In Memory of my friend

On Tuesday, I found out that a man I knew died. His name was Sunny. That was his nickname but it was also a lovely descriptor of his personality. he was a law student and an intern in our department for a few months to help us analyze the years and years worth of data about raped women we had from Darfur.

Every day he came in filled with enthusiasm and humor and a laid back attitude. He took things in stride. He found the flaw in our database for Papua New Guinea and fixed it without so much as a how-de-do. He loved to go out for drinks and chat. he made friends with everyone he met, I think. He was a computer engineer before he decided to turn his life towards the law. He planned to be the Secretary-General fo the United Nations. He was 28 years old.

He also had terrible food allergies and we got an email from our Canadian office saying that he was out with friends and succumbed to an allergy attack. Even though an epi-pen was used, he failed to revive. Although its shocking and hard to hear that he died, at least he died doing the things he loved - working hard, talking politics, surrounded by friends, and living his life to the fullest.

We had a lovely evening one night when he came over with two other friends from work. He put together my bookcase while the ladies swilled wine and chatted. He was always surrounded by ladies! We went out for tapas and heatedly discussed US politics. The next day he asked me if I was upset with him because it had gotten so heated. I didn't even remember it but he was that kind of sensitive person. He left us to go work with the Indian Supreme Court and return back to India where he hadn't been since he was a child.

He was a lovely man and the world is a poorer place without him. We'll miss you, Sunny, Rest in Peace.

Scheveningen Kite Festival

I spent Saturday afternoon at the Kite Festival in the world's most difficult Dutch word to pronounce city of Scheveningen. Doesn't look that hard to pronounce, does it? Well its got one of those guttaral throat sounds in it.

Here's a little video of kite flying bliss on a sunny Saturday Afternoon.

Culture Clash

After almost six weeks in South Carolina, being back in Amsterdam has been a bit of a shock. First of all, it was about 98 degrees when I left Charlotte on September 7th and it was about 62 when I got here on September 11th. It's full on autumn. The trees are changing colors. Everyone is wearing scarves. I wake up cold everymorning - which I did in SC but that was because the air conditioning was on too high.

And then I am having a bit of a culture clash trying to readjust to some of the Dutch things that I had forgotten about. I met up with my friends Susannah, Naomi, and Emma for drinks and Jamaican food. Afterwards we went out with her friends and ended up in a Blues band. When I tried to tell the bassplayer that I enjoyed the show he cursed at me in Dutch and told me that he was on break. I got elbowed in the Albert Heijn. I was almost run over by a taxi as I rode my bike.

Monday and Tuesday were hard at work. I tried to keep my head down on Monday and just work but the organization's debate culture was alive and well and I soon found myself arguing over things I really don't care about. Back to just trying to make it through the day.

Monday night I cut Simon's claws and I cut one too close and he bled ALL OVER the apartment. I have bloody paw prints on everything. I didn't sleep at all because I was trying to stem the bleeding. I ended up having to dip his paw in flour after all my attempts to bandage it failed. Bandaging a cats foot is not as easy as one would think. One big shake and bandages fly off. He's fine now and I'm still traumatized.

So - let's see. I've been back since Thursday night and I've been a wreck. Hm. Let's hope things get better. Today's plan of attack includes eating a lot of chocolate, buying cheap flowers to brighten up the apartment (pink dahlias and white chrysanthemums), listening to cheerful music loudly (including Laid by James, Barracuda by Heart, Wonderboy by Tenacious D and Dancing Queen by Abba), and watching Mad Men (a show I became obsessed with in the States). Going to bed early and going for walks at lunchtime to eat soup seem to help too.

Lessons Learned from Airports

Hotdogs, normally a food that costs very little in the hotdog vendor stands of the world, are abnormally high priced in airports. Fruit is rare. Bars never print the cost of their overpriced draft beers on the menu. Starbucks is always busy.

The majority of American businessmen traveling appear to be in the IT biz, love those bluetooth gizmos that make them look like the Borg, and wear unflattering pleated pants and dumpy shoes. Some could be attractive but their uniform of American Male geekdom destroys any sex appeal at all. Business suits and polished shoes, and a nice haircut can still make a man devastatingly attractive even if he isn't classically handsome. The tv show "Mad Men"is a perfect example of that.

