With Sorrow and Rage:  Watching America from Abroad

“With sorrow — for this court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent”.  The Supreme Court dissenting opinion Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization June 24, 2022. 

If you are in any doubt that we are now living in Margaret Atwood’s America,  PLEASE read on and please vote for pro-choice women.

“The United States is now one of just three countries that have restricted abortion access in the 21st century. Over the past several decades, more than 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global advocacy group opposed to abortion restrictions.”

New York Times, June 24, 2022

“Anyone who can get pregnant must now face the reality that half of the country is in the hands of legislators who believe that your personhood and autonomy are conditional—who believe that, if you are impregnated by another person, under any circumstance, you have a legal and moral duty to undergo pregnancy, delivery, and, in all likelihood, two decades or more of caregiving, no matter the permanent and potentially devastating consequences for your body, your heart, your mind, your family, your ability to put food on the table, your plans, your aspirations, your life.”

“We have entered an era not of unsafe abortion but of widespread state surveillance and criminalization—of pregnant women, certainly, but also of doctors and pharmacists and clinic staffers and volunteers and friends and family members, of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth. Those who argue that this decision won’t actually change things much—an instinct you’ll find on both sides of the political divide—are blind to the ways in which state-level anti-abortion crusades have already turned pregnancy into punishment, and the ways in which the situation is poised to become much worse.”

“Nonetheless, the anti-abortion movement is now openly pushing for fetal personhood to become the foundation of U.S. abortion law….If a fetus is a person, then a legal framework can be invented to require someone who has one living inside her to do everything in her power to protect it…No other such obligation exists anywhere in our society, which grants cops the freedom to stand by as children are murdered behind an unlocked door.”

“Pregnancy is more than thirty times more dangerous than abortion. One study estimates that a nationwide ban would lead to a twenty-one-per-cent rise in pregnancy-related deaths. Some of the women who will die from abortion bans are pregnant right now. Their deaths will come not from back-alley procedures but from a silent denial of care: interventions delayed, desires disregarded. They will die of infections, of preëclampsia, of hemorrhage, as they are forced to submit their bodies to pregnancies that they never wanted to carry, and it will not be hard for the anti-abortion movement to accept these deaths as a tragic, even noble, consequence of womanhood itself.”

“People you’ll never hear of will spend the rest of their lives trying and failing, agonizingly, in this punitive country, to provide stability for a first or fifth child they knew they weren’t equipped to care for.”

“In the face of all this, there has been so much squeamishness, even in the pro-choice camp: a tone that casts abortion as an unfortunate necessity; an approach to messaging which values choice but devalues abortion care itself, which emphasizes reproductive rights rather than reproductive justice. That approach has landed us here. We are not going back to the pre-Roe era, and we should not want to go back to the era that succeeded it, which was less bitter than the present but was never good enough. We should demand more, and we will have to. We will need to be full-throated and unconditional about abortion as a necessary precondition to justice and equal rights if we want even a chance of someday getting somewhere better.”

The NewYorker - Comment JulyY 4, 2022 Issue - see full article below. 

The Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-going-back-to-the-time-before-roe-we-are-going-somewhere-worse

 Greetings from Windhoek and Gobabis

I am back in the capital city of Windhoek after spending 4 days in the small town of Gobabis, where I did my research.  My goal was to talk to residents, government officials and with representatives from the NGOs who work with the residents and I was very successful.

First a note about travel in Namibia, where transportation options are limited.  If the Netherlands is on one end of the scale in terms of providing public transportation, unfortunately Namibia is on the opposite end. In order to travel to Gobabis, I had to take a "public taxi", which is nothing more than a guy with a car (most often a 10+  years-old used compact Honda or Toyota), which he then proceeds to fill with 4 passengers - 5 people in total -  three squeezed into the back seat, for a harrowing 2 hour drive at 75MPH for 120 miles.  As we barreled along on that straight road out of town, I swore I would find another way back to Windhoek - until I later found out that the 'public taxi' is the ONLY option.  So go with the flow!

Here I am in the back seat with one travel buddy, who is dressed in her native outfit.  The hat signifies a cow's horns - Gobabis is in 'cattle country' and cows are a big part of their culture.

The people in the settlement were a bit shy when talking to me, some of them spoke English and others did not. They speak local dialects plus Afrikaans, with some of them actually speaking as many as four or five languages.  Some have built what they call 'brick houses', usually made of stucco, but because they are so poor, most are still living in shacks or 'zincs'. as they call them - corrugated metal.

They have their own plots, many with gardens and some interesting planters.  They are all very proud of the fact that they now own their property, although they are still paying installments to the municipality for the roughly $150 price of the plot - and that takes 5 YEARS!! at the rate of a few dollars a month!.  Some have their own water tap and flush toilet and others do not, since they cannot afford the hookup to the water and the purchase and installation of the toilet.  And everyone is waiting for electricity.

I had a guide while I was there, a young man named Robson, who works for a German NGO called GIZ.  He was so helpful and supportive - I could not have done any of it without him.  He arranged meetings with residents, local municipal officials and even arranged a translator for me.  I am going to write a glowing recommendation to his boss.

