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Commentary

Alone in the forest

Discovering the kindness of strangers in Cuba.


A truck had dropped me off at a crossroads. But instead of driving away, the well-meaning driver was still trying to tell me something. Probably, “No cars are coming. You’re in the middle of nowhere. Are you crazy? What are you doing, little lady?”

I got the gist, even though I didn’t speak Spanish. I started walking, and as the distance between us grew, I could hear him yelling that maybe this was a bad idea, and he motioned for me to get back into the truck. He honked again.

But I kept on walking. No time for debate.

I passed a man wearing a suit and a felt hat, who was also headed for San Diego de los Banos, a town known for its thermal baths. He was just standing there, waiting in the middle of nowhere, as if it were a bus stop. But there was no bus stop. No car or another person in sight.

Perhaps he is still waiting there.

The man said that San Diego de los Banos was a long way off — 15 kilometers at least. But rather than join him, standing in the countryside, with the chance that a car may never show up, I decided that if I walked fast enough, perhaps I could still reach the town by nightfall.

It was now 3:30 p.m. The sky was overcast. About three more hours of sunlight left. Remembering the distance of bygone high school cross-country races, I calculated that 3.1 miles equaled five kilometers. If I can walk three miles per hour, surely I can reach town by dark, I thought. It is doable.

So I began walking. And I walked and walked.

And not a single car came by.

The road through the countryside rose and fell, and soon, the flatness of the land gave way to a forest of pines and cedars. Not far from here, Che Guevara had moved his headquarters into a cave during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was just me and this forest, and if I shouted, I’d spook myself.

Suddenly, two men emerged from nowhere, walking next to their bikes. Perhaps there was a house tucked away in the forest that I couldn’t see. I began to walk a little faster, but the two men were gaining on me.

Why are they walking next to their bikes? I asked myself.

My duffel was heavy, and I tried to pick up the pace, but they were getting closer.

I could totally be raped and robbed right now, I thought, clenching my teeth.

I stopped and let them overtake me. A teenager with his father on a bicycle ride, it appeared. They happened to be walking next to their bikes because the hill was on an incline.

“Hola,” they said, after I gamely raised my hand and said, “hi.” I knew I was safe after I asked them how far San Diego de los Banos was, and the man replied with a wave of his hand into the distance, “twelve kilometers. It’s far away.” I reassured him that I was hoping to flag a car that came this way. He nodded, and they soon passed me.

I walked a few more kilometers when I saw two other men approaching from behind — again walking with their bikes.

There is nobody around, so I am really at their mercy here, I began to think. Suppose I get killed in this forest. The Cuban police might take a week to identify my rotting body from my passport photo. My imagination was getting the better of me again; I began to wonder how much media coverage the story would get at home.

And then, the men were next to me. One of them offered to put my bag on his bike. I said no, that I can carry it myself. Now there is a ploy, I thought. Put the tourist’s bag on the bike and ride off.

It was not until the younger of the two men smiled sympathetically and said something about confianza that I softened. I said “si,” and put my duffel on his bike. I recognized the word from the French confiance, which means “trust.”

And so began our 12-kilometer ride to San Diego de los Banos, where the two men lived. The sun emerged, and the skies then revealed the depth of their blue heights, with wispy clouds soaring high above. When we would reach the summit of a hill, I would sit atop the horizontal bar of the bike, “sidesaddle,” in front of the younger man, and hold onto the inner handle bar while he, wearing my backpack, would steer us both downhill, with the older man following close behind.

We’d breeze past palm trees and lush vegetation, the young man applying the brakes generously and carefully avoiding the road’s potholes, until the hill petered out. Then the three of us would hop off the bikes and walk them up to the next summit, get back on, and ride downhill again.

A strange grunting noise seemed to follow us each time we stopped. And then came a long squeal.

Poking out of the slits of two sacks tied onto each bike were two snouts, each sniffing the air as if to figure out what was going on. We were biking with a couple of hogs.

“Musica,” joked the younger man as we navigated down yet another hill.

As we approached town, we passed people who looked up and stared. Sometimes, I heard laughs and “Chiiiiina.”

