Writer's Almanac, Dec. 27, 2015

It's the birthday of chemist Louis Pasteur, born in Dole, France (1822). Although he was not a physician, Pasteur was one of the most important medical scientists of the 19th century. He made four important discoveries that changed the modern world. First, he discovered that most infectious diseases are caused by germs, and that instituting sanitary conditions in hospitals could save many lives. Second, he discovered that weakened forms of a germ or microbe could be used as a vaccine to immunize against more virulent forms of the microbe. Third, he discovered that rabies was transmitted by particles so small they could not be seen under a microscope, thus revealing the existence of viruses. And fourth, he developed pasteurization, a process that uses heat to destroy harmful microbes in food products without destroying the food itself.

The Writer's Alamac 12/26/2015

On this date in 2004, a tsunami devastated coastlines along the Indian Ocean. It was triggered by an earthquake in the middle of the ocean, 160 miles west of Sumatra. With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, the quake was the third strongest ever recorded on a seismograph, and it lasted for up to 10 minutes. It occurred when pressure built up along a 600-mile fault line between two tectonic plates to such a degree that one plate slipped underneath the other. The quake occurred in relatively shallow water, which meant that the energy was not dispersed as much as it would have been in deeper seas. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the quake released energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The quake was so powerful that it vibrated the whole planet and actually changed the Earth's rotation very slightly.

The shifting of the plates raised the sea floor by about 10 yards, and this displaced massive amounts of water. The tsunami chain that this generated reached the Sumatra coast within 15 minutes. The waves - which started small but grew as high as 50 feet - wiped out whole villages in seconds. The tsunami even claimed lives in South Africa, up to 3,000 miles away from the epicenter of the quake. An estimated 230,000 people from 14 different countries died; half a million more were injured. Five million people required humanitarian aid. A ship weighing almost 3,000 tons was thrown almost a mile inland, where it remains a tourist attraction in Indonesia. But there were very few animal casualties; many people reported seeing animals fleeing for higher ground just minutes before the tsunami struck.

Two years after the quake and tsunami, the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System went into operation, and it was successfully put to the test in 2012, when more quakes hit the Indian Ocean.

Dec. 25, 2015 Writer's Almanac

Today is Christmas Day. Many of our Christmas traditions here in America came to us from England - specifically, Victorian England of the 19th century. In fact, there are some who credit Charles Dickens with inventing the holiday, at least as we know it today. In early 19th-century Britain, rural workers were moving to the cities in droves. They left behind the Christmas traditions of their home regions, but they didn't really adopt the practices of city dwellers, either. The holiday was slowly waning, and by mid-century, middle-aged Britons had begun to feel nostalgic for the holidays of their youth, even as they adapted to new customs like the Christmas tree, a tradition imported by Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert. The American writer Washington Irving spent time in England and fell in love with some of the old Christmas traditions that were fading away. He believed - and Charles Dickens later agreed - that a revival of old Christmas traditions would promote social harmony. But by the mid-19th century, few could afford to take off "the twelve days of Christmas" to celebrate the season, as they once had. Conditions for industrial workers and miners were very bad, and Dickens - who had himself worked in a blacking factory as a boy - became determined to "strike a sledgehammer blow" for the poor. He also thought a great deal about the Christmas traditions of his father's boyhood in the country: games, dancing, mulled wine, Christmas pudding, and a fat roasted goose. Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol contains both of these elements - an appeal to care for the less fortunate as an act of Christian charity, and a celebration of that cozy country Christmas that Dickens imagined so fondly. The story was an instant success, and Dickens found himself obligated to churn out a new Christmas story on a regular basis for many years. He grumbled, but he really did love the holiday. As his son later remembered, Christmas was, for Dickens, "a great time, a really jovial time, and my father was always at his best, a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy and throwing his heart and soul into everything that was going on [...] And then the dance! There was no stopping him!"

One of my favorite books. From 12/17/15 Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang (books by this author), born in Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand (1980). Her family moved to Minnesota when she was six years old. She planned to become a doctor. Then, during college, she did a study abroad program in Thailand that focused on global poverty. She said: "When I came back to America and college, I knew I could survive poverty in my life without being selfish. This is how I knew I could write." So she continued on to an MFA program, and she wrote a memoir about growing up Hmong in America, called The Latehomecomer(2008).

She said, "I became involved with writing like it is a love affair."

PS  January 11, 2016 I leave for Thailand and return February 15.

