While traveling upriver between Long Xuyen and Chau Doc in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, we spent an hour or so visiting with people in a small village devoted entirely to the manufacture of joss sticks used in Buddhist rituals. The women would glance over at us every now and then, but were essentially focused on their task of assembling the sticks, which are used as sacrificial offerings. I base the triangular composition in the horizontal carpet of red incense sticks. The two women run up one arm of the triangle, while a tree trunk runs up the other. The woman at the bottom wears the traditional Vietnamese conical hat, while the woman on top does not. This is a small village and almost everyone who lives here seems to be in the incense business. The businesses are family enterprises, and I have a hunch that the woman on the top of this image is further up in the hierarchy than the woman at bottom. Her position at the top of the triangle may well be an appropriate one.