kenisms

At least that’s over

Posted on November 19, 2018 by kwundrow

This Thanksgiving, along with all the things I am thankful for, I am very thankful that the elections are over. No, I am not going to gloat or moan about the results. I’m just thankful that they have come to an end. The fact that they are over means all the threatening and misleading ads are done. No longer will I be bombarded with messages of doom if I vote for the other candidate. No longer will I be required to listen to promises no logical person could ever believe were possible to keep.

Campaigning is no longer about who a person is or what a person intends to do but rather about how wrong headed and dangerous their opponent is. We are expected to assume that the person campaigning must believe in the exact opposite of everything we are asked to fear about the opponent. Gone are the days of civility and dignity. Without any compliance rules to follow and a boat load of money needed just to get your message out, civility and dignity have become passe. Fear and exaggeration sell.

How refreshing it would be if a candidate simple spoke truthfully about who they were, what they believed in and what they HOPED to do instead of making promises they either couldn’t keep or never intended to keep. How can I improve education, give universal no holds barred health care, fix our deteriorating infrastructure and do it all while I cut your taxes. All of those items, while extremely important to us can not be paid for without dollars. Why can’t we acknowledge that the benefits of an educated and healthy society improve life for everyone. It should not be a question of do I have a child in the education system but rather that all children in the education system deserve a chance to learn and develop the skills, both social and intellectual, that all of our futures depend upon.

But fair taxation does not mean equal taxation. Our graduated system has worked for years and is necessary if we are to accomplish even half the items on our wish lists. The problem is, that promising to make sure we can pay for something, just doesn’t go well with our propensity to want our taxes cut. Until we realize that the society we imagine needs the support of everyone in it, we can’t honestly expect it to ever exist. This means that the dollars I pay for taxes, if based on my ability to pay, will in fact directly benefit me, if not today, in my future. If it means I can drive on good roads across safe bridges, or know that I can see a quality doctor when I need to, without wondering if I can afford the service, then my taxes were well spent. If paying my taxes means that children can be guaranteed a quality education whether it is my child or yours, then my dollars are well spent. If it means that my taxes will provide the services for someone not as well off as me so that I can walk city streets knowing we have done what we can for the homeless and not that we have left even more fall through the cracks, then my dollars are well spent.

By now you are ready to accuse me of being at the very least a socialist and at the worst hopelessly idealistic. But understand, I am still grounded. Things may never be perfect but we should never settle for less than our best civic effort. I just wish we could have candidates, who if they really believe what they say, would be honest about what it takes to accomplish these goals and then go about actually trying to accomplish them.

We can be a great society but only if we are willing to shoulder the responsibility, both fiscally and morally, that it requires. But for now, fear and greed still sell. I can only hope that as we move forward, it will actually be forward. That we will move in a direction of increased civility. We have a voice to be heard and that voice is our vote.

At least for now, the ad campaigns are over and I might just be able to stomach the commercial breaks in my favorite shows. I will chalk this one up to it just had to be said.

Thanks for reading.

Sidewalk Art

Posted on November 17, 2018 by kwundrow

This week the city paid us a visit and removed and replaced four squares of our sidewalk. My big beautiful ash in the front lawn has over time decided its roots needed more room than the old sidewalk was allowing. Pushing up its roots and reclaiming its territory caused several of the sidewalk squares to get just a bit too far out of level. We now have a new smooth sidewalk and some new built in space for the tree. But that is not the point of this piece.

Over twenty years ago, the same situation existed as the then much smaller ash was just beginning to demand some room. Back then the city had come out and marked the squares to be replaced with a chalked “X”. We had three squares marked that time and were calculating the cost we would be forced to cover in replacing them. My daughter, Kathryn, was five at the time and quick to notice patterns. As I arrived home from teaching the night before the city crew was scheduled to appear, there was Kathryn out on the front lawn, sidewalk chalk in hand. It didn’t take long to see what she had been up to. There laid before me my entire length of sidewalk beautifully adorned with a big white “X” on each and every square. Kathryn, beaming from ear to ear, proudly exclaiming, “Look daddy, I finished their picture for them.”

