Serving as a judge for the My Generation writing competition sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank for writers in Washington, DC offered me a tremendous opportunity to read essays created by writers with diverse backgrounds. Essays were contributed by writers ranging from middle school students to honorable octogenarians.
What was that sound? Is that a wild animal up ahead? Or just an oddly shaped fallen tree branch. Steady, now. You’re safer here in the mountains than in most places in the world, as long as you keep your head cool and mind where you step.
Death by Hiking is pretty rare. Usually, fatalities are associated with falls or exposure. Typically, an unfortunate outcome is related to lack of adequate equipment or clothing, lightening strike, dehydration, hypothermia or lack of experience.
I’m reading my former colleague Chip Brown’s fascinating book Good Morning Midnight – Life and Death in the Wild about intentional death in the White Mts. Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild is another gripping account of what can go wrong in the mountains.
Safety tips for hiking alone.
Organizational Culture shows us how governments, corporations, associations and other organizations manage their story and proactively shape their message. Al-Qaeda has an organizational culture just like any other entity and hey, it’s run by a guy in the construction business with a bunch of sub-contractors who deliver their trade which happens to be self-inflicted mayhem and death.
The U.S. is a squeamish organization — we don’t like to see blood and heart-breaking scenes and we don’t like to violate our values and standards by using taboo subjects (religion, race, ethnicity, gender, etc) to our advantage in an information campaign. The U.S. is tough minded when it has to be, but its organizational culture steers away from making decisions, embracing necessary change or cutting off what isn’t working.
The government has pathological difficulty in cutting off funding for what isn’t working. That would be the “war” in Afghanistan and the “deomacratization” of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Throwing money and human beings in the form of soldiers at problems that require tougher decisions and a longer term frame of reference is how the U.S. has avoided the painful work of facing reality. Now reality means no more money. Perhaps, at last, bankruptcy and debt will force prudent decisions.
In 2000, 6.8 percent of China’s vast population were age 65 or older.
By 2025, 13.4 percent of China’s population will be age 65 or older.
Source: Eberstat, N. (2004, Fall) Four Surprises in Global Demography. Orbis 48, 4:673-684. p. 676
So what does that mean for ordinary people? China depends on families to look after the health and welfare of its elderly population. The one-child policy has been effective in stabilizing population growth, but the replacement population is skewed to males.
China may need a gender based immigration policy to continue a stable replacement worker population to continue the growth which can support the rapidly aging population through individual care or a national pension scheme.
China will always have a vast population, so that demographic impacts may not be as deep, but widespread. The political history has been to shift populations around the territory in order to support continued growth, populate empty areas and stimulate development. However, soon China will have a top heavy aged population — and the stereotype that Chinese are long-lived applies here — with many of those elders without family members to care for them. Some of those sole offspring did not survive or did not reproduce because of the under-representation of females since the one-child policy took effect. Some emigrated.
China will have to revisit the current policy on pensions and health care. This may provide emerging market opportunities for developed nations to provide China with services such as elder care and health care delivery.
And, look out China, under-educated, unskilled American females may be headed your way to pick up prosperous spouses.
Debt
Did you know…..China’s public debt as a percent of GDP — 16.20 (2008 est.), #101 on the global list. India’s public debt as a percent of GDP — 61.30 (2008 est.) # 23. The public debt of the United States — 60.80 in relation to GDP (2007 est.) #24 on the list.
Source: CIA (2009). Country Comparison::Public Debt. The World Factbook. Retrieved October 3, 2009 from: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html
The U.S. was only a notch ahead of India on the amount of public debt as a percentage of GDP in 2008, using data prior to the global economic implosion.
While India and the U.S. will retain their robust populations to continue economic dynamism, by 2050 half of the U.S. population will be middle-aged or older.
