For our 7th Edition James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Earth's radiation belts, has written a piece for the millenium. Other articles are on: direct action against racial discrimination in the early 1960s in USA; the horrors of leaving the Nepalese mountains to go to school far from home; growing from a child in George Bernard Shaw's house into an extrapolator par excellence; hillbillie conversations re IRS, the distribution of trash on the highway and the point of individual existence...; a proud mother worrying about her son at the World Trade Organisation demos in Seattle; a first visit into Africa by an Oxfam worker; the life and times of an Australian milliner; reality for a person with multiple personalities; learning disabilities or differently able: label and identity; Servas: the organisation that does free homestays; hang-gliding; childhood memories from Hannibal, Missouri; and a hunting yarn in descriptive technicolour. Plus some poetry as usual.

Our 6th Edition led off with a summary of my journey around the world and also included articles by a gay man on coming out, a psychologist on twitching around the world, a Belgrade academic on life under the NATO bombs, and a woman on the recent loss of a much-wanted child. Also some poetry, a trip to Rumania to help out there, a description of a ford in India, and a fine gin song.

Our 5th Edition has Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut,as Guest Columnist and other articles waxing lyrical on sailing in the Whitsundays; describing the work of a House of Commons clerk; a pilgrimage made by a British Buddhist in her 60s into the Thai jungle; a sperm donor's wonderings; quite a lot of poetry; and a retired gent recalling how he paid compensation on behalf of H.M. Government to all the individuals on each and every one of the Gilbert & Ellice Islands for coconut trees destroyed by the Japanese during the 2nd World War; inter alia.

Our 4th Edition has George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Guest Columnist and articles include an account of a cycling trip to the Gambia, an article from a 14 year old about her memories of life in Berlin when the wall came down, memories of bad things done as a child, twisting and turning imagery in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, bothersome thoughts a coroner can't ask, thoughts from a Baha'i, photography as art, and a comical account of shipwreck in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Our 3rd Edition has Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, as Guest Columnist and articles were also provided by Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Atwood and James Macmillan. In addition I published stuff by a physiotherapist working with kids in refugee camps in Jordan; a wee motor from Cairns to Darwin; a young London actor contemplating his kettle; a year in the life of an opera administrator; being on the receiving end of an armed robbery.

Our 2nd Edition has as Guest Columnist the contemporary composer Sir John Tavener, who had recently reached a wider audience with the playing of a piece of his at the funeral service for Princess Diana. It also carries articles on, inter alia, being a crew member in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race; pieces on identity: being "Irish"; being a member of two different minority groups ie Gay and Disabled; the death of one's parents; a woman's account of childbirth; an adopted child's first encounter with her biological mother; a day in the life of a violinist. There is a motley selection as usual of "No Can Do" correspondence.

The 1st Edition's Guest Columnist was the poet Ruth Padel and articles therein are on a variety of topics such as fear of boats; a newcomer's response to Zimbabwe; the emotional impact of surgical versus congenital amputation; imagination and the prehistoric cave paintings of Peche Merle; the death of a cat; and a day in the life of a family therapist.

Now up and running is the editor's homesite and the FTW diary. Why don't you bookmark my diary column and check it out regularly? That's where you'll find a lot of blunt stuff about living with disability that's widely and favourably reviewed in all manner of hardcopy newspapers and periodicals from the Chosun Ilbo in Korea to the Lancet, the Kalamazoo Gazette to the Swiss TV Times, the New Zealand Herald to South Africa's Fairlady. Click here or on logo at top of page to jump to Latest Diary Entry (1st April 2000). Check out my mystery page too.

STEPHEN HAWKING

The eminent physicist has sent a short diary extract. 

MARTIN WILMOT BENNETT

JAMES BOYLE

CHRIS BONNINGTON

MICHAEL COHEN

CHERYL COLLINS

ROBERT COOK

HARRY DALZIEL

MIKE EASTLAND

RICH GALLAGHER

GRETCHEN KLABER

PETER LAMBERTY

LEWIS

BILL MILLER

RICHARD MOORE

MIKE MURACH

TONI PAYNE

ANANDA SEN

POLLY TOYNBEE

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This website took 1st prize (£1,500!) in the Individual Category on February 18th in Sydney

This "site of the week" award was granted March 19, 1999

"If you visit only one website this year, make it this one."

this edition / 1st Edition / 2nd Edition / 3rd Edition / 4th Edition / 5th Edition / 6th Edition / 7th Edition

Editor's Homesite / mystery page / FTW diary

This site was last altered on 23 April, 2000 but is checked weekly.

STEPHEN HAWKING

Dear Hero,

First, I must apologise for the lateness of my reply. I have had a long trip abroad and a minor physical set-back with my wrist which has left me quite behind with my paperwork. I have also been involved with several protracted projects which required my attention before the year end. In addition, I will be going to Caltech in the States on January 4th for 3 weeks and will not be returning until the 27th. I was deeply moved by your recent letter and would like to send you all the encouragement I can. Our respective disabilities are pretty bad but at least they don't affect the mind like strokes or Alzheimers, so one is still the same person. I am sorry that I will miss the next edition of your magazine. However, I shall try and keep a brief journal during my trip next month and provide you with "a week in the life of ..." shortly after my return.

.......

.......

.......

Yours sincerely,

STEPHEN HAWKING

During January 2000 I visited Caltech in Pasadena where I gave a number of lectures. Here is my diary entry for the most important day of the trip:

Today I travelled from Burbank (which is the nearest airport to Pasadena and Hollywood) to San Francisco. My graduate assistant, Chris Burgoyne, drove me and my party of three nurses from San Francisco airport to Cupertino, enabling us to relax and enjoy the scenary. Cupertino is the city where ‘Apple Computers’ are based. Its very much in the heart of Silicon Valley.

We checked into our rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn, Cupertino at about 9 p.m. I was treated to a Sirloin Steak before heading off to my room at around midnight in pleasant anticipation of the hectic day ahead.

Went to the campus of De Anza College at lunchtime to give a lecture to around 1800 students and staff. The lecture was also attended by a large number of journalists. I spoke for around 25 minutes and this was followed by a 45 minute Q&A session. A review of the lecture appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, 22/1/00. Afterwards I was interviewed for Channel 5 TV. We all went back to the hotel at 2:30 p.m. to prepare for the evening’s events.

Returned to the De Anza campus at 6:30 p.m. for the first of two receptions. This was organised by Agilent. After about 30 minutes I had to move on to the second reception which was hosted by Mentor Graphics. Similar set up at both receptions - company executives and selected employees were in attendance. Another 30 minutes and then off to the lecture theatre.

Because of wheelchair access, we had to walk around most of the De Anza campus to get to the stage door of the Flint Centre! Lucky I have my own transport - everyone else had to trek around on foot! This lecture was attended by 2,400 people and apparently sold out 2 months beforehand!

I spent a little time in the Green Room, while some representatives of the show’s sponsors opened the proceedings. I went on stage at about 8:30 p.m.

At 9:20 p.m. the lecture finished and the Q&A session began. I just took 3 questions this time. The whole show was over by 10 p.m. and was followed by another two informal receptions. Luckily, the second of them was back at the hotel, so we didn’t have far to crawl home! It went on until about midnight during which time we enjoyed a huge Thai meal. An excellent end to an exciting day.

My party travelled to San Francisco for a day of sightseeing and light relief. Arriving at Pier 39 at around noon, we all went on a boat trip around San Francisco Bay (between Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge). Afterwards we had lunch at a restaurant on the pier which was very pleasant indeed. Shortly afterwards I was interviewed by a journalist from the San Jose Mercury News. At 4 p.m. we had to head off to back to the airport, which was around an hour away.

Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Gallileo) in Oxford, England. His parents house was in north London, but during the second world war Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead.

After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science. Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton.

Stephen Hawking is perhaps best known for his discovery, in 1974, that black holes emit radiation, and for his no boundary proposal made in 1983 with Jim Hartle of Santa Barbara. His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Stephen Hawking has two popular books published; his best seller A Brief History of Time, and his later book, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989.

He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes and is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Stephen Hawking continues to combine family life (he has three children), and his research into theoretical physics together with an extensive programme of travel and public lectures.

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In Mag 1, I described the pain of being so disabled I am "locked-in" and the realisation as a young child that it is a permanent state. In Mag 2, I waxed lyrical upon the elemental joys that buoy me up, and in Mag 3 I wrote about Oxford Envy. In mag 4 and 5, I just got too busy.

In Mag 6 I described in rather summary form my journey earlier in the year around the world - Tanzania, Bangladesh, Australia and New York, prompted by winning a prize for this website.

In Mag 7 I wrote on barriers to equality, which was the topic of my first paid work a couple of months previously, when Scope, one of the UK's biggest disability organisations paid me to speak and take part in a couple of their workshops at their annual national conference.

I am a thirteen year old girl with a locked-in syndrome caused by a profound apraxia of all my muscles and the retention of dominant babyish reflexes. I am a wheelchair user and need complete care. I cannot make voluntary sounds and therefore cannot speak. Spelling is my greatest delight as it affords me the freedom to direct the course of my life. I crave acceptance as a really quite ordinary person, with an artistic temperament and a nice enough personality. On the whole I prefer adult company to kids', and my own company to 'most any other. I am bloody-mindedly independent and rarely acknowledge the wisdom of my mother's grey years.

I live in England, in the same town as I was born in but I love my mother's native land of Scotland even more. I also find Venice hard to eradicate from my mind, it swims like a tantalising mirage on my horizon informing my tastes and swelling my longing need to be truly me. I used to say that "I yearn to visit with people beyond Europe but have not a lot of dosh available for such sojourns". Last year I raised the money for my first big journey and changed my life immensely.

I need quiet. I hear music in my head a great deal of the time in a way I have come to accept is unusual. I was a composition student on a part-time Intermediate place at the Royal Academy of Music in London, participating alongside the undergraduate and graduate students when I was 9 years old, but they abruptly terminated my place and thrust me into a terrible depression.

Since then, I have veered more towards writing and journalism, by inventing FTW and becoming a BBC Video Nation correspondent and some other initiatives, but I also have leanings towards the visual arts. I am currently building an ambitious installation, am continuing to develop my photography, and if I could find more time, would out the visual aspects of the two autobiographical ballet scores I have completed and organise some performances of my poetry.

I am slowly building my way towards a book. I have not lost sight of the Third World even for a moment, or of my responsibilities. More info in cv. 

