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Awhile back I had a spoof post about our friend Paul and Brian. While Brian is still reportedly a crabber in the Potomac river basin, Paul is actually NOT an insect harvester. What he is supporting and doing is much more inspirational. Read below, in this article from US News and World Report. Found at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FARM_SCENE_AFGHAN_POTATOES?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Spud farmer returns to roots to help Afghans
Associated Press Writer
To help poor Afghani villagers make money on potatoes instead of opium poppies, Idaho farmer Pat Rowe used a little old technology: root cellars.
The 68-year-old Rowe, whose family raises tubers and wheat on 2,000 acres near American Falls, went to the Central Asian country with a root cellar design common across his home state's famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s.
As part of his work in Bamiyan, located about 100 miles west of Kabul, Rowe said it was important that his potato sheds not be too sophisticated. They had to be built with materials readily available in the impoverished valley between the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba mountains with only dirt roads, a gravel runway, scant trees and almost no electricity.
Before leaving, he took notes from neighbors on Idaho's Snake River plain who had an old root cellar on their property.
"You look at what people are using and see what they are doing," Rowe said Monday, of his trip. "You don't want to be a crazy foreigner with all these ideas. You've got to be practical with the application."
Rowe went to Afghanistan as part of a $6.4 million U.S. Department of Agriculture program meant to fill gaps in Afghanistan's food supply chain and develop agriculture to compete with the forbidden poppies that fuel the country's heroin trade.
Rowe's work in January 2006 won mention earlier this month by first lady Laura Bush. She brought up Rowe's root cellars in a speech in France on June 12.
"Afghan potato farmers in Bamiyan have learned storage methods from an Idaho potato farmer that are making their crops more profitable," said Bush, who had made an unannounced trip to Bamiyan four days earlier.
Paul Sippola, a program officer for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit development outfit CNFA, which ran the Department of Agriculture aid program, said Rowe's retro cellar design was used in about 50 potato storage sheds in Afghanistan.
It's now being replicated with a few modifications to suit local needs in Pakistan's Kashmir region, where seed potato farmers' livelihoods were devastated by the 2005 earthquake, Sippola said.
"It's essentially the same one that Pat developed," he said in a phone interview. "Pat's work, which started in Afghanistan, has really grown. It's fed over into some of our other programs because the success of it has been really pronounced."
Rowe is a veteran of nearly 30 U.S. government-sponsored trips to developing countries including Egypt, China and Zimbabwe to help promote new agricultural techniques.
Farmers in Bamiyan, an ancient village on the Silk Road that spent 1,500 years in the shadow of two huge Buddha statues before they were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001, had no efficient way to store potatoes following their harvest, leading to drastic food-price increases and shortages.
"When the harvest is on, there's a glut," Rowe said. "If you had enough of those sheds built, it would make more food available to people at a reasonable price."
Afghanistan has seen a spiraling heroin trade and resurgent violence, even as the U.S. and NATO have poured more thousands of new troops into the country. Last year, more than 8,000 people were killed in insurgency-related attacks and violence has claimed more than 1,500 lives this year.
Winning a mention from Laura Bush is a sign that his root cellars accomplished what he'd intended.
"Just the fact that somebody in Bamiyan remembered," he said. "Something went on good there. The people are good people. The folks I worked with, I'd swim the Snake River for them."
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On the Net:
CNFA: http://www.cnfa.org [http://www.cnfa.org]
This November 2006 photo provided by CNFA shows one of about 50 root cellars built in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, according to a design by Idaho potato farmer Pat Rowe. Rowe, a veteran of nearly 30 U.S. government supported agricultural development missions, used root cellars common in Idaho's famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s as a model to help Afghan farmers develop more storage capacity for their own tubers. Rowe was mentioned in a June 12 speech by Laura Bush in Paris for his work helping farmers in Afghanistan grow legitimate crops, not illicit opium poppies. (AP Photo)
In this February 2005 photo provided by CNFA, Idaho potato farmer Pat Rowe poses with several farmers in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Rowe, a veteran of nearly 30 U.S. government supported agricultural development missions, used designs for root cellars common in Idaho's famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s to help Afghan farmers develop more storage capacity for their own tubers. (AP Photo/CNFA)
Hello!
Been meaning to post for awhile, but have not really had a chance and when I have I have not had a good enough connection to upload pics. I am in Bangkok for the next 10 days or so, which is a nice break from rural Singburi.
