Thursday, July 28, 2005
Reading Naropa grad Sherman Souther's Surgical Bruez (Tinfish Press). Don't have much to say about it other than that the design elements of this slim volume are very interesting. Photographic mages of disembodied flesh act as section breaks (note: the author is a retired plastic surgeon who seems to specialize in breast augmentation). The xxxx design motifs (groupings of 12) read like stitches and the spiral binding make me think of the body's spinal column. Still trying to crack the code of how the book is organized by letters/page numbers.
Monday, July 25, 2005
The Dallas Morning News has published a review of the Conspicuous Production show which closes on Sunday.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
If you are reading this from the New York area, tune in on on Friday, July 22nd at 10pm on WNEW, Channel 13, the local PBS station in New York, for Simeon Hutner's short film "My Brother Nathaniel." MacDowell alum Simeon is also the maker of "Martyrs & Saints", a documentary on the life of performance artist Ron Athey.
Reb has posted the list of authors who will be included in the No Tell Motel anthology out this fall. Interesting to see the high number of poets with blogs in the group. Glad to be included alongside Denise and Noah, all good company.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Just discovered the blog of Teresa Sparks who manages the Harry Smith printshop at Naropa. Teresa has some notes up on the SWP. Haven't been back in 7 years, and I miss it. Maybe next year... get Kort to teach a tea workshop for continuing ed and I can hang out in workshops. We were there in the last days of the big white tent pitched on the lawn adjoining C.U. Looking forward to seeing Naropa friends Andrew and Jack at our wedding next month.
Last year, on my way out of Boston to Dallas, I applied for a job at the arts organization that I used to work at and was passed over for someone who was more immediately available (already in Dallas, though I was due to arrive 1-2 weeks later), had "more grants experience", and who was also a writer/grad from SAIC, fresh from graduation. I felt like that last detail about SAIC was particularly dangled in my face, as if to say, Ms. Pai, on paper and in person you're no different or more unique than the next candidate. My internal dialogue back then was dude, you're going to hire a novelist who's trying to finish her first novel instead of a poet who could build interdisciplinary programs? And you think that she won't have more commitment issues than me (who had already worked for said organization and proved one's self)? So while surfing blogs today, I discovered, that as predicted and foreseen almost 1 year ago, Yvonne left her job after the season ended and is now cranking on finishing that novel that took the backseat for a year and loving her new job. Sounds like how Equivalence got written. So is arts admin just not a culture suitable for or structured enough to support the needs and the temperament of serious, dedicated artists?
Sacrilegious?
Queen is Dead is the first album that I ever acquired - a gift from my older brother when I was 13. What would Morrissey think of this whole thing?
Queen is Dead is the first album that I ever acquired - a gift from my older brother when I was 13. What would Morrissey think of this whole thing?
Sad news of the closing of Penny Lane in Boulder, gathering place of poets, musicians and Boulder locals...
A day in the life of the legendary coffee shop
By Jennie Dorris, Aimee Heckel and Vanessa Miller, Camera Staff Writers
July 10, 2005
EDITOR'S NOTE: Few places in Boulder offer as eclectic a view into what our town is and has been as the cafe on the corner of 18th and Pearl streets. To mark Penny Lane's closing, Camera journalists decided to spend one full day there, to see what it means to the regulars, from their first cup of coffee until the last open-mic act.
An army-green sleeping bag, zipped up fully, is sitting upright on the park bench at 18th and Pearl streets. It is swaying gently in the initial flow of the 5:30 a.m. sun. It rustles, and the cocoon gets slightly unzipped to reveal the small head of an old man. His face is all but concealed by large plastic goggles held in place with an elastic band.
Cowboy Bob is awake, and he's waiting for Penny Lane to wake up, too.
"I normally don't talk before I've had my second cup of coffee," he says. But he continues immediately, rattling off the headlines from the nearby newspaper stands and unzipping his sleeping bag further to reveal a light blue denim shirt and overalls. In his hand is the burned end of a hand-rolled cigarette.
Bob looks down at his sleeping bag and picks at a stray feather poking through. He is planning to start a business making down-feather socks.
"I've got a million dollars in goose-down feathers right here," he says.
