Tibetans Are Still Dying

Coming into Kahm

As each week passes word comes of another self-emulation in Tibetan lands of China. Many are young monks, and more and more are women. The grief they must feel for the slow loss of their culture is unimaginable to me. In our tandem travels across Tibet, we saw the government’s attempts at subjugating the Tibetan culture by smothering their lands with emigrants from the Han majority: whole cities are being built in the Tibetan foothills to attract Hans to Tibet, many to little effect. I remember pedaling miles toward a mountain pass for hours, with a view of modern city below us, large enough to house a million people. The tall buildings looked almost hopeful in their brilliance, but in those two hours we saw just a few cars and one motorcycle.

But eventually the Han will find the promise of free or inexpensive housing irresistible, and the Tibetans will be pushed back yet again. More will die, and the world will go on ignoring their plight.

We like both the Han people and the Tibetans. There must be a solution, but it probably will have to come from within. The West is now too dependent on China for cheap manufacturing to speak out against the policy of cultural destruction against Tibetans.

When we bicycled across Tibetan Sichuan on our In Search of Shangri La journey, we passed into Tibetan lands at this stupa marking the first pass.

As we traversed more passes to the west, the Chinese military and national police became much more numerous. We were stopped and questioned almost daily, lest we be on a mission to stir up the Tibetans.

Tension was in the air on the streets of Litang, where we took a few days of high altitude rest. A convoy of 108 trucks filled with troops passed through town to the taunts, and at least a few rocks were thrown.

To read much more, see photos and videos of the people and the land:

In Search of Shangri La

To give you an idea about the misplaced bravado that marked the first years of the U.S. military in Southeast Asia, Life Magazine quoted General Westmorland about the prospects for the war: “We’re going to out-guerrilla the guerrilla and out-ambush the ambush. And we’re going to learn better than he ever did because we’re smarter, we have greater mobility and firepower, we have more endurance and more to fight for… And we’ve got more guts.”  Either this was all bluster, or he was severely out of touch with the realities before him. In later years, other high ranking military officers indicated they felt Westmoreland’s strategy was wrong. But of course they did not speak out at the time, as criticism of a superior just isn’t done. Westmorland was trying to re-fight World War II using similar search-and-destroy strategies, with new equipment, greater firepower, and short-term conscripts. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Kong weren’t in Europe, or North Africa and they had no intention of playing by his rules. They didn’t read the same book. When the North got intelligence about Westmoreland’s massive sweeps, from friendly villagers who’d probably been bombed and didn’t like us, they simply melted away into the jungle, the villages, or crossed into Laos or Cambodia, to wait for a better opportunity.

Westmoreland, Abrams and Petraeus: Attitudes about war and the central  place of the civilian population on the battlefield and at home

The Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in June of 1971 was pivotal in turning American public opinion decisively against the war; the politicians are never far behind. The report, ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, showed the confusion and poor leadership of the early years of the war, but stopped short of the mentioning the changes brought about by Abrams and Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker after TET 1968. Soon after the release, President Johnson began increasing pressure to ramp down the war, by withdrawing troops and cutting support for the South.

Hue

The Abrams Strategy in Vietnam

General Creighton Abrams was appointed as deputy to Westmoreland in May of 1967 with the understanding he would shortly replace Westmoreland. Politics intervened and it was not until June of 1968 when he assumed command of the armed forces in Southeast Asia. Abrams, with full support from Ambassador Bunker, turned his war efforts from the search-and-destroy tactics of Westmoreland to protecting the villagers, and Saigon from rocket and ground attacks from the North and the Viet Cong. He understood that most people just want  peace, and if his troops and the South Vietnam Army could provide that, he could win them over.

Rockets over Saigon; Claire’s In vetro Soundtrack

While Westmoreland was chasing ghosts in the jungle highlands, the North and the VC were launching rockets nearly daily into heavily populated Saigon. While Claire’s mother DeLee was pregnant with her in Saigon, she was traumatized by a nearby explosion; that’s how close Claire was to this war. If people could not feel safe in Saigon, they must have felt there was little reason to support the Americans.

Claire Returns to Her Birthplace, Saigon

Abrams broke his troops into small units that were to protect villages, and train ARVN soldiers to take over when they left. This sense of safety paid great dividends. As we brought our troops home and the war wound down the people, particularly in the Mekong Delta and Saigon, so turned against the Viet Cong that they essentially ceased to be a factor. Many dropped their weapons and went “chieu hoi” or changed sides and went home. They would pay a price later in “reeducation” camps.

