The Photography of Dr. Jeff Harper

During the past five days Alan Morton and I took 32 high school students from the International School Bangkok (ISB), as a part of their Global Citizens Week, into a poor neighborhood of Bangkok to do a community service project.  The project involved painting a pre-school for poor children as a part of the Human Development Foundation's (Mercy Center) poverty reduction efforts in Thailand.  A number of years ago a large conference (coincidentally in Bangkok) met and determined that the very best "development dollar" was the dollar used to "keep a girl in school through the 6th  grade," the consequence of which was lowered poverty, disease, infant mortality, and the lessening of the "cycle of poverty."  In Bangkok, Father Joe Maier, an old Height Ashbury Hippy (like myself) who founded the Human Development Fooundation (HDF), realized the issue related to keeping poor girls in school longer was the "eldest daughter syndrome" -- a situation where young girls drop out of school to take care of still younger siblings while their single mother is out earning money to support the family -- and therefore become trapped themselves in the "cycle of poverty."  The pre-school we painted represents a way to keep "older" girls in schools by taking care of the young children while the older girls are in school. Our painting will help maintain the infrastructure of this useful and successful program.  This is the 17th such HDF school Alan Morton and the ISB students have painted for Father Joe over the past 14 yeas in Bangkok.

The hard working students sanded, scraped, and cleaned all the surfaces in prepartation for painting.

Once the surface preparation was competed, the paint was applied.

The school cooks supplied us with delicious Thai food for lunch.

We prepared and  painted one half of the one-room school while the the students were in the other half of the school -- then switched sides.  The 107 students of this school were very happy with the brightness and cleanness of their "New School."

It was a very big job, made harder by the complexity of painting the slatted walls in the heat and humidity of Bangkok. But, as they say, many hands made light work!

Our student painters came from 10 different countries.

This child was very curious about what was happening on the other side of her classroom!

We used sweet pastel colors to make the "Nursery School" look like a nursery school.

The finished school looked great . . . and will be protected from the elements for at least 10 years.

As always, I couldn't help myself from taking photos of amazing images.

What is it about corrugated tin roofing that evokes the image of Poverty? The view from the school kitchen.

Pike Market, Seattle.

Seattle: 'Tis the season for . . . . . . cheese fries?

A perfect day to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge! Too bad  I left my CF card reader at home in Bangkok! I will upload the good stuff in Portland in a few days.

Nice (from my wife's camera).

Sail boats out on San Francisco Bay on a crisp cold December day.

The Golden Gate Bridge partially shrouded in fog.

Fog banks swept across San Francisco Bay.

Beautiful Flowers Abound in Hua Hin, Thailand:

Sweet.

Sweet Buds . . .

The tiniest of flowers.

Bees pollinate Lotus flowers.

I just can't seem to keep away from photographing these wonderful scenes.

This raggedy orange Hyacinth was simply fantastic.

The orange Hyacinth stamen.

This is the only orange Hyacynth I have ever seen in this 'raggedy' configuration.  Fascinating.

Not flowers, but Koi. I loved the reflections on the surface of this pool beneath a Frangipani tree.

I spent last week-end in Hua Hin, Thailand.  While walking about the grounds of the Dusit Resort & Hotel with my 70mm Sigma macro lens, I spotted a Jackfruit tree fruiting. Wonderful.

The Jackfruit, I believe, arrived on this planet in the lunch boxes of Visiting Alien Creatures (VAC). They are extremely difficult to handle, and even more difficult to extract the bubble-gum-flavored bright yellow succulent interior fruit meat. Obviously, they spat (if spitting happened to be an anatomical option for the VACs) the Jackfruit seeds out, eventually spreading about the hills and lagoons of the Earthen tropics.  The Durian shares this same extraterrestrial, transpermatic origin.

Jackfruit begin as a thumb-sized main trunk protrusion.

This very young fruit shows surface organization.  I have no idea what these would look like on the inside at this point in their development.

As they grow, they begin to form their characteristic spinney surface.

The spines eventually become quite large and frightening, a common feature of fruit with extra-terrestrial origins. There is NO WAY you can convince me that this organism came up through some kind of Darwinian selection process on THIS PLANET . . . . NO WAY!

A fully mature Jackfruit is the size of a Grizzly Bear's head and can weigh up to 30 kilos (70 pounds).  It grows right out of the tree trunk on its own stem, not hanging from a branch, another common feature of non-Earth fruit origination. The leaves do not look like they would be featured in a dendrological field manual either.

How we spent Saturday morning: Offerings.

Old Monk.

We stayed with friends in their mountainside retreat.

Our architect friend's front door!

The interior of their mountain cabin was absolutely beautiful.

The cabin interior.

Pretty little touches everywhere.

The guest bedroom.

And a place to wash up before diner.

An amazing air fern garden!

A giant white orchid growing out doors.

Simple beauty around the cabin.