Before YouTube

When I lived in Richmond (1999-2001), my boyfriend at the time and I would watch these videos over and over on a beat up VHS tape.  He was more of an electronic music fan that I was, but these are still some of my favorites. 

Bjork-army of Me

Poor, defenseless marriage

When I was younger I'd hear news stories about "budget deficits" and how "the United States has a ten gazillion dollar debt" and and I'd think to myself, "isn't the government in charge of the U.S. Mint? Why don't they just print some more money and pay off the debt. Problem solved."

I had visions of my idea saving the American economy from slipping into an unrecoverable abyss. I had visions of being flown to Stockholm to receive my Nobel Prize. "It was all so simple. We adults were just overthinking it," the King of Sweden would decree in my commendation.

I soon came to understand the reason why this was not the solution. Just printing more money would weaken the value of the dollars that were already in circulation.

The same can be said about marriage licenses. There's all kinds of people out there who want more of them. So why don't we just let 'em have 'em - just print a bunch more and then the marriage deficit will go away. Now hold on! The same economic principle is obviously at work here. If we just print more of them then the value of those that are already in circulation will dissipate and those people who are married will become matrimonially insolvent. We can't have that!

Good thing North Carolina has Sen. James Forrester, Defender of Marriage, serving faithfully in its General Assembly. You see, Sen. James Forrester, Defender of Marriage, heard about all that excitement going on over there in California over this whole "Prop 8" business and he thought, "Sweet succotash, we need to get us some of that drama right here, and fast! Mercy heavens me!" And so late one night, while sitting at home in his high back Queen Anne chair smoking a fag, Sen. Forrester, Defender of Marriage, began to pen what would soon become "Senate Bill 272 - Defense of Marriage."

Nevermind the fact that the state of North Carolina is mired in one of its worst financial crises in decades and desperately needs all hands on deck in order to deal with budget shortfalls and job insecurity and such. There's marriages being threatened here! So, good thing that Stanley, North Carolina's own Sen. Forrester, Defender of Marriage, is dedicating plenty of precious time and taxpayer money to the legislative fight that will likely ensue over S.B. 272. Nevermind, also, that marriage is clearly a human right and that bigoted laws such as Prop 8 and its ambitious lil' brother S.B. 272 will eventually be found unconstitutional by the courts. S.B. 272 is just such a great investment for our future. Hopefully our marriage portfolios will rebound sharply in response to this wonderful news.

kitsch and kvlt

As I was driving yesterday, I was listening to our local oldies/adult contemporary station and was transfixed by a song I hadn't heard before called "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart. I don't know what it is about the song that hooked me, but I can't stop watching the YouTube video:



And then they played You're So Vain, so they were totally two for two. My music taste is generally pretty predictable "sad bastard" music, so while doing a little recon on a local favorite John Darnielle/The Mountains Goats (brilliant SB music) blog lastplanetojakarta, I noticed a side project from Gaahl of Gogoroth fame, who I've had an interest in since I saw the Vice documentary. I kind of love it too.

Where do we go when we die?

While I tend to favor the lyrics from Sentimental Man by Dismemberment Plan:

There is no heaven and there is no hell
No limbo in-between -- I think it's all a lie
Just a white light out to velvet black
and back to neutral gray -- that's all when we die

I do sometimes wonder "Is that really all there is?" and "What would heaven look like?". Well, one of my favorite sites, raptureready.com, home of the Rapture Index, an up-t0-date list that rates how close we are to the Apocalypse, can not only answer that question, but can tell me EXACTLY what my heavenly home would look like here. I adore the "Widow's Mite" and the "God-Fearing" mansions, but I'm wondering if they might require a little too much work on my part. Maybe Jesus could custom-make me a nice Craftsman bungalow like they have in Old North Durham? He could call it the "Bleeding Heart Liberal" model. I understand that I probably won't get the square footage of the "Average Christian", but I'm okay with that, as long as the windows are original. [If you're reading this JC, something like the one below would be great]


If you don't already know about the Rapture, here's a little instructional video to help you out:




Or I guess you could just ask me; I'm kind of an expert after reading through Book 6 (Assassins) of the Left Behind Series....

