Chiang Mai Oh My
A Visa Run, and Much More

Leaving town--and midterms. As I hastily scarfed down my curry at a food stall opposite the minibus station in my provincial border town, the driver beckoned across the alleyway that it was time to leave. Alright, I said, offering the rest of the fish and rice to my office's IT guy, who'd driven me downtown on the motorbike. In the approaching twilight, an aging gentleman ushered me into the passenger seat of the mini. He was the same man who'd told me an hour earlier that there weren't any more buses that night. Nuts to him!

As usual, I was flying by the seat of my travelling pants, unable to trust anyone, maneuvering through whichever late-night bus schedules would get me out of town and on to Chiang Mai so I could renew my tourist visa.
I needed to get out of town. I needed to travel again. I had had a rough week. I realized that if one isn't careful, midterm examinations can be as draining for a teacher as they are for students.

Travel. As I sat surveying the landscape from the van, I realized that I'd been stationary for the longest period in my life. For two months I had gone no further than a cave thirty kilometers away from my office. Even as a child I probably travelled further and more often than this. My bike here is my main form of transport and I had been living nose to the ground since early February. And those hills that appeared as mere mirages of forest in the distance bordering my town? They were real mountains--mountains I hadn't even known existed! And I was flying through them, reading every Thai sign I could like a child reading English for the first time.

It made me remember what my housemate here once said about travel: "Psychiatrists may not recommend travel as a means of changing your life, but it's always worked for me!" And so it was working. I had been more stressed out than I had noticed. My class load has been high, my attitude too serious, my midterm assignments too long and difficult. I had been a real hard ass, trying to cram as much English instruction into my three months here as I could. Language aquisition--life, even--doesn't work like that.

My minibus driver helped the situation. He had obviously made the choice to be happy. The portly fellow bowed and curtsied to the passengers and honked and gassed through the dry hills, speeding around corners like any good Thai driver should.

Chiang Mai, and a curious Thai monk: Upon arrival in Chiang Mai, I secured lodging, slept poorly (on account of the cheap hotel mattress, which I removed the night after that because I just can't sleep on fluffy things since getting used to the floor). I got my visa stamped, and made plans to visit a monastary in the hills outside of the city. A curious Thai monk had called me during my Thursday afternoon monk class and said he wanted to meet me.

When I arrived, I called Atcheetso on his mobile and the orange-robed fellow in blue aviator shades strolled up to meet me.

"Joshua?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You're not Burmese!" he laughed.

"No, I'm American," I smiled.

"I thought you were Burmese. We prepared a place for you to stay. I thought you were a Burmese monk...but you're an American boy!"

What could I say? Very little. We shuffled off to his second story classroom where he too was administering exams. We discussed the Dhamma at length. We drank coffee and soda and ate cookies. I met Lindas 1, 2, and 3 and other English teachers. The novice monks took their exams while we talked in hushed tones and he drew pictures about how I could only reach the metaphorical mangos if I am not too tall and not too short. And with it being almost mango season, I took note.

I told Atcheetso that I had a pain in my stomach, which had developed the week before. I told him I was thinking about going to the hospital. He said he to had gotten this pain when he worked in Saudi Arabia. The pain developed when he took his job too seriously. The hospital said there was nothing they could do about it. After a few days in a temple, he began to feel better.

"I tell you, Joshua," Atcheetso said with eyes gleaming. "I'm not like the other monks. I meditate during all my free moments. Others watch the TV or read, but not me."

Meditation: Hard core meditation has been my practice as of late. Whenever I have a free moment, I sit--and not usually in front of Blogger.

Atcheetso and I began walking across the courtyard to the temple, his dog--"no, my friend," he corrected me--lagging obediently behind.

"My students see me with you, they know I am a real English speaker," he said laughing.

We left Michael the friendly temple dog at the threshold and walked into the temple. After an hour in the dark and empty cavern of the temple and our minds, I felt completely miserable. The pain in my stomach had reached a new level of searing, burning agony, and I was exhausted beyond comprehension. Atcheetso too was rocking back and forth as if fighting off demons or the urge to sleep in that this drasted 100 + degrees F. heat.

Though I wanted to go to the hospital then and there, Atcheetso invited me to take an afternoon shower and help him prepare for his journey to his homeland, eastern Thailand on the Laos border. We walked into the hills overlooking Chiang Mai. Scattered throughout were the barracks-like rooms of the 500 monks and novices in residence at Wat Sit So Dah. Cicadas chirped and buzzed from the treetops, practically overpowering our meditative conversation--and cooling us with their constant spittle.

