SALEM — "Life-changing" may be overused, but in this case, it's certainly appropriate.
Salem State College students Jessica Herrick and April Rachel recently returned from the fledgling nation of East Timor, where they participated in an international conference as the only North American representatives — and the youngest attendees.
Accompanied by Salem State professor Greg Carroll, who is Australian, the young women discussed ways to strengthen the tiny, Southeast Asian nation, which is about half the size of Massachusetts and has 1.1 million people. Most live in poverty, and the average life expectancy is 42.
"When I first got there, from the plane to the hotel there were refugee camps alongside the road," said Herrick, a senior social work major. "It hit home, the idea that there are tons and tons of people outside the U.S. who don't live in the conditions we do."
East Timor has seen much bloodshed and destruction in its fight for independence from Indonesia and subsequent unrest. Until Kosovo became a country this year, it was the youngest nation in the world.
The International Youth Conference focused on nation building — health care, education, infrastructure and sanitation, to name a few issues — and hosted 300 youths from East Timor, and dozens from other nations, ages 18 to 29. Herrick said she made friends from Sri Lanka, Nepal and other countries.
"The people from East Timor would say, 'This is the first time I've been able to stand up and give my opinion without being persecuted, tortured, discriminated against, or condemned,'" recalled Herrick, 21, of Byfield.
Carroll, a professor of peace studies and education, has traveled to East Timor many times. Rachel is a freshman from Everett studying education.
To look at the blog from their trip, visit www.salemstate.edu/blog/dili.
A praiseworthy Press
Salem author Margaret Press won the 2008 Al Blanchard Short Fiction Award for her crime story "Family Plot." The story was published in "Deadfall," an annual collection of crime stories by New England writers.
The story explores the use of DNA to uncover family secrets.
Press is the author of "A Scream on the Water," the story of the 1991 murder of Martha Brailsford of Salem.
A giant dies
One of the great minds of the past century died a few days ago in Norway.
D. Carleton Gajdusek, 85, won the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine for his study of a brain disease that was wiping out a remote tribe in New Guinea. His friends included Buckminster Fuller and Linus Pauling.
As an old man, he became notorious, arrested on charges of molesting young boys he adopted from that part of the world. In exile, he spent his winters above the Arctic Circle, a land in total darkness.
We tell you all this because years ago the young Gajdusek, the world explorer, made a major contribution to the Peabody Essex Museum. He donated medical documents and objects from New Guinea and islands in the Pacific Ocean that are still part of the museum's collections.
The other Bob Lappin
There was a story out of Palm Beach, Fla, this week about a Bob Lappin who was being flooded with phone calls, letters and e-mails about the Bernard Madoff scandal.
But it was not Robert I. Lappin of Swampscott, the head of the Salem charitable foundation who has a winter home in Palm Beach.
This was the conductor of the Palm Beach Pops, who just happens to have the same name.
"I have great sympathy for Mr. Lappin — Mr. Robert I. Lappin — and the charities the foundation gave to, but my name is W. Robert Lappin and, professionally, I go by Bob Lappin," he told the Palm Beach Daily News.
The orchestra, he said, has never invested with Madoff. "The Palm Beach Pops has always observed a strong fiduciary responsibility over its assets, and our assets remain safe and secure," he said.
A long lost Livingston
Have you ever Googled yourself?
By that, of course, we mean typing in your own name to Google's massive search engine to find out if your name is listed on any Web sites.
Susan Livingston, the Brown Brothers Harriman partner who is fighting Dominion and has launched her own Web site to oppose the power plant, Googled herself for the first time a few months ago.
Not surprisingly, there are other people named Susan Livingston out there. But one in particular caught her eye — a Susan Livingston living in Virginia who has also launched her own blog where she writes about her campaign against Dominion and its coal-fired power plants in that state.
So now Dominion has two opponents named Susan Livingston — one on each side of the Mason-Dixon line.
"She's been demonstrating and fighting Dominion," said the North Shore's Susan Livingston. "When I saw that, I thought, 'What are the chances of that?'"
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