Oops….after complimenting my budding Van Gogh, one should never starve the artist, I grabbed a scrub brush and the hose and began the task of removing her handiwork. That of course would be the moment my neighbor appeared admonishing me on the crime he assumed I was committing. After all, he explained, he was being forced to replace six squares. Once I had assured him I was not responsible for anymore than my three squares, I turned my attention back to the task.

Let me tell you, it is much harder removing sidewalk chalk than one assumes. To my credit, I had at least dimmed the effect and that next morning, when the city crew arrived bright and early, I was there explaining my young artist’s talent and dedication. The three squares were re-identified, removed and replaced, and my wife and I vowed to find new outlets for our daughter’s budding art skills.

Turns out all IS well that ends well. I guess we just “chalked” it up to experience.

A Broken Record

Posted on November 5, 2018 by kwundrow

We are a culture that spends huge amounts of time keeping statistics. We track statistics in every aspect of work, sports, entertainment and life and then record them as records. The longest, the shortest, the highest, the lowest, the most, the least, the fastest and the slowest. If we can measure it, we can record it. We even dedicate an entire book to keeping these records and update it annually. So what is it about these records that make them so sacred?

They are important, or seemingly so, because they motivate us. They often go so far as to inspire us to reach for goals we believe might be beyond our reach. But one thing is true, records are meant to be broken. And, given time, they often are.

A week or so ago, one of my records was broken. It had stood for a number of years and in the back of my mind, I know I entertained the idea that it would somehow stand forever. It had been a record I had set at work and I was quite proud of it. In truth, it wasn’t the record, but rather the effort that it had taken to set that record that made it so important to me. And there in lies the point of keeping records. It is not the loftiness of the record but rather the effort, skill, tenacity and often the risk that was involved in establishing it. Records don’t come easily. If they did, well, they shouldn’t be records and certainly not worth tracking.

I am happy to say that my record was broken by someone very deserving. She put forth the effort required to have the chance. She sacrificed the personal time and dedicated herself to the work in a manner that allowed her to reach and exceed the goal. And in the end my record fell. Sure, there was a moment of sadness when my record fell but it was quickly replaced with a sense of pride knowing that I had inspired an individual to do what it took to break it.

That is the purpose of records and the reason they are worth recording. They inspire people to reach higher than they otherwise would. To accomplish things we think are beyond our ability. To set goals worth working for. The record setter needs to realize this fact and take pride in the effort they expended in setting it. The record may fall, but the sense of worth and the challenge they set for others can never be taken away.

Ironically, this week we have the chance to set a new record as voters go to the polls in what might be record numbers. What an inspiring thought that we as a nation might so fully respect the right to vote that uncountable numbers of people before us fought to secure and protect. Like any other record, it is meant to be broken and all it takes is the will to break it. Go be part of the record. Have your vote counted, and then just maybe go on to choose or set a record of your own. But remember, your record is just the bench mark for someone else to reach for. Set the bar high.

The Way Back Seat

Posted on October 23, 2018 by kwundrow

Quite awhile back I attempted to write a piece about the way back seat but couldn’t get it to work until now. For those readers who are somehow too young to know what I mean, let me enlighten you. The way back seat is not the one we think of in the SUV’s of today that have the third row seating and for that matter not even that rear seat of the mini van era. Rather it was the rear facing seat in the old station wagons some of our parents drove. Ours was in a yellow 1964 Ford Galaxy station wagon. Now a days, the line is “shotgun” as riders fight for the ride in the front passenger seat. Back then we would fight for that marvelous seat in the rear of the car we lovingly referred to as the “way back seat.”

We got two advantages when securing that seat. One, we were well out of the reach of the long arm of the law, dad’s arm. Two, we got to watch the countryside retreat into the distance from our vantage point there in the back seat. This usually, as we hurtled down the road on our way to some aunt or uncle’s house.

Now this is not a safety message or a “how did we ever survive our childhood” story, though the thought has crossed my mind many times since. Truthfully, we had ample opportunities to face our mortality without the aid of the way back seat, at least I did for all of my antics growing up. No, this is actually about the view.

