Ticklish Ideas

S.E. -     Hey Miriam! How was band practice?

M.D. -   Good. We worked on the same piece for an hour tho, it wore me out.

S.E. -     What's the weather up to now? d'you think it's done raining? I've gotta
                go back to the library tonight and find a couple more sources.

M.D. -   [scrunching up her face] It's wormy out there.

[Dissolve into giggles and guffaws]

Three and a half hours ago I was walking a first-timer through the steps of getting online at the library. He was a new American, from Africa, about thirty, with confident limited English.

I was standing at his elbow as he typed the access number and I noticed his hands. Hands that had been tortured. Joints distorted, digits askew, both hands, systematic slow painful injury. I noticed but put the information away, and it surfaced twenty minutes ago in the grocery store. Torture. What a horrible thing, what a far-away thing, and just today I was working with someone who survived it.

I talked to Amigos de Sobrevivientes and thought about volunteering with them when I lived in Eugene; I thought of them tonight. No working website tho, I just found directory entries and broken links. Looking for them, I found these guys: The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT).
I'm going back there just after I hit the publish button, I need to learn something, put together a way to think about this.