Jerez: Hola Caballos!

As this is the longest stretch of travel in Spain for our itinerary, we flew from Madrid to Jerez.

Holy cow is this ever horse country! Descending to the airport, taxi-ing into the (very small) city, to our hotel, everywhere there are exquisite horses, of elegant conformation and silhouette.  Quite the highest end designer equine runway models.

Plus, there is Flamenco and sherry.  And the classic Islamic White Cities of the Atlsntic and Mediterrean coasts. After deplaning, in the terminal, you are greeted by a welcome to Jerez mural that is first, a gorgeous horse, and a beautiful dancer in classic Flamenco form. 

Last night in Madrid, we saw a Flamenco show in a very up close and personal space, deliberately created to be as close to the underground and caves-cellars (generally those belonging to a taberna, thus wine storage, all over Spain, and particularly in the south, dating from at least the Roman eras, but I'd guess from the Carthaginian ones too) from which the tradition emerged. (We were the only mask wearers, but so what?) It was the first time I have been that close to the performers. So I could parse how much of their classic poses are the same as those of bullfighters, fo one thing. Though none of the dancers used cotenants, one of them wore a shell medallion, which I like to think was a homage to the ancient predecessors of cotenants, already in the days the Roman's, who used clam shells.

Tomorrow we're taking a tour of the largest Roman amphitheater in Spain. But first, dressage! 

I can't believe I'm finally here, where I've wanted to go since 4th grade.  Better late than never is true . . . .

[Originally posted on DW 03/11/23]

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Royal Amigos del Caballos

      . . . .  More foney-fone fotos of horses in braids, and even, yes, in sparklies, than any sane person can take!  Sparklies, though subdued and tastefully minimal, on the riding helmets too.  What? They think they're royalty, nobility, or something?

Indoor ring though, no sparkles.  But mirrors at one end, the Royal box at the other, with a gigantic portrait of the king on the back wall of the box.  I guess that's sort of a mirror for somebody? No fotos allowed, not even with foney-fones.

Orange trees in the grounds.  Fotoed those.

Must move on to next thing now, and train, to Cadiz.

[Originally posted on DW 03/12/23]

We Went There

      . . . . And so we did, go to New Orleans...

As miserable prepping for the 10-day journey was, mostly due to the very mixed weather and temperatures we would experience, as well as the knowledge that for the first time in years, I would be spending entire days within the company of over 50 other people -- and more due to some of the venues being clubs! the going itself was just fine and as smooth as it could possibly be.  LaGuardia airport’s renovation and remodeling has included handling TSA lines a lot better, smoother and faster. el V did everything anyway, via his fone, so I had nothing at all to do but show my passport. At the TSA metal detectors, again, I was questioned as to my non removal of footgear; the TSA person said I didn’t look old enough to be pardoned that requirement! so I should feel complimented by her inquiring. This was also the case at departure. (Surely it would have been different if I wasn't wearing a mask though!) Throughout the security process and inside the security perimeters, I was comfortable in my mask, in the terminal and on the plane, i.e. not anxious, despite so many coughing and not masked. What the heck, yanno?  I decided to do this, so there it is. As our beloved Dr. Song, says, "The mask is the vaccine." And so it is. The rain-wind storms were over by the time we were ready to land at New Orleans's new Louis Armstrong airport.

Outside the Lolis House in Treme, which was our base camp for the Treme Second Line Parade Sunday. Spike Lee gave us both t-shirts from his production in response to the Levee failure of Katrina, If
God  Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise. El V was interviewed on camera for the film.  The great geographer and scholar of New Orleans, Richard Campanella, provided fascinating and heartbreaking history of New Orleans, the levees and pumping stations, particularly around the why of the pumping station failure and flooding of Katrina.

"For the Funk of It" was another extraordinary Postmambo experience.  None of us got covid , or a cold, or anything else. This is much easier to do, when the schedule is so carefully planned and calibrated, for an environment which is highly ventilated as part of the eco-structure of the place as is New Orleans, and mask wearing inside the transportation -- with open windows when possible. It would be a lot different moving 50 people around NYC in winter than in New Orleans.  Which is why we did "For the Funk of It" on these days.

Then, yesterday, we left Spring behind and returned to Winter, though of course, our friends here, will not allow us to ignore the fact they endured some of the most brutal Winter NYC's had in a while, while we danced under the moon (the last nights anyway) and heard the best music.  As one of our multiple generations of on-the-ground-in-the-community guides said to me, "Every artist we saw, every act was pure Star -- not three stars, not four stars, not four and a half stars, but FIVE STAR WORLD CLASS, Babeee, and if I wasn't doing this gig I'd never have gotten to hear this!"

As I have been feeling this trip confirmed that New Orleans is in the midst of another Renaissance of artistic, creative explosion.  The energy there is incredible, which is felt and seen in everything from music to art to cuisine.  New Orleans is changing a lot, thanks to the influence of the numbers of 'others' moving in, from Honduras and Mexico, to Haitians and Cubans.  Particularly the Haitian and Cuban musicians who have chosen New Orleans, rather than Miami, as their US city of refuge. When we lived in New Orleans during the days of the Tulane Fellowship for The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (for which 4 digit audio royalties came in again, the day before we left on "For the Funk of It") there were no Cuban or Haitian musicians or bands there.  The influence percussively and vocally is flowing back-and-forth, inspiring fresh takes and innovation from both directions.  What is particularly exciting about what is going on there currently, is that, this being New Orleans, so rooted generationally in the mud of the place, that the gorgeous, foundational mosaic that made New Orleans unique and special in the world musically isn't being thrown out at all.  It is still the base, the center, but that base is growing, spatially, up, down and all around.

This makes the city a crackling, sizzling place of excitement and vitality -- quite unlike, say, Manhattan.  However, one fears, that like, say Manhattan, the greed capitalist land speculators are going to shut it all down by making it impossible for anyone who isn't quite, quite rich to live there.  Even within our own 'woke' group of Travellers, are quite a few who have second homes in New Orleans, which means people like our generationally planted ground crews, are having one hell of a time finding somewhere to live, since the Katrina floods took out their multiple generational family prosperity and homes. One sees the effect of this in the undeniable fact that all the service industries, whether hotels, restaurants, doctors, ophthalmologists, etc. can't get the staff they need to operate full-time.  Many are leaving New Orleans.

It is clear, the trauma of Katrina has by no means left the fibers and sinews of New Orleans and her people.

One other thing is clear, yet again, what Postmambo Seminars do and accomplish, cannot be done without dedicated, experienced, caring people who know the people and the territory, inside and out, who are connected, to the very height and depths of their souls.

