Organic Strawberry Smoothies

Today, Swe took J and me to a little coffee shop - Nada - nearby for organic strawberry smoothies. The strawberries were grown in his village.


Yesterday we talked to our friend Jeremy in Anchorage via Skype. So Swe had to practice his English with someone new. He also helped me to translate the words I had trouble with in a video I want to post.

This is Nada making another smoothie.

So today, Swe had downloaded Skype onto his computer and we practiced using it. While we were doing that, my daughter skyped us from Seattle. In less than a month, Swe will be in Japan at the Asian Rural Institute and will have to speak English most of the time.

News that really isn't New

Sometimes I get google search terms that tell me that something has happened. Today I got a couple of google searches about Beverly Masek. So I checked out what else the googler found and got to this Anchorage Daily News headline.

Masek to plead guilty to bribery charge

The only question was whether she would plead or go to trial. The prosecution is much more interested in getting people to plead. That way they don't have to risk a jury, they don't have to work so hard presenting the evidence, and they don't have to expose what they know and how they operate so publicly. But we knew that Masek was in their sights. This was a sad situation all the way through. As the article says,

Prosecutors wrote that they expect Masek to plead for a further reduction in her sentence, citing "alcoholism, financial and emotional distress, and/or situational depression due to her divorce."

This was someone who just wasn't legislative material. She had too many personal issues to deal with. It's an example of why knowing about a candidate's personal life is important for voters, despite what candidates say about this.

And let's look carefully at campaign ads again. Candidates themselves raise the issues they think will help get them elected - their families, their hobbies, etc. It's just when the media bring up issues like their alcoholism that they argue that personal issues are off limits. Which brings us to the other headline today that wasn't at all unexpected.

Palin's daughter, boyfriend break up

Alaskans knew precious little about the Palins' family life other than basics. The authorized biography gave us the good spin on things, but not too many people read it until she was nominated for VP. And then candidate Palin brought her whole family onstage to tout her son's enlistment and pending duty in Iraq and her daughter's pregnancy and future marriage. No one I talked to had any illusions about the couple's interest in living together happily ever after. Don Mitchell wrote a withering piece at Alaska Dispatch [that AK Dispatch link no longer works, so I've linked to a copy of the piece on Huffington Post] giving advice to Levi's parents on how to negotiate with the McCain-Palin team for payments to stick around until after the election.

So this too was news as unexpected as, "Today is the first day of Spring." (Well, in a little over a week you can say you already read it here first.)

Somchai Neelapaichit has been missing since 12 March 2004

Unfortunately, this discussion was held in Bangkok and we were back in Chiang Mai so we couldn't go. But it sounds like something a lot of people should know more about. Didn't I read something about the Thai Army Chief denying that there were any American torture prisons in Thailand recently?

Working Group on Justice for Peace presents

On the 5th Anniversary of the Disappearance of Somchai Neelapaichit
A Panel Discussion

Wednesday, March 11, at 8:00 pm
No cover charge
(including screening of the documentary film 'Human Rights' at 7:15 pm)

Somchai Neelapaichit has been missing since 12 March 2004, when he was last seen in Bangkok being forced into a car by a group of men. He was Chairman of the Muslim Lawyers Association and Vice-Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Law Society of Thailand at the time of his disappearance, when he was also representing five Muslims accused of terrorism-related activities in the Southern provinces. Five years on, the investigation into the circumstances of his enforced disappearance remains incomplete and the whereabouts of his body is still unknown. His wife and four children remain in the dark as to what happened.

On 12 January 2006, the Criminal Court convicted a senior police officer of coercion and assault – but not of the enforced disappearance itself – and was sentenced to three years imprisonment despite evidence presented at trial indicating that a more serious crime was committed. The police officer was released on bail pending his appeal, which is still outstanding.

The fifth anniversary of a person's disappearance takes on particular significance in Thailand as at this point the person is considered legally dead under civil law. The series of events commemorating Somchai Neelapaichit's disappearance will highlight the continual pursuit of truth and justice of this particular case, underscore the abhorrent nature of enforced disappearances, and represent public and high-profile efforts at seeking justice for an emblematic case in the fight against impunity in Thailand.

