Genève and UN

My Grandma Pat sent out an email yesterday (affectionately titled "Hi Mutts and Buzzards" from my grandpa) recounting their hosting of the summer. With no paragraph breaks, I think it conveyed the ways she's spent these past few months: having ten-day house guests, visitors with seven kids, my aunt from California unexpectedly arrive at 5 am with three others, and now planning a trip to Mt Rushmore (500 miles RT) with friends from Arizona. It made me proud of my grandparents, and if I held to Karma, I'd say I'm withdrawing their deposits.

I ended up staying in Geneva longer than expected because the bus I'd intended to take was full. It's your lucky day when Hannah comes for three days and stays for five. Esther more than took it in stride, as did her brother at whose apartment we were staying. [It's worth noting that he's a professionally trained patisserie and confectionery chef with specialties in ice cream and chocolate].

John Calvin
Lake Leman
Esther and the filthy crepe
So that I'm not accused of having a Pollyanna complex (which I haven't been, though it's a personal concern since I usually don't post accounts of me being a brat or waiting for three hours in a city hoping my couchsurfing host comes through or my feeling someone in close proximity is being paternalistic), here are some of the things I thought yesterday upon visiting the United Nations in Geneva.

First of all, it's not a very good tour, especially for CHF10 ($8). The guide talked and walked too fast and then called for questions such as, "Is everyone clear on the effect of the disarmament treaty on the world since 1995." But it was in the Spanish Room a.k.a. the Francisco de Vitoria Room a.k.a. the Council Chamber that the whole idea of the organization got to me. I know I'm not the first person to take exception to the UN, but it's the first time I've dealt with it in the "I'm walking down the corridors of power" reality, so bear with me.

The murals in that room, done by Jose-Maria Sert in an exaggerated, Rockefeller Center way, represent Technology, Social Systems, and Medicine with lots of bulging muscles. There are also three panels representing war/victory/defeat, but the concluding panel was of a woman holding a child of hope. Fair enough, I hold to a child of hope as well. The guide's interpretation, and the UN at large I think, is that our hope is that if we can harness technology, social systems, and medicine, then surely we can harness peace. A fundamentally flawed mission driving an organization with a $1.9 billion annual budget.

Then I went to the bookstore that has enough development material and conference papers to keep a person reading for thirty years. But the one that caught my eye was "Broken Bodies, Broken Dreams," about broken women. It was explicit, I won't be. Damn, it's too much to bear. And that's just their written stories and pictures. Maranatha.

Which brings me to my conundrum of do I move towards a life with a yoga studio on Vancouver Island or Nantucket or do I go somewhere with a somewhat higher percentage of broken people, like my friends Wes and Cara in Bolivia who work with prostitutes, and work out the gospel there. I guess that's what I'm here trying to figure out.