A Gift for the Village

Incredible time in the heartland of America - from Tom

2011-11-20T09:02:00.002-05:00

Thanks so much to the kind people at Roberts Park United Methodist Church in downtown Indianapolis. Friday, November 11 was a great day to be a local boy returning home. My high school, Lawrence North High, was brave to extend an invitation to talk to students from the theater, journalism, and video production programs there, so I delivered a short talk on my "career" in television and discussed the production of A Gift for the Village. The kids were great, and I admit to getting a little choked up just as I started my talk, and looked up at the crowd of about 200 students in the Little Theater, where I'd done quite a bit of singing and acting as a kid.

It was at that high school where I saw my first video camera: a thing so bulky that you had to wheel a cart around with it to contain the giant recorder and all of the electronics needed to make it work, and the arts teachers there taught me a lot of things I still use every day: how to speak extemporaneously, how to work as a part of a team to produce professional quality work, and how to evaluate your own work to continuously improve. I was honored that my best childhood friend John Klasing came to the talk, and he chimed in a few times with good suggestions of stories to share with the kids.

Then, that night we showed the film to a group of about 120 people, many of whom were old friends from my childhood church and high school pals and people I'd never met who heard about the show. I was honored that two Tibetans we'd met during my visit to Indy showed up to see the movie: they said that they only knew of 6 Tibetans in the whole city, and I hope they enjoyed seeing familiar scenes on the screen. The projection equipment and screen were provided by the people from the Heartland Film Festival, and the film looked great because of it.

Thanks to everyone who came out!
T.

Final Chance To See The Jane Lillian Vance Gallery

2011-11-03T08:02:00.003-04:00

On Friday, November 4, the gallery in downtown Roanoke that's been home to Jane's work will end the one year run of being open. In the past year hundreds of people have come through to see almost 100 of Jane's paintings on display, but now it's time to close the doors and take this artwork back into the world.

If you'd like one last chance to view the paintings and to hear Jane talk about them, come to the gallery at 309 First Street (near the intersection of 1st and Church) this Friday during the monthly Art by Night studio/gallery tour. To read more about the gallery, you can see this story about the opening from the Roanoke Times:

Southern Appalachian International Film Festival

2011-07-31T08:00:00.001-04:00

And more good news: We just got accepted by the Southern Appalachian International Film Festival in Kingsport, TN -
October 26, 2011 to November 04, 2011. We don't know our screening date yet, but would love to see our friends from Abingdon and Bristol find us there!

From Jane: a newspaper story about the Smithfield Show

2011-07-28T00:17:00.005-04:00

From the Smithfield Herald, June 26, 2011:
Community welcomes artist home

About 150 people attended the June 14 showing of A Gift for the Village. The award-winning documentary chronicles Vance's travels to Nepal to deliver her painting of a Tibetan leader and healer.

Some 150 people gathered June 14 at Johnston Community College to welcome home artist Jane Lillian Vance.
Vance, a Smithfield native who lives in Blacksburg, Va., came to the college to promote her painting exhibit and the award-winning documentary "A Gift for the Village."

Created by filmmakers Tom Landon and Jenna Swann, the documentary chronicles the delivery of Vance's painting "Amchi" to a Tibetan
village leader in Nepal. The film also serves as a bridge between the cultures of Nepal and the Western world.

Vance lived in Smithfield during her high school years, and many community members came out to view the documentary and to see the artist's paintings on display in the Frank Creech Art Gallery.

After the film showing and a question-and-answer session, guests observed 25 of Vance's oils on canvas. With vibrant colors and intricate detail, Vance tells stories of life in two communities on opposite sides of the globe.

"We are so grateful for this opportunity to showcase Jane Lillian Vance, her magnificent artwork and the fascinating documentary," said David Johnson, JCC president. "The turnout from our community to welcome Jane home was tremendous. Everyone was awestruck by the beauty of the evening."

Allison Elsee, a Smithfield native and friend of Vance's, was instrumental in bringing her to the college. She said she was thrilled by the local support for the event. "Jane's message of cultural harmony resonated with her hometown audience, who witnessed firsthand the wisdom that can come from visiting foreign lands and interacting with citizens of the world," Elsee said. "I have been overjoyed by the unanimously positive response from the packed house that attended our event. For Johnston Community College to host such an enriching evening demonstrates its dedication to global awareness."

Vance said she was humbled by the outpouring of support from the community that made such a lasting impression on her childhood. "It is so gratifying to be welcomed so graciously by my hometown and acknowledged by such important business and educational leaders," Vance said. "The Frank Creech Art Gallery is a wonderful testament to JCC's commitment to art and cultural education. I am proud to have my paintings hanging at such a beautiful space in my hometown."

Vance attended the College of William and Mary, Exeter University in Devon, England, and Virginia Tech. She teaches creative process in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech.

Southern Circuit Update

2011-07-27T08:05:00.005-04:00

Although it seems far away now, we are looking forward to screening the film as part of the Southern Circuit of Filmmakers Tour this coming spring. The tour is sponsored by an organization called South Arts based out of Atlanta.

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of South Arts. Southern Circuit screenings are funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Special support for Southern Circuit was provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. SouthArts selected 21 films this year and provides support for a filmmaker to travel with 6 other producer/directors to 5 cities in the south. The tours start in the fall and continue throughout the year. We were given a slot in March, and while we are still working out the details, we do know when and where the film will be shown.

Here are the dates:
March 17: St. Paddy's Day screening in Hapeville, GA (Atlanta suburb)
March 20: Madison, GA
March 22: South Carolina State U: Orangeburg, SC
March 23: Gainesville, GA
March 24: Manteo, NC

We don't know much about the other films yet, other than their names, but we'll be getting in touch with the other filmmakers as the dates get closer. Here are the other films we'll be traveling with:

1. A Bird of the Air: Margaret Whitten. Lyman (Jackson Hurst) is a loner whose job patrolling highways at night, aiding stranded motorists keeps him at a distance from other people. When a rare, highly talkative parrot flies into his home one day, Lyman needs to figure out where the bird comes from and tries to decode its often cryptic utterances. Enlisting the aid of Fiona (Rachel Nichols), an unconventional librarian who is as interested in Lymanʼs secrets as she is in the bird’s, the pair set off on a search that doesn’t always lead them where they think they’re going, but gradually leads them to one another.

2. Ahead of Time: Zeva Oelbaum. Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Ruth Gruber defied tradition from the moment she became the world’s youngest PhD at the age of 20 in 1931. She went on to become the eyes and conscience of the world as a journalist, photo-journalist and member of the Roosevelt administration. The first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic in 1935, Ruth traveled to Alaska for the U.S. Dept of Interior in 1942, and was chosen to escort 1000 Holocaust refugees to America in 1944. Ruth turns 100 years old in October 2011 and the film reveals that her trail-blazing spirit and moxie are still inspiring to this day.

3. Barbershop Punk: Sugimora Archer, Kristin Armfield: Is “The Man” controlling the vertical, the horizontal, and the channel you’ll be on? In a privatized American Internet, is big business “Big Brother” or does the free market protect and serve the needs of the average citizen with its invisible hand? With the simple act of swapping files, barbershop quartet baritone Robb Topolski finds himself at ground zero of a landmark case whose outcome will affect the rights of every American citizen.

4. You Don't Know What I Got: Linda Duvoisin. Life. Love. Passion. Five women lay their heart and soul on the line: singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco, activist/poet Linda Finney, police officer Julie Brunzell, artist/architect Myrtle Stedman and housekeeper Jimmie Woodruff. Through a tapestry of homespun stories, confessions, advice, music and poetry, we discover a cross-section of American women with an extraordinary passion for life.

5. Louder Than A Bomb: Greg Jacobs and John Siskel. “Louder Than a Bomb” is a film about passion, competition, teamwork, and trust. It’s about the joy of being young and the pain of growing up. It’s about speaking out, making noise, and finding your voice…it also just happens to be about poetry.
If you live nearby or know someone who does, mark your calendars.

The Golden Kahunas

2011-04-10T09:13:00.002-04:00

A Gift for the Village has been awarded a Gold Kahuna Award in the category of feature length documentaries by the Honolulu Film Awards. The award will be presented on May 7 in Waikiki. Unfortunately we won't be there, but send our thanks for the award and regrets that we can't be there to collect it with a fancy drink with an umbrella in hand.

Wow!

2011-03-12T09:39:00.003-05:00

Since we uploaded the trailer for the film, it has been visited 12,800+ times by people from 75 countries, including Jordan, Iran, India and more. We love it when you watch it and pass on the link to friends.

Now an Award Winning Film!

2011-03-01T09:27:00.005-05:00

We are super pleased to be able to say that A Gift for the Village is now an award winning film! At the Virginia Indie Film Festival in Richmond, VA last weekend the film won Best Documentary and People's Choice (documentary) to sweep the awards in our category.

While we're grateful for the prize money which will offset some of our festival travel budget, we're most gratified that an audience who knew nothing about our film and project recognized it as best in show. Thanks to the Virginia Film Office for sponsoring this great event, and to all of the people who came out on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to watch documentaries and short films.

On Friday of the same weekend Jenna and Jane traveled to Huntington, WV to be present for a screening of the film at the Appalachian Film Festival, held in a beautifully restored theater there. The audience was most appreciative and the hospitality was grand, though they left soon after the screening to make it to Richmond in time for the other festival on Saturday. All told they drove 19 hours over the weekend.

A Story from the Roanoke Sentinel

2011-02-17T10:09:00.002-05:00

Roanoke has a small weekly paper called the Sentinel, and they did a story on Jane's gallery opening. While it has a few small factual errors (Tom was never the Director of Education at Blue Ridge PBS, though his boss was) we appreciate the kind coverage.
Read the story here.

Gallery Opening!

2011-01-26T08:55:00.001-05:00

You are all cordially invited to the grand opening of The Jane Lillian Vance Gallery on Thursday, Feb. 3 from 5 - 9 p.m. 309 1st St. (Between Kirk and Church ), Roanoke, VA. Approximately 100 paintings, including several brand new ones.

Appalachian Film Festival says YES!

2011-01-17T11:24:00.001-05:00

We just got word that A Gift for the Village will be screened at the Appalachian Film Festival in Huntington, WV the weekend of February 25-26. Our first out of state acceptance!

Community through film

2011-01-16T18:29:00.003-05:00

Today we showed the film to a new group of people in Blacksburg. About 30 folks stayed after the Quaker Meeting at the fine meeting house on Mt. Tabor Road to share the experience of watching the film. Afterward, Jane and I talked over lunch about what it feels like to sit in an audience and watch your work projected in front of others.

For me, each time I see the film I find myself criticizing small things in my head - little things that I might like to fix, color I'd like to correct, an audio level that I might want to make a little louder or softer in a few spots. But even more than looking at "mistakes" I catch myself wondering about the hundreds of things that fell into place during the making of the film. My favorite shot? It's either the hummingbird that appears as if on cue to drink from the flowers over Jane's shoulder during her first "interview" appearance in the film, or a low angle shot of goats coming toward the camera while I crouched down in front of them. Or maybe the cloth blowing in the breeze in the door of a monastery, or a shot Jenna got that pans down from the Phadmasambhava cave in Lo that shows just how treacherous the walk was, or the serendipity of capturing a bullseye during the archery scene...

But I digress. What I really want to say is that I'm grateful for the chance to watch the film in the company of others. We spent so much time huddled at our computers working on the film that to share it with others is a real treat. To hear people laugh, or gasp, or sob while watching is a rare chance in this life for affirmation that you've done a good job, and I think it will be awhile before we tire of watching this film in the company of friends. In many respects I think THIS film is especially suited to communal viewing. After all, some of its first screenings were projected on monastery walls in the restricted region of Lo, in Upper Mustang in Nepal, followed by intimate screenings at the Kathmandu residence of the American Ambassador to Nepal and an impromptu showing on the side of my brother's house in Vermont the night before his wedding.

Now, that said, we have just added a little "buy now" button to the blog, which allows you to purchase a copy of A Gift for the Village using your credit card and having it shipped anywhere in the US. We hope that if you DO elect to own a copy of our film, you'll share it with friends and talk about it after, just as we continue to do in screenings.
T.

Virginia Indie Film Festival

2011-01-07T17:23:00.005-05:00

We found out today that A Gift for the Village has been selected to be screened during the Virginia Indie Film Festival at the beautiful and historic Byrd Theater in Carytown in Richmond. We don't know the exact time yet, but the dates are February 26 and 27, 2011, with our film screening sometime during the afternoon of the 26th. If you are in or near Richmond, we hope you'll come.

We'll soon also have news of a show of over 70 paintings by Jane Vance at a gallery space in Roanoke, so stay tuned. The gallery will be open to the public on the evening of February 3, details to follow.

An Essay by Leah Weisman

2010-11-20T13:04:00.003-05:00

Leah Weisman is one of the students this semester in Jane's class called The Creative Process, and Leah wrote this essay about her teacher.

Bridging Cultures: Blacksburg and the Diaspora of Tibet

Leah Weisman

Jane Vance likes to quote Georgia O’Keeffe. “Fill a space in a beautiful way,” she always says. And she does. Vance is bewitched by detail, and that makes her art, well, bewitching.

Vance is an adjunct professor of The Creative Process at Virginia Tech, among many other activities. She also spends her days working with special needs middle schoolers. So why did a small Nepali village throw this Blacksburg local such an extravagant, two-day celebration?

Her art. For over twenty years, South Asian cultures enchanted Vance. After developing a close relationship with Tsampa Ngawang Lama, a Buddhist monk, and housing him as a guest professor for her class, the lama agreed to have Vance paint his lineage portrait. This Amchi portrait has major significance for Tibetan Buddhists.

Vance is the first female westerner to produce art of this religious worth.

“The painting is a lineage portrait, which means it places an individual in his historical context. It explains how he is an encyclopedic representative of his culture’s traditions,” explained Vance.

It took Vance 10 months to complete the portrait. She scrupulously painted Tsampa Ngawang’s story of his visit to Virginia Tech, and his importance in his own culture in both Tibetan and English. The entire canvas, seven and a half feet tall by six and a half feet wide, is completely covered in vibrant oil paint. With its silk brocade frame, it became 13 and a half by nine and a half feet. Tsampa Ngawang Lama sits cross-legged in the middle, surrounded by prayers, gods, swirls of color, and flowers of both Tibet and Southwest Virginia.

“In all the Tibetan paintings before this one, the flowers were either lotuses or chrysanthemums. But for the first time this hybrid painting shows flowers from our Appalachian woods, from wild bird-on-the-wing to wisteria to apple blossoms, and many garden flowers as well. This was the story of a man making a bridge between his Asian, Himalayan village and our Appalachian village so I bridged with flowers as well as with the story,” Vance said.

In June, 2007, Vance and her team traveled 13,000 miles, riding rickety planes and trekking over a hundred miles through the Himalayas, with the large, fragile portrait. The festival was in western Nepal, in a remote region called Mustang.

“To travel to Tsampa’s village requires 13,000 miles and three flights before the long walk. You travel from jungle to moonscape in the remote western Nepal,” said Vance.

A Gift for the Village, a documentary about Vance’s journey to Nepal to deliver the artwork, hopes to bring awareness to the United States about the difficult situation Tibetans have been in since the 1950’s.

For thousands of years, Tibet was peopled with peace-loving Buddhists. High up in the Himalayas, this country was untouched by other cultures for a very long time. In 1950, after the Communist revolution, China invaded Tibet. Worshipping peace, war was not a language the Tibetans understood, and they crumpled under the unrelenting People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Since then, Tibetans have been persecuted and tortured. The Dalai Lama, the religious and political leader of Tibet, hasn’t been able to return safely to his own land since 1959.

Millions of Tibetans have died because of the Chinese invasion. Tens of thousands of others live outside the borders of their homeland.

“Tibetans have been called the most successful exiles in the world. They maintain their traditions of wisdom and compassion. His Holiness often reminds us that the hope for Tibet is really the responsibility of the free peoples of this world. The first step westerners can take is to learn the history of Tibet.”

Jane on the radio!

2010-11-05T07:59:00.003-04:00

As we prepare to head off to the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville this weekend, we're happy to post a link to Jane's recent interview on 101.5 The Music Place in Roanoke, which originally aired last weekend.

Link to the interview

If you have trouble with the link -- go to the main page of the 1015themusicplace.com website -- a link to the show appears on the bottom left column. The list of all October Shows is under the photo of Bruce with the megaphone....so scroll down a bit and you'll see us.

Jane's comments at the University of Virginia regarding Morgan Harrington

2010-10-21T11:13:00.009-04:00

My name is Jane Lillian Vance.

On behalf of my film team, let me express our thanks to the University of Virginia, in particular to Pat Lampkin, who reached out to us while we were still in Kathmandu this past summer.

Pat; Dan, Gil, and Alex; my film team; my own two children Iris and Emerson who are both here at UVa, David; and assembled guests: thank you all for being here today.

I am here, because of my fortune to have been Morgan Harrington's teacher.

I taught Morgan a course offered through Virginia Tech's Department of Religion and Culture, called The Creative Process.

In my course, I suggest to my students that love and loss are the two tributaries of the creative impulse--that cherishing causes the sensual hieroglyphics of generosity, and that grieving causes the agonized braille of memorial.

Morgan, who was expressive, conceptual, artistic--brilliant--sat with perfect front-row posture before these ideas.

Allow me to share with you a little about this young woman, who is being honored today, from when she was my student.

In The Creative Process, after reading Gita Mehta's A River Sutra, Morgan wrote about the psychological clash of old village India and cyberspace. She concluded that, especially if you view your life as a pilgrimage, it is poisonous to repudiate your past. She loved, instead, Walt Whitman's idea of synthesis: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large--I contain multitudes.

Morgan collaged for me about the national bruise inflicted by Hurricane Katrina and about New Orleans' brave, creative community responses to its unprecedented damage. She relished Truman Capote's vignettes in Music for Chameleons, and loved Capote's designation of fireworks--and conversation--as his favorite art forms. She sparked when I said there doesn't need to be much difference between the two.

In my course, Morgan read a book called The Voice That Remembers, written by a Tibetan woman who endured nearly three decades of degradation and torture in labor camps. Morgan learned why His Holiness the Dalai Lama believes that Tibetan Buddhism is so relevant to the West, as a spiritual technology, not a religion; a technology of mind, compatible with any faith, or any culture.

Morgan designed a Tibetan-style shrine to enfold her own core values and nascent aspirations. Allow me to quote from Morgan's accompanying essay: she wrote--

"One of the central objects of my shrine is a huge, comfy chair that my Dad sits in every night to finish his work from the office. All throughout my youth I would jump up on his lap to share this chair, and nudge his pile of never-ending work aside with grass-stained toes. He would never shove me off and continue work, as some adults might have done. Instead, he always took the extra minutes to cuddle, and show that he loved me, despite all of his expectations at work.

" I balanced an incense burner near the bottom of my shrine to symbolize spirituality and larger than life ideals that I struggle to accept. My maternal grandparents helped shape who I am because they raised the most important person in my life, my mother--a lock of her strawberry blonde hair is nestled into the deep center of my [imagined] shrine as the relic because I love
her so much and strive to be more like her. I look to my mom as a spiritual example because she is so open-minded. She is a very spiritual person and I see how this trust enriches her life, so I plan to spend more time exploring higher powers and positive energies instead of focusing on things that are insignificant in comparison. It is easy to get in a monotonous routine and
forget about the changes that I need to make in my life. With these objects places on my shrine, I have a higher likelihood of succeeding in these changes because the reminders will be ever-present."

As it happens, Morgan appears, breifly, three times in the film you are about to see. We did not edit her in. She was simply there, in our story, standing right beside Amchi Tsampa, the subject of our film when he visited our Virginia Tech Creative Process class during my semester with Morgan. And again, there was Morgan, at my home, with her classmates, as Jenna Swann filmed. You will see Morgan there for a moment, on my living room floor. She is the student who
is smiling.

Morgan would have traveled with my film team and me this past summer for the world premiere of our film in Nepal. She wanted to go trek to meet the people with the fierce and gentle spiritual technology we studied. She told me that she wanted this experience because she was going to become a teacher.

I hope you enjoy our documentary. Morgan saw parts of it in early drafts. Our co-producers Jenna Swann and Tom Landon have edited for years to bring you this story.

And now it is my privilege to present our narrator, Lisa Mullins, whose incredible voice most of you know from her brilliant Public Radio International work. Lisa, will you please do us the honor of presenting A Gift for the Village, which is dedicated--from my heart--to my front-row girl, my teacher, Morgan Harrington.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you

2010-09-22T10:20:00.002-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came out on September 16 for the premiere at the Taubman. Words can't really express how wonderful it was to see the film on the big screen in that beautiful auditorium, but more amazing were the shining faces of so many people who have helped this project come to fruition.

The list of people to thank is too long and fraught with the possibility of leaving someone off of it, but thanks to Heather Anderson and the Taubman, to Stephanie Koehler for helping in every way, to Andrew and Tammy for manning the merchandise table, to Ella and Mary and Will for being most excellent ticket takers, to Beth and Reba for handling the tickets, to the security guard who pointed everyone in the right direction, to John and Bruce for taking pictures, to Ron Rordam who read the comments of the American Ambassador at the reception, to Gil Harrington for bringing 20 people to see the film, to our families for making the journey to see the film, the list could go on and on and on.

We hope that those of you who were unable to make it might be able to come to one of our upcoming screenings.
T.

About Things Receding and Not Receding, September 1, from Jane

2010-09-01T18:41:00.011-04:00

Hi Friends, Ten years ago this autumn, Jenna and I were preparing to travel to India and Nepal together. It was an exciting time. Just before we left, Jenna won The McGlothlin Award for Teaching Excellence. We gave a presentation at Price's Fork Elementary School about the camels and fortress cities of Rajasthan, India, and about the remote Himalayas of western Nepal--places Jenna was going to experience for the first time. We promised to send post cards, write blogs when we found working computers, and take photographs. We both kept more personal journals, too, which we collaged and illustrated. I wanted to have a record for my own two children to describe what drew their Mom to such far-flung places--and not just to ANY far-flung places. South Asia had a strong pull, a calling. And although it was a relatively new tool for her, just before we left, Jenna also packed a videocamera.

I have titled my blog entry here to allude to my friend Suzi Gablik's most recent blog entry on her site, www.virgilspeaks.blogspot.com, which she has titled, About Things Standing and Not Standing. Take a look: all in the same collaged stew, Suzi collects the grand old chestnut tree out Anne Frank's window (which recently fell to fungal disease), an eerie-spooky broom that likes to stand upright on its own in the middle of a haunted boiler room (you'll see), Sarah Palin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Glenn Beck, President Obama, and the American (or human?) assumption that better times are ahead.

Autumn (or April, the cruelest month, or When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd--writers face Suzi's question about what stands and what does not stand in every season) is certainly one natural time to see the evergreen and the deciduous, the perennial and the annual, the possible and the lost, the hibernating and the dead.

Along with my friend Jenna, in this decade, I saw Amchi Tsampa, the extraordinary man whose lineage painting I was to make, come to
America for the first time. I saw him see September 11th happen on American television. I have seen the only existing photographs of the Dalai Lama's entire family--when he was just a little guy, before he was officially revealed as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama, more than seventy years ago--published for the first time--from a long-lost roll of film I found in Sedona, Arizona. I have walked incredibly difficult miles at extreme altitudes to have a conversation with an old King. I have seen many of the best treasures of what remains of old Tibet. I have been as rich as a human can be with love and friendship. My daughter Iris is in her third year of medical school at UVa. Five years ago this week she spent one semester at Virginia Tech, here with me, as her Tulane University spluttered and gasped to reopen after Hurricane Katrina drowned and broke people, pets, and property. My son Emerson is in his first semester of UVa's law school. He spent July with our film team and with me, in Nepal, revisiting the shrines, rickshaws, gardens, and mountains of his childhood. My children have supported A Gift for the Village at every stage of our work. And like everyone who reads this paragraph, I have also suffered. I have been afraid. I have seen some beautiful things recede.

But this month, let the red fireflies of the Annapurna Himalayan night skies, and the purple, gold, and green of Mardi Gras, and the chartreuse and magenta and mango of the carved flowers and candles on Suzi Gablik's dining room table, and the pink of my Strawberry Buddha painting, and the curries-burgundies-bluegreys & shell whites of the rock-silt pigment we collected this summer in Upper Mustang--let ALL the colors in this world know that our film is completed; Jenna Swann and Tom Landon and I have not missed ONE of them in A Gift for the Village. Every color stands.

My film team is so incredible. Thank you, Jenna. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Lisa Mullins, for letting your absolutely gorgeous voice bring our script to life. Thank you, Ambassador and Mrs. DeLisi for celebrating our work in Nepal. Thank you, Gil and Dan Harrington, for allowing me to carry Morgan's ashes to sacred places.

Thanks to all of you who continue to express interest in our work, and who will be joining us on the evening of September 16th at The Taubman Museum in Roanoke, for the American Premiere of our documentary, A Gift for the Village. Ten years fit into one hour! So please, no blinking allowed.

I look forward to speaking about our work six days before the Premiere, at noon, on Friday, September 10th, in the Taubman Museum, as part of their Box Lunch series. Please join me there.

So much will never recede. So much does stand. Jane

Wild Pre-Dawn Parties, from Jane, August 9th

2010-08-09T05:19:00.004-04:00

Hi Friends, Not one of our bodies has caught up to Eastern Standard Time. No wonder. We hurtle at 36,000 feet for 15 hours over Russia, and then Poland, and finally Greenland, and Canada, and then cross into American air space, and stagger into a line of New Jersey Customs Officers at 4:30 a.m., who ask, Have you been on a farm? No, I answer, but my mind thinks, The whole of western Nepal is a farm, and the luckier parts of the Kathmandu Valley as well, though Sushma Joshi is right that the Valley's rivers are choking on plastic. I have been within spitting distance of yaks and monkeys, water buffalo and black cobras, rabid dogs and yarchen gonpo (the fabled summer grass/winter worm--or is it the other way around?--the seemingly dual plant/animal that Tibetans drop into their moonshine).

Next question: Was I there, in Nepal, on business? No, I answer again, but if you want to talk about spiritual profits, then yes. Am I carrying any food into the country? I 'fess up. Yes, I stammer, and unzip my luggage to show my plastic-sealed Haldiram's bhujia. "That's okay," he concedes, but he misses by thousands of miles. A bag of bhujia is the life of my pre-dawn parties since I've been back. Awake at 4 a.m.? No problem. Put on the kettle to make my first cups of Darjeeling tea, and unzip the bhujia. It's called Indian and Nepali junk food, but please: its crunchy vermicelli-tiny bits of chick pea flour squiggle, with salt and chili powder. If Paul Simon had traveled to Nepal, he would have written the song about Bhujia instead of Kodachrome. Same tune, and same refrain: Please don't take my bhujia away. Bhujia is what Jenna and I took to the Ambassador and his wife when we went for dinner on our final night in Nepal. Jenna defended our choice as we handed over a giant bag of bhujia. "No," the Ambassador intervened. "This stuff is great."

So now (this is my wild pre-dawn party) I sit in a house full of cats and paintings and objects collected since my first travels to south Asia in 1985. I walk around the yard (even before it is light outside--I want to hear the shy wood thrushes). Tall phlox is the flower of the week, taller than I am, with clusters of Pepto Bismol pink and lavender-pink blossoms that look spectacular against my turquoise house. Their perfume is like a sweet black pepper, especially in the dark.