I am American, but I let people think I was from China during this trip to see Cuba on my own. “Chairman Mao!” some would offer generously in a eureka moment of finding common ground. “Lejos,” or “far,” people would say, in remarking how long my plane trip must have been from Asia.

I often got those comments while walking — or waiting for transport.

This is a country where you often have to stick your thumb out to get somewhere, especially when off the beaten track, because of a shortage of buses. No hitch aboard a tractor, truck, or even motorcycle sidecar prepared me, however, for the possibility of catching a ride aboard somebody’s bicycle.

When the younger man had first motioned for me to jump on his bike, I balked. How did he want me to sit, I wondered. Did he want me to straddle it?

“You’re from China,” he said, laughing. “You don’t know how?” He then stuck out his butt to demonstrate that the best way was to sit sideways.

I do know this. I would probably still be walking in the dark in that uninhabited forest, were it not for those two men. Not once did a car pass along the road that entire time.

We made it to town just before nightfall.

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A man brings a spare bike home from the repair shop in Candelaria, a town on the road from San Diego de los Baños. October 1999. (Alastair Smith)
San Diego de los Baños
Commentary

Alone in the Forest

Discovering the kindness of strangers in Cuba.

By Lita Wong
A man brings a spare bike home from the repair shop in Candelaria, a town on the road to San Diego de los Baños. October 1999. Alastair Smith

First in a two-part series. Click here for the second part.

A truck had dropped me off at a crossroads. But instead of driving away, the well-meaning driver was still trying to tell me something. Probably, “No cars are coming. You’re in the middle of nowhere. Are you crazy? What are you doing, little lady?”

I got the gist, even though I didn’t speak Spanish. I started walking, and as the distance between us grew, I could hear him yelling that maybe this was a bad idea, and he motioned for me to get back into the truck. He honked again.

But I kept on walking. No time for debate.

I passed a man wearing a suit and a felt hat, who was also headed for San Diego de los Baños, a town known for its thermal baths. He was just standing there, waiting in the middle of nowhere, as if it were a bus stop. But there was no bus stop. No car or another person in sight.

Perhaps he is still waiting there.

The man said that San Diego de los Baños was a long way off — fifteen kilometers at least. But rather than join him, standing in the countryside, with the chance that a car may never show up, I decided that if I walked fast enough, perhaps I could still reach the town by nightfall.

It was now 3:30 p.m. The sky was overcast. About three more hours of sunlight left. Remembering the distance of bygone high school cross-country races, I calculated that 3.1 miles equaled five kilometers. If I can walk three miles per hour, surely I can reach town by dark, I thought. It is doable.

So I began walking. And I walked and walked.

And not a single car came by.

The road through the countryside rose and fell, and soon, the flatness of the land gave way to a forest of pines and cedars. Not far from here, Che Guevara had moved his headquarters into a cave during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was just me and this forest, and if I shouted, I’d spook myself.

Suddenly, two men emerged from nowhere, walking next to their bikes. Perhaps there was a house tucked away in the forest that I couldn’t see. I began to walk a little faster, but the two men were gaining on me.

Why are they walking next to their bikes? I asked myself.

My duffel was heavy, and I tried to pick up the pace, but they were getting closer.

I could totally be raped and robbed right now, I thought, clenching my teeth.

I stopped and let them overtake me. A teenager with his father on a bicycle ride, it appeared. They happened to be walking next to their bikes because the hill was on an incline.

“Hola,” they said, after I gamely raised my hand and said, “Hi.” I knew I was safe after I asked them how far San Diego de los Baños was, and the man replied with a wave of his hand into the distance, “Twelve kilometers. It’s far away.” I reassured him that I was hoping to flag a car that came this way. He nodded, and they soon passed me.

I walked a few more kilometers when I saw two other men approaching from behind — again walking with their bikes.

There is nobody around, so I am really at their mercy here, I began to think. Suppose I get killed in this forest. The Cuban police might take a week to identify my rotting body from my passport photo. My imagination was getting the better of me again; I began to wonder how much media coverage the story would get at home.

And then, the men were next to me. One of them offered to put my bag on his bike. I said no, that I can carry it myself. Now there is a ploy, I thought. Put the tourist’s bag on the bike and ride off.

