10 Futbols to Zambia..and Peru, Morocco and Hanoi

Hello, Uncle Wilson.
Wherever you are, it's probably cold. In fact, even though you were probably blown clear off the summit of Mount Adams, you still may be the coldest One World Futbol in the whole world. Most are a lot warmer.

For example, some place in Zambia, there are some kids running around in the hot sunshine, kicking One World Futbols. It's running in the 80s in Lusaka, the capital city, where there are few, if any, clouds, and  zero chance of precipitation for the next few days.

The balls reached Zambia courtesy of the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, which is located on Seattle's Capitol Hill. Students travel from there to Zambia each year during the summer, and this is the second year in a row that they have put One World Futbols in the hands of kids who might have been kicking rag balls around. You can see from the photos they aren't playing in a soccer field. But they are playing; and with balls that they'll never have to repair.

Game On! The grass isn't cut, and there's no soccer field, but they do have a One World Futbol!

Seattle Academy received 10 balls this year which were purchased by supporters of your Wilson campaign in 2015. Here's what Gabriel Cronin, a faculty member and lead adult for the group, reported via e-mail:

"We dropped off the soccer balls in Zambia... we spread them out amongst four schools, a vulnerable child's family, and one found its way to the "village" in the care of a worker at the camp we stay at.  I've attached a few pictures...."

At the entry to a school, an adult discusses the ball with children.

Children get acquainted with the ball in the school yard.

The garments suggest that these kids are not in a hot part of Zambia.

"We really appreciate the gift and we hope that the balls will make students and children very happy," said Gabriel

In a couple of weeks, more futbols will be headed to Morocco, Vietnam and Peru. Some of those locations will have temperatures similar to Zambia's. Here's the weather at some major cities:

• Cuzco, Peru, elevation 11,152 feet: high 60s low 70s and 10 percent precipitation
• Hanoi, Vietnam, elevation 69 feet: high 80s low 90s with precipitation ranging from 10-60 percent over the next several days
• Rabat, Morocco, elevation 259 feet: low 80s to low 90s with 10 percent chance of rain

The balls are reaching Peru, Morocco and Vietnam via medical teams that are part of the Global Impact program operated by three Seattle community colleges that send teams to underdeveloped countries to work on health issues. In 2011, one of the teams focused on building  cook stoves that carried the smoke outside the home; promoting effective water filters for the home; and conducting medical clinics that included the flouriding of children's teeth. This year is the first time the Global Impact program has been involved in distributing One World Futbols in its field projects.

Kazoos will accompany the futbols to Peru and Vietnam.

Also going along for the ride:  Kazoos! Teams heading for Vietnam and Peru will be packing kazoos. In 2011, Peruvian school children were somewhat intrigued to hear a harmonica being played, but there was only one. Kazoos are very inexpensive, so this time many will have a chance to play, as well as listen.

The Global Impact teams will be on the ground in Vietnam no later than Aug. 21, and I'm going to be there with them. I'll be writing before then to tell you a little bit about what's going to happen, and I hope to be able to blog when I'm there. Until then,

Love,

Jean Baptiste (And Robert)

Do my eyes deceive me?

Left photo: Anna Elz and (background) the left behinds.
Right: Wilson atop Adams, July 2015

You could have knocked me over with a feather. In the foreground of the photo on the left is Anna Elz, atop Mount Adams. And in the background, amidst a bundle of paraphernalia left by other climbers, there is a small . . .  almost hidden . . . blue . . . round . . . object . . . right where . . .

Well, right where Wilson was left last July. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it is NOT the unbreakable. The winds of time, or better stated, the howling winds of Mount Adams, have borne Wilson farther afield into the mists of legend.

Anna writes,

Robert..sad to report we did not retrieve Wilson at the summit.  I looked for signs of it.  The snow was frozen and gusting wind of 40 + knots made for a brief encounter since I felt like I was going to be blown off.  Only a few items were visible..a pineapple head seemed promising..as though it might be its hat.   So it seems though I finally made the summit, Wilson is not coming home yet.  You need to find a summer expedition.  Thanks for sharing this with me it made the summit bid way more enjoyable.  Best regards to you and Junior and exciting news of your trip.

