How did you come up with the story for Black Wings?

Kathleen:  Actually, it came to me: I had a vision of a female pilot crashing into the sea. I hate flying, but I’ve always been fascinated by aviators.  I worked on this novel for almost ten years, with some breaks.  Over time Audrey evolved as the mysterious central character, her astonishing career witnessed by her roommate, Bridget, who must investigate her death.

Can you say a little about the title and what it refers to?

Kathleen:  The title is both a reference to a physical object and also a metaphor. In the Navy, people who are warfare qualified, such as aviators, wear a device on the pockets of their uniforms. In shorthand, the aviator device is referred to as “wings.” As Audrey pursues her dream of flying jets, sets of ominously black wings keep popping up in her path.

How did your experience at the Naval Academy add to the story?  Did you draw from real life experiences?

Kathleen:  I drew some of Bridget’s early adventures or mishaps from my own experiences. For example, she is originally from Boston and is not a particularly squared-away plebe when she arrives at the Academy. I’m also from Boston and I certainly had my share of culture shocks, especially during the first summer. Some found their way into the story, but I had to change them to fit with Bridget’s character, which is different from mine. As an officer, Bridget is part of the public affairs community. I’m also a public affairs officer or PAO.  I know that world so I had lots of real-life material to draw on, but I wasn’t constrained by it.  I used the Naval Academy grounds and the Pentagon, but I also took a lot of liberties. This is fiction!

What was the most difficult part of writing Black Wings?

Kathleen:  It was hard for me to untangle the story.  I wrote and rewrote the novel at least four times to get the sequencing and chronology right and to make sure the plot was coherent.  I had so many things happening, and I wanted Audrey’s voice to be a part of it.  I had to find a way to get her point of view across.

Can you say something about the role of women in the military—the difficulties, the triumphs—to which your book speaks?

Kathleen:  The changes for women in the military have been pretty far-reaching since I first affiliated with the military. One of the reasons why I set the book in the early 1990’s was to capture the time of change, churn, and firsts. When I joined the Navy in 1984, many issues were still being worked out, many career fields were off limits, and there was a fair amount of resentment towards women. Today women are much more integrated and have more opportunities. Not everything is resolved now – there will always be some tension, but that’s not necessarily a negative thing. Right now, military women are deployed around the world, showing their competence and professionalism in incredibly difficult situations. It’s very inspiring.

How would you rate your experience as one of the first women midshipmen at Annapolis?  Did it prepare you for life, how did it influence you?

Kathleen:  I had a first-rate education at the Naval Academy. It wasn’t a fun place to be by any means, but I had some pretty amazing opportunities, such as a chance to study in Ireland, to become fluent in Russian, and to be in really small classrooms with amazing professors, particularly in the English department. I don’t know if I would’ve taken a creative writing class if I’d gone to a civilian college. Molly Tinsley (co-founder of FUZE) was my professor and advisor. She nurtured my writing then and is still doing it now – 25 years later!  Another way the Academy influenced me was that I learned to be resilient, disciplined, and tenacious.  That certainly helped me stay with the novel for so long!

What inspired you to write The Mother Daughter Show?

I wrote The Mother Daughter Show partly to try to maintain a sense of humor about a situation I found myself in—the real Mother Daughter Show, a longstanding tradition at Sidwell Friends School, where my daughter was a senior. Every year the mothers of graduating senior girls write and perform a musical revue for their daughters, and it seems like almost every year peculiar things happen between the mothers. I wanted to understand why—what was it about this situation that made people act in ways they usually don’t? One obvious possible reason was that the senior year of high school is a stressful year, for mothers as well as daughters: there’s the pressure of applying to college, the stress of wondering where your child will get in, and the emotions stirred by the prospect of your precious little girl leaving the nest.

So I wanted to explore that, but I also saw the novel as an opportunity to write more broadly about the mother-daughter relationship. I gave each of my three main characters a mother of her own as well as a teenage daughter, to allow for a multi-generational aspect to the book.

Who is your favorite character in the book, and why?

I suppose I feel closest to Amanda, although she is no more “me” than any of the other characters are real individuals. But she fills the role that I did in planning the show, which is to say writing funny lyrics to a bunch of existing songs. Just as I did, she gets totally wrapped up in the creative process, unable to stop herself from churning out song lyric after song lyric, even when it becomes clear that other mothers want to take the show in a different direction.

