My Trunk Show on March 30th, 2007.

M. in traditional Burmese ensemble Golden Sunset -- (not for sale.)

A. in my hand-painted linen scarf -- Archipelago -- go to Alchemy to buy!

E. in Light Pink Linen-Lined Indian Silk -- My Valentine.

A. in Rainbow Coalition Scarf.

L. in faux vest/scarf -- held together with -- a chopstick!

E. in Black Chrysanthemum (SOLD)

W.M. in long thin fuzzy scarf.

A. in brown handmade batik

A Fun Time was had by all.

Thank you Gorgeous Models, you made my clothes look so good.

All photos and clothes, and paintings on walls, copyright Kyi M. Kaung

Till the end of April, five select items are at Alchemy, 8025 Georgia Av. Silver Spring, MD 20910 -- 301 565 2262

Contact Brenda.

Snap 'em up before someone else does.

http://www.artandalchemy.com

"Who am I?" at Dr. Kaung's Salon, April 6, 2007

On April 6, 2007, I had the great pleasure of hosting historian Bijan C. Bayne and cultural anthropologist Tomiko Anders with their presentation of “Who am I?” -- about cultural, racial, national and personal identities and identifiers, at my Dr. Kaung’s Salon at Space 7-10, Kefa Café, Silver Spring, MD.

Both Anders and Bayne are working on their own video documentary projects. Anders described her project consisting of interviews of people of “three or more mixed racial identities.” Bayne spoke of his project about people from other countries who were exhibited as “exotics” in America and Europe in the 19th century. He was not “blaming” about this practice, in the days before photography or TV, even while recognizing that the feelings of the “exhibited” have never been recorded, and most probably was extremely painful emotionally and even physically damaging.

Both Bayne and Anders have previously given talks at Space 7-10, Bayne about his project “Show People” and Anders, about her project, tentatively titled “Mergence.”

I see in my mind’s eye the extremely beautiful faces of such highly talented, racially mixed persons as Tiger Woods and Angelina Jolie, as I write this. It’s fashionable these days, but Bayne says, “There are ugly people too.”

Our Kefa - Space 7-10 co-ordinator and director Amy Kincaid, whom I always thought of as “Irish” due to her name, (or is “Kincaid” a Scottish name?) brought up the modern concept of color blindness. How we should all strive to be color blind in our friendships and associations.
{Remember the scene in the movie about Idi Amin, The Last King of Scotland, 2006, when Forest Whitaker (who won an Oscar for this role) playing the “murderous, charming” Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, accuses his personal physician of “being English.” To which the doctor says, “But I’m not English, I’m Scottish!”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455590/ }

My father gave me a black doll when I was a child in England in the early fifties. I distinctly remember running downstairs to fetch it before bedtime, while my parents were in Paris on a short vacation, and a young couple was staying with us, “to look after us.” They were newly married and hugging and kissing each other on the sofa, when, at 5 years old, I rushed in, grabbed my doll from under the Christmas tree, and rushed out again. I know now that “golliwog” which was the name for such dolls in those days, is derogatory. I found this out in the 90s when someone called Indian-born, British writer Salman Rushdie “a wog” at the time when Khomeini put the fatwah on him for his novel The Satanic Verses.

Some of the salon attendees at “Who am I?” shared some of their personal experiences with race issues. What I forgot to share (I was so tired from getting back from the airport a few hours earlier) were some “racial episodes” that others have related to me. A young Burmese women told me that in elementary school in L.A. a classmate spat directly in her face. She had to wipe the spittle off. She said she was so ashamed, she had never even told her parents. I see no reason why a victim should “feel ashamed.” It’s something for a perpetrator to feel ashamed of.

Another acquaintance, an amateur Burmese pop singer whom I am no longer in touch with, said he loves San Francisco and was driving in his car with the top down, when another car with two Indians in it, stopped with a squeal of brakes right next to him at a red light.

He said he cussed them – “Khwe kalar tway,” in Burmese. (“Damned Indians.”)

At which “the Indian” in the next car turned to him and said in perfect Burmese, “Ah Ko Gyi (Elder Brother), please watch your language.”

At the Salon, you’ll see from my pictures that the attendees were rapt, and everyone said to me afterwards, “That was a good one.”

They also talked about their reactions to my “Mostly Burmese Mugs,” that is, “mugshots” or portraits show, then on the walls at the time.

I’d like to refer you to two other artists who share my fascination with the human face, emotions, national or culture of origin, (in my case “Burmese” -- whatever that is) and art and impressionism.

Please see:
1. Rachel Kent: The Many Faces of Cherry Hood,
2. Claire Roberts: The Slow Art of Ah Xian
In Art in Australia http://www.australia.com/article

Focus on Burma and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at NEIU, April 5, 2007.

Sometimes out of the dull gray of Burmese politics and cold weather in exile, a spark of light and joy shines.
And sometimes it comes very unexpectedly, this finding of people of like mind. Sometimes, as now, the invitations actually come by email, and almost look like spam, except that spammers can’t spell and have no imagination.