On my lap is Mary, my oldest cat, who lived through a horrible injury just before I traveled in June, and who had to have stints and antibiotics while I was away. Only because my friends Jessica and Barbara Vance and Marlene Benson, who care for the cats while I am away--only because these women have absolute compassion for life--could my old friend Mary live for us to sit together again. Mary is not going to live long--she is skeletal. But her face and her eyes are bright. And she is purring.

I have just turned the calendar page to August. I have a great Frida Kahlo calendar, and this month, the painting is one of her zigzag cut watermelons, into one of whose drenched pink insides is written, Viva la vida. Long live life.

That's the motto for my wild pre-dawn parties from now on. Whenever I may have the chance again to travel and return, to be charged as I am now with the warp of circumscribing the planet, whenever, from now on, I feel home and far from home, Frida's invocation will be my banner. Long live life. And let's toast also (lift your cup of Darjeeling with mine) to what Buddha said: As you walk and eat and travel, be wherever you are; otherwise, you will miss most of your own life.

We DO miss Nepal already. Scott and Leija DeLisi, our new friends--what an inspiring last evening with you. We miss you. And all of our old friends, weeping with us at the airport, we miss you.

But let's see what new happinesses we can grow here, now, like a crop: what new paintings, and what other new reasons for wild pre-dawn parties like mine today, right now. Here are the seeds and the supplies I have: my family, my friends, my animals, my gardens, my woods, my students, my paintings, and one more unsiezed bag of bhujia. Viva la vida. Jane

2010-08-07T05:33:00.000-04:00

2010-08-07T05:22:00.003-04:00

2010-08-07T05:15:00.001-04:00

2010-08-07T05:11:00.000-04:00

2010-08-07T05:08:00.001-04:00

2010-08-07T05:03:00.001-04:00

Saying goodbyes and anticipating hellos

2010-08-05T00:55:00.002-04:00

We will be heading to the airport in a couple of hours. Yesterday we walked around Kathmandu within the 2-3 block radius around the Guest House that we have roamed multiple times a day for 12 days now. Yes, we could walk further, but within those blocks lies everything in the world you can imagine that you would ever need to buy. There must be dozens of jewelry shops, shops that sell pashima wool (like our friend Sunil), thankas, wood carvings, brass statues, embroidered rugs and tapestries, groceries, books, clothes and tailor shops.
We went by our friend Firdoz's gem shop to say goodbye and promise to keep in touch. He especially wants Mary and Ella to email his children so they can remember each other and maybe see each other again. We stopped in the photo shop where our friend Rajif, who has printed hundreds of photos for us, has asked us about our names, jobs, families and insisted we come say goodbye before we leave. Even the street people, as I call them, who walk around and approach you with their musical instruments or little purses, or the rickshaw drivers who ask you for the 10th time if you want a ride, know how many days we have left because every day they ask. I'm trying to resist the urge to buy those little things that I have eyed for days. Things I don't really need, but just like. Feeding Mary and Ella here is costing me enough rupees per day, so I have tried to be conservative, although you won't believe me when you see some of the things I bring home :)
The shop owners who called out to us insistently the first few days to come into their shop, "Please come look, looking is free, Madam!", now just nod politely or say "Namaste!" when we pass. The ones who have not been too pushy, who have treated us like guests and not like tourists, I have tried to at least visit their shops and support them a bit.
I logged on this morning, our last morning, to do a last minute email check to be sure nothing has changed with flights or our DC pickup. I found emails from friends wishing us a safe journey home. I read the sweetest comments ever on our blog or on Facebook. Now I'm getting all emotional, darn it, to see you all. I will refrain from getting all sappy, except to say thanks. Your time reading and commenting, your thoughts and prayer....it means everything.
See you soon.
Reba

from Jane, August 4th: Last full day in Kathmandu

2010-08-03T22:27:00.004-04:00

Hi Friends, I should say, I THINK it is our last full day in Kathmandu.

It's the morning of the 4th in Kathmandu, and the evening of the 3rd in Blacksburg, and as yet we have no printed tickets (e-ticketing makes me anxious), but today, the gods and the electricity willing, we will see actual plane tickets for tomorrow afternoon's flight to Delhi, and then onward home.

We have packing to do.

And goodbyes. To our friends, Pema Dhoka and Tenjin Thakuri, Mr. Bhatt and Yusef, to Sunil and Sarita, to Firdoze, to Narayan, to our new English friend, Tracy Litterick, on her way to Tibet, to Mingma Sherpa, and to all of our old friends at the Kathmandu Guest House, from the CEO, Rajan Sakya, to the housekeepers and the amazing gardener, to the tame supermodel-thin cats who are allowed to sleep in the garden in exchange for ratting duties.

Once we get to Delhi, we also have to say goodbye to Ashleigh Shepherd and to Mika Maloney (who returned to Kathmandu last night,
having spent glorious days in Pokhara, after her trek around the full circuit of the Annapurna; Moms and Dads, both Ashleigh and Mika look glamorous and glowing). We will miss them both terribly, but both are on their way to India for their first visits. They go with our admiration and love. Our summer was richer for their presence, and I am confident that their experience of Nepal will bloom into greater and greater
meaning, once they return to Virginia.

I hope so. My son, Emerson, about to start law school at UVa, says that his weeks with us at the beginning of this trip are definitely blooming for him. My daughter Iris, in med school at UVa, who has so sweetly followed every move and twitch of this trip, and who these
places when she was a child, still feels the exquisite effects of knowing Nepal.

Mary and Ella Hoffman, although they are only 12 and 8, have grown into capable world travelers in these six weeks, and, thanks to their amazing Mom's brilliant job mothering AND sharing her kids, Mary and Ella already plan their own returns.

We have already said our goodbyes to Tsampa and his family--they are all in Jomsom now, out west, in the high country--a world away. They will spend the day pitting apricots, and harvesting apples from Tsampa's orchard in Dhumpa.

Thank goodness it isn't easy to bring Nepali cats--and dogs--back to Virginia. I would be in real trouble.

Tonight, Jenna and I are invited back to His Excellency Ambassador Scott DeLisi's home, for a private, casual dinner with him and his wife Leija. How fortunate to have their company as a send-off. We liked them so much at the gala event they hosted to show A Gift for the Village to 52 amazing people this past Saturday evening. We are honored.

There is no re-capping a trip like this, but it is worth recalling that at the beginning of our Summer 2010 in Nepal, our hopes were to have the film shown in Kathmandu--which we have done, with great success; we didn't know back in June that our documentary would show in the Ambassador's home, as well as at the incredible Indigo Gallery, thanks to director/curator/artistic powerhouse of Nepal, James Giambrone, as well as in the Kathmandu Guest House Film Hall.

We had the dream of walking our film 155 miles, to show the film to the 25th hereditary King of Lo. We didn't know back in June that in fact the film would first have a private audience first with the Prince's nephew, our friend Raju Bista, in the beautiful Upper Mustang village of Ghemi, who is Pema Dhoka's brother-in-law, and then a private audience screening with the King, the Prince, and the Princess.

And then, on July 17 evening, with explicit royal permission and request, a screening indeed on the Palace adobe outer wall, for the village of Lo.

I must say that the generator and the sound system were perfect there, and that, seeing our film show in huge and perfect focus on that dark evening, on the medieval wall of Lo Monthang's Palace, at the request of King Jigme Palwar Bista, was a feeling I will never forget.

Our audience that night included villagers, the few other trekkers who had made it to Lo, and our incredible friend Luigi Fieni, the head of restoration for the American Himalayan Foundation, who has spent twelve years, so far, restoring the oldest giant temple in Lo, so important in part because there are several fresco Tibetan deities painted there that are to be found nowhere else in the world.

The next morning, Jenna filmed a rooftop conversation between Luigi and me, one of our favorite hours in Nepal. What impressed youa bout the film, we asked, and Luigi was extremely supportive. My compliment from him was that what surprised him, seeing a Gift for the Village and my commitment to Tibetan art and its ideas was, "Ahh, here is a Lady Luigi."

Such a beautiful Italian man, and such a charismatic compliment. He laughed hard when I rejoined, "Ahh, you meant to say, here (pointing to him) is a Gentleman Jane."

Luigi and Jenna and I hope to collaborate on a show--we double-promised to do so. His photographs, with my paintings, with Jenna's videography documenting, and to some extent creating, the effects of this blend. I can't wait.

I never want to end a trip to Nepal without thanking Jenna, my best friend and travel partner since 1999. I said, at the end of our 2007 trip, that Jenna continues to amaze me. She still does.

Jenna and Tracy (from Sheffield, England) went mountain-biking with our guide Narayan yesterday--an epic adventure that included riding on top of a crazy bus, WITH their bikes, over seriously bumpy roads and on cliff edges, bouncing and screaming and laughing, ducking powerlines and being slapped by tree limbs--let alone the hour of riding IN Kathmandu traffic, to Bhaktapur, sucking diesel smoke and eating grit. The bikes, Tracy added, didn't really have brakes. But they went up to Nagarkot, and rode down, and lived to tell the story. They probably went 25 miles, each safe rotation of their wheels a miracle.

Jenna came back grinning from the adventure. One day, when she turns 108 (lucky Buddhist number) and she does leave this earth, look for her as a cloud shaped like a superfit woman riding a superslick mountain bike (a supercool videocamera strapped to her supermuscular back).

And, once you have spotted her, just TRY to clock the speed with which that beautiful cloud--unlike all the other clouds in the sky, who have all accepted preconceptions about the limited things a cloud can do--just TRY to clock the speed, or measure the grace--as that Jenna-form takes off.

Many thanks to all of you who have followed our trip.

I give a talk at The Taubman Museum, part of their midday Lunchbox Series, a few days before our film premiere on the evening of September 16th. Tom Landon will help post (please, Tom!) the time and date of that presentation. I have worked on it in the last few days in Kathmandu, and feel pleased with finished essay.

Tashi deleg and orche to all of our friends and family here and back home. So so so so la! Victory to the gods. Victory over the causes of suffering. Victory to the wisdom and compassion in the human heart. Jane

Dinner with Nepali friends, by Reba

2010-08-01T23:38:00.005-04:00

It's Monday, and we have only three full days left here in Kathmandu. In the last few days, we have had the pleasure of having meals with friends in their homes. First, Sunil and Sarita hosted us again, and this time we got to meet their new granddaughter. Their son Saroj and his wife Arun live with them, and they welcomed a new baby just two weeks ago. She is absolutely perfect, although she was not impressed that there was a houseful of Americans oooh-ing and aaahing over her....she slept the whole time we were there. As usual, Sarita fixed a LOT of food, and they also had Jane a birthday cake.
Next we were invited to the home of Firdos, who runs the Gem Empire store where Mary and Ella got beautiful necklaces. Mary's is a black opal set with a green amethyst, Ella chose a gorgeous tiger-eye. Firdos has many finished pieces, but Mary and Ella sat down and went through his collection of loose stones and chose their favorites (within a reasonable price range) and he put them in silver settings.
We walked with Firdos to his home after he closed his shop one evening, and as we entered his home, his mother was doing her evening prayers on the kitchen floor. They are Muslim, and it was quite the culteral experience for all of us. We entered a room and sat on the floor, and Firdos brought us the food prepared by his wife. He told us that he would not be eating with us, but would eat later with the family. His 6 year old son, Aaman, ate with us. He was studying English in school and could understand our questions, and answered in very good English. He also had some well-rehearsed speeches that he recited for us. Atiya is Firdos' 8 year old daughter who was too shy to interact with us, although she watched and listened.
Firdos' parents and brother also live there, and we had an audience while we ate. It was odd to me, being invited to dinner but not eating with our hosts. I have no experience and very little knowledge of the Muslim faith and customs, but I felt so welcomed and comfortable. I'm not sure if our limited contact with his wife was a cultural thing or whether it was due to her inability to talk with us, but his mother, who also did not speak English, came in and sat down with us. Several times she fussed at us through Firdos that we were not eating enough.
Finally, yesterday we went to our upper Mustang guide Narayan's home. His wife delivered their second child, a son, just 10 days ago while we were returning from our trek. They share their home with Narayan's brother who is an artist, and his sister, who lost her husband a year ago and has a young daughter. Juice first, then tea, then french fries and vegetable pokura, then finally dhal batt with rice and greens. Then tea again. We were there for four hours, holding the baby and playing with his smart 5 year old daughter, Nikita, who loved Ella.
We are so lucky. We are guests here, and like other tourists have visited the popular sites, eaten in the restaurants and stayed in guest houses. But I wonder how many visitors to Nepal get invited into homes for meals and are treated like family? Mary and Ella have had very rich experiences and interactions here, and have been very well recieved. I hope the impression we have left is a favorable one.
In all three Nepali homes, extended families live together. They work together and share everything, and I can't help but notice how happy they all seem to be, especially the kids. How wonderful for these children to have so much family around them to depend on. I want this for all kids. For my kids.
Which reminds me of how much I miss everyone back home. I can't wait to be with family and friends again, even to talk about routine things and catch up on thier lives. I'm anxious to hear the stories Mary and Ella will tell their dad, my Mom and Dad, Grandma Rose, Kristi, Lawrence and Rachel, and Grandpa Richard. It will be so much fun to hear it all again from their perspective.
See you all soon. We love you.

August 1, from Jane

2010-08-01T12:00:00.005-04:00

Friends, It has taken me 24 hours to think of how to begin this e-mail.

What if suddenly there were a new color, a lemonwhite, for example, off the ordinarily visible chart, that has a scent associated, gardenia and frangipani, jasmine and New Orleans ginger blanc and tea olive, all at once, a heaven of white flower perfumes blending into a color so soothing and exciting and sweet, we can barely imagine it.

This clear, sweet, unimaginable perfume was our evening at His Excellency Ambassador Scott DeLisi and his wife Leija DeLisi's home last night.

Fifty-two incredibly accomplished people, including the Ambassadors from Switzerland and Holland, filmmakers, the best bronze and thangka artists and monastery restorers in Nepal, newspaper columnists, authors, doctors, television reporters, humanitarians, healers: these stunningly gracious, highly skilled professionals, each one friendly and intelligent, beautiful and poised, all gathered and heard the most elegant, seemingly impromptu introductions from the Ambassador, who didn't need a single note in front of him. Only when I heard Jane Goodall speak did I see this level of calm mastery and absolutely flawless eloquent delivery.

After greeting us personally with rich blessing scarves, and greeting all of his other guests, the Ambassador introduced the evening, and his words were all about A Gift for the Village as an example of the bridges we all need to attempt, that Nepal itself needs to attempt within its politics, that are every individual's greatest goals to aspire to help build. Jenna and Tsampa (in his most formal electric-marigold lama robes) and I could not have been accorded greater honor.

Ambassador DeLisi is an incredible statesman and an inspirational orator, and a gem of a human being, and Leia is brilliant and generous. What a night.

The film showed, followed by an incredible dinner at tables all around their magnificent home full of breathtaking art, and everyone circulated and told each other stories and very lavishly praised our film.

Jenna and I have been invited to return on our last night in Nepal for a very casual private dinner with the Ambassador and his wife. We can't wait.

A Gift for the Village grew wings last night. So did we. Jane

Firing up the publicity machine...

2010-07-31T10:35:00.005-04:00

While Jenna and Jane prepare for their big night at the US Embassy in Kathmandu, Tom sat down with Bruce Bryan of 101.5FM in Roanoke to talk about the film and the premiere. You can listen live Sunday Morning, August 1 at 8.am. or listen live or after the fact at the station's website:
http://www.1015themusicplace.com/program-descriptions/roanoke-valley-conversations.html

Our Pleasure, please: An Ambassador's Invitation, from Jane, July 29

2010-07-29T04:50:00.003-04:00

Today Jenna and I picked up four invitations, for Jenna, Amchi Tsampa, his daughter Lhakpa Dhoma, and me. We must R.S.V.P. by phone as well as present the invitations at the security gate. Each invitation is individually printed, and embossed with a golden great seal of the United States of America. The text of mine reads:

The Ambassador of the United States of America
and Mrs. Scott H. DeLisi
request the pleasure of the company of
Ms. Jane Vance
at the screening of "A Gift for the Village" with the Amchi Lama
followed by Buffet Dinner
on Saturday, July 31, 2010
at six-thirty o'clock p.m.

Included in each envelope is also a nice synopsis of our project and an introduction to the film.

Dress, praise the gods for my sake, is casual. Jenna has bought a beautiful salwar khameez--a long, flowing top and Arabian pants--in hot terracotta shades, so she will look ravishing, whereas my beauty will reside (where else?) in my necklaces.

I am so proud of my team, that this film now creates an evening event for an American Ambassador and his guests. How exciting.

I am so grateful to be part of a collaboration based on gifts. The heart of our film, in my mind, happens when Jenna speaks, near the end: "The gift happened long before the festival." She talks about reciprocation, and the synchronicity and confluence of so much generosity when two cultures really come together to share an experience.

We can't wait to bring the film to American audiences as well, once we are home. Jane

E-mail from a Prince, from Jane, July 28

2010-07-28T06:35:00.002-04:00

Today we have a wonderful e-mail from Jigme Bista, the Prince of Lo, in western Nepal. It is proper to say "former" Prince when you are here in Kathmandu, but out in Upper Mustang, that disentitlement is never spoken. Nepal's governmental structure is in flux, but the twenty-five generations of royalty in Upper Mustang is hundreds of years older than the current feuds, and Prince Jigme is so elegant and articulate and compassionate that I will always remember him simply as the Prince. Here is his e-mail:

Dear Jane,

A big congratulation to you on your documentary film!

Although we, the people of Lo (Mustang), don't know much
about modern art, you've touched our hearts and minds with your art and
inspired us. The various colors that you used in the painting and the amount of
detail you paid attention to is remarkable. I hope there will be aspiring artists in Mustang in the years to come.

I say this with immense gratitude that you have in a way contributed
in conserving our culture and traditions. I'm certain many will watch it with
great interest and enthusiasm.

I wish you luck and happiness.

Best regards,

Jigme S. P. Bista.

(Former Prince of Mustang)

Ashes and Names: July 27, from Jane again

2010-07-27T09:54:00.003-04:00

I can't help but notice that this is our 108th blog post. Buddhist malas (prayer necklaces, like Catholic rosaries) have 108 beads. A very lucky number.

Today, our chivalrous, handsome, selfless guide for the extreme Upper Mustang trek, Narayan Bhatta, wrote me a very sweet e-mail in response to a request he made early on our last morning in Jomsom, when he told me that he had just learned he had a new son--born in the wee hours of July 23rd. He requested that I give his son one name--which will stay with him, and be joined by a Nepali name, once the priests decide which name is right--in about five months.

I wrote Narayan with my suggestion, and tonight, I got this response:
-----------------
Dear Jane mom
Thank you so much for your kind mail, i feel so good mom, and glad to have a son name, thank you so much for lovely name, from now he's name is Emerson Bhatta.
-----------------
This news marks one of the sweetest parts yet of our bridge now between America and Nepal. Emerson Bhatta, like my own son Emerson, is family.

My friend in Blacksburg, Alwyn Moss, has written about the importance of naming, and Narayan's sweet e-mail has got me thinking tonight about this idea, about names, and giving a name, and naming what you give.

If you do not give something a name, you may not see it.

If you never see it, you may not believe there is anything there to take care of.

If you have no obligations toward it, you have no need to give.

And, as the proverb from the poorest slums of Calcutta, India, teaches (quoted in Dominique LaPierre's great book, City of Joy), Everything not given is lost.

Jenna and I love that proverb. So does our friend Lucinda Roy.

Everything not given is lost.

Before I left for Nepal, I visited my student Morgan Harrington's mother, Gil. I wrote to Mrs. Harrington because I had two of Morgan's essays, in the original, with two of her drawings.

I had contacted detectives early during what turned out to be 101 days of searching for Morgan before we all learned that she had been murdered. Morgan was in my Creative Process class the semester before she died, and I loved her. She sat in the front row. All of my other students in that class remember her, bright, beautiful, witty, humble.

Just a week after Morgan was missing, a wonderful, gentle, patient special agent came to Blacksburg and interviewed me for two hours, talking about Morgan, her writing for my class, my impressions, every angle of intuition and possibility I could brainstorm. I wanted with all my heart to be helpful.

The agent allowed that if Morgan were alive, and in some kind of hostage situation, she might--possibly--somehow--be allowed to see who was trying to write to her, in which case, he advised, it might be good if I wrote to her, as her professor.

In those 101 days, I wrote sixty e-mails to Morgan. She had expressed a strong interest in coming to Nepal with me one day, and especially in seeing the Elements Temple at Mukhtinath which 8-year-old Ella Hoffman wrote about a few days ago. I promised her that I would take her.

After her class visited, Morgan also said that she needed to show my house and the paintings to her parents. Yes, I said. Please bring them to my home one day.

As it happens, Morgan is in our documentary, three times. First, when Jenna filmed a class at my home--each of my Creative Process classes comes to my home for dinner at the end of the semester, while I teach a lesson on Visual Yoga and Narrative Art--the class she happened to film was Morgan's. There is Morgan, sitting on my living room floor, beaming, as she takes in the large paintings all around her.

Secondly, we also use a still photograph of Tsampa when he was at Virginia Tech, after teaching my class for an afternoon, all of us standing before the chalkboard. In the photograph, a group shot, I am standing to Tsampa's immediate right. To his immediate left stands Morgan, looking especially beautiful.

I had not contacted the Harringtons during the 101 days of their ordeal, when Morgan was missing. I did not know them--only their daughter--though she had written intimately to me of her intense admiration and love for her mother and her father. I did not want to cause them any grain of additional pain, being a stranger, contacting them possibly at some wrong moment.

But before this trip to Nepal, I wrote to them. I introduced myself, and explained that I had some of Morgan's work, and that I wanted them to have it when the time was right. Before a hard trip to Nepal, with the uncertainties of our long trek, I wanted to be sure I contacted the Harringtons, because I had what belonged to them.

Gil Harrington wrote back to me immediately, with breathtaking graciousness, and invited me to her home--just days before I left on this trip.

I drove there, and I can not remember spending a more powerful few hours in my life.

For me, Morgan's professor, to be led upstairs to her room--to see the copy of the Amchi painting that I had signed for her, framed and opposite her bed--to see Morgan's closet, her walls, her own stunning paintings--to see the house that was her home--to sit with her mother--to be with Gil while she read the incredible, detailed dedications that Morgan wrote about both of her parents--to comprehend that Morgan had INSISTED that I keep these papers. "But Morgan, these are YOUR papers. Make me a copy. You have gotten A's on them, really strong A's. Your parents will want to see this work," I had said at the end of the semester. "No," she had said, "YOU keep these."

And although we met during the week of my departure, Gil and I felt so much kinship that we squeezed in Morgan's wish for her parents to come and see my home, and the paintings, before I left for Nepal. I didn't know I could love anyone quite in the way I love Gil, but I love Dan that much, too. What incredible human beings, BOTH Dan and Gil. We had the best evening together, a feast of companionship. No wonder Morgan wrote with such wisdom and compassion. No wonder she was so beautiful.

Gil and Dan gave me the extreme honor of bringing some of Morgan's ashes to the Himalayas.

I carried them in a beautiful packet which had Morgan's photograph on it, hidden among my traveler's cheques and identification cards. Often, I checked the packet, and looked at Morgan.

When our team reached the west of Nepal, I had to give her up.

And I found that I was terribly emotional, really resistant, to give up Morgan's ashes.

But I had carried them to give them, the way you give a name.

And as I have given two Emersons, I gave Morgan to two places. She is at Mukhtinath, the Elements Temple, at 14,000 feet, and when I delivered her ashes there, dozens of Tibetan nuns happened to be chanting on three sides inside the shrine, like a vibrating hive of otherworldly bees. I have been to Mukhtinath three times, but this was the first time nuns were there, singing prayers and smiling and nodding as our team came in--the only visitors--and smiling, as I wept, to give up part of Morgan.

The other part, I gave to Tsampa, after explaining Morgan's murder. He took the other part of her ashes to do an extremely special ceremony on Dhumpa Mountain, where the air is full of dakinis, sky-dancers, female wisdom-beings who can contact a consciousness after it has left its body, who can remove obstacles for that consciousness, and who can empower a happy and richly enabled rebirth. Tsampa's tradition and training are rare, and his rituals are old and strong. I was thrilled that he offered this gift to Morgan. This was the greatest honor I could have hoped for her ashes.

And so, like a name, they are given.

The third and final time Morgan Harrington appears in A Gift for the Village is her name. When what you have is a name, and you love that name, you give it as a dedication. At the end, our documentary is honored to carry and to give Morgan's beautiful name.

Everything not given is lost.

I also believe in the sweet corollary: Everything given goes on. Jane

from Jane, July 27

2010-07-27T01:11:00.002-04:00

Hi Friends, Yesterday was my 52nd birthday, and our team spent it in great places. Our dear friend Sunil, whom I met as a driver for The Kathmandu Guest House 15 years ago (who now counts as family, and who has been to our homes in Virginia, and who has welcomed us into his home more times than is conscienable) took us out of the congestion and into the countryside.

The Kathmandu Valley is shaped like a circle, twenty-five miles in diameter, ringed by the Himalayas. On some edges of the valley there is still a sense of clean air, pastoral green, and wildlife. We went to those greener places.

We started in Patan, a former kingdom unto itself, with possibly the richest collection of wood and sundried brick pagodas and ornate resplendent Hindu and Buddhist temples in the Valley. We saw the Temple of the Thousand Buddhas, temples to preservers and destroyers and creators, temples to rare forms of certain gods and goddesses, temples so old that their central stone images--having been touched so much over the centuries--are soft illegible stone forms, worn down like fading sandcastles. We saw tables and tables of split coconuts, red hibiscus flowers, marigolds, neem leaves, and sequined gauze napkins, offerings to the images.

In the shops, we saw some of the best bronze statues in the world, and small exquisite Buddhas carved with the help of the artists' magnifying glasses into the spines of conch shells. We saw crystal Padmasambhavas and crystal phurbus, studded with emeralds and raw rubies.

We visited an old village, Bungamati, a sleepy two-street settlement which is a carver's village. I bought a sublime camphorwood Buddha, smelling like eucalyptus and peppermint all at once. Pema and her husband Tenjin Serap Thakuri found us--thanks to our friends' cell phones and Tenjin's motorcycle--and she presented me with a red birthday blessing scarf, a wooden sugarbowl, and a bronze protector Buddha. Hand in hand, I walked with Pema, past the watertank where the water buffalo were being allowed to bathe and dally; past the small clusters of mallards, past the old women with their earthen feet crossed at the ankle, past the medieval brick homes with their huge braids of red chilies and garlic hanging Rapunzel-fashion.

We drive on to Chobar Gorge, where Manjushri's sword--in mythological time--cut the earth, and the Kathmandu Valley, having once been a lake full of Nagas, drained.

We visited many amazing places, like the hilltop village of Kirtipur, where the fierce god Bhairav is worshiped in his tiger form, Singhabhairava. Dozens of cobwebbed buffalo skulls hung on the old mural walls there, with ghee-gooey bronze bells in huge metal snarls, and weapons in the multiple hands of all the wooden hipshot gods and goddesses on the second- and third-level pagoda temple struts: each weapon, a way to cut your own ego, to remove your mind from old habits of self-worship and other forms of illusion that lead to our old friends, sorrow, anxiety, and confusion. I for one need the whole arsenal.

