On the road to Mandalay

Mandalay

Monday, September 22, 2014

We flew to Mandalay from Bangkok, arriving in the steaming afternoon heat and began our bus trip, with stops, on our way to the boat. It was barren with fields along the way to Mahamuni Paya (pagoda), the second most sacred Paya in Myanmar. The Paya was built in 1785 to house the  Mahamuni (which means Great Image) Buddha, a bronze image believed to be over 2000 years old, that was captured during an invasion of Mrauk U. The Paya was full of pilgrims, not tourists. They prayed, or rather meditated. 

I was not yet used to finding monks at every turn.

We removed our shoes, a practice that would become common for the Payas and Temples we would visit. Sturdy walking shoes were often irrelevant.

Women were not allowed near the Buddha or the Mahamuni, another common theme. The Mahamuni was originally bronze but has been continually covered in gold leaf, not by artisans but by pilgrims, in the last century. Men are allowed to do this and it is part of their pilgrimage. They cannot put it on the face, which remains clear, but the body had become fat, almost monstrous, with gold leaf, which is over 6 in thick and getting thicker every day.

The Mahamuni Buddha is an example of the issue we would encounter throughout Myanmar. Although the Buddha is perhaps 2000 years old, the site is a living place of worship. About 100 years ago, local people began to change the Buddha, and the site has been constantly changed and "modernized".  We did not find World Heritage sites in Myanmar because no site met the preservation criteria. Frequently we found LED lighting and other enhancements. Reconstruction of sites often included improvements of a questionable type. This theme will follow through the trip.

I rang my first temple bell, always three times, and invoked the sound of Dharma for protection. The sound felt soothing.

Here is a link to a video of: Ringing the Paya Bell

Our bus took us to the Irrawaddy river and the boat that would be our home for our great adventure. The hills by the river were covered in glittering pagodas and stupas.

The banks of the river were full of people bathing or carrying out their daily chores. Mandalay is a large city with little infrastructure. The banks of the river were full of trash.

The boats were tied up for the night.

 A shower, dinner, rest.

Mengala ba. (The Burmese version of Aloha)

Shall we dance?

I took a trip to Myanmar via Bangkok. Although I was off the grid for most of the trip, I wrote notes each day.

Bangkok

September 18-21, 2014

Shall we dance?

It runs through my head and makes me smile. Siam. Anna and the King. Some truth and a lot of fiction. Here in Bangkok the Kings Palace remains a glittering wonder, and the European style to some buildings attest to the truth in part of the tale. The Japanese were here, of course, during WWII and there are day trips to The Bridge over the River Kwai, but our guide is not full of the horrors of their occupation, the way my Chinese friends were. Thailand was not destroyed, it was occupied. They did not fight, and they were just a pathway through to India. This is the hemisphere of the Japanese in WWII. The scope of that conflict has suddenly struck me. It truly touched the small places of the world.

I arrived late at night and out my hotel window I could see lighted boats ferrying across the Chao Phraya river. 

The next morning we took a river tour through the canals, where we fed the catfish and saw Thai daily life.  We stopped at Wat Aran, the Temple of Dawn. I climbed the steep stupa steps and got a view of Bangkok, and a close look at what would be many Buddhist sites.

On my own I took the metro to the grand market, where I got to see a million knock-offs of Western goods. Moving around was good for my jet lag.

The rest of the tour group joined us on my birthday, September 21^st, and we went to the Grand Palace. It dates back to the 1700’s with its most recent European style structure added by the King who was the son in the King and I. The song will not leave my head. At least it is a happy one. Gold and gaudy, ornate in every way, the palace was grand, fascinating, and hot, hot, hot. It would be the first of many days spent steaming and stewing in my own juices. The sweat did keep me cooler. The site was teeming with tourists from all over the world.

The contrast between the life in a modern city and the life on the canals was unique. Every manner of boat was used to travel and shopping ranged from supermarkets, to open air markets, to boat/water markets. 

The Thai are a smiling people. They greet you with their hands in a lotus position and a nod. Not a bow. Yes, the son of The King (and I) did change the requirement to be lower than the king. The Buddhist do want you to stay below the level of the Buddha. The emerald Buddha was high up on a stupa, but still the people stayed on the floor.

This feels like an open, free country.  What will it feel like when I get to Burma?

I had a dream..

I had a dream last night. Well really early this morning.  It was one of those dreams that is on the edge of waking. Vivid, clear at the time, you know something is off, you know you are dreaming. Yet you choose not to wake, to follow the path. 

I was doing a presentation on my Dissertation. I knew I knew it well. I had the presentation but I could not find it. I thought this is not a problem, I will tell them what I learned. I will tell them how this is relevant and how what I learned has changed my life. A sense of relief came over me as I knew how to address the audience (which somehow had become immense). Then I woke up.

