I’d hoped to write this yesterday – on the 4^th of July – but wasn’t able to do so as international flying had my head in a swirl. So, a day late . . .

In 1979, I, like the proverbial prodigal son, requested my inheritance early and went into a far country. I signed up with AESU (American-European Student Union) to spend that summer traveling around Europe on a tour with forty-some other college students from across the USA (and one from Argentina and another from Canada). My group and I (codename: AESU 616, because our departure date was June 16) ended up in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on Wednesday the 4^th of July – perhaps a day just like 2018’s Wednesday the 4^th of July. I was twenty years old and in the middle of my unsuccessful run as a first-time college student. Here’s my journal entry from that day when we traveled from West Berlin in East Germany (in the DDR – Deutsche Demokratische Republik or German Democratic Republic) to Prague.

4 July (Wednesday): Day 18

West Berlin – Prague, Czechoslovakia

JOURNAL: Happy Birthday, America! And here I go plunging in to Communist country heading for Prague, Czech. We’ve been gone from the hotel for two hours, got slightly lost, and now we’ve sat at the border for an hour. I took pictures out of window of guard tower and Iron Curtain; may not come out. Sand between sections of curtain is very tilled so that one would have a hard time running to escape. We got out and built a pyramid, then played “Simon Says.” We’re wondering if we get fireworks tonight in Prague. I read some, slept, then woke up to a heavy political discussion, I take no part. Talked to an East German lady today at a truck stop; she was very nice and understood all of my Deutsch. We passed through the outskirts of Dresden, a rather large city in DDR. People stop and stare. Michael* says: center of city new because of heavy bombing (3 days & 1500 planes). Where we passed, very old and shabby; to many we seem from the future or another planet. Michael is very bitter toward Russia and socialism & a little against USA. We came to Czech, after 2½ hr wait at border (plus 1 hr for daytime), and soviet control is so obvious here; red stars, memorials, forced tour guide, etc.; Laterna Magika, 4^th of July party on top floor.

NOTES: Many signs—Long Live Friendship DDR-USSR

I saw boys working on railroad for summer vacation—no pay

Southern DDR beautifully forested and hilled—forests not as dark as BRD/Evergreens

#11 at border of West Berlin

(* Michael was our Austrian AESU tour guide. Between him and kids on the tour, we had four Michaels, so I became Moose for that summer – and forever for my AESU friends.)

That was thirty-nine years ago, and much has changed. The USSR broke apart. So did Czechoslovakia, which is now two countries, as it had been in the past, Czech Republic and Slovakia. I haven’t broken apart yet, but I’m fifty-nine years old.

On American Independence Day in 1979, whenever we were outside our hotel we were completely under the control of the Communist regime. If I remember correctly, a man or two got on our bus as we entered Prague and directed our driver through the streets, controlling what we saw of the city. When we went out that evening, the “forced tour guide” again directed our limited experience of Prague. And the next morning, we were directed to Prague castle, and then the guide exited the bus as we left the city.

In our hotel on the night of 4^th of July, a group of us went to the bar on the top floor, where we must have been quite obnoxious young Americans – drinking beer and singing songs like “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” The reasons I think we were probably obnoxious is that, first, Americans traveling over here can often be that way (in a number of ways) and, second, the local patrons of the hotel bar all left the place to us.

My 2018 Prague experience of the 4^th of July was really quite different. After we arrived early in the afternoon, our group went to a hotel near the airport and checked in. No forced guides. Then Leesa and I traveled on our own by bus and subway into the heart of Prague, where we met friends and went to a music store and to a bar. We ran into a trio of young Czech and American friends. We casually experienced a beautiful historic city – the City of Love, the guard checking our passport at the Amsterdam airport called it – with only the adventurous fear of getting lost or missing a train we needed.

And on this 2018 4^th of July, I again finished the day in a hotel bar and restaurant, but the experience was quite different. Of course, being fifty-nine in the 21^st century was part of the difference. Unlike 1979, the phrase “Happy Birthday, America!” never entered my mind. My friends and I ate great food and drank beer and talked. We sang no “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Our table was near a large flat-screen TV set to CNN, which at one point reported that a Republican-led Senate panel determined that Russian president Putin helped – or tried to help – Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016. So instead of 1979’s “Long Live Friendship DDR-USSR,” it now seems to be “Long Live Friendship Trump’s USA-Putin’s Russia.” Weird changes.

At fifty-nine years old, I now try to see the world as one and its people as human beings and children of God. I try to see human beings stripped of all the racialized, gendered, political, national, and economic labels that can be attached to them, labels that deemphasize – even undermine – their humanity. I try to see color only as variety and diversity and a mirror of these in the greater creation. I try to see not Americans and Russians and Czechs but people who live in America and Russia and Czech Republic. I try not to see people as poor, as immigrant, as privileged, as ignorant, but as human beings often blindly being trapped by a (largely American, I think) power structure that perpetuates these conditions in the service of a collection of greedy and Godless few that are ultimately ignorant of anything beyond their own basest desires.

All these things are too big for my little mind and limited life to battle against hand-to-hand, mano-a-mano. I’ve come to believe that all most of us can do is as the old song says, “Brighten the corner where you are.” So, I teach in classrooms, write here and elsewhere, and live as best I can to enlighten and speak truth, not indoctrinate. And so, I come to the Czech Republic, to share the English language with friends who want to learn, to sing songs and play softball with children and young friends who like to sing and play as children tend to like to do around this one world.

(NOTE: By “inheritance” above, I mean about $2,500, which was half of what Mom and Dad had received from the sale of a piece of land.)