Cuba's 'sonic attacks' may
have been a side-effect of spying https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuba-apos-apos-sonic-attacks-203100769.html
Remember those 'sonic attacks' against
the American and Canadian embassies last summer, making staff queasy and
raising all kinds of questions as to what happened? There might be an answer. University
of Michigan researchers have theorized that the incidents were really the result of ultrasonic signals from poorly functioning surveillance equipment.
While individual ultrasonic signals can't harm people outside of extreme
circumstances, multiple signals can clash with each other.
As
the mother of an adopted son born in Colombia more than 40 years ago and also
as a long-time adoption agency board
member, I would say that there are now too many restrictions, costs, and
requirements imposed on international adoptions, to the detriment of children
and their would-be families. See http://www.businessinsider.com/why-international-adoptions-dropped-since-2005-2018-3
Just
sounding off here about the challenges of having no cell phone and no car. So
when assigned an interpretation in a strange neighborhood, I call a number for
metro information and am given the detailed route. In 14 years, that system has
never failed me. However, the other day, it did fail because although I had
given the agent the right address in NE
DC, it turned out she gave me directions to get to the same block of the same
street in NW DC, an artifact of our unusual
street numbering system and source of considerable confusion. (And I gave her
the top rating after our call, a 5.} So, I got to the named street via 2 metros
and a bus and considerable walking on a chill and windy day and found the right
numbered block. Nowhere did the street name say NW. But the house number, for a
client with a child with developmental delays, was nowhere to be found. I had a
phone number for the therapist, but no phone. Then I spied a man with a cell
phone, who agreed to make the call for me. It was then that I realized I was on
the right street but in NW, not NE, and my address was some 26 blocks away. So
I was not present for that family and not only missed getting paid, but my
agency also missed payment, because they take about half of our hourly pay.
Likewise, two blocks from my own home in SE,
there is the identical address in NE,
a source of much confusion.
Donald Trump seems
stuck in another era,
trying to revive US manufacturing and coal and steel production, supporting white
supremacy and gum culture, and closing borders to immigrants, not realizing
that the economy and life in general have moved on. His shrinking core of
faithful supporters wearing Make America
Great Again caps share his nostalgia for a America that us no more and
maybe never was.
Trump’s
MAGA folks are also fueled by a sense of envy and resentment, of unfairness, that
more educated people, minorities, foreign immigrants, maybe even women? and the
coastal elites are doing better than they are, getting more of whatever is
valued and Trump plays on those feelings, though unlike his hard core, he is a coastal
elite himself and a very wealthy one and hardly an evangelical like so many of
his followers.
If
Melania should actually decide to
divorce Donald Trump, she would probably get a better deal for herself and her
son if she did it while Donald was still president. Trump’s supporters are
predominantly male and they may actually vicariously enjoy his apparent ability
to have affairs without consequences with buxom blond porn stars.
His
boasts to the contrary, Trump has not
proved himself to be a good negotiator, so someone needs to be at his side when
he talks with Kim Jung Un.
Of
course, money counts for a lot in politics and candidates do adopt positions
advocated by their donors. But now with so many appeals for political
donations, I would like to think that money is not everything and that most voters
have some common sense and sense of decency and are not just empty vessels subject
to the whims of political propaganda.
What
about liability insurance for gun owners,
in case their gun harms someone? People have car insurance to cover them if
their car runs into another vehicle or person, even if they are not the one
driving, and if the brake gives out while it’s parked on a hill and goes
careening down into a person or property. What about insurance for gun owners
in case their guns accidentally harm someone else or even themselves? Is the tide turning on gun control, led by
young high school students? It doesn’t seem right that we in the US, unlike
citizens of other developed countries, have to be in fear for our lives.
The
day after returning from Honduras, I attended Amnesty International USA’s
annual conference held in the DC suburb of Rockville, MD. About 500 people
attended. Highlights included celebration of the release from prison in Turkey
of Amnesty’s director there, after she had spent 8 months. Turkey under RecepTayyip Erdogan has been moving
continually in a dictatorial direction, hardly making the country a candidate
for inclusion in the European Union. A prisoner of conscience whose case was
highlighted is Leila de Lima, a
legislator arrested last year for objecting to Duterte’s indiscriminate drug
war killings in the Philippines.
A
number of Amnesty members and visitors from other countries attended the
conference, including my friend Gabriele
Stein, head of AI Germany, who has helped out a lot on Cuba cases,
including with a maimed Cuban attack victim and human rights activist now
living in the US, Sirley Avila. One
of our speakers, the UK’s Philip Alston,
revealed that the US has probably the lowest percentage of registered voters
and the lowest voter turnout of any developed country, also the highest rate of
economic inequality in the developed world.
Above, members discuss resolutions at 2018 AI USA conference.
That same evening, I attended a very fancy
retirement party for Chip Filson, a
pioneer of the credit union movement.
