If there’s one thing I’ve learned living in Pokhara for the past couple of months is that it is generally advisable to carry an umbrella basically up until the time that it is generally advisable to wear a sweater. But that is retrospect now, at the time I hadn’t already heard that particularly useful piece of advice.

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It was after having momos and beer one evening with Bela and Purna at the Aroma Restaurant in Jamal that I suspected I had food poisoning. I was suspicious of the Aroma Restaurant, to be honest, right from the beginning. But here I am casting aspersions when I should make it clear right from the beginning that the Aroma Restaurant is, to the best of my knowledge, blame free in the ensuing incidents.

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This guy, the one who was abducted and reportedly tortured to death, the one who has been missing for two years now, it seems to me that his name is not likely to be Suresh Bahadorana. No, it’s more likely to be Suresh Bahadur Rana. He’s likely to be from Sauraha VDC, not Saula. It’s SAURAHA actually, that’s how it’s spelled. Yes. That’s where this guy lived, where his family awaits his return, where they wonder everyday whether they’ll ever see him again, where his young children will likely grow up fatherless and his wife may as well assume she’s a widow already at the tender age of 23.

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They say that finishing a Ph.D. is in itself a major life transition, and I can see that. For those of us who never outgrew our childhood love for school, completing a Ph.D. really is the end of the line. Yes, sure, one can become a teacher or a professor, but that’s all quite different from being a student. But of course it’s easy to wax nostalgic about being a student when one isn’t faced with the particular stresses and anxieties that it brings with it. Just after submitting my dissertation and completing all of the paperwork to officially receive the degree, I was on a plane back to Nepal, to take up a short term position altogether different than that of student.

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Put this one in the shameless promotion of people I think are fabulous category! My friend Sienna Craig wrote this beautiful children’s book about Namsel, a girl from Dolpo with dreams and ambitions. Clear Sky, Red Earth is exquisitely illustrated by another friend, Tenzin Norbu Lama. Many of the proceeds from Norbu’s illustrations and paintings go to support the Kula Mountain Primary School in Norbu’s home village that is run by a wonderful Headmaster, Urken Dorje.

I’m very fortunate to have friends from all different periods of my life whom I think the world of… and I was especially fortunate this past weekend to have spent some time with RPCV friends with whom I shared my Peace Corps experience in Nepal. Check out some photos from the gathering at Joy and Bobby’s and some photos from our time of service in the early nineties.

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History written by Michel-Rolph Trouillot is a fascinating account of something that was “unthinkable” and therefore silenced - the Haitian revolution, a powerful slave rebellion that overthrew French colonialism and established an independent Haiti. While the story of the Haitian revolution is in itself a powerfully interesting story, I think that Trouillot’s discussion of the mechanisms by which certain histories become history has important implications for those interested in systems of knowledge production.

In my random wanderings about the internet this morning, I came across a blog entry with a fun, whimsical short video, flyguy. A good reminder to me that it’s nice to spend time laughing every day!

For those of us who write dissertations, we often comfort ourselves with the idea that “well, only three people on the planet will read this anyway.” Those three people are a combination of dissertation committee members and/or loved ones, all of whom have particular stakes in what we write.

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The Agronomist is a powerfully inspiring film. It tells parts of freedom fighter Jean Dominique’s life story, centered around his struggles to hold onto freedom of speech in Haiti.

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