Review of Awakening with Mother Earth

Awakening with Mother Earth – Hearing Gaia Sing
By Fran Moeller Gatins

Our Mother Earth wants our souls to sing. She asks us to move beyond fear and forgetfulness into the light of universal hope and love. So saith Fran Moeller Gatins, who invites us to share her personal odyssey during which Gaia, mother of the ancient gods whose spirit is the very soul of our planet , chooses the author to become one of her “voices” in order to teach humankind that ancient wisdom is not incompatible with the evolution of our physical forms, our sacred structures and the ultimate essence of what we perceive to be the creators of the ever-changing cosmos.

This contemporary “bene gesserit” spent several years writing occasional “meditations” during travels in which she recorded her interactions with spirit guides as well as earth, wind, metal, fire and air before Gaia began the conversations in which she counseled that global shifts in paradigms do not necessarily consign humankind to obliteration if we retain a vibrant sense of openness to and respect for all manifestations of life past, present and future.

Change is a constant even for the goddess. She asks us to maintain our equilibrium through prayer, gratitude and forgiveness while we destroy old patterns of domination engendered by fear and unwillingness to listen to the truth-tellers in the quiet within.

Use this very conversational, well written and buoyant diary as a practical and poetic guide to living with the sacred in our everyday lives through a “spirit of curiosity, adventure and delight, even playfulness” as we join our Mother Earth in the hero’s journey to awaken our relationship with the universe.

"We were dancing on a volcano" Joseph Gatins

Make room Margaret Mitchell. A real-life refugee from the potato famine spawned a dynasty in which his son was among the Madoffs of his day, gaining notoriety and the attention of the Feds a hundred years ago as a wheeler/dealer stock trader known on Wall Street as a “bucket shop man.” His oldest son, in turn, transformed himself into a pillar of social and entrepreneurial respectability on Peachtree Street aided by Atlanta’s adulation of his French wife, the “Comtesse.”

Their son, Francis, the author’s father, joined the circle of American expatriates living in Paris between the great wars during which time he fell in love with a beautiful aristocrat from Colombia. As a French military prisoner of war responsible for opening cattle cars arriving at a death camp in the Ukraine, Francis was witness to the horrors of the Holocaust while his mother played a significant role in providing succor through the Red Cross to those unable to escape Paris during the Nazi occupation.

Once the reader negotiates the initial introduction to the bewildering number of Josephs and Egles , the fact-filled pages fly swiftly through one hundred and forty years of the triumphs and tribulations of this indomitable family which has survived wars, tenuous marriages, the ebb and flow of their finances and the scourge of alcoholism. Through it the women of the family were sustained by the certitude of their strong and rigid Catholic faith.

This searingly honest and well written family history will be my Christmas gift to my most cosmopolitan friends, many of whom now also are “dancing on a volcano” of global uncertainty.

RAYMOND BARRY HERBERT, DDS
Raymond B. Herbert broke the” surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God” on May 22, 2009. A pilot, a sailor and a dentist, Ray was born in the Bronx on April 25, 1942 to the late Ethel Bayuk and George A. Herbert. With his younger sister Geraldine (Stinson Wise), the family moved to South Miami where Ray attended Coral Gables High School. After undergraduate work at the University of Florida, Ray obtained his degree as Doctor of Dental Surgery from West Virginia University in Morgantown in 1966. His career included positions in both private and public practice interrupted by a long hiatus caused by serious injury to both legs in an automobile accident in 1979 upon his return from a year in Guatemala.
Ten years later he resumed work in Pinellas County until offered the position of Senior Dentist at the South Florida Reception Center in Miami. He also served at dental offices in Gainesville, Key West, Live Oak, Ocoee, Mt. Dora and Winter Haven. Plagued by continuing medical problems, Ray and his wife retired to Ocala in September of 2000.
In 1970 Ray won the I-26 North American Sweepstakes for the longest tyro glider flight in region 5 (280.0 miles), a record which still stands in any class according to the I-26 Association, terming it “a truly remarkable flight” which has “stood the test of time.”
This kind and gentle and generous soul was a Unitarian, a Democrat, a ham radio operator (K4QKE), a Navy veteran and a lover of classical music who built his own harpsichord. He leaves behind his sister, many Bayuk cousins and his beloved pets Odyssey, Maxie and Joy as he sails “the high untrepassed sanctity of space.” Ray is the love of the life of his wife, Delphine Blachowicz Herbert.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama

January 15, 2009

Monday we celebrate the birthday of a man of peace, a man who did much more than dream and voice platitudes even when other ministers, both black and white, first quavered, and a large segment of our population branded Martin Luther King Jr. a “communist,” that once most damnable of appellations, for speaking out against injustice and violence against the oppressed both here and abroad.

