Earthlings Letter # 6

Jeff & Susan • August 2, 2015

Greetings Earthlings! I would like to give you something to think about.

At some point in our Human Family Time there was a thought that surfaced that went something like this, “ When a baby is born its fists are closed, because that is where it is holding its gifts. As it grows older it opens its fists and shows it’s palms as it releases its gifts to the world.”

A drawing of a hand with a green outline around it

Many people repeated this thought because it seemed true to them and when people find something true it is remembered generation ( the average amount of time between the birth of parents and that if their children – about 30 years.) after generation. That is why I am able to write it down now, because someone told this to me and I feel it was true so I give it to you. What this thought is saying to me is that every person born has their own unique gifts to release to the world. And I find this to be a very exciting and happy thing to think about. I hope you do too.

So how do we find out what our gifts are so that we may someday release them? Many people have pondered this question over our long/short history as a human species on Earth. Now that I think about it, where does the word ‘earth’ come from?

A drawing of a globe with a blue frame around it

I will look it up. Here is what I found, the word ‘earth’ traces back to a German word ‘erde’ which means ground or soil. I am not going to suggest what you should or can think about this. We have thought about soil in an earlier Earthlings Letter. Now it is time for you to form your own unique thoughts about the name of our planet. Thinking about stuff is one of the paths you can take to discover your own unique ( the only one of its kind ) gifts that you will someday release to the world.

This letter will be a little different than ones I have written to you in the past. In this letter I am going to encourage you to think. Just to think. This is the whole experiment. And it is an experiment that will continue for your whole life. This may sound like an easy thing to do. But it is not. It is the hardest thing you will do, having your own thoughts about things. And sometimes you will succeed. There will always be someone trying to tell you what/or how to think. So you must be strong and determined and curious and brave. And with all that effort, you will learn things and that will encourage you to think some more.

So how do you know if your thoughts are really your own? And here hangs all that is important. The closer you get to thinking thoughts that are really yours the more excited and happier you will become and self motivated and eventually, if you stay focused, you may make a discovery! And real discovery is something that makes everyone nod their heads in agreement, if they are also thinkers, and helps everyone to live closer to the wonderful efficiency that Nature is using. We have been here only a tiny bit of time and Earth has been here a whole, huge unimaginable amount of time, and is way ahead of us when it comes to how to make things work. And that brings us to a question, “are you a noticer?”

A drawing of a person looking through a magnifying glass

Do you notice things that other people around you don’t? When you go for a walk in the park or woods do you walk up to plants, trees, creatures and examine them closely? These are signs that you are a noticer. Do you ask a lot of questions? This is another sign. Do you always know where to find something in your home that other people can’t? Another sign. And a noticer is a great thing to be! When you are a noticer you are gathering lots of information that your brain then stores and compares with other information it already has from your previous noticing and starts to make sense of these different observations in relation to each other. The more stuff your brain has to consider the closer the conclusions, you come to about whatever you are thinking, will be to what is real or true. And you may learn that what you thought before is not true at all! And that is not something to worry about because this ‘thinking thing‘ is what we are made for and answers always lead to more questions; if they are the right answers. We can never find what is ‘perfectly true’ because everything in nature, and we are part of it, is always changing. But we can come close… and that is close enough. There are infinity of wonderful discoveries possible between zero and ‘close enough’.

I am going to introduce you to an interesting word – synergy. This word came from the Greek word, ‘synergia’ which means working together, to help, cooperate. Our modern word, synergy, means the creation of an effect that is different and greater than the combination of its parts. Buckminster Fuller once said, “there is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”

You can see what he meant, that there is nothing in the many parts and arrangement of parts of a caterpillar that would make you think that some day it will transform into a butterfly which looks completely different and can fly too! Synergy occurs when people interact with each other, nature is synergetic to all its diversity and to us, and Earth is synergetic to everything that is constantly happening. We are all involved in a huge cooperation experiment! And the out come cannot be foreseen, but we can guess that it will be different and/or greater than its many parts! Each of our individual contributions to this synergy is essential for the constantly happening result to keep becoming…

Remember, we are each of us alive on Earth so that we can share our ‘gifts’. By thinking your own thoughts and by being yourself you are cooperating in the synergetic way the Nature loves!