The monk showered first, leaving me in a small room with four novices (his former students), their heads and eyebrows shaved, their eyes curious, their nature and their English reserved. Then I bathed and Atcheetso and I continued our Dhamma talk.

Atcheetso told me that the Thai-Burma border was not the right place to develope mindfullness. I live in the Wild West of Thailand where every opening of the house gate could bring Thai Intelligence to the door looking for a kickback--or, as often happens, to observe my English classes--where those noises I lauded before have begun to wear on me. My monk acquaintance said Burma has bad karma and there's nothing I can do to change the ethnic conflict and constant fighting going on there, so I should go inland to the center of a Buddhist land where it is safe and peaceful.

I took note of his thoughts and spent the next two days in Chiang Mai wandering from one temple to another. I saw a movie to escape the heat and to momentarily run away from my constant dread and anxiety. Pieces of lettuce arranged on plates entered my mind as manifestations of beauty. I began to reign in the wayward beast that is my untrained mind. I avoided the hospital and went to bed early. I still couldn't eat any mangos.

The bus ride back: On the bus ride back from Chiang Mai, I got stuck in my province's capital for five hours. Every bus to my town was crowded and it wasn't until the 3 am bus that operators decided to place stools in the aisle for us stranded passengers. Through the darkened mountain passes, I struggled to stay awake during those small hours of the morning, finally resting my head on the armrest of a Burmese man who told me he was going to Bangkok.

Poor fool, I thought. He's never going to make it.

And sure enough, about 5:30 am, he and about ten other Burmese got caught in a police dragnet outside my town. What happened to them I will never know, but the scene from my newly acquired seat was disturbing. Minions of Thailand's burgeoning Malaysian- or Singapore-styled police state were giving stern road-side interrogations and loading people into a caged-in flatbed truck.

I went home and collapsed. I've spend the week furthering my practice and thinking about what Atcheetso said. He often calls me to make sure I am ok. It's almost mango season, and last night I ate mango and sticky rice.

Politics of Thai Buddhism and Meditation: The Theravada buddhist tradition of Thailand is intricately tied in with statecraft. Thailand has a Department of Religion. The religion's Supreme Patriarch has close connections to governing bodies and massive sway over the populace. Every public school has a Buddha image or five. Even Catholic schools have Buddhas in the courtyards.

It's no wonder that flair-ups in four provinces along the dominantly Thai-Muslim, Yawi-speaking minority people along Thai-Malaysian border in the far south have resulted in more than one Thai monk being hacked to death with a machette. That's not only a religious message, but a political one.

Nothing like this happens where I live. We're much more multicultural. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Americans get along with a loud peace. More than Buddhism, we feel the presense of traffic cops.

These close ties between government and religion here explain a lot about why a monk like my friend Atcheetso can tell a person in this hyper-political age that it's ok to withdraw and go where there are fewer political struggles. Burmese monks were often highly involved with anti-government protests.

When ones freedoms are secured by the state and society, it makes it easier to withdraw to the peacefullness of the countryside without feeling the pull of obligation. I do not share that sense of peace. I feel obligated to be involved. Then again, the Natural Law Party advances the theory that meditation actually brings about world peace, so perhaps meditation does more for society than appears to the materialist's eye. Besdies if we are not healthy and happy ourselves, we cannot help others.

In the end, the world is like a stone and when we die, it probably won't mean two beans. Thinking is such a burden. I'm concerned with what's happening right now and that means I try to be more in tune with what my own body is telling me. Since I started being just a tad more selfish about my time and energies, my stomach has already begun to feel better. My classes are going better. We have more fun. We actually learn more when I don't try as hard. That's Taoism for you.

I am preparing to make some decisions about my future. I'm presented with a number of options, which I plan--in full ego-inflating, web-presense style--to bring to you, oh gentle readers, in the near future. :p

Father of a Boy Named Sue
Shel Silverstein's Lost Sequal to the Poem Johnny Cash Made Famous

Yeah, I lef' home when the kid was three.
It sure felt good to be fancy free
Tho I knew it wasn't quite the fatherly thing to do.
But that kid kept screamin' and throwin' up
And pissin' in his pants til I had enough
So just for revenge I went and named him Sue.

