text:
A Journey to Lo Monthang
Tag: memoir
To Tsarang
April 27, 2017 April 27, 2017 Rose LaneLeave a comment
As we set out for Tsarang, first we followed the rough road high above the river. Opposite were the fluted cliffs honeycombed with caves and at the top, completely flat, dark grey plains. It was impossibly dry and barren. Even the stunted bushes grew sparse on the yellow hilly desert spread before and behind us. Then Neville, Jit, and Netra took a narrow track, leaving me at the mercy of Dabendra with whom I descended to the river bed and criss-crossed the river back towards Dhe.
Since the brown horse carried our packs, Dabendra wasn't riding and couldn't gee my horse up, but at some point we became separated and I found myself alone on a horse determined to get to Dhe. I had no idea whether Jit intended for us to head through Dhe, but I just had to let the horse go and it climbed up the river bank and into the village, ambling along the paths between houses and by the stone-walled fields and groves of trees, passing a wall of prayer wheels on the left as though it knew the protocol. The place was deserted but for an old woman and a little girl washing clothes at a tap. The old woman replied to my "Namaste" with little enthusiasm and the little girl stared up at me with a serious face.
I realised the horse knew exactly where it was going when it suddenly stopped at the doorway of a walled yard, turned and entered. As my head hit the top of the doorway I finally had cause to be thankful for the wretched helmet. I don't know whether the horse had smelled it or made a note of it on our previous visit, but it must have felt very pleased with itself because the yard was filled with cut grass spread out and drying in the sun. But before it could set about eating the village's precious store of winter feed, I dismounted and managed to turn the creature and pull it out of the yard. I was terrified someone was going to see me and think I was stealing their hay. Dabendra eventually turned up and we sat and waited in silence for the others. They soon arrived. As it happened we did need to stop in Dhe so we could be registered at the check-post. This was the first time I became aware this was necessary. All foreign trekkers had to be registered at checkpoints throughout Upper Mustang.
Jit decided they would once again take the narrow track along the cliff while we would travel along the river bed, so we doubled back while they went on and travelled along, criss-crossing the rivulets once again, with Dabendra whooping and calling to hear his voice echo off the cliffs.
It was easy to see how the area had once been an ocean. In places the water ran clear blue over white sand. I wished we could have stopped and waded in the water, even though it was freezing. In that bright sunshine it would have felt like being by an ocean inlet and I wanted to see what was in the wide deep pools. It was peaceful travelling along that wide river bed with huge cliffs towering either side, but as the morning wore on our old friend the wind came up. But before it became too ferocious, we rejoined the others and rounded a point before heading up the Tsarang Khola. We crossed a wooden bridge and began ascending a track that climbed along the side of the cliff. As the track went on it became stonier—large slippery stones that clinked under the horses' hooves—but then we turned and began to climb a very steep slope, straight up the cliff, covered with the same large stones. It was very hard going. The horses eyes bulged and they breathed heavily and frequently slipped and threatened to lose their footing. I think they were scared; I certainly felt more afraid for them than for myself. When we finally reached the top I dismounted and hobbled to a ledge to sit down and rub my aching knees.
Netra, who still hardly seemed out of breath after the steep climb, came over and sympathetically rubbed my knee as well.
"Very steep," I said to him.
"Yes," he replied, "very dangerous."
When Jit and Neville arrived, we waited while everyone recovered before continuing on into Tsarang. We travelled along a pathway between stone walls enclosing groves of poplar trees. Some horses were penned in one walled yard and in a field also surrounded by a low stone wall a man was working with two strange looking beasts, like black and white cows but with large yak horns.
"Yaks?" I asked Netra.
"Dzos," he replied.
Dzos are a cross between cows and yaks. The females, actually called Dzomos, are fertile while the males, Dzos, are sterile. Yaks are rare in Upper Mustang now.
Jit led us through Tsarang and almost out the other side before stopping for the night at the Kailash Guest House.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, horses, memoir, Nepal, trekking, Tsarang, Upper Mustang
A Flying Monk and a Dangerous Goddess
November 19, 2016 November 19, 2016 Rose Lane2 Comments
With apologies for a long hiatus, here is the next post:
Luri Gompa (red building high up)
We were about fifteen minutes into our trek to Luri Gompa when I realised I had left the pouch I always carried with my passport and phone, back at the lodge Yara, where we were staying a second night after Luri. I needed the phone for photos and I never liked to be without my passport, no matter where I was. So Netra, generous and tireless soul that he was, went back to get it for me.
Jit called, "Bistera, bistera," to Dabendra as we continued on—"slowly, slowly,"—to give Netra time to catch up, but we'd been travelling for about half an hour and he still hadn't appeared.
"Rose, you are sure it is in your room?" asked Jit.
"Yes. It'll be on my bed."
And we ambled on. I got off the horse, because my knees were killing me, and walked for a while. We were travelling upstream along the northern bank of the Puyung Khola which joins the Kali Gandaki at Dhe and Surkhang. It was just a thin trickle in most places. There were many caves high up in the cliffs, as well as at ground level with dry stone walled enclosures built around their openings. There were also some freestanding enclosures with very basic, rough shelters attached, which I imagine are for goats or sheep and their shepherds to take shelter.
We reached Luri and still no Netra, but neither had the guy with the key arrived. Jit found he had phone coverage over on the rise above the river so walked over to call him. Meanwhile, Dabendra mounted the brown horse, bareback (it was carrying no packs because we were returning to Yara for another night), and took off to find Netra. He found him waiting at the small village of Ghara. Netra had taken the high road and, not being able to find us, had decided to wait there. And he had my pouch. Having found Netra, Dabendra turned and rode back to Luri, while Netra walked, arriving at the same time as the key holder. Jit, Neville and I were sitting on the ground waiting when Dabendra came galloping at full tilt. He pulled the horse up sharply and, with no saddle to hold him, pitched head first over the horse's head and onto the hard, rocky ground. We rushed over to see if he was ok, but he promptly picked himself up, tossed his head and said he was fine. He spent the next two days limping.
While Dabendra slept on the ground by the horses, the man with the key took us first to a small gompa on the flat ground high above the river. Strings of ragged prayer flags criss-crossed above it and fluttered in the breeze. Jit told us this gompa was only about one hundred years old. The guide unlocked the door and we entered a dimly lit room. It was like the other monasteries we'd visited but clearly little used. Statues stood at one end and in front the altar were butter lamps and bowls of water. The guide lit a butter lamp and quietly intoned some prayers. Jit told us that someone comes early every morning to do this, or if there are visitors, will wait and do it then. After a quick look inside we followed the man out and waited while he lit a small fire in the courtyard using some of the aromatic plant that grows all over the hills, and said some more prayers.
Across the river the high red cliffs had been eroded into sharp pointed flutes, the eroded earth piled against the base and falling away into the narrow gorge. They resembled giant termite mounds. Caves dotted the lower parts.
"Ah!" cried Jit, pointing at a very sharp, high flute. "I see this when I come here last time, but I thought in the earthquake maybe it has fall down, but still there."
The flute had a flat disk-shape that appeared to balance on top. It protruded high above the rest of the cliff. The guide looked up as well and then spoke to Jit, explaining something. Jit translated:
"He says, mmm, there was very powerful lama living in a cave here," he said, and turned to point at the many caves in the cliffs behind us. "Every morning, he is fly across the river, and build this, ee, stone here on top."
I pictured the lama calmly leaving his spartan cave each morning and flying across in the thin, cold air, his maroon robes flapping, to place another piece on the point he was building.
There was a stone wall enclosure that had been built out from the base of the cliff on our side of the gorge, which Jit said had been used for monks who wished to meditate for long periods. People from the nearby village would bring food each day. The walls were now crumbling, the stones falling away down the slope.
"The monks looking for the quiet place with nobody disturbing. And ça monks are powerful," said Jit with awe.
We now began the climb to the cave gompa. We passed three crumbling chortens with poles stuck in their tops and prayer flags strung between them. Little remained of the paint and engravings on the sides. One had completely collapsed and was just a mound of yellow clay with some stones sticking out. A square red building sat perched high up on the cliff but the gompa itself was inside one of the many caves. To reach this we had to follow a steep track up and across a metal bridge, covered along its length with prayer flags, and then up higher still until we reached a cave below the building. We entered and climbed a wooden ladder. Beside the new ladder sat the old one, a notched log such as we had seen in Lo Monthang and many other villages. We huffed and puffed in the thin air.
