Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.

Gone are the days of waiting for wars to break out and then drawing up ad hoc plans to pick up the pieces. In close cooperation with the National Intelligence Council, Pascual's office keeps "high risk" countries on a "watch list" and assembles rapid-response teams ready to engage in prewar planning and to "mobilize and deploy quickly" after a conflict has gone down. The teams are made up of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks--some, Pascual told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, will have "pre-completed" contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could "cut off three to six months in your response time."

The plans Pascual's teams have been drawing up in his little-known office in the State Department are about changing "the very social fabric of a nation," he told CSIS. The office's mandate is not to rebuild any old states, you see, but to create "democratic and market-oriented" ones. So, for instance (and he was just pulling this example out of his hat, no doubt), his fast-acting reconstructors might help sell off "state-owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy." Sometimes rebuilding, he explained, means "tearing apart the old."

Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate--that was colonialism's seductive promise: "discovering" wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, "the newest and most beautiful words can be written." There is, however, plenty of destruction--countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God). And where there is destruction there is reconstruction, a chance to grab hold of "the terrible barrenness," as a UN official recently described the devastation in Aceh, and fill it with the most perfect, beautiful plans.

"We used to have vulgar colonialism," says Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher with Focus on the Global South. "Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it 'reconstruction.'"

It certainly seems that ever-larger portions of the globe are under active reconstruction: being rebuilt by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial institutions. And from the people living in these reconstruction sites--Iraq to Aceh, Afghanistan to Haiti--a similar chorus of complaints can be heard. The work is far too slow, if it is happening at all. Foreign consultants live high on cost-plus expense accounts and thousand- dollar-a-day salaries, while locals are shut out of much-needed jobs, training and decision-making. Expert "democracy builders" lecture governments on the importance of transparency and "good governance," yet most contractors and NGOs refuse to open their books to those same governments, let alone give them control over how their aid money is spent.

Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times ran a distressing story reporting that "almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding." The dispatch could easily have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times just reported, all of Bechtel's allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in an endless litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could also have come from Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai recently blasted "corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable" foreign contractors for "squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid." Or from Sri Lanka, where 600,000 people who lost their homes in the tsunami are still languishing in temporary camps. One hundred days after the giant waves hit, Herman Kumara, head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent out a desperate e-mail to colleagues around the world. "The funds received for the benefit of the victims are directed to the benefit of the privileged few, not to the real victims," he wrote. "Our voices are not heard and not allowed to be voiced."

But if the reconstruction industry is stunningly inept at rebuilding, that may be because rebuilding is not its primary purpose. According to Guttal, "It's not reconstruction at all--it's about reshaping everything." If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit them. Kumara, in another e-mail, warns that Sri Lanka is now facing "a second tsunami of corporate globalization and militarization," potentially even more devastating than the first. "We see this as a plan of action amidst the tsunami crisis to hand over the sea and the coast to foreign corporations and tourism, with military assistance from the US Marines."

As Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz designed and oversaw a strikingly similar project in Iraq: The fires were still burning in Baghdad when US occupation officials rewrote the investment laws and announced that the country's state-owned companies would be privatized. Some have pointed to this track record to argue that Wolfowitz is unfit to lead the World Bank; in fact, nothing could have prepared him better for his new job. In Iraq, Wolfowitz was just doing what the World Bank is already doing in virtually every war-torn and disaster-struck country in the world--albeit with fewer bureaucratic niceties and more ideological bravado.

"Post-conflict" countries now receive 20-25 percent of the World Bank's total lending, up from 16 percent in 1998--itself an 800 percent increase since 1980, according to a Congressional Research Service study. Rapid response to wars and natural disasters has traditionally been the domain of United Nations agencies, which worked with NGOs to provide emergency aid, build temporary housing and the like. But now reconstruction work has been revealed as a tremendously lucrative industry, too important to be left to the do-gooders at the UN. So today it is the World Bank, already devoted to the principle of poverty-alleviation through profit-making, that leads the charge.

And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone); "democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times have never been better for public-sector consultants--the private firms that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running government services themselves as subcontractors. (Bearing Point, the favored of these firms in the United States, reported that the revenues for its "public services" division "had quadrupled in just five years," and the profits are huge: $342 million in 2002--a profit margin of 35 percent.)

But shattered countries are attractive to the World Bank for another reason: They take orders well. After a cataclysmic event, governments will usually do whatever it takes to get aid dollars--even if it means racking up huge debts and agreeing to sweeping policy reforms. And with the local population struggling to find shelter and food, political organizing against privatization can seem like an unimaginable luxury.

Even better from the bank's perspective, many war-ravaged countries are in states of "limited sovereignty": They are considered too unstable and unskilled to manage the aid money pouring in, so it is often put in a trust fund managed by the World Bank. This is the case in East Timor, where the bank doles out money to the government as long as it shows it is spending responsibly. Apparently, this means slashing public-sector jobs (Timor's government is half the size it was under Indonesian occupation) but lavishing aid money on foreign consultants the bank insists the government hire (researcher Ben Moxham writes, "In one government department, a single international consultant earns in one month the same as his twenty Timorese colleagues earn together in an entire year").

In Afghanistan, where the World Bank also administers the country's aid through a trust fund, it has already managed to privatize healthcare by refusing to give funds to the Ministry of Health to build hospitals. Instead it funnels money directly to NGOs, which are running their own private health clinics on three-year contracts. It has also mandated "an increased role for the private sector" in the water system, telecommunications, oil, gas and mining and directed the government to "withdraw" from the electricity sector and leave it to "foreign private investors." These profound transformations of Afghan society were never debated or reported on, because few outside the bank know they took place: The changes were buried deep in a "technical annex" attached to a grant providing "emergency" aid to Afghanistan's war-torn infrastructure--two years before the country had an elected government.

It has been much the same story in Haiti, following the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In exchange for a $61 million loan, the bank is requiring "public-private partnership and governance in the education and health sectors," according to bank documents--i.e., private companies running schools and hospitals. Roger Noriega, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has made it clear that the Bush Administration shares these goals. "We will also encourage the government of Haiti to move forward, at the appropriate time, with restructuring and privatization of some public sector enterprises," he told the American Enterprise Institute on April 14, 2004.

These are extraordinarily controversial plans in a country with a powerful socialist base, and the bank admits that this is precisely why it is pushing them now, with Haiti under what approaches military rule. "The Transitional Government provide[s] a window of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms...that may be hard for a future government to undo," the bank notes in its Economic Governance Reform Operation Project agreement. For Haitians, this is a particularly bitter irony: Many blame multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, for deepening the political crisis that led to Aristide's ouster by withholding hundreds of millions in promised loans. At the time, the Inter-American Development Bank, under pressure from the State Department, claimed Haiti was insufficiently democratic to receive the money, pointing to minor irregularities in a legislative election. But now that Aristide is out, the World Bank is openly celebrating the perks of operating in a democracy-free zone.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been imposing shock therapy on countries in various states of shock for at least three decades, most notably after Latin America's military coups and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet many observers say that today's disaster capitalism really hit its stride with Hurricane Mitch. For a week in October 1998, Mitch parked itself over Central America, swallowing villages whole and killing more than 9,000. Already impoverished countries were desperate for reconstruction aid--and it came, but with strings attached. In the two months after Mitch struck, with the country still knee-deep in rubble, corpses and mud, the Honduran congress initiated what the Financial Times called "speed sell-offs after the storm." It passed laws allowing the privatization of airports, seaports and highways and fast-tracked plans to privatize the state telephone company, the national electric company and parts of the water sector. It overturned land-reform laws and made it easier for foreigners to buy and sell property. It was much the same in neighboring countries: In the same two months, Guatemala announced plans to sell off its phone system, and Nicaragua did likewise, along with its electric company and its petroleum sector.

