Dulaan To Others

UPDATE: Now I seem to be able to get on the site. But ever since I got here it seems that blogs hosted by Blogspot are blocked. Sorry Ani Dara...

I love the internet, and have often said that it is the greatest invention of the 20th century next to clumping kitty litter. I love its utter freedom and relative lack of regulation. I love the infinitude of information and opinion so easily accessible, even the strange mirrors held up to the spectrum of peculiar human appetites. I love that “google” is a verb.

The internet is one of the last frontiers of unfettered expression; totalitarian states, therefore, despise it.

Case in point: for the past week, I have been able to create DODR within the software that Typepad provides me, but I have not been able to access the site itself to check what I have created. This has made me extremely uneasy, like a parent who cannot get to his infant child. It wasn’t a computer problem; I use a different computer each time at local internet cafés. Mystified, I emailed Typepad and they said, “Hmmm. I wonder if you’re experiencing some fallout from this.”

China. I know I’m supposed to bless all 1.3 billion of their pointy little heads, and love even the Communist bureaucrats whose sacred task it is to squelch the free exchange of ideas and make it virtually impossible politically for the Dalai Lama to tour Mongolia. But I’m reminded of one of my family’s favorite children’s books, Rotten Ralph. It’s about a cat, Ralph, who does rotten thing after rotten thing. He finally provokes his exasperated owner, Sarah, to say, “Ralph, sometimes you make it very hard to love you.” It’s a sentence we still trot out with each other at appropriate moments.

That the Chinese cannot read DODR is regrettable, but the thought that the Mongolians are being prevented by the Chinese from reading it is killing me. If you’re in Mongolia and accessing this site, please let me know in the comments.

Thomas Jefferson (for whom I’m named – no, his middle name’s not Konchog, you clown) said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." It’s as true today as it was then.

Ah, but I’m actually in an expansive mood today and wish to celebrate rather than criticize. I want to sing a subject I had thought to write about this coming Friday but that’s an auspicious day so I’ll reserve that for writing about Jetsunma’s impending visit. Today’s happy topic is the roaring success of The Dulaan Project.

In October of last year, I started doing research on Mongolia to assist with Jetsunma’s wish to help with the post-independence revival of Buddhism here. By December it was pretty clear that I was to be the first one going to Mongolia. Following my teacher’s example, I didn’t want to just gather information; I wanted to find a way to create some dynamic, positive energy that might catalyze similar karma and drive the project in a beneficial direction.

Even basic research will quickly kick up two facts about Mongolia: its winters are long, dark and extraordinarily cold; and the sudden transition from a state-run to a market economy, combined with a couple of years of vicious, livestock-killing weather, has plunged a full third of the population below the poverty line, including tons of children.

While mulling this information, I had also been thoroughly enjoying my cousin Ryan’s charismatic, laugh-out-loud-funny blog, Mossy Cottage Knits. I noticed that she had garnered a substantial, loyal readership of equally fanatic knitters, who rival birders in their quirky, and often eloquent, devotion to their passions.

This is another thing I love about the internet – the ability to create intimate, virtual community in a way that renders physical distance meaningless.

Anyway, with all of this info jostling in the hopper suddenly a bulb fizzed to life over my noggin and I gave Ryan a jingle. What if, I asked her, we were able to harness the good-hearted energies of these knitters, and whatever networks they were connected to, and create a pile of high-quality, durable, warm clothes for impoverished Mongolians? I’ll do all the initial set-up and promotion and you just have to cheerlead through Mossy Cottage (and, believe me, she’s got the pom-poms).

Ryan was intrigued and said she’d think it over. While she did so, I discovered that the Mongolians have a lovely word for “warm”, dulaan (pronounced doo-'lahn) and that a mere 30 miles up the road from Sedona was the Flagstaff International Relief Effort (F.I.R.E.), an organization devoted to transporting and distributing warm clothing to the poorest of the poor in Mongolia!