With a biracial man and his wife now moving into a white house built by black slaves, and their young daughters enrolled with other children of privilege in a Quaker sanctuary, part of Dr. King’s dream is being realized.

Yes, the great civil rights leader went to the mountain top and saw the promised land, a land in which little black boys and black girls join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. But today’s little children still must surmount even greater peaks in the mountain ranges beyond integration – the peaks representing war, pestilence, famine and death , the peaks even now patrolled by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse who ride among us as munitions manufacturers, diseases decimating millions each year which could be controlled for pennies per capita, exploding poverty as the seeds of the earth are deliberately sterilized for profit, and lastly, the primordial lust for power in the DNA of many of our “leaders” which renders our fragile planet subject to war without end..

Dr. King was a man of peace but he was not a man of fear. He was jailed 30 times for leading nonviolent efforts against injustice He spoke out against the pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities that mark so many of our public discourse. True, you and I are far more frail vessels, but working together we helped elect Barack Obama, another transformational figure in our nation’s history.

Now Barack, like Dr. King, is asking us to develop a kind of “dangerous unselfishness” by working in community for the common good. As the world collapses around us, how can we recapture the ability to “work unceasingly to uplift this nation that we love to a higher plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness?” Through service to others, through the “audacity to hope” that one’s seemingly meager efforts may make a difference.

Wendell Berry wrote in The Hidden Wound that the urbanization of our population has deprived us of the competence of knowing how to take care of ourselves. People used to be skilled in the art of making do and subsistence living off the land. . But with the relocation of most of our population to the cities, Berry writes that our ability to do things was replaced by the ability to buy things based largely on our subservience to modern incarnations of the company store. This dependency, along with our self-centered gluttony and greed, has led to the collapse of the worldwide economic system, impoverishing not only our bodies but our souls as well.

But today there is a great awakening to the fact that our world is not working. Not only are there wars on four continents but the very earth itself is rebelling against our short sighted rape of its riches as the seas rise and the oxygen producing forests disappear.

Many people now see that they must adapt. They must become the change that Obama calls for. Service to others, not lives of tepid comfort in our little boxes of urban isolation with an occasional bone thrown to the needy, must become our greater aspiration.

Martin Luther King Jr. was cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. He wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. . . Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

Barack Obama extended Dr. King’s words when in Berlin he said he was a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world. Let’s help him and ourselves by making sure that the world we leave our children is better than the world we inhabit today. In other words, think globally but act locally with vigor and courage. The light and love you radiate toward others will become the light which drives out darkness, hate and fear as together we climb the mountains encircling a promise of peace and justice for all..

Cipro, Levaquin and my shattered left ankle

Cipro , Levaquin and my shattered left ankle

-thanks Public Citizen, CNN and Google

My left ankle shattered about 10 a.m. Saturday, April 5, 2008. I have no memory of the event.

I last remember sitting back in bed to finish the newspaper. During the period I cannot recall, I apparently was able to function despite what must have been intense pain as my husband found me screaming on my bedroom floor. Upon becoming aware of my circumstances about two hours later in the ER at the Ocala Regional Medical Center with my left foot extended in an unnatural position (“ fall injury with severely displaced distal ankle fracture”), I asked to speak with my husband. The attending nurse said I had already done so three times and neighbors later reported that I had spoken to them as the ambulance took me away. I had no difficulty recalling telephone numbers during and following my black out.

After an x-ray, CT scan and MRI of my brain along with a cursory interview with a neurologist (Dr. Nieves), the surgeon (Dr. Nirav Gupta) put a plate and a couple of screws in my left ankle the next day. Operative report describes procedure as “open reduction and internal fixation of lateral malleolus and medial malleolus ankle, left side.”

