"I love the blog daddy" appeared in my email last night at 12:13 PM PDT. Sennen had left a comment on the Our Family Everywhere blog that I maintain when our family travels. He specifically commented on These Fishies Love Me! - a post from our recent trip to Thailand. It was puzzling because we have never shown the kids the blog and Sennen was at school. Neither Emily nor Alex knew how it happened, but after school Sennen explained with a mischievous and proud smile that he had Googled himself using his school laptop. Apparently when you Google Sennen Feigenbaum, the top two results are pages from the blog – the other being our 2018 trip to Thailand when he was trying to understand the economics of Third World vs First World countries.
I asked Sennen if he understood what he read – because I like to think I write to a higher reading level – and he said he did. He thought I was mistaken about what Ailyn said about the fish – but I assured him I wasn't and that he was busy playing and just didn't notice.
Naturally, I pored over both posts to make sure there was nothing that needed addressing. I have always wanted to share the blog when the kids get old enough, I had just imagined it would be in about another ten years. Where there's nothing Rated R in there, there are some big topics and parental observations about them I'm not sure I want them reading yet. This will take a little thought.
Fortunately, when setting up this blog – The Space Between – I elected not to allow it to propagate to search engines or any social media.
My boss - who has never been married and has no kids – likes to reference one of my favorite books, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond to point out how resilient and independent children can be. Diamond points out how in certain cultures – typically hunter-gatherer cultures – children are not only given much longer leashes but assigned serious responsibilities like foraging or brining back water from far away – sometimes up to 20 miles. He usually references this when he's being supportive of me and my choices – which is very kind.
I don't plan to allow my children to forage 20 miles away, but I understand his point. Kids can be resilient and take on a lot. On the other hand, we are not living in Papua New Guinea and there are some contextual differences.
The main thrust of Diamond's book – as you might gather from the title – has nothing to do with how children are or should be raised, but is an amazing exploration of how our world came to be so unequal in wealth, development and power. Bigots and eugenicists for centuries have asserted that some races or groups are superior to one another. Having spent significant time in Papua New Guinea doing research, Diamond, a UCLA professor, was inspired by the questions of a Papuan friend who wanted to know why America and European countries have all the "cargo" – the local term for "stuff" – and Papuans do not. Diamond could obviously fathom things like GDP, supply and demand and trade imbalances – but he could really figure out what the next step beyond that was. Why did Europe have such great footing in the world and Papua New Guinea did not. How did Britons who were poor and almost negligible to the workings of the world for most of the Roman Empire end up the dominant force by the 19th Century? Nothing about their island had changed – so why had they?
Spoiler alert – it had to do with Guns, Germs and Steel. Actually, the title betrays some of the real findings which are really more how natural resources were placed around the globe. The Fertile Crescent in the Middle East just happened to have the largest number of domesticable plants and animals while Australia had none at all. Continents that are wider than tall – like Asia and Europe – had an easier time spreading and adopting agriculture resources or "agricultural packages" as Diamond calls them. The ability to move from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society is a critical leap forward in development for many reasons, but among them include written communication, education, medicine, art, math and science. There is little to no room for these things if each day is about trying to get enough food to survive. Add in the role of mineral deposits – like iron ore – and the ability to make stronger tools, eventually steel and guns – and the playing field changes further because societies with these resources can move ahead to industrial development. Hawaiians, for example, had no iron ore – nor do most volcanic islanders. It would make it nearly impossible for them to have many of the things Europe developed.
Diamond hypothesizes that every society will develop at a certain arc if given the means and opportunity. For example, as corn evolved into a reliable food producing crop – which it was not for a long time and took significant human intervention to morph it – many tribes in Central and North America began a semi-agrarian lifestyle, staying in place during corn-growing seasons. Alternatively, the Aztecs actually came up with the wheel and put it on children's toys – but eventually abandoned it as a technology because they had no pack animals of any kind (dogs were their only domesticated animal and horses and oxen didn't arrive until Spaniards brought them – nor could llamas traverse from South through Central America to reach Mexico) and the wheel presented them limited uses. The Japanese did the same thing with guns – they came up with them and then set the entire technology aside as they did not face foreign threats at the time. Their use for such weapons was limited and the cost and difficulty to make them was disproportionate to the need.
Such was the discussion two days ago at Stelios with a British couple who happened to sit at the table next to mine. They had arrived in a group of about 24 Britons who had charted a fleet of four catamaran yachts to sail the Dodecanese and had arrived late on Patmos that afternoon after having to wait out the windy weather of the morning. What began with helping bridge a cultural gap between the server and this particular couple – involving the role of pastry and tea and resolving with the clever use of waffles and gelato – somehow turned into a roaring conversation about travel, the wife's experiences as a flight attendant for more than 30 years and their upcoming sojourn in the South Pacific. From there, it's an almost unavoidable slide into Guns, Germs and Steel. This delightful 60ish British couple met several of my stereotypes about British – very widely traveled but also poor at adapting to local customs. I thought trying to get English tea and cakes out of a cafe and gelato shop on a small Greek island was perhaps…. unrealistic. Despite it, I learned some very interesting tidbits on airline employee benefits and travel experiences and in turn, they added Guns, Germs and Steel and Sapiens to their Amazon list.