It was too perfect. Once I presented to Ryan the catchy name of The Dulaan Project and told her about F.I.R.E. agreeing to serve as a collection point for whatever was knit as well as distributing it in Mongolia, she was totally down. Her partner, who I am only permitted to refer to as The Mysterious K for reasons that will be clear if you read Mossy Cottage, just happens to be a graphic designer and whipped up a fabulous downloadable promotion/instruction flyer. On January 30, we launched The Dulaan Project into cyberspace, not knowing at all whether people would be into it and actually participate.

Oh we of little faith. Ryan’s readers responded enthusiastically to the project right out of the gate, but it didn’t fully take off until it was revealed that F.I.R.E.’s founder, the photographer Dave Edwards, and his executive director Meredith Potts had made a little wager. Dave bet that the project wouldn’t even generate 500 items; Meredith thought it would bring in more and if she was right, Dave had to buy her a nice bottle of wine.

Well, knitting ain’t your grandma’s fireside hobby anymore. The art’s been taken up in a big way lately by some pretty feisty gals (and fellers too) who don’t seem to cotton to the puny expectations of a camera-totin’ bubba, even if he do take perty pictures. After Ryan posted about all of this, her reader MaryB huffed in the comments, “Five hundred? That’s child’s play. Let’s set the mark at 2000. Whaddya say, ladies?” And after a collective, “Right on, sister!” I swear that dogs around the world cocked their heads at the sound of hundreds of determinedly clacking needles.

Very quickly The Dulaan Brigade (as Ryan styled them; I called them the Dulaanettes) grew to over 100 and they had produced and delivered to F.I.R.E.’s doorstep more than 500 items before I boarded the plane to Mongolia on March 18! I made Dave pose for a sheepish picture and knew we’d really unleashed something good.

Well, the deadline for mailing finished items for The Dulaan Project is this Friday and the F.I.R.E. office is buried in boxes that have arrived from all over North America and four other countries to boot. As near as their staff can figure, the total number of hand-knit goods, made with love to warm some lucky Mongolians, is approaching (drum roll, brass check your spit valves for the fanfare) 4,000!! That’s four. Four thousand. Twice two. Four. Dörvön myang if you want to hear it in Mongolian. In five months. That’s more than 25 items a day. Just absolutely, incredibly, unbelievably flabbergasting. Dave better buy Meredith a whole case of fine wine, and take her out for dinner.

I couldn’t be more proud of my cousin and her horde, especially now that I’m living in Mongolia and know that it’s no joke, the need is real. The F.I.R.E. volunteers will come in November and I so anticipate the day when I can work side by side with them, and share the images and stories with all of you. I just wish they’d be able to read about it in Beijing.

Comments

[Patti]

You probably can't even read our comments, right?

Yay Dulaan! Yay wine! Yay Ryan's pom poms!

[Diana]

Great job - I hope you do this again next year as an annual thing - I'd like to participate in the next round.

[anj]

and as a member of the horde (who knew I would love saying that??) I want to THANK YOU!! for being so dang special. You and Ryan (and TMK) made this absolutely possible. Thanks a million.

[Mary B]

The Brigade's goals: 4,000 knitted items next year--and then world peace in 2007. Mary B

[Kary]

YAY Tom! YAY Ryan!! Thanks for doing such a great job and telling the world about this project! Well - do tell - are we 'on' for next year too??

[Rachael]

Y'all are amazing. Woooooo!

[marylee]

I've been "in" from the start, yet I read your post like it was the first time I heard about it. Well told! I can't wait to see the pictures. Mary B., c'mon sister, give us a good number for next year. We did 4,000 out of the chute. Whataya think we can do now with a little 'sperience behind us?

[Norma]

Another member of the horde, saying thank you and best of luck spreading the love in November.

[chriswaugh_bj]

Just so you know, I'm reading this freely (no proxies) here in Beijing. The cybernanny is a fickle creature. Hopefully the block won't be back and we'll be able to continue reading Typepad freely.