As I have aged, I have come to realize that trying to fix our past doesn’t accomplish much more than regret. Don’t misunderstand me, I adhere to the statement “those who don’t learn history, are doomed to repeat it.” We must recognize the mistakes we have made and make every effort to learn from them and then to not repeat them. But we can’t change the past.

So where does that leave me. The view from that back seat was entertaining but it was where we had been and not where we were going. That view was from the front seat. The point I am going to make, is that we can’t relive the past but we can change the future.

On November 6th, we will ALL have the chance to vote. Regardless of race or gender, if we are of voting age, we will have the constitutional right to vote. Sadly, too many of us will be in the rear seat being nostalgic and will in fact, not vote. We will make excuses like, “it is too hard to choose” or “I haven’t got time” or maybe “it just doesn’t matter.” We will leave the decision to those riding shotgun to figure out where we are going. The truth of the matter is that they will take us where THEY are going.

This November 6th, I am asking you to vote, to make a decision in your future through those that you would have define it. You see, your vote does matter and it is your duty to see that it is counted. Sitting in the way back seat, waxing nostalgic, is not the best option. We cannot change the past but we can affect the future. Not just for us but for all who are counting on us, counting on your vote.

Go to the polls, cast your vote. I am willing to take the risk that you might not vote the same way I do. I feel that strongly about the process of electing our officials. But, who knows, if I am lucky, you just might vote the same way I do and together our votes and the votes of others will be counted and our future might just be a little more in our control.

So on election day, I invite you to ride shotgun and help us all figure out where we, as a free nation, just might be going.

To the Moon and Back

Posted on October 9, 2018 by kwundrow

Just recently Katherine Johnson celebrated her 100th birthday. If you are unaware, as too many are, who Katherine Johnson is, Google her and take the time to meet the woman behind the math that allowed American astronauts to reach space and eventually the moon. Her’s is a story of perseverance in the face of both gender and race discrimination that eventually and fortunately brought her to a position of importance and respect. She served as “the human calculator” for NASA in its early days of space travel and also served as an inspiration for black and female mathematicians of that era.

As a math teacher, I preached, to anyone who would listen, about the strengths and merits of young girls ability to grasp and apply math concepts. Back then, I had been instrumental in developing a math curriculum for both enriching and accelerating the placement of 6th and 7th grade students. It was immediately apparent that there was a large disparity between girls and boys in the placement. Boys easily outnumbered the girls in having success in mathematics recognized by their teachers. It was my opinion then and still is that if anything, we should be having a higher number of girls succeeding at math. Math is the study of concepts that become apparent when numeric relationships are recognized.

Sorry guys, but women are far more relational in their reasoning than we are. They also tend to be more visual and this is a valuable trait when a math student is trying to see the relationships behind the concepts that govern math. That said, there should have been more girls being recommended and placed in those accelerated classes. It became my quest to find them and to determine why they were not showing up in the first place.

Here comes my disclaimer. I am not a formal researcher but rather an observer. When I do need to research an issue, thank god for Google. Still, even though I had no formal research to back me up, I firmly believed I could point at several reasons why girls were being overlooked.

I will tackle the easy one first as it is the most obvious and the easiest to fix. Boys by nature are more aggressive than girls and will volunteer to answer a question even when they don’t have the answer. They also tend to be the one with too much energy and to avoid that energy going south, teachers will tend to draw them into the conversation to help control their behavior. Score two for the boys in the categories of recognition and involvement. We need to bring girls into the class conversation evenly.

Next up is teaching style. This area is much improved but also too often maligned by those on the outside. Math and arithmetic are two different animals. Math is a study while arithmetic is a skill. For way too long, math in the first six to eight grades was approached as arithmetic and devoid of concept development. It was taught from a left brain approach of rules and memorization. I will not go into systematic details and differences, but concepts are more complex and require more variety in teaching style. Not least of these variances is realizing that many children are more inclined to be right brain thinkers than left brain. The left brain is more rote memorization and rule oriented while the right brain is more visual and concept oriented. Early on I had observed that the students being recommended for accelerated placement in math were almost always involved in music classes. No surprise that music and creativity reside in the right brain. The girls that were being recommended for acceleration were also in those music classes. Epiphany, if girls were by nature more visual than males, was it possible that left brain teaching techniques were leaving them a step behind to start the race. Good news, as I stated earlier, this difference in teaching style is now widely understood and implemented by educators everywhere. Score one for the girls getting an equal chance.