Bill Of Rights

From the 12/15/15 Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was ratified by the newly formed United States of America. From the beginning, American politicians fought about how much power the central government should have. Some believed that the Constitution did not do enough to protect individual liberties, and worried that the Constitution would allow the central government to oppress the people. During the Constitutional Convention, several states only agreed to ratify the Constitution with the understanding that a Bill of Rights would be added to guarantee basic rights to American citizens.

The most vocal supporter of a Bill of Rights was George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Thomas Jefferson used it as an inspiration for the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison used it as a model for the Bill of Rights. Madison ran for Congress (and won) with the promise that he would support a Bill of Rights. Four days after Washington's inauguration, Madison began the work of reading through the Constitution and noting all the places he thought it should be changed. These changes were presented as a list of 19 amendments. Madison used non-negotiable language. For example, where the states rights documents said that the government "ought not" to interfere with freedom of the press, Madison wrote that it "shall not." Of Madison's 19 amendments, the House approved 17, and the Senate 12. By the time they were ratified by all the states, the amendments were down to 10. One of the two amendments that didn't make the final cut was never ratified, but the second - an amendment about congressional salaries - was ratified in 1992. The 10 amendments that became the Bill of Rights guarantee the freedom of the press, right to bear arms, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, and other basic rights.

In a 1788 letter to Jefferson about the Bill of Rights, Madison wrote: "It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the Government have too much or too little power, and that the line which defines these extremes should be so inaccurately defined by experience."

Recommended Reading

    My mother sometimes talked about the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.  She was 18 and the flu hit young people very hard...(it had to do with the vigor of their immune system).  Her sister, Ella, died and her brother, Oscar, came home from Alberta, Canada where he was farming, got sick and almost died.  Their brother, John, was in a military camp in the south and he, too. got sick.  WW I had a major impact on the spread of the Flu.  As many as 100,000 million people worldwide may have died.
   The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry tells not only the story of the flu but also the history of the rise of modern medicine.  Germ theory had recently been developed and clinicians were beginning to understand viruses.  His explanation of the nature of viruses is very helpful.  The flu may have been one of the factors leading to WW II because President Wilson came down with the flu during the peace negotiations after WW I.  Too sick to hold out for a balanced peace accord Britain and France imposed draconian peace terms which left Germany vulnerable to the rise of Hitler. I think it is a very important book.
    Quite a different book is The Checkered Years: A Bonanza Farm Diary 1884-88.  Mary Dodge Woodward moved from Wisconsin with her adult sons to keep house while they managed the 1500 acre farm.  A very literate woman she kept this diary which often records what she and her sons were reading.  It provides very interesting insights into what was a very harsh life.

The Art Of Travel

    "We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or 'human flourishing'." from the quirky little book by Allain De Botton, The Art of Travel.
     De Botton also writes about a visit he made to a tropical island.  In a travel brochure he saw a picture of a palm tree on a tropical beach.  It was so appealing that he decided to make a trip to the island.  When he arrived he was disappointed, even though the island was as it had been described. No.  His disappointment lay in the fact that he had brought himself along on the journey, and, that included  all of his internal issues.
     I've been intrigued by how excited some people get when they are in a far distant country and they meet someone from their home state or home town,  Oh, I do find it mildly interesting but not nearly as fascinating as an encounter with someone who is native to that far off land.  Perhaps that's why, when I travel, I avoid places where Americans hang out. There are enough opportunities to socialize with Americans when I'm in America.  Maybe that's some of the difference between a traveler and a tourist.
    As I suggested in my Oct. 21, blog the unexpected things we encounter in travel often create the adventures and the stories we later tell.

A Good Argument for Military Draft. (From 11/15/15 Writer's Almanac)

