door in the wall

Greetings,

Knowing the buried uranium at Hanford Unclear Facility will exist for 24,000 years causes great relief. Especially for citizens along and down the Columbia River.

North Korea, Burma and Iran have expressed geopolitical interest in purchasing spent fuel for their nuclear development programs.

This is good. Sharing is caring. Engineers from the three countries negotiated with the Department of Energy to inspect, buy and ship vast quantities of Uranium, Plutonium, Hyponitrite, and it's all right ma to their respective countries for processing. 

DOE is pleased with the deal. They have realized a huge profit and managed to get finally rid of the highly toxic waste. In Theory.

To entice the buyers they sweetened the deal by including the following:

• British Petroleum oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico
• Wild tribal mountain zones of Northwest Afghanistan
• 16,000 endangered animal pelts, bones, and useful aphrodisiacs 
• A free mobile telephone powered by U-235 with unlimited GPS capability
• 10 Russian sleeper agents and one resourceful money man using a fake Canadian passport
• One bag of high grade Cambodian rice and a barefoot woman to carry it on her back
• A one year Tibetan meditation membership at Sera Monastery outside Lhasa with singing bells
• A toxic river in China complete with slave labor factories and 1,000,000,000 peasants
• Unlimited access to free medicine, diamonds, and utopian and dystopian literary gems
• Unlimited access to high tech weapons of mass distractions
• Free cable, lock and a key to a door in the wall 
• A mask looking for a character with universal implications

Iran expressed interest in purchasing the entire state of Washington. Burma and North Korea thought this was egregious and outside the rules of a fair trade agreement. Iran said ok, maybe later. After we stone every woman for adultery because we live in the Dark Ages.

All parties shook hands boasting the event. They promised to play fair and look both ways before crossing the street carrying bright orange umbrellas while begging for food with compassion in silence.

They paid in cash. No refunds.

Metta.

At breakfast

Greetings,

I'm sitting in the lodge. People eat breakfast and chat. They remember last night. They plan a new day above ground.

There's a super serious Danish family of four. Sad blond dad and morose mom resigned to her fate. Two young boys about 10. They love to play pool, run around and make noise. A lot of noise. They need a behavior modification lesson for public places.

They're slamming balls around the table using their hands. Suddenly the young one blasts off into a terrified shriek of pain. It wakes up the eaters. His right hand was inside the cushion and brother's ball caught him squarely on the fingers. 

Dad rushes over. He cradles his son, escorting the bellowing child back to bread and eggs. Mom looks bored. She's dreaming of ice crystals in Copenhagen.

Three middle aged Americans and two 28-year old girls arrive and sit on soft cushions. One is the niece of the man. They've just arrived from a horrendous scam-filled long bus ride from Bangkok. 

The man is soft spoken. He's an Asian tour guide. He reminds me of Robert Thurman, the Tibetan scholar. His wife is an attorney in Portland, Oregon. She deals with suits. No one at breakfast is wearing a suit. I know her job because of the way she cross examines the two girls. An older woman with regal bearing is with them, perhaps one's mother. She is patient, kind and asks intelligent questions.

She lives in Eugene, Oregon as does one of the girls. The older woman grew up in Eugene, attended Portland State College and loved languages, especially Italian. She moved to Rome for six years. She came back and got her M.A. in Italian and Foreign Languages at the University of Oregon. She taught Italian until retiring. 

The attorney and the woman talk about growing up. The attorney is from Michigan.

"I was only able to get away for two weeks. My boss said, 'What happens if someone sues someone and you're not here to handle the case?'"

The older woman said, "It was just coincidence I ended up back in Eugene. It was hard growing up there."

"Why," said the attorney.

"It was the late 40's. We didn't have enough to eat. It was only steak and they cooked it to a cinder. It was that and potatoes. One brand of rice. I remember my mother and father loading us in the car and we'd drive to San Francisco to buy food."

"To sell?" asked the attorney.

The older woman looked at her. "No. To eat." I hear her thinking in Italian, "Mama mia! What a crazy question!"

The group talks about the bus, lodgings, cost and border hassles. The girls are dead tired. They compare travel stories. One girl has just completed a month teaching English in Burma. She says she managed to find a job through a foreign woman running a tour company.

"Yes," said the man, "there are people there who know the system. Where did you teach?"

"I didn't teach school. I taught teachers."

The man knows Burma. "I see. The authorities are very suspicious of foreigners. It's difficult to really get to know the people."

"I hoped to spend time with the Burmese in their homes but it was forbidden," said the girl.

I see the girl teaching a class of Burmese "teachers."

Half work for a government agency designed to acquire western educational pedagogical plans. The other half work for the secret police. One is a real teacher. Can you find the real teacher?

Metta.

A teacher.