End of Summer

(WARNING: the image has nothing to do with the content of the post below. It is merely being used to add colour and a sense of importance. The image is from a few years ago in 2008 (?) when the Karmapa from Dharamsala came to visit the Rubin Museum of Art and I was asked to give him a tour even though I no longer worked there since the prior summer of 2007. It was a choice of this image or one with me and Lobpon Tenzin Namdak. I didn't think anybody would know Tenzin Namdak except for those rare Bon followers and scholars. The Karmapa won the contest of recognizability).

Well, it is nearly the end of August and the end of summer according to a school calendar. It has been a very fast two weeks in Vancouver. The real reason for coming was to attend the IATS Conference - International Association of Tibetan Studies - held at the University of British Columbia (UBC). For me it began on Sunday the 15th and ended on the 22nd. It was long, it was grueling, mostly because of the difficult, over-lapping and confusing, schedule along with the required late night socializing - in modern language called networking. There were many people that I new and many people that new me or either the HAR or SRG websites. During the first few days it was easier being anonymous. HAR is very popular with the younger scholars. The Bon scholars were there in force and the Bon panel was excellent bolstered by the likes of Samten Karmey, Tsering Thar and Marc Des Jardins amongst others.

I was able to acquire some new images for the HAR website along with promises from others to send images. Some of the images have already been put up on the site. Check the HAR News page.

As I return to New York I must of course think about bedbugs. Yes, they are still there. The management company sprayed again on the 18th of August. Apparently there have been more complaints from tenants. I can understand as I have been talking about this since February, officially since March. As long as they think they can deal with a porous apartment building with topical applications of pesticide based on the subjective complaints of tenants then the problem will never be resolved. I return armed with good double sided sticky tape. I couldn't find any good tape in New York. The tape is crucial to my plan of survivability in a bed bug infested apartment building.

There have been a number of issues, topics and news items that have come up in the last few weeks that I have not responded to but they are things that I definitely want to react to - pro or con: the King of Shambhala living in Canada, the very harsh review of the Tibetan contemporary show at the Rubin Museum of Art, and various other things that will come to mind at the right moment.