Uh… Boo, y’all!

Hope your Halloween was happy and spooky and all that. Better, though, is to celebrate Dias de los Meurtos, in my opinion on 1 and 2 November. Tell us about all about your celebrations of the dead in the comments!

The week’s been busy as always. Made busier by the end of the first term of the school year with incumbent extra duties like finalizing report cards, writing student comments, meeting with parents, and completing professional goals. Through it all, I found time to blog, read, and explore Cambodia. Here are some interesting highlights from the week, in no particular order:

  • I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture by Aaron Carpene, an Australian-Italian opera academian who has traveled the world melding European opera with traditional performance art in such far flung places as Bhutan, Australia, and Japan. He is now staging a mashup of The Magic Flute and the Cambodian epic poem, Reamkar. The Reamkar is the Cambodian version of the Ramayana epic poem. The two stories, according to Aaron Capene are remarkably similar, so he’s using traditional Khmer performance of dance, shadow puppets, and musical ensembles to tell the tale. Fascinating stuff. I’m making plans to go see it in January 2022. Wish me luck… in the comments!
  • I found Newsline to be a fascinating source of insightful, reliable, and detailed reporting on the Middle East. I couldn’t put this article down until I was finished! Apparently, the seal that ISIS uses on its infamous black flag is from a forgery of a letter purporting to be from Mohammed himself. Haha! Don’t you just love Schadenfreude? Hating on ISIS is just too easy, isn’t it?
  • Cambodia is still overrun with unexploded ordnance (UXO) and landmines as this sad article can attest. Three boys injured when playing with some kind of shell or round that they found.
  • We went for bicycle trip around an island on the Mekong River just as it exits Phnom Penh to the southeast. We were back in Old Cambodia. To get to the island, we had to take a ferry. To get to the ferry, we had to walk down a dark narrow alleyway in a market area. The ferry was just a flat platform spanning two of the small river boat hulls. The island had a concrete paved road which people lived along in houses and sold goods from their front yards. We stopped to buy coffee — GREAT coffee, strong, sweet, and milky made with Cambodian robusta beans like in Viet Nam — and to buy some vegetables. The woman selling vegetables wouldn’t take our money! She was treating us like guests, not customers. No forgeingers tourists or resident visit this island very often. We just lucked into it and rented some family’s bikes for a dollar a piece. Here are some pictures from our adventure:
  • A flooded road past where the concrete road ran out.
  • A typical house. Raised because of flooding.
  • This is a tomb, I think. You see smaller versions of these little houses in front of people’s houses. They are the house of the spirit that protects the property. These are different. They are larger, sit on these foundations, and are placed on vacant lots. I think someone’s relative is interred in the foundation. Notice the electrical wire. Many have lighting features.
  • A bit closer so you can see the detail of the house. It looks like many of the bigger fancier houses here. Notice the incense burners, the bottles of water, and the small bowl in the middle. These are for offerings to the deceased so they will be happy and not haunt their survivors and eventually move on to rebirth.
  • Another interment shrine. Less well cared for than the other. A business is wedged behind it.
  • You can see where the remains are housed. You can see the incense burners for memorializing the deceased.
  • A spirit house protecting the folks that we “bought” the vegetables from. My favorite feature are the little police officer figures at the base. Notice the offerings in front to keep the spirit happy and living in the house.
  • A roadside shrine. Notice the mix of Buddhist and Hindu figures. Offerings of bananas, incense, and water.
  • A portion of a railing from a bridge or house. The snake is one of the national symbols of Cambodia, the naga. It is a multheaded cobra. The naga king coiled around the Buddha and protected him from rain with his hood as he meditated when he reached enlightenment.
  • Another naga. This time on what I believe is a shrine to the island’s protective spirit.
  • The shrine to the island’s protective spirit as seen from the road.
  • The entrance to the shrine
  • Another angle on the shrine.
  • A gate decorated with the heads of the Banyon Temple of Angkor Thom outside of Angkor Wat. They are on every surface of the temple. They are thought to be the face of Jayavarman VII who built the temple in about 1200.
  • A detailed look.
  • The flooding Mekong River separating the island from the mainland.

From the Calendar

The Week that Was

Last week saw a couple of posts and one day that got added to the calendar for next year:

  • How the GQP Divisive Politics is Destroying the American Way of Life. My thinking on how we should be treating those members of MAGA Nation, not their political and media leaders, but the rank and vile. The GQP is trying to split us in order to take us over. The way to stop them from stealing our democracy is to deny them the division. We will not be able continue as a country divided like we are.
  • Charles Koch, Racial Animus, Critical Race Theory Furor, and What to Do About It. Then I read an article in The Nation about how Charles Kock is funding the CRT school board outrage movement just like they did the anti-ACA Tea Party movement. They are trying to get demagogue white voters into voting GQP… AGAIN.
  • Friday 29 October was, of course, the date that the stock market crashed in 1929 ushering in the Great Depression. How could I have overlooked THAT date?!? How could any of you not remind me in the comments?

Next Week

I don’t have anything in the pipes right now. I’m still thinking about revisiting Timothy Snyder’s Twenty Lessons and the continuing effects that the pandemic is having on us. Here are the dates on the calendar:

  • Monday 1 and Tuesday 2 November is Dias de los Meurtos celebrated across Mexico to remember our departed ancestors and party with their spirits. It is a beautiful holiday. Everyone should celebrate. Remember your dead, everybody.
  • Monday 1 November is the first day of Native American Heritage month. Let’s see if us whitey white meats can steal that from them, too, howboutit?
  • Tuesday 2 November is election day in Virginia and New Jersey. They elect their governors and other state offices. Say a little prayer for our democracy and cross your fingers that we can continue holding on by our fingernails.
  • Saturday 6 November is A Day of Global Action on climate change. What will you being doing to take action on climate change? Tell us about it in the comments!
  • As always, if there is a day you think should be on the calendar, you should let us know in the comments, and we’ll add it.

Friends of Ye Olde Blogge

  • Friend of the blog from over at Cabbages and Kings writes a mean poem. This offering is a spine-tingling tale of an immortal beauty that is beyond temptation by earthly desires. It must be read to be understood.
  • Tengrain over at Mock Paper Scissors totally scores with this compendium of the evil that Facebook has wrought. Check it out. It is a smorgasbord of coverage.
  • Infidel has assembled quite the collection of Halloween themed memes and GIFs. It is well worth the time it takes to check it out.
  • Burr has his weekly summary of all the Interwebs worth reading with his typical pithy commentary liberally scattered throughout.
  • I found Scottie’s daily cartoon rundown from Thursday 28 October to particularly entertaining. Perhaps, you will, too, but you’ll never know unless you check it out!
  • TenBears treats us to an article that basically explains how the Supreme Court could declare the entire federal governing apparatus as we know it unconstitutional. Wouldn’t that be something? The conservatives really are determined to burn the whole thing down, aren’t they?
  • Apparently, Mike’s Blog Round Up has found itself in quite the dilemma this week with few submissions to be used. We immediately offered our latest efforts in violation of their two-week cycle of promoting blogs, i.e. no blog can be promoted in the two weeks following its last mention. Check the round up often, check out the blogs they’re pimping that day, and check out Ye Olde Blogge when we pop up in the rotation.
Huzzah!
Jack

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Image Attribution

This is the photo of the island spirit house from the street that I took on our trip. It is unlicensed and free to be used, abused, and confused for work that you did.