Duong in the center with good friends Dave and Ao. This was not long after we met last August and she was still trying to figure out what I was all about. Dave taught math on Long Island for 30 years, retired here and shares his life with Ao.
So I'm trying to learn how to use my blog and this is the first time I've put text and images up. Yup, that's me circa 1970 or thereabouts. I was teaching a class on hitch-hiking (surprise, surprise) at the University of Maryland and someone from the Baltimore Sun called and asked if they could do a story about my class. So a team came down, the photographer took some pics and then the writer- Henry Scarupa I believe, and I hitched to NYC for lunch and then back to Washington, DC. We were stopped by the NJ State Police but not arrested- they were actually pretty nice to us, and later I remember Henry describing me as "serene and Buddha-like" as we sped down the NJ Turnpike in the open back of a truck. They did the story in the magazine section of the Sunday Sun and later sent me this picture titled "Hippie Bob."Well a few years have slipped by for all of us, we have
done some moving
around, and I have done some "maturing!" What hasn't changed at all though is my passion for traveling and adventuring. As I write this in my small 6th floor "penthouse" apartment in Chiang Mai, Duong, my Thai wife/sweetie/companion is watching from the balcony as the first sweet, cooling monsoon rains of the day sweep down off the mountains just to the west.Literally a stones throw away is Wat Suan Dok, its massive gold stupa always part of our view, and relics of the real Buddha secreted within. Still not religious mind you but funny how that stuff works! That's the stupa with its gold dome in the back round, and the monks are 4th year students posing for their graduation pictures last year. The monks in the first row are their teachers.
The monk in the upper row smiling at us is "Tunnee." He is from Burma and came here because it was the only way he could get an education- Wat Suan Dok is also home to a Buddhist university. Often monks will speak to me as I go through the wat complex and several have become good enough friends that I can talk politics or share books with them. There is always something going on there- "Buddha days" as Duong would say- many of them, celebrations, funerals, school festivals. When there is chanting the sound drifts up and fills the room. It's a special place to live!
Well I'm psyched that I've been able to do this much today- more later!!
