Rules For My Grandson

1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down.

2. There are plenty of ways to enter a pool. The stairs ain’t one.

3. The man at the grill is the closest thing we have to a king.

4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer.

5. Act like you’ve been there before. Especially in the end zone.

6. Request the late check-out.

7. When entrusted with a secret, keep it.

8. Hold your heroes to a higher standard.

9. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas.

10. Don’t fill up on bread.

11. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look him in the eye.

12. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be.

13. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point.

14. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her.

15. You marry the girl, you marry her whole family.

16. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath.

17. Experience the serenity of traveling alone.

18. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room.

19. Never turn down a breath mint.

20. In a game of HORSE, sometimes a simple free throw will get ’em.

21. A sport coat is worth 1000 words.

22. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising.

23. Thank a veteran. And then make it up to him.

24. If you want to know what makes you unique, sit for a caricature.

25. Eat lunch with the new kid.

26. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it.

27. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win.

28. See it on the big screen.

29. Give credit. Take the blame.

30. Write down your dreams.

I stood by truth:
     to establish light across the land.

I wanted to be common:
     so when the struggle came I would not be found missing.

But here I am with the solitude I lost:
     but because of this injustice I do not rest.

The sea continues as I remain silent.

There is no space wider
     than that of grief.

There is no universe 
     like this which bleeds.

To rise to the sky you need...

two wings,
     a violin,
          and so many things,
               incalculable things, things without names,
                    a license for a large slow moving eye,
                         the inscription on the almond tree,
                              the tides of the grass in the morning.


  

Some thoughts on my return from Asia...

Now they can leave me in peace,
     and grow use to my absence.

I m going to close my eyes.

I only want five things,
     five chosen roots.

One is endless love.

Two is to see the autumn.
I do not exist without leaves
     flying and falling to earth.

The third is the solemn winter,
     the rain I loved, the caress
          of fire in the rough cold.

My fourth is the summer,
     plump and ripe as tomatoes hanging on the vine.

And, fifth, your eyes.
I will not sleep without your eyes.
I will not exist but in your gaze.
Spring adjusts for you to follow me.

That is all I want.
Next to nothing, close to everything.

Because I ask for silence,
     don't think I am going to die.

The opposite is true,
     it happens I am going to live.

It's a question of having lived so much
     that I want to live that much more.

Over the Easter holiday weekend, there were horrific bombings at multiple Catholic  and Christian churches and high end hotels.  The resulting explosions killed more than 500 people.  Although I was in no personal manager since I was located in a small eco-lodge, there were guards and police nearby.  I was able to view the damage at one of the churches, and captured these quick photos.  The other photo is of me relaxing on the deck of the eco-lodge main building.

ADDENDUM:

This and previous posts of my travels throughout southern Asia were composed on my flight home from Singapore to Los Angeles.  They were and are accurate, and succinct. After reviewing the posts, I realize I did not really convey the surprise, horror and disgust of viewing the remains of St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Negombo, north of the capital Columbo.The cathedral was a lovely, dated place of worship, that existed in various forms for over two hundred years.  My previous references to the Tamil Rebellion did not give enough background to understand how that ever present tension resulted from actions incurred during the British occupation of, then, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.

From Wikipedia, here is a brief account of what transpired during, through and to the, alleged, tensions between the Tamil ethnic group and the dominant Sinhalese. 

The origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War lie in the continuous political rancor between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils.^[30] The roots of the modern conflict lie in the British colonial rule when the country was known as Ceylon. There was initially little tension among Sri Lanka's two largest ethnic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils, when Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a Tamil, was appointed representative of the Sinhalese as well the Tamils in the national legislative council. In 1919 major Sinhalese and Tamil political organizations united to form the Ceylon National Congress, under the leadership of Arunachalam, to press the colonial government for more constitutional reforms. However, British Gov. William Manning actively encouraged the concept of "communal representation" and created the Colombo town seat in 1920, which alternated between the Tamils and the Sinhalese.^[31]

After their election to the State Council in 1936, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) members N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. In November 1936 a motion that "in the Municipal and Police Courts of the Island the proceedings should be in the vernacular" and that "entries in police stations should be recorded in the language in which they are originally stated" were passed by the State Council and referred to the Legal Secretary. However, in 1944 J.R. Jayawardene moved in the State Council that Sinhala should replace English as the official language.

In 1948, immediately after independence, a controversial law was passed by the Ceylon Parliament called the Ceylon Citizenship Act, which deliberately discriminated against the Indian Tamil ethnic minority by making it virtually impossible for them to obtain citizenship in the country.^[32] Approximately over 700,000 Indian Tamils were made stateless. Over the next three decades more than 300,000 Indian Tamils were deported back to India.^[33] It wasn't until 2003–55 years after independence—that all Indian Tamils living in Sri Lanka were granted citizenship, but by this time they only made up 5% of the island's population.

In 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike passed the "Sinhala Only Act", which replaced English with Sinhala as the only official language of the country. This was seen as a deliberate attempt to discourage the Sri Lankan Tamils from working in the Ceylon Civil Service and other public services. The Tamil-speaking minorities of Ceylon (Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Moors) viewed the Act as linguistic, cultural and economic discriminationagainst them.^[34] Many Tamil-speaking civil servants/public servants were forced to resign because they weren't fluent in Sinhala.^[35] This was a prelude to the 1956 Gal Oya riots and the 1958 widespread riots in which thousands of Tamil civilians perished. The civil war was a direct result of the escalation of the confrontational politics that followed.^[36]

In the late 1960s documents relating to a separate Tamil state of "Tamil Eelam" began to circulate. At this time Anton Balasingham, an employee of the British High Commission in Colombo, began to participate in separatist activities. He later migrated to Britain, where he became the chief theoretician of the LTTE. In the late 1960s several Tamil youth, among them Velupillai Prabhakaran, also became involved in these activities. They carried out several hit-and-run operations against pro-government Tamil politicians, Sri Lanka police and the civil administration.

