'When Marx has more effect than hormones, there is nothing to be done.'"

This past spring, I posted an iconic photo of Catalan communist journalist Marina Ginestà. In Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, she donned a uniform and hoisted a rifle once. That made her famous, on a hotel roof, in 1936. 

Anthony Beevor's history of that war cites Juliàn Marías, who "never forgot the expression of a tram-driver at a stop as he watched a beautiful and well-dressed young woman step down into the pavement. 'We've really had it,' Marías said to himself. 'When Marx has more effect than hormones, there is nothing to be done.'" I thought of this when reading about the Kurdish guerrilla fighters now.

Joseph Anthony Lawrence joined them as a photographer. The power of images, as the SCW with Robert Capa and Pablo Picasso taught us, endures to document and admittedly heroicize war as well as lament its destruction. Lawrence, according to an article in the Huffington Post,  was curious whether the fighters, 40% women, were "fearless warrior women" as the "foreign press" treated them, or terrorists, as the Turkish government depicts them in their fight against Assad in Syria and ISIS.

Joey L., as he calls himself, reports on his admittedly handsome subjects how their pride and martial ardor are evident in his photography of the YPJ, the female counterparts of the YPG. This army rescued many Yazidis from ISIS retaliation in Rojava. "Some carry the signs of a hard-fought war: chemical burns, chapped hands and scars. All the women are treated as equals to their male counterparts, but it is the men who will readily admit that a woman can fight better because she is a natural creator of the world, so she therefore has more to lose -- and therefore more to fight for."

My wife always chides that if women ran the world, there'd be an end to war. As this movement takes its guidance from the PKK, with its roots in Marxist-Leninism, I wonder. Their English-language website features a depiction of Abdullah Ocalan, in Borat-like celebration as the mustached and olive-fatigue uniformed leader at the center of emanating yellow and red rays, in typically People's Republic fashion. Admittedly, a glance at this reminds me of Qadafi's Green Revolution, or the later days of the paper Ginesta translated for, Pravda. Or maybe Granma, Castro's regime's mouthpiece. Our American media, with its corporate-sponsored slogans about "heroes coming home," echoes this.

The HuffPo snippets on the Kurdish fighters don't explain the background. Go to an earlier piece this year, by Gareth Watkins on the site CvltNation. "The Revolution Nobody's Talking About" draws parallels to Spanish anarchists and the Catalan dominance of women in leadership and in combat. Ocalan calls this "democratic confederalism." I am unclear as to the YPJ/G ties to Ocalan, as not the PKK but the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Kurdish National Council (KNC) are credited by Watkins in Rojava, where left-libertarianism is said to thrive along with eco-feminist structures.

Learn more at the Libcom reading guide on Rojava. The comments debating, typically, David Graeber's affirmative visit to Kurdistan are telling as anarchist-communists argue over the situation.  Graeber enters the thread and despairs that the radicals cannot give credence, when their theory obscures the truth, to any left-libertarian progress, but opponents caution any praising Ocalan's "cult."

At the PKK site, "Killing the dominant male: Instituting the Third Major Sexual Rupture against the dominant male" features Ocalan. "The male has become a state and turned this into the dominant culture. Class and sexual oppression develop together; masculinity has generated ruling gender, ruling class, and ruling state. When man is analysed in this context, it is clear that masculinity must be killed." Reading this essay, I can imagine many peace-loving Westerners nodding in agreement.

Concerning the predictable debates at Libcom and the media attention towards the female fighters, I confess mixed reactions. Aren't we expected to cheer on the revolution from suppressive categories and restrictive belief-systems? Is Lawrence's photo-journalism the necessary exposure of a step towards freedom for Middle Eastern women? Is violence the necessary and only practical reaction as self-defense rallies men and women to protect the Yazidi and the Kurds from Islamic State and Syrian Army-led decimation? Perhaps so; I doubt if any pacifists among Jews, Muslims, or Eastern Christians survived the Crusader's invasions. Yet, part of me shrinks back wary of the celebration of armed men and women as the ideal we should strive towards. And then part of me retaliates, as my sympathies remind me of revolutionaries who rose up to free our ancestors from slavery if not debt.

With my own direct ancestor implicated in such rebellion in Ireland, who am I to discount its perpetuation? Yet he was murdered mysteriously for the Cause. I used to be self-righteously bent on a refusal to listen to any opponent of Irish independence. Now, despite my atavistic intransigence, after three decades and more leading classroom discussions, at least I hear out all sides in any debate. In the conflict with the Islamic State and Assad's regime, are there any sensible voices on the other side? Addressing war, we must ask this, unlikely as it seems to us. And, who am I not to reiterate the most lasting path to equality and harmony, and to come closer to anarchic dreams, is to lay down that RPG.
(Photo by Joey L. Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) Guerrillas Patrol Makhmour Countryside, Iraq
.)

Marina Ginestà's iconic photo

"Iconic photo of Marina Ginestà on top of Hotel Colón in Barcelona." So says the Wikimedia caption. This was posted on my FB feed yesterday, and as I'd been reminded by a friend there to read Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain, his 2006 revision of his 1982 book The Spanish Civil War 1936-39, I wanted to learn more. The Wiki entry for Marina Ginestà tells of her 1919 birth in Toulouse, her family's emigration to Barcelona, and her joining the United Socialist Party of Catalonia. That photo was taken by Hans Guttman (later, intriguingly, Juan Guzmán) who had left his native Germany to join the International Brigades, and then, 1300 SCW photos later, fled to Mexico, where he befriended Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. He and his subject here lived long. Juan died in 1981 in the Mexican capital, and Marina in the French capital, back to her homeland, in 2014. 

She was wounded later in the conflict, evacuated to Montpellier. To flee the Nazis, she wound up in the Dominican Republic, where she married. In 1946, she left, opposing the dictator Rafael Trujillo. By 1952 she was married to a Belgian diplomat and returned to Barcelona. I wonder how she fared, two decades under Franco and the fascists she had fought against. She went to Paris in the early '70s.

This was taken early in the war, July 21, 1936. The Wiki entry notes this is the only time she carried a rifle. For a reporter, this weapon may be more her prop. She translated for Pravda, assisting Mikhail Koltsov, in turn another character. He inspired Hemingway's Karkov in For Whom the Bell Tolls. He participated in the Russian Revolution, reported on the Spanish war and served as Stalin's go-to advisor for the Loyalists, before falling out of favor and being executed with wife #3 in 1940 or '42. 

Beevor in his thoughtful introduction (all I've read so far) cites Juliàn Marías, who "never forgot the expression of a tram-driver at a stop as he watched a beautiful and well-dressed young woman step down into the pavement. 'We've really had it,' Marías said to himself. 'When Marx has more effect than hormones, there is nothing to be done.'" Consider this and the conflicting reactions to this icon.

Ryan Pyle's "Chinese Turkestan": Book Review

Ryan Pyle, an award-winning Canadian photographer who travels around and beyond his adapted Chinese home, presents a look at Xinjiang, for which he favors the old Chinese Turkestan title as better suited to its cultural diversity. In his short preface, he notes he does not want to "pontificate," but to present the modernization of this land by the Chinese with minimal commentary. That he does, in spare captions.

The paucity of background beyond the helpful introduction makes the reader turn viewer. Pyle places the captions a few pages away from the black and white photos. This has the advantage of allowing you to sink deeper into them, but the small red typeface (as well as the bright red binding and trim) do jolt you a bit.

Some photos benefit from the two-page layout, but this book is smaller in size than the coffee-table format I anticipated. (I was asked to review it.) Many, over half, document  the fast-changing main city of Kashgar, some in Khotan, and then they roam to the borderlands and wilder places. Fields and desert take over.

I expected more on the desolate Tian Shan mountains, but there is little coverage of the higher places. Most of Pyle's spare images show people, in factories, mills, streets, on paths, and among farms. He keeps the focus on them rather than natural landscapes, as he tries to give us a sense of its inhabitants.

This is welcome for its depiction of a place few of us may know beyond its ancient Silk Road aura. The reality as the Chinese regime changes this place and exploits its resources and imports its Han into a traditionally Muslim and Buddhist enclave must be interpreted. For, these are often minimalist portrayals. Author's site. 
Amazon US 2-6-15

Mike McGonigal's "Temperature's Rising: Galaxie 500": Book Review

This collaboration expands an oral history from participants and observers, one of whom, bassist Naomi Yang, crafted the visual content enhancing this careful indie-rock band's image a quarter-century ago. That span surprises her, as she reflects in this compilation's final sentence: "I am grateful for not letting my youth go to waste and I am looking forward to adventures to come." Even before they formed what began as a shambling, untutored Galaxie 500, together from Fall 1987 to Spring 1991, they shared some youthful adventures together, unlike many a rock band's pedigree.

