These rings are currently very popular in Scandanavia and are becoming popular here. They are called "Singelringen" and they are rings worn by people who are single and "looking." You can buy the ring for about $49 and then register on their website using the number inside the band to find other singles, gay or straight, near you. I think the ring is very pretty, and it's a cool idea. Check it out here http://singelringen.com/.

Calaveras

I've been a fan of this particular brand of folk art for many years now. It can be traced back to the works of Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852 - 1913). An example of his work is the engraving above. He was a political cartoonist who often depicted his characters as living skeletons. Today you can find many examples of hand-made art, much of it probably intended for tourists, that continues this very interesting idea of blending together death and the mundane details of living. I've included some photos below of items from my own modest collection.

Calaveras multiple

Some of the cheerful citizens of my village of the dead.

Posada frequently featured portraits of elegant skeleton women with plumes in their hats. These skeleton women came to be known Katarinas.

Katarina standing with her husband. I think his name is Clyde.

Calavera skull

A skull, or calavera, decorated with devil's heads for eyes and smaller skulls.

Angel and Demon

I've also noticed that the artists frequently pair opposites, such as angels and devils, together. I think this goes back to the central paradox of depicting skeletons engaged in the the everyday acts of the living.

I particularly like the wooden boxes with a scene frozen in time behind a pane of class. These are frequently the most colorful examples of this particular folk art form.

Happy Couple

Here's a happy couple sitting on a park bench. Notice the infant in the woman's arms.

Rocky Horror

I went to go see the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" this past Saturday night. It was fun, but the audience consisted mainly of "virgins" who didn't know what to do. I felt like jumping up and saying, "I'm over forty years old, and I can do the "Time Warp" better than that!" What do they teach kids in school today anyways?

The fabulous Betty Jean Crocker (left) and well-known club kid Johnny Cat (right) were the hosts. They did a really good job.

Altars for the Dead

Today I stopped by the Harlingen Arts and Heritage Museum to see their Dias De Los Muertos altars exhibit. They invite local artists to make their own version of the altars prepared by many in Mexico to celebrate Dias De Los Muertos. I took some pictures, and I'm sharing them with you.

This is a detail from one of the altars. The sugar skull bears the name of the deceased person honored by the altar. I believe it must be very therapeutic to create one of these for a lost loved one.

I particularly liked this altar, which is a wooden chair on a raised platform. The chair itself, elaborately carved and decorated, was the altar and the artist placed a portrait of her deceased father on the back of the chair. Her father's hat sat on the seat of the chair. It was very nice.

Nicole Ritchie

Imagine my surprise at running into Nicole Ritchie at the museum.

When I visited the museum today, I discovered they were having a class on decorating sugar skulls. I went ahead and joined them for a mere $10. It was fun. I actually have a sugar skull making kit with the molds and everything, but I've never used it. Mine were by far the least artistic of anyone's. As a matter of fact, now that I've seen this picture, I realize that I made my sugar skull look like "Mr. Bill" from Saturday Night Live in the '80s.

South Padre

South Padre Island

One of the nicest features of the area in which I live is South Padre Island. The island is really a very large sandbar that runs from mouth of the Rio Grande up to around Corpus Christi, a length of nearly 113 miles. It is named after Father (Padre) Balli who was an early settler of the region. The island is a really special place. Even though it is just 45 minutes away, I don't go there very often. I like to go when I can suspend my normal life and totally relax. I don't want it to become an everyday experience.

A frequent sight on the island are the shrimp boats heading out to the gulf through the channel by Isla Blanca park.

Brown Pelican

In the past few years, the island has seen a resurgence of the brown pelican.

This is a view of the bayside. These are some of the "dolphin tour" boats, and the building in the background is the Sea Ranch Restaurant where for the past several years a good friend of mine and I have celebrated our birthdays. If you should happen to take a "dolphin tour," I hope your pictures turn out better then mine.

