HARDMAN HOLIDAY NEWS

For more photos click on the Flickr cloud to the right....

Most years I vowed to start the Christmas letter early or to keep track of major events all year and so to post this primary-source, family history but this year I didn’t even try.
In January Rick and I went to Singapore and then cruised around Australia and New Zealand. We traveled 5 weeks—a trip made possible by friends who helped with house, mail and cat tending.
The photo above was taken looking down from the top of the monument at Borobodur while the next photo is from the paper factory and museum in Burnie, Australia.

Next is of a farmer works his field in Bali.



























While we were home in the summer Rick and I (mostly Rick) worked on doors— 4 of them. My favorite is the door to the basement studios. Rick repaired a door rescued from a trash pile and we installed my handmade sunflower tiles in place of the glass. As part of the door project I meant to paint the front door green but all I managed was to leave the can of primer in the front hall for 2 months. Maybe in the spring









The other big event this summer was our garden. Rick a rototilled the sand and compost into a nice mix and I planted snow peas, tomatoes, broccoli, garlic, pumpkins, squash, strawberries and rhubarb.


The rhubarb & pumpkins took over the land. I planned on strawberry rhubarb crisp for Rick but there were few strawberries (next year will be great) so looked toward apples but we didn’t get a single apple this year from a tree that generally had bushels to share.
The radishes were round and spicy; the carrots short and sweet and the lettuce grew faster than we could chew. One gourd seed from the compost germinated and gave us about 50 gourds but the tomatoes rotted for us as they did for most.

The broccoli produced until after snowfall. We’re making the garden larger next year and planting okra and more things that appeal to Rick so that means fewer zucchini.

While our tomatoes rotted we went to the Baltic States on a cruise. This photo is part of the city wall in Tallin, Estonia.








I spent Halloween in Boston with Emilie and Josh. Em was a speaker at the Boston Vegetarian Society Food Fest. Josh and I helped her serve 400 samples of food to her guests during the event and then we all went out dancing that night.



Jay had several pieces of his work accepted as part of the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery annual group exhibition. “I Don’t Watch the Internet” opened on Dec 10 and runs through January 16. Rick and I are going after Christmas. a(This is Rick, Me, Miss Dot, and Jay in Philly. Miss Dot is Jay's neighbor and extended family.



Other than that I continue to play flute and make pottery. Rick builds furniture, works on the 1939 Chevy and fixes things I break. The cat purrs; snow falls; fire snaps and one hopes the world comes to value kindness.

In a Timely Manner

Once upon a time, time was different. It’s hard to believe but the whole idea of standard time was controversial – the stuff of Sunday sermons and arguments. Watches were expensive and nowhere near accurate until well into the 1800s so people set clocks or watches daily based on the directive of God - high noon - apparent solar time.

High noon rolled across the country in a slow, even pace without a care for standardization and that was good enough until the country went from rutted dirt roads to smooth rails. With the extension of the railway system a person could move at such speed that the hodge-podge of times became a problem. The train couldn’t leave Philadelphia at 8 a.m. and arrive at its destinations for orderly departures without a regulated time system.

Along with the railroad system, telegraph companies stood on the side of time-standardization while others resisted holding instead to the belief that God didn’t intend for time to be defined. The sun at its peak each day was timely.

In 1870 there were 80 time zones based on the parade of shadows on sundials. By 1880 there were 56 time zones. Over the decades, as miles of train track grew, the number of time zones decreased. In 1883 the General Time Convention approved standard time zones in North America (4 in the US and 5 in Canada). On November 18 that year during “the day of two noons” the system was adopted by many people. Some communities resisted standardized time saying it was “unnatural” but over time most people accepted it so that it was mere formality when a 1918 law established standardized time.

I learned this at the National Clock and Watch Museum in York Pennsylvania where odd time pieces tick and chime with myriad pendulum heartbeats and fanciful bells in clocks tall and small, plain and fancy.

I live among clocks –grandfather, grandmother, regulator, schoolhouse, mantle and more – clocks that require a Saturday morning ritual of pulling chains and turning keys to renew the kinetic energy that keeps home time marching on – clocks built by my husband Rick. Surrounded by clocks I never thought of the fight behind establishing the right for our clocks to chime the quarter hour.