Yang and her partner, drummer Damon Krukowski, have known guitarist-singer Dean Wareham since they were teenagers at the same (unnamed here, but Dalton) Manhattan prep school in the late 1970s. They earned degrees from Harvard, with Yang and Krukowski staying on as graduate students for a while while Wareham worked as a clerical temp. Meanwhile, they started a band in Boston. But it did not sound like Mission of Burma or hardcore. As journalist Francis Dimenno observes: "Their album covers made a statement. Cool Restraint. Educated. Upper Class. Lots of Social Contacts."

As an intern for graphic designer Milton Glaser before she began her visual arts degree at Harvard, Yang possessed a confident air in her own promotional material. When the Italian font she hand-cut from a wedding invitation (which would grace many of Galaxie 500's productions) did not have two letters needed, she drew her own for the band's first cassette labels. She added such refinement seamlessly to the pre-digital mechanical and knife-trimmed process that she meticulously annotated as typographical directions for the band's debut LP Today (1988). These examples, added to the sounds the band labored to produce from raw promise, demonstrate the trio's concern for precision.

It's more elusive from McGonigal's verbal transcriptions (many appeared in a series for Pitchfork in 2010) what Galaxie 500 sounded like, for a curious reader coming to this collection. Writer Martin Aston sums them up: "They played slow when everyone was fast. They were defiantly lo-fi before it became accepted, they preceded shoegazing, but never felt as posy as much of what followed. It was totally out of time, not in a scene, music that existed because they just felt like playing it, or were limited by how they played. Punk mentality. 'We're aspiring to primitivism,' Damon once told me."

Aston's claim that Galaxie 500 "never felt as posy" as those who came later may be debatable. For evidence, the stylized, rarified, or shimmering nature of many photographs by Yang and colleagues such as classmate Sergio Huidor or Shimmy Disc's Michael Macioce (at the World's Fair site in Queens) document well the band's determination to stand out from their leather-jacketed peers. Even in denim, Wareham tries to exude sophistication, while Krukowski's similarly rumpled fashion plays off of his knowing scowl. And as for Yang, her bold earrings and dress sense draw one's attention.

The band, as photos and their recollections illustrate (no questions are asked by McGonigal; he silently arranges the responses in brief chapters around chronological themes) how the three worked together--before they did not. Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins notes Galaxie 500's lack of a solo star: he liked Yang's "simple naive approach" on the bass, while Wareham's "Velvets-y delivery" by "smart lyrics", a dry vocal style, and nimble guitar filled the space left by Krukowski's "expressive" and often spare, jazz-tinged percussion washes and taps.

The drummer explains how he heard the guitar at the top, his partner's bass in the middle of the soundstage on stage or in his mental mix, and himself at the bottom. Fitting this model, Krukowski felt it was "like joining the circus". Under Kramer's production, skillful singles led to an amazing first album, that album to another many judged even better, On Fire (1989) on Rough Trade, and acclaim. 

For a while at gigs, on the road, or in rehearsal, the band got along. Predictably, Wareham laments (briefly here, but see for far more the first hundred pages of his 2008 memoir Black Postcards) that the pressure of a pair teamed off against himself made for poor negotiations as a purported trio. As the band's power struggles grew, they--all in their mid-twenties--contended against outside pressures. Courted by Rough Trade, Yang recoiled. What the businessmen presented in the guise of friendship, she suspected as manipulation. Producing product, for the three committed to crafting quality, clashed with Galaxie 500's ethic.

Their rapid from-underground-to-college-radio success kept some misgivings internally shrouded and externally sidestepped. Kramer remembers: "The band was standing on top of a mountain looking down. The first record didn't seem like it got any bad reviews anywhere." Their second met with even better reception, but their third, This Is Our Music (1990), came with the record label and mismanagement problems (not helped by Kramer's addiction) that left Galaxie 500 straitened. Yang includes a photo of the "money envelope" with penciled scrawls of what cash came in from promoters and what went out for cabfare. Even at the height of their career, the lessons learned on such trials as their U.S. 1990 tour about to the realities of playing a distant city one week and then rushing back to the corporate temp job, as Wareham reflects, sobered them.

McGonigal's determination to match Yang's spare commentary on her archive of artifacts with unadorned transcripts may please fans, but for those less informed, this may not meet a newcomer's needs. The verbal editor provides neither an index nor introduction. True, a discography could be cobbled by a careful reader from Yang's inclusions. Most new fans will prefer a music guide for a standard overview of the band's influences, eclectic covers, lyrical moods, and production emphases. Kramer in an aside laments not capturing Galaxie 500 live when they could play as loud as Sonic Youth; the band's dynamic range on stage and on record, and (within a short career) their quickly improved dexterity both merit more mention than either the trio or their colleagues here provide.

"I was always drawn to the simple and the well proportioned rather than the flashy." Yang's aesthetic speaks for her band. They all squelch any reunion rumors. "We made three albums together, and those records are our children; even though we're divorced we still need to talk about the children occasionally." Wareham's tone captures the steady (or a few wobbly) judgments Galaxie 500 made, as musicians and as creators, to leave the best they could for discerning audiences then, and, enriched by Yang's contributions on their behalf, now in this handsomely assembled presentation of words and depictions about memorable music, (PopMatters 5-9-13; 4-23-13 to Amazon US)

Crannaí agus Sliabh Maolín

Is cuimhne liom an radharc chomh seo. Rúgadh mé in aice leis anseo. Chuir an grianghraf i gCovina nuair ag fásadh úlloird go leor fadó.

Thóg Clarence Tucker seo. Measaim go raibh séisean féin is óige ansin. Bhí amharc seo i 1900. Ar ndóigh, fuair sé bás i 1970.

Ar feadh an bliain sin, bhí mé óg freisin. Bhí mé i gcónaí i Claremont, D'imirt mé leis mo chairde ina h-úlloird na crannaí líomóide ar chúl mó thí.

Chonaic mé an sliabh ceanna leis sneachta. Tá Sliabh Naomh Antoine go hoifigúil ann. Ach, glaoch gach duine áitúil leis an leasainm é "Sliabh Maolín."

Tá sé thart ar deich míle míle ard ansiud. Tá sé ina sainchomhartha ag imeall an Cathair na hÁingeal ann, go deo. Is féidir liom a fheiceáil go fóill ar an lá glan daichead míle ar shiúl ina ghemreidh anois.

"Trees and Mt. Baldy"

I remember a panorama like this here. I grew up near here. The photograph was taken in Covina when many orchards grew long ago.

Clarence Tucker took this. I reckon he himself was very young then. This view's in 1900. However, he died in 1970.

During that year, I too was young. I was living in Claremont. I played with my friends in the orchard of lemon trees the back of my house.

I saw this same mountain with snow. It's Mt. San Antonio officially. But, everyone locally calls it "Mt. Baldy."

It's about ten thousand miles high up there. It's a landmark around Los Angeles, always. I'm able to see it still on a clear day forty miles away in winter now.

Rompu coitanta

Tá mé ag shíleadh faoi dhaoine cruitheachtaí éagsúlaí le deanaí. D'fhoghlaim mé faoi bhlag nua, suíomh gréasáin eile, agus smaointe úr. Mar sin, beidh mé libhsa ag insint an triur seo anois.

Ar dtús, thosaigh an scriobhneoir agus muinteoir (agus mo meantóir) Dónal Nussbaum [Crann cnó as Gaeilge!] leis a bhlag nua. Rinne sé Roinnt Smaointe Dharma. Treoracha sé slí a macnaimh; mar sin féin, múineann sé ar bhealach fuascailliú.

I 2001, bhí agallamh an scríobhneoir eile, Antoine Bállie, leis Seán Ó Múircheartaigh. Nuair bhí mé ag lorg eolas faoi Moriarty agus miotas na hÉireann anuas agus faoi láthair, fuair mé sin. Sibh ábalta léamh aisteannaí go leor ar bhlag le Antoine, Ecopunks; tá sé og obair tionscadal ó.

Ag labhairt na saoirse agus faoin tuatha, leamh Aisling Ní Néill ar mo bhlag agus sin le Antoine faoi Ó Muircheartaigh féin. Peinteanna sí in iarthar na hÉireann. Féic anseo chun níos mó a fhéicéail.

Roinnt na ceithre a mhian ar lorg lasmuigh de theoreannachaí gnáth. Tá siad i gcónaí trí in Éireann agus ach céann in aice leis mise ina gCathair na hÁingeal. Mar sin féin, aontaiónn muid a léir leis leas i rompu coitanta.