One way and another, "For the Funk of It" gave back to New Orleans, did not just take -- we pumped at least $100,000 directly into the musical and Black communities. Which is something, a small thing, but something.

It also showed that when done mindfully, carefully, in cooperation with and guidance from the knowledgeable, connected people who live there, like-minded group travel can be done again, safely.  So we are starting to believe Postmambo al-Andalus can be done with our people in 2024.

Ireland Is Not The Western: Tana French's The Searcher

      . . . . These Are Some Times, happenin', eh? since I last posted.  The night before last el V was wakened by a clap of thunder from the big storm pounding the City.  He woke with a cry, leapt from the the bed, madly scrembling for clothes, yelling at me to get dressed and GET OUT! thinking a bomb had fallen.

That was the night I'd finished reading Tana French's The Searcher (2020). With this novel, she's back to earlier form, and in some ways surpasses the earlier books that were very good themselves and made her justified reputation. The critics one and all informed us at the top The Searcher is modeled on one of John Ford's swan songs of movie Western, The Searchers (1956). I know where the critics tipped to that idea, or think they did, most likely because they were told so think that by the press release. 

That’s the single weak element in French’s novel  – ruminations about young males and masculinity and the closing of the US's old West.  Ya really think an old guy in Ireland is gonna muse on that? Or a Chicago cop retired to Ireland?  One feels compelled here to speculate: did French read Greg Grandin’s The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, published in March 2019, while engaged writing this novel. It sure feels like it because those few sentences seem grafted from some other place upon a narrative and tone that otherwise feels organically sprung from the place where the novel is set, which sure as hell is the greatest antithesis to the vast, dry spaces of the west Texas-New Mexico-Arizona territory of Ford’s The Searchers.

Rural East Ireland

The rest of the elements in French’s The Searcher are also the inversion of the elements of Ford’s film, most of which I won’t mention for fear of spoilers, which would be a pity. But one can safely state that John Wayne, playing an ex-confederate, is nothing like French’s protagonist, Cal, the protagonist and point-of-view, a retired Chicago cop, dropped into an out-of-the-way contemporary rural community on the island of Ireland. Thus I truly wish the critics had shut up about The Searchers, because it’s a red herring, which adds nothing to the narrative, but rather, to the discerning reader, rather detracts.

The reason this novel is satisfying is because it doesn’t follow any previously generic template.  I can almost always predict exactly where things are going, etc. in any genre of fiction (or movie or television show), at this point.  But not in this novel of French's. 

Among the charming elements, the novel contains a Greek chorus of  ravens, the keen observers, commenting on the action and particularly upon Cal. He views them as a community, with both group and individual personality and expression.  When he thinks to himself the ravens are laughing at him, you agree, from the description of their action and sound. French does this though, without anthropomorphicizing the birds. The protag treats them with respect, and despite having a shotgun, and a being a hunter, he wouldn't think of shooting them, especially just for fun. It's deep rural Ireland, and the ravens belong there.

I took 5 nights to read it -- not binging through (not there's time anyway to binge through a novel in These Times).  It's so well written word for word and composed in rise and fall of action, with lovely rest places now and again, one is happy not to dash through in a single burst, but linger in the world of the novel for a while.

John Ford's The Searchers

History Entertains Us!

     .... Last night I read the first few pages of Robert Harris's future medieval dystopian Britain mystery novel, The Second Sleep (2019).

Harris precedes the narrative with a pull quote from Thomas Hardy's 1886 novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is a descriptive passage of meditation upon the excavated skeleton of someone who belonged to much earlier time.

"They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide even for a spirit to pass."  

1886, three years before the state I was born in became a state. So we are aware how deep into our consciousness of time, of what is past, present and future Harris is going to take us.

Harris, writing in the present, looks to the past, which looks even further past, then writes a novel of the future, which is like the past. I admit I am smitten by this.

Then, even better, but proceeding purrfectly from the Hardy quotation, his opening passages could come directly from a Hardy or George Eliot -- or even Daphne du Maurier, who like Harris here, evokes the past through describing a chronologically labeled landscape excavated by the author, matched by language, pace and rhythm. Here is the first sentence of Harris's The Second Sleep:

"Late on the afternoon of Tuesday the ninth of April in the Year of Our Risen Lord 1468, a solitary traveller was to be observed picking his way on horseback across the wild moorland of that ancient region of southwestern England known since Saxon times as Wessex...."

It's elegant, pitch perfect to Harris's subject and place within the time evoked out of the reader's present -- a reader, who, if the world is fortunate, may transmute into a reader of the future -- through one time after another, beginning with Hardy, like nested Russian tea dollsm then turning around again into the present with the reader. No longer just smitten, I'm in love.  It's been a long time since a novel's opening has done this to me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . I recently re-watched Ridley Scott's The Gladiator, so hungry do I get for scenic historical epics.  It would be appreciated if there would be at least one of these once a year in the theaters to look forward to.  (Though more often than not, one will likely be disappointed.)

What I really appreciated even at the time of Gladiator's original release (2000) was how the cinematography showed us how much land Celtiberia had that seemed created in mind of the Goddess for raising some of the very best horses in her world.

I also simultaneously had a fair amount of trouble believing the coincidence that Crowe-Maximus arrived at his Spanish horse breeding latifundia, just after his family was massacred, starting from a point nearly 2000 miles away.  I don't have trouble believing he could have ridden that far within what seems about 3 weeks, because historically Roman soldiers and messengers could travel very long distances, even over inhospital ground -- an on little food when called to.  In this case accomplishing such a travel feat would demand the wherewithall to constantly replace Maximus's horse.  We see no evidence that Maximus is carrying a cache of cash into the battle. He presumably isn't going the direct routes, and finding horses between Germania and Spain as often has he would need to change mounts would be iffy.  I always bump into this.

Also dogs were used by a Roman army.  I haven't run across references to this use but then I'm no scholar of Roman military history beyond quite broad strokes, unlike my much more comprehensive understanding of how slavery operated within the Roman Empire. 

However, I recalled the Gladiator  dogs when re-watching the really unfairly slagged and dumped Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (2016 -- available to stream on amazon prime), because there are some truly terrifying dogs used by some of the villains in this series. The Shieldlands are the buffer zone between the ever shrinking terrain of the "Mudborn" and "The Old Lands', what looks like the remains of what had been a Roman Empire -- with various objects, styles, patterns and visitors received from there. Which is how it worked for sure as we see from excavations in Nordic and Germanic lands.

