A Blog of Flashbacks

A Table of Different Cultures

June 2025

When a student at the University of Colorado in 1961 and 1962, I ate lunch with a group of fellow students. Three were Americans from Colorado, two of them Jewish from Denver. Four or five were Muslim from Libya, Egypt, and Iran. Another one had been in a German concentration camp as an eight-year-old boy. This mixed group of friends gathered at the same table every day for food and chat. I don’t remember talking about classes. This spontaneous international table talked mostly about concerns and world politics. We had all been children during World War II. There wasn’t that much going on in the now of that time, but we sat at a table with different cultures and offered friendship and different perspectives.

One statement remains with me. A student from the Middle East said, “World War III will start in the Middle East.” That struck me so deeply, I remember it word for word some 60 years later.

I grew up with a father who was a Quaker. The family went to Meeting occasionally. I was a personal pacifist but used to think that war was a reality we had to tolerate. I did not think we could reach the point of pacificism Quakers or Gandhi preached. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I changed my position. Pacifism must be an achievable goal. The world cannot afford another world war. If we do, I fear we will annihilate ourselves and our planet. It will not be the asteroid from outer space of 65 million years ago, the one that landed on the southern tip of what is now the Yucatan peninsula, the asteroid that created darkness for three years, and killed off the dinosaurs. We shall be our own asteroid.

I wish I knew where these lunchtime friends are now. For some, I don’t remember all their names, but their faces and friendship remain. If we met again today, I think we’d have the same conversations but with greater intensity and urgency in today’s world.  

We are at the point where I don’t even want to read or watch the news. It’s too depressing. For decades I’ve wondered why we can’t have 24 hours of only positive news. What and where is the good going on in the world? I look out my window and see the forest where I live. Spruce trees over 100 feet tall. Hemlock trees. Sunshine on our garden boxes. If it were raining in the Tongass National Forest where I live, I’d see clouds and the sparkle of raindrops on tree limbs. I don’t hear the traffic noises of a city. I know my neighbors. I talk to people of all political and religious shades. Why? Because we are all humans on this planet.

What race am I? What race are we? We are the human race. The definition of race is all human inhabitants of Earth. We are not giraffes or eels. We are all human beings of different heights, shades, languages, and cultures.

I don’t know where the anger comes from. I’ll be angry if someone hurts my family. So far no one has. I’ll be angry if someone steals my money. So far no one has. I’ll be angry if someone steals my writing, my intellectual property and treats is as their own. So far no one has. Am I angry at those who think differently from me? No. We don’t all have to have the same opinions. I think that would be boring. Because I like to see the green buds on the end of each spruce limb doesn’t say that everyone else needs to.

I wish my Colorado lunchtime friends from faraway places could come visit. I could use those conversations and friendships we had then.

Some people have told me I am unique in my approach to peope. If that is true, what is it I do? I don’t get angry if someone disagrees with me. A brother-in-law of mine accurately describes himself as right-wind conservative Catholic. He asks me questions about abortion, homosexuality, politics that differ from his. We have conversations that are not arguments. We exchange information, opinions, and know we do not always agree. What happens is that we listen to one another and both learn. We do not interrupt the other. That’s another thing I do—I listen to the other person even if they’re angry. Conversation about politics, or anything else, doesn’t make me angry. It’s a conversation, a back and forth. What is there to argue about when I live in one of the United Nations’ designated World Heritage Sites? What is there to argue about when I travel to Oregon’s High Mountain Desert? I can go to a city such as New York, Washington, DC, London, Munich, St. Petersburg, Moscow. I see people scurrying about like mechanical ants not paying attention to one another or even themselves. Last month as my plane approached the Seattle airport from quiet Alaska, I watched the scurrying of trucks, cars, and trains. I know the sound of a city as I’ve lived in New York, London, and Edinburgh. Some people like the hubbub. I carry the silence and whispers of trees within me as I walk.

What is my approach? I do two things—I remain calm and I listen.