She added in a later message:

Here's what I had to work with.  No roof.  frozen solid. The guy with the shovel was the last guy up and the gale force winds made hanging out up there -- let alone chipping ice -- impossible... not to mention lack of oxygen.. note purple lips.  I'm sorry..just glad I made it.  Happy 4th.  Good to be home.  I'd love to meet up sometime and talk about the trip and your Wilson Junior plans!

In a follow-up phone call, Anna added that this was not a cakewalk up a snow field, which I had anticipated last year. The Mountaineers camped overnight at Sunrise Camp, at the 8,600 foot level, The night winds flipped Anna's tent over. Team Wilson rose at 3:30 a.m. to climb over a five-hour period across the Mazama Glacier and up to the summit. Part of the way they were roped up. The team of 11 hikers were enthusiastic about finding Wilson. And when Anna reached the summit and saw that round blue object, she thought she had hit paydirt, but it only turned out to be a fabric.

Afterward, there was no quick, convenient glissade down a snowy slope; the slope was frozen hard and any glissade would have gone much too fast.

Well, OK, so Wilson has probably gone out of my -- (should I say our?) life forever. But that's no reason to write them off. Look at the photo in the picture below of me with Lisa Tarver, chief innovation officer of the One World Play Project, and convince me that Wilson doesn't have a future somewhere. If that ball with the hole in it can still bounce, Wilson can too. And we'll keep on sending them e-mails. For all we know, they might just be in a Starbucks somewhere on wi-fi.

Considering the resilience of this ball, no reason yet to count Wilson out.

My new traveling companion, Jean Baptiste.

But now it's time to pass the baton to a new goodwill ambassador for the One World Play project, and that one is Junior. That's Junior, snagged to my backpack. Does the image strike a familiar chord? Would It help if I explained that "Junior" has a new name? It's Jean Baptiste.  They is named after the world's most famous papoose, who made it onto the American dollar coin. If that still doesn't ring a bell, check out the image immediately below.

Love,

Robert

(And Jean Baptiste)

Peru, Zambia, Morocco and Vietnam: The Summer of love, 2016

An update for Wilson

By Junior.

Hey, Uncle Wilson, guess what!
There’s another team on its way up Mount Adams to look for you! We just got word yesterday that they hope to be there Sunday morning, and Anna has her little shovel to dig you out of the snow.
Meanwhile, this summer we have as many as four Teams Wilson delivering our kinfolk to four different continents and I’m on the team heading to Vietnam!

And the biggest news of all – I got a piercing!

First of all, remember Anna Elz? I haven’t met her yet, but she was the one who organized the search for you in May, when a group of intrepid Mountaineers braved cold weather to reach the top of Mount Adams, where you were last seen in July 2015, tethered to a post on an abandoned building. Here’s a photo of the group, with Anna in the baseball cap:

Team Wilson Selfie: In foreground, Jeremy, the trip organizer. Anna Elz is on the right with the baseball cap. The others, from the left, are Sean, Cory, Sara and Steve.

And here’s what it looked like when they realized the weather was a little too rough to summit Adams and they had to turn back: (The white streaks are snowflakes.)

Second search and retrieve mission

Well, on Friday afternoon, we got this e-mail:

Hi Robert hope this finds you well..We are headed to Adams.  Different team.. Hope to find Wilson senior at the top!!  11 mountaineers going up tomorrow..should summit Sunday am.  I'll have my shovel to dig it out....
Cheers Anna

So, Uncle Wilson, don’t be surprised if a group of Mountaineers shows up with shovel in hand tomorrow morning – if you’re still there!

All this happened a week after a meeting at Seattle Central Community College June 25 for the Global Impact teams that will be heading out to conduct community health programs in Vietnam, Peru, and Morocco. These are doctors, med students and lay people who conduct clinics, promote really cool water filters and build stoves that improve the lungs of women who normally cook for their families using open hearths that fill their homes with smoke.