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MARTIN WILMOT BENNETT

PALAVER SAUCE: A THEMATIC SELECTION OF SOME WEST AFRICAN PROVERBS

'If you never offer your uncle palmwine, you'll not learn many proverbs,' prompts a Ghanaian saying. The advice seems to have been well-heeded. Whether painted across the fronts of speeding mammy-wagons or issuing from the mouth of a roadside mechanic or a paramount chief, proverbs throughout West Africa are in plentiful supply. Naming ceremonies, marriages, funerals; conversations in urban beer-parlours or by the palm-winetapper's fire; traditional folk-tales, some modern West African novels, highlife lyrics: These are just a few possible sources. Or to put it another way, 'When the occasion comes, the proverb comes.' (Oji, Ghana)

Whereas in Western societies proverbs have been mostly relegated to quaint decoration, in West Africa they are still part-and-parcel of everyday discourse, a sort of soundbite for the everyman. Thus the claim: 'When a proverb is told, only a fool needs it explained.' 'Proverbs are horses for solving problems' claims another example. 'When truth is missing, proverbs are used to uncover it.' And if the thought expressed is often less than original, it doesn't matter: 'Other people's wisdom frequently prevents the chief from being called a fool.' As a Yoruba saying has it: 'He who knows proverbs can settle disputes.' Not only can a well-aimed proverb save a thousand words of explanation; it can also help in discussing awkward home truths with a minimum of embarrassment. Seriousness and humor, focus and distance are authoritatively combined. Perhaps this is what underlies: 'When a chief deals out a dish, it becomes cold.'

One practical function of proverbs, then, is keeping matters in perspective. Indeed the structure of many proverbs resembles a pair of scales. 'There are forty kinds of madness, only one kind of common sense.' (Akan, Ghana) The idea of balance is also found in: 'Exuberance is not good, but meanness is not good at all.' More symmetrical still is 'When your guns are few, your words are few.' (Oji) There's further weighing things up in 'This year's wisdom is next year's folly.' Striking a happy medium, a Yoruba proverb reminds parents: 'If with the right hand you flog a child, with the left draw him to your breast.' The telling contrast also serves to remind us of the wider scheme of things: 'When carrying elephant's flesh on one's head, one should not look for crickets underground.' Or, for another occasion: 'The keeping of one's head exceeds the keeping of one's hat.' (Fulani) Continuing the theme of measurement and scale, consider: 'Debt is measured in a hippo's footprints' (Tiv, Central Nigeria) And truth? According to the Ibo, it is worth more than a dozen goats.'

Already we see how animals are a common proverbial feature. One reason, as in folk tales, is to provide a element of humor. 'If a baboon could see his behind, he'd laugh also'; 'The cock crows proudly on his own dunghill' are just two examples. Another reason is that animals supply easy scapegoats for our all-too-human failings. On our general fallibility we get: 'A horse has four legs, yet often falls.' (Tiv) For laziness: 'The dog's happy dream produces no meat.' For the nastier type of opportunism: 'Ants surround the dying elephant.' On the non-payment of debt: 'Spider hides under a stone.' (Ewe, Ghana) On the age-old gap between rich and poor, you may hear the pidgin: 'Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop.' For obstinacy, or a heavyweight equivalent of the English dog in a manger: 'The hippo blocked the road and nobody could get across.'(Tiv) For caution: 'In new surroundings the hen walks on one leg.' (Ibo) To conjure a sinister sense of occasion again the Ibo use: 'The toad does not jump in the daylight for nothing.' Even more disquietingly portentous is the Sierra Leonean: 'The bat hangs downwards because of the words told it by the sun.' As a portrait of the very human know-all, it'd be hard to beat the Yoruba: '"I know it perfectly" prevents the wasp from learning to make honey.' Arrogance, for better or worse, is vividly dealt with in: 'The lizard jumped down from the Iroko tree, and said, 'If there is nobody else to praise me, I will praise myself.'

In the world of proverbs not only animals take on human dimensions; so, rather more ingeniously, do everyday objects. 'The ax forgets; the tree does not,' states one vivid example. Respect for the elders is embodied in 'A pond is not a companion to a river' (Ibo); secrecy in 'Try to hide your secret and even grass is a spy.' For an emphatic equivalent of our own English proverb, consider: 'Walls have ears, and little pots too.' As an injunction against haste, the Ga say: 'A hot needle burns the thread.' For the delicate business of looking for a wife or husband, one might use, 'There's a lid for every pot, a key for every lock.' And then, after finding one, try: 'The cleared field looks good, the growing crop looks better,' this a proverbial echo of the more literal 'Children's laughter is music to the ears of the elders.' (Akan) For cooperation, marital or otherwise, take the mysteriously obvious: 'The sharpest knife cannot carve its own handle.' For a less than ideal view of family there's the Duala saying: 'The spear of kinship soon pierces the eye.' The same language expresses the naturalness of hard work in the more peaceable: 'The pot is not tired of cooking.' To bring home the division of labour, the Ho in Ghana use other utensils: 'The spoon does his job, the dish does his.' On the possibly unfair results of work (or lack of it), another saying points out: 'The pot cooks; the plate gets the name.'

Communication depending largely on what we have in common, another source of proverbial metaphor is, not surprisingly, the human body. So, for a nurturist view of crime, ponder: 'The stomach has done the head an injury.' (Duala) Covetousness is embodied in the Efik: 'The eye is a thief.' On appetite we have the festive 'The beard dances when food approaches.' As for the inevitability of arguments, the proof is in our very mouths: 'Even the tongue and the teeth quarrel now and then.' On talkativeness in old age, there is the ageless: 'Although the teeth drop out, the tongue does not tire.' Then, on how words can be literally a matter of life and death: 'The tongue kills a man; the tongue saves a man.' (Oji) So much for the head. Let's now move lower down. 'The house of the heart is never full,' swells a saying from the Duala, this echoed elsewhere by Yoruba's similarly emotive 'A man's heart is like an ocean; all the oceans cannot fill it.' (As a second thought Duala has an alternative proverb in: 'The heart's case is hard to open.') Specifically for travellers, a Nigerian proverb advises, 'The traveller leaves his heart at home.'

As an alternative to the proverb about co-operation cited in the previous paragraph is 'One can't tie a bindle with only one hand.' Below the waist we meet the lowly suggestive: 'The laughing penis does not enter' (Akan.) Continuing in the same direction: 'A man's legs are his brothers and sisters; on what else can he rely?' Or to use another limb to frame the same thought 'The soles of the feet may feed the mouth.' (Duala)

Many West African proverbs, however, dispense with metaphors completely, making do with sharp-eyed observation, arresting reportage. 'Three men can ruin a country,' resounds one with the air of historical truth. Like a bizarre newspaper headline, an Oji saying announces: 'The feast reveals the European's wooden leg.' Proving how a single proverb can save several paragraphs of tedious moralizing and stick in the memory better at the same time is: 'When the slave-trader preaches the Koran, it's time to watch over one's daughters.' Equally concise yet recognizable is: 'You hide your faults behind a wall, parade your neighbor's in the marketplace.' From the Yoruba we have 'Ask for alms and see the misers' while, to bring a smile to the sternest moralist, another proverb stipulates: 'He who excretes in the road is likely to meet flies on his return.' Sermon over. Similar matter-of-factness is evident in 'Your wife's tongue can turn your friends into enemies.' In one sentence a proverb often provides a character sketch which might take a novelist whole pages. So for entrepreneurs we get the cunning cameo: 'Having become rich, jump for joy in a quiet corner.' Or from the Ho in Ghana: 'The water-carrier drinks no slime.' Worth a chapter out of 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' is 'A soft voice loosens the gift from the Chief's hands.' Meanwhile for those seeking fame and worried about their height, the Nupe observe how: 'A man's never so tall that he can be seen in the next town; it's his name that goes before.' Teachers everywhere can might want to use the pithy: 'Nobody is without knowledge except they who ask no questions.' (Fulani)

Obvious enough, yet many proverbs work by pointing out those daily realities we often ignore. 'All the sages in the land cannot prevent misfortune,' is one example of such a rhetorical reminder. 'One cannot take medicine for someone else'; 'Who can make another woman his own mother?'; 'Without children the world would end'; 'There is no medicine against old age' are four others. Not that the obvious doesn't have a cunning corner or two: 'The doctor is never killed when the patient dies.' (Ibo) In a similar vein is: 'When really big business is on hand, the flag is not flown.' Or, as a timely put-down: 'A man may be famous in the world, yet small in his own house.' Just as beady-eyed is: 'The mistaken doctor leaves by the backdoor.' Then, showing that obviousness is relative, there's the sniggeringly accurate: 'The news has gone round and round, yet the person it concerns is deaf.' (Ibo) More disconcertingly general is the Hausa 'Love yourself and others will hate you; hate yourself and others will love you.' But lest all this proverbial advice and censure makes us self-righteous, the Akan have an antidote in: 'If you have an anus, do not laugh at your neighbor's farts.' As they say in Kamtok, a Cameroonian pidgin: 'Man no dey fit look other man's buttocks wey dey no show he own.'

Not all proverbs are as down to earth as the ones just quoted. Passed down by the ancestors, many West African proverbs are distinctly otherworldly, a sort of guide to the Great Beyond. 'The words of an epileptic are the utterances of a dweller of another world,' warns a saying in Yoruba. Another says 'A cripple may serve the gods as a porter at the gate.' Throughout West Africa the supernatural is never far away. 'God creates dreams' say the Efik in Eastern Nigeria. That the supernatural also has a horrific side is shown in the proverb: 'A sorcerer's zombie dies twice'. As alarming is 'A witch can harm you with your own footprints'. Along with references to possession and witchcraft, we are also handed tips on how to deal with ghosts: 'When a ghost puts put its hand, draw yours back.' Further etiquette reflects the Ghanaian custom of leaving food wherever it may have dropped: 'A ghost does not wait for the living to eat before it begins to eat.' On the strange phenomenon of wait-about ghosts or the spirits of those killed before their time, the advice goes; 'It's the living man who causes the ghost to long for mashed yam.' (Akan) Or, to explain the existence of such a ghost in the first place: 'The Supreme Being has driven him out, the spirit folk have driven him out.' Not that there's not also room for skepticism, as in 'The native doctor tells of his victories, not of his defeats.' (also Akan)

Related to the otherworldly is the subject of death or 'Sleep's elder brother' as a Nupe saying puts it - not so much a taboo as a proverbial favorite. 'The priest will die; the doctor will depart this life; nor will the sorcerer be spared,' warns an Ibo saying matter-of-factly. The same fate also lies in store for the miser, as in the Akan: 'Death has the keys to the miser's chest.' Equally salutary is the Ibo, 'The day one knows all, let him die.' From the same language comes this proverb which might also serve as a motto for travellers on Nigeria's roads: 'He who fears for his life is liable to be killed by a falling leaf.' Rather less menacingly an Akan proverb says, 'If you want to know death, look on sleep,'. Yet Death is nothing if not many sided: 'The old man runs away from death; the young child stands and stares at it.' Sometimes death comes quickly as in: 'A man's death is but a day.' (Nyang, Cameroon) Sometimes not so quickly: 'Little by little the leper pays his debt to the grave.' (Nupe, Northern Nigeria) Or, for the two time frames merged into one paradox, the Nupe have the metaphysical: 'Death is the owner of the house and is no stranger, yet when it comes it will be a stranger that day.

