Category Archives: bio

A Home for a Horse

I mentioned long ago that my daughter and I both love horses, and that we’ve had one (for her) since 2001. Now, very sadly, we are having to say goodbye.

Ross had already been riding for about four years when I finally decided (and had the opportunity) to buy her a pony of her own. We went to England to look for one, because ponies are a lot cheaper there – even counting the cost of our trip and then transporting him to Italy, we paid about half what we would have in Milan. But the buying is only a small fraction of the cost of a horse…

In retrospect, it’s a sad irony that we found Hamish and agreed to buy him on September 8th, 2001. We returned to Milan on the 10th and, as everybody knows, the world changed on September 11th. Had I known then what I know now about the world economy and my personal finances, I probably would not have started down the path to horse ownership.

Back then, it didn’t seem so crazy. I had plenty of money in the bank from my Silicon Valley heyday, and the prospect of making more freelancing for my former employer, Roxio, writing manuals for their European software WinOnCD. (In fact I did write manuals for versions 5 and 6, and was set to do that and more for version 7, when Roxio closed its German office. WinOnCD – and many people’s jobs – vanished.)

We kept Hamish expensively at a snobby stable in Milan for two years. Ross rode a lot, but never won any show jumping competitions, in part because Hamish is… difficult. There are ponies that, if you more or less aim them at a jump, will do everything they can to get you over it and win for you, no matter how badly you ride them. Those sorts of ponies cost a lot, and Hamish isn’t one of them. He requires to be ridden very well, which Ross did, but not quite well enough.

We also had some friction with Ross’ riding instructor, I suspect partly motivated by the fact that we had not bought Hamish through her, so she didn’t get the customary cut on the purchase. Whatever the reason, this instructor had no patience with Hamish’s foibles, and kept nagging us to sell him and buy a better. Even had I had that kind of money (oh, say, $15,000), that was not the lesson I wanted my daughter to learn about horses and sportsmanship. To me the point was never “spend as much as it takes to win,” but to develop a loving, trusting relationship with an individual animal, and win whatever you can, together, in harmony and friendship.

God help me now, that loving, trusting relationship is exactly what Ross and Hamish had. She sometimes grew frustrated with his stubbornness, tired of feeling foolish in front of her peers at competitions, but she stuck by him and defended him, and was praised by some other parents tired of their kids’ endless (expensive) litany of “If I only had a better pony.”

By the time we moved to Lecco last summer, financing a horse was becoming a problem, and we all heaved a sigh of relief to be paying far less to keep him, at a place where he could even be out in a field every day. But we couldn’t find near Lecco a reasonably-priced stable which included professional instruction. And, now in high school, Ross has less and less time; as I’ve mentioned, her curriculum at liceo artistico requires a school week of 35 hours, which, along with homework, leaves little time for anything else.

Ross continued to ride as much as she could, until she broke her arm a year ago, falling off Hamish onto frozen ground. That put her out of action for several months. She rode a bit in the spring, then the remainder of the school year was a mess – between extra tutoring and lots of studying, there was simply no time. In the summer she was happily away at theater camp for six weeks, rode a bit when she came back, and then we were in the throes of moving again.

In sum, Hamish has been left largely to his own devices this year, and is now out to pasture, not being ridden, and increasingly unrideable. With the new house, family finances are squeezed to the point that we can’t afford to just keep him (at 12 years, he’s not quite in his prime, but nowhere near retirement, either), nor do we have the time or money to put into riding him the way he should be ridden. So we have come to a parting of the ways.

It’s far easier to acquire a horse than it is to get rid of one, if you care at all about where it ends up. It would be easy enough to sell him to a horse dealer, but he’d probably end up at a slaughterhouse – this is Europe: people eat horses, and wear them.

The solution we have found is a stable on Lago Maggiore, where some friends keep their horses and ride, and we know the owners fairly well. Most importantly, we like their attitude towards and handling of horses. They may eventually sell him (and we might even get a cut), but they won’t sell him off to just anybody. They’ll do their best to find a good home for him and, at worst, they’ll just keep him. Ross can even go and visit from time to time.

