Recently, I heard a contractor, being interviewed in Afghanistan, say, “Watch your back, watch your front, but have fun.”

This is pretty good advice for traveling anywhere. Women, of course, know we’ve been born into a war zone. We’re targets, no matter where we go, mostly because of the homo sapien breeding strategy. The common term for a woman who won’t recognize this — and goes through life thinking somebody else is going to keep her safe – is “Statistic.” But if you’re a guy, you can pretend you’re a woman when you’re out-of-town and not let anybody get to close behind you. This applies to any neighborhood, anywhere in the world, even in your own country.

There are stories going around about friends who have ended up drugged and stripped of their valuables. The friends usually don’t tell the whole story. My husband, who spent years in the hotel and tourism industry in the United States, has heard this one before, and knows why people get drugged for talking to people they don’t know. If you really need a prostitute or drugs or that stiletto that the border guard is going to take off you anyway, then make a discrete contact in a good hotel. Don’t mess with the street skanks when your concierge can get you a nice, clean call-girl or groomed boy.

As an American, find out what your corporations have been exploiting. If the local Native population is fighting the gold-mine that is dumping arsenic in the local river – the only source of drinking water – and is being decimated by the local militia because the white boys from up north — whom the Natives know bought the gold mine – have defined tribal protesters as “terrorists” and paid off militias to take the fight to the villages: DON’t WEAR GOLD. The same goes for anyplace that’s using slave labor to mine diamonds. Keep the sparklies at home if there’s any chance somebody whose mother lost an arm to a militia machete might go ballistic if they see you wearing blood diamonds. Besides, the wedding-ring finger won’t have that ugly tan line when you get back home.

If you’re going to eat the local food, remember that you don’t have the same bacterial gut culture. No matter how clean something is, you’re still going to get sick because the new gut bugs will be fighting your own bugs. If you live in a place for a year, you’ll develop a new gut culture. Then when you get back home you’ll get sick all over again; well, at least you’ll be used to it. Do what the locals do in so many places: pile on the hot peppers. Not only are the firey condiments great disease fighters, they’ll also make you sweat. And they are so yummy! Try them on vanilla ice cream – it’s to die for. Drink lots and lots of HOT tea with them. It will clean out your system and the boiled water will guarantee you won’t be drinking the live bugs. Beer works, too, if you want something cold.

When traveling, don’t make fun of the locals. Don’t laugh at them or point or sneer at their food. How would you feel? Be the kind of traveler that doesn’t make your compatriots cringe and mutter, “I’m not with THEM.” If nothing else, think of the dignity of your people! Have you seen yourself in those Bermuda shorts?

The cliché you travel with will be the cliché you get. If you expect to be cheated or mistreated or despised, then that is exactly what you will get. If you expect to be delighted, amazed, surprised and thoroughly entertained by every new thing – no matter how scary – then that is what you will get. Try this experiment: if you expect to see little old men with berets, and accordion players, in Paris – they will materialize. If you expect drug dealers or angry extremists don’t hope to enjoy.

If you can’t learn any other words – and considering the American education system, nobody much expects you to – at least learn “Please,” “Thank you” and “Magnificent.” The last is what you’ll answer in case a translating friend asks you what you think of the local town. A big grin and high praise will make them do everything but wag their tails. Everybody likes to have nice things said about their town. If you start complaining, guess how you’ll get treated. Serenity and joy just seem to rub off on everybody. You may get a free bottle of wine with dinner, especially if you just hand the waiter all those napkins you’ve been drawing on for free. In some countries art is as good as money. Send your kids to art classes if they’re going to be traveling.

Don’t go into war zones unless you have a press pass. Everybody involved in whatever struggle is going on do not have time to watch you or your kids. You’re not a reporter, and you’re not being paid to carry a gun. Stay out of those arenas; those are not your playpens.

A lot of this applies if you’re going to retire to a place. Don’t expect to get what you got in your own country. There will be a lack of things you always took for granted, but there will be lots of wonderful things you can’t get back home – it’s a tradeoff. Decide what you want. Go to a place you think you’d like to retire. Learn the customs, the ins-and-outs, the way people do things. Make friends! The day you decide to retire to their country, you won’t run into the problems you’d get if you march in full of ignorance and arrogance, expecting the locals to be your quiet little colored servants. Everybody’s got their own culture, their own way of doing things. If you’re dumb enough to expect a flush toilet in a desert country, and refuse to turn the handle on the composting bin once a week, or recognize you can’t throw Styrofoam garbage into the methane pit if you expect them to work, then retire in your own culture. You’re too tame, and you need to stay within the domesticated fences.

With the growing population, everybody’s going to have to learn to use composting toilets soon enough. If you think the oil wars were bad – wait ’till you find yourself in the middle of the water wars. Don’t move to Los Vegas.

