Edinburgh - Summer 2011

Scottish Signage

2011-07-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

Fabulous sign in the Royal Lyceum lobby

Dirty.

Fire alarm

Millinery sign outside Jenner's department store

Mosaic outside a former hatter's near my apartment

Monster truck rally, who knew?

2011-07-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

Things I'm looking fwd to

1. Hot water at any time of the day. If you want to take a shower at an irregular time of the day, you have to plan an hour in advance and set the timer. Or, freeze.
2. Widely available fresh produce. Vegetables and fruits here are fairly horrid unless you get them at the farmer's market.
3. Decent pizza and Mexican food. Haggis tacos are a sin against god.
4. Sunny days. This is definitely a grey, drizzly nation.
5. Readily available good coffee. The coffee in this country is flat gross across the boards.
6. Sturdy toilet seats that don't jiggle around like some kind of Sit-n-Spin.

More things i'll miss:

1. Public acceptability of profanity. Wow, do people cuss here, and it's everyone, even grandmas. The first time i heard an old lady say "I donny give a single fook" really made my day.
2. Game in the markets. Seems like the only venison in Durham is pasted to the highway.
3. Faces on meat. I never see fish heads or hog's heads in US markets, and that's weird.
4. Haggis potato chips.
5. Wide open spaces full of people enjoying them. Our greenways and parks are underused in America, probably because we're all inside playing World of Warcraft or wasting our lives on Facebook.
6. Rain. Home is drought-stricken, 100+ degree days and sticky humidity are going to suck after Scottish Summer Which is Carolina Autumn.
7. Irn Bru! Maybe they have it in the International section of the Kroger.

Things Scottish we should adopt:

1. The social acceptability of clotheslines. In my community, the HOA won't let you string one in the yard.
2. Hot water heater timers. Much as I griped, I do think this is a good idea. Or, electric showers.
3. Outlet switches. We have some of these, but they have them on every outlet here.

Royal Botanic Gardens

2011-07-26T01:45:00.000-07:00

Images from Sunday....

Gates

clearing

Sculpture

Chinese pavilion and water lilies

Waterfall through the bridge rail

Dragon

Enormous plant, I am standing under it's leaves like a patio umbrella

Lilies as tall as I am

Caledonia

Some photos from Robert Powell studio tour

2011-07-25T00:33:00.000-07:00

A colleague and I were privileged to experience a private studio tour of the work of Edinburgh artist Robert Powell. Here are some photos i took of the area around his studio and works inside.

Plaque on building

Cathedral

Inside St Mary's

Series depicting the history of Scotland

Shadowbox/diorama and book press

Another view of same and bell

Chaise arm

Caged devil puppet and bulb horn with bookshelf

His studio-mate planned to do something with this old portrait

Wee Boy, Poor Man

2011-07-24T01:40:00.000-07:00

I thought i might share some of the writing exercises i've been doing in class here. Some i'm keeping to myself, because they're turning into larger pieces, but here's one that stands alone and likely won't go anywhere beyond being the output of an exercise:

Wee Boy, Poor Man

"'Ow do ye feel aboot the flight?" Big Fuchsia shifts in the teak chair, recrosses one thick leg over the other. "it's rather long innit?"

Tiny Navy nods vigorously, blinks too much. "Nine hours."

Big Fuchsia's lips twist. "aye, long that." She picks a tendril from her messy bun with one quick-bitten nail, checks her cheap watch. She tsks at the time, stirs another sugar straw into her frothy coffee. Too many rings weigh down her fat hands, hinder her ability to maneuver the spoon.

"That's just the first flight. Then to Chiner, you know, twice as much again past that." Tiny Navy skips over to the counter, grabs a couple more napkins. She moves like a teenager, but her freckled, lined face belies an adolescence twenty years gone. Her auburn bob was an expensive haircut two months ago, but now it's time for a trim and some product.

"I hate to be so nairvous, but it's weird you know?"

Big Fuchsia nods sagely. "Oh mi-god, indeed."

"And me a woman alone."

"Oh, I know."

Tiny Navy shudders, rubs her hands up her arms against some conjured chill, despite the warmth of the crowded coffeeshop. "And he don't want me to go."

Big Fuchsia shakes her head, shame-shame. "It canny be a comfort, you alone so far away."

"Ye know the problems for im go way back."

"Oh aye, poor man."

"'e's those abandonment issues, ye know." Tiny Navy's fingers flutter around her like bone insects.

"Just a wee boy inside, poor man."

"aye, aye."

Big Fuchsia picks at a callus on her heel, shifts the clunky platform espadrille off the wide ball of her foot. The silence stretches out between them like a clothesline. Big Fuchsia digs in her pleather bag for some lipstick, then hangs out her dirty laundry. "i donno how ye stand it, if i'm honest."

Tiny Navy slits her eyes. "Well i love 'im don't i?"

Big Fuchsia looks to heaven, waves invisible flies away.

"Don't i?" Tiny Navy turns her eyes to daggers, plucks at the cuffed-up sleeve of the oversize men's jacket bagging around her narrow shoulders. Her cell vibrates. She and Big Fuchsia look at one another, then at the phone. Big Fuchsia shrugs. Tiny Navy snatches up the gadget and her putty satchel and skips toward the door. She has to take this.

premature wist

2011-07-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

Argus tree

I'll miss Stuart with the asymmetrical mohawk who owns the Black Medicine coffee shop, and the grinny fellow in the deerstalker and vest who's runs the Chocolate Tree, the gaps in his teeth so wide, i could slot pound coins into his vending-machine smile.

I'll miss the weird beggar who sits on an afghan outside the co-op and asks for 5p, the one who's a dead ringer for one of those extras on Deadwood.

I'll miss the barrista who plays Gillian Welch every morning and sings along in a Scots accent.

I'll miss the hog carving booth at the farmer's market, the castle on the hill, the drunk teenagers playing six-hole one-club golf on the links in the afternoons.

I'll miss rows of Victorian chimneypots and sooty facades, pubs built in the 15th century, thistle brocade on the walls and Thomas the barman at Henrick's.

I'll miss "cheers" instead of "thank you" or "you're welcome," and small portions being wee.

How quickly i've developed local routines.

A text update for a change

2011-07-17T06:37:00.000-07:00

A few notes in addition to the photo posts of late, in no particular order:

Last weekend, my friend Beth came up from London where she's doing a summer program of study between her first and second years of law school. We hadn't seen one another since Los Angeles in 2005, and now we hang out twice in one month, in London and Edinburgh!

In addition to the places we went for which i've posted photographs (Holyrood, the Castle, etc), we also went to this amazing restaurant, Wildfire, up on Rose St., which had delicious steaks made from beef farmed a few miles north of here, and some profiteroles i could have eaten twenty of. It seemed like a pretty posh restaurant with only a few hard-to-get tables, but we lucked into a table just in time.

Another highlight of that day was the rain-induced serendipitous shoe shopping, where we ducked into a store to get out of a cloudburst and wound up buying some truly amazing shoes, Think! brand shoes made of Italian leather. I bought a red pair with yellow stitching, and Beth bought a pair of purple and black patent leather oxfords.

Saturday, my classmate Lizzie and i went to the Edinburgh Farmer's Market down at the base of the Castle. We had amazing bbq hog sandwiches (on wheat rolls spread thick with sage and onion stuffing and topped with applesauce), carved straight from the hog. The hog lying on the cart reminded me of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, how "soused hog's face" is Jack Aubrey's favorite dish.

We bought a ton of great local food, too, for meals this week. I got a wheel of Scots brie, a carton of strawberries, something called a "wee supper pie" stuffed with venison cooked in red wine, a slice of a larger meat pie stuffed with wild boar and pheasant (i am all about the wild game meats here), and i split a carton of black cherries with Lizzie.

We also bought handmade chocolate bars from local chocolatier The Chocolate House (Bramble and Cardamon for me, Strawberry and Pepper for her). Then we went to the pub round the corner and randomly discovered that we are both Tri Deltas! Small world. Now we're on a quest to take a photo for the sorority magazine, the Trident, in which there are always people's vacation photos in random places where "sisters" meet each other.

And, so far my favorite of the Scotch whiskies i've tasted is Monkey Shoulder, though i'll admit i might have been biased by the cute bartender who explained its name to me. His accent was the dreamy keep-talking-please sort such that he could have been telling me it was made by straining dog pee through a sweat sock and i'd have given it a try.

Now, off to find a copy shop.

Stirling Castle

2011-07-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went with a group of fellow students and teachers to Stirling Castle, and then to the William Wallace Monument. I've been doing so much writing for work, i'm hoping my posts of photos stand in for many thousands of untyped words. :)

Garden just past the moat wall of Stirling.

Stirling is a collage of structures from different eras.

Wee room down by the kitchens.

Rampart wall and the view.

Cemetery far below the castle walls.

Ramparts.

Looks like the opening of Hamlet, where's the ghost?

More of the view/walls.

Stones for lobbing at attackers.

Union Jack flies over Stirling,

Highlands in the distance. Scottish weather makes misty mountains.

The clouds here always look like landscape paintings.

More of that nautical rope at the Wallace monument.

The base of the tower at the top of the monument hill.

Trail marker, or tombstone?
(Trail marker, but i like its ambiguity.)

A Day Spent Wandering

2011-07-16T00:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday, i attended a talk at the Edinburgh Central Library, then a colleague and i went wandering around the gardens and burial grounds, looking for a place to sit and work. Here are some pictures of what we saw.

Saw these outside the butcher next door. We never see this in the US anymore really.

The name of this law practice made me laugh.

Brass sculptural map of the castle and city centre, labeled in braille for the blind.