It was on this day in 1940 that 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under the first peacetime conscription in American history. There had been a long history of resistance to mandatory military service in this country. During World War I, an estimated 3 million young men refused to register, and 12 percent of those called up didn't report for duty or deserted. Franklin Roosevelt's decision to impose a draft in the summer of 1940 was especially controversial because the country wasn't even at war. But Americans had all seen newspaper and newsreel coverage of the German Army rolling over Poland in a few weeks, and doing the same in France in a few months. By June of that year, Germans controlled most of the European continent, and the United States had a poorly trained standing army of only about 200,000 soldiers. So even though he worried it might hurt his chances of re-election that November, Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the first peacetime draft in American history. That October, 16 million young men appeared at precinct election boards across the country to register with the Selective Service. The first lottery was held in Washington, D.C., and it was designed to be as patriotic a ceremony as possible. Secretary of War Henry Stimson was blindfolded with cloth taken from a chair that had been used at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the ladle he used to scoop out numbers had been made from the wood of one of the rafters of Independence Hall. After the selection process, the first 75,000 draftees were called up to service on this day in 1940. During World War II alone, the draft selected 19 million men and inducted 10 million. The draft lapsed briefly after World War II, but the Red Scare persuaded Truman to start it up again, and it continued until 1973. Most Americans were happy about the end of the draft, but in 1999 the historian Stephen Ambrose wrote: "Today, Cajuns from the Gulf Coast have never met a black person from Chicago. Kids from the ghetto don't know a middle-class white. Mexican-Americans have no contact with Jews. Muslim Americans have few Christian acquaintances ... But during World War II and the Cold War, American [men] from every group got together in the service, having a common goal - to defend their country ... They learned together, pledged allegiance together, sweated together, hated their drill sergeants together, got drunk together, went overseas together. What they had in common - patriotism, a language, a past they could emphasize and venerate - mattered far more than what divided them." The Curmudgeon says:  "I don't know how patriotic we were but the Marines were certainly  a melting pot.  Yes, my life long friend is an Iowa farmer.  But, before the Marines I knew no Blacks, Mormons,  Mexicans, men from Louisiana, Asians, etc.  There are other good reasons to re-instate the draft and the issue may soon be forced by the lack of volunteer enlistments."

Memory Time from The Writer's Almanac.

Corn Picking 1956 - Afternoon Break  by Tom Hennen Listen Online I needed a heavy canvas jacket riding the cold red tractor, air an ice cube on bare skin. Blue sky over the aspen grove I drove through on the way back to the field, throttle wide open, the empty wagon I pulled hitting all the bumps on the dirt road. In the high branches of the aspens little explosions now and then sent leaves tumbling and spinning like coins tossed into the air. The two-row, tractor-mounted corn-picker was waiting at the end of the corn rows, the wagon behind it heaped so high with ears of corn their yellow could be seen a mile away. My father, who ran the picker, was already sitting on the ground, leaning back against the big rear wheel of the tractor. In that spot out of the wind we ate ham sandwiches and doughnuts, and drank hot coffee from a clear Mason jar wrapped in newspaper to keep it warm. The autumn day had spilled the color gold every- where: aspen, cornstalks, ears of corn piled high, coffee mixed with fresh cream, the fur of my dog, Boots, who was sharing our food. And when my father and I spoke, joking with the happy dog, we did not know it then, but even the words that we carelessly dropped were left to shine forever on the bottom of the clear, cold afternoon. "Corn Picking 1956 - Afternoon Break" by Tom Hennen from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013. Reprinted with permission. (

From The Writer's Almanac 11/12/15

It was on this day in 1954 that Ellis Island formally closed its doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants to the United States in its more than a half century of service. Before 1890, when President Harrison designated it the first federal immigration center, the states had previously managed immigration themselves. New York's Castle Garden station had single-handedly processed more than 8 million newcomers in the previous 40 years. As conditions in southern and eastern Europe worsened, and demand for religious asylum increased, officials prepared for what would be soon be the greatest human migration in the history of the world, deciding to greet the "huddled masses" before they ever hit shore. On January 1st, 1894, a 15-year-old Irish girl named Annie Moore became the first person to be ushered through the gates at Ellis Island. The original Great Hall was built of southern yellow pine and served well until a fire in 1897 burned it to the ground along with all the country's immigration records dating back to 1855. The government rebuilt quickly with fireproof concrete this time. First- and second-class passengers arriving in the U.S. were waved pass the island and given just a brief inspection on board to check for obvious disease. After docking in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the poorer third-class and steerage passengers were ferried to the island by barge where they underwent more thorough interviews. Officials observed the immigrants as they climbed the staircase into the main hall and marked a simple chalk code on the coats of those they suspected to be sickly. If you were in good health and your story checked out, processing might only take about five hours. Only 2 percent of all immigrants that passed through the gates were turned away, often for infectious disease. The facilities expanded constantly to meet the growing throngs of people, and engineers steadily increased the footprint of the island by dumping ship's ballast and piling up landfill from construction of the first subway lines. The island was eventually expanded tenfold to roughly 30 square miles. In the year 1907 alone, more than a million people passed through the center. With the dawn of World War I, immigration from Europe began to slow. The Red Scare and a growing backlash against foreigners at home soon brought it to a crawl. After 1924, laws were passed allowing immigrants to be processed at foreign embassies, and Ellis Island was made into a detention center for suspected enemies. On this day in 1954, the last detainee was released and the island was formally decommissioned. Abandoned for decades, in 1984 the island began the largest restoration undertaking in U.S. history, creating an Immigration Museum that has now drawn more than 30 million visitors. Today almost 40 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry through the gates of Ellis Island.