Back at the Guest House, I had a message from the Cultural Affairs Officer for the American Ambassador here in Kathmandu. The Ambassador requested that I write a brief biography of Tsampa Ngawang, the amazing individual in the painting I began in 2001, which became the ostensible Gift for the Village. The Ambassador also requested an early copy of our documentary, so that he could tailor his remarks on the evening of the 31st, when we attend an event at his private home, in honor of our film. A runner from the American Embassy picked up A Gift for the Village this morning. I was told I will be asked to speak about our project, to forty assembled dignitaries and guests. What an honor, to have our film requested by the Ambassador! As another honor, the Ambassador has also extended airplane tickets to Tsampa from Jomsom to Kathmandu and back so that he and his daughter Lhakpa Dhoma can also attend the film event at his home. So Amchi Tsampa flies to town today.

Thanks for my birthday wishes, from my old friend Waruna, in the hills of Sri Lanka, and from my children, and from such great friends. Much love from Kathmandu, Jane

Landscapes: A message from Ashleigh

2010-07-24T07:00:00.002-04:00

When asked what I might like to write about on the blog, the first thing that came to mind is the indescribable landscape of Jomsom, Kagbeni and the trail to Lo Manthang. I feel certain that the particular combination of colors and textures that make this land an astonishing work of art is indescribable, but I will do my best:

Seabuckthorn kindness,
A smile like rain quenching thirst,
Mr. Bhakti gives.

Jomsom sits by a river that has carved, for endless years, painted canyons of tundra-like majesty. Sheer, steep cliffs made of scree and compressed threads of prehistoric sediments. Cy and I find, in winding conversation, that this place reminds us both of the Beartooths in southern Montana mixed with the mountainous deserts of Idaho with a hint of California scrub. But, comparisons will not do: the wind of this valley is unlike any current I have every met.

Animals graze in high mountain-top pastures, quietly hidden in the clouds. I love how farmers set their animals free during the summer months--they can look after themselves as the rains fall on the valley. Amidst the rock and dust and afternoon wind that howls and screams and beats on our faces and fingers, are green fields: of the greenest I've ever seen. I realize how skilled the Mustang farmers are with their systems of irrigation. As the documentary shows, Mustang farmers have built wood-cast and stone channels that guide the flow of the waters so it will be most effective. People of Mustang are proud of their land and excitedly show us the way to their fields and describe every plant new and old, its properties, challenges and successes in growing AND offer us gifts of fruits and jam to take for the journey. Like Mr. Bhakti of Marpha, a town just an hour's walk from Jomsom. He greets us with great enthusiasm and quickly rearranges his day so that he can be our devoted guide. His name suits him: Bhakti means Devotion in Sanskrit.

Mr. Bhakti is a very accomplished man. He calls himself a social-worker. Even in our brief visit, I gather that he is a dedicated community leader. With great English, Mr. Bhakti weaves stories of apricot trees, Maoist infiltration, global warming and medicinal flowers. He offers us seabuckthorn berry juice and handfuls of fresh apricots: two varieties, local and Kashmiri. "Different taste," he says with a smile. He leads us along a pathway that opens at the edge of green fields. Each field is marked with a white stone at the center. The stone identifies to whom the field belongs. He joyfully shares news of his latest projects: he recently built solar powered showers and a clothes-washing tap for the lower caste people of his village, who cannot afford to wash. "This way, in my village, there is a smaller gap between rich and poor." He also talks about how, in Marpha, prices are adjusted for those families who cannot afford to pay full price on food and goods. What a noble man. His commitment, his devotion to making change happen NOW inspires me to commit to a community and, with courage and humility, become the change I wish to see in the world. Many thanks to our friend Mr. Bhakti.

Who can paint the wind?
Prayer flags in Upper Mustang.
Dust-storm dancing, blow.

...and so this is Kagbeni: the gateway to Upper Mustang, the gateway to restricted territory. From the edge of town, we see the door to the canyon, cliff-crossing trek that will lead us to Lo Manthang. Prayers are carved in stone and fingertips turn prayer-wheels to offer blessings to the wind. I imagine, for a moment, that wind is the breath of the world and we now reside in one of the windiest stone villages on earth. My face is covered in a layer of dust; my eyes squint with a thousand tiny sand crystals peeking through. The wind sweeps prayers and breath and even energy, perhaps -- but this sacred, quiet expanse nourishes the exhaustion back to life: as if we could be liberated of all our lesser qualities as the wind passes through. And what remains? A strong skeleton of possibility: naked and ready for seeds of newness. This is where I am: Kagbeni; wind-city; the gateway to Upper Mustang.

Fantastical world.
Red rock and windswept daydream,
unbelievable.

This land makes me feel quiet. How else to respond to something so unbelievable? The painted canyons carved like the red-heartwood of madrone or fallen oak; scratched by the claws of a giant cat: panther in the sky, snow-leopard paw. This land makes one believe in fantastical creatures. What else to say? I feel quiet. Riverbed, sharp canyon, speckled tundra, snow-capped peaks, irrigated green harvest. Pema Dhoka runs from the field to greet us. Her hands are covered in ashen earth from digging potatoes. She rushes to make us tea, make us lunch. Hardly stopping to take a breath, but always smiling. She loves to shower us with the gifts she knows, the abundance she grows and the spirit of the windy land she calls home. Gratitude.

Jaw drops at first sight,
Silk riverbeds grow gray gold.
Painted canyons hum.

Jane calls out: "Isn't this beautiful!" I laugh a little through my smile thinking of how I would be blind to disagree. I am drowning in disbelief: entering into a fantasy world where sheer red cliffs rise from silk riverbeds whose stones are fossilized history books of what flows and grows and changes as water passes over rock. What is most shocking is the contrast of colors and shapes and textures. The red-orange drip-castle shapes of Canyonlands, Utah (stretched in breadth and height) rise through a magnifying glass toward the sky. And burnt-purple embers burned by ash, not by fire; resin cooked in smoke, not in flame. The gray dust that sparkles blue in the sunlight and ices the red castles like sugar on gingerbread cookies. No -- more magnificent and robust than gingerbread cookies. ...The gray dust that sparkles blue in the sunlight and ices the red castles like like clear shoe polish, but more surprising. With my camera angled just-so, I try to capture the palette of colors laid bare before my eyes: Quartz white speckled with river-stones of blue, gray and golden-brown. Dry-wood brown sediment compressed flat by weight and time. Virginia red-clay angled like shards of glass or books stacked sideways. Dusty-green paint, almost like ether, speckling the tundra, but smoother than speckled. And the riverbed mud shines like fools gold. I resist the temptation of stopping every few meters to snap a photos of the marble blues and grays and whites: swirling, curling, playing with the trickle of the tiny streams like hair-strands or witch-fingers. Swimming in beauty. We walk across scree and sandy earth and wind plays with our scarves and hair. The climate is extreme: when the wind blows, it Blows. When the sun shines, it Beats down like a hot iron. When the clouds roll in, they are low and full and heavy. We enjoy the rise and fall of this land: remarkable and remote.

...Remote for but a few years longer. The government is funding the building of roads into Upper Mustang. As we walked out of Kagbeni, we had to share the road with a monstrous leveling machine. The one whose wheels look like a centipede rolling, rolling, rolling and flattening the rocky earth: making way for more landslides, more traffic, more tourists sleeping in the back of tour-buses. I felt like an insect in the Ferngully Forest, being ground to dust by the neon noise. After the unlikely and incredible bridge built by 10 years of hard work on A Gift for the Village, perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of our journey to Lo Manthang is the timing. Machines move quickly: uprooting earth that has kept the secrets of this land for centuries.

But for now, my heart is grateful to witness the grandeur of the gray-gold rivers, the blood-red pulsing canyons, the blue-ether painted watercolor mountains, the sharp snow-capped magic high peaks, and the sunlight-colored generosity of the friends and strangers we meet. Thank you, Jane and Jenna, for welcoming me on the journey. Just breathing here expands my belief in what is possible.

A different trip with kids......

2010-07-24T01:25:00.002-04:00

We are back in Kathmandu. Back to hot showers, towels, beds with sheets and pillows and the Kathmandu congestion and chaos. The difference between upper Mustang and this city is astounding. Here are more comforts and variety of foods, there we had serene landscape and primitive living.
I guess my focus has been how different this trip has been for me because of the girls. Our friend Pema, who lives in Kagbeni at the famous Red House, went with us to Lo. She said that we needed 7 people, because 7 was luckier than 6. She took her horse Sakpa for Ella to ride. Before we left for the trek, the girls came running into our room telling me that Pema showed them how to milk her cow!
Carol, Pema has the sign that your students made for her when she visited your classroom framed and hanging in the Red House!
When we get past Jomsom, the toilets are squats, not commodes. Ella would try, but she just couldn't let go when she was in there. She was so worried that she would get her clothes wet, so I started undressing her from the waist down every time she needed to go. Suddenly, she announced to me that she could use the "squattee" by herself and didn't need me anymore. We teased Mary that although she was potty trained before Ella, Ella was "squattee-trained" at an earlier age than she was.
Our second night, Mary woke me up at midnight (we went to bed at 8) with a stomach ache. We have to get up and get dressed and get a head lamp to go to the toilet (which is a separate, closet sized room from the bath (shower) room. Actually, there isn't a toilet at all, but a squat, and Mary has the distinction of being the first to throw up in a squattee. That night for me was anxious, because after 2 days of trekking in the middle of what feels like nowhere, I was scared to death that Mary was really ill and I was wondering what I was going to do. There were no cars...would I stay behind with her for a day and let her rest? I thought I could get her a horse but would she be able to ride? I knew Narayan would help me but in the middle of the night I didn't know what that help would be, so I lay awake, questioning for the first time my decision to bring the girls with me.
Thankfully she slept the rest of the night with no more vomiting, and announced at breakfast that she was fine and ate 2 packets of oatmeal. She wanted no part of riding Sakpa, she wanted to walk. I could have danced with joy. I love my tough girl!
Ella draws a lot of attention. Several times as we walk through villages, especially the older women will blow past all of us and walk up to Ella, smiling and holding her face in their hands. Because of her short hair, she is often thought to be a boy, but she takes it all in stride and smiles and gives them her sweetest "Namaste." They are sweet to Mary, too, but she is taller than most of them, and I don't think they realize she is only 12.
The girls don't mind the DAYS between showers. The only warm one on our trek was at Pema's sister Thari's guest house. There we were also able to wash out some laundry, by hand, in a bucket in the shower. I got to do pants, underwear, shirts, socks times THREE! Ella helped me rinse and hang everything on the line.
The trekking is HARD. I am well aware now of how old and NOT in shape I am. I think, after a 45 minute steep, zig-zagged climb, that it HAS to be the end of climbing for the day. But no.......we start descending, then cross a stream, then back up we go. Then we do it two more times. My legs feel like a combination of twisted knots and jello. Whenever one of us stumbles on a rock or slides on loose dirt, we say, "Nice Yak-Dance!" The porters are great, and one of them stays right with each of us. They are very watchful for dangerous places, and especially great about knowing when to get Ella off her horse to walk. We see wild blue sheep, running up and down sheer cliffs that I can't imagine a bug walking without falling.
Watching Mary walking way ahead with the strong girls Jenna and Ashley, watching the porters shower Ella with protective and playful attention, listening to Narayan, our guide, tell the girls the story of why the mountains are three different colors (ask one of them to tell you), the shock of walking into Karma's kithcn in the Dancing Yak and seeing Ella in her chuba Pema gave her, chopping greens and cauliflower and washing dishes, acting quite at home....these are some of my many memories. And they solidify my decision to bring them here with me.
We miss everyone back home. Mary and Ella talk about who they want to see, who they will tell/show different things, what they want to eat when they get back to Blacksburg. Ella REALLY wants a Mike's burger. Please know that all of your comments are like the baked chocolate Snickers...real cherished treats.
Thanks for thinking of us.
Love, Reba

Muktinath and Jomsom, by Ella

2010-07-24T01:13:00.002-04:00

We got back from our trek! One of the villages we stayed in had a hotel called the Mona Lisa. One of my favorite places was Muktinath. We saw a blue fire, trickling water and nuns chanting all in one place. It is called the agni (fire) temple. It is also called the elements temple because earth, fire, water and mind are all together. There were many prayer flags, almost as many as the monkey temple. Jane hung prayer flags for her brother-in-law Neal and her former student Morgan. Jenna hung prayer flags for her aunt Ree, Kelsey, Kendall and Wilson and another strand for Cindy and Tyler.
We stayed in Kagbeni at Pema's house. She gave me her horse Sakpa to ride on the trek. He was the best horse I have ever ridden, aka, the only horse I have ever ridden! But every stumble and trip he did, I still loved him. Pema also gave me a Tibetan dress called a chuba that belonged to her oldest daughter, who is also 8. Her name is Tcheten. Her middle daughter is Nima she is 6 and her youngest is Sela Lillian she is 1 or 2.
In Jomsom we stayed at the Dancing Yak. I worked there! I washed dishes while squatting on the side of the sink with Laxmi. I cooked and served food, and cleaned. It was very very fun.
I miss Dad. And I LOVE BABY MONKEYS!
Ella

About the porters, from Mary

2010-07-24T00:31:00.002-04:00

We had the best group of porters anyone could have. Along with Narayan, our guide, seven total. Seven is a lucky number, and a lucky number it was. Tek, our runner, always ran ahead to make sure we had rooms to sleep in at night. He was fun, and was always willing to lend a hand. Monoj was sweet and was always walking with someone and waiting if one of us was held back. Menesh was kind and always helpful. Roshan was a bit quiet at first, but warmed up quickly and was joking around. Lexman, who gave Ella the Nepali name Kangi, meaning younger, or smaller, was fun and always had an arm around Ella. Binaya was quiet, but also loved playing around with Ella. last, but not least, is our guide, Narayan, who loved joking around and was always checking to make sure we were ok, if the food was ok, and was always saying, "little bit up, little bit down...", which wasn't always the case. We had a race once, against Narayan and I, on the way to Jomsom from Kagbeni, and I beat him. Lexman called out, "Mary's won the Jomsom race, Mary's won the Jomsom race!!" It was sweet. Narayan had his back-pack on though. I think we should race again, without the pack. We also liked to arm wrestle. He beat me both times we played(I'll beat him next trime though!!!).They loved playing Barrel of Monkeys, and always wanted us to pull it out after dinner, or anytime we were resting. One night in Chele, after dinner, they brought out baked snikers. At first we thought it was a joke, but to our surprise, there it was, right in front of us, snikers rolled up in bread and baked like a crossaint. It was great!! After that when Narayan asked us if we needed anything else after dinner, Ella and I would say, "Can we have baked snikers?" It was fun. In Kagbeni, one night we served them their food!! They had always served us our food, and there we were, serving them!! We all had a good laugh out of it (Great idea Jenna-la!!). That same night, they sang us the trekking song. They all have beautiful voices. On our last night with them in Jomsom, Jenna, Jane, Ashleigh, Mom, Ella and I laid out little gifts for them and their children (If they had children), and when we called them up to see their gifts, it a treat to see the looks on their faces. They were so happy. Narayan has a little girl, and a newborn son, born on the night we were in Jomsom. Tek has a little girl, Lexman has a two little boys, not to mention he also has a twin brother, and Manesh has a little girl. The next morning, while we were getting ready to fly out of Jomsom, the time came to say good-bye. It was hard and heart-breaking to see everyone who we had been so close to for so long leave the airport slowly. Narayan and Lexman flew with us, but didn't fly with us to Kathmandu. We miss them all and hope in the future, when we come back, we get to have them again.

July 24, from Jane

2010-07-23T23:07:00.002-04:00

Good Morning from Kathmandu. Please don't worry: after this post, the other team members' voices should chime in. Last night we conferred about which of us would like to write about what parts of our experience. Ella and Mary were the first to pipe up. But I'll let them (and Jenna and Reba and Ashleigh) say what they have decided as their topics.

What I chose to write about is our return to The Cave of the Snow Leopard.

Three years ago, in 2007, our Gift for the Village team became (as we explain in our documentary) the third group of climbers to reach this recently rediscovered cave, which is chiseled out of a sheer 16,000-foot cliff. The back wall of the cave is entirely covered with fresco, a thousand years old. In our documentary, we theorize about who may have painted these excellent panels, and our conclusions hint at a tremendously unexpected story about the cave's artist.

As a flightless gnat would labor with a sense of inadequacy and even deformity to climb and descend skyscraper after skyscraper, so we struggled. This ascent, or series of ascents, was the most difficult of many intense climbs, although I am not speaking exclusively about technical difficulties like elevation or angle.

Here, you do not proceed with pride, and pride is a hard backpack to leave behind. There should be no frivolity on this walk. This climb is a pilgrimage, because the cave frescoes which have watched a thousand winter blizzards swirl past are painted prayers, homages and thanks to a series of the artist's teachers. This place is a cave which honors the idea of relationship, teaching, guru wisdom, and humility.

Be quiet here. See the beautiful landscape on the way to the Cave, of course, but turn your mind toward what you do not see. Do not poeticize your lovely heartbeat or your flights of gratitude here. Do not marvel about your skin tingling or your smile broadening to fit the enormous landscape. Be quiet. Stop seeing yourself.

Tsampa has taught me this much.

To reach the Cave, you must walk for hours past Lo Monthang, which is itself described as the Holy Grail of remote places.

You must enter a tiny village and find the Keeper of the Key, a local man whose ancient, wrapped rag contains the Key to the Cliff Door. He must walk with you past the Valley of the White Rocks, where, a quarter century ago, a glacial avalanche sent down a shattering of icy river and hundreds of thousands of huge, tumbling, snow-white boulders, some like basketballs, some like elepahants.

This torrent hit Chosar Valley at midnight. Ninety percent of the homes, the animals, and the villagers were never found. The Chosar Valley, with its white boulder tombstones, covers that midnight of agony. The Keeper of the Key, walking with us, was a young child at the time. He lost most people he knew, his village, and its landscape. He told his story to Pema, who translated for us, as we walked through that Valley, the Valley of the White Shadow of Death. I could not help but think of the skeletons beneath us, in archaeopteryx positions, the fossils of a terrible night.

You walk past a sky-burial site, a long flat boulder, a little like an ossified lounge chair, shin-high. The rock would not be noticeable except for the heavy ropes that tie around it, and, since Tsampa showed us last time, for the nearby rock, under which are tucked three rustworn handmade blades belonging to the sky burial priest, and the rag-clothing he wears during the rites he perform.

In Tibet, there is a saying: Everyone should see a sky burial at least once, in order to understand impermanence.

But first, allow me to explain: in Tibetan Buddhism, there are five types of burial, to match the five elements.

Earth burials, in Upper Mustang, are virtually impossible, because there is no earth to dig. The land here is rock, or rock-silt. Water-burial isn't tasteful, because, although a chopped corpse benefits the tiny fish in the rivers here, the body pollutes the water for the villagers downstream.

Cremation, or fire-burial, is a highly respectful form, but costly to the Mustangis. Our friend Pema explained that the wood which is piled all along every Mustang home is not primarily firewood, but "our wealth, and our duty." At death-time, a family needs enough wood to cremate the body. Not having this wood is considered shameful. Upper Mustang is high-desert, and wood is rare; there are no trees to fell--only the bonsai-twisted stubs of tortured juniper or other low-scrub. But this wood is necessary for a cremation, and fire is considered extremely clean. A cremation is an honor.

There are two other kinds of burial in Tibetan Buddhism. One, the rarest, is mind-burial. Mind is the fifth element as Tibetans organize the universe. (In China, the fifth element, or sometimes the sixth, is, instead, iron.) Highly-accomplished practitioners of Buddhist mind and body control can decide consciously to leave their body in order to choose a specific rebirth. Tibetans believe in a space between death and rebirth called The Bardo. In this in-between realm, which is not a holding tank, but more like a wind-tunnel, your consciousness goes careening.

Think of your after-death consciousness as a Kleenex blown forcefully into a completely dark wind-tunnel. You go zooming and twisting and fluttering, upside-down, a parachutist without a familiar body, but with some sense of your own blind being. It is a terrifying disorienting tumble--UNLESS you have trained for it. The meditations that His Holiness the Dalai Lama does, for instance, prepare his unbodied consciousness for this ride. Only, he will be able to steer.

There are Tibetan lamas (teachers, priests) so accomplished and learned that they can not only speak to a dying person's mind as the body dies, to help instruct the mind during the transition into the windy Bardo, but who can find a consciousness even after it has tumbled and taken rebirth, and educate the consciousness about how to prepare for the next death and the next chance to steer into a better next rebirth.

Sky-burial causes rainbows--not big arches--but tiny wisps of rainbow, which jet more like butterflies. The rainbow body of a mind burial may last for days, like evanescent northern lights, but in the daytime. Tibetans point to a place in the distant landscape and say, "Ah! Such and such lama has died. See the rainbow body."

But back to the fourth kind of burial: sky-burial. Sky-burial is the most visceral, and, for my temperament, the burial of choice. A corpse is taken to a long-frequented rock (as in, hundreds of years of use), like the one we stood before on our walk to the Cave of the Snow Leopard. A qualified Buddhist cuts the hard corpse into cubes, and powders them with roasted barley flour. These cubes are scattered out to the lammergiers, the giant condor-like Himalayan vultures. They are called the corpse-eaters, and I have one of their gigantic feathers from this trek. When I am home, I will make a strong painting called The Corpse-Eater's Feather.

These birds know the ritual. The body is cubed and fed to them, and they take flight. Their enormous messy nests are dinosaur confabulations that you sometimes see high on the most inaccessible cliffs. Their fledglings are fed with the power of the corpses that their mothers have gulped, and then the young lammergiers grow their own feathers. The birds fledge, and reincarnated forms festoon the thin air.

The ropes on the rock, Tsampa explained three years ago, are to thwart the lammmergiers' over-eagerness. Yes, they know the ritual, but the birds would just as soon get to the point. These animals are so massive, their talons so tiger-like, that they sometimes pick up entire corpses and lift them up to their cliff-nests. But this frenzy reeks of greed, and the sky-burial wants to show hor forms give to one another, not take for themselves. Thus the ropes: they hold down the impulse to take too much.

Such are the landmarks on the way to the climb to the Cave.

And then, on a frighteningly thin cliff edge, you find, preposterously, suddenly, a door. A door with a lock.

The door is built into nowhere. It is simply a door, in a door frame, upright on the trail itself. There is no building anywhere.

The door divides, seemingly, nothing from nothing.

It can be opened only with the Keeper's Key.

I was told three years ago, after much discussion as I first beheld this cliff-door, that it stands as a kind of compassionate warning. Its meaning? After this point, the trail really becomes difficult.

Our Roanoke friend, Stephanie Koehler, saw a photograph of this door on my bedroom wall, and by now she may have written a blog about it.

I told Stephanie that I am awed by the idea of this social symbol, this physical prompt that what you are about to enter is extremely difficult. What a gift! A door to tell you the truth. There are few enough such doors. Conversations with my friend Suzi Gablik feel like this door. Even being near my children Iris and Emerson, and seeing how they tailor their studies toward the opportunity to help people, feels like this door. Every word and every idea my best friend Jenna shares, how I always see her treat people and think of what other people need, feels like this door. My team, and why we have worked so hard to make this film, feels like this door. I see the two sides separated: where we learn and love--at any cost--and where we have nothing but our own self-interest ahead of us, a ghastly-thin, fearful trail. May the gods always provide such doors. May all sentient beings be allowed the fortune to go beyond them.

The last part of the trail is "improved." This year, there is a thin wire, somewhat staked into the ground, wrapped in a twirl of hairy yak rawhide. You can hold this "rope" to scale down one of the worst vertical descents. Because of this "improvement," you now pay one hundred rupees to continue from this point. Pema slipped here--badly--and would have dropped thousands of feet to her almost certain death. But two porters caught her. And then we reached the Cave.

In three years, the Cave of the Snow Leopard has suffered more damage than in its lonely thousand. In 2007, I did see a set of claw marks from a snow leopard's stretching. Those parallel marks seemed the best signature in the Himalayas.

This time, there were other problems, and Jenna spent much of her time there, explaining how much good work the guide had in his power, to ask people not to rest their hands on the surface of the paintings, and not to carve out indentations to hold sticks of incense. And definitely not to redraw the faded lines of the worn faces. The Cave is not ruined, but many of its subtleties are gone.

Still, I visited with old friends. In 2009, I made an oil painting called The Cave of the Snow Leopard, for which I used our photographs of the frescoes for the background. The King of Lo, and the monastery restorer Luigi Fieni, really liked this painting. It was wonderful to be near the unruined details of some of my favorite panels. And to observe a few new details, a few new secrets.

Photography is no longer allowed in the Cave, which seems a kindness, at this point.

We heard later from Luigi that one visitor in the intervening years has brought her infant to the Cave. But Mary and Ella are the youngest self-propelled kids ever to see The Cave of the Snow Leopard, which looks out onto Tibet, and where, I like to think, snow leopards on the far cliffs had their green eyes trained on us.

Last night, I got an e-mail bearing unbearable news. My old friend Anna Sankei died three days ago of a heart attack, in Lier, Norway. She was waiting for a bus to go to a ceremony where her older daughter, Tina, was to receive a medal for her six months of military service in Afghanistan. Her younger daughter Agnes would have been there too.

I met Anna on our first day of class, freshman year, 1976, at William and Mary. We were the two who were early, waiting for the door to be unlocked. The course was called Contemporary Religious Thought. By the time the professor and the other four students arrived, Anna and I were friends.

She lived in a place where she liked to find ostrich eggs in her garden, which she would bead. One day I could visit her village, she said, across the Rift Valley, in Kenya. I would see many giraffes on my way. I should notice their eyelashes.

That Thanksgiving, Anna spent with me, at my parents' home in North Carolina. She lived with two rather cheerless nuns, back in Virginia, who never knew about my naughty father's gift to Anna, as she took the bus back from Raleigh to Hampton. She carried two huge bottles of Johnston County moonshine, strong enough to unlacquer your living room furniture.

Anna sang "Oh, Shenendoah, I love to hear you, oh, away, you raging river," in the prettiest Kenyan-English I have ever heard. My tears stream to think of that singing. We were eighteen years old then. In two days, I turn 52.

I did go to Anna's Kenyan village. I met her beautiful mother. Anna showed me lions, wild ones in the bush, and she showed me the Mara River hippos. She told me that the Cape Buffalo were the only grouches in Africa. They would charge just out of meanness. I took my baby Iris there when she was four months old. I loved Anna that much.

And Anna brought her daughters to see me, in America, twice. Jenna took Tina white-water rafting. When Agnes was a little girl, she hid in my wood shed, because she didn't want to leave.

This morning, having awakened to a full day in which there is no Anna on this earth, I must braid a bridge to cross this sadness.

I must see a door on a thin cliff-trail, and go through the door.

I must send my mind spinning out to Gil and Dan Harrington, because there is no Morgan on this earth, and to my niece and nephew Maura and Vance, because there is no Neal on this earth, and to my friend Bailey, who rides Emily Jane Hilscher's favorite Virginia Tech horse, Impulse, a swatch of whose mane now flies in Upper Mustang (thank you, Bailey, for helping me honor your friend and her love of horses; Emily died on April 16th in our Virginia Tech massacre).

I must be small. And see the swirls of all the elements diminishing every form as I also diminish.

But: in the brief time I have to see, I must love as hard and as impassively as the snow leopard gazes. Love, in order to find the most remote safe places, past the most daunting doors, in the most treacherous wilds. I must see from Kenya to Norway to Virginia and North Carolina to Kathmandu, and see from now to yesterday and now to tomorrow.