Here above is Chip,with a friend's hand on his shoulder, while below is a view from the top-floor hotel balcony.
Just
before I left for Honduras, I got some unwelcome news. A friend from childhood,
who had visited me during Peace Corps, had won a financial settlement for
injuries suffered in an accident at her assisted living compound. She had
assured me that she had provided sufficiently in her will for me to be able to
get our long-delayed library project for
El Triunfo (the “Triumph” in the title of my Peace Corps book) underway. We
had estimated that we would need about $10,000 on a one-time basis for
furnishings and equipment for the library (2 computers, 2 window A/C units, a
photocopier, bookshelves and furniture), with the building provided by the town
and volunteer staff organized by Pedro Joaquin Reyes, who had attended a library
training with me during Peace Corps and had been holding our book collection for
years in cardboard boxes and old refrigerators. We were going to name the library
after my friend. However, despite her verbal assurances to me in our frequent phone
conversations (she lived in RI), after she died suddenly a few months ago, I was
told that she had not actually included me or the library in her will. So I had
to tell Pedro Joaquin in person, just now in Honduras in Feb., that we were
back to zero on financing the library. However, if anyone reading this has any
ideas of where to turn now, I will follow up on any reasonable lead. Does anyone
have connections or contacts with any foundations supporting libraries in
developing countries? When I was still in Peace Corps, would-be librarian Pedro
Joaquin and I submitted a laboriously crafted funding application to an
American donor with a foundation set up precisely for promoting rural Honduran libraries,
but right after that, the donor switched his financial support to
then-presidential candidate Manuel Zelaya, who subsequently was elected and who
has continued to be a controversial political figure in Honduras. This donor
later expressed public regret over supporting Zelaya, but then nothing was left
over for libraries.
For
my Honduras trip, I am posting photos with captions to take you all along on
the journey. While in Honduras, I got a shocking message from my son Jon,
saying that his left index finger, perhaps bitten by an insect or spider 3
months earlier, had been misdiagnosed at the hospital where he had gone for
emergency care. They were sorry, but the finger would have to be amputated
immediately, which it was.
That news threw a big monkey wrench into my
mood during my trip, which was also hampered by continuing, but diminishing, demonstrations protesting the recent Honduran
presidential election.
Here is my article about the recent Honduran presidential election
published on-line (in English) by Democracia
Participativa https://
2018 TRIP PHOTOS Please bear with me in posting these photos, which is quite challenging. Photos are not shown necessarily in chronological order during trip and most are self-explanatory. Those who have my (Amazon) Honduras Peace Corps book (Triumph & Hope: Golden Years with the Peace Corps in Honduras) will be familiar with many people and places. Remember, if you feel like donating to lip/palate surgery, do so to Operation Smiles, not to Smile Train, as the latter does not perform actual surgeries. Fortunately, as expectant mothers become better nourished and take folic acid, the incidence of lip/plate problems at birth has diminished, though there is also a hereditary disposition in some families, such as family shown in my Honduras book with three children born with that anomaly.
Below, in Choluteca, in the south, the family of a Honduran doctor named "Loni" in my Honduras book, now living with her American husband and children in the US and working as a nurse practitioner.
Below, in Choluteca, in the south, the family of a Honduran doctor named "Loni" in my Honduras book, now living with her American husband and children in the US and working as a nurse practitioner.
Here is Dona Reina and her daughter Solei, whose baby was born in the US when, with visas, they went on an extended visit there. They now sell pinatas, among other items, in their home store.
Below, Luis, my former colleague in La Esperanza's now closed Peace Corps office.
Below, girls playing with small gifts, including wearing plastic necklaces.
Triunfo scenes below, including of kids with "magic towels," tiny balls that open into small towels when soaked in water. Sweeping up and firewood below.
Above, new Triunfo rehab center with my donated walker and wheechair.
Below Pedro Joaquin, designated future librarian, playing guitar and fixing an item out in his back yard
Below, future library books kept in old freezer for safekeeping.
Above, house cracked in earthquake.
Above, store, below, typical cook stove in El Triunfo.
Below, baby with donated native American blanket. Below that, baby crib with mosquito net. I always slept under a mosquito net when I was living in El Triunfo.
Below, 2 kids at Teguc residential blind school and sign outside the school--photos are not permitted there for fear of people using them to collect money under false pretenses. The kids and staff remembered me from previous years.
Below, sign outside residential school for the blind
bags of water have all been sold.
A girl, age 10 or 11, selling baked goods that her mother made.
In Tegucigalpa, my hosts, who none-the-less had a TV set constantly running, were parsimonious with light, using tiny light bulbs like this one.
Above, Operation Smile (Operacion Sonrisa) notice My name button at the hospital, showing
outside hospital. we have done 5,000 surgeries over the years and never lost a patient.
Do you recognize me at right in hospital garb? 
Each operating room has two surgeries going at the same time.
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