You should build a new tree.
Heh, I made up a proverb.
Describe the Clouds is a new blog I’m keeping for all the travel-related stuff I want to share that isn’t a result of our own travels. It’ll feature pieces that convey a strong sense of place – the majority will be links to other people’s blogs and what not, but there will also be media and some personal stuff cross-posted from Quarter Year.
Please head over there and check it out!
Posted on September 2, 2010 at 11:34 am.

by Mike
Even a year later this man’s look strips my facade to its frame. Can you feel it too? His worker, a young man, made room in the shop for our flat-tired motorbike, and he went to work silently.
I wanted a picture of the old guy, I had to have a picture of those nails, but I made myself a rule to only take pictures of people I talk to. Damn principle. He didn’t speak English, so with my (very) limited Indonesian, I attempted to have a heart-to-heart with the old man, to get to know him, to have a meaningful, cross-cultural exchange.
“You work here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How many years?”
“27.”
Ah, the clumsy conversational dance where all you can reliably understand is “yes,” “no,” whole numbers and “chicken.”
“How old boy?”
“16″
“Your son?”
“No.”
“How many years you Bali?”
“[Unintelligible, but he didn't say chicken].”
Someone else paid and he used his nails to flip though a wad of cash. I salivated for a photo. Enough chit-chat, time to go for the kill, but subtly of course.
“How many years?” I pointed to his hand.
“One.”
Hold up, only a one year commitment for those things? This is doable! We can do this!
“I photo you?”
“Yes.”
I love travel, don’t you? You can never predict what you’ll come across when you leave the beaten path. There are interesting old dudes out there, around the world, willing to take a second to chit chat with a foreigner.
This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.
Posted on August 27, 2010 at 1:58 pm.

The Candelaria in Bogota, Colombia
by Mike
To accompany this photo I searched my journal for a piece of writing that might radiate a sense of place in Bogota, but in the two weeks we spent there I only filled ten pages and little of it describes the texture of the city. Some say, “Put away the camera and enjoy the place!” but the two acts aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, if measuring by regret (which is the only way to measure anything ever), I rarely regret taking the time to capture something but more often regret losing the first-person insight during a unique experience. With this in mind, sometimes I’ll simply list everything I’m noticing at a particular moment – sounds, smells, physical feelings, words, etc.
At the beginning of my first trip in 2001 I had to ask (our friend) Amy, “So, why does a person keep a journal?” I was on my way to Europe for the summer and had gotten a gorgeous hand-made journal from my then-girlfriend (I still count it as one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve received). Amy thought it was hilarious that I was asking for advice on what to write about in my own personal journal, but she ended up giving a pretty good rule of thumb: Write about stuff you don’t want to forget. It’s amazing, ten years later, to read back and say, “Oh yeah! I’d completely forgotten about that!” It makes me wonder what else I’ve experienced that might interest me, but I guess that can’t be easily mined.
Anyway, this picture is from a scenic little neighborhood in Bogota called The Candelaria. I think the photo captures the sense of place, even if my writing didn’t.
Posted on August 25, 2010 at 10:21 pm.