During the 1970s^[37] the Policy of standardization was initiated. Under the policy, students were admitted to university in proportion to the number of applicants who sat for the examination in their language. Officially the policy was designed to increase the representation of students from rural areas. In practice the policy reduced the numbers of Sri Lankan Tamil students who had previously, based on their examination scores alone, gained admission in a higher proportion than their participation in the examination. They were now required to gain higher marks than Sinhalese students to gain admission to universities.^[34][38] For instance, the qualifying mark for admission to the medical faculties was 250 out of 400 for Tamil students, but only 229 for Sinhalese.^[39] The number of Sri Lankan Tamil students entering universities fell dramatically. The policy was abandoned in 1977.^[40]

Other forms of official discrimination against the Sri Lankan Tamils included the state-sponsored colonization of traditional Tamil areas by Sinhalese peasants, the banning of the import of Tamil-language media and the preference given by the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka to Buddhism, the main religion followed by the Sinhalese.^[34][38]

Prabhakaran—together with Chetti Thanabalasingam, a well known criminal from Kalviyankadu, Jaffna—formed the Tamil New Tigers (TNT) in 1972.^[41] This was formed around an ideology that looked back to the 1st Millennium Chola Empire—the Tiger was the emblem of that empire.

A further movement, the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), formed in Manchester and London; it became the backbone of the Eelamist movement in the diaspora, arranging passports and employment for immigrants and levying a heavy tax on them. It became the basis of the Eelamist logistical organization, later taken over entirely by the LTTE. The formation of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) with the Vaddukkodei (Vattukottai) resolution of 1976 led to a hardening of attitudes. The resolution called for the creation of a secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam, based on the right of self-determination.^[42]

The TULF clandestinely supported the armed actions of the young militants who were dubbed "our boys". TULF leader Appapillai Amirthalingam even provided letters of reference to the LTTE and to other Tamil insurgent groups to raise funds.^[41] Amirthalingam introduced Prabhakaran to N.S. Krishnan, who later became the first international representative of LTTE. It was Krishnan who introduced Prabhakaran to Anton Balasingham, who later became the chief political strategist and chief negotiator of LTTE. The "boys" were the product of the post-war population explosion. Many partially educated, unemployed Tamil youth fell for revolutionary solutions to their problems. The leftist parties had remained "non-communal" for a long time, but the Federal Party (as well as its offshoot, the TULF), deeply conservative and dominated by Vellalar casteism, did not attempt to form a national alliance with the leftists in their fight for language rights.

Following the sweeping electoral victory of the United National Party (UNP) in July 1977, the TULF became the leading opposition party, with around one-sixth of the total electoral vote winning on a party platform of secession from Sri Lanka. After the 1977 riots the J.R. Jayewardene government made one concession to the Tamil population; it lifted the policy of standardization for university admission that had driven many Tamil youths into militancy. The concession was regarded by the militants as too little too late, and violent attacks continued. By this time TULF started losing its grip over the militant groups. LTTE ordered civilians to boycott the local government elections of 1983 in which even TULF contested. Voter turnout was as low as 10%. Thereafter, Tamil political parties were unable to represent the interests of the Tamil community.^[41]

More can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War 

However, this current conflict must be attributed to the radicalization of young Muslim adherents to a more violent means of achieving whatever goals they espouse. The recent announcements from the ISIS-aligned group states their violent actions were in response to the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre at a Islamic synagogues (not mosques as most of the Western press state) by a white nationalist terrorist (which the press refuses to use a label). Christians, Catholic or not, Muslims and westerners were targeted.

While I was there, there was little sympathy for the terrorists activities. Most expressed horror, and reflected on the destructive civil war they lived through ten plus years ago. When I left Sri Lanka, an uneasy peace remained. Which included armed militia and police at every intersection, in front of public building and all churches, cathedrals and synagogues, and all over all access to the airport. 

Once again, the deadly mixture of religion, discrimination, politics and poverty have created an alienated populace who uses violence and force to impose their will on the rest of the population. It never works, and results only in misery and pain for all.

Sri Lanka was similar to Indonesia, yet more sublime and subtle.  A very compact island, yet beset, for many years, with violence  due to the small, but aggressive, Tamil population. It's calm now, yet, anger and old memories continue to persist.  Beautiful, graceful people who immerse themselves in their culture and nature.  Kind, generous and open to sharing new ideas.

Papua New Guiana remains one of the more isolated, primitive islands in the Pacific. The terrain, the lack of infrastructure, the simplicity, and rejection of other cultures, keeps Papua New Guiana from being absorbed into the worldwide mishmash of cultures, technology and change.  Near the seaside cities and ports, western culture exists, although limited. Inland, western culture dissipates quickly.  Photos cannot capture the primitive, simplistic lifestyle these people pursue. They should be left alone.

Here's recent photos from my off-the-grid travel throughout Indonesia.  I deliberately avoided the large cities, the prominent landmarks and the tourist sites.  Just the backcountry and local indigenous people and places. Although nearly the largest Muslim population in the world, the people are not very radicalized.  However, that is slowly changing particularly in some of the major cities.