You can really tell alot about a region by the quality of the bookstores in their airport. American airports usually have crap bookstores: Charlotte Airport has tons of political books mostly slamming Barack Obama or Democrats or Liberals, books on how we are winning the war in Iraq, business management guides for dummies. The Columbia airport has lots of Christian and inspirational reading alongside the rightwing tripe, the Detroit airport has a pretty good bookstore with decent fiction and a travel section, the Chicago Airport has almost no books for sale at all. I couldn't find any books and only fashion magazines for sale in Miami. National Airport in Washington DC has a great local independent bookstore and even the newsstands have tons of political books from the left and the right. In contrast, the Amsterdam airport has a large bookshop with books in Dutch and English - heavily focused on sex. Even little London City Airport has a good bookstore with tons of fiction and non fiction.

Southern security guards are more polite than those of the Northern states. No two airports in the US have the same policy about shoes or your boarding pass.

I still get a warm fuzzy feeling when the border officials say "Welcome Home" when I go through immigration.

Family Photos

My father's father and my grandfather, Julius "Stub" Martin in the Army back in Papua New Guinea during WWII.


Mom and Dad in London in 1963



Alyson and I looking a bit like ruffians probaby in the early 70s.



Matching lederhosen dresses. Parents must love to laugh hysterically at their offspring.



Matching band uniforms, Sumter High School Marching Gamecocks, circa 1984!



70s Family at the World Famous Iris Gardens in Sumter, SC



Me in 2nd Grade



My first passport photo!



My mother rockin' a great hairdo. Obviously before she had children and time to do her hair!




Mom, about age 12 in her school photo.



My father on his first tour of duty to England in 1950.



My dad's glamour photo. Why don't they airbrush up our photos like that nowadays?



The first official family portrait from Mons, Belgium where Alyson and I grew up.

The Omnivore 100

So there's this thing going around on the food blogs that I've become obsessed with about the top 100 things that every omnivore should eat (at least once). The ones in italics are ones that I've tried already. I'm at 67% - some are never going to happen (whole insects) and others are just waiting for the opportunity (3 course meal at 3 star Michelin restaurant).

1. Venison: prepared it for the first in college when my boyfriend bought me some venison that he had killed. Turned me vegetarian.
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros: LOVE them from the Austin Grill in DC.
4. Steak tartare : the best steak tartare I had was in Brussels after a month in the Congo. We had it prepared in front of us by an old Belgian waiter and drank it with a bottle of Saint-Emilion.
5. Crocodile: First time I had it was in a fancy restaurant as carpaccio in a mall in Pretoria, South Africa. I ate Gator in South Carolina several times.
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue: I even have my own fondue pot!
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush: but eggplant doesn't like me.
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich: strawberry jelly, por favor.
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart: the best ones are in Copenhagen.
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (raspberries, cherries, crab apple)
19. Steamed pork buns : Dim Sum! Still looking for a good one though.
20. Pistachio ice cream : My favorite. I've always associated it with father's though as this was my father's favorite flavor in Belgium.
21. Heirloom tomatoes :and I've grown them!
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras :Oh god... what made me a omnivore again after 10 years vegetarianism.
24. Rice and beans :Best are blackeyed peas cooked with jalapenos, onions, tomatos, and butter and cajun seasoning with jasmine rice!
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters : Roasted, raw, fried. I love them! Bowen's Island, Felix's in New Orleans! Central Station Oyster Bar in NYC! Fried in a curry!
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl : had clam chosder in Boston but not in a sourdough bowl.
33. Salted lassi : but my favorite is Masala lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat : ate it in Port Antonio, Jamaica the first time.
42. Whole insects : that's never going to happen.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more: Not yet... give me some time.
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel : I'm in holland - its almost the national dish.
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut : HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW!
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi : the best hangover cure!
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini : with blue cheese stuffed martinis at Le Bar in DC is good.
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst: BERLIN, Salute!
65. Durian : in San Francisco with my friend Colin.
66. Frogs’ legs : in Haiti with Antoine!
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake :elephant ears and funnel cake at the Sumter County Fair, Beignets in Cafe du MOnde in New Orleans and churros in Mexico City and Madrid!
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain : I prefer the soft plantains fried with fried eggs and black beans and sour cream... yum.
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum ecstasy!
82. Eggs Benedict: Corinne Risler makes some of the best of them! But I was introduced to them at Polly's Cafe and I like them better with smoked salmon to replace the canadian bacon.
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant : NOT YET!
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare: in a ragout in Rome.
87. Goulash: I even learned how to make it from a Hungarian woman in my kitchen!
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab: The first time I had one, I ate it fried in a croissant. I didn't bite hard enough and the crab dangled from my mouth like a bug in my cat's mouth.
93. Harissa
94. Catfish :I'm from South Carolina, bien sur!
95. Mole poblano :in Oaxaca!
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake :Boa constrictor in Central African Republic. Rattlesnake in South Carolina. In retrospect, they are very similar locales.

