meeting Jenny and Jeff…

By bluerasberry on September 4, 2010

So Simon put me on the Muni to Oakland and I meet Jenny and Jeff outside the station. I had worked with Jenny at Free and Clear in 2007 and we used to go to art events. See moved to Berkeley, got a masters degree in East Asian studies, and now she is in a transition between having the degree and having a project. I do not recall her mentioning Jeff previously to this trip, but apparently they knew each other in Seattle and have some history together.

We immediately went to the Oakland Museum of California, which is a combination art museum and history of California museum. I think it is a good idea to combine exhibitions even though I do not see this often done. The way I see it is that museum space is expensive and costs can be saved by sharing space, and this is not a commercial venture which needs strong branding so why not cut expenses and work together? The result was a large building with lots to see. The temporary exhibit was a review of the sketches and working models of Pixar, which seems to have its offices somewhere in the area.

Jenny and I picked up talking where we stopped in early March of this year when she was in Seattle. Jeff seemed into this too; he grew up in Yakima, went to UW for his English degree, spent 18 months teaching English in Thailand, and is planning to go to Japan to teach next month. I was completely interested in everything he had to say. He and Jenny have been hiking and camping a lot and tripping out on the beautiful California wild places. I felt like I could relate to Jeff, because he and I had similar experiences growing up in a small town then having a revelation that we had easy access to a better life through living in a city, traveling, and accessing community amenities like parks and museums.

The museum was actually busy and for no particular reason I could tell, other than people being interested in the Pixar exhibit. One piece of novelty to me was something like a zoopraxiscope for the toy cast of Toy Story. It was a disc with models on it which, when spinning, seemed to make the models animated through a routine. Here is a video of it.

We went home and Jenny had terrific tea which I enjoyed continually. I enjoyed myself with them because they entertained my questions about Chinese culture and San Francisco infrastructure and tourism models and non-profit fundraising strategies and effective social work. I cannot really say what we talked about or when, but I can say that I enjoyed conversation with them immensely and feel like I could talk to either one of them for days because they both have opinions on everything.

Friday they asked me what I wanted to do and I told them I wanted to see Berkeley Campus and in particular the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I suspected that I would not be allowed entrance beyond the lobby of this laboratory based on its website’s description of the place, but I had no idea that it was on the side of a hill within Berkeley’s forested grounds, surrounded by fencing, and with a guarded gate preventing unauthorized entry to the parking lot. I was interested in visiting because of Berkeley having connections to the development of atomic weapons, and because of other scientific history which has happened here, and because currently this particular lab is a center of a lot of prestigious research, and because it is the lab of Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu. Well, I saw the laboratory, and now I think I could spend weeks reading about discoveries of interest to popular culture which have happened here. It seems like an isolated place what with it being well into campus and sort of away from San Francisco, but I suppose some scientists want it that way.

The Berkeley Campus is a relaxing place which is close but not conveniently close for walkers to this laboratory. I checked out the reading room for the Bancroft Library and thought it seemed like a nice place to get smarter. The trees on campus are so big and there is a creek running through it. There are so many soft places to lie in the grass. And then just off campus is the street with the coffee shops and hang out spots and lots of traveler kids with dogs and guitars. The first Peet’s Coffee is here.

That night we went to see Hitchcock’s 1956 Man Who Knew Too Much at this Deco theatre in Oakland called the Paramount Theatre. The theatre was gorgeous but Oakland sure has some run-down areas. We wandered around the theatre and it is being well kept, but it made me feel bad for Oakland because it seemed that such a luxurious place was not being
used to its purpose if it is surrounded by a neighborhood which was once busy and now has shuttered businesses. The place was kind of a fantasy escape; we went in and the walls were glowing and had deep carvings which I touched all over and then we watched that asinine dated movie where Jimmy Stuart and Doris Day behaved in a contrived and unbelievable ridiculous way which I have trouble understanding that any audience at any time could have ever found convincing. I still like Day’s singing, though. When we left and rejoined reality, it seemed that the surrounding area did little to support people who wanted to chill. Jeff recommended Merritt Restaurant and Bakery as the proper place to regroup, and he was spot-on. The menu featured chicken and waffles served together, huge cakes which looked like hamburgers, and an indication that the Pixar staff supports the concept of the place by including the image of a hamburger cake as one of the merit badges for the boy scout Russell in Up. As an eating-contest enthusiast, I support the idea of attempting to eat one of those cakes. Also the restaurant had painted copies of various Western masters, so it was classy. More tea and talk when we got home! I was really digging this trip.

