t r u t h o u t | Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Our Bees?

t r u t h o u t | Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Our Bees?

Pretty spooky, if true

Cookies, Military Spending, and the story of Stuff

A witty and short video on US government spending.

And another really clever one on the story of stuff: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ This one is about where the stuff we own comes from, how it's made, its impact on our lives.

Un video de Noé reciente
14 Agosto 2008

And his name is Noé William Beers Sancho

You may say, 'no way!', and you are right; baby's name is Noé. 'Noah' in English. And he's William Beers the V, as far as I know. He's four weeks old now. A wee precocious, he now walks, smiles and says things like, "I'm not quite convinced we should have unilaterally invaded Iraq." Well, but progress is rapid: he seems to be getting the hang of burping after every meal, and eating every three hours, instead of every two, a change for which his nursing mother, in particular, is quite grateful.

Winter has given way to summer, and we've gone from wool blanket to no blanket in less than a week. And so it's rather impressive that someone has lifted himself off the couch to post some more photos (like this one) and a few more videos. If tempted, click on the links on the top right of the page to get there. He's starting to look more and more like his father, that is, he's becoming increasingly cute, intelligent, and humble. And his parents of course are well and happy and thoroughly delighted to have him around. Here is a prayer we say with him:

O My Lord! O my Lord! I am a child of tender years. Nourish me from the breast of Thy mercy, train me in the bosom of Thy love, educate me in the school of Thy guidance and develop me under the shadow of Thy bounty. Deliver me from darkness, make me a brilliant light; free me from unhappiness, make me a flower of the rose garden; suffer me to become a servant of Thy threshold and confer upon me the disposition and nature of the righteous; make me a cause of bounty to the human world, and crown my head with the diadem of eternal life. Verily, Thou art the Powerful, the Mighty, the Seer, the Hearer.

We'll be visiting Ithaca from mid august to mid september, and very much looking forward to uniting Noé with his family on the other side of the puddle (Atlantic).

A perfect arrival: Parsimonious parlance and prolific pooper!

The baby once known as 'sardinita', and later on upon seeing its dangling genitalia in a sonogram as 'bacalao', has joined his irrepressibly joyful and proud parents this side of the womb. Here is the low-down: Disregarding the varied arrival predictions (other family members: the 20th of May; official and Alba's: 29th; mine: beginning June), Alba awoke in a puddle of waters on tuesday, May 27th, at 6:20 in the morning, after having enjoyed a restful night. The first of many considerations shown by the Providence and baby duo.

I began a quest to figure out whether water breaking and a virtual absence of contractions was a good or bad sign, searching online and calling all relatives. (The online information was varied, but it looked like we had a good margin of time before we need start worrying.)

Alba looking great and feeling fine, we proceeded to a thorough nest tidying, watering the balcony garden, mopping and all. With a suitcase packed we hailed a taxi which creeped us to the hospital. We signed in at La Paz hospital at 11 a.m.

Monitored heartbeat and contractions, which by 1 p.m. were starting to make Alba wince. Although dilation was just beginning around that time, we were fortunate that that time appeared to be a particularly popular one to be born, so we were kept in a pre-birthing room, where Alba could walk around at leisure. Otherwise, we would have been another victim of hospital policy: oxytocin to increase the rate of contractions and a spinal injection to numb the lower body! Despite the superb support of her husband who massaged/stopped massaging/pressed-stopped pressing/held-stopped holding at whim, by 4 or 5 the contractions were tempting Albita to go for the painkiller. One experienced nurse egged her on: 'Why suffer needlessly?' A little after 5 p.m. Alba's cervix was at 7.5 cm, and more nurses were somewhat pressuring her to go for the shot. One, however, said, 'You've come this way and what's left is the most beautiful part, pushing. You'll want to feel this.'

The irresistible urge to push came around 5:30 and I was called in, then sent out (more on this later), and called in again to find her in what looked like leg stocks, pushing with all her might. One contraction and two pushes later, baby's head was out, one more push and his neck, then shoulders, and a final push for the rest of his body. A bullet birth, second only to the fantastic one found in 'Big Fish'. I was bawling as the baby was placed on his mama's belly, while the gaggle of nurses and medical students cut umbilical cords, stitched up the slight tear, and then whisked baby away for a weigh, a measurement, and a few cleansing procedures that looked superfluous to me at that moment and made me bawl even more.

A perfect birth. A beautiful, alive creature, than would have made proud any parent--especially if that parent were a turtle (see photo of one year old baby!).

He was slimy and albinoish at first, with a may of black hair mixed in with gooey things from his prior living quarters. (His father went faint with all the blood and all during the first few rounds of pushing, and had to take the second half from a seated postion.) Playing telephone with family members (I was the only one accompanying Alba at birth), somehow news got around that the baby was some hairy creature from a prior age, and when the stream of visitors began to arrive, they were quite taken aback by the lustrous beauty of the young fellow:

The people at the hospital were quite nice but at the same time there was a culture of hierarchical bossery and petty snobbery that I hated. When asking about certain taking-the-baby-away-from-the-parents-procedures, the standard reply was 'Did you study medicine? I didn't think so...' [i.e. so just shut your mouth]. It was a clear showing of how good people in a cruddy environment can treat you rather cruddily.