Chieu Hoi; Listening to the Locals

Street Vendor Saigon

TET 1968

Despite disproportionately heavy losses in their TET offensive of 1968, North Vietnam refused to quit, and began building for another effort in the next dry season. Abrams number two objective, after pacification, was: cut the Hoh Chi Minh Trail in Laos. B52s had been pounding the trail from the Plain of Jars to the south of Laos near Tchepone, but Abrams wanted more: “He wants that Ho Chi Minh trail in such a shape that a crow has to carry his rations to fly over it.” Seventh Air Force commander General Lucius Clay, describing the interdiction (bombing) campaign. Abrams decided to take the offensive, using ARVN troops to cross the border, forbidden to U.S. ground troops in rules of engagement. The offensive was named Lam Son 719 discussed in the previous post. Again politics, South Vietnamese this time, intervened and snatched victory from the South and Abrams.

Harvesting our lunch vegetables from the moat in old Hue

Abrams was a patriot, and though he thought the war could be won, dutifully did the best he could with the troops left to him, bringing ARVN closer to being an effective army, and making it difficult, but not impossible, for the North to get troops and material in place for each new dry season attack.

Abrams was a warrior, and believed in pushing an opponent relentlessly, but there was another side of the man and his strategy. He hated to see people dying for no reason. Allowing rocket attacks on Saigon had to stop. Westmoreland had little interest in stopping the attacks, and at any rate could not, or would not, spare troops from his central search-and-destroy sweeps.

For the most part Abrams respected the army of the North, though the massacre of 3,000 civilians in Hue by the North during the 1968 TET offensive, would remain unfathomable to him. He worried about the South Vietnamese people, and felt protecting them, giving them enough security for them to go about their daily lives, was central. During his time of leadership, he succeeded in protecting most of the villages, and but failed to cut the Hoh Chi Minh Trail  It was just too dense with jungle, and the enemy too determined.

Mekong Delta Transportation

Shock and Awe: Westmorland Would Have Loved It

Abrams represented change in military thinking that has carried over, belatedly again, into the contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But not in the beginning. Shock and Awe was the order of the day at first in Iraq; search and destroy with armor and airpower won the day to Baghdad. Of course the enemy waited and watched, and invented the roadside bomb. General David Petraeus was brought in when old techniques were found lacking. He had read the Book of Abrams, and paid attention.

Petraeus Remembers Lessons from Bosnia and Haiti

In Mosul, as leader of the 101st Air Assault Division, Petraeus, began immediately to use methods to build security and stability. He worked to rebuild the economy, local security forces, held elections for the city council and began the rebuilding process for public works. Petraeus learned his nation-building during previous tours in Bosnia and Haiti. He saw nation-building as a central military mission.

Petraeus was named Commanding General of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq January 26, 2007 and held that position to September 16, 2008. His common sense leadership, championed the much debated surge, worked to rebuild local security forces, and he continued the protect-the-villagers strategy of Abrams.

As American involvement in Iraq wound down, as promised by candidate Obama, President Obama asked General Petraeus to take command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Petraeus was once again asked, as Abrams had been, to step into a war mishandled by others, make do with less, and win the unwinable. As with his approach in Iraq, and Abrams before him, he refocused in Afghanistan on bringing a sense of stability to the contryside. He hasn’t always succeeded. The records of Taliban activity are classified and some would like them leaked. Daniel Ellsberg believes they would show an increase after the troop surge in Afghanistan. It may be years before those figures are released, unless WikiLeaks finds the documents.

One other thing Petraeus and Abrams shared was a rock solid sense of ethics. Those who serve under him, and those who hired him, Congress and two presidents, believe what he says. He understands that war is won or lost in the hearts and minds of the people, both at home in America, and in this case, Afghanistan. Like Abrams, he hates to see people die unnecessarily: “We must never forget that the center of gravity in this struggle is the Afghan people; it is they who will ultimately determine the(ir) future…”  A NATO helicopter air strike killed nine Afghan boys and wounded two others in Eastern Afghanistan. Petraeus said, “We are deeply sorry for this tragedy and apologize to the members of the Afghan government, the people of Afghanistan and, most importantly, the surviving family members of those killed by our actions. “These deaths should have never happened.” Petraeus is not a “mistakes happen” kind of person. He understands that as top commander, the buck stops at his desk. It is a way of standing tall that crosses cultural and religious boundaries anywhere in the world.

