It's amazing how similar our lives were through the formative years and up into college.
I grew up on an island of 4000 people off the Northwest Coast of Canada. Most of the small towns up there were logging and fishing communities. My parents were hippies - they were the ones standing with the Indigenous folks in front of the logging trucks driven by the fathers of my classmates. I was a square peg looking at a board full of circular holes.
Out of high school, I went straight to college in the "big smoke" (what we called big cities like Toronto) and I just couldn't get my footing. I didn't fit there either. There were no open spaces - no forests, no trees, no autonomy. I lasted a year but only because I didn't have enough money to buy a plane ticket home. I worked in a car wash after classes to make enough money to get that ticket.
Once back home, I found a job in a sawmill with a bunch of guys who during lunch would sit on the stacks of lumber and bitch about things. They'd never been anywhere but there, and they were too afraid to change this. The epiphany I had was that I realized that I wasn't. I had only experienced two ways of being that seemed diametrically opposed - yet I could see they were amazingly similar. Both required a high sense of conformity of thinking - of which I do not have a shred of.
After a year, with money saved and a better sense of who I was and where I wanted to be, I went back to college closer to home, in a smaller town (of about 70,000) which was a much better fit. It was easy enough here to find a sense of community. I found an eclectic yet driven crowd through a local running and triathlon club - and I never looked back. Endurance sport changed my life - it gave me calm, purpose, and most importantly self-discipline (an important trait that was missing from my hippie upbringing). In my pre-family days I was disciplined enough in my training to qualify and race at Ironman Hawaii :-)
Being raised in a wilderness environment devoid of structure means I just don't fit in square spaces. These days with my family I have smaller goals but I still keep the discipline of running 6 days a week. With running, I can easily find peace, calm, and autonomy on all of the trails and paths around my home.
Wow... that is basically my exact experience. Good for you on Hawaii. I once did a half iron man. Quite a lot of my skier friends have done Hawaii. That's a big deal!
You gave me a lot to think about. I think the overlap of our experiences and how we managed to break free of abusive cycles might provide some insight into a strategy that could work for our whole society.
Thank you for that comment, I'll have to reference it and see if I can come up with something. It seems like there's the seed of an article there... maybe several!
What a great story! I’ve been thinking someone could write a piece on how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion , before it had a name, is actually what made this country the land of opportunity. it’s the loss of those values in all areas of American life that is making it feel shrunken and pinched and bitchy. Your breaking out of small town provincialism is kind of a metaphor for that, and the Birkenbeiner race, a more equitable and inclusive type of sport, was a place where you AND many others were able to shine. (Well, many other white folk, but that’s another story. )
Think about it. There used to be many different companies offering everything from a wide variety of baby foods to telephone service. Competition drove innovation and kept prices reasonable. There used to be many small stores serving communities, not just a single big box. Prices were more commensurate with value, wages with how hard or long you worked. Many types of jobs provided pensions. Family doctors came to your home and charged 1 or 2 dollars per visit (I know bc I found some old receipts in my Mom’s things when she passed), and didn’t have to get permission to treat from a bunch of corporate CEOs. We as a society were never naturally good at diversity or inclusion, it is something people of good conscience have always had to push for, but it was a value that was honored and shared and respected in civic life. Our grandfathers had fought the Nazis. No one would have sanctioned throwing the Nazi salute at a public meeting. We were making progress. We shut down the KKK. After decades of outrage the abuses of the robber barons (corporate predators and monopolists of the late 1800’s) were brought under control. We made it to the era where we were able to elect a black man as President. Bernie Sanders came close to winning the Dem nomination on a platform of universal healthcare (equity, inclusion) and closing the pay gap between the CEOs and workers (equity). Black Lives Matter flags flew at rural schools, and sports teams had to stop with the racist mascots and names.
