AGRA MARBLE AND ELECTION DAY.

One of the wonderful things about travel with OAT, is the many off itinerary things we do. After leaving Agra Fort, we have an all day travel to another UNESCO site. But, first, we visit Agra Marble Company. The boss who is seated explains the process to us.

The workers are from Iran, he tells us. These jobs are handed down from father to son, or brother to brother. It is a dying art, he explains. People don’t want to do this hard work anymore.

Cutting a gouge in the marble by scraping it with a sharp tool over and over again. Then the glass or pearl inlay is set in and cemented with a mixture of lime, water and and finely ground marble.

The glass is cut.

It’s outlined and assembled on the table top. Then the artist makes the cuts.

Each worker has a different skill.

The men would glance up at him furtively then at us, as though they were frightened of their boss. It was very noticeable. The boss even commented on it, saying something on the order of …they look at me as though I was going to beat them or something.  I suspect he wasn’t a kind boss.

Cutters permanently damage their fingers from the work. The cutter was asked to show us his little finger which gets stiff and unmovable after years of cutting. His index finger is scarred by a permanent dent in it where the blade is held and pushed into the hard surface.

The end product is beautiful, as you can imagine. This is the small two foot table I bought.

It was shipped to me in this cloth covered box. The box had reams of tape and those hard plastic fasteners. Then rope that my housemate and I had to remove. It took the two of us 45 minutes to get it out of the box. The stand was boxed the same way. Once the cardboard boxes were removed, the pieces were  enclosed in a heavy, coated blue box. Whew! What a job.


Because it was election day, the hotel personnel removed all wine and beer from our in room refrigerators. Drinking is against the law on election day. Ranvir provided a small get-together in his room with snacks and some rum with cola.

Theo drank  sprite or  lemonade.

Bands, bill boards, groups of people with signs-all part of  electioneering going on in the streets. I got one blurry picture of a band.
Pictures from a fast moving bus or train, don’t turn out well.

And one good one at a temporary stop. They gave an impromptu little concert.

Smoking is banned in India. It is really nice not to deal with second hand smoke and what a benefit for people to spend their money on food instead of addictive nicotine.  I saw two people smoking, both times in small towns. The scofflaws.
Other pictures I missed, students taking a test in a large field so no one can copy from one another. Dead cows on the railroad tracks.  I also did a search today for population figures. As I’ve blogged I began to question Mamju Sharmi’s statement that India is 80% Muslim and 11% Hindu. I re-read my notes and her statements. I think it was just a slip on her part. It is just the opposite. About 80% Hindu and 11% Muslim.  Tomorrow a two hour train ride and a five hour drive to Khajuraho.

TERRORISTS LURK AT EVERY CORNER.

It is true that no one is safe from terrorists here at home. You send your child to school and expect that she or he is safe. I have a cousin who claims he has no fear because he carries a gun on his hip where ever he goes. But, does he guard his grandchildren at their school? Could he prevent a mass killing? Could he defend himself against an assault rifle while he is drinking his coffee in a restaurant?

And what fear does, and what the media and now a presidential candidate does, is stir the pot of fear and hatred. It is preposterous to easily assume we are the victims of Muslim American Radicals.

Statistics prove otherwise. The people we should be afraid of is White Male Extremest Christians. They are most violent and so righteous when they kill.
Remember Christian mass murderers like Robert Lewis Dear? The Planned Parenthood Shooter. And, Dylann Roof, the Charleston Church shooter? And Seung-Hui Cho, who took out 32 Virginia Polytechnic students in seconds, and wounded 17 others. You've read he newspapers. You know the horror.

The statistics show that white Christian men are responsible for 64% of mass shootings. Blacks are responsible for 16%, and Asian Americans-9%. Latinos, Native Americans and "others" make up the rest.
I would challenge anyone who has submitted to the gun buying hysteria to show that we are safer with the proliferation of guns in our country than we were before the NRA began selling fear,  and gun ownership climbed into the gazillions. (I've forgotten the numbers of guns sloshing around the country right now. It is an outrageous number.)
The deaths keep coming. At bus stops, or coffee shops, at any event, even church. Even shootings by young male students at schools. And accidental shootings by children on shooting ranges.

   WE HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BAN CERTAIN WEAPONS - AND WE SHOULD DO IT.

 

In California, some signs of sanity:

Governor Brown Takes Guns Out of Schools.  Though it is old news, it is worth repeating.

 

SACRAMENTO – "Today, (October 10, 2015) Governor Brown signed into law Senate Bill 707, prohibiting gun owners issued a license by their local police chief or sheriff from carrying handguns for self-defense on California school grounds. It also subjects those with a carry permit, issued only after passing a strict, fingerprint-based background check and agency-approved training course, harsh new criminal liability for merely possessing a single round of ammunition on the grounds of any school or college campus, even if they don’t also possess a firearm."

 

Good for us and California Students.

PLASTIC BAG BAN

I celebrate every gift I get. This one is a biggie. I believe  Berkeley, CA was the first city to ban plastic bags in grocery stores. San Francisco followed.  Coastal North Carolina did the same. Now, Seattle follows Bellingham, WA  but their ban does more.
The Seattle City Council passed a broad ban on plastic bags Monday, outlawing them not just in grocery stores, but in department stores, clothing stores, convenience stores, home-improvement stores, food trucks and farmers markets.
The bill goes further than bans in other cities, which have largely banished plastic only groceries and sometimes drug stores. Customers in Seattle will still be able to get paper bags from retailers, but for a 5-cent fee.
Monday’s bill exempts customers on food assistance and other government benefits from the bag fee. The city will also make free or reduced-cost reusable bags available to poor people.
The ordinance applies only to single-use, checkout bags, and not to produce, bulk-ban and dry-cleaning bags. Plastic bags for take-out restaurant food are also still allowed, because they help protect health and safety while transporting hot food and liquid.

Read more:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Plastic-bags-banned-in-Seattle-2412950.php#ixzz1h5V777oN
I shop with my own bags and my little grocery store, Sierra Hills Market,  will reward you with a $25 gift certificate, for using your own shopping bag. People who use their own bags are allowed to mark their name and phone number on a small paper by the checkstand and put it in the draw box. I’ve won the certificate, once. I regularly see about four others using their own bags.
A chain grocer in nearby Angels Camp tried the “recycle” your plastic bags idea. The container was always stuffed full of plastic bags and was emptied regularly in the dumpster. The bags are cheaply made, tear easily, don’t hold much and the only person I ever saw taking recycled bags on their way into the grocery store was-ME.  It just doesn’t change habits.
“A study a few years ago “found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they’ve been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It’s equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.”
So, I celebrate it as a gift to our common environment. I’ve seen pictures of animals entrapped and dying from plastic bags drifting into their environment. And, just a reminder, there is a huge glob of plastic bags the size of the state of Texas in the ocean vortex where water circulates and keeps  miles of  plastic  afloat.  Other countries have banned bags in some cities.  Mexico City, twelve towns in Australia, Rangoon, Burma, Five major cities in India, London, Rawanda, the whole country is bag free.

It seems to me this is an opportunity for college students across the country to collectively  push for plastic bag bans in their communities. Hey, they know how to solve the deficit.  Over and again, they have proved to be smarter, and more effective than our do nothing government.