Time's getting short

We need to do another border run this week, so I can't go with the office on their exchange trip to the Northeast of Thailand. Also was able to change my return ticket from Bangkok to Taipei to Singapore to Taipei. And I just booked my ticket to Singapore. Tiger Airways that J took to Singapore, doesn't have any flight to Chiang Mai after today. So there are no non-stop flights to Singapore from Chiang Mai. Air Asia makes you book each leg separately on line.

I accidentally booked the 11am flight instead of the 8am flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, so I get to Singapore at 8pm instead of 3pm. Bummer. And it looks like luggage is severely restricted. Double bummer. But it's only about $150.

All the AJWS volunteers met with visiting New York rep, Dorcus, last night for dinner.




It was a chance to talk and catch up on what everyone is doing. A chance I didn't completely take advantage of. I got to meet an AJWS staff member I didn't know about and her former Peace Corps husband - who, it turned out, taught a year at the new university in Kamphaengphet.

After dinner we walked a little bit to get some ice cream. I had one of the best I've ever had - mango-blueberry sorbet. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Things Cool Off

Boy, things really changed in the last two days. While I realize you Alaska folk think 75ºF is hot, it's like the temperature dropped from 30ºF to 5ºF. It feels deliciously cool, even though the humidity went up. We had thunder and some rain today. About the second time we've seen rain in six weeks. After highs over 100ºF all week and lows in the high 80s, 64ºF seems downright chilly.

Saturday Afternoon Walk 5 - Signs

In case you needed anything while we're here, just let us know. .

(Exchange is about 32 Baht/$1US, so 500 Baht is about $13.)

Saturday Afternoon Walk 4 - Motorcycles, Song Thaews and Bus Stops

Transportation is an issue in Chiang Mai. I've already posted about the difficulties of walking. The basic form of transportation is the motorcycle as you can see by this video I took while we were eating our sticky rice. The AJWS handbook is very clear: No motorcycles. The Peace Corps has the same rule. When I was a volunteer at least there was no prohibition against riding on the back, you just couldn't have your own. Now, if you are caught on a motorcycle you are sent home.




But one of the AJWS volunteers we met last year had a motorcycle, so I was wondering how strictly it was enforced. One volunteer had heard a staff member say, you really need one in Chiang Mai. But she changed her mind when a young volunteer from another NGO was killed recently in a motorcycle accident. And last night we saw a sign in a shop asking for blood for a young foreigner who'd been in a motorcycle accident. So that is two foreigners we know of in the six weeks we've been here. And when Dorcus - the New York AJWS staff person who oversees Thailand - came by Friday (all four volunteers are meeting with her for dinner tonight) to the office, she reiterated - No Motorcycles.



Transportation is a problem. The easiest form of transportation is the Song Thaew. That literally means two rows and you can see one of the two rows in the picture of the Song Thaew at the bus stop, with the sign broken and hanging.





They are fairly cheap - 15-30 baht per person most places in Chiang Mai (about 32 B to the dollar). More if you book it private or at night. It seems the song thaew drivers who hang around tourist areas expect higher prices also. But there is also the bus. I know there's a bus because there's a website with a map. I've even seen the white buses pass now and again. But I've yet to see an actual bus stop near where we live. I have no idea what their schedule is. (The link above says 'schedule' but there is only a map.)





So as we walked I kept an eye out for bus stops. You can see two typical bus stops. (One with the back of the song thaew above.) Damaged and it seems that way for a long time. Someone gave me the best explanation the other day. The Song Thaew mafia doesn't want a good bus system. Sounds like a plausible explanation to me. But I did find a long range public transit plan that was written by Chiang Mai University faculty that essentially says buses are going to have to be used or traffic will become unbearable. I also found a plan

for a Chiang Mai subway system. Note that this is on a real estate website and all the lines go nicely out into the suburbs where western style subdivisions have been and are being built.

And as I was trying to find the mass transit plan website again, I found this two year long chat room discussion about mass transit in Chiang Mai. (only a few entries per year from 2004 to 2007) I also found the main transit website (the map above is linked from the website, but not back to the main transit website. Struggling through the Thai, I haven't found anything about how often they run, bus stops, or fares.)

So, in the end we use what I all the song thaw (sounds like the tow in towel) transportation system at lot. (Song means two, thaw means feet.) And when I go to work I use my bike. Last night, after some time in the night market we caught a song thaew back. (sounds a lot like foot - thaw - but with the (m)eow sound a cat makes.)

Saturday Afternoon Walk 3 - Grilled Sticky Rice and Temple Doors

We passed a couple of temples.

Variations on a temple door.

Grilled sticky rice.

First they make the sticky rice. Then they add sugar and coconut milk and the banana (it's in the middle of the rice.) Then they shape it and wrapped it in the banana leaves and grill it. Other times it has black or red bean instead of banana. I think I've seen banana leaf strips for sale at Sagaya's. Let's see if I can make these when we get home.

Saturday Afternoon Walk 2 - Weather Change

As we the through campus shortcut, I realized something was different. It just felt different, familiar. Some combination of temperature and humidity and smells was taking me back 40 years. I looked up. There were actual clouds in the sky, not haze. It was a strange deja vu, due clearly, to some atmospheric condition that took me back to how it felt in Thailand long ago.

Here are some seed pods on campus.

One thing on our list today was to see if I could get a connector so I can go directly from my MacBook to the projector. By chance we passed a Mac store we didn't know was there. 1000 Baht - about $30. We were headed for the giant discount computer place and I wanted to check the price online first. The computer place didn't have it, but got some dvd's to save some of the video and make more space on my Mac, and I got stickon Thai letters for the keyboard. I have checked on the connector and there are various issues mentioned on line so I'll wait til I get back home. Oh, it was $25 online, but not sure it was exactly the same connector.

Saturday Afternoon Walk 1 - Night Market Setup

After spending a hot, lazy day reading, studying Thai, blogging at home, we took off for a walk about 4pm. As we got down to Thanon (road) Suthep, the main road south of the University and near our apartment, we walked along where they were setting up for the night market. The tables were still empty as they were getting things ready.











All the spoons and forks and chopsticks and the dishes washed and ready for the evening crowds.






And the spice racks.














All I could get from the person there is that this ancient machine is for ice. Shaving it? Crush it? Not sure. Didn't seem like it was worth bothering them further to find out exactly.

Fitna

The bug post was a way for me to avoid posting about Fitna, but I realize I can't avoid it. This is a post that I probably shouldn't post at this stage. I don't thnk I've gotten my ideas straight. But I also don't think I have the emotional energy to work on it much more for now. Plus, the Engaging Muslim series in Wendy Williamson Auditorium will have another speaker on Sunday March 30, at 2pm so it seems timely to get this out now.

I got an email this morning. It began:

Dear Volunteer Corps Southeast
Asia,

We are writing to inform you of a controversial anti-Koran short film that has just been posted to the internet and the security risks associated with it. Given that there is increased risk we ask that you monitor the internet to keep abreast of developments around this story. If you do not have access to the internet, please make sure that we can reach you by phone in case there is a flare-up connected to the film.

So I, of course, had to find the film on the internet and watch it. Then I read more posts about it, including an interview with Geertz Wilders the Dutch member of parliament who produced the film.



Do I feel threatened? No, not at all. I'm in Northern Thailand. I'm more worried about getting hit by a car or motorcycle as I walk home up the dark, narrow street we live on. Maybe if I were in Southern Thailand where there is a Muslim anti-Thai government movement (and has been since I was here 40 years ago, but then they called it Communist). But I also realize that I got this email because I'm a volunteer for the American Jewish World Service.

And then there are the ironies of modern technology. On this website that features this anti-Muslim film that was predicted to cause mass riots and violence, we find Google Ads for How to How to Convert to Islam and Muslim Marriage Bureau.

But all this chatter on my part is me avoiding the main issue. The movie itself takes a few quotes from the Koran and then has clips of Muslim speakers telling their followers to kill non-believers, which Wilders thinks proves that the Koran promotes a "Fascist" ideology.

I'm not an Islamic scholar and I simply do not have enough information to come to a valid conclusion. Radical Catholic Mom had a link the other day to an article about a Coptic Priest who broadcasts to the Arabic speaking world in Arabic about the Koran and challenges Islamic clerics to refute his claims that the Koran advocates some hateful ideas and practices. That seems a better approach to me. (Though I'm assuming the writers of this piece want their subject to look good and I don't know what others say about him.) In contrast Wilders' movie is aimed at the Western world, warning that Muslims intend to take over the world and destroy democracy. And that now is the time to take action. I can't help but note that the website also says with no apparent irony,

As self-proclaimed “defender of free speech” and critic of Islam, he has sought to ban the Koran in the Netherlands because he believes it to be in conflict with Dutch law.

I'm stalling here, because I still haven't distilled out the key issues. Forget Fitna the film, but watch the Fox News Interviews - with a skeptical ear. I don't agree with Wilders conclusions, but as he goes along, he raises issues that must be addressed. The fears of people are what take us to war. I think the fears of the Dutch people, which have made Wilders one of the most popular Dutch politicians, must be considered, because that is what they act on. But I would also argue that the fears and despair of many Muslims are what causes them to act with hate as well.

While Wilders begins talking about the Koran as the source of problems, he eventually starts talking about the Dutch system as the problem. While he claims that the Dutch have done everything reasonable to assimilate Muslims, the Muslims have refused to go along. (If you had fled your homeland, say because you couldn't find work or support your family, and your new homeland happened to be Islamic, would you just switch to using Arabic at home and start your Islam conversion classes?)

Like Americans were taught about the melting pot for years in school, Wilders' idea is that the immigrants should become thoroughly Dutch citizens. Even if this was what they wanted, even it they could just do that, I suspect (and I have had discussions with European 'ethnic' students who were studying in Anchorage the past two summers) that many Dutch Muslims would say the Dutch don't accept them. I believe Wilders believes what he says about the Dutch making efforts to integrate the Muslims. The problem is that it is from a "the Dutch way is right and yours is wrong" perspective. After all, if yours was right, why are you here? Not an unreasonable question. Except the reasons people are there are complex, as were the reasons so many Dutch left Holland for the North America since the 18th Century.

Changing to a different part of this topic, radical Islam is about power and powerlessness.

Young men everywhere want to identify with the strong hero who saves the world.

Young Muslim men in the Middle East and elsewhere have seen themselves as powerless. The West has the power. The ideas and cultures of Islam are portrayed in the world media and in the global distribution of wealth as powerless and backward. It wasn't long ago that Muslims had respect in the world. I would note that it was only after I graduated from college - it was never in my history classes - that I learned that the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922)

[a]t the height of its power (16th–17th century)... spanned three continents, controlling much of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar (and, in 1553, the Atlantic coast of Morocco beyond Gibraltar) in the west to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf in the east, from the edge of Austria, Slovakia and parts of Ukraine in the north to Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Yemen in the south. The Ottoman Empire contained 29 provinces, in addition to the tributary principalities of Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia.

The empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. The Ottoman Empire was, in many respects, an Islamic successor to earlier Mediterranean empires — namely the Roman and Byzantine empires. (more a Wikipedia)

But today's world has been thoroughly dominated by non-Muslims and the Muslim world, despite its oil and some very rich elite, lives in relative physical poverty compared to the West. This contrast gets exacerbated when people immigrate to Western Europe.

And remember, much of this immigration was instigated by governments who needed laborers in post WW II Europe, and in the case of Germany they invited Gastarbeiter (Guest Workers), first from Italy and Greece, and then from Turkey. But, until recently, their grandchildren, born in Germany to parents who were born in Germany, could not get German citizenship. I can't go into all of this because I don't have time and I don't know all of it. My point is simply that this is not the black and white (Dutch have been wonderful hosts and the Muslims have abused our hospitality) story Wilders portrays.

When I was a student in Europe in the mid 60s, you almost never saw a non-white face. If you did they were either students or guest workers. In those days Europeans could smugly criticize the US for its handling of American blacks. But now the face of Europe has radically changed. If immigration is an issue in the US, it is a much more potent issue in Europe where the influx of people with very different world views has been swift and threatening to what had been far more homogeneously populated countries than the US. The fear that their way of life is being taken away is quite understandable. But globalization works both ways, not simply bringing European ideas to Africa, Asia, and South America, but African, Asian, and South American people, as well as resources, to Europe. Europe and the US cannot change the lives of others without having our lives changed as well.

The questions I'm trying to articulate revolve around the different world views, the different stories people have. But so many things are intertwined. Here are some of the factors that seem to be involved:

• The heritage of colonialism. The extent to which the European empires - the British, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Belgian, the French, and the German - play in all this is difficult to quantify factor. The Muslim immigrant population in UK, for instance, is hugely made up of people from former colonies. I think this is true of France and Spain as well. See the film Days of Glory/Indigenes to get a sense of the betrayal that North Africans felt in France

• Economic dominance of the West. While the political controls of the colonial empires were mostly dissolved in the 1960s, the economic control of the former colonies continued. Shell is a Dutch oil company, for example.

• Feelings of powerlessness. How much of the problem stems from the feelings of powerlessness and resentment of peoples subject to Euro-American economic, political, and military control of much of the world?
  

• Factors of Islam? What is it about Islam that it produces a violent reaction, whereas Buddhist and Hindu reaction are different? Is this a feature of Islam as Wilder claims, or is it a feature of people taking advantage of of the despair, who offer a native solution - Islam - to the powerless young men of the Islamic world?
  
  Or is it something about Arabic cultures? Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims seem to operate differently. Certainly Americans would respond with violence if their nation were invaded. We celebrate the violence of the Boston Tea Party in our history books. And Christianity used violence in the Crusades, in the conquering of the Amricas. And the Old Testemant, the holy book of Jews and one of two books of Christians, holds its share of violence and the destruction of people who do not worship the Jews' god.
  

• Dutch treatment of immigrants. Wilders himself has strong words about how the Dutch system exacerbates the problem. How much of the problem (in Holland) is the Dutch response to immigration and welfare? It appears that their approach was to treat the immigrants as though they had Dutch values and now they are resentful that the immigrants didn't respond as Dutch citizens would have.

I don't know the answers. As you can see, I'm still struggling to figure out the questions.

Perhaps people going to hear Dr. Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America, speak at Wendy Williamson Auditorium Sunday, March 30, as part of APU's Engaging Muslims program can raise these questions and have a real candid, yet respectful discussion.

Bug Intruder

It was evening a few days ago. A large insect was attached to the outside of our living room screen. The problem with not having manual control of the focus shows up in situations like this. The camera kept focusing on the screen, not what was lurking behind it.

From outside, it was too dark to get the bug clearly. The flash was too bright. So, I decided to have fun with the pictures. My limited technical resources here include iphoto and keynote.

My guess is that this critter had not completed his metamorphosis from the larval to adult stage.