Stranger still to me was the whole Japanese concept of time using 12 segments of time – 6 in the day and 6 for the night. In the summer the daylight hours stretch but in the winter the evening hours dominated. Correspondingly, Japanese clocks were built with sliding numerals to stretch or shrink the “hours” to fit into the patterns of day and night. No matter how long the day or the night, each held 6 units of time.

This too was based on religious beliefs. People were called to prayer with one, two or three chimes so time was marked with four to nine bells with noon and midnight marked with nine bells each. God changed the length of day and night so people changed the length of hours.

In 1873, outnumbered by those following the western system, Japan accepted the 24 equal hour divisions for each day and redesigned and imported clocks.
The National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors regards time keeping as both an art and a science. It seems they are right. Museum hours change seasonally. Admission. www.nawcc.org/museum



The Engle clock, built Stephen D. Engle (1837-1921) over a 20 year period in Hazleton Pennsylvania. The clock toured the country for 70 years until 1951. It now chimes, marches, parades, peeks, whistles, plays and otherwise entertains at the National Clock and Watch museum.

Making the Pottery Studio more inviting

The floor was the biggest problem with lumps and holes and very rough patches that were impossible to mop or sweep. Floor leveler helped to even it out after we patched the holes with a few bags of concrete. Rick and I did this before Jay came to help us.







The walls were stone at the start.









Jay and Rick parged the walls to make them more even. Jay also filled in several large holes in the walls between the basement rooms. Rick has been avoiding this for several years.











Then they were painted. None of these were fast or easy steps. Notice, the clock spontaneously started working again after the wall was painted. Nice.














Rick patching the lumpy wall over the work bench.










Rick Painting the wall.







There are some leaf stamps on the dungeon door to dress it up. It's already dusty again from the concrete work going on.








The floor is coated in an epoxy paint that has to sit to get ready for 30 minutes and then allows a 2 1/2 hour work period followed by a 12 hour drying period. We painted the floor in 2 sessions and did every other stair each time. It was important to remember which stair to walk on.





The walls look nice after they are repaired and painted. Not gorgeous, but nice.










This is the basement phone when clean.












These are the storage and ware shelves. The 2x4 supports were never painted until now.






The shelves will stay a bit tidy for a while.


















The basement stairs are much more inviting now with the epoxy paint. The paint chips keep it from getting too slippery.







This cupboard was originally in our kitchen. It now holds kiln shelves on the right and posts in the drawers. The top is our old kitchen counter that was replaced with Corrian a few years ago. Another chunk of that counter is an extension in the table saw.



The new shelves are from Linens N Things. Sad to see them go but these are nice strong and clean shelves.






This small collection of junk may inspire me or I may never use them.




























Diagram of location of glazes and raw materials.

India, second class

Dinner and a Train Ride

Rick and I always travel on our own. He finds guest houses and interesting restaurants and we walk mile after mile taking photos. But his research hinted that India was visited with a guide so we booked a tour.

Our trip was difficult, interesting, unforgettable, exhausting, amazing and sometimes wonderful. The problems were often due to our terrible guide and his terrible company (GAP tours) but sometimes they were due to poverty and intense numbers of people.

One night we left our hotel, piled into taxis for the train station stopping for dinner along the way. For safety, we took the luggage off the roof and stuffed it into the taxis while we ate at Treat Restaurant.

The restaurant occupied one side of a large building while the other side had some kind of children’s restaurant/play area where the music was loud enough to cause brain damage. Through the wall the music rattled the tables. Shortly after we ordered dinner the music stopped and the play area closed.

As my nerves began to settle with the quiet, I glanced to my left, toward the kitchen and a rat scamper across the floor to scoot under a cabinet.

I was sitting across from a pale, sad Jen, green shawl pulled tight around her shoulders and head down in the fatigue of constant stress. Earlier that day, while recharging her Blackberry, and she told me she thought herself adventurous before this trip but had reassessed. All future travel would be first class.

Had she seen the rat? Her eyes were closed so probably not. The rat might have sent her into a comatose state or perhaps it would have propelled her, screaming, onto the table. My relief turned to moral dilemma. Should I tell her or be silent? I chose silence because as I thought about it I began to realize that I too was in this restaurant with a rat. Should I eat this food, my last meal before a long train ride? If not, what reason will I tell everyone for my sudden change of heart? Maybe I should jump on the table and scream.

Certainly we had seen rats in Asia. In some Hindu temples people share food with rats – a form of prayer, a source of blessing. I do not wish to be so blessed.

