Vietnam = Iraq

Consortiumnews.com has an interesting article about the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq. It's called "Bush's Top Ten 'Vietnam' Mistakes."

Perhaps if he'd served when his country called (instead of going AWOL in Alabama), he'd have learned the lessons of Vietnam the first time around. Or perhaps, if Laura had brought her literacy campaign home, he might have read about it. But no. Georgie wanted a war, a bigger better war than Daddy's, and he got one. Unfortunately, so did we all.

Read the entire article––it's good. Here is the gist of it:

Because the Bush administration, almost from the start, has eschewed any comparison of Iraq with Vietnam, officials apparently never read the history of the nation’s heretofore worst war and have made the same 10 major mistakes:

1. Underestimating the enemy. As in Vietnam, the superpower’s potent military has been astounded by the tenacity and competence of a nationalist rebellion attempting to throw a foreign occupier from its soil.

2. Deceiving the American public about how badly the war is going. President Bush continues to talk of victory, and his chief military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, argued that the United States was making “very, very good progress” just two days before the more credible U.S. ambassador to Iraq warned that a civil war was possible in Iraq.

3. The Bush administration, like the Johnson and Nixon administrations, blames the media’s negative coverage for plunging popular support of the war.Yet the nature of the press is that it would rather cover extraordinary negative events, such as fires and plane crashes, than more mundane positive developments.

4. Artificial government statistics cannot be used to measure progress in a counterinsurgency war. In Vietnam, the body counts of North Vietnamese/Viet Cong were always much greater than U.S./South Vietnamese deaths. Lately, the Bush administration has touted that fewer U.S. personnel are dying in Iraq.

5. The initial excessive use of force in counterinsurgency warfare instead of a plan to win hearts and minds. The U.S. military, since the days of U.S. Grant, has used superior firepower to win wars of attrition against its enemies.

6. Failed “search and destroy” tactics belatedly gave way to the “inkblot” approach of clearing and holding ground. In both Vietnam and Iraq, after search and destroy missions, enemy fighters merely returned to areas when “victorious” U.S. forces left. But not enough U.S. forces are in Iraq to make the “clear and hold” method work.

7. “Iraqization” of the war parallels the unsuccessful “Vietnamization” in the 1970s. The Nixon administration never fully explained how the less capable South Vietnamese military could defeat the insurgency when the powerful U.S. military had failed. The same problem exists in Iraq.

8. As in Vietnam, there has been no “date certain” for withdrawal of U.S. forces. President Bush recently implied that U.S. forces would be in Iraq when the next president takes office. Such an indefinite commitment of U.S. forces convinces more Iraqis that the United States is an occupier that needs to be resisted.

9. Retention of incompetent policymakers. Lyndon Johnson retained Robert McNamara, the inept architect of the Vietnam strategy, as Secretary of Defense until McNamara himself turned against his own war. Bush has kept the bungling Donald Rumsfeld on too long in the same position.

10. Most important of all, starting a war with another country for concocted reasons, which did not hold up under scrutiny. Lyndon Johnson used a questionable alleged attack by Vietnamese patrol boats on a U.S. destroyer to escalate U.S. involvement in a backwater country that was hardly strategic to the United States. Bush exaggerated the dangers from Iraqi weapons programs and implied an invented link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In a republic, the lack of a compelling rationale for sending men to die in a distant war can be corrosive for the morale of the troops and public support back home.

Viral Suttee

From the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition:

suttee [Sanskrit. sati=faithful wife], former Indian funeral practice in which the widow immolated herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. The practice of killing a favorite wife on her husband’s grave has been found in many parts of the world; it was followed by such peoples as the Thracians, the Scythians, the ancient Egyptians, the Scandinavians, the Chinese, and peoples of Oceania and Africa. Suttee was probably taken over by Hinduism from a more ancient source. Its stated purpose was to expiate the sins of both husband and wife and to ensure the couple’s reunion beyond the grave, but it was encouraged by the low regard in which widows were held. The practice was not universal throughout Hindu history. It was abolished by law in British India in 1829, but isolated cases of voluntary suttee have occurred into the 20th cent.

