Photo of the Day

Another moment in Ft. Bragg in early September. I spent a long time in this Nepalese man's shop looking for some nice beads with which to make malas. I was shocked to see all the packaging that said, "Made in China," and asked him if he had anything that wasn't, as the last thing I wanted to be wearing was a mala bearing a Chinese imprimatur. He looked at me totally unfazed, seeming like he'd hurried across that river in Egypt on his way to America. "Ah! It's all made in China! If you worried about that, you wouldn't have any clothes on your back!" he said, almost mockingly, in thickly accented English. Surely I did not have to educate a man with Tibetan gift items littering his shop on the state of Tibet v. China. Was his jadedness a form of battle fatigue, or does every culture spawn businessmen trying to make a buck, even if it's over the dead bodies of their friends, families, monks and nuns? I left empty-handed, sad, a bit queasy, thinking about my godson Tenzin, with a few extra prayers for his future and that of his country, which even the Dalai Lama can't seem to save.