apipiyalotl

Flea bytes, spider bytes and commercial bytes

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:29:27 GMT

Fleas are insects that bite me when they get a chance. They bite me a lot when they get the chance.

Flea bytes? Bytes? Well, this is bytes of information, so... In my second to the last week in Zacatecas (July 23rd) I went to the museum of modern art. On my way a flea jumped a ride on my sandal. I ended up with about 20 bites on each ankle/calf. I'm allergic to the damn things and they itched like nothing else on earth. I'd been getting mosquito bites all along, but I'll notice them and they'll fade quickly. Flea bites, however make huge red splotches (each) that are intensely itchy. If I am not careful, I can scratch my legs or arm, or whatever part of the body they land on bloody in a few minutes.

Just after I got bitten one of the members of the Stirling list posted an article about a woman who had a neurological disorder that caused intense itching on her scalp. One day she woke up to find she had scratched through her skull down to the brain. I sympathize. Controlling the compulsive scratching is very hard. I ripped the heck out of both my ankles. During the day I'd automatically bring my foot up and begin rubbing my heel against the other ankle.

A lot of self discipline kept me from doing too much damage to my legs, but by the time I got on the plane Aug 4th I was still keeping my hands away from my legs. I had dinner at Pete's house that night and one of his other guests, a noted filker asked me what I was doing. I woke up to the fact that I was picking a scab off my leg at knee level (the flea didn't get that high!). I had noticed and resisted touching painful spots on my legs above the knee during the long and tedious flights from Zacatecas to Denver, but I hadn't paid much attention.

I passed off the awkward moment, but once back at my hotel room I looked at the four raw spots I had managed to create without noticing. They stung and they look necrotized. They were small (like the size of 1/4 of a lentil), but after some thought I decided that a spider had bit me. It must have been that last restless night in Zacatecas. I left the wounds severely alone. I still have scabs today, probably 12 days after the initial wound, whatever it was. But then, I still have scabs from the flea bites and that's been 23 days, at least. (All this was initially written Aug 11th!).

Spiders generally don't bite humans. All I can guess is that a spider had found refuge in my sheets after I runckled the room about getting all packed and hid in the sheets. Under those circumstances, it is possible a spider might have bitten me. When I looked up spider bites I found out most spiders can penetrate human skin, but don't usually do it. The spiders might have a neurotoxin to inject or a liquifying digestive enzyme. Spiders can't actually eat as in chew and swallow. Instead they dissolve and suck.

So, I suppose the little spider tried to dissolve this great big lump of person tossing and turning in the sheets. Once the three blankets, two sheets and pillow case have been all mixed together, I'd expect the critter to have found itself unable to escape from the folds and biting at whatever it could trying to get out. I'm not actually wondering very hard if it survived the experience.

But I was worried about those necrotized patches because I had the plan to go get spray painted so I could appear mexican indian dark for the masquerade presentation we had at the world wide science fiction convention. Would the dye be poisonous in my body? Would those open wounds (teeny ones, but necrotized wounds) let the poison in? What I call spray paint is what tanning saloons call the "Mystic tan." It's a spray-on dye called DHA. It can be safely ingested so I decided it probably wouldn't hurt me if I got it on open sores, thought the many websites said nothing about that.

Having missed the time frame for using the one near my friend's house, randwolf and I took a bus to one we found fairly near the hotel. I'd called several times and spoken with a male voice who assured me it was easy and simple to get the tan and just pop in.

So we found the place and walked in and I joked about coming in for "a spray job." There were three women behind the counter and the one who I took to be the most senior (possibly 25) asked me "Why? do you want to tan yourself?" Startled by the question and it's tenor I answered that I was going to be in a theatrical presentation and needed to be mexican dark.

Mind you, the same question had been asked at the previous tanning saloon, but the form of the asking had been much different. "Really? Is it for something special?"

So this woman continues to grill me on my reasons for tanning myself with a spray paint job and I am stiffening up by the second as the questions get both more aggressive and probing. In fact, there weren't many of them. I stiffen up really rapidly and she broke off to scold me for my rudeness to her and tell me she wasn't accustomed to being treated with this degree of aggressiveness. (The other two clerks are trying to pretend they aren't there.)

I explain to her (annoyed voice, at the very least) that I have been calling around, getting prices and I had called their particular business several times that day to make sure that it was OK to come in and get the spray paint job. She cuts loose with "These are perfectly normal questions that everybody asks and you shouldn't be getting aggressive and defensive about it. What are you going to do when we finger print you? Because we can't accept you as a client without fingerprints!"

It took as much as three seconds for the reality to sink in that she wasn't joking. She was going to require finger prints, IDs and a statement of intent from me before I could get this "mystic tan" dye job from her.

I left, shaken as much by her manner as the tenor of her questions. The next day, with randwolf's help found another tanning saloon and went over. The sweetest girl on earth answered all my questions, threw away the paperwork, since it was only used for those who wanted to use UV tanning and didn't apply to the mystic tan, gave me very careful instructions, charged my card and left me to it.

I went back to On the Beach the next day and got a second dose of the dye. It takes about 8 to 12 hours to develop and I'm very pale skinned. I did not get mexican dark or even close to it. There is a limit as to how much die can be absorbed by the dead cells on the surface of the skin before said cells slough off. So there is a limit to how dark one can get.

None the less, I did get quite a bit darker, enough so that the very dark makeup I put on later didn't look ridiculous over a very pale skin. I was concerned that the bites I had received from sundry insects in México would absorb more dye and maybe even create a tattoo effect, but no such thing happened. There are still scabs today (Aug 20) on my ankle and elbow. The one on my elbow I got the day after I arrived in México and I haven't a clue what caused it. So some of those bites managed to keep lesions going over month. And the fleas just under a month.

The bad saloon got back to me via email and assured me that they did indeed take finger-prints of their users since they had some serious liability over the use of the UV tanning booths for more than the stipulated time. I am to understand that serious tanners are always trying to increase their time in the booths and the saloons trying to limit it.

None of which applied to me or explained the Customer Service Representative's shitty attitude. So, some commercial outfits are customer oriented and others are profit oriented and the customers are mere fodder for their plucking.

Meanwhile, I wish I had looked them up on-line as they had over 40 comments telling people what a crap outfit they were. So just a reminder to self and others... in a strange town, the internet might give you some extra information that you might be glad to have. I certainly would have been glad to have been spared that woman's ill temper.

What next

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:57:03 GMT

I've been to México and back... (Sounds like a song!) and now I am beginning to do some serious studying. So the question is do I keep on posting or let the journal die?

If I keep it up it will be filled with musing about the Tenochteca Excan Tlatoloyan (Aztec Triple Alliance in common parlance), Spain in the 16th Century and the horrible time of the invasion of the Carribean islands and correlating bits of information.

For instance, just today there was a post on the Stirling list about an Island called St. Kilda in the western Hebrides of Scotland. These people were evacuated in the early 1930's. St. Kilda seems to derive, not from any saint but from a mislabeling of the name of the sweetwater spring that made it habitable in the beginning... Called Tobar Childa (both words mean "well", one in Galic and one Norse) it slid into a more "logical" name for the later visitors = St. Kilda. The wikipedia entry has a lot of discussion on the possible evolution of the name. But I like "well, well." It reminds me of the wiki entry for "mole," a generic name for many spicy sauces used in México as feast day food.

Queen Chihuapilli of Michoacan is supposed to have invented it to go on human flesh and the good frairs coaxed her into using it only on pig flesh. My grin there is that "Cihuapilli" means female noble, and of the lowest class, sort of like Baroness, so "Queen Lower noble."
The noteworthy things about St. Kilda, for me are the probably survival of the folk religion up until the early 18th century and the reaction to the disease environment brought by the ships. Also the influence of just one or two people on the island's population is of interest.

How much can I infer as universal behavior, how much is unique to the conquest of México and how much can be seen as correlation. Did they occur for the same reasons or different reasons and just look the same?

In a few months I'll be giving a talk of the survival of pagan systems of belief among the Nahuatl of the Sierra Oriental of México, known as the Huasteca region. It's a bit of an "I am going to eat crow," talk, since I always believed what I was taught... that the pagan religions vanished within a few years of the conquest. Learning that the "conquest' was a long drawn out proceedure and that the religions did not vanish easily or completely was a bit of a shock to me.