India and the U.S. have similar profiles of public debt in relation to GDP, but working-aged population is projected to diverge. This will impact U.S. ability to sustain its economic growth pattern in relation to mounting proportion of public debt. If the U.S. enhances trade partnerships with the more stable and growing economies such as India, the U.S. economic outcome may improve.
Great-Grandmama may be able to afford a caregiver — a sponsored immigrant from India who speaks excellent English and has nursing training.
Resources: http://www.Kumarafoundation.com
What will become of Middle East and North African youth who need jobs, are educated and are using social media to connect online?
One of the top three geopolitical challenges that the Middle East faces in the period 2010-2020 is the demographic bulge born between 1975-1995 who are competing for few jobs in economies that are mostly stagnant or depending on a sole resource. Oil or U.S. political-military support.
The issue is significant because traditional states such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, Morocco rely on theocracy or political idiology to control the population. The educated and digitally connected young people who are part of a population bulge born between the years 1975 and 1995 seek employment and a meaningful role in their national future. The aftermath of the Iranian election and political stalemating clearly shows the role that digital tools play in facilitating demonstrations, communications and even, possibly, a tear-down-the-walls action agenda.
At the same time, the U.S. needs to leverage existing relationships in the region, so that other global aspirants don’t gain a foothold.
The skillful manipulation of the essential story of the conflict between the U.S. with al-Qaeda has left the U.S. on the wrong side of the story. And make no mistake, in the information age, it is all about the story that plays online, on mobile phones, television, on video and film. Viral messaging moves images and information faster than governments can perceive, let alone respond or manage the message. Today’s message is repeated, expanded and changed as the reteller (retailer) sees fit.
The U.S. should use its considerable expertise in psychology and its thousands of highly skilled civilian psychologists (as well as military psychologists), regional cultural specialists, creative story tellers, film directors and others, to produce a sophisticated narrative to manage the information strategically to turn the story in a different direction. It is essential to understand how to deliver the message to a culture, region and social setting that is completely different than the U.S.
The development, training and success of the Iraqi Security Force (ISF) is another element to be managed in strategic information operations. The image of the ISF as weak and ineffectual must change in order for the narrative to support information dominance. Delivering that message correctly requires a strategy, perhaps more difficult than training the forces. Major General (Ret.) Najim Abed Al-Jabouri, an officer in the former Iraqi Air Defense and now a Senior Fellow in the Near East South Asia Center at the National Defense University points out that “the United States fails to realize is that the ISF itself is the battleground in the larger communal struggle for power and survival. Middle Eastern concepts of civil-military relations are fundamentally different than Western ones. Western militaries have developed a culture of political control over armed forces. …this is not the established culture in either Iraq or the greater Middle East. In Iraq, there is a culture of “he who owns the security forces, owns the politics.” (Al-Jabouri, 2009)
Al-Jabouri, Najim Abed (2009, August). Iraqui Security Forces after U.S. Withdrawal: An Iraqi Perspective. Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Forum No. 245.
The Transformational Challenge
Change is now called transformation. What does that mean to a variety of different audiences? As government embraces the word “transformation,” it confuses the situation and response, as it tries to differentiate between changing circumstances (incremental change) and transformation (more holistic, larger scale change).
We know, in the future, the concept of unfolding change will be called something else again.
The language of change and transformation matters. Semantics create expectations. Communications with the entire organization need to be clear and direct, avoiding language and in-house jargon that carries baggage and builds resistance or heightens awareness of past hierarchies.
Do you think transformation in government leadership will succeed?
A writers’ gathering, “Third Annual Conversations and Connections” held on 11 April 2009, involved a trio of excellent literary journals — Barrelhouse, Potomac Review and Baltimore Review — with sponsorship by the Johns Hopkins University and Montgomery College. The venue was SAIS near Dupont Circle.
