ROAD BLOG AHEAD

A video clip from Lama Lena’s teaching at the Remay Center in Kansas City. Yes, I know I’ve been a bad bad blogger lately, but the old plate has been just a tad full and I’ve been feeling more than a bit exhausted by it all. At any rate, here is my Lena-la speaking on the Nature of Mind…(links open in a new window)

Lama Lena on the Nature of the Mind, through the Dzogchen Teachings from Kevin Mullin on Vimeo.

I won’t bore anyone with a recounting of how many times I started to write a blog post and became overwhelmed or distracted by something else going on around me. Needless to say, it was often. I can’t tell if there is just that much that goes on in my life or if I am becoming increasingly more senile and unable to perform even simple multitasking. If I still chewed gum, I’d start to worry that, soon I’d be forced to choose between Juicy Fruit and Birkenstocks as, clearly, I’m getting too old to be allowed both simultaneously! The State of California did, however, just re-issue me a new driving license (with the second most horrible photo that has ever been taken of me.) So I guess I’m not yet officially too dimwitted to do a athree-point turn.

One thing to note is that we’ve had very erratic internet access and that is affecting my blogging. I have scanty reception right now and am trying to post this before it vanishes. For the next few days, we’ll be hanging out at their “country” place in the mountains near Santa Cruz. Definitely no internet there, so I may be incommunicado until next wednesday except for emergencies. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on the writing parts though and do the posting when the lines of communication are available again. Hope hope hope…

At any rate, Veronica finally had the baby on April 10th (which was also Lena’s birthday.)  I had the privilege of being on hand for the happy event, but the real front and center positions went to the new parents and to Veronica. And of course, to baby Eleanor who came in at such a hair under 8 lbs that a good, deep inhale topped her up and put that weight on the official records. Bright-eyes full of interest and curiousity were noticed by everyone, even the midwives and staff who have seen more babies than I ever hope to. She also had a great, hearty set of lungs and the strongest suck reflex I’ve ever seen and managed to demonstrate both at once. I’m convinced that little girl has a career waiting for her playing the digeridoo! Surrogate mother, excited new parents and baby are all healthy, happy and doing fine as of this writing. Everyone - except Miss Eleanor Elizabeth - spent the week following her birth attempting to catch up on all the sleep her false alarms caused us to miss. We spent an awful lot of time in and out of the birth center - usually in the wee hours of the night.

Since the birth, things have been in a fairly steady state of motion. Lena left the day after E’s birth to give a weekend teaching in Napa Valley then went up to spend a much wanted day with our wonderful old friend Phyllis (making me very jealous - I want to see Phyllis too!) She flew back to Oregon just in time to do laundry and then, together, we drove down to the San Francisco Bay Area, a 2 day trip with an overnight stop. Arrived just in time for me to do the weekend workshop with Stephenie Gaustad (at least an entire, glowing post in itself, I promise.) Since then we’ve stayed a few days with Lena’s cousin’s Pat and Bob in Berkeley. The brightest part of this was getting a few days to spend with members of the family who we always wanted to know better and whose company we thoroughly enjoy. Today (Friday) we headed coastside to stay with another cousin (Lena’s mom, Ruth had lots of brothers and sisters and they all had kids.) Diana is the sister Lena never really had and probably the closest living relative of all. I’d be jealous because Lena has such a terrific family, except that she shares them all with me.

5:30 a.m. - Back home. Labour petered out about 3:30 after the baby got hiccups. Veronica decided to come home and try to sleep and see if it would restart. She is ready, family is ready, we’ll see what the little one decides to do tomorrow.
Midnight: I am here outside of Portland, OR with my daughter who is in labour. This is a lovely birthing center with really great people. My daughter rocks. For those of you who don’t know, Veronica is giving birth as a surrogate, carrying a baby girl for R&D, an older couple unable to have children of their own. We’re all here to support her and love her and share the joy of a new life. I am delighted to have made it here in time. I am proud of my daughter for her kindness and courage and huge heart.

More as things unfold.

For those who don’t know, I live with a syndrome called Fibromyalgia which messes with a person’s neuromuscular system. In my case, the major symptoms are chronic pain and stiffness, sleep disturbances, and difficulty standing or walking any distance. Other Fibro sufferers also deal a lot with neurological and emotional effects that include confusion and memory loss, a state which we refer to as Fibro Fog. I’ve always been glad that this aspect isn’t acute in my case. Or, at least, I didn’t think it was.
I’m telling you about this, dear readers, only because it is germane to today’s post, not because I want sympathy. I take my pills, I use my cane, I cope, life goes on. One important way of coping is that I write notes and lists for myself all the time anyway and always have, which may be why I don’t notice the Fibro Fog nearly as bad as I otherwise might - I already had these compensatory mechanisms in place when I started getting sick years ago. I have check lists for everything and double checks too.

Well, of course, as one packs for a two month trip abroad, one thinks of many little things that mustn’t be forgotten. So I’ve got assorted handwritten notes to myself and post-its stuck to things as reminders. Yesterday, I got down to the piece of paper on which I had written some essential doings that I absolutely MUST NOT forget at the last moment, no matter how hectic it gets around here on Monday. Online check-in. Email the airlines about my food allergies. Get my B-12 shot. Review the non-profit charter for my friend’s charity in Ladakh. Pay credit card bills. Client phone call Sunday night. All important, priority tasks on this list. Then I get to the very last item written in large, bold letters and underlined. It reads: YARN!!!

Uh. Okay. I am a knitter and a spinner. I’ve been knitting for over 30 years. Even here in India, I have yarn. I make yarn. I am bringing yarn with me to knit – at least 4 projects since it’s a 36 hour flight time. I am bringing yarn with me to give as gifts. In fact, if I weren’t bringing yarn, I could probably travel with only my backpack instead of pushing the maximum size limit in luggage allotment and hauling a giant duffle bag across three continents. I eat, sleep and breathe yarn.

So WTF could my Fibro-fogged brain possibly have meant by writing just the word YARN!!! on my most important of to-do lists? I’m sure that, at the time I wrote that list, I was absolutely certain that just looking at that one word would jog my memory. Problem is, I don’t even remember having written it, much less remember what it means.

Maybe I’d better go pack more YARN!!! eh? Just in case.

There is at least one more skein I intend to pack. Right now it’s still hanging on our front balcony, drying:

This yarn was handspun by me out of local wool on my Journey Wheel. It’s not a particularly great example of my handspinning since it was a quick and dirty job to test out a sample one evening, but it’s useable and reminds me in texture and softness of a midrange Romney. I spun it but the dye job is courtesy of the Indian population of Doh, the little farming village where we live above Tso Pema on the occasion, two days ago, of Holi, the festival of colour. This is the day of the year when Nyondo really gets to be a coloured girl - Indian style:

I’m not quite as vivid - or as stunned-looking since I didn’t go down to town:

By contrast, our housekeeper Chinta and Lena went for a more artistic and deliberate effect:

It’s a LOT of colour and, by afternoon, as people stop and shower, the open gutters also flow with day glo runoff.