Sometime around here I talked to Eric and found I could meet him on Sunday. I asked for a couple of extra days with J&J and they were good to me in allowing it. Saturday morning we woke up and it was like a dream world outside. The wind was soft and the air was sweet and we walked through their neighborhood to the Beehive Market in the parking lot of Berkeley Adult School. The market had a good mix of stuff for sale and people advertising non-profit stuff and I hope it remains successful. The adult school there had great prices for advanced computer classes which I would like and seems to do good work teaching English and life skills to people who want that. There was this wonderful coffee shop across the street,

Later we went downtown because I wanted to see the headquarters of Bechtel, the largest engineering firm in the US and a major organizer US Department of Energy nuclear cleanup and management operations. I saw their area and they have this train car in the plaza of some sky scrapers where they keep a little Bechtel museum. This was in the Financial District, and also there we went by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals location for this area.

We went to the Mission and walked around seeing things including Clarion Alley’s graffiti and Paxton Gate’s wunderkammer and enjoying fantastic espresso at Ritual Roasters. The park across the street from the mission was all white kids with money drinking beer in the grass, so if this part of the Mission was ever Mexican the techno in the park shooed them away. I loved seeing the cemetery at the Mission!

That night we went to the night market in Chinatown and for the first time I heard Chinese opera. It was a musical style which was totally unfamiliar to me. After that we went to a rock show and I was introduced to Nobunny. I am no great appreciator of music, but I thoroughly enjoyed the singer coming out on stage in a bunny mask wearing a ball gag and stripping to his underwear during the show. He varied his music style as did the opening bands. I kind of wanted to rock out but despite the full turnout not enough of the crowd was jumping and pushing so it was kind of dangerous for those of us who were, because there was not critical mass for people slamming around to huddle in a contained way. So I got a little sweaty but not as thrashed about as I could have wanted.

So that was my introductory time to J&J’s place.

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first day in San Francisco…

By bluerasberry on August 29, 2010

This post has no interesting content at all. It is just a record to help me remember what I learned.

On Thursday August 19 Simon and I dropped off the car by driving north through Golden Gate Park, into the Presidio, then west along the waterfront to the return at Fisherman’s Wharf. Simon took me on a walking tour of SF by going south to Telegraph Hill where I saw the Coit Tower and a historical placard commemorating Farnsworth’s invention of the television. We walked on through Chinatown then to Union Square, where I saw a monument to the superiority of America over the Philippines as proven in the Philippine–American War

Somewhere around here we stopped for snacks at a pizza place called Blondie’s and then we went to this commercial art gallery called Weinsten’s. They advertised having modern masters for sale, and sure enough hanging on the wall were sketches by Picasso, some cheap Dali prints, and some proper big Chagalls. There must be a market here for people who walk in and want a Chagall in a bag to go, now.

We took a bus to the Castro then walked to the Haight. We looked at the edge of Golden Gate Park, then went to Outer Sunset where I caught the Muni to meet up with some friends in Berkeley.

Throughout the day Simon and I talked mostly about software and rights. He seems to be familiar with a significant amount of what I want to know, particularly regarding open software. I could say more about him but I will have email records to track what we talk about.

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drive to San Francisco…

By bluerasberry on August 28, 2010

For a long while I have had this idea to go to Mexico City and then onto Guatemala. I can be really mindless sometimes, and somehow I got it into my head that it would be a good idea to make this trip by land from Seattle. I had the idea that I could Craigslist rideshare from Seattle to San Francisco, stay there a while, then Craigslist to San Diego, cross the border, then bus from Tijuana to Mexico City. After that I imagined myself touring for a while then busing into Guatemala.