Those of you who know something about Burma, will know that the pro-democracy struggle, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (Daw=Ms. in Burmese), has been going on now since the mass demonstrations of 1988.
Daw Suu (or Aunty Suu) as she is affectionately known inside and outside the country of Burma, which the junta which rules it insists on calling “Myanmar,” – has been in and out of house arrest for a cumulative total of 13 years now.
At the beginning of her first house arrest, in spite of being incarcerated at the time of the elections, her party, The National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming majority.
The military junta which still rules Burma has never honored the results of the election, and has continued to harass and oppress the NLD, as well as the people of Burma. “It’s equal opportunity oppression,” as the late dissident, Dr. Chao Tzang Yawngwe, once said at an international meeting in Gottenberg, in 2002.
As a Burma expert I am often invited to international meetings, but disappointingly, the majority are now dominated by people who are willing to dis Daw Suu, in return for promoting pro-trade policies with the junta. I consider this reprehensible.
At the beginning of this year, I wrote a number of foreign policy articles for Open Democracy on line, as well as Foreign Policy in Focus.
As a result of these articles, I was invited to be on a panel about Burma by Northeastern Illinois University, which was co-sponsoring the Conference together with Open Democracy.
I happily accepted when the invitation came by email.
Barbara Victor, who wrote The Lady, a biography of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was the keynote speaker. On April 5th, Ms. Victor spoke of how she came to go to Burma to interview Daw Suu. Ms. Victor is a journalist with a very impressive resume who normally writes about the Middle East. She has interviewed such notable people as President George W. Bush and Gaddaffi.
She described how her publisher asked her to write the book, and she went to Burma with the help of a business woman Miriam Marshall Segal, then “friendly” with Gen, Saw Maung, whom she called “Mon General” according to newspaper accounts at the time. In 1998, with the collapse of the Asian Tiger economies, Ms. Segal’s business Peregrine Inc., also crashed. I distinctly remember using a falcon’s shrill cries as a mini-sound byte in my on air political and economic analysis column, Reading between the Lines, at that time.
Barbara Victor movingly described an overwhelming atmosphere of fear in Burma which she said she had never experienced before, even though she has covered many major wars. She said, the MI or Military Intelligence, followed her everywhere and insisted she stay the three months she was in Rangoon, in the government guest house, not in an hotel. She told me that Col. Hla Min, included in internal purge together with his boss Lt.Col. Khin Nyunt in 2004, was her “handler” in Rangoon.
During Ms. Victor’s presentation, we were treated to a slide show of photographs of Daw Suu and her father, the founding father of Burma’s Independence (from Great Britain in 1948) – Bogyoke (General) Aung San.
It is sobering to think that this beautiful and frail looking woman is so strong, and has suffered so much, for freedom for Burma. Though of course, she herself has always said, her suffering and sacrifice is nothing compared to that of all the people of Burma.
The Conference was organized by Dr Hamid Akbari of NEIU, Danny Postel of Open Democracy, Dean Murrell Duster and Assistant Dean, Yasmin Ranney. It was also co-sponsored by the Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh Leadership Fund at NEIU. Since Dr. Mossadegh was the democratically elected leader of Iran, who was also not allowed to assume power, we see the parallels with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD in Burma.
The morning panel was chaired ably by Danny Postel. Prof. Emeritus Clark Neher, Northern Illinois University, and Maura Stephens, U.S. spokesperson for the International Campaign for Freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma, were also on the panel with me.
I gave an opening short summary in 20 minutes of the important events, regime changes, economic and political systems in Burma from the late 19th century and colonization by Great Britain, to World War II and the Japanese Occupation, Independence and then the military coup of 1962 – and the various dates between 1962 and 1988 when the military shot at Burmese citizens who were un-armed and demonstrating peacefully. I emphasized the importance of 1988 as the watershed event which has impacted and shaped all of our lives. Prof. Neher, I found, also shared some of my revulsion with the junta. Maura Stephens related how she met a Burmese dissident who was on hunger strike to the death to lobby the U.N., how she became involved in the Free Burma Movement, and she also described the current work that she does helping Burmese refugees.
In the afternoon, we saw 2 films about Burma: John Boorman’s Beyond Rangoon, and the recent Frontline documentary by Evan Williams.
There was also a moving Prayer Circle during which Prof. Dan Creely described the sacred fire that had been brought to NEIU from a Native American traditional Healer. We then sat in a circle and shared whatever we wished to share as we were each given the “peace totem” in turn. Most moving were what a young man who had been an NLD member told us. A journalist who was imprisoned and tortured in Burma and his family were also there.
I’d like to thank everyone at NEIU and Open Democracy, for bringing us all together. There is indeed good energy emanating from this place.
I pray for Daw Suu and all the people of Burma and hope this darkness in our lives will soon be over.
--

Photos from my art show Mostly Burmese Mugs - March 13-April 7, 2007

I had another very rewarding experience at Space 7-10 at Kefa Café, 963 Bonifant St. in Silver Spring, MD. (Two blocks from Silver Spring Metro).
Here are some photos that I took midway through the show.
I love best – Lady Vanda on the wall next to the door,

and the impromptu “painting” made when I lifted my camera just as a delivery truck parked outside.
The captions by Bijan C. Bayne were also a great success.
Ababe, joint owner of Kefa together with her sister Lene, said, “The captions make you wish to go on to the next painting, and see what (it) says.” She also added, “They make you look at the painting, and then think, and then look at the painting again.”
To be truthful, they were a great surprise to me. After I invited Bijan to write the captions about three months ago, I purposely tried not to talk about the portraits. Nor did I think about them much until Audrey Dutton at The Gazette and Ying-Ju Lai at Asian Fortune interviewed me about the show. Both correspondents, interestingly, look on them as “human rights portraits” – and so did some of my Burma and arts colleagues.
To me, they are fictional creations, much like the fictional characters in my novels, short stories and, sometimes, in my poetry. I’d like them to be seen as human and humane, and then of course as having something to do with human rights. I am surprised that no one up till now has seen that “Min Gun, Revolutionary,” whom I named after the big bell at Mingun in N. Burma, has no arms inside the empty short sleeves of his light blue shirt and so could be a land mine victim. I only noticed it myself a while ago.
So it should not have surprised me when Bijan came up with serious one liners, that seem to bore into the soul of the “people” depicted on canvas. I had expected him to write funny, somewhat longer captions, perhaps to offset the seriousness of all the portraits. For instance, none of them smile, and a friend in Thailand who gave me permission to paint from her photograph, did not recognize herself. I seem to have taken everyone’s smile away, but that may be because I can’t paint teeth. J In all the stone friezes portraying apsaras or heavenly spirits (nats in Burmese) at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, there is said to be only one apsara who is smiling and showing her even little teeth.
Amy Kincaid, who directs Space 7-10 said, “Kyi is funny as well as serious,” and Mary Thomas, who with her husband Tom Thomas, regularly attends my Salon there, said, “”But there’s nothing funny about the portraits.”
And indeed there isn’t.
Bijan with his characteristic modesty, shrugs and says, “It’s just a reaction to the paintings. If someone else had written them, they would be different.”
“It’s all perception,” Tom Thomas says.
*
We Burmese, on the other hand, are known for our insouciance. We are always laughing and smiling, which has caused some reporters to conclude that we must be happy people and there are no human rights abuses in Burma. I myself think we laugh and smile and tell jokes, the more nervous and afraid we get. I remember my aunt’s husband, Uncle U Tint, telling jokes frantically the night after my father’s funeral, in an attempt, I think, to cheer me up. So as to appreciate the all out-effort he was making, I laughed.
My aunt then said, “She’s so young, she doesn’t understand.”
But of course I did.
*
All Words and Images on this Blog copyright Kyi May Kaung, unless specifically attributed. Mirroring and plagiarizing prohibited.

Posting a Big Picture -- blogs as websites.

Black Apsaras -- Copyright Kyi May Kaung

"Come share in my colors, as you stare, for I have much color to spare."

Bijan.C. Bayne.

My art show opening for Mostly Burmese Mugs

Chin Woman

"You wonder what I see, and wonder why I smile. How wonderful!"

Bijan C. Bayne.

(All Word and Images on this Blog, Copyright Kyi May Kaung, unless specifically attributed to others.)

March 16, 2007

This is my third one-woman show since 2001 in the United States.

The first two were “Flux,” March 2001 at The Foundry Gallery and “Blotches from Burma,” October 2005, also at Space 7-10, Kefa Café, 963 Bonifant St., Silver Spring, MD

These two shows were of my abstracts, which were compared in my first show by City Paper arts correspondent Louis Jacobson, to the work of Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. At the time, I had heard of Pollock, and seen the film based on his life, but I did not know who Franz Kline was. I hurriedly looked him up, and then understood what the art critic was saying.

After my “Blotches” show, I suddenly became fascinated by people’s faces. As what might be called a born writer (I knew I was one since about 5th grade, called the fifth standard in Burma), I observe people carefully in public places, short of staring at them rudely. In the years before 2005, I was rather tired of people, especially political people; the euphemisms they use when they speak, the way they are not sincere most of the time, and use dialog to zap you, put you down, or build themselves up.

Now because I am looking at people both as a writer and an artist, I notice much more. The woman who is so excited as she comes onto the metro – she must be in love, she starts each sentence with “he” as she talks animatedly to her woman friend. The Red Hat Society that I saw once, all the women, all shapes and sizes, valiantly wearing far-out red hats. And I didn’t even have the guts to go up to them and ask, “Where did you buy that hat?”

