Crunch Time

Grading papers, Vaquero off to San Francisco cruelly early in the AM of Wednesday, the third episode of Treme to watch, deadlines to meet, research to be accomplished re slave dance troups, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, AND Jefferson Davis -- personally?  It's not factually accurate for people to refer to him as President Davis, or as living in the White House.  He was never POTUS, and he never lived in the White House in Washington D.C.  Nor did Lincoln and his administrations in any way ever recognize Davis as president of anything.  Nor did any other nation in the world.


Vaquero in San Francisco, in his own words:

Looking forward to seeing my people in San Francisco -- April 29 at the
Museum of the African Diaspora for my talk "Eh, Eh, Bomba! The Haitian
Revolution as a Generative Explosion of Popular Music in the Hemisphere."
http://www.cubacaribe.org/festival6/press/specialeventflyer2010.pdf

and May2 at the Mission Cultural Center for my concert, "Noche Bohemia con El Vaquero."

http://www.examiner.com/x-12553-SF-Ethnic-Communities-Examiner~y2010m4d18-Noche-Bohemia-con-El-Vaquero-Ned-Sublette-concert-at-MCCLA

By the way, and off topic: Is everyone in Arizona deranged? How 'bout those bills and laws for possession and open carry of weapons (none) and deporting people on the basis of what shirt and shoes they wear?  This puts all the burden of dealing with the immigration mess on local law enforcement, where, as so many state as excuse for what is going on, is located a corridor for drug smuggling. This means some serious trouble is inevitable and don't always bet that the law enforcers won't be the ones shot, and that the perps will be caught. In the meantime not a thing is moving ahead in D.C. for the federal cleanup of the immigrtion mess for which it is responsible. Though that's not so easy, with all the special interests, i.e. big agri biz, etc., arrayed against doing anything, and, of course, states rights.

Pisanki

When I was growing up, my maternal great-grandmother and I used to make these eggs for Easter -- though nothing this elaborate, of course.  My grandmother, my great-grandmother's daughter, frowned upon this elaborate custom and grumbled every year we did this.  I thought it was because it messed up her kitchen (Great Grandma lived with her).  But much later I realized it was because this was a Polish custom, Catholic, in our overwhelmingly  Protestant, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Swedes and Germans, which we too, were.  Except Great-Grandma -- she was Polish and came from a Catholic background.  She renounced her Roman church upbringing in order to marry my rigidly Lutheran, Swedish great-grandfather, before they moved to North Dakota.  It was one of many family secrets concealed from us, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  As I was in the age cohort of the first great grandchildren born, I spent a great deal of time cared for in my earliest years by Great Grandma (whereas her death arrived before my third sibling reached the age of consciousness), and thereby absorbed a great deal of information, that, though I wasn't able to process it until much later, made a great deal of sense out of what was so mysterious as to be a negative space in my understanding.  Great Grandma could speak Swedish and German like both sets of our grandparents (while our parents could speak only English), but there was another language, in which she sang.

Pisanki comes from the Polish verb pisac, "to write."

Doesn't it seem likely that the famous Fabergé eggs are inspired by this traditional Easter egg?


You can see more about the Pisanki tradition here.

Happy Easter!