Moon Over India

 

Once I took a train across a portion of India. The railroad car consisted of a plain wooden box with two platforms attached to the forward and backward wall, with a window between the two. The platforms were hinged and could be folded against the wall or pulled down for seats. With my head and shoulders on one platform and feet on the other across from me, I draped myself beneath the window. My two traveling companions didn’t seem to care that I had commandeered the window. I guess my position didn’t look too comfortable to them. But I loved that train ride, for I had a panoramic view of the Indian countryside played out like a technicolor movie.

 

At one stop, I watched little boys playing in the railroad’s water supply that was open and spraying like a fire hydrant. On the deck beside the depot, I watched a couple change their toddler’s diaper and use water from a thermos to wash his fanny. Toilet paper is scarce to non-existent in India. Instead, water faucets are installed beside most toilets, even ones that are a simple hole in the ground. You can bet most of our suitcases were filled with toilet paper, as we were forewarned.

 

As the train rolled along, I occasionally saw a dog with a stained ring around his belly and hind legs. In fact, every dog I saw in that area had the same stained rump. Curious. And then I saw the cause. In the middle of a ginormous mud puddle—more like a shallow pond, sat a dog.

 

Two friends and I went to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. Hey, we were in India. It was a must, right? I was so naïve. I didn’t know it was a mausoleum. In the 1600s, the emperor built the Taj Mahal for his favorite wife, to the tune of, in those days, 32 million dollars. (In 2020, that would be one billion.) The love story between the emperor and his wife is heart rendering. She was so beautiful that he instantly fell in love with her, and although she was not his only wife, she was the “Jewell of the Palace.”  When she died of complications in giving birth to her 14^th child, he was so heartbroken he grieved for two years. And then he watched over the building of her mausoleum for another 10.

 

Upon walking through an archway, we were struck by a shimmering image of the Taj Mahal so brilliant that it appeared to be vibrating. Not only was it made of white marble, but semi-precious stones were precisely inlaid into the marble. The effect was not only exquisite, but gave the structure an ethereal quality. The two towers beside the building are structurally engineered to tilt. Upon viewing the building from a distance, the towers looked straight.

 

We were required to wear footies over our shoes when we entered the building, which was surprisingly small, a simple marble room with a tomb in the center. And beneath it, another room with another tomb exactly beneath the first. I learned later on the emperor was also buried there. The reflecting pool in front of the Taj Mahal contained no water. They told us it was only filled for special occasions, and since it was about 120 degrees that day, we understood why it was empty. I am not exaggerating about the temperature. However, we weren’t unduly uncomfortable and only learned the following day that we had endured 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So, you can understand why the dogs cooled their heels.

 

Six of us, led by a couple who regularly made the trek, journeyed to India to see an Indian guru named Sai Baba. We had viewed a film where he supposedly created verbudi, a sacred ash, from his hands. So, it was a bit troubling when we were there to see trinkets sold outside the ashram that looked exactly like the ones he supposedly explicitly created for a devotee in his audience.

 

What did I learn? That no person is my master. 

 

I once wrote about a phenomenon I witnessed in India and again in Hawaii. That was the grapevine. This surprised me that people just appeared and offered information when you needed it. One morning as the six of us were having breakfast in the courtyard of the house where we were staying, someone yelled over the board fence—we couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see us—but the voice told us that Sai Baba had moved from the little town where we were staying to his ashram in Puttaparthi. So, what did we do? We threw our simple mattresses, that we had purchased, onto the roof of a taxi, climbed aboard, and traveled to Puttaparthi. We did have one meal there, but basically, because we were afraid to drink the water and eat the food, instead, we ate toasted cashews sprinkled with cayenne pepper and drank lime soda from a bottle. (And we left the mattresses for the next visitors.)

 

From the ashram, Florencia, Sherri, and I went to the Taj Mahal. After Sherri got homesick and went home, Florencia and I traveled a bit more—like Copenhagen, “A wonderful gem of a town,” where it was so cold we donned wool sweaters. Florencia had been married to a military sailor who said you could only drink alcohol when the sun was under the yard arm, so at the end of the day, before we had our customary glass of white wine, one of us would ask the other if the sun was under the yardarm. Florencia would say, “Somewhere in the world, it is.” And that would give us permission. Florencia was a perfect traveling companion. She is gone now, but maybe where she is they serve white wine and don’t care where the yardarm is.