I also sympathize with Amanda’s dilemma as a longtime stay-at-home mother who needs to make money and cherishes what seems to be an impossible dream: to find a job that not only pays well but also provides an outlet for her talents and gives her a sense of self-fulfillment.

What turned out to be your greatest challenge in writing The Mother Daughter Show?

Coming up with a plot that worked. My first several drafts hewed much more closely to the show itself, and several readers told me that I needed more dramatic action. Apparently the mechanics of the show just weren’t that interesting to the general public! I wanted to keep the show as the background that framed the story, though, so the challenge was to come up with another plot that I could somehow shoehorn into the one I had. At first I didn’t think I could do it, but eventually I figured it out.

Your own children attended an elite private school in D.C. How much of your story was drawn from real life?

In terms of the details, not that much. To some extent I’m satirizing things that probably go on in any private school milieu (although as far as I’m aware, Sidwell is the only school that has a Mother Daughter Show). Of course, there’s a Washington, D.C. aspect that’s distinctive—for instance, a President’s daughter attends my fictional school, and the Obama girls currently attend Sidwell. But the Presidential daughter in the novel, who is an extremely minor character, is clearly not Sasha or Malia, any more than any of the characters are real people.

What I did borrow from real life about that situation is the excitement surrounding the presence of the First Family at the school, at least when they first got there (the novel begins in February 2009). In the book, tickets to the annual auction and the school play sell at an unprecedented rate, because people think the President and First Lady might show up. That really happened, more or less. Of course, as in the book, the President didn’t end up attending many school functions, apparently because he was a little preoccupied with trying to solve the nation’s problems.

You are an accomplished author, having written the award-winning historical novel  A More Obedient Wife, and now the contemporary satire The Mother Daughter Show. Can you speak to the differences in your approach to each project?

The two novels are quite different, and the creative process was different in many ways as well. To write a historical novel, you have to immerse yourself in the period you’re writing about (in the case of A More Obedient Wife, the 1790s). That requires a lot of research, and even then you’re always worrying that you’ve gotten something wrong (at least, I was!). So it was a nice change not to have to grapple with that for The Mother Daughter Show. Instead of burying myself in the library, I could just use my observations about the world around me.

On the other hand, I really enjoy historical research. And I think writing about a different time period, and in a voice that mimicked that of another era, made it easier for me to propel myself into a fictional world. I had to work a little harder at that with the contemporary novel—to make sure that the characters weren’t all just versions of me, for example.

Also, with A More Obedient Wife, my starting point was real letters between real people who lived 200 years ago. I saw my task as recreating, as much as possible, the lost lives and personalities of these people, while at the same time constructing a coherent plot. With The Mother Daughter Show, my goal was more to get away from what really happened. In a way, I knew the situation I was writing about too well—it was tempting to just write down what happened rather than create a well developed story. And at the same time, I knew too little. To create characters that work, an author needs to know them inside out, and I simply didn’t know the other women working on the show that well. Maybe it would have been easier to just write down what really happened, but it wouldn’t have worked as a novel.

Why did you decide to write about your experience as a first-time expat living in the middle of Mexico?

My wife and I were the last persons we ever thought would drop out and move to Mexico, especially when we did.  We were in our late 50s at the time, did not have much money to back us up, and did not consider ourselves the adventurous types. We were both working in high-tech, for different companies, and coincidently our jobs were going away around the same time.  At our age, we felt boxed in—or out.  So we sold our condo in downtown Portland, Oregon, with the spectacular view of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens and lived in Mexico off the proceeds of the sale. Put another way, we gave ourselves a self-funded, open-ended sabbatical. Funny things happened to us almost immediately and I thought I should start writing about what was going on, and do so mostly from the point of view of someone who was totally ill-equipped and ill-prepared to be an expat. If there are jokes in the book, I’m the butt of them, as well as the punch line to most setups. As it should be. The San Miguel Author’s Sala, since renamed the Literary Sala, published early drafts of two of the essays included in Nobody Knows.

Had you ever lived in another country before or thought about it?

