amy_thomson

In Which We Build a Boat

2007-07-04T05:30:10Z

Following Ratty's dictum in The Wind In The Willows, that there is nothing, absolutely nothing as wonderful as mucking about in Boats, I signed our family up for the Center For Wooden Boats' Family Boatbuilding Workshop, where we build a dinghy in four days. Our motto going into this insane venture was "If we can build it, ANYONE can build it."

Day One, we arrived, energetic and eager to start, bristling with tools (ouch!). There were supposed to be three families, but one never showed. So we and the Other Family, a dad, a son, and a cousin (all handy with tools, unlike ourselves) started off, measuring and drilling. By the end of the day, we had screwed the sides of the hull to the stem (the wooden piece at the very front of the boat) and to the transom (the flat bit at the back where the name usually gets put, and the rudder gets hung) and wired the two pieces forming the bottom of the boat together, and then wired them to the sides. We also attached the breast hook (ow!) and the stern knees, which provide stability and strength at the back corners and the front. Then Patrick, our instructor, mixed up some epoxy which we spread over the wired seams, we covered that with fiberglass cloth, and clear resin, and we went home, leaving behind a decidedly Boat-Like Object. We adjourned to the Old Spaghetti Factory to stuff our faces and name the boat. Very kindly, the others agreed to my suggested name, Tenger, which is the Mongolian word for sky. I like to think of this boat as the first boat in the Mongolian Navy.

On Day Two we fitted the seats. I managed to drill through the hull of the boat. Though I correctly installed the gudgeons (the sockets that the pintles slide into) or the holes that the rudder is attached to, for you landlubbers. Patrick assured me that I hadn't ruined the boat, and indeed, we patched the spot with epoxy and it looks just fine. We also pulled the wires out of the boat. Some needed to be heated with a barbecue lighter to melt the epoxy enough to pull them out. Then we patched the holes with epoxy and covered the outside seams with more epoxy and fiberglass.

Day Three (Monday), Edd had to go to work and Get Stuff Done for half a day. So Katie and I were on our own. The very nice Other Family, showed up with half a dozen Other Relatives each handier than the next, and they got an immense amount done. Katie was getting bored and I was grumpy and tired. She played and sat around and complained about being bored. I wasn't very sympathetic, especially when she blew me off whenever I did have a task for her to do. At last she went over to the nice lady running the Native American basket weavers booth, and she showed her how to weave a heart out of cedar bark. Meanwhile I finished the sheath for the daggerboard and some other bits and bobs. Edd showed up and helped with the oarlocks and some other stuff. The day ended with more epoxy and fiberglass, this time around the daggerboard sheath. We went home fried and tired.

Day Four (today, Tuesday), Edd took Katie to work. I started the day off solo, plugged myself into my iPod, and worked to a wonderful eclectic mix of throatsinging, and folk music, with the odd bit of rock and roll thrown in. Things went much better today. I glued and screwed the daggerboard handles and the daggerboard cover (for when you want to row instead of sail). Patrick tapered one end of the mast for me, bless him. I tapered the other end, enjoying the steady rhythm of planing. I also cut the tenon for the sprit with a chisel, feeling very carpenter-like. Edd and Katie showed up in time to help rig the boat and add the skegs. Then we took the boat to the the docks and launched it. It took on a little water probably via the skeg holes, which had been only recently glued. But otherwise the Tenger floated like a duck.

We proved less competent at sailing the boat than building it. I'd forgotten how to use a tiller, and we discovered the hazards of a lee shore the hard way. But eventually we managed to get the hang of sailing her, and had a pleasant cruise. Then we pulled the Tenger out of the water, and watched an Umiak skin boat built by a scout troop in Kent get launched with much ceremony. Bringing the Tenger home was a bit more of an adventure than we'd planned on. We had to stop twice to re-tie her to the top of the car. But we made it home safely. Now we need to sand and paint the Tenger, and buy a car rack or a trailer to transport her safely to the water and back again.

Looking Up at the End of My Rope

2007-01-01T18:50:50Z

As I said previously, the first few days were kind of fun. We were bold urban pioneers keeping up a stiff upper lip in the face of disaster. I took pride in our ingenuity and toughness. Articles about wimpy Eastsiders who had fled to hotels in downtown Seattle were greeted with a disdainful curl of my lip. Hah! We were made of sterner stuff! We would not abandon our post for the cushy comforts of a hotel!

But by Sunday night it began to get a trifle wearing. I never seemed to remember to get everything I needed in place before dark, when things got nearly impossible to find. I wanted to curl up with a nice book. And the firewood was all wet, and the skinny branches burned through really fast. And because they were round, they tended to roll off the grate. And when Monday, a work-day rolled around, with no way to start up the computer, I started to get a little irked. Still, Katie and I went out in the rain and cut up more wood for the fire.

At least Katie had circus camp from Noon to 3PM. Happily, three other girls from Katie's school had also signed up. I took Katie to camp, and retired to our local cafe, hoping to find a table near an outlet for my laptop. No such luck. I ate my lunch, with a brave smile pasted on my face, listening politely to people telling me that their power had only been out for a few days. Then I retired to the Georgetown Starbucks where there was a convenient outlet and got a few pages of editing completed before picking Katie up and retreating to the Cold and the Dark.

By Tuesday, I was getting seriously irked. Power had been restored to West Marginal for a couple of days. Large swatches of Seattle were online. A note of irritation had crept into my voice during my daily call to the power company. I was in denial around cleaning the dead stuff out of the freezer.

Meanwhile, my husband got to go to work and spend the whole day in a place where there was light and power and he could Get Work Done. Grrr, Argh, Waaaaaah! When I dropped Katie off at circus camp, one of her schoolmates mothers slipped me a pass to a local spa/bathhouse that she's a partner in. Clearly I was looking frazzled. At least I found the cafe that Edd had told me about All City Coffee, a funky, barebones cafe with a concrete floor, basic tables, and power. I liked it immediately, and managed to get a little work done despite the distractions of interesting bohemian folk and a bunch of nice, friendly dogs, who were clearly welcome and at home here.

Then it was time to pick Katie up and go home. Sometime that evening I noticed that Katie's fish was lying cold, still and grey on the bottom of his tank. *damn* I couldn't bring myself to tell her about it. Edd and I were searching desperately for dry firewood. I finally descended to the level of overpriced fake pressed wood logs (oh the SHAME!). Which at least last a long time, even if they do crap up your chimney and contain dubious petrochemicals. Melting wax from candles was starting to build up on the furniture, and it was going to be a bitch to remove. I didn't really care.

By Wednesday, the end of the rope was slipping through my hands. I called every number I could think of, including the local shift supervisor, in hopes of getting power. I sounded distinctly pissed off. Katie's fish was Still Dead. She hadn't noticed, thank god. Edd helped me clean out the fridge. EeeeW! We set the butter, milk and eggs outside to keep cold, along with a remarkable amount of beer left over from previous parties. But by mutual consent, we left the downstairs freezer till later. I went back to the cafe in the afternoon, rinse lather repeat. That night a recently-widowed friend called for some company and consolation. In a shameful display of self-pity, I wound up crying on her shoulder. It had been six whole days without power. Merry Fucking Christmas. Bah humbug!

Next Rock: A Miracle occurs.

Keeping warm

2006-12-31T17:48:47Z

The first few days of the power outage were actually kind of fun. We bought a fireplace grate and discovered that our wood burning fireplace worked very well. We got out the candles and enjoyed a few evenings by candle light. Our downstairs fireplace had a gas insert, and we kept that running continually. We have a gas hot water heater, so we had hot water. I left the tub full so that the heat from the hot water would radiate out into the room. I put jars of warm water in the tank containing Katie's betta Minty to keep him warm. It worked, sort of, keeping the tank water in the sixties.