After all, all those dances in front of the cathedral in indian dress with feather headdresses and rattles on the ankles and wrists were catholic right? Ummm... there is a considerable amount of re-evaluation I've undergone since I started my journey.

So maybe I'll use this as my sounding board and if people like it they can comment.

Home again

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:20:37 GMT

After 53 days gone, I am finally back home. Spent Monday-Sunday at Denvention; world science fiction convention. Competed in masquerade (unplaced! Dmn it!) and have cleaned out the kitty litter boxes, unpacked one of four suitcases, gone to the pubmet of Seattle fans and kissed and pilled my kitties. They are trying to decide if they recognize me or not.
Very tired.

Last day, last Project

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:15:20 GMT

It's just a little post... I finished up the document on making tortillas with 24 photos in it and decided it was too big for the livejournal. So I switched it over to HTML.

http://www.ipinc.net/~kiers/Mexico/080803Tortilleria.html

So if you want to hear my interest, my musing, see my pictures and learn a few fact about tortillas... hop on over.

This is the last post from México. As I leave the school, I leave behind the key and the fast internet connection.

I may or may not post from Denver and the WorldCon. Otherwise, I'll be home in mid August and have to decide whether to keep on posting.

Last things done

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:15:38 GMT

I have now done everything on my list. I'm amazed. I am so used to having left things not done until the next time that I'm looking at my list and shaking my head. This is a short post (rrrright!) with a couple of pictures. Next post is my "Modern Tortilla making" post and it will be long and photo- intensive.

So one of the things left on my list of to-do's that didn't get done were my buses with horns. I can no more explain my laughter at them than I can explain my fascination with the Grackle.

I found the Grackle on a trilingual list of birds that calls them Zanate in spanish, and Tzanatl in Nahautl. But our legend speaker, ACdlC called them, Tototliyayahuic. Which means, literally, bird that is black, blackbird.

I am transcribing the legend that ACdlC recorded for Odyn. It's slow going. I need quiet or I lose track between the spanish and nahuatl. So it won't be re-told for a while.

So, this morning I was up, not so early, and had my tea and pan dulce and transcribed 2 minutes of the tape, grabbed my email off the hostal server, which I'd rather not do. It's a poor connection. Then at 9:50 I headed out to the market that has had my patronage from the second week here. I like mexican mercados with all the little stands and people forming long term relationships with one vendor or another.

This time I had an appointment to photograph the full tortilleria operation. So I was in a hurry, fast walking along the sidewalks and jumping into the street when I got behind some slow moving tourists.

As I charge down Aguascalientes St. I can hear a distressed bus rumbling on the crossstreet. I hurry. Yes, there is one of my horned buses with the back hood (?) hatch (?) open and the driver fiddling around with the drive. I race around the stranded behemoth (really feeling like I found an elephant stuck on a deer trail!) and snapped away furiously.

Yes, yes, yes! I have a picture of my funny horned bus!

After that I went and kept my tortilleria appointment and continued on and photographed the market place. Mexican law states there has to be a market for every so many housing units. Basically, every neighborhood must have a market that is open once a week. The stalls are rented for a fairly reasonable price. Most markets have a few vegetable, meat and drygoods stands open every day. Most have a tortilleria associated with them. And then, one day a week all the stands are used.

As a matter of fact, this market seems to operate daily with all stands open. It's an old building. It's built on a slope (What building in Zacatecas isn't?) and the entrance is on the low side, so stairs up to the main floor. The bathrooms (3 PMN per user) are on the ground floor.

A series of rooms surround a small courtyard with six stands in it. Each room holds one to five businesses (the tortillas take up a whole room).

The courtyard is obviously old (1770? 1820?) and recently (last 40 years) roofed so that the open space can be used by more businesses. I'm used to buildings from the 1940's and 50's.

I've taken these photos, but perspective is a problem. There just isn't much space to maneuver around and I stepped on a lot of toes; whose owners good humoredly said it was ok. When I answered in spanish they'd make a small amount of conversation with me and let me get on with the snip-snap I was so involved with.

The tortilleria folks know me well by now. I like my tortillas fresh and they got used to my "Un cuartito,", 1/4 of a kilogram of tortillas. That's about ten tortillas and by the time I'd eaten them (2 days) they would have gone bad. But most people buy 4-10 kilos of tortillas at this place so my cuartito made them laugh, and remember me.

So, now I am back at the Institute and soon enough will meet up with all the people I'm having comida with, and that pretty much is a wrap. Sunday will be packing and resting and getting to bed real early so I can get up at 4am and still be bright enough to fly out.

Weird Coincidences

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:44:31 GMT

It only took 7 minutes before JB from one of my internet groups came back identifying the bird as a grackle. When I told my sole remaining classmate, Odyn started at the picture and told me his Tlamachtiquetl, (teacher) in Nahuatl, ADlC had told him a story about this bird. And here is a weird story.

So here is the story told by some Macehualli of the Verzcruzan Huasteca Range. When somebody is going to die, and they are truly going to die, and they have been a bad person (many disclaimers that this is what they he has been told, but he does not know if it is true) then a bird will be seen coming out of the house.

The person will get very sick, unresponsive, and the family will begin to make the preparations for calling the Tetiochiuhquetl(Death Prayer) and begin preparing things for their funeral.

Then suddenly the person will revive and go about their business as if nothing was wrong. After a while people notice that a black bird hops out of the house at night and comes back in in the morning when this person revives.

This happens several times. And the person is turning into a (I'm probably spelling it wrong, all my school books are packed away) Totoliyahuic (bird black) and the bird is eating up the souls of sick people and little babies. And each time it does it then the bad person can live a little longer.

I need more quiet than I've got right now. The tape I dumped is really quiet and it's in Nahuatl with a lot of spanish interjections and I'm having trouble listening to all that it is saying. But there is a lot of very interesting info on the tape. If I get the legend straight, I'll post it here later.

So that's my weird coincidence of the day.

Last Days of Zacatecas

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:47:51 GMT

Time is getting shorter and shorter. Last class was on Wednesday and we had a very productive brainstorming session with the head Tlamachtiquetl, (teacher).

Our other tlamachtiquetl was sick. She sat in on the session, but she was unable to completely follow all our ideas. She had a fever and was soon drooping over the couch in the institute. I drove her out to where her brother was waiting. In spite of insisting I could get back on the bus, they drove back into town with me and dropped me off at the hostel.

That was Wednesday. I'm told she is better and talked to her on the phone and she sounds better. We are all going out for comida (dinner) at 2pm tomorrow, so I'll see her then.

Meanwhile, classes are out and the Institute was as quiet as a building build next to a Mexican City parking lot could be and I have finally managed to get all the reins of logic express (the recording program) into my hands; so we taped a good chunk of the stories and also five of the beginning vocabularies.

I tried videographing some of the tlamachtianih as well. It doesn't look so hot when the video equipment is a small camera that is handheld in inexpert hands. Still, this was an experiment to think about a CD or DVD for distance learning.

Then, there were still things I wanted to do. One was get pictures of the "buses with horns;" still haven't managed that one. Another was to get pictures of the odd birds we saw in the park before Randolph left. I'd been back to the park several times without seeing them. I reasoned that it might be the time and went late today... and there they were!

34 photos later, I have a better idea of what they look like. They sure didn't like that weird person with the funny humming eye stalking them. They kept their eyes on me all the time. Why am I interested? Well, damn! What are they? They aren't big birds, but their tail is as long as their body. They have a very graceful pose, and a melodious voice... and they aren't crows! What are they?

At any rate, maybe I'll be able to identify them later. I headed back into town after that photo session and sort of felt aimless. Tomorrow I will photograph the tortilleria. It's a real steampunk kind of place. They take the dry corn kernels, soak and boil them in the calcium water, grind it, take the mass and put it through a machine that turns out fresh hot tortillas. The squeaking machine takes me right back to my childhood as does the incredible heat generated by all the gas flames cooking the tortillas and the corn grains.

As I got into town I avoided the craft fair under the arches. The dance shows aren't done and the crafters are doing a brisk business and I dropped a lot of money already on them. So I ended up on the side of the street with the Galeria and decided I had to have more salty tamarindo treats to take home. I ducked inside and passed the shop with all the beadwork stuff. And decided to snap a quick picture of the dear's head. (I wasn't given permission, but I wanted it and the owner wasn't there.)