If this had happened on my first night in India, I’d have probably starved but it was the middle of our trip and I smiled wanly at Jen and ate.

After dinner we continued to the train station. There’s an advantage to being in a train station at night. With the heat of the day gone, the smell subsides. With the darkness, one can’t see the, well… the rats.

We waited a long while for our late train but finally boarded a second class sleeper car. It would be home base for 12 hours, clanking from Orchha to Varanasi. The night on the sleeper train was a much-dreaded component of this tour. While I would not rush to board that train again, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It was November, winter, so instead of reaching 48 degrees Celsius in the afternoon the temperature merely ambled toward 30 (about 90 F) and that passes for “cold” in India. So, since it was winter, the fans were off. From my slot on a top bunk, I looked longingly at the shiny aluminum blades wishing they would move the hot air surrounding me but seeing the Indians mummy-like in woolen blankets, heads buried to conserve heat, it was senseless to ask.

Let me describe the train. The cars were in sections and each section accommodated 8 people. There were 2 sets of 3 bunks and one set of 2. The bunks, or berths, were green shelves cushioned with a bit of padding. Each person was given 2 sheets, a blanket and a pillow for personal nest building for the night. I started by cleaning my berth with several sani-wipes.

During the night, the train chugged for about 10 minutes, then stopped for 5. While it moved the snoring was masked by the many train noises and the sound of one’s brain sloshing in one’s head from the jarring movement. (How can train tracks be so bumpy?) When the train stopped the snoring seemed to pass through a clarifying filter sharpening the edge of each sound to increase the fingernails-on-chalkboard sensation.

This was my train song - to the tune of “My Favorite Things” – sort of
Clanking of train wheels and blaring of loud horns
Sellers of chai tea and people of loud snore
Bare toes that wiggle ‘neath white crispy sheets
These are a few of the things on my train.
When the flies bite
When the sanitizer stings
When I’m feeling bad
I simply ignore all these things on the train
And make sure my Rick is near

During our afternoon in Varanasi, we were warned not to walk on our own but that’s just what we did. We were approached by 50 drivers by the time we turned a corner. Once out of sight of the hotel, people ignored us.

Imagine this. We found a Hindi wedding march. It was Sergeant Pepper’s Band meets Bollywood - very cool. The bride was a lovely young girl who walked barefoot on the street surrounded by family and led by a marching band in full uniform.

We found spice alley with huge baskets of every spice we know and more and metal work factories where people rebuilt tuktuks. In the streets of Varanasi we crowded with humanity talking, beeping, driving, walking and riding bikes on every street while flies filled the spaces between people and sound. (I exaggerate only marginally.) Streets held cows, trash, goo, spit and urine. In every sheltered corner, we saw men peeing. Where there was no sheltered corner, we saw men peeing. Constantly, men pee. Of course, if one has no toilet what is to be done?

I’m sure parts of India are quiet, calm, aromatic and elegant. Perhaps even parts of Varanasi are serene but everything we saw was intense with color, noise, odor and clutter.

Dumpster Diving

Story Jar April 2 2008

It was called garbage picking when I was a kid, then dumpster diving and now the Freegan movement. It’s the fine art of giving rebirth to discarded objects. Karrie, an artist, says that people should look at nearly all trash as opportunity. Our house is full of great opportunities.

My dumpster diving days began when I moved into my first apartment in Greene, New York. All that I owned fit into a Volkswagen bug and this was an unfurnished apartment so when I saw an abandoned, maple drop-leap table nestled between the trash cans I gleefully dragged it upstairs to my empty kitchen. Not long after, I discovered a brass floor lamp in the same place. With a new wire threaded through and a lampshade added, it became a treasure. Now antiques, both are in Emilie’s Boston apartment.

The next major treasure was found in Binghamton in the late 70’s. I was jogging past a huge carriage wheel placed near the curb. It was clearly garbage with two rotted spokes but it was a "treasure" nonetheless. I rushed home and dragged Rick to our station wagon. Grumbling, he came along and found that the wheel was larger than the car, a Chevy Vega. The only way to get it home was to roll it.

Inconveniently, we lived at the top of a steep hill. It was so steep that on an icy winter day, Rick stepped into the road to put the garbage at our curb, slipped and flanked by bags of garbage, slid down the hill past about ten houses before he could stop.

