blind.
They are seed sown in a field by the hand of God. It will burst forth from its husk with the strength of its flesh, it will sway like a radiant plant facing the sun, it will become a majestic tree, whose roots take hold in the heart of the earth, whose branches aspire to the depths of the firmament.

- Kahlil Gibran - from The Eye of the Prophet