Last and perhaps foremost on the West African proverbial agenda is not death but Providence. A trip to any West African 'moto-park' will bear this out, the vehicles there painted with mottoes like 'God Dey', 'Destiny', 'Not as You Think', 'God's Time De Best', 'Who Knows Tomorrow', and 'God Never Sleeps'. Thus reminding us that there are higher powers than magic, one proverb says, 'It is God who pours rain for the sorcerer's garden.' From Hausa, West Africa's lingua franca, comes 'A grain of wheat upon a rock - God must give it water.' Or again: 'If you're going to ask from God, make sure you take a big calabash.' If one saying wittily stipulates that 'Not even God is ripe enough for a woman in love,' (Yoruba) another aknowledges that it is the same God who 'pounds fufu for the one-armed woman' (Akan), 'drives dlies from the tailless cattle' (Yoruba again) or 'fills your gourd with palmwine and when you throw it way, fills it up for you once more.' The Nupe express the same idea with: 'God who made the mouth will not sew it up.' 'If the Supreme Being gives you sickness, He also gives you medicine,' says the Akan. Most poetic of all, perhaps, is another proverb from the same language: 'If God gave the swallow nothing else, he gave him swiftness in turning.'

In the light of such sayings, we can better appreciate the Ibo assertion that 'The calabash of the ear is never full.' If 'Tales are the ear's food', then, as the Ibo also put it, 'Proverbs are the pepper with which words are eaten,' - a sort of palaver sauce with properties its leafy Chop Bar equivalent cannot match.

Martin Bennett taught in West Africa for several years and now works in Saudi Arabia. He has had three short stories on BBC World Service, and other work in Stand, Poetry London, Wasafiri, West Africa Magazine and elsewhere. A collection of poems - 'Loose Watches' - appeared from University of Salzburg Press in 1997.

Martin Bennett, 22 Khozama Compound, BAC, PB 3843, Riyadh 11481, Saudi Arabia or email: martin_wilmotbennett@hotmail.com

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1st September, 1999

Dear Hero Joy Nightingale,

Thank you for your letter. I was fascinated and moved to read about you and the piece you wrote about your travels around the world. the story of your webzine is very impressive and it would have been nice if I could have added a contribution. Unfortunately I am under tremendous pressure of work at the moment, with a book to finish very soon, and another one to complete against a tight deadline. All this in addition to a public lecture tour in the United States in early October and all over this country in October and November, as well as business presentations and the work I do for a number of charities. So, with great regret, I'm afraid that I haven't the time to write the sort of piece you want, but I do wish you the very best of luck with the project.

With good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Chris Bonnington

Chris Bonnington is an eminent British mountaineer. HJN. 

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JAMES BOYLE

----------

From: James Boyle
To: 'hojoy@rmplc.co.uk'
Subject: RE: You
Date: Tuesday, 15 February 2000 10:38am

You can re-print the 1000 word piece in "the Listener" which is on the BBC News site.

Boyle's law: Lock them in until they all agree

My reward is in heaven. In fact, I've got the cheque to prove it. It's pink and it's signed by our Saviour. It was sent to me from the Bible Belt of the United States and it is a promissory note drawn on the 'Bank of Heaven' and it offers to pay me "eternal life". Apparently, I pleased someone in South Carolina with an editorial decision about a religious programme.

Now, what about the rest of you? How is Radio 4 for you?

Well, let me tell you what the figures say: you are listening longer and in greater numbers than ever before. Good. That means that producers' programmes are being appreciated and that was the point of the change. Radio 4 had to be made futureproof but to achieve that status it had to dare to break with the past. Let's skip the "why" - you've heard it before; let's talk about "how"

The first move in changing R4 was to tell my staff roughly when I would leave. I guessed three years. That was based on experience and the knowledge that the necessary, wide-ranging changes would benefit the network but disaffect some and deeply offend those who deserved to be offended.

The fairest thing to do with the change-team was tell them the bad news at the outset: no one will be grateful and some us would get hurt.

My team was resolute, but I don't really know if they expected the turmoil predicted with the light abandon of Errol Flynn taking on the Spanish fleet. Keep smiling - another useful rule in change management. So, there was to be a time-scale for change and an exit point for me.

Next came the public timetable for change.

Radio 4 is an immensely complicated network broadcasting 13,000 programmes annually on FM, AM and LW. It also carries thousands of other short-form broadcasts such as trails and presentation announcements; and there is mandatory broadcasting such as Today in Parliament and the Shipping Forecast.

The network offers an extraordinary spectrum of programmes; some have been around for 50 years and, indeed, the Daily Service came to air first in the late '20s.

The network is complex in the extreme and endlessly fascinating but the key point was, I thought, simple and it related not to the programmes but to the proprietors: Radio 4 was a congress of interests and each one of the agencies, institutions and individuals who had a relationship with the Network believed that their's was predominant.

That is the story of this particular network. However, the strategy for change when resistance is inevitable is universally true: get it over quickly. If you don't, resistance will build and someone above you will begin to think that, well, a quiet life is easier. We made the changes quickly and decisively.

The change plan itself was created in the only way possible: with the collusion and help of as many people as possible and, above all, with an understanding of what listeners required - and that included what they needed as well as what they wanted.

In a series of meetings around the country, my team drew together hundreds of producers and simply worked through the issues and a lot of biscuits and tea. At the end I imprisoned my team of editors.

The final stage was more hothouse than gaol, however, because it was the design of the new schedule. A brand new hotel was opening and offering cheap rates. I booked work rooms and some bedrooms and determined that nobody left until we finished. This was in a posh area of London and I fretted that we might be seen to be profligate, despite the truth of the matter. It did not help my nerves to find 23 photographers in the lobby when we arrived. Relief: they were laying siege to a pop group.

Two days later, a large and austerely white room was papered - every wall, from floor to the six feet mark - with schedule patterns. It was the Day of the Yellow Sticky.

After that we did the other important thing: we told the whole nation what we were about to do.

In meeting after meeting, we went directly to the public across the UK - including Tunbridge Wells. There were no riots. All the received thinking about Radio 4 was wrong anyway; listeners were not rabid nutcases, they were people like us who were reasonable, tolerant and encouraging.

Naturally, we made mistakes; with total change it was inevitable. We fixed the problems and got on with it. At every stage we told folk what we were doing using letters, meetings and regular "Listener Reports". Forget the sensational stories. There was no listener outrage and "the scourge of middle England" never existed. The weaker journalists fabricated frights and still hold on to them; those who know the medium and the industry like Paul Donovan, Ray Snoddy and Paul McCann were professionally sceptical, clear and fair.

We received 5,236 letters during the 15 months of change; a major strand like "Today " receives over 15,000 in one year. Last year, when we issued a final report on the changes, letters were overwhelmingly supportive. No one likes everything, of course, but almost everyone acknowledges a stronger network, owned by its producers and listeners.

When Diana was killed, my advice to those who were to report the scenes around the funeral procession was this: describe what you see and not what you have been told you might see.

Obvious? Well, listen to bad reporting. On that day, my journalists had to begin by observing the true size of the crowds and refuting the newspaper predictions of six million visitors in London. That happens also to be a useful way of approaching any new task. Believe your own eyes and ears and have the courage to describe what you see, even if it is inconvenient for others. And don't worry; if all else fails, someone in South Carolina will appreciate it.

You will have a place in heaven.

James Boyle, unclubbable 54 year old Scot, married with three sons. They are his best work. Controller, Radio 4,1996-2000. This is his proudest boast.

________________________________________________________________________________  

MICHAEL COHEN

SUBMARINE ROUTINE

By Michael Cohen, M.E.A, P.E.

Shipbuilder and former U.S. Navy Submarine Officer

Like most other military careers, submarine service is not for everyone. Life in the Navy invariably involves long periods at sea, but a submariner spends most of that time submerged and confined to the interior of a very small hull. All those who serve in submarines must volunteer for that option and must be psychologically screened as well as specially trained after selection. Those who perform duties associated with the nuclear propulsion systems receive additional specialized training.

While it is recognized that many types of conventionally powered submarines are in operation today, mostly diesel-electric, this discussion will concern itself with nuclear powered submarines such as those in the U.S. and Royal Navy fleets.

While life aboard naval surface vessels has not changed significantly since the development of steam propulsion well over a century ago, submarines have undergone several stages of evolution in both propulsion technology and tactical use. While today’s submarines remain submerged except for transit in and out of port, such has not always been the case.

The tactical advantage of attacking from beneath the surface of the sea has been recognized by naval tacticians literally since the beginning of recorded history. Like many other innovations such as flight, however, idea preceded implementation by centuries because of the lack of available technology.

Operating a vehicle in an undersea environment requires not only a reliable power source absent the need for outside air, but a hull capable of remaining watertight through the range of increasing pressures encountered with increasing depth. Except for a few crude attempts at vessels with manually driven propellers over the centuries, the absence of a practical power source precluded the former; the state of the art in metallurgy precluded the latter.

The first submarines produced in any significant quantity appeared just prior to World War I, and were designed to engage the enemy while surfaced, submerging only for concealment. The evolution of the storage battery made submerged operation possible; the ships used either steam or diesel engines to charge the batteries while the ship was on the surface. By World War II, both ship design and weapons technology had improved to the point where torpedoes launched from periscope depth were the primary armament.

Such a ship operates on diesel engines (the Royal Navy additionally has had several steam powered versions) driving generators, which serve the ship’s electrical needs as well as driving propulsion motors. While the engines are operating, they also charge the ship’s batteries, which are large versions of the lead-acid battery used in automobiles.