Following my hospitalization and several weeks at the TimberRidge rehab center, I insisted on seeing another neurologist in an effort to determine just what precipitated this event so that I wouldn’t again injure myself or possibly others should I be driving at the time. The second neurologist (Dr. Jose Gaudier) did an exhaustive interview (with my husband present) and ordered a carotid artery examination and an EEG of my brain. Again, nothing abnormal was found.

On July 9, 2008 I heard Dr. Sanjay Gupta report on the links between Cipro and broken tendons and other injuries the day after the FDA issued its “black box warning.” Public Citizen had requested such a warning in August 2006 and Dr. Gupta said on his broadcast that doctors have known about the dangers of the drug since 1992. The FDA approved Cipro for use in 2000 and Levaquin in 1996. None of the doctors who’ve seen me have mentioned, suggested or even implied any causal possibility between use of Cipro and/or Levaquin and the injury I endured. Moreover, after googling the drugs and ankle injuries, I found that there are literally hundreds of personal reports of injury similar to that which I have.

Despite a predisposition to avoid unnecessary drugs, I had not earlier connected repeated use of Cipro and more recently Levaquin to my accident. I simply ascribed the following to stress as a caregiver for an extended period.

Before my Father died May 1, 2005, I experienced difficulty stepping out of bed because of pain on the bottom of my left foot. I could not even go to the bathroom without wearing shoes. . More recently I have had trouble standing at peace rallies and walking my dog. I also have felt faint at various meetings and luncheons. . Occasionally the pain on the bottom of my left foot upon getting out of bed recurred. I simply chalked up these episodes to my exhaustion in caring for a disabled husband who is unable to contribute much to running the household and to my activities in the community. Fatigue has been a constant in my life for many years along with shortness of breath and general lassitude.

During recent years I have taken Cipro fairly frequently for recurring urinary tract infections. Last November when an infection did not respond to Cipro my internist, Dr. Jose Roman , sent me to a(n) urologist, Dr. Paul Jo, who prescribed Levaquin.. Because the infection had persisted and I wanted to rid myself of it, I took the Levaquin DESPITE the fact that I experienced considerably more severe pain on the bottom of my left foot than I ever had before. Since Dr Jo gave me a prescription with 12 renewals (?) I took Levaquin again when a UT infection recurred yet again in February, I believe.

In the months just prior to my accident I also experienced several very brief transient surges in my brain like flashes of electrical charges – basically the left rear quadrant as I recall. Then about a week or ten days before the accident I had an earache on the left side which later extended into my left jaw . I’ve had good dental care and the only thing wrong with my mouth is that a crown has fallen off a tooth. But my husband, a disabled dentist, said there was no cause for concern as it could not be a source of infection since it had a root canal. Nevertheless I went to see a dentist, Dr. Stephen Dunn ,on March 27, I believe. Dr. Dunn, after taking new x-rays, concurred with my husband’s assessment. However he said that if the pain continued he would send me to a neurologist in case I had trigeminal neuralgia. I was first to return to Dr. Dunn about ten days later. After reading about trigeminal neuralgia online and because the pain had subsided, I knew I had not experienced this disorder. The accident occurred before I was able to return to the dentist.

Please note that I was again taking Levaquin for the recurring urinary tract infection.. . When I got to the rehab center the attending physician (Dr. Gabriel Umana) put me back on Cipro because he said that it was the standard for UT.

I’ve since had much outpatient therapy but still am not able to walk well and the foot/ankle remains in large part immobile ( like concrete as one therapist observed), swollen with scarring and a protrusion on the right side where the screws were inserted. Surgeon who I see again July 24 opined that injuries such as mine take 9 months to a year for recovery although he acknowledged that the ankle will not ever be entirely normal. My surgeon and the therapists said that any injury to the foot is the most difficult to recover from (worse than hip, pelvic fractures) because the foot bears the weight of the entire body.

Although I am now 72 years of age, my parents were long-lived. They both walked every day with my Father even mowing the lawn up north until he was 98. My Father died totally competent just three weeks short of 100 and my Mother died at age 91 of breast cancer which had metastasized. Thus I have expectations of living another 20 years or so, especially given the fact that I have always been well fed, have always had good medical attention and have never indulged in personal excesses of any kind. Dr. Roman, our internist since moving to Ocala in September of 2000, has always authorized routine checkups and appropriate tests for whatever ailment I may have had over these years including a bone density test just months before the accident.