In the train station’s high yellow light a young American, new to India, looked at his book but thought about suffocation; each breath filled his mouth like tea.
He smelled food prepared by an Indian family camped in a circle on the station’s floor. An old woman ate there, resting in anticipation. She would have to shove through crowds to secure a seat for the night-long ride where she, herself, was more likely to suffocate than this fit young man. She would sleep against a stranger on the aisle floor. She would be carried to another part of India, another humid part of India, where the traveler might see orange glowing light he could not now imagine if only he were brave enough to step down from the car and breathe deeply through his nose.
(Read More)
In the station he rose and followed a man to a ticket counter where others stood. He waited for them to finish. Hand prints smeared the window. A customer walked away and two more slid in and another man pressed against the counter. Mike waited patiently behind, above them. A dark man with fresh-smelling hair shouldered Mike’s ribs and nudged him farther back, so he was now separated from the counter by a crowd. Victoria station would not suffocate the young traveler, he was determined. Mike grew into his frame, his wide shoulders and thick chest. He was much larger than the Indian men. He leaned into each shift of the crowd and carved a path to the front.
Later, on the ground again, Mike stared beyond his book at a child’s dirty toes wiggling at him from bare feet. She held out an open hand. He ignored the beggar and he ignored the metallic ache that arrived in his ribs and coiled there. She stood for a minute, hand out, looking at a strand of brown hair curled over Mike’s pink ear.
Bombay is fine during the day, but I haven’t gotten used to the night. I feel so vulnerable then. Really, at night, I wonder whether I’ll make it three months, and at dusk I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I pine to see Westerners; I understand why blacks in the US say there’s a race problem – when you’re the minority it’s so apparent and jarring. Each day feels like a week, that, honestly, I just want to be over. The poverty here is relentless and my wealth is relentless and I can’t close my eyes on either. What am I supposed to do with this? What good is relative fortune? I can pose all the theories I want about giving to beggars but when I shut the hotel door I’d better have it sorted out because I’m tested before I reach the street. Were I brave enough to be vulnerable I’d talk with locals and justify this travel, but I only talk to beggars. I tell them, “No,” because I don’t know what else to say.
The dirty toes turned away and she walked like a ghost with her hands down. What haunts that girl’s body is the want for little and the expectation of nothing. If only she’d be at peace, he thought. The ache smoldered.
He looked past his book now into the eyes of an Indian man suddenly seated on the ground in front of him. The beggar didn’t extend his hand; he examined Mike’s blue eyes. The man’s black hair curled over his dark ears and he looked strong in his frame with wide shoulders and thick chest, though his legs had been cut off below the knees. Crutches lay beside him. Mike knew the man was 25-years-old, and they studied each other.
Posted on August 6, 2010 at 12:21 am.

by Mike
Have been scraping through early Bali photos and pulled out this series.
More Photos
Posted on August 2, 2010 at 4:53 pm.

by Mike
Wandering around the dusty roads of Bagan, we took a turn toward the river and discovered a thriving little shoreline where women washed clothes, kids splashed and others bathed modestly. As we strolled past gardens that hugged the sandy bank, we met a little boat pulling to shore, letting passengers off. Three kids paddled people across the river to what must have been a small village on the other side (though, as you can see in some of the pictures, it doesn’t look like there’s anything there. I suspect the town was far back from the shore, out of the way of floodwater).
We waved the kids over and asked if they’d take us on a little tour down to the gold-covered pagoda that commands the river’s bend.
Read More


The kids were young. They appeared to be managed by another young man on shore. I don’t remember exactly how much they asked for the half-hour ride there and back, it was something like one dollar, but we decided to pay five. We immediately regretted it. On the one hand, spreading the wealth is good, but on the other we were encouraging them to be reliant on (and to rip off) tourists, which can ruin a culture in the long run.
When we handed the kids the money they didn’t really give a look of “Thanks!,” rather they seemed to look at the money and say, “How do we hide this from our manager so he doesn’t take a cut?”
You might remember that kids from Bagan were the ones who served us at a tea shop in Yangon when we were contemplating child labor. So I guess, when I put the two situations in perspective, I’d rather give money to the boat kids who can remain home (even if working with tourists) than to tea shops who have taken kids from their families to live and work in the big city because they have no apparent prospects.
Obviously the better solution would be that the government provide adequate education, but that’s not the case right now.
(Then again, if I wasn’t so obsessed with money then maybe it wouldn’t be a central part of this story. That, itself, is counter-productive, I think.)


People fished. Another boat appeared to be dredging the river, its pump making a tremendous noise that didn’t travel too far in the humid air, but was plenty loud close up.
Throughout the trip I worried about my ankles being exposed to mosquitoes in the bottom of the boat, so we lathered up in bug repellent. Myanmar hasn’t rid itself of malaria and dengue fever, so we were constantly conscious of risky situations. Though it’s easy to look back at the pictures and romanticize the trip, a lot of energy in third-world travel is spent on minimizing risk and paying attention to your body. Am I just a little dehydrated, or is this the start of an illness? Though I’m hungry, is this food safe? Can you catch anything from drinking river water? And so on…





Posted on July 6, 2010 at 12:16 am.

