To read about Ron’s four months in Micronesia, go to the archive to your left and click on “Marshall Islands Story Project.”

Simon, our eighteen-pound tabby, went missing this week. Tuesday night, when Jill rounded up the pets (as she usually does every night), she realized we hadn’t seen Simon all day. This wasn’t unusual. When we went off to work, we figured he was sleeping late somewhere. It’s a big house with lots of places to hide. “Did you feed the cats?” Jill asked me. I said, “I thought you fed them.” Simon never misses a meal—and he lets us know when it’s time. He hadn’t been around to remind us on this day. Sophie, our small orange tabby, was staring up at us with interest. She’s so accommodating, she’d been waiting for dinner all night. It was now eleven. We fed her, then made another thorough search of the house. “He’s gone,” I announced grimly. “Let’s go find him,”

Simon came to us through the antiques consignment shop that Jill works at occasionally. He belonged to an elderly woman who had to downsize before she went into a retirement home. Surrendering her cat along with her belongings was a sad situation, everyone agreed. She had thoroughly spoiled Simon, whom she’d named “Sir Sweetie.” Vanessa, the owner of the store, assured the old woman that she’d take care of Sir Sweetie. But Vanessa had several cats of her own. So Sir Sweetie—renamed Simon—became the store cat. He was so relaxed, so trusting, so self-possessed, it didn’t occur to him that he should be wary or afraid of anybody or anything. He regularly stretched out on the floor anywhere he pleased. Jill worried that somebody would step on him.

Strangers thought Simon remarkable because he’d approach anyone, then rear up and place his paws on the stranger’s legs, like a dog asking to be picked up. If you picked him up, he’d then place one paw on each of your shoulders, as if to hug you. If you embraced him, he’d nibble your ear lobe. Strangers found this flattering and some believed that suddenly they had a remarkable rapport with cats. But it was just Simon’s way to be friendly with anybody who’d give him a chance. When Jill brought Simon to our house for a visit, I knew we had to keep him. I’d never seen a cat so calm and well-centered.

From the start, we had to keep an eye on him. He’d slip out our front door, then trot through the bushes fronting the neighboring row houses. Once I watched him leap from our back yard brick wall onto the sidewalk—five feet—then trot to the front of the house. It didn’t faze him that I was hollering for him to halt. He believed that the world was his and that everybody would welcome him wherever he went. One morning when I opened the front door to retrieve the paper, there he sat, waiting to get in. He’d been out all night. We were appalled. How? When did he get out?

I’ve owned many cats that I allowed to roam freely. Vets will tell you it’s not a good idea. Free-ranging cats live fewer years than house-bound cats. They pick up more illnesses, leukemia the deadliest of them. And they get into trouble. They kill birds and squirrels and can themselves be killed by raccoons, dogs, coyotes, and foxes. One night, while driving through a suburb, I saw a house-cat trotting blithely across the road. As soon as he disappeared into the bushes on the other side, I saw a fox sneak across the road after him.

Arthur, a tuxedo’d tom, was my most troublesome outdoor cat. He’d come and go via the back stairs of my apartment building. I thought I was doing him a favor by letting him roam. Though he was neutered, he acted as like a Romeo. It was hard keeping track of him. Most of the time he’d show up for dinner, but some nights he stayed out until dawn. One morning, I was driving to work when I saw a crowd of crows cawing raucously and diving into and swooping around a tree top. Curious, I glanced up only to discover that the source of their complaint was Arthur. He’d spied a nest. It wasn’t easy getting him out of that tree. Another time, Arthur disappeared for three days. When he returned, his coat was oily and matted and his claws were ground down to nubs. I suspected he’d gotten trapped somewhere and had to claw his way out after many hours, perhaps days, of effort. It took him weeks to recover. Another time he came home with a broken jaw, apparently having been swiped by a speeding car. In the end, I decided, letting cats roam free isn’t worth the risks. Since then, all of my cats have been indoor animals.

For a time we thought we could let Simon lounge in our long, bricked-in back yard. But it was never enough for him. If given the chance, he’d be over the wall and trotting away. We don’t know how he got out this time. As we scoured the bushes in our block and called for him, we knew that he was enjoying himself, but it was just a matter of time before he got hurt or somebody took him in. Our great fear was that somebody would fall in love with him and refuse to let him go. Every week we see fliers in our neighborhood announcing yet another lost cat. And every time I’d glance at a flier, I’d think us lucky that it wasn’t our pet on that poster.

