Adventures: Preparations for Thailand 2

As I mentioned in the previous post, I am preparing to travel to Thailand for the Rotary Peace Fellowship to study peace and conflict resolution for the summer. I leave in less than a week!

As part of the program, we will be visiting Rotary clubs in Bangkok, and we are supposed to bring something representative from our home to take to meetings. We are also supposed to bring photos, music, and ceremonial dress from our country to share with other fellows. Because so much of US culture and music is known world-wide, I decided to narrow my focus to think of what I want to share from the Chesapeake Bay region.

Chesapeake Bay EmaBee’s Art

I got together some of my EmaBee’s Art water color paintings of sailboats, and Annapolis and Maryland area water scenes. I’m also bringing some if my autumn harvest photo notecards because if the colors and the traditions around autumn, Thanksgiving, colorful fall leaves, and the harvest.

For music, I’m bringing the local Chester River Runoff that have lovely country/blue grass songs, many of them about local issues of loss of traditional farming communities, development, and destruction of the environment. Some of my favorites are on their album “Blue Heron Farm,”* the songs, “Plastic Houses” and “Where the Speed Limit Changes.” They talk about the changes that modern life brings to old ways, and the struggle to hold on to tradition, familiarity, and what we know as home. (Check them out on iTunes)
This hits home for me because if the changes that have happened to what I know as home and my family with the forced sale of the Willard and Son’s Boatyard; the dying out of the waterman’s culture; and the inundation of “development,” money, and recreation.

The other music I’m taking is Them Eastport Oyster Boys because of their fantastic portrayal of the more traditional Chesapeake Bay water culture which is fading so fast it’s almost now just nostalgic myth and legend. My favorites are “Hannah and Willie B,” and “Back Creek Crab.” (Check them out on iTunes)

I am excited to share my home with others and to learn about other people’s homes, cultures, histories, and lives.