A common quest

I've been mulling over various creative people lately. I learned about a new blog, another website, and new ideas. Therefore, I will be telling you about this trio now.

To start, the writer and teacher (and my mentor) Dan Nussbaum ['nut-tree' rendered above in Irish!] began a new blog. He created Some Dharma Thoughts. He guides a way to meditate; all the same, he teaches by a liberating path.

In 2001, Tony Bailie interviewed another writer, John Moriarty. When I was searching about Moriarty and Irish myth past and present, I found that. You're able to read many more entries on Tony's blog Ecopunks; he's working on many projects since. 

Speaking of freedom and the countryside, Ashley O'Neal read on my blog and that of Tony about Moriarty himself. She paints in the Irish West. Look here to see more.

The four desire to search outside the usual limits. Three live[d] in Ireland, and but one near myself in Los Angeles. All the same, we all agree as to an interest in a common quest.

Grianghraf: Bhean ar an droichead [Shráid Ui Chonaill i mBaile átha Cliath], 27 Marta/ The Lady on the Bridge [O'Connell St in Dublin], 27 March 1956)

Matthieu Ricard's "Bhutan: the Land of Serenity": Book Review

Unlike other photo narratives on this often mythologized kingdom, this one from a practicing monk takes a sober, almost detached approach that reveals his calm. After a decade in the company of the Dalai Lama's tutor there, Tibetan refugee Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and now the Dalai Lama's French translator himself, French-born Ricard brings the same considered evaluation of Buddhist practice and culture that his sponsorship and appearance in the films Brilliant Moon and The Spirit of Tibet (see my Dec. 2012 reviews) demonstrate about his devotion to his mentors. What this has to do with Bhutan as a larger entity comes across more gradually, and the brief three pages introducing each of these eight sections of his brilliantly reproduced color photography, 1980-2007, convey this more vividly than the miniscule font (too small, let alone the captions even smaller) do in this admittedly handsome, compact text, translated by Ruth Sharman.

About half of this content in words and images features or complements the surroundings of his dharma teacher in Bhutan. This complements Ricard's other treatments of him; it means that much of the photography documents monasticism and ceremonies around its operations. As for the country, this is not the best introduction, as no reading list, no map, and very little background is given about the region. The urbanization of many Bhutanese and the complications of modernization are barely glanced at. Intentionally, no doubt, but readers may want to consult other titles as well.

The typeface is as noted tiny and may not be legible for some readers. The book is elegantly laid out, but rather small. You get much less attention to the natural landscape and everyday people, although some stunning depictions of scenery (not only the expected panoramic vistas--one of Everest on the plane's way from Kathmandu to Paro--but abstracted patterns in reflected water) introduce the terse overview of the nation and its situation as the last Tantric Buddhist realm.

Taksang, the cover's Tiger's Lair, endures as the iconic image of the land, and its chapter shows it as before and then restored after the fire of 1998: it looks splendid in both incarnations. Sacred architecture and crafts show the incorporation of the spiritual landscape into art and costume, the Great Accomplishment ceremony, the intricate movements of dance and the composed presence of ritual. Ricard observes the "clear" lesson exemplifed by such as the Trongsar five-day festival dramatizing the message of Buddhism: "we are the architects of our own being." (153) 

While Ricard does not delve into his own manner of entry into such situations, one may assume his own position allows him a privileged status and a rare insider's perspective that allows him to bridge Himalayan contexts and Western expectations of what such mysterious presentations of Buddhism mean. Bhutan here shimmers more in its less commonly depicted textiles, paintings, and decorations that grace the inside walls of places perhaps prohibited to tourists, and his combination of exterior and interior illustrations works well to provide a Buddhist point of view. (Amazon US 1-13-12)

"Bhutan Heartland": Book Review

Libby Lloyd and Robert van Koesveld report from spring times on the Lateral Road, the east-west connection across the vertiginous valleys and high passes that furrow between the Himalayas and the subtropical plantations. As these Australian-based photographers and social workers explain early on, the choice they faced, to move from west to east, is repeated, if perhaps in reverse, by the natives of this kingdom daily. That road, and increasingly the feeder routes paved along what have been yak trails and footpaths, represents for this constitutional monarchy's Gross National Happiness plan a way to increase access to within a day's hike of most of its still largely rural citizens.

However, unlike previous photographic accounts from the 1980s and 1990s--such as Bhutan: Kingdom of the Dragon by Robert Dompnier, Bhutan: Fortress of the Mountain Gods by Christian Schicklgruber and Françoise Pommaret, or The Dragon Kingdom: Images of Bhutan by Blanche Christine Olschak with photography by Ursula Markus-Gansser and Augusto Gansser--the themes for Lloyd and van Koesveld explore not only traditions and crafts and native garb, but, as its 2010-published photos show people in "modern" dress and lifestyles, on the nation's attempt for as one schoolgirl champions as "Westernisation without modernisation."

This adds value to "Bhutan Heartland." It's set along the great road, and it doesn't look into the tropics as Dompnier does, or depart for the high country treks as does Dompnier or Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness by John Wehrheim. The former book handsomely presents traditional styles but little text and the latter black-and-white and verbal portraits taken of people and landscapes both customary and contemporary. The present book meets a compromise: moderate, intelligent text, many photos. (And a beautiful binding with a weaving pattern under the dust jacket.)

It prefaces sections which follow what by now's the customary approach taken by a traveler. Paro's scenery, for the first time I've seen in a book, shows the modern town and not only the dzong (fortress-monastery center of local control): you get a better sense of why the airport occupies the flat space. And, with double spreads for this, Taktshang Gompa "the tiger's lair," or the capital Thimphu with its Trashhicho Dzong's courtyard, you appreciate more than other collections their scope.

For instance, while the interiors of dzongs and monasteries may not be as featured as in Dompnier (maybe access is more restricted twenty-odd years later?), you see the path to Taktshang, the hermitage, the prayer flags, and the visit in words is more in-depth and thoughtful than many descriptions emphasizing the difficult climb more than the destination itself, 3000 meters up a cliff. The authors also take time to give sidebar profiles of some Bhutanese they meet along the way. The chapters move over the passes into central Bhutan, and then into monasteries, valleys, and the eastern districts (if too briefly--this seems a hazard of many books, but compare Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom by Michael Hawley, if you can find a copy, for more details).

Such expansion deepens the relationship you feel to them, more than the passing or anonymous mentions in some narratives. For instance, you hear from writer Kunzang Choden about her restoration of her family's former feudal estate at Ogyen Choling in the east, and you meet those old enough to have grown up under the old regimen, and listen to them compare an easier life today, as the roads reach the remote areas. Whether these can balance the modern with the traditional depends on educated people like Choden coming back to their villages and estates to improve local lives. The capital, as the civil service booms, attracts more internal migration: Thimphu's now over 100,000.

A minor observation--"the lesser vehicle" is outmoded as a way to define "Therevada," which means "the way of the elders," even if this is contrasted with "the greater vehicle" as Mahayana. As in other accounts, you don't get much sense of the east by comparison, but this may be a necessary hazard with itineraries planned in advance vs. the difficulties of expenses and getting into challenging terrain. For example, the Bumthang three-day trek by pony and foot passes rapidly, without enough sense of how an excursion by foot differs from one by jeep. Readers may want to consult Choden, or the well-known memoir from an earlier decade, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan by Jamie Zeppa, for more on life off-road in the regions farther away from the Paro-Thimphu-Punakha itinerary favored by short-term visitors.

The authors efficiently intersperse a lot of background (a glossary and too-short reading list are appended, and a link to van Koesveld's Bhutan Heartland website) that some earlier authors have struggled at length or brevity to include. It's the right amount for a newcomer: less academic and weighty than the "Fortress" study but more in-depth than Dompnier, and less-dated than "Dragon Kingdom." It's closest to Wehrheim's intimately scaled excursion to get into the mindset and talk to the locals more. For that, and the handsomely reproduced photographs and accessible text, a recommended addition to a short shelf, and a great place to begin an armchair adventure to Bhutan. (Amazon US 12-4-12; For two other reports by Australians on longer contracts to advise in Bhutan, see my reviews of With a Dzong in My Heart by Lansell Taudevin and "Dragon Bones" by Murray Gunn. Also see my review of Choden's 2005 novel "The Circle of Karma")

Mary Peck's "Bhutan: Between Heaven and Earth": Book Review

From visits totaling seven months from 1999 to 2005 to this Himalayan kingdom, Mary Peck's fifty-six black-and-white photographs, each on its own right-hand page facing a blank left, command attention. Many have captions placed as endnotes; a few do not. This removal of words from image (except four brief poems, one by Gary Snyder, another by W.S. Merwin, and a pair of his translations from Muso Soseki) allows the reader to look at the landscapes, people, ceremonies, and architecture as if witnessed first-hand.

