Last year, I purchased a Persimmon tree to plant in our backyard, but had to wait until this Spring for the tree to be shipped. Unfortunately, the seller sent it to someone else, and I seemed to have received four organic plants instead. The company told me to keep them since shipping the plants back and forth would likely kill them. So I planted them and one of the plants is organic basil, which has been thriving in our garden. Yesterday I noticed many butterflies around them and took the following shots.
Fiery Skipper on organic basil.Fiery Skipper on organic basil.Cabbage White butterfly on organic basil.Cabbage White on on organic basil.
My Ichi Kei Jiro Persimmon tree eventually arrived. I planted right away, but so far it has only one leaf left!
This past week, I used AI to generate images inspired by a few selected scenes described in Village Teacher. When it comes to images, I quickly found out that using AI without a paid subscription can lead to severe limitations on what one can do. Generating images consumes a lot of computer resources, and non-paying customers like myself will usually face delays or severe limitations on what we can ask AI to do.
For example, ChatGPT usually took a long time to generate an image according to my specifications. Then after one more try the next day, it told me I had to wait for the following week to continue refining the image. Google Gemini processed faster and allowed me to continue refining the image generated until I got what I wanted. Copilot was also more cooperative, but I did not like the images that it generated.
In Village Teacher, I had a chapter describing how Teacher Tâm and Giang, the French-Vietnamese young woman that he befriended, went to Thuận An beach near Huế and spent the day there. They walked on the beach as Giang pointed out features of interest. Below is the image generated by Gemini at my request:
Tâm and Giang walking on the beach at Thuận An.
After Gemini generated the image, I noticed the lack of footprints on the sand. Gemini readily agreed to add them. It also showed Teacher Tâm carrying a book. At my request, the book was changed to an empty conch.
In another scene, Tâm and Giang went to visit Thiên Mụ pagoda in Huế, Gemini generated the following image in less than two minutes.
Tâm and Giang at the entrance to Thiên Mụ pagoda.
This second image seems less natural than the one above it, and I am not sure that there could be so many Royal Poinciana trees around the main tower of Thiên Mụ,
Finally, I used Google Lens to search for images and people similar to those in the above two images. There were none, but I will probably not use the images for my book, even though I like the first image.
By now, most of you have heard of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, and some of you may have been using it. You could even be working for one of the companies here in the United States, or in other countries, which are developing AI software and its various applications.
One of rumors circulating about AI is that some people, especially students, have used it to generate term papers or even entire dissertation required for graduation. Some of the more salacious rumors may be apocryphal, or they may be not.
Yesterday, I decided to use AI to generate a review my book, Village Teacher, published in 2012. I used three AI tools, all available for free to almost anyone with a personal computer able to connect to the Internet: ChatGPT by a company called OpenAI, Copilot by Microsoft, and Gemini by Google. I just asked each AI tool to review Village Teacher, without saying that I am the book’s author.
Once I typed in my request for the review, each AI engine processed for about a minute or less before displaying its review. I did not encounter any problem and the wait was nothing compared to what I had to go through in the past at the office. Here are the results.
I. OpenAI ChatGPT‘s Review
About the Author & Origins
Nguyễn Trọng Hiền—who publishes under the name neihtn—self-published Village Teacher in May 2012 after nearly four years of writing nights and weekends neihtn+1.
He is based in the U.S. but infuses the book with deep knowledge of Vietnam’s history and culture, aiming to introduce younger Vietnamese, especially those abroad, to their heritage Elizabeth Gauffreauneihtn.
Setting & Plot
The novel unfolds at the tail end of the 19th century, during early French colonization. It follows Tâm, a humble village schoolteacher, journeying to the imperial city of Huế to take a crucial exam that could elevate him to a mandarin or send him back home Goodreads+1.
In Huế, Tâm rescues Giang, a young woman of mixed Vietnamese-French heritage. Their burgeoning bond faces societal resistance, political machinations, and threats that test their resolve Goodreads+1.
Praise from Readers
Goodreads and blog reviewers celebrate the book for its vibrant storytelling and rich historical tapestry:
Nicua praises its “colourful descriptions,” smooth narrative, and accurate portrayal of colonial-era society Goodreads.
Elizabeth Gauffreau highlights Tam’s humility, the nuanced love story, and how the novel balances political intrigue with emotional depth Goodreads.
Goodreads reviews by T.W. Dittmer and Bonnie DeMoss echo this sentiment—enjoying the compelling drama, well-drawn characters, and historical authenticity Goodreads.
Blogs like Bonnie Reads and Writes and Liz Gauffreau’s site applaud the narrative for weaving culture, romance, and history seamlessly, especially from an indie writer’s standpoint Elizabeth GauffreauBonnie Reads and Writes.
Constructive Criticism
One blogger, Aud, notes that the story’s characters sometimes feel one-dimensional—“too patently white or black”—and could benefit from more moral complexity. The translation of poetic Vietnamese lines into English also didn’t satisfy this reader, especially those deeply familiar with the original poetry neihtn.
Final Thoughts
Strengths:
Exceptional historical detail and cultural insight.
A heartfelt love story that reflects larger societal struggles.
Clear, engaging prose that brings colonial Vietnam to life.
Considerations:
Occasional reliance on archetypes rather than morally gray characters.
Some poetic translations may not fully capture the nuance of the original language.
Recommendation If you’re drawn to immersive historical fiction enriched by cultural depth and gentle romance, Village Teacher is a rewarding read. While it may benefit from deeper characterization, its strengths in world-building, historical context, and emotional resonance make it memorable—especially for those curious about Vietnam’s colonial era.
II. Microsoft Copilot’s Review
📖 Book Review: Village Teacher by Nguyễn Trọng Hiền
Set in late 19th-century Vietnam during the early years of French colonization, Village Teacher is a sweeping historical novel that blends romance, political intrigue, and cultural reflection into a richly textured narrative.
🧠 Plot & Themes
At the heart of the story is Tâm, a humble village schoolteacher who travels to the imperial city of Huế to take the prestigious palace examinations. There, he meets Giang, a young woman of Vietnamese-French descent. Their budding romance is tested by societal prejudice, family opposition, and the turbulent political landscape of colonial Vietnam2.
The novel explores:
The clash between tradition and modernity
The complexities of identity under colonial rule
The power of love and resilience in the face of adversity
✍️ Writing Style & Historical Depth
Nguyễn Trọng Hiền’s prose is thoughtful and immersive, with vivid descriptions that bring the setting to life. His research into Vietnamese society and history is evident, offering readers a nuanced view of a country grappling with foreign domination and internal transformation.
The omniscient narration provides clarity without sacrificing emotional depth, and the pacing—despite the book’s 400+ pages—is surprisingly brisk. Readers have praised the novel’s ability to balance historical exposition with compelling character development.
❤️ Reader Impressions
Many reviewers found themselves deeply invested in the characters, especially Tâm, whose integrity and quiet strength anchor the story. The love story between Tâm and Giang is portrayed with subtlety and emotional resonance, making the stakes feel personal and profound.
III. Google Gemini Review
Book Review: Village Teacher by Nguyen Trong Hien
Village Teacher is a historical novel by Nguyen Trong Hien (who also writes under the name “Neihtn,” his first name and initials spelled backward). The book is set in Vietnam during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a tumultuous period of French colonization.
The story centers on Lê Duy Tâm, a brilliant and virtuous young scholar who travels to the imperial city of Huế to take the national examinations. These examinations are the gateway to a prestigious position within the mandarin class, the scholarly ruling elite of Vietnam. Tâm’s final essay, which advocates for reforms to modernize the educational system, sets the stage for a story that intertwines personal ambition with the political and cultural upheaval of the era.
The plot kicks off with a classic meet-cute: while walking through the city, Tâm rescues a young woman on horseback who is being accosted by ruffians. This woman, Giang, is the daughter of a powerful Frenchman and a wealthy Vietnamese woman, and their meeting sparks a love story that becomes the heart of the novel.
Village Teacher is more than just a historical romance, however. It’s a deep dive into Vietnamese history, language, and culture. The novel explores the clash of old and new, as Giang teaches Tâm the new Romanized script for Vietnamese, a stark contrast to the traditional Chinese characters that define his scholarly world. The author, who is an expert in Vietnamese history, meticulously weaves in details about the time period, from the societal norms and political factions to the literary traditions and daily life.
