SEA-TAC

I have been silent, as you may have noticed. Can you believe that the Seattle downtown Sheraton Hotel is wi-fi'ed only in the lobby, a full eighteen floors below our room? Otherwise, it was a matter of using their ethernet connection for a mere $10.95 a day. I was too cheap to shell out for what I thought I should have had for free. And besides, yes, it was a busy couple of days. I'll plan to report in more detail tomorrow, when we get back to Los Angeles.

In the meantime, here I sit at Seattle's Sea-Tac airport...

... nicely wi-fi'ed but with little in my head other than the usual aggravations and humiliations that accompany the experience of being in any airport, anywhere. I had a ghastly oatmeal for breakfast and read the op-ed section of the Sunday New York Times, which scarcely improved my outlook on the world. I hear we're bombing Libya. Dreadful, that it has come to that. Still, what do you do when a tyrant is bent on slaughtering his own people? Shrug it off, and let them die? I see, too, that the Republicans are still hard at their efforts to cut the deficit by further depriving the poor of education and opportunity; and by screwing Mother Nature.

Having spent three days in a throng of four thousand or so art teachers, I do of course know who's to blame for all our pressing problems. Any teacher is fair game, it seems, for those who purport to govern this poor country. As for art teachers... well! We all know that art is a peculiarly useless frill when we have banks to bail out and corporations to subsidize. There are, after all, certain priorities to be observed.

Happy Sunday, then, from Sea-Tac. And welcome back to The Buddha Diaries. More tomorrow.