I have learned that there is an array of drugs which were used effectively for urinary tract infections before Cipro and Levaquin were put on the market. Apart from the pain and disruption to both my husband and my lives and the psychic and financial costs involved thus far, I am most appalled at the prospect of circumscribed use of my legs for the rest of my life . I hobble around the house, I can’t garden as I used to and my golden retriever breaks my heart by bringing me her leash for a walk.

I suddenly am old.

Delphine in a Persian Wonderland

You don’t have to leave the United States to experience culture shock. Just go to Washington and find a job on Embassy Row.

You might wind up, as I did , spending all your waking hours almost totally immersed in another culture while working for a glamorous

Middle Eastern ambassador whose lavish parties and playboy persona captivated the city for a number of years.

Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah of Iran’s last ambassador to the United States, anticipated the Reagan era by mixing aging Hollywood legends with a medley of Washington insiders, international sophisticates and all-American heroes including leading quarterbacks and media megastars.

Despite revisionist reports after the revolution which deposed the Shah in 1979, almost anyone who was anybody considered an invitation to

the Imperial Embassy of Iran more exciting and desirable than one to the White House. Official Washington flocked to parties where women, perhaps for the first time in their lives, enjoyed compliments and courtesies of the kind that now occur only in historical novels. They took it all at face value while their husbands happily acceded to any business boons born of an economy bursting from the profits of the sky-rocketing price of oil.

Caviar and champagne flowed freely in salons whose gilded walls and chandeliers suggested Versailles. And in the Persian Room, a vaulted chamber with a ceiling of a million miniature mirrors, a single lighted candle could transport one on priceless carpets through prisms of magical infinity back to the nights of Scheherazade.

But more seductive were the Iranians themselves. The ambassador’s charisma was of the first magnitude and his aides easily beguiled with courtly charm and chivalrous solicitude. Any every woman, no matter her age or visage, was “beautiful, beautiful” mainly because the ambassador could not remember her name. Soon I found myself writing love letters to women all over the world, often regaling members of the staff with my flights of poetic fancy.

But one had to remember that these parties never were without purpose. This was a working embassy which functioned as the principal public relations arm of the Pahlavi dynasty. Internally, it was much like a miniature royal court in which flatterers and prevaricators often prevailed. Standards which pertained to westerners did not apply to Iranian nationals.

Embassy guests would recount stories of the Ambassador’s kindnesses and humility, not knowing of the terror he inspired among the Iranians whom he often devastated verbally. Thus “tuqui’a” or dissimulation

Was not considered duplicitous, merely a prudent means for survival.

It wasn’t easy for a woman from small town USA who, despite a number of years overseas with the U.S. diplomatic service, was still fairly puritanical and politically naïve.

However, as a “local employee” one quickly became an in-house expert on everything from procurement to press relations. Since I could find my way around the yellow pages and knew the difference between a credit and a bill, my reputation was very soon secured. My greatest coup occurred when I was able to obtain a part for the Shah’s yacht which had eluded the rest of the staff for almost two years. The ruler of Iran may have been Kings of Kings, Light of Lights and Center of the Universe to the Persians but the Florida shipbuilder refused to tolerate the imperiousness of the demands of his vassals.

Soon I was dealing with the White House and the Congress and the State Department and the press and every businessman and charlatan who wanted a piece of the oil action. My politicization progressed rapidly. I read the newspapers with amusement and increasing cynicism as there often would be a significant disparity between the information I had and that a reporter thought he had. Even the most knowledgeable journalists found their vision clouded by relationships which too quickly became too intimate.

While it was fascinating to deal with the outside world, the greater challenge came within the embassy. It was there that one paid for the opportunity to observe the movers and shakers and shysters without.

Morning logistics were an exercise in non-western inefficiency. As a foreigner, I never was given a key to the ambassador’s suite despite the fact that I spent many long hours alone. Though I usually arrived a few minutes after nine, neither the Iranian social secretary nor the official in charge of the ambassador’s anteroom would be expected for another half hour or so. Thus every morning, it seemed, the telephone operator would have to send for the wonderful Italian houseman to open the door. Oftentimes he had to be awakened because if the ambassador was in town, he would have had to remain available for the private parties at the Residence next door, parties which, I was told, often lasted until early morning.

