Myanmar

Thursday

Caleb Quinley

Myanmar’s junta is lashing out

Myanmar’s junta has once again shown its true self: calculated, despicable, and violently unrestrained. Last night, warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs onto a crowded hospital in Rakhine State. The blast tore through the building with surgical cruelty, sending glass and metal through wards where patients slept. Dozens were killed instantly; others bled out in the darkness as the hospital collapsed around them. Many of the victims were children and infants. This wasn’t a tragic misfire, nor a reaction to combat nearby. It was a targeted strike: planned, ordered, and executed in the dead of night. The generals in Naypyidaw chose their moment with perverse intent.

Sunday

Calla Jones Corner

My father’s trunk reminds me of one of my earliest Memorial Days

Perhaps we all have our first memories of celebrating Memorial Day. Mine comes from 1945 when my father returned from the Pacific Theater of World War Two. I was only two. My father didn’t have to go to war as he had a family and was “safe” from the draft. Nevertheless, he volunteered after being recruited by the newly founded OWI, or Office of War Information. The OWI wanted men and women, like my father, whose graphic, photography, writing and communication skills at J. Walter Thompson, the worldwide advertising agency, had been noted and would help defeat the Japanese. He felt it was his patriotic duty and was buoyed, no doubt, by having close friends with families who had volunteered.

Thursday

Lesley Downer

On the road to Mandalay

Traveling in Myanmar, it’s hard not to think of Rudyard Kipling’s immortal lines: ‘On the road to Mandalay,/ Where the flying fishes play.’ These days both Kipling and Myanmar (or Burma, as we still think of it) are out of favor. The mere mention of a visit elicits raised eyebrows and hisses of disbelief, though it seems that travelers can visit China, which is just as repressive, with impunity. But despite the disapproval, Myanmar retains its allure. Even the names are magical. Who wouldn’t want to take the road to Mandalay or sail the Irrawaddy? There were no flying fishes the day I arrived in Mandalay.

burma mandalay