A High Monk's Passing 2- Taking Form

Early morning- 7:30 or so..  The best light of the day is around 7-8 a.m.  After that the intense sun's glare washes out colors and haze mutes the sky blues.  Even when there is nothing special going on I head over to the wat around 7:00, camera in hand, a few times a week.  Early mornings in Chiangmai are beautiful- the light, the cool, fresh air and the birds songing it up! 

Overnight the stairs on all four sides were almost complete, the base rough but fully enclosed, and the 2nd tier up and enclosed as well.

The two people, lower right, give you some idea of the scale.  They are looking into an open well enclosed by a circular brick wall.  During the monsoon the water rises almost to ground level but now it's probably 12-15 feet down.

The main wat on the left was recently reconstructed- new tile floors, beams, rafters and facing replaced, everything reglassed and freshly painted, and the entire roof retiled.  It was a huge undertaking and fascinating to watch it progress over the course of the several years it took to complete.  Early mornings and some evenings, the sounds of the monk's chanting drifts into my apartment.

Just a reminder.. you can enlarge these photos by clicking on them.  Click on them again to downsize them.  You can also view them in sequence without the comments using the film strip at the bottom.  It's really satisfying being able to do this!

A High Monk's Passing 1- Beginning Stages at Wat Suandok

Wat Suandok, immediately next door to my hotel, is a sprawling complex that includes, in addition to its two main temples, a massive, gold-domed stupa enshrining remains of the Buddha, the busy campus of a major Buddhist University, and the revered tombs of Thai royalty dating back to the 14th century.   For Thais it is hallowed ground of the highest order.

It also is the site of various fairs, student field trips, community health services, funeral services, and celebrations to mark the many Buddhist holidays and Lunar occasions.  But, except for daily visitors- most of them on packaged tours, it is a Thai place.  And much of what happens there is announced or posted only in Thai.    

Almost every day Duang and I pass through the wat grounds, either walking to lunch and back, or on her motorbike heading further afield. When I see billboards or sheets that indicate something is happening at the wat I usually ask her to translate for me.    
  

Ten days ago this sheet appeared in front the main wat.  Duang explained that a very high ranking  monk from Wat Buph Pharam in town had died at age 91.  His name was Pha Thep Veehsutthikwun (my phonetic spelling). After a period of celebration and prayer at his wat, he was to be moved in a long, elaborate procession, perhaps four miles, to Wat Suandok on the afternoon of the 25th.  For two days he would be honored and prayed for, and then, on the evening of the 28th, he would be cremated here.   In the ten years I've lived here I've seen only two cremations at Wat Suandok.  The first was a parallel celebration at Wat Suandok for a for a member of the royal family- the actual cremation took place in Bangkok.  The 2nd, I think, was for a member of one of Chiangmai's aristocracy.   When Duang explained this to me I knew right away that this would be an important event, but I had no clue how important, how momentous, and how impressive it would be.       

By the next morning construction of the bier was already underway.   They must have been working most of the night.  Dried lumber and building materials were scattered about. 

 

Alongside the wat other parts appeared overnight.  It was obvious that much time and effort had already gone into preparation.  A clue to what the final bier will look like is in the upper right on the announcement sheet, first photo.

Pha Thep Veehsutthikwun

Balcony Birds

Directly across the soi (small street) from my hotel are a pair of tall trees, their tops, roughly parallel with my 6th floor balcony, are 40-50 feet away.  During the wet season they are leafed out with a thick canopy, but now, moving into the heart of the dry season, they are nearly bare, dry seed pods about the size of silver dollars more numerous than leaves.   In the mornings and evenings especially, they are visited by a variety of birds that come to search for insects, redefine their territories, warm themselves in the first rays of the early morning sun, or to gather before heading off to their roosts for the night. 

The two Black-Collared Starlings are regulars most mornings and evenings.  These, I think, are a pair.  They stay close to each other as they move about  in the morning, usually staying around for up to an hour.  This summer I think it was this pair that built a rough, hanging nest about the size of a football and raised two chicks.  The entrance was just out of sight from where I watch but I got to see the whole mating ritual, nest building, feeding activity and finally the young ones  doing flight school atop the nest.  Sometimes there are three or four these days and I think the other one or two are the hatchlings still keeping company with the parents.

They have a wonderful range of calls- long strings of song rising and falling in pitch and volume, that usually begin around eight in the morning.  They sing in the evening too but for a shorter time.  During the day they are elsewhere searching for insects- their main food source, says my bird book!  Sometimes I will see one grooming the other, and more often I will see them touching bills as they energeticly give voice.  It looks as if they are fighting but I see this pair all the time and the bill touching and singing seems more like mating or bonding behavior than aggression. 

This is another pair I see every day.  They are Red-Whiskered Bulbuls and they like to perch on the very highest branches.  They too have a beautiful song that reminds me of the thrushes and vireos we hear summer evenings in Vermont. They are always together, sometimes here mid-day and they usually stay around longer.  They mate during the dry season so I am keeping an eye out for their courting!  Berries, fruit and insects are the preferred fare says my bird book.

There are many doves around- mornings perched in the high canopy to warm in the sun, during the day atop electric poles or balanced on the wires, and late day flapping straight up and then gliding down in long graceful spirals.  The last, courting displays I think.  This one is a Spotted Dove.  It's call here is similar to doves everywhere.. Coo, coor, coor.   Like the pigeons, they are mostly ground feeders, searching for seed and, like the pigeons, always availing themselves of the rice that the Thais scatter everywhere for the birds- especially the chickens.  Speaking of pigeons, I've always kind of held them in low regard- they crap everywhere, build loose, twiggy, ugly nests, feed at the bottom of the pile, and don't even have a notable song.  But from my balcony I have a different view of them and I've changed my tune.. They are some great flyers- very fast, acrobatic and graceful when it suits them!