During the day, I put my mighty Florian pruners to work, cutting dead branches out of fallen trees. There were a lot of those. The down side was that I could only cut branches up to 3", and they burned quickly. But pre-cut firewood was hard to find. We were really doing quite well. I even refrained from bothering the power company except to report that our neighborhood was out of power. Surely they would get to us as soon as possible.

Hah! Little did I know....

Next Rock: Looking Up at the End of My Rope

Happy New Year, everyone!

Powerless

2006-12-30T15:02:18Z

As many of you know, we had a huge windstorm about a week and a half before Christmas. Hurricane force winds in Seattle of all places! Because there's a huge and lovely pine tree just outside my daughter's room, she slept on the living room couch. In my hot pink paisley sleeping bag that I had as a kid and wrapped myself up in to watch the very first moon landing [insert *sigh* for lost youth here]. She thought that was just fine.

The next morning, we woke to many branches and fallen trees. None of them were on our house or on the houses of the neighbors. And the power was out. Massively out. Everywhere in the city. In our isolated neighborhood, a maple tree had fallen across the feeder line, and hung tilted across the only road into the neighborhood. Katie's school was closed. The sky was that brilliant and innocent *who me?* shade of blue that only comes after a really violent storm.

We got out and did our bit for the neighborhood by clearing branches off the road, and cutting back the other, smaller cottonwood that had fallen over the road. I have these great loppers made by Florian One of the kind of fun/pain in the ass things about our neighborhood is that we get a lot less of the "tidying up" kind of city services, and we have to do that for ourselves a lot. It makes us feel a bit like intrepid urban pioneers.

We inspected the tree that had taken out our power from a respectful distance, then edged under it, holding Katie firmly by the hand. Then we flung branches off the road and inspected the damage wrought to our drainage ditch and road by the storm. The culvert at the bottom of the road was completely clogged with gravel and sand. Water was running over the road, down the hill and flooding out the concrete business down at the bottom of the hill (again). This happens a lot since the city, in it's infinite wisdom decided to clean out our ditch with a machine that broke up the blacktop at the bottom of the ditch. Now the culvert is clogged every fall.

The concrete company had set up bags of concrete partway across the road to divert the water. Which worked, sort of. A four inch deep layer of gravel and sand covered the intersection between our road and the main arterial. It was a most impressive mess. As we were admiring the devastation (what else can one do?) The concrete company guys came up. They told me that it wasn't just the water from the ditch, but that Puget Creek, our own personal lutefisk fishery, had overflowed as well. I vaguely remembered driving through about six inches of running water on the way up the hill. But I'd thought it had been the ditch. The creek would have had to have risen at least fifteen feet in order to do this. Wow!

Next Rock:Keeping warm, etc.

My Nephew's Tall, Elegant Hungarian Wedding

2006-12-12T17:53:16Z

Darby and Agnes were married in a small town named Komarom about an hour outside Budapest. We rode there on a chartered double-decker bus. Komaron has this neat fort disguised as a hill, which we saw bits of, but obviously couldn't tour. Another thing on my list to go back and see. The church was a lovely yellow and cream confection with a tall tower and a big clock. A huge spread had been laid on in the vestry. We sat and chatted until it was time for the wedding. The inside of the church was simple and elegant with smooth cream wall and a beautifully carved pulpit. The reason they were being married in this church was that Agnes' grandfather had been the preacher in this church.

Darby looked more elegant than I'd ever seen him look before, wearing a beautifully tailored suit in perhaps the only shade of brown that a brown suit can look good in. Agnes looked stunning in a white sheath dress and a beautiful hairdo (which remained immaculate until late in the evening!) holding a sheath of white calla lilies. The wedding was entirely in Hungarian. Hopefully Darby didn't promise to do anything he couldn't follow through on. After the wedding we got to throw actual rice, which I found a charming throwback. The flower girl. a little blonde kid who looked about four, threw petals and then carefully picked them all up and threw them some more. When that ceased to appeal, she threw her skirt up over her head. Meanwhile, Darby and Agnes stood on the steps and were thoroughly congratulated and photographed. Darby's mother was smiling so hard I thought the top of her head would come loose.

We then retired to the vestry and ate pastries and cakes and sipped champagne. More pictures were taken. Around sunset we boarded the bus, went back to the hotel to rest up for an hour. Then we had the reception. It was in this incredible building overlooking the Danube with high vaulted ceilings. First came a seven course meal with four different wines. A wonderful clarinettist and a delightfully mad guitarist played during dinner. The guitarist actually bowed his guitar, and then, he turned it over and played it like a drum with brushes. He used a bottleneck, not on the frets but down where you pluck. It was amazing!

After dinner, and toasts, there was this lovely ceremony. Darby and Agnes sat side by side in front of a low table. Everyone placed a lit candle on the table, and gave the bride and groom a wish. It was lovely. And then they played Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. (this was totally unfair!) I dissolved into tears. It was just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen done at a wedding.

Following that, there was dancing and cake. I folded about 1AM, feeling like a wimp. Agnes's hair STILL looked immaculate. Wow! I understand that there was a late-night buffet laid on after I left. Honestly, I don't know how anyone managed to eat another bite after that amazing dinner.

What. me Hungary?

2006-12-06T23:53:15Z

My nephew Darby got married in Hungary a week and a half ago. Of course I went. I only have one nephew. And besides, it was a chance to see Budapest. For starters, Hungary is mis-named. They shouldn't call the place Hungary, they should call it "Eat, you look thin!" The food was fabulous! And my nephew has married into a great family. He's got a great mother and father-in-law, warm, kind, and very loving. And his wife Agnes is tall, gorgeous and very, very sweet. She's sort of like Audrey Hepburn's sophisticated older sister. And she's completing her residency as a doctor. What's not to like?

Everyone from out of town was staying at the same small hotel. That included several of Darby's smoke jumper buddies, a group of Agnes's friends, all tall and blonde, and my brother Mike and his ex-wife (Darby's mom). The night I got there, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant a few minute's walk away from the hotel. Despite being tired enough to fall face-forward into my dinner, I enjoyed getting to know Agnes' wonderful family. The next day, we took a bus tour of Budapest. I generally don't do traditionally touristy things, but city bus tours are a useful way to orient yourself. We saw most of the city: Heroes square with its stunning bronze statues, the city park, Fisherman's Bastion and Matyas Cathedral, the Citadela. The only drawback was our tourguide's racist remarks about gypsies.

That night, Agnes and Darby took us to the Szechenyi Baths, located in the city park. It took a bit to figure out how everything works. You pay admittance, and then a nice lady assigns you a locker for your stuff, giving you a numbered metal tag. From the dressing rooms we went outside. There were three HUGE pools, two warm pools and a cooler pool for swimming. My favorite part was the whirlpool. Not a jacuzzi, mind, this was a big circle (maybe 25 feet in diameter??) with jets that push the water through the circle. The result is a lot like white water rafting, only warmer. Inside the whirlpool is something like a jacuzzi. From time to time, the whirlpool shuts off and the water is diverted to the jacuzzi, while the whirlpool water slows down. It was huge fun. I could have spent hours going round and round. Come to think of it, I did!

I'm told that there's a whole bunch more stuff inside, thermal pools and saunas and such, but I had so much fun whooshing around the whirlpool that I never made it that far.

-Next Rock: My Nephew's Tall Elegant Hungarian Wedding-

Oh well....

