From Xico

Threads

In looking into the story of Diego Rivera and his murals in Detroit, I found myself following all sorts of stories I hadn't dreamed would interest me, but they did, big time. So now I am trying to pull them together into something comprehensible.  In doing this, I remembered why I so loved history: I love it because it or rather almost any scrap of it has loose threads that connect to other scraps which connect us intimately with the past. And the past is only a moment ago.  

Anyway, today I found another scrap.  I won't pursue this anywhere as far as I have the Detroit murals stuff (I don't have time!) BUT it is definitely worth following. This scrap is a piece of the story of anarchism in the United States and Russia and of some of its major participants. I have a funny feeling that if I looked far enough, I could tie it to the Diego Rivera stuff.  Of course this discovering of and weaving together of various themes is one of the blessings and curses of the internet.

There is a series by writers about writing in the New York Times called "Draft".  Today's piece was "A Collaborative Effort" by Karen Avrich. Avrich became her father's posthumous collaborator in a biography of Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman, two very important adherents of anarchism in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.  Karen Avrich's father, Paul Avrich is a leading if not the leading scholar of anarchism and worker rebellion in Russia and the US during that time. Karen Avrich creates a deeply loving sketch of her father.  She also talks of how she was enveloped in the work of finishing his book.  

And so I have found myself following the threads of Karen Avrich, Paul Avrich, Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman, just in a cursory google-y kind of way, but I find it amazing that I can trace them and their histories and other histories sitting at my desk in Xico.  

Wikipedia has a good article on Emma Goldman here.  It will be easy to find yourself sidetracked to major events in the U.S. past: The Panic of 1893, for instance, and the assassination of William McKinley.  And here are Margaret Sanger and birth control and Woodrow Wilson, World War I and The Draft....

I wanted to learn more about Paul Avrich, basically a quiet man who wrote and wrote and breathed life into the anarchists.  Of course you can find material on Paul Avrich on google. If you read Spanish, this is an interesting link.

In looking for information on Avrich the father, I arrived at the Kate Shipley Library, a treasure trove of anarchist literature and history, of primary sources, the creme de la creme for writing history.  And then there's this bit of gossip about Karen Avrich who turns out to be Mark Halperin's girl friend. 

The book that Paul and Karen Avrich collaborated on, Sasha and Emma,was well-received and sounds like it would be absorbing and lively.  Here is the NYTimes review. It was a NY Times notable book in 2012.

If you aren't up for anarchy, how about trying Alex Berensen's essay for Draft.  Berensen writes a series of thrillers centered on an agent, John Wells. The plots, which Berensen hangs on a careful and accurate use of history, could lead you down a path of research on terrorism, Al Qaeda, and the like.  

I HAVE to try to be more disciplined.  I really do want to get through Diego Rivera in Detroit!

 

Related articles

Some thoughts on Alexander Berkman

Emma Goldman: political thinking in the streets by Kathy Ferguson [Book review]

Worrying and the Value of History

Note: I cut and pasted the segment staring with "As Voltaire memorably remarked".  The underlined pieces of text from that point on are therefore not live links.

Richard Feynman, mentioned below, was a theoretical physicist. Look him up in Wikipedia via this link. Not only should he not be forgotten, he should be enjoyed. And while you're at it, do lookup Brainpickings.

In the wonderful newsletter called Brainpickings(www.brainpickings.org) there appeared today an article called Big Thinkers on the Only Things Worth Worrying About. There are snippets from a variety of Big Thinkers", and much presented ruefully, because worry is endemic to our species.  One particular segment caught my eye because the writer talks passionately about the importance of reading about HISTORY which of course I agree with. She talks about 'presentism', the tendency these days to dismiss the past as irrelevant and the consequences, grave indeed, of doing so. She includes a quote from Noga Arikha.

