Now that the laundry is well under way....

...I can start catching up with the dozens of e-mail messages sent me by my best correspondent for current events, and read up on what I missed. I swear, I leave you people alone for a week and miss all the excitement. From the indictment of Tom DeLay to Bill Bennett voicing the wishes of most of the Republican Party, to Patrick Fitzgerald potentially getting ready to indict MULTIPLE members of the Bush Administration for criminal conspiracy, to Jack Abramoff being a one-man octopus of Republican corruption, I swear, it's enough to give a girl hives.

And who IS Desmond, anyway? And why does he call Jack "Brother"?

Anyway....

Our trip was wonderful, despite a five-hour delay of the flight down due to Continental being unable to put together a crew just in from Hurricane Rita-stricken Houston in time. But UNLIKE Air Jamaica, which would have just cancelled the flight, it actually took off and got us to the hotel before dark.

Jamaica is a country much changed from when we first started going in 1986. Airport transport actually shows up on time, Sangster International Airport has air conditioning in the baggage area now, and everyone has a cell phone. While the evolution of the country into a more developed nation means a certain loss of the place's charm, it's impossible to begrudge a people who face the kinds of hardships Jamaicans do (not the least of which is their own disaster of a government) and still try to keep improving. Jamaican pride is based on what people can strive towards, rather than in beating their chests and screaming "We're #1!", which is what seems to comprise much of American pride.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the trip was listening to Jamaican talk radio -- not just the call-in shows, but programs that reach out to the people who live outside the cities. One program in particular piqued my interest, because it dealt with how parents can foster a curiosity about science in their children. Jamaica is well-known as one of the most homophobic countries in the world, most of that coming from the strong evangelical leanings of their Christian churches. This kind of conservative Christianity pervades Jamaican life -- and yet Jamaicans don't see a conflict between what their religion teaches and the facts of the natural world. And if there's anyplace in the world that could make you believe in some kind of deity, it's Jamaica -- a place where even a compulsively busy person like myself can just sit and stare at water and sky for hours on end. But it seemed that Jamaica as a nation recognizes the need to open people's eyes to scientific progress if the country is to join the developed world -- and that this may fly in the face of Biblical teaching doesn't seem to be a problem.

All this served to underscore the degree to which the Christofascist Zombie Brigade is moving our own, supposedly "developed" nation backward to a more medieval time just when the countries to which we've always felt superior strive for progress. If we allow this kind of retrograde thinking to become normative, and worse, policy, we're going to find countries like Jamaica leaving us in the dust while we burn witches and heretics.