Mongolia Monday: Two Poems

I haven’t posted any poetry for awhile, so here are two that I rather like. They are from “Modern Mongolian Poetry”, which was published by The State Publishing House in 1986. This was before the “changeover” from socialism, which started in 1990. So there will be 20th anniversary celebrations in Mongolia next year. Both photos [...]

Read Full Post »

Mongolia Monday- My Other Mongol Joke

Buuz is one of the most popular foods in Mongolia. They are a small, round steamed “dumpling” with a mutton or beef filling. Mongols make (and eat) zillions of them for their holidays. Just for fun we had a “buuz party” a couple of weeks ago. One of the guests, and the chief buuz maker, [...]

Read Full Post »

Mongolia Monday- A Mongol Joke

One of the many things I enjoy about traveling to other countries is learning what is considered humorous and to what extent it overlaps with what Americans find funny. This last July in Mongolia, I finally got a chance to explore this with my guide, who spoke very good English. I asked him about Mongol [...]

Read Full Post »

Four New Paintings!

Here are four more new paintings to go with the two I posted last week. I had a problem with the background in the last one and thought I’d show how it was and how I changed it.
Here is one of the takhi (Przewalski’s horse) that I saw when I was at the Khomiin Tal [...]

Read Full Post »

Off to the “Art and the Animal” Opening Weekend and an Update on the Mongolia Women’s Craft Association Update

Taking a break from painting for the next week, so y’all are going to have to hang tuff to see the next step of the big argali painting. Tomorrow I’m off to the opening weekend festivities surrounding “Art and the Animal”, the annual majored juried show held by the Society of Animal Artists, of which [...]

Read Full Post »

My Reply to a Comment on the Previous Post About Using Photoshop + Mongolia Trip Photo of the Week

I started to write a reply to the (partially quoted) comment below and realized that the topic was worthy of its own post since, as you will see, I have strong opinions about the subject (Who, me?).
“I found your process very interesting…especially because I tend to ‘jump right in ass-first’ and not do any studies [...]

Read Full Post »

Why I Love Mongolia: The Land

I’ve been back a week now. Something special happened on this, my fourth trip. A lot of things came together for me and I was able to experience Mongolia and connect in ways that I hadn’t on previous trips, even though something kept driving me to return.
Some of it was simply gaining a familiarity that [...]

Read Full Post »

I’ve Returned from Ikh Nartiin Chuluu

My trip to Ikh Nart was amazingly successful. It seemed like all the stars aligned for my three days of meetings with the women who want to start a crafts cooperative.
It’s going to take a bit to sort it all out and write it down coherently, but the punchline is that they got the word [...]

Read Full Post »

Onward to Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve

But first, when we got back to UB, I needed to go by the Nomadic Journeys office and pay for the trip. Jan Wigsten, who I worked with to plan my itinerary, was in and he spent about a half hour with Hatnaa and I chatting and kind of de-briefing us about how the trip [...]

Read Full Post »

Back to Ulaanbaatar

In the evening after the mountain ceremony, we went for one last drive and ended up poking around the ruins of an old monastery that is tucked up into a narrow canyon. The entry point and the site itself has many aspen trees growing in and around it, some with blue scarves (khadak) tied around [...]

Read Full Post »