Determination.

Rope carved in stone is a popular architectural embellishment here.

Carven thistle.

Stone mourner at St. Cuthbert's.

A robbed grave?

Bootmaker's tombstone.

The "(SEE OTHER SIDE) at the bottom of this stone cracked me up.

Spooky ornate carving on a stone from the 18th century.

Mossy skull teeth.

This fellow died in 1763 at the age of 27.

yesterday, i went to Stirling Castle, but that'll be another post.

More photos

2011-07-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

carousel

amphitheatre

wee house

ice cream on a stormy day

roast ox crisps and irn bru

gates

secret garden

around the corner from the previous image

topiary walls

holyrood

abbey ruins

tumbledown hall

stone coffin filled with rainwater

outside the king's theatre

Castles, cathedrals, and crypts

2011-07-10T02:26:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine from the US was visiting Edinburgh for the weekend, and yesterday we visited St. John and St. Giles Cathedrals, St. Cuthbert's Burying Ground, and Edinburgh Castle. Here are some photos from our day:

Street art near the university of edinburgh.

Sculpture near the city centre

Nave of St. John's

Ceiling of St. John's

Floor in St. John's

St. Giles seen through an arch at the supreme court

St. Giles

Tiny stained glass window

Storm clouds are coming, from castle ramparts

Another view of same

18-pounder cannon along front wall defenses

This sums up Edinburgh

The Scottish crown jewels are in here

Right after I took this it began raining buckets, and we had to hide under a flying buttress to avoid being drenched to the bone.

crypts at St. Cuthbert's

View of the castle from St. Cuthbert's

Thanks to a sudden severe storm, we also ducked into a tartan weaver's, photographs from which are over in my professional blog, La Bricoleuse.

Quick update

2011-07-07T00:51:00.000-07:00

A few links for the records, and a couple pics too.

Henrick's is the closest local pub, and it's really lovely. The second closest is a pub called the Auld Toll, but they have a restroom verging on the Trainspotting and the name is too close to "the Auld Tool" for my comfort.

Black Medicine is the best local coffee shop, and where I'm posting this from. Good coffee is a rarity, and they serve food as well.

And now a few photos.

Feathers I found in the park.
The middle one is iridescent blue/green but looks black here.
Any idea what birds they come from?

Super weird crest on fireplace at school.
Why is a giant disembodied hand about to grope the prone naked dude??!?

Grand Hall at school.
Apparently Hogwarts offers summer programs for Muggles.*

Crabbie's is alcoholic ginger beer,
aka the best new beverage I have tried in years.

*On a serious note, the building used to be an asylum for the insane, and in the corner of this room between the fireplace and the doors is a big trap door they used to dump corpses down to a basement morgue.

Photo post

2011-07-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

church next door

Royal Lyceum Theatre

Shakespeare's Pub

Traverse Theatre

John Napier, but we call it "Shakespeare Texting"

Sir Walter Scott monument through the trees by the National Gallery

Burying ground by St. John's

Several days condensed...

2011-07-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

Got into London at stupid o'clock in the morning, after an overnight flight in which i was unable to sleep at all. So, i'm typing this at midnight after being awake for 36 hours straight, falling asleep for four, then waking up unable to sleep more. Jet lag blows.

At least i have a cute hotel--the Oliver Plaza in Earls Court. I picked it because it was the most affordable thing in between Heathrow and the V&A (my one must-do), and it's an old hotel--small rooms by modern standards, but whatever, i'm not doing anything but (trying to) sleep in it. My one critique is that i wish they hadn't dropped the ceilings by a foot--the windows are still original height but go up into a pocket now, with the ceilings lowered, and i can't figure out why they did it, because it wasn't to put in HVAC.

For those of you who may be reading this who are friends and London residents (or near-to), i apologize for not making any plans to see you. I knew it was going to be a fly-by kind of thing, that i'd be running on fumes from jet lag, and that planning would blow as i have no cell over here.

I was last in London in I think 1992, for a summer study abroad program in undergrad, Theatre and Culture. The program began in Stratford-upon-Avon, where we did the Shakespeare thing (including two plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company complete with backstage tours), then came to London for theatergoing and museums. I had a 1990s version of the haircut i just got, and lived in dormitories in Russell Square.

Today i visited Lock and Co. Hatters, a famous London hat maker who has been in business since 1676. They have historically been known primary for men's hats--they made the first bowler, i believe--though they do also have a second floor showroom of women's millinery as well. In a case they have a great display which includes the original order notes for Admiral Nelson's bicorne (including measurements of various elements of decor) and the Queen's head size block.

Ship in a bottle sculpture in Trafalgar Square.

Speaking of Nelson, i'm a fan of maritime history and swung by Trafalgar Square to check out the statuary there, including an enormous ship in a bottle. I also found one of those cool London serendipity things, a headstone for someone's dog or horse (couldn't tell, a "faithful friend" and clearly not a human's grave) from the 18th century hiding off in a tiny bit of side street earth. I didn't take many pictures since all i had with me was my iPad, my camera being in my luggage which was back at the hotel. (Incidentally, people who say things like "pix or it didn't happen" or "pix or there's no proof" have a much more narcissistic and exhibitionist concept of journaling or otherwise documenting life than i. That, or else need to work on trust issues. JMO.)

I then went to the National Portrait Gallery. Wow! I love portraiture--part and parcel of an interest in the history of dress, as it's a major source of documentation of research--and the NPG was a great way to kill a few hours! Among dozens of other things i saw the original Chandos Shakespeare (rounded a corner and there he was and literally caught my breath), and a portrait of Elizabeth I which i have in the past assigned as part of a millinery analysis project i give my students at the end of that class. I also saw a bunch of photographs of ballet dancers dressed in the famous Bakst costume designs, the renderings of which i'm so familiar with (and which i also often assign in that same analysis project but the dye class/surface design version). It was cool to see the actualized versions of those on real bodies!

Then i met up with B. in the Victoria and Albert Museum, a friend who is also studying abroad this summer--she's in law school and doing some legal coursework in London. The last time we saw each other, she had come out to Los Angeles on vacation when i lived there, six+ years ago, so that was a great time. We honestly could have sat in a diner and i'd have had fun, but wandering the V&A together was fab (though finding a loo in the place that didn't have a mile long line was like looking for an honest politician).

Eye-forkingly, their Fashion galleries are closed til 2012, and their textiles collections are in the process of moving to a new facility, but that's ok. We got to see tons of incredible sculpture, metalwork, jewelry, silversmithy, and liturgical regalia. There was some egregious lack of pattern matching of pieced brocade on this one chasuble, that we groused about more than was probably seemly. And, i made some structural notes on the construction of bishop's miters they had on display, one of those hats you have to make now and again, and which you can't just grab a handy extant example to study interior construction of (or at least, i can't, not having any close friends or colleagues who are high up in the church hierarchy).

Then, we adjourned to an EXCELLENT Italian restaurant for dinner, catching-up, and people watching. And then i crashed and burned spectacularly (or felt like i did, it's so hard to perceive reality while sleep-deprived) and had to come back to the hotel to pass out. Which i did for four hours, then woke up and wrote this. Woo. The wifi in this hotel is exorbitant, so i'll likely post it tomorrow from some cafe with free access before i get on the train north to Manchester!

*

Or,not. Now I'm @Euston Station, awaiting my train. I came quite early, in case the massive labor strikes were going to cause any delays. The hotel had a breakfast set out, so I forewent the cafe. The men's fashion here is excellent, with the majority of men having on excellent shoes--brogues, wingtips, even winklepickers on all sorts of men, and given that trends seem to migrate to the US, one can only hope. Pinstriped jackets are also huge, with jeans and other trousers. American men, please start dressing like this, instead of cargo shorts and hoodies and birth control sandals.

*

Now, I'm on the train! I've traveled by train in the US, so it's not a total novelty, but I forgot how enjoyable it is. I have chosen to specify "Quiet Zone" for my carriage and people are serious about that designation, as a woman just got roundly berated for her cell going off loudly for a second time. Judging by what's flying by outside my window, sheep are a major segment of the UK livestock population. Which reminds me that I had made a mental note to look into tartan production as a possible source of interesting stuff in Scotland. I will say this, too, in terms of travel in general in the UK, it has been so easy and hassle-free, it really serves in contrast to the US, which is feeling more and more like a totalitarian state in terms of the bs you have to deal with just to travel from place to place.

Manchester, hello! Nice to meet you! Here I am staying with my friend C. and her husband T. (and their dachshund and two cats). It is nice to sleep in a real bed in a real home instead of a hotel. We're going to the Stockport Hat Museum, which i'll have to write up in La Bricoleuse. I can't wait!

*

Well, i'd hoped to make one post of all the previous material and write another on the train from Manchester to Edinburgh, but it was a fantastically ghetto train with no wifi and absolutely packed with passengers so no such luck. Now i'm in Edinburgh, but our lodging house has no wifi either. Crappy. This afternoon i'm going to hit an internet cafe and search for free wifi locations in the city--i know a couple of chains of coffeeshops do it so it's only a matter of time. The disconnectivity is actually really conducive to getting work done in terms of reading, writing, etc. so i don't mind so much, but it's just inconvenient to start.

View from my window.

I had to buy these.

Where I live!

My room is a decent, serviceable room, nothing posh but nothing gross either. I split the bath and kitchen with two other women in the program, one of whom is in my writing workshop (the morning class). It's a fourth-floor walk-up, but that will hopefully make up a bit for the lack of time for exercising that i'll have here. My window overlooks Bruntsfield Links, a huge meadow and golf course, so it doesn't feel like i'm in a city really.

