Hero

Some readers often express surprise that my mystery novels, Fear of Beauty and Allure of Deceit, tackle the challenges of Afghanistan and the Middle East from the perspective of families living in a small and isolated village.

"The most powerful force in the universe is a mother protecting [her] children,"contends Marc Edwards, the environmental engineer from Virginia Tech University who identified systematic contamination of the Flint water supply and helped residents raise the alarm. He shows a photo of a mother bear fiercely protecting her cubs. "And even if you don't care about children's health, and I think you should and you should get out of the field, and if  you don't, you don't want to mess with this force because she will go out of her way to track you down and mess you up."

Edwards spoke at a public forum presented by WKAR on his role in the Flint water crisis. To save funds, the city under state emergency management shifted its water supply away from Lake Huron to the Flint River in April 2014. By summer, residents were complaining. Six months later, in October, a General Motors plant discontinued using the city's water. By January 2015, state office buildings in Flint arranged for special water deliveries for their use.

Meanwhile, state officials kept assuring residents the water was safe. 

Lee Anne Walters is a Flint mother who noticed her children had rashes during summer of 2014 after they took paths or left the family's pool. That started a series of trips to the doctor and a pattern of worry. City tests found lead, but officials suggested the problem was with the home's plumbing. In February 2015, Walters contacted Miguel Del Toral of the US Environmental Protection Agency Midwest Water Division and Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Technical University. Blood tests showed her four children were exposed to lead. Edwards tested the water  and found lead levels - more than 13,000 parts per billion and more than twice the level the EPA classifies as hazardous waste. The city had switched water supplies and in failing to treat the water with an inexpensive anti-corrosion agent had virtually ruining the pipes, Del Toral informs the state, and expresses concern that the entire city could have the same problem.

Lead is a toxic metal, especially dangerous for children, that can cause many health problems - neurologic, hematologic, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and renal, reports the World Health Organization.  No level of exposure is deemed safe.


The mother, the EPA staffer and the professor assumed that state environmental officials would do their jobs and take immediate action. A city of almost 100,000 people was slowly being poisoned with lead and other contaminants. The complaints were many, yet state and local government officials resisted raising an alarm.

State environmental officials scoffed at residents who complained about brown water and repeatedly insisted the water was safe to drink. EPA regional administrator Susan Hedman reprimanded Del Toral in July 2015. In August, Edwards spent his own money to conduct wide-scale and independent tests of Flint water with the help of students. By September, he announced that the corrosion problem is community-wide with his tests showing that one out of six homes in Flint showed high levels of lead. In September pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha announced a spike in Flint children with elevated blood lead levels. Another month goes by, and in October, the city advised Flint residents to use only cold tapwater for drinking or cooking. State officials accuse Edwards and others of turning the issue into a "political football."

By mid-October 2015, Flint returned to the Lake Huron for its water supply. But pipes were ruined. The governor declared a state of emergency for the county in January 2016. More than 18 months had passed before the the public received a complete warning, and Edwards suggests that action would have taken much longer had the story not hit the newspapers. The contamination may have been caught relatively early because state officials were so callous and didn't even try to fake caring for Michigan residents.

Such unethical behavior is tolerated in the United States every day, Edwards warns, and he describes Walters, the Flint mom, as "ten times the scientist" over anyone at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

Edwards is firm about the scientist's role: "Science is about seeking the truth and helping people, and if you're doing it for any other reason, you should look find another career." He urges students, "Do your job, be a human. Revolutionary."

Public goods like water, essential for survival, are taken for granted. "In the US, Clean Water Is No Guarantee," and as I noted in 2011, "During an economic recession, protecting water supplies takes a back seat to industries that promise jobs....Americans may soon regret favoring one commodity [oil] over the other [water]."

Thanks to the tireless work of Walters, Edwards and Del Toral - the EPA has since done a turnaround and issued a memo urging managers of public water supplies to implement the Lead and Copper Rule, adding agents to prevent corrosion of pipes, and inform communities about problems in a timely way. Even so, the country can expect other problems and contamination of water supplies. A culture of corruption has infiltrated American society, and no one is safe until such systems are fixed and ordinary people find the courage to do their jobs and speak out about problems, rather than looking the other way and waiting for someone else to take on the unpleasant task.

