Kendall’s Quest:

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Original HTML:
<li class="cat-item cat-item-9134"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/about-africa" >About Africa</a> (10)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-2502"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/blogs" >Blogs and Blogging</a> (32)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9136"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/books-and-movies" >Books and Movies</a> (67)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-2456"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/buddhism" >Buddhism</a> (32)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-12"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/california" >California</a> (8)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-2052"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/cats" >Cats</a> (2)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-16063"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/chris-virden" >Chris Virden</a> (3)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9139"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/manko" >Manko</a> (17)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-6495"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/massachusetts" >Massachusetts</a> (4)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-276"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/mexico" >Mexico</a> (11)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9141"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/in-new-mexico" >New Mexico</a> (10)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-93"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/oregon" >Oregon</a> (23)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-4604"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/politics" >Politics</a> (20)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9131"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/in-portugal" >Portugal</a> (22)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-1209"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/preparation" >Preparation</a> (8)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9137"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/prisons-and-prisoners" >Prisons and Prisoners</a> (17)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9140"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/seth" >Seth</a> (16)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9132"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/in-spaingalicia" >Spain/Galicia</a> (4)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9133"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/in-texas" >Texas</a> (35)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-132"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/travel" >Travel</a> (1)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9138"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/what-does-it-mean" >What does it mean?</a> (51)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9135"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/where-to-plant-myself" >Where to plant myself</a> (27)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-1209"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/preparation" >Preparation</a> (8)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9137"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/prisons-and-prisoners" >Prisons and Prisoners</a> (17)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9140"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/seth" >Seth</a> (16)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9132"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/in-spaingalicia" >Spain/Galicia</a> (4)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9133"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/in-texas" >Texas</a> (35)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-132"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/travel" >Travel</a> (1)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9138"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/what-does-it-mean" >What does it mean?</a> (51)
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<li class="cat-item cat-item-9135"><a href="https://blogs.bootsnall.com/Grannygold/category/where-to-plant-myself" >Where to plant myself</a> (27)
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Chris Virden (3)

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Oregon (23)

Politics (20)

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Preparation (8)

Prisons and Prisoners (17)

Seth (16)

Spain/Galicia (4)

Texas (35)

Travel (1)

What does it mean? (51)

Where to plant myself (27)

Making judgments

June 22nd, 2007

One of the joys of blogging, for me, is that I have encountered a few people I’ve never met who have become virtual friends. That’s how it is with Nacho, Dave, Steve, Lubna, Jetgirl, and Stephen, the most frequent commenter on this blog who, because of his frequent comments, is here and now moving up to the center of the blog. At least for today. Stephen and I often communicate by email when we are not meeting on the blog, and I perceive the man I know via email to be gentler, kinder, more humorous, and more approachable (though no less discerning and discriminating) than the man who makes comments on the blog. This week our email and blog conversations have to do with India, where I have never been and he has; with judgment; with my perceptions of “harshness,” and with his beliefs about travelers, ethics, spirituality, and travel writing, his own and other people’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Books and Movies | 3 Comments »

Tags: Blogs and Blogging, Books and Movies, Hampi, Wislawa Szymborska

Finishing Holy Cow

June 22nd, 2007

If I can’t travel every moment, at least I can peer into someone else’s travels. It took me more than one day to finish Sarah Macdonald’s Holy Cow, partly because I’m wrestling yet again with a different kind of beast: a migraine. These have been the bane of my existence since I was in my twenties. Anyway, I have finished the book, and I like it even better than I did initially. Macdonald makes no claims to accurate or objective perceptions, but she describes India in the details that she notices, and she outlines, with hilarious self-deprecating humor, a “spiritual” process many Westerners experience: from revulsion and curiosity, to fascinated involvement, to earnest and naive effort to understand or “try on” certain beliefs and practices, and finally to a position of respectful balance, rejecting what she can’t stomach and incorporating what she can, feeling (sometimes accurately) like a fraud and a dilettante. She walks a sharp edge of cynicism and respect, and I find the way she does that admirable. I also see that those who attack her for cultural imperialism didn’t finish the book. She tracks her own journey from cultural imperialist to cultural relativist, and unless her reader goes with her all the way, that reader will definitely get the wrong impression. Here are some excerpts of her conclusions, for those who may be interested: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books and Movies | 1 Comment »

Tags: Books and Movies, Holy Cow, migraines, Sarah Macdonald

Brain enemas, Holy cows: a book I can’t put down.