All of the privatization plans were pushed aggressively by the usual suspects. According to the Wall Street Journal, "the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had thrown their weight behind the [telecom] sale, making it a condition for release of roughly $47 million in aid annually over three years and linking it to about $4.4 billion in foreign-debt relief for Nicaragua."

Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its cookie-cutter policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost no debt relief, and most of the World Bank's emergency aid has come in the form of loans, not grants. Rather than emphasizing the need to help the small fishing communities--more than 80 percent of the wave's victims--the bank is pushing for expansion of the tourism sector and industrial fish farms. As for the damaged public infrastructure, like roads and schools, bank documents recognize that rebuilding them "may strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider privatization (yes, they have only one idea). "For certain investments," notes the bank's tsunami-response plan, "it may be appropriate to utilize private financing."

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

In January Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us." Many were horrified at the idea of treating a massive human tragedy as a chance to seek advantage. But, if anything, Rice was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for "businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms. To them, all these coastal areas are now open land!"

Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius.

About Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (September 2007); an earlier international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). more...

From the book--- 

"Throughout the southern states whites heard a different version of the creation story. In His own image, African American preachers declared, God created Adam and Eve black. They turned white, and the hair straightened, from sin and guilt, from encountering God after eating the forbidden fruit."

As you can guess, stories like this did not go over well with southern whites. Black preachers, black folks, and whites sympathetic to black progress in the years after the Civil War were routinely harassed, attacked and killed in the post Civil War South. 

Reconstruction was a time of great potential and tragic failure. It's a time in our history that merits study by all Americans. While 2008 is a better day than 1875, you can still see today many echos of a brutal past. 

PBS has good information on Reconstruction. 

Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 is a leading history of this time.

It remains hard to imagine that all that blood was shed in the Civil War and black folks still had to endure 100 more years of Jim Crow.

Nothing is so lousy that it can not come true. The work of freedom is never done.

I did fine on the trip to Arkansas, but made a point to take ginger pills when riding through the twisty-turney hills with someone else driving. But I'd say my head was messed up for nearly a week from that one pill.

Yesterday I got my 3rd fill. And as I'd guessed, it took only 50ccs to get the expander implant to its design capacity of 450ccs. However, the doc says he can still expand it lots more.

I asked him about the ridge line that I can feel in the breast. When I wake up in the morning it crosses near the top of the breast (more north-south), but after I'm up for a while, it is mostly horizontal (east-west). Looking at a sample implant, it appears this ridge I'm feeling is the edge of the reinforced oval-ish area that is on the upper slope of the breast. Inside that is the circular port where the doc injects more saline each fill.

This time the doc filled the implant first, then drew out the fluid that had accumulated outside the implant. He got some fluid from the bottom of the breast near the armpit, but really hit the motherlode on the cleavage side. He said it was a good sign that there were two separate pockets of fluid instead of one big pocket. It means the tissues are healing inside there.

In case I didn't describe the process previously, here's the way it works. For removing the fluid, the doc injects a bit of numbing medicine, which I don't typically feel at the skin level. I may feel a little pressure or sting deeper inside but it only last a second. He may take a small tool to puncture the skin or just use a big syringe with a wide needle that's dull on the end so it won't poke a hole in the implant. Then he just starts sucking fluid out with the syringe, sometimes moving the needle around to get into other pockets, sometimes pushing on the breast to push the fluid toward the syringe.

For the fill: The doc uses a little "stud finder" to locate the metallic port in the implant. He marks the spot with a pen, then injects that spot with some numbing medicine. Again, I don't feel the needle going in (because the nerves to the breast were cut in the mastectomy) but feel some stinging deeper inside the muscle.

Then he puts a needle with a little tube into the port where he marked the spot and connects that to a special syringe which is also connected to a bag of saline. There's a valve on the syringe so he can either: (a) draw more saline into the syringe from the bag, or (b) squirt the saline into the implant. He can actually flip back and forth if the fill takes more than one syringe full of saline. When he's done, the tube/needle come out of the port and they put a little bandaid on the spot.

This time I feel fine. I'm sore and my chest wall seems to burn a little all the time, and the muscle on top is tender. But it's not so bad that it's all I think about. In fact I don't think about it unless I am active and either jostling it or using the muscle on that side. I rarely feel any of the bubbling, grinding weirdness now, which is a blessing.

My plan is to go back next week for another 50ccs. The right breast is already bigger in volume than the natural breast. But we need extra skin for the nipple reconstruction and also to create a little bit of natural droop, if possible. So I want to stretch as much as possible up front and then give the skin a month to surrender a bit.

We're thinking the final implants will go in maybe the week of November 17. Tho the doc said he could put them in as soon as 2 weeks from now.  I have 2 events where I'll be selling my "Thingy" self-improvement bracelets on the 2nd and 3rd weekends in Nov, so I didn't want to be just coming off surgery when I'll need to be hauling a bunch of stuff around.  Besides, I really do want to give the skin as much time to stretch as I can and still finish the whole process this year.

The final surgery will involve, for the right breast, opening the same incision from the mastectomy, removing the expander and plopping in the nice squishy silicone implant. On the left, the doc will make a small incision in the fold at the bottom of the breast, tuck the silicone implant behind the existing breast tissue and sew me up. 

This will be a short day surgery. He said they can use an airway assist device that doesn't go down my throat but helps the anesthesiologist ensure my breathing. If it were a surgery that required repositioning my body, they'd have to use a more stable breathing tube down the throat.  

Interestingly, it seems that after each expansion it only takes maybe 4 or 5 days for the skin/muscle to soften up. I have been rubbing lotion on it twice a day to keep the skin pliable, which seems to be helping. So maybe another 2 fills will do it.

And it seems as if the worst of it is over now. So I'm happy about that.

BTW, for anyone who did not get my email, please check out  www.armyofwomen.org  , a program (supported by Dr. Susan Love and Avon) conducting multiple studies of (ideally) a million women of all types and ages, with and without breast cancer, in hopes of determining the causes of the disease. 

Go to the Volunteer link, then "How you can help" and register. There will be studies that only require you to fill out questionnaires. Others ask that you mail in samples (saliva, urine, toenail clippings, breast milk, house dust, etc.) in provided kits. All you do is register and they will email you when they need subjects for studies. You may not qualify for all the studies, but any time you can participate will help add to the knowledge base.

