Please Do It Differently

I just finished another drawing on saa paper. This one features our new nofolete from a few posts back. You know, the anti-smoking one. This particular drawing was a long time in the making, with revision after revision. I finished it while listening to this particular podcast about the current state of our educational system. Mom, you might like to listen to it.

DISCLAIMER: The crutches, I insist, are animist, and have nothing to do with Dr. Seuss or Salvador Dalí. OK, maybe Dr. Seuss.

A Picture Is Worth: Two Orders of Sticky Rice, One Grilled Catfish, and One Plate of Spicey Pork

We are amazed at our ability to get from this

to this.

Vote Here/Aquí

Picture of me giving a presentation of my work
three days after the 2004 election.

Back in Texas I am always amused by the serendipitous correspondence of the third person singular imperative form of the verb "votar" in Spanish to the imperative of the second person singular of the verb "vote" in English. This makes it possible for frugal election officials to write, "Vote Here," and, "Vote Aquí" with only three words. Think of how much ink and paper they must save.

As I write this it is just after 11 AM UCT/GMT+7, 8 November, so 11 PM EST, 7 November. Polls should be closed or closing across the US, and those of you who exercised your republican virtue today should be able to sit back with a cup of hot chocolate, or slip into bed feeling proud of yourselves. At least until the election results begin to roll in. For the past two presidential elections I have succesfully managed to disenfranchise myself, or been disenfranchised by a third party. The last one I voted in was in 1996, while I was in the MTC in Provo. In 2000 I was in Spain, and didn't bother trying to obtain an absentee ballot. I wasn't sure who I'd have voted for anyhow. I didn't like the idea of a legacy presidency --Clinton passing the stick to Gore, like Regan to Bush I. Nor did I like the idea of a dynasty--Bush I, Bush II, Bush III (just waiting for Jed). That year I probably would have voted for Nader, safe for a Texan with misgivings since Dubya carried the state anyhow, and our electoral college system cares naught for the individual vote.

In 2004 J and I were in Italy, and despite the fact that we had requested our absentee ballots as early as was legal, they still arrived, as though to mock us, the day after the elections. We were living, at the time, with people from all over Texas as well as some from California. Those registered in Houston all received their ballots, the Aggies likewise. It seems like a little too much of a coincidence, however, that those of us registered in Travis County, the county most effected by republican gerrymandering (please explain to me how south Austin and the Rio Grande Valley are a community of common concern), received our ballots the day after. But it's OK really. Our votes probably would have been thrown out with the half million other absentee ballots that were discarded in 2004 (that is as though one in every 240 people were arbitrarily turned away from the polls).

My cynical and misanthropic strategy when it comes to voting is to vote for any and every third party canditate, be they Green, Libertarian, or Communist (I wouldn't vote for a fascist, though, were one to ever appear in any official guise). I then divide my remaining votes between Dems and Reps, with attention paid to whomever happens to be in power and where at the time. The idea being that I dislike both parties enough (though one more than the other at the moment) to try to prevent either from having a majority. I'd rather they work toward compromise, and engage in actual discourse, than be able to run any bill they like straight through. Though, lacking derridian play, I'll take demanian aporia, in the hopes that no harm will be done, if no good either.

I'm proud of those of you that voted, and especially of my SE Texas family for volunteering at the polls. Under a system run mostly by money, voting is one of the most idealistic and romantic things we can do. Hooray for ideals and romance.

CDSC Update

Since I originally posted about the Craft and Design Service Center workshop J and I participated in, various bits of it have begun to appear on the web, including this picture of me looking like a total spaz. I'm actually sanding that nearly invisible black object in my lap.

I'll continue to update this post as more things appear:
Photos on the CMU website.
Video on the CMU website. This will only play on Windows machines, so I still haven't seen it.
Post on Dave Besseling's blog about the workshop.

22 November 2006
On 17 November the CDSC had an opening for the Lanna Design Style Prototype Exhibit. It will be open from the 17th to the 26th at JJ Market.
My sketchbook containing notes from Vithi's lectures and sketches related to the workshop has been uploaded to the Internet Archive.

10 December 2006
These are our pages from the catalog:

Loy Krathong

November full moon shine.
Loy Krathong, Loy Krathong.
And the water high in the river and the klongs (canals) .
Loy Krathong, Loy Krathong.
Loy Krathong is here and everybody's full of cheer.
We gather at the klongs
Each one with his krathong.
As we push away we pray
We can see a better day.

Jami has been singing this with her preschoolers the past week in anticipation of tonight's full moon, and the celebration of the Thai Festival of Lights. Now that Loy Krathong is upon us her one complaint is that they've ruined a perfectly good holiday with fireworks. It is a pretty good holiday. Lots of fire works, a sky full of lantern balloons, and the rivers and canals full of krathongs, which are little floating boats made from flowers and banana leaves pinned to a section of banana trunk. "Loy" means "to float," so the name of the holiday is actually "Floating Little Boats."

We bought this little krathong around the corner from our house, and then took it to the Mae Ping River on the other side of town.

All along the river banks a bamboo platform had been set up to allow people to get down to the water to release their krathongs. About twenty seconds after we'd released ours a little boy with a stick started to pull it out of the water, so I gave him a stern look, and he pushed it out further into the river instead.

A bamboo bumper helps keep the little boats from getting caught in the rocks. When you release the krathong you make a wish or say a little prayer. If the krathong disappears from view before its candle goes out then your wish will come true. I suppose if our krathong thief had succeeded he would have stolen our wish as well.

