This is the front of the Buddhist temple.  The carvings are of 'watch fish' and the tile symbol stands for the Eight-fold Path to enlightenment that the Buddha taught. [Yes, the Nazis stole it from the Buddhists!]  The reason that 'watch fish' are guardians is because fishes' eyes are always open.  How do Buddhist monks decorate their temples?  Just like the rest of us, with flowering plants, lol.   

This is a Buddhist temple on the grounds of Dongguk University, in Seoul.  If you look carefully, you can see the gold statue through the window. 

My friend Carol Dussere taught at Dongguk until her retirement.  More about her experiences in Asia can be found at http://caroldussere.com

The cats are back.
Dave called me a couple weeks ago and said he had to get rid of his cats.  He brought Mimi and Bobo over on the Monday night before Chusok.  I told him that one of the conditions was that they would be "indoor-outdoor" cats, as I couldn't see keeping them penned up in this tiny apartment for the foreseeable future.

They stayed indoors for the first 4 days, until they accepted that this was their new home.  Then I started letting them out for short periods, and feeding them when they came in.  Mimi decided that she needed to protect the yard from any cats who wandered through.  My Soul!  I hadn't realized that this yard was a 'right-of-way' for every cat in the neighborhood!  She is a very territorial creature. 

While chasing a brindled cat Friday night, she jumped up on the wall that separates our yard from the next-door neighbors' yard.  After jumping down, she discovered she couldn't get back out.  The wall is only about 4 feet tall on our side, but it's about 8-10 feet tall on the other side.  That's because our houses are on the side of a mountain.  I discovered her dilemma when I went out to call her in after midnight.  The young woman who lives over me came out and we tried to get Mimi out.  The upper apartment's lights were out, so I decided to wait till morning, and G* agreed that was best.  She said she would explain the problem to the owner next morning.   

We went over and talked to the gentleman.  He fetched his key, came down and unlocked the gate, but Mimi didn't come when I called.  I walked down around the back of the house and found her, huddled under a bike tarp next to the bike.  She was not a happy camper.  She hissed, but offered no resistance when I uncovered her and picked her up.  She actually snuggled against my warm shoulder as I walked back to the small group of curious Koreans.  When I got 'too close,' she hissed.  I quickly said, "Mimi is scared," and G* translated, so they stepped back and let us through.  

When we got to our front gate, she began to struggle.  G* gasped when I put her down on the ground.  Mimi was doing a thing that's logical for cats; she was telling me, "Okay, I see home, Mom, and I want to go in on my own four feet!" and she SHOT through the gate, turned and looked at me all wide-eyed, made a feint toward the left and then dashed through the open door into my apartment.  I explained to G* that she was struggling because she recognized 'home' and wanted to go in.  G* said she gasped 'cause she thought that Mimi was going to run away, and we'd never see her again.

Mimi was quite the neighborhood attraction over Chusok holiday.  Several grandmothers brought their toddlers to see the 'tame cat' and, after some initial nervousness, Mimi seemed to enjoy the attention.  She sat in the open doorway and allowed grandmas to come up and talk to her in a 'cat voice' to which she responded.  I got a real kick out of the lady who said, "Annyongsayo" in a meow tone.  When Mimi mimicked her, "Ayow," the lady said, "The cat is saying 'Hello' to you." to the toddler in her arms.

Happy Trails! 
~ Sil

On August 5, 2009, Rachel Maddow presented an investigative report on MSNBC, detailing the PR firms and right-wing millionaires behind the so-called "spontaneous demonstrations of average, middle-class Americans." It is on YouTube and this is the link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct--N3hJfxs It is ten minutes long and worth every second you spend watching it.