Sample of the mise en scene of Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (2016)

BTW, for those who are fond of these not strictly historically correct productions -- anyway, Beowulf is a fiction, as, say, Roland is not -- I was better than reasonably entertained.  A mixture by Brit sensibility of the American frontier western and Dark Age Sword and Sorcery that doesn't take itself overtly seriously, it's at least as much fun, with more interesting characters and monsters than The Witcher.  Another plus is Shieldland's  mise en scene ....

Flu, Nomads, the Eurasian Steppes and Ertugrul, the Brave Man

     . . . . Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (2017) by Laura Spinney is given a substantial review in the LRB: 

I listened to some Spinney interviews last year,  though I haven't read the book --  I do have the flu currently, alas.  (Yes -- I got the flu shot, back at the start of September, but we know this year was iffy for protection against the Big Mutator.)

With the current flu getting so much news coverage one does think of this book, as well as because this is the centenary of the Spanish flu pandemic. 

I learned from the review, (written by a physician) the three centers from which its global spread probably issued. I didn't know any of this before.

Maybe for me the most interesting factoid I got though -- is that perhaps the first flu epidemic was in 'Asia' 2000 years ago, acquired from horses. Was this the first strike against the rest of humanity by the Eurasian steppes and the nomads. long before the Mongols?

Baiju Noyan is a bad man, a VERY bad man.

I think of such a thing since I am watching the second season of Resurrection: Ertugrul, in which the big bad is the Mongols, and particularly Ogedei's general, Baiju Noyan.

Unlike in Jack Weatherford's histories of the Mongols, they are really eviLe here (though Weatherford pulls no punches when it comes to Genghis's sons, whom he holds responsible for what the Mongols came known for). They are worse by far than the first season's Crusaders. Even the nomad tent and their warriors (alps) say this is so.  Certainly more prone to random acts of cruelty and torture for the sake of it, and bloody on a grand scale. This season is more graphically violent and grisly than the second one, which is only one large difference between the series' season 1 and season 2.

Initially, with the first episodes, I thought the second season was going to retell the first one, merely shifting roles around as to antagonists and protagonists and maybe even recreating the same characters but with different names and tribal membership.

But once I'd gotten a few episodes in, it was clear this season was very different.  The poetry and passion of romance have almost disappeared.  Halime Hatun, Ertugrul's love, to whom he now is married, is pregnant -- the longest pregnancy ever -- but she hardly ever appears except for him to order her "to be patient and wait." (I fear tremendously the Big Bad is going to kidnap her.) Mother Hayme seems to have lost her great wisdom just when she needed it most -- but plausibly so.

This season is far less concentrated on God's will, and the gorgeous mysticism and maybe, even the magic, of Islam.  (However, we have a hermit who appears whenever Ertugrul is in the direst of straits, feeds him, hides him his cave, reunites him with his loyal alps -- some are traitors). Other annoyances of the first season, such as the predictable episode arc of at least one exceedingly lengthy battle scene, and the truly annoying predictable slo-mo, stop action, of horses galloping, have been dropped. Each episode moves faster than in the first season, and seem shorter though they are the same length.

Season 2's Ertugrul (called "Brave Man") is focused in utter desperation on keeping the promised arrival of the Golden Horde from overrunning all of Anatolia -- and perhaps, though much of this is vague, particularly in terms of the years involved, the Persian Seljuk Anatolian Sultanate of Rûm (Rome, i.e Byzantium, though that word wasn't used until the 16th century, while Istanbul didn't come into use until 1923), which borders the lands of Byzantium.

Along with this comes something I really like, the often overlooked aspect of the Mongolian generals' front line operations in the lands they are targeting for conquest. It didn't happen in one sudden, massive invasion.

Cohorts were sent ahead long before the arrival of the Golden or the Blue Hordes -- sometimes years. Not only did they perform terrorist lightning strikes along the borders and penetrate deeply into the targeted territory. They spent years subverting tribal influencers with bribery, kidnapping of family members controlling and using them behind the scenes. 

Yet another aspect was to disrupt the local economies of trade,  herding and manufacture (this is in the charge of women) as much as possible. As Baiju Noyan says, "The only thing I love more than fighting is winning a battle without having to fight it." 

However, the Turkmen Seljuks employed the same tactics themselves when moving out of Central Asia into Asia Minor, with the same devastating effects upon the population and trade as the Mongols accomplished. 

Battle of Köse Dağ; Mongols won, Seljuks lost.

From this I'm picking up that even today the Turks harbor no forgiveness for the Mongols, recalling with hatred their subjection of over a century, which happened after getting clobbered at the battle of Köse Dağ (1243) -- won, not coincidentally one might think, by -- Baiju Noyan.

Seemingly (I don't know -- my ignorance is abysmal) this subjection of the 300 year Seljuk Empire in Anatolia by the Mongols until their own empire fell apart is the reason there aren't histories of the Anatolian Seljuks per se as there are of other Seljuk spheres as in Persia, or the Arab eras, etc.

Additionally, Anatolia was where the Byzantines Greeks and the Ilkhanate Empire (the Mongolian dynasty that took over from Seljuk Rûm) clashed the most, constantly ceding and conquering and reconquering, despite their many alliances. So the region was in state of flux and disruption at the best of times for all these years. 

"The Mongols and the "Franks" [including the Venetians] made many alliances against the Egyptian Mamluks, the wall against which Mongols and Europeans always broke. Also Frankish-Mongol alliances weren't very effective to start with. The Mongols, i.e. the Ilkhanate Empire [see above] were allied with Byzantium -- though that also broke down constantly as well. Despite many attempts, neither Hulagu [brother of Kublai; ruler of the Ilkhanate Empire, including most if not all of Anatolia] nor his successors were able to form an alliance with Europe, although Mongol culture in the West was in vogue in the 13th century. Many new-born children in Italy were named after Mongol rulers, including Hulagu: names such as Can Grande ("Great Khan"), Alaone (Hulagu), Argone (Arghun), and Cassano (Ghazan) are recorded.[27]"

Which reminds me of how often I see the name 'Attila' in the credit rolls of Italian television series -- another legendary hero's name (depending on one's perspective) that never lost in Italy associations of overwhelming power.

OTOH, this perhaps provided the liminal space where flourished the legendary aspects of the Oghuz and Osmans, from of whom rose the origin stories of the Ottomans, and the legendary warriors such as Ertugrul of the Kayi tribe. This season his trajectory has Ertugrul resembling both Christ and King Arthur, i.e. sharing aspects, as mythical figures invariably do.

This is the era when the Mongol conquers in Asia Minor converted to Islam, while also importing vast numbers of Chinese scholars and administrators from the Yuan dynasty back in Eastern Asia. 