It was not until the younger of the two men smiled sympathetically and said something about confianza that I softened. I said “Sí,” and put my duffel on his bike. I recognized the word from the French confiance, which means “trust.”

And so began our twelve-kilometer ride to San Diego de los Baños, where the two men lived. The sun emerged, and the skies then revealed the depth of their blue heights, with wispy clouds soaring high above. When we would reach the summit of a hill, I would sit atop the horizontal bar of the bike, “sidesaddle,” in front of the younger man, and hold onto the inner handle bar while he, wearing my backpack, would steer us both downhill, with the older man following close behind.

We’d breeze past palm trees and lush vegetation, the young man applying the brakes generously and carefully avoiding the road’s potholes, until the hill petered out. Then the three of us would hop off the bikes and walk them up to the next summit, get back on, and ride downhill again.

A strange grunting noise seemed to follow us each time we stopped. And then came a long squeal.

Poking out of the slits of two sacks tied onto each bike were two snouts, each sniffing the air as if to figure out what was going on. We were biking with a couple of hogs.

“Música,” joked the younger man as we navigated down yet another hill.

As we approached town, we passed people who looked up and stared. Sometimes, I heard laughs and “Chiiiiina.”

I am American, but I let people think I was from China during this trip to see Cuba on my own. “Chairman Mao!” some would offer generously in a eureka moment of finding common ground. “Lejos,” or “far,” people would say, in remarking how long my plane trip must have been from Asia.

I often got those comments while walking — or waiting for transport.

This is a country where you often have to stick your thumb out to get somewhere, especially when off the beaten track, because of a shortage of buses. No hitch aboard a tractor, truck, or even motorcycle sidecar prepared me, however, for the possibility of catching a ride aboard somebody’s bicycle.

When the younger man had first motioned for me to jump on his bike, I balked. How did he want me to sit, I wondered. Did he want me to straddle it?

“You’re from China,” he said, laughing. “You don’t know how?” He then stuck out his butt to demonstrate that the best way was to sit sideways.

I do know this. I would probably still be walking in the dark in that uninhabited forest, were it not for those two men. Not once did a car pass along the road that entire time.

We made it to town just before nightfall.

November 2, 1999

First in a two-part series. Click here for the second part.

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Commentary

Finding solace in cyberspace

savage.jpg

Stricken with the loneliest of illnesses, people with rare forms of cancer have built their own online communities.


Savage, a Boston Globe correspondent and ITF contributor, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. This story was originally published June 4, 2001.

 

“No man is an island,” the poet John Donne assures us. But on October 5, 1998, I had a hard time sharing his optimism. That was the day I found out I had LMS — leiomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of soft muscle tissue that strikes fewer than four people out of a million.

But despite those numbers, I never really felt alone. Today, people with extremely rare medical conditions around the world are banding together via email groups. It is, in every sense, a revolution in terms of patient empowerment, one that has quickly spread in the past couple of years.

Cancers like LMS are among the loneliest of illnesses. While those with more common cancers can usually find a network of others in the same city who have the same condition and who are going through the same thing, my chances of ever meeting another LMS patient seemed slim.

Only a few years ago, that isolation would have been my new reality. It certainly was for Orland Hetherington, a native of Ontario, Canada, who had LMS diagnosed in 1994. “I spent two years trying desperately to find another living soul with LMS,” Hetherington said. “I was alone with this and scared. I became somewhat obsessed with finding someone else on the planet with LMS and searching harder for more and more information.”

In March 1997, LaDonna Backmeyer, an LMS patient in Rock Island, Illinois, found Hetherington on a cancer online support list. She asked him to help her start an online discussion group specifically for LMS patients and their families and friends. From just four members then, that email group has grown to more than 560 subscribers.

For a while, I was one of them. The group instantly welcomed me to its ranks with both personal notes of understanding and a barrage of advice on treatment options and research information that helped me know more about what lay ahead during my recovery.

The group “has given information to several hundred patients since its founding,” Backmeyer said. “Some of the patients check in for a small amount of time in order to get the information they need; others find a group of welcoming friends, and they stay.”

