Loi Krathong 2561 BE/ 2018 CE

The Full Moon of November is the festival of Loi Krathong, where folks float little baskets on the rivers and waterways which are lit with a candle.  It is a family affair and children are a big part of it.  It heralds the end of the Rainy Season and (supposedly) the start of the drier Cool Season (although I’m still sweating my farang ass off in the still-lingering humidity!). 

During this last week along the street to the river they have been building rides for children, booths for selling loads of carnival stuff, and a stage at the river for a band with tables for revelers.  (During the political riots of 2010 and the Great Flood of 2011 this festival was locally absent; but now it’s back to normal and thriving.) 

This year I chose not to go out into the neighborhood under the moonlight.  The crowds are just too packed for my tastes, too many slow-moving crowded sidewalks with small kids.  The bands are not to my taste either, and it’s impossible to find a spot in which to view them anymore.  In the past I could view the band from the bridge, but the crowds are too dense now. 

So I watch the Full Moon in private, absorbing its tranquility. 

-Zenwind. 

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US Marine Corps Birthday 2018

The US Marine Corps celebrates its birthday on 10 November.  On this date in 1775 John Adams proposed, and the Second Continental Congress approved, the formation of two battalions of Continental Marines.  Appropriately, the first recruiting locale was a tavern, Tun Tavern in Philadelphia.  The rest is history. 

Fifty years ago today, I was in my first week of Marine Corps Boot Camp, a Hell I had been warned about but could never even imagine how horrendously cruel it would be.  (I wrote a bit more about that time HERE.)

It was the first chapter in the true overall Marine experience, summed up as: 

“And when he gets to Heaven,

To Saint Peter he will tell:

‘One more Marine reporting, Sir.

I’ve served my time in Hell’.” 

-Zenwind. 

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