The Intruder Scoping out its Prey

Yam (rhymes with Tom) for Sale

These Karen shoulder bags were brought into the office just now. They are for sale for between 120 Baht and 150 Baht. I thought I'd put them up here and see if there was anyone who wanted to buy one - I hope for a little more.

They were made by children in the village as a way to raise money for school fees. If someone wants to buy one or more of them - there are three in the office now - let me kow and we can figure out how to work out the payment somehow.

If you can wait, I can get them to you when I get back to the US in May. Or we can could mail them from here, we'll just add shipping charges.

My boss understands the potential power of having a blog - in fact we set one up experimentally. You can see it in my profile. There is only one post. But Bing asked me to help him set one up too. He's put up a poem he wrote for his grandmother who died when I first got here. I'm hoping that as he gets good at it and will be able to write for the organization's post. Go to his blog and leave a comment. Tell him you'd like him to translate the poems into English.

So let's see if there is power here to sell some shoulder bags. Any bidders?






Here are some pictures of village kids. These are not the kids who made the bags, but you get the idea. These are poor kids who live in a fairly traditional hill tribe culture. The bags were made by similar kids.

Traini's Back In

It seems my mid town vote matters after all. According to an ADN story by Kyle Hopkins, the Supreme Court has decided that Traini is eligible to run.

I've already written on this extensively. It's unfortunate that the only way, apparently, to clarify the ambiguity in the law, was to legally challenge someone running for office for an 'extra' term. I've looked at the Municipal Charter and at the Muni's hired attorney's opinion, and think that he shouldn't have been eligible. But the reasoning Kyle reports the SC used - when there is a doubt in the law, interpret for the candidate - does make some sense too.

The decision clarifies this for future races, which is good and was clearly necessary. Unless the charter is changed again, 'term' does not mean 'partial term.'

I'm sure all this put a damper on Traini's campaign - as Kyle's post says - and Traini may challenge the election if he loses. I still think it is contrary to the spirit of the term limits. He will have served, if he wins and completes his term, more than nine years.

Voting - Thanks to Persistence of Lupe Marroquin,

People are quick to complain and slow to praise public servants. I want to thank Lupe Marroquin of the Municipal Clerk's office for her persistence in getting us our absentee ballots here in Thailand. Here's a picture of me voting long distance.



It wasn't easy. First, I didn't know what fax machine to use. At our apartment building they said I couldn't fax out of Thailand. (To send in the applications) When I asked at the office though, Ew smiled and pointed at a box. She'd just bought a new fax machine. We set it up and managed to send in the applications. But I wasn't so sure about getting a fax back. It would be night here when they faxed. Would the electricity to the fax be on? Would the paper jam?

I emailed to check they got the applications. They had, but they were getting busy signals. At the apartment the fax at the main desk was out of toner and they had to order from Bangkok. Then, there was a knock on the apartment door, and someone from the front desk had brought up an old fax machine to use in our apartment.

Lupe checked the internet and figured out that she needed to drop the zero in our phone number when calling from overseas. She got through to the Thai recording I warned her about, but then there was a second recording and she hung up. I faxed from the office to the fax in the apartment the next day. It worked. I emailed Lupe that the second recording just said, "Wait a sec."

That night about 11pm, the phone rang, and the fax began to spit out a long scroll of paper with our ballots printed on it. So, today I took them to the office and faxed them back. People were a little amazed that I could vote by fax.

It does say on the form, "I am voluntarily waiving a portion of my right to a secret ballot..." But when I saw that in the picture you could see how I voted, I redacted the photo. I don't have to give up that much of my right to a secret ballot.

So, thanks again Lupe for being so persistent in getting our ballots to us. I know you were working from home at 6am when you emailed me you'd try again. That's the kind of service that you aren't paid for, but which is great to get.

Now, the rest of you Anchorage readers, go vote in the Municipal elections.

Payroll, Pool, Pancake

What I manage to post up here is just a small fraction of what's happening. J's Thai classes have ended. AUA - American University Alumni - was teaching Thai and English in Bangkok 40 years ago already. But it is summer break and they postponed Thai classes to fill their classrooms with Thais wanting to learn English. There's a much bigger demand. Meanwhile, they also have classes at the University which is much closer. But J liked her teacher so much she continued at AUA. I still want to go in and have a diagnostic test and get some Thai lessons appropriate to where I am. Clearly I'm picking up lots each week, but I could do this faster with help.



So, when we were at the Fire Break Ceremony Sunday, J was asked to give English lessons in the office and she came in Tuesday and yesterday (Thursday). They were in another room but I heard a lot of laughing. J's a great teacher and I know they had a good time and learned. Ew came out speaking only in English, something she's never done with me before. Yes, words here and there, but never whole sentences. It's all there, but the speaking experience is missing.







Yesterday after the lesson Ew drove J and me to lunch. Then we dropped J off at the Chiang Mai University (Chaw Maw for short) swimming pool and we went on to the bank to do the payroll.




Last night J and I walked down to the Vietnamese restaurant. The air conditioning was set low enough to be unobtrusive, but eventually I realized how comfortable it was. It's been in the high 90's every day, and recently the evenings have NOT been getting cooler. But the humidity was down in the 30% range, so I don't get all wet.

They call this a Vietnamese pancake on the menu, but it is much, much more than that. And it comes with this huge collection of vegetables. For the Alaskans who have been drooling over the food pictures, you can order this at Ray's on Spenard across the street from Chilkoots. Steve Heimel introduced me to this when he met with my class last fall.


And for you coffee fanatics, you'll be pleased to know you can satisfy your cravings with no problem in Thailand. Coffee shops are everywhere, particularly in tourist areas and here around the university. You can double click the picture to enlarge it.



It's about 32 Baht to the dollar.

Bert Hoak - Running for Assembly

My curiosity was piqued reading the ADN description of Assembly Candidate Bert Hoak's time in Cambodia. So I googled a little. It looks like Hoak got his 15 minutes of fame running a book store in Cambodia.

There's also a Hoak's Lakeshore restaurant in Buffalo, New York that was owned by a Bert Hoak who could have been Bert's father.

I shouldn't be surprised that we have so many people with such interesting life experiences in Anchorage. There is no doubt he would make an interesting addition on the Anchorage Assembly. Having watched real life and death issues in person in Cambodia, this isn't a man who's likely to get caught up in the pettiness that can sometimes be the Anchorage Assembly. This isn't an endorsement, I only know a few tidbits about him. But this is a man I'd like to take to dinner and have a long conversation with when I get back home.


From Mekong.net we have these observations from Hoak originally written on a mailing list:

Although my opinions on Cambodia are by no means unique, my observations were made from a perspective that was unique. Unlike many others, I continued on after the completion of the UNTAC mission and was daily witness to the rapid decline of Cambodia...socially, politically, and environmentally. The business that I operated dealt with clientele that included NGO, tourists and professional travelers, journalists, academicians, and diplomats. It was common for our clientele to share their experiences from throughout Cambodia. I know of no other who had the benefit of such a such a unique vantage.

The pain, the suffering continues. In spite of Cambodia being the highest per capita recipient of foreign aid -- for more than five years. The deforestation increases...in spite of foreign aid. The drug network increases...in spite of foreign aid. The Human Rights abuses, the killing of journalists, editors, dissidents and others continues, and will continue, in spite of foreign aid. Our continued aid will only serve to prop up a despotic regime...to prolong the misery...to prolong the ecological devastation, even to the point of no return.

Again and again we hear that foreign aid should be continued so that we can have some influence on the "government" of Cambodia, or as [Australian] Ambassador [Tony] Kevin states it: "By remaining engaged (continuing foreign aid) outside governments and agencies have some leverage on RGC behaviour....that by withdrawing, that leverage is lost."

I lived and worked in Cambodia for almost five years. Throughout that time there were repeated and continuous instances of murder, atrocities, ecological rape, and the violation of even the most basic Human Rights...not to even mention the abject terror that the rural Cambodian comes to expect in Cambodia today.

Throughout those years I waited...together with millions of Cambodians, waited for the international community to act, to make some stand, to give some sign of hope that the outside world would not sit idly by while Cambodia again slides into despotism.

A July 1997 New York Times article says about Hoak:

Many of those who are leaving are people like Mr. Hoak who volunteered to help the United Nations prepare for elections and stayed on to make Cambodia a second home.

Bert's Books became a landmark, the only good English-language bookshop in town, where browsers could pull a dusty paperback from the shelves and sit on the roof looking out across the Tonle Sap River at the palm trees and fishing villages on the opposite bank.

Housed in what was once a brothel, Bert's Books also became a popular guesthouse, where a single room with bath and extra-large bed could be had for $6 a night.

There's even mention of him in the scholarly journal Human Rights Quarterly, but UAA's electronic data base only goes back to Volume 17 and the article is in Volume 16. The google snippet says:

work of the United Nations Volunteers-people like the Alaskan, Bert Hoak, ...

And one more in the same vein as the NY Times piece dated July 1997 from geocities:

Mr Hoak, 46, has worked in Cambodia for five years, including a stint with the United Nations and as owner of the well-known Bert's Bookshop, Guest House and Restaurant, a popular meeting place for travellers and resident expats.

Clutching visa applications for himself, his Cambodian wife and their young son, Mr Hoak said they were going to his hometown of Buffalo, New York, after watching this nation go from bad to worse.

"I came here in 1992 as a United Nations volunteer to work in the election" which resulted in a seemingly absurd power-sharing arrangement between two prime ministers, Hun San and his now self-exiled rival, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.

"I witnessed sexual excesses" by UN personnel during preparations for the 1993 poll, said Mr Hoak, referring to widespread complaints that some of the international "peace-keeping forces" harassed Cambodian women and enjoyed trysts with prostitutes.

Nevertheless, after the UN spent nearly $3 billion (90 billion baht) to stage the elections, Mr Hoak stayed on and opened his riverside "cerebral hostelry" three years ago, attracting backpackers, aid workers and professionals who strolled through the neighbourhood's squalor to munch cheap food, swap tales and search his stacks for fine literature.

Looking for other tidbits, I found Hoak's Lakeshore restaurant in Buffalo, New York (Hoak's home town.) I don't know how many Bert Hoaks there are, maybe this was Dad's place. The link has the menu.

In 1949, two brothers, Edward and Bertrand Hoak, purchased what was to become Hoaks restaurant. The restaurant was opened in November of 1949. Gus Hoak and Gus Sr., Pop Hoak, added their wit and personality to the everday operation of the young business in 1955. Eds sons purchased the business from Bert in 1977. The restaurant offers a lovely view of the Buffalo skyline and the Canadian shore, whih is only surpassed by the beautiful sunsets. We are constantly striving to maintain the fine tradition and quality of service and food which has made Hoaks a familiar name to those seeking a friendly family amosphere. Banquet rooms available. Download our banquet menu here.

Yes, Running Can Make You High

That was a NY Times headline today.

It was just the other day I said to J. one thing I'm really looking forward to when we get back is running again. Between dogs and the heat and my schedule, I've only run once. I'm having a good time, sleep like a log every night, etc. But I do miss running.

Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect.

I don't run more than 35-50 minutes usually (they studied runners after a two hour run), and I certainly don't get euphoric, but I generally feel much better overall when I run regularly. Now, I do get about 20 minutes of biking - a few minutes up hill on the way home - each day, and we walk in the evening to dinner and around, but it just isn't the same.

Fire Break Ceremony 5 - Saying Hello in a Karen Language

Most, if not all, of the people at the ceremony could speak Thai so I got to talk pretty easily to a number of people. But Karen is their first language - well one of the Karen languages, I'm not sure which one. Here is our first Karen language lesson - it's a short 19 second video.




Wikipedia doesn't have much about this language:

The Karen languages are members of the Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The three main branches are Sgaw, Pwo, and Pa'o; they are not considered to be mutually intelligible (Lewis 1984). Karenni (also known Kayah or Red Karen) and Kayan (also known as Padaung) are related to the Sgaw branch. They are almost unique among the Tibeto-Burman languages in having a Subject Verb Object word order; other than Karen and Bai, Tibeto-Burman languages feature a Subject Object Verb order [8]. This is likely due to influence from neighboring Mon and Tai languages (Matisoff 1991).

[Later: Another site says that Sqaw and Pwo are the only two that have a written language and these folks said they could write in their language. So that limits it down to those two. Someone in the office said their language was "Bakayaw" but that is in Thai.]

Land Reform in Northern Thailand

My job here is supposed to be about helping with management issues, but I do need to understand what the organization does to help out. Plus, one of my functions is to help with networking with related organizations. As part of that, I've been checking the internet for information on sustainable farming, land reform, etc. in Northern Thailand.

I've talked about land reform issues before, always with the disclaimer that I don't really understand very much about the context and details. The same disclaimer applies here.


As I got to work today, there was a large group of people in the compound, many villagers of a hill tribe group I didn't recognize. I was told they were Palong. (I'm having trouble finding non-tourist oriented websites that discuss the hill-tribes, this one seems relatively neutral.) Further questioning of people at the office revealed that a ruling on a land dispute from 2547 (it's now 2551, that that would have been 2004) was handed down this morning and these villagers were found to have violated law when they occupied the land around 2500. There was a meeting going on in the meeting room and I asked if I could listen in. It turned out that Mi - who sometimes uses the other desk in my office - was running the meeting. He invited me in, and later during a break said I could take pictures, but I pushed for him to ask the people in the room first before I did.

The talk was of how many rai (.4 acres) of land, money, number of families. It is so easy to slip into filling in the missing details with my own preconceptions, but I'm trying hard not to let that happen and focus on the objective things I know or what people tell me. Even then I have to double, even triple check to make sure I understood the Thai correctly.

Our brains naturally try to make sense of things and put them into context. My most immediately related brain cells clicked onto what I know about when American Indians' land was made available for sale. Outsiders could buy the land destroying the community and unity of the tribes. People were tempted with quick cash, and as some tribe members sold their land, the tribes soon became alienated from the land. Is that what was happening here? It sounded like they were talking about selling prices and that Mi was talking about the necessity of the group holding together. But maybe I was imagining all that. I'll try to talk to him after they end the meeting today.

Later: So before pushing the publish post button I went back out and asked more questions. The court found that they occupied the land illegally, but they will be able to stay on the land. They've been there over 40 years and there really is no place for them to go. Furthermore, the land belongs to the government, not to corporations or other individuals who are trying to claim ownership of the land. So, I asked, if they get to stay on the land, why are they appealing? Answer: So that they are not ruled to have violated the law. My informants are gone and so I can't ask the other questions I still have. I'm assuming this is in hopes of setting precedence for other land disputes, but I'm not sure.

In my networking internet search, I did find this report on land reform in Northern Thailand which matches the issues I wrote about earlier. Then I was trying to give some context to the land conflict issues and this report does that. Here's an excerpt:

Misappropriation of land in Baan Hong district
As the economy grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s, financiers began looking for secure long-term investments for their accumulating capital and found that buying up rural land areas was an ideal investment. Such land could be acquired cheaply, issued with title, with every likelihood in the economic climate of the times that it would swiftly rise in value. In Lamphun province, titles for extensive areas of land were issued during the height of the economic growth period in 1990-1993 without the knowledge of local communities who became aware of the alienation of their community lands only when fences started appearing in the fields.