It was Gatlinberg in mid July
I was gettin' drunk but gettin' by
Gettin' old and going from bad to worse
When thru the door with an awful scream
Comes the ugliest queen I've ever seen
He says my name is Sue. How do you do?
Then he hits me with his purse.

Check out the rest here. Cheers to housemate Dave and his strange morning net wanderings related to teaching "A Boy Named Sue" to his Burmese friend.

St. Patrick's Day Message Decoded
It seems the Drunken Middle-Aged Thai Woman Wanted to go on a Date!

So the drunken Thai woman who wrote me an almost indecipherable letter when I got sucked into their mid-street St. Patrick's day party wanted to meet me for lunch three days ago. It took a natiev Thai speaker to decode the message in Thai class today. And by then it was too late. Oh well. T'is better for Thai women to have lusted and lost than never to have lusted at all.

"The Picinic is Over"
My Friends and I Return to the Familiar--Namely: Peacocks, Dogs, Allah, and Hard Wooden Floors

I know I demonstrate attachment when I speak of the peacock, the dogs, Allah, and the hard wooded floors that my students and I know at our two-house compound in provincial Thailand, but it's just that after living here almost two months, I've gotten used to the sense of place here. I sleep better when chants from the two local mosques--"their yelling," one student quipped--fly at me in stereo at regular intervals, often during morning yoga and evening jogs.

This place gives me a sense of the familiar. At first, I didn't like the neighbor's peacock trumpetting at all ours of the day from its cage right outside my bedroom window in the most strained voice. Now I've gotten used to the darn thing. The hard wooden floor and thin straw mat I sleep upon make my back feel better. The spiders on my ceiling, the mosquitos at my sides, the lizards on my walls, and the rats scurrying through my floorboards all make me feel strangely at home. The constant barking of dogs and the cacophonous array of other noises may have sent the volunteer I replaced packing after three weeks, but I sleep through everything. The three ngihts of silence at my office while I waited out the nonexistent police check this week filled me with dread.

Likewise, the other familiars of my house make me happy. There are the curries of our Burmese cook and the smiles of her beaming daughters that fill me with joy and food. The stump-tailed mother cat (stump-tailedness being the phenotype of almost all Southeast Asian cats) we adopted with bribes of fish bones and bounteous mountains of mice, continues to push her three flighty half-grown young away from her receading breasts. Stumpy, Dumpy, and Lumpy, as we've christened them, still run away before we can cuddle them. But the mamma cat rubs against our legs whenever we eat.

My strange jammed schedule begins tomorrow. We are due for a review session. My monk friends are due for a placement test.

Spring Break Border Sweep
A Brief Summary of Recent Events in My Life

The streets and markets are all but emptied of hand-holding powder-wearing women, the Osama Bin Laden t-shirts are fewer and farther between, and the samossa shop doesn't have as many customers. While my Burmese friends waited out this week of heightened security in a nearby refugee camp, I've been enjoying my unexpected spring break, getting to know some other foreigners in town, educating myself on the situation here, and generally chilling out. Things are beginning to get back to normal. Here are some updates of a fairly random nature:


Sources say about 6,000 illagal Burmese refugees have crossed back into Burma. Work permit procedures should change soon so that only the Burmese government can issue permits.


On St. Patrick's Day, not knowing it was St. Patrick's Day, I encountered a party in the middle of the street on the way home from the local reservoir. I mean it blocked off the street. Try as I might to get around the commotion, two other falong and I were sucked into the fray and handed glasses of cold beer. I tried my best to communicate with the drunk middle aged Thai women who were hitting on me, but to little avail. Various women had been hooting at me all afternoon, mostly because they thought I was crazy for taking my shirt off to get some sun. (Thai and other local Asian folk bundle up when it's hot--they don't want to darken their chemically bleached skin).

Thirst quenched, we hit the road again and I peddled the six kilometers back to the office to sozzle off the nast of a reservoir filled with discarded batteries and other scarey things.


Thailand is in the middle of one of its increasingly severe dry seasons. Elders say it's never been this bad. Waterfalls that used to flow all year are now dry. Farmers can't irrigate their rice crops. The mid-afternoon temperature peaks at about 39 degrees Celcius (102 Fahrenheit).


St. Patrick's day night (Wednesday) I called the three people camped out at my organization to see if everything was ok. No police, no ominous signs. I got the "all clear." Looks like this sweep was aimed mainly at migrant workers.

