Recollecting Robert Papini

In Memoriam

Robert Papini in meditation at Vaults & Garden cafe,
University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, 2007.

 

This is a belated tribute to Robert Papini, particularly for his contributions to interfaith, notably with the International Association for Religious Freedom.  I also include excerpts from his other activities, with a sprinkling of quotes to offer glimpses of his erudition.  I hope to highlight in these brief excerpts how he exemplified the voluntary and vocational nature of his work and reflected deeply.

Background

Robert was originally from South Africa, with Italian ancestry through his father who was originally from Florence.  Possessing an open and inquisitive mind, he developed an interest in people, culture and the environment, which he nurtured throughout his life.  His academic study included two degrees in the UK: a Bachelor’s in English and African & Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury and a Master of Studies in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography together with Museology at the Department of Ethnology & Prehistory/ Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (as a member of Linacre College).  This led to employment as a Research Officer in the Local History Museums, Durban from 1989 to 2002.  Some fruits of his research are evident in papers on his Academia site.

Robert at IARF

About a year later, from November 2003, he started a new job in Oxford, as General Office Administrator at the Secratariat of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF). IARF is one of the first international interfaith organisations, which traces its formation to 1900 and is a UN NGO with general consultative status, which means it can be consulted on any matter, not just religion.

Robert was soon immersed at his desk in a compact office space, within a series of rooms on the top floor of a corner block in Market Street, which also housed the World Congress of Faiths (WCF), the International Interfaith Centre (IIC) and, in little more than a storage room, Rissho Kosei-Kai (RKK).  There he started to familiarise himself with the organisation and the distinctive features of dealing with adherents of world religions and the complexities of faith-based issues.  There were numerous projects that needed planning and facilitating.  It was a demanding initiation into international interfaith work.

I had been a member of the IIC and kept in touch with the office, sometimes exchanging e-mails.  At the beginning of March 2004, I sent a note about a Dhammakaya meditation session that I was organising at the Friends Meeting House in St Giles, which was circulated internally.  Robert picked it up and was interested.  He had already practised Vipassana as taught by S.N. Goenka, but was open to exploring other methods. 

However, he was swamped by work.  It was not until June, when another series of classes was on offer, that he felt that he was starting to cope with his role and ready to attend, commenting early in June 2004:

Many thanks for this; six months on, & I'm a bit more on top of admin routines at IARF, so have some time for myself now. Am definitely there for the first & last of the dates mentioned...

Robert did make it, but only just, and couldn’t stay:

Very sorry to have had to walk out on the class - please excuse, I was just so shattered from the day's work, found myself dropping off as soon as the eyes closed, in spite of all efforts!

I need to have a good day at work first, I realise...

Robert’s exhaustion came from his wholehearted efforts and over the next years he continued to grapple with – what seemed to me – an exceedingly demanding job.  In typical corporate style, his job titles were frequently shuffled without a clear career progression; from Office Administrator, he became (in succession): Office & Research Co-ordinator, Executive Officer, Office Manager and later he signed off merely as Admin.

Occasionally, Robert’s dissatisfaction was intense (he once admitted to me that he had walked out on an important meeting), but by and large, Robert gradually found his way, managing the challenges more effectively.  One of his most impactful involvements was in human rights education, especially in India, resulting in numerous training sessions.

In parallel, with opportunities to explore near and far, he developed his leisure activities. He drew on a long-standing interest in photography that inspired the likes of High School students and photojournalists (archived), with camera in hand, he started to reacquaint himself with the geography of Oxford and the Thames, dutifully contributing photographs of historic landmarks to the Historic England Archive IOE Series.

In Osaka

His travel abroad provided an opportunity for him to apply his empathic approach towards different cultures and for others to experience his considerable writing skills, whether that meant capturing the zeitgeist in brief pithy comments or much longer, evocative narratives.  This was epitomised in an unexpected turn of events. 

By 2007, as documented in the annual report of 2008/9, IARF was suffering a crisis and underwent major organisational change with operations moved to Japan.  After holding the fort in Oxford, Robert, as the sole surviving staff member, was sent to Osaka in mid-December, to run operations out of IARF’s Japan office, assisted by unpaid volunteers.  At the invitation of Reverend Yoshinobu Miyake, he was hosted by the Konko Church of Izuo (of the Shinto tradition), one of the charity’s main supporters.

Robert was once again having to orientate himself in a new culture and, despite severe financial constraints, he embraced it with enthusiasm, vividly penning his initial impressions:

Getting back to UK end-2003 was a buzz, but this is another order of excitement. Always been hard for me to remember what it's like when you land blind in a totally new country where the script is a scribble to you, and a handful of words is all you have.

During his first week, his creative juices started flowing:

18/12/2007
OK, this should be on a blog, but gimme time - I just got here...!.

(How about 17 years or so?)

He could barely wait to describe his environment:

Evening of my third day as a transient of Izuo neighbourhood, Osaka – just got back from my first real solo sortie into the surrounds, & my virgin supermarket safari. Been itching to get reactions to file, so lucky i brought over the old Toshiba laptop from Oxford, as no office PC bought yet, let alone set up in the new IARF office, which is double ex-res rooms two doors along from my little living-cell here on level three, topmost, of the Izuo Konkokyo church residential block (From my window, that's filled with the watercolour-fine foliage of dwarf bamboo and looks directly onto the Ancestors' Hall, I can see the massive coped gable of the mighty temple's great tiled roof, which is steep & gold-monogrammed, and the antique pale green of oxidized bronze).

The loaded term 'cell' i mean in the fully positive sense – i'm sat tapping away right now on the beautiful fine-weave /tatami/ mat flooring that's integral to the traditional Japanese home, with enough room on one edge of the living space to have a mattress, on the other a thin futon for my morning & evening bodywork; no furniture, but a roomy built-in cupboard & wall-mounted heater/aircon. My tiny kitchenette has a sink, mini-fridge & single electric ring, which would be fine anyway (though you might think I look a bit outlandish looming over my wok in its recess) but there's a much bigger cooking space, with gas, in the office-to-be, where i'll likely do most feeding..

Robert proceeded to describe his use of the local public bath (for his ‘cell’ had no shower or bath) as very much a social activity, but a tradition in decline as a result of Western influence.  Then came further details of his residence,

So anyway – there it is, my monkish cell with its outhouse ablutions. In all it's small for a great lunk of a spotty barbarian like me, kinda 'cubicular' i guess, but perfect for your stripped-down living, your monastic aspiration, and i have near-perfect silence here. There's a little street goes down the one side of this long 3-storey residential block, but hardly any traffic, and it's utterly charming, in the way of everything i've seen so far in the neighbourhood: /so/ different from our innercity streetscapes, obv everything three-quarter size, yes, but in many other ways such an insight into pre-modern urbanity while being totally modern, and refreshingly non-postmodern in the human scale of it, the sense of neighbourhood & the diversity & almost hobbitonian individuality of structures, the mingling of small business with residential, the balconies, jungle of oldstyle wiring overhead through all the interlinked alleyways & arcades that make up our Izuo 'hood, in the district here of Sangenya Nishi, a ward of Taisho, one of the many areas of what is a truly huge, trade-grown megasprawl between distant coastal mountain range and bay, with a good part of it reclaimed from the sea (including the airport, built by infilling the bay with mountain-top) --- and much of that in centuries well before the Dutch began their much-celebrated polders.

Bringing his historical survey into present times, he paused again to reflect:

Not too hard then, wandering about, to sense for oneself how the cities of pre-modern Japan must have been before American bombs & the post-war boom ushered in the built environment we see now. And this Now itself is all very much of that era; what gives the charm is the 50s/60s retro feel in building design, kinda like visions of old-school futurists, now a little worn & dated, but very much inhabited & alive, & conforming well to a certain stereotype we have of Japan (or at least, that the sophisticated have; I'm disturbed to discover how crude were my notions of this country & culture - just as with everywhere unknown, you come to realise. Pious it may sound to ask again, but the old chestnut stands: When will we learn to attribute the very same full humanity to others as we do to ourselves & 'our own'? Travel the cure? Shame it has to be on fossil fuel).