I've already gotten my monthly bus pass for the city--£51, better than shelling out £3.20 a day or £1.30 every time i want to ride somewhere, which, given that we have to take the bus to and from campus and all evening events, would add up to more fast. I'm a block from a grocery store, so that's also convenient.

This morning is a literary walking tour and then i'll probably scope out someplace to post this much at least. I need to write up my thoughts on the Hat Museum this afternoon as well, before it gets too far in the past, because it was completely amazing and gave me a bunch of ideas for future scholarship opportunities. If this program comes back to Edinburgh next summer, i may see if i can work it so i spend a month in Manchester beforehand and do some scholarly research in the museum's archives or something. It's something i'm baking in the brain-oven, so to speak.

three more links

2011-06-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

Royal Botanic Gardens: Definitely a place to wander through one afternoon!

Cramond Island: If I can get out there, this was supposedly Robert Louis Stevenson's inspiration for Treasure Island, and since I've got a commission for a short story based on that book, perhaps it would be inspirational.

Pilochry Festival Theater: I've an invitation to visit and observe their costume shop in the works, which I gather runs something like the Utah Shakespearean Festival's, in that they build four shows at a time and open them all at the same time for them to run in repertory. Sounds great!

Edinburgh is a mad god's dream...

2011-06-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

The quote in the title is by Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and I found it in a book I'm reading called Edinburgh: Cities of the Imagination. It was written by the Edinburgh playwright Donald Campbell and is sort of a combination between a travel book and a literary and historical overview of the city. I've been reading it in fits and starts, trading off with reading the books I'm assigned to read for my courses.

It's a really interesting approach to giving an overview of a city for travelers, in a format very different from the usual tourist manuals (a chapter full of hotel listings, a chapter full of restaurant listings, a chapter full of local attractions, etc.). Since I'm going to be living there for an entire month, and since I have a pretty specific set of educational and research goals, a standard tourist book is not as useful as something like this. I don't care about how many stars a given hotel or restaurant has been awarded. I'm living in a rented room and cooking most of my meals.

Speaking of such things, I added some links to the sidebar, Including a couple of the places where the program will be hosting public readings–meaning, I'll be reading in at least one of those places–and a site with a panoramic view feature of the place I'll be staying, Wright's House. They are grad student housing for Edinburgh Napier University, private bedrooms with a shared kitchen/bath among two or three other folks.

I decided to collect in this post some of the links to places I've been reading about in Campbell's book which sound interesting. With respect to my last post, I sent out inquiry e-mails to the milliners, costume directors, and academic program heads of the places I linked in it; I've heard back already from one of the faculty at Queen Margaret's University, so I've already made at least one exciting professional connection! I hope to hear from a few more, but even if QMU are the only people to respond, it will be exciting to see and talk with another department with a similar focus to ours at UNC-Chapel Hill!

ETA: The milliners at Fabhatrix have now also gotten back to me, so that's two!

But anyhow, here are the links:

Being as I am a huge fan of maritime history (and fiction, and artwork, etc.), I think while I am there I'd like to visit the Nelson Monument.

I'm also a huge fan of portraiture, so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to check out the new portrait galleries at the National Galleries.

The Oxford Bar is a legendary literary pub, though I guess now it is also prominently featured in some series of popular detective novels? Regardless, I think I would like to check it out.

It would involve negotiating travel down to Dumfries, but perhaps I will be able to check out the National Museum of Costume. Charles Stewart's costume collections are legendary, and the opportunity to see pieces up close and in person is incredible. But, I don't know how difficult it will be to travel down there from Edinburgh, so we will see whether it's possible or not. Even if not, the plain old National Museum in Edinburgh has a lot of interesting collections as well.

Costume/Millinery in Edinburgh

2011-06-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

This post is a place for me to aggregate some links to various places of interest in Edinburgh on the subject of millinery and costume production. Though I will primarily be there to take writing courses, I will have plenty of time off to explore the city, and I'd love to check out some of its internationally known millinery culture!

Academics:

Telford College offers classes in millinery to its theater students. They won't be offering any while I'm there, but perhaps I could get in touch with one of their instructors and ask to see the facilities.

I hope I can make an appointment to check out the facilities for the Performance Costume program at the Edinburgh College of Art.

Queen Margaret University also offers a program in costume production for the theater.

Millinery:

Sally Ann Provan is a well-known Edinburgh milliner for theater and film, and bespoke couture. Maybe she needs a volunteer a couple days a week!

I definitely want to go check out the Fabhatrix boutique and workshop!

Ta Ta Hats has a horrible website, but they appear on source lists for the film industry in Scotland, so I'll probably still give them a call. After all, Parsons in NYC has a horrible website as well.

Professional:

I don't know if anyone will be around at the Royal Lyceum Theatre while I'm there, but I will probably try to get in touch with the head of costumes, to see if I could take a backstage tour of their production facility.

McMillan Stage Costume looks like from their website that they might cater to community theaters, but I will probably still see if I can tour their storage facility.

testing, testing

2011-06-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

It's time to think about resurrecting this travel blog!

Obviously I was not thinking in the long term when I chose the URL initially, but I've updated everything else to reflect the new destination this summer: Edinburgh, Scotland! I have two weeks until I leave, and I plan to use them in part to update the structure of the blog, adding new sidebar links that are relevant to this summer's trip and possibly aggregating some information about things like where I will be staying and where our classes will be held.

I'm really looking forward to it, 14 days and counting!

Freud and the Closing Party

2010-08-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

Serious post-travel blues. My subconscious is not subtle.

Last night i dreamed that my workshop classmates, professor, and i were all in this abandoned hacienda, really delapidated, walls painted dark blue. We were each in a different room, writing on the walls with silver pens. We couldn't leave our rooms though, and could only occasionally yell at each other. I distinctly remember one of them yelling, "WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GO PLAY VIDEO GAMES?"

Anyhow, here are some images from the closing party:

Casa de la Cuesta photos

2010-08-01T08:32:00.001-07:00

I made it home to North Carolina okay! I have a set of photographs of the Casa de la Cuesta to share, the hacienda where the indigenous mask museum is located.

If masks are your thing, i wrote up the museum itself over here in my work blog.

fountain

courtyard

\
folk art display

rooftop view

cactus garden from above

I have at least one more post to share of photos, and at some point i'll probably write up some final thoughts on the San Miguel experience. In a nutshell though, unforgettable and amazing, and SO glad i went!

Photos: Architecture and Silly Things

2010-07-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

Well, i'm headed home tonight--my airport shuttle will come at 3:30am, and i'll be on a flight to the US by daybreak.

I cannot wait for a shower with water pressure in a bathroom with more space than a phonebooth. I will be so excited not to have to tip out my shoes each morning in case of scorpions. I will enjoy saying hi to my neighbors again, folks i know and see all the time instead of new strangers every day. I can't wait to do laundry, wear something besides the clothes i have worn the past month, lay in my bed, eat a breakfast without beans involved, sit on my deck under deciduous trees.

I am sad to be leaving though, and will miss almost all of my classmates. I'm excited to have made it through a semester in this writing program, and the experience has really confirmed for me that i am doing a good thing, that these courses are a good goal to pursue for the next couple years. I can't wait for next summer's classes in Scotland!

Here are some more photos, random selection of things.

Rum & coke in a can with a tallship on it. Why do we not have these in the US?

Octopus maki wrapped in plantains. Delicious!

This Jesus has actual human hair.
That freaked me out until my housemate said,
"Maybe that's just where somebody keeps their wig."

Gravity-fed fountains like this one are all over the city.

They run for quite a while after the rains.

This shrine says "I am fat and beautiful."

I love this facade.

The carved doors on this house are amazing.

Shrines like this are above street level on many corners.

Obligatory ass shot.

Photos: Knockers of San Miguel

2010-07-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

Lest the title seem misleading, i'm talking about doorknockers here.

I have been fascinated by the doorknockers in this town since my first day here, and yesterday i took most all of these photos just walking up a single street, Pila Seca, on the way to my first class. (Two images i took earlier, and two are of door hardware other than knockers.)

My installation came down so fast, my classmates dismantled it before i even made it to class on Wednesday. Thanks y'all!

SHIP / SHAPE Chronicle, Part 3

2010-07-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

I should have known i couldn't do an installation about Katrina without the weather getting involved. It stormed all day long while i was at the escuela, such that i had to do most of the work under the eaves of the sheltered areas, then run out into the courtyard and up onto the roof with an umbrella or just getting rained on. I was there from about 11am until 7:30pm yesterday.

This many bottles...

...turned into a boat this big.

Banners with testimonials.

More of the same.

SHIP / SHAPE Chronicle, Part 2

2010-07-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

Today is Installation Day!

I wrote a justification of the installation, which i'll repost here--the URL of this blog (posts tagged "installation") is posted at the escuela, so anyone who wants to read more info can do so. The justification explains a lot of the inspiration and thought-process and symbology of the work. It even has citations and a bibliography.

Here it is:

The use of entirely salvaged media for the SHIP / SHAPE installation was of paramount concern. The resourcefulness of New Orleanians in developing survival means and tools cobbled from salvage recurred throughout our post-Katrina literature, but particularly in the first-hand oral history accounts of Voices Rising and Callaloo. The theme of salvage and making-do also relates directly to the age-old heritage of bricolaged Mardi Gras costumes and floats for the krewes, Indians, Zulus, etc. (Kuchta, 127-9).

