From Xico

A Small Moth and a Big Hospital

Jim the bug photo man says (and rightly so I am sure) that butterflies and moths often seem attracted to colors they can blend in with.  I think of flowers: deep orange butterflies on deep orange zinnias, for instance.  This butterfly (or moth) also blends nicely, but not with a plant.

I took the photo in what appeared to be the bug free environment of the Angeles Hospital and office complex next to Plaza de las Americas on southeast end of the main highway through Xalapa.  It is one of a chain of hospitals in fancy buildings, with fancy equipment and fancy doctors which exist in Mexico.  This one is maybe a year old.  Interestingly enough, it is accessible to people who are not loaded with money as long as they can pay some money.  We are taking the son of someone in our colonia here to see a psychiatrist because he developed rather severe symptoms of depression.  The psychiatrist knows all the health systems from those for the poor (Seguros Populares) on up and makes referals and recommendations accordingly.  But I think he is not so egalitarian...here it occurs to me that there is a lot of prejudice against poor people by not so poor people.  

This is not an unusual prejudice as Americans should know only too well, though here I don't think people blame the poor for their plight so much as assume there is some basic difference between classes.  At the moment (and seemingly irrelevantly) I am reading a new biography of Vincent Van Gogh in which the extreme prejudice on the part of the upper middle classes to which Van Gogh's family belonged against lower (and Catholic) classes is described in detail. People like Van Gogh's mother, and hence her children, feared literally contamination from the poor if they slipped in guarding their standards.  Here, while a doctor might explain problems with generics to someone like me, he might assume they are adequate for someone from a lower class who doesn't need so much money spent on his problems. He might assume a kind of "you and I know better" attitude.  I am making some enormous leaps of assumption here, so don't take what I say all that seriously.

Angeles Hospital is designed under the obvious influence of Mexican Modernism and architect Ricardo Legorreta, but it lacks the surprises and playfulness and aesthetic sense of a Legorreta building. Legorreta's buildings engage people's curiosity (or at least mine) and make them want to turn corners and look out windows.  This building is kind of ho-hum and sterile.  But better a Legorreta influence than a big-box influence: better some precariously perched spheres than just another long corridor.

This was taken in front of the elevators on the second floor.

The lobby has lots of comfortable chairs and is enlivened by a giant, smiling photo.

This strip of Xalapa is almost indistinguishable from such a strip in the US.  Sometimes I find myself automatically speaking English in the buildings around here.

 

 

 

Mujeres Creativas I

The Little Blue House

Our house on the main drag of Colonia Ursulo Galván is responding well to its rehabbing.  As you can see, it is now a bright blue house.  We had our first meeting as a group a week ago with the eight of us who are going to be the governing body.  It was not like a US meeting.  No body called the meeting to order, nobody had a printed agenda.  Neither proved necessary or even desirable.  My neighbor Ingrid who made the gorgeous rope of flowers in my house took minutes. 

The eight women sat in an informal circle.  A topic would bubble up, get discussed, and decided upon, then someone would bring up another topic and so on.  No one led the meeting, but somehow everything got discussed and decided upon!   The name of the group and the store is going to be Mujeres Creativas, that the eight women present would be the governing body, various issues pertaining to choosing and selling merchandise, that we would have a "pre-opening" to sell things for Dia de los Muertos that the women had made and would make, that the profits would be shared equally by all, that is that even if one person's stuff sold like hotcakes and another's didn't, we'd share the profits equally thinking of them as a payment for labor, both making the crafts and providing necessary work for the coop. There was no objection to this plan at all.  We also decided we would sell other people's stuff but take a heftier share of the profits from them.  AND that the outside of the store, the entrance, could  use some plants and we could also SELL some plants.

The voices swelled and faded, comments jumped around from person to person, and I realized I still had a long way to go in understanding Spanish.  Groups are HARD!  

 

 

 

How can you write a post without a main subject or unifying idea?

The only thing this post has to unify it is the fact that the pictures were all taken the same day at roughly the same time after Jim had picked me up from the singing group.

Bougainvillea and a yellow flower whose name I don't know tumble over the wall of a house.   

The flowers close up.

Below are views of a house in the fraccionamiento (subdivision) called Las Matas (I think) in Coatepec.  It looks as if it might have been designed by Ricardo Legorreta Vilchis who is famous for his use of geometric forms.  His distinctive buildings can be seen all over Mexico and in the southwestern United States and in Nicaragua and El Salvador and Qatar among other places.  The San Antonio, TX public library, also known as the Big Enchilada is his.

The front door:

Looking at the other side of the house from across the street. 

More bougainvillea, this time sculpted.

We went to the Coatepec market and bought maracuya (passion fruit) below.  In the photo, some of Jim's chiles surround it.

