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DEAR FRIENDS
I wish you all a great New Year where we learn to better tackle the destructive Corona and Trump
forces around us.
Again I spent most of the year with the family in our Corona
hideout in our summer cottage?
THE FAMILY
Since some of you have been over here and know them, here is a brief update
on....
.....our son Daniel who stopped his hitchhiking to virtually every
country in the world when Corona closed it down. He is now taking an education
as "social and health assistant" for the old and weak since the Danish
wellfarestate has a great shortage of "warm hands" like nurses and caretakers
for the grewing number of elderly. He loves his job and develops deep bond with
the many old people he visits every day and exchange life stories with.
.....our daughter Lalou also stopped traveling the world as a
psychologist for traumatized children and women in often very dangerous areas
such as Somalia, Mali, Iraq, Rohingja, Gaza (being bombed twice by the Israelis)
as well as India, Rwanda and Malawi and Zimbabwe. Now she has opened
her own psycholy office
in Copenhagen with specialty in womens exposed to violence - and sad to say
there is no shortage of clients.
....my wife Vibeke in August retired from her job in the Artist's Union.
However, they can't do without her, so with all her expertize she keeps going to
the office to help them out. Still there was time for a little vacation, so when
Europe started opening up for our Corona passes, we first went on a camping trip
to the Harz mountains in Germany and
then in November on a month long climate friendly Interrail trip to Sicily.
Since
my flight climate quote has long ago been used up it is no excuse for not
traveling since Europe's trains are excellent to read and work on - and in only
two days we hit warm beaches others would fly around the world to go to.
Try Europe's new sleeing wagons - dogs go free - on
Interrail - from the Polar Circle to the border of Iran.
A LITTLE ABOUT MY "WORK"
.....as an involuntary retiree
"On saying yes" in English
As you may know I two years ago published the first volume of my memoirs "On
saying yes" in Danish - so far only about my youth. And since I am forever
grateful to
the
Godfrey family in Canada who once invited me over and thereby laid the
ground for "American Pictures", I decided before Christmas to translate the
chapter about my stay in Canada (before it is too late for the 104-year Dr.
Godfrey to read it). And also the chapter about how I developed my happy role as
a vagabond in America - the two only chapters in the book taking place in North
America.
If you liked "American Pictures" I think you
will have great fun here reading about the enormous naivity I arrived with in
America in 1970 with incredible generalizations of "Americans", Jews,
"negroes" etc. I try to be as honest to the young man I once was - frequently
laughing about myself - although some of the humor is lost in the Google
translation. Still I hope you will enjoy it.
Here are all the illustrated chapters in the book,
but read
Chapter 6 about my arrival after I had to flee Denmark from a court case for
terrorism due to my radicalization by the Vietnam war (in chapter 5)
- and how the Godfreys then gradually got me de-radicalized.
And afterwards Chapter 7 about how the Americans afterwards tought me to see
and care for the suffering just around me instead of constructing utopian
ideologies about how to end it all.
"Roots of oppression"
I told you in the Christmas letter last year that the Black Lives Matter movement
inspired me to write an update to "American Pictures" (which was never
published in the US). For although there are plenty of good books today on racism,
hardly anyone has - like me - photographically followed the oppression of
American blacks for 50 years after the civil
rights struggle. On the advice of an old friend -
the author Samuel
Delany - I found an extremely good editor of my bad English in
the author
Vincent Czyz. We have had a wonderful working relationship - also with some help
from
my old girlfriend Marly Sockol and other old friends.
Since this summer the book has been ready for a publisher, but to my
surprise I haven't heard back from neither publishers nor the literary agents
needed to find a publisher. Surprised because I thought there would be a
huge demand for litterature on racism in the aftermath of George Floyd. Now I
fear that it is either because noone in todays cancel culture dares to publish anything
NOT written by a black (or by a LGBTQ+ about the expanded gay section in the new
book).
Or could it be because of the general dislike of the whole underclass issue I always heard
about when enthusiastic students after seeing my slideshow bought the book to
give to their parents or museum directors - only to see them quickly leaf
through it with obvious distaste and then put away without a word?
For look at how this Magnum photographer
Alec Soth with
thousands of followers on Instagram for a long time reacted to my old book.
I had hoped to finally get a book published in America - preferably before my 75
year birthday in 2022.
So if any of you like my new book and have contacts to publishers or literary
agents, please tell them about it.
I like to follow friends for life, so what I like best in the new book
are my lifestories of the people you know from my old book.
I want to share some of these with you:
Life story of Mary - whose house was firebombed as a result of our
relationship - and how it was not until her death we developed that type of
relationship my readers always imagined it was.
Life story of Lefus Whitley - and how Bruce Springsteen stole from both
him and me.
Life story of Virginia Pate - and how our friendship caused three life
prisoners to be released.
Life story of Valerie Rockefeller - the 3 year old girl I was once
sitting with on my lap - and why I was so angry with the Rockefeller family in
my old book - and how we are still friends today when
she is the head of the
Rockefeller foundation.
Life stories of my Ku Klux Klan friends - and how only through my long
friendship with two of the biggest groups I discovered all the goodness they
often contain underneath their cruel facade.
Life stories of white serial murderers of blacks - and how it was only
as a result of my 20 year friendship with this traumatized family that I
eventually found proof that they really had killed all those blacks they
bragged about. Read the moving story about the abused children who still e-mail
me all the time.
Or see the whole book - also with new chapters about how I worked for the Black
Panthers - and why I didn't dare to tell it for years.
Send this links to your publisher friends:
american-pictures.com/roots
MY WORK IN THE UBUNTU HOUSE
Here in Copenhagen it is a great joy for me to host and work for my dialogue center, the
Ubuntu House. Just look at how we here work harmoniously together in our female
mosque/synagogue - Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Budhhists, Hindus and Christians from
many of the world's conflicting tribes and nationalities:
american-pictures.com/ubuntu
You are all invited to come
and celebrate my 75-year birthday with us in the Ubuntu House on April 29th.
And since I love lifetime stories and we just celebrated Christmas,
here you can see almost all the Christmas eves I photographed - ha, ha - ever since I was
8 months old.
Since our parents died we have the last 9 years filled up the empty Christmas
eve seats of our
loved ones with Muslim immigrants - who in the process have become our new
beloved family members.
And with this little story of how there is hope for the world - if we learn
better to live and party together - I hope you also had a meaningful
birthday party
for our dear cousin here .......
Merry Christmas and
happy New Year
Jacob Holdt
From my run Christmas morning along the harbor of Copenhagen ...
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