The main characters are well-developed, and the narrative navigates the many obstacles Tâm and Giang face, including the reactionary attitudes of a mandarin, the resistance of a protective mother, and the malicious schemes of a bullying village headman. The struggles of the talented but less powerful protagonist against the entrenched wealthy and influential are a central theme, one that resonates even in contemporary society.
The book has been praised for its rich historical detail, its engaging love story, and its ability to transport the reader to a different time and place in Vietnam, one not dominated by the more commonly portrayed war narratives. Some reviewers have noted that the author’s narrative style, which adopts the conventions of a 19th-century tale, may feel a bit stilted to modern readers, but this is a deliberate choice that contributes to the book’s authentic feel.
Overall, Village Teacher is a beautifully written and compelling historical novel. It is highly recommended for anyone interested in Vietnamese history and culture, or for those who simply enjoy a well-crafted historical love story with a rich and detailed setting.
Please comment and share what you think of the above reviews by the three AI engines. Do you have any favorite, or any criticism of them?
I plan to use the same three AI engines to generate color images to replace the book’s cover. Hopefully, I will have some images to post on this blog in the near future.
This week I drove to Bethany Beach, DE to visit some friends. For that I had to drive over the Indian River Inlet Bridge, officially named Charles W. Cullen Bridge and completed in 2012. It is a beautiful 2,600 ft (792 m) long cable-stayed four-lane bridge with its pylons anchored on solid dry land to avoid erosion by ocean waves. The bridge cables are blue and at night they are illuminated with blue light which is supposed to help bats and birds avoid collision with the bridge. The bridge also has a 12-ft wide pedestrian and bicycle path.
I could only take a few shots of the bridge with my cell phone as my camera did not work that day.
Indian River Inlet Bridge.Indian River Inlet Bridge.Indian River Inlet Bridge.
Zinnias are the quintessential flowers of summer. They come in all shapes, colors, and, most important for me, are easy to grow from seeds. I sowed some seeds this Spring and several plants have been blooming in our front and back yards despite the mini drought currently affecting our region.
This year Cleome or Spider flowers are showing up in the flower beds without any help from me. I have not been watering them, and they don’t seem to complain!
Red foxes have been living in a corner of our backyard for as long as we have been in our house. In early June, a mother Red Fox was supervising her cubs playing there.
Red Foxes playing under supervision.
The mother was very suspicious and kept watching me for as long as her cubs were playing (I was a good 150 ft from her)!
Red Fox mother watching photographer.
At least a Swallowtail did not mind me.
Swallowtail feeding from Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias Incarnata) growing by our deck. Swallowtail and Milkweed.
I have not posted much since the beginning of this 2025 mainly because I have been involved in helping a friend translate his book from Vietnamese into English. However, two months ago in late May I went to Wells Mills County Park in Waretown, NJ to photograph Mountain Laurel at the peak of their blooming season. I walked for no more than two miles and saw many Mountain Laurel trees and flowers.
Mountain Laurel prefer to grow under the canopy of tall trees like the Atlantic White Cedars in the following photo.
Atlantic White Cedar in Wells Mills County Park provide lots of shade for Mountain Laurel.White Mountain Laurel flowers.White Mountain Laurel.Red Mountain Laurel.Pink Mountain Laurel.Red Mountain Laurel. This tree was blooming profusely out in the open with full sunlight and no shade.
I am sure these Mountain Laurel trees have fancy names at garden centers that sell them. Unfortunately, the above trees were growing wild and untagged at Wells Mills County Park.
The weather is still quite cool. At this moment it is 33 °F (almost 0 °C) outside. I hope the flowers will survive and be able to put on their spring show as in previous years!
On Tuesday of this week I went to Edwin B. Fosrsythe National Wildlife Refuge. There were not very many birds or ducks, except for a flock of probably 2,000 Snow Geese resting by one side of Wildlife Drive.
The geese were chatting noisily, drowning out the sounds of car engines passing by them. Then, all of a sudden, the noise increased severalfold and the entire flock rose into the sky.
I took the following photo of a Bristlecone Pine in Great Basin National Park in 2015. This kind of tree is known to live for thousands of years, and, even after they die, their gnarled remains endure for a long time, becoming as hard as the rocks around them. I cropped the photo to give it a more dramatic look.
Here are some images that I did not have a chance to post these last few days.
Goldenrod and bees at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge last November.Blue Jay at birdfeeder.Two Northern Cardinals perched on magnolia tree during snowfall.Blue Jay with Northern Cardinal in background.
The second storm of the season spared us, dumping just 1.5 inches of snow on the ground. The new snow was powdery and made everything look white. Our backyard birds seemed agitated as they feasted themselves on a new batch of sunflower seeds in the birdfeeder. For a few hours I saw at least ten red Northern Cardinals and their female counterparts, perhaps four Blue Jays, and many Juncos, Sparrows, Chickadees , Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers.
Male Northern Cardinal.Female Northern Cardinal on Butterfly Magnolia branch.Male Northern Cardinal.Female Northern Cardinal.Blue Jay.Blue Jay.Dark-eyed Junco.
We are supposed to get more snow this coming Saturday. I’ll have to hurry to the store and get more sunflower seeds.
It snowed yesterday, giving us about two inches of snow, enough to cover our yard with a white blanket. I hurried to refill the birdfeeder. In no time the Juncos and other small birds came to feast on the sunflower seeds. There were also several Northern Cardinals, the males resplendent in their Red coats.
Male Northern Cardinal.Male Northern Cardinal.Male Northern Cardinal.Male Northern Cardinal.
I have not been able to go on any photo shoot since undergoing cataract surgery in both eyes over the past three weeks. However, yesterday I reprocessed some of the photos taken at Glacier National Park in the fall of 2015. With the latest updates and improvement in software over the past nine years, I hope you will like the photos below of birch trees and yellow leaves.
Yellow leaves on birch trees near Two Medicine Lake.Yellow leaves on birch trees on a hill near Two Medicine Lake.Yellow leaves on birch trees near Two Medicine Lake.Yellow leaves on birch trees near Two Medicine Lake.Near Lower Two Medicine Lake. Mostly green conifers, with some yellow leaves interspersed.
Here are some photos I took of some birds at the refuge in September at the refuge.
Great Egret catching breakfast.Nonbreeding American Avocets foraging for food. Immature Snowy Egret with yellowish green legs.Immature Snowy Egret taking off.Greater Yellow Legs.
I will be off for the next few weeks due to cataract surgery, but will be back in November. In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to a beautiful Vietnamese song. The three sopranos are Vietnamese Americans born in the USA. One of the three, Teresa Mai, in 2022 was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album .The song is about the fall season. It was composed by Cung Tiến in 1953 in Sài Gòn at the age of 14. He passed away in 2022 in Los Angeles, CA.
The River Wild is the name of a movie made in 1994 featuring Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon. I have not seen it but when I travelled near Kootenai River in Montana nine years ago, the owner of a restaurant said that I should take the time to photograph the Kootenai Falls where parts of the movie had been filmed. Shown below are two of the many shots I took that day.
Kootenai FallsKootenai Falls.
If you have seen the movie, let me know whether you recognize Kootenai Falls as depicted in the movie.
I took the following photos over several weeks from late summer into early fall.
Tickseed Sunflower along Wildlife Drive at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.
The refuge’s Wildlife Drive is about 8 miles long, 5 of them covered with Goldenrod bushes on both sides of the road.
Goldenrod with bees feeding on it.Swamp Rose Mallow.Red Swamp Rose Mallow with enormous flowers 12 in (30 cm) in diameter.A more modest Swamp Rose Mallow.Much smaller wild Asters,
Nearer to home, our town library planted a butterfly garden this past summer. I used my Samsung Galaxy cellphone to take the following shots.
FlowerPower Spider Purple Osteospermum.
However, the bees seemed to prefer yellow flowers.
Bumble Bee of yellow Chrysanthemum flower.Bumble Bee of yellow Chrysanthemum flower.
When she came home after their wedding, she was sixteen and he was five. He was the only child of his family. His parents treasured him more than gold. His only problem was that he was afflicted with many health issues.
His grandfather was a small merchant who had made some money. His grandmother was a devout Buddhist. Once she pulled his fortune out of a pile of sticks at a temple filled with incense, it told her that she needed to marry him to a girl older than him so that he could overcome the many adversities the future had in store for him.