The land conflict I witnessed before was in Lamphun and this sounds very much like that situation. (It turns out that it should sound familiar because it was written by two people - one Thai, one foreign - who worked here in the past. But no one here even knows this English report about their work exists. So, one thing it turns out I'm helping out with is putting together a set of articles in English that relate to what they are doing. A few people here can read these with difficulty, but if they have volunteers like me, they should get these to bring them up to speed a little faster.)

The entire 15,000 râi in Baan Hong District described above, that was previously held in common by local communities and that was supposed to be allocated to local people, is now titled under the names of non-resident companies and wealthy individuals from outside the community. Local farmers have vigorously challenged the legality of the title deeds. Villagers state there was no notice of intention to survey the area and issue title either posted in the village or announced over the village loudspeaker. Research into the title deeds shows that many were issued on the basis of incomplete survey information, sometimes under false names, and from non-existent or long dead sellers (in at least one case, the space for the name and address of the seller was simply left blank).
Thus, villagers in Baan Hong were prohibited from using their community land, around which fences were constructed in or around 1990. Seeing such fences and boundary markers appearing in the lands they had traditionally claimed for village use, people from Sritia village rose up in protest at the illegal transfer of this land to outsiders. A youth leader involved in the protests was shot and killed by unknown gunmen.

I realize that you could say, OK, that's one side of the story and it seems a little extreme. My sense is that in the past (and I did work in rural Thailand forty years ago so my sense isn't totally imaginary), poor farmers, particularly hill tribes, had no power whatsoever and if they got to the courts they were sure to lose. And today's decision was only partially in favor of the villagers and wasn't filed by people who were claiming to own their land. So things that happened until recently were pretty blatant because those in power never expected to be challenged. But local activists, supported by international NGOs have come onto the scene to help the victims.
My organization, the Northern Development Federation, is working with the farmers to secure the rights to the land. The people in the pictures above and in the Chiang Dao series of posts are the people whose rights to the land they farm - and in many cases for a couple of generations - are challenged.

Sorry Hillary, You Need to Cool it or Drop Out

Saw Hillary Clinton's response on CNN to the criticism (that I wrote on yesterday) of her embellishing her story about 'running from the plane under fire' in Bosnia. I think she needs a good night's sleep, maybe two. She's so focused on becoming president that she's forgotten the long term goal - getting the country back on the right track, best accomplished, if you're a Democrat, by electing a Democrat.

All of us can be nice when things are fine and people are friendly. Our true character comes out when we are under pressure. Clearly Mrs. Clinton was under pressure. But still, this was clearly choreographed by her handlers as well. So we can't just say she's under stress. Changing the topic is a classic response to attack. But bringing back up the stuff about Obama's pastor to distract from her own crisis only turns off Democrats who range from dismay to disgust by her embellishment.

OK, a brief detour here a second. Is embellishment just another euphemism for lie? I don't think so - it's allowing for more than just 'lie' as the explanation.

I've learned from my wife over the years, that I'm on the extreme end of focusing on the literal truth of content in a conversation. For me, conversation is about getting information passed from one person to another. For some people, the content is irrelevant because conversation is about human interaction. If there is lapse in the conversation, it is all right to totally make things up to keep the communication going. Someone I won't name (not my wife), once asked at a large dinner at her home, if someone wanted mustard. When I answered I did, she got all flustered and said, "We don't have any." I've come to understand that she was "being a good hostess" in her eyes. This is not about lying or telling the truth, because the content is irrelevant to the purpose of making people comfortable.

Most people are somewhere in between on that continuum. Content and communication are both important and the balance varies depending on the context. Talking with your buddies about the fish you caught or the basket you shot from midcourt is about camaraderie and allows for embellishment. What a comedian says on stage, we understand to be fiction. When we testifying as a witness in court we're supposed to be telling just the truth.

So, it is reasonable for Clinton to have filled in some details that maybe didn't happen. Given all the briefings she had about the dangers, her brain may have actually merged the briefings with the actual event. Or maybe the first time she embellished a little on this story it got a good response so she kept embellishing. This is natural. I imagine most people reading this are conscious of doing this themselves. My brain doesn't work that way. I may remember things and relate them incorrectly, but if I am conscious that I'm straying from the facts, I stop and correct myself immediately. It's not some superior moral position that deserves credit, it's just how my brain works.

But when we are talking about a possible US president, I want someone whose brain is good at separating fact from fiction if that was the problem. I want the president to remember as close to the truth as humanly possible her interactions with other world leaders. And when she does make things up (say as part of high stakes negotiation strategy like nuclear weapons in North Korea), I don't want it to be something that can be so easily discovered to be false as this. And if the president is found out in a lie, I want a her to respond the way Mr. Obama responded to criticism of his pastor. With intelligence and class.

Mrs. Clinton seems to be so narrowly focused on winning that nothing else matters. A truly presidential candidate would recognize that the stake for the Democrats and the nation will be much higher in November. If she doesn't win the nomination, Mr. Obama will. Not a disaster for her cause. It seems to me this has gotten too personal a goal from Mrs. Clinton. As a Democrat, her highest goal should be that a Democrat wins in November. What she's doing now is counterproductive. It's making her look bad and when you throw mud, it inevitably gets the the target dirty too.

Now, I'm not sure I buy into the argument that what she says against Mr. Obama will only help Mr. McCain. All this stuff will be brought up in the final campaign whether Mrs. Clinton raises it or not. And if she is discredited, then quoting her on this will only convince the convinced. A united front would certainly strengthen things, but the Republicans don't need the Clinton campaign to talk trash about Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Clinton, I think the honorable courses of action open to you are these:

1. Continue your campaign with the knowledge that you might not win and that's ok. Focus on the programs you think are critical and what you would do if elected. Try to influence the eventual winner to adopt your ideas. When talking about Mr. Obama and his policies, remember that he may be the Democratic candidate and possibly the president. Say things that reflect well on you as a person and as Democratic presidential candidate and that will help the party elect whomever is nominated. Don't let the media push you into a food fight with Mr. Obama
2. You already recognize that you are fighting from behind. Step back and also recognize that each day this campaign goes on, it costs the Democrats money and time they could use in the fight against Mr. McCain. If you can't be president, certainly it would be better for you to have Mr. Obama president than Mr. McCain, wouldn't it? With this knowledge, you could announce that you are withdrawing for the sake of the party and the nation. It would prove wrong the people who are saying you will do anything to win and make you look much more like a statesperson.

Hillary's "Millions of words a day"

CNN's website says that in explaining the difference between her description of running from a plane in Bosnia under fire in 1996 and the video of her walking normally from that plane:

Clinton told the paper's editorial board it was a "minor blip." Watch how Clinton described her trip »

"I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.

Millions of words a day? Could that be? So, I read out loud from the CNN piece for 5 seconds. I read seven words in five seconds.

12 X 7 = 84 words a minute.
60X 84 = 5040 words an hour
5040 X 24 = 120,960 [per day]

So, if she spoke non=stop for 24 hours, it still wouldn't be close to a million. OK, I know she doesn't count the words and this was simply a wild guess, but it's nice to know that someone who could be our president has a sense for numbers, not just so that she would realize it was probably impossible to say millions of words a minute [day]. But so when other large numbers are used, we can have confidence that she understands them and the implications.

More disturbing is the suggestion that because she talks all day, it's ok to 'misspeak' once in a while, because that would just be a 'misstatement.' Since we now know that she doesn't use millions of words a day, does that change anything? What is the difference between a misstatement and a lie? In this case painting a picture of running from a plane under fire when in fact she walked off, and according to the picture, she and Chelsea stopped to talk to a little girl.

Wouldn't a mother remember whether she put her daughter into a life threatening situation? I'd like to know if possibly there was some other flight when she came under fire. If there isn't some other flight she might have confused this one with - and she didn't mention one in her defense apparently - then this is all disturbing indeed. Embellishing one's stories may be ok for fishers, but it isn't ok for presidential candidates.

Or am I falling victim to anti-Clinton non-stories being leaked to the press?

Clinton - Obama Feud a Media Creation?

I caught a CNN piece this morning about how things are getting down and dirty in the Democratic primary. But as I listened to their examples of the dirt, it seemed to me mostly minor. It seemed more likely that CNN is doing its best to keep up ratings by creating the impression of a nasty fight between the two.

Example 1:

Sen. Hillary Clinton says Barack Obama's camp is spreading false information about her positions.

Example 2:

Obama described Clinton's anger as "tactical" and defended his campaign.

These are hardly fighting words. But it appears that CNN and the others are doing their best to make it seem that the two are engaged in something that will keep viewers glued to their tvs.

OK, someone might point out that they also got into Carville's Judas statement about Richardson's endorsement of Obama. But Carville and Richardson aren't even the candidates.


CNN's website sets it up for you to see them fight. They have their story - Obama and Clinton fight it out - then they pull out the clips, no matter how weak, that support their story:

Taking a mocking swipe at the Illinois senator's campaign style, Clinton said people want actions and not words. Watch Clinton mock Obama »

Meanwhile, Obama railed on Clinton for supporting NAFTA when her husband was president. Watch the latest on the back-and-forth »

This is politics as reality tv. Actually that would be fine with me if they focused on what was important instead of just the how things affect the race.


It seems that Stanley Fish at the New York Times is thinking the same things I am

This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round. [emphasis mine]

Meanwhile, the things the candidates themselves are saying about really important matters – war, the economy, health care, the environment – are put on the back-burner until the side show is over, though the odds are that a new one will start up immediately.

Why? Controversy means more viewers and more viewers means higher advertising rates. Additionally, the longer Obama and Clinton fight for the nomination, the more money they will spend on political advertising.

Now, I'm pretty good using Google, but I could find precious little on media profits and the elections. From this November 2004 post on a website for direct response marketers:

In a presidential race that spent more money than any other election in history, exceeding $1.5 billion according to some experts, people were curious about who went home with bulging pockets after the last of the confetti was swept from election headquarters.
According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, media firms were among the big winners this election, in addition to lawyers and pollsters.

We see here, that it appears that the media report the news in a way (horse-race) that helps their ratings. But this also raises another question. How does advertising spending affect whether they even cover a story at all? If a newspaper, say, gets tons of money from a particular advertiser, will that cause the paper to not report news that negatively impacts that advertiser? Odds would seem pretty good they would find other important stories to write about.


So, what is legitimate and what isn't in debate? Basically, I would say that criticism of one's opponent's policy positions is legitimate. Personal attacks - questioning their loyalty, snide comments on their religion, gender, race, looks - should generally be off the table.

But separating out the personal from the professional isn't always that easy. It is legitimate to raise questions about one's experience and decision making abilities - anything directly related to the job is fair game. It's up to voters to watch the ads critically and reward those candidates who keep on task - campaigning on the issues, not trashing their opponents. Of course, the voters have to know the difference between the two.

Fire Break Ceremony Chiang Dao 4 - Embroidery

These are some of the women who were at the ceremony and their beautiful hand made clothes.

This woman said it took three days to embroider this one.

Fire Break Ceremony Chiang Dao 3 - Bamboo

These villagers could do anything with bamboo, and they did. The posters were posted on bamboo bulletin boards, and the stage where the speakers would sit was bamboo.

Upper left is a prayer stand of bamboo. Below was the bamboo ribbon for the ribbon cutting to the fire break. Pieces of the ribbon, after it was cut, were then tacked onto trees. If I weren't careful I might make some comment about talismen - but that would be me making assumptions I have absoutely no basis for. I don't know if the bamboo posted on the tree along the firebreak is anything more than decoration.

And who needs red Costco cups when there's bamboo? Complete with bamboo cup rack. In back are bamboo water holders to fill the cups with. And you don't even have to take them to the recycle center. You can just toss them when you're done.

And what celebration would be complete without bamboo serving dishes and serving spoons?

So, what is this one?

Did you get it? It's a fully adjustable microphone stand. There's a smaller piece of bamboo inside a bigger piece, you can raise and lower the mic and put little pegs in the holes to keep it in place.

Fire Break Construction Ceremony Chiang Dao

The sign says, roughly,

Celebration/Ceremony to Open the Fire Break - Mae Ba Sao and Mae Khong Sai

People and the Forest Can Live in Sustainable Harmony

Communities of Mae Ba Sao and Mae Khong Sai Subdistrict: Mueng Khong District: Chiang Dao Province: Chiang Mai

March 23, 2551

(they use the Buddhist calendar)

The ceremony was just up the road on the left where the fire break begins. I'll jump ahead here to show the ending where everyone ceremonially swept the dry bamboo leaves off the trail.

I was a little confused about the purpose of the ceremony and the efficacy of the fire break, so at lunch today I ask those sorts of questions. Essentially, the villages maintain a six meter wide fire break for 30 kilometers. The part you see at the end here was merely ceremonial. The intent of the ceremony was to show government officials who came that the hill tribe people can live in harmony with the forest. All the posters (I'll show some in later posts) talk about things like sustainable farming and global warming. I'll also do a post on bamboo here - showing a number of the things that the villagers made of bamboo for yesterday. Bamboo grows in abundance up there and is totally recyclable.

Infomekong has the following on Karen farming:

There are two main types of farming: slash and burn and paddy. Slash and burn farming involves clearing an area of trees and then burning the underbrush. The burning process adds minerals to the soil, which helps crops to be grown. Unfortunately, the negative aspects outweigh the positives. This process strips the soil of essential nutrients and leads to more erosion, therefore, only allowing crops to be grown for a few years. As a result, the Karen have begun to utilize the process of paddy farming more often than slash and burn. Instead of installing an irrigation system, a paddy farm is flooded by a close river in order to water the crop.

Note: Infomekong is an evangelical site. I have personal problems when people of one religion try to convert other people to their religion. I find it curious how they can write on their site,

...the Thai government started oppressing the Karen community by trying to convert them to become more Thai-like

without any irony. How is conversion to Christianity a better cultural diversion than conversion to Thai culture? I'm not at all defending what the Thai government has done. It is not unlike what has been imposed on Alaska Natives by both church and government schools. At its worst you get results like those Tony Hopfinger reported in his Newsweek story of sexual abuse of students by priests that I linked and which came out last week in an expanded version in the Anchorage Press. But I think the information - aside from where it veers into missionary work - is useful. But be warned.

Hilltribe.org writes:
;
Traditionally the Karen live at lower elevations than the other hilltribes and although they still practice slash and burn, unlike many hilltribes they live in permanent villages and have been aggressive in developing environmentally sustainable terraced rice fields. These factors have allowed the Karen to become much more integrated members of Thai society. The Karens living at lower elevations almost universally have Thai citizenship which has allowed them to buy land and to have access to free secondary education, luxuries other hilltribes do not yet have.