Bagan, Myanmar.
by Mike
What’s intriguing about this picture is the question, “Where is that plane going to and coming from?” If you look at a world map you’ll see there’s almost no other cities on that longitude, from pole to pole in that hemisphere. The only possibility I can see for a direct north-south flight might be Lhasa to Yangon. If it’s actually going at a more southwestly trajectory, then the origin might be Kathmandu or New Delhi with destinations like Yangon, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.
Posted on July 2, 2010 at 9:26 am.

by Mike
Sometimes a city feels so different that you don’t even know what to take a picture of, so you snap shots of the biggest things around: buildings.
Many buildings in Yangon were decaying, rotting or defiantly holding their ground against the heat and humidity.
(More Pictures Inside)

This, to me, is what Yangon felt like – wide and quiet streets, air illuminated by the warm sun while people take their time at curbside teashops.


It was illegal to take pictures of government buildings. Sometimes they were marked, but sometimes they weren’t, so Azure slyly took pictures of these behemoths, most likely forbiddenly.


Typical scene on the backstreets.

We were surprised that the TV in our rooms showed international news (BBC) including stories on how the Myanmar government was illegally detaining Nobel Prize winner and opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi. I wonder how many people inside Myanmar understand English well enough to grasp the newscast.

Downtown mosque.

Hindu shrine with serious guard.

The side of a Hindu temple.

A very recognizable tea shop.

Many restaurants and food stalls cooked at outdoor kitchens like this one. I’m glad we got a shot of this because sometimes, when traveling, something novel might be so ubiquitous that you never take the time to get a shot of it.
Posted on June 30, 2010 at 11:21 am.

King.
by Mike
My dad got hold of an enormous king salmon, the largest he’s ever caught. They fought for 20 minutes as the salmon repeatedly ran for its life, but the hook was well-set. It was a monster, weighing almost 50 pounds (42)!
(Here are a bunch of pictures of my dad in his heaven)
Posted on June 27, 2010 at 1:47 pm.

by Mike
Early morning in the back streets is quiet. It smelled like smoke and fried foods – for breakfast I had a little doughnut thing that was cooked by a lady on the street with a small crowd around her. It was greasy-good.
Posted on June 25, 2010 at 8:33 am.

by Mike
Can I be honest with you? (Who am I kidding, we’re all the imagination of ourselves, we hardly exist enough that you can object. So I’ll be honest.) We didn’t like Shwedegon Paya very much. It’s the top tourist draw in all of Myanmar, and apparently the pinnacle of Myanmar pride. The LP guidebook writer appeared to have had an orgasmic experience that lead to them devoting more pages to the temple than to any other attraction I’ve seen in their books. There are probably more pages on the Shwedegon Paya than there are on non-Bali Indonesia.
But you know what? It was just a big temple, from the outsiders’ perspective. Another misguided human attempt to honor the supernatural with material goods. Eh.
Oh, 100% of our entry fee was turned into gold leaf, which they reapply every year, while their people beg and starve. I suppose they mine vanity from the same source as Americans who buy luxury cars here at home, but none of this excuses our five-dollar contribution to it, so let me say this: If you’re going to Myanmar and you don’t have any connection to Buddhism or architecture, maybe skip this place. Give your five dollars to someone selling their own food on the street. Pictures!
Anyway, the whole time I was taking pictures here I felt like I was trying to draw blood from a stone. I mean, I know this place is beautiful, but opulence is ugly. It’s enough to make a monk take to the forest.
The Structure

I do have to admit, though, that the entrance was pretty exciting. It made you feel like maybe you were about to walk out onto the court for Game 7 of the NBA Finals, the only thing missing was the roar of the crowd.



People

Pagodas seem to be spirituality-centered gathering places. Locals were just hanging out, chatting, some even had food with them. Many were deep in meditation or prayer, and nobody seemed to mind having their picture taken. I wonder if this was due to the general, “I’m OK, You’re OK”ness of Buddhism.

I was on the fence about including this picture because it’s not gorgeous or well-executed or anything, and the kid is an idiot, but I was so moved by this woman, apparently exhausted by her devotion, that I could never bring myself to cut it during the editing process.

This man is pulling a rope that rings a bell. Note that there’s a Buddha statue in front of him.

This was our trusty guide. He just started talking to us and we didn’t have the heart to tell him to leave us alone (I think that’s how it’s done here, anyway), but he was a nice guy. He spoke good English and had been a professor his whole life, but the government forced him to retire because he could remember the time before their regime. That made him dangerous, of course, because he had a broad perspective of the government’s lies. He told us not to talk about it, though, and also not to trust just any monk – some of them, apparently, are government spies. The government’s main resistance comes from within the monasteries.