My intent was not to just praise two men, Abrams and Petraeus, or damn one, Westmoreland, to praise or damn any war, but to look inward at my own attitudes and try to understand the war that wasn’t mine. I am encouraged that at least one lesson was learned, and passed on, from Vietnam.

I believe war seldom solves problems, and often creates more than it solves, but these leaders showed the complex nature of war and those who fight them. In the beginning it is the politicians who start wars, sometimes for good reasons and with clear objectives. Too often they start wars to gain political capital, and too often without a clear objective. No matter, the Abrams and Petraeus, the soldiers of our military, are bound to carry out those civilian orders, no matter their opaqueness, or downright stupidity.

The lack of a clear objective in Vietnam led to an ignoble end, death, sometimes a lifetime of hurt, for many of my generation. Abrams did his best, but it came too late for Vietnam.

Afgan War: objective to find the 9/11 terrorists. Fail. Iraq the reason.

In the beginning of the Afghanistan war, the objective was clear, find the terrorists who struck on 9/11. Unfortunately the politicians sent the troops to Iraq instead, and Afghanistan slipped away. Petraeus got his Afghanistan surge, and it is bringing a better sense of security to at least some villages. But, it may be too late. Americans have turned away from Afghanistan, toward their own financial problems, and the politicians are ending involvement. Maybe this is how wars go now. Maybe this is how wars have always gone. Someday the politicians, and we the people, will learn from Petraeus, and Abrams that wars are won by winning the hearts of the people most affected.

Maybe someday we will will learn how to solve our differences without war.

In my lifetime, we’ve gone to war, and won or lost, in a disturbingly recurring pattern: The politicians, responding to world events feel the pressure from former military and patriotic citizens, to do something. A “limited” war seems like a good idea. The military has never seen a war it didn’t like, at least in the beginning; everybody moves up a couple of ranks and the retirement piggy bank grows. The generals always promise a nice clean and short victory. Of course they know better, but are very optimistic. War, no matter how valid, moral, worthwhile, is never as clean and nice as it seems when plotted on maps, satellite images, and stoked by videos from fighter jets and tank turrets.

Citizen Impatience, Politics and Generals at Cross Purposes

The limited war drags on for years, as the enemy adapts to predictable strategies. The cost in both American lives and the economy becomes burdensome to the public and they turn against the war. The politicians, quietly, order the military to scale back the war. Reducing the casualties and saving money are now the main goal, not winning the war. This is about the time the generals figure out that it is not about territory taken or body count, but winning the hearts of the civilians caught in the middle of the war. This is a war that can be won. Of course it’s too late, the play winds painfully down, and the curtain closes on yet another unfortunate outcome for the most powerful military, most powerful country in the world.

Southeast Asian War By Tandem Bicycle

Because of our most recent travels in Asia on our tandem bicycle, I have developed a new interest in the Vietnam War, really the Indochina War of my youth. My draft board called me in 1964. I presented myself, got on a bus and taken for a physical and mental evaluation. I was just out of hospital for a bleeding ulcer. They didn’t know how to cure ulcers in those days, and they knew military food would kill me: 4F. I have always had some survivor’s guilt, partly because I have seen the toll that particular war took on many of the surviving draftees. The vets I have shared this feeling with have said I didn’t miss anything, and to let it go. I think I have. Maybe traveling there, seeing the land and the people involved has had something to do with my coming to terms with those feelings. My appreciation for anyone who fought there is deep. It was one helluva place to have to fight a war.

As Claire and I pedaled, and pushed, our tandem on one of the many branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, lost in the jungle with the unexploded ordnance from our massive bombing of the trail. We pushed through mud in roads cut deep by thousands of trucks bringing supplies from North Vietnam to the various fronts in South Vietnam and Cambodia. Huge bomb craters are now softened by new growth jungle, but still there, mute reminders to anyone crazy enough to go there.

