Ten Years of Ukraine

Today is a pretty significant anniversary.  Ten years ago, March 27, 2006, I came to Ukraine for the very first time.  It was just a two-week visit, and I had no idea at that time that it would be the start of a ten-year odyssey that would be arguably the most remarkable period of my life.

The Arrival

I really didn’t know what to expect when my plane touched down in Boryspil early that Monday. It was the culmination of a wild weekend. I had just returned to Denver Saturday morning from a week-long business trip to Peru, and I had only a day to organize, pack and prepare for my two weeks in Ukraine. I left Denver Sunday morning, and owing to time-zone changes, arrived in Kyiv early Monday afternoon.

I was dog-tired as I got off the last of the three planes that carried me from Denver to Kyiv. Going through passport control was a bit intimidating that first time, but it’s gotten better since then. After emerging from customs, I looked around for the guide I was expecting but whose face was unknown. A young girl named Marina soon greeted me and we were off in a taxi to find my hotel. And so it all began.

Why I Came

My reason for coming that first time – although I am loathe to admit it – was that I had gotten involved in the online scam of websites that promote dating and marriage with women from the former Soviet Union. I really didn’t know much about this “industry” and had gotten into it accidentally in 2005 while researching things to do in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where I thought I would be working. Up until that point, Ukraine had never entered my mind as a destination for any reason.

But as it turned out, I received letters from a number of women in Ukraine and struck up some correspondence with a couple of them, one of whom seemed particularly interesting. She invited me to come and meet her. The situation in Kazakhstan didn’t work out, so I decided to make the trip. About two weeks before I was due to arrive, I got a letter that she had suddenly become engaged. That seemed really strange, and I figured out soon after that the woman probably never really existed; the letters were likely written by an agency employee and the photos were probably fake.

But it was too late to cancel, so I made the trip. I found an independent translation agency in an eastern city called Kharkiv, and they sent a translator/guide to help me. I did meet a couple of other women, but I quickly figured out that the whole thing was a scam. The women were “professional daters,” whose game was to meet a succession of men who would take them out to nice dinners or shows, and then leave.

The whole “industry” had bad people on both sides: cynical women who scam clueless foreign men for money and despicable guys who travel to these countries as “sex tourists,” using the nicer and more vulnerable girls for a week of sex and then never being in contact again. I wanted no further part of that, and I was embarrassed to have been involved with it at all.

That was the bad part. But there were some good points of my two weeks in Kyiv; a lot, in fact.

A Turning Point

I saw many different and interesting places in the city and had a lot of fun, mostly with my hired guide. Having learned some Russian years before, it was interesting to be in the midst of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. Even the sore spots of the city – street beggars, dull Soviet-era architecture, and horrible drivers – were intriguing in their own way.

At one point, while we were returning to the center from a visit to an open-air museum of historical Ukrainian building styles, I looked out the window at the people going about their business. We were in traffic, moving slowly through a mixed neighborhood of residential and small-business buildings. The houses were typically dull five-to nine-level apartment buildings, and the streets were dotted with grocery stores and other small businesses.

Suddenly the thought came to me: I could live here. It was a feeling I’ve had in few other places in my life; throughout my many travels, only Colorado and Ireland come to mind. Sure, language was an issue, but I could learn, I could adapt. After all, I had learned enough Spanish to get by pretty well in Peru.

I was at a point in my life where something inside of me was crying out for change. It’s something I had gone through several times in the past. I seem to need some kind of change – big change – every five to eight years or so. Ten years ago, I was feeling that need, and in Kyiv, the seed of change began to take root.

Before Kyiv

I had been working for a small project management company for almost eight years, and it had been great. Doing that kind of work and being asked to join that company was something I never could have anticipated when it happened in 1998. I worked with good people, had interesting adventures in places like South America and Kazakhstan, and had regained the high level of professional self-esteem that had taken some hits in the early ‘90s.

And I was doing very well financially. By 2006, I was living in a comfortable, cabin-style house on four acres of forest in the beautiful foothills of the Rocky Mountains. My home was a retreat from the city, and I had nature and quiet around me most of the time. It was the second house I had bought since I started at that company, the first having been a new-construction home in a Denver suburb. I had two pickup trucks, the second being a new Nissan Titan with all the bells and whistles. That allowed me to let my daughters use my other truck as they needed, and I enjoyed being able to do that.

I had a lot of other creature comforts as well. From a material point of view, my life had never been better. And I was able to travel and see new places, mostly in conjunction with my work. It all seemed pretty good. But something was missing.

The biggest part of that something was probably what led me to take a chance on the dating website that discovered me while preparing for Kazakhstan: loneliness. I had been living alone, without a love in my life, for too long. We men don’t like to admit such weaknesses, but there it was; it’s hard to deny that it was a big factor.

But there was more to it than that. Between 2001 and the end of 2003, I had been involved in a difficult and, at times, nasty environmental cleanup project outside of Chicago. For the final six months of the project, I had become the sole onsite manager from my company’s side.

Dealing with the people around the project, particularly the residents and the local politicians was absolutely terrible. Most of the people were just looking for ways to extort money from our client, a large utility company, and the politicians were using every means possible, truthful or not, to castigate the utility company and advance their own political careers.

That area in and around Chicago was (and remains) completely controlled by the Democratic party, and we were at the mercy of liberal politicians. I learned firsthand how nasty and downright evil they can be. At the end, I was exhausted and very cynical.

For the next several years, I got more involved in some South American mining projects, which seemed great. But again, politics and other factors intruded to sap my enthusiasm for the projects. It seemed as though all we did was create feasibility studies, but we never got on the ground to actually build anything. And during this time we had some very bad internal incidents that jaded my feelings about the company. It had become time for me to do something else.