Finally the difficult one, culture. We still don’t fully recognize the importance of the role mothers play in their daughter’s math success. Though more documented in today’s culture, back when I was teaching if I asked a parent who helped with math homework, the answer was all too often dad. The mother’s response was often, “I tell them to ask their dad because I was never good at this.” So there it was, that daughter who looked at her mother as a successful role model was left with the take away that math was seemingly not important to success but likely too hard anyway.

I will always point to and thank strong women who prove time and time again that they can “do the math” and stand as role models for every young women looking to be just as successful as every young man out there. Mothers, please don’t send your daughter to dad every time she has a math question. Own your role and possibly your daughter’s future success.

Happy birthday Katherine Johnson and thank you for never doubting yourself and always fighting for your place in the world. Thanks to you, our world stretches at least to the moon and back.

Friends come and go….

Posted on October 5, 2018 by kwundrow

I know I haven’t written for a while and I must tell you it’s become a bit of a thing. The act of writing is a release for me and to have a bout of writer’s block is a real stress inducer. I also need to warn my readers that I have had three cups of coffee this morning and as my wife can attest to, that is dangerous. One cup leaves me witty while two cups brings out my sarcastic side. Three cups is basically uncharted territory.

Friends mean everything to me and all too often I end up obsessing about one or two that I have lost contact with. I always blame myself for that when in reality it is a two way street. We all become busy with the things of life. Careers, family, hobbies and past times all conspire to get in our way and suddenly that list of people you lost touch with starts to grow.

If you are now expecting some words of wisdom from me remember that I already warned you about the caffeine intake. You can remain hopeful but I promise nothing. It is just that for two days in a row, I have managed to reconnect with three groups of friends in a guilt driven effort of reunion frenzy. It started yesterday with a lunch date with two of my previous co-workers and then continued last evening with a surprise birthday party for a friend that conveniently brought together several friends from an old couples group.

This morning, after an excruciating patience demanding drive across town in rush hour traffic, (I just needed that off my chest so thank you for that moment of venting) I arrived at a breakfast reunion with fellow retired teachers from my now distant past. The group meets at the same restaurant every first Friday of the month for breakfast. I had known about it but just couldn’t seem to find the time to attend. Or was it the fear that I wouldn’t be able to go back to those old times with any success. The moment I walked into the room, two things happened. The first was instant acknowledgement by the assembled group. They both acknowledged me and even though twenty plus years had passed us by, I still recognized them. There is always that fear that as Thomas Hardy said “you can never go back”. My apologies to Mr. Hardy but that was my take away or at least all I gathered a million years ago in some english lit class that I had been required to take. Maybe one day I should actually read the book, but for now my contorted interpretation of his statement will suffice. The point is we can go back, if we are willing, and might just be surprised that as much as life can change us there is still the chance for reconnections to take place.

The second thing that happened was that within a matter of minutes, the conversations took me back to the memories of the careers we had shared and the years between melted away. The beauty of these reunions is that they take us back to times that were part of our life’s journey and were quite often the defining moments of who we had become. It is important to realize that in those reunion conversations we focus on the happy memories. Those memories of the times, that even though they may have had struggles and rough spots, we found ways to have fun. That is what made us friends, that drew us together, that represented the commonalities we shared.

Breakfast lasted two hours, thus three cups of caffiene, and thanks to the memories, I was able to catch up. We shared stories from the past and pictures from the present. We marveled at how our thirteen and fourteen year old students of the past were now in there forties and yes, fifties, even as we were denying that we had aged at all. The beauty of telling stories from the past is that our own age somehow retreats as the memories return us to those days. Maybe even “the good old days.”

