History by another name

Paper carousel

How to make paper carousel, eiffel tower, birds, christmas ornaments from different parts of the world.

Book tip

memoir tips

The story must be told

It is incredible when a person gives up everything for helping others. There are inequalities in many spheres of life. But Dr Ruit says that saints and crooks are same to him. He treats everyone in need.
When I saw 'Three Cups of Tea' on the cover of 'Second suns', there was a small doubt in my head. But I spoke to Nepali neighbours and they knew about the Miracle Doctor Ruit who is touched upon as God by those he offered sight with his 7 minute cataract surgery. The way Ruit and Sanduk, first and last names are used independently in consecutive sentences, it was confusing at times. His partner Dr Tabin is a dare devil.
The author has started with the backgrounds of both doctors and the overlap of the Venn diagram which ends in the eye center. When one doctor talks about the other, it seemed like the interviews with chopped contestants as the contest goes on.
Because of the thick volume of the book, I have to wonder how much more meaningful it would be to read the whole story from the perspective of the doctors.
I am a foodie. So I was happy to come across lotus root pakora and butter tea (My neighbour says this is mostly had in the Himalayas).
There are bits and pieces of history in the background with 2001 Nepali royal family tragedy (I recalled it from the news cast in India), Sikkim history.

Dignifying pantoum

The Late Parade by Adam Fitzgerald

Strange cinema poem somehow clicks when a poem should be written in a Pantoum form. Like When Harry met Sally?

Ormolu

Definition poem

'To reveal the rose

that the rose obscures'

These lines make you think of the insides of a rose and not just as the 3D box that we see it as.

In 'Eden and After', the poet makes you think of all the things that you do and how were they when you did the for the first time and when Adam/Eve did any of the verbs, named nouns for the first time. The poems have a freshness of a rock upturned to see the unknown world underneath it.

Eradicating blindness from Nepal

Second Suns by 

Tsampa with Butter tea.
Second son into monkhood. How to understand a country's culture? We know in some countries first sons go to fight for the country. Especially in smaller countries.
Father Mackey of Education
Low altitude sickness

Round Kanchenjunga: Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration

Where Art and Life intersect

What art is by Arthur C Danto

Lebenswelt

Sausage series

Yesterday I was standing aside having ordered an icecream dipped in chocolate and almonds at Costco. The staff went about fulfilling a previous order of the hot dogs. The receptacle was steaming. when she opened it, she brought out a sausage with the tongs. Later she opened a two tier metal cabinet which held the bread for the hot dogs.


Paint job

While searching for 'Paint Job' by Fischli and Weiss, I read of the blind that had been laid on the floor in that exhibit of 'Paint job'. The blind had been stolen. Oh, so thats why many ordinary objects go missing?

I went online to see Blinds for sliding doors and followed to the store for the ideas in the article. Oh my god, the ideas were so expensive. Does anybody use blue carpet?

Fat chair

I was going to say I am 30% art after reading of Fat Chair as art but not after some smarts from the above link.

Reading art

Saving art

Get a sense of

along with a Cate Blanchett movie on the topic.

Comedians

I will soon be reading

I want to read a related 

Painting landscape

Wendy Jelbert

Recently I made a water painting of an ox relaxing on a beach with palm trees behind and a blue sky from a photo on the net.
after I got done with the ox, I no longer wanted the ground to be sand, I wanted it to be muddy water and then came the light sky. And now I was left with middle ground and didnt know what to do with it. Then I imagined a scene from my childhood where there was a mild high land cliffing into water pool. I went fr with the imagination to put in our ancstral home but not enough to realise that it would make an interesting subject for another painting all by itself.
To cut long story short, 'Creative Acrylic Landscapes' by Wendy Jelbert encourages such changing, mix and match of elements of in your landscape to get at a powerful painting.
'Contrasts in tone' shows how tones alter the perception and feel of a landscape. The book explains the basic quipment and techniques that are needed to make a landscape painting.
There is a detailed snapshot by snapshot of making of a half dozen landscapes with snapshots ranging from 30 to 50, explaining, the method and feel sought after with each step.

If you are afraid of Angela's ashes

If you wimped out reading 'Angela's Ashes' by Frank McCourt, here's another chance at reading on Irish childhood. With 'I'll give you something to cry about' chapter, I read in another book 'Stuck in the Middle with you' by Jennifer Finney Boylan where the author goes to Ireland with her family and in one of the irate moments says the same 'I'll give you something to cry about'. so it is true Irish childhood.
In some chapters, the author tries to show us incidents where his childhood innocence was peeled by doing away with a litter of dogs. I watched a similar thing where a litter of cats were left in a sack very far away from house but at a much younger age than the author. Then there's the mom not letting you go to excursions even after having paid the trip expenses. I could relate well with some of the experiences.
The TV Reporters snippets in most of the chapters recreate the family dinner table setting and unleash the 'Troubles' second-hand in an easy medium to the readers.
Author ate custard cream biscuits in the break time of turning turf.
Custard cream wiki
Nigella custard cream biscuits

The man behind Jeeves

Not until reading of Pears soap in the P. G Wodehouse Life in letters, I hadnt realised how much British life is mixed into the Indian life.
Eno - sat isabgol - Hajmola

Townsend - Townend. Our ancestral house was at the outskirts of the village.

Books Wodehouse read as a child

Anstey books

As wise as Teresias

Before reading this book, if you asked me how many kinds of parenthood there are. I would say mother, father, adopted, surrogate. But now I wonder if I am already in the midst of the future modern world where like one of the writer says, where one day you can choose to be a man and another a woman.
It is amazing to read of the emotions related to birth from the mother's perspective who gave birth but didn't get to see the moments of the baby growing, from the mother who gave labour, funeral and grieving to the baby who couldn't live.
The greatest surprise in the book is the interviews with various writers who have a different angle to bring to parenting. Not how to raise children but what it means to have children, how their childhood affected their views on having children, to be a parent - mother or father or somewhere in between.