Astronomy, you & me: Night Sky Network
I’m stoked about my new job at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific as the Outreach Coordinator. We run Night Sky Network a free online service where amateur astronomy clubs and the public can find out about astronomy events and connect with each other. My priority is to get more clubs to use site. I [...]
Día de los Muertos countdown: Is Halloween a gangrened limb?
A border buddy of mine wrote to me about Día de los Muertos:
Día de los Muertos is becoming more and more popular in California. This is because Halloween has become more and more empty of spirituality. Once, Halloween was celebrated as a spiritual practice. As time has passed it has become another limb of [...]
Día de los Muertos countdown: What happens to the food on the altar?
We never eat the food set out on the altar for the muertos and my friend Rosanna Salgado McDonald tells us why:
My grandmothers said that they prepared food for the spirits of our
relatives, but that we shouldn’t try to eat the food after Día de los
Muertos has passed. She said the spirits took the flavor [...]
Día de los Muertos countdown: metro muertos
Muertos are everywhere in Mexico City, even in the metro.
Día de los Muertos countdown: muertos going public
The visiting dead aren’t spoken about freely in most places in the U.S., probably because people will think you’re nuts if you talk about them (the muertos/the dead). It was refreshing to hear one of my Japanese students, Sho, blame a mischievous spirit on keeping him up late at night. Throughout several classes, he kept [...]
Dreaming Day of the Dead, El Paso & Moby's Pale Horses
I’ve already got Dia de los Muertos on my mind. Pale Horses by Moby and singer Amelia Zirin Brown reminds me of when my mother and I would go to the cemetery to visit my grandparents, great grandparents, and my uncle’s grave in El Paso. We’d take gifts like fruit, enjoyable candies and flowers. We’d [...]
Hip Hop Grandma by filmmaker Cristina Ibarra
Eating Salad: Thank a Mexican
Where is 80% of our lettuce grown? In Salinas, California, known as the “salad bowl of the world.” The growers of the veggies? Mostly Mexican and of Mexican descent. Many Oaxacans these days. Off of highway 101, there are a couple of eerie larger than life size drawings of farmers, seemingly Anglo-American farmers. These [...]
Tortillas y Lalo Guerrero
In every city, I hunt down tortillas. I hear Lalo Guerrero singing “no hay tortillas” when I’m without. Here are the lyrics:
Lalo Guerrero
There’s No Tortillas
I love tortillas
And I love them dearly
You’ll never know,
Just how sincerely.
I love the corn ones,
Y tambien de harina,
But when my wife calls out from
La cocina.
There’s no tortillas.
There’s only bread.
There’s no tortillas,
And [...]
Come camote
Remember your grandparents eating camote y leche? You might not, unless you grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border. My grandpa would mash up the sweet potatoes with milk, sometimes adding in cinnamon. Sweet, warm, mushy, easy-to-cook comfort food that nourishes a sweet tooth.
I offered this delicacy to my boyfriend, and he thought it was wacked [...]