Garrion Keillor editorial for the Salt Lake Tribune:

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus. The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned. The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by Mr. Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts. It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it. None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner. To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung. Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and, after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Court will dispose of this piece of garbage. If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them. I got some insight week before last into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for Homegrown Democrat, but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares? The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Governor's race

Governor's Race

The latest polls according to Texas Monthly are as follows:

Perry 35%
Bell 23%
Friedman 23%
Strayhorn 15%

I am voting for:

Governor-Chris Bell (D)
Senator-Barbara Ann Radnofsky (D)
Congress-Ruben Hinojosa (D)
State Senate-Eddie Lucio (D)
State House- Eddie Lucio III (D)

I guess this makes me a Democrat!

Yerberias or Hierberias

Yerberias or Hierberias are stores that sell a combination of herbal medicines, charms, religious items, candles, and sacred oils to a predominantly Hispanic customer base. I noticed that there seemed to be a cluster of these shops in a two to three block radius on South 17th street in McAllen, so I took some pictures of the exteriors of the shops (see below). I did this on a Sunday, when most of the shops are closed, so as not to provoke concern amongst the shopowners. Ever since I moved to the Valley, I've been very interested in the tradition of curandisimo, the traditional folk healing customs of people of Mexican descent on both sides of the border. I'm fascinated by the idea that people tend to live in a world made up of people much like themselves with the same beliefs and philosophies. We don't stray out of our little worlds into the parallel worlds of the people who surround us very often, and I think this is the cause of many of the tensions that exist between various groups of people. If you live in a large metropolitan area, you can essentially tour the world by visiting the various neighborhoods in your city. In the Valley, many people live in a cocoon of their own culture and ethnicity, never bothering to become familiar with the other world that surrounds them. I've always been drawn to "the other," or different ways of looking at the world. I make my share of blunders, but I'm always very interested in walking in the steps of people of different traditions and cultures than my own, even if it is for just a few hours.

Limpia

A "limpia" is ritual cleansing. The version that I have heard is that the afflicted is wrapped in a blanket and an egg is rolled from the toes to the head. The evil is absorbed by the egg. Notice the tarot card sign. Many of these shops offer both "limpias" and tarot card readings.

Yerberia Mistica

This yerberia is also a bridal/flower shop. Notice the Santisima Muerte's, the "folk saint" of fidelity in marriage, in the window.

Santisimo Muerte

Santisimo(a) Muerte

One of the most disturbing images to the uninitiated are the statues of death that appear in the windows of many of the shops here in the valley. At first glance, they definitely seem Satanic. However, I also noticed some candles that referred to death as "Santisimo Muerte." I was raised a Catholic, and I've certainly never thought of death as a saint.

I did a little research and found out that Death is a "banned saint" or a "folk saint." Santo Muerte can be represented as a male or a female figure. Since they are skeletons, you usually tell the difference by how they are dressed. The female version often wears a crown made of flowers. The female representation of death is used as resource by women to keep their men faithful. Women say "novenas" to death to keep their men in line. Some sources say she is a syncretized (I learned a new word!) version of an Aztec goddess called Mictecacihuatl, who ruled the underworld with her husband. I think his name was Bob. (Or maybe it was Mictlantecuhlti).

Santo Muerte is the male version. Some say he became popular in the 1960s with gangsters and criminals and then moved more mainstream. People pray to him for luck, paticularly in material things. He may also have been inspired by Native Americans interpretations of the Spanish concepts of the Angel of Death, the Holy Ghost, or the "holy death" one receives when given the last rites.

Nino Fidencio

I noticed this sign on 17th street in McAllen near a yerberia. Nino Fidencio was a famous Mexican faith healer in the 1920s. Nino means child (and I don't know how to add the tilde over the N!) He was born in Guanajuato and lived in Espinazo, Mexico, in the state of Nuevo Leon. He was said to have cured the president of Mexico when the president was ill, and people flocked to him by the thousands. He died in 1938.

Today, many curanderos(as) believe that they are channeling his spirit when they cure people. They consider themselves "cajitas" or "little boxes" for Nino's spirit. People who believe in Nino are called "fidencistos." There is a well-known curandero named Alberto Salinas who lives in Edinburg who believes he has been channeling Nino's spirit since 1978. I became aware of Nino Fidencio nearly twelve years ago when I attended an exhibit at a local museum called "Nino Fidencio: A Heart Laid Open." I frequently see candles with his image for sale, even in mainstream places like the grocery store chain H-E-B. I am including a link to Albert Salinas's website:http://elninofidencio.com/index.html