kmkat and her kneedles

Recent outings.

Last Friday Elder Son and I went to the Maya exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St Paul. When he was in Chiapas as a volunteer teacher* he lived in an area populated by Maya, so he was eager to see the exhibit. 

"This is where I was, Mom."

 

   
The stelae in the exhibit were casts of the originals. The Maya kings
loved to raise stelae with pictographs and stuff.

 

Younger Son's comment when I showed him this photo: "Really? The Maya had projectors?"

 

 

Elder Son said he often saw women dressed in similar garments.

 

Yarn! Must photograph the yarn!

 
This hand-brocaded fabric was lovely, but my photos suck. No flash photography allowed. 

 

A few things I learned about the Maya:

• They had a base-20 numbering system. Andrew pointed out that they didn't wear shoes, so base-20 instead of base-10 makes sense.
• The civilization comprised isolated city-states. There were no navigable rivers and settlements were separated by steep mountains, so each was isolated.
• The carved stelae commemorate battles and various kings' conquests of other city-states, but no written record remains of day-to-day life.
• The paucity of written records is due to the first Christian missionary to minister to the Maya. He burned all but four of their books because, clearly, they were the devil's work.
• The Maya civilization appears to have crumbled because of severe drought and overpopulation, exacerbated by their deforestation of the hillsides to grow corn to feed that population.
• They could only store one season's worth of corn because of the damp climate during half the year, hence, loss of one year's crop was devastating. Continued losses = time to leave their great cities and go somewhere else where there was rain.
  
• Learning the history of the Maya is important to the indigenous people of the region because until now, they had no history. History, as taught in the schools, started with the Spanish conquest of Central and South America. Before that, there was nothing of importance.
• As interesting as the history was, the part of the exhibit that attracted my attention was the textile section.

We ate dinner at Cossetta's in St Paul, then I went to knit with my buddies at Starbuck's on Grand while ES went to find a bookstore.

The youngest member of the knitting group.

* * * * *

This week's adventure occurred on Wednesday, when Smokey and I drove into Minneapolis to attend the grand opening open house at Younger Son's new employer.

There was yummy food and an open bar and did I mention the cherry cheesecake? 

 

This is one of their server racks. I think. Okay, I have no idea what this is.

 

This may look like an ordinary tile floor, but It Is Special. It is an anti-static floor -- who knew?
-- and the chair has special metal wheels to prevent static buildup and has a couple copper grounding straps besides. Apparently, static is a bigger no-no around electronics than I thought.

 

 

 

* * * * *

But we are not done yet. We left the open house to go to a concert at the Cedar Cultural Center.

The venue was only a couple doors down the street -- literally, two doors away -- from  the storefront/apartment building that blew up on New Year's Day.

All that remained was a pile of rubble and a lot of ice.

 

The concert was delightful. We heard Zoe Keating, who has been one of my favorite artists for several years since I first heard her music on Radio Lab. I encourage you to click on the player at the link and listen to her latest album.

Once again, no flash photography, so sucky photo.

 

* Or, as he puts it, hea was a Volunteer Teacher In The Zapatista Army Of Liberation.

Christmas and job loss.

So after watching for a while to see what you were supposed to do I walked in to find a pareja and dance, and for the first couple seconds it just felt the way dancing normally feels for me, like an unpleasant obligation that never would have been invented if everyone in the world were me. But this time was different: I caused a  panic. When the local girls saw me walking toward the big group of dancers they said "El gringo, el gringo" in high squeaky voices and scooted away en masse. I tried twice with the same result, so then I thought, Hey, now this is mighty fine,  I've just gotten myself a gold-plated Get Out of Dancing Free card, I can't be expected dance if everyone's afraid of me, now can I?

The latest dispatch from Andrew, this one written while he was home for three weeks.

Photo above is of the former airstrip he talks about in the dispatch. Click on the following links to see the chicken heads. (Warning: not for the overly squeamish)

Usefulness.

The boy man* talks about teaching in Zapatista Chiapas.

* He recently turned 23. I must remind myself he is most definitely not a boy any more.

And a soul in ev'ry stone.

Zapatista Sand Animation

"...The training standard of the two Zapatista education promoters I know in Zapata is one of those things where I’ve gotta step back, take a little breath, and remember that these people are exactly one inspiringly rebellious generation out of plantation slavery, and any grandfather here just might bear the mark of the lash on his back and certainly never saw the inside of a classroom as a child...Cassius has never been to school a day in his life and can’t read or write so much as his name. He’s thin, short, and leathery like most Tzeltal peasants I’ve met, and especially in the firelight’s flicker, something in the gaunt lines of his face reminded me of Howard Zinn, and, hmm, I’m not sure how to say it. There’s just something about the guy, a sort of deep inner wounding and bitter memory that manifests as moral authority and scarred wisdom, there we go..."

Andrew's latest dispatch: And a soul in ev'ry stone.

Sweet Jesus.

Andrew encounters happy cows and Latin American evangelism.

Vaccination day.

Andrew's column for this week's local paper.

The photo is the medicines that the delegation from the Chiapas Support Committee brought when they came to San Mañuel for the installation of the new autonomous council in early October.

All's well that ends soon.