Writing Assignment

     "Choose your favorite book.  Next declare the literary reason it is your favorite book; is it the plot, or maybe the characters, is the description of the action...tell your connection to the book, how did you feel as you read it?"   These were some of the directions that H.P., the 6th grade teacher, gave her students for a writing project.  Students were to name the book and its author. After naming the literary feature that they claimed as the reason for choosing the they were told to give three examples from the book to support their claim.  Included in these examples were to be their personal reactions as they read that section.  When this assignment was complete they wrote a rough draft of a paper, book report, which they first shared with other students for critique.  After changes were made based on that critique H.P., or I, helped them proof read for spelling, clarity, punctuation and grammar.  The final step was writing the paper either longhand or on a computer.
    These students are receiving a wonderful basic education in how to write.  Some of them are gifted writers while others really struggled.  All of them were exposed to the basic elements of writing a paper..a foundation on which they can build.
    "The context you ask?"  Noble Academy, the Hmong Charter School were I volunteer.  Some charter schools get a bad rap but at Noble academics are taken very seriously.  In fact, the Noble school day is an hour longer than that of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  In addition about 75% of the students voluntarily attend summer school which concentrates on reading and math.
   

Hot vs Cool or Anxious vs Non-Anxious

      Watching the Benghazi Committee hearing yesterday when Hillary Clinton was questioned about the attack on the U.S. consulate, reminded me of the first ever televised presidential debate.  (There are some benefits to being old.) The debate was between Nixon and Kennedy.  Kennedy was widely thought to have won the debate, not so much for what he said as for his demeanor.
      Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher, is famous for having said "the medium is the message."   That rang true in the Committee hearing while Hillary remained cool, i.e., non-anxious, while much of the committee was palpably anxious.  Viewers are hypersensitive to anxiety.  Have you ever been at a public event where the presenter gets flustered and noticed your own rise in anxiety?
   In McLuhan language Nixon, and the committee, were hot while Kennedy, and Clinton, were cool. Because I like the categories from Family Systems thought I call them anxious and non-anxious respectively.  So, I agree with McLuhan, that, in many respects at least, the medium is the message.
   Leaders who are anxious always run the risk of attack.  This is because followers don't like to be anxious but become so when the leader is anxious.  If the opportunity arises they often respond by attacking the leader.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" or Stories we Tell Ourselves

    During my enlistment in the United States Marine Corps I was once recruited to do some painting. Stationed at  Camp Pendleton, CA., I worked in the office of a rifle company.  The sergeant in charge of the office rented a different apartment in town and wanted it painted before he moved in.  Three or four of us were recruited to do the painting.
    Busily painting away in my corner of the room, doing the best I could, it apparently wasn't good enough. Sarge watched me paint for a few minutes and then said "Al, why don't you go buy the beer?"  Neither of us had been taught that "anything worth doing is worth badly", or, at least if Sarge knew it he didn't want the "doing badly" on his wall.
   I've parlayed that experience into a lifetime of never having to paint, by telling myself the story that I can't paint.  Had I been in the  mindset that skills come slowly, perhaps I'd have learned to paint. Of course, I do admit, it has also been convenient.
    Do you ever listen to the stories you tell yourself about yourself?   Driving near my home I recently took a wrong turn.  Several possible stories about the wrong turn presented themselves to me; how stupid, or, what's the matter with me, or, my memory is failing, or, I'm an idiot.  What do your inner voices say to you about you?   I'm guessing that for many people that voice is often an inner critic.  If that's true, perhaps we should ask "Where did we learn to be so critical?"  Why the judgment?   Missed a corner? Yup...I'm absent minded, always have been because there is always a lot going on in my mind

 What's your story?

Perhaps I was better at carrying rifle than painting.

