In a short video available on Google Video, the Cambodian Norry railroad story is presented in an enjoying short video..

Bamboo Railway - Battambang, Cambodia

The story of how the Cambodian people could recycle pieces from the weapons of a genocidal war to fashion a working means of communication with the help of critical U.N. technical assistance in the form of gasoline engines shows how U.N operations can be effective with little cost. This railway operation benefits from the Cambodian ingenuity and cooperative values.

The very simple design of the rail car is economical in use of materials, only the basics beyond the gasoline engine. It's one use of gasoline where its an amazing and appropriate energy source. These engines are simple, rugged, and effective. The use of a stick on the axle as a brake is, perhaps, not enough safety for me however.

One wonders what they will do when the supply of abandoned battle tanks runs out that provide the wheels for the Norry. The absence of bumpers requires a certain fatalism from the passengers. Low speeds and the lack of rail traffic make this system practical.

Since the car must be taken off the tracks when a "REAL TRAIN" comes along or one Norry must pass the other, the design has parts that can be moved by at most two people, even one. Obviously the passengers are expected to help with taking the car on and off the tracks..... This limitation in the design is quite a challenge. The bamboo in the car platform deck is a locally grown resource and lightweight

I found this web video after following a link from a Facebook posting to a video by Gib Cooper where a Mexican master craftsman shows how to bend bamboo culms with heat. From there the YouTube suggestions with keyword bamboo had this video. I love railroads and bamboo, so I went there. What a gem!

The vision to create this informal rural rail system had huge and lasting beneficial impact on the lives of the survivors of the Khemer Rouge genocide. The U.N. is a vital part of our international community when it acts in this way. A catalyst and an enabler of the things that make life better.

My grandmother said that the hardest part of growing older was loosing friends. She lived to be 102, and by then, had lost all her friends though she still had our family. She passed away while my mother was in Europe with her husband, and I think that she had to go when Mom wasn't there. They were very close, and even though Grandmother lost some of her cognative powers as she aged, that love never faded.

For me, growing older has been good in some ways, as I'm married again, and happier than before. My values are more clear, as what's important comes through the noise as I age. Indeed Grandmother was right, friends are so important, and making new ones is both a pleasure and a challenge.

With my first wife, there was a time of closeness, family, learning and the shared dreams. The shared visions and values were corroded as fundamental incompatibilities in our core values came through, turning raw emotional sores into deep wounds.

My own immaturity was a factor in some dumb choices when I was young, but I did the best that I could and many of my choices were good. Now 60, my first wife died some 27 years after we divorced. She left me and precipitated a crises in my life, upending my story, in a painful episode that cauterized some aspects of me. It also caused me to seek counseling and to question many of my assumptions, and I changed in some important ways. Fortunately we were able to forgive each other before she passed away, and she was honest about some things that I suspected but never knew that happened during our marriage. She confirmed that my intuition was right, that my deepest self knew what I didn't want to know. She was able to grow and before she passed away, she was able to bring love to the forefront, and to give her daughter that unconditional love that is the gift that never dies.

So for me, living long enough to get some perspective on those painful events so long ago, to forgive and be forgiven, to learn and to understand has been a great gift. I learned about some of my unrealistic expectations and choices, and how some of my values and choices meant so much to those around me. That validation of who I am and my worth has been a comfort, and one that could only come with the perspective of time.

Even under the stress of loosing my marriage, I held to certain core values and personal decisions about how I would live my life. Those core values have been life saving, in ways that I never imagined. Indeed, it was only later that I learned that a slightly different choice could have been deadly for me, as I could have been exposed to disease that later killed her. Of course, her passing was the confluence of many things, and the lifelong alcoholism wasn't going to "work out". It's not a feeling of superiority that I'm talking about, rather the experience of amazing grace.

The grace that got me through those tough times and is with me today. The grace that got me through being with my dear partner Peggy when she passed away from cancer and the grace that lead me to open my heart again to my wife today. Amazing grace, thanks for the grace in my life! Thanks for this morning, for this breath. Thanks.

As the American Indians pray, "all life is sacred".

for all my relations,

thanks.