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June 8
We walked, we talked, we kicked some ...
Our walk on Thursday, June 9, took us through Santa Barbara and into Montecitotoday was huge to say the least. We walked. We rallied. We yelled. We socialized. We spoke. We ate. And, we got massages!
Jun, Tsewang, Ani Pachen and Larry all stayed back to meet with some Catholic Nuns who meet regularly at Casa de Maria. This would be the first time that Tsewang would miss any step of the walk. When I asked him about it, he said not to worry because it would walk the stretch that he missed on his own later.
One of the highlights of staying at the La Casa de Maria was an informal gathering of the staff of the facility, some of the Nuns affiliated with the Immaculate Heart Community who live and work at La Casa de Maria, the Centerıs Director, Don George, Ani Pachen, Tsewang Khangsar and Larry Gerstein (President, ITIM).
During this one hour gathering, Ani Pachen shared a portion of her story while others in attendance sat attentively with tears in their eyes and compassion in their heart. After the presentation and discussion, Ani-la first offered Don George a Katak (Tibetan prayer scarf), then the four Roman Catholic Nuns, and the remainder of the staff.
From the onset of this gathering and our arrival at La Casa de Maria, it was quite apparent that the staff of the Center and that of the Tibetans was similar; sharing a vision of spreading peace and non-violence through kindness, compassion and respect.
So while they were having their meeting, the walkers were in Santa Barbara making noise. We stopped by an art gallery and got a preview of a Tibetan photo exhibit, which was to open on Saturday night. It was very cool and a bit weird to think that our timing was in sync and yet totally unplanned.
Instead of having lunch at noon, we had a rally in De La Guerra Plaza, sort of a central place in downtown Santa Barbara. Our response was great. There were probably 70 people in attendance and the local ABC television news crew.
Ani Pachen and Yishe Togden both spoke to crowd about their prison experiences.
Then we walked out of downtown, along the beach and then into Montecito, where we did more slogan smashing. It was rather cool to have the opportunity to scream at two communities in one day.
When we finished walking we went to Panıs Garden in the next town over, Summerland, and enjoyed refreshments. He is the only guy in Santa Barbara County who displays a Free Tibet banner 365 days a year.
While some people stayed, a smaller group of us piled into Larryıs rental car and flew over to the University of California at Santa Barbara to speak to a class about Tibet. The Tibetan Buddhism class is taught by a famous Tibetan scholar, Allen Wallace.
One of his students, Lucas Man, was cool enough to hook us up with the gig just a couple days before. Another crazy thing is that this was their last class of the semester.
Larry, Ani Pachen and Yishe Togden spoke to the class of about 150 students. Then they entertained questions. At first we were supposed to speak for 15 minutes because Professor Wallace had some final lectures for the class and a class summary. That quickly changed, because our talks were so well received and they kind of fit with the lecture topic, too. I think it wrapped up after about 45 minutes and then the students gave us a roaring round of applause that was pretty overwhelming.
So then we waited outside of the classroom and spoke with students as they came out. One of them wanted to conduct an interview for a website, www.zoomculture.com, where unedited, uncensored reports on all sorts of social issues are offered.
After about an hour of that, we flew back to Casa de Maria where a message school had taken over our living room. All the walkers were sort of stumbling around with stupid-happy looks on their faces, telling us to go upstairs immediately and get hooked up.
Happy, happy.
They also brought dinner for a pot luck, which of course was awesome.
Santa Barbara has been very, very good to us ... and we still have two more days to go.
International
Tibet Independence Movement
PO Box 592 Fishers, Indiana 46038-0592 United States
e-mail: rangzen@aol.com
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