All bad deeds are rewarded. The snapshot didn't turn out well, but... I've spent, since I arrived here (43 days!) way too much time looking for a beadwork cat. The Huichol do not carve on demand. They carve on the inspiration of the gods and I have bought a lot of their craftwork this trip. A snake, a turtle, another two snakes, a jaguar head, a tigrillo (jaguar--oh, my! full body in reds and oranges, fabulous!) a frog, but no cats showed up... and here in the window, looking pensive and winsome was a cat... and another one, on it's back with what looks like a book in it's lap and a third, looking like an owl!

All two days before I am due to leave!!! I got the winsome one. Isn't it gorgeous?

So, I've actually gotten done all the things still on my list with the exception of tomorrow's tortilleria photo-orgy and the buses with horns. I'm a little stunned. I'm also pretty fairly packed and almost ready to jet out of here early. Pity the airlines aren't more like the bus lines. But I'll wait until Monday morning, with great patience.

WorldCon is just around the corner.

Last Day of Classes

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:09:54 GMT

Five days without a post? I'm falling down on the job.

Today, Wednesday, is the last day of classes. On Monday we started to decipher old Nahuatl documents. Our teacher says we've (as a class) come further than any other class he's had.

Part of it, he believes, is just that they've managed to get the course material finished and published. A lot of ground is covered during the school year in grammar, translation and refining stuff that was used the summer before. But part is the class. It was a very interested and hardworking bunch, this year.

My particular contributions are in areas that graduate students and faculty members (the bulk of the class) aren't too savvy; that of technology. Mainly in recording, transcribing and formatting large documents. Using things like spreadsheets to look at verb conjugations and how nahuatl sways between a word being a noun or a verb.

We've been working with a recording program to get down the nativo-hablantes voices telling the stories. Plans are in the works for videos, CDs and other goodies that will help students keep up through the academic year in the cold (or hot) north.

Some of the repeaters are based in colleges in the very southern California area. Others are going to stay in Mexico to gather information. Several are working on books. I am intensely interested in one project, due out in less than a year. It's a solid study of the ball game that the mexica played.

There is evidence that the game itself goes back much further than uto-aztecan civilizations, possibly as far as the Olmeca. Dating and deciphering ruins that have been overgrown by jungle and rainforest for several thousands of years and also used as quarries in the intervening centuries is quite hard.

But evidence has accumulated and I want to know more. Even more surprising is that the game is still played in Northern Mexico. I have to grin... it's the part of Mexico that was last colonized, and most poorly colonized.

The high sierras, the inhospitable north were colonized very gradually and even by the war of independence were only loosely in control of the central government. Great swaths of territory, considered non-productive in our modern world, sustain groups of natives? indians? first wave immigrants? What do I call them? Peoples, peoples of the place. Here is a man dressed in the clothing they wear. This man is a Huichol, selling a traditional medicine they use for arthritis. The Huicholes have no desire to dress like city folk. They like their garb and wear it naturally and happily. A lot of hard work goes into making it. I could get a man's outfit for about $80 or $90 dollars and a woman's for somewhat more. I didn't. (I bought a bunch of stuff, already.)

Back to the ball game. All these people, ignored by conquerors, priests, colonizers and developers of the nation that has become Mexico, have retained many customs and games. The ball game has survived and scholars are studying the modern one, the writings left by the frairs of the sixteenth century on the game and other writers who grew up playing it. I have a great deal of interest in that book.

As this is the last day, I look back on the previous 5 1/2 weeks and ask myself if this was worth it? It cost a lot of money to come and stay in Zacatecas for a month and a half, the flights cost and the course cost... 144.5 hours of academic instruction and individual tutoring doesn't come cheap.

It was so worth it. I'm not a speaker of Nahautl, with my little bit learned in these six weeks, I am not going to walk into an emergency room, a court room or an ICE interrogatory and be able to translate. Uh-uh! But I have the basis of understanding language and culture and my tlamachtiquetl spent a lot of time throwing books, book names and authors names at me. Most of my classmates chipped in with their favorite books. According to randwolf there are piles of the books I have ordered while here waiting for me at home.

In spite of the long hours of work and play I have been putting in, I also downed two technical books; one on the Summer Institute of Linguistics and another by Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest which is a treasure trove of information. I am told that Louise Burkhart's book Slippery Earth is another treasure. It's out of print and the only copy I have located costs $200 USD. I think I'll get it through ILL. I wish the university of Arizona would re-issue it. Apparently it's turning into a really hard to obtain item.

Well, I'm rambling and it is almost time for our last class. I'll post one on rambling Zacatecas in a day or two, and all the things I actually didnt' do.

A great store that didn't get posted

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:02:23 GMT

Have I gone missing? No I'm right here. But it's end-of-course blahs... and some hard end-of-course work.

We were supposed to leave for the village today. Sigh. Political troubles got in the way. So we aren't going. It's making us all feel pretty dull and sad right now.
So I think I'll post something else. There are a lot of shops in town; a LOT of shops. I'm not so interested in the silver although I can recognize it's value and the craftsmanship. But there are more than enough shops left to catch my attention. There was that shop I posted with the funnest chachcas.

But there is a small chain of VERY fine stuff. They sell to the tourist, but they sell only the cream of the crop. And for what they sell the prices are not unreasonable.

They have a store on Plaza Goitia that caters to the tourists. A store just past the Cathedral that caters to the cognoscenti and a small store out at the ruins of La Quemada that is a frank tourist trap with the added attraction of snakes in the display cases. If it's quiet (it wasn't the day I went) one of the sons of Cazorra (Sr. Renard) will take the snakes out and let people handle them.

I found them by looking for a mask. I wanted one of the tiger actually, jaguar masks that are used in the southern part of Mexico for dances every year. But they simply can't be found here and I was asking all over the place.

I'd been in the store on the Plaza Goitia and they told me to go over to the store past the cathedral. What a treat. Mr. Renanrd and his wife are cultured intelligent people who know their town's history forward and backward.

They have fine stuff and old stuff and true antiques. He could talk for hours and I'd love to hear all he has to say; he shares his knowledge in a very fun way. He assured me that he had the mask I was looking for at the other store and one of the clerks ran from the other store to the one I was in with the mask.
I could have died. It was a tiger mask and antique. And lovely and well worth the asking price of $80.00, (I think) but it wasn't what I wanted. And an antique like that really needs to belong to somebody who wants and loves it. I'm a costumer, my stuff gets used.

This is the place where I got the nice shawl and rebozo. Anything they have in stock is of the finest.

So, I have posted a story I meant to post before I got heatstroke, and been playing catchup got in the way. If you go to Zacatecas, do visit Cazorra, it's a neat-o place.

Not quite the SCA

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:20:49 GMT

As I've said before, Zacatecas can really surprise me.

I'd heard some re-creationists, medieval re-creationists were in town and didn't think much about it. But Saturday morning I heard... bagpipes? Scottish bagpipes and drums? I was hard at work transcribing a lecture tape and didn't take the time to go running three blocks to see if it was indeed a scottish band. But I am assured by the guys who did go run off after them, that they were indeed a "scottish" marching band.

Late that evening, coming back from a nice dinner at an exclusive restaurant we heard noise coming from the Plaza de Armas and wandered over to watch.

Remember when the SCA started? In Diana Paxson's backyard 30 plus years ago, (I think?). And they were just trying it and period wasn't a criteria, yet. No more were safety precautions taken... well I'm looking at this small crowd of people.

Let's see, the monks are over there, all five of them in tunic and tabard. Two sets of fighters are having at in the center and a small crowd is on the City Hall steps. It's cold and it's been raining. Most of them have cloaks... thin velvet panne cloaks on. I'm told there were a few gypsy wenches, but I didn't see them.

The two pairs are having at with wall hangers. Yes, the dull scrape of untempered, shoddy metal is unmistakable. They are wearing tunics, to the knee, tights and some sort of shorts. The tunics are cloth with trim sewn on. The boots are modern. The girl is wearing white and gold, her tunic comes almost to her ankles, she's wearing modern zip up the inside boots with three inch heels. They are solid heels, not stiletto and she's acting pretty serious about her sword play. WINCE! On wet, smooth shinny stone paved courtyard, yes, her foot just lost it's grip. OW! That recover must have hurt her ankle.