This was our third Holi spent in India and the first one where I actually dressed for the tradition of being painted liberally with coloured dye powders by friends and neighbors. It’s a lot of fun, everyone eats sweets and laughs a lot and there are parties everywhere. People wander up and down the streets tagging everyone and anything that will stand still long enough - even the dogs and the sheep. I wish I’d gotten a picture of the lavender and green sheep and the orange cows! Oh well, our fellow villagers and the visiting French medical team were as colourful as any cow:

The kids, especially, have a ball with it and love that the weird American ladies are willing to get in the spirit of the thing and get painted and squirted and turned into tie-dyed works of op art. Hmmm. Tie-dyed.

We’d bought a selection of the bright dye powders ourselves this year. Blue and yellow and orange and screaming pink and green and a purple and… I had this idea. While we were getting ready in the morning, I found the plain white skein of handspun yarn and put it to soak in a vinegar bath. I had this hunch that the powders being so liberally scattered around were essentially food grade dyes. Which means that they would “take” on wool or other protein fiber, if it were acidified. Hence the vinegar bath When the skein was thoroughly saturated, I wrung it out gently and… draped it around my neck. It was a warm day so the wet yarn didn’t bother me. And, as friends and neighbors came to cast fistfuls of bright hues our way, I asked them to apply their colours not only to my face and hair, but to my yarn. The first few were hesitant since it was pristine white but, once they got the idea, everyone goodnaturedly took a swipe at the skein. Periodically I turned it and exposed uncoloured bits. The photo shows it at the end of the day, but the colours seem a bit washed out by the sunset light – they are even more brilliant that this. Today I re-wet it, put it in a black plastic bag and left it in the sun all day to “cook”. When I went to rinse it this evening lo and behold! Almost all the dye had exhausted and set. The water ran clear very quickly, leaving me with a skein of gloriously vibrant handspun, handpainted yarn! I’m thrilled, both with the result and with the process that made it happen – the good cheer, friendliness and community of everyone whose hands touched me in colour.

Edited to add a picture of the dry skein with truer colour:

I have plans for this yarn and will be bringing it with me to the States in order to implement said plan. Any guesses?

On a more sober note, we heard yesterday that, in the Tibetan province of Golok, Chinese soldiers lined up 100 Tibetan civilians and shot them in cold blood. It is said that such things are now happening all over the region in isolated villages and cities alike. I don’t know… More information is now getting out as all Western journalists have been expelled from the country and are telling what they saw in the last days. There are more candlelight vigils down by the lake, more tears and grieving. More resolve. We’re gearing up, preparing for more bad news and trying to keep our spirits up. It’s a hard time to be leaving, even temporarily.

Our deepest thanks to all those who have donated to the Emergency Fund in the last few days. Your kindness and generousity is humbling. Please folks, don’t stop yet. We’ll be traveling, but Nyondo will be holding down the fort and administering the fund from here while we do oversight from abroad. We’re working with a new public health nurse who has great compassion, a little knowledge and much willingness, but no funds or supplies of her own. She’ll be another great ally in our absence. There’s a lot to be done. Still.

I’ve finally come up for air long enough to write a post here. It’s tense and crazy in this part of the world as you may have heard. We’re okay, just up to our ears in stuff that needs doing. Between trying to stay in communication and trying to get ready for our visit to the States in April, it’s been hectic and I send apologies to all those who I have been neglecting. I hope to eventually get caught up. Meanwhile, I am going to post here all the information I have on the current situation in Tibet. I’ve been writing updates to a Buddhist group on the internet and I am going to repost them exactly as written with the addition of a few photographs taken at yesterday’s rally and demonstration in Mandi. Many thanks to Dr. Bernard Scognamiglio of France and Yeshe Choedon Hara of Tso Pema for these photos. I’ll keep posting more as I know more, but the news lockdown is pretty thorough except for what is being fed to satisfy the media.

This is a helluva time for us to be trying to travel to the U.S. I’ll also try to get Lama Lena’s teaching schedule up on the blog and the web site asap. She’ll be at a number of places, but there’s still room for more weekend Dzogchen teachings and a full week’s retreat for the Yeshe Lama practice if anybody would like to organize anything more. Contact me via a blog comment if you have questions about that.

Meantime, the pictures. I’m having a hard time not crying as I crop and size these images. These are the people of my home, even if they aren’t from my homeland. Their faces are dear and familiar to me. I’ve drunk tea with them, talked shop with them, laughed and played and celebrated with them. I love these people, even the occasional ones I don’t much like. Their fear and grief is palpable. So is their hope and determrination. I would like to be able to do something to help support that hope. For today, all I can do is write and show you their efforts:

Carrying the flag of a homeland he’s never seen, a little boy waits for the demonstration to leave Rewalsar

Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. These young Tibetans wear the flag of their country proudly - on their faces.

The women of any village are a force to be reckoned with. Here are the married ladies of Tso Pema, on the march.

Not only Buddhist nuns and monks, but laypeople too show their faith and support in His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. In occupied Tibet, the price of education and medical treatment is to renounce all allegiance to Tibet’s secular and spiritual leader. Townspeople here steadfastly look to His Holiness for direction and guidance.

The littlest demonstrator. I only hope she will be able to proudly tell her grandchildren about her part in a free Tibet.

Most Tibetans want nothing more than the right to live in peace and pursue happiness in freedom, rights that much of the Western world takes for granted in 2008.

They would like autonomy over the region they have occupied for thousands of years.

But, in the aftermath of exile, torture, oppression and the fear of genocide, many are angry. I understand their anger. And I wonder, as I watch the Chinese flag burn, if it is safe for them to be angry?

The writing on this woman’s vest eloquently sums up the words I have heard from every single Tibetan I have talked to since the violence began in Lhasa.

Here, in reverse date order, is the information I have received so far from people with direct contacts in Lhasa:

March 21, 2008

Today’s news from Lhasa and pictures from yesterday’s demonstration and rally in Mandi.

The Chinese army is enforcing a curfew on Lhasa that essentially amounts to a total lockdown. There are shoot on sight orders for any Tibetan seen on the streets. Everyone must remain in their home with the doors and windows shut. No exceptions. There have been deaths of anyone defying this order. They’re not playing around.

Lhasa is burning. The Tibetans there know they are outnumbered. They are poor and have no money for weapons, but they can afford bottles and rags and kerosene. When the Chinese army fires on them, they are fighting back - with fire.

The Chinese are monitoring all mobile phone communications in and out of Tibet. Nobody really dares to say more than that the curfew is on and they are being monitored and that yes they are alright. Any other communication is cut off. So nobody knows what is really going on anymore behind the borders of Tibet. No one is allowed in or out of the country. Tourists are not allowed to travel and are confined to their hotels. This apparently includes all volunteer medical staff.

All my Tibetan friends reiterate their plea for the United Nations Observers and the American government to intervene on their behalf.

March 20, 2008

I’m sitting here now asking questions of a friend who came to fill us in on the latest news and it’s pretty bad. This is someone who has been talking to Lhasa this week. This is someone who is personally passionate about all of this. He himself escaped Tibet a few years ago, was captured by the Chinese army, beaten brutally, tortured and left for dead. He survived, badly damaged and he has just recently some of his strength and confidence again. I am not even going to give names here anymore.