I would begin reading the newspapers in order to anticipate anything which might require attention. Members of the staff would telephone or appear to bow and inquire about the ambassador’s “mood.” Zahedi’s

mood determined the tenor of the day for some hundred and twenty people. Of that number, perhaps a dozen or fewer actually would cross his path but ramifications of his disposition reverberated throughout the building.

The ambassador would convey to “his people” his first instructions of the day. Who was to be sent caviar, who flowers or perhaps a small gold coin, a “Pahlavi”, for the hospitality of the evening past. Cars had to be dispatched and the chauffeurs given detailed instructions on how to find, say the White House or the Capitol, even if they had been there just the day before. Patience never was one of my strong suits but the good nature drivers voluntarily gassed up my Camaro during the oil crisis of 1973-74 (?) , saving me from the long lines which countless other Americans endured.

If the ambassador was in town, the office I shared with Jaleh Yazdan-Panah was transformed into a maelstrom of mayhem. The comings and

Goings from his office and the hangers-on sitting nearby in order to rise and bow should he chance to pass meant working in a vortex of cacophonic volume as Farsi-speakers generally conversed only at the top of their lungs. The administrative officer to whom I had reported for the first six weeks or so once accused me of having no “taruffe,” the Farsi word for courtesy, because when I was on the telephone, I would sometimes turn my back in an effort to hear when three or four people spoke to me simultaneously while a dozen others continued their conversations in the background.

Basically each supplicant said “If we’re friends, you’ll do my project first.” Everything was put on a personal basis. So unless the ambassador wanted something specific, I had to establish my own priorities.

Because of the nonstop phone calls and the pandemonium which prevailed, I usually stayed after hours to do the correspondence in the silence which descended once the ambassador departed. In addition to the normal business of an embassy, I remembered birthdays, I wrote thank yous for thank yous. I sent out little gifts with a note to just about everyone the ambassador met on his extensive travels around the country.

And I became an excellent sleuth. For example, the ambassador might have met a woman in a green dress. He couldn’t remember her name, which party, which city, which date. So you play dumb and call around to chat with all his hostesses for the past few weeks.

Washington socialites themselves could provide a source of considerable amusement within the office. Jaleh would hear tales of women shopping for a dress with which to seduce the ambassador, . . hostesses would call us demanding dinner parties for 48 at the Residence when no more than half that number could be accommodated.

Upon the arrival from Tehran of one of the ambassador’s relatives, women besieged the newcomer with invitations under the assumption that he had special influence. In fact, the ambassador literally did not even glance in his direction for some two months, so furious was he at the behavior which occasioned banishment from the Imperial Court.

But bloodlines were always the bottom line so the malefactor suffered only psychic distress.

Iranians love to give gifts but they are not nearly as generous with information. If you knew something that no one else did, you in effect forced the ambassador to call upon you. My efforts to Americanize the place included the distribution of copies of correspondence to those who I thought needed to know, a revolutionary act at the time.

There was a clear distinction between the treatment accorded westerners and Iranians. Fortunately, I seldom had to deal with Iranians outside the embassy who may have traveled from California, Europe or even Iran to meet with the ambassador only to be kept waiting for days or never even seen at all. However, appointments with westerners, be they statesmen or students, were punctual to the minute unless the ambassador happened to be on the telephone with the Shah.

As a foreigner, no matter how much you gave of yourself, y ou were always the outsider, always the “ferenghi.” You never really were privy to what really is going on but you do the best you can given the information available to you at any given point in time. But if the Secretary of State doesn’t return the ambassador’s call, somehow it’s your fault. If the telephone lines are cut when the ambassador is speaking to Switzerland, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t answered other calls. The ambassador read people extremely well, but things mechanical were another matter.

Nevertheless I was never treated discourteously. Otherwise I would not have remained as long as I did. True, I resigned repeatedly but not because of the ambassador whom I came to respect and admire. Sometimes the internal machinations simply became too much of a daily struggle.

My penultimate resignation letter stated that it was too difficult for me as a woman in a Muslim environment and as a ferenghi who would never be trusted.

