Font Quirks, Bhutan Film, DC Schools, Cuban Refugees, Hondurans Lose TPS, Iran Decision, Craziness as Strategy?, Quibbles with the Democratic Party, State’s HR Report

As noted in previous postings, font size and spacing between lines unexpectedly varies on this blog, but I seem to have little control over such details, so ask for readers’ understanding. Such quirks don’t actually impede the message and trying to fix them can make matters worse. I’m not indulging in these strange variations on purpose! The blog gods have their own ideas.

The volcano goddess in Hawaii also has her own ideas and is angry, so some native people say. 

Spring is finally here or is it now suddenly summer?

It’s also my late ex-husband’s birthday, Tom Joe, RIP.

The Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries are celebrating the art of Buddhism during the month of May. As part of that celebration, I accompanied my two Bhutanese visitors to a rare film produced in their country. It’s a melodramatic, convoluted, highly stylized tale, shot mostly in dreamy mist and at night with a campfire in the forest and dark mountains behind. The old-fashioned atmospherics concern the mystery of an abbess’s death. Yet, while numerous traditional and ancient aspects are depicted, including scary old Buddhist statues, cell phones are also in evidence, as well as cars (with righthand steering wheels), and detectives wearing shiny badges. 

The capital city, Thimphu, is more than a mile high, even higher than Denver, with a cool climate. Its population is only 100,000 and the whole country has only 800,000 people, about the same as Washington, DC. Tourism is limited by the king, the nation’s supreme leader, who decrees hefty daily tourist expenditures, including for guide services. This keeps outsiders from influencing the country much and also guarantees tourism income—no backpackers or hitchhikers allowed. Since I am unlikely to ever visit Bhutan, I was glad to have had this glimpse of its quaint villages, capital city, forests, rivers, and mountains.

Below is the name of the film we saw and link to a trailer. I asked my young ladies what the English-language title means—they said it can only be understood in the context of their Buddhist religion, which everyone there adheres to. In addition to their own language, kids learn English in school, which is why my visitors are so fluent. There is no embassy here--just a few folks attached to the UN mission in NYC who carry out embassy-like functions.

Honey giver among the dogs

https://vimeo.com/158453408

A local friend of my visitors and her young daughter also went with us to see the film. I ate some rice and very spicy chicken with them beforehand in our kitchen. Bhutanese folks eat with their fingers, not utensils, something I also observed in the movie.  

A word now about the evolution of DC public schools since the days when my kids attended and were a minority among a mostly African American student body. As I now sometimes act as an interpreter in DC schools, I’ve witnessed the many improvements made in physical settings, activities, and services, as well as close teacher involvement with each individual student. Now, instead of white middle-class parents sending their kids to private schools, they are jockeying for spaces in public schools. And an unprecedented number of “illegal” students have been found to be attending DC public schools from surrounding jurisdictions, with their parents now being dinged for tuition! We may well have former controversial visionary reformer Michelle Rhee mostly to thank for that.

No longer welcome in the USA, Cuban refugees are increasingly ending up in other Spanish-speaking countries that have proved more receptive: Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Chile. 

At a recent interpretation at the home of a Honduran family with several US-born children, the husband/father, a construction worker assigned to a government project, told me he had just learned that his TPS status would be terminated. Now what?

By the way, this family had a therapist visit because their youngest child, now about 15 months old, had been born after only 26 weeks of pregnancy and weighing just 1 lb. 2 oz. He stayed in the NICU for two months and came home initially with a stomach feeding tube. Now, though eating by mouth, walking, and playing, he is behind in his development. Yet, he seemed to be a responsive, engaging, and curious child much loved by his family. While there is a big difference between 20 and 26 weeks of fetal development, I will say again that I don’t find a 20-week abortion ban to be overly restrictive of women’s individual “rights over their bodies.” Of course, 20 weeks is only halfway through the 40 weeks considered a full-term pregnancy, so it’s very early. But if a fetus must exit the womb after that early date of gestation for whatever reason, why not let him or her have a chance at survival or the dignity of a natural death, rather than being actively killed? Certainly a fetus at 20 weeks can feel pain. I’ve agreed with the Democratic Party position on most issues throughout my long life, but as both an adoptive and a birth mother, I’ve never been comfortable with my fellow Democrats awkwardly characterizing the pro-life position as ”anti-choice” or “anti-abortion rights.”

Embryos being held in frozen limbo, though possessing future characteristics, I would agree, are not yet persons, and the question may be ambiguous during the first 3 months of pregnancy. Contraception and the “morning-after pill” should be available. But there is a transition to personhood somewhere along the line. There can be and is debate about just when that occurs (it’s a matter of social definition), usually when most people would agree that it happens—in historical times, it was with “quickening,” that is, when the pregnant woman became aware of independent movement by the fetus. Of course, not every baby, child, or young person develops into a worthy adult—just look at Donald Trump, probably once a cute, chubby baby. Producing a child is a big gamble that doesn’t always turn out well. However, the abortion debate is not yet settled and is evolving as understanding of fetal development and ever-more successful and earlier fertility and medical interventions occur.

