Woodstock Writers Festival: Douglas Rogers

I sat down this afternoon and tried to start a piece about a fantastic weekend I spent at the Woodstock Writers Festival which was devoted to memoir.  At least today, I found it too difficult to try to put together an account of so many disparate parts of the weekend experience. But I will mention that a fascinating and hard-working group of people created the festival which about 400 people attended. One of the organizers was Martha Frankel, the festival's executive director and a very successful author, about whom I will write in another posting as I plan too to write about her festival planning colleagues.

For now I'm going to just tell you about one of the most interesting writers I heard. His name is Douglas Rogers and he was born in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia as it was known then). He's also a good-looking fair-haired, travel writer with a look on his face that says "Nothing surprises me. I've seen a lot of things in my life and I'm not going to get very upset no matter what anyone says or does." Douglas has lived around here and there, some 50 countries according to his count. He now calls Brooklyn his home.

 As Douglas explains, I’m attracted to stories of ordinary people living brave, strange, imaginative, or heroic lives." Well among those people are Douglas's own "European" parents, ("European" being the term used to refer to whites in southern Africa.) You may know that Zimbabwe is ruled by Robert Mugabe, the too long ruling, dictator whose policies have been condemned internationally.

According to Douglas, despite what may appear in the press, the main targets of Mugabe are his African opponents - not Zimbabwe's Europeans - although Mugabe has driven many, perhaps most of them, off their land and out of the country. Despite threats, including some from bands of armed teenagers who have driven up to Douglas's parents door in trucks, his folks, Lyn and Ros are not leaving. They own a chunk of land on which they run a resort.  At one point when things really started to get difficult, Douglas called his parents from abroad. "How are things going Mom?" he asked worriedly. "Terribly Douglas, I'm terribly upset. They lost." "Who are THEY?" he asked even more upset, but also perplexed. "Why the cricket team, of course. Who do you think I meant?" his mother replied. Douglas's parents don't scare easily.

Douglas's book, The Last Resort is in part a coming of age tale as well as a "how to book," as in “how to survive in a corrupt Third World dictatorship.” Included in the story is the fact that there is a brothel on his parents' land, and some marijuana seems to be growing there too. Huh? I'll be reviewing the book at some point in the coming weeks.