"And what do you do?"

It seems like it is the second thing someone learns about you, after your name of course.  What do you do?  What are you supposed to be doing anyway, between bathroom breaks and checking your email?  What is your occupation?  

It is like a probe, sent out to see if there is anything else for the two of you to talk about, or if they other man should be buying the next beer.  Subconsciously we are hoping that if we ask enough people we will get an exciting answer: Why I'm a hit-man.  Here's my card.  

That person would definitely have a seat at my table.  On the other hand, anyone who answers accountant, house keeper, IRS agent, or anything similar, will find themselves sharing a table in the back of the room.  We identify ourselves with our work, and other people identify us the same way.

Americans have a knack for this type of identification.   Since we lack titles and lineage, we work 40 plus hours a week in order to gain distinction.   We spend a great deal of our lives doing this, and some of us feel more at home at work than we feel at home.  Where we work has the power to dictate our hobbies, goals, friends, even our mate. Working at a large office is a great way to find dozens of mates. 

If someone were to ask me, imagine it were you asking, what it was that I do, I guess I would be tempted to lie.

I don't do anything at all, not in the sense that I have an occupation.   I would pretend to misunderstand the question and tell you all the things that I did do this week: played Tetris, stacked firewood, researched resent cult activity on the Internet.  But, that would not answer your question.  

To really answer your question I would politely smile and say, "I'm between things," and then you could change the subject. Knowing that we had nothing else to talk about I would go and sit in the back, with the IRS agent.

I have been intentionally avoiding people for that very reason, and I wonder if that is a common trait among the unemployed.  Currently I am hiding at the local library.  I'm trying to figure out how I lost my cultural identity and where I might find a new one.  My high school guidance counselor recommended personality tests for great moments of crisis, so I took one.

My life can now be summed up by four letters.  INFP.  It means that I am a nervous wreck because I do not know who I am.  The test recommends that I stay near the home and to be understanding when my irrational behavior baffles those around me.  

This test will help me understand my feelings more clearly, and I can now more successfully navigate a career path. Because, at the end of my life, Saint Peter is likely to ask me the same question, but in the past tense of course.

To find out why you are unemployed please visit: www.careertest.net

Global Trends 2025

Break four four Yankee, are you out there Yankee? I'm surveying the scene.  Everything... is...[static] unrecognizable.  The high temperatures continue... more fires.  Possibly inhospitable....  Yankee?  Are you out there? 

According to the National Intelligence Council we have a lot to look forward to in the year 2025, like war, pestilence, and famine.  Maybe even biblical plagues will make an appearance, just for good measure.  

This 'Transformed World' is quite different than the earlier predictions by the National Intelligence Council for 2020 where it was believed that: "continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US."  Although the previous scenario sounds more like a Bush bedtime story than actual facts, this new report comes across as a cautionary tale.  I for one am a little skeptical.

If you read the report you can find out what the future might be like via the diary of a future President, or a fictional letter from a future head of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization.  Personally, I prefer facts and tables when looking into the crystal ball, over government sanctioned Science Fiction.  But at least their report might be interesting.

The real highlights are the predictions that seem to have been made by using common sense.  Cause and effect.  If we continue to use the worlds non-renewable resources at an ever increasing rate they will become increasingly rare.  This may in turn become a source of future conflicts.  

At this time we do not have the technology to replace our fossil fuels with renewable resources.  This is predicted to lead to energy shortages.

If the globe is really heating up, we might see: draught, increasingly forceful weather patterns, rising Sea Levels, and changes in plant and animal life.  This predictably will lower G.D.P. while simultaneously increase global needs.

But that is not news.  The National Intelligence Council went one step further by predicting possible outcomes of these scenarios.  

The US "will find itself as one of a number of important actors on the world stage, albeit still the most powerful one....Advances by others in science and technology, expanded adoption of irregular warfare tactics by both state and nonstate actors...will constrict the US freedom of action."  