Fellow traveler on a branch of the Hoh Chi MinhTrail,

Ho Chi Minh Trail, Bombies and B-52s

Wondering if you might step on a 40-year-old anti-personal bombie, still live, tends to sharpen the senses of even the most exhausted sojourner. The jungle trembled with light and dark, produced unseen, unknowable, sounds, imaginings of one of the large cats that survive still. Mostly it was a quiet jungle, far different from how it must have been during the round-the-clock bombing sorties of that time. I wondered at the men who had driven the trucks down this awful track and died there. And I wondered about the men in the B-52s overhead, wondering about the men they were killing below. We dropped as much munitions on little Laos, as in all of WWII. What most Americans don’t know is how many unexploded bombies lie still in the jungle, waiting for a rice farmer’s daughter to turn it accidentally with her foot… They severely limit the use Laotians can get from the land that lay along the Ho Chi Minh trail. At least it’s good for the wildlife.

A Better War? A Belated Look at Vietnam

I recently ran across a book that examines the final years of that war: “A Better War, The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam“, by Lewis Sorley. It gives a reasoned, analytical, if at times biased, view of the final years when General Creighton Abrams had command.

After we finally found our way out of the jungle to the main road between populated Laos and Vietnam, we spent our final night in Laos in the town of Tchepone. I wish I had known what strategic importance that it had held, how the overgrown Ho Chi Minh Trail we had traversed, had been the center of the most intensive anti-personnel bombing of the war, and the largest incursion by the South Vietnamese Army, with support of American air power. The only reminder of the war are fence posts made from bombs that didn’t explode, or supplemental fuel tanks dropped for the return to base. We did have a bit of trouble finding food, but our first bed in some days made up for that. As with all Laotians, the people were friendly.

Bombs near Tchepone, Laos

Coming To Khe Sanh

We had some concerns about the border crossing into Vietnam. Claire’s passport lists her place of birth as Saigon, Vietnam. Her father was in the foreign service: security. Her birthplace drew a shocked look from one border guard, and a knowing acknowledgement by a second, no doubt noting the year, 1964, the early stages of America’s ramping up of  involvement. Claire and I could have been there at the same time, she as a baby, me as a grunt or maybe a combat photographer if I’d been lucky.

Boat made from jet fuel tanks in the highlands of Vietnam; nice to see our tax dollars still at work.

Generals Abrams and Petraeus

As we pedaled into Vietnam on the infamous Route 9 toward Khe Sanh, the lush undergrowth and steep mountains of the highlands held a beauty that belied the violence it had seen. The jungle heals the wounds of war quickly. I still can’t imagine how we could have conceived that a war in such a place would not drag us in and strangle us. That we did as well as we did is a tribute to the grunts who did their best in impossible conditions. Abrams deserves credit for finally understanding how such a war might be won, or at least brought into stasis as in Korea. Unfortunately our military seems to find a way to hold the good guys in reserve until it’s too late. I see an amazing parallel between Gen. Abrams and Gen. David Petraeus’ view of their own wars.

I’ll make those parallels in a later post. Stay Tuned.

I wrote (below): “If such a gentle people were capable of those atrocities, what society is not? If Cambodians could become so divided that they began murdering other Cambodians, could we? How far must civil discourse erode before “the other” is so reprehensible to deserve killing?”

After today’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords I am reminded that our lack of civil discourse is tearing this country apart. We would not survive another civil war.

Reprint below:
By Bob Rogers

After 35 years, the first Khmer Rouge mass murderer has been convicted in Cambodia. We’ve all heard of the killing fields of Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge murdered between one and two million other Cambodians. It was one of the worst periods of mass murder in history. It was the Chinese Cultural Revolution gone crazy. The Khmer Rouge, in attempting to bring about an agrarian utopian society, sought out and murdered anyone with an education, and anyone associated with them.

I remember following news reports of the carnage in this far away land, and wondering how such a thing could happen in a society. After Claire and I bicycled the length of Cambodia near the end of our In Search of Shangri-la tour, I am even more puzzled, and not a little disconcerted.

While the Cambodians are not as laid back as Lao, or as industrious as Vietnamese, they were friendly. Though not as outwardly happy as the irrepressible Lao, they were reasonably outgoing. And yet, some of the older Cambodians we saw must surely have been murderers. The Khmer Rouge were peasants, and we traveled through the rural countryside at twelve miles per hour, bought food from them at markets and street restaurants, slept in their guest houses. We smiled and received smiles in return. And yet, there was a pall of uncertainty for me, as I watched a landscape roll past, a rice small field that just might have been a killing field.