I'm thinking about starting a food blog but I need some help in learning how to photograph food to make it look as beautiful as some of the others. Maybe we could have a collaborative food blog where those of us who love to cook add new recipes that we've tried!

Nostalgia

Nostalgia: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

Alyson and I spent the day today in our house in Sumter, trying to make sure anything valuable is put away or brought to Columbia. It was in the 90s and it was hot and dusty. I came across some boxes of photos that I haven't seen in ages. I sat through and thumbed through them tonight and I am going to try to scan some of them electronically in the next few days and post them here. Our beautiful house in Sumter was the setting for so many of them and so many fabulous memories.

* Prom photos from 1982 (Mike), 1983 (Kenny), and 1984 (Mortie) - Mostly posed by the stairs in the living room. My hair stayed remarkably small considering it was the 80s but I have a dress copied from Princess Diana's wedding dress that my mother labored over and sewed for me. Usually she sewed in the sunroom and there was nothing she couldn't make - EXCEPT a bathing suit. We tried that several times and it never quite worked out right. I wish I had paid more attention to the sewing. I can cut out the pattern (my job) but could never thread the bobbin.

* Band uniform photos. I think these should be burned. Posed by the sunroom in the living room. At least I didn't wear braces like Alyson but I do see some monster zits on my face. Alyson also has piano recital photos. I played flute and piccolo - don't see any photos from symphonic band - just marching band.

* Photos of me and my friends from high school and college - rugby shirts, t shirts with sayings, dropped waist dresses, lots of teal. Playing cards, playing scrabble, playing drinking games in the den, draping ourselves across cars in the driveway, and posing in front of the front door in Sumter.

* The house after Hurricane Hugo - my favorite dogwood tree ripped up by the roots, the roof in shambles. Photos of Alyson and I playing in that tree. I remember pretending I was a gymnast in the Olympics.

* Gatherings with Grandma Sis and British relatives when they came to visit in the back yard (before its renovation into a Charleston gated garden) and on the side sunporch patio before we realized it was way too hot to ever sit there in the sun in the summer.

* Dinner with the Winsteads, the British Wives' Club, and other friends of my parents. Usually in the dining room. Often, Alyson and I were banned from the grownup parties and sent upstairs. We would try to wheedle ice cream out of our parents by sending notes down tied to the cat's collar.

* Christmas presents opened and displayed - usually done in the living room with a tree in the sunroom or living room and all of us in bathrobes in front of the fireplace in the living room.

Barack Obama for President!

What a speech... I have that hopeful feeling that I had back in 1992...

Obama's good choice

A reason to like Obama's choice in running mate:

From The New Republic:
[Pundit's] assessments [of Joe Biden's accomplishments] have strangely overlooked what's arguably Biden's signature accomplishment in domestic policy: the Violence Against Women's Act. And that's no small thing. [NOTE: I met with his office on this bill in 2006 before I left DC so that's why I'm interested!]
It may be hard to remember now, but widespread awareness of domestic violence--and how to deal with it--is a relatively new phenomenon. As late as the early 1990s, many communities had no domestic violence shelters at all, while those that did couldn't fund them adequately. And neither law enforcement nor the judicial system were prepared to deal with the special nature of domestic violence. If a woman who’d been battered or raped went to the police, she was frequently lucky if she got sympathy--let alone experts trained in how to handle such cases, go after perpetrators, and counsel the victims. “At that time there were no victim rights and [somebody] had to witness an act of violence in order to prosecute it,” says Judy Ellis, now executive director of First Step, a domestic violence program based in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. “The criminal justice system lacked information and training on the dynamics of domestic violence and its effects on the family.”