Amid the fragrant incense fumes and the sound of temple bells, Grandmother naturally believed in what the Buddha had revealed to her about his fate. She discussed with Grandfather and they decided to make the proper inquiries throughout the region to find a partner in life for their grandchild.
She came from a family with five mouths to feed and a small field measuring a meager few tenths of an acre. They could barely grow enough to eat rice congees at their meals. One winter, wanting to earn some extra money to supplement their income, her father followed people up a mountain to gather rocks for sale. Before he could break any rock, one crushed his back. They had to sell all their possessions, including their small field, to treat his wound.
Every day her father could only lie in bed, wanting to die but not being able to. Her two brothers were still very young. Her family misery, the laments of her mother weighed heavily on her youth years and her thoughts.
The matchmaker lady came and told them: “Give your girl in marriage and you will have money to treat his back, with any surplus going toward your other household expenses.”
Her mother shook her head. How could she let her innocent daughter go into an inferno? But the girl pleaded: “Mother, let me go. With that sum of money, perhaps we can get father cured?”
The music welcoming the new bride filled the alley right in front of their small house. Her father lay in his bed, pummeling his chest. “My girl is sacrificing her youth to marry someone who is not worthy of her, just to rescue me and save the rest of our family!”
With tears rolling down her cheeks, her mother fastened a brooch to her girl’s hair. She wore a red tunic as she prostrated before her father. Next she dropped the red veil over her face. Only then did the tears come, mixing with the powder on her cheeks.
From then on, her entire life, including her matrimonial duties, belonged to a infant who was not yet aware of what had happened.
Vegetables street vendor in Hà Nội, 2016.
Her young mother-in-law was not a severe or difficult woman to please. Her father-in-law lived far away and had no need for three bows and nine greetings. Her husband obeyed his mother who told him to call his wife “elder sister”.
Every day, in addition to helping her mother-in-law tend to their vegetable garden, she had to perform her house cleaning duties. Once that was done, she cut medicinal herbs prescribed for her husband and boiled them to prepare a decoction for him to drink. She had to make clothes for him, help him play, let him sleep. Sometimes he would be coughing all night, or had a fever. She stayed awake all night to apply cold compresses to relieve his fever, and to give him water or medicine to drink. In her heart she treated him like a younger brother.
When she met neighbors, she kept her head bent and walked silently past them.
Whether his fate followed what his fortune had predicted or whether he owed it to his own strength, his health improved. Under her care, he vanquished one by one all of his ailments, the minor ones as well as the major ones: whooping cough, meningitis, sores and so on. Gradually he became more attached to her than to his own mother.
At times, when no one was watching, or when he was sleeping, she cried and asked herself: “Is this how my marriage will always be? Is this my husband?”
When he was old enough to go to school, she sewed him a handbag, and led him by the hand to his class at school. Whenever they saw her, the village children would holler: “The bride, what does the bride do? Turn out the light, blow the candle out…”
She did not know whether she was sad or hurt. She bent her head down, her face turning red, then pale white, then red again.
One night, he was already under the bed cover when he said: “Elder sister, I love you!”
She, the sister, was his wife! His wife was her! She looked at his young and innocent face, and she kept silent. For the first time, she laughed bitterly.
His father lost his entire fortune gambling. Within just a few days he lost everything that the family had built. He and his parents argued and quarreled, after which his father went away. Nobody ever saw him again. Rumors said that soldiers arrested him and forced him to work as a laborer.
Her mother-in-law had some jewelry left on her and pawned them. She discussed with her daughter-in-law and they agreed to buy three acres of land. They could not hire any worker, so the two women had to roll up their pants and work in the fields. At home she was used to working and helping her parents cultivate their land. She had experienced every hardship and pitied her mother-in-law who had never planted rice.
A well-to-do family went from riches to rags overnight. The father had left and disappeared forever. The mother was ashamed and was determined to work hard. However, she soon felt sick and was unable to get up. Before she died, she grabbed her daughter-in-law’s hand and begged:
“He is still young and innocent. I beg you to look after him. If you want to leave, I implore you to wait until he becomes an adult.”
She took his hand and held it tight. From then on his fate was led by her hand. She was a woman who revered loyalty and gratitude. Nothing had been promised, but she was with him as she had always been. From then on, even she could not tell whether she was his wife, his elder sister, or his mother.
She worked hard day and night to allow him to continue his studies. Their life went through many hardships but remained calm in the deep sisterly love she felt for him, a love as vast as everlasting maternal love.
When he graduated from secondary school and succeeded in his entrance exams to the University of Pedagogy, she packed his bags for him and accompanied him to his new school. She looked at the young man who had just passed puberty. She had raised him from when he was a little boy. She told him to try to study hard, nothing else. But he said:
“Elder Sister, wait for me to return!”
Her heart beat softly for a short time, but her face kept the same daily expression. However, no one noticed the faint smile that appeared on one side of her lips. That smile was not a result of what he had said. It was because she realized that the labor that she had invested in raising him had born fruit for the first time.
She continued working the rice fields. She was frugal, ate little, and did not acquire any new clothes so that she could send him money.
The first two years of college, every Lunar New Year and every summer, he came home and helped her work in the rice fields. But in the third year, he wrote that he was not coming back that summer. He said he wanted to find a job somewhere else and earn money to help relieve her burden.
She was then 29 years old. In the countryside, a woman like her would have been the mother of several children. The village folks told her that she had done more than enough. She had raised him from childhood and allowed him to go to college. She was older than him by eleven years. She should not wait for him to come back.
She did not know whether she was performing her duties as a wife: after all, a dozen years ago, she had arrived at his home as a newly married bride. Perhaps she had been taken in by what he had said: “Wait for me to return!” Or was she a mother worrying about her young child who now lived far away? Whatever! She continued to wait for him. She kept quiet and went on living as she had been for many years.
Finally, it was time for his graduation. He came home. He was now a grown man, a mature man with the bearing and spirit of a learned scholar.
She on the other hand had labored hard for many years. Her beauty had disappeared under the early morning dew and the relentless sun. She looked like a genuine countrywoman.
In her heart, she had considered him as her dear younger brother. She could not believe it when he said:
“Elder Sister, I am now a fully grown man! Now we can be husband and wife!”
She looked at him as if she was in a dream. She was afraid she misunderstood him. Was he a man who respected love and its obligations?
He remained in town and taught school. She worked on the rice fields at home. They had a boy and a girl.
Later he went to the region where there was a new oil well. Due to his teaching credentials and experience, he was promoted to be the principal of a secondary school. However, until he had established his household registration, their children had to remain at home in her care. Once he received his household registration, he came home and took his family with him back to his post.
The school teachers came to help their principal move in. A tactless teacher came forward and asked:
“Mr. Principal, why did you bring just your mother and your brother? What about your wife and the children?”
A heavy silence fell on the crowd of people. Everyone turned to look at her. She felt ashamed and did not know what to say. She smiled awkwardly and turned to him with a guilty expression. He looked her straight in the eyes and said to everyone in a booming voice:
“This is your Elder Sister. I am now your Principal thanks to her. I even owe her my life.”
She heard what he said and tears invaded her eyes.
Now she is 72. Because she had worked so hard, her health was poor and she walked painfully because of arthritis. He was 61, and had retired for a long time.
For the past two years, they had moved to their new house. When it was not raining, not too cold, one can meet them at the flower garden. She held a walking stick in one hand. He helped her on the other side. They walked slowly, step by step. He led her and cared for her as if she was a young child learning to walk.
Those who knew their story admired the sight of the couple, moved by the story of their love, one that was deep and enduring. He told them:
“She brought me life, provided warmth for my mother, gave me a house to live in. Now, for the second half of my life, I am going to be the one taking care of her.”
He led her by the hand, like when she led him as a five-year-old boy. They both smiled, their smiles as beautiful as the clouds on a summer’s horizon.
Ten days ago, I was on the jetty at Barnegat Lighthouse. It was a beautiful sunny day, not too hot. There were many people, maybe a hundred, walking or sitting on benches. Some were strolling like I was, others were down on the rocks fishing, but most were just sitting on benches, enjoying the light sea breeze and sunlight. As I moved through them I saw the following birds.
Double-Crested Cormorant. The double crests were not visible as mating season is over.
There were some shorebirds walking on the jetty or on the rocks. They moved casually through the crowd without any apprehension. I followed a couple of them, and they seemed to just ignore me.
Ruddy Turnstone.Ruddy Turnstone picking at a hoop cereal.Sanderling searching for food on the rocks.Sanderling searching for food in seaweed.