The Image most people have of the killing fields and mass graves, are of one central location near the Capitol, Phnom Penh. But, the killings took place in villages across Cambodia and the mounded mass graves still stand above the rice paddies, sometimes marked by simple concrete altars festooned with flowers and incense. Someone remembers and makes offerings to the gods, offerings of remembrance, and perhaps a hope that such a thing never happen again. It is an eerie sight to see the rice people working their fields so close to the bones of those killed there.

The reason Cambodia has been so slow to begin the process of justice escapes me, but I am not Asian. I didn’t grow up working dawn to dusk fighting the vagaries of nature, just to have a bowl of rice. From what we saw in Laos and Vietnam, Southeast Asians tend toward forgiveness. They hold no grudges against the former enemies in what they call the American War. Perhaps the Cambodians have passed on opportunities for justice all these years because they are either forgiving, or they are guilty. Now a generation is coming of age with no memory of those times. Perhaps the justice beginning now will educate them.

If such a gentle people were capable of those atrocities, what society is not? If Cambodians could become so divided that they began murdering other Cambodians, could we? How far must civil discourse erode before “the other” is so reprehensible to deserve killing?

For more on Cambodia go to New Bohemians, In Search of Shangri-la

From C.

“I can’t watch the news after last night’s reporting on a five year old girl who was going to either have her leg amputated or die from the infection and the mother said, right there in front her daughter, to let her die. The girl cried out and extended her hand to her mother – the doctor had to tell the mother to take her daughter’s hand. I can’t stop crying after seeing that.”

My reply:

C, I’m not directing this at you, but your heartfelt pain made me think:

The mother was making a decision for her other children. In the third world, they live close to the edge every day, a child that cannot work the fields, or the streets, a child that must be cared for, could take the whole family down. It appears cruel to us, but we are not faced with that mother’s decision. I suspect the reason the mother would not take the child’s hand is self-preservation, her own sanity.

The thousands of mothers are making these same kinds of decisions daily around the world, not just Haiti, not just today. We were recently in Laos, where the anti-personnel “bombies” America dropped during the “American War” are still maiming and killing, 40 years later; such heart wrenching decisions are still being made by mothers.

Part of the pain you feel is from being so far away and seeing it through the flickering eye of a TV screen. If you could be there to hold that child’s hand while she died, it would probably be less painful for you, you would be doing something, involved, not just watching.

We were able to save a drunk who crashed his motorcycle in Vietnam recently. He was going to drown in his own puke, or burned from the gasoline his cigarette would have ignited. All it took was a willingness to do something. We were lucky to be there (that means actually traveling to such places) and be able to do what comes naturally. But, that man, his family, and bystanders will never feel the same way about Americans.

Americans travel so little, and when they do, they wrap themselves in the cocoon of cruise ship or tour bus, and are denied the opportunity to actually touch and be touched by the people. I’m not saying everyone should travel by bicycle as we do, but a few simple choices in travel planning can make the difference between seeing a country through a filter of luxury, or making direct contact.

Don’t take a predetermined tour. The tour leaders are sure you don’t want to meet the real people, but a sanitized version of folk presentations. Travel independently, and  don’t always stay in the travel destinations, the tourist towns; stay in smaller towns or villages, spread your money around. Look that street vendor in the eye while you negotiate some mystery meat on a stick. Return her smile. Not only will you have more fun, more memories, but that street vendor will remember that some Americans actually cared enough to want to see her village, and how she lives. Small things make a difference.

Market Vendor in Cambodia

TV is unfortunately a one-way street. We can see. We can hurt, but we can’t give our selves (two words purposely) to that little girl, or the crashed drunk or… because we aren’t there.

We owe the World more than feeling its pain through our high-def screens. We need to be there as they live their day-to-day lives, so they know we care enough to come see them. Donations of supplies are necessary in time of crisis, but a better thing is to go to places like Haiti between disasters, spend a little money, shake a hand, laugh together, eat together, breathe their bad air, drink their boiled water, sleep on a board, defecate in an outhouse as they do.

Then come back and give some money to a micro credit organization that will help them help themselves, or maybe work to see that our government does not drop more anti-personnel weapons on innocent rice farmers. It all makes a difference. Watching and empathizing with a flat screen TV doesn’t change anything.

