Uncategorized – Page 37 – Brattleboro Adventure

Blessing or curse?

When we lived in Salt Lake City, it was relatively easy to pile up points on Delta, since SLC is a hub for them. Now that I have to split my miles among a couple of airlines, being Diamond isn’t a slam dunk any more. But I’ll get close by the time it’s all said and done.

DysHarmony

The Harmony Parking Lot was developed with great optimism in the 1980s. The murals along the concrete base of the retaining wall are now faded and peeling, but still humorous…

Unfortunately, the upper section of that retaining wall, made from boulders, dates from about 1888, and a few weeks ago it “moved.” The road above is now closed, and structural engineers are being called into evaluate the extent of the problem, and begin to estimate the cost of repairs. High six figures is likely, and that is, once again, a whole bunch of money that is not in the budget, and that we don’t have laying around.

The round schoolhouse of Brookline

Today, I took my first ride with the Windham Wheelmen, a very friendly local bike club. It’s nice to find a group where I’m one of the young guys. It was a perfect late summer day, just the right temperature, the leaves are starting to turn colors, couldn’t ask for better.

In honor of this being my first ride, we made a short detour to the round schoolhouse of Brookline. At some point around the end of the 19th century, a former Scottish highwayman named John Thunderbolt Wilson came to town and built the schoolhouse, where he taught, in between acting as the local physician. Supposedly it is the only round schoolhouse in the country. Go figure.

Cats? Under the cabinet? No, no cats here.

As the Brooks House nears completion, someone decorated the remaining sheathing.

Or did they???

On the boardwalk

This beautiful Ferris wheel watched over a parade of cyclists this morning, a motley band ranging from pudgy teens on folding bikes to grizzled old soldiers kitted out in European team gear on carbon fiber racing machines. Some were clearly there to work out, but it seemed as many were there for the socializing. That much is consistent with bike clubs everywhere.

A tale of two economies

Other than some Caribbean resort vacations, this is really my first time in a developing country. I haven’t felt comfortable taking pictures of squalor, but it is all around us. At the same time, there seems to be an enormous amount of construction activity, although, like this site, it’s not clear how fast progress is being made.

Here, the guard shack presides over an open field, while the guard reads a newspaper next to a smoldering campfire. This is on one of the major arteries in the entire city, just blocks from the gleaming Mall of Asia.

When we were meeting with the international consultants sent here by the World Health Organization, they spoke candidly about the difficulties of managing their work in a country that has been devastated by floods and typhoons, government corruption, and ongoing civil strife. Many people are living in what I can only refer to as primitive conditions, and even basic sanitation and public health must be difficult to provide in such densely packed communities as we have seen.

And yet, despite everything, in the reading I did before coming here, the Philippines is held up as one of the most successful Asian economies. At times it is difficult to see how a cloud-based server to help a nascent electronic medical records infrastructure will help, but then again, it’s a step in a direction, and many steps are needed.