Zapatistas /Jose Clemente Orozco (1931)

The latest dispatch from Andrew in Chiapas. In his own words,

After two months of nothing I’m fairly bored and unexcited, and I’m afraid that shows in the writing, sorry about that. I expect that’ll change at the end of this week once I actually have something to do. But if that warning doesn’t daunt you, then read on, this one does contain fire, machetes, and a novel use for feces

All's well that ends soon.

Waitin' for the frogs to fall.

A new dispatch from Andrew in Chiapas, this time about an overly-entrepreneurial child, food, attitudes toward medicine and disease, eugenics, animals, and bugs.

Waitin' for the frogs to fall

Gimme a break: a rant.

      

From our local paper, the caption alongside a photo of a car with a smashed windshield:

Mary V...felt lucky to be relatively uninjured last Friday when a large white-tailed deer crossed her path and landed on her windshield as she drove south on Hwy W just north of X. One of the first on the scene to offer assistance was Pastor Larry Y of Z. [Mary] told him that she was listening to Christian music when the collision occurred and felt that her faith played a factor in keeping her safe, aside from some minor glass cuts.

Okay, compare with this:

Smokey A, husband of kmkat, was driving south on Hwy B, when he struck a deer, but only lightly. The deer stumbled, then bounded away unhurt. Mr. A's vehicle suffered no damage.  Mr. A stated that he was listening to AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" cranked up pretty loud at the time of the incident. He credits the Australian band with saving both the deer and his vehicle.

AC/DC trumps your Christian music every time.

* * * * *

I am not dumping on Christians in general here, only on those people stupid and arrogant enough to feel that their God favors them over others. This rationale seems to have gotten a lot of play lately. Yeah, like the other children and mothers and husbands who died on That Bridge were somehow less... worthy. Gimme a break. It's pure chance, being in the right/wrong place at the wrong/right time. Get over yourself.

* * * * *

[/rant] Please return to your regularly scheduled (and less noisy) knitting and blogging.

* * * * *

In a totally non-ironic vein, here is an e-mail I got from Andrew yesterday. I had e-mailed him a screen shot showing that Hurricane Felix's path was project to go pretty much right up his backside.

Huh, National Geographic says that Hurricane Felix went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in 51 hours, faster than any other storm ever recorded.  Then it made landfall in Nicaragua yesterday morning, moved inland over a sparsely populated area, ran into 7,000-foot mountains and fell apart.  "...Felix's remnants will be gone by Thursday."  So it was a hurricane with ADD or manic depression or something, look out everybody here I come oh forget it I'll take a nap.

Andrew

My thanks to those who expressed their concern for his safety. Once again, he is fine.

Andrew in Chiapas.

Okay, here's the deal.

My boy Andrew is volunteering in a Zapatista community in Chiapas, Mexico until next April. He sends out mass e-mails periodically to all his friends and family to let us know what he is doing, plus he submits a column to the local paper every six weeks or so. He sends Smokey and I individual e-mails sometimes, too, but the vast majority of information  comes from these mass e-mails.

Anybody want to read them? He's an decent writer, and this is a way to get a glimpse into the lives of indigenous people in a developing country who have historically been treated pretty much like African-Americans in Mississippi. Not as badly as Native Americans here or Africans in South Africa, but badly nonetheless. They are improving their lives now, though, and apparently doing much better than they were able to before they essentially seceded from Mexico.

I have uploaded the first three e-mails and his first column. The links will take you directly to a pdf file; you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can get free here.

July 4 e-mail: Introduction

August 1 column "Land, Dignity, and Freedom"

August 2 e-mail: El Encueñtro

August 20 e-mail: The universe will have its way

That's a lot of reading all at once, for which I apologize. It wasn't until I was reading the latest e-mail that I had the idea to put his stuff up on my site. Also, as he says himself, "I can't say hello in less than 1,000 words."

* * * * *

I'm off and away this weekend to my 40th (!) high school reunion, to which I am muchly looking forward. Old friends, catching up, staying with my best friend from h.s., [another] Kathy, good food, great scenery, blog fodder all around. Maybe some knitting, too...

See ya on the flip side!

End of the hurricane saga.

From my e-mail to Andrew:

Did you get any effects from the hurricane? I'm really curious, since on the Weather Channel maps it looked like you would be on the outer edge of it.

mom

Andrew to me:

Yeah.  It rained a good four hours earlier than normal.

Andrew

And we shall not speak of it again... until the next hurricane. It is only August.

Andrew and Dean.

According to The Weather Channel, Hurricane Dean came ashore in the southern Yucatan and Belize very early Tuesday. Late Tuesday afternoon I got an e-mail from Andrew, in which (of course) he made no mention of the hurricane. In spite of his lack of caring as to whether his mother is having a heart attack or not, it does tell me that his little hamlet still has electricity and a telephone line, both of which would probably be sorely lacking if there had been severe storm damage.

Thus, the smileys. Yay for the internet!

ETA: [I'm such a self-centered slut.] Thank you all for your good wishes! This knitblogging community rocks, as so many others have said before this.

 

 

Dean and Andrew.

This is Hurricane Dean at about 2 pm Monday. See that yellow star at the left edge of the picture? That is where my son Andrew is right now. He is volunteering in the Chiapas state of southern Mexico until next April. Happily for his mother's state of mind, he is not near the coast. Unhappily, he is still uncomfortably close to harm's way.