All this from a machine

In my case, the group helped me learn about a then-experimental surgical technique developed by Dr. Steven Curley at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I flew to Houston and underwent Curley's surgery, which removed all traces of tumor from my liver in December 1998. As of my last trimonthly check up, I remain cancer-free without having had to undergo chemotherapy.

In October 2000, Curley was quoted in a U.S. News & World Report article about a successful new generation of cancer-fighting techniques; because of the help of the LMS group, I found him two years before the general public learned of his existence.

There are similar email lists for about sixty other cancers. All are the offspring of a single group list started three years ago by the not-for-profit Association of Cancer Online Resources, founded by Gilles Frydman, a New York City computer entrepreneur. Frydman's wife was stricken with breast cancer and found information through an email list that helped her avoid a mastectomy.

"I started to look at how cancer patients use the Internet," Frydman said. He found that people with a variety of cancers all seemed to end up on a single, general-cancer email list. "I thought it was outrageous that only people suffering from very common forms, like breast and prostate cancer, got their own specific mailing list. So it seemed to me that what we should do was create a mailing list for every known type of cancer." Today, there are more than 125 email groups, with a total enrollment in the tens of thousands.

"Everyone comes to this support group with no idea of the vast information that is going to be shared with them," said one LMS group member, Cynthia Whitson of LaGrange, Georgia. "We all just come to selfishly help ourselves find the way through the maze of doctors, facilities, treatments, and side effects. We find that we become a part of an emotional movement to collectively find the answer to each one's question."

For many, helping others on the list find answers becomes a way to cope themselves. "I had every intention of getting off the group during this three-month break between treatments while I waited for the next scan date," Whitson said. "But you can't leave it. It becomes a part of your life, just as cancer will forever be a part of your everyday life."

Many members of these rare-cancer communities attest to this sense of involvement–becoming, in the words of Donne’s poem, not an island but a “part of the main … involved in Mankind.”

“The list, for me, has meant longer time here on Earth and incredible satisfaction in trying to help others with LMS,”

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Blog

In France, end of first-round presidential elections brings old with new


When far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen won a place in the second-round presidential elections in 2002, beating out the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, the French seemed startled. They had given themselves little to choose from: right or more right.

Capturing just fewer than 17 percent of the vote in 2002, Le Pen, leader of the controversial, anti-immigrant National Front, set the stage for Jacques Chirac’s landslide victory in a bizarre contest of two conservatives.

Now, with Chirac’s term coming to a close and another round of presidential posturing upon them, the French look forward to a much more traditional, balanced field — at least politically.

In the French version of what Americans might label a presidential primary Sunday, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal won pluralities to qualify for the second and final round of elections next month.

Speaking at a rally in Poitou-Charentes region, Royal promised a new future for the French people, troubled by immigration and a struggling protectionist economy.

Many French people “do not want a France ruled by the law of the strongest or the most brutal, sewn-up by financial interests, where all powers are concentrated in the same few hands,” the Times quoted her as saying. “I am a free woman, as you are a free people,” she added.

Those words carry an interesting subtext for American politicos gearing up for the 2008 presidential race. Like Hillary Clinton in the U.S., Royal seeks to become the first female president in her country.

Royal’s prospects look uncertain. Current public opinion polls in France show Sarkozy up eight points, but with record turnouts at the polls around France — more than 84 percent of France’s 44.5 million registered voters cast ballots — it looks like this election might be harder than usual to predict.

Whatever the outcome, it means a return to a new take on an old favorite in France: left verses right.

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Blog

Fear quarantines Australia


“Quarantine,” as Dr. David F. Musto, a Yale University drug policy historian, noted in his 1986 article “Quarantine and the Problem of AIDS,” comes from the Italian word for “forty days.” That’s the arbitrary length of time ships coming from supposedly contagious areas used to be held at a distance from port to prevent disease from spreading to the city’s population. It’s an old idea, used back then to evoke a feeling of safety from diseases like leprosy, yellow fever, and cholera. On Friday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared it a fit idea for AIDS.