Too many political, academic and business leaders try to evade basic truths while protecting their own careers. An investigation is underway.

Update, March 4: The Guardian newspaper examines emails in Michigan and suggests all staff in the governor's inner circle knew of complaints about corrosion and contamination. Some staff members chose to ignore the complaints and other questioned the veracity. The complaints bounced back and forth among staff members with no action or urgency.

A good reminder for any employee. If there is a suspicion of wrongdoing or danger, especially for vulnerable people, do not limit reports of concern to one supervisor. The employee may get fired or reprimanded, like Del Toral, but that is better than later being regarded as callous, incompetent or criminally liable.

Stoic

Pundits suggest that the Clinton campaign is perplexed by millennials' support for Bernie Sanders. The reasons are not so perplexing for this observer whose fiction, especially Allure of Deceit, explores women's rights, demographics, the generational divide, worries of mothers for their sons, in addition to the warped incentives of charities that strive to boost select groups.

Sanders has captured a key millennial concern - inequality - and he deplores inequality of opportunity as much as inequality of income.

The young may expect Sanders to make worthy appointments and might wonder about nepotism in a Clinton administration, and not just the influence of big donations and speaking fees from Wall Street. There might be concerns, say, about a role for Chelsea Clinton versus Elizabeth Warren in a Clinton administration, whereas the perception is that Sanders would not hesitate to appoint Warren to a cabinet position.

Along the same lines, Sanders seems as though he could work well with Hillary, but young voters can't be sure that the Hillary would be willing to work with Sanders.

The biggest problem may be Hillary's stoic attitude - that she has had to put up with much and she may expect young voters to be patient and do the same - and leaders who expect voters to fall in line with expert opinions.

Clinton's hold over the 2016 democratic nomination was described as inevitable. But too many democrats did not want to be denied the opportunity to listen and choose. Too many in leadership positions, on both the democrat and republican sides, assumed that they could select a winning candidate in advance and impose that on unsuspecting voters.

But voters have their own opinions. The young, the women, all voter can surprise.


Clinton's eager supporters have made a huge miscalculation by chiding young women's support for Sanders - by suggesting that Clinton is entitled and destined to become the first woman president of the United States. Scoldings by Gloria Steinem ("When you're young, you're thinking 'Where are the boys?' The boys are with Bernie") and Madeleine Albright (Young women have to support Hillary Clinton... and just remember, there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other") were cringe-worthy moments that are particularly damaging for the Clinton campaign, as described by Robin Abearian for the Los Angeles Times.

Parents, politicians, teachers have lectured the young time and time again, warning of economic chaos and hell, metaphorical and otherwise, if certain paths are selected or traveled too quickly. Marriage equality is just one example. 

Many young people are weary of polarization between the parties, sexes, races, religions and more. Their world is a crowded place - they must navigate among 330 million Americans and 7.4 billion people in the world versus the 200 million in the United States and 3.6 billion of the world in 1969 when Hillary graduated from college. Yes, the world's population has doubled in a lifetime, and the country is more diverse.  The young want to and must get along. Most voters would prefer that candidates in both parties cooperate within the party and across-the-aisle, coalescing around a few reasonable positions to solve big pressing challenges and get some some work done for the country.

Photo of two campaign supporters assisting an elderly voter, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the State Library of New South Wales. 

I Write Like...

I Write Like is a free tool to analyze writing excerpts. Users insert a few paragraphs into a box, and the tool assesses the text based on  word choice and style to determine which famous author's work the excerpt most resembles.

So I immediately tested a few graphs from my most recent novel, Allure of Deceit, a scene of two frightened children running away from home. The tool suggested that the text was similar to that of J.K. Rowling. Then I tried a different section, one on a main character reflecting on his age, and was advised the text resembled that of author Neil Gaiman.And then another section from the final climax - that was identified as similar to work by science fiction writer Harry Harrison. I tried yet another section, early in the book, a section describing a mother's curiosity about a son's death, and that was assigned Jane Austen.

The results were surprising and may suggest that my writing is inconsistent over the course of several hundred pages. But then again, perhaps not. I turned to an excerpt of Harry Potter & and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling and inserted her text - and lo and behold, that was assigned a badge from Kurt Vonnegut. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss was reported to be similar to work by James Joyce.