I moved back into my home that very night. Before I left my other office, I stole a shrivelled orchid to add to our garden at the house. I felt this was justified, seeing as no one at the office took the time to water it. (A month and a half ago, I uprooted a few spreading succulents from the city post office and planted them in our garden. The cacti--resembling "Hens and Chicks"--are doing quite well in their new home). Hopefully the orchid will revive too.


Yesterday I visited a million-dollar compound run by a group of Virginia Baptists. The disparity of their wealth bubble was striking. Plopped down in the midst of barren brown landscape full of shacks was a fenced-in manicured green lawn and a chateau full of imported American toilets. A more tempting reason to convert has never been better engineered. Ask the converts what Jesus taught and you're unlikely to get an answer, but they will be able to sing "Jesus loves me" by rote. On a related note, the migrant school on the same dirt road was nothing but a stand of decrepit buildings when we went by. Two months ago, it was up and running. The only thing inside now was an old chalkboard. The old students have had no choice but to convert.

After we left the compound, a man in aviator shades pulled up next to us on his motorbike and said in a very Virginian accent: "Three falang on a motorbike. You don't see that very often. Where y'all from?"

We told him we only owned one bike and that we were from the States. He claimed to be from Oklahoma and that he too was "just passing by, lookin' at the school." He was obviously from Virginia and obviously a Baptist.
I don't trust a man wearing aviator glasses. You can't see his eyes.


I've been doubling my efforts to find worthy local organizations to fund. The most needy cases I've so far found are: an orhpanage low on food whose headmaster has gone into personal debt to pay the rent, a clinic without enough bandages or malaria medicine, and an industrious man who teaches vocational-technical skills out of his home. All of these causes are in desperate need of funding are no one else I've found could put a strong foreign currency to use. Though I can't post the details online, email me to get more specific details. I have photos and other information at the ready. Remember that your currency will go ten times further in Thailand than at home.

More later. Peace out.

Freedom From Fear
A Jailed Democracy Leader's Warning Against Fear Mongers

"Just as corruption induced by desire, when not the result of sheer avarice, can be caused by fear of want or fear of losing the goodwill of those one loves, so fear of being surpassed, humiliated, or injured in some way can provide the impetus for ill will. And it would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. With so close a relationship between fear and corruption, it is little wonder that anywhere fear is rife, corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched."
~from the essay Freedom from Fear by democratically elected Burmese leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, currently living under house arrest in Burma.

Running Around in Circles
The Closest I've Come to Danger

Since I'm living on the other side of town this week while Thai police round up illegal immigrants, I went jogging on the other side of town--at the airport. There's a jogging track there next to the new highway. They--whoever they are--broadcast propaganda--commercial and governmental--from loudspeakers. Near the end of my jog, they aired the national anthem. Everyone stood at attention facing the battery of flags along the road. I kept running, then walking. People began to look away from the flags at me, the moving falong. I quickly slowed and began to pace at attention.

When I got back to the office, our wonderful Burmese staff member told me it was good that I stopped jogging--that Thai police make a habit of harrassing falong who don't respect the king. I wasn't sure if I was respecting the king or just taking time out of my day for the nation-state. I got every respect for the king.

No reports of any police activity here, except for a family that got followed into the jungle and got raided at their makeshift shelter. Looks like this week is shaping up to be just what the police said it would be: a raid on migrant workers. Still, it keeps the human rights people on their toes. And keeps me almost entirely immobile. In this practically liquifying heat, I'm glad to have a breather.

Post-Election, Pre-Sweep
Your Narrator Returns to His Shell

Every night club and bar in Thailand was closed Saturday night so as not to interfere with provincial elections on Sunday. So much for hitting the one nightclub in my town last weekend. Instead, there was a housewarming party with plenty of karaoke.

The results of yesterday's elections aren't in, but trike-driving old men have taken down all the political posters and newspapers are already detailing the frauds and abuses. If we can't expect America to have clean elections, how can we expect Thailand not to disappear ballots, photocopy new ones, and otherwise interfere with the kingdom's democrazy? (That's what a Thai friend called it last year--and I likes it!) Whoop whoop whoop whoop! Democrazy! I wonder why the States and other countries don't have elections on weekends. (That's rhetorical, BTW).

Yeah, I'm back in my shell, meaning all of my possessions are back in the backpack. I had to (temporarily?) abandon ship while Bangkok cops clean out the migrant community in my town. The word on the street (the rumor on the street) is that things will get back to normal in about a week's time.