Submergence time is necessarily limited by the endurance of the battery, meaning that these ships were required to surface every two days or so to operate the diesels and recharge batteries. Development of the snorkel mast by German engineers in 1943 allowed submarines to remain submerged while running diesels to charge the batteries, meaning that they could remain submerged for entire patrols - as long as food and fuel supplies would permit.

Life aboard these ships is crude even by Navy standards. They are quite small, weighing about 500 to 1000 tons compared to modern nuclear vessels weighing ten times that much. The engineers designing these ships were masters at space conservation. They had only one passageway fore and aft in the ship, and had very limited water supplies. Each crew member was given a daily water ration with which to wash and/or shave, explaining why submarine sailors became known for their beards. Showers were rendered inoperable once the ship left port, leading to the colloquial reference to these vessels as "pigboats".

From this description, you can see that because of their limited submergence time, these ships were not true submarines - they were merely submersibles. Even in his 1872 work 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne brought forth the point that for a true submarine to operate submerged for any appreciable length of time, it had to utilize a power source not requiring combustion. The Nautilus described in his work in amazing engineering detail had all of its equipment powered by electricity. The primary difference between Verne’s fictional ship and the USS Nautilus developed 80 years later was method by which that electricity was generated.

When Admiral H.G. Rickover began developing nuclear propulsion for the U.S. Navy in 1947, he used proven technology for most of the engine room equipment. He used a steam plant to drive propulsion turbines and generators, producing the steam from the heat of a nuclear reactor. By 1953, a mere five years later, his program had started construction of a submarine and produced a full size working prototype - a remarkable achievement even by today’s standards. In 1954 the USS Nautilus - with a reactor that would operate for five years without refueling - went to sea.

Modern nuclear submarines, while still small by the standards of surface craft, are fast and very comfortable ships compared with their diesel-electric counterparts. They can operate up to 25 years without refueling, and their actual time on patrol is limited only by the amount of food they can store and the sanity of their crews. The onboard distilling plants produce more than enough water for everyone’s needs and atmosphere control equipment produces oxygen as well as scrubbing the air of harmful gases. They are, in every sense of the word, true submarines.

Once a submarine begins its patrol, typically 60 to 90 days depending on the nature of the mission, day and night are important only chronologically and in terms of meal times. Unlike the life on surface craft, there is no daily routine tied to sunrise and sundown. The day is divided into four six-hour periods starting at 6 AM, and crew members are in an 18 hour cycle. The person stands watch for six hours, tries to get a day’s work and watch qualifications done in another six, and sleeps for six if time permits. The cycle is then repeated for the duration of the patrol.

An ongoing process throughout the individual’s tour of duty is watchstation qualification. No one is allowed to operate equipment or stand watches in a space without being thoroughly qualified for that position. He must study about the watchstation, then demonstrate his ability to operate the equipment.

The watches are supervised by three officers: the Officer of the Deck, who is in overall charge of ship operation and controls ship speed, heading and deployment of weapons if needed; the Diving Officer of the Watch, who reports to the Officer of the Deck and is responsible for depth control and depth changes; and the Engineering Officer of the Watch, who is responsible for safe and proper operation of the nuclear propulsion plant.

In addition to individual watchstations, all officers and crew are required to achieve a general "qualification in submarines". This means that they must demonstrate their knowledge of locations of virtually every system on the ship and where damage control equipment is, so that they can work effectively in a combat situation.

Submarines have two primary missions, which dictate the location and duration of their patrols. Missile submarines, carrying sea-based ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, patrol the seas and serve as a deterrant to those who might consider starting a major conflict; they generally patrol for a sixty to seventy day period. Fast attack submarines are designed to seek out and destroy other submarines, and have a number of secondary missions as well, such as attacking land targets with cruise missiles. The patrol time for a fast attack sub can vary from a week to 90 days or more.

As you can see, life is kept busy, but there is time for recreation. The ship also brings to sea a large collection of movies and other videos, and has a small library. Submarines traditionally have some of the best food in the fleet, and combined with the lack of exercise one gets in such a small environment, control of body weight is a problem for many submariners. One day during my tour of duty on USS Sea Devil, a fast attack sub, the medical corpsman posted a height-weight chart in the Officer’s Wardroom. At the bottom of the chart was the footnote, "Add five pounds for clothes and shoes." One of my colleagues pencilled in, "Add fifty pounds for sub duty."

Many people have asked me if I felt confined when I served on a submarine, and my answer is usually that one does not have time to think about being confined. The nature of a submarine’s mission keeps everyone busy, and when they are not busy with the mission, they are busy working on their qualifications.

What about communications to and from home? Unlike a surface ship, which continually transmits and occasionally receives mail, a submarine must remain undetected. It therefore remains submerged and does not transmit and radio signals while on patrol. All communications must be passive; i.e., radio traffic is being received continuously.

In the days before email, the only communication a sailor received from home was a "familygram" - a brief message that his family could send to the fleet commander, which was them broadcast to the ship. If a crew member had a birthday at sea, his family could in secret give the captain a gift to give him on the day of his birthday. Now emails are received continuously, so crew members can receive substantially more information from home.

As I’ve said, this is not a lifestyle for everyone. During a visit to a local water park with my family last summer, I watched an olympic high dive team perform. After the final act, in which a diver dove into a small pool from a 60-foot-high platform, I approached the diver to tell him I enjoyed the show.

"People told me I was crazy for going on submarines in the Navy, but you’d never get me up there", I said, pointing at the tiny platform.

He responded, "That’s OK - I’m claustrophobic. You’d never get me on a submarine."

Have a pleasant day and enjoy the things you can’t see from a submarine.

* * *

Dear Hero,

Glad you like the article - I enjoyed writing it for you.

The drop out rate in subs is a bit higher than other areas of the Navy (only about ten percent remain in for careers), but not because of the constraints of a sub. The main reason is that submariners are more highly trained than their surface Navy counterparts, which makes them very valuable in the civilian economy. This is especially true for the "nucs" (pronounced "nukes"), those who are trained in reactor operation, who can go to work for commercial nuclear power plants at much better pay and not spend the time away from their families.

Occasionally we have had someone lose it, but those cases are very rare because of the psychological screening that these people undergo before they are allowed to serve. Commanding officers are very alert to signs of trouble, and if they have any doubt about a sailor's suitability, he will be transferred off the ship. Usually when this has happened, it has been because of a family problem that made the separation difficult, not necessarily the submarine environment.

As a matter of fact, on my first submarine patrol in the Mediterranean, we received a message that a child of one of our petty officers was seriously ill. The fleet commander instructed us to surface at a specific location in the middle of the night, and they had a helicopter there to pick the man up and take him to the nearest NATO base so he could be flown home.

The room is about comparable to an airplane, except picture having to sleep in a stateroom about twice the size of an airplane restroom and you have the idea.

Your mum is right about what you feel - a submarine rolls a lot on the surface, but once it submerges, you don't even know you're at sea. Even in very severe weather, you feel almost no sensation of motion unless you get close to the surface. The only time you notice anything is when the ship changes depth, because it will take an up or down angle. That really upsets the cooks if they happen to be serving a meal at the time. :)

Also, the ship comes to periscope depth once a day to receive certain radio traffic and to get a reading from the navigational satellites. I can tell you from my experience as a diving officer that in rough weather, it is difficult to control the ship at periscope depth. The surface creates a suction effect that is trying to pull the ship up, and the diving officer has to keep it submerged without dunking the periscope.

During builder's sea trials, however, it's a different story - we deliberately subject the ship to hard turns and steep angles, somewhat like an airplane, to be sure it is capable of high speed operation. We call that operation "angles and dangles".

A nuclear sub never surfaces during its mission - the objective is to remain undetected, and it does this by remaining quiet and staying submerged.

Feel free to ask anything else that occurs to you. I feel privileged to be able to contribute to your magazine and to your knowledge. I can tell you some rather humorous stories about some things that happened on subs. The toilets have a unique design and a special flushing procedure, which can really create a mess at times if it's not done properly.

Attached is my bio information - you may edit it as you wish if it's too long winded.

Take care,

Mike

Michael Cohen was raised in the states of Massachusetts and Maine, USA, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1971, subsequently serving in nuclear submarines. He earned his Master's Degree from George Washington University in 1983, and has been a licensed Professional Engineer since 1981. Mike left the Navy in 1976 to settle in Virginia Beach, Virginia with his wife Beth and has raised two daughters, Jennifer, 24, and Jaime,19. He now manages contracts for Newport News Shipbuilding, a shipyard that builds submarines and aircraft carriers. Mike teaches college math and engineering courses at night, and shares what time he has left between his family and his Internet activities.

Mike is the editor-in-chief of the newsletter for Cyberangels, the Internet branch of the Guardian Angels and the world’s largest Internet safety organization.

Mike is also a political satirist and poet, and has written several pieces for co-workers and Cyberangels members as well as two on the Cyberangels website.

Mike has taken a strong interest in helping the families and friends of victims of the tragic school shootings that have happened across the U.S., and has constructed a page on the Cyberangels website honoring the victims and linking the support groups from the various communities affected.

