“ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”

Dick Cavett has some useful observations in the NY Times about the language of General Petraeaus. It reminds me of the Jim Boren's When in Doubt Mumble. It would be funny if this weren't the general who is in charge of 'winning' the Iraq war.

It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to “Eyewitness News.” Its rule: never use a short word where a longer one will do. It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of “learnedness” and “scholasticism” — possibly even that dread thing, “intellectualism” — to their talk. Sorry, I mean their “articulation.”...

Petraeus’s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”?

Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.

It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. . .

He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).

NGO Volunteers in Chiang Mai

We've not had much ex-patriot contact in the two months we've been here. But things have suddenly changed. Melissa, one of the other AJWS volunteers invited people working in OD (Organization Development) with NGO's (Non-governmental Organizations - basically non-profits) in the Chiang Mai area, to meet and talk Friday afternoon. We met at trendy Coffee 94 off Nimenhaemen Street which has a lot of foreigner accomocations. (I had a passion-fruit, banana, ginger slushie, mmmmmmm. About twice the cost of a street stand, but it was air conditioned and had wifi.) The discussion focused on how folks are doing in their placements. We had a couple of British Volunteers, two AJWS volunteers, and a Frenchman. All the others (besides me) are working with organizations involved with Burmese refugees. This is a politically tricky topic here so I won't go into it further. I did ask the Frenchman, who's been working in this area for a number of years, about the radical difference between Thakileik and Myawaddy - the two Burmese border towns we've visited. His response was: Thakileik looks more properous because 70% of the world's heroin has come through it in recent years.

Meanwhile, Ew has been talking to AM who worked as a volunteer with the Canadian Volunteer organization and said AM wanted to meet me. Well, I didn't even know that they'd had this volunteer or that she was still in Chiang Mai working with the Agricultural School at Chiang Mai University now.

So after the NGO meeting, J met me and then we met AM. Appropriately, after the meeting I'd just attended, we ate at a Burmese restaurant the other volunteers had recommended.

The dinner with AM lasted several hours not only because she had worked in my organization, but she's a very lively and interesting Canadian woman. (When I mentioned French-Canadian, she corrected me. "No, I'm a Canadian. The others are English-Canadian.")

I got a lot of background about the people in my office. Hers was a rather different perspective from mine. We figured that some of the difference stems from my age and gender compared to hers. I'm glad we met and I got to hear her stories and I'm also glad that I didn't hear these stories until now when I've had a chance to form my own impressions. It was also good to hear the Ew had been telling AM very good things about the impact I'm having at the organization. I do think I'm raising possibilities and options that haven't been raised, but it's good to hear that independently. On the other hand I also wring my hands and wonder whether my being here has done any good at all. I realized Friday that I've only been here two months, which is no time at all.

It also followed up a good meeting that afternoon with my boss about what I'm doing and what I should focus on in the two weeks I have left. This meeting had also confirmed that they thought my time there was worthwhile. Just the fact that we can talk openly about things is a good sign. He asked when Joan was scheduled to leave - two days before me. He said he'd take her to the airport. Then I asked, "What about me?" "No, you're staying here."

(Bew)Air Asia

I booked my flight to Singapre through Air Asia. It’s a low fare airline, but for new users like me, there are a couple of things to beware of:

1. You have to book each leg of the trip separately. So my Chiang Mai - Singapore trip had to be booked
A. Chiang Mai-Bangkok, then I had to start all over with the second booking
B. Bangkok - Singapore

You have to fill in the forms all over again. OK, my computer had the info ready to plug in, but still. And if the second flight isn’t available, then there’s a hefty fee for changing the first flight. It might be better to call and let them check on these things before you commit your credit card.

And if your first flight is late and you miss the connecting flight on Air Asia - you lose your fare and everything!!

2. The prices are wildly deceptive. They show you the price for the flight. The Chiang Mai - Bangkok leg was listed as 449Baht. Somewhere on the page it says not including fees and taxes. But when I got to the next page it was 1386 Baht including a fuel surchage of 550 Baht.

3. Very limited luggage. 15 Kilos (about 33 pounds) is your limit. Carry on is 7 Kilos. How much if you have more? In Thailand it is 80 Baht per kilo extra (almost $3) and between Bangkok and Singapore it’s 186 Baht per kilo.

And since each flight is separate, you have to pay the extra for each leg of the flight.

This is fine for short term trips and as long as you know all this in advance, you can plan which trips would work best on Air Asia. I’d guess the best time to use Air Asia is for single flight trips with minimal luggage.

The Racket Tailed Drongo Shot

twenty or thirty times it calls

penetrating deep into my sleeping brain
it's not even light yet, go back to sleep.

several days now this morning racket
just out our window

today it is light
I groggily get up to see


Not the drongo call I know
My brain still in bed as I watch him
fly away


[Photos © whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com All Rights Reserved]

To hear this guy, watch the video here.

Refugee Nation out of Hibernation and KyiMayMaung Too

Burmese exile Kyi May Maung put links to my Border Run posts on her blog this week. She's also got two poems in a new anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, & Beyond. She has glowing praise for the book from the likes of Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States. Also lots of links to sites about Burma.

