A broken hip and rehab are part of the reason it has been so long between posts. I still have a good number of thoughts about and pictures of my visit to Bali which I hope to share.
Rather than eat breakfast at the restaurant at my hotel, I read about several coffee shop type places a few blocks away. This gave me a chance to learn something about the neighborhood as I walked out and back each morning. I found that religion, mostly Hinduism, is omnipresent.
There are temples in the middle of town, enclosed and not open to foreigners.
More intimately, households often have shrines and put out offerings in small paper “dishes.” In one case these offerings were made to a statue of Buddha.
Some households or shops have Hindu shrines where offerings are set out.
Sometimes offerings like these are placed on the sidewalk in front of a door. One must pay attention to where one walks – however the unevenness of sidewalks already made this necessary. Construction sites and debris also made the route I took less than elegant. I learned that “Ati Ati” means danger, as in “danger: construction zone”. The Balinese script is found in some museums, but has elsewhere been replaced by the western alphabet.
In a shop at another site, the offering was placed on top of fruit for sale, making it safe from missteps by passers-by.
These offerings must fade quickly but I rarely saw one that looked bedraggled. They are clearly important to their makers.
There were few tourists and a long row of shops with tables and chairs offering a good view.
Thank goodness volunteers from the Island Heritage Trust maintain the trails. They would soon be lost in the dense growth that now covers an old homestead.
The twentieth issue of Sin Fronteras Journal has arrived from the printer. This is my fifth year as one of the editors. I’m pleased to have helped the Journal move into the digital age with a website, 
The last class “Mr. Bob” worked with will be moving on to Middle School this summer. Children who read the books in the future won’t know who Bob Kaufman is. But perhaps some of them will notice the labels and realize that someone cared that their library has these books for them to read. 
freethoughtandmetaphor 