Crews Letter #2004 02 Depth Perception

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Good Morning Crew:

We have not yet started traveling and the recommissioning is progressing well without surprises. What follow are some exercises in depth perception.

Swiss Hitchhiking

The Swiss couple moored beside us have both good and not so good things to say of the people they encountered while cruising the Atlantic coast of the United States. They were docked at Annapolis for three weeks. The nearest supermarket was some distance away. Public transportation was a bus four times a day. Hitch hiking is illegal and asking for a ride always got a staunch “No!”

The woman developed a ploy that worked every time. With the cart of bagged groceries at hand, she would approach anyone loading groceries into their own car and ask for directions on how to use the bus. She would get out the return trip bus tickets and ask when and where to catch the bus back to their boat.

Conclusion: Americans have learned well not to trust hitchhikers, not to give beggars a ride, but their generosity is too great to ignore a good con artist.

The same Swiss couple walked one night from the Annapolis to their boat. It was dark. The streets were empty. The absence of people was scary. Europeans walk day and night. Empty streets are unusual in cities.

Then a “black man” approached them. They were scared and he recognized it.

“I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to hurt you.” he said, “ I just need a couple of dollars.”

They told him they didn’t have any money and they all laughed. He went on his way.

They also stayed some time in Charleston, South Carolina. What a surprise the difference in culture, language and manners. Are many parts of America so different?

There is an underlying concept in Europe is that the United States (America) is one country with a single language, culture and history. It can’t possibly be much bigger than Germany or France.

The state of Montana is bigger than Germany.

Ancient Acoustical Engineering

All this time we were amazed with the engineering of the Greeks and Romans. The fantastic acoustics of the ancient theaters and coliseums is unbelievable.

Sunday we attend a concert in a cave. The performances are classical flute and a cappella voice, quartets and solos. The sound is natural, without amplification. The acoustics of this cave are fantastic.

Conclusion: It must be the stone, not the engineers.

Accent Recognition

At the marina supermarket an Aussie asks if I am Canadian.

By my accent, he is certain that I am neither British nor Australian.

I tell him “Texan”.

“Ok” he replies, “American.”

He then explains that to ask a Canadian if he is American is a harsh insult. To go the other way doesn’t upset Americans.

Conclusion: ?

A business philosophy which is prevalent in the US goes like this:

For completely selfish reasons, I want my supplier to make a fair profit on every deal that we do. That way, he will be in business the next time I need the product he supplies and I am already confident of his skill and integrity.

I have expressed this concept to different businessmen here in Turkey. Not so, they say. Here, the philosophy is get the price so low on every deal that the supplier looses money. It is his problem. If he is not in business next time, someone will have filled his hole.

On reflection, several of these people have said this difference may explain why Americans are wealthy and Turks are poor.

Chinese Proverb: If you live for the present, you eat seed. If you live for next year, you plant wheat. If you live for ten years from now, you plant trees. If you live for a hundred years from now, you raise your children well.

<<You can “live for a hundred years from now” without expecting to be alive a hundred years from now.>>

Conclusion: Without balance, we can starve now or we can starve later.

In today’s world, with terrorism in open manifestation, it would be foolish to think “Bad things can’t happen to me.” Even so, the real loss is for those people who change their lives and narrow their horizon because of fear of the terrorists. For us, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Egypt are places we would like to cruise. Because of the political situation we will not. The Greek Olympics this August have got to be a high profile target. The UN Building, Congress, the Golden Gate Bridge, any six major city shopping malls on a Saturday afternoon: all high profile targets are easy to define and impossible to protect. The only option is to kill the assassins before they commit the crime and this makes us the terrorists.

A person who will kill us by killing himself is only neutralized successfully by killing him before he gets a chance to kill himself.  The really dangerous people in the process are the ones who put him up to it with funding and dogma.  We can either take the war to them or they will bring it to us.  The later alternative is not acceptable.

The absence of WMD in Iraq has left the world with a significant guilt. For twelve years, our agent, the UN, held 25 million people in poverty and depravation because of these things that didn’t exist. During this time the leadership of Iraq and the UN profited from the sanctions. The people of Iraq suffered the sanctions. We imposed them.

Please pray for all of the people of the Middle East and the world whose lives are bent and broken by these jerks. 

Fair Winds and Quiet Times,

Phyl and Fred

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