In her afterword, "Bhutan's Curve of Time," Peck relates how directions were given by Bhutanese. Each of her inquiries led to a local range of instructions--by a resident. "Just walk into that cloud." one man told her. (130) Beyond circumscribed limits, hemmed in by gorges or peaks, paths or landmarks, the estimates faded, and new ones emerged with the next encounter, the next person down the trail.

Karma Ura situates his nation within these same furrowed contours. As a distinguished civil servant charged with the think tank implementing the nation's evolving Gross National Happiness policy, Ura explains in his thoughtful forward the scope of GNH. He sums up the country, full of micro-climates from one valley to the next. He notes how "the food chain is more or less completed within one's own valley." (5) Therefore, the mythology, community, and the land are integrated over generations to support the people in a intimate, in-depth knowledge-- differing from the fragmented skills promoted today as a solution to education and modernization.

GNH philosophy, holistic, seeks value beyond quantification. Documents back to 1729, Ura reminds us, mention happiness as "the purpose of government." (8) If people are happier locally, their relationships thrive. Goods, houses, and money might not matter as much as personal and communal fulfillment. Certainly a fresh perspective, contrasted with the relentless, increasing, and often sole pursuit of economic growth posited in our own societies as the ultimate indicator of success.

With television approved only just before the millennium, and the Internet now making inroads as electrification accompanies roads into more of the previously remote interior where most Bhutanese still live, the challenges already faced in its rapidly expanding capital, Thimphu, may repeat in villages and hamlets. India and China trade exert enormous pressures on a region with a fragile ecology and strategic situation, combined with its agricultural, hydroelectric, and forested resources. "All that Bhutan has is a very long history of isolation," Ura observes. (11) It lacks "our own huge center of gravity," and its culture and traditions must not only be preserved, but kept integrated into everyday life. Not as trinkets or dances for tourists, but as decentralized, sustained, and relevant ways of living as arranged by those best suited to do so: the local people themselves.

Ura concludes with a reflective rationale for GNH. He registers the alleviation of poverty, the rights given both genders, and the control of environmental impacts. He argues against "a comfortable standard of living" measured by income or expenditure as the truest marker of well-being. Instead, he links the potential of his fellow citizens to "integrity, wisdom, and foresight." Perhaps surprisingly for readers of this book, Ura avers that such qualities may emerge even today from an historically "orally based culture" where the best and the brightest need not be literate to be community leaders. (13) For him, in the Buddhist perspective, this study via each person's "incipient" nature as a potential Buddha enables the Bhutanese to probe into understandings of the mind and perception, desire and its origins, which transcend the monetized frenzy of the rest of the world.

While a short read, this combination of Dr. Ura's essay with Mary Peck's photographs, enriched by a more eclectic reading list that goes beyond Bhutanese borders for regional eco-criticism, is recommended. For images in complementary tones, with a longer narrative that delves into similar issues, see (my Nov. 2012 review of) Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness by John Wehrheim.(Amazon US 12-17-12)

Nicole Grace's "Dreaming Bhutan": Book Review

How does this book, praised by nearly all previous [Amazon US] reviewers, compare with similar images paired with text? I've looked at (and reviewed recently) a few such pairings. Most of these have amassed far fewer reviews--even taken together--compared to Nicole Grace's "Dreaming Bhutan: Journey in the Land of the Thunder Dragon." I want to provide more context, given the paucity of most earlier and often effusive remarks as to its substance.

Substance itself may elude the reader wishing for information. Grace in her one-page introduction, however, tells her choice to eschew such detail found elsewhere. Rather, as if "waking from a rare, exquisite dream, and finding yourself reliving its charms in vivid flashes, I have attempted to capture a few precious moments." (15) This is her prerogative. But compared to other collections, how well does she do so?

She presents in "a brief glimpse" over forty photos on the right side, spare text which could fit on a postcard on the left, leaving lots of blank space. Perhaps the slightly blurred resolution of some of the photographs fits the title, as she in promotional material for this book explains how she wants to show "dreaming" not "of" but "Bhutan" itself--as a portal to enlightenment. A romanticized approach directs Grace's gaze. It prefers "a world of enchantment, ancient rituals and dress that seems not to have changed in hundreds of years."

This offers little commentary. The newcomer curious about this Himalayan constitutional monarchy, perusing these shots of Buddhist-themed and landscape-dominant subjects, will find little information. A couple of the vertiginous Taktsang cliffside iconic monastery are perhaps necessarily tilted away from the portrait to landscape settings, but this does not enhance their effect, and details of certain places and vistas are not sharply rendered or reproduced on the page. The large map cannot be discerned as to place names. The Royal Grandmother's forward takes two sentences. A few Dzongkha terms, endnotes, and an appreciation for her 2009 visit guided by an "Aide de Camp to the beloved fourth King" and also his family which enabled her access to some holy places supplements the main body, the photos and captions.

No bustling Thimphu of now a hundred thousand residents, no girls in jeans, no guys in sneakers, no cigarettes or traffic--even the eyeglasses on one shadowy monk are barely discerned. In "a cross between the mythical lands of Shangri-La and Brigadoon," if one wants to imagine a Buddhist Bhutan free of modern presence, this will satisfy your desire.

I liked the two quotes included from the country's notorious guru from centuries ago, the Divine Madman Drukpa Kinley. He's an apt rejoinder to pomposity. Overly earnest audiences might take heed of his subversive message--and the libertine style with which he conveyed it down to the phallic decorations on walls today in his memory.

In two photos on the road to Bumthang, two painted cave pictures of Padmasambhava and the Buddha and an inscribed encouragement from that latter figure appear. She notes how, old as they look, they were made for the set of a scene from Khyentse Norbu's "Travelers and Magicians" film--"NOV 2002/ Scene 112/TAKE 101" accompanies the prayer. That and a page to the 108 chortens on Dochu La to commemorate the national campaign against Indian militants are about the only references to the contemporary occurrences in this land, not as much a "Lost Horizon" as the dust jacket's quote may lead the captivated newcomer to assume about a fragile ecological, political, and cultural entity between China and India.

For those who want to explore in photos and text the challenges for this precariously perched realm, other volumes and media may be contrasted.  The Dragon Kingdom: Images of Bhutan by Blanche Christine Olschak (1984, with photography by Ursula Markus-Gansser and Augusto Gansser) covers similar Buddhist material but with a text attentive to its integration in culture and history. Bhutan: Fortress of the Mountain Gods by Christian Schicklgruber and Françoise Pommaret (1998) gives a hefty academic weight to the same, with scholarly chapters and images of artifacts.

If you want less weighty text than these but a bit more than Grace's brevity, begin with Bhutan: Kingdom of the Dragon by Robert Dompnier (1999); he entered monasteries and holy sites to show interiors more than she may have been able to do. A few years later, Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom by Michael Hawley (2004 in smaller but still very large format than its 2003 museum showcase as the "biggest book in the world") balances an east-to-west journey (the opposite of the usual itinerary) with hundreds of digital photos. Finally, an updated look at the changing legacy of faith, custom, and globalization, a handsome treatment with sharp color photography is Bhutan Heartland by Libby Lloyd and Robert van Koesveld (2010).

Skillful black and white photography conveys its own suggestive appeal. See Bhutan: Between Heaven and Earth by Mary Peck (2011 with a valuable essay by Karma Ura on Gross National Happiness policy) and for more personal insights combined with a wider territorial range, Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness by John Wehrheim (2nd ed. 2011). Hawley, Lloyd + Van Koesfeld, Peck + Ura, and Wehrheim all include the more difficult, less evocative subjects missing from "Dreaming Bhutan."

Perhaps it's meant to be only a dream. But Bhutan's reality's worth investigating beyond the limits of these forty or so glimpses. Grace's book may whet the appetite; perhaps some of you will turn to more extensive presentations from this land. (Amazon US 12-20-12)

Grús nó Gé?

Nuair chuaigh go mo fhuinneoig thuas staighre inné, chonaic mé seo. Shíl mé go raibh mála plaisteach bán. Shéid an gaoth go leor ar na cnoic os cionn mo theach, go cinnte.

Chuir mé mo dhéshúiligh síos ó seilf ard. D'fheach mé níos dlúithe aríst. Anois, bhreathnaigh mé an éan ina ionad sin.

Bhí muineál fada agus comhlacht urrúnta air ann. Níl a fhios agam ach beagán eolas faoi cineálacha na n-éan. Mar sin, ní raibh mé cinnte má bhí sé grús nó gé.