All three teams are excited about taking One World Futbols from the Wilson Campaign with them when they go. There's also a separate fourth independent Team Wilson contingent from Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences (a private high school) that will be taking One World Futbols to Zambia.

Because the slogan of the Wilson Campaign is "Somebody Loved a Stranger," I guess this sort of qualifies as the Summer of Love.

Here are some photos from Robert’s 2011 Global Impact trip to Peru that show what Global Impact was doing there:

Showing kids how to wash their hands

Flouriding teeth in hundreds of little mouths

Saving lungs by replacing open indoor hearths with cook stoves that had chimneys

Building water filters that looked like big flower pots but captured 99 percent of pathogens

Now, about that piercing...

Oh, about my piercing. It's not like a tongue stud or one of those eyebrow or nose rings. I don't have a tongue, nose or eyebrows, anyway. But Robert attached a screw to me and then hung a connector on it:

No Wilson-styled tether for Junior. My stud loop will connect to Robert's backpack.

While I'm in Vietnam, I'm going to be tagging along on his backpack like a papoose. Oh, about that sticker in the photo--that's from the Gay Pride events that were going on in the park near our workshop. I was curious. Being non-gendered, I haven't figured out what this sex thing is all about. What's the big deal?

Well, I hope the Mountaineers find you. Then we could have a big Wilson homecoming party!

Love,

Junior
(And Robert)

Five years ago, these kids were waiting for a Global Impact health clinic in Peru.

Sex, politics, city ambling and solid food

Hi, Wilson
Junior and I have had had a great time bonding this week. Since acquiring the Little Unbreakable from the One World Play Project on Monday, I've been introducing them to the World. Well, OK, the world of San Francisco.

A giant rainbow flag flies at the boundary of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco.

One part of that world has its own flag, Pictured above. Remember a year ago on Valentine's day? I explained women to you and it was then that we accepted the fact that One World Futbols are pre-gendered and are assigned the third-person singular non-specific pronoun, "they." (I'm still forgetting to use that pronoun from time to time -- old customs are hard to shake.)

Well, San Francisco has a neighborhood--the Castro--where the residents have been clarifying their gender orientation for decades. And they recognize it's not an either-or. It's a spectrum, so they represent it with that geat big humongous rainbow flag.

A historic theater building is another identifier for the Castro neighborhood.

There are people who have trouble understanding that spectrum, and one of those individuals caused a lot of hurt last week. The Castro neighborhood showed solidarity for the victims of his rampage by gathering a big pile of flowers on a street corner in the heart of The Castro.

Junior visited a growing pile of flowers that expressed solidarity with the shooting victims.

This was the beginning of Junior's initiation: the harm humans can cause for each other and the role OneWorld Futbols can play in bringing people together.

San Francisco's Grace Cathedral welcomes those seeking immunity from intolerance.

The next day, when my other traveling companion, Valerie, and I were walking on Nob Hill, we visited Grace Cathedral, which is the epitome of tolerance and understanding, as indicated in the photo above. Valerie held Junior up so they could read about the commitment of this Episcopal church to offer immunity to all who enter: Immunity from the "ravages of religion," ... "inquisitions, crusades and witch hunts," and "religious military zealots, abortion clinic bombings and TV evangelists attempting to take power..."

At their young age, that was a lot to throw at Junior out of the blue, but they handled it well.

Twin Peaks

Sheltered from brisk winds on this staircase, Junior ascended one  of the Twin Peaks.

There was more to see in The City. Valerie wanted to see Twin Peaks, a couple of hills that overlook San Francisco. It's a steep climb, made shorter with the help of a bus that took us most of the way to the top. Junior was able to make it up the final steps, despite some really brisk winds, where they could take in the view of the city, in the photo, below.

View from Twin Peaks; the faint diagonal line in the center of the photo is Market Street, pointing toward San Francisco's Financial District.

The Haight

Junior and me in a botique that capitalized on the sixties' rejection of  materialism.

Afterward we hiked down to Haight Ashbury, another item on Valerie's bucket list. She shot this photo above showing me educating Junior about the Sixties.

