And it is raining. After a big thunderstorm last night, with high winds, and brief electrical outages, it is settling down to a steady (but light) rain here in Dharamsala.
I am crashing (an American expression from Hippie days meaning “unwanted occupation of”) the IT office at Men-Tsee-Khang (the Tibetan medicine and astrological center) where Dawa Tsering (see photo) is giving me an internet connection. Men-Tsee-Khang is one of the NGOs that uses the Dharamsala Mesh, and Dawa says that their Internet connections have been reliable and fast ever since they connected to the mesh. Another testimonial to the power of communities working together!
Four days before the opening session of AirJaldi. The (large) hall is empty except for the resounding echo of pop music that Yahel is using to test the sound system. The mixer board sits in the middle of the first row in the auditorium, and Yahel is “wildly mixing,” and muttering under his breath about getting rid of the 50 cycle hum. And concluding that the circuits are on different phases (you understand that, of course). And then plugging into a different plug and all of a sudden the hum disappears.
Chicago’s Millennium Park has a huge outdoor performance venue, which replaced the old “bandshell” and it also has a number of other art-in-public-places featres. If you’re in the Chicago Loop and have nothing to do for an hour, it’s worth crossing Michigan Avenue to see The Bean. This is a metallic, mirror-finish sculpture somewhat like a kidney bean, they say. I say it’s more like an alien from outer space that happens to have plopped itself down in the park and is attracting Earthlings to eat them.
around the plaza. Then, you wonder “where am I?” And I will tell you that’s not so easy to figure out. You see people standing across the plaza waving at the bean – what they’re doing, of course, is looking for the waving reflection to they can spot themselves.