“Can I visit a farm in Vietnam?” I asked my friend Greg Farris when we were planning our overlapping trips to Vietnam.
“No problem. My wife Chau is planning to visit her relatives who are farmers and you can come along.” Greg was also a GI in Vietnam in the 1960s. He married a Vietnamese co-worker and they have lived in California for decades.
I am writing this column rapidly from a four-star hotel along the Perfume River in the old Imperial City of Hue. We splurged for a chance to get a buffet breakfast and a balcony with a river view.
So why am I in Vietnam for a three-week vacation? I was there two years ago and had a fantastic time. Forty years ago I was there and had an interesting time. But how do I justify or rationalize this third trip?
Historians are dangerous and subversive. While often soft-spoken and
mild mannered they quietly undermine our conventional wisdom.
How
often do we hear folks say, “But this is the way we have always done
it” and “This is what we have always believed”? Sometimes we are taken
down the opposite road, “Here is a wonderful new idea or insight that
will change everything.”
Americans are increasingly singing, “Make the world go away.” Folks are tired of competing with foreign companies, tired of dealing with immigrants and tired of foreign involvements.