So they say. Casting one's self on a funeral pyre may have gone out of fashion, but a more insidious form of suttee has taken root in India––viral suttee.

According the the Globe and Mail, "India has an estimated 5.13 million people with HIV, second only to South Africa, although the percentage of those with the AIDS-causing virus is much lower than in many parts of Africa, where the infection rate is well into the double digits." There, as in much of Africa, it is the men who bring the disease into a family, and, with it, death.

India places a huge premium on fertility. Women (and often they are still girls) who marry will try to conceive as soon as possible, lest their in-laws consider them barren*, and cast them out. Divorce is a common fate for an infertile woman, and remarriage uncommon.

This remains true even if the husband in HIV-positive, and the wife is not. Yet.

I've seen such patients myself at our antenatal clinic in Vellore. They know that they will probably become infected. They know that, even with medication, they can expect to live, at best, about 10 years. They know they will leave their child an orphan. They know the child may be born infected. But still, they try. The in-laws will raise the child, they say. Besides, what else can they do?

And what else can she do, especially if she's low (or no) caste? She is probably illiterate, and has no job skills. Her family may not want her back if the husband's family rejects her––another mouth to feed, a dowry squandered, and the shame. Her future seems bleak. She is willing to sacrifice her future for acceptance now, to avoid a life of destitution, and perhaps prostitution, which is a death sentence in itself.

So she conceives, becomes infected, and dies. Just another statistic in this global epidemic. But she is a sati, as much as any widow who ever threw herself on a funeral pyre, immolated by the HIV virus.

____________________
*Among the young doctors I worked with, I found that they would present obstetric patients to me as having "an x history of infertility," where x equals the number of months/years since the wedding. It is automatically assumed that one is trying to conceive as soon as one marries. Wouldn't our fundies be happy there? (Well, except for that one child thing, and the prevalence of sterilization........)

Harvard MBA

Which Harvard MBA, in trying to explain the beauty of the self-regulatory marketplace, described it as follows:

One of the most –– one of the most pure forms of democracy is the marketplace, where demand causes something to happen. Excess demand causes prices to –– the supply causes prices to go up, and vice versa. That stands in contrast to governments that felt like they could set price and control demand.

Of course, the correct answer is that noted economist and great thinker, G W Bush.

I'm not sure what he actually said, as the syntax is even more garbled than GHWB at his most obtuse. Setting aside the confusion of political systems with economic ones that most right wingers have (equating socialism with totalitarianism, which was true in the Soviet Union, but is not true in most of modern Europe, where free and fair elections are help on a regular basis, unlike, say, Belarus, Ohio or Florida), the economics itself is doubtful. It seems, though, that he believes that an increased supply causes prices to rise.

Adam Smith would, and not in the least bit respectfully, disagree.

And, if this is how a Harvard MBA thinks, no wonder our country's business sector is so screwed up (just like the government!)

Back to Work

After being away for a month, it was a bit of a shock to come back to work in only the second month ever that we've surpassed 200 deliveries on our labor unit! I've been actually working all day long, doing up to four cesarian sections a day, plus lots of inductions, admissions, non-stress tests and emergency visits each day. I've been getting home too tired to do anything except watch taped episodes of the Daily SHow and then sink into bed. (Yes, too tired to send e-mail! Imagine!)

But it seems to be slowing down. Maybe I'll have time to start working on my pysanky soon after all. I put some eggs out to thaw* last night............

FYI: St Mary's will be doing some sort of pysanka event next Saturday, April 8th, and my friend Theresa is organizing a session sometime later in April. If you're interested in either, drop me a comment below and I'll get back to you.

*Actually, to equilibrate to room temperature. If you use eggs straight out of the fridge, the wax won't stick properly to the cold shell, and the pysanky will be a huge disappointment.