The drive from Seattle to San Francisco is 14 hours. The one-way flight is $100. From San Francisco to San Diego the drive is 8 hours. Tijuana is a walk from San Diego – I think – then 48 hours by bus later is Mexico City. The flight from Seattle to Mexico City is $400. The bus from Mexico City to Guatemala City is hours. The flight from Seattle to Guatemala city is about $500. Buses are cheap in Mexico, but not free, and same with Craigslist rideshare. I think that there are no good reasons to not fly directly to the place where one wants to go. I do not know how I ever came to the idea of doing all this land riding.

I did rideshare from Seattle to San Francisco. I wrote to a bunch of people on Craiglist going to San Francisco and none wrote me back. So I posted my own ad saying I had a car, and immediately 15 people wrote me. Of those, I choose the coolest sounding 3 and talked to them about renting a car. I made the arrangements, got lots of insurance, shared the car responsibility with one of them, and we left.

I had reserved the cheapest car at the agency, but when we got there it was unavailable and they gave us a Cadillac. That was a good start. The other three guys were way awesome and it seemed we all shared a lot of interests and views on many things. This was unexpected to me that things could work out so well, but then also, I suppose that only people like me would try to arrange a trip like this.

This guy Dan had lived in Guatemala for a year just recently, and he was on his way to Santa Cruz to catch a flight to live in Nicaragua for a year. He had been staying with an uncle in Seattle doing carpentry work. He told me where I should go when I get to Guatemala, and gave me some convincing arguments for avoiding parts of Mexico because they are overrated and over priced compared to other places in Central America. Apparently he intends to surf all year and teach English while he is there.

Darryl recently got a degree in landscape architecture and was moving to Berkeley to get a master’s degree in the same. He had interesting stories about traveling in Europe and doing forestry volunteer work in Missoula, Montana. Apparently there is a college base there where no one works and life is cheap and every day is a nature hike adventure. He was not familiar with Seattle and wanted to spend more time there someday. He wants to do sustainable architecture including third world projects.

Simon is a computer programmer who had been living across the street from me in Seattle for about a year. He had been unable to connect with other like-minded people in Seattle, and wanted to return to SF where he could have options for jobs, a different social scene, and his familiar ground. He also was into Indian culture and expressed interest in visiting Sai Baba some day. When we got to SF, we dropped off the first two first, then I stayed the night at Simon’s place south of San Francisco University.

I could see myself collaborating on any number of future projects with any of these guys… I hope we manage to stay in touch.

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Seattle Century

By bluerasberry on August 7, 2010

The Seattle Century is a 100 mile bicycle tour organized this year as a fundraiser for Bikeworks, which is a non-profit organizing which promotes cycling for young people. There were participation levels for 50 and 100 miles; I did the 50 mile on July 31, the day of the event.

Registration for the event was minimum $60. I did not want to pay so I signed up to start a little late but help with event setup, and in exchange I got a free ticket. I went alone to this, but I met some other volunteers who were also alone and an Indian Microsoft guy who was both alone and confused and went with them.

The tour started at Magnuson Park, got onto the Burke-Gilman Trail and went north through Kenmore and to Bothell. From there we got onto the Sammamish River Trail and went south to Redmond. We went further south down W Lake Sammamish Parkway, right on Newport Way to Lake Heights Park, then north on 118th Ave to the I-90 trial going west to Mercer Lid Park. We took the East Lake Washington Bridge off the island then went north on Lake Washington Boulevard to get back to the university and the Burke-Gilman Trail, where we stopped at our starting point. I could not find a copy of their map online, so I photographed my beat-up copy.

I have a mountain bike and it has not been tuned in a couple of years. It held out for the trip, but I might have enjoyed being able to go faster. I stayed with the Indian guy and on breaks drilled him with questions. He seemed like so many other Indians I meet here. He has been working in this area for two years, but said that he has only visited Seattle a few times. This must mean he just goes between work and his home without going out for fun. He seems to only talk to other Indians and does little more than work. We came to four-way stop of an actual street at one point. We needed to travel two crosswalks to get to the corner opposite of where we were. He hit the walk button, then went diagonally across the street. I am not sure whether this seemed to him a shortcut because there were no cars coming or if he really thought this was okay, but to me as a Seattlite, it seemed strange because most bikers follow the rules very closely. I see his behavior as representative of how most Indians in America behave; it was obvious to me that he has not spent much time doing things with local people.