Fhill mo mhac Niall ar ais go óna scoil. D'iarr mé air. D'fhreagair sé go mbeadh sé grús.

Rinne Niall an ghrianghraf seo. Tá muid i gcónaí ag imeall an cathair ar feadh i ngach ceann dár saol; nach bhfuil muid cinnte. B'fhéidir, tú ábalta insint freagra ceart dúinnsa.

Crane or goose? 

When I came to my window upstairs yesterday, I saw this. I thought it was a plastic bag. The wind blew a lot on these hills above my house, certainly.

I got my binoculars down from a high shelf. I looked more closely again. Now, I viewed a bird in its stead.

It had a long neck and a sturdy body. I have but a little knowledge about types of birds. Therefore, I was not sure if it was a crane or a goose.

My son Niall came back from his school. I asked him. He replied it might be a crane.

Niall took this photograph. We've lived for all of our lives around the city; we're not sure. Perhaps, you're able to tell us the right answer.

"Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods": Book Review

This folio-format study commemorates a Viennese exhibition at the Museum für Völkerkunde in 1997-98. While scholarly, and hefty in size and substance, it contributes more weightily to the knowledge we have of this Himalayan kingdom. I found it valuable as a corrective to the often more romanticized photo collections, easier to consult than more specialized if even drier monographs, or more balanced than necessarily more hurried summations in travel narratives by and for Westerners. As co-editor Christian Schicklgruber introduces the collection, it mirrors how a visitor would approach Bhutan. Visual impressions, "the lay of the land," flora and fauna, architecture, and regional peoples and their distinctive dress unfold.

Schicklgruber reminds us of the challenges a "mountain fortress" faces, given the fate of Buddhist enclaves in Ladakh, Mustang, Tibet, and Sikkim. He considers the demands of the Nepali and often Hindi populations on the southern borders, and the competing cultural and ethnic identities of the Buddhist majorities in the heartlands. He notes how modernization for the nation may not equate with conventional Western judgments, and attributes the royal stewardship for the decisions demanded as this small region deals with the pressures from India to the south and occupying China to the north.

Botanist Gerard Navara begins with a chapter on its landscape, while co-editor and Tibetologist [see my May 2012 review of her Bhutan: Himalayan Mountain Kingdom (Odyssey Guide)], Francoise Pommaret's linguistic and ethnographic survey documents the various peoples with cultural and ethnic allegiances. It (as other contributions) can be slow reading, but it sums up value--much remains to be learned about the array of languages and dialects in such a small country. Marc Dujardin, in an ambitious analysis of Rukubji in the central region, explains how it's "living architecture." As opposed to a Western understanding of monuments and concrete fixing a place's meaning, Dujardin assesses Bhutanese construction in its evolving context, sites placed by religious considerations where spirits may lurk, deities may abscond, and modern methods may undermine or support ancient ideas of how, say a farmhouse is to be rebuilt for every generation in the same family's spot.

Then, everyday life and religious worship comprise part two. I admired ethnologist Martin Brauen's "Dreamworld Tibet" (see my Feb. 2012 review) and his report from another, if unspecified, central community shows his knack for conveying the reality of life in the mountains and not myth. He relates how taxes and tasks must be achieved, and what happens when women own land and farms. 

This aligns well with Dujardin's chapter, and we see how women negotiate power and control, even as a significant percentage of the village consists of the landless families. Brauen here as in his other book cautions any Shangri-La expectations. Buddhism, more skeptical towards female energy, keeps its hold over the village and the mindsets of men and women, even as education beckons. For, the farm, if run by women, may expect girls not to stay in school, and for all there in such a village, the afterlife is still seen as more likely to reward a male than a female, regardless of her merit in this life.

"Zorig chusum" or the "thirteen crafts" have been passed down from parents to children for centuries. Barry Ison finds these exemplifying the material mixed with the spiritual out of the hardships and the diversity of Bhutan's situation. As its people cannot compete making cheap products for the globalized market, they can promote their heritage and expertise with wood, stone, painting, clay, bronze, metalwork, cane and bamboo, paper, tailoring, weaving. As in other sections, artifacts intersperse in photographs as evidence.

For the third section, Buddhism and the state being mutually supportive, Mynak Tulku as a "high cleric" interprets ritual. Although an aside, I found his paragraph on p. 140 intriguing: Buddhism may have entered Bhutan far earlier than the 7th c. AD, perhaps as early as 200-100 BC. 

Schicklgruber matches gods to sacred mountains, and applies its shamanistic origins to a religious interpretation of the striking, fabled landscape on multiple levels. "To put it rather crudely one can say that the Bhutanese do not fulfil Western demands for precise levels of classification." (161)  These gods, from folk tradition, harass or please humans, and Buddhism superseding their mythic rule, it tried to supplant or overpower them. Even the raven crown of the king may stem from this.

History, as nationhood (late for this realm), follows. Legends around the noble origins begin Pommaret's long treatment of sketchy or venerable sources transmitted from antiquity. Animism and even megaliths gave way to temples and Tibetans entered the "southern valleys of medicinal herbs" which gained fame with Guru Rinpoche's arrival in the eighth century CE. Drukpas and secondarily Nyingmapas gained pre-eminence in particular regions of the then-fragmented land. Pema Lingpa galvanized central and eastern regions as the "treasure revealer" (1450-1521). The first Shabdrung (visited by Portuguese Jesuits in 1627) repelled Tibetans to establish a western region under Drukpas. This ruler constructed dzongs in each valley to fortify then one unified theocratic-monastic kingdom.

She continues with the coming of the British (1772-1926) to use their records to compare with Bhutanese accounts. As India pushed north, Bhutan gave in, and as a trade route to Tibet, the Swiss-sized kingdom in the middle sought to stay independent internally. By the early 20th c, "Relations were excellent but distant" between the Raj and Bhutan's first king, Ugyen Wangchuck. There's a tremendous amount of information in these two chapters, full of rivalries and assassinations, but the data add up to much more than a non-specialist may want to sift through.

The final section features Karma Ura's perspective as a civil servant (and writer) on "tradition and development." He reminds us that most Bhutanese still live more than a day's walk from the "motor road," and the layout of settlement means mule tracks may endure for some as the ancient path. But, exposed as many in the capital and other towns on the road become to media and foreign goods, the elite crave more, and expectations rise faster than incomes, within a Buddhist-ruled system which cautions against excess. Globalization and development must be balanced against a precious and now rare combination of traditional values and ecological legacy. Village altruism weakens when impersonal cities beckon the young and ambitious. The lama may deserve a voice alongside the investment banker. Meanwhile, Ura's fellow intellectual, Kunzang Chöden, who wrote the first novel in English [The Circle of Karma] by a Bhutanese woman, offers five interviews from females in the capital that grows 7-10% annually. (Thimphu has now around triple the population it did when this chapter itself was drafted in the late 1990s, to prove the point.)

A glossary and list of objects illustrated end the volume. Not an exhibition catalogue in the usual sense, Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods instead presents an in-depth examination of the nation. While very factual in tone and heavily academic, the contributors serve as a cross-section of native and European scholars best able to explain this kingdom seriously to an audience for which fantasy and effusion seem to suffice given its dominant portrayal in the media as a happy hideaway.

(P.S. This book reincarnated as an award-winning 2001 Austrian website, but that's long defunct.)[11-29-12 to Amazon US]

Michael Hawley's "Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey": Book Review

This younger sibling to the world's biggest book continued raising funds for medical and educational projects "across the last Himalayan kingdom." Friendly Planet, a charity spinoff of M.I.T., raised money in an innovative fashion, as digital photography and bookbinding skill combined with high-tech expertise under a team led by Professor Michael Hawley, who ran the campus' Media Lab's special projects division. The big brother book, 5' by 7' and weighing 150 lbs., dwarfed the two Bhutanese schoolchildren the team "adopted" on their initial November 2001 visit, when displayed at Harry Winston's gallery in Manhattan. This 2003 book symbolized the meeting of high rollers with a worthy cause, and demonstrated how a $15,000 volume could further other schoolchildren and families in the remote areas of this region, reached only by trails, far from the touristed areas the book documents.

For the smaller companion, itself considerable at a foot by two feet and 15 lbs., this expands the original. It reproduces the immense photos and doubles their number, if in less stupendous manner, by explaining how the original was assembled, and how the team returned to Bhutan in 2003 to bring aid to villages and schools from the moneys raised by the big book. Now out-of-print, this follow-up 2004 volume also contributed its profits to Friendly Planet, and Hawley's text and captions, garnered from a cooperative of eleven photographers, conveys the appeal of the Buddhist kingdom and people.