At 6:15 a.m. the dark and roasty smell of the first pot of coffee of the day mixes with the increasing sunlight, and the doors of Penny Lane are propped open. Bob wanders inside.
He is walking through the same doors that were a conduit for legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg's fiery readings and one of Nirvana's early grunge-rock concerts.
This café's reputation is pillared by the cultural icons that have performed on its stage, but its core is a layered collection of the patrons that have used it as their living room. In the words of customer David Wolf: "The locals just left a little piece of their soul, and it's all meshed together to be whatever this place is."
Penny Lane's doors will close for the final time this month, its owner says. A failure to renegotiate a lease will leave the 24-year-old cafe without a home and its many regulars with a void. They face losing their favorite cup of joe, their second home and, for some, a launching pad to musical and artistic fame.
The day begins
A Pontiac Firebird parks in front and RE/MAX Realtor Daryl Smith gets out and strolls in for Penny Lane's first cup of coffee. He stays inside, sitting alone at a table and reading the paper. He's been coming to Penny Lane for 15 years but admits he's not the typical customer.
"I'm not much for the evening festivities," he says. "But this is the best coffee in town."
Outside, barista Micha Farfour unstacks the tables and puts the chairs into place. All match except for three, which have larger fan-shaped backs.
The patio fills quickly. A motorcycle pulls up, parking directly in front on the sidewalk. The rider walks onto the patio.
"Good morning," he says to no one in particular, punctuating the remark with an expletive.
Two guys in the corner make room for him to sit down. The three middle-aged men met at Penny Lane and have been mid-morning friends since then.
"We mainly get three things done here," says R.V. Saxton, leaning back in his chair. "Griping, moaning and complaining."
The patio's crowd thickens, and the conversation moves from complaining about work to dissecting the shark attacks in recent news stories to the stale-eyed murmurs of "mmhmm, yeah man, yeah."
"You know, maybe it's a good thing this place is closing," Saxton says. "Do you know how many hundreds of hours I've wasted here?"
Dave King, who hosts Penny Lane's semi-weekly open stage nights, trades his chair for one of the fan-backs, which turn out to be hot commodities among the regulars.
"I think what Penny Lane is won't become apparent at first," he says of the shop's closure. "A place changes, and the magic isn't there to draw the people anymore. The charm of Boulder used to be that it was funky, and rough-edged, and this is one of the last places to have that."
Penny Lane's founder didn't set out to make it that way. In 1981, the business was a copy store with a few chairs and a pot of black coffee. Traveling musicians stopped by and found an open ear. And no one shooed away homeless teens or dreadlocked wanderers. Penny Lane quickly became the official hangout for those who had no place to hang out.
Today, the aged cream Penny Lane sign sits in calm antiquation below the white vinyl "For Lease" sign.
Cowboy Bob walks by, dragging his sleeping bag and scattering bits of feathers behind him.
What's lost
Susan Hendrickson's ice cream melts before she can pay for it.
At 11:30 a.m., it's hot inside. But the metal chairs on the patio are worse. They're skillets.
The morning crew has been replaced by younger faces, a dozen staring at laptops. Coffee is now strawberry iced tea.
Over ice cream soup, Hendrickson is planning her sister's funeral. She was holding the 56-year-old woman's hand when she died of leukemia the previous day.
"Everyone knows her, believe me," Hendrickson says. She turns to the baristas. "You guys know Chris Hendrickson? Remember Chris Hendrickson? Um, the hippie with the glasses, long hair?"
Barista Sean Mackey doesn't remember, until Hendrickson slides her laptop across the sticky copper countertop, her sister's face glowing on the screen.
"Oh, wheatgrass and _mocha," Mackey says. "But I just saw her on Friday."
In the back of the room, Todd McDonald sits alone over a laptop, just waiting - for anything, really. Things have been pretty boring since he lost his job at IBM a few weeks ago.
"If you wait long enough, one of your friends will show up, or someone you can just talk to and hang out with," he says.
It seems everyone here is seeking some sort of structure to deal with a loss. A death. A job. The imminent evaporation of what they call "old Boulder," before it was so expensive, before Starbucks opened several blocks west on Pearl Street.
Back at the counter, someone wrote, "We don't resist change" on the tip jar. They lied.
