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.
:)

Cheaters

My students took their final exams last week and during the first class - the 9am nursing class - I confiscated THIS!
I noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under the test of one student and she was holding her arm over her exam in a suspicious manner. So I walked over and picked up her paper and this little, tiny, cheat sheet was smiling up at me.
I think that more of them had a copy of it. 5 people failed the exam. I think they had just not studied at all because they were planning to cheat and then when I put them in alphabetized seats and busted this one with the cheat sheet, they got too scared to use it. I was proud of myself :)
My only problem was what to do.
I confiscated the cheat sheet and let her finish the exam. I ended up subtracting 2 letter grades from her exam. She failed the course when all was said and done. Hahahahaha!!!!!

Firulaisa, my almost dog

This one might make me cry. But I went to visit my friend Mariana back during Semana Santa. She lives in Tepoztlan (pictures to come in a subsequent post) and she had this dog living at her house that she called Firulaisa. Firu is a wonderful, sweet, awesome dog and I decided that if I could, I would bring her home with me.
I bought my ticket to come home in July and the guy said that I could bring her on the plane, no problem. He said there is a special section under the seats that is pressurized and airconditioned so it doesn't matter what time of year the dog is traveling. He said it would cost me $200 hen I got to the airport.
So, I went back to Mariana's (at great personal expense) taking over a week off work, to get Firulaisa fixed because she was pregnant.
I spent 10 days in hell listening to the idiot Mariana rant about politics that she doesn't understand and lose all control of her emotions. She gets high all the time and has no clue about much. she is completely self-centered and ridiculous.
Anyway, after this miserable trip (but I DID manage to get Firulaisa fixed) I called to check on my reservation only to find out that NO I can't take the dog.
It was going to cost me over $600 to take her. And I don't have that kind of money.
So I don't have a choice. I have to leave her.
I hope I can save some money and somehow find a cheap flight to Mexico in the fall, when there is not an embargo on animals traveling. Then maybe I can go get her. I hope she's still around by then.
I love this little dog.

Iguana

We got to work yesterday to find this giant iguana dying on the steps of the Centro de Idiotas. We all had to poke at it and take pictures, but then some Mexican professors who knew NOT what they were doing came out and decided they needed to pour peroxide on it's ass because it looked wounded. Something was protruding, anyway, like hemmorhoids or something. We thought it was awful that they kept fucking with the poor thing. And it did die eventually that day. Who knows? But at least I got some good pictures of the local fauna :)
But now I come to the moral dilemma part. Well, not really moral dilemma so much as a complaint about myself. After I looked at these pictures I started to feel like one of those assholes at Abu Ghraib that took pictures of themselves posing with the humiliated prisoners. Should I feel that way? I don't know. But I kinda do. I need a drink. :)

Again with the crappy American pottery

Perhaps I cherry-pick my examples. However, if you have walked up and down the rows of any art show in the US recently you know I tell the truth. Again, I say - "compare!" From top to bottom I present you with pottery from Poland, Greece, Turkey, Spain, and, the USA. And for this travesty, I do blame the patriarchy.

Notes on the sorry state of US ceramics

I listed this under moral dilemmas because I figure that some of my friends who see this are probably fans of US pottery and I don't really want to have to be the one to tell them that they have been maliciously duped. I have tried to avoid this moment for some time now, but I just can't take it any more!
Ok, so the bottom picture here is of your typical American crap-o-la pottery. If you go to any art show you will be assaulted by hundreds of little booths full of identically hideous pottery for sale at truly idiotically high prices, flogged by folksy-arty types who toss around words like 'raku' and 'character'. The spectacle is so upsetting to me that I've almost had to avoid art shows to get away from it.
I want to know WHY we in the US can't seem to produce pottery that comes anywhere near the beauty and elegance of other countries? Are we all just tone-deaf of the eyes? Come on people, this stuff is just ugly.
In contrast, note the grace and beauty of the specimens I've posted here (from the top down) from Mexico, Mexico, Guatemala, and Italy. Centuries of tradition, craftspersonship, artistry, love, and beauty goes into these pieces. And then we get to America's offering.

Lorraine Motel

We toured the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was murdered. It was totally sad. And inspiring. My problem was with taking the pictures. I wanted to get in the picture (like you do) but it didn't seem right to smile and wave at the camera. So I tried to adopt a somber expression. I don't know if I quite achieved the right look.

