Story Jar - Wesak Day, Kuala Lumpur

The Story Jar - a biweekly column in the Patriot and Free Press, Cuba, New York

Published November 15, 2006 - Copyright Elaine Hardman 2006

Wesak Day, Kuala Lumpur, Malyasia

The smells were foreign and intense. Candles burned. Thousands of them. The smoke mixed with diesel fumes and camphor. Aromas from cooking pots and ripening fruits filled the air with scents so strong that we felt them as much as smelled them.

The sounds were more real than simple vibrations in the air. They were solid, golden, reverberating tones of voices, strings, gongs and bells.

The people were as numerous as the candles and they were the essence of variety. Ages, sizes, colors, languages and ethnicity all flowing through the space in their own celebrations of Wesak Day, Buddha’s birthday.

Wesak is the time to celebrate the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha. Devotees gather in temples throughout the country to light candles and offer prayers. The date depends on the lunar calendar but it’s always in late May or early June.

Malaysia, in the 1980s, was home to a variety of religious festivals because the cultures of Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, Moslems, Animists, Christians and others intermingled. It might not be the same now but then there were festivals and celebrations of great variety.

The Wesak celebration was something that Rick knew about from his previous stay in Thailand so he arranged our travel date so that we would be there in time to know the festival as he did by walking through it.

The Malaysian heat - equatorial, humid, heavy and still new to us - began to dissipate toward evening so that’s when we left the air-conditioned Ramada to take a taxi to the temple. The sun’s light faded but the smoky haze of candles marked the site from outside the gates.

Our children held on to me. Well, maybe I held onto them. When the senses are so full of the unknown, the familiar is something to be clung to.

When we entered the temple courtyard, the ocean of candles had the greatest impact. It seemed that every area not occupied by people held small, smoky candles.

The other unforgettable sight was the profusion of sandals. Shoes can’t be worn inside inner temples so they are left at the gates in tangled piles. Like beds of maple leaves that covered our yard at home in the fall, little children giggled and crawled through the sandals. It wasn’t clear if that was just for fun or if they were searching for footwear. The barefoot people leaving the temple seemed to be admitting the futility of finding the right pair in such a massive community of shoes.

Without intending any insult, we put our shoes in my shoulder bag and zipped it up. Inside the temple, shoeless people lit more candles, gave offerings to the monks and knelt on the marble floors to pray.

Wesak is the time to offer alms to monks in saffron robes who bow, bless and give vials of holy water to their supplicants. Some of the people drank the water and returned the vial while others used the water to anoint their heads or hands.

Though it has been decades since we saw them, the faces of the monks and worshipers are still in my mind. They were peaceful. Kindness was there. These people clearly honored brotherhood, the teachings of Buddha. Their voices mingled musically with the temple bells tingling in the wind. Patience and sharing were palpable so as we wandered through Wesak Day we all accepted Malaysia as our second home.

Story Jar - Tandas

Story Jar - a biweekly column published in the Patriot and Free Press, Cuba, New Yorki

Published November 1, 2006, copyright Elaine Hardman

Tandas

While it might seem indelicate to discuss, I think that Malaysian rest rooms are interesting. Tandas is the word. Saying that to anyone will result in their pointing toward a public toilet, using a thumb. (One always points with the thumb in Malaysia.)

Now, if you stay in the regular tourists areas, your western toilet knowledge will be fine, but if you go where the people live and work, you need some instruction. First, there is generally an attendant seated at a table near the entry. There may or may not be a sign posted but it is common knowledge that one pays to use the toilet. If there is no attendant, there is generally a slotted box or can. Deposit 20 sen (5 cents) and enter.

The stall partitions are commonly close to the floor for privacy. I consider this a bonus since awkward doesn’t begin to describe what I am with an Asian toilet. In the stall is a step up and a porcelain toilet-rim with foot areas on either side, level with the floor. The toilet is straddled, the body squats quite low and the business is done.

Before getting comfy it is necessary to check the lay of the land. Generally there isn’t any provision for toilet paper in these stalls. One was supposed to have purchase tissues from the attendant when the fee-for-use was paid or to have planned ahead and be carrying such tissues. Packets of tissue are an additional 20 sen.

Next, is there a sign? Sometimes toilet tissue cannot be put into the toilet bowl. There may be a sign in which a fine of up to MR500 (over $100 US) is threatened for the crime of putting tissue in the toilet bowl, though I don't know how that would be enforced.