When I was in the military I was stationed on Puerto Rico for nine months.  However, I was stuck on the military most of the time.  Whenever I could, I’d take a bus into San Juan and spend a weekend, filling myself up with local food and culture.  About ten years ago, Arlene was offered an engineering position in Dresden, Germany.  She went back to Dresden to find us a place to live and called to ask me if I wanted to live in Old Town (Altstadt) or New Town (Neustadt).  I told her it was Europe and I definitely wanted to live in the older part of town.  She laughed and told me that Neustadt dated from something like the 1600s.  Ultimately, she didn’t feel right about the job offer and turned them down.  From that point on, though, we coveted the thought of living in another country, especially someplace in Europe.  San Miguel is not Europe but it’s done a great job preserving a 17^th century European look and feel. It’s a beautiful, historic setting and a favorite tourist spot for Mexicans.

Instead of selling everything and moving to Mexico, why didn’t you just take a six-month tourist visa and rent a place for awhile?

We weren’t interested in just another vacation, we wanted an adventure.  We had worked our entire adult lives, with only an occasional week or two off, and felt it was time to try something new and we hoped interesting.  Portland, Oregon, is a wonderful place to live but we didn’t see ourselves closing out our lives there. As difficult as it was to leave the comfort of familiar surroundings and dear friends, we craved a real change in our lives.  Presto chango, we found ourselves in the middle of Mexico in a traditional neighborhood.

I imagine it was difficult leaving friends and family behind but did they ever say or think you were crazy for moving to Mexico when you did?   

I’m sure plenty of our loved ones and acquaintances thought so.  But they had the good manners to not tell us to our face we had flipped out.

What’s the number one question people ask you about living in Mexico?

It’s a toss-up between “Is it safe?” and “What do you do for medical care?” The drug war is insane, of course.  But it’s pretty much limited to the border towns and drug cartels or federales shooting at each other over turf.  San Miguel is a ten-hour drive from the Texas border.  I felt safer walking in my first Mexican neighborhood at night than my old Portland neighborhood.  I feel just as safe in my new San Miguel neighborhood, which is closer to the center of town.  Medical care is an interesting question.  The first time we lived here we subscribed to a global health insurance policy for catastrophic medical needs.  Everything else we paid for out of pocket.  A doctor’s visit, for example, was about three hundred pesos or twenty-five dollars at the current exchange rate.  In other words, it was close to what we would have spent as a co-pay in the States.  Dental work is a lot cheaper here, too, and it’s high quality work.  If you’re talking about brain surgery, you probably want to return to the US and get it done there.  But if you need lab work or a basic physical or a leg cast or a thorough skin cancer checkup, you can get it done here and for a lot less than in the States.  Plus, the doctors make house calls and the pharmacies deliver to your door. How cool is that?  When all else fails, there are US-style major hospitals thirty to forty minutes away.

What did you find most surprising about Mexico? 

So many aspects of life down here surprised me, pleasantly so, I’m not sure where to start.  Of course, when you drive down you first notice the roads and the highway system in Mexico, especially the toll roads, which far exceeded my expectations.  The scenery was, at times, spectacular. Watching a rising middle class has been fascinating.  We have hi-speed Internet in our house, decent mobile phone coverage, and fresh, delicious produce and eggs every day.  There’s even a burgeoning organic food movement in San Miguel.  Perhaps the single greatest pleasure, even though I can’t call it a surprise, was how warm, gracious, and friendly our Mexican neighbors were and still are.

What disappointed you most about living in San Miguel?

My greatest disappointment and the bane of my existence down here is the level of noise.  San Miguel is a party town and Mexicans love their fiestas.  Their philosophy seems to be if it’s worth celebrating, it’s worth a lot of noise.  I suppose if I were twenty again I’d feel different about it all but the noise is relentless.  Perhaps my second greatest disappointment is that I can’t buy my jeans off-the-rack.  I’m short and stocky and thought, finally, at last, a country where I’m closer to a normal size and I wouldn’t have to get my pants altered or wear them hiked up under my chin like some 80-year old guy playing Bocce Ball. I’m afraid I’ll also never figure out the door locks in Mexico.  Some things are beyond my comprehension. And don’t get me started about the topes or speed bumps. What we refer to as speed bumps in the States pale by comparison.  It’s like that scene in the film Crocodile Dundee when the Australian guy is walking in New York City at night and is accosted by a desperate man waving a knife.  The Australian laughs at the guy and says, “That’s not a knife, Mate.”  Then he pulls out a huge knife that’s as big as a machete and tells the would-be thief, pointing it at him: “Now that’s a knife.” That’s pretty much how I feel about the difference between speed bumps in the States and in Mexico.