This seems to be just the first part of a major overhaul in the way Burmese migrant workers get their work papers in Thailand. Thailand's prime minister Thaksin has been deal-making with the Burmese junta. Apparently migrant status will be determined on the Burmese side of the border, thereby giving control to the Burmese SPDC (State Peace and Development Committee) over who can leave that authoritarian natural paradise to work in this reactionary free kingdom of Siam. This probably also means that fewer politicos will make it to Thailand. More details should materialize in the coming months. There's some talk of permanently relegating all externally displaced persons (refugees)--even the opposition political groups--to refugee camps.

If this sweep lasts more than a week, I'm going south to a refugee camp as a "guest speaker" for a day or two next week. It takes a week to get a pass. I've been wanting to do this for a while.

I thought this might also be an opportunity to chill with with Udi the Israeli Theravada monk I met in town a few weeks ago. He's got a monastary in a village a few kilometers out and he's always talking about how "ze meditation--eet eez so good, zee meditation in ze caves, Joshua." Unfortunately for me, he's at the moment two days south of here by bus staying on an island at a beach-front temple. I spoke to him by mobile last night and guess what? "Zee meditation, eet eez so good here, Joshua. But you can do eet onyor own. Just remember ze breeding. If you can breethd, then you can meditate."

If I can breathe, I can meditate. If I can breathe, I can meditate.

Security Scrambles, Omelettes
Or, Why I've Been Spraypainting Out People's Heads

Things are up and down, hectic and relaxed. At once, we carry on as if there are no security problems--holding political conferences at German resorts where housemate Dave and I sit by the pool while our students debate alternate visions of Burmese government--while also hoping that some security issue won't send the lot of us scrambling.

Two nights ago, Dave and I bought all the ingredients for omelettes and made them with other volunteers at another house. Comfort food. One of Dave's friends--a girl we'll call "A" who was in Mali with him during the Peace Corps--was not there. She hasn't been here for two weeks. She had to leave unexpectedly. This is the first time I've had time to write her story.

"A" was volunteering at a nearby orphanage. Two of her students--ages 7 and 12--went to Seven 11 early in the morning--and never returned. They'd been nabbed by the police and taken to a border area, where they were being held by Thai immigration. The people at the orphanage asked A to go try to secure the girls' release.

When she got to the border, the police confronted A, screaming at her to tell them where she worked. She remained silent, but they forced her to let them copy her passport.

She secured the girls' release.

The next day, police searched her neighborhood. A left town. No one could visit A before she left. Now A is in another area, possibly on the Indian side of Burma.

It's a transient feeling here. Volunteers come and go. Sometimes they're forced to leave. We wait. I know that if I have to leave, I won't have problems. It's the people who live here without papers who might have the problems. Rumors are flying again. Immigration visited people north of town. Should we spread out till the heat's off?, etc.

The leaders of my group bought everyone alcohol last night and I got my first hangover in two months--something I won't soon repeat.

I think these rumors are just rumors. Still, I worry about my students. The last thing they need is to be sent back to Burma--where junta government officials surely wait to ship them off to political prisons and forced labor camps.

And so we wait. And we make scrambled eggs. But we don't scramble.

Everybody Was Haiku Writing
And I Chose One to Share

I assigned haiku poems to review syllables. Remember 5-7-5? We were learning computer terminology that week. I was happy with the results.

Read this slowly.

Remember it was written by someone who's studied English for only a few months.

Wonder where it came from.

Wish you could speak and read Burmese so you could understand the rest of his poetry.

Ask a spider What
Weaving the electric threads
We call computer.

The Deep Web
Keeping This in Mind For the Near Future

"The deep Web has gotten a lot of press these days. The Web is becoming a complex entity that contains information from a variety of source types. It is much more than fixed Web pages. In fact, the part of the Web that is not fixed, and is served dynamically "on the fly," is far larger than the fixed documents that many associate with the Web. Some people incorrectly refer to this content as the "invisible Web," for reasons that will be explained below.

"Why is this content referred to as the "invisible Web"? This is because the content of databases rarely shows up in a search engine result. Search engine spiders cannot or will not go inside database tables and extract the data. Database content is therefore "invisible" to them. "

Whew! That's a Relief! So I Wasn't Really on My Way to the Shanghai Grand Theater for a "Yoga Performance"
Oh, and one of my students has Dengue Fever

So I woke paranoid this morning that I'd missed it...my "yoga performance" in downtown Shanghai, whatever that means in the harsh light of smog that is this Thai border town when all the farmers decide to burn their fields before the dry season hits hard. But the dream seemed so reasonable in the throes of sleep. So did cursing the taxi driver as he snaked through Shanghai streets because "I [wasn't] even changed for the show yet!" I cancelled the usual Wednesday yoga class.