Something Different

Coming to Kyiv ten years ago was not just a desperate attempt to find love; I was also moved by the sense of adventure. I was going to Ukraine, a place that used to be part of the dreaded Soviet Union. In a previous life as a Navy intelligence analyst, the USSR had been my primary target, and going there was beyond impossible. But in 2006, there I was. It was a fantastic adventure.

When I had that feeling on the bus that I could live there, I paid attention to it. Being at that “need for change” point in my life, I wondered what I might do in such a place as Ukraine. I didn’t think too seriously about it at that moment, but I kept it in the back of my mind as I returned to Colorado and went about my project management work.

After the trip, I continued to correspond with my guide, and those e-mails fed my thought process about making a life change. More and more, I knew that I needed to do something different. A few months later, in May or June, I had a lengthy online chat with the owner of the translation company in Kharkiv that had provided the guide for me. I wanted to know what I might do for work if I came to Ukraine and wondered what she knew about teaching English there. I had a vision of a simpler life in which I would write and teach English.

In the course of the conversation, we discussed working together within the framework of the company she had been trying to build, expanding it and registering it in the United States. We would become business partners. In addition to writing and teaching, I would help manage and market this company; we would grow it as a translation and interpreting company focused on business and tourist clients. At that time, it looked like Ukraine was poised to be an emerging market for such services.

Also, I would continue my business writing and editing work, but on a freelance basis, and we would fold it into the overall offerings of the new company. It all sounded pretty good, and I began making concrete plans.

The Result

That talk led to another trip to Ukraine at the end of 2006 during which we set further plans and organized a team. It also led to my resigning from the project management company. It was a very amicable resignation, and I continued to do work for them, and for some other local companies, as an independent contractor for several years.

In early 2007, some cracks began to show in our business partnership, but I had made my choices, and there was no looking back. In May of 2007, I came back to Ukraine to spend a month working together on the business, which I had registered in Colorado, and to do some business writing workshops at several local universities.

Later that summer, I sold my house in the mountains. It was a sad moment to pack up and drive away from my beautiful refuge, but I was now headed in a new and different direction, and it wasn’t financially possible to keep the house at the same time. A few months later, in September, I rented my first long-term apartment in Kharkiv, and by May of 2008 I had become a full-time resident.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Years Since

There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years that I have lived here. I’ve experienced personal highs and lows, and I’ve seen the country go through enormous convulsions. But both Ukraine and I seem to be surviving.

When I first arrived in 2006, Ukraine was in the second year of the Yushchenko government. He was the president who had been elected during the Orange Revolution of late 2004, beating the kleptocrat Viktor Yanukovich. There were high hopes that the Yushchenko government would rein in the thieving oligarchs, reform the country’s corrupt institutions, and bring real democracy to Ukraine. But even by the time I arrived, people were starting to lose faith.

As it turned out, the Yushchenko government was a failure, mainly due to infighting between his camp and the camp of his Orange Revolution partner, then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. As a result, the arch-kleptocrat Yanukovich won the presidential election in January 2010, and “thug” government began to return. “Tax police” raided businesses to exact bribes, and a whole slew of shady government authorities got rich from the public coffers.

At the end of 2013, people had had enough, and in November, a small protest movement began on the Maidan in Kyiv. It became known as Euromaidan, and by February 2014, after the killing of 100 protesters by the government, democratic forces swept Yanukovich and his cronies out of office. A caretaker government took control while new elections could be organized, and a few months later, the current president, Petro Poroshenko, took office.

In the meantime, Russia, which had long pulled the strings on Yanukovich, began to move against the new Ukrainian government in early 2014. First, they took control of Crimea and then annexed it after a trumped-up referendum. Then they set about creating trouble in eastern Ukraine in concert with the existing criminal element in that region. That trouble took hold in Donetsk and Lugansk and evolved into the war that has been ongoing since the middle of 2014. For many months, there was a real fear that Russia would stage a full invasion of Ukraine. We were very nervous.

I saw firsthand in March of 2014 how Russian provocateurs tried to foment upheaval in Kharkiv. Thousands of Russians had come into the city on March 1st to stir up locals who supported Russia over their own government. I personally witnessed a scene in which tens of thousands of people crowded Kharkiv’s main square and angrily egged on thugs who were beating Euromaidan supporters. It was ugly.

We all worried about Kharkiv going the same way as Donetsk, especially with Russian military units only 30 kilometers away across the border. But, thankfully, nothing materialized, and Kharkiv has remained relatively safe and very Ukrainian. Still, we all know that Russia is not far away, and one day it could all come crashing down.

And the Economy

When I arrived in Kyiv for the first time in 2006, the currency exchange rate was about five hryvnias to the dollar. As an American with dollars, everything seemed remarkably cheap. When the worldwide financial crisis hit in late 2008, the exchange rate jumped briefly to 10 to one, and then settled down to an average of about eight hyrvnias to one dollar. It stayed that way for about four years, and we were all able to live with that, and despite inflation, the cost of living was still pretty good overall.

But in early 2014, it all came undone. The exchange rate shot up quickly: 12 to one, then climbing to 15 to one, and then past 20 to one. It settled down again for a while, but the news of Ukraine’s failing economy the past months caused the rate to spike again, and the rates have been in the range of 26 or 27 hyrvnias to one dollar. Quite a change from when I first arrived.

But the currency exchange rate isn’t the only problem. Ukraine’s economic output since the beginning of 2014 has plummeted due to lack of industrial production in the warring eastern region. As a result, Ukraine has been unable to pay its debts, and inflation has skyrocketed. Food prices have risen multiple times, and energy prices have gone through the roof. Because I and other people working in IT get paid on a dollar basis, we do all right. But for millions of others, especially older people living on meager government pensions, it’s very difficult.