Rick considered the wheel unworthy of further attention but I started rolling it. In a short distance, it became clear that I was a lousy wheel roller. Thankfully, Rick felt sorry for me and, grumbling a little more, took over the rolling while I drove the car. I cheered him on. He growled.

That wheel came with us to Alfred and again to Wellsville (with additional growling). Jay dressed up in Daddy's hat and stood in front of it once for a photo before several more spokes finally gave way to rot and we put it at the curb. In just a few minutes someone else began rolling that wheel away to their house.





My dresser was once trash. The mirror was gone and a few pieces were broken. We bought it at an auction with few people bidding in competition. They didn't see potential the way we did. With the discarded wings from an old vanity making a frame for a new mirror and a few other pieces of wood it has provided decades of service.






Rick once trashed a narrow, paneled door but I pulled it back into the garage and he eventually built a wonderful blue cupboard around it. Sometimes, the reflection of the cupboard can be caught our half-round window.




Once part of the Wellsville High School, it now is part of our kitchen along with some discarded oak cabinets from Andover School. Andover also gave us a glass lamp found resting on a pile of old light bulbs and Alfred State College "sold" oak book cases for $5 - not far from a dumpster price. Things made of oak, beveled glass or brass just aren’t meant to be garbage.















I rescued a 1972 dress model with wheeled cast-iron feet, stamped metal arm and neck plates and a fancy cast-iron finial. Discarded by the girls moving out of Jay’s Cherry Street apartment, it now stands in our living room in an outfit made (and discarded) by members of Thailand’s Karen Tribe. Leaning against the wall are some fly fishing poles that Jay rescued for us from another Philly apartment. You just can’t find stuff like that in a store.

The only time Rick gives any discarded stuff a glance is when he notices my pottery. Once he took an enormous but perfectly ugly bowl out of our trash and shipped it to a gallery near Chautauqua where it sold for over $200 – a record. I’m still astounded.




photos of other rescued items are at flickr

Story Jar: Baktapura

A bell clangs, a hundred bells clang and the sound bounces over and around the chugging engines, beeping horns, chanting monks, bargaining shoppers and endless drums and flutes. In the far distance the dying day glows pink on mountain snow and over the valley a huge flock of white birds settles then explodes again into the air looking for a night roost.

Red and pink shawls warm shoulders of women buying, women selling, women walking with children tied to their backs, women filling water jugs and everywhere there is another sound, another movement and another temple toward which sounds are offered. This is Bhaktapur, Nepal, the city that holds its heritage.

We came here with Jeff, the last member of our India tour we hugged good-by. Rick and I had a room for our last night in Nepal but Jeff came only to walk about and have lunch before returning to Katmandu. Shortly he’ll leave for Tibet and we will head for home.

Inside the taxi was one century but outside time was braided: ancient history, middle ages and modern times. We found internet cafes and pottery smoldering in straw fired pits. Tarps on streets or temple steps were covered with rice drying in the sun while people talked on cell phones.

At noon a live goat led a parade to the main temple where it was sacrificed leaving a large puddle of blood on cobblestones – all of it captured on digital movie cameras. It is completely not Kansas.

Bhacktapur is the most impressive of the World Heritage sites we have seen during this trip. A large, complex entity, the city is a living museum with hundreds of temples and wells (there is little indoor water service) and more carvings than a person could count. The wooden doorways, windows, balconies and roof tops are carved with Ganish (the elephant god), elephants, goddesses unknown, Garuda (a mythical bird), feathers, fruits, diamonds and flowers.

The main square is carved and polished but Rick and I walked the back alleys peeking in a doorway where a woman cooked over an open fire while surrounded by as many people as the small floor would hold. Hens pecked at stray grains of rice between their fluttering chicks. A young girl jumped rope in a courtyard and an old man slept on a bit of burlap next to knitting women and sleeping babies.

Everywhere there is one more structure worthy of a photograph.

Once just a bit of a trading road to Tibet what is now Bhaktapur became a town under the efforts of King Ananda Malla 1080, more or less. For 200 years, from 1400 onward it was the most powerful city in the area. Most of the knock-your-yak-wool-socks-off architecture is from that period or from the 17th century. Apparently it would be even more dramatic but an earthquake in 1934 destroyed several temples. It’s hard to believe that any were lost since they are everywhere but at the peak there were 172 temples and monasteries here as well as 172 pilgrim shelters, now used as shaded meeting areas for old men during the day.