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Chapter 11: Japan Part 3

September 15, 2025

Japan Log, Part 3 General impressions, Japan and Jeju South Korea

Japan, special Nagasaki log

September 9, 2025

I went to the Nagasaki Museum of Art. There was a special exhibit there called War in the Eyes of Artists; from Goya to several Nagasaki artists. Though I had deliberately avoided visiting the epicenters of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for reasons I have already expressed, seeing this exhibit at the museum was just as intense. For this log I am going to highlight a display I found most moving. I am including the youtube address where it can be seen and heard. Place address here The display starts with a poem and an illustration. Both commemorate the bombing of Nagasaki. After viewing the illustration and reading the poem you enter a small theater to sit down and watch an animation of the illustration set to music. All the children, adults, animals and Shinto like creatures that are in the illustration (in a huge tree) come to life and move to the rhythm of the music. A male voice sings overall, lyrics that may have to do with the poem, written by singer/songwriter Masaharu Fujiyama and entitled, “Kusunoki; Blown by the 500-year Wind.” The illustration is the work of an artist named Junaida. The lyrics were inspired by the Kusunoki (camphor trees), which survived the atomic bomb.

Chapter 11: Japan Part 2

September 2, 2025

Shizuoka

Chapter 11: Japan Part 1

August 25, 2025

We dock at Hakodate, Japan on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That stands as a singular horror among the many horrors humans commit on each other and Nature and continue to commit to this day. There is no apology possible and unfortunately nothing may have been learned. We still threaten each other with nuclear weapons. No treaty has stopped the building of nuclear bombs. I wonder how the Japanese people keep the memory of this tragedy so that living can continue with some normalcy. Maybe it can be equated to a typhoon or earthquake, like a natural disaster having no morality or intention. It has influenced their imaginations ever since though, revealed in movies like Godzilla and in their Manga. Threatening creatures, imagined power that cannot be controlled or resisted. People can be like a natural disaster to each other. People can also be wonderful. We saw this as we left the city. A small group of dancers appeared on the dock to say goodbye. The dancing they did was so charming and touching. It was a traditional dance, maybe 15 dancers. About 8 people played instruments to accompany them, flutes, drums and other unique percussion. Watching from the top deck of the ship the dancers appear like exotical dolls. Three warriors pantomime their strength, emphasized with elegant gestures of their fans and their golden, brightly tasselled headdresses that bow and flash in opposition. Then the little children emerge, five of them. Their elders position them precisely and they wait for the music to begin. Their tiny movements are sweetly in time as they step then extend their fans to tap the air with it lightly, creating a feeling of certainty and control. Moving to one side with a gliding motion they unfurl their fan, flourish and close it, then glide to the other side and do the same. The dance continues with variations of these movements and some new ones punctuate occasionally. So intent and serious, each tiny performer dressed in elaborate traditional clothing, a magical, miniature display. The dance becomes hypnotic as it continues to the simple rhythms of the drums and flutes repeating and repeating an ancient significance remembered by a few. After they finish, our ship pulls away with several blasts from the horn. The tiny dancers wave goodbye, with their hands crossing again and again in front of their faces, for so long it seems as if they might continue until we are out of sight. Finally we are too far away to hear the children cry out. This experience was fleeting and very moving. A dancing gesture of dignity and friendship. People are not their military, they are not their government. They have to participate in their society but they are first of all human. They want to create understanding beyond language and country.

Chapter 10: Alaska Part 2

August 12, 2025

Alaska feels like a different country; not like one of the United States. Maybe its vastness and extreme climate have created this unique presence. People who adapt themselves to living half the year in darkness and half in light, in a lot of cold and rain with magnificent beauty all around, this has an impact. The unique environment of Alaska transforms people. The Tlingit were one of the aboriginal Alaskan groups. They crossed the Bering Strait from Asia, approximately 9,000 years ago. There are also some theories about individuals island-hopping from Polynesia. Both scenarios may be true. Nonetheless, they formed a highly complex social, legal and political structure along with extraordinary creative arts and oral culture. Before European contact their population reached approximately 20,000. Status was based on birth and wealth, creating a hierarchical social structure. There was a noble class (determined through hereditary) followed by medicine men and women, warriors, traders, commoners and slaves. The Clan House was home to three resident classes; nobles, commoners and slaves. The construction of the Clan House was a sacred event involving rituals for the dead. The two ritual groups (moiety) were Raven or Eagle/Wolf, and they were expected to marry outside their group (exogamous). Tlingit followed a matrilineal clan system. Children inherited the clan side of the mother. All rights were through the mother; these include fishing, hunting and gathering places, the use of certain clan symbols, totem designs, house decoration and ceremonial clothing designs. The Clan had spiritual, psychological and medical protection from a medicine man or woman. They were also known to control weather, bring luck, predict the future, expose witches and speak to the dead. They did not cut their hair in order to keep their power strong. Their power would pass to a younger relative when they died.