VAWA changed all of that. It cracked down on interstate stalking, set standards for the collection and use of evidence in abuse cases, and set up a national domestic violence hotline. No less important, VAWA poured money into local communities for the creation of new prevention and treatment initiatives. In Detroit, according to Ellis, a VAWA grant allowed local authorities to hire prosecutors, police officers. and counselors specifically trained to deal with domestic violence. It also paid for outreach programs into non-English speaking communities, where many victims had no idea of their rights--or the resources now available to them.

Nor does the Detroit story seem to be atypical. Here’s how one New York domestic violence attorney, Liberty Aldrich, described the transformation in an article she wrote for the Nation back in 2000:


When I worked at Mississippi Legal Services before VAWA, I interviewed police to find out if they had any special programs for domestic violence victims. Not a single department did, although one sheriff volunteered that he always took into account the differences between blacks and whites in such cases--black families are used to violence, he said.
Police and prosecutors now have a tougher time getting away with attitudes like that. In New York City, for example, there have been significant developments, directly and indirectly generated by VAWA. Over the past five years, a domestic violence officer has been installed in every New York police precinct. The Brooklyn district attorney received almost $1 million in VAWA money to develop a coordinated boroughwide response to domestic violence. And the Queens district attorney just announced that a domestic violence bureau is being developed with VAWA funds to insure that all prosecutors dealing with these cases have received special training.
So what did Biden have to do with all of that? Everything. Biden had been promoting a domestic violence bill starting in the early 1990s, and although it didn’t go far at first, he kept at it, finally getting his chance in 1994, once Bill Clinton became president and began pushing for a crime bill. Even then, it was a tough sell. Critics, led by Republican Senator Robert Dole, thought the '94 crime bill was bloated with unnecessary spending and demanded cuts from it--including the $1.6 billion over six years set aside for VAWA. But Biden held firm and, eventually, got his way. “You can sponsor a bill, but if you just sponsor a bill and let it sit there, that’s nothing,” says Pat Reuss, a longtime activist who was one of the measure's chief advocates in Washington. “He shepherded it. He made sure it happened. He assigned staff to it, gave them carte blanche to do with they needed, they spent days and nights on it.”

And Biden’s stewardship didn’t end with the bill’s passage. In 1996, when President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, Biden made sure that victims of domestic violence got an extra six months to exhaust welfare benefits. When the law was up for reauthorization in 2000, he won even more funding for it. Although the courts would end up striking down one part of VAWA’s legal reforms, and although it would occasionally rankle right-wingers, the program’s bipartisan support grew over the years. In 2006, President bush signed its second reauthorization.

Advocates have claimed VAWA cut down on domestic violence by 25 percent. And while that figure seems suspiciously high--precise estimates are hard to come by--advocates seem to agree universally about VAWA’s importance and Biden’s role in it. “If I were to choose the single most important event leading to broad based awareness and change regarding domestic and sexual violence against women,” says Ellis, “it would be Senator Biden’s Violence Against Women Act of 1994.” Reuss offers a similar assessment: “In Congress, it was singularly because of him.”

Does VAWA alone make up for Biden's votes on the war and bankruptcy bills? Maybe not. But it's certainly a big point in his favor--one that deserves to get a little more attention.

--Jonathan Cohn

Two sides of South Carolina

Last night, I met up with an old friend with whom I worked at a restaurant (Motor Supply Company) and a health food store (Rosewood Market) in South Carolina in the early 90s, right after college. It was great catching up with her but it was also really interesting to walk down memory lane a bit. I was a bit early to meet with her and didn't have anything to read with me so decided to walk around Five Points to look at my old haunts. Frighteningly enough, in one of the restaurants I worked, I saw two waiters who worked there when I worked there (from 1989- 1993) and in a bar that I also worked, I saw two of the regulars that always hung out there.