Once again, Ukraine sits at the edge of economic and political disaster. Infighting is tearing the government apart, and it appears to be only a matter of time before a key member of the post-Euromaidan government, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is forced out. That will fracture the governing coalition. It all seems like just more of the same.

When I first arrived, and for some years thereafter, most people I talked with were not thinking seriously about leaving the country. There were some who wanted to emigrate, but most had the notion of making Ukraine better. In the past year or so, however, I have encountered far more people who have given up and decided their lives would be better in Western Europe or North America. These days, I have a lot of former students and a few good friends who are now living elsewhere.

My Ten Years

The business we had planned, Nova Mova, failed. The financial crisis of 2008-09 had a lot to do with that: it became very hard to get client work. But also, it turned out that my business partner was extremely dishonest and incompetent. By early 2010, the company was no more.

But in the meantime, I had cultivated a good body of work as an English teacher. It started with doing speaking clubs at a local language school, and before long, I had individuals asking for private lessons. In the fall of 2008, I was invited to come several times a week to give speaking clubs at a local software development company, EPAM Systems – the company at which I work full-time now.

I added another large IT company, Global Logic, to my list of work in the fall of 2009, and my schedule was further filled out with private students. At the end of 2009, I dropped the language school and became focused on providing teaching services to IT companies and private students. Soon I had more work than I could handle. I wasn’t writing as much as I had planned, but I was doing a LOT of teaching.

More important, I think, I was growing. I was changing as a person and developing as a teacher. New ideas came to me – ways to more directly help the students I had with the kinds of business English skills they actually needed. After decades of different kinds of work, I had really found my niche. I was doing what I was meant to do.

Now I work full-time for EPAM, which has grown to more than 1,000 employees in Kharkiv alone, and more than 4,000 in Ukraine. It keeps me very busy, and with that level of work, I've had to cut back to just a few private students. But I enjoy what I do – something I have not always been able to say about past jobs.

Living in Eastern Europe has afforded me opportunities to travel that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve made several trips to Switzerland to visit my daughter and her family, which has been a real joy. I’ve also been able to see a bit of Italy, France, Denmark, Austria and Hungary. Last year I took a real resort vacation to the south of Turkey. And I am still thinking about making a return to Ireland someday soon. All of that has been great.

Throughout these ten years of my Ukrainian life, I’ve had a number of special friends and unique acquaintances. And I’ve built a LOT of memories. There are a couple of people here I would count among the best friends I have ever had in my life, and if I hadn’t come, I would never have met them.

In these years I’ve also felt the hope of love and the sting of heartbreak. I still live alone; that hasn’t changed. Perhaps this points out that this kind of relationship is something I’m just not meant to have in this life. Maybe it’s just a tough lesson of karma. Who knows?

Maybe it’s more related to the one thing about living here that perhaps does not fit: age. For all of these years, I’ve been an older man living among much younger people. My friends and acquaintances are all many years younger. I know no one over 40 and very few over 35. Very often, I find myself wishing I was a lot younger; lately I’ve thought about that a lot. But I am not – and there it is.

But all of that aside, my life here has been good. I sometimes reminisce about the house in the mountains and listening to the sweet, calming sounds of a Colorado forest on a warm summer day. But aside from that, I have no regrets. I am where I am meant to be, around people I am meant to be with, doing what I am meant to do. I think a lot of people would have trouble honestly saying the same.

The Future?

Maybe I shouldn’t try to look ahead for now. I’ve thought a number of times over the past four or five years that I probably should leave. But I am still here. Maybe that's because I've been not ready – or afraid – to make another change. Or maybe it's because on some level I still feel like I belong here. I'm not sure. 

I really was primed to quit Ukraine after a series of bad events in 2013, but then someone came along late that year who made me want to stay and see what might happen. The jury is still out on that, but I’m not quite ready to pull up stakes and move on. (UPDATE: The jury came in, and nothing good came of it.)

And I have great work now. There are challenges, and sometimes I feel like pulling my hair out (if I had any to pull) over corporate bureaucracy and such. But still, I find myself most days feeling pretty good about what I am doing. I’ve finally gotten myself to start doing some serious writing on a book. Again it’s all good, and it might be for naught if I give up on Ukraine now.

But there is that urge to change. It’s a part of me. Maybe I need to leave, or maybe I just need to make some other kind of big life change without going anywhere. I don’t know the answer to that yet, but I do realize that I am overdue to make some kind of big change. So, either way, I guess some big things are still in the offing.

All I know for sure is that my arrival in this country 10 years ago was not an accident: there was a purpose behind it. The life I’ve lived since then, including the very hard parts, has been the life I’ve needed to live. And I am glad for every moment of it.

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Gratitude for What is Yet to Come

“Give thanks for (the as-yet) unknown blessings (that are) already on their way.” – Native American saying of unknown origin.

Long before the establishment of organized religions, ancient people believed that mysterious, natural spirits controlled the world in which they lived. If food was abundant and the weather was good, it was because these spirits – the “gods” – made it happen. When the game disappeared, the weather got bad, and the land failed to yield crops, it was also because of the gods.

But ancient people did not consider their gods to be totally capricious; there was always a reason why life conditions were good or challenging. The reason, the people deduced, was about them: either the gods were pleased with them or they were not. If they pleased the gods, sang their praises and gave something back to them, the gods would continue to bless them with good living conditions.