From the bookshelves....part 1

Here are two images from the book Life Beyond Earth by Timothy Ferris. The top is an engraving from "Monthly Discussions of All Sorts of Books, by Several Friends, " from 1697. The bottom is from 1687 from "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and the Sun" by Cyrano de Bergerac.
In a similar vein, here are two cosmological diagrams from the 1500's. These come from The Cosmographical Glass: Renaissance Diagrams of the Universe, purchased at the incredible Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. Also included is an illustration of one of Kepler's geometric conceptualizations.

Someone's had too much Lavoris...

Got family drama? Why not Flickr it out!

We recently stumbled upon a Flickr set called: "The Changeling." At first, it just seemed to be a run-of-the-mill group of scanned photographs documenting an American family in the 1950s and 1960s (ok, yeah: with a strange set title, no doubt). But then, the more we clicked through this set the more we noticed all of its bizarre and, well...agressive image tags. From these tags and from the images' lengthy captions we began to piece together an intense family drama, unfolding before our eyes in all its (publicly-viewable) Flickr glory.

See a bit for yourself. Take a look, for example, at this screenshot of tags from one single image from the set:



Those tags come from this image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/strobis/2454925578/in/set-72157606994681036/

From these tags we can discern that this is a story of heartbreak, of sibling rivalry run amok, and of mouthwash addiction! Yep. See, allegedly, the little girl in this picture had a pretty wild childhood mouthwash habit. An excerpt from one of the captions says this:

_____ looks almost human here. It's hard for people to believe this, but ______ spent much of her childhood drinking Lavoris mouthwash straight from the bottle. My parents didn't have a clue this was happening until the day they saw her drunk and unable to walk a straight line. The bad news: ______ blamed her later alcoholism on our mother for failing to notice that she was addicted to Lavoris as a child. The good news: ____'s breath throughout her early childhood was cinnamony-fresh.

I'm not making this up. _____ would have Lavoris tea parties with me and _____, pouring each of us a small cup. ______ and I understandably found this shit undrinkable, so _____ would just help herself to our share. Not sipping it either -- throwing it down.

Thankfully, we get a sort of response from her about this calumny. See, the other amazing part of this feud is that the brother also cuts and pastes portions of the sister's emails right into the captions of the images on Flickr. So we get some of the other side, albeit filtered. For example, here he quotes her as saying about him:

YOUR DEPRESSION WAS CAUSED BY YOUR WEAKNESS TO USE AND TO CONTINUE TO USE, ILLEGAL DRUGS, MAGIC MUSHROOOMS, COCAINE, ETC. I REMEMBER A FRIEND TELLING ME, THAT SHE KNEW YOU IN COLLEGE AND A QUEENS COLLEGE PROFESSOR GOT YOU TO EAT MORE THAN TOMATO SOUP AND FRUIT COCKTAIL.....

So, let me get this straight. Apparently the script goes like this:

Brother: I hate you. You're crazy! And it's because of all the mouthwash you used to drink as a kid.

Sister: I hate you more. And you're crazier than I am because of all the tainted tomato soup and fruit cocktail you used to eat in college.

Brother: I hate you most. And to prove it I'm going to post all this on the web.


I wonder who would have had a better blog: the Hatfields or the McCoys?

Children of God

As anyone who knows me knows, I have a little fascination with cults. However, I have a personal tie to one particular cult, called "Jesus People", "Children of God" or "the Family". This cult was centered around a creepy character called David Berg and his consort Karen "Maria" Zerby. It began with communal living, branched into free love, "flirty fishing" (proselytizing by prostitution) and then, tragically, sexual abuse of children. The scary thing is that this cult had a few million members in its heyday and still survives now, although they have formally disavowed the sexual abuse (although are still up to some nefarious activities). I had heard of the CoG, but was reminded about their existence by my little sister's ex-boyfriend, Thor, who was born into it, and spent his childhood traveling all over Europe, busking for the group. (note 1: I feel that it is okay to use his real name since his mother has written a book, Heaven's Harlots, about her experiences and openly referenced him, with his permission. Plus, he's very open to discussion about it. note 2: I seem to keep in contact with her exes perhaps better than she does...) He recently sent us a chapter of an account his Dad is pitching for a book deal as a complement/counter to his mom's perspective, but I haven't had a chance to look at it closely. The biggest splash the cult has made was the Ricky Rodriguez murder/suicide in 2005. From his birth to "Maria" and his adopted father David Berg, he was groomed to take over cult leadership and given the name "Davidito". His childhood (and abuse) was chronicled in a grotesque child-rearing guide called "The Story of Davidito". Unsurprisingly but sadly, he was never able to recover and his abusers were never prosecuted. He finally set out on a quest to kill his mother and then himself, but instead killed one of his former nannies/abusers when he was unable to track down Maria. I read a book about his story called Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge that tells his story. It's pretty heartbreaking.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, ex-members have created a comprehensive wiki with great photo, document and video archives. The images on top are some of the weird posters from the site. Obv, not for the faint of heart.