This is what he told me, what he heard yesterday from a phone call to relatives who are in Lhasa:

10,000 Chinese soldiers just reached Lhasa. The city is surrounded. They are not only arresting ethnic Tibetans, but they are arresting Buddhist Chinese in the city also and anyone they think might be Tibetan sympathizers.

The soldiers now outnumber the entire population of Lhasa and, at this point in the occupation, 2/3 of the population of the city is Chinese and only 1/3 is Tibetan.

They are arresting all the monks and as many of the lay folks as they can put their hands on. Any one identifiable by dress or looks as a Khampa (an Eastern Tibetan nomad.) is being shot on sight. (Most of the people in our village and most of our friends are from Kham)

There are many many people badly injured by the Chinese army – people have lost eyes, limbs, have been beaten half to death.

The estimates range from 200-500 Tibetans dead. My source said he heard that at least 40 people from Amdo province have been killed and another 500 combined from Lhasa and Kham.

Many thousands have been taken off to jail by the Chinese soldiers. There has been no sign of any of them again. The word being circulated is that those who are taken to jail are simply being shot and their bodies dumped in mass graves outside the city. All that is certain is that those arrested have been disappearing.

The Chinese are only letting the media take pictures of what they want to be seen. The BBC shows pictures of Tibetans working “as usual”. What they aren’t allowed to talk about or photograph is the armed guards making them work – at gunpoint. I asked my contact if he thought anyone could use their cell phone to get pictures and send them out of Lhasa. His response was that anyone who tried would be risking their life – if they were seen, they would be shot. People are terrified he says, everyone is expecting to die. They are pretty sure that the Chinese would like to simply eliminate all the Tibetans if they could. The Tibetans themselves are praying that the Americans and the United Nations will step in and stop the slaughter. They believe that it’s their only hope for avoiding genocide – they do not have enough numbers and no ability to fight. Global pressure is the only thing they believe will have the slightest effect on the Chinese authorities. He says to me, please get the word out. Ask everyone in America to write the president. He likes fights doesn’t he? Let him fight this if he’s going to fight something. It’s our only chance. Otherwise the Chinese government will kill us all. Already we have to publicly denounce His Holiness the Dalai Lama in order to get any medical treatment or education, even the children in school are made to daily denounce him.

The other word on the street is that the spies are everywhere. Here in the Indian Himalayas everyone is afraid of Chinese spies and a few have been found. It’s easy enough to bribe someone who is very poor to pass information along for a few rupees. Here in Rewalsar, a few members of the taxi drivers’ union are reputed to be spies for the Chinese. This morning, as most of the Tibetan population of town and their allies were heading off into Mandi, the local district headquarters, for a largescale rally and demonstration of solidarity with their brothers and sisters still in occupied Tibet, they were set upon by those drivers and, when they refused to give them money, the drivers physically attacked the group, beating and seriously injuring people, including several of the adult women in town. It was a traumatic beginning to what was otherwise a very successful rally.

The trouble doesn’t stop at the Tibetan border either. Nepal is cracking down on demonstrators and protesters, arresting them by the dozens and preventing them from reaching offices and embassies with their pleas. We heard from at least one good friend there that he is safe, but is wanted by the police and has gone underground. The Nepali government is no doubt in a quandary that they’ve been in many times over the centuries. They sit in the shadow of China, a buffer zone between that enormous entity and the almost as enormous but far less dominating mass of India. Everyone is holding their breaths, waiting to hear what Nepal will do in all of this. Meanwhile, on a day to day scale there is always the question of who is being paid off by whom…

I’m going to copy and paste the text of another e-mail I just received. It is from a dear dear friend of ours, A Tibetan nun in Nepal who is extremely involved in her community. I wrote her a couple of days ago to tell her we were concerned about her and her kin. Today I received this reply:

Dear Lena and Joy

Thank you very much for your mail. I don’t have any news from my viilage and Zigar monastery. I am so happy to know that you are alwasy there for us. I am extremely glad to hear from you at this very time. Nobody has any clear news from Tibet. I went to the UNO’s office yesterday and I was put in the prison for the whole and we were released at around 6 pm. I reached at home at around 7 yesterday evening.

We are very sad what is happening in Tibet. Many
Tibetans were killed and many more are injured badly.
About 500 people are still in the police custody and
most of them are being sentenced to death. Nobody
knows how many people are missing and how of them were
killed. Some people say that more than 3000 Tibetans
were killed. We need the whole world’s support to have
some peace in the country. Many Tibetans go to the UNO
office every day in Kathmandu and some of them are
injured badly by the police. Two ot them are seriously
injured. One of them has been broken his both legs. We
are not allowed to knock the UNO’s office also. We are
helpless until we get the international support. Many
Tibetans were killed in many places around in Tibet. I
don’t know what to do. Should we cry or die? Every day
Tibetans in Kathmandu try to go the UNo’s office but
we are always rejected and we are put into prisons. I
know every body looks down upon us because we don’t
have any passports. We have lost many of our brothers
and sisters in Tibet. Here all Tibetans cry and cry
every day infront of Boudha stupa or in the streets.
Sometimes I don’t know what to do. I can’t think also.
The Red Chinese have been practising marshall law in
Tibet. They are blaming its on H H the Dalia Lama.
They are shameless. They captured our country plus
they don’t give jobs and rights for the Tibetans in
Tibet.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours dharma friend

Ani Y*

March 19, 2008

A few minutes ago I received an e-mail from one of the long-time sponsors of a Tibetan refugee family who lives outside of Kathmandu. Attached to that e-mail was a letter from the father of the family. I think it’s worth sharing as it’s written very directly and from the heart, so I’m copying it below for you all to read. This is the unaltered words of a Tibetan in exile about what is happening, right now, in his homeland:

Dear K……..,
Thank you very much for your mail. We are so happy to
hear from you. We are also so happy to know that you
are always there for us. I(Paya’s father) is seriously
ill and we are also so worried about his bad health.
We are praying for those who lost their lives for the
nation and its culture and religion.

We are very very sad now that thousands of Tibetans
were killed in Tibet without any mercey. We can’t do
anything and we need the whole world’s support to have
peace in Tibet. Many more are injured. Hundreds of
Tibetans are put in the prisons. I think UNO is
sleeping soundly. If they can’t do anything for people
in the world then why did it start?
Today we all Tibetans are going to ask help for the UNO but we they
are afraid of Chinese power. Now who is going to
support us? Chinese didn’t allow any medias in Tibet.
The people in Tibet can only see the smoke and hear
the gun shots everywhere. I think whole world is
watching but no one is dare to say anything.
We look forward to hearing from you soon. With best
wishes and warm regards.
Yours sincerely

P and P

March 18

Okay, so from the phone call our family member got this morning, ALL the deaths have been Tibetan (or maybe a few Chinese.) The body count that the Tibetans are “sure” of varies between 120 and 300 depending on who you talk to. I know someone who has lost at least 2 monks from his remote home village. But the Westerners who were there when the troubles began are supposed to be safe and getting escorted out of the country quickly. Both sides of the conflict - Tibetan and Chinese - do not want the foreigners to get hurt so they are taking some care. The California contingent and all others actually, should be fine and should be surfacing soon. If they were going through Nepal they will probably get delayed as Nepal is seething right now, though the protests there are supposedly much calmer than in Lhasa. Nobody is sure how the Nepali government will react - will they let the refugees in easily or will it be a mess? Nobody is saying yet. However everyone is gearing up to receive an influx.

