This Child Here - Nadia Decides

This post is reprinted with permission from an email circulated by Robert Gamble of This Child Here.  I have posted other emails from him from time to time.

As I begin this, Yulia and I are in flight from Kiev, Ukraine to Munich, Germany, the first leg of the trip home that will take us next to Newark for a few hours and finally to Atlanta. I am thinking about what we know that others do not know and perhaps will not ever know. I am thinking of all the places I have been and adventures I have had and the warm family I grew up in that is the solid base upon which I can and have had such experiences. 

Nadia

These are things the girl in this picture here will probably never know, neither the places I have been nor the experience of a warm family like the one I was formed within. This girl's name is on the paper tag on her shirt: Nadia. Note the arm bands, black and white. I've seen this before. They likely cover scars from a knife or razor.  

In the final weekend of the visit to Ukraine, our team led workshops in two orphanages about three hours by train from Odessa. The girl pictured here lives at the orphanage in a town called Kotovsk. One hundred and ten children live at this orphanage. It is a town of perhaps 30,000 people. 

Nadia decides

 In this moment children are in a circle, in the foreground is a stuffed animal, out of focus, held by Alla, our team leader. The rule is, the person with the toy, speaks; the others listen. The discussion will vary but mostly center on topics like who we trust and why, or how we support our friends. 

Roma - Take my picture

Two other youth are pictured: a boy named Roma who would not participate in many of the games we played, because for him they were too embarrassing, but who clearly wanted his picture taken as he leaned back for me to shoot it. And then, this girl, Tanya  who jumped into the action and conversation, laughing and making others laugh.

Tanya - pick me, pick me

These are kids destined for a life very different from ours. They won't know what you and I know and experience here in America. But that is not the end of hope or the end of the story. What we give these children when we come is the time to build upon the love and friendships and trust they are already forming. 

Our goal is not to hold their hands or give them blankets or candy, but to help them find the strong person they can be--and that person is often hiding inside them.

As I finish this newsletter I am back now in the states. In one of the several airports we passed through, I saw an interesting poster: a picture of a girl who looked to be twelve or thirteen and living in poverty somewhere in Asia. At the top of the picture were the words, "I am powerful." 

That's what we are about in our work with children. It's one thing to help with food, clothing and medical care. It's another to help children find the courage and strength inside to make a life. 

Grace and Peace,

Robert Gamble

--
Dr. Robert Gamble,
cell phone: 828 318 2149
Interim Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Cumberland MD

Director, This Child Here
www.thischildhere.org
Donations to This Child Here can be made on the website or by check to: This Child Here, 245 Seaview Ave, Daytona Beach, Fl 32118
http://www.thischildhere.org/latestnews/

We do not Believe in
Ourselves until someone
Reveals that deep inside us
Something is valuable,
Worth listening to, worthy
Of our touch, sacred to our touch.
Once we believe in ourselves we can
Risk curiosity, wonder, Spontaneous
Delight, or any experience that reveals
The human spirit.
e.e. cummings

Mole Crickets Again

Tanya has declared war on garden varmints.  Colorado potato bugs ate a bunch of her newly transplanted tomato plants two days after she put them out.  She sprayed them at least once since.  She bought an extra sprayer for roses and cabbages which apparently take the same spray so she can keep a tank loaded for tomatoes and cabbages to respond at a moment's notice.

The mole crickets are back with a vengeance this year.  They make little round holes in the earth about the size of your finger and eat the roots underground and also the tops above ground.  They are omnivorous which means they also eat bugs and grubs.  But they eat Tanya's flowers so they are doomed!

She buys some kind of green granular bait.  A trench is dug with a hoe beside some flowers where the Mole Crickets have been active.  The trench is filled with water and once it soaks in the granules are sprinkled on top and the trench is covered over.  They are drawn to the water and are poisoned by the bait, sometimes coming to the surface to die.  These two shots below are of surfaced dead ones.

The book says 50 mm in length.  These are at least 75 mm.  They also have wings and adults can fly up to 8 km (5 miles). 
 
I blogged about Mole Crickets two years ago here. If you Google Mole Cricket images you will get lots of great pictures. If you like that sort of thing.

Baxter Black on Pink Slime

"Rick and I were discussing the uproar about “pink slime.” He said, “Well, I don’t know much, but I’m sure not gonna buy any of their CD’s!”

It’s all in a name; Pink Floyd, Pink Panther, Pink, Pinko Commie, pink in the center (medium rare), pink eye, Pinky Lee and/or pinkie finger.  Pink slime, as you have heard is a predominately lean beef that has been separated from fat and is added back to hamburger to make it leaner.  It is puffed with ammonia gas to eliminate bacteria.  They could have chosen to call it lean beef crystals, beeffulls, red stripes, lean beef sprinkles, or recycled fresh beef calorie reducers.  But they didn’t, so unwittingly, they became targets..."

Continued Read Baxter's Column | Baxter Black

I love my job

I LOVE MY JOB

This is even funnier when you realize it's real!

Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.

Bob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana

He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.

Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister.

She then sent it to radio station 103 .5 on FM dial in Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest.

Needless to say, she won.

Read his letter below...

~Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office.

I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office.

It's a wet suit.

This time of year the water is quite cool.

So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater.

This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea.

It heats it to a delightful temperature.

It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.

What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit.

This floods my whole suit with warm water.

It's like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.

So, of course, I scratched it.

This only made things worse.

Within a few seconds my butt started to burn.

I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done.

In agony I realized what had happened.

The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it, however, the crack of my ass was not as fortunate.

When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my ass.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.

His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say, I aborted the dive.

I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totalling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.

When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.

As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber.

The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't shit for two days because my ass was swollen shut.

So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your ass.

Prague Holiday - Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov town is THE tourist trap of Czech Republic.  Tanya and I want to spend at least three days there on our next trip.  The entire old city is a UNESCO world Heritage site, complete with humongous castle and associated building and hundreds of beautiful old buildings now all converted to eating, drinking, sleeping and shopping establishments.

The castle was built to defend the southern borders of Bohemia.  It is the second largest noble residence after Prague castle. Of course we never actually got inside it.  Next time. For history and pictures see UNESCO link above.

Oxbows in the river act as natural moats

Approaching the castle from parking lot

On the inside from a bridge

Closer view of the river side of the castle

Looking over the town in the centre oxbow

Looking back towards the castle

Lovely old buildings

Narrow streets

Restored original decorative paintings

And cannons!!!!

Are there any news?

Not a new.

The Midnight Chorus

There is nothing to see on this video as it was done at night and you need to turn the sound up pretty good.  And it was still 30 MB.  I need to learn a better way to record sounds.

Growing up on a farm in Saskatchewan, we did hear frogs singing in the sloughs in spring, but it was one kind of frog and one voice of singing. I find it quite interesting to listen to these guys. One a good night there are about 4 to 6 voices that can be distinguished.  They go all night and all day.  The cuckoo chimes in (so to speak) starting about 5:00 am and someday I will record him/her too.