So they created chants and songs, they communicated with the gods through prayer and meditation, and they sought wisdom and visions from the gods. Also, they revered special individuals in the clan, shamans, who seemed to have unique abilities to communicate with the gods and interpret their signs.

Pleasing the Gods

A critical part of pleasing the gods was to make sacrifices to them, to give something back to the gods to show their appreciation for what they had received. The sacrifices could be a portion of the crops they had produced or the animals the gods had sent them to kill for food and clothes.

In extreme circumstances, humans were given as sacrifices to the gods, either members of the clan or enemies captured from other groups. These were probably more about a desperate feeling that they needed to make payments to angry and demanding gods than showing appreciation for blessings.

But occasional human sacrifices and payments to angry gods aside, the main point was that people recognized that a power greater than themselves was at work in their world and that the people themselves had an ability to work with this power to manifest their needs and desires. Part of working with this power was to ask for good tidings, blessings, and have faith that the higher power would manifest them. An even more important part was to show gratitude for what already had been provided; why should the gods continue to favor the people if they didn’t appreciate the favors?

But many people also recognized that it wasn’t enough to give thanks for what they had already received. They had to demonstrate equal gratitude for what they had not yet received. Giving thanks for what was yet to come was a show of faith in the higher power, a positive belief that by working in harmony with that power they could manifest their desires. Their needs and desires could be realized only by living their lives with an “attitude of gratitude.”

This understanding has continued into modern times, although there have been times when many have abandoned it.

The First Thanksgiving

This belief that success depended on showing gratitude to a higher power is what motivated the settlers in Plymouth Colony to hold a three-day celebration in 1621. They had endured more than a year of hardship in which more than half of their original company died. They almost didn’t survive their first winter on the cold coast of Massachusetts.

But with the help of local natives who saw a political advantage in helping the English newcomers (although their ancestors certainly have good reasons to regret the decision), they were able to survive that first brutal winter and successfully plant crops that would ensure their continued survival. After bringing in a good harvest in the autumn of 1621, they felt that they needed to thank God for their good fortune. And to show thanks to their Wampanoag friends, who had essentially saved their lives, they invited them to join the celebration.

But even this celebration was about more than just showing thanks for what they had received: it was about showing their faith that their God would continue to provide for them in the future. In their own way, they were also showing their “attitude of gratitude” in order to manifest success in the future.

The Power of Intention

I have long been a believer in the Power of Intention, the idea that if you focus strongly on your desire – your intention – the creative power of the universe will move to help you achieve it. This is described in the popular video, “The Secret.” Those who believe in the Power of Intention also believe that in order to be successful, a person must have a genuine “attitude of gratitude.” They believe you should give thanks every day, not just once per year.

Now let me say here that, although “The Secret” is inspiring and, on the whole, a statement of truth, I do find the video to be simplistic and a bit too focused on gaining material wealth. But for me, there is no question that the Power of Intention, harnessing positive thinking to manifest your desires, works.

I have seen it in action, both in a positive and negative sense. Clearly, when a person focuses on the negative things in his or her life, that person only attracts more of the same negative crap. What you focus on most strongly, you attract into your life in greater measure. The universe sees these negative things as what you must want because you keep thinking and talking about them. As a result, more of these things are brought your way.

The opposite is absolutely true as well. When you focus positively on your desires, and do it with so much belief in your success that you are able to be thankful for it as though it had already come true, you will manifest it. Of course, this does not mean that the universe will magically make it appear for you without any effort on your part – you still have to do your own work toward the goal. But your attitude of gratitude can and will cause the universe (God, if you prefer) to move in your direction, to meet you halfway, so to speak.

Perhaps this is the main point or lesson that we should take from our Thanksgiving celebrations.

Doing Better

I do believe in the Power of Intention and positive thinking in general. But sadly, I have to admit that I have not been so good about really embracing it in my life and making it work for me. Too often, I allow negative thoughts and feelings to creep in and take control. I have my demons.

Perhaps age has something to do with this. When you get older, time seems to grow shorter, and your options and opportunities seem to become more limited, it can be harder to look at the world with the same kind of positive wonder as when you’re in your 20s. Harder, but not impossible; it’s just an attitudinal thing, and I know this.

So, I have to do better.

When I first made the big leap to leave my comfortable job and life in Colorado and come to Ukraine, I said that I wanted to teach English and write. Since I’ve been here, I have been teaching English and writing. Desire manifested!

I need to write a lot more, perhaps finally get a book project off the ground. And although money and wealth are not priorities for me in the sense of being greedy, having more and more, etc., I would like to earn more and be able to comfortably return to a life in the mountains somewhere, or perhaps near the sea. That would be a nice way to close out the circle. Desires yet to be manifested.

There are desires I have had that have not been manifested, at least not as I had hoped, but perhaps my own thinking is more to blame for that than anything else. Desires to be subjected to better thinking patterns and (hopefully) manifested.

My Thanksgiving 

More than three years ago, October 2012, I wrote a post about how I realized that I was a lucky guy. It was true then, and it’s true now. I have a lot to be thankful for. I am still alive, which is a good start. I like the work I am doing. I have had the chance to travel and have the kinds of experiences that many people never have. And most of all, I have some truly wonderful people in my life. 

I have to get back to the kind of thinking that regularly focuses on gratitude for how cool my life has been. But I have to take it a step further.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day in the USSA. Tomorrow I will host my annual Thanksgiving dinner for a few friends here in Kharkiv. I will be thankful for my life, for where it has taken me, for what I’ve had the opportunity to do and experience. I will be especially thankful for the people in my life, both here in Kharkiv and elsewhere, and particularly for those who will be with me tomorrow.

