11/21/2008
Iced coffee Wizard!
11/11/2008
Prathet Thai iik kang deeo
Well, I made it back to Thailand. I did some running around, went up to Singburi to get out of my apartment, and was lucky to land there on the weekend of the famous Tham Reuah festival that happens once a year. There are about 20 boat racing teams that participate in this event, and it was definitely a site to see. I could do without the drive-thru quality loudspeaker blaring the play by play throughout the race, but the atmosphere was fun, perched above the Chao Praya riverbank.
Then I found an apartment in Bangkok for the month, while I look for work and travel a bit. It is just easier from here, although I wish I would have set up camp in Chiang Mai. At least this place is rentable for one month (most require at least 3 months stay) and I have wireless here. Also, the holy tree at the entrance to my street certainly would bring good tidings!
Then it was time to do a little job searching and friend visiting in the north. After holding my breath and celebrating the Obama victory in Chiang Mai I took the bus an hour and a half through the rolling norther n mountains to a village of a couple thousand folks in Chiang Rai province.
At one point, while sitting and enjoying an evening chat with Yo's friend and next door neighbor, he grabbed a stick and extracted this green, fruity thing from the tree. I was instructed to eat it, as it was good for my health (loaded with vitamin C, they said. Villagers come around whenever they are sick to eat them). Well, it was bitter as hell, kinda like rhubbarb, but it wasn't that bad. What was interesting was the semi numb feeling in my throat afterward, kinda like a methal lozenge leaves in its wake.
Good business if you can get it.
Sadly, this may be my last long term stint in Thailand, as I have a few irons in the fire Stateside. The Obama victory makes it much more palatable to return and live there, and the time is feeling right for a shift. This trip to the north was such a pleasure it makes it a simultaneously wrenching and satisfying move. I am so fortunate to have had these experiences. So many good friends and great memories.
10/18/2008
10/03/2008
07/14/2008
Going through my wares
Well, some neat things have happened over the past while.
Some recent stuff
This is a very large, old object that is housed in a magnificient temple in Bangkok. When I have a little more time I will elaborate on this.
07/02/2008
This one's for real
Awhile back I had a spoof post about our friend Paul and Brian. While Brian is still reportedly a crabber in the Potomac river basin, Paul is actually NOT an insect harvester. What he is supporting and doing is much more inspirational. Read below, in this article from US News and World Report. Found at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FARM_SCENE_AFGHAN_POTATOES?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
June 30, 2008
Spud farmer returns to roots to help Afghans
By JOHN MILLER
Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Writer
To help poor Afghani villagers make money on potatoes instead of opium poppies, Idaho farmer Pat Rowe used a little old technology: root cellars.
The 68-year-old Rowe, whose family raises tubers and wheat on 2,000 acres near American Falls, went to the Central Asian country with a root cellar design common across his home state's famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s.
As part of his work in Bamiyan, located about 100 miles west of Kabul, Rowe said it was important that his potato sheds not be too sophisticated. They had to be built with materials readily available in the impoverished valley between the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba mountains with only dirt roads, a gravel runway, scant trees and almost no electricity.
Before leaving, he took notes from neighbors on Idaho's Snake River plain who had an old root cellar on their property.
"You look at what people are using and see what they are doing," Rowe said Monday, of his trip. "You don't want to be a crazy foreigner with all these ideas. You've got to be practical with the application."
Rowe went to Afghanistan as part of a $6.4 million U.S. Department of Agriculture program meant to fill gaps in Afghanistan's food supply chain and develop agriculture to compete with the forbidden poppies that fuel the country's heroin trade.
Rowe's work in January 2006 won mention earlier this month by first lady Laura Bush. She brought up Rowe's root cellars in a speech in France on June 12.
"Afghan potato farmers in Bamiyan have learned storage methods from an Idaho potato farmer that are making their crops more profitable," said Bush, who had made an unannounced trip to Bamiyan four days earlier.
Paul Sippola, a program officer for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit development outfit CNFA, which ran the Department of Agriculture aid program, said Rowe's retro cellar design was used in about 50 potato storage sheds in Afghanistan.
It's now being replicated with a few modifications to suit local needs in Pakistan's Kashmir region, where seed potato farmers' livelihoods were devastated by the 2005 earthquake, Sippola said.
"It's essentially the same one that Pat developed," he said in a phone interview. "Pat's work, which started in Afghanistan, has really grown. It's fed over into some of our other programs because the success of it has been really pronounced."
Rowe is a veteran of nearly 30 U.S. government-sponsored trips to developing countries including Egypt, China and Zimbabwe to help promote new agricultural techniques.
Farmers in Bamiyan, an ancient village on the Silk Road that spent 1,500 years in the shadow of two huge Buddha statues before they were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001, had no efficient way to store potatoes following their harvest, leading to drastic food-price increases and shortages.
"When the harvest is on, there's a glut," Rowe said. "If you had enough of those sheds built, it would make more food available to people at a reasonable price."
Afghanistan has seen a spiraling heroin trade and resurgent violence, even as the U.S. and NATO have poured more thousands of new troops into the country. Last year, more than 8,000 people were killed in insurgency-related attacks and violence has claimed more than 1,500 lives this year.
Winning a mention from Laura Bush is a sign that his root cellars accomplished what he'd intended.
"Just the fact that somebody in Bamiyan remembered," he said. "Something went on good there. The people are good people. The folks I worked with, I'd swim the Snake River for them."
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On the Net:
CNFA: http://www.cnfa.org [http://www.cnfa.org]
This November 2006 photo provided by CNFA shows one of about 50 root cellars built in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, according to a design by Idaho potato farmer Pat Rowe. Rowe, a veteran of nearly 30 U.S. government supported agricultural development missions, used root cellars common in Idaho's famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s as a model to help Afghan farmers develop more storage capacity for their own tubers. Rowe was mentioned in a June 12 speech by Laura Bush in Paris for his work helping farmers in Afghanistan grow legitimate crops, not illicit opium poppies. (AP Photo)
In this February 2005 photo provided by CNFA, Idaho potato farmer Pat Rowe poses with several farmers in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Rowe, a veteran of nearly 30 U.S. government supported agricultural development missions, used designs for root cellars common in Idaho's famous potato country in the 1930s and 1940s to help Afghan farmers develop more storage capacity for their own tubers. (AP Photo/CNFA)
06/05/2008
05/19/2008
Matty turns the big Larry Bird
Yep. This guy is 33 today (or maybe tomorrow in the States). Met him when he was a wee lad of 6. Now look at im. From velcro shoes to a hi-tech, mountain climbing goofball. Keep on keepin on, Matty!
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