We entered a small cave where there were several smallish statues set against the back wall. Behind these were silk thangkas. In front was an old cabinet along which were some small bowls, and beside this a low table with a couple of butter lamps on it. On the left was a small chorten. Large tea pots and other vessels sat on other tables and on the uneven floor. Everything was grimy with dirt and soot. The guide lit the lamps and stood chanting prayers in a low voice while we waited quietly. He then unlocked a door on the left and we entered a small cave that was almost entirely filled with a polished, ornately painted chorten. Jit pointed to the outer wall where there was a section made from mud.
"This was open, but now block," he said, "because people is coming to take things. Maybe Khampas. This area many Khampas. Maybe Khampas destroy and find the gold or something."
"Gold?" I asked
"Inside the chorten they put in there normally gold or many valuable things. And mantra also."
Michel Peissel describes how on leaving the chorten cave, which he likened to "Ali Baba's cave" they were indeed "assailed by the 'forty thieves'—some two score Khampas, who wanted to know if we had arms, saying they 'needed them badly'. I persuaded them with some difficulty that I had none."
Of all the chortens and paintings we had seen in the monasteries we'd visited, this one was unique. It is known as the "Hundred Thousand Dragons Chorten". Luri belongs to a sub-sect of the Kagyu school of Buddhism, a sect which came after the Nyingmapa and Sakya sects of Lo Gekar and the monasteries of Lo Monthang and was established in about the twelfth century. The Kagyu sect has a heavy emphasis on tantric meditation, believing that enlightenment can be reached in one lifetime if meditation is practiced enough, which I guess explains the meditation cell and the possibility of powerful flying lamas. Nobody knows who built Luri Gompa but it is estimated to have been built in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The paintings on the highly polished chorten and on the domed ceiling and walls around it resembled the art of central Asian countries and was quite different to that seen in the monasteries of Lo Monthang and the other monasteries we had seen in Mustang. Images of high lamas were painted on the domed ceiling above, and below these were white flowers, something like chrysanthemums, on curling stems and with white leaves on a green background. At the very top of the ceiling above the chorten was an intricate mandala. The chorten itself looked and felt more like enamel than the clay from which it was built, so smooth and polished was its surface.
Along the inside wall something had been painted in large Tibetan script.
"Is this 'om mane padme hum'? I asked Jit.
He consulted with the guide who read the script quietly muttering some 'oms' and 'padmes' under his breath. He then explained to Jit who translated:
"Is different mantra. 'Om mane padme hum' normalment but little bit mixed."
Next to the door a sequence of vertical lines had been painted, like someone keeping tally and the guide said he thought it may have been someone keeping count of the circumambulations of the chorten, but he really didn't know.
Stooping through the low doorway again, we returned to the room with the statues. Opposite was another small wooden door.
"What's in there Jit?" I asked. He spoke to the guide then turned to me.
"This is a little dangerous," he explained in a low, serious voice. "When-ça ceremony time they open, but is, ee,…like the goddess."
"It's dangerous for us because the goddess doesn't like to be disturbed?"
"Ee, yes."
We climbed another ladder and emerged onto the roof of the red building to find a small solar panel. From here we looked down through a hole into an adjoining cave where the guide had again lit a fire in a small hearth in the middle of the room and was intoning more prayers. There was a shallow depression in the inner wall that looked like a small fireplace but with no chimney, which would explain the blackened walls and ceiling. Above it a ledge had been cut like a mantlepiece, and on this sat some rocks and a tarnished vessel with a very narrow neck. A copper bowl sat on a battered, broken, wooden, table, which had a thick coating of dust. More caves could be seen through holes in this cave. The cliff was honeycombed with caves.
"I think so, many house before; many room, many house," said Jit.
He was guessing. Not much is known about any of Mustang's caves. They're estimated to be around 3000 years old and it's assumed people lived in them at some time. Maybe Luri's caves were inhabited by a community of monks, maybe the monks took them over after they had been long abandoned. I like the fact that the caves, the monastery, the extraordinary chorten and the unusual paintings are still a mystery.
We joined Dabendra, lying on the rocky ground enjoying his sleep, and ate some of Netra's dried fruit and nuts and I pulled out the apple I'd save from Dhi. I ate half and gave the rest to the white horse. There was not another soul around. The guide had locked up and gone back to his village. We sat and relaxed in the sun. Across the gorge, the sharp fluted peaks that formed the cliff were topped with a completely flat, plain. There were many of these plains high above the river gorges and Michel Peissel described them as being "so level that a large aeroplane could have landed without so much as one stone needing to be moved out of the way." The barren hills rose beyond them rolling away to the south in yellow-brown waves, and far away on the horizon, peaks topped with patches of snow.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, Buddha, Buddhism, buddhist monks, Caves, Horse riding, Luri Gompa, memoir, Nepal, Tibet, Upper Mustang
September 26, 2016 Rose Lane1 Comment
We arrived in the late afternoon in Yara to find there was only one lodge open and it was full, so our guides had to share a tent, which they pitched in a walled yard just above the lodge. I decided to rest before dinner and for a long time I sat watching out the window next to my bed, as the light slowly faded. The ubiquitous small brown sparrows hopped about amongst the wood piles along the roof edges. Opposite, a barren hill rose, dotted with clumps of spiky bushes.
Three young guys came sprinting and laughing down the steep track that ran along the base of the hill below a solitary house. Below us was the walled dirt yard by which we had entered, the horses laboriously pulling themselves up the several steps. Now as I watched, several men came galloping effortlessly up the steps on horses, pulling them up sharply in the yard where they quickly dismounted. Jit told us later that they were here on a pilgrimage to take their horses to bathe in the holy lake, Damodar Kunda.
That evening, as we sat drinking in the dining room before dinner, a young woman came in to tell us that there would be Tibetan dancing and singing after dinner. We sat around the perimeter of the small courtyard and half a dozen women gathered in a line and began, quite self-consciously at first, to sing for us. They sang in nasal voices, swinging their legs in synchronised fashion, arms around shoulders, laughing at themselves when they briefly forgot how the song went, joining in with gusto when someone recovered the faltering song and it got going again. Between songs they would discuss amongst themselves what they should sing next, but we were never told what any of them meant.
Some of the men, who had been drinking raksi for a couple of hours by the time the singing began, joined in at certain points, yelling drunkenly and clapping enthusiastically and seeming to call out requests. The locals carried on for some time after we went to bed. Having lost all track of days of the week, I realised it was Saturday night—a wild Saturday night in Yara, high up on the Tibetan plateau far from everywhere. I guess this is how most of the world amused themselves before reliable electricity enabled TV, radio, recorded music, and computers to stop us from singing and dancing together.
That night I was woken about midnight by the ferocious growling of the lodge-owners' dog outside my door. I sat for a long time at the window looking up the hill, lit up like day by the full moon, hoping I might see the elusive snow leopard, but nothing moved. The next morning I told Jit I'd been woken in the night.
"Yes, I hear jackals last night. First far away, then close to our tent," he told me.
"Jackals?" I replied. "Like a wild dog?"
"Mmm, no maybe more like a fox. They eat chickens, maybe small goat."
Caves in the cliffs near Yara
So perhaps it was not the snow leopard, just a pack of Himalayan jackals raising the hackles of all the village dogs. Evidence of brown bears has also been found in Upper Mustang as high as 5500 metres. They live on small mammals, mostly marmots, and birds, but between 2005 and 2008, herders in the Manaslu area of the Annapurnas reported losing twenty-nine animals, mostly yak calves, but some horses and mules, to bears. They aren't often seen, but bear scat has been found around Lo Monthang, in the Chhosar region and near other villages and they have been spotted in the Damodar Kunda region to the east of Yara. They tend not to come too close to villages although some researchers believe livestock reportedly taken by snow leopards may in fact have been taken by bears, judging from the hair samples left behind. A Himalayan wolf was seen in Upper Mustang in 2004 and their scat has also been found but it's believed there are fewer than 350 of these wolves in existence.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, Bears, Horse riding, Jackals, Lo Manthang, memoir, Nepal, Snow Leopards, Tibet, Upper Mustang, Wolves, Yara
To Dhe
September 9, 2016 September 9, 2016 Rose LaneLeave a comment
Next morning we ambled out of Lo Monthang and quickly began climbing to the top of the Lo La, the pass above Lo Monthang, and, after stopping for a last look back at the walled city, we headed to Dhe en route to Yara.