And found other sites particularly striking for being of a certain period:

Took a wander around the neighbourhood this afternoon … Found my way into the Osaka Dome (Police & Bon Jovi to play soon), & it's so /very/ much of its time - 80s futurist, now beginning to wear a bit. This was the Wembley Arena of its day, and vast it must have seemed then. Still pretty impressive. They have some kind of snowmaking lark going on at the top level, & loads of young people were buying snowboarding & other gear at a big indoor market, then queuing to get in. All the rage, obv. Minded me of Dubai's snow mountain in the desert, & other insanities of the incipient anthropocene era of atmosphere-wrecking.

Back in the office, it was time to deal with some practicalities.

Izuo, Osaka

18 Dec 07

dears

First day spent assembling the few bits of office furniture, devilish diagrams but eventually got them figured & glued, banged & screwed all together, trala, with just one cockup, of slight consequence though odd appearance (I blame it on a skewhiffed hands-off education. Come naa then, Bob the Builder To Be, make yo papa's ghost proud...)..

He was seemingly adopting the famed Japanese work ethic, as exemplified by his distinguished host:

 … Tomorrow we go off to Kyoto again, this time to some of the great shrines, for a 'greeting'. And it seems there's a trip to Tokyo next week, for this G8 Religious Leaders thing of Rev. Miyake's. He richly deserves the honorific 'tireless' that's given him in the biography of his grandfather that i'm reading: having gotten back from Tokyo at 3.30am this morning, after three top-level meetings with cabinet secretaries, etc., he was up at 4.30am to hold a temple service, then hit the desk to complete a newsletter for a 11am deadline! Even with the flu that he's inevitably picked up (quite a few people going about in facemasks, as it's said to be bad this year), he remains cheerful as ever, happy to help me out, managing well enough without his office girls today (Tuesday is a day off around here).

After an eventful start, he was in good spirits, sending the following note to welcome the arrival of 2008:

Dear friends

This year I count myself probably the first of you to greet the new year, here in Osaka, on the western Pacific rim. Aah yes - to be first, for once... ;}

(Most of you at least nine or ten hours away from first continental landfall of Jan 1st. 2008, some much more. Shame... But the suspense is everything, right?)...

Enjoy it when it comes, & here's to the year -- hope you're facing it with courage & commitment.

As ever -  Life, Love & Unity  !

Robert was in his element on this sojourn.  With his stay being extended, his wife, Catherine, went over several times to join him.  After a successful spell that met the approval of his hosts, he returned towards the end of 2008 to establish a ‘virtual office’, subsequently returning to Osaka for shorter spells.  In the minutes of the IARF Council Meeting of March 2009, the Personnel Committee reported:

Guji Takahiro Miwa had supervised the Osaka Office and was pleased with Robert’s performance. From November 2008 Robert had operated a virtual office from his London home and this had worked well with appropriate cooperation from the Church of Konko, whose staff had checked the incoming post. The three months in Osaka and three months in London arrangement will continue during 2009. A motion of thanks to Guji Takahiro Miwa, Guji Yoshinobu Miyake and Robert Papini was passed by acclamation.

Through generosity and fruitful collaboration, IARF survived and was able to maintain a significant international presence, providing input on a range of issues that affected religious practice directly and indirectly.  Robert provided a continuous thread to all these activities, not merely in fulfilling his office duties in practical terms, but, more profoundly, by his sincere cultural adaptation, demonstrating a deep dialogue with the Japanese members who provided the main financial support.  He earned considerable respect and hence encouragement to keep going.

Laying Foundations for Digital Communications

IARF’s severely limited financial resources prompted the organisation to make increasing use of electronic means of communication, a direction already evident in Council Meeting minutes of 2009.

Robert was again instrumental in this development; the ‘IARF - RFYN Young Adults’ Human Rights Training, Kolkota: 2011’ report noted:

Mr. Robert the administrator-IARF has began with session where he has made us know actualization of HRD ie “Human Rights Defenders” He introduced us with the various sources from where we can began and channelize our revolution towards Peace. In his continuing session he has mention the various ways ie media, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter can play significant Role.

The IARF Website was intended to be central to these developments.  Unfortunately, it was not fit for purpose.  Navigating from the home page, one  encountered pages authored in 2009, in one design, and a presumably early 2008 design used for news in 2010.  The site also had a discussion forum that was swamped by spam, and with custom PHP coding that was not maintained, the security status was questionable.  And then there were the styling and presentation issues, the variability in layout, fonts, colour schemes.  All in all it was a mess.

So IARF sought a solution based on an established content management system and Robert was tasked with delivering it.  A tender was put out, to which several companies responded, but I suspect that the budget was not adequate for commercial rates – even after significant discounts.  It likely prompted a reassessment and a reaching out to existing contacts in the hope of finding someone with requisite skills (and a charitable disposition).  That let Robert to me.

At that time, I was employed half-time as Web Officer at the Museum of the History of Science, so I had some spare capacity.  And having developed and consolidated the museum’s web offerings in WordPress, I had some idea about content management.

On 11 May, following a face-to-face chat, Robert sent me their requirements document.  At the end of the month, after further exchanges, Robert wrote:

Apropos, this email is really to tell you some good news (well, I hope it's good for you! - i.e. that you're not committing out of any sense of obligation to the interfaith cause.  The consensus seems to be that our new site project is in better hands with you than with some anonymous vendor for whom we're just another client.

Agreement was reached, and I started the work in early June.

There was endless scope for design, but Robert kept things fairly simple - it would suffice to make the site resemble or, at least, be in tune with the United Nations(!).  At that time, the U.N. site was heavily information-oriented, with hierarchical navigation, which actually suited me because I tend to think that way and am not a specialist in front-end graphic design or user interfaces. I proceeded to customise an existing WordPress theme by Brian Johnson, a member of the IARF US Chapter, extending it to accommodate the wider remit of the parent organisation.

Robert was keen for the site to emphasise its global scope and for it to act as a conduit in both directions and he wanted visitors to be aware of this and hence the use of the Pulsemaps heat map WordPress plugin.  He also sought to offer various means for essential communication from those directly affected by religious persecution.  Hence the Skype contact and the brief contact form, encrypted in case of snooping, especially by state authorities.

The main work was completed in about six months, in time for Christmas 2011; the site was duly delivered on a new virtual private server with not insubstantial system resources allocated.  I provided various documentation and training with further consultancy in subsequent months, when I departed for Qatar to take up a full-time post at the Qatar Museums Authority.  I would come back periodically to the UK and as Robert lived near Heathrow, we met up a couple of times in Terminal 4 before my departure back to the Gulf.

Whilst laborious, the website re-development project consolidated Robert’s knowledge of the entire organisation in its various strands, right across the world.  The international scope was reflected in Robert’s promotion of IARF work on social media, establishing a Flickr group, which featured the Human Rights Education and Training Programme in India.

where he was also involved in panel discussions

With the projects being delivered, his contributions became duly recognised in various countries outside the UK, not just Japan and India.  For example, for his role in the founding of the Kenya chapter:

To IARF administrator brother Robert Papini, I thank him for all the support he has shown towards the formation of IARF Kenya chapter.”  (Rev. Lawrence Adera, Secretary General IARF Kenya chapter)
Midview Hotel, Nairobi, 20 July 2013

By 2015, the website was well established and in much better shape.

The international reach of IARF was evident in its member groups:

 

Having implemented these major deliverables, Robert decided that it was time he moved on and he retired from his post in June 2015. 

Vade Mecum

Over the years, we met up periodically for wanderings on foot, sometimes joined by Catherine; and after leaving IARF, he had more time to roam. For, Robert noted, “We 'obligate bipeds' are in prime health when doing around 20km per day!”