Stories

    While I'm in Thailand early next year, the Curmudgeonette has plans to spend some time in Arizona.  She's recruited her college roommate, J.J., as a traveling companion.  As plans for this trip were being developed discussion turned to possible contingencies.  J.J, said "Well if it doesn't go according to plan it will be an adventure.  Adventures will give us stories to tell."   I thought, 'now there's a wise woman with a great attitude.'   Of course I knew that before, but it reinforced my opinion of her.
    Yes, stories!  Recently I heard a discussion of traveling on National Public Radio.  One of the speakers spoke of car trips he takes with his wife and children.  He said that when they begin the day he reminds his family it's about creating stories.  This turns the unexpected into fodder for story telling.  It would set the expectation that the surprises are to be eagerly anticipated and not seen as frustrating interruptions of the day's planned activities.
    In one of my travel books the author makes the point that there is a significant difference between a traveler and tourist.  Much of the difference is in the reaction to the unexpected.  The tourist heads for the safe, known, popular places where he/she is likely to be surrounded by other persons much like him/her.  The traveler, on the other hand, is interested in experiencing the culture and life in a new place and the unexpected, the different, the unfamiliarity is the point to travel.
    Thailand, and especially Bangkok and Ayutthaya, are now very familiar to me...my home away from home.  Therefore, it is more difficult for me to be surprised and have the data for stories. Seeing pigs on motorcycles, goats on the street, elephants walking home after work (when the Curmudgeonette read this she thought I meant "when I was walking home" but it's the elephants that are walking home), children on water buffalo, tuk-tuks, long tail boats, rice paddies, 4 passengers on a motorbike, a wheelchair pulled by a motorbike, beggars on their bellies, royal photos everywhere, pick-up trucks with loads ten feet high, everyone standing at attention at 6pm as the national anthem plays, drivers sleeping in hammocks under their parked buses...and much more, I now take for granted. 
      The last few years students at Noble Academy, the Hmong charter school where I volunteer, have done "I spy" with me.  That is, they brainstorm photo opportunities for which they want me to search while I'm in Thailand.  This has been very helpful as I look at, what is now familiar to me, through their eyes and recapture some of sense of how exotic it all is compared to home.
    There there are the stories we tell ourselves...but I think I'll save that for a subsequent post.

I drive by this temple every day on my way to school in Ayutthaya.

End Of Revolutionary War

From the Writer's Almanac

Today is the anniversary of the surrender that ended the American Revolutionary War, in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. George Washington had had a difficult spring. His troops were low on supplies and food, their clothing was in shreds, and there had been a steady stream of desertions from his ranks. By summer, Washington had only a few thousand troops camped at West Point, New York. The British expected Washington to attack New York City, which he had been planning to do for most of the spring. But when he learned that the British forces under the control of Lord Cornwallis were building a naval base on the Yorktown Peninsula in Virginia, he decided impulsively to march his army from New York to Virginia, in the hopes of trapping Cornwallis and capturing his army. Washington's plan to move his army 400 miles in order to catch his enemy by surprise was a bold move. He had to march his troops toward New York City first, to scare the British into hunkering down for an attack. Then he quickly moved south. Washington's men and their French allies marched every day from 2:00 a.m. until it grew too hot to continue. It was a hot summer, and on one day, more than 400 men passed out from the heat. Few armies in history had ever moved so far so fast. Lord Cornwallis learned of Washington's approach before he arrived, but Cornwallis chose not to flee, because he thought his troops would be evacuated by the British navy. He didn't realize that the British ships had already been routed by a French fleet from the south. So in the early weeks of October, he watched as Washington's troops surrounded the city and began a siege. After several days of bombarding the city with gun and cannon fire, Washington received word that Cornwallis would surrender. Washington requested that the British march out of the city to give up their arms, and the surrender began at 2:00 a.m. on this day in 1781. The one soldier who didn't surrender was Cornwallis himself. Instead, he sent his sword with his second in command to be offered to the French general, signifying that the British had been defeated by the French, not the Americans. In didn't matter though. England didn't have enough money to raise another army, and they appealed to America for peace. Two years later, the Treaty of Paris was signed, and the war was officially over.