"That's how we make more tips," says barista Danny Shafer. "Actually, I hate it. I hate change."
Shafer has worked at Penny Lane since he was 22. He's 37 now.
His co-worker Johnny Jenkins has worked here for 18 years.
"It's not like I just love hippies or homeless people or dirty people or crazy people," Jenkins says.
And he doesn't think that's the case for owner Isadore Million, either.
"I don't think he said to himself 20 years ago, 'I think I'll open up a free-range mental asylum,'" Jenkins says. "I think he just has a very open heart."
There are three questions Million won't give a straight answer to: What's his age (he's 77); how often do they wash the cups (only on Tuesdays, someone jokes); and why exactly Penny Lane is closing (a rent increase of at least 40 percent, although the landlord won't comment either).
"I have to realize that the end is in sight," Million says. "That's all there is to it, and I'm accepting it."
Tears fill his eyes, and he turns his head away.
Forest Engstrom, 16, arrives. His parents were the first to perform here 24 years ago. He wants to be Penny Lane's last performer.
He and Emily Owens, 17, say they're going to open their own shop and call it Strawberry Fields. They don't have the money. But like other regulars, they both think something magical will happen, that someone will sweep down and save it.
Emily doodles on a notebook in the corner, in between bumming at least nine cigarettes this hour. A plaid hat droops over her eyes and glasses. Layers of clothes devour her.
Sometimes Emily feels like she owns Penny Lane. She used to ditch Boulder High School and come here to escape the "social drama." That was before she dropped out.
"This place is just like heaven," she says, holding two cigarettes in one hand and an iced coffee in the other. "You can escape from hell if you need to."
Her cell phone rings. It's her mom.
"Is there any possibility we can have dinner together tomorrow, because I'm kind of busy right now," she says.
When Penny Lane shuts down, Emily says she'll make coffee at home, walk the two miles south and drink it on this patio. No matter what business takes over.
What's gained
The cafe's lights dim as the sun sets, and the names of musicians hoping for a slot on the "open mic" playlist are scrawled on a yellow notepad near the elevated stage.
That stage, now empty and prepped for an evening of performances, has for years hosted beat poets, bands and aspiring solo musicians. For William Mallory, a coveted spot before tonight's crowd could be his launching pad, too.
Mallory hovers face down over his keyboard, the top of his hat greeting the growing audience of high schoolers, regulars, baristas and passers-by who halt conversations, click shut cell phones and come in from the breeze to circle the stage.
Mallory's head lifts, and he introduces himself. Grins. Taps his foot. And rolls. Quick notes flow through the room. He plays with eyes closed. The melody tilts heads and taps toes, before heading outside and dissipating in the street.
"They have the best open mics here. I don't know where people will go next," Mallory says. "But all things must pass. It's hit its end."
Penny Lane's passing almost came in 1994, after the cafe closed because of neighbors' complaints about people loitering outside. But community outcry convinced Penny Lane's owner to reopen across the street three months later.
"Penny Lane is a lucky place, that's for sure," he says. "Like that. And the people you meet. And you sometimes find a puppy."
And you sometimes find your way, DeAngelis said. It could be your way to understanding. Your way into a relationship. Your way to success.
For the 34-year-old from Boulder, "the Lane" was a road he traveled down - a passage he traversed.
"It's been a conduit. A freeway," DeAngelis says.
As the entertainment winds down, patrons head out the door and into the street. Baristas stack the chairs and shut off the lights. Penny Lane is closed, but the customers linger on the patio.
A day in the life of the legendary coffee shop
By Jennie Dorris, Aimee Heckel and Vanessa Miller, Camera Staff Writers
July 10, 2005
EDITOR'S NOTE: Few places in Boulder offer as eclectic a view into what our town is and has been as the cafe on the corner of 18th and Pearl streets. To mark Penny Lane's closing, Camera journalists decided to spend one full day there, to see what it means to the regulars, from their first cup of coffee until the last open-mic act.
An army-green sleeping bag, zipped up fully, is sitting upright on the park bench at 18th and Pearl streets. It is swaying gently in the initial flow of the 5:30 a.m. sun. It rustles, and the cocoon gets slightly unzipped to reveal the small head of an old man. His face is all but concealed by large plastic goggles held in place with an elastic band.