And Refugee Nation, the Laotian American theater group out of LA that wowed the audience at Out North last fall, has started writing on their blog again and will be performing in April in Berkeley.

April 25th Benefit Tickets:
Center for Lao Studies / Legacies of War

April 26th Tickets
La Pena Cultural Center

So this is a warning to my Berkeley/Oakland readers (both of you that I know of) to check it out. They offered a great view into what it means to be Laotian-American today. Their blog seems to have started in Alaska last November at the end of their national tour and petered out after they got back to LA.

Just consider for a moment all that traveling: planes, trains and automobiles from June to December in and out of town from New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Alaska, the miles, the people, the energy and effort, the changes in time and weather...it's exhausting! It's work!! So we felt we needed to take a breather. Calm ourselves. Be with ourselves. Be down with ourselves and during that time we took time to evaluate 2007 and all it's struggles and successes and take that knowledge to plan out the 2008 series of Refugee Nation events to come. We hope you follow us again because our batteries are fully charged and we look forward to making impact with people, places and things...promise. So come along for the ride or better yet come see us in person when we are in town. It's a lot nicer face to face, smile to smile.

Racket Tailed Drongo Video, Finally For Real

Something was snagging up this video - either some audio, some frames from the video, or the final titling. I rebuilt the video piece by piece and saved it until it started balking again. So here it is. After the title you have to wait about 10 seconds to see the drongo fly by the first time (it seems much longer). But wait for the slow motion version of each shot, especially the second one. Then you can see the tails clearly. I cut out the stills, but you can see them in the previous post.

Racket Tailed Drongo Video, Finally

[Click the picture to enlarge it]

The racket tailed drongo is always followed by these two long tail feathers which seem to disappear just before there's a wider feather and then the end of the tail. There are several that fly around here, but they've been incredibly hard to catch with the camera. [Go here for an even better shot taken the next day.]

But persistence pays off. Here are two on video. It's all explained on the video. To hear the drongo's strange electronic call, listen to the end of the video here.

[I don't know what's happening. iMovie keeps crashing while it's trying to save the video. I need to remake it I think, but I don't have time now. I'll add it in later when I get it figured out.]

Scooping Thai News, Almost

I was telling Bon at lunch today about seeing the gaur and the monk at the temple on Sunday. She reacted with surprise and said she saw a story like that in the newspaper today. When we got back to the office she showed me. I guess you could say I had a number of exclusive stories, like the village protest over the land survey. But as far as I know, no one else covered them. This is the first one that I've posted that I know of that was posted almost simultaneously in a national Thai newspaper. But only my loyal readers and a few people in the office are likely to know that.

I have to admit, their photographer got a lot closer than I did, but I got more story - and background on gaurs.



Of course, remembering the sign in the temple about boasting and bragging, I'm just letting you know that my surprise at this wild animal living so close to this populated area and befriending the monks was news for the Thais too. (You'd think I'd never been in Alaska, let alone had moose sleep in my backyard, but this is Thailand, the land of the endangered species.)

Black Naped Oriole

This one was really clear and easy to identify using the binoculars, but you couldn't tell in the photos. I wouldn't have known he was there if I hadn't seen him fly to the perch. In the upper photo, he's on the far left on the highest branch coming out of the side of the frame. He was there for all of maybe 15 seconds. I realize I've set up unrealistic standards, wanting to not only see the birds, but to photograph them too. Anon, I'm going to look into a camera like yours when I get back . My serious birder friend Dianne doesn't even have a camera. What you can't see in the picture are his bandit black stripes over his eyes, his other black markings on his tail and underparts, and his reddish beak.

And, coming soon, are pictures of the racket-tailed drongo in flight. These guys show themselves for five or ten seconds at a time. I finally figured out their flight path from our balcony - just a short opening - and knowing they were in the area, just kept the video camera on until they flew by. I'll try to edit the video tonight.

1950's Mike Wallace Interviews

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas Austin has about 65 Mike Wallace interviews from 1957 and 1958 on their website. The people he interviewed were all very well known names at the time, some still are. I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet, but this seems like an incredibly interesting way to connect to American history and to get some perspective on how some things have changed, how other things haven't changed at all.

There's a tendency to think that the time you live in is when people really know what's going on. But I've always been amazed reading books from the past at how aware and 'modern' people from previous centuries and millennia were.

I've picked a few of the interviews to give you an idea of what's there. Great for those with ipods to listen to in the car or at the gym. Find out how we got to where we are today. I've included the brief bios since many of the names will not be familiar to a lot of people today. (And Monica, no I didn't know who they all were either. The first one's for you though.)


Thanks to reader JM for this great tip, which he found when Salon.com discussed the interview with Pearl Buck.

Mortimer Adler
9/7/1958

Mortimer Adler, president of the Institute for Philosophical Research, former professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Chicago, and author of The Idea of Freedom, talks to Wallace about conceptions of freedom, capitalism, socialism, and the American worker.



Charles Percy
7/6/1958

Charles Percy, president of Bell & Howell, talks to Wallace about the role of government in the economic system, about private enterprise's involvement in public services, tax reform, and the soviet economic system.



