I don’t know which piece of good news to share with your first. I guess I’ll postpone some of my self-promotion and give you an update on our good friend Pema. He keeps himself busy from fall to spring hiking the steep Khumbu trails of his home neighborhood in Nepal and tends to maintaining his prosperous lodges. You can be sure that he gets quite enthused when summer comes along and the heavy monsoon rain make his trekking business impractical. He absolutely loves getting out and traveling the world in the summers, as he has been doing for many years. He has made so many friends across the far corners of the globe that it takes him all summer to dash around and drop in for quick visits. For now he’s in the eastern United States, and by the end of the summer he’ll whip through here on his way to California. I suggested that either he has too many friends to visit or he should find more excuses to get away from Nepal.

Yesterday I got started talking about the news media in Nepal. I’m sure you can draw the same conclusion that the transparency and freedom of the press are things we can’t take for granted and the people of Nepal should be diligent to keep them growing. I’d like to point out some of the online news resources for reporting from Nepal. Other than the countless blog entries from free-spirited hikers who pass through the established sight-seeing trails (myself included) there are a few active news sites published from Nepal that give its citizens and the world outside an update on daily matters. Of course there is a lot of debate and criticism of conditions in the country in the villages and city centers, but people generally feel they need to watch their backs for the wrong ears hearing their critical opinions. English language news organizations within Nepal are closely monitored and somewhat constricted by the political administration, but there are also some news agencies reporting from outside the country’s borders that take an interest in Nepal’s issues.

Since I returned from trekking in the Himalayas I’ve gotten into the habit of checking the updates on our Nepal News page. I’m watching for signs of anything improving over there, but I realize things can get a lot worse. Just as we were leaving Nepal we heard how the government was hemming in the media and that it wasn’t that safe to speak openly about certain issues. It was interesting to be in that environment to help adjust my perspective a little. In the US we average citizens are barraged with news reports and editorial commentary coming from all biases and viewpoints. We get so much news that we don’t really pay attention to it, or we don’t go too far to test the views expressed. A lot of the news we get can seem petty, but the value is that the media do watch and report on the issues. In a place like Nepal the government does censor the media sources and works to sway them to their agenda. In the United States we sometimes feel disaffected with the news media because they seem to have a political bias or they beat sensational stories to death to draw more viewers.