Birds in flight, claims the architect Vincenzo Volentieri, are not between places, they carry their places with them. We never wonder where they live: they are at home in the sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world.

–Geoff Dyer

Found on P. 80 of Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul, a book that has fast become my favorite thing, mostly because my head didn’t stop nodding the entire time I was reading it.

Maybe you’ve heard of the Navajo Indian concept of living your life fully in harmony with nature and the world around you. They call it “walking in beauty” and I can not think of a better nor more “beautiful” way to say exactly that. Through all of my travels and frequent moves, I have come to understand that happiness is derived much more through relationships and serenity than through physical possessions. (Not to mention how this makes those moves infinitely easier!) I believe it is important for us to find a balance, however. We can live ascetic, bare lives, but the fact is we, as humans, like pretty things and comfort. Don’t we?

I don’t mind living out of two suitcases (or three or four!) but I’ll admit that I would love to have a PSF in my life. (That’s a permanent storage facility – expat speak for a home of your own.) That’s why I was overcome with very non-harmonious feelings of envy when I spotted this fabulous Ubud jungle dream home in the NYTimes.

Do you believe in serendipity? Images of Bali have quite suddenly began to appear in my life more and more often. Blog posts, emails from friends, articles in newspapers and magazines…everywhere I turn I see pictures of gorgeous guest houses or reviews of literary festivals or rich travel stories. If the Navajo share the walking in beauty concept with anyone, it must be the Balinese. The colors, the flowers, the harmony with nature…although I haven’t yet been there it looks like an artist’s paradise. The flowers! It seems like there are flowers everywhere, is this true? Maybe it is time for a visit? I think I’m becoming enchanted, yet another common thread between the people of Bali and the people of New Mexico.

Forgive me, I’m not at all sure whether Veteran’s Day was yesterday or today… My family, like a lot of American families, has a strong history with the military. My mom, dad and brother all served. My grandfather spent WWII in India, my uncle in Vietnam. I even have a great-uncle who flew U2 spy planes for the Air Force. (wink wink Mom!) I even considered it for a while (albeit a very short while), back when I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life, (Do I now?), and I scored high enough on that military aptitude test to keep the recruiters calling.

Today, I received an email from an organization called Survivor Corps asking me to blog about Veteran’s Day and their efforts to raise money and awareness for injured troops. Survivor Corps began as the Landmine Survivors Network and evolved into Survivor Corps as their mission broadened to include services to victims of global conflict and war.

The traumatic effects of war, left unaddressed, will have far-reaching negative consequences for service members, their families, and their communities. Based on our ten years of global experience helping survivors of conflict overcome trauma and give back to their communities, Survivor Corps founded Operation Survivor to provide the same kind of life-changing support to American veterans and service members. ~Dani Sevilla

The email got me thinking about veterans and what it means to “support the troops.”  “Support the troops” has got to be one of the biggest cliches of our time. Sure, slap a yellow sticker on your car and you “support the troops.” Isn’t there a better way to support the troops? By actually supporting the troops? I don’t know very much about Survivor Corps, but they look like a good place to start. Asking your senators and representatives to support veteran-friendly initiatives in Congress is, too. I read in the NYTimes about an initiative to give caregiver benefits to injured soldiers’ family members who quit their jobs to stay at home and take care of them. Having worked as a nurses’ aid and a registered nurse, I know how difficult, physically and mentally, it can be to care for the ill and disabled. It is a full time job for these family members and they deserve support.

How about a book recommend? Fortunate Son by Lewis B. Puller, a Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography of Puller’s experiences in Vietnam and trying to live after horrific wounds and alcoholism. Consistently rated at 5 stars, it is an emotional read, especially when you know the author committed suicide only three years after its publication. Soldiers need our help and understanding.

How about a documentary recommend? Section 60, now airing on HBO, pays tribute to the fallen soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan through footage of Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery. Created by the same filmmakers who made Baghdad ER (which I mentioned here), Section 60 is a moving and memorable look at the mourning process. Soldiers’ families need our help and understanding, too.

My brother went to war and came home healthy, as healthy as one can come home from war. He was one of the lucky ones. Let’s not forget the rest.

Or, Something Infuriating.

Censorship sucks. Plain and simple. Yahoo promotes censorship, of this I’m sure.

Yahoo Betrays Free Speech

New York Times Editorial – 02 December 2007

For a company that ostensibly believes in the Internet’s liberating power, Yahoo has a gallingly backward understanding of the value of free expression.

The company helped Beijing’s state police uncover the Internet identities of two Chinese journalists, who were handed 10 years in prison for disseminating pro-democracy writings. Testifying before Congress last year about one case, Yahoo’s legal counsel said the company was unaware of the nature of the investigation. Did he miss the language about providing “state secrets to foreign entities” — a red flag for a political prosecution?

Last month, Yahoo settled a suit by the families of the jailed journalists but it did not admit doing wrong and is refusing to change its procedures to avoid becoming a stool pigeon for China’s police state again.

Yahoo’s collaboration is appalling, and Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people. Microsoft shut down a blogger at Beijing’s request. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft censor searches in China. Cisco Systems provided hardware used by Beijing to censor and monitor the Internet.