What these alliances did do (as with Venice) was facilitate trade routes and exchange between east and west across Asia Minor to China and back -- and across Africa too. 

A reading done by Ifá; versus the Dilogun, produces 256 possible combinations of symbols which define specific combinations of Odu. The Odu are indicted by throwing cowrie shells in the sand tray.

The I Ching advisories are found via throwing coins.

This is probably when Ifá probably came to the burgeoning West African kingdom of Oyo, home of the Yoruba. El V has always believed that the Ifá readings of shells and trays and signature advice was based on the I Ching. By the 13th and 14th century the Yoruba had firmly embedded Muslim counselors from "the North," i.e. Islamic Africa 

El V studied the I Ching when he was taking Chinese classes, and of course he's studied Ifá -- which, it seems not too many, or anybody else, has done both. And now he's got me to bring him the historical trajectory of trade and conquest that made this cultural interpenetration possible. (The Yoruba have always been brilliant at taking something from another culture and transforming it to fit their own expression -- they still do it, as we see in Cuba all the time. Or here, for that matter -- Africans and African Americans are just brilliant at expression, form and style.) 

History is so exciting! I think telling el Vaquero this stuff made him fall in love with all over again.  

Ha! And to think this all is because I watch a Turkish telenovella. At one point a primary character is wearing a robe that I swore had Chinese designs on it. So I went looking at more history again. And by golly, that's yet another historic detail the series has right. It's always all about trade.

We've only resumed treading aloud, now that el V's back from Cuba, Barry Cunliffe's By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia.  The maps are brilliant. It's extra exciting when we hit sections that deal with the same peoples I've beeen watching on Qin Empire: Alliance, and Resurrection: Ertugrul, as well as in Jack Weatherford's books on the history of the Mongols.

I've been thinking about the steppes, nomads, Mongolians, China, Islam, and trade for several years now.  But it's so complicated, and I have no grounding in the geography, so it's  hard to grasp this. 

Once again, I understand how impossible it is to deal with history without geography and vice versa.  Ertugrul sends me back to both after every episode I watch, and I think I'm all the more improved because of it.

It's worse than sad though, that we, as USians and Europeans do NOT know this geography and history -- history of actual, long-standing empires that we've never even heard of.  If we did have more than a passing acquaintance, at best, with these matters, maybe the world wouldn't in quite the state it is currently.

Eurasia, Winter, the Ottomans: History and Archeology, Television and Books

     . . . . El V's enthralled with Barry W. Cunliffe's Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia (2015). 

It's lavishly illustrated with the most helpful maps possible, many photographs and other illustration, index, etc.  It's not quite a coffee table book, but its glossy paper, luxurious spacing and layout and dimensions does quite resemble more a deluxe museum catalog of a distinguished exhibit than a non-fiction hardcover.

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe CBE FBA FSA

A Humanities Network review that hits the book's talking points can be read here.  

It goes well with the two books I read this year by Jack Weatherford -- The Secret History of the Mongol Queens (2010) and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004). 

     . . . . It goes well too with the Turkish period series I began early this year and still haven't finished watching. One cannot and should not binge anything this long. I'm finally to episode 66, and it's still season 1 of Resurrection: Ertugrul (2014 --76 episodes in all).  The time period is the 13th century and the pressures from the Mongols are pressing hard on all nomadic peoples and everyone else, north, south, east and west, including Seljuk Turks (Salah ad-Din's people, falling into eclipse at this point), Arabs, Roman Christians, and Byzantine Christians -- none of which like each other and are in serious conflict.  The only uniting pressure for many of them is Islam.

Ertugrul is the legendary warrior who supposedly united and founded the peoples who became known as the Ottoman Turks, by re-uniting the Seljuk and the Oghuz Turks, was father of the equally legendary forefather of  Suleiman the Magnificent, whose grandfather, Mehmed the Conqueror, took out, finally, after many failed Ottoman attempts, Constantinople, in 1453.  Thus the Turkish television series' title, presumably -- resurrection of the Turks via union, which held back the Mongols, and defeated the European Christians, and the Greek Christians, to become the great Ottoman Empire which ruled the region for at least 500 years.

Season 2 of Ertugrul is also available on netflix (so far, I believe there are 3 seasons), again of 76 episodes.  So I could keep watching this for another year -- and probably will.  Among its many charms is seeing the western perceived exoticism of this eastern world through its own eyes.  It's great fun too, to see these palaces as filled with secret passages and vicious political assassinations as the romances.  It's stuffed with romance of story and character as well as the romance of its poetry, which runs through the cultures of all the peoples in this series -- and which illustrates from another angle than my grad courses in medieval and comparative literture courses how much Courtly Love and the Romances of the medieval world acquired from interaction with the Arabic cultures, particularly from Moorish Spain. The Pyrenees between Aquitaine and Al-andalus. 

Also, the horses are magnificent. (Cunliffe's book focuses a great deal on horses, of course!) How could I resist Ertugul, who confides at length to his lovely horse, all the doubts, fears and yearnings which he cannot express even to his loyal beyond death warriors?

El V says, "We're getting our winter on. Last winter: the Merovingians.  This winter: the steppes."

Ya, I say, "As winter disappears with the melting of the ice caps in Antarctica and the Arctic and the end of the glaciers. Winter, the primary fact of life since the beginning of life, of so many, including my own entire life until leaving the northern midwest, is rapidly becoming an exotic fantasy."

At least we still have books . . . .

Checking In From the Blue Ridge Mountains -- Staunton, VA

Stopped off here to see an old friend* (from Lincoln Ctr.'s sponsorship of Rhys Chattham's hundreds guitars piece, for which El V was one of the diredtors), and visit the Woodrow Wilson Pres. Library.

Wilson is the POTUS who officially instituted federal apartheid for any federal work was born here, though early  his life his Slavery rahrahah Secession minister father moved them to Georgia . . . .

So many places and people, so much history, in so few days.

In the meantime, there's this from Publisher's Publicist:

The American Slave Coast (9781613748206) was referenced and quoted from in an article by Malcolm Harris posted to The New Republic on 4/27/16.

------------------

*  This friend, met while he volunteered and spent some weeks in NYC to rehearse the piece (in el Vs section) also creates the acoustic spectrum tracking hardware and software of planets and stars for the great astronomical telescopes such as Hubble. He love music and particularly guitars.  He also repaired el V's dead vacuum tubes for his classic Fender amp.

Yesterday and Today Beauty's Name is Pennsylvania

It was an autumnal trees, mountain and water spectacular panorama yesterday, driving from Manhattan to State College -- Penn State University.

