November 2011

Our modern lives sometimes have a hard time imagining the difficulties of other cultures. Young girls in Bihar state in India, one of the poorest and most populous, had a hard time going to school, and therefore were stuck in the rut of their poverty. If they walked, it took a long time, a certain energy and when coupled with their chores at home, left no time for homework. Often they had to drop out. But three years ago the government set what it called a “gender agenda” and initiated a program giving young girls about 2000 rupees to buy a bicycle. With the bicycle they can get to school in 15 minutes and have enough time for their chores and homework. More girls are now enrolling for school, dropout rates have declined by 90%, some girls talk about going to college, some about deferring marriage until their schooling is done. The program has been so successful it is now being tried in at least 4 other Indian states.
Seems like those girls can now bicycle out of poverty.

Thanksgiving is the time of year when I am particularly grateful to be in the United States. As an immigrant some part of me identifies with the Pilgrims and I feel aware that no other country would have given me the freedom to be myself. I chose a non- traditional life and have made choices different from the norm. Given my age, the degree of self expression I have found here is greater than those I would have found in Western Europe. Only fairly recently have countries like France and the U.K. come to equal he U.S. in that area. And countries like Denmark or Norway equal but do not surpass the U.S. when it comes to an individual being able to live up to his or her potential. The greatness of the U.S. to me is not in its military might, or its economic power, but in those institutions and values that enable individuals to be who they were meant to be. As long as we can preserve this aspect of our culture, then I shan’t be concerned about the future for my dear little Roma and for all the other wonderdulchildren growing up here.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Conrad Murray has been found guilty. The media and others can now officially blame him for his actions in Michael Jackson’s death. We live in a system where when the jury speaks, that’s it. And yet we are increasingly aware that innocent people are in jails and on death row, people who were once found guilty by a jury. I didn’t follow the case so I can only go by what I’ve been reading since the conviction. There was, for example, a prejudicial interview Murray gave shortly after Michael Jackson’s death, there were rulings from the bench precluding certain type of evidence, for example evidence showing Jackson’s dependency on drugs. Some legal experts believe that these cast a shadow on his guilt. There was also the lengthy instruction to the jury, where they were charged with deliberating on a narrow aspect of his guilt, where finding against the doctor could be said to be a foregone conclusion. As a result of all this one thing I can say for sure is not that Dr. Conrad Murray is guilty of involuntary manslaughter, but that a jury decided he was. He may well be guilty, if not of this, of stupidity, greed, overwhelm, mistakes, but under the circumstances, with him as with many defendants I read about, I am still uneasy about formally accepting his guilt.