Much of the Karen population in Thailand and Burma is Christian and has been for multiple generations. Christian Karens are very strong in their beliefs.

The people in these two villages are all Thai citizens, and as later posts will make obvious, they are Buddhists. A key issue for these villages is that they live inside forest land that is government land. One of the programs of the organization I'm working with is to help the villagers get title to the land they live on. Inviting the government officials to take part is an attempt to have them see that these villagers are not going to destroy the forest.

Fire Break Construction Ceremony Chiang Dao 1

We were up for the sunrise again - our ride was going to pick us up at 8am. (The first picture is the sun through the trees, not a fire.)




And of course I was going to look for birds. You can see why it's so hard to get good photos. You can hear them, but often you can't see them unless the move. Can you find the one in this tree? They don't usually sit in such a prominent place.
All I knew is that some other NGO people from Chiang Dao were going to pick us up. It turned out we were picked up by tv cameramen who drove up from Bangkok to cover the event. So it will get coverage beyond this blog. It should, now I have to double check with Ped (I've been spelling it Pet here, because that's how it's pronounced in English, but Ped said it was with a D not a T. But in Thai a final D is pronounced like T. So should I spell it the way he does or the way my English speaking readers are more likely to read it correctly?) to see if he was joking when he said I was the media coverage. He had to have known about these cameramen, or is there another NGO involved who arranged that? I have no idea.

Here's a minute or so of the hour ride to the village.

Chiang Dao Big Tree

Coming back from the cave we saw a big tree. Not just any big tree, but one that reminded me of the big tree behind my house in Kamphaengphet long ago. So I looked through the pictures I digitized and found one that had that old tree in it. I've posted this picture before when I wrote about Kwai, but I wonder how many people noticed the tree in the background. This time, forget the kwai and the two people and notice the tree.







To show you how big this tree is, J agreed to stand at the bottom - where the yellow arrow is pointing. And then we discovered there were quite a few of these trees in the area, but we didn't see any quite as big as this one. But here's another that was pretty big.

Chiang Dao Cave and Temple

The temple was built right alongside the cave. This is the entrance to the cave. There are two men standing in front of the sign. But in Thai it said, "Entrance Fee 10 Baht." While the Thais often use Western numbers, they do have their own numbers, so ten looks like: ๑๐. Below that, in English, it says, "20 Baht Fee for Electric Bill." So the foreigners have no idea they are paying double what the Thais are paying. Basically, I have no problem with that. Most foreigners in Thailand have incomes considerably higher than Thais and they do need money for upkeep and Thais shouldn't be prevented from going to places like this because of the high entrance fee.

There's a small shrine just inside the cave. Then, if you want to go further, you have to hire a guide for 100 Baht (about $3). Our guide had a kerosene lantern and a delightful sense of humor.

The spots on the ceiling are bats. They were a lot easier to catch on camera than the ones outside our window. Later we saw what we decided was a bat flyway near where we were staying. We saw groups of bats fly by for the five minutes we watched there.

There came a point where the guide pointed to a small opening and asked if we thought we could go through. It was maybe two feet (2/3 meter) high. The other option was to return the way we came. She assured us it was only 1 meter long. The picture is after the hard part. No problem. But then a couple of rooms later, there was another tunnel that was five meters long, but by then there was no turning back.

Here's the fishpond in the temple grounds next to the entrance to the cave (in the background).

Yang Tone Farm Stay Chiang Dao 3

It's now Sunday evening. I've just gone through what in the old days would have been rolls and rolls of film and video. I've got a dozen posts here. Yesterday seems like a week ago. And these will all end up in reverse order on the blog to confuse things further.

Anyhoo, since it was only yesterday that I was gushing about Yang Tone Farm Stay, I'll finish that and move into Day 2 when we moved to the Chiang Dao Nest #2.

Here's the dining room where magic was performed back there in the kitchen.

Here's the cottage we stayed in.


Our front porch. There really were no mosquitoes, here or the dining room.


I'm in the bedroom shooting the sink in the bathroom.


The shower. Even though everything is made of traditional materials and much in traditional ways, the bathroom uses them in non-traditional ways.


We even had a guard frog who showed up in different interesting spots in the bathroom.

It was a hard decision to make to move on to our second night's housing. But we had reservations, it was closer to the cave and temple, and our Sunday morning ride was expecting to pick us up at Chiang Dao Nest #2 which was right on the road to the village we were going to Sunday.

Yang Tone Farm Stay Chiang Dao 2

This place is incredible, the food is amazing, I can't recommend it highly enough. And we got here by accident, the place we'd found on line was full and sent us here. They have a fancy website that their son created. But he doesn't check the email regularly. Call and leave your name. They speak some English, but slowly. Be patient. It's worth it.

Sweets after breakfast - which is whatever you want. I had a great bowl of Jok - a common Thai breakfast of boiled rice with various things in it. Well, it's not quite boiled rice. J had sunny side up egg and toast with jams made from fruit at the farm - mangoes, starfruit, langan.
This is the host Sriboon, the absolutely sweetest woman you will ever meet. And a great cook. And when she saw me taking lots of pictures she showed me special orchids to shoot. A magazine article about this place says her philosophy is giving people a chance to rest and get in touch with nature. Helping a guest find peace is more important than making money. Everything was just perfect, if you like nature, quiet, birds, and authentic Thai style (with modern plumbing.)
This is her husband Suwit. His English is quite good. He studied in the Philippines. Their son went to the University of Nebraska and works at the royal botanical gardens near Chiang Mai. I'm sure he learned a lot here at the farm. Suwit drove us over to the Nest this afternoon.

Papayas just outside our room

Joan says this is a heliconia and google images confirms it.

We aren't sure what this bird is. The book has several different birds that had parts that were right, but not the whole bird. There were a group of these. It had a black head and bib like a roufous treepie. It had a long grey tail with black stripes like long tailed sibia, and it had a red beak like a red billed malkoha. The green billed malkoha has a similar silhouette in the book, and is in this part of Thailand, but has green beak. Also, there are a couple of swallows. I've given up on identifying swallows because the colors are so hard to see when they are flying high above.

Mango orchard.

Big leafless tree, waiting for the rain.

Yang Tone Farm Stay Chiang Dao 1

The mountain just grows up from the plains, silhoueted by the pink sky, hazy in the late afternoon smoke.
As it got darker, we could see bits of flame. The point of Sunday’s event is to mark a new program where the farmers on the hill, Karen hill tribe people mostly, will begin building fire breaks. There is a lot of controversy about slash and burn agriculture which various hill tribes have practiced for generations. But today as the world has moved ever closer into their territory, they have less room, and the smoke from their farming impinges on the people in the cities more and more. In these days of global warming, the practice comes under greater scrutiny.
The giant orange moon rising just after we arrived.
The sun rising almost in the same place this morning.


We stayed at the Yang Tone Home Stay Farm because the Chiang Dao Nest, nearby, was full Friday night. Now we've moved to the Nest, which has wi fi, but the adapter plug that changes my three pronged Mac plug into a two pronged plug is the wrong size. I left the one that works in our apartment in Chiang Mai. So I only have about two hours of battery left.

The Yang Tone is incredible and I'll do a separate post on that. If you are in Northern Thailand, do what you can to stay at least one night at Yang Tone Farm Stay.

At breakfast after walking a couple hours around the farm watching the birds and flowers. See also the next post on this great little place. You can tell, if I like a place, I'll let you know, and this place is really special.

More Birds and a Squirrel

Today I saw the source of the strange bell like bird calls - a pair of racket tailed drongos flew by. It was them. But I couldn't catch them on camera. And the Koels were flying by in pairs as well. I guess it is spring.

And the doves. And for Anonymous, and Bird Anonymous, there's even a fuzzy shot of the coucal in the video with its tail. And audio of a racket tailed drongo at the end.

Spring 2008 - 99F and climbing

Suddenly there was a surge of visitors to this site today. It turned out that Google.co.th has What Do I Know? listed second for the search term "First Day of Spring".

That has as little meaning here in Chiang Mai, where it is in the hot 90s (My Computer says it's 99F, but the 30% humidity makes it fine with me), as it does in Anchorage where, according to my computer, it is 22F.

They are all being directed to last April 26 which I dubbed the real first day of spring when the temperature got up to 65F in Anchorage.

I've finally gotten my sense of purpose here - last week actually - and I've been developing lists of outcomes and tasks that relate to the plans the organization wrote as part of getting their grant. It is getting close to the end of the grant and people here are feeling a little overwhelmed with what they all have to do, including writing reports.

One thing I'm contributing is getting them to see that the goals are not just either/or - either you reach the goal or not. Rather, we can look at at how much they've done toward reaching the goal. So, for example, they are supposed to gather information for about ten villages. Rather than saying, "No, we haven't done that" because they don't have everything for every village, I've divided it up into villages. Then for each village we're listing the steps in this process. Set up an intitial meeting, pass out the questionnaires, get official land documents, etc. When they look at it this way, there are two advantages:
1. They can see how much they've actually done as well as what specifically they still need to do. (They know all this, but it is different when it is written down on paper and you look at it.) I've already started with one person to calculate the time he will need to do everything that is left. (At least the things we've identified. It is much less overwhelming than he thought. He's typed it all up in Thai and is already checking things off.)
2. When they report what they've accomplished to the funding agency, they now have all the steps along the way to report. They've been thinking either/or and haven't thought as much about all the work that goes up to getting to complete. So even if some goals haven't been completed, they can show they are 60% or 80% complete with a list of all they've done.

The reaction seems to be pretty positive to this approach. The boss is clearly pleased.

Other activities - I faxed in our absentee ballot applications today. When I asked about using the fax yesterday, E. pointed to a box - she'd just bought a fax machine. So we set it up yesterday evening and I got the forms in today.

Sunday, the organization has a big event up in one of the villages north of here. They have initiated a program of building fire breaks in the mountains with one of the hill tribes that has traditionally used slash and burn agriculture. I'm not completely sure whether the slash and burn techniques will still be used and how the fire breaks contribute. In any case it is a big deal and several people have been out of the office in preparation. I'm trying to arrange for us to stay up there at a small resort Friday and Satruday night where the birding is supposed to be very good. Then we'll get up to the village Sunday morning somehow. Things will work out one way or another.

Swinging Bulbul and White Rooster

I pass this rooster, and his friends, every day when I ride to the office.

And I caught this red whiskered bulbul from our balcony enjoying this swing. He came back for a second round.

Shaking Up the LA Public Integrity Unit

A reader alerted me to a story about the new US Attorney in LA breaking up the public integrity unit there. It's the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, that along with the FBI, and the local prosecutors that is spearheading the investigations and prosecutions of corruption in Alaska. The LA, unit according to the story, had a long running investigation into Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis. TPM suggests preventing another Republican scandal was the motivation for the breakup.

If someone wanted to end the investigations in Anchorage, you can bet none of our legislators in DC would lift a finger to keep the investigations going.

From LA Observed:

Feds disband L.A. public corruption unit

Kevin Roderick • Bio • Email

New U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien redistributed the 17 lawyers in the public integrity unit in Los Angeles among the major fraud and organized crime sections, the Recorder reports. The San Francisco legal paper quotes spokesman Thom Mrozek saying those sections will have a higher mandate to battle corruption. “Our view is that it’s a significant enhancement of the public corruption unit,” he said. “We now have over 70 lawyers who essentially will be able to step up to the plate.” But the Recorder says "many other current and former federal prosecutors are skeptical." The unit is known to have a running probe of Rep. Jerry Lewis over ties with a lobbying firm, the paper says.

Wen Jiabao Speaking Live about Tibet on Al Jazeera

This morning as I was finishing breakfast and getting ready to go to the office, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier's annual news conference with foreign correspondents was broadcast live on Al Jazeera*. After a brief talk, the first question came from a CNN correspondent who asked about Tibet and Taiwan - the two taboo subjects in China. (I'll elaborate on that at the end.) Basically, here's what Premiere Wen said about Tibet, paraphrased from my handwritten notes as I listened to the translator:

Rioters caused severe damage and killed people on the streets. The Governor of the Autonomous Region of Tibet has already addressed this question. The rioters have trashed cars, torched stores, and caused widespread destruction and disrupted public order and public life, causing loss of lives and property for the people of Lhasa.

There is plenty of evidence this was organized and masterminded by the Dalai Clique. The violence and damage refute consistent claims of the Dalai clique that they pursue peace. Their claims are nothing but lies. Lies cannot cover up facts. Strictly, within the constitution and laws, and with restraint, we have moved to protect the people in Lhasa.

Claims that the Chinese Government engaged in cultural genocide are nothing but lies. We are fully capable of maintaining public order in Tibet and at the same time helping to develop the economy of Tibet while protecting the natural environment.

He then turned to the subject of Taiwan and I headed out for the office.

When I taught in Beijing, Taiwan and Tibet were the two subjects that Chinese mostly agree on (and that Japan should make amends for what it did to China in WWII.) They are both parts of China and must stay that way. There are no opposing views that my students were ever exposed to. From the Chinese perspective, the impoverished people of Tibet were virtual slaves to the religious rulers of Tibet and the Chinese liberated them from this tyranny.

Now there are exceptions. There was a Tibetan student who, over dinner after I opened the way, talked about having been sent to boarding school at age 12 and not ever again living at home in Tibet - just back for short visits. There were some Han (the 93% majority of China) Chinese students with us at dinner who had never heard this view of Tibet.

One of my students - I was going to say brighter students, but they were all brighter - said to me later. I've thought about what was said, and thought about how the minority students are treated here and to me it looks like they get treated equally to any other student. I thought about this for a moment and then responded, "Probably you are right. But, remember, they are at a Chinese speaking university, learning about China, not at a Tibetan (or Mongolian) speaking university, learning about their own cultures. The discrimination took place long before they got to the university. Their cultures have been stolen from them. Their schooling has all been in Chinese, not their own language, not from their own cultural perspectives."



*Al Jazeera was much maligned when it first came on the scene as the Arab voice of the news out of Qatar. But as I was looking for the link today, I see that Allied Media Corporation, an Arlington, Virginia public relations company has a whole Al Jazeera page on its site. On most other corporate sites such a page would suggest that Al Jazeera was a subsidiary of Allied Media Corporation. I can't find anything that confirms that and it runs counter to what I've thought was true. Does anyone reading this know the connection? AMC also touts as its clients



I wonder what the folks at Terror Television (www.stopaljazeera.org) would think about that client list and corporate links to Al Jazeera.

Election Traini Wreck

Kyle Hopkins at the ADN blog reports that Judge William Morse has ruled that Dick Traini is termed out and cannot run again for the Assembly. That leaves candidate Elvi Gray-Jackson as the only real candidate on the ballot, but Traini's name will also still be on the ballot. Unless, of course, the Alaska Supreme Court overturns Morse's decision.

So, we will see now whether the voters really wanted term limits or just wanted term limits for candidates they didn't like.

