The french are at it again, protesting their own government´s policies. W must love it; as long as they are protesting Prime Minister Villepin, they can't protest him.
"The police eventually turned to tear gas and water cannons to clear the protesters away." [link]
Water cannons? I mean, of course water cannons. Riots = Water Cannons, but when you think about it, do we even *have* water cannons in the U.S.?
"Strikes and demonstrations are part of the fabric of French society."
Quod erat demonstrandum - Water cannons in Paris.
There was a demonstration the first week I arrived to live in Paris in 1995 (I love the french word for it; "manifestation"). It took me by complete surprise; the street was shoulder-to-shoulder, curb-to-curb. People were carrying signs, banners, skeletons on poles, megaphones, each other. I ask my ami what it was about, this huge demonstration.
"Ne sais pas". I dunno, he said, shrugging his shoulders, not really even giving it a second thought. "Labor or something?"
There was only one other demonstration that I knew about that summer; a protest against the French Government performing nuclear testing in the Pacific. The French Government setting off bombs.
It was in Place de Bastille and there were several thousand folks there, mostly young, milling about and looking for...I don't know what. A few people spoke, there was some drumming going on. People danced around and yelled stuff. Some folks were dressed in black hooded robes, dressed like death.
The organizers passed out sheets of little round stickers with nuclear triangles on them. They were to be affixed to french coins to raise awareness in the marketplace of this terrible act by the government. Every time I used them, the little shopkeeper would just peel them off and examine the coins suspiciously for counterfeit.
Maybe that was unusual, to have so few demonstrations that summer. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the more immediate fact that Algieran terrorists were setting off bombs of their own in trashcans all over Paris...making Moruroa in the pacific seem even further away.
French protests (and me)
You know you´ve been in Mexico too long when...
...you brush your teeth with bottled water back in the states, too
...you wake up to a cold shower and think "well, the gas is out, but at least we have water..."
...you come home to leaky plumbing and a puddle on the floor and think "well, at least we have water..."
...you start to like the taste of huitlacoche
...you look forward to soccer matches on T.V.
...and you know the teams in tonight's match ("TYT" stands for "Trinidad y Tobago")
...you think of "gringos" as other people from the states
...you laugh at "gringos" who go to the Gigante just to buy tequila
...in a restaurant, you ask for "Coca Light" and you don't bother saying "sin hielo"
...you describe everything that doesn't go your way as "pincha"
...you turn on your left blinker to indicate to the guy ahead that he should move to the right
...you never use your right blinker
...you hear the Christopher Cross song "ride like the wind"...and realize you've got such a long way to go to the border of Mexico...from the wrong side.
Ride like the wind to be free again.
And I got such a long way to go.
To make it to the border of Mexico.
So I'll ride like the wind.
Mexico Stories - Mercado
Every city has a central market...the one in Guanajuato is huge, crowded, noisy, and has everything for sale; from pirated DVDs of movies not yet in Gringolandia theaters to vats of pickled chicken feet and steamed chickpeas. Wires crisscross overhead, encased in decades of dust and spiderwebs.
Inside Mercado Hildago - Skylight...Hall...Endless stalls
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For Sale - Quail´s eggs, by the 1000's...guayaba...the ubiquitous hat
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...plus blankets, T-shirts, bracelets, pottery, crucifixes, sunglasses, jimcama, chicharron, baskets, copper pots, flowers, cowboy boots, empanadas, ostrich skin belts, octopus... ...the rest of the story...
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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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?
Mexico stories - Whose language?
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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 ...the rest of the story...
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.
Catalog - 2006
Cards - Spring 2006
Contest - Scrapbook 2006
Cards - Xmas 2006
Cards - Atlanta Signs 2006
Cards - Xmas 2005 A
Cards - Xmas 2005 B
