Kilauea On a Rampage, Cartoon Antics, Spanking, Cuban Arts Festival, Iran Deal, Kanye, Universal Health Care, Triunfo Library, National Borders, Former PCV Teacher of the Year Unmuzzled, One or Two Spaces?

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano on the Big Island erupted suddenly, sending plumes of lava shooting up into the air, prompting a mandatory evacuation as more lava and steam poured out of cracks in roadways in a residential neighborhood, destroying an estimated 35 houses and several cars. One resident also described the sudden appearance of “a curtain if fire.” The volcano has been spewing lava since 1983, lava constantly flowing down into the ocean, creating a perpetual cloud of steam. Now earthquake activity has disturbed the volcano further. I’ve often hiked over the hardened lava beds around Kilauea to marvel at the steady stream of lava flowing out, especially at night, glowing a brilliant, hot red-orange, a very impressive sight. But never get too close! Will the volcano ever run dry? It seems to spew lava up constantly up from the bowels of the earth, never running out. (I have family in Hawaii and friends living on the Big Island.)

Recently arriving early for a therapy interpretation for a child and parent in a private home (interpreting, as I’ve said before, is my part-time job), I found the child watching what seemed to be a rather clever cartoon show. The cartoon characters visiting an art museum playfully entered well-known artworks, like the Mona Lisa or impressionist riverside picnics and actually interacted there with subjects. Most of their antics inside the paintings would not have impressed our young client, but I enjoyed watching the cartoonists having fun making the scenes play out.

By the way, my observation is that most Hispanic mothers living in the US, even with kids with developmental problems, like other mothers I’ve observed in Latin America, use physical punishment, sometimes just a slap on the hand or a threatened “pow-pow.” I only recall once hitting one of my four children in exasperation (to my own surprise and distress)—I’m definitely an advocate of raising kids without physical punishment or threats. It can be done most of the time. Maybe it’s also a class thing, as when I was a social worker, both black and white low-income parents resorted routinely to corporal punishment of children. And male partners in many cases beat their wives.

My own mother used a hairbrush on occasion. I remember once at about age 5 vowing not to cry as she wacked me harder and harder and finally gave up when no peep came out of me. I don’t recall the infractions that in her mind merited the hairbrush, but they were infrequent.

After a recent evening Spanish interpretation session, I found myself standing out alone after dark on an unfamiliar street across the river in Anacostia in a largely low-income area of DC. I began feeling a little apprehensive while waiting for a bus for almost a whole hour. But certainly, it was not as scary as in any city in Honduras, where, of course, I would never stand outside at night. 

As per my Confessions book, I have always supported cultural exchanges with Cuba and with other countries too. Celebrating Cuban Arts is the name of a current celebration. For two weeks, the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, will present Artes de Cuba: From the Island to the World, a festival celebrating the artistic richness that has emerged from this "island archipelago in the sun." This unprecedented gathering of Cuban and Cuban-American artists represents some of the greatest from the island and the Diaspora, May 8-20.

Netanyahu has been pretty successful in manipulating Trump, first regarding moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, now with his latest efforts to derail the Iran agreement. That deal may be imperfect, like all deals, but is probably better than no deal at all. Netanyahu and others seem to be goading Trump into a war with Iran, likely to achieve some Israeli objectives vis-à-vis Iran and also to rally our nation in support of a wartime Trump. Meanwhile, peace efforts are going forward regarding North Korea, thanks to the two Korean leaders, perhaps incentivized by Trump’s scary nuclear threats.

Sympathy may be due for Trump appointees working (voluntarily, of course) for an erratic and ignorant boss and too often ignorant themselves about the agencies and policies entrusted to them. I feel sorry for those who seem to have no clue about what they are supposed to do while painfully testifying before Congress or trying to respond to reporters’ questions. Sarah Sanders is actually more adroit than most Trump spokespersons in answering questions in slippery ways that avoid outright lies, but also are unlikely to antagonize her big boss.

Trump is definitely more popular with Trumpists than Obama was, so taking a poll among his own supporters, as Rasmussen does, will always come put him on top.

Is Kanye West seeking extra publicity? If so, he has certainly gotten it. But rather than increasing Trump’s support among African Americans, he has actually reduced it—along with his own.

The cover story in The Economist of April 28, 2018 makes a well-researched argument for “Within Reach: Universal health care, worldwide.” Might the US eventually be swept up in a growing tide?