Turning Blue

Based on the latest polls, there are only three red states (those with a greater than 50% approval rating for Bush) left––Alabama, Wyoming and Utah. Even Idaho's gone muave!

Compare this to last fall.

More on Torture (and WWIII)

I found this on Raw Story while tooling around the net tonight. It is an exchange from an interview with a founding member of the elite counter-terrorist unit, Delta Force. Retired Command Sergeant Major spoke with David Kronke; the interview is supposed to appear in today's LA Daily News.

Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

....

Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney ...

A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.

For Better or Worse

The newest approach in the Bush-Cheney Iraq blame game is to put all the problems of Iraq at the feet of the press. Why? Because they weren't sufficiently optimistic, they aren't reporting "the good news in Iraq."

Perhaps if they could leave the Green Zone safely (more than 80 members of the press have died in Iraq, the highest number in any war since WWII), they might be able to find some. Then again, perhaps not.

Click here for an interesting article about he current state of affairs in Iraq. It is from the BBC, by one of the journalists that neither the CPA and its forces nor the insurgency have managed to kill yet.

"Christians for Torture"

What is it with with Christians and torture?

Setting aside the fact that torture has never been proven effective at coercing the truth, only at coercing confession, and that international law prohibits it, there is the moral aspect. After all, Matthew 25:40 says

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

A recent Pew Research Center poll asked the following question: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"

Those answering rarely or never included

Catholics 26%
White Protestant 31%
White evangelical 31%
Secular 41%
Total 32%

Andrew Sullivan's take on this?

Most disturbing to me are the high numbers of self-described Christians favoring torture: only 26 percent of Catholics oppose it in all circumstances, while only 31 percent of white Protestants rule it out entirely. If you combine those Christians who think torture is either never or only rarely acceptable, you have 42 percent of Catholics and 49 percent of white Protestants. The comparable statistic of those who are described as "secular," which I presume means agnostic or atheist, is 57 percent opposition. In other words, if you are an American Christian, you are more likely to support torture than if you are an atheist or agnostic. Christians for torture: it's a new constituency. Another part of the Bush legacy.

Also interesting is this quote from a National Catholic Reporter article:

During Lent especially, he [David Robinson of Pax Christi] says, the image of Jesus, who was tortured to death, should be powerful for Catholics, reminding them that "Christ is being crucified today through the practice of torture."

Also taking umbrage with her fellow Catholics was Sister Dianna Ortiz, a nun who was herself tortured in Guatemala by men thought to be connected to the American government.

Ortiz went to Guatemala in 1987 to work as a teacher in a Mayan village. She arrived in the middle of a long civil war... her only crime seems to have been teaching Mayan children to read and write, she was picked up in 1989 by members of the Guatemalan security forces, whose boss, she says, was an American.

By the time she was freed –– she believes because of pressure on American members of Congress to intervene –– she had 111 cigarette burns on her back alone. She was gang raped and thrown into a pit filled with human bodies, “children, women and men, some decapitated, some caked with blood, some dead, some alive.” And, she said, “worse than the physical torture was hearing the screams of the others being tortured.”

Having gone through that appalling experience, she has dedicated her life to fighting torture, helping to found an organization called Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International.

The organization’s mission is to support torture survivors, including the estimated 500,000 living in the United States, and work for the abolition of torture, which the organization says is currently being practiced by more than 150 governments.

She is livid about the charges of torture against her own government, and the apparent apathy of Americans.

“Where is the outrage?” she asked. “Where is the demand that this government obey its own law and the international agreements we have signed? Those who lead us must understand that to support torture -- either actively or passively -- repeats the brutality of the past. It puts us in the company of the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Pinochets, and the Argentine generals who also found ethically comfortable reasons for torturing.”

But the poll numbers on the number of Catholics who approve of torture really bother her.