2006-11-09T18:43:27Z

I recently started trying to set up one or two weeks each month with no appointments. It gives me a chance to get caught up. This was supposed to be one of those weeks.

But Tuesday afternoon was spent knocking on doors to get out the vote. When it got too dark to do that, Katie and I went to the Machinists Union Hall to call voters. Katie thought it was pretty cool, because she got to eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ring the bell whenever a caller told us they'd voted Democratic. We went home long enough to inhale some dinner, then I went to our local polling place to count provisional ballots and call in the number.

Yesterday was a day of mixed emotions. There was much happy dancing because of the election results, but I spent the afternoon helping out at a friends' memorial service. He died suddenly, leaving his wife and children shocked and deeply grieved.

So much good was done, but there went the week. It was decidedly worth it, but try telling that to my groaning desk.

Chickenshit At The Night Market

2006-08-03T23:51:40Z

We went off to Chinatown a couple of days ago to the very first Night Market. It was pleasant, but not nearly as evocative as the name. It was organized by the youth group as a part of the Neighborhood Night Out campaign. This year its' just a one-off event, and felt a bit sketchy, but it was well attended, even if there wasn't enough stuff out to make it an actual market. Next year they'll be doing more of them, and perhaps it will feel a little more market-ish.

Katie had brought along her current favorite soft toy, a little guinea pig. I was holding it for her while she was drawing. A guy came up to me. He had the bad teeth and grubby appearance of the borderline homeless. He said, "I have a teddy bear too. They gave it to me when I got out of jail to keep me company. So that I could have the happy childhood I never had." It was a sweet and very sad thing to hear from a total stranger.

Being slow, and a little put off by this guy general grubbiness, I just smiled and offered him some Fritos. He refused. His teeth couldn't handle them, he told me, and walked off. I stood there, thinking I should have said something, anything more. I really was moved, but too slow and chickenshit to give the guy a hug, or some other gesture of human to human kindness.

I hope I see him again and get a chance to tell him how moved I was by what he'd said.

It isn't easy being green

2006-08-01T23:36:53Z

While I was picking up my daughter up at Girl Scout Day camp at Camp Long, I ran into the mom of one of Katie's classmates. We got to talking, and I forgot myself and mentioned that I was going off to Harbin Hot Springs to go to throat singing camp . *Damn* There goes another lost play date for Katie. It reminded me of a fellow fan who took his new girl friend to her first convention. At some point, she turned to him and said, "Your friends just don't make small talk, do they?"

Summertime

2006-07-24T15:06:48Z

It's been a simultaneously busy and quiet summer. Much re-writing is being done. My daughter Katie is going off to a series of fun summer camps. Last week she went to a sailing/kayaking camp on South Lake Union, which she enjoyed immensely. I envied her the opportunity to muck about in boats. But I enjoyed it too, because it was only a hop, skip, and a jump from the Center for Wooden Boats. So I started dropping by either before or after I picked her up. There was a class on building a traditional eskimo baidarka in progress, and I started chatting with Cory Freeman, the teacher, about boats and Mongolian yurt-building. He very kindly let me show him some pictures of Mongolia, and I watched him help people put together these beautiful lightweight little boats. (They weigh about 60 pounds!) It has inspired serious Boat-Lust in me. Next winter, I'm going to sign up for the Family Boatbuilding session, where they help you build a lightweight little sailboat of your very own. Wheee!

And Saturday, in my guise as Evil Troop Leader, I forced a troop of Brownies to march a mile and a half in the HOT sun. The only drawback was that I was marching with them. *darn* Note to self: Next time have minions supervise the Forced March. Actually, it was the West Seattle Hi-Yu parade, and we all had a reasonably decent time passing out largesse in the form of green wristbands and candy to the crowd. For the next two weeks, Katie will be at Girl Scout Camp, which she loves.

And in other news, I'm going off to Throat Singing Camp at Harbin Hot Springs in mid-August. I should arrive at Worldcon fully equipped to make peculiar droning sounds and eerie inhuman whistles. If anyone's interested, go to Purenature Music. The group Chirgilchin is on tour in the area. I'll be going to their concert at Seattle Pacific University tomorrow. There's a link to their tour schedule on the site.

Tuvan Punk Rock

2006-04-26T16:49:38Z

Last Christmas a friend of Edd's, knowing I was into Mongolian music, gave me a CD by Yat-Kha, a Tuvan rock and roll group. I immediately ordered their entire output via their website Yat-Kha.com. They do throat singing and rock and roll, both Tuvan music, and English language covers of things like "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "Inna Gadda Da Vida". The music is startling and wonderful in equal measure. The English cover songs may be an aquired taste, but it's one well worth acquiring! There's lots of the remarkable horse rhythms (and camel rhythms and sheep rhythms.)

My favorite CD's are Tuva.rock, Bootleg, and Aldyn Dashkha, though the rest are pretty cool too. Stop by their website and listen to some of their marvelous music. I strongly suggest listening to the traditional music first, which kind of prepares the ear for their english language covers. You can listen to some of the cuts from their albums on their website.

I've heard that they're trying to organize a US tour. If you can help them find places to play, you can contact their booking agent on their website. I'm dying to hear them live!

I name my tiller

2006-04-18T16:31:15Z

Yesterday, I got out my gas-powered mini tiller to till in the compost on the blueberry bed. It took half an hour to get the damned thing started. There was much flipping of switches, setting of chokes, and yanking on starter cords, followed by taking out of spark plugs to unflood the engine. (I bought a second spark plug, and I just switch the plugs instead of painstakingly drying and replacing the plug, it saves time.) All of which was followed by a steady refrain of cussing. At long last I got the thing started. It promptly died again. It was at this point I christened my tiller. Its new name is #@!%&*. It seemed to respond well to its new name, since it finally started running, after sputtering and dying half a dozen times. Then #@!%&* functioned beautifully, until it got choked by clots of sod, or tangled up in quack grass rhizomes. At which point I had to take the tiller wheels off, and remove all the sodding sod.

But at long last the bed was properly tilled, a thing of frothy beauty (if you're a gardener that is!) The soil is rich and loamy, with peat moss, boughten compost, and more carefully screened compost from my compost heap, and made acid by ammonium sulfate judiciously weighed and painstakingly applied. My four blueberry bushes (Brigitta, 2 Elizabeths, and an Olympia) were planted, and tucked in beneath a thick blanket of pine needles. Next year we'll harvest blueberries!

So here's to #@!%&*. Let's hope it's more cooperative next time! Especially since I have another four blueberries to plant in a second bed!

One perfect day, with tulips

2006-04-13T17:19:26Z

Tuesday my daughter Katie and I went up to the Skagit Valley for the Tulip festival with my friend ladyjestocost. It was just about a perfect day. I had my doubts about taking Katie, but when we hit the first vast expanse of tulip fields and she went "WOW!" I smiled inwardly and knew that it was worth it. On the way to the tulip fields we passed a field full of white snow geese. There must have been thousands of them. We took pictures, and I got a couple of spectacular pics of them all taking off at once. We toured the Roozengarde display gardens, Katie borrowed my camera and took a number of blurry pictures of grass and trees and sky and people's feet, but a fair number of quite good pictures. After the gardens, we lunched in lovely LaConnor (say that ten times quickly!), in a restaurant overlooking the slough. There was a bald eagle sitting on an old stump, and we saw a seal surface. And of course we had lethal chocolate desserts.

