Living on Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan

My good friend and today’s guest blogger, Nancy Glaser, Senior Economic Advisor for USAID, tells about everyday life at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan

One of the most interesting experiences I never anticipated was being assigned to live and work on Bagram Air Field for my 12 month tour of duty with USAID in Afghanistan.

When I arrived here on June 20^th, 2012 I was amazed by the vastness of the physical space as well as the number of people living and working here. Of the estimated 30,000, the U.S. military makes up the majority (the “green suiters”) of which 90% are male.

Bagram is located in the “high desert” (5,000 feet high) and it is dusty, especially in the summer which requires wearing glasses 24 hours a day.

Our housing consists of living in my personal “hooch”, an 8’by 20’ metal “dry” container. Our shower and bathroom facilities are in a separate building which we share with female military and civilians. We live on the flight line and air craft are taking off and landing 24 hours a day. This includes helicopters all the way up to the Boeing B-17. Wearing ear plugs to sleep at night is recommended. We have TV and internet access. 

We civilians are embedded with the military both at work and other activities. We all eat together in the DFAC (Dining Facility) where up to 1,500 people eat together. The food is amazingly  good and there is a good variety for every palette including vegetarians.

There is a “spa” on Bagram that offers hair and nail services as well as massages. The women who work there are all from Kyrgyzstan and speak Russian. They do a very nice job at very good prices (shampoo, cut, and blow dry costs only $14).

I get “out” about every other week to visit provincial governors, line directors and business men. My position as RC East Senior Economic Advisor for USAID is to promote private sector development. This is not the easiest job in a war zone, but some progress is made day by day. I travel by MRAP, “fixed” wing small Beechcraft planes or helicopters. We are always accompanied by military and military police. I actually feel safe traveling this way.

Sometimes I feel like I am in a movie.

Mother's Day

As Mother’s Day approaches, I am of course reminded of my own mother, who died way too young, almost 50 years ago.

Now that our children are grown, this holiday for us is mainly about the bird’s eye view of parenting that comes from watching them raise their own kids.  I’m sure there will be many cards and hand-crafted treasures bestowed on the young mothers in our family on Sunday.

Billy Collins’ incomparable “The Lanyard” comes to mind:

       She nursed me in many a sick room,
       lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
       laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
       and then led me out into the airy light

      And taught me to walk and swim,
      and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

The real giving, with all its obsessive fretting and pride and hope, flows down and down to the next generation.  Among my loveliest memories are the faces of our children watching their children walk and run and dance, with so much amazement at each miraculous stage of growth in these young lives they brought into being.

They are so busy, these young mothers, and you wish you could somehow will them to slow down, to savor it, to forget about rushing out the door to buy the next birthday toy for the classmate. 

Life is long but childhood is short.

Happy Mother’s Day, one and all!  

The Brothers Tsarnaev

Now that the initial shock of the Boston Marathon bombings has subsided and the perpetrators killed or captured, we can step back and contemplate the senseless carnage visited on bystanders by these young men.

Much has been written about the apparent likeability of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, coupled with dismay that their American education and assimilation did nothing to inhibit their deadly jihadist impulses.  But nothing in the Koran or logic can explain or justify the misguided belief among radical Islamists that random violence will somehow further their cause or settle the score for perceived injustices.

Impulse control in young men has been a societal challenge since the beginning of time and we probably don’t do enough in our schools, churches, mosques and families to teach our boys the link between action and consequence.  Think about a young man from the poverty-ridden inner city who wants money to buy a six-pack of beer.  He goes into a Seven-Eleven and winds up shooting the clerk, unable in a moment of panic to link the outcome of his impulsive action to a little boy at home who will cry himself to sleep night after night because he has lost a father.  We spend so much collective energy trying to educate our young people, but somehow fail to give them the tools to navigate the hazardous process of growing up in a stressful and competitive world.

I read the Koran as part of a study group at my church and was struck by how similar it is to the Old Testament.  These ancient writings reflect cultures at war and they are similarly belligerent towards other tribes.  Most religious warfare has been about class or politics or tribalism and not about religion, and that’s true of the Islamic fundamentalist movement too.

Conservatives are too quick to blame Islam and liberals are too focused on political correctness to talk sensibly about solutions to this endless, senseless violence.  Just as Christians should speak out against extremists who justify bigotry or sexism through the Bible, leaders in Islam should do more to condemn acts of violence in the name of their religion.