Highlights include: David Macauley's handsome endpaper map; colorful masks, costumes, and dancers from a Trongsa "tsechu" or "ten-day" annual festival; shots of monastic celebrations normally forbidden to photograph; marvelous expanses from Jholmohari's snowy range bordering Tibet; and encounters with the Merak and Sakteng's Brokpa yak herders that conclude this elegant presentation. 

There's little about the history or current events beyond an itinerary following (if in reverse contrary to other versions) the sole east-west route dominating most travel narratives, understandably given the necessity to follow this to get across the mountainous domain, however slowly by jeep. It ventures off-road in two memorable sections, even as these may therefore romanticize portions of the experience, and the urbanizing and modernizing pressures on Thimphu the capital, or the demographic increases by both the southern bordering Nepali and Indian-backed peoples are barely glanced at. But readers wanting more can look elsewhere for such coverage. It's easy to get caught up in the marvels of a fabled place. The intention here is to provide visual splendor, and that goal is met. 

This volume may only be in a large library, for reference or in a rare-book room. (The big book is even rarer, naturally). It's worth spending a few hours with, to enjoy what a well-prepared text (despite a few typos--"abbot" is misspelled every time) and collection of images provide about a realm often mythologized by past and present visitors. This may prolong the myth-making, but it also addresses the practical shortcomings of everyday education and medical care too many still suffer.
(Amazon US 11-18-12)

Robert Dompnier's "Bhutan: Kingdom of the Dragon": Book Review

This offers a French photographer's array of images taken during many visits in the 1990s, emphasizing tradition and crafts. While short on text--the prefatory words are helpful but brief regarding Bhutan's history and each thematic chapter--it's handsomely arranged. The colors leap out and the size allows a map far larger than in most books on Bhutan--even if a tiny caption warns: "The borders as shown on this map are neither authentic or correct."

Originally published in 1999, this allows you to see more of the varied terrain and costumes, varied landscapes and faces. The natural range of tropical, hilly, mountainous, and valley settings covers nearly three-dozen pages of photos. Architecture of dzongs, houses, and shops follows, and the format allows you to peer into details. This also offers more examples from across the country than some other photographic collections.

The "great Punakha procession" with its symbolic commemoration of victory over the Tibetan invaders gains coverage. Next, the chapter on society takes you to markets, schools, looms, and hearths as well as the many historic dzongs, the district fortresses combining monastic control with administrative power. You see more of their interiors than usual, as other books tend to shoot their splendid exteriors atop dramatic, strategic positions. Dompnier's survey enters the walls, and reveals the monks and workers at their daily tasks.

More dances follow, and then it's off to very remote but truly captivating raw northern vistas of high Lunana, Laya, and the eastern lands of the Brokpa yak herders. A glossary of terms and a short reading list conclude this volume. The dimensions are not as overwhelming as, say, Michael Hawley's Friendly Planet Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom from the early 2000s, but they are more comprehensive than the older The Dragon Kingdom: Images of Bhutan (1984) which cover similar ground and a similar time period.

This complements John Wehrheim's black-and-white photography and comprehensive narrative from 2011, Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness. Dompnier's color matches Wehrheim's focus on people inside the landscape, and both fit into a more human presentation. For more on artifacts and crafts, the Bhutan: Fortress of the Mountain Gods (1998) large, scholarly book treats in-depth the history and culture of this kingdom. (Amazon US 12-3-12)

"The Dragon Kingdom: Images of Bhutan": Book Review

This 1983 large-format book combines a Buddhist-infused commentary by Blanche Christine Olschak with photographs by Ursula Markus-Gansser and Augusto Gannser. The Swiss-based trio of scholars reports from the earlier stages of the kingdom's connections with the West, and the analysis is therefore very light on modernization, which had just begun in the period they visited. It can be perused in a sitting, as a quick introduction to the traditional mindset of the region.

You do get a sense of the vast landscapes and mountain vistas. The photos of Lunana prove, as the text by Gansser underlines, the haunted quality of the far-off frontiers. Olschak's comments on the dances and rituals that dramatize Bon and Buddhist overlaps of stories and ideals also match the images effectively. What you won't get a sense of are the people themselves, in conversation or close-ups in the text. More from a distance, this shows the sights. It's brief, but fine for those who do not require an in-depth study of the realm.

Chapters on the religious myths and culture (attending well to spiritual themes, as this book comes from Shambhala Press in English translation), the topography (lovely photos from remote areas and well as dzongs and folk artifacts), dance (good on symbolism), "the coronation of the youngest king in the world" in 1972, and a small overview of transitions into the wider world. By now it may feel dated. It may be consulted as more "lightweight" in heft and content by those wanting a less comprehensive, but academically based survey than the 1998 Shambhala Press edition of the 1997-98 Vienna museum exhibition with scholarship, Bhutan: Fortress of the Mountain Gods, eds. Christian Schicklgruber and Francoise Pommaret. (Amazon US 11-24-12)

John Wehrheim's "Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness": Book Review

Here's a deeper look into these pages. Previous {Amazon} reviewers laud John Wehrheim's evocative b/w photographs; these compliment his sensitive, lively, insightful text. A companion to the DVD he co-produced, "Bhutan: Taking the Middle Path to Happiness," about the modernization-by-moderation Gross National Happiness project in this Himalayan kingdom turning constitutional democracy, the last land ruled under a Tantric Buddhist ethos, this book--originally in hardcover 2008, but slightly revised for the better 2011 in paperback--transcends its coffee-table appearance.

That is, after fifteen years as a hydropower consultant working in Bhutan, 1991-2006, what he presents peers into the Bhutanese, many of whom he honors as "my friend" in the calm, steady narrative. As in his similar pairing of story and image, "Taylor Camp" from Kaua'i, the clash of the recent with the traditional underlies his perspective, allowing him to record patiently the varying reactions from the natives to a world that wants to barge in, attracted to an Asian area's remote charms and natural wonders. But this does not mean he romanticizes a place where television in 1999 brings unwelcome temptations, and advertising tempts people away from the Buddhist admonition to let go of desires.

Fittingly, after a deftly conveyed history of Bhutan and its context within Indian-fueled border struggles where the nation its novel way wins a recent war on terror, the geographically east-west path begins in Paro, where one lands at the airport. Wehrheim explores the Drukpa heartlands, in western and central regions, and treks follow drives into the northern interior near Tibet. A climb up to Taktshang doesn't seem to faze him. We learn of the Divine Madman and patron saint Drukpa Kinley, and the girl turned goddess Yeshe Tsogyal.

In the Thimphu chapter, we visit his hosts Jack and Karma; she relates her family's saga which shows the difficulties of many in this land where subsistence farming exacts its toll, and which in its abandonment the capital lures some young folks eager for civil service and bright lights. "TV ruined my life," laments a bumper sticker. Wehrheim as an engineer observes astutely how the modern buildings in traditional style gloss over concrete and steel the folk patterns but the structures cannot sustain the shapes that have evolved gracefully with organic materials.

In Punakha, Wangchu takes him into the forests. A yellow dog, one of the ubiquitous barkers, hassles him one night. A yelp is heard later. A leopard has taken off the cur, like a cat with a rat, the beast hanging limp in firm jaws.

Bhutan's predicament might be akin to that of small prey between big beasts. Glacial melts worsen conditions; the fate of Nepal and its deforestation, and of Tibet with the loss of its timber, overshadows this nation as it tries to balance sustainable growth with a reluctance or eagerness (the capitulation of Sikkim lingers as its doomed neighbor) to rule one's self. The central regions of Wangdi, Trongsa, and Bumthang give the author a chance to join a royal celebration, that goes on for weeks it seems. The king having abdicated at fifty for his son's reign, the son urges his people to further democracy. But, they fear the corruption and graft of their neighbors will infect the Bhutanese polity.

Before this event, my favorite chapters take us nearer the northwest frontier with Tibet. First, Wangchu and companions escort Wehrheim into Gasa. A hot spring, and elegant portraits of its bathers, enhance a bawdy set of exchanges, as if the Wife of Bath reincarnated. The territory of Laya and then rival Lunana follow. The Layap, more laid-back, exemplify a "hidden" people tucked away out of sight of the Tibetan trade routes, 12,000 feet up. Conical hats perched on the women and the forthright, practical attitude of the locals make them a memorable bunch. Their "night-hunting" custom of matchmaking seems a twist on my Lao or Hmong students' tales of similar "abduction" where all the family are complicit!

As with the Lunap, the people over in Lunana, they seem far removed from what we know as neighbors. The Lunap have practiced polyandry as the men are away so long and this kept the population low in a harsh terrain. A more reticent and gruff lot, they contrast with the Layap.

