cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"This week I have reflected about how playing `Cowboys and Indians' has been a theme throughout my life. I recalled how after I had been to China several times, I realized how fascinated the Chinese were with cowboys and indians, and so I would tell them about Grandpa Hafen and how he wrestled wild cattle on the Arizona Strip (see .../9811.html). This is the reason China Cattle Corporation got started and the reason Uncle Lloyd and Uncle Glenn went to China to check out the property were we were going to run cattle. The Chinese regularly give a gift when you visit. I learned to reciprocate, and the best received gifts were puzzles of the west and of cowboys and indians. I will be curious to learn from Paul if this motif is common in Siberia also. It certianly related to my trip to England and Norway this past week.
After church last Sunday I finished packing, finished making edit changes on my two professional presentations (Rhonda came by during church and edited the hardcopy from the all night's work and had found the usual two or three hundred misspellings [I look forward to when I have a spell checker on my e-mail so the Thoughtlets are not so full of misspellings]), and then as Sara drove me to Hobby airport I called Grandma Hafen, my Mom, and Melanie. Needless to say I slept real good on the plane. In fact, I don't even remember there being a movie, and usually I am at least tempted to see what movie is playing since it is the only time I allow myself to see edited `R-Rated' movies. It is suprising how often airplane movies are built around the cowboy and indian theme.
Sean McQuaid picked me up at the airport and drove me back to his house. It was nice to catch up with what he as been doing. He was sufficiently interested in my descriptions of the Virtual Environment work we are doing he missed his exit off of the Motor Way and it took a while to get back to his house in Chelm. Sean is from the north of England, his wife, Anasuya, is from Sir Lanka, and they have a son Jaya (age 3) and daughter Priya (age 5 1/2 going on 15). Anasuya has just been accepted as a physics lecturer at a London college. They treated my like royalty. Orange Juice, and out to a lovely backyard garden to talk and watch the kids play. I went with the kids to two swings while Sean and Anasuya got ready for a picnic lunch and to go play cowboys and indians (they never once mentioned my cowboy boots). I was pushing Jaya on one swing and Priya was swinging standing up on the other swing, which consisted of a large plank of wood connected by two strands of heavy rope to a branch on a large tree. Priya called me over and asked me to come and help her get down. I was too slow and she stepped off as the swing went back, falling on her face, cutting her lip so it was really bleeding, and then raising her head up just in time to have the plank of wood hit her in the back of the head. It was a big bump, like when Ben and Paul hit heads playing football at Brother Staheli's house, with blood all over her shirt. I felt absolutely terrible. We all had the opportunity to visit the emergency room at a nearby hospital. What an experience. Priya was OK.
When we got back to the house, we started over getting ready for the picnic. They have a black 1954 Citron, which looks a lot like my 1928 Blue Wyllis Whippet. The roads in England are absolutely wonderful. If there was a tree in the way, they made the road go around it. It was a beautiful spring day, and we drove down off the chalk hills, through the little quaint townlets, and across the countryside. It was absolutely gorgeous. I wished I had someone I love there with me to share the moment with me. They found some public forrest land on the map, parked the car and we went on a hike to go find a place to play cowboys and indians. We found a place in an opening next to a new field of brussel sprouts overlooking trees, and country lanes, and chalk mountains. It was as picturesque as anyplace I have ever been. The little kids are so-ooooo cute. They took turns taking pictures of us and vice-versa. We sat on our jackets, at ham sandwiches, and a birthday cake for Anasuya, which the kids had made for her (it was covered with chocolates). I wish you all could have been with us.
As we started to walk back to the car through the forest, Jaya assigned me to be an indian (in my cowboy boots), and his Mom to be a cowboy (she is of India Indian origins). Kids are definitly colorblind. We were each given sticks as guns, and we would run and hide behind bushes and ambush each other. We made imaginary bows and arrows. We found some larger sticks which had been stood up to make a four foot tall shelter, like a tepee, hiked across little rivers, and had great fun. As I remembered the future (Alma 13:1), I reveled in the idea of playing cowboys and indians with my grandchildren. My mind went back to my childhood and the fort I have previously mentioned Dad built for me in the front yard (.../9811.html). I would say he built it for me and Sara, yet as I recall I was pretty little, which means Sara wouldn't have been walking. I really have no idea if this is a fact, but I seem to recall the fort consisting of 4'x10"x1/2" boards cut so they looked like the fort had spikes around the top. There was a little lookout tower on one corner, and a sheet of horizontal plywood elevated to stand on and look over the edge of the fort. I remember my leather cowboy coat, with the fringe, my guns and holsters, my bow and arrows, and I vaguely remember friends coming out and us playing cowboys and indians for hour after hour. The cowboys always won. In the forest in Surrey the indians seemed to come out ahead.
