Another Blow to the Catholic Church.

The Pope is coming to Britain in September. In lieu of his upcoming visit, the British Foreign Office circulated an internal memo - born from "a discussion between three or four junior staff members who had gotten together to brainstorm on how to make the visit a success", and probably after a less than enthusiastic staff meeting, no doubt - listing some important activities for the Catholic Church's premier gateway to God. 

The product of this "brainstorm session" lists such appropriate "social" activities for Pope Benedict as: a "launch of 'Benedict' condoms", "launch a helpline for abused children", "open an adoption ward", "bless a civil partnership", "announce sacking of dodgy bishops", and a "training course for all bishops on child abuse allegations".

The Brits clearly know how to exercise discretion.

The hilarity of the situation aside, with national elections just weeks away, the Labour party has to be kicking themselves; there are 4.4 million British Catholics, and most of them vote Labour. The Conservatives, lead by David Cameron whose Libertarian-esque opening campaign speech heralded increased individual responsibility and a smaller government, has to be smiling at the inability of the Foreign Office to control their junior staffers. 

I wonder who the asinine moron was to actually leaked the memo to the Daily Telegraph. The NYT wrote that British Catholics won't be bothered by the contents of the memo because "they are used to getting bad press."

Maybe Henry VIII knew what he was doing when he created the Church of England.

Democracy. One word, but not one meaning.

I was reading a New York Times article today about the Iraqi people turning out in force to vote in elections for their Parliament on Sunday. This would be a story all on its own; it is made even more extraordinary by the fact that insurgent-detonated bombs killed 38 people in Baghdad on election day. 

 

An Iraqi man told the NYT reporter defiantly that his people "are not afraid of explosions anymore," and held up his purple ink stained figure signifying that he had voted. Behind him was the rubble of a torn-apart apartment building that had fallen victim to one of the bombs earlier in the day. 

 

 

The Iraqi people showed immense courage in voting under fire. They risked their lives for the sake of democracy; it seems that everyone knew that the continuing American military presence in their country hinges on this critical election. If they elect people that the world can be confident in to hold down the fort in a war zone, then Uncle Sam just might feel confident enough to finally scale back their operations there. 

I was struck by the effect of war on Iraq's social psyche - how tough must a society be to not only survive the likes of Saddam Hussein, but the brunt of the American military industrial complex. I thought back to a Soviet Russia history class that I took in undergrad - we talked for a lecture of the effects on the Russian people that lost millions of people in World War II, most of them young men from the ages of 18 to about 28. The losses didn't stop there though. Before and after the War, people were being killed en masse, mostly young people trying to stand up to the Soviet regime in "party purges" and for being enemies of the state. A good book to read on this is Ayn Rand's We the Living. It is her first novel, and for the most part, does not serve any political agenda other than to depict how utterly bleak life was under the Soviet government in Russia in the 1920s and 30s.

Iraqis, no doubt, are a tough lot. A website called Iraq: The Human Cost was started by an MIT professor looking to fully describe what the cost of the Iraq war is to those who will live with the consequences long after Western Powerhouses pull their fighting forces out: the Iraqis. Huda Ahmed, an Iraqi woman and a fellow at MIT, reports: "The constant feeling among the Iraqis is that their blood is cheap and no one cares for them. Both the Iraqi government and the multi-national forces declined many times to admit the genuine number of the Iraqi casualties caused by their actions."

The Iraqis have a rough road head, no doubt about it. Sandwiched between terrorist havens Iran to the East and Syria to the West, Iraq doesn't exactly have stable nations surrounding them. Saudi Arabia, Iraq's Southern-most neighbor, is a country which has yet to let women get behind the wheel of a car, and will be graduating their first class of women from law school just this year, is not exactly a forward thinking nation either. Within Iraq, centuries old battles are being waged amongst Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish ethnic groups.

It is not surprising that the history of Baghdad and Iraq paints a tumultuous picture. Baghdad was once the center of learning during the Islamic Golden Age, a city that has seen conquerors come and go: first came the Sumerians, then the Persians, followed by the Parthians, the Romans, the Muslims and the prophet Mohammed, it was then destroyed by the Mongols in the "sack of Baghdad" who massacred Baghdad's people and tore down all landmarks of knowledge. Then the Ottomans strolled in during the 14th and 15th centuries, and ruled until the Brits took over after World War I. Iraq was granted independence in 1932, and the infamous Saddam came on to the scene in 1979 after seizing power from his successor and arresting everyone who worked for him. It all seems a bit hopeless.