It seems as if there must be 172 stores selling CDs of monks chanting or of Nepali music because one hears this everywhere. Our guidebook says that this city, the architecture and pace, is what Katmandu was 30 years ago. As I write we are sitting on the roof of our hotel sipping tea, listening to all that is Bhaktapur while I type on the laptop by the light of a candle sheltered from the wind by a plastic water bottle. Gotta love recycling.

In the 1970s a German consortium decided to support Baktapur by building a sewage system and repaving the streets with cobblestone and brick and also began a continuing restoration of buildings and temples. Now one pays $10 to enter and the money is used to restore old buildings brick by brick and clay tile by clay tile. Only photos will do to explain this town wide party with momo steamers on every block.

Part 2

One never knows what one will find on any street but when on a street in a foreign city he chances of seeing something outlandishly different increases. Baktapura’s streets are as foreign as they come and they have provided us with shock, amusement and fascination.

A three-year old girl’s toy was the creepiest thing though I can only say that because we missed the goat sacrifice in the afternoon. She was running and laughing while waving about a hypodermic needle. (Let’s reassess the danger level of “runs with scissors”.) The needle was huge, the holding several ml of what looked like very dirty water (sewage??) and brandishing a 2 inch long needle. Rick and I cleared out of her way. Can you imagine being stabbed with an old hypodermic needle with unknown fluid inside?

Later another tiny girl ran between us with a burning stick. She was among a group of 3-10 year olds who were burning bits of trash in the corner of a temple.

In a safer part of our evening walk we went to Potter’s Square. We had been there in the afternoon when we saw pots being stacked on a straw bed, packed with more straw and layered with more pots and more straw. By evening the pots were covered in straw and buried in ash in preparation for a 3-day firing.

Another load of pots had been fired and another was in the process of firing with smoke leaking out all around it. This pit firing was being tended by a man who fed scraps of wood into each of the ports at the bottom. He would continue to do this all night.

We went to our hotel room for the night when I heard cymbals and drums and looked out the window. There was a dancing parade of the nine manifestations of Durga, living gods that are particularly revered and feared in Baktapura. During certain few occasions and particularly during the festival of Dasain (now), members of the cast of flower sellers are chosen to don the masks and parade through the street.

The masks are specially made and used for only one year. When on, the masks empower the wearer with the embodiment of the deity and so they are living gods. They dance throughout the city to of the major temples and then they disappear into the monastery where only they and initiates can go. I snapped one photo but then learned that someone might have taken my camera and smashed and then beaten me for the audacity of photographing a living god. Religious ideas are amazingly creative and varied.

Part 3

Through the COLD night there were periodic bells clanging but the bells began in earnest at 4:30 and were ferocious for a while being joined by blaring horns and the occasional fire cracker. Dressed in every layer we had we ventured out, creeping down the stairs intending to go to the square for a closer look but the night clerk slept under a thick blanket in the lobby and the doors were closed and bared. We were locked in but in isn’t really the right word.

The hotel rooms are closed but the restaurant is in the open courtyard and the stairs lead to the roof-top café so the building is more open (cold) air than enclosed but without leaping over the outer walls or waking the guy on the sofa we were locked in.

Jen Brown, a new friend from the India tour, leaves today for base camp at Everest. We’re chilled to the bone here and can’t imagine what she will face.

Story Jar: Metro One, Budapest

Metro One, Budapest

Hungary, 2007: Subways are great. I say that with all sincerity right now because we stayed out too late and missed the last train to our hotel so had to hike a considerable number of blocks across the city.

Budapest is actually two cities (Buda and Pest) divided by the Danube River, a body of water without a hint of blue. It’s easy to get around Budapest on the Metro lines, the trolleys or the buses. We used the Metro for several days and took it for granted until tonight.

We boarded on the red line and meant to transfer to Metro 1 but when we started up the stairs a woman at the top shouted a string of Magyar (Hungarian) to which we responded with blank stares. She then said, “Finished.” That we understood. Didn’t like it but understood so we exited the station and pulled out the worn map that Em and Josh’s had given to us. We had to hike a distance equivalent to 7 stations on Metro 1. We walked down the wide center avenue on a clear, spring evening talking about the yellow line, Metro 1. It’s a gem.