TRAITOR!!


This little girl is wearing the traditional face paint, tanakh, I think. Most children and many women wore it. Men didn’t tend to wear it, for whatever reason. Apparently it works as sunscreen, though I think it’s primarily appreciated as make-up. It’s incredibly endearing.
Us.

Azure pouring water on the Tuesday Buddha.

Me pouring water on the Saturday dragon. If anyone knows what this symbolizes maybe you can leave the info in a comment.

My favorite of this whole set – Azure back at Tuesday with the guide
Anyway, I’m glad to finally have the pictures up and done with, they’d been blocking up my system for over six months! (Ew!) We’re going through our Myanmar pictures right now, so expect more in the days to come.
Posted on June 24, 2010 at 8:02 am.

by Mike
While Azure and I sat at a tea shop in Yangon we were approached by a young monk with his collection bucket. He held it out to us. I was happy to offer some food, so we held up a pastry, “Do you want this?” He shook his head no. I held up another pastry and he shook his head again, “No.” Click to Read More
Of course the monk isn’t going to ask straight out for anything, because he shouldn’t want in the first place (he should just present himself without expectations)… but the kid wanted money. We were uneasy giving him money because the practice isn’t supposed to be about that, we thought. That’s more like begging.
Wasn’t it the point that Buddhist monks be happy with whatever they’re offered? Wasn’t it the point that they not be choosy about food, that they only accept alms to keep their body going so it can house the life-force?
We were getting a little upset about the apparent corruption of what we thought were pretty straight-forward Buddhist values – and the fact that we’d met some unimpressive, certainly unenlightened monks a few nights earlier. One was possessive of us, which is again out of sync with what we understand to be Buddhism.
Azure and I spent the morning trying to figure out if we had misunderstood the practice or if we were seeing it misapplied somehow.

Sitting at another tea shop, an English teacher – I don’t remember his name, but it starts with Oo Oo – noticed I was wearing the traditional Myanmar longhi, and he commented on it. He sat down to talk with us. His long white hair was in a top knot and there were long, white wisps coming off, as I imagine a schoolteacher from the 1820s old west might look. He had a whiskery mustache and no beard. His white shirt was buttoned up to the collarless top, and he wore the same traditional longhi, of course. I asked him why he dressed like this while few others did. He said that he wanted to keep the traditions alive. Yes! Why are there so few who understand this?
We took advantage of his English-speaking to ask him about the Buddhists. He said he was a Buddhist, though he only lasted as a monk for 10 days. He said that we should give money to nuns – they need it. They’re not well-taken care of by the monasteries, monetarily. They only receive raw rice then have to cook everything themselves.
On the other hand – and we sensed this – monks don’t need the money at all. They get donations and eat very well, everything is prepared for them, so they don’t even take food when it’s offered. He said there are a lot of "fake" monks who only put the robes on then don’t change anything. They have a plan to start a business or something, so they throw the robes on, collect money while taking English classes and internet classes, then when they have enough they quit and start some computer store or whatever.
People (and all the monks) can tell the difference between genuine monks and fake monks. Some genuine monks – as I suspected – become forest monks. It’s just in their nature, he said, to go and be alone and meditate in a cave or under a tree. Some genuine monks will stay in the temples as teachers. Monks are not respected here unless they deserve respect, it seems, and people know the difference.

Posted on June 21, 2010 at 11:55 pm.



Pictures from Alaska, monks from Thailand, client from Bellevue, words from my heart.
by Mike
The monks told us not to enjoy our food, so I tried, but it wasn’t so fun.
(Click to Expand)

Before meals the monks pray. They say, “This food is for my body, not for enjoyment.” I think it’s ok to enjoy while you’re eating, but if you shove someone aside so you can have your favorite food then that’s just not right.
The other day someone said, in all seriousness, “I’m just trying to survive.” Business was slow, and though their ‘survival’ was at stake, they were using their money to pay me to wash the windows of their large home. We have a funny concept of survival. Their life isn’t at stake, their lifestyle is. A lot of us confuse the two, and since lifestyle is an extension of identity, the idea of changing it is equated with some kind of death. But it’s not death, it’s pride or vanity that causes the pain.
Food abounds. What if we ate what we had, not what we sought? And what if that was satisfactory?
I see why the monks warn us about enjoying food: Some of us buy our favorite food – even if we’re supporting companies that harm people – because we’re addicted to our lifestyles. I don’t think happiness depends on what we eat, so that’s not an excuse. When we’re addicted to something, we make compromises to secure it.