I took the following shots of a Great Blue Heron stretching at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge on 9/12/2024 at 9:11 AM. It had been standing for quite some time on top of a wood piling on one side of a salt marsh. Once I started clicking away, it began stretching.
Great Blue Heron on top of wood piling.Great Blue Heron beginning to stretch.Great Blue Heron continuing stretch.Great Blue Heron finishing its stretch.Great Blue Heron after stretch.
After the above shot, this Great Blue Heron suddenly flew up and away. I tried to take some more shots, but none of them turned out well.
American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis) and Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) are two beautiful butterflies that I have misidentified in the past, calling both Painted Lady. Two days ago, I went to a Monarch Waystation about a mile from the Barnegat Lighthouse to look for Monarch butterflies but instead found many American and Painted Lady butterflies flying around and dining on vivid Buddleia flowers.
According to the Missouri Department of Conservation “The easiest way to tell them apart is the eyespots on the underside of the hindwing: American lady has 2 large ones, and Painted lady has 4 small ones.” Now looking at my photos, that distinction allows me to correctly give them their names.
American Lady.Painted Lady.American Lady.Painted Lady.American Lady.Painted Lady.
There are other minor differences that also help distinguish these two butterflies apart, especially when they are seen from above when the spots are not visible. Unfortunately, I did not take many of those shots. To end this post, here are two images of two kinds of butterflies that are not so hard to identify. They were also feasting at the same waystation.
Sachem Skipper.Monarch Butterfly.
It was still early in the season for Monarch migration, so I hope to go back there in about two weeks to see many more Monarchs at the waystation.
I had to return to the library, and this time I brought my camera along. Many Sachem Skippers were still there having a great time with the buddleia and other vegetation planted for them.
Sachem Skipper.Sachem Skipper.Sachem Skipper on Buddleia flowers.
There was another white flower that I can’t identify. If you know its name please comment.
As I exited our town’s library yesterday, I saw several Sachem Skippers (Atalopedes campestris) feeding on flowers . Not having a camera with me, I took the following photos with my Samsung Galaxy cellphone.
Sachem Skipper.Sachem Skipper.Sachem Skipper.
I am not an expert on butterflies, but I think these are three females of the species because of the presence of white dots on their wings. They are about 1.5 in (3.8 cm) in length.
Ten days ago at the EBF refuge, I saw a male Osprey eating a fish he had caught while a juvenile Osprey was chirping loudly to ask him to bring the fish to it. He had already eaten his part, the head, and the rest belonged to the Osprey chick. August is somewhat late in the Osprey breeding season and young Ospreys should have already grown up and flown away.
Male Osprey with captured fish.
Suddenly the male Osprey flew toward the nest with the rest of the fish.
Male Osprey bringing the fish to the nest as the Osprey chick started to fly away.
The male Osprey briefly stood alone in the nest.
Male Osprey in the nest.
Then it took off, still grasping the fish, to bring it to the young Osprey.
Male Osprey flying the fish toward the young Osprey.
I no longer saw either Osprey and stopped taking any photo for a minute or two. Suddenly the young Osprey was back at the nest, with the fish. It then began eating it.
Young Osprey with fish that it began eating.Young Osprey looking up from fish eating. Note the white edging on its feathers, an indication that it is a juvenile Osprey.
The following photos are from the same trip I took last Wednesday to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge near Galloway, NJ.
On the bank of Gull Pond.White Campion.Mute Swan preening.Two Black Skimmers fishing.Two immature White Ibises.Great Blue Heron.Forster’s Tern.Female Red-winged Blackbird.Male Red-winged Blackbird warning off visitor.
Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge is the place I go to most often to photograph nature in general and birds in particular. The refuge extends over 48,000 acres of land along the coast of New Jersey, but not all in the same place and some areas are not open to the general public. I actually go to the Southern end of the refuge near Galloway, NJ. It has a Wildlife Drive which extends for 8 miles. Driving on that road one can observe and photograph many kinds of birds on both sides of the road. There are sweet water and salt water marshes along the way, and the wild vegetation lining up the road is kept low enough for drivers to see almost everything from their cars.
This past Wednesday was the first time I went to the refuge after too many weeks of rainy weather. I arrived early and the usual crowds of Audubon groups had not yet made their appearance. I went to the Gull pond observation tower, found it deserted and climbed to the top to look around.
Road leading to Gull Pond area of refuge. Skyline of Atlantic City in the background.Looking North from Gull Pond tower. The public is not allowed on the path seen in the photo.Scene at one of the ponds visible from Gull Pond tower.
On this visit, there were many birds throughout the refuge. However, I noticed some pretty flowers as show below.
Evening Primrose.Evening Primrose and a bug.Prickly Lettuce.Prickly Lettuce.Crownvetch.Swamp Rose Mallow.Orange Sulphur butterfly on Polygonum Persicaria bistorta (Adderwort).
Nguyễn Hữu Loan (1916-2010) is an acclaimed, iconoclastic Viertnamese poet. I have translated below an article he wrote shortly before his death.
I was born in a poor family. In my childhood, I did not have the opportunity to go to school like other children of my age. Only my father taught me a few words now and then at home. Although my father was a tenant farmer, he was smarter than most people. In secondary school, I went to school in Thanh Hoá earning my diploma there but I did not have money to further my studies in Huế or Hà Nội. In 1938, when I was 22 years old, I took my chances and went to Hà Nội to take the French baccalauréat exam to prove that even a self-taught child from a poor family could get a degree just like anyone else.
I had absolutely no intention of joining the ranks of the mandarinate. Everyone knew that passing the baccalauréat exam was very hard in those colonial times. The number of those who passed it was extremely small and even 50 or 60 years afterwards people of those times could still remember the names of the ones who passed it such as Nguyễn Đình Thi, Hồ Trọng Gin, Trịnh Văn Xuân, Đỗ Thiện, and … me Nguyễn Hữu Loan.
With the baccalauréat degree in my hands, I left my village to go to the city of Thanh Hóa to be a teacher. My reputation as a poor but brilliant graduate caused Mrs. Kỳ, the wife of a government official, to invite me to come to her home to tutor their two boys. Her maiden name was Đái thị Ngọc Chất, and she was the wife of Lê Đỗ Kỳ, the general inspector of agriculture for Indochina. He was later elected to be a representative in the first national assembly. In Thanh Hóa, Mrs. Kỳ had a store selling fabrics as well as books and newspapers. I went there quite often and that made her notice me.
Mrs. Kỳ was a kind-hearted lady who treated me very well as if I was no different than a member of her family. I remember the first day I came as a tutor, she had to repeatedly call her daughter, who was then 8 years old, before she finally appeared with her arms crossed across her chest.
“Teacher, may I present my greetings!”
Her greetings done, she unexpectedly opened her eyes wide and looked at me directly. Those big black eyes, round and bright, made a lasting impression on my mind and soul, and they would follow me throughout my life.
I taught her reading, writing. Her name was Lê Đỗ Thị Ninh. Her father had been a forestry inspector in Sài Gòn. She was raised in the South and was used to calling her mother Má. She was very intelligent and easily absorbed my teaching. She understood and remembered everything. She did not speak much, but every time she opened her mouth she sounded like a “young grandma”. She especially took care of me every day in a discreet way. At meal times, she would put on the serving tray, near the spot where I used to sit, several red peppers, or a juicy lemon that she had just picked from the garden. In the summer, when I had a midday nap, she would surreptitiously grab my white shirt that I had hung up in a corner of the house, and took it away to the well to wash it.
One time, I told to Ninh’s two older brothers my story of the “young grandma”. Unexpectedly, the story got to her ears and she sulked. For a whole week, she lay down in an inner room, refused to study. Mrs. Kỳ took me into the room where she was sleeping. I don’t remember much of what I said, but I only know that I talked a lot. I told her stories, then I recited poetry to her. She got up that afternoon, ate a bowl of chicken congee, and walked out of the room.
The following afternoon, she resolutely requested that I took her up to the pine forest. The whole family disagreed. “You were just sick! You are still too weak, you can’t go!” She would not listen and wanted to go anyway. I was afraid she would sulk again, so I asked her parents to let me go with her up the mountain.
