January 29, 2009
Posted: 1912 GMT

ATLANTA, Georgia — "People see themselves in a painting."  That’s what the curator of a tiny art gallery, tucked in the back of Atlanta’s Oglethorpe University tells me.

What would I see of myself in his gallery’s exhibit of modern Tibetan art?


I think of the Tibetan political struggle, last year’s protests against the Beijing Olympics, Buddha and enlightenment, the majestic Himalayas.

I see it mostly in political terms, the curator is thinking spiritual discovery. I walk in and all my preconceptions fly out of the window!

The traditional Tibetan art style is evident, but take a closer look and you see all the rules are broken.

One painting speaks to me in particular. A meditating Buddha, but his skin is a road map of America, with arteries of highways running through his body.

A collage of modern materialistic “things” around him. I look at the title for clues. It reads, “Excuse me Sir, which way is to my Home?”

Now I know why I am drawn to it. It speaks to my own American journey.

I am still the person I was when I came to this country, but the journey in my adopted home is changing me. Once you start that journey, “home” is never going to be the same and I don’t think you have to be an immigrant to feel that way.

We’re all on a journey away from “home,” changing as we travel along life’s twisting roads.

It can be disorienting but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tenzing Rigdol who painted "Excuse me Sir, Which Way is to my Home" will join me live this Sunday on World News 22:00 GMT.

You can post questions for him in the comment section below.

Click here if you want to see the report on the exhibit.

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Filed under: Asia • China • Ralitsa Vassileva


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threemeals   January 30th, 2009 147 GMT

American people is a great people from all over the world including Tibetans. Together they have made a great nation and they love it. Most of them don't mention where they were from every day. All the immigrants to America are eager to call America their home. Few of them want to be independent, even though they are different from the native Americans. Most of the Hawiians or Alaskans don't want to be independent even though they lived there long before others. The southerners don't want to split the country (independent) even though they don't agree with issues. You can bet that none of the Americans will not be very happy if somebody call America his home and try to expell them back to where they were from.

Americans, they themselves have gone through a lot: independency war, civil war, segragation, civil unrest, murders, burnings, riots, etc. These happened but not pretty. Most people in the world know what is good or bad for them. For example, the British people (actually the Queen) knew that opium was bad for them, so it was illegal in Britain and was only sold to others. Likewise seperationism, segragation, slavery, church controlling government, independency, riots, revolution have been out dated (and lawed) in America.

ET wanted to go home.

threemeals   January 30th, 2009 208 GMT

From Loren Coleman, in cryptomundo.com on January 21st, 2008:

".... Besides Schäfer, the Nazi’s 1938 expedition also included anthropologist Bruno Beger. Beger is mostly recalled as having gathered and analyzed over three hundred skulls during the trek to prove that Tibet was the birthplace of a “Northern Race” (the Aryans).

Schäfer and Beger were aware of the native reports of the Yeti, or as it was called, the “Migyud,” which is close to the name “Mi-go” found in some cryptozoological sources. Schäfer, however, follows the heavily Austrian-German theory, and felt what they were looking for was a large unknown bear."

And more:

"Did Heinrich Harrer know what the Nazis were up to in 1938, when Harrer was becoming the first person to climb the north face of Switzerland’s famous Eiger mountain in 1938. [In the 1990s, Harrer admitted he was a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), the Nazis, specifically being in Himmler's SS, the special secret police unit of Hitler's Germany.]

As it will be recalled, Harrer escaped, as a Nazi prisoner of the British in India, to Tibet in 1944 and then stayed there for the next seven years.

In Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer, while in Tibet, once found footprints in the snow, which he said that “people with more imagination” than him might associate with the “Abominable Snowman.”

Harrer is also curiously mentioned as once having some interest in the Dremo of Tibet. The Dremo (or Dre-Mon in Odette Tchernine’s books) is a probable cryptid bear, often confused with the more traditional Yeti and Met-teh, unknown hairy hominoids seen in the valleys of the Himalaya."

There you go, ETs want to go home. Americans want to stay.

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