This is my response to the copy on Kate&Jim's journal: "She said what I’ve been thinking since I read the National Organization of Women’s exposure of the insurance companies behind the crushing of the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 1970s. Professional agit-prop agents are behind these so-called ’spontaneouts displays of outrage.’ "

My daughter posted the following on her Facebook page: "D___ believes no one should die because they cannot afford healthcare, and no one should go broke because they are sick. If you agree, please post this as your status. (Seriously, I'm often as callous as the next person when it comes to a lot of things, but how can people be so inhumane to their neighbors?)"
Other people (including myself) responded to it, including a "teabagger" who spammed me and others with 9 vitriolic e-mails, one more than mentioned in the dialogue below.  He deleted some of his remarks on Facebook, but the automatic 'notify robot' forwarded all the posts to my daughter, the other commentators and me. He was responding to these Comments:
1.) I would have thought this went without saying.
2.) Yeah, in any civilized country it does. :( And yet people have been literally screaming and making death threats at people who've suggested trying to be that humane, here. I've been rather depressed over this.
3.) [my comment] These "teabaggers" are the willfully ignorant; they let the commentators on FauxNews lead them around by the nose,- they would rather yell than think. They don't know what is real; they prefer delusion. In my youth, this was defined as "insanity." Now, it appears to be normal, because so many do it. But, as my Granddaddy Neal used to say, "Just because they do it, doesn't make it right."
4.) [the teabagger] You folks r obviously kiddin'n right? (This is not the first of the nasty comments, which he later deleted.)
5.)[same guy] And i need to find out who "they" are? But i have to believe that they are big government.
6.) { Now, I will admit that I got a little snippy here.} Don, maybe you need a course in basic English Grammar, if you can't figure out that "they" refers to the Teabaggers, just as any pronoun refers to the noun it replaces. I'm sorry I can't tutor you, but I'm in Korea.
7.) Don, I realize you deleted most of the comments you made, but maybe you don't realize they are all delivered to me in email regardless of whether you delete them or not. That means I have eight comments spamming my email, from you. See, this is why I don't like Facebook, it's obviously confusing to a lot of people. You don't seem to be aware that... Read more I posted my status on MY facebook. Not on yours. It only showed up on your friends page because you've got me friended. It's possible for you to block me so that you don't have to see any of the comments I make on my own status or on anyone else's facebook pages who you have friended. I'm not planning on forcing you to do anything - and I'm sure no one else is, either.

And I'm pretty damned sure the government is not going to force women to have abortions if we get an OPTION (<--notice that word there?) of government coverage for people who can't get insurance through their jobs.
8.) And here come the insults and sarcasm.
9.) [me again] You brought it on yourself. I was also bombarded with a torrent of insults and snippy remarks authored by one Don ***{edited to delete surname}. That's because I am in this thread.

Well, folks, there's more to this little drama, but I think you get the gist of what frustrates me.  These guys are programmed to attack anyone who doesn't agree with the delusion that they have been spoon-fed by the PR men and FauxNews, which is the loud-speaker for Rupert Murdoch.  Murdoch has been working for for forty years to consolidate various media in one huge mega-corporation.  His philosophy is very Darwinian, that free-market capitalism is not really greed,- that it's right for big companies to trample free speech and human rights as long as he gets his 'hard-earned' profits. After all, little people are little because they didn't have the advantage of a rich daddy and an Oxford education like Mr. Murdoch did.   Or, as Don put it, "...here come the insults and sarcasm."

Happy Trails.....and good luck trying to deprogram the members of the new cult on the block...  ~ Sil

Footnote:
When I was a kid, there was a phrase, "agit-prop" short for agitation propaganda.  It was practiced by "those vile commies."  The idea was to get people all stirred up by spreading rumors and out-right lies, to lay the foundation for a "popular uprising," a revolution or a coup by a disaffected part of the government.  The patriotic American agit-prop has been operating for at least ten years, when these same PR firms duped the fundamentalists, as mentioned in the video.

Footnote The Second:  Who is behind the 'outraged citizens' at the Town Hall meetings? They are not just 'middle-class Americans;' they are the people who brought you Enron, Swift-boaters, and other lies spread abroad in the last 3 decades. It's the same technique that they used to kill the ERA in the 1970s,- hauling bus-loads of protestors [pink ladies, then] from one venue to another.