The word on the street (in Lhasa that is) is that the protests will continue through August (that’s when the Olympics happen.) Also that suicide protests are beginning now among the monks.

Here in Tso Pema the air continues tense. Last night’s events left the air very smoky so that everyone is wheezing this morning. The monks from all the monasteries ringed the little lake, invoking Guru Rimpoche’s aid and attention on the plight of Tibetans. Enough incense was burned to be smelled all the way in Lhasa and the lake looked like it was aflame with butter lamps and candles. Wish I could take good night pictures. It is really interesting to hear OM AH HUNG BENDZA GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG chanted in a martial war-chant sort of way! Others drove trucks round and round the kora path on the lake, flashing lights and also chanting. The village is almost empty today. Every Tibetan, who was able - that is, everyone who has legal papers, is physically fit and can possibly afford not to work for a day - piled into one of four trucks to drive into the local district headquarters for a more visible political demonstration. Those who have vows, are too old or infirm and those who wish to emphasize their spiritual practice over their political one, have gathered in the Nyingma monastery’s courtyard for three days of intense puja and prayers. Tibetan owned shops and businesses are closed if there are no Indian friends or partners to help run things. The silence on the streets is eerie.

And yes, the other word on the streets is that we’ll be seeing an influx of refugees here by the end of the year. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

March 17 2008

The situation there is, indeed, serious and tragic. It’s also frightening how little information is getting out to the “official” media. I live in the Indian Himalayas, essentially within driving distance of the Tibetan border (if there were roads open.) The village in which I live and work is home to many Tibetan refugees who have been come here since 1959. Everyone is worried and frightened at the turn of events in Lhasa. Most of us have family and friends inside Tibet and we are holding our collective breath, waiting to hear some word of them, some sign that they are alive and well. There are people we have been expecting to return from visits “home” who haven’t yet arrived and whom we can’t reach by phone now. What word we do hear confirms that hundreds of people have been arrested, that much of Lhasa is burning and that many have died in the past few days at the hands of the Chinese soldiers.

For the past several nights, there has been a candlelight protest/vigil/ceremony around the lake that is the center of our town - Tso Pema - the Lotus Lake of Guru Rimpoche and Mandareva. The lake has been ringed with the fire of hundred of candles and the impassioned chanting can be heard well up the mountains as monks and students and villagers show their solidarity with the people of their homeland. There are three monasteries here as well as the cave community at the top of this mountain, a community of yogis, yoginis, lamas and nuns of which my partner and I are a part and have been for many, many years. There’s a lot of fear, a lot of tension, a lot of anger. We are waiting to hear more. Waiting to hear the whereabouts of people like D_______ ______k or S_______ or K________ who should have been home by now…

During our time here, we have started an emergency fund and free medical clinic to provide help to Tibetan refugees. Most of the people we see are monks and nuns, the very elderly and the children. Most of them have walked out of occupied Tibet to be free to practice according to their tradition and culture. Almost all of those who actually make it out (we lose hundreds every year. This year’s count is 300+ missing somewhere in the Himalayas) are malnourished, sick and badly traumatized by the time they get here. In our makeshift clinic we see nuns and teenaged girls who have been raped and beaten by Chinese soldiers. This is… commonplace. We see groups of little kids who walked out through the snow mountains without their parents and old people who saw their children die. We see monks who were once strong and sure who were captured, beaten and tortured until they are emaciated and frail and flinching. They come here and they try to make a life for themselves.

All of them are connected by ties of culture, history and - most important - kinship - to Tibet and its land and its people. We hear what is going on. We’ve known that things were bad there and going to get worse. It’s been a topic of conversation in the tea shops and backroom bars for months. I understand some of the politics, some of the cultural pressures, but I’m not going to try to explain and analyze here, just tell you what we see happening. I’m afraid that, for every one of the refugees that does make Kathmandu (actually, they’ll end up in Bouddha) we’ll lose 2. I’m bracing for more to reach her by the year’s end. First they’ll land in Nepal, then they’ll figure out how to get here to North India (we’re actually north of Kathmandu where I’m at.) If they have kin in India, that’s where they’ll go. Some to Bir, some to Dharamsala, some to Dehradun or Tashijong. Some of them will come here to Tso Pema and we’ll fit them in and help them stay alive.

We’re heading off next week to the West to see family and so that my partner, can visit some of the many centers around the U.S. that have invited her to come and teach meditation. It’s a hard time to go away. On the other hand, we hope we’ll be able to raise some money to help the refugees, both the ones already here and the ones who will be coming soon.

If I have any concrete news that isn’t already public, I’ll try my best to post it to my blog. That’s where I do talk about this place where we live, about the Tibetan people and culture here, the events, the places. There are lots of pictures and information about what we’re doing with the Tso Pema Medical / Emergency Fund and how that works and who we’re helping. Things have been hectic the past few weeks, so I’m behind in posting there, but I will stay in touch with my Tibetan family here and try to keep things updated.
Any help - from your prayers, your political support on petitions and at demonstrations of solidary, to your donations of time or supplies or money to the organization or cause you support - will make a difference to the Tibetan people and their allies. Hard times for everyone, we’re all doing what we can. Thanks for caring enough to read this.

In the Western world, one of the ways that the Winter holidays are celebrated is by the making and sharing of sweet treats: Christmas cookies, Yule logs, mince pies, plum puddings and a variety of traditional confections. Most cultures have some cake or pastry type of thing that typifies regional tastes and available ingredients. In the Tibetan community, New Years (Losar) is celebrated by the making, eating and exchanging of kapsas.

You may well ask “what is a kapsa?” For which effort you are likely to be rewarded with a number of different answers, including “it is a lightly sweetened, delicate cookie, best eaten fresh and crisp” and “It’s a dense, heavy object of fried dough, roughly the size and shape of a cricket bat which lasts almost indefinitely if allowed to sit around until it hardens sufficiently.” Both are true, depending on the maker and the customs of their region. People from Lhasa, where ingredients like baking powder and sugar are known and available, tend to make small, ornate kapsas that are slightly sweetened and leavened. On the other hand, nomads from Kham (who are sort of the Tibetan equivalent of Klingons) make enormous kapsas of very solid twisted dough which, after a few weeks in the old saddle bags, could effectively be used as weapons.

At Losar, kapsas make the rounds throughout the village. First they appear during the celebrations. They’re piled high in front of the presiding lamas and their attendants:

Those of us sitting in the “VIP” seats also get a plate of kapsas to much on while we watch the dances and games, along with butter tea in real china cups, while young monks circulate among the unwashed multitudes (I mean that literally) with bowls of kapsas, handing them out by hand.