Claire and Zippy on Cable Beach, Broome, Kimberly, Western Australia

We rode our tandem a few thousand kilometers across and through the middle of Australia, through the Kimberly, in the far northwest. The Kimberly region is the size of California with 41,000 residents. Think of that. We rode for two to three days without seeing human habitation. There are bulbous baobab trees and bush fires on the land, crocks and huge snakes in the billabongs and camels stomping around the tent in the night. Lovely.

We arrived in Broome probably the most remote town in the English speaking world, just in time for our anniversary, so it holds a special place in our hearts. The coast there is like all the coasts in Australia, spectacular. But the Kimberly coast is special for it’s remoteness and the austere red rock beauty and beautiful, but often violent weather.

We can only hope the spill in contained before it ruins one of Earth’s special places.

For more on the Kimberly and our 20,000 kilometer ride around Australia, see the link Around Australia by Tandem on the Home page, or click here

The High Road to Shangri-la

We leave September 1 for Chengdu, Sichuan, China to begin a tandem bicycle tour of SW China and SE Asia. We begin in Chengdu, Sichuan, where the earthquakes killed thousands last year. We will visit some pandas and probably visit our first important Buddha statue before heading into high country where the Himalayas transition from the Tibetan plateau, giving birth to all the great rivers of SE Asia. After a long crossing into Yunnan, we will drop into the sub tropics of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and end probably in Bangkok, one of our favorite cities.

We are feverishly making preparations: Zippy, our 38,000 mile Cannondale mountain tandem. He’s our precocious teenager. Though still strong, he always requires a complete rebuild from the frame up, because the places he takes us are hundreds or thousands of miles from a modern bike shop. We like him to start out without the creaks and grinding noises he will acquire after rain and grit take their inevitable toll. Claire sewed patches on holes and weak spots of our 38,000 mile Cannondale panniers (no they are not sponsoring us). We are far to sentimental to buy a new bicycle or panniers; we’ve come a long way together. I’ve been gathering all the tools necessary to fix almost anything that might go wrong in a few thousand miles, though as I learned on our Silk Road Crossing, I can’t carry replacement parts for every eventuality.

Claire is working on her Chinese, and I will, as usual, smile and use various vigorous hand signals attempt communication. The airlines are making it more and more difficult to travel with bicycles, let alone a tandem, so after painstakingly rebuilding him, I have taken him apart, down to the smallest package possible, and it still exceeds the maximum size, but is underweight. We are hoping for compassion from the agents.

There will be more preparation pictures, and another message from Lucky the rescued Panda who is going back to China with us.

There will be many more posts along the way than there were for the Silk Road Crossing; we’re taking a netbook so you can travel with us. Be sure and bookmark this site and check it often. We appreciate your good wishes.

More than 1,000 Womens Air Service Pilots, WASPS, served important and often dangerous missions testing and delivering the aircraft that would fly over Germany and Japan. Seventy-nine of them were injured or killed during the war. They were central to the war effort, yet had to buy their own uniforms, and they took up collections to return bodies of their fellow WASPS home after a death. They of course were all volunteers.

A B-24 flying over Arizona

After the war, they were rejected by the American Legion, The Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Veterans Administration, and as they aged, they were denied veterans benefits. Finally Barry Goldwater stood up for them in 1977. It is estimated that 300 to 400 are still alive.

We were honored to be able to fly with several of these fabulous women from Phoenix to Tucson, Claire aboard a B-29 and Bob in a B-24. The Collings Foundation travels around the country offering flights on vintage aircraft, and they take on as many WASPS as they can find.

Claire published a story on the women in the March 2007  issue of The Desert Leaf, along with the photos we took on the flight. We were honored to spend time with these ahead-of-their-time women, and brave Americans. If you are ever lucky enough to meet one of these women, thank them.

When WASP buddies meet after many years.

Yep, the darn thing still vibrates like crazy!

A WASP has a close look at an old friend, a B-17, after a very long time.

WASPs gather beside a B-24 prior to a flight of memory.

Georgia is a sad and beautiful place. It reminds me in many ways of my home state of West Virginia; always being taken advantage of, never being able to assert their proper place in the world, never able articulate their special nature and make it work to their advantage. Georgia is also buttressed by two Muslim states, and fiercely defends its Christian Orthodox traditions.