As national powers break down and conflicts increase those in power might be: ethnic groups, religious organizations, corporations, and organized crime.  Since the Council thinks that AIDS, although still incurable, could swing either way, I think it pertinent to add that they also predicted other pandemics.  But, the diseases are ones we have not had the pleasure of experiencing yet.

Some nations should see increases in productivity though.  Like a warmer Russia and a more developed Brazil.  Maybe even countries that have not even been invented yet will be making big changes on the world stage in 2025.

Apocalyptic predictions always make me nervous.  Even when the U. S. is still "the most powerful one."  But when I look out my window today, I still see the world just the way it was before I heard the predictions.  They do not line up.

Maybe that is why I find it so hard to change, or to take such bad news seriously.  Maybe it will happen that way, but probably it will happen like everything else, in a way we never could have predicted.  But the horrors of the future sit in my gut, next to my lunch, and I do wonder: What can I do to make the future at least a little brighter?

If you would like to read more of the Global Trends 2025: Transformed World 

The Moon

Photograph © Jeremy Wade Shockley 2008.

I look down at the celestial body held by the breast of the mountain in its liquid reflecting glass. A powdery steal blue sky shines in the surface of the lake. The sky is holding the refracted light of the sun too, and no other heavenly bodies can outshine the luminescence of tonight. Below in the cold cold water I can make out no impurities, no signs of life, nothing but a few ripples and the ever expanding face of the moon. In fact, the body of water has become the moon in its emptiness and sterility.

By day I know that this same lake holds many things not found on the moon (and a few that are). Foot prints for one, cows, geese, dogs, men: all leave behind their traces, like on the moon. Candy wrappers and soda cans are supposedly on the moon and they're here too, on the lake.

But there's an abundance of life here as well. Seaweed, trout, toads, elk, pinion, cottonwoods, and all varieties of thistle crowed together in and around the lake. There are wild flowers and grasses; slowly drying out and dying. They freeze and the wind and weather break them down. Small animal mouths consume their remains. The geese leave too, the cows move on. Salmon and pike and trout follow the dwindling body of the lake as she reclines into the dam.

The candy wrappers will stay where they are, winking up at the moon; forever maybe, outlasting the dam holding the lake, the lake holding the moon, and the sky holding me in place against a backdrop of spruce shapes.

Zulu 101

Photo Credit: Jeremy Wade Shockley

Za and I sit face to face in the living area of our flat.  She is on the low terquose dorm coach, that smells slightly of old socks, and I sit on a bar stool taken from the kitchen counter.  Her short curly hair shows off the striking, beautiful shape of her head and accents her dark eyes.  A peaceful smile stretches across her face as we begin.  "Wow, in Zulu"  she says, with her distinctive laugh.  Her confidence in me obviously surpassed my own.

My Zulu Language course requires that I interview a native Zulu speaker, and lucky for me I live with one of the kindest women I have ever met, and she speaks Zulu all the time.   There are loads of Zulu speakers actually.  Most of the students at the University of KwaZulu Natal speak several languages, and English is just one of them.  I could have picked from janitors, or strangers, or professors, but I know Za.  I know that she won't laugh at me as I labor through phrases that she can't even remember learning; and that she won't mind as I dutifully take notes as she spells out the difficult words. 

These simple phrases are so difficulte to utter, so foreign to my tongue.  My mouth struggles to make sounds and patterns it has never made before.  Every time my subconsiouse thinks it recognizes where things are heading, whoops, isiZulu surprises me again.  

I begin  the 'interview' with the traditional greeting, which is easy enough, but from there things become a bit harder.  I feel smaller and smaller as I ask the silliest questions--the only ones my vocabulary will allow.  After 25 of them I am sure that Za is imagining me with a dunce cap on my head.  "Wow!"  She says, "That was really cool.  You are REALLY speaking Zulu.  I cannot believe it.  That is really great."

Her response is more than surprising, it almost makes me feel worse.  What is so cool about me butchering her language, and interigating her at the same time?  As an exchange student  I am definitely an outsider to the nuances of South African culture, but Fanagalo come to mind. Fanagalo, sometimes referred to as Kitchen Kaffir, is a shortened version of Engish, Afrikaans, and Zulu used only for commands.  Do this.  Do that.  Boy.  It was used in the mines and in houses during Apartheid to communicate instructions to black South Africans.

