MotherPie

Remember the Dead: Dia de Los Muertos...

Some people would have spent the last few days making sugar skulls with the name of the dead on them to keep alive the memory of those who have died and placed them on altars at home and elsewhere.

You get to die three times: once when you take your last breath, another when you are buried, and a third time when you are forgotten by the living.

Here, in our culture, death becomes a scary thing and we spend $5 billion on the Halloween holiday to dress up and parade around with this fall festival.  Last week at the International Folk Art Museum a lecture on Day of the Dead altars in Mexico gave details on how the dead are kept alive.  A three-tiered altar is made with marigolds and their scent and an archway above are to bring the dead back.  Water to quench the thirst of the soul and other favorite foods of the deceased are placed there, along with mementos that remind the living of the loved ones who have departed this world such as a photo, a favorite comb or such. Sugar skulls made with molds (purchase via link) with the name of the dead are placed on the altar and shared with others.  I've written elsewhere about Day of thte Dead here and here.

All Saint's Day (Nov. 1) honors the children, who are considered saints anyway.  All Soul's (Nov. 2) honors all other dead.  Something that I would consider adding to my folk art collection of Day of the Dead items would be a skull by award-winning ceramicist Jose Luis Serrano from Metepec via the Day of the Dead Folk Art Gallery.  But here we do the art but not the tradition of remembering that is behind the art.

Gone, but not forgotten. I think it is a great idea to keep alive the memory of those who have gone before in a structured holiday of the celebration of lives lived and the legacy of memories. Who has time to go gather at the grave?  Our families are all scattered, our focus is on our own living selves and death is a hushed thing. Our culture of individualism makes death a one-done deal.

Time...

Time is confusing. My chiming clock, a staple in my household since my marriage in 1980, now chimes the hours completely at random.  At four o'clock it might chime two. A cross-country move made it jumbly.  I'm jumbly about time, too.  My wristwatch battery is sluggish.  Only my cell phone and laptop tell me the true times.

But is time really true? I run on relational time, not punctual time.

Daylight Savings Time has been extended by four weeks so on November 4 we turn the clock back, a week later than in previous years. More people are having trouble sleeping now and I wonder if it is time-related and our move away from real time or stress in the US. DST's effects are long-lasting and serious... it takes weeks for the circadian system to adjust and in some people it never does, according to one latest study. Daylight Savings Time... most people like it because "there is more light in the evenings/you can do more in the evenings."

We have an English sense of time. Time is documented differently in other cultures.  Time is not perceived the same as we sense it and speak about it.   In the US, verb tenses are just past. One tense. In Spanish and French, you have recent past and things that occured a long time ago.  There is not just one past sense of time.

What actually is time?  What is the neurological mechanisms behind our experience of time?  Time varies by culture...  What differences are there among past, present and future?  What is real?  Is time only an expectation and a memory? Is time more physical than psychological?  Linear or circular? Is time subjective, dependent on the mind?  Time is a measurement... but it is an envelopment?  Time moves slowly, time can move fast.

graphic: U.S. government

Red Hot: Contemporary Chinese/Asian Art...

Yes, it is Red Hot.  Red Hot was the title of the Contemporary Asian Art (collection from the Chaney family) exhibit at Houston's Museum of Fine Art.  I was lucky to hit the exhibit on its last day with my art loving girlfriends.  It was thrilling to see such a collection in one place, especially with the contemporary asian art market being extremely red hot right now.  As both my friends would say, this art is ginormous in its impact and indicative of the creative cultural edge emerging out of Asia.

Just to take one example of the contemporary art that made me think of cultural changes -- idealized women in our consumer (now global) society -- Chinese artist Feng Zhengjie's 2007 portrait of a female, top right, was on exhibit at the Red Hot Houston exhibit. It is an example of the flat-style of his super-hybrid female portraits that expose "the essence of temptation, magnifying the sex appeal of fantasy lifestyle and its gulf of intangibility. Transposing these disposable sentiments through his highly refined painting technique, Feng glorifies the allure of advertising as epic, enduring, and numbingly empty," according to The Saatchi Gallery representing his portraits (Saatchi has a strong platform out of China).  He has only hit the art scene in the last 10 years.  His work is typical of many who repeat the same iterations and whose reputations are rising along with the price of their art.