It may not be right to compare a cat to a child, but cats and dogs are as close as Jill and I have to little ones of our own. Without him, our life was out of whack, off-balance, like a listing ship. As we circled our block at intervals through the night, rattling kibble in his bowl and calling his name, I felt myself sinking hour by hour. At six the next morning we put up fliers offering a hundred-dollar reward. We got a few phone calls offering tips. One neighbor had sighted Simon in front of our neighbor’s yard at seven the previous morning. Another caller had sighted him at nine that night, lounging in the same place, like a dog surveying his domain. This was good news—he was still around. By the end of the day, we had gathered yet more intelligence. Apparently Simon had sneaked out Monday night after dinner. That meant that he’d been out a full 24 hours before we realized he was gone.

Jill and I hated ourselves for having let this happen. We had excuses. For starters, we were still distracted and tired from our overseas travel. But excuses were cold comfort as Wednesday wound to a close. One of our neighbors said Simon had tried to get into her building the previous night. “He was aggressive about it,” she said. “But I’ve got a cat of my own. And the guy on the third floor has a Rautweiler, so I didn’t let your cat in.” Another neighbor apologized for not taking him in. She said the two young men on the first floor of her building were seen with the cat early in the morning. “They’re not right in the head,” she continued. “Who knows what they did with him. They take drugs.” Jill and I rang their bell. A lanky young man with red-streaked dreads came to the door. He said he was playing with Simon at four that morning. “We left him right here,” he said, pointing to the small square of grass in front of the building.

After he went inside, I asked Jill, a social worker, if she believed him. “Yeah, he was very calm. A sociopath would have had an attitude. He’d be angry or edgy.” It was now eleven Wednesday night. Simon had been out a full 48 hours. It was possible that Jill and I had missed our chance. Maybe someone had taken him in at last. Maybe he had wandered farther off. In the case of missing animals, as with missing children, the more time that passes, the less likely there will be a return.

We locked Sophie on the porch, then opened the front doors (keeping the security gate locked) so that Simon could wander in, if indeed he was still wandering. We thought it remarkable how many strangers called to express concern or offer tips. And most apartment buildings kept our flier up. Only in one building did somebody keep tearing it down. What was that about? Jill hoped it wasn’t some evil person who had decided to keep our Simon. For two nights Simon had been right here in front of our building, waiting to get in. And we had been oblivious. If we didn’t get him back, how many years would our regret pursue us?

Later, as we were sleeping, a sudden jolt woke us—eighteen pounds dropping onto our bed. It was Simon, having returned and now making his customary entrance at the foot of our bed. He was fine and unfazed, happy to receive our shower of affection but apparently unchanged by his adventure. This meant he’d be eager to sneak out again. We fed him, then let Sophie get reacquainted with her partner. She sniffed and sniffed him. He smelled of the world, apparently.

The next evening, we walked the dog and took down the fliers. It was a very happy occasion. And still we got a calls of concern, one from a young woman who had played with him in front of her building. “He was so cute, I wanted to take him home,” she said. “I’m glad he’s back.”

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I woke at four this morning to the hyperbolic chorus of birdsong. Since our return on Monday, I’ve been getting up at 4:00 AM, no matter what time I go to bed. A sinus infection has complicated my re-acclimation to stateside time-zones. But today, at last, I can smell again. I’m startled how early it gets light. In the Marshall Islands, equatorial sunrise and sunset never alter: 7:00 AM, 7:00 PM. Here, the sun starts insinuating itself at 4:30 AM. I’m startled, too, how early the birds go to work. And how noisy they are about it. I like their company when I’m up at that hour, staring out at the brightening blue over the Baltimore rooftops. Their energetic singing suggests that I should be about my business too.