“Whatever those polled may believe,” she said, “I am convinced in my mind, heart and soul that it’s our moral, religious and Catholic responsibility to not only speak out against torture but to do all that we can to end it. That’s what it means to be a Gospel people. Torture can never be justified.”

Holy Roman Catholic Church officials presiding over the torture of a man suspected to be a heretic before his subsequent execution during the Spanish Inquisition. Circa 1700 AD.

Oh No, Not Again!

The opening salvo appears to have been fired in the "War On Easter"! Here we go again.

WorldNetDaily, a right wing website, has started it. If you read the article, though, you realize that they're grasping at straws. As they themselves state, bunnies and eggs have nothing to do with Easter:

Ironically, while millions of Christians celebrate Easter Sunday each year to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the origins of Easter have much more to do with the season of spring, itself, rather than anything to do with biblical Christianity.

In fact, the term "Easter" is actually the name of a pagan – that is to say, non-Christian – fertility goddess.

In ancient Babylon, the goddess was known as Ishtar (pronounced the same as Easter is today with a silent "h"), and became known as Astarte to the Phoenicians, Ashtoreth to the ancient Israelites, Eostre to the Greeks, Ostera or Eostre to the Anglo-Saxons, and eventually Easter in modern times.

Historians believe because rabbits and eggs are symbols of fertility, they naturally became associated with the goddess.

But this won't stop the zealots, I suppose, from feeling persecuted. Even though, as with Christmas, the symbols they revere actually take away from the true meaning of their holiday, and point instead to ancient pagan rituals.

Simple Math

In his news conference the other day, Bush stated that he didn't want the Iraq War. I find that doubtful, as hard as he and his cabal pushed for it, ignoring all intelligence in favor of their cooked data. After all, Reagan had his war (the Great Grenada Adventure) and daddy had his (Gulf War, v1.0, and Panama!) Georgie wanted to be a "War President," too.

Being a war president has its advantages. It helps in the polls, especially if you time it right, just before an election. After all, you don't change horses in mid-stream. Right?

And all that chaos can be helpful, too. George may not know much, but he seems to understand the law of supply and demand. Less oil available = higher prices. So said Adam Smith. The war closed down the oil fields in Iraq, and Bush has failed to get them back on line. The cost of a barrel of oil has almost tripled. And oil companies have posted record profits (record not just for them, but for any corporation in the history of mankind).

So, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it. Mission Accomplished!

But then, what else would you expect if you elect two oilmen to the White House?

Back to Work

Why is working for pay so much more tiring than working for free? The hours I put in at my real job are not that much longer than at my volunteer gigs, but they seem a lot longer. I suspect it is the difference between working at the regular grind, and doing new, interesting things.

Not that my job isn't interesting--I get to meet lots of new people, and help them have babies (or not, as the case may be). And there's less of a language barrier. Maybe it's just having to get up at five in the morning, and going in while it's very cold an d very dark out. Who knows?

Do I work in a classy hospital, or what?

Today was my first day back. It wasn't horribly busy until, of course, the last two hours before I was to finish. And, hating to leave loose ends, I stuck around to finish things up.

Then home, worn out, capable only of watching last night's Daily Show/Colbert Report, and tonight's Olbermann and L&O.

.............Sigh. Time to plan another trip.

Reality

Today’s Dan Froomkin:

“I understand how some Americans have had their confidence shaken,” President Bush said yesterday in Cleveland. “Others look at the violence they see each night on their television screens, and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq. They wonder what I see that they don’t.”

Bush tried to explain. But in the end, what he provided was yet another example of what others see — and he doesn’t.

That would be reality.

This woman has a good grasp of reality, too:

The Lessons of My Lai...

...appear to have been forgotten, along with all the other lessons of the Viet Nam War.

Residents of Haditha, 140 miles west of Baghdad, told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

Revenge killings. More here.

Santanyana was right.

Feeling Safer?

