Weekend Roundup

Interesting articles and other specimens abound online this week; here's a taste of what caught my eye.
There's something for everyone here!

1. Trial of former Guatemalan president for genocide >> For the first time in history, a former head of state has been put on trial - and then convicted - of genocide by his own country's court system.  This op-ed in The Globalist was written by Laura Myers of Limitless Horizons Ixil. Laura was our guide and an ambassador from the Ixil community when I traveled to Guatemala with Belmont University in March 2012. Having lived for over a year and a half with the Ixil people in the remote highlands of central Guatemala, Laura's knowledge, experience, and empathy inform her unique perspective on this remarkable event in local, national, and world history.

photo credit: Eric Johansson

2.
Swedish Photoshop expert creates mind-bending images

3.
French-Namibian girl grows up napping with cheetahs, riding ostriches - incredible photos!

4. Finland's contribution to online shopping: Buy anything you see online! - Cool Helsinki-based company Kiosked makes advertising less annoying and more enjoyable for shoppers.  Read about it in the Huffington Post.


5. "Struggle is progress" - A young mother bares her heart as she chronicles the joys and challenges of raising her two small children.  The genuine emotion and thoughts she shares are a beautiful part of the human experience.

6. "The unbearable beauty of Finnish grammar".  Believe it or not, after living here for 8 months, I've actually started speaking Finnish - real conversations!  Even arguments.  I had to aggressively defend American cuisine the other day when some guy tried to blanket-statement American food is bad ... because he ate bad Mexican-style food from an "American" restaurant in Helsinki (where Finns manager and cook).  The parent company might actually have ties to America.  And I had all the words to set him straight in Finnish!

For all the warnings that you get about this being the most difficult language in the world, it's really not that bad.   I have found Russian most challenging so far.  

7. '13 Bankers', Financialization, and the Economy.  This was posted about 3 years ago, but the message is still incredibly relevant!  Let this be a foreshadowing of one of my newest and most exciting projects.  If you find this topic interesting, stay tuned!

photo: Cata Portin

8.  Philosophy of life: Insight & Inspiration with one of Finland's most loved philosophers. He also happens to be a researcher and lecturer at my university.  I had lunch with Esa one day; he's a brilliant and lovely man.  He's also my neighbor, and by some funny coincidence, I now live in the apartment he used to own - where he raised his kids.  Here's a paper on elevated reflection that serves as a great introduction to his work and passion!
If you've ever been to Finland, you understand how brilliantly Esa stands out!

9. What the World Eats in a Week. This is a super neat photograph collection of families around the world, surrounded by everything they eat in a typical week.  Highlights: I was astounded by the volume of what the German family drinks compared to all others.  I was also horrified by the minuscule 1/12th of the British table that contained unprocessed, fresh edibles.  Mexico appears to adore Coca-Cola; Guatemalans have insanely red tomatoes; bananas / plantains must be in every Ecuadorian dish.  Based on this table analysis, I should probably move to Turkey or Italy.  

Bhutan - photo: Peter Menzel

"Return of the Sun"

This week Finland has been aglow with the return of that beautiful orange orb that apparently still exists, though I almost began to fear it had permanently burned out during these past few months.

Greenland is also seeing the return of the sun. Earlier and earlier each year as of late, it seems.  Enjoy these four minutes of magic ...


Return of the Sun from Glen Milner on Vimeo.

Trekking to Everest

Dipak convinced me that it would be crazy to go up to Lukla for 11 weeks and not trek to Everest Base Camp. "You're halfway there!  This is once lifetime opportunity - you must do it."

He was so excited about it himself, and I had such a good time listening to his stories of the Sherpas that I just couldn't resist.  Most people pay upwards of $1,300 for the trip, but since I'll already be on the road from Lukla (where the trek starts) to Base Camp, and since I already have all the gear needed for the summertime trek and will be acclimatized to the altitude, and since I have such good connections with Nepali people, the price of the 10-day trek is only $479 for me.  There are four of us going together - all volunteers with RCDP* who I've met in the hostel here in Kathmandu. We've spent the week together in intensive language courses.  On Monday I'll be flying with Joanna from Singapore, Nate from Minnesota, and Emma from Hong Kong to Lukla. From there Joanna, Nate and I will walk an hour and a half uphill to the monastery, and Emma will walk downhill a half hour to her host family and the school in which she'll be teaching.

After about four weeks, Emma will have finished her project and Dawa, the RCDP Coordinator in Lukla, will walk with her up to the monastery, where we'll join them to continue up the mountain.  Dawa will be our guide all the way to Base Camp.  Having summited Mt Everest before and guided many other groups up to Base Camp, he's well qualified to do so.  We'll also have two porters - Sherpas who will carry our baggage.  All we'll carry is a day pack with water, snacks and a camera. Along the way we'll sleep and take meals in tea houses scattered all the way up to Base Camp 3 (we're only going to Base Camp 1).  This lessens the burden on our porters, who won't have to carry tents and cooking equipment.  Nevertheless, I'll still be bringing a sleeping bag because the temperature inside the tea houses is the temperature outside. There are no heating systems, besides perhaps the cooking fire.  What the tea house does offer is a shelter from the wind.  Even so, it only gets down to just above freezing in the summer - even at 6,000 meters (about 19,700 feet) - the approximate altitude of Base Camp 1.

I've really enjoyed listening to stories of the Sherpa people, and I'm looking forward to living with them for the next 11 weeks.  Though I haven't read any of the books published by Americans, Germans, Canadians and others who've summited Everest, I've certainly seen and heard of them.  I always imagined these had to be some of the toughest individuals on earth.  And no doubt they're fit.  But what I didn't know is that for every individual who writes a book about getting to the top, there's a team of guides and porters behind him or her who did the real work - carrying all the gear, setting up camp and navigating the route.  Most of these Sherpas have summited Everest 17, 18, 20 times. They bound up and down the mountain like gazelles - even when carrying three people's baggage - and porters are constantly going up ahead and then coming back down to check on the foreigners, then moving on up ahead, coming back down to see if anyone needs anything out of the bags. (The guide stays with the group the whole time.) One of the volunteers here is a French Canadian in med school and told me that Sherpas actually have more red blood cells than we do and are therefore able to take in more oxygen with each breath.  She said even after a week or two up there I'd start to produce more red blood cells, too!  

I'm glad I'll be spending about 4 weeks at 10,000 ft before moving up to 19,000 ft.  Hopefully my red blood cell count will increase sufficiently to ease the trek, and lower my chance of getting altitude sickness, which is really a serious concern as you can die if you don't descend to a safe altitude immediately.

*Real Community Development Projects

Murmuration

I started to write: "I'm in one of the moods tonight that's a perfect mixture between introspectiveness and appreciation for social fellowship; a healthy balance of quietness and exuberance; maintaining focused thoughts yet finding myself on the brink of complete awe and wonder at the world around me."
But then I decided I could say all that in one word.  Peace.

At peace is a most wonderful place to be.
And it is here, where one is most vulnerable to feelings of overwhelming enthusiasm when presented with even the littlest joys of life, that I came upon one of the most awe-inspiring phenomena of the natural world that I've ever seen.  Just look for yourself....

Murmuration, by Sophie Windsor Clive A chance encounter and shared moment with one of nature's greatest and most fleeting phenomena.
Shot 14 days ago on the River Shannon in Ireland.