The billionaire paradigm is the opposite of that. It dictates that privilege is the best and only measure of value. The top dog who eats all the others is the only one that matters. Value = money. The ones with the most money think they should be kowtowed to and worshipped, and held above the law, while those who promote or live according to compassionate, equitable, inclusive values should be disparaged, gaslit, and harmed economically and socially. Now, under Trump, those who openly espouse DEI may be arrested.
We are all harmed in the Racist, Exclusive, and Inequitable society, (REI), which is the paradigm the current robber barons in the Twimp Admin plan to shove down our throats. It won’t be half as spacious as the life disappearing in the rear view mirror, with all its flaws and possibilities and hopeful demands for expansion. That’s not nostalgia, that is a prediction. Life under REI will feel awful. Because live and let live, and wishing the best for one’s community and the people within it, is engrained in our DNA as Americans. Without those common values, we will be ripped apart. We’ll all be as miserable as the guys sitting on their overturned buckets eating their greasy sandwiches. And there will be plenty to bitch about.
If not a full Birkie, we can at least go for a ski on my local trails. That would be very nice, followed by a good lunch! I'm glad you found me! I was going to ask about reposting that interview you did with me a while ago. Can I just grab the file off your podcast, or would you prefer to send me a file? I haven't posted it to my newsletter yet and I still want to do that!
Sounds like growing up rural really was difficult. Hope you got far away from small town living. No shortage of diversity in cities. The college part saddened me. Wish your parents would’ve been a better support system/prepared you more.
I grew up in Roanoke, VA and Winchester, VA in the 1960s (1955 born). The only black people I knew were the housekeepers who got off the city bus to work in our middle class homes. It took me decades to unlearn the basic lessons of racism and learning about CRT.
Great story, Walter.
It's amazing how similar our lives were through the formative years and up into college.
I grew up on an island of 4000 people off the Northwest Coast of Canada. Most of the small towns up there were logging and fishing communities. My parents were hippies - they were the ones standing with the Indigenous folks in front of the logging trucks driven by the fathers of my classmates. I was a square peg looking at a board full of circular holes.
Out of high school, I went straight to college in the "big smoke" (what we called big cities like Toronto) and I just couldn't get my footing. I didn't fit there either. There were no open spaces - no forests, no trees, no autonomy. I lasted a year but only because I didn't have enough money to buy a plane ticket home. I worked in a car wash after classes to make enough money to get that ticket.
Once back home, I found a job in a sawmill with a bunch of guys who during lunch would sit on the stacks of lumber and bitch about things. They'd never been anywhere but there, and they were too afraid to change this. The epiphany I had was that I realized that I wasn't. I had only experienced two ways of being that seemed diametrically opposed - yet I could see they were amazingly similar. Both required a high sense of conformity of thinking - of which I do not have a shred of.
After a year, with money saved and a better sense of who I was and where I wanted to be, I went back to college closer to home, in a smaller town (of about 70,000) which was a much better fit. It was easy enough here to find a sense of community. I found an eclectic yet driven crowd through a local running and triathlon club - and I never looked back. Endurance sport changed my life - it gave me calm, purpose, and most importantly self-discipline (an important trait that was missing from my hippie upbringing). In my pre-family days I was disciplined enough in my training to qualify and race at Ironman Hawaii :-)
Being raised in a wilderness environment devoid of structure means I just don't fit in square spaces. These days with my family I have smaller goals but I still keep the discipline of running 6 days a week. With running, I can easily find peace, calm, and autonomy on all of the trails and paths around my home.
Wow... that is basically my exact experience. Good for you on Hawaii. I once did a half iron man. Quite a lot of my skier friends have done Hawaii. That's a big deal!
You gave me a lot to think about. I think the overlap of our experiences and how we managed to break free of abusive cycles might provide some insight into a strategy that could work for our whole society.
Thank you for that comment, I'll have to reference it and see if I can come up with something. It seems like there's the seed of an article there... maybe several!
IMAGINE … if at the Super Bowl … all the black players took a knee during the national anthem …
I wish they would. This idea that we can't put the "end racism" sign out when the president is there is truly damning.
