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MJJM - Michael Meteyer

ONLY CONNECT... Wanderings and wonderings from Anchorage to Zanzibar; issues in blindness, and fun with guide dogs; connecting with friends and family.

Michael Meteyer is currently a Field Representative an internationally acclaimed dog guide school. Part of his job involves traveling around the country and the world to interview applicants for admission to the various programs at the school. Previous to this, Michael had been in the blindness field for nearly two decades. Previous to that he had been: a carpenter; a commercial salmon fisherman; a taxi cab driver; a production manager for a clothing firm in Chinatown, San Francisco (didn't last long there); a sheep rancher; a horse rancher; a flower rancher (!?); a tree surgeon; a bookstore manager; a Zen monk (just kidding, but close); a framer in an art gallery, and, in seventh grade (Saint Boniface School, the Men's Club in the basement) a bowling pin setter. The last job required skills which, alas, are no longer in demand. Also I've published some stuff.

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Joined on: March 17th 2009
Last Login: November 4th 2009

Blog Entries: 17
Photos: 59

TB Code: [blogger=113798]
Status: BLOGGER

Blogs & Travel Journals

by MJJM, order by Date newest first.

By MJJM
November 3rd 2009

Only Two Months Left Asia » Bhutan » Trashigang

This year has travelled more than I have, and faster. Only two months left for the Raffle Quiz. Here's are new RQs: 11.1: What is the national bird of Bhutan? 11.2: What year were USA advisors first sent to Vietnam? 11.3: Lo Muthang: where? [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
July 21st 2009

Nepal Asia » Nepal » Himalayas

Monks at Pema Tsal Pokhara
" ALL of you are our mothers!"

Has it been three years already since we've been in Nepal? I had gone there to visit one the schools that our friend, Lama Pema Wangdak, had established for refugees in the Tibetan diaspora. Lama Pema had devoted 10 years to creating a Tibetan language based Braille system, Buryig. He was also establishing the first mainstream school for visually impaired Tibetan refugees in another one of his schools, in Mundgod, India. Kate and I were each sponsoring young monks who lived at Pema T'sal, Pokhara. Our friend Marylin and her daughter Manon had already been in the monastery for the summer [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
July 18th 2009

AN EYE FULL Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris

Eiffel 1

No one can rival the Pomp of the French in most Circumstances: but for the 220th anniversary of Bastille Day, as well as the 120th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower... you knew it would be something special. So, Kate and I rallied our creaking bones from our hotel on the Rue de Corcelles, then slowly tumbled downhill past the Arc de Triumph towards the Trocadero, where we hung a hard left and ended up on the North Bank, by the Ave. New York, in an attempt to miss as much of the crowd of 800,000 as possible. In any event we [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
July 17th 2009

Somewhere in Southern France... Europe » France » Languedoc-Roussillon » Cévennes National Park

Le Mas
North entrance

(The names of the people and places are disguised in this post...) Some forty years ago I left the East Coast to visit my friends "Robert" and "Angela." I was on my way to France to become a novelist. Robert and Angela were hippies, working in the leather trade. We lived together for a while in their two room cabin near City College in San Francisco. We "dumpster dived" in the Safeway bins for day -old bread and other delicacies just past their expiration date, but nonetheless edible. Robert went on to become an executive, then a CEO at a well [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
July 4th 2009

The Parisian Gypsy, A Bridge and the Goldish Ring Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris

Pont Neuf

We were on the Pont Neuf. Beneath us the Seine was roiling liquid jade. Above us, in the Parisian sky, a bevy of winged, chubby cherubs were floating, disguised as clouds. We knew better. In front if us a neatly dressed attractive woman in her thirties was smiling warmly at Kate and me. We were strangers passing in the day, our smiles and eyes all complicit in the shared beguilement of a perfect moment. "Bon jour," she said "Bon jour right back at ya bien sure" we answered. We were in a buoyant mood, freely dispensing smiles and bilingual idioms garnished [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
May 2nd 2009

Why Time Is No Problem in Morocco, Part 2 Africa » Morocco » Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaer » Rabat

MM by Door

"We think you are insulting us," said Akmed, the blind Moroccan, "when you say that time is no problem in Morocco". As the Technical Coordinator for the Peace Corps Orientation and Mobility program (Stage, '93) I was hosting a seminar for the administrators of the blind schools from all over Morocco. I had been given two days notice to coordinate it. My first response: a PANEL! I figured if I got a panel of people together to discuss blindness issues, spoke real slowly, and used complex American jargon that would take the translator thrice as long to find an Arabic equivalent, [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
April 30th 2009

Brazil South America » Brazil » São Paulo » São Paulo

Sao Paulo 2

I've been back a full day. Even though the gardens of Casa Bella are in bloom, the roses in full flush, the Passionflower vine tangling with the fragrant clematis, each of them so heavy and prolific they threaten to pull down the fence on the north border, I've the itch to go away again: May Go Be With You. In my mind it's back to Brazil. Sao Paulo is a massive megagigaurbanopolis of a city with tireless people and an air of frenetic exhaustion. The Paulistas pride themselves on their fierce work ethic, in contrast to those silly Cariocas (inhabitants of [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
April 16th 2009

The Trek to San Miniato Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Florence

MM by the Battlements

Kate and I were in Florence, staying at the Pensione Bretagna, where Kate had lived for a year back in the day, when she was a twenty- something year old student in Gonzaga's Junior Year Abroad Program. Ah, Firenze. The Pensione Bretagna was a few steps away from the Arno River. From our window, if we leaned out and looked to the left, you might spy the most beautiful small bridge in the world, the Ponte Santa Trinita, which I stared at for endless moments whenever I could. There is something about the curve of it, and the way it suggests [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
April 11th 2009

Lama Pema Makes Good Momos Asia » India » Himachal Pradesh » Dharamsala

Lama Pema Makes Good Momos Lama Pema is an extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist monk based in New York, constantly traveling, an artist, inventor, musician, linguist and teacher. Among his inventions: a complex of templates that can be constructed to form a chair one day, a bed the next, a house if you had enough of them; an artistic gravity defying stainless steel whirling prayer device; an architectural system for the balance of hot and cool air; and a Tibetan/Sanskrit based Braille system (the Buryig) that took him ten years to develop. Lama Pema is a pointman for questions on Tibet and Tibe [View Full Entry]

By MJJM
April 5th 2009

The Glass Desert North America » United States » Arizona » Phoenix

MARCH ANSWERS Congrats to: Tara C, Cheryl, Dixchief, Dr. Tom M., Liz M, Matt M, Byrnesie, Leda, Steve K, Connie K and others who have correctly answered one or more of the RQs (Taffle Questions) for Win the USA. Answers are: RQ1: Name the writer (or the book) with which the following quote is associated: "Only...connect". A: E.M. Foster "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer." From HOWARD'S END Foster, who also [View Full Entry]

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