There are no helms/helmets, no gloves or gauntlets, no vambraces, no mail, no gorgets, no armor, no codpieces, in short, cloth. I see four people, dressed in light polyester no-period tunics, no protection at all, having at each other with wall hangers! The footwork sucks? Let's just say that they are really having at without a clue as to what they are doing.

Then the prince walks across the the plaza de armas and talks to the warriors I hadn't see earlier... the Goth Black Leather Warriors. and I swallow. The Prince is dressed in white. It's some sort of shirt past the crotch, pants, tight ones, a belt, a polyester or rayon cloak fluttering from the shoulders to the waist, white somethings on the feet and these leather things that go from the instep up past the knees, strapped on somehow. They are either white leather or some fake leather and studded all over with gold colored studs of varying sizes.

A sound brings my head around. One of the pair of swordsmen is curled up on the ground. I can't tell if his sparring partner landed a good one, hurt him or he slipped. Yes, I forgot, there are no marshals watching the fights. The girl and her partner are off for a few.

These two leave, but my attention was taken away by the prince and goths and their little bus of costumes trying to park in front of the cathedral. The unmusical ting of wall hangers catches my attention again and there are the girl and her much larger partner going at it. She does this hop-shuffle stance, left leg back, right knee bent, right arm extended and flailing the sword and then in this position some sort of a hop forward several times without altering the position of her feet. It looks very anime (and with those heels!).

I decide I can't watch any more. In five years they will be much more seasoned and maybe they can even avoid killing somebody with a broken sword. Then, maybe I can watch.

Morning music

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:54:38 GMT

Zacatecas Likes it's music. I've pretty much stopped mentioning it, but marching bands, singing groups, student choirs and ensembles are a nightly feature.

But at 7:30am? Mostly that's a feature of the loud speakers atop the gas trucks... which were silent this morning. But music there was, loud music. It sounded like military music? I'm in school by 7am most mornings and this morning I was going for a piece of pan dulce when the racket hit. After buying my bread I went poking around.

In the Plaza de Armas on the other side of the cathedral an open troop transport was parked and an honor guard of trumpets and drums was busily tootling and thrumbing away. It was well done and they were very disciplined, wearing ordinary fatigues, but with bright red hash marks, with little pompoms dangling off each side of the mark, jiggling with each move of their arms. The sound banged against the municipal palace, across the street against the line of hotels and shops and back again.

When I could I asked the trooper watching the transport what was up. He explained it's in honor of the death of Benito Juarez in 1872. Well. He was one of Mexico's little pieces of luck and it's nice they honor the day.

And once the honor music was done, the gas trucks began their loudspeakers again.

Zacatecas is always giving me something else to be amazed at and with.

Cats in Zacatecas

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:22:51 GMT

There are a lot of dogs here. Especially those really small dogs an unloved ex used to call "drop-kick" dogs. But I rarely see cats. In my fourth week I count my fourth sighting of a cat.

The first was a little orange cat being carried down the street of the Alameda. The second a fluffy black standing in the open doorway of a Hostel near mine. It blinked at me, but decided that I wasn't good enough to talk to. The third was a white cat with faint gray markings sitting in front of the school one morning last week. Terribly feral. It held it's ground until I got within two meters and whisked away.

The fourth was found on Tuesday late morning, in a plastic bag by the garbage can in the alleyway. A pair of American women are staying near here, each with two children. They pulled the cat out of the bag and were all indignant. I walked in on the questioning.

Well, yeah, people still get rid of cats. Soffocation is more likely in a place without a lot of surface water. We later found out that the little boy kitten (16 weeks aprox) has been wandering around the street for a few weeks. Very tame, very loving. The women went nuts over him, bathed him, got him a collar, some litter, the kids had a new stuffy toy to play with. And I felt uneasy.

The hostel owner also wasn't happy. For one, they didn't ask for permission to have the cat at the hostel, just assumed it would be fine to bring it in. I could guess another reason why, too. He was afraid they'd take off in two weeks and leave him the cat. I could see that this was a very likely consequence. So I put on my halo and talked to them about how to get the cat into America.

Get it to a vet, get it's shots, get it a health certificate, call the airline TODAY, talk to so and so who did something similar on the bus... All through this talk I "assumed" they would not adopt and abandon. But in the back of my mind their attitude was shrieking warning signs.

I've got three cats of my own and a longish journey before getting home. I can't take it. Two other cat lovers are in the same situation. But by afternoon I was very aware that four children, two under 8 and two under five had taken over the 16 week old kitten as a toy.

Of course, they were quarreling over it. Not a day goes by when one of the girls doesn't have four or five crying jags over conflicts. Now a living critter was at the center of the kids conflicts.

My unease was given a real form early the next morning. After more drunks on the terrace and the cops coming out and an arrest I got up at 5:30 and was out the door by 6:45 to come to school. As I walked down the street I heard the kitten screaming in hysterics. It had been put on the balcony of the woman's room, three or four meters up in the air and it was having a total panic attack.

There wasn't anything I could do. Access to that part of the hostel is by key and I don't have one. Just as I was turning away I was caught by the night-clerk who wanted to talk over the arrest and while we were talking a schoolmate of mine popped out on the adjacent balcony in high irritation. The kitten had been screaming since 4am.

She let me in, I knocked on the door and let the lady know the kitten was going to jump and kill itself. (Probably could have walked away from the fall, but iffy). She brought the kitten in and blessed silence reigned.

The coda is sad. Later yesterday a set of three teens were seen hawking the kitten around town for $25 pesos (USD 2.50). I don't know the fate of the kitten, but I am very annoyed at the adopt a toy for my kids and abandon it when it's too much trouble people.

I haven't found out why there are so few cats in Zacatecas, but there isn't a lot of stray food lying around. It's a clean city, for the most part and there isn't a lot of refuse that can be eaten. But there appears to be an anti-cat prejudice as well.

Stray dogs are also unusual. One market had two, two other markets don't have any. There are one or two associated with a crazy beggar at the cathedral.

I'll post a happier post next time.

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:55:58 GMT

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.

I promised a new photojournal, a day late, but not a photo short...
http://www.ipinc.net/~kiers/photos/Signs.html

Next up

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:32:29 GMT

I promise a URL to all the fun shop signs I photographed. We might as well get some advantage out of my heat stroke.

The consequence of carelessness while walking Zacatecas.

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:31:28 GMT

This is an "I'm sick and I'm going to tell you all about it," entry. So, if you are squeamish, don't read any further. However, if you think you'll go to a high altitude city, you might want to re-warn yourself how easy it is to get heat and sunstroke, dehydration and altitude sickness.

So remember my adventures over the last few days? I got tummy wobblies on Tuesday from cream that was turning and lost the contents of my gut a few times. IBD is no fun and I wasn't retaining much I ate. Friday anything hitting my stomach caused hard cramping throughout the intestine, so I didn't even drink much water.

Then I went to La Quemada without breakfast, or lunch and felt so sick by the time I got back that I didn't have dinner until way too late. The potato chips I ate at the archeological site were lime flavored which didn't do my swollen gut any good.

I had a small amount of spaghetti and sauce late that evening and felt better, but a bit sore the next morning. So I decided (as you can see from my previous entry) to get all the fun shop names captured on the camera. And walked all over the city before I found that half the photos were horribly blurred.

I never did figure out what I had done to the camera settings to lose so many photos. It reset itself and was taking fine photos several hours later.

So in the afternoon, after feeling exhausted and hot earlier, but "Better, now!" I headed out and did the whole "walk the city," again!. I was kind of restless as the night fell and didn't do lights out until well after 11pm.

About 2am I woke to hear people still on the terrace, but I wasn't really worried about them. I was shivering and my body felt like it was on the rack. I pulled all four covers up and blessed Ernesto for giving me an extra one last week when the weather was so cold.

It still took time for it to sink in... heatstroke, complicated with dehydration and my IBD. I'd been going all around town in a t-shirt with a heavy denim shirt on top to protect from the sun and sweated quite a bit.

My gut cramped and I worked my way out of bed for the first time and as I sat on the throne realized I hadn't pee'd in two days. One very heavy drop came out. My gut was swollen to the five months pregnant level. Crawling back to bed I snagged the 2 liter water bottle. My lips were dried and scratchy, my mouth and throat cotton covered. Little sips was all my much abused stomach could tolerate. When I finally got up again to use the toilet, I was sure 4 or 5 hours had gone by.