If there is such a sign, there will also be a covered trash can in the stall. This is the proper place to put used tissue, a presumably clean item since one has washed with the nearby hose and used the tissue only to dry.

While a good, robust flush can take away the tissue (or whatever) many toilets don’t have a flushing mechanism. Instead, they have a faucet with a flexible rubber hose. This hose can be directed at areas to be cleaned but such hoses generally don’t have a particularly forceful flow of water so washing or flushing is a struggle.

Also, squatting can be awkward. Sometimes the knees complain about the bending or the body protests the effort of maintaining balance while straddling the tandas with feet placed on slick, damp, porcelain pads.

After the experience of the stall, one might look forward to washing hands. This will be easily accomplished if in personal possession of soap. Soap is neither provided nor sold. I generally carried a small container of shampoo from the hotel and kept it handy, ready for the grand finale of my tandas visit.

There was one particularly memorable tandas experience. We were going to the Bako National Park. After a long car trip, and before embarking on a one-hour boat ride, I visited the public tandas. I put my money in the slotted box and walked in. I wasn’t aware that the whole building was sliding into the South China Sea so, when my foot landed on the slippery, wet tile just a bit below the floor level expected, the rest of my body followed rapidly until I smacked into the lower wall, feet splashing in two inches of water of questionable purity.

The building wasn’t actively falling, just a bit off. I pushes back from the wall and entered the stall where I had to straddle a skewed, Asian toilet while wearing a heavy backpack. I was sort of fighting around with things and trying to hurry because people were waiting for me in the boat when I noticed the sign. Written in Bahasa but with symbols, I realized that this was one of the instances where the tissue wouldn’t flush. There was a blue, plastic container on the right of the bowl for used tissue and a once-pink, rubber hose for washing on the left. The sign was clear. There was a heavy penalty for putting tissue in the bowl.

I meant to follow the directions but there are some movements that are just automatic. To try to erase my mistake, I aimed that hose at the toilet bowl, this way and that. I contributed somewhat to the puddle in the corner but the tissue continued to float, imaginary $$ appearing on its wrinkled surface. I gave up and left, hoping not to be pursued by an angry attendant, jumped into the waiting boat and skimmed away from the scene of my crime.

Story Jar - The Chair in Room 318

The Story Jar - a biweekly column in the Patriot and Free Press, Cuba, New York

Published October 18, 2006 - Copyright Elaine Hardman 2006

I saw Bob Goodrich lugging it out with the trash at school in 1992 - I think. It bothered me because I am a fixer and this chair deserved to be fixed. It wasn’t a great chair, as in perfect. There were three legs on a chair that needed four. The flange under the seat was broken and two spindles were cracked. A hole was worn where the chair had rubbed for years against an unknown wall. But, it was an old, oak, office chair and I rescued it.

Bob said that he hated to throw it out but it had been in a pile in the basement for years and he never found a piece of oak thick enough to make a new leg. Besides, a new leg wouldn’t match the other three so the chair wasn’t worth keeping.

Undaunted, I dragged it home to Rick, a champion fixer and descendant of one of West Virginia’s professional tinkers. Because of the propensities of his family, Rick has been surrounded by objects in need of repair and restoration, and he has valiantly tinkered his way through a mountain of projects. It was worth a try.

The chair went from spending years in the school basement to spending years in our basement where it accumulated dust, spider webs and a few new scratches while waiting for a thick piece of oak. Over those years, Andover School acquired a new wing, the site of room 318. At first, room 318 was a study hall and then health classroom but eventually it became my language arts room and I moved in with all of my computers.

It was on the top shelf of the upper cupboard at the far end. I felt it before I saw it and had to climb on a chair to get a good grip. Three inches thick, golden oak, with a wheel on the bottom. I held up the missing chair leg and gave a shout.

That wing of the school wasn’t even a drawing when the chair was broken. How did the leg ever find its way into what became my cupboard? That lonely and lowly, disembodied chair leg had been rescued, more than once I’ll bet, for about eight years. I asked around the school but didn’t find anyone who remembered ever seeing it before. “Nope. I have no idea.”

Inspired by the find, my husband attached the leg, machined a new flange, glued the spindles and installed an engraved plate over the wood filler repairing the hole in the back. Now it really is a very nice, old, oak chair and I think that Bob would have been pleased.

Music from a Keyless Piano?

