Night in Dehli

It was dark as we flew over Afganistand and Pakistan. The lights of towns were soft and barely visible. The light outside the airport in Delhi was also a soft yellow glow. This was in sharp contrast to Newark where we landed after dark from LA on the first leg. There the lights seemed to be an attempt to turn night into day. Now, in Dehli it seemed like the lights were just a slight imposition on the dark, just enough so people can find there way around.

As we came down the stairs toward the customs, we saw a man holding a sign with our names. He whisked us through to a special counter where we waved through. Then into a car. Besides the soft light, the first thing I noticed was the air. The temperature was comfortable, on the border between warm and cool, but not quite either. And the air was thick with the smell of coal and you could see it. Neither the driver nor Raghav
knew exactly where we were going. The picture at the top shows them asking for directions for the third time. The dark image gives a sense of how we felt. But this man was sent by Rashmi's uncle so we didn't worry. Eventually we got to the guest house. Got checked in and into our room. We slept well to the next morning.

the best show on earth

"...India is the best show on earth, the best bazaar of human experiencs that can be visited in a lifetime...India will disolve your ideas about what it is to be a human being, what it is to be compassionate, what it is to be spiritual or conscious. Its people give new meaning to perseverance, courage, ingenuity, and friendship. India 's is a bewilderingly old culture, with myth and history so intertwined and layered that one knows immediately it cannot be known nor understood, only experienced." From the introduction to Traveler's Tales: India, edited by James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger

We leave LA at 10:35am, stop in Newark, then arrive in Dehli, if all goes well, at 9:15pm Nov 2. Rashmi has arranged for us to be met at the airport and taken to a guesthouse. We've started our malaria pills. I think we're ready. Can you ever be ready for India?

Diwali Celebration

We had a great send off tonight - the Anchorage Indian Cultural Center's Diwali Celebration. There was music, danicing, singing, a fashion show, and, of course, food. We got lots of advice about things to do in India. We leave for the airport soon for LA, and Wednesday for India.

AFN Meeting in Anchorage

Talking to friends in the Egan Center Lobby



The Alaska Federation of Natives has its annual meeting in October, generally in Anchorage. Last year, after feeling like Anchorage was taking them and the dollars they brought to town for granted, they met in Fairbanks. By all reports they were very warmly met there. The move seems to have worked because Anchorage did a lot of wooing to get them back this year.
This is where indigineous peoples from all over Alaska and their friends come to meet - to develop policy for Alaska Natives, to see old friends, to sing and dance. It's an opportunity most non-Native Anchorage folks fail to take advantage of. It is a great time to get to meet Alaska Natives from all over and to get past stereotypes and meet real people, as well as to welcome them to our town. There's also a great opportunity to buy Alaska Native arts and crafts and meet the people who made them.


Tsimshian Drummers

Special Alaska Cars

We don't see that many unique cars in Anchorage, but this one was parked down the street Thursday. Afraid you can't clearly see the Alaska wild flowers painted on the side.

You can also see we got our first few snowflakes. Not a pretty snowfall. Winter just marking his territory, letting us know he owns us til March or April, lest we forgot.

Live from Amritsar

We're going to India next week - I'm assuming I will find ways to keep posting from there, but if there is a gap that will be the reason - and so today we met with a Sikh friend to talk about our trip. While talking about visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar, he told us that every day "The Book" is ceremoniously carried into the Golden Temple at 4am and then returned in the evening. And - here's the interesting part - that ceremony is covered live every day by satellite! So we saw a tape of today's ceremony. Below is more about it from incredibleindians.com.

Amrit Vela
Amrit Vela means the pre-dawn moment. It is actually the time when the watch strikes four o'clock in the morning. The pilgrims wake up and start preparing for a serene early morning visit to the Darbar Saheb. After reaching the temple entrance, one must take off their shoes at the 'shoes counter'. The next step is to dip one's feet at a channel of running water. On the way to the temple, there are lined up flower stalls, for one to buy garlands or just fresh flowers for offering... (more on the Golden Temple here, it's the last article on the page. The picture above comes from this link.)

Winter Nears

Listened to the leaves of the Mountain Ash raining in front of the house today.


And there was ice on the puddles.

Great Theater Town Anchorage

My daughter recently told me she saw a lot better theater and film in Anchorage than she sees in Seattle. Instead of having 30 choices every night, we have 3-10 (not counting regular movie theaters) or so. Still more than one can do. But of that number, most are pretty good. And often the venues are relatively small, so you are right there face to face with the actors.

Thursday, we saw Tony nominated Lisa Kron in 2.5 Minute Ride at Out North. The room holds, maybe, 100 people. We tooks seats in the front row. A one-actor piece, three spots on the stage, three different intertwined stories going on. A mock slide show of her trip to Auschwitz with her dad and the Dutch woman who'd lived with them when she was a high school exchange student; an annual family trip to a big amusement park in Indiana; and her brother's wedding. Ultimately it was a tribute to her dad who was sent alone to the US from Germany as a 15 year to escape the Nazis. Since my mother came to the US alone in 1939 as a 17 year old, there was a lot for me to relate to. And I'd had many of the same reactions while wandering through Buchenwald, that she had at Auschwitz. She played her father to tell one story of a kid named Lohman, the only other kid in his school class not to join Hitler Youth. Her dad wondered, "If I weren't Jewish, would I have the courage to say no like Lohman?" A question for us all to ponder carefully today.

Friday we saw Little Shop of Horrors at Mad Myrna's. A tiny stage, in a back room of a gay bar that was crowded with a little over 100 seats, a bar, a four piece band, and a place to store the grown Audrey II until she was needed on stage.. But we have great local talent, and Christian Heppinstal pulled together a great production. All the actors became their roles, with highlights by the dentist and both Audrey IIs (the puppeteer who was inside the giant plant and danced with real soul, and voice of Audrey who sang with real soul.)

We really are lucky to have such good stuff here.

Finally Converted - Poetry - Sudoku

I finally took the hint and converted to the new version of Blogger. Didn't seem to affect anything negatively. In fact my View Profile counter seems to be working again. It had been stuck on 12 for several months, and now is up to a whopping 18.

Checking blogs yesterday, I landed on one that featured poetry. I realized how hard it is in today's world to stop and take the time to appreciate poetry. We've learned to scan everything quickly and move on. But good poetry requires we stop and read carefully, and reread. Enjoy the words and imagery, not just quickly grab the content and move on. So I stopped and read more carefully and since there were no comments, composed a sonnet to convey some of these thoughts. It was much more fun than Sudoku (I finally went to a Sudoku site last night too, trying to figure out whether the 1 or the 4 is the easy rating, since my struggles with sudokus aren't consistent with the rating). Had to look up sonnets again to remember the rhyme scheme. If you really want to see my sonnet, you can go to Star Sequence. Since I incorporated phrases from his poem, it wouldn't make sense without also reading Old Women among the Stars. It's the first comment.

Dances With Films at Out North

We went to Dances With Films at Out North Theater last night. We got to see six short films from this LA Film Festival. Leslee Scallon and Michael Trent, the festival founders, were there to answer questions. It was an interesting set of films. "Shift" the Grand Jury Winner, was about a young 'Korean-Jewish' actor who takes a night shift job at a mailing company managed by a Chinese and with an interesting ethnically diverse set of employees, who are given bad new every time pizza is delivered. You can see the Audience Award winner by clicking Dirty Mary. But a warning - the sound and video got separated the first time I tried it. The second time I found that when it did that I could stop it and it started back ok.

Also more moose today, while out jogging. When I detoured through the trees to avoid the cow on the trail, I almost ran right into the bull with a good rack hidden in the woods.