I came late to this little game and was relieved to discover that many other writers had tried the software and posted similar results on social media. "Obviously, I Write Like isn't an exact science," wrote Jake Coyle for HuffPost Books in 2011. "But simply the idea of an algorithm that can reveal traces of influence in writing has proven wildly popular."

The software, developed by Dmitry Chestnykh of Coding Robots, went online in 2010 and is largely based on keywords. Chestnykh explained in an email that the assessment tool is limited to 52 authors. He provided the list, and all are notable.

The length of text inserted into the tool matters. A partial excerpt of the speech by Sarah Palin endorsing Donald Trump as presidential candidate was described as similar to writings David Foster Wallace. The full text of her speech was assigned the badge of Rudyard Kipling.

There are no rankings that suggest an excerpt is immature or needs improvement. The tool accepts the world's most amateur works, including schoolwork by a second grader or comments on Yahoo, and all are compared to famous works and assigned a badge from one of the 52 famous authors.

And that is probably wise. Any assessment of writing, including I Write Like, is subjective. What matters is that we try to write and connect with others though our work. In Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment, Maja Wilson describes being "convinced that there is something fundamentally sacred about teaching writing - about helping another person to express and shape their humanity through language."

Writing offers a window into the thoughts of others - and as such, writing and tools that aid revision and fine-tuning should be also encouraged. Fortunately, the I Write Like tool does not store or use inserted text for purposes other than the quick assessment. 

Take and give

In using fiction to address social problems, an author does not want to be too extreme with imagined scenarios, easy to do in the thriller and suspense genres. Overly biased stories will turn off many readers.

While first thinking about charities in early 2011, arguing that the spending may not be in line with democracy, I felt very much alone. Politicians and citizens raved about big charities. I felt ungrateful, cynical, but still felt compelled to write a story about a good woman who is hurt, overseeing a foundation and manipulating billions of dollars for funding in the developing world.  A string of news stories since February of last year, when Allure of Deceit was released, suggest my critique of big philanthropy may not have gone far enough.

George Joseph interviews Linsey McGoey, author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy, for the Progressive and writes:

"As institutions like the Gates Foundation take increasingly leading roles in policymaking and governance, McGoey argues, the line between traditional notions of charity and top-down consolidation of power becomes unclear; and with this largely unchecked influence, philanthro-capitalists, like Bill Gates, have pushed countries across the world to accept market based solutions for crises like education inequity and disease proliferation—despite evidence that these problems are often rooted in actions taken by those philanthro-capitalists themselves."

McGoey points out that giving can be shrouded in secrecy, that it can be strategic and designed to support goals of donors; wealth is often transferred among the rich, and taxpayers subsidize charitable endeavors by giving up tax revenues. The system reinforces inequality.

The interview concludes: "The amassment of wealth doesn’t naturally endow any individual with leadership ”rights.” But that is what’s happening: the assumption that wealth confers exceptional public duties and that we owe deference to individuals who part with their fortunes. That assumption has no merit—at least not in a democratic nation."

Philanthropy is a worthy tool, and becomes treacherous when lacking in transparency or applied in selective ways. In defense of some major charitable organizations, some programs tackle problems head-on and worldwide - like the Gates Foundation goals to eliminate polio or encourage libraries. Other programs are dangerously selective and often mask political agendas.


In a world with limited resources, people must decide if problems, especially "absolute poverty," are best solved by government or charitable giving. Do philanthropy and the associated lobbying weaken government and come with hidden agendas?

Philanthropy is a worthy tool, but not when it diminishes respect for government.  

Photo of a Nairobi slum, courtesy of Africa.org.

Uncertainty

I live near one college campus and work at another and relish the opportunity to hear the views of emerging adults.

They worry about the future - not just for themselves but generations beyond.

Rising student debt and a shrinking number of good jobs don't help. The world's population expanded - from 1 billion in 1800 to near 2.5 billion in 1950 to more than 7 billion people today poised to reach 9 billion by 2050. The increase in population does not ensure more jobs. Globalization in communications ensures that many consumers will chase after the same small set of books, movies or songs. Technology sucks the creativity out of work  and even eliminates jobs at retail outlets like service stations or grocery stores just as computers reduced the need for secretaries or typists and software increasingly threatens employment in accounting, engineering, architecture, finance and other fields.