These companies argue that it is better for the Chinese people to have a censored Internet than no Internet. They say that they must abide by the laws of the countries they operate in. But the Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the press, association and assembly. Those guarantees may be purely symbolic, but these companies — which loudly protest Chinese piracy of their intellectual property — have not tried to resist. What they are resisting are efforts in Congress that could help them stand against repressive governments.

Last January, Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act in the House. It would fine American companies that hand over information about their customers to foreign governments that suppress online dissent. The bill would at least give American companies a solid reason to decline requests for data, but the big Internet companies do not support it. That shows how much they care about the power of information to liberate the world.

Because I use Yahoo’s photo service, Flickr, and I visit Yahoo Groups, I feel like I am supporting Yahoo’s position. I’ve said it before, and I continue to stand by my decision. Over the next month I will be removing my photos from Flickr and I will close my account. I have decided that I will find another way to host my photos, one that feels more comfortable. Will Yahoo care? Of course not. But I cannot consciously continue to do business with them. Not when they have placed profit over the values that I cherish above all.

“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.” ~Mark Twain

So it’s not the orangutan after all.

Is burning books ever a good idea? I’m not sure how I feel about this. A bookstore owner in Kansas City had a warehouse full of books he was unable to sell – close to 20,000 books. After libraries and thrift shops refused the books, he decided to hold a monthly book bonfire. He views the burnings as a protest against society’s declining support of books.

I am actually cringing as I write these words. When I think of book burnings, I imagine that scene in Indiana Jones, when the nazis are burning all the books and Indy “runs into” Hitler. Book burnings = fascism, fear, totalitarianism, prison state, loss of freedom, censorship, closed-mindedness. In the nazi concentration camps, the motto work makes you free hung over the gates. I think a more appropriate motto for our day and age would be information makes you free.

The bookstore owner fears that most people are getting their reading in through newspapers and the Internet, that people don’t care about books anymore. I can think of nothing more sad. I spend countless hours on the Internet, reading as much as I can, but at the end of the day, I need books. There is nothing quite like the feel of the pages, the heft of the words. I seek information in as many forms as I can get – audiobooks, ebooks, Internet web pages, the old fashioned book. For me, information is my most valuable tool for surviving in this world. Maybe that is why I have chosen to spend the next year studying information science. A librarian’s world is filled with information.

When I read the article about the book burning, I immediately thought of a photo slide show (#1 on the search list) I had seen on the New York Times website a few weeks ago. The pictures were of university campuses in Africa. They showed the students living in cramped and dilapidated dormitories, as many as can fit in one room. They showed science classes using broken beakers and test tubes to perform lab experiments. They showed classrooms literally falling apart. They showed long lines of students desperate to get into the library to study. In America, one man burns books because no one seems to want them. In Africa, young people yearn for any kind of access to the information that could give them a better life.

The New York Times has excellent multimedia reports available on their site. This is by no means a recommendation to spend all your time surfing the Internet. Embrace a real live book if you have the chance!

This morning I stopped in to McDonalds to get some breakfast. I don’t normally eat at McDonald’s, but every once in a while I do get a craving for a sausage’n egg McMuffin, especially after a long 12 hour night shift. Well, a very scared looking Chinese-Canadian girl (Ahem, the China connection…) greeted me and asked in a timid manner if she could take my order. She was wearing a button that said, “I am new and I am trying.” I couldn’t help but smile. She was so cute. Completely incapable of making any sort of McDonald’s related decisions, but cute. (She kept turning to her trainer every time she had to answer a question.) And she was trying. I couldn’t help but think, “Is this how I am going to be on my first day as an English teacher?” Oh I hope my drama skills kick in. Please tell me that all those years of corny high school plays (Sir Sprout ring any bells?) and overly-dramatic college musicals will finally count for more than just GPA boosters. (Those were fun times, though.)

My new mantra will have to be: I am new and I am trying.

So it seems that going native is a registered trademark belonging to a company that sells “world foods” like soups and wraps. Their “Ethos” (philosophy) is along the same lines as mine, I just didn’t get the domain name first. I guess this means that I won’t be moving my blog to goingnative dot com.

What exactly is Going Native all about? It is a philosophy that I have come to know through my many travels. Mainly it means that I am abandoning any preconceived notions that I may have about my new country. That I am travelling with an open-mind. That I am ready to accept what may come. That I aim to live as the locals do. That I will eat the local food and reject the Westernized Fast-Food establishments that seem to be spreading like a tumour across the world… That I will learn the language, culture and customs of the new country. (As much as I can.) I have a very big interest in folk practices of cultures different from my own, so one of my goals will be to explore that aspect of Chinese culture.

I’m not heading out to the Far East wearing rose-colored glasses, I recognize that there are always two sides to everything – good & bad, yin & yang. I choose to see both. I want to observe China and the Chinese as they are, as they deal with the new world they are now in.

Today at I Deal coffeeshop, a Canadian guy who lived in Turkey was talking about how the North American media is really creating a wall between North America and the rest of the world, dealing in stereotypes & fear. That in reality, the people of the world are really not scary terrorists, just people living and getting by like everyone else. It is so true. My aim in going native is to get to know the world out there beyond North America’s borders, with no agenda. No politics, no religion, no dogma, just genuine interest.