A sculpture of a boat made from empty water vessels is constructed on the escuela roof, with a line connecting it to its “anchor,” a Cartesian Diver bottle. The size of the boat will be determined by the number of bottles ultimately collected by our collective UNO community this summer. The ship-shape pays homage to New Orleans’ shipbuilding history and echoes positive boat-stories—many survivors mention the importance of boats in surviving the flood (Nolan, 1253), the creation of makeshift boats (Ward, 1396), and rescuing survivors who were stranded. It also makes reference to the negative symbol of the stranded barge crushing part of Jourdan Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward, whose presence was chronicled in Adam Pelz’s recurring “Bargewatch” column for NOLAFugees.com (Longo and Lofstead).

The installation’s title references layers of meaning, from physical boats to the act of shipping items and people, taking aboard or sending abroad, shape as a silhouette, as a perimeter, as a state of being, and as an act of sculpting, molding, or otherwise forming order from chaos.

Primary elements of the installation:
1.) Water bottle boat-shaped structure
2.) Collected-story tenement flags
3.) Embraceable Cartesian Divers
4.) Numbers and statistics
5.) Community participation and the uncertainty principle

Significance of Water and Salvage

Water bottles are the primary medium of the installation, because water is perhaps the most significant yet accessible element to the very essence of New Orleans. New Orleans has always been a city of opposing symbols, fire and water. The incendiary nature of its politics, criminal element, climate, musical traditions, the volatility of its race relations and its palpable sexuality—pairs of opposites bound together.

Water and hydrocentric weather events loom over much of New Orleans literature, and water comprises 70% of the human body by mass. We can die from the lack of it, far quicker than we can of other necessities like food or shelter. New Orleans is seated within and surrounded by water, water looms over it as a force of potential and historical destruction at all times. And yet, when the city was flooded post-Katrina, water became a desperately needed commodity—safe, drinkable water was something people would break into stores and homes to find, literally being unable to live without it. Theron Bolds stresses over and over the challenges of obtaining potable water in his harrowing account of his Superdome experience, “More and More People but No Food” (Antoine, 25-39).

Here in Mexico, potable water is also a commodity, one we all are willing to pay for regularly. The empty bottles of our own water, water that has been consumed and served to hydrate every one of us in this program, combine in this installation to form a collective structure, a sculpture that is exposed to the elements—the water from the rains that deluge San Miguel de Allende. Our bottles—stacked, arranged, cut and reformed and made into a surface and vessel that both leaks and contains water—represent the UNO low-residency community/diaspora as well as the New Orleanians community (and post-Katrina diaspora), and indeed the national and global community as a whole.

The bottles are arranged in relation to one another, connected to one another without being permanently bonded to one another, in the shape of a ship—to disassemble the entire infrastructure of this vessel’s topography, one needs no special tools. Anyone can take these shapes apart into useless pieces of trash. The wind and rain can (and hopefully will) destroy parts of the installation during its three to five days of exposure to the elements.

The choice of location for the installation leads the viewer up to the rooftop of the school, as so many people were driven to their roofs escaping or attempting to escape the floodwaters of the many hurricanes that have struck the New Orleans area throughout history (Hand, 32). The escuela roof, however, unlike so many roofs in New Orleans, is open to the sky. This is a roof from which it is easy to have hope.

The use of water bottles exclusively was important—as opposed to soda or other bottles—and water bottles that I myself had used or others have given me, or ones collected in public establishments such as La Pamplonada from the general table trash. Only water bottles which had a direct connection to the artist were utilized—bottles that I or fellow students in the program were willing to save for the project. The number of bottles used and every individual bottle itself is then directly tied to the immediate community of the artist.

By coincidence and along brand-popularity lines, the labels generally sorted into two colors: orange and blue, the orange of Bonafont brand (on sale for a good price at many corner stores in San Miguel) and the blue of most all other brands. These labels are used to create streamers to festoon areas of the installation—“celebration garbage.” Blue and orange are complementary colors in the field of color theory, meaning that they are direct opposites on the color wheel, and can be used in differing combinations of intensity to create either jarring or pleasing effects.

The labels as a group element function within the context of the installation as a means by which the viewer can draw a parallel between the bottles and the residents of New Orleans. Initially, when the bottles were purchased by the students of the UNO summer program as water-containers, each bottle had an identity as a member of a product group that indicated its origin and history—Ciel brand water, or Santorini, or Bonafont, etc. The bottles began their “life” thus divided, just as New Orleanians historically have divided themselves along racial and ethnic lines—blacks, whites, Cajuns, Vietnamese, as well as numerous mixed-race identities (Codrescu, 1099). The process of preparing the bottles for use as installation media stripped them of their labels, literally, just as the Katrina disaster broke down boundaries between various populations within the city, and much like with some individuals who cling tightly to divisions in such circumstances, some of the bottles refused to give up their labels, the adhesive being too strong for them to release.

As much of the installation as possible is made from discarded objects, refuse, things that otherwise would be thrown away. The only parts of the installation that were not found/salvaged/repurposed are the string and paper used to construct the collected story tenement flags.

Collected Stories: Texts as Banners

The textual component is compiled from long-distance interviews with my circle of friends, colleagues, and family. It is clear that community and connection is vitally important to the people of New Orleans, and that the same time issues of distance and separation are paramount. Distance and separation exists within the city itself across socioeconomic and ethnic/racial lines, and also in reference to the distance and separation that was forced upon families, neighbors, and professional and cultural communities by the evacuation of the city amid the disaster of Katrina.

Our post-Katrina reading selections illuminated moments of instant community development and forged connection among survivors, as well as exploitation and separation. The common thread and refrain of impartiality echoed many times over—people “did what they had to”, what they felt they could, what they needed to. In Frederick Barton’s afterword to Voices Rising, “Breaches of Faith,” he tirelessly berates failures at every level of government while praising his fellow New Orleanians’ strength and community in just such terms. Over and over in the oral history transcripts, Katrina survivors such as Mr. Barton express both virulent anger directed at entities like the stratified levels of government and authority, and simultaneous complete forgiveness of individuals who acted in dysfunctional ways. (Antoine, 216-244)

All text responses incorporated into the installation come directly from the cited respondents in the form of comments on a travel-blog post and status updates on social media sites like Facebook in which I solicited input. I have retained all grammatical and spelling mistakes, in order to preserve the comments exactly without enforcing an editorial hand. A central theme running throughout the reading selections that centered on oral histories and collective experience was the vital need to maintain original voices rather than impose editorial judgments, even as “minimal” as copy-editing for punctuation or capitalization errors.

Strung up like rlung ta, Tibetan prayer flags; like papel picado, Mexican cut paper banners; like parade banners and tenement laundry; the text responses hang in carnival banner swags aroumd the installation space. Rlung ta is translated as “Wind Horse,” a Tibetan allegory that symbolizes the concept of good fortune. Papel picado are displayed for celebrations, from Christmas and Easter to the Day of the Dead, encompassing birth, death, and resurrection. Celebrations are such an intrinsic element of New Orleans culture that a visual connection felt vital to the effectiveness of the installation.

Cartesian Divers/Cartesian Devils

The Cartesian Diver vessel is named for Rene Descartes, and demonstrates scientific principles of buoyancy. The Cartesian Diver “anchor” roots the installation in the courtyard of the escuela; it represents the core survival and tenacity of the city itself and many of its residents. In Cartesian Diver structures, the divers are never unsubmerged in their watery chamber, just as New Orleans is never a city above sea level. Application of pressure makes the divers plunge to the bottom of their bottles, but they always return to the top when the pressure is released. Pressure can be applied aggressively, with squeezing hands in a "choking" gesture, or comfortingly, by "hugging" the bottles. This represents the nuanced dichotomy of New Orleans as a city of sin and salvation, and the need for both care and forcefulness in rebuilding, and echoes the “Katrina Hug” phenomenon (Shaik, 1484). The Cartesian Diver device serves as the anchor for the ship-shaped sculptural element. (This portion of the installation is contingent upon my finding suitable materials to create the diver.)

Numbers and statistics

Any disaster can be reduced to mere statistics. We fall back on statistics and enumerations as a means for attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible, judging distances in perspectives such as the length of a football field, or explaining massive weights in terms of the equivalent number of semi trucks. As a representation of this tendency, I have broken down the entire installation into a few easily comprehended numbers.

The following brands of water were used in the following quantities:

Agua Cryspura: 1
Bonafont: 37
Ciel: 41
e-pura: 1
H2Go: 8
H2-Oh!: 1
Isseg: 2
Nestlé: 1
Peñafiel: 3
Pureza Aga: 1
Santorini: 4
Skarch: 5

Commercially rebranded:

Abuelo Agustin: 1
La Biblioteca: 1
Limerick Pub: 1
Ten Ten Pie: 1

* figures current as of 7/19/10

These figures are approximated from a best-estimate, based on my sense of how many of each, educated guesses looking at the ratio of salvaged label and cap types, and utter guesses. This means of statistics collection corresponds to the manner in which NOLA-related statistics were compiled about Katrina—numbers of deaths and injuries fluctuate wildly, depending upon who stated them and when. As we noted in discussion, incorrect death-toll statistics are present even within the texts from the course reading list (Antoine, 216-244).

According to Ralph Adamo in his Big Bridge essay, “Meditation on New Orleans,” more than 480 billion gallons of water covered most of the city. In comparison, this installation features containers that formerly held 45 gallons of water (estimation will increase by the date of installation so final figures will change). I would need to remake this installation ten billion times to use the equivalent of the post-Katrina flood worth of water-vessels. Such statistical deployment remains incomprehensible.

These figures are posted throughout the installation as a constant reminder of how easily reducible anything is to a set of statistics, yet doing so adds no appreciable comprehension of an event which is, essentially, incomprehensibly complex.