We met mainly in towns and cities, which served as sources of endless anthropological fascination as we navigated across centuries of development and bounced ideas off each other.  One such meander was in 2016, assisted by Designs of the Times: Self-guided walk through the Square Mile (archive).  Always with Robert, as an allotment holder, having an eye for uncovering green spaces (the so-called secret gardens):

Robert in Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden.

 

[See also some photos on Flickr.]

The next day, Robert reflected:

a very promising beginning to possible probings of whatever may remain neglected & unilluminated in this breathtaking megalopolis.

And in response to a tentative proposal I had in mind for a “3D illuminations of neglected spaces (or similar)”, he was encouraging, clearly seeing a deeper potential:

I've been interested in Psychogeography for a while, though never had the chance to really go into it. Seems all a bit trendy at the moment, but nonetheless may have merit if it matures along with the kind of technology you're clearly thinking about applying.

[See, e.g., an explanation of the term by the Tate. ]

Occasionally, we met in more rural settings, such as Wytham, where we’d observe other kinds of wildlife going about their business.  But it didn’t really matter where we ambled for Robert was perspicacious in any environment.

Thursday’s Lotus

My own introduction to interfaith work, which led to my meeting Robert, was through my mother, the late Fuengsin Trafford, who worked for 10 years at the Multi-Faith Centre in Birmingham before it ceased operating in the mid-1990s.

Shortly after my mother passed away in 1995, I started writing her biography.  By the time Robert left the offices in Market Street, I had a complete draft and was getting editorial feedback with a view to publication.  Robert offered his services and agreed to compile the index, patiently and painstakingly using DEXter, a clever, but somewhat temperamental tool that provided wonderful automated assistance most of the time, but not always.  A little over twenty years after commencement, Thursday’s Lotus was finally published and I was pleased to present a copy to Robert. 

He graciously responded:

I do have to say, it's such a total pleasure to heft in one's hand the finished work -- thank you!  It's been a while since I was involved in anything that saw the solidity of bound paper.

To say it again, it's been a privilege to be associated with something out of the ambitious world of interfaith that has this much integrity & worth. So much of what I toiled at with IARF so often seemed futile, but your labour of love has gone quite a way to persuading me of the merit of its wider context.

I’m sure that if Robert had been writing to or about someone he worked with at IARF, he would have been more positive, for he appreciated his colleagues in the office; his frustrations were (I feel) to do with the organisation's corporate management.  At the same time, some of these comments came from a natural modesty and humility, indications of his own integrity, which were what encouraged him to persevere.  But also, in hindsight, these were signs of low self esteem.

Environmental Awareness and an unusual Anthropological Project

Robert’s connection with Nature was deep, informed by study of evolution and observation of the present.  In May 2020, the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Robert drew further inspiration from cultivating his allotment plot to  fuel a passion for returning to a more sustainable living and community:

I've never been more physically exhausted in any Springtime of soil toil - but it's fantastic, a joyful weariness. The life of plants, I've come to realise, is an allure that beats any that comes out of a screen.

I'm investigating a place called Tinker's Bubble, down in Somerset. Check it out, there's a great video on Vimeo.

Tinkers Bubble is a small off-grid woodland community in Somerset.  This ‘back to basics’ lifestyle was, Robert mused, probably too radical for Catherine (or, indeed, most of the population used to their creature comforts), so he wondered about milder alternatives and, so, I suggested the LandARK.  Naturally, he had already come across it and considered its viability:

Thanks for reminder of this excellent venture, which I stumbled upon years ago, bookmarked, and had not revisited. The question would be, of course, where one might be permitted to plant one's little bubble. Might it help to be tugging one's forelock before the great & good one percent who own more than half this island?

We exchanged further speculative messages against a backdrop of a world in utter confusion, without any definite conclusion.

Meanwhile, at the writing desk, within a year of leaving IARF, Robert embarked on an ambitious writing project, a kind of anthropological novel describing Mesolithic life in Africa.  He was tentative about revealing it, perhaps fearing that it wouldn’t lead anywhere, but did share a few tantalising glimpses.  Robert first mentioned his ideas to me in a park café near SOAS towards the end of October 2017 shortly before I attended an evening meeting of The Biographers' Club.  Afterwards, I wrote to him to relate that there was reflection on how to 'enter' a different time and land; in all cases the key was immersion, directly or indirectly.

Robert responded:

 …  Interesting to hear that biographers do still cherish the credo that it's possible to immerse in another time. It undergirds the whole craft, I suppose, but as the tired saying goes 'The past is another country...they do things differently there'. So I propose to market my work as a satirical subgenre of Fantasy, so absurd do i find the proposition that a modern consciousness can evoke anything faintly approaching the conditions of life even a century back - let alone the millennia that 'prehistoric fiction' wades blithely about in...

Serious fiction is only ever contemporary.

But my hunch is that even as the globe shrinks & the old nomad wanderlust of our kind dies spatially, it will compensate temporally, and while the kids are hurtling off to fantasy worlds rich in dragons & elves, or fearsome deep-space aliens, the adult imagination will want inter alia to probe further & further back into our imagined past.

And what the market calls for, none shall gainsay! Hooray indeed. Long may huddled creatives continue to earn a crust down the 'satirical fantasy' alleyway... with cakes & ale to the trailblazers, of course.  ;)?

Gradually, having got to know about Robert’s project, friends and family became curious about his writing.  I was not alone in thinking that a publisher might be interested and, so, enquired about samples.  In March 2021, replying to a message which had started on zero emission zones, Robert was characteristically thoughtful:

Molweni, bra Paul (Gauteng-greets)

Thanks for asking about my long-ongoing writerly ambitions.
It's become more effortful as I've had to start infilling the structure with plausibly thought-out, anthropologically-informed pattern & process around the storyline.

I wish it were possible to offer some sample, as it seems most creatives are able to do even just a few months after conceiving a project (mine has been five years in the making so far). 

However it's a 'built world' I'm about, so even a short passage would demand of any reader an immersion into backdrop detail (I provide it in maps, timelines, synopses, etc.) which few are prepared to undertake, given the Titanic-scale 'raft of alternatives' on market offer any day of your life... (and all within a few seconds' whisper of your fingers' busy tap-tapping). 

That begs the larger question of whether readerly attention span nowadays has any inclination toward 'built-world immersion' (aka Fantasy?). Maybe the New Pandemia inclines the newly underemployed among them that way? 

I'm counting on a few other things to make the offer stand out - not least that Fantasy has always been hugely ethnocentric. Counting most riskily of all, though, on a readership that's able to slow down, in order make sense of language rendered faux-archaic.
Not much ask there! :)

He confirmed his commitment in further correspondence.:

I've come too far now to abandon it. Huge investment of time, and sacrifice of earnings. Sometimes I do wonder what can have driven me to it!

Sadly, he would never see its completion. 

Robert’s Passing

Robert Papini passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday 23 April 2022 shortly after 3pm.  Whilst difficult to comprehend, there has since come to light much of biographical interest.  This post offers just a taste of Robert’s life, one that epitomised an enquiring mind and service to humanity. He worked hard, facilitated, inspired and did not seek credit.  It’s especially evident from his time at IARF, where he made a major contribution in delivering projects across the world, touching many people’s lives in a positive way. 

Preparing an EPUB as a Web project

[minor edits on 5 Feb 2017]

Having explored various approaches to publishing an e-book, as described in my previous post, I came to the conclusion that I needed to manually produce Thursday’s Lotus according to an EPUB standard.  This meant working directly on the HTML and CSS sources, which I broadly describe here with a little illustration — the discussion assumes some experience of Web development.

To get started, I browsed the KDP online help on formatting files. The guidance is more about the overall workflow, with only basic information about HTML.  For the details it directs you to the Kindle Publishing Guidelines, which should serve as the main reference source.  I was slow to come across this guide, which helpfully discusses the pathways that I determined in a meandering way for myself, but I don’t think it would have affected the path I took.