Iran and North Korea have learned well from the example of Iraq, their partner in the so-called "Axis of Evil." They have learned that any nation without nuclear arms is at risk of attack and invasion by the US. Iran is busily arming itself. And North Korea?

North Korea: “Pre-Emptive Strike Is Not The Monopoly Of The United States”...

From the AP:

North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North's official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.

"As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike," the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. "Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States."

Bush and the Neocons, bringing safety and stability to the world, one nation at a time....

Welcome to Liberated Iraq

The following are the remarks of Dr. Entissar Mohammad Ariabi, a pharmacist from Yarmook Hospital who is part of an Iraqi women's delegation touring the United States, organized by CODEPINK and Global Exchange. She spoke on March 18 in West Palm Beach, Fla.(Note: The words are Dr. Ariabi's, the photos, my commentary.)

I came on this speaking trip to the U.S. because when I was home in Baghdad, I watched on TV what President Bush was telling the American people about democracy, freedom, security and the help that the U.S. is giving the Iraqi people, and I couldn't believe the lies. So I decided to take the risk to come to the U.S. and share with you what's really going on. I do not represent any political organization or ethnic group. I come only as a mother of five, a pharmacist and a human being.

I work in one of the largest hospitals in Baghdad. I stood by helplessly during the 13 years of sanctions and watched my people -- especially children -- die from lack of medicines and poor sanitation. UNICEF estimated that over 200 children died every day as a direct result of sanctions.

Many people thought that after the U.S. occupied our country and the sanctions were lifted, the health care of the Iraqi people would improve. But the occupation has made it worse. Many of the Iraqi hospitals in cities like Baghdad, Al-Qaim, and Fallujah were bombed and destroyed. Many ambulances were attacked and health workers killed, despite the fact that it is illegal under international law to attack hospitals, ambulances and health workers.

After our hospitals were bombed and looted, millions of dollars were given to contractors to repair them. We suggested that this money be used to buy things that we urgently need, but the contractors refused and instead bought furniture and flowers and superficial things. Meanwhile, we suffer from a critical shortage of medicines, emergency supplies and anesthesia, and there is no sterilization in the operation rooms. As the director of the pharmacy department in my hospital, I refused to sit on a new chair while there were no sterile operating rooms.

Diseases that were under control under the regime of Saddam Hussein, diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, meningitis, polio, have now returned to haunt the population, especially the children. Death due to cancer has increased because treatment programs stopped and medicines are not available. The health of the Iraqi people is also devastated by environmental contamination due to the destruction of our water and sewage systems.

The health of women, particularly pregnant women, has deteriorated. Many pregnant women suffer from malnutrition. When it comes time to give birth, many women prefer to give birth at home because they fear being shot on their way to the hospital, and they know the bad conditions in the hospitals. As a result, more women are dying in childbirth, and more babies are dying.

Before the occupation, with all the problems we had under sanctions, Iraq ranked number 80 in the worldwide list of deaths of children under 5. Today, we have jumped up to number 36. UNICEF has said that the rate of severe malnutrition among Iraqi children has almost doubled since the occupation.

We have also lost our most important resources -- our doctors. Iraqi doctors are under attack from all sides. Many have been killed or very badly beaten or arrested by the American troops. In Fallujah, the hospital was bombed and doctors were killed inside. In Haditha, the Americans arrested the doctors in the hospital and beat them very badly. I saw Dr. Jamil, the only surgeon in the hospital, 21 days later. His face was still swollen and his nose was black and blue. The director was also beaten and held for a week inside the hospital.

With the chaos that has reigned since the invasion, over 200 Iraqi doctors have been kidnapped for ransom. Sometimes their families pay money and they are released, and then the whole family, terrified, flees the country. Others are killed by their kidnappers.

In all, more than 1,000 doctors have left the country. Many of them are our most experienced, most specialized doctors.