Community Participation and the Uncertainty Principle

The uncertainty and immediacy of the project is in and of itself an important aspect of the project. New Orleanians—as evidenced in our readings—are masters of “flying by the seat of the pants,” exhibiting amazing resourcefulness, adaptability, and both resignation and triumph in the face of challenges. When I have been asked by my fellow students, “What is the installation going to look like,” I’ve consistently responded, “I don’t know.” (I only realized I was building a boat in the third week of the process.)

The finished dimensions of the ship-shape will ultimately be contingent upon so many factors outside my control that there’s no point in prior speculation. How many bottles will I have? How much space can they be made to take up? Will there be enough to attempt some complex structures, or will I be limited by a lack of resources? Will I be sick that weekend from a salad washed in dirty water, and be forced to compromise on the quantity or quality of labor? Will it rain while I’m working? What if I’m struck by lightning on the roof of the school?

[ETA: So far, no stomach flu, but it will probably rain today. And i have A LOT of bottles.]

I’m in a microcosm of the position of any New Orleanian, when asked, “What if the Big One comes? What if the city floods? What if the fishing/shrimping/oyster industry never comes back from the oil spill?”

One simply cannot plan for such a thing. There are too many variables to even make an educated guess. One has to rely upon faith, whether that be faith in a greater power to guide you in a time of need, or faith in your own ability to adapt and innovate. You’ll do the best you can with whatever you’ve got, whenever it happens. For now, why worry?

Laissez le bon temps roulez.

Works Cited

Adamo, Ralph. “Meditation on New Orleans.” Big Bridge #14: Crescent City Sturm und Drang. Brinks, Dave and Bill Lavender, eds. Web. 16 July 2010.

Antoine, Rebeca, ed. Voices Rising: Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2008. Print.

Brinks, Dave and Bill Lavender, eds. Big Bridge #14: Crescent City Sturm und Drang. Web. 16 July 2010.

Codrescu, Andrei. “New Orleans: A Lecture.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1098-1102. Web. 17 July 2010.

Hand, Simon. “In Patience to Abide.” Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. 27-33. Print.

Kuchta, Jen. “The Peasants are Revolting.” Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. 127-129. Print.

Longo, Joe and Jarret Lofstead, eds. Year Zero: A Year of Reporting from Post-Katrina New Orleans | NOLAFugees.com. New Orleans: Lavender Ink, 2006. Print.

Nolan, James. “Acts of God.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1253. Web. 17 July 2010.

Pollock, Rachel E. “Please help with my installation!” San Miguel – Summer 2010. Blogspot, 8 July 2010. Web. 18 July 2010.

Shaik, Fatima. “Christmas in New Orleans.” Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1484-1485. Web. 17 July 2010.

Ward, Jr., Jerry W. Callaloo 29.4 (2006): 1395-1399. Web. 17 July 2010.

Photos: Birds and Flowers

2010-07-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

In the courtyard at my casa, there's a huge vine of Night-blooming Cereus, or La Reina de la Noche (the queen of the night). The flowers open after darkness falls, and only last the one night. We managed to see several of them open over the span of last week. Here are some photos i took, as well as some bird pictures.

This is what they look like well before they open

So close!

They're ready to open...

Libby displays the Reina de la Noche in bloom!
It's about 11pm and dark in the courtyard here.

Blooming time is over.

Do you see my bird neighbor? This lamp is right outside my door.

Hummingbird feeders at Casa de la Cuesta--can you find them?

Look how close i am to the feeders.
It was like being dive-bombed by the biggest bugs ever.
You can see a bird swooping in from above.
They're beautiful up close!

Photos: Random Details

2010-07-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

[click to biggify]

Cool street view of a church square i stumbled on today

Homobono is the patron saint of tailors

I pass this guy on the way to school every day

This flower bloomed outside my window today

Doors of an organic cafe

Lady in a hat

Border painting at La Pamplonada

My feet and some sun tiles on a sidewalk

SHIP / SHAPE Chronicle, Part 1

2010-07-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in a prior post that i planned to do an installation for my final project in my Contemporary New Orleans Literature class. I'm going to be building it over the next 3 days, and thought it would be cool to chronicle that process here in this blog.

Thank you to everyone who submitted responses, either in comments to my prior post or on Facebook, via email and private-message. I really appreciate what a great collection of stories and thoughts i received! Several of you who emailed privately expressed a desire for anonymity which i have honored in the printed elements to be hung in the gallery space, and i will not be reprinting any of the testimonials in this blog or anywhere else online. The only ones readable by the general web-browsing public will be those left as comments in the prior blog post, and even the printed/posted ones are anonymized/pseudonymized for those who requested it.

I've written a fairly lengthy (9 pages) justification of the various elements of the installation, which i think i'll post tomorrow. Today though, i'm going to talk about what a pain in the ass it is to obtain all the supplies i'll need in a small Mexican mountain town when you don't speak Spanish or really know the town that well.

Right now what i'm doing is waiting for stores to open--nothing is open until at least 10am here, and to be safe, i ought to wait until around 11am. I can't wait too late though, because everybody goes on siesta and the stores close from about 1pm-4pm. This window is irregular and peculiar to each storekeeper on each day--if they feel like siesta from 2-5pm, that's when they close instead. And, they usually reopen afterward, but only if they feel like it, and stay open as late as they wish, which might be til 6pm or might be til 10pm. Shopping in Mexico is a crapshoot.

Today, i need to print some files, make a bunch of photocopies, and buy tape, staples, colored paper, string, and eyedroppers.

The easiest way to do this would be to hop in a taxi and go to the Mega, which is basically the Mexican Wal-Mart (except Wal-Mart does have stores in Mexico--they apparently destroyed some archaeological site building one over by Teotihuacan--so it's more like the Mexican competition to Wal-Mart). That kind of grosses me out, and also goes against the spirit of the installation, which speaks to New Orleanian thematic tropes brought about by the Katrina disaster.

It would only be appropriate for me to get my supplies from Mega if i had to paddle there on an air mattress and then steal everything i needed, including all the water and non-perishable food i could carry, while dodging hostile police treating me like some kind of carjacking felon.

Instead though, i'm relying upon the small shops of San Miguel.

First, i'll have to find a string store. (Seriously.) I hear there's a good one on Insurgentes, a street several blocks from where i live, that this Insurgentes string store has tons of different cords and twines and ropes. Nobody knows the name though, it's just a place i'll "know when i see."

Similarly, i have to find a papeladeria, a paper store, where i can buy several colors of copy paper, and hopefully the tape and staples. There's one of these right up the street, on Canal. I pass it every day on the way home from class.

Then, i need to find a place that does copias, a copy-shop, which ideally would also be an internet cafe, as i have to print out all the testimonials and other placards, and then photocopy them onto the colored paper for an element i'm calling "Confessional Tenement Flags." Strung up like rlung ta (Tibetan prayer flags), like papel picado (Mexican cut paper banners), like parade banners and tenement laundry, the text responses i've collected will hang in carnival flag swags aroumd the installation space. I hear there's a good one of these on Insurgentes, again no name for the store but "there's a big ceramic sign over the door."

And THEN i need to find a farmacia, which will be the most likely place to get the eyedroppers, which will form the "diver" component of a huge (3gal) Cartesian Diver chamber at the center of the installation. There's one on Canal just up from the papeladeria, though i know from trying to buy aloe vera gel there for bug-bites that i will have to draw a picture of an eyedropper on a little piece of paper and say "quatro, por favor," and hope that's good enough to get me what i want.

That's what i have to do today, starting in an hour or so. But for now, i'm just biding my time.

Luckily, i have plenty to write between now and then.

Asta mañana!

Photoessay: More from Guanajuato

2010-07-17T08:05:00.000-07:00

The Teatro Juarez, where the Ballet Folklorico performs.

The other side said "COMMEDIA," but was much less interesting in terms of shot composition potential.

View of the Teatro Juarez from the balcony where i had lunch.

Street performers on the street below the balcony restaurant.
Shame on the giant plastic center back zippers in those doublets!

Chocolate ice cream at that restaurant! Delicious.

Spires.

Celebration with a brass band outside a cathedral.

Another spire view.

So much to photograph in this town! Great architecture everywhere.

Also, if it's your bag, check out some images of indigenous dancers' regalia and elaborate feathered headdresses over on my professional blog, La Bricoleuse!

Photoessay: Streets of Guanajuato

2010-07-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

I am missing my 20th high school reunion right now. However, much as i'd like to see a bunch of folks i haven't seen in ages, i'm not at all sorry to be right where i am. This is the first of several photoposts of Guanajuato.

Guanajuato from above.

Cathedral dome from above.

Funicular tramway down into Guanajuato

View of this statue's lack of junk.

Candy-delivery motorbike di los Muertos.

Spiral fire escape.

Twisty narrow street.
The whole town is like this.

Universidad.

Weird face coming out of the side of this building.

All the curly ironwork on this reminded me of my friend Angie.

I just liked these water bottles against this wall.
This was right across the street from Diego Rivera's house.

the reading of the bulls

2010-07-14T05:19:00.000-07:00

I see hummingbirds every day, poking the long needles of their snouts down into the banks of magenta flowers outside my window.

I read a portion of one of my short stories last night, one called "Shake, Sugaree," about a woman clerking in a fabric store in Knoxville, TN, the night someone robs it. I don't think i've read any of my work in front of a crowd since maybe 2003, when i was doing the writing courses at Harvard summer school.

A lot of people in my house were reading, six of us total, and i think we all did a really good job! One of the other people in the house bought all the readers a round of tequila, which is not my favorite, but i thought, okay, fine, cactus courage would be maybe not a bad idea.