Luck

I'm generally not a poignant quote kind of a guy, but I was really moved by this yesterday:

"I wanted to acknowledge luck; the chance and benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others, who might not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it."

Who said it? It was Paul Newman. Newman passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer - or maybe better to say after an 83 year lifetime of fortune and corrections. This quote was shared by his assistant in an obituary that Kate and I were reading last night.

Why is this poignant to me? Because it so deftly distills much of my basic philosophy on life and so clearly differentiates two of my most internally-debated concepts: luck and providence. Remaining intentionally coy here, I'll just say that I definitely side with the former.

And why am I commenting on this here? Because I can't wait to have conversations with Jonas about this pair of concepts (years from now, sure)...and, more importantly, I can't wait to watch Jonas go through his own process of parsing this out on his own - to watch him make up his own mind. Hopefully my luck will continue, and he'll have lots of it too, so that we can share a lifetime of ever-correcting luck together.

I just saw an amazing documentary and I want to go tell it on the mountain.

Wow! It's very seldom that I see a movie that makes me want to tell everyone I know, "Hey, you gotta check this out." Especially a documentary, because Kate and I see so many social and cultural documentaries. But I just finished watching a documentary called "Street Fight" (a film by writer/director/producer/etc. Marshall Curry) and, "Hey, you gotta check this out."

I know I'm a bit behind the times, since this movie is several years old and maybe everyone reading this has already seen it, but this amazing film really snuck up on me. "Street Fight" tells the story of candidate Cory Booker during his 2002 bid to become the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. The film pits Booker, a 32 year old wunderkind (Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law graduate, former Stanford University football standout) versus the established 32-year! incumbent, Sharpe James. I love that name, it's almost as telegraphic about his M.O. as Boss Tweed's name was. And Sharpe James's political machine is probably just as entertaining to watch in action. Watch as James's flunkies continuously grab the lens of the documentarian's camera as he films a public! event on a public! street in the City of Newark. Watch as James brings three busloads of pollworkers in from PHILADELPHIA on the day of the election while simultaneously claiming that all of his pollworkers are volunteers while Booker's are all paid outsiders ("He's a carpetbagger. He can't buy this election," Sharpe quips.) Watch as James racebaits Booker by saying that he is backed by "Jews and the Ku Klux Klan." Both Booker and James are African American, by the way.

One of the reasons I'm compelled to blog about this now is that it seems very well timed. I can't help but compare Booker to Obama, and if you watch I think you'll see the same intense spirit of optimism in the two. If you have Netflix, this is available on their "Watch Instantly" feature, which is how I watched it. Also, I'll just point out that this film was actually nominated for an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Documentary Feature. Here's the trailer, should you need more enticement.

birds

playing around with the camera in Raleigh and at home; then putzing around with photo editing software...

Here's one:



You can see the rest here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/citizenplastic/Birds

Stockholm Syndrome Relapse

As promised, here's part 2 on Swedish pop. This time, instead of highlighting the phenomenon of inter-gender duos in the Swedish pop scene, I just want to throw out some Swedish vids for your listening and viewing pleasure. I think these five are remarkable. The first three of them have their own trend going on in them: they all use animation.

The first video is a popular one: "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn, and John.



The second is "Jump the Train" by My Darling YOU! - a duo by the way.