 "As Voltaire memorably remarked, “Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” Without appreciation for the Feynmans of the past we duly don our presentism blinders and refuse to acknowledge the fact that genius is a timeless quality that belongs to all ages, not a cultural commodity of the present. Many of our present concerns have been addressed with enormous prescience in the past, often providing more thoughtful and richer answers than we are able to today, whether it comes to the value of space exploration or the economics of media or the essence of creativity or even the grand question of how to live.  Having “living heroes” is an admirable aspiration, but they should never replace — only enhance and complement — the legacy and learnings of those who came before.  Below is a tiny piece 

"Indeed, this presentism bias is precisely what Noga Arikha, historian of ideas and author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, points to as her greatest worry in one of the most compelling answers. It’s something I’ve voiced as well in a recent interview with the Guardian. Arikha writes:

´I worry about the prospect of collective amnesia.While access to information has never been so universal as it is now — thanks to the Internet — the total sum of knowledge of anything beyond the present seems to be dwindling among those people who came of age with the Internet. Anything beyond 1945, if then, is a messy, remote landscape; the centuries melt into each other in an insignificant magma. Famous names are flickers on a screen, their dates irrelevant, their epochs dusty. Everything is equalized.'

"She points to a necessary antidote to this shallowing of our cultural hindsight:"

'There is a way out: by integrating the teaching of history within the curricula of all subjects—using whatever digital or other means we have to redirect attention to slow reading and old sources. Otherwise we will be condemned to living without perspective, robbed of the wisdom and experience with which to build for the future, confined by the arrogance of our presentism to repeating history without noticing it.'

 

 

 

 

Mexico and Detroit, Diego Rivera and the Fords

In an effort to deal with bankruptcy, it had been proposed that Detroit sell its fabulous art collection to meet city pension fund obligations of roughly 800 million dollars.  I wrote about this here  and provided an update link here. More recently, at the end of January, private funds and government sources had come up with pledges that come close to the 800 million dollars needed for the pension fund so that it would not be necessary to sell the art.  A BBC article provides vivid reminder of just what not having a pension fund would mean.  This would be a cruel bind, a killing blow to the city’s retired workers. It would be hard to justify keeping the art if it turned retired city workers into paupers.  

Part of the plan would turn the museum over to a private not-for-proft organization instead of continuing as city property, thus, hopefully, saving it from being a pawn in future municipal budget difficulties. None of this is certain yet.  But it is a promising start.  If it succeeds, I hope the Institute will expand its reach into Detroit communities, so that it becomes a living presence which all kinds of citizens can be part of. 

I knew nothing about the Institute until I realized that among its most valuable treasures was a huge mural created by Diego Rivera the famous Mexican muralist, called Detroit Industry.  Far from being hoity toity art, this mural is a passionate and beautiful portrayal of working Detroit. I haven’t seen the original, but even online it is impossible that it not draw you in.

Today’s economic situation in Detroit is not altogether different from what it was during The Great Depression when Diego Rivera created the mural.  And the mural reveals roots of today’s crisis.  In some subsequent posts, I’ll talk about this as well as about Mexican connections and about how art and our lives really do go together.       

   

 

Mexican faces

Some older Mexicans at a meeting addressing pension issues. These are our contemporaries, by the way.

From La Jornada, Veracruz edition, December 8, 2013. Foto credit: AVC Noticias.

A Reading Group at Caftan Rojo in Coatepec

Our reading/writing group meets more or less every fourth Wednesday of the month.  The next one is coming up on the 16th of October.  We are a growing bunch of  yes-we-are, would-be, have been and would-have-been writers of various ages and "ethnic backgrounds".  We call it a readers' group because some (many) of us shy away from criticism and just want to enjoy each others' tales and because some of us haven't necessarily written anything new in a long time and don't feel like having the old stuff rehashed yet again.  For some reason I am reminded of children's hour at the library where kids sit in a circle on little chairs around the friendly adult who reads a page and then holds the book up and shows the pictures.  We each get a turn to be librarian, clearing our throats, looking around the circle of faces before we begin.  We read bits of our memories, stories, poems, even a letter. We know each other outside of our little reading group.  We can puzzle or say aha about the sides of each other we didn't know, the feelings revealed, the delicacy hidden behind a gruff voice. 

