The round, orange cluster bomblet we call the BLU-24 is favored by fisherman because it is more easily opened than other bomblets and holds enough explosive to fashion several fishing bombs from old food tins and small lengths of detonation cord. I’ve met fishermen who have boasted of the many fish their homemade bombs...
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There was a time when clearance organizations trucked their own supply of TNT across the country and then stored it in one of several approved depots, usually at a military base. Most recently the government has insisted that the explosive travel only on their vehicles. That’s “vehicles”, plural, because the National Regulatory Agency’s S.O.P....
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The setting: a steep hill of hard-packed clay lightly coated with gravel. The sleds: a flattened cardboard box, a lid from an old bucket and a crushed water jug. Who cares about a little road rash when you’re having fun with your buds!
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Vong knew he had no future as a farmer. He was born with a deformed leg that makes walking difficult and arduous labor in the rice paddies impossible. He’s unlikely to marry well, if at all, and a farmer without a helpmate has, as we in Wisconsin know, a handicap worse than a gimpy...
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While I was distracted See, my newly-hired interpreter in training, wandered off the work site. He reappeared some minutes later immensely pleased with himself. He carried a wounded bird in one hand and a slingshot in the other. I had no idea that he was packing heat. He had bagged a grey-headed, indigo-bodied songbird...
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I recently wrote about a thrifty, improvised bridge, rudimentary in design that, nevertheless, repeatedly bore the weight of the many Lao adults who trotted over it. I was halfway across the span when it collapsed under my weight, dropping me in the muck. It was not my first fall through a Lao footbridge. There’s...
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The Western world is getting fatter. So is America. So is Jim Harris. For some masochistic reason, at home between trips to Laos, I step on a bathroom scale every morning and watch my number steadily climb northward even though, lacking will, I have no intention of doing anything to reverse my gain. 180,...
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It’s always unnerving to hear a bomb explode after hours. Say…we’re all eating lunch in the field, or dinner in camp, or sitting around the campfire on a chilly evening. An explosion can only mean a mishap in the village, and possibly the loss of limbs or lives. Last night, when most of us...
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We began work after lunch by hiking into to a miserable site. We first spent half an hour stumbling around at the top of a ravine looking for a safe route down. We couldn’t find so much as a rabbit run in the dense foliage, much less a path that the farmer would have...
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Last evening near, Dak Lie village, we visited with a family who last year asked us to clear a parcel near their fishpond so they could plant a vegetable garden. They envisioned harvesting fresh greens not only for their table, but possibly in an abundance that would permit them to market produce to others...
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