However, these guidelines are not so practical as a means to actually learn how to produce EPUB-compliant files as a novice.  To fill this gap I bought a copy of Paul Salvette’s The eBook Design and Development Guide, which is very much a hands-on manual, informative and well laid out.  What’s more his company generously provides many helpful resources for developers, including boilerplates, some of which I used as a basis for my own templates. The main limitation is that it was published in 2012 and oriented around the EPUB2 standard; version 3 of the standard has since emerged and the previous version IDPF marks as obsolete. Nevertheless, this guide clearly describes the principles behind the EPUB standards, so that I’m quite sure that it will be relatively straightforward to take on board future iterations.  Hence I had no hesitation in writing a positive review.  In practice so far I’ve found the online publishers, not just Amazon, readily support this (it’s rather like web browsers will happily display old Web pages, though in most cases this doesn’t go as far as the distracting <blink> tag!)

Document styles in MS Word and Filtered HTML outputs

Salvette is quite adamant that one should write an e-book from the ground up.  Certainly it makes for a much cleaner document from the outset.  However, on this occasion I acted contrary to his advice, starting with a Word document and exporting it as filtered HTML (but not saving as filtered HTML, which keeps a lot of internal MS Office code and can increase the file size severalfold).  One of the reasons I did this was to avoid having to re-enter over 1000 hyperlinked bookmarks in the index or else modify the Word document in ways that are best left to a text editor.  Besides, I could learn a lot about the structure of a Word document and its characteristics.  I then gradually simplified the HTML.  Along the way I realised that the wysiwyg interface made it easy to develop bad authoring habits such as the manual insertion of spaces and the inconsistent use of styles.

I can illustrate this with a small example.  Thursday’s Lotus includes a glossary of terms with entries in Thai and Romanised Pali (this is included Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ preview).  The first entry is for Abhidhamma and in Word it looks like:

I had realised that it makes sense to define a style for every distinct type of content, so here I defined one for ‘Glossary Definition’ and chose to display it as indented.  The ‘Modify Styles’ dialog, shows these and other details.

An indication of the potential issues that would arise in exporting to HTML becomes readily apparent.  For instance, I chose the font face, Gentium Plus, because it has a classical look that works will on paper and it has broad support for glyphs, including characters with diacritics. However, it’s not included as an option in the Kindle.  Underneath the preview window there is a specification of the font support, with explicit reference to Thai language and exact line spacing of 12pt, which I had deliberately chosen as a means to help control the vertical layout because it includes many photographs.  These definitions would not make sense for an e-book. 

When saved by Word as filtered HTML this glossary item was rendered as:

It’s a little bloated and the use of physical markup tags, and  , are slightly deprecated, but it is not unmanageable and the main thing is that the structure is sound and it retains all the semantics, including denoting the Thai language instance with a lang=“th” attribute inside a tag.  In fact, surveying the entire document, it appeared that every Thai language instance was denoted this way — useful because it can be used by browsers, e-readers and so on to interpret Thai content distinctly.   One other thing to notice: actually, I had defined two styles: one for the entry term and another for the actual definition, but it became evident that I never got round to using the Glossary entry style.

For a full document, even one that’s of modest sized, the HTML export produces a large single file that can look quite intimidating because the content appears to be engulfed by CSS formatting, starting with masses of font definitions, with numerous built-in Microsoft classes, defining long hierarchies of selectors with many declarations.  Furthermore, as even this small example suggests, there was extensive use of tags, liberally sprinkled across the document.  A lot of this very fine-grained control is to ensure precise print-ready documents, most of which is unwanted for reflowable content. But there extraneous material is applied consistently and it’s a matter of understanding the logic of what is applied and how it was applied.

Cleaning and Preparing (X)HTML for EPUB

So I then began the process of cleaning the HTML, removing font face definitions, unused CSS selectors (there are tools like Dust-Me selectors that give the lowdown) and gradually applying regular expression search/replace to successively removing excess spaces.  There are quite a few tools available that clean HTML, but for EPUB, there are additional assumptions that can be made that affect what to delete and what to replace.  For example, fonts may be converted to use relative sizing (‘em’ units) from fixed points (apart perhaps from titles and headings being positioned relative to top of screen).

After a number of such transformations the glossary definition became:

I deleted almost all style definitions from the <span> tags, but not the language attribute, whilst declarations that I thought relevant, such as indentation, I folded into the corresponding named classes.

Images

The output also includes a folder of images, which are generally rather small.  Compared with the proliferation in the main text, this may seem incidental, but I decided to attend to this early on because the images, of which there are about 100, are an important part of the book.  It’s important to note that whereas there’s practically no limit on image file size for CreateSpace and they thus should ideally be of high resolution (Amazon recommends at least 300dpi), there is a caveat with KDP. Depending on the royalty options, the resulting file incurs a region-dependent ‘delivery cost’, e.g. 10p per MB for books sold in the UK.

To keep costs modest, starting with high resolution sources, I used Irfanvew to carry out some batch image conversions to output images to have long side with at most 800 pixels and I also applied some compression.  The net result was a folder with a total of about 5MB, but I suspect I could have reduced this further because I forgot to strip metadata.  It was dealing with issues like this that already indicated it was going to take me a few weeks rather than a few days!

(X)HTML Validation

I initially worked towards HTML5, with the intention of ensuring that as a late step I correctly serialize this as XML.  Only later did I discover that EPUB2 specifies as its base content format XHTML1.1, whereas EPUB3 specifies XML serialisation of HTML5, i.e. XHTML5 (aka “polyglot” HTML5).  Fortunately, for the relatively simple structure in my book, it meant little more than changing the Web document headers.

For Web standards I generally make a beeline for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which has for a long time helpfully provided an online validator, currently https://validator.w3.org/nu/. However, after using this repeatedly I felt I ought not to keep draining its resources, so I downloaded and installed a copy from GitHub, via the project’s About page, following the instructions to build the service. 

One particular error I ran across because of my use of accented characters was:

“Warning: Text run is not in Unicode Normalization Form C.”

This refers to one or more characters that can be generated in multiple ways – notably as a precomposed (single) character or as a decomposed sequence of characters.  There are several normalization methods; NFC normalized text, which is recommended for Web pages, opts for precomposed.  I found a helpful thread with a nice solution on Stackoverflow: in BabelPad just copy and paste across and then select: Convert -> Normalisation form -> To NFC.

EPUB Preparation and Validation

Having refined the HTML, previewed and validated, I then considered the production of the EPUB as a package, i.e. a nested series of folders with sources and metadata. It was time to write some PHP and I loaded up Netbeans, which is my usual IDE, partly because it is cross-platform.  The book itself had to be split into a number of files and so I wrote a script to do that according to sections whilst ensuring that anchors continued to work afterwards.  To carry out manipulations on a DOM object created from the single file (before it was split), I used PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser,  and then to assemble the XML files I used the SimpleXML extension.   I created a logical table of contents and also duly specified basic core metadata such as title, publisher, unique identifier and subjects, though I’m not sure how much these are actually used.  In addition to Salvette’s guide, I browsed various fora, finding some succinct and sage advice, such as that from Micah Sisk and others.

For EPUB the final step in packaging is to bundle everything as a ZIP file with a .epub extension; one caveat here is to ensure that the mimetype file is not compressed (there is usually an option available to do this, e.g -0 for compression-level 0).  Then to validate what I had, I turned to the EPUB Validator,  Unfortunately at the times I tried the online service it seemed to be weighed down and couldn’t even complete the processing on the files I submitted.  So, as with the W3C validator, I proceeded to download and install my own copy, in this case epubcheck.  Once in place, I had it available to run on the command line and added an alias to .bash_profile for convenience.  The tool provides precise feedback about the errors: what they are and where they occur in your code, and with the help of occasional online searches I found all the answers I needed, learning, for example, that every file used in the publication must be included correctly in the manifest!