May has brought ever-more encounters with foreign travelers and cafe conversations. On Monday a reasonably large tour group of American college students passed through. Again, I was writing at Stelios when about 15 of promptly formed a line into the shop, each getting some gelato, practically depleting the supply of the Kinder Beuno flavor – an understandable choice. One girl sat at the outdoor table across from mine and I inquired if they were on a cruise. I turned out that they came by chartered boat from Turkey specifically to see the Cave of the Apocalypse and Monastery here on Patmos. They are students at Northwest University, a private Christian college in Kirkland, Washington. They are all in the Ministry Program and because the college felt the recent tension around the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is too volatile, this year's class instead went to Turkey to see the Seven Churches of Asia – from Revelations. If The Book of Revelations is your focus, then a quick trip from Kusadasi (the modern city adjacent to ancient Ephesus) to Patmos to see where Revelations was written seems like a logical extension of the itinerary.
I often forget how for many people Patmos is very religiously significant and for this group, Patmos was a holy site. When the very sweet and engaging 21 year-old asked me why else someone would be on Patmos, I cocked my head and said,
"Well, as you can see, it's very pretty and charming. It has some amazing beaches down the road like a very popular one called Agriolivadi."
"Really?! I never would have thought that!"
For a moment, I realized that while she was sitting at the next table, we had a larger gap than I would have imagined between us. Still we talked about travel and being a digital nomad. The girl was very interested in traveling more when done with school – but isn't sure she can convince anyone to travel with her. She is of Asian descent – I would guess Vietnamese – and I told her how Thailand is a very popular place for young, single-female travelers and the backpacker culture there makes it so young people easy connect, mix and travel with each other. On Khao San Road in Bangkok, young people meet their new best friends everyday and have adventures they never would have imagined – sometimes swapping out friends and groups as they go. It was fun infecting someone with a travel bug and I could see the wheels turning. I wouldn't be surprised if she end up writing a travel blog one day.
A thirty-something Polish couple and their four-month-old baby boy are floating around the island. They went to university in the United Kingdom and have impeccable English. I didn't really try to befriend them – but so often they walk into the same restaurant or cafe where I'm writing that eventually we began to talk. Besides, the stroller and Baby Bjorn remind me of being here with little Sennen. They have a friend from college who owns a house near Grikos beach and they are enjoying three weeks on the island. I happen to love what chilled parents they are and how they'll put their baby to sleep and enjoy lunch – much like Emily and I used to do. We talked a little about sleep training because she's tired and he doesn't get up for night-time feedings – claiming he's too old (he might be closer to 40). Her practical response to his sexism and agism is to want to get rid of the issue and help their son sleep through the night – which I think is the smart choice. Mainly, they're just really nice, educated people who are taking a European-length vacation to enjoy their baby and each other on a Greek island.
On Wednesday there was a pair of 50-something Turkish women at the next table from me at Stelios (I did three days there this week) who were seeing Greece for the first time. Despite being from Izmir, Turkey's third-largest and a port city on the Aegean, they had never jumped on a boat heading west. One of them spoke perfect English and smoked cigarettes with almost equal aptitude. Unlike my British friends who sat at that same table at another time, the Turkish ladies instinctively understood what to get at a Greek cafe and how to command the staff without having to lean too far forward. In the end, Greece has enough overlap with Turkey that things probably felt at least familiar to both customer and serving staff. Coffees, alcohol, gelato, crepes and even a pack of cigarettes (I didn't even know he sold cigarettes!) were brought to these ladies' table – while most of us go up to the counter to order. I'm pretty sure Stelios would sooner give up ouzo than wait on me – or much of anyone else – table side. When his wife helped out in March, she made it look painful to get me a spanakopita and a bottle of water. But for whatever reason, these ladies pulled off a miracle or just understood which buttons to press. With an air that reminded me of Zsa Zsa Gabor, the stronger English-speaking one told me that they enjoyed Greece – but it was not as special as they had expected. And like the Cat in the Hat, she picked up her things just like that, and then she was gone with a tip of her hat. The rest of us didn't know what to do. Well what would you do if it happened to you?
In some respects, it's sad to leave Patmos just as the tourist season is beginning. Perhaps because it's small enough, Patmos has the strange quality of being like a more adult, refined version of the foreign backpacker scene in Thailand. There, young people make friends unusually easily. Here, it tends to be couples and families. More than anywhere else, Emily and I have had dinners with other travelers we've met. People often get into conversation with fellow diners at neighboring tables. Last time, we were even invited to a resort on Grikos where this Australian family was staying because their daughter and our kids enjoyed playing so much together at Agriolivadi. We ended up spending the day together – the two families. On another night, we were invited to the KYMA seafood restaurant by the chef and his wife who we met when they had the beach chairs next to us at Kampos Beach. It's a very casual, organic, low-key social environment which is probably what it makes it perfectly my speed.
I can easily imagine finding a social scene – or at least people I would enjoy talking with here and there as the island's population rotates. Patmos isn't a massive tourist destination. It seems to attract a certain "in the know" crowd of people who want the same blend of chilled out but friendly as I do. The population features educated professionals, people from around the world who come annually, the occasional young travelers who try something off the beaten path like we once were, members of the Greek diaspora who return to spend summers with their Patmian families and Julia Roberts. It's a smart, eclectic and cosmopolitan mix. It would be fun to have that experience along with the long, warm days and more beach time. At the same time, there has to be something to look forward to next visit. Hopefully next time, I'll be back on the other blog and Sennen will still like my writing.