Junior also got introduced to the concept of luxury during a brief visit to Laurel Court in Nob Hill's opulent Fairmont Hotel.

Junior ogles the Fairmount's grand staircase.

Not the world's crookedest street?

Despite the hills--or maybe because of them--San Francisco is a great walking city, and we walked for several miles on Thursday, including in our ramblings a visit to the crookedest street in the world -- part of Lombard street where  a really steep slope is made navigable by a series of Lombard's sharp switchbacks.

Actually, a Cable Car conductor observed, Lombard isn't the world's crookedest street. The top honor, he disclosed, goes to Wall Street.

Junior observed the passing of the cars on one of the many curves on Lombard Street.

Then we hit one of the great landmarks of the world -- we set off for The Bridge.

From the bridge we could view a smirk of pelicans passing below.

After walking the Golden Gate, Junior rested.

What to do after walking The Bridge? We introduced Junior to their first solid food -- at Ghirardelli Square. At more than $12, this was probably the most expensive banana split I've ever purchased. I couldn't believe they ate the whole thing.

Junior spies the Ghirardelli banana split...

...and leaves the plate pristine.

Well, Wilson, you obviously don't have to worry about me getting lonely. I've got Blue at the condo, and Junior to hike with. I've got summer plans for the Little Indestructible, but that's for a later dispatch.

Love,
Robert
(And Junior)

Introducing Jr.

Wilson,
You and I have been on four continents in the past couple years and visited several nations, and I have yet to see as tiny a One World Futbol as I saw in Berkely, CA,  Monday afternoon when I visited the One World Play Project headquarters. The dang thing almost fit in my shoe! Well, OK I exaggerate. But I still want to tell you about the visit.

My new, diminutive One World Futbol on the shoe seen 'round the world.

First of all, there's the news about the tiny One World Futbol that I photographed on my shoe in the bathroom of the San Francisco time share after I got back. Not everyone who wants to play with unbreakable One World Futbols is man-size. Some aren't even kid-size. This ball is for the tyke-size.

It  would have been great to have a few of those last November when I was in the Baobob refugee center in Rome, where some of the families were waiting for an evening meal with babes in arms. It's an appropriate addition to the One World Play Project's love arsenal.

The staff at One World Play Project gave it to us when I visited Monday -- "us" including you (on Mount Adams), and Blue (at my condo). And now we got Jr.--that's my name for the little one. (And "junior" is a gender-free term! Jr. will be tagging along with me in San Francisco.

Tim Jahnigen

Now the next thing I want to show you is the proof of how truly resilient these balls are. That's me in the photo below with Lisa Tarver, Co-founder and Chief Giving officer for the One World Play Project. Lisa is also the spouse-in-chief of Tim Jahnigen,Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer (and visionary for this marvelous ball), pictured at the right. Note that Lisa is holding a ball with a big chunk missing and a whole lot of little bite holes in it. That's what can happen when a big dog with bitey teeth gets to play with one of these things for a year.

Look closely, because this is one of those rare photos that show just how tough a One World Futbol can be. The well chewed ball still has as much bounce as ever.

But get this -- the darned thing is firm, holds its shape, and bounces as if it isn't missing a big chunk of its exterior. If you didn't see the hole, you'd never know. These things take a trouncin' and keep on bouncin'. (I think I said that a long time ago in an earlier blog.) The balls aren't necessarily recommended for pets, but people buy them for their dogs anyway. These things last--and work!--in places where people are kicking rag balls around.

You know, Wilson, there are 195 nations in the world--196, if you count Taiwan as a separate nation. (That's where the balls are made, by the way, with many shipped in 40-foot containers that can hold 5,000 balls.) One World Play Project has sent One World Futbols to 175 of those nations. So far, they have shipped 1.6 million balls. At 30 users per ball, that's 48 million people who didn't have to purchase their entertainment. They were given the ball by strangers like us and our donors.

And something else is happening. Organizations that are distributing the balls are involving girl players in traditional societies where girls were less likely to engage in sports. In my imagination,  I think that, just by creating this endurable ball, One World Play Project is making it possible to shift the paradigm and is contributing to the incremental redefinition of what it means to be female.