Conversion to Kindle formats and Preview Tools

Whilst correctness is reassuring, it still remains necessary to inspect what’s presented and I used a number of applications.  Even before it gets converted I ran some initial tests on a desktop Web browser.  Although this interprets the HTML quite differently, it’s a familiar interface and can highlight issues of inconsistency in fonts and images, notably in their sizes and alignments.  

Once I had prepared an ePub file I could then upload to KDP, which carries out a conversion to its own formats and offers a browser-based preview tool.  I found it slightly disconcerting process because it would give the impression of some errors that I hadn’t expected.  Then I read various comments on fora recommending downloading the resulting .mobi file and a preview application, Kindle Previewer.  Furthermore, once downloaded you can use ‘Send to Kindle’ for a more reliable test on actual hardware.  For the conversion, Amazon provides a tool called KindleGen from various files (as listed in its page on supported formats).  It’s freely available to download and use and comes bundled with the offline previewer.  Taken together there are numerous preview options and I don’t think I used them so effectively; next time I need to be more systematic and thorough.  

Note there are two versions of KindlePreviewer (2 and 3); working on a Mac, I was reluctant to install version 2 because of the requirement to use an old version of Java (6) and it seemed a bit fiddly.  So I was relieved to find the beta version 3, which has no such issue and the installation worked fine.  It was then a matter of refining the HTML and CSS and rebuilding, which was simple to do with the scripts in place the e-book was ready for publication, well almost...

Publication of Thursday’s Lotus as an e-book: finding a suitable approach

Thursday’s Lotus is now available as an e-book through Kindle Store and Kobo, with others to follow. I’m glad I made the effort and hope this post will encourage other newcomers to explore further some of the options to contribute to the world of electronic publishing.

As someone whose career has been largely in technology, I found the preparation and publication of a hardcopy book a fascinating process, resulting in the very satisfying experience of holding a physical copy in my hands. But, of course, nowadays it’s expected that books be made available in digital formats for reading on handheld devices, i.e. as e-books. As I had other work commitments I concentrated initially on the paperback, making it as polished as I could; I felt pursuing an electronic version in parallel would have negated against that, so I put that thought to one side and merely indicated that I expected an e-book version to emerge in 6-12 months. Then, after a little break, I decided to start focusing on the e-book version in August and I published it in September.

For those who have already self-published a paperback, I’ll share a few general observations, but my thoughts are mainly for those who are interested in do-it-yourself (DIY) and have some experience of creating Web pages. It actually took me quite a bit longer than I had anticipated largely because I chose to pursue the DIY route and along the way I wrote some software to do some ‘heavy lifting’, but I found this rewarding and it means I can now help other authors produce both hard copy and electronic copy.

Just as Amazon’s CreateSpace offers a dedicated service for publishing paperbacks, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is the analogue for e-books, and unsurprisingly CreateSpace points to KDP, easing the transition by offering to share the front cover and metadata. So, yes, it seemed a natural next step. However, one of the first tasks was to understand what exactly I was meant to be preparing for it wasn’t immediately obvious. After some searching, I learnt about an open technical standard called EPUB, the work of the International Digital Publishing Forum, a trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry. It consists of a markup specification, where document content is specified as (X)HTML, so it’s like preparing a special class of Web pages. Then there’s the specification of how everything should be packaged, table of contents, navigation etc., which is in a series of XML files. These files get bundled in a ZIP and renamed with .epub extension, and voilà! You have an EPUB instance, or ePub file. Just as there are a range of authoring tools for Web development in general, so there are various options for producing EPUB.

All well and good, except the list of members, doesn’t appear to include Amazon. Indeed Amazon has its own proprietary formats, Mobipocket (abbreviated .mobi) and Kindle Format 8 (.kf8). However, Amazon is pragmatic, and its KDP service supports uploads in various formats, including MS Word, HTML, ePub, MOBI and so on. Nevertheless, expectations need to be tempered as the range of options hides the fact that for all but a simple text document, without revision of that document, these options will produce results that vary a great deal in quality. In almost all cases the original manuscript, typically authored in Word, will need to be carefully edited to ensure tidy and consistent formatting.

Plenty of pointers are available; Amazon provides a Simplified Formatting Guide and in the beginning I found it instructive to experiment with a transitional version, applying one of the freely available Word templates designed for Kindles. If I had been in a hurry, then I might have followed this path, but for a quite complex book layout, I was not confident that I could have sufficient control over the final output.

Irrespective of the method eventually chosen, I recommend becoming familiar with how KDP processes and prepares a file (.mobi, that actually includes the .kf8 version as well) that it would use as a publication candidate. Within the KDP dashboard, you can preview the result online using the Web-based previewer and download the file to inspect on your device (just use Send to Kindle). When I tried this, downloading the first drafts for viewing on my Kindle e-reader (7th generation) all the words were still there and I was impressed to see that the endnotes (which I had arranged on a per-chapter basis) had been converted to footnotes with working hyperlinks between text and notes.

Beyond this was not so good — it had numerous issues:

• table of contents, list of figures etc had ragged layouts
• in fact, generally the layout was all over the place, with chapter headings not properly aligned
• the images had become small and were variously centred or left-aligned
• varied font sizes
• large gaps in text
• no logical table of contents (i.e. the one available via an e-reader menu item)
• the index, which had originally been designed for a fixed layout, was replicated and in its static form with reference to hardcopy page numbers made little sense

In pondering these issues I learnt quite a lot about going from fixed layouts to reflowable layouts. I pondered quite a lot the last one in particular and eventually realised that there might be a path to a meaningful solution. I had originally created an index the traditional way and been faced with the traditional problem afterwards: on completion of a draft I had worked my way through the book to laboriously compile the index, but subsequently needed to revise it quite considerably. I then discovered the method of indexing in Word using bookmarks as the targets of index entries and the (not particularly robust) Dexter add-in, for managing these entries and generating automatically the index from the bookmarks. Thanks to Robert Papini, the index was re-made this way, to keep evolving without great effort. Furthermore, for the e-book I used another tool from the makers of Dexter, IndexLinker, which turned the index into a set of hyperlinks to the respective bookmarks. Saving this as (filtered) HTML preserves the links and this has been successfully carried over to the e-books.

Much as I could solve some particular problems, tweaking the Word document and uploading would not be completely satisfactory, so I focused attention on the EPUB format, reassured by various messages in fora that Amazon has invested considerable effort in converting to .mobi/.kf8 At this stage, I had to decide how far I wanted to proceed (really how fussy I was to be about the final rendering). For many, particularly those who don’t want to immerse themselves in the technicalities of HTML and XML, there are authoring environments that facilitate the process and can produce good results. Probably the most popular of these is Calibre, which is a whole environment for production and management of e-books.

I gave it a quick go and it could correctly display chapter headings, with the lotus image properly aligned, but inevitably it reflected the quirks in the original and some issues would have to be corrected in the in-built editor. At this point you are exposed to editing HTML and CSS, and whilst the import of a Word document does a lot of tidying (and smartly splits a large file into smaller files based on sections), it does retain much of Word’s original markup and superfluous spacing; also in the translation, it adds a lot of its own CSS without using semantic labels.

As I wanted to learn more about EPUB and edit/process HTML and CSS, I opted to leave Calibre for another day and use tools and techniques with which I’m familiar. I’ll describe some of these in my next post …

Thursday’s Lotus is published!

Before I returned to England, Ajahn made a prediction that in future I was to go and spread the Buddha’s teachings in England … He said:

‘You go … you are ready to teach now.

You will have to teach one day.’

More than 21 years after her passing, Fuengsin’s biography has at last been published under the title, Thursday’s Lotus: The Life and Work of Fuengsin Trafford, actually appearing on the occasion of the Thai New Year, 13 April 2016. So now everyone can read how Fuengsin fulfilled the prophecy of her meditation teacher, Ajahn Gaew.