Next, there's Dungen and their video for the song "Festival." I saw them live a couple of years ago in Carrboro. They didn't speak any English except at one point the lead singer said into the mike, "I'm come to Carrboro to smoke my Marlboros." I think he had a pretty good grasp on American culture to be able to condense it so succinctly. What was even more endearing was that after the show the band lined up at the exit door of Cat's Cradle in a sort of receiving line to meet people on the way out and thank them for coming to their show. I've never seen anything like that in my entire life.



Video number 4 is the song "We're From Barcelona" by the band I'm From Barcelona. I love this so much and I probably shouldn't.



And finally, the duo Suburban Kids With Biblical Names with the song "Rent a Wreck." I'm told that SKWB recorded their album in the hallway of the basement of the family home. Lyrics like, "I wanna turn all the dance floors into a burning inferno of Ba-Ba" should always be made into t-shirts.



God Bless the Kingdom of Sweden!

What's More Swedish Than Ikea?...

Swedish pop duos (especially the one male/one female variety).

Note to reader: I plan for this to be post number 1 of 2 in a 2-part series on Swedish music. I can't say exactly why I have so much pent up angst vis-a-vis the Swedes and their tunes that I need to go all around the internets blogging about it, but I do - and I want to share it with the world. I think that as you delve deeper into this issue with me, you'll catch on.

Aunt C recently shared with us her approval for our planned name for our boy, Jonas, explaining that she thought the name extra special because it was a Swedish name. So, she further explained, if he's born blonde and grows up to live in Stockholm, he'll have no real trouble assimilating.

Great point Aunt C! I think we're doing the right thing with the name too - the more I say it in my head the more I love it. We just need to figure out a good Swedish last name now. Jonas, we can't wait for you to come (but we will, because you have to cook some more). In the meantime, let me give you a couple of heads-up on the pop music aspects of your soon-to-be future counterfeit heritage.


For me, it all begins with Roxette. Or maybe ABBA, which is a double inter-gender Swedish pop duo - so I guess they don't count since that makes them a quartet. So let's start with Roxette, a group made up of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle. They had a couple of top ten hits in the U.S. in the 1980s, specifically a hit that they'll probably still be playing by the time you, Jonas, are old enought to listen to (digital) radio: it's called "It Must Have Been Love." I also just found out that they are huge elsewhere around the world, especially in Latin America. They are in fact one of the highest selling acts of all time with 75 million records sold worldwide! They set a high bar for the rest of the co-ed Swedes. [Note: Roxette is shown in the first picture at the top left.]

Sort of jumping from the earliest example to one of the most cutting edge examples, next consider a band called Wildbirds and Peacedrums made up of Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin. I love that band name, it taps into that Strawberry Alarm Clock verve. They are the next funny looking duo on the left (look for the guy in the Cosby sweater holding the two fake goldfish). It's like a hippy drum circle meets P.J. Harvey with an endearing Euro accent.


The next picture shows another sullen looking young man with a very blond femme fatale. That's Club 8, comprised of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård. I don't know much about them, other than that they put out a lot of pretty danceable bossa nova / triphop joints, and that they have that quintessential Swedish look that must not go unnoticed.


"The Knife" is a brother-sister electropop duo of Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer (See: boyish-looking gymnast and his too-much makeup-wearing trainer). Some might categorize these folks as weird. They distinguish themselves by eschewing normal pop sensibilities by (1) generally refusing to make public appearances and interviews, (2) if they do appear in promotional way they wear masks (mostly venetian masks that feature long bird beaks), and (3) until recently, they outright refused to perform live concerts. Atypical Swedes in that they haven't quite fully adopted a twee and fancy-free lifestyle, but typical in that they are a brother and sister performing pair (very common among this community) and that they have an English moniker and that they sing, mostly, in English.


Let's take a moment to acknowledge how this business all started coming together in my mind. Jonas, I suppose all this Swedemania started to brew with the recent popularity of a song called "Young Folks" by the Swedish group Peter Bjorn and John. The song features a duet between a frisky Swedish male voice and a seductive female voice (what I learned later was the guest-starring voice of Victoria Bergman of a group called The Concretes). Having never seen a photograph of PB & J, and only having seen their animated video for this song which features a boy and a girl, I thought this group was a co-ed duo. A shot from that video is shown at left, and you may just see it posted later in part 2 of this series.