Delaware Water Gap by George Innes 1861; oil on canvas

Delaware Water Gap. Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Susquannah River

The Susquehanna River. Pocono Mountain. Appalachians. Hills, mountains, mountain ridges rounded, not jagged, cragged or pointy. Covered in trees exploding with autumn. Valleys of corn farms, horses and cattle, snugging in for the coming winter.

Smooth and easy, low traffic. We stopped at a scenic overlook to share a sandwich and a rice pudding. Urinated behind a huge tree, upon the most ruby and gold glowing surface ever of fallen leaves. It was like driving through Rivendale, gold, orange, ruby leaves falling like snow upon road-killed deer, highways and rivers alike.

Received with such hospitality and authentic welcome. Should have been in bed by 11 PM but the conversation was too brilliant for any of us to leave.

Not to mention the food. This is the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, and the shell fish are divine.

Breakfasted, washed, dressed, out soon for an informal visit to CM's class, a visit to the library the archives of which contain artifacts as well as papers, that include many from the the state's slave trading days.  Then it's our official gig.

Tonight is going to be a dinner party, food provided by a member from "northern Alabama who is a fabulous cook."

No wonder the descendants of William Penn are still agitating to get the family's colonial proprietorship status re-instated . . . . What a fascinating state, as well as filled with great eating and beautiful scenery and splendid architecture. I wish I could spend some extended time here. I feel that way about everywhere up and down this Atlantic Coast and east of the Mississippi.

Among the things I love about these locations is that all four seasons manifest themselves completely through the cycle, and include every traditional poet nuance that human beings have come to associate with the four seasons of the northern hemisphere. One looks at these mountains in autumn and it takes no squinting at all to see them in winter, spring and summer. Of course, the winters here are harsh, as harsh as midwestern ones.

What a beautiful nation we have. Even England and the UK have nothing on us in either fat farmland buccalia or enthralling place names.

Why are we destroying it as fast as possible?

Happy New Year -- May 2015 Be Healthy, Prosperous and Satisfying

A fine start to 2015:

on British telly season 3 of Last Tango In Halifax begins Sunday. It shall surely arrive here on PBS sometime soon after.

As the temps are supposed to stay around freezing here for a few days at least, and the weather's supposed to turn nasty after New Year's, about noon I took out the cart for a grocery shopping marathon that started at Gourmet Garage, truundled east to Whole Foods, went across Houston and turned back west to Morton Williams, then beyond to Raffettos Est. 1906!, the Porto [sic] Rico for the Finest Coffee and Teas Since 1907 [their coffee and tea may be best, but their spelling isn't ...],

then back east again to SoHo Wines & Spirits. The cart was entirely filled by the time I buzzed for el V to come down and help me hump the stuffs up to the shelves and fridge.

Lots of salad materials, as the lettuces, kale, etc. actually looked good today. Alas for fresh produce though -- the vegetables that were good, like the sweet peppers and eggplant -- the eggplant! it was beautiful! -- are on el V's restricted list of foods. Butternut squash, I got -- to make into a soup or just bake, don't know. There were no brussels sprouts. The cauliflower was $6.99 a head, so no. Got some broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, pears and apples, and organic dried apricots. Lots of cheeses and olives stored yet in the fridge, so need for those.

No champagne for fizzy stuff is terrible for el V's condition, so some bottles of Frascati, that light, fresh tasting wine from the Latium / Lazio region in which is located Rome, on the western side of Italy, that's not as high in alcohol content as generally They are making wines (and beers ) have now.

This is the year and logo of the bottles I got.

Frascati was fashionable in the era of the jet set,* before most USians outside of NYC or San Francisco were drinking wine much, or at all.  I first heard of it from reading Erica Jong and Vanity Fair magazine in college -- when I drank tequila or beer, but mostly I, ah, just, ah, smoked . . . .  and has not been heard of since, at least around here.

But this fall the Soho Wine guys (Italians all) ended up with a few cases as part of some larger purchase from one of their Italian wine distributors, who is pushing Frascati as part of a deal with its vintners.

The day I saw the Frascati on the shelves of the Italian wines section, I grabbed one, to try it, and as a tribute of sorts to Erica Jong and her fearless, adventurous explorations of everything that promised pleasure, interest and inspiration.

Opened once it was chilled, while starting a pasta dinner, it was equally wonderful to drink after the meal was finished as it was to drink with the food. Best of all, it turns out that, consumed cautiously, el V's GERD can tolerate drinking 2 - 3 glasses without ill effect.

It's also very inexpensive -- $7.99 a bottle, plus the hefty state liquor tax. Of course, these days, quite a few Italian products have gotten a lot less expensive here, as Italy's economy is still in the sewer and showing no signs of climbing out.

So far, the Wine guys say, I'm the only one who has been buying the Frascati, so it's certainly not fashionable. Which is terrific for me, except if I'm the only one buying it, then the Wine guys won't be ordering it. But if if this wine does get fashionable again, it would be too expensive for my budget.

Just noticing, now, how I went off at the keyboard, I realize that one of the dimensions of my ongoing wine delight is that wines are tightly twined with history, history of place, history of trade -- and geography.

P.S. So many books have entered our apartment since the week before Christmas and two more arrived yet today! BooksBooksBooks! As our reading has been so project-focused latterly, which meant perusing documents as opposed to reading, while many great books in history were published this year, our friends evidently wanted to make sure we didn't miss them.   Many, many thanks!

P.P.S.  One more day to go and I can declare I wasn't sick a single day of the holiday season.  :)

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*   If I'm recalling correctly -- it's been at least 10 years since I watched La Dolce Vita -- Frascati wine bottles are seen in that film from 1960?

38 Maps That Explain the Global Economy

by Matthew Yglesias on August 26, 2014:

Commerce knits the modern world together in a way that nothing else quite does. Almost anything you own these days is the result of a complicated web of global interactions. And there's no better way to depict those interactions and the social and political circumstances that give rise to them than with a map or two. Or in our case, 38. These maps are our favorite way to illustrate the major economic themes facing the world today. Some of them focus on the big picture while others illustrate finer details. The overall portrait that emerges is of a world that's more closely linked than ever before, but still riven by enormous geography-driven differences.

 One map example, but at the link, the maps are much larger, and easy to read:

The Wettest Place On Earth

The wettest place on earth is Meghalaya, in India, north of Bangladesh.  It is so wet that human-made bridges rot away so quickly as to be impractical.  For centuries the people of this region have been training the roots of rubber trees and bamboo shoots to grow into bridges.  The Atlantic Monthly has a splendid photo feature of the place and the bridges, here.

