Driving south from Glastonbury, I check my map and conclude that I am about an hour from my second destination, Stonehenge. I settle in to enjoy the drive. It is an odd sensation -  driving on the opposite side of the road in the opposite seat from what one is used to in the States.

The fabulous and uncharacteristically beautiful weather continues to amaze me. It is October,sunny, and warm - three words that usually don’t occur in the same sentence for any length of time in England, especially in October.

The English countryside is just as idllic as pictures suggest. Green hills roll by, spotted with farms and grazing sheep. The winding road is occasionally and artistically interrupted by small villages. Within the villages I see some modern structures, but there are many historic buildings, remnants of people and times long gone.  The thickly textured thatch roofs are a feat of timeless engineering and show a proud art; a well thatched roof may easily serve longer than an owner’s lifetime, some have lasted a hundred years. It is a splendid thing to see, these villages.

Enraptured by my drive, I make a few wrong turns. I finally conclude that it is time for some technology. I pull into a lot next to a huge and weathered barn to dig through my bag for my handheld.  I slap the GPS module into it, center the map on my location, and program the destination for Stonehenge.

My trusty but somewhat obsolete GPS leads me spot on to Stonehenge. Laughing inwardly, I wonder what the architects of this ancient place would think of such a device. The best estimates of modern scholars place the origins of Stonehenge at some 4000+ years ago.

The ring of stones are stunning in their simplicity. The afternoon sun gives a sharp definition to the angles and textures of the weathered and roughly hewn megaliths. Their majesty is evident, they stand stark in a wide open landscape. From horizon to horizon there is nothing to clutter the view. How Stonehenge has  survived all these millennia I cannot imagine. Some fallen stones have disappeared throughout the ages, but overall the circle remains remarkably intact. It is rather hard to imagine, but in 1917 some misguided officials submitted an outrageously odd application to request the complete demolition of Stonehenge -  with the claim that it was an unacceptable hazard to low flying aircraft! It seems that bureaucracy and ineptitude are timeless as well.

I am pleasantly surprised by the lack of obvious tourism. The only scar upon the otherwise uninterrupted green land is a smallish parking lot on the opposite side of the street from the ancient ring of stones. Pulling into to a slot, I exit the car and look for signs of an information center.

I find an information booth and a shop, both cleverly concealed in a channel cut blow  ground level on the far side of the parking lot. I am glad that someone had this idea. Nothing would spoil the serenity and magic of this placid setting more than the usual gaudy badge of tourism heralded by blatantly tasteless signage and buildings. A small tunnel under the road opens innocuously at the edge of a meadow,  in the middle of which stands  Stonehenge. It is an unforgettable sight. It is indelibly and gloriously stamped on my mind.

Surrounding the circle of stones is a modest path. Seemingly mesmerized by the ancient tableau,  visitors walk the path and lounge on the grass in near silence. Herds of sheep graze in nearby fields.

I get out my camera. It is a perfect day. I  stand in front of Stonehenge, recalling my morning stroll through the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey. It is a perfect day.

Written at Stonehenge

Thou noblest monument of Albion’s isle!

Whether by Merlin’s aid, from Scythia’s shore,

To Amber’s fatal plain Pendragon bore,

Huge frame of giant-hands, the mighty pile

T’ entomb his Britons slain by Hengist’s guile:

Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,

Taught ‘mid thy massy maze their mystic lore:

Or Danish chiefs, enrich’d with savage spoil,

To Victory’s idol vast, an unhewn shrine,

Rear’d the rude heap: or, in thy hallow’d round,

Repose the kings of Brutus’ genuine line;

Or here those kings in solemn state were crown’d:

Studious to trace thy wondrous origine,

We muse on many an ancient tale renown’d.

Thomas Warton the younger (1728-1790)

Ming had her surgery as scheduled on Thursday, Sept 18th. She was in the hospital until the following Monday. It could not have gone better, and the folks at Johns Hopkins took exceptionally good care of us!

I saw this van on a morning walk through the streets of Singapore. Stopped me in my track!. Painted on the side is “Hindu Casket One-Stop Funeral Service”.

Take a close look.

It was September of 1989 in San Juan, Puerto Rico and I was enjoying my first day out after being flat on my back with dengue fever for 3 weeks. My girlfriend Sandra and I were enjoying a comedy by a local drama group when her pager started vibrating. Puzzled, she looked at me and gestured to come with her. Exiting the theater she told me that the message had been from the FBI, telling her to secure her Bureau car.

Sandra, a native Puerto Rican and in her 30’s at the time had been an agent since shortly after graduating from college. In the era before the www information age, she was about as close as an inside source as you could get. A few phone calls with a mobile phone the size of a brick (and weighing just as much) sent us scurrying to prepare for the possible onslaught of the first major hurricane to hit PR in decades.