________________________________________________________________________________  

CHERYL COLLINS

Dear Hero,
One phrase jumped for attention, when you wrote of the broading, mind-expanding effect of traveling, "Yanks it so taut one never regains the original shape."
Upon returning from a month and a half from Japan, I struggled deeply. The quiet solitude experienced, away from all the folks who have categoried me, predicted me. The difficulty arises when you return. When you've changed in a rather dramatic way, but your friends and family have changed in an entirely different way, and a gap developes. I grew rather paranoid on the eleven hour flight back. Dreading such questions as, "What's the most different?". . . "What was the best thing?" Nothing is that easily summed up, the answers to those questions are too over simplified. So the dilemma. Pressure to fall into the sort of person you were before leaving, fighting to hold on to a dear, precious experience that is unexplainable to others. The ride home from the airport where my parents and I stopped at Taco Bell or something. It was so frightening hearing and understanding every little conversation and word and radio annoucement that circulated around me. I was in the majority-white and English speaking. Everything was so huge, so spread out, so multi dimensional. Myself thinking, "that parking lot is wasted space, we could throw in a couple of tall buildings. . ." Or, wondering how my host sister would see this place. The familiar suddenly foriegn. And when I didn't speak English at all for three weeks. The second day I returned I visited the small downtown, the farmer's market where my friend Zach bought some curry and I sipped a lemonade and we walked to the marina and sat beneath a tree, staring at eachother, unsure where to go from here. (We'd began a relationship of sorts before my departed and e-mailed throughout the summer, about my fears switching host families, about his new band with my friend Kelsey's boyfriend (Kelsey was in Japan the same time I was, same plane rides, different cities) , called, an amusement to me, "Because of Japan.") Where before departing I think I communicated in a crude, bold outspoken manner, and where now I struggle to explain what simple emotion I'm feeling. Trying to talk under a tree, gesturing wildly, stuttering, confusing myself. Sometimes it comes with ease, other times I decide, after much consultation with myself, that some things are unnecessary or ridiculous to speak of. I find myself silent much of the time. Some of my friends I never did connect with again. I keep the select group close. Loyalty is important. I whispered until late last night on my friend Courtney's couch (she lives down the street), I'm gonna see a movie with my friend Aaron today, who I've been spending a lot of time with, (he's planning on returning to school this winter to study for something he is unaware of right now) and I'll go sweat and jump my groove thag at the Metropolis where a Zach's friend Rich and his band, "A Tale for Thomas" -blues, rock, funk-are playing tonight. I go through waves of self doubt and confusion. When I started doing stupid things like comparing myself to friends of mine who are highly gifted people. 4.0, 1350 SAT score, honor society, president of such and such club, for 20 hours a week, etc. Where as I struggle though math, and chose to read books instead of working. My struggles are so petty.

I think it's hard for me watching Aaron. I know he is so highly capable and intelligent and driven, yet-the folk he spends most of his time with, who are loyal and wonderful to him, I judge. I judge certain ways the treat Aaron, especially if they're drunk or stoned, as they can be much of the time. Aaron, so focused on music (a wonderful singer, a how choir member in his high school days) He let me listen to a tape of his friends jamming, so proud of it. And I'm over there on a Friday night when he want to sing and jam with his buds, and they're too busy slamming beers and surfing on the arms of the couched. He knows his friends hold him back from streching outward into other areas, but he's told me he'd rather stay there with than abandon them.

I just felt, or realized how idealistic my closest friends are, including myself at times. We all have these images of travel, of meeting people, hitch-hiking and developing bands for our voice to the world, to say something real, even though we don't even know what we'd say given the chance. Just the romantic image of walking in an unknown place in the dark. For all the times I'm at the dock with people and we're declaring all the stuff we want to do, where we're dancing and carrying on without music. Everything's electric and hot-wired and beautiful. When these moments are what'sr eally important to me. I'll quote Zach when he aid it's "public drunkeness without a drop"

Reading Thoreou, I went on a walk in the woods at my Grandma's house. I followed the old white dog until I was almost lost and the sun was going down. It's good to forget yourself sometimes.

This is much longer that I anticipated, sorry for stuff I've repeated. It was rather thereputic to ramble a bit. I hope there's something of mild interest to you.

Cheryl Collins

I am but a silly, struggling eighteen year old clutching to a few short years remaining of my idealized adolescence, before I'm thrown to flounder in the "real" world of jobs, financing, money-driven politics and an economy guided by an invisible hand that I, being too cowardly, cannot trust. I struggle through past experiences remembered. But, for the moment, I soar enthusiastically, drifting between my present close companionships and my hopeful aspirations for the future. I want connection--the simple gelatin of friendship. And I want to learn, not of memorization or repetition, but of nature and balance.

A year ago, perhaps, I stumbled across an article of Ms. Hero plastered in the Lifestyle section of my local daily Olympian (Olympia, WA USA--my present residence, listed for formality's sake). I read the article, and an issue of her zine published via Internet, and decided to e-mail. She blew away my "gesture is more important than language" stance. And admittedly, I was inspired, completely slack-jawed, and intrigued.

Ms. Hero informed me she was printing an e-mail I sent her sometime ago (to my great excitement, although I only vaguely remember the scattered rambling), regarding my six week visit in Japan this last summer. I began studying Japanese my sophomore year in high school, and am currently in my third year of study. Language is fascinating. A series of coded symbols and sounds arranged in complex strings, comprehended. Except the symbols and sounds hold wide variety, changing dramatically over crossed borders and even slang altering from one neighborhood to the next. Through one fashion or another, we are all completely dependent on it. For a present day note--I keep frequent contact with my first host family, and I recently hosted a Japanese student for a bit. Wonderful and exciting for me, to translate meanings and make connections. Like kindergarden, I trace letters in Japanese children's storybooks, and light up with new words discovered.

To Ms. Hero: Your writing is honest--a cliched phrase, I know. But accurate, I'd say. You've printed your privacy in words bursting beyond my uncontrolled arm-waving and shouting. I can only give my greatest respect to you as an individual, for your strength to express personal vulnerability and apprehensions so openly.

Sincerely,

Cheryl Collins

Napolean12@juno.com

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ROBERT COOK

Subject: A pleasure to meet you, Hero
Date: Thursday, 17 February 2000 5:19am

Dear Hero

I've just been reading From The Window, having found it about half an hour ago by following a link from a BBC website story about gifted children. I was idly browsing the Beeb to give my brain a break from a raft of statistical analysis that I really should have finished by now. But that's just a bunch of numbers. From The Window is life. And its awards have been well earned, as you have been well named.

A brief bio seems to be the form. I'm 32 years old, born in Kent, brought up in the Cotswolds and the biggest single event of my childhood was my father dying in the middle of it. I'm a Registered Nurse with a degree in Applied Psychology, I have a severe and incurable addiction to books, and all I really want to do is write. I am currently living and working (as a Research Assistant) in the dead heart of the world, also known as Canberra, also known as John Howard's Fantasy Theme Park. I'm more in love than I ever imagined it was possible to be, both with my fiancee Cheryl and my son Matthew (nearly 3 months old - he laughed his first laugh today, which I'll remember forever). I don't know if we'll stay here or go home. I hope we'll go home.

The attached poem was the result of a writing exercise wherein each word starts with a letter of the alphabet. It goes A to Z, then Z to A, then A to Z again. I cheated on a couple of the 'X's.

I have to go now. Work has interrupted my digression from work. But now I've found you, I'll write again. Life can only be more interesting when people like you are living it.

Robert G Cook, RN, BA(Hons)
e-mail: robert.cook@act.gov.au

After begging Carmen
"Don’t ever forget!"
going home
I jogged.
Killing long moments,
no other pastime
quite right,
sitting trembling
under velvet-dark windows
examining yesterday’s zeal.

Ozone… yes, excrement
winding viciously
up towards sunlight
robbing quiet pastures
of nothing meaningful
long-term.
Kites, jonquils, incense.
How God forged Eden.
Darling Carmen
berated all, and
beckoned coarsely
danced
essayed
fabricated.
Gladly, humbly,
I killed longing,
meaning never of
perfect
quixotic
restless she to utter.
Vain words - xanthic,
yielding zero.

ROBERT COOK
Approved bio in the email above. HJN.

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HARRY DALZIEL

It occurred to me while I was sitting in the Los Angeles County Jail, that this cell was the sum total of my life. 37 years old , this was where it had all led; under lock & key, partly by my own design, but moreso because of many year’s of refusal to accept responsibility for my own actions. There I was sitting in jail, withdrawing from alcohol, heroin & cocaine and awaiting a judge’s decision, on my recent feeble attempt at bank robbery.

There could be no lower point, I had no friends, to come to my assistance, much less visit me; I couldn’t call my family, out of complete shame & humiliation and the dreams of a young boy never included being where I now sat.

I won’t even attempt to describe life amongst the inhabitants of this jail where 9000 men representing every type of crime against man, state & nature; every mental abomination & a state of complete moral depravity, are crammed into cells and forced to fend for themselves. Beatings by bands of inmates, beatings by jailers, perversions that one would even fear to imagine and the worst deprivation of all: the loss of freedom , these were the cornerstones of this dark mirror society, which is our prison system .

I was not adaptable to surviving in this compressed microcosm of evil; only my fear masked my disgust, the shame and desolation I felt. Unlike many in the world’s jails and prisons, it was not a way of life I could or had any desire to adjust to. Every decision in my life had led me to this place. As I went through my day to day life awaiting my sentence, never did I run into anyone that I had attended school with or grown up with, people from my neighborhood didn’t wind up in jails.

I was raised by a decent Irish Catholic family in a decent middle class neighborhood and was sent to grammar school and Catholic Prep school with the intent that I would go on and complete college.

Although I was a somewhat disobedient boy, it stemmed more from my dislike of being told what to do and a complete lack of regard for the alleged adults who held authority over my young life; than from some latent sociopathic/criminal predilection brewing in my soul. Just a bit rebellious, was how I viewed myself, but it was the 60’s and all of my heroes were rebels. When I looked back, I couldn’t have walked a more normal path, church on Sundays, a newspaper route, membership in the Boy Scouts and even a half-hearted attempt at becoming an altar boy. I was just a kid who wanted to be liked , wanted attention and held most adults and certainly authority , in contempt. Not a particularly evil child, a good student, if not lazy; schoolwork, reading and composition always came easily, I just found little that interested me that wasn’t rapscallious

How then had I spent the last 20 years of my life consumed by drug use, wasted days and slowly treading a path toward this jail cell ?

There were days when I thought my life wonderful, no job, no obligations and nothing to do but get high, savoring my empty days with no purpose, no direction & no one to answer to accept an inner voice which I spent every waking hour trying to silence. Survival was getting from one high to another, whether it was a drink, a joint or eventually and injection of sweet sister Morpheus. Food and shelter were not high on my list of priorities, as I slept where I fell, mostly on the sofas of my like minded friends and food was more an inconvenient necessity then something to be viewed as critical to sustenance. It was all about how I felt, and when I felt high I knew no shame, I didn’t care what you thought of me and for a moment it didn’t bother me that I had not only no future but no present, either . As I fell deeper into hard core addiction, using heroin & cocaine, the early innocence of my drug use as a runaway child, wild on the streets of San Francisco in the 60’s, had changed from some amusing statement about society, the political climate & an acute case of prolonged adolescence, into an insidious journey into a world of violence, guns and desperate people who were capable of nearly any atrocity to get their medication. It had become an absolutely necessary medication to numb ourselves to empty lives, spiritually bereft lives, lives where any sense of decency, our families may have taught us, were only shadows of what once may have been consciences.