The red hot market was on view at London's contemporary art auctions this fall. Bringing in top dollar  -- the work of Chinese contemporary artists.... considered to be the forefront of the avant-garde.  "Buyers are responding to the genre's political potency,"  writes the NY Sun in an article on London as the barometer of the global interest in the art markets. Sotheby's international auction this month included the most expensive contemporary Chinese art at auction,  a painting by the star of China's emergence, Yue Minjun. "Execution" (1995), at left, was estimated to sell at between $2.97 million and $3.96 million. Execution exceeded all estimates and was actually sold for $5.9 million. In it, four maniacally giggling, near-naked men face a firing squad in front of the red wall of the Imperial Palace in Tiananmen Square. 

More indications of the ginormous growth in this sector? March's sale of contemporary Chinese art in New York, "which grossed $38 million, rather than the estimated $18 million. It was the first time the house had seen buyers from China put in extravagant Russian-style bids."  NY is the largest art market, with London being second.  I've heard it said Santa Fe is the third.  But here it is the contemporary Native American art making the waves.  Back in March some said the Asian Contemporary market was reaching maturity with buyers becoming more selective. Prices have risen tenfold or more in the last year.  It is an odd market, a gold rush, with people wondering who is buying.

Sotheby's  supported the production of the catalogue for Houston's Red Hot exhibit and the book is an excellent resource for what is happening in this market with this art genre.  MFA Houston's director, Peter Marzio, is top-notch and this exhibit is but one example of his leadership.

At the basement entry to Houston's MFA building is a continuing exhibit on Japanese Pop Art. Walking towards it, my feet stepped across this huge photo at right, lit up from below, one of a series. After seeing Red Hot, that is how I felt: pressed up close, drowning in the cultural messages, trying to take in the dynamics of this red hot art. 

Trick or Treat...

It is our American Halloween week where we spend $5 billion for holiday fun and we culturally play with the spooky, like the cover of the New Yorker, out this week at right.  For us, it is a week of tricks (?), like today's NYT article by Maureen Dowd of a conversation between Tim Russert and Dick Cheney:

RUSSERT: How close are we to war with Iran?

CHENEY: Well, I think we are in the final stages of diplomacy, obviously. We have done virtually everything we can with respect to carrots, if you will. It’s time for squash. Not to mention mushrooms, clouds of them.

Sen. Dodd said today on Meet the Press that the Iran war rhetoric has stepped up. (for real). "The administration clearly is on a drumbeat here, given the Cheney speeches... Clearly this administration is moving in that direction, towards military action against Iran.  ... And I believe we’re getting precariously close to that happening."

Was Bush's WWIII comment a trick or a faux-pas?

Maybe this is the play way we deal with the dead, the evil, the scary, the spooky. Boo!

Downtown Houston...

Curious, after living in NYC, to see the development of downtown Houston and the opportunities for living in the central business district, I embarked on a Saturday drive with a friend who had volunteered with me teaching art history to elementary students.  She had worked downtown so knew how to navigate.  We've travelled together on school trips in the U.S. and Mexico.  We know how to look at places. At right is Joan Miro's sculpture, Lady with a Bird at Capital and Milam Streets.  All morning I was looking up.

Houston's skyline district has vastly changed since I worked with architects and Penzoil Place was the new defining skyscraper (early '80s).  The new changes are more  for recreation and visiting with residential growth still going west.  My Houston Downtown photos are posted on Flickr. 

Not many people were out and about downtown on Saturday.  Two people with dogs.  Homeless women were told to skat from one of the few outdoor restaurants that had anyone eating and enjoying the beautiful day. Houston is still a city that works.

Thinking about buildings and Going Green, I put this skyscraper photo in black and white.  This is a city that couldn't grow up until it had air conditioning.

I thought of my father-in-law's words, having lived in Houston in the 30s: never visit Houston except from October through March.  He lived there pre-airconditioning.  October was a good month for visiting. 

Wine & Cheese, Yes, Please...

They say you can't go home again, but what if home is a moving target and friends sprinkle every place?  How do you keep those threads?  How do you keep those friends?  As a mom, as a woman, friends are most precious. 

Thanks to one of my dearest friends, a fun simple wine and cheese let me stay in touch with Houston friends.  All it took was an idea and an email and an afternoon putting it together, together.  I appreciate all of my girlfriends who took the time to come.  They all have an open invitation to come see me in NM!

Friends echo ourselves.  We are mirrors for our friends. 