The book has been printed as a paperback using the Amazon CreateSpace system and so naturally it is available through Amazon online stores. It can be ordered from the CreateSpace store, amazon.com, amazon.fr, amazon.de and most amazon.eu sites, with the UK site to be activated in a few days; the recommended retail prices are: $14.99, €12.99 and £9.95 respectively. I've set up a companion website at http://fuengsin.org/, which collates Fuengsin's translations and articles and provides other supporting materials for the book. I'll be posting articles about various aspects of the book — why it is written the way it is, how it was produced, etc.

Now it just remains for me to say, "Please take a look and I hope you enjoy reading!" Thank you for your interest.

First Draft of Fuengsin's Biography

I'm pleased to report that the first draft of a biography for Fuengsin Trafford, my mother, has materialised! It has been a long journey that has involved quite a lot of fieldwork in Thailand exploring family heritage, carrying out interviews, learning about her alma mater and workplace. There have been documents to scan relating to her meditation background and back in the UK I've really only dipped into her personal diary of daily life in the UK. My Thai language skills are still rudimentary, but I've received excellent help and advice from friends and made use of some impressive translation tools.

All of this, with contributions from many people, has resulted in a life story in 15 chapters:

• Chapter 1: Breaking New Ground
• Chapter 2: Fuengsin’s Childhood: From Wartime to Roaming Free…
• Chapter 3: University Days and a Carefree Life
• Chapter 4: Early Professional Life: Teaching and Meditation
• Chapter 5: First Time Abroad: Whirlwind Activities
• Chapter 6: Life in the Outer Reaches
• Chapter 7: Varied Fruitfulness in The Garden of England
• Chapter 8: Thailand and other Family Outings
• Chapter 9: New Prospects in the Midlands
• Chapter 10: Emergence
• Chapter 11: Further Visits to Thailand
• Chapter 12: Flourishing
• Chapter 13: Transition and Further Projects
• Chapter 14: Faltering Health and Grand Finale
• Chapter 15: Fuengsin’s Legacies

I have been contacting a few family members and friends to check the content for accuracy and general tone as there are many events and people mentioned in the various accounts. I'll then make some further revisions in light of their comments and afterwards seek some editorial guidance with a view to publication (I hope!)...

A Wander around Chulalongkorn University

In between conference preparation, pilgrimage, visits and general sight-seeing, I was given a special tour of Chulalongkorn University, by Khun Tewee, a long-time family friend who used to play with my mother as a child. Both of them had studied at Chula - Khun Tewee physical sciences and my mother (then Fuengsin Sarayutpitag) liberal arts. On this occasion I wanted just to get a feel for the environment, and see how much it resembled the scene depicted in group photos from the late 50s (my mother is standing, 5th from the left):

Chulalongkorn University occupies a privileged position in Thai history and culture. Even its Thai wording claims the linguistic distinction of having the word ‘university’ following the name: จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย [Chulalongkorn Mahawitthayalai] so it reads in the same order as in English, whereas all other universities would put Mahawitthayalai before the name.

The University has its roots as a civil service training school, founded during the reign of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) at the end of the 19th Century CE to help in Siam’s administration. It gradually expanded its remit and so emerged Chulalongkorn University, formally granted its new name and status in 1917, the first university to be established in Thailand. It is located fairly centrally in Pathum Wan district of Bangkok, with the nearest BTS station being National Stadium and occupies a rectangular plot of land plus a number of surrounding buildings.

When Khun Tewee proceeded to showed myself and one of her friends the central site, she led us first of all towards the original entrance across playing fields. There looking out from a raised platform were the University's two founders commemorated in a memorial statue:

Seated is King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) and standing beside him is King Vajiravudh (Rama VI). Whilst we were there, a couple of students were paying respects, lighting incense sticks. Nearby there were some elaborate floral kratongs, very likely student creations, now looking somewhat bereft after the Loy Kratong festival, but still nice and colourful.

Next we retraced some steps and approached some of the original buildings (or, at least, the oldest that are still standing). Particularly prominent is the main auditorium, where the conferral of degrees and other major ceremonies take place in a grand theatre:

We then carried on to the Faculty of Arts building, close by, and naturally I was keen to explore.

The first thing that struck my was the lightness of the building. By modern standards it doesn't have many floors, but as I wandered around, I could gaining a feeling of great solidity and substance, an imposing presence, with lofty spaces. It was a very distinguished environment and not hard to imagine students feeling like princes or princesses. Every angle seems to be pleasing architecturally, certainly worth protecting with the nagas!

The only disappointment was learning that these buildings are now used mainly for administration. So where do the Faculty of Arts students have their classes, if not in these buildings? Looking from the centre, there are new buildings dotted around:

The tall building in the distance is บรมราชกุมารี Borommarajakumari (Supreme Daughter of His Majesty the King), an epithet for HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who herself was a graduate from the Faculty of Arts in the 1970s (details in a biography). It is a multi-purpose building: as well as lecture spaces, there are exhibition areas and academic staff have rooms towards the top.

Inevitably a lot of change, but it seems to retain a distinguised ethos and it looks like the staff and students continue to build on the heritage. It still looks an attractive place to study.

Somboon Sarayutpitag and Satriwithaya School

In recent trips to Thailand I’ve been learning how my maternal grandparents greatly valued education. I’m sure they were a strong influence on my mother, Ajahn Fuengsin, who acquired a lifelong interest in learning and transmitting her knowledge through teaching (Ajahn is a general prefix for an established teacher).

My grandfather had been awarded the title of 'Luang', so he was subsequently addressed as Capt. Luang Sarayutpitag (he had been a captain in the army). The distinctive Thai surname seems to have been spelt in more than one way; my cousins generally insist on ศรายุธพิทักษ์ but there are several letters that can represent an ‘s’ sound and an extra ท ('t') seems optional, so sometimes it has been written สรายุทธพิทักษ์ (with an opening ส instead of ศ). I expect that if one knows the roots of Thai language (Sanskrit, Pali and so on), then one can work out the appropriate letter, but I guess that might be like asking someone in the UK to distinguish between Greek and Latin etymology...

Anyway, prior to this visit, I had heard that my grandmother, Khun Yay Somboon Sarayutpitag, had attended the same school as the Somdet Ya, the Princess Mother (the mother to H.M. King Bumiphol). This school was called Satriwithaya School, a girl’s school in the heart of Bangkok. Some time last summer I started typing into Google ศรายุธพิทักษ์ and สรายุทธพิทักษ์ and a few permutations.  Eventually I came across the Web site of the Srinagarindra [Somdet Ya] museum, the museum of Satriwithaya School, set up in honour and memory of its most famous pupil. Google had spotted an occurrence of the name in the following paragraph:

สิ่งที่เป็นจุดเด่นของพิพิธภัณฑ์สมเด็จย่าคือ พระบรมฉายาลักษณ์ ที่มาของภาพเก่าอันทรงคุณค่าของสมเด็จย่า ส่วนหนึ่งมาจากศิษย์เก่าและครูเก่าเก็บไว้ และอีกส่วนหนึ่งได้ไปขอมาจากสำนักพระราชวัง หนึ่งในรูปภาพที่ทรงคุณค่าอย่างยิ่งคือภาพถ่ายหมู่ของนักเรียนชั้นมูลปีที่ หนึ่ง(ปัจจุบันคือระดับอนุบาล) ถ่ายวันที่ 9 มีนาคม ร.ศ.127 (พ.ศ.2451) สมเด็จพระศรีนครินทราบรมราชชนนี ครั้งยังทรงเป็น ด.ญ. สังวาลย์ โดยพระองค์ประทับในแถวกลาง เป็นลำดับที่ 3 จากซ้าย ซึ่งภาพต้นฉบับสีซีดจนอ่านตัวหนังสือบนแผ่นกระดานที่แขวนไว้ด้านหลังนัก เรียนไม่ออก ต้องใช้คำบรรยายที่เจ้าของภาพเขียนติดไว้ด้านหลังภาพ ภาพนี้ได้รับความอนุเคราะห์จากทายาทนางสมบุญ ศรายุทธพิทักษ์ ในภาพมี ด.ญ.สมบุญอยู่แถวหน้า ลำดับที่ 6 จากซ้าย ส่วนด้านขวาสุดคือครูทิม