Jenny-Tree: Or, Should I get a new Mac?

Well I am about to be fed up with myself for not knowing my own freaking password. Actually, it's not my fault. It's the fault of the patriarchy. If I were a dude I would have made more money than I did when I was working and would have been able to buy a new Mac back when this one got hit by lightening. But NO, I'm female so I'm underpaid and undervalued and if I'm competent people will think I'm a bitch and if I'm friendly people will think I'm incompetent. That's the meaning of OPPRESSION, people! When no options are good so you get squozen in. Anyway, so, I had to call some shade-tree techie who met me in a parking lot and replaced my hard drive, resetting the passwords and he apparently misspelled my regular password so I can't upgrade anything anymore. I can't download any new programs. I'm basically trapped, frozen in time. I LOVE this little MiniMac of mine but some days it just gets to me. ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!
On the plus side, I have a good friend who will do my photoshopping for me. So I get to be a Christmas Tree for Solstice!

Amazon nomads and missionaries

I just saw a video article on the BBC about a group of Peruvian nomads, unseen (by the press and the scientists) for over 30 years. Apparently these people didn't want to join the "civilized" world and retreated into their jungle home. Now that they've been spotted in an area that is up for bids to multiple international petroleum conglomerates, their lives will be, once again, up for debate. I have so many feelings about that. All of them sad. I'd like to say that people who drive Hummers are evil. But that would be to mystify the workings of power. While I still think people who drive Hummers are delusional and misguided (to say the least), I also fear that it is misguided to blame individuals for problems that are corporate. Of course, we all do collude in electing people who are motivated by the greed of the next election and incapable of thinking or seeing past their own noses. But, we (in most of the US without access to public transportation) are realistically trapped in a system that denies us viable alternatives to driving our own cars. We send each other clever little emails about boycotting gas stations to "show them who's boss," but come on! We aren't really interested in changing the power dynamics, are we? That would mean giving up too much. Giving up too many opportunities to make money. Too many opportunities to simply pay the bills. Giving up the "freedom and independence" of our own transportation that we have cleverly been sold on as indicative of our individual worth. How many ways does your car express your "individuality?" How many ways do your shoes do the same thing? I don't want to wax pessimistic, but I'm just in the mood. Most depressing of all is the apparent fact that US-based christian missionaries are making inroads into these communities and blessing the lord for helping them get the heathen to see their sinning ways. This fills me with a rage and disgust that I have a hard time letting go of. Why are the missionaries, who claim to care about these nomads, exposing them to disease with contact? Why are they giving them translated tapes of their bible rather than translated tapes of the constitutions of their countries or translated tapes explaining their international legal rights as people? We all know why.
I need to talk a little about these pictures, though. I debated putting up the second two because they look like the subjects are unaware of the camera. This type of imagery has always been used to portray a false sense of intimacy and immediacy for the viewer. If the subjects aren't aware of the camera, then the viewer has (what she believes to be) an unmediated view into/onto their lives, a god's-eye view. But this is never true. The first picture is the best, I think. The subject is very aware of the looker. The others let us look and think, falsely, that our gaze is accurate and unbiased. But I did add the second and third pictures because they seemed less depressing than the first.
So I'll end this little diatribe. Maybe something good will happen tomorrow. You never know.

All My Shoes

This is a picture of all my shoes. Yes, these are all of the shoes that I own. I've been thinking about this for a while now. I own 11 pairs of shoes. That seems excessive. Sometimes I think about all the people in the world who don't have any shoes, or who only have one pair that don't even fit very well. Sometimes the sheer hedonistic lushness of my lifestyle makes me cringe in embarassment. I know I don't have a lot by US standards. I guess I live in poverty in a lot of ways. But compared to the people around the world who live in tiny one-room apartments in overcrowded buildings, or in garbage dumps, I'm living the life of Riley (whoever that is). So, my conundrum: Do I get rid of any of my shoes? And, if so, which ones are to go?
It would have to be some of the platform heels, because I almost never wear them. But which ones? The oldest or the newest? I struggle with the answer to these and other important questions on a pseudo-daily basis. I'm open to suggestions.