If anyone reading this has the name of someone I might contact to help us with getting underway the long-delayed public library in El Triunfo, my first Honduras Peace Corps site, please let me know. For some time, funding for the library was included in the will of a childhood friend who had visited me in the Peace Corps in Honduras. But perhaps due to outside advice, that provision was apparently removed from her will shortly before her death last year. So, we are back to square one again on the Triunfo Library—we have a collection of books but nowhere to put them or to lend them out.

The Trump administration said that it is ending special immigration protections for about 57,000 Hondurans, adding them to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from other countries battered by violence and natural disasters who are losing permission to be in the United States. Expelling all these well-established people, not only Hondurans but of other nationalities, if it actually happens, will be a big loss to our country culturally, economically, and just about losing so many if our friends. Wouldn’t it be so much more effective to get rid of Donald Trump and his myopic associates instead?

The Central American migrants currently gathered at the southern US border do present a dilemma. Letting them in does encourage others to make the risky effort and there are limits on how many can be accepted. Their grievances and fears in their home countries are real, but is it the obligation of the United States to be their refuge? Many have chosen to stay in Mexico, not exactly a safe place either, but one more accommodating than the US and where their language and cultural adaptation is less severe. Why are they still coming? Probably for what motivates refugees and migrants everywhere, for a combination of both greater safety and more economic opportunity. While I do support DACA and legal status for other long-time crime-free residents with a well-established life here (facts on the ground), that is, those who have already become part of our social and economic fabric, no country can allow fully open borders. So, while Trump’s proposed southern wall would be an ineffective, costly, ugly, and symbolically unwelcome purely cosmetic device, at the same time, allowing open borders is not the answer either. Opinions certainly differ about how many refugees and asylum seekers our country can or should accommodate. However, like it or not, Trumpists, humankind is moving closer to “One World,” the reason that you folks are now fighting so hard against it.

Here’s a case of where Trump tried to silence the message, but it ended up coming through even stronger. Mandy Manning, a former Peace Corps volunteer, (Armenia 1999-2000), this year’s National Teacher of the Year, read a speech on CNN Saturday, which she said President Trump wouldn’t let her give during her award ceremony at the White House. On CNN, Manning’s speech referenced the immigrant and refugee students she teaches, as well as her support for LGBT and other marginalized students. Manning said her purpose was to tell her students “that they are wanted, they are enough, and they matter.” In her appearance on CNN, she listed the names of her students who she said rely on America’s “policy of welcoming immigrants and promoting peace.”

As a woman myself of a certain age, having worked in social work, occupational therapy, overseas medical brigades, and, now, as a healthcare interpreter, I am not particularly surprised when I or my contemporaries experience a sudden health setback. Often, it’s something that has actually been building up for a while, but has just come to light. Yet my agemates, confronting a cancer diagnosis or cardiac surgery, often act surprised and affronted, as if fate has conspired has against them by dealing this unfair and shocking blow. Well, yes, it has—but not in terms of mere random bad luck, rather because aging and death are our universal fate. Of course, they—and our modern medical system—will seek to delay the inevitable. Because I’m well aware of my own potential health risks, I never plan my annual Honduras trip until a few weeks out. Everything is temporary, planet earth, Donald Trump, and we ourselves. And yet, Egyptian-born Wanda, a mother of three and my long-time friend in South Duxbury, Vermont, is now 103 and still living in the house that she and her husband built on their farm so many years ago. She has a very attentive family, one key to her longevity. 

Finally, what about the current debate between leaving one or two spaces at the end of a sentence? As a recent article in the NYTimes attests, back when most text was rendered by typewriters, leaving two spaces may have made reading easier. Now, with computer fonts, one space between has become more common. I began leaving only one space back when we decided that for our occupational therapy association magazine, OT Week, it would save space. After getting accustomed to doing so, I’ve used one space in my books and now here, so two spaces actually make my eyes hesitate. But, apparently, two spaces may result in marginally smoother reading for most people, though the jury is still out. I notice that The New Yorker’s print version seems to leave only one space at the end of sentences, likewise, in the on-line versions of the Washington Post and New York Times. Typos are rare in those publications and I only once found what might be considered a typo in The New Yorker—it was the lack of a period at the end of a sentence in a place where it would have been awkward to include it. But I have often found typos and misspellings even in big publishers’ best sellers. I hope there are none in either English or Spanish in my books. I became a typo obsessive after my years proofing OT Week.