My friend and I went to see a band called Grey Egg, composed of some of the people who work at Rosewood Market. The lead singer is a Women's Studies professor at USC too, I think. There were lots of familiar faces in the band and in the audience. It shed a different perspective on the familiar faces I had seen in my old haunts. It reminded me of how out of step I often felt while living in South Carolina. Whereas in DC, what you do for a living identifies who you are as a person, in South Carolina - what you do for a living can be your passion but it can also be the economic way that you feed yourself while you pursue your real passion. So many of the people I knew in SC when I lived here were musicians, artists, writers, and just creative people. The restaurant business was how we all made our living and some of us branched off to working in the macrobiotic deli or organic produce department of the local healthfood store. But in general, we were all in our early 20s, staying up all night drinking and talking and dancing and bouncing around. In the morning, we shook off our hangovers and went to work to serve rich beautiful people their chicken salad croissant or their macrobiotic special of the day.

But there were also people who had hopped off the consumerist capitalist machine that drives the day to day American life. Many of my old friends who are in their 40s now and still performing in bands and being creative and living their life without fretting about how the next step in their life will impact their career climb like I am. It was a welcome reminder that the South and the US is not so bad after the past three weeks where I pass the same chain restaurants every day on my way up and down the highway to the hospital and the rehab facility to visit my father. I haven't walked further than down the hallway to the vending machine to get a coke since I got here!

Then this morning, while I was emailing at work about responding to the Sudanese press about confidentiality for rape survivors, I got an essay from a friend written by a homeschooled child about her day taking care of her Evangelical family. Its pretty easy in the secular world that I travel in to forget just how important religion is to many people in the US. The South has always been considered the Bible Belt. I have a lot of respect for people of faith - I have several friends who are religious, attend church regularly, and I also worked for a faith-based organization, Witness for Peace when I first left graduate school. Since I've been back in South Carolina for the past three weeks, I've witnessed our presidential candidates go to the largest Evangelical church in the US to pass a test of fire about their beliefs so they can woo the religious vote. Every day when I walk through the lobby of the Palmetto Heart Hospital to visit my father, I pass piles of New Testaments on the tables in the lounge. While there is the politically correct "Meditation Centre" in the hospital - presumably to cater to the ever growing population of Hindus and Muslims living in Columbia - all the literature and sign up lists were from Southern Baptist ministers. My father had at least four visitors of devout African-American women ministers coming by to visit him. Many of the cashiers, security guards, and nursing technicians wish me a "blessed day" when I talk to them. There are hundreds of churches in various old buildings all over town. I pass the "Church of the Spiritual Guidance" in what appears to be an old insurance company building on the corner of Main and Sunset every day.

I myself went to many religious "teen activities" growing up in South Carolina. I have very vivid memories of one particular "teen activity". They told us that we were going to watch a movie and there would be free popcorn (I'm a sucker for popcorn). Instead, it was a movie about the apocalypse and the rapture and how all of us secular non believers would be left on hell on earth. A particularly striking scene was a guillotine that the nonbelievers were executed at. The condemned was forced to wait for the blade face up and the point of view of the camera was of the condemned's view of the blade slicing down upon them. Then after freaking us all out (I was 12), they invited us to come up to the altar and embrace Jesus as our saviour. I hid in the bathroom until it was over.

In many ways, the Netherlands is not so very different from South Carolina. There are free spirited thinkers who resist the capitalist imperative and there are strongly religious conservatives co-existing side by side in both places. The conservatives in Holland aren't a part of the accepted script about Dutch tolerance and the free thinking artists and leftists of South Carolina aren't part of the accepted script about life in the Bible Belt.

Alyson and Dad's House in Columbia

Here's the house that Dad and Alyson are renting in Columbia. It's near Sunset Drive and Main Street in Earlwood, a nice little neighborhood. I'm staying in the office/guestroom with the crazy orange cat named George.

Photos from South Carolina

Just saw this guys photography in the Starbucks in the Vista (boy has that place changed since my days slaving away at Motor Supply Co. Bistro) and I liked a few of his things.


This is the Congaree Swamp near Sumter where I grew up.


