After seeing The Kid on to her train at the end of our weekend, I needed music to ease the ache of goodbye and switched on the iPod.
I chose the soundtrack from Eric Valli's drama-documentary 'Himalaya' (1999; iMDB), a marvellous movie. The award-winning score by Bruno Coulais (Amazon UK) includes some fine Tibetan chant and traditional songs.
Last night, oddly, Tibet then kept cropping up on the blogroll as I took a look to see who was where.
Rainer's put a digital prayer wheel on 'Solipsism Gradient', bearing the famous mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum" and telling us why, with some good links.
In the US section at Open Source Politics, Barbara O'Brien has declared herself 'Cassandra Americana':
"Every day a few more people look into the future of America and see the Mother of All Train Wrecks. And, alarmed, these good citizens flap about and try to warn the others.
And the others say, jeez, what's with you? You hate our President. You must be a Saddam lover. Or a traitor. Or (gasp) a liberal! And we're supposed to believe you? Bwahahahaha!
I confess; I'm infected. I'm a Cassandra. And I say to my fellow citizen who believes George W. Bush is doing a good job, one of us must be crazy. And I don't think it's me.
Why am I worried? Let me count the ways." So she does (OSPolitics).
This incited me to follow Barbara to her own place, 'The Mahablog', which is unrelentingly political but a commendable, well-informed read.
And who did she choose to include in a links round-up? The Dalai Lama's recent trip to the United States is the subject of a piece by Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of 'The Nation'.
The Tibetan leader is "a very good listener. He also seemed very human, yet spiritual; political, yet apolitical; humorous, yet full of a sadness that comes from being the leader of an occupied country; but also joyful, with a mischievous laugh," Katrina wrote in her 'Editor's Cut'.
I would have liked to read more of what he had to say than of what Katrina told him, in a bid to "make sense of the theme of media and ethics while also addressing the Dalai Lama's call for compassion and nonviolence."
Nevertheless, it's an editorial comment worth reading.
The Dalai Lama's country came up yet again at MetaFilter, in a tip-off by Taz to a splendid collection of movies available for download at the Open Video Project.
These include 23 remarkable reels of film shot mainly in Tibet in the 1930s by a British political officer stationed in the Himalayas, Frederick Williamson (OVP: Special Collections).
They are fascinating, but some are big downloads (around 80 MB in MPEG-1 format for the first, 10 minutes long).
In all, the Open Video Project (index) currently stocks almost 2,000 movies on a host of themes.
It's an invaluable archive.
1:05:06 PM link 
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