I think somewhere in my thoughts I knew that this was only a temporary phase I was in, but the longer it went on, the more any way out became impossible to envision. Having started leaning toward this life of decadence, at an age where most boys are learning concepts like responsibility, accountability and planning a future, 100’s of days, all exactly the same, became 1000’s and I was nearly 30 years old and a nagging realization ate at my already deflated spirits, I was miserable and had nothing and no one in my life.

Today was a bright warm Northern California day and I went for a walk on the pier by my house. The large surf breaking against the sea cliffs, the enormity of the Pacific horizon and the chilling sea breeze, brought me a sense of well being, a sense of gratitude and renewed the awe at the simple, majestic wonders of life. One’s sense of wonder and appreciation of life, is lost when one reduces his life to the simple chore of making it from one fix to the next. Life is different today; I am a respectable citizen, hold a good job and meet my obligations and responsibilities matter of factly. I am 50 years old now, but still feel somewhat alienated from my peers or at least those in my age group. It’s as if I am awakened from a 25 year slumber and have resumed my life, in a slightly worn & torn body but with the tenuous emotional fiber of a 17 year old.

I suppose the law and judicial system can count me as a small victory. Their jails served their purpose well with me, I was intimidated, humiliated and willing to try something, anything else. It was not all that simple, I had little if any skills, absolutely no discipline or control over my own will and knew only one way of life, that of a drug addict. Thus it took nearly 4 years after being told by a judge that my prison sentence would be suspended if I stopped using drugs of any type and could manage to stay out of his courtroom. To a reasonable person this would seem an easy choice to make, but to an addict it was not just a matter of stopping, it was more a matter of changing every manner of my being. Yes, I was unable to altar my behaviour and returned several more times to that courtroom before I realized that this was not a task I could achieve alone.

Harry is now an upstanding citizen and certainly standing on a cornerstone of integrity more solid than that on which politicians and attorneys rest.

________________________________________________________________________________  

MIKE EASTLAND

MY LIFE WITH HEROIN OR: HOW OUR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY BECAME MY DEPENDENCE DAY

You know, if someone would have told me three and half years ago that I would be sitting here writing about my life on heroin basically and for all intents and purposes confined to a wheelchair I would have said they were out of their gourd . Hell, if anybody would have told me that I would ever wind up having to sit in one of these things for hours on end I would have said they were crazy! but I guess it was inevitable that I would screw up my life somehow considering some of the people who influenced me. I had always been interested in the sad way some people end up; Ernest Hemingway (in his last couple of years), Sylvia Plath and Sid Vicious being just a few of of the forlorn souls I took great comfort in identifying with. One of my favorite tortured artists was Darby Crash lead singer of that late great punk rock band Germs who died of a self induced heroin overdose in December of 1980. I remember driving the Hollywood streets he used to prowl on the tenth anniversary of his death looking for the house he od'ed in and thinking to myself what a cool way to go; on your own terms. When you decide its time. However, I along with Darby were fools because all you really leave behind are shattered loved ones and squandered potential. But I had a few more years before I was to do what eventually made Darby Crash,crash: HEROIN

I first tried shooting up heroin at age 25 .An aquaintence told me that it was a great high. The ultimate high. Lord knows I had been looking for that ultimate high for years.Starting at about age fifteen I began to experiment with alcohol.When that at first alluring elixir got boring I switched to marijuana.The leafy green lasted me right up until my last night as a normal,functioning human being and may have ultimately contributed to my downfall on that blistering hot July 4th, in 1996.But more on that later. From there I went the mind expansion route and got into LSD; a drug that to this day I am still not sure is totally bereft of value in moderation.But that being the key; moderation. And moderation was the last thing on my mind in '96.Well from there things just seemed go to downhill for me. Next on my list of ways I was subconciously trying to kill myself was with cocaine. Oh, how I loved cocaine. One line of the powdery white stuff and I was off to the moon. Little did I know that one day that moon and the sun and all the stars in the sky would come crashing down on my head with all the force of a comet and yet all the sublty of the pinprick of an injection.

From there I stuck with the stimulants and got into the worst drug I was to ever try next to heroin. Methamphetamine.Meth is an insidious drug. It can turn your best friend against you to the point where they will steal not only from you but from they're own grandmother to support their habit. And what happens when they have been using for an extended period of time? Well, they get red blotchy sores on their face and their teeth look as though they might fall out if they were to bite into an apple too hard. I had tried meth earlier in life but didn't really get into it until the summer of '95 I started by snorting it, then went to smoking it then I made the worst mistake I was ever to make in my entire life. My "friend'' Derek reintroduced me to needles. Derek was the bad-ass of our apartment complex. He once boasted to me that if ever the police were to come knocking he was going to go down in a hail of bullets because there was no way he was going to do another long prison stretch. Believe me to look at him you wouldn't doubt it for a minute. He could stay up for days on end. Whenever his battery ran down he would just shoot up again and he would be good to go for another twelve hours. It was facsinating

I guess I had always had this morbid facsination with shooting up ever since I had seen the movie ''Pulp Fiction''. The look of ultimate pleasure on John Travoltas face as he is driving down the road after shooting up the ''madman"; not to mention Tarantinos shot of the red,red groovy being drawn up into the syringe before Travolta pushes the plunger down and sends himself into ectasy drove me to crave that kind of ''cool''. Of course the madman was heroin and except for my brief experimentation when I was 25 that was still 8 months in the future. No, I started shooting up by shooting meth. It too was a great high. Derek would have to do it to me in the beginning but it wasn't long before I had graduated to shooting up myself. Its hard to describe the feeling when you shoot up meth. it starts with a feeling in the back of your neck. A kind of warm feeling that travels down your spine and through your arms and legs. And then you get that taste in the back of your throat. A kind of an acidic taste that travels down your esophagus into your stomach and then that warm rush of energy and you feel as if nothing on this planet can harm you. But of course it can. When you mainline anything the potential is there to screw up and take to much as I did.

Next up were these small gray pills that Derek got for practically nothing. If I remember correctly he got 50 pills for 25 bucks which is 50 cents a pill............ they were called morphine and and these little pills would reintroduce me to the false joys of opiates. They were a nice high and very clean.I would just put the pill in the spoon dip my syringe into the water, take a little bit up into the rig and pour it on the pill and it would dissolve by itself, no cooking required. Then I simply put a piece of cotton in my little mixture, drew it up through the cotton to get all the impurities out and I was ready to go. Next came my favorite part of shooting up; tying off and searching for a vein. you tie off with a belt or a scarf but I prefered a belt so that I could really get it tight because I have what they call "roller"veins. Which means that when you try to stick the needle in your veins will roll away from the needle. I dont know if they really do that but I do know that even when I would go to the doctor it has always been hard for me to get an injection so I needed to get that belt as tight as I could. Next came the slapping of the veins to get them to pop up, then the insertion, the slow, deliberate draw back of the blood into the rig to make sure you have hit vein then the even slower push down of the plunger................ At the time I thought the morphine was a nice high but I would soon discover that it was even better with a marijuana chaser.

I first tried mixing marijuana with opiates in the summer of 1995. Ahhh, the leafy green. BUD. My bud. Sometimes my best bud. Marijuana had never let me down.It had been with me for the good times and the bad.The first time I had tried this combination of weed with morphine I smoked a joint before I shot the morphine and thought it just made me sleepy. The second and every subsequent time I did this to myself I shot up first then smoked a joint.Which made all the difference. Bud enhanced the trance like qualities of the morphine to produce the most relaxing state I think I have ever felt. It was intoxicating. It felt like a warm blanket over me on a cold night. It was tranquil. Again, I blame this combination of marijuana and opiates for my undoing. And also again, more on that later.

Summer turned into fall with me shooting up about once a week."It's not to much" I deludely told myself."At least I am not shooting heroin" was still another catchy refrain I can recall repeating to myself over and over again in the hope that I might actually start to believe that I was doing my body no harm. No before the heroin started it would take a move across town.

I was evicted from my apartment in early December for basically running a home for wayward young punk rockers without a license. They used to pay me fifteen to twenty dollars a month which was enough to support my still small, but ever growing drug habit. I had an open door policy. If there was space on the floor grab it. Unfortunately for me one too many did just that and before I knew it I had ten "kids" living with me in my small two bedroom apartment. We called the place "the nuthouse". When my landlord got an idea of what was going on we got the boot. So that necessitated a move downtown. I had always wanted to live downtown and now I had the chance. We moved in January. I didn't know at the time that I had just six months to enjoy it. Two of the very first people I met when I moved downtown were Rick and Kim. Nice people. But two very addicted people. They would reintroduce me to what would later turn into the nightmare of heroin use. But first they would have to teach me how to use it. It was basically the same as the morphine pills except you would have to cook it. The heroin we got was Mexican black tar heroin, so called because it resembles a small chunk of road tar. The idea was, you put a small piece of this little glob of what looked like coffee grounds all smooshed together in your spoon and then add your water and heated it up over a lighter. You had to burn the impurities out or so they said. Then you just repeated the process described above

So many things were the same between shooting up meth, morphine and heroin but the high was not one of them. Physically, some people it was rumored would get sick on it and throw up after injecting but this never happened to me. Almost nothing could describe the feeling I got when I shot up heroin. For me it was almost as if my body were suddenly devoid of a care in the world. I don't mean you didn't care about people or anything like that but it was almost as if your own self-absorbed worries about the world and your place in it just didn't seem to matter that much anymore. You just didn't seem to care anymore if you didn't have a job or you and your girlfriend got into a fight. I also didn't seem to care that I had begun to crave it in the same way that I had once only craved one other drug: marijuana.

The months went by with me switch-hitting between meth and heroin. In addition to Rick and Kim, I had also met Aaron the meth dealer who conveniently lived right next door, so there was always a supply of both drugs around. Aaron was a scary guy, always had a gun in the waistband of his pants. He had also been doing speed too long.and was I think on the verge of becoming unstable.................

Spring wore on and my girlfriend Lisa and my relationship began to unravel. First came the little fights about my heroin use. Which was funny to me at the time because she was a bigger meth fiend than I was. But her reasoning was that she just smoked it and snorted it whereas I was using a needle. She used to always tell me that shooting up was going to catch up with me one day. She just didn't tell me that one day was fast approaching. Then came the bigger fights, then the ultimate blowup. We didn't even talk after that. She just up and walked out of my life, which I am sure played a part in what happened next..

