“While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.”
Posted August 7, 2025 by katryCategories: Musings
Tags: Being 78, friends, Ghana, heat, home, Peace Corps
This was one of those put a mirror under her nose to see if she is alive mornings. My mother would have said I must have needed it. The dogs slept in with me then they waited on the stairs to make sure I was up and moving. I was, barely.
The weather has been amazing, but today starts a bit of a heatwave, a Cape Cod heatwave. It was be in the high 70’s and low 80’s through the weekend. The nights have been in the 50’s, but that too is disappearing. Nights in the mid to high 60’s will make a comeback. I know those of you living in states with 3 digit temperatures are probably thinking how silly it is that I am complaining, but weather is relative. If we hit 3 digits here, it would mean the end of the world.
In two years, I will be 80. I hope. My plan is to visit Ghana that year for what I figure is the last time. Starting in a few months, I have to live frugally to save my money. I was asked why I go back to Ghana. It isn’t as if I lived there long, only two years. I tried to explain. I talked about how Ghana became home, how Ghanaians became my friends. It was there I found my love of teaching. I was as comfortable in Ghana as I had been anywhere. I woke up happy every day. I found life-long friends among the volunteers. We shared the same feelings and experiences in Ghana. They get it. I wrote the following a long while back. Maybe I should have read it to her.
It didn’t take long after training to realize the best part of Peace Corps isn’t Peace Corps. It is just living every day because that’s what Peace Corps comes down to, just living your best life in a place you couldn’t imagine. It is living on your own in a village or at a school. It is teaching every day. It is shopping in the market every three days. It is taking joy in speaking the language you learned in training. It is wearing Ghanaian cloth dresses and relegating the clothes you brought with you to the moldy suitcases. It is loving people and a country with all of your heart from breakfast to bed and forever after. Peace Corps doesn’t tell you that part, the loving part, but I expect they know it will be there.
”Reality is a crutch for people who can’t handle science fiction.”
Posted August 4, 2025 by katryCategories: Musings
Today will be sunny according to the weather, but nobody told the clouds. It is going to be hot, 80°. The air is so still nothing is moving. It is quiet.
I am watching the strangest movie, Monster from the Moon from 1953. A boy wearing a space helmet and shooting one of those metal ray guns meets some scientists. His sister, a scientist, comes to get him to take him back to their picnic where his mother and sister are. They take a nap after eating. When the boy wakes up, he is wearing different clothes, there are scenes of dinosaurs and the plot has changed. He runs back to the cave and sees the Ro-Man monster, a gorilla in a space hat, who speaks perfect English in a voice-over and is on Earth to kill. There are only nine survivors. The film was colorized. Two characters have purple arms right up to their elbows, and the rest have tinges of purple. My favorite line so far is from a male scientist, the beau of the sister, who says to her, “You’re so bossy you ought to be milked before you come home.” He then adds, “You are too beautiful to be smart or too smart to be beautiful.” They are now getting married. The father wishes them a fruitful life. I figure the monster and all are part of the boy’s nap dream. I need the silliness of this movie.
My parents were always the youngest parents. My mother had turned twenty just four days before I was born. My father, also twenty, was close to his twenty-first. My mother was involved. She was a Girl Scout leader, a camp counselor and a den mother. She worked at the Christmas fair. My father had little time as he worked long days. He was a salesman, and his territory was south of Boston. In my mind’s eye, I see him coming home in the dark. He was seldom home for supper. I remember my parents driving to Hull for a drill competition. I was thrilled they drove all that way. I still remember them smiling as they walked toward me to say hello before we competed. My mother wore a white skirt. My memory drawer has held on to that white skirt for over sixty years. I don’t remember the rest.
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