Monday evening I went to London and had dinner with Melodee Olsen, Marketing Manager for the PGS Data Bank. They are going to have WVS display some of our immersive environment stuff in their booth at the SEG in New Orleans this fall. It turns out she was born in Wyoming and understands the cowboy motif. On the way back to Sean's, in the train station in London, I purchased `The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century.' He starts the book off taking about cowboys and indians:
The last chapter of The Dilbert Future is an alternative attempt to explain what I am writing to you kids in `Prime Words.' The book is a quick read if any of you want to borrow the book and read about `Induhviduals,' specifically in terms of the freedoms symbolized by the myths about the American West - myths about cowboys and indians.
Tuesday morning I got up early, caught the train into Victoria Station, stored my bag, took the underground to Green Hill, and walked to the BP (British Petroleum) Executive Suites at 22 Hill Street in Mayfair. This is just off Hyde Park and Park Lane (the street the property in Monoply was named after). What a gorgeous house. Absolutely elegant. The room I was escorted into was the entertainment room. The best of everything. Grandma Hafen and Mom would have loved to have seen the weaving, the couches, the tables, and the paintings. An original painting of William Knox D'Arcy was on the wall in back of where I sat. He was the founder of BP (British Petroleum), back at the turn of the century and just after the era of cowboys and indians. I was there to meet Dr. David Jenkins, Chief Technology Advisor for BP. His shoffered car was tied up behind an accident coming into London. So I was shown to a phone, which looked like a turn of the century dial phone, and was actually was push buttons, and asked to call him and talk to him on his mobil phone. We talked about immersive environments, getting a precommitment for setting up a `Reality Centre' in Anchorage, Alaska for BP and Arco, VR-Office (sm), Tables (sm), Walls (sm), ROOMS (sm), ROOF (sm), Knowledge Backbones (sm), Virtual Seminars (sm), hypermedia, and some of the other stuff I have been working on the last decade. He got there about 45 minutes late, and we talked another 20 minutes in person. I felt like a real induhvidual in the midst of the opulence of muted excess.
Cowboys and indians didn't take subways and planes. However, much of the myth of the freedom of the American West started when the Wild West Show or a similar circus was brought to London and Hyde Park in the late 1800's. From Mayfair I walked over to Hyde Park and down past Hyde Park Corner. This is where Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruf, Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Orson Hyde, Dan Jones, and other early missionaries of the church preached the gospel in the days of the cowboys and indians. As I walked through the park, along the bank of the Surpentine, I recalled the numerous times I visited Hyde Park on my mission. I recall the summer Sunday I set up, as a District Leader, the mission singing group and brought them into Hyde Park, collected a large group of sunbather's around us to listen to the music, and then had missionaries take turns standing up and preaching to them like the early missionaries to England had done at Hyde Park Corner. That Sunday in the summer of 1972 was probably the last time missionaries preached in Hyde Park near Hyde Park Corner. Good memories.
I walked past Albert Hall, famous for music concerts, and down Princes Gate. As I passed #51, where the Mission Home was when I first reported to London in 1970, I found a tear in my eye, recalling how it had been sold and how the fiancial transactions associated with this sale were part of the reason my Mission President was disfellowshipped from the church (the more serious reasons in my mind being teaching false doctrine, filling out false reports about baptisms, and screwing up a whole bunch of missionaries who were not strong enough to stand up to him). A little further down the street was Exhibition Road and The Hyde Park Chapel. As I walked down into the subway tunnel across from this landmark, I recalled all of the baptisms we had had in in The Hyde Park Chapel, I thought of the lives changed, I recalled the visit to our mission by the prophet Harold B. Lee after his visit to Israel, I thought of the mission conferences, zone conferences, and district meetings there. As I looked back at the gold steeple I was overwhelmed. Walking through the tunnels there was a young girl playing the guitar and singing. South Kennsington Station looked exactly the same. It was like I had come home. I bought a Cadbury Whole Nut Chocolate Bar, caught the subway to Victoria, picked up my bag, and took the Picidally Line to Heathrow Airport. I facetiously wondered if the subways were there when cowboys and indians visited England a hundred years ago.
