I am a knight-errant as I journeyed down the yellow brick road of my life. Decades ago, I wanted to create a utopian experiment before I ran out of any more bricks. My dream was to bring people that I had met overseas. I did a year of postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1968-69. Some of them are Scottish.

Additionally, I traveled all over Europe and met people during that year that I wanted to bring to my utopian experiment. That was when I was a fair-haired youth. During the last half century, I have had people from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, and a handful of islands in the Pacific. This is a link to my Dreaming Dreams section on my website. Perhaps my utopian experiment might be an example to others to be more inclusive about who makes up their family.

This is my dream.

However, even when I was young, bringing around a hundred individuals or families wasn’t possible solely due to not having millions of dollars to bring them here, build homes, supply furnishings, cars, and a litany of living expenses. I have no idea of the cost of my utopian experiment when it comes to the lake, the land, and the mountains. I have failed in my quest and haven’t realized anything of my dreams.

Talk about pain. I am a knight-errant that failed. So, I got up from despair and modified my dream. Before I ran out of any more bricks on my yellow brick road of life, my dream was much smaller. I’d settled for 24 homes on a lake. However, even a modified dream wasn’t possible. As I reduced the size of my experiment, the more hope that the modified dream could be realized. However, I still failed.

I felt like the Man of La Mancha. A famous Spanish artist did this pen and ink of Don Quixote. It wasn’t a Pablo Picasso version of his pen and ink version. It is of Don Quixote the defeated warrior.

Robert McCall describes the novel, Don Quixote, in Equalizer as "a guy who thinks he's a knight in shining armor, who lives in a world where knights don't exist anymore."

McCall is correct. Don Quixote jousting with windmills collides with the real world. It addresses the tension between the world of one’s imagination and reality. Don Quixote and knights-errant, like me, are different from the rest of the world. We will always dream impossible dreams. That won’t ensure success. Nonetheless, not risking failure will guarantee one’s own failure. That is an obvious oxymoron.

I am in the process of starting a GoFundMe drive. I have been helping my family financially for a decade. Over that time period, my family of five, who live in Myanmar, which is located in Southeast Asia, has increased to nine. Between a military coup, COVID, and an earthquake, my family is like the majority in Myanmar, or the rest of the developing countries in the world, who need financial assistance. So, I am continuing in my knight errant role in assisting them by wire transferring money to them. Last year, I wired transfers of over $48k.

So, where am I getting all the money to assist my family of nine? I didn’t retire from teaching until a month prior to turning 80. That helped. The other means is borrowing from my home equity loan. However, there isn’t any money remaining in my home equity loan. Therefore, I am helping my family and at the same time paying two mortgages on my house.

Doing two things simultaneously is a vexing issue. I need to broaden the number of potential donors. One means is to ask donors to tell nine of their friends about my fundraising drive.

However, another means is to talk to someone that I don’t know. I want that person’s critique. What did they like about the composition of my GoFundMe page? More importantly, what did I write or mention in the video that wasn’t clear? By the end of my fundraising drive, most of the donors won’t be people that know me.

By happenstance, I know the name of the perfect person. He has been successful in his business, and we have never met.