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, Canada

For over 20 years, I’ve had this dramatic A0-sized poster by El Lissitzky (for the Russian Exhibition in Zürich in 1929, notable at the time for its egalitarian depiction of men and women as equals), hanging in my home—imagine my surprise when I serendipitously stumbled across the original photo-montage prep work this evening, via ffffound! The poster is one of several dozen fine pieces given to me by the curator of the magnificent Poster Collection at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Zürich when I visited there in 1986.

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890–1941), better known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect. His avant garde work greatly influenced the Bauhaus, Constructivist, and De Stijl movements and experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th century graphic design. More about El Lissitzky here.

Oh, and happy World Graphics Day!

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.

Winnipeg, Canada

Lately, I’ve been thinking about hogs more than I care to—and don’t get me wrong, I’m no lover of pigs. I stopped eating pork (and beef, and bison, and mutton, and poultry) over twenty years ago, after seeing first-hand how factory farms had preempted traditionally sustainable animal husbandry with mechanistic meat-production methods (in which short-sighted profit extraction came first, regardless if that meant treating animals cruelly, pumping them full of medications (anti-biotics, growth hormones, etc.), and incorporating unwholesome shortcuts in feed production (think mad cow disease). Although I still eat cheese, seafood, and occasionally wild meat (living in the woods, I do occasionally harvest a deer), I am resolutely and ethically opposed to the mistreatment of animals and to the profit-first methods of corporate agribusiness. (18 months ago, we helped spearhead a successful[!] viral marketing campaign [broken link] to consolidate public outrage against the inane proposal of the OlyWest consortium to build a massive hog slaughter plant here in St. Boniface, a back-room deal concocted by Winnipeg’s back-room dealing mayor Sam Katz).

I’m embarrassed about the fact that here in Manitoba (a formerly pristine Canadian province the size of Germany and Italy combined) with a population of just over a million human beings, we have a resident population of over eight million caged hogs(!). Two months ago, news of the largest meat recall in U.S. history came across the wires. The root cause of the recall? Animal abuse, and the blending of bruised animals with otherwise safe meat. Two weeks ago, a massive fire on a Hutterite hog farm north of Winnipeg killed over 8000 caged and terrified animals (just thinking about their agony makes me sick). Adding insult to injury, driving home from work this past week, I was horrified to hear that our federal government had just announced that it will pay pork producers $50 million to kill off 150,000 of their pigs by the fall, as the (bloated, non-sustainable) industry now teeters on the brink of economic collapse. The animals will be destroyed at slaughter plants and on pig farms in a bid to cull the swine breeding herd by 10 per cent—what a waste, and so regrettable!

Oh… and happy Earth Day!

From the past…

Last night I stumbled across a great bunch of classic, mid-20th Century illustrations (by hundreds of different illustrators) on flickr… see the image sets sorted by illustrator here, and by subject here. Great reference, and a nostalgic window into the past… enjoy.

In Ulm, um Ulm, um Ulm herum…

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Württemberg, on 14 March 1879 and he passed on to another dimension on 18 April 1955 (53 years ago today). A fiercely impressive life left a legacy for all humankind… (For some reason I had always thought him to be a very serious personage—then I came across his irreverent tongue-out image at the [amazing, designed by Libeskind, worth a visit!] Jewish Museum in Berlin a few years back… and now I see the amazing, genius, brainiack in a totally different light). Cheers, Albert!

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” — Albert Einstein

A picture (by Margaret Bourke-White, 1904-1971) is truly worth a thousand words, or more… Thanks to Jason Funk.

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.

Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on the design and illustration of several series of quirky greeting cards (to be produced in conjunction with Ev’s What? Clay Art & Curios). In the research and discovery process, I’ve stumbled across some remarkable sources of inspiration—such as these beautifully crafted images by Sir William Nicolson (1872-1949).

He has been called “perhaps the most influential graphic designer of all time,” and his woodblock prints of the 1890s were amongst the most revolutionary British print images of the era. His graphics used “a treatment of form, with a stylised simplification of shape, and a handling of perspective and picture space which had had no precedent in British art.” Under the pseudonym of ‘The Beggarstaffs,’ Nicholson, along with his Scottish brother-in-law James Pryde (1866-1941), “virtually created the modern poster,” with its clear outlines and large areas of flat colour.

Thanks for your contribution to contemporary visual language, Sir William!

Somewhere in the USA…

From the “strange but true” side of things… It seems that in 1961, The American Medical Association (AMA) hired the Gipper for a viral marketing campaign dubbed ‘Operation Coffeecup.’ “Doing his part to scuttle the arrival of Medicare, Reagan lays down an 11 minute rap explaining how ‘Socialized Medicine’ can only lead to an America where men are not free. This record was then mailed out to the “ladies auxiliary” (doctors’ wives) of the AMA in each county. Was it this little record that kept Medicare from being signed into law until July 1965?”

Could this possibly be why we our American neighbours still don’t have Universal Health Care? Give a listen: Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine here (mp3). Then, give your head a shake…