Oslo, Norway was beautiful. My first talk on Wednesday afternoon (http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/papers/980506was well received. I flew over to Stavanger on Thursday for meetings with PGS Data Bank about the Knowledge Backbone (sm). Thursday evening I was told we had a commitment for the $10 million investment in WVS Corporation. Creve Maples of MuSE, Jeff Hume and Cindy Boulier of Energy Innovations, and myself had dinner with the investor on Thursday evening and everything seemed on track. We learned about his new invention for a generator which works in air and in the water and is very much like David Dennard was talking to Roice and I about a year ago. Everything seemed on track. However, he did not talk to us on Friday, and it was sort of like being stood up at the chapel for your wedding. Possibly this is why I feel the second talk didn't go so well (http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/papers/980508. Roger Anderson from Lamont was there, and he bouyed me up over dinner with another friend from Arco. I left early the next morning for Houston via Amsterdam. It seemed like the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Sara and Rob picked me up at Intercontintal Airport. I had brought them some Cadbury chocolate from London and they seemed to like it. Rob, I'm sorry I have repeated the stuff I told you in the car on the way back to the house. However, these Thoughtlets are my diary these days. Shortly after we got to the house, I had changed shirts and washed up a little, and I went to the first PAIRS reunion party. It was fun and really neat to see all of my friends from the relationship class. I left early to take Rob to see the new movie `Deep Impact.' I thought the science was better than most, and quite enjoyed the movie. Rob told me that he and Joe Amason had gone to the movie earlier in the week and when the young man who was the hero was in front of the school assembly and a friend told him `Now that you are famous you going to get a lot of sex,' Joe had blurted out, `I want to be in that Astronomy Club.' It reminded me of Dilbert's Immutable Laws of Human Nature: stupidity; selfishness; and horniness. These laws date back to the times of cowboys and indians.
The young man who discovered the comet was a cowboy. He rode a motorcycle instead of a horse to save his girl friend. I especially was touched by the heroine, who had cutoff her father, and then at the end of the movie re-established a relationship with him, even though it cost her her life. Partly I was touched because I thought of your Mom and her relationship (lack of relationship) with her father and how this has impacted her relationship with me. I keep hoping my filter is not too far off base. I guess this especially touched me because of an e-mail from Melanie which I read after I got home from the movie. When I called her Sunday afternoon, I asked if I could quote her e-mail in this Thoughtlet and she said yes. Selecting from the theme which touched me, Melanie wrote:
Rob and I tried to call Paul in Siberia before we went to the movie, and the line was always busy. However, we got through Sunday evening. I was also able to conference Melanie, Ben, and Sarah into talk to Paul. Roice, you were not home (or I dialed a wrong number, as we got a female voice on the answering machine) and so you didn't get to talk to Paul. Paul sounds good. Melanie says he sounds like all the male missionaries do. I didn't hear that tone-of-voice, and yet tone-of-voice has never been one of my strong points. Paul is going to become an Assistant to the Mission President on Wednesday. He will have to travel all over the mission, and he will be translating for President Galbraith all of the time. It will be good experience for him. I guess President Gaibraith didn't have a chance, since Paul is reading a stanza from Prime Words every day, a Thoughtlet every week, and regularly coloring his scriptures. This is the perscription for success in any aspect of life, isn't it? I hope the calling doesn't go to Paul's head, like I have seen happen with others in the past. For those who monitor how he is doing via these Thoughtlets, he really does sound good. Paul says they do not wear their nametags, and keep a low profile because of the law. The law has not affected the work. In his last letter he says the birds are starting to sing and the skies are starting to turn blue. Specifically he wrote:
From these words it sounds to me like we have raised at least one cowboy (or is he an indian in disguise?)."