He said he was from Hyderabad, of course. I asked him what he thought of bike tours in his city, and of course he said no one would be interested. I asked him why and he said that bikes there are mostly for poor people and no one would pay. He also had a mountain bike, and I asked him what he thought of the other bikers around us. Almost all of them had bikes which cost more than $1500 and my guess was that except for the volunteers around us they were all professionals. I saw no one who was obviously under age 30 there except for volunteers. I asked him why it was that in American rich people bicycle for fun, but in India bicycling is not really popular as a sport for anyone. He just told me that this event was the first time that he had ever heard of this kind of thing, and that a friend bought him a ticket to go to it, but that his friend was not at the event with him. I would have liked to have talked to him more about sports in India versus America, but he seemed bewildered by my questions.

When I was volunteering I asked the coordinator how many people paid to register. He said 1200, and that 200 more would show up that day. Times $60, that means $84,000, plus they were selling t-shirts for $15 and cycling jerseys for $60. The expenses for hosting the event were arranging for reservations at parks where people can rest, but I think the city gives these reservations for free or nearly free. Also snacks and drinks were at each rest stop, usually provided by volunteers. When I was volunteering I met a medical doctor who was volunteering to be on call if someone got hurt, and also there were mechanics as volunteers to fix broken bikes. Some cars were standing by to drive to trouble if anyone had it, and riders could call for help if they needed it. As I said the tour ended where it started, so they just rented one event hall for this and even that was in a public park. They had a catered meal waiting at the end, but the food was not expensive. They paid for a website and for a designer to create nice maps of the tour. They paid for staff to organize this one day event, but since it is the same every year, I am sure they designed the plans once and now reuse them.

There is no way that this one-day event could have cost $15,000 to organize. That means that minimum they raised $70,000 to host this event, and probably they get that much every year. What a fantastic, healthy, fun, fundraiser involving ecotourism.

The tour was beautiful, by the way. Almost all of it was on bike trials near the water or in the woods. There were small stretches of it on bike paths in public roads, but these areas were designated by signs on the path as being connections between different trials.

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and this is what the devil does…

By bluerasberry on July 15, 2010

I went to see Lords of Acid and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult Tuesday July 13 at Studio 7 in Georgetown. I listened to them when I was a teenager and it was cool to see them live.

The venue sucked and I gave them a bad yelp but both bands were good. Thrill Kill Kult did the best they could with what they have to work with, but I suppose their music is better mixed than performed lived.

Lords of Acid was interesting on stage. I do not know how old Praga Khan is, but he must be old, and he looks very old. The net says he did his first recording in 1988, so if he did that at age 18 he must be 40 now and if he did it at thirty he would be 52 now. 1988 was pre-computer days, and historically people were older than thirty to get established to record electronic music back then, so I would not be surprised if he was 60. He was totally wasted and did a lot to disrupt the band, laughing maniacally and bearing his teeth.

He came out with a wild look on his face and seemed very confused. He had the keyboard and a microphone to do vocals, but he hardly contributed directly to producing sound. There was a drummer, two guitarists, and then whoever their new female vocalist is. Praga Khan almost never touched his keyboard and he kept swinging his microphone around. He attacked the guitarists during most songs; the one with an afro usually was strangled until he could fight him back, and the one with long hair mostly got slapped and threatened. In one song Praga Khan got on the long-haired one’s back then started climbing to sit on his head. They both fell backward and Praga hit a speaker hard. I thought they were hurt because Praga’s neck hit the box behind him and his tailbone hit the floor, and the guy he was on just crumpled. The stage crew gave Praga a rubdown and a coke and the other guy walked it off then returned to stage. The girl singing and the other paid no attention and kept singing so eventually everyone went on with the show. Praga Khan apparently likes Coca Cola, because he opened four cans throughout the show, and it seemed to help him do more stage business.