We meet at Caftan Rojo which has within its walls and its courtyard an art school and various changing art exhibits as well as an English language book exchange and a Spanish book collection which you can borrow from.  On the Jewish holidays, it has celebrations which the small Jewish community of Xalapa and Coatepec attends. We attended the memorial of a friend there a year or so ago. Sometimes someone from the area gives a presentation as was the case when a former professor from the US gave a talk on peak oil which he hoped would alarm us more than it did.

If you are in Coatepec, wander in, have a seat if you want to rest your feet.  Look around.  You can find current information at www.caftanrojo.org.  Here are the phone number, address, etc:

Para más información puedes llamar al teléfono 01 o 52 (228) 816-3151 de lunes a sábado, de 9 de la mañana a 3 de la tarde, o visítarnos en la 3ª calle de Xicoténcatl nº 44, en Coatepec, Veracruz, México. 

A Somewhat Random Collection of Odds and Ends Including Emergency Info

First of all, if you have an emergency in the Xico-Xalapa area, you should call 066 for assistance.  They will help 24 hours a day.  The second item in the left sidebar of this blog will provide you with more emergency information.

When it rains here these days, sometimes it rains as if The Flood were coming and we should all start building our arks.  Green drips from trees and giant leaves and small ones, too.  It has been a bit hard gardening because the rain washes seeds away, but still we have an abundance of what has not been washed away.  We have cilantro and small wild tomatoes and tomatillos and beans and greens and I think giant Italian squah and very hot red peppers and bamboo which we didn't plant but which decided to come up in two beds.  We'll have to move it.

Here is a video on youtube of us driving through the rain near here.

It seems Guillermo our gardener has a relative who worked for our friend who died.  So we talked a bit about that and then I told Guillemo I discovered we, too, could be buried in the Xico Panteón and Guillermo said then we really would be from Xico, or at least OF Xico.  And then he said, but best to enjoy today and not think too much about dying.

Except a friend dying is a good and poignant reminder to me not to dwell too much in the news I can do nothing about.  So I have been stopping myself from following wandering thoughts of Syria and so forth and wrapping my spirit (so to speak) in our countryside which is munificent and filled with friends and I also downloaded Seamus Heaney's book of poetry, "North", which is available on Kindle, as are some others. Earthy and vivid and melancholy, perhaps, too. Serious, northern imagery, but not at all ponderous.  I'd heard his name, but had not read his poetry.  Actually the only poetry I've read recently is that sent by a good friend, and whenever I read what she sends, I tell myself I should read more.  

Related articles

Seamus Heaney's death is a huge loss to the world of poetry

A Funeral in Xico

 (Image: panoramia.com) 

A few days ago we went to a funeral in La Parroquía de Santa Maria Magdalena in Xico. This very beautiful church crowns Xico´s main street. Inside,  soft pink and white hung from the dome, caught up with lacy gold flowers.  Fresh flowers decorated statuary and pillars and side chapels.

The man whose funeral it was was not a fancy person or a particularly important one in the town, but it didn't matter. He rested at the foot of the altar for the service. On the altar, Maria Magdalena, voluptuous and beautiful, reclined under a bloody, crucified Christ.

Non-Catholics, especially from the US, whom I have spoken to wonder at the bloodiness of this Catholic Christ, and especially Protestants shudder and say it is the Resurrection that should be celebrated. But when I look at this still-human, wounded Jesus, I think of his compassion, of someone who not only is said to have died for our sins, but who also shared in human suffering, who feels it with us. And I think this image provokes compassion in those who kneel beneath it. The priest said, his arm passing over all of us who sat there, Christ loves us all.

At the end of the service, the man's wife and family walked in front of the hearse and the rest of us followed behind, moving slowly down the main street which is paved with stones. Here, funeral processions have the right of way. They are not infrequent. We turned on the street towards the Pantheon, the city's cemetery, moving up and down the steep hills. Outside the cemetery, vendors sold snacks and drinks.

