Old Friends in Texas, Oklahoma

Gerry Auel, Nancy at a coffee shop in Stillwater, Oklahoma

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Remember old friends we’ve made along the way

The gifts they’ve given stay with us every day

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Old friends – we’ve been fortunate enough to have them. Such quality people, lives filled interest, care and concern for all living things, the fate of the earth. How fortunate we’ve been. Reconnecting to old friends and the worlds in which they live was nothing short of delightful.

Traveling to Texas and Oklahoma to visit friends from Denver. By the time we returned to Colorado we’d rolled up 1800 miles in the car. Not a part of the world I know very well although although long ago and far away I had visited both Houston and Dallas for speaking engagements repeatedly – but that was 40, 50 years ago. As for Oklahoma, other than traveling through the Oklahoma Panhandle on my way to Lubbock where I spent some time in the early 1990s, I have never been to the state till this past week.

A local Denver friend asked why we’d vacation in “red states”? Why not? was my response. The nation has not formally collapsed into red and blue states yet. Besides, there is something about seeing a place with one’s one eyes, meeting people in person that I have always trusted more than tv news spots.

A local Denver friend asked why we’d vacation in “red states”? Why not? was my response.

These particular old friends are such good, interesting people who have lived full lives, a small part of which Nancy and I shared some precious moments. Jo Ellen Patton, who lives in a Fort Worth suburb, was a traveling nurse for much of her work life. Nancy and Jo (and myself to a lesser extent) have cultivated a friendship over the course of 54 years since the two of them met in a University of Colorado-Boulder dormitory in the fall of 1969. Jo, Nancy and I were involved in the protests of what was called Project Rulison, one of Edward Teller’s evil, nutsy attempts to suggest that nuclear bombs could be used for mining natural gas. Jo’s big concern while we were with her, was to construct a raised bed garden in her spacious backyard.

Gerry Auel, who lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and I served in the Peace Corps in Tunisia together (1966-1968) where we taught at “Bourguiba School” (L’Institut Bourguiba des Langues Vivantes). In February, 1968 we took a ten day trip to Algeria, hitchhiking from Souk Ahras in the eastern region of the country to Algiers, then down to Ghardaia, well into the Sahara, over to Hassi Messaoud and back to Tunisia. Gerry was the International Student Advisor at Oklahoma State University. She married Steve Hallgren, who taught Forestry there, himself also having served in the Peace Corps early on in Morocco a few years after Gerry and I had left Tunisia. Gerry would return to Africa with the Peace Corps, first to do a two year stint in Burkina Faso by herself (at something like the age of 70) and then together with Steve, more recently, yet another stint in Tanzania. Both retired, Steve and Gerry are planning yet another trip – two months living in India.

Have noticed where people get their news from and how it shapes their views, if not entirely, still, to a very great degree. For some, it’s CNN; for others MSNBC, the New York Times, and NPR, none of which is particularly useful when it comes to U.S. foreign policy; to the contrary. People need to broaden their sources of information. People need to broaden their sources of information; if not, one is likely to get stuck in the mud of mainstream narratives.

Have noticed where people get their news from and how it shapes their views, if not entirely, still, to a very great degree. For some it’s CNN; for others MSNBC, the New York Times, and NPR, none of which is particularly useful when it comes to U.S. foreign policy; to the contrary.People need to broaden their sources of information; if not, one is likely to get stuck in the mud of mainstream narratives.

I had thought that beyond the “what have you been doing for the past 30 (or 50) years” from old friends that the issue of the Ukraine war would come up with its usual polarizing results, but it didn’t. Not at all. What did come up, however, was China, and that repeatedly. A function of the Biden Administration’s latest anti-Chinese offensive – the great balloon threat to the U.S. heartland? Or something on a deeper level? I don’t know. Nor was it that the concerns, shortcomings in China’s growth are not relevant. although the claims of Chinese oppression of the Xighurs from what I have learned is mostly propaganda. More interested in listening to where people are at than arguing about U.S. relative decline (which is dramatic in global terms) and China’s rise (which is just as dramatic),

We returned to Denver yesterday, between late Winter snow storms. A friend sent a useful article on China – US.

Jo Ellen Patton and Nancy (background). Six month old “Bella” in the foreground. Fort Worth, Texas