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Michael Gehron

Thrice Told Tales

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1. False Start

May 17, 2018 By Michael Leave a Comment

One day in Togo, West Africa, I returned home to find a group of village women gathered around my house.  The house was roofless.  Its corrugated lid lay thirty feet away. Inside, I found everything heaped in a pile at the center of the room.  Even the most fragile things, like the glass chimney of my hurricane lamp, remained intact.

My friend and colleague, Sebou, arrived as soon as he heard that I was home.  He acted as my interpreter.  The village women spoke over one another, competing to talk about a mighty wind. They said they’d watched it spin down from a nearby hill. They saw it swirl in through an open window.  Then the roof popped off like a champagne cork.

Having exhausted all comment, the group dispersed.  I stood puzzling over the improbable pile of items stacked in the middle of the room.  I wondered if the village had gotten together and taken the roof off themselves.

Sebou laughed when I told him what I was thinking.  He said it was crazy, first because why would the village do that?  And second, he said, if they’d done it, did I really think they’d be able to keep the secret for as long as they already had?  I agreed that, knowing them, it seemed unlikely.

He then told me two more things.  First, there would be no end of speculation about why this had happened.  The whole village would want to figure out what I had done to deserve my house blowing down. They would want to identify the person whose spirit-guide had exacted this revenge.  Second, I couldn’t sit back and shrug this off because there were things I had to do. He said he wasn’t sure what those specific things were yet, but he’d speak with the village elders and figure it out.  They would know exactly what to do.

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1.1 Phantasm

June 2, 2018 By Michael Leave a Comment

Sitting in my living room, Kodjo told me about a recent accident.  He said a truck had hit a married Peace Corps couple as they were crossing a small bridge on a motorcycle.  The two of them were friends of mine.  Kodjo said he had heard that they were headed home from a local market where they stopped to have some beers with me.  Then the news got worse. [Read more…] about 1.1 Phantasm

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1.2 Divination

June 2, 2018 By Michael Leave a Comment

 But I want to get back to what happened to my roof.

To describe Kpagouda – or any of Togo for that matter – as ‘superstitious’ doesn’t do it justice. Togo and Benin, its next door twin, are the birthplaces of Voodoo.  Here tree spirits are very much alive. If you live long enough among people who share these beliefs, it is hard to dismiss their point of view.

Here’s an example: I was sitting with my farm cooperative at a steel table in a mud walled bar at 10:30 one morning.  We’d spent the previous four hours working in their fields. There were enough of us in there that the conversation broke into two groups, one at each end of the table. The far end of the table erupted as two back legs of one of the chairs cracked off, throwing its occupant to the floor.   The entire table swung towards me in unison blurting things like “How’d you do that?” and “Wow, you must be really strong!”  The guy who had fallen was apparently disrespecting me when his chair came apart.  Everyone was certain I’d used my powers to drop him to the floor. [Read more…] about 1.2 Divination

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1.3 Closing the Chapter

June 2, 2018 By Michael Leave a Comment

All this connects back to Evan, the volunteer who’d told me he didn’t want me to share ‘his’ house.  He was the one who had precipitated all of  it yet he was probably the only person in town who had not witnessed my confession.   He wasn’t there because he took pains to ensure that our paths rarely crossed. Still, shortly thereafter, he flagged me down as I passed him near the market.  He said, “I think we’ve proved we can maintain our distance.”  We started our relationship from there.

It turned out that we actually got along quite well and soon established a weekly date to play chess. After a time we opened up to each other and he told me that he was gay (I told him I’d figured that out the first time we’d met). He asked me what I planned to do when I left Peace Corps and I said I really didn’t know.  How about him? He told me he was pretty sure he knew exactly what he’d do. He said Harvard Law School had accepted him before he joined Peace Corps.  They’d allowed him to defer until after he finished.

Later, the topic came up again, and he further amplified. “I want to be the guy who makes gay marriage legal in the United States.”  At the time he said this, 1979, inter-racial couples were still under attack on our Virginia streets.  I reminded him of that and added, “And you think you’re going to pass a law to allow men to marry men?”