It’s a series of Little-Engine-that-Could trains with sweet, small yellow cars that arrive every 2 or 3 minutes all day long with seating for 16 and, the poster says, standing room for 50 more. (I would challenge that because we were on a full car once and I counted 24 standing passengers with virtually no room between elbows and bags. There is no way another 26 passengers could have gotten on without some sitting on others’ shoulders.)


Hungary had the first underground system in Europe and while I don’t know that Metro 1 is part of that first construction, it certainly has the hand-crafted look of an earlier time. Metro 1 has oak doors, steel pillars with art deco tops and two-toned ceramic walls. We particularly liked that the Metro 1 cars play a happy little tune when entering stations, as if they are pleased once more to make it out of the dark tunnel.

When we arrived in Budapest we purchased a one week pass. We each carried a tiny, colorful ticket entitling us to ride any of the trains, trolleys or buses in either Buda or Pest. The tickets don’t open gates or pass under scanners. It almost seems as if a person could get around without a ticket but at any time while on the system, someone with a transit system armband might ask to see the ticket and if it isn’t produced, they collect a large fine right there. If a person has neither ticket nor money, the transit officials may confiscate anything that the person does have and hold it ransom until the fine is paid. There’s no messing around.

The system is the same in Prague where we were asked for our tickets several times. Generally tickets were checked on the bus. Not only did we always have our tickets but every person around us during those checks also produced one so we never witnessed a problem in Prague but in Budapest we saw three people pay fines. To say they looked glum would understate their appearance.

On the night of the long walk, this night of the missed train, we witnessed such a fine on the red line. We walked into the station at nearly 11 p.m. when 3 officials asked for our tickets. Rick pulled them out of his pocket and we were nodded onward. A train had just come into the station, disgorging an assortment of passengers – a band with trombone, guitar and sax, a man with a suitcase and a number of couples. These people were also stopped by the transit officials and the man with the suitcase had no ticket so one officer scribbled out a citation. The man handed over several bills, took his receipt and wheeled his suitcase out of the station unhappy to have taken such an expensive ride.

We had time to watch all of this because we had an enormous ten-minute wait before our large, modern train arrived with screeching brakes. That train took us to the station where the woman told us that the service was finished for the night.

We spent the next 20 minutes walking and missing the wonderful, yellow Metro 1 trains.

Annapurna Mountains

In the Annapurna Mountains

It seems days ago now but at 4 this morning a knock at the door set us in motion to view the sunrise on the top of a hill overlooking the valley town of Pokhara. We almost didn’t make it up because the car in front of our van had a problem. People gathered around it and pushed it up the hill until the engine caught but it went only a few feet and stalled again. Another group gathered around and pushed and again it faltered so they pushed it to the side of the road so our van and others could labor to the top.

We found coffee shops and souvenir stands and a flood of pink sunlight crawling up from the other side of the distant hills. There were many tourists there taking photos of the sunrise, the mountain tops and themselves. When the red ball broke over the hill there was a combination of frenzied shutter action, applause and prayer to the sun god – a mini festival.

We returned to the hotel to regroup for breakfast and then to hire taxis to the dam where we crossed a swaying wooden foot bridge and began what Amanda timed as a one hour hike but I’m sure her watch stopped for at least 50 minutes because I did 2 hours worth of puffing and sweating.

The taxi driver actually insisted that we not take this walk. It was a long walk and “not good.” He couldn’t define “not good” so we went. It wasn’t good in that it was mostly in the woods and so the view was limited but we did peek through the trees at the lake and the mountains and we passed a couple of snack stands and found an observation point fairly covered with prayer flags. It was wild, crazy prayer flaggage. The workout was good for us after so many long hours of bus bouncing.

We found our way with the help of a young man who came along on the trail because at first we weren’t sure about how to go but there were actually signs (Who could expect such a thing?) and we would have been fine but it was all good, share the wealth and all. We walked a long time without being able to see the stupa so his presence was good security.

Early in the walk we passed people working in the rice fields. Water buffalo tramped in a circle over rice to loosen the grains and then men beat the rice on the ground to remove the grain. Nearby a group of women cooked what was most likely a hard earned meal and together they painted a lovely scene under the huge blue sky.

Not far from the rice fields, Amy decided she was too ill for a hike so she and Gordon walked back. They got a closer look at the rice work in the field and decided to take a walk in the river where women were washing clothes. This ended with their paying the women for foot massages and then taking a taxi back to the hotel

The point of the hike was the World Peace Pagoda created by a Japanese group some time ago. The Pagoda was closed for renovation. No problem. It was a nice walk through the woods followed by a direct walk down steps to the lake where we hired two boats to take us back to the hotel.