In a scene played out every weekday morning, students of the RCLP School in Nongsohphan Village, Meghalaya, India, cross a bridge grown from the roots of a rubber tree. In the relentless damp of Meghalaya's jungles, wooden structures rot away too quickly to be practical. For centuries the Khasi people have instead used the trainable roots of rubber trees to "grow" bridges over the region's rivers. (© Amos Chapple)

It is beyond comprehension the frequently expressed conviction that people without engineering degrees and traditional western education can't be technologically brilliant-- and, further, that biology isn't "real science."  Like any science, it can be technologically inventive, creative, and also beautiful, uniting perfectly form and function.

As well as the bridges, the jungles beneath Mawsynram hide "living ladders" curled into shape to assist villagers descending the steep flanks of the Khasi hills. (© Amos Chapple)

We Went to Georgia -- Tbilisi, That Is + Another Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story

After attending Another Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story again,* with our London amigo and his Brooklyn Girlfriend, we got in a cab and London Host directed the driver to his undisclosed destination.  He said, "We're going to a new restaurant in your neighborhood which I guarantee you've never been to, and haven't heard about."

He spoke truth.  Tbilisi, named by the immigrants for the capital of their natal land, it had just opened.

The next best thing for getting an authentic sense of a place one knows nothing about, after going there oneself, is to have a good friend, who has excellent powers of observation and a good memory, who is bold and adventurous culturally and linguistically, who also has native guides, to tell you about their journey and experiences.  London Host and Girlfriend are all of these.  As well, since he's a music professional, like all musicians, he slides effortlessly into local non-tourist experience.  Music and food are two of the very best ways to get to know a strange place.  They are also the fastest ways -- particularly as they are part of the language of the place.

London Host and Girlfriend had spent some splendid days in Georgia as he conducted a Masterclass in London's Underground Music of the 60's at the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival, Georgia.  He's also doing a massive study of the conceptual underpinning of "world music" thus he has been visiting points east of Europe frequently lately.  That's the story of how we got to this restaurant.

Meat-centric, the menu didn't have the appeal for me that other sorts of nationality cuisines might, nevertheless it mattered not, as it was the company.  The wines are what are interesting, as this region, on the Black Sea, sharing borders with Turkey, has been producing wines since ancient times, while also since ancient times, been on the trading routes among Europe, the Middle East and Asia -- and even Africa, re Egypt. London Host and Girlfriend were excellent guides to the wine menu.

We got home around 1:00 AM.  Lo and Behold, the modem lights were all on.

I'd just about adjusted to being internetless and thinking it was OK -- except I was worried about winter and how cold the walk would be to the library, and would I slip and fall on ice, while carrying my computer?

Nine days.  Will we ever learn the truth of what happened?  After I called TW once again late yesterday afternoon, after several runarounds, which meant starting all over again each time, I got connected to a real person who told me the problem was -- get this -- a scheduled outage, in order to upgrade the cables and wires throughout our neighborhood.  The work for this project was scheduled to be completed by 7 PM last night and our services would all be resumed.  She would call me around PM, when that happened, if I liked.  But I was going to be in the theater, so my phone would be off.

If -- big if -- that was true, why weren't we informed this was going to take place, so we could have made plans and not pulled out our hair and wasted endless minutes of our cell phone service on phoning TW over these last 9 days?

Is the answer because as customers we must, in person, to a real person, demand we not be charged for the days without service?

But -- is what I was told even true?

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* It was so much fun to see this show this time in London Host's company, because he too knows why Jerry Wexler is the satan of this tale.  If you know anything at all about American pop music in the 20th century, you know the moment Jerry Wexler appears in the life of an artist or a label, it's the trump of doom for the artist and the label.  What a thug.

This time around JS informed BS's kids, who are instrumental in this jukebox musical getting produced, and are now attempting to raise money to take it to Broadway, that we'd be there.  So we learned when they called out el V by name, and wanted to talk about the show and music with him and with London Host as well.  They are so stoked about this show.  Very nice people.

Their mother, Ilene Berns, hasn't seen it yet.  Bette Midler told them the other night when she attended that their mother is going to shoot them ....  I hope not. The amount of ovarian power in music on that stage, particularly in the second half,

in which the singer-actress, Linda Hart, playing Mrs. Berns, does her let-it-rip blues, "Liar," ought to make her feel redeemed.

Cuidad Juárez - Sunday, July 13

A dear Albuquerque friend drove in to see Las Vidas Perfectas this evening at the Museo de la Revolutión en la Frontera in Juárez.  He and his girlfriend

stayed overnight in the Camino Real. So I got to drive over the bridge to Mexico with L.  -- and did not have to hang out all day while tech went on.  The LVP people took off for Juárez early in the AM.  My back couldn't have taken that kind of all day hang, even with breaks for the mercados. On the other hand, I'm not able to buy anything because getting it home -- American Airlines! and I am also getting cowboy boots this week and they sure do eat space and poundage -- and that would be frustrating. I do love exploring markets like this, whether or not I buy anything. There is always jewelry ....

Going across the border to Juárez was quick and easy.  Coming back was something else.  You can feel the vibration change in the middle of the bridge approaching the admittance gates to the U.S.  For one thing, at some point a U.S. border cop, on foot, appears, nonchalantly strolling across the lanes, for no particular reason at all. The peddlers attempting to sell mops, kitty art, bottles of water, popcorn etc., the people determined to wash your windshield, have gone poof into thin air. Traffic crawls to a halt.  It can easily take 5 more hours now to cross those -- what? 1500 feet to the gates.  We were lucky.  It took us about 35 minutes, but very stressful minutes.  Imagine the New Jersey Turnpike and the turn offs to the Holland Tunnel, but with armed military everywhere you look.  One strolls over and peers for a long time into the backseat where H and I are sitting.  We don't bother to interrupt our conversation to look back at him.

Yet it is a very distressing, particularly for H, who was born in Hidalgo Mexico, but has been a U.S. citizen for years and years, and lives in Albuquerque. One gets a much deeper sense of how truly awful all this is when traveling with U.S. citizen who is of Mexican descent.*

We have our "documents" at the ready as ordered. The guard who takes our passports asks "What were you doing in Mexico?" The implication is only creeps, criminals and other undesirables bother with Mexico. He  doesn't  attempt even the rudiments of politeness.  L is pumping George Jones on his car speakers. El V and L had been singing along.  As el V's the one at the window on the guard's side, he answers, "Attending the opera.  At the museum." The guard snickers, "Was it any good?" El V smarts back, "It was very good.  I was the star."  L groans.  The guard laughs, takes away our passports to run them through the scanners and databases. He quickly returns them.  Now we're allowed to return to the U.S. It takes three minutes to get back to the hotel and have dinner.  Except for el V, none of us have eaten since breakfast and now it's nearly 10 PM.