All we have are these doors and these bridges. This good vision, this astonishing view, our brief gardens. "Safe" means only a place where what we do reincarnates, finds some other form; where, amazingly enough, what has been beautiful is not altogether lost.

My love to Tina and Agnes. Your mother was a strong and beautiful woman. She loved you both so incredibly much. She was brave enough to be unselfish, and to act with kindness toward whomever happened into her life, whatever the impact, whatever the seeming impracticality of the broad reach of her heart. I will always carry your mother, wherever I go. I will never forget Anna Sankei. Farewell, beautiful friend. May we find one another again. Jane

July 23, from Jane

2010-07-23T06:55:00.002-04:00

Hi Friends, We are back in Kathmandu, safe, sound, amazed. Thanks for the great comments and responses here and on facebook. Thanks for caring where we are.

We woke at 4:30 in our Dancing Yak bedrooms in Tsampa's home, to learn that Narayan, our guide and friend, had gotten a call at 2 a.m. that his second child, a little boy, had been born, in Gurkha, in central Nepal. We knew about his birth before the grandparents: Narayan's parents don't have a phone. It will take some time for a village friend to take the news to them. Narayan has asked me to give his son one American name, to go with his Nepali names. This Gurkha boy will carry the name Emerson.

We had sweet tea, carried our backpacks downstairs, and waited to see if any flights were able to penetrate the woolen clouds that hang so thickly during all of Nepal's monsoon season. Mostly, for days and days, no flights have been able to come in or out of Jomsom's tiny airstrip. But today--flights.

I could not believe our fortune.

We flew, and the flight was one of the most spectacular treats I have ever enjoyed, and not just because I knew we were avoiding the rain, the mud, the uncertainties of moving with our baggage downtrail, through waterfalls and grungy flood-prone river-villages.

We flew over the land before time, close to the tops of dozens of green bulging mountains, over tiger and python jungle. Slivers and nicks of white, as we approached, grew into tremendous waterfalls, dozens of them, and overarching the verdure were the breathtaking granite-faced Annapurna goddesses, the 26,000-foot snow-faced immortals. We flew easily and calmly through dawn-colored clouds and over villages too small to have names.

I remembered the scene near the end of David Lean's beautiful film adaptation of E. M. Forster's great novel, A Passage to India, when Dr. Fielding and Stella stop the car just to stand and look up at the closeness and the enormity of the Kashmiri Himalayas. They can say nothing in response to the magnitude of these things. Only Maurice Jarre's score can speak the emotions of being near the Himalayas. Not being crushed by them seems so improbable, so generous. The mountains feel bigger than concepts which remain theoretical, bigger than the universe, bigger than eternity.

And then we landed in Pokhara, a world aways from western Nepal, and then we got our next flight to Kathmandu, and before noon, we were all seated at Pilgrim's, waiting for our masala dosas and palak paneer and buttered naan and fried rice. We are in culture-warp shock, for the flights to have worked, and to have catapulted us back to Kathmandu so flawlessly. Just days ago we were having audience with a King in a faraway medieval palace.

To celebrate our safe return to Kathmandu, I ordered a dozen peanut sticks from the German Bakery, which will be ready tomorrow. They are not unlike biscotti, not too sweet, not as good as my friends the Passalacquas have made, but pretty damned wonderful, cinnamon and peanut. Which reminds me: Carol Fox, I am scandalized that you want to join the pack of chocolate-carnivores and that you lust in sympathy with my team, for those deep-fried Snickers. (Thanks for the great comment, Carol! We miss you and Joe.)

Tonight maybe we will apportion certain topics for each of our team members to write about, but for now, hot showers, laundry, food choices, the greatest bookstore in Asia--just next door to the Kathmandu Guest House, publicity for our film ("Madame, I have read about your team and your film in our newspapers"), and an upcoming dinner with the American Ambassador, to show him A Gift for the Village.

I am so proud of our team, and of our film. We are really looking forward to our American premiere at The Taubman Museum in Roanoke on September 16th. Please plan to join us that evening. And sometime before that premiere, I have the honor of giving a Lunchbox (midday) Talk at the Taubman Museum. I think I have been given 45 minutes. My Virginia Tech students will smile to think of Ms. Vance trying to condense ANYTHING into that brief slot.

Much love from all of us, back in the crazy city. I love this crazy city. Jane

from Jane on June 22, in Jomsom

2010-07-22T07:17:00.002-04:00

E-mail is a snowflake in an updraft here: it exists, but may quickly disappear toward some faraway infinity. Still, we hope so much that you who are following us, my Tech students, our families, our friends, know that your support (and comments) matter so much to us. At The Dancing Yak Hotel, we have arranged gift piles for our porters and our guide, Narayan. After dinner, we will present these amazing young men with their presents and tips, to thank them for taking us through the roughest territory in our collective experience.

I want to say again that 8-year-old Ella and 12-year-old Mary Hoffman, Reba's girls, were absolute champions on this adventure. Mary now carries the nickname Jenna Junior as an honorific, because she walked nine-hour days at extreme altitudes on rocky, treacherous slopes and cliff edges with NO problem, and Ella is now an accomplished equestrian, having ridden Pema's noble horse Sakpa through most of Upper Mustang (though on the wildest cliffs, Ella walked--without any complaint).

Reba is so happy that the girls are thriving, loving the great people here, and gorging on dhal bhatt meals--rice and lentils and curried vegetables. On the last night in Upper Mustang, Narayan, our lead guide, brought in fried Snicker bars, coated in oily hot dough. As the only team member who would rather eat cardboard than chocolate, I had a view of my team as chocolate-carnivores, absolutely POUNCING on this dessert--and I am NOT just talking about Mary and Ella.

Cross your fingers and squeeze your amulets that the plane flies tomorrow morning, and that it flies safely. It really will be a small miracle if we are able to fly on schedule. The monsoon clouds look like Michelangelo's torsos. Muscular and unprepared to be easily bypassed.

Anyway, we can't wait to share our stories. Out the window, there are teams of pack mules ringing their neck-bells as they head down Main Street. There is also a very occasional motorcycle, weird with its huge noise. Jason and Sherrie will remember the roasted peanut rooftop restaurant down the street--Jenna and I had those hot peanuts as a treat today.

We look forward to having more leisure to write in Kathmandu. Hope all of you are well. Jane

from Jenna

2010-07-22T03:27:00.002-04:00

Hi Friends and Family.
We have made it to the gateway of the Annapurna. Tomorrow we either fly to KYM or we wait one more day then we walk out. Today is cloudy and there was little chance that the 6:30 Am flight would go, but just now-- 12:56 it took off. Wish us luck.
There is so much to tell,but since my computer is SLOW and missing a few important keys, I will save the stories for KTM.
A few notes: What fun to travel as a group of 7 women (and girls)!! our friend Pema joined us for the trip to Lo as well. Unfortunately Tsampa could not. Mary and Ella are at home here. It is fun to watch them!!!
Jason, Sherrie, Tom, Debra, Eric, and Joey we miss you!! Pema says she loves you all and misses you-- Sunil Sarita and Tsampa also asked about you all. Debra the honey made it. Tsampa was thrilled. You have a beautiful Bhatt piece on the way, and tell Joey I am working really hard on his wish list, esp the ball tree. Jason thanks to you my pack was no problem in Lo (but I do have some GREAT blisters on my feet)! We did make it to the cave again--- more about that later.
MORE SOON!!! j

July 21, from Jane

2010-07-21T04:02:00.002-04:00

Hello Friends and Family, We are all well--and Mary and Ella are strong and perfect. We have just ten minutes ago shuffled back into Kagbeni after ten successful and amazing days and 155 miles into Upper Mustang, where the King of Lo as well as the Prince and Princess loved A Gift for the Village and where indeed our film showed on the left outside wall of the Royal Palace. We have many stories to tell, but I have to go drink tea and soup. Every one of us is completely fine, amazed by our experiences, and rich in our hearts. Pema of the Red House made the entie trek with us, even up into the Cave of the Snow Leopard. Tomorrow we walk back to Jomsom, and then the next day, the 23rd, we attempt to fly to Pokhara and on to Kathmandu. Otherwise if the winds and clouds are playing havoc then we begin the descent by trail eventually to Pokhara, and somehow or other back to Kathmandu. On the 31st of July we have been invited to the Ambassador's home to show our film. By then, pray, we will have bathed. So so so so la! Victory to the gods! Jane

July 8th, from Jane

2010-07-07T23:26:00.002-04:00

Hello Friends and especially our BMS friends in exile, I may be 13,000 miles from home, but let me say first that I am so sad that our School Board has taken the decision to move the Middle School to Old Christiansburg High School.

We have made it to Jomsom in the Annapurnas. Our flight happened yesterday, solving many frightening problems.

This morning, Pema Dhoka Thakuri from a village three hours up the Kali Gandaki came to the Dancing Yak because word had traveled upvalley last night that we had arrived. She is the Tibetan friend who came to stay with us in Blacksburg two years ago. It is so amazing to see her!

And Tsampa was standing at the edge of the tarmac to greet us, and so was Cy and Karma, Tampa's wife, and Lhakpa Dolma, Tsampa's daughter. It feels GREAT to be here!

Yesterday we were ushered into our new rooms--built on the back side of the hotel--with our OWN bathrooms! An we were given a basket of Tsampa's orchard's fresh apricots which ALL of us can't stop eating. Ella says they are the best things she has ever eaten. And pretty soon, we were hiking--across the iron bridge, up to Dhumpa Lake and monastery, where the air is full of dakinis, the locals say--sky-dancing female spirits who can intervene in the lives of people, and who are present but not visible.

We are in high country now, with snow-capped mountains all around us.

And last night we showed the film to Tsampa! And to his family, and to friends. The Dancing Yak was the theatre. What an uproarious great hour! I think we will have a reshow tonight. Everyone was thrilled, and it was anarchy in the audience, laughing and being amazed and yelling out approval and joy. Jenna videoed. WOW.

The thang-ka I painted in 2001 is hanging up and looks completely at home. We have made it to the first position of the Dancing Yak menu, where the hotel lists its specialties and services, for example, having a Tibetan doctor on call, or being able to help a tourist rent a trekking pony. But the first listing: Amchi thang-ka of Holy Man Tsampa Ngawang lineage portrait hangs here.

It is thrilling to have made it here, and thrilling for Emerson to be back in the really high mountains with me, and wonderful to see Ashleigh and Mary and Ella drop their jaws at the land and the vistas and the sheer age of the buildings here--and great to see Reba walking with her completely free fossil- and bone-hunting daughters--and as always, a privilege to be with Jenna.

Tsampa looks as young as ever-- Emerson says he looks exactly the same as the last time he saw him.

We are full of apricots, popcorn, dhal batt, greens, AND summer worm/winter grass liquor, a rare Tibetan herbal (well, for a vegetarian, the summer worm part is disturbing!) concoction to celebrate the film and to give us long life.

Our love to everyone. E-mail is expensive and unpredictable, but the trek to Lo is on schedule, and our friends are here with us. Emerson will be leaving with Cy tomorrow to head downtrail on foot--should be a spectacular adventure--and it looks like we are on target to show A Gift for the Village both in Kagbeni at the Red House and to Raja Jigme, the King of Lo Monthang. Love, Jane

a few side notes from Jenna

2010-07-06T11:19:00.003-04:00

ON BIKING: did i mention that i had to ask which side on the road to ride on and several times during our ride in town I could not figure out why cars and motorcycles were heading straight for me? In Nepal, I am pretty sure there is a law saying that anytime you are driving a car or riding a bike or motorcycle you should beep your horn or ring your bell as much as possible. I have to say that Ashleigh was much better with the bell ringing than me-- I was so busy dragging my feet to stop the bike on down hills and trying to figure out why everyone else was on the wrong side of the road to worry about the darn bell. Thanks Ashleigh-- your bell ringing saved us a few times!

ON FLYING TO JOMSOM: I have to say that i was really nervous about the flight. We were looking out the airport window at a cloud covered sky and a light rain and the lady told me "Jomsom weather very bad mam, very difficult for plane land" After waiting 5 1/2 hours we were led onto the tarmac. tHE RAIN HAD STOPPED AND THERE WERE HINTS OF BLUE SKY, BUT NOT MUCH, (oops caps) We were told that the pilot would take us up and see if he could land. It wasn't until I saw the female co-pilot look out of the cockpit and smile at Mary and Ella that I started feeling okay about the attempt. Then as were were just about to take off the pilot looked over his shoulder, surveyed the FULL flight of 16 passengers, smiled and turned back around. It was if he was saying, I see you, I see who you are, and I will take care of you. The flight is no more than 20 minutes. Today, after 20 minutes, we had circled about five times, dropping and ascending to dodge clouds-- mind you our pilot was flying by sight! no instruments helping with navigation, only altimeters and a few other gadgets....

ON HIKING: that last two days, despite the oppressive heat we have done two amazing treks to the mountain tops around Pokhara. Ella joined us for the trek to the World Peace Pagoda and Mary trekked to the top of Sarangkot Mtn. today. It feels good to be getting our legs ready for the long trekking days ahead. Our walks took us up steep rock stair cases, threw villages and rice fields, past men herding water buffalo in for the evening and women carrying massive baskets of corn or rocks, or buckets of water on their heads. It never ceases to amaze me where women have set up their tables or blankets full of goods-- we climbed up a steep rock ledge to find women up there waiting for us. As we trek threw villages, we are greeted in one of a few ways..."Namaste-- which country?" or "Hallo-- what your name?" "Come, just a look, no cost to look."

ON BLOGGIN: As I was nearing the end of this blog, my computer started beeping, as if the timer to an explosive was counting down-- I tried to post, no luck, I tried to copy and save, no luck, so I called over the attendant who simply nodded his head back and forth side to side and ran his fingers a few keys on the keyboard and the beeping stopped and the computer seemed to unlock. HUM????? I hope this is the last blog for a while. If it is, it means we have flown. Keep your fingers crossed for a clear sky and safe journey. Also, as i am typing there are 3 laughing geckos in sight of me. We see them everywhere and they really do laugh. There was one right above Mary's head as we ate dinner the other night.

I'm going to post now before a gecko drops down on my keyboard and the beeping starts again!

July 6, evening, from Jane

2010-07-06T11:11:00.003-04:00

Hi Friends, My eyes are drooping but I wanted to wish Blacksburg Middle School no amputation and no dislocation.

On our unexpected day in Pokhara, Jenna and Mary and Ashleigh and I walked up to Sarangkot, the big hill between Machupuchchare and Phewa Lake. From this hill, hang-gliders take off. We walked in fields and along the one switchback-looped road, past mahogany and neem forests and stone walls covered in ferns and wild crown-of-thorn. This was a really vertical walk, and I for one was as drenched from the exertion as if I had jumped in a swimming pool.

At the top, we met a little girl named Pushpanjali, thin and beautiful-eyed, but extremely forward physically, touching our necklaces, and wanting us to sit near her. I wondered if she might be a child who at Blacksburg Middle School would be one of my special kids, and I guess so: her older sister gestured to Pushpanjali and said (to our sadness), "No mind," shaking her head. Maybe not, but we would have taken this little girl with us so quickly, if we could have spoken to her easily, and if there weren't a Great Wall of regulations to barricade such a bond. She was cheerful and lithe, and happy. She seemed bright, but eccentric, possibly repetitive, or plaintive, in her affection. So far, where is the flaw?

On the drive downhill (because we decided to take a car down, to avoid the time of evening when black cobras cross the road), let's just be glad that our raft guide was in the front seat. Our driver seemed at one point distracted by a vision in the faraway distance,, and our car began to drift toward the cliff. Jenna TOOK that steering wheel and turned it, and the driver was good-natured about the correction. Go Jenna! May your raft guiding always extend to other service fields, like saving your friends from a car-flight over a Nepali precipice.

So again we try to fly tomorrow. Looking in the direction of Mustang is like looking into a mix of octopus ink and milk. I can't imagine the break in the clouds that we will need, but then again, not much of what we are doing is easy for me to imagine, even when I am seeing and being here. Like watching the silk Amchi shirt-artist: a blur and whir of stitchery keeps turning into adventures which keep turning into gifts which keep turning into friendships and then back into celebrations. Sounds as if I am drunk, but in fact I am too tired to lift a beer.

Goodnight, Pushpanjali. You may never remember us in your life, but we will never forget you. Tiny wisp of a mountain girl, walking near the stars, looking down on Phewa Lake from such a height that you could believe your own mind is nothing but clear light and empty endless sky-space. May all your dreams be as fresh as cloud and as light as mist. May flowers be bright every season of your life. May your unchecked sweetness and enthusiasm heal a thousand sadnesses in your village.

We miss our friends and family. Iris, you are always in my heart. Love, Jane

From Jane, July 6th

2010-07-06T05:11:00.002-04:00

Hello Friends, We are NOT in Jomsom, but instead still in Pokhara.

The skies this morning were heavy with low clouds, and although we were at the little airport by 5:30 a.m., we had to wait until about 11 a.m. to hear that the first four flights to Jomsom were all totally canceled but that Agni Air WAS going to try the fifth and final flight of the day. So our team of seven and a sprinkling of locals (sixteen, counting crew) boarded the tiny twin-engine, with some trepidation and some hope.

And although we came face to face with the mighty Goddess Annapurna (over 26,000 feet, her stone face), and although we circled and circled among the thick clouds, our landing was not to be. Jenna gave thumbs up to the pilots in their open cockpit when they announced there was no entering Jomsom today. We appreciated the attempt AND our crew's reluctance. Flying into Jomsom--as our documentary shows--is not cake. You have to commit to a ravine, descend along the river, arc hard in a bowl, and stop before the runway turns into a mountain face. Today, the ravine was a cauldron of cloud, and, as Nepali pilots like to say, our clouds have rocks in them.

So we came close.

Fortunately we are already booked for attempting the second flight tomorrow morning (Usually if you miss a flight, you are pushed to lowly stand-by position, stressful for us since we are a group of seven, and don't want to split up). But the Agni representatives were excellent, and stored three of our heaviest bags at the airport, making tomorrow morning's attempt a little less burdensome.

Still, our position is not easy. Each day we can't fly, the roads--sorry, the "roads"--to Jomsom are more waterlogged and possibly blocked by mudslide or rock-avalanche. Each night in Pokhara is another $30 per person for an air-conditioned room--an expense we weren't counting on, ideally. A jeep is devilishly expensive, as quoted here in Pokhara, and so we have our friend Mingma in Kathmandu trying to get us a better deal on a good jeep. May I add that having a shop owner connect a phone here to our friend Mingma in Kathmandu is itself a trip.

If we DO opt to be driven, we will do so ONLY in a good jeep, not on public transport. Jenna and I have seen the roads, and a public "bus" on those "roads" is outside my definition of reasonable. We have considered a heliocopter, but we doubt we can afford the option.

Anyway, we spent a decompression lunch upstairs at a familiar restaurant and navigated everyone's response to the mild trauma of circling but not being able to land in Jomsom.

Most disappointed was Mary, partly because her ears ached a little fom the flight and partly because she so much wanted to land in our next place and get that much closer to snow leopards.

Mingma informed us, upon my asking the dire question of whether any of our Upper Mustang fees would be refundable, if we can not get to Kagbeni at the appointed time to start the trek to Lo, that no, unfortunately, our contract is signed and the fees are paid for the special permissions given by various government ministers for us to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. Those are big bucks to have flutter out of our grasp. And big hopes to lose from our grasp.

So wish us well, getting to Mustang. My young cousin Cy is there (he took the local bus, but, for the life of me, I can't feel great about that choice for my team), who informed Emerson last night by crackly phone that there may not be a working projector in Jomsom, and therefore we may not be able to show the documentary where the festival was held, which is a shame. But in the walled fortress-city of Lo, there IS a generator, a projector, and a King expecting us and the documentary.

All we have to do to show A Gift for the Village there is, first, to solve the puzzle of how to outwit the monsoon sky and its wrath upon the roads, and, second, to walk 155 miles. As our friends here often say: Is problem? No problem.

But outside the ring of obstacles I have described, what an amazing event in Pokhara yesterday! I met a young man, Udhav Shrestha, 23, and his handsome father, Krishna. There was something about Udhav. I wish I knew how to recollect exactly what made me sense that he was an artist. All he did is name some prices on t-shirts. But there was something...

I can honestly say that until I SAW Udhav I had not had the idea, but something in his expression...

I said, "I have a project I want to suggest. It may be impossible, and you can simply say no. I can not imagine you wlll say yes, but there is something in your face, something in your smile, which causes me to ask."

So I showed him a photograph of the Amchi Painting.

I told him about our project, our documentary, about Tsampa Ngawang and my long support of Tibet, and I read him the Dalai Lama's letter endorsing A Gift for the Village. Udhav listened.

I said, "I wonder if you could, with silk thread, reproduce this Amchi painting--in silk--on a black t-shirt. I know it is complicated. It is possibly impossible."

Udhav smiled and shook his head, as if in disbelief, and then introduced me to his father, who had been listening, and who said, "I think you are very lucky. If you had asked any other person in all of Pokhara, not one other person would even try. I don't tell you this as a selling point. But to do what you ask requires more than tailoring skills. As it happens, yes. We are father and son, and yes, we can do this work. We are the only two within sight of Phewa Lake who can sew like artists. How did you know to ask?"

Hopefully, Tom Landon can link our site to Krishna and Udhav's business, Shrestha Embroidery Shop, where you can see the kind of artistry these men have, although I can not imagine that ANY custom design on their site can compare to the Amchi shirt I am currently wearing. Their site is: www.embroiderynepal.weebly.com. As soon as we can, we will send a jpeg of the Amchi shirt, so you can see for yourselves.

Unbelievable. Quite a feeling, to have your large Tibetan lineage painting sewn into a silken t-shirt design, before your eyes, with son and father bent over the hoop, and the son reminding the father how to shape the grimace of the snow lions' faces, and the father working all the necessary colors into the peacock feathers (each, smaller than a cumin seed).

I think we will take a walk today. Just to stretch our legs and work out the kinks from the disappointment of not being able to land in Jomsom. Not yet.

Love to all of our family and friends, Jane

From Mary

2010-07-05T07:26:00.002-04:00

Wow! Pokhara is Hot! At least 100 degrees when the sun is at it's peak. I hope it's not that hot in Blacksburg. After being in Pokhara for a few days, a mountain trek is welcomed. Jane and I are getting ready to go see a shirt she's having made by a silk tailor-artist, of her painting. Hopefully it'll be good, But it might be horrible. We went to Devi's Falls the first full day we were here. There was a waterfall (Of course,)and a double rainbow in a area off to the side. There was also a wishing well with Ganesh on a isolated perch, the edges going off into a shallow well. Of all of us who tried, Emerson managed to get a rupee coin on the island and have his wish granted. As we were leaving, I saw a really beautiful brass Snow Leopard, but the woman priced too high. As everyone else was browsing other stores, Emerson goes back and buys the Snow Leopard for me. That almost put me in tears. I then saw a necklace with a pheonix and a dragon around a marble and Jane gave me 100 rupees to get it. That was very nice also. Then, when we were at the Tibetan Refugee camp, we went in and saw the woman who were making the rugs, and one pats her bench for me and Ella to get up. She even showed us how. Then Mom got a huge Wind Horse, Ella got a small square Snow Lion, and I got a medium-sized Black dragon. This morning, we got up early to go out on the Lake, which I kept calling a river. On the way there, we got caught in between a dog fight. The bad thing was, the fight followed us. So as Jane was getting ready to get Emerson, I tried to join up with the rest of the group, but was cut off several times. I finally got through though. When we got out on the lake, We paddled over to a temple on the island. There were many pigeons, but in the water over a certain point, was a huge school of fish. When we looked through the polarized lenses, it was so much clearer. On the way back, There were a couple bottles out on the lake, Ashley, Ella , Mom, and I (Our boat), We went to go get them. It turned out they were buoys. Then we went to a German bakery, 2 hours before lunch. Lunch for Ella and I was a plate of French Fries. Mom didn't come because of her ear-splitting headache. Don't Worry Mom, I've been there before. So, now we are going for the T-shirt. Hope it's good!
Mary

a quick post from Reba

2010-07-05T05:50:00.002-04:00

Holy cow. I just read through the rest of the team's posts. It seems that I am traveling with a team of gifted writers, my oldest daughter included. I am grateful I will have a wonderful travel journal with these blogs when I get home.
This morning we got up and out at 6 am to get breakfast and get on the lake before the sun got too hot. As we walk up the street from our hotel there is the occasional shop owner opening up to start the day, but mostly everything is closed....even breakfast places, much to Ella's chagrin.
We were joined by a large dog wearing a collar. A healthy-looking male who trotted along with us, weaving in and out of the 6 of us. Emerson had not joined us yet. It wasn't long before another couple of dogs, who seemed scrappy and steet-wise, joined the parade. One was a cute female dog who seemed sweet. Jane and Jenna have warned us not to touch any dogs, and the girls remember this now. But we talk to them and they wag their tails and trot along......then more dogs peel off from their intended paths to hook up with the women and dog entourage. Yeah, you can see it coming, can't you?
First came a few warning growls and positioning of bodies between the female and the other males. Jane told us to stop and let the dogs go on ahead of us, or we were about to be in the midst of a dog fight. We stopped. So did the dogs. We walked faster. So did the dogs. We crossed to the other side of the street....and here came the dogs. They seemed intent on hanging with us, even with the distraction of rivals in the mix. We even stepped up into the outside section of a restaurant (it wasn't yet open) and several of the dogs even followed us there, continuing to snarl and growl at each other.
Finally, the dogs lost interest as we got further up the street. We learned that no one serves breakfast in Pokhara before 7 am. We decide to head back to find Emerson, by now it is 7 and we knew we could find somewhere to eat. We choose a nice outside table by the lake and order black filter coffee (not Nescafe) and scrambled eggs. Jenna and Ashley order banana porridge and Jane ordered an indian breakfast. She's all spicy, all the time!
Three of the dogs find us again. They came right up on into the restaurant, wagging and waiting on a handout. We resisted the temptation to feed them, but our young waiter who was so polite looked at Jenna and said, "Your dogs, Madame"? Jenna sweetly told him no (her face revealed, "Sure, I brought them with me from America!") and he ran them out, and they were not patient enough to wait for us to leave.
We finished our breakfast, discussing our all-time favorite films then our plans for the day, which included renting boats to paddle to the little island of shrines in the middle of the lake.
I'm not sure what kind of internet, if any, is in Jomsom and beyond. If possible, we will post again. If not, the next time you hear from us will be when we return from our trek.
We miss everyone back home, and love you even more.
R

now i feel grounded here...

2010-07-05T05:35:00.002-04:00

From Jenna
It was strange for the fourth of July to pass with no fireworks....
After our biking adventure yesterday and canoeing on the lake early this morning, I feel more at home. off and on the last week I have thought about my friends running the rapids on the New River and the mtn bike trails I love so much at the pond. the only thing I need to do now to heal my mild homesickness is work in a garden somewhere and eat a BIG salad and some icecream! Jason and Jon, please tell me what foods you are eating from the garden and how the flowers are doing......

To add to Ashleigh's description of the ride, I must fist say that the bikes in Nepal are just like the ponies in the high mountains-- COMPACT!! i was riding the biggest bike they had, and it was still a bit small. in the end, it was probably a good thing because there were no brakes. All i had to do was drag my feet on the down hills. I loved riding between the water-fulled, terraced, rice paddies and watching men, women, children,and water buffalo harvesting, planting and plowing the fields. I am always amazed how well people here use the land and how hard they work. Water from mountain streams is channeled and diverted to the fields, and each field drains water into the terraced field below it until it is returned to a creek or the lake at the bottom. It was 200 rupees to rent the a bike for two hours-- that was the best $2.65 I have spent in a while.

