too much and too little

It is very good to have a break starting today. I do have a lot of research work I want to finish that I've been putting off because of school. Now I have no excuse. We're going to Cali 12/25-1/1 but outside of that I'm free.

E will be done after tomorrow night (and after grading 45 term papers). It'll be nice to have E not teaching. Of course he may just replace teaching with going to the gym. He just signed up for his 2009 marathon - Scotland here we come!

Today was the last day of psych class for 2008. I had two guest speakers, a clinician and a researcher, come in for a mini-career day. It was short but good. I found myself adding a bit...I should have a day when I talk about my career and my research. The class has no idea who is teaching them. :)

I was talking to a teacher in the faculty lounge today. She was saying that even if you're a teacher, while your child may be able to get in, they will probably only get minimal financial aid. T (my school) is supposedly not as well-endowed as some of its peers in the city. Well, one should remember the kind of people who send their kids here...apparently I missed these two touring my school the other day.



On a more serious note, while I know there is much poverty and disease worldwide all the time, the situation in Zimbabwe has struck a chord with me. The cholera epidemic - so sad, so preventable and treatable with clean water and sanitation. It's interesting that research shows that people are most likely to give money with presented with the story of one specific person/child in need compared to if you tell someone a hundred, or a thousand children are in need. If you tell the story and present the statistics the giving is in-between. This seems illogical but I wonder if it has something to do with the way we're wired - we can be overwhelmed or numbed by large numbers. But one person - yes, then maybe you're not helpless and can make a real difference.

Here is the story that made me cry:

"The death toll mounts each day. Chipo and Tecla Murape rushed their orphaned 5-year-old niece, Moisha, to the clinic in Chitungwiza, a city just south of Harare, last week. Nurses told the family the veins in the girl’s arms had collapsed because she had lost so much fluid. No doctor ever saw her, her relatives said, and the nurses never hit a vein. Moisha, a shy, but friendly girl, instead drank rehydration fluids.

Throughout the day, she complained of a terrible thirst and a stomachache. On the advice of clinic workers, her aunts did not even hold her hand as she lay dying, fearing infection. After night fell, the nurses said there was nothing more they could do and suggested that Moisha’s relatives take her to the city’s hospital, some two and a half miles away.

But there was no ambulance. Tecla Murape, 42, swaddled Moisha to her back and set off hurriedly for the hourlong walk, her heart pounding with worry. Under a dark, moonless sky, she took a shortcut through a maize field, leaping across yet another putrid sewage spill. By the time they arrived, Mrs. Murape’s clothes were soaked with Moisha’s watery diarrhea. Hours later, Moisha died."

NY Times, Cholera Is Raging, Despite Denial by Mugabe By CELIA W. DUGGER

I know this is a silly reflection of my naivete but like a city kid who has no idea the meat from the grocery store comes from a cow, I wonder how mankind has been able to have clean water/ decent sanitation throughout time. Obviously, groups settled near water sources. And I'm sure there are guidelines like how far excrement should be from water sources, etc. You hear about people's lives revolving around getting water (two hours to the well, etc.) but I don't think it really sunk in before. And throughout history there have been many things like cholera epidemics. Life expectancy overall was shorter.

I wonder to myself what I would do if my nice city facilities broke down. What would I do with my building trash if I couldn't just throw it down the shoot. What if all the toilets were broken. What would we do with all our human waste. What measures would I take to ensure my daughter didn't die from lack of water.

Back to happier things, we celebrated E's 41st birthday last week:


Chocolate beard plus sticking her finger up her nose, does it get any better?


I still have googly eyes for you, babe: