Thursday 10 October 2019

Clay pots Burma

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/asia/myanmar-buddhism-water-clay-pots.html

but dipping same cup into pot and drinking spreads disease.  Yes, there is too much plastic.

There was a time when plastic was so scarce we used shreds to wrap our meat in frig., and US Embassy sold used plastic bags for 18 kyats each.  In 1970s.

10-10-2019

Monday 7 October 2019

Chihuly look alike projects with recycled and new plastics.


You need pour acrylic paints in bottles.


this is more advanced--another one uses hair dryer, but need adult supervision

and this last one is the best, by a school art teacher for children + adults 7 and up.

Start saving recycled bottles right now.


Cheers,

km

Thursday 26 September 2019

Where to buy my short story FGM

https://www.amazon.com/FGM-Story-about-Mutilation-Women/dp/1497497736

Where to buy my novella Black Rice

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rice-Novella-K-Kaung/dp/0615797520#reader_0615797520

About a man with very dark skin captured by a rival ethnic group in Burma in 1948.

--

Review of my novella Black Rice by Peter Carey


Dear Dr Kyi,

I was deeply affected by your powerful essay 'Black Rice' which is beautifully written and extremely effective in evoking the tragedy which has overwhelmed Burma in all the years since independence. In fifty short pages it is all there - the tragedy and the waste and the pity of it all.

I was born in a recently independent Rangoon (30 April 1948) in a state which which was known as the 14-mile government because the Karens were pressing so hard on Rangoon's back door. My mother had to take her own mattress into the Dufferin Hospital when she gave birth to me! So the arrangemnents you evoke in 'Black Rice' are very  accurate.

What particularly affects me is that the story is built at the very physical level - and the emotions generated are experienced through the body. It is almost as though one is hearing the sounds amplified through blindfolds - the same blindfold that the non-Burman protagonist is forced to wear when his naval vessel is ambushed and he falls into the hands of the Karen rebels. He hears and feels through his feet the execution of his friend. This is what I would call the 'the brillig and slithy tove' style of writing pace Lewis Carroll. It is very visceral and only to be experienced through the body. Every day this story comes back to me in my memory and imagination. It works like a depth charge deep within one's being - very powerful and very true. A remarkable achievement.

Well done! Chapeau - as the French would say!

Again sorry to be so long in writing back but I didn't want to send something too quickly as I needed it to
mature.
Peter Carey – via email – 7-24-2013
 

Monday 23 September 2019

Greta Thunberg speech at UN General Assembly

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/teen-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-delivers-scathing-speech-u-n-n1057621

Monday, September 23, 2019

Pelosi shld just IMPEACH, not pontificate--

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/09/23/pelosi-threatens-new-stage-of-probe-after-ukraine-call/23818019/

Farmers slam trump

https://www.aol.com/article/finance/2019/09/23/farmers-are-slamming-trumps-dollar28-billion-farm-bailout-more-than-double-obamas-2009-payment-to-automakers-as-a-band-aid/23818051/?a_dgi=aolshare_twitter

Please review this book on Amazon if you can find the time--go to write a review, and post--you need an Amazon acct.


There's a pretty long "look inside" option, so you don't even need to buy the booklet.

The junta used to egg on the Arakanese against the Rohingya, but is now fighting the AA (Arakan Army).

This handbook gives "all you need to know" about the Rohingya (a subset of Burmese Muslims) having been there for literally ages, before there were such things as national borders. 

Nobel Laureate A K Sen said at a conference at Columbia U that I helped organize, "It's more true that the borders were drawn between them, than that they came in (from Bangladesh) across the border."

Border lines began only in the 19th century.

The Rohingya have been there since the 8th-10th centuries.

This booklet compiles how they came and their history in Burma--they came on Arab dhows utilizing the monsoon winds.   See also Michael Wood, The Story of India.

km

With Prod. A K Sen, second from R.

Climate activists have shut down DC near Capital Building.


and neat American Petroleum Inst

17 yr old Greta Thunberg has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.

9-23-2019

Duchess Meghan in Africa--

https://pagesix.com/2019/09/23/meghan-markle-wears-85-dress-in-nyanga-africa/

Saturday 21 September 2019

Review of my novel Wolf, by Burma Expert Dr. Sean Turnell--





Kyi May Kaung's Wolf is a novel of astonishing depth.  Following the life of a student leader of Burma's 1988 pro-democracy uprisings, it touches the most profound questions of the quest for freedom, amidst the alternative demands of love and loyalty in a life lived in extremis. Wolf is simultaneously exciting, suspenseful, poignant and deeply moving. Long after you finish reading, the characters will stay with you, as will the insights it imparts.
Wolf works firstly because K. M. Kaung is a great writer.  It also works because Kaung herself lived through many of the events described. That the novel is a work of such integrity and wisdom is no little due to the fact that, in so many ways, it shines a mirror on its author and her times.
Sean Turnell, Burma Expert, author Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press), 2009, available on Amazon.


Friday 6 September 2019

Former PM, Burmese Democratic Government in Exile, returned to Burma.


I saw her late July, and she sent a hurried email that they got their passport, she did not say visa.

I hope they are OK.  Photo is outside the gate, not inside being greeted by DASSK.

Frankly, I doubt it will work out, esp. with a son born in USA whose education is being disrupted.

But he sounds calm, the way he always does.

km

9-6-2019

Monday 2 September 2019

Children's book, Proudest Blue

https://www.amazon.com/Proudest-Blue-Story-Hijab-Family/dp/0316519006/ref=nodl_#reader_0316519006

Looking for these books--


I read this paper about 25 years ago, but I wasn't writing historical fiction then.

I would esp. like to read the Thein Pe Myint novel, less interested in the romances.

If you can find me pdfs, that would be great, or print copies.


km