I made an agua from them.  I used a receta that suggested one maracuya for each glass of water, then blend.  That recipe was so sour that i had to unglue my cheeks from each other and put my eyes back in.  I diluted it down to one maracuya to about three glasses of water plus a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and then blend it, seeds and all.  after it sat for awhile, I strained it.  Quite good and very much resembling agua de guayaba in flavor.

The brilliant red peppers are habaneros from Jim's plants.  All the plants suffered from a plant- and leaf curling malady but still were hot and flavorful.

Resting on top of a turned-off burner on our stove is a hongo de chonote, or muchroom from the chonote tree, according to Guillermo.

  What you see is a single scalloped, wrinkly .mushroom, perhaps 8 inches by si7 inches.

I am not a mushroom connoisseur.  I  can't honestly tell you I know the difference in flavor from one muxhroom to another. I can tell you thatt his is a bit more dense in texture than a regular mushroom. And maybe because of that the flavor is a bit stronger than the button mushrooms of supermarket fame.

We stopped at Chedraui on the way home.  They already have their temporary tent-building set up in the  parking lot for Christmas.

 

 

 

Life in the Time of Tiny Frogs and Fruit Flies

A few evenings ago, I heard quiet crackly sounds like wires shorting.  Jim didn't hear them and he asked me where I thought they were coming from.  Last time I'd heard something sort of similar, it had been bugs bouncing off the bulbs so I peered at various bulbs. Not that.  Here, I said, no here, no here.  I couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from. I didn't smell anything burning so I gave up looking.  A bit later, Jim said, Frogs.  And of course he was right.  This is the time of year the tiny frogs appear.  Below you can see a couple of pictures of them that Jim took.

 

They are about an inch long from nose to hips and intensely green, something which doesn't show up in the photo.  I would love to have more information about these.

++++++++++++++++++++++

It is also the time of fruit flies.   Jim doesn't think he's ever taken any picture of a fruit fly so I've stolen this one from the web:

 Once in awhile, though, they become noteworthy.  The slightest bit of sugar or a cut in a piece of fruit on the counter or slit of an opening on the composting container in the kitchen brought swarms of them.  We wash the windows with vinegar and as I think I mentioned in an old post, and once I decided to wash the windows with vinegar in a time of fruit flies.  I discovered to my chagrin (as they say) that fruit flies love vinegar, too.

 

A Day (or two) in the life

The Festival of San Jeronimo  has come and gone in Coatepec. This year, Jim ran in Festival's 4k run.  I took lots of pictures but you won't get to see any because somehow I lost them all transferring them from camera to laptop (desafortunadamente).  It is a VERY informal run.  To say the least.  There was no really clear finish line for one thing.  And no official timer we could see.  There was prize money and everyone could see who came in first, second and third: the Kenyans again.  There seem to be a number of Kenyans here in Mexico who make their living at local runs.  Jim didn't come in last.  I didn't run at all.  The oldest known runner was an 82 year old man of great vigor who punched the air when he ran just like male tennis players do.  A woman who came in after Jim was wearing a lot of makeup, had her hair done, a fancy schmancy woman-tennis-player style dress, dangling earings and plain old grubby tennis shoes and athletic socks.  And she appeared to be 82 also.  It had rained cats and dogs and hammers as our friend David Town likes to say just before the race, but cleared nicely in time for the start.  The guy on the podium seemed to have become enamored of his voice because 4:00 came and went as he droned on and on about the magico of  Coatepec.  The runners actually started clapping and booing to get him to stop. He never did for the whole race, but finally someone gave the start shot and they were off and running by 4:15. 

That was Friday.  Today we took the Rav to be repaired and wandered around Coatepec doing some odds and ends of chores. We went into a large store filling several rooms on Av. Cuahtémoc.  It's been there for some time and is truly wonderful. The rooms are in an old colonial house with big windows and high ceilings.  It is filled with light and sells just tons of incredibly varied and interesting junk that you don't need but suddenly want: really glittery fake jewelry heavy with fake diamonds and rubies and stuff, underwear, plastic containers, toys, make-up, books, clothing, shoes, beads, mops and all kinds of religious and some other kinds of statues. We saw an end table to beat end tables,   a painted seductive over-made-up plaster of paris woman squatting on one knee holding up a glass top with a scalloped edge. I crave it.  I can't imagine a more unlikely piece of furniture.

Then we stopped briefly at a plant shop that pours out onto the sidewalk from an old (older than me) woman's living room.  She had some roses with gorgeous, brilliant yellow and reddish-pink blossoms, lots of very healthy herbs and a plant with big eggplant-like leaves that had ....EGGS...hanging from it. The lady came out to chat.  THOSE eggs aren't for eating, are they, I asked.  Oh no, she said.  Just for drawing.  I swear that's what she said. Jim said something about eggplants.  Then I said to Jim, maybe they glued the eggs on the stalks.  No, no, said Jim.  Those are part of the plant.  Naaah.  I said can't be, but they WERE!  