One boat came with a boatman but Rob was handed a paddle and pronounced driver of the other so he and Jeff had to pay for a boat ride and then do the work themselves (and us). It’s like that sometimes and it’s all okay in Nepal.

Pokhara, Nepal

Pokhara

Sorry, the internet is so slow I still can't post photos but I have about 500 of them.

Our group’s numerous demands and not inconsiderable whining brought us a larger, newer, cleaner bus which made both a potty stop and a food stop (at a restaurant with many toilets – one of them western style).

We traveled from Chitwan to Pukhara on a road built in 1973. Before the road this particular trip was a ten-day mule train trek. For us it was a 5 hour drive that involved as much bouncing as a ten-day mule train trek.

I’m pleased that the road is there – all 220 km of it – but the sad little road suffers from pot holes like craters and the occasional rock or mud slide damage that creates a great deal of unevenness so that travel is slow, halting, and amazingly bouncy. We spent the whole trip listening to Nepalese or Indian rock music which was okay at first but seemed to grow in volume toward the last hour until our heads were raw from the piercing sounds of thin, high pitched women’s voices.

This bus ride started with a bit of excitement – we chased a run-away horse. We were leaving the village and had just crossed the bridge when Rick pointed out a little horse cart with a cute cover. He called it the “surrey with the fringe on top” but suddenly said surrey took off without a driver.

Amy saw the driver panic and run and Amanda watched the cart speed away. The man smacked on the side of the van and though not a word was spoken the driver realized that he was being commandeered as a rescue vehicle so he slowed the van, the man jumped onto the ladder at the rear and we were in pursuit.

We drove for quite a while and I thought that the pony must have turned somewhere. I watched the man through the back window as he glanced up side roads and driveways but always returned to the forward view with extreme concern and distress.

We must have gone the better part of a mile when we saw the pony stopped on the road. A crowd gathered much like one did when our bus locked together with a pink car in some other town on a previous endless bus ride.

That accident was on a busy street full of cars, bikes, motorcycles, people and all kinds of animals so it was no surprise that there were suddenly enough people to lift the car and pull the vehicles apart but this was a relatively quiet street suddenly full of people ready to help. Where did they come from?

The horse stood in that particular place not because he had been caught and not because he was satisfied with that much freedom but because he ran over top of a westerner’s motorcycle which was then lodged between horse and cart. (It is unknown if the motorcycle was moving or not at the time of impact. The westerner was wearing gloves and helmet so it seems likely that he was riding but we missed the moment of impact.)

The crowd assessed the situation and the motorcyclist held the horse with a “what-the-hell-happened?” look on his face. Thankfully he seemed unharmed.

The horse’s owner jumped from the still moving bus and ran to the fray but it seemed the crowd was in process of detaching the cart so he held the horse as they lifted it from the motorcycle.

A bicyclist went down the street to tell everyone what the problem was. When he came to our bus driver there was a short conversation which must have included the driver reporting his part in the rescue. Smiles were exchanged and the bike rider went on. Everyone was quite patient.

The motorcyclist seemed okay as did the horse. The horse owner kept a tight hold on his animal. People moved the cart to the other side of the street out of the way so that the horse could be hitched to his cart again. The crowd picked up the motorcycle for the smiling rider who, when last I saw him through the back window, was putting his gloves back on and shaking his head.

The rest of our trip was relatively free of drama though the road seemed hardly wide enough for two buses to pass unscathed and it was occasionally nerve wracking. We drove past fields patch-worked in rice harvested and rice cut and drying. We crossed the river a few times once on a one lane bridge so creaky and rattlely that it seemed ready to collapse.

Right along side of the creaky bridge was another bridge under construction so maybe the old bridge will shortly be removed. On this day, only one vehicle crossed that bridge at a time which I thought was perfectly dandy but there didn’t seem to be any signs telling people to do that. How does everyone figure this stuff out?

We often had views of snow-capped mountains, lovely green valleys and winding rivers all watched by people with room to wiggle.

In Pokhara Rick and I walked the town and found an observation platform on the lake where we watched a pink sunset. Rick keeps thinking he is in Peru with pizza restaurants, cold air at night, fires burning in the restaurants and colorful knitted socks, mittens and hats for sale but we are certainly in Nepal where the eye of Buddha is on shirts, buildings, trucks and signs.