Hamish leaves tomorrow morning. It’s a horribly painful loss for Ross and me both. I wish I could spare my child this. I almost wish we’d never started. But, on the other hand, horses have given her so much, and can still give her so much more, and she them. I can’t regret it. I can only hang on, and help her to. This time tomorrow, it will be over, hopefully without any last-minute getting-Hamish-into-the-van traumas. It will be over, and Ross and I will have survived it. Somehow.

Silver Threads Among the Gold

One thing I do like about my hair is its color. When I was little it was white-blonde, partly because I lived in Bangkok and spent a lot of time out in strong sunlight. It darkened as I got older, to its present ash-blonde, with random (and completely natural) patches of lighter and darker color here and there. A very cliché gay hairdresser I went to, years ago, gasped in delight: “I just LOVE your streaks!”

Now I’m getting my first white hairs, and I rather like the effect. The individual hairs are thicker than my other hair, so they spring out and catch the light, sparkling against the soft tones of the rest. I don’t think I’ll mind at all when my hair eventually goes completely white.

The God Gene: Why Some of Us Just Don’t Get Religion?

In this new book, Dean Hamer discusses possible genetic components of “a personality trait known as self-transcendence, originally identified by Washington University psychiatrist Robert Cloninger. Cloninger found that spiritual people tend to share a set of characteristics, such as feeling connected to the world and a willingness to accept things that cannot be objectively demonstrated. … Hamer confirmed what earlier studies had found: heredity is partly responsible for whether a person is self-transcendent or not.” (quoted from a review on Amazon)

The book has been attacked on various grounds; I won’t bother to attack or defend since I have not yet read it. But the theory that religious feeling (or spirituality) may be genetically determined would explain something that otherwise puzzles me greatly: why do many intelligent people believe in god?

A number of religious people have been part of my life, including some who, while not following any organized religion, believe in or crave some sort of “spirituality.” I try – I really do! – to be respectful of their beliefs, because I respect these folks personally for other reasons.

But, frankly, I just don’t get it. I don’t feel a need for god or spirituality. I can feel connected to the world, and delight in its many wonders, without needing to thank anybody. I have my own strong moral compass that tells me how to treat people and the world, without reference to any scripture. I have no belief in a spiritual world I can’t see, and don’t feel the lack of that belief. Some people are born color-blind; I guess I was born god-blind.

Religions have an explanation for people like me: we haven’t been exposed to, or have refused to accept, the word of god – we haven’t seen the light (as I said: god-blind).

Until now, I’ve been groping for a way to explain them. “Opiate of the masses” only covers the ignorant and easily-led, and assumes complete bad faith on the part of every spiritual leader who ever lived. I can’t go that far. So I’ve had to assume that people whom I know to be intelligent in every other way are just dumb in this particular area, or victims of a traditional upbringing. Which, of course, is no explanation.

I therefore like the idea that the need for religion may have a genetic component. This would explain why some people feel this need strongly, and others not at all. The desire for this feeling of self-transcendence is independent of any specific religion, and even of the question as to whether there is a god. There may or may not be something “beyond” what science will ever be able to explain; for genetic reasons, some of us care a lot about being in touch with whatever it may be, and others don’t. In either case, we can’t help it – we were born that way.

 

Meeting Cat Stevens

Everyone’s had their brush with fame, or at least with famous people. My personal biggest to date occurred in Bangladesh in 1976 or ’77, when Cat Stevens came to give a lot of money to UNICEF, and to visit some of the projects he was funding in various parts of Bangladesh. (I guess this was just before he officially converted to Islam.)

There wasn’t a lot going on in Dhaka in those days, and a famous person even landing in the country was huge news. It happened that a friend of the family, part of our usual weekend music group, was a huge Cat Stevens fan. He learned Stevens’ travel schedule, and showed up at the airport every time Stevens and his entourage of one (his lead guitarist) passed through. Eventually, our friend managed to invite them over for an evening.