Look, Wilson, I know that, you being genderless and all, this "girl" issue  may not mean much to you, but trust me, over time this could be important.

Me, Jr., and the One World Play Project staff.

There's one other person I want to give special mention to in today's dispatch: Marketing Associate Emily Hopcian, the individual who has been instrumental in what we have been able to accomplish. She's my go-to guru. She's standing on my left in the photo above, with me holding Jr,, who has been kissed with a whole bunch of staff autographs. To my right is Lisa Tarver. Other One World Play Project staffers in the photo are, left to right from the top: Luc Schwab, designer; Cameron Maguire, giving and R&D coordinator; Rebecca Perez, director of corporate partnerships; Jenn Hwang, VP marketing and communications; Taylor Veit, marketing assistant, and Neill Duffy, chief catalyst.

From their second floor suite in a Berkeley office building they are sending the power of play all over the world. It's an office sort of like every other office, but the fact that it looks so ordinary makes it so much more extraordinary -- and inspirational.

We can do things, Wilson. We can make a difference.
Love,
Robert

Shades of summer past!

Wilson,
This time the letter isn't for you. It's for my friend, Val, who will join me this Monday evening, after I return from meeting the folks at One World Play Project. And she's going to be eating her heart out. Not because she'll miss a chance to meet the people who make those wonderful unbreakable soccer balls. It's about missing the Haight-Ashbury summer fair!

Throngs of mostly normal-looking people jammed Haight Street for several blocks to catch a glimpse of a period that came and went before they were born.. Hippies indeed left their mark!

Val is an old friend and I invited her to come along on my San Francisco trip. She has never been here, and Haight Ashbury was on her bucket list. On Sunday I took a bus ride to check out Golden Gate Park and how well my muni pass for a week of public transportation worked. But the bus got diverted by a blocked street. It was the fair! This was pure seredipity, and it took me back to my misspent youth and the 1960s.

Like, far out, man, it was like good-tripping into a time warp, warp, warp, warp.

Wilson, you weren't around then, of course, but you know about love, because you represent agape, brotherly love. And 1967, the year I headed off to the military,  was the Summer of Love  (including the brotherly type) in San Francisco. It was a Utopian celebration that started in Golden Gate Park and became the impetus  behind the runaway hit, Hair. Geeze. That was 49 years ago, but you wouldn't know it by some of the characters who showed their faces and colors on Sunday.

 I shot a bunch of photos of the activities and people and the neighborhood, and I'd like to share them with you. I'll add captions to some, but many speak for themselves. Here they are:

Flower man was selling psychedelic umbrellas and beads.

Was it the mushrooms? The old gaffer-- (oops, probably my age) --said he sees right past the peace symbols on those shades. That symbol, by the way, is created by combining two military semaphore symbols, "N" and "D", bound by a circle. The initials stand for "nuclear disarmament."

Psychedelic type faces can be hard to read, but who cares, man? It's groovy.

Signs representing two different eras content for the tourist's dollar.

Tie-dyed T-shirts

Oh, wow, man. Out of sight! Way cool. It's like, wow, like the biggest owl eye you ever saw, man. It's far out! No, wait, it's psychedelic!  No, it's so far out it's in! Gotta have it on my mantle. That Michelob bottle needs to go--all the candle wax I dripped on it one night 50 years ago to make it look really old has faded and chipped off...

One block away, opulent, manicured Victorian-styled homes, accented with gingerbread motifs and spiced with hints of psychedelia, reinterpret the ostentation of  the counter culture that was absorbed  and co-opted, yet continues to inform the mainstream.

Around the corner from the street fair, a young entrepreneur sought donations for his lemonade stand to benefit a civil rights academy named for Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person in California to be elected to public office. He could only accept donations because of the city ordinance, his mother explained.

Dead Heads should know this Ashbury Street address--it's where THEY hung out.

And Jerry Garcia's spirit still plays on here--on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps.

Love, 

Robert