The Census Taker: Stories of a Traveler in India and Nepal

Stablein, Marilyn

Literature & Fiction

Madrona Publishers

How does a Western cencus taker count non-bodies, or tally marriages in which the only legal and binding ones are bel fruits? Marilyn Stablein leads us on an intimate journey through India and Nepal with a vivid collection of images and encounters. Here, the Western mind meets the Eastern world. Whether describing Tibetan hotels, animal sacrifices, plunging buses, or how a toilet becomes a museum, Stablein has an eye for detail, a facility with language that includes elements of reportage, folk tales, exotic narrative, and a sensitivity to the cultures she evokes. Dreams and reality, enlightenment and practicality weave together creating an American woman's portrait of life deep in the heart of regions unknown to most of us.

Travel

Asia

Black Heron Press

In her first collection of essays since her award-winning book "The Census Taker", Marilyn Stablein takes us on a personal journey of cataclysm and terrain.

Climate of Extremes: Landscape & Imagination

Black Heron Pr

EASY BEANS, now in its sixth printing, has over 100 fast , healthy and delicious bean, pea and lentil recipes. The "6 o'clock chef" will find all the recipes clearly formatted and simple to prepare. Authors Ross and Trafford make cooking beans as mainstream as stir-fry or pasta.

Easy Beans: Fast and Delicious Bean, Pea, and Lentil Recipes

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking by Ingredient

Big Bean Publishing

"The author’s eye is wide open, and her writing is fresh, funny, and exhilarating."—Peter Matthiessen
"Marilyn Stablein’s wry voice tells how it was, calmly and clearly, unadorned. . . . whether on the ground with sadhus and chapatis or in the sky with diamonds, these wry prose poems evoke a last epiphany of the best of East and West."—Keith Dowman, author of The Power Places of Tibet
In 1965, Stablein drops out of Berkeley and travels to India and Nepal with her lover. Their brief getaway turns into a seven-year stay. "There are times when I ask myself," Stablein writes, "What am I am doing here? My answer: to paint, to study a culture; to uncover its secrets; to listen to the whisperings, the sacred oral traditions; to learn by heart the names and faces of deities so I can capture their images on paper and strive to imbue each image with the greatness of its namesake, its spiritual essence. Art is my muse and practice. The world is my palette, artists my teachers; art lives and breathes in the people I meet."
In the heyday of the ’60s Stablein encounters luminaries of the American counterculture like Ram Dass whom she accompanies to interview HH, the Dalai Lama, on the spiritual value of LSD. Later, when the Indian police come to arrest Stablein for having an expired visa, Kalu Rinpoche quips "The Buddha never had visas," and orders her to hide in a closet next to his tantric human bone costumes.
Includes photos and recipes.
Marilyn Stablein, writer, artist, and performer, is the author of seven books and a frequent performer of her work. Her art has been widely exhibited. She lives in the Hudson Valley and co-directs, with her husband, Alternative Books and The Uptown: A Performance Space in Kingston, NY.

Sleeping in Caves: A Sixties Himalayan Memoir

Religion & Spirituality

Monkfish Book Publishing

Letters home detail the life, travels, and studies of a young artist immersing herself in Eastern spiritual and artistic traditions during the late 60s and early 70s. Before the Internet, texting, and social media were ubiquituous, Stablein travels through India, Nepal, and Tibet on a journey from girlhood to adulthood and eventually motherhood.

Houseboat on the Ganges: Letters from India & Nepal, 1966-1972

Chin Music Press Inc.

Milepost 27 showcases the poet's examination of the effects of climate change. From the bone altar of a Native American shaman who prays over disturbed land honoring deceased ancestors to the phantom forests of New Mexico where a ponderosa forest once thrived, Stablein has an eye for surreal environments, especially the drought-parched firescapes that have become increasingly common across the globe. A number of Stablein's poems recall her post-Beat travels to Asia in the 60s where she studied art for six years. With a keen eye for detail, her poems evoke the rich cultural and spiritual life of people she met and places she lived, "from New York to Nepal; from Juarez to Varanasi; from Kathmandu to farflung rivers and seashores." Her most poignant poems evoke her grief after the unexpected, accidental death of her son. From despair to acceptance, the arc of the book weaves up and down, in, out and around the familiar American obsession with the open road. Ultimately her lonesome journeys down the Jornado del Muerto adn the Route 66 caminos give way to acceptance, appreciation, and joy.

Milepost 27

Poetry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stablein, Marilyn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stablein, Marilyn

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stablein, Marilyn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Census Taker: Stories of a Traveler in India and Nepal

The Census Taker: Stories of a Traveler in India and Nepal

Climate of Extremes: Landscape & Imagination

Easy Beans: Fast and Delicious Bean, Pea, and Lentil Recipes

Sleeping in Caves: A Sixties Himalayan Memoir

Houseboat on the Ganges: Letters from India & Nepal, 1966-1972

Milepost 27