I was surprised that this withered shell could have been the voice I know. I did not expect to hear him sing because I did not think he would stay in front of the microphone and anyway I thought the show was mostly prerecorded and moreso for his parts, but then about the third song they started up “Rough Sex” and the people slamming around in front quit dancing and started staring to see how they were possibly going to pull this off. Out of his cracked out head growled the voice I know saying, “When I think about love… I don’t think about bright moon…” and the rest of the lyrics and the chorus just like the recorded version. After the first chorus he quit singing to rampage and the crowd turned that song into a singalong. He did not have any more parts after that.

The female singer was good and she was not having his attacks, and when he started circling her and growling she gave him a look which said that she was the alpha. He gave her neck a play choke so as to not totally lose face but then she brushed him off without even missing any vocals. I take it that Praga Khan tied himself to the rights to the songs and band name so if these other four young talented musicians want to go on tour posing as a band they listened to when they were 15 then they have to put up with their crazy grandpa. Praga Khan jumped into the crowd to surf twice, and his minders brought him back to stage safely both times. They also continually picked up his keyboard when he knocked it down, plugged his microphone back in, and directed him to his part of the stage when he seemed lost.

Everyone at the concert knew all the songs for Thrill Kill Kult and Lords of Acid, so it was a happy crowd. We all knew the music and it probably would have been boring if they just played the songs through. I do not think they have money these days for elaborate stage shows but the rumor going around among the older crowd was that on their early tours they cast a model to play out being crucified on stage and then various band members would fellate this person. Since that kind of performance was omitted, I would have to say that Praga Khan’s stage activities contributed greatly to my enjoyment of the show.

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Zombie Walk and pie eating contest

By bluerasberry on July 9, 2010

Dr. Zombie Lane is ready to eat either brains or pie

Saturday July 3 was the Fremont Zombie Walk. I regret not having pictures, but there were three of us together as zombie scientists in lab coats. Here is a picture of me without blood or too much makeup. I participated in a pie-eating contest organized by The World is Fun, and since it was no-hands, I did not wear much paint because I would have been eating it.

The contest was a lot of fun. I had a 9″ apple pie which I ate top and filling in about 140 seconds. There were about 12 other competitors but most of them were quite dainty or unwilling to swallow without chewing so even with a lot of moaning and roaring I was doing well to out eat them. One of the contestants was this girl who had a cream pie with a cracker crust. The other pies had flaked pastry crust; I hope all readers understand the difference, but the pastry is crust is heavy, comprised of shortening, and serves more as a vehicle of the filling than something necessary to eating. In contrast the cracker crust was thin and attached to the pudding of the cream pie, and could be consumed with big licks rather than chewing and was therefore easier to eat.

I lost to this girl. I shook her hand to be a good sport, but was really upset that there were no international competitive pie eating rules for me to brandish and use to call foul. We all should have had the same pie instead of mostly pastry and two cream pies to be assigned, so when I write codifying laws for governing competitions of this sort I will be very bitter in remembering this and exactly describing how to make these things more just.

After the contest we made our way to Fremont to participate in the zombie walk. We bloodied up at a nearby diner and it seemed that everyone around was a zombie. We contributed to the fee for Guinness World Records to have the event checked as the largest zombie walk ever; the event was advertised as having extra money go to Solid Ground, a local food bank.

The unofficial count was somewhere around 4,900 people in the zombie parade. The average quality of costumes was quite high. It was difficult to talk to people because everyone was in character, so zombies wanting to take pictures of other zombies had to moan requests and confirmations.

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Two parades – Solstice and Pride 2010

By bluerasberry on June 22, 2010

Lane with some yorkie

The Fremont Solstice parade was on Saturday June 19. I had worked with this guy named Dave who is a physicist and in a band called the Shamaniacs. I enjoyed talking to him because he was good at explaining popular science.

The parade was great as usual and everyone brought their dogs and I petted all the dogs. In the commercial section there was a silk shop called “Kashi” and it had a rickshaw in front of it.