This next part of my story had to be told to me by my friends, roommates and my last surviving "kids" from the nuthouse days, Jessica and Jordan. Why? Because I can't remember it. About the last thing I do remember is seeing on television where the movie Independence Day would be opening that weekend. Then it all went blank. Jessica says that I got up fairly early on that July 4th and seemed in a bad mood over my recent breakup with Lisa. She said that I said something about doing dope and headed out the door only to return in about a half hour which means I went to Rick's. Jordan's friend Steve was visiting and what they told me later was that he was an even bigger dope head than I was. To tell you the truth I don't even remember the guy. Evidently I had scored about fifty dollars worth which was way more than one person should take. I guess Steve and I split that in half which still leaves me with twenty-five dollars worth, more than I had ever taken in one sitting. I guess I took about a ten dollar chunk of it the first time I shot up. A ten piece the second time and saved the small piece for last. After that, I guess I smoked a joint and that was all it took. I shouldn't have done it. Every instinct should have told me not to shoot that much. But weed? It had always been my friend. But now this one little joint would set off a chain of events that would irreversibly alter my life. Evidently after asking Jordan to watch Steve because I was afraid that he might overdose I went and sat down in my chair and nodded off. Jessica became worried when I started wheezing as if I was having trouble breathing. They tried to wake me up but I wouldn't wake up, so then they got the bright idea to turn the garden hose on me. Still nothing. At about that time I guess I went into convulsions, wheezing uncontrollably and coughing up phlegm. At some point I vomited and sucked some of the vomit back into my lungs. Panicked, Jordan called an ambulance while Jessica did a throat sweep on me to get what remained of the vomit out of my mouth. I guess I must have sensed someone had their finger down my throat because Jessica says that I nearly bit off her finger! Jordan called my parents and what they later told me was that the doctors at the hospital were saying that there was a fifty- fifty chance that I would be vegetable for the rest of my life.

After that I can only remember glimpses of dreams until at some point I guess I just woke up. I can't really pinpoint in my mind when that was. I remember not knowing where I was until my Mom took me around and showed me that I was now all the way across town in a rehab hospital, where I had been for a couple of weeks subsequent to being in intensive care at a regular hospital for a month. And where I would be for the next month and a half working out with various physical therapists.

Stacy and James were my occupational therapists. They would have the monumental task of re-teaching me how to do things like put on my shirt and shoes. They would also have to teach me how I was going to bathe and use the toilet. To bathe I would have to sit on this small bench and my Dad would wash me and to use the toilet.........well, lets just say that my Mom has had the unpleasant and unfortunate job of wiping me down there ever since. Things that people take for granted but that I now had to relearn almost as if I were a small child once again. One of my moms favorite stories to tell about this time is that it once took me a half hour to take off and put on my shirt.

First Dawn and then Dale would be my physical therapists. They would have the more important job of trying to teach me how to walk again. No easy task I can assure you. Carol was my speech therapist. She would have what to me was the most important job of all. Trying to help me get my voice back for I had you see, lost the ability to speak. I had always been a vocal person and for me to lose the ability to communicate with other people was terrifying. I recall trying my hardest to get that first word, that first syllable out, not being able to and feeling as though I was suffocating.

The questions that went through my mind were "Will I be like this for the rest of my life? Will I ever talk and walk again?'' Fortunately my voice did return although at a much diminished level. I tend to run my words together so that I become incoherent and I can't seem to manage much more than a whisper. And I definitely can't scream like I used to. I am also having to relearn how to walk again. This has been the toughest physically. I can't tell you all the times I fell over my walker and landed on my head!

Fortunitely I am slowly but surely learning how to do all these things again. I just recently gained enough dexterity to be able to reach around behind myself far enough to wipe myself. Walking still is a problem. I recently tried to walk out my garage door, stepped down and broke my foot. But that's not the only problem with my walking. I have lost my sense of balance. I topple over very easily. As you might imagine I am never long without some new scrape or gouge.

Which is why I'll probably never be completely free of this wheelchair. As much as I might want to be I'll probably always have to rely on it somewhat. Sitting in a wheelchair can be tiring. Your bottom starts to hurt, your legs start to hurt your back starts to hurt. But do you know what really hurts? Its going down to the park and watching the kids playing tag or soccer and knowing that my days of doing that are pretty much over. The freedom to run and play will probably elude me for the rest of my life. So will the freedom to be independent of my parents for the foreseeable future (and they independent of me, God bless 'em). No, I traded my independence in on the very day we were supposed to celebrate it with fireworks, parades and backyard barbecues. What did I trade it for? A cheap high. Please don't be like me. I won't even pretend to be the person who screams at you, DON'T EVER USE ANY DRUGS EVER!!! But if you do decide to use drugs please, please don''t use the hard stuff. Not unless you have your will made out..............

for Rob and Dad and Mom

Where are you, rat? You've changed your e-mail address. Please get in touch. HJN.

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RICH GALLAGHER

Seeking and Finding America at the Ballpark

We Americans like to see ourselves as part of a complex nation that is too big to be described in words. But if you want to really understand the American psyche, we do offer a two-hour short course, in the form of an average major-league baseball game. What people outside the USA see as a bunch of people in funny hats swinging a piece of lumber at a little ball is, in reality, a microcosm of our society - individualism, competition, teamwork, capitalism, and even a little bit of class warfare thrown in for good measure.

Many sports like football - as it is played on either side of the pond - are basically a triumph of might over weakness, where gangs of men try to force something into a goal. For all their individual roles and strategy, football teams basically succeed today for much the same reason that Mongol hordes did in the 13th century: they are bigger, meaner and stronger than their opponents. Baseball, on the other hand, is about putting your fate in the hands of a group of specialists. Few of them can win the game by themselves, but each of them must execute better than the other team at the right moments. It's more like the sports world's equivalent of Silicon Valley or Wall Street than simple armored combat.

As America's "national pastime", we like to surround this game with a pallor of traditionalism, but are pragmatic enough to change the rules when it makes sense, and particularly economic sense. Many years ago one of the two major leagues added a "designated hitter" to replace the notoriously weak-hitting pitcher in the batting order, and purists and pragmatists argue bitterly to this day about the merits of it. (Cars here even have bumper stickers that read "Dump the DH.") More recently, teams from these two leagues started to play each other during the season and not just in the final championship - a move viewed by some with the gravity of letting men and women use each other's rest rooms - but once again, we survived. As a culture that is barely a couple of centuries old, we take liberties with our game that others would never dream of doing with, say, the rules of chess. In my mind, the same pragmatism that occasionally offends baseball purists is part of what drives America's economic success in this century.

Baseball has served as a good barometer for other trends in our society as well. One has been a growing urge to return to our roots. In the early 1990s, Baltimore was the first city to eschew a cavernous concrete stadium for an intimate, traditional ballpark that looks like it should have been build a century ago. Fans fell in love with it. Then the Cleveland Indians, a team which was the laughingstock of baseball for decades, constructed a new "old" stadium which has drawn sellout crowds ever since, which in turn helped them finance what has become one of the dominant teams of the 1990s. Since then, cities nationwide have been tripping over themselves in a rush to tear up perfectly good modern stadiums and build new "old" style ballparks to try and duplicate the experiment. Even if all of them cannot succeed financially, they have become islands of tradition in a world that became modern too quickly for some people.

Another social trend mirrored by baseball is the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. In 1990 I lived in Pittsburgh, the smallest US city to have a major league team, and it fielded a championship team with a payroll of $16 million dollars. Within two years its payroll rose to $35 million, expensive star players were jettisoned with indelicate haste, and the Pittsburgh Pirates have never been competitive since. While many factors have fueled this madness, the end result is a world where salaries have escalated steeply, and winning teams are frequently in large cities with generous television revenues and crowds. (Fully a quarter of this past century's World Series have been won by the New York Yankees, including three of the past four years.) Americans like big success stories, and what is happening today with global companies like Microsoft and WalMart are in a sense echoed daily each summer on the baseball diamond.

I once spoke with one of the owners of the small-market Montreal Expos, and asked him how the team was doing. He replied bluntly that it's hard to make money when less than 15,000 people show up for each game. In a world where everyone loves a winner, losing can create a downward financial spiral that can be hard to escape. But in 1994, these same Montreal Expos were the best team in all of baseball, and their year echoed another theme common to North American life - how we cheer on the success of the scrappy underdog who occasionally succeeds.

Baseball today also mirrors America's peculiar optimism that nearly anything can be conquered. Nearly every year brings a major record being shattered by a new bearer of the torch - for example, Cal Ripken, Jr's record streak of 2,632 consecutive games played, David Wells and David Cone pitching rare perfect games in back-to-back years at Yankee Stadium, or Mark McGwire demolishing the home run records of Roger Maris and the legendary Babe Ruth. Records like these give hope every year that next season is the harbinger of better things to come, even if your team currently struggles to stay in fourth place.

Above all - and no self-respecting American baseball fan would say this out loud - there is a certain existentialism to a day at the ballpark that would be hard to duplicate anywhere else. Americans are people who are relentlessly doing things, and baseball is one of few times that many of us stop doing them for a couple of hours and ponder the meaning of life. Its pace is perhaps intentionally slow enough that by the time a side has been retired, you have filled in the pauses with the rhythm of your own life, and that of your family and friends.

It is, above all, an intensely social experience that anyone can partake of for the price of a ticket. When life seems lonely and bleak, there is nothing quite like going to a stadium with 50,000 other human beings, hanging on every pitch, expressing its mood like a single organism, hushed stillness exploding into roars and high-fives from people you've never met. It is plugging into life in its most pure form, and it's a cleansing and healing experience.

Rich Gallagher is the author of several books on business and technology, and lives in Upstate New York, USA. He is a serious baseball fan who is part owner of a collegiate summer league team, and remains eternally optimistic that the Pittsburgh Pirates will contend again someday. His latest book "Delivering Legendary Customer Service" will be published in spring 2000 by Oasis Press.

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GRETCHEN KLABER

Hello back Hero. I like your name. What was it about that name that your parents choose it? Well as I noted in my note to you, I am a Firefighter Paramedic. I volunteer for the Washington Township Fire Dept in Centerville, Ohio. I have been in the Fire and EMS service for 4 years. It is incredible what is involved in this area.