Eleanor Roosevelt from today's Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of the longest-serving First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, born in New York City (1884) who said, "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." She began a secret courtship with her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During World War I, she went off to Europe and visited wounded and shell-shocked soldiers in hospitals there. Later, during her husband's presidency, she campaigned hard on civil rights issues - not a universally popular thing in the 1930s and 1940s. After FDR died in 1945, she moved from the White House to Hyde Park, New York, and taught International Relations at Brandeis University. As anti-communist witch-hunting began to sweep the U.S., she stuck up for freedom of association in a way that few Americans were brave or bold enough to do. She chided Hollywood producers for being so "chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry." She said that the "American public is capable of doing its own censoring" and that "the judge who decides whether what [the film industry] does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies." She said that the Un-American Activities Committee was creating the atmosphere of a police state in America, "where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion." In 1947, a couple years before the McCarthy Era had reached full swing, she announced, "The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA." She once said, "We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk." And, "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."

I took the boat trip mentioned in this article.

Heavy Rains Continue to Flood Areas of Northern Thailand

Weeks of non-stop heavy rain have caused flash flooding throughout Burma and northern Thailand

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CHIANG RAI – The Meteorological Department has forecast heavy rain until Sunday in most areas in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Phayao, Phrae, Nan, Tak, Uttaradit, Sukhothai, Khampaeng Phet and Phichit.

Operators of boat trips to a village housing long-necked Karen women have temporarily suspended service because of flood-related safety concerns.

Long-necked Karen children in the rain

Ampon Unjai, who supervises the Mae Hong Son Boat Cooperative, said on Saturday that trips were cancelled until further notice because rapid currents in the Pai River which could pose a danger to tourists.

The water level in the river rose sharply on Friday after flash floods in mountainous areas upstream in the northern province.

The cooperative runs the boat service from Mae Hong Son town to Huay Pu Keng, a village famous for the long-necked Karen of the Paduang hilltribe, and to Ban Nam Pieng Din near the border with Myanmar.

Heavy rains pounded the province on Friday night and flash floods damaged farmland in Pai, Pang Mapha and Muang districts.

The Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department said on Saturday that the rains had stopped and conditions should return to normal by Sunday.

Soldiers and officials survey the site of a collapsed bridge at Khanaeng village in Chiang Kham district of Phayao. (Photo by Saiarun Pinaduang)

In Phayao Nopparit Sirikosol, chief of Chiang Kham district, said heavy downpours in the Mae Lao watershed area in the northern province had triggered the runoff that tore apart the bridge pilings at Khanaeng village in tambon Mae Lao.

More than 300 residents were left stranded in the village as the bridge was their only access to the outwide world, said Mr Nopparit.

Soldiers arrived on Saturday to build a temporary wooden bridge. Heavy equipment will be brought in later to repair the bridge.

The district chief said he had already reported the damage to provincial authorities and asked them to declare the village a natural disaster zone.

I visited the museum when I saw The Bridge Over the River Kwai

70 years later, Australian devotes life to keeping legacy of Thailand's 'Death Railway' POWs

By DENIS D. GRAY Associated Press

 

AUGUST 10, 2015 — 1:30AM

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NAM TOK, Thailand — Wielding a machete, Rod Beattie slashes at tangled undergrowth and soaring bamboo to expose vistas from one of World War II's iconic sagas. Out of the jungle appear remnants of a railway that cost the lives of more than 100,000 Allied prisoners and Asians enslaved by Japan's Imperial Army.

As the 70th anniversary of the war's end approaches and its veterans dwindle by the day, the aging Australian still slogs along the 415-kilometer (257-mile) length of "Death Railway." With his own money, he maps its vanishing course, uncovers POW relics and with his vast database helps brings closure to relatives of the dead — not only those who perished building the railway, but also those who went to their graves never having shared their traumas.

Beattie acknowledges to being a man obsessed.

"The life I have given isn't just for them but for their descendants," he says. "Their children are now at an age where they have retired. They've got time to ask questions — 'Where was my father? What happened to him?'" And many, bringing along their own children and even grandchildren, are making what Beattie calls pilgrimages to the railway to seek answers, find peace and shed tears.

One daughter he escorted was able to learn for the first time exactly where her father, Pvt. Jack McCarthy, died on July 21, 1943, of what diseases and where he was initially buried.

Then Beattie took her to his final resting place, beneath a headstone brightened by a single poppy. Another daughter recently came fixated on whether wild bananas contained black seeds the POWs would suck for sustenance. It was something her father often recounted. When they found some, it seemed to authenticate and illuminate all that her father told her about his ordeal.

"It made her very happy," Beattie said.

Arguably the world's authority on this drama of inhumanity and courage in a green hell, this one-man band has also busted myths and plain inaccuracies that have accumulated around the railway. Some are drawn from a still-ongoing parade of memoirs, novels and films, from the classic 1957 movie classic "The Bridge on the River Kwai" to "The Railway Man" in 2013 and "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," a novel that won Britain's top literary prize last year.

