Art, Music, Photography

from Annabel Laura

whom I was talking with at Annapurna this morning

in Sanur

late after a rare breakfast out. Most cool. - dc 

Eric Arnow went to Russia

Eric comments on his trip to Russia

on his Bumble Buddhist blog - July 15 and May 9 2015 entries

Eric's cuke page 

Hiroshima Day

Nuclear war is still far too possible - on a much vaster scale than the US nuclear bombing of Japan.

Defusing the nuclear threat.


cuke page for Species Threat #1 - Nuclear War 

Snake on the beach

An ular poleng, a banded krait, a sacred snake here because it's black and white stripes, more like silver grey and black. Here's a page on it. It was about four feet long, slithering along with a bunch of us locals and bule (local word for not them) watching. It's poisonous though few deaths reported. Some dogs checked it out. One kept a distance and the other's owner held it back. It went into the sea water and swam off. Wasn't too pleased to see that as that's where I'd just been, but that's not its usual haunt. It was sort of herded there. 

More on Montior Lizards and Cobras

Zen buddy Fil Lewit in Thailand has sent some excellent advice and info on monitor lizards and cobras. Check it out below and then some links.

I went noodling around in cuke.com until I found “Saunters,” where all my questions were answered in your long blog, of which I read every word. Fascinating stuff, for a guy, me, now living in Bangkok!

I’ve lived in the tropics for almost 40 years: when living at Railei for 25 years, our back line was the national park jungle’s line, with a small klong running down from the jungle, so we had lots of Clouded Monitor Lizards, ranging from babies a foot long up to full-grown adults of about 5 feet long and chunky and unafraid. They are not afraid of humans when full grown. The pic of the little kid cuddling a big Monitor gave me the willies, and here’s why: although Monitors are not “poisonous" as such, this lizard’s mouth flora and bacteria are completely inimical to human health, and if you piss one off and it does bite you say on the arm, you’ve got a few hours to get to a doc. Your arm will swell up and hurt like Hell, and you will almost immediately get blood poisoning and will either lose the arm to amputation or just die.

Therefore I would like to discourage you from calling Monitors “harmless,” or letting them stay in your home (they like to get into kitchens). It is true that the only Monitor to attack a human without provocation is the Komodo Dragon, but both Clouded Monitors and Water Monitors can be, and often are, deadly to humans because of their weird mouth bacteria.

The second point of issue: Of course cobras, all of them from tiny to huge, should be avoided, but they are not usually dangerous, as they dislike humans and will go the other way. The Indians call cobras “the good snake” as they rarely bother humans but eat great quantities of rats. I’ve seen a number of them, including a 7-footer black spitting cobra, very much alive, in the wild. It ran, or do I say slithered quickly away? The two dangerous ones: 1) the little ones, who can crawl under your pillow and bite you fatally on the neck when your head hits the pillow and disturbs them (this is why we kept our separate bungalow bedroom screened with the door shut all the time; and  2) A King Cobra (10 -15 feet long) in the wilderness wild is territorial, and will attack a human entering its territory with little provocation, though when out of its territory is harmless and will slither on its way. Outside of those two examples one has little to nothing to fear from cobras.

Fil Lewitt book page on Amazon which doesn't yet have his new book, Clockwork Cherries: Haiku to Sonnets with Color Drawings 2011-2012 Paperback

Fil on cuke.com

Last Eye Drop

A few days ago had my last eye drop. Been taking them since late June, since when I first went to the Indera hospital here. After that last drop got curious and looked up on the Internet average cost for lazer surgery in the USA to correct a detached retina.
The site I went to reported five to ten thousand dollars for everything. I had three visits to that hospital, saw two doctors and assorted nurses and assistants, got various tests, and was told on the last visit by the eye surgeon that it's good now. Total cost to me about two hundred dollars. Now I saved some here because Indera doesn't usually deal with foreigners, has no international section, and I had to use a good deal of Indonesian - though if I hadn't they would have figured it out. Landlord David said he gets better service and lower costs by not going to the places that specialize in foreigners - he'd broken an arm recently. But the cost in those places would also have been way way below America's insane gouging. Will let you know if my eyeball falls out. - dc

School's back

School break is over. There's a middle school just over the wall near us. Sound of lots of kids. A new man on the loudspeakers. I miss the former one who had a kinder voice. Occasional band music like a high school marching band where I come from. A woman signing a schmaltzy song like something from Lawrence Welk. The man again going on and on. Last year there was a lot of this for about a week, then just for a while some mornings starting early, maybe going on for hours on a Saturday. There's a lot of variety in it but not the best there is offered here. This is Bali.