Mexico stories - Doors

People use a lot of colors on their houses...a relatively inexpensive way to brighten the uniform brown of the landscape.

Several of these doors are along the first street pictured; others are scattered along the alleys and passages of this hilly little town.

These doors are the separation between alley and home - there are no lawns, no courtyards, no stoops, no porches - they are as much part of the side of the alley as they are the side of the house.

I love the details (one door has the street number "5" in the door frame and "14" on the side of the house. Many have no doorknobs. So many different blues!)

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Mexico Stories - Church

Love this church...Guanajuato is built into a mountain valley...this church is on the opposite side the valley from everything else I had explored so far. It seems to be falling into a beautiful pile of shapes and colors.

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Sarah's Wedding

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Military not playing nice?

"Military Sex Assault Reports Up 40 Percent" [abcnews.com]

The obvious solution is to expand the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It should include "It's okay to be raped; just don't tell your commanding officer"...

Why can rapists be soldiers and homosexuals can't?

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Mexico stories - Whose language?

I sure do like bougainvilleas, those woody-vined, flowering plants that love warm, sandy locales. Just don´t ask me to pronounce them.

I'm trying to do well with my spanish here in Mexico; part of that is pronouncing double "l" as "y" (tortillas, quesadillas), so "bougainvillea" must be pronounced: boo-gan-vee-YA

Well, no.

I asked my amigo how to pronounce it. He said: boo-gam-vee-LEE-a

Spell that! "b-u-g-a-m-b-i-l-i-a"

So, I looked it up (big shocker). It turns out that a french explorer, Admiral Louis de Bougainvillea, "discovered" the plant in South America and named it after himself (another big shocker), so the latin genus is "Bougainvillea".

In Mexico, the french spelling isn´t pronounced in spanish...the spanish spelling was changed to match the french pronunciation.

So...how do you pronounce - in english - a South American plant whose latin name is a french word that has been translated phonetically back into spanish?

P-R-E-T-T-Y-F-L-O-W-E-R

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History repeats itself

"Ultimately, the President came to be identified personally with a war that seemed unwinnable. As a result, his popularity sagged drastically, dipping below 30 percent in approval ratings." [link]

"The latest CBS News poll finds [the] President´s ... approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the ... war has risen to a new high." [link]

One of these statements is about Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. The other is about George W.

What did American citizens think about Vietnam in 1968? What do we think about Iraq today?

What do Americans think about Lyndon Johnson today? What will we think of "W" in forty years?

Interesting questions, but totally irrelevant to the soldiers they both sent to war.

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Mexico Stories - Haiku

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Oscar

Who needs a red carpet?

Everyone seemed to have fun watching the Oscar ceremony...I enjoyed shoving my little "Oscar" into each person´s hands as they came in the door. I announced "You´ve just won" as I took their picture. I like the variety of reactions from each "winner"...

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