Doctors and health workers who stay are overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients and their inability to help them. Where there is a bombing or shootings, dozens of bleeding, mutilated people are rushed to the hospital; there is panic everywhere, and because we don't have the proper care, many of them die. Sometimes the staff are beaten by the patients' families. The families get desperate after seeing their loved ones die because of inadequate care and take out their frustrations on the hospital staff.

I have seen too many bodies of Iraqis maimed, bleeding, destroyed. They are shot by U.S. troops, blown up by roadside bombs, caught in the crossfire, mutilated by kidnappers. Iraq has become a continuous river of blood. The most beautiful thing God created is the human body. It should not be treated so violently.

I have seen too much suffering, too many orphaned children, too many mothers crying. I cry with them every day. I cry because I can't bear their pain. I cry because I feel so guilty that I can't help the sick and the injured. I cry because I see my people come to the hospital and die.

I remember one day in the hospital we started talking about the Americans and asking if they had brought us anything good. No, we said, with all their wealth and knowledge, they haven't shared their great technology, they haven't given us new equipment, they haven't even given us basic medicines. "Yes, they have given us something," said one doctor. "They brought us cold storage for the corpses."

The U.S. invasion has killed our people, destroyed our lives, ruined our health care system. I want the U.S. troops to get out of my country. I want them to go home now. I think that if the Americans leave, we Iraqis will have more of a chance to come together to heal our wounded nation.

Since the day I arrived in the United States, people ask me if I have any hope. Of course. No one can live without hope. My one sliver of hope lies with the American people. No other force in the world can make the American troops leave our country. No other force in the world can make this government hear our cries. Please don't let us down.

Notes for Converts

Ready to quit drinking the Bush Kool-Aid?

Read Jane Smiley's Notes for Converts.

Rational Discourse?

Click on the cartoon to enlarge it.

Turning Blue

Popular Wartime President

All the current polls show Bush's popularity to be the the 30+% range (beating out only Richard Nixon, another "popular wartime president"), but the mainstream media can't seem to give up the meme of his "popularity". Apparently, most Americans have decided they don't really want to be ruled with some guy they'd drink with in a bar after all.

The boy king's popularity has fallen, even among Republicans. In a recent Pew poll, the most common word used to describe him was "Incompetent."

Bush's personal image also has weakened noticeably, which is reflected in people's one-word descriptions of the president. Honesty had been the single trait most closely associated with Bush, but in the current survey "incompetent" is the descriptor used most frequently.

Whiny Brats.....

....apparently grow up to be conservatives. And that's not just my opinion––a scientific study has confirmed it. Read about it here.

In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

I guess Eddie Haskell must be a leading light of the GOP by now......

Three Years

"Three years later and the nightmares of bombings and of shock and awe have evolved into another sort of nightmare. The difference between now and then was that three years ago, we were still worrying about material things––possessions, houses, cars, electricity, water, fuel… It’s difficult to define what worries us most now. Even the most cynical war critics couldn't imagine the country being this bad three years after the war... Allah yistur min il rab'a (God protect us from the fourth year)."

Read the whole piece by Riverbend here.

Under the Weather

Miserable with a cold, worse today. I have only been semiconscious much of the time. I got home yesterday only to find that my telephone line was dead. Based on the record of incoming calls, it had been dead since February 16th, two days after I left, and about the time of our last major power outage.

I finally had a reason to use my cell phone.

Today I set about trying to solve the problem. Since the DSL was working, I was able, in a few moments of lucidity, to isolate the problem using scientific methodology. I unplugged all my devices from the phone lines, and plugged them back in one by one. I discovered that my old reliable Sony phone had finally become unreliable. It would refuse to hang up, causing the lines to go dead. So I threw it out.

The remaining phones seem to work, and I wait for the luggage courier from Air France to call and let me know he is on the way. I wait in vain.

I'll have to buy a new phone once I'm feeling better. For now, it's soup and sleep.