So, it made me think, "Wow, you know I think there are a lot of co-ed Swedish duos out there, I wonder if there are more of them that I don't know of." Then I started doing some research and found the duos mentioned above. What I also found out was that PB & J was in fact made up of three dudes: Peter, Bjorn, and John. I don't know how I could have been deceived there - maybe it was the lack of commas in the name. Anyway, this discovery made me start thinking about all-male Swedish groups. As I started to look further into all these Swedish groups, the more MALE Swedish pop duos I noticed, just like their co-ed counterparts. Here are a couple of interesting ones.


The first is The Legends. English name, sing in English, happy-go-lucky sound, strange promo photos. See how the pattern is not really that different. Where are they running to anyhow? Wherever it is, I hope they get there soon because they look like they're tired. But, study that photo carefully because, if you do, you'll notice that this "band," this "duo" is actually just one man! It goes to show you that there is some self-awareness among Swedish musicians and they realize that what they should be doing is BEING A DUO and not a solo act. And if you're not a duo, well then you better Photoshop yourself into a picture of yourself, and fast. What's even crazier, and more telling about this identity crisis is that on The Legends' website they (he) say that they (he) are (is) a band "comprised of nine members." Who does this shapeshifting Swede think he is? Well, it's none other than Johan Angergård - the aforementioned sullen guy from Club 8. He is also known to haunt the band Acid House Kings. Hey, Johan, what gives? You can't just be part of a duo and then not be part of a duo as the situation fits you best. Stick to the script! You and blondie (preferably your sister) start a band, you make happy little records, and you get huge in Latin America. What's so hard about that?


It doesn't help that Johan has a enabler to his schizophrenia: the record label Labrador Records. See, Labrador is the imprint for all of his Club 8, The Legends, and Acid House Kings projects. So, while I was on Labrador's website, I checked in on the rest of the label's lineup and discovered that the company is filthy with duos.

Choosing to mention them purely on the strangeness of their promo shot, consider if you will Labrador mates The Sound of Arrows made up of Stefan Storm and Oskar Gullstrand. "Hold still Oskar! You've missed this one glob of product. Here let me," Stefan says (or maybe it's the other way around). I promise to check out their music soon and let you know if it's as great as these Forever 21 catalog outtake photos.

And finally, this brings me to my favorite new Swedish duo of Johan Hedberg and Peter Gunnarson. The name of their band is Suburban Kids With Biblical Names. That's them with the dog.

I see that picture and I make up this story in my head about how their dog Sasha has just told Johan and Peter that he wants to run off and join the circus and that this will be their last afternoon frolic together in this meadow of heather. Johan cuddles up to Sasha and says, "But the school children! How will I break the news to them?" while Peter gives a thousand-yard stare because he's thinking about how much trouble Sasha has been all this time what with the chewing of his Ikea futon and all, and how, now that Sasha is joining the circus, he can just get a goldfish. "Yeah, a goldfish, that'll be easier than Sasha...and then I'll have more time to figure out this 'Wildbirds and Peacedrums' business."

dance dance revolution

Kate's birthday potluck went swimmingly last night. It seemed like all had a blast.

So, you know how sometimes towards the end of a great party, when the rhythm of the party swings low (and the bulk of your guests head for the door), you're left with a couple of your closest (and punchiest) friends to get silly. Spawned by interest in our Party in Punjab CD, Kate and I kicked off this phase of the night by trying to teach folks how to "bhangra." Where "bhangra" is the high-energy dance from the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Here's a nice example to introduce you:



This short tutorial was followed by Lara and Annick's revealing to us the recent French craze "Tecktonik." In the video below you can see why this followed from the bhangra moves. Kate, Michael, and I had never heard of this dance style, so of course we had to pull out the laptop and call up YouTube for a few examples. I don't know about Kate and Michael, but I was floored by it - probably because I know my body will never be able to do that. Not since throwing my back out from krumpin' in 2003. Check out this Tecktonik example:

Is s/he dead?

For some reason, lately I have been wasting valuable time over worrying about whether or not certain famous people are alive or dead. Besides listening to Journey and trying to get my hair styled like David Lynch's hair, this is my fave timewaster du jour. Sometimes I'll bring others into the headscratching - it makes a nice icebreaker or game at a party.