Here are some of the most common shapes:

Making the kapsas for the big ceremonies is a community event. A few days before the big celebration, local townspeople gather in the monastery’s refectory. Massive amounts of dough have already been prepared:

Everyone has a task and makes whatever size and shape of kapsa is traditional in their home place or their family. In this town, there’s a preponderance of Khampas so most of the dough sculpture is in the cricket bat configuration:

After shaping, they are dropped into a vat of hot oil and fried

Until they float and can be scooped out and more dough bats put into the hot grease:

That’s the big ceremony aspect of it. Then there are the hundreds of dozens of kapsas made by individuals and families. For days after Losar, everyone goes visiting their friends. They bring treats: fruit, candies (especially rock sugar candy which is traditional) package biscuits, butter, dried fruits and… Kapsas. Lots of kapsas. If you have a lot of visitors, as we did on Saturday, you end up with massive amounts of… stuff. And it’s traditional to present them piled up in elaborate and decorative stacks and wrapped in a white scarf. The old timers would also decorate these sculptural edifices with whorls of fresh butter.

The really wildest moment came when a large box was delivered to us by coolie from Palga Rimpoche. Special “blessing kapsas” made by the lamas, filled with other goodies. They are one of the more amazing things I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but think of them as either boats or boots made of the fried dough.

And, of course, you sit with everyone and you drink tea and talk and hug and enjoy their company and friendship. I made 2 huge flasks of Tibetan tea (a fermented tea made with salt and butter) and our housekeeper made at least 2 flasks of sweet chai before the day was over. I have to admit I felt pretty good about the fact that most of the old folks remarked, after a sip, that it was really good butter tea, “real” Tibetan tea, not that “health stuff” that the younger Indian acculturated Tibetans drink (meaning low or no fat and salt.) Almost all of them had seconds or thirds. Hey, it’s not every day you get somebody from the old country complimenting your traditional cooking!

From each gift bag, a portion was put on our altar. We are blessed to have so many good friends here. If we have too many more friends, we are going to run out of room…

By this morning, the kapsa situation had gotten a wee bit out of control:

This isn’t including about 2/3 of the fruit and almost all the packaged treats and fruit juices, which would have filled a table themselves. Fortunately, it’s traditional to pass along not only the kapsas you make yourself, but some of all you receive. Eventually everyone in the village gets some of everyone’s kapsas. We bagged up a big portion of these and added to them packages of butter and milk. The butter and milk are high-end gifts, especially for those of our friends who are just village folks for whom a half kilo of butter and a sealed liter of milk are useful and expensive. We can, so we do. It’s really nice to be able to give back to those who have made us feel so welcome in their community and who share their lives, their customs and their homes so openly with us.

Okay, this last isn’t actually kapsas, though it did come with one of the Losar goodie bags. It was part of one of the kapsa and candy towers that a nun erected on one of our largest steel plates. If the picture isn’t absolutely clear, let me describe it as a handsewn bag of flannel with odd little pictures on it and the word “love” in candy colours, the sort of thing you might make a baby’s pajamas out of. When Nyondo asked what it was, both Lena and I guessed some sort of sachet or potpourri to put in a drawer or cupboard, or possibly a packet of the cedar incense that is burned for purification. Any of those things would be an appropriate gift, though food is more common. So, when the hordes had left for the evening and we began disassembling the towers, I picked it up and sniffed it to see what scent it might be. And began to laugh uncontrollably. I knew that smell; it’s absolutely impossible to mistake it for anything else on this planet.

“It’s cheese”

“cheese?”

“Take a sniff.” I tossed the rather grubby pouch to Lena who held it to her nose and joined me in chortling at the musty, old sweat socks aroma wafting from it.

For a moment, Nyondo and Winna seemed nonplussed, not quite having made the transition from sachet to a modern Khampa’s way of gift wrapping churra, the strong, hard, very dried cheese made from yak* milk after the butter has been churned out.

“Why would someone want your underwear to smell like cheese?” came the innocent question, causing us to laugh even harder. Because the truth is, wearing the same clothes day in and day out as people do in places like Kham, after about a year, pretty much EVERYTHING smells like cheese.

* a “yak” is actually the term for a bull of this cattle species. The female is called a “dzo”.

On Thursday we went into town to the Monastery for Losar celebration. It rained. Oh goodness how it rained! Many of our pictures didn’t turn out well because there is no camera setting for “light reflecting off of wet concrete” or “condensation on lens”.

By Friday the rain had turned to snow, particularly on the top of the mountain, in the retrul - the community of practitioners living in the caves and shacks built up there. These days most of those making retreat up there are nuns, but there are still a few yogis who have lived in those caves for more than thirty years, growing old, meditating in solitude and time to time celebrating in community. Certainly it would be hard, after so many years, to give up the breathtaking views:

The picture above was taken earlier in the year, before the snows. This is the view looking East, much the same direction as from our balcony, only several hundred meters higher. The foot path up to the retrul (cave community) begins from the road right next to our house.

This is the short (but much steeper than it looks in the photo above) route to the top. You can follow the road, but it winds to give access to the tiny farming villages. It is 8 kilometers by road to the stone steps leading to the caves.

My guess, having climbed those stairs and repeatedly forgetting to ask someone how many there actually are, is that it’s about the equivalent of a twelve-story building, perhaps a bit more.

Did I say it was snowing yesterday? It was snowing - great big huge hunks of snow plopping out of a leaden sky that, the day before, had been gushing rain. On the one hand, the rain melted all the accumulated snow on the mountaintop. On the other, it was wet and then it was freezing and then it snowed. That makes slippery slopes to say the least, particularly on rocky, lichen covered paths void of anything to grasp. I find the path from the upper parking area difficult in clear weather with my bad knees and poor balance. In ice and snow with poor visibility, it’s treacherous to the nimble. Lena is still recovering from her tumble at Christmastime. In the end, much as I love that community, I decided not to risk it and stayed home while Lena, Nyondo and Winna went up. I think it was the right choice because Nyondo, who is the most agile and sure-footed of all of us, slipped on the path and fell. Fortunately she was unhurt. They brought me pictures however, to share with you:

Above, a path between here and there. Below, prayer flags in the snow.

Passing a spot not yet snowed in:

Despite the precipitation and cold, the Rimpoches were piped into the temple with all the usual ceremony. Umbrellas are only somewhat optional:

Once under cover - though still outdoors - the wives greet old friends:

Those who braved the elements and came up from all over the region

And those who live in the caves full time. From right to left: Ani Chonyid who was one of the first inhabitants of the caves and has lived there since the 1960’s and Ani Khandro, whose residence there has been almost as long. To Khandro’s left is Nyima, a monk who lives down near the lake and is one of the friendliest people in the village.

Don’t you just love a pretty woman in a fur and brocade hat? No wonder she looks so happy - she’s got warm ears!

