Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Tiny house presumptions and assumptions--

TINY HOUSE--presumptions or assumptions

1. You have a rich father in law on whose land you can park.

2. You live in a market system where you don't have to store and save anything like empty containers.

3. You live in a warm climate.

4. You live in a country where the land owner can evict you anytime.

5. You don't live in Birama.

6. You don't have children and just got married.

7. You are not claustrophobic.

8. You have no need to set down roots.

9. You can live anywhere.

10. You don't cook spicy food, have a stuffed nose and can do stepladders and don't mind sleeping above a stove, where your head hits the ceiling.

I don't know how comfortable these are and whether they will be cold in winter and hot in summer, and how stable they are on the road.

And right now they are not exactly cheap.

So well--

to everyone their dream.

But I can live in 750 sq feet and have for about 2 decades--but it needs to be in a good area with low crime and a good public transport system.

KMKaung
9-30-2015




Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Elizabeth Barrett Browning--

I was surprised to find The Curse about 10 years ago, but I did not know Elizabeth Barrett Browning was so political and indeed wrote more political than love poetry.

It is all shadowed somewhat by the image portrayed in the play/movie The Barretts of Wimpole Street, but she really was very political and her works are all here http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16646/16646-h/16646-h.htm

and their letters have all been digitized, though hard to read, and are in Austin, TX, imagine.


KMKaung
9-29-2015

Great and wondrous gift, The Pied Piper of Hamelin--

Found the entire poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin--did not even know it was by Robert Browning till now, though I know he wrote My Last Duchess.

Wow, what a voice, and it has aged well--see-

150 ``Consult with carpenters and builders,
151 ``And leave in our town not even a trace
152 ``Of the rats!'' -- when suddenly, up the face
153 Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
154 With a, ``First, if you please, my thousand guilders!''

IX.


155 A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
156 So did the Corporation too.
157 For council dinners made rare havoc
158 With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
159 And half the money would replenish
160 Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish.
161 To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
162 With a gipsy coat of red and yellow!
163 ``Beside,'' quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
164 ``Our business was done at the river's brink;

The name "Getulio"

The name "Getulio" features here in my novella--


It was also the name of one of my classmates in Poland from Venezuela, Getulio and Rosa, who were the parents of a baby girl I call Wadna Ochi (beautiful eyes)

and a friend of a friend who gave me the name of the Concierto de Aranjuez--

BUT, neither of them have anything to do with the Getulio on this story, which is based partially on a Russian grad student shot on the streets of W. Philadelphia while his girl friend was making spaghetti.

What I want to say is it will be less than useless to try and look for traces of my private life, assuming I have one, in my fiction.

Like all novelists, I am an expert at bullshitting you.

I have written fiction in the voice of a 1988 student leader (Wolf), the voice of a stripper (here in The Lovers) and a lion, in Beast.

So until I feel like sharing, as Salman Rushdie did in Joseph Anton, his autobiographical novel--

you will just have to guess or not know.

After all, it is not your right, as I am not a public figure and besides, it is not interesting.

At all.

KMKaung
9-29-2015
Of Life and Art.


Concierto de Aranjuez

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036k8v8

Pronounced " kon-chair-to d' ah ran hwayz"

check BBC program above.

--Our family friend Joe's son, Dr. HH, a geneticist, just wrote me a second note by email saying he was so sorry we could not open the violin case of the small violin (jr size) given to his father by my father in Chicago.

As I mentioned before J played it accompanied by his daughter on piano way back in the late 1980s.

I was thinking what a good friend J was.

Not only did he not disappear like most people did when my father died, he continued on to be our friend till he died.

I did not see him in person after 1988 due to many health problems he and his wife were going through.

The last time he spoke on phone was to my brother in 2004 when my brother was visiting DC.

--Dr HH said next time I come to LA, he will have had the violin re-strung and have his younger son play it for me.  But I am just happy they have the violin.

It is not a Stradivarus, but by now it has a history and I intend to invite Dr HH's 2 children to play with my piano whiz grand nephew at my funeral, and maybe for him to speak.

--

On the other hand, if you have an ugly mole on your nose, a flat head and no brain, you are not welcome on my blog.

This is only for the visual artists and writers who have a poetic soul,

and I don't consider media people to have much soul.

So that's it for today.

BTW, Joe introduced me to the music of Andres Segovia on classical guitar and Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, took me to the National Gallery of Art, drove us home via the Blue Ridge Highway--and sent me my first doll from Chicago that had eyes that closed when she was lain down.

I started listening to opera as his wife Scallion said she had come to love opera.  She said she was growing orchids because my mother grew orchids.

--I remember exactly how I heard about this concerto.

I did book readings in Philadelphia and NJ, and at the time my other friend had a husband who had had a stroke? and was dying, and she also had a friend from S. America, Getulio? was his name, from one of the oppressive countries, I don't remember exactly which one.

When I mentioned classical guitar, G wrote "Concierto de Aranguez" on a small slip of paper, and I found the CD in a bookstore.

