Pushing Buttons

My friend Dahlia went to pick up her son from school one day and her car was in the shop so she had a rental car. On the way home her son wanted to open the car window, but he couldn't find the button. That's because the windows rolled down via a handle, manually. There was no button. He's sixteen. He couldn't figure out how the handle worked. I think this is both hilarious and sad. Are we the last generation who knows how to roll down a window?

Further, do you think people sat around and lamented that quill pens were becoming a thing of the past? Or did they just move on to fountain pens? That's another thing that someone younger than 20 has possibly never seen/used. I love the way the ink gets faint as you write and the pen empties. And then you fill up the pen from a beautiful jar of ink by pumping the little hidden lever on the side, and it makes a very satisfying sucking sound, and then the ink gets dark and strong again on the paper. I just don't love buttons and keypads the same way. I think these interactions with things are important.

Finshed

Working on a Snow Leopard

Phurba Namgay is painting a series of animals for the Bhutan Foundation to be used for education and outreach. We have a lot of snow leopards in the house just now. Pictures, that is. He is the most amazing painter I have ever seen. I will be sad when he finishes this Snow Leopard. Here's a link to the Bhutan Foundation.  Click here to watch a trailer for a Foundation film that just won an award at the International Wildlife Film Festival. It's about Snow Leopards and how yak herders in Bhutan are learning to live in harmony with them. As a result of this amazing program, everyone-- yaks, herders and Snow Leopards-- in the Bhutanese Himalayas is thriving.

Building a House in Bhutan

Here are more pictures by Dr. Will Frey.

This is the traditional way houses are built in Bhutan.

Clay is built up in the wooden trough and then pounded down, usually by women. And they sing.

When the clay dries, the wood is taken away and an adobe wall is left.

Everyone in the community helps build the house. Adobe is inexpensive and is great insulation. It's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. 

Vanderbilt Alumni Tour of Bhutan

There are a couple of spaces still available for the Vanderbilt Alumni trip I'm hosting to Bhutan next fall. Dates are October 25 - November 6.  Here's the brochure:

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/travel/bhutan.php

You don't have to be a Vanderbilt Alum or have an affiliation with Vanderbilt to sign up. It's going to be a fantastic 10 day trip, and we will fly from Paro to Bumthang, which cuts out about 3 days of travel on the road. As much as I love Bhutan I will be happy to not travel the lateral road from Punakha to Bumthang this time.

Part of the reason for this tour is to show people the things I love most about Bhutan, but we're open and flexible. One of the group's members is a retired teacher. She didn't get to visit any school on her last trip to Bhutan, so we'll visit some and have tea with some principals. Another wants to walk, so we're doing a day trek somewhere in Bumthang. We'll have enough people on the ground so everybody can do what they like.

Here are some remarkable pictures by Dr. Will Frey, who visited Bhutan last fall. He owns the rights to these photos and I've posted them here with his permission.

Manifesto Part I

Change is inside

Are you perfectly content in your life? Few of us can say we are perfectly content. There’s always something that we want to change. We want a new job or a new set of friends, we want to travel or go to school. We want to look different. We want to be smaller, larger, richer, smarter, more powerful, independent, younger, freer. We want to make our lives better. We want upheaval. But we don’t. We don't know how to make changes and we feel scared. We're not really quite sure we actually like that word 'radical.'

            I want to talk about creating a new belief system. I am talking about a new blueprint for your life. I challenge you to get up and get out of old beliefs that don’t work so well for you. My theory is you can change your life and make it better, have the life you really want, by taking it step by step. Get an idea of where you want to be and then move in that direction slowly, incrementally. After a time you’ll get there. You’ll be surprised. I’ve said it so many times: you don’t need to haul off and move to Bhutan. You just need to get an idea of where you want to be and what you want from your life, and then take some steps to get there. None of us, well, few of us, realize how capable we are, how full of energy, and love, and intent we can be. The thing is to get a plausible, firm, clear idea of what you want your life to be like. That's the hard part, that deciding what you want. And here’s a trick: you want to start from the inside. You don’t need to change your job or your house or family or your car or things like that. These are secondary to what you want to change. You want to change yourself inside. Then the other outward things will change. This is the shorthand of what I experienced when I went off to Bhutan those many years ago. I slogged and stumbled in this amazing place. And what I came to realize is that what changed is how I saw myself inside. My view of myself changed even before I set foot on a plane, and subsequently my view of the world changed. 

Reboot          

Honestly, I didn’t have a master plan. I just knew that I was a better person being in Bhutan. I could be nicer and do more good. All of the daily things that tripped me up, my sense of myself as someone who didn’t accomplish much, and my preoccupation with mundane things that didn’t really in the end matter much were gone, poof, just like that. What took their place was a focus on daily things. It was a more purposeful life. I was able to reboot, so to speak. In a very short time. In what seems like an instant, I was able to reassess priorities and get to a level of living that was rather basic compared to how I lived before. This helped me immensely, this peeling away things that didn’t matter so much. (“I need to have that dress and those shoes if I’m going to do that.” “I need to drive that car.” I need you to support my decision.”)

So many of my “needs” were really wants. When it all got stripped away in Bhutan I saw I really didn’t need much. I just wanted things. But with things unavailable, and people unavailable, I realized I could live nicely without much. Wanting went away. I needed food and air and a place to live and a few clothes. So it was transformative. Ironically, this focus on daily things and on simplifying gave me more purpose and a more complex inner life.