Back in Windhoek, the weather got much colder, with temps only going as high as 55 during the day and 28 at night.  And there is no heat in Namibia.  AC yes, if you are lucky, but no heating systems. So I bundled up.  

Next stop is Swakopmund, on the coast.  Ester and I are taking a few days off to go to the beach, though I hear that Namibians do not go into the water - too cold for them, but I am going to try it!

 

Arrival in Namibia

I must say first of all that the weather here is beautiful - blue sky, light breeze, low humidity and 70 during the day.  My trip here was fairly painless, though long - 10 hours from Frankfurt - and I have been traveling with my dear friend Ester.  She has been my friend, my guide, my host and travel companion.  Here we are, arriving at the airport.  Ester is obviously happy to be home.

 Here we are enjoying a chicken dinner - BBQ or "kapana" as they call it here.

 

I joined a local tour of Windhoek and the township.  We had kapana at the local market and also tasted worms... just called worms.... very salty and crispy. Yum.

And here is the view of the National Museum and the Supreme Court building from my apartment.

I am off to my next stop, Gobabis, where I will be doing most of my research.  More to come.

I went to Berlin and then came back and had a birthday.

The last time I was in Berlin, I celebrated my 21st birthday in that city and it has taken me this long for a return visit. Berlin has been high on my list of places to visit while in Europe, so when my museum friends started to plan a visit, I got onboard.

And so many museums!  So many in fact, that there is an entire island devoted to museums....Plenty of artifacts plundered from the middle east...

And plenty of modern art as well.

So many buildings have been restored since I was last there.

And others are still the same, including the Philharmonie...

And the bombed-out church on the Kurfurstendamm...

And plenty of street art.

Back in Rotterdam, I celebrated my birthday with my thesis buddies Beti and Ester:

my friend Amr

                                                And friends Maya and Esther

Next stop Namibia.  Yes, I am going on June 8... with Ester...who has been a great friend and colleague.  I am so happy to be going with her to Windhoek and then on to Gobabis, where I will be doing my research on " Namibia's Flexible Land Tenure System:  The Impact on Social Cohesion in Gobabis".  A 2 1/2 week adventure - stay tuned.

 

How do they ship all these tulips??

I had no idea how hundreds of thousands of tulips made their way from the fields of the Netherlands to every place in the world.  Because tulips are fairly delicate, right?  And they only last a few weeks.  Well, maybe some of you know the answer to that but I certainly did not.  So I visited the tulip fields to find out...

SO MANY TULIPS

               

As I found out, tulip farmers are not interested in the actual flowers that they grow.  They have special mowers that chop the flowers off the stem in order to make a healthier bulb.  Then they wait a few months and harvest the bulbs - and that is what they ship all over the world - tulip bulbs.  Of course.

And they are everywhere - in the trees... and on the bikes...

I stayed at a very nice apartment near the beach

and rode my bike on the nice bike paths in the national park.

Happy spring!

 Why there are no STOP signs in the Netherlands

at last not in my neighborhood.  Or in any other Dutch city that I have visited.  At the end of an intersecting street, the street pavement ends, because there is a continuous sidewalk and bikelane on the main street.  When a vehicle approaches the end of the street, not only does the pavement end, there is a light bump to demarcate the sidewalk, then there is the bike lane, and then another bump (drempel) before the car an enter the main road: (I tired to include a video, but Blogger would not cooperate 👎)

You can see the white car waiting for the cyclist to pass by, with the front of the car on the sidewalk.  Notice the end of the red pavement of the road for that car.  The result is that speed limit signs and STOP signs are pretty much superfluous - as a driver, you only drive as fast as you feel safe to drive.  Plus cyclist have the right of way, as long as their red pavement continues.

It is definitely springtime....

And I do plan to visit the tulip fields in a few weeks, so photos of that to come.  Yesterday, I took a trip to Leiden and was hoping to see tulips on a quick bike ride outside the city but, apparently, the fields are further away than I expected.  I did manage to find one of the least attractive towns in the country - Zoetermeer - although, to be fair, I was not in the old city center.  When I found this place, I was so discouraged that I drank my coffee and rode back to Leiden.

I didn't spend enough time in Leiden to really appreciate the town (I'll be back another day) but I did see the birthplace of Rembrandt:

And since I went by train (of course) I had time to observe more of the Dutch 'cleaning' tradition.  Here it was, a bank holiday morning (Good Friday), and these two were actually power-washing not just the floor of the platform, but scrubbing the grout in-between the tiles!! (these tiles were on my side - they had not gotten to them yet...)

And have I mentioned that I LOVE the Dutch transportation system.  No need to check schedules, just go!  And the entire system runs on wind-powered electricity - except when it doesn't run at all.....

That's right, the ENTIRE system was shut down for 12 hours.  This happened two weeks ago, when I was in Maastricht, a two hour train ride from Rotterdam and so I had to stay at a hotel.  Believe me, there are worse places to be stuck than Maastrict.  There is a great museum and a bookstore in a what used to be a church.

                    

Until next time,

Judy