I mentioned my bird book..  For awhile there was a great bookstore close by.  But Thais don't read much and bookstores as we know them survive on visitors mostly.  I found a sweet hardcover bird book there- Birds of Thailand for just a couple of dollars.  Not all of the birds I see from my balcony are in there but enough so that when I take my tea or cereal out there in the morning I also bring Birds of Thailand, my binoculars and my bird journal.  If the light looks promising I take my camera too.  So far I've identified twenty-one different birds and also entered descriptions of several that weren't in the book.  No serious "birder" am I but it's satisfying to learn more about them. 

Also, having a great camera (Nikon D7200) that has high resolution paired with a zoom lens (Nikon 70-200 f4) that is mind-boggling sharp, has seriously opened things up for me.  Expensive they were but never have I regretted getting them.  They are treasured tools!  I took the bird photos this morning, hand held- no tripod, and then have cropped the files way down to bring up the birds.  I'm so amazed and thankful at how well some of them turn out! 

Smile!

This blog is another step on the learning curve for me.  LightRoom has 14 possible steps for converting raw files to jpegs!  I went into my LR (LightRoom) "Collections" library and picked the set with the baby because it had only four files, and I much like them.  With the LR book set up on a stand next to me, I carefully tried to follow directions.  The option came up of where to store the converted files- in the folder on the external hard drive where the original raw files are, or in a special folder created on my desktop.  Though fraught with more peril I went for the original folder on the external drive. 

Also, I wanted to see if the copywrite watermarks I created would show up in my photos.  In the past I haven't been able to get them in.  They are my name in the lower left corner of the photos.  They're different because I created two versions- so I tried one in the baby pics and the other in the flower pics.   I converted and downloaded the flower pics into this blog for the practise and because I wanted to compare the watermarks.   Anyone have thoughts about one or the other?

I wanted to run the text down the side of the three baby pics (similar to what I did in the previous blog) but it keeps jumping me down to the top of the pic below.  If I did it once I'm sure I'll figure out how to do it again.

The other thing I wanted to learn was could I easily rearrange the photos when I had then loaded into the blog?  Thankfully it is easily done (at least this time.)  I can just click and hold on a photo and then drag it up or down and drop it where I want it.  It helps to go to the insertion point and make the space bigger before I try to drop a pic there.

I know it's a little on the cutsy side alternating baby pics with the flowers but it is practice rearranging the pics and the juxtaposing almost works.. sort of.  Next step is to plug in the text and background colors and see if they blend with the wallpaper background similar the previous post.

Doesn't she have the greatest smile!

Finding My Way Again..

So, six months ago, after a frustrating attempt at renewing this site, I gave it up for lost.  Reason.. Google didn't want to accept a new debit card, and no one I spoke to at Google seemed to have answers.  But now I've come back to find I'm up and editing again.  Have no idea how or why, but apparently I'm good to June 2017 when It's renewal time again.

It's been so long though that I'll need to relearn how to use this site, and that is what this post will be- trying to figure it out again!  First thing.. how to get pics in here.

Getting a font, text color and backround color leaves a bit to be desired- a thin range of choices, but inserting pics was surprisingly easy- click on "insert image" up in the tool bar.  In the window that came up I clicked on choose files, navigated to my flagged pics in iPhoto, chose three and double clicked on the last one.  Took a minute or two but all three uploaded, and I think in the order I selected them.  Will check that next set.  A nice surprise is that when I highlight the pic here in the blog, it gives me choices for the size (these are extra large) and I can choose whether I want it centered or aligned left or right.  Nice!

So now I put the curser to the left of the photo, and yes the printing sets up down the left side.  Yay!  But what happened to my gold background?  Maybe it doesn't like to share the block with the photo file?

So if I highlight a section then I can change the print and background colors

A fair amount of messing around to get the print and background to match that of previous posts, but:

In the grids 3 over, 2 down for text, lower right corner for background.. seems to match well.  

Now we try it to the right of the photo.  I set the curser alongside the top of the photo on the free space side, click, use return to drop a space and here we are.  I am very pleased so far.

These pics were taken at the Phuket Yacht Club down in southern Thailand a couple of years ago.  The small sailboat to the left is the one my friend Bruce and I sailed around the islands for a week.

I like the sepia tone of the catamaran below but the horizon line needs a little adjusting! 

Wanted to increase the spacing between pics 1 and 2 to two spaces but hitting the return bar lowers the text in this column instead of dropping the middle photo.  So will go with single spacing  between photos, and between paragraphs for now.

Previewing helps a lot to dial things in.

So do we get the backround color back?  Nope!  But the pictures look okay to me.  Great to be able to use the xtra large size to fill the blog space.

I would like to recover that textured, rich chocolate map background I have on my earlier posts but where is it?   Well.. Thought I changed the background to white and the text to another shade but Whoa.. what happened here? Filled in here but up above where I had return spacing no filling??

Okay!  I went up to the top right menu bar and clicked on preview, and it brought me to the original wallpaper with this blog pasted into it.  Unfortunately all the different background colors and print colors carried in too- not pretty!  But now lets try to clean it up!

One bit of bother is that the menu bar is in Thai when I first open my blog page.  Bugs me when this happens without my asking for it.  But will figure it out I'm sure.

So I think that's it for this blog.  Very excited to be up and running again.  Next order of business is to use LightRoom to dial in converting my edited raw files to jpegs, and then finding an efficient way to move the selected photos into my blog.