We were up early to get out on the lake before the heat and sun made it unbearable. Jane, Emer and I shared a wooden canoe, and Ashleigh, Reba, Mary and Ella shared one. Fewa Lake runs the length of "Main Street" in Pokhara, it is lined with poinsettia TREES, jungley forests, blooming jasmine and bougainvillea vines. We were hoping to see monkeys playing in the trees, but they must have been taking it easy because of the heat. In the middle of the lake there is an island with many little shrines. We are able to tie our boats up and walk around the island. Surprisingly enough, several women had loaded up their bracelets, necklaces, small statues and purses and set up tables on the island. Because people bring offerings to the shrines there is also a nice pigeon population hanging around hoping for a treat. Reba commented that it felt pretty lucky to roam around the whole island without getting pooped on.

Ella had 5 rupees that I gave her the other day. She was trying to decide what to do with it, and in the end she picked a sweet old Sadhu wearing saffron colored clothes to give it to. It was very sweet watching her walk up to this holy man with her hands in prayer position as she said "Namaste" and placed the rupee note in his hands. Carl, Naomi, and Hugh you would be proud of your girls! today Mary took one of her drawings to a tailor and discussed the idea of turning the design into an embroidered short. She discussed the color, size and even negotiated the price. In the end she decided that she should probably wait till KTM to get the shirt because she did not want to have to carry it on the trek.

Jane's bag was found!!! Our wonderful porter Naryan will bring it when he comes to the mountains. What a relief! It is hard to believe that in this 104 degree weather she could possibly need the fleece tops, capaline underwear and wool socks from that bag, but she will need them when we hit the high mountains.

We leave our hotel at 5am tomorrow-- for a 6 am flight. The 20 minute flight is going to be exciting-- the small twin engine plane will probably transport out team of 7 and maybe 5 other passengers. we will take off, climb and climb and climb over the snowy peaks and then descend into the village of Jomsom. This time the runway will be paved, but the first time Jane and I were here it was a gravel runway. I already know that Tsampa and his wife Karma will be there to greet us with blessing scarves to drape around out necks. I am hopeful that little Laxmi, the street girl Tsampa and his wife took in a few years ago, will be there as well. We all fall in love with her last time. She is between Mary and Ella's ages, and we are looking forward to the girls getting to know each other.

Write us if you have a minute, today will the our last EASY day to read comments until we return to KTM in 3 weeks. J

Bicycle Adventure in Pokhara

2010-07-05T01:42:00.003-04:00

A Joyful Hello from Ashleigh

In her last post, Jenna mentioned being on edge of a bicycle adventure: I am still beaming from the fun. Rather than ride our mountain-bikes (functionally speaking: beach cruisers) up the mountain to the World Peace Stupa, we decided to follow a small road that snakes along the edge of the lake. Asphalt turns to dirt and gravel; city turns to mountain huts and terraced rice fields. My heart soars as we steer our bikes, sans brakes, between slurping mud puddles and sharp rocks. "This feels like running a rapid," I say to Jenna, the expert raft-guide who always chooses the smoothest line. I laugh as I fly over the biggest rocks and dodge the puddles on edge. As my pedaling legs dissolve into my joyful smile, I am reminded of what a country mouse I am. Remember the children's story? I can play the city life for a little while: the electric glow, the exhaust pipe face-powder, the loud sounds of street shops, stereos and car horns. But how I come alive when I fade into green! Village life, knee deep in rice-paddy mud and oxen-drawn plows, holds the alchemical magic that accesses my brightest glow. This is where I recharge.

Jenna and I laugh our way through small roadside stops like the Hungry Feel Guest House and the Benign Cafe. We laugh again at the two young Nepali men who follow us for miles on their motorbike: just smiling and staring at these two crazy women pedaling so freely. "Where did Tom and Lisa Hammet live when they were here?" I ask Jenna. "I hope it was here in the rice fields," says Jenna. "Just what I was thinking," I reply as I nearly swerve off the road, lost in the beauty of green.

We return our bikes after the gorgeous adventure and walk to the hotel dripping mud and sweat. A pot of lemon tea, a shower, reunion with the glowing faces of our team: what a way to live an afternoon.

July 5, from Jane

2010-07-05T01:15:00.002-04:00

Apologies to those of you who are following the blog and have had plenty already of Jane-thought, which may have seemed nice and organic in your first few bowls full, but now may have cooled for you, and started to taste pasty, like so much old oatmeal. But I doubt our ability to communicate easily if at all starting hopefully tomorrow, thus the impulse to write while I can.

This morning, though, we had a sinister sky, unbearably low clouds, not right for allowing our hummingbird flight into the high country. I fear that we may not be able to fly tomorrow morning if we have a sky like today's. I am feeling like a bad trip organizer since we COULD have flown yesterday morning. Luckily, Emerson pointed out that my horoscope today encouraged me to "let go quickly of your dumb ideas."

Before attempting to fly up to Jomsom village--hopefully tomorrow morning, though the clouds have me worried--I am thinking about what it is you decide--what gods and which thoughts guide you--when you willingly go into a place of higher risk, or imagine the risks as greater.

I do always remember how the urbane French theorist Roland Barthes died: not in the Himalayas, or along the Amazon, or on an expedition like Shackleton's icy polar imprisonment, but in Paris, I think, as he crossed the street, distracted. He was hit and killed by a laundry truck.

I also always remember what the Tibetan lama Venerable Dudjom Rinpoche said when someone told him the sad news that a dear friend's health had suddenly declined and that the friend would most likely die. "Yes," the Rinpoche smiled, "Of course he will not recover. We are all dying."

There was a time when the inevitability of a Buddhist response like the Rinpoche's made me roll my eyes, seemed merely clever, or troublingly aloof and blithe.

Now I try to steer by a set of prayer flags that I think I see fluttering in front of me, knowing the boat (or tiny airplane) that sails them is always already disintegrating as I glide. The prayers printed on the flags I strain to glimpse announce wishes: may all creatures suffer less; may we all gain wisdom and compassion; may the Buddhas of the five directions prosper, inspiring good intentions, non-violence, right action, and right livelihood. May we, to recontextualize the title of an essay I love by my friend Suzi Gablik, see and be moved by Art and the Big Picture.

A great article by Sushma Joshi (e-mail her at sansarmagazine@gmail.com) impressed me in yesterday's Kathmandu Post, called "Killing our Nagas: Our disembodied society views the rvers as spearate, rather than as part, of the social fabric." The article highlights the noxious and sordid condition of the Kathmandu Valley's rivers and alludes to the Buddhist idea that Nagas, river dieties, are responding to the disrespect that forgetful and selfish humans have shown to their own life-sources.

Joshi sees her own condescending relation to the Buddhist literature she has grown up learning--sees how she has been directed in her education to relegate Buddhism to "inventive and charming" parable. But "Scientists predict water shortages all over the continent [of Asia] in the coming decades. Predictions are dire--millions may be without drinking water. Thirsty times have begun." Like D. H. Lawrence in his Sicilian poem "Snake," Joshi rethinks what really repels her in this world.

Joshi remembers that "Killing snakes was forbidden in Vedic times. Snakes, myths said, were the embodiment of Nagas, serpent guardians of rivers and rains. They carry the elixir of immortality. When Nagas were protected, the monsoons arrived on time."

Immortality and death are not oxymoronic. It is in the turning of the continuous wheel of life, death, and rebirth where immortality resides. After all, the contribution of any human being can be only to nurture and celebrate life before the point of death--to fly or raft with faith and gusto, to do as little harm as possible where you are--and, importantly--to do as much GOOD as you can, while you can.

No choking of rivers allowed. No breaking of spirits or hearts. No desecration. No cynicism. No armchair sarcasm. No apathy. No giving up. Or to put the pith otherwise, as my friend Jenna likes to say (quoting a t-shirt she admired), come to the end of your life in a great slide, like a baseball player giving 100% to reach home base, dirty, sweaty, exhausted, and thinking, "Amazing! What a ride!" Jane

Small Wonder

2010-07-05T00:59:00.003-04:00

July 5th: Greetings from Ashleigh

While lazing around the hotel in the blistering afternoon heat of this surprising tropical village set in the gaze of some of the highest, snowiest mountains on Earth, I smile at how familiar Pokhara feels to my travel-worn feet. Banana trees
surfing the breeze, electric-chirping cicadas, curiously independent toddlers dancing through the streets: have I been here before? I sit quiet and calm and think to myself: not every day has to be a revelation or a revolution, for that matter. Why is it that we so often place what is new and novel on a pedestal that glares at what is ordinary and similar and strangely familiar? Some of the most extraordinary gems of life hide in the soft shadow of every-day moments. The kind of moments that are easy to live thoughtlessly are full of mica-like gifts just waiting to be recognized by seeing eyes. I laugh at myself for how I have to coach myself through the beauty of a lazy afternoon; how I have to remind myself that the binding glue of a journey does not reveal itself all at once like the light explosion of a festive sparkler; how I am integrating the many teachings of Jane's Creative Process class, of Yoga, of vagabond feet into the present moment: re-weaving theory as practice. And just then, as I am lost in thought and laughing at myself in joyful quiet, Ella and Mary boom onto the seen with grace and invite me to play. Of course! And out of the ordinary afternoon, heavy with tropical laze, booms the firework-wonder of two young girls who remind me of the magic hidden in the walls of the hotel garden. We dance through the green and pink buzz and speak in British accents as if we are tour guides pointing out every movement, every sound, every small wonder hidden in rocks, in trees, in rusty spiral staircases and mountain views: bliss blooms in the crystal-shine of our silly voices. How grateful I feel to learn the world through the eyes of these two sisters, Mary and Ella, whose eyes, like telescopes, find new constellations hidden in the everyday sky. We sing ourselves silly: a round of In The Jungle that lets us try our hand at harmonizing. Such fun: barefoot in the garden; raising our voices in song. Thank you Mary and Ella: for your eyes, for your laughter, for sharing the joy of spirited song. You remind me why I want to spend my life learning from children. -Ashleigh

from Jane, July 4th evening here

2010-07-04T11:18:00.003-04:00

A breeze! The internet shop I have chosen is open to the lake, and now that it is dark outside, the air is sweet. It carries frangipani tree-perfume and Nepali filmi music and albino gecko chirps and NO pitchfork heat.

At dinner tonight, under a thatch upstairs restaurant roof, Ella, having split a pineapple pizza with Mary (please put "pizza" in quotation marks), was looking out at the street life, and swaying to Nepali music, more and more vigorously--in her own world--in the literal rhythm of this place. Reba leaned over and said, nodding toward Ella, "Too bad Nepal has shut Ella down."

Mary and Ella get to alternate at lunch and dinner who gets to choose which dish to order for them to share, and they are being good cooperative sisters, only occasionally jealous of who has the camera.

Mary said to me today, as we were walking, "I am so glad I came on this trip, Jane. i feel so privileged. But not in the way of that Kathmandu guy, Aslan."

"Were you suprised at how rough I was with him, Mary?" I asked. She paused. "No. I wasn't surprised. It doesn't surprise me that you would protect me. You thought he wasn't safe. So you became rough." "I did. And it made me shake to speak to someone that way. My hands were shaking. It doesn't feel good to be rough, but I knew it would have felt worse to tolerate him near us. So I don't regret being rough. But it didn't feel good. Do you understand?" "I think so," Mary said. "You aren't naturally rough. Just when you need to keep us safe. But I'm not sure I will ever be able to be rough like you. I hope so, though. It was awesome."

So our friends in Kathmandu have alerted me that I have an early birthday present: they have found my missing backpack, and our guide, Narayan, will be bringing it to Mustang before we meet to head into the Restricted Territory. So I will have a sleeping bag liner and cold-weather gear after all. Amazing! Thanks to Jenna for realizing what I didn't have (MY BACKPACK!) before I did, and kicking into gear to send the alert out in time.

Ashleigh and Emerson, and our already-trekking teammate Mika, young people in their twenties, like all my Creative Process students at Virginia Tech, or like my Blacksburg High School friend Jessica, who is taking care of my gazillion cats when she is not impressing the Coach of the Metropolitan Opera House (GO JESSICA!): Jenna and Reba and I (the elders) are SO proud of you, as we are of Mary and Ella.

What a team. Happy 4th to our friends and family back home--our extended team! Jane, The Rough Elder

from Jane on the 4th of July

2010-07-04T04:52:00.002-04:00

Fourth of July in tropical Pokhara: the entire region is a lit firework. Sizzle-heat.

I had no idea it WAS the 4th of July today until I was wondering today's date for this post, and now, I think of fireworks in my back yard, with Jenna, and with my friends and my neighbors, the Bowyer family, and Sammy and Izzy Robbins and their family, and Iris and Emerson being the firework masters on the lawn near the apple tree, just outside my painting room.

I love fireworks, and have always tried to afford them. I love what Truman Capote said, that fireworks were his favorite art form. But as we would shoot off sometimes two hours' worth in my back yard, I always felt a little conflicted, enthralled by the fizz of colors, but also sorry for the sleeping birds, who lose their magic at night, and can not fly, either from their fears, or toward their needs.

I will measure this 4th of July in threads instead of sparks.

Today, we visited the Tibetan Refugee Center on the back side of Pokhara, where there is a carpet workshop. I bought two small square carpets of Tibetan wool: a yak for my son (Emerson picked it out--rose, dull magenta, and tan) and a snow lion for my daughter (Iris will love the colors--apricots, sage, and pale blue). Both the yak and the snow lion will live in Charlottesville, in my children's apartments, this fall.

We saw the work-room where the carpets were hand-loomed. It was a Tibetan woman named Dawa (whose name means "moon") who packaged these purchases for me. She liked my necklaces.

In Martin Scorscese's film, Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, I can never forget the scene when His Holiness has had to flee Lhasa and finally manage to reach safety at the Indian border. The handsome young Indian soldier who greets the young Dalai Lama approaches and says, "Excuse me, sir. May I ask: Are you the Lord Buddha?" And when the exhausted Dalai Lama finds the strength to reply, He answers: "I think I am like the moon, reflecting in water. When you see me, you see yourself."

See that film, with Philip Glass' gorgeous musical score, if you haven't. I weep each time I see it. Think of fireworks, fireflies, yaks, snow lions, the moon, the thread, and a free Tibet. Jane

it's a sauna here

2010-07-04T04:40:00.002-04:00

Greetings from Jenna in Pokhara, I was up at 5:30 am hoping to watch the sun rise over some of the largest peaks in the world-- Annapurna I and II, to name a few. Once in a while the clouds broke and revealed the snowy peeks, which seemed so surreal, because the temperature was already in to the 90's on the roof of our hotel.
Now, at 2:30 in the afternoon it is over 100 degrees. Everything seems even more lush and jungle like than I remember-- lots of banana trees and poinsettias trees (though not in bloom). I look forward to canoeing on the lake tomorrow before the heat sets in.
Today we took a jeep up to Devi falls and Tibetan Refugee Camp-- what a great surprise to step off a market street, through a gate and to the edge of a deep water fall (for all of my river friends-- it's not runnable). We saw beautiful double rainbows and amazing rock formations carved from flood waters.
Ashleigh and I just bought a map of lake side Pokhara. We were going to rent two mtn bikes and try our luck riding to a hill top temple called the World Peace Stupa.

I have really enjoyed seeing Nepal with Ella and Mary's eyes. They bring so much to our experience and they are doing so well here-- bargaining on the streets, trying new foods, and asking the best questions. People respond to our group favorably because we are traveling with kids--- way to go Reba. What a gift you have given to us all.

Jane my not post this, but you should know that yesterday as we were about to board our flight-- we discovered that her backpack with all her trekking gear did not make it to our hotel. The last place we had it was when we put it on the plane to Nepal. Jane was so busy making sure we were all okay and that all the bags with gifts for the nunnery had arrived, she never noticed the missing bag--somehow we all missed this one bag. She did not really need anything from the bag in KTM, but as we prepared to leave the city for the trek, she realized it was gone. We have our friends at Gurkha travels trying to track the bag down, and we are hopeful our porter can bring it from KTM when he comes. Keep your fingers crossed!!!!

more later after the bike ride-- wish me luck-- the bike has no shocks, there are not helmets for rent and I don't have my padded biking shorts, not to mention we have NO idea where we are going. Should be an adventure.

Memories....from Reba

2010-07-04T04:22:00.002-04:00

Ahhh, we are in Pokhara....a where it is not an exaggeration to say that you can fry and egg on the sidewalk (just ask Emerson who took a quick barefoot walk in the hotel garden).....where showering is just an interruption to being wet with sweat. It makes me remember the last time we were here, and our whole team was on one floor of the UN-air conditioned Guest house. We were so desperate for a breeze that we opened all of our doors on the hallway and stipped down to undershorts and tops to lay across the beds and nap....or at least that's what I remember doing :)
We haven't taken the boats out yet, but that's our plan for this evening or early in the morning. The spelling on the signs here is keeping us laughing, I remember Sherrie being so good about taking pictures of things like that. Sherrie, Jason and Tom, we DO miss you...very much.
Today we went to the Tibetan Refugee camp where the women spend months hand weaving beautiful wool and silk rugs. We entered a small room where three woman were sitting before huge looms, threading strings through with their fingers. One woman looked and Mary and Ella and patted the bench beside her, and they scrambled up. She showed them how she did it, then she let them try. I got good pictures! It was really sweet and I was proud of how Mary and Ella didn't hesitate to "give it a go." Even more amazing, and what I couldn't figure out, was how in the world the woman figured out when to stop one thread color and begin a new one in the design. We were told that for a large rug, 4 women must work for 4-5 months to complete it.

Ella wants me to tell you that she loves the food in Pokara. So far she has had pizza twice (pineapple and garlic) and spaghetti once. They are both eating like horses, so all is well...
And she still loves baby monkeys!

Aslan and Aslan: Emerson on July 3rd

2010-07-03T10:29:00.002-04:00

Well, this is an interesting experience! I haven't gotten to be a contributor the blog just yet, perhaps because everyone else seems to do such a good job. From mom's diligent chronicling of where we have been and her keen insights into what going there means to the youthful enthusiasm of the Hoffmans (if, in some cases, ie Reba, slightly immature enthusiasm), we seem to really have a good thing going here. Nevertheless, I wanted to share some of my thoughts as the sole male on this expedition.

This morning we left Kathmandu for Pokhara, but before we did, we came face to face one more time with someone who had been frustrating our team leaders and creeping on the young women in our group. This guy was from San Francisco, and had the entire Californian cliche down pat: the bleached blonde hair, the flip flops no matter what the weather, the lazily sexually aggressive surfer energy, and of course the liberalism that expresses itself not as a generous and benevolent desire to help others and build community but as a disturbingly self-centered, drug-addled narcissism. I went to school in California, and fortunately my peers were not really this sort of person, but you saw them, and really pitied them. But the average hypocritical surfer would have nothing on our friend, who incredibly was named (at least he claimed) Aslan. That's right, Aslan. The Lion from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis's representation of Christ. The thing Liam Neeson voices in the movies. His name was Aslan. What incredible irony.

He came stumbling drunk to our breakfast table around seven in the morning, if not earlier, which should tell you something about his personal habits and behavioral patterns. Anyway, a strong charge led by mom and Jenna (with some choice quotes that I will leave for them to relay), he wandered off (or rather, was driven as far away as he could get, which was several yards). The incident wasn't that big of a deal for me, because I was too tired to really pay much attention and because his energy was directed anywhere but me, since I was the only other guy around. But his intrusiveness, and even more so his somewhat pitiful demeanor and obvious lack of wisdom, did get me really thinking. Namely, what a difference between Aslan the spoiled drunk boy playing in a Nepali toy box and Aslan the lion who saves Edmund from his own folly and leads the charge against Jadis, The White Witch. What a tremendous difference, not just of situation (the real world versus the fantastical), but also a difference of character.

I thought about how this difference might relate to our trip in Nepal, trying to decide if my observations and armchair psycho and literary analysis were worth sharing. And I decided, with not a hint of self-regard, that they were. It began with wondering why C.S. Lewis chose to make the most heroic character in The Chronicles of Narnia, the Christ figure, a lion. I think partly it has to do with traditional Christian iconography (Christ being both lamb and lion), and partly it has to do with the lion being the traditional king of the jungle (just ask Simba!). But I think he also meant to convey that a powerful force for good in the world would be "lion hearted". Aslan the lion certainly is lion-hearted. Aslan the deadbeat, not so much. And I think that as important as being lion-hearted is to leading an army or even saving humanity (as Lewis would suggest), it is also important to be lion-hearted if you wish to travel to Nepal, in two ways.

First, in the negative sense. Nepal is really hard. For instance, we are in Pokhara right now, where the temperature was over 100 degrees before the sun rose all the way. It is hot, it is humid, and the air conditioning in the hotels (air conditioning that only comes in particularly luxurious rooms) randomly does or does not work depending it seems on nothing more than the whims of the Olympian gods. It's easy to get sick here, either from making poor food choices, not being hygenic, or (hopefully in my case) just by being unlucky. In Thamel in Kathmandu, people are constantly begging and trying to sell you things, often refusing to take no for an answer. I was asked if I wanted to buy hash about ten times a day. We flew today, and the airports are crowded and chaotic. Nowhere seems to have rules that exist as real enforceable rules; they rather seem to be based on whims, momentary decisions, and other ephemeral, untraceable criteria. Being in Nepal can be uncomfortable, it can be bad for your health, and it can be frustrating.

A person accustomed to the good life would have a meltdown instantly. But even someone who has strength could easily find themselves questioning why they came or how they will ever be able to survive Nepal. But if you are lion-hearted, bold and courageous, you can meet the challenges of the heat, or the diarrhea, with swagger and smiles rather than moans and groans. Many, I think, would wilt in the face of the adversary of Nepal. Or, like our human Aslan, they would stay in the bosom of tourist luxury, drinking until all fears and hardships evaporated in an alcoholic, perhaps hashish as well, induced haze. But a lion-hearted person, like the lion Aslan, would face such hardships as route markers on the path to real reward and embrace them.

But I don't think that being lion-hearted only has to do with bravery and courage, even though that is what we often associate with lions. Certainly the character Aslan is admirable not just because he is courageous, but also because he is wise and merciful. Similarly, facing Nepal and staring down its bizarre, and often comically disturbing, idiosyncrasies is not enough to be lion-hearted. One must truly appreciate its good qualities. Aslan represents Jesus Christ in C.S. Lewis's Christian view of the world, and perhaps it might be good to relate to western audiences that bringing a Christ like presence is a good way to begin to be lion-hearted. That doesn't mean to evangelize, to grab poor Hindu boys off the street and yell at them that they must accept Jesus or face the fiery flames of Hell (a horrible and perverted misreading of a great faith that I actually witnessed my first night in Kathmandu). Far from it. Instead, it means that a visitor to Nepal should have the wisdom, and the compassion, to act as the prophet Abraham (Lincoln, not the Old Testament one), said, "with malice towards none, with charity towards all."

That means understanding that the Buddhist monk who wishes to bless you is as wise and as generous as the best people you know back home. It means understanding that the merchant trying so hard to rip you off does so not because of his own malice, but because of economic desperation. It means that witnessing the ritualistic slaughter of a goat, as I saw at the Hindu temple Dakshin Kahli, is not a barbaric practice of the past but rather a different culture's way of dialogging with the notions of transience and loss. It means recognizing that we bring immense privilege into Nepal by virtue of our American money belts brimming with dollars and rupees, and that we have a responsibility to act kindly towards those we meet, no matter how repugnant they might seem. I think a lion-hearted person would have the wisdom to see that when someone travels abroad, they are ambassadors from their country, and that they should act accordingly.

Nepal is wonderful, insane, difficult, challenging, and rewarding. There was a terrible movie made once called Crazy/Beautiful, but I think the title really captures what Nepal is all about. I hope that our team of people, from Jane my mom who has been to Nepal so many times to Mary and Ella Hoffman, who are seeing outside the United States for the first time, can be like Aslan. That we can be brave in facing hardship and magnanimous and generous in our actions. That we can avoid being like the other Aslan, hiding from our responsibilities and consuming Nepal in a fetishistic attempt to outrun our own demons.

I think our team, our project, those of you following at home, and even our United States of America would do well to have the spirit of the lion Aslan, and to shun those tendencies that turn us into the human Aslan. In so doing, perhaps we can appreciate another place with both strong pride and generous humility.

Maybe Aslan the lion does have a cure for mild fever and diarrhea? If so, I'd DEFINITELY like to be a bit more like him....

from Jane on July 3rd

2010-07-03T04:25:00.002-04:00

Today has been an intense day, partly because we have reached Pokhara, the middle city, but also because my student Mika Maloney split off from the rest of the team.

She went with a friend of ours on a long journey of her own, to reach Besisahar, the starting point for the Annapurna Trek. If you think of a horseshoe with the round curve on top, like an upside-down letter U, Besisahar is at the bottom right point. The entire Annapurna Circuit is about two weeks of long walking, with its climax at the top of the horseshoe, the Thorung-la Pass, at almost 18,000 feet.

Jenna and I crossed the Thorung-la in the winter of 2000, with Tsampa-la, in the first snowstorm of the season. Mika will not face a blizzard, although she could see snow or sleet. If our paths do not intersect, we will miss each other by just a few days and have promised to leave one another notes at certain points along the Circuit. We know her guide, who will accompany her like a loyal brother for the entire Circuit, so we feel comforted. But we already miss her. Last night, everyone at dinner felt that odd anxiety, the trekker's misgiving about parting ways, the feeling of The (Buddhist) Last Supper, where betrayal is not the problem, but only the poignant inevitability of separation.

Mika, we wish you safe safe and gorgeous travels. We will always be your team.

The town of Pokhara is positively sweltering, 104 degrees Fahrenheit when we landed, before the sun was at its peak. Coffee grows here, and bananas. Fortunately, our hotel rooms have air-conditioning, although Reba pointed out that the AC unit, though set in a beautiful wooden-arch window, has an inch of open sky to every side. Carpentry smarpentry.

Fever birds are calling around me, the koila bird you can hear in Richard Attenbourough's film, Gandhi, when Candice Bergen, playing the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, interviews the elderly Gandhiji during his millionth imprisonment by the doomed British Raj. She is asking him about whether non-violence could be used against a leader as ruthless as Hitler. Not without defeats, Gandhi reasons, because non-violence takes a long time, but in the end, there is no weapon stronger than civil disobedience when used with the right intentions.

Pokhara is a city built on the rim of a lake, Phewa Tal. We see the giant famous Machupuchchare looming over it, Fishtail (just Google this famous mountain and you'll see what is on Ashleigh's and Reba's cameras from this morning). Along with Everest and the Jungfrau, Fishtail is the most photographed mountain in the world. It is a steep pyramid, extremely pointy, a classic, sharp, snow-covered white and ageratum Himalayan peak.

Later, if we have not completely dissolved from this constant sauna, we will take long canoes out, and paddle ourselves over close enough to observe the shore of the wild side, where monkeys and tigers live. Peak season to be here is in the Fall, when the skies are clear. In this season, Fishtail plays hide and seek, but we may, if we are lucky, see the moutain reflect in the lake.

Non-violence takes a long time. My friend Suzi Gablik sent me her most recent blog this morning, where I saw a photograph of cola-colored streaks of the Gulf oil-spill veining horribly upon an Alabama beach.

There is not a single old Tibetan artefact in the Pokhara stalls today, only plastic Chinese copies of junky tourist items, hawked by the Tibetan refugees here who have never, in fifty sad years, been able to go home.

