Gross National Happiness

Greetings,

You will happy to know Bhutan has a gross national happiness (GNH) index. Material well being is one component.

"That doesn't ensure you are at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other," said Kimjie Dorjing, minister of Well Being.

On the red path music scene following new directions along delicious muddy trails to the south; villages and rice paddies are filled with labor's love. The dirt way offers views of old brick factories, rolling green hills, western mountains, rivers, lakes, and 'Water Music.'

This is where you discover a small tributary rushing down from hills and, like visiting the Rio in southern Spain, you begin cleaning out winter's dead debris, clearing out a channel as the flow courses through leaves, around stones, dancing down twisted delicately carved erosions toward distant fields filled with rice, corn, and cabbage greens deep inside old forested ferns, sheltered large bamboo groves with the eco-system encapsulated by bird songs and pine scent.

You witness the orange sun going home as a full moon rises over an eastern mountain monastery dreaming starlight.

Peace.

Glorious Worker's Day

Greetings,

Hello, my name is Xi. Today is Worker's Day and I am a worker.

I was working the other day in our small sport shoe piece factory like any other day meaning it's all the same day when you work in a small rural Chinese village and suddenly a strange man came in. Some of the girls hid behind their sewing machines, others ran into the back room but I stayed where I was, just sitting and smiling.

I must be honest and tell you the work is boring, we don't make much money and the male boss is mean to us, but it's a job, the only job I could find after finishing middle school so I took it. My parents are farmers. They are happy because they have a small home, a bike, rice cooker, radio, and TV.

I like the people I work with. The girls and women sew together foam and leather pieces which is the top part of a shoe. I know it's only part because they send them to another factory in another village where they do more pieces.

I guess they eventually become a complete shoe but we all wear plastic sandals anyway so it doesn't matter to me.

The man said some words which I didn't understand and he took pictures. I was a little nervous but he seemed ok so I just sat still, smiling. After he left I went back to my finishing work. It was the most interesting thing that happened in the factory that day.

Happy Worker's Day!

Peace.

Found Iraqi antiquities poem

Greetings,

Iraq sits on the land
of ancient Mesopotamia,
the "land between two rivers,"
home to prehistoric man and
the cradle of civilization.

On the banks
of the Tigris and Euphrates,
the Mesopotamians
were the first people
to study the stars,
develop the written word and
enforce a legal code.

Standing among shards
of glass
outside the Iraqi National Museum,
Dr. Moayad Damerji
said
the objects and artifacts which bore witness
to mankind's development
had vanished,
their loss immeasurable.

"The Iraqi National Museum is the only museum in the world
which shows all the steps in the history of mankind,"
said the professor of archaeology at Baghdad University,
and the former director general of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities.

"These witnesses
to our own development
have gone,
they are gone."

Among the most
priceless treasures
missing
are the Vase of Uruk
and the Harp of Ur,
dating back
to between 3,000 and 2,500 BC
and the rule of the Sumerian kings.

The exquisite bronze Statue of Basitki
from the Akkadian kingdom
is also gone,
somehow hauled out
of the museum
despite its huge weight.

Peace.