June 19th, 2007

Travel much? Ever worry about the cultural imperialism inherent in “tourism,” especially in countries full of poor people? Two recent films touch on these issues, Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland. Sarah Macdonald wrestles the beastly issues skillfully in a book that is for me a real page-turner. Last night while doing errands (because it’s too hot to go out in the daylight) I came across her Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure. It’s reviewed here (do read the review and all the comments–fascinating!), and I agree with everybody who writes about the book. It’s smug, it’s respectful, it’s loving, it’s arrogant, it’s an Australian woman’s experience of India, her own spiritual quest undertaken inadvertently and against her better judgment, and it is also, as most of the reviewers fail to mention, gut-busting hilarious. I’ll copy out some pieces of the book below the line. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Books and Movies | 2 Comments »

Tags: Blogs and Blogging, Books and Movies, Holy Cow, Sarah Macdonald, Vipassana

What Tillie Olsen actually said

June 16th, 2007

Today while I was packing books I came across my old paperback copy of Tillie Olsen’s Silences. The paper is brown and crumbly, and the words have been read, underlined, and read again so many years ago that they became part of the way my own brain works. It is a marvel to look at them and think that at one time, these ideas were new to me. Look. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books and Movies, Politics, Seth | No Comments »

Tags: Books and Movies, Politics, Seth, Tillie Olsen

Mundane complexity and shocking beauty

June 15th, 2007

I am mired in the mundane: now that Manko has moved out and I am about to relocate to my temporary home in Houston, I must make decisions about LAN phone and DSL service, whether to get a prepaid cell phone (and if so from which provider), in order to “port” my old LAN phone number to a cell phone for those people who don’t read the blog or don’t have email or who I have forgotten to notify but don’t want to lose…and all of this keeps me in front of the computer for many wasted hours. The compensation for these wasted hours is that occasionally, while looking for something else, I click on a link to unexpected beauty. That poem by Szymborska yesterday, and today a reminder of Tillie Olsen, a memorial that reads like a poem itself, and the existence of the book I meant to write in the 80s. Someone else wrote it. Good. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books and Movies | No Comments »

Tags: Books and Movies, Tillie Olsen

Why we don’t do it.

June 14th, 2007

Met my friend Jake at a coffee house this afternoon, and we found ourselves laughing at all the excuses we make for why we don’t do what we say we most want to do. In his case, paint. In my case, write. We need more uninterrupted time. We need to clean house first. We need a larger space. A smaller space. Unpaid bills worry us. Our kids need something from us. Want to write in the blog first. Our excuses are endless and hilarious, really. Driving home, I heard something on NPR that caught my interest, so I went to their website and ended up stumbling over a feature that includes a marvelous poem that says it brilliantly and made me laugh. Szymborska is talking about people who put off having a child. But it’s about putting off anything we think (or say) we want to do; running our “rackets” as the Forum people say. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in What does it mean? | 1 Comment »

Tags: What does it mean?, Wislawa Szymborska

The best thing about getting old…

June 12th, 2007

What I like best about getting old is the clarity that comes from watching the roller coasters soar and sink for so many years that, while I never lose interest in what will happen next, I am also less likely to expect that whatever is happening now will go on happening. Buddhists call it impermanence. The breath arises and falls away, and that becomes a metaphor…. I’ve received a wealth of emails from old friends over the last few days, and I sit here with my arms outstretched, as if I could embrace us all. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Manko, Seth, Texas | 2 Comments »

Tags: Manko, Seth, Texas

4,3,2,1: LIFT OFF!

June 10th, 2007

Manko and Kendra are spending their first night in their new home tonight. They took what they absolutely needed with them today. Tomorrow morning the moving men come, to load up what has been my household and take it over to their place. I’ll supervise the move and delivery while the girls are at work. The Grand Scheme is in motion. Is this really happening? I feel a little like I’m in the middle of that Dali painting with the melting clocks. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Manko, Texas | 1 Comment »

Tags: Manko, Texas

Vanessa Regrave, Heroine worship

June 4th, 2007

Last night CBS News Sixty Minutes featured an interview with Vanessa Redgrave, and although I was infuriated by Mike Wallace’s conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the interview, I was enchanted (as always) by Redgrave. She’s eight years older than I am, and all my life she’s been the woman I wanted to grow up to become. (That is, when I wasn’t wanting to grow up to be Pema Chodron, Barbara Jordan, Mary Oliver, or Audre Lorde: I have been blessed with glorious role-models!) Well, that won’t happen, but we’ve lived by the same ideals. I’m so glad she has been in the world at the same time I was. I could go off on the anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism thing, but I won’t. I relish the way she presents herself in the world, and I also clicked on the photo-essay and sat back and enjoyed every single photograph.

Posted in Books and Movies | No Comments »

Tags: Books and Movies, Vanessa Redgrave

Energy, Zulu traditional doctors, Kirby vacuums

June 3rd, 2007

Today is my second full day of not-teaching (till mid-August), and I feel as though I’m on intravenous Life Force. I went for a walk this morning, and I could feel energy surging through me like electric voltage. I think it’s related to a concept I learned from Zulu traditional doctors, about which I’ll say more beneath the line. Meanwhile, as I was finishing off my course, Manko and Kendra started training for a new job. At first they thought they were training to be telephone consumer service reps, and later they realized they were training to be Kirby vacuum cleaner salespeople. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About Africa, Manko, Texas, What does it mean? | 7 Comments »

Tags: About Africa, Manko, Texas, What does it mean?