MSI Press Blog

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Acton and Afghanistan are not far apart alphabetically, but in space—and in my life—they are about as distant as two places can be. I was already sixty years old when I first landed in Afghanistan. Most people assigned there were much younger. But I wasn’t going as a soldier or diplomat. I was going to Camp Julien, just outside Kabul, to better support the Af/Pak Hands program—a U.S. military initiative designed to train select service members in Afghan and Pakistani language, culture, and regional expertise for long-term assignments. I had been leading the language and culture training for the Hands stateside. Now, I needed to see the learning environment on the ground. I needed to understand what support they still needed once deployed. And I needed to understand it firsthand. So, off I went, accompanied by a National Guard majo...

Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Camp Julien: Barren Beauty and Blunt Reality When I arrived at Camp Julien, I was surprised at how barren it was. The surrounding mountains looked more than arid—they looked as if the “green” had been bombed out of them. It probably had. Facilities and Perspective The facilities, from what I could see, were pretty good—though everyone has their own comfort level with roughing it. Mine is fairly high. Life in Acton had been just barely on the grid. We grew our own food, milked our own cows, and butchered our own animals for meat. (I hated that part, so it’s pretty amazing that I ended up serving in the Army and then spent much of my civilian career working for the Army.) All the structures at Camp Julien were tents—large and small. The teachers worked in the same tent they slept in. They complained about it, but I couldn’t fully underst...

  Yes, Elly had a friend, Buster, a cat, who made the RV trip across Canada with her. Buster was apparently not a very good traveler at first, but adapted with time and experience. Here are some times the cat appears in the book: Buster is a Rag Doll breed of cat whose defining characteristic is going limp when he’s picked up. Having grown up with Elly, the slightly older Buster established himself early on as Alpha and maintained that relationship by a swat or nip on Elly’s hindquarters when he decided a playful interlude was over. While Elly was always a great traveler, Buster had some issues, even before our trip began. He occasionally upchucked if a road became too twisty or bumpy for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Buster’s problem behavior stopped suddenly and permanently during our trip, much to our delight. When appropriate, I’ll offer my opinion as to why. Our departure date of July 1 coincided with Canada Day, a statutory holiday for citizens to celebrate the birth of Canada....