Addendum: Air France courier called at 11 PM to let me know the bags would arrive on my doorstep between 1 and 3 AM. I was too out of it to argue. And they did arrive. Just because it is 9 AM in Paris does not make it a reasonable time for a delivery!

Home Again

It's been a very long day. I flew out of Madras at 3 AM, and arrived in Detroit 2 PM. With the 10.5 hour time difference, that means I was en route 21.5 hours. About an hour and a half of that was spent in DeGaulle airport in Paris, riding buses and running through construction, and between terminals and gates. (I made it, the suitcases didn't.)

The trip really began 5 PM the day before in Vellore, when I left Prasad and Jiji's and rode the 130 km. to Madras. A spent a few hours with Amachi ("grandmother", actually Vasini Mathew), Jiji's mother, being fed fish curry and watching Malayali soaps, before heading off to the airport. So make that 33 hours from house to house.

Somewhere along the way, I caught cold. My throat is sore, and my nose is running. What with sleep deprivation and jet lag, I'm completely knackered and am headed for bed.

Good Night!

Books for New Orleans

Getting the urge to do a bit of spring cleaning? Watertiger had this on her blog yesterday:

In an effort to restock its shelves after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Public Library is asking for donations of hardcovers and paperbacks for people of all ages. Library staff will decide which books should go into its collection; the rest will go to destitute families or be sold to raise funds for the library.

Please send books to: Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations, New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Ave., New Orleans, LA, 70112.

Apparently, if donors mention to the Postal Service that the books are for the library in New Orleans, they will be able to send the books at the library rate, which is slightly less than the book rate.

Help them out if you can!

ADDENDUM: Apparently, the response to this has been overwhelming. Before sending anything, check out these FAQ.

And now for something completely different: a double Daily Dose of Durst:

Hindu priests who look after the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi had to conduct a purification ceremony after a visit from President Bush. They claim it wasn’t his fault but rather the sniffer dogs who accompany him, but we all know how polite the Indian people are.

Hope President Bush had fun in India. Visiting our old jobs.

A Uniter, Not a Divider

Feel the love!

Pysanky in Vellore, Part 2

Today, Saturday, I taught my second pysanka class in Vellore this year. I almost missed the session––for some reason I had convinced myself that it was at 5 PM, and I just happened to be at LCECU working on my Ultrasound presentation when I discovered my mistake.

Sashi had gotten us the requisite supplies––lots of eggs (because there are so many broken and cracked ones in each ten), more candles, and several rolls of toilet paper. Paper towels are expensive and uncommon here in India, so we use the TP to pat the eggs dry after dyeing them, and to wipe of the wax when cleaning them. Considering the texture of Indian TP, this is probably the best use for it.

I had a smaller group this time, all women (including a few junior women). Today we had invited any interested CMC staff, and Sara had invited a woman and her daughters that she knew from the community.

I had begun making a couple of pysanky just before they arrived, so I was able to show them eggs in various stages of preparation. They watched as I wrote on the eggs, as I dyed them,and then as I melted off the wax.

And then they got to work.



This group was a bit more tentative than the last, but equally enthusiastic. They were more adventurous with the colors, insisting on using all of them. And they really enjoyed the process, most making two pysanky, and one particularly enterprising young girl making four.

(My friend Jiji at work on her first pysanka)

Unfortunately, because we had several younger participants, we had several broken eggs. I was able to empty one of them largely intact,

but the others lost big sections.

(I emptied the eggs because, once cracked, they will leak. And leaking eggs, smell, well, absolutely hideously horrible.)

This group is really interested in getting equipment made, finding supplies (dyes and beeswax), both to make the pysanky themselves, and to teach the skill to others. I hope their enthusiasm lasts.

Below are a few of their eggs.

Lariam Dreams

Lariam, also know as mefloquine, is an anti-malarial medication. It is effective for prophylaxis and treatment of many types of malaria that are resistant to older drugs like chloroquine (a derivative of quinine, which is also found in the tonic portion of a gin and tonic). It has gotten a bad rap in the lay press, unfortunately.