After looking at some tile choices for our new house/store, we stopped at a fruit and vegetable store we go to from time to time.  We went to buy bananas, but because Jim and I rarely hear each other these days, especially in the din of traffic, (of course we pay very close attention to what the other is saying) we got our signals crossed and I ended up buying a number of things not including bananas and Jim got nothing.  

Finally we took the bus home because we were quite sure the car wouldn't be ready even though good ole Carlos Alarcon, the charming, guapo mechanic with the slicked-back hair who seems to me like someone who'd come from Queens was 100% sure it would be.

I've got to go back with my camera and get some pictures. 

Leobardo

In our neighborhood narrow paths between buildings turn into little streets sometimes, callejones,  that lead past houses tucked behind the houses on the named streets.  Leobardo lived in a shack made of perpendicular bamboo sticks with spaces between them on a tiny callejon.  I think he probably shared it with other people. Often, he sat outside his sister’s house or his mother’s house on the main street. He might once have been handsome.  By his early fifties, he was washed up.  He was usually drunk: a quiet drunk, gentle, friendly.  Sometimes he had a little girl on his knee: a grandchild we imagined.

The first time I said more than adios to him was maybe three or four years ago. I was driving home and just about to turn onto the road into the colonia.  He was standing on the grass at its edge of the carretera, over his prostrate burro who seemed to have just died.  His arms hung limp at his sides. Tears were running down his face.  I pulled over and got out. Leobardo talked through his tears: the burro, whom he loved, had fallen down.  He had managed to drag her up on her feet just to have her fall again.  And then she didn’t get up any more.  I don’t know what to do, Leobardo said.  I said I don’t either. We decided to find someone who did.

I brought him up to Vero´s drugstore.  Vero wasn’t there, but her mother, a lean energetic woman was.  She took Leobardo to a large animal vet who lived in the colonia.  I left.  I was too sad to be helpful.  I don’t know why, but I get overwhelmed by suffering and dead animals to the point of not functioning very well.  Anyway, the next time we went past his house, we stopped, and Leobardo said someone had come to take the burro away.  Some time later I saw him walking along with a younger burro. We stopped to chat and he told me someone had given it to him. For awhile, he tended to the burro, but  then it was gone. I don't know what happened to it.  So Leobardo resorted to a wheelbarrow to lug piles of long grass for other people’s animals.

One April or May day I came across him pushing the wheelbarrow up the street and looking as if he were in great pain.  He was sweating heavily, gasping for breath, stopping every few steps.  I offered to help.  Leopardo said he doubted I could manage it. I'm strong I said.  It didn’t occur to me that a wheelbarrow of grass would be particularly heavy but  I could barely move it.  Leobardo laughed wearily.  I refused to give in, being me, and made it about ten feet before yielding it back to him. I walked beside him as he trudged.  We didn't talk.  He didn't have the strength.  He was getting sick from his drinking.

Maybe a year and a half ago, Leobardo actually managed to stop drinking.  His eyes looked clear, he sat straight and we even met him walking outside the Colonia, lugging loads again. He stayed sober for quite awhile, but all those years of alcohol had worked hard on him.  And once so once more we found him sitting outside his sister’s house more and more often.  His belly was swelling.  I stopped to talk one day and asked what was wrong.  He told me his belly was filled with water.  He had no energy and everything hurt. He’d been to the doctor in Teocelo who’d given him a prescription for Lasix, a diuretic, but he could no longer afford it.  So we started buying a generic for him.  Again he improved.  A lot, in fact.  He was up and about, smiling, doing chores, hanging out with friends. Then one day he wasn’t fine.  He’d gotten drunk, passed out so cold his sister couldn’t rouse him for several days. He stayed drunk.  His sister and I talked and his sister said there was no point anymore in getting the medicine.  He was killing himself.

He lived many months more than we thought he could.  But last week there were rocks blocking a section of the street and a tarp covering the section outside Leobardo’s family compound.  Our neighbor Vicente told us Leonardo had died peacefully in his sleep.

The family was holding a veleria.   We went in the evening bringing a bag of dried beans and a bag of sugar.  We sat for awhile with the family in Leobardo’s mother’s living room and talked as we ate the beans and rice and limonada they brought to us. The body had already been taken to the cemetery in Xico, the Panteón, less than a day after he died. (In Mexico, burial must occur within 24 hours of death.) The family had cleared all the furniture from the front room and rented plastic chairs which lined the walls. A shrine with La Virgen de Guadalupe adorned with many candles filled a corner.  Shadows flickered throughout the room in the candlelight.  It was very peaceful.  In these settings I find myself soothed by – who knows what?  It felt as if Leobardo had been released from his suffering, had been forgiven and embraced.