People were lined up all along Nakorn Ping Bridge throwing fireworks into the air or the river. Some of the smaller firecrackers would explode three times underwater, and the larger ones would keep bubbling up for several seconds, and you could feel the pulse from the explosion through the ground on the bank.

We're afraid our little marigold boat might have ended up in this log jam. Ironically Loy Krathong is celebrated to ask Mother River for forgiveness for polluting her waters. Maybe we should just restore wetlands instead.

Update as of 7 November 2006:

Our friend Eh has also posted on Loy Krathong. She was actually around for the parade (which happened Sunday night, the calender we had was not the most informative) and had an excellent view, perched on top of a fire truck (reminds me of A and A and I scaling fences years ago to get a good view of the Manhattan Halloween parade). In addition to shots of the parade she also found these nifty krathongs made of bread.

Another Nofolete

On our trip to Maesai this Friday I found yet another winged elephant (the Burmese side of the border is shown above, from inside Burma, looking towards Thailand, 20˚26'45.04" N, 99˚52'47.02" E looking almost due south if you're that curious). This one is a nice little bronze pipe with the wings embracing the bowl. If you look closely at it, however, the stalk of the pipe extends from below the tail (poor guy has what must be the worst case of hemorrhoids in the world), so in order to use it you are actually sucking on the elephant's anus. Is this handsome pipe actually trying to deliver a subtle anti-smoking message?

Under the Eye of Mictecacihuatl

¡FELIZ DIA DE LOS MUERTOS!

La Notte delle Streghe

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Yi Peng

On Saturday while we were eating lunch at The Kitchen (turns out its name in Thaimeans something like "Kitchen Full of Delicious Food") our friend Eh showed up and told us about the Yi Peng festival happening that evening in Mae Jo, just north of town. We'd heard about it, but weren't sure when it happened, so we called up our friend LB, and headed out. Yi Peng means "second moon" in Northern Thai Dialect, meaning that the festival happens on the second month of the Thai lunar year. Or the third. Or the twelfth. I haven't found a reliable source yet. It is the Lanna variant of Loi Krathong, the Thai festival of lights, and involves letting loose thousands of lantern balloons after a day of making merit with the Lord Buddha.

Here the gals fill their balloon.

And here they get ready to release it.

And off it goes.

In the background is a group of monks in orange robes getting ready to release their balloons.

Like I said, thousands.

And here's a short, crumby video, of course.

The next day after church we went to Wat Umong to see what the Monk Chat was like. For two hours each Sunday a British monk makes himself available for two hours for people to come and ask him questions. He seemed nice, and sincere, and had some good answers to some pretty dumb questions. There is an abundance of cheap Buddhism here in Thailand. The visit was LB's idea, and she was pretty disappointed. She made a good point about people who grow up with no religious community around them, so they end up searching for anything, and when they find something they don't know when to keep their mouth shut about their personal business.

So we went and looked at the fish pond instead. I was expecting a pond full of carp, but instead it was full of huge plecostomus and catfish, which people were feeding bread and food pellets.

Plecostomus are algae-eaters, and their mouths aren't adapted to surface feeding. So they make weird behavioral adaptations to compensate, like swimming backwards while pointing up, hoping a pellet will get pulled into their mouth, or pinning a piece of bread to the wall and sucking on it.

Meanwhile, the catfish seem to have no trouble with their huge vacuum cleaner mouths. Almost makes you want to stick your hand in there.

Indigo Workshop

Ever since I started sewing, I've had an interest in natural dyes. A few weeks ago during the height of indigo season I attended a three day indigo workshop at Studio Naenna. The first day we went out into a neighboring field and cut several wheel barrow loads of indigo. We wrapped the leggy plants into bundles, then carefully filled about 8 garbage cans with 15 kilos worth of bundles and water to cover them. Then we placed a rock on top to keep them from floating up. As the bundles soaked over night the indigo pigment leached out of them, and on day 2 they were ready for "beating." Dane came on the second day to take the place of a sick participant, and we were glad for the extra muscle. In the "beating" process, you incorporate builders lime into the indigo-laced water by scooping and pouring the water back and forth in the can. The process is complete once the water has turned from a light green to a dark blue, and takes about 20 minutes of scooping and pouring!

This is a video of the beating process.

The workshop instructor didn't let anything go to waste. She had pans to catch every little splash from the beating, and the bundles that we removed from the water previously were dried in the sun to be burned later. The ashes are used to make ash water, the mordant for the dye. After beating the fresh buckets we began to dye our fabrics using an existing dye pot. Good indigo dye pots are maintained in a very delicate balance. Before dying anything, you have to scoop out a cup full of the dye to add back to the pot at the end to replenish the exhausted dye. It's a bit like making yogurt or sourdough bread, with cultures and all. Dane and I dyed handwoven cotton, pictured above, that we purchased from the studio. The fabric is narrow because it's woven on a backstrap loom.
On day 3 we filtered the water that we beat the day before through a tightly woven cloth to collect the indigo paste that settles to the bottom. It's this paste combined with ash water, sugar, an indigo culture, and a little alcohol that makes the dye. In fact, the dye is a dark olive green instead of blue. The fabric turns blue once it hits the air and oxidizes. It's a really amazing process.

These are the indigo bundles after soaking overnight.

The spent bundles are taken out in the sun to dry.

Dane beats builder's lime into the water to bind the indigo.

Dane prepares his fabric for dying by folding and tying it.

Another participant adds her fabric to the dye pot.

See how green the fabric looks when it first comes out.

Shaking the fabric helps to oxidize the dye which turns from green to blue.

Here is our fabric dying at the studio before we untied it.