Have a wonderful weekend.

The T-Shirt is a staple in fashion in the United States, popularized during WWII by the American soldiers who admired the versatility of the lightweight British soldiers' undershirts. Since that time, the T-shirt has been immortalized by people like James Dean and Elvis, bringing depth to an other-wise unremarkable design. These shirts are easy and comfortable because they are button-, zipper-, collar-, and sleeve-free and soft to perfection thanks to their jersey knit.

Their Way

T-Shirt reconstruction, although it may not seem it, is a very broad subject and can be divided into the following categories:

1. No-Sew (customizing a shirt without sewing it)

2. T-construction (altering a t-shirt with a needle and thread to make it something wearable)

3. Mash-Up (using parts of different shirts to create a shirt)

4. Tee-Party (using one or more shirts AND other embellishments, such as lace, scrap fabric, buttons, zippers, patches, etc. to create a shirt)

5. Versatili-tee (using one or more shirts and other pieces to create a different article of clothing)

My Way

Surgery #1

Surgery #2

Surgery #3

In all of the above pictures: Black jeans, Zara; Suede boots, thrifted; shirts, miscellaneous, customized by me.

]]> http://texasliberal.wordpress.com/?p=3859 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:53:36 +0000 Neil Aquino http://texasliberal.fr.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/many-presidents-have-died-early-in-their-terms-president-palin/

When a President has died in office, it has often been quite early in his term. This has often made a big difference in American history.

This is the Texas Liberal Election Fact of the Day.

The first President to die in office, William Henry Harrison, expired just a month into his term. Harrison died in 1841. President Harrison, at 68 the oldest President to that point, was a Whig. His Vice President, John Tyler, was a representative of the Southern planter class picked to help balance the ticket and not in full agreement with the Whig mainstream. As President, Tyler pursued policies, such a veto of a national bank, that greatly distressed Whig leaders such as Henry Clay.

President Zachary Taylor passed on in 1850 after serving just 17 months of his term. He was succeeded by Millard Filmore. 

Abe Lincoln's (above)1865 assassination occurred just a month into his second term. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson (below), who had not been Lincoln's first term VP, had very different views than Lincoln on Reconstruction, and how the South and Southerners should be handled after the Civil War.

Here is a stark difference between the person elected President and the person elected Vice President. The United States got one month of a great President and just under four years of a terrible President. And black folks got a century of Jim Crow.  

James Garfield was shot in the first year of his term in 1881. He died a few months later. Garfield's successor, Chester Arthur, might well have been an improvement. President Arthur sought Civil Service reform and was surprisingly independeant despite a reputation as a machine politician.

William McKinley was shot and killed in the first year of his second term in 1901. McKinley's Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, who like Andrew Johnson had not been the first term VP, was a very different man than McKinley.

Franklin Roosevelt was shot at in 1933 in the time between his election and inauguration. Roosevelt's Vice President-elect, John Nance Garner was far more conservative than F.D.R. You might never of had a New Deal if Garner had become President instead of Roosevelt.

Roosevelt would later die in the first weeks of his fourth term. Vice President Harry Truman who had not been VP in the first three F.D.R terms, took the White House and did a pretty good job.  

Also, Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded in his first year as President in 1981.

Let's say you are less than a hardcore Republican, yet are still considering voting for 72 year old John McCain. American history shows us that you may feel you're voting for Mr. McCain, but that what you really may get is President Sarah Palin.

On Agate Hill  by Lee Smith

Lee Smith's novels are usually set in contemporary Appalachia, but On Agate Hill  is her first experiment with historical fiction.

Told in the form of letters, diaries, poems and songs, it is the story of Molly Petree, "ghost, spitfire, burden, and refugee girl," as she grows up on a ruined North Carolina plantation called Agate Hill, in the bitter aftermath of the Civil War. Molly meets the challenges of her difficult girlhood with wit and grace, and becomes a woman who lives her long, adventure-filled life "so hard, and with so much love, that she uses herself up like a candle."

One reviewer described this book as "vivid, artful, and an authentic American saga, as bittersweet as an Appalachian ballad." Lee Smith is a longtime favorite of my book club, and we had a great discussion recently about this book. We recommend it!

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www.zamzar.com

I need to make this determined comeback and i know that it is not impossible. I will make it all possible. :)

Now I will return to about the death of my mother which was November 14, 1867.  My father Jacob E rvin Montgomery in the next year married Mrs. Frances A. Davis, the widow of Robert A. Davis.  After their marriage, they had two children, the first was Laura and the second Wirt Henry.  In about 1884 my father died.  A long about 1873 or 1874 I went to farming.  Continued farming until 1879.  A fter which I moved to starkville Miss.  Weighed cotton as public cotton weigher after which I clerked for JohnS. Worley one year.  After that I clerked 3 years for Blumenfeld & Fried.  After this I went to rail roading.  Helped to build the New Orleans & North Eastern R. R. from Meridian, Miss to New Oeleans.  After that I was employed as Brakesman on the M & O R. R. from Okolona, Miss to Mibile, Ala.  Sometime while I was on the Road I had my hand mashed while coupling cars in Whistler Yards, Ala.  After that I never worked any more for the Road.  After my hand got so that I could use it I was employed with my brother Joseph in putting up and running a steam saw mill on the Canton, Aberdeen & Nashville RR in the western portion of Oktibbeha Co. Miss.  There I staid with him about 8 or 9 years after which I moved to West Point, Clay Co. Miss.  There I went to night watching at the Compress for one year after that year was out I hiered myself to the Mississippi Cotton oil Co. as a night watchman.  After I quit the Oil Mill I did not work any more for about 2 years.  I went to Columbus, Miss in March 1914, I bought me a house and lot for a home which I now (Sept. 22, 1915) own.

(transcribed by Cole Coonce)

Yes, I am now recommending that anyone who is about to have breast reconstruction after mastectomy save some (or get a refill on) pain meds for the tissue expansion process...if you like to use such drugs. Or, if you're like me, keep some of your over-the-counter pain pills handy.

I'm not saying this hurts worse than immediately after the surgery, because it doesn't. But it is -- or at least can be, based on my experience -- as disruptive.

For me I think it is that this was unexpected. I knew I'd have pain of some magnitude after surgery, and trouble sleeping. I even expected to have some discomfort during the expansion process, and I was even prepared to grit my teeth and soldier thru it at an aggressive pace to get it finished as quickly as possible. But I didn't expect the TYPE of discomfort I'm having now at Day 18.

I've talked about the creepy, funnybone kind of feelings from inside the breast that have been bugging me when I move, especially leaning forward or to the side. Well, yesterday the doc pumped up the expander implant and removed a bunch of fluid from outside the implant. The right breast is now noticeably bigger than the left breast, which is good because we want the skin overstretched to get a little natural sag and to provide enough skin for the nipple reconstruction.

Now, however, when I move, it feels as if there's a wooden bar inside my chest rubbing and bumping back and forth across my ribs.