Then we walked out into one of the open tulip fields and took lots more pictures. It was a sea of color pale pinks, rose, and magenta with the odd yellow or red tulip. It was a deep and intense pleasure to be surrounded by so much incredible color. It was like tasting chocolate for the very first time. You realize you've been craving it, without ever knowing what it was you craved. After an hour or so bathing our eyes in color, we headed back to the car, stopping to buy an armload of tulips to take home.

It was Pajama Day at Katie's school...

2006-04-07T16:09:41Z

It was pajama day at my daughter Katie's school, and her class was hosting a bake sale. She asked me to come to her shift, so I put on my pajamas and took off early for lunch and went. (You can do this when you're a writer and work at home!) My PJ's were flannel with black and white patches on them like a holstein cow. They're darned silly and way too big. (I originally bought them to wear at the hospital, since I despise those thin little gowns and needed a laugh.) Anyway, I was the only Mom in PJ's. After the bake sale, I stayed to keep Katie company during lunch. One of her class mates said. "Your mom is crazy." So I leaned over and said, "Yes I am, and it's a lot of fun!"

It's amazing what power admitting the truth can have.

Ha!

Octavia Butler's Passing

2006-03-03T18:59:32Z

I was at the Potlatch Banquet when I heard about Octavia Butler's passing. Debbie Notkin had come up and told Nisi Shawl so that she could steel herself for it, before they announced it to everyone. She told me. I'm glad she did, because it gave me time to wrap my mind around the concept. When the general announcement was made, there was the most incredible spontaneous shocked and grieved silence. I remember thinking, "This is what a moment of silence is supposed to feel like."

I went to the wake at the Science Fiction Museum last night. It was beautifully done. Leslie Howle put together a wonderful PowerPoint slideshow of pictures of Octavia, and her books. There were pictures when she was young, and pictures of her winning awards and with her Clarion West classes and students. But the best ones were out in wild places. There was a wonderful open smile on Octavia's face. It was clear that she was at her happiest and most open out in nature. There were wonderful moments of synchronicity, when someone would be saying something about Octavia, and a picture would come up that perfectly matched whatever people were saying about her.

They played an interview with Octavia Butler. Watching it, I couldn't believe she was really dead. Her presence was there, in the room, larger than life as she always was. She was like that. She will always be like that.

Many moving and funny stories were told. My favorite was the woman who had flown out here from Washington, D.C. She had found a number for Octavia on the web, and called it, expecting to contact an editor or publicist. The person who answered demanded to know how she got the number, and didn't believe she'd gotten it off the web. The woman who called said that she was a fan who wanted an address so that she could write Octavia Butler. There was much back and forth, and finally Octavia (she'd reached Octavia's home phone number) told the woman who called that she was Octavia Butler. "No, that's not possible. The world isn't that kind," Octavia's caller replied. There then followed a half-hour argument while Octavia tried to prove that she really WAS Octavia Butler. Anyway, they talked for five hours, and became good friends.

Here's what I wrote up and read at the wake:

I never took a class from Octavia Butler, but she was one of the most important writing teachers I ever had.

She taught me the importance of turning over rocks in the human soul and writing about the squishy, crawly, and scary things underneath. She taught me to have the courage to put the characters in my books through hell, even if, and sometimes because I loved them. Her months-long struggle to find a way to properly begin The Parable of the Sower taught me the importance of taking the time it requires to tell a story correctly, even if a deadline is breathing down your neck. In short she taught me a lot about the courage it takes to tell the truth in a story, even if that truth is a difficult or unpleasant one.

Octavia was much more than a black writer, writing to a black audience, or even a science fiction writer writing to an audience of science fiction fans. Her immense compassion makes her books universal, and universally important. Through her books, she took me by the hand and led me through the harrowing experience of racism, in a way no one else could.

Writing is the only way we can experience being someone else. And Octavia was a master at helping us become the other.

After the wake, I talked to one of Octavia's neighbors. She told me two things that eased my aching heart. First, that Octavia Butler was not alone when she died. Second, her passing was peaceful and without pain. Small comfort, but one gathers what shreds one can out of a tragedy like this. Everytime we talked (sadly, it was not often) I learned something important. I will miss her very much.

News

2006-03-03T18:12:25Z

The earth surges and cracks. Suddenly a wiggly pink snout emerges out of the freshly disturbed soil, whiffles tentatively, and then with a lurch and a heave, the rest of the animal appears! Is it? Yes! It's the elusive amyii thomsonia emerging after a long winter of writing and Not Much Else! Blinking blearily in the late winter sunshine she looks around, and sees her shadow. Curses! Six more months of editing!

Or in other words, Hi, I'm back, at least for a bit. Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It's been more than 14 months since my last LJ post. So here's what I've been up to:

I've just finished the second draft of my novel Nomad, currently weighing in at 147,372 words(abt. 522 manuscript pages,in Times Pinyin, anyway). My back went out in early July, just as I finished the first draft. Oh ow! It was a herniated L3-L4 disk. It's better now, thanks to steroids. But it's not a 100%. I'm going to take a month or two off before I dive back into the book. My life is in shreds, I'm exhausted, and I need a break. It will give me time for more exercise, which is what really helps my back. I also need to talk to people, especially people who are not my wonderful husband or daughter. I need to go on a diet, I need to do my taxes. And I need to find the floor in my office and bedroom. The Elders say that once upon a time there was a desk under all that paper.... Archaeological housekeeping. There's a lot of catch up. But I'll endeavor to be a more regular LJ-er. That's the news! More follows on a more somber subject....

The Election & Beyond

2004-11-11T14:46:22Z

Well, like many people on this list, I took the day off and helped get out the vote. I signed up for the King County Administration building because it was the closest available polling place near my daughter's school, so I wouldn't have to fight my way across town to pick her up and then resume my duties. I was supposed to check the polls, make sure they were running smoothly, and then follow up on any voters who hadn't yet voted. But after a couple hours in the rain, it transpired that all the buildings in my precincts were security buildings, making door belling impossible. So I went home and called everyone from the comfort of my home, rested a while, picked Katie up, checked the polling place one more time, made more calls to people who STILL hadn't voted, and then went back in time to oversee the closing of the polls.

When I got there, there were two old people in wheelchairs, sitting there, hand in hand, waiting for their taxi. Forty-five minutes later, they were STILL waiting.Apparently, the taxi had driven up, seen that they were in wheelchairs and refused to take them. So I bundled them in my car, and took them back to their nursing home. Which was a really nice way to end my day, though I'll never use Yellow Taxi again, given the way these people were treated. (Since Yellow Cab drivers seem to be unable to find my house with both hands and a map, it's not much of a loss. They never seem to bother passing my directions along to the driver.)

And then woke up the next morning to rampant defeat. Waaah! At least we turned OUR state in for Kerry. And an incredibly tight Governor's race may well go to the Democratic Candidate because of the votes the Kerry campaign got out. It's STILL too close to call, within a couple thousand votes, with a bunch from King County yet to be counted.

Like a lot of people, I went into shock, and kind of drew in my horns. It's going to be a crappy four years, though I'm planning on working hard on the mid-term elections. King County and Seattle have brought most of the best women in Washington State politics to the fore. Both our Women senators, and Christine Gregoire are from Seattle. So working to get other talented women into state and local offices here may well keep women feeding women into higher political offices. And there's lots of other states to encourage with donations.

Up until we moved out to Woodinville in '97, I was a go-to-meeting Democrat. Woodinville was so conservative that I didn't have the heart to keep up my activism. And since moving back here, I've not really picked it up again. But I think I should now! When I was active, I got to see a lot of people come into office, including my congressman Jim McDermott, who was interviewed in Fahrenheit 911. And I was a voter registrar, a door beller, and a poll worker, as well as being a Precinct Committee officer, responsible for getting out the vote in our precinct. It was exhausting, but fun, and a learned a great deal about the election process, and maybe even did some good.