More specifically, he said on Friday that Australia should bar HIV-positive immigrants from entering the country, according to an AP report. Howard said Health Minister Tony Abbott was looking into means of tightening Australia’s HIV-exclusive immigration policy, the report adds. Currently, Australia’s health screening program unconditionally bars immigrants with active or untreated tuberculosis but evaluates HIV-positive applicants on a case-by-case basis.

While an Australian move towards a more HIV-exclusive immigration policy would hardly make it the first nation to bar all HIV-positive people entry — Russia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates all unconditionally ban HIV-positive people from entering their borders — the decision would put them among a small and dwindling group of nations maintaining absolute bans. France and Britain have admitted non-citizens infected with HIV, and Costa Rica, South Africa, and Thailand have all lifted HIV-exclusion policies, according to one 1998 report.

Current U.S. immigration policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, excludes HIV-positive people from entering the country. The U.S. first categorized HIV as a “dangerous contagious disease,” added it to its exclusion list, and began requiring mandatory testing of all applicants for the virus in 1987 under President Reagan.

Unlike President Reagan, AIDS isn’t a subject I would normally discuss. Outside of a few debate rounds in high school when the other side chose to debate U.S. HIV-exclusion policy, I knew little about the topic before I set out writing this post. I’m not an activist on the issue and certainly not an expert. I don’t even know anyone who is HIV positive. Still, I think the issue prompts a more thoughtful, hard look at how we react to incurable, mysterious diseases like leprosy and cholera. Australians are (at least somewhat understandably) scared of AIDS, but in this case, perceived security should not trump the individual value of immigrants in Australia or elsewhere. Australians, give out condoms and research cures. Don’t throw up a wall and pretend the black-plague-at-the-gates will disappear if you hide in your own quarantine.

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Blog

This Easter, bittersweet chocolate is best


This Easter, among overflowing baskets of mashmellow chickens, chocolate bunnies and Jelly Bellys, lay the bittersweet lamentations of the Pope. 

Speaking Sunday to tens of thousands of faithful at St. Peter’s Square, he cracked the eggshell of Easter’s sugary coating to discuss “how many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world.”

I am happy to say that, for a change, the Pope and I are on the same page.  While Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas often seem divorced from their principled roots and pious traditions — Easter marks the second biggest holiday for candy sales in the United States — the Pope kept the spirit of Christ’s resurrection central to his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” Easter address.  He spoke about terrorism, about kidnapping, and about the parts of the world that need political, economic, and social resurrection the most.

From Darfur to Afghanistan, Congo, and Somalia, the Pope’s call for reconciliation and peace, though idealistic, echoes the sense of hope growing in Northern Ireland.  On a holiday known for it’s pastel bunnies, egg hunts, and baskets of candy, I welcome his social conscience.  I only wish he had a few less conflicts to lament.

Read more about the Pope’s address here.

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Blog

A bucketful of hope


With conflict in the Middle East burning as hot as a California wildfire in spring and strife in Chechnya hardly close to a conclusion, a bucketful of hope seems ready to put out the coals of one long-painful blaze for good.

The devastating conflict between Protestants and Catholics over control of Northern Ireland looks close to peace. On March 26, prominent Protestant politician Ian Paisley sat down with Gerry Adams, a Catholic and leader of Sinn Fein, a political party originally formed as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, in an unprecedented display of compromise and hope.

With so many reasons to lose hope for peace around the world, the meeting stands as a beacon of promise for a better future in Northern Ireland and countries like Chechnya and Israel, where historical territorial conflicts and irredentism have long blocked cease-fires and reconciliations.

As Paisley put it in remarks given at the meeting, “We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future.”

I agree. I only wish more world leaders came to recognize that constantly using the past to justify present atrocities and violence only perpetuates hatred and misunderstanding among races, religions, nations, and states.

We don’t have to forget the past to bring a happier future; we need to be willing to move past it. Otherwise the fires will keep on raging.

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Blog

Terrorism in a suit


Gritty desert sand blowing, tan brick fading in the harsh sun, Arabic letters sprawling across signs and banners, women winding through streets wearing the hijab. Old cars honking as they make their way through traffic, long beards waving in a breeze, what do you see? Improvised explosive devices buried by roads? AK-47s with half-empty magazines? Terrorists?