We were heading south again but would soon turn east and cross the Kali Gandaki. We followed a rough track of loose, sandy soil along a ridge. As we ambled along I found myself looking down at the horse and footprints in the sand made by other travellers, not thinking about much at all, until I realised that I was no longer seeing horse and footprints but also large paw prints. They were heading in the opposite direction, back to Lo Monthang. I turned around to Netra and Dabendra walking behind me and holding my hand in a claw shape, shook it towards to the ground.
"Paw prints," I said, and pointed at the ground.
"Ya, tiger," replied Netra.
"Snow leopard?"
"Ya, ya. Big one," he replied, and laughed.
My eyes were now glued to the ground and the prints continued until we reached the turnoff to Dhe, where they gave way to small goat prints. They continued along the track that led to Tsarang, not far from Marong, where 120 goats had been killed by a snow leopard, just a couple of weeks before.
We now turned to descend towards the river, but the horses decided that they'd rather not. The brown horse, carrying the packs, took off running way off the track. Dabendra set off yelling abuse and throwing rocks at it, trying to steer it back onto the track. Meanwhile, Netra motioned to me to dismount because the descent was too steep and slippery for riding. Let go, my white horse took off too and try as they might, Dabendra and Netra could not get it back. It was headed back to Lo Monthang; it had clearly enjoyed its time there and decided it would prefer to return. The brown horse tried to follow it, but Netra managed to stop it in time. It kept stopping and trying to turn but we all managed to keep it going in the right direction. Netra turned and ran back up to help Dabendra.
We were a long way down when we finally spied Netra far above us walking down alone. There was no sign of Dabendra or the other horse, so we all just carried on, slipping and gingerly making our way down the very steep, slippery, sandy slope.
Below us emerged the patchwork quilt of the fields of Dhe, stretching to the edge of the river bank. On the opposite bank was the village of Surkhang, but it is only accessible from Dhe when the river is low enough to walk across as it sits where the Puyung Khola meets the Kali Gandaki and there is no bridge between the two villages. A suspension bridges crosses the Kali Gandaki river upstream of the meeting point between the two streams.
We had just arrived at the bottom, outside the village of Dhe, when to our amazement here came Dabendra on the white horse, galloping it down the same track we'd just inched our way down.
Like the village of Samdzong, which is moving due to lack of water, the village of Dhe has been struggling with the same problem, and has begun the process of relocation. Some outside of Dhe believe the village's troubles have been caused by the selling of saligrams, others because they killed and skinned a yeti.
But as we sat in the warm dining room waiting for our noodle soup, we were oblivious to all of this. The room was much like all the dining rooms, with its mud benches covered in carpets running around the perimeter behind low, ornately painted tables. The walls were a blue-green and covered in the same pictures as in many of the other lodges: the panorama of Lhasa, a large painting of the Potala palace (the former residence of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa), photos of the Dalai Lama and Sakya Trinzen, some family photos, and a large silk thangka. Wires were strung loosely around the tops of the walls and ran down to two car batteries. One appeared to be for lighting, the other to power a small television inside a glass-fronted cabinet.
Kitchen noises could be heard from behind the piece of fabric hanging in the doorway. Otherwise the place seemed deserted. While we waited, Dabendra was put to work carrying lunch out to the workers in the field, baskets of food and a thermos of tea. Netra came in and gave us an apple each; here as in most of the villages there were plenty of apples.
Lunch over, Dabendra took the horses down and across the river, while the rest of us went via the long metal suspension bridge. Below us, a thin milky blue stream ran. Clumps of poplars huddled close to the water's edge.
Upstream, where the gorge narrowed, stood a small red chorten, its edges crumbling, towered over by the weathered cliffs, with horizontal layers of red, yellow, grey, and brown. Over all arced the hard, blue, cloudless sky.
We were in remote country now.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, Ancient cities, Dhe, Horse riding, Lo Manthang, memoir, michel peissel, Nepal, saligrams, Snow Leopards, Tibet, Upper Mustang, Yetis
Farewell the Walled City
August 31, 2016 Rose Lane1 Comment
On our last afternoon we went for a final walk around Lo Manthang. People sat in the late afternoon sun, as though soaking it up while they could, for it would soon be winter. Some called "Namaste", one older man "tashi delek" the Tibetan greeting. Men carrying loads of hay and heavy feed bags strapped to their foreheads walked with purpose. Somewhere a goat bleated. In one street, children, still in their school uniforms, called out,
"Where are you from?" and, a common greeting, "Where are you going?".
Old women sat on the ground, backs against the wall, chatting. Men sat on ledges outside shops desultorily twirling small prayer wheels, asking
"You like to look in my shop?"
One elderly man, whom we had seen a few times on our walks, offered
"Rooftop view?", and we had seen a few photographers take up his offer.
Of course there would be a fee for this privilege. Women, bent double, swept leaves from the rough ground with the small brooms made from sticks tied together that you see throughout Nepal. Others crouched by taps washing clothes and metal dishes. Goat hides lay spread out, drying. The air was crisp with the chill of the coming night and, as ever, the smell of manure, clods of it drying along the ledges, was everywhere. Around this ancient, walled city, the ageless hills rose, silently, majestically, as though in the quiet understanding that this city, although it had stood for nearly 700 years on its "Plain of Aspiration", would one day pass away, and that when it did, the hills would still stand silently, eternally.
Outside the city walls, a large square building with square towers on each corner was being constructed, two storeys high, three at the corners. The bottom storey and the top of each tower had an outer surface of stones while the other walls were smoothly rendered. An "R" had been worked into the stonework on at least one of the towers. It had timber windows set deep into the cement grey wall. Large sheets of plywood covered what looked like the main entrance. It was still very much a construction site but no work was going on. This was a new boutique hotel being built by the Crown Prince or Gyalchung. A boutique hotel seemed incongruous in Lo Manthang. It's not the kind of destination you'd head for if you wanted luxury accommodation.
Outside, between the Kunga Shopping Shop and the Lo Manthang Youth Club, advertising "hot showers" in hand-painted letters on its wall, two women and their children squatted by the stream washing clothes. Here the stream was wider just before the concrete channel began that directed the water around and through the main gate, and channeled it through the whole city. It ran clear and shallow over smooth stones. Using bars of soap and plastic scrubbing brushes, the women scrubbed the clothing on the larger stones. Even the children's shoes were waiting in the queue to be cleaned. Two little girls called out "Namaste" and one proudly pointed to one of the women, saying, "this my mother!".
We passed a boy of about 6 trying to ride a small broken bike, its back wheel hopelessly buckled. We watched three little boys of about 4 pulling two cardboard boxes along by pieces of string. Every now and then they stopped to put some leaves or bits of rubbish in the boxes, then continued on, chatting seriously about the whole operation.
That night, our last in Lo Manthang, I climbed up the ladder at the end of the upstairs balcony and onto the roof. The moon was up and the hills glowed pale orange and butter yellow in the last remnant of daylight. Prayer flags fluttered in the breeze and birds still twittered busily. Over the wall, the palace stood dark and abandoned. In the distance a horn blared, then a tractor with a large trailer attached, heavily laden with green grass, rattled noisily up the street, pausing briefly with each new acceleration, like an old man catching his breath, and carrying with it the jarring sound of Bollywood pop music.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, Ancient cities, Lo Manthang, memoir, Nepal, Tibet, Upper Mustang
A Cave and Two Monasteries
August 16, 2016 Rose LaneLeave a comment
The next day, we rode north to the area of Chhosar and the village of Garphu. We followed a rough sandy track, on the western bank of the Kali Gandaki. Here it was much narrower and quite dry. Its vertical banks were a long way above the small rivulets, timidly snaking their way at this time of year. Around us the land spread out, dry and barren but for the patchy clumps of spindly grass. High on rounded hills stood the ruins of forts. I read that sky burials were performed in this remote place.