So if there is a point to this story it is that we should stop feeling guilty about the friends we lost touch with and just take the opportunity when it arises to reconnect. Friends don’t really come and go, we just get separated by time. Take the chance to go back in time every once and a while and surprise those friends that time has separated us from. Odds are you might just surprise yourself at how quickly the years that separate you disappear.

Prost!

All good things….

Posted on September 17, 2018 by kwundrow

We have arrived in Switzerland and tonight we dine in Lucerne. The Alps form the backdrop of most of our pictures and rise straight up out of the flat plains that surround them.

But let’s go back to yesterday and our farewell to the crew, the boat and new dear friends. We have spent the last seven days doing pretty much everything together and saying goodbye last night was very difficult. We have promised to stay in touch and have made some preliminary plans to visit each other’s homes. Our friends are from Atlanta so this will take some dedication to make the journey either way.

When you travel in a group as we have these last seven days, it becomes quite easy to share our stories and suddenly find ourselves becoming bonded over common likes and plans. This is a side effect of the travel but really one of the most important aspects of it. There are river ships and ocena ships but the greatest are the friendships.

So this morning, we left the boat headed for our stay in Lucerne, without our Georgia friends. They had left much earlier and caught their flight for home. Though strange, we were still looking forward to our extended stay in Switzerland.

After our city tour and a quick lunch of local cuisine, we were on a bus headed for Stanserhorn and the long ride to its summit. We start with a cog railroad ride for the first leg. The train is the original train from 1893. As we climb up the open meadow flank of the mountain, we see Lucerne and the surrounding villages drop away below us. But this is just the first leg and the real climb waits at the end of the rail line. At about 1/6 of the way up the mountain, we switch over to the cable car.

I have been on cable cars before. I have been higher up on mountains out west, but this was clearly different. Not sure whether it was the steepness or just the seeming singleness of this peak, but the sense of vertigo was overwhelming. One can only wish the pictures could adequately display the view and somehow create the same sensation of floating, but only being there can have you truly appreciating the majesty of the Alps.

As if the sheer power and magnitude of the mountain and our precarious ride up its face were not impressive enough, there was a surprise. Nearing the top, in a clearing hanging on the side of the mountain, we could see the switchbacks of a trail and then, to our surprise, the appearance of cows grazing at an incredibly impossible angle. And where there were cows, there were farm buildings perched on the terraces of the mountain.

Switzerland has, by law, no corporate farms. The average farm in Switzerland is a postage stamp fifty acres. What shocked me, was that even here, high on this mountain side, farmers and their families were harvesting meadow hay for the cattle.

After a white knuckle hike to the final summit and a cliff walk back to the top of the cable car, we were headed back down. Our cameras were full of the shots we could only hope told the story but the views and the sensations we experienced were etched in our memories and would travel down the mountain with us and then back to our homes as our journey was coming to an end.

We are comfortably seated at our restaurant on the edge of the canal. Our waiter is bringing us more drinks and food as we listen to an impromptu concert break out across the canal. The Alps are bathed in the waning sunlight as evening closes in on us.

One more day in Switzerland. One more chance to record the memories of a country I never thought I’d see. One more day to be the traveler.

We were just strangers when we met

Posted on September 10, 2018 by kwundrow

The sign read “There are no strangers here, just friends you haven’t met.” This turned out to be pretty prophetic. By the end of one month of travel, we had met many strangers who by the time we had to part ways, were new friends.

August found my wife and I on a trip up the Rhine in Europe. It started with us meeting two couples from Nebraska, Mureen and her husband Murray and Gayle and her husband Larry. We shared stories and drinks and continued those conversations all week long. Now we also met another couple the very first day and bravely introduced ourselves. Through the next ten days, we shared walks and talks, dinners and stories of our lives. But eventually we were saying goodbye to our new friends, Polly and Stu, but knowing we would make a mutual effort to meet again. Strangers had turned out to be friends we just hadn’t met.

And then there was Lucerne. We had boarded a paddlewheeler for a trip around Lake Lucerne. Knowing no local dialects and completely on our own, we took a seat across from an elderly women. As the boat moved away from the pier, she leaned over and asked if we were from the U.S. Over the next hour we carried on a fascinating conversation learning things about our new friend, Lucerne and Switzerland. When she had to disembark at her stop, the women next to her, not knowing any of us, leaned in and said “I’ll take care of them from here.” And she did. No language barrier was going to thwart the effort of strangers becoming friends.