Right now, I hear a man calling “Ice cold!” outside. He’s one of the enterprising urbanites who bring coolers packed with bottled water to busy intersections. Today’s salesman is a skinny fellow wearing a white canvas sunhat, long denim shorts, and a t-shirt. A plastic bottle of iced water in each hand, he strides into the street and calls, “Ice cold! Ice cold here!” Yesterday it was a different guy. It’s surprising how many Baltimoreans drive with the windows down, no matter how hot it gets. I’m convinced it’s part of the city’s Southern heritage. We get really hot here in summer and many seem to flaunt it. Whereas temperatures in the Marshall Islands rarely top 90, Baltimore will broil in the nineties for weeks. Last week’s heat spell killed our maple sapling in the sidewalk treewell.

The Marshall Islands is all sky and ocean—wide open and very blue. Here on the East coast, it’s green and cluttered. Trees press in and crowd the view. I like that. It’s what I’m used to. Speaking of trees, we’ve discovered a pair of mocking birds building a nest in the tree nearest our back porch. We consider this a big deal because it means our back yard plantings are getting mature, entering their third year. Jill announced this morning that our pond has at least one new goldfish. She sighted fish eggs a few weeks back but couldn’t be sure. Now we know. Though hundreds spring from the hatching, very few survive the attention of the forever hungry tadpoles and adult fish. Last year only one fry made it. Jill worries about them but understands that we have to let the ecosystem take care of itself.

I still haven’t gone through my mail—there’s a big box of it. Nor have I fired up the vacuum and gone after the cat and dog hair that mosses the carpet in every room. It’s going to take a while for us to get the house back in order. But there’s no rush. We’ve been doing laundry all week. Piles of it. I forgot to cancel my New Yorker subscription before I left, so now the magazines are scattered all over the house as I read them in snatches. I won’t even try to catch up. There is no catching up with anything, I’ve decided—not with your old body weight or the backlog of magazines you think will make you a better person if only you could read every one of them cover to cover. Still, tomorrow I return to the gym and start again with good intentions.

Generally, my return to States has elated me. Our nation is so much like an amusement park, everything geared to entertainment and immediate gratification. I delight in filling up our refrigerator after a day of grocery shopping and blasting music from my computer while I surf the internet and fire off emails at the speed of light. I smile when the electric garage-door rises over me as I back into 28th street. Jill managed to get the city to install a NO PARKING sign in front of our driveway, so now we no longer have the headache of rogue city parkers blocking the garage. Our flowers are opening in the back yard, the butterfly plant as big as a giant squid. I’ve been napping all over the house like a lazy cat, first settling into the library couch, then padding down the hall to the guest room—wherever it’s coolest. Our big house seems such a novelty, there’s so much of it to play in. It’s terrible and wondrous to be an American. “This is Rome,” an Irish friend once told me with a smile. Rome towards the end, I was tempted to add. Nothing this good can last.

On the news recently I saw a story about the growth of the middle-class in India. Observers worry that this huge influx of consumers (350 million) will overburden world resources. The suggestion is that the Indians, like the Chinese, should cool their capitalistic jets. But how realistic is that? Just because Americans got the goodies first doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should go wanting. Our problems are global and, in the end, all of us will have less because it’s too small a world to accommodate everything we want.

I knew this before I went to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, so I can’t say my visit made me feel any guiltier for my privilege. But my stay did calm me down, putting into perspective what is and isn’t important. American history, much of it an embarrassing chronicle of overreaching and exploitation, has led too many of us to believe that what’s happened here in the U.S.A. has been inevitable. It’s a sense of entitlement that much of the world can’t fathom. When you live among those who don’t have such expectations, you begin to see personal and global limits in new ways. We Americans have all we have, in great part, because we got lucky. Much of it had to do with being in the right place at the right time, like a gambler sitting at a hot slot machine. Luck is hardly a firm basis on which to found national pride, much less personal ambition. This is not to say that I will now tamp down my own ambitions and adopt an “island” mentality. Rather, it’s to say that when the next disappointment visits me, I’ll be a gracious host and remember that I’ve been very lucky.

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When I saw Jill again, she looked like a farm girl, her face freckled and without makeup. We hadn’t seen each other in four months. Newton and I presented her with a traditional crown of flowers and a lei, both of which Newton’s wife made. Then I bought her a Marshallese sunhat at the handicraft store–because you really need a hat out here, especially if you’re going to walk the reef. To my surprise, Jill wore it right away. I thought she’d find Majuro disturbing because many do. Too dirty and crowded. But Jill likes things more complicated than not. Majuro is plenty complicated. She said, “Don’t some parts of Florida look like this?”