My attempted translation is as follows:

A prominent feature of the Srinagarindra [Somdet Ya] museum is the Royal source of some valuable old pictures of the Princess Mother. One part comes from the collections of alumni and former teachers, and another has been requested from the Bureau of the Royal House. One exceedingly valuable picture is a group photograph of first year pre-elementary students (now equivalent to kindergarten) taken on the 9th of March R.E. (Ratanakosin Era) 127 (B.E. 2451). The Princess Mother [can be seen] at the time when she was still a girl, Miss Sangwan; Her Royal Highness is residing in the central row, 3rd from the left. As an original picture it is extremely faded to the extent that it is not possible to read the writing on the plate mounted on the board behind; it's necessary to use the description that the owner has attached on the back of the picture. This picture was received with the assistance of the descendants of Mrs. Somboon Sarayutpitag. In the picture Miss Somboon is in the front row, 6th from the left.

The next paragraph presents an invitation:

สำหรับ ผู้ที่อยากชมภาพนี้ มีภาพขยายใหญ่เกือบเท่าตัวจริงติดอยู่ในห้องเอลิซาเบธ ซึ่งเป็นห้องประชุมของโรงเรียน ห้องนี้มีขึ้นในช่วงที่ควีนเอลิซาเบธที่ 2 เสด็จมาที่โรงเรียนสตรีวิทยาในวันที่ 30 ตุลาคม พ.ศ.2539 เพื่อทอดพระเนตรกิจกรรมและนิทรรศการการป้องกันยาเสพติดในสถานศึกษา พระบรมฉายาลักษณ์สมเด็จพระราชินีนาถ เอลิซาเบธที่ 2 พร้อมพระปรมาภิไธยที่ได้รับพระราชทาน ขณะนี้อยู่ที่พิพิธภัณฑ์สมเด็จย่า

 In approximate English:

For those who want to look at this picture, there is a near life-size enlargement on display in the Elizabeth room, which used to be the school assembly hall. This room was set up on the occasion of the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Satriwithaya School on October 30 2539 to observe events and exhibitions relating to drug prevention in schools. The picture of Queen Elizabeth II, together with her signature, is in the Srinagarindra Museum.

I soon found a copy of the photograph online in the Wikipedia entry for the Princess Mother. However, having read the description above I thought, "I’d really like to see this picture for myself at the school!"

I was fortunate. I got in touch with my cousin, P’ Laem, and he made enquiries through an aunt who used to teach there. Soon arrangements were made and we went along to visit one Friday afternoon in late November. Designed around a courtyard, the buildings rise on three sides to several storeys, having expanded considerably since its foundation over a hundred years ago. When we arrived the school was still bustling with activity; at the entrance there was a large tree occasionally shedding its leaves under which a group of pupils was anticipating its every move ... and then a leaf would come sailing down and they’d try and catch it. Later when we left there were just two girls by the tree, still playing the same game!

On the left hand side as you enter there is a status to the Princess Mother:


The inscription says it is dedicated to สมเด็จพระศรีนครินทราบรมราชชนนี (Somdet Phra Srinagarindra Boromarajajonani), giving the dates she was alive (B.E. 2443 – 2538, i.e. 1900-1995CE). It was unveiled by สมเด็จพระเจ้าพี่นางเธอ เจ้าฟ้ากัลยาณิวัฒนา กรมหลวงนราธิวาสราชนครินทร์ (Somdet Phra Chao Phi Nang Thoe Chao Fa Galyani Vadhana Kromma Luang Narathiwat Ratchanakharin). This is the full title of HRH Princess Galyani, the elder sister to H.M. King Bhumipol. P’ Laem informed me that she took a great deal of interest in the Royal family history and was particularly interested in the school. The statue was unveiled in B.E. 2543 (2000 CE).
We were shown inside the museum by a librarian and directed to a number of books on the table. These contained further photographs and descriptions. We learnt that at the time that group photo was taken, Khun Yay Somboon was 14 years old and the eldest in the group. Afterwards we were led to the Queen Elizabeth Room, which now serves as the board room, where the enlargement has been placed on the wall. Here it is (clicking on it will take you to the version on Wikipedia):


This photo was taken in 1908, right towards the end of the reign of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). Thailand's process of modernisation through especially European influences is evident in the uniform: you can see the children wearing the traditional jongraben, but also Western style shoes and socks!

Thailand’s tropical climate is very severe on paper, yet the photograph itself is in very good condition. How come? P’ Laem explained that Khun Yay Somboon had cherished this photograph very much and took special care of it. His parents had built their home very close to the grandparents’ house and P’ Laem’s room was almost opposite Khun Yay’s. He could see it hanging at the back of the room as Khun Yay emerged onto her balcony. The positioning was deliberate!

The Princess Mother subsequently went on to Chulalongkorn Hospital to study nursing. Khun Yay also had an opportunity to study there but declined, apparently afraid of the ghosts! Thai people are generally sensitive to spirits, but this response surprised me as she was certainly a strong character, as I hope to convey in a future post or two...


Postscript [August 2012]:  Please note the primacy in spelling of ศรายุธพิทักษ์ over สรายุทธพิทักษ์ - previously I had got it the wrong way round!  Sorry about that.

Ajahn Gaew and the first Western Bhikkhus at Wat Paknam

A few days after my pilgrimage to pay respects to the late Abbot of Wat Paknam, Chaokhun Phramongkolthepmuni, I went with my cousin, P' Laem, to visit the family home of one of his disciples, Ajahn Gaew.

Ajahn Gaew was my mother's primary meditation teacher of vijja dhammakaya (advanced meditation using the method of the Middle Way) and my mother had huge respect and admiration for him, being fulsome in her tribute at his passing. Now I had the opportunity to learn more about his legacy from some of his children. I am particularly grateful to his daughter, Khun Darunee, and his son, Khun Goo, for sharing recollections and materials with me relating to their father.

Ajahn Gaew had become a respected lay meditation teacher at Wat Paknam in the 1950s - certainly known, for instance, by the maechi I had visited only days earlier. Among his students were monks, nuns and lay people and he subsequently continued to give teachings for many years. In a manner that seemed to predict the interfaith work of my mother, his outlook was very broad in terms of building bridges. He was fluent in Chinese and helped the Wat by translating Dhamma teachings into Chinese for there was a significant Chinese community; he did a great deal to persuade them to support Wat Paknam and thereby share in meritorious deeds.

As he had knowledge of English, he got to know a Western ordinand by the name of William Purfurst, who took bhikkhu ordination as Kapilavaddho (among the various materials I was shown a signed photograph). As Khun Goo gradually produced various publications, it was evident that Ajahn Gaew had taken considerable interest in Venerable Kapilavaddho, echoing my mother's remark that Ajahn Gaew often described this monk's activities in detail. It didn't matter that Ajahn Gaew was a lay person - the circle of meditators would know each other. In fact Ajahn Gaew did later take bhikkhu ordination for a rains retreat before returning to take care of his family.

I hope to describe the various items in more detail in a separate post, but here I just mention one that particularly caught my eye: a booklet, in Thai and Chinese, presented at the bhikkhu ordination of the three Western disciples of Ven. Kapilavaddho:

An English translation:

The English Sangha Community

The Buddha Bhavana Association
A publication to commemorate the ordination ceremony of the English [ordinands]

We bow to offer respects to
Luang Phor Phramongolrajmuni
Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen, Thonburi

For distribution
Donated to
Those who come to share in the merit of the ordination ceremony.
10,000 copies.

