Justicia, Tierra, y Libertad

I keep forgetting to post this. I went to visit Mariana in Tepoztlan. I think I've blogged about that hideous experience before. But on the way back I passed this sign. I thought it was worth a picture :)

Colonia Obrera Fauna

A nice rooster in Colonia Obrera. I shot this picture while we were waiting for the Tux-Van.

Scented mysteries and chemistry

UNPA students primarily (until they started the nursing program to make money for the school) studied sciences like chemistry and biotechnology. They have 2 labs. I have a few pictures here of the chemistry lab. It is amazing how well-equipped it is considering that it is so far out in the middle of nowhere, jungle. Completely impressive.
Another factor, though, that put the blight on life at UNPA was the stench. There was (possibly) a garbage dump or landfill nearby that I liked to call the compost initiative. We speculated on its existence because of the presence of the vultures circling over the hilltop behind the school. The circled like hornets around a hive. It was eerie sometimes.
But the smell might also have come from the processing of hule/ule from the groves all around. Ule is rubber. Men walk around tapping it from the trees and they sell it to people who process it into latex that is then sold to companies to manufacture whatever they want. The process, and the ule itself, has a pretty rank smell.
So we never knew if that dogfood smell was coming from the compost initiative or the ule processing. And maybe we'll never know.

UNPA flowers

I took a lot of pictures of the flowers and the campus on my next-to-last-day at work. I hope I remember how beautiful this place is. It's easy to forget under the burden of the unbearable heat and hideous insects and slacker students that this is actually quite a beautiful place.

La Presa 2

Here are a couple of views of the actual river where it's been dammed. The water level is very low right now. I've been here before when it was so high it was all underwater. It's just beautiful no matter what, though. Very little to complain about. Except.
It was very hot. And in the plastic seats at the restaurant I did have swamp-ass so bad it looked like I'd been sitting in a puddle. Ugh.

La Presa

Homero invited us to go to the presa (the dam) that is the water source for Tuxtepec. He has a car so we went. We drove there, took fab pickies, ate a great meal, and came home stuffed and happy. The scenery around Tuxtepec is always breathtaking.

Walking around Tuxtepec Part 2

Here we have a house with wood slats on the walls of the upper part - an unusual architectural feature for Tuxtepec. But the reason for the picture is actually, if you look carefully, two animal heads mounted on the walls. I think they might be deer. Or gazelles. Or something. They are real, anyway. And mounted on an exterior wall like that, on an upper floor, they are just really bizarre.
The next picture is the pedestrian bridge. We walked across it once and it was totally fun. But the city condemned it - I think the day after we walked across it. And they roped it off and took up the boards. Some helpful soul has apparently replaced some of the slats so that the more daring, or lazier, pedestrians, can still use it - if you're willing to risk it. I wasn't.
The beautiful green wall in the next picture just speaks for itself.
And the last one should read, se recibe escombros. Whoever receives the scrap-metal here needs a lesson in remedial spelling. :)

Oops. My description doesn't match the order of the pictures. And I don't know how to fix that without moving a lot of shit. So I'm leaving it. You can figure it out.

Walking around Tuxtepec PArt 1

There are far too many interesting things to take pictures of in Tuxtepec. So, I will dedicate a brief series of pictures from around town to this project.
Since the rains have set in, the weather is actually mild enough to make walking enjoyable again. So EY and I have been walking around, looking at stuff. And it is making me like Tuxtepec again and I think I will miss it.
Here I am posting a picture of the painting of Super Dog. This is on the wall of a veterinaria place that treats sick animals and sells dog food. Can is apparently the spanish for canine or dog.
Another pf these pictures is a basketball court near the cemetery where somebody has tried to write FUCK on the goalpost, but didn't quite get it right :)
The bottom picture is a grave at the cemetery. Here the cemeteries are called panteones. This one caught my eye because of the Greek temple design and the colors.
And this corrugated iron wall painted white was just pretty.

Masked Children

These kids were re-enacting something in the town square one day last week. I always walk through the square on my way home and usually something is going on. That day there were a lot of kids in various kinds of costumes.
I had my hands full of heavy sacks of groceries so I only stopped long enough to get these 2 pictures. I kinda wish I'd gone back for more photos. There were kids dressed in what looked like pirate costumes, too. But I think they might have been Benito Juarez.
The people here sure know how to make good use of their public spaces. They never do anything this cool at home and here it's commonplace.
I wish Tuxtepec would spiff up their big band and play concerts in the bandstand :) Maybe that's asking a little too much though.

Mercedes in Regalia

Not one of my students, but a student whom I got to know while working here. Her name is Mercedes and she is a little strange. Quirky, really. I like her a lot.
She had this picture as her FaceBook profile pic for a little bit. She is in traditional dress here, for a dance that the school sponsored. I'll try to post pictures from the performance sometime.
Mercedes has a friend named Melina and both of them decided that they loved me and always stopped by my office and talked to me and followed me around. The worst moment came when they asked me if they could call my "mommy." I was HORRIFIED!!!
They were sweet but, really, I need my space.
And I'm not anybody's mommy.
I didn't want to hurt their feelings, though, so I was kinda stuck for awhile. Finally after basically ignoring them a lot when they would come by, they maybe got the message and stopped trying to hang out in my office. I felt like a heel, but dude. I need my space.
That's why I live half a world away from my husband.
:)

Nag el Hamdulab

Rock carvings!
These were first identified and photographed in the 30s or so by an Egyptian Egyptologist, Labib Habachi. The photos were stored in the Chicago House at Luxor. Maria Catto has been working at this site in Aswan and reconstructed the images because, since Habachi photographed them, some IDIOTS have scratched at them and almost destroyed them. Probably in a fit of religious piety, thinking they were an affront to god.
These scenes were carved into the rock a little over 5,000 years ago. They date to around 3500 BCE, to the time between the Scorpion King and Narmer, and they show a mixture of royal festival iconography that bridges the differences in the early examples of these scenes. The earliest focused on boats while slightly later ones focused on the king and beasts. This one has both. The king with a dog and retainers carrying flags and boats.
So some lame-ass religious zealot almost erased a fascinating and potentially important part of history, out of misguided religious duty. This is one reason why I don't like religion.

Monkeys

I saw a few articles this morning about this monkey (a crested black macaque) and some of it's buddies grabbing a dude's camera and taking pictures of themselves. The pictures are darlin' and I wanted to save this one because it's so damn cute!

4th of July 2010

Last 4th of July I was at Giza climbing around on the pyramids and goofing off with Lindsey. How freaking cool, huh?
This 4th of July I was at work. At UNPA. In the sweltering jungle of Oaxaca near Vera Cruz.
We didn't get the holiday.
We did go out for a couple of beers afterward at the Happy Place. I'll post pictures if I can remember.

Rock Stars

So, I don't have any actual photos of ME with Ruben, the lead singer of Cafe Tacuba. But I did meet him several times and hang out with him. I have been to his house many times and we even participated in a group therapy session together one afternoon (family constellations - interesting but with an evil, patriarchal perspective). I didn't know he was so bloody famous when I met him and he was actually more interested in my work in Egypt and what I knew about the revolution that I was in his work. Then I found out how bloody famous he is. Incredible.
Still, I never got up the nerve after finding out how famous he was to ask him for a photo of us. So I can't prove that he's one of my homies. However, I did manage to steal this picture of Ruben with his wife and kids picnicking with some of my friends. Is this proof enough of the exalted circles in which I roll?