The rickshaw took about an hour to take us to the bottom of the hills. She climbed the slopes like a young squirrel, and I was out of breath trying to keep up with her. At the top she sat down and asked me to sit next to her. We remained like that for a long time, neither of us saying anything. Suddenly she looked at me then cast her eyes toward the horizon. I did not know what she was thinking. Then she asked me:
“Teacher, do you like to eat the fruit of rose myrtles?”
Rose Myrtle flowers.
I looked down at the slopes covered with the purple rose myrtles. She stood up and walked toward the myrtles. As for me, I was so tired that I lay down on the grass and fell asleep.
When I woke up, she was sitting beside me with her conical hat filled to the brim with myrtle berries. They were black and fully ripened.
“Teacher, eat some.”
I took a berry from her hand and put it in my mouth.
“It is so sweet!” I marveled.
As I told you, I was born into a peasant family, and rose myrtle berries were nothing new, but frankly I never had any so sweet!
And so we ate them one by one. I looked at her. She smiled. Her teeth were reddish purple, and so were her lips. Both of her cheeks were also purple red, the color of the myrtle berries. I burst out laughing and she laughed with me.
Rose Myrtle berry.
At the end of that winter, despite her parents’ advice and promises to intervene on my behalf, I left to go join the resistance against the French. The day I left, she walked with me to the entrance to the village and stood there to silently watch me go. I climbed to the top of the dike and looked down. She was still standing in the same place, small and frail. She waved to me with her small hand which looked like a myrtle leaf. I waved back and continued walking away with gloom. I turned and looked back. She was still standing there. I continued walking and looking back until I could no longer see her.
During the months and years in the war zones, once in a while I received news from the village letting me know that she was in good health and had grown up. Later friends told me that when she was barely 15, many young men came to woo her but she always hid in her room and refused to see any of them.
After nine years, I came home. I went to Nông Cống to find her. The day I saw her at the entrance to the village I asked her many questions but she did not say anything, only nodding or shaking her head. She was no longer Ninh the stubborn student. She was almost 17 and a beautiful young woman.
We loved each other but I was afraid that her parents, due to their social status, would think that our marriage would be a misalliance. I only knew later that our wedding had all along been silently scripted by her parents.
A week later we got married. I discussed having a wedding dress made for her, but she brushed it off, saying that she did not need a new dress, and that “to love each other in a strong and lasting love was all that mattered.” I was tall, well educated, and a decent poet that happened to be good looking. She teased me often by calling me her unique husband.
Our wedding took place in the hamlet of Thị Long, village of Nông Cống, in Thanh Hóa province where her father, Lê Đỗ Kỳ, had hundreds of hectares of land. It was a very simple wedding, but it went without saying that the two of us had never been so happy.
My two-week leave was over very quickly. I was ordered to go immediately with the 304th Division and function as the editor-in-chief of the Chiến Sĩ [Warrior] newspaper. The day she said farewell to me, she stood at the beginning of the village, at the same spot where she had stood nine years earlier. The only difference was that she was no longer the little Ninh and had become my dear lifelong companion. I walked away, then turned back to look. While nine years earlier I had felt sadness, I then felt a real deep pain in my heart. My legs seemed to want to collapse.
Three months later I received the terrible news that my wife had passed away! She died a tragic death on the 25th day of the 5th month of the lunar calendar in 1948. She had taken clothes to wash in the river Chuồn in her hamlet of Thị Long, Nông Cống. As she tried to reach for a shirt that had fallen into the river, she lost her footing, fell into the river and drowned. The big river had engulfed her, it had taken away my soulmate, leaving me an immense sorrow that nothing could make up for. I have felt that pain deep within my heart over the past 60 years.
I had to hide that pain inside me. I could not let my fellow soldiers know about it to avoid affecting their fighting spirit. I was like a corpse without a soul. It seemed like the more I tried to suppress my pain, the more virulent it became. Fortunately, a period of political thought correction started and our leadership announced that anyone who harbored some inner thoughts should declare them out loud and tell everything. At that time we were stationed in Nghệ An. I sat by myself at the entrance to the village. My eyes filled with tears, I took out a pen and began writing. I did not have to think, the simple words just kept pouring out:
Her family had three older brothers who had joined the army. Some of her younger siblings could not yet speak. Her hair was still very soft… I came home and did not see her …
[There are 65 lines in the poem. Vietnamese musicians have used it to compose beautiful songs. The one by Pham Duy in the South is probably the most popular, and people have become very familiar with it.]
When I came home, I took the flower vase from the day of our wedding and used it as an incense vase. I had written my poem onto a paper fan and left it at the house of a friend in Thanh Hóa. My friend copied it and circulated it to his friends. It has been recopied and recirculated many times since then during the war years. That is the poem The Purple Color of Myrtles.
At this point in your reading, you may have known that I am Nguyễn Hữu Loan, known as Hữu Loan, born on April 2, 1916. I am currently home tending to my garden in the hamlet of Nguyên Hoàn. I call this place my birthplace. It is within the village of Mai Lĩnh, district of Nga Sơn in Thanh Hóa province.
My wife Ninh used to like wearing dresses in the purple color of myrtles. Strangely enough, the place where she lost her footing and drowned was known for its myrtle bushes full of flowers. That is why I was able to write lines in my poem such as: walking during our operations through foothills filled with purple myrtle flowers/ endless hills colored by myrtle flowers in the afternoon sun.
Rose Myrtle Bushes on a hill.
When I lost her, I lost everything. I became bored with life, and fed up with the war. I left my fellow soldiers. I gave up literature and went home to farm. It was also partly due to my quarrelsome and rebellious nature, my inability to do things that ran contrary to my conscience. “They” scolded me, criticized me for being too soft, made all kinds of demands from me, and rejected my petition to leave the resistance. I did not care. In missed my myrtle flowers too much. Also, I was already so sick of those people.
They did not spare me after I went home. They followed me to continually create difficulties for me, but I didn’t care! After years of swallowing bitterness, I was given the opportunity to open my mind in two interviews on the 5th and 12th of October, 2002 with Hương Ly, a Vietnamese reporter working for the BBC.
I told her that in general everyone was simply stepping on the necks and heads of the people. After telling the interviewer the origin of The Purple Color of Myrtles and the aftermath of that poem, I talked about my life in poverty and the plots to assassinate and to destroy me and my family starting in 1956. While I suffered and almost died many times, I was determined not to submit to them.
In those times, if you wanted to go work outside of the center of the Resistance against the French, you had to follow the Party’s orders. So when I left them to go home, they would not leave me in peace. They devised all kinds of traps and punishments, they wanted to eliminate me. I believe I had the protection of Heaven, of the Buddha, and they could not kill me despite many poisoning attempts.
These were the years of 1955 and 1956 when writers and artists led the Nhân Văn Giai Phẩm (Humanism and Beautiful Works) movement to oppose the Communist Party and its dictatorial policies. They denounced those writers and artists who lent their pens to inform on their teachers and friends while praising the Party hoping it would grant them favors and crumbs.
To be a poet means to have a soul, and that soul must have noble sentiments in order for the poetry to be any good. Good poetry is everlasting. A poet that has no sentiment, no soul is worthless. In those times, poets had to extol the Party, praise communism, and glorify the war. I saw that as what made the people suffer the most, and so I opposed it with all my strength.
In those times, one had to praise Hồ Chí Minh nonstop, while I praised romantic love. I cried about the wife who had been so kind to me, my unique life partner. They said that I was crying about personal matters. In my poem I said I got married then went to become a soldier. We had been married just over a month when she went to wash clothes and drowned in the river. I was devastated, I wrote that poem and cried. They said my poem was reactionary! One had to write poems about Uncle Hồ, not about one’s personal suffering. Why could we not cry about our personal loss?
They insulted the honor and the sacred sentiment that bound my dear wife and I together. So in 1956, I left the Party, I abandoned my organization to go home and till the land. They did not want me to do that. They told me to write an application. I did not write one. I considered that to be my personal freedom, to leave the Party when I wanted to leave it, no one could tell me otherwise!
I went home. I had to till and harrow our land. I went into the forest to gather firewood, and pulled a cart carrying rocks for sale. They created all sorts of trouble for me, confiscated my cart. I had to build my own one-wheeled cart, with a wooden wheel in front and two legs in the back to push or pull the cart. They would not allow even that, and forbid everyone to sell me a wheel. I had to take on jobs that required using my shoulders to carry loads. I kept carrying my burdens, I never gave up.