No such luck. It was just three and I had finished off over a liter of water. This time the pee was more abundant and didn't burn or drip. So I knew my upper intestine was doing it's job. I sat on the cute little steps up to my bathroom and tried to pour another bottle full of water out of the 5 gallon jug. My muscles weren't working well, all dried out pieces of meat and I splashed water all over the towel I'd had the forethought to lay down. Slowly I filled the 2 liter bottle.

Each sip of the cold water caused the shivers to start up again. The third time my bladder called I managed to make my way over to my clothes and snag socks, underwear and a t-shirt to put on under the very light nightgown I was wearing.

That did the trick, my core temperature began to rise and after an hour (just after 4 am) I begin to be able to drink the cool water without shivering for 5 minutes.

Not only does each joint hurt from the prolonged bout of shivering and holding myself tense, my ankles are telling me that I'm an idiot. I feel them fearfully as I put on my socks. No, thank heaven, they aren't swollen, just painful. But then, I have no idea how much I walked; about four hours worth of up and down and around split into two occasions.

My small intestine gurgles as it processes the H2O and all of a sudden my large intestine tells me it needs to do it's thing. That's when I realized I hadn't produced gas for 48 hours, either. Man, do I need to be this stupid? A healthy gut produces gas. It's how we know its working.

But the heat and dryness and my complete hyper focus on what I was doing are all part of the same thing. Looking back I realized I'd had the warning signs, but at the time nothing triggered a warning flag in my brain, which was being fuzzy. In fact, leaving to do the rest of the pictures is a classical symptom of heat exhaustion.

randwolf caught that the last time I did this, but he's not here any more and his warnings over the phone the night before went right over my head.

Every time I moved I panted and ached. I drank water in sips. Too much is no better than too little. Unfortunately I didn't have any suitable food to get my gut dis-inflamed and the three block walk to the corner store was right out of the question.

I'll be posting this long after it's all over. Walking downstairs (4 flights) is out of my power as I write. Yeah, hydration and paying attention to the heat are things I need to do.

Bleh, I feel supremely stupid.

Around 10 am I did manage to make it downstairs, feeling like a fool. The owner and his desk clerk got me the food I needed and I painfully made my way upstairs, again and boiled up a cup of plain oatmeal with a pinch of salt. It stayed down and in. The peach juice stayed down. The water stayed down.

I could manage about 15 minutes of activity before falling down. The sheets and blankets were a mess. But by now, 7pm I am noticeably better and hope to go back to school tomorrow.

Sigh, it's impotant to be careful in strange environments.

Walking and snapping

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:34:46 GMT

I wasn't as sore as I thought I'd be from all that climbing around on ruins. So today I decided was a good time to work on another project of mine, photographing all the fun and interesting and odd signs in town. In between working on my verbs... which continue to puzzle the heck out of me.

I eventually arrived at a store called Cazzorra where I'd found some stuff the other night and met the very nice owner and his wife. When I got there, he allowed me to take pictures and then I found out that my camera has been unfocused all along and half the photos are blurs of colors. I'm ready to scream. But Mr. Zorra was nice and let me come back later to take good photographs. They are a highly intelligent couple and interested in preserving the history of their land and making a profit.

Yeah, this is a driving force today in México. I can't remember that it was ever different. People want to work, earn a salary, get ahead. There are street vendors all over the place, people walking by hawking whatever they think might sell, and those few that haven't gotten a stash to invest in beg and look pitiful... and they really rather be selling cocados or chaquiras or something.

Everybody with a room towards the street has transformed it into a shop. Some so narrow my hips just barely clear the merchandise, others quite spacious.

Anyway, back to the pictures. When I got back to the hotel I realized that only half were bad. I had no idea what had happened to the camera, but a reboot seems to have fixed the problem. But I was exhausted by then and all I wanted was a light little meal and some rest (and some attention to the verbs).

Late in the afternoon I was ready to head out again and try to re-shoot the photos that had gone bad. I got all but one of my shots. I also got some incredible beadwork that I'd been eyeing for three weeks and a pot to make real foamy hot chocolate in.

I'll be posting the pictures (probably in another html format) over the next week or so.

I've mentioned I've been cold and it's been rainy? And whined and bitched and moaned? Friday I was so cold I went looking for a warm wrap of some sort because I was so uncomfortable. I found the above mentioned shop, Cazzorra by accident. I'd actually gone looking for a special mask, but that's another story. They sold me, ah, yes, excellent salesmen, and the shop only stocks the finest stuff a shawl, in our language chal with a heavy emphasis on the ch and a rebozo. When I got back to the hostel they did indeed match my pretty dress I hadn't been able to wear.

So I had a nice warm wrap for class Monday. It's Sunday and it was blazing sun, incredibly hot and I loved it. I've been missing the sun.

Walking back after my second round of photography (ok, *now* my feet hurt!) I had to take pictures of that intersecting street near my hostel. Every time a car crests the rise from Hidalgo up Aguascalientes and hangs a left, I swear the darned thing is going to take wings and fly. While I was doing this an older man stopped and watched me.

"Where are you from?"

"Would you believe me if I said here?"

"No, but your spanish is very good. It's your face and body that say you aren't a country woman."

I laughed and he talked with me. He's a tahúr which he insists is a dealer in games of chance. Not only was I taught that the term means gambler, but the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language agrees with me. When I asked him for the correct term for a gambler he told me it was a sickness and had no name. He's going to leave a fotostatica at the Hostel for me to study on the evils of the pathological need to gamble.

My lips twitch but I suppress the giggles. He used to run cockfights and was gung-ho to take me to one or a horse race. He dwelt fondly on the excitement of horse races and I laughed and assured him I'd rather ride the horse than watch it run in this heat. He meandered off homewards (so he assured me) obviously a little bit over the top with his friend alcohol.

I went upstairs to get a long drink of mineral water and speak sternly to my stomach. I forgot to eat yesterday and my innards let me know just what their opinion of that bit of foolishness was... I'm still quite sore today from the reaction.

Well, back to the Hostel and conjugate verbs in the Nahuatl.

Night Zacatecas

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:49:53 GMT

Last night I accepted an invitation to make part of a party to go see "La Quemada," an archeological site near Zacatecas. It was only around 9pm that I suddenly remembered Aracely, my tutor and I were going to meet at midday to make up two lost hours of study. Yikes, I was leaving with the group at 10am!

It's ten to four and I'm just back from La Quemada archeological site. For that trip, I've got too many photos to post here, so go to:
www.ipinc.net/~kiers/photos/Laquemada.html .

Returning to last night, I remembered that another of the nativo-hablantes was working late at the institute and raced back (ok so it's just two blocks! pant, pant, pant!). Cati was still there and getting ready to sign off the net as her expected call hadn't come through.

Yes, she knew where Aracely worked and it was on the way to her bus stop. So I could come with her, but she didn't think Aracely was working tonight. She wasn't. Cati's bus was coming and loading and it was the last bus as she wrote what she hoped was the house phone of Aracely's dorm on my hand and sketched a map of where the dorm was on my other hand.

The bus took off and I roared in my deepest voice at it to stop and Cati made it on. Then I looked around and took my bearings. At one point on our quick march through the city Cati had wondered if I'd be able to get back on my own. I assured her that I had already walked along this part of town and was not in any trouble.

I decided to give the map a quick try, but it was hopeless. The round blob at the bottom was supposed to be a landmark off the Alameda, but which one in the four block long tree lined street? So I went back to the Hostel and tried the phone line. I got in touch with a female voice which I presumed was the house mother and ran into a problem, at once. I couldn't remember Aracely's last name and there are four Aracelis living there (most of them spell it with an "I" not a "Y.")

Eventually the lady seemed to identify her by description and promised to deliver the no-show message. I was pretty dubious. In fact, this morning I went to IDIEZ to use the net connect and post the bits and pieces post and John Sullivan was there. He gave me Aracely's cell phone number and I finally got in touch with her and canceled the tutoring session. (No she hadn't gotten the message I left last night.)

I've got to go to her job and talk about how we are going to make up the time later today. Meanwhile, wandering about town between 9 and 10 pm was fun. Not all the shops are open, but a fair number are. The streets are crammed with cars. It's easy to do, they are so narrow. But there are many more people than cars thronging the narrow sidewalks, all made out of the same flat stone as the streets are. In the rain it's quite slippery.