Kashi in Seattle

I thought people who knew Kashi, my Varanasi, might be interested in seeing this picture of a Kashi booth in Fremont.

Seattle Gay Pride parade was on Sunday June 27, but the day before was the smaller pride celebration in Capitol Hill, Seattle’s traditional gay district. I was at both with the HVTU promoting the vaccination studies. I got to meet the current part-time recruitment staff and see how they work.

To get attention they had the usual swag but this time also we had fun pins that said “I (heart) trans”, “I (heart) anal”, “I (heart) (cock)”, “cut”, “uncut”, and “(cock)”.

from left: Chris, Victor, Eddie, me, and ??? a scientist

The cut and uncut ones were supposed to initiate talks about circumcision and raise awareness of how current scientific research consensus is that circumcised males who penetrate their partner anally or vaginally have a significantly lowered risk of contracting HIV. The first two pins were the crowd favorites. I like that these promos were things that people would conceivably wear and use in daily life. Buttons are fun, people put them on backpacks and they get seen in public, and they are great for starting conversations.

Keith in foreground and Lane in back

The downtown pride was cool and I had my own fun but the actual parade and fairground exhibition seemed the same as other prides and other events. I know that commercial booths are money makers and that it is expensive to arrange stage shows or music but still I wish that the end of the event was not dropping everyone in a park where the rule is that everyone gets solicited to buy fair merchandise. I was on the front page of the Seattle Times in their gay pride article because I was standing behind my friend Keith when his picture was taken. Keith is not gay, but he loves costumes and attention and handles both well.

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Erik Satie’s Vexations…

By bluerasberry on May 19, 2010

I attended part of a performance of Erik Satie’s(1866-1925) Vexations Jack Straw on May 16. Satie was a Parisian musician and dadaist who wrote minimalist repetitive music. This work, Vexations, is a song which most people would choose to play in about 3.5 minutes, but Satie wrote on the page of music the sentence, “In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities. (Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se préparer au préalable, et dans le plus grand silence, par des immobilités sérieuses.)” Modern performers have interpreted this from the 1960s onward as an instruction that the song is not to be performed unless it is played 840 times in succession.

I went to Jack Straw at about 6:30am on Sunday morning. The performance began at 4pm Saturday, with new players coming in every half hour. The crowd that was there when I arrived was dazed in their lounging on big pillows in the floor in a room with a grand piano and recording equipment everywhere. The performance was being broadcast live, so no talking or noise was allowed in the room.

I stayed for almost two hours. I did not find the music vexing at all; it was pleasant to me, and I would recommend the experience to anyone. I read books while I was there, and I appreciate the opportunity to combine art experiences with time to complete my usual work and routine. Too often I feel like museums and performances force guests only to pay attention to the work or that they treat people as being disrespectful if visitors do not pay complete attention to the show while they are there. To me, this discourages attendance at these things. Very often I want to make time to attend shows, but simply do not have the time, and for me combining activities is the only way I get to learn about these shows at all.

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Lane can has cheezburger…

By bluerasberry on April 28, 2010

I went to go hear Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network speak at Seattle Public Library on Saturday April 23. This is the startup guy behind the LOLcat site, Fail Blog, Graph Jam, Engrish Funny, and other funny content sites. He lives in Seattle.

Everyone entering the lecture was offered free cheeseburgers from Dick’s. He was a terrific speaker. He did a slideshow packed with pictures and his presentation was totally complimentary to the slides, and not just a rehash of them. He was done lecturing in 20 minutes, which is exactly what I want from most speakers. After he was done talking, he asked for questions and anyone who asked a question got a stuffed Happy Cat. During his lecture, he said that his company employs 40 people. My guess at average salary is $50k so they must be paying out 2 million a year. My question was how his site network creates that kind of livelihood for that many people. His answer was advertising, t-shirts, and books.

I already expected him to say that because I had read that answer in lots of places before, but it felt good to hear it from him. He compared his business model to that of Twitter, Facebook, and Google, saying that all the sites are just content providers like any other media company. The only difference is that their content is user-generated. Again, I knew this, but it just seemed more real to hear it than read it.