And I will be thankful for what is yet to come. I will work harder to keep my “attitude of gratitude” genuine and to hold on to it, even when things seem a little dark. I won’t always succeed, at least not at first. But I will do my best. The rest is up to the universe.

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On Europe's "Refugee Crisis"

Macedonian police try to keep back people attempting to cross illegally from Greece.

I have been reading accounts of the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe with dismay. Why should Europe, or North America, be saddled with some kind of misplaced sense of “responsibility” for these people?  I don’t believe they should.

According to international agreements on refugees, Turkey, as the first point of refuge, should accommodate the refugees with the aim of repatriating them when conditions improve and resettling them only as a last resort. The notion of automatically resettling them all over Europe is ludicrous. The role of other countries should be to provide humanitarian aid through Turkey: food, shelter, clothing, etc. The refugees do not have a "right" to go and live where they want.

Now, to be sure, the plight of people displaced by war is terrible, and good people everywhere should want to help. But that desire to help has to be tempered by the realities of what kind of help is appropriate, how many people are truly in need of such help, and what impact that help might have on the people giving it.

If you can help others without it having a seriously negative impact on yourself or your society, then it’s the right thing to do. But if giving that help creates deep problems for your own people, or even puts your country and the lives of its citizens in peril, then it is not appropriate, no matter how sad the situation is. And it's important to note that there are other countries that should be bearing this burden far more than Europe.

For me, there are a number of points to consider, and while they may not be “politically correct,” and it might make me seen cold and uncaring, these points need to be considered nonetheless.

Who Are the Real Refugees

So much has been made of Europe’s reaction in the past few weeks because this is where most of these (illegal) migrants have been trying to go. We regularly hear stories about boats sinking in the Mediterranean Sea, and people dying trying to reach Italy from North Africa. The recent news has been mostly about thousands of people from the Middle East trying being stopped in Hungary as they try to get to Austria and other points west.

Apparently there has been a huge influx of people trekking from refugee camps in Turkey to Greece, Macedonia and then Serbia as they attempt to enter Hungary and then go on to Austria and Germany. But they are not all Syrians attempting to escape the bloodshed in their country.

People near the train station in Budapest wanting to travel to Austria.

While many of them might actually be genuine refugees from the civil war in Syria and the ISIS-led strife in Iraq, many are not. According to a September 6, 2015, article in the Washington Post, many of those trying to gain “asylum” in Western Europe are not refugees from the war-torn areas at all. There are a large number of non-Syrians pretending to be from Syria and trying to fake their way into Western Europe through this crisis.

The Post reports that there are Pakistanis, Afghans and others who carry fake Syrian identification or discard their identification papers altogether and then claim to be refugees from Syria. Near the fence that divides the border between Serbia and Hungary, the ground is reportedly littered with non-Syrian identification papers as these people throw away their real documents and then claim to be Syrian on the other side of the border.

Instead of being genuine refugees, they are people trying to escape poverty and low living conditions in their own countries by merging with the refugee streams and trying to get the same kind of asylum. They are essentially just illegal migrants taking advantage of the crisis to get into Europe. The Post article mentions the anger among many of the real Syrians when they encounter these people.

The Demise of Europe?

Western Europe is already reeling under a decades-long influx of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East. The way of life in European countries has been affected, severely in some cases. These immigrants refuse to assimilate and conform to local laws and ways, demanding instead that the host countries let them live according to their own cultural mores and, even worse, their own religious laws.

This threatens to completely destabilize Europe in the near future. Indeed, a stated goal of ISIS and similarly minded, radical Islamic groups is to establish a "Caliphate" in the Middle East and then destablize Europe so that they can make Islam dominate on that continent. Christians and other "infidels" must convert or die. They talk of raising the ISIS flag over the Vatican.

The process is already underway. There are places in Paris, Brussels and other cities where regular French or Belgian people – including the police – are afraid to go. These enclaves are called No-go Zones, and they are controlled by the immigrant groups. They impose sharia law in these zones, and the local authorities seem impotent to stop them and enforce the national and local laws.

As the numbers of these people increase in the future, they will put pressure on the host nations to change their laws to accommodate them. There have already been moves to have some countries adopt sharia into their legal systems. Thus far, these demands have been refused, but it might be only a matter of time.

By sheer force of numbers, these Muslim immigrants are on track to displace Europeans in their own countries. If it is allowed to continue, French, Italian, German and other cultures will be lost. Europe will be lost.

Can Europe really afford to absorb thousands more Middle East “refugees” who will swell the ranks of those already there?  Do they really want to hasten the demise of European civilization?

One result of this groundswell of Muslims into Europe has been the rise of nationalist groups whose rallying cry is to defend and preserve French, German and other traditions and culture. This creates a separate, but equally serious problem. But a majority of Europeans seem not to care.

Who Should Really Step Up?

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, which then spread to Iraq, Turkey has accommodated almost two million refugees. This is appropriate, as Turkey, like Syria and Iraq, is a Muslim nation. Many Turks are more secular and certainly not even close to the fundamentalist sorts of Muslims found in some other countries. And even though Turks are not particularly fond of Arabs, at least they share some religious commonality. 

But recently, Turkey has decided that the burden is too great, and they've been allowing - perhaps even encouraging - refugees to leave Turkey and enter Europe. 

Lebanon, which is very small and has plenty of its own problems, has taken in more than a million displaced Syrians. Jordan has taken in more than a million, and Egypt has accepted about 133,000.

Beyond these, however, the extent to which other Muslim nations have helped in this crisis is practically nothing. The worst offenders, as is often the case, are the oil-rich Gulf states. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have given refuge to exactly ZERO.