As a white person, and as an American, my opinions are held highly and my actions are watched closely--without merit certainly, but I am considered worldly and modern.  I wonder if Za thinks that if I, with all my stereo types, learn her language, her real language, that perceptions of her culture are changing.  New levels of equality are being reached.  

Education may eventually be the key to healing the hurt caused by years of racism.  Maybe.  

I awkwardly say thank you to Za for doing the interview, and I quickly exit.  I am hoping to avoid the uncomfortable feelings I get when I am confronted with racism, but they linger.  They linger all over South Africa, and in every place in the world.  Avoiding my feelings doesn't get me very far, and soon I am typing the interview for class the next day.   

###

Below is the actual interview, for posterity's sake.  I have only translated parts, because my recollection of the language is pretty spotty.  

Me: Sawubona Za.  Usaphila Na?

Za: Yebo, ngisaphila.

Me: Nisafunda isiZulu, ngicela uphendule le mubuzo.  Ungubani igama lakho nesibongo sakho?

Za: NginguZakithi Khanyezi.

Me: Uvelaphi?

Za: Ekhaya Ethekwini.

Me: Uneminyaka emingaki?

Za: Amashumi amaboli nambili.

Me: Ufunda unyaka wesingaki?

Za: Wesithathu.

Me: Ufundani?

What do you study?

Za: iBCom.

Business Comunications

Me: Uyifundelani iBCom?

Za: Ngoba ngifuna ukuba usomabhizinisi.

Me: Uthandini?

What do you like?

Za: Ngithanda imali.

I like money.

Me: Ukuthangaphi ukudla?

Where do you shop?

Za: Esitolo, eSpar, eCheckers.

Spar, Checkers

Me: Uya esitolo ngani?

Za: Ngamakhumbingamatekisani.

Me: Ngempelasonto uthanda ukwenzani?

Za: Ngivakashela ekhaya. Ngihlala nabangani bami.

Me: Ulala nini?

Za: Ngilala nini?  Ngehora leshumi nambili.

Me: Uthanda ukudlani?

Za: Izinto ezimnandi.

Me: Yini ongayithandi?

Za: Ugwayi.

Me: Ukupheka nina ukudla?

Za: Ntambama.

Me: Wenzani kusasa?

Za: Ngiyafunda.

Me: Unaye umfowenu nodadewenu?

Za: Yebo, Ngino sisi abathathu anginabo ubhuti.

Me: Baneminyaka emingaki osisi?

Za: Baneminyaka engamashumi amathathu nambili.  Amashumi ambili nesikentombisa.

Me: Ngibonga isikhathi sakho.  Hambla kahle.

Travel well.

Za: Sala kahla

Stay well

The Power of Peace

Shouts bubbled up over the drone created by the thousands of conversations taking place at Fort Lewis College’s Whalen Gymnasium. The cool of the bleachers I was sitting on was soon over powered by the heat radiating from so many bodies and so many breathes in what was now a small space. I had fought for a ticket, and then at the door, they were giving them away--like devalued money. The extra tickets had obviously been a surprise. There were many, I was sure, that had stayed away unwillingly and had believed that getting through the door would be impossible.

A simple man, standing a bit taller than most, was the cause for all the excitement. He stood at the head of the auditorium on a low stage. A large screen hung above and behind him and was holding the projected images of exotic looking children. His athletic build was padded a bit, here and there, from the course of age; he had an open face, and a fountain of enthusiasm. From his opening words he drew attention from the audience, and he held us charmed for the entire hour and a half of his presentation.

Greg Mortenson tried to convince us that contrary to the description on the back of his book, Three Cups of Tea (written with David Oliver Relin), he is not a modern day 'Indiana Jones'. That he is in fact, just like you and me. And to prove it, he told us about how he flunked his first driving exam and that in his freshmen year of college his G.P.A. was a sorry 1.89. But, there is an obvious difference between Greg and me. He spends half the year living in regions of Afghanistan that are controlled by terrorist.   He gives boys and girls a chance at literacy and hope for a peaceful future.