Ducking a hard rain shielded by a Munchkin umbrella made in China for Marimekko, I scooted across Mass. Ave to another office building that’s now part of the SAIS complex. Years ago, the Italian Cultural Institute occupied the first floor of this building, where films and lectures in Italian were followed by Prosecco and amusing canapes. The Italians have moved on, now hosting cultural events in their swank Embassy across Whitehaven Parkway from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s residence.
Blackbird receives submissions from the global anglophone writing community. Other contemporary literary journals whose editors were also on the panel — Failbetter.com, JMWW, LOCUSPOINT . They publish a diverse pool of writers. A key point that there’s no need to distinguish between serious online lit journals and printed literary journals. The editors pointed out that online literary publications offer added value with audio and video files that enhance understanding of poems, stories or essays read aloud and published in the journal.
How to tell which online journals are worthy, someone asked. Read the masthead and take note of a stable publication schedule answered a panelist.
Is it heretical to think we need more deer hunters? Somebody needs to thin the herds that have resulted from rapacious outer suburban development.
I’ve already got a permit to buy a firearm. I’ve been thinking of learning how to shoot. I’d look great in hot pink hunting cammis.
Flipping through a hook and bullet magazine, I learned that hunters should wear bright pink. Shocking pink is invisible to deer, yet easily distinguished by humans forging through winter woods. Will he-men with guns wear hot pink?
I’ve shadowed deer in genuine wilderness and protected pseudo-wilderness, — if a human can get there easily, it’s not true wilderness.
The deer live in and around their own gated communities — semi-suburban enclaves, parks, state controlled nature areas. The deer are my neighbors, live closer to me than some of my siblings. I know where the deer hide in regional parks and preserves, but that’s not saying much, since they parade with ease along highways, across lawns for gourmet shrubbery, and into town for brief celebrity in local news rags. You’ve seen the photos when a deer leaps through a store-front, spooked by its own reflection.
When I am in their territory, I follow the paths graven by their hoof marks or marked with scat. Deer paths emerge as a distinct line of scuttled leaves in the ground cover of fall and winter, a muddy track in spring, or flattened grass in summer. Nearly every walk along their byways, I’ll see the twitching white plume of a tail. I’ve seen leaping solitary bucks, herds of doe that nuzzle their young and lie close. Near an erratic outcropping of rock at the end of a shuffled leaf trail, the moss is upturned.
Deer don’t have enough to eat. Some townships and counties hire off-duty sharpshooters to cull the herd. Who gets the meat?
As the skeins of forest thin and break at the hands of developers, the deer hew tightly plaited paths where they can no longer roam widely. The deer paths demonstrate an intelligence and instinct. Within hailing distance of convenience stores, ramblers, schools and skating rinks, the deer-ways curve with the land using topography or fallen trees for cover.
When deer are wild in the woods, they retain the shroud of mystery; when they are common as pigeons or rats, they lose their immunity lodged in beauty.
Is there an answer for the crowded suburban deer who live along your backyard fence? More state sponsored deer-kill seasons with volunteer hunters dressed in pink?
White-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, with their vulnerable Audrey Hepburn eyes, turn your heart when you see them shadowed on a lawn or poised to leap a roadside barrier. But to a homeowner or driver, they signal disaster, even death. Deer darting across country byways cause crashes. My mother’s Hosta collection were midnight snacking grounds for the deer until she moved all the plants to a fenced garden.
The deer have a four million year history, got along just fine with the indigenous residents and our immigrant forebears. When did enough room to roam become nowhere at all?
I know deer are losing their fear of humans. I don’t need to wear pink to be invisible. They’re used to my scent. The foals are complacent, stand and stare back, their only display of authority to strut in place with their white tails at half-mast.
With deer living in parks, fool-‘em strips of trees along the highways and suburban vest-pockets woods, they’ve become semi-domestic fixtures, like goats or dogs. They live with squirrels and ground hogs and opossum. And die like them too, as road-kill. A neighbor butchers fresh deer killed by motorists and gives it to the food bank for poor folks.