In some users, lariam can precipitate a psychosis. It is a very unusual side effect, and generally reverses with discontinuation of the drug. Many other anti-malarial drugs, including chloroquine, have the same risk, but only in Lariam's case has it gotten publicized to a large degree. While this side effect is not a good thing, the risk of not taking prophylaxis is even greater––malaria is a serious disease, and, in individuals who've never had it before, can cause very serious complications including seizures and death. And all it takes is one mosquito bite.....

That being said, one of the other side effects of lariam, and chloroquine (they're in the same family of drugs), is vivid dreams. Not scary dreams or nightmares, but very vivd dreams. I remember the Peace Corps volunteers I met talking about their chloroquine dreams and, after years of intermittent lariam use, I understand.

The dreams are memorable, unlike my usual dreams, which are forgotten right after waking, And they are original. Most of my dreams, in daily life, seem to be reruns, like watching a favorite episode of M*A*S*H over and over again. Not so my lariam dreams. I find myself in strange situations, in new places. It's like reading a good, but a bit strange, book for the first time.

I've also had the opportunity to see my old relatives again. Like the little boy in the Sixth Sense, I see dead people (but only in my dreams). My aunt, my grandparents, other people who've been gone for years, have risen from the recesses of my memory to be with me again. Perhaps it is because of all the old photos I looked through in January and February, while putting together a photo show for my parents. Still, it was nice to see them all again, and talk to them.

Perhaps I'll see them again tonight, or perhaps I'll visit someplace I've never been before. Whatever it is, it will be interesting.

Pool Party

Another busy, hot day at LCECU as the clock winds down. In the morning we had our test, and it was evident that the nurses had memorized our labor flow record and taken it to heart. Well, the nurses who shoed up had. Kiruba pointed out to me that it was the younger ones who were thee and answering. Many of the older, more resistant nurses hadn't shown. Oh, well, we'll see how it goes in the labor room.

Sara and I discussed religious syncretism and a few other interesting topics, and I worked on future presentations to the doctors. (Syncretism, we decided, occurs mostly in dominant religions; minority ones tend to become even more orthodox. In India, Jesus has become a god in the Hindu pantheon. In Latin America, many of the local gods have become unofficial saints of the Catholic church.) I also learned a bit more about Tamil/Hindu culture. One of the reasons that there are few births during the hottest months (April and May) is that women are obligated to go visit their mothers, leaving husbands at home, during the two months or so when they might conceive babies that would deliver then. Quite clever!

We had a staff meeting in the afternoon––the monthly statistics were given, and a few decisions made. Then the doctors met with me, and we discussed labor, the new scanner, and our plans for elimination of the elective episiotomy (as per WHO recommendations) and the painful repair (more local anesthesia and better infiltration). I have realized I will have to return next year to see how all of these initiatives are doing.

In the evening, we went to the gorgeous pool in Bagayam to have dinner with Prasad's department. The "chaps" (mostly women) of Medicine 3 are a lively and friendly bunch. We played games,

ate lovely food,

(chef making a batur) and had a generally good time. Two members of the team, Ige and Sowmya, are rotating to another unit, and they were honored and had a chance to speak.

Avinash had a great time playing "TT" (table tennis)

and frolicking in the pool.

We had to leave a bit early to drop him, in full school uniform, at the Katpadi train station. His fifth form class was going to the Blue Mountains to a water park for their "senior trip."

There were twenty faculty there for the forty students; they would be on the road all night, at the park all day, and then return tomorrow night via the 8 PM train back. This being India, the the "Blue Mountain Express" was half an hour late. Everyone was put safely aboard,

jealous siblings and apprehensive parents said their goodbyes, and they chugged off into the night.

We got home quite late, and fell gratefully into our beds. As I drifted off to sleep, into my Lariam dreams, I felt sorry for those few non-school passengers on that particular railroad car.