In a moonscape, Wehrheim, a water expert, knows that he cannot get sick from a "sacred spring" that high up. He drinks a cold draft. He gives in as his heart stops and energy invades his body. He relates a terrible and powerful afternoon spent coping with the aftereffects of the "naga."

Reading these encounters, the vivid and textured photography interspersed to often comment directly or subtly on the narrative, you learn about the sensibility of the people. Gradually, your own time and space retreat, as with the impact of the "naga's water," if not so dreadfully. Receding from our own surroundings, the harsh and gentle notes mingled in this account merge and rise.

Unlike more heavily promoted reports from Bhutan, falling into New Age rapture or (see my reviews of "Radio Shangri-La" by Lisa Napoli and Jamie Zeppa's "Beyond the Sky and the Earth" for a relevant pair) "I went there and fell in love" revelations, "Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness" allows a longer gaze than a first-person voice, through the camera. While limited of course to his choice, the added visions open up the reader to become a viewer. He tells us in an afterword: "The words and events are true but not always in the order and sequence implied."

In Wehrheim's last chapter, in a bar in Thimphu Town, he tells an ambitious Indian who wishes to push Bhutan twenty years forward that such a jolt will leave it like Sikkim: invaded by immigrants, overrun by India, touristed and commodified. Forty years behind Bhutan may be, but better that than the fate of Tibet after that period. In a parallel conversation with a Tibetan-descended man, whose family in part escaped, Wehrheim sums up his subject jauntily. "Happy peasants in bountiful fields. A King who's too good to be true. The usual. I'm making photos, shooting video and collecting stories. Everybody in Bhutan's got a story--some of them might even be true." (Amazon US 11-1-12)

John Wehrheim's "Taylor Camp": Book Review

"Exotic locations with beautiful women" accurately captures much but not all of the charm of this handsome study. John Wehrheim's skillful black-and-white photography from the early 70s conveys the light and warmth he enjoyed on the North Shore of Kaua'i. Here, Elizabeth Taylor's brother Howard gave land to thirteen feckless hippies who'd been the harbinger of what would change that island from a sleepy place in the sunset of the plantation era of sugarcane and pineapple into today's tourist and surfing mecca--witness pricy Princeville near the setting of the seven cleared acres known as Taylor Camp near Hanalei Bay, on the site of an old Hawaiian settlement of taro groves and graves.

Taylor gave it out of spite (the county wanted the land for a park) to the campers, who had been jailed after settling in a another island park. They were very young mainlanders, often from California, often well-off, and in March 1969, they took possession. They tried to go native: treehouses, plastic sheeting, and a beachfront property. Food stamps, a garden, and cultivation of "pakalolo" (the last endearing them to a few otherwise wary locals) sufficed. An eclectic chapel, happily naked parents and kids cavorting on the sands, many smiles--these fill the pages along with recollections of the residents, decades later. I was impressed how satisfied and healthy, given what I reckoned would be conditions of squalor and sloth, they look.

Then, as Liz visited, the puka shell craze began, and Surfer Magazine featured the shore on a cover and lavish page spread, the idyll ended. At its height, three hundred hippies and other wanderers and beach-bums flocked to a place too fragile to endure.  The state in 1977 ordered Sam Lee to burn the camp, after evictions, although all left without resistance. The people are still waiting for their park on the site of the camp, even as other areas nearby get snapped up for development of condos and second homes. Let's hope it stays in the public domain.

And, as the mini-essays appended to the photos document (there's also a DVD released separately in 2008), the sunny smiles portrayed over and over in this well-designed book did not endure for all the campers. The jungle hid its own secrets among the treehouses by the end of the road. Paradise's costs took their toll. While many of those who came to stay there for a while or forever testify movingly, the young children raised there relate the difficulty to grow up so quickly, where few outsiders attended school or were accepted, and among the counter-cultural mores and casual relationships that tended to be the Camp lifestyle.

Suzanne "Bobo" Bollin, one of many examples, typifies the profile. She left San Diego after run-ins with the police over pot. She jumped probation and fled with her girls to Kaua'i. She partied, she indulged, and she inhaled. Yet she bemoans the changes that her own arrival accelerated: "Go watch the sunset. People are getting so far away from what God wants us to do, we really need to get back to nature, and I am hoping that this book will help people do that."

Vietnam sent some there for peace--Calvin Kuamo'o tells his story, raised on the Big Island, fighting as an Asian for America, coming back from hell; "Taylor Camp gave me heaven." Spirituality, sexuality, and a lack of materialism attracted many to the allure of this unfrequented hideaway. Many stayed, one reason the population is three times that in 1969 on the island. Most of those interviewed reside somewhere throughout Hawai'i, although some--showing the changes once upon a time--had left the Camp for the Big Island as back then land was cheaper. D. Keakealani Ham Young describes  conflicts between incomers and locals, how those around the Camp tended to keep their distance.

Many islanders tell of the passing of the old ways, the loss of respect for land passed down, as newcomers rushed in. They themselves often defend the island they have adopted: they respect the customs that their own enthusiastic presence has complicated by the entry of so many from elsewhere. Now, many whose roots are in the islands cannot afford to stay where their families raised them--I think of some of my own dorm mates back in college who had left O'ahu to study in L.A. I teach a few students now, in Southern California, who have since left that "rock" for the mainland, to find work and an affordable home.

John Wehrheim himself came to the islands in 1969, and married into a local family; his wife became mayor of the County of Kaua'i. Her opponent, also interviewed, lobbied for the hotels and houses that now dominate some of the island; she had wanted more farming. You can judge the results yourself.

His portrait, fair-minded and elegiac, begins with his deft survey of the squabbles and idealism that infused the Camp. His photos arrange towards "mauka" inland moving up from "makai," as he follows the pattern of sea to mountain. He shows us the residents living there near the end of the commune, 1976 or so in the village, as if on a guided tour. Photos and quotes comprise the main section. This then introduces the essays, from those who watched, battled, supported, and became Taylor Camp. The results stand as an eloquent picture of the hippie dream before it faded into the darkening ocean at twilight. (Amazon US 10-24-12; compare photos in Wehrheim's "Bhutan" book.)

Grianghraf na Himíleachaí

Dúirt mé múinteoir eile ar mo scoil faoi a chreideamh. Chonaic sé spárálaíscáiléáin ar mo ríomhaire ag an obair. Taispeántais grianghraf ó sliabh os cionn loch i tSikkim. 

Níl ábalta chóipeáil sé níos mór anseo. Úinéireacht Microsoft é. Mar sin féin, ábalta tú a fhéiceant an imeasc seo níos lú suas. 

Breathnaigh mé ar sé go minic. D'inis múinteoir dom go raibh más radharc a choinneail ar lorg, beidh mé ag dul ann lá amháin. Mhínigh sé go raibh mian ag a bhean a tí ag dul An India. 

Ba mhaith sí ag cur cuairt an Taj Mahal. Bheul, bhí grianghraf de aici. Bhí chuimhne dí de go rialta.  

Ar ndóigh, chuaigh siad a chéile ansiud ag deireanach. Mar sin, chuir mé é ag leanúint ar aghaidh an grianghraf Himíleacha ar an gcúis chéanna. B'fhéidir, is féidir liom dul an Himíleachaí lá amháin.

A photo of the Himalayas.

Another teacher at my school told me his belief. He saw a screensaver on my computer at work. It displays a photograph of a mountain over a lake in Sikkim.

It's not able to be copied larger here. Microsoft owns it. All the same, you are able to view this image smaller above.

I look at it often. The teacher told me that if a view of a sight is kept, I will go there one day. He explained his wife's wish to go to India. 

She wanted to visit the Taj Mahal. Well, she had a photograph of it. She was reminded by it regularly.

Of course, they went together over there at last. Therefore, I continue to put a photo of the Himalayas up for the same reason. Perhaps, I will be able to go to the Himalayas one day.

(Formerly known as) the Kingdom of Lo/ Mustang

When Michel Peissel died last autumn, I was reminded of his exploration of this remote--even by Himalayan standards--desert realm that while within the boundaries now of Nepal is over the range in the Tibetan plateau. I looked up in the Wikimedia commons for Mustang (kingdom) photos and I was reminded instantly of a postcard I'd bought (discounted of course) twenty-five years ago at the bookstore while a student at UCLA. Tom Zetterstrom's black and white photo of "Lhasa Valley, 1981" looked not at all like the Land of Snows yet eerily like my memory of Myoma, a desolate area north of Palm Springs whose topographical map I'd long kept after a Scout campout the spring of '73.


