March 23, 2010

Daw Tin Shwe | Htamane festival

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Tri-x @3200 | Ilford MGIV RC
Universal Peace Buddha Temple, Brooklyn

This auntie is a very devout Buddhist and comes to offer food and pay her respects to the monks every Sunday. With her great experience, she led the process of making htamane, and the rest of the members surprised her with a birthday party. Due to the temple's distance from her home, the hard work of htamane, and the early start time of puja on Sunday, she stayed overnight in the women's quarters at the temple.

More Htamane photos here.

Making htamane | Universal Peace Buddha Temple

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Olympus OM-2N | Fuji Neopan 1600@3200 | Ilford MGIV RC
Universal Peace Buddha Temple, Brooklyn

The finished htamane is dense and heavy. At least two men worked together to empty each wok.

Htamane is a glutinuous rice dish mixed with ginger, coconut, sesame, peanuts, and copious amounts of oil. The Htamane feast marks the first harvest of the year, in which the best crops are set aside to offer to the monks. It's believed that these particular ingredients combine to create a healthy warmth in the body during the chilly season. Preparing htamane takes several hours and the hands of many temple members.

More Htamane photos here.

Making htamane | Universal Peace Buddha Temple

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Tri-x @3200 | Ilford MGIV RC
Universal Peace Buddha Temple, Brooklyn

Traditionally, as the htamane feast is a communal celebration, all participants are welcome to contribute ingredients. However, the food for this particular Htamane festival-- including noodles and desserts--was fully sponsored by the UNDP Myanmar.

Htamane is a glutinuous rice dish mixed with ginger, coconut, sesame, peanuts, and copious amounts of oil. The Htamane feast marks the first harvest of the year, in which the best crops are set aside to offer to the monks. It's believed that these particular ingredients combine to create a healthy warmth in the body during the chilly season. Preparing htamane takes several hours and the hands of many temple members.

More Htamane photos here.


Preparing rice noodles | Htamane Festival

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Tri-x @3200 | Ilford MGIV RC
Universal Peace Buddha Temple, Brooklyn

More Htamane photos here.

Mabel | Htamane Festival

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Tri-x @3200 | Ilford MGIV RC
Universal Peace Buddha Temple, Brooklyn

The duty of washing the glutinous rice for htamane usually falls to young women.

More Htamane photos here.

Making htamane | Universal Peace Buddha Temple

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Olympus OM-2N | Fuji Neopan 1600@3200 | Ilford MGIV RC
Universal Peace Buddha Temple, Brooklyn

Sesame, peanuts, coconut, oil. Tearing apart coconuts was extremely time-consuming last year, so this year chopped coconut was purchased from an Indian market.

Htamane is a glutinuous rice dish mixed with ginger, coconut, sesame, peanuts, and copious amounts of oil. The Htamane feast marks the first harvest of the year, in which the best crops are set aside to offer to the monks. It's believed that these particular ingredients combine to create a healthy warmth in the body during the chilly season. Preparing htamane takes several hours and the hands of many temple members.

More Htamane photos here.

March 12, 2010

We Are One Malawi | New York

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Olympus OM-2N | Delta 100 | Fotokemika Emaks K-888 #2

Facebooky folks out there: we set up a fan page :).
www.facebook.com/pages/We-Are-One-Malawi/337901826931?ref=mf

All the info for our upcoming fundraiser will be posted there, and on our website. But in brief:

Friday, May 7th
The City Bakery
8pm-12am

Wine, beer, lots of good food. Awesome silent auction. My friend's documentary film on view. Er, some sort of other entertainment. That will probably be really good. And...prints. Yeah. Prints on display. Sorry, trailing off a bit...we're working out the details. Including designing an actual invite...haven't had much time lately...I'll get to it. DId I mention the wine and beer, though?!

Still happy to take silent auction items!

March 4, 2010

Family | Hell's Kitchen

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Zeiss Super Ikonta B | Fuji Neopan 400 | Fomatone warmtone RC

March 1, 2010

Chinese New Year | Sunset Park

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Plus-x | Ilford MGIV RC

Chinese New Year | Sunset Park

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Plus-x | Ilford MGIV RC

Chinese New Year | Sunset Park

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Plus-x | Ilford MGIV RC

Chinese New Year | Sunset Park

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Olympus OM-2N | Kodak Plus-x | Ilford MGIV RC

February 21, 2010

We Are One Malawi | New York

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Olympus OM-2N | Delta 100 | Fotokemika Emaks K-888 #2

Cute kids, right? There's a small thing you could do to help keep them in school.

We're planning our "annual" fundraiser. "Annual" in quotes because we're a small group of busy friends without a board to answer to, so...our last fundraiser was actually December 2007. Luckily it was successful enough that we haven't been hurting yet, but it's definitely time for another.

We Are One Malawi raises educational funds for high-school and university students in northern Malawi, an area largely ignored by the NGOs in the capital. Our main focus is 12 special boys who are mostly still in middle school at this point, but with the money we've raised, are being pulled out of the free, overcrowded government schools. You can read about the boys and the history of our org on the website, but feel free to ask if you want more details!

Anyway, as you can see from the link, we had a silent auction last time, and we'd like to do another. I'm definitely not asking for any financial outlay on your part, but if you or your wife or your father or your best friend has a connection to a place that could offer goods or services for auction, please send me a message! Services of course should be something either New York metro-based or national (hotel stays, airline miles). If you don't live in New York but have goods to offer, write to me and we'll figure out how to get it here.

Also, if you work for a large, seemingly faceless corporation...there's probably a philanthropy department to check with. That's how I got stuff from my office last time.

These do NOT have to be big-ticket items. But if you have a Wii to offer, you win! (Prize TBD). Don't worry about what you think you'd bid on in an auction. One of the more random items we got last time was 4 hours with a car service. Our silent auction fairies combined it with other items to make a "Weekend in New York" package, and they're ready to work their magic again.

Send me a message if you have something to offer, or just have questions. The fundraiser will be during the first week of May, so there's some time...just want to get an idea of what's out there. Thanks for reading :).

February 19, 2010

"Blizzard" | Chinatown

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Olympus Trip 35 | Kodak Plus-x | Arista Private Reserve RC
We'd been getting warnings for days, but the great pre-Valentine's Day storm didn't amount to much.

"Blizzard" | Prospect Heights

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Olympus Trip 35 | Kodak Plus-x | Arista Private Reserve RC
We'd been getting warnings for days, but the great pre-Valentine's Day storm didn't amount to much.

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