Braids and Belt

 

Circumambulation of a small town temple

 

Merry Christmas!!!

Wow, what a wonderful day! What a wonderful life! I can't begin to express how blessed I am. Every day I'm humbled by the incredible riches with which I've been blessed- a wonderful family that loves me, tons of friends, a comfortable home, no lack of food to eat and warm clothes to wear. Sometimes I just sit, too small to move- why should I be so blessed when there are so many people who have nothing at all? What thing did I do that made me worthy to receive life when others eat nothing but bitterness and suffering until their short days on earth come to an end? Nothing, I have done nothing at all to deserve all of this grace. I only hope somehow, in some small way to be able to share goodness and life and warmth and love with those from whom such things have fled. 
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Tonight our home was filled with friends and family from all over the world. We celebrated our hope of eternal life with food and songs and prayers. But if we fail to extend the love that we've received- what good are we? If we spend all these gifts on our own comforts- what have we gained? Life is so short and suffering in the world is so great, how could we live in our own skins if we didn't attempt to share the riches that we've received? And yet, what is harder than to convince our own selfish flesh to give up comfort, even though it be for the worthiest of ends? As Thoreau said when commenting on men's possessions possessing men, "the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves." 
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On Saturday we will be hanging out at the home for orphans and castaways and the mentally ill. Adjacent is a home for the elderly. Some of them can't even talk, can't cry out for the most basic human needs. No one cares about them. In fact- most are there because they aren't wanted by their own families. I hope that during a few moments with these precious people we'll somehow be able to communicate love and kindness. I also hope that this one day will not be the exception in our lives, but something as common as breathing in and breathing out. Our gifts, our blessings, were not meant to be held on to, but to be exhaled, passed on freely and readily as we received them.

For Birute

I promised a friend that I'd send some pics of Tibetan Mastiffs. Here are two from last year. I was in the field working on a grassland study and talking to folks about possible solutions to the problem of brown bears breaking in and pillaging nomads' winter homes. It was a good time- clipping grasses, sedges, and forbs with scissors while being swept over by four consecutive thundering hail storms, being watched by wolves, and stumbling across wild ass bones and abandoned nomad homes. That night we helped herd the yak home and were rewarded with an astounding sunset and a homemade yak-meat and noodle dinner. Sometime in the night the dogs went crazy and we all went outside to observe a large black silhouette lumbering away in the dim moonlight. Probably an Ursus arctos. 

The close-up of the puppy is from summer 2004. I was out in the field doing some participatory-rural appraisals.  The puppy belonged to a doctor who made about $500 a year. I think he either lived in a livestock shelter or ran a medical dispensary out of it. He made ends meet by working as a motorcycle repairman. Anyway, that's his puppy. Can't remember if Marc or I took that shot.

 

Friday Around the House

In anticipation of an upcoming Christmas party, I'm tidying, doing laundry, and washing dishes. It's almost noon and the ice inside the kitchen window is slowly thinning. This week marks the beginning of the descent into winter, and with it the first trickles of the expatriate exodus to warmer climes. In the project area- even the government shuts down for winter and moves to lower altitudes- so our compound will soon be filling with officials and their families even as the foreigners are departing. Others on the team are now up on the plateau finishing up the clinic monitoring, looking for land to lease for a research station, and tying up loose ends before the new year. January will find only the hardiest folk on the grassland- and that's when we hope to be getting into some substantial wildlife monitoring and equipment setup- though I won't be around to make the trip.

Back to the dishes.