Fourteen people read in total, and we had a strict five minutes each. Five minutes is not a lot of time to read your work, unless you are a poet or a flash-fiction writer and all your pieces are like, a page long. Five minutes, they tell us, is about 2.5 pages, or 1100 words. I have exactly sweet F-A that's that long, in either fiction or nonfiction.

I have to say, i think this is a really valuable component of this program, the required readings, because practically speaking, if you wind up being any kind of successful writer, you'll have to read your work to strangers at public readings, so you might as well do that a few times before some publisher or bookstore has spent money on an event for you to do so.

It reminded me of how, in the program in which i teach at UNC, presentation of your work and portfolios is a component of the program of study, to get people used to talking about their work and their creative decisions and methods in front of a group. It's a required professional skill and something you'll have to do your whole career long, so really, a graduate program that doesn't prepare you for that at all is failing its students in a vital area. So, go UNO, I for one appreciate the opportunity to read my work.

The readings were held at a local restaurant called La Pamplonada, which is thematically decorated with about 230948 pieces of art featuring bulls, and some huge taxidermized bull heads. Capacity is about 135, i'd guess, and we pretty much fill it with the 85 students and the dozen-plus faculty and postgrads. It's a challenging place to read, because not only is everyone there eating and drinking (sometimes to excess), but there's a fountain in the middle of the restaurant that runs continually, and the place itself is open to the air with only a tarp for a roof, so the bells from the cathedral next door are really loud when they start tolling. Most restaurants and houses have this kind of open-but-tarp-covered eating area. Not sure why.

We weren't required to read in our area of focus (mine's creative nonfiction), which made me think at first, i'd take the easy way out and read a couple of poems. But, i'm just not that into poetry. I mean, i write it now and then, and read it now and then, and am proud of the poems i've written (the one's i haven't put in the file called "sucky poems," that is), but it's not my primary, secondary, or even tertiary writing interest.

So, i decided to read fiction, and i spent a good while going through things i've written, trying to find a section i could cut down to fit the time requirement, that would be worth listening to, that i felt was decently-written...and i wound up with two. One was a section of serious craft-heavy prose from the draft of a novel called Burglar's Wine, a bit where these two teenage brothers discover their musical talents in church, but subsequently form a rock band. The other was this piece i read, which despite the fact that it's about a robbery, is fairly funny due to the narrative voice.

I had pretty much settled on the Burglar's Wine piece and had a classmate with a printer print it out for me--i didn't want to impose and have her print both, since she was already doing me a favor. Then, sitting in the courtyard talking performance anxiety with a couple housemates yesterday afternoon, i mentioned that i had two choices but was just going to go with the one my classmate was printing out. One of my housemates with a printer offered to print out the second.

So, i wound up with both and figured, i'd wait to see what the people before me were reading, and choose based on that. If they were reading heavy shit, i'd read the lighter-toned robbery piece. If they were all reading flip, funny selections, then i'd read the serious one. The guy before me read poetry about the BP spill and the Afghanistan war, so i figured, funny it is.

Afterward, the head of the program told me he thought i did a good job, so that was really gratifying. Guess i am pretty decent at this writing/reading thing.

Saturday spent writing...

2010-07-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

The sky looks different at night down here, this far south. Not by so much i can't find constellations, but they're in different places.

Doing your laundry here is like buying moonshine. You go through twisting streets to a tiny unmarked metal door. You knock, and a woman opens it a crack. You pass her your clothes in a bag and 50 pesos, and she hands you a slip of paper and tells you a time to return. Nowhere does it say "Lavanderia" or indicate that it is any kind of business. There are actual visible operating laundry places, but this one is the place closest to where i live. I admit, the furtive weirdness of it is some of its appeal.

Yesterday i wrote all day long, homework for my classes, but not unwelcome. It's fairly incredible to have whole days set aside for nothing but writing and reading the work of others. I turned out a first draft of a short story, one that a website has commissioned, based upon that little piece i had in the Steampunk anthology. It's amazing what legs that story and in fact that whole universe has. Good thing i'm down here working on the novel, which gets workshopped this coming week. It might be the most marketable thing i have right now.

Spending the day in my room writing yesterday, i never left the house. I went outside into the courtyard, into the lounge for sporadic internet, and the breakfast room for desayuno--hermiting doesn't feel as limiting here. At home, maybe i'd go out on the balcony, chat with the neighbor, but i always feel a little bit losery not leaving the house at all for a day of writing there. Maybe that's just a mental block i need to GTFO.

Photoessay: Teotihuacan

2010-07-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Click to biggify.

Overview of Teotihuacan

Pyramid of the Moon viewed from halfway up the Pyramid of the Sun
(Aztecs must have been able to kill a man with their thighs. These steps were high.)

Pyramid of the Sun

Pyramid of the Sun

Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl

Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl

Pyramid of the Moon

Creepy thundercloud ominously hovering over the Pyramid of the Moon

La Gruta

Also! If you haven't had a chance yet to answer the two questions in my last post, i'd really appreciate it if you did! I want to have as many voices as possible in the installation from among my friends and family.

Please help with my installation!

2010-07-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

For my Contemporary New Orleans Literature class, i'm doing an art installation as my final project. It's going to have a lot of different elements, but one thing i'd like to include is some text from friends.

I would be super-grateful if you could leave a comment or email me at (ladybee-at-gmail-dot-com) and answer at least one or both of the following questions:

1.) What do you think of when you think of New Orleans? Are you from New Orleans, or have you ever visited or lived in New Orleans?

2.) Where were you when Hurricane Katrina hit? If you have time, please tell me your story. I want stories from people all over the country and the world, whether you were present in the city or weathering the outer bands in northern Mississippi or just reading about it on the internet in Zimbabwe.

Please understand that, by answering in a comment/email, you agree to give me permission to use your quote as part of this art installation. If you wish to remain anonymous/unattributed, that is totally fine! I will be writing up the installation and documenting it in my San Miguel blog, so you will get to see how your words fit into the whole thing.

Thank you SO much!

Actual text! Written on the fly...

2010-07-07T19:16:00.000-07:00

Grabbing a bit of time to write before my classes today, though i expect i won't be able to post this until perhaps lunch break or later.

I love it here. I see why people buy homes here and retire, or buy summer homes (or winter homes) here, why artists open galleries and just live here and paint. Everything is beautiful, even the dilapidated ruins and areas of squalor. Check out the random statues someone had on their balcony, and the airbrushed flamejob on this VW bug (a very popular automobile in San Miguel, the old ones, not the new ones).

The rains are crazy intense, and it rains every single night without fail, hard driving rains that flood even the deep runoff gutters, covering the steep streets in 6" of deluge. I got trapped in it today and had to hide out in a church. I was still soaked though.

The weather so far is temperate and beautiful when it's not raining, not the kind of sun that beats down, just gentle sun, grey days, clouds, middays in the 70s. I'd only brought one hoodie and one light jacket, so yesterday i bought an alpaca sweater for the equivalent of $22. I packed super-light but the clothes they sell here are so beautiful and inexpensive, i'll probably buy about 3-4 more outfits while here--bright gauze tops and flowy embroidered skirts.

One thing that's pretty fun is that in San Miguel, overwrought 80s music is what they use for muzak in their public spaces, so i eat lunch every day at a bagel cafe (no really) and listen to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and the greatest hits of Journey while i read my classmates' writing and come up with workshop critiques. The classes so far have been really great, my fellow students all very interesting people from a range of ages, backgrounds, and experience.

A typical class day goes like this: get up at 6:30am to shower and dress, head over to the lounge to take care of essential email and check the news, breakfast at 8am. Then two classmates, Roger and Libby (both of whom used to teach at UT-Knoxville, coincidentally), and i meet at 9am to walk up a narrow steep cobblestone street to our first class. Lunch is pretty much always at the bagel shop, as i can get an onion bagel with gouda, bacon, and avocado for 35 pesos (about $3). Then off to another part of the city on my own for my afternoon class, held in a local Escuela (school). Then i usually drop off my books at my room before heading to a big bullfighting-themed restaurant called La Pamplonada where we watch movies or have readings (as in, read your work aloud). Then, return to my B&B at 8pm for homework and sleep.

Tomorrow will be my first day off, so we'll see what that brings. Probably a bunch of writing homework, punctuated by laundry.

Photoessay: Scenes from the street

2010-07-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

Photoessay: La Hacienda y borrachos

2010-07-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

La Hacienda is where my first class is held. Here are some pix of it. The last two pictures are of saloons.

They tell all the women in the group, not to go into the bars with swinging doors. You can go into the ones with normal doors, but the swinging-door ones, you're considered a hooker if you go into them.

Spanish pirate hooker bar.

Plain hooker bar.

Photoessay: Puertas

2010-07-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

One really popular book about San Miguel is a coffee-table photo-book called "The Doors of San Miguel" or something like that, and it's just bunches of photographs of doors. Today, i took a few photos of my own in that vein.

Not a door but a cistern.

Brief thoughts

2010-07-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

I met my focus-classmate, Leigh, while scoping some lobby internet earlier in the day yesterday. (I don't get WiFi in my room unless i stand on my footboard in Warrior Pose with a metal coathanger in each hand; reception is just in the lounge, which is fine because it means i'll be able to write without distraction.) There are two of us in each incoming class who are creative-nonfiction focus--she writes long-form memoir and is from Bozeman, Montana. She's married with two kids, just finished two BAs, and wants to write for a living after getting her MFA. She has a really great water bottle with an integrated filter cartridge, so she can fill it from the tap and drink without fear of the trots. Jealous! I am so getting one if i come back here next year.