There is a moment in the film version of Out of Africa in which Denys Finch-Hatton tempts Karen Blixen to go on safari with him: "There is land there you ought to see," he promotes, "because it won't be there much longer."

In three days we will be on our way to what must be some of the last land where the Buddhas have always curbed what makes people hasten their own demise.

We will not find this pristine wisdom anymore in Lower Mustang, we are told. But I do still expect to find it in the Resricted Territory. I had better tank up there, before something explodes and plumes all over the Annapurnas, something ruinous and toxic, melting the glaciers, sinking the fish, bludgeoning the Buddhas I love. Jane

Ella's post

2010-07-02T05:44:00.003-04:00

Nepal is a place that not many 3rd graders will see. It's very different. You have to drink from bottles water and bottled water only! I am very impressed that they have Fanta! Fanta is really common in Nepal! So is Coca-cola, Pepsi, and other USA drinks. The crazy streets are very bumpy but awesome!
My favorite Hindu god is Ganesh because he looks like an elephant.
I liked the monkey temple because it had cute baby monkeys, but I did NOT like the 403 stairs that we had to walk up.
I had a gnat in my hot chocolate this morning (I got it out), and Mom forced me to eat scrambled eggs because I ordered a banana pancake but didn't like it.
Oh yeah, and Emerson and I saved Mary from a mama monkey! See? I DO care about her!
That's all for now
I LOVE BABY MONKEYS!
Love, Ella

Additional note from Reba:
Yesterday, as Mary and I were lying around our room feeling puny, Ella was back to her sassy self. She spent her afternoon playing Uno and journaling with Mika, Ashley and Emerson. They taught her how to cut pictures from the brochures to glue in her pages. She has loved Emerson for a long time, and now she loves Mika and Ashley. Two beautiful, kind and brave young women as role models. What more can a mother want?

3rd try from Jenna

2010-07-02T04:48:00.002-04:00

Sorry to be bad about communication. I have tried to post two times and both times I spent over an hour and then lost what I had worked on. Frustration, time, power outages and slow internet have kept me away from the computers. I am fine and doing well. It is hot here, but our guest house garden provides shady spots for rest. We have been going non stop.... the monkey temple, the cremation temple, the potters square, shopping in the markets, dinner with friends and a beautiful day trek to Nagercot-- the mountain top site where we can see Everist and several other giant peeks. Unfortunattely the clouds were so thick that the mountains were hiding. luckly we will see the big mtns when we head out west tomorrow.

I am struck this time by the street kids-- i see a new problem I have not really encountered here before. The young boys spend their days sniffing STRONG glue out of paper bags. They are almost delerious as they wonder the streets. I talked to our friend who is a gem dealer and he told me about picking these kids up off the stoop in fromt of his store and noticing their dry, almost scaley skin and their brittle bones. He told me about all the organizations which collect $ to help these kids, and how it hardly ever makes it to the street kids. Then he told me about an Amreican woman and her organization who does really great work to help. Apparently she feeds them all one good meal a week, some times she pickes them up and takes them to a place where they can get haircuts and sometimes to a place to get a bate. I want to find out more about her and the organization.

Our flight tomorrow morining will take us even further awaty from the city, computers and the chaos of KTM. We will spend a few days in Pokara, the lake city where we will canoe thru terraced lands and trees teeming with monkeys, we will visit a cave, and a tibetan refugee camp-- we can expect jungle temperature there (100 degrees)and we will probably run into monsoon rains. Next we fly to Jomsom where the festival was held and where Tsampa lives. After a few days, we will meet our porters and our favorite guide Naryan, and we will start our trek to Lo. We already have worries about monsoon rains at the end of the trek, so we have a plan B which gives us time to do the extra 4 day walk out of the mtns if our plane can't fly-- this is what we had to do last time and I was actually glad for the extra trek. That part of the trek takes us back thru the low land jungles-- where the rest of the trek is in the high mtns and in view of snowy peaks.

I worry about the changes I will see as we head to the west. I have heard that there are now roads on most of the Annapurna Circut. In 2007, Jomsom village had a tractor, and a car and a few mororcycles now has traffic passing by---Cars and maybe even busses. It used to be that cars were disassembles, flown in and reassembled, and that they were only used in Jomsom and the boardering villages-- rivers flowing down from the mtn tops prevented further travel. Now cars can drive all the way from Beni to the holy site of Muktinath in about 2 days-- when we trekked, it was about an 8 day walk. Luckly, Lo, the remote region we will travel to does not have roads YET, but I suspect we will see more evidence of the roads to come!!!

Today we took bags of clothes to a monistary for nuns-- they were thrilled. We were invited in for a cup of tea, and thanks to Jane we were served YACK BUTTER tea rather than sweet milk chai. She thought it would be funny to request the salty, thick, butter tea so our new comers Ashely and Mika could try it. Though we all had to choke the stuff down, Jane was the only who was served a second cup before she could stop them, so in the end her plan back fired. Jason, Sherrie and Tom, we tosted you with this tea!!!! After tea we were given a tour of the main temple room, the nuns blessed our journey with a singing and paryer, then they beleest Ashley, Mika ande Jane's malas. It was a beautiful monistart right next to the Monkey twemple build over 125 years ago. There are 125 nuns at this monistary and the youngest is 7 years old. It was great to be able to deliver about 17 pairs of shoes, dozens of tooth brushes, clothes, (jeans, shirts, and coats). The nuns will make sure the goods get to the people that need them. We have already been invited back for a vegetarian lunch after our trek. I will make sure to order a POT of Yak butter tea for Jane.

I have not given myself time to edit. I want to post before i lose this... forgive my errors.

from Jane, July 1

2010-07-01T11:26:00.002-04:00

Hello, Friends. Our third showing of A Gift for the Village this evening was a wonderful success, with a sweet group of Nepalis and travelers, including a social worker from Spain and university administrators from Minnesota. Again, the film created great emotion, and brought people to tears. We are so gratified.

We spent the day walking from Pashupatinath to Boudha, from the cremation ghats along the Bagmati River, to one of the two holiest Buddhist stupas in the valley. At Pashupati we saw an incredible ceremony which Jenna filmed: the one-year anniversary remembrance of a beloved Pashupati sadhu's death.

Most incredible was a sadhu (holy man) dressed as Hanuman, the monkey god, with a huge hairy tail-appendage, curled up higher than his head, and his lower face masked with half a coconut hull, painted livid red. The effect was to make him seem as if he were really a monkey, but tall and dancing like a man, and in splendid garish marigold and silver and ruby swaths of ornamented cloth.

Jenna admitted that the costume actually spooked her, because the piercing painted eyes of this Hanuman figure seemed convincingly like a monkey-god's. I felt the same eerieness, and Mika later made the same observation, about the strange intensity of this dancing Hanuman.

Among the gypsy sounds of the sadhus, the manic tinny tambourines and the hoarse thigh-bone horns, and amidst the billowing smoke of the smouldering cremations, I saw the most impressive retinue of committed sadhus I have seen in my 25 years of traveling to south Asia. These men were handsome and elegant, emaciated and languid, classic in their statuesque features, like the Roman art of Praxiteles in the 5th century B.C.; like the Dying Gaul, or later, the Laocoon. Some were dressed in pastels, apricots my grandmother would have selected, and others, in acid lemons and pomegranate crushes of color. Some looked as if their faces had not produced sound for all eternity, and others were sweating, singing metallic plaintive prayers.

At Boudha, the world smells like juniper, and the Tibetan women walking round in their striped aprons look like sturdy satellites to the beautiful hemispheric reliquary, with its blue and golden eyes facing the four directions. I always feel relieved to be near Tibetans, especially when they write me an e-mail:

Date: July 1, 2010 07:49:43 +0000
From: Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Dear Jane Lillian Vance,

I have been directed by Mr. Chhime R. Chhoekyapa, Secretary to His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, to response to your letter.
He sends His prayers and good wishes for the success of your
film.

We very much appreciated and congratulated for completing your film
project on Tsampa Ngawang Lama of Mustang, Nepal, which took over 9½
years to complete. We are very much sure that your film will bring about
greater awareness of the rich cultural heritage of the people living in
places like Mustang.

We once again very much appreciated your thoughtful gesture for sending us
NTSC version and PAL format of your documentary film.

With best wishes,

Yours Sincerely,

Tsultrim Dorjee
Administrative Assistant

--
Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Thekchen Choeling
P.O. Mcleod Ganj
Dharamsala 176219
HIMACHAL PRADESH
--------------

For now, goodnight from Kathmandu. Everyone on the team sends their love. Jane

from Reba

2010-07-01T08:02:00.002-04:00

Thanks, Everyone for your sweet and supportive comments. I'm almost afraid to tell you guys that Mary, Ella and I have been out of commission for a couple of days from a stomach bug. We are all ok now, not to worry. I don't think it was food or water because we all got it but nobody else has so far. I was really worried that being sick here would make them want to come home, but they have been troopers. Jane has this plum concentrate, a very strong, sticky goo that helps with stomach problems. Grudgingly the girls took a couple of doses and are much better now. Ella is completely better, Mary and I are working on it.
It is so fun to watch the girls here. Mary acts so grown up and doesn't hesitate to talk to people or greet them. Ella is finally "Namaste-ing" and smiling at people, whereas at first she would act shy. She always runs up to the desk when we enter the guest house and asks for the key. (A skeleton key on a large wooden key-holder) She also isn't afraid to leave our room and run down to Emerson or Ashley and Mika's room without me or her sister. Yesterday morning when the girls were not feeling well, I went down to get myself some tea at the guest house cafe and the manager asked how we all were. I told him that the girls were not feeling well, and he responded, "Which one? Mary or Ella?" I was surprised that he knew their names, but then again, not. People here seem genuinely happy that we are here.
Dinner at Sunil and Sarita's was just like Jane described...too much. It was so fun taking Mary and Ella there. As we were getting out of the rickshaws, Mary leaped out and her feet came out from under her. She got quite a bump as her head hit the rickshaw. We teased her that she now has a great story to tell about fighting with a rickshaw in Kathmandu! Mom and Dad, Sarita asked about you. Her mother is close to turning 100!
We had a very nice dinner courtesy of the Gurka trekking company at this very old palace I believe of a royal priest. We sat on the floor, were served spicy peanuts, popcorn, momos, potatoes....and those were just appetizers! Then came a Thali (sp?) plate of about 6 traditional Nepali dishes. Very good!
This morning we went to Pashupati, the creamation temple. Mary and Ella saw some very hard things. Not so much the 2 bodies that were burning or the two that were being prepared (wrapped in clothes and draped with marigolds), but rather the poor and disfigured people who sit and beg for a few rupees to eat. We did get to see a celebration for the 1 year anniversary of the death of a Sardu. (I hope I spelled that right, probably not) We also took pictures of a group of Sardus, with and without Emerson, Mika, Mary, and Ella.
We are all having a great time, but we miss everyone back home a whole bunch. Lots of love from Nepal, ya'll.
R

From Mary

2010-07-01T07:29:00.003-04:00

Wow. The Hoffman's have been sick for a while. We're starting to get better....I hope. Today at Pashupati I got 'up close and personal' with a mamma monkey. If Ella hadn't pulled me back, I probably would've been jumped on. Brrrrr. Sends a chill down my spine how close I was. Anyway, Let's head to good news. I finaly got a dragon, thanks to Mom and Jane. It's a big black one. Jane said Black Dragons are guardians in Nepal. Tomorrow is our last day in Kathmandu. I'm feeling a little homesick, but excited for the new adventures to come. I hope no more close monkey encounters though. Also at Pashupati, we saw body's being prepared for burning, and body's being burned, understanding that it's an entirely different culture, but was also very moving. On the 29th, I think, Mingma took us to a very nice hotel with a nice restaurant with pretty good food, (I probably would've enjoyed it more if I wasn't feeling sick,) and amazing dancers. In one dance, the man dancing took a liking to Ashley, which made his girlfriend mad. There were about four or five performances before they finished. I heard last night's show was big success. That makes me happy people care. I miss everyone back home and hope you are all having a nice summer.
Mary

from Jane, June 30th evening

2010-06-30T11:04:00.002-04:00

Our time in Kathmandu is only accelerating in intensity, and I wanted to post a blog to celebrate our premiere at The Indigo Gallery in Kathmandu, just a few hours ago. Jenna Swann and Tom Landon and our Gift for the Village project are soon to be featured in a beautiful glossy magazine here in the Kathmandu Valley. We were interviewed in the garden just before the film showed tonight. And afterwards, a reporter from the Kathmandu Post (the valley's largest English-speaking newspaper) who watched the documentary interviewed us and wants to do a story on our film.

Indigo Gallery's owner and master of ceremonies, James Gambrione, and his beautiful wife Linda were unbelievably gracious and generous hosts in their grand film space, and our guests were an accomplished and varied group, with expat professors and Tibetan and Nepali academics, art critics, poets, service group representatives, and our porters Binod and Hare and Narayan (again), who all helped us reach Lo in 2007.

We had a rich question and answer session after the film, with Jenna videoing, and James and Linda want to set up another showing, perhaps at the American Embassy, perhaps at the Ambassador's private home.

We had a LOT of interest and joy in our audience after the film. It seems that what Jenna and Tom have made is really inspirational. The energy tonight was joyful. The bridge between our cultures is growing sturdier each time this film shows.

How beautiful for me personally to have our team there to support these moments. Jason and Sherrie, the porters all asked about you by name, and wish so much that you could be with us again on the long trek to Lo. Do you remember the Dog Lady in Kagbeni, who made the dog warning signs? She came to our Indigo Gallery premiere!

Tom, cheers! It is good to know that you and Beth and Max and Will and Lucky Dog are back from Harvard. Roanoke is lucky to have you home.

Lisa Mullins, our gorgeous narrator, if and when you read this blog, I'm not telling you what present we got for you in Kathmandu today, but BE EXCITED! It is so amazing to have our work carried by your incredible voice. Huge thanks to you for your faith in our script and in our story.

And Suzi Gablik, to have you here, in the film, makes me feel so comforted and thrilled. Without your mind and your work and your love, I don't think I could have understood Art and the Big Picture (to quote the title of one of my favorite pieces of your writing) soon enough to help accomplish the correct ripening of our work.

To our family and friends, and to my Virginia Tech Creative Process students especially, we all send our love. Tashi deleg, Jane

News coverage in Nepal

2010-06-30T07:40:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to a story on our film that appeared on a South Asian news website.

Kathmandu Premiere: Jane on the 30th

2010-06-30T01:43:00.001-04:00

June 30 from Jane

Our days are so full that we cannot remember which events happened two days ago. Before I could write this blog, I had to check in with Emerson, whose handsome burgundy handmade book from Jenna is the team’s best journal-record of our tracks.

We all go to sleep so tired that the effort to pull our sheets down at night feels like pulling back the rock slab to enter the dark cave.

TWO days ago was Jenna’s birthday. What a day! Three years ago on June 28th was the Festival of the Gift for the Village. This year, we premiered our documentary.

In the morning, we navigated ordering breakfast in the front courtyard of the Guest House. Ordinarily a blissful and sensible retreat, for a little while the courtyard was where the crow of madness happened to be perched. A sample: We would like a pot of ginger tea, please. Sorry, Madame, we don’t do pots. But just last night we had pots of tea! Sorry, Madame: what you want is not possible. Thirty seconds later, Reba comes out and says: May I order a pot of tea? Why not, madame? What you like? Then Jane tries to make a substitution, no fresh fruit but instead one scrambled egg. Two kitchen conferences are convened. The request is not possible. Why not, exactly? Explanation: we are not moving the items. Then a new waiter arrives, with a notepad, nearly manic: but what are your room numbers, and is your breakfast included with your room? We don’t know. We are all happily surprised that each room is approved as breakfast-included, until Mika names her and Ashleigh’s room number, which is directly under Reba’s, and the same kind of room. Quick retaliatory answer: NO. No, Madame: you are NOT approved. Apparently Mika’s room is accursed, but probably only for that hour.

It is very sweet for me to see my half-Swedish former Virginia Tech student castigated to the realm of the inexplicably unapproved, only to smile with the pleasure of observing the mirage. Mika is doing a brilliant job on her first trip to Nepal. We are going to miss her sorely when she diverges from the group, to be driven up and over the valley, on her own, past Gurkha village, to Besisahar, the start of the horseshoe-shaped Annapurna Circuit—the favorite trek of the British Royals. As I write, Jenna is teaching Mika yoga on the Guest House Garden lawn, where Ashleigh was already up, practicing early, with the docile Guest House mother cat curled on the edge of her mat.

After breakfast, we were seated at the dignitaries’ table at Gurkha Encounters to review with Mingma Sherpa the trek tailored for our group: how many porters, where to bargain for the horse we’ll need just in case for Mary and/or Ella, where we meet our guide out west, and what vegetarians want to be sure the porters remember (no chicken broth in our ramen noodles, please). For lunch, we sang happy birthday at Pilgrim’s and ordered masala dosas (onionskin-thin lentil crepes bigger than the old New York Times with its pages open, rolled and stuffed with potato curry, with tomato and coconut chutneys, and rasam, spicy local vegetable soup). Jenna got chocolate-covered m&m pretzels and chocolate bars, among her birthday haul.

We visited our friend Sunil’s cashmere sweater and silk scarf shop and picked out unbelievable gifts, and only Jenna’s stern demand made Sunil accept any of our money.

Emerson and I visited Gem’s Empire, where a Nepali Muslim old friend of mine, Firoz, talked life and politics and religion with my lion-hearted son. They exchanged e-mail addresses, and made a connection heart-to-heart. I like doing business within the context of emotion. I also like bargaining when I see jewels that I could not have even dreamed existed. Only in our other friend Mr. Bhatt’s shop do we never bargain, because we are already taking his pieces at shameful friend-prices. But with Firoz, there is ritual bargaining, and it was a pretty struggle. I won, and so did he.

And then, in the late afternoon, our group reconverged at the Kathmandu Guest House for the world premiere of A Gift for the Village.

To be honest, I think no filmmakers anywhere in the world have ever had a richer and more satisfying and amazing film premiere than what we experienced. It was thrilling.

The Guest House Film Hall is relatively small, but the roster of attendees—let alone the responses after the film—held so many honors for us that I can say the feeling of that night will always rank among the most amazing times of my life, and I am sure for Jenna as well, and Tom, for you, too—our film shot straight home, like that arrow in Jomsom, a perfect bull’s-eye.

Who came? On her last night before leaving with her beautiful half-French, half-Tibetan daughter Clara Dolma, Anne Lelong, the accomplished photographer and patron of children in the rough western Nepali region on Dolpo. Maya, the street vendor, who is one of hundreds of poor trinket-sellers who are usually depicted as just the accosters of tourists, but who, three years ago, tried to sell Jenna little purses. Jenna, instead of brushing her aside, said to Maya: I am here for a week, and I will not buy these purses from anyone but you. Until then, you can greet me without trying to sell to me. We can just speak to one another as friends, and at the end of our trip, I will buy from you. Not only did Jenna keep that promise, but she accepted an invitation to Maya’s “house.” This kind of crossing of the boundaries almost never happens, but leave it to Jenna to have penetrated the veneer. That street-vendor, so easily a nobody in our experience, was at our premiere, and was introduced to everyone, and had a GREAT time. She LOVED A Gift for the Village, and we were so honored to have her sweet presence. Our guide Narayan was there (who is in the film in several shots), with his breathtaking young daughter, Nikita. The chief musician whose Nepali music plays in our film was there, BEAMING to hear his music. Several of the Guest House management were there, including Uttam, whose responses meant incredibly much to me personally. Cy Kassoff was there, my cousin, who translated for us when we were in the King of Lo’s Palace in 2007. Sunil Shahi was there, who is like family to us. Radhakrishna was there, the little boy we met on a walk in 2000, now a young man. A Swiss couple were there, who had heard about our film. Our new friend Helen, a world traveler from Portand, Oregon. Mingma Sherpa was there, representing Gurkha Encounters, whose Buddhist roots and home near Boudhanath stupa made him a formidable audience member, if anyone were going to see inauthenticity in any little moment of the film. Our team was there. My son was there. My girl Iris was there in spirit. And others.

We were overwhelmed by the emotional responses to A Gift for the Village. People loved the story, loved the art, loved our connection and tribute to Virginia Tech, loved hearing the reasons for our dedications, simple LOVED our film.

I got some of the strongest hugs I have ever gotten, and Jenna and I were showered with the heartfelt thanks of people whose hearts we love and admire.

In our documentary, Jenna speaks at one point about what it was like for us to bring a painting about Nepal to Nepalis, potentially quite a critical audience. And at the premiere of our film about Nepal, in Nepal, with many Nepalis of so many different backgrounds in our audience, I really found so much joy with Jenna, and Tom with us in spirit, and all of our family and friends who have followed our long efforts to make this story possible—so much genuine joy in being the bearers of A Gift for the Village.

Let me speak for a moment about the dedications in our film. The film is dedicated in four parts: for His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, who turns 75 this year in July; we are so grateful for His blessings to our project. For the great people of Nepal—and they ARE great. I have traveled here for 25 years, from the time BBW (before bottled water), to now, the time ACP (after cell phones)—and I know some of the sad shorelines where some parts of the old culture are weathered and eroded day by day, choked now from the polluting grip of industrialization.

I have one friend who has always been my teacher by doubting the effect of my being here at all: as if by being here, I AM inevitably the degradation and the pollution of what I encounter. Maybe. But I believe in bridges, and in right livelihood, and in the power of ambassadorial presence. The great people of Nepal have made us all rich, but I think that Jenna’s and Tom’s film is a real gift in return, and as Georgia O’Keeffe has said, To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

The film is also dedicated to our friend Cindy Goad, who died before our team traveled here in 2007. Her sister is our team’s still photographer, Sherrie Austin. We miss you here, Sherrie, and we remember Cindy. Her gorgeous smile, her stunning heart.

And our film is dedicated to my beautiful student Morgan Harrington. Morgan’s ashes are going with me wherever I go, and I will see to their ritual honor in the west of Nepal, where she had wanted to travel with us. I miss you, Morgan, but you are with us. To Morgan’s parents, Gil and Dan, I am with you. And your story has moved the hearts of our dear friends in Nepal. We are proud to be arm-in-arm with you.

After the film, we rickshawed to Sunil’s house. Rickshawing through Kathmandu is like bicycling in an acid trip (I do NOT speak from experience). The feast at Sunil’s was the greatest birthday party Jenna could ever have been given. A thousand appetizers, ten thousand dishes, and uncountable joys. Sunil’s daughter-in-law Arundhati is due to have Sunil’s first grandchild on my birthday (July 26). Yet she cooked with Sarita and made us feel so much at home. Jenna had a huge birthday cake and, from Sunil’s rooftop, a view of a spotlit Swayambhunath stupa against a starry Kathmandu valley sky.

As we walked back to the Guest House from Sunil’s, down alleys where no tourist walks, we saw the Kathmandu that the locals still own, the women asleep on burlap in the cool of the evening, the boys talking around small fires, the street dogs finally at ease (except for the one who did not love Mika). I saw Ashleigh walking ahead and thought how glad I am for this incredible 25-year-old to be taking in the real Nepal, as unlikely as it is for any foreigner to have gained such access, and as representative as the city can be of a mostly utterly rural Himalayan country. As we walked, a car came by, and it happened to be Raj Bajgain, our friend, and a leader of social causes in Nepal, a champion for women, children, the destitute, and the environment. He rolled down his window and pointed to Jenna, giving her one last amazing birthday gift. With his bright smile, he said, simply, “Big film maker!”

And though we had a really late night, and fell to bed dizzy, we had the desk give us wake-up calls for 4:00 a.m. Sunil arranged three cars, and all of us, and Sunil and his wife Sarita, and our Oregonian friend Helen, headed the hour and fifteen minutes up to the rim of the valley. In peak season (October to January), the views from Nagarkot village on the rim of the valley are stunning panoramic Himalayan eye-candy. Our view was more a landscape of sweet fog and hill, with a two-hour walk through pine forest, cicada song, mica and black tourmaline-encrusted rock, fern and rhododendron, wild marijuana and canna lilies, red hibiscus and tall ageraturm, oversized lantana and mango trees. I loved walkin g with Mary, telling her about geology and flora and fauna, and how learning a new culture impacts the way your imagination works from now on. On a side-trail with Cy, Emerson noticed a dog acting unsettled and staring at a bush. No wonder. Out emerged a long black cobra, the length of two trekking poles, moving to his destination at leisure. Lions can be kings, but so can cobras be. Well done to Emerson for reading the dog’s behaviour and stepping back before the appearance of the snake.

We walked to the oldest temple complex in the valley, Changunarayan, with its famous carved god and goddess struts on the famous ancient wooden and brick Newari pagodas (pagodas originated in the Kathmandu Valley, not in Japan). What a walk, to what complex clusters of shrines, old and worn down from the worship-smudges of red and yellow tilak powder, like the stone shrine of Hanuman, the god whose mother was a monkey and whose father was the wind: Hanuman’s monkey face is now a soft unfeatured formless bald of stone, eroding for reasons of centuries of loving touch.

I will stop for now. A girl can’t keep writing when Mr. Bhatt’s Tibetan stone shop is so close by. Our team sends love to each of you reading. We head to Pokhara if the cloud-gods agree on July 3rd, are there for three nights at Hotel Kantipur (Google it! We get a big friend-discount), and then move to high country, where the spirit of Tibet still lives despite the new roads and clog of vehicles we are hearing spoils so much of the lower Annapurna trails, and despite fifty years of Tibetan occupation to the north. Thanks to everyone remembering us. Jane

From Mary

2010-06-28T07:05:00.002-04:00

Hello, Namaste!
It took a while before I finnaly got to blog here but I'm finaly doing it now. Nepal is a place that very few people will ever get to see, but is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Not to mention the crazy taxi rides. Wow! I feel safe as long as a Nepali is driving but if an American were driving....... Watch out! The sights in Bhaktapur, a ancient village with many hand carved statues, windows, and even had royal baths with nagas all around the edges,(which art collecters sadly stole the heads of,) but two brass ones were saved. there was a peacock window, that was absolutly stunning, (again art collecters stole the head,) and the statues were amazing. Just today I brought a drawing of a Kangaruchi, which I drew myself, to a shop where they sew designs on shirts and other things, and Ella brought a drawing of, who else, but Leo. They took the drawings, and used them to expertly put identical drawings of stiches on the shirts. It was amazing to see them do some of the work. Well, We have to go, so I'll try to blog later about our new Nepali adventures.

