a detour to the other side of the world

post #112
       A friend of ours, Carolyn, has just returned from a part of the world that my husband and I visited long ago, in the early 1970s, with our backpacks and a budget of $10 a day.  We left before Christmas and returned in late June.  
      Photographically, we took slides as we went along, mailing several rolls at a time to my mother from wherever we happened to be.  We thought she could follow what we were doing, but the reality is that those little packets greeted us when we got back to the States.  Had the camera not been working, we wouldn't have known until our return!!  
      Today I am going to scan some of the slides to share with Carolyn and with Ashley, whom she visited  -- and with the 100 or so weekly visitors to this blog.  We had one camera, one lens, and two of us taking turns making photos. So, duh, the ones I took for sure are the ones with hubby in them.  We also took turns writing daily in our journal, a legal size spiral notebook that now is a treasure of specifics.  In a smaller blue notebook, we kept track of addresses, when we mailed something, and of every coin we spent.  By the way, believe me, traveling cheaply is a lot of work.  And without networking along the way and staying with friends or friends of friends, we couldn't have pulled it off. 
      It was a most memorable trip, one I am so grateful to have made. A lifetime of stories. Once we started, I realized that I had always really just wanted to see what was on the other side of the world.   
 
       OK, today, therefore, is the Indonesia segment of the adventure. We arrived there in late January.  (We headed west most of the time.)  This is embarrassing to admit, even now, but one reason I wanted to go there was because I didn't really know where Indonesia was located!  Yet it was the fifth most populous nation in the world!  (It's now the fourth.)  How American ignorant is that!  It is such a beautiful place, very different from anywhere I had ever been before.  (Of all the countries we visited, we had always thought we would like to return to Indonesia, Japan and Afghanistan.  It hasn't happened -- yet.)

friends of a friend: Our letter to Winnie and Dick about our arrival was never delivered, so we showed up in their village unannounced!  They were wonderfully welcoming.  Notice the ducks in the canal behind them.  They had come from Boston so Dick could carry out a Harvard research project about rice growing in very rural central Java. 

ducks in another canal, started in the days when the Dutch were in charge

ducks in the fields, central Java, eating the fallen grains

taking some of the crop home at the end of the day

harvest time, with the kids fascinated by us strangers

riding in a cart, for half an hour, headed to an uncertain address

then traveling by train in central Java

      It takes a while to clean up these slides for viewing, so I will show the other half next week.  These include our visit to Borobudur, and more kids -- who seemed to show up where ever we went.  (These slides are somewhat worn, from being shown in my husband's classrooms for many years.)
      I know that since we were there forty years ago many things will have changed, but perhaps these images from back then will be of interest to those who live there or visit there now.  The people we met were unfailingly kind as well as curious and helpful.
 

Waiting for cooler

post #93
     Hot, hot, hot, but we are hopeful there will be rain later today and some under 90 degree days soon.  It is beyond me how anyone can not be willing to consider that all these extreme weather events are probably part of a climate change that we ignore at our peril.  Sometimes things in life are not as we may want them to be, but that doesn't mean they are not happening.  There are definitely steps we can take to keep the planet from even greater injury.  However, this requires taking action sooner rather than later.  How about starting NOW. 

      I was thrilled to see a personal/professional response to non-action by two fine reporters in eastern Kentucky, one a writer, the other a photographer, in today's Daily Independent newspaper out of Ashland, KY.  Here is the link.   Thank you, Ronnie, thank you, John, and thank you, Appalachian resident Rick Handshoe, all three, for not giving up, yet.  But what more is it going to take to create a sane response to energy needs in our beloved but impaired world??

Some photos from this world, because that is how I love to share:

white blooms on black cohosh, which blooms about now, grow deep in the Kentucky woods.  They make the grove where it grows feel like a magic place.

from a farmers' market, actually in Massachusetts

yellow lady's slippers, deep in the woods, scanned from a slide, using a tripod, at dusk -- a wonder to have found them

This leaf, near the creek, also scanned from a slide, shows the moisture we usually have. After these many weeks of dry weather, the design of the shadows and raindrops looks particularly beautiful and intriguing to me.

bad hair day   (scanned slide)

      I would have liked to continue the alphabet book today -- with U-V-W -- but an idea slowed me down! I will be able to do it next week.  In the meantime, I am ending with a few words I wrote the day after the health care decision was handed down by the Supreme Court:

Why is the Supreme Court's affirmation today of most of the Affordable Health Care Act headlined as a Democratic victory, when my assumption is that it wouldn't have been constructed to be unconstitutional in the first place?  It is the profit-motive types who have been whining and whipping up anti-Obama fears by the rhetoric they use in challenging it. Unfortunately we will now have to listen to even more stealth PACs claiming Obama has to be taken down.  Because he backed a real effort for health care reform? that Americans badly need?  There are darker motives at work here. (See Profit comment above....) Anyway, I am glad for today's news!

 Stay well, everyone, despite the precarious state of our health care system....  Ann

 

back to tobacco, this time in Vietnam

post #56
       Before I got sidetracked two weeks ago by sorghum making, I had intended to finish up my tobacco series on this blog by showing photos I took during that 2004 trip to Vietnam.  I wrote about those two weeks, in post #25, and included several images.  But now I want to share the day our bus passed through a village in Vietnam which had tobacco drying in each front yard and under each porch overhang.  I made my only photo request of the trip (which was not designed for either photographers or for tobacco farmers) by asking if the bus could, please, please, stop there on our way back from the day's historic site.  Actually my request sounded more like begging.  I explained that I just couldn't face my community at home if I didn't take any photos of the totally amazing sight of seeing tobacco growing alongside rice!  
      We did stop later, I (and others) did get off the bus, and our guide was able to explain to the family why I wanted to take the photos.  Of course the explaining part was, to me, a gift.  I am always more comfortable being able to express appreciation  and to do the small talk thing.

        Facts: the time of year, October, the location, the middle of the country, where there are several growing seasons.  Of note: many Vietnamese homes and stores are open in the front, and there is a lot of visiting back and forth.  I still wonder how they take to the American way of closed-off living.
     The next photo shows what really got my attention -- rice, tobacco (more than one crop a year, I presume), and corn growing side by side!

     
     Two last photos, non-tobacco but Vietnam, are again with the help of being with someone who could translate my interest for me.  I usually send a photo to whomever I take one of, but on this trip it was hard to do that every time. I do apologize for the imperfections of these slides (which I have scanned and made digital) but I didn't always have much time to work or much choice about the light.  Otherwise, it was a wonderful trip.  I am so grateful to have been able to go there.

two sisters -- one of my favorite moments from the trip