The young woman I saw on the elevator the other day, hair pulled back in a bun, her clothes in black and white stripes, white high heels, and a big dark red jelly in a heart shaped mold decorated with real raspberries. A picture already!

So I started painting portraits in 2005, and now have enough for one and a half exhibitions.

With me and my events, the weather rarely co-operates, and that Friday it was on strike. I packed the Burmese “golden rice” dessert I had made in Tupperware; other things I was taking with me such as spare paper napkins, in plastic bags. I also took a spare cloth bag just in case.

As I got off the train and started walking uphill to Kefa Café, I noticed the icy rain was starting to leave slush on the sidewalk. I walked along carefully in my rain boots, afraid of falling.

Because of the awful weather, only some of my best friends were there. There were about six of us. We had a lot of food, as my Burmese friend brought deep fried spring rolls which were delicious. She brought the fish sauce and lime juice based dip in a jam jar. Lene and Ababe, the owners of Kefa, put out a big pot of coffee and almond flavored bread.

The reception was supposed to be from 6.30 to 8.30 PM. At about 8, I realized my friends were sitting and talking to me so I would not be alone.

At this point I thought, “Wow! This is a bit like a wake.”

But I really did not notice the bad weather outside, because of my friends.

Later at home I thought -- But who gets to attend their own funeral wake, sit and laugh with friends and be surrounded by portraits of fictional characters she/he has painted herself/himself?

I forget which writer it was, perhaps Pearl Buck, who asked for all her published books to be brought onto her deathbed with her.

Not a bad way to die. Or live.

___________

Article about my art show Mostly Burmese Mugs in The Gazette

Human Rights Activist.

All Words and Images on this Blog - Copyright Kyi May Kaung unless specifically attributed.

For Gazette article please see:

http://www.gazette.net/stories/032107/bethnew231523_32328.shtml

Thank you Audrey Dutton and Adam Fenster and The Gazette.

Thank you Amy Kincaid, Lene and Ababe at Space 7-10 Kefa Cafe.

Thank you Tom Block.

Thank you Bijan Bayne for the captions.

Thank you Khin May Zaw.

For all the time and support you have given me to make this show and this article possible.

Thank you my sons, friends and family members for giving me permission to paint your likenesses (and change them!) --

and encouraging me to paint "in series" and "a series of Asian women."

Thank you all the Activists who have told me your Stories.

Kyi May Kaung

My Recent Publications and Events March-April 07

My poetry profile

http://poeticinvention.blogspot.com/index.html

Four poems translated from Burmese and one found poem.

http://poeticinvention.blogspot.com/2007/03/kyi-may-kaung.html

Thank you Linh Dinh for posting these.

http://www.wildriverreview.com/spotlight_shrimpandtuna.php

Thank you Wendy Steginsky and Joy Stocke at Wild River Review.

My current and upcoming events at Space 7-10, Kefa Cafe, Silver Spring, MD.

http://space710atkefa.blogspot.com/

Thanks Bijan Bayne for captions for Mostly Burmese Mugs and continuous support.

Thanks Amy Kincaid for logistics at Kefa and using my art and photos on Kefa blog site

I was also interviewed by local MoCo TV, Audrey Dutton of Bethesda Chevy Chase Gazette and Ying-Ju Lai of Asian Fortune, which has an on line edition.

Thank you Everyone for this Year of the Pig.

Learning to upload and position images

A friend in Australia (they all say "Oz") says: Find the "Customise" button, then click "add an element to blog."

I found customise, but Help on my blog has a different process.

Mars Ranger-Copyright Kyi May Kaung

So now I am trying to upload Mars Ranger, for which The Northern Virginia Review gave me a Best in Show prize (see article What I Won was Best in Show).

Here goes -- IT WORKED! Now it's so easy, it's scary.

What I Won was "Best in Show"

Copyright Kyi May Kaung 3-8-07


Tuesday March 6, 2007 dawned with the wind still going “woong” in Burmese round the corner of the oh-so-tall building I live in. It came in the slight spaces between the sealed window and the window frames. It was frigidly cold and I had a sinus headache.
By about noon, I had to start to get ready to go to an awards ceremony in Virginia. I sneezed in bouts of 3 to 6 at a time, my whole body seeming to convulse with the force of my sneezes. I remembered a friend of mine who was a nurse saying “We Asians have smaller nasal cavities and are more prone to sinuses.”
A colleague of mine from Thailand – he is a Burmese refugee activist poet also, called to say he would have to walk about 30 minutes to the metro where a board member of The Northern Virginia Review was going to pick me up, so he would not be coming. It was too cold. He’d try to come to my art show opening. I said I understood. I would have stayed in bed myself also – but I was the one receiving the award.
Connie picked me up at the metro an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to start in Annandale. She waited for me at the foot of the escalator, not the top as she had said, because of the wind. I was so relieved to see her – and felt I knew her so well, after all she was a fan of my short story Black Rice, and had selected it for an award. I rushed up to her and hugged her. In my heavy wool coat and with a shawl over my head, I felt like a Russian bear.
It was further to Annandale campus than I had thought. During the drive, Connie flipped her right hand, I thought at the beam of sunshine coming through the windshield. I am convinced that with global warming there is hole in the ozone layer over the greater Washington DC area. The sun is too glaringly bright, brighter than it has ever been before and I don’t think it is my aging eyes. Connie said, “It’s dog hair.” I thought of two dogs, a St. Bernard and a Border Collie, that I am very fond of.
At the Ernst Cultural Center, Connie parked her car and told me she had made a trip to the Punjab, to study Sikhism. I told her again about hearing that my cousin, Ah Par (one of fictitious names I have given him) recently passed away in Rangoon. My character Black Rice in the story is partially based on my cousin Ah Par, who was nearly executed during the Karen Uprising in 1948, but the revolver jammed. He was rescued by a Karen officer whose name he would never reveal. In 2004, a Karen leader told me the name of the man who had rescued my cousin, but I forgot it again. By now the fiction has become more real to me.
I wrote the story in Philadelphia about 10 years ago. My marriage was disintegrating, I was browned out after the Ph.D. and I was trying to get accustomed to the loss of my country. The clampdown on the pro-democracy movement had started on Sept 18, 1988 and continues to this day. I wrote poetry every day and worked part time at Annenberg Center as an assistant house manager.
The day I finished my dissertation, I felt so empty I started my creative non-fiction memoir. Black Rice was in the middle of the novel, as an elder cousin who had brought the political realities of Burma into my young life, by telling us stories on his visits.
I wove Black Rice, the character in my short story (well, actually it is a novella) out of at least 3 other stories and my observations of the Indian “maestry” or mason/supervisor and his Indian worker. Kalama (Indian Girl) in my story became Black Rice’s Indian mother. The “maestry” changed color too, and became a rich Chinese contractor.
I took out Black Rice from the memoir as a free-standing piece in 1997, and sent it to the Philadelphia Inquirer. They liked it, but at the time, they had just run a report on Burma. So I sent another story Band of Flesh, about conjoined twins, and they published that in their Sunday magazine. Then Black Rice must have grown pale, in the piles of mss in my apartment, while I moved to DC, worked in radio, worked for The Burma Fund, traveled all over and wrote “other things.”
Due to a friend, B., taking a great liking to Black Rice, I started sending it out again about 6 months ago, and The Northern Virginia Review accepted it, then they also accepted a painting of mine Mars Ranger, then they told me I had won a prize.
So, the awards ceremony.
The keynote speaker Meena Nayak, author of Endless Rain and other novels, was riveting. It was so easy for me to relate to her going to Kashmir to research her story that it was scary. Are we, as one friend of mine charged, addicted to danger?
It was good to meet the editors Dorothy Seyler and Steve Drasner. Fortunately, Dorothy mentioned the number of different prizes they were handing out in her introduction. So I was not too alarmed when it wasn’t Black Rice which was awarded the short story prize.
What I won was what Dorothy called the Best in Show, that is, the best in this annual edition #21. I felt like a pot of tulips in full bloom at the Philadelphia Flower Show. You know how bulbs are forced to bloom early in March – layers of bulbs are buried in big pots and watered and kept at about 50-70 degrees Fahrenheit, until they all bud and bloom at once for the show.
I won for Black Rice, as well as my painting Mars Ranger, done without a brush.
Prizes are always nice. And it’s always nice to have people come up and say how much they liked your story. At the buffet, another board member, it must have been, said to me, “I love your Black Rice.” For a moment, it felt as if she was praising something I had cooked, and I looked around at the tiny spring rolls, the dainty quiches 1 ½ inches in diameter in green and yellow, the juicy brown meat balls and the cake, with light beige chocolate icing and “The Northern Virginia Review” piped on it in white, and thought, Where is the rice? – before I realized she wasn’t talking about the food.
Another writer friend Marianne Villanueva, told me in Berlin at the House of World Culture where we were fellow invitees that “writers need an ego boost now and then.”
I felt so good for the affirmation TNVR was giving me.
I talked non-stop and invited Meena to do a book launch at my Salon in Silver Spring, and she accepted, and I talked some more with Tanya Gupta, who won a poetry prize. The taxi Tanya called for never came, so Steve Drasner took us back to Vienna metro and Tanya and I talked some more on the train.
Today, I am making a brown colored pressed rice dessert for my art show opening Mostly Burmese Mugs.
But this rice is only brown from the brown sugar in it.
Black Rice is a glutinous rice that is black-purplish naturally – and is very popular in Burma as a breakfast food with fried dried fish and crushed sesame seeds and oil. It is also the basis of a Portuguese sweet in Burma called dohl dohl. (The Portuguese first came to Burma in the 16th century as mercenaries with guns, cannon and gunpowder).
I cooked the rice for the dessert Shwe Htamin (Golden Rice) in the rice cooker, and have cooled it and pressed it down in a tray using aluminum foil and all the tin cans I can find.
Why is it rice and everything else cooks so much faster here than in Burma? Is it because I can just switch on my stove, I don’t have to blow at firewood or hot coals, or is it because the rice itself is more modified and cooks faster? Or it is time that moves faster as I age?
--------------