I’m sure the families of Tamerlan and Dzokhar are just as devastated by their horrific actions as would have been the Newtown, Connecticut mother of Adam Lanza, had she lived to see the painful legacy of her son’s life. 

It’s too much burden to place on the shoulders of parents of young men who go horribly wrong.  We need to do more as citizens of an ever-smaller world community to provide moral grounding in values that prepare them for a complex and sometimes painful journey to adulthood.     

Why Small is Better

The argument against big government has always struck me as a red herring, just another way of saying we'd be better off without a common touchstone as a nation, rejecting the notion of collective concern for the common good.

For one thing, I've never believed state government was particularly more efficient, less corrupt or better managed.

But I have to admit a personal bias in favor of "small" when it comes to most things, and that includes corporations, schools, social groups and, yes, government.

It takes extraordinary management skill to run a big organization well.  If you doubt this, walk into any local outlet of a large corporation and think about whether the person helping you cares one whit about whether you ever come back, in spite of whatever catch-phrase-of-the-day they've been taught to recite as you check out.

The reality is that we are motivated tribally, and the bigger the tribe, the less likely we are to feel responsible for it.

Unfortunately the capital markets require successful businesses to keep getting bigger quarter after quarter, so that eventually even the best-run corporations are dragged down by the weight of this perpetual growth.

Think about our schools and the vast wasteland of massive urban high schools with thousands of testosterone-driven adolescents locked up together all day in institutional anonymity without any long-term commitment to each other or any sense of community.

True, we are a big, populous country and can't go back to a village economy.

But if we could break institutions into smaller units, maybe we could eliminate some of the waste and inefficiency, not to mention the loneliness and lack of engagement that all too many Americans experience in their daily lives.

The Oxford American: Why Reading Still Matters

Strapped into my seat on a cross-country flight, I can indulge in the rare pleasure of reading something worthwhile.

The Oxford American, produced in that most improbable of literary headwaters -- the great state of Arkansas -- is packed with thought-provoking, beautifully written pieces that engage your mind and heart in a way that couldn’t be further removed from the drivel we are fed by the popular media.

My eye was drawn to this caveat by editor Roger Hodge at the beginning of the magazine:

“… if you are reading these words you have entered an aesthetic zone that is as free as possible from the hectoring voices of opinion merchants and professional manipulators of resentment and rage.”

Writing for its own sake?  Not trying to sell something?  What a concept.  In an age when news broadcasting has become cynically profit-driven, creating perpetual controversy for financial gain, and when serious fiction has been undercut by our stressed-out longing to read nothing more challenging than escapist action adventure, it is a sweet indulgence to spend a couple of hours with my nose in a literary magazine.

The Oxford American spotlights Southern culture – fiction, photography, music, the arts – beautifully laid out, with superb storytelling.

 Storytelling has been central to the way we human beings have understood ourselves and our world from the time man first walked this earth.   It is at the core of all the world’s major religions. It gives children a universe of experiences, thus enabling them to imagine the trajectories their own lives could take.  

If you enjoy the beauty of a well-turned phrase or the drama and pathos of Southern fiction or stunning photography of rural America, you’ve got to check out the Oxford American.

Writing Books and Speaking Out

Even though many authors are drawn to the solitary business of writing because they prefer the written word to social intercourse, one of the by-products of releasing a book is that people expect you to show up and talk about it.

I’m thinking about public speaking because I have a reading at Kepler’s Bookstore tonight, wondering how this foray into writing has led me right back to the place I thought I was escaping.

                                               

I did a lot of public speaking during my career as a lawyer and the unreliable voice caused by a neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia was a big factor in my decision to retire.  The journey from being a retired attorney who still had something to say to writing a novel was not as big a leap of faith as you might imagine.

Because today’s book publishing industry is in such turmoil and disarray, the risk of your book dying on the vine is bigger than ever.  At the same time, the opportunity for a book to gain traction is wide open to anybody and everybody, as the power of the Internet, ebooks and new channels of distribution are increasingly democratizing the book business.

In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, the Director of UCSF’s Anxiety Disorders Program Tracy Foose talked about some of the positive aspects of anxiety, a human survival gene that is “highly preserved across species” because it gives us the energy and heightened awareness to outperform in the face of perceived danger.

I plan to leverage that performance gene tonight in hopes of reaching new readers who will find pleasure and hopefully something of meaning to carry away with them after reading One Summer in Arkansas.