We got several orders of take-out, including stir-fried octopus, then drove a rented car the length of the island to Laura, where it’s green and less populated. We ate at the Peace Park, built by the Japanese government in 1986 to commemorate the war (II) dead. We had the place to ourselves. On weekends, the Peace Park and much of Laura are crowded with the thoroughly sociable Marshallese, who picnic and cook-out with family and friends as much as possible.

The next day, Newton took us to a small island, which we had almost wholly to ourselves. While he fished with rod and reel (casting into deep water), Jill and I snorkeled. Jill had never snorkeled before, but took to it easily. And she wasn’t freaked by the rain of jelly fish we swam through. They were about the size of quarters, tiny nearly-transparent bells, and they were everywhere. But they didn’t sting. Still, they freaked me out. As we swam through them, and they bounced off my dive-mask–and my forehead–I was sure we’d feel the stinging later. But later Newton told us that these were dead jelly fish. This particular kind sheds its skin at certain times, he explained. That’s all we were seeing, the sloughed-off skin.

I made Jill tramp through the jungle a while. I love picking through a jungle. It was tough going and Jill wasn’t happy about it but she humored me for a while. That’s how I run my life, it seems: I push into weeds, then go too far to turn back. “I see light through the trees,” I kept calling to Jill. “Almost there!” We also walked the reef, checking out the tide pools and lifting rocks to see what’s there (always return the rock to its original position b/c every rock is an ecosystem, with lots of stuff living on its underside). We came across a healthy looking moray eel, about a foot long. Also, while wading in the tide, Jill came across a black tip shark. A baby, hardly two feet long. It was mighty fast, zipping past us once, then twice, then it was gone–before I could get my camera ready. Black tips are fairly common on the oceanside.

Exactly forty-eight hours after Jill’s arrival, I came down with a sinus infection. No doubt she introduced me to a handful of Stateside microbes, an exposure exacerbated by two days of snorkeling. I’d spent over four months in the Marshall Islands without getting pink eye, without getting the flu, without getting a cold, and here at last I got sick. Maybe my body simply gave in now that the pressure was off. Not that the job is done. Newton and I have pushed the Project deadline to September 1. There’s simply too much data to process. I have to finish editing the videos, then compress them and upload them to the website. Same with the audio. Newton has piles of translation and voice-overs to do. But the website is up and operational and it’s looking pretty good. I’ve decided Newton must come to Baltimore to review our final work. On Majuro he won’t be able to view the video–their internet connection is so slow, it’ll take all night to download a single one-hour clip.

Jill’s not sure what to make of my tattoo. Her first response was “it’s so big!” She also had mixed feelings about my haircut. Only Jill cuts my hair. But I couldn’t wait for her this time and had a local cut it several weeks ago–someone Newton recommended. The stylist, a Filipino hoping to get to the States, did a great job and ended the session by giving me a back massage. How different would we be if haircuts in the States ended with a back massage?

Jill and I stopped in Honolulu on the way back. I had to visit the Bishop Museum to see what Marshall Islands artifacts it displays. Not enough, I thought. The museum was founded in 1893, shortly after the Hawaiian royal family was dethroned. Though the museum took possession of many royal family belongings, a larger number were auctioned off. The story of the Hawaiian monarchy is a sad one and implicates the U.S. in the worst way. By many accounts, the monarchy was enlightened and beloved by the people. In fact, the last king, David Kalakaua (the “merry monarch”), reinstated the hula dance and other elements of native culture that the missionaries had attempted to eradicate. But outside forces–mostly American and European business interests (among them some recognizable names)–controlled his cabinet and revised the constitution to their benefit, infamously dubbed the “bayonet constitution.” In the end, the powerbrokers got their way and the island nation was soon annexed by the U.S. in 1898.

