Stories
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Update of Culture of Peace Corporation
Looking back at my life, I see a series of turning points that took place when I went to the mountain.
The first mountain was Rice Peak in the summers of 1960, 1961 and 1964. I was paid well to be a lookout for forest fires in the Boise National Park and Forest, but what was important for me were the two novels that I wrote there. The first, Master of the House, turned me from a religious believer to an athiest, and the second, Peace, began my lifelong journey to address the danger of a nuclear war that would destroy human civilization.
Then came a moment in 1970 when I climbed to the top of West Rock in New Haven in order to move on from the death of the New Left in which I had been engaged since the Cook campaign of 1966 along with Nina. Looking out over the city I called home, I decided that I needed to experience socialism firsthand. I wanted to go to Cuba, if not China, and if neither, as a last resort, the Soviet Union. I was black-balled for Cuba by comrade Rick Wolff, prevented by lack of diplomatic recognition to go to China, and so I learned Russian and went to Russia and Soviet Georgia for the experience I needed.
In succeeding years of the 20th Century, being in good physical shape, I could climb mountains literally. With my Wesleyan comrade and good friend, Harry Sinnamon, we traversed all of the high peaks of the Adirondacks on a several-day camping trip. And a few years later, climbing Mount Monadnack in New Hampshire along with Lindsay. Thousands of people make this climb, but surely I was one of the few who made the entire climb and descent barefoot.
The last decade of the Century, at UNESCO, I ascended a figurative mountain of the culture of peace culminating in the UN Declaration and Programme of Action and the 75 million signatures on the Manifesto 2000. I think of the image of Mahatma Gandhi who said we are all climbing the mountain of peace, but since we take different paths on different sides of the mountain, we are not always aware of the others.
One mountain I never climbed, although I discussed with Yuji Suzuki and Takehiko Ito, was Fuji San in Japan. Kiki and I visited Japan and saw the mountain from a distance, but we did not climb it, to my regret.
Now, as I come to the end of my life, I am still trying to climb another mountain.
Is it Mount Nebo in Moab where Moses looked over into the Promised Land? This was the vision that I developed in my novella "I have Seen the Promised Land."
Unfortunately, as time goes on I fear that instead I am climbing another mountain, along with Sisyphus, constantly trying to push a boulder up the mountain, but it keeps falling back on us. Perhaps I will die without seeing the Promised Land.
Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme
1997-2001
UN Intl Year for Culture of Peace