Savvy Women

I have wonderful memories, dating all the way back to my early boyhood, of driving to the Texas Gulf Coast for family vacations. Because we lived inland, on the northern edge of what’s called the Texas “Hill Country,” we had to drive for several hours before we’d arrive at our preferred locale, a small town called Rockport. We’d then spend a week or so walking on the beach and collecting sea shells, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, crabbing and giving away our catch to more serious fishermen, feeding bread crumbs to the sea gulls, going out to eat at seafood restaurants, and just having a whale of a good time.

Today, as a middle-aged adult, I’d have to say that my love of large bodies of water probably began during those holiday trips. I just get this wonderfully expansive feeling when I travel to oceans and seas at this time in my life. It’s exhilarating to stand at the water’s edge and look out across at what appears to be an infinite blue horizon. Because I’ve traveled so much in recent years, I’ve had the opportunity to see many of the world’s great bodies of water, including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and the Red Sea. All are magnificent.

As you can probably guess, I am horrified by what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico, at the Deep Horizon oil blowout. I won’t use the word “spill” to describe what’s taking place. A spill sounds so mild and controllable. All a spill requires is to be wiped up. What’s happening a mile below the surface is more like an oil “volcano.” How does one stop a volcano and clean up after it’s done spewing?

I’ve included a twelve-minute interview, conducted by Democracy Now!’s Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman, with Dr. Carl Safina, renowned ecologist and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute. This video provides a nice overview of the part the gulf plays in the larger ecosystem.

In recent days I’ve been prompted to read up on the current health of the world’s oceans and seas. If, like me, you’re interested in finding out more and what can be done to help, I suggest you have a look at this site.

Now that my classes at the university have ended for the year, I’m looking forward to summer vacation. In a little more than two weeks I’ll be flying to America to see my family, and on the way there, I’ll do a stopover stay for a few days in Edinburgh, Scotland. I’ll blog that trip in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.

Reading is one of the things I enjoy doing during the summertime when I’m back home. Just recently, when looking for reading material to carry me through the next three months, I discovered Jean Kwok, a Chinese-American writer who emigrated from Hong Kong when she was very young and now lives in the Netherlands with her Dutch husband and two children. Kwok’s first book, Girl in Translation, a novel that is based quite extensively upon early experiences she had in the Big Apple melting pot, was recently published and seems to be getting pretty good reviews.

Kwok can be seen talking specifically about her novel here. I’ve included a CNN interview in which she focuses less on the book and more on her upbringing and the interesting concept of “identity.”

I feel that I have a lot in common with Kwok. Of course, we both write, but I’m thinking mostly about the fact that the two of us have spent significant chunks of time living outside the countries where we were born. Such people, with a foot in two different worlds, are very interesting, I think.

Each year, as I get ready to jet back to Texas, I always spend some time thinking about who I am, where I’ve come from, and how I’ve changed now that I’ve become so international. The conclusion that I always come to, at the end of all that thinking, is that I’m now the intriguing Mr. Gray Kwok refers to in her interview.

Often, while I’m getting ready to go to work, I listen to a live, online broadcast of the day’s news put out by a relatively new media outfit called Russia Today. I like RT because their reporters frequently bring an interesting perspective to their stories. Plus, I once lived in Poland and have traveled a lot in central and eastern Europe, so I like to keep up with what’s going on in that part of the world.

A few mornings ago–I forget which day it was now–I was wandering around my apartment, buttoning up my shirt or brushing my teeth or doing whatever I happened to be doing at the moment, when RT aired a poignant report about Maria Mamzurina-Volkova, a septuagenarian Muscovite with an interesting connection to the small town of Kistelek in southern Hungary. The “Spiritual Mission” hook used to introduce her story was enough to draw me into my living room where I ended up taking a seat and watching the entire four-minute video, the very same one embedded here.

Immediately after seeing this story about “family duty”–that’s Volkova’s phrase–I composed an email to myself which included a link to the archived version of the report and then wrote, in the subject line of the message I was typing, the following: “My Next Savvy Blog.”

For additional information about Volkova, her brother, and her life’s mission, check out this story, from 2006, on Pravda.