We’re now on our way home on a 767, Jill trying to sleep beside me. It didn’t take long for us to re-acclimate to each other–we’re back to our usual, teasing selves. At bottom, I didn’t expect this separation to affect us adversely. But it’s going to take me a while to sort out how my time here has affected me in other ways. The night before we left Majuro, Newton made us a traditional meal: the reef fish he’d caught that day, a coconut stew, baked breadfruit, and fried breadfruit. It was glorious. The next day, he and several of my student–Obet, Jefferson, Benson, Ayson, Decency, and James–saw us off at the airport. I don’t know if these young people know how much hope is riding on their shoulders. I’ll continue to be on call as their technical advisor. (Check out their website at http://rmitdt.org.) They’re in good hands with Newton. He’s gentle and wise and they respect him tremendously. But, obviously, none of us oldsters can protect them from all the world will bring their way. This worry for them is something that, as a teacher, I should have gotten used to long ago but, apparently, I never will.

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Ron Tanner, chair of the Writing Department at Loyola College-Maryland, won a grant from the National Parks Service to help Marshallese college students preserve the oral culture of the Marshall Islands. He’s spending the 2008 spring semester (5 months) on Majuro to direct this pilot program, called the Marshall Islands Story Project. To get the full story of his personal experiences, be sure to check the archives to your left.

Jill didn’t believe me when I told her I got a tattoo My generation, the baby boomers, were taught to associate tattoos with decrepit sailors and outlaw bikers. “Why would you want to do that to your body?” Mom often told us. The campaign against tattoos was remarkably successful and grew in direct relation to the ascent of good hygiene and the reverence for clinical cleanliness–hospital-white kitchens and bathrooms tiled like swimming pools. But disapproval was also surprisingly short-lived, lasting only about 100 years. Tattoos have been around since 3000 B.C. Start with Jesus and count backwards one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand.
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The Marshallese had elaborate tattoos, which were semi-sacred. Men and women had distinctly different kinds. You had to make an offering to see if the signs were propitious–and you were worthy–of having a tattoo. When the Spanish first arrived here in the late 1500s, the found the natives so heavily tattooed, they called them “los pintados” or “the painted.” Their tattoos rivaled those of New Zealand’s Maoris, whose intricate decorations are world famous. The missionaries got rid of all that. Ironically, so did the Japanese, whose own culture is rich with tattooing. The last of the Marshallese traditional tattoos died with their bearers in the 1950s. The national cultural museum published a book of traditional Marshallese tattoo designs. John, my tattoo artist, has the book in his office.

When tattoos started appearing on youngsters in the 1990s, I shook my head in wonder, mostly because it seemed kids weren’t putting much thought into marking themselves for life. Flowers, hearts, thunderbolts, dragons. Of course there’s a long tradition of that. You can’t go wrong with a bannered heart blazoned with “MOM.” But, alas, many a romantic has felt compelled to etch the name of his squeeze across his bicep. Much of John’s work involves covering up tattoo mistakes. He does a good job. John’s from Fiji. As far as I know, he’s the only tattoo artist on Majuro. I came to him because I heard he does traditional designs. I chose a sea turtle with Marshallese motifs on its shell. He wanted to do it with the head aimed up but I requested the head down, as if the turtle were swimming down my arm.

Jill said, “But you’ve got such a thing about protecting your body!” It seems I give the wrong impression sometimes. I admit that I didn’t like the idea of a guy needling at my arm. It made me queasy. And there was a time, I admit, when a tattoo would have been out of the question. But, then, I wasn’t in Micronesia. Jill arrives on Tuesday. She says she can’t believe she’s going to be here. She’s never left the country. The first thing we’ll do after she arrives is buy her a sunhat at the handicrafts shop, then we’ll get some take-out and go watch the waves.

As you see, I’ve included some photos of Majuro dogs. Though they are often loved, they have a hard time. It’s not the life Americans would want for dogs. Most live on scraps and handouts. But they roam freely and none are neutered, so they are abundant. Some complain that they are dangerous or, at least, surly. Some days a few would chase my bike. Other days the same dogs would ignore me.

Tomorrow Newton, a few students, and I visit the other high chief of the nation. It’s taken Newton a month to set this up. He’s exhausted. Me too. I put in twelve hours today. Our website’s much bigger than I expected. But it’s going to be cool. This time next week Jill and I will be in Honolulu and I’ll be in a daze. Here are some things I’ve missed (people are a separate category): broadband internet, brick-oven pizza, salads, organic produce, cool drizzly days, home cooking (e.g., Jill’s carrot cake), satellite radio, cheese, Sunday New York Times, a cat on my lap, mail, watermelon, fresh peaches, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, Italian food, thunderstorms, and hot water.

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