The ambassador’s response upon his return from Switzerland moved me deeply. I was summoned to his suite at the Waldorf Towers where he went over a few weeks’ backlog with me in the presence of his principal subordinates. They included the Iranian Consul General in New York City, the head of SAVAK in the United States, the representative of the National Iranian Oil Company and the Embassy’s Minister Counselor for Cultural Affairs.

When we departed the following day, I to return to Washington and the ambassador to Houston where his sister was hospitalized, he took me to the airport in his limousine, leaving the others to follow in another.

Soon after his return to Washington, Ambassador Zahedi called me to his office. He said he had decided to give me a private office directly above his own, with a staircase to be built connecting the two rooms. I also was to have my own assistant and I would be among those on Iran Air’s inaugural flight from New York to Tehran.

When this became general knowledge within the embassy, the friendship and respect of many turned to envy and hostility. My position as a conduit of the ambassador’s wishes was increasingly denied. One evening I went back to the kitchen to check on matters for the evening reception only to find myself locked out of my office upon my return.

A dam born of frustration and exhaustion broke and I left a furious letter of resignation on the ambassador’s desk. It began “I’m tired of working in this den of vipers….”.

Thus ended three years during which I had the privilege of working for a highly idiosyncratic but truly remarkable man whose loyalty to his leader was more profound than any I have ever observed. His cultural background, personal lifestyle and political imperatives were nothing like my own. But Ardeshir Zahedi’s humanity was immense and his behavior of much grander dimension than that of the world about him.

An astute observer remarked that I had allowed myself to be defeated by pygmies.

The Barber's Daughter - Chapter Three

As dawn came up, fair to the north we saw the fiery lips of morning kissing snow gods of stupendous size. The earth itself seemed to do obeisance to their supra worldly splendor as the plains lay prostrate before the majesty of the still growing giants which are the Himalayas.

I was aboard the military attache's plane, en route to Calcutta where the Deputy Chief of Mission, Winthrop Brown, had an appointment early that February morning. As was customary, he had invited some staff members to share the pre-dawn flight, among them Pat Billson, cheerful, practical Pat who made each passage through the file room a delight. We'd be seeing Jane Kiernan, another of the code clerks with whom I'd worked in Washington. She now was at the Consulate General in Calcutta living in quarters too small to accommodate any guests. She too had moved from Meridian Hill to the YWCA near 17th and K, a possible walk bak and forth to State when we weren't too pressed for time. But whereas my life outside te Department was mainly George, hers was Lois, her very beautiful friend from Boston who only wore one suit, but what a suit. A stunning black brown tweed which reflected the soft elegance of one to the manor born.

Incredibly it was cold, so cold that February morning, that I wore a handsome light grey tweed coat I'd bought at Peck & Peck, the coat in which George had photographed me by the P Street bridge in Georgetown. I guess George really did love me because I looked so beautiful in those snapshots. Quite a contrast to those my Mother took, her forefinger always obliterating a corner of the scene and me always glaring, awkward and angry.

Soon the DC 3 started its descent as the Hooghly River, the westernmost channel of the Ganges snaked through its delta toward the Sea of Bengal. We spiralled down over a maze of makeshift buildings and boats riding a river of mud. Dispersed among them were fragile settlements in which hundreds of thousands of human beings clung to lives so tenuous that a few feet rise in the tide could easily obliterate all evidence of their being. But when the waters receded they or their descendants returned again and again like abused children who prefer the known violence of out-of-control parents to the ministrations of caregivers who rule their lives with colder cruelty.

The door of the plane opened and the heat which entered was as palpable as childbirth. It almost blew us back into the cabin.

We rove into town from DumDum, the airport named for the nearby arsenal which had produced the infamous bullets used by the British to put down dissent among the natives. It became evident that all of Bengal gave new meaning to the word teeming. Wave upon wave of milling humanity melted before the onrushing limousine as we raced through a maelstrom of moving creatures.

Mr. brown dropped us at the Great Eastern Hotel where Jane was waiting to take us on a tour with the local representative for CARE. Bob Kelly replicated Jane's tall, black-haired good looks and his sardonic intelligence matched her Boston Irish wit.

"It's hard to pick the worst of the worst in this hell hole but the railroad stations are as god a bet as any," Bob said, as he maneuvered his Landrover through the streets which millions had the misfortune to call home.