This photo is lovely - I once went down here for an afternoon with a boyfriend I had named Shrimper.


The Gervais Street Bridge that leads from West Columbia (where we once saw the Ku Klux Klan recruiting at the Kmart) to the Vista (where I worked for some time and the site of many a debauched evening). Some will remember my infamous vomiting episode on this bridge after the famous snow storm of 1988.


The State House in Autumn SANS the confederate flag on top, thank god.


Shrimp Boats in Mt Pleasant. I have fabulous memories of eating fresh shrimp, ice cold budweiser, and dancing to the English Beat with Mike Dumiak and Bill McIntosh and his wife to be, Holly. What an amazing weekend.

Kudzu - a poem

... Up telephone poles,

Which rear, half out of leavage
As though they would shriek
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows

At night to keep it out of the house
The glass is tinged with green, even so,

As the tendrils crawl over the fields.
The night the Kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead.
Silence has grown oriental
And you cannot step upon the ground...

ALL: Kudzu by James Dickey
Photo by Jack Anthony

Scenes from the South

A few pleasant memories from an unpleasant time in the South:

* Sitting on the back porch listening to the sounds of a hot summer night while drinking cold beers and listening to music with friends. I never could afford a place with a back porch or even a front porch outside of the South.

* Buying fresh tomatos and peaches from an old black man from John's Island at the gas station on Main Street.

* Watching a man cut his son's hair on his front porch. For some reason, cutting your hair outside on the front porch sitting on a hard back chair strikes me as so very deeply southern that it makes me nostalgic. My sister cut my hair for me once when I lived on Kiawah Avenue and worked at the Rosewood Market.

* Intense lightning and thunderstorms that turn the night sky purple and toss the crepe myrtles around resulting in carpets of small pink blossoms all over the driveway. Torrents of tropical rain that leave the air clear and crisp the next morning.

* The park completely choked by kudzu at the turn onto Sunset Drive. While kudzu is the scourge of the South, its so beautifully densely green and lush. Combine that with the smell of gardenias and honeysuckle and its like Proust's madeleine.

* Tomato sandwiches on white bread with hellman's mayonaise, a little salt, and fat slices of aforementioned John's Island tomatos. Must be eaten over the sink.

Bad Idea

File under: Bad Idea. Eating Sushi from the Piggly Wiggly.

Scenes from Sicko

Last night, I watched a prisoner who is on the intensive care unit that my father is on, being led on his physical therapy prescribed walk down the hall with his IV pole and his ankles shackled together. The respiratory therapist sitting with me mentioned "The Corrections officers are hard core. They'll keep a prisoner shackled who are on ventilators".

SICKO: the South Carolina version

On Tuesday night, the air conditioning at the hospital in Columbia where my father is currently went out for 12 hours. The temperature was over 96 degrees (36 degrees for you non Farenheit speakers)and it rose to almost 90 inside the hospital (34). I brought a fan from home and we stripped him down and kept cold wet face cloths on him and put him under the fan. The nurses told me that there used to be fans in the hospital but they were nowhere to be found nowadays.

While I was surprised that there was no back up system for the a/c dying in the middle of the brutally hot July-August months, I wasn't that perturbed until I read the news media spin where the spokesperson from the hospital said it was uncomfortable but nothing to worry about and praised the staff for bringing fans to the patients. I was in that hospital with frantic families from all over the city bringing fans in. The CVS next to the hospital was selling out. In the hospitals that I routinely visit in Africa and Asia, there are usually no air conditioning for anyone. There aren't even fans usually. But there are open windows to catch breezes. In the hermetically sealed highrises that are the modern US hospital, there's no opportunity to open the windows and cool yourself down. It was a good 20 degrees warmer in the hospital than it was when I went outside. Some patients had families take them out into the cool evening air. Since my dad was on an IV and oxygen, we weren't able to do that. To my sister's undying embarrassment (you are such a radical! she says), I decided to write a letter to the editor in the local newspaper in response to this article.