It is a busy, crowded cemetery, a city of the dead, with small graves marked with a jumble of wooden crosses and miniature houses and large (for a cemetery) tombs that seem to be miniature castles for the more prosperous. Colors are bright, flowers, plastic and real, piled high.

Our friends' grave, off to one side,under some trees, was a simple place, already dug.  We could see Pico de Orizaba in the distance, white with snow.  While the workers lowered the coffin into the grave, a woman sang a hymn, then said a rosary in a clear, firm voice. Some people put flowers on the coffin, others handfuls of soil. Then the workers poured concrete around it, deep in the ground. Finally they started shoveling the earth on top. More flowers, more earth. And finally, all the rest of the flowers.

We all came forward and standing in a circle around the grave, held hands  One person chanted in Spanish, "From the earth we came, to the earth we return like a drop of water goes into the sea." People shared memories. One woman said, with a quiet laugh, "We will be neighbors."  Her plot was right around the corner.

And then it was over. We walked slowly back to Xico.

 

 

 

 

Yoga in Xico with Luana

I kept thinking I was too old to start yoga.  I thought this for years.  During the time I thought I was too old for yoga, I ran a 5 k (and came in last) and took pilates for quite a while and tai chi for a couple of years.  But yoga kept calling, so finally, after my friend who is ALMOST my age told me how much she liked it, at age 69 and almost 8 months I wandered into Luana's studio.  It is a comfortable white space with some colorful 8x10 Mexican-type banners strung across the ceiling which is high, old, wooden and beamed.  And I'm not too old.  And I love it, even after just a couple of weeks.  I had taken dancing lessons for years -- serious ones -- and I've never stopped missing them: the feeling that you and your body (to be corny) are one: the feeling of your muscles working and stretching and lifting you, the sweat pouring down your back as you push just a little harder and a little harder, the music coursing through you.There isn´t any piano music in yoga, though there are some chants, and it isn't as hard (or rather Luana won't permit old bones and muscles to push as hard), but it is still thrilling to be back making my body work in this way.  In the classes, the movement alternates with meditative periods where you stay in a position (for me, mostly reclining positions) for extended periods of time.  I've done breathing on and off for years, and in my years as a therapist with severely mentally ill patients I taught mindfulness which involves breathing, so I´m not new to it.   In Luana's studio, it seems that my experiences are a bit different.  Lying on my back, (I don't think I'm psychotic) it seems as if I am somehow a very thin shell, with the world flowing through me.  Even better, I notice the sounds and smells of the neighborhood outside: roasting coffee, bus exhaust, garlic in oil, trucks with their home-made wooden sides rattling down the cobblestones, a light hint of piano music or the sound of a clarinet in the distance, women gossiping and laughing, a radio playing norteño. 

Anyway, now a plug for Luana's classes.  She is very flexible (mentally as well as physically) and adjusts the movements according to the level of the student.  She is completely fluent in both English and Spanish.  She follows the Lyengar method.  Weekdays, she teaches Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9:00 am to 10:30 am and Monday and Thursday, from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm with a a class for children on Wednesdays from 5:00-6.00.  Obviously I recommend her highly.

Classes are 50 pesos a piece.

The address is Hidalgo 100, Xico

The phone is cel 228 111 7647

And she is on facebook at Yogatlán.

Wear shorts or comfortable clothes.

This, too, Is México

This is a link to a captivating post on a museum in the midst of what is now desert between Chihuahua City and Cuahtémoc in northwestern México.  Linda, Eric and families in New Mexico, you really, really ought to go see it.  It is MUCH closer to you than to us.  I was surprised to read that the Mennonite farmers in the area (who are leaving now in sizeable numbers) are not organic or near-organic farmers and that they do not work to conserve water.  As my brother-in-law Ivan says, when water-table water is gone, it's pretty much gone.

But, but...this is NOT a gloomy article: it is joyful. Enjoy it, the pictures, and Elizabeth and Eliseo, and celebrate two original and resilient human beings.