Posted on June 20, 2010 at 10:05 pm.

by Mike
These are from the middle of Bali, near Munduk.
Previous pictures, and the post inspired by this lake, are here.
But wait, there are More!
Posted on June 17, 2010 at 11:29 am.

Somewhere on Bali
Posted on June 16, 2010 at 10:05 am.

Hibiscus Tiger, Bali, Indonesia
by Mike
Nice tiger picture, right? Well, the picture that goes with the quote below was supposed to lead this post, but I just couldn’t bare to put it in plain sight. It’s hidden behind the Not Safe For Work cut.
The following is a quote from Steppenwolf (1929) by Hermann Hesse. There’s this ongoing (semantics-heavy) debate in travel circles about the difference between a “traveler” and a “tourist.” Here’s what I think: nobody with a cell phone is traveling. That’s all I’ll contribute to the debate at this point. Here’s Hesse:
We talked, too, of her nephew and she showed me in a neighboring room his latest hobby, a wireless set. There the industrious young man spent his evenings, fitting together the apparatus, a victim to the charms of wireless, and kneeling on pious knees before the god of applied science whose might had made it possible to discover after thousands of years a fact which every thinker has always known and put to better use than in this recent and very imperfect development. We spoke about this, for the aunt had a slight leaning to piety, and religious topics were not unwelcome to her. I told her that the omnipresence of all forces and facts was well known to ancient India, and that science had merely brought a small fraction of this fact into general use by devising for it, that is, for sound waves, a receiver and transmitter which were still in their first stages and miserably defective. The principal fact known to that ancient knowledge was, I said, the unreality of time. This science had not yet observed. Finally, it would, of course, make this “discovery,” also, and then the inventors would get busy over it. The discovery would be made – and perhaps very soon – that there were floating round us not only the pictures and events of the transient present in the same way that music from Paris or Berlin was now heard in Frankfurt or Zurich, but that all that had ever happened in the past could be registered and brought back likewise. We might well look for the day when, with wires or without, with or without the disturbance of other sounds, we should hear King Solomon speaking, or Walter von der Vogelweide. And all this, I said, just as today was the case with the beginnings of wireless, would be of no more service to man than as an escape from himself and his true aims, and a means of surrounding himself with an ever closer mesh of distractions and useless activities. But instead of embarking on these familiar topics with my customary bitterness and scorn for the times and for science, I made a joke of them; and the aunt smiled, and we sat together for an hour or so and drank our tea with much content.
NSFW
At the Palm Beach, Florida airport on our way back from Colombia.
Posted on June 14, 2010 at 10:39 pm.

by Mike
Have you heard of the word, “terroir?” It’s French. Terroir is why champagne can only come from the Champagne region of France. It’s why you can’t call your crappy, molded chicken milk, “Roquefort.”
Terroir is the sum of the environmental conditions in a place. It’s the soil composition, the acidity of rain, the angle of the sun, the height of the hills, local farming techniques and surrounding plant species and all the minute variables that even local farmers might not know. The terroir of the Champagne region can’t be reproduced anywhere else on earth. You want to make champagne? Move to Champagne. But if you’re satisfied making some shitty sparkling wine then you can stay in Fife or wherever you live. Expand!
When you eat a meal you eat a place.1 Not only are you physically becoming part of the food and its soil, but you’re spiritually saturating your body with the terroir.2