As a Firefighter, I do more than put out fires and go into burning structures to put out fires or do search and rescues in the burning structure. I help/assist with people who are trapped in motor vehicles due to accidents. We use the Jaws of Life or the shears to cut the car from around the patient. We investigate fire alarms, unusual odors, guard natural gas leaks to people are not harmed while we wait for the Gas & Electric Compant to come a repair the leak. I help the Medica personnel with patient care at an accident scene, at a home or business. We do public education on Fire Safety. The list is endles. I do not do the real heavy duty rescues-Trench rescues, Confined space or resuces that involved heights. I have to be able to drive a fire engine, control the pump panel that gives the water to the firefighters, understand the nature of a fire, how to ventilate a roof so that the smoke and fire is pulled and out of the attacking crews.

As a Paramedic, I able to due extensive patient care & treatment. I am able to administer various medication for patient with heart disorders(dysrrthmias), cardiac arrest, diabetic emergencys, allergic reactions, seizures decreased or elevated blood pressures. I am able to deliver babies, assess a patient and make a diagnosis on the signs & symptoms and treat that, determine if a trauma victum need to be flown by helicopter to the tramua center, call a death in the field. I see may types people and all ages.

No situation is alike. My department is busy. We have had over 4000 fire and ems calls thus far. I can experience every emotion. Joy at helping a older person who has fallen or is ill, sad at the death of a child or teenage who has not experinced all that life has to offer, anger at the carelessness of a drunk driver who kills others or a driver who is not carefull about weather conditions and kills a fellow firefighter and a police officer, laughter-when you have an open microphone and you do not realize and the rest of the department hears everying being said on the way back to the fire station.

We are a tight group of people. We are a family. We have a trust in each other that is deep. We respect each other. We depend of each other for our safety and lives. Each patient is one of our family. Teamwork, Loyalty, Dedication and Committment.

All of this does not even begin to touch upon what we do and what we have to know, both in the Fire Service and the EMS Services.

I hope I have not bored you too much. This career means so much to me. It takes a special person to do what I/We do. We faces dangers of all types.

Thank you Hero for allowing me to share this with you.

Gretchen

Good Afternoon, I would be honored to have you put it into FROM THE WINDOW.

On November 20 at 0310 am Engine 45 was call to a neighboring city to help fight a structure fire. This was my first structure fire in the 4 years I am have been doing this. It was also the first time that I had to breath air from an SCBA and facemask. We had to go into one of the structures(house)to check to make sure the fire had not spread. I was scared but knew I had to remain calm. When I was in the very smoky structure I felt like I could not do this and kept breathing faster. We have 40 mintues of air in a tank. My partner and the other 2 people who were in the structure with us were a source of strength which helped me thru this. We completed our job and headed out. It was a good thing as I had only 5 minutes of air left. We were in the structure 20 minutes. We went on to fight the fire and learned how tough fires can be to fight and the distruction they leave behind. One of the hardest jobs a paramedic has to face is calling the death of a young person in the field. Just one year ago, we were called to a car accident with 2 people trapped. I knew ahead of time that what I faced. I started to work on the driver when I was asked to work on the passenger. He was a young man who had obvious massive trauma. He was also trapped. There was so much damage to the car that every type of extrication tool and method we had would not work. It was a rear engine car and the front passenger tire was between this young mans legs and the car body would crumble at our attempts to free him. I did not know his name, age.....We worked on him medically to give him every chance at living. Then came the moment when I looked at the heart monitor and no life was left in him and I said stop. I looked at my Lt and asked for a time of death-0155. My work was done and I placed a warm blanket over him and tried hard to hold back the tears that wanted to come. When I went out of service at 0600 that morning, I knew his name and age. Several days later I was told he had gone to the same high school. An 18 years difference. The fire service is a family. Joshua did not die alone, he was a part of our family and was surrounded by love and dedication. I hope these will do. I could go on with my war stories. I am honored at your request. Thank you.

Gretchen

Volunteer Firefighter/Paramedic, Centerville, Ohio, USA; Mom to 2 wonderful cats, Groover & Gramsey. Enjoy antiques and being with my familty. Work fulltime for a National HMO.

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PETER LAMBERTY

Subject: evacuation and other things
Date: Friday, 19 November 1999 12:11pm

Greetings from Tasmania!

Hello again Joy; as promised, a few evacuation memories and other trivia you might find interesting; In the late 30's when it became evident that another European war was in the offing, His majesty's (George VI) Govt. in conjunction with the LCC (London County Council) formulated an emergency evacuation programme with the aim of moving as many children as possible from areas likely to be the target of bombing. So the moment war was declared, this programme was put into effect with the result that thousands of children were separated from their families and scattered far and wide across the country. Well, so much for the background but for me and I'm sure thousands of others, the whys and wherefors of the situation were far beyond juvenile comprehension. With a luggage label firmly tied to a convenient buttonhole and a canvas holdall clutched in an uncertain hand (not to mention the gas mask in a cardboard box strung around the neck), I was ( at the age of 5) shepherded ( one could almost say herded) with countless others, to one of London's main line stations and on one of the specially organised trains. Some parents were actually able to wave goodbye as the trains left the stations, but these were in the minority as teary and emotional goodbyes were usually done at the local street corner assembly points. My first evacuation destination along with about 9 others) was to a large (well, it seemed large to me at the time) country house in Surrey. The personal emotional upheavals of that time were somewhat tempered by the wonder of being transported into a new (for me) world of woodlands carpeted with bluebells, organised games of hide a seek and some months later, my first and vividly enduring memory of the most wonderous Christmas I had yet experienced. A real Christmas tree with lighted candles, carols around the fire on Christmas eve and the excitement of hanging a stocking at the foot of the bed in anticipation of presents from Father Christmas. (And we were not disappointed). I should mention that prior to my first evacuation, my life in one one of the poorer areas of London (devoid of trees flowers and grass) had been a round of various hospitals and a somewhat disjointed family life. So for me the new set of circumstances brought about by evacuation offered many positives and in retrospect I have come to regard these experiences ( many of which were painful at the time) as of significant value in my life. Perhaps because the location (Bletchingly) of the house was too close to London or maybe the house was needed for other war purposes, but after 9 months or so it was decided to return the children to their homes prior to re-evacuation to pastures new. For me it was back to the Kings Cross area of London to experience some of the Blitz bombing followed by a significant period of hospitalization (during which I also contracted infantile paralysis- polio) at Hillend near St Albans. Then later another period of evacuation to a special camp in Buckinghamshire for handicapped children. However that is another story which might have to be left for a later date. If you are still interested. I would like to hear how you are getting on in your various 'battles' if you would care to share them,

Best wishes Peter

PS A useful reference book on evacuation is 'The day they took the children' by Ben wicks published by Bloomsbury. Many personal accounts plus photos. It says 3,500,000 were evacuated!

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> Date: Monday, 20 December 1999 11:55pm

.....

Well, in my last EMail, I told you about my first period of evacuation, well following this another period in hospital plus polio before being sent off to Horsley Green Camp near High Wycombe Bucks. This camp was specially set up to cater for physically handicapped boys aged 5 -15. Consisting of 6 large wooden dormitories each holding about 40, according to age. In spite of the camp being specially set up to cater for the handicapped, conditions were harsh at times and other ex Horsley Green ites have verified that it was not just my impression. The war time mentality prevailing at the time reflected was reflected by the attitude of some of the staff. Lining up outside the dining room (hut) in dormitories groups, stand at attention, stand at ease quick march etc etc. Rather strange in retrospect as many boys could only shuffle or walk with the aid of sticks or crutches. Once inside, seated in fours on benches each side of long trestle tables, impatient hands and ever hungry bellies had to be restrained until grace and the order to eat was given. With the barely sufficient food piled up in the middle of the tables, we all learned to eat quickly if you wanted your share. At the end of the meal, the order to stand before dismissal. With 4 boys suddenly standing at the same time, the rather unstable bench would as often as not fall over with a crash; whereupon the luckless four would be called to line up for punishment. One sadist used to hold each boys chin before a slap on the face as a reminder to stand more quietly in future.

No, I'm not exaggerating and one ex Horsley Green correspondent recently described his experiences of the camp to me as "Dickensian". In keeping with the wartime theme, the person in charge of the camp was called 'The Commandant" !

An attempt was made to continue our education as much as possible and some of the teachers tried to make up for the shortcoming of the 'carers". A teacher I had, took me to her house for tea once or twice, but this was stopped because of the unfavorable reaction by the carers and some other boys. In fairness, it must be said that most of us boys rarely if at all, had visits from parents or relatives. Wartime travel restrictions, or war service etc meant many of us went for several years cut off from family contact.

So you can imagine that many reacted emotionally and in some cases violently, which in turn brought about a harsh reaction from the carers. Quite a few ran away, but were soon picked up by the police. One boy hid under one of the dormitories for several days, before his discovery led to a public thrashing for wasting everone's time.

A friend and correspondent of mine recently described how he only lasted only a few months before his father took him back to London (and the bombing) because of the harsh treatment he received.

And yet, and yet; lest you think it was all negative (of course nothing is really) I do value that experience as another aspect of an eventful life which being born at that time and with a handicap (Talipes and polio) gave me a different perspective of life.Painful though it undoubtedly was. One never knows what life will bring and at that time to have even thought that one day I would end up in an overseas country as a teacher would have been beyond comprehension. And my friend (who suffers from cerebral palsy and is deaf) who was retrieved from the camp by his father, was later in life awarded the OBE for his services to the handicapped. Life is a geat teacher, if we can but learn some of the lessons.

.....

I came into this world in 1935 in Islington, London. (it says on my birth certificate), with a few congenital defects (legs) to which was added the bonus of a passing acquaintance with polio a few years later. As with most London children, the period 1939 - 45 was rather a turbulent time- the bombing and subsequent evacuations to safer areas. I had two evacuation experiences; one to Bletchingly (Surrey I think) which lasted about 6 months and another to Horsley Green for 3 plus years. Now resident in Tasmania, Australia, having come here in 1976. Now retired from teaching my activities include painting (made my living as an artist early on in my life) and designing models of various kinds.

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LEWIS

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Date: Thursday, 2 December 1999 8:08am

Greetings...Hojoy,

My name is Lewis and I am from the USA (specifically, Austin, Texas). I have a desire to express. Not only do I like to express, but I want my audience to feel and experience what I express, as well as exact the completeness of my emotions during the moment of my expression. (That's a grammatically incorrect sentence, huh?)

I write, I draw, I photograph, I videotape, I sculpt, and I do any number of things to capture an instant in time such that I can then share it with others.

Anyhow, here is my current submission...with more to come?

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The canvas in the sky.

Monday afternoon was fantastic...

As I left the office at around 5:30pm, I walked outside of my flourescently lit office and took in the view that stood bey