This book contains quite a few photos of the Western disciples — including samanera ordinations and their arrival as a group at Don Muang Airport. I think most of the photos have already been circulated in other publications, but I hope to translate some of the text as this may provide further details that can help shed light on the activities at the time. The booklet also includes photos of the Chinese Association, including a group photo showing the Abbot welcoming visiting Chinese bhikshus (of the Mahayana tradition). These may be the same bhikshus who actually attended the ordination and remarked upon in the cine footage that was taken (with, I understand, commentary by Kapilavaddho himself):

And so this little bit of history continues to unfold...

Personal Diary Of Fuengsin Trafford - in 10 volumes!

My mother, the late Fuengsin Trafford, kept a personal diary, covering the years B.E. 2512 to 2517 (1969 to 1974). At the start, my family was in Southampton (Alpine Close), and then we moved to Strood in Kent in 1970 when I was just a toddler, staying there until 1975. I don't know what prompted my mother to maintain the diary - whether it was something she chose to do to help her adjust to British life or whether she was following some advice from a friend.

The diary is mainly in Thai and occupies a varied collection of notebooks, ten in all, most of them fairly small (bit less than A5 in size). There's an entry for almost every day, sometimes running to only a few lines, at others to more than a couple of pages. I estimate that there are 1500-2000 pages in total, but I can barely make out any of my mother's handwriting. :-(

Yet I can extract some simple patterns because there are many names in English (most of which I can decipher, but not all!) These include circles of friends and places visited (many mention Strood, Chatham, and Rochester, all places in the Medway area that are collectively seeking city status). Also recorded are literary works that she enjoyed reading, including a succession of French novels: Préséances (Mauriac), Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), La Porte Étroite (André Gide), L’Assommoire (Zola) and unspecified works by Balzac and Flaubert. There are also contemporary events that hit the national and international headlines, which could be an interesting complement to her collection of scrapbooks.

But how am I going to be able to make more than superficial use? I would dearly like to be able to read the handwriting, but for the moment I am dependent on others and so I'm inviting a few Thai friends to transcribe small portions to gain a better idea of what my mother wrote. I hope that these samples will help me to be able to read on my own.

Even then as there's so much material I shall have to target particular portions for reading, transcribing and translating. I could choose passages where certain people are mentioned etc., but perhaps there are more ingenious ways of delving into the text. Any suggestions would be welcome...

Recalling Memories through Pictures (using multimedia tools)

The processes of contact, feelings, perception and memory are closely interlinked. They are mediated through our senses and for most people the sense that usually predominates is sight. So in trying to put together the early life of my mother, the late Fuengsin Trafford, it's been helpful to carry out interviews based on sets of photographs. I haven't done much planning really, but rather have made things up as I've gone along, working intuitively; it's only now I can see more of the methodology that I've actually followed! I'll report here on that methodology and also on some of the technical tools that I've used to assist me.

My mother left hundreds of photos, which I've tried to arrange in sets according to distinct periods: early childhood, University days, her first years of teaching and so on. I created an index for each set and have pencilled in an incrementing number on the back of each photo, so that they are uniquely identified and there's some order to them, though (as I later would frequently find out) it's not chronological! I then scanned in the photos at a fairly high resolution (on an HP Scanjet 5370C, quite old now) and saved the files using the index as part of the file name. Having done this for a fair proportion of the collection, I've put copies in many places - on laptop hard drives, an external backup disk and memory sticks.

However, merely creating an archive without any descriptions is not much use! For some while I had intended to ask relatives and friends of my mother to enlighten me as to the context and details concerning the photos. I was finally able to set off for my mini fieldwork earlier this month (December), with a copy of the photos on my netbook, an Eee PC. When I met the 'interviewees' in Thailand I recorded the conversations using a digital voice recorder, saving copies of the recordings as files on the netbook.

It was the first time I had properly used such a recording device and my experience of conducting interviews was minimal (though I once did an interview with a Big Issue seller as part of a one day digital video course). So earlier this year I explored the world of digital audio recorders (a process that's familiar for me as I've purchased quite a lot of electronic devices :-) I settled on an Olympus WS-110, which is a compact device, somewhat smaller and lighter than e.g. a Nokia 8210 mobile phone. I chose it based on reviews of its audio quality - good microphone and high quality sampling (see e.g. reviews on Amazon); file format wasn't a concern for me. These devices are evolving rapidly and already Olympus lists this as an archived product, which means you should be able to find it new at a very good price on ebay (which is where I purchased it). Operating the device was very simple.

Then the netbook would serve as a digital lightbox and a basic means of navigation - for a given photo set all the photos would be the same folder and I'd run a slideshow using the wonderful Irfanview! The major handicap with the netbook is the relatively small screen - in many cases I needed to zoom in (my audio recording has a lot of tapping sounds!) When I was in conversation, I'd start with a preamble about what I was intending to do and asked for permission (it's worth confirming this afterwards as well). Although sometimes you know that everyone is happy, it's a good habit to get into in case I go on to do academic fieldwork, which is something I am deliberating. My main role felt like being a catalyst, with some general encouragement and a few questions sprinkled here and there, to elicit a few more details. There's no doubt a large swathe of literature on conducting such interviews, but I didn't read any.

On my return to the UK it was time to transcribe what had been said. To facilitate this, I wanted to associate the audio with the respective pictures (a tradeoff of using a separate recording device rather than doing the recording directly on the netbook). The intended result would be a video consisting of the photos that I had shown with each photo accompanied by the respective audio commentary, i.e. the comments from friends and relatives.

The solution I adopted was to use a video editing tool, Windows Movie Maker (WMM for short), which comes part of the Windows operating system. I guess it is similar in functionality, if not in elegance, with Apple's iMovie. My familiarity with WMM is very limited, so it's probably best if I summarise. The basic idea is to create one WMM file for each interview (WMM only provides a single audio track) so that in any given interview when playing back you know what was said about a particular picture. Here's a screenshot:

There are basically three areas: top left is the collection of files that I used to create the composition - this is where you import the photos and the audio and in this case I could import audio straightaway without conversion as it was in WMA format. Top right is the playback for the composition as a whole. However, the work is carried out below in the storyboard/timeline, which consists of parallel tracks. All I used was the Video and Audio tracks, dragging and dropping photos from the collection area, moving them about until there was approximate synchronisation.

However, in writing a biography I need words as well as pictures! The next step in the process is thus transcription. The method I'm using here is to create a large table with the first column containing the photos, one photo per row. Each of the other columns are to record the transcription from a particular interview. With reference to the WMM files I'm transcribing what was said about a particular photo in the corresponding cell of the table. Again I'm not being particularly sophisticated about the implementation - it's one mammoth table in a MS Word document. As long as it works, it is okay. For a formal research project I expect this would be better implemented in a database.

Handwriting bonus!

There have been some nice extras in undertaking this exercise. My mother has penned in Thai many documents, including a diary over several years. It's one thing to learn how to read the printed word, but a further step to decipher Thai handwriting! With these compositions I have some samples here that have been read out (and with the aid of a dictionary I can slowly spell them out myself). To be systematic, for each letter I can build up a set of samples that I can use later on.

For a few hours of recording, there are many more in organising and interpreting, but I find it fun to do and along the way I learn a little more about Thai history generally. For anyone contemplating learning more about their own family history, I'd recommend this as a stimulating and informative exercise.

Acknowledgements

I mustn't forget to thank everyone who has kindly provided information in the December interviews, including: Pah Vasana, Khun Jamras, Pah Umpai, P' Laem, P' Darunee & her mother, Khun Chaiwat, P' Yui, P' Ead, Na Tewee, Na Tun, and Pah Jah. If I could contact all those my mother knew well, this list would be very long ...