These countries are exactly where the refugees should be going. They are Arab and they are Sunni Muslim. Culturally, linguistically and in terms of religion, the refugees would be most comfortable, most “at home” in these countries. And with all their oil money, these are the countries most able to help these people. But they do nothing.

Why isn't the world raising a stink about the inaction of the rich Gulf states and demanding that they be the ones to take in the refugees? Why is it that people are so quick to criticize the West (including those in the West) for practically everything, yet refuse to call out the Arab nations for their hypocrisy and their many practices that run completely contrary to human rights?

Even worse than doing nothing, the oil-rich Arab states have the gall to criticize Europe for the events unfolding in recent days. They refuse to help their fellow Arabs, their fellow Muslims, yet they demand that Europe and the West do more. They are singularly disgusting.

Equally disgusting was a statement over the weekend from the president of Iran who praised Europe for making accommodations for the “refugees.” If Iran was opening its country to refugees, that praise might carry some significance. But Iran has largely been financing the war and arming the government side; their responsibility for creating the crisis is almost as great as their “praise” is hypocritical.

Wolves with the Sheep

Within this influx of millions of “refugees” there are undoubtedly terrorists. Whether from ISIS, Al Qaeda or some other groups, the opportunity to infiltrate operatives into Europe through these masses is too good to pass up.

It will be nearly impossible for European authorities to adequately screen these people and identify the potential assassins, bombers and other terrorist operatives. The very fact that people are crossing with no documents, claiming to be Syrian refugees, and then granted asylum makes it clear that it’s a golden opportunity for terrorists.

Europeans need to brace for even more attacks in the near future.

What of Ukraine?

Europe’s ostensibly heartfelt embrace of these “refugees” and all the feel-good statements about helping people escaping the horrors of war look pretty weak here in Ukraine. To the best of my knowledge there has been no such outpouring of humanitarian empathy for the millions of people displaced by Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The European Union, through its Schengen visa regime, still makes it a bureaucratic hoop-jumping exercise for Ukrainians to get even a visitor’s visa. And the long-promised visa-waiver policy for Ukrainians still seems like a pipedream.

It’s hard to understand why Europe continues to put up such a bureaucratic wall to Ukrainians – who are, themselves, Europeans – while rushing to admit more and more Middle Easterners whose goal is not to become European, but to make Europe become Muslim.

And What of America?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney stated over the weekend that the crisis at Europe’s border is a direct result of the Obama administration’s botched handling of Middle East policy. He is not wrong about that, but he does seem to conveniently give his own administration a pass for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that was largely responsible for the situations that have followed. The Bush administration is at least as responsible as the one that followed.

If the U.S. had not gone into Iraq, the world might be a very different place. Iraq turned out not to have the weapons of mass destruction that were the stated reason for the invasion. And while the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein was overthrown, what has followed in the years since has been weak and unable to create any kind of stability. If the U.S. had not invaded, there might still be a relatively strong Iraq to counter Iran and the fundamentalist forces that have risen in the region.

But the Obama administration is more directly responsible for what has happened since 2010. They created the power vacuum that has been filled by Iran and Islamic extremist groups like ISIS. Their complete botching of the “Arab Spring” movements allowed Muslim extremists to rise to power in a number of countries, and Obama’s embarrassing reactions to the Syrian situation in 2011 created the mess that followed.

The USSA does bear a lot of responsibility for what is happening now, but the brunt of the consequences is falling on Europe. I wonder if Europe will survive.

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Remembering Tia

Those of you who know me well know that I love cats. Always have, always will.

When I was a child, we always had cats in our family. We had one dog as well, but the cats ruled. We were especially fond of Siamese cats. We had Tiki, and later, when I was a teen, my mother got a new Siamese kitten, and we named her Tiki (2). She was a joy to all of us, and was my mom’s constant companion right up until her death. Tiki 2 died at the age of 16, only a month after my mom passed away.

In my own adult life, I’ve had several Siamese as well. There was Jaydee and her kittens, Spassky (named after the Russian chess master) and Stonewall. In Japan, we adopted an adult Siamese tomcat and named him Tayka.

For a long time after that, my lifestyle didn’t really accommodate having pets, but then I agreed to take two young kittens, a brother and sister pair, that were part of an abandoned litter. Nekko (cat in Japanese) and Koshka (cat in Russian) were with me for 12 years until Koshka mysteriously disappeared and Nekko died about five months later of what I believe was a broken heart. I wrote about Koshka and Nekko in an October 2013 post entitled, A Sick Cat.

Enter Tia

Several years before Nekko and Koshka were gone, a new kitten entered the scene. One of my daughters moved in with me and brought a little black ball of fur she had rescued in Arizona. She named the kitten Tia. And she fit in immediately.

Although Nekko and Koshka were starting to show their ages, they were still pretty active, and they were used to having new kittens in the house. A few years earlier, my other daughter decided to move in with me for a while and brought her little gray tabby, Chili Gizmo, with her. Sometime after that, a girlfriend moved in with me for a short time and brought her kitten, Kisu (kitty in Finnish).

Cats usually find it difficult to adapt to a stranger in their territory, but Nekko and Koshka seemed to accept new kittens pretty quickly. They got along well with Chili and did the same when Tia appeared. Sometimes they were not in the mood for a kitten’s antics, but more often than not having a playful kitten around kept them a little livelier as well.

Eventually, my daughter got her own place in Boulder, and Tia went with her. But she moved around a lot in those days, and it wasn’t always convenient to have Tia with her. So on several occasions, Tia was back at my place in the suburbs south of Denver. It was always a pleasure to have her, especially after Koshka and Nekko were gone and I needed another soul in that big house.