My wife and I just returned from a short trip to the North Woods. On day two of our stay, I headed out to an area golf course. I was going to squeeze in a quick nine holes somehow hoping I could just play alone and practice my game undisturbed by any semblance of competition. But this was not to be. Instead, I was paired up with two gentleman, Gene and his son-in-law, Ryan. As they had never played the course, I turned out to be their guide. The three of us shared a very beautiful fall morning and what turned out to be one of my best scores of the season. As I finished on the ninth hole, we all wished each other well and where we had been strangers just two hours earlier, parted as friends.

The next day, Deb and I took a long bike ride on a trail near our cottage. When we returned back to our car, which we had left parked at a local pub, we decided we needed some lunch and the pub looked inviting. It was while we were there that I discovered the sign I quoted at the beginning of this piece. It was placed prominently above the bar and in the patrons soon proved how true it was. In no time at all we were in conversation with two local construction workers, the bartender / owner of the pub and two other couples who were traveling like us and had decided to drop in, because that’s what you do at a North Woods pub. The sign was true, there really were no strangers there.

The next day found us again at the end of another bike ride exploring yet another local pub. Before you start worrying about my drinking habits, remember that we are on vacation, wait even better, we are retired. Earlier, as we were locking our bikes and walking downtown, a woman crossing the street had overheard us pondering about this new place, well new to us, and told us it was a great place and that we ought to stop back later when the place opened. Well it was later and we heeded her advice and entered the establishment. To our surprise, the women, it turns out her name was Margaret, was not only working there but was in fact the co-owner. We ordered our drinks and retired to the warmth and coziness of their backyard patio. There Margaret waited on and conversed with us, sharing her story and getting ours in return. Within the span of half an hour, we felt like friends. Hopefully Margaret is reading this blog and is approving my story. There is no doubt that The Vine in Minocqua will be a new favorite stop on our stays up North and we will look forward to more conversations with the owners, Margaret and Scott.

Our trip was coming to a close when we got one last chance to make a stranger a friend. It was Saturday and we had just finished golfing. Not wanting to miss the Badger’s football game, we stopped in the Sayner Pub, yes, I know this is starting to sound like a North Woods pub review but it’s just a coincidence. We seated ourselves at the bar, best viewing position, I swear, and began watching the game. We were soon surrounded by strangers who through the comraderie of a sporting event would become our new friends of the day. Bob on our left, recently retired and living up North and Ryan on our right who turned out to be from Madison. The Badgers won, we all celebrated and after sharing our stories, parted with the memories and emotions of another well spent day.

This piece would be pointless without a message, okay moral. One never knows what interesting story resides in the stranger sitting next to you or maybe waiting in the same line. That is unless you take the step to find out. To maybe even introduce yourself. What’s the worst that could happen? They might just turn out to be the friend you haven’t met.

First Days

Posted on September 3, 2018 by kwundrow

This week our children and in my case, grandchild are headed back to school. Summer is over in some sense and play time is being replaced by school time. I came across this quote by The Prophet, Khalil Gibran that my sister had shared in a post.

“Your children are not your children, they’re the sons and daughters of life longing for itself. They come through you but they are not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You can give them your love but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts. You can house their bodies but not their souls — for the souls are in a place of tomorrow that you cannot visit. Not even in your dreams. You can strive to be like them, but you cannot make them just like you.”

As I read these words and felt them resonate within me, I knew I had to write about my version.

Twenty two years ago this week, I prepared to walk my daughter Kathryn to her very first day of school. At five years old she was our stubbornly independent challenge. There was seemingly nothing she didin’t feel she could do on her own. As we prepared to leave the house, she declared that she did not want me walking her to school. She was fully intending on taking the five block walk on her own. As I insisted that it wasn’t going down that way she dug her heels in harder. After some intense negotiations, I managed to carve out a compromise. I would be allowed to walk with her to the end of the block before her school but there would be no hand holding. I accepted this compromise fully believing that she would soften on the way and allow me to go that last block to the school doors. And with that folly in my head, we set off.