This will blow your mind. Have you ever heard of camas or salal? Well, let me tell you about them, friend. Camas is a plant with an edible root that seems to be somewhere between an onion and a potato. (It has a bad-ass brother named, death camas, which isn’t nearly as fun to eat.) And salal is a low shrub that you’ve definitely seen around the NW if you’ve spent any time here. It lives under tall trees, near water and it makes little black-purple berries. You’ve definitely seen it.
Both these plants are native to the Pacific Northwest. Along with salmon they were the staple foods of the Northwest native peoples.
I have lived here my whole life. I wouldn’t say I know everything about Western Washington botany, but I pay as much attention as anyone else. Until a few months ago, I had never even heard of the two plants that were the pillars of people’s diets, right here, for the last 10,000 years. And it’s not like I’m six years old; I’m thirty! Over thirty!
So, what does this have to do with anything? I’m not really sure myself, I’m a little drunk.
I guess what I’m getting at is that Presence/Attention/Awareness is about more than just focusing on the moment, it’s also about engaging with this place where we are.3 Because we eat many times a day, we have many opportunities to engage with the terroir, to be sensually present in this physical Place and let the rain become our blood. We should eat food with which we share terroir, with which we have a common rhythm.
Salal and camas evolved here, so where are they in our diets? Maybe they taste bad, I don’t know, I’ll tell you this summer, but maybe they were pushed off our plates by cheap food from other places. If we are where we eat, then most of us are geographic Frankensteins.
Where it rains so much that there’s rain in my dreams and my knees can feel it and it narrates Sunday mornings, do I eat the onion that drank the rain that wet my hair weeks before?4




—
1 “Terroir” technically refers only to food and drink (and the official distinction doesn’t even require that the food be organic), but I like to think of it as applying to other things as well – clothing and building materials immediately come to mind.
Art made with local materials is, I think, something different. Of course food and clothes and structures can be created with inspiration to become more than just necessities of survival – they can become expressions of place through person – but the timing of the creative process may or may not coincide with the need for food or shelter, and those two things are going to be taken care of regardless.
2 Not to mention the spirit with which the farmer grows, treats and harvests the food.
3 Travel is, essentially, the experience of and engagement with Place. Which is why these food posts have a place on a travel blog.
4 This is what I thought about when praying before each meal in France, how our bodies mix with the earth and why I can taste Marguerite’s biceps in her wine.
Posted on June 13, 2010 at 11:07 pm.

The poor old rich days…
by Mike
There is a mysterious person in traditional Corsican towns, a man or woman kept at the periphery of society because they play a supernatural role in death. At night, this Mazzeri is compelled to sneak into the maquis, the low shrubbery that blankets wild parts of the island, and to hunt down whatever animal comes across their path. The boar or dog meets a violent death – the Mazzeri bludgeons it with a club or a rock, it might strangle the animal or tear its flesh with their teeth. (Read More)
When the animal is dead, the Mazzeri rolls it over and looks into its face. They recognize a person they know in the face of the animal, and the next morning, they announce to the town that the person they saw will die within a year. Even if it’s a family member, they are compelled – by Quellu Quassu, the Corsican “Some Thing” more vague than the Christian God – to hunt it and kill it, against their own will. The Mazzeri do not choose the person, they’re simply death’s messengers.
The hunt takes place in dreams, but Corsicans consider dreams to be a parallel and relevant world: the prophesied deaths occur within the year.{1}
Of course, this tradition died out half a century ago.
I arrived on Corsica among the skeptical majority, the rational liberal who doesn’t necessarily believe in something he can’t see, like God or dream-hunters. To each his own, of course, but if I can’t see it, I don’t believe in it.

Then, in mountains that had been presented as ogre- and Mazzeri-filled, where dreams had been dangerous, we saw kids in Yankee baseball caps and Nike tennis shoes listening to 50 Cent.
We have lost something, I could see.
The world is poorer for the loss. Much poorer. What richness is steam-rolled by skeptical media, employment-focused education, the medical establishment and our science-centered faith? What creative force was extinguished by the Church or ignored by tv-addicted posterity? And how did MY money encourage it?
I wondered, “Really, what does it hurt to open myself to believing in dreams and magic? Am I skeptical only because I have so much pride that I think it matters that I be right or wrong?”
I chose to open myself to the possibility probability that there’s much more going on than what I can see. At the very least, it will make my world richer.
But science and money, the twin pillars of Modern religion, crush cultural niches, the pockets in which creative wealth can accumulate. The Corsican mountains are flat. The Snoqualmie run casinos. Modernism has its cellular talons in Africa.
Then we rolled into the valley of the Christian Back-to-the-Landers, and everything lit up. Nowhere else had I seen a cultural cauldron like this: the kids were singing songs to entertain themselves, they talked about natural phenomena, they believed in the supernatural, the Christian God, they believed that Mary was there and helping them. They had stories. They had a world that was immediate and rich, and legends of their own creation were growing in its garden.
I could see how this might be the kernel for a culture. It wouldn’t take many more generations, or like-minded families, for this to develop into a web of myths and practices that the world has never before seen.
So, what does this have to do with food?

