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THICH NHAT HANH IN HANOI. During the Vietnam war he spoke out against foreign ideology and foreign arms. He created a volunteer youth group to rebuild destroyed villages. He was consequently exiled. Now he was back, in peace.
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MUSTANG TREK: A LONG WALK IN AN ANCIENT KINGDOM. I discovered a land of song where every song is a prayer. And now a rough new road from the Tibetan plateau is bringing in the sounds of motor vehicles.
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DAY OF TRINITY, DIES IRAE. For Joe McKibben, it came in the back door without knocking. For Berlyn Brixner, it rose in dead silence like an awesome new desert sun. Birth of the nuclear age as recalled in interviews 50 years later. My report, from the Albuquerque Journal.
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EARLY MINING IN THE SAN JUANS
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CRESTONE, CO - February 9th, 2010
A Tale of Buddhism In Singapore
The man who rode away
BY LARRY CALLOWAY
It seemed odd to me that Singapore, where 70 per cent of the population is Chinese and the biggest annual all-consuming holiday is Chinese New Year, would have a Chinatown. But there it was, as promised by the tourist map and guaranteed in the name of a subway station: a few colorful lines of old shop houses against a backdrop of tall buildings in the mumble of traffic.

Unlike neighboring Little India, Singapore’s Chinatown is no ethnic enclave (the streets do not teem), but it does have distinct cultural markers in the form of temples (red and gold and traditional). The grandest of these is a new four-tiered building with upturned eaves in the Tang dynasty style that occupies a city block between two streets named Sago. Completed in 2009 at a cost of nearly $50 million, mostly from donations, it has the unlikely (from a tourist’s perspective) name: Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum. I found the sacred relic’s chamber, highly secured and shining with leaf gold, at the architectural center of the temple. All the mainland Asian traditions of Buddhism are represented here, up to and including the rooftop garden with a giant Tibetan prayer wheel, although the obvious center of activity is the high main-floor sanctuary of Maitreya (the Buddha of the Future) where resident monks chant, believers pray and tourists shoot pictures.
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But what thoroughly captured me for an most of an afternoon there (yes, it is air conditioned) was the museum. The first pieces on exhibit, fine artful statues and bas-relief stone carvings, represented scenes from the story of Prince Siddhartha (Sakyamuni or Gautama). It’s a problematic and somewhat inaccessible tale because it tells how a young man from a royal family renounces everything, leaving his wife and infant son to go live in the woods (and in the purest version, never returning). I think of it as a sort of Western with the title, “The Man Who Rode Away.”

The curators of the Buddha Tooth museum have created their own fascinating device to make the story more accessible: the enlightenment as told by the Buddha himself. At first this seemed a little too unscholarly for a museum, too Disneyish for such a seriously religious place. Then it occurred to me that classical Chinese can indeed be translated in the first person if the context allows and, further, that Buddhism is not a by-the-book religion plagued with the dicta of literal interpretation. Texts are rafts for crossing the river, fingers pointing at the moon. I recalled the popularity of Thich Nhat Hanh’s novel-like rendition of the basic sutras in “Old Path, White Clouds.” more>>


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Bruce King Was The Last Cowboy Governor -- Anywhere
I had no idea Bill Clinton would be there, but when he showed up I realized the story Bruce King told was true. Those early-riser breakfasts meant something. View>>
Coming Of Age at the 2009 Telluride Film Festival
Because the mysterious selectors at the Telluride Film Festival are in touch with the industry globally, clusters of films happen, themes emerge. View>>


Book of Days - Snapshots of Southwest History in Progress



Paintings by Paul Folwell



Photo by Clyde Lovett, crestonecreations.com