Speakers will be:

- Mrs. Angkhana Neelapaichit
- Kraisak Choonhavan
- Justice Elizabeth Evatt

---

Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand
Penthouse, Maneeya Center Building
518/5 Ploenchit Road (connected to the BTS Skytrain Chitlom station)
Patumwan, Bangkok 10330
Tel.: 02-652-0580-1
Fax: 02-652-0582

E-mail: info@fccthai.com
Web Site: http://www.fccthai.com

Thanks to the person who sent me the email.

Lotus

The petals open
Softly glowing, too soon gone
Like the setting sun

Good To Be Home

We left Chiang Mai last Thursday morning and it's only Tuesday night now, but it feels like we've been gone a couple of weeks. The more that is packed into a period of time, the faster the time seems to go, and the longer it seems to have been. Or so it seems to me.
V gave us these two of her rare bananas. I think she called them elephant's toe, or ingrown toenail. And then there was a bunch of another type known as lady's breast bananas. A couple were yellow and the rest green and should be yellow in a day or two. [Above and right is the inside of the banana. Which I added Wednesday afternoon.]




The flight back from Bangkok went easily. And we were greeted in the airport hallway to the exit by orchid after orchid plant. Mostly they looked like cymbidiums, but there was a variety of orchids - maybe a hundred different plants, each with several sprays of flowers.






































And when we got out of the airport, we were greeted by the relative coolth of Chiang Mai after the Bangkok heat. (The computer says it's 79 here and 86 in Bangkok, but that doesn't factor in the extra humidity in Bangkok as well.)








And then there was the full moon. We've been keeping track of time by watching the moon wax and wane. It was full the day before we left Anchorage - January 12. And it was full when we were in Kuala Lumpur when our 30 days were up in Thailand. And now our second 30 days are up. When the moon is full again, we'll be just back in Anchorage.

Bangkok Airport Free Wifi

As of now - March 10, 2009 - there's free wifi in the Domestic Terminal Food Court. Speedtouch. Couldn't find it in other places in the airport.

Message to US Hmong Community from Thai Hmong Farmer

One of the demonstrators was a Hmong farmer. In the video below he sends a message in the Hmong language to his brothers and sisters in the US and elsewhere.

So, folks in Anchorage. Those of you who know how to get hold of the Hmong community, tell them to check out this video I took today (March 10, 2009 Thai Time). And people in other states with Hmong communities, let them know this video is available. Thanks.



[Update: Thursday, March 12, 2009 9pm Thai Time; Someone found this post pretty quickly and posted a link at a Google Group for Hmong. Within 24 hours some 60 people had watched the video. Two comments were up on the Google Group, but they're in Hmong so I have no idea what they say. But I'm trying to get the man in the video the information. So, thanks for getting the information out, whoever you are.]

Bangkok Farmers' Demonstration

[Tuesday, March 10, 2009 3pm Thai time]
J and I managed to get over to where my colleagues and the farmers they work with are demonstration. They were originally scheduled to go home tonight, but a group of the demonstrators are supposed to be meeting the prime minister tomorrow, so they aren't sure how long they are staying. But we're headed home tonight. I've written about some of the issues in previous posts. I'll just put up the pictures now.

We got there after they marched to Government House today, so no action shots.

We wandered into the Southern Thai part first.
They were happy to show me their sign and have me photograph it.
Then the sent us to the Northern Thai section.

We passed the stage.

And this is what things look like pretty much. Lots of people sitting around under the blue tarps. It's really hot and humid.

Finally I found my group. It was good to see people I recognized and who recognized me. But everyone was friendly to us, even those who had no idea why I was there.

They were cooking lunch at this point.

And checking to see what news about the demonstration was in the newspaper.

And resting.

Here's the laundry area. I know my group left Thursday night and
today is Tuesday, so they've been here a while.