It was 5 am. A trip to the bathroom, then back to bed to try to sleep. For an hour as I hovered between sleep and wake, my mind touched on key lessons learned early that impacted me later. And then I thought about how those impacts had touched others. Some of the lessons were from that dissertation process and I am pleased to know that that process did shape me, did toughen me, but also taught me the value of colleagues and friends. In that hazy semi-sleep time, the events that emerged surprised me and then didn’t.

Data is messy because people are messy.  If you look at it piece by piece you can then create a picture that makes sense.  If you look at it as a total jumble you will give up and go home.  You eat an elephant one bite at a time. This taught me to look at people, organizations, and problems identifying the components that make the whole.  It helped me understand complexity through the underlying simplicity.

Organizations are people. Changing an organization means changing people. How do you change an organization? 

 I did large organization surveys early in my career. They were anonymous and there was a place for comments. In a crude barely literate hand, on one of 10,000 surveys, someone wrote: “My boss touches me. He won’t stop. I want him to stop.”  The response was in a stack of surveys that had comments before and after this survey that told me the location of the person who wrote that comment. I did not want to violate the anonymity of the survey, but I wanted to help that person.  So I went to a colleague in that business and showed him the comment. He put together a training program on harassment (this was before it became a cliché) and conducted a pilot at that site. The training included a hotline for complaints. It led to the identification of a number of problem supervisors and it created in my colleague an unlikely champion for the issue.

Yes or no. Does your boss try to help you do a better job? I snuck this question into the first global survey we ever did, in the late 80’s. If I divided the company into two groups, those who answered yes, and those who answered no, I found it was two different places. Everything you wanted to be, do, or feel was in that yes place, while the no place was a miserable opposite. That shaped almost everything I did for the rest of my career. I preached this story in every coaching session, training program and management discussion I had. It changed me too.  You don’t have to succeed, but you have to try to help.

It is hard to be heard as a woman. I was often the only woman in meetings. If I had a comment to make and others did too, they would be heard, but my voice was invisible unless I pushed until I was almost rude. I learned to just keep talking until the others stopped, because if I waited my turn, it never came.  I only did this when the point was important. It was a persistent problem that I noticed other women had as my meetings became more diverse. I learned to call on them, and I counseled the men I worked with about the issue.  It didn’t stop the problem, but it changed their perception of me and of the issue.  I think by the end of my career it had become less of an issue. I mentored many women and men about this.

Did I change my company? I think I did.  Things that never happened became part of the culture. I mentored many men and women who became top leaders in the company, and I influenced how they led. 

Did what I learned in my dissertation matter. Yes.  I learned to think differently and that if I had a good explanation, I could make a change. I affected people. They affected me. Back it with data not perceptions. As Friday said, just the facts. 

People are such a rich tapestry of DNA and experience, yet I am astounded by the similarities across every divide. I once sat on a balcony on the other side of the world, looking at the moon. My colleague and I talked about that day, now 45 years ago when people all over the world went out and looked at it in a new way. For the first time there was a man on the moon. I had a vision of the darkness circling the world that night, drawing people from every continent, every country, every religion, every age, out to see the moon. For that moment we were all filled with wonder. My lesson to the people I met across cultures was to focus on the similarities and embrace the differences.

In high school I read The Diary of Ann Frank, we did the play. The play ends with Ann’s statement, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.” The last line, from her father, “She puts me to shame.” For most of my life, I could not agree with Ann Frank. I thought she remained an idealist who died too young to outgrow it. Somehow, in the last few years, I have finally come around. It was a picture that did it, and improbable one.  A homeless man sat near the rubble of the Oklahoma bombing, holding and protecting children being brought out of the ruined day care center by desperate bystanders. A discard on every other day of his life, in that moment he became a part of the greater effort. A spark in him responded and he was trusted for his humanity. We all have some of that in us.

We live in a world that is going through a dark and tumultuous time. But it seems I am an optimist. There is survival value, as a species in being kind to one another. It is a lesson not all have been taught. When you look at the smile of a child, before the world has its way, how can you not believe that we are all good at heart.

Shalom
Salam Alaikum
світ
мир
Peace 

The Blue and the Gray

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln – November 19, 1863 

150 years ago today two great armies met in central Pennsylvania, in what would later be judged the turning point in America’s Civil war.  A number of my ancestors were in the fields around Gettysburg the night of July 1, 1863. 

George Washington Watson and his older brother Harrison enlisted as privates in Company L of the 38 Regiment of the Georgia Volunteers. They were in a number of major battles incuding Antitum, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. During the month of June, as part of Early's brigade, they fought at Winchester then fought skirmishes and burned bridges at York, which they reached on the 29th. They were withdrawn to push to Gettysburgh on June 30 and on July 1st they arrived. The 38th were part of the leftmost flank of the confederate line which inflicted heavy casulties and pushed into the town. They were withdrawn the evening of the first and held in reserve for the 2nd and the 3rd. On the 5th they were assigned to cover the retreat of the army. Their unit suffered 28% casulties on July 1st.