Our arrival at Chhosar piqued the interest of three small grubby children who stood staring at us, fingers in mouths, thick streams of snot heading south, outside the one shop, which doubles as a cafe, selling warm Coke and cans of Budweiser with Chinese writing on the sides, Lhasa beer, juice poppers, biscuits, noodles, chips, strings of beads, shampoo, vaseline, phone recharge cards and anything else a village might need. A radio blared "I'm a gangsta baby!".
We followed Jit on foot across a hard dirt soccer pitch and up to the Shija Jhong caves.
Holes could be seen going up about five levels. A set of stairs had been constructed for easy access to the entrance, but once inside it was extremely cramped and difficult to get around. The main entrance cave was about the only one with any space for more than a couple of people and in which anyone could stand comfortably. Here an old woman in grubby traditional dress sat on a bench, smiling a toothless smile. It was her job to guard the caves but there wasn't a lot to steal. Against the inside wall was a glass-fronted cabinet containing dusty clay bowls and flasks, a few broken saligrams (Ammonite fossils revered by Hindus as incarnations of the goddess Shiva), a couple of traditional animal skin shoes and one gold Buddha pendant on a chain. On another wall hung a filthy striped apron, torn and fraying, a few small canvas bags, and some white and yellow silk katas had been strung across the ceiling. All of the blackened walls had been graffitied, with things like "Ganesh" and "Jomsom" and things in Devanagari script, the traditional script of Nepal. The ceilings were as though covered in black diamonds, hard and shiny, presumably blackened by centuries of cow dung fires.
In places the caves formed corridors along which other caves led off. There was nothing in any of them except piles of feathers on the loose dirt floors. They gave off a cold dusty smell. We stooped our way through them and up and down ladders, puffing heavily in the thin cool air.
After the caves we headed over to the Nyphu monastery. It was perched above a small collection of houses, all joined together. We stopped to look south.
Cirrus clouds feathered across the hard blue sky and in the gap between the barren hills which sat either side of the village, the snow-capped Annapurnas could be seen once more, far to the south now. The place seemed deserted except for an old woman who came walking up the side of one of the houses, hands clasped behind her back, the coloured stripes of her apron dulled by layers of brown dust. Her head was wrapped in a green scarf, black leggings emerged from the bottom of her equally dusty bukkhoo and she wore white joggers on her feet. She gazed up at us then turned to see what we were looking at.
As we walked up the stairs to the monastery door, a goat went ahead of us and stood with us on the front porch as we waited for someone to bring the key. At last one of the monks appeared and, after shooing away the goat, unlocked the wooden door with much creaking and scraping. As he pushed it open, the smell of incense rushed out. It was a small monastery, 700 years old and of the Nyingmapa sect, the oldest one, established by Padmasambhava the same as Lo Gekar. The wall paintings were in very bad condition, blackened and fading as in the monasteries of Lo Manthang. Gold Buddha statues sat complacently behind glass, one holding a pearlescent lotus flower, the other holding two of its hands in a prayer position while the other two hands were held out to the sides, fingers and thumbs curled toward one another.
Garphu monastery sat in a small courtyard amongst the houses. Atop its entrance were gleaming golden statues of two deer facing the Dharmachakra or Dharma wheel. This is a common image above the entrance of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. These mythical deer, a male and female, representing peace and compassion, have just one horn and are known as Tibetan unicorns, magical creatures that manifest only in the presence of great teachers. They raise their eyes to the Dharma Wheel in aspiration to reach Dharma or Nirvana.
Back at the shop-cafe we ordered fried rice and Jit and Netra sat and drank warm Budweiser. Many people came into the shop and bought Coke. While we waited, we watched the TV, on which men with perfect hair and heavy eye makeup chased each other along some busy Indian street, and laughed along with the others. We couldn't understand a word of the Hindi movie, but there didn't seem to be much of a story anyway.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, Ancient cities, Buddha, Buddhism, Caves, Garphu, Horse riding, Lo Manthang, memoir, Monasteries, Nepal, Nyhpu, Upper Mustang
Tsele
June 19, 2016 June 26, 2016 Rose LaneLeave a comment
It was at Tsele that we left the modern world behind.
Now there was no internet, limited phone coverage and patchy electricity. After lunching in Chhusang, we followed the river again before it narrowed dramatically running through a rock tunnel, formed long ago by an enormous piece of the cliff falling against the other side. In the cliff face high above was a uniform row of caves, some of the many thousands that dot the cliffs throughout Mustang, and about which little is known.
When Michel Peissel reached this point he encountered only a simple bridge of planks of wood bolted together, impossible for his yaks to cross. There is now a steel bridge, which we walked across, but the horses had to wade across the shallow river, just as the jeeps do when the water is low enough. A road bridge is now being built and will provide vehicle access all year round.
Peissel took his yaks up the very steep and narrow gorge of the Ghyakar Khola that runs beside Tsele:
The sides of the canyon were so steep and so close together that in many parts the sunlight could not reach us, and we advanced as if in a cave, from whose bottom we could only occasionally glimpse a bit of blue sky.
He bypassed Tsele, but we took the almost vertical track beside the khola up to the village, entering via a wooden gateway, following the path as it continued up and between white-washed walls before arriving at our lodge for the night.
After tea on the terrace that looked out at the dramatic cliffs of the Kali Gandaki canyon, the table cloth nailed to the table so the fierce wind couldn't whip it away, we explored the small village. It seemed quite deserted. One old man sat alone on a step spinning a prayer wheel and bid us a weary 'namaste' as we passed, women were out in the field gathering the harvest together before covering it with what looked like an old tent, and late in the afternoon a noisy game of volleyball was being played in a small courtyard below us, triumphant, joyful cries rising into the dimming light as dusk came on. Our lodge appeared to be the only one open.
Here the altitude began to bite. We were at 3070m and I had a headache and had begun to feel vaguely unwell, but after I'd eaten some dinner I felt better. I also had some difficulty with the squat toilet. It was not so much the nature of the toilet as its location. It was outside in a separate building reached through a passageway between rooms. At the end of the passageway was a door and it had to be bolted shut to stop it banging in the relentless wind. The problem was that the bolt was on the inside. Inevitably, I had to use the toilet during the night which meant I had to leave it unbolted and be quick enough to get back inside before someone got annoyed enough by the banging to get up and bolt it. I wasn't, and when I emerged from the toilet block with only my head torch for light I found I was locked out. I thought maybe the window next to the door was our room and tapped on it, calling Neville's name softly, but wasn't sure enough that it was our room to persist, which was lucky because it wasn't. There was no other option but to bang on the door until someone opened it. Eventually a rather frightened Nepalese man opened it saying:
"It was open."
"Wasn't it bolted?" I replied.
"I didn't know," he said.
The conversation made no sense, and I must have looked and sounded angrier than I was.
That night, the Nepalese were glued to the television as their government finally handed down the first constitution. They didn't know then that it would lead to deadly clashes on the border with India and a four month long blockade creating crippling fuel shortages, bringing the country to a standstill.
I awoke to the sound of the horses' bells as Dabendra brought them up outside our window and got them ready for the next day's travel. We would be climbing higher to the village Ghiling.
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, WritingTagged Adventure, Horse riding, Lo Manthang, memoir, michel peissel, Nepal, Tsele, Upper Mustang
Under Constant Surveillance
On Not Visiting the Great Wall.
The Subversive Travel Writer
Here's to the Fearless Female Explorers
Quiet, Late Achievers
Rose Lane on Under Constant Surveillance
Dr B on Under Constant Surveillance
annetmyers on On Not Visiting the Great…
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I love to travel and write. Come with me on my most recent journey to the ancient walled city of Lo Manthang
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Equipped with the same EXPEED 4 image processing engine as used in the flagship D4S, the D810's overall performance gets a significant boost: image rendering and ISO capability is vastly improved in both stills and video, with sophisticated new algorithms enabling remarkable clarity and enhanced gradation with a tangible sense of depth across the entire sensitivity range. Engineered to excel in any environment, the Nikon D810's powerful high-speed capabilities deliver exceptional versatility, ensuring you can capture even the quickest, most unpredictable subjects in a big way. Faster continuous shooting speeds and the flagship Multi-CAM 3500FX 51-point AF system enable precise, uncompromised full-resolution images at up to 5 fps, plus the camera can shoot 15.3-MP images at up to 7 fps in DX crop mode.