You often refer to old movies or rock lyrics.  Was that a deliberate stylistic choice on your part?

Indeed it was.  Like a lot of people, I love movies and music and have been influenced heavily by both.  Arlene likes to say I can’t remember to pay a bill on time but I can remember a piece of dialogue from a movie I watched twenty years ago.  I also think dropping in bits of popular culture is another way of connecting to readers, especially in a humorous memoir targeted at readers around my own age. When I was in college, I knew a woman who would spice up her conversation with song lyrics, as if she were quoting Aristotle. By the way, I don’t quote Aristotle in the book, or Plato, for that matter. I do, however, cite Albert Brooks and Humphrey Bogart.  

How did you come up with your book’s title?

I wanted a title that would combine Mexico and humor.  One early title was (groan) “Two Years Before the Masa,” which wouldn’t work, I realized, since the Richard Dana book referred to disappeared from bookshelves a long time ago and only serious cooks knew that tortillas come from masa or corn dough.  Eventually I settled on Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak for the title because it’s a chapter from the book and because it captures, in six words, my total confusion and incompetence as an expat.  Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak is, of course, a play on the old spiritual “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus” and, I think, it’s a title that says this is a light-hearted book about a non-Hispanic living in an Hispanic country.  Plus, as bonus points, our car mechanic’s name was Jesus and he knew a lot about the troubles we had with our car.

Did you ever regret dropping out and leaving the States?

Never.  I think what we came to regret was leaving Mexico and returning to the States when we did, which was in late 2007, just in time to participate in or at least observe from the sidelines with great horror  the tanking of the American economy.  Returning to the States meant we were going to have to try and find work and the downturn in the economy, coupled with our ages, made that a Herculean task, to say the least.  But we were homesick.  What we probably should have done was returned to the States periodically for long stretches, a month or so at a time, and still keep a house in San Miguel. Hindsight doesn’t require reading glasses from Costco.

Has your Spanish improved?

Yes, but not significantly.  Sometimes clichés make the best or at least shortest explanations.  In my case, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  I regret not mastering a foreign language when I was much younger and had more brain cells on my team, with a better shot at winning.  Now it’s almost impossible for me to get beyond the basic hello-how-are-you-see-you-later greetings.  I try to speak Spanish whenever I can but it’s mostly individual words, broken up like ceramic tile and spackled together, supplemented with some vigorous hand signals and finger pointing.  I’m not proud of my lack of proficiency in Spanish.  I’d also like to be able to play the piano but I suspect at my age—here comes another cliché—that ship has sailed.

This is your first book.  What is your background as a writer?

In business, I was pretty much a word and picture guy.  I did a lot of technical writing and then marketing writing over the years.  In my spare time, I wrote and drew cartoons, weekly single-panels for newspapers and gag cartoons for magazines.  I also did some editorial cartooning in college and after.  I wrote gags for the comic strip “Frank & Ernest” as a freelancer and did quite well, since I love silly word play.  I even tried stand-up comedy for a bit and didn’t do well at end.  In fact, I bombed enormously at it and returned to writing, which was easier and more natural for me.  I’ve never had to run into the bathroom just before starting to write and throw up.  Stand-up comedy is not easy on a guy with a nervous stomach.  Eventually, I started writing short plays, again in my spare time, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  More than twenty of my plays have been either staged or read in theatres across the country, a few have won awards, and a couple have been published.  A few years later I took a couple of amazing screenwriting classes and eventually wrote several features, all comedies.  They’ve won awards but only one of my full-length scripts has been optioned. Two of my short scripts have been optioned as well and one was actually filmed.  Please don’t ask about the film. The tipping point for me as a writer, I guess, came in late 2001 when I applied for and won a fellowship.  The award gave me six weeks in a cabin in the Southern Oregon woods to do nothing but write. My employer at the time was very generous and supportive and kept my job open for me while I took time off to write.  However, from that point on, it was hard for me to work a regular job when I’d rather be spending my time writing.  It was one of those “how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm” experiences, an epiphany that changed my life. 

Do you have plans for a sequel or second book about life in Mexico?

Yes, sort of, maybe, I think so.  I’m working on a book about our new Standard Poodle, Duke, a 75-pound apricot-colored male.  He’s basically a snow dog who now finds himself living in the middle of a semi-arid climate.  The working title is “The Duke of San Miguel.” He literally stops traffic whenever we take him out for his walks.  And at least once a week someone asks if they can have their picture taken with him.  We’re thinking of putting a sign around his neck and charging for the photos.  I’m also working on two full-length plays, as well as adapting one of my screenplays to a novel.