Cowboy Bob is awake, and he's waiting for Penny Lane to wake up, too.
"I normally don't talk before I've had my second cup of coffee," he says. But he continues immediately, rattling off the headlines from the nearby newspaper stands and unzipping his sleeping bag further to reveal a light blue denim shirt and overalls. In his hand is the burned end of a hand-rolled cigarette.
Bob looks down at his sleeping bag and picks at a stray feather poking through. He is planning to start a business making down-feather socks.
"I've got a million dollars in goose-down feathers right here," he says.
At 6:15 a.m. the dark and roasty smell of the first pot of coffee of the day mixes with the increasing sunlight, and the doors of Penny Lane are propped open. Bob wanders inside.
He is walking through the same doors that were a conduit for legendary beat poet Allen Ginsberg's fiery readings and one of Nirvana's early grunge-rock concerts.
This café's reputation is pillared by the cultural icons that have performed on its stage, but its core is a layered collection of the patrons that have used it as their living room. In the words of customer David Wolf: "The locals just left a little piece of their soul, and it's all meshed together to be whatever this place is."
Penny Lane's doors will close for the final time this month, its owner says. A failure to renegotiate a lease will leave the 24-year-old cafe without a home and its many regulars with a void. They face losing their favorite cup of joe, their second home and, for some, a launching pad to musical and artistic fame.
The day begins
A Pontiac Firebird parks in front and RE/MAX Realtor Daryl Smith gets out and strolls in for Penny Lane's first cup of coffee. He stays inside, sitting alone at a table and reading the paper. He's been coming to Penny Lane for 15 years but admits he's not the typical customer.
"I'm not much for the evening festivities," he says. "But this is the best coffee in town."
Outside, barista Micha Farfour unstacks the tables and puts the chairs into place. All match except for three, which have larger fan-shaped backs.
The patio fills quickly. A motorcycle pulls up, parking directly in front on the sidewalk. The rider walks onto the patio.
"Good morning," he says to no one in particular, punctuating the remark with an expletive.
Two guys in the corner make room for him to sit down. The three middle-aged men met at Penny Lane and have been mid-morning friends since then.
"We mainly get three things done here," says R.V. Saxton, leaning back in his chair. "Griping, moaning and complaining."
The patio's crowd thickens, and the conversation moves from complaining about work to dissecting the shark attacks in recent news stories to the stale-eyed murmurs of "mmhmm, yeah man, yeah."
"You know, maybe it's a good thing this place is closing," Saxton says. "Do you know how many hundreds of hours I've wasted here?"
Dave King, who hosts Penny Lane's semi-weekly open stage nights, trades his chair for one of the fan-backs, which turn out to be hot commodities among the regulars.
"I think what Penny Lane is won't become apparent at first," he says of the shop's closure. "A place changes, and the magic isn't there to draw the people anymore. The charm of Boulder used to be that it was funky, and rough-edged, and this is one of the last places to have that."
Penny Lane's founder didn't set out to make it that way. In 1981, the business was a copy store with a few chairs and a pot of black coffee. Traveling musicians stopped by and found an open ear. And no one shooed away homeless teens or dreadlocked wanderers. Penny Lane quickly became the official hangout for those who had no place to hang out.
Today, the aged cream Penny Lane sign sits in calm antiquation below the white vinyl "For Lease" sign.
Cowboy Bob walks by, dragging his sleeping bag and scattering bits of feathers behind him.
What's lost
Susan Hendrickson's ice cream melts before she can pay for it.
At 11:30 a.m., it's hot inside. But the metal chairs on the patio are worse. They're skillets.
The morning crew has been replaced by younger faces, a dozen staring at laptops. Coffee is now strawberry iced tea.
Over ice cream soup, Hendrickson is planning her sister's funeral. She was holding the 56-year-old woman's hand when she died of leukemia the previous day.
"Everyone knows her, believe me," Hendrickson says. She turns to the baristas. "You guys know Chris Hendrickson? Remember Chris Hendrickson? Um, the hippie with the glasses, long hair?"