There was no hand holding and as we approached the last block I was being allowed to walk, she informed me she was going to say goodbye and I needed to go home. The look on her face told me there were no further negotiations to be had.

Now before you think badly of me leaving my precious daughter to walk that last five hundred feet all alone, I at least had one last trick. As I turned back toward home, with a handshake goodbye, I ducked behind the tree that would hide me from her view. From my vantage point I was able to watch as she approached the school. My heart ached as I saw the line of parents standing there with their children, holding hands and hugging them close. And there was Kathryn, in her first day dress and that Pretty Pony pink backpack.

And then it hit me. What was the one thing I had wanted for her as I held her tiny body in my arms just moments after her birth? I wanted her to be independent, to have her own mind about things and the courage and determination to follow her dreams where ever they would take her. And now, watching her from my hiding spot behind that tree, I realized that she was going to be just fine.

All of this leads me back to the words of the prophet. We can try to relive our lives through our children. We can try to mold them to the form we would have them take but the truth is they really aren’t ours to keep. Our role is one of slowly moving away from center stage and back to the wings, where if we are wise, we quietly observe the wonder of life through their eyes. We understand that we can bring them into this world but it is their world from that moment forward and they belong to it. They will carve their path and leave their mark and if we trust them to walk that last block alone, the mark they leave, just might be great.

So as you take those first day photos and bid your children goodbye, trust them, trust yourself. They will succeed if you let them and they will flourish if you encourage them. This is their first day.

Planes, trains and …..well, you get the reference

Posted on August 24, 2018 by kwundrow

And it’s over….well in another ten hours or so. My wife and I are sitting in the Zurich Airport awaiting our flight into Atlanta. From there a short hop back across the states will bring us home once more. The two weeks have flown by and I am not sure I am ready to go home yet. Europe is a small area relative to the United States. There are just so many places for the traveler to visit and many of them seem so easily reachable, that I must resist the urge to continue on.

Canal Boat in Amsterdam

Cathedral in Lucerne, Switzerland

I have seen rivers and dikes, windmills and mountains, old cities and new. If I am asked my favorite, I will shrug and tell you that each one had a favorite aspect. I will remember the people who helped us along the way and the people who became our friends. Some we may see again and others will remain a memory of a time or an event or a place. I have taken fifteen hundred pictures and will struggle deleting any of them. But that is the way of travel. Unlike home, where we collect stuff, on trips you collect people and memories.

Windmill in Kinderdijke, Holland

Paddle Wheeler on Lake Lucerne

As I crossed a large piece of Europe, I wrote what ended up as a cross between a travelogue and a blog. Some of the writings were to make sense of those fifteen hundred photos, but a great deal of the writing was due to the fact that experiencing these things left me wanting to jot down my impressions. Hopefully a few of my readers found some interest in both.

New Friends, Great Travel Partners

When you travel, you try hard to capture the beauty and depth of what your eye sees and then attempt to transfer that through the lens to the photo. You hope that it will show the colors of the water or the steepness of the mountain or the tallness of the buildings (seems so much more descriptive than height). Sometimes it comes close but most of the time the photo only approximates the true effect it had on your eyes. And then you feel the need to describe it in words and the travelogue begins.

Lake Lucerne, Switzerland

I have been blessed to have the where with all to afford travel, the ever planning spouse to keep me even just a little on track and the health to walk the cobblestone streets or climb the mountain of steps. I can only hope that the would-be traveler does not wait too long or is not too delayed by life’s busyness to take the first step on their journey. The world is a small place, much smaller than we pretend it to be. We all too often think it too large or too complicated or even too scary to explore. After taking an automobile and a plane, a bus and a tram, a boat and a train and even a cable car and a paddle wheeler, I am proof that one not only survives the adventure, they return just a little more worldly and richer for the experience.

Taste of Germany Celebration

	kwundrow on Life’s Moments
	Annette Landsness on Life’s Moments
	beth on Life’s Moments
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