I'm not happy with this whole situation. While I'm not a fan of term limits - I think voters should be allowed to vote for any eligible candidate - it is the law. Rather than stepping down gracefully and following the spirit of that law, Traini chose to challenge the law on a technicality (When is a Term not a Term?) saying his first term wasn't a 'full term' and the Muni contracted attorney agreed with him. Now the judge has said the law does not permit him to run again.

This gets messy for several reasons:
1. His name will be on the ballot. (Muni says it's too late to print new ballots. We still have two weeks. I think they mean it's too expensive.)
2. The Supreme Court could overturn the ruling and say he is eligible. If that happens - and he loses the election - do we have another election?
3. He could get more votes than his opponent. In which case the next Assembly person will have lost the election, but won the seat.
4. The people of my district have only one real candidate to vote for.

But I think a challenge was necessary because:

1. The decision will probably affect the School District and Mayor elections too.
2. The Mayor is planning to run for Senate and if he won, would leave office early.
3. If that happened, the person - Assembly President - filling his seat would be faced with the same issue when he/she ran for reelection the second time.
4. Debbie Ossiander has already served more terms on the School Board and Dan Kendall did it on the Assembly, but no one challenged them. This will give us the final answer on whether this is ok.
5. This was a risk Traini took, knowing he could be declared ineligible, and knowing his incumbency would prevent other qualified candidates from putting their hat in the ring.

So, what the Supreme Court rules will clarify the ground rules. It is unfortunate that the only way this can be done is by challenging a candidate who decides to run for a fourth term (for Mayor a third term.)

So, I'm hoping the people in my district will choose Elvi Jackson-Gray, giving her a mandate to be a good Assembly person, and demonstrating that we believe in term limits, we believe in the law, and that we can elect a strong woman candidate who, because of her years as the Assembly budget analyst, is one of the most qualified candidates to run for the Assembly in a long time. [Yes, I have supported her candidacy with a check.] Doing this will clean up a potential mess that Traini's decision to run, the Clerk's decision to allow him to run, and the Superior Court's decision to not allow him to run have all set in motion. Let's get it behind us.

And the Supreme Court's decision on the appeal will let us know what the rules are for the future and, if Jackson-Gray wins comfortably, won't result in a political mess that will cost the residents of my district all sorts of grief. The Assembly and the people of Anchorage have more important work to get done.

Can we act like adults now? Or are we going to try to make this really messy? Yes, I'm sure there are people who think Jackson=Gray or any liberal candidate means the end of the world, but consider what years of Republican dominance have done to this state. Jackson-Gray on the Assembly will be just fine. Your lives won't come crashing down around you.

Seven Minute Trip to Thailand

OK, here's the video. It's long, Seven minutes or so. I really did cut a lot out. But it gives you a lot more of the sense of being at the Consecration Festival at the Temple last Saturday night.



The last minute is worth waiting for or skipping ahead to.

Nine Inch Nails Free Legal Download

Zohar read the readme file when he thought he was illegally downloading Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I - IV and learned it was completely legal:

We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. Â It’s licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons.

There may be a good reason for the freebie, which you can get here. I wouldn't know one of their old pieces if I heard it. But I'm guessing their old fans might find this free one different from what they were expecting. I've been listening to it for a while now and I like this album.

ํYou Can Read Thai

Who will be the first to write the English meaning of the pink word on the sign? It's probably much harder than I think, but it's probably much easier than you think. Double click on the picture to enlarge it.

The New Bot - โบสถ

Sunday March 16, 2008 morning.
We went to the consecration of a new Bot at a local Wat in Chiang Mai. I'm embarrassed because I don't even know the name of the Wat. [Later Sunday: I caught the sign at the entrance of the Wat on the video - it's Wat Tham Khaam.] It is right next to the house of one of the people at work who invited us to go. I also found a website that is very helpful as I describe what was going on. Actually, I'm borrowing from
Thaiworldview. I'll italicize the quotes from Thaiworld.

In a Thai temple, the "BOT" (โบสถ์) is the finest building where monks are assembled for religious rites (สังฆกรรม) such as morning and evening prayers, ordination. It is the most sacred part of the temple.

Any Buddhist religious ceremonies cannot happen in a "BOT" until it has not been consecrated. This ceremony is called "FANG LUUK NIMIT" (ฝังลูกนิมิต).

The eight boundary stones ("SIMA" - สีมา) around the "BOT" indicate that the building has been consecrated and can be used for monks religious rites.

Ouan told us last night that these stones were part of the consecration of the new Bot and there were about eight of them. It wasn't completely clear what happens. You can see there is a cloth over a deep (3 meters maybe) hole. He said they didn't get covered with dirt and buried. I'll have to look at another temple to see if I can find them. You could buy gold leaf to cover the stones with. Another way you could donate money was to buy a sword that would be used to cut the ropes. Then you get the sword afterward.
These swords were about $300 each (Baht 9.999) and there were less expensive ones too. Ouan said the whole thing cost Baht 10 million, so they needed a lot of donations over the nine years they've been getting this ready.

Both the "BOT" and the "WIHARN" contain a presiding Buddha image and usually several smaller attendant statues. Some statues are so well known that Thai people come from far away in order to worship them. In Thailand, there are more Buddha statues than inhabitants (60 Millions). Buddha statues follow a precise set of positions. These positions have not changed since centuries.

In front of the "BOT" entrance there are often "NAGA" (นาค). Naga was the serpent who did protect the Lord Buddha when he was meditating. Sometimes Buddhist deities, lotus are built instead of "NAGA".

The inside walls of "BOT" are often covered with beautiful Buddhist paintings. They often represent Lord Buddha's previous lifes ("JAKATA" - ชาดก)

In this case, they portrayed a mix of modern and old activities of people in the village. [Monday: Actually, on checking the video - not yet posted - I realized the murals are in the Wiharn, not the Bot. The Bot has beautiful wood walls.]

There were people from all over at the area. Representatives from other Wats came as well as from the community - such as the local market (traditional Thai market, not supermarket) and schools. There was a parade of sorts, with floats and music, there were several stages where schools and other villages danced, sang, drummed. A group of farmers from one of the villages that my organization works with came for dinner to Ouan's house too and then with us to the fair. Their village has a woman leader - the only one of the 92 villages in their district. Her story could be a whole other blog post.

But the pictures don't capture the feel of the hot evening, the smells, and the sounds. The video, which I hope to edit today, will at least capture the sounds.

Don Young Exit

From the Alaska Report's video of Don Young addressing the Republican Convention in Anchorage. The audio kept cutting out, but throughout the video, we see Don Young and the EXIT sign.

New Temple Festival - Part 1 - Dinner

Ouan from work invited us to dinner for tonight and to go to his local village Wat. (Village here is in the sense of how a local district is divided up). Here's the new Bot at the Wat that is the cause for the celebration. Nine years and 10 Million Baht later, here it is. This was a shot I got before dinner.
Then we were served a Northern dish - Khao Soi - yellow noodles, with a delicious curry.

I have a zillion more pictures to post of the fair - and a video tape - and there's dragons and fire breathing, but I'm falling asleep here now. So that will have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Rocky Road Ripple

This is for Phil, but everyone else can enjoy it too. Thanks go to Thomaz Delgado Kardos for finding and posting this video.

Saturday Morning Birds

Between the cicadas and the bird songs, and some background hammers for percussion, our Saturday concert goes on and on. With various birds making cameo appearances.



There were a number of birds I couldn't catch on camera and flitted in and out so quickly or just far enough that it was hard to even know what they were. And I still haven't gotten the low Toop Toop Toop Toop call of the coucal, but it's out there all the time, so one day I'll get it. I'm pretty sure this is a greater coucal. It's hard to tell exactly how big it is without a lesser nearby to compare, but it seemed pretty big. And we didn't see any white streaks in the wing feathers.

And again, I think the birds in the video are black drongos - there were some greater racket tails flying around again, but getting them in flight with their long tails is a challenge.

Beware the Ides of March

It is the 14th of March already here in Thailand, so it seems a good time to remember the famous words from Shakespeare's Julius Caeser.

Soothsayer
Caesar!

CAESAR
Ha! who calls?

CASCA
Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!

CAESAR
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer
Beware the ides of March.

CAESAR
What man is that?

BRUTUS
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

CAESAR
Set him before me; let me see his face.

CASSIUS
Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

CAESAR
What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

Soothsayer
Beware the ides of March.

CAESAR
He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.
(Thanks for the quote from The Literature Network)

According to Merriam Webster the Ides fall on

the 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of any other month in the ancient Roman calendar; broadly : this day and the seven days preceding it

National Geographic tells us more about that bloody day in the year 44 BCE. And perhaps Ropi, the Roman expert, will too. I checked, and he has, but not because of Julius, but because of the event this link to Wikipedia tells us:

The revolution in Hungary grew into a war for independence from Habsburg rule.

Many of its leaders and participants, including Lajos Kossuth, István Széchenyi, Sándor Petőfi, Józef Bem, are among the most respected national figures in Hungarian History, and the anniversary of the revolution's outbreak, March 15 is one of Hungary's three national holidays.

Sex, Power, Sin - Thoughts on Spitzer

Why do people like Eliot Spitzer have sexual liaisons that jeopardize their reputations and their positions of power?

The number of men whose lives have been rocked by sexual adventures beyond their marriages is significant enough to raise questions about the wisdom of our (United States) national norms about sex and marriage. Wikipedia has a long list (scroll down past political scandals to sex scandals.) Bill Clinton, Larry Craig , Jim McGreevey, Mark Foley, are just a few well known recent ones. We also have clergy. Among the Christian evangelists, some of the famous names include Ted Haggard, Jim & Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. The Catholic church is still reeling from the impact of clergy having sex with young boys and girls.

Why does this happen?

• Lust. Some male readers are shaking their heads, I'm sure, that I would have to ask such a question. Sex is an instinctual drive that can take over someone, blocking out all other pulls on one's conscience until it is satisfied.
  

This surely explains some of it. But there are other factors too, I suspect, acting in various combinations with lust.

• Power. Why do we know about some people, but not about others? I'm sure that some sexual adventurers believe they are so powerful that nothing can touch them. In part this goes along with the belief that they won't get caught. And politicians' sex lives were not covered in the past the way they are today. John F. Kennedy's liaisons were known by the press, but were off limits. John H. Summers writes in the abstract of his article that

  By the beginning of the twentieth century, by contrast, revelations of sexual turpitude among the most prominent elected officials had begun to disappear from public life. Whereas Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, and other members of the nineteenth-century political elite negotiated their reputations among a broad array of publics, in the new era men such as Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy benefited from this more circumspect pattern in political speech.

Surely, Bill Clinton assumed, when Monica Lewinsky presented herself in the Oval Office, that no one would find out. And when they did, he used his power to hang onto his office. I assume that Larry Craig assumed know one would know who he was and that he would not get caught.

For some politicians, everything is about power, and getting the power to do what you liked, even flaunting it. Certainly, the Congressman Charlie Wilson, portrayed comically by Tom Hanks in the recent movie, didn't hide his sex life from the world. But he had the advantage of being a bachelor.

But I think there is also another category worth considering.

• Guilt. I'm not sure this is the right title. This is the category for the men who are feeling conflicted by the gap between how they present themselves and how they really are. Hypocrisy. This is probably the major issue for married homosexuals. In 1980, when we spent a year in Washington DC, Robert Bauman (R-MD), was caught cruising for gay prostitutes in the car with his official Congressional license plate. Bauman was known for his anti-gay rhetoric. I can't help but think that, at least subconsciously, he wanted to be outed. And Gary Hart challenged the press to cover him closely if they thought he was having an affair - and they found him boating with a woman other than his wife. It's easier for some people to have the cover pulled off than to take it off themselves. Or maybe the risk makes it more exciting.
  

So what is Spitzer's story and should he have resigned? Spitzer prosecuted prostitution rings like the one he used. Perhaps he thought he understood how things worked well enough that he could get away with it, perhaps he thought he was too powerful. But it seems Spitzer was a real moralist. From LoHud.com

This guy was ostentatiously Mr. Morality," says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "This is feet-of-clay kind of stuff. Like, 'Boy, this guy has been telling us how pure we ought to be - look at him!' "

Some have argued that moral crusaders are out there to cover up their own sins. The repeated use of the word 'shocked' in the news responses to the disclosures about Spitzer certainly confirm his success in this.

My guess is that Spitzer's motives were a combination of all three of these. But should we continue to go after politicians for their sexual transgressions? Shouldn't we consider that part of their private lives as most of the rest of the world does? The basic argument - if he cheats on his wife, he would cheat on the rest of us - may hold some validity. But for everyone who has succumbed to their own personal vice - here's a reminder of Catholic Church's seven deadly sins

* 1.1 Lust (Latin, luxuria)
* 1.2 Gluttony (Latin, gula)
* 1.3 Greed (Latin, avaritia)
* 1.4 Sloth (Latin, acedia)
* 1.5 Wrath (Latin, ira)
* 1.6 Envy (Latin, invidia)
* 1.7 Pride (Latin, superbia)

Since I'm not a Catholic, I had to look up some of these vices to determine to whether there are degrees or whether these are considered either/or. It appears that with lust, if one's action is voluntary, that lust is always a mortal sin. But the Church also seems to consider it particularly tempting:

The pleasure which this vice has as its object is at once so attractive and connatural to human nature as to whet keenly a man's desire, and so lead him into the commission of many other disorders in the pursuit of it.

The others - gluttony or wrath or sloth - for example have different degrees. So, eating another two or three brownies does not carry the same weight as lust, but perhaps if you understand the pull of those brownies and their irresistibility, you can understand the pull of sex too.

But this is something of a diversion since the US is not bound to Catholic teachings and Spitzer is not a Catholic. According to Wikipedia, he's a not particularly observant Jew.

But then the Old Testament figures dealt with the need for sexual adventure by having more than one wife. And some of the greatest Old Testament figures had many, many wives. So we are judging them by a different standard than we judge modern men who are expected to stay faithful to one wife for a lifetime.

He has now resigned his post. Was that the right thing to do? In terms of his office, should he be compelled to resign because of a personal act that is not necessarily related to his position as governor? I've written about when someone should resign in a previous post. I listed three reasons for resignation:

1. They've abused the public or their employers' trust through misuse of their position - they've used their office for personal gain, and/or they have made decisions based on personal criteria, not the objective, professional criteria required.
2. They have caused harm or damage through neglect, incompetence, or other inability to do the necessary work
3. A significant portion of the public and/or the people who work with or for them no longer trust them or have confidence in them to the point that it affects the credibility of the agency or company

The key is the link between the violation and the office and the impact of the violation on one's effectiveness. If a law maker breaks a law that is more than a minor technical infraction, it seems to me that he or she has an obligation to resign. Lawmakers have an even higher obligation to obey the law than the rest of us.