I've gotta say that I'm kind of tired of liberals who say they're too good for the Democratic Party. And then they piss and moan about how the party has slid to the center. Well, goddammit, just how did that happen? It's the grass-roots Democratic organizations that do the groundwork for getting candidates at all levels into office. It's where a lot of good people get their start in politics, sometimes moving up to higher office. If we don't get out there, and put our shoulders to the wheel, then how the hell are we going to keep the Dems liberal? We sit and whine about how the Republicans are sooo organized because they all go to church. Well, maybe it's time to do something more than whine. If you're hurt and upset and angry about this election, contact your local Democratic Party organization (they're in the phone book) and ask where and when your local district organization meets, and start going. You don't even have to go to every meeting, just the ones ramping up to the elections, say June or July through November. You'll meet good people, and help at the most basic level of politics.

Poetry Me-me-meme

2004-10-19T13:51:09Z

Okay, I've been resisting this, waiting for just the right poem. And to hell with it, here's one that's just plain funny. I want to paint it on my mailbox. It's by Wendell Berry, from his collection A Part.

Throwing Away the Mail

Nothing is simple,
not even simplification.
Thus, throwing away
the mail, I exchange
the complexity of duty
for the simplicity of guilt.

I'm pretty much of an auto-didact when it comes to poetry. One morning, when I was in college, I walked into the University of Idaho Women's Center. There was this fine-boned, small woman on the couch, and there were these WORDS coming out of my mouth. I was just blown away. It was Olga Broumas, and she was doing poetry. Despite having gone to a lot of expensive private schools, somehow nobody managed to convey that poetry wasn't about words arranged funny on a page, poetry was about how it SOUNDED! And I was hooked. I inflicted bad poetry on the universe for a while and then the muse just dried up and went somewhere else, damn it. These days I write maybe one poem every year or so, and don't show them to a soul.

As far as reading poetry, I subscribe to the Big Fat Poetry Anthology theory of poetry, in which one keeps a BFPA close at hand. In the bathroom, say, or on my desk. I flip through it until I come to a poem I like, and if I really like several by that poet, I go out and buy a Big Fat Poetry collection by that author, and keep it handy for a while.

Among my faves are: Olga Broumas, e. e. cummings, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry and Emily Dickinson.

Sunday-Mongolia

2004-10-18T12:55:17Z

The next day was Sunday, a day off at camp. Once again I woke early, but instead of lying in bed, staring up at the roof of the ger, I dressed and slipped out into the moonlit night. I hadn't seen the ruins of the main temple yet, so I walked over there, and wandered around. The roof was gone, so the moonlight shone in cold and bright. The outer columns and the beams that would someday support the second floor were up and in place. The shadows they cast were deeply black. It was silent and the stars blazed overhead. I walked around, enjoying the mystery and the solitude until I got too cold, and then wandered back to my ger and stared at the ceiling, invisible in the darkness, except for the few stars that I could see through the roof hub.

At last I heard people moving around in the kitchen, and since I'd signed up to help with breakfast, I got up and went to see what useful things I could do. Since my Mongolian was minimal, despite studying language tapes, I was probably more in the way than anything else, but they let me start a fire and boil water. I filled the water jug with boiled water, and then ladled more into the enameled crocks that held the extra water. Then I tried to stay out of the way while they cooked rice, and made milk tea.

After breakfast, we went up to the little log cabin temple and listened while the monks chanted. First they blew the giant horns, summoning people to worship. We arrived on the porch of the temple, took off our shoes and tiptoed in. There were only five monks, Guree, and Egee, the adults, and the three little monks, Bajka, Jantsin, and little Baina, but they filled the temple with the deep rich drone of their chanting. I sat and watched and listened, feeling simultaneously awed and a bit like a proud mom, watching my little mini-monks all grown up and chanting a service. It was very presumptuous of me, but I had become hugely fond of the irritating little darlings over the last few days. Karen tiptoed around taking pictures, and I recorded it. The monks chanted on imperturbably, occasionally ringing a lovely resonant bell. Then it was over, and we all scattered to our various Sunday pursuits.

Mine was laundry, which had rapidly taken on a personality of its own. After that, Cori took me on the meditation path, a circular walk around the valley, perhaps two or three miles around. There are a number of shrines to various Buddhist aspect deities and guardians, there were also several ovoos, and a number of ruined temples. Cori explained the history of the temple as we walked. The temple was built in the 1700's, when the king of Mongolia decided that the country needed temples to guard the four directions. (Baldan Baraivan was the temple that guarded Mongolia's eastern gate.) The king sent out emissaries to find an appropriate site. When they reached Baldan Baraivan, they found an old couple living there. They were named Baldan and Zupelmaa. Their names were Tibetan, which was believed to be an extremely auspicious omen (Mongolians are Tibetan Buddhists). That and other omens being auspicious, the temple was authorized. Baldan Baraivan became a major center of Tibetan Buddhist learning and worship. At its peak, there were three thousand people living in this quiet, valley.

When the communists came to power in the 1930's, they began to destroy the monasteries. When they came to Baldan Baraivan, they killed everyone over the age of 11, and sent the children back to their families. Then they comprehensively destroyed or defaced every shrine, leaving only roofless ruins open to the skies. Looking around today, in this peaceful place, it's hard to visualize this place full of people, but looking down from the shoulder of the mountain to the west of Baldan Baraivan, you can see lines in the earth, the remnants of streets and houses. Even harder to imagine is the carnage and brutality that happened, but somewhere nearby, there are mass graves waiting to be found.

In the 1990's, when communism fell around the world, it also fell in Mongolia, leaving a country dependent on Russian aid struggling for identity, and an economy in tatters. The few surviving lamas came out of the woodwork, and are slowly, slowly rebuilding the monasteries. When you go to Gandan Temple in Ulaan Baatar, you see old, old men, and monks in their twenties and young students, with a huge gap in between. There are very few middle-aged monks in Mongolia. One of the lamas who was at Baldan Baraivan came back and started to rebuild the temple. He built the small log cabin temple, and named Guree as his heir. His family lives here at Baldan Baraivan.

Eventually, word of the temple reconstruction reached Mark Hintzke, who was searching for a project to be the focus of his ecotourism company CRTP. He came and began working to rebuild Baldan Baraivan. Over the last several years the temples have been carefully excavated and rebuilt. And here I was, in this beautiful, sacred site, walking along a sacred path. It was almost too much to believe. Sitting here in Seattle, in the midst of American opulence and spiritual junk food. It feels good to know that such a place exists, and is being breathed slowly, carefully back to life.

Meeting one of my heroes (Not Mongolia)

2004-10-03T13:57:55Z

Usually meeting one's heroes is kind of a let down. You realize that they're human, and both of their feet actually touch the ground. But I got to meet Senator Daniel Inouye yesterday, and I'm pleased to say, he lived up to my admiration of him.

I first heard of Senator Inouye when I was an impressionable thirteen year-old, spending the summer watching the Watergate hearings on TV. It was the first time I'd ever seen live Senate hearings, and I watched nearly every minute of the proceedings. It not only made me a lifelong Democrat, but it taught me to swear. Fluently.

Senator Inouye's quiet dignity, thoroughness, and passion for the truth impressed me. And when I heard that he was going to be in town campaigning for Kerry, I decided to go.