Q: How long did it take to finish Satan’s Chamber?

A: Satan’s Chamber takes place in Washington, DC, and Sudan. While we are both intimately familiar with the former location, the latter location called for a great deal of research. Sudan was once a patchwork of independent kingdoms. Its modern borders were arbitrarily defined by colonial invaders in the nineteenth century. The resulting geographical and cultural diversity has spelled political chaos ever since, especially after the discovery of oil further inflamed the volatile situation. At the same time, the ancient history of the region is rich and complex. It took us two and one half years to get to know this extraordinary land, then create the story that occurs there.

Q: What was the toughest part in writing your book?

A: Cross-country collaboration was our biggest challenge. Regular phone calls and constant email transmissions can’t compare to face to face discussion. (We had only four, fabulous day-long brainstorming sessions in those two and a half years.) Still the rewards of collaboration far outweighed the difficulties posed by distance. When it comes to figuring out the next plot twist, or the next layer in a character, again and again, two heads were better than one! And we both shared the same commitment to crafting a riveting story of survival, courage and redemption.

Q: How did you settle on the title Satan’s Chamber?

A: Satan’s Chamber is a metaphor for the geo-political circumstances mirrored in our story, soul-destroying circumstances dictated by ruthlessness and greed. To say more might give away too much of the story. Yet among those trapped in this hellish situation, there are those who fight back, survive, and pursue salvation for all.

Q: Is the National Identity Movement a real movement in Sudan?

A: The NIM is not a real movement, but the issue of national identity must be foremost in any plan to resolve the chaos of Sudan. Home to many tribes, languages, and ethnicities, the country has been at war with itself for three-quarters of its existence.

Q: Are Tory and Wilkins going to hook up?

A: The chemistry is certainly there. But they are both independent spirits, and we have to get further into our second Tory book before we will know for sure how their relationship will play out. Stay tuned — the next book promises to be an even more thrilling ride for Tory.

Q: Why did you decide to write TRUST: Short-Circuit the Hardwiring?
A: As a lawyer, I litigated a lot of employment disputes. In the process, I realized many complaints and grievances stemmed from a failure to integrate employment law and EEO diversity issues. When I retired, I decided to teach supervisors a more integrated approach that included building trust with employees–getting to know them better; understanding their diversity. The response from supervisors was overwhelming and they asked me to teach the class to their employees. Then participants also started saying, “You should write a book!” So here it is.

Q: Why does the title refer to “Short-Circuit the Hardwiring”?

A: Strangely enough, the worlds of neuroscience and psychology tell us that as human beings, we are “hardwired” to mishandle conflict in at least two important ways. We are biologically and psychologically “hardwired” to do all the wrong things when conflict arises!

Q: What is the difference between “Biological Hardwiring” and “Psychological Hardwiring?”

A: Using MRI technology researchers observed biological hardwiring when a person is challenged or attacked. In other words, his/her belief system might be questioned, or his/her standing in the group might be challenged. The rational brain shuts down! Its blood supply is reduced, and the most primitive portion of the brain, the portion that controls the fear response, takes over. The person responds with a mild “fight or flight” response that typically presents as aggressive behavior–sarcasm, ridicule abuse. The recipient of this behavior typically reacts in mild “fight or flight,” returning the sarcastic, ridiculing, or abusive behavior, or becomes silent or frozen. We’ve all witnessed this; we’ve all been a part of it. Few of us recognize what is happening. We think that this is the way arguments or conflict have to be. It seems perfectly natural, and it rarely dawns on us that there could be a different way of disagreeing with someone using our rational brain.

Psychological hardwiring is more complicated. Suffice it to say that I have borrowed a concept from the worlds of psychology and organizational development. Each of these fields has its own terminology for describing how we as humans take information in and process that information and then react to it. The concept teaches that our reaction to the event is not based on the event, but rather on the way one interprets the event.

I call this concept the “Story” process. It explains why people in conflict are so certain that the other person is wrong and they are right: their “Story” is telling them this at a deep subconscious level. The fact that we make “Stories” is also a key to turning conflict into a positive, relationship building, problem-solving moment – if we know how to use it correctly.

