trip

What We Did on our Vacation

By John Taylor; 2007 October 12, 16 Mashiyyat, 164 BE

We just got back from our epic annual fall voyage, first to upper New York State, where we attended ARE, the Auxtuna Renkonto de Esperantistoj, at the Silver Bay YMCA Resort (photos are already available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/limako/sets/72157602368084841/). There are two separate schedules of events there, one for the YMCA resort, and one of the Esperantists. Among the sports offered is archery. We took up the hobby of archery with great enthusiasm, the entire family; the resort featured a good teacher, who showed us the ropes. We are all anxious to try the activity here at home. As always, the children were greatly impressed by the abundance of chipmunks at Silver Bay. They are rare and very timid in this neck of the woods. Thomas enthusiastically suggested that they change the name of the United States to "Chipmunk Land." We also went on a boat tour of Lake George, one of the cleanest lakes in the world, according to the New York Times. Having read that, when I used up my distilled water I drank straight from the tap. It was good water.

After the weekend was over, we drove to Sherbrooke, Quebec where we stayed with Marie's Czech friends, Olga and Vashek, with their new baby, Tadeash. For a non-Czech speaker like myself, the visit was tedious; Marie caught up by internet telephone connection with the family of her godmother, with whom she spent most of her childhood. On the first day we drove to a labyrinth in Magog, but it had closed for the season. On our bike excursions, though, I was very impressed with the parks and path system of Sherbrooke. We were there on a weekday and the place was full of pedestrians and bicyclists. The town is a living demonstration of how eager people are, given the chance, to escape from the despotism of the automobile. The washrooms of the park even had those new-fangled urinals that do not waste water (according to the label, each one saves over a 150,000 liters a year); I had read about them but never saw one before. In Ontario you are lucky if the park even has a bathroom, and when it does, to find it open. The tap water of Sherbrooke seemed good and was tasty; I did not miss the distilled water I have to live on at home.

Yesterday, we got up at 5 AM and drove home from Sherbrooke, easily the furthest I have ever driven in one shot; after several rest stops we finally arrived at nine in the evening. It was especially difficult because these kids get into catfights at the drop of a hat. What saved my bacon as we entered the trial-by-fire of Toronto traffic was a recording of Lynn Redgrave reading aloud a youth oriented fantasy novel called Inkheart, which I had put onto the kids' Ipod blaster. They happily listened to that interminable story, and since I am no fan of fantasy, I was free to concentrate on getting us home in one piece. Although the book is to be found on the teen shelves of the library, Thomas (8) was every bit as captivated by the story as was Silvie (13).

From a Baha'i teaching point of view, the highlight of the trip was a talk I gave early Sunday morning on the travels of the Master. Although I have what I think is an impressive collection of photos and documentation, much of it never before seen in public, all my attempts to show it to an English-speaking audience have turned up duds. I pushed myself onto our local monthly fireside proclamation meeting in the Dunnville Library in September, and nobody turned up to see it. Even Ron, who has the key and opened the room, was sick that day and had to leave after a few minutes.

But I have no problem getting onto the program and presenting to the Esperantists at ARE, who are not even Baha'is. I had quickly translated the Powerpoint captions into Esperanto for this event. I showed photos and drawings of early Babi history and Abdu'l-Baha's western voyages; then Marie read aloud the text of an address the Master gave in Edinburgh, Scotland to the Esperanto Rondo there. He did give several talks to Esperantists, but as far as I know this is the only one whose Esperanto text was published at the time and is available. Marie's reading may have been the first public airing of that talk since it was originally given almost a century ago. I will share the text with you here on the Badi' Blog.

Surprisingly, the Master does not talk about God or anything religious in this address; He barely mentions Baha'i or Baha'u'llah. His sole concern is with the practical problem of overcoming the language problem, what Esperantists call the "interna ideo de Esperanto." The internal idea is the use of Esperanto not as a language like any other but as an official auxiliary world language, called in Esperanto a "helplingvo." Listening to Marie read the talk, I was thrilled to hear that a little personal anecdote that the Master tells at one point about an occurrence in Baghdad between friends who did not speak the same language still got a laugh. A hundred year old bit of humor from our Exemplar that still goes over with a live audience.

After it was all over, a veteran Esperantist, also named Marie, asked me to send her a copy of the talk in English so that she can show it to her English-speaking Baha'i friends, all of whom refuse to consider learning Esperanto. Good luck to her. You would have an easier time persuading neo-Nazi party members to take a sexual and racial sensitivity training course. (In my opinion, what English speakers need is to take a forced tour of the world's linguistic concentration camps, as was done by the liberating armies to the "innocent" nearby villagers after WWII.) Anyway, in an upcoming Badi' blog entry I will include the talk in both English and Esperanto (it is in an old Star of the West, as well as Khursheed's "Seven Candles of Unity," if you have that book). Only one other Baha'i turned up at ARE this time, Magnolia, a young French Canadian believer from Montreal, who was taking the beginner's course. Her first statement to me was, "These Esperantists are really open to the Faith, aren't they?" You bet.

Also attending this gathering, and teaching the "Introductory Esperanto" Courses, was Dr. Ronald Glossop, a prominent figure in the discipline of peace studies. He wrote the text book that I studied with a fine toothed comb when I was taking correspondence courses back in the early 1990's. He was kind enough to agree to an interview on his life, which we conducted after the Socia Renkonto on Saturday night. The notes I made on that occasion will be the subject of an upcoming Badi blog entry.