Henry Kissinger
7/13/1958

Adlai Stevenson
6/1/1958

Adlai Stevenson, former governor of Illinois and twice the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, talks to Wallace about American politics, the difficulty in persuading good people to become involved in politics, diversity, elections, and the need for the average citizen to be involved in government.

William O. Douglas
5/11/1958

William Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, talks with Wallace about freedom of expression and the freedom to exchange ideas. In Douglas's book, The Right of the People, he wrote, "In recent years, as we have denounced the loss of liberties abroad we have witnessed its decline here in America."


Salvadore Dali
4/19/1958

Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, talks to Wallace about genius, the subconscious, weakness, old age and luxury, death, religion, and dreams.


Reinhold Niebuhr
4/27/1958

Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, vice president of Union Theological Seminary in New York, on leave to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and one of the most important and challenging religious thinkers in the world, talks to Wallace about the separation between church and state, Catholicism, Protestantism, anti-Semitism, communism, and nuclear war.

Oscar Hammerstein II
3/15/1958

One of the most successful and controversial figures in show business and Broadway lyricist for such classics as Oklahoma!, The King and I, and South Pacific, Oscar Hammerstein II talks to Wallace about sentimentality, racism, religion, and politics.

[He was like a father to Sweeney Todd composer Stephen Sondheim]

Pearl Buck
2/8/1958

Pearl Buck, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning novelist, talks to Wallace about American women, marriage, career versus family, and the difference between men and women.

Walter Reuther
1/25/1958

Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, talks to Wallace about his plan for profit sharing for auto workers, which was being attacked as a "giant step toward socialism."

Drew Pearson
12/7/1957

Drew Pearson, syndicated columnist, talks to Wallace about Sputnik, a third world war, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, and about being called a vicious liar by prominent politicians.

Eleanor Roosevelt
11/23/1957

Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady, talks to Wallace about Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Republicans, Democrats, the Soviet Union, Westbrook Pegler, her son's relationship with Dominican leader Rafael Trujillo, race, and garlic pills.


Kirk Douglas
11/2/1957

Kirk Douglas, a film star who had recently completed two films, Paths of Glory and The Vikings, talks to Wallace about acting, fame, the charge that Hollywood films misrepresent America abroad, Nazis, Communists, and European versus American women.
[Michael Douglas' father]

Malcolm Muggeridge
10/19/1957

Malcolm Muggeridge, former editor of Punch Magazine and one of England's leading intellectuals, talks to Wallace about his article in The Saturday Evening Post in which he created an international furor by criticizing Queen Elizabeth.


Orval Faubus
9/15/1957

Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, talks to Wallace from the Governor's mansion in Little Rock during his standoff with the Federal Government over the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Faubus had called in the National Guard to bar the African-American students from the school and had met the day before this interview with President Eisenhower in an effort to resolve the conflict.


Margaret Sanger
9/21/1957

Margaret Sanger, the leader of the birth control movement in America, talks to Wallace about why she became an advocate for birth control, over-population, the Catholic Church, and morality.


Frank Lloyd Wright
9/1/1957 and 9/28/1957

This interview was recorded in two parts. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, talks to Wallace about religion, war, mercy killing, art, critics, his mile-high skyscraper, America's youth, sex, morality, politics, nature, and death.
Thanks to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for their cooperation in presenting this interview here. This interview is available on home video through the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.



Eddie Arcaro
9/8/1957

Eddie Arcaro, the most celebrated jockey in America, winner of 5 Kentucky Derbys and 22 million dollars in purses over a 25-year career, talks with Wallace about horse racing, gambling, drugging of horses, and the pressure to win.

[Sports scandals with drugs are nothing new]

Senator James Eastland
7/28/1957

Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who has been called "The Voice of the White South," talks to Wallace about segregation, slavery, the Soviet Union, voting rights laws, and the Ku Klux Klan.
NOTE: This interview contains language that may be offensive to some people.
[Listen to a Mississippi Senator when segregation was still the law in the South]

Bob Feller
8/4/1957

Bob Feller, one of the great baseball pitchers of all time, talks to Wallace about ballplayers' salaries, the reserve clause, rich ball clubs, Pay TV, beer companies as sponsors, bean balls, gambling, and Joe DiMaggio versus Ted Williams.


Charles "Commando" Kelly
6/30/1957

Chuck "Commando" Kelly, recipient of the Medal of Honor in World War II, talks to Wallace about his financial troubles, unemployment, the Korean War, and nuclear weapons.


Steve Allen
7/7/1957

Steve Allen, comedian, musician, and television personality, talks to Wallace about his rivalry with Ed Sullivan, his television show, and awards.


Gloria Swanson
4/28/1957

Gloria Swanson, one of Hollywood's most spectacular stars, talks to Wallace about why she is not making films, sex appeal, Hollywood in the 1920s, marriage, plastic surgery, and cancer cures.


Eldon Edwards
5/5/1957

Eldon Edwards, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, talks to Wallace about the South's attitude toward the KKK, the Klan's membership, segregation, the NAACP, communism, and J. Edgar Hoover.