Civil Air Defense Drill today, 2:15pm. Or was it 2:00? I can’t remember. It happens every month on the 15th, or as is the case this time, the 16th if the 15th is a Sunday. This has been happening once a month for almost 50 years. I wasn’t outside today, but when I am, I notice some traffic slows, some people go underground, but mostly things continue on as usual. Too many important things are happening in people’s lives to take 15 minutes out to stop by the side of the road, or to crowd into an underground shopping arcade for a drill. I’m OK with that. Actually, I think the whole thing is pretty cool - the sound that is. I mean, I’m freaked by the possibility of war, but on the other hand it’s wild living in a place that has practical reason to conduct big, loud echoing drills. It reminds me of war movies. Maybe the Cold War 50’s were like this in the US? I don’t know. Lots of helicopters flying overhead today too. I think I should note that when, a year or so ago, a North Korean pilot defected in his MiG jet, the civil air defense system failed. It takes mere minutes to fly down from the North to the South in one of those fast planes. The civil defense system was tripped when the plane was spotted comin’ our way, but Seoul never heard a peep from the sirens. Afterward, there was some talk about how some parts of the system were unchanged from the 50’s and that the failure was prompting upgrades. Heh.

I’ve been working on a paper I brought home from the women’s center last week. Of course, I put off even looking at it until the day before I’m supposed to go back and show some progress. The paper is about the politics of hair in Kathmandu. I love things that talk about hair and larger sociopsychological implications of that stuff growing from our heads. How our identities are connected to our hairstyles and how we can rebel simply by cutting or growing our locks. Or, how we’re all judged by the tint, the length, the curl, or the lack therof. Lisa Jones has written some great stuff about hair: "Hair issues are among us. We must tease them out, hold them up to the light, and coax them into art."