It has been my great good fortune to see much of the world and to enjoy the people within it. My military service exposed me to Puerto Rico, Panama, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Four years of teaching in San Antonio, Texas continued my love affair with Hispanic culture, and got me, very briefly, to Mexico. A Fulbright Summer Study grant to India began a lifelong interest in Asian culture and left me a Hindu/Buddhist/Congregationalist/Methodist to this day.
Later, the awarding of a Japan Society grant to study there in the summer provided a superb opportunity
to further explore Buddhism. Several years after that I received a New York State
Regents' grant
to study Sanskrit literature with W. Norman Brown, Director Emeritus of the Department of Indic
Studies of the University of Pennsylvania.
In the summer of 1977, I was a guest of a marvelous Arapaho named Gabriel Warren, camped out with 4,000 Arapahos and Shoshone in the Wind River Basin in Wyoming for the week of the Sundance ceremony. That is Gabriel in the picture to the left. His grandson was going through the ceremony, and I was able to help with ceremonial preparations, gathering sweet sage and helping to build the lodge. Afterward there was great feasting. It moved me sufficiently to pierce both of my ears for turqoise studs.
A few years later, I had an exchange with a Navaho school at Rock Point in the Navaho Nation, a vast area in northeast Arizona and spilling over into Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Several years later I took a sabbatical to meet and talk with Iroquois leaders in the eight various pieces of Iroquois territory in New York State.
It is all of this great good fortune that has left me deeply committed to wishing the same kinds of experiences for my students, and fuels much of my passion for multicultural history.
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