Ninashka Hanz talks about being a good witch. How Wicca is the only religion a young woman like her could embrace. The Slovak grandmother taught her the old ways and what was the point of life but to be one with nature and your own true self? Her Czech grandmother from the other side of her family was a witch too, but deep and dark.
Twenty and wondrous to watch, she moves from one campsite to the next, changing conversations, flipping campers’ radio dials. She approached our site after a short exchange in laid-back FM station style with Don the post office warehouse worker whose tent was pitched nearest the forest. Then we watched her sashay up to AM Top 40 tuned Joe Six-Pack camping with a family not his own, having exchanged his kids for someone else’s when a new Momma came into his life. I thought I’d seen the young woman roving the campsites somewhere before.
Nina says the big Rec-V next to our van belongs to an ex-Navy guy who was at Ft. Meyers back in the late sixties and now drives around the lower 48 from state park to federal forest, camping out year-round. “I tried to sell him on driving up to Alaska,” Nina said, “but he didn’t want to drive outside the borders of the USA. Go figure.”
Later we realized we’d seen her hitching on Route 101, fetching groceries. I spotted her first, warned Les to slow down. “It’s a girl. We have to pick her up.” He shrugged, drove past. “We’re headed up to Mono, need to get there before dark.” By now, surely he sensed I was exhausted by his silence on the road and needed to talk to other people. We’d been road tripping the better part of a month without saying much. Get up in the morning, drive, stop, gas up and go on. Smoke into a state recreation area, eat, sleep and do it all over again. The pots of coffee on the Coleman burner marked the passing days.
I told Les that he and I used to be on the opposite sides of some line. If I hadn’t crossed over and made a move, nothing would have happened. Now I crossed the line to move outward again, in this case the line is a sandy gritty campground path that connects the tent sites to the restroom and bathhouse. I’m headed for a young couple huddled around a campfire and soon enough I realize the female is the same person I’d seen that afternoon on 101.
I offer Nina and Joe Six Pack a bag of marshmallows. I’m guessing that Nina is reluctant to waste her time with him because that’s what she calls him to his face, Joe Six Pack. I hang around, toasting marshmallows and keeping the conversation around the crackling fire drifting upward instead of down into a silent gully of stoned introspection. Nina is sucking her beer bottle and complaining her life is not worth much, the other face of the girl who says her ambition is to make money packing Alaska salmon. I tell her what she’s doing now is still an opportunity, not a mistake.
Nina holds court at Mono Campground, so named after the last great mononucleosis epidemic of 1969. Not really; Les and I entertained ourselves with such made-up road stories. We’d been there ten days now and Nina long ago installed herself as unofficial hostess greeting all newcomers, visiting her favored campers each day.
Nina would come round, telling the older folks how she lives in state parks and national lands. “It’s my land,” she’d say. “Yours too. Take advantage of it. Stay as long as you like. Remember, these forests belong to us — We the American People.” I’d nod and smile at Nina, then repeat what she said to Les who was cleaning his revolver under the plastic pull-out awning. I’d asked him to show me how to aim and shoot it, not like I knew anyone else with a weapon like that. “It is her land, you see, Les? And ours too. America, land of the free. This is government forest, owned by we the people, so she’s living on her own property.” My volume climbed. I was trying to shake Les from his skeptical view of Nina. He pulled his lips back in the fake mad-dog smile. We hiked far into Los Padres Forest and I learned to hold, aim and release the trigger, without ammo.
If anyone interesting pulled into the neighborhood, as we called our corner of the three campgrounds, Nina invited them over to her site for wine, dope and guitar tunes. “Before I became a witch,” she said, “I was a singer in a rock band. I was the drummer’s old lady,” she bragged. “They had to let me sing or he wouldn’t play and that group needed a drummer. Couldn’t play for nothing without him.” She’s her own old lady now, just twenty years, writing ballads about the meaning of life, too young to have a storehouse for the meaning.