My students have been getting correspondingly sick with the rise in homework lately. Yesterday I took the day off and went spelunking ("I spelunked," I like to say) in a local cave with other teacher/volunteers from my organization. It was a little field trip, down about two kilometers into the earth. At the bottom was a shallow pool that I waded into. Afterward we got a hottub room fed by springs hot enough to boil eggs and kill bird flu in. And killed the flu was...just like the Thai gov'ment said...killed like the suspected drug dealers who are being extra-judicialled killed in this country's second annual drug war kill-a-thon. But anywho, I was getting to the point here...which was that the other volunteers said their students constantly tell them "I have malaria" to get out of class... The teachers laugh and assign more homework.

One of my students was sick the day before my field trip, the day of, and again today. He had a fever of 102. I went looking for him after class and someone said nonchallantly..."they took him to the clinic and found out he has Dengue Fever."

"Oh great..." I said. I had learned only the weekend before that my students didn't have mosquito nets. The kid who's got the fever came down to class one morning hands stained with blood from the mosquitos he'd smashed upon waking.

My housemate Dave got out the oh-so-humorous and information-packed "Where There is No Doctor," his staple medical book when in Peace Corps Mali, and flipped to the mosquito-borne diseases pages. Dengue fever has no cure. You just have to brave it. We'll see if anyone else gets fevers of 102.

I hide under my mosquito net, except when the mosquitos are sleeping, which is any time I haven't stirred from their dark hiding places under my piles of dirty clothes. When that happens, I hide again...hide means study Thai, Chinese, or the inside of my eyelids. I've only killed two mosquitos since coming here OVER A MONTH AGO!! WHAT? But I "unthinkingly" kill them by keeping my door shut. Then they don't know how to escape. The Geckos that slip under the door crack kill about a third. The spiders on the ceiling kill another third. In cycles, I find the remaining mosquitos in carcas form only, crippled and deflated in their death beds of next morning's class pile or my next lifetime's stack of Chinese flash cards.

This is where the mosquitos grow. It's where I throw buckets of cold water over my head twice daily. It really is that scary and blurry. (I usually don't have my contacts in when I'm tossing the water around).

Don't worry mother and friends. This area's Dengue Fever is really mild. It's only the Laos strains that are terrible. And I'll work on draining our tub every few days or so. That oughta kill off the larvae. But about those other nightmares ...................... breathe. cough. breathe. ahhh. teach. breathe. blog. ahhhh... =)

Funny
Top Ten Search Engine Search Strings for my Old Chinese Travelogue Website

First number, rank.
Second number, number of visits.
Third, percentage of visits.

I particularly like numbers 1, 11, and 14. Oh, the marvels of the internet.

1 3 5.77% bad behavior spitting in class first grade health infection
2 3 5.77% deng xiao ping
3 3 5.77% sinositis
4 2 3.85% crying chinese
5 2 3.85% den xiao ping
6 2 3.85% picture of an old man crying
7 2 3.85% pictures of a narrator
8 2 3.85% south ocean school china
9 2 3.85% tsingdao beer
10 1 1.92% aluminum bicycle cost china
11 1 1.92% buying methamphetamines in bangkok
12 1 1.92% chinese old man picture
13 1 1.92% chinese riding a bicycle
14 1 1.92% chinese word for yogurt
15 1 1.92% constant non-productive cough
16 1 1.92% cost of aluminum bicycle in china
17 1 1.92% cultural cana%c3%b1as
18 1 1.92% disney language
19 1 1.92% fishing background
20 1 1.92% jobs michigan montcalm county

Free Trade Nightmares for My Home Town
World's Largest Refrigerator Plant Closing, Walmart Moving In
Twenty percent of local tax base just lost their jobs. Stores already closing.

I come from a town of 150 people, a place called Fenwick, Michigan. The nearest "big" town is Greenville, home of the Danish Festival and birthplace of the modern supermarket, Meijer.

I've been having nightmares ever since I received the double blow that multinational electronics manufacturer Electrolux and supermarket chain Walmart are both fundamentally altering the fabric of my town. Electrolux announced last month they are closing the refrigerator plant and moving the lines to South Carolina and Mexico, not because they were losing money, but because they weren't making enough. Moving the plant will make them an additional $81 million.