I had planned for skin-stretching pain, but because the nerves were cut during surgery, all but a rim of skin around the very edge of the breast mound (and in my armpit and side) is numb. So skin pain is a non-issue since the tape is gone. I didn't feel the numbing shot the doc gave me on Day 5, either on the skin or inside, but yesterday on Day17, I felt a little stinging sensation deeper inside, presumably in the muscle.

I had also expected pain from that upper pectoral muscle that is being stretched over the implant. And I do feel discomforts from that, tho they kind of fade to the background unless I'm using the muscle or push on it and can tell it is tender...more so since yesterday's expansion.

But I didn't expect that deep, rubbing-against-the-ribs kind of discomfort/pain.  It's not even clear to me whether this is a real pain or an enhanced funnybone feeling. Maybe a combination. In any case I took my first Aleve since about Day 5, hoping that some part of the sensation would be blunted with the pain medicine. I think it helped. 

Nevertheless, I had the worst night's sleep last night that I've had since that first night in the hospital with people and noises waking me up every 20 minutes. Why? I'm not sure if the breast was actually hurting and woke me up, or if I shifted and the apparatus in there moved and woke me up with its weirdness. Either way, I was awake a dozen or more times during the night to find a comfortable position. Even my old reliable left-side position only worked for a while.

Of course, since I took the Aleve around 5 or 6 yesterday evening, it would have been wearing off in the early morning hours, which may have been when I started to toss and turn. So tonight I will take one at bedtime. I haven't taken one this morning yet, but I think I may go ahead and do that now so I'm covered for the daytime hours and will be ready for another at bedtime.

I have a high tolerance for pain but a low tolerance for annoyance and distraction. As long as a pain doesn't annoy or distract me, I can ignore it. But this new thing is both annoying and distracting. For others, it could very well be experienced as pain, possibly equal to (tho different from) the pain following surgery.

So, for those who are planning to have breast reconstruction, I recommend that you keep some of your favorite pain meds handy for the expansion periods. 

I have to assume that it is worst after each pumping up and will ease off as the skin and muscle stretch and adjust to the the new mass. I don't know how much bigger this expander will go, but I suspect we're not too far from its capacity. I've had 2 fills now, and during the first one the doc thought he had me near capacity. But he was thinking it was a 350 cc and it was actually a 450 cc. If I was at, say, 325 after the first fill and he put in another 75 yesterday, then I'm around 400 now. I don't know if he'll be less aggressive now and do smaller fills or  if he'll just do the remaining 50 cc next time and then send me off to wait for my body to adjust.

At least I now know what to expect. Who knows, I may even open that bottle of Darvocet at some point.

...or not. We'll see.

The doc removed about a half-cup of fluid from below the implant. And that really helped a lot. I hadn't been sure whether I was really feeling more discomfort or if the burning from the tape adhesive previously had distracted my attention from the discomfort in the breast itself.  With the fluid gone, a lot of the discomfort was gone too.

However...he also pumped up the implant quite a bit more. So it isn't making as many of the creepy sensations (I told the doc they're like hitting-your-funnybone weird), but now the muscle is a bit sore because of the increased pressure on it. Theoretically, as it stretches, it won't hurt so much. I feel it everytime I take a breath. Actually, it hurts less, or not at all when I sit up straight, which I need to do anyway. So that's a win-win deal.

Now the right breast is bigger than the left one. But it's good that it's stretching this much already. It means we should be able to get the whole reconstruction done before the end of the year.

The new breast still feels a tad bit weird, so I may try wearing a bra even when I'm at home to see if that external pressure helps relieve the creepiness. Fortunately this is only a 2-month process. The doc assures me the silicone implant will feel very soft and natural.

I got a call from the general surgeon just a little while ago. He got the pathologist's addendum to the confusing earlier report that made it sound as if the cancer was all over the breast he removed. Her addendum says that the total amount of DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) was 1.5 cm in diameter, and the two spots of invasive cancer were inside that 1.5 cm tumor.

That's a tremendous relief in that it tells me the scans accurately estimated the size and extent of the cancer in that breast. That also tells me that when all those same scans found nothing unusual in the other breast, they can be considered pretty accurate in that finding as well. It doesn't mean there aren't tiny tumors too small to see with any of the tools, but there was nothing the best instruments could detect at this time.

The doc also said that the tumor was HER2/neu positive. That means the tumor cells are more aggressive. It also means that they would respond to a chemo drug like Herceptin. However, like a lot of these drugs, Herceptin has some hefty potential side effects, the big one being congestive heart failure.

I don't know what the oncologist will say, whether he'll recommend my taking Herceptin. But I will decline. Since all the known tumor cells are theoretically gone now, the drug would be given on the premise that there might be bits of cancer that got away or formed independently. Using that logic, I should take every known drug and chemo agent and nuke my whole body in case I have some bits of cancer elsewhere.

The information about HER2/neu is good to have, tho, for future reference. And I hope I will never have to use it.

La guerre en Afghanistan a été déclenchée il y a près de 8 ans. Le pays se porte-t-il mieux que sous le joug des Talibans ?

Oui. Les infrastructures ont été en partie reconstruites. Les télécommunications fonctionnent bien. L’économie est relancée avec une croissance à 9% en 2007. La scolarisation est d’un taux très enviable pour un pays pauvre comme l’Afghanistan, puisque plus de 80% des enfants sont scolarisés. Et la couverture sanitaire a connue des progrès importants.
De ce point de vue, la situation est bien meilleure. Mais ces améliorations ne doivent pas cacher une certaine inefficacité de la politique de reconstruction mise en œuvre depuis 2002.

Le statut de la femme a-t-il évolué en Afghanistan ?

C’est l’un des rares pays de la région parmi lesquels il y a des femmes élues au Parlement. De plus, la loi affirme l’égalité de tous les Afghans devant la loi.
Dans la pratique, malgré tout, l’Afghanistan reste régi par ses traditions. Le changement radical du statut de la femme n’aura pas lieu. Mais dans nos actions pour le développement rural, nous voyons, par exemple, que les femmes sont de plus en plus associées aux décisions prises pour leurs villages et les terres avoisinantes. Comme dans toute société traditionnelle, la femme est d’autant plus respectée qu’elle est mère. Etre une jeune femme non mariée n’est pas forcément enviable, à moins qu’elle ne soit très diplômée. Et de fait, les étudiantes afghanes sont très assidues et remarquables.
Les Afghanes se montrent également brillantes dans l’usage du micro-crédit. Dans les opérations de micro-finance tout ce qui est géré par les femmes marche bien, alors que ce qui est du fait des hommes donne lieu à toute sortes de tricheries.

Un Etat afghan s’est petit à petit mis en place depuis 2002. Est-ce une réussite ?