Q: Who is your intended audience for TRUST?

A: Originally, it was for supervisors in the workplace. However, readers are showing me that the trust-building skills in the book are useful for everyone – employees in the workplace; couples in disagreement; parents and teens in disagreement; neighbors in disagreement. You name it! Any two people in disagreement about anything can use the skills taught in TRUST to resolve the conflict, and turn the experience from a negative, relationship damaging moment to a positive, problem-solving, relationship-building moment.

Q: What is the most important lesson you would like your readers to learn after reading TRUST?

A: I want people to recognize that conflict does not have to be a powerful negative experience to be avoided at all costs–because the costs of avoidance are very high. Once they realize that, then, with the other tools in the book, they can begin to take charge of conflict and transform it to a positive, problem-solving, relationship-building experience.

Why did you decide to write the book about your experiences in Bolivia?

LB: Karen and I view the world differently.  Where she saw a picturesque village, I saw only poverty.  Where she saw spirituality and ancient customs, I saw a belief system that kept the people poor.  She was horrified that a mine would be built, leading to the destruction of the village; I was proud that I could make new wealth for the world and provide well-paying jobs for people who had never had more than two nickels to rub together.   As you may imagine, our differences led to heated arguments and many a cold night on the couch, so to resolve our differences, Karen demanded that we live in the village to find out the truth.   I figured she would last a couple of weeks then beg to go home, but she was so much stronger than I had assumed.  The book is the result of that ten-year experience, documenting how neither Karen’s nor my views of the world were correct.

KG: I was horrified when my husband, an exploration geologist, told me that a remote Quechua village would have to be moved because it sat upon a silver deposit he discovered.  Usually exploration geologists have nothing more to do with their discovery; their job is to find the ore and then move on to explore other areas.  I felt that if the town were to be moved, we had a moral responsibility  not to leave, but to follow the people over time and document their changes. I also felt that my husband and I were examples of the liberal-conservative polarization so common in the United States, and a book reflecting our own growth might be helpful to others. We learned to accept that there is truth on both sides.

How did you decide on the title?

KG: The Gift of El Tio is a natural title for our story because the villagers referred to the silver as el regalo de El Tio, a gift from El Tio, who is the god of the underground.

LB: This is the phrase that time and again people out in the bush used when describing our discovery of this gift from their most angry, dangerous, and hungry god.

Who is your intended audience for this book?

KG: We believe this book will appeal to anyone who loves travel and anyone who has an interest in cultural anthropology, geology and mining, education and/or economic development of third world countries.

LB: Our book shows clearly that resistance to economic development in the third-world is not a final answer, while at the same time change in such poor communities isn’t always for the better.   If people can read The Gift of El Tio and appreciate how our polarized views on development are culturally myopic, then the effort we took to write it will be well worthwhile.

What would you most like for the reader to remember?

KG: Often we think we know what is best for another country, but economic development of third world countries is very complicated.  Each situation is unique and requires careful study and an open mind.

LB: A community without change is one that is slowly dying. But even though change is necessary for life to grow and expand, nobody ever said it is pleasant.

What was the most important lesson(s) you learned from this experience?

KG: a. I had very strong, biased opinions regarding mining and development in third world countries before I even visited Bolivia.  Once I lived there, I acquired a different perspective – one which allowed me to see that reality may not be black or white, good or bad.   International companies do not just go in and rape the land (at least not the company Larry was working for). They are required by international law and the loans from world banks to follow environmental laws and to protect anthropologically, archeologically, and historically significant aspects of a town they will destroy.  This particular company received recognition for its socially conscious endeavors. They offered priority jobs and training so that the majority of the town had some kind of work.  They also provided seed money for the development of businesses and other money-making ventures, so that once the mine closes, the people won’t be reduced to poverty again.

b. People all over the world deserve opportunities to escape poverty, though I wish those presenting the opportunities would also educate the people as to possible outcomes of development, such as the loss of culture and customs. I think we’re seeing a lot of evidence of culture loss because people work twelve hours a day and because the mine can’t shut down, certain celebrations and rituals can’t take place.

c. That even staunch conservatives like my husband can change – and I love him for it!

LB: Two lessons:

a. Never again will I sneer at what I used to call “primitive myths” or “irrational spirituality,” as I found out that such beliefs are critical to the survival of remote, isolated communities.

b. Karen is one tough human being.