The Detroit Free Press wrote:
Despite an offer of what amounted to $182.6 million in tax credits, union concessions and a new building, Electrolux said it would move most of the work to a new $150-million plant in Mexico.

The company estimates wages in Mexico are 10 times less expensive than the $13 to $15 an hour plus benefits it pays its Greenville workers.

The Greenville closure underscores how fragile Michigan's once mighty smokestack economy has become due to rising costs, such as health care, and the lure of doing business in nonunion areas where labor is cheaper.

The Dems attacked Bush. The UAW issued this statement, attacking everything from the loss of jobs to the Emerald Ash Tree Borer insect that came in on untreated Chinese timber and is now ravaging Michigan Ash trees. (As a gardener from the Mitten State, in one of the four counties in America affected by the Borer, I know how terrible the blite is. Ann Arbor had to replace all of the thousands of Ash trees that line their city streets).

I'm not against global trade. I'm not against Mexicans and South Carolinans having manufacturing jobs. I'm pro-union to the extent that unions have done much to improve the lot of workers' lives, but not pro union enough to support them across the board. Through my father, who worked as an engineer and manager at the second-largest manufacturer in the area, I've seen too many unions protect people who just want to slack off.

But I am against multinational corporations who think they can fuck workers after the workers have done so much to make them what they are today. Corporations owe something to the community they become a part of, especially when they become such a large presence. Communities once had the right to revoke corporate charters. In the case of Electrolux, have little recourse. Electrolux is Swedish. Of course, in the case of Walmart moving in, Americans can still tell Sam and gang where to stick it.

So Walmart has decided to build a store in my hometown; this will inevitably follow the same pattern as every other Walmart. Local stores will shut down, workers' salaries will be driven down. My town already has a major shopping store, part of the Meijer chain that pioneered the concept of one-stop shopping in the 1960s. While Miejer's wages aren't great, they're better than Walmart's. And now they'll have an excuse to lower them.

This is outrageous. I agree with lesbian singer songwriters Bitch and Animal. Jackhammer Walmart parking lots! They've siphoned off enough jobs. I just hope the people in my town know better than to believe the ads. A bouncing yellow smiley face lowering prices is not the reality of the world's largest supermarket chain.

An Environmental Call to Arms
To Prevent Civilization-Altering Climate Change, We Must Act Now

We see its effects every day. The seasons feel a bit more off, a bit more severe. We laugh off global climate change. But the air continues to smell a little more tainted. The ozone still isn't there. We ever more often get the sense that we're in a goldfish bowl and someone has forgotten to change the water and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

As Lorenzo Hagerty put it in his persuasive and succinct new essay "What if the Pentagon is Right?",

When the story about possible catastrophic climate change first appeared in "Fortune" magazine early this year, it became obvious that climate change has now moved beyond the realm of people who are environmentally conscious and into America's corporate board rooms as well. To my knowledge, this is the first time that the US Pentagon has warned corporate America that an environmental catastrophe of monumental proportions may take place in our lifetimes. "Catastrophic" is the word they used, and this is a powerful word when used by our nation's military planners. Generally, this word is reserved for use when speaking of Weapons of Mass Destruction. We are talking here about something with the power to be civilization-changing.

As is often the case these days, several different scientific disciplines have intersected, experienced synergy, and illuminated truths about our planet that would have seemed outrageous only 100 years ago. Thanks to current science, we now have a much better view of the processes involved in heating the North Atlantic land masses. It has long been known that ocean currents, like the well-known Gulf Stream, are responsible for the warm air along the east coast of North America and along European coasts.

What is new, however, is the discovery that the direction in which these currents flow can reverse in a very short period of time, which in turn would cause a catastrophic change in global weather. In fact, should these warming currents change direction today, within 2 - 3 years most of Europe and eastern North America will begin to experience very long and severe winters and soon become uninhabitable. Here is how author Thom Hartmann described the situation:

"The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age -- in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset . . . a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. . . . If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow."

The Pentagon/Fortune crowd have now made it OK to talk about these issues in public. No longer must environmentally-aware people remain circumspect around their friends, families, neighbors, and business associates. It is time drop our shields and get everyone on this planet talking about what us humans are doing to our life support systems here on Earth. What if we did that every day at work, at school, at church, and everywhere else we go? What if we asked every store clerk we deal with what they think about the Pentagon's report? What if everyone finally gets it? … And what if we don't?

read the rest of "What if the Pentagon is Right?"