Barista Sean Mackey doesn't remember, until Hendrickson slides her laptop across the sticky copper countertop, her sister's face glowing on the screen.
"Oh, wheatgrass and _mocha," Mackey says. "But I just saw her on Friday."
In the back of the room, Todd McDonald sits alone over a laptop, just waiting - for anything, really. Things have been pretty boring since he lost his job at IBM a few weeks ago.
"If you wait long enough, one of your friends will show up, or someone you can just talk to and hang out with," he says.
It seems everyone here is seeking some sort of structure to deal with a loss. A death. A job. The imminent evaporation of what they call "old Boulder," before it was so expensive, before Starbucks opened several blocks west on Pearl Street.
Back at the counter, someone wrote, "We don't resist change" on the tip jar. They lied.
"That's how we make more tips," says barista Danny Shafer. "Actually, I hate it. I hate change."
Shafer has worked at Penny Lane since he was 22. He's 37 now.
His co-worker Johnny Jenkins has worked here for 18 years.
"It's not like I just love hippies or homeless people or dirty people or crazy people," Jenkins says.
And he doesn't think that's the case for owner Isadore Million, either.
"I don't think he said to himself 20 years ago, 'I think I'll open up a free-range mental asylum,'" Jenkins says. "I think he just has a very open heart."
There are three questions Million won't give a straight answer to: What's his age (he's 77); how often do they wash the cups (only on Tuesdays, someone jokes); and why exactly Penny Lane is closing (a rent increase of at least 40 percent, although the landlord won't comment either).
"I have to realize that the end is in sight," Million says. "That's all there is to it, and I'm accepting it."
Tears fill his eyes, and he turns his head away.
Forest Engstrom, 16, arrives. His parents were the first to perform here 24 years ago. He wants to be Penny Lane's last performer.
He and Emily Owens, 17, say they're going to open their own shop and call it Strawberry Fields. They don't have the money. But like other regulars, they both think something magical will happen, that someone will sweep down and save it.
Emily doodles on a notebook in the corner, in between bumming at least nine cigarettes this hour. A plaid hat droops over her eyes and glasses. Layers of clothes devour her.
Sometimes Emily feels like she owns Penny Lane. She used to ditch Boulder High School and come here to escape the "social drama." That was before she dropped out.
"This place is just like heaven," she says, holding two cigarettes in one hand and an iced coffee in the other. "You can escape from hell if you need to."
Her cell phone rings. It's her mom.
"Is there any possibility we can have dinner together tomorrow, because I'm kind of busy right now," she says.
When Penny Lane shuts down, Emily says she'll make coffee at home, walk the two miles south and drink it on this patio. No matter what business takes over.
What's gained
The cafe's lights dim as the sun sets, and the names of musicians hoping for a slot on the "open mic" playlist are scrawled on a yellow notepad near the elevated stage.
That stage, now empty and prepped for an evening of performances, has for years hosted beat poets, bands and aspiring solo musicians. For William Mallory, a coveted spot before tonight's crowd could be his launching pad, too.
Mallory hovers face down over his keyboard, the top of his hat greeting the growing audience of high schoolers, regulars, baristas and passers-by who halt conversations, click shut cell phones and come in from the breeze to circle the stage.
Mallory's head lifts, and he introduces himself. Grins. Taps his foot. And rolls. Quick notes flow through the room. He plays with eyes closed. The melody tilts heads and taps toes, before heading outside and dissipating in the street.
"They have the best open mics here. I don't know where people will go next," Mallory says. "But all things must pass. It's hit its end."
Penny Lane's passing almost came in 1994, after the cafe closed because of neighbors' complaints about people loitering outside. But community outcry convinced Penny Lane's owner to reopen across the street three months later.
"Penny Lane is a lucky place, that's for sure," he says. "Like that. And the people you meet. And you sometimes find a puppy."
And you sometimes find your way, DeAngelis said. It could be your way to understanding. Your way into a relationship. Your way to success.
For the 34-year-old from Boulder, "the Lane" was a road he traveled down - a passage he traversed.
"It's been a conduit. A freeway," DeAngelis says.