“We need to listen,” Greg said over and over, pleading with us in every way, to fight against the ignorance that he believes breeds hatred. According to him, education gives us hope. That is why he has been advocating for boys, and especially girls, by building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan since his failed attempt to summit K2 in 1993.

When he came down from the mountain, alone and emaciated, he entered the village of Korphe, Pakistan. Here he was welcomed and nursed by the Balti villagers.  He shared their meals and the bonding ritual of drinking tea. He stayed in the village and created binding friendships. When it came time to leave he promised to return, and to build a school. Although there were several obvious needs for development, Greg was moved by the 84 children who were, “writing with sticks in the sand,” and had no teacher.  They could not afford the salary of one dollar a day.

Raising the $12,000 needed to build a school was far more difficult than he expected. In the end, “It wasn’t movie stars or sports figures,” Greg said, but, “it was children in their innocence and purity.” that gave the most. A charity where the benefactors are children, Pennies for Peace, was founded from his experience. Since then, children have raised over 16 million pennies; here in Durango children have raised 579,121 pennies and counting, since August.

Matching their generosity, the community presented Greg with a check for $52,520.00 the night of his presentation, Safer, More Compassionate World 2008, and even more money was donated that night. What happens to all the money? The Central Asia Institute, founded by Greg in 1996, has built 53 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, helps support over 520 teachers, and instructs 15,014 student, which includes 9,398 girls.

According to an African Proverb, and Greg agrees, "If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you educate a community." And Greg is very interested in educating communities. His hope is to have every child reading, so that when they become adults, they are literate adults. By starting with the very small, he believes that together we can achieve peace in a region that is torn apart by violence and poverty. But, he also wants to educate us by showing us the power of one, the power of listening, and the power of peace. That is why he came.

Casa del Lago

Photo by Jeremy Wade Shockley

A fall wind shook my hair and pricked my skin as I sat looking out over the lake. I left my perch of blushing granite and ascended the staircase that led to the western entrance of the house. Casa del Lago jutted out of the side of a mountain-neither dominating nor blending into the landscape. The proud structure was hewn from the land in such a way that it appeared to have risen up out of the ground like a giant.

Weaved within its camel colored sand stone walls was a battle. It was being fought between the old ways; predictability, the sorrow of many years, the recompense of unmet goals, abutted against all the fiery hells of youth. Every slab of concrete and every stone and every beam, in fact every detail, had been attended to by a Shockley hand. The magnificent estate was a testament to the power of the will and the thickness of blood.

After three steady years it was still unfinished. I surveyed the scattered piles that peppered the yard and wondered how much more ‘becoming’ the house would have to endure before it was pronounced complete. I eased down into the low California chair on the porch and savored the smell of warming pine being opened up by a saw. The house was organic. It had grown like a living thing. Within its fibers were so many hopes and dreams, so many expectations, that it almost breathed from the very force of it.

White House Ruin

Photo Credit: Jeremy Wade Shockley

White House Ruin sat unmoving in its little pocket of Canyon de Chelly, and I sat in mine. We stared at each other across one hundred feet or so of fenced off yard--the yard belonging to White House Ruin.

Everything about Canyon de Chelly made me feel like an outsider. The dizzying heat, the abundance of dark skinned Navajo and fair skinned Europeans, even the strong smell of urine wafting up from the sandy wash was a reminder of being uninvited. Unwelcomed.
White House has been made famous by photographers. Ansell Adams memorable picture erases the crumbling pueblo below and instead focuses on the small notch above. The notch holds a few ancient square rooms, like a clam. One room, set in the back, is still white.

Large black vertical bands paint the cliff face, hundreds of feet up. They disappear into a bright blue Arizona sky, where cotton balls stick to the roof of the world. The red sandstone walls have been dissolving over time to make the red sand that I am walking on. A soft, pad, pad, escapes from my feet when I walk on it.