What defines us most?  A place? A passion? Friends? Family? Talents? Accomplishments? Circumstances? Shared time? Special moments? Memories?

Smarty Pants: Underwear & Literacy & Self-Discipline...

Do you want to know, really, how many teenagers go commando?  I don't.  There are many things mothers just don't want to know. So I said to my daughter who wanted to call the other daughter to get a consensus on reporting to me about this issue.  To write about it, I looked it up on Wikipedia to get the absolute facts of the matter so I can tell you that 7% of women do this, 9% of men do and possibly 25 - 30% do this semi-regularly. 

However, the connection between underwear and literacy is there.  I know.  There is also the issue that self-discipline and delayed gratification is more important than high I.Q.   

Underwear, clean underwear, is important.  So says mother.  Don't ever scrimp on three things: underwear, haircuts and shoes.  Time magazine's blogger talks about a national underwear day.

That is all the smart things I have to say. today. Except to add that my headline might be, for Britney: No Wear to Bare.

This era -- one where modesty might be as dead as Detroit?

photo: Allure Magazine for September's issue

New Things...

This Nokia phone, not yet released, with the Querty keyboard is what Apple's i-phone doesn't have.  The larger screen, too, holds appeal over the Treo (what I use). 

Apple's Leopard is brand new (and $110 online).  I'm waiting on my PC to blow any day now and I don't want Vista and my current Apple works fine.  For those who depend on Microsoft's operating system (they are filing a patent for mind reading) for the Office Suite, like I do, I am interested in two free platforms that might allow me to skip the Vista PC and Microsoft's software altogether. Free office platforms include this one and one by Think Free that (reviewed by PC magazine) uses standard Microsoft-Office file formats for its default formats, making it the most Office-compatible of the online productivity suites.

If Apple only had more stores, their sales would jump for computers.  For the phone?  I think the Blackberry (Curve) and Nokia might be the battle...

10/30 update: Nokia, based in Finland, will sell 430 million handsets this year, according to Forbes Nov. 12 issue. It's revenue will grow 30% with profits probably up one quarter to $7.8 billion. It is number one in each of the fastest growing markets - China, Southeast Asiam and India.  North Americans are equal to China in consumption but Nokia's market here is one out of ten, compared to one out of three five years ago.  It is poised to capture more of the U.S. market.  On the horizon?  A Google phone.

Do They Get Reconstruction?

Laura Bush is raising awareness of breast cancer in the Middle East.  I'm wondering about the different perception of bodies, of dress, of being female and how these things impact dealing with bc and its aftermath.

Remember silicone implants evolved from NASA discoveries and were first used in  Texas...  Reconstruction often goes hand-in-hand with bc recovery.

Texan Nancy Brinker's appointment in  September to the State Department is, I'd bet, having something to do with lifting the burka on the bc issues since the State Department is the organizer (it's called "transformational diplomacy").  Houston's M.D. Anderson and the Susan G. Komen Foundation are also organizers.

This photo, with the colors of pink juxtaposed with the black - the pink ribbon on the black, on the pink seat in front of the pink curtain... is as much about the color of feminine things in different cultures as it is bc.  It was only 25 years ago that bc was a hush-hush subject, kept under wraps. Middle Eastern women are where we were back then.

I just wonder, though, culturally, will reconstruction ever be part of bc recovery there?  Burkas/chadors hide many things.

An interesting photo deconstruction via BagNewsNotes.

photo also here, credit

(image:  Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images. October 22, 2007.  Abu Dhabi.  nytimes.com.  linked image: Kamran Jebreili/Reuters/UAE-Pool.  via YahooNews)

Plamegate: I Spy...

Valerie Plame Wilson, (the muzzled non-official cover officer) ex-CIA spy, is now living in Santa Fe and has just published her book, Fair Game this week (about 10% of which was blacked out by the CIA but the book contains an afterword that relies on interviews and public records to report biographical details that Wilson was prohibited from including). Joe Wilson's book, The Politics of Truth,in 2005 explained how and why his wife was outed in retaliation for his challenges to the administration on the reasons for going to war in Iraq. (20-year CIA veteran Plame had been working in the Iraq branch of the CIA's Counterproliferation Division notes the Washington Post in a review of her book.)

Who needs imaginary Ludlum-esque thrillers about clandestine operatives when real stories are stranger than fiction?  This one is so complicated that the narrative has yet to be told in full by a third party... it is unfolding snippet by snippet.