The result was a private concert, for about 30 of us, at someone’s house in Dhaka. I was already familiar with many of the songs, and was surprised that the two of them alone sounded just like they did on the albums, without benefit of the rest of the band or any studio mixing. Cat Stevens also looked just like his album covers, with the long curly hair and beard. He did sing one song I hadn’t heard before,”My Lady d’Arbanville.”

I don’t know if anyone got any pictures with him, but I definitely didn’t, so all I have is the memory and the story to tell. And there you have it.

Shotgun Wedding 2: Coca-Cola, and an Ostrich

I called Enrico in New Haven to let him know the news. He had not been happy about my traipsing off to Africa in the first place, so, while he was happy that I was pregnant, he was not at all happy that I was pregnant in Africa, and wanted me to come home immediately.

This was around week two of a four-week working trip, and I still hadn’t managed to accomplish much of the work I had been sent to do in Tanzania. I was reluctant to walk away from the project, even though I was not feeling at all well. The next morning the center shuttle van came to pick me up, and I vomited in the van. The kind driver was very concerned – he thought I had gotten malaria. I didn’t want to tell anybody at the center that I was pregnant. I knew that being pregnant and not (yet) married wouldn’t have been a big deal in Cameroon, but I wasn’t sure how Tanzanian culture would react.

Enrico left no stone unturned in trying to persuade me to drop everything and fly home. He called my parents and every friend of mine he could find a number for – between that and frequent calls to me in Tanzania, his phone bill was around $800 that month. As a result, I got calls from everyone. My parents, to my surprise, switched tracks – Mom said she didn’t feel old enough to be a grandmother, while Dad was clearly delighted at the prospect of being a granddad. My friend Stephanie, who had never even spoken to Enrico before, called in some bemusement – she had had a frantic call from him, begging her to convince me to come home.

Meanwhile, I tried to find something in Tanzania that I could stand to eat. It seems petty to say so, but the food in Arusha left a lot to be desired; I had been sorely disappointed after the wonderful cuisine of Cameroon. In desperation, I switched hotels, to the new Swisshotel across town. The hotel chain had sent a chef out from Switzerland to teach the local staff how to cook the hotel’s standard menu. Sitting in the dining room one day, I was witness to an amusing scene:

The chef was describing the menu, item by item. The steak sandwich, he explained, was a steak on a long, crusty baguette. He illustrated a long shape with his hands.

“No, no, sir,” said the Tanzanian cooks, “a sandwich is like this!”- and their hands shaped a standard American square of bread.

[Some Tanzanians have by now learned to make long sandwiches: my classmate Mahmood opened Africa’s first Subway franchise several years ago, in Dar-es-Salaam.]

The only foods I could keep down were tomatoes and salted peanuts. On my aunt Rosie’s advice, I also drank lots of Coke – she told me that Coke syrup used to be sold in pharmacies in the States as a remedy for morning sickness. It works, for morning sickness and any other form of nausea.

Between starvation, Enrico’s badgering, and frustration with the training project that was not getting accomplished, I finally decided to leave Tanzania a week earlier than scheduled, and fly to Rome to join Enrico and his family for Christmas (as originally planned). My boss wasn’t best pleased about it – “You always give the client more than you promised, not less!” Well, neither the client nor I had reckoned on me turning up pregnant…

Getting out of Tanzania involved a bit of adventure. The American woman with whom I had travelled to Ngorongoro (I’ll call her Donna) was working out in the bush on an ostrich-rescue project. Ostriches are extremely stupid; they don’t look after their nests, so the survival rate from egg to adulthood is about ten percent. Donna and her partners had a deal with the Tanzanian wildlife service whereby they would go out and collect the wild eggs, and hatch them in incubators on a farm. They would take some percentage of the chicks to ostrich farms in the US, and release older chicks back into the wild, with a greatly enhanced survival rate, resulting in a net gain in Tanzania’s ostrich population.