Today’s last picture is for all our friends from Whidbey Island, Washington. A big hello from Mully and Carrie who made it up for Losar. Here they are with Lena seated in the cave temple:

Happy Losar! It’s the lunar new year, celebrated in Asian communities around the globe under various names and traditions. Dragon dancing, firecrackers, auspicious gifts of money and oranges, feasts, visits from friends, ceremonies solemn, joyous or hilarious are all a part of welcoming in the Year of the Wood Pig.

Here in Tso Pema, the past 2 days have been a nonstop party in the Tibetan communities (and friends.) Thursday the town came together at Zigar Monastery, down near the lake. People from all over the Himalayas - Tibetans, Indians, Ladakhis, people from Kinnour, Lahoul, Spitti, Kashmir and visitors from East and West gathered under leaden skies in the monastery’s courtyard to watch the Lama Dances and then have a grand feast.

The dances are performed by monks in elaborate, brocaded costumes in brilliant colours, representing guardians, gods and elementals. The spectacle is beautiful, eerily graceful and steeped in monastic tradition.

Although I appear in the first photo below, I was definitely NOT a part of the dance - merely trying to make way through the throng to our seats near the dais. I’m the large figure in brown with a white shawl over one shoulder at the right rear, with Lena right behind me.

In the dance of the guardians of the four directions

a demon is eviscerted by the guardian of the East,

a role danced by Palga Tulku Rimpoche:

Tomorrow, pictures from the celebration in the caves at the top of the mountain.

Tomorrow is Losar, the beginning of Tibetan New Year. Everything comes to a halt in this town as people start preparing for the festivities. The Tibetan calendar runs in 60 years cycles. This year marks the beginning of a new cycle. Only the oldest people here remember the opening of the previous cycle of years and that was in another place, a homeland that, only a few years later, was occupied in the first wave of Chinese takeover. Most of the previous cycle has been spent in exile and most of the young generation of refugees have never seen their homeland. One can’t help but wonder what this next 60 year cycle will bring for these people exiled from what has been called The Roof of the World.

The old year is ending in icy cold rain and fog here in Himachal Pradesh. Occasionally it morphs into a few moments of snow, but mostly it’s just wet and dismal and overcast. In the past couple of years that we’ve been here, the lunar-based new year has fallen late in February and those few weeks have made a difference in the local weather. Not only has this been the coldest winter in a long, long time, but with the new cycle, Losar now arrives early in February, before the chill starts to abate and the sun make an all-day appearance. No one is sure what will happen to the outdoor celebrations if this weather continues through the weekend. In Tibet, of course, it’s much much colder in this season and the festivities are all out-of-doors. But it’s a dry cold in February, none of this seeping wetness falling from the sky to make puddles where the dancers feet are supposed to go.

It’s the time of year when people visit one another and bring goodies, usually homemade kapsas, the Tibetan fried cookie/bread/pastry treats that range in size from a few bites to elaborate twists the size and density of a cricket bat. Sweets are usually included for decoration. This year’s kapsa inundation at our house started yesterday when a coolie arrived at our door carrying a BUCKET of still-warm kapsas. Yup, a bucket. That’s how it goes and doesn’t stop for weeks. By the time the holiday season is over every person, cat, dog, cow and monkey in Rewalsar has eaten enough kapsas to hold them until next Losar. Then, this morning, another friend came by and left a tray of more kapsas and a sprinkling of wrapped candies. The kapsas were pretty much as expected but the candies gave us some extra entertainment. Nyondo, who is violently allergic to nuts, has a habit of reading the labels on any commercial food product that comes into the house. So she reflexively scanned the candy wrappers and began to hoot. These were funny enough that I took pictures so I can share with you:

Read the print towards the bottom, next to the trade mark. and then:

One has to wonder…

Nowhere, on either of these wrappers, is there anything recognizeable as a flavour. Unless “litter” is now a taste.

I have to admit, I love weird takes on language. There’s a web site called engrish.com that has lots of fractured or bizarre wordings and images. I aspire to find a package or sign worthy of being on engrish.com! I might as well post another picture I’ve been saving which is from the side of the only box of plastic food wrap I’ve ever seen in India. The stuff is impossible to work with as is the packaging, but it was worth the 30 rupees for the notice on the side of the box:

Haven’t you always wanted to squeeze a cartoon and watch their little animated eyes bulge out?

Y’all should know that I’m continuing this blog somewhat later after having had a New Year’s eve libation so I might be a tad bit sloppy and/or verbose. Mostly I wanted to share some random images from here there and around that haven’t quite fit into my more serious posts. I certainly have enough serious stuff to contemplate, but I’m not by nature a solemn sort of gal - I’d rather make people laugh than cry. I’ll settle for smiling though.

So, looking through bits and pieces, I find that several people wrote me or commented about the Indian glass buttons. Here’s a shot of the whole lot of colours we found:

I’m thinking of possibly auctioning off a bunch of these little jewels to raise some money if there’s any interest. That and some of the traditional Himalayan socks that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. Let me know if people might be interested in an auction or raffle of some sort. The orange ones that look like Pondicherry rubies are really gorgeous, but that might just be me and my new orange fetish, thank you Claudia. Oh yeah, on the orange note, I have to show off my new project bag.

It was a gift from Zigar Chotrul Rimpoche, the head of the Zigar Monasteries of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, who is in town for Losar. The cloth is traditional Bhutanese handwoven with geometric designs on a base of… orange. It’s just the right size for carrying my smaller knitting projects and the mesh pouch of knitting tools and the colour lets me spot it at a glance.

Our house is buzzing at the moment as friends stop by to visit and raise a glass of… whatever is cheerful for them. Our dear friend Winna, who has repeatedly opened her house in Bolinas, CA to us and been one of the kindest people I know, is here with us for a couple of months.

Not only is she the most beautiful woman I know, but she personifies all of the best possible qualities that I connect with the word “friend”. Can you tell that I love her a lot?

We’ve got company in the kitchen tonight too so it’s not just a “hen” party. Yab is entertaining us with his many stories of life. Some people know him simply as the father of Palga Rimpoche, the most rocking young tulku of the Kagyu lineage. Being the dad of this amazing young man is a great thing, but Yab has had quite a life all on his own and we’re lucky to count him as family. Never a dull moment with him around, I promise that! And Naru, our Indian friend and neighbor popped in after work. Those who have been reading this blog awhile might remember him as the diabetic farmer who was walking around in shoes with the nails poking into his feet. He’s doing much better now - his blood sugar is under far better control than it was a year ago. Naru is also the kind of person I am proud to call my friend - loyal to the core of his being.

Another person whose presence is an asset in our life is Chinta, our new housekeeper, a jewel among women. She’s smart, competent, curious, thinks at problems, notices things that need doing and just does them and takes pride in her work. She’s also amazingly strong for her size and not afraid at all of hard work.