Still they followed me everywhere, obstructed me in every possible way. Security people followed me, and some were sent to harm me. But there were people everywhere who helped me. What is strange is that one time it was my own poetry that saved me. That time a security guy told me that he had received the order to kill me. However, he was a man who loved his homeland, who missed home. He often took out my poem Yên Mô about his home of Ninh Bình to read and to feel a little less homesick. That’s why he could not bring himself to kill me.
Life and fate led me to another woman who has now lived with me until today. Her name is Phạm Thị Nhu, and she is also one with a deep soul. She is a victim of the land reform and the landlord denunciation campaign initiated by the Vietnamese communists.
I remember that during those times I was the political commissar of my battalion. I witnessed with my own eyes the denunciation trials. Being an educated person with deep morality and ethics, I was thoroughly nauseated and I no longer respected the old Hồ and communist doctrine. I had been a Party member for several years, but, frankly speaking, I was immensely disappointed.
In a village in the district of Nga Sơn, Thanh Hóa province, only about 15 kilometers from where I lived, there was a very wealthy landlord family with almost 500 hectares of land. The landlord was benevolent and kind to everyone. Seeing that the soldiers of my Division 301 did not have enough food, he often had his tenant farmers carry rice to where we were stationed to support us. As the Chief of the Propaganda and Political Section, I thanked him for his good will, and I also asked my Division Commander to reward him with an official commendation. Personally I admired him and always remembered his kindness.
Then one day I heard that he and his wife had been denounced in the land reform campaign. Both of them were dragged before the village people to be insulted, shamed, and finally buried in the ground up to their necks. After that a pair of buffaloes were used to pull a harrow back and forth over their heads until they both died. Only one member of the family, their daughter, was spared but the denunciation team chased her out of the house with only a few clothes. Furthermore they ordered that no one was to talk to her, give her food or hire her for work.
During those times, the political cadres forbid anyone to marry the children of landlords. Learning of the terrible persecution of the landowners that I admired, I came home to find out how their daughter was managing to survive. I had known her previously as a young girl who stood by the windows at the Mai Anh Tuấn school to listen to me talk about the famous poem of Kiều. When we met she told me that because she often came to listen to me teach about Kiều , she sometimes forgot to look after her buffaloes. They ate the rice plants and afterwards she had been punished.
As I came near her village, by chance I encountered her. Her clothes were in tatters, her face was dirty. She was bent over gleaning sweet potatoes that people had left in the fields. She put them in her shirt pockets, then took one out, wiped it on her trousers before bringing it to her mouth to eat. I became very emotional, tears pouring out from my eyes, and I went to her. She recounted in full the day her parents were brought before the people’s tribunal and how they were persecuted until they died. She cried as she told me how everyone had chased her away; how by day she had to go glean potatoes to eat; how she slept at night in a deserted temple. She said she was extremely worried not knowing whether she would still be alive the next day or die from hunger and thirst.
I listened to her sad story and was deeply moved. I thought for a long time and finally decided to bring her back to my village. Disregarding the ruling of the people’s tribunal, I decided to marry her. Fortunately, I had made the right decision. I lived in a poor village and came from a poor family. Then I was in the military and did not have any money. But the two of us endured life together. We worked hard and went hungry at times. But today, my wife has given me ten good children, six sons and four daughters, and we now have more than 30 grandchildren.
For several decades, I stayed in my home village, perfectly content with my very modest life. Every day I went to look for rocks to sell, taking with me French or Vietnamese books to read. Once in a while I would compose poems. Yet “they” would not leave me in peace. When they relaxed their grip, they came to flatter me and invite me to join the Writers Association. I turned them down.
In 1988, I reappeared in public after 30 years of forced isolation at my remote home. I wandered almost a whole year on the transViệt trip organized by the Lâm Đồng Province Litterature and Art Association and the Langbian magazine. The trip was to demand freedom of expression, freedom of the press and publishing, and real political renewal.
At the end of 2004, when I was 88, a company called Vitek VTB suddenly offered to buy the rights to my poem, The Purple Color of Myrtles, for 100 million Đồng (US$3,953).They said it was a way to preserve a national cultural asset. That was acceptable to me. The 100 million after taxes would be 90 million. I gave 60 million to my 10 children, kept 30 million as a reserve for illness in old age, and used a little bit of it to publish a book of 40 of my poems, titled Poems by Hữu Loan. After that, several groups of companies wanted to buy other poems of mine, but I turned them down. My poems are not for sale.
After finishing secondary school, I took the entrance examinations to the University of Pedagogy with a major in English. While a student, I also worked at No. 3 Bạch Đằng Avenue. The address was a short way of referring to the Central Intelligence Agency of South Việt Nam.
I wanted to work there because I loved adventure and needed to avenge the death of my father. He was the owner of a rice mill in the province of Bạc Liêu. Since the area did not have adequate security, he had to pay taxes regularly to the communist shadow government. Nevertheless, one night they knocked on his door, dragged him out and executed him. It took me several years to investigate the crime. I found out he was the victim of an undercover communist agent. Following a minor dispute with him, the agent led a group of guerillas to take him to a field and shoot him.
Naturally, I took my revenge after graduation from the university. While I waited for my papers to be processed by my employer, I snuck back home and hid in a room of our house without letting our neighbors know. That night I went to the undercover agent’s house and lay waiting in the back. In the countryside, there was usually no bathroom inside the house. When needed, people just went out behind their property. On the second night, the communist agent opened the back door and walked out. I thrust my gun against his back and said:
“Comrade, keep walking. The organization wants to ask you about some urgent matters.”
He became suspicious and got ready to react but I used the butt of my gun to hit him, stunning him briefly. I then tied him up and carried him on my back to the field where they had killed my father. I interrogated him until he finally confessed that he had executed my father. At that point I told him the truth about me. He begged for forgiveness but to no avail. I kept seeing the face of my father with his accusing eyes fully open even in death. I became furious.
Subsequently, my family sold the rice mill and the house. We all went to live in Sài Gòn. I graduated from the university and became a secondary school teacher in the provinces. After each intelligence mission, whether it was successful or not, I went to another province.
My story really began when I was given the task of following a seamstress living in the suburb of a coastal city in the center of South Việt Nam.
Somehow propaganda leaflets were scattered every morning in the main road leading into the city. The road was used by most farmers and other ordinary civilians who carried their products into the city by bicycles, Lambretta scooters, or oxcarts. The police were watching every morning but did not see anyone suspicious. Finally, we had to have someone lie on the sidewalk to observe a young woman riding a bicycle and carrying water spinach in the back. She had the propaganda leaflets near the pedals and only had to kick them lightly to make leaflets fall to the ground. It was difficult for anyone to see what she did, especially in the early morning darkness.
The investigation led me to a young seamstress living in a house in a city suburb near the border of the city. Behind the house was a small field where she grew water spinach. Every morning she harvested some spinach to sell to the market vendors. Then she returned to her house right away. She lived with a mother who was in her sixties. There was only one sewing machine in the front room of the house. A back room had a bed where mother and daughter slept, and enough space for customers to change as they tried on their new dresses. A little more than a year ago, the seamstress family had moved to the city from a district in the mountains.
A tailor shop in Hội An in 2016.
According to our sources, the young woman, named Lan, used to be a secondary school student before becoming a seamstress. Her store had a fair number of customers since she was a nice and cheerful woman who did not overly charge for her skilled labor. The shop was probably just a liaison office and not an enemy financial center.
My mission was to befriend her and pretend to fall in love with her so as not to stir their suspicions. It would be even better if I could eventually become part of their organization and work for them.
One Sunday morning I rode my motorbike and had to stop near her house because of engine problems. I walked into her store, asked for a scrap piece of cloth then walked out to my bike. I unscrewed the spark plug, wiped it clean, and also cleaned the carburetor. I was sweating profusely but the engine would not start. I went to ask her for a cup of water and sat in front of her store sipping it while chattering with her. Afterwards, I walked my bike home.
The following day, I took some fabric to her shop to ask her to sew me a new shirt. This time she invited me inside since I had become a customer. From then on, every now and then I asked her to make something for me. I confessed to her that I did it so that I could visit her and that I missed her when I did not see her. She looked surprised but kept silent. During my following visits, she appeared to be even more reserved. However, I began seeing in her eyes a glimmer of joy whenever she saw me.
I told her about my family and mentioned that my father had been involved with the liberation front but had been killed in an operation of the nationalist army. Once in a while, I went to a pagoda or participated in some meeting where I freely criticized the government. After her initial coolness, she became more friendly and happier.