Then (1998) you could not go on line and search and listen to music so easily.

The BBC program above is much like the specials I used to make, where the music is seamlessly underlaid in the story, and also part of the story.

Anyway, this post is not for the puffed up personalities in Bur lang media

as I said, you need a poetic soul.

That's all for today.

KMKaung
Of Life and Art.
9-29-2015
from my Facebook page--


Saturday, September 26, 2015

Friday, September 25, 2015

1988 photos from Irrawaddy--

http://www.irrawaddy.org/multimedia-burma/a-fateful-day-the-88-coup-remembered-in-photographs.html

Burma at risk for genocide

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/21/map-the-risk-of-genocide-around-the-world/

Memories of Hisroshima from Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/06/after-the-a-bomb-what-photographers-encountered-in-hiroshima/

Hola--The Metropolitan Museum of New York--

Hola-

I am going to go museum hopping in NY, and you can too--with just the click of a mouse, no train fare, no bus fare, no plane fare, no expensive hotels or cheap digs.

Here is one of my all time favorite places in the world--sorry, but I like it a lot better than the Shwedagone in Burma, even if it represents Western materialism and acquisitiveness.


is like getting an MFA Master of Fine Arts, in art history, and I highly recommend it--esp. if you are going to make a living as a working artist, a gallery owner, a curator or an art critic.

As MFA degrees usually cost at least 10 grand a year in tuition alone, think how much you are saving.

At the very least you will learn to pronounce names like Ingres correctly.

These days there is no excuse to be ignorant and uncultivated, unless you make yourself so.

So I will post a lot less, but I will require you to "follow me" in much greater depth.

Also, I just saw that they have statues of the female pharaoh Hatepshut, about whom I might one day write a novel, and that gives me a good excuse to go to Manhatten and the Met again, sometime next spring or summer.

Be well,
good night or good morning.

KMKaung
9-25-2015


I like this a lot--Picasso at the Met--

KMKaung
9-25-2015

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

My fiction list so far--




K.M.Kaung started writing fiction as a teenager in Burma.

Dr. Kaung holds a doctorate in Political Economy from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her work has been previously published in anthologies and literary journals, and she has read widely in universities and bookstores in N. America and Southeast Asia. From 1997-2001 she had a poetry and political commentary program on air, broadcast to Burma/Myanmar. Edward Albee praised her two act play, Shaman, and she has won Pew, Fulbright and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants.

http://kyimaykaung.blogspot.com

www.facebook.com/kyi.m.kaung

and at Kyi Kaung@kyikaung on Twitter.

www.kmkaung.com

1.      The Lovers --a ballet dancer from Chile, who has to leave her native land for political reasons, and emigrate to America.
The Lovers has vivid local color while traversing the uneasy life of political asylees. The Lovers, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4767856?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026
The Lovers, Kindle edition
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lovers-Novellas-K-M-Kaung-Kaung-ebook/dp/B00JX8NZRU
At Barnes and Noble--http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Lovers.html?id=yDABoQEACAAJ

2.   Black Rice is a Burmese man with very dark skin, almost purple, and almond eyes.  He is captured in an ambush in Burma's delta in 1947, as ethnic strife rages.  K.M. Kaung takes you on a heart stopping journey.

3.   The Rider of Crocodiles
Dr. Kaung was traveling in Thailand when a colleague told her his great great grandfather was not killed in Ayuthia in 1767 when the Burmese invaded, as he knew how to ride crocodiles.
print edition
Kindle edition
--




4.  Dancing like a Peacock and Koel Bird

A seven year old girl is sent off across the border to earn a living and send money home to Burma.
https://www.createspace.com/pub/simplesitesearch.search.do?sitesearch_query=K+Kaung+dancing+like+a+peacock&sitesearch_type=STORE

Dancing like a Peacock & Koel Bird, also includes Little Transparent Fetus Buddha.

Print (soft cover) + Kindle editions

http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Peacock-Bird-Border-Stories-ebook/dp/B00JWZSL3C
5.  FGM—Kindle edition
FGM: A Story about the Mutilation of Women.
Dr. Aset, a trained gynecologist with several post graduate American degrees, lets herself be drawn into an inappropriate
relationship.

My novella FGM is now available on Kindle--http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KJ3FUOE

there is also a print edition on the CreateSpace/Amazon store.

https://www.createspace.com/4738586
6.  Dealing with death and old age in the USA as immigrants--
No Crib for a Bed and Other Stories, Kindle Edition
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JW2ZD40
No Crib for a Bed, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4768879?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026
7.  Home is Where
Kindle edition USA



New link for Kindle of The Lovers—new price
8.  Band of Flesh print edition--+ review
Band of Flesh e edition + one review They have different cover designs.
A.     My Amazon author page in British pounds














Specialpost--Ellen Bernstein--expose of World Bank Rohingya project--

https://www.irrawaddy.com/culture/books/hellfire-and-damnation-in-myanmar-ex-world-bank-country-head-recounts-rohingya-catastrophe-response....