Nikon's new Group Area AF mode offers fast acquisition and improved background isolation when shooting subjects that are comparatively small and close to a high-contrast or distracting background. A new shutter/mirror box mechanism reduces image shake for a steady viewfinder image with minimal blackout during high-speed shooting, and you can activate the new electronic front-curtain shutter to minimise internal vibrations and reduce the risk of micro-blur in subtle details. For faster image transfer and smoother post-production, Nikon's RAW Size S file format delivers richly graded 12-bit uncompressed Nikon NEF files.


This is the easiest snack to make when you purchase pre-washed baby kale. I bought a pound for five dollars at our local grocery. Just throw a couple of handfuls on a baking sheet with a sprinkle of olive oil and a pinch of sea salt. Then shake a bunch of nutritional yeast over top. It makes the chips taste cheesy – and is full of energy-boosting B vitamins. Bake at 350 degrees until the kale becomes crisp but keeps its bright green color.
On day 42 of this 365 day project, I ate my daily five (including some amazing "Honey Bunch" grape tomatoes). Did you enjoy yours?


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Former Gov. Jon Corzine is engaged to longtime girlfriend
Published: Apr. 15, 2010, 4:47 p.m.
Josh Margolin/Statehouse Bureau
Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerWalking down Washington Street in Hoboken Governor Jon Corzine leaves the Elks Club with his girlfriend Sharon Elghanayan after voting there last year.
— Former Gov. Jon Corzine is getting remarried. Three months after leaving office, Corzine this week got engaged to longtime companion Sharon Elghanayan, Corzine's office said this morning. Informed of the news, Gov. Chris Christie, who defeated Corzine in last year's election, offered his congratulations. "I wish them every happiness," Christie said. Corzine has been married once; Elghanayan has been married twice. They have been dating for about five years.
Related coverage:
• Former N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine plans to guest host on CNBC, lecture at universities
• Former Gov. Corzine talks about life in Hoboken, the corruption scandal and the future
• N.J. Gov. Corzine's final State of the State address reflects on tenure in office

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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CottonCrop ProtectionCropsCrop DiseaseFarm Business
It's important to heed pesticide labels, product requirementsIt's important to heed pesticide labels, product requirements
"I think it's still important to impress on applicators that the label is full of very necessary information regarding requirements that need to be met for applying dicamba and 2,4-D products..."
Shelley E. Huguley
Cotton stripping on the Texas South Plains.
One year after the release of new cotton technologies, such as auxin-tolerant XtendFlex and Enlist, with new formulations of dicamba and 2,4-D, only 10 complaints have been filed in Texas against the technology.
But growers should continue to practice strict stewardship, says Dr. Peter Dotray, professor and Extension lead specialist with Texas Tech University, Texas A&M AgriLife Research, and Texas AgriLife Extension Service. "Certainly, there were lots of success stories, lots of glyphosate-resistant weeds that were controlled when the technology is used as part of a system," he said at the Texas Plant Protection Association conference at Bryan, Texas.
He stressed the importance of growers not relying solely on the new dicamba and 2,4-D products, but rather using them as part of a system. "There were pretty significant problems in some parts of the country — Arkansas and Missouri, in particular — where they had lots of off-target movement."
While Texas has only had 10 complaints filed to date, Dotray says, "I think it's still important to impress on applicators that the label is full of very necessary information regarding requirements that need to be met for applying dicamba and 2,4-D products —certain nozzles, which various tank mix partners require, carrier volumes, wind speed, wind direction, etc." And as growers move into year two, he hopes "they will be very careful when using these hormonal-type herbicides to assist in the overall management of weeds."
For 2018, Dotray says, dicamba will be a restricted use pesticide. Only certified applicators with special training and those under their supervision may apply the pesticide, "which is different than it's been in the past."
"A number of folks on the Extension side, working closely with Monsanto, BASF, and the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA), have developed a 50-minute presentation, and anybody who plans to be applying a dicamba product in XtendFlex cotton will need to go through one of the training courses."
Also, according to the EPA website, manufacturers voluntarily agreed to label changes that impose additional requirements for over-the-top use of products, like dicamba, next year, including:
• Requiring farmers to maintain specific records regarding the use of these products to improve compliance with label restrictions.
• Limiting applications to when maximum wind speeds are below 10 mph (from 15 mph) to reduce potential spray drift.
• Reducing the times during the day when applications can occur.
• Including tank clean-out language to prevent cross contamination.
• Enhancing susceptible crop language and record keeping with sensitive crop registries to increase awareness of risk to especially sensitive crops nearby.
RECURRING ISSUES
As Monsanto investigated pesticide complaints, trying to get a better handle on some of the problems, Dotray says, two things seemed to recur: the requirements for buffer zones had not been met, and tank mix incompatibility.
"No. 1 was the necessary buffer that's required, which would surround a field close to susceptible vegetation — maybe requirements for those buffer zones, buffer areas, weren't met. The other thing, as related to wind direction toward adjacent susceptible crops —maybe some of that wasn't met either. I think it's ever so important to talk about necessary buffers, awareness of wind speed and direction, and surrounding vegetation."
For example, at http://bit.ly/2l0sQR1, a graphic displays a summary of mandatory application requirements, including downwind buffer: a minimum 110 foot buffer, at 22 fl oz/A rate; or wind speed: apply when wind speed, measured at boom height, is between 3 mph and 10 mph.
Another issue was tank mix partners. "There are interactive websites for both technologies that allow the applicator to be very current as to which products can be put into the tank with XtendiMax, Engenia, and FeXapan, in particular. They need to be aware of these label changes and what are some of the newly-allowed tank mix partners they can use in 2018."
Dotray recommends applicators use the variety of resources available online to keep up with the most current information and technologies:
• http://applicationsrequirement.com
• http://tankmix.com
• Monsanto: http://bit.ly/2l0sQR1
• DOW: http://bit.ly/2Apgih4
• BASF: https://on.basf.com/2kpi6tD
Editor, Southwest Farm Press
Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions that have to be made each season based on "if" it rains, "if" the drought continues, "if" the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such a Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.
See more from Shelley E. Huguley


Blessed with a warm year-round temperature, the Canary Islands offer numerous beaches, dramatic volcanic landscapes, vibrant nightlife and excellent accommodation options.
The Canary Islands offer all the ingredients you need for an unforgettable romantic honeymoon in a unique island location that was once considered the edge of the world.
The Canary Islands (or Islas Canarias) comprise Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro. These Spanish territorial islands are located in the Atlantic Ocean around 1100km from the Spanish mainland, but just 100km from the northwest coast of Africa.
The most popular honeymoon playgrounds are rugged and mountainous Tenerife and Gran Canaria, each boasting several resorts, followed by the eco-friendly island of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, which is famous for some of Europe's top beaches and superb kite and windsurfing conditions.
The small, undeveloped island of Gomera is often visited from Tenerife on a day drip, while the green island of La Palma is a favourite for walkers. Further afield lies windblown El Hierro, popular with hikers and scuba divers.
Visit the Canary Islands in February to experience the colourful Carnival – one of the biggest and most colourful fiestas outside Rio de Janeiro.
Discover the most popular holiday playground in the Canary Islands.
With year-round sunshine, golden-sand beaches, vibrant nightlife, great accommodation options and a rugged mountainous interior ideal for hiking, horseback riding and mountain biking, Gran Canaria offer all the ingredients you need for an unforgettable European island honeymoon.
Experience a choice of beach resorts on Tenerife – the best known Canary Island and one of Europe's most famous holiday islands.
Unwind at family friendly Los Cristianos beach resort where you have easy access to several theme parks, and party all night at Playa de Las Americas, Tenerife's legendary resort best known for its vibrant nightlife.
Experience a choice of romantic getaway holidays on this relatively undeveloped island, best known for the least spoiled and longest white-sand beaches of the Canary Islands.
With three major beach resorts boasting low-key, family friendly entertainment, world-class water sports and accommodation options to suit all honeymoon budgets, Fuerteventura offers all the ingredients you need for a relaxing European island honeymoon holiday.