I don't know that any of the three standards I proposed unambiguously would require him to resign. Sure, for some people, any moral transgression, whether it directly affects his job or not, would be reason to resign. I'm not aware of polls that suggest a significant portion of the public felt he should resign. And I'd guess many of those who did, felt that way, not because of the activity, but because he'd pissed them off somehow enough that they wanted to see him publicly harmed. Perhaps there is a law that was violated that Spitzer knows he will be indicted for.

One factor that isn't included in those three standards above is hypocrisy. If there is a reason for Spitzer to resign it would be that he was so moralistic and had gone after prostitution rings and the men who used them. This is certainly a factor people have used, say, in the Larry Craig case. It isn't that he solicited gay sex in the rest room that they saw as such a problem, (well many did) but that he did so while being an outspoken anti-gay advocate.

Spitzer's resignation does quickly remove a political cloud over New York, allows the state to focus on business and not on scandal, and also allows him time to make amends to the people most directly affected by his actions - his wife and daughters. In that sense, he has taken a road that too many others have not taken.

For a different perspective, recently a Thai politician, the Governor of Bangkok, resigned.

Apirak Kosayodhin decided to suspend his work as Bangkok governor on Thursday after the Assets Scrutiny Committee (ASC) decided to press charges against him in connection with the controversial fire trucks and boat procurement for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.

The Thai newspaper, the Nation, has an online poll on what people think about the resignations of Apirak and Spitzer.

I think it is good when a politician shows responsibility. I really like Apirak. He has been working well for Bangkok and I hoped he would not resign. However, his case cannot be compared with that of the New York governor because he has been found guilty, Apirak has not.

Sopidnapa Chumpani

Actress

-----------------------------------------

The moral degree of our politicians, I believe, is below zero. They're shameless. We're in a 'demon'cracy, not democracy. I'm working on a series of paintings called 'Dark Period' to satirise these shameless powerful men.

Vasan Sitthiket

Artist and founder of the Artists Party

-----------------------------------------

People will forgive politicians if they admit their guilt. But the bottom line is people are more concerned with what these politicians do for the country. Their personal life is secondary. Take Clinton, for example. People seem to forget his scandals as his actions spoke louder.

Tamarine Tanasugarn

Tennis player

-----------------------------------------

What the two have done is right. It will allow investigators to act

without interference. Top officials, if found guilty, should be punished more than ordinary people. But, I don't think Spitzer needed to quit. He should just apologise to his wife.

Chantawipa Apisuk

Empower Foundation

-----------------------------------------

Politicians caught in a scandal don't have to resign. Clinton did not quit over his relationship with Lewinsky. Unlike Apirak, other indicted people are not serving in posts linked to the fire-vehicle scandal any more.

Pongthep Thepkan-chana

Spokesman for Thaksin Shinawatra

-----------------------------------------

I admire Apirak. His self-suspension will set a new standard. I think Spitzer's quitting will remind others to restrain themselves over sex. However, Thais don't pay much attention to the sexual exploits of high-ranking officials. I want the public to condemn this.

Supensri Pungkoksung,

Friends of Women Foundation

-----------------------------------------

If Apirak quits, it means he might be involved in corruption. If he was not, he should not fear investigation.

Meanwhile, the New York governor's resignation was a show of responsibility, even though buying sex is normal for men. But it was not appropriate.

Wantee Supada

Bangkok street stall owner

-----------------------------------------

Though politicians are believed to be involved in corruption, I am not convinced Apirak is in this case; he was forced to follow procedure.

The New York governor's resignation is a good example of politicians taking responsibility for their mistakes.

Bongkotrat Chusai

University student

-----------------------------------------

Politicians should wait to be convicted before resigning. How can the country develop if politicians have to quit in order to fight allegations?

Sombat Nongkomma

Cobbler

Daily Xpress

ห้ามจอดควาย - No Buffalo Parking

(The picture came from a Thai music website. I'm not sure if it is the cover of a commercial album or a self made album.)

I'd been in Thailand over a month this trip before I saw my first Kwai - or water buffalo. This was a day or so after I saw my first elephant. When I first came to Thailand, you could almost see kwai from the airplane landing at Don Muang airport, which was surrounded by rice paddies then and kwai were everywhere. Now they have been replaced by 'iron kwai' or tractors. The pictures below are from 1967 or 1968, from the pictures I digitized and left in Kaphaengphet for the school museum last weekend.





This farmer walked his Kwai by my house every day. Here, one of the students who lived with the teachers is testing it.








This was one of the most common sights in Thailand then. Kids swimming with and bathing the kwai.









And here's why everyone had a kwai, and why they don't today. They were used to help plow the fields. Now there are tractors. That's progress and people don't have to work as hard and they can produce more. But
you don't have (well most of us wouldn't) have the same kind of relationship with a tractor as you would with your Kwai.




According to Bing, these kwai, which we passed coming back from the land meeting Wednesday, are on their way to the slaughter house, the main use for kwai today.














Elephants weren't as common a sight in the old days. They too played an important work role - getting timber - mainly large teak logs - from the forest to the river where it could be floated to a town, or to a road where it could be trucked out. Now the elephants you see are beggars, with their out of work human companions.

The one we saw was walking down the street in downtown Chiang Mai. We were in a vehicle going the other way and I couldn't get a picture. Yesterday was National Elephant Day.

Back when I was teaching in Kamphaengphet I asked my students to let me know when the elephants - which traveled the country - were in the area clearing teak logs. Here are a couple from the digitized batch I took when my students took me out to the forest to see them at work.




































Yes, that's yours truly, testing his elephant handling skills.


Boy, looking at the old slides compared to the new picture, I'm going to have to pull that old Pentax out again when I get home.

Land Conflict ความข้ดแย้งเรึ่องที่ดิน

Consider this a work of journalistic fiction for the time being. I was there, I understood some of what was said, some was explained, during and after, but I still have lots of questions.

Monday, Bing asked if I wanted to go back to the second village we visted Monday. They were going to resurvey the land. I always say yes. I usually have little or no idea where they are taking me. I'm starting to ask more questions.

Summary

Here's a brief synopsis of what I think happened. The 'rich' (I'm hearing the story from the farmers' side, so it is the poor farmers having their land stolen through the corruption of the rich) companies were having the land surveyed. The farmers blocked the survey in the morning. We arrived around noon, took about seven of the villagers about 20 kilometers to the district land office. About 50 more villagers were already there. The group went into a large open air hall where the land office was clearly ready. The spokesman for the farmers put up some charts, took the mic and started into his articulate arguments. Then the head of the land office replied. He was polite, he listened carefully when S spoke, nodding his head demonstratively and smiling on occasion. He spoke with deference and authority at the same time. He said
กฎหมาย (law) often, which I took as a bad sign. He was apparently referring to the law, and I'd been told that the rich guys had an official title to the land, but which the farmers alleged was fake and bought from corrupt officials because they already owned the land.

Some people from the audience spoke and/or asked questions which the official answered , again seriously and with deference. A representative of one of the companies spoke and answered a few questions.

The audience applauded politely for all the official speakers.

Then farmers went back to the tree outside the building, where there was some thank yous and discussion of what happened. Then people got back into pickups - I saw three with at least ten in the back of the pickups - plus ours. We dropped people off back in the village where they went through copies of land titles, and then drove home.

The conversations with Bing afterward led me to believe that the representative of the company (who apparently wasn't with the company when the land was acquired) said that the company thought they were buying forest land and it is possible that they were swindled by the person who sold them the land. If that is an accurate description of what Bing said, then it was a concession to the farmers. But I have no idea of how Thai law works, except I do know that powerful people tend to win over people who have no power. Not much difference from other places.

That was easy. I should do more summaries. OK, now I'll add the pictures, video, and some details of what I think Bing said happened.




Bing in the driver's seat.












This huge reclining Buddha is on the mountain side where you turn off the highway into the area of the village.









Although, it is still the dry season, areas near rivers are able to irrigate for rice. Other fields wait dry for the rains.










We are almost at the headman's house.















The headman had lunch ready - not for us - and invited us to join him.













Bing had brought some maps of the village area and the men gathered there looked through them and picked out the two that covered most of the land.





We drove to the land office with three people in the bed of the pickup and three more (besides Bing and me) in the front. About 50 farmers were already there waiting for us under the big tree.





We all went into hall, took chairs, and sat down.

























The village spokesman spoke.












Here are several pictures of the land office official responding and the audience listening. I thought I had a picture of the company representative, but I must have erased it. I did save some on another computer and maybe I can find that for the video.


















Afterwards, people gathered under the tree again, piled into the pickups and left.







We took some people back to the headman's house where they dug out old land documents to review what they had. Then we left.

Brief Update

Yesterday Bing and I went back to the second village - where they grow the mangos. They were going to have surveyors come to resurvey the land. We got there around noon, had lunh with the headman of the village and then took about seven people to the public lands building where about 50 other villagers were waiting as well as the lands people. I got home about 8 again last night and after we walked down to Suthep Road (about 5 minutes) for dinner, I lay down on the bed at about 9:30pm for a few minutes. I got up again this morning at 7 when my alarm went off. As they say, pictures and vidoes later. Here's a preview - close up of lunch (with sticky rice) on the headman's porch. The white vegetable is a kind of eggplant.

Two Villages

Met Bing at the office at 7:45am. Not sure where we were going, something about villages and a van.

Turned out we went to the village I went to earlier with Doc. Well, not quite. This village has two locations. Old and New. Last time I went to the fair at the old location, today we went to the hill top location - after picking up a Japanese professor from Rikkyo University, a program coordinator, their post doc student, a Japanese student doing her doctoral thesis in Chiang Rai, Thailand, and a Japanese-Thai translator.

This is the meeting space at the first village. It was nice to see familiar faces, including a couple of guys who had gotten pretty drunk at the fair. I have a lot to write about these two visits and the stories of the villages. Here, the "occupied" the land 6 years ago to the day today. I'm posting this late March 11 Thailand time - it's actually slipped into March 12 while I've been working on this. The leader of this group - the man whose house I slept at when I went to the village last time - explained the issues and the translator translated. I asked Bing a lot of questions. It's sort of how I expect being very hard of hearing is. You catch some of what is being said, but the stuff you fill in may or may not (more likely) be correct. So in mixed Thai and English, Bing would fill in. Basically, some 'rich' man owned the land and had subdivided it and was going to sell it for housing development. The farmers in the neighboring land needing nearby land as their children grew up and their land was already barely enough for a family, took over the land and started planting. Eventually, the government bought the land and sold it to the farmers with a 50 year mortgage. I know I'm missing a lot here and the justification for taking over someone else's privately owned land seems sketchy. There are issues of the impact of globalization, the commodification of land and the resultant loss of farm land for the farmers. And questions about the economic structure that enables some families to get wealthy and others not. Corruption plays a role as well. It's a long story which I don't have completely straight. Or even partially straight. But I'm going to try to get it written down in English. And, apparently the legal issues are not yet over, though if I understood right, in four years they will have been on the land long enough for it to be their own.

Here we are inside as the leader talks - he's in the white t-shirt to the right of the map. Since this is the 6th anniversary of getting the land, they were preparing for a big feast. I'm not sure how many pig heads were in this pot.




















During the meeting Bing showed me his cell phone "hot news" screen. This was how I learned that oil had hit $108/ barrel. After 108, dollars and barrel are written phonetically in Thai.







We had lunch at a restaurant not far away. I couldn't help, as a loyal Alaskan, snapping this picture advertising dried salmon skin for 15 Baht per little bag. (about 50 cents.)







And in case one had trouble reading the Thai, and interpreting the little man, the bathroom had a more graphic sign.






After lunch we drove south to Lampoon to the second village. Here people are again being introduced and then discussion of this village's land problems. They were given this government land - divided up among the various villagers. After they had it for ten years, according to what I learned today, some rich Thais - both individuals and companies from Bangkok and Chiang Mai - produced a deed to the land and charged them all with trespassing. The explanation was 'corruption.' The poor, relatively uneducated farmers never got documentation when they got the land and these others then got the officials who were in charge later on to forge new documentation and they planned to build a resort here.


You can see the mangos growing - a major crop for them - and these should be ripe in about three months.




When this man showed up a little late, it was obvious that he was 'the man.' There was something about him, just like the leader at the last village, that commanded attention. I just knew, this was the man who knew things. (My boss confirmed this later when we got back) He also has served about 8 years in prison over a longer period of time for trespassing. The case is still on appeal. I did get to ask him if any of the original government officials were still around who could vouch for them. He said they had all died off. Again, it is not clear what the basis for appeal is, though he did say that when asked who they bought the land from, the first people they claimed to have bought it from denied it. The others all turned out to be dead. There is a receipt that they paid for anything only for one small parcel. Or so I understood from the discussion.

This guy also asked the visiting Japanese sustainability experts, why a Thai mango that a friend had bought in Tokyo cost 25Baht there, when they sold for 9Baht a kilo in Thailand. Surprisingly, while I understood the question immediately, the Japanese interpreter, whose Thai is much better than mine, had trouble understanding this one.

We didn't get back to the office until 7:30pm. The lights were still on so I went in and talked to my boss a bit. I'm going to give some more seminars - people from the other organizations in the compound will be invited to some, and for those we will get an interpreter so that when I get to the more complicated abstract concepts, I can get help with the Thai.

Lots of thoughts are swirling through my head, but I'm going back to the second village tomorrow with Bing - 9am this time - because they are having someone come to survey the land. Bing and I had lots of time to talk in the van and at the villages today and that was good.

He said, "When we have English speaking volunteers, their Thai always gets better, but our English stays the same." So we used a lot more English today. He also asked how I was doing. I told him I'm fine and I'm having a great time, but I'm concerned that I'm not giving the organization enough value. He quickly said not to worry, that he was learning a lot just through our conversations. I asked for an example, because I was a bit surprised. He mentioned a discussion we'd had last week about his work with some women in a village who sew clothes for sale. A rich man gives them cloth and needles and thread and buys what they sew and sells it for 300% more than he pays (less markup than the mangos.) Bing thought they should sell the clothes themselves and make more money. In part of that discussion I told him about the proverb "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Only I added, in this case, you aren't even leading them to water, you are only telling them about water. The horse story was the example he gave.

I told my boss, when I got back tonight - he was still working at 7:30pm and didn't seem ready to leave when I left at 7:50pm - that I was learning a lot and really should come back in November, after the US elections. He said, that sounded good, but I could save the airfare by just staying. So, I think we're getting along well, though the more I know, I discover there is even much more that I don't know. But then that was the case when I first came to Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer. Today my Thai wasn't quite as frustrating as it was last week. Many of the words I've been studying were used in the discussions. Enough. I doubt too many people will get this far anyway. Congrats if you did.

Gary Gycax - Out of the Game

Adam Rogers comments on the death of Gary Gygax last week in an op-ed in the NY Times.

GARY GYGAX died last week and the universe did not collapse. This surprises me a little bit, because he built it.