We arrived at Howrah where some five thousand refugees lived in cardboard boxes or corrugated cans awaiting a respite from the age old Hindu/Muslim animosities so that they could return home. Too poor for the blouse-like choli, modesty also was too precious a commodity for their women who scratched the scorching streets for a few dropped grains of rice or an abandoned object which might bring a rupee from some other indigent. Bereft of home and of homeland, they took no notice when their saris fell from ther shoulders. The eyes of strangers had no meaning.

Bob was not as pitying as Pat and I. "These people persist n the Muslim/Hindu hatreds. We/ve resettled hundreds of thousands of the estimated five million refugees who've come to West Bengal since partition but they resist any change even if it means survival. They're so inflexible that if they come from a wheat- eating area, they absolutely refuse to live in a rice-growing region. And if they are sent to a wheat-growing area, the variety must be exactly the same as that to which they are accustomed. Otherwise, they still won't eat."

I remembered that Doug had told me that Americans had earned much opproprium when some years earlier tons and tons of wheat shipped in response to famine proved unacceptable. The villagers though they were being poisoned, a fear perhaps fanned by clever communists concentrated among the unemployed intelligentsia in Bengal.

Bob next drove us to Sealdah, a station slightly smaller in size but so overwhelming in misery that the Government of West Bengal refused to allow the Prime Minister to see it during an official visit. We concluded the afternoon with a visit to the Kali Ghat, the place where the dead are burned to the extent that their relatives can afford sufficient wood. Although a local guide said we could take pictures, we chose not to insult the wretched any further.

Numbed by our afternoon excursion, we sank into catatonia on the drive back to the hotel. I thought of Doug and our after hour chats in the embassy during which he caressed the solitude of my soul with his cheerful civility and encyclopedic knowledge of the subcontinent. But mainly he spoke of a beautiful land lost in time.

"Once you go to Nepal, you'll never be the same. There is a magic in the air. The higher you climb into the hills, the nicer the people become. Perhaps it's because the heat no longer is so intense that life is somewhat easier. Water is more accessible and crops grow more easily than they do in the burning plains to the south." He promised to take me as soon as he could.

That promise was to be fulfilled sooner than I expected...

When Bob and Jane dropped us at the Great Eastern, there was a message for me. Doug Heck would call again at 7 p.m. It was now quarter to. Pat and I raced up to our room and tore off our clothes, sopping as we were from our whirlwind excursion through the inferno outside.

"think you can break away to join a convoy taking jeeps to Kathmandu? I'm flying in tomorrow with Marilyn, my secretary, and we're leaving the following morning with several folks from the consulate to make the delivery. Ask Pat and Jane to come along. Believe me, the more the merrier and you'll have the adventure of a lifetime."

I called Gerry Mull to arrange additional leave but Pat and Jane demurred. "Gee, Delphine, I'd love to tag along. But Miriam is going on leave next Monday and I have to be back or the whole embassy will fall apart. You know no one else can find anything in that file room."



Proper Patricia, good Catholic Pat, never said don't go off with a married man. No everyone assumed that I knew what I was doing as they'd done for as long as I remembered.

Five jeeps were packed with food and water and luggage when ten American officials assembled at the Consulate General in the pre-dawn coolness. We drove out past vestiges of decaying empire and through streets of still shrouded bodies not yet resurrected from their sleepless night. The ceaseless cacophony of Calcutta followed us past beggar colonies and sprawls of vendows setting out their modest wares.

As morning rose, we continued north through suburbs somewhat more sedate than the never ending whirlwind within the inner city. After an hour or so, we turned west toward the industrial belt which rings the city. Here factories and mills spewed mountains of soot, magnifying the misery of the oppressive heat. Doug wet a cloth and wrapped it round his face as much to breathe as to catch the rivulets of sweat cascading down his body.

We alled the jeep the green gari and I drove despite the fact that non-diplomatic personnel were not encouraged to do so. The Hindu might twist and break the tail of his bullock a thousand times and prod its genitals raw but woe to any foreigner who even grazed its flank. Americans were officially advised to flee if an accident occurred and report isntead to the nearest police station rather than risk a lynching right then and there.