Excellent 30 min video documentary/commentary on Burma (1962-2007) -- Highly recommended

http://www.khitpyaing.org/ads/seinCnya.php

From Khitpyaing (New Era) Journal based in Bkk.

This video documentary/commentary soberly moves back and forth between footage of recent notorious gala wedding of Gen. Than Shwe's daughter -- "Ph.D. candidate, Shanghai Univ." and conditions in Burma.

Rare footage includes:

Shots -- also gunshots and wounds -- from 1988 -- some first aired on Nightline with Ted Koppel.

An aged Gen. Ne Win saying, "When an army shoots, it doesn't shoot in the air. It shoots to kill."

-- in roughly serial order -- sales of Burma's natural resources, including jade, pearls and gemstones, teak,

-- the gap between rich and poor

-- the plight of women

-- rape as a weapon of war

--an army officer expounding on high yield paddy (rice) and the rice production targets (note someone moves silently and deliberately out of the camera's field of vision)

--the importance of food --

(the crowds lined up for food -- the little boy who spilled his rice --

are being fed in a SattuDeeThar -- a special charity where all comers are fed.)

On a personal note:

To: D.S. who wrote my part on the Burma sanctions debate in Foreign Policy In Focus was
"poignant and personalized,"
the anonymous commentator who said my use of a video documentary as evidence was "ludicrous" and D.B.V. -- who vociferously defended his website as non-political,
pl. consider this my reply.

kmk

Burmese in a Cold Climate

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

Burmese in a Cold Climate.

Just a few days ago it was 60 degrees F. A good day to do my grocery shopping, have my hair cut. The barber shop where I usually have my hair cut, owned and run by Vietnamese – is packed. About a 15 min wait. I use it to observe the other customers and work out what conflicts there might be among them. After all, I am primarily a fiction writer – conflict is the basis of all fiction.

A woman has straight blonde hair, and to my eyes her new cut looks perfect. But she keeps looking at herself sideways in the big oval mirror that the petite Vietnamese hairdresser, is holding up for her. I cannot figure out why she is so worried. Hair is hair, right? When she stands up, I notice she is about 6 months pregnant. Her husband is about 40 years old, and seems to have put on much more weight than she has. He pays for himself, and the owner of the shop jokes with him, “You have not paid for your wife.” She says something I can’t hear, and he says, “This is the last time you’re coming with me!”
Couple on the verge of a marriage breakdown?
I pay my $20 hair cut fee, with $2 for the hairdresser. She didn’t hold the mirror long for me. She didn’t even dry my hair properly. But no matter. It is colder. I am glad I brought one of my hand-made scarves, made with my own hands as I watch TV.
I worry as I always do, if America will get too expensive for me to retire in.
I think about Chinese economic growth – the stock market fall.
How should I price my artwork?
When stocks fall, will people buy more art as they did after the last crash?
In the grocery, I try to remember not to buy more than I can carry on the Metro. When I travel, I also try not to take more than I can manage.
Fruits and vegetables are quite expensive. The bunch of coriander leaves is $1.00
How much is a bunch of coriander in Burma now?
With two bags of groceries, I go to La Madeleine and treat myself to a puff pastry – a chicken friand stuffed with ground chicken, and smothered, absolutely smothered, in a light brown mushroom sauce. Yummy. I also get a custard with photogenic red strawberries and big blueberries on top. Quote from T.S. Eliot – “The roses had the look of roses that are looked at.”
To top it all up and really pig out, I ordered a diet coke. There!
Two days later it is so cold – maybe 20 degrees but the wind chill is nasty.
The wind goes “woon” (in Burmese) around the corner of the 30 storey building I live in. It seems to shake the building and force its way in past the sealed windows.
A Burmese colleague emails me to look at his blog site – but I cannot open the Burmese font, which instead of being the Burmese script of round interlocked and open alphabets, is now empty small squares. I look at some You Tube, to see, as my colleague says, “the way the mind of young Burmese work, but I am older.” I am even older than my colleague, but at some point you stop worrying. I look at Picasso’s paintings. Picasso advocated growing younger every year.
The young Burmese on You Tube look too westernized to my eyes. Why are the Burmese sites called “Myanmar Blogs?” Does that mean they are on the side of the Myanmar junta? Or is the host a Myanmar concern inside Burma. I feel quite “gingerly” as a friend from Jaffna in Sri Lanka used to say. She always urged me to use “gingerly oil” as a balm. I never figured out what she meant. It does not have anything to do with ginger, as far as I know. I could never make her appom – which are Burmese ah-ponn; light lacey, crispy, wafer thin, reverse dome-shaped “cakes” with a puddle in the middle – in Burma the puddle is filled with a whitish coconut sauce. She also taught me to make “string hoppers” which were nothing string-like, and did not hop, but more like the steamed rice cake we eat in Burma called monn sein paung. Only the Sri Lankan version is savory and eaten with meat curries. In Burma we never made these cakes at home, and so have no recipes, nor any idea how to make them. We always bought theme either in the morning bazaars or the evening, night time pagoda festival markets. Now after 20+ years “in a cold climate” I rather miss Burmese pagoda festivals.
B. says I am having a good year. Last Tuesday, Montgomery County TV’s Coming Attractions interviewed me and Amy Kincaid about the Kefa Café art space, Space 7-10, that Amy runs, and my upcoming wearable art show. Fortunately, it was not so cold then. I wore one of my jackets made from cut up portions of my own and my mother’s clothes. The host practiced pronouncing my name and I thought to myself, maybe I am forgetting the pronunciation of my own name. It sounds much harsher in real Burmese.
The Gazette reporter Audrey Dutton interviewed me on Thursday, and the photographer took pictures of me and my anonymous portraits. They are not really “anonymous.” They are fictional.
“Min Gun, Burmese Revolutionary” started as a copy of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s photograph. But at some point, the neck started to look masculine to me, so I put away the reference photo and proceeded from there. I decided to name him “Min Gun” after the world’s biggest bell in Burma, and in honor of very young boys and girls, some teenagers as young as 13, who joined the pro-democracy movement in Burma.
Tomorrow I will receive an award from The Northern Virginia Review for my short story Black Rice, written over 10 years ago, partially based on my late cousin, who was nearly executed, but the pistol jammed. He was then saved by a Karen leader whose name he would never tell us.
Yes, I have a lot to be thankful for in this Year of the Pig.
-------------------------------