48 hours after we were allowed to go home. You may ask what is he like?
He is a sweet, considerate boy: a gentle and regular nurser (every 2 hours), a wide- though blurry-eyed observer, a prolific producer of flying pees and projectile poops, a tender sleeper (he even values his father's skinny chest as a worthy bed) and a polite crier. He wails as if saying, 'please, do something about this lamentable situation, and pleeeease do it right away!'

So we are now in Toledo with my in-laws, reveling in all the joys of parenthood: nursing and changing diapers! More seriously, it is of course the greatest gift to have such a small creature join the family. We are awestruck and immensely grateful.

(See more photos here; and a video here)

Excellent talk on Sustainable Development

Last week I went to a talk on "Sustainable Development" that was shocking and inspiring at the same time. The speaker, a swiss Baha'i biologist by the name of Arthur Dahl, spoke about the increasingly grim short-term (next decades) outlook for the planet, and what he thinks will and has to happen in order to bring the planet around to more sustainable and humane living. I wrote up highlights of the talk for the blog of EBBF, which you can find here: www.ebbf.org/blog.

Sardinita

Crazy. This is the first picture taken of "Sardinita" (little sardine) after she lost her tail. To tell the truth I wasn't really looking forward to going to the doctors with Alba. I mean I had seen such black and white pictures before, and occasionally you could make out a lump that was the head or the rump or something, but it seemed to be as detailed a picture as a two-year-old's portrait work with an Etch-a-Sketch. But I went because I didn't really have an excuse not to go. 45 minutes on the bus to one of the three hospitals that Alba has to visit off and on as part of the routine checkups sent by the goverment paid physicians. (Universal free healthcare sure is nice. Gives me a real nice feeling deep inside when I look at all the taxes I'm paying!) A brief wait and then summoned into the room where they double checked to make sure the paperwork and Alba matched up and then whisked off into a side room where the sonogram machine was. Lie down, tummy uncovered and rub some gel on it, and then as soon as the doctor pressed a little machine to Alba's belly there appeared a baby on the screen. Arms up, knees bent, stretching her head and legs when the doctor pressed harder, everything looked just perfect. I suddenly realized that what everybody was saying--including my wife--was true: I was going to be a father. I can't believe I almost turned down this precious opportunity.

Alba wasn't as lucky. Since she was lying down the whole 5 minutes, she wasn't able to look at the screen but the last 15 seconds when the doctor--who seemed a bit moody that morning--swiveled the screen around for her to see.

Sardina's scheduled arrival is at the end of May, a few years sooner than we thought, but we are delighted to have her. I've mostly gotten over my fears of being unable to feed and diaper the baby with my English teacher's salary. Alba on the other hand is wholly unconcerned about pecuniary issues. (That's why I married her, to balance out the worrywartsome inclinations in the family!)

Although the baby's gender has not been divulged by the ultrasound (is this the same as a sonogram?), we have been using female pronouns because Alba swears on her prophetic mantle that it is to be so. Still we're fussing about names for both genders (Nur? Sofia? Kieran? Haydar Ali? Nasim? Aischa? Maryam?), and of course will be happy with whatever child that comes our way.

Coming up in two weeks is our first wedding anniversary. I'm really into this marriage thing. My thought of the year is that a couple that can duke and figure out all the problems that arise from doing everything together is the premier sign of hope in the world. It is a harbinger of good times to come. Why? Because the most difficult lesson for our species to learn is to
keep our personal persnickety wants and likes and thoughts in check. I want this, you want that, and for the time being they are incompatible. So either there is a fight or there is a solution, or both. I really think that if 1000s and millions of husbands and wifes can decide together how to spend a vacation or spend money or raise a child or whose turn it is to cook, then I think there is hope for Chávez, Bush, Ahmadinejad, Merkel, Castro and Zapatero to get along and iron out there differences. Or flipping it, if two people who chose to be together CANNOT figure things out, then what hope is there for world leaders who would avoid each other at all costs if given the choice. This is all to say, making our marriages and interpersonal relationships work means all the good in the world and deserves superhuman efforts.

Other news: Went to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea in August to help with a FUNDAEC teacher training. Great to see the impact these materials and program is having on youth, who are being empowered to bring about positive change in their communities. Alba came to Equatorial Guinea and together we visited some family of hers (Sinuhé and Maryam & co.) and Nabil and Prisca. (Here is a a video of a scrumptious dinner at their house as well: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZK-IeUzcOAA) Here are some pictures. This first one is in Bata, Yasmin, Alba, Karim, Maryam, Sinuhé and Olinga:
And one of Nabil and Prisca on the Malabo harbor:
Here is a picture with Prisca's (Nabil's wife) family, mother (on left), two siblings on either side of her grandmother, and niece in front of Alba.
My two sisters Shamsi and May are coming to visit, along with my brother-in-law Joel and niece Kalle, who has just turned one. Christmas dinner with Alba's extended maternal family, with gift exchange and everything (really recommend doing the 'secret santa' thing, where each person has to give something to one person. you get to really think about what this person wants, and make it special, without worrying over a dozen or two people and gifts and budgets.)

Alba's brother Daniel turned 15 in... July was it? This is the coming-of-age in the Bahai Faith and so we took him on a walk in the mountains of La Mancha (the region where Don Quijote was from and where my in-laws live), and put him through a series of challenges, representing the development of such qualities as persistence, awareness, concentration, responsibility, and trust (see photo).

Alright, that's all for now folks. Much love, k