The Library

I ventured in on Saturday. I have not been able to read a book since last June. Magazine articles: sometimes. Even some emails have been too much for my concentration.

But, I had this idea that I could maybe read something not challenging. So, I went in and located three potential books (_Breaking Her Fall_—Stephen Goodwin, Ann Packer’s latest (the title of which I forget and have already returned it) and _Belong to Me_, Marisa de los Santos.

I nervously took them to the desk and my heart stopped when the librarian asked for my card a second time, it turns out in order to update it but in that brief moment I wondered if my card had been revoked for some reason, and I even managed to exchange a few words with her (“I cried over _Belong to Me_”, she said. “I haven’t cried since _The Time Travelers Wife_”, I replied. “Oh! I loved that book!” and so on.)

I have been on a binge since Saturday morning. I am nearly through the third and went and got three more to make sure I don’t run out. I’m afraid that if I stop, my ability to read will leave again and I don’t think I could bear another year without books.

Democracy Doesn't Scale

Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society (whether distinguished by wealth, family or military powers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

Democracy just doesn't scale.

The Fistula Hospital

In the villages in Ethiopia, the girls carry pottery jars of water so heavy that their bone growth is slowed so much that their pelvic bones are often too small for a baby to pass through. A hole in the bladder or rectum can appear, the girls leak, the community shuns them, husbands send them back to their father, a separate hut is built, and they live alone unable to even stay clean. Some walk a day or two to the fistula hospital, receive free repair surgery and recuperation, some are fixed and walk back to their villages.

The girls are advised to deliver at a hospital, to start walking towards care when the baby starts to walk. At first I was drawn to the noble service of the local physicians, the countrywide need, the shame erased, ...

Until I began to think that this repairing isn’t preventing.

Perhaps the next generation will not work girls so hard, perhaps the next generation will not wed girls so young, perhaps the next generation will use birth control.

Someday there might be water at a village tap, and girls would not carry pottery jars of water so heavy that their bone growth is slowed.

5/15/08

One of the characters in Cutting for Stone, a fine book by Abraham Verghese (set mostly in Ethiopia), becomes a fistula expert.

8/6/09