You are in Iraq, but you probably guessed that before I told you. Imagery commands strong associations, and sometimes those associations help us make sense of the world and predict events. But make no mistake, those associations can just as easily lead us to misguided conclusions. You might think of terrorism when you see a Muslim, or when images show up in the paper of a far-off Arab land, even if you don't think that individual is a terorist. I want you to challenge those assumptions and look inward. Even the American government, under an objective definition, can be a terrorist.

Joshua S. Goldstein, professor of political science at American University in Washington, D.C., and Jon C. Pevehouse, with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, define terrorism in their 2006 edition of International Relations as “political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately.” By that definition, America commits terrorism, too.

For an example, look no further than the United States’s bombing of Afghanistan in ironic retaliation for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As Noam Chomsky, prolific political author and professor of linguistics at MIT, explained in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, George W. Bush on Oct. 12, 2001, “announced to the Afghan people that we will continue to bomb you, unless your leadership turns over to us the people whom we suspect of carrying out crimes.” He didn't show a shred of evidence about crimes they might have committed. Then the U.S. bombs started dropping.

What about the American crimes? Professor Marc W. Herold from the Whittemore School of Business & Economics estimates that the U.S. air war on Afghanistan killed more than 3,000 Afghani civilians and psychologically traumatized many more. His explanation? “The apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan.”

Understandably incensed by the atrocious terrorism in New York only a month prior, it seems the American public turned a blind eye to what Noam cites as a “textbook illustration of international terrorism by the U.S.’s official definition.” However, I will be the first to recognize that one argument does not the debate make. For brevity’s sake let me direct the reader to further examples. I simply suggest the American public pull the American-flag-colored wool off their eyes and recognize the hypocrisy before them. Read more of the evidence and debate me. I welcome it.

Senseless fear does no good. As Chomsky once famously said, “Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.” I ask that each of us stop lying complicity by while the powers you vote for perpetrate terrorist violence. Challenge assumptions and examine the facts because sometimes terrorists wear a suit.

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Blog

Dirty secrets? Like, whatever!


When I asked one of my classmates how he felt about the classification of government information, his response was as terse as it was disappointing. "I don't," he said.

Ask a student you see walking to a class at any college campus in America. The responses rarely vary.

The iPod Generation, with its sleek camera phones and on-demand online news, has all too often simply forgotten about the dirty little secrets that those we empower to run our lives and spend our money hide from us on a daily basis.

We skate across the surface of today's 24-hour news cycle, across the icy layer of the superficial and the celebrity that dominates today’s programming.

So how can anyone blame us?

We are, as the cliché goes, what we eat. As the news becomes increasingly soft and profit-oriented, healthy choices become more and more scarce.

Can I or any other transparency advocate blame a generation choosing from the journalistic equivalent of McDonald's for their unhealthy diet? Logic tells me I must answer no.

Had I never broken through that ice and into the debate room during high school, I, too, might never have discovered the cold waters that lie beneath the surface.

Once I did, the truth was as shocking as any plunge into a wintry lake.

Hundreds of detainees held without charge or due process in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; torture in secret prisons from North Africa to the Middle East to Eastern Europe; illegal wiretapping of American citizens. Every story read like the topic of a high-adrenaline bestseller ready to fall off bookshelves at a Borders or Barnes & Noble near me.

But the stories were true. And the deeper I dove, as I arrived at college and began volunteering at the Freedom of Information Center, the more unbelievable, shocking truths I discovered.

A U.S. government report saying the Iraq war has significantly increased the threat of terrorism, not quelled it; Iraqi insurgents who not only were financially self-sufficient but even earned enough money to fund other terrorists around the world: These kinds of truths made me stare dumbly at my flat new laptop’s screen.

They underscore the necessity of a national dialogue about open government and transparency like Sunshine Week.

Now that I have seen the shadowy world beneath that layer of ice, I wonder how anyone could simply ignore the injustices our votes enable and tax dollars bankroll.

But I don’t wonder long.

I remember the words of the late President Reagan, who famously classified his grades after taking the oath of office: "All you knew is what I told you."

