I just crossed the road I live on. It has smooth, black pavement with a double yellow line up the middle and white lines down the margins. There are lights overhead. About a quarter of a mile up the road there is a traffic light at a very busy intersection. I just returned from a trip to Nepal. I saw one road with lines on it there, maybe two. I think one of these may have been at the airport in Kathmandu. I don't think we saw a traffic light in our extensive travels around the country. We had electricity 24 hours a day. I'm told this is a new development, since the monarchy ended eleven years ago. The last night our group was in Nepal we were invited to Udit Bhatta's house for dinner. Udit was really the reason we were in the country. We were there in support of his project "Tie The Trash." At the dinner, while his mom and sisters were in the kitchen making a wonderful meal, we had one of those conversations which happen when you know you don't have much time. Where you dig right in and talk about what is in your heart and on your mind. What is on Udit's mind is the question of whether it is possible for his country to develop into a fully modern nation without the people losing their religious and family values and connections. Nepal has always been a subsistence culture. People there value family and religion and there is a general sense of gratitude for what they have. Is it possible to develop without losing these basic, beautiful traits of Nepali life? The work Udit is doing with Tie The Trash and with Vajra Academy is really an attempt to help make this dream happen. The teachers at Vajra are teaching kids respect for the land and environment, on a daily basis, and the kids are responding by taking on the task of clean, green, sustainable development. These kids are the future of Nepal but they are also the future of the world. We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction on planet Earth. Most signs point to homo sapiens being a part of that extinction. If the developing world does not become green and sustainable then what we do here in the U.S.A. is not really going to matter. Nepal gets most of its electricity from hydro-electric plants. Its main natural resources are its rivers. Rivers which are polluted and toxic. These school kids are trying to clean up the rivers and the land. They believe strongly in what they are doing. The air in Kathmandu is thick with smog and post-earthquake dust. These kids envision clean air and rivers not choked with garbage and pollution. They are committed to this. I can't help thinking that there is a direct connection between their family/ religious/ cultural values and their commitment to clean up the country. Maybe in the U.S.A. we lost our family and spiritual values as we developed wrongly. Maybe our own re-development as a green nation is and will be directly connected to a return to basic values. On the airplane home I watched the John Ford movie of the John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath and watching the Joads hang onto their family for dear life really seemed appropriate as I reflected on my time in Nepal. Maybe the only way to develop as a nation rightly and cleanly with justice for all is by clinging to the family and the religions and culture. Maybe we have a chance, as a society, to clean up our act. That is my great hope because I'd love to live in an America as happy and full of gratitude as Nepal is. If we have to give up some things to get there, then that's fine. Let's get to work!!!

Friday, December 1st 2017