Donna and I had become friends; she’d come in from the bush every few days and borrow my hotel room to luxuriate in a hot shower. She planned to go back to the States soon, so I scheduled my departure to coincide with hers. There aren’t that many flights out of Arusha; we both booked on flights out of Nairobi, Kenya, which meant a few hours’ trip by jeep, across an international border.

A few days before we were to leave, Donna left a note in my hotel room: “See you soon! And I’m bringing a surprise!” Uh oh. No, she couldn’t, really – could she?

She did. She brought a baby ostrich.

The ostrich chicks bound for the US were shipped several dozen to a large crate, high enough for them to stand up in (at several weeks old, they’re about two feet tall). And they did stand up for the whole trip – anybody who sat down would get trampled and suffocated. This particular chick had a bad leg and couldn’t stand up properly; his chances of surviving the trip, let alone in the wild, were very slim.

Donna knew someone at the San Diego wildlife park who could perform the surgery little Gimpy needed to stand and run and live a normal ostrich life; the problem was to get him to San Diego. Her permit did not allow her to export ostriches except by the crateful, so she decided to smuggle him with her on the plane.

The first step was to cross the land border between Tanzania and Kenya, where passports, and possibly luggage, would be inspected. Donna put the ostrich in a gym bag which she stuffed down behind the car seat, out of sight of the driver, leaving just a hole open for his head to stick out. When we reached the border, she stuffed his head into the bag and casually tossed a jacket over it; our luggage was not checked, and we breezed on through.

Our flights from Nairobi were in the evening, many hours after our arrival, so we had booked a hotel room for the day. I didn’t feel well enough to do anything but rest, so I stayed in the room with the ostrich while Donna went out shopping. She put him on the floor near the bed, on a towel, and gave him salad and water. I lay down for a nap.

I had not known that ostriches make noise – but only when they’re happy. The jeep trip had been bumpy and traumatic, so Gimpy had stayed quiet. Now he started burbling with contentment, a soft warbling noise. I sat up in bed, startled, and looked at him. He looked at me. I lay down again. He started warbling again. I didn’t get much sleep, but, on the other hand, how many times in life do you get to hear an ostrich sing?

Getting Gimpy through Nairobi airport was going to be a little trickier. Donna took a hotel pillowcase and cut holes near the open end so that she could wear it over her arm like a shoulder bag. She put Gimpy in that, so he was snugged between her elbow and her waist, but he made too bulky a package to hide under her bush jacket. I loaned her my beloved Indian shawl, the dull brown one I had bought on a special occasion years before. Loads of sentimental value – I would not have risked it for anything less than saving the life of an ostrich. Donna draped the shawl casually over her shoulder; it looked completely natural while covering the pillow case and the ostrich.

My flight was earlier, so we went to the airport separately. I got worried for Donna when I saw that body scans and pat-downs were being performed on all passengers, and hand luggage was being x-rayed. How was she going to manage?

I got the whole story from her later, when we spoke on the phone after we had both returned to the US. Donna told me she had surveyed the security situation, and saw that she would have a problem with the body check. But she also noticed that the people manning the x-ray scanners were scarcely looking at their monitors. So she stuffed Gimpy back into the gym bag, under some other things, and he went through undetected (makes you feel good about Nairobi security, doesn’t it?). She said that, on the plane, the problem was to keep him from getting happy and making noise; she kept having to kick him. At Heathrow airport, she bought some salad and went into a breast-feeding stall in the women’s bathroom to feed him (he had to be more or less force-fed). A lady came into the bathroom with a baby, looked into the open stall, blanched, and quickly left.

Donna somehow got the ostrich all the way to California, where surgery was successfully performed, and Gimpy presumably lived out the rest of his days happily at the San Diego wildlife park. She mailed my shawl back to me, and now it’s had one more adventure than I have, having been an active participant in the great ostrich smuggling caper.

  1. The Italian Proposal
  2. Tanzania Surprise
  3. Coca-Cola, and an Ostrich
  4. Justice of the Peace