Here's the water and shower area. Also a nearby hotel was letting them take showers for 5 or 10 Baht a head if I remember right.

Here are some of the farmers I first met in Petchabul
in early January, and then a few times later.

It's hot out there.

And here's J and Ew (from our office) catching up.

OK, I realize this is just pictures, but it will have to do for now. I'm also going to post a video next. I took these pictures a couple of hours ago.

Paul Krassner Advice for Bloggers

J gave me a the February 2009 copy of Sun magazine last night insisting that I should know about it. This morning (I need to say it is really hot outside at 8am. In Chiang Mai it cools down at night. In Hanoi it was mostly in the 60’s and low 70s (16˚-22˚ C. But it’s HOT here.)I read the interview of Paul Krassner, who I’m vaguely familiar with, and who is described in Sun as having

been spreading his witty, sometimes snide, and often political brand of humor since the late 1950’s.

He was a violin prodigy who played at Carnegie Hall at 6 and wrote for the Steve Allen show and Mad magazine and edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography among other things like writing the Realist.

Blogging gives all of us the chance to be social critics, and Krassner, now 76, offers some comments that I think bloggers should consider.

People don’t like to be lectured to, but if you can make them laugh, their defenses come down, and for the time being they’ve accepted whatever truth is embedded in your humor. When a large audience of people are laughing together, no matter how disparate their backgrounds are, it’s a unifying moment. But who’s to say how long that moment of truth or unity lasts and whether it leads to any action? p. 6

The more repression there is the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter-words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn’t have to get a belly laught. It does have to present criticism. p. 7

The picture is my computer in the guest house at J&V’s place. The other is the view from the guest house porch.





It's not quite as hot as I thought earlier, it was the effect of coming out of the air conditioning.

Bangkok Stop

At JL's insistence, we added a night in Bangkok on our trip home from Hanoi. J was in my Peace Corps group and was in the next province to mine 40 some years ago. He's been involved with Peace Corps and/or AID until he retired and now lives in Bangkok in a house he and his wife built [remodeled] on her old family property. [She said she would have built such a big house.] We're staying in a beautiful guest house in the back.

They heard that banana trees were a good way to green up the yard fast after the construction and so now they have a collection of lots (I forgot the number) of different kinds of banana trees. This was perhaps the strangest - it's got hundreds of tiny bananas.

This condo building towers above their place. It's distinction is that every condo has its own swimming pool. But J isn't sure they have enough money to finish it. It seems that nothing's been done on it for a while and it's not done. The penthouse on top comes with its own helipad. So if you're interested, email me and I'll get you in contact with J.

We walked around the neighborhood. This will give you a little idea.

J wanted something at the supermarket, so I checked out the fish department.

750 Baht is about $20. So this Tasmanian salmon is under $10 a pound.
Presumably this is previously frozen salmon and farmed salmon,
but I didn't see anything that gave that sort of info.

Then we stopped at the Spa for some iced chocolates and I had mandarin-passion fruit.

Then tonight we had dinner at a beautiful Northern Thai place close by.
Here's the fish dish. With all the ingredients of Miang.

Here are the culprits at dinner.

I really don't have much time to say much more. I'm feeling a little guilty staying at this beautiful spot while my colleagues are a few kilometers away sleeping on the street in front of Government House. I did talk to Bon by phone today and the Prime Minister has signed something - I think to set up a committee to study and resolve the issues the farmers have brought to Bangkok. I'm hoping to get down there tomorrow before we fly home. They are due to bus home tomorrow night.

I'm letting Hanoi sink in before writing anything more. All I know is that I was headachy the whole time. That's not my style. I'm guessing it was the traffic and noise - and trying to dodge motorcycles every time I crossed a street.

Oh yes, tomorrow is the 50th Anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising. Tibet's been closed off and they are expecting protests at Chinese embassies around the world. Apparently there's been disputes among Tibetans and there may be more vigorous protests than in the past, possibly even some suicides in protest. Or so the rumors go.