C’est loin d’être une réussite. Le grand mérite du gouvernement et des administrations en place est d’exister et de s’étendre à l’ensemble du pays. Mais si l’administration centrale est représentée dans les provinces, elle l’est de manière insuffisante et qualitativement peu satisfaisante. La corruption sévit partout, notamment parce que les fonctionnaires sont très mal payés. Ils ont donc tendance à « privatiser » leurs services, y compris dans le domaine de la justice. Ainsi, dans les régions un peu reculées d’Afghanistan, où ceux de la justice officielle ne parviennent pas à résoudre des litiges, les gens font appel aux Talibans. Ils connaissent la jurisprudence islamique, et règlent leurs problèmes.

Beaucoup de responsables régionaux et nationaux sont issus des milieux de la drogue…

C’est l’origine de l’échec de toute tentative pour apaiser ce pays. L’un des maux dont souffre l’Afghanistan est le clanisme, la tendance de la société à s’organiser autour de chefs rivaux entre eux. Ces derniers rendent des services autour d’eux, par des voies le plus souvent illégales et prédatrices. La culture du rapport de force est ancienne en Afghanistan. Elle fait des ravages et favorise la création de mafias, comme celle de la drogue. Elle a donné lieu à la multiplication des chefs de guerre. Ils ont été valeureux à l’époque de la résistance, mais ils sont à présent des chefs locaux qui substituent leur autorité à celle de l’Etat de façon tyrannique.
Il faudrait que tout ce que la société afghane peut secréter de traditionnellement délibératoire, comme le système des assemblées de villages, soit développé pour que la solidarité devienne le principe de base des décisions, et non la rivalité. C’est ce qu’il aurait fallu faire dès le début. Mais on a laissé se développer la culture du pavot, et donc les mafias de la drogue. Ces erreurs sont payées très chers aujourd’hui. Car les populations sont déçues par l’Etat et la communauté internationale, et voient, moins qu’autrefois, l’intérêt à s’opposer résolument aux infiltrations talibanes.

La culture du pavot a encore progressé entre 2006 et 2007. Certains experts estiment qu’il faut trouver une culture de substitution…

C’est là l’autre échec de la communauté internationale. Ce n’est pas une culture de substitution mais une économie entière de substitution qu’il faut trouver. Ce qui signifie développement de l’artisanat, des transports et évidemment d’un certain nombre de cultures de rente. Aujourd’hui le marché de l’opium sert un peu de Crédit agricole et de Caisse d’épargne. C’est le seul domaine dans lequel les agriculteurs reçoivent des avances sur récoltes par des trafiquants. Et la résine d’opium est facile à dissimuler. Les paysans en cachent une petite partie et la sortent pour la vendre au bazar, quand ils ont un besoin urgent de liquidités.
Le développement de la micro-finance pourrait permettre de remplacer ce système. C’est un travail de longue haleine qu’il aurait fallu entamer bien avant.

L’aide internationale qui parvient au pays retourne, selon certains experts, pour 40% aux pays donateurs. Comment expliquer ce phénomène ?

Il y a une grande déperdition de l’aide internationale. Elle est non seulement détournée par la corruption dont font preuves certains officiels, et retourne vers les pays donateurs, notamment parce que certains experts expatriés gagnent presque 1000 euros par jour ! Mais il y aussi des gaspillages, comme la multiplication d’études très coûteuses à l’intérêt limité. Et le peuple afghan finit par le savoir et désespère. Ce qui l’emmène à prêter davantage l’oreille à la propagande des talibans.
De plus, les dommages collatéraux dans les opérations militaires font énormément de tort à la paix. Un appui aérien à des unités qui progressent en zone difficile est nécessaire. Mais bombarder des villages en présumant que des talibans s’y cacheraient est une catastrophe. C’est l’une des réalités qui retourne la population contre l’occident.

Comment aider durablement l'Afghanistan ?

Il s’agit d’abord de poursuivre l’entreprise de responsabilisation des communautés locales. Il faut aussi faire en sorte que ces dernières puissent être représentées auprès des pouvoirs publics par des interfaces efficaces. Des syndics par exemple.
De plus, il faut poursuivre les actions de développement économique dans le sens de la création d’une véritable économie de substitution, et faire que les mafias de la drogue soient au chômage.
Par ailleurs, l’Afghanistan reste un pays très pauvre. Les sécheresses successives dans certaines régions ont fait des dégâts considérables. Le retour des réfugiés renvoyés du Pakistan notamment pose un énorme problème humain. Il y a donc des efforts à faire qui relèvent de l’humanitaire d’urgence.
Enfin, la question énergétique est très problématique en Afghanistan. Pour 25 millions d’habitants, il y a seulement 700 mégawatts de puissance installée. La population a vraiment besoin d’électricité, si elle veut, justement, se tourner vers nouvelle économie. Mais toutes ces actions doivent être menées avec pertinence, en étudiant de très près les besoins et la manière dont il faut s’y prendre pour les satisfaire. La communauté internationale a souvent eu tendance, à chaque fois qu’un malaise se développait, à augmenter la dotation globale mise à disposition de l’Afghanistan ou le nombre de soldats étrangers, sans se préoccuper des objectifs à réaliser. Ça ne suffit pas. Les actions doivent être pensées.

Propos recueillis par Fanny Costes

(1) Pierre Lafrance est président de l’association Madera depuis 2000. Signifiant mission d’aide au développement des économies rurales en Afghanistan, Madera a vocation à favoriser les structures de décision locales, l’économie durable et à lutter contre les inégalités. Elle est présente depuis plus de 20 ans sur le territoire afghan. Son président connaît bien la région puisqu’il a été 1er secrétaire d'ambassade à Kaboul (1973-1975), et ambassadeur de France au Pakistan (1993-1998).

I've decided I don't care anymore. I'm so lazy when it comes to updating things, and I want to post a photo. So good by Anonymity. It's pointless anyway!

Anyway I found this great thing called Wardrobe Remix. I don't 100% understand it, but it inspired ME to remix my wardrobe, so this was my attempt for today.

Shrug: 579

Dress: Aeropostale

Tights: WalMart

Shoes: Deb

Bracelets: Some store at the mall

Necklace: A Claw Machine (Not a store, an actual machine XD)

So there you go! Walking around in those heels hurt SO MUCH. My feet were in a lot of pain, and I didn't have the tights on earlier, so it was a lot worse. Anyway, I really have to do my homework for Shakespeare class, since Heroes premieres tomorrow and I also have 6 episodes from season 2 to catch up on before it starts! Eep! I am going to try and keep up on this, but no promises.

I reconned a shirt yesterday, it's gorgey porgey, I'll post a photo soon =) Toodles!

It's now 16 days since my mastectomy (right side) and I feel great...with some annoyances, which I'll go into later.

Let's see, on Day 5 I was given the okay to drive and on Day 6 drove myself to a friend's dad's funeral.  Driving was no problem, except when it came to looking for cars in my left side blind spot or backing up. The twisting motions to look backwards seemed to put some strain on things and so I relied a little more than I like on the side and rearview mirrors alone.

I still had both drains in at that point and was wearing them in a pouch made by pinning up the hem of some men's undershirts. That put them within easy reach for emptying and the fold covered the tubes under my arm so I never got my arm caught in them. But going to the funeral meant dressing up.  So I wore a sort of high-waisted, flowing dress that could serve well for maternity purposes, and just carried a sweater over my arm in front of the squared-off breast and the lumpy drain pouch. Nobody seemed to notice anything was amiss.