And do zip over to The Apollo Alliance website for a synthesis of what we should expect from America's next President and the rest of world leaders.

Once in a While Maureen Dowd earns her Times Salary
War on Terror Finally Being Called out for the Sham it is

From Dowd's syndicated NYTimes column entitled "All they had to do was make a call," which lambasted Bush's stonewalling of the 9/11 commission.

As Bob Kerrey, a frustrated member of the Sept 11 commission said, the United States should have declared war on Osama bin Laden as soon as it became apparents that he had an army with a "tremendous, sophisticated capability" and an ideology that dictated killing Americans.

"To declare war on terrorism, it seems to me to have the target wrong," he said. "It would be like after the 7th of December, 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their taactic. ... Terrorism is a tactic."

But oh, yeah, weren't we debating gay marriage?

Beautiful Faces of Revolution and--*gasp*--even--Transcendence?

Except for my mother and Jane Goodall, I can't think of any woman more beautiful than Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma. She beams at us from many a wall in our compound.


The martyred leader of the All Burma Federation of Students Union (ABFSU), Min Ko Naing--a psuedonym meaning "conqueror of kings"--also beams revolutionary greetings from behind poster eyes. He led the first student democracy uprising on August 28, 1988 on the site of the old student union building at Rangoon University, a building the ruling junta dynamited in their 1962 coup.

Before he was killed by State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC--ha!--the government's former acronym) troops in Settway Prison in Arakan state, Min Ko Naing said,

"I will never die. Physically I might be dead, but many more Min Ko Naing would appear to take my place. As you know, Min Ko Naing can only conquer a bad king. If the ruler is good, we carry him on our shoulders."

And still the fighting continues.

Here's a bad-ass picture of a National Union Party of Arakan navy fighter, Major Mo Ma Oo, taken by a guy in our office. The Arakan Navy is one of three groups still fighting the SPDC in the southwestern coastal state of Arakan. Here's anotherpic of the Arakan Navy.

And here's a pic of my housemate, Dave, and one of the office guys, Khaing Zaw. When I spray painted out their heads for security reasons, Khaing Zaw began giggling from behind my shoulder. He's always giggling. I don't know what I'd do without him at the house to fill our lives with levity.


And speaking of levity...

Look at the way this guy's face just radiates with joy. My best friend sent me this picture. His name is Brother Wayne Teasdale, who calls himself a "Christian Sannyasi." Sannyasis are the "wandering monks" of India) The quote reads "Renunciation is not negative; it's not a withdrawal from the world. It's withdrawal from the world's illusions, and from the whole selfish way of life, which is the basis of suffering."

As my friend said, "This guy is amazing. He's a leader in what he's calling 'Interspirituality', which is recognizing the common thread of all mystical traditions, but still allowing them to be unique. He's friends with the Dalai Lama (H.H. wrote the intro to brother Wayne's book), and is a representative of the Parliment of World Religions." The world needs more Brother Wayne Teasdales.

May all beings know peace.

A Letter From My Friend, A Soldier/Medic in Baghdad
intended as a letter to the editor

"As a soldier I can see how absurd it is to expect American combatants to be peace keepers in a country whose peace they themselves disrupted. We have the duty of enforcing ill-defined laws on a people who we can't distinguish from those who would kill our comrades. Now that we've taken Saddy H. out of power, it's time we take the US military out of power.

"Every day I feel I have to keep my mouth shut or risk being cast out, because people I work with make racist and offensive jokes at the expense of a people we're here to protect and free. And in many cases it doesn't stop at jokes. It's not uncommon to see a small convoy of people in gun trucks who fire slingshots at children. These "peacekeepers" start fights with the adults who tell us to stop.

"If a force took over our country and told us they were here to make things better, and at the same time kept pushing our family members around and shooting rocks at our children, would we sit back and do nothing? Absolutely not. We'd be constructing makeshift bombs to take out as many of them as we could just as some Iraqis are doing. If anyone out in TV land thinks Iraqis are killing our soldiers for no reason at all, she is sadly mistaken. We've all lost sight of who the enemy is, and every day we're told to remember that there is still a war going on out there. In all likelihood, innocent civilians are dying more frequently than the U.S. soldiers we've been mourning over. There's a chance we could prevent further casualties on both sides if we eliminate this obvious source of hostility-the soldiers that provoke these attacks."