Leigh also has a room decorated with beautiful handmade dolls, both actual little dolls on shelves and on tiny chairs bolted to the walls, and a big mural of dolls sitting around doing happy doll things. Her room is bright orange and yellow and red, while mine is plain cream and washed-out peach and green and dark-stained wood. Hers is more charming, mine more austere, but i think i'll have an easier time writing in mine. It's more secluded and quiet off on my side of the courtyard. Her (bright YELLOW) bathroom is a foot longer than mine, too, which really only means that it would be a bit more difficult for her to barf in the sink without leaving the commode, so what with the whole looming fear of Montezuma's Revenge, perhaps i secretly have the better bathroom.

It's exciting to discover that, in Mexico, i am tall! (I'm 5'5" on a good day, unless some sort of augmentative footwear is involved.) One of my classmates wife, Susan, is 6' tall, and Mexican ladies stop her on the street to ask if they can have their photo taken with her. They come up to just above her waist on average.

Today: exploring the town and an Opening Party. Happy 4th!

Photoessay: initial images

2010-07-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

Click these to biggify.

This is my bed in my little room.

This is my bookshelf of things for school. And, Kraken, for fun.

This is my desk and the window beside it.

A lamp at the cantina where i had dinner last night.

A cerveza at the same cantina.

The cantina itself!

The courtyard my window looks out on.

Another courtyard at Elvia's, where we have breakfast.

A view of the entrance hall, which is secretly open-air.

The spiral stairs in the main courtyard.

First impressions

2010-07-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've arrived safely in San Miguel de Allende, and am fully settled into my base of operations, a small room in the beautiful bed-and-breakfast known known as La Casa de Elvia.

Yesterday was the longest traveling day ever, so all i wanted to do last night was pass out. I got up at 3am (!) to finish packing, close up the home for a month, and head over to my pal Mike's house, who had kindly offered to drive me to the airport. Then the headaches of post-9/11 international travel ensued, compounded by the computers being down at RDU when i arrived at 5am--huge lines for baggage check. Thank god i'd already checked in and printed boarding passes online, so the bags were all i needed to deal with. (I should note that the last time i flew anywhere outside the US was back in the 1990s.)

Then the huge lines for security, and i got picked for the "look at you buck naked in the special x-ray-right-through-your-clothes scanner," followed by the "get groped all over every-which-way by a security officer who is clearly not comfortable with her grope-on-command job," which, whatever, but i find those things offensive. Not so offensive that i'd eschew travel over it, but given the choice, i'd rather take a chance on a jet-plane cage-match with a box-cutter-wielding terrorist armed only with inkpens and hate than allow airport staff free rein to ogle me naked and go to second base any time they please. But, maybe that's just me. I don't think so, though. They put a Muslim lady in a hijab in the naked-x-ray machine right before me, and i could tell she pretty much wanted to die over it, which broke my heart and pissed me off. But, what can you do? Submit or stay the fuck home, i guess.

I had a layover around lunchtime in Dallas-Forth Worth, where for a brief moment i considered having Mexican food for lunch, before i realized, hi, Mexican food for a MONTH, perhaps you want to choose something else just for variety's sake. The other option was Fuddrucker's Chilidogs though. Awesome. (Not.)

The plane that brought me to Leon--the closest airport to San Miguel--was one of those little cigar planes where you feel like at any minute you'll all be given paddle fans, asked to roll down the windows and help flap. The Leon airport itself reminded me of the airport in Tennessee where i grew up, TRI/Tri-Cities, not as it is now, but as it was when i was a kid, when you still debarked from little planes down rolling ladders directly onto the runway. Different climate and vegetation, of course, and the entire tarmac was covered with the bodies of theses large-winged flies that seem to have come in a plague earlier in the day and commenced dying everywhere. Luckily, they seem to be a plague which descended only upon the Gomorrah of the airport, and not up here in saintly San Miguel.

Next, a shuttle ride, two hours from the airport up into the mountains--a van of four of us on a two-lane highway with a leadfoot driver, speeding through the hillside housing projects of Guanajuato, funny identical prefab pueblos all peeling Crayola shades of paint. I saw small boys riding donkeys, and men in straw rancher hats plowing their fields with actual wooden plows hitched to pairs of oxen. I saw ladies sitting outside of breezy orange cantinas finger-weaving bright string cords, and plenty of brick ruins. I saw exactly why we aren't supposed to drink the water: it all comes from rooftop cisterns collected direct from storm runoff, quickly turned brackish and dispensed unpurified from gravity-fed faucets. I worry, i admit, about the cost of proper hydration. I normally drink tap water all day long in the US.

I bought two bottles to tide me over last night at the cantina where i had dinner--a open-air place a block away that had excellent cheese empanadas and fresh avocado salad. I tried a kind of beer i hadn't had before--Pacifico--with fresh-picked limes squeezed into it. I'm going with the Grog Theory of consuming liquid in public places that's not bottled water--something with alcohol and citrus in it is far less risky than what could potentially be straight-up bilgewater. As long as i can balance this with not getting accidentally shitcanned in the process, i should be good to go.

The whole town is covered in bougainvillea, ferns, lime trees and other unfamiliar plants and trees. So far, everyone is extremely pleasant and kind, though the fact that i speak the most minuscule amount of Spanish is making things a bit difficult in terms of communication with random people. It's okay, everyone's willing to try to understand, and at least i know the most basic things like hola, buenos dias, hasta luega, por favor, gracias. I'll learn more by the end of the month i'm sure. I spent a week with a family in Madrid in high school and was busting out a few simple conversations by the end of that, so i've got faith i'll pick up what i need soon enough.

One thing i'll say--this trip is kind of like going to NYC for the summer, psychologically speaking, in terms of how you have to kind of surrender yourself to the ebb and flow of life, and have faith that you'll get where you want to go, do something you want to do, that you like to do, whether it's something you planned or foresaw or is a total surprise, faith that you'll meet nice people on the way, and that it'll all turn out for the best. I haven't felt very in-control or secure in terms of what's happening when--it's been very seat-of-the-pants, so to speak.

For example, i made my shuttle reservation a month ago, but had no idea til i got off the plane and saw a dude with my name on a sign whether anyone would *really* be there to meet me. And, I booked this room through UNO months ago, but had no idea whether anyone would recognize my name or have a room for me for real, or what it might look like at all, until i arrived yesterday, dumped at an enormous wooden gate by my kind but no-ingles driver, who had to basically fling me out and drive away because all the streets here are one-lane cobblestone warrens, and about 10 cars were honking behind him wanting to get on with it.

La Casa de Elvia, wow, what a beautiful place. My room is small (though palatial by NYC standards), sparsely furnished with cool, sturdy wood furniture, woven serapes, and punched-tin lamps. It's shady and temperate and has a beautiful view of one of the courtyards. It's hard to determine interior and exterior space here--you think you are indoors, but when you look up it's actually open to the air with just a grating and some plants for cover. I imagine this place like a labyrinth in which all the pathways open into balconies and terraces and courtyards on levels upon levels. (So far, no sign of a minotaur--Elvia and her family are all super-nice and friendly.) My room, incidentally, has a ceiling.

I'd worried that i'd need to find an alarm clock--i left my cellphone in the states, without thinking that i rely upon it as a travel alarm. Oops. However, the town clock chimes on the hour starting at 6am, and the birds get up at 6:30, so i'm set.

At breakfast today, i met a couple fellow UNO folks--a second-timer named Heather, a fellow first-year, Keith, and his wife Tessa, who live in Brooklyn. Heather apparently won a grant to come this time around, the terms of which require her to serve as a sort of local-resource helper to new folks. She's taking a few of us to a tienda (shop) and a cambio (currency exchange) this afternoon, and walking with us to our orientation tonight. Keith is in my "Contemporary New Orleans Literature" class, and Tessa is just along for the experience. She said she thought she might use the opportunity to learn more Spanish--there are lots of language schools, and she has the Rosetta Stone program for Spanish as well.

Incidentally, breakfast was spectacular. Everything is fresh! Fresh-squeezed orange juice, local milk and butter and eggs and tomatoes and black bean paste, home-made strawberry jam and fresh-baked bread in tiny loaves. I'm more than glad to come back here the next two summers if that's how it goes!

So, that's it in a nutshell right now. I actually expect that i'm going to be too busy to update daily, judging by the calendar, but i'm such a fan of travel-journaling that i intend to prioritize updating at LEAST once a week.

Is Hurricane Alex going to affect my trip ?

2010-07-01T17:23:00.000-07:00

The short answer is, no.

By the time i get there tomorrow, he'll be blown on by.

Early to bed, early to rise. Tomorrow: Mexico!

Cartography

2010-06-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

This is a map of San Miguel de Allende, in Guanajuato, Mexico.

If you click it, it'll get bigger, big enough you can just make out the street names. Click it again with the magnifying-glass zoom, and they're read clear as day.

I love looking at maps of places i'm going or places i've been. It's exciting and also comforting to be able to pore over them and say, Oh, here's where I'll live, and there's where the school is, that's where films are shown, where my friends will live.

Here's where i grew up, and here's Michelle's old house, and there's how far we rode our bicycles that one time in fifth grade.

I think it runs in the family. For as long as i can remember, my grandfather has pulled out maps to supplement stories or to talk about vacations or things that happened long ago. Even now, at 86, he keeps atlases in the magazine stand beside his big leather recliner, nevermind that about the furthest he travels these days is to eat supper out at the Golden Corral.

Perhaps this is because Papaw spent his entire professional life working with maps--railroad maps and trucking-route maps and airline maps. He was what they now call a Supply Chain Manager for the Berkline furniture mill in Morristown, TN, making sure that materials got to the factory on time and that the products got to stores around the country. My entire adult life, he's followed my cross-country moves through those magazine-stand atlases, looked up my neighborhoods and shown people when they visit, here's where Rachel is.