I was slowly pulling my prey to our side. I knew that I was drawing attention from her side, but I also thought I had come to an impasse and did not know how to move forward.
One Sunday morning I went to visit her as usual. However, when I arrived at her shop there was only a pile of still burning ashes. For some unknown reason, the house had caught on fire in the middle of the night. Mother and daughter only had enough time to run outside to save themselves. I tried to console her, but she kept shaking her head and looking worried.
“I have not yet paid the rest of what I owe on the land, and then there are all those clothes belonging to my customers. They said that I have to make an effort to pay them for those clothes, but I have no money left!”
I promised her that I would do my best to help her out. I sold my motorbike, and with the help of the neighbors we managed to gather the pieces of metal roofing that had not burned. I bought some construction materials, we rebuilt the house, and there was enough money left to buy her a new sewing machine. She was put back in business within a week.
From that time on, her attitude toward me changed completely. We regularly went out to see a movie and eat snacks. Sometimes she would even come to visit me at my lodging place. Every time she went out with me, she was well dressed and put on a little makeup on her cheeks. She looked as if she had been transformed from Cinderella to become a beautiful princess. However, whenever I walked with her, especially through deserted and unlighted places, I had the creepy feeling of standing before the muzzle of some gun pointed at me in the darkness. Because of my profession I always had to be careful, always watching behind my back to make sure there was no danger there.
Once when she came to visit me at my lodging, she told me that one of her neighbors had begged her to let a daughter come to be trained at her shop. The young woman had failed her secondary school exams and wanted to become a seamstress and earn some income to help her family. I encouraged Lan to agree, but she said she would wait a few days before giving an answer. She was probably waiting for her commander’s decision.
The following week she agreed to accept the new seamstress trainee. She turned out to be a fast learner and within three months the shop had more customers than before. One day, I talked to the trainee and asked her how things were coming along. She said that she was not yet comfortable with cutting fabrics, but she could handle sewing with ease. Some customers had already complimented her thread lines which were straight, smooth and pretty.
“Perhaps we need one more sewing machine so that you can help sister Lan keep up with customer orders,” I said.
“I have thought about that, but I have no money,” she answered.
I confided to her that Lan and I loved each other and we would soon get married. However, I was hesitating because I suspected Lan to be in love with someone else. Then I said I needed her help to find out whether anyone was visiting Lan and talking intimately with her. I gave her a small tape recorder to hide inside her handbag and said she only needed to hang the handbag on the back of her chair which was close to the changing room. If Lan somehow found out about the tape recorder, she was to say that I let her borrow the machine to listen to the radio. She was also not to tell Lan that I had lent her money to buy a sewing machine so that Lan would not become jealous.
We thus listened in to the discussions that took place inside the changing room. Another unit photographed the fake customers who visited the shop. We came to know all the undercover communists, their financial operations, and where they hid new agents who had infiltrated from North Việt Nam. However, we still did not know who their leaders were.
In our trade, the slightest carelessness meant death. We were following the seamstress closely without her being aware of anything. She and I were like two judo fighters who were circling each other to find a way to pounce on their opponents and throw them to the ground. But I was not yet ready to make a move and wanted to wait for her strike. She could pretend to talk and inquire about me, or perhaps she could entice me to go for a long walk in the countryside. However, none of those things happened. She did not speak a lot and was always nice toward me.
But her attitude made me extremely careful as she was more dangerous than I thought. Walking beside her, outwardly I acted joyful and happy. But I thought she was like a venomous snake who could, in a second, strike and kill me instantly.
In general, I did not like my role in this drama. I was ordered to make a further step. It meant that I should try to get physically intimate with her and make her become my prey. However, I was determined not to take such a step. I was truly a rookie in my new intelligence career.
That summer the enemy made plans to attack our province capital. Our side got ready to conduct an operation against the enemy one afternoon. The seamstress trainee came to me to report that an alms-begging monk had come to the front of the shop. Lan went out on the street to talk to him in low voices as usual. However, when she turned to go back inside, her face had turned pale and she was shaking.
We suggested that the police conduct an operation to gather all of that group. I was also arrested, handcuffed and taken in the police truck. Later I was of course released.
I calmly took a short break before accepting a new mission. I don’t know why the image of her when she was being captured kept reappearing in my head and my compassion for her rose. I always thought that in times of war women and children should be in the rear, protected from any harm. But this gentle seamstress was behind bars like a captured wild animal waiting to be slaughtered.
After observing her sitting dejected in a corner of her cell, I thought of her as a wilted flower. Her future was without any hope, and the love of her youth had abruptly ended.
I considered myself a ruthless guy who had deceived a young woman, even though she was controlled by the other side. Then I no longer saw her as an enemy. It was as if a layer of dust on an old painting had been wiped clean to reveal underneath a gentle face. This made me ask my organization to release her so that we could capture the rest of her accomplices.
We were called in to be questioned on our relationship. We both said that we loved each other and that we did not know anything else about the communist group. The police investigator who interviewed us believed our stories and said that we would be freed. He walked away to do the paperwork.
I went to sit next to her and took her hand. She glanced at me and only shook her head. Perhaps she was telling me that what the police investigator had said was just a trap, but I made her understand that I had some influence and I did want to take her out of there because I loved her.
“I made a request for them to let you go free. I will be responsible for your future activities. If you truly love me, then don’t participate in anything that would present a danger to you. You still have to look after your old mother, then you will get married and have children. You will have a happy life, like most ordinary people. So please don’t take any foolish risk. I am saying this not because I am afraid of being implicated with you. It’s because I cannot bear the thought of you running into any kind of danger. I will arrange for you and your mother to move to Sài Gòn and live among ordinary people without fearing anyone coming to bother you. We will make an engagement ceremony, and when I am allowed to come back to teach in Sài Gòn we will have our wedding.”
Her head bent down, she listened to me talking, Then she took my hand and squeezed it. One tear drop fell on my hand. I exhaled, happy that she had understood me. She wrote a letter to her mother and told her to sell the house to prepare for a move. Everything was to be sold except the sewing machine.
After that we moved quietly to Sài Gòn. Friends helped us buy a small house near a market at the corner of Hoàng Hoa Thám and Ngô Tùng Châu streets in the Gia Định district.
Of course, her movement and activities were still being monitored.
Our organization activities usually received American support. The Americans were generous and gladly gave me money to buy another motorbike to replace the one I had to sell. I was also reimbursed for my miscellaneous expenses such as taking her to the movies and eating snacks with her.
However, after the raid on her group, the case was closed. I sold my new motorbike again and borrowed some additional money to take care of her. I had no idea when I could afford to buy another motorbike.
Over the summer months, after work I usually came to visit her. Now and then I also had dinner with them. After dinner her mother was busy clearing the table while Lan asked for permission to take a bath.
In the evening, the Cây Quéo market was deserted. In the back of her house was a small backyard with a fence that provided good privacy. I liked to sit there on a long bench to wait for her. After her bath, she had the habit of not wearing any bra underneath her shirt which showed two mounds like baby bamboo shoots that had emerged from the ground. She would come sit next to me and used a towel to dry her hair. After that she would look upward to let the hair fall behind her back, then smiled at me as I watched her and admired her smooth skin and the smell of cleanliness from her entire body. Then we usually ate some sweet soup or fruit while we talked well into the night before I went back to my own place.
At the end of summer, I was transferred to Huế to teach at a school in that city. I wrote her a long letter, promising that I would come back at the Lunar New Year and we’ll have our engagement ceremony then. She usually does not say much, and the letter that she sent me contained just a few words. She said that on receiving my letter, she cried out of happiness. She thanked me for understanding her, and said she truly believed in my promise with all her heart and her life.
At the end of the year, I asked for and was granted leave to come back to Sài Gòn. When I arrived at her home, I was surprised to find that it had been renovated very nicely. She took me to the back and showed me the new room that had been added. She said that her mother would sleep in the front room and she would sleep in the new one.
“And you will sleep on the floor,” she said as she blushed.
Our engagement ceremony was simple. My family had thought I was getting engaged to some student, and they were surprised to find out that she was just a seamstress. They were not class conscious, but everyone knew that a teacher could easily find a pretty wife in his school. However, after they met her the first time, they all liked her. She was gentle and quietly beautiful. My mother kept calling her “daughter” in her sweetest voice, while my sisters could not stop talking and pestering her with questions. Lan was both moved and flustered by the emotions of the moment.