But last night was a nice pleasant night and walking back to the hostel through the center of a "strange" city in the streetlamp gloom was fun. People were smiling, some coming off work in ordinary clothes, others out for a good time in nice clothes, a few beggars holding out their hand. I felt a little bad because I'd left my purse in the hostel when I ran out. Zacatecas has a nice bouncy night life that is friendly and fun to wander about in.

I found out an hour ago that Aracely was having dinner at the hostel with two of my fellow students while I chased all over the city! Oh, well. We got in touch and she didn't come to the Institute in vain while I was off in La Quemada, and that's what really mattered.

Zacatecas bits and pieces

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:36:00 GMT

It's hump weekend and I haven't posted for four days. Dear me. What have I been doing?

Well studying for one. The verbs and the nouns (both of which use very similar prefixes but not the same prefixes) are finally untangling in my head. I have this graph the teacher gave us and I keep on calling it up in the language class (in my mind) because we aren't allowed books. Got to get it by hearing... listening, really.

There's a problem with that. When 10 english speakers and five Nahuatl speakers get together in a room built of cinderblock, facing a three story parking garage and all practice the latest verb conjugation at once, the echoes and sounds filtering in can blast away the subtleties of pronunciation. Often I have to wait until the next morning when it's only my tutor and I making all the noise so I can hear. Even then, the echoes off the cinderblock walls can confuse me quite a bit.

What else... cranking out over the drunks. That problem is mostly resolved. Thank goodness. But part of the solution is my moving to another room. I don't want to wake up at 2am and stay awake because the rowdies are on the terrace any more, but I love the room with the three windows, the wonderful views over Zacatecas, it's bathroom up a little stair, but I do need to sleep. I can't have both and sleep is the more important consideration.

The hostel owner has reconditioned two houses, one in front of the Institute and one down a blind alley a block away. These he is starting to use for "quiet places." For us older hostel users who aren't interested in long drunken talk fests that get loud, they are going to be a god-send (Hermes, of course). The disadvantage to both these houses is no kitchen. I'll have to haul my cooking food and gear from the annex every meal time. Better that than getting dosed with pork all the time.

I've been wandering all over Zacatecas for a few weeks, now. It's not easy to get lost. The street run down the ravines and are connected by very narrow streets or stairs.

I needed a few more pieces of cookwear. The ones I got originally are too big for cooking for one. So I set out on Wednesday to El Mercado del Arroyo de la Plata. I was there on the last day with randwolf but we didn't see a lot of it. So I was pretty sure if I went ->that-a-way I'd find it and I did. It rained. I'd mentioned it's been raining? I was told last night several communities are flooded and relief is on the way. So Wednesday it rained and rained and rained, soft, mizzle, hard, downpour... never let up, just changed character.

I went around and around in the Market. It's an odd place and communication between the various floors and sections is quite eccentric. One of my fellow students is studying the cult-phenomena of La Santa Muerte. So I walk into the market and ask at an herbalist/magic stand where to find my pots and pans and look up at three one-meter statuettes of La Santa Muerte. I follow directions twice, thrice and finally find out that I had turned right rather than left and get to the seller of household goods.

I get what I need and head out to school and mention the herbalist shop to my classmate. Friday we went there and had another classmate in tow. Tony doesn't speak spanish. It's a handicap at this point. Les and I do. We interpret for Tony. He's in seventh heaven, getting things for La Santa Muerte cult taking photos, asking questions.

Then I head down to the Household area to get a tortilla basket and napkin. Basket, yes, napkin, no. Les buys one, too. Tony takes photographs of the obligatory shrine to La Guadalupana.

We leave and I suggest I cook lunch for them. Les says "No," her tummy was pretty upset, still. Tony is still good from breakfast but they followed me to the smaller market close to the school to buy tortillas. While I'm in line buying tortillas they wandered out to the market looking for flor de calabaza for our lunch. And find the apothecary in that market who is a total gung-ho fan of La Santa Muerte and absolutely is enchanted to talk about her and and invite him to a temple out of the city.

When they are done with the ritual and buying things we head back to school or the hostel. I'm still looking for flor but it's all been bought. It's pretty rare right now, maybe the rains are affecting the crop. Or it might be too late in the year. Les and Tony head up the street and tell them I'll catch up and shoot off to one of the street stands to see if they have flor.

They don't but the vendors are busily stitching away at tortilla napkins and I have a brainstorm... "Do you sell those, too?"

Yup. She races off to their car and brings back a half dozen so I can check them out. I buy a large and a small one ($10 and $5 dollars) and head out to the hostel, highly satisfied with my morning and ready to have some food. Les buys the smaller one off me and we are both satisfied with our little purchases.

Learning Nahuatl

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:53:30 GMT

I've been here, taking classes for two weeks now, and haven't posted much on the classes. Well, for one, early lessons in a language tend to be incredibly boring. More for the listenee than the takee, if you get my meaning.

For another, well, Nahuatl is hard. John teased me for four days running on that one word and morpheme. It's Na-huatl, where Na is a syllable and huatl is a syllable. The rule is a syllable can be a vowel, or a consonant and a vowel or vowel and a consonant or a consonant, vowel, consonant. So how is huatl a syllable?

hu is a phoneme and represents one sound which is counted as a consonant. Linguists have these complicated symbols for all the sounds, but basically the hu and uh combinations are always one consonant that sounds like "w." They are the same letter, one occurs at the beginning of a syllable and the other at the end of the syllable.

The reason makes sense, too. Way back in the old days, 1520-40 when Nahuatl scribes were learning to write their language in the latin characters with a Castillian gloss, there were sounds that simply weren't in the alphabet, so they'd put together two letters to make the sound. Such are the hu/uh combo.

The problem pops up in a word like Tonatiuh - sun. It's pronounced Tonátiw and the final iw sort of fades out of the sound. It's not Tonatíuh. And if we were to write it with the morpheme Tonatihu, it would be pronounced To-na-ti-hoo. So the scribes, seeing that their Castillian brethren kept making that mistake developed a rule for writing w at the end of the syllable.

Back to our language word, Na-watl. Yes, the tl is one sound and a consonant. Not like the tl in turtle, instead put the tongue up behind the uppper teeth for the "t" sound, barely sound it and let the air run out the sides of the mouth between the tongue and the roof of the mouth.

It takes some work to get the proper pronunciation. My last day at Hermetic Society I was told by our Fearless Female leader that they expected me to come back making a speech in Nahuatl. And I instantly blabbed a few words (I think from the 12th book of the Florentine codex) I had committed to a very ephemeral memory that day.

Bleh!

I'm glad John Sullivan, the tlamachtihquetl, never heard that! Two weeks into the course and I'm snorting at my presumption. The language whose name means, "clear, sonorous sound," (maybe, scholars argue all the time over these details) is bloody difficult.

I was engaged in writing out words from Joe Campbell's Foundation Course in the weeks before coming to Zacatecas. I found that certain letters didn't belong together in my mind and I'd have to force myself, very carefully to write to correct combination of consonants and vowels. Now I have to listen and listen and listen to the nativo-hablantes (native speakers) trying to make the sounds work in my ear so I can reproduce them with my mouth.

I'm getting some of it, but today, in classic grammar (oh, by the way, I never learned grammar, in English or Spanish!) we had our first real sentence to parse. I was all at sea. One looks at the sentence and decides if that big fat word is a noun (sustantivo) with it's seven little bits and pieces... no wait, that's the verb with seven prefixes, affixes and suffixes, the noun only gets two or three of them. OK, so maybe this thing is a verb....
noconnnotlatlauhtilia in momahuizzotzin mmm, can I have it with a cherry and nuts? It'll make just as much sense to me. Hidden in the two large words are the roots of verbs. They have got to be found and figured out. OK, the first word starts with no and the second one with mo. Both end in reverentials. I've got to find the reverential pair to find out what "I" was saying to "you." Then maybe with three pieces subtracted from the original word I can find the root of the verb.

Well, some hard work dividing up the word left me with tlatla which means burn. And doesn't make sense in this context. I tackle the other word and manage to parse a bit of it, but can't figure out the root. Turns out zz happens when z-y are put together. The first correct verb root was tlatlahutia which means I beg or I supplicate. The second root was induces fear. Your awesomeness or your Reverence. Man did I feel dumb by the time John had finished explaining all the bits I missed.

