The Peace Chain – Peace from Around the World

While writing a post about the fortunes found in Baci chocolates, and my weird habit of keeping fortunes and giving them away, I thought about another thing I have come across.  It was something that I was so impressed with that I do sort of the same thing as with my little fortunes. Just like those fortunes, I keep some, some disappear (most end up in the laundry), and some I have given away.  It is weird how such small little things can become so special.  I kind of wonder what the friends I give these little things to think about them.

One thing that was really interesting, from the last post, was finding out that one of my Internet and SL buddies actually shared the same custom of keeping and distributing fortunes.  It was even more interesting to me to find out that we both kept these little Baci fortunes in our jewelry boxes.  I wonder if this should tell us something about how we felt about these little things.

Now that I consider the subject again, I think it may be a throw back to my childhood jewelry box, where I kept my worthless little trinkets, well, that were some how special to me.  Actually, there has not really been much that I was able to keep from my childhood, but I still in my jewelry box on my dresser, some few things from back then.  One day I should go in and take a peek at them.  I just find it amazing that the two of us could consider these little bits of wax paper important enough to place in our little chests of treasure.

Haha… I haven’t even told you what this other collection is.  Well, I will tell you where I keep it. You have seen the collection in the picture I use on my eight fold path posts, although the picture is probably not big enough.  On my little meditation altar, next to my little Buddha with the teaching mudra, and under some prayer beads, you will see a cracked ceramic bowl.  This bowl once held sand to stand incense in, but now has in it (and around it) these little ceramic thingies.  Here is another picture of that area just before I started this article.  It is the little ceramic thingies that this post is really about.

The Country Fair

For quite a few years, my other half and I have tried a really neat fair. We can’t make it every year, but each year it seems we make it more of a point to try and go. I always enjoy going to the fair, because there seems to be a easy feeling about it. Just a relaxing time.

The Country Fair, as it is called, is held once a year near in a small rural town around one of the more “liberal” places in this region, at least that is what I have been told. I guess you might call the fair “hippie friendly”. Well, considering it is run by “hippies” I would hope so. It is certainly a wonderful place to let your freak flag fly, well, if you still own one or know what one is.

I love taking pictures at the fair, although I try to use discretion.  I always feel like too many cameras will ruin the mojo of the place, well what mojo is left. The fair itself has been running since the 60′s and I believe the Grateful Dead actually played there.   It has changed quite a bit I hear since those early days, but that’s just how things go. I have a personal collection of photos of people just enjoying themselves.  I love how the photos over the last decade or so that I have visited the fair seem to meld together.  It is nice to actually recognize people at the fair from year to year.  You can hardly tell which year the photos are from because the fair is so slow to change.

The fair happens every year on the weekend after the fourth of July, and I have yet to be caught there in the rain. The location of the fair allows for cool breeze, even when it is real hot. By the evening ride back home, I always seem to feel appropriately sunned, cool, and relaxed, although the dust kicks up a bit and there is the now traditional picking the dirt out your nose event once we get home.  Hahahah…  “how much mud did you get out in that pick?”

But this post is not about the fair, perhaps I will share some more stories about the fair with you at another time.  This is about something that I found at the fair that I just thought was very special.  On to the ceramic thingies…

Just a Wonderful Idea

It must have been at either my first or second fair where I saw this cart and guy who I affectionately called for years later “the peace dude“.

The peace dude has made literally hundreds of thousands of these little ceramic pendent’s that you can wear on a chain, necklace, or these little hemp strings. Each of these pendants has the word “Peace” molded on it, which is neat in itself, but what is even cooler is that they are all in different languages. The peace dude gives all these pendants away for free, but of course takes donations. I just thought this was just super neat.

Here is the pamphlet I picked up this year to go with my little thingies:

I believe that the number he has made is now over 400,000 at the time of this writing.

So over the years, as I have wandered the fair, I have also looked for the peace dude. Each time that I have found him and his cart, I have picked up many of these pendants.  Each year I will think of who I will give them to, and what languages just ring with me, and I will get my self a handful.  This is actually one of the highlights of the fair for me.  Funny to think about that.  Kind of a little secret pleasure of mine, although I find I never spend enough time at the cart.

Rarely do I not have someone in mind when I pick some up.  I’ll always get a few more.  Some languages are more difficult to find, for example I rarely if ever can find a Tibetan one.  This is only the second year I have been able to find one.  I always end up giving the ones I love away.  Isn’t it funny how that works?

So… I thought this year I would share my collection of peace pendants with you, at least the ones I have left.

After years of picking these things up, and I get a few of them a year. I’m actually quite shocked that I have so few left. Maybe the cat’s are giving them away too…

Peace in Japanese hei-wa

Peace in Italian Yay!

Peace in Hebrew shalom

Peace

she da…

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