As the entertainment winds down, patrons head out the door and into the street. Baristas stack the chairs and shut off the lights. Penny Lane is closed, but the customers linger on the patio.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
If a poet is "good-looking", I will not be more prone to read their work, i.e. I do not read Li Young's work for his stunning cheekbones which is a conversation that arose previously on Ron's blog. And for that matter, I don't read a person's work based on their personality necessarily either. One of the strangest moments in my life was at a conference in Boston last year, when upon learning my actual age at the dinner table, Li Young blurted out how unfortunate he could not hook me up and introduce me to his single sons. Hmmm.... the gap between generations. I was nevertheless, charmed in other ways.
Digression over - Some are organizing a poet's calendar. It will be interesting to see who makes the final 12. How is this not its own strange exclusionary and completely subjective practice, as random as the publication of poems, i.e. what's "hot"?
And than there is an artist like Derek Fenner who is engaged in a portraiture project of the artists and writers who have had the greatest impact on his sensibilities. I am lucky to own 1 piece from the series, a portrait of Joan Miro. The mat surrounding the image is recycled from clippings of meat images from the supermarket pages and hangs over my kitchen sink.
Digression over - Some are organizing a poet's calendar. It will be interesting to see who makes the final 12. How is this not its own strange exclusionary and completely subjective practice, as random as the publication of poems, i.e. what's "hot"?
And than there is an artist like Derek Fenner who is engaged in a portraiture project of the artists and writers who have had the greatest impact on his sensibilities. I am lucky to own 1 piece from the series, a portrait of Joan Miro. The mat surrounding the image is recycled from clippings of meat images from the supermarket pages and hangs over my kitchen sink.
Frank Sherlock of the old La Tazza series in Philly has a new post on the Philly Sound blog. Check out the process notes of various "poem machines."
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Material Support Opening at UTD
Some photos from the opening of the Material Support show at UT Dallas tonight which documents the processes of the current artists in the Southside program and supplements the works in the current Conspicuous Production show at the MAC. Thanks to Gail, Kelly, Greta, and all the students of Greg Metz's Arts Management course who worked well past the end of their semester in May to make this project come to fruition.
Saskia Jorda installation
Saskia is currently continuing her work this summer at Skowhegan. This sculptural installation builds on her obstetrics drawings which she started during her residency at Southside.
Study for a photograph by Kelli Connell
Kelli's work is amazing. She uses the same model in all of her photographs and photoshops images together to create her finished images and narratives. Check her work out here.
working notes from Unnecessary Roughness
On the pedestal is a copy of my xPress(ed) book and tacked up on the wall behind it are the sketches for various vispo pieces including dodgeball and square it up, including several crossed out phrases and rethinkings of how to approach the sports and violence theme.
still from a video by Brian Fridge
Brian is one of the brighter and more professional artists in the program, with previous work in the Whitney Biennial and video works in the collection of the Fort Worth Modern.
painting by Baseera Khan
Baseera chose to show a finished piece rather than to reveal the aspects of her creative process. But the video piece screening in the show put together by Greg Metz's UTD students really highlighted all the artists' approaches to making their work and included some footage of Baseera speaking of her Indian Muslim identity. Though the footage was much more "raw", I actually preferred this document to Quin Matthews's documentary which is on view at the MAC on continuous loop. Much more time is allocated to each artist to discuss the issues important to their work and process. Personally, I felt a lot more relaxed talking to the UTD interviewer and noticed that she caught me smiling several times on screen - whereas in Quin's video, I have something of a permanent looking crease in the brow and irritated expression with pointed eyebrows while explaining my work. My interviewer Kelly also seemed much more interested in issues of identity and cultural representation and solicited the conversation that I was really interested in having. Yet the dreaded question which EVERY interviewer loves to ask me was still asked - what do you call yourself? Poet or artist? In the video, I reply, "interdisciplinary artist." Which is not unlike how I answered a similar question by a reporter on NH Public television 2 years ago - when asked which discipline I would give up if I could only do one thing, I said neither, the work is about resisting categorizations and being both. I really hate this question, and I think I will start answering the question this way - it is like asking me if I am Asian or American. It's not one or the other, it's both. So move on already.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Announcing Bruce Covey's new poetry ezine Coconut. Dig it! Issue 2 due out in October, currently open for submissions.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
The last week has been a bit rough and this email that landed in my in-box from Bryan Thao Worra gave me one of the best laughs I've had all week. As everybody knows, I'm in the midst of wedding planning - 3 weeks out from Saturday. Our officiant is not licensed to sign the certificate, we have not enough chairs, our harpist has asked for a tent, and our printer crapped out before we could print the programs. Screammmmm. But the wedding favors have been arriving (Botan Rice Candy!) and the white katas I ordered from dharmashop.com which we will offer to our lama for a blessing came yesterday and they are lovely. Now I am shopping for gingko and dogwood trees (thank you gift to parents!) and birdseed online in lieu of the rice toss because raw rice makes birds sick (and for that matter cigarette filters). Supposedly the rings shipped from Simon in the U.K. And maybe there will be no live music and you know what, I think I'll live. We can't wait to get to Tamarindo.