          You don't have to go anywhere. Get your own Bhutan right where you live. Get to a place in your mind—not in your geography, although geography and place are important—where you can reboot and figure out new priorities. What I realized is that my desire to move to Bhutan had already started this process and while I still living in the U.S. I started shedding stuff and saving money and getting to a mental place where I didn't need much. 

       

Namgay visits a man with no television.

 Turn off your TV

          You don’t have to watch the evening news, and frankly watching the news is something I insist that you quit doing immediately. You won't learn anything. You’ll learn more by teaching yourself to make pot holders or learning to mix concrete. The evening news will not only not tell you anything, it will sap your intelligence and divert you from what you need to do. Do I sound paranoid? Good. And just try to not be informed about the world. You can find out what’s going on in the world when you go to the grocery store. The cover of the National Enquirer will tell you everything you need to know. It's all variations on the same things-- different levels of conflicts and discord and titillation-- it will all just depress you and keep you from your goals and your focus. Don't let yourself be diverted by conflict. You want to think longer term. You want to do things and read things and see things that will elongate your focus and make you think deeper. Read books. Read intelligent articles in intelligent magazines and on the web. So much of media is designed to keep you from your focus and your goals and limit your attention span to about 20 seconds. Try to resist this and increase your attention span. It is diversion and there's too much of it. I have more to say but I'm going to do it in another post because I know this is getting long and I want to keep your attention. 

I'm not your guru

          I present myself here as someone who is not all that brilliant or good looking or remarkable. I’m an average sort who has been able to organize a remarkable life. And my purpose in telling you this is to encourage you to do something remarkable for yourself. You can. You are most likely more gifted than me, and smarter, and better looking. Depending on your beliefs, you either have one shot to get it right in this life or you have an infinite number of opportunities to get it right and can reincarnate and do it all over again. Either way this is your life now. And at this time in the world, because of geopolitical events, or the carbon dioxide levels, or maybe the stars are aligning a certain way, or the molecular structure of things is straining a certain way, or the poles of the earth are switching their magnetic pull—whatever it is, gravity, karma--everything in the world is telling us things. Mostly what I’m hearing and you will too if you listen to the music of the spheres is this:

slow down 

pare down 

laugh 

savor

get grounded

get smart

cut through the clutter

Wake up

It is absolutely time for this.

Phurba Namgay Paints a Cat

Actually this is not just any cat. This is a cat that belongs to a little girl we love. And we also love the cat. We kept her for a while-- the cat, that is-- when we came to the U.S. She was a stray who wandered up to our house, and Namgay said we couldn't have a cat because we are somewhat transient, after all.

But I went behind his back and fed her and he went behind my back and fed her. I remember going to the pet shop and buying food. "I don't really have a cat," I said to the owner. "Lady, you're buying cat food. You have a cat," he said, accurately. So we kept her, and then when we left for Bhutan our friends'  little girl got her. And we really feel like we were just custodians, or a transit point, or foster parents, because this little girl and this cat belong to each other. It's a sweet story. And kind of magical. Their eyes are the same color of blue, and they have the same sense of mischief and completely dominate any situation they are in. And they are a little bit wild and very beautiful and smart and funny. It's so much fun to see them together. So here's the "thangka" Namgay did.  The little girl also likes butterflies.

Puffy Q
10" x 8"
oil on canvas

The First American Friend to Bhutan

One of the first Americans, if not THE first to set foot in Bhutan preceded me by about 40 years. I never met Burt Kerr Todd, the wealthy industrialist from Pittsburgh, who attended Oxford with a member of the Bhutanese Royal Family. But the world has a lot to thank him for. After he graduated, Todd’s schoolmate invited him to visit her in Bhutan. Back then, there were no roads in or out of the country, and then, as now, the Himalayas in the west, north and east, formed natural barriers that made moving around the area difficult, if not impossible at certain times of the year. No airplanes flew in or out. The only way to get into the country was to come up from India on foot or on horseback, over treacherous mule tracks. It must have been an amazing journey that probably took the better part of a week, although it’s only a little over 50 miles as the crow flies.  He enjoyed his stay, and he went back after a few years; he and his wife spent their honeymoon in Bhutan in 1955. She loved the country, too.

Todd traveled several times to Bhutan. His relationship with the Bhutanese was clearly mutual admiration. As a businessman and entrepreneur who obviously thought outside the box, he became very useful to the Royal government, and helped strategize their modernization program. The Bhutanese government desperately needed funding for hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, and when traditional loans fell through, Todd came up with the idea of selling postage stamps as a way to raise cash. That was in 1962, and the country has been producing them ever since. The money generated by stamps makes up a large portion of the annual revenue for the country, even still. The stamps Todd created, like the country itself, are remarkable, quirky, and fun.

Todd’s own company in Pittsburgh still produces them. There are stamps made from gold coins; triangle shaped stamps depicting yeti, the Bhutanese name for Bigfoot; 3-D stamps; stamps made as CDs that play the Bhutanese national anthem; stamps printed on silk, and steel, and, oddly enough, sculptural stamps.

The Bhutanese stamps created by Todd were revolutionary. Perhaps the fact that Todd had no actual experience producing them, and knew little or nothing about designing stamps, was the reason he was able to push the envelope, so to speak. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. So because of this remarkable, industrious, generous man, the world has the fabulous stamps of Bhutan. And I like to think that Bert Kerr Todd made such a huge and lasting impression on the Bhutanese, they were pleasantly disposed toward me, when I came years later.