My Upcoming Events in Silver Spring, MD. March-April 2007

March 13 through Saturday, April 7, 2007.

Exhibit titled "Mostly Burmese Mugs" featuring "mostly anonymous, ethnically ambiguous" portraits and painted ceramics by artist and poet Kyi May Kaung. Provocative captions written by historian Bijan Bayne accompany the artwork. Explore those questions about race that decorum forbids we ask strangers on the street. March 16, 6:30 to 8:30pmArt Opening Reception --

Kyi May Kaung March 30, 6:30 to 8:30pm

Real Clothes for Real People. Trunk show of wearable art jackets handmade with Asian fabrics by Kyi May Kaung and modeled by café neighbors and regulars. Open call for volunteer models.

April 6, 6:30 to 8:30pm. Dr. Kaung's Salon: Who is it? Art as a Mirror of Pre-Judgment. With historian Bijan C. Bayne and videographer Tomiko Anders.

Kefa Cafe -- 963 Bonifant St. Silver Spring, MD 20910
Junction of Bonifant and Georgia Avs.

ph. 301 589 9337 Free Parking on Bonifant St, at underpass or on Wayne Av.

One block from Silver Spring Metro, Red Line.

From a Young Burmese -- I recommend this site.

http://www.kmhtun.com/myfamily.html

I've met Kyaw Min Htun briefly at conferences and seminars -- but do not know him well. I did not know he had arrived in the United States so recently.

This site, in both Burmese and English, is really very good.

It gives a different perspective than "mainstream media" and allows one to pick and choose what to listen to --

It's a pity that as his personal website, he does not present a daily digest of all broadcast pieces about Burma --

kmk

My Academic CV as of Feb. 2007

KYI MAY KAUNG (Ph.D.)
Curriculum Vitae

Objective: Seeking an advocacy, senior research and/or writing position in an international organization.

Strengths: Very fast and efficient researcher – Lexus-Nexus etc. on line.
Fast and accurate boil down of important issues to easily understandable points.
Excellent oral and written presentations. Convincing, engaging and experienced public speaker. Fluent English.
Able to speak and write persuasively so people listen.
Extensive contacts in academia, politics and the arts.
Able to formulate and carry out P.R. Initiatives.
Ten years of non-profit experience in DC area.
Political Economy and S.E. Asia specialist.
Able to formulate strategy and analyze organizational structure and goals.
Able to travel internationally up to 25% of the year.
Work permission in the USA.



EDUCATION
Ph.D. City and Regional Planning and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, May 1994.
M.A. City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, 1987.
M.A. Economics, University of Rangoon, 1967.
B.A. Honors, Economics, University of Rangoon, 1964.

DISSERTATION
"Modernization, Breakdown and Structural Configurations: Retrogression in Burma (1962-1992)."
Chairman: Henry Teune, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.
Members: Josef Silverstein, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University.
Donald E. Smith, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.
Seymour Mandelbaum, City Planning, University of Pennsylvania.

LATEST PUBLICATIONS:

Foreign Policy in Focus. Debate on Sanctions in Burma. Jan. 2007

Wild River Review – Burmese Migrant Workers and Shrimp Shelling and Tuna Canning in Mahachai, Thailand – March14, 2007.

Also in Burma Economic Watch, on line.

OpenDemocracy articles. 2006-2007

Asian Survey

The Irrawaddy (Burmese dissident magazine – read by members of Congress)

Creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) – Norton Anthology (upcoming), Poet Lore, Wild River Review, Northern Virginia Review, Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine (short story – 1997), Poet’s Attic, Meridian Anthology.

Extensive poetry readings in the United States and Canada.

AWARDS AND HONORS


Best short story – March 2007, The Northern Virginia Review.

William Carlos Williams Award, Academy of American Poets, 1995.

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Award, for concept for play FLASHBACK (now titled Shaman.)

Pew Finalist, 1996 and 1994, for play SHAMAN and allegory She-Monkey respectively.

Fulbright Scholar, 1982-89. University of Pennsylvania.

Polish-Burma Exchange Scholar, 1969-70. Central School of Economics and Statistics, Warsaw, Poland. First place winner.

M.A. with distinction, first in class, Rangoon, 1967.

B.A. first division, first place winner, 1964.


VOLUNTEER POSITIONS

Supporter – U.S. Campaign for Burma.

Founder/facilitator: Dr. Kaung’s Salon, 963 Bonifant St. Silver Spring, MD.

Board member, Burma Refugee Project, (medical aid to refugees), Jan 2005- present

Board Member, Burma Economic Watch, An Electronic Magazine, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. 2004 to present.

Member, Technical Advisory Network, Burmese Government in Exile, 2000-present.


WORK
2004- Consultant and Free Lance Writer.
Senior Research Associate. The Burma Fund, Washington DC, Sept 2001-Dec 31, 2004
Senior Research Analyst. Radio Free Asia, Washington DC, May 1998-Sept 2001.
International Radio Broadcaster, RFA Burmese Service, Washington DC, March 1997-April 1998.
1982-1994. Ph.D. candidate, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
1978-1988. Assoc. Professor, Economics Department, University of Rangoon, Burma.

RESEARCH INTERESTS/WORK IN PROGRESS

Greater Mekong Region, environmental problems.

Yangtze Dams.

Environmental Laws and the United States.

Effects of Global Warming.


Dissertation to Book --- completed August 2004.

Economic Transitions in Burma: Strategies and Scenarios. Book length project, co-authored with Zaw Oo, 2002.