When you are on an island and a category 5 hurricane is coming, you have very few options. You can’t leave, so you buy water, you buy food and necessities, you put all the furniture on the first floor of the house up on plastic milk crates as high as you can…. and you wait.

You are comforted by the fact that the house is, in fact, constructed of solid concrete reinforced with rebar throughout. You are, in fact living in a nearly indestructible edifice. While you’re waiting and thinking about the really solid house you are in (just a few blocks from the beach) , it suddenly occurs to you that even with the milk crates if the neighborhood floods too much, you’re still in a shitload of trouble because all the houses in PR have rejas (wroght iron security bars) over the outside of the windows and the ONLY way out is through one of the 3 padlocked downstairs wrought iron doors.

You are glad you are a strong swimmer, but you are wondering in a detached way if in the aftermath it would be possible to hold your breath long enough to unlock the doors. You think about the Poseidon movie and wonder briefly if you should unlock just one lock downstairs, but that thought is very brief since crime is rampant here and the police corrupt and if it does get really bad there will be looting and THOSE people will definitely have guns. Sandra has all her guns upstairs, they are ready too, but hopefully unnecessary. You are glad again that the house is made of thick concrete and has bars over all the windows. You are a pacifist at heart but know perfectly well how to handle a gun and would shoot someone if you had to but hope you never have to make that decision. You are exhausted from the weeks of dengue fever and preparing the house for the hurricane and you want nothing more than to sleep.

Soon, it is dark. Suddenly the wind whips up and the lights go out. They will stay out for the greater part of two months, but you don’t know that yet. Sandra, your little dynamo hard ass FBI agent girlfriend is most defiantly NOT relaxed. She is saying “coño, coño, coño”. You take a flashlight and a futon and Sandra and make a bed on the floor in the interior upstairs hallway. There are no windows there. It is safe. Leaving Sandra to fall asleep, you exit the hallway.

You are not worried; you are in fact, exhilarated. You wonder, not for the first time if that means that you are missing some fear factor that makes other people much more sensible than you. But you don’t worry about that either because that’s how you are.

Back to the storm; the winds sound awesome outside but it is too dark to see anything. You hear an occasional  “BOOM!” like a cannonball hitting the back of the house and you know that the nearly ripe and very large coconuts from the giant palm tree taller than the top floor are barraging the house. Worried that the glass from the windows facing that side might shatter, you pull the blinds down. You sit and listen for a long time.

Finally succumbing to exhaustion, you go out in the hall and collapse next to Sandra, She is out like…….. well, like all the lights.

You wake. Sandra is still sleeping. You venture out of the hallway again. The storm is still raging but it is light. You go to the windows and see that they are not broken. The coconuts were too big to fit through the rejas. The wind is glorious in its violence. The palm trees are bent nearly horizontal under the onslaught of the gale and the pounding rain. You try the battery-powered radio, but all the stations are off the air. You are still exhilarated.

After a few hours, the wind winds down to nothing and the rain stops. The sun comes out. You and Sandra venture downstairs. You unlock the door and pick your way among the debris outside. You have no way to know if you are in the eye or if Hugo has passed.

You realize now that it was much more than coconuts hitting the house. At the back of the house is a road that leads directly to the beach and it has acted like a wind tunnel. There is a ten-foot high pile of trees and debris surrounding the downstairs floor. Some of the trees are huge, deposited in their entirety, roots still intact. You are once again glad you were in a concrete house. It is unscathed, but everything not firmly attached including the trees that used to make your yard a dark dense jungle, are gone. The few trees that are not gone look bizarre.  Stripped of their leaves it looks like winter, which of course in Puerto Rico never happens. It is quiet. Too quiet. You hear no birds, no cars, nothing.

Your house miraculously is an island on an island. Most of the rest of the neighborhood is flooded from the storm surge. The north coast of Puerto Rico is now at your back fence being held at bay by a cinder block base that supports an ugly chain link fence. You and a couple of your neighbors are on a small hill you never noticed before and these houses are the select few not flooded.

Turning on the battery powered AM radio you find an English station that is broadcasting again. It is not the eye. Hugo is gone. Time to clean up.

In the days following, the news trickles in. During the day as well as at night, you hear gunshots. You hear that a family down the street was forced out of their house at gunpoint and stood there while the looters loaded up their truck and left. You are sad. You are a pacifist but the guns are ready and you and Sandra both know how to use them.

Well, this is not the post I had hoped to write about our adoption adventure, but such is life. We returned yesterday from taking Ming to see Dr George Jallo, Director of pediatric Neurology at Johns Hopkins. We took her to see him because she has a mild form of Spina Bifida that caused the abnormality of her foot (clubfoot).