When I was at home, I just always wore one of those undershirts with the pouch, either by themselves or under another shirt. On Day 15 when I went for my checkup at the plastic surgeon's, I tried something different: I stuck the one remaining drain bulb into my bra cup on top of the wanna-be breast with the tubes wrapped around. Of course it freaked the doc out a bit when he first saw these strange grooves winding around the breast, until I explained.

And finally, when I went back on Day 12, I just pinned the bulb to the inside of my shirt in the armpit area. I wouldn't want to go around too long with that grenade in my armpit but, it was fine for the short time till the drain came out.

The top drain came out on Day 5. It didn't hurt at all; the doc used the kind with straight tubing, so there was no ball inside me that had to be pulled thru the incision hole. it just felt a little slithery coming out.

The doc also added some saline to the expander implant at that time to help stop the burping/sloshing/buckling I was feeling coming from the expander.  He gave me an injection of numbing medicine but I didn't feel that needle and probably didn't need it because the area is already numb. He was very pleased that I was pumping up so fast and the tissue was still returning to softness quickly. He has had me massaging the breast with lotion to keep the skin supple and flexible. It's helping my hands too.

The bottom drain continued to fill. I'd hoped to get that one out on Day 10 but there was still a sufficient amount of drainage to warrant leaving it in. Plus there had been a clot in the tubing so it wasn't draining as much as it needed to.  The doc got that out and had me come back 2 days later on Day 12. I didn't feel anything at all when the bottom drain came out, presumably because of the numbness.

By Day 12, I was dying to get the drain out because the soreness under my arm had become more bothersome than the pain after surgery. My skin around the drain felt like it had been burned. I even started taking Aleve again, after having stopped all pain meds a few days after surgery. Turned out to be an allergic reaction to the adhesive on the tape around the dressings.

After the second drain came out on Day 12, I still felt the burning soreness, but not from the drain hole, as I'd thought: it was from the tape around the dressing.  So I tried minimizing the amount of tape used to hold down the wad of gauze, and I tried putting the tape in places that weren't already sore.

I discovered the hard way that the drainage was still coming out of the drain hole. It soaked thru the gauze and my shirt that first afternoon after the drain came out. So at bedtime I packed extra gauze over the hole (with a dab of Polysporin), but had no soak-thru overnight. So I thought it was done draining. But Noooo. I got my first independent shower (no balls or tubes to be managed, yay!) the morning of Day 13, but by the time I got in to see the general surgeon for my checkup that day, I had soaked thru the new dressing...and my bra...and my shirt.

So the GS re-covered it with a ton of gauze and plastic tape. And by the time I got home later that day I had big red welts everywhere the tape was. I pulled off that dressing and put a wad of gauze on with just one little strip of tape. Still it was sore even where the little bit of tape was, but by the next day (Day 14) the drainage was down to a tiny dab. So I just took the dressing off and decided I'd let it drain onto my t-shirt and I'd change to another if it got too wet. But the hole didn't drain at all after that and now the only little bit of soreness I feel is right on top of the drain hole, and only if I touch it.

The GS had had another converstation with the pathologist who had noted the "extensive DCIS" in her report, but still had no answers as to what that really meant. I told him that I mainly want to know how her findings might relate to the other breast. We had mammogram, sonogram, CT and MRI all saying there was a mass of DCIS about 1.1 cm in size (dime sized) in the right breast, with a couple of tiny spots of invasive cancer inside that same 1.1 cm space.  So did the pathologist find considerably more than that amount of cancerous tissue that did not show up in any of the scans? Or did she just see many different slices of the same 1.1 cm tumor mass? 

If she found way more cancer than any of the best scans saw, then my all-clear reports of the other breast from these scans aren't worth squat.  The GS has asked her for another summary that boils her findings down to the kind of facts we/I need. For example: What was the total size of the cancer mass?  And was it all confined to the one known area or was there cancer in more than one area?  He will let me know when he gets more info from her.

He has also not yet gotten the HER2 genetic test, which will tell us whether these cancer cells are overexpressing the genes that normally cause breast tissue to grow. If the tumors are positive for the HER2, it would mean that they might respond to the chemo drug Herceptin. But since the tumors are theoretically gone from my body now, this is not applicable. Also, Herceptin carries a lot of serious baggage with it in terms of side effects like congestive heart failure. So I would be reluctant to try it even if I had justification.

The path report noted that both the DCIS and the invasive tumors were just at the bottom end of the middle category for tumor growth. 0-10% is the lowest/slowest growing tumors, 11-30% is the middle and mine were at 12%.  So while they weren't the slowest growing tumors, they weren't in any big hurry.

I asked him to explain why the DCIS was mildly (3%) estrogen positive but both of the invasive tumors were not responsive to any hormones. He said that the DCIS cancer had mutated into the two little invasive tumors, and in mutating, the cells apparently got tougher/meaner and lost their need for estrogen to fuel their growth.  It means that while hormone blocking therapies might slow the DCIS a tiny bit, they'd be useless on the invasive tumors. (Which is irrelevant at this point because we assume with the removal of all the known tumors I no long have cancer.)

I asked him about having to avoid needle sticks, IVs and such in the right arm (since he removed a couple lymph nodes). He said it's not a big worrisome deal. However, I should always try to get blood drawn and have IVs on the left arm unless they just absolutely can't get what they need. Then it's okay to use the right arm. I need to learn more about how the removal of just 2 lymph nodes affects my body.

As for my current status: I feel as if I have something stuck in my armpit all the time. That, apparently, is the outside edge of the expander. I'm sure that adds to the burning sensation in my skin: friction from skin again skin.  Some is likely a bit of swelling too. I really hope that is just temporary to create enough space for the permanent implant and that the silicone implant will be softer and more centered.

I have to say the expander is starting to really bug me. First there is the weird feeling of the muscle going over top of it. It's most annoying when I use that muscle.  The muscle is still sore of course, so I have to assume this strangeness will go away when the muscle stretches out and things heal.

But then there's the whole gurgling, shifting, burping, buckling, and I-can't-describe-it feelings coming from the breast when I lean over or to one side. I feel as if the implant is skittering against my ribs sometimes; other times it feels as if there's something that gets stuck on a nerve and bites me. When I bend forward, the fluid moves to the upper part of the expander temporarily, pushing on the muscle, and that feels weird, sometimes hurts.

It's possible that all we need to do is fill up the expander more to take up space that was filled with fluid that has now drained off. Or maybe with the drain out, there is still some fluid trapped in there making the implant float more in its space than it did before. I presume that at some point my body will encapsulate the implant and this goosey business will stop, tho maybe not till after the permanent implant is in for quite a while. All I know is that this weirdness is far more distracting to me than any of the pain has been. A couple days ago I was fairly active all day and I found myself holding onto the bionic breast any time I had to lean over because otherwise it felt too creepy. I can't do that for the rest of my life, so I really really hope this is just temporary.