We “stole” her from the statue construction site on Yab’s recommendation for the three days a week we need someone to help with the housework. Malka, Lena’s old friend, just really wasn’t up to the challenge of learning our “Western” ways, though her heart was in the right place most of the time. She was with us for a year during which time we got all her dental worth fixed and a new set of teeth, brought her health and weight up to a good condition, established her in a room and made she she had enough to keep her well for as long as it takes to find another position that suits her age and skills better. She’s still our friend and we wish her well. Chinta, on the other hand, is dynamic. She’s the mother of two teenagers, raising them well and supporting the family. I mentioned that she was doing construction work? Here’s some photos of construction taking place above our house showing just how that work goes. I am amazed at how the women work so smoothly in their bright clothes and trailing dupatas, carrying huge loads on their heads:

I guess, after hauling rocks, doing laundry by hand must seem a lot lighter load. I know I couldn’t do it at this time in my life. I genuinely admire the strength and stamina of these women workers. I feel like we got ourselves a real treasure if Chinta continues to be as competent and cheerful as she has the past two weeks. It’s great to have someone around who sings as she works! Oh, and she’s a great cook too. That could get dangerous…

If there are any twelve-year-old boys among my blog readers, they’ll probably be tickled to know that the Hindi word for snow is barf. I learned this - from people who didn’t understand why I was amused - because it’s been barfing off and on all week.

There’s snow on the mountainside above our house and quite a bit at the caves at the top of this mountain. It’s hard to see though, though the intermittent fog and haze, just as it’s hard to see the more distant white capped peaks off towards Manali - woodsmoke and clouds obscures almost everything. Because Tso Pema is surrounded by the mountains on all sides, it sits in a little bowl with the lake at its very center. The warm air of lake and town keeps the ambient temperature down there just high enough that snow rarely sticks. The higher peaks trap most of it before it actually gets here, the warmth of the lake then turns what does get in to an icy rain by the time it touches down. This past week has been cold. People are saying it’s the coldest winter in at least a decade. So there has been snow falling in town.
Nyondo grew up in Los Angeles. Her first experience with snow came when she was a student at Harvard many years ago. Since then, she’s lived back in California. Even up in the North part of the state we rarely get more than the occasional five minute flurry. It’s not a weather condition she is accustomed to. So she was quite amazed when this began on Tuesday:

And rather overwhelmed when, after half an hour it became this:

and we couldn’t see beyond the road for the white stuff falling from the sky.

Now I grew up in Chicago where something like that in January wouldn’t even occasion comment. I originally learned to drive in three feet of snow and winter playtime as a kid meant snow forts, snowball fights, sledding and ice-skating in subzero temperatures. Still, I lived in San Francisco from the time I was 23 until I was 49 so I’m no longer sick of the snow as I was when I moved West. Last spring, when I was in the States with Lena and Rimpoche for a few months, I spent some time in Vermont and in Western Massachusetts and was totally enchanted by the snowdrifts remaining in shady woods and hillsides. I never tire of looking at the higher Himalayas to the North and the East of us with their crowns of white reflecting dawn or the setting sun. It sure is pretty!

The cold though is really hard on the older folks and those of us with lousy joints. Even with my Fibromyalgia under pretty good control these days as long as I get enough rest and take my meds, I still wake up in the middle of the night or at dawn and say, “Weather’s coming in” and, sure enough, within a few hours, clear skies will give way to rain or snow or fog as the barometric pressure changes. Being a human barometer is not fun and I am hardly the only one around here feeling it. Almost everyone who has a bit of arthritis or has ever broken a bone is kvetching at the moment as weather systems blow in and out with precipitous enthusiasm.

Lena has been busy handing out the local equivalents of aspirin, Advil and tylenol as well as packets of the green Biofreeze gel that seems to work really well for rheumatic type pains. I bought what I thought was a huge supply when I was back in the States, but it’s going like the proverbial hotcakes at a firemen’s breakfast. At some point soon, we’ll have to figure a way of replenishing our supply. Nothing locally available has proven to be an adequate substitute. We’ve also been buying up all the decently made hot water bottles we can get our hands on. We’re passing these out as fast as we find them to the elderly, the sick and those whose circumstances mete one of the precious bottles. People don’t aways have the means to warm their houses in the freezing weather, but they can curl around a source of warmth and sleep well or put it on an aching knee, a frozen shoulder, the bad back or cramping abdomen and get some relief. In a place with sketchy electrical power and no knowledge of central heating, a hot water bottle makes lots of difference.

There is something we’ve learned though about giving a hot water bottle to a newly arrived refugee. You have to teach them how to use it. Though it may seem so to the rest of us used to such complex technology, a Tibetan nomad who has lived in a tent and spent her life herding yaks and having nothing that was not handmade, some things are not obvious. Lena found this out the hard way when one of her patients, a nun living in a cave, handed her back one of the rubber water bottles and said, “It doesn’t work. It leaks. My bed got all wet and I got very cold.” Gentle questioning revealed that this otherwise reasonably intelligent refugee had not realized (and none of us had thought to explain) that, once the bottle was filled with nice hot water, the nice hot water does NOT stay in the bag. Unless… you. screw. in. the. stopper. Oh. Now there’s a little explanation that goes with each giving. Cultural dissonance. Never, ever assume anything. Got it.

For this moment, anyway, we have been assured by the people who know who’s who and what’s what in this place, that there is currently nobody in serious danger of freezing to death, starving or sick and uncared for.

Oh, there are sick people aplenty in the cold and damp. The digestive disorders of the warmer months have given way to a preponderance of arthritic pain and respiratory illnesses. Pneumonia, colds gone to bronchitis or sinus infections, sneezes and wheezes and coughs galore are what we expect in this season. Something common here however, that might not be expected in other places is the upsurge in asthma attacks we’re seeing. It’s not surprising if you know the local systems though. When I say I can’t see the distant mountains for the haze, the haze I’m talking about is mostly smoke from the thousands of wood fires lit all over the valley first thing in the morning. Sticks, paper, pine cones, cardboard boxes, advertising flyers, pretty much anything that will burn is set alight to keep people warm or to heat the breakfast tea at five a.m. The air is full of smoke and it is not particularly clean smoke. It gets into the lungs and into noses and ears. This time of year people often go around with hands and faces blackened from tending open fires.

The other culprit is also burning, but it’s the deliberate burning of things not meant to be put to the fire: plastic garbage of all sorts, bags and packets, styrofoam, broken toys, straws, spoons, cigarette butts, dead sneakers, old balloons all of it ends up dumped in a wadi at one end of town and, periodically, is burned by some representative of the “powers that be.” On nice days, the air here is fresh, clean, touched by mountain breezes all the way from Tibet. Other times its toxic, reeking with fumes from the burning chemicals and we’re all gasping, sneezing, eyes burning and streaming with tears. Even partway up the mountain it’s bad. Down in town it becomes just awful. Those who already have asthma are in bad shape and new people seem to acquire reactive asthma every week. For many, albuterol inhalers for emergencies and preventative inhalers such as asthmacort keep the worst of the wheezing under control Of course, a lot of people have trouble affording these inhalers since they are comparatively pricey - particularly the prophylactic ones that keep you from reacting in the first place. Frequently, by the time people come to see us, they’ve been out of their medicines for awhile due to costs and are in bad shape. We use the emergency fund to subsidize what we can and hope that the donations keep coming because a lot of these folks are going to be using an inhaler every winter for life.