Gycax was the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, a game that still lurks in boxes in our house. Rogers credits D&D as the model for the digital world of today

Gycax co-created Dungeons and Dragons in 1974. I don't know whether I would have been attracted to the game if it had been around when I was a boy and teen, but I know that my son became a big D&D fan. Whenever he had gathered enough money, he was off to Bosco's to get another hard cover volume of the the D&D series.

I'm not qualified to judge Rogers' assessment of Gycax's impact on the content of our world today.

Today millions of people are slaves to Gary Gygax. They play EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and someone must still be hanging out in Second Life. (That “massively multiplayer” computer traffic, by the way, also helped drive the development of the sort of huge server clouds that power Google.)

But that’s just gaming culture, more pervasive than it was in 1974 when Dungeons & Dragons was created and certainly more profitable — today it’s estimated to be a $40 billion-a-year business — but still a little bit nerdy. Delete the dragon-slaying, though, and you’re left with something much more mainstream: Facebook, a vast, interconnected universe populated by avatars.

The idea that we all play roles in life is not something that Gycax created - it's been around in literature and psychology and anthropology and even management for a long, long time. And slaves just doesn't seem like the right word. As Americans, are we slaves to the crafters of the US Constitution?

But I can attest to the impact of D&D on the life of at least one geek. My son got totally wrapped into D&D but there weren't enough others he knew he could play with. So I got recruited, very reluctantly (on my part.) I had a lot of things I was doing and interested in and playing D&D just wasn't one of them. But J was so insistent. And the media had all sorts of hype linking D&D with Satanic rituals and other bizarre and sometimes deadly activities. I needed to know what my son was involved with. But there were about 12 volumes he wanted me to read so I would know how to play. Another big obstacle. I finally told him to make me reading assignments - no more than one hour a day - so I could learn enough to play. Focus on the essentials. He did, and I did my assignments.

And I was amazed at the sophisticated world that was there. Particularly, I was intrigued by the attributes of the various characters. Essentially, Gacyx created a model of human beings (well, he included other vaguely human like characters such as wizards,haflings, and gnomes) that were similar in structure (if not quite in content) to similar models of humans in the field of management. Essentially he identified key traits such as

Strength
Dexterity
Constitution
Charisma

I don't remember how many there were altogether. You had to roll the strange dice (were they 12 sided? I don't remember) to fill in points for each trait. High points in certain traits worked best with certain 'races' of characters. It was an analytical tool that I'm sure taught many people about such modeling, even if they didn't know that was what they were doing.

And we did play some, but I'm afraid I never became an enthusiastic a player.

My son also used the computer - we're talking Vic-20 and Commodore 64 if I recall right - to create tables to keep track of the points of his characters and those of his imaginary opponents.

It also gave him refuge from a world that he didn't seem to fit into very well at that time. As he moved on to other games, I used to ask him why all the games he played had as their goal to kill and maim as many people as possible. Why didn't they have games to find ways to feed the poor or find ways to overcome cancer?

All the skills he developed to support his gaming have come in handy as he grew up - the point that Rogers is making. And I suspect that his one time passion for Buffy may also have been linked to the supernatural world of D&D.

So, thanks Gary. You were at the right place at the right time and millions have learned a lot and had great fun from your creation. Sorry you had to leave us so soon. And perhaps you didn't have to.

In an interview with Gamespy after his stroke in 2004, Gycaz said, when asked about his health:

Gary Gygax: I feel pretty good now. I just can't exert myself too much. I'm still too overweight, though. I shouldn't even be smoking these cigars. I also quit smoking a pack of camels a day.

I know that George Burns was still smoking cigars when he died at 102 or 103, but he was a statistical outlier
.

Price of Gas and Election Payoffs

Sunday (It's Monday morning Thai time as I post this) was the mayoral election in Kamphaengphet Candidate #2 was the front runner according to Mook. But Sunday word was out that at leat two candidates were paying people 500 Baht each for their votes. Mook was upset about this, but his father, when we visited him, was asking how come he didn't get his 500 Baht. That is the same amount J and I had to pay each to get into Burma - about $15.

Meanwhile, the price of gasoline ranges around 30 Baht per liter for 91 octane. At about 3.8 liters per gallon and 32 Baht per $, that's about $3.50 per gallon. This is a little higher than gas was when we left Anchorage, but given that everything else is much cheaper than in the US, gas prices at US levels and above are extremely expensive for Thais.

Back in Chiang Mai

[still having trouble loading photos - there's a brief video of the hilltop temple below.]

Bus to Kamphaengphet from Chiang Mai. Comfortable and easy. Got to the bus station early so got on the earlier bus. Roads are really first class, four lane divided highway. But as we descended from the higher altitude of Chiang Mai into the lowlands, we got pushed to the left and the right as we zoomed downhill around the curves, I was reminded of taking this route when I first arrived in Thailand in 1967. The Peace Corps volunteers in the North were all sent up to Chiang Mai by train after a week of orientation in Bangkok. We left Chiang Mai in the evening. Then the road was not paved, two lanes, and I recall careening around the curves in the dark, lit up regularly by bright flashes of lightening which let me see the pouring rain outside. I remember that vividly still today as I just accepted that I would survive or not and that would be my fate.

In Kamphaengphet, Mook took us to the P Resort. The river across from the town is now lined with ‘Resorts” - we’d call them, motels, though each seems to be its own unique style. They had specially reserved an oval room for us that was over the river with windows about 200 degrees around the circle. It was pretty spectacular. We rested a bit enjoyed the view until he picked us up to go for dinner.

We went to an upstairs room at a Chinese restaurant owned by the children of a good friend of Mook’s father - they had come to Kamhaengphet about the same time.

Who’s Mook? I didn’t have Mook as a student in class - he was in grades above the ones I taught. But he did live with me for a while so he could practice his spoken English before taking the American Field Service (AFS) examination in 1968. There had never been an AFS student from KPP province, but he passed the exam. I got to know him and his family well during that time. He went to Iowa in 1969-70, a small rural town where he fit in very well. His daughter has also been an AFS student and now is living in Los Angeles. He’s been back to the US several times over the years, got an MPA in Bangkok and works at the HINO truck dealership. His family banana farm from the old days is now a huge sugar cane concern and Mook is head of the Sugar Cane growers association of KPP.

At the restaurant were Manoo and Sittiporn, two former students of mine. Manoo was an English teacher until he bacame an administrator at his primary school. Sittiporn is also a teacher. Both were good students when they were in my 7th grade English class.
There were also a few other people. One of the current English teachers at the school who is very enthusiastic and whom I promised last year I’d digitize some slides from 1967-68 of the school and of Kamhaengphet. They were very happy with the dvd - I played a slide show at dinner on my MacBook - and with the old student newspaper which had stories by Manoo and Sittiporn as well as Mook.

After dinner Mook had contaced Somprasong - one of the Thai teachers of the year - who was on a bus bringing students back from visiting the sea. His students live in the mountains and I imagine few if any had seen the sea. They were on their way back to Umphang and Mook arranged for us to meet them at a gas station as they were passing through Kamphaengphet. It was great to see him and his wife and son again. There were two big tour busses with 92 kids! Somprasong had gotten some businessman to donate the busses for the trip. But the big busses would not be able to go the small road to Umphang, so when they got to Maesot by 1am or so, they would have to switch to the small pickup trucks with benches in the back for the last three hours.

Right now I’m on the bus back to Chiang Mai. We had a lazy Sunday. We switched to the Techno Riverside Resort because the big room we were in wasn’t available for Saturday night. This motel was closer to town and also nicely situated on the river, but we didn’t have the great view we did the previous night. But they did have internet connection in the lobby so I could check email and make a post yesterday. Breakfast came with the room in a nice indoor-outdoor setting. Mook and his wife Aow came by with their 8 months old grandson. He was well fed and well slept, so he was in a good mood and we had fun. A real cutie.

Then off to Mook’s son’s (and wife’s) tutoring business. They have over 300 students who get tutored in English, math, and other subjects. Weekends are their busiest time. There we met Carlo, one of their English teachers. He’s a 48 year old Italian who was born and raised in Germany and is married to a Thai woman and lives 25 kilometers out of town.

Then to Mook’s house to drop off his wife and the baby. Then we stopped by a nearby wedding that Mook had been invited to. He dropped off an envelope with money and apologized to the bride’s (or was it the groom’s?) mother for not staying. Then we stopped at a spot on the river where his father first had a house when they got to KPP and where Mook and his brothers and sisters learned to swim. There were some people fishing and we also got to see the pens where they raise farmed fish.

Then we got out of town and onto the old main highway - the one that was the highway when I was teaching here. It was so much more quiet, the narrow two lane road going through fields along the river. Even though it is the dry season, there were bright green fields of new rice, irrigated by river water. And we stopped at a small temple - cemetary at the top of a litle hill. This was litterally a little hill as though someone had made it with a giant bucket of dirt. It gave us a a great view of the area, and there was another wedding loudly going on in the village just below. Mook said today was an auspicious day for a wedding and we must have passed three or four.

We got to Tak about two and had another great lunch. It is a little embarrassing because I’m not allowed to pay for anything in Kamphaengphet. Manoo slipped in and paid for our hotel room the night before - after Mook had told me it was already taken care of. Sutin and his wife paid for our hotel room last night I later learned. And this last lunch Mook would not let us pay. We had orginally planned to see the big dam in Tak today, but it was getting late and Mook has a meeting in Bangkok tomorrow morning, so I said we should skip the dam and just go to the bus station.

It was a little after three pm and we just missed the Chiang Mai bus and we could catch the four o’clock bus, but it might be 4:30. Mook said to just wait and see which bus came first (one from Bangkok or one from the Northeast) but I was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough seats. I should have taken Mook’s advice. The Bangkok bus came first, was a nice new bus with lots of empty seats. It left about 4:30. The Khonkhean bus from the Northeast came later and didn’t leave til 5pm. And it was pretty full. Our seats turned out to be broken and after a bit, someone got off and we got other seats. But we are making a lot of little stops - not like the direct bus we were on going to KPP. It’s almost dark (6:35pm right now), but I was able to get my battery charged fully before the busride. So I’ll end this post and work on another one that will be less travelogue and more things we’ve found out in the last couple of days.

Burma Thoughts

[Blogger's having problems posting pictures. I'll add more tomorrow]


[This is a little disjointed, but I just don’t have the energy to make it more coherentGoing into Burma felt a little strange and exciting. The contrast between Thailand and Burma - just walking over the bridge over the river Moei (in Thai, the Burmese call it something else) you could feel it. It is a major entry way in both directions for goods. Lots of Chinese things come in from Burma to Thailand. I’m not sure what all goes the other way - though we did see a couple of trucks loaded with plastic garbage cans.

And our guides told us that a lot of motorcycles - mostly used - come to Burma where they are repaired and sent back to be sold at a profit. I wasn’t sure to what extent the motorcycles were old clunkers they were salvaged or bought, or whether some where stolen and brought over the border. There’s a picture of a repair shop in yesterday’s post.

And Burmese drive on the right side of the road. Unusual for a former colony and with neighboring Thailand driving on the left. Our 'guide' said it happened in 1967 when the prime minister decided the left side was a British legacy he could do without.

But I felt uncomfortable at first going into this country where the elected president has been under house arrest for years and a rich ruling class supported by Western companies that extract natural resources from Burma - including US oil companies - and by the Chinese government. On the Burmese side there were far fewer motorized vehicles. A lot of men wore long sarongs, and things just seemed much slower and seedier and poorer. They also had goats which you don’t see that much in Thailand. Joan and I had to pay 500 (about $15) Baht each to enter Burma. Mook and Manoo, as Thais, had to pay 20 Baht each. They kept our passports at the border crossing at the end of the bridge and gave us a receipt for them and Mook and Manoo’s day passes.

Already on the bridge we got picked up by two Burmese men, one who spook good English to me and to Joan and one who spoke good Thai to Mook and Manoo. Actually our ‘guide’ spoke good Thai too. No agreements were made, but each guide began explaining things as we went along. They tried to get us into little tricycle carts to ride to the temple we’d decided to visit, but we wanted to walk so they walked along with us.

The temple was very nice. There was scaffolding around the pagoda, but even the scaffolding was aesthetic. And the pagoda was very similar to the one we’d seen next to Manoo’s house earlier that morning. It was in the temple that the English speaking guide started opening up more. Well, he did tell us about how hard he works and his son in college and daugher in high school and the rising cost of housing as people are now speculating that Myawadi land will get much more valuable as the Asian Highway - driving east to west from Hanoi to New Delhi - becomes a major route. It made me think about the movie Bagdad cafe which is just inside the Iran border and caters to the many truck drivers of all nationalities who need a place to eat. He never asks for money, but leaves that up to the people he guides. If I understood him correct, he said there was a group from the Discovery Chaneel that morning. Seems I’ve written about them already not too long ago.

Part of me wanted to ask lots of questions about the political situation, and part of me felt that wasn’t a good idea. But we saw a guy in a military uniform in the back of a pickup truck and a machine gun over his back. This was not the Burmese military, but a KMT ???? Soldier. I expressed surprise he is riding around so openly. There’s a cease fire and both can be open now in the province. Eventually we got to talking about the government. There was a sort of verbal dance as he gently tested me out and I him. But, ‘we have to be careful, there are spies everywhere.”

Everyhouse had a two story bamboo pole with a flat piece of metal maybe 10 inches by 8 inches. These are used to put out fires we were told. I guess if you see the fire right away and can beat it out this might work.

We had no Burmese currency and everything was quoted in Thai Baht.

I posted a picture yesterday of some kids playing footbal on a field that had a white stone monument on the right end. The Thai speaking guide told me it was in honor of Aung San Suu Kyi and that there were monuments like that in every province. But they weren’t allowed to clean them up or otherwise maintain them. But I got the sense that just having it there was enough.

And then we got to the Burmese immigration office. I gave them the receipt and they gave us our passports and the two Thai day passes back and we walked back over the bridge. I gave my guide 200 Baht, Mook gave his 100 Baht. We didn’t see any other Westerners during the time we were in Burma - maybe 2 ½ hours - and Mook said there weren’t that many Thais either. People were friendly. In one case my guide pulled me away from someone who was getting too friendly - he was pretty drunk. Alcohol was one thing, I was told, that was very cheap.

Back from Burma with 30 more days

We've done about a weeks worth in the last 48 hours and I don't have time to post much. Here are some pictures of today (It's Saturday night, March 8, 11pm in Kamphaengphet, Thailand). But I have another 30 days I can stay in Thailand in my passport. (Ropi, that should answer your question.) My first 30 days is up tomorrow. J and more time because she came later and then went to Singapore. But we both went with Mook and Manoo, two former students of mine.



We woke up looking at the sun over the River Bing from our hotel room.




After breakfast, we went with Manoo to see the Burmese style Chedee near his house. I know this temple from many years ago, but only recently did it get covered with gold paint.




Mook met us at Manoo's house and we drove to the border town of Mae Sot. There we had lunch before crossing the border. This was the fish that the restaurant was known for.


And here we are at a Burmese temple.
















