Jean directing Elisabeth (narrator) and Diem (videographer) in documentary of Sarah Brown (the daughter of John Brown the abolitionist) and Lucy Higgins (a Santa Clara resident) at the Cooper-Garrod winery in Saratoga, California.

Yes, it will be finished someday!

Lori Deal as Sarah Brown in video portrayal of "Lucy Higgins and Sarah Brown." This view shows Sarah teaching English and learning Japanese from farmworkers in the Santa Clara Valley.

Japanese Diem is from a Japanese artbook that was found in the home of Lori Deal's grandmother. She has now donated the book to the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley after allowing Jean to photograph it.

Diem and newspaper at De Anza College in 2004. Diem has now graduated from San Jose State University.

He manages the family contracting business and finds time to help Elisabeth's Mom with our Internet Bookselling business.

This is Elisabeth in Palo Alto in January 2008. I did a portrait shoot of her for our website: http://www.atozproductions.com

Canon Powershot

this is Roxie, my granddaughter, at the beadshop in Palo Alto, California in summer 2006.

This is my granddaughter Roxanne at Border's Books (the former Varsity Theater building) in Palo Alto, California in August 2007. She will begin University studies majoring in Art History in the fall, 2008.

Canon Powershot.

Dissident Vietnamese poet Nguyen Chi Thien in Berkeley, California, November 2007. He will be 69 years old on Feb. 27, 2008.

The Yale University Council on Southeast Asia Studies has just published the Hoa Lo/Hanoi Hilton Stories with photos of the Hoa Lo prison, now a museum in Hanoi, by Chris McCooey of SmugMug donated to his book.

The Party banished me to the wilds,
wishing my corpse would feed some
manioc shrub.
A huntsman I've become, and I'll
emerge bear snake jewels, rhino
horns.

The Party drowned me in the sea,
wishing I'd sink and hit the
depths.
A diver I've become--
I'll surface sparkling with rare pearls.

Nguyen Chi Thien, from Phong Quang prison camp, 1972.

Translated by Huynh Sanh Thong, Yale University, 1984.

photo at the Monterey Dunes Refuge, California, by Jean Libby, October 2005

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This is the first photograph that I took of the dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien, on October 30, 2004. He is posed turning away from the Gates of Hell by Rodin at Stanford University. He was imprisoned by the Communist government of Vietnam for twenty-seven years for composing poetry against the regime.