 

 

A Snake, Dia de la Vera Cruz, a Walk with Graciela, Carrots and Flowers

Yesterday we saw the first really scary looking snake here.  It was dead, it's head having been removed.  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so you'll just have to believe me.  It was probably closer to three than to two feet long, skinny, striped black, red and white (I think).  The (I think) white stripes were jagged, like lightening looks in comic books.  The deadly snake in our area is the coral snake.  They are relatively shy and not aggresssive and rarely seen.  I don't know how this one came to lie across our path, but I do know it wasn't a coral snake.  I came home and looked through dozens of snake pictures and didn't see one just like it.  Maybe my imagination was playing tricks with me and maybe the white stripes didn't look like lightening bolts in comic books.  I stopped looking at the pictures because I didn't want to end up dreaming about snakes which are not my favorite animals in the world.  If this description makes sense to any of you and you could offer an identification, I would really like to hear from you.

Friday was El Dia de la Vera Cruz, the Day of the True Cross.  The capilla of the True Cross is located behind our neighbor's house.  It is only used on this day.  For the celebration, it is cleaned and decorated and looks beautiful.  This year it had its own arco.  In addition to the misa, there is often an effort to have a fiesta of some sort.  One year it was very successful with all kinds of activities for younger people as well as music.  For this year's celebration the community hired a DJ for a baile, a dance, at night.  I don't think too many people came, but I couldn't swear to it because it is also the holiday outside of La Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe that has the most cohetes and the biggest ones, and these ones are fired off right around us and these big nearby ones still make me VERY nervous even after all these years, so I hide inside.

Here is a picture of the capilla all decorated:

There were a number of very pretty hanging decorations:

Here is the interior:

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

Moving right along....

Much to my amazement, the carrots we planted in the garden at our other little house actually grew into real carrots!  I still am amazed when stuff actually comes up, especially stuff I've not planted before, and carrots seem particularly miraculous.  These came up (or rather, went down) full-sized, crisp and flavorful!

Last week our young neighbor Graciela went on a walk with us.  She has the other afghan hound in the neighborhood.  It is also a found afghan.  This one was at one point the dog of a neurologist who lives in Xico.  The guy tried to keep the dog without a fence! So of course it wandered.  His wife tried to bring it back quite a number of times, but they finally gave up. (This according to our friend and vet, Marco Antonio)  Kids in our neighborhood saw it and thought it was ours.  Anyway, it ended up with Graciela and she and the dog (now tied up) adore each other.  So she came on our walk.

Graciela has eagle eyes.  She saw a snake in the grass which she repeatedly pointed to while making alarmed little noises. Finally I saw it as it scurried away, and at long last, so did Jim. It was a slender green grass snake. She also was the first to notice a clump of tiny, shiny black worms  inching its way across the path.  Each worm must be about a quarter of an inch at most and quite skinny.  Each pile of them must contain a couple of hundred.  She showed us that when you see one clump, you will see more.  They tunnel and come up.  And sure enough, we saw a trail of them, spaced apart. She also saw wild cilantro which doesn´t look at all like the cilantro we are accustomed to.  The leaves are clustered around a center, like dandelion leaves.  They are fairly narrow and have pointed edges which are sharp.  You have to cut off these edges to use the leaves, but then they not only smell and taste just like cilantro, according to Graciela, but can be used just like regular cilantro.  She collected a bunch for her mom.

Below are some leaves I picked.  I didn't have my camera on the walk so these are on our table.

And finally, yesterday Doña Gloria came over with a beautiful bunch of roses for me.  Today is Mother's Day in Mexico, and she brought them "as one mother to another" so I wouldn't feel too lonely with my kids far away.  We sat and had coffee and commented on the weather which has gotten a bit May-like: no rain, dusty air, and a lot of humidity, although this year the temperatures have been pretty mild.  So she told me about the Fiesta of San Isidro which is coming up and will be celebrated in Xico and I think in our Colonia.  She said that on this feast day, people carried a gourd upside down to show there had not been enough rain.  They pray to San Isidro for rain, and if all goes well, it will rain shortly thereafter.  

And that's all for now.  El Pacto por México pronto. Maybe.