Holzen-Kandern, Germany
I received some family pics from my kid-brother Phil today (with wife Tammy, niece Amanda, nephews Michael and Alexander)… they’re just back from a summer holiday in Corsica. Since February, Phil and family have been living in Holzen, a quaint medieval-era Black Forest village known for its proliferation of storks and the (equally) fertile surrounding vineyards.
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Ev Richter (my smart, beautiful, and talented girlfriend) has been busily preparing for this summer’s 7th Wave Artists’ Studio Tour, which kicks off on the weekend of 14/15 June when “the public is invited to tour the studios and participating artists of the Interlake… essentially a self-guided tour enabling visitors to speak with the artists and view their work in very picturesque locations.” Studios of participating artists will be flying a distinctive blue-and-white Wave flag.
“North of Winnipeg, take the scenic route through cottage country along Lake Winnipeg’s western shore, experience the vastness of Netley Creek and Oak Hammock Marshes, leave the beaten path for charming country lanes, and take a trip inland to Stonewall. Cover the whole tour in a round trip loop, or make it a day or a weekend adventure. Great restaurants, picnic sites, sandy beaches, a refreshing dip, inspiring historic sites, first class accommodations, and of course, an art experience close up and personal!”
More information about the Winnipeg Beach Art & Culture Co-op Inc. and the 7th Wave Artists’ Studio Tour here. See some of Ev’s work here.
Evelin photographed this evening outside her studio with one of her ceramic sculptures (The Seven-Year Itch).
Vancouver, British Columbia
Well, the long-promised book I’ve been working on for the past years with downtown-Eastside Vancouver gem-of-a poet Sam W. Reimer, (published by and designed at Circle), had its unofficial launch here in Lotusland this weekend—replete with readings at the Ivanhoe Pub (where many of the works were penned over the past few decades) and memory-enriched visits to some of the significant Vancouver sites cited in the book’s 200+ poems (parks, beaches, crime scenes, and edgy slum addresses). The weather cooperated, (as did the poet’s rheumatoid arthritis, for the most part) and we were blessed with magnificent sunshine.
Thanks to my dear cousins Sam (with whom I also shared a birthday yesterday) and Lois (also a Reimer) for welcoming me to her west-side home. If you’re interested in an advance copy of the book ($16 Cdn. plus postage) contact me here. (Active marketing of the book will commence within the next few weeks, and I’ll share further information on that as it rolls out…).
Sam W. and Lois at the Granville Island Market; “bard in bar” at the lower Ivanhoe; the book’s cover (thanks, Adrian).
Frankfurt, Germany
Having grown up multi-lingually on several continents, I’ve never really been “at home” in any particular place, and have often felt a bit like a chameleon. I’ve also eschewed (mostly unconsciously) being woven into a single community or cultural fabric. This likely explains why I live in the woods (without neighbors or a local community), yet have spent my life heavily involved in professional and global peer networks, and seem to have an ongoing “restlessness to move” and travel on a continual basis. I’ve often used the ironic quip: “If you don’t care where you are, you’re never lost.” as a truism I can really relate to. While being rootless does have its advantages (one tends to be more tolerant of others; adapting to new environs is easier) this identity struggle also brings a raft of other social and psychological issues along with it in its sojourns, including reverse culture shock and a sense of disengaged melancholia.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered this phenomena has a taxonomy and name of its own—Third Culture Kids, often abbreviated “TCKs” or “3CKs” or “Global Nomads,” referring to “someone who, (as a child) has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture.” By definition, “the TCK tends to build relationships to all cultures, while not having full ownership of any,” and “develops a sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere.”
The concept of Third Culture Kids was introduced in the 1960s by Ruth Hill Useem (1915-2003), a sociologist who used the term to describe children who spent part of their developmental years in a foreign culture due to their parents’ working abroad.” Her work was the first to “identify common themes among various TCKs that affect them throughout their lives.” TCKs tend to have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCKs from their own country—over the past decades, TCKs have become a heavily studied global subculture. (My cousin Faith, also a TCK, authored/edited the book Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global, documenting “a life of growing up in multiple nations, cultures, and language regions.”)
“Not All Who Wander Are Lost.” —JRR Tolkien (a TCK himself)
Old photos: I always had this thing for small cars (perhaps in reaction to the hulking ‘Strassenkreuzer’ Studebaker my parents shipped over to Germany); on our Stettenstrasse front stoop, my first day of school in Frankfurt.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
On Sunday, I had the chance to celebrate my Dad’s 88th birthday, along with nuclear family in these parts. As I was leaving his place, he pressed a matted and somewhat discolored photographic portrait of my mother (taken at the sweet young age of 16, shortly before he met and married her) into my hands—I had never seen this photograph of my long-departed mother (Amanda Marie Reimer) before, and I was quite moved by the very sweet gesture (thanks, Dad!). Mom… wherever you are, I still miss you more than I can say.
To my far-flung siblings and numerous relatives: I now have a high-resolution scan of the lovely Amanda that I’d be happy to make available to you as a download—contact me here if you want me to send you the link.
The North Atlantic…
This day goes down in history as one of Titanic hubris—in 1912 it marked the sinking of the eponymous “unsinkable” passenger-liner en route to New York (at the age of 96, Millvina Dean of Southampton is today the last living of the famous ship’s 706 survivors). Besides being my brother Jim’s birthday, 15 April was also the birthday of Leonardo daVinci (in 1452), the day that Abraham Lincoln died (in 1865), the birth-date of German poet/moralist Wilhelm Busch (in 1908—remember the cretinous Max und Moritz, Jim?), and the horrific, dark day in 1945 that British and Canadian troops discovered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
Images: Willy Stöwer’s Untergang der Titanic; da Vinci’s John the Baptist (detail); and Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz.
Winnipeg, Canada
Two birthdays in my nuclear family this week—my father John J. Peters turns 88, and my brother Jim Peters turns 58. Cheers, guys!
Images: Jim, along with our parents, packed and leaving for Europe in 1957 (I was three that spring, so I either took the photograph, was hiding somewhere, or am in that trunk…). Dad has always been a good looking dude… here’s a photo of him in Frankfurt 50 years ago.
Holzen, Baden-Württemberg (Germany)
My kid brother, Phillip Arthur Peters, turns 50 today… congratulations big boy, and may you stay forever young! Phil shares a birthday with René Descartes (Cartesian ‘father of modern philosophy’ born in 1596: “Cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am.”)
Our mother Amanda with happy little Phil in Frankfurt (thanks for the photo, brother Jim).
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
All of my “free time” in the past few weeks and weekends has gone into the book of poetry I am currently editing/publishing, featuring some 200 works by Sam W. Reimer, a remarkable “ecstatic depressive” (his self-description) bard living in Vancouver. Our aim is to have the book on shelves by May… Here’s a taste test:
Impression: Along Molson Way
On the other side of this chain-link fence
along the tracks,
blackberries,
daisies,
& morning-glories run in packs;
plethoras of thorns & unkempt petals,
pretty poisons
& tongues of dust-green leaves ply the ravine;
wilding as well Long tall grasses
ivies
& ferns deceptively indelicate &
dense-pack blocks of blackberry brambles
bully everything else off the would-be boulevard.
Give the earth just a crack at the city
& gardens grow in gangs,
daisies
& morning-glories run in packs.
. . . . .
©2008 Sam W. Reimer (1949 – )
The photo is of Sam on a visit in June, 2006.