Again, the people seem friendly and happy. They interact with their children and greet without pushing one to buy, buy, buy. Also, we are all finding great joy not only in walking on sidewalks but in walking where there are no cow droppings to navigate.

Story Jar - Chinatown, Singapore

Chinatown, Singapore, 1950
To know people, visit their homes. The Chinatown Heritage Museum in Singapore is a home built of wood and heartbreak. Visiting it left me with silent tears and haunting dreams. It is a museum to never forget.
Not long ago, Singapore began tearing down whole portions of Chinatown but people realized that the old shophouses were full of history and personality so they changed plans and blocks of old buildings were renovated. Three of those renovated buildings became the Chinese Heritage Museum, a shophouse outfitted with the belongings of the people who lived in it.
The museum encompasses three narrow structures. On the ground floor, one is a restored tailor’s shop, the second a café (calendar and décor circa October 1963) and the third became the museum’s gift shop.
The tailor shop faced the street and behind the store a work room held sewing machines, tables and ironing boards. This was where the apprentices worked and slept. There was an open courtyard – sort of – an open shaft that mined air and light for the building and gave people a place to hang laundry.
The tailor and his family had a large living area but also a kitchen, bathing stall and “toilet” – a wooden bucket in a stall. Above, people were packed in, nearly stacked up. Rooms full of possessions tell the story well.
The front room of the second floor - prime real estate because of two windows admitting air and light - housed a doctor and his daughter. The room is filled with their furniture, medicines, books, curtains on the windows and notes about their lives at the time. The two of them shared about 100 square feet. At night, they had space to stretch out on sleeping mats but in the day the area was a medical office and dispensary.
In the next room four maids enjoyed a small window and about 80 square feet of living area. The room behind theirs, about the same size but without windows, housed a working couple and 8 children. Sleeping shelves were built into the walls and clothes hung on hooks. There was a small table with a few dishes and not much else. A TV monitor was hooked up running a video of one of the children who told about living there – the noise, heat, stifling air, poverty and lack of privacy.
The next room housed four Samsui women. These Chinese construction workers dressed in blue jackets and red hats and always wore jade bracelets for luck and protection. Human trucks - they moved baskets of rock and soil to clear construction sites or they brought baskets of bricks to brick layers. They expanded their dark living space into the hall by taking turns sleeping in a hammock at night. By dawn, they were up, the hammock was down, and the hall was open for traffic.
A shoe hawker filled her room with a bed and bags of shoes and could easily hang her laundry because she was next to that air tunnel. Further back was a carpenter, his wife and their baby. This family had furniture and toys in their room and a cupboard in the hall with kitchen ware. All of the rooms had windows opening to the hall and the doorways were covered with curtains or left open. There was no area for privacy or comfort.
At the far end were four construction workers who, according to the others in the building, smoked opium in a shared room. A bed in their room had a red light in one corner to simulate a fire that one of them started by knocking over a pipe. Luckily the fire was discovered quickly and put out before it killed everyone.
The last room was the communal kitchen and bathroom – again with no windows since buildings were constructed back to back. There were shower and “toilet” stalls. In this recreation, the kitchen sink had a little pump so it seemed that water dribbled over plastic veggies in a bowl while another setup simulated steam from the teakettle. A row of blackened woks on the wall above a cooking pit illustrated the shared cooking area. A museum sign (in 4 languages) encouraged people to look at plastic “night soil” in the bucket.
Water was piped into the building sometime in the late 40s and electricity brightened it in the 50s but sewers didn't come until almost 1960 so the night soil had to be carried out to the front of the building to a daily collection wagon. A bit of a trip or stumble on the worn steps and we can only imagine the mess.
The museum added sounds – radio news and music, people talking and cooking - and collected furniture and stories from the families. All the rooms were recreated as accurately as possible to show how people lived in Singapore while I was growing up in a huge three bedroom apartment in Buffalo with lights, water, sewer, doors and so much space.
In the museum area one could watch videos of some of the people involved. A man talked of helping his parents run a food stall, a job he now has as an adult. The doctor’s daughter talked of her struggles and one of the Samsui women told of her difficult life. The tailor described the neighborhood.
Rick and I went back to our huge hotel room thinking of how much room we had and thought of our obscenely large house in Wellsville.