A few are already too sick for the inhalers to break the asthma cycle and need more urgent care. We did bring a nebulizer, a machine used for administering a medicated breathing treatment to someone in bronchial distress, with us to India. It relies on electrical power however and, because it was originally intended for use in the U.S., an adapter is required to permit it to run on Indian 240 volt current. Not only does the frequent power outtages stymie us in its use, but the automatic circuit breaker on the nebulizer is tripped every few minutes, making it of minimal use. At some point, we’ll need to spend the money to get a good, battery powered machine that can be used here regardless of circuitry or whether the power is on.

Oral steroids are not anyone’s first choice of medication for severe allergies/asthma, but sometimes it’s the only recourse when the inhaled medicines aren’t doing the job. At the moment I think we’ve got a couple of people on prednisone, including one elderly nun whose general condition has us pretty worried. We can’t save everyone, but she’s not expressing any readiness to go and is asking for help so we will give her all the help we’re able as long as we are able to do so.

Hmmm, other cold and snow related topics… Ah, yes, staying warm. I’m doing a whole lot better at this the past few days because I have a new sweater to curl up inside, nice and toasty. I’ve tried a bunch of times to get a really good picture of it, but, because it’s simple and of a single colour this is the best I’ve been able to do:

What isn’t evident in that shot is that it’s incredibly soft and fuzzy. Here’s a close up of an arm that shows the texture as well as a slightly more accurate version of the colour:

The yarn is one of the locally produced no-name mohair blends that are the most natural wool available around here. The owner of the shop couldn’t even tell me exactly the composition, except he swore that it included some mohair and some angora. From the softness of the finished knitting and from the burn test of the yarn, I’d have to assume that he was correct about that and that the core around which the mohair/angora is spun is nylon. It’s very soft and wonderfully warm and I haven’t taken it off except to sleep since it was finished on Wednesday morning.

Okay, before any of my fellow knitters start congratulating me on an FO (finished object in knitting parlance) let me confess that, while handknit, this sweater was NOT handknit by me. I chose the style and the fit, I chose the yarn out of what is locally available since I didn’t bring a sweater’s worth of anything but a silk tweed yarn with me to India. So when we discovered a treasure of a knitter who was enthusiastic about taking on commission work, we dug into our growing stash of “local mohair” and put her to work.

Um, growing stash. Hey, I though *I* was bad, but here’s Lena, the household’s NON knitter, just returned from an expedition to the Fancy Wool Shoppe across from the post office down in town:

Ha, I say. And Ha again! She bought yarn. Lots of yarn. Some is as soft as the cocoa brown of my new sweater, some is harsher, suited more for outerwear, some has a higher wool content and smells faintly of sheep, some is clearly more acryllic, but soft, fuzzy and still enough natural fibre to make it truly warm. Now that my sweater is done and turned out so well (fits like a dream, almost unbelievably so) she’s commissioned one of her own, a wrap type jacket similar to her woven one from Nepal. That will be in charcoal grey of a rather rougher mohair suited to a jacket worn over other clothing.

The woman doing this lovely work first came to my attention when she brought us gifts to thank us for helping her sick husband. That would be Rigdzin, the young lama with leukemia whose monthly chemotherapy bill the Emergency Medical Fund has been paying for awhile now. She sent each of us, Lena, Nyondo and I, a pair of hand-knitted socks in good wool, done in a traditional Kinnouri pattern (they’re from Kinnour) but without the ghastly day glow patterns in contrastic acryllic that are so common in this region. Here’s a photo of some of the traditional socks we’ve been given. Can you guess which ones she made?

Mine were on my feets when I took the photo (and are on my feet as I type this, keeping them warm on the concrete floor of my office.) But the white with brown patterning and the grey with white patterning are her work. Now, I don’t absolutely hate the bright patterns. Or rather, I adore the patterns, I just don’t much like the day-glo acrylic yarn used to create them, even when the body of the sock is good, natural wool. But at present, bright colours are only available in acrylic, there aren’t other options. So there’s this great colourwork in sweaters, hats, gloves, etc., but they aren’t as warm as they might be since they’re not wool. Here are a few more examples:

So, seeing someone using only natural colours got my attention right away. Then I looked at the quality of her work and just about fell over. These were by far the best knit socks I’ve seen since coming to the region. Knit in the round with perfect shaping, gusset and flap heel, subtle patternwork… I had to meet the knitter. So Lena went hunting for her and came back with some photos of other work she’d done. I looked at intarsia, cables, more traditional patternwork, a sweater she’d designed… wowza. So we set a date to meet and, when she came, she measured me (using her hands as a measuring tool) asked about details and then I gave her the yarn and introduced her to circular needles. People have donated needles to give to those here who need them. I’ve given many away already, I gave her a few more, much to her surprise and cautious delight. We don’t, by the way, have a whole lot of language in common. The Kinnouri dialect is its own unique critter.

I wish I could stop referring to this amazing person as “Her” and “she” but I have lost her name. I know, not so bright of me eh? It’s written down on a piece of paper. Okay there are only 3,654,239 little pieces of paper on my desk. It’s in there somewhere. What I do have is a picture of her, her husband Rigzin and their 3 year old son:

Need I say that, now that we’ve seen what this knitter can do (she produced my sweater which is an XXL, 30″ long with perfect stitches, finishing, an exact fit in less than 10 days) we also see that the future of this family may be less precarious. While she may not be able to both support the entire family AND pay for Rigzin’s ongoing chemotherapy by knitting on commission, she can certainly earn enough, at $25 plus cost of wool per sweater, make enough to feed, house and clothe them. We’ll continue to try to find sponsorship for Rigzin’s treatment and pay it ourselves until we do so. And, because her husband’s survival is NOT assured at this point, because there is the potential that one day she will end up a widow with a small kid to support, all of them have been under a great deal of stress. If we can help her get started with commission work (and doing something she loves to do anyway and does beautifully) that will take a great deal of fear and stress away from them all. So that’s what we’re brainstorming here.

As for my own knitting - I’ve not had a whole lot of time for it the last few weeks, but I did manage to finish a pair of Fetching fingerless mitts for myself (with several extra inches added to each cable section to accomodate my longer hands.) Even without fingers, gloves are necessary in this climate. I’ve been known to sleep in them lol! And I cast on, in some of the local yarn we bought, a sweater for granddaughter, Danika. I knew as soon as I saw the yarn that I had to use it to knit her something. The orange colour just screamed to me to be hers:

So I cast on for a Haiku (Knitty, Fall 02) which is an easy and fun little project:

and then I remembered something Lena had found in a vendors stall: Buttons. Old, glass buttons that had been there for unknown ages, exposed to the dust of India and the bright sunlight until the ones on the top of the box faded, eroded their edges and came to look like nothing so much as the beautiful old bits of glass you find on the beach, polished to a matte finish and amorphous shape by sea and sand:

There are many colours, but it was the ones on the left in the above picture that I wanted. Their peridot green is a lively and interesting compliment to the persimmon coloured wool. Green and orange? I’m knitting in green and orange? Hey, Claudia, what did you do to me!!!???