As for sensations, the breast skin is completely numb down to the lower crease. I have feeling only about 1 inch in from the center and only in some areas: the farther up you go in the center the more the numbness goes all the way down to the chest and even over a bit toward the base of the other breast.  On top, it's numb in an arc slightly above the top edge of a bra. And in my armpit, the numbness goes about halfway back on the upper part; not so far back toward the bottom.

I do sometimes have that tight feeling along the bottom fold of the breast like I'm wearing a bra, when I'm not. But not too often. Or not so that I even think about it. The main things that draw my attention are the fullness/friction in my armpit, the soreness and creepiness of the raised muscle on top and the weird movements from the expander and fluid.

Pain? Now that the tape is gone, I can't say I have anything I'd remotely call pain, except for those isolated moments when the breast bubble moves with my position and something hits or pulls on a nerve. It's like a bite or pinch and it goes away virtually at the same time I register it.  Early after the surgery, I had what I described to the doctor as "phantom nipple" pains. Not really pain, but little nerve twinges that seemed to originate from the center of my breast where the nipple would be. 

The soreness/tightness I feel from the muscle occasionally is like when I'd go for a walk and decide to run a bit when I wasn't really in shape for running. I'd get a mild cramplike feeling in my chest briefly, presumably my heart muscle straining. That's what this feels like, only on my right side. I don't feel it very often, tho now that I'm writing about it, I think the sensation may be there almost all the time but just so mild that I don't even notice it. I may only notice it when I use the muscle or put extra pressure on it by moving a certain way.

Sleep? I still can't comfortably sleep on my right side for any length of time. I roll over there for a few minutes at night just for a change, but soon shift back to the left side where I can sleep soundly. I no longer need to sleep with pillows elevating my head and chest. As long as I'm on my left side, I sleep fine. Tho I am still using my fattest pillow to give me a little bit of elevation. And I have extra pillows to the right of me in the bed so I can tuck one or more around me when I turn onto my right side to take the pressure off the breast. I personally recommend feather or feather-like pillows that will sculpt and hold a position rather than the springy foam pillows.

Mentally/emotionally? I accept the "cured" declaration with some reservations. I have dodged a bullet and will forever be more aware that I'm am living in the line of fire. I still see myself as a healthy person; however, I know there are more things I can and must do to optimize the healing resources nature gave me to promote wellness and to fight off disease and frailty.

I am focusing more on a healthy diet, filled with fresh or frozen vegetables and fruits, with only moderate portions of protein and carbs. It's basically the diabetic diet, which everyone could probably benefit from. My gynecologist called to check on me last week and was telling me a new study at UCSF by Dean Ornish has shown a definite connection between healthy lifestyles (low stress, moderate exercise, and diets high in fruits and vegetables, low in fat and sugar) and the amount of telomerase, the enzyme that protects chromosomes and cells, extending their lives...and ours.

I still need to get more exercise; I've been way too sedentary since my surgery. I didn't want to go walking out in public because of the whole drainage apparatus hanging off of me. I thought about mowing (the parts that our sweet neighbor didnt do with his riding mower) last week after the drain came out, but still had an open drain hole and thought that blowing debris all over my body was probably not the smartest thing just yet. So I moved the stepper back into the house from my office and got on that this morning. I did a little stepper and then a little laundry, then stepper, and something else. But at least I kept moving for about 30 minutes.

I am very thankful for this experience and for the wisdom it has brought to me. I will continue to learn from it. And I am most thankful for all of you who have walked with me on this journey.

Well today was our post -op visit with the plastic surgeon.  We did learn that an initial 150ccs were inserted and he put in another 100 today.  If chemo is needed he will likely be almost done with everything before then. 

It was the first time I'd seen him smile too.  We got to know him a little more as he fixed her dressings again and injected more fluid.  Luckily they gave us more bandages because the nurse did not apply the dressings appropriately and my wife was leaking vascular fluid.  When I got home, my wife asked me to reapply the gauze and bandages.  This was actually the toughest job yet.  We had just hit the weekend and hopefully I did it right or someone would have to take my wife back in this weekend.  It was frankly a little too close  for me.

We still were not ready to remove the drains and they recommended keeping them in another 5 days. Ugggh.  I saw the sadness in her eyes.  I know they are uncomfortable for her and when they tried to push the date to next Friday I knew we had to fight for a Wednesday appointment.  I guess the fighting isn't done yet.  It ain't over til its over I told her.  She apologized that I still had to drive her everywhere and I told her no apology was necessary.  How anyone does this alone is just brutal,  She needs to be able to get out and become mobile again and I know she is getting antsy.  The drains are definitely not pleasant to look at for sure and cannot be that comfortable.

We at least have our next three appointments settled for the plastic surgeon, the removal of the drains, and the initial meeting with our oncologist who is supposedly one of the best nationally so we feel very fortunate that she is able to take our case.

Other than the darned trains and discomfort she is feeling okay after today's procedure.  i guess that is easy for me to say, but I'm sure going to be glad when the coming week is over.  I know she is thinking the same thing.

Okay, she's obviously no Kate Moss but Wilma has already won over the hearts of the scientific community as for the first time a reconstruction of a Neanderthal's face has been completed based on DNA evidence. National Geographic explains:

Artists and scientists created Wilma (shown in a photo released yesterday) using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had been cannibalized. Announced in October 2007, the findings had suggested that at least some Neanderthals would have had red hair, pale skin, and possibly freckles.

Created for an October 2008 National Geographic magazine article, Wilma has a skeleton made from replicas of pelvis and skull bones from Neanderthal females. Copies of male Neanderthal bones—resized to female dimensions—filled in the gaps.

I have recently been researching Ansel Adams' photography and philosophy. It was interesting to learn that his photographs were almost all pre-visualized. He believed that you should take into consideration composition, color, tones, and detail all before exposing the film. He created the piece in his head and then on the film. One of his famous quotes was, "You do not take a photograph, you make it." How true! You must visualize what you want in order to achieve your goal. I have tried to take this approach with my photography and do so more now that I see how it worked out for Ansel. You make the photograph. You reconstruct nature to what you see. Nature in itself is not art in technical terms, but the reorganization of elements in nature is art.

This image is one that I captured while fishing near Kansas City. How simple but so refined. I reconstructed the scene to evoke a sense of calm and subtle geometry. The blue gives you a smooth and easy retinal stimulation, while the individual stems give the image a sense of solidity. Only the necessary went into the image. No more, no less. Maybe a weak example of the previous paragraphs topic. None the less, it was my reconstruction. What would you have done?

MT

The bombing and burning of girls schools in NWFP is an act of violence against humanity. The targeted schools of girls are more than 160 in the Districts of Swat, Bajour, Mohmand, Dir Upper, Dir Lower and other parts of FATA and NWFP.

It is a plan to keep the female population in darkness and deprived. The female literacy rate is very low in these parts of the country and the need was to establish more (almost double) the numbers of school there for boys and girls to educate the young population of the nation.