Its odd trees, tilted brushy against barren hills, drew me in. As if the lunar landscape sprouted some symbol of arid California, all over the vistas of my childhood. While the valley's water lent the scene a watershed-adjacent air my desert encounter--I got lost on the way between the campsite and the ride home, in predictable heat and thirst--lacked, it enchanted me. It looked like an engraving from a Victorian ethnologist from the burnished reign of some Raj. I kept the postcard safe for years as it appeared to me as if a dream to be fulfilled. Despite the title, mun tan, Tibetan for "fertile plain," much of Lo/ Mustang appears differently than advertised, or as it is shown in this shot from Ghemi:



Seeing these photos of Tetang...


and the capital, Lo Mantang...

...reminds me also of visions as if glimpsed by Coleridge, Calvino, or Borges, of impossible cities beyond our comprehension. One impossibility is assuming such places will stay this way. When the Maoists overthrew the kingdom of Nepal in 2008, so went the last king of Mustang. As the new regime courts the Chinese, tourism and modernization will follow as inevitably as Kathmandu's made filthy by Israeli and German trekkers and Lhasa by military-owned brothels, neon, Holiday Inn, and every manner of cynical exploitation. Such realms contract and dry up, pressed between China and India, and a Nepalese effort to supplant Buddhist fastnesses with Hindu-dominated enclaves where monasteries may turn more museums.

As with Bhutan, which just raised its $200 per diem rate to $250, at least Mustang requires visitors to pay $50 a day. Yet, according to the Wikipedia entry, the locals have resisted the visits as of 2010 as none of that fee goes back to them. So much for Marxist reform of an unjust system for the peasants.

As you can tell from my Scouting, my ventures outdoors remain infrequent. For now, I mean to look up when I have more downtime what's been written by those who ventured to the little-known kingdom the past half-century. However dated, three library titles may open up this redoubt to curious eyes like mine. Peissel's 1967 bestselling "A Lost Tibetan Kingdom"; "The Last Forbidden Kingdom" by Clara Marullo in 1995; Peter Mathiessen's "East of Lo Monthang" the same year await.

Then it may be on to the tale of finding the mysterious source Peissel traced for Herodotus' "gold-digging ants" into the Himalayas, or his book on yet another "hidden kingdom" of Zanskar, in Kashmir near where the Baltis live, in the last places far from our relentless network, where few discoveries await today's adventurers, at least on the surface of our topographically diligent globe.

Oona Frawley's "Memory Ireland: Vol. 2": Book Review

How do emigrants remember the old sod? Do an immigrant's sons and daughters commemorate their ancestral, often distant, homeland? Can such a place endure as home within a diaspora?

Within the motherland, how do natives transform what was left behind? Both those overseas and those at home perpetuate "memory practices" through souvenirs, stories, song, and celebrations. Images on walls as pictures or photos commemorate traditions and concoct new trinkets, kitsch, and art. These make up the material for the professors and poets who contribute here. 

In my NYJB review of this series' predecessor, I explained: "This first of four volumes explores the replacement of chronological historiography with a more fluid, less rigid approach that investigates what is remembered from the Irish past." Oona Frawley edits eighteen mainly academic submissions to volume two. While "rhizomes" and "chronotopic" feature in two of the first three essay titles, visits to Irish fairs abroad, examinations of tattoos, and excursions to Gaelic games, cooking, and "the eviction photograph" explore more familiar contexts for most readers. Aimed at the Irish Studies and historiographical fields, alternating between theoretical concerns and accessible examples, this collection will intrigue audiences seeking a serious study of Irishness in popular culture--more serious than the blarney and blather which constitutes much of what passes for Irishness in culture. 

Nostalgia, Frawley observes, "has fed into the construction of the cultural memory that Ireland embodies at home as well" as abroad. Until the independence of most of the island, Ireland hid many national ideas through symbolic representation. Therefore, memories themselves "spoke" in acts, words, and emblems.

Aidan Arrowsmith looks at British-Irish writing as "postmemory" and finds many romantic cliches. Chad Habel relates from Irish-Australian novels of ancestral memory more trauma, perhaps due to such immense distance, to separate from the homeland as well as a desire among some to recover relationships and attachments from dormancy and attenuation. Katrin Urschel peers into Irish-Canadian "physical manifestations" of the homeland within the vast, multicultural dominion.

From America, James P. Byrne challenges the usual derivation of nostalgia as "homecoming" + "pain". He locates a revisionist nostalgia which advances political and cultural power for emigrants. While Frawley appears to overstate as "mostly unaddressed" the problem of race in Irish contexts as if able to be confronted or depicted more outside the island, Maureen Reddy uses Jim Sheridan's film In America and Roddy Doyle's novel Oh, Play That Thing and story "Home to Harlem" as case studies that expand the attention given by current Irish Studies scholars to "race-inflected" accounts. Spurgeon Thompson's "The Kitsch of the Dispossessed" excavates as "signifiers" artifacts of "cultural loss" from Irish America alongside Patrick McCabe's and Neil Jordan's versions of The Butcher Boy.

Other objects, as jewelry, souvenirs, and tattoos, Maggie Williams shows, emerge as "icons of Irishness". The great fairs in the 1890s and 1900s in Chicago and St. Louis featured simplified "Irish villages, and such visual displays of a less complex "recent past" endured in the recollections of visitors, along with mementos. Jewelry temporarily and tattoos indelibly show an identification--to the public or to intimates--as "signs of membership in a constructed ethnic and cultural community".

In the early days of New Zealand, St. Patrick's Day celebrations invoked, Tanja Bueltmann reports on varying memberships for the small emigrant community there. For the eminent Irish-language poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, her shift from childhood among immigrants to Lancashire dramatically changed when she was "fostered out" to her Gaelic-speaking aunt's family in West Kerry. Ní Dhomhnaill feels as if, when she returns to England as an adult, a "doppelganger" hovers, "the person I would have been if I stayed".

Joop Leerssen opens part two. He studies as "internal memory transfer" the gap as the Irish language receded in the nineteenth century and a historic cultural break found partial repair--as with James Joyce's Dublin reconstruction in Ulysses-- through determined active and archival intervention. Of course, Joyce used music as one keen method to evoke memory, and Katie Brown tackles his mid-nineteenth century predecessors, who blended a nationalistic mix of static and dynamic shifts of modes and lyrics which filled Ireland's linguistic breach. Steve Coleman continues with traditional sounds which embody history variously, and which stir contested innovation into musical legacies.

The "eviction photograph" codes a powerfully charged image into this history, as Gail Baylis scrutinizes their arranged depictions of peasant expulsion by landlords and their agents. In the 1890s, one series of "protracted evictions" was exploited for publicity by the Land League for foreign journalists, English politicians, and "radical sympathizers". Baylis compares historical with recent appearances, in the press and on genealogical sites, of "visual coding" from such charged images.

Related images resist the "outsider" condition given to Travellers, opposed to what Mícheál Ó hAodha surveys as its emerging "rearticulations" from within its community to the "anthropological canon". Sara Brady's analysis of Gaelic sports looks at games in Ireland and overseas as a primary marker "to stage identity, ethnicity, and place". Hasia Diner sums up the Irish portion of her book on "foodways in the age of migration" a century and more ago--the Famine may have contributed as well as the dependence on the potato to "disassociation of food from identity, family, and community" but the Irish predilection for alcohol fueled much of their social life--and anti-British subversion as such beverages eluded taxation, so the rationalization developed-- no matter where the bonding transpired.

Cooking at the "traditional Irish cottage" proliferates as a commemorative subject. Rhonda Richman Kenneally seeks to redress the emphasis on the hearth and not the housewife. Cookbooks reveal the incorporation of international and modernizing influences into the island's "gastronomic heritage" as defined and delineated by three cooks' narratives from the past seventy years. 

Paul Muldoon, in typically allusive prose segments, starts with rum and Treasure Island and after forays into matters piratical and puritanical regarding that demon drink and other brands, and skirting the Troubles of his native turf, ends with a confrontation, suppressed in part as in many Irish families, with the coded mention in Robert Louis Stevenson, of alcoholism. With this memory, so frequent in histories recorded or erased by the Irish over the sea or back on the island, this collection closes. 

Frawley--a New Yorker teaching at an Irish university--alludes to the position of not only the caricatured American tourist looking for his or her roots, but the Irish who are tourists in their own country. When Irishness is globalized, what does this do to caricature the natives? Perhaps the third or fourth volume will include an essay on franchised Irish bars with mass-produced "old-fashioned" decor, this unforgettably marketed "kitsch of the dispossessed" as icons of the diaspora and beyond. (NYJB 5-15-12 with minor editing.)