From Reba

2010-06-28T06:56:00.002-04:00

Namaste Everyone!
Sorry it took us so long to blog, but when we came last night to do it, I had the password wrong and couldn't get in.
The trip over was long, and we had to endure security checks of our bags at every single airport, even though we were in transit and had not left the airport since our last flight, we still had to put our bags through xray and walk through the metal detectors. When we finally arrived in Kathmandu, the gentleman who was manning the xray machine would not let Ella and Mary put their bags on the belt, he just motioned for them to walk on through, smiling sweetly at them.
Sunil and Sarita were waiting on us when we arrived at the airport, seeing them brought lots of hugs and a few tears of joy. Sunil rode with us the to the Kathmandu Guest House where we checked in then walked to Swyambunath (spelling is iffy) where we walked up 403 steps.(yes, we counted) But after all that time sitting on the plane it was good to walk. We saw many sights along the way, including a huge pig rummaging through a large pile of garbage (their refuse system needs work) and several monkeys with babies. (We got video!)
Yesterday we went to Bhaktapur (again the spelling!) which is a very old village in Kathmandu. The buildings there are over 500 years old! I love this place, because this is where I met the sweetest kids when I was here the last time, and this time was no different. This tiny little girl with a red dress approached us and asked for a rupee or a "sweet". I couldn't resist her, she was so little, and cute, and bold. So I gave her a coin and asked if I could take her picture...she happily obliged. I have a great shot of Ella with her.
I also ended up buying another singing bowl because I just could not say no to this man who I'm sure was selling me a sad story about how he had NO business that day and he was selling it to me at his cost. (yeah, right!) But he was so sweet about following me up the street, dropping the price from 1000 rupees to 700 that I could not say no to him.
Today is Jenna's birthday! We had lunch at Pilgrims which is a bookstore near the guest house that has a restaurant in the back. After an interesting conversation between Emerson and Ella about greek mythology (Ella's knowledge came from watching the Percy Jackson movie)
Jane created two new goddesses of her own: Dialysis and Sarasquatter. Those of you who know Jane can imagine the relevance of those names. Please ask her about them when you see her. :)
Our first movie premiere is in about 20 minutes, so we have to get back to the guest house. Mary and Ella are treated special wherever we go, they even got little gifts from the clerk at Pilgrims when we checked out.
They are both doing GREAT. I am so proud of them, although I give Emerson most of the credit for them being happy here so far.
All our love to everyone.
Reba

Jane 6/27

2010-06-27T12:57:00.001-04:00

Hello Our Friends, It is Jane, typing on the laptop provided by her VT student Bailey. We can’t believe we have been at the Guest House for only one night so far, because our time has been unbelievably packed already.

Last night Jenna and I had a call while we were in our room: it was Radhakrishna, the little 12-year-old boy we met ten years ago while we were hiking along the rim of the valley. He was a village boy who wandered up to and walked for hours with us, under eucalyptus trees and through sal and strangler fig forests, on goat-herder trails, from one temple village to another—the Nagarkot to Changunarayan trek. In 1999 we exchanged addresses and parted after that friendly chance meeting. Tomorrow, this young man, now 22 and in his second year of medical school, will come to the premiere of A Gift for the Village. What a nice birthday present for Jenna!

Last night was the healing deep sleep we needed after our two days of flying to arrive here. This morning we woke early, to the loud grey-headed crows, the silent thin mother cat and her huge-eared nursing kitten, and the forlorn three-legged monkey, all resting in the security of the Guest House garden, with its Buddha statues, terracotta lotus pool,, pomelo and pomegranate trees. We can’t see the pomelo tree without thinking of Joey, who was one year old when he came to the festival in 2007, and who pointed up at the green grapefruit-like shapes then and declared “ball!” We will ALWAYS see this beautiful tree as Joey’s Ball Tree. Jenna and I found yoga mats and were our on the lawn by 5:30, to find Ashleigh already doing yoga in another part of the garden. Mika, Emerson, and Reba and the girls wandered out eventually, rested and happy, ready for pots of masala chai.

At 8 a.m. we met Andrea Clearfield and Katey Blumenthal here at the Guest House. Jenna met Andrea on Facebook, an amazing musical composer who is working on a composition called Lung-ta, which is Tibetan for Wind-horse, the kind of horse whose hooves never touch the ground, and who carries mind-jewels on its saddle. Lung-ta is the carrier of hope and wisdom, and it gallops like wind toward clear minds. Katey is a brilliant young anthropologist who had just traveled back from Lo with Andrea, and so these two women could bring us fresh news from the Forbidden Kingdom, where we will travel in mid-July. Andrea told us that everyone in Lo knows about our visit and can’t wait to see the film. After many years of hoping we could one day take our completed film to Lo, and show it to the King, we are now expected. The breakfast with these women was full of confluent interests, and all of us feel sure we have some collaborative projects ahead. And then we showed them A Gift for the Village (they leave tomorrow for a conference in Germany), They were really moved, and gave us gorgeous responses. These women are doing work as close as ours to the Tibetan inspirations that have excited our project, so their excitement at our film was really gratifying.

Later this morning, Sunil helped us drive across the valley to explore the old kingdom-city of Bhaktapur, where Mary especially loved the famous elaborately carved peacock windows and Ella worked with no prompting as a serious photographer. For Emerson, visiting Bhaktapur was a trip down his rich memory lane. He remembered so many of the winding narrow medieval alleys that he last walked as an eight-year-old, and he enjoyed the wizened faces of old villagers almost as much as the loving company of his steady young Hoffman companions. Jenna had her video camera close on some amazing moments, an ironsmith hammering, a potter rotating a wheel with a pole, and who knows what else. Reba is relaxed and thrilled to watch her daughters seeing so well and feeling so at home. Mika took some of the most amazing photographs I have ever seen—a pile of chilies drying or a child’s face. Asheigh made friends constantly, and a lot of children in Bhaktapur will remember the friendly young American woman who really talked to them.

I drew a sketch of a possible design for our new team patch today, and Jenna took it to a tailor who will have a sample made for us tomorrow. This time, A Gift for the Village patch will feature a snow leopard in front of a snow-capped mountain, in front of which hang the five colors of Tibetan prayer flags.

Tomorrow is Jenna’s birthday. Our dinner will be at Sunil’s house. We will each therefore gain twenty pounds from Sarita’s amazing feast! More soon! Jane

WE ARE HERE FROM JENNA AND JANE

2010-06-26T08:31:00.002-04:00

Hi Friends and Family,
We are here and VERY VERY tired. In fact Mary and Ella about fell asleep in their soup tonight. Our first adventure was walking to the Monkey Temple with our dear dear friend Sunil. We have just run into the musician who plays a song in the documentary. He will come to the show on the 28th. So will several friends we have already made since we arrived, and several other old friends, including Mr. Bhatt, our beloved jeweler, who knows that he makes an appearance in the documentary.

Our flights over were all comfortable (at least for those of us with short legs) and it was fun to watch Mary and Ella as they looked out of the plane window and asked Jenna, "What are those white things down there?" "Clouds," Jenna told them.

We are well. We have spun giant prayer wheels already, watched tiny baby monkeys ride their loyal mothers, and eaten our first fine dinner at The Third Eye, where Emerson had his first bowl of special Nepali tomato soup in twelve years, and where his cousin Cy joined us.

Jason, Sherrie, and Tom, we miss you! You should have been sitting across from us on the rooftop. It is hard not having out team with us.

Can't wait to report as our days play out! J and J

from Jenna: pre-departure

2010-06-21T08:27:00.002-04:00

Friends and Family,

In four days I leave for Nepal with Jane, her son Emer, Reba, her two girls Mary and Ella, and two other friends Ashley and Mika. We will be in Kathmandu for a week. While there will will have three showings of our documentary, two at the Kathmandu Guest house and one at the Indigo Gallery.

Our next stop will be Pokhara, the second largest city in Nepal. After that we head out west to the village of Jomsom where the festival took place. We plan to show the documentary there as well. The final phase of our journey is the long trek into Upper Mustang (12 days of walking, 155 miles, over 16,000 ft peaks). We now know that there is one generator, a projector and a Monastery wall where we can show our movie to the king (who is in the documentary) and to the rest of the villagers.

I may not check email after the 24th, so follow the journey here and to comment if you'd like....

We are also on FB, (be our friend) and may post there if it proves to be easier than this bog.
www.facebook.com/pages/A-Gift-for-The-Village/183800545072?ref=ts

To see a trailer from the new documentary film: www.youtube.com and search "A gift for the village, Jane Vance".
If you are interested in looking over the team website from the trip 3 years ago, it's at: www.agiftforthevillage.com

See you in August. Have a wonderful summer.

Remembering Morgan

2010-06-17T10:10:00.002-04:00

Yesterday Jane spent the morning with Gil Harrington at her home. Gil's daughter, Morgan Harrington, who was missing for 101 days before her body was discovered five months ago, had just been one of Jane's much-loved Creative Process students at Virginia Tech, and our film remembers her in its dedication. Thanks to Gil, herself an oncology nurse, and her husband Dr. Dan Harrington, in one week from today, our team will be carrying a load of precious supplies to villagers in extremely rural Himalayan villages: reading glasses, collapsible water carriers, solar and crank flashlights, retractable kitchen knives, sewing kits, birthing kits, and more. We wish to thank our friends the Harringtons for these donations and for their interest in our work.
Please visit Gil Harrington's beautiful and brave blog posts at www.findmorgan.com.

A new article from Planet Blacksburg!

2010-06-06T17:40:00.001-04:00

As some members of our team prepare to return to Nepal to show our film to Nepali audiences, Planet Blacksburg, an online "paper," wrote an article on Jane that explains the project nicely.

April 16, 2010

2010-04-16T07:59:00.005-04:00

Today is April 16, the third anniversary of the killings at Virginia Tech. This sequence from the film shows a memorial sequence held in Jomsom to commemorate the dead and wounded from that tragic day.

Premiere Date in Roanoke, VA

2010-03-27T10:10:00.002-04:00

Those of us who will be unable to go to the Nepali premiere of our film in Jomsom in June with Jenna and Jane should mark their calendars for September 23, 2010, when our film will be shown at the Taubman Museum. More details to follow - we'll be limited to 300 seats (two showings of 150 each) and we look forward to seeing you there. There will also be a showing in Blacksburg later in the fall, and we'll keep you in the loop on that one too!

What a difference a pro makes...

2010-02-15T10:11:00.004-05:00

If you've clicked on the video above, you've heard the voice of Lisa Mullins, who has kindly agreed to narrate our film. Lisa's a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where Tom's wife Beth Macy is also in the program, and is the host and senior producer of WGBH Radio's "The World" which is heard daily around the country and in Roanoke on WVTF's Radio IQ. She's interviewed presidents and artists and thinkers from so many walks of life, and her smart voice is a huge lift to our project.

As I was re-editing the trailer with Lisa's voice the other day, Beth walked into our apartment and literally stopped in her tracks as she heard it coming from the speakers of my computer. It really does make all the difference in the world to have Lisa's calm and authoritative voice attached to our film. Thanks Lisa!

2009-12-18T09:13:00.005-05:00

A Gift for the Village Trailer Revised 2-11-10 from Tom Landon on Vimeo.

Our latest video upload: let us know what you think!

Jane and Jenna's Art and History Project

2009-10-22T07:51:00.004-04:00

Jane Vance has just been featured in another story in the Roanoke Times. This time it's for a neat art and history project at Jenna's school, Prices Fork Elementary, in Montgomery County. Here's the link to the story . I especially like the way she fit a South Asian elephant into a painting of a Prices Fork coal mine. Verisimilitude, for sure.

A Premiere Date!

2009-10-18T10:51:00.004-04:00

Jane reports that she's secured a premiere date for our film in Blacksburg during the week of February 20th as part of an international students event sponsored by Nepali students on campus. We'll have more details soon.

Things continue to move forward. Thanks to portable hard drives Jenna was able to work with Jane and made a big push just as summer was ending to get the film in a state of near completion, and now I have the files here in Cambridge, Mass. and have been tweaking, tightening, and mixing audio for the last several weeks (while also working on finishing a really fun Hindu wedding Jenna and I shot October 2 in Blacksburg.)

We have some good news on the narration front: a nationally known narrator is going to take a look at the film in the coming days and let me know if she's willing to help us out. I won't give her name just yet but she is perfect for the job, and we hope she'll say yes. In the meantime, Jane's producer friend Dee in San Franciso has been sent multiple copies of the latest version of the film to critique and may be providing some professional help with color correction and finalizing the video - depending on budget cuts and other variables. Even if she's unable to help, I think we have a great film on our hands. It feels so good to have a finish line for this production marathon.

Jenna has been rockin!

2009-08-11T19:43:00.002-04:00

While I've been busy packing up our house for a one year move to Massachusetts and starting the school year, Jenna took the editing controls and has been hard at work for the last week or so, tightening up previously edited scenes and tackling the sequence that shows the festival in Jomsom, which is some of our most complicated work, shot with two cameras and requiring a lot of thinking! Jane reports that it looks great, and the next step will be to keep tightening the entire program and start the graphics work, along with color correcting and more work on the soundtrack. It feels like a big corner has been turned, and I for one can't wait to see the results of Jenna's latest efforts.
T.

Progress feels great!

2009-07-18T15:42:00.005-04:00

This week we came together once again to do some more editing and we're pleased to report several new developments.

First, we continue to add new content to our program and keep finding little nuggets of video that we knew existed but hadn't yet pasted into the timeline. With almost 40 hours of raw video to choose from, we keep finding things that astound us. The trick is to find a way to fit it all into our alloted time of just under an hour.

Second, we seem to be closing in on an order of things for the program that makes sense. Deciding where to introduce Tsampa and Jane, for example. Beth Macy watched what we'd done to date and asked really good questions that helped us focus on what is really important and to think of information that viewers will want to know.
Third, we met with some folks who are offering some help and support to us as we work our way through the end of the editing process. We paid a visit to Cabell and Shirley Brand in Salem. The two of them have traveled all over the world, and are the owners of a beautiful Thangka that I wanted Jane to see. While we were there we showed them a preview of our work, and it appears that soon we will be able to do some fundraising under the auspices of the Cabell Brand Center for International Poverty and Resource Studies. We'll have more to report on that soon.

We also met with Mike Gangloff and Nathan Bowles of the Black Twig Pickers, a tremendous band. They are going to provide us with background music for several of the Virginia segments of the program, and we couldn't be more pleased about it.

We're meeting in Blacksburg on Monday to shoot more video of Jane's art, so stay tuned.

Every great film deserves a great theatrical trailer, right?

2009-07-11T19:43:00.003-04:00

Though we missed Jenna horribly (she's in Sweden serving as part of the support team for an extreme cross country race), Jane and I huddled in Roanoke over the last few days and spent an equal amount of time getting organized for an upcoming edit session and working on a video segment that will serve as both the trailer and opening segment of our film. What do you think?

Still making progress!

2009-06-26T09:48:00.003-04:00

Imagine a mobile studio that instantly materializes on a kitchen or dining room table - one minute an empty space and the next a surface covered with multiple computers and monitors, a spider web of cables, and lots of notebooks, tape cases, and external hardrives which hold the current state of the documentary. Jenna, Jane and I have met several times like this in various locations - at Uncle Frosty's river house last year, in our dining room, and most recently at Jenna's house in Blacksburg. With each meeting we make a little more progress and set the agenda for our next working time. I'll be posting a short snippet of some of what we've accomplished so far here soon, but I wanted to take a minute to remind our friends that one day, hopefully soon, we'll have a film for all to see.
T.

What Exactly is a Thangka?

2009-04-07T09:40:00.004-04:00

A recent story in the New York Times does a pretty good job of explaining the importance of the thangka painting in Tibetan Buddhism. The reporter visited a site in Tibet where the traditional style of thangka painting is still practiced. If you're interested, here's the link to the story: NYT story on Thankgas.

The story spreads...

2009-01-02T16:23:00.003-05:00

Not too long ago a story was written on the Blacksburg online news site, "Planet Blacksburg" about Jane and our project. That story was then picked up by The Buddhist Channel, USA Today, and news outlets as far away as Finland. You can read the story by going to http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Organizations/Schools/Virginia+Tech/0cuUcPI99Sc91/34

Today Jenna and Jane and Tom are working on the documentary, aiming for a July showing, location t.b.a.

Making Progress

2008-07-20T10:35:00.002-04:00

Tom here: Our 5 days on the Chesapeake Bay are almost over and Jenna Jane and I are feeling pretty fine about our progress on the documentary. We're tackling segments of the video and gathering our best footage so that we'll all know what kind of images we have as we go forward with scripting and additional interviews. As I write this we've done a rough cut that is almost 19 minutes long and focuses on festival preparation and the day of the festival. It feels GREAT to be making some headway on this huge undertaking.

An Excerpt from "Into Nepal" - Our first documentary

2008-07-18T18:10:00.000-04:00

Off to the river for a productive week

2008-07-14T10:29:00.002-04:00

Jenna, Jane and Tom leave on July 16 for a week of "video camp" at Tom's uncle Frosty's house on the Rappahannock River/Chesapeake Bay. It's our hope that by getting away together we can make some more progress on the film. In the meantime, watch our You Tube video!

It's been a while....

2008-06-26T16:41:00.003-04:00

Hello to anyone who might still check the blog occasionally - hopefully it will begin to reactivate again as we start making progress on our next phase - editing the documentary.

Last night was Jenna's 40th birthday and Jason was reminded that one year before we had been teaching the children of Jomsom to play Twister and singing Happy Birthday to Jenna and a guy from New York who happened to also be in town and dropped by the Dancing Yak to see what all the commotion was. That also means that today, June 26, is the one year anniversary of the actual festival that celebrated the painting's arrival in Jomsom. Wow.

In about 3 weeks Jenna and Jane and I will go to my uncle Frosty's place on the Chesapeake Bay, right at the mouth of the Rappahannock River, to work on the documentary. Jane has been "writing the script in the air" recently and it will be good to leave with something concrete. We did produce a brief video about the ceremony that Tsampa held in honor of the Virginia Tech shootings, and soon I hope to figure out how to post it here in the blog, or at least on You Tube for those of you who are interested. Namaste!

Mark your calendars for November 14

2007-10-19T17:11:00.000-04:00

Hello from the long-lost trekkers. It has been pretty crazy in all of our worlds since the last of our crew returned in August. Jenna had to start planning for a new year of teaching 5th graders and an especially challenging student, who she is of course dedicating every moment to helping in the classroom, as well as working weekends at North American River Runners. Jane came home to a houseful of expectant cats and immediately had to face the prospect of teaching 2 courses this semester at Virginia Tech, along with her day job working at the middle school. I began a new job teaching online, and the learning curve has been steep. Jason has been up in West Virginia guiding trips (the season ends this weekend, I believe). Reba is full-tilt into teaching her class, and we are all missing our friends back in Nepal as they wait expectantly for the political situation to stabilize.

All of this does NOT mean that we've stopped forward progress on our project, but it has been laying fallow and we're just beginning to poke it with a stick and wake it up for a fall and winter season of making progress. Jenna and Jane are making plans for a program to take place at Virginia Tech on November 14 - the event that we had to cancel after the tragic campus shootings last April. As soon as we have a web link for the presentation, I'll post it here.
T.

Home - From Jane

2007-08-11T15:18:00.000-04:00

This is Jane, writing from my Glade Road computer, with one of my fourteen cats,
Mary, insistently on my lap. It is Friday, August 10th, and our crew of seven
have now all returned and disbanded, with Jason in West Virginis to guide a
lucky whitewater rafting crew, and Tom and Diane in Roanoke, and Sherrie,
before she returns to Hawaii, enjoying her family and friends in Dublin and
elsewhere.

Jenna and I were at Carl's and Reba's early this morning, to sit on the porch
with the hot pink geraniums, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and heady rubrum
lilies, to help send off Sunil, Sarita, their son Manoj, his girlfriend
Sheetal, and her best friend, Haseena--our friends from Nepal. Will Landon and
Mary and Ella Hoffman were there, too, hugging our Nepali family goodbye, and my
son Emerson would have been, except that he was in Roanoke, shopping in
preparation for his flying soon to Malibu, where he will start in less than two
weeks at Pepperdine University. And my daughter Iris sent her love from New
Orleans. She especially appreciates how hard Sunil's and Sarita's son Manoj
has had to work to come from Kathmandu with little English and then to graduate
from the University of Kentucky, his English now surpassing many Americans'.
Like Manoj, Iris has had to work 40 to 60 hours a week, several concurrent
jobs, while taking heavy courseloads, and like Manoj, she has done the
impossible.

We cried, parting with our friends, who at least this time know that we hope to
complete the documentary and raise the funds to return, to show the film in
Kathmandu and Jomsom, as soon as possible. Sunil and Sarita thanked Carl and
Reba for hosting them so generously; and thanked us for showing them Virginia
Tech, especially the April 16th memorial in progress, the horticultural
gardens, Price's Fork Elementary and Blacksburg Middle School, a house being
constructed, Pandapas Pond--where Sarita learned to skip rocks, Claytor
Lake--where Sunil tried valiantly to get up on water skis ("Trying, trying, but
not possible," he laughed), and all of our homes for many dinners. They enjoyed
the 20-minute collection of video images that Tom Landon has put together as a
teaser of what we have to work with for our film, and this only from his camera
(Jenna and I now will be reviewing and logging her hours of video footage too),
since none of these Kathmandu Valley friends has ever traveled out west in
Nepal, where our festival and our treks were. They enjoyed having kids sit in
their laps, love them, hug them good morning, and entertain them--Mary and Ella
and Will did such a good job being friends to "the Nepali people," as Ella
called them so casually. For me it was amazing to see Manoj and Emerson
together, who had known each other when Emerson was three and Manoj was eleven.
Back then, Emerson sat on Manoj's lap. Today, they are two handsome young men,
discussing college and how they will link up in Calirfornia, with Emerson in
Malibu and Manoj in San Francisco soon. All of us in the crew of A Gift for
The Village see our friendships already happening in the generations following
ours, and, as many speakers said during the festival in Nepal, and as Jenna
said at the end of her speech that day, may this friendship between our two
parts of the world last a thousand years.

So this is, in a way, the first day that Jenna and I, and probably Reba too,
feel "back," simply because now we are not with our Nepali friends, and no one
from Kathmandu is in the kitchen.

Jenna has been working already to post some photos on-line. These are photos
from her video-camera's still shot capacity. If you have already seen them,
you know how excellent they are.

A few of our friends have received their presents--Suzi Gablik and Dollie
Cottrill and Andrea Langston. What a pleasure to bring back little pieces of
Nepal! Emerson's two masks from Swayambhunath made it home safely, thanks to
bubble wrap. So did the lama table that Tsampa carved and painted and
presented to me at the festival. So did all of our things from Mr. Bhatt. Now
that we are back, we really look forward to seeing so many of you!

I have noticed a few changes since I have gotten home. One is that I want
strange things for breakfast, and I want my breakfast between four and five
a.m.; for example, a plate of pickled okra and diced raw onion. Another
morning, I ate a cereal bowls' worth of Virginia peanuts soaked overnight in
lime juice with minced garlic and minced hot green peppers, like a cold spicy
soup. One morning I ate two giant sliced tomatoes with olive oil and basil
leaves and raw sliced garlic. One morning, when Jenna and Reba and Mary and
Ella and I took Sunil and Sarita to Crow's Nest, to meet Charlie O'Dell and to
pick raspberries and blackberries, I ate two pints of berries. Jenna is making
blackberry smoothies, and I wish I had one right now.

I also noticed that the oldest of my cats were the happeist to see me. Mary,
the undisputed queen of this pack, walked up to me as if to hug me when I
returned. She was vocal and physical and her expression showed that she really
understood my absence and my return. Rare, the second-oldest, was also
delighted, and didn't stop purring for the entire day. Even my backyard
hoodlum cats didn't shy when I went out to visit them. Poor things, in this
hundred-degree heat.

It is good to be home. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that Nepal
and Tsampa and his family and his village all treated us like family. It was
good to be home there as well. Tashi Deleg.

Nepali Friends in Blacksburg!

2007-08-04T23:44:00.000-04:00

Sunil and Sarita arrived in Blacksburg Tuesday, July 31, after attending their son’s graduation ceremony at the University of Kentucky.
Their son Manoj and his strikingly beautiful female friends Sheetal and Hasina (also Nepali) arrived with them on Tuesday afternoon, and after dinner I convinced them to stay here instead of going to a motel for the night before their drive back to Kentucky. In one evening, I am in love with these youngsters. They came into this house and made themselves instantly at home, working around my kitchen washing and drying dishes, making us Masala tea, talking and laughing and answering all of our questions, and translating for us with Sarita.
Manoj is a 25 year-old handsome boy who coaxes and plays with my too-shy-to speak-or-look-at-anyone daughter Ella until she comes TOO far out of her shell and becomes obnoxious in his presence. After dinner our friend Tim came by with his kids, (Kayla,10 and Austin, 8) and Manoj, Sheetal and Hasina showed us how to write all our names in Nepali ...so beautiful it looks like art.
They leave us the next day, promising to keep in touch and to come back and visit, and for that I am glad. Manoj has since called his dad and mom several times a day to check on them.
That afternoon, Sunil and Sarita go with me to take Mary and Ella to their swim lesson at the pool (I wonder what they thought of that), then to the Oasis International market. Imagine my surprise when within minutes of entering the store, they are chatting with a Nepali woman and 2 Nepali men! We leave with a few things that Sarita has chosen to make us a meal the next evening.
Dinner that night was a cookout at Carol and Joe's, which sprang out of a morning that Carol, Andrea and I spent at Virginia Tech with a group of international teachers from Switzerland, South Africa, Brazil and Vietnam. We enjoyed meeting them so much we decided to host an All-American Barbecue, during which Sunil invited everyone to come to Nepal.
On Thursday I drove them up to Wythe County where my parents live, and my dad goes with us over to Foster Falls State Park where we eat a picnic lunch and watch people canoeing, kayaking, and tubing down the river. Sarita rolls up the pant legs of her salwar khameez (I hope I spelled that right) and wades in with Mary to pick up mussel shells. We tried fishing but we forgot to get bait and the leftover cheese from our sandwiches refused to stick on the hook.

Back home for dinner, Sarita has brought her own spices (which she has ground herself, one of which is a red chili) from Nepal and cooks us a meal of tomato pickle, cabbage, cauliflower with potatoes, chicken and rice. She goes about cooking with no fuss or fanfare, and any concern I had about communicating with her while cooking quickly vanishes when I realize she doesn’t need me for anything except to get her down a bowl (she says “bol”) or to chop the onion more, which she communicates by motioning to the chopping board in a way that I know means “chop those pieces smaller!” She has Sunil food-processing 2 heads, not cloves, of garlic and a whole ginger root. We had purchased a bag of basmati rice and in my desire to contribute in some way I read directions and measured the ingredients in a pot to place on the stove. Sarita quickly spoke to Sunil, who told me that I had done it wrong, and Sarita would show me the right way to cook it. It was the coolest thing...she simply put some unmeasured amount of rice in a large bowl, filled it with water, stuck her open hand fingers-down in the top and showed me that the water level should be up to the second joint on the middle finger. She motioned for me to put it in the microwave and told Sunil to tell me “twenty”. We had to add a few more minutes, but it came out perfect. The food tasted amazing.

The next morning we went down to Blacksburg’s Steppin’ Out Festival before I took them to Roanoke to stay with Diane and Ken. I will miss Sarita combing and braiding Mary and Ella’s hair and hugging them, Sunil playing chess with Mary and Chinese checkers with Ella on the front porch, Sarita taking a walk around my house and up my street every morning before she has her tea, Sunil reading Carl’s notes he attempted to write in Nepali, Sunil taking pictures of everything that I take for granted (or used to), long conversations with Sunil comparing our way of life with Nepal; our roads, homes, cars, shopping, food, marriage, crime, sickness, religion. Having them here is like having a little piece of Nepal with me, only now that piece is part of me, like family. That Carl and my girls know Sarita and Sunil makes me so happy. I hope it helps them understand in some way how Nepal affected me and perhaps will create a desire in them to go experience it for themselves.....with me, of course. And we will need Jane and Jenna. Anyone else want to go? We also went through a drive-through laser car wash. Hearing Sarita laugh was worth every penny.