The first night out we stopped at a government rest house, one of the many built throughout India during the Raj so that government officials had some place to stay as they travelled in the hinterlands. The one room hut was spare and sturdy and clean but we all preferred to put the charpoys outside in order to catch any wayward breezes. Doug held me on his lap for a few moments while we considered the spectacular stardust strewn across the sky. No westerner who's not travelled o smogless, smokeless spaces of underdeveloped areas of the world can claim o have ever seen the infinity which is the Milky Way. In the pre-dawn a bird landed on my sheet wrapped body. I was too terrified to uncover myself to see if a vulture thought my moribund.

After an austere breakfast of tea and bisquits we continued west through the scorching plains of Bihar until we came to a river crossing somewhat east of Patna. We were to be ferried across the Jumna in little craft of matchstick construction whose seaworthiness suggested toys in a bathtub. Doug and I were the last to place our jeep and our lives in the hands of four smiling boatmen who propelled our vessel across the clay colored river. Midway across Doug gave me a scarf of heavy Italian silk with muted colors, cream and grey and beige, in honor of my first crossing of the holy water. "It's so you'll never forget this trip," he said softly, kissing me lightly on the forehead.

On the other shore we soon found the new road which led to Kathmandu. For hours the only rest stops were leafless trees in fields of umber with an occasional camel to break to monotony. After a time the earth grew kinder. The villages were kissed with green and their wealh measured in heaps of dung. Each locality seemed to have devised a pattern of its own, much like the brands on cattle in the great American west. I was astonished to see girls of the most beautiful mien and carriage follow after the bullocks to catch their droppings.

Doug laughed at my distaste. "Not only do the Indian woman use the dung as an antiseptic against wounds a d as a cleaning agent in their huts, they also drink the bullock's urine to ensure their fertility."

The ground grew higher and the fields more lush as we continued north. We had fallen behind schedule and the other jeeps were nowhere to be seen. But Doug didn't see any problem in not reaching Kathmandu that evening. "There an AID couple living in the Rapti Valley. We'll spend the night with them."

The Rapti ran through a belt of land in southern Nepal known as the Teria. The US government had done much to banish malaria in the area but it remained a place where elephants rescued mechanical road builders and maharajas assembled for tiger hunts. The valley felt as new as it must have on the first day of creation. I asked Doug if I were among the very first white women to enter. He smiled and said perhaps among the first hundred.

The Wrights were pleased to see us and they produced a fine meal out of their modest quarters. They only westerners living in the Rapti, they obviously enjoyed Doug's company and the three had many tales to tell of the exigencies of attempting to work with people to whom the fifteenth century was more real than the twentieth.

They told us that now that the road from India was completed, the King was anxious to further extend his transportation network farther south in order to decrease Nepal's vulnerability against the great colossus which had swallowed Tibet with scarcely a protest from the western world. Thus did a medieval monarchy in Shangri-la find it prudent to seek protection from the world's largest democracy as well as from the world's most powerful. And that why Doug came to have the joy of establishing the first American embassy in Kathmandu.

As the green gari headed north out of the valley the next morning the hills grew into mountains with terraced landscapes making their mark upon the great glories of God's creation. The manicured villages in the Alps were not as close to heaven as were these hovels clinging to the youngest of God's mountains. Nor could the dour Swiss compare to the shing faces to be seen along the roadside near these magical aeries.

Thew air darkened and the road continued to curve upward. Solitary figures occasionally appeared, the women who worked only in their long heavy skirts, men who sat lacing the split calluses on the sole of their feet. Doug said that only western mountaineers required special boots . Their Sherpa guides wore none until they reached the intense cold at 20,000 feet.

Finally the valley of Kathmandu appeared. We pulled to the side of the road and walked across a treeless meadow to the edge of a precipice overlooking its vast expanse. The play of sunlight and shadow upon the scene was consummate manifestation of yin and yang, black and white, good and evil - all the duality in nature. We lay together in the grass until Doug discovered the fragility of the overhang.

As we began our descent, minarets and castles, maidans and prayer flags were everywhere in a fairyland of Elizabethan wooden structures. The hills were brilliant with the colors of Cezanne but the high mountains hid themselves behind foreboding clouds.

The all-knowing eyes of Swayumbonath, a striking Buddhist temple, stared everywhere across the valley.

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