He's driven, he says, "for history's sake. To give people a true version of the story. After I leave or pass away, who would otherwise know where the railway was?"

Beattie, 67, clambers down a steep slope where the track has been replaced by a rolling field of tapioca. Within 15 minutes, aided by a metal detector and pickax, he uncovered 11 relics under the reddish soil, including railway staples and bolts. He also gathered clues to the location of a labor camp, Tampii South, that he has yet to pinpoint.

Tampii South was among a string of POW camps along the railway, which the Japanese regarded as a strategic supply line from Japanese-controlled Thailand to their forces in Myanmar as Allied warships made the sea route around the Malay Peninsula increasingly hazardous. Completed in 15 months, the railway was an incredible feat of engineering and human toil.

More than 12,000 Australian, British, Dutch and American prisoners died along with an estimated 90,000 Asians, including Tamils from Malaysia, Burmese and Indonesians — some 250 corpses for every kilometer of track. Working with primitive tools and their bare hands, the prisoners succumbed to cholera, beriberi, starvation, executions and despair.

A civil engineer in Australia, Beattie arrived in Thailand in 1990 to work as a consultant in the gems industry. He settled in the western Thailand town of Kanchanaburi, a key railway terminus and site of the infamous bridge on the River Kwai. His passion was kindled by the history around him and his own background: two of his uncles had been killed and his father twice wounded in World War II. Beattie himself served in the Australian military for six years.

In the mid-1990s, with machetes and chain saws, he and his Vietnamese wife, Thuy, eight months pregnant, cleared 4.5 kilometers (2 miles) of rail bed at a rock cutting known as Hellfire Pass, paving the way for a memorial and museum there. In 2003, he opened the Thailand-Burma Railway Center in Kanchanaburi, both a research facility and a superb museum incorporating some of the thousands of artifacts he had uncovered.

Although Japanese atrocities are graphically depicted, it is not a mere museum of horrors. Japanese soldiers also suffered hardships and savage commanders, and not all are portrayed as brutes. The exhibits include rare photographs provided by a Japanese engineer on the railway.

Beattie has corrected misconceptions about the railway that had made it into a number of history books, including some that flatly state that Japanese guards killed 68 Australian POWs at Hellfire Pass. He proved that the guards killed no Australians there by going through a database of 105,000 records of nearly every prisoner in Southeast Asia.

Beattie found that Allied POW records were so sketchy that some relatives even had false information about where their fathers died. He said the index cards that Japan's Imperial Army kept on every POW sometimes have proved more helpful than Australian officialdom. He also dug into archives around the world including hospital and burial records, cemetery maps, regimental documents and diaries to reconstruct the tortured odysseys of thousands. He offers them to any who want to know, and has received decorations from Australia, the Netherlands and Great Britain for his work.

Beattie's ongoing work includes a detailed GPS mapping of the entire rail line that in Thailand is 60 percent completed. Earlier, logging more than 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) on foot, he plotted the Thai end and some of the Myanmar stretch on a 1:50,000 map.

"Probably when I die," he says when asked when he'll halt his self-imposed mission.

Beattie's labors seem a race against the clock: The railway is vanishing along with those who built it.

Over the past two decades, he says, most sections disappeared, overtaken by the jungle or covered over by farms, roads and a large dam. In Australia, only some 200 ex-railway POWs are still alive; worldwide, the youngest one Beattie knows about is 89. Only two survivors attended commemorations this year in Kanchanaburi on ANZAC Day, April 25, the national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand. In times past, there might be dozens.

But earlier in the year, 34 Australians, mostly children of POWs, gathered at the main Allied cemetery in Kanchanaburi town for a simple, moving service among the 6,982 graves. Some wore the medals of fathers they never knew: They were conceived before their fathers left for war or were simply too young to remember them. They sought information from Beattie.

It was the first trip to the River Kwai for Elizabeth Pietsch, whose father died in 2013 at the age of 95.

"He never talked about it very much, but when he did, tears would well up in his eyes," she said. "He went on to be a chartered accountant, a very successful man, but it was always there, the elephant in the room... It was the defining time of his life."

Cemetery with museum in background...no Americans buried here. 

Square center sections were replaced after allied bombing.

Walking across the bridge...it's now a tourist railroad from Bangkok.