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August 10, 2014

It’s been a couple of months since my last post. At that time I was recently returned from five months of humanitarian assistance work in Rakhine State, Myanmar (formerly Burma). I thought I had more to say about that experience – and some of the extremist, fascist, bigoted, ignorant Rakhine populace who obstructed our work *and* some of the so-called humanitarians who numbed (and probably still do) their better judgements with tables full of cocktails every night while permitting atrocious abuses to continue (read Rohingya Children Going Hungry, published on August 9th). Maybe I do have more to say; maybe I don’t. But when I Google “rohingya in myanmar” I find myself saying, “all these news articles probably say it better than I can. Let my readers Google it themselves if they wish to know more.” Call me complacent, but I just don’t feel like re-visiting it right now. If you haven’t been following my blog and you’d like to know some of the history of my five months there, go back over my posts from January to May of this year to get a taste.

I’m back in Vermont now. Since I have an increasingly international following, I’ll be more specific: that’s in the northeast part of the United States near Canada. And what a beautiful part of the country it is. I feel so fortunate to have landed here after my hellish work experience in Myanmar, specifically Rakhine State in the western part of the country. Oh, if you’re curious and thinking of visiting Rakhine State, don’t. There are very few places where you can travel freely. Because the newly “democratic” (ROTFL) government doesn’t want you to see the truth of the crimes against humanity that are occurring in Rakhine, travel is severely restricted in western Myanmar. They only allow you to go to places where there’s practically no ethnic tension. Even the humanitarian community has to jump through hoops to get to certain locations. And God forbid you speak the truth about what you see there! You’ll get ejected from the country, or at least Rakhine State, like Medecins Sans Frontieres, Malteser International, or me.

Gee, all I wanted to do was post a few pictures I took of the super moon rising over my meadow tonight, I mention Myanmar and look what happens…

Enough.

I’m in Vermont, which is darn near paradise, and this incredibly beautiful full moon rose over the horizon tonight. Today the moon is the closest to earth it will be all year. It appears 12% larger and 30% brighter. Here are a few pictures I took of it.

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 Coming later this week, pictures from the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in upstate New York. I attended three days of incredible American roots music with my friends Heidi, Eric and their dog Ryan from August 1-3.  We camped at the festival location in Eric’s pop-top Westfalia VW camper. Fun!

I’ll talk more about American roots music in my next post.

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