After we both finished Peace Corps, I occasionally caught some mention of him in the press.  Once, I noticed that Time Magazine had added him to their “10 People to Watch” list.  He was listed for his work in promotion of same-sex marriage.  In June, 2011, I found another photo of him in the press.  In it, he stood beside New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.  The Governor was signing New York’s same-sex marriage bill into law. Even later, I saw him on the PBS News Hour.  He was Jim Lehrer’s lead interview.  President Obama had just announced his support for a national same sex marriage law.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about him:

Evan Wolfson (born February 4, 1957) is an attorney and gay rights advocate. He is the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States. Wolfson, who many consider to be the father and leader of the same-sex marriage movement,[1] authored the book Why Marriage Matters…He was listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World…

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2. Life’s Three Paths

May 17, 2018 By Michael Leave a Comment

In 1979, Evan Wolfson told me he was committing his life to legalizing same sex marriage.  In 2015, he was one of a handful of people credited with accomplishing this goal.  But his work on same-sex marriage – incredible as it is – isn’t why I call him out. I call him out because he is a great example of someone who set himself a difficult life goal and reached it.

Differences in the way people set their life goals intrigue me.  I’ve asked hundreds of people about it and their responses form a pattern.  People comfortably self-identify as being members of one of three groups.  The first group contains people like Evan, who set life goals they eventually achieve. The second group is made up of those who set life goals that remain persistently out of reach.  The third is populated by people who say they set no life goals at all. They are content following the path life presents them.

In this context, Evan is a member of the first group, but with a notable distinction.  Evan’s goal – legalizing same-sex marriage – was a monumental stretch.  Evan is a person who set out to do the impossible – and accomplished it. Think about that for a second. Think about a person who set out to be the US President.  Or down a notch, an NFL quarterback.  Or someone who decides to be a professional ballerina, or a movie star, or a billionaire.

I decided some time ago to make an informal study of people and their goals. What kind of person sets herself a goal? What happens to him when his goal is not achieved? I started looking for source material on the topic, but I couldn’t locate much. So for the last decade or so, I have asked people a question (with the following intro): “I’ve asked a lot of people this question, and I’m consistently surprised that everyone seems to have a ready answer about themselves. I’ll tell you my current tally on this survey after you answer this: People appear to break into three distinct groups.”  Then I lay out what I laid out above.  “Now the question: Which group are you in?”

I have asked about two hundred people this question. I have never had anyone hesitate to self-categorize. (Note that this only works with people of a certain age…it doesn’t make sense to ask people as they’re starting out). Once they identify their group, I tell them the results of my informal study. Regardless of the number of times I’ve done this, the proportions remain about the same. One-third of respondents end up in each of the three groups.

That division doesn’t surprise me much. It seems reasonable that two out of three people eventually settle on some specific path or goal. What does surprise me is that a third of the people I’ve asked believe that they’ve accomplished what they set out to do. I am betting this is sampling error. It could result from the socio-economic status of the people I know. Most are reasonably well-off professionals. I assume those numbers would change if I had a more randomized sample.

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Table of Contents:

  1.  False Start, Phantasm, Divination, Closing the Chapter & Life’s Three Paths (1.0 – 2.0)
  2. The Path I Choose, Once Again – From the Top, Walkout, Strike Three, Misguided (2.1 – 3.3)
  3. Death on the Trail, Paperback Writer, Afghanistan Pt. 1-2, Kabul Coup (3.3 – 5)
  4. Up & Away, Kabul Close-out, Weyward Sister, Thank(less)giving Day, Animal Traction (5.1 – 6.2)
  5. Snakes!, Kimendo Road, Gorilla Warfare, Love Canal, Goal Posts (7 – 8.1)
  6. Geek[1], Nancy, Never Go Back, Geek[2], Dave (8.2 – 10)
  7. The Firm, Rocky Start, Caballo, GrabMohr, Weirdest Thing (10.1 – 11.2)
  8. End of Beginning, Great Red Island, Things Got Bad, Then Things Got Worse, Sombila (11.3 – 13)
  9. Wild Cats, Meeting Satan in Uganda, Y2K, Backtrack, Headdress (13.1 – 14.1)
  10. TFI, Costa Rica, Merger & Acquisition, Robbed!, Specter of AIDS (14.2- 15.1)
  11. Mwalimu Nyerere, Lions!, Made to Stick, Root Canal, Ngorongoro (15.2 – 16.2)
  12. The End (16.3)

 

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