Music of the Armenian Duduk, by a master. [Watch in Full Screen, lower right]
Baderech El Hayam – Light in Babylon
From Turkey. [Watch in Full Screen, lower right]
Drowning Sorrows in Wine – The Zhongruan
“Jiu Kuang,” Drowning Sorrows in Wine. [Watch in Full Screen, lower right]
Flowing Water – the Chinese Gugin
At the beginning, ambition cared about the high mountain and said that benevolent people liked the mountain. Later, ambition cared about the running water and said that wise people liked the water. [Watch in Full Screen, lower right]
Emerald Drifters – Cig Harvey
NEW YORKER Magazine Newsletter April 19, 2025, article by Ocean Vuong about the photography of Cig harvey in “Emerald Drifter”
“Despite its ethos of charged mourning, “Emerald Drifter” is a rallying cry to exist in our bodies, where all the senses encounter the world. Viewing these images brings to mind an anecdote I once heard and think of often in relation to art: French colonizers, upon arriving in Vietnam in the nineteenth century, were aghast to see gold-clad Buddhas and stupas, porcelain and jade vases and statues, left in the open air, for anyone, even beggars, to touch. How can a people’s finest enaction of craft be left so unguarded, they wondered. Quickly, the conquerors dislodged these treasures and locked them in vaults to be sent back to the empire’s capital and displayed in museums as “relics.” What does it mean to be so frightened by beauty’s power that it must then be plundered and removed, caged? I’ve seen psychological research suggesting that, for some communities in Asia, the touching of religious artifacts has medicinal results that rival the effects of psychotropic drugs. In other words, it reaffirms what artists have known for centuries, and what Harvey so deftly reveals to us here: that beauty, despite being degraded by commerce, or shunned as merely decorous, feminine fussing, heals.”
Mastery – Tao Te Ching
View – Eugene, Oregon
[Photos 
Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
Japanese Garden – Portland, Oregon
[All photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
Refuge Hot Springs – Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, Nevada
The Sheldon NWR sits on the Nevada side of the OR-NV border and is accessed by OR and NV Hwy 140. The Reserve is vast and home to antelope, big horn sheep, elk, deer, mountain lion, wild horses and burros that were set loose years ago. The Refuge Hot Springs was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s by building a wall on the low side of the hot spring runoff. The CCC built a shower house that is free and open to the public, fed by the hot spring water. There is a great free campground surrounding the pool. [All photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
The road to the hot springs passes an active opal mine which offers tours in season. There is also an old homestead with a stone barn and a corral with a fence woven with willow branches.
Home Away from Home – Chimayo, NM
It’s been my good fortune to enjoy the hospitality of my friends, Debbie and Liz, in Chimayo, NM, for the past nine years and be a guest in their adobe home along the Santa Cruz River. Their home adjoins the Malpais, i.e. the BLM badlands where I’ve hiked many an hour. [All photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
I’ve found many potsherds on the south facing slopes of this rock formation, typically with a white clay slip and black painted designs, but occasionally in red polychrome. The nearby Santa Cruz river would have provided water for the small settlement. The Jemez mountains are on the horizon.