So I got there on time, and got to shake his hand and gush. He was very polite about it. He shakes hands just like my brother Joey, who
also is missing his right hand. (Odd thing to notice, but there you go.) This was a get-out-the vote event for Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders. And was chock full of admirable local Asian Community bigwigs, and politicos. There was a substantial contingent of Filipino and Nisei (2nd generation Japanese) Veterans. Tough guys who went through hell, and lived (well some of 'em) to tell about it. Wow! I'd heard plenty of stories about the Nisei regiment, and despite being a pretty serious anti-military pacifist, I have enormous respect for these guys.

Even though I'm not Japanese American I've visited the site of the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho, (or at least the site where it was). I've read a bit about the internment camps. Because of a 1924 law that revoked the citizenship of Asian American immigrants and forbid future naturalizations (including American born Asian Americans who were married to Asian immigrants (like Inouye's mom, for example!),the Nisei were not considered citizens. They had to petition the government for the right to join the army and get shot at for their country. They did this while their families were interned in concentration camps. The Nisei Brigade was one of the most decorated brigades during WWII. Daniel Inouye was a member of this brigade. They had a huge casualty list and many, many of them died. Inouye himself lost his arm during the war.

Anyway, Senator Inouye talked about making mistakes. He talked about respecting Roosevelt, even though he'd signed the internment order that imprisoned Japanese Americans. He talked about how the Muslims were being treated post-911, and how the Japanese Americans had been the first to rally to their support. He talked about how the Bush campaign has tried to smear John Kerry's Vietnam service record, and how angry that made him. And Inouye talked movingly about being the junior Senator on the committee that held hearings about the Mai Lai massacre. He'd been an ardent supporter of the war up until the hearings. After having heard the testimony on the massacre, and seen the photographs of women, children, and old people floating in irrigation ditches, he changed his mind about the war. As junior Senator on the committee, he was the last senator to ask questions. All the questions, he said, had already been asked. So when it was his turn he said. "I only have one question, and that's for the other members of the committee. Would this have been permitted if this was Paris, and those women, children, and old people had been French?" After which, the chairman adjourned the hearing. There was nothing more to say.

Inouye talked about what it took to admit that he was wrong, and to "flip-flop" on this issue. He talked about moral courage and strength, and the wisdom to admit he was wrong, and how important it was for a leader to do this. He talked about Kerry's moral strength and his determination to do the right thing, even if it meant changing his position on an issue. It was a hell of a speech. Most folks would have delivered a podium thumping stem-winder of a speech. But Senator Inouye didn't need to. At no point did he raise his voice, or call names. He simply got up and spoke the truth, as only one who had the moral authority of sacrifice and years of public service can do. It was enough and more than enough, and it reminded me that there really are good, truthful and honest people in politics. Would that there were more of them.

Vote Early, Vote Often, Vote Democrat!

First Morning at Baldan Baraivan/Afternoon interlude with mini-monks

2004-10-01T16:00:27Z

After patiently staring at the roof of the ger until it was light enough to see it, I got up, popped more wood into our little round sheet-metal stove with the loose, rickety door, and got dressed while my patient ger mates slowly unfurled. At last the breakfast bell rang, and we shuffled off to the dining hall where breakfast was waiting. The dining hall consisted of a kitchen floored with vinyl and cooking took place on three sheet metal stoves exactly like the one in our ger. You took the top off the stove and fitted a big pan right onto the stove. There was a little lip that exactly fit the stove. Clearly this was standard tech here in Mongolia. It was very cool. We sat at two long tables cheek by jowl with each other, though we did tend to congregate by language spoken, Mongols with Mongols, and participants with participants, mostly for ease of communication. The floor of the dining area was packed dirt.

Breakfast consisted of a rather delicious fine-ground buckwheat gruel with lots of sugar, and bread with jam and butter. The Mongolians ate their bread with sugar on it. Lots of sugar. I quickly learned to tank up on breakfast, which was easily the best meal of the day. To drink, there was suutei tsai (milk tea) which was mostly milky and salty, with subtle tea overtones. It tasted great if you put enough cocoa in it. Otherwise it was a bit of an acquired taste to my American palate. There was tea and instant coffee as well.

After breakfast, I helped the women do dishes. Since there was no running water (only big blue water barrels lined up along one wall of the dining hall) we did the dishes right on the dinner table, in big dishpans. Everything was cleaned in HOT soapy water, then rinsed twice. Stacks of wet dishes were turned sideways so that the water could drain onto the hard-packed dirt floor. Neat! You could never just dump water on the floor of an American kitchen. Then it was off to morning meeting.

The morning meeting took place out on the grass, in front of the line of gers where people slept. We stood in a big circle out on the grass, and Mark discussed the day's agenda, which was translated into Mongolian by Bat (short for Batbilig), our translator. Then there was the phrase of the day, which was repeated in Mongolian by the non-Mongols, and in English by the Mongols. It was a clever way of improving our various vocabularies. (I had studied a bit of Mongolian before I left, but it was still pretty primitive). And we taught each other, which brought us closer together. Then there was a warm fuzzy hand clasp and we all departed for our various jobs. (Volunteer participants were expected to work for five hours a day).

Today's work was to start building a ger (yurt is a Russian word). We shuffled off to the half-completed cabin that was eventually going to become the monk's dormitory. We were being taught by Sukhbaatar (Sukhe for short) a master Mongolian carpenter. He had brought all the materials we were going to need, basically a bunch of roughly peeled sapling poles, a hoop of wood about 4' in diameter, and large chunks of tree. Work was interrupted by rain. We all stood around and waited while a tarp was fetched and draped over the half built roof to shelter us. Our first task was to take the poles and plane them into roundness. These were to be the uni (pronounced un) or roof poles of the five wall panel (khana) ger we were to make. Sukhe had harvested the wood himself, soaking the sapling poles in the river for two weeks, then peeling the bark and letting them dry.

So we set to work, planing poles, creating piles of shavings, and getting to know each other. Gradually, the weather cleared, and by the time the mini-monks buzzed by on a motorcycle it was sunny, shirt-sleeve weather, and we had a respectable pile of poles done. Sukhe carefully measured the ends of the poles, which tapered to two centimeter squares, so they looked rather like blunt spears. Then it was time for lunch, and then we loaded our laundry in a backpack and hiked off to the river. The party was made up of Karen, Jeff (one of the interns), Baina, Bajka, and Jantsin, and me. It was a 45 minute hike to the river, through green and open countryside carpeted with wildflowers, and around a patch of the wickedest nettles I've ever encountered. Poor little Baina was wearing bright pink open-toed plastic sandals, and his feet got really badly stung. Still, five minutes later, he was playing as though it had never happened. A few minutes later we passed the corpse of a foal that had been injured by wolves. There was a large wound on his hindquarters. To stop the bleeding, the wound had been burned. There's not a lot of veterinary medicine out that far. The foal had subsequently died of its wound. It was a grim reminder that even in this beautiful place, life was far from idyllic.

Eventually, we got to the river. I'm a slow hiker at best, too involved with the scenery to hurry, so I was pretty much tail-end Charlie both coming and going. The river was small and lovely, full of large rounded boulders, comfortable and warm after washing in the chilly water. I washed my rather fragrant clothes (not a patch on how bad they were going to smell in a few days' time, though!) and laid them out to dry on the rocks, and then we lounged on the rocks while the mini-monks splashed and yelled boisterously upstream. Those kids could go from holy to hell-raiser faster than anyone I've ever seen. Of course, to be fair, they had a much higher range on the holiness end than most kids their age. I mostly sat around thinking, oh wow, I'm really in Mongolia, and admiring the cloud shadows on the distant mountains and the unbelievable peace and verdancy of this place. And then it was time to head home. My clothes were still damp, but after hanging them on the line, they were dry within a couple of hours, a reminder that even this green place was enormously dry. The area gets 6-10 inches of rainfall a year, most of it in the late summer and fall. Most of the regions wildfires happen in the spring, which seems almost too odd for my mind to encompass, living as I do in a part of the world where it's drippy wet and miserable all winter long.