In the end just remember the following things:
1) The wedding's not about you and the groom (as weird as that sounds).
2) Something will always go wrong but no one is likely to notice except you (like, the cake is cream instead of canary...).
3) The actual ceremony is a first public test to show how well you do together in adversity.
4) Don't bother trying to make everyone happy. People don't come to weddings to be happy- they come to kvetch and nitpick about something. If everyone's, absolutely everyone is all smiles, something's up. Watch out! :)
From a Southeast Asian point of view, you can't win. Either your spouse will be:
-Too rich or too poor.
-Not educated or "too educated, he thinks he's better than everyone else..."
-Not the right race. Or, the right race, but comes from a lousy family.
-Comes from a fine family, but he's nothing like his family... or
-Acts like the rest of his fine family. Stuck up.
-Nice enough, but not very handsome.
-Handsome, but not very smart.
-Smart, but not very polite.
- Polite. Too polite. He can't relate to us ordinary people.
- Has no sense of humor. Or else laughs at the wrong times.
- Too stingy or "gives to strangers but not his family? the nerve! He's got no sense of fiscal responsibility...."
- Wrong religion. or: Right religion but he's a zealot or too lapsed.
- Ties his shoelaces funny.
- Has a bad haircut.
- Has lousy taste in movies.
- Doesn't talk too much. or He's a total snitch.
- Doesn't get involved. or, He meddles too much.
- Has nothing in common with you or Has too much in common with you, you're just amplifying each other's bad habits.
- He clashes with the furniture.
In the end just remember the following things:
1) The wedding's not about you and the groom (as weird as that sounds).
2) Something will always go wrong but no one is likely to notice except you (like, the cake is cream instead of canary...).
3) The actual ceremony is a first public test to show how well you do together in adversity.
4) Don't bother trying to make everyone happy. People don't come to weddings to be happy- they come to kvetch and nitpick about something. If everyone's, absolutely everyone is all smiles, something's up. Watch out! :)
From a Southeast Asian point of view, you can't win. Either your spouse will be:
-Too rich or too poor.
-Not educated or "too educated, he thinks he's better than everyone else..."
-Not the right race. Or, the right race, but comes from a lousy family.
-Comes from a fine family, but he's nothing like his family... or
-Acts like the rest of his fine family. Stuck up.
-Nice enough, but not very handsome.
-Handsome, but not very smart.
-Smart, but not very polite.
- Polite. Too polite. He can't relate to us ordinary people.
- Has no sense of humor. Or else laughs at the wrong times.
- Too stingy or "gives to strangers but not his family? the nerve! He's got no sense of fiscal responsibility...."
- Wrong religion. or: Right religion but he's a zealot or too lapsed.
- Ties his shoelaces funny.
- Has a bad haircut.
- Has lousy taste in movies.
- Doesn't talk too much. or He's a total snitch.
- Doesn't get involved. or, He meddles too much.
- Has nothing in common with you or Has too much in common with you, you're just amplifying each other's bad habits.
- He clashes with the furniture.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of AppleComputer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at
Stanford University.
___________________
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending
all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to
Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too
long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Stanford University.
___________________
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending
all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to
Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too
long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Material Support
Material Support
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.
Material Support at the University of Texas at Dallas featuring work by Kelli Connell, Ryan Fitzer, Brian Fridge, Saskia Jorda, Misty Keasler, Baseera Khan, Stephen Lapthisophon, Titus O'Brien, Shin Yu Pai, and Paul Slocum. On view July 16-August 12, 2005. Opening July 16, 5-8 p.m.