A couple of brief notes:
I am very happy Obama is the candidate. I may be even happier that the whole primary process is over. Even way over here it is nausiating.
And I am intrigued by the recent news flash: Bush Whitehouse has been "misleading". Wow. Shocker. In every sense of the word for eight years.
I really miss cheeze. I have not had any dreams about it yet, but I fsuspect the subject seeping into my subconscious.
I also could handle a picnic by a lakeside somewhere, prior to the skeeters' arrival. Then some fishing.
Very glad the KG-led Celtics won game one of the NBA finals. Plan on watching game two monday morning.
Wish I could hang with family and friends back home for a couple weeks. That sounds really nice. And we could eat some real cheeze, perhaps cheeze placed on a pizza. That would be ideal, in fact.
Off to do a training in preparation for another training, Not Jedi training, just training for educational purposes with work. Jedi training is reserved for the evenings and weekends.
I will post a real blog sometime next week, and dream of cheeze in the interim.
Yep. This guy is 33 today (or maybe tomorrow in the States). Met him when he was a wee lad of 6. Now look at im. From velcro shoes to a hi-tech, mountain climbing goofball. Keep on keepin on, Matty!
Okay, so i promissed to write more about Thailand and I have done that and will continue to do so. But I have to continue my rants as well, for I have few folks to discuss this kind of thing with here and need an outlet. The following article is a perfect example of the kind of weak, shallow and selective reporting that leads to ill-informed public sentiment. It has been rife throughout history, but perhaps never so rife as in the lead up to the unjust and illegal Iraq war.
By BarbinMD. May 17, 2008 at 07:00:11 PM PDT
Amidst the uproar over George Bush politicizing the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence, the media has been strangely silent about the revelation that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, by George Bush and John McCain's own definition, is guilty of "foolish delusion," and lacks "the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation's security."
Just one day before Bush declared that "some," also known as Barack Obama, is an appeaser to terrorists, the likes of which have not been seen since Hitler invaded Poland, and before John McCain chimed in by saying Obama wanted to enhance "the prestige of a nation that's a sponsor of terrorists and is directly responsible for the deaths of brave young Americans," Robert Gates said:
We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them. If there's going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander with them not feeling that they need anything from us.
And while there has been plenty of coverage of Bush's remarks, McCain's parroting of Bush's remarks and Obama's smackdown of both of them, no one seems to be covering Gates' policy of terrorist-enabling appeasement. Or as Jamison Foser at Media Matters put it:
Naturally, then, a media firestorm erupted, with the Bush administration and its political allies questioned all day about whether Bush has any idea what he is talking about, whether he has lost control over the Pentagon, whether Gates will be fired, what Gates thinks about Bush's comparison of those (like Gates) who advocate dialogue between the United States and Iran to appeasers of Adolf Hitler, and whether the fiasco will remind voters that the Bush administration's foreign policy has been marked by incompetence and dishonesty, thus doing irreparable electoral damage to John McCain and other Republican candidates.
Sorry -- what was I thinking? That didn't happen.
Foser points out that ABC, CBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Time and ABC's The Note, have all extensively covered the "appeasement controversy," but have made no mention of Gates' comments. Given that Dana Perino claimed that Bush's remarks simply reflected "long-established United States policy," why is the fact that Bush's own Secretary of Defense opposes this policy not news?
Well, I have actually lived in 4 locations in 3 months (actually, it is dozens if you include my hotel rooms in Bangkok). Here is a photographic journey viewed through my various windows and balconies.
My house on the pond. Quaint, but no air con, hot, with little critters getting to me all night. Apparently, during last year's flood, all the fish escaped and snakes became a problem. The family living next to me would just walk into my house whenever they pleased. It was only about a kilometer from work, but 12 Km from town. Spent 8 days here and skeedaddled.
My apartment complex with Singburi in the background. It is an ideal locale as it is outside of town about a kilometer but on the way to work. So it is a bit less noisy (however, Singburi goes dead about 9pm most nights). Lived on the first floor for 2 weeks (no pics), which was a larger room with higher ceilings. But it is also more expensive, which I could tolerate. What I could not easily take was the beeping noise that echoed down the hall every time somebody came in using their security card. Why on earth is that noise necessary? Loud enough to wake me up, so I decided to move up to the 4th and top floor. What I didn't realize was that it is much warmer up there. The roof holds the heat and the nights are really quite hot, leafing the aircon running while I am there. While the naturally heated water is nice for showers in the morning, not worth the heat during the hot season. Decided to move down a floor. I am on the other side of the building now, which has good and bad traits. The good one is the view. But I also miss the benefits of the parking lot view, which afforded me the view of who is downstairs shooting the breeze at the table. I often have an evening brewski, some grub from the local market, and a chat with folks down there. Good Thai practice, as very few people in these parts speak English.