Absolutely love that story, made me tear up.
What a great story! I’ve been thinking someone could write a piece on how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion , before it had a name, is actually what made this country the land of opportunity. it’s the loss of those values in all areas of American life that is making it feel shrunken and pinched and bitchy. Your breaking out of small town provincialism is kind of a metaphor for that, and the Birkenbeiner race, a more equitable and inclusive type of sport, was a place where you AND many others were able to shine. (Well, many other white folk, but that’s another story. )
Think about it. There used to be many different companies offering everything from a wide variety of baby foods to telephone service. Competition drove innovation and kept prices reasonable. There used to be many small stores serving communities, not just a single big box. Prices were more commensurate with value, wages with how hard or long you worked. Many types of jobs provided pensions. Family doctors came to your home and charged 1 or 2 dollars per visit (I know bc I found some old receipts in my Mom’s things when she passed), and didn’t have to get permission to treat from a bunch of corporate CEOs. We as a society were never naturally good at diversity or inclusion, it is something people of good conscience have always had to push for, but it was a value that was honored and shared and respected in civic life. Our grandfathers had fought the Nazis. No one would have sanctioned throwing the Nazi salute at a public meeting. We were making progress. We shut down the KKK. After decades of outrage the abuses of the robber barons (corporate predators and monopolists of the late 1800’s) were brought under control. We made it to the era where we were able to elect a black man as President. Bernie Sanders came close to winning the Dem nomination on a platform of universal healthcare (equity, inclusion) and closing the pay gap between the CEOs and workers (equity). Black Lives Matter flags flew at rural schools, and sports teams had to stop with the racist mascots and names.
The billionaire paradigm is the opposite of that. It dictates that privilege is the best and only measure of value. The top dog who eats all the others is the only one that matters. Value = money. The ones with the most money think they should be kowtowed to and worshipped, and held above the law, while those who promote or live according to compassionate, equitable, inclusive values should be disparaged, gaslit, and harmed economically and socially. Now, under Trump, those who openly espouse DEI may be arrested.
We are all harmed in the Racist, Exclusive, and Inequitable society, (REI), which is the paradigm the current robber barons in the Twimp Admin plan to shove down our throats. It won’t be half as spacious as the life disappearing in the rear view mirror, with all its flaws and possibilities and hopeful demands for expansion. That’s not nostalgia, that is a prediction. Life under REI will feel awful. Because live and let live, and wishing the best for one’s community and the people within it, is engrained in our DNA as Americans. Without those common values, we will be ripped apart. We’ll all be as miserable as the guys sitting on their overturned buckets eating their greasy sandwiches. And there will be plenty to bitch about.
A great story, beautifully written. Thanks for sharing it.
I missed skiing, the Birkie, and the snow. Once I am back from Panama in two years, I will hound you, Walter, to do a Birkie together!
If not a full Birkie, we can at least go for a ski on my local trails. That would be very nice, followed by a good lunch! I'm glad you found me! I was going to ask about reposting that interview you did with me a while ago. Can I just grab the file off your podcast, or would you prefer to send me a file? I haven't posted it to my newsletter yet and I still want to do that!
Sounds like growing up rural really was difficult. Hope you got far away from small town living. No shortage of diversity in cities. The college part saddened me. Wish your parents would’ve been a better support system/prepared you more.
I got through eventually. They had their own problems at the time. I think everybody wishes it could have been different. Ever forward.
I grew up in Roanoke, VA and Winchester, VA in the 1960s (1955 born). The only black people I knew were the housekeepers who got off the city bus to work in our middle class homes. It took me decades to unlearn the basic lessons of racism and learning about CRT.
Your writing puts a lump in my throat and a smile on my face!
Thank you, that's a good combo :)
Physical sport is an amazing way to open up one's mind to the humanity in all of us :-).
Yes, it also gives you a much needed break when the world starts to feel overwhelming.