John Alexander Rutledge and his two older brothers Jessie and Micager enlisted as privates in Company H of the 16^th Regiment of the Georgia Volunteers.  They fought a number of battles prior to Gettysburg, including Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.  As part of Wofford’s Brigade, on July 2^nd they were heavily engaged in the Wheatfield, with Company H taking heavy casualties late in the day they moved into the Peach Orchard where the fighting was equally fierce.  1/3 of Company H was killed, wounded, or missing that day.

William G. McClain joined the 1^st Regiment of the Georgia Infantry State Guard.  It was moved to the 12^th Georgia Artillery and then Gordon’s Brigade in late 1862.  They fought bravely in Chancellorsville, and on July 1^st they arrived in Gettysburg.  At the head of Early’s Division they charged to the Almshouse in Gettysburg, but were ordered back to reinforce another part of Early’s line.  On July 2nd, they were held in reserve.

BJ Semmes joined the Company L of the 154^th Tennessee as a sergeant. He fought with that group in Belmont Missouri in November of 1861.  Their next battle was at a place called Shiloh Church in April of 1862.  On the second day he was wounded and his wife, Iorantha, took him from the battlefield to nurse at their home in Memphis.  He left to rejoin the army before the city was captured by union troops in June of 1862.  Iorantha and her four children were kicked out of Memphis by William T. Sherman after her 10 and 8 year old sons hoisted a Confederate flag on their stable and staged an attack on the Union soldiers across the street.  When Sherman arrived in July he sent her away with 40 other families who had relatives in the Southern army.  In July of 1863, BJ was in Chattanooga Tennessee, awaiting orders that would make him a Major and a Quartermaster.  His brother Alex was a physician, assigned as a surgeon to Hays Brigade, part of Early’s division.  Known as the Louisiana Tigers, they fought in the first Bull Run and then were assigned to Stonewall Jackson’s brigade and participated in a number of bloody campaigns before reaching Gettysburg.  On July 2^nd, they stormed Cemetery hill before retreating when no reinforcements followed.

Raphael Semmes was BJ’s cousin, and an Admiral in the Confederate Navy.  Paul Semmes, another cousin, was a brigadier general in July of 1863.  Semmes Brigade was part of McLaw’s Division, and had fought well at Chancellorsville. On the night of July 1, they were 4 miles outside of Gettysburg.  As Wofford’s Brigade, with my Rutledge relatives fought in the area that came to be known as the Valley of Death, Semmes brigade was moving through the Plum Road Ravine, to engage in what would be called The Peach Orchard.  Wofford’s tired troops were sent to assist Semmes Brigade, and Paul Semmes was mortally wounded.  He was carried off the battlefield and died July 10^th.

William McClain survived that day, and fought in bloody battles though 1864.  He was taken prisoner and sent to the notorious Fort Douglas POW camp outside of Chicago where he died in February, 1865.  He is buried in an unmarked grave.  His daughter, Louzanne, my Great Great Grandmother, was 14 when he died.

George Washington Watson survived the battle and fought through many more, including Cold Harbor and the Wilderness. On April 9, 1865 he surrendered at Appommattox. His brother Harrison was promoted to sargent in 1864 and fought through every major battle. On March 23, 1865, two days before the futile attack on Fort Stedman, he deserted. George returned to Georgia, married and raised the daughter who would become my great grandmother. His brother moved to Maryland and raised a family there, but was never part of the family again.
 
John, Jessie and Micager survived that day, but in March 1864, Jessie and Micager were captured and died of smallpox a few weeks later in a prisoner of war camp.  John was taken prisoner in January of 1864, but he swore allegiance to the US and was drafted into the Union Army, assigned to the Illinois Calvary, and moved to New Orleans.  He developed chronic bronchitis and received a medical discharge in May of 1865.  Thomas Rutledge, my Great Grandfather, was born in 1876.

BJ survived the war, including the Battle of Atlanta.  His correspondence with his wife Iorantha, documenting their courtship and their separation during the War are now in a collection in the Chapel Hill Library and have been cited in numerous books, including Last Train from Atlanta.  His son Raphael, my Great Grandfather was 11 when the war ended.

My father discovered the truth about John Rutledge in the mid 80’s.  John’s granddaughter, my great Aunt Kate, was still embarrassed about this family secret, but of all my relatives of the civil war, John was the one who had to survive for me to exist.  His two brothers and my 3-Greats grandfather William McClain died of neglect or disease in Union POW camps.  BJ and William already had the children who would become my relatives, before the war started, but if John had made a different decision, I would not be here today.

150 years ago tonight, George, Harrison, John, Jesse, Micager, Alex, Paul, and William, were waiting to see what the next day, July 2^nd, would bring, along with thousands of soldiers on both sides of the lines at Gettysburg.  All survived the next day, except Paul, but Jesse, Micager and William did not survive the War.

Thomas Rutledge, John's son, Ocie Ola Stanley, William's granddaughter

John Alexander Rutledge - 1917

Louzanne "Zany" McClain Stanley - 1919

George Washington Watson - 1862