From then on I went to her house every day. Sometimes I slept over, but we had vowed to wait until our wedding took place, and nothing happened. She had a very womanly way of behaving. She sewed pillow cases embroidered with the heart symbol and our names intertwined, and two flying birds. Then she worried about what names to give to our future children. I teased her on that. She looked irritated, but I knew that deep beneath she was very happy with our beautiful dream.
We planned for our wedding to take place in a few more months, but at the beginning of 1975 South Việt Nam began to crumble piece by piece. It was like a dam had burst as people began escaping to the Southern part of the country.
I waited until the last minute because I had to destroy our files and scatter our agents. I went South to Đà Nẵng but had to go back to Huế because Central Việt Nam had fallen to the enemy. They seemed to know nothing about my real identity except for my cover as a secondary school teacher. They began to call every teacher to come and identify themselves, as if they were getting ready to reopen all the schools. Then at the end of May 1975 they came to my rental lodging, handcuffed me, and led me out. In addition to a truck full of soldiers, I also saw a car with fake license plates. I knew at once that my cover had been blown. I wondered why our headquarters had not destroyed our personnel files.
I sat between two very young communist soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles. In front, a woman was sitting beside the driver. We left the Citadel through the South East gate, went over the Trường Tiền bridge and went on Duy Tân street. The truck in front of us turned and went into the old police station while our car went straight toward National Highway 1. I guessed that they were taking me to Sài Gòn for interrogation. I planned to escape but not until we reached the Southern part of the country. So I began napping between my two guards. Along the way, when we had to stop at several checkpoints, the driver, who was also a soldier, stopped. He presented his papers, had some discussions with the checkpoint guards, then we were allowed to continue our trip.
We arrived in Quảng Ngãi in the morning. I opened my eyes and looked around casually. I felt cold all over immediately. The woman sitting next to the driver was my bride-to-be. I suddenly realized that I had made a mistake in my previous mission. She, and not the alms-begging monk, was the actual leader of the group I was trying to infiltrate.
I became profoundly bitter about having lost to a woman who had disguised herself so completely that she not only fooled me but also fooled the people on her side. I felt nothing but shame for having been deceived by her magnificent performance which had led me to believe that my absolute love for her had won her over to our side. She was sitting there cool and composed. What was she thinking about me, a second-rate spy with some petty bourgeois pretension to romance?
The car rolled into Bình Định and stopped at a roadside restaurant. One of the soldiers opened my handcuffs and told me to keep within five paces of him. If I came closer or drifted out of that range he would shoot me. I was led to a corner table and sat down surrounded by the soldiers. She sat alone.
After our meals, she took out a wad of newly printed money, pulled out a few bills, stood up and walked out without waiting for any change. I tried to look fearful, hoping to lull the guards into complacency. I was planning to make a move to escape from them that evening and darkness would allow me to slip away with ease. But I was wrong. The car travelled all night until it arrived in Sài Gòn, then took the alley leading to her house and stopped. She went in and spent a long time before coming out with her mother who got into the car and the two of them sat together in front.
The car went on the Biên Hòa highway and headed for the seaside resort of Vũng Tàu, I thought that they would hand me over to their people in Vũng Tàu or Long Hải. Previously I had sent some of them to prison and they were surely going to take their revenge then.
In Vũng Tàu, they stopped to buy sandwiches before going to a semi-luxury hotel. After eating and washing myself, I was again handcuffed and put into one room guarded on the outside by two soldiers.
I heard her talking to he guards, telling them to be on guard against me who was a dangerous enemy. She was going to meet with the new military authorities on an urgent matter but would be back immediately after that. I was exhausted, got on the bed and went to sleep to regain my strength as I was planning to escape that night. The handcuffs were not a problem. I only needed a piece of metal wire which I already had already obtained when I went to the bathroom in Bình Định.
However, after I ate a sandwich, the two soldiers used handcuffs to tie both of my legs to the bed. They stayed in the room to guard me, taking turns to watch me with their owlish eyes. There was no way I could escape from them.
I remembered the time after our engagement. She had learned to understand me and take care of me very well. I was extremely happy that I was about to be married to a woman who would be devoted to me. That devotion has now led her to guess that I was going to attempt to escape and she had taken precautions against my move.
That night, at 10 PM I was again led out to the car. All six of us got into it, just like we had been earlier in the day. The car went around Vũng Tàu a bit before heading toward Back Beach. That night there were a lot of low clouds which felt very cold. The South had never been so cold. There was no other traffic on the road which was barely illuminated by the car’s headlights. The car drove on to the end of the sandy beach then stopped.
She ordered one soldier to blindfold me then took his AK-47 rifle and told him: “You all stay here and wait for me. When you hear me firing this rifle, I will come out shortly thereafter.”
Then she turned to her mother and said in a cold voice: “You will follow me and see how I avenge father and so many other of our comrades.”
I thought that was retribution for my executing the communist agent who had killed my father. My turn to die was coming that night, but I could not remember what I did that make her hate me so much. Could she be the daughter of that communist agent?
She chambered a round and pointed the rifle toward me and pressed its muzzle against my back. She had made a grave mistake! I could quickly turn around and push that muzzle away from me. Then I could use my feet to kick her. Whether I was blindfolded or not did not matter since the night was dark. I retrieved the metal wire from my watch and used it to partially open my handcuffs. When I guessed that we were far enough from the waiting soldiers, I got ready to attack, but I suddenly felt her remove my blindfold. She quickly said:
“Can you carry mother on your back? Hurry up! If something happens, you and mother should just get away and don’t worry about me. I have a boat nearby waiting for us.”
She ran forward with her rifle while I carried her mother along for about a kilometer until we arrived at the waiting boat. We pushed the boat out and then started the engine. Half an hour later, we climbed aboard a larger boat which went out to the open ocean. The following day we were rescued by a US Navy ship. It took us straight to the island of Guam.
Here’s a mid-summer series of photos I took over the past week of some summer flowers from around our house.
Pink hibiscus.White hibiscus and bee.Red hibiscus.Clematis.Cleome.Cleome.Cleome.Butterfly Weed buds and a bug.
The one below is not a flower. It’s a watermelon which has grown up very fast since I first took its picture a little more than two weeks ago. The seed packet says it will weigh as much as 25 lbs. (11 kg)!
I have not gone out on a photoshoot anywhere in almost two months. It’s been too hot or rainy, and I’ve also been busy with chores at home. However, this morning I went out to our backyard and got the following snapshots.
Persimmons, still green but look very promising. They will ripen in October. Watermelon flower.New watermelon!
Grape tomatoes, still ripening.Butterfly Weed (Asclepias Tuberosa), to attract pollinators.Butterfly Weed for beauty.Sachem (Atalopedes huron) butterfly dining on Echinacea flower.Sachem butterfly on Echinacea flower.
This past Friday, at 8:31 AM I saw an Osprey family having breakfast by the side of Wildlife Drive at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. The male Osprey had gone fishing and caught a big fish for the whole family. Perched near the nest, he ate first consuming the head of the fish while the female and the baby Ospreys waited at their nest.
Male Osprey eating fish head while female and babies waited.
Here’s a closer look at male Osprey eating.
Male Osprey eating fish head.
As I watched I saw that the female was getting agitated.
Female Osprey at nest with babies. Only one baby was visible in this shot.
Then the male Osprey started trying to shield his fish by deploying his wings.
Male Osprey shielding fish.
He looked left then turned his head right. A Bald Eagle was circling around the nest, diving toward it briefly.
Male Osprey watching for intruder.Male Osprey watching Bald Eagle fly around nest.
I saw the Bald Eagle but was unable to focus my camera on it.
Bald Eagle flying around Osprey nest. Atlantic City is in the background.
The female Osprey made loud noises to warn the eagle to go away.
Female Osprey shouting at Bald Eagle.
Finally the intruder went away.
Female Osprey guarding nest.Male Osprey making sure the intruder was not around before resuming his breakfast.
I have not been to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in several months, but yesterday, dry and sunny, was a good day for a tour around Wildlife Drive. There were many wild flowers and the usual birds. The flowers were colorful, very showy.
Mullein starting to bloom.Butterfly Weed (Asclepias Tuberosa).Common milkweed (Asclepias Syriaca). Note the two mating insects at top.Milk Thistle.Fire Lily.Hairy Vetch.
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