Arguably, the world already has too many people, too many mouths to feed, but increasingly this is due not to excessive births, but to better survival, especially of older people like me. World population is becoming top-heavy with oldsters who use more medical and other resources, so only encouraging them/us to live longer means that many consume more while often no longer producing. I am trying to remain productive in my own life, not only by working part-time, but by participating in local volunteer activities and in helping out younger members of my own family, as well as folks in Honduras. However, the time may come when I will need a helping hand myself.

Besides abortion, another issue where I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with the Democratic Party and with Barack Obama, whom I otherwise admire, has been on their unnuanced position on the Castro dictatorship and the excessive coziness with that regime aimed at gaining some measure of trust (maybe this is how Republicans view the nuclear agreement with Iran?). I shared the hurt feelings experienced by genuine pro-democracy activists in being shunned in that effort. So, while I could theoretically support a moderate Republican at the ballot box, I’ve never actually done that nor been able to agree with such a candidate on most issues. 

Not every Republican or Republican candidate is an ogre, obviously, but Donald Trump has sharpened the divide. From my current vantagepoint after having lived quite a long time on several continents, it does seem that Trump, based on a combination of faulty information, outside pressure, and just plain ignorance, has made a very unfortunate and harmful decision on the Iran nuclear deal. Iran’s leaders are quite right to say that he doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to understand the agreement. Let’s hope that other countries can hold it somewhat together until we can manage to get rid of Trump’s presidency. Iran’s old tactics of burning American flags while shouting “Death to America” and “the Great Satan” have genuine resonance once again. Given his general ignorance of foreign affairs and seeming inability to learn, former Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given Trump some good advice—meet with Kim Jonq-Un, shake hands for a photo-op. but leave the heavy lifting and negotiating to others.

When Donald Trump or one of his spokespersons, whether Giuliani, Scaramucci, or Kellyanne Conway, says something completely off-the-wall, is that being just plain crazy and undisciplined or is there an actual method to their madness? Pundits keep trying to figure that out. Sometimes craziness, whether inadvertent, impulsive, or on purpose, seems to work, as when Trump threatened Kim with nuclear annihilation. Kim has met his match against someone even crazier than he is and more likely to actually carry out his threats. But pundits think there was no grand strategy behind Trump’s exit from the Iran deal; he just wanted to undo an Obama-era policy, cement further ties with Netanyahu and the Saudis, and play up to his voter base. Putin has succeeded in damaging the USA well beyond his wildest dreams. He has effectively used American openness and democracy to undermine our country. If Trump had really wanted “a better deal” with Iran, he would have realized that a deal is not just a signed contract, but a relationship of initial mutual trust that can be built-upon and expanded. Where is the better deal that he wanted to make? The USA has lost the trust of the rest of the world and of most American citizens in Trump’s impulsive move on Iran. Donald Trump craves praise, so why doesn’t he try doing something to earn it for a change? 

If, as John Kelly alleges, undocumented immigrants “don’t integrate well,” it’s partly because they must live in the shadows, half-hidden. Their American-born children seem to be pretty well integrated. Just look at the Dreamers! And as for the allegation that such immigrants have no skills, they have plenty of useful skills when it comes to working in construction, agriculture and horticulture, and taking care of elders and children. Nor is integration just a one-way street. Newcomers don’t only have to “integrate” with those already here, the rest of us need to integrate with them, which I have tried to do by learning Spanish and also by traveling the world, not mainly as a tourist, but mostly with supporting useful projects abroad. The folks who don’t “integrate well” and are out-of-step with the majority of Americans are actually Donald Trump and his minions, including Mr. Kelly. However, it has been reported that Kelly may support TPS families who have long-established roots here—if true, Kelly is not completely irredeemable and maybe his criticism of immigrants is merely a ploy to win over Donald Trump? If so, more power to him.

It’s become increasingly hard to hear or read the news. I’d like to be back in the Peace Corps in a small town in Honduras, away from world news and the memories of my late son Andrew, immersed instead in the everyday details of a simple country life. I was in leafy, quiet El Triunfo in the Peace Corps when the US Supreme Court allowed GW Bush to assume the presidency despite his popular vote loss, also when September 11 occurred, followed by the Iraq WMD debacle, so the news didn’t filter down to me right away and the shock was less acute. I was involved instead with home births, helping local ladies plant vegetable gardens, and simply washing my clothes by hand and cooking meals over a wood fire. Once in a while, I listened to a transistor radio. Today, living right here in Washington, DC, blocks from the capitol, Supreme Court, Trump Hotel, and the White House, it’s all too close for comfort. But once it’s over, we will feel such great relief and will be fully occupied with assessing the damage and taking steps to remedy it. We may look back on these awful and ridiculous days with a certain nostalgia, disbelief, and even humor about what we all went through. I hope to live to see the day.

A Critique of the US Department of State 2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (from Amnesty International)

https://medium.com/@amnestyusa/a-critique-of-the-us-department-of-state-2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices-f313ec5fe8ca

Thank you, dear readers, those still with me, for allowing me to express myself so frankly and freely. And, after I am gone, if my children, should want to resurrect my memory, they have only to consult these pages.