Evanston, Illinois. Allston, Massachusetts. Hollywood, California. Astoria, New York. He found them all, pulled out city maps and looked up the cross-streets for every studio apartment and third-floor walk-up. No matter how far away i was, in whatever time zone, Papaw could find me, exactly there right on those maps.

My dad is big on maps, too. As a kid, he bought me puzzle maps, Tennessee and the fifty states and a split-open flayed-looking flat globe of the world. We always had road-atlases in the utility drawer, and folding maps of dozens of cities and states. When i was small, I remember him finger-following red interstates and blue highways and narrow windey black rural-route roads, talking about the differences, big and small and where they led to. Here's where we're going on vacation this year, down this interstate to this city here, in this state, this far away, this many inches is this many miles. Fascinating.

Now that i think about it, i don't know that the women in my family have cared much about maps. I don't think they've got anything against them--my mom and my aunt, my Mamaw and my grandfather's wife Jean, they all look at Papaw's maps with polite interest when he pulls them out to point to something. Here's where Rachel is. Well, isn't that interesting? But i can't recall any of them producing any atlases of their own as part of everyday conversation. Or maybe, like me, they just look things up cartographically on their own time and don't think to share them.

Well, until now.

Look at the big version of this map. To the left of the large-point legend reading Market Bistro (Films), there's a street running vertically called 28 de Abril Norte, jigging off at a dogleg as it goes up.

This is the street on which i will live.

I don't know what the historical significance of April 28th might be for Mexicans, why San Miguel has a street named for that date. Googling around doesn't give a lot of clues either. My money's on Miguel Ramos Arizpe, a distinguished citizen who advocated for Mexico's right to seek independence before the Spanish Court in the 19th century. He died on April 28, 1843. I'll find out soon enough; i'll ask my landlady, Elvia, on Friday.

Follow the line of 28 de Abril Norte up to where it ends in a T-intersection with a street called Umaran. Just south of that T-intersection, that's where my house will be. Elvia's house. La Casa de Elvia.

La Pamplonada, that is where my classes will be held, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I wish there were some way to layer over some topographical information, as i'm told that the walk from my place to the school is uphill, San Miguel being a mountain town. I'm not concerned--after growing up in Appalachia and college in Knoxville, i can walk up a hill, no problem. Still, it'd be neat to see: how steep?

Hacienda de los Flores--the Plantation of Flowers--that's the fanciest place students may choose to live. I'm not living there, obviously; it's suites and the folks who come as couples or families snap them up. Perhaps though, that is where some friends i don't yet have will live.

Traveling to anywhere you've never been always feels like a bit of a leap of faith. It's scary, but thrilling, and you always think about all the best and worst things it might bring, even though you can't know til you up and go.

By the same token, reading a map is like saying your prayers. Does it really help at all? I reckon it does if you think it does.

Three more days, and i'm there.

More books!

2010-06-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

In addition to the "Contemporary New Orleans Literature," I'm also taking a class called "Writing Literary Speculative Fiction." We have three recommended books for that class, even though it will be mostly a writing class. They are:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en

And, unrelated to any class, i have just finished reading the Great Destinations travel guide for San Miguel and Guanajuato, in the interest of being somewhat informed about where i'm going for the next month. It's a decent travel guide, but it also feels like perhaps the listings are sponsored, since none of the B&Bs my classmates and i are living in are listed in there, though they are all easily findable online.

Since i have a few things out in books myself, i thought it'd be cool to cite some of those links too, just for fun.

Imagining Heaven anthology, edited by Linda Matney--I have a poem in this called "what papaw said." Proceeds from sales of the book go to support hospice efforts.

Knoxville Bound anthology, edited by Jack Renfro and Judy Loest--I have a memoir in this called "ten thousand cigarettes."

Steampunk anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer--I have a short story in this called "Reflected Light."

Voices of Multiple Sclerosis anthology by LaChance Publishing--I've got a memoir in this one, "Recollection." Proceeds from it go to the Healing Project.

That's everything you can track down a copy of fairly easily online. My other credits are in back-issues of various journals.

Oh, and: four days!

Contemporary New Orleans Literature booklist

2010-06-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

Today, an overview of the books i've had to read for one of my courses. (These aren't Amazon Affiliate links or anything BTW--honestly, i don't see myself taking the time to set that kind of referral-program crap up.)

I am really looking forward to this course, because admittedly before this class, my nebulous idea of what "New Orleans Literature" might be was confined to Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite novels, and a few Tennessee Williams plays. It's clear that there's a sort of schism in New Orleans creative art, of that produced pre-Katrina and that produced post-Katrina, and it's really been fascinating to see how various members of the New Orleans artistic community (writers, musicians, painters, performers, etc) have been struggling so hard to retain or reestablish communication and ties with what is now the New Orleanian post-Katrina creative diaspora.

Anyhow, here are the books:

New Orleans Lit: Short Story Collections

Dream State by Moira Crone--Written in 1995, pre-Katrina.

Southern Cross by Skip Horack--Written in 2008, post-Katrina, but not steeped in hurricane-lit. Haven't enjoyed a collection of short stories this much since i read Breece Pancake's. Which, maybe "enjoy" isn't quite the word, because most of them are super grim, but good.

French Quarter Fiction edited by Joshua Clark--Lots of stories either set in the French Quarter or written by authors living in it. I loved about ten of them, hated about ten of them, and the rest could take or leave.

New Orleans Lit: Poetry

The I of the Storm by Bill Lavender--Post-Katrina poetry collection, though the first half of the book is pre-K poetry.

New Orleans Lit: Novels

And the Parade Goes On Without You by Andrea Boll--This came out post-Katrina, but is set pre-Katrina. Really loved this one, as a postmodern-collage-style novel of second-line parades.

Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden--Hands down my favorite book of the bunch. This novel takes place between Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. I literally stayed up all night reading this book because i couldn't put it down. I might give copies of this to people for Christmas.

New Orleans Lit: Anthologies

Year Zero, compiled by NOLAFugees.com--This was the collection that kept me from getting actively depressed by the post-K survivor accounts. In this collection, the authors got past being beat down enough to express some fatalistic dark humor, which felt like a first rung on the ladder to New Orleans returning psychologically to itself, if that makes sense.

Voices Rising, edited by Rebeca Antoine--This one, i read before Year Zero, and it was overwhelming. Really good in terms of personal accounts and the stories people told about surviving the disaster, but hard to get through, which is in and of itself hard to consider, since I'm just reading about what they went through, and they're the ones that went through it.

Big Bridge Crescent City Sturm und Drang, edited by Dave Brinks and Bill Lavender.

And, there is one more anthology, a literary journal which i cannot find any links to online, a post-Katrina edition of Callaloo which you can only get to on like, JSTOR (I read it through the UNC library login i've got with work).

FIVE DAYS, Y'ALL. :D

Inaugural Post: Art galleries, museums, and events in San Miguel!

2010-06-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

I thought this blog might be a good way for me to share my trip with friends and family! Welcome! It's also a place for me to collect links and information that might be of use to me while i'm there, and hopefully post photos and journal entries.

To start off, a quick overview of why i'm going there. I'm enrolled in this writing program through the University of New Orleans, and taking the classes "Contemporary New Orleans Literature" and "Writing Speculative Fiction." I'll be staying at the lovely B&B, La Casa de Elvia.

So, you might be wondering, why am i taking writing classes, when you thought i was a theatre costumer? Well, while i'd never say writing is my career--professional costuming is my career--it's not exactly a hobby, either. I submit my work for publication regularly, and i get probably two or three short stories, poems, or essays published per year. Maybe it's a hobby i'm just pretty good at?

I guess the way i approach writing is the way folks approach things like playing on the company softball team, or selling things they crochet in front of the TV on Etsy, or training for and running marathons in their spare time. So, maybe it is a hobby after all. Doesn't matter, it's something i enjoy and something i've always just done in my spare time, so the opportunity to go to Mexico for a month and take some writing classes sounded awesome, hence the trip.

I've got some links to art galleries, museums, and events in San Miguel that i'm hoping to check out in my free time:

William Martin Gallery--Run by a painter and seemingly showing exclusively his work.

Juan Ezcurdia Gallery--Louis St. Lewis pretty much ripped off this artist's painting Desliz for a painting my employer commissioned for their 50th anniversary, and a related series of bicycle-riders. I'm interested to see Ezcurdia's original work.

Alhondiga de Granaditas Guanajuato Regional Museum--I really want to see the pre-Hispanic stamping tool collection here...

Zocalo Folk Art--OMG, I kind of fear going here. I may spend all my money!

Museo de Iconografico del Don Quixote--Yep, it's an entire museum dedicated to imagery of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Fabrica la Aurora--This is exciting, they're hosting an art walk the evening i get into San Miguel! I get in in the afternoon on the 2nd, but we don't have our first welcome/meet-and-greet for the program until the evening of the 3rd.

Galeria Pergola--Very excited to check this one out! The current exhibit looks awesome.

Galeria Arte Sacro--Nothing but sacred art and images of saints. I cannot wait to go here, too.

Edina Sagert--I'd love to take a watercolor class with this lady while i am there. Not sure if i will have time, though. Maybe i can at least see some of her work in person...

Expresion en Corto Film Festival--This is taking place in the final week i'm there. Maybe i'll catch some of the films.

Ok, so that's it for my first post. I plan on writing a few more posts over the next week before i leave, as i learn more about what the coming month holds for me.

I'm in countdown mode now: six days til San Miguel!