The Hunter

One facet of Tia’s personality that soon became apparent was that she was a superb hunter – better than any other cat I had had. Koshka and Nekko were housecats whose outdoor experience was generally in a fenced backyard. But Tia, despite being a very warm and affectionate pet in the house, was a well-honed predator.

One particular spring and summer, she became the scourge of the local rabbit population. When I first moved into that house, I installed pet doors that allowed the cats to go from the house to the garage (where I kept their litter box) and from the house to the backyard. When Tia moved back in with me, the dead rabbits began to appear.

There was a pretty sizeable rabbit colony nearby, and despite her relatively small size, Tia became adept at catching the small ones and bringing them back to the house. Like most cats, she would “play” with her catch for a while before finally administering the coup de grace. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come downstairs in the morning and find a bunny carcass on the carpet.

But rabbits were not her only prey. She brought in small rodents, birds and even a snake. One time, I found what appeared to be a dead bird under my kitchen table. I brushed it onto a dustpan then carried it outside to toss over the fence. When I tossed it into the air, it flew away. I was astonished.

Finally, I had to lock the cat door and limit Tia’s access to the outside on an “ask for permission” basis. It worked – there were no more dead critters in the house.

The Mountain Cat

Eventually Tia went back to live with my daughter, and a while after that, I decided to move from the suburbs to a home in the mountains southwest of Denver. I had been there for just a couple of months when Tia came to live with me again. It was good timing too: I had a few mice in the house, a problem that was permanently solved after Tia came.

Tia was with me in the mountains for the three short years that I lived there, and it was during this time that we really bonded, and she found a special place in my heart. She was still the super predator, but she was also very affectionate and a great companion.

She came at the end of the summer, and for the first few weeks, I would not let her outside, no matter how much she begged. I lived in a forest, with foxes, raccoons, coyotes, and even bears and mountain lions. I was not sure that this little black cat could survive for long out there with all those critters. But she did more than survive: she thrived.

I knew that eventually I would have to let her out, but I wanted her to get accustomed to the house first, to understand that it was now her "queendom." Eventually, I started to take her out with me during daylight. I would sit on the porch while she explored the front of the house, then walk with her around to the back and watch while she explored.

Eventually, her exploration took her further and further from the house. And soon she was staying out at night. And I worried. But she knew where home was, and she always returned. She knew how to take care of herself, and she never came home with even a scratch to suggest she had a run-in with another animal. She knew how to avoid the dangerous animals, while being a danger herself to the local rabbits, rodents and birds.

There was no pet door, so she had to let me know when she wanted to come in. I had a pile of firewood stacked on my porch so that the top of the pile was even with the bottom of my bedroom window. Tia would jump up on the pile and tap or scratch at the window to let me know she needed in. Sometimes, when I was home, I left the window open just wide enough for her to go out or come in on her own.

Always the Predator

As at the other house, Tia tried to bring her hunting trophies into the house. I was usually successful at keeping her from bringing them in, but she did manage to sneak a couple of them past me.

One summer evening she had been out quite late, so I left the window open just wide enough for her to pass, and I went to bed. At some point, I heard a sound on the woodpile, and sure enough she came in, jumped over my head and onto the bed, then jumped down and went into the other part of the house. I figured she went to her food and water bowls, and I closed the window.

A bit later, I was awakened by the noise of some commotion downstairs. It sounded like Tia was running around, and I thought it was strange, because I was sure she would have wanted to sleep after being outside for so long. Suddenly I heard the telltale scream of a panicked bunny, and I realized what was going on: Tia had brought a rabbit into the house – carrying it in her mouth right over my head – and was “playing” with it downstairs.

I realized she was in the process of killing it at that moment, and I did not want to deal with it, so I closed my door and went to sleep. In the morning, I went down and cleaned up what was left.

Besides that rabbit, she managed to bring in a couple of birds and a ground squirrel. And I have no idea how many she caught and did not bring in. I was never angry with Tia for these episodes. She was a cat doing what comes naturally.

Affectionate Housecat

Despite being an efficient predator and successful forest cat, Tia was also comfortable as a housecat and was a very affectionate companion. She learned that in the dead of winter she could not go outside because of all the deep snow, and she adapted just fine to being a full-time housecat. But when the snow began to melt, she was more than ready to get back out. 

Even in the warm parts of the year, she enjoyed her indoor time. Her favorite place to sleep was on my bed, usually against my leg. Whenever I sat in an armchair or sofa, she was immediately on my lap, purring and wanting to be petted.

In the early evening when I returned home from work, I would unlock and open the front door to find a sleepy Tia sitting in the middle of the living room and greeting me with a yawn after her daylong nap (she had heard my truck pull up to the house). When she saw me, she would meow and then flop over onto her side and roll onto her back so that I would rub her belly. Then she would be out the door and ready to explore, except when we had several feet of snow everywhere.

Sometimes, she would meow for me to come outside with her, and we would take a walk together. When I was with her, she didn’t feel so much of a need to be stealthy and careful. She felt protected and knew that she could run where she wanted without having to worry about attracting the attention of a dangerous animal.

Living alone in the forest house was a little lonely sometimes, but having Tia there made it a lot less so. She made a big difference in my life in those days, and I was always grateful to have her there.

The Leaving

After I made the commitment to move to Ukraine, I had to sell the house. It was very, VERY hard to give up that idyllic home in the forest, and one of the hardest parts was having to take Tia away from it. When my daughter came to take her, Tia knew that something was happening that she would not like, and she did her best to avoid being taken. But we finally got her into the cat box, and they drove away.

I was sad for myself to lose the companion I had had, but I was sadder for Tia to lose the home and lifestyle she had come to love.