About possible scenarios should there be democratic change and the World Bank and IMF enter Burma. I intensively studied Joseph Stiglitz’ points of criticism.

Migration on Thai-Burma Border, Thai policies and SPDC Roadmap.

SPDC Roadmap and Problems.

2004 – Second Wholesale Sell Off of Natural Resources in Burma.

2004 – Sanctions vs. No Sanctions: United States’ Burma Policy.

Human rights, especially women's and children's rights.
Closed vs. open systems.
Command economies vs. open markets.
IMF and World Bank packages and shortcomings.
US policy and Burma, the Burmese democracy movement,
System change and democratic, market reforms in China and Russia etc.
Causes and effects of out-migration and search for humane solutions.
Burma and Asean, community of democracies.
Alternative models and their application to Burma.
Problems of transition in Burma, Vietnam, Russia, Poland.
Chinese Economic Reforms 1978-present, N and S Korea.
Exploring humane solutions to Thai-Burma refugee problem.

Economic History. J.S. Furnivall and Economic Planning, the Plural Society in Burma during the U Nu (democratic) period in Burma 1948-62.

Novel in Progress, about a Burmese dissident.

Collection of Short Stories.

Play development -- Shaman

Painting – abstracts and iconic figures – 3 one woman shows in greater DC area since 2001

SEMINARS/CONFERENCES, STRATEGIZING SESSIONS 2001 –

April 5, 2007, Northern Illinois University, Focus on Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi – I have been invited to be on the keynote panel.

November 2006, Refugee Conference – American University – one of invited speakers.

October- Dec., 2006. Refugee art exhibit, one of invited painters. Helped plan the exhibition, Gateway Heliport Gallery, Silver Spring, MD.

July 2006, E-W Center DC sponsored a closed door conference on Conflict Resolution in Burma in Bangkok. I was one of a dozen invited commentators/rapporteurs.

July 2006, Burma Studies Group – Singapore.

October 2005, The Politics of Voices, House of World Culture, Berlin. Invited with 5 other S.E. Asian writers “who dare to confront.”

October 2004. Panel on Burma, “The Latest Purge in Burma,” Burma Studies Center, DeKalb IL. Keynote Panelist.

September 2004, Bank Information Center, Open Society Institute. Washington DC

Helped plan seminar on World Bank and IMF, Lessons from Bosnia.
March 2004. Closed door strategizing session on Burma, SAIS Johns Hopkins, Washington DC.

March 2004, Young Scholars Forum at American University, Washington DC. Paper proposals of Burma scholars in USA and discussions on research methodology

August-September 2003, Research on G.H. Luce and Furnivall Archives.

July 2003, helped formulate interview questions for Migrant Workers Survey on Thai-Burma Border (collaboration with Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.)

Jan 2003 International Association for Study of Forced Migration, paper on Burmese refugees, Thailand and SPDC “roadmap.”

March 2002 Technical Advisory Network, NCGUB, Bangkok, Thailand. Role of Advisors of Burmese Government in Exile.

Nov. 2002. SAIS, Johns Hopkins, Washington DC. Participant. Strategizing for Burmese democracy movement in exile.

Sept, 2002. Burma Studies Conference, Gottenberg, Sweden, co-chaired panel on Diplomacy and Dialog in Burma.

Jan 2003, Conference on Forced Migration and Burma, Chiengmai, Thailand.

July 2003, Canberra, Australia, Australian National University, Peer Reviewed book on Economic Transitions in Burma. Peers from Burmese Democratic Government in Exile,

July 2003, Sydney, Australia, Australia Burmese Students Conference.

March 2003, Globalization and Human Trafficking, Denver CO.

Aug. 2002, International IDEA Stockholm, Democratic Capacity Building for Burma.

August 2002, Asean People's Assembly, “Globalisation and ASEAN,” Bali, Indonesia.

April 2001 Conference on World Affairs, Boulder CO. “World without Borders.”


References: On request.

Color Coded on the 22nd of February, 2007

Chinese New Year -- the Year of the Boar (not bore:) has passed.

The anniversary of my father's death, after a car accident in Calcutta, has passed.

I was invited to a Conference on Burma and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in Chicago on 5th April, on the basis of my articles in OpenDemocracy.

It is just like the House of World Culture inviting me and other S.E. Asian writers "who dare to confront" to Berlin in the fall of 2005. The invitations came in as email.

The power of web publishing and blogs, if one is judicious about it.

I helped my dissident friends resolve a mini-crisis.

I "pulled and dropped" a "friend" to my X-files -- because she was cavalier about my original audio material and lost them.

Elephants have long memories.

I baked a fruit cake and offered it on my Buddhist altar.

The Year of the Pig, will be a joyous Pig.

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

Mostly Burmese Mugs -- March 2007 Bio + Statement

Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.) Bio – 2007
Ms. Kaung is a multidisciplinary and multi-faceted writer and artist who does not fit neatly into any pre-conceived category. She has been called “a trained social scientist with the soul of a poet.” She has just won a best short story prize for her story Black Rice from the Northern Virginia Review (#21).
Originally from Burma, she has published two poetry chapbooks; poetry in Rattapallax, CrossConnect, Poet’s Attic, Mosaic, and Passport Magazines; read poetry with DC Poets Against War, Washington Musica Viva and in the U.S.A. and Canada. Her short stories have appeared in Wild River Review, Northern Virginia Review (upcoming), Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine and Shoptalk; foreign policy articles in Foreign Policy in Focus, OpenDemocracy, Asian Survey and Irrawaddy. Her play “Shaman” was praised by Edward Albee and others and she has been a Pew finalist in literature twice. She is also a winner of the William Carlos Williams Award of the Academy of American Poets.
Kyi has been painting professionally since 2001. Mostly Burmese Mugs is her third one-woman show. (Previous shows were Flux – at Foundry Gallery, DC 2002 and Blotches from Burma at Space 7-10, MD in 2005). Kyi paints abstracts in an action painting style that has been compared to Franz Kline and Jackson Pollak, and intuitive and haunting “portraits” generated from photographs of real people and/or her imagination.

Kyi May Kaung: Artist’s Statement – for Mostly Burmese Mugs and Trunk Show – Space 7-10, Kefa Café, Silver Spring, MD. March13 – April 7, 2007
In this show, I am exhibiting iconic portraits that I have painted in oils on canvas since 2005 in an intuitive process that I worked out for myself. Starting from a sketch or snapshot of a real person, I keep painting to a point where the picture starts to tell me what it wishes to be. At this point I put the reference shot away and pay attention to what is happening on the canvas. The subjects change gender or ethnicity, or become iconic figures such as Our Lady of Scorpions or Lady Vanda (an orchid species.) They develop personalities of their own and select the objects they wish to be surrounded by. They also dictate to me, their conduit, in which style they wish to be painted. Some are in lumpy paint straight from the tube, and some are smooth surfaced.
These are the mug shots in this show. The rest are my hand painted ceramics, some of them actual mugs you can drink from.
This is my first Trunk Show of wearable art. For a scheduled interview, I am thinking back to the genesis of this particular artistic activity of mine, and find I can trace it to two monologs on stage which I did in 1994 at Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. In one of these, “Head Turned Backwards,” based on one of my poems, I unpack a suitcase full of clothes that I had meant to take home with me, while talking about my grandmothers. I wore a jacket made of the cut up parts of my old Burmese clothes that no longer fit.
By 2005, women on the streets would swivel their heads to look at my clothes, and ask me where I bought them. As I am unable to sell some of the jackets made from collectible fabrics with long histories (for example, the longyi or sarong I wore at my wedding breakfast), I decided to make jackets out of the fabrics I have collected on my travels, mostly in S.E Asia.
It is important to remember that I am not a tailor or a dressmaker who makes finely tailored, fitted and highly constructed, padded clothes. I am a poet and artist who sometimes makes poetic and metaphorical clothes. Due to my aging, I no longer do fine stitching or embroidery. I don’t want to contract out and be an employer of sweatshop labor. So I make everything on my own, minimizing seams and leaving in minor defects, because as the Turkish carpet makers say, “Only God is perfect.”
I make the jackets to complement everyday clothes such as the little black dress and the blue jeans, because I think clothes should make the wearer feel secure, covered and more truly herself or himself. I make jackets to read my poetry in.
I am against anorexia and make clothes for the mature woman.
Feb. 14, 2007