In the face of all of this, Iraqis came to the polls, when bombs were exploding all around them, and voted for their future. They voted for the chance to someday be free of tribal warring, to be able to walk down the street and not fear for their lives. They want to do it their way. By showing up to the polls, Iraqis made a firm statement to the world: We have been through this before. Let us rebuild. One Iraqi summed it up well, saying that "we have been through three wars before...[the bombs we heard today] was just the play of children that we heard."

Mental Toughness: A Rower's Dream.

I rowed on the Cam this morning in the snow. In small drops, water splashed on to my oar and froze instantly. The ice creeped up my blade until everything save the neoprene handle was encased.

Snow is an event in Cambs - in fact, Cambridge is one of the driest spots in the UK. Despite the lack of measurable precipitation, the air always seems to be a bit damp; which is especially evident now that cold season is in full swing on campus. My teammate, Aoife, who rows in front of me in our boat hails from Ireland. She told me this morning that "the damp" in the British Isles is something that even tough old "Grannies are afraid of", sometimes leaving rooms in the house closed up during the winter because of it.

Despite the adverse conditions, the snow, the damp, the cold, and rowing on a hard wooden plank that somehow resembles a seat at 6:30 am, elicited not frustration from me and the women that I row with, but laughter.  As soon as the snow started coming down in huge mushroom-sized flakes, we all giggled. Snow? Really? 

It hit me then: mental toughness is both a sufficient and necessary condition and a catalyst for anyone who gets up at an ungodly hour in the cold, folds yourself into a seat that is far too small for your ass (the other girls and I have affectionately deemed the parts of your ass that fold over the seat "spillover"), locks your hands to a blade and gets shouted at from the bank of the river whilst attempting to repeat the same stroke motion perfectly over and over again.

Penn State University's Sport Psychology Services, from an article by one of the U.S.'s leading sports psychologists, defines mental toughness as an athlete's "natural or developed psychological edge that enables [one] to: Generally cope better than your opponents with the many demands that are placed on [an athlete] as a performer," and is the ability "to be more consistent and better than [an athlete's] opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, resilient, and in control under pressure." 

Indeed. 

This past Friday in the Robinson Head Race on the River Cam, my boat finished 2.2 kilometers upstream in 11 minutes flat, beating such heavyweight Cambridge colleges as St. John's College, who rows as Lady Margaret Boat Club - they have more money than God, and their corporate sponsors pay them to go on team training camps in exotic locales during the Christmas break; Emmanuel College - the women's first boat that we slaughtered is currently the Head of the River for Lent Bumps, the second largest Cambridge college race during the school year next to May Bumps (Note: Head of the River means that they finished first last year, so they will be starting at first this year, so they are a pretty big deal); and Robinson College, a team who was deemed to be "tough" by our coach. We tied with Peterhouse Boat Club, the oldest college in Cambridge, which means they have one of the largest alumni bases at the University; they too have more money than the Holy Trinity.

This, however, is the best part: we beat our Men's boat by 47 seconds. That's right, 47. If you round up, that's a whole minute. Not only did we beat the boys who row with our college, but we beat a third of the men's boats entered in the race. 

Mental toughness = Us.

Money, It's A Gas....

President Obama said yesterday that America's financial situation is still "unacceptable," reports the New York Times. The President went on to comment: "[j]ust as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century."  

Yet - how do we determine the path to "economic success?" How will we know the "areas" to "invest in" and what does "investment" entail? How will we know when we are finally on a sound financial path in the United States? Is it akin to how the Supreme Court described pornography: that one will "know it when they see it?"  Such a thought is slightly unnerving.

I recently started listening to a NPR program called This American Life - an excellent radio hour from Chicago Public Radio that highlights unique American stories paralleling a different theme each week. The first program of the year was attempting to predict what 2010 would bring for the United States. Given the economic climate, the worsening situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming problem of climate change, there was plenty of prediction to be had - good or bad. 

One of the segments was on predicting the economic health of America, and whether it was a science, an art, or something that only a few minds in the world could understand. In the end, it was decided that, like most things we attempt to surmise about the future, economic prediction is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Astonishing.

When will America come to terms with the fact that being fiscally responsible is essential in order to maintain our relevance in the world? Yes - running a developed world power and managing the needs of millions of Americans is insanely expensive. However, the President is on point: the U.S.'s financial position is utterly unacceptable.