I remembered what I learned in history class: how he had neglected to mention his decision to sell arms to Iran and send the profits to anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua.

I remembered my generation, entirely too young to remember the lesson of the famous Iran-Contra Affair and, like every generation, probably could have paid closer attention during American History.

When I think about how little my generation knows about the indignities of our times, I have to forgive them.

Instead of learning from a young age not to trust our politicians' power to create secrets, we went ice-skating.

This week is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast, and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools, and others interested in the public's right to know.

 

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Photo Essays

The martyrs are home

Martyrs01.jpgPost-war reparations in Guatemala.


Surrounded by coffins, ribbons, and three forensic anthropologists, families of victims from Guatemala’s 36-year internal conflict received their deceased relatives’ remains on January 25, 2007. The families fathered in a church in Xaxmoxan, Chajul, Quiché, Guatemala, finding closure more than two years after the National Coordination of Widows in Guatemala (CONAVIGUA) began compling witness testimonies from villages in the municipality of Chajul. During the internal conflict from 1960 to 1996, Quiché’s population suffered 263 massacres, according to the Recuperation of Historic Memory report, known as REMHI and entitled Guatemala: Never Again. In the words of one son who received his father’s remains: “This is a great moment. My father has arrived. The martyrs are home.”

[Click here to enter the visual essay.]

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New York
Commentary

One Piece at a Time

Stitching the past together.

By Rachel Van Thyn

QuiltFor Hanukkah this year I may have received the most meaningful gift I’ve ever been given. My family isn’t all that big on the gift-giving associated with that time of year. Like many people, it’s more about the time we spend together as a family than the price tags or the presents. We get simple things, like Dutch chocolate letters, an old tradition from my dad; or useful things, like teacups or socks or warm sweaters. And to be honest, this year I didn’t even want a gift. Everyone was happy and healthy, and that’s all that mattered.

However, my mom surprised me this year. When I was in high school she taught me how to knit, and I had spent many years slowly knitting colored squares with the intention of one day creating a quilt. She started making squares as well, and when I went away to university we stored the squares and the yarn in our guest room. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had taken on the task of sewing together not only squares that both she and I had made but added those to squares my dad’s mother had made as well: a three-generation quilt.

I was completely stunned. I knew that my mom must have spent countless hours painstakingly arranging all the squares and sewing them together. Her inclusion of pieces from my oma (“grandmother” in Dutch) gives the quilt an added meaning. My oma passed away when I was fourteen, just as I was beginning to know her. She and her husband, who died when I was three, were both Holocaust survivors. I feel as if I’ve spent the rest of my life searching for pieces of them, tying stories, pictures, and memories together in an attempt to hold on to her.

I know a few people who have their grandparent’s pocket watch or a piece of jewelry belonging to a great-great relative. Or maybe it’s an old photograph that they carry in their wallet. These objects remain almost invincible to time, preserving the memories of their past owners and keeping them alive.

Aside from objects, stories that are passed from generation to generation also keep memories from dying. Also, sometimes people name their children after those who have passed on as a way to give honor to their memory.

As for my grandmother, I try to weave the stories my family has told me about her with my own memories as well as physical objects. Before she died, a Holocaust museum in Florida interviewed my grandmother. I listened to the tapes, searching for answers into who she was. She described her experiences about being in a line that separated the people who will live from the people who will die, and about where they slept, ate, and cried. Her spirit and determination comes through on those tapes so vividly, it’s almost as if she’s next to me and we’re having this intimate conversation. I want and need to keep her memory alive for my children and their children too.

In the meantime, the quilt lays on my bed, protecting me from the unknown secrets in the night and keeping me warm. My squares, which are sometimes slightly misshapen or hampered by mistakes, intertwine with those of my mom, pieces that are uniform, brightly colored, and cheerful. My eyes follow the stitches to my oma’s squares, neat, tightly bound, and of deep, rich shades of brown and orange that were popular in the seventies. And maybe it sounds silly, but I know she’s there with me. It’s as if her soul shines through the yarn. Perhaps physical objects are our most powerful relics after all. Either way, they certainly keep our bodies and our hearts warm.

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