Then it was dinnertime, after which I sat around watching Melissa and the monks shoot baskets until it was too dark to see. And so to bed.

Mongolia Trip-Baldan Baraivan at night

2004-09-30T13:33:28Z

After dinner, there was a rain shower, bringing with it a glorious double rainbow arching over the valley floor. It was the first time I've ever seen a double rainbow where I could see both ends (of both rainbows) hitting the ground! It rendered an incredible landscape utterly magical. So, I was finally here! Mongolia! The real deal! As I wandered around, awed and amazed, the mini-monks found a basketball and started shooting hoops on the little patch of bare earth in front of a rough basketball backboard made of weathered plywood and supported on log poles. The air was fresh and clean, perhaps cleaner than anywhere I've ever been, except, perhaps for Antarctica.

Exhausted, I fell asleep around sunset (even in August, the sun was setting at nine-thirty or so). I woke up around three or four in the morning, with the full moon shining through the roof hole of our ger. I was cold, and needed to visit the outhouse. Stepping outside, I looked up into a glory of stars! Even on the darkest night in Seattle one sees only a few dozen stars. Here, there were millions, even with the full moon. It was utterly still, the silence occasionally punctuated by one of the herd dogs barking at wolves. On the way back from the outhouse, I saw that the shape of the ridge exactly matched the line of the Big Dipper gleaming above. Wow! I stayed out until the cold drove me back into my ger, where I stirred up the coals in the stove and got a bit of a fire going again. Then I lay in bed and watched the firelight dance on the door and walls of the ger. Mongolia. I was really, really here! And it was better than I imagined.

Mongolia Trip-Ulaan Bataar, The Mini-monks, and Baldan Baraivan

2004-09-25T15:36:30Z

In the hurry to finish my last post, I talked a lot about what Ulaan Bataar (UB, for short) was like, but not what I did. Up until UB, I was traveling alone. But I had signed up as a volunteer participant with a group called Cultural Tourism Restoration Project, which is restoring a 300 year old Tibetan Buddhist Temple at a place called Baldan Baraivan in northeastern Mongolia. My goal in Mongolia was to find a place where I could stay and learn as much as I could about Mongolian life and culture, but with support, translators, and back up. My friend Lise, who knew about my fascination with Mongolia heard about CRTP, and passed the link on to me. Long story short, I signed up for a two-week stint at Baldan Baraivan, tacked on the Trans Mongolian Railroad trip, and a short stay in Beijing at the end of it, and wound up in UB.

Anyway Ganna, CRTP's representative, translator, and general tourist-herder met me at the train station, helped me carry my too-heavy luggage to a taxi and got me to my hotel. I was staying at the Hotel Diplomat, which was an ex-consulate building converted into a hotel. It was clean, though the furniture didn't quite fill the rooms. Then she took me to the state store downtown, where I stocked up on some basic food items, purchased a cheap informal del (the traditional Mongolian long tunic) for extra warmth, and pointed me at the internet cafe, where I let my husband know that I was all right.

After that, I found a place for a quick burger (decidedly so-so). As I was munching my burger, I noticed a girl, perhaps eight years old with her hair done up in many braids all fastened with brightly colored elastics. She looked like a Mongol princess, with a round face, high, prominent cheekbones, narrow eyes and an aristocratically arched nose. Clearly she was destined to break hearts when she got a bit older. We smiled at each other, both fascinated by our differences, and kept watching each other. She came over and sat with me for a bit, under the watchful gaze of her family. After I was finished, I fished in my bag, looking for some small American souvenir for her. All I could find was a penny, which I gave her with polite smiles all around.

Then it was back to the hotel for a HOT bath and bed. I slept like the dead until about 4 AM, then got up, read for a bit, then repacked all my suitcases, I was nearly done, when the phone rang. Mark Hintzke, head of CRTP was there to pick me up. I hastily crammed the last few items into my suitcase and hustled my luggage downstairs. Mark and Jeff, the intern, helped me toss my stuff into the back of the fourgone, a large Russian-built van rather like a VW microbus on serious steroids. Then we went off to Gandan Monastery to pick up some monks who would be traveling with us. I was expecting a group of serious, enlightened adult monks. What we wound up with were three kids dressed in Buddhist red and gold robes, plus one teenager with a monk haircut dressed in jeans, all under the watchful eye of a pair of monks in their twenties. We loaded the teenager, Tumee, the little round-headed kid Jantsin (pronounced Johnson) and the grown-up monk Egee into the van while the rest piled into a taxi. Mark and Jeff expressed severe reservations about the taxi's ability to survive the trip, and then we set off for Baldan Baraivan.

Everyone breathed easier as we left UB, with its coal-smoke pollution behind. The steppe unrolled around us, a close-cropped green carpet, with trees up on the hills. Jantsin and Tumee started playing a finger game, much like rock, paper, scissors, but simultaneously simpler and more complicated. Instead of fist, flat hand, and scissor fingers, you only stuck out a single finger. Basically thumb beats index finger, index finger beats middle finger, and on around, with pinky beating thumb to close the circle. If the fingers being stuck out are not next to each other you keep trying until one of you wins or loses. The loser gets thwacked in the forehead with a finger. Much unmonklike silliness was involved. I had yet to learn that unmonklike silliness was the norm here in Mongolia, where Buddhist monks eat meat and even get married (rather Episcopalian of them, actually!).

Eventually we reached the border of Khentii aimag (aimag=province), where the pavement stopped. There was a guanz (a ger restaurant), where I got my first taste of authentic Mongolian cuisine, greasy goat soup, with gritty noodles. I did my best to finish, but only managed a dozen spoonfuls before my throat closed, and I couldn't force myself to continue. Then we continued on, over roads that were no more than a set of braided ruts through the grass, driving through streams. Jantsin tried teaching me some Mongolian, we got as far as sky, grass, hay, flower, tree (and variations like wood and forest), sheep, goats,horses, and cows, and then we ran out of things to point at and the language lesson ground to a halt. The Mongolian landscape is stunningly beautiful, but very basic. It reminded me of the Palouse region of Western Washington and Northern Idaho, where I went to college, only with gers and corrals instead of fences and wheat. It was very odd to be so far away from home and see something so hauntingly familiar. Despite my normally cast-iron stomach, I was starting to feel decidely queasy (probably the goat soup!), so I was a little relieved when we reached the taxi, which had broken down. I got out and wandered around, startled by the carpet of wildflowers, little purple asters, bachelor buttons, miniature campanulas, and howlingly magenta single carnations, all familiar garden flowers native to the area. And eidelweiss. Eidelweiss in Mongolia! What was next? Julie Andrews bursting out of a ger and singing "The steppe is alive with the sound of khoomei"? (Khoomei is throat singing). At this point I got the serious giggles.

After much discussion, the kids all climbed up onto the luggage in the back of the van, leaving the taxi driver and his broken car to be retrieved later. The driver did eventually make it to Baldan Baraivan and get his car fixed, and then presumably got back to UB. Fortunately, we were only about a half an hour out from Baldan Baraivan. So we lurched and jolted and laughed our way along the ridge and down the mountain and into camp. I hauled my luggage into the ger that would be home for the next two weeks, and met my ger mates, Karen, a photographer from San Francisco, a wiry, sensible fifty year old, and Melissa, a college student from Wisconsin. And then it was dinnertime. What was for dinner? Why goat noodle soup of course!