The band The Tallest Man on Earth's "Pistol Dreams": "Throw me in the fire now, come on/Throw me in the fire now, come on" 

We are in the fire; and the way we are throwing money away is only feeding it. The steps from realizing that a situation is less than ideal and changing it are many, but at least we are taking the first one.

Not Just Another American Death.

Luke Beachnaw, a Sergeant in the US Army, from Lowell, Michigan, died in Afghanistan in a fire fight with Taliban insurgents. He graduated a year behind me at Lowell High. His sister, Jamie, graduated with me. Our high school was really big; I knew Jamie, but I didn't know Luke that well, if, really, at all. My younger cousin (more brother than cousin), Jeff, was in Luke's class, and knew him better than I did. 

That said: His death is not just a American military casualty in a far off in some mid-Asian "-stan" scary nation full of things like "Taliban insurgents," "terror cells," and "Al-Qaeda operatives". He was a home-grown, corn-fed, Midwestern-er with a family who loved him more than life. He came from the place where I grew up, the place that shaped me. The place that I go home to. 

I thought of Luke Beachnaw today, this guy that I didn't really know; I thought of him crouching in the arid Afghan desert, with scrubby shrubs all around him, sand crunching lightly under his military issue combat boots, wearing a light camo uniform bearing a light olive and black colored American flag on his arm. I thought of him preparing for a patrol or talking easily, maybe about baseball or football, with the men in his unit, watching the sun creep over the jagged peaks and rise as the day went on. The high-altitude mountain air was probably crisp and cold on the day he died. 

I thought of what it must have been like for him, and his fellow soldiers in the field with him that day, to have been surprised by enemy gunfire, to hear him go down with a thud, and to run to him and try, in vain, to save his life. Who was holding his hand when he died? Who was he thinking of? When was the moment that he knew he was going to die? Did the man who shot Luke Beachnaw look him in the eye in his gun sights before he pulled the trigger?

When his family was told that their brother, son, cousin, nephew, faithful friend was dead - did the Earth disappear beneath their feet and seem to swallow them whole?

His service to my country can be described in only one succinct word: brave.

Even though I didn't know Luke Beachnaw, I think I can understand him. The two pictures above were taken by the Grand Rapids local NBC news station as his casket was brought back to Lowell, our hometown. Welcome home, Sergeant. Rest in peace. 

Lucy Cavendish College/Hughes Hall Boat Club: Perpetual Aid Recipient

If Haiti doesn't strike your fancy for your charitable donations, check out my college rowing squad's website at: http://www.hughesrowing.com/

If you wish to make a charitable donation to the LCC/HHBC, contact me at: katelynbush07@gmail.com.

If you choose to donate to us rather than Haitian earthquake victims, you have made the wrong choice :).

We have a race this weekend, the Winter Head to Head Race on the River Cam put on the City of Cambridge Rowing Club. Go Lucy!

 

Haiti: Survivor or Perpetual Aid Recipient?

I just got word from my Mom, who turns 50 today (Happy Birthday, Mom!), that she is headed to Haiti next week to deliver medical aid with an Amway aid group from Grand Rapids. She is a nurse anesthetist, so she told me she is going to be delivering primarily local anesthetic for amputations while she is there. 

Wow. Go Mom. 

She is going to be bunking with other doctors and nurses from GR, and Amway is going to fly her and the other medical professionals going with her down in their corporate jet, which has already made numerous runs to Port-au-Prince delivering food aid, medical supplies, and other essentials for the Haitian people. 

We were discussing on the phone whether all of the aid pouring in to Haiti right now is going to help or hurt Haiti as a nation in the long run; obviously, she said, they need help right now. But what if we are giving so much help that they can't stand on their own two feet after all of the doctors pack up their equipment and technical prowess and get back to their practices other places in the world, she asked. I inquired as to whether or not she would be training Haitian nurses while she was there, and she said not as far as she knew; she said she was just there to clear the back log of people needing medical attention, especially now that Haiti has endured another intense aftershock yesterday. 

After acute medical and basic survival needs are dealt with in Haiti, when can they start helping themselves? How does this get addressed in Haiti's existing governmental institutions so that they are better equipped to deal with a disaster in the future? That remains to be seen.


The link below is to an incredible news story on CNN; an emergency physician reports that the body is incredibly resilient in the face of adversity, and a healthy individual can last almost two weeks without food or water. Unfathomable.  

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/20/haiti.earthquake.survivors/index.html?hpt=C1