The female literacy rate is about 22-24% in Swat, 2-3% in Bajour, 10-12% in Dir Lower and 8-10% in Dir upper. But unfortunately the education institutions and specially girls schools from primary to higher secondary level are being targeted by the militants and thousands of girls remain in homes due to the security fears and destruction of schools.

About one in four schools in Swat have been destroyed by the militants. In some areas, the small girls of primary schools are forced to wear burqa (veil). Recently the Girls High School at Ganori Village is blasted in Dir Upper. The only Girls High school in Wari Tehsil (Subdivision) of Dir Upper is burnt and
all the girls are now forced by the government to get their school leaving certificates.

Communist Party of Pakistan condemns these acts of militants to keep away the girls from education and forcing them into the age of darkness.

Communist Party of Pakistan calls upon all the parents, teachers, political and rights activists to protect the schools as some of the brilliant parents did in Swat and Dir.

CPP demands from the governmnet to provide security to schools, students and teachers.

The reconstruction of destroyed schools should be the first priority of the Government, and special programmes for the reconstruction of schools should be initiated.

Central Secretrait
Communist Party of Pakistan

groups.yahoo.com

In a recent project I wondered if one could use the type of spatial production evident in the work of Superstudio as a form of historical visualization and reconstruction. I made the above image as part of an effort to reconstruct the smokey air of Pittsburgh at the early 20th century. Architectural reconstructions often involve the reconstruction of structures versus the larger milieu in which they once were conceived. I imagine it is difficult to understand much of the architectural work of Pittsburgh from 1900-1950 without an understanding of the former state of the city's atmosphere.

Of course the scale of the above proposal is completely unrealizable -- technically, financially, and politically. Thus, the above image stands as a type of historical provocation. I considered how one might develop the idea at a more reasonable (but still formidable!) scale below. This, I imagine would be a balloon, of the type used for advertisements that is merely patterned with an image of smoke--floating above the city, a smoky Leonidov.

I made this image when I was the curator of architecture at the National Building Museum (2000-2002). I had just purchased Robert Augustyn and Paul Cohen's book "Manhattan in Maps" (Rizolli, 1997) and enjoyed examining the most recent efforts to map the midtown sector of the city. But I felt that none of the recent maps actually captured how it feels to be in those spaces. I wanted to develop a birds eye view that captured the immense production of indoor air in these spaces, the scale of air-conditioning. The map would later lead to my dissertation project and years of inquiry into indoor air in New York City.

In this project I explored the possibilities of "mock history" in architectural and urban history. As a friend of mine recently pointed out, the idea of "What if?" scenarios are a long-standing trope in comic book concepts. But in history they are generally considered forms of historical projection, and inherently irresponsible. The historians task is not to chart possible pasts, nor do we have any evidence that the study of the past can inform what might have been -- the strange smashing together of historicism and determinism.

Nevertheless, after visiting an exhibition at the New York Historical Society on Central Park, I was curious what New York City might look like without Central Park. I thought this study could operate within a broader context of restitution politics. The current area of Central Park once contained Seneca Village, a small but racially diverse settlement. What if the land of Central Park was returned? Considering its value would building commence immediately? I also thought this question could operate within ethical questions about development. Why do the great works of the past appear so cruel to us? The latter question was explored in an exhibition concept for the Citadel in Central Park (the then current commissioner nixed it as too controversial) the latter concept appeared in Cabinet Magazine and the Venice Biennial.

Model of an 1870 pool (David Pascu, model maker)

Yale University and The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, NYC

The project started my consideration of "historical practices," which in this context implies the operation of historical work in which all of the aspects of historical production are thrown into question.

In an architectural history course at Yale we were reintroduced to the work of 18th and 19th century architects who sought techniques for reconstructing buildings from Roman and Greek ruins. This primarily entailed drawings that represented buildings as they may have once existed-- work by Le Roy, Labrouste, among numerous others. The work of Henri Labrouste was particularly inspiring as he sought to place the act of architectural reconstruction within the particular social activity of a former society.

In considering this earlier activity of reconstruction, the following questions were posed: How might a reconstruction operate today? How might the reconstruction of a building from the past be a provocation? What does it mean to reconstruct the very act of reconstruction?

As a case study, I chose to experimentally "reconstruct" the floating pools that once enabled people to swim in the East and Hudson Rivers in New York City. The idea of swimming in these rivers seemed in 1996, as it might still today, inherently provocative, frightening, repulsive. The idea was to reconstruct the building through drawings, photos and models to enable debate, protest, discussion about the position of the river in the experience of New York City. The processes of Labrouste were wired in reverse. 

The project was staged at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City in 1999

Read the reviews of the project in the Village Voice and the New York Times

Bomber Billy And Barry 'Bama In the 'Hood

by

R.E. Prindle

     On Billy's blog 8/3/08 Linda Lenz writes:

     In other words Obama does, indeed, know Bill Ayers as more than just a guy in the neighborhood.  So do a host of civic leaders in Chicago.  For example, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge board included Susan Crown of the General Dynamics Corp. family, Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Arnold Weber, past president of Northwestern University and of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.  Indeed, just about everyone active in Chicago school reform in the early days saw Ayers as a colleague.  No one ever accused them of being radical because of their association with Bill Ayers.

     Of course that begs the question, Why not?  What do we have here but a veritable rogues gallery of 'radicals?'

     Weber of Northwestern?  Say, isn't he the fellow who hired Bernie Dohrn?  And that was after she said this.  Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 1985.

      The Weathermen went a step further by lauding (Charles) Manson as a heroic, acid-ripped street fighter who offed some 'rich honky pigs."  "Dig it!" exclaimed Bernardine Dohrn.  "First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach!  Wild!"  The Weather people proclaimed 1970 :"the Year of the Fork" in Manson's honor.

     And Herr Doktor Professor Weber made this woman a LAW professor at Northwestern University?  Wild!  Indeed, why wasn't he called a radical- or worse?

     From the same authors, Lee and Shlain:

     "We have one task,' Billy Ayers stated, "and that's to make ourselves into tools of the revolution."  Toward this end the Weather collectives embarked upon a rigorous process of internal purification.  They sought to overcome their bourgeois cultural conditioning by living in places that were filthy and foul.  Sometimes they went without food to save money for more important things, such as guns.  They rejected romantic love as a capitalist hangup and abondoned monogamous sexual relations in favor of orgies and freewheeling partner swapping.  (People who fuck together, fight together.)  was the going slogan.

     And now Billy and Bernie are man and wife.  Are we to believe they ever stopped being 'tools of the revolution?'  Not if Billy stomping the flag in the alley means anything.

     So, what about U. Illinois and Northwestern?  Both outfits knew who Billy and Bernie were before they hired them.  They too must be 'tools of the revolution.'  So why doesn't someone call them radicals because of their of associtation with Billy and Bernie?  Why, indeed.

     To quote Linda Lenz again '...Obama does, indeed, know Bill Ayers.,.' and Bernie too.

     The question is did Billy shape Barry into a 'tool of the revolution' or was it even necessary.