Blue House News

I've been a clearinghouse for incoming data regarding the IT person using my address, with permission, and now in Nepal, enduring many tremors amidst outright earthquakes.  She misses cold beer.  She just donated a Sony camera to a team, recalling her time with Jordan, neighbor, whom I recently saw at May Day in South Campus.

Jordan and Lindsey interviewed Right to Survive and Right to Sleep activists quite a bit, including their testimony in City Hall.  She got good at video editing, helping splice things together.  She'd been doing that anyway, with audio, and her drum machine, R2D2 coincidentally, like the Village (North Campus).

So now that she's in Kathmandu she realizes the predicament:  earthquakes happen quickly but their ripple effects and consequences are more enduring and the challenge is to sustain attention in a species with ADD (Gore Vidal called it amnesia but in any case a dementia of sorts).  People will forget all about "the big earthquake" or "the big storm" and yet people in and around New Orleans know that Hurricane Rita is still blowing, in a manner of speaking.  More work to be done.

Melody knows a lot about New Orleans first hand whereas I'm still relatively green when it comes to great North and South American cities (not forgetting Central).  There're a lot of cities out there and unless you're campaigning for some big office or on a team that's doing that, or work for TSA or one of those, you probably don't see many of them.  Maybe if you work for Taco Bell at some level, or similar franchise.  Just saying:  my geographic information awareness is somewhat limited and I'm aware of that.

The incoming data were about upgrading from tourist status so as to continue the relationship.  Visits to the US Embassy were also involved.  Nepal wisely wants criminal background checks and more if taking in a student, we often do the same.  Visiting other countries is not a one way street and we all have to go through various obstacle courses.  Some celebrity recently was caught smuggling his dog into an aggressively self policing country and took a lot of flak for it.  One is not supposed to flaunt the law.  That being said, a private jet may still cut some hours off processing time.

Actually, when Urners traveled to Tashkent from Kabul, Afghanistan, via Aeroflot, the idea of simple tourists was new enough that Intourist wanted to be there.  They met our plane and showed us around, in Moscow later as well, but not in any heavy handed way.  Yes, Russians get paranoid, but I don't want to exaggerate for melodramatic effect the way some do.  Urners wandered alone and unsupervised in Russia, just as they did in many places.  Big Brother was not watching.