At the same time, governments and corporations tussle over benefits while taking on excessive debt for wars and infrastructure that may not serve future generations well. Businesses and states under-fund pensions. Students are urged to explore nursing as a stable career but new graduates struggle to find full-time employment as hospitals limit work to part-time.  Legislators insist that governments can no longer afford programs enjoyed by older adults.

Few leaders anticipate or plan ahead for trends emerging over the next 50 or more years.

At the same time, the world's climate is changing. Weather disasters, food shortages or conflict over a resource as basic as water could break out and add to the waves of desperate refugees seeking new homes.

COP21 is wrapping up, and by various reports, more global leaders are serious about addressing climate change. Others suggest the action does not go far enough.
 

More than one young adult has expressed fear that it's too late to prevent or slow a changing climate. Many recognize that wilderness is shrinking as populations expand. The collective experience with wilderness tightens with every generation.  Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, recalls his child pointing out that the young did not enjoy the woods as much as their parents did:

"He was right. Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that 
seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact.

Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. 
The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment—
but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading. That's exactly the opposite of how it was 
when I was a child.... Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature."


More young adults adapt to the new uncertainties by learning to live with less and do more to interact with and record their experiences with nature. Many relish the new simplicity and deliberate over each purchase asking, Does this item make my life easier or does it make my life more complicated? Smart consumers do not overextend with housing, clothing, food and entertainment. A DIY economy is emerging. Many young adults, particularly the educated, vow they won't bring children into a world that is less comfortable than the one to which they were born.

Allure of Deceit tackles all these issues of globalization and more from the point of view of a few families in a remote Afghan village. 

The economy is shifting amid uncertainty, and most young adults do not complain. The rest of us could learn from their examples.

Photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

Fertility rates

Restrictions on abortions and closure of clinics increase attempts at self-induced abortions, suggests a study by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, University of Texas:

"To determine the prevalence of self-induced abortions in Texas, investigators surveyed women and asked them whether they had ever tried to end a pregnancy outside a clinical setting, or if their best friend had," reports Amanda Holpuch for the Guardian. "The best-friend measure was included because women tend to under-report abortions in studies."

Surveys are less than reliable, but methods for tallying such incidents are simply not available. As described in Allure of Deceit, a few women could be successful in terminating their own pregancy. Others fail and go on to deliver a child. The study suggests that between 100,000 and 240,000 women in the state of 27 million tried to induce an abortion at home.

Allure of Deceit, set in a fictional remote village in Afghanistan, takes an unconventional look at the topic.

The little girl was plump, content, alert. Before finding Shareen, Zahira had once believed that abortion was kinder than adoption. A mother could never trust a stranger with her child, and thoughts of Shareen with another woman were abhorrent. 

Zahira had rescued the  child not once, but twice. Their relationship was exceptional, though it was ironic how much Zahira sounded like the women who opposed abortion for others but vehemently justified their own.

The suspense novel begins at a lavish charity event and a Texas woman's hope to secure funding for a charity designed to introduce natural family planning in Afghanistan. The director of the largest foundation in the world uses such activities to investigate the death of her only son. His fortune led to the foundation's creation.

The US total fertility rate, the average number of children born to women during child-bearing years, has been in decline since the 2007-2008 recession, going from 2.09 children per woman in 2006 and 2007 to 2.01 in 2014, suggests CIA World Factbook and Mundi. Texas, at 2.07,  ranks among the 10 US states with highest fertility rates.

Afghanistan's fertility rate stands at 4.9 for 2013 down from its height of 7.9 around 2000 when the Taliban controlled the country, notes World Bank data. The CIA puts the country's fertility rate estimate at 5.33 children per women. Countries that have higher fertility rates than Afghanistan: Niber, Burundi, Mali, Somalia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Zambia, Malawi, Angola. Texas's rate at 2.07 is less than rates for France and Guyana, higher than those in Grenada or Libya.

Places with higher fertility rates have younger populations and, with a median age of 33.6, Texas is the second youngest after Utah, according to the US Census.