Chapter 10: Alaska Part 1

August 4, 2025

Some context for this trip and log. The ship we are traveling on is the Villa Vie Odyssey. It is a small cruise ship with about 300 passengers and 300 crew. We have bought a cabin aboard. My plan is to document one circumnavigation. This will take about 3 and ½ years. So far this has been a record from when we boarded in Barbados, going through the Panama Canal, up the western coast of Mexico over to Hawaii then up the western coast of the United States to Alaska.The following is an account of Alaska. After this we will travel to Japan. Thank you for your interest. I was unprepared for the profound beauty of Alaska. The more you see, the more it astounds. How is it possible that people could hunt seals, foxes, wolves and beavers to extinction, log evergreen trees to bare brown ground - as if a massive electric shaver was used to mow the mountains- that grow back in patches and trails made for giants? Vastness is not endless. The harsh environment, remoteness and beauty did not protect them. Still, how was it possible? Only people caught in a frenzy of commerce could do this. The same frenzy that brought thousands of men with dreams of making fortunes in gold to remote outlands of Alaska. They became insane devourers. Luminous white water rushes from a cleft at the top of the mountain sliding in and out of evergreens to the river below, pinched along the way by grey rocks. This was the land of the Tlingit for at least 10,000 years. Theirs was a highly developed social structure equal to those found in Europe. Spanish contact in 1775 dropped their population by about 80 percent, with typhoid fever, scarlet fever, and measles. The Russian fur trade changed their lives even more. It began after Vitus Bering’s 1747 expedition and “discovery” of the Bering strait. Sea otter pelts were the incentive. Other fur was also sought but sea otter pelts were the most coveted. It is the warmest fur. It has the most hairs per square inch of any animal fur. An adaptation that allows it to live in the extreme environments of Alaska. Unfortunately for the otters its fur can be made into the warmest of coats. By 1799 the fur trade was thriving. It involved the forced labor of the indigenous people. Their local knowledge of the animals and their hunting expertise were essential. This industry brought significant change to the native communities, disease, dependence on trade goods and inter-tribal conflict. Russia traded furs to China and Europe. When competition for pelts and political factors involving Russia affected their ability to continue the trade, Russia sold Alaska to the United States. The US had been pressing westward and getting involved with trapping, fishing, mining, logging and homesteading. In 1867 the US bought Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. In 1788 the US entered the maritime fur trade; sea otter furs for Oriental goods. By 1801 the US controlled the fur trade at its height and Boston was at its center. When a major discovery of gold was made in 1896, Alaska became the gateway to the Klondike gold fields. Purple mountains are passing by my window as we glide to our next port. I can watch this ‘movie’ before I go to sleep. It stays light till around midnight and never becomes completely dark. The sun is up at 5:00. Locals describe the endless darkness of the winter months as depressing. “What do you do?” “Watch movies, watch TV.” Native people used the long dark Winters to create. The memories of summer beauty and important events, documented in beadwork, carved figures of animals from walrus bone, charms for hats and masks, hand made fur garments beautifully beaded with flowers, leaves and animals, scrimshaw pipes of bone, a crown for a baby beaded and decorated with carvings, two white pom poms hanging from thin leather strips on either side. The intensive summer hunting over, food dried and stored. Time for handwork, music, story telling and conversation. While the mountains and sky silently hover near in all their variety and beauty.

Earthlings Letter # 6

Chapter 11: Japan Part 3

Japan, special Nagasaki log

Chapter 11: Japan Part 2

Chapter 11: Japan Part 1

Chapter 10: Alaska Part 2

Chapter 10: Alaska Part 1

Chapter 9: Cruising Around the World

Chapter 8: Cruising Around the World

Chapter 7: Cruising Around the World Part 2

Chapter 7: Cruising Around the World Part 1