Rugged independence persists in modern Corsica.
There are groups of people among us that are making an effort to live in this fashion. They don’t have TVs and don’t read the newspaper. They’re trying to live in a way that allows them and their kids to sharpen the impression of their characters{2}, that the force of their creativity be unrestrained and untarnished by mass-commercialism, that they can channel their unblemished centers and create with its texture. And for their efforts our world will be richer.
These are the people we need to support with our money. Whether they’re making clothes or constructing homes with local materials or growing food, our money needs to go to those who are creating culture, not steamrolling it.
If we’re going to buy food, let’s buy it from these people, the farmers, the independents who are making this place richer. Let’s buy from the small stands at the farmers’ markets, to help the fragile ones nurse quiet lives.
And we need to stop supporting the steamrollers, the brand names – Coke, Safeway, Costco, Monsanto, Dole, and all the others. There is no spirit in money-centrism, and I’m tired of hearing their voices in humans’ mouths.
Money is the agent of the modern world’s evolution. Spend wisely.

—
{1} Dorothy Carrington in Granite Island, describing the Corsican fishing community:
“A week he was missing with his boat and crew…. I heard only a single comment on the situation: ‘His wife came down to ask for news. You should have seen that woman! Her face was black; she has drunk the blood of his heart.’ Blessed are the illiterate, who can spontaneously express themselves in such apt and opulent imagery! But perhaps this was general in the days before universal education began mass-producing minds. I have often wondered how far the Elizabethan writers were indebted to the virile, vivid speech of an illiterate majority.”
She wrote about the Mazzeri and other Corsican folklore in The Dream Hunters of Corsica, in which she reinforces her point:
All this, one might say, belongs to the past. Rational French state education and materialistic values have discredited the evil spirits and reduced the legends to curiosities of folklore. The ogres have vanished; the Devil no longer roams among the rocks. Nor, indeed, does Saint Martin…
{2} “The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character… Under all these screens {brands to which a person subscribes} I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.”
– Ralph Waldo Emmerson
Reading Emerson makes me want to overturn cars.
Posted on June 10, 2010 at 11:33 pm.
The following information is all courtesy of Fresh Picked Seattle. They are responsible for making this beautiful map, so please visit their site!
Saturdays = Blue
Sundays = Green
Tuesdays = Purple
Wednesday = Red
Thursdays = Yellow
Fridays = Aqua
Note: There are also markets in Redmond (Saturday) and Sammamish (Friday) not shown on the map. Click below for details.
Icons with dots are closed for part of the year. Click the marker for specifics.
View the Seattle Farmers Markets in a larger map. (external link)
Listings by day of the week:
Saturdays
U-District Farmers Market
Year-round. 9am-2pm
Corner of University Way & NE 50th
Magnolia Farmers Market
June 5 – Sept 25, 10am-2pm
Next to the Magnolia Community Center at 2550 34th Avenue West.
Bellevue Farmers Market
June 5 – Nov 20, 10 – 2pm
Washington Square
10610 NE 8th St
Kent Farmers Market
June 5th – Sept 25th
2nd Ave & Smith St in downtown Kent
Edmonds Farmers Market
July 3rd to Oct 2nd, 9:00 am – 3:00 pm
(Closed Aug. 14th due to the Taste of Edmonds)
Downtown Edmonds on 5th Street from Main at the fountain to Bell and east up Bell Street around Centennial Plaza.
Georgetown Farmers Market
June 5 to Sept 25, 10:00am – 3:00 pm
Located on the grounds of the original Rainier Brewery, 6000 Airport Way S in the Georgetown District, between the General Offices building and the old Malt House.
Redmond Saturday Market
May 1 – Oct 30, 9am-3pm
7730 Leary Way NE
Sundays
Tuesdays
Wednesdays
Thursdays
Fridays
[Updated 6/2010]
Posted on at 10:07 pm.

Yakutat, Alaska
by Mike
Some halibut are so big you have to put a bullet in them before they come in the boat. If you were to net one and bring it in, it could break your legs or worse.
Once a boat was found floating adrift. In the bottom of the boat was a dead fisherman and a dead halibut – the halibut had killed the fisherman when it was brought aboard, then it suffocated on the deck.
The halibut pictured above was 120 lbs.
Posted on at 9:09 am.