Mongolia Trip- Dawn on the Gobi & Scenic Ulaan Bataar

2004-09-22T14:27:52Z

Shortly after the train pulled out of the last Chinese station, I came over all hungry (jet lag). So I took out the bucket o' noodles that I'd purchased at the station. I filled it with boiling water and chowed down. Which meant that I woke up at 3 or 4 AM, with a migraine and a desperate need to pee (again!). I'd left the window cracked open and everything in the car was covered with an invisible layer of incredibly fine dust.

Even my teeth were covered with the stuff. They felt simultaneously gritty and slimy. Running my hand through my hair I realized why all the Mongolians in the pictures of the Gobi Desert had such spiky, dry horrid-looking hair. It was the dust. It worked like a gritty styling mousse, and it didn't take much time to get like that. No wonder the women all wear scarves. I had thought that it was just due to the wind. I laid in bed and watched the moonlit desert scroll endlessly past in silver, grey and white. It was lovely, and mysterious, and being the only person in the whole car awake made it mine alone!

Eventually the sun came up, and I knew that sleep was not going to happen. So I stood by the window in the corridor and watched dawn on the Gobi desert. It was lovely and eerie. Never had I seen so barren a place. It looked like Mars, only beige and brown. Even lava flows seemed more alive than here. Yet people call it home. And the dawn was beautiful, amid all that vast emptiness.

Finally it was time for breakfast. I made my way to the dining car and discovered that the Dining Car Fairy had been there in the night, transforming the formerly soviet-utilitarian car into a Mongolian Fantasia of carved wood with big raised medallions of copper lions and dragons on the ceiling and walls. It was spectacular! And there I had the last decent meal in Mongolia. If I'd known that, I'd have paid more attention to it.

We stopped briefly in a flea-bitten town called Choir. It boasts a blue and white confection of a train station, a silver soviet-style heroic statue of the only Mongolian cosmonaut, and not much else. Coming back from photographing the cosmonaut, I stopped to buy a frozen bottle of water from a small child. I inquired about the price, which was mumblety-mumblety togrugs (Mongolian money), or four Yuan(Chinese money). As soon as I got out my wallet, I was mobbed. Somewhere between a dozen and a hundred kids of varying sizes crowded around me, waving bottles of water. Desperately overwhelmed, and more than a little startled and frightened. I finally pointed at one girl, said "you!" and handed her my four Yuan and got a bottle of water. I retreated to the train, feeling considerably chastened and very humbled by this combination of desperate poverty and capitalistic drive.

The landscape gradually grew greener as we moved further north. It was hot. I was damned glad of my frozen bottle of water. I'd have bought two if I'd known how hot and dry it would be. Navajo country feels humid in comparison! Every so often we'd pass a post-soviet ruin, a vast field of concrete panels leaning against each other, or once, a three or four story building sitting all alone in the middle of nowhere, with no roads and no electrical wires connecting it to the rest of the world. It looked like it had dropped out of the sky. What was it? I'll never know.

And at long last, we reached Ulaan Bataar, capital of Mongolia. The Mongols do a vast number of things incredibly well. I've never seen such intelligent, ingenious and physically competent people. They do more with little than anyone I've ever seen. But they do not urbanize well.

Ulaan Bataar is a post-Soviet pit. It's dirty, polluted, broken-down, and crowded, ringed by ger suburbs set on bare earth and bounded by ugly fences of poles and sheet metal. There are weeds everywhere. Most of the city looks like it's held together by spit and baling wire. The main square and the government buildings are freshly painted, but the rest of the city looks like hell, except where foreign money has come in. There are oddly deserted modern glass and steel buildings where clearly the foreign money washed in, and then washed back out again. The women all dress like in often startling styles that make them look like cheap hookers (they're not). I saw one woman in stiletto-heeled high-top sneakers, but never found out where she found such audaciously outrageous shoes, damn it!

But for all its ills, Ulaan Bataar is the center of everything in Mongolia. It's where the jobs are, and the funnel point for foreign development money. The best schools are there, and it's the only way up and out for Mongols looking for a better life. It's a hard-scrabble kind of place, but for all its flaws, I admire its grit and determination. Given ten good years, the Mongols could make their capital something wonderful. The trick will be getting ten good years.

Rats, out of time again! Next Rock: Leaving Ulaan Bataar and meeting Mini-Monks!

Mongolia Trip-Trans Mongolian Railway

2004-09-21T15:42:39Z

Here's the first entry about my trip to Mongolia. It describes my arrival in Beijing, and my trip north to Ulaan Bataar on the Trans-Mongolian railroad.
I decided to travel to Mongolia to research the science fiction novel I'm writing. I used Mongolian pastoral nomadic culture as a template for one of the cultures in the book. And the more I read about Mongolia and it's people the more fascinated I became. It's a remarkable place to read about and an even more remarkable place to visit.

So, the trip. I flew out of Seattle to San Francisco, and then north again across the Pacific to Beijing. Mostly I went to Beijing because I wanted to ride the Trans Mongolian Railway. It's a 30 hour trip through northern China, the Gobi Desert, and the Mongolian steppes to Ulaan Bataar. There's a stop at the border to change the wheels on the train to the Russian gauge, which sounded exceedingly cool. I booked the trip through White Nights, and it all went very smoothly.

I do not sleep on planes, no matter how exhausted I am. So I arrived in Beijing completely hammered. I took a cab in to my hotel and fell over. Next morning, I got to the station good and early. This turned out to be a good idea, since I spent twenty minutes in the wrong place (left luggage) before some kind soul told me where to go. I dragged my too-heavy bags to the main station latched onto a tour group heading for the train, and made it with fifteen minutes to spare, time enough to buy apples, water, and a large bucket of noodle soup mix. I wish I'd bought more noodle soup. It came in a large paper bucket. You filled it with boiling water and let it sit for five minutes. It was spicier than US ramen, and very tasty.

The trip itself was extremely pleasant. We chugged north, past the Great Wall. Beyond the wall and the mountains it runs through, the land opened up. Like most of China it was intensively farmed, with lots of sunflowers and corn. It looked very much like Colorado, with wide valleys surrounded by high brown mountains. I shared a compartment with a pleasant Italian couple and a monoglot Chinese guy who might have been named Jimen (communication was never very clear). There were lots of Australians, and a few Americans. Most were on their way to Russia, though a few were getting off in Ulaan Bataar.

It was sunny and pleasant. I reveled in having thirty hours of unstructured time, I read. I tatted. I chatted with others. The food was good. The bathrooms were challenging. Night fell as we got to the southern edge of the Gobi. The sunset was spectacular, oranges and pinks and reds in a near cloudless sky. We reached the border around midnight. There was Chinese customs, then we went on for a bit, and, about the time I was exhausted and needed desperately to pee, we stopped to change the wheels. I hopped off as they were lifting the train car. There was no bathroom. So I watched in considerable discomfort as the train wheels were unlatched from the train, towed off and replaced with a wider gauge. The workers were wearing hard hats made from woven cane. There was a small, skinny woman overseeing the hydraulic lift. This tiny woman lifts trains for a living. The thought kept me amused until we reached another station where there were bathrooms. Squat toilets, a palpable pong, and no TP. Ahh bliss!!!

And I see by the clock that I'm out of time. Continued on Next Rock: Dawn on the Gobi, Gobi hair, A visit from the Dining Car Fairy, and getting mobbed by small children. All this and Scenic Ulaan Bataar!