 

What sent me off on this trail? My honey and I watched a documentary the other night titled “I am Salt,” about an extended family that spends 8 mounts every year on a desolate mudflat in India, farming salt. Fascinating. I did not know salt required such hard work. Everybody worked on sitting up camp, digging the pump and hoses out of the mud where they had buried them last year, made ponds, and ran a pump constantly to bring the saltwater buried in the ground to the surface to fill ponds. As the water evaporated, leaving behind the purest white salt, they had to tend their crop, building berms to hold the water, ditches to move it, tamping down the soil, adding grass, so the crystallizing salt had something to grab hold of. It was laborious work. As I watched the momma’s making flatbread, I wondered what they ate besides bread, and I thought of the babies in India. The babies didn’t fuss or squirm as one would expect of an infant. I had observed that fact until our ride back from the Taj Mahal in a First-Class railroad car. Onboard, a young couple had a young child, less than a year old. They looked affluent, immaculately dressed, and the baby acted as one might expect of an infant that age, jumping on their lap, active, squirming, taking in its surroundings.

 

I concluded that nutrition had a hand in this.

 

Why did I call this "Moon Over India?" Well, our travel agent said that a visit to the Taj Mahal during a full moon was exquisite, and that we would be there during a full moon. We don't know what it looked like that night for we were wiped out from the day, and languished in a hotel room that night.

That vibrating image was the picture I have carried away. It was enough.

 

Don't forget that review you've been meaning to write--you can be honest, and remember, adults like children's books too. They are fun, and who doesn't want to know what they would find if Inner Earth really did exist. Please go to Amazon, click on book, scroll WAY DOWN of left side of page, and viola' there is a place to write a review. A click on the book cover will take you there.

  Two in a series, however, each stands alone.
 

 

Did We Learn What We Needed to Learn from This Covid19 Pandemic?

We found that lowering the amount of traffic had a measurable affect on our air quality. And the first spring after the lock down seemed more abundant with plant life than in previous years. It appeared that the Earth took a breather.

But, did we? Did we learn that we could make a difference? Or did we grumble that our way of life was stymied? I know it was tough—people dot sick, some died, people lost their jobs--my husband included. Still, I wonder if we got what the Earth, the virus, the Universal Consciousness, whatever, was trying to tell us.

Instead, we became polarized over politics, over to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. Many thought our freedoms were being taken away. We were mandated to wear masks. Some argued that masks did no good and actually harmed.

I found out recently that the arguments over vaccinations date way back to the smallpox vaccinations. “The Government is controlling us,” they said. “Don’t make me put that in my child.” (Some parents tried to suck out the vaccine from their children’s arms.)

During the past two years, we could have banded together and become a stronger people. We could have been more sympathetic to the suffering. We could have suggested that maybe, just maybe, the planet was trying to tell us that we needed to make some adjustments.

Stewards of the forest know that a healthy tree is more apt to resist bug infestations, blight, or a slew of tree diseases. So, it would be prudent to do everything possible to ensure healthy trees.

Biologists know that when an animal population becomes overcrowded or over stressed, their fertility declines, and they turn on each other. It would be prudent to investigate what make a healthy human being, and to pursue that.

People who contract a disease often say it was a wake-up call telling them they needed to change something. Are we paying attention? Or would we rather have a virtual reality that is a fantasy?

Some people like to think and say that the Earth is going through a natural cycle with global warming, and people aren’t responsible. What is it with people being resistant to taking responsibility? If they admit they have some control over factors, they also have control over changing those factors.

Do we believe in science or not? Do we think that people are trying to help, or just being pains in the butt? Do we think that those with the most money have the power? Is this a popularity contest?

 
And then we have this: A baby is God’s way of saying the Universe must continue.

Make the world good for him.

 

 

P.S. Pick a book, write a review, snag a tote bag. (Canvas with zipper.) The gift this week only, From March 8 until next Tuesday March 15. Not the 16th, or the 17th, nope, nada, it ends the 15th.

choose either or both, The Incredible Yellow School Bus or A Journey Into Inner Earth.

 

clink on books:

 

 

Thank you,

Jo

Long Ago and Far Away, or Right Now and Up Close

In a time when I had more hair, my husband and I visited the fairyland castle of Neuschwanstein. It was the one that inspired Walt Disney to build a castle in the middle on Disneyland--a magical place, and did feature swans, such as a gold swan faucet in a bathroom. On site I heard that they had running water fed from a water source at a higher elevation from the castle. And later on, I read that the castle had flushing toilets too. (King Ludwig died in 1816, before the final completion of the castle.) Magnificent paintings featuring scenes from Richard Wagner’s operas adorned many walls, and in the kitchen, there was a Leonardo di Vince device to warm the dinner plates. It consisted of a chain that could be pulled up the wall behind the stove. The chain had spaces for plates, and in using that device, the guests received their food warm.

From the beauty of that castle and how much King Ludwig loved Wagner and swans and was determined to have it beautiful and perfect, I never bought the story that he was crazy. There is a mysterious story about him drowning in a lake while on a boat ride with his psychiatrist. Hum—sounds suspicious to me, especially since he had privately funded the construction, and a great amount of money was released upon his death.