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Supreme Master Ching Hai’s conference…

By bluerasberry on April 4, 2010

On Saturday April 3 I went to a conference sponsored by Supreme Master Ching Hai in UW’s Meany Hall. I found out about the conference from handbills and posters that were circulating around the neighborhood. It was advertised as a series of lectures on environmentalism, vegetarianism, sports fitness, and family fun on paper and on the advertised website, http://ecofamilyfunfair.com/. The website has a list of external links to http://www.SupremeMasterTV.com, so that is the connection to Ching Hai.

The program was scheduled for 1-6:30pm. I arrived around 1:30 and stayed for about forty-five minutes. Outside the lecture hall there were tables on three floors and the building seemed full of things to do. The strange thing was that very few people were there other than the people staffing the tables. Also, I could not help but notice that the persons at the tables were Asian (since Ching Hai was Taiwanese, I presume these people were Taiwanese), especially because when I approached them to talk about whatever they were displaying – pictures of environmental damage to water, health statistics, vegetable propaganda – many of them were not able to converse in English. There were food tables mixed with the info tables, and they had excellent vegetarian food, and they were giving it for free. So I had snacks as I walked around and let these nice Asian people speak in broken English to me asking for simple endorsement of the virtues of environmentalism, health, etc. My guess is that there was enough hot food for more than 500 people to eat a lot; it was piled high in insulated crates.

I started to wonder how this event came to be; it was apparent that this did not happen because of natural demand in my community because the people working there were not fit for the work and the lack of attendees indicated to me that this was not an event that local people had been wanting. Meany Hall is a music and dance performance hall which seats about 1000. It is a nice venue. When I went into the performance hall around 1:45, there were about 30 people there, and that includes 3 on stage speakers and 12 people who seemed to be doing tech. Of the tech people, two were recording video of the stage show and one was taking still pictures. Of the fifteen who seemed to be conference attendees, three were definitely asleep and to me they had the appearance of those who are homeless.

The lecture I visited was basic. It seemed to be targeted at people who did not know that pollution existed; it was dumbed down below the level I would expect of a television documentary and I could not imagine it being useful to the sort of savvy people who look for conferences at universities. The info booths outside the lecture, even considering the language barrier, were below that level. They had no science and no call to action.

Here is the list of rates in pdf for renting Meany Hall. My guess is that the money paid to the university for the rental and university staffing must have been about $3000 for the day. There were a lot of non-university event staff here; I would guess 90-110. There were games for children everywhere, and they had a prize point system were it was guaranteed that 3 children would win new bicycles on that day, and the bicycles were not cheap. I am sure that most of the staff were volunteers and probably Ching Hai followers, but still, when I imagine the value of the money and labor and time and that went into this event, I do not think I would be far off the mark to say that at least $8000 in cash got expended and if 100 people each contributed 10 hours valued at $10 per hour, then that is about $10,000 in value put into this event.

It is hard for me to say whether some of the Asian people wandering around not working were visitors or already associated with Ching Hai, but excluding those 10-20 people, in the time I was there I do not think that there were more than 40 people at this event and I doubt many of those stayed as long as I did. I saw no non-Asian children there, and about 10 Asian children who seemed to be associated with parents staffing the children’s games.

Today is Easter. Nandan told me that he went to a Christian church today and saw about 4,000 Hindus there. I do not mean to stereotype, but I think in general Hindus are more open to engaging in religions other than their own than members of any other religion. Still, Nandan told me this time as he has told me before that the Christian missionaries in his area pay people to attend their services and that the people know this relationship with the Christian church. What happens in Varanasi and other places in India is the foreign Christian church using vast funds to try to force proselytization in an area that has no natural demand for this.

I think that the same thing happened yesterday at the University with Supreme Master Ching Hai’s people. It is not a stretch for me to imagine an American telling about Easter in India without even knowing the local language, and not knowing that they appear to the Indians as these Taiwanese did to me.

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purpose of this blog

This is Lane Rasberry's personal blog. None of the information on this blog is private, but it is personal and I have not written it with the intent to make it of public general interest. Anyone visiting this site has my permission to use anything they find here for friendly, share-alike purposes.