lunch and dinner

Katrinka's in the States for a month so the variety of the meals has gone down but fortunately I love brown rice and we have a rice cooker. Soaked some non GMO soybeans and cooked them. Had them both for dinner last night plus some olive oil and gomashio on the rice and tahini and soy sauce with the beans, A little local water spinach cooked in a pan with a little water, some coconut water and almond milk mixed. What a meal. Bananas with cashew butter for breakfast then for lunch, more rice and soy - cold out of the fridge (heat it in body) with the same additions. Almost time for dinner. Let's see, how about some more brown rice and soybeans with water spinach? Will repeat till it's all gone. 

Tumeric and Jamu

Tumeric, kunyit in Indonesian, is one of the herbs and spices I've gotten into here. I grate a tiny amount in with the mix for morning chai and a whole finger of it for an evening drink with hibiscus called rosela here. First got into it when a restaurant we went to featured jamu, a popular Indonesian drink, or tumeric tonis as another place calls it - cold or hot. Here's a page by a tumeric true believer. I'm skeptical of all these claims but I've made sure there's some oil with it since reading this - almond milk or coconut oil. And here's Cafe Jamu with how to make that drink. I usually add ginger but need to start including tamarind with it. - thanks Katrinka

Bathtubs in Bali

We rarely see a bathtub. There are some nice showers here, however. The one in the photo is a couples' shower off Trip Advisor, not ours. I took a hot bath in a large tub in Germany almost every night. Not many bathtubs in lots of Asia. Japan of course has the best tubs where one sits rather than lie. I wonder about Korea. Can't remember. Not in India even in some nice homes I was in but it's a big complex place and I just experienced a millionth of it.
We see tubs in places we stay here on the island sometimes and often they're big square tiled things that look snazzy but too big take forever to fill up to a foot or there's no hot water for them. The people putting them in and designing don't understand. When we were in Japan a year and a half ago we had a hot soak every night. I say soak of course because you clean off outside first. I did that in Germany too - cleaned in the tub first then filled it or took a shower in it afterwards. No water shortage at all in those parts. But there are water options here to offset the paucity of tubs. - thanks for the query MK who said he hoped I didn't shock myself in the tub but then again, do we have tubs? This was the answer.

Deplorable

I thought about that deplorable thing and sent this to some people connected to the campaign.

Putting it in Christian terms.

People are not deplorable. If they are, then I am a deplorable. It is deplorable to say that people are deplorable. However, one may correct oneself saying they were passionate about this and what they meant was that there are deplorable beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, statements, actions. In the spirit of Martin Luther King, and as Hillary Clinton has referenced, we are commanded by Jesus to love everyone. But we are all sinners in that a sin is a harmful mistake. We forgive the sinner but we do not ignore the deplorable.

Trying to do as little harm as possible,


dc

Shocking

Just got a heck of 220 shock from the long extension cord. I plugged it in in the bedroom to watch a Narcos on laptop in bed, picked up the end with the power strip, and the next thing I knew was being shot into outer space. And like I've experienced in emergencies, time was super slowed enough I could wonder what was happening and then realized I was getting shocked. I instinctively yelled. You know how it's said you can't let go when you're getting shocked? I remember hoping it would fall out of my hands because I wasn't connected anymore there. It did fall.
I assumed I'd stuck my thumb in the outlet and somehow gotten shocked that way and picked it up and got briefly shocked again but just had to step back. It was exposed where the cord went into the power strip. Will take to the nice old guy who put it together for us at his small nearby electric stuff store. We get our electric cords from him because he makes them out of bigger wire and they don't stop working like the commercial ones. But there was this glitch. Sort of woke me up. Was resting after getting a root canal. Reminds me of sitting sesshin at Green Gulch and going out to grab the electric fence at that horse coral for a nice shock that would keep me awake a few periods. But nothing compared to this Bali high. - dc

Hooray for them

Forest-burning is a sin says Indonesian Islamic council

Ocean Cleanup Attempt

Good luck to these folks - thanks Gregory

And may there be aggressive government sponsored education and laws and rules to stop so many people in the world from thinking the ocean is a handy garbage can - and then there's the air and the land. - dc

Clear View Project

Buddhist-Based Resources for Relief and Social Change 

September 1 report on activities and appeal by Alan Senauke of the Berkeley Zen Center

Byodo-in

Back in January Andrew Atkeison sent these photos and report on the temple, Byodo-in in Japan and just now getting this PDF up as it slipped through the cracks.

Andrew's cuke page - with a lot of other reports and photos and links

Andrew's Iron Flute Song website

Weather or Not

It's hot for August here. August is the coolest month in Bali too. Here's the latest hot tip from Nasa about this. They say everybody's talking about the weather but nobody's doing anything. It seems to me we are doing something.