I'm not regretting coming, I'm having a ball, and the language is fiendishly complicated. We each have a native speaker tutor and do about 5 hours of classroom work a day. (9-10:30, 10:30 to 11:30 and 4:00 to 6:00) that's 4.5 hours plus the hour of tutoring. I'm finding the native speakers a lot of fun, too. My tutor is a very fine boned petite girl, soft spoken until she decides I must have wax in my ear and she shouts. Thanks to her hard work I'm not trailing too badly.

But, even though spanish is not required for the course, not having spanish handicaps the student when working with the tutor. So, I'm learning and I can say, "My finger, your finger, his finger, our finger, your (pl) finger, their finger." And also arm, head, hair, eye, foot, leg, butt, nose and ears. I can understand the commands to walk, sit, stand, jump, dance, touch, climb, climb down, crouch, straighten (oh, yes confession, catholic confession is straighten your soul!) ummm, straighten, eat, count, read, conjugate them in present and preterite. Oh, yes I'm learning and I want an OZ style learning pill to go faster. But there is no substitute for the brain doing the work.

So I guess, Ximocehui, tlicolli in amatl. Sit, pen and paper is next on my agenda.

Oh, yeah, it's raining! Started about 6 pm-ish, rattled down in fine style and we've already lost power once. The thunder was strong enough to rattle the room for over 60 seconds at one point. I've got a lovely series of morning pictures of La Bufa with the weather rolling in. I plan to slide show them and see all the moving systems.

I'll post this tomorrow. Now it's time for tlicolli and amatl.

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:26:06 GMT

We wandered town Sunday morning and saw super dog. No kidding, somebody had dressed the pi-dog at the church (one of them) in a faded old superman t-shirt.

Taking that photo was a little nerve-wracking; poor dog thought I was going to feed him and kept jumping on me. But he is a friendly little doggy. I've been watching him for a while, now. Pi-dogs in México learn ... ah, let me rephrase that. An aggressive pi-dog dies, quickly and early in México. A nice lady finally turned and called him and I got the pic.

randwolf left a bit after 2 pm Sunday. I waved goodbye as the hostel car took him off to the airport and then took myself off. Sitting around and feeling sorry for myself felt like a bad idea.

Added note: Bad me. I misspelled Socavón, no wonder I couldn't find it in the dictionary. It means cave, tunnel, sinkhole. It's very rare for me to make a mistake with the b/v in spanish. Sorry about the confusion. All corrected below.

I decided that I would go buy some tuna fish, some limes (I call them límones) and a few other bits and pieces for supper. Shops are open, maybe, on Sunday. To my surprise I found El Socavón del Recuerdo open. After getting the foodstuffs at the mercado down the street I went back. The ladies in there were absolutely nice about my taking photos and answering questions. This is the place that has the stuffed horse. Here is the display:

Yes, there are masks, calf heads and green men plaques up on the wall. El Socavón del Recuerdo at 121 Calle Tacuba, Center of Zacatecas is the best all round chachca shop I've found and it has very decent prices. In the far back is a farm cart with two stuffed calves, three stuffed hens or roosters and a bunch of other stuff. The whole ensemble is for sale.

Why do they stock these odd items? Because rich people with a cabin or ranch outside the city decorate them with these particular items. There was a goat with noble curved horns halfway dow the aisle. The bird looks like an emu with chicks. Several roosters or hens -- and another calf sitting on the top of a singer sewing machine frame with a new table top:

As you can see the merchandise is a wonderful varied miscellany. I will be heading back there, I'm eyeing some of their mugs and matched geodites that are just the size for earrings.

What does Socavón mean? Good question and not one I could have answered at that moment. I am fairly sure that it means a cellar, but one like a wine cellar, long narrow, arched roof, masonry, etc. but I had to look it up and haven't found it online. But my mexican speakers call it a mine audit or narrow passageway used for storage. Not up above... I had originally misspelled the word.

I went to the sweet store after that and got jamoncillo which means "small ham." In spite of the name, perfectly edible by yours truly. It's really cinnamon flavored boiled down milk and sugar. Guaranteed to trigger a diabetic attack. (I'm going to have to be careful with my sweet tooth, I want all the sweeties in town.)

The day before I leave I will have to buy a ton of the traditional sweets of México to take to Denvention and bring back to Seattle (if they last!). It's harder to get them in the US than any other mexican food product and I've yet to track down a recipe book that focuses JUST on the traditional sweets of México.

Oh, yes, it rained again. Started to mizzle in the morning, tapered off and then started again around 5 pm, did the bucket thing from about 7 pm and kept it up the most of the evening.

The un-fatted calves

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:11:20 GMT

{Just a quick note before the meat of the entry. If anybody has tried to leave a comment and gotten the obnoxious You have to log in answer, "I'm sorry!" It was part of the default set-up and I have hopefully disabled it. If you still have trouble leaving comments, let me know and I'll kick the set-up again. Back to the main message...}

I don't always understand what I see... and I grew up in this country. Historians talk about the microfragmentation of the country. It's a process where each little piece, state, city, county, neighborhood, sets itself apart and finds methods to make themselves different and deserving of a bigger piece of the pie. Which might explain why there are sights in Zacatecas-many miles north and somewhere between 6 and 8 hours on the bus away from where I grew up-I don't understand, but will share with you.

So the two days we were up on La Bufa last weekend taking photos I took two photos that were rather inexplicable to me. I did ask, but the answer didn't seem to answer anything.

Here they are:

What are they? Well, just what they look like, newborn calves that have been stuffed... maybe I should say... taxidermified??? Preserved is probably the correct term. But my dicky is back in Seattle, so we'll go with what I can recall. I looked at one, at the other, decided they weren't goats, or lambs, finally saw the hoofs and agreed with myself on the designation, "cattle." I then asked the very nice shop lady.

Yup, calves.

"Why?"

"Well, it's not animals they sacrifice, you understand. Some are born and die soon or are born dead. Those are the ones they cure and stuff."

Ok, so they don't kill the animals to create these conversation pieces. Truth to tell, that wouldn't bother me. Other people like veal and it is a baby cattle. But why would someone buy a full sized stuffed calf?

There was no answer to that question, just a little shrug. And yes, the white one is mounted on a singer treadle sewing machine table. I have another such table in my room at the hostel, treadle intact, but top replaced by a piece of plywood.

Well, so I don't have answers. There is a shop down the street from where I am taking classes that has one of these calves and on the opposite wall a humongous wooden plaque with the forequarters and head of a horse. I haven't asked yet. Maybe this week. Meanwhile I think I need to explore this very odd store. I can see a bird like thing standing halfway back to the wall from the store front that I am curious about. Maybe the proprietor will give me a more complete answer on the whys and wherefores of these curious art-works.

Other mysteries to be solved. I've mentioned Zacatecas likes it's marching bands. Yes it does. Today we found a partial solution to the mystery. Bands welcome the bride and groom as they leave the church. The bride was then driven around the park three or four times with all the horns blowing at their hardest.

But later, while photographing the theater we saw another band take off from the corner (covered in light green rain ponchos) and head towards the cathedral, booming and tuba-ing away. A crowd followed them, but there was nothing special about them, so I don't know. Some bands seem to have a purpose, others may be advertising just how loud or in tune they are.

The so-called artillery that woke us the 4th of July (and this morning has been booming intermittently) was explained as the beginning of a festival of peregrination (maybe of the Holy Child of Antioch, patron of the miners) that would eventually, after days end in a large dance of Moros y Cristianos. It's a festival where elaborately masked and clothed dancers dance in front of churches playing Moors and Christians. So there were fire crackers at dawn that lit up the sky.

Ah, washing. When I was living here my friends would not take a shower right after eating. It was years before I finally untangled what was going on. The dictum, "Don't swim after eating." was translated into spanish, probably in the 50's. But in spanish the word for swim, bath and shower is the same. To this date, many people in this country will not clean their whole bodies in the evening because they've "just eaten."

So when the sovadora told me very seriously that having a shower right after the rather smelly massage was a terrible idea I kept my thoughts to myself. It took two applications of shampoo to get the stuff out of my hair each day.

Rain, drunks, La Sovadora and Snakeoil

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:17:01 GMT

It's been raining, did I mention that? I found out yesterday that the rains did not come as usual in May and June. My mother has sent me an email (you can just reply here on the live journal, Mom!) saying, "May or June and end in September if you are lucky, November if you aren't."