I developed an infection while in Germany, and there at a hospital an English speaking young man checked me in. He told us he was doing community service in place of military service, for he was a pacifist. After hearing that we were from Southern California, he told this story: Once while surfing at La Jolla, California, he was hit in the face with a surfboard. He was taken to the hospital, where the doctors treated him with such kindness that he vowed to treat others the same.

A doctor gave me some medicine and said, “This is Wednesday. We’ll bill you.”

Imagine.

We were in Germany because my husband's company sent him to an Optics Trade Show in Stuttgart, Germany, and I was invited to go along. His job was to collect data on new instruments. My job was to eat, play and make merry. Oh, and to catalog what we spent on meals and lodging.

We made several other stops in other countries, but Germany was the most impactful. For, throughout my life, I thought I was German from my mother’s side of the family. She grew up in a German community, although she knew no German. However, my Great Grandmother was the first child of their family to be born in America and spoke broken English. The family immigrated before the war and I believe her mother endured that ocean voyage while pregnant—maybe she passed on my tendency to get sea-sick. It was, therefore, somewhat troublesome for me to visit a land that was the primary cause for the Second World War. I was expecting to see war-torn buildings.

 I saw nary a one. I remember taking a walk one morning and stumbling upon a cemetery awash in flowers (It was May). Individual graves were fenced in with rot iron fencing, and there were so many flowers it was as though I was in a greenhouse. I watched an old man walk shakily to a faucet, fill a sprinkling can, and carry it back to a grave where he tenderly watered the flowers.

We rented a car and drove around the gorgeous countryside where cows stood on green hillsides, and yellow flowers dotted the green. Many immaculately manicured farms had their morning feather comforters airing out the windows. This was before down comforters were commonplace in the U.S., but most hotels on our European trip used them, and I became a fan. I have slept under down ever since.

The day following our castle visit,  I said, “Let’s drive into Switzerland. I want to see a land where blood never touched their shores.” And so, we drove until the Alps stopped us, and the picture of the little boy bringing home the cows in the misty evening is emblazoned on my brain, especially one cow. She was laboriously walking along behind the others and obviously pregnant. Finally, she stopped, gave a deep sigh, then carried on.

In Lucerne, Switzerland, I saw a sign printed boldly on a pharmacy. It was my Family name—the family that had migrated from Germany. The name was Hertenstein.

“See," I said, "My people lived in Germany for a while, but got out.” Not realizing that I had it backwards.

 A couple of years ago, as a Christmas present, my daughter chased down our ancestry on my mother’s side. And to my utter surprise, I’m not German, but Swiss.

 

And Right Now and Up Close:

This morning, in preparation for the paperback edition of The Incredible Yellow School Bus, I wrote a dedication to my daughter Nina:

 For my beautiful daughter Nina.

 I wrote this story when my daughter was in the first grade and read it to her class. (It kept their attention.) Ever since, Nina has often admonished me by saying, “Mom, publish the school bus story.”

 But I didn’t, until now.

 It was my first fiction story of any length, and I thought I needed to learn more before anyone read it. Often, I would dink with it and make it worse.

 Now, these many years later, Nina says to me, “Mom, sometimes a person’s first work is the best. And then we think we ought to make it a certain way and lose the purity of it.” See, she grew into a wise adult.

And then I wrote Incredible's sequel, A Journey Into Inner Earth, and that was a fun write and read. 

 Thanks Nina. This is for you.

Mom

It tickled my fancy.

 Thanks Nina. This is for you.

Mom

  

And from Amazon:

While Amazon’s algorithms are somewhat of a mystery, it’s a known truth that when your book accrues a certain number of reviews, or a lot of reviews in a short amount of (unspecified) time, Amazon kicks into gear multiple promotions for your book. Free promotion that would probably cost a fortune if you had to foot the bill.

 Every time your book is reviewed, the algorithms are updated, and your book’s internal ranking increases.

 They say the magic number is 50 reviews. Wow.

 

A special Thanks.

  So, my dear ones, if anyone wishes to add a review to my Amazon page, I will thank you profoundly.  The first FIVE people--kids or adults--to write a review for either or both books, will get a tee-shirt as a special THANK YOU.

 (I will need your NAME, ADDRESS and size. Adult or child, S, M, L, XL, 2XL.)

 

Want a different color than black? Tell me.

 

I’m providing links to review the books, for it took me a while to learn how to do it, and that will, hopefully save you time.*

To write a review for The Incredible Yellow School Bus, please click on the below picture: This will take you to the Amazon review page. 

For A Journey Into Inner Earth, click below:

 

 

*To go Amazon's route, go to the item you want, SCROLL WAY DOWN on the left side of the page, past other books until you come to this:

 

Thanks for reading. You know I love you,

Jo