The median age for the US is 37.8. For Afghanistan it is 18.4 - meaning half of Afghan people are children, according to CIA estimates. The Texas median age compares with Chile's, Greenland's, North Korea, Palau and Saint Lucia.
 
Fertility rates influence a society's environmental, security and economic conditions. Good governance requires monitoring demographics for long-term policy planning, and problems including waves of immigration, when young populations do not receive adequate education, health care and other services.

Photo of children in Afghanistan following a patrol by coalition forces and a provincial reconstruction team  in Laghman Province 2011, courtesy of Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane and Wikimedia Commons. Fear of Beauty is the story of a provincial reconstruction team in Helmand and an Afghan woman desperate to learn how to read after the death of her son on the night before he is supposed to leave for school.

Inevitable

The Islamic State does not abide by the Geneva Convention or any other code of conduct for war, adding to the challenge of the fight against terrorists who go after soft targets and behead prisoners of war and civilians.

One CIA estimate puts the Islamic State manpower at 31,500. By comparison, the United Nations estimates "that 7.6 million people are internally displaced" and "more than half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million is in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, whether they still remain in the country or have escaped across the borders," reports Mercy Corps.

Countries including the United States, Jordan, France and many others target Islamic State sites with air strikes. But air strikes are imprecise. Hitting civilians is inevitable, especially in battling an opponent that lacks a code of conduct.

Reporting for AP, Vivian Salama and Zeina Karam report on the tragic inevitability as described by  Airwars, a group that monitors the war against the Islamic State and tracks civilian casualties.

"The coalition's war against ISIL has inevitably caused civilian casualties, certainly far more than the two deaths Centcom presently admits to," notes [the Airwars website]. " Yet it's also clear that in this same period, many more civilians have been killed by Syrian and Iraqi government forces, by Islamic State and by various rebel and militia groups operating on both sides of the border."

So far, Airwars reports more than 8,000 strikes, estimating 20,000 Islamic State deaths and up to 200 deaths.

Some context: Totals of civilian deaths caused by the Islamic State are notably lacking.

Also, monitoring groups suggest that the Syrian government and Assad regime are responsible for many more deaths than the Islamic State - an estimated 250,000 during the four-year civil war in Syria. "Between January and July [2015], Assad’s military and pro-government militias killed 7,894 people, while the Islamic State killed 1,131, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain," reports Hugh Naylor for the Washington Post. 

Such casualty counts are likely low, with reports of mass graves found in areas near Sinjar, overtaken by Iraqi Kurdish forces: One is reported to contain 78 women between the ages of 40 and 80 years old and the other had bodies of about 50 men, both likely Yazidis. Authorities anticipate finding other grave sites, reports Nabih Bulos for the Los Angeles Times. 

After the attacks in Paris that killed more than 125 and injured more than 300, the international community will likely join with Russia, and targeting the Islamic State will take priority over removal of Assad as Syria's leader.

At least eight governors in the United States are making moves to block Syrian refugees in Texas, Massachusetts, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Michigan, reports Nolan D. McCaskill for Politico. 

Many contend that ground troops are required for thorough defeat of the Islamic State, but citizens throughout the West resist sending their soldiers and expect Muslim nations in the Middle East to defend their territory - though it must be noted that the conflict in Syria is highly complex as the United States supports Kurdish rebels and Turkey, a member of NATO and US ally, targets those same fighters described as successful against the Islamic State. Russia, too, targets rebels who oppose the Assad regime.

An imperfect solution for the Syrian refugee crisis, one grounded in gender and age bias: conduct screenings and open borders for women with children under age 15 and adults older than age 50.A tough for the international community.

Terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Europe, North America and beyond are anticipated, too.  The Islamic State is a disturbing problem global in scale.

"Attacks by Islamic State terrorists in Syria, Iraq and beyond pose consequences for refugees fleeing communities throughout the Middle East and moderate Muslims," YaleGlobal reminds. "Globalization of communications, travel and more ensures that regarding violence, hatred, terrorism as routine for the region with a population of more than 200 million can threaten global security."


Photo of refugees at Budapest Keleti railway station in Hungary, courtesy of Mstyslav Chernov and Wikimedia Commons.