The title may seem curious without some background. We bought this old farmhouse -an empty building except for a red piano. When the kids were young, we made them take lessons for a while but neither of them developed much interest. Time went by, a couple of decades actually, and my husband Rick decided he would smash the piano or at least disassemble it and free up some space.

As he worked, the piano changed shape and suddenly I saw it as a desk. I told him it was a desk and he gave me this, are you crazy look but I pointed out the shape and we started playing with the strings and he agreed it was not only a desk but a great desk. The perfect desk for me.

The work surface had three recessed areas but I made tiles for those spaces and he got a piece of plate glass to give it the smooth surface a desk needs. We painted it brown, a sort of mocha that suits the room and we added an old oak chair.

I can play the strings with my hands or feet plucking a note at a time or strumming with a sweep across the whole face and when I staple or if I sneeze the whole thing reverberates in the most wonderful way. The piano creates visual and auditory music and represents our family in its creativity and one-of-a-kind presence.

If I ever write my biography, Music from a Keyless Piano will be the title.

peace rally Washington DC January 27

Peace. It’s almost a fighting word. Why is that? People stand on Main Street in Alfred New York every Wednesday at noon in honor of peace knowing the likely responses. Some will pass by, heads down, eyes averted. Some will cross the street to keep distance from the group. A few drivers will honk. Someone pushing a stroller will smile and raise a hand in a peace sign. One or two will make it clear, by flashing a sneer or smirk, that they don’t respect the effort. What is there about peace that offends them?

Does discussion of peace belong only to the Christmas season - best written on Chanukah cards or sung in church choirs? Is peace somehow inherently unpatriotic, pallid and weak when compared with military symbols? Is it unobtainable so therefore irrelevant?

On January 27 hundreds of thousands of people descended on Washington DC in support of peace though large media sources reported smaller numbers. The mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument was filled with patriots demanding that the simple but wonderful words of the constitution be honored and that their government start acting as if it valued peace.

In 2004 the crowd was smaller, the mood more timid, the politicians obviously missing. This year, the sense that the war was wrong from the start was center stage and people were willing to stand, shout and demand– No More War.

They came from California, Vermont, Texas, New York, Illinois. They came to announce to the world and to their elected officials that war is horrible, barbaric and wrong. They showed pictures of little boys who grew to be soldiers whose strong, young bodies strode into Iraq whole but came home broken. They came to say that it’s time to admit mistakes, to change policies and to start a discourse in honesty while there is some hope of reestablishing our lost reputation in the world.

John Conyers addressed the crowd. He said that he knew that some of them had been with him when he marched against Vietnam and others worked with him and Rosa Parks to demand an end to segregation. He sees the struggle against this war as a continuation of those struggles as well as a continuation of the nation’s demands made on November 7^th. He asked everyone to continue their cries and the outrage until the administration in Washington did the right thing.

Reporters and journalists from China, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Mexico and other countries were there with cameras and recorders talking with congressmen, military leaders, veterans, and several film stars who asked for an end to the barbaric exercise that is modern warfare.

Susan Sarandon spoke only of the needs of Iraq vets. Our country is involved in two wars but every year the budget for veteran services is cut. One in three homeless people is an American vet. The shame of the situation overpowered her.

The veteran’s medical system has one doctor for every 500 vets, making vets wait weeks or months for appointments. The divorce rate for returning vets out paces that for the rest of the country as does the unemployment rate. American vets on anti depressants are being sent back to tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan and new soldiers are being sent there after as little as two weeks of military training.

The blame doesn’t rest solely with Bush, she said. None of the 2008 presidential candidates have brought the needs of veterans into their platforms. What does support the troops mean if these people are denied services after they have faced death repeatedly in war?

After the speeches people marched for hours. Actually, there were so many people that their movement was more of an oozing of humanity down the streets around the Capitol. There were wheelchairs, strollers, scooters and stilts. There were pounding feet in sneakers and boots and pounding sticks working cadence on drums, buckets and pans. People sang protest songs from the 60s, when songs were written with more attention to poetry and meaning.

There were peace flags, rainbow flags, banners, puppets and signs. One sign read “War is a failure of humanity.” Another said, “War is tragic. Peace is magic.” One Gold Star Mother held a banner telling the world that half of her heart is forever in Iraq.

Being in such a march won’t directly end a war but it does bring one to where humanity and kindness can be absorbed and inhaled. One veteran said that he finally felt that he had come home, that he was in a place where people were really listening to him.