I am coming up against a wall in a collaboration with one of the artists I've been working with. Heated diisagreements over layout and formatting about work which change the context and subordinate one to the other. In the course of conversations, realizing how this collab differs from the others. In my projects with other artists, there has always been a mutual conversation and shared point of view re: sports, media, pop culture, identity politics, fill in the blank. The work has been described by readers as "dancing together." Well in this new series, there is less of a dance, and more of a challenging of status quo views through the initiation of dialogue via text. A picture says a thousand words, and within a series, the message is even more loaded/pregnant. But one person's view/perspex, remains one person's perspex, and the world is much bigger than I, or you, or he or she and 1 man/woman's experience. Particularly sticky when dealing with issues of cultural (mis)representation.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
The Artists of Southside
Tomorrow night the Dallas Observer is sponsoring a loft party/art event in our building and the residents are opening their studios to meet and greet. This is our motley bunch, minus Robert Pruitt who's space is now occupied by this fellow. Paul Slocum blogged recently about the need for better reality t.v. programming - an entertaining project would be documenting the life and times of the residency program and its residents and the evolution of this program towards some sort of critical mass.
Tomorrow night the Dallas Observer is sponsoring a loft party/art event in our building and the residents are opening their studios to meet and greet. This is our motley bunch, minus Robert Pruitt who's space is now occupied by this fellow. Paul Slocum blogged recently about the need for better reality t.v. programming - an entertaining project would be documenting the life and times of the residency program and its residents and the evolution of this program towards some sort of critical mass.
The Buddy System
The Buddy System
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.
The entrance to the Janette Kennedy Gallery and the Buddy System show which opened on Friday while we were in New Mexico. On the far wall taking up some prominent and prime wall space is the painting of the girlfriend of one of the Southside residents. Yes, it's true that a show called "the buddy system" is going to be nepotistic, but let it be interesting art at least.
works by Ted Kincaid and Joy Christiansen
works by Ted Kincaid and Joy Christiansen
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.
Kelli Connell curated in Ted Kincaid, a photographer who shows at Barry Whistler. Ryan Fitzer picked the work of Joy Christiansen.
installation detail
installation detail
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.
I don't have the exact titles on me, but these are three 3D paintings by Larry Lee - they are inspired by minimalism and the Lao Szechuan menu in Chicago's Chinatown where Kort, Yuchia, me and Kort enjoyed an excellent meal after the closing night performance of "Recipe for Paper" at the Chicago Cultural Center last November.
eggplant with tofu, 2005 ($750)
bitter melon, 2005 ($750)
tri-color tofu, 2005 ($750)
Pleased that Reb over at No Tell Motel has taken one of the love hotel poems, "tie me up, tie me down" for her anthology project due out later this year. Working now on gathering together the images for the texts for the full-length version to get it out the door to Press Lorentz.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Monday, July 04, 2005
The Lawrence Tree
The Lawrence Tree
Back from a quick weekend to the Land of Enchantment. Here are some photos... this first one was taken at D.H. Lawrence's ranch in San Cristobal. This is a pic of pine tree in front of the main cabin where Georgia O'Keefe first stayed when she visited NM –– the tree would later become the subject of a painting she would call "The Lawrence Tree."
Lawrence tomb
We hiked up to the Lawrence memorial/mausoleum and peeked inside Lawrence's tomb. Had a better view with the digital's zoom lens than with the naked eye.
DH Lawrence's tomb
A bunch of chile ristras hang from the lamp inside the tomb.
Ganesha shrine at Lama
We visited the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal where Kort does his summer tea retreats. It's a beautiful place, and the spiritual is palpable here. This is a pic of many of the different shrines we'd happen upon walking the grounds.
Entrance to Stupa
After walking around Lama, we made the drive to Questa to meet with Lama Chodrak who showed us their new stupa. The interior is handpainted with beautiful images of buddhas and dakinis by Cynthia Moku and her students, all the way from Naropa.
The Stupa at Questa
And here's another pic of the stupa up close which was stunning to say the least.
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