I did get to spend time in the Museum of the Revolution on the Border itself. Juárez had a huge role in the Mexican Revolution (the Revolution's armed conflict began in 1910 and lasted roughly through 1920).  Morever, like so many museums everywhere, part of the institution is located in the old Mexican Customs House (see: el paso del norte -- trade route!). As much a role as they play in history, I've come to collect visits to customs houses like I've been doing visits to castles.

Among the many interesting things observed about the audience in Juárez is -- it was entirely "Mexican," with the exception of the couple from Ft Worth - Dallas, who scheduled their vacation in order to attend every performance of Las Vidas (they are coming to the Marfa performances as well). However, the earnest, attentive, pretty and very young Japanese women, ubiquitous at anything like this anywhere I've been, in Europe, the U.S. and the Caribbean, particularly Cuba -- they were conspicuous by their absence today. There were three present at Saturday night's El Paso gig, but none at all at el Museo de la Revolutión.

52 women were killed here back in October, 2013, when a bomb was thrown into their place of work.

An image for Majorie Agosin’s book of poetry, “Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez.”

The buildings all around us in Juárez were so interesting, so attractive, despite many of them being so run down.  Street signs are not generally in evidence though.  All this the consequences of so many tens of thousands killed there in the drug gang wars, the exploitation of the maquilidoras and the violence there, particularly against women.

I would liked to have explored more, but L, who has spent quite a bit of time in Juárez due to his activist work, says it's really too dangerous.  If L thinks it's too dangerous, then it is.  L goes everywhere, anywhere.

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*The Mexican born member of the Las Vidas Company had a nasty return as well.  He walked back with several of the other performers because it is so much quicker than driving.  You still have to show your passports and prove you are who you are.  The border patrol guard who took R's passport snickered about his hair -- it's very long, very beautiful and he had braided it into one his lovely signature braid designs.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you creeps.

El Paso 3 - Saturday

It wasn't predicted at 8 AM when I looked at the forecast.  Nevertheless, I am having a fine view of a spectacular thunderstorm rolling in fast over the mountains now at 3 PM MST.  Thunder cracking, and lightning, lightning whips reflected in the windows of the hotel's wings on either side of our room.

And now it's over. So fast, it's as if the storm never happened.  The pavement didn't even look wet.  As hot as the pavement is, the rain must have turned to evaporation upon impact.  The temperature was 96º, with a 'real feel' of 101º when the front rolled over us.  The southwest!

Among the events hosted by the hotel today is a bachlorette party. Evidently Mexican culture does these parties very differently than we see in the movies? Because there wasn't a cocktail in sight -- but the desserts were so luscious one gained ten pounds simply by looking at them.

The bride must have hundreds of female friends and relatives, as the dining room was entirely given over to the party and every chair was occupied.  The guests celebrating the bride were of all ages, from very elderly women to tiny girls in the cutest clothes and hairstyles, who behaved even more cutely (can one use that usage?

 Those little girls -- there were some who were maybe three years older than the littlest ones, and like -- I assume cousins everywhere, the older girls are adored by the younger ones, who follow them everywhere, and hug them every chance they get.  The older girls are careful and tender with the littler ones. Latin culture does inculcate that sort of attitude of children to each other.

Turned on the tv for the first time, to see what is up in that.  It maybe because this is a hotel, but the screen resolution was poor, particularly as used to high def and so on as I am from watching solely online. Commercial breaks as ubiquitous as ever.  But imagine the shock when thinking I'm settling in on a PBS overview of the Presidents of the U.S., from Washington to Lincoln.  Narrated by Newt Gingrich, co-written with his wife Calista, Rediscovering Religion in America (2007) proved how fundamentally religious each of the presidents was, and how they believed religion was more important than government to government. Religion here means protestant christianity only, and specifically evangelical protestant christianity.  The program was interrupted with endless, lengthy commercial breaks to sell many kinds of insurance from many insurers to senior citizens.  This is not a PBS as I have ever seen it.  This must be PBS in Texas ....

Gotta say: the women of El Paso are poised and stylish, with that extra elegance and bounce that is part of a latina woman's culture, from whichever hispanic background she hails.  A woman seated at my table at the theater tonight, now retired, used to own her own clothing design business.  She told me that fashion was really big business in El Paso, meaning designers as well as fabricators and manufacturers, though in the last ten years it went pfffffftttt, which is why she's now retired.  But the influence of it once being a big part of the city's economy and cultural life is still evident whenever you see a young or youngish woman, or a little girl.

However, there is still El Paso Fashion Week. I've met many women who worked in fashion in NYC, or whose daughters are now working in fashion in NYC, or who are going to NYC this fall, to study fashion or design at Pratt, FIT, NYU, and so on.

Most of the oxygen today was taken up by preparations for tonight's performance. Which paid off.  It was revelatory.  Las Vidas Perfectas continues to evolve, and shall for as long as it is performed.  The amount of talent assembled on that stage was breathtaking.  The amount of work, perseverance, faith and skill -- as well as the creative and artistic talent -- by so many individuals, to make this so successful can't be measured.

Super Moon, El Paso, Saturday, July 12, 2014

The first performance was a spectacular one, though the performers are all complaining about what was poor, what went wrong, how they effed up, etc. Artists are never satisfied with themselves.  It was spectacularly received too, and I know so, because I heard what audience members said.  For example: a young man, dressed in universal young hipster style, after the first section's applause died down, sighed to his companions, "O, I feel I've gone to New York.  It must be like this all the time there!"  (Ha!  It sure as heck is not, at least not anymore. But I remember what it is was like when I lived in Albuquerque, and artists from Europe or the coasts came in.)

In other words, it was an event worthy of an El Paso super moon!

Tomorrow night, Sunday, with the performance in Mexico, in the Museo de la Revolutión, will surely be even more so, as Ciudad Juárez is entirely Spanish-speaking.  As well, in the latino world, the arts and intellectual pursuits are far more respected than in the U.S.  Artists and intellectuals are part of the political discourse -- the entire spectrum is far more lively than anything you find in the U.S.  Print magazines remain important and vital in the nations south of us, whereas here, it's all gone online, whatever is left, and it's all about entertainment. If something takes longer than 164 characters to look at, make fun of it and dismiss it.  Unless it's filled with non-stop mindless violent action.  Then we can stare at it for days at a time, and so we do, getting to ever higher levels of The Game, whatever The Game may be.