Discover of the least developed isles of the Canary Islands.
Blessed with a 259km-long coastline comprised mainly of towering cliffs, headlands and spectacular rock formations (created by volcanic eruptions and erosion), Lanzarote boasts more than 90 mainly golden-sand beaches.
Relax on the greenest and arguably most authentic of the Canary Islands, more commonly known as La Isla Bonita (the pretty island).
Unspoiled and tranquil, La Palma is a UNESCO-listed World Biosphere Reserve and the perfect island for escaping the crowds and getting close to nature.
Unspoiled La Gomera is perfect for hiking or cycling through a choice of stunning natural landscapes.
From a rugged cliff-edged coastline occasionally indented with black-sand and pebble beaches, follow walking trails through green valleys and deep ravines past small whitewashed villages into a verdant, mist-shrouded laurel forest scattered with mountain streams and unique Canarian fauna and flora.
Escape the crowds on the smallest, least visited and most westerly of the Canary Islands – once considered the edge of the known world (until Columbus sailed to the Americas).
The Canary Islands (Islas Canarias) are located in the Atlantic Ocean around 1100km off the Spanish mainland and just 100km from the northwest coast of Africa.
By air, the islands of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Palma receive daily flights from Spain, Europe and North Africa. The smaller islands receive daily flights from Tenerife and Gran Canaria.
By sea, the islands are well serviced by interisland ferries as well as cruise ships, which mainly stop at Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Arrecife on Lanzarote.
© 2010-2019 Honeymoon Guide. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced without our written permission. Note: The above information about Canary Islands was accurate when published, but can change without notice.


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This was not a planned addendum to our previous pieces on Bigotry in Football, but the debate stirred up by the recent match between Celtic and Rangers at Celtic Park seems to have stirred the issues up once again. The start of the series can be found here and the previous installment here.
It is relevant because it once again stirs up an issue which it seems to suit people to avoid and distort in Scottish Football. As we discussed through the series, in Football UEFA deals with all bigotry on protected grounds in a comparable way. It is dealt with under the auspices of Article 14 and there is no difference in seriousness or punishment regardless of the type of insulting behaviour or on which grounds it is insulting the human dignity of a person or group. It includes Racism. It includes discrimination on religious grounds. It includes 'sectarianism', which is not yet defined in law (though that is in process as this goes to print) which is effectively a hybrid as it it is commonly used and applied in Scotland.
While the match on Sunday was a breathtaking affair that Rangers deservedly won, much of the post match furore has centred on gestures made by Alfredo Morelos following his red card and reported abuse of the player. A Rangers spokesman had reported that:
"We believe Alfredo was racially abused and we would expect now that all measures will be taken to identify and deal with those responsible."
After which Celtic responded with a statement which read:
"We are aware of the gestures made by the player towards Celtic supporters. We have received no reports of any racial abuse but would fully investigate any should these be brought to our attention."
In the meantime there has been speculation about the exact nature of reported abuse. Certain videos which appear to have been taken by fans show the player being roundly booed and raised voices shouting abuse which, depended on various sources were either of a sectarian or racist nature. While it can be clearly heard that he is called a 'hun b****rd', it is not so clear either in the videos widely circulated or the responses whether the other shouts are the same second word preceded by 'orange' or 'black' or indeed a combination. The fact is that it really doesn't matter. Both would fall under the same articles reproduced above and be treated interchangeably. Both are equally reprehensible and have no place in our game.
Whether this particular incident was racist in nature, sectarian (in the sense that it equates Orangism with Protestantism and with Rangers, regardless of the players own personal beliefs) – or a combination of both – does not need to be evaluated nor distinctions drawn. The SFA have responsibilities to ensure that our game remains free of such prejudice under the auspices of its 'fair play' requirements and its subserviance to UEFA principles on the matter. The problem it has is that it doesn't have the same 'strict liability' powers that UEFA does to address it with.
While its unpleasant to admit, in Scotland black players are regularly racially abused. This season there have been incidents: Morelos himself has suffered it in front of the camera's against Hearts in the past, Kane Hemmings of Dundee against Dundee United. Nor are Rangers immune from dishing it out: Moussa Dembele received racist abuse in a game against Rangers.
What these incidents thankfully have in common though is that they are ordinarily the province of a handful of idiots rather than indicative of widespread attitudes throughout the support. It gives a degree of credence to the idea that better self policing and reporting procedures (such as those discussed at the forum in February) can help drive it out of the game. Personally we'd love to see fan charters like this at grounds along with easy accessed and well signposted reporting lines.
It is winnable and it is rightly known to be unacceptable behaviour. I'm not sure that in any cases it is all that helpful for particular clubs to be finger pointing on the issue at other clubs, but if it is to happen it would seem sensible for all clubs to equally apply the same thresholds to themselves. That also seems to be a trend clubs are for the most part following in making it explicitly clear when such behaviours are unacceptable, though of course there will always be 'whataboutery' on such issues.
What is less widely remarked upon on an incident-by-incident basis though is the much wider spread issue of Article 14 abuse sung about en masse from the stands and occassionally presented on banners and flags. At the risk of 'whataboutery' (which to be fair is probably justified, but this is actually just the best example I have given the case history on the song itself) the following song was also sung during the game discussed by the Rangers and Celtic statements:
pic.twitter.com/SoAti33XrV
There's a clear case precedent with UEFA on that song and its very audibly clear. It wasn't picked up by either of Celtic or Rangers in their statements on the game yet it is in clear breach of the same principles. But I don't mean this point as just about this one incident. It is far from the only unacceptable singing or chanting that both teams (and indeed many other teams in Scotland) engage in. Anything that insults the human dignity of person or group in such a way is simply not allowed and everyone knows it, but it is tolerated. Fierce rivalries simply do not need proscribed behaviours to be equally as noisy and boisterous.
The difference is, a bit of this kind of stuff (both directions) is generally quite good for business for both clubs in the long haul. It is disturbing that in this day and age picking and choosing which abuses are okay can be left to the whims of clubs when it is representing a Nation in showpiece events. It leaves the distinct impression when dealing with other clear racist issues that the clubs are really only posturing, kow-towing and influencing the narratives rather than serious about the issues themselves – and that the SFA is so behoven to the clubs that it is powerless to act as UEFA would have them.
That itself really is a worry.
31st Dec 2019


Jean, a trained aromatherapist, formed the company in 2002. After spending a couple of years developing her unique recipes, Jean took the brave step and opened her first shop in Bread Street in Penzance. After 18 months, building on the success, she moved in to Causewayhead, a beautiful street full of independent traders.
Jean is a person who loves nature and after spending most of her life in Surrey, finally escaped to Cornwall to live the life she loves.
The dream had been to do her therapies and live a simple life, but due to a neck injury found she was unable to do this. After being a lost soul for over a year, she was very lucky and soap found her. She always says it was a bit of a bumpy ride, but the end was perfect.
The start of the journey was stirring her soap in her kitchen, then upstairs in her first shop and now finally in the beautiful barn on her small holding. As the soap is stirred, Jean can look out and see her animals and the amazing view over the ocean to the Scilly Isles, on a clear day.


Feeling distracted at work? Are you on a project that requires a lot of mental effort and attention detail? Try this series to help bring your mind back to a clear and present state. This balancing series requires a lot of attention and awareness to the body and breath. The final pose, garudasana, draws all of the attention and energy inward. This series will leave you with more directions and energy to meet the tasks at hand. Now get after it!
Want Office Yoga classes at your workplace? Contact us for class options and scheduling.
Interested in teaching Office Yoga? Check out Office Yoga Teacher Training for more info!


In order to give the Paris Resistance a boost in motivation and try to score a shard for the OLW character, the crazy dutch wanted to help in the Tuesday graveyard shift. Like @Biezt said: "best stupid idea ever". The dutch traveled between 5 to almost 8 hours each way, for 15 minutes of help and 30 minutes of talk. Some even had to go straight to work after the trip. To get as many agents to come with us, we had to hire a 9 person van. However, not all of our people could pay because they also had the cost for the train to come to the pick up point. If you can help us finance this "best stupid idea ever" we would be very grateful, thanks!!
OP100: Ça saute sous la couette ! / Jump under the covers !
So sad we didn't make it.