Tbilisi has some of the most beautiful architecture in the world, Georgian Architecture revered the world over for it’s unique mix of East and West. Many of Tbilisi’s buildings are now losing the battle with gravity, but the great facades of commerce, commerce and religion, still stand proud amid the struggles of the people.

The Russian era sucked the soul from Georgia, and last year’s humiliation didn’t help any.

Below is an except from our Silk Road Crossing travel narrative, as we rode our tandem bicycle across the Silk Road. Georgia was a crossroads of those intertwined trade routes:

Akhalktsikhe, Georgia: The last town before the Turkish border, and with the help of locals, amid much arguing and gesturing, we found THE hotel in town, a 20 Lari ($10) down-the-hall stinking squatty potty, no shower, cold water hotel ($2 in China). We walked around the potholed town center in a dripping rain between slate gray buildings; young men stood on crumbling sidewalks looking beaten, dangerous; vendors braved the wet selling cigarette lighters, cheap radios; anything for a few more Lari before darkness descends. We bought tomatoes and carrots for dinner, twenty five cents.

Back in our single hard bed room, I drink a cheap Georgian beer and gaze out the window at the Soviet era apartment block through the waning rain and gathering gloom. It is a tableau of a former, not yet liberated, life under Communism: clotheslines, mops, jugs of home-made wine, rust-bleeding concrete balconies; a babushka beats on something like wool, shreds it and hangs it to dry; a woman finishes hanging clothes, they sag the line in the soggy air; another babushka drinks wine and eats bread and stares into the mountains drifting with shards of stringy charcoal cloud; an old man limps the short length of his balcony repeatedly, as if exercising, indomitable spirit; three women lean out and talk, echoing between the buildings, gestures of question, of resignation; a Doberman paces and barks from a second story balcony, his babushka comes to check; she has been a victim; a tabby cat makes his rounds along lower balconies, looking for food, he later appears in our third-floor toilet; the only children to grace my tableau, two girls, play with a tattered badminton birdie, and one racket; a man joins the wine drinking woman, lights a cigarette to salute the end of rain; several people appear on balconies and talk all at once to anyone, anyone; and just as suddenly they become quiet, they wander inside leaving a lone couple eating sunflower seeds, they spit over the edge, the husks flutter into the mud.

It is how I imagine Eastern Europe shortly after the breakup, beaten, left alone in a world they know nothing about. I wonder if the older ones were good Communists, rewarded for their patriotism with an apartment to pass on to their children; there are few children or grandchildren, and no money for upkeep. Their asset slowly bleeds iron oxide and sags toward an uncertain end.

Leftovers from Soviet era. Claire looking at Soviet housing from our hotel window.

Georgia’s future is uncertain, and depends largely on outside forces. The promise of Communism failed them and they don’t have the educational structure or the youth to find their way forward in a new, rapidly chainging world. They have resources, water, rich farmland and willing workers. Will there be room for them in the high tech world?

What we are just now learning is how much the beaver shaped the landscape and how much we continue to lose by killing them.

I once wandered the plateau of Allegheny Mountain in wilderness area called Dolly Sods, in search of blueberries, huckleberries and brook trout. These forays alone, or with friends Steve Richards or Sull McCartney are some of my richest memories of the few years I lived in the beautiful Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

The meandering streams were punctuated by beaver dams that slowed the water and created meadows for large deer and bear, and habitat for those brookies, always hungry for a tiny dry fly. Fire had shaped Dolly Sods many years before, after the first cutting of timber, taking the soil away to bedrock in many areas, making them stony deserts. The beaver moved in, harvested the remaining trees, and built dams on most of the streams. These dams not only created habitat, but they trapped sediment that filled in the bedrock and reclaimed the mountain top.

One October I went backpacking on Dolly Sods alone, to try and catch some fall color; maple and aspen, and the deep green of the signature flag spruce. What I got was an early snowstorm, and a lesson in just how worthless plastic sheeting is for shelter. But the snow didn’t stop the beavers from their work until dark. A periodic slap of beavertail on water, reminded me I was a visitor, and they’d just as soon I leave. And leave I did, after taking a couple of rolls of film, with frozen hands and soaked sore feet, and a pocketful of memories, at least partly thanks of those beavers.

I’m not sure what has happened since I left the area in 1978, but I can bet there are a lot more trees than before, probably fewer blueberries, but a healthy young spruce forest.

For more on new thinking and research on the value of beavers go to:  Voyage of the Dammed