This is the view taken looking right. Can see the road I take for about 10 Km to work, plus i get to watch the rice paddy in its various stages. Lots of large birds that resemble storks like to congregate in tall tree in the center. Other birds fly about too. The guy who tends to the rice is an old chap who comes daily to shoot 3 bottle rockets that explode almost even with my window. Sometimes just after dawn. First couple times it happened I thought my room was the target, as I did not see the shooter. Then I realized that this man, with whom I often converse in the evening - as he has an evening beer Singha at the table - was merely shooting fireworks to ward off evil spirits from his crops.
View looking left, as goats graise on the fringe of the roadside.
A suspicious looking goat herder, holding some kind of communication device. An initial suspect in the bottle rocket investigation.
A man driving some kind of machine to even out the soil in the paddy. It pulls him along like a large snowblower would, and he easily goes over the mud barriers separating the paddies. I assume he was hired by the older man who tends to the fields with a garden hoe and firecrackers. I assume he is too old for this kind of work, as the beer drinking man is in his 70s. But then again, it might be him all covered up to protect himself from the sun.
Bird's-eye view. Third floor is much cooler than the fourth and I like this view with the breeze it affords. Unfortunately, under those lilly-type weeds pictured below are the water storage tanks. There is a pump of some kind that is triggered bringing water to the apartments. This happens even more frequently than the beeping on the first floor, so I just cant win. However, the sound is a bit more muffled and not as abrasive as the beeping, so I think I will stay put. I may try to get internet in my apartment, so I guess I need to decide, but I think this is the one for me.
The sights along the way...
I pass a lot of rice paddies on the 13 kilometer trip to work. There are a few fish farms as I get closer to work as well. I run across a lot of interesting things but usually don't have a camera handy. I will try to document a few of them in the future. The office pictured is also the a house. I often sit, type and sweat at the table pictured to the right of the house. The office is on the first floor.
The more interesting occurences on the way home from work usually entail a weekly game played with the police. They stop all motorcyclists for their weekly coffers at some point, usually a Tuesday or Wednesday. I get corralled onto the shoulder with the rest of the cyclists, as there is no way to avoid them, they have all the arteries covered. But I have an advantage over the others. When I flip up my visor to reveal my smiling white face, the officer gets nervous, as he doesn't speak English. He does know how to say "Go!", however, and he says it to me about once a week, and waves me by...
And here's a random photo for good measure. Tried to find one of some flowers that I see, but failing that, this will do.
Before entering the temple....
The ancient capital city of Ayuthaya is really something to see. A UNESCO World Heritage site, at its peak it had more than 1 million residents, larger thatn Paris and London combined.
Founded in c. 1350, Ayutthaya became the second Siamese capital after Sukhothai. It was destroyed by the Burmese in the 1767. Its remains, characterized by the prang (reliquary towers) and gigantic monasteries, give an idea of its past splendour.
It is one of those places that, when wandering around it, provides glimpses into the past. There are moments when you can see and feel what it was like 600 years ago. The majority of the ancient city was founded on "The island" that exists between the 3 rivers that merge around it then reform again into the larger Chao Phraya river.
The site was chosen for the second capital of the Siamese Kingdom because of the region's remarkably fertile soil and its strategic defensive position. Unfortunately, a stronger Burmese army lead by hundreds of elephants raided the town in 1767 and the Burmese ruthlessly burned and looted the city. Once covered in gold, the city was laid to ruins.
As in all areas of Thailand, there are bursts of vibrant color to be found throughout the park
Note the beheaded Buddha statures in the picture. Many of the heads have been stolen over the years. Theft of antiquities has plagued Thailand and all of SE Asia for decades. I am having trouble getting my other pictures to upload, so I will end this post here.
Will try to post more regularly about Thailand, buddy.
Read about it at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7366357.stm
Please ask your representatives to exert pressure on the Burmese junta to release her and demand elections. Ask them to put pressure on the junta's crutch supporters - China, India and Thailand. Shame on those governments for supporting such brutality, and on the US extractive industries that continue to do work in Burma. Half hearted, swiss cheese sanctions don't work with dictatorships with additional funding.