Greetings from Russia! You're doing a great job!


Floral Shears 3.5 out of 5 based on 23 ratings.
to create a beautiful arrangement," shares Underwood. What should you have on hand? "A good pair of floral scissors or shears," she says. "A clean cut on your stems is crucial for having longer-lastin.
Flower arranging dates back hundreds of years in Japan, when the first schools were founded by Buddhist monks. This pair of slim ohkubo shears used in Japanese flower arranging is similar to standard ohkubo shears, except that the profile and handle are narrower.
Tamp down the soil around the trunk to keep it sturdy. Using clean pruning shears, cut poinsettia stems off the mother plant.
The Average Cost in Starting Up a Floral Shop – Some of the items you'll need include floral tape, floral wire, vases, floral foam, preservatives to keep the flowers fresh, cards and plastic card holders, tape, ribbon, scissors, knife, floral tape.
Jake Shears just keeps creepin'. Shot in New Orleans, where Shears resides, the clip shows the gay heartthrob performing in a mesh top at a nightclub before slipping into a floral church dress—royal w.
Azuma's floral palette comprises species with a dizzying.
The first order of the day's business is to "wake up" specimens.
Ask a Master Gardener: What the gardener on your list is wishing for – Some gardeners suggested garden shears, fruit-thinning shears or floral scissors for deadheading flowers or snipping herbs. Some like to keep their snips or pruner ready at hand in a holster. Many gar.


It's just a football chant; An Irish pun; The Mighty Boosh; Israel Folau; Mind your stage manners; My message is too complex; Post, respond or repost?; An interview with Lesley-Ann Jones; Music from Slim Chance Check out this episode!
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Episode #017: A Conversation with Ryan Blanck from the Hanger Clinic
Health, Amputees, Military, Medicine, Prosthetics
On this episode, we interview Ryan Blanck, a prosthetist with the Hanger Clinic. Ryan is the brains behind the ExoSym, a device that gives patients more agility and empowers them to participate in high-impact activities like running, jumping, skydiving, and even military redeployment. We became aware of Ryan through several of our Athenas and knew we had to interview him for the show. He shares his background, fascinating details about the ExoSym device, and how he helps a variety of individuals with challenging injuries. You'll be inspired by Ryan's story and his commitment to improving people's lives.
Ryan's journey of moving from the private sector to working with veterans.
The surprising story behind his development of the ExoSym, as well as details about how it works.
How the Hanger Clinic works with clients and helps them do a "reboot" as they learn to use their new devices.
Why Hanger's focus on treating a patient's pain, limitations, and weaknesses has positive psychological effects.
How the ExoSym is customized for each patient, no matter the area or type of injury (ankle, knee, tissue, or nerve damage, etc.).
Hanger's process for patient care after they are fitted with a new device.
Ryan's advice for jumping into something unknown.
Discover how the Hanger Clinic uses innovative technology for #orthotic and #prosthetic… Click To TweetRyan Blanck from the Hanger Clinic shares his story of serving patients with #prosthetics.… Click To TweetWhat is the @ExoSym, and how does it help #prothetic patients? Find out on this week's episode!… Click To Tweet
Photos and video of the ExoSym
Additional information about the ExoSym
Hanger.com
Connect with Hanger on Facebook
Follow Hanger on Twitter
Watch Hanger on YouTube
EmpoweringAmputees.org (the online social networking site for amputees)


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Miles Davis: Still Cool As Ever
by April Hanna
In the dictionary, "cool" and "Miles Davis" should be listed as synonyms.
Stanley Nelson Jr.'s 2019 documentary, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool tells a story of the late jazz legend's thrilling and tumultuous life, and the indelible influence he had on jazz as we know it. The Netflix-backed documentary delves into Davis's upbringing, love life, inner demons, and how all of these facets of himself ultimately inspired his distinct style of jazz music. May 26th marks Davis's birthday, and today, we take a trip back to New York City's late-night 52nd street jazz scene, where Davis and his trumpet hit the block swingin'.
Related: "John Coltrane: Revisiting A Jazz Improvisation Master"
Miles Davis was born in 1926 in East St. Louis, a place that the film describes as "racist to the bone." Growing up, he faced racial violence and injustices, despite coming from a wealthy, upper-class family. Later, it is revealed that a great deal of the racism and adversity he endured in his youth and early adulthood would heavily influence the emotional tones of some of his greatest compositions.
From the get-go, Davis was playing with some of the best-known jazz musicians of all time – but little did he know it. After high school, he quickly joined big bands with the likes of Charlie "Bird" Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, among many others. The documentary notes his reluctance to play trumpet at first, but his father was the one that pushed him to pursue the instrument. His televised big band gigs left him wanting more, and like many jazzheads at the time, he flocked to New York City's nightclub scene where jazz music was alive and well.
While in New York, he attended Julliard and played in as many clubs as he could. At this time, the city had a vibrant live music scene on 52nd street, with jazz music being played at every bar and dive, every single night. Eventually, he followed love interest and actress Juliette Greco to Paris and found himself surrounded by other intellectuals of his time that shared his innovative and creative spirit. However, his return to Jim Crow-era America left him longing for the opportunity and creative freedom he experienced in Paris, and soon after he developed a heroin addiction. His father made him return to his hometown in East St. Louis to sober up, leaving him with newfound hope that he could regain his footing in the jazz world. And thus, the Miles Davis Quintet and Kind Of Blue are born.
Related: "'Chill Music' Makes A Comeback In the Time of COVID"
One of the special aspects of Birth of the Cool as a film is the myriad musical legends and popular music critics and historians that are featured throughout. Their personal experiences with Davis that they share so candidly truly carry the storyline of Davis's life with flare. While delving into the Kind of Blue era, Nelson lets these musical giants speak for themselves on what Kind Of Blue meant to them.
"You can listen hundreds of times. It always has something new to say," shared music historian, critic, and journalist Ashley Kahn. "And that, for me, is the definition of a masterpiece."
"Miles had a way of playing that sounded like a stone skipping across a pond," described Davis's bandmate and jazz great Herbie Hancock. "He just touched on the waves."
Nelson also highlights many events in Davis's life that truly catapulted his career: his record deal with Columbia Records (described by Kahn as "the Tiffany of record labels" at the time,) his performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival, and the release of Someday My Prince Will Come, which featured his then-girlfriend and model Frances Taylor on the cover. Even after the mainstream success of Kind Of Blue, Davis continued to feature new and emerging jazz musicians to play in his bands, such as Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock.
Nelson also guides the story of Davis's life by noting prominent events from each year. The "1969" leg of the documentary focuses on how Davis wanted to stay hip with the times, as rock and roll and funk music were on the rise, and jazz was fading into the background. As a result, he began to change his look and sound – trading in his sharp suit and tie for swagger-infused numbers and albums like Bitches Brew. While the album was popular in both the funk and jazz scene, Davis began to spiral downward in his addiction more and more. While the pain that drove Davis to abuse drugs also drove the emotion behind much of his music, it derailed his musical career and personal relationships in many instances throughout his life. With the release of Bitches Brew in 1970, many began to see the effects that Davis's addiction had taken on his mind and body.
Davis passed away on September 28th, 1991, and remains one of the most impactful musicians in the history of jazz music. Birth of the Cool beautifully showcases the good, the bad, and the beautifulness of his musical collection. While the legend himself is gone, his music will continue to transcend time.
And in the words of Miles Davis himself that seem to resonate so strongly with our current times: "Living is an adventure and a challenge…if anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change."
-April Hanna
Photo: Miles Davis in 1959 (Getty Images)
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TagsApril Hanna • Birth of the Cool • bitches brew • Charlie Parker • CultureSonar • CultureSonarFeatured • Dizzy Gillespie • documentaries • herbie hancock • jazz • jazz trumpet • jazz trumpeters • Kind of Blue • Miles Davis • miles davis film • Netflix • Stanley Nelson Jr.
AboutApril Hanna
April Hanna is a recent graduate from Ramapo College of New Jersey majoring in communications and writing. Born in May (not April), she enjoys writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and biographical sketches. April is also an avid supporter of the Oxford comma. You can find April writing custom poetry on @venmopoems.
3 comments on "Miles Davis: Still Cool As Ever"
Great article! Definitely made me want to check out this documentary.