However, in so many parts of some of these countries, violence is a way of life and politics that artists, intellectuals and the people themselves are desperate to change, particularly since so many of them are specific targets of the violence.  It's not a Game.

El Paso 2 - Friday

Needing a break from the room, and el V's constant Las Vidas' practice, we went walking in what had been El Paso's city center, back when el V was a tad and his father was teaching biology at what then was Texas Western College, now, folded into the UT system, is the UTEP -- University of Texas at El Paso.  El V, back then, knew and loved this downtown - central business district of El Paso, filled with record stores and movie theaters as it was,

This is the El Paso Main Public Library when el V was a little kid.

The El Paso History Museum is in the foreground; the Main Public Library is in the background.

The museum's ground installations are a fringe benefit for the library.

and the public library.

Like so many cities, El Paso destroyed its downtown by tearing down much of the historic, attractive part, driving away the thriving smaller businesses, in order to build a sterile convention center, sports stadium, etc. The city also employed the Great Terminator upon the very neighborhoods and communites, that give a city a soul, the soul that make cities attractive and liveable:  El Paso drove a damned interstate through the rooted neighborhoods and mercantile centers, killing them dead under concrete, killing the soul.

So, with its downtown  deader 'n a doornail, like so many other cities, El Paso's revitalization wish fullfillment is to upscale the attraction of what remains in the old city downtown center, renting the spaces out to young(ish) entrepreneurs in the, usually vain, expectation these expensive camera cuisine restaurants, and the high fat food plus expensive imported beer sports bars will attract local business and tourism. Throw in the inevitable crafts mall, art galleries, a farmer's market once a week for part of the year, and First Friday Nights special offers, etc. How many small cities and towns have we seen doing this since the 1980's?

The real kicker is how the wealthy corps and politicians count on artists to fix the urban blight that they created themselves, and, then, if by chance the plan actually works -- as in NYC -- grab the real estate back and dump the creatives into the street -- but not these streets. The creatives fixed 'em so they're no longer welcome. Then begins the sterilization process all over again as the prices rise higher and higher and higher, with nothing inhabiting the real estate again except that from which anybody looking for any real fun and surprise will run from at 100 MPH.

There is construction everywhere, just like in every city that anyone wants to live in everywhere in the world, covering ever more open space under asphalt and cement, pretending to be public gardens and recreational territory.

Hotels abound throughout this area, as there are regional headquarters for every national / international bank, mortgage company, real estate moghul, and every kind financial and insurance corporation here -- not to mention those of such light "industry" as textiles and light furnishing finishing, that employ international cheap labor and ship internationally. The busy execs flying in and out, making deals, arming drug dealers, smashing progressive governments and labor movements need places to stay.

But where do they eat?  Probably in the strip clubs, which are further away? they aren't in these restaurants.

Then there is the tourism.  Where do they eat? Well, tourist college kids, think going to Juárez will give them better deals on getting so drunk they must crawl and more exotic and cheaper sex workers.  So there isn't enough enough clientele to make these places profitable 7 nights a week.  Partly, too, it's because they don't really want Spanish speaking clientele.

(It's más pleasant that our hotel's staff is bi-lingual, and so are the guests.  The staff were puzzled by el V and EVF's Spanish though -- they had to tell them it was Cuban.  Then there's E's Spanish-Spanish, pure Castillian -- she's from Madrid.)

What is great here though is the El Paso Historical Museum -- there is a lot of history -- the El Paso Art Museum -- and the El Paso Public Library.  The library is still where it was when el V was a little kid, though the building is not the same. It's open 7 days a week!  You see all kinds of people in it.  It reminds me of Greenville, Mississippi's public library. What else does this library do beyond all the things public libraries are providing these days, including wi-fi connection, computers and a/c?  It is showing the World Cup games for all those who can't watch at home, can't afford to be or don't want to be in a sports bar.  Is that public service or what?

The Kress Building has survived, but everything around it has been torn down, so it sits within a construction site; the streets around it are closed.  This historic post card doesn't show what a glorious jewel of a building it is.

It's nearly impossible to photograph the Kress Building now.

There are some buildings that didn't get torn down during their urban renewal, and I love those. So many Spanish-Moorish styled buildings, that are beautiful.  So we were out photographing madly early this AM while the sun was in the right place to have shadows and not glare.

It's such a pleasure to have all these recognizable bits come together that have not changed about being in the southwest: the clatter of cicadas, big sky, the dry heat, hearing "Mexican" Spanish, local tribes people, the Moorish-Spanish influenced design of buildings, fountains, patios, plazas and courtyards, the food (which though el V can't eat it, isn't stopping me from eating Mexican dishes every chance I get -- the hotel has some of the best red and green chili sauces for breakfast ever) -- and, this is SO TEXAN! Shiner Bock, my beer of choice for this trip.

Or so it felt as the sun rolled down, while the super moon rolled up,  turned yellow, big as a super-large cotton ball, over the mountains, then turned red in the smog for awhile.

El V had hired a car to drive us along the scenic route, as well as look for spots from his childhood days here. The driver was a self-educated tour guide, from India, who has lived in El Paso for 30 years. He was filled with information about everything to do with El Paso and Juárez, and enjoyed sharing.  He seized the opportunity to fact-check various things from the 1960's downtown and campus against el V's memories of the time.

These days though, West Texas is about to go into recycling toilet water, so depleted is the water table from irrigation, and how arid it is, now that the grasslands have been taken out for over a century.  Recycled toilet water won't preserve this profligate water way of life in a region that has always been arid.

Chihuahua grasslands now.

How all the Chihuahua grasslands used to be, only a century plus about twenty years ago.

It's painful to have those instinctive reactions to flying over the Franklin's flatlands, seeing it as ancient, primeval desert monster -- while the facts are that a century ago -- or perhaps a decade or so before that -- those flatlands, mesas and plateaus were grass tall as your knees and the clutching spread of claws on the twisted limbs sand channels were streams and rivers of flowing water. Cattle and cotton and oil .... (In the Sahara it was goats, among other things.)  How quickly we destroy the environment, yet insist we have no responsibility for that or any obligation to it.

This is what is keeping us from ever returning to the southwest -- water. The northeast we are water rich. Doubtless other regions will be going to war with us about this most precious resource of all, in the fairly close future.  Hey -- I've lived to see the return of the wars of religion -- it's not that unlikely I shall see water wars too. If I live, that is.

Dune feels more prescient all the time.