Selamat Hari Merdeka! Happy National Day. I'm always telling people (foreigners) about Malaysia, and how it is a great place to be. Thinking about things this year, I realize that those of us who are sort of middle class have always been happy to just get along and enjoy what our country has to offer. We are often not aware of or interested in what is happening to others in our country, or we may be briefly outraged but feel powerless to do anything, and forget about it after.

I'm reminded of the saying attributed to Martin Niemoller, which is inscribed at the Holocaust Memorial in Boston:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

This Merdeka Day, maybe we should think about those who have been marginalised in our society and what we can do about it.

Currently reading: Dylan on Dylan (2006)

I picked this up at the library same time as the Burma books. Growing up, I didn't know much about Bob Dylan (still don't). I saw him once on tv, and was quite interested to see what all the fuss was about, but he had a really gravelly voice and I couldn't hear what he was singing, so I never quite got into it. I knew his famous stuff was like "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Like a Rolling Stone" but I didn't know he wrote "Blowing in the Wind".

However, a friend of mine has been sending us Bob Dylan-related emails for the last 10 years or more, so when there was a docu-special on tv a few weekends ago, I figured I should catch it. I didn't get to see all of it, but I did see footage of a young Dylan's appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, a skinny kid with a guitar and harmonica and a distinctive way of singing. That was quite interesting, and the songs were interesting too (this time I could hear the words). He also was pretty funny in the interviews.

So I went to look him up in the library, and got this out. It's a collection of interviews - including a New Yorker article, several from Rolling Stone, and other magazines, newspapers, and radio and tv interviews. A few from Australia/NZ area as well. It goes from the early 60's to the 90's. I'm in the early 80's now. Our library does have music CDs but it's hard to find anything there.

It's pretty interesting to see the changes over the years, in what he says and how he responds, and also to see how the interviewers ask the same questions over the years... about growing up, early history, Woody Guthrie, being a prophet, whether the songs are protests, why did you go electric, who is this song about... not to say that they didn't ask other things as well, but there are those themes. And they often ask him about politics and controversial issues and all sorts of stuff and he often answers "i'm just a songwriter" or something to that effect.

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Just like the interviews, I think we also shape our life-stories as we go along. We look back on a certain period in our life and form an image of it, how we think about it, what we were like then, what impact it had on us, and how it shaped who we are now.

I've been thinking lately about adult life. It's sort of neat to see how people change as they get older (from the 20s to 60s), and yet in other ways they stay the same. You add on, I suppose, rather than discard. It's good to know that when you are old, you can still enjoy those things that you did when you were young. It's also good to know that you can change with the times and at the same time follow your own path. (Been reflecting on musicians and missios whom I've come across lately).

In education, there's the constructivist theory of how learners make meaning by integrating their past experience and knowledge with the new learning. I guess that's what we do with our lives too -we make meaning in life and construct our life story by looking at where we are now and looking back and putting the pieces together so that they fit together in some weird jigsaw puzzle way. We may not see what the big picture is, but we can trace some patterns and areas of commonality, just like when you're doing a jigsaw you put the colours together even while there are all these other pieces that don't fit.

Just picked up: The Heart Must Break: The fight for truth and democracy in Burma by James Mawdsley (2001). Published under the title "The Iron Road" in the U.S.

Since we have been working with the Karen people, I went to pick up a few books about Burma from the public library, and stumbled across this. I have only skimmed it, but it's a truly remarkable story. This British guy, ordinary young person, had such love for his fellow man in a different country that he kept going back, even when he was thrown in prison and tortured.

It was also in prison when he cried out to God, and found Him. He asked for a Bible and read it like never before. Meanwhile, in the outside world, his family and officials worked tirelessly for his release. It's quite a read. Not many people would go through what he did for people in a foreign place.