We bathed in the sulphur hot springs and she talked to her dog Sugarfoot. “All bark, no bite, but they don’t know that,” she confided, pulling shreds of Bugler tobacco out of the economy size can and piling it into two glued together Top rolling papers. “Hey Sugar, hey Foot — go kill, maim and scare,” she joked at the dog, a mangy white cur that splayed on the dusty dry grass nosing its hindquarters . She spoke without raising her head from licking the seam on the cigarette. I ask her where she got the tobacco. “Downtown, you know, in Carthage, east of Santa Barbara.” The joke was there’s nothing east of Santa Barbara but mountains.
Another time when we were together in the bathhouse, I asked her, “You ever get scared out on the road alone, sleeping in campgrounds? Not knowing where your next meal or ride is coming from?” Nina laughed, “Fear? Of what? Magic protects me,” she said. “I really am a witch; no one would mess with me.” Like Sugarfoot, she’s all bark, no muscle. I think Sugarfoot does his part; looks like a mean junkyard dog.
Later I heard her giggles while she toyed away the night. She’d moved on from Joe Six to the ex-Navy guy in the big motor home. When I walked by, they leaned back on folding chairs looking at the stars. “Have some wine and weed,” she urged. “Andy has some of the good stuff, Maui magic. Come on, let’s talk about things tragic and all that good-lookin’ magic.”
“That sounds like a line from a song,” I said. “Write that one up!” Nina grimaced and pulled her guitar from behind the chair. “Sure, I’ll come by later when I’ve punched it out.”
Toting her guitar and Bugler can, a stack of tattered songbooks under her armpit, Nina sloped towards our camp. She showed me her own lyrics copied on three-hole lined school notebook paper. She banged out her twenty year old lament, a defensive answer to a world that has not dealt her well. In the song, she wants to go to Scotland and she wants to go to Budapest to see what her grandmothers talked about.
“My name was Hanzlik in the old country — Czech and White Russian.” She sang patches of a language that only a million people know. “There’s none of us left,” she slurred. “We gypsies and witches, ‘zey killed all us women. ‘Cept ‘zose who went hiding, ‘zey killed us all off.”
Nina slugged back cheap wine, fisting the bottleneck. Now she’s sitting on a picnic table. The ex-Navy man is sloshed and amazed by her. He’s wandered over to see why she’d been gone so long. Nina says fuck a lot, has no lasting interest in him, knows the difference between knaves and knights. She’s telling us about different men she’d known, maybe to shuck off Andy-the-Navy-guy or maybe to stir him. On the one hand I want to give her my time and my ear, but she talks cheap. Not new to me, this story.
She sings: “Jest mello down some backroad, bein’ native and naive, eatin’ weeds and grazing dope, sniffing each other’s breeze. Me and this spring’s lover, me and love me later. Sometimes my mind I play, sometimes each old day. Beat the clock in corridors of plenty, listen to the voices rhyme, magic airwaves on the sundial.” The song was truly awful.
“It might be time for me to leave Mono campground. Change my life,” she says, dragging on another Bugler reefer. A scrap of tobacco from the end of the rolled cigarette sticks to her lip.
Sure enough, she hopped in our van the next morning, headed out with us to the highway west of Santa Barbara. The coast road, 101. Sugarfoot curled on a throw rug in the back and Nina crouched on her gear. I swiveled around in the shotgun seat so I could talk to her and still keep an eye on the road ahead. Les drove as usual, nodded once in a while towards the side view window. Kept his peace when she broke the no smoking in the van rule and lit up in the back.
We dropped her off in Christmas (the town named Solvang), California within sight of the big yellow house that she said was her adopted mother’s. “I’ll stay here with her for a while, then head up to Alaska. Time to get some money.” In the right side-view mirror, I saw her stall around, put her knapsack and guitar on the ground next to Sugarfoot, then stick out her thumb.
Reference:
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