Perhaps I began feeling an ounce less morbid about my new hobby when I did some Googles and found that I'm not alone in this strange obsession. There is a website, called "Dead or Alive?" dedicated to just this issue, updated hourly it seems. There are lists on Wikipedia of people who have once been thought to be deceased prematurely, falsely, or otherwise. There are sites that are simply obit aggregators.

It's all Abe Vigoda's fault. The man, who once portrayed "Fish" on the decidedly craptacular Barney Miller, has sustained an entire career on a 1982 People magazine gaff that proclaimed him dead. This mistake instantly revamped his career (people hardly speak ill of the dead). And ever since Vigoda's earthly solvency has become the punchline to a million jokes. It probably helps that he's got such a funny name. By the way, you can check his status at this website - be sure to hit refresh just to make sure he didn't just kick it!

I mean really, if you think about it, this question of alive or dead is a totally viable thing to worry about. Maybe you're a huge fan of Roy Scheider, but you've lost track of him since the mid-1990s TV show seaQuest. [Dead: infection, 2/10/2008] Or maybe you're like me and couldn't fathom that someone as wildly infirm as Jesse Helms could possibly still be alive. [Alive: evil never dies] Or maybe you just don't religiously follow the celebrity blogs. So, before you judge me for being too morbid, I ask you...can you honestly tell me (without peeking on Wikipedia) if the following people are alive?:

John Goodman
Henry Kissinger
Ike Turner
Bea Arthur
Ed McMahon
Shelley Winters

(See what I mean.)

Mount Everest

Biff and I are huge fans of PBS's series Frontline, which airs documentary programming about all different topics and then will post them for computer viewing as well. I've been really interested in Mount Everest since reading Into Thin Air in 2001, and seeing the Everest IMAX. David Breashears is a mountain climber/filmmaker who was on Everest in 1996 filming that IMAX when a storm came up that ultimately killed 15 climbers I think, including his friend and fellow guide who got stranded on the summit. Breashers returned to Everest a couple of years ago to rethink the tragedy and interview survivors in the program Storm Over Everest. We haven't really seen the tragedy narrative until this point, although Into Thin Air describes it well, you don't really realize how sublime the mountain is and how epic the journey until you see it. I personally feel like submitting Everest is the ultimate in human hubris and selfishness, especially since for every 6 who summits successfully, 1 person dies. I really feel for the family members of the climbers. However, I definitely see the fascination and understand the power of the superlative-how tempting to have scaled the highest mountain on Earth. What's especially incredible are the non-climber thrill seekers that train specifically for Everest and pay tens of thousands of dollars to risk their lives just to have that distinction.

We've since seen Breasher's other documentary called Everest: the Death Zoneabout what happens to the human body at really high altitudes (accelerated decay and cognitive loss). It's okay. There are other books about the 1996 storm, but I don't know if I have the heart to read them.

From Russia with consternation

Cecelia has been tutoring a Russian vaccinologist in English for awhile now, and it seems that his gift for biomedicine outweighs his gift for language, but in a really adorable way. She wrote him an email about how she had been out of town for a week and received this reply (really common actual Russian name replaced with other really common Russian name for privacy):

Hi, Cecelia
I so glad to see you on Wednesday. We have been worrying for you. You have got lost and we can't information about you. It's terrible.
See you later. Vladamir & Family's Vladamir

Ethiopian well-wishing

I got the most charming email from a colleague in Ethiopia who heard the news that I was pregnant. This woman is really amazing. She started and runs her own orphanage/child care center in Addis Ababa. Her native language, Amharic, is a very different language from English, with a whole different alphabet. I can't claim to speak any of it, but I love the way Makeda (not her real name) translates to English.

Dear Kate,

How are you doing? I heard that you started a process to bringing new person to our planet that is great!

so how is it going? you are in my prayer to have a peaceful time.

I wish you to have all the best time.
Makeda


The last time she visited here, I helped her pick out some gifts for her daughter, who really wanted some binoculars. We went to Target and found some. She sent me this after her return:

Hi Kate,
Thank you, I arrived safely in Ethiopia all my family members are well. My daughter who get binocular gift, she is very happy for that, and now she planning to go to the nearest forest to see wild animals with it. Please pass my greeting for all staff of Health Inequality Department.
Thanks
Makeda