We were hoping to get confirmation that her Spina Bifida was not to be any further issue. However, Dr. Jallo took one look at Ming’s wobbly gait and told us that she has Tethered Cord Syndrome and will need surgery ASAP to prevent neurological deterioration. In the simplest of explanations, Ming’s lower spinal cord is stuck when it should be able to move freely, so surgical intervention is needed to un-tether her cord.

Dr. George Jallo

However disappointing this news is, we couldn’t be in better shape with Ming’s medical care. US News and World Report ranks John’s Hopkins #1 in Pediatric Neurology & Neurosurgery, and Dr Jallo is Director of that department. We are also lucky that we are equipped with 2 very good family medical insurance policies that will likely cover most, if not all of those top ranking medical services. Phew!

Ming’s surgery is scheduled for September 18th.

The unassuming and very excellent Far East Youth Hotel/Hostel is in SW central Beijing, a pleasant 20 min stroll to Tiananmen. The tower has singles, doubles and triples with shower. Across the street are dorm bunks in an old traditional courtyard building. Located in one of the few remaining original Hutongs (i.e. NOT big shiny high rises) Clean modern and safe. My fav in Beijing

The unassuming facade of the Far East Hotel and Hostel, Beijing China
(Click above to zoom)

(Click above to zoom)
Taxi map to the Far East. It’s VERY important to have a bilingual map or you won’t get there!

Below are some of my favorite spots in and around Beijing and the Far East .

Oh and if you want good steamed dumplings, hang a right as you exit the lobby and walk about 10 mins until you see a funny, life sized statue of a guy holding a dumpling in his hand on the left. It’s in one of the smaller, older and more tourist-free shopping districts in Beijing.  After a yummy meal, (remember, no ice! no water! no drinks made with water except hot tea!) keep walking to the main road, then walk directly north to  arrive at the south end of Tiananmen. On the other side of the loooooong plaza is the Forbidden City. In the middle is Mao’s tomb, which likely has a long line snaking all the way around the building.

[Show as slideshow]

Yesterday Ming received her “Big Shoe” as we call it. It’s a brace that is worn while sleeping to maintain the clubfoot correction, and it is just like big brother Kai Dong’s! KaI was very excited to show Ming how he puts his on before bed, and now they are happy to do “teamwork Big Shoe” all night.

This brace was developed by Ignacio Ponseti, MD Department of Orthopaedic Surgery University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Kai Dong has been wearing his for about a year an a half now. He often tells people how his Big Shoe is helping his foot. We tried other bracing methods, but this was what he was ultimately comfortable with. Ming seems to like it too. this is her second night, and both times we got it out to put on she said “WOW, WOW!” with a big smile.

When she was at home she would completely ignore the cast, it was as if it wasn’t there, but she ALWAYS cried at the hospital. It wasn’t painful, she just didn’t like getting the cast removed and replaced. Note the picture below!  The casting material is a wonderful rigid material that is wet and then wound around to create a full leg cast. Almost immediatly it is rigid but lightweight and ready to go.

We’re waiting for her orthotics; she’s getting a nightime sleeping brace ( like big brother Kai Dong) , and a short molded day brace to support her ankle. Both braces will help keep her foot from starting to turn inward again.

Below are Ming’s “before” and “after” photos.

Ming’s foot in her referral photo (click above to zoom)

Ming stands! Ming Cries! Ming doesn’t like going to the doctor’s!
(click above to zoom)

Phew! Nothing like a big, soft puppy after a tough day!
Ming sleeps with her new little cast* (click above to zoom)

* I had a question about Ming’s small cast, since it is not the standard full leg cast -  the answer;

Ming had her little short cast just for a few days. On the day we went in to get her last cast off, her orthotics were ready (Ponsetti night brace and a molded day brace for her ankle) but somehow there were crossed  communication wires and they were left at the Dennison orthotics office. To avoid losing the beautiful correction and to avoid another trip for us to Baltimore ( 2 hours RT), Dr. Sponseller put a little half cast on her, which I unwrapped myself and took off as soon her orthotics arrived in the mail. The short cast actually worked like a charm, it gave her a chance to begin to trot around with some support, and it was easy to remove.

Mainly for exposure, I listed several pieces of Artsfish Design Studio jewelry on Ebay at a substantial discount. Now, I know that it is summer and historically items sell slower during the season when anyone with a life is out and about - but the auction results were disturbing. Nothing is selling. Not just my items, but everything in similar categories.

Things that are selling; items that are much more vital to people’s lives than jewelry. It isn’t a far leap to say that this is another worrisome trend in the ever-plunging economy.  I am wondering if I list on the UK ebay if items would sell considering that with the exchange rate for the British pound, everything is basically half price.

Ah well.

The current listings are HERE

Click here