The Crazy Zany Marvellous Cacophonous Honk 2011

An evening at the Cafe939 in Boston...

Check this out on Chirbit



Check this out on Chirbit



Check this out on Chirbit

A visit to the New Orleans Museum of Art

New Orleans Architecture -- French Quarter and elsewhere

Action against gentrification @Union Sq MA -- III

Action against gentrification @Union Sq MA -- I

Wael Ghonim at MIT: II

Wael Ghonim at MIT: I

Talking rocks in danger

Pakistan is going to lose one of the most precious rock art carvings due to construction of the Diamer-Basha Dam. The proposed site of the dam hosts some 30,000 ancient art carvings and inscriptions which may vanish forever due to the construction of this reservoir.

Some of the carvings and inscriptions are more than 10,000 years old which provide a window to discover ancient lexicography, history, anthropology, culture and lifestyle of the people settled in the upper Indus area.

There is an urgent need to preserve these sites so that they remain a part of world heritage. – Photos courtesy by Harald Hauptmann / Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/18/talking-rocks-in-danger.html




A simple and beautiful representation of Buddha, discovered at Thalpan area.

This veneration of Stupa was discovered from Chilas area and belongs to 1st to 2nd century A.D.


The new symbols of the Sun and the Axe appeared in the last era of Buddhism. Both Sun and Axe were the symbol of power of the times.

Another masterpiece carving of the Buddhist era with Stupas and writings in three different languages of Kharoshti , Brahmi and Sogdian.

Some 5000 inscriptions or writings have been discovered from the upper Indus area. Their study provides an insight of ancient languages and history of the region. In this image different scripts can be seen:

1: Karosthi
2: Brahmi
3: Brahmi
4: Proto-Sarada
5: Sogdian
6: Middle-Persian
7: Partian
8: Bactrian
9: Chinese
10: Hebrew
11: Syrian
12: Tibetan

e5 Pena May 2011: III

e5 Pena May 2011: II

e5 Pena May 2011: I

El Movimiento Fundraiser: Taiko II

El Movimiento Fundraiser: Taiko I

Namdeo Dhasal: Poet of the Underworld

I bear a crown of agony on my head;
A luminous fountain of African anguish;
A wound has found its home in my heart---
Even words cannot open its doors.
A bear made of sunbeams is walking around with a banner.
No complaint can be registered here.
A wretched derelict of a poet like me
Starts dancing to corrupted words in a saint’s festival.
There are neither slogans nor shrieks of pain.
Every face of compassion wears a black veil.
You are allowing your downtrodden life to swim
In the hell-water of self-alienation.
What more can even the trees do now
Except scratch the armpits of bygone times?
Let me fill into my eyes
The darkness in the womb of the soil.
Allow me to listen to the counterfeit jingle of the coin
Of my distraught, sleek-necked dreams.
Allow me just once
To plaster the cracks in the sky of contemporary anguish.

Wearing a white shroud,
A formless silence sleeps in your courtyard.

...

(From Gandu Bagicha, 1986)

At the end of the chain...

I did not receive my baggage when I arrived into Pittsburgh PA yesterday. At around 9pm the airline called informing me that my luggage had arrived and that they would deliver it. It finally arrived around midnight. The driver who delivered it was an older person. He asked me to be careful about the slick driveway after the fresh snow as I came out to get the suitcase. He apologized for the delay, saying he got held up at the airport because "they held him back because of road conditions"...I did not figure out who "they" were...some people who probably had authority over him...he said he had to get to Morgantown next...in West Virginia...I reckoned that must be far from where I was...I looked at his slightly pained expression...it was mostly dark and it was late...and maybe the roads were slippery...but he had a job to do...

Delta Airlines with all its trappings, million dollar aircrafts, the cost of running a global carrier, airport hubs...and then mundane things like lost baggage...an agent at the airport who takes down your details promising to send the baggage when found...and then a courier company who has the contract to make deliveries at all hours...and then, finally, an older man who needs the job, who has to drive out at late hours to distant places in bad weather to actually complete the service that Delta promises...

Cuban pilgrims crawl to St Lazarus shrine

A pilgrimage combining two faith traditions has taken place in Cuba at the shrine of St Lazarus.

It is a religious event which has managed to continue uninterrupted, even in the face of oppression in the past.

Michael Voss reports from Havana.

a haiku by Sonia Sanchez

we are sudden stars

you and i exploding in

our blue black skins

-- Sonia Sanchez

[thanks to a friend for pointing me to Sonia Sanchez]

Mahmoud Darwich— As the Land is the Language

I had close to no expectations from this documentary on Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish's, life. Most such chronicling efforts are patchy and markedly limited.

This documentary effort by Simone Bitton is however, refreshingly a sterling effort. It puts Darwish smack in the center of the narrative and weaves the storyline with his poetry, which it should. The film also employs some very well chosen scenes from the actual locations - Jenin, Galillee etc - as backdrops to the poetry.

But nothing can be as moving as Darwish reading his own poems, whose verses are such sublime admixtures of the modern, the current and the older, the historical...how beautifully he plumbed the depths of exile and land and belonging...

Frits Staal Lecture

"The Himalayas and the Rivers of Southern Asia."
Professor Frits Staal
University of California, Berkeley, emer.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009


was crazy...but so is the man...

http://fritsstaal.googlepages.com/