Last Blog from Jane in Kathmandu

2007-08-02T12:06:00.000-04:00

Friends, Andrea, Carol, Joe, Tom, and most of all Ike, THANKS for your latest encouragement and e-mails as we ready to return. I am tired, and it must be the emotional kind of tired, because I had only a grand total of three sips of rakshi (rice wine) tonight with dinner--Jenna will tell you about our fun meal at Bhancha Ghar--and I can't think of any other sufficient reason for all this yawning and for the feeling that somehow I have a sodium i.v. drip slowly knocking me out tonight.

I know that when Jenna and I picked up our last little Tibetan stone things at Mr. Bhatt's, we had yet another amazing talk with him, and a last overview of what we would be doing until we should see one another again, hopefully with our film in hand. We planned to cook together next time, momos and vegetarian spring rolls, and sweet and sour vegetarian soup. Apparently Mr. Bhatt is also a chef. Mr. Bhatt apologized for not having us to his home this time--and Reba, I think YOU and Carl have some very special company just now, bless your heart, and THANK YOU all for taking such good care of our Sunil and Sarita! We can't believe they are in BLACKSBURG!--and Mr. Bhatt and Jenna and I talked about world politics and the 2008 American election and terrorism and Tibetan culture and American awareness of the Tibetan issue and the Dalai Lama's accepting our government's highest civilian award, The Congressional Medal of Freedom, this October 18th (also my brother Charles' birthday).

We talked, and laughed, and Mr. Bhatt told us the parable about a man walking on a sea shore, where the tide had beached a school of fish, who were all flapping, but lost, and destined to die out of water. This man was stooping down to pick up the fish, and to throw them gently back into the water, one by one. He was at this task for hours, when another man came walking by, who saw that for the length of the beach, as far as the eye could see, there were such beached fish, thousandsm who would die without being rescued in this way. "Why do you stop to save these fish?" The man asked. "Can't you see how many there are? Many are doing to die, no matter what you do, so what does it matter that you stop and save any?" The man saving the fish paused for just a second before he threw the present fish back into the ocean, and said to the sceptic, "See this fish? This one? To this one, it matters."

Mr. Bhatt said that we can not stop all the terrorists, but we can be sure that our own actions, our own hearts and jobs, are right. We can love, and take care of each other, and do good wherever we can, in our own lives. We can find beauty and make beauty, and string these amazing necklaces of our times with our human and our animal friends. My Virginia Tech students know that I am thinking of A River Sutra, Gita Mehta's excellent book, and that a sutra is the connecting string that holds together the stories and the karma which all touch and add up to the weight of your own narrative. You can not do everything, but what is near you, you should do, if you see that you can try. This kind of practical compassion is enabling, I think, and makes good sense to me in a world where fundamentalisms clash violently, while detached intellectuals hold up magnifying glasses merely to show the severity and folly of the clashes. Mr. Bhatt is right, and I will take heart from his lesson.

What I will most remember from our trip, outside of the festival on my best friend's birthday, and the time our entire team spent together to create the Gift for The Village, is that as the time came for Jenna and me to leave, Mr. Bhatt stood up and came out from behind the counter. I am well aware that he is a Tibetan Muslim, and out of respect, I would never, ever have assumed to do anything but shake his hand goodbye, even though I have known him for many years, and even though I am a southerner with a passionate heart (I hope). He looked up at me with a Tibetan face almost stern and full of honor and courage and then reached for me and hugged me long and hard, and came away from this long hug crying. He hugged Jenna the same, long and hard and firmly, as if we had all crossed oceans of time and thousands of past lives to reach this recognition of how deeply connected we are. We said not a word, but all stood crying, and then we held our hands up to one another in namaste, trying to smile, but being too sad and yet also too sobered by the bare truth of our affection and love for one another as friends to do anything but stare at one another with tears in our eyes for a few more seconds. These moments were one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

Iris, Emerson, all my our friends and family, we are coming home, with hearts full, and luggage heavy. Jessica and Barbara Vance, you have been my greatest of all friends, and I owe you a debt from my heart--for taking care of my cats all this time, and for knowing how wonderful it is to have loved ones in my home. Thank you again. To our teammates already returned, we know you must be smiling, because you understand the journey. Sherrie, Jason, when you read this, thank you for staying on. Our time together with Tsampa and Tsewang and Narayan and Bishnu and Ganesh and Gopal and Hari was astonishing. And Jenna, you still amaze me. Love, Jane

From Jenna on our last day

2007-08-02T12:03:00.001-04:00

Today our last full day was beautiful and sunny--- most days we have had at least an hour of rain. Jane and I got up early to watch the streets come alive. Imagine a narrow street lines with metal car garage doors, side by side and all closed, next imagine the sound of these clunky nosy doors being lifted to reveal the goods inside, except the shop is not contained within the walls, the shop spills on to the street, tables are brought out and set right in the way of the traffic, making the narrow ONE lane road even more impossible. It takes a shop owner close to an hour to set out the masks, bells, carved rocks, beads, thankas (paintings), prayerflags, and other goods that STILL tempt us as we walk by. Then the streets begin to bustle with activity.... the street sweepers and trash pickers are up early to clear the streets. A large dump truck rolls slowly thru town and the three men on the back catch trash being thrown to them and they sort the cardboard, plastic, glass and other trash into piles in the bed of the truck. Rickshaws come out to find the choice spots where a tourist might be. Slowly the noise level begins to rise and before you know it, there is full chaos on the streets again. I LOVE IT!!

Today while Jane was with Mr Bhatt, buying the last necklace, and Jason and Sherrie were getting massages, I went to visit Mia's "home." Mia is woman who I have become freinds with, she walks the streets with a big smile on her face, a baby girl tied to her back and a hand full of silk purses i nher hand. She buys these purses whole sale, on credit, for 30 rupees and tries get 35 to 100 rs for each one. The beautiful baby on her back is always sluggish and sleeping. Mia's oldest daughter is always in school, so until today I had not met this 5 year old. Mia, her husband, (who has not worked in 6 months because of health problems) and her two daughters live in a room that is 10 feet by 15 feet, there was one small window, but the window opened to a brick wall less than a foot away, there was one bed and a pile of blankets on the floor, which her husband was sleeping on when we walked in. One large, chest-like piece of furnature was on one wall, but I could see that the slightly opened drawers were empty except for a few articles of clothing, one blanket and some broken barbie dolls. The few pictures on the walls were tear outs from a magazine. One one wall, there was a low shelf supported by bricks. This shelf had a small propane cook stove, (which was out of propane), two cooking pots, one frying pan, and a few wooden stiring utencils. There were a few dirty plates sitting in a bucket of water near the shelf. That was all there was. Mia told me that she was out on the street from 8 to 4 (when she walked to her daughter's school to pick her up), then if she had not made ANY slale for the day, she would come back on the street till. Mia explained how she was happy when she was outside with her daughter on the streets, but that she cried everytime she walked into her house. Her marrage was arranges, and her parents and his parents are not in the picture to help out. She explained that the rent on their room was about 1200 rs a month ($18) and she was allowed to make it in three payments when tourism was slow (which is this time on the year).

There are a lot of scams on the street used against tourists...
Kids ask you to buy them milk or something to eat, but then they take the goods back to the shop owner who gives them some pocket change, and the goods are returned to the shelf, then there are the kids who ask you to buy some piece of art work they have colored, of course most foreginers can't resist, but then the kid goes back to a shop owneer who has a stack of these "coloerd pictures" and again they split the profits. Finally, the most heart renching are the mothers carrying their infants and an empty bottle of milk. They ask for you to buy milk for their baby, but the baby never gets that milk even if you buy it for them
There are many people in desperate situations here, so desperate they will do anything to make money. It is hard to decide who to help, and it is even harder to say no to people who you really believe need your help. I bought two of Mia's bags for 500 rs each (she asked for 35 each), and I am sure I will give her more before I leave tomorrow. I'll miss seeing Mia each morning.

We just returned from a great dinner with Cy (Jane's cousin) and Pema, a friend of ours from the village called Kagbeni. Pema made the journey to Jomsom with us and then met us in Kathmandu, she has been here all week. She is a mother of two girls and is pregnant with her third child. Becuase of the pressures of this culture, she is hopeful for a boy this time, so she does not have to have yet another child. She had her first ultra sound (EVER) today and was too nervous to find out if it is a girl or boy.
We took her to Bhancha Ghar for dinner, a traditional Newari Restaurant with dancers and music and great Nepali food. We took off our shoes and climbed to the third floor of the 100 year old building, then we were served peanuts roasted in a lime, onion, cilantro sauce and popcorn. We were then given finger potatoes (french fries) Then my favorite part, we were served Rakshi in small unfired clay cups. Jason drank my rakshi and I kept the little hand made cup(they are thrown out after one use)Pema had never been to such a place and she was mortified how expensive the food was (about 500 to 1000 rs per person) Pema loved the dancers in their traditional costumes doing the traditional dances, and said she had never been to such a place. Dinner was served one floor down, we had more food than we could possibly eat--- mostly, you guessed it, RICE!!! The highlights of dinner, besides the company, a flat pancake- like corn bread, and a wonderful sweet curd for dessert.

the cyber cafe is closing and I have to pack. See you all soon! Jenna

2007-08-01T11:37:00.000-04:00

August 1, Kathmandu. Tomorrow is our last full day in Kathmandu, and I suspect Jenna and I will get up early and surprise one of the rickshaw drivers who always park so hopefully in front of The Kathmandu Guest House gates. All the drivers have asked us each day for our business, and we say no, thank you, we are walking; but tomorrow we will say yes, please, we would like a bicycle rickshaw to
Swayambhunath Stupa, but no, thank you, we don't want you to wait: we will be there for who knows how long, just watching the mani stone carvers and the sleepy monkeys and the pilgrims always climbing the hundreds of steps to the top of the hill.

Swayambhu will be busier with monkeys than when Tom and Diane and Reba were here with us, because we had the blazing sun then, and monkeys are no fools. They know very well how to hide in the shade of tangled lantana and bougainevillea thickets, and in the highest ferny and bromiliaded branches of mango trees. But tomorrow is likely to be rainy, or at least extremely cloudy, so I expect the monkeys to be bold and daring, baring their teeth if they think we keep eye contact with them for too long.

I can't wait to walk on their hill with them again. These monkeys are rhesus. They have tiny pink faces with intense burnt sienna eyes. They look forlorn for a second, then irate, then sanguine, then melancholy, then terrified. Each expression, Raphael would have given anything to paint, but god help any artist who tries to use a monkey for a model. The changes come like playing cards folding and fanning and clapping over one another when someone knows how to shuffle in a bridge. Still, a monkey goes through more than 52 expressions a minute, so could more than fill a deck of cards with states and emotions: regret, confusion, self-pity, senility, numbness, agony, exhaustion, hunger, meaninglessness, loneliness, fury, challenge, zen. Every possible face and more, always a passing perfect mask.

There is something comforting about seeing every completely convincing intensity arrive but also vanish, and so I like to walk with all the monkeys. Their angry face subsides; their hatred evaporates; their fear vanishes. In a second, their posture of confrontation and menace relaxes. The desperation goes, and a monkey
is left, contemplating the sinuous and languid eyes of Buddha looking out in each
direction from Swayambhunath stupa. A blinking, not particularly verbal monkey, sighing or remembering, or hoping, or thinking of the shape of its own shadow.

Today Jenna and I visited Mr. Bhatt and Yusef, and talked more about Tibetan stones. Jenna wanted to see fake red coral next to real red coral, and fake dzi beads next to the rare and unaffordable real dzis. Mr. Bhatt said that he and his brother-in-law Yusef can now see a dzi from five meters and guess its authenticity and worth. How, exactly? Jenna asked. There are no criteria to be certain, Mr. Bhatt said, but the recognition is sensual. And there are numerous stories about what dzis are. To be certain, they are agates, but where do these agates come from? Mr. Bhatt's grandfather and most Tibetans of that generation believed that you could see a small snake, if you were very lucky, and if you were quick enough, and threw a handfull of dust on that snake, the part you touched with dust broke off and hardened on the spot into a dzi stone, while the rest of the snake wriggled down and disappeared into the earth. Which means, of course, that this was no mere snake, but one of the wise race of nagas, who occupy a different realm, which westerners would call mythical, but which Tibetans understand as being "in a different room." Occasionally these creatures from a different realm appear here, or occupy a form that we think of as familiar. So you must always be on the alert for these opportunities to see what isn't usually possible, and which usually does not exist, but, on rare occasion, suddenly does exist.

Other stories about the rare dzi stone--which is a banded or circled agate, in browns and blacks and whites, cylindrical (the circles are called "eyes")--include the belief that they come from dragon's breath, or another story has dzis coming from the minds of dragons, who decide to implant them in secret and unexpected places, especially inside the hollow, discarded horns of dead yaks. Even the most scientific explanation of dzis say that they are simply agates which must have been prehistorically acid-etched somehow, to achieve these strange patterns, but the carbon-datings, which verify their age, leave no hints of how the prehistoric jewelers managed to do this acid-etching, since no one can replicate the effect now. (You pronounce the name of the stone ZEE, by the way.) Ask Reba Hoffman where dzis come from. She has a necklace of baby dzis, the most miniature form, very rare and beautiful. Or ask her daughter, Mary, the most expert dragonologist in North America.

Dragons earlier today, and monkeys tomorrow, in the morning. And earlier this evening, an excellent book find in Pilgrim's, a gorgeous little edition of Indian beasts, each page a sumptuous silkscreen, a collection of ethnic folk renditions of foxes, elephants, anteaters, cows, snakes.

And also time to browse in Pilgrim's section of essential oils, scents affordable only here. I selected neroli, the extremely rare Egyptian essence, and cajput, which is eucalyptus-stong. Any of you who sneeze at overpowering scents will now, at least for a time, unfortunately die in my home, because the only way for me to re-suture myself back into America without hurting too terribly and to continue something of the experience of being in Nepal is to heighten every flavor and aroma I can. So beware, my friends. Just for a few weeks, dinners on Glade Road will roar with chilies and cardamoms, and the house will smell like a harem. My cats will all be disgusted, but I will feel like Nepal came home with me.

We can't wait to see all of you. Love, Jane

The count down begins....

2007-07-30T12:33:00.000-04:00

This is Jenna on the troubled space bar computer.
I can not believe wefly out in 4 days!

i just met a little Nepali boy on the street who spoke perfect English and told me all about the US-- why our flag has 13 stripes and 50 stars, about the capital of the US and the # of states,and so on. Next I was stopped by a woman holding a limp sleeping child and an empty bottle, she asked me to buy milk for her little girl, next I saw the same nine year old boy who begged for food this morning smoking a cigarette in the middle of a crowd of boys. In between the rickshaws, mopeds, cars, pedistrians, and street vendors a large cow moseyed by. There is a man who sitson a square plank with skateboard wheels and uses his handsto make his way thru traffic,he has not askedfor money or food, but he looks at us with wonder and sadness in his eyes. We have friends here now, Mia,a woman who sells little silk bags chases me down to ask how I am doing,people on the street call us by name and tell us that we will be going back to America in 4 days and that they will miss us, Mr Bhatt, the Tibetan stone seller, was concerned about our trek and the floods and wanted to know all about the festival when we returned, Rahju,the gem seller offers us tea when we walk back into his shop and we just sit and chat.Iwillmissall these people.

Right now it is 1O:30 pm and the streets are still rocking, carhorns, five different songs from 4 different shops and one live band, and French, Sweedish, Nepali, Tibetan, English,German, Russian and a million other languages being spoken, also there is a man just beside me trying to make a call he has yelled "Hello?? Hello?? Hello?" about a million times.

With in view of the kathmandu Guest house we can by sweets from a German bakery,booksfrom Pilgrimsbook store, knivesfrom a Gurkha knife stall, Tibetan Stones, carved masks, Kashmiri carptes, Thang-Ka's, Raw Silk, Roasted peanuts, Tailored clothes,Buddha statues....

Our currency is the Rupee it looks like monopoly money only the 5 rupee note is smaller than the rest and the 1000 is larger. One US dollar equals about 62 rupees, so dinner is usually 200 rs per person, a tailored outfit is about 600 rs, a snickers bar is very expensive - 60 rs, and a one rupee coin can not buy anything. ONe problem is that no one EVER has change,so if you buy something for 85rupees,and you pay with a 100, you have to have exact rupees or forefit the 15 rupees. So, sometimes we bargan and bargan to get the price down and we end up paying more because no one has change.

gotta go,it is 11pm and I amtired.
Jenna

2007-07-30T12:02:00.000-04:00

July 30, Kathmandu. Kirby, Carol Watson, Gretchen Distler, and all of or other many, many friends who keep us company along this journey, thank you for knowing and caring about this project. We can not say enough how moving it is to have your blog responses and your conern and excitement behind us.

Tonight the incredibly accomplished and elegant young man in charge of Gurkha Encounters, our trekking agency, took us to dinner as a congratulatory flourish to our twelve successful days hiking the precipices and vast distanaces of Upper Mustang. Raj took us to an old favorite haunt of every Everest climber, a restaurant called Rum Doodle, whee giant yeti footprints all over the walls and celings carry the messages of all the climbers who have summited Everest or other peaks like the Thorung-la or other daunting and remote hauls like the trek to the Holy Grail of far-away neverlands, the walled city-kingdom of Lo. I have been sent home to The Kathmandu Guest House with pens and a footprint to design ours, where our Gift for The Village team will all be signed in properly for our efforts and our project. So our web site will hang near the signature of Ed Hillary and other seekers and explorers who have all brought their own gifts here but left the richer, as we will.

We thank Gurkha Encounters for being the Cadillac of all trekking agencies in Nepal. And we were especially honored to be joined at dinner by Narayan, our main guide to Lo, without whom we would never have made it to the top of two dozen peaks at the ends of eight- or nine- or ten-hour days climbing on the strength of a thali plate of dal bhat and a few cups of masala chai. Narayan reminds me of a Nepali Gardner Rordam, Blacksburg's mayor's elder son--and speaking of Mayor Rordam, sir, did you ever score one cool gift from Kathmandu today. After your incredible service to our town, Ron, around the events of April 16th--which have not left my mind for a single day--the Gift for The Village team is proud to remember your service to all of us in Blacksburg, as well as your excitement about our project.

Today we also heard from Nepal's Acting Director of the American Center, The Honorable Ms. Sharon Dean-Hudson, on behalf of the United States Ambassador to Nepal, the Honorable Mr. Moriarty. She very generously wanted to wish us a great time here, despite the monsoon weather, which is not so bad after all, and to thank us for being such "wonderful promoters of U.S.-Nepal relations." We are honored.

Today we spent much time walking the streets of Kathmandu, around and sometimes in mud puddles in the bumpy crazy streets. Sarah, your girl Sherrie hunts constantly with so much love (and so much success!) for the very best treasures for you! And Larry and Shelly, your Jenna and Jason found such a fun and perfect Nepali present for you today! Suzi Gablik, my luggage is becoming a shrine to your tastes. If I have gone overboard, do not tell me so, and keep that judgment completely out of your expression, or I will see it and be heartbroken. As I told you in an e-mail, where gifts are concerned, I prefer complete acquiescence to my complete excesses. If the village of Jomsom can accept a thang-ka, you can put up with the small pile Jenna and I have acquired for you. Anyway, as we all experienced today, gifts are one of the only ways we can begin to express to people the beauty and intricacy of this culture. Carl, did you think I forgot you today? Never. It was actually Jenna who found a perfect Carl thing. Gifts are a reflex here. What a pleasure to be able to extend in words and sometimes also in objects--and how exciting to think of extending yet more, once I am home with my cats, in the form of the many new paintings I have imagined. The truth is, I have twenty paintings ready in my mind, which is even more than usual. Let us hope the two boxes of fresh Ceylon tea I bought for myself tonight will pack punches every night of this fall and winter as I get back to my two jobs and the lawn to mow and litter boxes to tend and meals to cook and bills to battle. I want to PAINT as my main gift. Or as one of them.

May we all be torn in precisely this way, worried most about how to give our gifts and which they will be. May we all be always-busy with the beauty we see.

Walking down from Jomsom, we traveled for a few hours with a French photographer and her half-Tibetan three-year-old girl, Clara-Dolma. Anne told us about traveling in the most remote parts of Mongolia, where people "really have free minds," she smiled. Tell me how you saw the free minds? I aksed her. "Well, for example, no Mongolian nomad ever asks your name or your age. Instead, you will be asked first--because it is most important--right after hello, 'How many friends do you have? Who are your friends?'" Not WHO ARE YOU?, as we are accustomed to wondering in the West, but WHO ARE YOUR TRIBE?

May we all know, forgive, love, always laugh with, and take care of the dear ones in our tribe. And may our tribes all be strong and loyal and rich with gifts. Love, Jane

From Kathmandu... Tsampa meets Mr. Bhatt

2007-07-29T11:58:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends, Again from Kathmandu, this time on a keyboard which loves to create spaces (yesterday's did not) but which refuses to do capitals, and which can recognize Arabic and Chinese and Korean much more easily than English--just to remind you that when we write from Kathmandu, nothing comes easily but surprise. The recalcitrance of the various keyboards goes some way to proving reincarnation, I think, since I can't otherwise explain why the station where I am sitting tonight really wants me to know languages other than the one I know.

Today, we met Tsampa in Kathmandu, who had made that long and seriously arduous journey with us down from Jomsom. Even he said that he had a terrible blister and a cramped leg and sheer exhaustion: this, from the super-human who probably holds the world's record for human time in getting down the trail in previous excursions. His beautiful daughter Lakpa Dolma said today that her mother (Karma) was "too much scared" for us as we went down the trail, since all the newspapers here are full of death tolls rising in the more southern parts of Nepal. We heard today that there has been a solid week of standing water nearly four feet deep in much of southern Nepal, much like what you saw in parts of Vietname, Joe and Carol, where the rice paddies are highly organized, like a Piet Mondrian work, but all in tints of chartreuse: this agricultural quilt is gone, under mud and debris, and even the rice shoots have drowned. I think of baby goats, water buffalo infants, all hapless, all drowned. And the sheer expanse of water, broken only by poor thatched roofs, all the laborers and farmers hapless and without a hope of recovery. Not unlike New Orleans a very brief time ago, where tonight I hope both of my amazing children, who know more than their years about recovery and hope, know that their far-away mom is thinking of them.

Tsampa today met and really spoke at length to another dear, dear long-time friend of ours, Mr. Rehman Bhatt, and to his wonderful brother-in-law Yusef, who own the Lhasa Gift House, where every Tibetan who comes with a priceless heirloom gau (prayer box) or dzi stone comes to get an unquestionably fair and compassionate price--and where Richard Gere shops for his coral also. Ask Reba and Diane (and Tom too--less a shopper, but a great observer, always) what THEY thought of Mr. Bhatt, if Jenna and I seem too much like completely prejudiced advocates of this fine man.

Anyway, it was a great meeting of amazing people--Mr. Bhatt, to my mind, the world's most honest and brilliant Tibetan stone merchant, and Tsampa Ngawang, who happens to be Nepal's most accomplished amchi and renaissance man. This happy confuence and mutual appreciation is not always the case. Georgia O'Keeffe, for instance, and Frida Kahlo, met briefly--and turned their noses up at one another, when for me--these years later--they are the Southern and the Northern Hemisphere's two toughest and smartest artist-girls from the Americas, who could have traded pistols and ridden into the sunset together much better than those ultimately self-destructive and panicky girls, Thelma and Louise.

It was beautiful to see Mr. Bhatt, who is a Tibetan Muslim, and Tsampa, who is the lineage holder of many rare and sacred old Buddhist traditions, look at each other with nothing but joy and a kind of immediate love and trust. It was beautiful to see Mr. Bhatt congratulating Tsampa for the amazing and huge festival that the village of Jomsom held to honor our project, our friendship, and our gift for the village. How lovely it is to see people who care about what will last a long time, rather than only about, as our Tibetan friend in New Delhi, India, taught Jenna and me to say seven years ago, "short fun."

More soon. Much love to Khadija, Suzi, Reba, Garland, Suzan, Barbara, and Jessica, and all of our friends who keep making us all feel like there is a home on the other side of the world for us, even if we are as far away as we can be, just at the moment. Love, Jane

from Jenna about Lo Montang

2007-07-28T11:49:00.000-04:00

We spent 12 days in the most remote region of Nepal. In fact this region is still called the Forbidden Region because, until recently, no tourists were allowed in. To get in we had to register months in advance, complete the necessary permist, and hire a trained and certified guide (and porters) who would spend the 12 days with us. Here are a few "snapshots or this place.

LO is a place where.......

-every dinner is a candle light or cook fire dinner
-Dal Bhat is served for lunch and dinner -- a LARGE heap of rice, a small cup of lintles in garlic and ginger broth, Aloo (curried potatoes) and sauteed mustard greens. This meal is served on a LARGE round metal plate which is refilled as fast as you can empty a compartment.
- there are only 15 villages in the region and some have as few as 60 people or as many as 600 (there are about 6000 people total in Lo)
- people wash laundry, dishes, children, and themselves at the community waterpump (a large croud gathered when we did our laundry-- later we found out that they all realy enjoyed watching us wash our clothes (underwear and all)in DISH washing soap
- villages seem to be only two mile apart, but to get to the next village, we had to walk 7 hours, climb 5 steep narrow trails, descend 5 rocky switchback trails, cross 3 wooden bridges patched with ROCKS, and wade threw onw swollen river with water up to our knees
-the bathroom, if we were licky, was in a ROOM with walls and a ceiling and porcelin rimed hole in the floor, when we were unlucky, there was a hole in a sagging mud floor surrounded by a stacked rock wall with no ceiling and a door that would not shut, or we used the "natural toilet"
- Tashi Deleg means hello and Tu tu che means thank you
- Naryan, our wonderful guilde, painted his face (just like ours) using red, orange, white, dark gray, and mustard colored natural rock pigments we found near a Chortan (mud and rock shrines that can be seen all over Nepal)
- Binod, Ganish, Hari, and Gopal, our porters, sang and laughed with us, cooked for us, waited for us at the top of big climbs, danced with us, and spent 12 days exploring monistaries, rivers, caves, villages, asnd the mountains of this Northern region in Nepal
- Saligrams (spiral chambered nautulus fossils, over 20 million years old) can be found in the river beds
- snow can be seen on the tall peaks
- showers, IF THERE IS SUCH A THING, are COLD!!!!
-homes are made from stacked rocks packed with mud and the roof is made from mud covered branches
- the floors in homes and monistaries are sprinkled with water a few times a day to settle the dust and to level out the scuff marks on the dirt floors
-meals are cooked over fires
-there is NO ice for drinks
-besides small junipers, the only vegitation has been planted by hand and wateres by irrigation ditches also dug by hand
-prayer flags fly and rocks are stacked at the top of tall mountains and steep climbs as a welcome, and to honor a tough journey, celebrate an accomplishment. When we added our rocks to these piles we joined our guide in saying, "So So So So La" it means victory to the gods
-children who may not speak any English, still know, "Chocolate? Rupee? School Pen?"
- some people may have never seen a white face before
- there is NO TV, raido, or telephone, grocery store, laundrymat, or fast food restaurant
- children may not go to school becuase there is not one in their village, it is too far to walk to the nearest school, or they are responsible for caring for younger siblings or working in the fields
- AND people drink YAK BUTTER Tea---- aarrggghhh!!!!

SO much more to say, but it is getting late, and as you will read on Jane's blog, we have just arrived in Kathmandu after a long hard journey.

Reba-- we miss our roomie!!! Debra, Eric, Joey, Tom, Diane, we miss you guys too.
Thank you to everyone who is responding to our blog, we love to hear from you!

more soon Jenna