This is a motorcycle wash and repair shop in Myawaddy, Burma.






Our unofficial guide, who picked us up as we crossed the bridge into Burma said that the grey stone monument on the right end of the football field is for Aung San Suu Kyi, but they aren't allowed to maintain it. But there is one in every province in Burma. This was after about an hour or more walking around that we finally got to these topics.









I've cut this really short and here we are back in Thailand on the way to Tak from Mae Sot stopped at the Musor Hill Tribe market.




And we got to stop to visit Maliwan, whose husband died a year ago - just days after we arrived in Thailand last year and before we got to see him. Idiris and I were teachers together when we were both very young men. My no flash policy didn't work out well here.

There's lots more but that will have to satisfy your for now

Kamphaengphet Tomorrow, Burma Run Saturday

Americans don't need a visa to visit Thailand - they get 30 days. My thirty days is up this weekend so we are making a border run in Maesod on the Burmese border. You can go into Burma, but not very far. I'll probably go in, get my passport stamped, and come back. But we'll take advantage of having to do that and get the bus tomorrow to Kamphaengphet where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 60s. When we were there last year I mentioned that they didn't have very many photos in the school museum. They said there weren't very many. So I promised to digitize some of the many slides I have and I did just before we left. So we'll deliver the dvd and I also found some copies of the English newspaper that my students put out and I have those too. The winner of the name the newspaper contest was Sakchai and the winning name was "To You With News." I know all this because there's an article about who won and how much he won (10 Baht)in the September 1968 issue. To Sir With Love was a very popular song at the time, which I'm sure played a role in Sackchai's winning entry.



I snapped these pictures when we went to eat tonight down the street. First is Ozone Net, one of the many internet shops on the street just outside the Chiang Mai University campus. I'm outside on the street. Double click on the picture to enlarge it.



And here's a woman, at one of the many shops along the University outer wall, cutting the mango to put with my sticky rice, that I'm just now finishing while I post.

Oh yes, I met a Belgian on Saturday who lives in our building. He was going out 'shooting' and was wearing camouflage pants. I saw him again tonight as we were walking out and asked him how his shooting had gone. He immediately pulled up his short shirt sleeve to show me the marks of the BB's that hit him. I'd heard of paint ball, but I didn't realize people went out shooting each other with BB guns. I asked if he had eye protection and he assured me he did. He goes to some large warehouse nearby where they have various vehicles and other things to hide behind. And there's a Thai military base where you can do this outside. He said people come from all over Thailand, including Thai police and soldiers. I jokingly said, "They like shooting at foreigners" but he didn't seem to notice I was joking and said sincerely that he thought so.

J asked if any women participated. He said no, they don't like getting all marked up with BB wounds. He said he spent three hours the other day and five hours yesterday doing this. I live such a sheltered life.

Work, Lunch, Assessment,Sunbird, Heinrich Böll

Bird Call and Construction Wat Ramphoeng uploaded by AKRaven

I heard this bird outside my office window. It was somewhere in the tree on the temple grounds. I put these two pictures together so you can get a sense of the view. Yes, the orange is monks' robes drying. I spent a lot of working on the vocabulary of the work plan so I understand

• what they are supposed to do and what they have completed, and
• so I have the vocabulary to talk to them about it.

I also worked on a couple of pages on how to run meetings. I had the English knocked out in 30 minutes. Then I spent a long time getting the right Thai words - and not sure I did all the time - and plugging them into the page. Mostly I cut and pasted from Thai2English.com, but I'm also getting better at remembering where the Thai letters are on the keyboard. Since my keyboard doesn't have Thai letters on it, I've cut out pictures of the keyboard and taped them to my laptop. I'd say I remember about 15 or 20 now. If I only knew how to spell right. I really need a Thai spell checker on my computer.






I was invited to lunch that someone had brought into the office - sticky rice and various kap. When you eat a meal (as opposed to snacks) you "eat rice." All the curries and other dishes that go with the rice are "kap khao" or 'with rice." One interesting dish was kwitdiao noodle, but not as a noodle. Rather a big piece was used to roll up vegetables.


In the early afternoon Grib showed up. She's the local American Jewish World Service coordinator. It was time to do some assessment since I've been here almost a month. So we sat outside with Pet, my boss, and talked about how I'm doing outside. I said I eat, I work on the computer, watch birds... and Pet added "takes pictures." We got her a copy of my workplan - Pet got her the Thai version. I'd emailed one to New York when Dorcus had asked for it, but I'd forgotten to get a copy to Grib. We all agree it is overly ambitious. But it also includes local people working with me on each part so they can follow up when I'm gone.

The good news is that I think my perception of things and Pet's are similar. Since it was almost all in Thai, (I had to explain what 'getting up to speed' means) I'm not going to say I'm 100% sure what the others said. Language is still an issue - which is why I'm working hard to get enough of their workplace vocabulary - potential, negotiation, coordinate, state agency, experience, reform, take action, proposal, etc. - to be able to talk about work more easily. I also explained about A.D.D. when I got distracted by the sunbird and pulled out my camera. I'm pretty sure it's an olive backed sunbird - that dark throat on the yellow, the long curved beak, and hummingbird like activity all seem to fit.

When I said that Pet and I don't say a lot to each other, but we communicate without words, he looked surprised and said, "how did you know?" The workshop I did Monday was the kind of thing he wanted his staff to do and he'd like me to do more. He also told Grib how much time I spent in preparation - showing how I'd typed the handout in Thai. Too much time? Should I have an assistant? Grib asked. At this point, I replied, doing it myself means I'm learning it. After a while, having someone else type the Thai would be a lot easier and faster. Right now I'm trying to understand the organization before I start doing too much. But the short time I have left - about six weeks - does focus things and I will get, I'm already, moving with a sense of urgency. It was a useful chat for us all I think.



Right next to us were some of the election posters of the candidate the organizations here were supporting, but who lost. I'm still trying to get the vote count. Someone gave me the url of a Thai website, but I didn't have the time it would take to find it in Thai. I might not even know it if I did find it.



I've been taking different routes to work and back just to know the little streets around here. I was also trying to find a little place on the map called Pie Sabai which appears to be a little Western style bakery in the neighborhood. I saw it several times when people were taking me around in their car or motorcycle looking for a place to stay, but haven't been able to find it since. Even though it looks on the map I have to be on the way to work. But here's a picture of the sunset on the way home - it was about 5:45 and by 6:45 it is dark.

I also found out the Heinrich Böll Foundation is very near us. At least that's what the sign says, I didn't find the foundation itself. He's a Nobel Prize winning German author for those who don't know.

Why Clark Will Tell What He Knows

Anonymous asked in a comment on my earlier post on the Clark plea:

I believe that he is guilty as charged-- but do you think he would tell more and fib a bit and tell the FBI what they want to hear, as well?

Well, the 2nd Addendum linked by the ADN shows the Prosecutors have the same concerns, and they pretty much locked him in. Basically it says if Clark

• lies, fabricates, or implicates innocent people
• if he tells the truth, but withholds something relevant because they didn't ask the right question,
• if he stops cooperating after sentencing

it will be considered a breach of the agreement (and all promises to ask the judge to reduce the sentence are off) AND he could be prosecuted.

I don't know what charges the prosecutors might have had on him that they dropped or what else they may have ceded to him (like they promised Bill Allen they wouldn't go after his kids), but on Clark's side it looks like total surrender.

Detail below. The whole document at the 2nd Addendum link. I was hoping these would be a little bigger, but you can double click on them to see them more easily.








The rest is about how the prosecutors can only recommend, but the judge has the final decision and things like that.

Morning Birds - Black Crested Bulbul

It's at times like this that I'm jealous of whatever camera Anonymous has at Bird Anonymous. But I've left my ancient pentax and telephoto lens at home because the Canon Powershot fits in my pocket and I can have it conveniently with me all the time. But still, times like this I wish I had a better camera. My pics here are only to help me document that I saw them and to help identify them and I leave the fantastic close ups to Anonymous and the lucky times a bird lands on my nose.

So, here are some sketchy shots from our fourth floor balcony of today's visit by the Black Crested bulbul. Also saw to greater racket tailed drongos fly by. Thought maybe they were the ones making the the two toned doorbell like call in the video. But a little googling got me to Dave Farrow's incredible pages on SoundSnap which have different calls for that drongo.

So turn on the video and listen to the bird calls while you look at the bulbul shots. And you can go here for some better shots of the black crested bulbul.







It's in the middle, just to the left on the branch in the middle of the tree. You can double click all of these to enlarge them a lot.

Khao Lam - ข้าวหลาม

Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 11:30pm

While I was going through goals and objectives and outcomes earlier today, someone came in with two Khao Lams. Khao lam, one of my favorites, is sweet sticky rice, in this case with some black beans, cooked inside bamboo. mmmmmmmm.

Plea By Jim Clark, Frank Murkowski Chief of Staff, Means He's Helping Feds

Chiang Mai Time: March 4, 2008 1:50pm


Reading this ADN headline from Chiang Mai means everyone else knows a lot more about what's going on than I do.

Former Murkowski chief of staff pleads guilty to corruption

The charge to which he pleaded guilty, is relatively minor in the big scheme of things - charging $68,000 in political polls by Dave Dittman to Veco - but is bigger money than any of the three already convicted legislators saw.

Specifically, from the ADN link to the plea agreement, here's what he pleaded guilty to:

[NOTE: Double Click on the Images to Englarge Them]

For this, according to the documents, he's facing:

These are recommended sentences from the prosecutors. Nothing binds the judge, and all this is dependent on how well Clark cooperates, meaning how well he shares what he knows, testifies as a government witness in court, etc. The recommendation is for a three level downward departure from the sentencing guidelines. So far Judge Sedwick, in the one case of a cooperating witness in this series of cases - Bill Bobrick - has followed the recommendations of prosecutors.


From the ADN link to the Factual Basis for the Plea are more details:





More important, is that Jim Clark must have worked out a deal, meaning that he's been telling the FBI and Federal Prosecutors what he knows about the Murkowski administration. This could get interesting.

Thanks to the ADN for posting the court documents on their website.

Tarongchai's very special hand made cards

You never know what you'll see in the night market along Thanon (Road) Suthep. Mostly it's food, but there's a guy who just sells cardboard boxes, and stalls with clothing, and one with potted plants. And then we saw this one tonight.

These are popup cards that the man you see in the picture makes. A college grad, he finds this more satisfying. And his cards are really special. They all close flat like normal card, but they have intricate cutouts inside.




He gave me his card and I said I'd post his email. He has an online catalog he'll send you. There's a chance the email address isn't quite right. My email to him hasn't come back yet. So maybe it's ok.

ken-popup@hotmail.com

Bugs

The grasshopper was on our sliding glass door yesterday - on the outside.




On the east end of the Sunday night market there were lots of bugs flying around the lightbulbs in the stalls. They weren't very big and looked a little like termites. But then we got to a point where we could see the streetlight and there seemed to be millions of them.

Meetings

Monday night, March 3

I did my seminar this morning. We got into things like productivity and time management - particularly identifying the task people do then trying to connect them to the organizational goals. I've had several weeks to hang out with these people and the organization. They've got good documentation because they had to set up standard international mission statement, goals, objectives, etc. for their grant from Oxfam.

My Thai continues to frustrate me at work, but I had the Powerpoint (had to save my Keynote presentation as powerpoint then fix a few things that got lost in the transition - I have to see if I actually have a cord for my Macbook to a projector so I can just present from my computer) with enough Thai and pictures that everyone could understand what I was trying to convey. Well, even American students have problems with the concepts, but they at least understand the words.

When the boss came in - he had to go visit someone in the hospital and was late - my sense was that he was pleased with the message I was giving. At the end when I told them to talk among themselves, from what I could understand, he was reinforcing many of the things I'd been saying.


Then we all had a lunch that someone brought in. The afternoon was another meeting. Same six people with several more people from another office. The pictures are of the meeting, not the morning seminar. I tried to understand and I caught phrases and words regularly, but not enough to be certain what the point was for sure. It's clear that people's northern accents are one factor, but I just don't have the vocabulary I need. So when I heard them repeating a word, I tried to write it in Thai in Thai2English.com and see if I could get the English word. The problem was spelling it right because that program doesn't give you things that are close, only the right
spelling. At least in Chinese you write the pinyin (phonetic in western letters). But I did get, finally, ข้อมูล spelled right and learned it meant data, information.

The organization's candidate didn't win - #1 did. Apparently vote totals weren't available today, since no one new how many votes those two candidates got.

When I got home, J told me about her first Thai lesson. This is out of sync for the classes so she has a one on one lesson with what she described as "a real teacher" who knows how to get the most out of their time. She likes her so much, she rather go there than to the University class (which she checked out) even though the university is much closer.

We met Melissa for vegetarian dinner. This was the third time I've been there in a week and they were very nice to us and the food is really good. In the restaurant and in the shops I can tell my Thai is much more fluent than when we first got here, something I don't feel at the office where I'm always listening to and stretching for words I don't know. Talking about the meaning of efficiency, organizational goals and objectives, and how to measure one's work output is a lot more abstract than ordering food or asking if they have a lid for the frying pan.

I've got some catch up posts and pictures and I'll do those separately.

Zohar Offers Onion Video and Other Good Stuff

I don't remember how I got to the The Zohar Class a while back, but I went back again today. It's worth plugging. (I have absolutely no personal connection to Zohar, just found him on-line, never met him, and think his blog is terrific.) He says he's a 'non-stop' reader and that's reflected in the kinds of things he finds to post and how he comments on them. Recent posts include videos on Facebook's and Google's threats to your privacy, books being given away on-line and why, what I think is Zohar's map of corporate connections, and this great video from the Onion.


Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot


Why great? Because it makes us to look at things we take so for granted that we don't actually see them for what they are. After watching this video, who can ever look at tv news visuals with a straight face again? Great satire.

I can only guess that the ridiculous cigar in Zohar's picture is also intended to be satirical, but I think he should get a new pic without it.

Dinner with Steven LB

I'd met Steve LB at the strawberry party last week and we said we should get together again. We met at the organic vegetable shop on the Chiang Mai campus where he left his bicycle - outside the gates after I learned that lesson last week - and we started to walk across the campus and caught one of the free shuttles that took us the center of the campus. From there we walked to the main entrance on the north, passing the department of statistics along the way.

Steven's been running a business that brings US students to cultural immersion programs in Nepal and Peru. He's spent nearly the last six months in Thailand and we went to the vegetarian restaurant I'd been to before. After dinner we had coconut ice cream - J and I had coffee and Steven had durian.


Then we walked through the night market behind the resturant - lots and lots of little shops aimed at the students on campus across the street. Steven found a new friend at one of the shops. They had a good laugh.

Steven is headed south soon so we probably won't get to see him again this trip, but we had some great conversation and we're sorry he's leaving. I'm sure everyone at the strawberry party last week has interesting stories like steven does.

Most of the day were stayed inside, resting, and I did some work for my seminar Monday.