Well, here in Zacatecas they expect the real rains to be over by mid June. But this year they didn't come and the whole area around the city sweltered in the heat and moaned. The people of Zacatecas (witness their willingness to have marching bands every evening in the rain, magic shows, and wander about with or without umbrellas) are enchanted that the rains have come. They ain't complaining.

But my fellow hostel dwellers are. And getting drunk. Too wet to go out and do things? (whimps!) We'll sit here and drink. (I must clarify... these are the transients traveling around and seeing the sights. Not serious students like myself.)

The fridge has 178 beers (at eight pesos the pop) and Wednesday the fridge was emptied.

Wednesday night a few got stinking drunk on the terrace below my room. In the still Zacatecas air sound carries for about 20 or more meters... in a bubble shape. The rooms have no sound insulation and trying to sleep while a bunch of drunken idiots try to remember what social interaction actually is can be very tedious.

At mid-night the proprietor chased them down to the loft over the reception hall where parties are supposed to happen. At four the night desk clerk chased them off to bed and a few minutes later I called down and he came up to warn them most strongly that they'd be calling the cops if they didn't settle.

Settle? What's that? They fought, they banged doors, they yelled, they tripped over chairs, they fell into walls. At five I banged on their door and was told, "Don't worry, we are leaving tomorrow!" 45 minutes later they finally passed out.

It's not just how grouchy lost sleep makes me. If I sleep my body relaxes enough that the hard mattress doesn't matter, but if I'm tossing and turning I ache in the morning. So, the next morning I asked La Sovadora who comes into town with our teacher if she give me a sovada. The verb means to rub and a sovador is a lay masseuse and curandero. In the case of this lady, trained by her grandfather when she was 15, forty odd years ago.

At 12:30 she set to work and I sniffed the smell, trying to place it. "Is that Eucalyptus?" "No, it's arnica and rattlesnake oil."

Mexican traditional medicine is based on animal products as well as vegetable, and they tend to like animal products a lot more. A skunk meat tea is used against a persistent cough and tuberculosis.

Doña Hilda asked me if we used rattlesnake oil in America and I carefully hid all thoughts of snakeoil nostrums in the back of my mind and courteously explained what the FDA would require in terms of a rattlesnake farm, rattlesnake feed, rattlesnake care, animal sacrifice, fat rendering and venom control... and ditto'd that with the skunks.

I didn't mention PETA, either. Our teacher's face when one of the students begged her not to squirt the sacred ants with Windex® was a sight to behold. What did a story about sacred ants have to do with them swarming over the cookies? I agreed with tlamachtihquetl (teacher) and we dumped the cookies in the garbage, tightly closed it and set it outside. No PETA wouldn't have made sense to my sovadora.

She was mildly surprised we'd cut ourselves off from such valuable products and mentioned that she felt that farm raised rattlesnakes with a scientifically balanced diet might not have the same medicinal impact as wild ones eating like wild ones are supposed to.

There was a snake farm a few blocks from our house in México City when I was growing up, for the purpose of milking their venom and creating anit-venoms. It was just a big stucco building and I never went inside it. Now I wonder if the snakes were handed over (under the counter) to curanderos once used up so their meat could be rendered for fat.

The real question, of course, was if it really was rattlesnake fat, or she was sold a bill of goods or I was. But a query on my part came back with a realistic description of the camp of the rattlesnake hunters in the lands to the north of the city and the method they used to render the fat and pour it into little bottles and the methods the sellers used to combine the different elements.

Following this thought on to the skunk meat... one buys fragments of the skunk at the market (it's expensive) and it is removed from an unskinned but gutted skunk hanging in the booth, so everyone knows it really is skunk. In México as in other parts of the world the saying, "You were sold a cat for hare," is well known.

I hurt a lot less today, although last night was the traditional Margarita party. I hung around a while, but it was 10pm and I hadn't slept well and I don't hang around really well when things like studying and Lockhart's book on the Nahua are waiting for me. I left, but randwolf stayed and had 1 1/2 margaritas and wandered back to the room later. Wandered is the operative word. I'd sacked out a little earlier, but was chilled to the bone.

However, I slept until 3:20. I usually float awake about that time and fall back asleep soon after. At 3:38 the party-goers decided the terrace was the place to be. I shushed them and then tried to ignore them. I fell back asleep eventually and woke just before six to fireworks. Big fireworks... I thought it was artillery at first. randwolf thinks it might be a complement to the US 4th of July.

I know nothing right now. But México has resisted most American holidays, unlike our embracing of St. Paddy and 5th of May. The one they have picked up is Halloween, thought they have put a very mexican slant onto it.

Both El Cerro de la Bufa and El Cerro del Grillo are shrouded in fog this morning. I actually got some decent pictures (rain speckled lens, however) And then I saw the teleférico hanging halfway between them and somebody dangling below. I did my best to get a picture in the low light and fog, but wasn't very successful.

Well, I'll have another sovada today and maybe the last lingering ache in my hips will go. Or maybe that's just age and arthritis. The pomade with oil is very sticky and she assures me that washing is a bad thing. I'll have to write up the whole washing thing in another post.

Explanation of Wandering

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:11:46 GMT

OK, ok, the sight cracked me up and I had to share it.

Here's what really went down. The packing cases are for the stated
firearms and the navy bought them.

Please don't ask me why. I don't have a clue why the Mexican Navy
needs full auto short range kill them all point and spray weapons.

But, once empty, the cases were used to transport the fully clothed
dummies used in the recruiting display that was up in the Galeria
(posh shopping center in front of the Cathedral) for two weeks. The
Mexican Navy prides itself on it's spit and polish and only recruits
the cream of the cream out of college. My best friend's husband
graduated with a 98.9 out of Medical school and they scooped him up.

So they were recruiting way inland and showing off all their peacock
feathers, bands played, dress dinners for the dignitaries, special
tours with huge airconditioned busses(*), etc. etc. Today they packed
up. The whole weapons thing is pretty tricky in México with several
armed uprisings going on in the southern area and other touchy hot-
spots, so leaving two boxes clearly labeled with a kind of gun that
any rebels would be enchanted to get their hands on struck me as the
funniest thing I'd seen.

The labels were just plain letter sized paper, probably glued on and I
would have yanked them off before re-using the boxes... but they
didn't, so I had my giggle of the day.

(*)I'll have to post a few pictures of the streets here. Those huge
airconditioned busses looked like buffalo on a deer track. Zacatecas,
capital city of Zacatecas state is unusual in that it *doesn't* have a
Zocalo, (main plaza) like most towns, and a neatly laid out grid of
streets coming off of that. It's built into a long narrow ravine.
Most of the streets can't manage "straight" for a block and few have
parallel sides. Many of the streets are so narrow they have a lip to
prevent cars from getting on them, and a lot are just plain slopes or
stairs.
My hostel is on "Primero de Mayo" street, half a block from
"Aguascalientes" street. Aguascalientes charges uphill from one of
the main central streets, the only allowed direction (though it's not
marked) is "up." When it reaches Primero de Mayo the cars can turn
left and down 95 or 100° or right and sharp up 90°. The street is
paved with those large square polished stones and I swear each time
one turns left and down over that crest on a bit more than a square
angle I see the tires lifting and the whole contraption staying on
course by faith itself. In the rain it's even more impressive... and
scary. By the way, no cars come "up" Primero de Mayo to
Auguascalientes. But none of the streets are marked. When somebody
makes a mistake, they back up (uphill) and then back into
Auguascalientes and back downhill (really fun with the horns!).
Here is a URL of a map of the city. You can see the long narrow shape
determined by the ravine... which is silver bearing and explains the
excentric construction... one of the few un-planned cities in México.
http://www.travelbymexico.com/zacatecas/mapa/index.php

Wandering in Zacatecas...

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:30:49 GMT

By the main cathedral when I saw some boxes sitting on the sidewalk.

http://www.ipinc.net/~kiers/photos/Wandering.html

Now that's something we wouldn't see in the USA sitting in the main square.

Rain

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:15:42 GMT

It rained yesterday. It sprinkled until about 8pm, then we were in our room and randwolf suddenly said, "Whoa, they turned on the faucet."

Then we gasped as the buckets started to fall. And finally we wondered if the aqueduct had overflowed.

Let me tell you, it RAINED last night.