Johnny J. Blair
Thank you for writing that. He's one of my heroes.
Stephen Caldwell
This is a great start! More on our jazz greats!
One question: how could you publish this w no nod to Cobb. A huge loss…
Leave a Reply (and please be kind!) Cancel reply


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The Junior League of Kansas City, Missouri: women building better communities.
Front row panelists: Leslie Whitaker and Jerry Vaughan. Second row panelists: Sudy Hurst and Jinny McCoy.
This year's Spring Sustainer Meeting's main event was filled with insightful stories of the past, told by four amazingly funny and brilliant sustainers: Leslie Whitaker, Jerry Vaughan, Jinny McCoy and Sudy Hurst; with Lisa Nickel moderating the conversation.
Leslie explained that back then the League had a closed entrance process. It was an honor to join and the process and League activities were very secretive. Additionally, new member classes were about 20 people, contracts had to be signed to participate and everyone was required to work at the Thrift Shop, along with two other committees.
Jerry said, "I had to wait two years to have a rush party. I was told to wear white gloves and my very best dress. When I got in, my father sent me a dozen roses!
The second question, "What were the greatest issues you faced throughout your League career?" brought about insightful and thoughtful responses.
Jinny helped women who were in the workforce integrate with the League. When she arrived, women who worked outside the home were not allowed to vote or attend meetings. The League didn't even know what to call them. At one point they discussed referring to them as "Ladies of the Evening", but fortunately settled on "Evening Actives" before simply allowing women who work the same benefits as those who didn't.
The panel concluded with closing thoughts.
Our League is incredibly fortunate to have an incredible group of Sustainers who share a passion for service, pride in our community and commitment to building the potential of women.
This entry was posted on May 9, 2017 by JLKCMO in Community Impact.
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Back in the 60's, JFK make a bold proclimation that we were going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The details of exactly how this was going to happen were a bit sketchy, but having a big hairy audacious goal galvanized the innovation community into achieving something spectacular.
In today's world, one of the bottlenecks we have to innovation is the lack of software development talent. This is particularly acute in New York City, where you have several industries undergoing serious disruption, a critical mass of creativity from the cross pollination of ideas, and lots of capital. It's not so much that we have a shortage of talent as much as we have an overabundance of opportunities for innovation.
Let's add 250 new developers—roughly a little more than one at every new venture backed startup this year—to the startup workforce this year.
Are we talking about educating new developers?
Are we moving them from other workforces?
Are we moving them from other cities?
My sense is that it would be most interesting and most effective over the long term to think about educating new developers. Bringing skilled developers in from other cities or moving them over from banks is also helpful, but I think it's the kind of thing that skilled recruiters can also do a good job of. Plus, my fear is that there are barriers in those areas that may be difficult to scale—namely salary and lifestyle. If you've already got someone that optimized for making the most annual salary, joining a startup might be a difficult sell. Even if that's not what they were going for, if they're already on that track, it might be hard to get them to delever their life. Furthermore, if you have a developer who lives in Wisconsen, I really don't want to get stuck explaning to them why they can't have two spare bedrooms at a reasonable cost in the West Village.
Not only that, but addressing the existing developer pool doesn't really solve NYC's most major human capital barrier to innovation—that it's too easily to wind up mindlessly tracked into being an accountant with a CPA in a NYC school than it is to wind up a moble app developer. I see it all too often—that if you don't really know what you want to do, the default tracks that have the most suction pressure aimed at warm bodies are the least innovative fields. We send scores of college kids who have no clue what they want to do into dead-end jobs. At least if we empowered them with tools to compete in the most dynamic and growing fields, they'd have a greater chance of finding their niche. When you live in a world on the verge of a smart device in every pocket and a tablet in every home, you're doing young people a disservice to train them all to account for and pass dollars around in financial jobs instead of actually pushing the envelope in the innovation world.
I also suspect that if you exposed young people early to small teams of people trying to chance the world through technology, integrating them into the social graph of the innovation community, they'll be more resistant to hedge fund job offers down the line. I'd bet anything that fewer students that participate in hackNY—will wind up in finance jobs relative to their computer science peers who just follow existing recruiting tracks.
Identify what's possible: How many actual hours of learning, and with what resources, would it take to get a developer up to speed to be usable as an entry level employee?
Find the target market: I think I'd like to go after computer science and MIS grads who have prior inclination towards technology, but haven't yet gained enough applied training to be usable to a startup—taking someone from a few school JAVA projects or maybe even nothing more than IT management courses to Ruby proficiency.
Create a model for learning that is both effective and economically efficient.
Try not to reinvent the wheel—use the learnings from existing programs and try to leverage the work of those who have already attempted solutions to this problem.
Find a small group of technical advisors to oversee syllabus creation, program structure, etc.
I may not be technical myself—but after working with Jean Barmash on CTO School, I've learned a lot about finding the right technical people and enabling successful education by and for the more technically inclined innovation community. If you're interested in helping out, or have ideas around this, let me know.
And yes, I've heard of the NYCEDC's initiative to develop a new engineering and applied sciences campus. They're taking answers to an RFP from the very institutions that have failed to educate enough technical innovators in the first place—and then they're going to stick them in a big building somewhere. I figure by the time the NYCEDC gets through just the vendor selection process, we'll already have 2500 new fingers pounding away usable code. That's the lesson the city needs to learn from programs like hackNY. If you take a small group of the right people with limited financial resources, they can accomplish a lot more without a lot of structure than you can through an official government programs.
Speaking of hackNY, you might as whether or not what I'm trying to do here overlaps or relates to what Hilary, Chris, and Evan are doing. To me, I'm trying to increase the number of people in the top of the funnel—to get more students to switch from being book publishers to mobile developers and from accountants to Rubyists. hackNY takes the best of the students that have already made decision and connects them to the startup community for employment opportunities—bolstered by educational events. This is absolutely critical—and if I'm successful, I'd like to flood hackNY with applicants next summer.
At the same time, I've already promised the hackNY founders that I would help them get the necessary funding and resources to become a more sustainable entity. If folks like the NYCEDC have access to dollars aimed at growing the tech base of the city, they absolutely need to be funding programs like hackNY and even more importantly, getting out of their way. It's really important that the key institutions surrounding our community—the VCs, the big tech companies, the government, etc.—get behind the efforts that are native to the community itself, as opposed to recreating wheels.


The Data Transformation Services (DTS) tool that you are familiar with in SQL Server 2000 has gone through its own transformation in SQL Server 2005. DTS is no more, but instead with SQL Server 2005 you get a new transformation tool named SQL Server Integrated Services (SSIS). SSIS is much improved over the old DTS. As a first look at SQL Server 2005's SSIS transformation tool, let's get a look at the import and export wizard to transfer data to and from SQL Server. I will try to explain what new features are available in this new wizard, as well as what features have been removed.
There are a number of different ways to start the SSIS Import / Export wizard. You can start it a couple of ways using the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio. Or you can start it using the SQL Server Management Studio. Lastly, you can start it using an executable.
The last way to bring up the SSIS Import and Export wizard is by running a DTSWizard.exe program from the command prompt. If you take the default installation parameters then this executable can be found in the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn directory. Otherwise it will be where ever your installed the Binn directory while installing SQL Server 2005.
The flat file will contain the column headers on the first line, followed by the six records. Each column is delimited by a tab.
On this window, you identify the source of the data you want to import or export. So far, The SQL Server 2005 SSIS Import/Export wizard looks very similar to the DTS wizard provided in SQL Server 2000. One of the exciting new data sources supported by SSIS is an XML document.
As you can see this screen is a lot different then the old "Text File" data source screen of the SQL Server 2000 DTS Import/Export wizard. Note that once you enter a "File name" all the grayed out options become active. The initial pane displayed is the "General" pane. On this screen, you have the option to specify the locale and code page for your flat file if it is different from your local machine. You also have options to specify how the raw data is formatted. For my example, I will enter "C:\temp\RawData_Imp_Exp_Wizard.txt in the "File name" field and then I will check the "Column names in the first data row" checkbox, since my column headings are in the raw data.
With this pane, you can set the criteria you would like to use to suggest a data type. The wizard will then sample your data to determine the best data type for the selected column.