 I was a block-watch coordinator in Bremerton, Washington, for fifteen years. This is why I refuse to coordinate, oversea, organize or browbeat a block-watch ever again. But I’m certainly willing to share tips and hints if anyone wants to set one up.

First of all, let the local police know you’re forming a blockwatch. You’ll need their cooperation. If you want to get rid of the coke house or make the users stop attempting to run the kids off the sidewalks, here are a few suggestions:

1. Set up a block-watch contact with the police. Get their phone numbers and fancy brochures.

2. Have an initial block-watch meeting, and make sure you have some kind of cop there. Most towns have a block-watch contact. Make sure the kids attend.

3. Don’t haul the neighbors in every single week for a block-watch meeting. Have a complete informational meeting the first month, and then go underground until actual problems surface. It’s going to be easier to have people over to your house for cookies and action plans (and for your stupid cat to frighten with a dead baby robin) if there’s an actual problem going on in the neighborhood.

4. Remind the neighbors that they’re actually property owners and no, nobody has the right, under any constitution, to scare, bully or generally push them around.

5. Drive-by shootings are always aimed at the people actually involved in the trafficking. The clowns in the low-riders are aiming for each other, not the locals. People on drugs don’t normally shoot straight. Remind block watch members that they have a bigger arsenal than the drug dimwits – the police. Don’t let the flip-flopped idiot with the yard fixation start threatening to use his own gun; remember the block-watch slang for children: “Bullet magnet.”

6. If you’re in contact with the cops to set up surveillance for on-going criminal activity, it’s simply going to take a long time for them to build a case. If the block watch is not willing to take film of activities through the curtains at night, or keep a llicense-plate list of vehicles pulling up for five-minute stops, then don’t bother the cops about closing down the drug house.

7. If the gang-bangers try to move in and tag the garages, get out there and get those scribbles painted off. Today. Everybody can swear all they like, but paint out the marks NOW. Then wait for the next day when the bangers bring their friends by to brag about their new territory, and find out that the actual property-owning gang has un-done all their markings. Try not to laugh as the taggers nearly burst into tears. Pointing and laughing, however, is just bad manners.

8. If an obvious drug stop occurs repeatedly – especially in front of your own house – try this old Detroit trick: paint a nice neat red-on-white sign that proclaims, “Drug Parking – 15 minute limit.” The one thing the drop-off drivers don’t want is attention. The only problem this will cause is if you try to take it down later and your neighbors complain because they thought it was funny.

9. If the drop-off moves to the next house, have a party on his car. This is highly entertaining to the neighborhood, and extremely frustrating for the dealer. It’s awfully hard to bring in customers if the blockwatch is sitting around the guy’s car drinking margaritas and holding up numbered performance cards.

10. If one of the neighborhood kids starts lighting things to watch them burn, contact the fire department. Have a special meeting for Junior Firefighters. Re-direct the little arsonist’s desire for attention: make him the Chief.

11. The kids will get in on the blockwatch, whether you want them to or not. Drill it into their little pea brains that they are NOT to confront adults. If they see anything, do a slow walk-and-whistle around the block to the blockwatch leader’s house. Make sure they understand how much larger an adult is than any child – and that they are very seldom reluctant to hurt children they think is getting between them and their fun. People doing dumb things often can’t recognize other people’s children as human beings. If they could, they wouldn’t be doing the dumb things in the first place.

12. It is very very difficult, but at least try to make it clear to people that they can’t witness something and run to you to report it. You are NOT a member of the police. You are not a legal witness. People often have warrants upon them, and are reluctant to act as witnesses. At least set up a network where they can have someone else call in the problem – preferably a relative not wanted by the sheriff, if they can find one.

You’ll have to re-think your direction for any blockwatch, and make it fit your own situation. Use a sense of humor and don’t be afraid. If you’re afraid, they’re going to take over the neighborhood anyway, so you might as well get in ahead of them.

Have fun, and hook up for the National Block-watch parties. And vote in a new blockwatch coordinator at least once a year.

Before the first one loses her mind.

Donna Barr has written a lot of books. Her home page is www.stinz.com

I just realized why China is going to eat our lunch.

Go get the movie Mad Max — Beyond Thunderdome.  Watch it (It’s fun!).

Then ask what is the real difference between two of the movie’s societies, both founded by females.  They’ve both got light.  They’ve both got the same fuel.  They’ve just got different sources.

It’s not oil.  It’s not corn.  It’s not electricity.  Victor Hugo jumped up in the middle of Les Misererables to demand why society was being so incredibly wasteful of this home-grown product.  And he was only ranting about farming. 

The Chinese aleady know how to use and process this fertilizer/fuel.  Farms all across China are producing it for independent use on farms and in villages. 

We, instead, are using billions of gallons of precious drinking water to literally flush it away.  We are idiots.

And it’s why Josh Whedon’s Firefly  got it right about everybody in the future speaking Chinese.  The Chinese are going to kick our butts. 

Or the shit out of us — either reference in pertinent.