Regarding Dr. Caughman Taylor's statement about the air conditioning breakdown at Palmetto Health Richland that "It was not a safety issue; it was an inconvenience", I beg to differ. My 80 year old father was hospitalized when the air conditioning went out on Tuesday night. For the elderly, extreme heat is a serious life threatening condition. They are often the first to die when there is no air conditioning as we saw in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and in heat waves in the mid West. It was family members that brought in fans and window units for their loved ones, not the staff. Staff complained that they were unable to access or find fans that used to be plentiful and spoke about equipment malfunctioning in the emergency room due to the excessive heat. While they were also suffering from the extreme heat in the hospital, they did the best that they could to provide care. CEO Singerling said that "practice makes perfect" so I hope the Palmetto Health Richland has found those fans and are prepared to have emergency plans for seniors and others with respiratory problems in case of another unexpected air conditioning malfunction during the hottest months of the year.

World's Longest Flight

I'm currently on the way from Papua New Guinea to South Carolina. I wonder if I'm the first person ever to travel from PNG to SC. I doubt it. I find South Carolinians in the oddest of places. I left Lae at 5pm on Tuesday night and flew to Port Moresby (1 hour) on Air Niugini. I left Port MOresby at 11am on Wednesday morning and flew to Brisbane (3 hours) on Air Niguini. I flew from Brisbane to Singapore (8 hours)on Qantas. I flew from Singapore to Amsterdam on KLM (13 hours) and I'm awaiting my KLM flight from Amsterdam to Detroit (10 hours) that then transfers to Charlotte (3 hours) where Alyson's friend Michele will pick me up and drive me to Columbia (1 1/2 hours).

Air Niugini B+
Qantas A
KLM B+

I've been mostly in center seats the entire way. On the Air Niguini flight from Lae, I saw an amazing rainbow. On the Air Niugini flight to Australia, I noticed that we had jungle survival gear on board (it was labeled so). On the Singapore flight, an older man fainted or collapsed in the aisle causing quite a stir 4 hours in. He recovered and is fine according to the flight attendants. What awaits me as I cross the Atlantic?

Things about my father

Lived in Turkey, Lived in Greece, Lived in Taiwan, Lived in London, Lived in Wyoming (probably the roughest of them all since it was 1964). Lived in Belgium. Lived in South Carolina which he loved the most since there was no snow shoveling required, unlike Iowa where he grew up.

Loves cats. We've had a few: A siamese cat my mother and father had in Taiwan who used to swim in the bathtub. Iargo, a black cat that he rescued in Belgium. When he was run over by a car, we buried in the woods where the bluebells bloom. Sheba - another Siamese. I used to dress her in ballerina clothes. Spike- the tabby cat who loved my dad. When he was ill and old, my father chopped cantalope and shrimp for him to eat. Dante - my cat that went to live with my dad when I went to Guatemala. They were two grey haired old men together. And now George - the cat my father was destined to have. A sweet orange cat who won't take no for an answer.

Worked in a bowling alley in Los Angeles. Picked apples in Washington State. Worked in a motel in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Joined the Air Force to see the world (and avoid being drafted into Korea).

Loved my mother. Madly. Was a total ass to her on their first date (or so the mythology goes) but knew from the moment that he saw her that he was going to marry her. Met her on his birthday, October 27, got engaged on Valentine's Day, and married in July 27th. Engraved her wedding ring with WAML - meaning with all my love.

An amazing dancer- loved to dance and when we went to Guatemala, I was ready to leave the disco before he was. The same thing happened to us in Swindon, he made up muchlater than the young kids.

Voracious reader - read Ulysses for the nasty bits. Loves police procedural novels and we share a passion for fantasy novels like the Diana Gabaldon ones.

Loves the Sioux. Growing up wanted to be a Sioux indian chief. His stepmother was a pottawattame indian from Missouri. He grew up in Iowa and Minnesota.

First impressions of Papua New Guinea

I'm currently in Lae, Papua New Guinea - a port town and the second largest city in PNG (as its abbreviated). Calling it a city, however is a bit presumptious. There don't appear to be any buildings taller than 3 stories and its quite spread out. I'm posting a few photos from todays "Fun Run" that I participated in where we walked through the city dressed in green and yellow teeshirts with thousands of others. More impressions to come later.

Photos from the "FUN RUN":

The military men join in running in cadence and singing.


Orange boots keep the mud out!