KyiMayKaung

Tin Moe’s poetry translated by Kyi May Kaung.
Copyright Tin Moe
Translation copyright Kyi May Kaung


Sobs (The Desert Years)

An intake of breath.
A sliver of glass.
Old decades of years
cannot consider.
In these years the bees cannot
make honey the mushrooms
cannot sprout.
All the fields are out of
crops -- Dry.

The mist is damp.
The storm is dim.
The dust rising in clouds,
Along the road where
the bullock cart
has traveled.

Encircled by thorns
The hta-naung tree its trunk
Cat’s claw scratched, is trying
To bloom.

It does not rain.

When it does – it’s not enough
To soak the earth.

In the monastery at
The edge of the village
Bells
Are not heard. If they are
they do not enter the ears
blissfully.

There are no novices
Saffron clad
Zilch sounds of young
Voices
Reciting the scriptures only the
Kappiya attendant
With his
shaved head falls between the
pillars and the columns of the building.

The earth doesn’t dare
To put forth fruit
It abandons all
And looks at me
At once feeling embarrassed
And frightened as if she
Cannot talk.

When will the sobs change
and the bells ring sweetly again?


New Pages

With one great sigh
So early in the morning
I heave myself out
Of bed

Among the skyscrapers that hit the clouds
The car horns going pipi pipie
The trains full of people ta sisie
The world that stays current with the age
With rapid rat feet
I have to find a place
Where
I can reside
And be safe.

Find my own cool pot
Of village water, on
A stand for strangers, by the roadside.
Ye kyan sin.

Only in old age
When infirmity is catching up with me
Do I have to undertake
This long journey
Of many steps.

On yesterday’s pages
I wrote out the history
So many instances of
So many mistakes
How bitter the taste
Of all those mistakes.

Here, the car engines cough
Into action, in an airplane I have arrived
At the edge of the continent of
North America.

Will I be able
Old and alone as I am
To change the course of history
To edit the past
How will I manage to do
All
This.

But old as I am
I still have the unrent flag
Of my heart’s spirit still
Waving undaunted.

I can raise up my spirits.

Holding in my hand
A lantern of light
Drinking a potion to keep me
Forever young, I go again to battle singing
A song
Of my own
Devising.

That sigh that is let out
It’s not
The sign of a deep depression
It is only
The swish of another page turning
Another page
Of my own and my country’s
Dark history.


To Thakin Kodaw Hmaing

With his topknot
On his head
His jacket lopsided
Frogged over
Half his chest, his cloth of
Unbleached
Cotton his yaw
Longyi of indigo
Blue, pundit
Hmaing is a true
Wise man.

With his brain
And his guts
He has risen up
In Revolution.


Miss Red with Little Umbrella.

Gracefully she comes
With her little umbrella.
Come on over, come on over
Teacher is calling.

With her head held up at an angle

Stridently she sings
Recites her lessons. In her
Excellent
Recitations
Miss Red
Is always
First.

Copyright Tin Moe
Translation copyright Kyi May Kaung

KyiMayKaung

Burmese Poet Tin Moe: In Memorium.
by Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.)

