The Old Man in the Bag

Ted’s original book, “The Old Man in the Bag and Other True Stories of Good Intentions,” is a memoir written as a series of short stories tied together with 80 old B&W photographs and facsimile of 12 original letters. These stories are about a number of minor, but life changing, incidents that took place during the three years Ted and his wife, Helen, lived in a grass hut in a very remote part of Ethiopia 50 years ago while he was “avoiding” the Vietnam War.

Back then, Haile Selassie was still alive and in power, but he was an old man blind to the corruption around him. Although still revered by many, some were beginning to question his absolute authority. It was the beginning of student strikes, beatings and disappearances.

This book is, on one level, about how Ted and his wife helped a few dozen very poor local farmers establish a very remote new town in the dense uninhabited lowland jungle of the Rift Valley on land recently given to them by the sometimes loved, sometimes loathed Emperor. It is also about their own struggle as a newly married couple to survive fire, disease, drought and death in a very isolated, unfamiliar but intriguing environment.

However, the series of short stories are mostly about the misconception that real life decisions must be made in black and white, like democratic decisions are forced to be. Even decisions made with selfless good intentions can sometimes generate the opposite of love and admiration from those being “helped”. The experiences were what inspired Ted to write “Power, Chaos or Consensus?”