Tia lived in several different circumstances for the next few years, not always able to be the outdoor cat she was used to being. Finally, my daughter got a place on the prairie outside of Boulder. There was a horse property nearby and room for Tia to wander. But Tia was older and not quite as alert as she had been. And the property didn’t have the plethora of trees and other cover that the forest offered. And there were coyotes.

One time, Tia went out, and she never returned. We never knew what happened to her. My heart broke a little at the news, but this is the way of pets: their time in our lives is short. When we take them as kittens or puppies, we know we will outlive them, and we know we will have to deal one day with the sadness of them passing out of our lives.

And so it was with Tia. Technically, she was not my cat, but in the ways that mattered, she was mine, and I was hers. And I still miss her.

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I am not sure why I thought to write about this. It just came to my mind the other day, and I started writing. But sometimes it is good to remember – and write about – such things.

The Bike Path of Life

This weekend I got out on my bike for the first time in weeks. The vacation in Turkey burned a couple of weekends, and last weekend, frankly, I just didn’t feel like it.

I rode alone, which has been a little unusual this summer, but probably something I should get used to if I am going to keep riding. Saturday I rode mostly on the street, but today I returned to the forest park near my home, which has been where I’ve done most of my riding this year.

At one point, after I had ridden about five kilometers deep into the park, I stopped to just listen to the sound of the wind in the trees and try to enjoy some much-needed serenity in this little forest oasis surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city. It was a warm, breezy day, and the leaves above rustled as a light wind moved them to and fro. There was the occasional sound of a tree trunk creaking or dried leaves falling to the ground.

Even though I knew the city was still all around me, it was nice to imagine that I was really far away in a forest and able to take in some calm power from the trees, the wind – from nature itself.

Such moments often inspire me to think beyond myself. For a moment, I thought about riding alone and how it felt sort of odd. Then I put that thought aside, and something else came to me.

The Path of Life

As I looked at the path straight ahead of me, I realized that at some point, the path seemed to merge with the trees at the end of my field of vision; I could not see where it ended. I turned around and looked behind me and noticed the same thing. Then it occurred to me that the bike path was a lot like the paths we follow in life.

You can only see a certain portion of the path ahead of you, but you have no idea what lies beyond what you can see. It’s a mystery, and the only way to find out what is there is to keep riding until you reach the end. It’s sort of a metaphor for life: you can only see or predict a small part of the future, but to find out what lies ahead for you, you have to keep going until you reach it.

And the path behind is a similar metaphor. You can recall well much of the recent past, but beyond a certain point, you tend to forget things that happened. Only truly remarkable or important things remain in your memory.

But the bike path resembles life in other ways. Some parts are rough and difficult to ride, while other parts are easier. Much of the path I rode today had only about a two-foot (65 cm) strip down the middle that was navigable, and there were deep ruts on either side. Veer off into a rut, and I’d find myself flying off my bike, possibly into a tree. Life is often like this.

And there were a number of obstacles along the path. In about five places, deadfall trees blocked the path, and I had to get off the bike and either go over the tree, under it, or around it. In the past, we’ve encountered places where the path was filled with muddy water or even impassible. And life often throws up obstacles to block your path; you either find a way around the obstacle, or go back and find an easier path. I suppose some people just stand there waiting for the obstacle to remove itself.

There are places where you can pedal along at a fast pace and make good progress. But in other places, the going is slower. Maybe you have to climb a hill, or push through muddy ground. Maybe you have to take it slow because the ground is irregular, with a lot of dips, holes and rocks. Life too has its times when you can move quickly and make good progress, as well as times when you find yourself bogged down.

Which Way to Go?

The forest park is crisscrossed with paths of various types, widths, difficulties and directions. There are no markers to tell you which path leads where, and there is no good map. You often come to crossroads and forks, and you have to make decisions about which way to go. A wrong choice can send you far from your intended destination and make your ride a lot more difficult. Sometimes you can make a good guess based on the position of the sun or by using a compass; other times you just have to use your intuition.

That is very much like life. In a post I wrote almost two years ago, called Decision Points Along Life’s Path, I wrote extensively about the forks and crossroads we come to during our lives and how these choices affect how our lives turn out. In that post I imagined how making different choices at those decision points might lead to entirely different lives and wondered whether all of those possible alternatives might actually exist in some kind of mirror universes. And I thought again about that today.

People and Messages along the Way

As I rode, I came across several people. One biker was coming the opposite direction very quickly and nearly caused us both to veer off and crash. But at the last moment, we were able to get control and pass each other safely. I came up on several pairs of people walking in the forest, slowed down, and politely thanked them when they moved to the side to let me by.

At another point, I came upon a man with a dog. The man was on a cross path coming from my left, and he asked me in a friendly way if I knew where the path that I was following led to. I told him that I thought it led to the golf club property, but he replied that the golf club was to my left, along the path that he had just come from. Since that was my goal, I went that way.

The man had a message for me that I needed at that moment. We often encounter people in life who have some message or knowledge for us at the right time.

More Thoughts

As I continued riding, I thought about change, about how none of us is perfect (some of us, in fact, are exceedingly imperfect), and how our life’s path should be about improvement, about learning how to be better people. It occurred to me that we should grow to be stronger of will, but at the same time more understanding and accepting of others, and more caring and compassionate.

I started my Sunday ride feeling a bit depressed that I was riding alone. But as time went by, that depression faded and was replaced by the exhilaration of hard peddling, a quickened heartbeat, and just enough sweat to know I was working hard. Even more, it was replaced by some valuable life insights that I would never have gained if I had sat at home or met friends in a café.

It was a good ride, and a great day.  But all in all, I’d still rather not ride alone.

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