One of the most onerous things one has to do, is write an obituary when a fellow poet, artist, writer or dissident dies. I just opened my computer file where tributes to three other notable people who worked for Burma and freedom are still lying quietly, some published, some not.
I first met poet Tin Moe when he wrote to the radio station where I was working in Washington D.C. He wanted to leave Burma and work overseas. This was in 1997. No one at my former workplace did anything to help him, though I showed his letter to another writer and to the then manager, who was in a position to offer him a job.
Tin Moe was already a famous poet and had been in prison a few years. Time passed. I was offered the opportunity to write and produce a weekly program in air on Burmese and international dissident poetry. I started with a piece on the poet Naing Win Swe, who had died in the jungle with other freedom fighters. I thought naively that I would do one weekly column and the next week my material would run out and there would be nothing left to talk about. I did not yet know the extremely important role that poetry plays in oppressive systems like the Burmese one. Every week, I used to get poetry leads from friends and acquaintances and poetry fans. They sent me hand written or transcribed poems, remembered poems, rare editions from Burma and carefully hand copied pages of poems which had been inked out of Burmese magazines by the official censors. My poetry column went on and continued for over three years until my time at the radio ended.
Towards the end, I underwent a good deal of job harassment, resulting in my losing my job in February of 2001. About 1999, Tin Moe arrived in the United States on a visit. I understood that he had managed to emigrate with the help of his daughter, who then lived in Belgium. I did a program on his poetry and translated some of his poems into English. These were featured in an interview about him, based on the radio interview, which I sent to Burma Debate. It is still on line.
A mutual friend said she “would practice videography” by filming me interviewing Tin Moe in my Washington D.C. apartment, so we set up a date. My friend drove Tin Moe over and helped him get back to the house where he was staying.
Tin Moe was a short plump man who looked “typically Burmese” and seemed to be always smiling, despite the vicissitudes of his life. I was reminded of the late writer John Gardner’s words, that “whatever smiling faces they present to the world,” artists and writers always have trauma in their backgrounds. I learned that in addition to the years in prison, Tin Moe had also lost his wife. But he seemed to show none of this on the surface. He appeared even jolly, like a Burmese Santa Claus. He wrote bits of poetry good naturedly for my friend’s seven year old on small scraps of paper, sitting at the same level as the child.
In this interview I asked him when he first learned he was a poet (he said he still did not consider himself one) and what had been the predominant poetic influence in his life. He said, “I’m a very simple person. I yearn for the village where I was born, among the peanut fields.” He then told me that the primary motif of all his work, whether he mentioned it ostensibly or not, was the symbolism of the yay gyan zin, or water pot on a roofed stand, which is outside every village in Burma, to offer drinking water to thirsty travelers. I restrained myself from reminding Tin Moe that the earthen water pots weren’t so hygienic, because people had to drink from the one tin cup provided, and dunk the cup each time into the water pot. Nor did I say that all the tin cups I had seen were all chained to the pots, so as not to be stolen. But it was certainly a beautiful image. Visions of the round-bellied earthenware pots, unglazed and therefore “sweating water” and oh- so cool, and the mini-rice fields of sprouting bright green paddy plants around each pot danced before my eyes. This was indeed the pure and simple Burma we all wish to return to.
I also asked Tin Moe about the influence that two other great poets, Zawgyi (U Thein Han) and Minthuwun (U Wun) had had on his work.
He stopped and said: There is nothing so beautiful, so wonderful and SIMPLE, as the poems of Zawgyi and Minthuwun. So pure in their shining simplicity.
I could not agree more. He told me that the children’s nursery rhymes set to music which I learned as a child growing up in Rangoon, were not traditional, as I had thought, but had all been written by Minthuwun. Maung Lay Yay, Hta Par Tau (Dear younger brother, do get up, the dawn’s early light – or ta kyaw hna kyaw tay ko thee, hget kyar hnoke palee – stanza by stanza she threads her song, bird of the hnoke palee – which I find impossible to translate – Bird of the teasing beak? Bird with a playful mouth?
I learned also that it was Tin Moe who had written the first grade primer with which we all learn our three Rs in Burmese in Burma. An email from a Burmese dissident just pointed out how brilliant these are.
At the very beginning, when all we have learned are single alphabets, such as A, B, C, D and Ka Kha Gha Ga in Burmese, Tin Moe made poem sentences of single alphabets, such as:
Ma Ma Wa Wa Hta Ka, which I always loved and have put on one of my painted ceramics. Fat Older Sister Get Up and Dance! And when we have learned a bit more such as the vowel sounds -- Nga Ei Du Nar The -- My knee hurts!
I asked Tin Moe which was his favorite poem. He did not pause long before he replied, “Htee Kale Ne Ma Ni – surely, Miss Red with the Little Umbrella,” a nursery rhyme.
Tin Moe and Burmese democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s family friends gave me copies of the poem he had written for the funeral of Suu Kyi’s husband, the late Dr. Micheal Aris. I still have, somewhere under my piles of paper, because it is too painful to look at, a funeral program from 2005 for our late friend Daw Taw Myo Myint of Los Angeles, devoted wife, mother and committed dissident, whom Tin Moe also knew and admired. I remember he wrote that Taw was taw te, that is, kind, righteous, good, intelligent, smart, royal, proper, just like her name.
On another occasion, in the summer of 2001, famous student leader of the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations, Moe Thee Zun arrived in the United States. Moe Thee, I found, also had a deep interest in the arts and literature and at that time was working on his own memoirs. Moe Thee went and fetched U Tin Moe from Boston in his car (he had just got his driving license) and brought him to stay at his apartment for a while. Moe Thee then got the idea that he needed to put descriptions of political events between episodes in his own story, so why didn’t he interview me? I had been about 20 years old in 1967, when the anti-Chinese riots took place, when Moe Thee himself was just an infant.
When I arrived at Moe Thee’s apartment in Rockville, M.D., an impromptu soiree was in progress. The front door was propped open, and one of Moe Thee’s close friends was actually sitting slung across the threshold. It was 10 AM on a Saturday.
At the dining table, Tin Moe suddenly burst into a classical song. I told Moe Thee what I could remember of the disturbances of 1967. When it started getting close to lunchtime, I thought we should all chip in and get pizza. But Moe Thee took us all along with him to a neighbor’s house, where we all sat down to a magnificent home cooked meal. Tin Moe remembered all the names of my artsy relatives in Rangoon. On another occasion he read poetry at the Free Burma Coalition.
I don’t know how to honor one great poet, except with the words of another, --Welsh poet and nationalist, Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
*
R.I.P. – Which I realize now spells “rip.” A friend, writer/historian Bijan C. Bayne, says this is “Rooted Inspirational Poetry.”

January 23, 2007
---------

KyiMayKaung

U.S. Midterms -- Nov 9, 2006.
When my niece, of mixed parentage, was seven, she drew herself as ET, with the caption, “Yumi, where the hell are you from?” After 20+ years in the United States, I still feel an outsider. American politics as gleaned from sound bites is not easy to understand. Until about a week ago, when I saw a documentary on how midterm elections are run, I had no idea that they are run at the local level, mostly by volunteers, who are mostly aging baby boomers. On Monday, I was sick from my annual flu shot. On Tuesday I went for my morning walk with my senior friends, in our neighborhood in Maryland, which is the most educated in the United States, has the highest percentage of postgraduate degree-holders. As we walked among the immaculate, at least 3 m. dollar homes, two of my friends carefully gave me a rundown on the candidates based on their research. I had been too busy to do my own. One woman, in her mid-70s, spoke of how “Now I understand how Hitler came to power in Germany.” She said with G.W. Bush it was all “oil and papa.”
Buoyed up by the conversation, assured by my friends that I did not need any form of identification, I rushed to the Village Center, which was the polling center for the day. Two people who were on the Democratic ballot, including a woman named Susan C. Lee, running for House of Delegates, greeted us smiling at the entrance. “Please vote for the Democratic Party,” she said. “I intend to,” I said purposefully. I was so happy I was going to vote in a few minutes for the first time in my life.
It was not to be. Despite spelling my name for them twice, they could not find me on the list. It turned out I had not registered to vote 21 days earlier as I was supposed to. “Don’t worry,” someone said, “we’ll get you set up so you can vote in 2 years.”
Dejected, I walked out of the center. At the door, a reporter came up to me and asked me if I had voted. He said, “Even if you didn’t get to vote, would you like to talk to us? Do you like the direction in which the Republicans are taking us?”
Would I like to talk! “The war in Iraq,” I started out, “they should have been better prepared. It isn’t so easy to go in there ‘to set up democracy’ without knowing the culture or anything. The Democrats have been traditionally for the underclass. I think they will see to raising the minimum wage. We’ll get to a solution of the war situation, talk about things we need to, like the environment.”
Two days later, with Republican Sen. George Allen conceding defeat to Jim Webb in Virginia, just a little southwest, across the Potomac from us in Maryland, the Democrats are now in control of both houses of Congress by a 51-49 majority. Yesterday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned, Democrat Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. All my friends are beaming, passing around chocolates, saying they don’t need to move to Canada or Australia after all.
Oddly, The Independent and the BBC have given us the best analyses of the changes. That’s nothing new. A lot of us gave up on the American media some time ago.
I like Nancy Pelosi. Saw her once in the Rayburn Building in D.C. when she came to give a speech on Burmese democracy leader Suu Kyi’s birthday. Pelosi is brainy, tough and beautiful. She doesn’t mince words, has called President Bush an emperor without clothes. She gets right to the point, never stops smiling, but is firm. During Chinese New Year in San Francisco, she knew to wear red. Hopefully, as Bush and Pelosi both talk of bi-partisan solutions (to Iraq) I look forward to a time when I won’t need to turn my TV off when Jim Lehrer on the McNeil Lehrer News Hour says every evening – in reference to the daily war dead – “And here in silence are the names of – more.”
We all know more Iraquis have died and are barely counted, let alone named. According to journalist Judith Coburn, the number in 2005 as counted by IBC (Iraq Body Count) was between nearly 23,000 and 26,000.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0718-21.htm
That’s an enormous number. Now (Jan 2007) it is reported at 34,000, more than ten times the number of the more than 3000 reported American dead.
The Democratic Party should not let down its guard. President Bush apparently still has some tricks up his sleeve. On Thursday he submitted the nomination of the unpopular and controversial John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.; he’s pushing legislation to pass the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. Donald Rumsfeld might have been just a convenient fall guy.
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